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Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.
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The virtue of a brother must make me love him; as his vice or infamy must excite the contrary passion.
Virtue and vice, when considered in the abstract; beauty and deformity, when placed on inanimate objects; poverty and riches when belonging to a third person, excite no degree of love or hatred, esteem or contempt towards those, who have no relation to them. But that reason, according to this hypothesis, discovers also vice and virtue. Thus the good and bad qualities of our actions and manners constitute virtue and vice, and determine our personal character, than which nothing operates more strongly on these passions. Any great elevation of place communicates a kind of pride or sublimity of imagination, and gives a fancyed superiority over those that lie below; and, vice versa, a sublime and strong imagination conveys the idea of ascent and elevation. When we blame any action, in any situation, the whole complicated object, of action and situation, must form certain relations, wherein the essence of vice consists. All the difference is, that our superior reason may serve to discover the vice or virtue, and by that means may augment the blame or praise: But still this discovery supposes a separate being in these moral distinctions, and a being, which depends only on the will and appetite, and which, both in thought and reality, may be distinguished from the reason. As to the third sense of the word, it is certain, that both vice and virtue are equally artificial, and out of nature. 2003 Update: