one. Shaftesbury's influence was in the last century a very wide Not only in England, but also in France, and even more in Germany, his views left distinct traces in the systems of numerous philosophers who studied his works. § 65. Francis Hutcheson1 (1694-1746).-Francis Hutcheson, son of a Presbyterian clergyman, was of Scotch descent, though born in Ireland. After receiving a preliminary training in a classical school in his native place and at an academy elsewhere, he spent six years (1710-16) in the University of Glasgow. His course of study there included, besides philosophy, the classics and general literature, theology, which was taught by a man, the liberality of whose views (which cost him his chair) left a marked effect upon Hutcheson's way of thinking in theology. At the close of his course, Hutcheson accepted a call from a country congregation near his old home, but soon resigned his position to open an academy in Dublin. After some years of very successful work here, he went (1729) to Glasgow to occupy the chair of Moral Philosophy, to which he had been elected. By a certain frankness and benevolence of disposition and manner, and by a liberality of view and a natural eloquence, he won a large following, and exercised a wide influence, tending towards the separation of ethics and religious dogma, and the liberalization of religious teaching in Scotland. Works. Hutcheson's principal works are: "Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, and Design" (1725); "Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil" (1725); "Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections" (1728); "Illustrations upon the Moral Sense " (1728); "Letters" (1725-27); "Philosophiæ Moralis Institutio Compendiaria Ethices et Jurisprudentiæ Naturalis Elementa" (1742); "Metaphysicæ Synopsis Ontologiam 1 "Hutcheson," by Thomas Fowler; Hutcheson's "System of Moral Philosophy; ""The Scottish Philosophy," by James McCosh. et Pneumatologiam complectens (1742); "System of Moral Philosophy" (1755). The most generally known, and most important, are the first four works in the preceding list. Philosophy.-Hutcheson is important chiefly as a moralist. It is worth while, however, to glance at his psychologicometaphysical doctrines. Psychology and Metaphysics. — In psychology Hutcheson is largely a follower of Locke. He rejects the doctrine of innate ideas (as Locke understood it), derives knowledge from sense ("sensation" and "consciousness "), and “reflection." There are certain (not unimportant) points in which he differs from Locke. He asserts that the "ideas of extension, figure, motion, and rest are more properly ideas accompanying the sensations of sight and touch than the sensations of either of these senses; that the idea of self accompanies every thought; and that the ideas of number, duration, and existence accompany every idea whatever." We cognize the external world by means of images of it, which we are compelled to refer to an external world by "our very nature." The correspondence of image and object has for its cause God, who by "an established law of nature brings it about that the notions which are excited by present objects may be like the objects themselves, or at least represent their habitudes or qualities, if not their true quantities. We have a direct consciousness of mind as distinguished from body and of our own personal identity." Still other points in which Hutcheson "departed from or supplemented the philosophy of Locke" are the "distinction between perception proper and sensation proper, which occurs by implication, though it is not explicitly worked out; a hint as to the imperfection of the ordinary division of the external senses into five classes; the limitation of consciousness to a special mental faculty, namely, that by which we perceive our own minds, and all that goes on within them; and the disposition to refer disputed questions of philosophy not so much to formal arguments as to the testi mony of consciousness and our natural instincts" (Fowler). With regard to the senses external and internal - he proposes the following classification (understanding by "sense," " every determination of our minds to receive ideas independently on our wills, and to have perceptions of pleasure and pain"): (1) "the external senses universally known" (though the ordinary division is "very imperfect"); (2) pleasant perceptions arising from regular harmonious uniform objects; (3) "our determination to be pleased at the happiness of others, and to be uneasy at their misery," the "public sense;" (4) the general sense by which we perceive virtue or vice in ourselves or others; (5) the sense of honor; and perhaps an infinite number of others. Metaphysical axioms are self-evident and immutable (though not innate); space and time are realities, but not modes of the divine being; we perceive in conscious energy or efficacy — the only sort of cause the nature of substance is unknown.1 - 66 that Ethics. "Human nature," says Hutcheson, 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 our reason, the associations rising 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 on 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 a lovely form [in Shaftesbury's sense] to excite our pursuit of it, and has given us strong affections to be the springs of each virtuous action." There is (that is to say) for the determination of conduct a "moral sense," "guiding and controlling certain natural and non-reasoned impulses." The moral " sense is for 1 See McCosh's "Scottish Philosophy." Hutcheson not wholly without intellectual character, but has a certain governing norm, or criterion, according to which it acts. The springs of action are: (1) original desires, corresponding to the five classes of senses above enumerated, viz., desires of the bodily senses, of the imagination or internal sense, of the sense of public happiness, of virtue, of honor; (2) various secondary desires consequent upon these. In moral action these desires, and not reason, give the initiative, but are subject to conscience, which is therefore the real controlling principle. The desires or affections are classifiable as turbulent and transient, or calm and enduring, and as selfish and benevolent. From the calm, enduring, benevolent desires conscience cannot withhold approval. The criterion of the moral sense, that is to say, is the idea of benevolence or the general good of mankind, the “greatest happiness of the greatest number" (a phrase originating with Hutcheson). "If we examine all the actions which are accounted amiaable 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 and flowing from the love of others and a study of their happiness, whether the approver be one of the persons beloved 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 towards some persons, they be not pernicious to others. Nor shall we find anything able anywhere in any action whatsoever where there is no benevolence imagined; nor on any disposition or capacity which is not applicable to and designed for benevolent purposes." The principle of benevolence does not exclude self-love: a man may be "in part an object of his own benevolence; and those actions which flow from self-love, and yet evidence no want of benevolence, having no hurtful effect upon others, seem perfectly indifferent in a moral sense, and raise neither the love or hatred of the observer. . . . 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." The only real sanction of moral action is the voice of conscience, governed by the thought of benevolence. Esthetics. There is a sense of the beautiful, as of the good; i. e., the perception of beauty is immediate, it is a matter of sensibility or feeling, i. e., of pleasure or pain. The sense of the beautiful is an internal sense, ... a perception of relations rather than things. The fundamental relation of beauty is that of uniformity amidst variety: "mathematically speaking, beauty is a compound ratio of these two, so that when the uniformity of bodies is equal, the beauty is as the variety, and when the variety is equal, the beauty is as the uniformity." There is a beauty of universal truths, laws, actions, moral principles. Our ideas of the beautiful are in a measure effects of association of ideas. Result. The general observations made upon the system of Shaftesbury apply to that of Hutcheson, a close follower, almost a copyist, of Shaftesbury. — Hutcheson is generally regarded as the founder of the Scottish School of Philosophy, a school the chief characteristics of which are that (1) it makes the self its chief object of study; (2) it employs as method "induction;" (3) it maintains the doctrine of the existence in mankind of a "common perceptive of eternal and necessary truths.1 sense § 66. Joseph Butler (1692-1752). Butler was educated by a private tutor at a "Dissenters' Academy" (to which his father sent him, with a view to making a Presbyterian minister of him) and at the University of Oxford. His entrance to Oxford was preceded by an expressed intention 1 See McCosh, "Scottish Philosophy." 2 Butler's Works; "Butler" by Collins ("Blackwood's English Philosophers"); "Encyclopædia Britannica." VOL. I. 12 |