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

Hutcheson's first book, in two treatises, presented on its title page as a defence of the Earl of Shaftesbury's principles against the author of The Fable of the Bees. The first treatise argues that we perceive beauty through an internal sense, which responds to uniformity amidst variety in nature, mathematics and art; the pleasure comes immediately, before any thought of advantage. The second treatise applies the same model to ethics. We have a moral sense that approves of benevolence wherever we meet it, in strangers, in enemies and in characters from history, so moral approval cannot be disguised self-interest, as Hobbes and Mandeville had claimed. The motive of virtuous action is kind affection, not hope of reward. Hutcheson even proposes ways of comparing actions by quasi-mathematical rules, and states that the best action is the one that procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, an early form of the phrase later tied to utilitarianism. He revised the book several times up to 1738.

It launched moral sense theory, influenced Hume and Smith, and its argument that beauty and virtue are felt rather than calculated is still central to aesthetics and ethics.