They make us feel the difference
between vice and virtue; they excite and regulate our sentiments;
and so they can but bend our hearts to the love of probity and true
honour, they think, that they have fully attained the end of all their
labours.
2. The other species of philosophers considers man in the light of a
reasonable rather than an active being, and endeavours to form his
understanding more than cultivate his manners. They regard human
nature as a subject of speculation; and with a narrow scrutiny examine
it, in order to find those principles, which regulate our
understanding, excite our sentiments, and make us approve or blame any
particular object, action, or behaviour. They think it a reproach to
all literature, that philosophy should not yet have fixed, beyond
controversy, the foundation of morals, reasoning, and criticism; and
should for ever talk of truth and falsehood, vice and virtue, beauty
and deformity, without being able to determine the source of these
distinctions. While they attempt this arduous task, they are
deterred by no difficulties; but proceeding from particular
instances to general principles, they still push on their enquiries to
principles more general, and rest not satisfied till they arrive at
those original principles, by which, in every science, all human
curiosity must be bounded.
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