"Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue"
About this Quote
Hume takes aim at the moral cartoon version of humanity: saints on one side, monsters on the other. The first sentence sets up that neat theological sorting mechanism - heaven and hell as a binary filing cabinet. Then he punctures it with a statistic disguised as a shrug: most people "float". That verb matters. It suggests drift, inconsistency, circumstance. Not heroic struggle, not settled depravity, but a human weather pattern of small choices, habits, incentives, and lapses.
The intent is polemical in a calm voice. Hume is pushing back against religious moralism and against any ethics that pretends character is a fixed essence. In his wider project, moral judgment comes less from divine rulebooks and more from sentiment, social approval, and the everyday machinery of custom. If most people are in the middle, then the moral task isn't to separate sheep from goats; it's to build institutions and norms that gently tug the floaters toward decency and away from harm.
The subtext is also a warning about hypocrisy. A world that insists on "good" and "bad" invites everyone to perform goodness while privately bargaining with vice. Hume's middle majority is messier but more honest: we want comfort, status, love, security, and we rationalize accordingly. The context is the Enlightenment at its most disruptive - not simply doubting God, but doubting the usefulness of moral absolutism. It's an early argument for moral psychology: if you want better people, start by describing people accurately.
The intent is polemical in a calm voice. Hume is pushing back against religious moralism and against any ethics that pretends character is a fixed essence. In his wider project, moral judgment comes less from divine rulebooks and more from sentiment, social approval, and the everyday machinery of custom. If most people are in the middle, then the moral task isn't to separate sheep from goats; it's to build institutions and norms that gently tug the floaters toward decency and away from harm.
The subtext is also a warning about hypocrisy. A world that insists on "good" and "bad" invites everyone to perform goodness while privately bargaining with vice. Hume's middle majority is messier but more honest: we want comfort, status, love, security, and we rationalize accordingly. The context is the Enlightenment at its most disruptive - not simply doubting God, but doubting the usefulness of moral absolutism. It's an early argument for moral psychology: if you want better people, start by describing people accurately.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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