judge on that subject) is of all my writings,
historical, philosophical, and literary, incomparably the best. It
came unnoticed and unobserved into the world."

It may commonly be noticed that the relative value which an author
ascribes to his own works rarely agrees with the estimate formed of them
by his readers; who criticise the products, without either the power or
the wish to take into account the pains which they may have cost the
producer. Moreover, the clear and dispassionate common sense of the
_Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_ may have tasted flat after
the highly-seasoned _Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding_.
Whether the public like to be deceived, or not, may be open to question;
but it is beyond a doubt that they love to be shocked in a pleasant and
mannerly way. Now Hume's speculations on moral questions are not so
remote from those of respectable professors, like Hutcheson, or saintly
prelates, such as Butler, as to present any striking novelty. And they
support the cause of righteousness in a cool, reasonable, indeed
slightly patronising fashion, eminently in harmony with the mind of the
eighteenth century; which admired virtue very much, if she would only
avoid the rigour which the age called fanaticism, and the fervour which
it called enthusiasm.

Having applied the ordinary methods of scientific inquiry to the
intellectual phenomena of the mind, it was natural that Hume should
extend the same mode of investigation to its moral phenomena; and, in
the true spirit of a natural philosopher, he commences by selecting a
group of those states of consciousness with which every one's personal
experience must have made him familiar: in the expectation that the
discovery of the sources of moral approbation and disapprobation, in
this comparatively easy case, may furnish the means of detecting them
where they are more recondite.

"We shall analyse that complication of mental qualities which form
what, in common life, we call PERSONAL MERIT: We shall consider
every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either
of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or
sentiment or faculty, which if ascribed to any person, implies
either praise or blame, and may enter into any panegyric or satire
of his character and manners. The quick sensibility which, on this
head, is so universal among mankind, gives a philosopher su