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The phrases in their context!

Extract from A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE:

There are no phaenomena that point out any such kind affection to men, independent of their merit, and every other circumstance.
We love company in general; but it is as we love any other amusement.
An Englishman in Italy is a friend: A Euro paean in China; and perhaps a man would be beloved as such, were we to meet him in the moon.
But this proceeds only from the relation to ourselves; which in these cases gathers force by being confined to a few persons.
If public benevolence, therefore, or a regard to the interests of mankind, cannot be the original motive to justice, much less can private benevolence, or a regard to the interests of the party concerned, be this motive.
For what if he be my enemy, and has given me just cause to hate him? What if he be a vicious man, and deserves the hatred of all mankind? What if he be a miser, and can make no use of what I would deprive him of? What if he be a profligate debauchee, and would rather receive harm than benefit from large possessions? What if I be in necessity, and have urgent motives to acquire something to my family? In all these cases, the original motive to justice would fail; and consequently the justice itself, and along with it all property, tight, and obligation.
A rich man lies under a moral obligation to communicate to those in necessity a share of his superfluities.
Were private benevolence the original motive to justice, a man would not be obliged to leave others in the possession of more than he is obliged to give them.
At least the difference would be very inconsiderable.
Men generally fix their affections more on what they are possessed of, than on what they never enjoyed: For this reason, it would be greater cruelty to dispossess a man of any thing, than not to give it him.
But who will assert, that this is the only foundation of justice?
Besides, we must consider, that the chief reason, why men attach themselves so much to their possessions is, that they consider them as their property, and as secured to them inviolably by the laws of society.
But this is a secondary consideration, and dependent on the preceding notions of justice and property.
A man's property is supposed to be fenced against every mortal, in every possible case.
But private benevolence is, and ought to be, weaker in some persons, than in others: And in many, or indeed in most persons, must absolutely fail.
Private benevolence, therefore, is not the original motive of justice.
From all this it follows, that we have no real or universal motive for observing the laws of equity, but the very equity and merit of that observance; and as no action can be equitable or meritorious, where it cannot arise from some separate motive, there is here an evident sophistry and reasoning in a circle.
Unless, therefore, we will allow, that nature has established a sophistry, and rendered it necessary and unavoidable, we must allow, that the sense of justice and injustice is not derived from nature, but arises artificially, though necessarily from education, and human conventions.
I shall add, as a corollary to this reasoning, that since no action can be laudable or blameable, without some motives or impelling passions, distinct from the sense of morals, these distinct passions must have a great influence on that sense.
It is according to their general force in human nature, that we blame or praise.
In judging of the beauty of animal bodies, we always carry in our eye the oeconomy of a certain species; and where the limbs and features observe that proportion, which is common to the species, we pronounce them handsome and beautiful.