Chapter V (1)

AN EXAMINATION OF THE SCOTCH INTELLECT DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

To complete the history and analysis of the Scotch mind, I have now to examine the peculiar intellectual movement which appeared in the eighteenth century, and which, for several reasons, deserves careful attention. It was essentially a reaction against that theological spirit which predominated during the seventeenth century. Such a reaction would hardly have been possible, except for the fact which I have already noticed, namely, that the political activity which produced the rebellion against the Stuarts, saved the Scotch mind from stagnating, and prevented that deep slumber into which the progress of superstition would naturally have thrown it. The long and stubborn conflict with a despotic government, kept alive a certain alertness and vigour of understanding, which survived the struggle that gave it birth. When the contest was ended, and peace was restored, the faculties which, for three generations, had been exercised in resisting the executive authority, sought other employment, and found another field in which they could disport themselves. Hence it was, that the boldness which, in the seventeenth century, was practical, became, in the eighteenth century, speculative, and produced a literature, which attempted to unsettle former opinions, and to disturb the ancient landmarks of the human mind. The movement was revolutionary, and bore the same relation to ecclesiastical tyranny, which the previous movement had borne to political tyranny. But this new rebellion had one striking characteristic. In nearly every other country, when the intellect has fairly arrayed itself against the exclusive pretensions of the Church, it has happened that the secular philosophy, which has been engendered, has been an inductive philosophy, taking for its basis individual and specific experience, and seeking, by that means, to overthrow the general and traditional notions, on which all church power is founded. The plan has been, to refuse to accept principles which could not be substantiated by facts; while the opposite and theological plan is, to force the facts to yield to the principles. In the former case, experience precedes theory; in the latter case, theory precedes experience, and controls it. In theology, certain principles are taken for granted; and, it being deemed impious to question them, all that remains for us is to reason from them downwards. This is the deductive method. On the other hand, the inductive method will concede nothing, but insists upon reasoning upwards, and demands that we shall have the liberty of ascertaining the principles for ourselves. In a complete scheme of our knowledge, and when all our resources are fully developed and marshalled into order, as they must eventually be, the two methods will be, not hostile, but supplementary, and will be combined into a single system. At present, however, we are very far from such a result; and not only is every mind more prone to one method than to another, but we find, historically, that different ages and different countries have been characterised by the extent to which one of these two schemes has predominated; and we also find, that a study of this antagonism is the surest way of understanding the intellectual condition of any period.

That the inductive philosophy is even more marked by its secular tendencies than by its scientific ones, will be evident to whoever observes the epochs in which it has been most active, and has possessed most adherents. Of this, the history of the French mind, in the eighteenth century, affords a good instance, where, after the death of Louis XIV., we may clearly trace the connexion between the growth of the inductive method, and the subsequent overthrow of the Gallican Church. In England, too, the rise of the Baconian philosophy, with its determination to subordinate ancient principles to modern experience, was the heaviest blow which has ever been inflicted on the theologians, whose method is to begin, not with experience, but with principles, which are said to be inscrutable, and which we are bound to believe without further difficulty. And I need hardly remind the reader, that scarcely was that philosophy established among us, when it produced those bold inquiries which quickly ended in the downfall of the English Church under Charles I. From that terrible defeat, our clergy did, for a time, partly rally; but as their apparent success, in the reign of Charles II., was owing to political changes, and not to social ones, they were unable to recover their hold over society, and, unless the nation should retrograde, there is no possibility that they ever should recover it. Over the inferior order of minds, they still wield great influence; but the Baconian philosophy, by bringing their favourite method into disrepute, has sapped the very base of their system. From the moment that their mode of investigation was discredited, the secret of their power was gone. From the moment that men began to insist on inquiring into the validity of first principles, instead of accepting them without inquiry, and humbly submitting to them as matters of faith and of necessary belief; from that moment, the theologians, driven from one post to another, and constantly receding before the pressure of advancing knowledge, have been forced to abandon entrenchment after entrenchment, until what they have retained of their former territory is hardly worth the struggle. As a last resource, they, at the close of the eighteenth century, determined to use the weapons of their opponents; and Paley and his successors, enlarging the scheme which Ray and Derham had feebly sketched, endeavoured, by a skilful employment of the inductive method, to compensate their party for the failure of the deductive one. But their project, though ably conceived, has come to naught. It is now generally admitted, that nothing can be made of it, and that it is impossible to establish the old theological premises by a chain of inductive reasoning. Respecting this, the most eminent philosophers agree with the most eminent theologians; and, since the time of Kant in Germany, and of Coleridge in England, none of our ablest men, even among divines themselves, have recurred to a plan which Paley, indeed, pursued with vigour, but of which our Bridgewater Treatises, our Prize-Essays, and such schoolboy productions, are poor and barren imitations.[613] No great thinkers now follow this course in matters of religion. On the contrary, they prefer the safer, as well as the more philosophic, method, of dealing with these subjects on transcendental grounds, frankly confessing that they elude the grasp of that inductive philosophy which, in the department of science, has achieved such signal triumphs.

[613] Of course, I say this merely in reference to their theological
bearings. Some of the Bridgewater Treatises, such as Bell's,
Buckland's, and Prout's, had great scientific merit at the time of
their appearance, and may even now be studied with advantage; but
the religious portion of them is pitiable, and shows either that
their heart was not in their work, or else that the subject was
too wide for them. At all events, it is to be hoped that we shall
never again see men of equal eminence hiring themselves out as
paid advocates, and receiving fees to support particular opinions.
It is truly disgraceful that such great speculative questions,
instead of being subjected to fair and disinterested argument,
with a view of eliciting the truth, should be turned into a
pecuniary transaction, in which any one of much money and little
wit, can bribe as many persons as he likes, to prejudice the
public ear in favour of his own theories.

The opposition of these two methods, and the inapplicability of the inductive method to theological pursuits being thus apparent, it is not strange that the Scotch should have adopted one of the methods with great zeal, and to the almost complete exclusion of the other. Scotland, being essentially theological, followed the theological plan. The intellectual history of that country, in the seventeenth century, is almost entirely the history of theology. With the single exception of Napier, who was born in the middle of the sixteenth century, all the most vigorous thinkers were divines. In physical science, scarcely anything was done.[614] There was no poetry, no drama, no original philosophy, no fine compositions, no secular literature, now worth reading.[615] The only men of real influence were the clergy. They governed the nation and the pulpit was the chief engine of their power. From the pulpit, they moved all classes and all sorts intellects; the highest as well as the lowest. There, they instructed them, and threatened them; saying whatever they liked, and knowing that what they said would be believed.[616] But all their sermons, and all their controversial writings, are eminently deductive; not of them attempts an inductive argument. The idea of such a thing never entered their heads. They assumed the truth of their own religion and moral notions, most of which they had borrowed from antiquity; they made those notions the major premises of their syllogisms, and from them they reasoned downwards till they obtained their conclusions. They never suspected that premises, taken from ancient times might be the result of the inductions of those times and that, as knowledge advanced, the inductions might need revising. They assumed, that God has given us first principles, and that He, having revealed them it would ill become us to scrutinize them. That He had revealed them, they took for granted, and deemed it unnecessary to prove.[617] Their method being entirely deductive, all they were concerned with was to beware that no error crept in between the premises and the conclusions. And this part of their task they accomplished with great ability. They were acute dialecticians, and rarely blundered in what is termed the formal part of logic. In dealing with their premises after they obtained them, they were extremely skilful; how they obtained them, they were very heedless. That was a point they never examined with anything approaching to impartiality. According to their method, all that was requisite was, to draw inferences from what had been supernaturally communicated. On the other hand, the inductive method would have taught them that the first question was, whether or not they had been supernaturally communicated? They, as deductive reasoners, assumed the very preliminaries which inductive reasoners would have disputed. They proceeded from generals to particulars, instead of from particulars to generals. And they would not allow either themselves or others to sift the general propositions, which were to cover and control the particular facts. It was enough for them that the wider propositions were already established, and were to be treated according to the rules of the old and syllogistic logic. Indeed, they were so convinced of the impropriety of the inductive method, that they did not hesitate to assert, that it was by means of the syllogism that the Deity communicated His wishes to man.[618]

[614] 'It is humiliating to have to remark, that the notices of comets
which we derive from Scotch writers down to this time (1682)
contain nothing but accounts of the popular fancies regarding
them. Practical astronomy seems to have then been unknown in our
country; and hence, while in other lands, men were carefully
observing, computing, and approaching to just conclusions
regarding these illustrious strangers of the sky, our diarists
could only tell us how many _yards_ long they seemed to be, what
_effects_ were apprehended from them in the way of war and
pestilence, and how certain pious divines "improved" them for
spiritual edification. Early in this century Scotland had produced
one great philosopher, who had supplied his craft with the
mathematical instruments by which complex problems, such as the
movement of comets, were alone to be solved. It might have been
expected that the country of Napier, seventy years after his time,
would have had many sons capable of applying his key to such
mysteries of nature. But no one had arisen--nor did any rise for
fifty years onward, when at length Colin Maclaurin unfolded in the
Edinburgh University the sublime philosophy of Newton. There could
not be a more expressive signification of the character of the
seventeenth century in Scotland. Our unhappy contentions about
external religious matters had absorbed the whole genius of the
people, rendering to us the age of Cowley, of Waller, and of
Milton, as barren of elegant literature, as that of Horrocks, of
Halley, and of Newton, was of science.' _Chambers' Domestic Annals
of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 444, 445.

[615] 'Thus, during the whole seventeenth century, the English were
gradually refining their language and their taste; in Scotland,
the former was much debased, and the latter almost entirely lost.'
_History of Scotland_, book viii., in _Robertson's Works_, p. 260.

'But the taste and science, the genius and the learning of the
age, were absorbed in the gulph of religious controversy. At a
time when the learning of Selden, and the genius of Milton,
conspired to adorn England, the Scots were reduced to such writers
as Baillie, Rutherford, Guthrie, and the two Gillespies.' _Laing's
History of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 510. 'From the Restoration down
to the Union, the only author of eminence whom Scotland produced
was Burnet.' _Ibid._, vol. iv. p. 406.

'The seventeenth century, fatal to the good taste of Italy, threw
a total night over Scotland.' ... 'Not one writer who does the
least credit to the nation flourished during the century from 1615
to 1715, excepting Burnet, whose name would, indeed, honour the
brightest period. In particular, no poet whose works merit
preservation arose. By a singular fatality, the century which
stands highest in English history and genius, is one of the
darkest in those of Scotland.' _Ancient Scotish Poems, edited by
John Pinkerton_, vol. i. pp. iii. iv., London, 1786.

[616] Ray, who visited Scotland in 1661, could not suppress a little
professional envy, when he saw how much higher ecclesiastics were
rated there than in England. He says, 'the people here frequent
their churches much better than in England, and have their
ministers in more esteem and veneration.' _Ray's Memorials, edited
by Dr. Lankester for the Ray Society_, p. 161.

[617] 'Believing ignorance is much better than rash and presumptuous
knowledge. Ask not a reason of these things, but rather adore and
tremble at the mystery and majesty of them.' _Binning's Sermons_,
vol. i. p. 143. Even Biblical criticism was prohibited; and
Dickson says of the different books of the Bible, 'We are not to
trouble ourselves about the name of the writer, or time of writing
of any part thereof, especially because God of set purpose
concealeth the name sundry times of the writer, and the time when
it was written.' _Dickson's Explication of the Psalms_, p. 291.

[618] 'Christ from heaven proposeth a syllogism to Saul's fury.'
_Rutherford's Christ Dying_, p. 180. 'The conclusion of a
practical syllogism, whereby the believer concluded from the
Gospel that he shall be saved.' _Durham's Law Unsealed_, p. 97.
'All assurance is by practical syllogism, the first whereof must
needs be a Scripture truth.' _Gray's Precious Promises_, p. 139.

It was naturally to be expected, that the clergy, holding these views respecting the best means of arriving at truth, should do all in their power to bring over the nation to their side, and should labour to make their own method of investigation entirely supersede the opposite method. Nor was this a very difficult task. The prevailing credulity was one great point in their favour, inasmuch as it made men more willing to accept propositions than to scrutinise them. When the propositions were accepted, nothing was left but to reason from them; and the most active intellects in Scotland, being constantly engaged in this process, acquired complete mastery over it, and the dexterity they displayed increased its repute. Besides this, the clergy, who were its zealous champions, had monopolized all the sources of education, both public and private. In no other Protestant country, have they exercised such control over the universities; not only the doctrines taught, but also the mode of teaching them, being, in Scotland, placed under the supervision of the Church.[619] This power they, of course, used to propagate their own plan of obtaining truth; and, as long as their power remained undiminished, it was hardly possible that the opposite, or inductive, plan should gain a hearing. Over grammar-schools, the clergy possessed an authority fully equal to that which they had in the universities.[620] They also appointed and removed, at their own pleasure, teachers of every grade, from village schoolmasters to tutors in private families.[621] In this way, each generation, as it arose, was brought under their influence, and made subject to their notions. Taking the mind of Scotland while it was young and flexible, they bent it to their own method. Hence, that method became supreme; it reigned every where; not a voice was lifted up against it; and no one had an idea that there was more than one path by which truth could be reached, or that the human understanding was of any use, except to deal deductively with premisses, which were not to be inductively examined.

[619] Bower (_History of the University of Edinburgh_, vol. i. p. 217)
says, 'The history of the universities and of the church is, in
modern Europe, and perhaps in every other civilized portion of the
globe, very nearly connected. They are more nearly connected in
Scotland than in any other civilized country called Protestant;
because the General Assembly have the legal power of inquiring
into the economy of the institutions, both as it respects the mode
of teaching, and the doctrines, whether religious, moral, or
physical, which are taught.' Spalding, under the year 1639, gives
an instance of the power of the General Assembly in 'the College
of Old Aberdeen.' _Spalding's History of the Troubles_, vol. i. p.
178. See also, on the authority exercised by the General Assembly
over the universities, a curious little book, called _The
Government and Order of the Church of Scotland_, Edinburgh, 1690,
p. 25.

[620] In 1632, the 'ministers' of Perth were greatly displeased because
John Row was made master of the grammar-school without their
consent. _The Chronicle of Perth_, p. 33, where it is stated that,
consequently, 'thair wes much outcrying in the pulpett.'

[621] See, for instance, _Minutes of the Presbyteries of St. Andrews and
Cupar_, pp. 66, 83, 84, 118. One of the entries is, that in
January 1648, 'The Presbyterie ordained that all young students,
who waittes on noblemen or gentlemen within thir bounds, aither to
teach ther children, or catechise and pray in ther families, to
frequent the Presbyterie, that the brether may cognosce what they
ar reading, and what proficiencie they make in ther studies, and
to know also ther behaviour in the said families, and of their
affectione to the Covenant and present religione.' p. 118. Compare
_Selections from the Registers of the Presbytery of Lanark_,
pp. 56, 65.

The inductive or analytic spirit being thus unknown, and the deductive or synthetic spirit being alone favoured, it happened that, when, early in the eighteenth century, the circumstances already mentioned gave rise to a great intellectual movement, that movement, though new in its results, was not new in the method by which the results were obtained. A secular philosophy was, indeed, established, and the ablest men, instead of being theological, became scientific. But so completely had the theological plan occupied Scotland, that even philosophers were unable to escape from its method, and, as I am about to show, the inductive method exercised no influence over them. This most curious fact is the key to the history of Scotland in the eighteenth century, and explains many events which would otherwise appear incompatible with each other. It also suggests an analogy with Germany, where the deductive method has, for a long period, been equally prevalent, owing to precisely the same causes. In both countries, the secular movement of the eighteenth century was unable to become inductive; and this intellectual affinity between two such otherwise different nations, is, I have no doubt, the principal reason why the Scotch and German philosophies have so remarkably acted and reacted upon each other; Kant and Hamilton being the most finished specimens of their intercourse. To this, England forms a complete contrast. For more than a hundred and fifty years after the death of Bacon, the greatest English thinkers, Newton and Harvey excepted, were eminently inductive; nor was it until the nineteenth century that signs were clearly exhibited of a counter-movement, and an attempt was made to return in some degree to the deductive method.[622] This we are, in many respects, justified in doing, because, in the progress of our knowledge, we have, by a long course of induction, arrived at several conclusions which we may safely treat deductively; that is to say, we may make them the major premisses of new arguments. The same process has been seen in France, where the exclusively inductive philosophy of the eighteenth century preceded a partial resuscitation of deductive philosophy in the nineteenth century. In Scotland, however, there have been no such vicissitudes. In that country, men have always been deductive; even the most original thinkers being unable to liberate themselves from the universal tendency, and being forced to accept a method which time had consecrated, and which was interwoven with all the associations of the national mind.

[622] This I have already touched upon in the first volume, pp. 808,
809. Hereafter, and in my special history of the English mind, I
shall examine it carefully and in detail. The revival of the old
logic is a great symptom of it. Works like those of Whately, De
Morgan, and Mansel, could not have been produced in tho eighteenth
century, or, at all events, if by some extraordinary combination
of events they had been produced, they would have found no
readers. As it is, they have exercised a very extensive and very
salutary influence; and, although Archbishop Whately was not well
acquainted with the history of formal logic, his exposition of its
ordinary processes is so admirably clear, that he has probably
contributed more than any other man towards impressing his
contemporaries with a sense of the value of deductive reasoning.
He has, however, not done sufficient justice to the opposite
school, and has, indeed, fallen into the old academical error of
supposing that all reasoning is by syllogism. We might just as
well say that all movement is by descent.

To understand the investigation into which we are about to enter, the reader must firmly seize, and keep before his eyes, the essential difference between deduction, which reasons from principles, and induction, which reasons to principles. He must remember, that induction proceeds from the smaller to the greater; deduction, from the greater to the smaller. Induction is from particulars to generals, and from the senses to the ideas; deduction is from generals to particulars, and from the ideas to the senses. By induction, we rise from the concrete to the abstract; by deduction, we descend from the abstract to the concrete. Accompanying this distinction, there are certain qualities of mind, which, with extremely few exceptions, characterize the age, nation, or individual, in which one of these methods is predominant. The inductive philosopher is naturally cautious, patient, and somewhat creeping; while the deductive philosopher is more remarkable for boldness, dexterity, and often rashness. The deductive thinker invariably assumes certain premisses, which are quite different from the hypotheses essential to the best induction. These premisses are sometimes borrowed from antiquity; sometimes they are taken from the notions which happen to prevail in the surrounding society; sometimes they are the result of a man's own peculiar organization; and sometimes, as we shall presently see, they are deliberately invented, with the object of arriving, not at truth, but at an approximation to truth. Finally, and to sum up the whole, we may say that a deductive habit, being essentially synthetic, always tends to multiply original principles or laws; while the tendency of an inductive habit is to diminish those laws by gradual and successive analysis.

These being the two fundamental divisions of human inquiry, it is surely a most remarkable fact in the history of Scotland, that, during the eighteenth century, all the great thinkers belonged to the former division, and that, in the very few instances of induction which their works contain, it is evident, from the steps they subsequently took, that they regarded such inductions as unimportant in themselves, and as only valuable in so far as they supplied the premisses for another and deductive investigation. As the various departments of our knowledge have never yet been co-ordinated and treated as a whole, probably no one is aware of the universality of this movement in Scotland, and of the extent to which it pervaded every science, and governed every phase of thought. To prove, therefore, the force with which it acted, I now purpose to examine its working in all the principal forms of speculation, whether physical or moral, and to show that in each the same method was adopted. In doing this, I must, for the sake of clearness, proceed according to a natural arrangement of the different topics; but I will, whenever it is possible, also follow the chronological order in which the Scotch mind unfolded itself; so that we may understand, not only the character of that remarkable literature, but likewise the steps of its growth, and the astonishing vigour with which it emancipated itself from the shackles which superstition had imposed.

The beginning of the great secular philosophy of Scotland is undoubtedly due to Francis Hutcheson.[623] This eminent man, though born in Ireland, was of Scotch family, and was educated in the University of Glasgow, where he received the appointment of Professor of Philosophy in the year 1729.[624] 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 entirely 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.[625] This confidence in the power of the human understanding was altogether new in Scotland, and its appearance forms an epoch in the national literature. Previously, men had been taught that the understanding was a rash and foolish thing, which ought to be repressed, and which was unfit to cope with the problems presented to it.[626] Hutcheson, however, held that it was quite able to deal with them, but that, to do so, it must be free and unfettered. Hence, he strenuously advocated that right of private judgment which the Scotch Kirk had not only assailed, but had almost destroyed. He insisted that each person had a right to form his opinion according to the evidence he possessed, and that, this right being inalienable, none but weak minds would abstain from exercising it.[627] Every one was to judge according to his own light, and nothing could be gained by inducing men to profess sentiments contrary to their convictions.[628] So far, however, was this from being understood, that we found all the little sects quarrelling among themselves, and abusing each other, merely because their views were different. It was strange to hear how the professors of one creed would stigmatize the professors of other creeds as idolatrous, and would demand that penalties should be inflicted on them. In point of fact, all had much that was good; and their only real evil was, this love of persecution.[629] But the vulgar deemed every one a heretic who did not believe what they believed; and this way of thinking had been too much countenanced by the clergy, many of whom felt their vanity offended at the idea of laymen pretending to be wiser than their spiritual teachers, and venturing to disagree with what they said.[630]

[623] See a letter from Sir James Mackintosh to Parr, in _Mackintosh's
Memoirs_, London, 1835, vol. i. p. 334. 'To Hutcheson the taste
for speculation in Scotland, and all the philosophical opinions
(except the Berkleian Humism) may be traced.' M. Cousin (_Histoire
de la Philosophie_, première série, vol. iv. p. 35, Paris, 1846)
observes, that before Hutcheson 'il n'avait paru en Ecosse ni un
écrivain ni un professeur de philosophie un peu remarquable.'

[624] _Tytler's Memoirs of Kames_, Edinburgh, 1814, vol. i. p. 223.
_Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. iii. London, 1755, 4to.

[625] 'The intention of Moral Philosophy is to direct men to that course
of action which tends most effectually to promote their greatest
happiness and perfection; as far as it can be done by observations
and conclusions discoverable from the constitution of nature,
without any aids of supernatural revelation: these maxims or rules
of conduct are therefore reputed as laws of nature, and the system
or collection of them is called the LAW OF NATURE.' _Hutcheson's
Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 1.

[626] 'The natural understanding is the most whorish thing in the
world.' ... 'The understanding, even in the search of truth
amongst the creatures, is a rash, precipitate, and unquiet thing.'
_Rutherford's Christ Dying_, p. 181. 'Innocent Adam,' indeed, says
Boston, 'Innocent Adam had a stock of gracious abilities, whereby
he might have, by the force of moral considerations, brought
himself to perform duty aright. But where is that with us?'
_Boston's Sermons_, p. 65.

[627] 'A like natural right every intelligent being has about his own
opinions, speculative or practical, to judge according to the
evidence that appears to him. This right appears from the very
constitution of the rational mind, which can assent or dissent
solely according to the evidence presented, and naturally desires
knowledge. The same considerations show this right to be
unalienable: it cannot be subjected to the will of another: though
where there is a previous judgment formed concerning the superior
wisdom of another, or his infallibility, the opinion of this
other, to a weak mind, may become sufficient evidence. As to
opinions about the Deity, religion, and virtue, this right is
further confirmed by all the noblest desires of the soul; as there
can be no virtue, but rather impiety in not adhering to the
opinions we think just, and in professing the contrary.'
_Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. pp. 295, 296. See also
vol. ii. p. 311. 'Every rational creature has a right to judge for
itself in these matters: and as men must assent according to the
evidence that appears to them, and cannot command their own assent
in opposition to it, this right is plainly unalienable.'

[628] 'Thus no man can really change his sentiments, judgments, and
inward affections, at the pleasure of another, nor can it tend to
any good to make him profess what is contrary to his heart.'
_Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. pp. 261, 262.

[629] 'Arians and Socinians are idolaters and denyers of God, say the
orthodox. They retort upon the orthodox, that they are Tritheists;
and so do other sects; and thus they spirit up magistrates to
persecute. While yet it is plain that in all these sects there are
all the same motives to all social virtues from a belief of a
moral providence, the same acknowledgments that the goodness of
God is the source of all the good we enjoy or hope for, and the
same gratitude and resignation to him recommended. Nor do any of
their schemes excite men to vices, except that horrid tenet, too
common to most of them, the right of persecuting.' _Hutcheson's
Moral Philosophy_, vol. ii. p. 316. See also vol. i. p. 160; and
_Hutcheson's Inquiry into our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue_, London,
1738, p. 283.

[630] 'We all know the notions entertained by the vulgar concerning all
hereticks; we know the pride of schoolmen and many ecclesiasticks;
how it galls their insolent vanity that any man should assume to
himself to be wiser than they in tenets of religion by differing
from them.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 167.

Such large views of liberty were far in advance of the country in which they were propounded, and could exercise no influence, except over a few thinking men. These, and similar doctrines, were, however, repeated by Hutcheson, in his lectures, every year.[631] And strange, indeed, they must have seemed. To those who received them, they were utterly subversive of the prevailing theological spirit, which regarded toleration as impious, and which, seeking to confine the human mind within the limits of foregone conclusions, deemed it a duty to chastise those who overstepped them. In opposition to this, Hutcheson let in the elements of inquiry, of discussion, and of doubt. There is also another point in which his philosophy is memorable, as the beginning of the great rebellion of the Scotch intellect. We saw, in the last chapter, how successfully the teachers of the people had inculcated doctrines of the darkest asceticism, and how naturally those doctrines had arisen out of the enormous authority possessed by the Church. Against such notions, Hutcheson set his face strenuously. He rightly supposed, that an admiration of every kind of beauty, so far from being sinful, is essential to a complete and well-balanced mind; and the most original part of his philosophy consists of the inquiries which he made into the working and origin of our ideas on that subject. Hitherto, the Scotch had been taught that the emotions which beauty excites, were owing to the corruption of our nature, and ought to be repressed. Hutcheson, on the other hand, insisted that they were good in themselves; that they were part of the general scheme of human affairs, and that they deserved a special and scientific study.[632] And with such skill did he investigate them, that, in the opinion of one of the highest living authorities, he is the originator of all subsequent inquiries into these matters; his being the first attempt to deal with the subject of beauty in a broad and comprehensive spirit.[633]

[631] 'As he had occasion every year in the course of his lectures to
explain the origin of government, and compare the different forms
of it, he took peculiar care, while on that subject, to inculcate
the importance of civil and religious liberty to the happiness of
mankind.' _Leechman's Life of Hutcheson_, p. xxxv., prefixed to
Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy.

[632] 'The ideas of beauty and harmony, like other sensible ideas, are
necessarily pleasant to us, as well as immediately so.'
_Hutcheson's Inquiry into our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue_, p. 11.
'Our sense of beauty seems designed to give us positive pleasure.'
p. 71. 'Beauty gives a favourable presumption of good moral
dispositions.' p. 257. 'But it is plain we have not in our power
the modelling of our senses or desires, to form them for a private
interest; they are fixed for us by the Author of our nature,
subservient to the interest of the system; so that each individual
is made, previously to his own choice, a member of a great body,
and affected with the fortunes of the whole; or at least of many
parts of it; nor can he break himself off at pleasure.'
_Hutcheson's Essay on the Passions_, pp. 105, 106.

[633] 'Fille de la scholastique, la philosophie moderne est demeurée
longtemps étrangère aux grâces, et les _Recherches_ d'Hutcheson
présentent, je crois, le premier traité spécial sur le beau, écrit
par un moderne. Elles ont paru en 1725. Cette date est presque
celle de l'avénement de l'esthétique dans la philosophie
européenne. L'ouvrage du père André, en France, est de 1741, celui
de Baumgarten, en Allemagne, est de 1750. Ce n'est pas un petit
honneur à Hutcheson d'avoir le premier soumis l'idée du beau à une
analyse méthodique et régulière.' _Cousin, Histoire de la
Philosophie_, première série, vol. iv. p. 84.

Not only in speculative views, but also in practical recommendations, Hutcheson displayed the same tendency; every where endeavouring to break down that gloomy fabric which superstition had built up.[634] His predecessors, and, indeed, nearly all his contemporaries who exercised much influence, represented pleasure as immoral, and opposed themselves to the fine arts, which they considered dangerous, as ministering to our pleasures, and thereby distracting our minds from serious concerns. Hutcheson, however, declared that the fine arts were to be cherished; for, he said, they are not only agreeable, but also reputable, and to employ our time with them is honourable.[635] That such is the case is obvious enough to us, but it was long, indeed, since similar language had been heard in Scotland from a great public teacher, and it was completely opposed to the prevailing notions. But Hutcheson went even further. Not content with raising his voice in favour of wealth,[636] which the Scotch clergy stigmatized as one of the most pernicious and carnal of all things, he fearlessly asserted that all our natural appetites are lawful, and that the gratification of them is consistent with the highest virtue.[637] In his eyes, they were lawful, because they were natural; while, according to the theological theory, their being natural made them unlawful. And here lies the fundamental difference between the practical views of Hutcheson and those previously received. He, like every great thinker since the seventeenth century, loved human nature, and respected it; but he neither loved nor respected those who unduly trammelled it, and thereby weakened its vigour, as well as impaired its beauty. He placed more confidence in mankind, than in the rulers of mankind. The Scotch divines, who preceded him, were the libellers of their species; they calumniated the whole human race. According to them, there was nothing in us but sin and corruption; and, therefore, all our desires were to be checked. It is the peculiar glory of Hutcheson, that he was the first man in Scotland who publicly combated these degrading notions. 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; and he cast from his philosophy, with vehement scorn, those base prejudices, which, by aspersing all that is great and magnanimous, had long blinded the eyes of their contemporaries, and, by bringing into fresh prominence the old and mischievous dogma of moral degeneracy, had represented our nature as a compound of vices, and had been unable to see how many virtues we really possess, how much of the spirit of self-sacrifice, and of free disinterested benevolence has always existed; how much of good even the worst of us retain; and how, among the ordinary and average characters of whom the world is composed, the desire of benefiting others is more frequent than the desire of hurting them, kindness is more common than cruelty, and the number of good deeds does, on the whole, far outweigh the number of bad ones.[638]

[634] In his _Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue_, p. 107, he so completely
opposed the prevailing notions, as to assert that 'our perception
of pleasure is necessary, and nothing is advantageous or naturally
good to us, but what is apt to raise pleasure, mediately, or
immediately.' Compare what he says at p. 91 respecting
'superstitious prejudices against actions apprehended as offensive
to the Deity.'

[635] 'Hence a taste for the ingenious arts of musick, sculpture,
painting, and even for the manly diversions, is reputable.'
_Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 83. At p. 129 he says,
that in them 'our time is agreeably and honourably employed.' See
also vol. ii. p. 115.

[636] 'Wealth and power are truly useful, not only for the natural
conveniences or pleasures of life, but as a fund for good
offices.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 104. Compare
_Hutcheson on Beauty and Virtue_, pp. 93-95; and his _Essay on the
Passions and Affections_, pp. 8, 9, 99. 'How weak also are the
reasonings of some recluse moralists, who condemn in general all
pursuits of wealth or power, as below a perfectly virtuous
character; since wealth and power are the most effectual means,
and the most powerful instruments, even of the greatest virtues,
and most generous actions.'

[637] 'The chief happiness of any being must consist in the full
enjoyment of all the gratifications its nature desires and is
capable of.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 100. 'The
highest sensual enjoyments may be experienced by those who employ
both mind and body vigorously in social virtuous offices, and
allow all the natural appetites to recur in their due seasons.' p.
121. 'Nay, as in fact it is for the good of the system that every
desire and sense natural to us, even those of the lowest kinds,
should be gratified as far as their gratification is consistent
with the nobler enjoyments, and in a just subordination to them;
there seems a natural notion of _right_ to attend them all.' pp.
254, 255.

[638] ''Tis pleasant to observe how those authors who paint out our
nature as a compound of sensuality, selfishness, and cunning,
forget themselves on this subject in their descriptions of youth,
when the natural temper is less disguised than in the subsequent
parts of life. 'Tis made up of many keen, inconstant passions,
many of them generous; 'tis fond of present pleasure, but 'tis
also profusely kind and liberal to favourites; careless about
distant interests of its own; full of confidence in others;
studious of praise for kindness and generosity; prone to
friendships, and void of suspicion.' _Hutcheson's Moral
Philosophy_, vol. ii. p. 11. 'Men are often subject to anger, and
upon sudden provocations do injuries to each other, and that only
from self love without malice; but the greatest part of their
lives is employed in offices of natural affection, friendship,
innocent self love, or love of a country.' _Hutcheson's Essay on
the Passions_, pp. 97, 98. And at p. 165: 'There are no doubt many
furious starts of passion, in which malice may seem to have place
in our constitution; but how seldom and how short, in comparison
of years spent in fixed kind pursuits of the good of a family, a
party, a country?' ... 'Here men are apt to let their imaginations
run out upon all the robberies, piracies, murders, perjuries,
frauds, massacres, assassinations, they have ever either heard of,
or read in history; thence concluding all mankind to be very
wicked; as if a court of justice were the proper place for making
an estimate of the morals of mankind, or an hospital of the
healthfulness of a climate. Ought they not to consider that the
number of honest citizens and farmers far surpasses that of all
sorts of criminals in any state; and that the innocent or kind
actions of even criminals themselves, surpass their crimes in
numbers? That it is the rarity of crimes, in comparison of
innocent or good actions, which engages our attention to them, and
makes them be recorded in history; while incomparably more honest,
generous, domestic actions are overlooked, only because they are
so common; as one great danger, or one month's sickness, shall
become a frequently repeated story, during a long life of health
and safety.'

Thus much as to the tendency of Hutcheson's philosophy.[639] We have now to ascertain his method, that is to say, the plan which he adopted in order to obtain his results. This is a very important part of our present inquiry; and we shall find that, in the study of moral philosophy, as in the study of all subjects not yet raised to sciences, there are not only two methods, but that each method leads to different consequences. If we proceed by induction, we arrive at one conclusion; if we proceed by deduction, we arrive at another. This difference in the results, is always a proof that the subject, in which the difference exists, is not yet capable of scientific treatment, and that some preliminary difficulties have to be removed, before it can pass from the empirical stage into the scientific one. As soon as those difficulties are got rid of, the results obtained by induction, will correspond with those obtained by deduction; supposing, of course, that both lines of argument are fairly managed. In such case, it will be of no importance whether we reason from particulars to generals, or from generals to particulars. Either plan will yield the same consequences, and this agreement between the consequences, proves that our investigation is, properly speaking, scientific. Thus, for instance, in chemistry, if, by reasoning deductively from general principles, we could always predict what would happen when we united two or more elements, even supposing those elements were new to us; and if, by reasoning inductively from each element, we could arrive at the same conclusion, one process would corroborate the other, and, by their mutual verification, the science would be complete. In chemistry, we cannot do this; therefore, chemistry is not yet a science, although, since the introduction into it, by Dalton, of the ideas of weight and number, there is every prospect of its becoming one. On the other hand, astronomy is a science, because, by employing the deductive weapon of mathematics, we can compute the motions and perturbations of bodies; and, by employing the inductive weapon of observation, the telescope reveals to us the accuracy of our previous, and, as it were, foregone, inferences. The fact agrees with the idea; the particular event confirms the general principle; the principle explains the event; and their unanimity authorizes us to believe that we must be right, since, proceed as we may, the conclusion is the same; and the inductive plan, of striking averages, harmonizes with the deductive plan, of reasoning from ideas.

[639] In 1731, Wodrow, who was the last really great specimen of the old
Presbyterian divines, and who was not a little shocked at the
changes he saw going on around him, writes: 'When Dr. Calamy heard
of Mr. Hutcheson's being called to Glasgow, he smiled, and said, I
think to Thomas Randy, that he was not for Scotland, as he thought
from his book; and that he would be reckoned there as unorthodox
as Mr. Simson. The Doctor has a strange way of fishing out privat
storyes and things that pass in Scotland.' _Wodrow's Analecta_,
vol. iv. p. 227. It is interesting to compare with this, the
remarks which that worldly-minded clergyman, the Rev. Alexander
Carlyle, has made upon Hutcheson. See _Carlyle's Autobiography_,
Edinburgh, 1860, 2d edit. pp. 82-85.

But, in the study of morals there is no such harmony. Partly from the force of prejudice, and partly from the complexity of the subject, all attempts at a scientific investigation of morals have failed. It is not, therefore, surprising that, in this field, the inductive inquirer arrives at one conclusion, and the deductive inquirer at another. The inductive inquirer endeavours to attain his object by observing the actions of men, and subjecting them to analysis, in order to learn the principles which regulate them. The deductive inquirer, beginning at the other end, assumes certain principles as original, and reasons from them to the facts which actually appear in the world. The former proceeds from the concrete to the abstract; the latter, from the abstract to the concrete. The inductive moralist looks at the history of past society, or at the condition of the present, and takes for granted that the first step is, to assemble the facts, and then to generalize them. The deductive inquirer, using the facts rather to illustrate his principles, than to suggest them, appeals, in the first place, not to external facts, but to internal ideas, and he makes those ideas the major premiss of a syllogistic argument. Both parties agree, that we have the power of judging some actions to be right, and others to be wrong. But as to how we get that power, and as to what that power is, they are at utter variance. The inductive philosopher says, that its object is happiness, that we get it by association, and that it is due to the action and reaction of social causes, which are susceptible of analysis. The deductive philosopher says, that this power of distinguishing between right and wrong, aims, not at happiness, but at truth; that it is inherent, that it cannot be analyzed, that it is a primary conviction, and that we may assume it and reason from it, but can never hope to explain it by reasoning to it.

It requires but a slight acquaintance with the works of Hutcheson to see that he belongs to the latter of these two schools. He assumes, that all men have what he terms a moral faculty, which, being an original principle, does not admit of analysis.[640] He further assumes, that the business of this faculty is to regulate all our powers.[641] From these two assumptions, he reasons downwards to the visible facts of our conduct, and deductively constructs the general scheme of life. His plan being entirely synthetic, he depreciates the analytic method, and complains of it as an artful attempt to diminish the number of our perceptive powers.[642] The truth is, that every such diminution would have taken away some of his original principles, and would thereby have prevented him from using them as the major premisses of separate arguments. And if you deprive a deductive reasoner of his major premisses, you leave him nothing on which to stand. Hutcheson, therefore, like all the philosophers of his school, was extremely jealous of the invasions of the inductive spirit, with its constant tendency to attack convictions supposed to be primary, and seek to resolve them into their elements. He repulsed such encroachments upon his major premisses, because the power and beauty of his method were displayed in reasoning from the premisses, and not in reasoning to them. According to him, the moral faculty, and the authority which it exercised, were impervious to analysis; it was impossible to track them higher, or to resolve them into simpler constituents; and it was in vain that many attempted to refer them to circumstances external to themselves, such as education, custom, or the association of ideas.[643]

[640] In his _Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 52, he calls it 'an original
determination or sense in our nature, not capable of being
referred to other powers of perception.'

[641] 'This moral sense from its very nature appears to be designed for
regulating and controlling all our powers.' _Hutcheson's Moral
Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 61.

[642] See, in his _Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 79, his complaint
against those who 'would reduce all our perceptive powers to a
very small number, by one artful reference or another.'

[643] ''Tis in vain here to alledge instruction, education, custom, or
association of ideas, as the original of moral approbation.'
_Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 57. Compare his work on
_Beauty and Virtue_, p. 84.

Hence, the judgments which men pass upon the conduct of others, or of themselves, are, in their origin, altogether inexplicable; each judgment being merely a different form of one great moral faculty. Inasmuch, however, as that faculty escapes observation, and is only known by its results, it is evident that, for all purposes of reasoning, the judgments must be deemed primary, and arguments are to be constructed from them, as if they were the ultimate and highest conditions of our nature. In this way, Hutcheson was led to that love of multiplying original principles, which Sir James Mackintosh has justly noticed as a characteristic of his philosophy, and, after him, of the Scotch philosophy in general;[644] though the distinguished author of this remark has failed to perceive that such characteristic was but a single part of a far larger scheme, and was intimately connected with those habits of deductive thought which a long train of preceding circumstances had indelibly imprinted on the Scotch mind.

[644] 'To him may also be ascribed that proneness to multiply ultimate
and original principles in human nature, which characterised the
Scottish School till the second extinction of a passion for
metaphysical speculation in Scotland.' _Mackintosh's Dissertation
on Ethical Philosophy_, edit. Whewell, Edinburgh, 1837, p. 208.