an Improvement upon our Nature: yet if Virtue be look’d upon as wholly Artificial, there are I know not what Suspicions against it; as if indeed [xix] it might tend to the greater Interest of large Bodies or Societies of Men, or to that of their Governors; whereas a private Person may better find his Interest, or enjoy greater Pleasures in the Practices counted vicious, especially if he has any Probability of Secrecy in them. These Suspicions must be entirely remov’d, if we have a moral Sense and publick Affections, whose Gratifications are constituted by Nature, our most intense and durable Pleasures.
I hope it is a good Omen of something still better on this Subject to be expected in the learned World, that Mr. Butler, in his Sermons at the Rolls Chapel, has done so much Justice to the wise and good Order of our Nature; that the Gentlemen, who have oppos’d some other Sentiments of the Author of the Inquiry, seem convinc’d of a moral [xx] Sense.7 Some of them have by a Mistake made a Compliment to the Author, which does not [xix] belong to him; as if the World were any way indebted to him for this Discovery. He has too often met with the Sensus Decori & Honesti,8 and with the Δύναμις αγαθοειδὴς, to assume any such thing to himself.
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Some Letters in the London Journals, subscribed Philaretus,9 gave the first Occasion to the Fourth Treatise; the Answers given to them bore too visible Marks of the Hurry in which they were wrote, and therefore the Author declined to continue the Debate that way; chusing to send a private Letter to Philaretus, to desire a more private Correspondence on the Subject of our Debate. I have been since informed, that his Death disappointed my great Expectations from [xxi] so ingenious a Correspondent. The Objections proposed in the first Section of Treatise [xx] IV, are not always those of Philaretus, tho I have endeavour’d to leave no Objections of his unanswer’d; but I also interspersed whatever Objections occurr’d to me in Conversation on these Subjects. I hope I have not used any Expressions inconsistent with the high Regard I have for the Memory of so ingenious a Gentleman, and of such Distinction in the World.
The last Section of the Fourth Treatise, was occasion’d by a private Letter from a Person of the most real Merit, in Glasgow; representing to me some Sentiments not uncommon among good Men, which might prejudice them against any Scheme of Morals, not wholly founded upon Piety.10 This Point is, I hope, so treated, as to remove the Difficulty.
[xxii] The Deference due to a Person, who has appear’d so much in the learned World, as M. Le Clerc, would seem to require, that I should make some Defense against, or Submission to, the Remarks he makes in his Bibliotheque Ancienne & Moderne. But I cannot but conclude from his Abstract, especially from that of the last Section of the Inquiry,
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either that I don’t understand his French, or he my English, or that he has never read more than the Titles of some of the Sections: and if any one of the three be the Case, we are not fit for a Controversy.11
In the References, at bottom of Pages, the Inquiry into Beauty is called Treatise I. That into the Ideas of moral Good and Evil, is Treatise II. The Essay on the Passions, Treatise III. And the Illustrations on the moral Sense, Treatise IV.
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THE CONTENTS
An ESSAY on the Nature and Conduct of the PASSIONS.
A General Account of our several Senses and Desires. Selfish or Publick.
Particular Divisions of the Affections and Passions,
A Comparison of the Pleasures and Pains of the several Senses, as to Intenseness and Duration,
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ILLUSTRATIONS upon the MORAL SENSE,
Concerning the Character of Virtue, agreeable to Truth or Reason,
Concerning that Character of Virtue and Vice; the Fitness or Unfitness of Actions,
Mr. Woolaston’s Significancy of Truth, as the Idea of Virtue, considered,
