ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that David Hume's preference for the Enquiry may be linked to his admiration of Marcus Tullius Cicero, and his work, De Officiis. It examines Hume's attempt to reconcile the foundation of morality, as he understood it, the sentiment of humanity, with the principles of utility and agreeableness. The chapter attempts to illustrate how Francis Hutcheson and Hume appealed to the authority of Cicero in their respective contributions to that controversy and how their inquiries eventuated in different understandings of the honestum. Hutcheson's conception of the principles of morals differed from Cicero, in his Offices, where he was determined to reconcile the useful with the truly virtuous or the honestum. Hume's reactions to Hutcheson's criticisms would have done little to allay Hutcheson's concerns. He agreed with Hutcheson that he was not an advocate of virtue; he was a metaphysician, an anatomist of the passions and the motives that underlie moral conduct.
