Humanity, justice, generosity and public spirit, are the qualities most useful to others. Wherein consists the propriety of humanity and justice has been explained upon a former occasion, where it was shewn how much our esteem and approbation of those qualities de|pended upon the concord between the af|fections of the agent and those of the spec|tators.
The propriety of generosity and public spirit is founded upon the same principle with that of justice. Generosity is diffe|rent from humanity. Those two qualities, which at first sight seem so nearly allied, do not always belong to the same person. Hu|manity is the virtue of a woman, generosity of a man. The fair sex, who have com|monly much more tenderness than ours, have seldom so much generosity. That women rarely make considerable donations is an ob|servation of the civil law * 1.1. Humanity consists merely in the exquisite fellow-feeling which the spectator entertains with the sentiments of the persons principally concerned so as to grieve for their sufferings, to resent their injuries, and rejoice at their good fortune.
