In this view, cleanliness is also to be regarded as a virtue; since it naturally renders us agreeable to others, and is a very considerable 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, dearly discover the origin of the moral distinction of vice and virtue in other instances.

Besides all those qualities, which render a person lovely or valuable, there is also a certain JE-NE-SCAI-QUOI of agreeable and handsome, that concurs to the same effect.  In this case, as well as in that of wit and eloquence, we must have recourse to a certain sense, which acts without reflection, and regards not the tendencies of qualities and characters.  Some moralists account for all the sentiments of virtue by this sense.  Their hypothesis is very plausible.  Nothing but a particular enquiry can give the preference to any other hypothesis.  When we find, that almost all the virtues have such particular tendencies; and also find, that these tendencies are sufficient alone to give a strong sentiment of approbation:  We cannot doubt, after this, that qualities are approved of, in proportion to the advantage, which results from them.

The decorum or indecorum of a quality, with regard to the age, or character, or station, contributes also to its praise or blame.  This decorum depends, in a great measure, upon experience.  It is usual to see men lose their levity, as they advance in years.  Such a degree of gravity, therefore, and such years, are connected together in our thoughts.  When we observe them separated in any person’s character, this imposes a kind of violence on our imagination, and is disagreeable.

That faculty of the soul, which, of all others, is of the least consequence to the character, and has the least virtue or vice in its several degrees, at the same time, that it admits of a great variety of degrees, is the memory.  Unless it rise up to that stupendous height as to surprize us, or sink so low as, in some measure, to affect the judgment, we commonly take no notice of its variations, nor ever mention them to the praise or dispraise of any person.  It is so far from being a virtue to have a good memory, that men generally affect to complain of a bad one; and endeavouring to persuade the world, that what they say is entirely of their own invention, sacrifice it to the praise of genius and judgment.  Yet to consider the matter abstractedly, it would be difficult to give a reason, why the faculty of recalling past ideas with truth and clearness, should not have as much merit in it, as the faculty of placing our present ideas, in such an order, as to form true propositions and opinions.  The reason of the difference certainly must be, that the memory is exerted without any sensation of pleasure or pain; and in all its middling degrees