"Of the Standard of Taste" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

particulars; and to be less in reality than in appearance. An
explanation of the terms commonly ends the controversy; and
the disputants are surprised to find, that they had been
quarreling, while at bottom they agreed in their judgment.

Those who found morality on sentiment, more than on reason,
are inclined to comprehend ethics under the former
observation, and to maintain, that, in all questions, which
regard conduct and manners, the difference among men is really
greater than at first sight it appears. It is indeed obvious,
that writers of all nations and all ages concur in applauding
justice, humanity, magnanimity, prudence, veracity; and in
blaming the opposite qualities. Even poets and other authors,
whose compositions are chiefly calculated to please the
imagination, are yet found, from HOMER down to FENELON, to
inculcate the same moral precepts, and to bestow their
applause and blame on the same virtues and vices. This great
unanimity is usually ascribed to the influence of plain
reason; which, in all these cases, maintains similar
sentiments in all men, and prevents those controversies, to
which the abstract sciences are so much exposed. So far as the
unanimity is real, this account may be admitted as
satisfactory: But we must also allow that some part of the
seeming harmony in morals may be accounted for from the very
nature of language. The word virtue, with its equivalent in
every tongue, implies praise; as that of vice does blame: And
no one, without the most obvious and grossest impropriety,
could affix reproach to a term, which in general acceptation
is understood in a good sense; or bestow applause, where the
idiom requires disapprobation. HOMER's general precepts, where
he delivers any such will never be controverted; but it is
obvious, that, when he draws particular pictures of manners,
and represents heroism in ACHILLES and prudence in ULYSSES, he
intermixes a much greater degree of ferocity in the former,
and of cunning and fraud in the latter, than FENELON would
admit of . The same ULYSSES in the GREEK poet seems to delight
in lies and fictions; and often employs them without any
necessity of even advantage: But his more scrupulous son, in
the FRENCH epic writer, exposes himself to the most imminent
perils, rather than depart from the most exact line of truth
and veracity.

The admirers and follows of the ALCORAN insist on the
excellent moral precepts interspersed throughout that wild and
absurd performance. But it is to be supposed, that the ARABIC
words, which correspond to the ENGLISH, equity, justice,
temperance, meekness, charity, were such as, from the constant
use of that tongue, must always be taken in a good sense; and
it would have argued the greatest ignorance, not of morals,
but of language, to have mentioned them with any epithets,