ABSTRACT
David Hume makes his account of social artifices, and of the artificial virtues that consist in conformity to their constitutive rules. A general claim, covering natural as well as artificial virtues, would be hard to reconcile with Hume's earlier already quoted claim that those who use the term obligation without first showing its link with justice and with "its origin in the artifice and contrivance of men" are guilty of "a very gross fallacy". The originality is threefold: first, in the claims concerning what it is that authors collectively invent-the very possibility of ownership, of loan, of gift and barter, of promise, of authority over others, and so of the obligations and rights these involve; second, in the details of the account of how they are able to do this inventing; and third, in the account of the relation of these rights and obligations to the rest of morality.
