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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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He who would derive from experience the conceptions of virtue, who would make (as many have really done) that, which at best can but serve as an imperfectly illustrative example, a model for or the formation of a perfectly adequate idea on the subject, would in fact transform virtue into a nonentity changeable according to time and circumstance and utterly incapable of being employed as a rule.

 We may presume the like with regard to all the other virtues, which have a like tendency to the public good. vice and virtue must consist in some relations; since it is allowed on all hands, that no matter of fact is capable of being demonstrated. Now it has been observed, that our own sensations determine the vice and virtue of any quality, as well as those sensations, which it may excite in others. 
  • Since then natural abilities, though, perhaps, inferior, yet are on the same footing, both as to their causes and effects, with those qualities which we call moral virtues, why should we make any distinction betwixt them?
 The utility and advantage of any quality to ourselves is a source of virtue, as well as its agreeableness to others; and it is certain, that nothing is more useful to us in the conduct of life, than a due degree of pride, which makes us sensible of our own merit, and gives us a confidence and assurance in all our projects and enterprizes. We have also instances, wherein an indifference and insensibility under misfortune encreases our concern for the misfortunate, even though the indifference proceed not from any virtue and magnanimity. And indeed we may observe, that the natural abilities, no more than the other virtues, produce not, all of them, the same kind of approbation.