H/E was a member of the Scotch bar, and one of the many Edinburgh lawyers who devoted themselves to philosophy.
He was one of the first to write against the ethical principles of Hume, which he did in his " Delineations of the Nature and Obligations of Morality," published anonymously, 1752 or 1753.He sets out with the principle that private happiness must be the chief end and object of every man's pursuit; shows how the good of others affords the highest happiness; and then to sanction natural conscience be calls in the authority of God, who must approve of what promotes the greatest happiness.This theory does not give morality a sufficiently deep foundation in the constitution of man or the character of God, and could not have stood against the assaults of Hume.In 1754, he was appointed professor of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, the chair which David Hume had wished to fill some years before, -- and continued to hold it till 1764, when be became professor of the law of nature and nations, and held the office till about 1779.In 1768, he published a second work, written against Hume and Lord Kames and in defence of active power and liberty.Like all enlightened opponents of the new scepticism, he felt it necessary to oppose the favorite theory of Locke, that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection." It may indeed be allowed that the first notions of things are given to the mind by means of some sensation or other; but then it may also be true that after such notions are given the mind, by the exertion of some inherent power, may be able to discover some remarkable qualities of such things, and even things of a very different nature, which are not to be discovered merely by any sense whatever." He published " Philosophical Dissertations," in 1782.
He was born in 1705, and died 1795.His father was a merchant in Edinburgh, and his mother a daughter of Hamilton of Airdrie, from which family Sir William Hamilton was descended.He seems to have received his education first in Edinburgh College, and then, like so many scholars of the preceding ages, at Leyden.{191}