Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals - Hume (1751).djvu/237

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A

DIALOGUE.

My Friend, Palamedes, who is as great a Rambler in his Principles as in his Person, and who has run over, by Study and Travel, almost every Region of the intellectual and material World, surpriz'd me lately with an Account of a Nation, with whom, he told me, he had pass'd a considerable Part of his Life, and whom he found, in the main, an extreme civiliz'd, intelligent People.

There is a State, say'd he, in the World, call'd Fourli, no matter for its Longitude or Latitude, whose Ways of thinking in many Things, particularly in Morals, are diametrically opposite to ours. When I came amongst them, I found I must submit to double Pains; first to learn the Meaning of the Terms in their Language, and then to know the Import of those Terms, and the Praise or Blame attach'd to them. After a Word had been explain'd to me, and the Character, which it exprest, hadbeen