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The phrases in their context!

Extract from A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE:

Virtue in rags is still virtue; and the love, which it procures, attends a man into a dungeon or desart, where the virtue can no longer be exerted in action, and is lost to all the world.
Now this may be esteemed an objection to the present system.
Sympathy interests us in the good of mankind; and if sympathy were the source of our esteem for virtue, that sentiment of approbation coued only take place, where the virtue actually attained its end, and was beneficial to mankind.
Where it fails of its end, it is only an imperfect means; and therefore can never acquire any merit from that end.
The goodness of an end can bestow a merit on such means alone as are compleat, and actually produce the end.
To this we may reply, that where any object, in all its parts, is fitted to attain any agreeable end, it naturally gives us pleasure, and is esteemed beautiful, even though some external circumstances be wanting to render it altogether effectual.
It is sufficient if every thing be compleat in the object itself.
A house, that is contrived with great judgment for all the commodities of life, pleases us upon that account; though perhaps we are sensible, that noone will ever dwell in it.
A fertile soil, and a happy climate, delight us by a reflection on the happiness which they would afford the inhabitants, though at present the country be desart and uninhabited.
A man, whose limbs and shape promise strength and activity, is esteemed handsome, though condemned to perpetual imprisonment.
The imagination has a set of passions belonging to it, upon which our sentiments of beauty much depend.
These passions are moved by degrees of liveliness and strength, which are inferior to belief, and independent of the real existence of their objects.
Where a character is, in every respect, fitted to be beneficial to society, the imagination passes easily from the cause to the effect, without considering that there are some circumstances wanting to render the cause a complete one.
General rules create a species of probability, which sometimes influences the judgment, and always the imagination.
It is true, when the cause is compleat, and a good disposition is attended with good fortune, which renders it really beneficial to society, it gives a stronger pleasure to the spectator, and is attended with a more lively sympathy.
We are more affected by it; and yet we do not say that it is more virtuous, or that we esteem it more.
We know, that an alteration of fortune may render the benevolent disposition entirely impotent; and therefore we separate, as much as possible, the fortune from the disposition.
The case is the same, as when we correct the different sentiments of virtue, which proceed from its different distances from ourselves.
The passions do not always follow our corrections; but these corrections serve sufficiently to regulate our abstract notions, and are alone regarded, when we pronounce in general concerning the degrees of vice and virtue.
It is observed by critics, that all words or sentences, which are difficult to the pronunciation, are disagreeable to the ear.
There is no difference, whether a man hear them pronounced, or read them silently to himself.