[An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume]@TWC D-Link book
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

PART II
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Vanity alone, without any other consideration, is a sufficient motive to make us wish for the possession of these accomplishments.

No man was ever willingly deficient in this particular.
All our failures here proceed from bad education, want of capacity, or a perverse and unpliable disposition.

Would you have your company coveted, admired, followed; rather than hated, despised, avoided?
Can any one seriously deliberate in the case?
As no enjoyment is sincere, without some reference to company and society; so no society can be agreeable, or even tolerable, where a man feels his presence unwelcome, and discovers all around him symptoms of disgust and aversion.
But why, in the greater society or confederacy of mankind, should not the case be the same as in particular clubs and companies?
Why is it more doubtful, that the enlarged virtues of humanity, generosity, beneficence, are desirable with a view of happiness and self-interest, than the limited endowments of ingenuity and politeness?
Are we apprehensive lest those social affections interfere, in a greater and more immediate degree than any other pursuits, with private utility, and cannot be gratified, without some important sacrifice of honour and advantage?
If so, we are but ill-instructed in the nature of the human passions, and are more influenced by verbal distinctions than by real differences.
Whatever contradiction may vulgarly be supposed between the SELFISH and SOCIAL sentiments or dispositions, they are really no more opposite than selfish and ambitious, selfish and revengeful, selfish and vain.

It is requisite that there be an original propensity of some kind, in order to be a basis to self-love, by giving a relish to the objects of its pursuit; and none more fit for this purpose than benevolence or humanity.

The goods of fortune are spent in one gratification or another: the miser who accumulates his annual income, and lends it out at interest, has really spent it in the gratification of his avarice.
And it would be difficult to show why a man is more a loser by a generous action, than by any other method of expense; since the utmost which he can attain by the most elaborate selfishness, is the indulgence of some affection.
Now if life, without passion, must be altogether insipid and tiresome; let a man suppose that he has full power of modelling his own disposition, and let him deliberate what appetite or desire he would choose for the foundation of his happiness and enjoyment.


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