While residing in Dublin, Hutcheson published anonymously the four essays by which he still remains best known, namely, the Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, and the Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, in 1725, and the Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, and Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, in 1728. The original title of the former work (which reached a second edition in the next year) was— An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in two Treatises, in which the Principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury are explained and defended against the Author of the Fable of the Bees; and the Ideas of Moral Good and Evil are established, according to the Sentiments of the Ancient Moralists, with an attempt to introduce a Mathematical Calculation on subjects of Morality. The alterations and additions made in the second edition of these Essays were published in a separate form in 1726. To the period of his Dublin residence are also to be referred the “Thoughts on Laughter” (a criticism of Hobbes) and the “Observations on the Fable of the Bees,” being in all six letters contributed to Hibernicus ’ Letters, a periodical which appeared in Dublin, 1725-27 (2d ed,, 1734). At the end of the same period occurred the controversy in the columns of the London Journal with Mr Gilbert Burnet (probably the second son of Dr Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury), on the “True Foundation of Virtue or Moral Goodness.” All these letters were collected in one volume, and published by Foulis, Glasgow, 1772.

In 1729 Hutcheson was elected as the successor of his old master, Gerschom Carmichael, to the chair of moral philosophy in the university of Glasgow. It is curious that up to this time both his essays and letters had all been published anonymously, though their authorship appears to have been perfectly well known. In 1730 he entered on the duties of his office, delivering an inaugural lecture (afterwards published), De Naturali Hominum Socialitate. The prospect of being delivered from the miscellaneous drudgery of school work, and of securing increased leisure for the pursuit of his favourite studies, occasions an almost boisterous outburst of joy :—“laboriosissimis, mihi, atque molestissimis negotiis implicito, exigua admodum erant ad bonas literas aut mentem colendam otia; non levi igitur laetitia commovebar cum almam matrem Academiam me, suum olim alumnum, in libertatem asseruisse audiveram.” And yet the works on which Hutcheson’s reputation was to rest had already been published.

The rest of Hutcheson’s life, down to his death in 1746, was mainly spent in the assiduous performance of the duties of his professorship, including, of course, the preparation of lectures for his classes. His reputation as a teacher attracted many young men, belonging to dissenting families, from England and Ireland, and he appears to have enjoyed a well-deserved popularity among both his pupils and his colleagues. Though somewhat quick-tempered, he was remarkable for his warm feelings and generous impulses. “He was all benevolence and affection,” says Dr Leechman; “none who saw him could doubt of it; his air and countenance bespoke it. It was to such a degree his prevailing temper that it gave a tincture to his writings, which were perhaps as much dictated by his heart as his head; and if there was any need of an apology for the stress that in his scheme seems to be laid upon the friendly and public affections, the prevalance of them in his own temper would at least form an amiable one.”

In addition to the works already named, the following were published during Hutcheson’s lifetime:—a pamphlet entitled Considerations on Patronage, addressed to the Gentlemen of Scotland, 1735 ; Philosophice Moralis Institutio Compendiaria, Ethices et Jurisprudentiae Naturalis Elementa continens, Lib. III., Glasgow, Foulis, 1742; Metaphysical Synopsis Ontologiam et Pneumatologiam complectens, Glasgow, Foulis, 1742. The last work was published anonymously.

After his death, his son, Francis Hutcheson, M.D., published in two volumes, quarto, what is much the longest, though by no means the most interesting, of his works, A System of Moral Philosophy, in Three Boohs, London, 1755. To this is prefixed a life of the author, by Dr William Leechman, professor of divinity in the university of Glasgow. The only remaining work that we are able to assign to Hutcheson is a small treatise on Logic, which, according to his biographer, was “not designed for the public eye,” but which was published by Foulis at Glasgow in 1764. This compendium, together with the Compendium of Metaphysics, was republished at Strasburg in 1772.

Of all these works, however, those alone on which Hutcheson’s philosophical reputation rests are the four essays, and perhaps the letters, all published during his residence in Dublin. To the more distinctive features of his philosophical system, so far as they may be gathered from these and his other works, we now proceed to draw attention. In the publication of the first two essays, Hutcheson acted quite rightly in connecting his name on the title-page with that of Shaftesbury. There are no two names, perhaps, in the history of English moral philosophy, which stand in a closer connexion. The analogy drawn between beauty and virtue, the functions assigned to the moral sense, the position that the benevolent feelings form an original and irreducible part of our nature, and the unhesitating adoption of the principle that the test of virtuous action is its tendency to promote the general welfare, or good of the whole, are at once obvious and fundamental points of agreement between the two authors.

According to Hutcheson, man has a variety of senses, internal as well as external, reflex as well as direct, the general definition of a sense being “any determination of our minds to receive ideas independently on our will, and to have perceptions of pleasure and pain” {Essay οη∙the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, sect. 1). He does not attempt to give an exhaustive enumeration of these “senses,” but, in various parts of his works, he specifies, besides the five external senses commonly recognized (which, he rightly hints, might be added to),—(1) consciousness, by which each man has a perception of himself and of all that is going on in his own mind (“Sensus quidam internus, aut conscientia, cujus ope nota sunt ea omnia, quae in mente gerantur; hac animi vi se novit quisque, suique sensum habet,” Metaph. Syn., pars i. cap. 2); (2) the sense of beauty (sometimes called specifically “an internal sense”); (3) a public sense, or sensus communis, “a determination to be pleased with the happiness of others and to be uneasy at their misery;” (4) the moral sense, or “moral sense of beauty in actions and affections, by which we perceive virtue or vice, in ourselves or others;” (5) a sense of honour, or praise and blame, “which makes the approbation or gratitude of others the necessary occasion of pleasure, and their dislike, condemnation, or resentment of injuries done by us the occasion of that uneasy sensation called shame”; (6) a sense of the ridiculous. It is plain, as the author confesses, that there may be “other perceptions, distinct from all these classes,” and, in fact, there seems to be no limit to the number of “senses” in which a psychological division of this kind might result.

Of these “senses” that which plays the most important part in Hutcheson’s ethical system is the “moral sense.” It is this which pronounces immediately on the character of actions and affections, approving of those which are virtuous, and disapproving of those which are vicious. “His principal design,” he says in the preface to the two first treatises, “is to show that human nature was not left quite indifferent in the affair of virtue, to form to itself observations concerning the advantage or disadvantage of actions, and accordingly to regulate its conduct. The weakness of ouι ’ reason, and the avocations arising from the infirmity and necessities of our nature are so great that very few men could ever have formed those long deductions of reason, which show some actions to be in the whole advantageous to the agent, and their contraries pernicious. The Author of nature has much better furnished us for a virtuous conduct than our moralists seem to imagine, by almost as quick and powerful instructions as we have for the preservation of our bodies. He has made virtue a lovely form, to excite our pursuit of it, and has given us strong affections to be the springs of each virtuous action.” Passing over the appeal to final, causes involved in this and similar passages, as well as the assumption that the “moral sense” has had no growth or history, but was “implanted” in man exactly in the condition in which it is now to be found among the more civilized races, an assumption common to the systems of both Hutcheson and Butler, it may be remarked that the employment of the term “sense” to designate the approving or disapproving faculty has a tendency to obscure the real nature of the process which, goes on in an act -of moral approbation or disapprobation. For, as is so clearly established by Hume, this act really consists of two parts :—one an act of deliberation, more or less prolonged, resulting in an intellectual judgment; the other a reflex feeling, probably instantaneous, of either satisfaction or repugnance, —of satisfaction at actions of a certain class which we denominate as good or virtuous, of dissatisfaction or repugnance at actions of another class which we denominate as bad or vicious. By the intellectual part of this process we refer the action or habit to a certain class, and invest it with certain characteristics; but no sooner is the intellectual process completed than there is excited in us a feeling similar to that which myriads of actions and habits of the same class, or deemed to be of the same class, have excited in us on former occasions. Now, supposing the latter part of this process to be instantaneous, uniform, and exempt from error, the former certainly is not. All mankind may, apart from their selfish interests, approve of that which is virtuous or makes for the general good, but surely they entertain the most widely divergent opinions, and, if left to their own judgment, would frequently arrive at directly opposite conclusions as to the nature of the particular actions and habits which fall under this class. This distinction is undoubtedly recognized by Hutcheson, as it could hardly fail to be, in his analysis of the mental process preceding moral action, nor does he invariably ignore it, even when treating of the moral approbation or disapprobation which is subsequent on action. Witness the following passages :—“Men have reason given them, to judge of the tendencies of their actions, that they may not stupidly follow the first appearance of public good; but it is still some appearance of good which they pursue” {Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 4). “All exciting reasons presuppose instincts and affections; and the justifying presuppose a moral sense” {Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, sect. 1). “When we say one is obliged to an action, we either mean—(1) that the action is necessary to obtain happiness to the agent, or to avoid misery; or (2) that every spectator, or he himself upon reflexion, must approve his action, and disapprove his omitting it, if he considers fully all its circumstances. The former meaning of the word obligation presupposes selfish affections, and the sense of private happiness; the latter meaning includes the moral sense” {Ibid.}. Notwithstanding these passages, however, it remains true that Hutcheson, both by the phrases which he employs to designate the moral faculty, and by the language in which he ordinarily describes the process of moral approbation, has done much to favour that loose and popular view of morality which, ignoring the difficulties that often attend our moral decisions, and the necessity of deliberation and reflexion, encourages hasty resolves and unpremeditated judgments. The term “moral sense” (which, it may be noticed, had already been employed by Shaftesbury, not only, as Dr Whewell appears to intimate in the margin, but also in the text of his Enquiry'), if invariably coupled with the term “moral judgment,” would be open to little objection; but, taken alone, as designating the complex process of moral approbation, it is liable to lead not only to serious misapprehension but to grave practical errors. For, if each man’s decisions are solely the result of an immediate intuition of the moral sense, why be at any pains to test, correct, or review them? Or why educate a faculty whose decisions are infallible? The expression has, in fact, the fault of most metaphorical terms; it leads to an exaggeration of the truth which it is intended to suggest.

But though Hutcheson usually describes the moral faculty as acting instinctively and immediately, he does not, like Butler, confound the moral faculty with the moral standard. The test or criterion of right action is with Hutcheson, as with Shaftesbury, its tendency to promote the general welfare of mankind. “In comparing the moral qualities of actions, in order to regulate our election among various actions proposed, or to find which of them has the greatest moral excellency, we are led by our moral sense of virtue to judge thus—that, in equal degrees of happiness expected to proceed from the action, the virtue is in proportion to the number of persons to whom the happiness shall extend (and here the dignity or moral importance of persons may compensate numbers), and, in equal numbers, the virtue is as the quantity of the happiness or natural good; or that the virtue is in a compound ratio of the quantity of good and number of enjoyers. In the same manner, the moral evil, or vice, is as the degree of misery and number of sufferers; so that that action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, and that worst which, in like manner, occasions misery” (Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 3). What was subsequently called the utilitarian standard is here unhesitatingly adopted by Hutcheson; and it is curious to notice that he actually employs the very phrase which became so celebrated in the mouth of Bentham, though afterwards reduced by that writer to the more simple expression “greatest happiness.”

The adoption of an external standard, requiring much care and reflexion in its application, ought to have led Hutcheson to see that the moral faculty, by which the standard was to be applied, is by no means so simple and instinctive as he imagined it to be, and that, consequently, these two parts of his system are in reality inconsistent.

As connected with Hutcheson’s virtual adoption of the utilitarian standard, may be noticed a kind of moral algebra, proposed for the purpose of “computing the morality of actions.” This calculus occurs in the Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 3.

The most distinctive of Hutcheson’s ethical doctrines, still remaining to be noticed, is what has been called the “benevolent theory” of morals. Hobbes had maintained that all our actions, however disguised under apparent sympathy, have their roots in self-love. Hutcheson not only maintains that benevolence is the sole and direct source of many of our actions, but, by a not unnatural recoil from the repellent doctrine of Hobbes, that it is the only source of those actions of which, on reflexion, we approve. “If we examine all the actions which are accounted amiable anywhere, and inquire into the grounds upon which they are approved, we shall find that, in the opinion of the person who approves them, they always appear as benevolent, or flowing from love of others and a study of their happiness, whether the approver be one of the persons beloved or profited or not; so that all those kind affections which incline us to make others happy, and all actions supposed to flow from such affections, appear morally good, if, while they are benevolent toward some persons, they be not pernicious to others. Nor shall we find anything amiable in any action whatsoever, where there is no benevolence imagined; nor in any disposition, or capacity, which is not supposed applicable to and designed for benevolent purposes” {Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 3). Consistently with this position, actions which flow from self-love only are pronounced to be morally indifferent: “The actions which flow solely from self-love, and yet evidence no want of benevolence, having no hurtful effects upon others, seem perfectly indifferent in a moral sense, and neither raise the love or hatred of the observer” {Ibid. ). But surely, by the common consent of civilized men, prudence, temperance, cleanliness, industry, self-respect, and in general, the “personal virtues,” as they are called, are regarded, and rightly regarded, as fitting objects of moral approbation. This consideration could hardly escape any author, however wedded to his own system, and Hutcheson attempts to extricate himself from the difficulty by laying down the position that a man may justly regard himself as a part of the rational system, and may thus “be, in part, an object of his own benevolence” (Ibid.),— a curious abuse of terms, which really concedes the question at issue. Moreover, he acknowledges that, though self-love does not merit approbation, neither, except in its èxtreme forms, does it merit condemnation. “We do not positively condemn those as evil who will not sacrifice their private interest to the advancement of the positive good of others, unless the private interest be very small, and the public good very great” {Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, sect. 6). The satisfaction of the dictates of self-love, too, is one of the very conditions of the preservation of society. “Self-love is really as necessary to the good of the whole as benevolence,—as that attraction which causes the cohesion of the parts is as necessary to the regular state of the whole as gravitation” (Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 17). To press home the inconsistencies involved in these various statements would be a superfluous task.

Hutcheson’s benevolent view of human nature is illustrated also by his denying that malevolence is an original principle in the constitution of man. “Perhaps our nature is not capable of desiring the misery of any being calmly, farther than it may be necessary to the safety of the innocent; we may find, perhaps, that there is no quality in any object which would excite in us pure disinterested malice, or calm desire of misery for its own sake” (On the Natwe and Conduct of the Passions, sect. 3). Against this...

HUTCHINSON, John (1674-1737), the author of Moses's Principia and other works in which the so-called Hutchinsonian system is expounded, was born at Spenni-thorne, Yorkshire, in 1674, and after receiving an adequate elementary education there, served as steward in several families of position, latterly in that of the duke of Somerset, who ultimately obtained for him the post of riding purveyor to the master of the horse, a sinecure worth about .£200 a year. In this employment he became acquainted with Dr Woodward, physician to the duke, and author of a work entitled The Natural History of the Earth, to whom ha entrusted a large number of fossils of his own collecting, along with a mass of manuscript notes, for arrangement and publication. A misunderstanding as to the manner in which these should be dealt with was the immediate occasion of the publication by Hutchinson in 1724 of Moses's Principia, part i., in which Woodward’s Natural History was bitterly ridiculed, his conduct with regard to the mineralogical specimens not obscurely characterized, and a refutation of the Newtonian doctrine of gravitation seriously attempted. It was followed by part ii. in 1727, and by various other works published at frequent intervals. Hutchinson died in 1737. A complete edition of all the publications of this author, along with his posthumous pieces, edited by Robert Spearman and Julius Bate, appeared in 1748 (12 vols.); an Abstract of these followed in 1753; and a Supplement, with Life by Spearman prefixed, in 1765.

Although the crude ideas of Hutchinson at the time of their first promulgation were successful, by their seeming devoutness, in commending themselves to some of the pious but dim-sighted and over-timid souls of that period, who had taken alarm at the atheistic conclusions they believed to be deducible from the Newtonian doctrines, they are now too uninfluential, as well as too glaringly inconsistent with the universally recognized principles of physics and philology, to call for any detailed analysis. Their nature may be almost sufficiently gathered from the titles of some of the works in which they are set forth, such as Moses's Ρriηdpiα, Parti.; of the Invisible Parts of Matter, of Motion, of Visible Forms, and of their Dissolution and Reformation; Moses's Principia, Part II.; of the Circulation of the Heavens; of the Cause of the Motion and Course of the Earth, Moon, <kc.; of the Religion, Philosophy, and Emblems of the Heathens before Moses writ., and of the Jews after; in Confirmation of the Natural History of the Bible; Moses's Sine Principio, represented by Names, JVords, Types, Emblems; with an introduction to show the Nature of the Fall, of Paradise, and of the Body and Soul; The Confusion of Tongues and Trinity of the Gentiles (being an account of the origin of Idolatry); Power Essential and Mechanical, or what power belongs to God and what to his creatures, in which the design of Sir I. Newton and Dr Samuel Clarke is laid open; Glory or Gravity, wherein the Objects and Articles of the Christian Faith are exhibited; The Religion of Satan, or Antichrist Delineated. Bishop Horne of Norwich, it may be mentioned, was during some of his earlier years an avowed Hutchinsonian; and Jones of Nayland continued to be so to the end of his life.

HUTCHINSON, Thomas (1711-1780), governor of the province of Massachusetts, son of a wealthy merchant of Boston, was born there September 9, 1711. The son, being unsuccessful in commerce, studied law, and adopted it as his profession. He was representative of Boston in the general court for ten years, and was three times chosen speaker. From 1749 to 1766 he was a counsellor, in 1752 he was appointed judge of probate, from 1758 to 1771 he was lieutenant-governor, and in 1760 he became chief justice. In 1748 he carried a measure to substitute gold and silver for the paper currency, which had depreciated one-eighth in value. During the Stamp Act riots of 1765 his house was sacked by the mob; and by his subsequent support of the general policy of the British Government he incurred increasing unpopularity. In 1767 he laid claim to a seat in the council on the ground of being lieutenant-governor, but on account of his political views his claims were set aside. On his appointment to the governorship of Massachusetts in 1769, he used every method to support the measures which the mother country sought to enforce against the colonists; and in December 1773, on account of his refusal to permit the reshipment of teas on which a duty had been laid by the Government, several of the inhabitants of Boston emptied the tea into the bay. In January 1774 Hutchinson asked leave to resign his office, and in June he sailed to England, where he spent the remainder of his life. As the result of official inquiry into his conduct while governor of Massachusetts, he was rewarded with a pension. He died at Brompton in June 1780.

Hutchinson was the author of the following works:— A Brief Statement of the Claim of the Colonies, 1764; Collection of Original Papers relative to the History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1769; History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay from 1628 to 1750, 2 vols., London, 1765—67; History of Massachusetts from 1749 to 1774, published posthumously in 1828.

The followers of Mr. Hutchinson have not erected themselves into a sect or separate community. Among them may be reckoned some eminent and respectable divines, both in England and Scotland; but their numbers seem at present to be rather on the decrease. Of those who, in their day, were ranked in the list of Hutchinsonians, perhaps the most eminent were the following: Mr. Julius Bate, and Mr. Parkhurst, the lexicographers; Mr. Holloway, author of “Originals,” and “Letter and Spirit;” Dr. Hodges, provost of Oriel College, Oxford; Mr. Henry Lee, author of “Sophron, or Nature’s Characteristics of the Truth;” Dr. Wetherell, late master of University College, Oxford; Mr. Romaine; Bishop Horne; and Mr. William Jones, the bishop’s learned friend and biographer.

This dark period lasted no long time; in 1514 he was again in Germany, where, thanks to his poetic gifts and the friendship of Eitelwolf von Stein, he won the favour of the elector of Mainz, Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg. Here high dreams of a learned career rose on him; Mainz should be made the metropolis of a grand Humanist movement, the centre of good style and literary form. This golden dream was scattered by the murder in 1515 of his cousin John of Hutten by Ulrich, duke of Wiirtemburg. This outrage changed the whole course of Hutten’s life; satire, chief refuge of the weak, became his weapon; with one hand he took his part in the famous Hpistoloe Obscurorum Virorum, and with the other launched scathing letters, eloquent Ciceronian orations, or biting satires against the duke. Though the emperor was too lazy and indifferent to smite a great prince, he condescended to bestow on Hutten the inexpensive honour of a laureate crown in 1517; as the poet tells us with pleased pride, the wreath was woven by the hands of fair Constantia, Conrad Peutinger’s daughter. As recognized poet laureate of Germany, Hutten, who had been to Italy, again attached himself to the electoral court at Mainz; and he was there when in 1518 his true friend Pirckheimer wrote, urging him to abandon the court and dedicate himself to letters. We have the poet’s long reply, in an epistle on his “way of life,” an amusing mixture of earnestness and vanity, self-satisfaction and satire; he tells his friend that his career is just begun, that he has had twelve years of wandering, and will now enjoy himself a while in patriotic literary work; that he has by no means deserted the humaner studies, but carries with him a little library of standard books. Pirckheimer in his burgher life may have ease and even luxury; he, a knight of the empire, how can he condescend to obscurity? He must abide where he can shine. And so, dazzled by his dream of an intellectual reform, Hutten chose the path which presently led him to his ruin.

In 1519 he issued in one volume his attacks on Duke Ulrich, and then, drawing sword, took part in the private war which overthrew that prince; in this affair he became intimate with Franz von Sickingen, the champion of the knightly order (Ritterstand). Henceforth Hutten takes part in the Lutheran movement, while he becomes mixed up in the attempt of the “Ritterstand” to recover its position, and to assert itself as the militia of the empire against the independence of the German princes. It was soon after this time that he discovered at Fulda a copy of the manifesto of the emperor Henry IV. against Hildebrand, and published it with comments as an attack on the papal claims over Germany. He hoped thereby to interest the new emperor Charles V., and the higher orders in the empire, in behalf of German liberties; but the appeal failed. What Luther had achieved by speaking to cities and common folk in homely phrase, because he touched heart and conscience, that the far finer weapons of Hutten failed to effect, because he tried to touch the more cultivated sympathies and dormant patriotism of princes and bishops, nobles and knights. And so he at on,ce gained an undying name in the republic of letters and ruined his own career. He showed that the artificial verse-making of the Humanists could be connected with the new outburst of genuine German poetry. The Minnesinger was gone; the new national singer, a Luther or a Hans Sachs, was heralded by the stirring lines of Hutten’s pen. These form a distinct epoch in the history of German national literature; they have in them a splendid n ιtural swing and ring, strong and patriotic, though unfortunately addressed to knight and landsknecht rather than to the German people.

The poet’s high dream of a knightly national regeneration had a rude awakening. The attack on the papacy, and Luther’s vast and sudden popularity, frightened Elector Albert, who dismissed Hutten from his court. Hoping for imperial favour, he betook himself to Charles V.; but that cold young prince, who cared little for Humanists, and was not a German, would have none of him. So he returned to his friends, and they rejoiced greatly to see him still alive; for Pope Leo X, had ordered him to be arrested and sent to Rome, and assassins dogged his steps. He now attached himself more closely to Franz von Sickingen and the knightly movement. This also came to a disastrous end in the capture of the Ebernberg, and Sickingen’s death; the higher nobles had triumphed; the archbishops avenged themselves on Lutheranism as interpreted by the knightly order. With Sickingen Hutten also finally fell. He fled to Basel, where Erasmus refused to see the sick hero, both for fear of his loathsome diseases, and also because the beggared knight was sure to borrow money from him. A paper war consequently broke out between the two Humanists, which embittered Hutten’s last days, and stained the memory of Erasmus. From Basel Ulrich dragged his limbs to Mulhausen; and when the vengeance of Erasmus drove him thence, he went to Zurich. There the large heart of Zwingli welcomed him; he helped him with money, and found him a quiet refuge with the pastor of the little isle of Ufnau on the Zurich Lake. There thé frail and worn-out poet, writing swift satire to the end, fell a victim to his infirmities, and died (29th August 1523) at the age of thirty-five. He left behind him some debts due to compassionate friends; he did not even own a single book, and all his goods amounted to the clothes on his back, a bundle of letters, and that valiant pen which had fought so many a sharp battle, and had won for the poor knight-errant a sure place in the annals of literature.

Ulrich von Hutten is one of those men of genius at whom propriety is shocked, and whom the mean-spirited avoid. Yet through his short and buffeted life he was befriended, with wonderful charity and patience, by the chief leaders of the Humanist movement. For, in spite of his irritable vanity, his immoral life and habits, his odious diseases, his painful restlessness, Hutten had much in him that strong men could love. He passionately loved the truth, and was ever open to all good influences. He was a patriot, whose soul yearned for what was high, and soared to ideal schemes and a grand utopian restoration of his country. In spite of all, his was a frank and noble nature; his faults chiefly the faults of genius ill-controlled, and of a life cast in the eventful changes of an age of novelty. A swarm of writings issued from his pen; at first the smooth elegance of his Latin prose and verse seemed strangely to miss his real character; he was the Cicero and Ovid of Germany before he became its Lucian.

His chief works were his Ars versificandi (1511); the Nemo, (1518); a work on the Morbus Gallicus (1519); the volume of Steckelberg complaints against Duke Ulrich (including his four Ciceronian Orations, his Betters, and the Phalarisrnus) also in 1519; the Vadismus (1520); and the controversy with Erasmus at the end of his life. Besides these were many admirable poems in Latin and German. It will never be known with certainty how far Hutten was the parent of the celebrated Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, that famous satire on monastic ignorance as represented by the theologians of Cologne with which the friends of Reuchlin defended him. At first the cloister-world, not discerning its irony, welcomed the work as a defence of their position; though their eyes were soon opened by the favour with which the learned world received it. The Epistolae were eagerly bought up; the first part (41 letters) appeared at the end of 1515; early in 1516 there was a second edition; later in 1516 a third, with an appendix of seven letters; in 1517 appeared the second part (62 letters), to which a fresh appendix of eight letters was subjoined soon after. Hutten, in a letter addressed to Robert Crocus, denied that he was the author, and is followed by Bayle in his Dictionary ; but there is no doubt as to his direct connexion with the book. Erasmus λvas of opinion that there were three authors, of whom Crotus Rubianus was the originator of the idea, and Hutten a chief contributor. D. F. Strauss, who dedicates to the subject a chapter of his admirable work on Hutten, concludes that he had no share in the first part, but that his hand is clearly visible in the second part, which he attributes in the main to him. To him is due the more serious and severe tone of that bitter portion of the satire.

For a complete catalogue of the writings of Hutten, see Bocking’s Index Bibliographicus Huttenianus (1858). The best biography (though it is also somewhat of a political pamphlet) is that of Strauss {Ulrich von Hutten, 1857; 2d ed., 1871; English translation by Sturge, 1874), with which maybe compared the monographs by Potton (accompanying his translation in French of the Morbus Gallicus, 1865), Mohnicke, Wagenseil, Von Brannow, Biirek, and Göhring. See also Panzer {Ulrich von Hutten in literarischer Hinsicht, 1798); and K. Hagen (“Ulrich von Hutten in politischer Beziehung” in his Zur politischen Geschichte Deutschlands, 1824).

All the biographical notices of Hutton are unanimous in describing him as one of the most skilful of teachers, and the most amiable of men. His modesty and simplicity were as remarkable as his intellectual gifts. To his friends and pupils he exhibited a warmth of personal affection that attached both to him in a very rare degree. It was also with him a sacred duty to seek out the poor and unbefriended student of science, and promote and otherwise assist him to the best of his power.

HUTTON, James (1726-1797), one of the great founders of geological science, was born in Edinburgh on 3d June 1726. Educated at the high school and university of his native city, he acquired while still a student a passionate love of scientific inquiry. It had been decided that he should pursue a professional career, and he was accordingly apprenticed to a lawyer. But as instead of copying law papers he was sometimes found amusing his fellow-clerks with chemical experiments, his employer with much sagacity advised that a more congenial profession thin the law should be chosen for him. The young apprentice, released from his engagement, chose medicine as the pursuit nearest akin to his favourite study of chemistry. He studied for three years at Edinburgh, and completed his medical education by an attendance of nearly two years at the medical classes in Paris, returning by the Low Countries, and taking his degree of doctor of medicine at Leyden in 1749. At the end of that year he came back to England, only to find, however, that though he had qualified himself to practise as a medical man there seemed hardly any opening for him. In the summer of the ensuing year he definitively abandoned the idea of following out the medical profession, and, having inherited a small property in Berwickshire from his father, resolved to devote himself to agriculture. With the zeal and thoroughness characteristic of his disposition, he then went to Norfolk to learn the practical work of farming. Thereafter he extended his experience by a tour in Holland, Belgium, and the north of France. During these years he began to study the surface of the earth, looking into every pit, ditch, or river-bed that he saw, and gradually shaping in his mind the problem to which he afterwards devoted his energies. In the summer of 1754 he established himself on his own farm in Berwickshire, where he resided for fourteen years, and where he introduced the most improved forms of husbandry. As the farm was brought into excellent order, and as its management, becoming more easy, grew less interesting, he was finally induced to let it, and establish himself for the rest of his life in Edinburgh. This took place about the year 1768.

From this period until his death in 1797 he lived unmarried with his three sisters. Surrounded by congenial literary and scientific friends, he devoted himself to those researches which have had so important an influence upon the progress of science. At that time geology in any proper sense of the term did not exist. Mineralogy, however, had made considerable progress. Hutton’s taste for chemistry naturally led him into mineralogy. But he had conceived larger ideas than were entertained by the mineralogists of his day. He desired to trace back the origin of the various minerals and rocks, ani thus to arrive at some clear understanding of the history of the earth. For many years he continued to ponder over the subject, making during that time many excursions to different parts of the country to obtain materials for his researches, or to test the hypotheses he had been led to form. At last, in the spring of the year 1785, he communicated his views to the recently established Royal Society of Edinburgh in a paper entitled Theory of the Earth, or an Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe. In this remarkable work the doctrine is expounded that geology is not cosmogony, but must confine itself to the study of the materials of the earth; that everywhere evidence may be seen that the present rocks of the earth’s surface have been formed out of the waste of older rocks; that these materials having been laid down under the sea were there consolidated under great pressure, and were subsequently disrupted and upheaved by the expansive power of subterranean heat; that during these convulsions veins and misses of molten rock were injected into the rents of the dislocated strata; that every portion of the upraised land, as soon as exposed to the atmosphere, is subject to decay; and that this decay must tend to advance until the whole of the land has been worn away and laid down on the sea-floor, whence future upheavals will once more raise the consolidated sediments into new land. In some of these broad and bold generalizations Hutton was anticipated by the Italian geologists; but to him belongs the credit of having first perceived their mutual relations, an 1 combined them in a luminous coherent theory everywhere based upon observation.

It was not merely the ground beneath us to which Hutton directed his attention. He had long studied the changes of the atmosphere. The same volume in which his Theory of the Earth appeared contained also a Theory of Rain, which was read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in February 1784. He contended that the amount of moisture which the air can retain in solution increases with augmentation of temperature, and therefore that on the mixture of two masses of air of different temperatures a portion of the moisture must be condensed and appear in visible form. He investigated the data available in his time regarding rainfall and climate in different regions of the globe, and came to the conclusion that the rainfall is everywhere regulated by the humidity of the air on the one hand, and the causes which promote mixtures of different aeri ιl currents in the higher atmosphere on the other.

The vigour and versatility of his genius may be understood from the variety of works which, during his thirty years’ residence in Edinburgh, he gave to the world. In the year 1792 he published a quarto volume entitled Dissertations on different Subjects in Natural Philosophy, in which he discussed the nature of matter, fluidity, cohesion, light, heat, and electricity. Some of these subjects were further illustrated by him in papers read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He did not restrain himself within the domain of physics, but boldly marched into that of metaphysics, publishing three quarto volumes with the title An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, and of the Progress of Reason—from Sense to Science and Philosophy. In this work he develops the idea that the external world, as conceived by us, is the creation of our own minds influenced by impressions from without, that there is no resemblance between our picture of the outer world and the reality, yet that the impressions produced upon our minds, being constant and consistent, become as much realities tn us as if they precisely resembled things actually existing, and therefore that our moral conduct must remain the same as if our ideas perfectly corresponded to the causes producing them. His closing years were devoted to the extension and republication of his Theory of the Earth, of which two volumes octavo appeared in 1795. A third volume, necessary to complete the work, was left by him in manuscript, and is referred to by his biographer Playfair, but seems to have disappeared. No sooner had this task been performed than he set to work to collect and systematize his numerous writings on husbandry, which he proposed to publish under the title of Elements of Agriculture. He had nearly completed this labour when an incurable disease brought his active career to a close on 26th March 1797.

It is by his Theory of the Earth that Hutton will be remembered with reverence while geology continues to be cultivated. The author’s style, however, being somewhat heavy and obscure, the book did not attract during his lifetime so much attention as it deserved. Happily for science Hutton numbered among his friends John Playfair, professor of mathematics in the university of Edinburgh, whose enthusiasm for the spread of Hutton’s doctrine was combined, with a rare gift of graceful and luminous exposition. Five years after Hutton’s death he published a volume, BBustratioηs of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, in which he gave an admirable summary of that theory, with numerous additional illustrations and arguments. This work is justly regarded as one of the classical contributions to geological literature. To its influence niuch of the sound progress of British geology must be ascribed. In the year 1805 a biographical account of Hutton, written by Playfair, was published in vol. v. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.