"Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of _reason_ and of
_taste_ are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of
truth and falsehood: The latter gives the sentiment of beauty and
deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects as they
really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other
has a productive faculty, and gilding and staining all natural
objects with the colours borrowed from internal sentiment, raises
in a manner a new creation. Reason being cool and disengaged, is no
motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from
appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining
happiness or avoiding misery. Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain,
and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to
action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition.
From circumstances and relations known or supposed, the former
leads us to the discovery of the concealed and unknown. After all
circumstances and relations are laid before us, the latter makes us
feel from the whole a new sentiment of blame or approbation. The
standard of the one, being founded on the nature of things, is
external and inflexible, even by the will of the Supreme Being: The
standard of the other, arising from the internal frame and
constitution of animals, is ultimately derived from the Supreme
Will, which bestowed on each being its peculiar nature, and
arranged the several classes and orders of existence."--(IV. pp.
376-7.)
Hume has not discussed the theological theory of the obligations of
morality, but it is obviously in accordance with his view of the nature
of those obligations. Under its theological aspect, morality is
obedience to the will of God; and the ground for such obedience is
two-fold; either we ought to obey God because He will punish us if we
disobey Him, which is an argument based on the utility of obedience; or
our obedience ought to flow from our love towards God, which is an
argument based on pure feeling and for which no reason can be given.
For, if any man should say that he takes no pleasure in the
contemplation of the ideal of perfect holiness, or, in other words, that
he does not love God, the attempt to argue him into acquiring that
pleasure would be as hopeless as the endeavour to persuade Peter Bell of
the "witchery of the soft blue sky."