Key Arguments

• People call good whatever conduces to health and worship, and bad whatever hinders these, confusing imagination with understanding.
• Order is preferred because easily imagined; but there is no order in nature except relative to our imagination.
• Sensory qualities (beautiful/ugly, fragrant/fetid, sweet/bitter, hard/soft, etc.) are labels for how motions affect our nerves and senses.
• Disagreement and skepticism arise because human bodies differ; thus judgments vary with mental disposition rather than understanding.

Source Quotes

I will speak of these latter hereafter, when I treat of human nature; the former I will briefly explain here. Everything which conduces to health and the worship of God they have called good, everything which hinders these objects they have styled bad; and inasmuch as those who do not understand the nature of things do not verify phenomena in any way, but merely imagine them after a fashion, and mistake their imagination for understanding, such persons firmly believe that there is an order in things, being really ignorant both of things and their own nature. When phenomena are of such a kind, that the impression they make on our senses requires little effort of imagination, and can consequently be easily remembered, we say that they are well—ordered; if the contrary, that they are ill—ordered or confused.

When phenomena are of such a kind, that the impression they make on our senses requires little effort of imagination, and can consequently be easily remembered, we say that they are well—ordered; if the contrary, that they are ill—ordered or confused. Further, as things which are easily imagined are more pleasing to us, men prefer order to confusion—as though there were any order in nature, except in relation to our imagination—and say that God has created all things in order; thus, without knowing it, attributing imagination to God, unless, indeed, they would have it that God foresaw human imagination, and arranged everything, so that it should be most easily imagined. If this be their theory, they would not, perhaps, be daunted by the fact that we find an infinite number of phenomena, far surpassing our imagination, and very many others which confound its weakness.

But enough has been said on this subject. The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected: though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch as they believe that everything was created for the sake of themselves; and, according as they are affected by it, style it good or bad, healthy or rotten and corrupt. For instance, if the motion which objects we see communicate to our nerves be conducive to health, the objects causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary motion be excited, they are styled ugly.

The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected: though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch as they believe that everything was created for the sake of themselves; and, according as they are affected by it, style it good or bad, healthy or rotten and corrupt. For instance, if the motion which objects we see communicate to our nerves be conducive to health, the objects causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary motion be excited, they are styled ugly. Things which are perceived through our sense of smell are styled fragrant or fetid; if through our taste, sweet or bitter, full—flavored or insipid; if through our touch, hard or soft, rough or smooth, &c.

Key Concepts

• Everything which conduces to health and the worship of God they have called good, everything which hinders these objects they have styled bad;
• such persons firmly believe that there is an order in things, being really ignorant both of things and their own nature.
• men prefer order to confusion—as though there were any order in nature, except in relation to our imagination
• The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected:
• if the motion which objects we see communicate to our nerves be conducive to health, the objects causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary motion be excited, they are styled ugly.

Context

Ethics I, Appendix, lines 606–734; genealogy and relativization of evaluative concepts