BOOK III PART I
lowed on all hands, that no matter of fact is ca-
pable of being demonstrated. Let us, therefore,
begin with examining this hypothesis, and en-
deavour, if possible, to fix those moral qual-
ities, which have been so long the objects of
our fruitless researches. Point out distinctly the
relations, which constitute morality or obliga-
tion, that we may know wherein they consist,
and after what manner we must judge of them.
If you assert, that vice and virtue consist in
relations susceptible of certainty and demon-
stration, you must confine yourself to those
four relations, which alone admit of that de-
gree of evidence; and in that case you run into
absurdities, from which you will never be able
to extricate yourself. For as you make the very
essence of morality to lie in the relations, and
as there is no one of these relations but what is