and humour are capable of altering so essen|tially. As our most solid judgments, there|fore, with regard to right and wrong are re|gulated by maxims and ideas derived from an induction of reason, virtue may very properly be said to consist in a conformity to reason, and so far this faculty may be considered as the source and principle of approbation and disapprobation.
But tho' reason is undoubtedly the source of the general rules of morality, and of all the moral judgments which we form by means of them; it is altogether absurd and unintelli|gible to suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason, even in those particular cases upon the expe|rience of which the general rules are formed. These first perceptions, as well as all other experiments upon which any general rules are founded, cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense and feeling. It is by find|ing in a vast variety of instances that one tenor of conduct constantly pleases in a cer|tain manner, and that another as constantly displeases the mind, that we form the general rules of morality. But reason cannot render any particular object either agreeable or dis|agreeable to the mind for its own sake.
