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• Introduction
• Note On the Text
• Acknowledgments
• An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue
• The Preface
• ∥ 1 Treatise I: Viz. an Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, &c.∥
• Section I: Concerning Some Powers of Perception, Distinct From What Is Generally Understood By Sensation.
• Section II: Of Original Or Absolute Beauty.
• Section III: Of the Beauty of Theorems.
• Section IV: Of Relative Or Comparative Beauty.
• Section V: Concerning Our Reasonings About Design and Wisdom In the Cause, From the Beauty Or Regularity of Effects.
• Section VI: Of the Universality of the Sense of Beauty Among Men.
• Section VII: Of the Power of Custom, Education, and Example, As to Our Internal Senses.
• Section VIII: Of the Importance of the Internal Senses In Life, and the Final Causes of Them.
• ∥ 1 Treatise II: Viz. an Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue Or Moral Good.
• Introduction.
• Section I: Of the Moral Sense By Which We Perceive Virtue and Vice, and Approve Or Disapprove Them In Others.
• Section II: Concerning the Immediate Motive to Virtuous Actions.
• Section III: The Sense of Virtue, and the Various Opinions About It, Reducible to One General Foundation. the Manner of Computing the Morality of Actions.
• Section IV: All Mankind Agree In This General Foundation of Their Approbation of Moral Actions. the Grounds of the Different Opinions About Morals.
• Section V: A Further Confirmation That We Have Practical Dispositions to Virtue Implanted In Our Nature; With a Further Explication ∥ 1 of Our Instinct to Benevolence In Its Various Degrees ∥; With the Additional Motives of Interest, Viz. Honour, Shame
• Section VI: Concerning the Importance of This Moral Sense to the Present Happiness of Mankind, and Its Influence On Human Affairs.
• Section VII: A Deduction of Some Complex Moral Ideas, Viz. of Obligation, and Right, Perfect, Imperfect, and External, Alienable, and Unalienable, From This Moral Sense.

THE PREFACE

There is no part of Philosophy of more importance, than a just Knowledge of Human Nature, and its various Powers and Dispositions. Our late Inquirys have been very much employ’d about our Understanding, and the several Methods of obtaining Truth. We generally acknowledge, that the Importance of any Truth is nothing else than its Moment, or Efficacy to make Men happy, or to give them the greatest and most lasting Pleasure; and Wisdom denotes only a Capacity of pursuing this End by the best Means. It must surely then be of the greatest importance, to have distinct Conceptions of this End it self, as well as of the Means necessary to obtain it; that we may find out which are the greatest and most lasting Pleasures, and not employ our Reason, after all our laborious Improvements of it, in trifling Pursuits. It is to be fear’d indeed, that most of our Studys, without this Inquiry, will be of very little use to us; for they seem to have scarce any other tendency than to lead us into speculative Knowledge it self. Nor are we distinctly told how it is that Knowledge, or Truth is pleasant to us.

This Consideration ∥5 put∥ the Author of the following Papers ∥6 upon∥ inquiring into the various Pleasures which Human nature is capable of receiving. We shall generally find in our modern philosophick Writings, nothing ∥7 further∥ on this Head, than some bare Division of them into Sensible, and Rational, and some trite Common-place Arguments to prove the ∥8 latter more∥ valuable than the former. Our sensible Pleasures are slightly pass’d over, and explain’d only by some Instances in Tastes, Smells, Sounds, or such like, which Men of any tolerable Reflection generally look upon as very trifling Satisfactions. Our rational Pleasures have had much the same kind of treatment. We are seldom taught any other Notion of rational Pleasure than that which we have upon reflecting on our Possession, or Claim to those Objects, which may be Occasions of Pleasure. Such Objects we call advantageous; but Advantage, or Interest, cannot be distinctly conceiv’d, till we know what ∥9 those∥ Pleasures are which advantageous Objects are apt to excite; and what Senses or Powers of Perception we have ∥10 with respect to∥ such Objects. We may perhaps ∥11 find∥ such an Inquiry of more importance in Morals, to prove what we call the Reality of Virtue, or that it is the surest Happiness of the Agent, than one would at first imagine.

In reflecting upon our external Senses, we plainly see, that our Perceptions of Pleasure, or Pain, do not depend directly on our Will. Objects do not please us, according as we incline they should. The presence of some Objects necessarily pleases us, and the presence of others as necessarily displeases us. Nor can we by our Will, any otherwise procure Pleasure, or avoid Pain, than by procuring the former kind of Objects, and avoiding the latter. By the very Frame of our Nature the one is made the occasion of Delight, and the other of Dissatisfaction.

The same Observation will hold in all our other Pleasures and Pains. For there are many other sorts of Objects, which please, or displease us as necessarily, as material Objects do when they operate upon our Organs of Sense. There ∥12 is scarcely any Object which our Minds are employ’d about, which is∥ not thus constituted the necessary occasion of some Pleasure or Pain. Thus we ∥13 find∥ our selves pleas’d with a regular Form, a piece of Architecture or Painting, a Composition of Notes, a Theorem, an Action, an Affection, a Character. And we are conscious that this Pleasure necessarily arises from the Contemplation of the Idea, which is then present to our Minds, with all its Circumstances, although some of these Ideas have nothing of what we ∥14 call∥ sensible Perception in them; and in those which have, the Pleasure arises from some Uniformity, Order, Arrangement, Imitation; and not from the simple Ideas of Colour, or Sound, or mode of Extension separately consider’d.

These Determinations to be pleas’d with ∥15 any Forms, or Ideas which occur to our Observation,∥ the Author chuses to call Senses; distinguishing them from the Powers which commonly go by that Name, by calling our Power of perceiving the Beauty of Regularity, Order, Harmony, an Internal Sense; and that Determination to ∥16 be pleas’d with the Contemplation of those∥ Affections, Actions, or Characters of rational Agents, which we call virtuous, he marks by the name of a Moral Sense.

His principal Design is to shew, “That Human Nature was not left quite indifferent in the affair of Virtue, to form to it self Observations concerning the Advantage, or Disadvantage of Actions, and accordingly to regulate its Conduct.” The weakness of our Reason, and the avocations arising from the ∥17 Infirmity∥ and Necessitys of our Nature, are so great, that very few ∥18 Men could ever have∥ form’d those long Deductions of Reason, which ∥19 shew∥ some Actions to be in the whole advantageous to the Agent, and their Contrarys pernicious. The Author of Nature has much better furnish’d us for a virtuous Conduct, than ∥20 our∥ Moralists seem to imagine, by almost as quick and powerful Instructions, as we have for the preservation of our Bodys. ∥21 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.∥

This moral Sense of Beauty in Actions and Affections, may appear strange at first View. Some of our Moralists themselves are offended at it in my Lord Shaftesbury,iii so much ∥22 are they∥ accustom’d to deduce every Approbation, or Aversion, from rational Views of ∥23 Interest∥, (except it be merely in the simple Ideas of the external Senses) and have such a Horror at innate Ideas, which they imagine this borders upon. But this moral Sense has no relation to innate Ideas, as will appear in the second Treatise. 24 Our Gentlemen of good Taste can tell us of a great many Senses, Tastes, and Relishes for Beauty, Harmony, Imitation in Painting and Poetry; and may not we find too in Mankind a Relish for a Beauty in Characters, in Manners? ∥25^aI doubt we have made Philosophy, as well as Religion, by our foolish management of it, so austere and ungainly a Form, that a Gentleman cannot easily bring himself to like it; and those who are Strangers to it, can scarcely bear to hear our Description of it. So much ∥26^bit is^b∥ changed from what was once the delight of the finest Gentlemen among the Antients, and their Recreation after the Hurry of publick Affairs!^a∥

In the first Treatise, the Author perhaps in some Instances has gone too far, in supposing a greater Agree-ment of Mankind in their Sense of Beauty, than Experience ∥27 will∥ confirm; but all he is solicitous about is to shew, “That there is some Sense of Beauty natural to Men; ∥28 that we find∥ as great an Agreement of Men in their Relishes of Forms, as in their external Senses which all agree to be natural; and that Pleasure or Pain, Delight or Aversion, are naturally join’d to their Perceptions.” If the Reader be convinc’d of ∥29 such Determinations of the Mind to be pleas’d with Forms, Proportions, Resemblances, Theorems,∥ it will be no difficult matter to apprehend another superior Sense, natural ∥30 also∥ to Men, determining them to be pleas’d with Actions, Characters, Affections. This is the moral Sense, which makes the Subject of the second Treatise.

The proper Occasions of Perception by the external Senses, occur to us as soon as we come into the World; ∥31 whence∥ perhaps we easily look upon these Senses to be natural: but the Objects of the superior Senses of Beauty and Virtue generally do not. It is probably some little time before Children ∥32 reflect∥, or at least let us know that they reflect upon Proportion and Similitude; upon Affections, Characters, Tempers; or come to know the external Actions which are Evidences of them. ∥33 Hence∥ we imagine that their Sense of Beauty, and their moral Sentiments of Actions, must be entirely owing to Instruction, and Education; whereas it ∥34 is as∥ easy to conceive, how a Character, a Temper, as soon as they are observ’d, may be constituted by Nature the necessary occasion of Pleasure, or an Object of Approbation, as a Taste or a Sound; ∥35 tho it be sometime before these Objects present themselves to our Observation.∥

∥36 The first Impression of these Papers was so well receiv’d, that the Author hopes it will be no offence to any who are concern’d in the Memory of the late Lord Viscount Molesworth,iv if he lets his Readers know that he was the Noble Person mention’d in the Preface to the first Edition, and that their being published was owing to his Approbation of them. It was from him he had that shreud Objection, which the Reader may find in the first Treatise;* besides many other Remarks in the frequent Conversations with which he honour’d the Author; by which that Treatise was very much improved beyond what it was in the Draught presented to him. The Author retains the most grateful Sense of his singular Civilitys, and of the Pleasure and Improvement he received in his Conver-sation; and is still fond of expressing his grateful Remembrance of him: but,

To be concern’d in this Book can be no honour to a Person so justly celebrated for the most generous Sentiments of Virtue and Religion, deliver’d with the most manly Eloquence: yet it would not be just toward the World, should the Author conceal his Obligations to the Reverend Mr. Edward Syng;vi not only for revising these Papers, when they stood in great need of an accurate Review, but for suggesting several just Amendments in the general Scheme of Morality. The Author was much confirm’d in his Opinion of the Justness of these Thoughts, upon finding, that this Gentleman had fallen into the same way of thinking before him; and will ever look upon his Friendship as one of the greatest Advantages and Pleasures of his Life.

To recommend the Lord Shaftesbury’s Writings to the World, is a very needless Attempt. They will be esteemed while any Reflection remains among Men. It is indeed to be wished, that he had abstained from mixing with such Noble Performances, some Prejudices he had receiv’d against Christianity; a Religion which gives us the truest Idea of Virtue, and recommends the Love of God, and of Mankind, as the Sum of all true Religion. How would it have moved the Indignation of that ingenious Nobleman, to have found a dissolute set of Men, who relish nothing in Life but the lowest and most sordid Pleasures, searching into his Writings for those Insinuations against Christianity, that they might be the less restrained from their Debaucherys; when at the same time their low Minds are incapable of relishing those noble Sentiments of Virtue and Honour, which he has placed in so lovely a Light!∥

Whatever Faults the Ingenious may find with ∥37 this Performance, the Author∥ hopes no body will find any thing in it contrary to Religion or good Manners: and he shall be well pleased if he gives the learned World an occasion of examining more thorowly these Subjects, which are, he presumes, of very considerable Importance. The chief Ground of his Assurance that his Opinions in the main are just, is this, That as he took the first Hints of them from some of the greatest Writers of Antiquity,vii so the more he has convers’d with them, he finds his Illustrations the more conformable to their Sentiments.

∥38 In the former Edition of this Book there were some Mistakes in one or two of the Instances borrowed from other Sciences, to a perfect Knowledge of which the Author does not pretend; nor would he now undertake that this Edition is every way faultless. He hopes that those who are studious of the true measures of Life, may find his Ideas of Virtue and Happiness tolerably just; and that the profound Connoisseurs will pardon a few Faults, in the Illustrations borrow’d from their Arts, upon which his Arguments do not depend.∥

[iii. ]Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), was educated under the supervision of John Locke but was not a follower of his philosophy. Hutcheson used the collection of Shaftesbury’s works in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 3 vols. (London, 1711). According to the subtitle of the first edition of the Inquiry (see note 1 on the title page), Hutcheson’s intention was to defend Shaftesbury’s views against Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees.

[iv. ]Robert Molesworth, a wealthy Irish merchant, politician, diplomat, and author (1656–1725), with short interruptions a member of both the English and Irish Parliaments for about thirty years. He was one of the most prominent radical Whigs of his time. At the end of 1722 Molesworth retired to Dublin, where he founded a philosophical and literary circle. Hutcheson was a member of the group.

[* ]Sect. v. Art. 2. the last Paragraph.

[v.]Translation: “Thinkest thou that dust or buried shades give heed to that?” Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 4, l. 34, in Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, revised ed., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935).

[vi.]Edward Synge (1692/94?–1762) was successively bishop of Clonfert, Cloyne, Firns, and Elphin. He was a friend of Berkeley and probably a member of Molesworth’s circle in Dublin, where a lasting friendship with Hutcheson developed. Hutcheson’s son dedicated his father’s posthumous System of Moral Philosophy (London, 1755) to Bishop Synge. As Synge demonstrated in a sermon from 25 October 1725 (the anniversary of the Irish rebellion), later published as The Case of Toleration, he was a liberal and tolerant Anglican.

[vii. ]Hutcheson was familiar with Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and probably with Plotinus. See the quotation from Cicero on the title page (from De officiis, book 1, §§ 14, 15). Also see Plato on the perception of beauty in Phaedrus (250d) and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, II, 9 (1109b, 20–26) and III, 6 (1113a, 23–35) as well as Politics, I, 11 (1253a, 16–19). On this topic, see E. H. Olmsted, “The ‘Moral Sense’ Aspects of Aristotle’s Ethical Theory,” American Journal of Philology 69 (1948): 42–61. See Plotinus, On Beauty (Ennead I. 6).

[5.]A (p. iv): set

[6.]A (p. iv): about

[7.]In C and D always farther instead of further. Exception: further at the beginning of a paragraph (C and D, p. 20 and p. 57).

[8.]A (p. iv): latter to be more

[9.]A (p. iv): these

[10.]A (p. iv): about

[11.]A (p. iv): see Reason to imagine

[12.]D2, D3 [Corrigenda, p. 309]: are few Objects which are

[13.]A (p. v): shall find

[14.]C (p. xiii), D (p. xiii): commonly call

[15.]D2, D3 [Corrigenda, p. 309]: certain complex Forms

[16.]C (p. xiii), D (p. xiii): approve

[17.]C (p. xiv), D (p. xiv): Infirmities

[18.]A (p. vii): of Mankind could have

[19.]A (p. vii): may shew

[20.]D2, D3 [Corrigenda, p. 309]: some

[21.]C (p. xiv), D (p. xiv): He has given us strong Affections to be the Springs of each virtuous Action; and made Virtue a lovely Form, that we might easily distinguish it from its Contrary, and be made happy by the Pursuit of it.

[22.]A (p. vii): they are

[23.]D2, D3 (p. xv): private Interest

[24.]New paragraph in D2, D3 (p. xv).

[25.]D2, D3 (p. xv): It will perhaps be found, that the greater Part of the Ingenious Arts are calculated to please some Natural Powers, pretty different either from what we commonly call Reason, or the External Senses.

[26.]A (p. viii): is it

[27.]A (p. viii): perhaps will

[28.]A (p. viii): And we find to the full

[29.]D2, D3 (p. xvi): this

[30.]Not in A (p. viii).

[31.]A (p. ix): and thence

[32.]A (p. ix): do reflect

[33.]A (p. ix): And hence

[34.]A (p. ix): is full as

[35.]C (p. xvii), D (p. xvii): tho’ these Objects present themselves to our Observation sooner than the other.

[36.]A (pp. ix–xi): Were not the Author diffident of his own Performance, as too inconsiderable to have any great Names mention’d in it, he would have publickly acknowledg’d his Obligations to a certain Lord (whose Name would have had no small Authority [x] with the learned World) for admitting him into his Acquaintance, and giving him some Remarks in Conversation, which have very much improv’d these Papers beyond what they were at first. The Author might have found good Materials for a modern Dedication from the active parts of his Life, as well as from his Learning and Reflection; but he knows him to be one of that sort,

Cui male si palpere, recalcitrat undique tutus.*And therefore, when they come to his Hands again, he only repeats to him the old Dedication with which he first presented them ———

• ——— Si quid ego adjuvero, curamve levasso,
• Si quae te coquat, aut verset in pectore fixa,
• Jam pretium tulerim.† ———

[37.]A (p. xi): the Author’s Performance, he

[38.]Not in A (p. xi). C (pp. xxi–xxii), D1 (p. xxi–xxii), D2, D3 (p. xxi): In [C (p. xxi): this third Edition] [D1 (p. xxi): this Edition] [D2, D3 (p. xxi): the later Editions], what Alterations are made, are partly owing to the Objections of some Gentlemen, who wrote very keenly against several Principles in this Book. The Author was convinc’d of some inaccurate Expressions, which are now alter’d; and some Arguments, he hopes, are now made clearer: but he has not yet seen Cause to renounce any of the Principles maintain’d in it. Nor is there any thing of Consequence added, except in Sect. II. of Treatise 2d; and the same Reasoning is found in Sect. I. of the Essay on the Passions.

D1 (p. xxi): In this [C (p. xxi): Third] [D2, D3 (p. xxi): 4th] Edition there are Additions interspersed, to prevent Objections which have been published against this Scheme by several Authors; and some Mathematical Expressions are left out, which upon second Thoughts, appear’d useless, and were disagreeable to some Readers.

[36.]A (pp. ix–xi): Were not the Author diffident of his own Performance, as too inconsiderable to have any great Names mention’d in it, he would have publickly acknowledg’d his Obligations to a certain Lord (whose Name would have had no small Authority [x] with the learned World) for admitting him into his Acquaintance, and giving him some Remarks in Conversation, which have very much improv’d these Papers beyond what they were at first. The Author might have found good Materials for a modern Dedication from the active parts of his Life, as well as from his Learning and Reflection; but he knows him to be one of that sort,

Cui male si palpere, recalcitrat undique tutus.*And therefore, when they come to his Hands again, he only repeats to him the old Dedication with which he first presented them ———

• ——— Si quid ego adjuvero, curamve levasso,
• Si quae te coquat, aut verset in pectore fixa,
• Jam pretium tulerim.† ———

[* ]Hor. Lib. 2. Sat. I. v. 20. [Translation: “Who, being flattered clumsily, kicks back, protected from all sides.”]

[† ]Cicero de Senectute, in initio. [Editor’s note: The exact quotation does not exist in any known Cicero text. The original lines read as follows: “si quid ego adiuero curamve levasso quae nunc te coquit et versat in pectore fixa, ecquid erit praemi.” Translation: “should some aid of mine dispel / The cares that now within thy bosom dwell / And wring thy heart and torture thee with pain, / What then would be the measure of thy gain.” (Cicero, De senectute, De amicitia, De divinatione, with an English translation by William Armistad Falconer, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 8.)]