 Hutcheson also spends considerable time examining the positions of Clarke and Wollaston in detail. For Clarke, moral distinctions derive from the relations of fitness and unfitness, which are themselves eternal. For Hutcheson, any construal of such relations as morally significant must presuppose a moral sense. As Hutcheson notes, we do not morally praise the relations between, e.g., the natural numbers as in mathematics, or the fitness of certain chemical compositions. The fitness of a sword to end someone’s life is in and of itself morally neutral. And the fitness of an action to its end is also morally neutral—some actions are just as fit to human misery as other actions are fit to human happiness. Of course, one might hold that the fitness relation is simply to be applied (in a morally interesting sense) to the ultimate end of action. Happiness, in other words, is “fit”; misery “unfit”. But, according to Hutcheson, what does this mean? It cannot be “fit” to, say, give rise to some other thing—that’s what makes it an ultimate end. But any explication that would render some particular end as “fit” seems, according to Hutcheson to presuppose an independent evaluation beyond its “fitness”. (Though for a reading of Hutcheson that suggests significant continuity between Hutcheson and Clarke, see Sheridan 2007.)