The Scottish Philosophy [50]
the Spirit.' Where an old. preacher would have said a great decree of sanctification, a man of moderation and politeness will say a high pitch of virtue." In the advice to a good preacher the following counsels are given: "(1) His subjects must be confined to the social duties. (2) He must recommend them only from rational considerations; viz., the beauty and comely proportions of virtue, and its advantages in the present life, without any regard to a future state of more extended self-interest. (3) His authorities must be drawn from heathen writers; none, or as few as possible, from Scripture. (4) He must be very unacceptable to the common people." " The scattering a few phrases in their sermons, as harmony, order, proportion, taste, sense of beauty, balance of the affections, will easily persuade the people that they are learned; and this persuasion is to all intents and purposes the same thing as if it were true. It is one of those deceitful feelings which Mr. Hg in his essays has shown to be beautiful and useful." In illustrating the third counsel he says: " It is well known there are multitudes in our island who reckon Socrates and Plato to have been much greater men than any of the apostles, although (as the moderate preacher I mentioned lately told his hearers) the apostle Paul had a university education and was instructed in logic by Gamaliel. Therefore let religion be constantly and uniformly called virtue, and let the heathen philosophers be set up as great patterns and promoters of it. Upon this head most particularly recommend M. Antoninus by name, because an eminent person of the moderate character says his `Meditations' are the best book that ever was written for forming the heart." The effect of this accommodation of religion to the {84} world is graphically and truly described: "The necessity of such a conduct cannot be denied when it is considered what effect the length and frequency of public devotion have had in driving most of the fashionable gentry from our churches altogether." "Now the only way to regain them to the church is to accommodate the worship as much as may be to their taste." "I confess there has sometimes been an ugly objection thrown up against this part of my argument; viz., that this desertion of public worship by those in high life seems, in fact, to be contemporary with, and to increase in a pretty exact proportion to, the attempts that have been made and are made to suit it to their taste."
Hutcheson's works got fit audience in his own day, but did not continue to be much read 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 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 immeasurably 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. He represents it as natural to man, and in his very constitution and nature. There may even be a propriety in calling it a with the qualifying phrase , inasmuch as, like the senses, it is a source of knowledge, revealing to us certain qualities of voluntary acts or agents, and inasmuch as it has always feeling or sensibility attached to its exercises.
But,
Hutcheson's works got fit audience in his own day, but did not continue to be much read 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 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 immeasurably 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. He represents it as natural to man, and in his very constitution and nature. There may even be a propriety in calling it a
But,