[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.
[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.
[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.
[645] See his ingenious chapter, entitled ‘A deduction of the more special laws of nature and duties of life, previous to civil government, and other adventitious states.’ Moral Philosophy, vol. i. p. 227; and compare vol. ii. pp. 294–309, ‘How civil power is acquired.’
[646] See, for example, his remarks on ‘the right of possession.’ Moral Philosophy, vol. i. p. 344; on ‘rights by mortgage,’ p. 350; and on inheritance, p. 356.
[647] In his Moral Philosophy, vol. ii. pp. 346, 347, he sums up a long argument on ‘the nature of civil laws,’ by saying: ‘Thus the general duties of magistrates and subjects are discoverable from the nature of the trust committed to them, and the end of all civil power.’
[648] That is, so far as the facts are concerned. Geometry, considered in the most elevated manner, rests on ideas, and from that point of view is impregnable, unless the axioms can be overthrown. But if geometricians will insist on having definitions as well as axioms, they gain, no doubt, increased clearness, but they lose something in accuracy. I apprehend that, without definitions, geometry could not be a science of space, but would be a science of magnitudes, ideally conceived and consequently as pure as ratiocination could make it. This does not touch the question as to the empirical origin of the axioms.