o temperance and sobriety. Men are even
afraid of passing for goodnatured; lest that should be taken for want
of understanding: And often boast of more debauches than they have been
really engaged in, to give themselves airs of fire and spirit. In short,
the figure a man makes in the world, the reception he meets with in
company, the esteem paid him by his acquaintance; all these advantages
depend almost as much upon his good sense and judgment, as upon any
other part of his character. Let a man have the best intentions in the
world, and be the farthest from all injustice and violence, he will
never be able to make himself be much regarded without a moderate
share, at least, of parts and understanding. 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?

Though we refuse to natural abilities the title of virtues, we must
allow, that they procure the love and esteem of mankind; that they give
a new lustre to the other virtues; and that a man possessed of them is
much more intitled to our good-will and services, than one entirely
void of them. It may, indeed, be pretended that the sentiment of
approbation, which those qualities produce, besides its being inferior,
is also somewhat different from that, which attends the other virtues.
But this, in my opinion, is not a sufficient reason for excluding them
from the catalogue of virtues. Each of the virtues, even benevolence,
justice, gratitude, integrity, excites a different sentiment or feeling
in the spectator. The characters of Caesar and Cato, as drawn by
Sallust, are both of them virtuous, in the strictest sense of the word;
but in a different way: Nor are the sentiments entirely the same, which
arise from them. The one produces love; the other esteem: The one is
amiable; the other awful: We could wish to meet with the one character
in a friend; the other character we would be ambitious of in ourselves.
In like manner, the approbation which attends natural abilities, may be
somewhat different to the feeling from that, which arises from the other
virtues, without making them entirely of a different species. 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. Good
sense and genius beget esteem: Wit and humour excite