A STUDY OF FRANCIS HUTCHESON.* Dun justice has perhaps scarcely
been done to Hutcheson in the history of modern philosophy, while of his personality little has hitherto been known. Mr. Scott's excellent work will help to remedy both of these defects. It is true that even his diligence has not been able to furnish us with a complete portrait of the Glasgow Professor, but all that can be told of him we find in these pages. His life was an uneventful one, devoted to religious and philosophic instruction, but since he had Adam Smith for a pupil, and since, from different points of view, Hutcheson influenced both Kant and Bentham, his inner life is most important, and we feel no little gratitude to Mr. Scott for this careful and exact piece of work.
Hutcheson's philosophy, as set forth mainly in his Inquiry into the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, and in his System of Moral Philosophy (published after his death, and not so complete as he would have made it), may be described as emotional intuitionalism. The philosophy in vogue up to the latter part of the seventeenth century had taken account of the analytic reason only. Shaftesbury first asserted in his Characteristics the claims of the feelings to be considered in a total estimate of man. He did this in a very interesting but fragmentary way, rather in a series of detached thoughts than in a reasoned system. It was reserved for Hutcheson to complete and systematise the work of Shaftesbury, and this he did with much insight and power. Hutcheson tried to base ethics on a full observation of actual human nature. In our complex being he finds altruistic as well as egoistic elements. He finds a genuine delight arising from actions calculated to give help and pleasure. Reason is, it is true, useful to sympathy, but it cannot alone estimate the value of human actions. Along with reason must go experience, by which the tendencies of actions are learnt, but the moral sense is not derived from experience. Discussing the origin of the moral feeling, Hutcheson supposes it to have been implanted by God in every man, and so we get the doctrine of innate moral feeling, which, in Hutcheson's view, is the basis of ethics. This moral sense is, however, independent of theology, and may actuate those who have no religious belief. To promote goodwill and happiness through this innate moral feeling is man's chief task, and Hutcheson here anticipates the very formula of Bentham—the greatest happiness of the greatest number—intuitionalism here blending into utili- tarianism as a doctrine of moral action.
Such is a brief analysis of Hutcheson's views, which are of interest historically as preparing the way in thought for the characteristic movement of the eighteenth century, the move- ment of sentiment, of philanthropy, of reform, which had both its strong and weak sides, and which accomplished so much in both aspects. The system is well stated in this work, and especially we would commend the chapter on the " Hellenic and Philanthropic Ideals," by which both Shaftesbury and Hutche- son were impressed and moved to action. These ideals repre- sented to some extent the rebound from the philosophy of Puritanism as well as an attempt to demand for the emotions the place denied by the Cartesian philosophy. As for the man himself, Mr. Scott, as we have said, tells us all there is to be told, after ransacking every piece of evidence he was able to find. Hutcheson was the son of an Irish Presbyterian minister, and was born in County Armagh on August 8th, 1694. He was brought up largely by his grandfather, who is reported to have said when the child was three years old, " Francis, I predict thou wilt one day be a very eminent man." At an academy at Killyleagh, in County Down, young Hutcheson made rapid progress, and in 1711 he matriculated at the University of Glasgow, which was then slowly beginning to recover its fortunes. In 1701 the staff
• Francis Hutcheson his Life, Teaching, and Position in the History of Phi7, osaphy. By William Robert Scott, M.A., D.Phil. Cambridge : The University
Rms. gisa had been reduced to the Principal, a Professor of Divinity, and four Regents of Philosophy, without any fund for salary.
During Hutcheson's time no less than three Professorships were created or revived, but there was a low level of manners and culture. One of the Professors, a free-liver and a free- thinker, is supposed to have been the original of " Crab" in Roderick Random. The teaching was largely by disputation. Hutcheson was attracted more to Cicero than to any other author, but after his arts course he entered the theological department with a view to the pulpit. After a period of tutorship, he was licensed as a probationer in 1719, and seems to have been too heretical to implant confidence in the solid Irish country Presbyterians. After one of his sermons at Armagh, his father received this comment from one of the elders :—" We a' feel muckle was for your mishap, reverend Sir, but it canna be concealed. Yom• silly loon, Frank, has fashed a' the congregation wi' his idle cackle; for he has been babbling this oor aboot a gude and benevolent God, and that the sauls o' the heathens themsels will gang to heeven if they follow the licht o' their ain consciences. Not a word does the daft boy ken, speer, nor say aboot the gude auld comfortable doctrines o' election, reprobation, original sin, and faith. Hoot, man, awa' wi' sic a fellow." From which it will be seen that young Hutcheson had already in his mind the germ of his philosophic doctrine, and that, from the religious point of view, his principles confirmed the Quaker doctrine of the " inner light." He has emerged from the binding power of creeds.
In 1720 Hutcheson removed to Dublin, where he was engaged to direct an academy. That singular and brilliant man, Carteret, was at that time Viceroy, and his Court was a centre of culture and intellectual life. Hutcheson was a frequent guest, and it is possible that he met Berkeley there. In 1730 he was elected to the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. He found there two parties, one of intense conservatism, one of progress, and he joined the latter, being one of those instinctively progressive spirits who can never rest in the actual. As Professor his ideal was rather to inspire the moral nature than to impart knowledge. His lectures were oratorical displays, in which he used to walk upend down, giving utterance to noble sentiments which doubtless entered deep into the hearts of many of his hearers. But his influence was not confined to the lecture-room. He was the friend, benefactor, banker, guardian of his pupils. He suffered none to be in want, and was earnest for the moral reclamation of any who had gone astray. In a word, he carried out in all his acts his own doctrine of benevolence to a quite remarkable degree, and was one of the most consistent teachers who ever lived. He had the satisfaction of introducing Adam Smith to Hume, with the latter of whom he had much correspondence. It seems that Hume suspected Hutcheson of being unfriendly to his candidature for the Chair of Ethics at Edinburgh, and the accusation was true, for Hutcheson did not believe in Hume's ethics, and so could not honestly promote his advance- ment to a post from which he could influence the mind of Scotland. Hutcheson died in 1747. There is in the life of the excellent man one more testimony that a thinker is not necessarily a fool in mundane affairs. Busy as he was in philosophy, Hutcheson found time for constant University business, and managed with success his property in Ireland. As an ideal character he would be hard to match. Plato would have found him a good ruler for his Republic.
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