If approval and disapproval were based on personal advantage, we would never admire the good deeds of our enemies or rivals, since those deeds are hurtful to us.

Hume is confident that “the voice of nature and experience” will show that Hobbes’ theory, understood in this way, is mistaken. Borrowing many of Hutcheson’s arguments, he points out that if approval and disapproval were based on thoughts about the possible advantages and disadvantages to us of people’s characters and actions, we would never feel approval and disapproval of people from “very distant ages and remote countries”, since they cannot possibly affect us. We would never admire the good