Illustrations on the Moral Sense (review)

96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of chemical fact. History, however, need not follow a logical sequence; and the Newtonian trend, which might seem remarkably progressive to twentieth-century eyes, did not solve the basic problems facing the eighteenth-century chemist. It is more than slightly ironic that chemistry gained much of its order from a return to the premechanical view of elements as the bearers of qualities in chemical reactions. Secondly, Thackray's discussion casts considerable light on the subtle and fascinating problem of the nature of scientific change. His close analysis of Newtonianism and chemistry provides much-needed historical fuel for the discussion of the role of the paradigm in the development of science, "paradigm" taken in both the sociological and conceptual senses. Finally, an historian of philosophy would find this book useful in illustrating the scientific context of many important problems that arose in eighteenth-century philosophy, particularly problems concerning the nature of matter, the breakdown of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and concern with such questions as whether matter can think. Atoms and Powers should prove to be an important and useful book for the historian of science and philosophy, the philosopher of science, and anyone seriously interested in the history of ideas. MARGARET J. OSLER Harvey Mudd College Illustrations on the Moral Sense. By Francis Hutcheson. Ed. Bernard Peach. (Cambridge : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Pp. x+252. $8.50) Amid the welter of reprints issued in the past few years, it is a pleasure to find a genuine edition such as this. Hutcheson's Illustrations on the Moral Sense appeared in four editions during his lifetime; the last of these, in 1742, was extensively revised, and formed the basis for the posthumous Foulis edition of 1769. The present text is a modernized version of the 1769 edition, with the 1742 edition used as a control, and variants from the three earlier editions added in footnotes. The correspondence between Hutcheson and Gilbert Burner, which led to the publication of the Illustrations, is thoughtfully printed as an Appendix, and there is also a monograph-length Introduction by Professor Peach, who focusses on Hutcheson's epistemology of morals and his theory of justification. All of this is presented in a very readable brown-on-white, with margins wide enough to actually encourage annotations, and a valuable Index. Furthermore, Peach's introduction offers several helpful insights into Hutcheson's theory: certainly correct, for example, is the view that Hutcheson gives the moral sense several functions or roles, rather than one, as has been generally thought; the discussion of Hutcheson's views of primary and secondary qualities and of "concomitance " is the first significant one on the topic I have seen; and the discussion of the moral sense in terms of our contemporary notion of defeasibility seems promising. But, while this is certainly an important book, it is not an entirely satisfactory one. Even the choice of text leaves much to be desired, for, in addition to numerous letters in periodicals, Hutcheson's earlier writings were An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas o~ Beauty and Virtue (1725) and An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections. With Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728). Each of these he considered to be made up of two treatises, making four in all, which he numbered consecutively -- not with the intention of isolating them from one another, but in order to stress their continuity. Furthermore, until recently the only readily available part BOOK REVIEWS 97 of Hutcheson's work has been most of Treatise II (from the Inquiry, entitled Concerning Moral Good and Evil) and some bits of Treatise IV, or the Illustrations, both of which are included in Selby-Bigge's British Moralists, and now in Raphael's similar anthology. (Peach says in his Preface that there has been no edition of the Illustrations since the eighteenth century; however, a reprint edition was issued in 1969.) Already, then, too many readers have relied for too long on an edited version of Hutcheson. The most influential study of him in recent years, for example, Wm. Frankena's "Hutcheson's Moral Sense Theory" (J. His...