Item 84 - Letter from Henry Hallam

3 pp

Wimpole Street - Thanks WW for the two pamphlets [James Mackintosh, Dissertation of the Progress of Ethical Philosophy with a preface by WW, 1836; Newton and Flamsteed: Remarks in an Article in Number 109 of the Quarterly Review, 1836]: 'You have conferred a great benefit on the public by rendering Mackintosh's dissertation so generally acceptable; it will really show that there is a want of interest in ethical philosophy, if it now fails of becoming a standard book. Your own preface, being a clear analysis of the leading parts of the dissertation, will undoubtedly contribute to the result'. HH notes that WW has 'modestly expressed yourself to developing Mackintosh's opinions, without introducing quite so much of your own as I should have desired. There are, in my opinion, some difficulties in the way of the theory which both he and you have maintained, not perhaps irreparable, but such as I have not yet seen removed. I mean particularly the old objections to the existence of a moral faculty, as a standard of right and wrong, drawn from the great diversity of emotions connected with actions which we find among mankind. That moral qualities are the object of emotions, may be easily conceded to Mackintosh and his school' - this seems very different to the line taken by Butler [Samuel Butler] and Hutcheson [Francis Hutcheson]. If we are to admit of a moral system as an authoritative auditor of right and wrong, 'it can only, I think, be done on the hypothesis of a distinct primary faculty; and I cannot understand how any process of association, which must be objective in its origin, and consequently dependent on carnal and exterior circumstances, can generate an uniform rule of judgment or sentiment among mankind'.