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• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• The Preface
• Treatise I: An Essay On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions
• Section I: A General Account of Our Several Senses and Desires, Selfish Or Publick
• Section II: Of the Affections and Passions: the Natural Laws of Pure Affection: the Confused Sensations of the Passions, With Their Final Causes
• Section III: Particular Divisions of the Affections and Passions.
• Section IV: How Far Our Several Affections and Passions Are Under Our Power, Either to Govern Them When Raised, Or to Prevent Their Arising: With Some General Observations About Their Objects.
• Section V: A Comparison of the Pleasures and Pains of the Several Senses, As to Intenseness and Duration.
• Section VI: Some General Conclusions Concerning the Best Management of Our Desires. With Some Principles Necessary to Happiness.
• Treatise II: Illustrations Uponthe Moral Sense
• Section I Concerning the Character of Virtue, Agreeable to Truth Or Reason.
• Section II: Concerning That Character of Virtue and Vice, the Fitness Or Unfitness of Actions.
• Section III: Mr. Woolaston’s Significancy of Truth, As the Idea of Virtue Considered
• Section IV: Shewing the Use of Reason Concerning Virtue and Vice, Upon Supposition That We Receive These Ideas By a Moral Sense.
• Section V: Shewing That Virtue May Have Whatever Is Meant By Merit; and Be Rewardable Upon the Supposition, That It Is Perceived By a Sense, and Elected From Affection Or Instinct.
• Section VI: How Far a Regard to the Deity Is Necessary to Make an Action Virtuous

Acknowledgments

A number of people and institutions have helped in producing this edition of Hutcheson’s Essay with Illustrations. As to institutions, special thanks are due Boston University, the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, Liberty Fund and its unfailingly helpful staff, and the Australian National Cricket Team, which kept me awake through long nights of collation. As to people, James Moore has shown great generosity in helping me with my many queries about Hutcheson. He suggested Gershom Carmichael as the possible identity of the man of “real merit” in Glasgow (cf. p. 10, note x) and has aided in numerous other notes. Stephen Scully and Morgan Meis have suggested and corrected translations. I am also grateful to Bob Brown, Alfredo Ferrarin, Ian Hunter, Thomas Mautner, and Åsa Söderman.

Three people deserve very special thanks. First, Shelly Kroll labored with me over the proofs and caught many errors with her eagle eye. Second, I have benefited beyond measure from Luigi Turco’s masterly Italian edition of the Essay with Illustrations. Through his scholarship I have avoided many pitfalls, and most of the notes in my edition are indebted in one way or another to his far more copious and erudite discussions. In particular, he has identified all of Hutcheson’s classical sources. I refer to Turco in a few of my notes, when I am deriving a particular point from him, but his mark is on virtually everything in this volume. All readers who can read Italian and want to know more about the Essay with Illustrations are referred to his work. Finally, thanks to Knud Haakonssen, the editor of this series, who has helped with many notes, edited my prose, and been a constant support and resource. Without him this edition would not exist.

an

ESSAY

on the

Nature and Conduct

of the

Passions and Affections.

with

ILLUSTRATIONS

On the Moral Sense.

By the Author of the Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue.

Hoc opus, hoc studium, parvi properemus, & ampli,Si Patriae volumus, si Nobis vivere chari. Hor.1

LONDON:

Printed by J. Darby and T. Browne, for John Smith and William Bruce, Booksellers in Dublin; and sold by J. Osborn and T. Longman in Pater-Noster-Row, and S. Chandler in the Poultrey.

M.DCC.XXVIII.

[1.]Horace, Sermones, I.3.28–29. “This work, this study, let us hasten it far and wide, if we would wish to live in our country and to live happily with ourselves.” Horace is the most quoted of the classical authors in the Essay with Illustrations, although Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, and Aristotle are also frequently cited.