ABSTRACT
David Hume concern for the general happiness is due to the mechanism of sympathy, the natural attraction of ideas and impressions. According to Hume the sentiments of moral approval and disapproval influence the will and sometimes determine us to action; they must therefore be species of pleasure and pain. He seems to have thought that the moral sentiment was a perfectly specific introspectible feeling of pleasure or pain. Hume could more plausibly have said that only qualities of character, or acts deemed to be evidence of them, are closely enough connected with the person of the agent to actuate the indirect passions of pride and humility, love and hatred. He is suggesting that other motives by which men might determine their generalised approvals and disapprovals would have disadvantages, which sympathy alone lacks. Sympathy is no longer needed to explain concern for the happiness of others; an original instinct of humanity is a simpler and, he thinks, truer explanation.
