Philosophy Essay on Beauty and Virtue by Francis Hutcheson, Singapore

An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue

Francis Hutcheson

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 inquiries have been very much employed 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 its 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 itself, as well as of the means necessary to obtain it, so that we may fi nd out which are the greatest and most lasting pleasures and, thus, not employ our reason, after all our laborious improvements of it, in trifl ing pursuits. Indeed, it is to be feared that without this inquiry most of our studies will be of very little use to us, for they seem to have scarcely any other tendency than to lead us into speculative knowledge itself. Nor are we distinctly told how it is that knowledge, or truth, is pleasant to us.

This consideration put the author of the following papers upon inquiring into the various pleasures which human nature is capable of receiving. We shall generally find in our modern philosophic writings nothing further on this head than some bare division of them into sensible, and rational, and some trite commonplace arguments to prove the latter more valuable than the former. Our sensible pleasures are slightly passed over and explained 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 refl ecting 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 conceived, till we know what those pleasures are which advantageous objects are apt to excite, and what senses or powers of perception we have with respect to such objects.

We may perhaps 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 necessarily displeases us. Nor by our will, do we procure pleasure or avoid pain except by procuring the former kinds 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 is scarcely any object which our minds are employed about which is not thus constituted the necessary occasion of some pleasure or pain. Thus we fi nd ourselves pleased 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 in our minds with all its circumstances, even though some of these ideas have nothing of what we call sensible perception in them. And in those which have, the pleasure arises from some uniformity, order, arrangement, or imitation, not from the simple ideas of color, sound, or mode of extension separately considered.

These determinations to be pleased with any forms, or ideas which occur to our observation, are what the author chooses 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 the determination to be pleased with the contemplation of those affections, actions, or characters of rational agents which we call virtuous is what he marks by the name of a moral sense.

His principal design is to show “That human nature was not left quite indifferent in the affair of virtue, to form to itself observations concern-ing the advantage, or disadvantage of actions, and accordingly to regulate its conduct.” The weakness of our reason, and the avocations arising from the infirmity and necessities of our nature, are so great that very few men could ever have formed those long deductions of reason which show some actions to be in the whole advantageous to the agent, and their contraries pernicious.

The author of nature has much better furnished us for a life of virtuous conduct than our moralists seem to imagine by almost as quick and powerful instructions as we have for the preservation of our bodies. He has made virtue a lovely form, to excite our pursuit of it, and has given us strong affections to be 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, so accustomed are they to deduce every approbation, or aversion, from rational views of 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. 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? I 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 is it changed from what was once the delight of the finest gentlemen among the ancients and their recreation after the hurry of public affairs!

In the first treatise, the author has perhaps in some instances gone too far in supposing a greater agreement of mankind in their sense of beauty than experience will confirm, but all he is solicitous about is to show “That there is some sense of beauty natural to men; 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 joined to their perceptions.” If the reader is convinced of such

determinations of the mind to be pleased with forms, proportions, resemblances, and theorems, it will be no difficult matter to apprehend another superior sense, natural also to men, determining them to be pleased with actions, characters, and 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, 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 reflect, or at least let us know that they refl ect, upon proportion and similitude, upon affections, characters, and tempers, or come to know the external actions which are evidences of them. Hence we imagine that their sense of beauty, and their moral sentiments of actions, must be entirely owing to instruction and education, whereas it is as easy to conceive how a character or a temper, as soon as it is observed, may be constituted by nature the necessary occasion of pleasure or an object of approbation, as a taste or a sound, though it be sometime before these objects present themselves to our observation.

Sect. I Concerning some Powers of Perception, Distinct from What Is Generally Understood by Sensation

To make the following observations understood, it may be necessary to introduce some defi nitions and observations, either universally acknowledged or sufficiently proved by many writers both ancient and modern, concerning our perceptions called sensations and the actions of the mind consequent upon them.

1. Those ideas which are raised in the mind upon the presence of external objects, and their acting upon our bodies, are called sensations. We fi nd that the mind in such cases is passive and has not power directly to prevent the perception or idea or to vary it at its reception, as long as we continue our bodies in a state fit to be acted upon by the external object.

2. When two perceptions are entirely different from each other, or agree in nothing but the general idea of sensation, we call the powers of receiving those different perceptions different senses. Thus seeing and hearing denote the different powers of receiving the ideas of colors and sounds. And, although colors have vast differences among themselves, as also have sounds, there is a great agreement among the most opposite colors than between any color and a sound; hence, we call all colors perceptions of the same sense. All the several senses seem to have their distinct organs, except feeling, which is in some degree diffused over the whole body.

3. The mind has a power of compounding ideas which were received separately, of comparing their objects by means of the ideas, and of observing their relations and each of the simple ideas which might perhaps have been impressed jointly in the sensation. This last operation we commonly call abstraction.

4. The ideas of substances are compounded of the various simple ideas jointly impressed when they presented themselves to our senses. We define substances only by enumerating these sensible ideas. And such definitions may raise an idea clear enough of the substance in the mind of one who never immediately perceived the substance, provided he has separately received by his senses all the simple ideas which are in the composition of the complex one of the substance defi ned. But if there be any simple ideas which he has not received, or if he lacks any of the senses necessary for the perception of them, no defi nition can raise any simple idea which has not been before perceived by the senses.

5. Hence it follows “That, when instruction, education, or prejudice of any kind raise any desire or aversion toward an object, this desire or aversion must be founded upon an opinion of some perfection or of some deficiency in those qualities for perception of which we have the proper senses.” Thus if beauty be desired by one who has not the sense of sight, the desire must be raised by some apprehended regularity of fi gure, sweetness of voice, smoothness, softness, or some other quality perceivable by the other senses without relation to the ideas of color.

6. Many of our sensitive perceptions are pleasant, and many are painful, immediately, without any knowledge of the cause of this pleasure or pain, or the means by which the objects excite it or are the occasions of it, or our seeing to what further advantage or detriment the use of such objects might tend. And the most accurateknowledge of these things would vary neither the pleasure nor pain of the perception, however it might give a rational pleasure distinct from the sensible or might raise a distinct joy, from a prospect of further advantage in the object, or avesion, from an apprehension of evil.

7. The simple ideas raised in different persons by the same object are probably in some way different, when they disagree in their approbation or dislike, and in the same person, when his fancy at one time differs from what it was at another. This will appear from reflecting on those objects to which we have now an aversion though they were formerly agreeable. And we shall generally find that there is some accidental conjunction of a disagreeable idea which always recurs with the object, as in those wines to which men acquire an aversion after they have taken them in an emetic preparation. In this case we are conscious that the idea is altered from what it was when that wine was agreeable by the conjunction of the ideas of loathing and sickness of stomach.  The like change of idea may be insensibly made by the change of our bodies as we advance in years, or when we are accustomed to any object which may occasion an indifference toward meats we were fond of in our childhood, and may make some objects cease to raise the disagreeable ideas which they excited upon our first use of them. Many of our simple perceptions are disagreeable only through the too great intenseness of the quality. Thus moderate light is agreeable, very strong light may be painful; moderate bitter may be pleasant, a higher degree may be offensive. A change in our organs will necessarily occasion a change in the intenseness of the perception at least and sometimes will even occasion a quite contrary perception. Thus a warm hand shall feel that water cold which a cold hand shall feel warm.

8. On this subject, we should consider how, in like cases, we form very different judgments concerning the internal and external senses. Nothing is more ordinary among those who, after Mr. Locke, have shaken off the groundless opinions about innate ideas then allege “That all our relish for beauty and order is either from prospect of advantage, custom, or education,” for no other reason but for the variety of fancies in the world. And from this they conclude “That our fancies do not arise from any natural power of perception or sense.” Yet all allow that our external senses are natural and that the pleasures or pains of their sensations, however they may be increased or diminished by custom or education and counterbalanced by interest, really precede custom, habit, education, or prospect of interest. Now it is certain “That there is at least as great a variety of fancies about their objects, as the objects of beauty.” But, in fact, it is much more diffi cult, and perhaps impossible, to bring the fancies or relishes of the external senses to any general foundation at all, or to find any rule for the agreeable or disagreeable, though we all allow “that these are natural powers of perception.”

9. The reason for this different judgment can be no other than our having distinct names for the external senses and none, or very few, for the internal and, by this are led, as in many other cases, to look upon the former as more fixed, real, and natural than the latter. The sense of harmony has got its name, a good ear, and we are generally brought to acknowledge that this is a natural power of perception or a sense in some way dis￾tinct from hearing. Now it is certain “That there is, as necessary, a perception of beauty upon the presence of regular objects, just as there is of harmony upon hearing certain sounds.”

10. But let it be observed here once and for all “That an internal sense no more presupposes an innate idea, or principle of knowledge, than the external.” Both are natural powers of percep￾tion or determinations of the mind to receive necessarily certain ideas from the presence of objects. The internal sense is a passive power of receiving ideas of beauty from all objects in which there is uniformity amidst variety. And there seems to be nothing more difficult in this matter 117 than that the mind should be always determined to receive the idea of sweet when particles of such a form enter the pores of the tongue, or to have the idea of sound upon any quick undulation of the air. The one seems to have as little connection with its idea as the other. And the same power could with equal ease constitute the former’s occasion of ideas as the latter.

11. The association of ideas hinted at above is one great cause of the apparent diversity of fancies in the sense of beauty as well as in the external senses, and it often makes men have an aversion to objects of beauty and a liking to others lacking it but under different conceptions than those of beauty or deformity. And here it may not be improper to give some instances of some of these associations. The beauty of trees, their cool shades, and their aptness to conceal from observation have made groves and woods the usual retreat to those who love solitude, especially to the religious, the pensive, the melancholy, and the amorous. And do not we find that we have so joined the ideas of these dispositions of mind with those external objects that they always recur to us along with them?

The cunning of the heathen priests might make such obscure places the scene of the fictitious appearances of their deities, and hence we ascribe ideas of something divine to them. We know the like effect in the ideas of our churches from the perpetual use of them only in religious exercises. The faint light in Gothic buildings has had the same association of a very foreign idea, which our poet shows in his epithet,

A dim religious light.

In like manner it is known that often all the circumstances of actions, or places, or dresses of persons, or voice or song, which have occurred at any time together when we were strongly affected by any passion will be so connected that any one of these will make all the rest recur. And this is often the occasion both of great pleasure and pain, delight and aversion to many objects, which of themselves might have been perfectly indifferent to us. But these approbations, or distastes, are remote from the ideas of beauty, being plainly different ideas.

12. There is also another charm to various persons in music, which is distinct from the harmony and is occasioned by its raising of agreeable passions. The human voice is obviously varied by all the stronger passions. And, when our ear discerns any resemblance between the air of a tune, whether sung or played upon an instrument, in its time, or modulation, or any other circumstance, and the sound of the human voice in any passion, we shall be touched by it in a very sensible manner and have melancholy, joy, gravity, or thoughtfulness excited in us by a sort of sympathy or contagion. The same connection is observable between the very air of a tune and the words expressing any passion which we have heard it fi tted to, so that they shall both recur to us together, though but one of them affects our senses. Now in such a diversity of pleasing or displeasing ideas which may he joined with forms of bodies, or tunes, when men are of such different dispositions and prone to such a variety of passions, it is no wonder “that they should often disagree in their fancies of objects, even though their sense of beauty and harmony were perfectly uniform,” because many other ideas may either please or displease, according to persons’ tempers and past circumstances. We know how agreeable a very wild country may be to any person who has spent the cheerful days of his youth in it, and how disagreeable very beautiful places may be if they were the scenes of his misery. And this may help us in many cases to account for the diversities of fancy without denying the uniformity of our internal sense of beauty.

13. Grandeur and novelty are two ideas that differ from beauty but that often recommend objects to us. The reason for this is foreign to the present subject.

Sect. VII Of the Power of Custom,  Education, and Example as to Our  Internal Senses

1. Custom, education, and example are so often alleged in this affair as the occasion of our relish for beautiful objects, and for our approbation of, or delight in, a certain conduct in life, in a moral sense, that it is necessary to examine these three particularly to make it appear “that there is a natural power of perception or sense of beauty in objects that precedes all custom, education, or example.”

2. Custom, as distinct from the other two, operates in this manner. As to actions, it only enables the mind or body more easily to perform those actions which have been frequently repeated. It neither leads us to apprehend them under any other view than those under which we were capable of apprehending them at first, nor does it give us any new power of perception about them. We are naturally capable of sentiments of fear and dread of any powerful presence, and so custom may connect the ideas of religious horror to certain buildings. But custom could never have made a being naturally incapable of fear receive such ideas. So, had we no other power of perceiving or forming ideas of actions but as they were advantageous or disadvantageous, custom could only have made us more ready at perceiving the advantage or disadvantage of actions. But this is not to our present purpose. As to our approbation of, or delight in, external objects, when the blood or spirits of which anatomists talk are roused, quickened, or fermented as they call it, in any agreeable manner by medicine or nutriment, or any glands frequently stimulated to secretion, it is certain that, to preserve the body’s ease, we shall delight in objects of taste which in and of themselves are not immediately pleasant to it if they promote that agreeable state to which the body had been accustomed.

Further, custom will so alter the state of the body that what at first raised uneasy sensations will cease to do so, or perhaps raise another agreeable idea of the same sense. But custom can never give us any idea of a sense different from those we had prior to it; it will never make those who have no sight approve objects as colored, or those who have no taste approve meats as delicious, however they might approve them as strengthening or exhilarating.

When our glands and the parts about them were void of feeling, did we perceive no pleasure from certain brisker motions in the blood? Custom could never make stimulating or intoxicating fluids or medicines agreeable when they were not so to the taste. So, by like reasoning, had we no natural sense of beauty from uniformity, custom could never have made us imagine any beauty in objects; that is, if we had had no ear, custom could never have given us the pleasures of harmony. When we have these natural senses antecedently, custom may make us capable of extending our views

further and of receiving more complex ideas of beauty in bodies, or harmony in sounds, by increasing our attention and quickness of perception. But however custom may increase our power of receiving or comparing complex ideas, it seems rather to weaken than to strengthen the ideas of beauty or the impressions of pleasure from regular objects; otherwise, how is it possible that any person could go into the open air on a sunny day, or clear evening, without the most extravagant raptures such as those Milton ascribes to our ancestor after his first creation? For such raptures any person should certainly fall into, when first viewing that kind of scene.

Custom in like manner may make it easier for any person to discern the use of a complex machine and approve it as advantageous, but he would never have imagined it beautiful had he no natural sense of beauty. Custom may make us quicker in apprehending the truth of complex theorems, but, although we all find the pleasure or beauty of theorems as strong at first as ever, custom makes us more capable of retaining and comparing complex ideas so as to discern more complicated uniformity which escapes the observation of novices in any art. However, all this presupposes a natural sense of beauty in uniformity, for, had there been nothing in forms which was constituted as the necessary occasion of pleasure to our senses, no repetition of indifferent ideas as to pleasure or pain, beauty or deformity, could ever have made them grow pleasing or displeasing.

3. The effect of education is this: that thereby we receive many speculative opinions, which are sometimes true and sometimes false, and are often led to believe that objects may be naturally apt to give pleasure or pain to our external senses, but which in reality have no such qualities. And further, by education, there are some strong associations of ideas without any reason, by mere accident sometimes, as well as by design, which it is very hard for us ever after to break asunder. Thus aversions are raised to darkness, and to many kinds of meat, and to certain innocent actions. Approbations without ground are raised in like manner. But in all these instances education never makes us apprehend any qualities in objects for which we do not naturally have senses capable of perceiving.

We know what sickness of the stomach is and may without ground believe 119 that very healthful meats will raise this, and, by our sight and smell, we receive disagreeable ideas of the food of swine, and their sties, and perhaps cannot prevent the recurrence of these ideas at table. But never were men naturally blindly prejudiced against objects, as of a disagreeable color, or in favor of others, as of a beautiful color; they perhaps hear men disparage one color and may imagine this color to be some quite different sensible quality of the other senses, but that is all. And, in the same way, a man naturally void of taste could by no education receive the ideas of taste or be prejudiced in favor of meats as delicious. So, had we no natural sense of beauty and harmony, we could never be prejudiced in favor of objects or sounds as being beautiful or harmonious. Education may make an unattentive Goth imagine that his countrymen have attained the perfection of architecture and an aversion to his enemies, the Romans, may have created some disagreeable ideas about Roman buildings, even causing them to be demolished, but he would never have formed these prejudices had he been void of a sense of beauty.

Did blind men debate ever whether purple or scarlet were the fi ner color? Or could any education prejudice them in favor of either as colors? Thus education and custom may infl uence our internal senses, where they already exist, by enlarging the capacity of our minds to retain and compare the parts of complex compositions, and then, if the finest objects are presented to us, we grow conscious of a pleasure far superior to what common performances excite.

But all this presupposes that our sense of beauty is natural. Instruction in anatomy and observation of nature and those airs of the countenance and attitudes of body which accompany any sentiment, action, or passion may enable us to know where there is a just imitation. But why should an exact imitation please upon observation, if we did not naturally have a sense of beauty in it, any more than observing the situation of fifty or a hundred pebbles thrown at random? And, should we observe them ever so often, we should never dream of their growing beautiful.