Self-interest, refined through convention and education into a concern for social utility, constitutes a historically adequate and approvable motive specifically for artificial virtues on Hume's own terms.

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Artificial virtues(Hume's category of morally good traits): Moral qualities like justice and honesty that humans created through social agreements because they help society function, rather than virtues that come from human nature alone.
Historically adequate(describing whether Hume's theory works as a real-world account): Sufficient or reasonable as an explanation based on how things have actually developed in real human history.
Hume(as the main philosopher discussed in this statement): David Hume was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher who argued that human knowledge comes from experience and observation rather than pure reasoning alone.
Motive(in ethics, as what drives a person to act morally): The internal reason or desire that makes someone want to do something.
Social utility(the refined form of self-interest): The usefulness or benefit that an action brings to society as a whole, rather than just to one person.
convention(Used to distinguish mere regularities from convention-governed regularities in the analysis of meaning.): A regularity that obtains because there is something akin to an agreement among a group of people to keep the regularity in place.
self-interest(A motivation that Machiavelli suggests can align with the public good): A person's own personal advantage or benefit, what they want for themselves.

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