For example, let us examine a boy who steals a toy at a store. A matter of fact about this situation is that a young human male has taken an item from a store. This is what happened. The senses and reason tell us a few other things too: the toy was a plastic squirt gun; the boy used his hands to take the toy; it took only a second for the boy to do this. Hume argued that no matter what we find about the situation with our senses and our reason, we will never find the actual existence or quality of vice. So then, if morality is not intrinsic to objects in a situation, what is morality?

Hume said that morality can be found within. When you observe an immoral act, you do not find any right or wrong about the situation when you consider only the objects involved in the act. “Only when you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation” will you find a right or wrong about the situation. Hume said that this was only a feeling or sentiment though.

Therefore morality is not something of our reason, for we could not find the existence of good or bad while examining the situation with our reason. Our reason only told us facts about what happened and how it happened. Morality then must a sentiment or feeling. Hume uses the example of the philosophical view of colors, heat and other such “qualities”. Hume says that modern philosophy considers such things as colors, heat and sound as simply perceptions and not definite qualities of any object. Colors and heat are objects of our observation, to be sure, but it can not be said for sure that such things are properties of an object. Take an apple for example. We see red, but red is our perception and is not necessarily an actual quality of the apple. To go even further we cannot even say for fact that an apple exists, and if the apple does not exist than surely red can not be a quality of it. All we really know is that we perceive an apple and in our perceptions it is red. This does not also imply the existence or qualities of the apple. Hume compares this type of thought to morality. Hume is trying to show that like observations of color and heat, morality is not something that can be found, for us, in an object, but instead morality is something which only exists within our world and comes from the sentiments in us.

Hume seems to be correct in declaring morality cannot be judge through the senses. We can only know what is afforded to us by our senses and our senses do not tell us when something is wrong or right. Something only becomes wrong or right when someone applies their feelings about certain actions to what they have seen or heard. The evidence for this is the disparity in people’s moral beliefs: what offends one person’s moral sentiments does not always offend another. While many people believe it is morally offensive to commit suicide in any situation, but in many cultures thought it more honorable to kill oneself than to admit defeat in a battle. These people did not see suicide in that situation as immoral. Morality is not something that is intrinsic in the objects or the action, since two different people would come to two different conclusions about the action of suicide. Instead it must be as Hume says; morality must be within us as a personal sentiment

Law 72 states “If you judge love by most of its results, it seems more akin to hate than to friendship.” Taken in the basic terms it is true, but beyond the purely philosophical basis it points to the mental and physical changes one can experience during love and hate. Love can invoke powerful chemical changes in the brain akin to those caused by the use of drugs. Hate also causes chemical changes, increasing the amount of adrenaline and decreasing seratonin in the body. Both can cause behaviors under other circumstances would be unthinkable or undesirable. Friendship is less emotional and more mental. While friends are chosen for what they can do for oneself1, lovers and enemies are created through surge of emotions and are very rarely mental on the surface2. Yes La Rouchefoucauld is correct that love is similar to hate in its effects, but it is not a far off barley attainable philosophical truth, but just a scientific fact. Law 102 and 259 continues this idea again alluding to the chemical changes that occur in the brain.

Law 78 says, “For most of mankind, love of justice is nothing more than the fear of suffering injustice.” This is also true from a scientific point; the love of justice or fear of injustice is a survival trait. This trait is an offshoot of altruism which is required in any complex social setting for any creature human or animal3. Altruism is easily seen in all primate species, there have been many observed scenarios where a member of a group who did not reciprocate the altruistic behavior was “punished” by being denied further altruistic gestures by the remainder of the group. The member of the group who was punished now is less able to collect food, care for young and be alert to danger if the need arises. Because of this most members of the group feared losing the altruism of their neighbors they reciprocate the gestures in an attempt to insure further altruism. This can easily be seen as a form of societal justice.

These are both good examples of how La Rouchefoucauld’s philosophy of human nature mirrors the scientific version of the same. La Rouchefoucauld achieved his goal of finding the laws of human nature through philosophy yet in doing so also made a road map to the scientific laws of human nature. Maybe the question should not be is human nature based on philosophy or science, but rather is there anything in human nature that cannot be explained by both philosophy and science. Both interpretations of human nature, philosophical and scientific, appear on the surface to be correct. However not all people prefer to believe in the philosophical explanations preferring the concrete and proven scientific facts, like-wise many people do not believe that science can explain away all the mysteries of the human conundrum and only by looking beyond the proven can one truly find the answer to the puzzle.