A distinguished philosopher of last century, was the son of a Presbyterian minister in the n. of Ireland, where he was born in 1694. He studied for the church at the university of Glasgow, but shortly after the completion of his theological course, he was induced to open a private academy in the city of Dublin, which proved highly successful. In 1720 he published his “Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue,” etc., which was the means of introducing him to the notice of many influential personages, such as lord Granville, then lord-lieutenant of Ireland, archbishop King, primate Boulter, and others. This work was followed, in 1728, by his “Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions;” and in the year after, he was appointed professor of moral philosophy in the university of Glasgow. Here he died in 1747. His largest and most important works, “A System of Moral Philosophy,” was published at Glasgow in 1775 by his son, Francis Hutcheson, M.D., with a preface on the life, writings, and character of the author, by Dr. Leechman, professor of divinity in the same university.

Personal

  He was a good-looking man, of an engaging countenance. He delivered his lectures without notes, walking backwards and forwards in the area of his room. As his elocution was good, and his voice and manner pleasing, he raised the attention of his hearers at all times; and when the subject led him to explain and enforce the moral virtues and duties, he displayed a fervent and persuasive eloquence which was irresistible. Besides the lectures he gave through the week, he, every Sunday at six o’clock, opened his class-room to whoever chose to attend, when he delivered a set of lectures on “Grotius de veritate Religionis Christianæ,” which, though learned and ingenious, were adapted to every capacity; for on that evening he expected to be attended, not only by students, but by many of the people of the city; and he was not disappointed, for this free lecture always drew crowds of attendants.

  He was all benevolence and affection, 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 prevalence of them in his own temper would at least form an amiable one…. If any one should wish to know anything about Dr. Hutcheson’s external form, it may be said it was an image of his mind. A stature above middle size, a gesture and manner negligent and easy, but decent and manly, gave a dignity to his appearance. His complexion was fair and sanguine, and his features regular. His countenance and look bespoke sense, spirit, kindness, and joy of heart. His whole person and manner raised a strong prejudice in his favour at first sight.

  In the contingent which the Schools have furnished to the advance-guard of human knowledge, there are many greater figures than Francis Hutcheson’s; but few that are more attractive, more complete in symmetry, more noble in sincerity of nature: what he thought, he loved; what he taught, he was. A generous philosophy became in him a generous personality. With an enthusiasm for truth and goodness, unalloyed by the scholar’s fault of jealous property in ideas; with a contempt for nothing but meanness, vice, and wrong; with a transparent unreserve, neither ashamed of an honest admiration, nor afraid to avow a righteous anger; he drew forth what was best in others by simple self-expression; and by the total absence of pretension rendered personal dislike impossible; except with those to whose narrowness of heart and mind his very presence was a rebuke.

  Francis Hutcheson seems to have been noted, even in his earliest years, for the same sweetness of disposition, the same unselfishness, and the same keen intellectual activity that marked him throughout life…. His outward aspect did not belie his disposition. Tall and robust of figure, with an open and bright countenance, with a carriage negligent but easy, with unimpaired health, and the subtle charm of absolute simplicity, he made his way to the hearts of his hearers with consummate ease…. For the function of public lecturer he was eminently fitted, not by his gift of eloquence alone, but by the electric power of a quick and ready enthusiasm. To the last he refused to write his lectures, and delivered them without notes, “walking,” as we are told by Dr. Carlyle, “backwards and forwards in the area of his room.”… His temper was quick, but so well under control that its vivacity only added to his charm.

General

  Dr. Hutcheson had the merit of being the first who distinguished with any degree of precision in what respect all moral distinctions may be said to arise from reason, and in what respect they are founded upon immediate sense and feeling. In his illustrations upon the moral sense he has explained this so fully, and, in my opinion, so unanswerably, that, if any controversy is still kept up about this subject, I can impute it to nothing, but either to inattention to what that gentleman has written, or to a superstitious attachment to certain forms of expression,—a weakness not very uncommon among the learned, especially in subjects so deeply interesting as the present, in which a man of virtue is often loath to abandon, even the propriety of a single phrase which he has been accustomed to.

  His great and deserved fame, however, rests now chiefly on the traditionary history of his academical lectures, which appear to have contributed very powerfully to diffuse, in Scotland, that taste for analytical discussion, and that spirit of liberal inquiry, to which the world is indebted for some of the most valuable productions of the eighteenth century.

  Butler and Hutcheson coincided in the two important positions, that disinterested affections, and a distinct moral faculty, are essential parts of human nature. Hutcheson is a chaste and simple writer, who imbibed the opinions without the literary faults of his master, Shaftesbury. He has a clearness of expression, and fulness of illustration, which are wanting in Butler. But he is inferior to both these writers in the appearance at least of originality, and to Butler especially in that philosophical courage which, when it discovers the fountains of truth and falsehood, leaves others to follow the streams…. Hutcheson was the father of the modern school of speculative philosophy in Scotland.

  Butler was a preacher, and Shaftesbury a man of the world, while Hutcheson was a metaphysician by profession. It is not remarkable, therefore, that the doctrine, which the two former merely indicated, should have received from the latter a full development under a precise and philosophic form. Shaftesbury and Butler suggested the idea, Hutcheson formed the system, of the moral sense.

  His Lectures, which, by their copious illustrations, their amiable tone of feeling, their enlightened views of liberty and human improvement, and their persuasive eloquence, made a deeper impression than the more severe and dry compositions of Butler could ever create, and laid the foundation in Scotland of the modern ethical school.

  And this leads to what was his most vital experience in college. The more his character and mind matured, the more earnestly did he devote himself to aspirations after moral greatness. He read with delight the Stoics, and was profoundly moved by the stern purity which they inculcated. But the two authors who most served to guide his thoughts at this period were Hutcheson and Ferguson. It was while reading, one day, in the former, some of the various passages in which he asserts man’s capacity for disinterested affection, and considers virtue as the sacrifice of private interests and the bearing of private evils for the public good, or as self-devotion to absolute, universal good, that there suddenly burst upon his mind that view of the dignity of human nature, which was ever after to “uphold and cherish” him, and thenceforth to be “the fountain light of all his day, the master light of all his seeing.” He was, at the time, walking as he read, beneath a clump of willows yet standing in the meadow a little to the north of Judge Dana’s. This was his favorite retreat for study, being then quite undisturbed and private, and offering a most serene and cheerful prospect across green meadows and the glistening river to the Brookline hills. The place and the hour were always sacred in his memory, and he frequently referred to them with grateful awe. It seemed to him, that he then passed through a new spiritual birth, and entered upon the day of eternal peace and joy.

  Meanwhile Philosophy had distinguished votaries, with Butler at their head…. Much inferior in power as well as in clearness, but still useful, in the same field, was Hutcheson, an Irishman who taught in Glasgow, and who has sometimes been called the founder of the Scottish school of mental science.

  The beginning of the great secular philosophy of Scotland is undoubtedly due to Francis Hutcheson…. By his lectures, and by his works, he diffused a taste for bold inquiries into subjects of the deepest importance, but concerning which it had previously been supposed nothing fresh was to be learned; the Scotch having hitherto been taught, that all truths respecting our own nature, which were essential to be known, had been already revealed. Hutcheson, however, did not fear to construct a system of morals according to a plan secular, and no example of which had been exhibited in Scotland before his time. The principles from which he started, were not theological, but metaphysical. They were collected, from what he deemed the natural constitution of the mind, instead of being collected as heretofore, from what had been supernaturally communicated. He, therefore, shifted the field of study. Though he was a firm believer in revelation, he held that the best rules of conduct could be ascertained without its assistance, and could be arrived at by the unaided wit of man; and that, when arrived at, they were, in their aggregate, to be respected as the Law of Nature. This confidence in the power of the human understanding was altogether new in Scotland, and its appearance forms an epoch in the national literature…. With a noble and lofty aim did he undertake his task. Venerating the human mind, he was bent on vindicating its dignity against those who disputed its titles. Unhappily, he could not succeed; the prejudices of his time were too strong. Still, he did all that was in his power. He opposed the tide which he was unable to stem; he attacked what it was impossible to destroy.

  His style was copious and glowing. He tries to engage the attention of the reader by great abundance of examples and comparisons.

  The metaphysical doctrines which connect Hutcheson with the so-called Scottish school, and which justify his being considered the precursor of Reid, are the circumstance that he anticipated Reid in his dissent from Locke, and used the term suggestion in the same import in which Reid employs it in his Inquiry…. Hutcheson also shows his independence of Locke in his doctrines of axioms.

  Hutcheson’s works got fit audience in his own day, but did not continue to be read much after his death. In his mode and manner of writing he is evidently indebted to the wits of Queen Anne, such as Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, who were Frenchifying the English tongue, polishing away at once its roughness and its vigor, introducing the French clearness of expression, and, we may add, the French morals. Hutcheson has their clearness, but is without their liveliness and wit. His style is like a well-fenced, level country, in which we are weary walking for any length of time; it is not relished by those who prefer elevations and depressions, and is disliked by those who have a passion for mountains and passes. He ever maintains a high moral tone; but it is doubtful whether he has retained for morality a sufficiently deep foundation. His philosophy is undoubtedly an advance upon that of Locke, and rises unmeasurably above that of those professed followers of Locke in England and France, who in the days of Hutcheson were leaving out Locke’s reflection, and deriving all man’s ideas from sensation, and all his motives from pleasures and pains. His view of the moral faculty is correct so far as it goes…. His view of the moral power falls greatly beneath that of the great English moralists of the previous century, and below that of the school of Clarke in his own day.

  His writings must have powerfully aided the tendency to detach ethics from theology, and to treat questions of morality as an independent branch of investigation, capable of a methodical and scientific handling. Hutcheson’s professional and ecclesiastical position was calculated to lend great weight to his example in a matter of this kind…. Hutcheson did more than, perhaps, any preceding moralist towards supplying an adequate expression for the moral criterion of actions, affections, and characters. His writings, together with those of Shaftesbury and Hume, undoubtedly pave the way for the general reception, towards the end of the century, of what is now called Utilitarianism. Whether that theory provides a sufficient guide and test of action will always, perhaps, be open to some dispute. But it cannot be questioned, I think, that Hutcheson occupies an important place in its history. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson do not stand in the first rank of philosophers. Neither in the roll of fame nor in that of merit, do they compete with Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Descartes, Spinoza, or Kant. But, in the history of literature and philosophy, as in that of war and politics, posterity is often unjust to names of secondary importance, and is apt to pass over considerable services, because the recollection of them is not associated with that of illustrious persons. In the foregoing pages I have endeavoured to repair this injustice in the case of two of our own countrymen, without whose intervention the development of at least one branch of philosophy in English might have been deprived of many of the most characteristic features which we now recognize in it.

  The moral sense is his equivalent to Butler’s conscience, although his optimism gives a very different character to the resulting doctrine. The chief use of the faculty is to affirm the utilitarian criterion, and he was apparently the first writer to use Bentham’s phrase, “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.” He may be thus classed as one of the first exponents of a decided utilitarianism as distinguished from “egoistic hedonism.” The essence of his teaching is given in his early essays, though more elaborately worked out in the posthumous “system,” where he develops a cumbrous psychology of “internal senses.” In metaphysics Hutcheson was, in the main, a follower of Locke; but his ethical writings constitute his chief claim to recollection. They did much to promote a psychological study of the moral faculties, though his analysis is superficial, and he is apt to avoid fundamental difficulties. His theology differs little from the optimistic deism of his day.