Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals - Hume (1751).djvu/183

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Of Qualities immediately agreeable to Others.
169

Amongst the other Virtues, we may also give CLEANLINESS a Place; since it naturally renders us agreeable to others, and is no inconsiderable Source of Love and Affection. No one will deny, that a Negligence in this Particular is a Fault; and as Faults are nothing but smaller Vices, and this Fault can have no other Origin than the uneasy Sensation, which it excites in others; we may, in this Instance, seemingly so trivial, clearly discover the Origin of moral Distinctions, about which the Learned have involved themselves in such Mazes of Perplexity and Error.

But besides all the agreeable Qualities, the Origin of whose Beauty we can, in some Degree, explain and account for, there still remains something mysterious and unaccountable, which conveys an immediate Satisfaction to the Spectators, but how, or why, or for what Reason, they cannot pretend to determine. There is a MANNER, a Grace, a Genteelness, an I-know-not-what, which some Men possess above others, which is very different from external Beauty and Comeliness, and which, however, catches our Affection almost as suddenly and powerfully. And tho' this Manner be chiefly talk'd of in the Passion betwixt the Sexes, where the conceal'd Magic is easily explain'd, yet surely much of it pre-vails