the delight of the finest gentlemen among the ancients, and their recreation after the hurry of publick affairs!"[1]
Hutcheson's chief lesson for his contemporaries is, therefore, the old Greek lesson of the inherent beauty of goodness, of the essential attractiveness of virtue, and he tells us that he "took the first hints" of his opinions from "some of the greatest writers of antiquity." Certain forms of conduct and character, like certain forms of sound and color, give pleasure to the spectator; and "that determination to be pleased with the contemplation of those affections, actions, or characters of rational agents, which we call virtuous, he marks by the name of a moral sense."[2] "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."[3] But, while virtue pleases, its pleasantness is rather the criterion than the essence of virtue. "In the pleasant passions, we do not love because it is pleasant to love; we do not chuse this state, because it is an advantageous or pleasant state: this passion necessarily arises from seeing its proper object, a morally good character."[4] The very distinction between 'natural' and 'moral' good is that the one is pursued from interest or self-love, the other from disinterested love of the action itself.
This moral sense does not necessarily imply such a desire of virtue as shall overcome all considerations of self-interest; we may know and approve the better, yet choose the worse. But no considerations of self-interest can blind our perception of the beauty of virtue: "our moral sense cannot be bribed."[5] And though we may be able to reason out the advantage of virtue, our knowledge of it is a perception rather than an inference. "Must a man have the reflection of Cumberland, or Puffendorf, to admire generosity, faith, humanity, gratitude?… Unhappy would it be for mankind, if a sense of virtue was of as narrow an extent, as a capacity for such metaphysicks."[6] He specially warns us, however, not to confuse the doctrine of the moral
