Summary

Portrait of David Hume David Hume Treatise of Human Nature/Book 2… (1739)

For if all morality be founded on the pain or pleasure, which arises from the prospect of any loss or advantage, that may result from our own characters, or from those of others, all the effects of morality must be deriv'd from the same pain or pleasure, and among the rest, the passions of pride and humility. The very essence of virtue, according to this hypothesis, is to produce pleasure, and that of vice to give pain. The virtue and vice must be part of our character in order to excite pride or humility.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of David Hume David Hume Treatise of Human Nature/Book 2… (1739)

Thus one hypothesis of morality is an undeniable proof of the foregoing system, and the other at worst agrees with it.
But pride and humility arise not from these qualities alone of the mind, which, according to the vulgar systems of ethicks, have been comprehended as parts of moral duty, but from any other that has a connexion with pleasure and uneasiness. Nothing flatters our vanity more than the talent of pleasing by our wit, good humour, or any other accomplishment; and nothing gives us a more sensible mortification than a disappointment in any attempt of that nature.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of David Hume David Hume Treatise of Human Nature/Book 2… (1739)

There may, perhaps, be some, who being accustom'd to the style of the schools and pulpit, and having never consider'd human nature in any other light, than that in which they place it, may here be surpriz'd to hear me talk of virtue as exciting pride, which they look upon as a vice; and of vice as producing humility, which they have been taught to consider as a virtue.
Source: Wikisource

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