Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/426

410 410 HUTCHESON ness or natural good ; or that the virtue is in a compound ratio of the quantity of good and number of en j overs. 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&quot; (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 &quot;greatest happiness.&quot; 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 in consistent. As connected with Hutcheson s virtual adoption of the utilitarian standard, may be noticed a kind of moral algebra, proposed for the purpose of &quot;computing the morality of actions.&quot; This calculus occurs in the Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 3. The most distinctive of Hutcheson s ethical doctrines, still remain ing to be noticed, is what has been called the &quot;benevolent theory&quot; 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. &quot; 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 affec tions, 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 &quot; (Inquiry concerning Moral Good ami Evil, sect. 3). Consistently with this position, actions which flow from self-love only are pro nounced to be morally indifferent: &quot;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 &quot; (Ibid. ). But surely, by the common consent of civilized men, prudence, temperance, cleanliness, industry, self-respect, and in general, the &quot; personal virtues,&quot; 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 &quot;be, in part, an object of his own benevolence&quot; (Ibid.), a curious abuse of terms, which really concedes the question at issue. More over, he acknowledges that, though self-love does not merit approba tion, neither, except in its extreme forms, does it merit condemna tion. &quot;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&quot; (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. &quot; Self-love is really as necessary to the good of the whole as benevolence, as that attrac tion which causes the cohesion of the parts is as necessary to the regular state of the whole as gravitation &quot; (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 con stitution of man. &quot; 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 &quot; (On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, sect. 3). Against this position of Hutcheson, propounded also by Butler (Scr/n. ix.), it might be objected that, even amongst very young children, we often find a singular and precocious love of cruelty. This is, undoubtedly, one of the most curious facts in moral psychology, but it may perhaps be accounted for by supposing it to originate in a combination of morbid curiosity with an equally morbid love of power. The vexed question of liberty and necessity appears to be carefully avoided in Hutcheson s professedly ethical works. But, in the Synopsis Metaphysicce, he touches on it in no less than three places, briefly stating both sides of the question, but evidently inclining to that which he designates as the opinion of the Stoics in opposition to what he designates as the opinion of the Peripatetics. This is substantially the same as the doctrine propounded by Hobbes and Locke (to the latter of whom Hutcheson refers in a note), namely, that our will is determined by motives in conjunction with our general character and habit of mind, and that the only true liberty is the liberty of acting as we will, not the liberty of willing as we will. Though, however, his leaning is clear, he carefully avoids dogmatizing, and speaks of the difficulty as &quot;ardua quajstio,&quot; &quot; qurestio vexatissima, qua} doctorum et piorum ingenia semper torserat, atque de qua utrinque frustra ad sensumcuj usque in tern urn provocatur,&quot; earnestly deprecating the angry controversies and bitter dissensions to which the speculations on this subject lu.d given rise. If our limits allowed us sufficient space, it would be easy to trace the influence of Hutcheson s ethical theories on the systems oi Hume and Adam Smith. The prominence given by these writers to the, analysis of moral action and moral approbation, with the attempt to discriminate the respective provinces of the reason and the emotions in these processes, is undoubtedly due to the influence of Hutcheson. To a study of the writings of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson we might, probably, in large measure, attribute the unequivocal adoption of the utilitarian standard by Hume, and, if this be the case, the name of Hutcheson connects itself, through Hume, with the names of Priestley, Paley, and Bentham. Butler s Sermons appeared in 1726, the year after the publication of Hutcheson s two first essays, and the parallelism between the &quot; conscience &quot; of the one writer and the &quot; moral sense &quot; of the other is, at least, worthy of remark. In the sphere of mental philosophy and logic, Hutcheson s con tributions are by no means so important or original as in that &amp;lt; f moral philosophy. In the former subject, the influence of Locke is apparent throughout. All the main outlines of Locke s philosophy seem, at first sight, to be accepted as a matter of course. Thus, in stating his theory of the moral sense, Hutcheson is peculiarly careful to repudiate the doctrine of innate ideas (see, for instance, Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 1 ad fin., and sect. 4 ; and com pare Synopsis Metaphysical, pars i. cap. 2). At the same time, it may be noticed that lie shows more discrimination than does Locke in distinguishing between the two uses of this expression, and between the legitimate and illegitimate form of the doctrine (Syn. Mctaph., pars i. cap. 2). All our ideas are, as by Locke, referred to external or internal sense., or, in other words, to sensation and reflexion (see, for instance, Syn. Mctaph., pars i. cap. 1 ; Logical Compcnd., pars. i. cap. 1; System of Moral Philosophy, book i. eh. 1). It is, however, a most important modification of Locke s doctrine, and one which connects Hutcheson s mental philosophy with that of Reid, when he states that the ideas of extension, figure, motion, and rest &quot;are more properly ideas accompanying the sensations of sight and touch than the sensations of either of these senses ; &quot; that the idea of self accompanies every thought ; and that the ideas of num ber, duration, and existence accompany every other idea whatsoever (see Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, sect. i. art. 1 ; Syn. Mctaph., pars i. cap. 1, pars ii. cap. 1 ; Hamilton on Reid, p. 124, note). Other important points in which Huteheson follows the lead of Locke are his depreciation of the importance of the so-called laws of thought, his distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of bodies, the position that we cannot know the inmost essences of things (&quot;infinite rerum untune sivc essentia 1 . &quot;), though they excite various ideas in us, and the assumption that ex ternal things are known only through the medium of ideas (Syn. Mctaph., pars i. cap. 1), though, at the same time, we are assured of the existence of an external world corresponding to the.se ideas. Hutcheson attempts to account for our assurance of the reality of an external world by referring it to a natural instinct (&quot;idearum plurimas ad res externas, tanquam earundem imagines ant reprse- sentationes, referre cogimur ab ipsa nalurn,&quot; Syn. Mdnph., jars i. cap. 1). Of the correspondence or similitude between our ideas of the primary qualities of things and the things themselves God alone can be assigned as the cause. This similitude has been effected by Him through a law of nature. &quot; Hsec prima qualitatum primal i- arum perceptio, sive mentis actio qusedam sive passio dicatur ; non alia similitudinis aut convenient iae inter ejusmodi ideas et res ipsas causa assignari posse videtur, quarn ipse Deus, qui certa natural lege hoc efficit, ut notiones, quse rebus prsesentibus &amp;lt; xcitantur, shit ipsis similes, aut saltern earum habitudines, si non veras quantitates, depingant&quot; (pars ii. cap. 1). Locke had repeatedly stated that &quot;the primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves&quot; (see, for instance, Essay, bk. ii. ch. 8, sect. 15), and he also speaks of God &quot;annexing&quot; certain ideas to certain motions of bodies (Ibid., sect. 13, and elsewhere) ; but nowhere, we believe, does he propound a theory so precise and definite as that here propounded by Hutche son, which reminds us at least as much of the speculations of Malebranche as of those of Locke. Amongst the more important points in which Hutcheson diverges