Volume III in a Series on Ethics

Originally published in 1930. The rise, progress, and decline of a theory of moral philosophy which prevailed in this country for the greater part of the eighteenth century.

Founded by Shaftesbury, and built up by Hutcheson, it derived our moral perceptions from a special Moral Sense, interpreted on the analogy of the Five Bodily Senses.

The book attempts an account of those two leaders, and of their principal followers and critics. The followers include the doubtful supporter David Hume; the critics Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant.