Previous chapters in this monograph have shown that Adam Smith and Thomas Reid commented extensively and favorably on Joseph Butler's earlier analysis of the importance of resentment and forgiveness in the moral development of children. All three philosophers emphasize that the interplay of sentiment and reason is fundamental. David Hume, too, admired the work of Butler. However, although he was familiar with their writings on these topics, Hume had little to say about resentment and forgiveness.

As noted earlier, Glen Pettigrove, current holder of Glasgow University's Chair of Moral Philosophy, offers an account of how meekness was commonly regarded in eighteenth-century Scotland that might help explain Hume's apparent silence about Butler's views on these matters. Meekness was seen as a virtuous disposition marked by slowness to anger, but not moral submissiveness. Also, as Pettigrew points out, some sort of training is involved in its acquisition. Had Hume acknowledged this and discussed key factors this involves, differences among Hume, Smith, and Reid regarding the roles of sentiment and reason in moral development would likely be seen as less extreme.

Assessed by the criteria of reasonableness advanced by Butler, Smith, Reid, and Hume (at least in the opening chapter of his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals), today's public discourse does not fare very well. It is all too often dominated by one-sided, bold advocacy of one's point of view and weakly supported derision of those who dare to dissent, thus displaying a serious moral failure to consider issues fully and fairly. This would no doubt be a great disappointment to pragmatist John Dewey (1859–1952) were he here to observe the quality of public discourse among adults on vital social and political issues facing us today. More than a century ago in his Reconstruction of Philosophy, Dewey offered advice as sound now as it was then: