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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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SECT. V SOME FARTHER REFLECTIONS CONCERNING THE NATURAL VIRTUES No distinction is more usual in all systems of ethics, than that betwixt natural abilities and moral virtues; where the former are placed on the same footing with bodily endowments, and are supposed to have no merit or moral worth annexed to them. Thus it appears, that sympathy is a very powerful principle in human nature, that it has a great influence on our taste of beauty, and that it produces our sentiment of morals in all the artificial virtues. Normalize your metabolism. Thus animals have little or no sense of virtue or vice; they quickly lose sight of the relations of blood; and are incapable of that of right and property: For which reason the causes of their pride and humility must lie solely in the body, and can never be placed either in the mind or external objects. The case is the same, as when we correct the different sentiments of virtue, which proceed from its different distances from ourselves. Upon these principles we may easily remove any contradiction, which may appear to be betwixt the extensive sympathy, on which our sentiments of virtue depend, and that limited generosity which I have frequently observed to be natural to men, and which justice and property suppose, according to the precedent reasoning. The case is the same, as when we correct the different sentiments of virtue, which proceed from its different distances from ourselves.