Natural Abilities

Natural Abilities And Moral Virtues

The distinction between natural abilities and moral virtues is the most usual in all systems of ethics.
    Natural abilities are:
        placed on the same footing with bodily endowments, and
        supposed to have no merit or moral worth annexed to them.
A dispute on this would be merely a dispute of words.
    Natural abilities and moral virtues are not the same.
    But they agree in the most material circumstances.
    Both:
        are equally mental qualities,
        equally produce pleasure, and
        have an equal tendency to procure mankind's love and esteem.
Many are jealous of people who have sense and knowledge, honour and courage, much more than they are jealous of those with temperance and sobriety.
    Men are even afraid of passing for good-natured because it might imply a lack of understanding.
    Men often boast of more debauches than they have been really engaged in, to give themselves airs of fire and spirit.
In short, all the following advantages depend almost as much on his good sense and judgment, as on any other part of his character:
    the figure a man makes in the world,
    the reception he meets with in company, and
    the esteem paid to him by his acquaintance.
A man with the best intentions will never be able to make himself be much regarded without a moderate share of parts and understanding.
    Natural abilities are perhaps inferior to moral virtues but are on the same footing in terms of their causes and effects.
    Why should we make any distinction between them?

We do not call natural abilities as virtues.
But we must admit:
    that they procure mankind's love and esteem,
    that they give a new lustre to the other virtues, and
    that a man who has them is much more entitled to our goodwill and services than one who lacks them entirely.
The sentiment of approbation created by natural abilities is inferior and different from the sentiment which attends other virtues.
    But I think this is not a sufficient reason to exclude them from the catalogue of virtues.
Each of the virtues, even benevolence, justice, gratitude, integrity, excites a different feeling in the spectator.
The characters of Caesar and Cato, as drawn by Sallust, are both virtuous, but in a different way.
    The sentiments arising from them are not entirely the same.
        The one produces love; the other esteem.
        The one is amiable; the other awful.
    We wish to meet with:
        the one character in a friend, and
        the other character in ourselves.
Similarly, the approbation of natural abilities may be different to the feeling from the approbation of other virtues, without making them entirely of a different species.
    Not all the natural abilities produce the same kind of approbation.
    This is less true for the other virtues.
        Good sense and genius beget esteem.
        Wit and humour excite love.27

Footnote 27:

Love and esteem:
    are at the bottom the same passions, and
    arise from like causes.
The qualities that produce both:
    are agreeable, and
    give pleasure.
The passion arising from the pleasure is more properly denominated esteem than love, when:
    the pleasure is severe and serious,
    when the pleasure's object is great and makes a strong impression, or
    when it produces any humility and awe.
Benevolence attends both love and esteem.
    But it is connected with love in a more eminent degree.

Natural abilities Are More Invariable, Moral Qualities Are More Variable

Some think that the distinction between natural abilities and moral virtues are very material.
    They say that natural abilities:
        are entirely involuntary, and
        have therefore no merit attending them since they do not depend on liberty and free will.
I answer that:
    Many of those qualities, which all moralists, especially the ancients, called moral virtues are equally:
        involuntary, and
        necessary with the judgment and imagination.
            Examples are:
                constancy, fortitude, magnanimity, and
                all the qualities which form the great man.
    I might say the same of the others.
    It is almost impossible for the mind to:
        change its character in any considerable article, or
        cure itself of a passionate or splenetic temper, when they are natural to it.
    These blameable qualities become more vicious and less voluntary the greater degree there is of them.
    Why may virtue & vice and beauty & deformity not be involuntary?
        These moral distinctions arise from the natural distinctions of pain and pleasure.
        When we receive those feelings from any quality or character, we denominate it vicious or virtuous.
        No one will assert that a quality can never produce pleasure or pain to the person who considers it, unless it is perfectly voluntary in the person who has it.
    Free will has no place with regard to men's actions, no more than men's qualities.
        What is voluntary is not always free.
        Our actions are more voluntary than our judgments.
        But we do not have more liberty in the one than in the other.

This distinction between voluntary and involuntary is insufficient to justify the distinction between natural abilities and moral virtues.
    Yet the voluntary distinction will afford us a plausible reason why moralists have invented the involuntary one.
Natural abilities and moral qualities are mainly on the same footing.
    But there is this difference between them:
        Natural abilities are almost invariable by any art or industry.
        Moral qualities may be changed by the motives of rewards and punishments, praise and blame.
    Hence legislators, divines, and moralists have principally:
        applied themselves to regulate these voluntary actions, and
        tried to produce additional motives for being virtuous.
    They knew that little effect would result from:
        punishing a man for a folly, or
        exhorting him to be prudent and sagacious.
            Even if the same punishments and exhortations might have a considerable influence with regard to justice and injustice.
But men commonly do not carry those ends in view.
    They:
        naturally praise or blame whatever pleases or displeases them,
        do not seem to regard this distinction much, and
        consider prudence under:
            virtue and benevolence, and
            penetration and justice.
    All moralists, whose judgment is not perverted by a strict adherence to a system, enter into the same way of thinking.
    In particular, the ancient moralists made no scruple of placing prudence at the head of the cardinal virtues.
Any faculty of the mind in its perfect state can excite a sentiment of esteem and approbation.
    It is the business of:
        philosophers to account for this sentiment, and
        grammarians to examine what qualities are entitled to be called virtues.
            They will not find this task so easy.