III. Specific Contributions

It was Hobbes (q.v.; and see Deism, I., § 2

1. Hobbes and Mandeville

Reformed independent ideal, the rigoristic spiritualism of their Christian social order, and tried to found morality on a purely sensualistic basis. His political ideal of the State was that of Machiavelli, and the weapons he employed against spiritualism were the sensualistic ideas of Pierre Gassendi (q.v.). But the whole structure of his thought is based on keen psychological analysis. He accomplished a complete and radical revolution in ethics, finding the source of the moral law in the secular sphere. The law of nature and divine law he interprets in an entirely novel way. The law of nature is differentiated from natural law, which by itself implies a primitive war of all against all. The law of nature is maintained because man's interests demand it. The absolute State which comes into existence through its operation has also the right to establish the true religion, for the divine law has also its sanctions from the existence of that absolute political system which man, coming out of his original confusion and discord, discovers as the sole condition of his social existence. Hobbes brings Christianity into full conformity with his absolute State. The State decides what form of Christianity shall be adopted by its subjects; even heathen states have the right of maintaining untrue religions for the sake of common welfare, and must not be resisted on this account. Hobbes' originality consists in his concentration on secular interests, his psychological analysis, and his introduction of historical illustrations into his system. Mandeville (1670-1733; see Deism, I., § 8) is important as attempting to show that moral conceptions are artificial creations intended to hold the mass of people in subjection, and from his arguments that the specific ideas of Christian ethics can not be accommodated to political, social, commercial needs.

In the Restoration there was a strong reaction against the sensualism and nominalism of Hobbes, showing itself in an attempt to establish the necessity and the apriority of moral ideas by metaphysics, and more particularly the metaphysics ¹ of Platonism. This was the work of the Cambridge school (see Cambridge, Platonists) which allied itself with Anglican rationalism and Arminianism and was antagonistic to Calvinistic positivism and rigorism. The law of nature is completed, according to this school, in the divine law. Stress is laid upon the necessary element of ethics and the impossibility of a purely psychological foundation. The head of the school was Cudworth (q.v.), who, like Kant and Plato, insisted upon the absolute character of morality. He asks whether the mind as the source of all necessary truth is the first factor and the experience of sense, the simple material of mind, is the second; or whether the reverse is true, so that the spiritual and the necessary must be derived from the accidental and occasional. He himself, of course, defends the necessriness of ethical ideas on the basis of the eternally necessary relations of minds to one another, which relation is based ultimately on God and is, in a fragmentary way, reflected from the conceptually necessary in God's mind to the mind of man. Henry More (q.v.) introduces the element of psychological analysis, applying it to the feelings and emotions, and combining morality with the happiness of the whole community and the individual member. It is in what he calls the "boniform faculty" that he finds the special sphere for the moral principles. The coincidence of happiness with moral conduct follows from the divine plan of the world. Richard Cumberland (1631-1718), whose special interest lay in contesting Hobbes' view of the original condition of man, shows the a priori character of the moral demands by proving that the faithful maintenance of Hobbes' contract between the individual and the State depends on a previously existing moral element. The operations and processes of sense only bring out

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some latent element, while the coincidence of happiness with morality is teleological. Good-will, love of one's neighbor, altruism, the whole field of Christian morality, work in and for the common weal.

3. Clarke, Hartley, and Price.

Related to the Cambridge school is Samuel Clarke (q.v.), who accepts an absolute standard for all positive laws. Moral distinctions are therefore not accidental; the standard which isrepresented in the typical ideas of the good, the righteous, the truthful, and so on, the moral judgment of the plain man, come from the necessary relations between the parts of the world, themselves all arising like mathematical relations from the idea of the whole, which, in turn, is dependent on the will of God. The above relations are assumed to be normal because the welfare and maintenance of the whole depends upon them. On this law of nature is based both positive human law and positive divine law, the latter bringing the completion of happiness through the idea of immortality. David Hartley (1705-57) derives from an original self love the moral judgment in its objective shape; obligations associated with commands apart from the individual have the immediateness of an in stinct. These different products of the psycholog ical process are parts of the accomplishment of the divine purpose in man, hence the moral law has a divine necessary character, representing a deter ministic pantheism. Richard Price (1.723-91) represents the defense of the intuitional character of the moral judgments of approval and disapproval. What originally is confused in instinct is clarified by thought. These judgments do not stand for considerations of interest, are quite distinct from any sensuous feeling of pleasure, and rest ultimately on the system of values established in the divine mind. This rationalizing Christian ethics aimed to establish the derivation of individual and social moral ideas from the presence of God in man's soul. It recognized no distinction between religious and secular aims, and had no intimate connection between the teaching of grace and original sin, but the coincidence in the next world of moral worth and happiness was brought out. The autonomy and divine nature of moral law was not brought into connection with the acts or facts of individual social life. These thinkers were not concerned with the erection of a Christian state nor the separation between a religious morality and the morality of man as citizen and subject of law.

4. John Locke.

Against such a priori idealistic theories, John Locke (see Deism, I., § 4) worked out his a posteriori sensualistic system, opposed by his philosophy all innate ideas, making the foundation as well for ethics as for knowledge the investigation of the simplest elements of experience, viz., the feeling of pleasure and pain and the power of reflection. There was no criterion, according to him, of intuitive knowledge; this was proved by the great variety of ethical ideas in the field of ethnography and history. On the simplest elements of consciousness he based his principles of conduct. It is this common and simple basis that gives the character of necessity to morality. The law of nature is only an abstraction from the acts of men directed toward happiness. But moral law depends on a positive legislative will, adding pleasure and pain to the fulfilment of these commands and requiting them by punishment and reward. In this way the divine law of Moses and of Christ is introduced into his system as holding the supreme place, and after that the law of civil society in the State and in justice, with its ordinances resting expressly or unconsciously on a social contract. A third type of law, lying outside of both of these two, is developed from the free intercourse and judgment of society, having its sanction in public opinion and its motive in social respect. These are the chief rules of human action, because the highest attainment of happiness comes through their pursuit they correspond with the law of nature, and harmonize with the revealed law of God; they represent the principles by which the law of the State secures social welfare; they stand for the principles by which public opinion reaches its clearest form. The State law aims at the union of the religious and political autonomy of the individual with the welfare of the whole, while the other two types of law require self-control and benevolence. In Locke's system the Christian character of morality is preserved, but it has a very loose relation to the fundamental basis of his thought. It comes into view chiefly in his discussion of tolerance, the freedom of the Church, and the political freedom of the individual. But Locke's ethics was the point of departure for two movements, one which further reduced the religious element of Deism (q.v.) contained in it, while on the other side he was appealed to by the anti-deists who established a system of utility and ethical law characterized by rational supernatural elements (William Warburton, 1698-1.779, and William Paley, 1743-1805, qq.v.). But after all, in deism the chief point was its criticism of positive religion, rather than its ethical teaching; nor can any real progress be shown by the opponents of deism, in their combination of a natural and rational with a supernatural eudemonism. The greatness of Locke's work consists in his denial of innate ideas and in his establishment of moral rules adequate to the manifold examples of historical morality. He widened the sphere of ethics also by making a place for political and social morality. The practical side of his teaching made him popular in England, although in appreciating the true character of ethical study, he was less profound than the Cambridge school.

5. Shaftesbury, Butreler, and Hutcheson.

The separation of this sensualistic empiristic eudemonism from Christian ethics was made more complete by Lord Shaftesbury (see Deism, I., § 8), who handled the subject as a kind of arithmetic of the feelings. His work shows the esthetic standpoint of ancient times and the Renaissance, especially as he produces many Stoic points of view. He opposes the rationalism of the Cambridge school, and rejects the place acoorded to reflection by Locke. Man approves the altruistic impulses and feelings that tend to social progress in the State and society, and disapproves whatever disturbs the harmony of so

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society or of his own nature. Ethics assumes the harmony, internal and external, between nature and man. But there is no connection in the system either ethically or metaphysically with positive religion. The power of reflection and the content of consciousness were clearly and powerfully analyzed by Bishop Joseph Butler (q.v.). The natural impulses, the feelings of self-love and benevolence, are distinguished by the different objects to which they are referred. Moral judgments arise only after reflection has established their relation to one another and their place in the economy and constitution of man. From these thoughts arises the authority of conscience, which acts as a governor over the interplay of the feelings. The central ides of tile conscience is love to one's neighbor, or the ideal of the harmony of society as a whole, in which the individual ego forms s part. The idea of God is included in the idea of morality, but the power of morality is strengthened by revelation and salvation as developed is Christianity. Locks practically kept the field in England, Shaftesbury influenced both German and Scottish thought. The purely human basis of his system was never recognized in England, or in any case it received narrow limitations and applications. At the head of the Scotch school stands Francis Hutcheson (1894-1746), with his development of the life of the soul from the principle of self-love. He distinguishes moral principles from sensual feeling. An instinctive tendency admires benevolence wherever it is seen, and man's conduct is controlled by this feeling of admiration. The approval of altruistic acts is seen by further reflection not to exclude a just type of self-love. This reflection is worked out in a casuietical and mathematical formulation of moral judgments in general, on which family life, private life, the society, and the State are ordered. By the same standard historical diversities in morality are socounted for. There is no difference in feeling itself, variations are produced solely by reflection on the feeling, or the conquest of the moral sense through egoistic passions.

6. Hume and Adam Smith.

It is this intuitive moral sense that David Hume opposes (q.v.; and see Deism, I., § 8). . As an empiricist he desires to introduce nothing except the sensations and the feeling of pleasure and pain for the establishment of moral principles. Imagination, sympathy, association, habit, and custom are the foundation of all ethical acts and judgments. Man can place himself in a sympathetic attitude toward the action of others even when that action does not personally concern him, and can arrive at an average conception of the kind of action that benefits the individual and society. This attains the character of an objective ideal which he uses as a standard for his own conduct. A common norm is thus attained for all types of conduct. By education, culture, tradition, and positive law, this ideal has an objective power, either as law or in the instinct of conscience; its origin is forgbtten. It will thus be seen that sympathy does not aim at the satisfaction of common self-love as such, but at attaining what is useful to men as a whole. So Hume ends with the humanity idea of Shaftesbury and his morality takes on a utilitarian character. Hume's system has nothing to do with positive religion or Christianity, for morality is destroyed by superstition; theism or antheism would form a better combination with it. Hume's theory of sympathy was further developed and applied by Adam Smith (1723-90), who made the foundation of society enlightened self-interest. Ethics constituted only one part of a whole; the significance and action of ethics on that whole had to be determined. Moral ideas can arise only through association with others. By reflecting on the judgments of others sympathetically, there arises the idea of an impartial observer sympathizing with us with whom we also can sympathize; this makes up the corporate common consciousness, giving a necessary character to morality. The rules for man's conduct are at the same time the rules for attaining happiness and the harmony of society. Accordingly ethics, while not created by considerations of happiness, yet has its power increased by being brought into living relation with the harmonious organization of the whole of nature. So the idea of sympathy was transferred to the sphere of social psychology, and its individual basis was virtually abandoned. This social philosophy is regarded as coinciding with Christian altruism.

q. Results.

So arose the conception of modern scientific ethics. Great continental teachers such as Kant and Schleiermaeher were making their several contributions, contemporaneous with the progress of English ethical thought. But the impulse of the whole current came from English sources. Through the effects on theology, a new religious philosophy, dependent on moral psychology, came into existence. Theological ethics was established as a new form of study, made independent of dogmatic theology with a far wider sphere of interest than the old; laying down the lines of Christian ethics by analytical processes without sacrificing supernatural im pulses, it tried to unite Christian determination of ethical value, originating in an other-worldliness, with a human "in-the-worldliness." See Ethics; Morality, Moral Law.

(E. Troeltsch.)

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