 Hutcheson reacted against both the psychological egoism of Thomas Hobbes and the rationalism of Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston. As regards Hobbes, Hutcheson thought his doctrine was both wrong and dangerous; wrong because by the frame of our nature we have compassionate, generous and benevolent affections which owe nothing at all to calculations of self-interest, and dangerous because people may be discouraged from the morally worthy exercise of cultivating generous affections in themselves on the grounds that the exercise of such affections is really an exercise in dissimulation or pretence. As against Hobbes Hutcheson held that a morally good act is one motivated by benevolence, a desire for the happiness of others. Indeed the wider the scope of the act the better, morally speaking, the act is; Hutcheson was the first to speak of “the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers”.