 To begin, Hutcheson believed that the most important contribution of the Inquiry was a rejection of the “self-interest” theories of Hobbes and Mandeville (see Gill 2006: ch. 11). Famously, Hobbes and Mandeville placed the foundation of morality on the individual self-interest of every moral agent. Now, Hutcheson thinks that a crass reduction of morality to self-interest is thoroughly untenable—else we would assign moral properties to “a fruitful Field, or commodious Habitation” (Inquiry, 89).