take is important, and challenges our
attention. Nothing is to be over-looked and despised, that regards them.
And where any person can excite these sentiments, he soon acquires our
esteem; unless other circumstances of his character render him odious
and disagreeable.

SECT. V SOME FARTHER REFLECTIONS CONCERNING THE NATURAL VIRTUES

It has been observed, in treating of the passions, that pride
and humility, love and hatred, are excited by any advantages or
disadvantages of the mind, body, or fortune; and that these advantages
or disadvantages have that effect by producing a separate impression of
pain or pleasure. The pain or pleasure, which arises from the general
survey or view of any action or quality of the mind, constitutes its
vice or virtue, and gives rise to our approbation or blame, which is
nothing but a fainter and more imperceptible love or hatred. We have
assigned four different sources of this pain and pleasure; and in order
to justify more fully that hypothesis, it may here be proper to observe,
that the advantages or disadvantages of the body and of fortune, produce
a pain or pleasure from the very same principles. The tendency of any
object to be useful to the person possess d of it, or to others; to
convey pleasure to him or to others; all these circumstances convey an
immediate pleasure to the person, who considers the object, and command
his love and approbation.

To begin with the advantages of the body; we may observe a phaenomenon,
which might appear somewhat trivial and ludicrous, if any thing coued be
trivial, which fortified a conclusion of such importance, or ludicrous,
which was employed in a philosophical reasoning. It is a general
remark, that those we call good women's men, who have either signalized
themselves by their amorous exploits, or whose make of body promises any
extraordinary vigour of that kind, are well received by the fair sex,
and naturally engage the affections even of those, whose virtue prevents
any design of ever giving employment to those talents. Here it is
evident, that the ability of such a person to give enjoyment, is the
real source of that love and esteem he meets with among the females; at
the same time that the women, who love and esteem him, have no prospect
of receiving that enjoyment themselves, and can only be affected by
means of their sympathy with one, that has a commerce of love with him.
This instance is singular, and merits our attention.