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...