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 LECTURES 
 
 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
PBINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UUrraKaTY PEEBS. 
 
LECTURES 
 
 HISTORY OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A NEW EDITION 
 WITH ADDITIONAL LECTUEES. 
 
 By WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D. 
 
 MASTER OF TKINITY COLLEOE, CAMBEIDGE. 
 
 AafLwdSui ^qvrcs 3ta5iiirov<ra> aXXijXois. 
 
 CAMBEIDGE: 
 
 DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. 
 LONDON: BELL AND DALDT. 
 
 1862. 
 
UNIVERSITYi 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 A 
 
VI PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 give an accottnt in a compendious form of some of his 
 speculations in Jurisprudence; inasmuch as on this 
 subject his writings are voluminous, and their leading 
 features may not be readily seized by the general 
 reader. 
 
 I have pointed out freely both Mr Bentham's 
 merits and his defects in this department : for in- 
 stance, in the Classification of Offenses I have pointed 
 out that his method produces cross divisions of the 
 subject, ciunbrous and shapeless appendages to the re- 
 gular members of his classification, and the absence 
 of obvious places for some of the most common 
 offenses, as Fraud, Breach of Contract, Debt. I do 
 not know that any of Bentham's admirers have at- 
 tempted to show that his system does not labour 
 under these defects : indeed he himself allows it. I 
 have attempted also to show how these defects may be 
 avoided. 
 
 The Dissertations of Dugald Stewart and of Mack- 
 intosh on the history of Moral Philosophy go over 
 much of the same ground as my Lectures : but stUl 
 I hope that the reflexions which the perusal of our 
 English moralists has suggested to me, may have some 
 interest for those who trace the progress of moral 
 opinions and principles among men. 
 
 Of the kind of interest which such a view of the 
 subject may excite, a curious example has recently 
 appeared in a volume which has drawn much notice 
 entitled Essays and Reviews. Mr Pattison the 
 author of one of those ' Essays,' entitled ' Tendencies 
 of Religious Thought in England, 1688 — 1750,' has 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Vll 
 
 to speak of several of the same -writers of wtom I 
 have spoken in the following Lectures. The con- 
 nexion of 'Keligious Thought' -with moral specula- 
 tion naturally brings him into the same field on which 
 I have ofiered my remarks. And Mr Pattison agrees 
 with what I have said in the beginning of Lecture VI. 
 as to the profligate and sensual tone of speaking and 
 writing which prevailed at the beginning of the last 
 century, and which I have exemplified especially in 
 Mandeville. He goes on to say (p. 323): "Though 
 there is entire unanimity as to the fact of the pre- 
 vailing corruption, there is the greatest diversity of 
 opinion as to its cause." He then proceeds to enu- 
 merate various causes of this state of things, assigned 
 by various parties; and this he does in a manner 
 which makes his list amusing, but, I think, somewhat 
 sarcastic towards the persons enumerated in it. The 
 Nonjurors and High Churchmen, he says, attribute 
 it to the Toleration Act and the Latitudinarianism 
 allowed in high places : for instance, to the favour 
 shown to Bishop Hoadley's celebrated Sermon. The 
 Latitudinarian Clergy divide the blame between the 
 Freethinkers and the Nonjurors. The Freethinkers 
 point to the hypocrisy of the Clergy, who, they say, 
 lost all credit with the people by having preached pas- 
 sive obedience up to 1688, and then suddenly finding 
 out that it was not a scriptural truth. The Noncon- 
 formists lay it to the enforcement of conformity and 
 the unscriptural terms of communion; whUe the 
 Catholics rejoice to see in it the 'Protestant Reforma- 
 tion at last bearing its natural fruit. And Warbur- 
 
Vm PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 ton attributes it to the bestowal of 'preferment' by 
 the Walpole Administration. 
 
 I certainly should not have expected that I should 
 figure in such a list as this: nor does it seem very 
 reasonable that a speculator on the Tendencies of 
 Eeli^ous Thought, at the period here spoken of, 
 should group a speculation on the Tendencies of Moral 
 Thought, written one hundred and fifty years later, 
 with such writers as are here quoted : these being 
 obviously put forward as persons blinded by passion 
 and party prejudice. Indeed Mr Pattison seems to 
 feel that it is only by force of very comprehensive 
 grouping that he can include such a writer in his 
 picture; and with generous condescension, as he seems 
 to mean it, he gives me the benefit of his most com- 
 prehensive mood. 
 
 "Lastly," he says, "that every one mo/y have his 
 say, a professor of moral philosophy in our day is 
 found attributing the same facts to the prevalence of 
 that low view of morality which rests its rules upon 
 consequences merely." And he then quotes the picture 
 which I have given of this inroad of corrupt doctrines. 
 Having thus made an opening for me in his view of 
 'Tendencies,' he proceeds to discuss the question 
 whether the low moral principles then prevalent were 
 the cause of the immoral habits which also prevailed. 
 He thinks not. He says, "The actual sequence of 
 cause and effect seems, if it be not presumptuous to 
 say so, to be as nearly as possible inverted in this 
 eloquent statement." I do not wish to revive here 
 the discussion of this point. When licentiousness of 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, IX 
 
 talk and manners prevail at the same time as low 
 moral doctrines, it must needs be very difficult to say- 
 in what degree each is cause and is effect. But there 
 is one argument used by Mr Pattison which I may 
 notice, in order to explain further the view which 
 I intended to take. " If," he says, " as Dr Whewell 
 assumes, and the whole doctrinaire school with him, 
 the speculative belief of an age determines its moral 
 character, that should be the purest epoch when the 
 morality of consequences is placed in the strongest 
 light — when it is most convincingly set before men 
 that their present and future welfare depends on how 
 they act : that ' all that we enjoy and great part of 
 what we suffer is placed in our own hands.' " 
 
 If Mr Pattison had done me the honour to attend 
 to the Lectures which he has quoted, he would hardly 
 have expected that this argument would appear to me 
 of any force. Throughout those Lectures I have put 
 in opposition to each other the morality of principles 
 and the morality of consequences. The latter I have 
 everywhere spoken of as a low and imperfect scheme 
 of morality: and because it is low and imperfect in 
 theory, it appears to me likely to be conjoined with a 
 low and lax morality in practice. It cannot make 
 men 'pure.' I do not at all know who the doctrinaire 
 school are, who, Mr Pattison says, agree with me in 
 holding this ; but I think we have with us the com- 
 mon voice of mankind. It seems to be a general 
 opinion that Epicurean principles of morality are 
 likely to be accompanied by licentious talk and licen- 
 tious action. The morality which reasons from the 
 
X PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 consequences of action does not break this connexion. 
 However ' convincingly ' it proves to men that licen- 
 tious conduct is a mistake, they are not convinced for 
 purposes of practice. The voluptuary says, ' Accord- 
 ing to your own account I am right in seeking plea- 
 sure; and I shall seek it in my own way, not in 
 yours.' And so it is nothing wonderful to us — ^to me 
 and the doctrinaires who think with the common 
 people, — that the doctrine of moral consequences, ap- 
 plied, as Mr Pattison says it was, ' as the most likely 
 remedy of the prevailing Kcentiousness,' did not suc- 
 ceed. 
 
 I do not well understand whether Mr Pattison 
 thinks that opinions have any influence on practice. 
 In his view of the Tendencies of Religious Thought, 
 he seems to connect the licentiousness of which we 
 have been speaking with the Religious thought of the 
 time. Does he hold that religious views affect prac- 
 tice, though moral views do not ? It may be so ; but 
 one might have wished to see some further illustration 
 of so curious an aphorism. 
 
 Mr Pattison also thinks that I am in error in 
 saying that Butler shuns the use of technical terms, 
 and is thus driven to indirect modes of expression, 
 (p. 295.) The matter is not of much consequence, but 
 what I said was not lightly said, and I stiU believe 
 that a careful examination of Butler's writings will 
 prove its truth. 
 
 The fourteen Additional Lectures now first pub- 
 lished were written, like the former Lectures, for 
 delivery by me as Professor, and were most of them so 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XI 
 
 delivered. Some of them refer to ethical -writers and 
 ethical doctrines which have not commonly been in- 
 cluded in the history of moral philosophy : but they 
 will I think interest those who wish to view the whole 
 progress of human speculations on such subjects. 
 
 Trinity Lodge, 
 April II, 1862. 
 
LECTUEES ON THE HISTOEY OF MOEAL 
 PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND. 
 
 INTEODTJCTOEY LECTURE. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 The Poini or View , i 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 Febeins. Ames. Hall. Sakdebsok. Taylob. Db 
 
 KHIGHTBBIOGB , l8 
 
 LECTURE 11. 
 EoBEEs I • : 40 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 Henet Mobb. Whiohootb. Wobihington. Wilkins 60 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 CnMBEBLAinj. CnDWQBIH 75 
 
 Lecture v. 
 
 Loose. Glabee 91 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 MANDEVILLB. ■WAEBDRTOir . . , . . 100 
 
 LECTURE VIL 
 
 PUMBBBLANB. SHAFIBSBrBT. HUTOHEBOIT. BaLGTJT. 
 
 Sooth ' . io7 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Bdtlbe. Shambsbdrt. Waebubton. Beekbley. 
 
 TiNDAL. BaL&UT 126 
 
 LEGTUBE IX. 
 Waebubton. Law. Jacksoit. Uutheefokth. Wa- 
 
 TEELAMD ^4'^ 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 Gat. Tuokbb. Palet '54 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 Palet. Gisbobnb 178 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 61BBOENE. Peabson. Pbicb. Robbet HaiiL . . 190 
 
 LECTURE XIII. 
 Bentham. His Biography. TTia Style of Discussion . 203 
 
 LECTURE XIV. • 
 Bektham. His Principles of Morals and Le^lation . 216 
 
 LECTURE XV. 
 Bbkthau. Objections to his System . . . . 228 
 
 LECTURE- XVI. 
 Bbnihau. Classification of Offenses .... 243 
 
 LECTURE XVIL 
 Bbnihau. Classification of Offenses continued . . 255 
 
 , LECTURE XVm. 
 Bentham. Defect of his System 268 
 
 Appendix. Recent Arrangements for the Horal Studies 
 
 at Cambridge 277 
 
ADDITIONAL LECTUEES ON THE HISTOEY 
 OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAQB 
 PlATO I 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Abistotlb's Pstohologt and Lisi or Vietues , 6 
 
 LECTUEE IIL 
 Objections to Abistotlb's List op Vibtueb . . i8 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 Abistotle on Justice and Equity . . . . 24 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Abistotle and Plato — On the Rule op Lipe . 30 
 
 LECTUEE VI. 
 Abistotle on Rights — Plato's Politt ... 40 
 
 LECTURE VIL 
 Stoics and Epiocebaits— Cicbbo .... 50 
 
 LECTUEE VIIL 
 Jus 63 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Roman Law 7° 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 Cheistian Mobalitt. — St Augustine on Lying . '78 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 Scholastic Mobalitt. — Pbtek Lombakd ... 94 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 The Schoolmen. — Thomas Aquinas .... 98 
 
 LECTURE Xin. 
 Recapitulation. — Db S. Clabkb 
 
 loS 
 
 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 Reason and Undebstandinq. — S. T. Colekidge . 119 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 INTEODUCTOEY LECTIJEE. 
 The Point of View. 
 
 THE folio-wing Lectures contain criticisms on the 
 views and doctrines of a series of ethical writers; 
 they attempt to point out how far each was right, and 
 in what way he contributed to the progress of moral 
 speculation in this country. It is plain that such 
 judgments must be affected by the views and doctrines 
 of the critic himself. Nor is this a disadvantage in 
 such criticism, if the critic's point of view be defi- 
 nite and evident. In my "Elements of Morality" 
 I have given that view of the grounds and relations of 
 moral truths to "which the best parts of all previous 
 moral speculations appear to me to converge; but it 
 may still be of use to explain here, more briefly and 
 poiatedly, the System of Morality there presented. 
 
 Schemes of Morality, that is, modes of deducing 
 the Eules of Human Action, are of two kinds : — 
 those which assert it to be the law of human action 
 to aim at some external object, (external, that is, to 
 the mind which aims,) as for example, those which in 
 ancient or modern times have asserted Pleasure, or 
 Utility, or the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest 
 Number, to be the true end of human action ; and 
 those which would regulate human action by an in- 
 
 1 
 
2 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 temal principle or relation, as Conscience, or a Moral 
 Faculty, or Duty, or Rectitude, or the Superiority of 
 Eeason to Desire. These two kinds of schemes may 
 be described respectively as Dependent and Indepen- 
 dent Morality. 'Sow it is here held that Independent 
 Morality is the true scheme. "We maintain, with 
 Plato, that Reason has a natural and rightful autho- 
 rity over Desire and Affection; with Butler, that 
 there is a difference of kind in our principles of 
 action; with the general voice of mankind, that we 
 must do what is right at whatever cost of pain and 
 loss. "We deny the doctrine of the ancient Epicureans, 
 that pleasure is the supreme good; of Hobbes, that 
 moral rules are only the work of men's mutual fear; 
 of Paley, that what is expedient is right, and that 
 there is no difference among pleasures except their 
 intensity and duration; and of Bentham, that the 
 rules of human actions are to be obtained by casting 
 up the pleasures which actions produce. But though, 
 we thus take our stand upon the ground of Independ- 
 ent Morality, as held by previous writers, we hope 
 that we are (by their aid mainly) able to present it in 
 a more systematic and connected form than has yet 
 been done. 
 
 Let us begin with the doctrine of Plato just refer- 
 red to ; that Reason has a natural and rightful autho- 
 rity over Desire and Affection, which doctrine Butler 
 has further illustrated. In making this principle the 
 groundwork of morality, we seem to be guilty of an 
 oversight; for the word rightful already involves a 
 moral notion: thai is rightful authority, and th^t 
 only, which it is immoral to disobey. lu order to 
 make our scheme complete, we must define rightful, 
 and prove that the authority of Reason over Desire is 
 rightful. 
 
 The Definition of rigliifid, or of the adjective right, 
 is, I conceive, contained in the maxim which I have 
 already quoted as proceeding from the general voice 
 of mankind: namely this, that we must do what is 
 right at whatever cost. That an action is right, is a 
 reason for doing it, which is paramount to all other 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE, 3 
 
 reasons, and overweighs them all when they are on 
 the contrary side. It is painful : but it is right ; 
 therefore we must do it. It is a loss : but it is right; 
 therefore we must do it. It is unkind : but it is 
 right; therefore we must do it. These are self-evi- 
 dent propositions. That a thing is right, is a supreme 
 reason for doing it. Right implies this supreme, 
 unconquerable reason; and does this especially, and 
 exclusively. No other word does imply such an 
 irresistible cogency in its effect, except in so far as 
 it involves the same notion. What we ought to do, 
 what we should do, that we must do, though it bring 
 paiu and loss; but why? Because it is right. The 
 expressions all run together in their meaning. 
 
 And this supreme rule, that we must do what is 
 right, is also the moral rule of human action. Hav- 
 ing got this notion of what is right ; what we ought 
 to do ; what we should do ; we are already in the 
 region of morality. What is right ; what it is that 
 we ought to do ; we must have some means of deter- 
 mining, in order to complete our moral scheme ; but 
 whatever we so determine, we are involved in a moral 
 system, as soon as we begin to use such words as right 
 aad ought. 
 
 Thus then we see that the supreme reason of 
 human actions and the moral nature of them cannot 
 be separated. The two come into our thoughts toge- 
 ther, and are in otir conceptions identical. And 
 this identity is the foundation, in a peculiar and cha- 
 racteristic manner, of the System of Morality to which 
 we have been led. 
 
 In thus speaking of the reasons of human actions, 
 it is plain that I am using the term reason, not for 
 the Faculty by which we judge, but for the grounds 
 of our judgment ; not for the Power of mental seeing, 
 but for something which we see. Reasons and the 
 Reason thus differ nearly as thoughts and Thought. 
 The Reason sees the reasons for human actions: and 
 among these, it sees the supreme reason, which is, 
 that they are right : and because the Reason is the 
 Faculty which sees this, while Desire and Affection 
 
 1—2 
 
4 HISTOET OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tend blindly to their objects, not seeing reasons, but 
 feeling impnlses, or at least, seeing reasons only as 
 subordinate things j — therefore it is that we say that 
 the Reason has a natural and rightful authority over 
 Desire and Affection. It is right that Reason should 
 control and direct Desire and Affection, because Rea- 
 son alone can see what is right; alone can understand 
 that there is such a character as rightness. 
 
 But though the general statement of the ground 
 of Morality may thus be found at a very early 
 period of ethical speculation, several additional steps 
 are requisite in order to deduce from this principle a 
 systematic scheme ; and some of these steps, it seems 
 to me, have not been previously made in a satisfactory 
 manner. The Reason, we have said, must control and 
 direct the Desires and Affections; — must so control 
 and direct them, that they may act rightly. But 
 how are we to carry this Rule into detail 1 What are 
 the conditions of acting rightly, in the case of the 
 Desires and Affections 1 How is the Supreme Rule 
 of Human Action, Rightness, brought into contact 
 with these Impulses, these Springs of Human Action, 
 as we may call them ? 
 
 In order to answer this question, we classify the 
 Springs of Human Action, as they commonly exist 
 among men, namely, the Desires and Affections ; and 
 we look for conditions of Rightness, corresponding to 
 this classification of the Desires and Affections. We 
 shall JGLnd such. 
 
 The task of classifying the Springs of Human 
 Action, the Desires, Affections, and the like, has been 
 attempted by various moralists in modem times, es- 
 pecially by Reid and Dugald Stewart. Their classi- 
 fications supply useful suggestions, but appear to me 
 to be both defective and redundant. I have had 
 therefore in a great degree to make my own classifica- 
 tion. It may be said, I think, that the leading 
 Desires of man, . in their largest form, in which they 
 are expressed by means of general terms, and in which 
 they include the Affections, are. The Desire of Per- 
 sonal Safety, the Desire of Having, the Desire of 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 5 
 
 Family Society, (whicli includes tlie Family Affec- 
 tions,) and the Desi/re of Civil Society, (-wHch. includes 
 tlie more general Social Affections) . There are other 
 Desires which are not of this primary character, as 
 the Desire of Knowledge, and the like. These primary 
 Desires in their various operation regulate the whole 
 scheme of human life. Men's personal safety, their 
 possessions, their families, and the concerns of the 
 community in which they live, are, in their eyes, 
 the greatest objects which exist. No actions can be 
 conformable to Rule, if the actions which refer to 
 these objects are not conformable to Rule. If these 
 objects are not ordered, secured, respected, reverenced, 
 there can be no order, no security, no respect, no 
 reverence anywhere. However other Desires and 
 Affections be controlled and directed, if these be not, 
 there can be no real control and direction. If these 
 great primary forces are not in equilibrium, or at least 
 in moderated movement, there can be no valid effect 
 produced by adjusting the smaller and slighter im- 
 pulses which operate upon man. 
 
 But the Desires which regard these great primary 
 objects, Personal Safety, Possessions, Family, Civil 
 Society, — how are they to be regulated so that they 
 may conform to the condition which we have assigned; 
 to the Supreme Rule of Human Action; in short, 
 that they may be right ? That is the question which 
 we have now to answer. 
 
 We do not at present want a complete answer, but 
 a starting point from which we may proceed towards 
 a complete answer. How the Desires and Affections 
 are to be regulated, so that they may be right in the 
 highest sense, is an inquiry which requires a long 
 train of careful thought: but is there no condition 
 which is obviously reqtiisite, as a general rule, in 
 order that those Desires and Affections may be right ? 
 
 There plainly is such a condition generally esta- 
 blished among men. In order that the Desires and 
 Affections with regard to the Personal Safety, Posses- 
 sions, Family, CivU Condition of other men may be 
 right, they must conform to this primary and univer- 
 
6 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sal Condition, that they do not violate the Rights of 
 others. This condition may not be sufficient, but it is 
 necessary. Thou shalt do no violence ; thou shalt not 
 steal ; thou shalt not commit adultery ; thou shalt not 
 oppress ; — these are rules which all men acknowledge 
 as the very foundations of Morality. However far 
 we may go, we must begin here. 
 
 And here we find, as we said we should find, con- 
 ditions of rightness corresponding to the primary 
 springs of human action : for we find a classification 
 of Rights corresponding to the classification of primary 
 Desires, to which we were led. As the primary De- 
 sires of men are the Desire of Personal Safety, of 
 Possessions, of Family, and of Civil Society ; so the 
 primary kinds of Rights among men are everywhere 
 the Eights of the Person, the Rights of Property, the 
 Rights of the Family, and Political Rights, which 
 depend upon the constitution of the community to 
 which they belong, and the place of each man in it. 
 
 But these large classes of Rights thus correspond- 
 ing to the leading Desires and Affections of men, do 
 not quite exhaust the kinds of Rights commonly 
 recognized among men. We cannot make a good and 
 complete arrangement of Rights, withotit putting, as 
 one large class. Rights of Contract; — Rights arising 
 from agreement among men : for though these may 
 often be about Property, and may thus seem to enter 
 into the class of Rights of Property, they may also be 
 about other things as well, and do really depend upon 
 a different principle. 
 
 As the other classes of Rights correspond, each to 
 each, to leading Desires of men, we may ask to what 
 Desire do the Rights of Contract correspond; and to 
 this the answer must be, that such Rights do not 
 depend exactly upon a Desire, but upon what may be 
 called more fitly a Need; one of the most universal 
 and dominant Needs of man in his social condition ; 
 the Need of a mutual understanding among men, so 
 that one man may regulate his intentions and actions 
 by those of another : a Need of which the satis- 
 faction is possible through the existence of Language. 
 
INTR0DTTCT0R7 LECTURE. 7 
 
 So tten we have five acting principles, — Springs 
 of Action, and Sources of Rights among men ; — ^the 
 Desire and Love of Personal Safety ; of Property ; of 
 Family ; and of Civil Society ) and along -with these. 
 Language, or the Desire of a mutual understanding 
 which Language enables them to gratify. And we 
 have in like manner, five classes of Eights ; — those of 
 Person, Property, Family, State, and Contract. 
 
 This symmetrical division of the Springs of Human 
 Action and Rights existing in Human Society is the 
 starting point- of our system of Morality ; being, as 
 we have said, the point where the Springs of Human 
 Action come in contact with the supreme Rule of 
 Rightness on which Morality depends. For though 
 the adjective right in a moral sense, and the substan- 
 tive Right in a legal sense, are words of very different 
 extent, the one is necessarily comprehended within the 
 sphere of the other; Nothing can be a man's Right 
 but that which it is right he should have, though he 
 may not have a Right to eveiything which it would 
 te right for others to give him. And thus when we 
 have once arrived at the existence of Rights, we have 
 reached a point from which we may go on to Right- 
 ness of a higher kind, and may thus construct the 
 whole edifice of a system of Morality. 
 
 In what manner, it may be asked, do we rise 
 from mere legal Rights to moral Rightness ? I reply, 
 that we do so in virtue of this principle : — that the 
 Supreme Rule of man's actions must be a rule which 
 has authority over the whole of man ; over his inten- 
 tions as well as his actions ; over his Affections, his 
 Desires, his Habits, his Thoughts, his Wishes. The 
 man's being cannot be right, except all these be right. 
 If he abstain from outward violations of the Rights of 
 others, he may satisfy Law, but he does not satisfy 
 Morality. It is not enough that he do not steal ; it 
 is also necessary that he do not covet ; and not only 
 so, but that he do not nourish a love of wealth which 
 leads to covetousness ; — ^that his affections be fixed, his 
 thoughts employed on other things, not on mere 
 worldly goods. And thus we rise from legale Obliga;- 
 
8 HISTORY OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 tion to moral Duty; from Legality to Virtue ; from 
 blamelessness ia the forum of man, to innocence in 
 the court of conscience. Every Eight points to an 
 ascending series of Virtues ; and again, all the differ- 
 ent Virtues run and melt into each other and con- 
 verge to one supreme and central Idea of Goodness, 
 the union and the origin of them all. 
 
 To this scheme of Morality various objections may 
 be made, some of which I will here state, and reply to 
 as briefly and as distinctly as I can. 
 
 (I.) It may be said that in the system which has 
 thus been described. Morality is founded upon Law, 
 that is, upon the Laws which actually exist among 
 men; and that such a Morality must necessarily be 
 narrow, low, and formal ; being bounded by the nature 
 and extent of its foundation. 
 
 To this we reply, that our Morality, though it 
 derives a portion of its form from our classification of 
 Eights, and so far, of Laws, is not at aU bounded by 
 the nature and extent of Law, but on the contrary is 
 necessarily immeasurably more comprehensive, deep 
 and high than Law is, in virtue of the principle just 
 stated as the leading principle of our Morality; — 
 that Morality claims empire over the whole man, in- 
 cluding internal purpose, affection, and thought; 
 whereas Law is concerned only with outward actions. 
 We may add to this reply, that Law, or Rights, 
 are in our system, not the foundation, but only the 
 starting point, of Morality. Though we begin from 
 them, we do not build upon them. Indeed with us, 
 Eights, and the Laws which establish them, instead of 
 being the foundation of Morality, are only the foun- 
 dation of the mode in which Morality regards exter- 
 nal things, such as property, fe.mily ties, and the Uke : 
 and the way in which Morality regards such things 
 must, in all systems, be greatly regulated by existing 
 laws ; — ^nor is this the case in ours more than in other 
 systems. 
 
 (II.) But again it may be objected that our 
 Morality, being derived from existing Law, must ne- 
 cessarily be controlled by existing Law; so that 
 
INTEODTJCTORT LECTURE. 9 
 
 however absurd, unjust, or oppressive be tlie Laws, the 
 precepts of our Morality must be conformed to them. 
 
 To this we reply, our Morality is not derived from 
 the special commands of existing Laws, but from the 
 fact that Laws exist, and from our classification of 
 their subjects. Personal Safety, Property, Contracts, 
 Family and Civil Relations, are everywhere the sub- 
 jects of Law, and are everywhere protected by Law ; 
 therefore we judge that these things must be the sub- 
 jects of Morality, and must be reverently regarded by 
 Morality. But we are not thus bound to approve of 
 all the special appointments with regard to these sub- 
 jects, which may exist at a given time in the Laws of 
 a given country. On the contrary, we may condemn 
 the Laws as being contrary to Morality. We cannot 
 frame a Morality without recognizing Property, and 
 Property exists through Law; but yet the Law of 
 Property, in a particular country, may be at variance 
 with that moral purpose for which, in our eyes, Laws 
 exist. Law is the foundation and necessary condition 
 of Justice ; but yet Laws may be unjust, and when 
 unjust, ought to be changed. The cases in which 
 Morality and Law come into conflict, are difficult 
 problems in all systems of Morality. We have no 
 greater difficulty in propounding and in solving such 
 problems than any other Moralists. 
 
 (III.) It may be objected that by deriving Moral- 
 ity from existing Laws we make it depend upon some- 
 thing accidental, partial, variable in different countries 
 and times ; whereas we require that Morality should 
 be something necessary, universal, uniform in all 
 places and times. 
 
 And to this we reply, as before, that we do not 
 derive Morality from Law in such a way as to make 
 it share the accidental, partial, variable character of 
 Law. We derive it from the fact that Law every- 
 where establishes, or endeavours to establish. Personal 
 Security, Property, Contracts, Families and States; 
 which objects of Law are, we conceive, universal, con- 
 stant, and the necessary conditions of man's moral 
 existence. So that Morality, however it may begin by 
 
lO HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 borrcwing a suggestion from Law, may still be said 
 to be in its nature necessary, universal and eternal. ^ 
 
 (IV.) Again, it may be said that the necessity 
 of which we here speak, when we say that the funda- 
 mental kinds of Eights exist necessarily, is the neces- 
 sity arising from mutual fear. Property, for example, 
 is established by Law, as a kind of term of truce 
 to the endless quarrels concerning the objects of 
 human desire which would otherwise take place among 
 men. 
 
 But that mutual fear alone could not establish 
 property and the other kinds of Rights, is evident 
 from this : that such Rights do not exist among brute 
 animals, in spite of their mutual fears and conflictiQg 
 desires. Rights do not arise from mutual fear, but 
 from the whole nature of man ; and especially from 
 his nature as being capable of living under rules 
 of action, and incapable of living otherwise. He 
 cannot live except under rules of external action, 
 directing and controlling him ; hence men have Rights. 
 He cannot live except with the recognition of rules of 
 internal action, giving a character to his intentions 
 and purposes, as wrong or right; and thus he must 
 have Morality. 
 
 (V.) The same answer might be made if it were 
 urged that by making our Morality begin from Rights, 
 we really do found it upon Expediency, notwithstand- 
 ing our condemnation of systems so founded. For, 
 it may be said. Rights, such as property, exist only 
 because they are expedient. We reply, as before, that 
 Rights are founded- on the whole nature of man, in 
 such a way that he cannot have a human existence 
 without them. He is a moral being, and must have 
 Rights, because Morality cannot exist where Rights 
 are not. Rights are expedient for man, just as it is 
 expedient for man that his blood should circulate. If 
 it do not, he soon ceases to be man. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that according to our view. 
 Morality is founded upon the whole nature of man, as 
 containing Desires and Affections, and as subject to a 
 Rule which must govern his whole being. The Rea- 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. II 
 
 son is employed both, in giving to the objects of the 
 Desires and Affections a more general and ideal cha- 
 racter, and in discerning the manner in which they 
 may be controlled and directed so as to conform to 
 Eule, and to the Supreme Eule which all other Eules 
 necessarily imply. We thus assent to those who say 
 that it is the office of Reason to govern the Desires 
 and Affections ; and we add that Reason, by its nature, 
 must tend to govern them so that they may be right. 
 We assent to those who say that Virtue consists in 
 acting conformably to man's Nature; meaning that 
 his nature is a moral nature, and necessarily implies 
 a Rule of Tightness. We assent to Butler when he 
 speaks of man as having a determinate mental consti- 
 tution; meaning thereby a constitution in which the 
 Desires and Affections must be controlled by Rules, 
 and therefore governed by Reason. We assent to 
 those who speak of man as having a Moral Faculty, 
 meaning that he has the Faculty of seeing the necessity 
 of such Rules and of referring actions to them. We 
 do not speak of man as having a Moral Sense ; because 
 the discovery of the conformity of actions to a Moral 
 Rule is a process entirely different from the operation 
 of any sense. We speak with reverence of Conscience, 
 meaning by Conscience the judgment which we form 
 of our actions as being right or wrong : and we are 
 willing to assert the authority of Conscience, meaning 
 thereby that our judgment of our actions as right or 
 wrong, is a ground of action superior to any other 
 view of them ; but we do not speak of the authority 
 of Conscience as swprerm, meaning that what we judge 
 to be right is necessarily right, and what we judge to 
 be wrong necessarily wrong. For our judgment on 
 these points may be erroneous. We may have wrongly 
 conceived or wrongly applied the Supreme Rule of 
 human action; and thus our erroneous Conscience 
 may require to be enlightened and instructed by a 
 better use of our rational Faculty. 
 
 We do not rest our Rules of action upon the ten- 
 dency of actions to produce the Happiness of others, 
 or of mankind in general ; because we cannot solve a 
 
12 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 problem so difficult as to determine which, of two 
 courses of action -will produce the greatest amount of 
 human happiness : and "we see a simpler and far more 
 satisfactory mode of deducing such Rules; namely, by. 
 considering that there must be such Rules ; that they 
 must be Rules for man; for man living amwng men; 
 and for the whole of man's being. Siace we are thus 
 led directly to moral Rules, by the consideration of 
 the internal conditions of man's being, we cannot think 
 it wise to turn away from this method, and to try to 
 determine such Rules by reference to an obscure and 
 unmanageable external condition, the Amount of Hap- 
 piness produced. But we do not doubt of the truth 
 of the doctrine. That right action does produce the 
 greatest amount of human happiness ; and we conceive 
 that happiness must be so apprehended and so under- 
 stood as to be consistent with this general truth. 
 
 "We do not deduce our Rules of action directly 
 from the tendency of actions to produce our own hap- 
 piness, in the way of reward; because we do not suf- 
 ficiently know, on independent grounds, the Laws 
 according to which our Judge will administer his 
 rewards. We believe that He will reward what is 
 right and punish what is wrong : but we believe that 
 He intends us to use our rational and moral Acuities 
 in discovering what is right and what is wrong. He 
 has given us other helps in the task, but He has not 
 superseded these. We cannot be content to make our 
 Morality depend, as Paley does, on these two steps; — 
 that God wishes the happiness of mankind, and that 
 therefore he will reward what we do for the promotion 
 of that happiness; for we conceive that to determine 
 in what sense Tmjumam. happiness is to be understood, 
 when we say that God wishes it and wishes us to 
 promote ii^ is far more difficult, than it is to determine 
 God's will by seeking for it in the Supreme Rule of 
 human action : besides which, even if we could deter- 
 miae what this happiness is, we might still be unable 
 to discern the best means of promoting it. But we do 
 not doubt that the Supreme Rule of human action, 
 the rule which requires action to be right, is identical 
 
INTRODUCTORT LECTURE. I 3 
 
 with the "Will of God; and that His Will is the high- 
 est and strongest sanction by -which any Eide can be 
 enforced. 
 
 Though, as yre have already said, our Morality 
 does not depend upon actually existing human Laws, 
 nor even upon the necessary existence of Law; yet 
 will Morality, and the Laws which necessarily exist 
 in human society, rest upon the same foundation, the 
 moral nature of man. And iu tracing this funda- 
 mental basis of Law and of Morality into a system of 
 each, there may be, and naturally will be, a corre- 
 spondence between certain general provinces and divi- 
 sions of the one and of the other, of Law and of 
 Morality. And thus as we have five leading kinds of 
 Rights, we have also five leading kinds of Duty and 
 of Virtue. These five are Benevolence, Justice, Truth, 
 Pwrity, and Wisdom; which last, reckoned by Aris- 
 totle and others as an intellectual virtue, (in distinction 
 to the others, which are termed moral virtues,) may 
 be called Order; siuce it manifests itself both in the 
 discovery of right Rules and of means for upholding 
 them. Without pressing too much upon the parallel- 
 ism between these five kinds of Yirtue and the five 
 kinds of Rights respectively, we may venture to say 
 that these five Virtues may be regarded as a convenient 
 division of Virtue, so far as virtue is divisible : and 
 these may deserve to be termed the Cardinal Vvrtmes, 
 far better than that ancient quaternion, which moralists 
 have so often assumed, of Justice, Temperance, Forti- 
 tude and Prudence. And as this is a division of 
 Virtues, which are habits of action, so is it a division 
 of Duties, which are occasions of such actions; and 
 we have Duties of Benevolence, of Justice, of Truth, 
 of Purity and of Order. 
 
 Duty is a term which especially belongs to Mora- 
 lity, not to Law. The term Obligation is used in both 
 subjects : we speak of the legal Obligation of paying 
 our debts, and the moral Obligation of relieving the 
 distressed: It would produce some convenience if the 
 term were confined to the former meaning; but at any 
 rate the two senses ought not to be confounded. We 
 
14 HISTOET OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ought not to speak, as Paley does, of obliged and ougJU 
 as synonymous terms ; seeing that men are often obliged 
 to do what they ought not to do. 
 
 Nor again, ought the habit of such phraseology to 
 lead us to suppose that because legal obligations are 
 always obligations to some person, therefore moral ob- 
 ligations are also always due to some person. Duties 
 to others, as they are sometimes termed, are much 
 better spoken of as Duties simply : for they are to be 
 performed not only out of regard to others, as what 
 thei/ ought to have, but far more, from regard to our- 
 selves and what we ought to be. 
 
 To every (Legal) Obligation which we contract 
 or have, corresponds a Eight which another person 
 requires or has : but to our Duties correspond no 
 Rights of others. If however we wish for a correlative 
 term to Duties, we may use the phrase Moral Claim ; 
 we may say that a poor man in distress has a Moral 
 Claim on his rich neighbour, even if the law do not 
 give him a legal Eight. 
 
 And many of our Duties which regard our special 
 relations to particular persons, and which we may 
 therefore term Relative Duties, may be conveniently 
 arranged and treated of according to those Eelations. 
 
 Having these views of the most convenient way of 
 using the term Obligation, we should avoid using such 
 terms as perfect and imperfect Obligation, which have 
 been common among Moralists. Such phrases have 
 the inconvenience of implying that no Obligations are 
 perfect but those which the law imposes, and that all 
 our Duties are of the nature of Debts, only less perfect 
 in degree. 
 
 It may be asked how we can apply these general 
 heads of our System to particular actions and to special 
 moral questions, such as Moralists are expected to 
 decide : and it may be urged that some reference to 
 the results of actions and to some external object of 
 action is requisite for such purposes. But it will be 
 found that this is not so, and that a consideration of 
 the ideas of Benevolence, Justice, Truth, Purity and 
 Order, determined in the way in which we have de- 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 1 5 
 
 termined them, combined with a regard to the various 
 relations in which men stand to each other, will enable 
 us to draw out a complete scheme of human duties. 
 And we conceive that this is not only a possible mode 
 of proceeding, but that it is the way in which men do 
 naturally and spontaneously endeavour to decide for 
 themselves such moral questions as come before them. 
 If the doubt be what course of action Justice, or Truth, 
 requires, and if they reason morally on the question, 
 they do not generally so much consider what will come 
 of each course, — what they will gain or lose by it, — 
 as what it is that Justice, or that Truth means, and 
 how the meaning is applicable in the particular case. 
 That in this manner a detailed scheme of human duties, 
 and a solution of ordinary moral . questions may be 
 obtained, is, we conceive, shown in the Elements of 
 Morality which have been published with this view. 
 
 Although we begin the arrangement of our Morality 
 by taking account of the kinds of Eights established 
 among men by actual Law, this, as we have already 
 said, does not prevent omx passing judgment upon ex- 
 isting Laws as moral or immoral, just or unjust. But 
 though some existing Laws may be unjust, we must 
 in our System of Morals, and in all systems of morals 
 which can be recognized by human society, look upon 
 existing Laws in general with great respect, as highly 
 important elements in all moral questions. In general, 
 what is Property, what is a Contract, what is a Mar- 
 riage, in any Society, must be determined by the Laws 
 of that Society; and as our Duties, as well as our legal 
 Obligations, are concerned about Property, Contract, 
 Marriage, and the like, our Morality must involve a, 
 regard to existing Laws. The existing Laws of each 
 state belong to its history; — have grown out of its 
 history or with its history, and change with its histo- 
 rical changes. Hence our Morality, besides involving 
 the ideal elements of which we have spoken, the ideas 
 of Justice, Truth, and the like, must include an histo- 
 rical element, belonging to each separate community. 
 Along with the Idea of Morality we must include the 
 Fact of Law. And the bearings of Law and Morality, — 
 
1 6 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the dependence of ■vrhat oughi to he on what is, — 
 the conversion of what is into what ought to be in 
 each community, — forms a large and important pro- 
 vince of speculation which we can by no means leave 
 out of our consideration. To this province belong all 
 general questions of Political Morality; questions con- 
 cerning the Eights and Duties of Governments as well 
 as of individuals. We may add, as also coming within 
 the sphere of our reasonings, questions of Justice con- 
 cerning property, contracts, and the Uke, as determined 
 by supposing the most general forms of actual Law, 
 which province we may term General Jiurisprudence. 
 
 The radical part of the term Jurisprudence, namely 
 Jus, (the special study of Jurists,) denotes a branch of 
 speculation which may be distinguished from Morality 
 proper by saying that Jus is the doctrine of Bights 
 and Obligations, Morality the doctrine of Virtues and 
 Duties; the term Obligations being here used in the 
 strict sense above spoken of. 
 
 Besides these, we conceive it proper to include in 
 our Morality questions as to what is just and ri<;ht in 
 the dealings of Nations with one another. This is 
 commonly termed International Law; but since there 
 is no supreme authority among nations by which Laws 
 affecting them can be enforced, these questions can- 
 only be discussed by assuming a common understand- 
 ing respecting the Rights and Obligations of nations; 
 and hence the subject may rather be termed Inter- 
 national Jus. 
 
 The subject of Religion is intimately connected 
 with Morality ; or indeed Religion may rather be said 
 to include the subject of Morality, regarding it ac- 
 cording to her own special view of man's nature, con- 
 dition, and prospects. But there result important 
 advantages from treating separately Morality accord- 
 ing to Reason, and Morality according to Religion: 
 and this therefore we do. 
 
 The explanation which has thus been given of the 
 relation of our System of Morality to the Systems 
 published by other writers, will have shown in a great 
 degree the objections to the schemes of our predecessors 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. I 7 
 
 ■which, prevent our resting satisfied with their labours. 
 With regard to Palsy's Frincvples of Moral Philosophy 
 in particular, the book which is recognized by the 
 University of Cambridge as an especial subject of ethi- 
 cal study, I have repeatedly pointed out what appear 
 to me to be defects and errors'. But I have thought 
 that it might be convenient to my readers to find here 
 some remarks on a writer who has erected his system 
 of Morality and Jurisprudence on the same basis as 
 Palej', but with more of systematic method and logical 
 consistency : I mean Jeremy Bentham. I have there- 
 fore given some account of his principal works on 
 these subjects, and have ventured to point out what 
 appear to me their grave defects in principle, reason- 
 ing, method, and spirit. With regard to the objec- 
 tions to the principles, they are, of course, much the 
 same as the objections to Paley's fundamental doc- 
 trines, modified according to Mr Bentham's mode of 
 stating them. As a specimen of Mr Bentham's me- 
 thod, I have taken his classification of Offenses, as it 
 appears in his Frindples of Morals and Legislation. 
 I have attempted to show that this Classification is 
 very defective, mainly in consequence of his introduc- 
 iag the Head of Offenses against Condition, and not 
 taking as one of his Heads, Contract, a province of the 
 subject so abundant in rules and subdivisions among 
 the best preceding Jurists. It appears to me to result 
 from this examination that the division of Rights into 
 five kinds. Rights of the Person, of Property, of Con- 
 tract, of Marriage, and Political Rights, with corre- 
 sponding Offenses or Wrongs, arising from the viola- 
 tion of these Rights, is both more philosophical and 
 more practical. I have also ventured to point out in 
 a particular case (as an example) the impossibility of 
 making a scheme of Law without recognizing in Law a 
 moral purpose. 
 
 1 See the Preface to Bntler'a Three Sermons; also the Ekmcnts of Moral- 
 til, Art. 454, &c 
 
LEOTUEE I. 
 MoEAL Philosophy. Casuistry. 
 
 Perkins— Ames— Hall — Sanderson — ^Taylor — 
 Dr Knightbridgb. 
 
 I NOW appear before tte TJnivei-sity for the first time 
 in the attempt to discharge my public functions as 
 Professor of Casuistry, or Moral Philosophy ; to which 
 chair I was elected in June last, 1838. The office of 
 Professor, in this as in other Universities, is generally 
 understood to imply the duty of delivering Public 
 Lectures upon the subject which the Professorship de- 
 signates ; and in the case of the Professorship which I 
 have the honour to hold, this duty is expressly enjoin- 
 ed by the Founder, and directions are given in the 
 deed of Foundation with a view of securing its effec- 
 tual performance. As, however, notwithstanding these 
 reasons for the delivery of Public Lectures by the 
 holder of this Professorship, circumstances had in fact 
 led to a discontinuance of them, I did not find myself 
 by this appointment placed in a situation in which I 
 had to continue and carrj' on an existing system of 
 teaching, on the subject thus committed to my care. 
 I am well aware that it may easily happen to a Pro- 
 fessor, from the nature of his subject, or from other 
 circumstances, that he may better hope to promote the 
 study of his science, and the interests of the academic 
 body to which he belongs, in other ways, — ^by his ad- 
 vice, his writings, or his judgments on what is done 
 by others, — than by the delivery of Lectures to the 
 general body. With particular subjects, and under 
 particular circi;inietences, this may very readily be con- 
 
CASUISTBT. 19 
 
 ceived to be so : but in almost all cases it would seem to 
 be desirable, that a person, who has conferred upon Mm 
 such a distinction as is among us implied in a Profes- 
 sorship of any branch of science or learning, should come 
 forwai-ds in some manner which may show to the Uni- 
 versity that he has made, or is making, a study of that 
 which he professes ; — that his attention is employed in 
 examining its principles and tracing its progress; — 
 that he is at his post, prepared with his proper share 
 of the learning and knowledge of past times; and 
 ready, when any new doctrines claim his attention, 
 to resist error, and to welcome truth. It is by possess- 
 ing a body of persons who hold their respective places 
 in our Universities in such a spirit, whether they bear 
 the name of Professor or Tutor, or any other, that these 
 bodies will be, as such bodies ought to be, the deposi- 
 taries and diffusers of sound learning — the asylums of 
 solid and substantial truth — ^the golden links which 
 connect The Permanent with The Progressive. When 
 therefore I was elected into this office, I thought that 
 it became incumbent upon me to show, in some public 
 manner, that I was giving my best attention to the 
 subject with which I was thus charged. And among 
 other steps to which I felt myself thus directed, it 
 appeared to me that a course of Public Lectures, such 
 as the foundation of the Professorship enjoins, might 
 be both of use and of interest to a portion of the Uni- 
 versity. Such a course, therefore, although in the pre- 
 sent year, for reasons which I may hereafter refer to, 
 it must be a brief and very incomplete one, I now 
 propose to commence. 
 
 The subject which I consider as committed to my 
 charge by my professorship is Moral Philosophy, ac- 
 cording to that view of the position and limits of the 
 science to which the best modern authors have been 
 led. Even if by taking this subject so defined and 
 bounded, it should appear that it does not employ itself 
 upon precisely the same class of questions which the 
 Founder had in his view when he endowed the office, 
 I should still not fear that the University would look 
 upon such a modification of the Professor's task as not 
 
 2—2 
 
20 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 only allowable, but, Tinder proper conditions, laudable. 
 For, in order to teach or to speculate with advantage, 
 we must recognize those relations of the different sci- 
 ences — those unions and those separations of the vari- 
 ous fields of knowledge — ^those cardinal questions and 
 fundamental alternatives, to which the best researches 
 of later as well as earlier times have led. And if, 
 a century and a half ago, the traditionary partition of 
 the various branches of religion and morals was unphi- 
 losophical and confused; or if the questions then con- 
 sidered most important, have now become frivolous 
 or superfluous; it would be unwise for us to allow 
 ourselves to be bound down to technicalities and errors, 
 prevalent in those days,* but now detected or obsolete. 
 Such conduct would be a perverse obedience to the 
 letter of our benefactor's instructions, which might 
 almost look like irony; since by such obedience we 
 should certainly and knowingly thwart his real inten- 
 tion. It will be a far more cordial and generous inter- 
 pretation of his injunctions, and of the purpose of the 
 University in accepting his bequest, if we direct our 
 attention to the branch of knowledge which- now 
 stands in the place of that which he recommended; 
 which preserves all that was most valuable in the 
 older body of learning, while it brings before us ques- 
 tions and principles such as are now, at this day, of 
 the deepest interest, and of the most grave concern to 
 the prospects and convictions of men. I may add, 
 that such a substitution of a newer form of science 
 full of life, hope, interest, and solid truth, for the older 
 and more imperfect speculations upon related subjects, 
 is what you, the University, have accepted with satis- 
 faction and applause from many, or I may say from 
 all, of the rest of your professors. 
 
 I shall therefore reckon upon the implied sanction 
 of this University, in considering myself as Professor 
 of Moral Philosophy; a branch of study of which a 
 professorship exists, I believe, in every university but 
 our own : a branch of study, too, as I trust to be able 
 to show, which cannot be excluded without leaving the 
 general body of knowledge, such as we should here 
 
CASUISTRY. 2 1 
 
 present it to our students, in an intolerable degree 
 maimed and imperfect. 
 
 You are probably aware that the person holding 
 this professorship is designated in the Foundation 
 Deed, as Professor of Moral Tlieology or Casuistical 
 Divinity; and has usually been termed Professor of 
 Casuistry. Although, for the reasons I have just 
 stated, I altogether disclaim the notion that my pro- 
 fessorial province is to be defined or limited by an an- 
 tiquarian investigation as to what Casuistry was at 
 first, or at any period ; and although, as I have said, 
 another phrase appears to me to be at present far 
 more fitted to express my office, it may iiiterest you, 
 in parting with this subject its an acknowledged sci- 
 ence among us, to cast back a glance, very briefly, 
 upon its nature and course. 
 
 I need not remind any one here that the term in- 
 dicates that portion of Christian Morals which treats 
 oi Gases of Conscience ; and that Cases of Conscience 
 are questions of human conduct in which conflicting 
 duties, or obscurity in the application of moral rules, 
 seem at first to perplex and disturb the faculty which 
 judges of right and wrong; and make it necessary to 
 trace, in an exact and methodical manner, and with a 
 careful exclusion of everything hut moral considera- 
 tions, the consequences of the fundamental rules of 
 morality, in order that thus we may escape the doubt 
 and confusion with which we are threatened. The 
 Gases of Conscience of Jeremy Taylor, as one of his 
 works is often termed, and similar writings of many 
 others of our best divines, will at once recur to your 
 recollection. 
 
 Nor, again, need I remark, (although the circum- 
 stance is full of instruction,) that since, in cases where 
 obvious duties appear to be in conflict, we cannot 
 decide either way without transgressing, or seeming to 
 transgress, some plain rule of morality, the common 
 mind is never fully satisfied with such a conclusion : 
 and even when the decision is made on the most purely 
 moral grounds, and when the reasons assigned for it 
 are, to a person capable of following such reasoning, 
 
22 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 perfectly convincing and demonstrative, still the care- 
 less hearer attends to nothing but the fact that reasons 
 are given for omitting a duty. 
 
 Hence it has come to pass, that when, in any cases, 
 reasons are stated tending to evade some generally 
 acknowledged rule of conduct, although the reasons 
 have only the most shallow and transparent pretence 
 of morality, still the popular mind will not take the 
 trouble of distinguishing between such sophistry and 
 the indispensable distinctions contemplated' by the ge- 
 nuine moralist. And thus such evasive perversion of 
 reason is also called Casuistry; and hence the word, in 
 more modern times, and in certain classes of writers, 
 is used in a somewhat* obnoxious sense. Pope will 
 supply us with examples of both shades of significa- 
 tion: as, first, in the sense of decisions on the best 
 authority : — 
 
 Who shall decide when doctors disagree, 
 
 And soundest casuists doubt, Jike you and me? 
 
 and again, in the unfavourable sense : — 
 
 Morality by her false guardians drawn. 
 Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn. 
 
 Technical law and technical morality are both often, 
 as here, the objects of sarcasm and blame. Yet it 
 must be obvious to every considerate person, that laws, 
 to be consistent in practice, must be technical; and a 
 very little attention to the subject will show us that 
 morality also, in order to become a portion of exact 
 truth, must assume, as all sciences must, a technical 
 form. Such a form is one which the popular mind 
 cannot and will not comprehend, and on which it will- 
 ingly avenges itself by ridicule and dislike. 
 
 We know however that, notwithstanding the pre- 
 valence of such feelings, it is ov/r business, in this, no 
 less than other subjects, to aim at truth of the most 
 rigorous and exact form, as weU as of the most soHd 
 certainty. Nor wiU it ever be possible to treat of 
 morality, in any complete and sufficient manner, with- 
 out taking into our account the question of conflicting 
 duties, and other questions such as have been termed 
 
CASUISTRY. 
 
 23 
 
 Cases of Conscience. And though such cases are nei- 
 ther the main part of our subject (Moral Philosophy), 
 nor that from which it can with propriety derive its 
 name, it may, as I have said, "be worth our while to ex- 
 amine how an appellation so derived has been, in past 
 times, applied and understood; and it will, I trust, 
 be found that in this manner some light will be thrown 
 on the more recent progress of moral philosophy. 
 
 The works which contained collections of cases of 
 conscience, and of which the title commonly was Sv/m- 
 ma Casuum Cdnscientice, or something resembling this, 
 were compiled at first for the use of confessors and 
 ecclesiastical persons, who had to give their advice 
 and decisions to those who made confession to them. 
 It was requisite for them to know, for instance, in 
 what cases penance of a heavier or lighter kind was to 
 be imposed ; and what offenses must, for the time, ex- 
 clude the offender from the Communion. 
 
 As early as the 13th century Rajrmond of Penna- 
 forti had published his Casuistical Summa, which came 
 into very general use, and was referred to by the 
 greater part of the succeeding casuists. 
 
 In the 14th and 15th century the number of such 
 books increased very greatly. These Sum/mce were in 
 common speech known by certain abbreviated names, 
 borrowed from the designation of the author, or other 
 circumstances. Thus there was the Astesana, which 
 derived its name from its author Astesanus, a Mino- 
 rite of Asti in Piedmont; the Angelica, compiled by 
 Angelus de Clavasio, a Genoese Minorite ; the Pisama 
 or Pisanella, which was also termed Bartholina or 
 Magistrucda; the Padjica; the Rosella; the Sylves- 
 trina. In these works the subjects were usually ar- 
 ranged alphabetically, and the decisions were given in 
 the^form of Eesponses to Questions proposed'; the 
 
 1 I will give, as an example of tlie 
 Sv/nvmts, one of the questions imder 
 the word Mrietas in the 
 Angelica, 
 
 P. 61. "Mridas est privatio in- 
 tellectus facta ad aliquod tempus ex 
 immoderato potu vini vel cnjusoun- 
 que rei potabilis. 
 
24 
 
 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 opinions being often quoted from, or supported hj, the 
 authority of the Scripture, or the Fathers, or Schoolmen. 
 Thus, Astesanus says in his preface, that, conscious of 
 his own poverty, he had," like Kuth, gone to glean in 
 the grounds of the wealthy, the books of great doctors ; 
 and that he had put in his book " ilia tantum quae 
 pertinebant ad consilium in foro conscientise tribuen- 
 dum." There was not in these books any attempt to 
 lay down general principles which might show that the 
 decisions were right, or which might enable the in- 
 
 "Q. Utrum ebrietas sit peccatum 
 mortale. Bespondetur ut colligo ex 
 Alexan. Secninda Secimdce, et Glo. 
 xxF. Dist. sect, alias ea demum. Et 
 docetur ibidem quod aut raro con- 
 tigit aut assiduS. Si raro: sic dis- 
 tingue, quod aut inebrians se cog- 
 noscit vini poteutiam, et suam com- 
 plexionem dispositamadebrietatem, 
 et tunc magis vult ebrietatem incur- 
 rere quam a viao abstinere, ei sic 
 est peccatum morbale; aut inebrians 
 se nescit viui potentiajn et ignorat 
 quod ex tali potu potest inebriari 
 vel non advertit; et sic est nullum 
 peccatum vel veniale secundum ex- 
 cessmn in potu, et negligentiam la 
 advertendo. Siveroassiduasitebrie- 
 tas: sic est mortale peccatum, non 
 propter Iterationem. actus, quss mul- 
 tiplicatio actuum venialium non au- 
 getininfinifcum; sed quod non potest 
 esse quod homo assidud inebrietur 
 quin sciens et volens ebrietatem in- 
 currat: aut saltern omittat diligen- 
 tiam quam debet adhibere de neces- 
 sitate ne inebrietur cum habeat tem- 
 pus deliberationis reprimendi motus 
 veuiales ne procedant in regnum 
 peccati." 
 
 I will also give the part of the 
 
 article which refers to Addict, aicqSCa, 
 Indifference, and Dejection with re- 
 gard to doing good, which the school- 
 men had made a special sin. By 
 Aquinas it is ranked among the vices 
 opposite to the Christian virtue of 
 Hope. 
 
 P. 3. "Addia, secundum Bicar- 
 dum de Sancto Victore, est torpor 
 mentis bona inchoari negligentis, et 
 secundum Damascenum est tristitia 
 aggravans mentem ut nihil bona ei 
 agere libeat. Q. Utrum acidia sit 
 contra aliquod praeceptum Becalogi. 
 Eespondet Alexander, Trac. de Aci- 
 dia, quod est specialiter et explicite 
 contra illud. EccL xxxviiL 20. [Taike 
 no heaviness to heart: drive it away, 
 and remember the last end. Forget 
 it not, for there is no turning again : 
 thou shalt not do hini good, but hurt 
 thyselt] Implicite vero est contra 
 illud Exod. XX. [Remember that 
 thou keep holy the sabbath-day.] 
 In acidia est tristitia de spirituali 
 bono cum amore quietis camalis. 
 In illo vero precepto est amor sanctse 
 quietis quae cum gaudio est in bono 
 spirituali, licet sit laboriosum." 
 
 P. 68. "Ervhescentia de 6ojm) Test 
 peccatum, et est filia acidiae." 
 
CASUISTRY. 25 
 
 quirer to determine for himself tlie matter by which 
 his conscience was disturbed. The lay disciple was 
 supposed to be in entire dependence upon his spi- 
 ritual teachers for the guidance of his conscience; 
 or rather, for the determination of the penance and 
 mortification by which his sins were to be oblite- 
 rated. Moreover, a very large proportion of the 
 offenses which were pointed out in such works were 
 transgressions of the observances required by the 
 Church of those days, and referred to matters of which 
 the conscience could not take cognizance, without a 
 very considerable amount of artificial training. Ques- 
 tions of rites and ceremonies were put upon an equal 
 footing with the gravest questions of morals. The 
 Church had given her decision respecting both; and 
 the neglect or violation of her precepts, and of the 
 interpretations of her doctors, could never, it was held, 
 be other than sinful. Thus the body of Casuistry, of 
 which I have been speaking, was intimately connected 
 with the authority and practices of the Church of 
 Rome. When, therefore, the domination of that Church 
 was, by the blessing of Providence, overthrown in this 
 and other countries, the office of such Casuistry was 
 at an end. The decision of moral questions was left 
 to each man's own conscience ; and his responsibility 
 as to his own moral and spiritual condition could no 
 longer be transferred to others. For himself he must 
 stand or fall. He might, indeed, aid himself by the 
 best lights which the Church could supply — by the 
 counsel of wiser and holier servants of God; and he was 
 earnestly enjoined to seek counsel of God himself by 
 hearty and humble prayer. But he could no longer 
 lean the whole weight of his doubts and his sins upon 
 his father confessor and his mother church. He must 
 ascertain for himself what is the true and perfect law 
 of God. He could no longer derive hope or satisfac- 
 tion from the collections of cases, in which the answers 
 rested on the mere authority of men fallible and sinful 
 like himself. 
 
 Thus the casuistical works of the Eomanists lost 
 aU weight, and almost all value, in the eyes of the 
 
26 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Reformed Churches. Indeed, they were looked upon, 
 and in many respects justly, as among the glaring evi- 
 dences of the perversions and human inventions by 
 •which the truth of God had been disfigured; so that 
 a great Eeformation became necessary ; and from this 
 period, beyond doubt, we may trace the origin of the 
 disrepute under which, up to the present time, the 
 name of Casuistry has laboured. 
 
 The writers of the Reformed Churches did not at 
 first attempt to substitute anything in the place of the 
 casuistical works of the Romish Church. Besides an 
 averseness to the subject itself, which, as I have said, 
 they naturally felt, they were, for a considerable 
 period after the Reformation, fully employed upon 
 more urgent objects. If this had not been so, they 
 could not have failed soon to perceive that, in reality, 
 most persons do require some guidance for their con- 
 sciences ; and that rules and precepts by which men 
 may strengthen themselves against the temptations 
 which cloud the judgment when it is brought into 
 contact with special cases, are of great value to every 
 body of moral and Christian men. But the circum- 
 stances of the times compelled them to give their 
 energies mainly to controversies with their Romish 
 and other adversaries, and to leave to each man's own 
 thoughts the regulation of his conduct and feelings. 
 They had to man the walls and carry on a war against 
 an external enemy for their very existence ; and hence 
 they could the less bestow their labour in building the 
 halls of justice, the houses of charity, and the temples of 
 God, within their city. Or, to use an image of one of 
 the first of our writers' who attempted to remedy this 
 defect : " For any public provision of books of casuist- 
 ical theology, we were almost wholly unprovided; and, 
 like the children of Israel in the days of Saul and 
 Jonathan, we were forced to: go down to the forges of 
 the Philistines to sharpen every man his share and his 
 coulter, his axe and his mattock. We had swords and 
 spears of our own, enough for defence, and more than 
 
 > Jeremy Taylor. 
 
CASUISTRY. 27 
 
 enough for disputation : but in this more necessary- 
 part of the conduct of consciences, we did receive our 
 answers from abroad, till we found that our old needs 
 were very ill supplied, and new necessities did every- 
 day arise." 
 
 In the use of this image, Taylor followed, perhaps 
 imitated, a still earlier English writer on the same 
 subject — ^William Ames. He, in the preface to his 
 " Conscience, with the power and Cases thereof," 
 (English Ed. 1643), says, "This part of prophecy 
 hath hitherto been less practised in the schools of the 
 prophets, because our captains were necessarily en- 
 forced to fight always in front againt the enemies to 
 defend the faith, and to purge the floor of the Church ; 
 so that they could not plant and water the fields and 
 vineyards as they desired, as it useth to fall out in 
 time of hot wars. They thought -with themselves in 
 the meanwhile (as one of some note writeth), if we 
 have that single and clear eye of the gospel, if in the 
 house of our heart the candle of pure faith be set 
 upon a candlestick, these small matters might easily 
 be discussed. But experience hath taught at length, 
 that through neglect of this husbandry, a famine of 
 true godliness hath followed in many places, and out 
 of the famine a grievous spiritual plague j insomuch 
 that the counsel of Ifehemiah had need be practised, 
 namely, that every one should labour in this work 
 with one hand holding the plough, and in the other a 
 spear or a dart, whereby he may repel the violence of 
 the enemies." 
 
 Among the earliest and most considerable of 
 the moral writers of the English Church, imme- 
 diately after the Reformation, I may notice William 
 Perkins, a learned divine who lived in this place in 
 the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was educated at 
 Christ's College, of which' he became Fellow in 1582 ; 
 and being much admired as a preacher, was chosen 
 minister of St Andrew's Church ; in which church he 
 was also buried in 1602' He was esteemed the first 
 
 * I haTe not, however, been able to discover his tomb in this church. 
 
28 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 .preacher of his time, and one of the most laborious 
 theological students ; as indeed his works show him to 
 have been. The work which it particularly concerns 
 us to notice at present is entitled, The whole Treatise 
 of Cases of Conscience, distinguished into^ three books, 
 taught and delivered hy Mr W. Perkins, in his Holy- 
 day Lectv/res. In this work we akeady see the differ- 
 ent spirit of the Casuistry of the Reformed and the 
 Eomish Church. The editor of Perkins's work (for 
 it was a posthumous one) says, " We have just cause 
 to challenge the Popish Church, who in their case- 
 writings have erred, both in the substance and circum- 
 stances of their doctrine : — 
 
 " First, because the duty of relieving the conscience 
 is by them commended to the sacrificing priest.... 
 
 " Secondly, they teach that their priests, appointed 
 to be comforters and relievers of the distressed, are 
 made by Christ hhaseli judges of the conscience, having 
 in their hands a jvdicia/ry power and authority truly 
 and properly to bind or loose, to remit or to retain sin, 
 to open or to shut the kingdom of heaven — 
 
 " Thirdly, that a man may huild himsdf on the 
 faith of his teachers, and for his salvation rest con- 
 tented with an implicit and unexpressed faith." . ..To 
 which other objections are added. 
 
 Instead of this transferred responsibility, this sub- 
 mission of the conscience to an earthly tribunal, this 
 reliance on a human foundation, the Reformation taught 
 individual responsibility to a heavenly Master, and re- 
 moved aU other foundation than his word and will. 
 The conscience was subject to no subordinate autho- 
 rity : it might be instructed by man, or enlightened by 
 God ; but it had a supremacy of its own for each man. 
 It was, as Perkins declared (p. 1 1), "in regard of autho- 
 rity and power, placed in the middle between man and 
 God, so as it is under God, and yet above man." 
 
 In consequence of this change in the authority and 
 force previously ascribed to the decisions of moral 
 writers concerning Cases of Conscience, which was 
 thus brought about by means of the Reformation, the 
 mode of treating the subject was also changed. Since 
 
PERKINS. AMES. 29 
 
 the assertions of the teacher had no inherent autho- 
 rity, he was obliged to give his proofs as well as his 
 results. Since the conclusions in each case de- 
 rived ■ their weight from the principle which they 
 involved, it became necessary to state the principle 
 and to show its application. Since the examples were 
 thus of value, not in themselves, but as they illus- 
 trated the moral or religious truths which dictated the 
 decisions, it was no longer useful to accumulate so 
 vast a mass of instances, or to attempt to exhaust all 
 possible cases. The teacher's business now became, 
 not to prescribe the outward conduct, but to direct the 
 inward thought ; not to decide cases, but to instruct 
 the conscience. In the title of his work {Gases ofCon- 
 sdence), the attention had hitherto been bestowed 
 mainly on the former word; it was now transferred to 
 the latter. The determination of Cases was replaced 
 by the discipline of the Gonscience. Casuistry was no 
 longer needed, except so far as it became identical 
 with Morality. 
 
 Accordingly, we find that the collections of cases 
 of conscience by writers of our Church are, in fact, 
 treatises of Moral Philosophy. This is the case even 
 with the earliest of them, that of Perkins, which I 
 have mentioned ; as is noticed by foreign writers upon 
 this subject, among whom his reputation has generally 
 been greater than it has been in his own country. 
 Thus Staiidlin' says of him, " He wrote a treatise on 
 Casuistick, yet did not prescribe any definite limits to 
 his subject; but solved questions which cannot be 
 called questions of Conscience, and produced well nigh 
 a Christian Ethick." 
 
 We may perhaps discern one reason why Perkins 
 produced no great direct effect upon the studies of 
 English divines, if we turn our attention to his pupil, 
 also an eminent writer on this subject, whom we 
 have already mentioned, William Ames. Ames was, 
 like his master, of Christ College in this university. 
 "I gladly call to mind the time," thus he begins 
 
 1 Gmh. der Christ. Moral, p. 423. 
 
30 HISTOKT OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 his address to his reader, " when being young, I heard 
 worthy Master Perkins so preach in a great assem- 
 bly of students that he instructed them soundly 
 in the truth, stirred them up effectually to seek after 
 godliness, made them fit for the kingdom of God, and 
 by his own example showed them what things they 
 should chiefly intend, that they might promote true re- 
 ligion in the power of it, unto Grod's glory and others' 
 salvation." Ames goes on to say of Perkins, that " he 
 left many behind him affected by that study (the study 
 of Cases of Conscience) who by their godly sermons 
 (through God's assistance) made it to run, increase, and 
 be glorified throughout England." But probably many 
 of these, like Ames himself, belonged to the party of the 
 Puritans, and had their influence in England crippled 
 by their unhappy dissensions with the Established 
 Church. In the pulpit of St Mary's, Ames expressed 
 a vehement disapprobation of the festivities by which 
 the season of Christmas was then celebrated at some 
 of the colleges in this University ; — relicte, as he de- 
 clared them to be, of paganism. And cards, which 
 at that festival are tolerated by some of our ancient 
 statutes, he pronounced to be an invention of the 
 devil. With so severe and hostile, a view of practices 
 which seemed to the majority of his countrymen at 
 that time innocent recreations, he might naturally be 
 not unwilling to migrate to a country where the reign- 
 ing opinions were more in accordance with his own. 
 He accepted an invitation sent by the States of East 
 Friesland to become Professor of Divinity in their 
 imiversity of Franeker ; and from that place he be- 
 came known to the Uterary world, tmder the name of 
 Amesius, by his treatise I>e Gonscientia, ejus Jure et 
 Casilms, published in 1630. 
 
 Although Ames's book is an important one in the 
 history of the science, I shall not dwell upon it; but 
 proceed to subjects more closely connected with En- 
 glish literature. 
 
 Another eminent English writer, who shortly after 
 this time wrote upon Cases of Conscience, was Joseph 
 Hall, Bishop of Norwich in the time of Charles the 
 
HALL. SANDERSON. 3 1 
 
 First. He was educated at Emmamiel College, of 
 ■which he also became a fellow. His book, entitled, 
 Besolutions and Decisions of divers Practical Gases of 
 Conscience in continual use am,ong men, was published 
 in 1649, while he resided at Heigham, near Norwich ; 
 his bishopric having been sequestrated by the Parlia- 
 mentary Commissioners. This work is, mainly, the 
 resolution of forty separate Questions, many of them 
 relating to the common conduct of life, and affecting 
 individual consciences; as, "Whether the seller is 
 bound to make known to the buyer the faults of that 
 which he is about to sell," — "Whether, and how far, 
 a man may take up arms in the public quarrel of a 
 war." But others of these questions are really dis- 
 cussions, not so much concerning the application of 
 moral rules, as concerning the validity both of moral 
 rules and of civil laws: — ^as, "Whether tithes be a 
 lawful maintenance for ministers under the Gospel," — 
 "Whether marriages once made may be annulled." 
 Thus, though this book on Cases of Conscience is not, 
 like others which our Church has produced, a treatise 
 of Morals in general, it still is, for the most part, a 
 series of moral disquisitions, in which questions are 
 decided, not by authority or arbitrary selection, but 
 by reason and Scrij)ture; and in which the individual 
 is supposed to make himself acquainted with the 
 foundations as well as the result of the reasoning. 
 
 Bishop Sanderson's Cases of Conscience are in a 
 great measure of the same nature as Bishop Hall's; 
 except that they bear still more strongly upon their 
 face the impress of the times in which the work was 
 written; reminding us of the peculiar conjunctures 
 and relations to which the civil and religious dissen- 
 sions of the time gave rise. Among the cases which 
 he discusses are, — the case of marrying with a recu- 
 sant ; the case of a military life ; of a bond taken in 
 the king's name; of the engagement by which fidelity 
 to the Commonwealth was promised; of the Sabbath; 
 and of the Liturgy. These were questions in which 
 the minds of a large proportion of Englishmen were 
 intensely and practically interested. Even these, how- 
 
32 
 
 HISTOKT OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ever, are in some respects general questions of morality, 
 rather than special cases of conscience. But besides 
 these, Sanderson wrote upon morals in a more general 
 form. His treatises De Ohligatione Consdentice, and 
 De Juramenti Ohligatione, were of great repute in 
 their time, and exhibit well the foundations of the 
 morality of conscience. In the former Treatise, at 
 the outset, he examines the opinions of those who 
 hold that Conscience is an Act, a Power, and a Habit ; 
 and decides that it cannot be considered any of these, 
 with so much propriety as a Faculty, partly innate 
 and partly acquired. 
 
 Sanderson was intimately acquainted with the ca- 
 suists and other moral writers who had preceded him; 
 and we find in his wiitings something of the subtlety 
 and technicality of the scholastic writers; but this is 
 very far from preventing their exhibiting great moral 
 acuteness and much sound reasoning '. 
 
 The tendency of the Casuistry of the Reformed 
 Churches to become systematic Morality, was apparent 
 in other countries, as well as in our own; and the 
 questione thus brought into discussion being treated 
 with a predominant reference to scriptural authority 
 and religious doctrines, the subject was naturally 
 termed Moral Theology. Treatises with this title 
 became very common in Germany towards the end of 
 the seventeenth century; but, for reasons already 
 mentioned, I shall not now dwell upon this portion 
 of ethical literature. Confining ourselves to the works 
 of English moralists, the most conspicuous is one with 
 which many persons here are, doubtless, familiar — the 
 Rule of Conscience, of Jeremy Taylor, published in 
 1660: and this celebrated book, like the preceding 
 labours of English divines on similar subjects, is a 
 treatise on the leading doctrines of morality ; the au- 
 thority and attributes of conscience being made the 
 basis of the system. As, by the effect of the Refor- 
 
 1 I have recently published 
 an edition of Sanderson's work 
 De Obli^atitme ConscienUie, with 
 
 Notes in which I have endeavour- 
 ed to point out his characteristic 
 merits. 
 
JEEEMY TAYLOR. 33 
 
 mation, Casuistry became Moral Theology, so in agree- 
 ment with the unbroken tradition of Christian specu- 
 lation, Moral Theology was established on Conscience 
 as one of its foundation stones. 
 
 The study of the authority of Conscience formed 
 an important part of Moral Theology. Abelard in 
 the twelfth century had already laid down the leading 
 principles of this subject, by teaching that the funda- 
 mental principle of morality is the will of God revealed 
 to us by means of our Conscience, as well as by means 
 of the Holy Scriptures. Jeremy Taylor's view is 
 nearly the same with this. Many of you may recol- 
 lect the manner in which the noble work of which I 
 have spoken, the Rule of Conscience, or Ductor Dubi- 
 tantium, opens : — " God governs the world by several 
 attributes and emanations from himself. The nature 
 of things is supported by his power, the events of 
 things are ordered by his providence, and the actions 
 of reasonable creatures are governed by laws; and 
 these laws are put into a man's soul or mind as into a 
 treasure or repository : some in his very nature, some 
 in after actions, by education and positive sanction, 
 by learning and custom," And having thus stated 
 his general view, Taylor proceeds to illustrate it with 
 his usual copiousness of learning and fancy'- "So that 
 it was well said of St Bernard, Gonscientia candor est 
 lucis ceternce, et speculum sine macula Dei Majestafis, 
 et imago bonitatis illius : ' Conscience is the brightness 
 and splendour of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of 
 the Divine Majesty, and the image of the goodness of 
 God.' It is higher which Tatianus said of conscience, 
 Mwov elvai (rvveiBrjcnv ®e6v — ' Conscience is God unto 
 us : ' which saying he had from Menander : 
 
 'BpoTols airan ffwdStiais Geis. 
 And it had in it this truth, that God, who is every- 
 
 1 In the Notes to the De Obi. 
 Come Prselect. 11. Sect, i, I have re- 
 marked that Taylor has, in this 
 passage, borrowed from Sanderson. 
 
 The expression that Conscience is 
 under God and above man, has been 
 already (page 28) quoted from Per- 
 kins. 
 
 8 
 
34 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 where in several manners, hath the appellative of his 
 own attributes and effects in the several manners of 
 his presence. 
 
 'Jupiter est quodounque vides, quoeunque moveris.'" 
 
 "That Providence," he adds, "which governs all 
 the world, is nothing else but God present by his 
 providence: and God is in our hearts by his laws; he 
 rules us by his substitute, our conscience." He then 
 proceeds to illustrate this in his own way : " God sits 
 there, and gives us laws; and, as God said to Moses, 
 I have made thee a God to Pharaoh, that is, to give 
 him. laws, and to minister in the execution of these 
 laws, and to inflict angry sentences upon him; so hath 
 Gtod done to us, to give us laws, and to exact obedience 
 to those laws; to punish them that prevaricate, and 
 to reward the obedient. And therefore conscience is 
 called otKetos <j}vXa$, ei/oiKos 0eos, JirtTOTrog Sat/uov, ' the 
 household guardian,' 'the domestic God,' 'the spirit 
 or angel of the place.' " 
 
 Taylor's work is entitled Ductor DvMtantium; but 
 this would have been a more proper title for the col- 
 lections of Cases of his predecessors of the Romish 
 Church, who pretended to direct the conduct of their 
 disciples, without removing the ground of their doubts. 
 The Rule of Conscience ought rather to be, the Medela 
 Duhitationum — the remedy for doubts; that which 
 brings the Christian's mind to peace and confidence, 
 and to a clear insight into its proper course. The 
 moral teacher's doctrine should be the light of day, 
 which gives us a full view of our path — not a hand 
 stretched to us to guide us blindly in the dark. And 
 such, in fact, Taylor has tried to make his book. It 
 is mainly concerned in giving directions for the in- 
 struction and confirmation of conscience, and in laying 
 down broad general principles of morality. And al- 
 though cases of conscience, or questions which may be 
 so termed, are introduced into the work with wonderful 
 fertility of invention, and acquaintance with preceding 
 writers, these cases are brought in only as illustrations 
 of the principles which he is employed in expounding. 
 
JEREMY TAYLOR. 35 
 
 The Rule of Conscience is, in truth, a treatise on the 
 leading doctrines of Morality; the authority and at- 
 tributes of Conscience being made the basis of the 
 system. 
 
 Thus, at this period, we may consider the authority 
 of Conscience, its divine commission, and its due place 
 as the basis of sound Morality, to be fully established 
 and recognized among the great writers of our own 
 Church. The period of which I now speak, the seven- 
 teenth centuiy, though darkened with calamities and 
 afflictions, in this as in other countries, was not inglo- 
 rious or unfruitful with regard to that great subject of 
 human speculation with which we are here concerned. 
 Many pious and thoughtful men, disciplined by the 
 neecb, and rendered serious and wise by the events, of 
 the time, laid before the world the trains of thought 
 and reasoning which had thus been suggested to their 
 minds. Hooker and Selden, Hammond and Sanderson, 
 Usher and ChUlingworth, had enriched English litera- 
 ture with solid and valuable productions in the first 
 part of the century; and when the Church and the 
 Monarchy had shown the depth of their foundations 
 by the violence of the storms which they had survived, 
 the general aspect of the speculative world, at least in 
 England, was one which appeared to tend to compa- 
 rative repose : all the great fundamental questions of 
 religion, law, and government, having been fully de- 
 bated, and, to a certain extent, decided or brought to 
 a compromise. I shall therefore here make a pause, 
 and consider the point at which men's minds had now 
 arrived as one. of the epochs of the history of morals 
 in this country. 
 
 Casuistry, as we have seen, had been succeeded by 
 Moral Theology : — the decision of cases by authority 
 had been replaced by an exposition of reasons : — and 
 these reasons were sought in the Word of God and in 
 the Conscience of man. This, therefore, we might 
 term the Epoch of the acknowledged authority of 
 Conscience as the ground of Morality. 
 
 That this repose was of short duration, or rather, 
 that the promise of it was never fulfilled, I shall soon 
 
 3— £ 
 
36 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 have occasion to show. It will appear, too, that this 
 idea of Conscience, as the basis and principle of Morals, 
 has not even yet been completely and rigorously work- 
 ed out into its systematic form and consequences. But 
 these are parts of the subject on which I must treat 
 hereafter. 
 
 During the period of which we now speak, Oases of 
 Conscience, discussed in the way which I have endea- 
 voured to describe, had a strong interest, not for divines 
 and speculative men only, but for all classes. Such 
 discussions held somewhat of the place of the graver 
 popular literature of the present day; being, like that, 
 the expression of the natural effort which man, when 
 his mental powers and tastes are cultivated, constantly 
 exerts to reconcile practice with theory; — to under- 
 stand what is, and to produce what ought to be. We 
 find many evidences of this popularity of Casuistry in 
 the seventeenth century. The very nature of the 
 questions treated by Hall and Sanderson is a proof of 
 this. Sanderson's decisions were for the most part 
 delivered as answers to questions proposed to him by 
 persons really troubled in their consciences. At the 
 end of one of the most elaborate of his cases {The Case 
 of Unlawful Love^) he says, "In all this discourse, I 
 take upon me not to write edicts, but to give my advice 
 (being requested thereto by a reverend friend)"; and 
 he adds that he cannot possibly be moved by personal 
 considerations respecting the parties, since, "so God 
 is my witness whom I desire to serve, I had not any 
 intimation at all given me, neither yet have so much 
 as the least conjecture in the world, who either of them 
 both may be." 
 
 Sanderson was much admired by his unhappy 
 master, Charles the Pirst. When he took leave of 
 the king, in his last attendance on him, in the Isle 
 of Wight, his majesty requested him to apply himself 
 to the writing of cases of conscience : to which his an- 
 
 1 A question of the obligatlcn of a promise of a second marriage made 
 during tbe existence of tlie flrst 
 
SANDERSON. 37 
 
 swer was, that "h.e was now grown old and unfit 
 to write cases of conscieace." The king replied, "It 
 was the simplest thing he ever heard from him, for no 
 young man was fit to be a Judge, or write Cases of 
 Conscience." 
 
 The treatise De Juramventi Ohligatione was trans- 
 lated into English by Charles, during his confinement 
 in the Isle of "Wight. And one of the accusations 
 commonly made against that unfortunate monarch by 
 his enemies is, that he cultivated and encouraged the 
 study of Casuistry. But it is easy to find marks of 
 popularity of the subject in other quarters. The treat- 
 ing such subjects in the vernacular language, instead 
 of the language of the learned, was of itself an evi- 
 dence that it had become the subject of attention with 
 a more difiused and varied audience. In 1658, when, 
 like the rest of the royalist clergy, Sanderson was in 
 great poverty, Boyle engaged him by a salary to write 
 Cases of Conscience. Edward Lord Denny, Baron of 
 Waltham, afterwards Earl of Norwich, was the friend 
 and patron of Perkins while alive, and bestowed kind- 
 ness upon his family after his death; and the same 
 person also gave to Hall, at an early period of his life, 
 the living of Waltham Cross. The collection of Per- 
 kins's Works is dedicated to Lord Waltham, as San^ 
 derson's Lectures are to Boyle. 
 
 Among the evidences of the general interest felt in 
 such speculations, I may notice the foundation of the 
 Professorship in virtue of which I now stand before 
 you. It was founded in 1683 by Dr Knightbridge, 
 fellow of St Peter's College, and by Anthony Knight- 
 bridge his brother, who took the requisite steps for 
 carrying into effect the intentions of the original testa- 
 tor ; these being found to be in some degree informally 
 declared. The endowment was afterwards augmented 
 by Dr Smoult, the first person who occupied the pro- 
 fessorship. Of others of my predecessors I may have 
 occasion to speak hereafter. 
 
 Dr Knightbridge is said to have been of the county 
 of York. The first part of his university education he 
 received at Wadham College, Oxford. When a Bache- 
 
38 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lor of Arts of three years' standing, lie was brought 
 from Oxford to St Peter's College; and was, in 1645, 
 made a fellow of that College, in the place of one of 
 the royalists, who were then ejected in great numbers 
 from fellowships in this University by the Parliament- 
 ary Commissioners. I have not been able to learn 
 any circumstances which disclose the views which he 
 entertained when he established this foundation of a 
 Professorship, as he terms it, of " Moral Theology or 
 Casuistical Divinity." Treatises on " Moral Theology" 
 were, as I have already said, very frequently published 
 about this time on the Continent, both by divines of 
 the Roman and the Protestant Churches; and Cases 
 of Conscience, as we have seen, were studied with in- 
 terest ia England. The designation of the Professor- 
 ship employed by the Founder appears to show that 
 he assented fally to the practice of treating Morality 
 mainly upon theological grounds, which had usually 
 prevailed till his time; but which shortly after began 
 to suffer innovation, as I shall soon have to relate. 
 
 In the mean time, I must not terminate my first 
 Lecture, without again begging the indulgence of the 
 University, for the very imperfect manner in which, 
 at the present time, I am able to execute the office of 
 delivering such Lectures as the Professorship requires. 
 The proper study of Moral Philosophy requires no ordi- 
 nary amount of reading and of thought. I trust that, 
 hereafter, I shall be able to bring before my hearers 
 the results of a longer course of labour employed on 
 this study, and in a maturer form. But I was desir- 
 ous that, after so long an interruption of the activity 
 of an office which may be so useful in this University, 
 not a single year should elapse without something 
 being done by me to mark its revival; and I conceived 
 that, by taking a limited field, the history of Moral 
 Philosophy in England, and especially in tliis Univer- 
 sity, and by tracing only the more prominent features 
 of this history, I might be able to offer some views not 
 uninstructive, even with so short a time of preparation 
 and among other employments. This therefore will 
 be my scheme of Lectures for the present year. In 
 
PLAN OP LECTURES. 39 
 
 future years I may attempt, perhaps, a wider range of 
 research, although I would beg to be excused at present 
 from laying down any definite plan or fixed period. 
 My power of giving a full attention to the subject may, 
 for some time, be limited by the prosecution of other 
 speculations which I would not willingly resign '. More- 
 over, these wider speculations to which I refer, al- 
 though at first they may appear to have no direct 
 bearing npon the special study which belongs to this 
 Professorship, will, I can venture to say, be found in 
 the end to be subservient, in a very important man- 
 ner, to the clearness and soundness of our ethical rea- 
 sonings. Inquiries into the nature of truth, the means 
 and methods of its' discovery, and the philosophy of 
 science, even though they set out from the study of 
 physical science, if they are at all successful, cannot 
 fail to exercise a strong and favourable influence upon 
 our studies with regard to moral truth, moral science, 
 and the true philosophy of human life. 
 
 1 The author was then engaged on the subject of the History and FkUo- 
 sophy of the Inductive Sdenees. 
 
LECTUEE II. 
 
 HOBBES. 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured to point out the course of 
 things by which the Casuistry of the Romish 
 Church became, in the writers of the Reformed 
 Churches, Moral Philosophy, or, as it was then justly 
 termed. Moral Theology. I have also attempted to 
 show that the doctrine which prevailed among our 
 Divines after this change was one in which an original 
 authority, a divine sanction, and a place as a large 
 part of the foundation of moral rules, was ascribed to 
 Conscience ; the structure of man's duties being rested 
 upon Conscience and upon the Divine precepts con- 
 jointly. It has appeared also that the discussion of 
 such subjects had extended far beyond divines and 
 learned men. The use of a vernacular literature, the 
 right of private judgment which was countenanced and 
 stimulated by the Reformation, and the general tend- 
 ency to a stirring, questioning, and contentious tem- 
 per, which was at work in the world, led a very great 
 number of the unlearned, and of persons in all ranks, 
 to take a lively and active interest in speculations 
 concerning questions of morality, even when the in- 
 quiry was pursued to the deepest foundations and the 
 most entangled intricacies of the subject. I may add 
 that the amazing and rapid progress of physical science, 
 in the latter pai-t of the seventeenth century, led men 
 to look at other branches of knowledge with a vague 
 expectation that some great improvement might be in 
 store for them also. . Novelty had ceased to affiight, 
 and had become, in /the eyes of many, a recommenda- 
 
HOBBES. 41 
 
 tion. The old was no longer necessarily the right. 
 Truth might perhaps, it was now imagined, be found 
 elsewhere than in the ponderous tomes of the past. 
 All that was to be allowed to stand must secure its 
 place by proving its claims. Nothing was protected 
 from examination. All things were again to be tried, 
 that the age might find for itself what was good. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it was not at all likely 
 that the doctrines of Moral Theology, such as I have 
 stated them, would pass unquestioned. In the tumult 
 and effervescence of men's minds, even the sacredness 
 of Conscience might no longer be treated with reve- 
 rence. In the universal movement, even the founda- 
 tions of Morality might be dug up, in order to be 
 relaid. Among so many obstinate questioners, so 
 many bold ianovators, some one might probably be 
 found who would deny the received principles on 
 which Morality had hitherto been built in the Christian 
 world, and would propose some new system, as more 
 suited to the newly enlightened time. 
 
 Nor was the received system, in truth, well pre- 
 pared for a defence against any vigorous attack. The 
 foundations of the city were laid, but the walls were 
 but little advanced in the building; and there was 
 no solid impediment to prevent some audacious Re- 
 mus from leaping over the rampart of the future 
 mistress of the world. The doctrine that Morality 
 rested jointly upon Conscience and upon Scripture 
 was generally admitted among divines; but the de- 
 velopement of this fundamental notion into a con- 
 sistent and solid system, had not been executed. The 
 separate offices of these two foundation stones had 
 not been assigned with due accuracy; and with regard 
 to Conscience, the morality founded upon it, which 
 could only have been impregnable if it had been ex- 
 pounded in a scheme composed of the most rigorous 
 demonstrations, systematically connected and arranged, 
 had never been treated but in a disjointed and arbi- 
 trary manner; the reasonings being, indeed, generally 
 sound as far as they reached, but not starting from 
 any common point, nor completed so as to leave no 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 unprotected chasms. Conscience, though claiming to 
 be an independent authority, often called upon other 
 powers for aid ; upon Divine, and even upon Human 
 sanctions, so as to disclose a secret misgiving of her 
 own strength, and to invite the aggression of any 
 enterprizing adversary. 
 
 Such an adversary this country soon produced. A 
 man bold, acute, penetrating, unshrinking in specu- 
 lation, confident in his own powers, contemptuous of 
 the opinions of others, treating with little tenderness, 
 hardly with affected decency, the common prejudices 
 and feelings of mankind, but able to impress his 
 thoughts upon men with singular vividness and energy, 
 — such a man dared to lift his hand against the Moral 
 Theology of the time. He dared to proclaim, to the 
 alarmed ears of his contemporaries, that right and 
 wrong had no independent existence ; that moral good 
 and evil were sought and must be sought, not for 
 their own sakes, but on account of extraneous ad- 
 vantages ; that the natural condition of man is a state 
 of war ; that Might is Right, and that Conscience is 
 only Fear. 
 
 The person of whom I speak is the celebrated 
 Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, who published his 
 opinions in the time of the Commonwealth and of 
 Charles the Second. He lived in considerable famili- 
 arity and respect among the eminent men of his time : 
 but his doctrines were looked upon by most of them 
 as dangerous and offensive novelties. He himself in- 
 deed was at least as well persuaded as any of his 
 readers, of the originality of his views. In one of his 
 works' he asserted, that though Physics was a new 
 science, Civil Philosophy was a still newer, since it 
 
 1 Elemenis of Philosophy ^ 1656, de- 
 dicated to the Earl of Devonshire. 
 After mentioning Copernicus, Gali- 
 leo, Hervey, Kepler, Gassendi, Mer- 
 senne, and the College of Physicians 
 in London, as the only true Natural 
 Philosophers, he adds "Natural Phi- 
 
 losophy is therefore but young: but 
 CiTUPhilosophyis yet much younger, 
 as being no older (I say it provoked, 
 that my Detractors may know how 
 little they have wrought upon me) 
 than my book Be Cine." 
 
HOBBES. 43 
 
 could not be truly said to be older than his book De 
 Give (first published in 1642). And he boasted of 
 the smallness of his acquaintance with preceding- 
 writers, as if it had been a merit ; declaring that if he 
 had read as much as other men he should have been 
 as diill of wit as they were. 
 
 Hobbes's doctrines are well known to the general 
 English reader. He deriyes right and wrong from 
 the consideration of man in a state of nature. And 
 this state of nature is, according to him {Leviathan, 
 p. 62), a state of mutual war ; a constant war of every 
 man against every man. In this state of nature no 
 moral element exists. "To this war of every man 
 against every man, this also is consequent, that 
 nothing can be unjust. The notions of Eight and 
 Wrong, Justice and Injustice, have there no place. 
 Where there is no common power, there is no Law; 
 where no Law, no Injustice. Force and Fraud are, in 
 war, the two cardinal virtues. Justice and Injustice are 
 none of the faculties either of the body or the mind" 
 {Leviathan, p. 63). From this state of nature springs 
 the civil body or commonwealth, the origin of rights 
 and duties. And this combination is {Leviathan, 
 p. 87) something more than consent and concord; it is 
 a real unity of them all in one and the same person. 
 The multitude, so united in one person, is called 
 a Commonwealth. "This is the generation," he adds, 
 " of that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more 
 reverently" [that is with the reverence due to i«], 
 " of that Mortal God to which we owe (under the 
 Immortal God) our peace and defence." As there is 
 no element of justice or morality in man while still 
 unsocial, and no society but the union of individuals, 
 it is plain that in this way we can have no right and 
 wrong, except what positive law and consequent punish- 
 ment make such. Eight is the power of enforciug ; 
 Duty is the necessity of obeying. 
 
 Since the common power thus determines all ques- 
 tions, and acknowledges no counterpoise in man's 
 moral faculties, we may easily conceive with what 
 terrible attributes it must be invested. "The sove- 
 
44 HISTORY OP MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 reign, whether he be a single person or an assembly, 
 contains in himself the origin of all good and justice. 
 No man can, without injustice, protest against his 
 ordinances" (Leviathan, p. 90). " His acts cannot be 
 accused. He is judge, not only of what is necessary 
 for the peace and defence of the whole, but he is 
 judge of what doctrines are fit to be taught" {Levia- 
 tham, p. 91). "It belongeth to him that hath the 
 sovereign power to be judge, or constitute all judges, 
 of opinions and doctrines, as a thing necessary to peace, 
 thereby to prevent discord and civil war." And thus, 
 even man's moral nature is annihilated in the pre- 
 sence of this overwhelming power. "In the next 
 place," he says in another part of his work (Leviathan, 
 p. 168), "I observe the diseases of a Commonwealth, 
 that proceed from the poison of seditious doctrines ; 
 whereof one is that every 'private rnan is judge of good 
 andevU actions,^'' whereas, he says, "it is manifest that 
 the measure of good and evil actions is the Civil Law ; 
 and the Judge, the Legislator, who is always the repre- 
 sentative of the Commonwealth. Prom this 'false 
 doctrine' men are disposed to debate with themselves, 
 and dispute the commands of the commonwealth ; and 
 afterwards to obey or disobey them, as in their pri- 
 vate judgments they shall think fit : whereby the Com- 
 monwealth is distracted and weakened." 
 
 Of course the authority of Conscience is thus abo- 
 lished by the power of Hobbes's Gommonwealth; nor 
 does he shun this consequence. "Another doctrine 
 repugnant to Civil Society is, that whatsoever a man 
 does against his conscience is sin : and it dependeth 
 (this even) on the presumption of making himself 
 judge of good and evil. Therefore, though he thfl,t 
 is subject to no Civil Law sinneth in all he does 
 against his conscience, because he has no other rule 
 to foUow but his own reason; yet it is not so with 
 him that lives in a commonwealth : because the Law 
 is the public conscience, by which he hath already un- 
 dertaken to be guided." 
 
 It is evident thab such principles must annihilate 
 all Civil Liberty as they destroy aU Morality. Accord- 
 
HOBBES. 45 
 
 ingly Hobbes maintains {Leviathcm, p. 89) that the 
 sovereign power cannot be forfeited; that the subject 
 cannot change the form of government. Not only so ; 
 but he dwells with strong predilection upon the advan- 
 tages of the most absolute monarchy. Thus he urges 
 (Leviathan, p. g6) that in monarchy, the private in- 
 terest of the man is the same with the public interest 
 of the sovereign ; — that " a monarch receiveth coun- 
 sel of whom, when, and where he pleaseth :" — " but 
 when a sovereign assembly hath need of counsel, none 
 are admitted but such as have a right thereto from 
 the beginning j which for the most part are of those 
 who have been versed more in the acquisition of 
 wealth than of knowledge :" — to which other advan- 
 tages of monarchy are added and insisted apon; while 
 the inconveniences of monarchy, though stated, are 
 diluted and balanced by bringing forwards greater in- 
 conveniences of assemblies. 
 
 Such then are the consequences which result from 
 taking man, divested of any moral principles, as the 
 element of the world, and building up the frame of 
 Civil Society by the mere juxta-position of individuals. 
 In this way is formed that Great Leviathan, which, 
 in this system, establishes and rules over all human 
 institutions, and even determines what shall be held 
 as divine. In reading this account we are almost led 
 to imagine to ourselves a monstrous idol, composed of 
 human beings, yet invested with the attributes of 
 superhuman power, and worshipped as the Creator of 
 Justice and Law, Peace and Order, Truth and Reli- 
 gion. But perhaps you think such an image too 
 strange, too monstrous, too terrible to be steadily 
 dwelt upon. Not so. It is the image oifered to us 
 by the author of the Leviathan himself : — offered too, 
 not in the vague lineaments and airy colours which 
 words bestow, in which so many an uncouth and ex- 
 travagant figure is presented withotit offending us ; 
 but carefully drawn as a visible picture in lines and 
 shades. It is the frontispiece of his book; and I 
 think no one can- look at the representation without 
 discovering in it a kind of grotesque sublimity. This 
 
46 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 is tte picture. — Over a wide spreading landscape, in 
 which lie villages and cultivated fields, castles and 
 churches, rivers and ports, predominates the vast form 
 of the Sovereign, the Leviathan, the Mortal God. Its 
 breast and head rise behind the most distant bills j its 
 arms stretch to the foreground of the picture. Its 
 body and members are composed of thousands upon 
 thousands of human figures, in the varied dresses of 
 all classes of society ; all with their faces turned to- 
 wards the sovereign head, and bending towards it in 
 attitudes of worship. The head has upon it a kingly 
 crown ; the right hand bears a mighty sword; the left 
 a magnificent crosier. In the front of the picture is 
 a city with its gates and streets, its bastions and its 
 citadel; in which, high above all other edifices, rise 
 the two towers of a noble cathedral. Nor is this 
 figure thus predominating over the country and the 
 city, the only intimation how vast and comprehensive, 
 how strong and terrible, is the power thus bodied 
 forth. Below, in various compartments, are emblems 
 of the provinces and instruments of this power. On one 
 side, a castle on a rock, from the battlements of which 
 the smoke rolls, as a piece of ordnance is discharged; 
 on the other, a church with a figure upon its roof, of 
 Faith, holding her cross; on one side, the c6ronet; 
 on the other, the mitre. On the one side is a cannon, 
 the thunderbolt of war; on the other the thunder- 
 bolts, in their mythological form, indicating, perhaps, 
 the fulminations of the ecclesiastical sovereign. On 
 the one side, are the peaceable arms of Logic, Syllo- 
 gism and Dilemma, Spiritual and Temporal . argu- 
 ments ; on the other, the sharper arguments of mate- 
 rial arms, to be used by nations when reason fails, 
 lances and firelocks, drums and colours; finally, on 
 one side the judiciary tribunal, seated in solemn order, 
 with their dark robes and formal caps ; on the other, 
 the more stormy tribunal of the battle-field, the 
 charge of hostile armies, sloping spears, bristling 
 through volumes of smoke, the combat of horse and 
 foot, the victors and the dying. Nor must I pass un- 
 poticed, the physiognomy of the supreme figure itself. 
 
HOBBES. 47 
 
 In the common editions, the face has a manifest re- 
 remblance to Cromwell (the •work was published in 
 1651), although it wears, as I have said, a regal 
 crown : and in these, the engraving is well executed 
 and finished. But in the copy belonging to Trinity 
 College Library, the face appears to be intended for 
 Charles the First. The engraving of this copy is very 
 much worse than the other, and is not worked into 
 the same careful detail by the artist, although the 
 outline is the same : and the text of the book ia a 
 separate and worse impression, although the errata are 
 the same with the other copies, as well as the date. 
 How Hobbes himself, or any other person, should 
 come to print the Leviathan in this manner, I am 
 quite unable to explain. 
 
 I now proceed to notice the reception which this 
 and other works of Hobbes met with. Many of his 
 doctrines were at once condemned, not by divines only, 
 but by the generality of sober-minded men. Among 
 these we may place the great and good Lord Clarendon, 
 who objected to them as soon as they were published. 
 He relates, that as soon as he had read the Leviathan, 
 Hobbes's friend. Sir Charles Cavendish, asked him, 
 by the author's request, what his opinion was of the 
 book. " Upon which," he adds, " I wished he would 
 tell him, that I cotdd not enough wonder, that a man 
 who had so great a reverence for civil government, 
 that he resolved all wisdom, and religion itself, into 
 simple submission to it, should publish a book for 
 which by the constitution of any government now 
 established in Europe, whether monarchical or demo- 
 cratioal, the author must be punished in the highest 
 degree, and with the most severe penalties." The 
 political doctrines of this work, indeed, (which may be 
 summed in the expression I have used, that Might 
 makes Eight,) had perhaps a personal as well as a 
 philosophical object. For when at Paris, Clarendon 
 met Hobbes, then, like himself, an exile, in the time 
 of Cromwell's usurpation, Hobbes mentioned to him 
 some of the conclusions which his book, then printing, 
 was to contain. "Upon which I asked him," says 
 
48 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Clarendon, " why he ■would publish such doctrine : to 
 which, after a discourse between jest and earnest upon 
 the subject, he said, The truth is, I have a mind to go 
 home" Clarendon himself published a reply to the 
 Leviathan. This work, A brief View amd Survey of 
 the Dang&rous and Pernicious Errors to Chv/rch and 
 State in Mr Hobbes's book, entitled, The Leviathan, 
 did not appear till long after the work which it op- 
 posed. "It could not reasonably be expected," the 
 author says, " that such a book would be answered in 
 the time when it was published, which had been to 
 have disputed with a man that commanded thirty 
 legions, (for Cromwell had been obliged to support 
 hinn who defended his Usurpation) : and afterwards 
 men thought it would be too much ill nature to call 
 men in question for what they had said in ill times." 
 Hence the reply was not published till many years 
 after the Restoration, when Clarendon was again 
 exiled by the base and profligate sovereign whom he 
 had served too well. His dedication to the king be- 
 gins in a manner which, under the circumstances, 
 appears to me afiecting. " It is," he says, " one of the 
 false and evil doctrines which Mr Hobbes has pub- 
 lished in his Leviathan, that a banished subject, during 
 the banishment, is not a subject; — and that a banished 
 man is a lawful enemy of the Commonwealth that 
 banished him. I thank God, from the time that I 
 found myself under the insupportable burthen of your 
 majesty's displeasure, and under the infamous brand 
 of banishment, I have not thought myself one minute 
 absolved in the least degree from the obligation of the 
 strictest duty to your person, and of the highest grati- 
 tude that the most obliged servant can stand bound 
 in; or from the affection that a true and faithful 
 Englishman still owes, and must still pay to his coun- 
 try. And as I have every day since prayed for the 
 safety of your person, and the prosperity of your afiairs, 
 with the same devotion and integrity as for the salva- 
 tion of my own soul; so I have exercised my thoughts 
 in nothing so much as how to spend my time in doing 
 somewhat that may prove for your majesty's service 
 
HOBBES. 49 
 
 and honour." And he signs himself " Your majesty's 
 most faithful and obedient subject, and one of the 
 oldest subjects that is now living to your father and 
 yourself, Clarendon." The work is dated Moulins, 
 1673, and was printed by the University of Oxford ia 
 1676. Nor was this strong condemnation of Hobbes's 
 doctrines confined to persons, like Clarendon, of high 
 principles. In 1666 his Leviathcm, and treatise Be 
 Owe were condemned by the Parliament. And when 
 a bUl was brought into the House of Commons to 
 punish atheism and profaneness, Hobbes considered it 
 as likely to be employed against himself and was 
 much alarmed. 
 
 There were many other replies made to Hobbes 
 from the first. Tenison, afterwards Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, published a book called The Greed of Mr 
 Hobbes examined, in 1670; and Bishop Bramhall, a 
 little later, wrote The Catching of the Leviatham,^. I 
 shall not now dwell upon these and other works on 
 that side. It is plain, from all circumstances, that the 
 whole tone and temper of Hobbes's philosophy ofiended 
 and shocked those who had been accustomed to reve- 
 rence the doctrines of morality as usually taught. Thus 
 Bramhall says, that "if it be necessary, I will not 
 grudge, upon his desire, (God willing) to demonstrate 
 that his principles are pernicious both to Piety and 
 Policy, and destructive to all relations of mankind 
 between Prince and Subject, Father and Child, Master 
 and Servant, Husband and Wife; and that they who 
 maintain them obstinately, are fitter to live in hollow 
 trees among wild beasts than in any Christian or Po- 
 litical Society, so God bless us ! " {Preface to Defence 
 of True Liberty.) And it is stated that, ia this Uni- 
 
 i This was not the only allusion 
 to Hobbes's title whidi his adversa- 
 ries indulged in. Clarendon's An- 
 swer to him has a frontispiece which 
 exhibits Andromeda chained to a 
 rock, and a terrible sea-monster ad- 
 vancing through the water towards 
 
 her, while Perseus, his destined de- 
 stroyer, hovers above and prepares 
 to execute his task of liberating the 
 distressed maiden; who I suppose 
 represents Truth, as her foe does the 
 Leviathan, 
 
50 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 versity, a student was removed and punished for 
 offering to defend in tte schools a Thesis taken from 
 Hobbes's doctrine. 
 
 And yet in truth these tenets, so startling, so 
 alarming, so offensive, were very far from being new. 
 These bold paradoxes had long previously been brought 
 before the eyes of the speculative world. The whole 
 of this controversy had agitated the schools of philoso- 
 phy many ages earlier. The Greeks, who left few 
 paths of speculation untrodden, and who, in almost 
 every subject, seized the great antitheses between which 
 opinion still oscillates, had taken hold of that opposition 
 of systems which was here concerned, in the most 
 vigorous manner: and the Romans, who pursued as 
 rhetoricians what the Greeks had begun as philoso- 
 phers, found in this dispute a congenial field for their 
 eloquence and skill. The dialogues of Plato and of 
 Cicero are full of discussions which are, in substance, 
 the same as those which took place between the ad- 
 versaries and the disciples of Hobbes; — between those 
 who assert that moral right and wrong are pecuKar 
 and independent qualities of actions, and those who 
 say that these terms mean only that the actions lead 
 to other extraneous advantages and disadvantages. 
 The Stoics and the Epicureans represented, very nearly, 
 these opposite schools, which i-un through the history 
 of morals. It is true, that Christian philosophy had 
 for a long time driven into disgrace, and almost ex- 
 pelled, the tenet that pleasure alone is good, and that 
 power alone is justice. Yet even in the Christian 
 world such opinions had already reappeared after their 
 season of obscurity. The old controversies were be- 
 ginning to rouse themselves from their slumber, and 
 to come forwards, modified and somewhat changed. 
 Pomponatius and Machiavelli in Italy had attacked, 
 though covertly, the metaphysical and moral principles 
 which had reigned tiU their time uncontested; Gas- 
 sendi in Prance had professed and adopted the doctrines 
 of Epicurus, clothed in a Christian robej Descartes 
 was even then teaching that it was the philosopher's 
 duty to doubt of every thing before he believed. Nor 
 
HOBBES. 51 
 
 was the connexion of Hobbes's doctrines with those of 
 such men difficult to discern. 
 
 Gassendi was one of the most ardent admirers of 
 the philosopher of Malmesbury, as was Mersenne, who 
 was termed by the Parisians " the resident minister of 
 Descartes." And Hobbes's opinions were so far con- 
 sistent with the tendency of the times, and favoured by 
 external circumstances, that they found many admirers. 
 Many perhaps accepted some of the opinions without 
 seeing the tendency of the system. According to 
 what Clarendon says ; — " Of those who have read his 
 book, there are many who, being delighted with some 
 new notions and the pleasant and clear style throughout 
 the book, have not taken notice of those downright 
 conclusions which undermine all those principles of 
 government, which have preserved the peace of this 
 kingdom through so many ages, or restored it to peace 
 when it had at some time been interrupted; and much 
 less of those odious insinuations, and perverting some 
 texts of scripture, which do dishonour and would 
 destroy the very essence of the religion of Christ." It 
 would seem that Charles the Second himself and his 
 courtiers, who were, very naturally from what they 
 felt and saw, disposed to take the lowest view of hu- 
 man nature, were inclined to admire many of Hobbes's 
 maxims. Clarendon says, in the Dedication of his 
 Reply to Charles the Second, that he had often tried 
 and hoped to prevail upon his Majesty to give himself 
 the leisure and the trouble to peruse and examine some 
 parts of the Leviathcm, "in confidence that they would 
 be no sooner read than detested by you; whereas the 
 frequent reciting of loose and disjointed sentences and 
 bold inferences for the novelty and pleasantness of the 
 expressions; the reputation of the gentleman for parts 
 and learning, with his confidence in conversation ; and 
 especially the humour and inclination of the time to 
 all kind of paradoxes, have too much prevailed with 
 many of great wit and faculties, without reading the 
 context, or observation of the consequences, to believe 
 his propositions to be more innocent, than upon a 
 more deliberate perusal they will find them to be." 
 
 4—3 
 
52 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 Undoubtedly such causes liad their effect in pro- 
 curing currency and influence to Hobbes's opinions. 
 He possessed in a great degree that quality of mind 
 and will which has often characterized the founders of 
 philosophical sects; and a comparison between him 
 and more recent writers who have become the heads 
 of more similar schools might be amusing and instruc- 
 tive. It will be found, at least in Hobbes's case, that 
 the most extravagant arrogance, joined with great and 
 indeed professed ignorance, does not destroy, if indeed 
 it do not favour, the power of the master over his 
 disciples. What is stUl more remarkable is, that this 
 power, although it generally implies great acuteness 
 on particular points, and the invention or adoption of 
 some clear short trains of reasoning in special cases, by 
 no means depends upon the faculty of following with 
 certainty and clearness a course of rigorous demon- 
 stration. The history of Hobbes afforded a very cu- 
 rious example of this. Among other studies, he turned 
 himself to that of mathematics; and in this, as in other 
 cases, his overweening self-opinion soon led him to 
 believe that he was infinitely superior to the professed 
 cultivators of the subject, — had detected their weak- 
 ness and error, and might treat them with supreme 
 disdain. He also persuaded himself that he could 
 solve the questions which had been attempted in vain 
 by mathematicians; and which they had now despaired 
 of, and set down as impracticable. He published a 
 Duplication of the cube; a problem, which, as is well 
 known, proposed in the time of Plato, has, up to the 
 present day, been considered (geometrically) impracti- 
 cable. It may perhaps be allowable in this place, and 
 not uninstructive, to describe the nature of Hobbes's 
 error, which led him to imagine he had solved this 
 problem. He gave a construction, in which two lines, 
 drawn in a certain manner in his diagram, each inter- 
 sected a third line; and his reasoning supposed that 
 the two intersected the third in the same single point. 
 Wallis and other mathematicians easily showed that, 
 although the two points of intersection were very near 
 each other, they did not absolutely coincide; and 
 
HOBBES. 53 
 
 Hobbes did not hesitate to reply, that the space occu- 
 pied by one of the points was large enough to take in 
 the other also. 
 
 This matter was the subject of long and angry 
 controversy. Hobbes wrote Quad/ratwa Circuli, Gu- 
 hatio SphoercB, BupUcafio Gubi : also Be Principiis et 
 JRatiocinatione Geometrarum Contra Fastuosum Pro- 
 fessorem: also Six Lessons to the Professors of the 
 Mathematics at Oxford (1656) : and also Sriy/Aai 'Aypu- 
 [lerpCai, 'AypoiKi'as, 'AvTwroXtTctas, 'A/iia^eias; or Marks 
 of the Absv/rd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish 
 Church Politics, and Barbarisms of John Wallis, Pro- 
 fessor of Geometry amd Doctor of Divinity. These 
 writings are full of the most extravagant arrogance, 
 ignorance, and dogmatism which can be imagined. 
 Wallis, on the other side, treated his adversary with a 
 severity and contempt which, at any rate on this sub- 
 ject, there could be no doubt of his deserving, in his Rob- 
 biani puncti dispunctio : Hobbesius Heautontimorume- 
 nos: Due correction for Mr Hobbes, or School-discipline 
 for not saying his Lessons right; and other writings. 
 
 The same utter want of comprehension of the 
 nature of science appeared in Hobbes's judgment re- 
 specting the Royal Society of London, which he cen- 
 sured at its first institution for attending more to 
 minute experiment than general principles ; and said 
 that if the name of a philosopher was to be obtained 
 by relating a multifarious farrago of experiments, we 
 might expect to see apothecaries, gardeners, and per- 
 fumers rank among philosophers. And yet the man 
 who thus thought it ridiculous to seek for truth by 
 accumulating experiments, was one who in his youth 
 had lived in habits of intimate intercourse with Lord 
 Chancellor Bacon, and was said to have assisted him 
 in translating his works into Latin. Nor did this 
 contempt of facts withhold him from himself proposing 
 many explanations of physical phenomena j nor did 
 his profound ignorance of the very nature of science 
 prevent his drawing up a general scheme of the 
 branches of science and philosophy. (See The Levia- 
 than, Chap. I.) 
 
54 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The fact is, ttat those system-makers' who have 
 collected schools of the most devoted disciples, have 
 generally been persons who did not, in their systems, 
 attend, in any connected or philosophical manner, to 
 facts; but boldly and emphatically asserted a few 
 assumed principles, which the general progress of men's 
 minds had prepared them to receive; and who deduced 
 from these principles their consequences. They have 
 not been inductive, but deductive spirits, although it 
 by no means follows that, even in deduction, they were 
 exact and safe reasoners. 
 
 Some of Hobbes's contemporaries did not overlook 
 this unphilosophical character of his mind. Harring- 
 ton in his Oceama, notices it. "Of this kind," he 
 says (p. 2), " is the ratiocination of Leviathan through- 
 out his whole Politics, or worse ; as when he saith of 
 Aristotle and of Cicero, of the Greeks and Romans 
 who lived under popular states, that they derived 
 those rights, not from the Principles of Nature, but 
 ti-anscribed them, into their books out of the practice 
 of their own commonwealths, as grammarians describe 
 the rules of language out of poets. "Which is as if a 
 man should tell the famous Harvey, that he tran- 
 scribed his circulation of the blood, not out of the 
 Principles of Nature, but out of the anatomy of this 
 or that body." 
 
 Hobbes, in the latter part of his life, received 
 from foreigners and others that kind of attention 
 which is naturally bestowed upon the patriarch of a 
 new and stiiking system of opinions, good or bad. He 
 had been sent in his youth (1603) to Magdalen Hall, 
 Oxford; and in 1608, was by the recommendation of 
 the Principal of that house, taken into the family of 
 William Cavendish, soon after created Earl of Devon- 
 shire, as tutor to his son. In 1631 he became tutor 
 to an Earl of Devonshire of the next generation. On 
 the breaking out of the troubles in England, he re- 
 turned to Paris, where he lived in intercourse with 
 
 1 For example, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, 
 
HOBBEg. 55 
 
 the most considerable men of letters ; but after the 
 publication of the Leviathan, he returned to England, 
 and lived principally at the Earl of Devonshire's seat, 
 Chatsworth, in Derbyshire. Here he was allowed to 
 live as he liked, his habits being somewhat peculiar ; and 
 was treated with the tolerance and indulgence which 
 his relation to the famUy rendered suitable. But the 
 earl, we are told, " would often express an abhorrence 
 of some of his principles in policy and religion ; and 
 both he and his lady would frequently put oflf the 
 mention of his name and say, he was a humourist, and 
 nobody could account for him." He died in 1679 at 
 the age of ninety-one. 
 
 Among the causes which contributed much to the 
 currency of Hobbes's doctrines we may, I think, 
 reckon as one, that he was the first writer who habi- 
 tually and prominently employed, in the explanation 
 of man's moral condition, a principle with which we 
 are now very familiar, and which has in it something, 
 at least for a time, very persuasive. I mean, the 
 principle which we now call the Association of Ideas. 
 Hobbes, undoubtedly, very clearly pointed out the 
 process which is thus designated, before Locke, to 
 whom its discovery is usually ascribed. " The cause," 
 — ^he says (p. 17) in his Hwrruvn Natwre — "The cause 
 of the coherence or consequence of one conception to 
 another is their first coherence or consequence at that 
 time when they are produced by sense ; as for exam- 
 ple, from St Andrew the mind runneth to St Peter, 
 because their names are read together; from St Peter 
 to a stone, for the same cause; from stone to founda- 
 tion, because we see them together;" and so on. And 
 thus, he observes, the mind may run almost from any- 
 thing to anything. But the material step in the in- 
 troduction of this principle, was, not the stating the 
 facts only, which others also had done, but the using 
 it as an explanation of mental habits and operations. 
 A large part of Hobbes's philosophy consists in such 
 explanations. Thus he says, " Pity is imagination or 
 fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding 
 from the sense of another man's calamity." The same 
 
56 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is the case in his celebrated explanation of laughter : 
 " The passion of laughter proceedeth from the sudden 
 imagination of our own odds, and eminency ; for what 
 is else the recommending of ourselves to our own good 
 opinion by comparison with another man's inferiority, 
 or absurdity?" And this principle is indeed the main 
 foundation of the whole treatise of Humwn Naiwre. 
 
 I do not intend now to discuss the truth of doc- 
 trines, so much as to point out their succession and 
 revolutions. Otherwise, I might observe that the 
 Doctrine of the Association of Ideas, applied as an 
 explanation of the moral constitution of man, must 
 be very imperfect, and indeed can never be more than 
 a small fragment of explanation. For if it be asserted 
 that any notion or conception becomes what it is by 
 the association of ideas, if, for instance, this is the 
 way in which right comes to be right, and honesty to 
 be honesty, we still want to know vjiik what the out- 
 ward act or occasion is associated in order to have this 
 impress stamped upon it ; and also, to discover whence 
 this new agent derives its power of making things 
 appear right and honest. We are referred back from 
 moral good to something else; but it may easily hap- 
 pen that this object thus referred to may require 
 analysis as much as the good which we first contem- 
 plated. In many cases the explanation of results by 
 the association of ideas is only at best treading back 
 a few steps on a winding path, and this can do but 
 little towards telling us where we are. To give us 
 such an explanation, is to show us the final links of 
 the chain, when we want to know the strength of the 
 hook from which its beginning hangs; it is to trace 
 the history of a philosophical doctrine, when we want 
 to know about its truth. 
 
 But yet it is far easier to most minds to follow the 
 explanations which trace such associations through a 
 few steps, than to seize hold of the fundamental moral 
 ideas on which moral truths depend. Hence, such a 
 philosophy as that of Hobbes's appeals to the common 
 intellect with great advantage; and they who reason 
 against it, before a popular audience, have a difficult 
 
HOBBES, 57 
 
 task to perform. Ttey have to appeal to ideas which 
 are dimly and waveringly entertained in the minds of 
 many of their hearers ; — ^to take for granted maxims 
 which cannot be seen to be true without a certain 
 discipline of mind. Before such an audience, if phy- 
 sical astronomy were the matter in discussion, the 
 Cartesian, with his vortices, would carry his hearers 
 with him farther than the Newtonian j for all men 
 can understand that a body may be swept along by a 
 current which is in contact with it ; but to see how 
 a distant force produces a regular orbit, the disciple 
 must have his mind furnished with clear mechanical 
 conceptions. And in like manner, before such an 
 audience, he who asserts that men are and must be 
 constantly governed by material tangible interests, will 
 be more likely to persuade, than he who holds that 
 the true governing power of the moral system is the 
 central Idea of Moral Good. 
 
 The opponents of Hobbes found this diflSculty in 
 their task. The course and state of the times increased 
 the difficulty; for the audience to which moralists and 
 metaphysicians had now to appeal was of a far more 
 popular cast than it had been in earlier times. Lite- 
 rature now addressed itself to a very extensive and 
 miscellaneous public ; not, as of yore, to a few persons, 
 all of whom were, more or less, studious, leaxned, and 
 thoughtful. All persons claimed a right to judge on 
 such matters, though few had had their intellects dis- 
 ciplined so as to understand the principles, or were 
 acquainted with any study which made them feel the 
 force of philosophical reason. The young age, as was 
 natural, wished to show itself independent of the past, 
 by rejecting its doctrines. To contradict the ancient 
 teachers was an easy mode of throwing off the humilia- 
 tion of being their scholars. But besides this advan- 
 tage on the part of the assailants, the assertors of inde- 
 pendent morality had not developed their own genuine 
 principle, and formed their own coherent system to 
 such an extent as to be well prepared for a conflict. 
 This appears plainly enough in the vacillation of 
 thought respecting the real foundations of morality 
 
•)8 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 ■which prevails among the English writers of the time 
 ■we speak of. For some of the opponents of Hobbes so 
 far assented to the language ia -which his doctrines 
 ■were expressed, that they allo-wed the proper end of 
 human action to be the pursuit of happiness, or rather 
 of ■well-being : but then, they maintained that the -well- 
 being ■which is found in the practice of virtue is of a 
 peculiar and superior kind, elevated above the plea- 
 sures of sense, and the advantages of extraneous conse- 
 quences. Others rejected altogether this notion of 
 virtue as deriving its essence from the direction of our 
 aims to ulterior objects; and held that in the very 
 ideas of moral good and evil there -was something 
 which established their obligation, and needed no ex- 
 trinsic support to make them recognized as the proper 
 guides of man's life and will. But neither of these 
 views was unfolded and confirmed with rigour and 
 clearness enough to enable it to stem the torrent of 
 the revohition which was taking place in philosophy. 
 The assertors of the former doctrine, when they had 
 once allowed moral good to rest upon an external 
 foundation of some other good, were never able to fix 
 any firm boundary which should preserve men in ge- 
 neral from sliding continually downwards, tiU they 
 were driven to the palpable good of mere pleasure. 
 And the maintainerS of independent morality, the 
 more genuine antagonists of the sensual and Hobbian 
 school, did not succeed, at least at the time, in bring- 
 ing into clear view, to the satisfaction of the popular 
 audience, (to which, as I have said, the appeal was 
 now made,) the native authority of -nrtue, or the uni- 
 versal and indestructible existence of the faculty by 
 which this aiithority is recognized. And thus, the 
 common crowd of reasoners on morals, who, having 
 their natural feelings of morality revolted and stimu- 
 lated to opposition by the startling paradoxes of the 
 Hobbian system, sought some clear and solid ground 
 on which they might take their stand and fight their 
 battle, were driven from one position to another, and 
 perpetually found their line of defence broken, and 
 their flank turned, by the admissions which their 
 
HOBBES. 59 
 
 leaders had made, or by the obscurity of the principles 
 to which they were compelled to appeal. 
 
 And besides these disadvantages, they were pressed 
 and borne down by another, perhaps more overwhelm- 
 ing still; I mean the influence of new systems, both of 
 physics and of metaphysics, with which the new philo- 
 sophy of morals allied itself. For in these new sys- 
 tems, much was so clearly convincing, that it was im- 
 possible to resist the evidence of its truth. And it 
 was a matter of great difficulty, requiring profound 
 thought and great acuteness, and even with these ad- 
 vantages, requiring time and experience also, to dis- 
 cern how far and in what form these new truths were 
 to be accepted, and buUt into the edifice of human 
 knowledge, so that the eternal foundations of right 
 and wrong should not be moved or undermined. And 
 thus, the defence of a genuine and independent moral- 
 ity was conducted in a mt^pner disunited, vacillating, 
 sometimes illogical, sometimes doggedly opposed to the 
 most boasted discoveries of modern times. To re- 
 construct moral philosophy after the ancient systems of 
 philosophy had been shaken to their foundations by the 
 powerful hands of Descartes and Hobbes, Bacon and 
 Newton, was no easy task. Strenuous and persever- 
 ing effijrts, skill and genius, were needed to remove 
 the rubbish of the ruin ; to work down again to the 
 foundation-stones; to show that these were still in 
 their places, and to build up upon them a fair and 
 solid edifice. In the mean time, men were content, or 
 compelled, to dwell in huts made of wrecks and frag- 
 ments, building for the day, providing for the hour, 
 daring not to dig downwards, nor to raise any loftier 
 pile. Such indeed has been in a great measure the 
 condition of the common structures of morals up to 
 the present time. But it will be proper to point out 
 more in detail the historical facts which illustrate this 
 state of things; and this I shall proceed to do in the 
 next Lecture. -i 
 
LEOTUEE III. 
 
 Hes-ky More, Whichcote, &o. 
 
 I HAVE said tliat after the sensual system of morals 
 of wMcli Hobbes was tbe promulgator in England 
 had been brought before the public, it was opposed in 
 two different ways. 
 
 Hobbes had declared the sole intelligible end of 
 man's actions to be his own gratification, and had 
 made virtue into a mere means, subordinate to this 
 end. In opposition to this doctrine, one class of writers 
 allowed that the proper end of man's actions was the 
 pursuit of happiness or well-being, but asserted that 
 virtue was in a peculiar and eminent manner the 
 condition of this well-being : the other class held that 
 virtue by its own nature was the right rule and end 
 of human action ; and I have stated, that the difficulty 
 of successfully maintaining either of these systems was 
 increased by the changes which about this time took 
 place in other parts of philosophy. I shall now offer 
 some further remarks on this period of the history of 
 Ethics. 
 
 Without attempting to enumerate all the writers 
 who belong even to the English branch of this contro- 
 versy, or to give a full account of those whom I 
 mention, I may observe that to the former class belong 
 Sharrock, Henry More, and Cumberland, to the latter, 
 Cudworth and Clarke. 
 
 The greater number of writers on these subjects at 
 the time of which I speak, belonged to the University 
 of Cambridge, but Sharrock was a Fellow of New 
 CoUege, Oxford. His work was printed in 1660, and 
 
HENRY MORE, WHICHCOTE, &C. 6 1 
 
 ■was entitled "YTroflecris rjOiK-q, De Officiia secundv/m 
 Natures Jus, seu de Moribus ad Raiionia Norrnam, 
 conformandis Doctrina; unde Casus ornnes Conscientiw, 
 quatenus Notiones a NatwrA srwppetunt, judicari pos- 
 sunt. Mhicorum swtiul, et Juris, presertim Civilis, 
 ConsuUorum consensus ostenditur, Principia item et 
 rationes Hohhesii Malmeshuriensis ad Ethicam et 
 Politicam spectantes, quatenus huic Hypothesi contra- 
 dicere videantwr, in examen veniunt. In this treatise, 
 it is asserted that the object of virtuous action is a 
 serene tranquillity and joy, which the ancients under- 
 stood under the name of pleasure; and a large array 
 of quotations from ancient authors is produced, with a 
 view to show that the pain of a troubled conscience 
 outweighs all other evil, and thus to prove the ground- 
 lessness of Hobbes's statement, that this effect of 
 conscience only depended on external fear. In like 
 manner the author collects testimonies, both of heathen 
 and Christian philosophers, to prove that the happiness 
 which is the true end of human existence is to be 
 obtaiued by following the dictates of right reason. It 
 is not to my present purpose to show how Sharrock 
 follows out his principle into a system of duties, nor 
 how he assails other parts of the Hobbian doctrines : 
 what I have thus briefly stated may serve to show the 
 general course of the controversy on the main ques- 
 tion, so far as Sharrock is concerned. I now proceed 
 to the Cambridge opponents of Hobbes. 
 
 Dr Henry More, of Christ's College, Cambridge, is 
 less known as an ethical writer than as a divine, of a 
 profoundly contemplative and pious character, of great 
 learning, but with a strong turn to an enthusiastic and 
 mystical cast of thought. He was greatly esteemed by 
 his contemporaries, and his writings, in their day, 
 were extensively read and much admired. Hobbes 
 declared that whenever he discovered his own philo- 
 sophy to be untenable, he would embrace the opinions 
 of Dr More; and Addison terms his Enchiridion 
 Ethicum an admirable system of Ethics. This is the 
 work of his with which I have here mainly to do. It 
 was written, it appears by the preface, in 1667, the 
 
62 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 author setting about his task, as lie declares, with, a 
 most unwilling and reluctant mind, at the earnest 
 entreaty of friends The grounds of his reluctance he 
 states to be — his persuasion that a dry system of 
 morality was of small value, compared with that virtue 
 which is not taught, but apprehended by faith from 
 God and his Word ; — his love of other more cherished 
 studies, which "soothed him with their mild and dewy 
 air;" — and his knowledge that an excellent and 
 learned person was writing a work on the immutable 
 reasons of Good and 111 ; by which I presume 
 Cudworth, the master of his own coUege, is pointed at. 
 Cudworth had already maintained the eternal and 
 indestructible nature of the measures of Good and 111, 
 on taking his B.D. degree in 1644. The Enchiridion 
 Mhicum does in fact approach in its doctrines very 
 near to the Immutable Morality/ of Cudworth. Yet, 
 inasmuch as, in stating his fundamental principles. 
 More seems to define virtuous actions by their refer- 
 ence to an end, rather than to their own nature, I 
 place him in the former division of the" opponents of 
 the sensual school. Ethics is, he begins by asserting, 
 the art of Kving well and happily, Ars bene heateque 
 Vivendi. And he forthwith proceeds to treat of this 
 happiness, de Beatitudine. He soon determines that 
 this beatitude is to be placed in a ' Boniform Faculty.' 
 Of this boniform faculty, the fruit is a happiness or 
 divine love, than which no greater happiness can exist, 
 he ventures to declare, either in the present life or in 
 the future. And this happiness must arise, not from 
 the mere knowledge, but from the sense of virtue, ex 
 sensu virtutis. , 
 
 It becomes obvious, in such expressions, how easy 
 the transition is, from the consideration of virtue as 
 the source of happiness, to virtue as perceived by a 
 peculiar faculty ; since, in this view, the happiness, as 
 well as the perception, requires a peculiar faculty for 
 its realization. " If any one," More says, " estimates 
 the fruit of virtue by that imaginary knowledge of 
 virtue which is required by definitions alone, it is aU 
 one as if he should try to estimate the knowledge of 
 
HENRY MORE, WHICHCOTE, &C. 63 
 
 fire from a fire painted on the wall, which, has no 
 power whatever to keep off the winter's cold." "Every 
 vital good," he adds, " is perceived and judged of by a 
 life and a sense. Virtue is an intimate life, not an 
 external form, nor a thing visible to outward eyes." 
 And he quotes from one of his favourites, the Neopla- 
 tonists, " If thou art this, thou hast seen this." 
 
 Much to the same purpose are his expressions in 
 verse, in his address prefixed to his poem entitled 
 Psychozoia, The Life of the Soul. 
 
 Reader, sith it is the fashion 
 
 To bestow some salutation, 
 
 I greet thee; give thee leave to look 
 
 And nearly view my opened Book j 
 
 But see thou that thine eyes be clear 
 
 If aught thou would'st discover there. 
 
 Expect from me no Teian strain, 
 
 No light wanton Lesbian vein. 
 
 Silent Recess, waste Solitude, 
 
 Thoughts deep-searching oft renew'd ; 
 
 Still conflict 'gainst importunate vice 
 
 That daily doth the soul entice 
 
 From her high throne of circling light 
 
 To plunge her in eternal night ; 
 
 Collection of the mind from stroke 
 
 Of this world's magic, that doth cloke 
 
 Her with foul smothering mists and stench. 
 
 And in Lethean waves her drench ; 
 
 A daily Death, dread Agony, 
 
 Privation, dry sterility; — 
 
 Who is well entered in these ways 
 
 Fit'st is to read my lofty lays. 
 
 But whom but fear and wrath control 
 
 Scarce know their body from their soul. 
 
 If any such chance hear my verse, 
 
 Dark numerous nothings I rehearse 
 
 To them ; make out an idle sound 
 
 In which no inward sense is found. 
 
 The production to which this address is prefixed 
 is a collection of allegorical poems, in the stanza, and 
 very much in the style, of Spenser. It is dedicated to 
 his father, to whom he gives as a reason, " You hav- 
 ing from my childhood tuned mine ears to Spenser's 
 rhymes, entertaining us on winter's nights with that 
 
64 HISTORY OP MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 incomparable piece of his The Fairy Queen, a poem as 
 richly fraught with divine morality as fancy." 
 
 These poems are entitled, Platonic Songs of the 
 Soul, treating of the Life of the Soul, her Immortality, 
 the Sleep of the Soul (against -which he argues), the 
 Unity of Souls, and Memory after Death. Perhaps I 
 may be allowed to quote a single stanza as a specimen : 
 
 But yet, my Muse, still take a higher flight, 
 
 Sing of Platonic faith in the First Good, 
 
 That Faith that doth our souls to God unite. 
 
 So strongly, tightly, that the rapid flood 
 
 Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud 
 
 Can stain, nor strike us off from unity. 
 
 Wherein we steadfast stand, unshak'd, unmov'd. 
 
 Engrafted by a deep vitality. 
 
 The prop and stay of things is God's benignity. 
 
 There can be little doubt that More's Enchiridion 
 was written with a view of counteracting the poison 
 of the Hobbian doctrines : yet the name of Hobbes 
 is, I think, nowhere mentioned in the book. On the 
 other hand, Descartes is constantly referred to, almost 
 always with commendation, though often with dissent 
 and warning. And to the Enchiridion is appended a 
 letter to a V. C, "containing an apology for Descartes, 
 and fit to serve as an Introduction to the Cartesian 
 Philosophy." When we consider the want of reverence 
 to the ancient philosophers which pervaded Descartes's 
 style of philosophizing, and the materialist aspect of 
 his physical doctrines, this admiration of him on the 
 part of More may seem somewhat strange and incon- 
 sistent. Yet we find this tendency in other works of 
 the same school, as in the Intellectual System of 
 Cudworth. And it may, I think, be in a great 
 measure explained. Besides that the Cartesian Philo- 
 sophy embodied and systematized many of the new 
 discoveries in the natural world, which no person of 
 clear intellect and active mind could fail to assent to, 
 when the evidence was fairly before him; — besides, 
 too, the charm arising from the subtle and acute meta- 
 physical spirit of the French reformer of philosophy : — 
 there was a positive principle involved in his specula- 
 tions, which was very congenial to the profound 
 
HENRT MOKE, WHIOHCOTB, &C, 65 
 
 idealism of More, -which we shall see adopted by other 
 writers of the same temper j and which may perhaps 
 be found to contain the true solution of the apparent 
 opposition between the empirical methods which have 
 led to the discoveries of modern times, and the cH priori 
 truths on which the admirers of antiquity love to 
 speculate. This principle is, the consideration of all 
 natural events and states as governed and determined 
 hjLaws. This is really the ideal element which pervades 
 modem physical philosophy; and this element prevents 
 it from presenting, as it is sometimes supposed by its 
 admirers to present, a mere assemblage of external 
 phenomena, discrediting the belief in the independent 
 faculties of the mind. 
 
 But without here pursuing this thought, I may 
 further observe, that the connexion and coherency of 
 Descartes's system, the professed severity of deduction 
 with which a few simple assumptions were traced into 
 a mass of details apparently commensurate with the 
 phenomena of the universe, the pleasure of demonstra- 
 tion, and the triumph of reason, to which the new 
 doctrine ministered, might very naturally seduce men 
 of speculative, acute, and inquiring minds. The force 
 of system on Hobbes's side was most easily balanced 
 by the force of a different system, by which, though 
 not directly opposed, it might be counterpoised. 
 
 A part of Descartes's philosophy which found great 
 favour with the moralists of the time, and with Henry 
 More among the rest, is the classification and analysis 
 of the Passions. But without here dwelling upon 
 this, it is of more importance to remark More's own 
 view of the place which the passions hold in man's 
 moral being. His view approaches to that of Plato, 
 as given in his Polity; that the passions are the 
 ministers of that superior faculty which is the proper 
 guide of human action. " Palam est igitur, Regnum 
 quoddam in nobis esse sive Principatum, Animamque 
 nostram rem esse non adeo soUtariam, sed satis 
 numeroso stipatam sateUitio, et in proprias Passiones 
 imperium habere." "We find too in this part of More's 
 views, an anticipation of a course followed by sucqeed- 
 
 5 
 
66 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ing writers of the same school, in that he examines 
 what is the due office of each Passion, according to the 
 intention of Providence, in the creation of man. Thus 
 the Passion of Shame, which is connected with mere 
 bodily pleasures, is an admonition to us that such 
 pleasures are not fiiUy suited to the excellence of man's 
 nature. Anger is the conspicuous part of Retributive 
 Justice. And here we are again led back to the Polity 
 of Plato, (though More quotes the sentiment from 
 another author,) by the doctrine that Resentment and 
 Desire are so put in their places, with respect to the 
 governing part of the Mind, that the former is the 
 guardian and protector of the body, the latter its pro- 
 veditor and feeder. Desire is the Purveyor, Resent- 
 ment, the Soldier of the Moral State. And thus, 
 More differs widely from the Stoics, who would reject 
 all human passions. The whole family of irascible 
 passions (the ^ujnoetSes of Plato) is, he says, highly 
 useful and necessary. If they were removed, man 
 woidd become either wily, or merely soft and enervate^ 
 and could never be Sopv<j)6poi iKavos xal ttiotos cr(o/xaTo- 
 tjivXai T^s apexes, which Horace has well rendered 
 " Virtutis verus custos rigidusque satelles." 
 
 It is easy to see how widely this analysis of the 
 Passions is opposed to that of Hobbes, who resolves all 
 our impulses into selfish fear and sel£sh desire ; and 
 rejects rules of action which give them any other 
 interpretation. 
 
 Henry More is one of the most remarkable 
 examples which our literary and ecclesiastical history 
 presents, of a contemplative life pursued in tranquil 
 steadfastness and self-sufficing joy. As soon as he 
 came to College, he immediately, as he informs us, 
 plunged himself over head and ears in philosophy, and 
 applied himself to the works of Aristotle, Cardan, 
 Julius Scaliger, all which he read before he took his 
 Bachelor's degree in 1 635. He soon went on to the 
 Neoplatonist philosophers and mystic divines, in whom 
 he found a more congenial strain of thought. He 
 became Fellow of his College (Christ's), and never 
 would engage himself for any long time in the duties 
 
HENRY MORE, WHIOHCOTE, &C. 6^ 
 
 of a more active office. In 1642 he resigned the 
 rectory of Ingoldsby, in Lincolnshire, soon after he 
 had been presented to it by his father, who had bought 
 the advowson of it for his son. This living, at a later 
 period, he conferred upon his friend Worthington; and 
 at his death gave the advowson to the College. In 
 1675 he accepted a prebend in the Church of Glou- 
 cester, being collated to it by one of his admirers, but 
 soon after resigned it to Dr Fowler, on whom it was 
 conferred at his request ; this being, it was supposed, 
 the view with which he liad accepted it. For he with* 
 stood the offer of various other preferment, including 
 a bishoprick, and even declined the mastership of his 
 own college. He made himself a paradise, as he said, 
 in his abode in the country ; and here he pursued the 
 studies and contemplations, of which, as we have seen, 
 he speaks with such strong affection. During the 
 civil wars and the commonwealth, he was not inter* 
 rupted in this studious retirement, although he had 
 made himself obnoxious by constantly refusing to take 
 the covenant. 
 
 Burnet, in his ^isfory of His Oivn Times, speaks of 
 More as one of a knot of men, principaUy of Cambridge, 
 who did honour to the Church, and who, agreeing with 
 each other in a great measure in their moral and 
 religious views, were directly opposed to the Hobbian 
 philosophy. "Hobbes," he says (Vol. i. p. 262), 
 " who had long followed the court [the exiled court of 
 Charles the Second], and passed there for a mathemati- 
 cal man, though he really knew little that way, being 
 disgusted by the court, came into England in Crom- 
 well's time, and published a very wicked book, with a 
 very strange title. The Leviathan." The bishop, after 
 giving a sketch of the doctrines of Hobbes, says, "This 
 set of notions came to spread much. The novelty and 
 boldness of them set many on reading them. The 
 impiety of them was acceptable to men of corrupt 
 minds, which were but too much prepared to receive 
 them by the extravagancies of late times. So this set 
 of men at Cambridge studied to assert and examine 
 the principles of religion and morality on clear 
 
 5—2 
 
68 HISTQKT OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 grounds, and in a philosophical manner. In this, 
 More led the way to many that came after him." 
 "More," he says again, "was an open-hearted and 
 sincere Christian philosopher, who studied to establish 
 men in the great principles of religion against atheism, 
 that was then beginning to gain ground, chiefly by 
 reason of the hypocrisy of some, and the fantastical 
 conceits of the more sincere enthusiasts." 
 
 I may add here the remainder of what Burnet says 
 of this body of men, for they peculiarly belong to our 
 Cambridge history. The better of the clergy who 
 appeared in Charles the Second's time, "were general- 
 ly," he says, "of Cambridge, formed under some 
 divines, the chief of whom were Drs Whitchcote, 
 Cudworth, Wilkins, More, and Worthington. Whitch- 
 cote was a man of rare temper, very mild and obliging. 
 He had great credit with some that had been eminent 
 in the late times, but made all the use he could of it 
 to protect good men of aU persuasions. He was much 
 for liberty of conscience ; and being disgusted with the 
 dry systematical way of those times, he studied to raise 
 those who conversed with him to a nobler set of 
 thoughts, and to consider religion as the seed of a 
 deiform nature (to use one of his own phrases). In 
 order to this, he set young students much on reading 
 the ancient philosophers, chiefly Plato, Tully, and 
 Plotin ; and on considering the Christian religion as a 
 doctrine sent from God, both to elevate and sweeten 
 human nature; in which he was a great example, as 
 well as a wise instructor. Cudworth carried on this 
 with a great strength of genius and a vast compass of 
 learning. He was a man of great conduct and pru- 
 dence : upon which his enemies did very falsely accuse 
 him of craft and dissimulation." 
 
 I here pass over what Burnet says of WiUdns and 
 Worthington, though interesting in itself as not so 
 closely bearing upon my subject. I may add, that 
 Whichoote was of Emmanuel CoUege, and in 1633 be- 
 came fellow and tutor ; and several of his pupils became 
 eminent in the church. In 1643 he was appointed to 
 fhe provostship of King's College, in the room of Dr 
 
HENRY MORE, WHICHCOTE, &C. 69" 
 
 Collins, Tufho was ejected by the Parliamentary Com- 
 missioners. He held the Eectory of Milton near this 
 place, and also gave an afternoon lecture at Trinity 
 Church in this town. He was removed from the 
 provostship at the Restoration, but without harshness 
 or disgrace; and died in 1683, at the Lodge of Christ's 
 College, where he was visiting his friend Cudworth. 
 His leading tendency is to dwell upon the divine 
 impress of good in man's mind susceptible of indefinite 
 improvement. His opinions are said to have some- 
 times clothed themselves, even in conversation, in 
 phrases more learned and abstract than belong to the 
 common language of other men. It is related of him 
 that one day seeing two boys fighting in the street, he 
 went up and parted them, exclaiming, " "What ! moral 
 entities, and yet pugnacious ! " 
 
 Of Cudworth I shall say more hereafter; but I may 
 here observe, that he, like Whichcote, was appointed 
 to the mastership of a college in Cambridge (Clare 
 Hall) by the Parliamentary Commissioners, and after- 
 wards became master of another (Christ's College) in 
 the Protectorate, but nevertheless was not displaced at 
 the Restoration. 
 
 I may say a few words of Worthington and Wil- 
 Idns, the remaining two of the Cambridge Divines 
 mentioned by Burnet in the above passage. The 
 former was, I believe, a relation of Whichcote, his 
 mother being niece to Sir Jeremy Whichcote, Bart. 
 He was educated at Emmanuel College, of which he 
 became a fellow about 1640 (B.D. 1646, D.D. 1655). 
 He was afterwards chosen Master of Jesus College, 
 when it was vacant by the ejectment of D'r Richard 
 Sterne, afterwards Archbishop of York : but it is said 
 that he was with some difficxilty prevailed upon to 
 submit to the choice and request of the fellows, his 
 inclination being to a more private and retired life ; 
 and soon after the Restoration he resigned that 
 mastership to Dr Sterne. In all this, we see much 
 of the same kind of unworldly contemplative character 
 which we have noticed in Henry More. Tillotson, 
 who preached his funeral sermon, says of him, that to 
 
70 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 set off his other virtues, there was added the ornament 
 of a meek and qtiiet spirit, which we can readily 
 believe. His writings are, for the most part, of a 
 theological rather than an ethical nature; and the 
 largest and most characteristic of them is a Discowee 
 on Christian Resignation, in which virtue he declares 
 aU duty and aU happiness to be included. But I may 
 notice expressions respecting conscience which occur 
 in Worthington, of the same kind as those which I 
 have already quoted from other writers of this period. 
 '* Conscience," he says (p. 582), "is God's deputy and 
 vicegerent ; the voice of conscience is God's voice," 
 " There is no such satisfaction : nor are there any such 
 joyous reflections as these (of men of a good conscience): 
 it is their /tifre eoprrjv aXXo Tt ifyowrai ^ to Seovra 
 irparreiv, their only feast to do their duty, as was said 
 of the Athenians ; and accordingly a good conscience 
 is a continual feast. Yet," he adds, naturally going 
 on to the religious view of the subject, " it is but an 
 antepast or foretaste of a better in heaven." And we 
 see the general character of his school, recognizing 
 glimpses of moral and Christian truth in the heathen 
 sages, in such passages as the following (p. 14) : "It 
 was a good maxim of the Pythagoreans, Tt/nijo-ets rov 
 0€ov apurra, eav T<S ®e<o Ttjv Sidvoiav ofioiwaris. Thou 
 shalt then in the most excellent and becoming way 
 glorify and honour God, when in thy mind thou art 
 like God, when in thine inward man thou art conform- 
 ed to God's image, and likewise, when thou art affected 
 as he is affected, when thou wiliest as he wUleth, when 
 thou art willing to have that destroyed in thee which is 
 contrary to the divine nature ; then most of all dost thou 
 honoxir and glorify God." Worthington was at one 
 time rector of Fen Ditton in this neighbourhood : but 
 his published sermons were principally preached at St 
 Benet Fink in London, where he carried ou the ser- 
 vice through the year of the plague in 1665, tUl the 
 church was laid in ashes by the great fire in 1666. He 
 had also, as I have already said, the living of Ingoldsby 
 given him by Dr More. He died smd was buried at 
 Hackney in 1671. 
 
HENET MORE, WHICHCOTE, &C. 7 1 
 
 The name of Wilkins is probably better known to 
 general readers than some of those ■which I have men- 
 tioned ; for he published several books which excited 
 much notice at the time, and are not yet forgotten. 
 Some of these had reference to the new discoveries in 
 physical science, which, as I have said, led to an ex- 
 pectation of a revolution in philosophy of all kinds. 
 In 1638, when he was only twenty-four years old, he 
 published a book entitled, The liiscovery of a New 
 World : or a Discourse tending to prove that it is possi- 
 ble there may he amother habitable world in the Moon ; 
 with a Discourse concerning the possibility of a passage 
 hither. Two years afterwards appeared his Discourse 
 concerning a new Planet, tending ta prove that it is 
 probable our Ea/rth is one of the JPlanets. He was on 
 the popular side in the great political struggle of the 
 seventeenth century, and was brother-in-law to Crom- 
 well, having married his sister Robina; but, as 
 Burnet says, " he made no other use of that alliance 
 but to do good offices, and to cover the University of 
 Oxford from the sourness of Owen and Goodwin." 
 He was made Warden of Wadham by the Parliamen- 
 tary Committee, and in 1659, by Richard Cromwell he 
 was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge ; 
 but on the occasion of the Restoration, next year, he 
 was removed from that position. He was, howevei-, 
 afterwards advanced to various ecclesiastical dignities, 
 and finally to the bishoprick of Chester. Although he 
 is much commended as a preacher and a practical 
 moralist, I do not think there is in his writings the 
 Platonism of More and "Whichcote. Indeed, from his 
 intercourse with the newer philosophy, he was likely 
 rather to take the tone which prevailed among its dis- 
 ciples, namely the morality of consequences : yet he 
 rather exhibits to us the earlier schools of ethics, quot- 
 ing copiously Plato and the Stoical writers; and speak- 
 ing of our chief end, which he says, (Principles and 
 Duties of Natural Beligion, p. 306), "must consist in 
 a communion with, and a conformity to, the chief good, 
 and consequently in being religious." 
 
 Perhaps it may not be without some interest, even 
 
Ji HISTOBY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in connexion with our subject, to refer to another re- 
 markable and celebrated work of Wilkins, his Essay 
 towards a Real Cha/racter, amd a Philosophical Lan- 
 guage; for such an attempt must have a bearing, it 
 would seem, on every part of philosophy. Such an 
 attempt, he observes in the Preface, contributes much 
 to clearing of differences in Religion, "by unmasking 
 many wild errors that shelter themselves under the 
 disguise of affected phrases, which being philosophi- 
 cally unfolded, and rendered according to the genuine 
 and natural importance of the words, will appear to be 
 inconsistencies and contradictions. And several of 
 those pretended, mysterious, profound notions express- 
 ed in great swelling words, whereby some men set up 
 for reputation, being this way examined, will appear to 
 be either nonsense, or very flat and jejune." I will give 
 a specimen of Wilkins's system in relation to our sub- 
 ject. The distribution of notions, for which he has to 
 find names in his Universal Language, is made accord- 
 ing to the Aristotelian scheme of the Ten Predica- 
 inents; nor would it have been easy to find a better 
 or more general arrangment. Now, if I would, for 
 instance, know the place of Conscience in this system, 
 where shall I find it? It is plain that Conscience does 
 not belong to either of the first two Predicaments, 
 Substance and Quantity; but to the third, QvMity, 
 being a quality or attribute of man. Now Quality he 
 divides, nearly following the Aristotelians, into Natu- 
 ral Power, Habit, Manners, Sensible Quality, and 
 Disease. And Conscience he arranges under the first 
 head, making three Natural powers of the Mind, or 
 Rational Faculties, Understanding, Judgment, Con- 
 science; besides Will, the Natural Motive-Power. It 
 may easily be conceived that all notions being thus ar- 
 ranged, may be noted by a corresponding arrangement 
 of visible symbols. Thus the Natural Powers are all 
 denoted by a line with a crescent touching its middle 
 point (__tL_); and those of the Mind are noted as 
 belonging to the first Class of such Powers by a mark 
 at the one extremity of the line, and the several 
 Powers of this Class are numbered by a series of marks 
 
HENRY MORE, WHICHCOTEj &C. 73 
 
 annexed to the otter extremity of the line. Hence the 
 four Natural Powers of the Mind just mentioned would 
 
 be thus denoted, /()\, A> l> ZXL/, /' O ^ 
 
 I have the more willingly dwelt a little upon the 
 Cambridge Moralists of this period, because I conceive 
 that there has always been in this place an important 
 school of moralists ; and it is interesting not only to us, 
 but to all who regard the history of Moral Philosophy, 
 to trace the changes through which the course of spe- 
 culation here has passed. 
 
 I now turn back to speak of the effect produced on 
 the public by these opponents of Hobbes. More's re- 
 ligious writings were extremely admired in their day. 
 The Mystery of Godliness, and the Mystery of Iniquity, 
 were extraordinarily popular; as also his Divine Dia- 
 logues concerning the Attributes and Providenoe of God. 
 These works found a peculiar public who delighted in 
 his pure and tranquil tone of thought, and his trains of 
 religious contemplation, by which they found them- 
 selves elevated and soothed. But this mystical and 
 enthusiastic spirit was altogether out of sympathy with 
 the general temper of the most active-minded men of 
 the times, and with the tendency of their speculations. 
 The inquirers of the age demanded something far more 
 definite and material than the Platonic Mrst Good; 
 and looked for something exhibiting more of the air of 
 novelty. Hence we shall not be surprised that More's 
 doctrines made few converts among the newer school : 
 and that his writings did not produce any very general 
 effect ia resisting the spread of the Hobbian tenets; 
 which, more or less modified, made their way very ex- 
 tensively. The doctrine of a complete distinction of 
 virtuous and sensual enjoyments, when considered only 
 as enjoyments, was not easy to impress upon the 
 popular mind. And gradually, as the difficulty of 
 maintaining the war at this point was more and more 
 felt, the higher school of moralists sought for aid in 
 another element of the subject; — namely, the will and 
 government of the Divine Lawgiver. 
 
 Undoubtedly this aspect of moral duty had never 
 
74 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 been lost sight of by Christian Moralists ; but still there 
 ■was, philosophically speaking, a difference in the modes 
 in ■which the Diidne sanctions of Morality were intro-, 
 duced by different -writers ; which difference it is, for 
 pur purpose, necessary to state broadly and distinctly. 
 Some theologians taught that God rewarded actions 
 and dispositions because they were good, while others 
 maintained that actions were only therefore morally 
 good because they were commanded by God. The 
 former doctrine ■was held by Cudworth, and other as- 
 serfcors of an independent morality; and these ■were, in, 
 fact, the genuine antagonists of the Hobbian school. 
 But in the first burst of the assault on the old ethical 
 ■FiewSj Morality had been driven to a lower ground; 
 and this, as the contest continued, they found it neces- 
 sary to entrench more carefully than they had at first 
 expected. And after the war had for some time gone 
 on in this direction, it ended, as we shall hereafter se^ 
 in a hollow compromise ; which, as I think it is impos' 
 sible to doubt, has been very injurious to moraUty, 
 This, however, is a subject for future discussion. 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 CUMBEBLAITD. CxjD WORTH. 
 
 I HAVE already said that there were, among those 
 of the English moralists, who rejected the doc- 
 trines of Hobbes, two schools: those who held that 
 goodness was an absolute and inherent quality of 
 actions, of whom was Cudworthj aod those who did 
 not venture to say so much, but derived morality from 
 the nature of man and the will of God jointly; and so 
 doing, introduced more special and complex views. 
 
 Eichard Cumberland, Fellow of Magdalene College, 
 Cambridge (about 1655), afterwards Bishop of Peter- 
 borough, was the opponent of Hobbes who took the 
 principal step towards the latter result which I have 
 mentioned. His BisquisUio Be Legibus Nativrce, pub- 
 lished in 1672, is the first extensive attempt to con- 
 struct a system of morals, which, being founded on 
 the consideration of the consequences of actions, 
 should still satisfy those moral feelings and judgments 
 of man in his usual social condition, which had been 
 revolted by many of Hobbes's doctrines and modes of 
 reasoning. That the work was intended to contain a 
 refutation of the Hobbian doctrines, is stated on the 
 title-page; and is evident, not only in the controversial 
 parts of the work, which constitute a large portion of 
 it, but also in the selection of the main principles of 
 the doctrine. Hobbes had maintained that the state 
 of the nature of man is a universal war of each against 
 all; and that there is no such thing as natural right 
 and justice; these notions being only creations of 
 civil society, and deriving their sanction entirely from 
 the civil ruler. Cumberland's fundamental proposi- 
 tion is, that the la.w of nature with regard to man's 
 
76 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 actions is a universal benevolence of each towards all. 
 It will easily be conceived that when this proposition 
 is once established, most of the common rules of 
 morality may be deduced from it. But a question 
 which also belongs ,to our present purpose is, how far 
 the author's proof of the principle is effective. Two 
 of the steps which his reasoning involves, enable him 
 easUy to place a wide interval between himself and 
 the Hobbian school: namely these: — First, that the 
 laws of human action must be universal; valid for all, 
 and consistent with themselves; for the Law of 
 Nature, as far as morals is concerned, cannot prescribe 
 to Titius to do that which it enjoins Sempronius to 
 prevent: and, second, that the Law of Nature, still 
 speaking with reference to morals, prescribes internal 
 dispositions as well as external actions, and contem- 
 plates the effect of actions upon the dispositions and 
 satisfactions of the mind, as well as upon the comforts 
 and pleasures of our body and outward state. These 
 two principles do certainly enable the moralist of con- 
 sequences to keep the mere sensualist at bay; and 
 have for a long period assisted many intelligent and 
 good men to frame systems of morals in which they 
 have been able tp rest tolerably well satisfied. 
 Whether such principles do not in fact assume dif- 
 'ferences which they do not expressly state, and 
 whether they do not give up the univei-sality, or at 
 least the independence, of the fundamental principle 
 of the system (the pursuit of mere happiness, special 
 or general), I shall not here examine. From the 
 time of Hobbes to our own, the degree of importance 
 practically given to these two considerations, has been 
 a leading feature of distinction among different schools 
 of moral writers ; and has determined, in a great mea- 
 sure, the general complexion of their system, as it did 
 in the case of Cumberland. 
 
 But Cumberland further, as I have said, calls to 
 his aid another great principle, which also was used 
 still more prominently by his successors. The proof 
 which he gives, that universal benevolence is a law of 
 our nature, is principally this: that the general pre- 
 
CUMBERLAND. CTTDWOBTH. "Jf 
 
 valence of such a rule of action, and of such dis- 
 positions, tends in the highest degree to the happiness 
 and well-being of all. But he is not content with 
 looking upon this tendency as a mere result of some 
 blind necessity, as an idtimate law of nature, by which 
 we must govern ourselves, looking no higher. The 
 tendency of all things is evidence of the purpose of 
 the Creator of all. The Law which nature thus 
 teaches us, is the law of a Divine Lawgiver. That 
 benevolence is thus the effective condition of the well- 
 being of his creatures, is a proof that he wishes us to 
 be benevolent: and thus universal love is his com- 
 mand, and those duties which flow from such a source, 
 are duties which he enjoins and sanctions. 
 
 We appear now to have advanced very far towards 
 the systems of morals prevalent in our own time ; yet 
 a slight attention to the differences which still remain 
 will show ns that there are several wide steps to make 
 before we pass from the moral system of Cumberland 
 to that of recent authors. In the first place, it is 
 very remarkable that though he thus introduces and 
 repeatedly insists on this aspect of the Laws of Nature 
 as the commands of a Divine Legislator, he nowhere 
 distinctly fortifies his system by a reference to a 
 future retribution; still less does he aid himself by an 
 appeal to the revealed will and promises of God. 
 This may appear very strange to those who are ac- 
 quainted only with the more recent aspect of this 
 subject; and I will therefore quote the passages which 
 specially refer to this part of the argument. After 
 explaining^ how benevolence to all rational beings is 
 necessarily connected with our own most perfect 
 mental state, he proceeds to show that other good and 
 bad consequences also are connected with, actions con- 
 formable to and at variance with this law of action ; 
 and that these consequences, whether resulting from 
 the course of nature or the institutions of men, may 
 be looked upon as the sanctions of a Divine Law. 
 He then adds^ not as a separate consideration, but 
 
 1 Cap. V. Sect. i5. = Cap. v. Sect, ss- 
 
78 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in a paragraph at the end of a long section, " Further, 
 if God teaches men to judge, that it is necessary both 
 to the common good and the private good of particular 
 persons, that all violations of the peace should be 
 restrained by punishments, when men come to know 
 of what evil consequence they are; — we may clearly 
 gather by parity of reason, not only that He himself 
 so judges, and wills that men shoiUd do so too ; but 
 also that He makes the same judgment on actions 
 equally hurtful, which men either do not know or 
 cannot punish.... This reasoning is obvious to all; 
 whence they cannot but think with themselves that 
 God has appointed punishments to their secret crimes; 
 and that He will avenge their insults upon the weak; 
 for there is no reason to doubt but that He will 
 pursue this end, the common good, in which both His 
 own honour and the happiness of rational beings is 
 contained. For a greater end there cannot be : and a 
 less end cannot be taken for the greatest by Him who 
 judges truly." Here we might expect, from the order of 
 the thought, to find a reference to a future state, in 
 which those sins are punished which escape with im- 
 punity in this life. But we do not find this. On the 
 contrary, the authqr merely says, "Thus the pangs 
 and obligations of conscience take their origin from the 
 government of God." And having thus, as he would 
 seem to imagine, provided sufficiently for the punish- 
 ment of secret crimes, he proceeds to another section, 
 beginning thus : "But let us return to the punish- 
 ments inflicted by men." He does, indeed, a little 
 afterwards, say', "Among the rewards [of virtue] is 
 that happy immortality which natural reason promises 
 to attend the minds of good men, when separated from 
 the body:" and, he adds, as applying to this future 
 state no less than to the present life, "that the happi- 
 ness of good men is inseparable from the remembrance 
 and exercise of virtue." "But," he proceeds, "it is 
 sufficient for me briefly to have hinted this, which has 
 by others been handled more at large." 
 
 I Cap. T. end of Sect. 42. 
 
CUMBERLAND. CUDWORTH. 79 
 
 Perhaps it is not difficult to see why this most 
 ■weighty and solemn consideration of a future state, is 
 introduced in so subordinate a manner, and so soon 
 dismissed again, by a writer of unquestioned and 
 earnest piety, Hobbes had made his attack upon the 
 established theory of morals, as it was commonly 
 entertained among men ; and it was the object of the 
 moral writers of his time to repulse this robust and 
 audacious assailant. According to the opinions cur^ 
 rent up to the period of this controversy. Virtue might 
 claim respect and obedience on all grounds^ She was 
 an eternal and independent power, not a creation of 
 co^mmand supported by external force. She had d. 
 natural and indisputable authority, not needing the 
 assistance of threat and promise. She was her own 
 reward, even if she had no other. She had the pro- 
 mise of this life, as well as of that which is to come. 
 She was beautiful in herself, as well as rich in her 
 dowry. These were the pretensions which Hobbes so 
 rudely assailed. These opinions therefore the oppo- 
 nents of Hobbes could not at once abandon. If they 
 had immediately called in a future life, as the only 
 mode of defending the cause of viriiue, they would 
 have seemed to give up the very point which was 
 assaulted. Could they instantly relinquish to the 
 sensualist the empire Of this world? Could they grant 
 to him, that, so far as the present life is concerned, his 
 doctrines are a wise rule of action ? Could they forth- 
 with abandon all mention of the dignity, the beauty, 
 the authority, the peace and joy, which belong to 
 Virtue? To do this at once, would have been too 
 shocking. If they had thought of it, the very heathen 
 would have put them to utter shame. 'For in 
 the ancient world they had before their eyes a glo- 
 rious phalanx of writers — Plato and Cicero, Epictetus 
 and Seneca, Academics and Stoics, who had never 
 shrunk from the defence of Virtue for her own sake. 
 These writers had found themselves able to frame a 
 system of independent morality which had elevated 
 and purified men's minds, and in some measure guided 
 their conduct; which had filled them with admiration, 
 
80 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and ■won tlieir sympathy, even before the Christian 
 religion came into the world to teach how man's 
 moral condition might be still further improved. Not 
 only so, but these ancient moralists had resisted, and 
 successfully, this very warfare, the fierce and bold 
 assault of the sensual school, before which the modern 
 moralists now wavered, and thought to change their 
 ground. It was impossible for these moralists, at 
 once, in the sight of the enemy, and after the first 
 modern attack, to abandon positions so dear to all 
 lovers of virtue, so nobly defended hitherto ; position^ 
 so strong in their ancient majesty, that even the 
 traditionary respect which hung around them would 
 secure them from a pudden revolution and ruin. 
 
 Tet, on the other hand, it is tolerably evident 
 that, in truth, some of the most important doctrines 
 of the Christian religion had a large share in making 
 moralists become more willing than they had hitherto 
 been, to give up the independent authority of V^irtue. 
 The views of man's nature, and of his relation to his 
 heavenly Master, which prevailed among our divines, 
 co-operating with the inherent defects of the ancient 
 system of moral's, — defects never supplied, nor capable 
 of being supplied, — made men not unwilling to try 
 what could be done to satisfy the cravings of his 
 speculative nature by combining moral with religious 
 views. The deficiencies of the moral system which 
 spoke of the inherent beauty and iudependent author- 
 ity of virtue were indeed evident enough: for alas! 
 with all its charms and its rights, how little can it 
 efi"ect among men ! how blind are they to its beauty ! 
 how rebellious to its authority! Even if we can, by 
 the light of nature, discover a rule of action, how little 
 can we discover motives which are fitted to urge men, 
 such as in general they exist, to conform to the rule! 
 That we here need some extraneous power which may 
 enforce our law, is too obvious. That the Divine 
 Government of the world which religion discloses to 
 us, is a motive needed by man and suited to his needs, 
 all moralists will gladly allow. Here, therefore^ we at 
 once see great advantages which result from calling in 
 
CUMBEELAND. CUDWOETH. 8 1 
 
 Religion to assist the ■weakness of independent moral- 
 ity. The law which had hitherto been feeble and 
 almost ineffective, thus became a living rule of con- 
 duct, realized by the prospect of the highest rewards 
 and most awful punishments. Man could thenceforth 
 no longer, as of old, separate with impunity knowing 
 from doing; — no longer see and approve the better 
 and follow the worse. But moreover this disposition 
 to give up the independent authority of moral good 
 was favoured by other theological views then prevalent 
 among our Divines : — by the desii-e to put, in the most 
 prominent and impressive forms, the supreme author- 
 ity of God, and the coiTuption of man's nature. The 
 former of these tenets was, or at least appeared to be, 
 strengthened by declaring God to be not merely the 
 assertor but the author of moral distinctions. The lat- 
 ter tenet, the corruption of man, was put in a strong 
 point of view, when it was held that he was so per- 
 verted as not only not to be able to do, but not able 
 even to hnow what was good. 
 
 I shall not here discuss these views at length. 
 I will only observe, in order to obviate any mistakes 
 which the statement of these opinions without any 
 corrective might occasion, that if we make Holiness, 
 Justice, and Purity, the mere result of God's com- 
 mands, we can no longer find any force in the declara- 
 tion that God is Holy, Just, and Pure; since the 
 assertion then becomes merely an empty identical 
 proposition. And with regard to the other point, if 
 man cannot, by the best exertion of his natural facul- 
 ties, attain to any knowledge of the distinction be- 
 tween right and wrong, he cannot, without a revela- 
 tion of God's will to him, be capable of vice or sin, 
 since these are the violations of moral rules and 
 Divine Laws concerning right and wrong actions. 
 
 It is with reluctance that I have introduced these 
 subjects, even in the most transient manner: but it 
 seemed to me that if I were not to do so, the state of 
 the question, which I am now treating historically, 
 could not be understood : and I trust to the indtilgence 
 of all my readers, to interpret in the most favourable 
 
 6 
 
82 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 manner, these scanty hints thus occasionally thrown 
 out, on subjects of the deepest importance. 
 
 But to return to the author of the Treatise Be 
 Legibus Naiwrce, of whose place in this discussion 
 I was speaking. I observe that the considerations 
 to which I have referred, and which withheld the 
 moralists of his time, even when they made conse- 
 quences their only guide, from at once reducing Virtue 
 to the mere pursuit of enjoyment, have very strongly 
 affected his work; and have left it full of expressions 
 and tenets which his successors in this path gradually 
 abandoned. For instance, he attaches great impor- 
 tance to what he calls Right Reason, and thus often 
 approximates to the school of Independent Morality; 
 as when he speaks of the obligation of the Laws of 
 Nature as immutable' : and again, at other times he 
 uses language like that of Henry More, as when he 
 speaks with enthusiasm of the pleasure of benevolent 
 dispositions^; "that joy which arises in our minds 
 from the prosperity of others, and which brings our- 
 selves home a plentiful harvest." 
 
 I will only further observe, as one of the causes 
 which contributed to the influence of this book upon 
 the succeeding course of English Moral Philosophy, 
 that it is constructed with a laborious imitation of 
 mathematical forms of demonstration; which, from 
 the reputation of the writings of Descartes, and the 
 progress of mathematical physics, were now beginning 
 to be looked upon as the genuine forms of true know- 
 ledge. In the same spirit, there is a frequent refer- 
 ence to mathematical examples to illustrate the nature 
 of necessary truths and demonstrative reasonings : 
 and the recent physiological discoveries are called in 
 to confirm the other indications which tend to show 
 that universal benevolence is the law of nature. Thus 
 he quotes from WiUis, the physician, an account of 
 the Plexus Nervosus of the intercostal nerve, and 
 even inserts a copper-plate, in order stiU further to 
 explain this structure; because, as he says, this part 
 
 1 Cap. v. Sect 23. a Sect 16. 
 
CUMBERLAND, CUDWORTH. 83 
 
 of the nervous system is one of tte things which 
 better enable man to rule his affections. His quota- 
 tion from "Willis is curious : " That the thoughts 
 relating to acts of the ■will or understanding (in "which 
 the powers of prudence and the virtues are conspi- 
 cuous) may be duly formed, it is necessary that the 
 torrent of blood in the breast be kept within bounds, 
 and the inordinate motions of the heart be restrained 
 by the nerves, as by reins, and be reduced to regu- 
 larity." Which purpose the intercostal nerve, he con- 
 ceives, answers; for "by these branches it supplies the 
 place of an extraordinary courier, communicating, to 
 and fro, the mutual sensations of the heart and brain." 
 
 The indications of purpose in man's structure and 
 constitution are most rightly taken into account, by 
 the moralist as well as by the physiologist; but I do 
 not conceive that this part of Cumberland's reasoning 
 was very happily developed by him. Indeed the 
 whole work, notwithstanding its mathematical form, 
 is wanting in method, and is constantly made tedious 
 and confused by the insertion of criticisms of Hobbes 
 in every part. It was however, as I have said, the 
 basis of much of our succeeding moral philosophy. 
 It was translated, or rather abridged, in English by 
 James Tyrrel, in 1692; and in I'jz'j a translation 
 was published by the Eev. John Maxwell. In the 
 remarks made by the translator in this edition, we 
 see that the author had not succeeded in conveying 
 clear systematic notions to his readers, at least of that 
 day. For these notes often complain of the author's 
 obscurity, and sometimes give an explanation which 
 is at variance with the system. This is not surprising ; 
 for in the mean time several other speculations had 
 come forth which altered the state of public thought, 
 and made it different from that which prevailed when 
 Cumberland's work was written. 
 
 These occurrences I must afterwards notice, but 
 I must first attend to the other division of the oppo- 
 nents of Hobbes. I have spoken of those who treated 
 virtue as a means to some other end : I must now 
 speak of those who considered it as an end in itself. 
 
 . 6—2 
 
84 
 
 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I have described the reasonings of those who consi- 
 dered Virtue as commendable, because she leads to 
 man's happiness and -weU-being : but I must now give 
 an account of those who ascribe to her an independent 
 value. The former, as we have seen, approximated 
 by degrees towards a view of morality such as now 
 prevails; the tendency of the doctrines of the latter 
 will appear as we proceed. 
 
 Of these assertorsof independent morality,Cudworth 
 is the principal. Ralph Cudworth, Fellow of Emma- 
 nuel College about 1637, Master of Clare Hall in 1644, 
 and of Clmst's College iu 1651, was, as I have already 
 said, the most genuine antagonist of Hobbes, since 
 he descended to no compromise, but steadily main- 
 tained the immutable and independent authority of 
 moral right. In doing this, he took the old high 
 Platonic ground on which the battle had in ancient 
 times been fought, although he both modified and 
 fortified the position by a judicious attention to the 
 recent progress of philosophy. Familiar with the 
 writings of the ancient moralists, he at once perceived 
 that all the bold and paradoxical dogmas of Hobbes, 
 strange and monstrous as they sounded in modem 
 ears, were but the repetition of the sophistries of 
 former times. His Treatise concerning Eternal and 
 Immutable Morality, begins by showing that there 
 have been some ia aU ages who have maintained that 
 Good and Evil, Just and Unjust, were not naturally 
 and immutably so, but only by human laws and 
 appointments. This assertion, which had been made 
 by Protagoras' and many others, was connected by 
 
 * Though the commentators on 
 Plato often speak as if Protagoras 
 were the prominent example of i^ 
 moralist who reduced Eight and 
 Wrong to mere Pleasure and Pain, 
 Gain and Loss, yet in truth, there 
 seems to be no reason to put bim in 
 this position. In the Platonic Dia- 
 lOsHe which bears his same, and in 
 
 which he is the principal figure, he 
 repudiates this doctrine. The doc- 
 trine that Might is Eight is asserted, 
 not by him, but by other Interlo- 
 cutors in the Platonic Dialogues; as 
 CaJlicles and Folus in the GSorgias, 
 and Thrasymachus in the first Book 
 of the Bepnblic. 
 
CUMBERLAND. CUDWOETH. 85 
 
 them with, the doctrine that we derive our knowledge 
 from our senses, which cannot give us information 
 of any thing certain and permanent ; and that in the 
 ever-flowing stream of the universe nothing can be 
 immutable and eternal. Plato himself had made it 
 one of his most serious tasks to reason against this 
 school. Two tenets of the Protagorean philosophy, 
 that the universe is constituted of atoms, and that 
 all our knowledge is only relative and phantastic, were 
 both rejected by Plato, as alike leading to skepticism. 
 Cudworth, taught by the recent progress and prospects 
 of physical philosophy, takes care not to make the 
 cause of the eternal fixity of truth depend upon the 
 rejection of the mechanical theory of the universe. On 
 the contrary, he turns the battery of the Atomic Theory 
 upon his adversaries : and maintains that the genuine 
 result of that Theory is, That Sense alone is not the 
 Judge of what does really and absolutely exist, but 
 that there is another Principle in us superior to Sense. 
 He further asserts that knowledge is an Inward active 
 Energy of the mind, not arising from things acting 
 from without : that some Ideas of the mind proceed 
 not from sensible objects, but arise from the inward 
 activity of the mind itself: that the intelligible notions 
 of things, though existing only in the mind, are not 
 figments of the miad, but have an immutable nature; 
 and hence he concludes, in an assertion of Origen, 
 that Science and Knowledge is the only firm thing in 
 the world. 
 
 This view of the nature of knowledge is proved, as 
 I have already said, upon the principles which are 
 unfolded so skilfully and agreeably in Plato's Dia- 
 logues ; the exposition being however materially modi- 
 fied with reference to the state of modem philosophy. 
 But the application of this doctrine of the eternal 
 and immutable nature of truth in general to the 
 particular case of moral truth, is less fully and clearly 
 developed \ After he has proved that "wisdom, 
 knowledge, mind, and intelligence, are no thin shadows 
 
 ' Cap. VI. p. 292, 
 
86 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOlsOPHT. 
 
 or images of corporeal and sensible things, but have an 
 independent and self-subsistent being, whicb in order 
 of nature is before body;" be contents himself with 
 saying, "Now from hence it naturally follows, that 
 those things which belong to Mind, and Intellect, such 
 as are Morality, Ethics, Politic?, and Laws, which 
 Plato calls the offspring of the mind, are no less to be 
 accounted natural things, or real and substantial, than 
 those things which belong to stupid and senseless 
 matter." 
 
 It must, I think, be allowed that the treatise of 
 Immutable Morality produced very little effect on the 
 Hobbian controversy : and though always mentioned 
 as one of our standard works on Morals, even now 
 produces little impression on most of those who view 
 it as an ethical work\ Nor is it diflB.cult to assign 
 reasons for this want of effectiveness in the book. In 
 the first place, this result is almost sufficiently account- 
 ed for by what I have stated : namely, the principles 
 of the work are not manifestly brought to bear on the 
 question. It may be well proved, we may suppose, 
 that all truth is independent and immutable; but we 
 want a great deal more than this general principle to 
 satisfy us that moral distinctions are independent and 
 immutable. We require a detailed application of the 
 general reasonings to the particular case. If it be so, 
 we would know how it is so :— what form the demon- 
 stration assumes when we use the terms of the propo- 
 sition we would establish : how the difficulties and 
 obscurities which seem to hang about it are affected by 
 this demonstration. Men will not be satisfied that 
 there is an adamantine chain, except we can show them 
 the links of which it consists. They will not believe 
 that moral ideas are determined lay eternal laws, 
 except we show them what these laws are ; just as 
 they would not believe that the motions of the planets 
 are governed by fixed laws, tiU these laws were 
 
 1 Mr Hallam, Iii<fira*Mre, iv. 300, 
 says: "Cudworth's reasoning is by 
 no means satisfactoiy, and rests too 
 
 much on the dogmatic metaphy- 
 sics which were then going out of 
 use." 
 
CUMBERLAND. CUDWOETH. 87 
 
 discorered aad stated. Cudworth in moral specula- 
 tions held the place which Kepler held in the specular 
 tions respecting the forces which govern the planetary 
 world. He asserted that there must be some fixed, 
 orderly, constant force, by which all things and their 
 relations are retained in a perpetual and immutable 
 harmony, but he did not succeed in placing before 
 men's eyes the very form and expression of this force ; 
 and hence he was hardly listened to, and deemed by 
 most a dreamy and fancifiil visionary. 
 
 But besides this reason, another may be mentioned, 
 which much impeded the influence of Cudworth's book 
 upon general readers. It was a book written in the 
 fashion of the past rather than of the present ; a book 
 of erudition rather than of formal demonstration. I 
 have already noticed that Cumberland's work gained 
 in efficacy by adopting the modern forms of demonstra- 
 tion. Cumberland, in the character and training of 
 his mind, belonged to the latter half, Cudworth to the 
 former half, of the seventeenth century. Cudworth's 
 learning was great, and he had well pondered and 
 digested it; but still his pages were, for modern 
 readers, too much overloaded with ancient authorities 
 and antiquarian disquisitions. Although this feature 
 is very far from being so much the case in the 
 Invmutahle MoroAvby as it is in the Intellectual System, 
 (which vast work was written against the supposed 
 atheistical principles of Hobbes's writings, as the Im- 
 mutahle Morality was against their immoral tendency), 
 it still appears even in the former work : as for example, 
 when he traces the doctrine of atoms to Moschus a 
 Phoenician^ who lived before the Trojan war, and 
 endeavours to identify this teacher with the Jewish 
 Lawgiver Moses. Speculations such as this, formerly 
 so grateful to the learned, now repelled rather than 
 attracted the common reader, Galileo, Kepler, Des- 
 cartes, had taught men to look forwards rather than 
 backwards, to future discoveries rather than to past 
 opinions; and even in morals, authority was now of 
 small weight. The reasonings of Plato and Aristotle 
 would formerly have derived additional force from 
 
88 HISTORY OF MROAL PHILOROPHY. 
 
 being given in their own words ; but now their being 
 presented in such a mode, led to the suspicion that 
 the reasonings would not bear to be delivered in the 
 modem form of demonstration. Thus Cudworth's 
 erudition weakened, rather than enforced, the effect of 
 his arguments, by making his dialect strange, and his 
 proofe suspected, to the audience which he addressed. 
 
 But besides these two reasons of the little effect 
 produced by Cudworth's Imrrvutahle Morality (reasons 
 residing in the work itself), there was a third, an 
 external cause, which contributed to the same result. 
 The book was, as it were, bom out of due time : it 
 did not come before the world tiU many years after 
 the death of its author, when the controversy had 
 made large advances : several works, which hold a 
 prominent place in this series of speculations, had 
 been published in the mean time, and had preoccupied 
 men's minds. The author died in 1688, and was 
 interred in the chapel of Christ's College; but the 
 IitmvutaMe Morality was not published till 1731, when 
 it was edited by Dr Chandler, Bishop of Durham. It 
 may serve to show the progi-ess of opinions, as one 
 generation succeeds another, to remark, that Cud- 
 worth's daughter was Lady Masham, the peculiar 
 friend and admirer of Locke, who lived almost con- 
 stantly, and at last died, at her house at Gates in 
 Essex. Her son. Sir Francis Cudworth Masham, into 
 whose possession Cudworth's papers came, was the 
 person who gave to the world the book of which I 
 have been speaking. And thus Cudworth's work, 
 which was, in spirit, a generation anterior to Locke, 
 was, in its time of publication, a generation later. 
 
 Cudworth and Locke are perhaps the two greatest 
 English names on the two contrary sides of the 
 question respecting the nature of knowledge. But 
 these two speculators made their philosophical voyage 
 with very different fortune. They started from the 
 opposite shores of the great ocean of speculation : 
 Cudworth in a vessel of heavy and antique fashion, 
 deeply laden with ancient treasures ; Locke in a lighter 
 bark, fitted to skim nearer the surface, and exhibiting 
 
CUMBERLAND. CUDWORTH. 89 
 
 in its rigging tie improvements of modern times. But 
 this was not all the difference. The breezes of popular 
 favour, which had long veered between the opposite 
 quartei-3 of Ideas and Sense, at last set steadily in 
 favour of the latter ; the Lockian theory rushed on 
 before the prosperous wind, with expanded saUs and 
 flying colours; while the system of Cud worth, ill suited 
 for such a rivalry, endeavoured in vain to make heac? 
 against the adverse influences. And thus at this periot 
 aU seems to be in favour of the ultimate success of the 
 new doctrine. 
 
 Yet let us not be too hasty in deciding thus. Let 
 us not despair of the fortunes of the course which leads 
 from Ideas to Truth. The voyage is yet far from 
 finished : it is hardly begun. "Who knows what 
 changes the successive time may still have in store ? 
 Perhaps the newer system, while it thus bounds on 
 with bending mast and swelling canvass, may be 
 suffering a strain which its texture is too frail to resist. 
 Perhaps its parting sides may admit the surrounding 
 flood, ever ready to whelm such adventures in its 
 unfathomable depths. Perhaps the rising storm may 
 soon bring to light the superior security of the stronger 
 forms of ancient building; perhaps the direction of the 
 wind may change; perhaps from that other shore, 
 lighter galleys, fitted for modern times, may advance 
 to relieve their comrade. Or, once more, perhaps it 
 may be found that both paths, rightly pursued, lead to 
 the same end : and persevering and slolful navigators, 
 who have taken their departure from the remotest 
 positions of the Intellectual Globe, may still meet in 
 some common point, to which their course is tending ; 
 may find and recognise each other as feUow-labourers on 
 some shore as yet undiscovered ; may rejoice together 
 in the bright sunshine of the unknown Islands of the 
 Blest, which they sought so long in mist and twilight, 
 ever mistaking each other, and missing of their aim '. 
 
 1 This passage has been criticised 
 
 as rhetorical and unmeaning. I can 
 
 f 
 
 hardly assent to the latter term 
 
 censure; for I conceive that the ex- 
 pressions will suggest, to an atten- 
 tive reader, what I meant to say:— 
 
90 
 
 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 Such a point of union ■we may consistently hope 
 there will be found. We know from the history of all 
 the most clear and undoubted portions of our know- 
 ledge, that except we are rightly guided by Ideas, 
 Truth is not to be found. From the physical sciences 
 themselves, the great boast of the philosophy of 
 experience, we know that experience cannot lead to 
 solid knowledge» except so far as it is combined with a 
 careful investigation of the ideas which knowledge 
 must involve. We know that the attempts to reject 
 these fundamental elements of truth involve us in end- 
 less change, obscurity, and doubt. We know, in short, 
 that we must look for no Science of Morals, as we find 
 no Science of any other kind, except we can discern 
 the region where the truths taught by Cudworth and 
 by Locke are united; where the eternal and the 
 immutable beams through the outward veU of the 
 actual and visible ; where experience gives reality to 
 Ideas, and Ideas give universality to the truths which 
 we gather from experience. 
 
 that the Lockian philosophy is al- 
 ways in dangeT of sinking into 
 skepticism, and is not able to soEtain 
 a strong controversy :— that thfi he- 
 ief in the reality of Goodness may 
 
 be strengthened from the side of 
 religion :— and that the morality of 
 principle and the morality of con- 
 sequences may be found ultimately 
 to coincide. 
 
LECTTJRE Y. 
 Locke. Claeke. 
 
 THE PHlosopliy of Morals is closely connected with 
 the Philosophy of Mind. New views respecting 
 the human understanding cannot fail to produce new 
 views of the foundations of duty : for in Psychology, 
 we cannot define the powers and operations of the 
 Understanding without treating of the Affections and 
 the Will; and in Ethics, it is not enough to consider 
 the office of the Will, we must also trace its dependence 
 upon the Understanding. 
 
 The historical sketch, which I have endeavoured in 
 previous lectures to give, of the progress of the contro- 
 versy concerning the Foundation of Morals, so far as 
 English writers are concerned in it, has brought us to 
 the well-known name of John Locke; who is commonly 
 considered the author of a great revolution in the meta- 
 physical system prevalent in England. To his place 
 in our argument we must therefore now turn our 
 attention. His celebrated Essay on the Sv/mam Un- 
 derstanding was first published in 1689, and therefore, 
 in point of time, is very little later than the works of 
 which we have already spoken. But stUl, in the tone 
 and spirit of his writings he belongs to a newer school; 
 for Cudworth, and Clarendon, and Harrington, and 
 even Cumberland, were disciples of the philosophy 
 which prevailed in England before the civil wars ; but 
 Locke was deeply and decidedly formed by the opinions 
 which came into vogue towards the end of that stirring 
 period. He is commonly looked upon, indeed, as the 
 founder and master of the New Philosophy which then 
 succeeded the Old; but I think it will be acknowledged, 
 by any one who carefully looks into the literary history 
 
92 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 of the subjects on whicli he wrote, that he originated 
 little or nothing. All the distinctive opinions which he 
 maintained had already been asserted, and very widely 
 entertained. They form the main substance of the 
 system of Hobbes, and of the concessions made by the 
 less resolute portion of his opponents. Locke's office 
 was not that of a discoverer, but one which more com- 
 monly places a man at the head of a school of philoso- 
 phers, the office of bringing together into a system, 
 tenets which others have taught in a less connected 
 form, and for which the time is ripe; of proposing 
 safeguards by which their obvious dangerous conse- 
 quences are seemingly averted ; and of expounding them 
 in a lucid and persuasive manner, generally inteUigible 
 to common readers. Such, I believe it will be found, 
 were Locke's fonctions in the history of English philo- 
 sophy. But my business with him, at present, is not 
 in this wider aspect, as the supposed author of a new 
 system of metaphysics; but as a writer, who having 
 great authority among his contemporaries, delivered 
 his opinions upon the question of the Foundations of 
 Morals, and both directly and indirectly influenced the 
 fortunes of this great controversy. It is at oace obvious, 
 in his case, that he belongs to the school of moralists 
 who reject the independence of morality, and reduce 
 moral good to a dependence on something else, namely, 
 the pleasure which it produces. This he plainly asserts. 
 "Good or evil osre nothing bu^^easure or pain, or that 
 which X)ccasions or prp^i^^measure or pain to us. 
 Moral goodf^H^£|^^^fl^^^Hmly the conformity or 
 disagreemenfyE! ^P^^^^UHMactions to some law 
 whereby good OT:tevil-^Hp^;g^h uft^by the will and 
 power of theJtiiv'-maker ; which gqod and evil, plea- 
 sure or pain, ag^pliog our observance or breach of the 
 law, by the decree of ithe Law-maker, is that we call 
 reward and punishment'." And what, perhaps, even 
 more tends to make him a conspicuous figure on this 
 side of the controversy, is, his arguments against innate 
 practical principles, in the beginning of this Essay; not, 
 
 ', Book n. ch. zxriU. { j. 
 
LOCKE. CLARKE. 93 
 
 it is to be observed, his assertion that man bas not m- 
 nate ideas; for the doctrine of the existence of such 
 ideas is in no way necessary to the support of indepen- 
 dent moral truth, any more than of independent geo- 
 metrical truth. But the mode in which Locke prose- 
 cuted the war against innate ideas, led him to adduce, 
 as important and instructive facts, all the wretched and 
 disgusting instances of human degradation and deprav- 
 ity, which tend to show how far man may lose his 
 moral nature. To dwell upon such cases has always 
 been a favourite mode of reasoning of those who hold 
 that moral judgments are merely artificial and conven- 
 tional; and however we may justify Locke's adoption 
 of this course, by the demands of the argument in 
 which he had engaged himself, the effect upon his dis- 
 ciples was likely to be, and was, to lead them to reject 
 all notion of actions being right or wrong in themselves. 
 Moreover, the general scope and leading principles 
 of Locke's system had the same tendency. All our 
 ideas, he holds, are derived from Sensation and Re- 
 flexion. The latter term, Reflemon, is so vague that it 
 allows his disciples to make of his doctrines what they 
 please. The meaning of this term may be extended, as 
 it has been extended by the more temperate philosophers 
 and genuine moralists of his school, in all times, and 
 especially in recent times, so as to save the interest of 
 morality for practical purposes, and to avoid, I might 
 say to evade, all glaringly offensive consequences. But 
 on the other hand, the term "Eeflexion" may be so 
 limited and restricted as almost to lose its effect in the 
 general proposition, and to leave the doctrine much the 
 same as if it had asserted ideas to arise from sensation 
 only. When a term so wide and vague, or so complex 
 and multifarious, so thin and shadowy, or so ponderous 
 and unmanageable, as this "Reflexion," is introduced 
 side by side with the clear bodily definite realities of 
 the senses (Sensation), it can hardly hold its place 
 securely as a philosophical term. It means too little 
 or it means too much. It means too little to balance 
 the sensible world, or too much to be heaped together 
 without analysis. Accordingly, while, as I have 
 
94 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 said, our own most reasonable philosopliers have 
 taken refuge in this term "Keflexion" to an extent, 
 which well nigh overturns Locke's system altogether; 
 those of other countries (the French followers of Locke 
 for example) have, more consistently, discarded it, as 
 a merely ceremonious expression; and have boldly 
 asserted, as Locke's great doctrine, that aU our ideas 
 are derived from the senses. Now this doctrine con- 
 cerning ideas irresistibly fastens upon us the ethical 
 tenet, that right and wrong are some modifications or 
 other of bodily good and iU, that is, bodily pleasure and 
 pain. And tiius Locke's name is made the badge of 
 the Sensualist School of morals, such as the School 
 appeared in the time to which he belonged. 
 
 Yet, in feet, Locke himself would not only have 
 disclaimed this position, into which his followers have 
 thus thrust him, but he really did cherish many views 
 and speculations which were altogether at variance with 
 the spirit and tendency of the Sensualist system of mo- 
 rals. These were probably the remnants of his education 
 in the philosophical school which preceded him. In 
 truth, this inconsistency is a general, perhaps a univer- 
 sal character of the founders of new systems of opinion : 
 such persons run onwards from their predecessors, but 
 they do not cease to hear their voices, and to share 
 their feelings. They reach a new point of view, but 
 they look backwards with regard, as well as forwards 
 with hope. They mount some unfrequented summit, 
 but they retain traces of the vale mit of which they 
 have climbed. They point the way to a new region, 
 but they themselves retain the habiliments and the 
 speech of the covintry out of which they have come. 
 They are not aware of the magnitude and completeness 
 of the revolution they have produced; and often dwell 
 with fondness on the expected endurance of things, of 
 which they themselves have prepared the termination. 
 
 Some such indications we find in the moral doc- 
 trines of Locke. For example, notwithstanding the 
 account which, as you have heard, he gives of the 
 nature of Morals, he repeatedly and anxiously dis- 
 cusses the question, whether Morality be capable of 
 
LOCKE. CLARKE. 95 
 
 demonstration. And he decides that it is so, or may- 
 become so, on the ground of that very system of ideas 
 which he had laboiired so strenuously to destroy. 
 This is the way he reasons. " The idea of a Supreme 
 Being, infinite in power, goodness and wisdom, whose 
 workmanship we are, and on whom we depend ; and 
 the idea of ourselves, as understanding, natural beings : 
 being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly 
 considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our 
 duty and rules of action, as might place morsility 
 among the sciences capable of demonstration; wherein 
 I doubt not but from self-evident propositions, by 
 necessary consequences as incontestable as those in 
 mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might 
 be made out to any one that will apply himself with 
 the same indifferency and attention to the one as he 
 does to the other of these sciences'." No moralist, 
 even of the school of Cudworth, would need to claim 
 more than is here conceded. 
 
 But how this is to be made consistent with the 
 doctrine that moral good and evil are only pleasure 
 and pain; or how the amount of pleasure or pain 
 which any action produces is to be brought into such 
 a demonstration, are far harder questions : questions 
 which, I think, none of Locke's followers have yet 
 solved. 
 
 Accordingly, the greater part of Locke's disciples 
 have disregarded altogether those suggestions respect- 
 ing a morality founded upon ideas, and established by 
 means of demonstration ; and have clung to that kind 
 of morality which is really the only one consistent 
 with his general view of human nature ; that which 
 makes moral good and evil merely the means of pro- 
 ducing pleasure and pain respectively. And as the 
 Lockian philosophy was rapidly diffused in England, 
 and deeply infused into the general ton's of specula- 
 tions on all subjects ; so this view of Morality was, in 
 speculation at least, and among those whose minds 
 
 ^ Essay, B. ir. ch. iii. % 18. 
 
96 HISTOET OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 required consistency in the systems wliich they em- 
 braced, very generally accepted and maintained. The 
 Hobbian opinions, softened and guarded no doubt, but 
 not fundamentally altered, were in a great measure 
 victorious. No one wUl deny, I think, that in the 
 general aspect of the principles and method of their 
 philosophy, Locke and his school approach incompar^ 
 ably more to Hobbes than they do to his antagonist 
 Cudworth. 
 
 In saying this, it will be understood that I speak 
 of the general tendency of the Lockian philosophy : 
 for in its actual result, its evil consequences were 
 averted by means of cautionary principles introduced 
 by the most moderate and judicious writers of the 
 school, and countenanced, as we have already seen, 
 by Locke himself. But all these stipulations and cor- 
 rectives did not prevent the promulgation of Locke's 
 philosophy from being felt as a vast accession of 
 strength by the lower, and a great addition to the 
 difficulty of their task by the higher, school of moral- 
 ity. Since that time, the morality of consequences 
 has been almost universally accepted j and the as- 
 sertors of essential and independent distinctions of 
 good and evil have foimd but a scanty audience and 
 a cold reception. 
 
 StUl, however, the other side of the question has 
 never been without its representatives ; and I must 
 now notice those who belong to the time of which 
 I speak. The principal figure among these is the 
 celebrated Dr Samuel Clarke, (afterwards the friend 
 of Newton,) who was edacated at Caius College in 
 this University in 1691, and the succeeding years. 
 Hi a dissertations on the Being and Attributes of God, 
 and on the Evidence of Natural and Bevealed Beligion, 
 do not refer to the nature of morals, as a principal 
 subject J bnt stiU, we find in these works clear as- 
 sertions of the eternal nature of moral distinctions. 
 We cannot doubt, he teaches, that all the relations 
 of all things to aU, must have always been present 
 to the Eternal Mind. In this sense, the relations are 
 eternal, however recent may be the things between 
 
LOCKE. CLAEKE. 97 
 
 ■which they subsist. These eternal relations of things, 
 different one from another, involve a consequent 
 eternal fitness or unfitness in the application of things 
 one to another : in regard to which fitness, the will of 
 God always chooses, and which ought likewise to de- 
 termine the wills of all subordinate rational beings. 
 These eternal differences make it fit and reasonable 
 for the creatures so to act; they cause it to be their 
 duty, or lay upon them an obligation so to do, sepa- 
 rate from the will of God, and antecedent to any 
 prospect of advantage or reward. Wilful wickedness 
 is the same absurdity and insolence in morals, as it 
 would be in natural things to pretend to alter the 
 relations of numbers, or to take away the properties 
 of mathematical figures. And to explain, what might 
 appear startling, in thus separating between Moral 
 Eight and the Divine Command, he says, " They who 
 found all moral obligation on the will of God must 
 recur to the same thing ; only they do not explain how 
 the nature and will of God is good and just." 
 
 Clarke, then, is an assertor of the independent 
 and necessary character of moral distinctions. But in 
 making this assertion, he declares such distinctions to 
 be perceived by the Reason^; and this he does, just at 
 the time when, in virtue of the teaching of Descarteg, 
 Locke, and others, the Reason had been separated from 
 the other faculties, limited to the operations of the 
 intellect, and deprived of its direct intercourse with 
 the emotions and affections, the materials of our moral 
 nature. The cause of independent morality was in 
 this way presented under great disadvantages. 
 
 Clarke was one of the most zealous promoters of 
 the new physical philosophy. Soon after taking his 
 
 - 1 It has been objected that in this 
 and the next paragraph I have given 
 an erroneous view of Clarke's po- 
 sition in the history of Moral Phi- 
 losophy. I do not altogether deny 
 the charge. BytheJ2easo?i,hedidnot 
 mean the i>i5(?ur'5wei2ea507i only. He 
 
 included the Intuitm Reason, which 
 his predecessors had held to be tlie 
 ground of moral judgments. I have 
 attempted to rectify the misstatement 
 in a supplementary Lecture printed 
 among the Additional Leclmres which 
 I follow these. 
 
 7 
 
9 8 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 degree in this University, he was actively engaged in 
 introducing into the academic course of study, first, 
 I the philosophy of Descartes in its best form, and next, 
 the philosophy of Newton immediately after its first 
 'publication. He was naturally led, therefore, both by 
 his familiarity with recent metaphysical distinctions, 
 and by his love of demonstration, to ascribe a great 
 weight to intellectual relations, and to overlook as 
 parts of the subject those in which the intellect had 
 not a direct or sole jurisdiction. If this had not been 
 the case, he could hardly have failed to see how in- 
 sufficient an account of moral distinctions it was, to 
 say that the denial of them implies an absurdity and 
 a contradiction. When Cudworth and the ancient 
 philosophers talked of wickedness being contrary to 
 Right Reason, the Reason was looked upon as the 
 governing faculty of all provinces of man's nature. It 
 was the fountain and treasure-house of all fundamental 
 general principles, by which we judge of truth of all 
 kinds ; and it was also the authority which applied 
 these principles to their practical uses. So viewed, 
 therefore, the Reason was qualified to pronounce moral 
 judgments; to extricate out of her own nature the 
 speculative truths which are involved iu her recog- 
 nized functions. But now the case was altered. The 
 office of Reason had been greatly narrowed and bound- 
 ed; and this had been done, I will suppose, for the 
 sake of argument, with great advantage to the clear- 
 ness and distinctness of metaphysical doctrines ; stDl 
 this change made it less safe than before to say, that 
 eternal distinctions of moral good and evil were objects 
 of the Reason. The Reason had now had her business 
 reduced to the employments of collecting ideas and 
 general principles from experience, and of combining 
 these according to the processes of discursive reasoning. 
 How could any one find, in this series of operations, 
 the road to eternal and immutable truths, concerning 
 good and bad, right and duty ? 
 
 Thus the doctrine of Clarke, Kke the opinion of 
 Locke which I before mentioned, that Morality is 
 capable of demonstration, may be considered as rem- 
 
lOCKE. CLAEKE. 99 
 
 nants retained by them of a philosophy then past j — 
 propositions already antiquated when they were pub- 
 lished ; — traditionary assertions repeated, because they 
 ■who asserted them did not perceive ho"w great a revo- 
 lution the import of their terms had undergone. If 
 Morality is still to be capable of demonstration, — ^if 
 her distinctions are really steadfast and unchangeable, 
 — we must seek some new source of just principles for 
 our reasoning, some new basis of fixity and perma- 
 nency. The discursive Eeason, generalizing and com- 
 bining the measures of good and ill which she obtains 
 from the senses, can never soar back again into the 
 higher region of absolute good ; though she may retain 
 some dim remembrance of it, which may still influence 
 her wanderings in this lower world. 
 
 V— a 
 
LECTUEE VI. 
 
 Mandeville. Warbtjeton'. 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured to explain in my previous 
 lectures that the tendency towards the lower view 
 of morality, which rests its rules upon consequences 
 merely, had acquired an extensive and powei-ftd pre- 
 valence in the beginning of the last century. This 
 view had been connected by Locke and his followers 
 with their metaphysical doctrines ; and these again, 
 besides their other recommendations, had been con- 
 nected, how rightly or necessarily it may hereafter be 
 our business to consider, but in men's minds they had 
 been connected with the general progress of science 
 and knowledge, and of new opinions, which that period 
 witnessed. And so striking and wonderful was that 
 progress, that we cannot at all marvel if men were 
 carried too rapidly onwards by the current, and were 
 led to think that the new metaphy.-ical doctrines which 
 had thus formed an alliance with an admirable body 
 of new truths, must be far sounder and better than the 
 old modes of speculation, which had been pursued for 
 so many ages with so little visible positive result. 
 The two sides of the great alternative of the Theory 
 of Morals, the Morality of Principles, and the Morality 
 of Consequences, had been combined respectively with 
 the old and the new metaphysical systems. Or rather, 
 while the Morality of Principles, as a system, remained 
 still involved in great perplexity and obscurity, the 
 Morality of Consequences was perpetually worked out 
 into clearer and clearer forms, and exjiressed in a more 
 
MANDEVILLB. WARBUHTON. lOt 
 
 pointed and precise manner. Hence, both Clarke;' who 
 asserted the doctrines of the higher moral school in. 
 terms no longer •well fitted to express them, and Butler, 
 ■who, maintaining them steadfastly, strove to avoid the 
 responsibility of expressing them in any fixed and 
 constant terms, produced little permanent effect upon 
 the general habits of thought of their contempora- 
 ries. The Morality of Consequences, the doctrine that 
 actions are good or evil as they produce pleasure or 
 pain, was pushed further and fiirther. A principle so 
 simple and tangible, all, it seemed, could apply. AU, 
 or at least a great number of men, ill fitted for the 
 office of moral teachers, did actually take courage and 
 apply it. The reverence which, handed down by the 
 tradition of ages of moral and religious teaching, had 
 hitherto protected the accustomed forms of moral good, 
 was gradually removed. Vice, and Crime, and Sin, 
 ceased to be words that terrified the popular speculator. 
 Virtue, and Goodness, and Purity, were no longer 
 things which he looked up to with mute respect. He 
 ventured to lay a sacrilegious hand even upon these 
 hallowed shapes. He saw that when this had been 
 dared by audacious theorists, those objects, so long 
 venerated, seemed to have no power of punishing the 
 bold intruder. There was a scene like that which 
 occurred when the barbarians of old broke into the 
 Eternal City. At first, and for a time, in spite of 
 themselves, they were awed by the divine aspect of the 
 ancient rulers and magistrates : but when once their 
 leader had smitten one of these venerable figures with 
 impunity, the coarse and violent mob rushed onwards, 
 and exultingly mingled all in one common destruction. 
 The general diffusion of the estimate of moral good 
 and ill by the pleasure and pain to which it leads, pro- 
 duced a profligate and sensual tone of moral discussion ; 
 and this extended with a rapidity not imaptly repre- 
 sented by the above image. As a promin'ent example 
 of this spirit, we may take the well-known Fable of 
 the Bees. This was a short apologue in verse, published 
 in F5ei4, by a physician of the name of Mandeyille, 
 the professed object of which was to shew that Private 
 
102 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 Vices are Public Benefits ; that the vices, as they are 
 usually held, of Selfishness, Luxury, and Lust, -within 
 certain limits, are the elements upon which the pros- 
 perity of a state depends, and, " that all the moral 
 virtues are no better than the political offipring which 
 flattery begot upon pride." The work possesses little 
 or no literary merit; and is only remarkable for 
 the notice it excited, and for the mode in which the 
 author, when put upon his defence, supported his 
 tenets : namely, as I have intimated, by professing 
 to trace to their consequences the courses which he 
 palliated. The main impression which the book is 
 calculated to convey is, the old licentious doctrine, 
 that virtue and vice are only conventions for keeping 
 society in order ; that virtue has nothing really lovely, 
 and vice nothing absolutely mischievous ; but that 
 on the contrary, our supposed virtues arise from the 
 coarsest springs, and our vices often produce the most 
 beneficial consequences ; (see for example, pp. 83, 4) ; 
 and especially that vice is an essential constituent of 
 riches and greatness in a moral state. 
 
 The book was presented as a nuisance, on account 
 of its profligacy, by the grand jury of the county of 
 Middlesex in 1723. And although this cii-cumstance 
 may be alleged, I hope justly, as proving that the 
 poison of the principles promulgattd. by this author 
 had not yet entirely pervaded English society, we may, 
 observe on the other hand, that the Presentment states 
 that many books and pamphlets are published almost 
 every week against religion and morals ; and it assigns 
 this general viciousness of literature as the reason for 
 singling out this book, and another which is mention- 
 ed, for condemnation. 
 
 Similar complaints, most emphatically expressed, 
 are made by almost all the Divines and Moralists of 
 the time. Attacks on religion and on morals, (for 
 these were, as may be supposed, very generally com- 
 bined,) were so common and so licentious, that many 
 pious and good men appear to have looked upon the 
 progress of thought and feeling with despondency and 
 despair. 
 
MANDEVILLB. WARBURTON'. I03 
 
 In such, a state of things it manifestly beeam e the 
 duty of the lovers and guardians of morality to collect 
 their forces and put themselves in a condition suited 
 for defence. They had been fighting loosely and care- 
 lessly, and disunited; so confident of their inherent 
 strength, so relying upon general respect, that they 
 had hardly believed the combat was in earnest. They 
 had looked upon it rather as a mere academic disputa- 
 tion than as a trial in which their preservation or ruin 
 was involved : rather as an encounter of wits for 
 superiority, than as a struggle of moral principles for 
 life. That the battles of speculators concerning Moralsp 
 Politics, and Religion were an affair of real practical 
 import, heavy with the most solemn consequences, the 
 history of the remainder of this eighteenth century 
 showed too clearly ; but it was only about the time of 
 which I speak, that this conviction began to force 
 itself upon the minds of the friends of the principles 
 then established. It was however now plain, that the 
 emergency was a weighty one, and that it behoved 
 the teachers of morals and religion to provide for 
 the safety of the host which looked up to them for 
 guidance. 
 
 A bold and vigorous champion stept forth, and 
 proceeded to order the mode of defence which the 
 defenders of morality were to adopt. Learned in 
 ancient and accomplished in modem literature, acute 
 in the conduct of arguments, ingenious in the inven- 
 tion of theories, self-confident almost to haughtiness, 
 sarcastic, lively, he was beyond doubt the ablest con- 
 troversialist of his day. I speak of Warburton ; who 
 did, in fact, give to the theory of morals the form in 
 which it has been received among us almost up to the 
 present time. He, I say, at the time now under con- 
 sideration, set himself to arrange the principles of 
 morality in such a form that they might be systema- 
 tically and successfully defended. He did not hesitate 
 at once to collect and unite forces of variotis kinds, so 
 far as they could be made subservient to a common 
 purpose. It was no longer now a time, he conceived, 
 when it was wise or fit to insulate the various bodies 
 
104 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 of gemiine moralists ; — to separate those who founded 
 morality oa the relations of things, and those who 
 derived it from the will of God. The history of the 
 subject had shown the evil of this. The old Platonic 
 moralists, such as Cudworth and More, had been 
 abandoned by their brethren j and their little host, 
 insulated from the rest, seemed to have crumbled 
 away. The independent moralists who stiU remained, 
 as Clarke and Butler, could be upheld only, "War- 
 burton thought, by surrounding them by a line of 
 more robust combatants. And along with these, he 
 was willing to accept as allies that other class of 
 moralists who had lately assumed a distinct shape, 
 and who ascribed to man what they called a Moral 
 Sense; the school, as we shall see, of Shaftesbury. 
 Warburton considered Shaftesbury as one of the 
 adversaries whom he had to oppose, since his writings 
 were directed against the Christian religion : but this 
 did not prevent him from adopting the Moral Sense, 
 in the most distinct and positive manner, as one of his 
 principles. The first books of the Divine Legation of 
 Moses, in which this was done, appeared in 1738. 
 Warburton's basis of the defence of morality, is a com- 
 bination, or as such a system is sometimes termed by 
 writers on the History of Philosophy, a syncretism, of 
 all the principles on which immoral writers and mere 
 sensual moralists had been pi'eviously opposed : namely 
 the Moral Sense, — the Eternal Differences of Actions, 
 — and the WiU of God (p. 136). He shows great 
 skill in asserting and maintaining the co-existence and 
 relative offices of these three principles. " God," he 
 says, "graciously respecting the imbecility of man's 
 nature, the slowness of his reason, and the violence of 
 his passions, hath been pleased to afford three different 
 excitements to the practice of virtue ; — something 
 that would hit men's palate, satisfy their reason, or 
 subdue their vnlV He complains that "this admir- 
 able provision for the support of virtue hath been in 
 great measure defeated by its pretended advocates, 
 who, in their eternal squabbles about the true founda^- 
 tion of morality and the obligation of its practice, have 
 
MANDEVILLE. WARBURTON. 105 
 
 sacrilegiously untwisted this Threefold Cord; and each 
 running atray with the part he esteemed the strongest, 
 hath affixed that to the throne of God, as the golden 
 chain that is to unite and draw all unto it." He then 
 proceeds, with great dexterity, to play off these three 
 sects against each other. The advocates of the Moral 
 Sense, he says, (pointing at Shaftesbury) hold the 
 essential differences in human actions " to be nothing 
 but words, notions, visions, the empty regions and 
 shadows of philosophy : the possessors of them are 
 moon-blind wits; and Locke himself is treated as a 
 schoolman. And to talk of reward and punishment 
 consequent on the will of a superior, is to make the 
 practice of virtue mercenary and servile." He then 
 speaks of those who adopt the Essential Differences 
 of things as the ground of morality : and according to 
 these, he says, " God and his Will have nothing to do 
 in the matter." And the third, he says, "who pro- 
 poses to place morality on the will op a superior, 
 which is its true bottom, acts yet on the same exter- 
 minating model. He takes the other two principles 
 to be merely visionary : the moral sense is nothing but 
 the impression of education ; the love of the species, 
 romantic, and invented by crafty knaves to dupe the 
 young, the vain, and the ambitious." He proceeds 
 with still more ingenuity, to find a recognition of this 
 threefold aspect of virtue in St Paul : " Finally, bre- 
 thren, whateoever things are true, whatsoever things 
 are honest, whatsoever things are just : To Xoiirw aS€X- 
 <f>o\ ocra IotIv dXrjOrj, ocra (TEjixva, ocra SiKaia; akrjOyj 
 evidently relating to the essential difference of things, 
 o-E/ivoi, (implying something of worth, splendour, dignity) 
 to the moral sense which men have of this difference ; 
 and SiKata, just, is relative to will or law." In the 
 same manner he distributes "pure, lovely, of good 
 report," into the three pigeon-holes of his theory, "ayva, 
 pure, referring to abstract truth ; irpoa-i^ikrj, lovely, 
 amiable, to innate or instinctive honesty : and evi^yjixa, 
 of good report, reputable, to the observation of will or 
 law." He again makes a similar attempt on the con- 
 cluding words of the passage, although they do not 
 
I06 HISTOET OP MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 form a triad It is easy to see that if they had been 
 these, " if there be any virtue, if there he atiy wisdom, 
 if there be any praise," he ■vrould have been most 
 triumphant : that is, he -would have said, — if I may 
 venture to complete what he has said, — " if the moral 
 sense can make the practice of morality a virtue ; if 
 the essential differences of things" [can render it con- 
 formable to reason;] if obedience to a superior will can 
 make it matter of praise ; think of these things. But 
 though we cannot &il to admire the ingenuity with 
 which Warburton thus constructed and illustrated his 
 system, it is difficult for the genuine moral philosopher 
 to maintain it in precisely that form which he assigned 
 to it. In his desire to engage in his service all the 
 strongest supports of morals which he could discover, 
 he has hardly sufficiently attended to the nature of 
 each, and to their mutual relations. If these three 
 elements are to be united in order to obtain a basis for 
 our system of morals, this must be done, not by arbi- 
 trarily and forcibly twisting them together, but by 
 combining them in their proper relations, so as to form 
 an organic and living whole. That Warburton has not 
 done so, it is not difficult to show. But before I show 
 this, I must consider more in detail the history of the 
 elements which he here attempts to combine. This I 
 shall proceed to do in the next Lecture. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 Cumberland. Shaftesbury. Huxcheson. Balgut. 
 South. 
 
 IN my last lecture, I stated that when the general 
 prevalence of licentious speculative opinions re- 
 specting morality had become very alarming, of which 
 state of things the publication of the Fable of the Bees 
 and similar -works was an indication, Warburton tried 
 to put the cause of sound morals in a better condition 
 for defence, by combining all the principles which had 
 been employed by his predecessors against the doc- 
 trines of the sensual school. The principles which he 
 thus associated were, I stated, these : Bight Reason, 
 the Moral Sense, and the Divine Command. Of the 
 first of these doctrines and its features, I have already 
 given an account in several Lectures. I must now 
 trace the rise and progress of the other two forms of 
 opinion; and first the Moral Sense. 
 
 In a former Lecture, I endeavoured to explain 
 how the controversy between the school of indepen-' 
 dent morality, and the school of the morality of con- 
 sequences, was afiected by the new metaphysical 
 opinions to which Locke's essay gave currency and 
 authority. It appeared that those who had, till then, 
 maintained that moral rectitude consists in eternal 
 and injmutable relations recognizable by the reason of 
 man, had their arguments weakened and perplexed by 
 the analysis of the human mind which was now gene- 
 rally admitted, and by the limits within which the 
 province of the reason was now circumscribed. Such 
 doctrines as those of Cudworth and Clarke, though 
 
I08 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 still asserted by some, began now to be considered as 
 remnants of a past philosophy; — propositions anti- 
 quated before they were published; — traditionary as- 
 sertions, repeated only because those who uttered 
 them did not perceive how great a revolution the 
 import of their terms had undergone, or how much 
 the views of philosophers had changed, concerning the 
 region in which truth resided, and the road by which 
 her votaries were to travel to her. A few short 
 phrases of weariness and contempt were considered by 
 the world as answer enough to the most acute and 
 laborious works which breathed the old Platonic strain. 
 
 Yet in this, as in other cases, when a great contro- 
 versy is thrown into confusion by a change in the 
 speculative opinions which its terms imply, after a 
 season of vacillation and misunderstanding, the an- 
 tagonist parties again form themselves, and stand, as 
 before, with opposite fronts, though, it may be, with 
 new watchwords, on each side. From the time' of 
 Locke, the morality of consequences appeared to pre- 
 vail over the morality of a priori principles ; but still 
 the spirit of independent morality was alive, and soon 
 found a garb in which it could claim the respect of 
 men. 
 
 Though moralists no longer found the common voice 
 of mankind respond to them, when they declared that 
 virtue and vice were founded upon eternal and im- 
 mutable distinctions, apprehended by the reason, there 
 were still many who could not be content with such a 
 representation of man's nature, as that which assigns 
 to him no higher motives than the love of pleasure 
 and the aversion to pain. And these persons sought 
 in various quarters, and under various forms, the prin- 
 ciples of genuine morality, and the faculties by which 
 we apprehend those principles. One such principle, 
 thus ascribed to human nature, was a general. Bene- 
 volence and Sociality, — a love of his kind, — which man 
 possesses, it was held, in addition to his regard for his 
 individual pleasure and interest. This doctrine was 
 at this time very commonly maintained by moralists 
 and jurists throughout Europe, having been made by 
 
eUMBERLAKD, SHAFTESBURY, &C. IO9 
 
 iGrotius and Puffendorf the basis of their systems. 
 Cumberland aSerEed~in'a very decided manner that 
 such was the proper ground of human action, clearly 
 dividing this principle of benevolence from the regard 
 to -our own good. Thus he says (Chap. v. Sect. 22); 
 "His own happiness is an extremely small part of that 
 end which a truly rational man pursues; and bears 
 only that proportion to the whole end (the common 
 good with which it is interwoven by God the author 
 of nature) which one man bears to the collective body 
 of all rational beings, which is less than that of the 
 smallest grain of sand to the whole mass of matter." 
 And although he sometimes speaks of our acting so as 
 is necessary to complete our own happiness (Sect. 27), 
 he immediately adds that "this happiness necessarily 
 depends upon the pursuit of the common good of all 
 rational agents; as the soundness of a member depends 
 upon the soundness and life of the whole animated 
 body; or as the strength of our hands cannot effect 
 tually be preserved without first preserving that life 
 and streagth which is diflfused through our whole 
 body." Thus the well being of the whole community 
 is assumed as necessary, not only to the attaining, but 
 to the conceiving the well being of the individual; 
 and I note this the more especially, because this fea- 
 ture and the images by which it is illustrated, may 
 sometimes enable us to distinguish to which of the 
 two antagonist schools moralists belong, when they 
 seem to approach near to the boundary line. Com- 
 parisons, such as are here employed, (the human body 
 and the human species,) belong almost exclusively to 
 those who maintain that morality is an end in itself. 
 They are employed by Plato in his Dialogues, the first 
 clear argumentation on that side of the subject which 
 was given to the speculative world ; and we shall see 
 that they stUl continue to be used by those who may 
 be looked upon as the assertors of the same side of the 
 question, at a period later than that of which we are 
 now speaking. 
 
 Of the moralists of this school, in the period im- 
 mediately, succeeding the publication of Locke's Essay, 
 
no HISTORY OF MOIIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury may be considered as one of the 
 bast representatives. His grandfather, the celebrated 
 Achitophel of Dryden, had Locke for his intimate 
 friend; and the grandson was bred up in a habit of 
 deference to the philosophica;! reformer. But this did 
 not prevent him from discerning the real tendency of 
 the morality which was involved in the new system; 
 nor from declaring himself the opponent of the doc- 
 trines thus promulgated. In his "Letter to a Student 
 in the University," after observing that "all those 
 called free writers now-a-days have espoused those 
 principles which Mr Hobbes set a^foot in the last age," 
 he adds, "Mr Locke, as much as I honour him, on 
 account of other writings (on government, policy, 
 trade, coin, education, toleration, &c., and as well as I 
 know him, and can answer for his sincerity, as a 
 most zealous Christian and believer,) did however go in 
 the selfsame tract, and is followed by the Tindals and 
 all the other ingenious free authors of our time." 
 
 "'Twas Mr Locke," he adds, "that struck the 
 home blow, for Mr Hobbes's character and base slavish 
 principles of government, took off the poison of his 
 philosophy. 'Twas Mr Locke that struck at all fun- 
 damentals, threw all order and virtue out of the world, 
 and made the very ideas of these (which ai-e the same 
 as those of God) unnatural and without foundation in 
 our minds." 
 
 In opposition to these dangerous and degrading 
 opinions, Shaftesbury maintained the independent and 
 original nature of moral distinction. He calls himself 
 a Moral BeaUst, as opposed to others who he says 
 (Characteristics, ii. 257) are mere Nominal Moralists, 
 making virtue nothing in itself a creature of WiU 
 only, or a mere name of Fashion. His view of the 
 ground of morality is nearly the same as that which 
 we have already seen in Cumberland. Virtue requires 
 an attention in each individual to the good of the 
 whole; and the loss of this disposition is a disorder 
 which includes the unhappiness of the individual 
 among its evil consequences. [Inquiry concerning 
 Virtue; Characteristics, u. 82), "When there is an 
 
SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHESON, &C, III 
 
 absolute degeneracy, a total apostasy from all candour, 
 equity, trust, sociableness, friendship, there are few 
 who do not see and acknowledge the misery which is 
 consequent. Seldom is the case misconstrued when 
 at worst. The misfortune is, we do not look on this 
 depravity, nor consider how it stands, in less degrees. 
 The Calamity, we think, does not of necessity hold 
 proportion with the Injustice or Iniquity. As if to 
 be absolutely im>moral and inhuman were indeed the 
 greatest misfortune and misery; but that to be so in a 
 little degree should be no misery nor harm at all." 
 And then follows one of the characteristic illustrations 
 of this school, "Which to allow is just as reasonable 
 as to own that it is the greatest ill of a body to be 
 in the utmost manner distorted or maimed : but that 
 to lose the use only of one limb, or to be impaired 
 in some one single organ or member is no inconveni- 
 ence or ill worthy the least notice." 
 
 It is not difficult to see here and in similar expla- 
 nations of the school of moral realists, that although 
 calamity, misery, unha/ppimess, and the like terms, are 
 used to describe those attributes of vice which make it 
 a thing to be shunned and hated, the real fundamental 
 notion of this evil is the violation of man's nature, as 
 a system in which the parts have certain essential rela- 
 tions to each other, and to the whole. Accordingly 
 the author adds, immediately after the passage I have 
 quoted, "The parts and proportions of the mind, their 
 mutual relation and dependency, the connection and 
 frame of those passions which constitute the soul or 
 temper, may easUy be understood by any one who 
 thinks it worth his while to study this inward anatomy. 
 'Tis certain that the order or symmetry of this inward 
 part is in itself no less real and exact than that of the 
 body" — and to the same train of thought belongs what 
 he elsewhere says (ii. 121), "that to want conscience 
 or natural sense of the odiousness of Crime and Injus- 
 tice, is to be most of all miserable in life." 
 
 Shaftesbury possesses great merits as a writer, and 
 was much admired by a great number of his con- 
 temporaries. And beyond doubt his influence contrir 
 
112 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 bated to preserve his countrymen in some measure 
 from that very low scheme of morals which results 
 from resolving virtue into a mere pursuit of pleasure. 
 But while he did this, he found, or fancied, that there 
 was a school of divines, as well as a school of philo- 
 sophers, whose tenets were at variance with his ; and 
 the harshness, and I may say petulance, with which 
 he condemns and ridicules these adverse theological 
 doctrines, together with his want of reverence for 
 revealed religion, produced an enmity between him 
 and Christian writers, to whom, on some points, he 
 might otherwise have been a valuable ally. The main 
 point of oflFence with him is the practice, which he 
 lays to the charge of divines, of making virtue a mere 
 matter of self-love, by resting her obligation entirely 
 on the hopes and fears of a future life (ii. 59). If any 
 divines had done this in such a way as to lose sight of 
 the goodness and justice of the great Judge, and of the 
 love of goodness which he demands even more than 
 outward acts, they would be justly liable to the ac- 
 cusation of perverting religion, no less than morality. 
 I am not aware of the existence, at this time, of books 
 of any degree of general currency which put forth such 
 mistaken views; and I think we may rather ascribe 
 this noble writer's ebuUitions of ill humour on such 
 subjects to a dislike towards the clergy and their 
 peculiar views ; which we may trace very generally in 
 the men of the world of the period now under con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Without here attempting to analyse the origin of 
 this feeling, I may observe that so fer as our subject 
 is concerned, it manifested itself in two ways. The 
 philosophical revolution brought about by Hobbes and 
 Locke had divided the speculative world between two 
 opinions, the old and the new. If the clergy adopted 
 the new doctrine, that seK-love is the only spring of 
 human action, they were iipbraided as lowering the 
 dignity and purity of virtue; — ^if on the contrary, they 
 kept their ancient ground, and held that virtue is a good, 
 to be sought for its own sake, they were sneered at as 
 the obstinate assertors of visionary and obsolete notions. 
 
SHAFTESBTTRY, HUTOHESON, &C. II3 
 
 Shaftesbury is to be condemiied so far as he op- 
 posed morality to religion ; but the objections to him 
 would have been unphilosophical if they had merely 
 depended upon his distinguishing morality and reli- 
 gion. We must not refuse to accept Shaftesbury as 
 the origin of a new school of real moralists, if he be 
 indeed so. And there was an opening for such a 
 school. 
 
 The ancient school of Cudworth and Clarke was 
 now nearly extinct : yet a divine of some note who 
 answered Shaftesbury, still upheld the credit of this 
 school. This was John Balguy , vicar of Northallerton, 
 and prebendary of Salisbury (!B.A. in 1705). In 1 ^26 
 and 1728 he wrote replies to Shaftesbury's Inquiry 
 Ooncerning Virtue, and also to the work of Hutcheson, 
 which we shall soon have to mention. In these pub- 
 lications he speaks of " that excellent, that inestimable 
 book, Dr Clarke's BoylSs Lectures" and expresses his 
 surprize that a person of the discernment and pene- 
 tration which he ascribes to his adversary, rose dis- 
 satisfied from that work with regard to the points before 
 us, namely, the foundations of morals {Tracts, p. 66). 
 
 Balguy {Tracts, p. 66) did not hesitate still to 
 declare his assent to the ancient formularies of the 
 Cambridge school — that the morality of actions consists 
 in conformity to Reason, and difformity from it — ^that 
 virtue is acting according to the absolute fitness of 
 things, or agreeably to the Nature and Relations of 
 things — ^that there are eternal and immutable Dififer- 
 ences of things absolutely and antecedently; that there 
 are also eternal and unalterable Relations in the nature 
 of the things themselves; from which arise agreements 
 and disagreements, congruities and incongruities, fit- 
 'ness and unfitness of the application of circumstances 
 to the qualifications of persons. To these Clarkian 
 and Oudwoi-thian phrases Balguy adds others, as "that 
 virtue consists in the conformity of our wUls to our 
 understandings," and these ways of speaking he endea- - 
 vours to explain and defend. 
 
 But these were now becoming antique and unusual 
 sounds. In general the moral realists were aware that 
 
 8 
 
114 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 they gave their adversaries an advantage, when they 
 ascribed the discernment of moral relations to the 
 Reason, narrowed as the domain of that faculty had in 
 later times been. They now found it more convenient 
 to assert that moral distinctions were perceived by a 
 peculiar and separate Faculty. To this faculty some 
 did not venture to give a name, but described it only 
 by its operations and results, while others applied to it 
 a term. The Moral Sense, which introduced a new set 
 of analogies and connections. Each of these courses 
 had its inconveniences for the assertors of the faculty, 
 as we shall see. And first of the latter course. 
 
 It has been customary of late among those who 
 have written concerning the History of Ethics in 
 England, to speak of Hutcheson as the writer who 
 introduced this term the Moral Sense. The phrase, 
 however, is repeatedly used by Shaffcesbuiy, whose 
 follower Hutcheson was. In the Inquvry concerning 
 Virtue we are told (p. 44), " Sense of right and wrong 
 being as natural to us as natural affection itself, and 
 being a first principle in our constitution and make, 
 there is no speculative opinion, persuasion, or belief, 
 which is capable immediately or directly to exclude or 
 desti-oy it." And this sense of right and wrong is 
 constantly, in the margin nt l e ast, termed, " The Moral 
 Sense." 
 
 As this phrase, and the faculty to which it is ap- 
 plied, have in more recent times become so celebrated, 
 perhaps it will be allowed me to lay before you 
 more particularly the manner in which the faculty 
 was described, when it was first, in its modem form, 
 brought into a prominent position in Ethics. Shaftes- 
 bury likens the natural sense of the right, to the 
 natural sense of the beautiful, which he assumes as 
 incontestable. "The mind," he remarks {Inquiry, 
 p. 39), "observes not only things, but actions and 
 affections. The mind which is thus spectator and 
 auditor of other minds cannot be without its eye and 
 ear; so as to discern proportion, distinguish sound, 
 and scan each sentiment or thought which comes before 
 it." He goes on to say that thus observing, it must 
 
SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHESON, &C. II5 
 
 admire or condemn — "It finds a foul and a fair, a 
 harmonious and a dissonant, as really and truly here 
 as in musical numbers or visible forms. It cannot 
 ■withhold its admiration and ecstasies, its aversion and 
 scorn. To deny the common and natural sense of a 
 sublime and beautiful, is," the noble ■writer pronounces, 
 "mere affectation. And as this is true of the natural, 
 so is it of the moral world. The heart at such a spec- 
 tacle cannot possibly remain neutral ; however false and 
 comapt it be, it judges other hearts. It mnst approve 
 in some measure ■what is natural and honest, and 
 disapprove ■what is dishonest and corrupt." 
 
 I shall not stop to show how this assumption of 
 such a Sense is employed by Shaftesbury in establish- 
 ing that ■which is the general Thesis of his Inquiry: — 
 that it is according to the private interest and good of 
 every one to work towards the general good; ■which 
 if a creature ceases to promote, he is actually so far 
 ■wanting to himself, and ceases to promote his o^wn 
 happiness and ■welfare. I proceed to his foUo^wer, 
 Hutcheson'. 
 
 Francis Hutcheson -was the son of a djag^ting 
 minister in Ireland, and was educated at the Univer- 
 sity of Glasgow. His Inquiry into the Ideas of Bea/uty 
 and Virtue was much admired on its first appearance 
 (about 1727). In this work the author notes that 
 fundamental antithesis of moral systems which we 
 have all along kept in view. There are, he says, two 
 opinions entirely opposite, both intelligible, each con- 
 sistent ■with itself (pp. 207-211). The first of these 
 opinions is, that all actions flow from the prospect of 
 private happiness; the other which he opposes to this 
 is, that we have not only self-love, but benevolent 
 affections, and a moral sense. The moral sense he 
 
 iLord Shaftesbury, 16139, Iitmrnm amcemmg Virtm. 
 Dr F. Hutcheson, 1727, IngvAry mto the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. 
 Dr Balguy, 1728, The FoundaMon of Moral Goodness. 
 Dr Butler, 1726, Sermons. 
 Wollaston, 1726, Meli^ion of Nature. 
 ■Warburton, 1738, Dwime Legation. 
 
Il6 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 describes as that -which determines us to approve the 
 actions which flow from the love of others. 
 
 It is evident that the Moral Sense here comes for- 
 ward as the main element on the side of independent 
 morality, and thus takes the place of the fitness, truth, 
 light reason, and other former strong-holds of that 
 school. But though the Moral S^se is thus substi- 
 tuted for the ancient EecSiuaePSEe things are very 
 far from being equivalent; and by this substitution, 
 the character of the controversy was very materially 
 altered. 
 
 It will perhaps best serve to show the nature of 
 this transition if we enquire how the new view was 
 looked upon by the remaining adherents of the old 
 realist school — those who maintained, with Clarke and 
 Cudworth, that the morality of actions consisted in 
 their conformity to Reason. 
 
 I have already noticed Balgiiy as a combatant in 
 the ranks of this now scanty host. He very soon pub- 
 lished a Eeply to Hutcheson's Inquiry, which he enti- 
 tled The Foundation of Moral Goodness, or A Fwrth&r 
 Inquiry into the original of our Idea of Vi/rPue (1728). 
 His objections to Hutcheson's system are mainly 
 these : — (i) That Virtue, according to the new doctrine, 
 depending entirely upon two Instincts, Benevolent 
 Aifection and the Moral Sense, becomes arbitrary and 
 insecure : (2) That brutes, since they have kind in- 
 stincts or affections, have, on these grounds, some 
 degree of Virtue : (3) That if these afiections constitute 
 Virtue, the Virtue must be the greater in proportion 
 as the affections are stronger; and that thus we contra- 
 dict the notion of Virtue which represents it as con- 
 troUiog the affections : (4) That Virtue is degraded by 
 being made a mere result of Instincts : (5) To these 
 are added some more peculiarly realist arguments ; as 
 (6) (p. 49) that, according to this view, we can attach 
 no meaning to the assertion that the Laws delivered 
 by God are holy, just, and good, since the standard of 
 goodness, which the theory sets up for man, cannot 
 apply to Him : and (7) that, according to the theory, 
 if God had not given us this benevolent instinct, we 
 
SHAFTESBURY, HDTCHESON, &C. II7 
 
 should have been incapable of Virtue; and tliat on 
 that supposition, notwithstanding Intelligence, Reason, 
 and Liberty, it would have been impossible for us to 
 perform one action really good — a conclusion which 
 the adherent of the ClarHan school holds to be absurd. 
 
 The main force of these arguments as they apply 
 against the assertion of a Moral Sense, — and it is ia 
 fact a very weighty consideration, — resides in this : 
 that the doctrine of the Moral Sense, as delivered by 
 Hutcheson, represents that Sense as a mere Instiaot, 
 and thus takes Virtue out of the domain of the Reason.] 
 This, as was to be supposed, the disciple of Clarke 
 conceives to be a monstrous and degrading proceediug, 
 (p. 63). "To make the Rectitude of Moral Actions 
 dependent upon Instinct, and in proportion to the 
 warmth and strength of the Moral Sense, rise and fall 
 like spirits ia a thermometer, is depreciating the most 
 sacred thing in the world, and almost exposing it to 
 ridicule." Again (p. 58), "If virtue and the approbation 
 of virtue be merely instinctive, we must certainly think 
 less highly and less honourably of it than we should do 
 if we supposed it to be rational : for I suppose," he adds, 
 "it will be readily allowed that Reason is the nobler 
 principle." No, he ciies in another place (p. 46), "Let 
 virtue by all means be natural; but let it also be 
 necessary — Let it reign without a rival, but let its 
 throne be erected in the highest part of our nature." 
 
 It cannot be denied, as I have already intimated, 
 that there is great force and signification in this re- 
 monstrance. Beyond all doubt we do not rise to a 
 just idea of virtue except we represent it to ourselves 
 as a rational activity, not an instinctive impulse of our 
 nature. Instinct is blind, but Virtue must see her 
 object and be conscious of her purpose. She partakes 
 of the nature of Reason in the highest sense of the 
 term. Whatever be the source of the truth which 
 Virtue contemplates, it is a part of her office to con- 
 template truth; even to discover it when hidden; — ^to 
 bring it forth when obscure ;-^to combine principles ; — 
 to look to consequences ; — to conduct trains of demon- 
 stration;— to detect fallacies;— to expose sophistry. 
 
Il8 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 If virtue be not a mere modification of the Reason, at 
 least she must be both reasooable and rational; con- 
 formable to right reason, capable of just reasoning. 
 
 It is true, as I have already remarked, the identi- 
 fication of Yixtue with Right Reason which had long 
 found favour in the eyes of moraKsts, was now dissolved 
 by the circumscription which the province of Reason 
 had undergone in modern times. Reason was now no 
 longer, at least no longer commonly, used to designate 
 aU the higher faculties of our nature. It no longer 
 included all by which the rational are superior to the 
 irrational creatures. Virtue was perhaps thus shut 
 out of the narrowed limits of mere Reason. Granted, 
 that this might be so ; but she was not by this driven 
 into the immeasurably inferior jurisdiction of Instinct. 
 If Virtue was not Right Reason, at least she was not 
 irrational. If she was not a mere system of clear 
 views, at least she was not a mere collection of blind 
 impulses. 
 
 Thus the moralists of Right Reason, the old Cud- 
 worthian school, had arguments of no small weight to 
 urge against the new assertors of the Moral Sense. 
 These latter moralists, actuated, unconsciously perhaps, 
 by a perception of the difficulties which the Realist 
 school had of late sufiered, in maintaining its old high 
 ground, had moved downwards, but had been by no 
 means cautious in the exact selection of their new 
 position ; and had not taken pains to adopt the most 
 unexceptionable phraseology to express their views. 
 The term Instinct, which exposed the system to such 
 glaring objections, had not been shunned by Hutcheson. 
 He says (Vol. i. p. 155) : "The true spring of virtue 
 is some determination of our nature to study the good 
 of others, or some instinct which influences us to the 
 love of others, as the moral sense determines us to 
 approve" certain actions. Even the term which was 
 employed as the most usual designation of the principle 
 thus spoken of, and which has now almost acquired an 
 established place as a technical term, the moral Sense, 
 was very far from being unexceptionable. In its wider 
 signification, no doubt, this term might be employed 
 
SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHESON, &C. II9 
 
 to designate any mode of apprehending things and the 
 relations of things. Shaftesbury, the leader of this 
 school, had illustrated his Sense of right and -wrong, 
 by comparing it with the apprehension of beauty and 
 deformity j and thus had shown plainly enough that 
 he did not intend to suggest the analogy of the bodily 
 senses. But the Sense of Beauty was almost as much 
 a matter of controversy as the Sense of moral Bight; — 
 divided analysers and theorizers as much; — ^was the 
 subject of opinions as opposite, concerning its ultimate 
 foundation and genuine elements. In this, as in the 
 other subject, there were realists and nominalists, a 
 rational and a sensual school. Some maintained an 
 Independent Beauty, as some maintained an Inde- 
 pendent Morality ; but others held that the ideas of 
 Beauty were mere modifications of some agreeable im- 
 pressions or other, made originally upon the bodily 
 senses. This perception of Beauty, then, could be no 
 secure guide to a true understanding of the perception 
 of Eight and Wrong : the Beautiful was not a stable 
 and solid enough foundation to allow philosophers to 
 erect upon it the important structure of the Good. If 
 the Moral Sense could not be made clearer than this 
 analogy made, it, the theory of such a sense was vague 
 indeed ; and its form Ul fitted to bear the shock of 
 controversy. 
 
 To avoid this vagueness, the defenders of the exist- 
 ence of the Moral Sense inclined to giye more definite- 
 ness to the term by accepting the analogy which it 
 ofiered with the bodily senses. This course at first 
 seemed to offer some advantages. For instance, it 
 enabled them, when pressed for a definition of moral 
 right and good, to avail themselves of the Lockian 
 maxim that "Simple Ideas are incapable of defini- 
 tion ;" — ^that right and good were as undefinable as 
 whiteness and warmth; and were, notwithstanding, 
 like these others, real and clear ideas. But though 
 this answer might serve for the moment, it could 
 hardly render much service to the party who could 
 find none better. For who could steadily and calmly 
 maintain the existence of a sense which tells us 
 
120 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 whether any given action is good and right, of the 
 same nature as the senses which tell us that snow 
 is white and cold? When the Theory of a Moral 
 Sense is presented to men in this form, it veiy natu- 
 rally calls forth their loudest opposition ; and indeed 
 is generally received with ridicule, if not with anger 
 and indignation, as implying a claim on the part of 
 its propounders to the possession of a Sense which 
 their neighbours have not : and this too precisely such 
 a Sense as apprehends superiority and inferiority of 
 the very highest kind. 
 
 Thus the assei-tors of the Moral Sense found it 
 very difficult to make good the intermediate position 
 between the higher and the lower schools of moralists, 
 into which they had thrown themselves, as the fortress 
 whence they were prepared to defend the cause of 
 genuine morality. The old champions of immutable 
 morality directed their antique artillery of Eight Rea- 
 sons and Eternal Relations upon the Moral Sense, as 
 too low, too blind, too arbitrary, too variable, too limit- 
 ed, to be the main element of vii-tue : while the sensual 
 school angrily assailed the fort on the other side, as 
 ■ built upon their own foundaitions, and presuming to 
 tower above them with most arrogant and absurd pre- 
 tensions. The new moralists tried to occupy a posi- 
 tion between Reason and Sense, and upon this, the 
 advocates both of Sense and of Reason turned upon 
 them as foes. Their natural aUiance was doubtless 
 with the latter : for if Yirtue must belong either to 
 Reason or to bodily Sense, it is plain that her place 
 is in the domain of the former. Even if we take the 
 LocMan division of aU Ideas into those of Sensation 
 and those of Reflection, it cannot be doubted that the 
 Idea of Right and of Moral Good must derive its 
 existence -from Reflection, not from Sensation. 
 
 If all our conceptions and notions belong either 
 to Sense or to Reason, Virtue must be ranged either 
 in one division or the other. If, on the other hand, 
 Yirtue be neither a part of Sense nor of Reason, this 
 cannot be a complete division of the human feculties. 
 And this appears plainly to be the case, from the 
 
SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHESON, &C. 121 
 
 course of the controversy which I have described. In 
 any rigorous sense of the terms, it was found impos- 
 sible to maintain either that Virtue was merely a result 
 of Reason, or a result of a Sense. And the two terms 
 had in modern times had a rigorous meaning given to 
 them. This had been the effect of the general pro- 
 gress of philosophy. Reason had been limited, Sense 
 had been definitely studied. Nor was it fitting to 
 undo what had thus been done, in order to get rid of 
 the difficulty about the Moral Sense. If metaphysics 
 have really become more precise, we must not attempt 
 again to throw the subject into confusion, for the pur- 
 pose of providing a temporary refuge for Morality. If 
 Sense and Reason have taken up fixed positions, and 
 Virtue cannot find a place with either of them, we 
 must seek one which is appropriate to her. If philo- 
 sophers have analysed man's intellectual being, and 
 ascertained that moral good does not derive its origin 
 from thence, we must analyse the remainder of his 
 being, and try if we can discover what the true source 
 of moral relations is. 
 
 We must do this, that is, if we can, and as soon as 
 we can. It is easy to say, "we must discover," but 
 this declaration of necessity does not necessarily lead 
 to discovery. It is easy to say, "we must analyse," 
 but it is hard to analyse aright. If it be trae that in 
 recent times the Senses and the Intellect have been 
 more thoroughly studied, more completely dissected, 
 their structure and processes better determined than 
 had before been done; how much labour, how much 
 time, how much ability, how long a succession of per- 
 severing enquirers, each profiting by the labours of his 
 predecessors, has this progress required ! How little 
 can one man, one generation, perform in such a task ! 
 If, after all the attempts to discover the true nature 
 and grounds of moral rectitude, we have the labour 
 to recommence, we can hardly hope that we shall be 
 permitted to see it completed. 
 
 But this is not so. It is far from being, true, in 
 the progress of knowledge, that after every failure we 
 must recommence from the beginning. Every faUure 
 
122 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is a step to success. Every detection of what is false 
 directs us towards what is true : every trial exhausts 
 some tempting form of error. Not only so; but 
 scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely 
 any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether 
 false; no tempting form of Error is without some 
 latent charm derived from Truth. 
 
 If we have learnt that the foundation of Morality 
 is not to be sought either in the Sense or in the In- 
 tellect, there is already something learnt. If the per- 
 ception of this foundation, though wrongly designated 
 as a Sense, be still a peculiar operation of our inward 
 being, we may perhaps apply to it a more suitable 
 designation. If we cannot teU what this perception 
 is, we may still perhaps be able to say what it does. 
 If we cannot assign to it an exact place in the human 
 constitution, we may stiU mark out, in some wider 
 manner, the region of human nature in which its 
 operations are carried on ; and may thus prepare the 
 way for a closer approximation at some future time. 
 
 We have seen some of the inconveniences which 
 the defenders of independent morality incurred by 
 designating by a special name, and attempting to de- 
 scribe with some exactness, the faculty which discerns 
 moral distinctions. But, as I have already mentioned, 
 there was another class of writers, who, aware perhaps 
 of the danger of entangling themselves in the defence 
 of a theory technically enunciated, contented them- 
 selves with asserting their docti-ines in general and 
 variable phraseology, so as to show that they did not 
 consider the truth of their system wrapt up in any one 
 or two special forms of expression. Of these writers 
 I must now speak. 
 
 Those who have asserted Independent Morality 
 without introducing any technical name, like the 
 Moral Sense, of the eighteenth century, or the Boni- 
 form . Faculty of the seventeenth, have always been 
 a numerous party among divines and moralists. With 
 them the word Gonscience has always been a favourite 
 term to describe this power and its operations. But 
 how far they were, by the use of such a term, from 
 
SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHESON, &C. 1 23 
 
 propounding any precise theory concerning its nature, 
 and from pretending to decide concerning its character, 
 as innate or acquired, original or derived, simple or 
 complex, is easily seen by looking at the controversies 
 which took place on these subjects. Thus the school- 
 men disputed whether conscience be an A ct, a Habit, 
 or a Power. Sanderson, in his treatise de Conscientice 
 Ohligatione, examines in a very acute and satisfactory 
 manner the arguments on the various sides of this 
 question, and decides that Conscience is something 
 intermediate between an acquired habit and a true 
 power; and hence he prefers to call it a Faculty, which 
 appears to him to be a term in some measure appli- 
 cable in common to habits and powers. It will easily 
 be understood that such discussions as this, though 
 they may not terminate in any intellectual theory so 
 precise as those of modem times, still proceed upon 
 some view then current of the constitution and parts 
 of man's nature ; and perhaps we may be allowed to 
 say, that the portions into which the human mind was 
 resolved by the philosophy of that and of preceding 
 times, were in many respects as well made out and as 
 clearly established as the elements which are presented 
 to us by modem systems. The mind of man contained 
 the Understanding, the Passions, and the Will ; and 
 the Understanding was considered as the Speculative 
 and the Practical Understanding. This division, then, 
 being admitted, the Conscience was defined by Sander- 
 son to be (p. 13) "a Paculty or Habit of the Practical 
 Understanding, by which the mind, through discourse 
 of reason, applies the light which is in it to its own 
 particular acts." And this view was accepted so widely 
 among divines that we may consider it as prevailing, 
 except when it was interfered with by bolder theories, 
 up to the time of Butler, whom I am of course led to 
 take as the representative of the Unsystematic Moral- 
 ists, at the time when the system-makers propounded 
 tHe theory of the Moral Sense. 
 
 I will only illustrate what I have said by a single 
 example, which may serve to show in a striking man- 
 ner the functions and character ascribed to Conscience 
 
124 HISTORY OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 during the prevalence of these views. In a Sermon of 
 South's on the Image of God, he makes it his business 
 to describe man with the glorious attributes which he 
 possessed before his PaU from his original brightness. 
 The description of the faculties and powers of man in 
 that primary condition is, of course, a representation 
 of all that was conceived most consummate and com- 
 plete, both in the faculties and in their relation to 
 each other. The preacher passes in review the various 
 parts of the mind such aa I have just stated them; 
 he says on the siibject now before us, such things as 
 these : 
 
 " The Image of God was no less resplendent in that 
 which we call Man's Practical Understanding, namely 
 that storehouse of the Soul in which are treasured up 
 the Eules of Action and the Seeds of Morality :" and 
 after speaking of the notions which reside in this pro- 
 vince of the soul, he adds, " It was the privilege of 
 Adam innocent, to have these notions also firm and 
 untainted, to carry his monitor in his bosom, his law 
 in his heart, and to have such a conscience as might 
 be its own casuist. Reason was his tutor, and First 
 Principles his Magna Moralia — the Decalogue of 
 Moses was but a transcript, not an original — all the 
 laws of nations or wise decrees of states, the Statutes 
 of Solon and the Twelve Tables, were but a paraphrase 
 upon this standing rectitude of nature ; Justice," that 
 is, as it appears by his context, the internal principle 
 of Justice, "was not subject to be imposed upon by 
 a deluded fency, nor yet to be bribed by a globing 
 appetite, for an Utile or Jucuridium, to turn the balance 
 to a false or dishonest sentence. In all its directions 
 to the inferior faculties it conveyed its suggestions 
 with deamess and enjoined them with power ; it had 
 the passions in perfect subjection; and though its com- 
 mand over them was biit suasive and political, yet it 
 had the force of coactive and despotical. It was not 
 then as it is now, when the conscience has only power 
 to disapprove, and to protest against the exorbitances 
 of the passions, and rather to wish than make them 
 otherwise. The yoice of conscience now is low and 
 
SHAFTESBURr, HUTCHESON, &C. 1 25 
 
 weak, cHastising the passions as old Eli did his lustful 
 domineering sons : IT^ot so, m/y sons, not so : but the 
 voice of conscience then was not, this should, or this 
 ought to he done; but this mMst, this shall be done. 
 It spoke like a legislator; the thing spoken was a law: 
 and the manner of speaking it a new obligation. In 
 short, there was as great a disparity between the prac- 
 tical dictates of the understanding then and now, as 
 between empire and advice, counsel and command, 
 between a companion and a govei-nor." 
 
 It would be easy to select other passages containing 
 similar representations of the functions and authority 
 of conscience, in writers of the period of which I now 
 speak (the early part of the eighteenth century); al- 
 though they become more rare as the systematic repre- 
 sentations of morality as founded on pleasure and pain 
 on the one side, and on a peculiar moral sense on the 
 other, encroach upon the old more natural and fami- 
 liar modes of representing man's moral nature. It 
 would be easy, also to adduce other forms of expression 
 employed by unsystematic writers to designate the 
 powers, habits, faculties, and acts of man's nature by 
 which he judges of his own deeds and affections. But 
 enough has probably been said to show that the old 
 opinions concerning the fiinctions, duties, and autho- 
 rity of that part of man's nature in which his moral 
 principles reside, the opinions which we noted as ap- 
 pearing in the earliest writers whom we had to quote, 
 still existed and continued to animate a considerable 
 portion of our literatui'e, till the time of Butler, or 
 at least till within a very short interval of that time. 
 
 Butler then I look upon as the successor of the 
 unsystematic writers on morals. He took the phraseo- 
 logy of the subject as he found it in use among those 
 who wrote on morals for practical purposes, and he 
 abstained, studiously as it might appear, from giving 
 an exclusive or constant preference to any one of them. 
 In this way he obtained some advantages, but also 
 incurred some inconveniences; and these must now 
 be considered by us. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 Butler. Shaptesbukt. Waebtteton. Berkeley. 
 TmDAL. Balgut. 
 
 THE view wliicli I have given of the progress ht 
 ethical speculation in England has brought us to 
 Butler. I have already attempted in some measure 
 to point out the place which he occupies in reference 
 to the different schools of morahsts. The controversy 
 which had divided philosophers from the time of Plato, 
 between the higher and the lower moralists, had as- 
 sumed various aspects. At first it was the opposition 
 of Ideas and Sense ; — of Ideas, the principles of eternal 
 tiniths, not derived from the material world ; and of 
 Sense, which supplied to man manifest undeniable 
 material good. The reign of a purer rehgion had for 
 fifteen hundred years suppressed the sensual doctrine ; 
 but at the end of that time. Sense began vigorously 
 to reassert its claims, as the source at least of lich 
 stores of natural knowledge j and the reverence for 
 Ideas began to waver. When this struggle was car- 
 ried into Ethics, at first the supporters of Ideas put 
 them forth in their ancient form, as the foundations 
 of Eternal and Immutable Eelations : but it appeared 
 that in this shape, they were no longer well suited 
 to resist the new philosophy of Sense, flushed as it 
 was with triumphs obtained in the natural world. 
 Many moralists, no longer confiding in Ideas, in the 
 necessary relations and fitnesses of things, sought to 
 balance the morality founded upon mere bodily Sense, 
 by a morality founded upon a principle, nominally 
 indeed a Sense, but really an element opposed to sense 
 — a Sense of the moral beauty and goodness of actions 
 
UNSYSTEMATIC MORALISTS. 1 27 
 
 as a peculiar quality. These asserfcors of the Moral 
 Sense became the systematic oppcments of the sensual 
 school ; or, using a term less obnoxious, of those who 
 derived all morality of actions from the consideration 
 of resulting pleasure and pain. But the common feel- 
 ings of mankind, which have in all ages recognized 
 right and wrong, good and evil, as something different 
 from agreeable and disagreeable, from gain and loss, 
 caused the adherents of independent morality to be a 
 much larger body than the school who thus undertook 
 their defence in this technical manner. Many persons 
 admired the beauty of virtue, and felt the obligation 
 of duty, who did not know, or could not be persuaded, 
 that they did this by means of a peculiar Moral Sense. 
 There were many who thought that their moral con- 
 stitution was more truly represented by the ancient 
 and familiar phrases, than by this new theory of a 
 Moral Sense. These I have termed the Unsystematic 
 Moralists. They asserted, or assumed without assert- 
 ing, the existence of a power of moral judgment ; but 
 they did not pretend to separate this from other powers 
 in any exact manner. Some separation of the human 
 powers, indeed, is involved in the very language which 
 describes them. Such differences as those of the Head 
 and the Heart, the Understanding and the Reason, 
 the Passions and the WUl, are familiar to all men ; 
 and among such terms, the Conscience implied a prin- 
 ciple as real and distinguishable as any other. And 
 phrases even implying more of positive classification 
 had found very general acceptance, as when the moral 
 actions of man were ascribed to the Rational Principle, 
 or to the Practical Understanding. By the progress 
 of thought, — by the increased liabits of mental analysis 
 fostered by the general circumstances of human know- 
 ledge, and infused into the minds of all men by the 
 contagion of society and the very use of language, — ■ 
 even unsystematic thinkers were compelled to take a 
 more systematic view than they had hitherto done, of 
 the constitution and provinces of the human mind; 
 and hence those who were convinced that they could 
 perceive moral distinctions as something peculiar and 
 
128 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 of their ovsm nature, must also believe that they pos- 
 sessed a faculty, hcwever it was to be described, how- 
 ever to be derived, by which they apprehended such 
 distinctions. 
 
 To assert the existence of a Moral Faculty more 
 clearly and positively than had yet been done, without 
 incumbering himself with too systematic a description 
 or definition of its nature, was the merit of Butler, at 
 the period when Hutoheson was publishing his as- 
 sertion of the Moral Sense. All truths are seen dimly 
 before they are seen clearly ; — arfe conveyed in a vague 
 and confused shape before they are expressed in a 
 definite and lucid form. The analysis of bodies into 
 their elements employed many generations, and was 
 for centuries most obscurely and imperfectly appre- 
 hended ; and yet, during these centuries, philosophers 
 were travelling towards the truth, and were at every 
 point obtainiag positive truths of great importance. 
 The analysis of the mind, like the analysis of matter, 
 may be imperfect, and yet valuable. It is no proof 
 of an absence of worth and importance in the doctrine 
 of a Moral Faculty, that at first, the boundaries of 
 such a Faculty seem vague, and even its indepen- 
 dence questionable. It is of far more importance to 
 prove the reality of its office, and to show that its 
 existence gives a consistent and satisfactory account 
 of those moral rules and convictions which the doc- 
 trine of consequences cannot explain. 
 
 In order to do this without making any super- 
 fluous assumption, Butler appears purposely to have 
 shunned any appearance of technical names for the 
 elements of our moral constitution on which he specu- 
 lated ; and to have studiously varied his phrases. Thus 
 he speaks of mamls hdng a law to Mnhself; of a dif- 
 ference in hind among maris principles of action, as 
 well as a difference of strength; of an internal con- 
 stitution in which conscience has a natural and right- 
 ful supremacy; along with other forms of expression. 
 
 But the course thus taken by Butler had incon- 
 veniences as well as advantages. Clarke adopted the 
 received and metaphysical phraseology of Ms times, .. 
 
BUTLEK. 129 
 
 •which, so far as moral philosophy was concerned, -was 
 not ■well adapted for tracing out his doctrines in a 
 forcible an.d clear manner. Butler avoided this error ; 
 but was, in this manner, constantly driven to peri- 
 phrastic and indirect modes of expression which blunt 
 the point and obscure the aim of his reasonings. Hence, 
 though he lays down his arguments in a clear and or- 
 derly manner, in good plain language, and with suf- 
 ficient detail of steps and circumstances, he has always 
 been found, by common readers, a difficult and obscure 
 writer. And this was the opinion entertained of him 
 in his own time by men of the world. " The bishop 
 of Durham," says Horace Walpole, " had been wafted 
 to that see in a cloud of metaphysics, and remained 
 absorbed in it." 
 
 Joseph Butler, of whom I speak, was educated for 
 the ministry of the dissenters, but was brought over 
 to the episcopal church by his conviction of its valid 
 claims. When yet young, and unknown, the interest 
 which he took in speculations such as those of Clarke, 
 had led him to enter into a correspondence with that 
 divine, in which he displayed great acuteness and 
 ability. This correspondence is published at the end 
 of the later editions of the Discourse on the Beimg and 
 Attributes o/Gfod. Butler soon after became Preacher 
 at the RoUs Chapel (in 17 18), and his sermons preached 
 there were published a few years later. It is in these 
 sermons particularly that his moral doctrines are to 
 be found. 
 
 So much has been said in recent times of Butler's 
 place among the English writers on moral philosophy, 
 that it is the less necessary at present to dwell upon 
 that subject ; the more especially, as my object in the 
 present course of lectures is, not to discuss and decide 
 questions such as that of the Moral Faculty, but to 
 give an historical sketch of the steps of the great con- 
 troversy carried on in England concerning the arbi- 
 trary or necessary nature of moral truth. 
 
 I will only make two or three remarks. In the 
 first place, I observe that Butler does really and effect- 
 ively assert the principles which are the foundation of 
 
 9 
 
I30 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Independent Morality, more decidedly than he may at 
 first reading be thought to do ; his assertions being, 
 as I have said, somewhat blunted, and apparently 
 mitigated, by the generality of the language which he 
 uses, and by his avoidance of technical terms. That 
 he really does rest his moral system upon ideas, al- 
 together distinct from consequences, will appear when 
 we recollect how sedulously he insists upon the pro- 
 positions, that among our principles of action there is 
 a difierence of Tdnd as well as a difference of degree ; — 
 that to certain of our faculties belongs, by their nature, 
 an authority and supremacy above others, and that 
 this appears by a mere contemplation of the ideas 
 of those faculties. Thus, when he puts the question 
 (Serm. II.) " Which is to be obeyed, appetite or re- 
 flection ?" he replies (p. 4 1), " "Would not the question 
 be intelligibly and fully answered by saying that the 
 principle of reflection or conscience, being compared 
 with the various appetites, passions, and affections in 
 man, the former is manifestly superior and chief, with- 
 out regard to strength, and how often soever the latter 
 happen to prevail it is mere usurpation ? The former 
 remains in nature superior, and every instance of such 
 prevalence of the latter is an instance of breaking in 
 upon and violation of the constitution of man." 
 
 These notions so steadily adhered to, — of a differ- 
 ence of kind \ a peculiar constitution of man in which 
 each faculty and motive principle has its place ; a 
 nature which determines what ought to be as well as 
 what is ; relations which are seen and apprehended 
 as manifest by contemplation of the conceptions which 
 they involve, — are the proper characters of the school 
 of Independent Morality, and show how justly Butler, 
 notwithsta^iding some vagueness, and perhaps some 
 vacillation of expression, is taken as one of the prin- 
 cipal ||fiIosophers who have upheld that side of the 
 great antithesis of opinion on the foundations of morals. 
 
 There is another principle repeatedly employed by 
 Butler, and which is, I think, worthy of more notice 
 than has been given to it in general. In his view of 
 the constitution of man, he considers the various 
 
BUTLER, 131 
 
 affections and passions which belong to this constitu- 
 tion, not only as actual parts of our nature, which we 
 must govern and control as virtue directs, but also 
 as elements inserted by our Creator with peculiar 
 purposes, and for definite moral ends; and he conceives 
 that we may discover what is the true regulation of such 
 affections by tracing the moral purpose which they are 
 fitted to answer. Thus he says (p. 35), "Since' then 
 our inward feelings, and the perceptions we receive 
 from our external senses, are equally real ; to argue 
 from the former to human life and conduct is as little 
 liable to exception, as to argue from the latter to 
 absolute speculative truth. A man can as little doubt 
 that his eyes were given him to see with, as he can 
 doubt the truth of the science of Optics, deduced from 
 ocular experiments. And allowing the inward feeling, 
 shame, a man can as little doubt whether it was given 
 him to prevent his doing shameful actions as he can 
 doubt whether his eyes were given him to guide his 
 steps'." 
 
 Butler pursued this view of the irascible part of 
 our nature somewhat further. He distinguished 
 Eesentment, the name by which he describes this 
 element, into sudden Eesentment, which is given us as 
 a Protector which acts with energy before Reflection 
 has time to rouse herself into action, and whose office 
 is to repel harm, without regard to its being wrong 
 as well as harm; — and settled Resentment, which is 
 naturally directed against vice and wickedness. "The 
 one stands in our nature for self-defence, the other for 
 the administration of justice." It is by considerations 
 such as these that the Idea, which at first appears so 
 wide and barren, of a certain undefined Constitution of 
 man, is traced by Butler into special moral duties. The 
 proper office of each of the principles of our nature 
 
 1 We may recollect that the same 
 train of thought has already come 
 before us in previous writers on this 
 side; as in the case of Henry More, 
 whom we have seen adopting the 
 
 Platonic notion that appetite pro- 
 vides for the needs of man's nature 
 and anger for its defence, both in 
 subservience to the governing power 
 of reason. 
 
 9—2 
 
132 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 assists Tis also to determine their limits, and to 
 lay down rules for their direction, control, or re- 
 straint. 
 
 I have already observed that while, among the 
 defenders of Independent Morality, Clarke, in stating 
 his moral opinions, entangled himself by adopting the 
 terms of the prevalent metaphysical system, Butler 
 too often perplexed his readers by trying to avoid all 
 systematic metaphysics. But this mode of treating 
 the subject does not answer the needs of those who 
 pursue it as a speculative study. For short technical 
 expressions, when they are familiar to us, enable us to 
 avoid much labour of the intellect which we must 
 otherwise incur ; and to fix our attention at once upon 
 the critical part of each proposition and argument. 
 If there shall be found to be introduced afterwards a 
 technical classification of the faculties and operations 
 of the human mind, which shall be consistent with 
 the truths asserted by Butler, the business of under- 
 standing his arguments will be much simplified. We 
 may conceive that, in his enquiries, he was doing that 
 which, in fact, discoverers always have to do. They 
 search at the same time for true propositions and for 
 precise definitions. Each of these elements depends 
 upon the other ; they are found at the same time, and 
 approximated to by the same degrees. Men go on 
 towards moral as they go on towards physical truth. 
 The proposition that the planets are directed by a 
 central force, became more and more certain, as the 
 conception of a central force became more and more 
 clear. We have already compared Cudworth to Kep- 
 ler, who was confident there was such a force, yet 
 most vague and loose in his description of it : perhaps 
 not even Butler can be compared with Newton, who 
 laid down the law of this force with complete evidence, 
 and traced it to its remotest effects. He rather 
 resembles BoreUi or Wren or Huyghens, who referred 
 this force to its true center, and saw with entire con- 
 viction the certainty of its operation, but wavered 
 from one form of expression to another in their de- 
 scription o'f its nature; and though they asserted its 
 
BUTLER. 
 
 133 
 
 existence, did not lay down its law in words, nor 
 draw out a system of its consequences. 
 
 Of the three principles of morality included in the 
 Syncretism of 'Ny^arburton, Eight Keason — the Moral 
 Sense — and Divine Command, we may now consider the 
 third ; which brings us nearer to the domain of Theology. 
 
 I have hitherto considered Butler and his con- 
 temporaries (for, as I have said, Hutcheson's Inquiry 
 and Butler's Sermons were published about the same 
 time') merely as moralists; as employed in determiaing 
 the fouudatiomi of natural morals ; — ^the principles of 
 human conduct according to mere philosophy. But 
 we shall not be able to understand the true bearing of 
 the speculations of this time, and the causes which 
 affected the fortunes of the subject in its next shape, 
 without taking a survey of these speculations from 
 another point of view ; without considering what bear- 
 ing Morality, according to the systems which were in 
 currency at the time of which I speak, had upon 
 E«ligion ; — how men's views of their duties in this 
 life were connected with their eternal hopes. 
 
 The system of Clarke, according to which Morality 
 is derived by rigorous deduction from right reason, 
 and the doctrine of the Shaftesbury school, that virtue 
 is the object of a peculiar Sense or Taste, each gave to 
 virtue a kind of independence, which seemed to make 
 extraneous support superfluous. And hence the ene- 
 mies of revealed religion saw with pleasure, and its 
 friends with pain, the probability of an attack upon it 
 from this side ; which accordingly took place. I have 
 already said that Shaftesbury had been looked upon, 
 and we must regret to say, with incontestable justice, 
 as an enemy of Christianity ^ Not only did his view 
 of the differences of actions, as founded upon inhe- 
 i-ent qualities, and perceived by a peculiar sense, make 
 his Morality independent of Divine Command in its 
 
 1 Butler's Sermons, 1726; Hutche- 
 son's Inquiry, tMrd edition, 1729 ; 
 the Dedication, to.the second edition, 
 is dated 1725. 
 
 2 This is regretted by his ad- 
 •mirer Hutcheson. Predace to Inr 
 qwvry. 
 
134 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 foundations, but he seemed unwillingly to admit a 
 Divine Judgment into his scheme. It is true, that 
 he often spoke of the Supreme Being and his govern- 
 ment in a manner far from unseemly, Thus he says, 
 (Inquiry, p. 56), " If there be a belief or conception of 
 a Deity, who is consider'd as worthy and good, and 
 admir'd and reverenc'd as such ; being understood to 
 have, besides mere power and Imowledge, the highest 
 excellence of Nature, such as renders him justly 
 amiable to all ; and if in the manner this Sovereign 
 and mighty Being is represented, or, as he is histo- 
 rically described, there appears in him a high and 
 eminent regard to what is good and excellent, a con- 
 cern for the good of all, and an affection of Benevolence 
 and Love towards the whole ; such an example must 
 undoubtedly serve (as above explain'd) to raise and 
 increase the affection towards Virtue, and help to 
 submit and subdue all other affections to that alone." 
 And to the influence of the Honour and Love which 
 we must bear to such a Being, he adds the influence of 
 a persuasion of his constant Presence. And again, 
 " When the Theistical belief (his technical expression 
 for the belief in a God) is intire and perfect (p. 57), 
 there must be steady opinion of the superintendenoy 
 of a Supreme Being, a witness and spectator of human 
 life, and conscious of whatsoever is felt or acted in the 
 universe : so that in the perfectest recess, or deepest 
 solitude, there must be One still presum'd remaining 
 with us; whose presence singly must be of more 
 moment than that of the most august assembly on 
 earth. In such a presence, 'tis evident, that as the 
 shame of guilty actions must be the greatest of any; 
 so must the honour be of well-doing, even under the 
 unjust censure of a world. And in this case, 'tis very 
 apparent how conducing a perfect Theism must be to 
 virtue, and how great deficiency there is in Atheism." 
 And he allows that a belief in a future state of re- 
 ward and punishment may support and preserve a man 
 wavering between right and wrong ; may even restore 
 and repair the moral constitution when by evil practice 
 it has been debauched and perverted (p. 61) ; and may 
 
BUTLER. 135 
 
 make virtue, wliicli was at first pursued for its conse- 
 quences, to be loved for its o-wn sake (p. 62). " In the 
 same manner, wkere instead of regard or love, there is 
 rather an aversion to what is good and virtuous, (as, 
 for instance, where lenity and forgiveness are despis'd, 
 and revenge highly thought of and beloVd) if there be 
 this consideration added, 'That lenity is, by its rewards, 
 made the cause of a greater self-good and enjoyment 
 than what is found in revenge ; ' that very affection 
 of lenity and mildness may come to be industriously 
 nourish'd, and the contrary passion depress'd. And 
 thus Temperance, Modesty, Candour, Benignity, and 
 other good affections, however despised at first, may 
 come at last to be valu'd for their own sakes, the con- 
 trary species rejected, and the good and proper object 
 belov'd and prosecuted, when the reward orjpunishment 
 is not so much as thought of" 
 
 But this was so grudgingly allowed, so limited with 
 conditions, and balanced with attendant dangers, that 
 it was hardly to be wondered at that those who had 
 trained their minds to think it man's duty to do all with 
 reference to his great Master and Judge, were dissatis- 
 fied, and found that the language of the Characteristics 
 was harsh and dissonant to their feelings. Of this we 
 may take as an example the expressions of Bishop 
 Berkeley, a man allowed by all his contemporaries of 
 all parties to be one of the most amiable of men. In 
 his Vindication of his Theory of Vision, p. 5, he says, 
 " What availeth it in the cause of Virtue and Natural 
 Eeligion, to acknowledge the strongest traces of wisdom 
 and power, throughout the structure of the universe, 
 if this wisdom is not employed to observe, nor this 
 power to recompense our actions; if we neither believe 
 ourselves accountable, nor God our Judge ? 
 
 "All that is said of a vital principle of Order, 
 Harmony, and Proportion; all that is said of the 
 natural decorum and fitness of things ; all that is said of 
 taste and enthusiasm, may well consist and be supposed, 
 without a graia even of Natural Religion, without any 
 notion of Law or Duty, any belief of a Lord or Judge, 
 " any religious sense of a God ; the contemplation of 
 
136 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the miad upon the ideas of Beauty, and Virtue, and 
 Order, and Fitness, being one thing, and a sense of 
 Religion another. So long as we admit no principle 
 of good actions but Natural Affection, no reward but 
 Natural Consequences ; so long as we apprehend no 
 judgment, harbour no fears, and cherish no hopes of a 
 future state, but laugh at all these things, with the 
 author of the Cha/racterisiics, and those whom he 
 esteems the Uberal and polished part of mankind, how 
 can we be said to be religious in any sense ? Or what 
 is here that an Atheist may not find his account in, as 
 well as a Theist ? To what moral purpose might not 
 Fate or Nature serve as well as a Deity, on such a 
 scheme ? And is not this, at bottom, the amount of 
 aU those fair pretences' ?" 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh in speaking of this passage 
 (History of Ethics, p. 158) says, that here "this most 
 excellent man sinks for a moment to the level of a 
 railing polemic." But this expression is, I think it 
 must be allowed, far too strong. How adverse the 
 influence of Shaftesbury had been to the real belief 
 in religion, was well and generally known. And no 
 thoughtful Christian could be ignorant how baseless 
 and hollow is a scheme of rules for human conduct 
 which has no sanction beyond the beauty of virtue, 
 and the existence of a moral sense. However much 
 such a sense may aid us in discovering the rules of our 
 duty, and even our relation to the Supreme Legislator 
 and Judge, it is only when its indications are pursued 
 in that upward direction, that we obtain such pro- 
 spects as are requisite to support and animate us in 
 our progi-ess. We may have such faculties, such a 
 sense if you will, as is sufficient to enable us to find 
 our way through the wilderness; but except this is 
 accompanied with a firm belief ia the beauty of the 
 promised land, our wanderings may stiU be devious, 
 perverse and interminable. It was natural that Chris- 
 tian divines should grieve to see the internal light 
 
 1 Berkeley, Theory of Vision, p. z. (1733). 
 
SHAFTESBUKT. TINDAL, 1 37 
 
 whicli exists in. the mind of man employed to bewilder 
 instead of direct him ; — spoken of as if it were the 
 end not the gidde of this path ; — as if he had to walk 
 to it not hy it. 
 
 But the Clarkian school, sincere and earnest Chris- 
 tians themselves, had no less, as I have already in- 
 timated, opened the way to a similar attack. It is 
 true, that there was a broad difference between them 
 and the school of Moral Instinct. For the Eternal 
 Reasons which made things right and wrong in the 
 eyes of all reasonable creatures when they were guided 
 by their reason, could be no other than the Eea- 
 sons which determined the Divine Will ; and therefore 
 regulated the Divine Commands. And thus, there 
 was, in this scheme, a necessary coincidence between 
 the Morality of Reason and the Commands of God. 
 And thus, the judgment of right and wrong were 
 not, in their scheme, the results of an instinct, taste, 
 or sense, which contained no indication of a deeper 
 ground, and higher sanction. 
 
 But then, this very identification of Reason and 
 Command was urged by others as rendering one of the 
 two superfluous. The opportunity of pressing the at- 
 tack on this ground was taken by Dr Matthew Tindal, 
 a Fellow of AU Souls' College, Oxford, who had all his 
 life been known as a writer against the Church of 
 England and her Clergy, but who in 1730, at an ad- 
 vanced age, published a work in which all revelation 
 was aimed at. The title of the book was Christianity 
 as old as the Creation. Tindal's two principal works 
 against the Church and against Morals are referred to 
 by Pope : 
 
 But art thou one, whom new opinions sway, 
 
 One who believes as Tindal leads the way, 
 
 Who Virtue and a Church alike disowns. 
 
 Thinks that but words, and this but bricks and stones? 
 
 Fly then, on aU the wings of wild Desire, 
 
 Admire whate'er the maddest can admire. 
 
 His professed object was to show that Christianity, 
 being the external revelation of the will of God, must 
 
138 HISTORY OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 agree with natural religion, which, is the internal reve- 
 lation of the same will ; and the inference which was 
 insinuated was, that Christianity is needless and use- 
 less; the original law and religion of nature being so 
 perfect that nothing can he added to it by any sub- 
 sequent external revelation. 
 
 I have said that this attack was in some measure 
 occasioned by the doctrines which Dr Clarke had re- 
 cently published. Accordingly an argument founded 
 upon these was urged in the work, and was by some 
 supposed to have a formidable aspect. Balguy, whom 
 I have already mentioned as a supporter of Clarke's 
 views, wrote an answer to Tindal, entitled A Second 
 Letter to a Deist (iloB first letter to a Deist was the 
 answer to Shaftesbury) concerning a late hook entitled 
 ' Christianity as old as the Creation,' more pa/rticularly 
 that chapter which relates to Dr Clarke. In this letter, 
 it appears that Balguy's correspondent had proposed 
 to him divers questions on the subject of Tindal'a 
 book: one of which was, "Has not the author, in his 
 last chajiter, plainly proved Dr Clarke inconsistent 
 with himself : and that one part of his Lectures clashes 
 with another?" The contradiction is, that the Law 
 of Nature is asserted to be complete, and again as- 
 serted to be insufficient; and to this the author an- 
 swers very triumphantly : " In setting forth the obli- 
 gations of morality, Dr Clarke everywhere speaks of 
 the Law of Nature in the highest and most advan- 
 tageous terms. He considers it as arising necessarily 
 and invariably from the true natures, reasons, and 
 relations of things. He represents it as a system of 
 eternal, universal, and unchangeable truths ; as a per- 
 fect Eule of Action; as a Law independent of, and 
 antecedent to, all other laws and obligations whatever. 
 He declares, that all rational creatures are obliged 
 to govern themselves, in all their actions, by the 
 eternal Rule of Reason; and that it is not only a law 
 to creatures, but to God himself, who is pleased to 
 make it the unalterable rule of his actions in the go- 
 vernment of the world. These, and many other decla- 
 rations of the like nature, are made by Dr Clarke; 
 
TINDAL. BALGUT. 1 39 
 
 and some of them are quoted at large by your author 
 in the fore-mentioned chapter. 
 
 "Has then Dr Clarke advanced anything after- 
 wards in contradiction hereto t Has he anjrwhere 
 denied the truth or perfection of this sacred rule 1 
 Has he, in any part of his book, expressed himself 
 in derogation from it, or diminution of it ? Not one 
 syllable can I find to any such purpose. What then 
 has he done 1 "Why, he has brought a charge against 
 mankind, of ignorance, negligence, perverseness, stu- 
 pidity. He has a£5rmed, that they are such weak, 
 frail, corrupt creatures, that sometimes they cannot, 
 and, very often, will not understand, of themselves, 
 what belongs to their duty. He has represented men, 
 even the wisest of them, as in^dncibly ignorant, with- 
 out Revelation, of some points of the utmost conse- 
 quence. And as to the generality, he has shown, that 
 they stand in need, upon many accounts, of more light, 
 and better instruction, than either their own reason, 
 or that of the ablest philosophers, could ever afford 
 them. Whether these be facts, or mistakes, I desire 
 to know where lies the inconsistency ? On the one 
 hand, we find excellent truths; a complete rule; a 
 most Divine law: on the other hand, men corrupt; 
 faculties neglected; understandings depraved. I have 
 brought these doctrines close together, to give you. 
 Sir, a fairer opportunity of discovering that opposition 
 which your author pretends to find between them. 
 But who can find it besides himself? Will any man 
 say, that the reality, or perfection of a rule, depends 
 upon the skill or disposition of the agent? Can the 
 eternal truth and reason of things be disannulled, or 
 any way altered,- by the ignorance or frowardness of 
 mankind ? Why then so much pains taken to bring 
 in Dr Clarke as an evidence against himself? Why 
 so many passages produced, in order to prove that he 
 had often ^aid, what, indeed, he always said, and never 
 once denied'?" 
 
 1 £algU7, p. Sg6. 
 
140 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Balgiiy adds (p. 277) another illustration to retort 
 the edge of the argument, that the law of nature is 
 perfect, that all men are capable of discovering it, 
 and that therefore the Gospel is not needed. "Let it 
 be granted," he says, " that temperance and exercise 
 constitute a complete rule of health, and that aU men 
 are capable of discovering this. Does it then foUow 
 that physic and physicians are useless ?" And thus it 
 is that the completeness of the moral rule, even if it 
 be complete, only proves more entirely how much our 
 human nature requires something more than a rule. 
 The end of our Ethics conducts us to the beginning 
 of our Gospel The place which the rules of morality 
 hold in aU sound systems of the philosophy of man, 
 is that which St Paul assigns to them. The wrath 
 of God is revealed against all unrighteousness and un- 
 godliness of men; but stiU these men hold this truth, 
 this revelation of conscience, in unrighteousness; and 
 thus it becomes necessary that the Gospel Revelation 
 should supply the needs which the revelation of Con- 
 science only discovers. The Gentiles have a law in 
 their hearts, as the Jews have on the tables of stone; 
 but what is the place which this great doctrine holds 
 in the high argument into which the apostle intro- 
 duces it ? Neither more nor less than this, to prove, 
 of Jews and of Gentiles alike, that they are all under 
 sin. 
 
 Thus the systems of ethics which found morality 
 upon original and independent principles, not deducing 
 our rules of action from commands and consequences 
 merely, but assigning to them an inherent and es- 
 sential value, do not in any way really trench upon 
 the domains of religion, or interfere with the teaching 
 of Christianity. Tet the pain and controversy occa- 
 sioned by such attacks as that of which I have spoken, 
 even when successfully resisted and repelled, seem to 
 have been among the motives which induced divines 
 first to combine the other principle of morality with 
 this one of the divine command, which, as I have al- 
 ready stated, was done by Warburton in 1738, and a 
 little later, to resign, or at least to cease to put for- 
 
TINDAL. BALGUT. I4I 
 
 ■ward, as any essential part of their principles of mo- 
 rality, the Clarkian tenets of eternal relations, and the 
 like. The form of Morals which thus became preva- 
 lent in this country must now be the subject of our 
 consideration. 
 
LECTUEE IX. 
 "Wabburton. Law. Jackson. Etjtheefokth. 
 
 ■WATEKLAin). 
 
 WARBURTON, as I have said, attempted to 
 combine, in his view of the true foiindations of 
 morality, the three principles of Right Reason, the 
 Moral Sense, and the Divine Command. But in doing 
 this, he did not avoid the objections which lie against 
 each, as I must briefly show. 
 
 1. By speaking of the Moral Sense as an Instinct 
 (following Hutcheson, as we have seen), he has put the 
 assertion of such a sense in the most obnoxious and 
 objectionable form. When asserted in this shape, it 
 is difficult or impossible to find any unquestionable 
 proofs of its existence. It is difficult to discover any 
 instincts which are moral, or which cannot be resolved 
 into such as are not moral; — which cannot be traced 
 into such instincts as are subservient to self-preserva- 
 tion; or such as those by which families are formed 
 and held together. "When the moral sense is asserted 
 in this form, separate from all reflex operation of the 
 mind, or rational insight into the connexions and mo- 
 tives of actions, the usual arguments so often brought 
 against its existence assume a very formidable front, 
 and can hardly be opposed by any satisfactory replies, 
 without, in some measure, changing the ground of the 
 controversy. 
 
 2. The doctrine of essential difierences in things, 
 apprehended by the Reason alone, does not establish 
 a genuine moral character of actions, as I have already 
 observed in speaking of Clarke's view of morality. 
 
WARBPBTON. I 43 
 
 Whatever of fitness or unfitness for certain ends, of 
 agreement or disagreement with certain ideas, there 
 be in this or that course of willing or acting, the dis- 
 covery of these relations does not give an aspect of 
 moral good or evil to actions, except it be conjoined 
 with a sentiment of approval or disapproval, which it 
 is not one of the functions of the Reason, strictly un- 
 derstood, to give. By adopting, as one element of his 
 system, this doctrine of difierences apprehended by 
 the Reason, when the term reason was understood of 
 the intellect only, Warburton made a disadvantageous 
 a,Uiance. No succeeding writers on morals have been 
 able to develope the assertion of such difierences into 
 any thing of real value and strength. 
 
 3. Warburton thus made the assertion of the 
 moral sense too coarsely definite, and that of eternal 
 difierences too barely rational. This arose from his 
 separating too violently, from these elements, that 
 idea which gives them their moral character : and this 
 idea, thus injuriously insulated, he perverted. This 
 was the idea of Obligation. This idea is really in- 
 volved in the very conception of all moral rule and 
 moral relation. That is right which we ought to do. 
 If our moral faculty approves of a deed, we are under 
 an obligation to perform it. The obligation may be 
 evaded or disobeyed, but we cannot help recognizing 
 it, by the very mental act by which we recognize the 
 action as good. When our conscience tells us that we 
 do wrong, we can have no doubt that we have violated 
 an obligation. 
 
 This appears plain enough, but with this Warbur- 
 ton was not content. He laid it down as an axiom 
 {Dvv. Leg. B. i. Sect. iv. p. 141) that "Obligation ne- 
 cessarily implies an Obliger;" — that the will can only 
 be bound by an external Lawgiver. That the sanctions 
 of a Divine Government are necessary to induce cor- 
 rupted man to discharge the duties of Morality, we 
 shall all agree. But that, in metaphysical analysis, 
 there is no other basis of Obligation, appears to be 
 quite inconsistent with the best ideas we can apply 
 to the subject. We cannot but estimate actions as 
 
144 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 right or -wrong; as what we ought and what we ought 
 not to do; as duties and crimes : and in this very esti- 
 mate, is involved an obligation to do and to abstain. 
 Who doubts that we are bound to tell the truth, to 
 observe compacts, without bringing into the Court of 
 Conscience an external power to punish intentional 
 falsehood and bad faith ? Does not the theory which 
 resolves Social Duties into a Social Compact ackuow- 
 ledge an original obligation in a Compact 1 That this 
 obligation is too weak for practical purposes, is not the 
 question: — at least not the question which concerns 
 us here, though it must be allowed that this considera- 
 tion had a material bearing upon the argument of 
 Warburton's book. But that the obligation did not 
 compel man's will, by no means showed that it was 
 not an obligation. The question concerning the nature 
 and foundation of moral rules must be treated on its 
 own ground : both for the sake of truth, and because, 
 without this, we lose that sublime testimony to the 
 Divine Government of the Universe which the Mo- 
 ral World, far more than the Natural, is capable of 
 bearing. 
 
 4. This notion of Obligation, however, was not 
 taken up gratuitously by Warburton, but for the pur- 
 poses of his argument, or at least in harmony with 
 those purposes. He had formed the project of placing 
 the Alliance between Morality and Eeligion on a new 
 basis. In the old form of the argument, it had been 
 urged in favour of Religion, that she distinctly teaches 
 that future retribution which Morality anticipates and 
 requires. But he inverted the argument, and stated 
 it thus ; — ^that Morality does indeed require a state of 
 Divine Government, and that therefore, if, while all 
 other Religions assume this as futwre, one does not, 
 such a Edigion must have been able to poiut to this 
 Divine Grovemment as present: and this he applied 
 to the ancient history of the Jewish Religion. And 
 having taken this course, not content with the con- 
 clusion at which mere human moralists had previously 
 arrived, that Morality requires and anticipates, and 
 renders probable, a future state of rewards and punish- 
 
WAEBURTON. J45 
 
 nients; he ■would make the connexion still more rigor- 
 ous, so that all Moral Obligation should imply a Divine 
 Obligor, -who must be perceived as presiding at present, 
 if he were not taught as one who was to administer 
 justice in future. 
 
 5. It is due to Warburton, and to the subject, to 
 state, that however little we may be disposed to assent 
 to his argument in favour of the Divine Character of 
 the Jewish dispensation (as in fact I believe that cur- 
 gtiment has not been very generally assented to), his 
 representation of the relation between Natural and 
 Revealed Morality is really very instructive and valu- 
 able. He remarks (Book m. Sect. v. p. 536), that 
 previous writers had either tried to prove the reason- 
 ableness of Christianity, by showing that the best 
 pagan philosophers had arrived at moral rules and a 
 doctrine of future retribution approaching to those 
 which Christianity teaches: or else they have denied 
 to the pagans a knowledge of such doctrines, in order 
 to prove the necessiPy of revelation : — But that either 
 way the argument was capable of being reversed; the 
 infidel who ascribed these doctrines to the pagans, 
 inferring revelation to be unnecessary; and he who 
 could find no such truths in the conclusions of the 
 natural understanding, declaring Christianity to be 
 unreasonable. To both these views Warburton op- 
 poses his own. " The only view of antiquity which 
 gives a solid advantage to the Christian cause, is such 
 a one as shows natural reason to be clear enough to 
 perceive truth, and the necessity of its deductions when 
 proposed, but not generally strong enough to discover 
 it, or to draw right deductions from it." "Having 
 of late seen," he afterwards says, "several excellent 
 treatises of morals, delivered on the principles of natu- 
 ral religion, which disclaim, or at least do not own, 
 the aid of Revelation, we are apt to think them, in 
 good earnest, the discoveries of natural reason; and 
 so to regard the extent of its powers as an objection to 
 the necessity of further light. The objection," he adds, 
 "is plausible; but sure there must be some mistake at 
 bottom; and the great difference in point of excellence!, 
 
 10 
 
146 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 between these supposed productions of mere reason, 
 and those real ones of the moat learned ancients, will 
 increase our suspicion. The truth is (he continues), 
 these modem system-maters had aids, which, as they 
 do not acknowledge, so, I will believe they did not 
 perceive; and these aids were, the true principles of 
 religion, delivered by revelation: principles so early 
 imbibed, and so clearly and evidently deduced, thafe 
 they are now miistaken to be amongst our first and 
 most natural ideas: but those who have studied an- 
 tiquity, know the matter to be far otherwise." 
 
 He adds an illustration, drawn from the history of 
 science, which appears to be of a perfectly justifiable, 
 and very instructive nature, making some allowances. 
 "I cannot," he says, "better illustrate the state and 
 condition of the human view before revelation than 
 by the following instance. A summary of the Atomic 
 Philosophy is delivered in the Thesetetus of Plato : yet 
 being given without its principles, when Plato's writ- 
 ings at the revival of learning came to be studied and 
 commented upon, this summary remained absolutely 
 unintelligible; for there had been an interruption in 
 the successiou of that school for many ages ; and nei- 
 ther MarsiUus Ficinus nor Serranus could give any 
 reasonable account of the matter. But as soon," he 
 says, "as Descartes had revived that philosophy by 
 excogitating its principles anew, the mist removed, 
 and every one saw clearly (though Cudworth, I think, 
 was the first who took notice of it) that Plato had 
 given us a curious and exact account of that excellent 
 physiology. And Descartes was thought by some to 
 have borrowed his original ideas from thence; though 
 but for the revival of the atomic philosophy, that pas- 
 sage had still remained in obscurity. Just so," he 
 continues, " it was with respect to the powers of the 
 human mind. Had not revelation discovered the true 
 principles of religion, they had without doubt con- 
 tinued altogether unknown. Yet on their discovery, 
 they appeared so consonant to human reason, that 
 men were apt to mistake them for the production of 
 it." 
 
■WARBURTON. 1 47 
 
 In our assent to this comparison, we must, as I 
 have said, make some allowances : — wo must recollect 
 the disposition which prevails, to believe that great 
 physical truths, even of the most recent discovery, 
 may be found anticipated in ancient authors of re- 
 nown; — we must recollect also the triumphant position 
 then occupied by the atomic theory, which at that 
 period had met with no check from men of science ; 
 and we must bear in mind the current admiration 
 for Descartes which even then had not faded away. 
 It is true in morals, not only as much, but very far 
 more than in physics, that the greatest truths, when 
 once promulgated, are profoundly persuasive and con- 
 vincing by their own evidence. It is true in morals, 
 as well as in physics, that truths which multitudes of 
 the most sagacious of men had laboured for ages with- 
 out discovering, when discovered, are held to be ob- 
 vious and self-evident. It is true, even in physics, that 
 we cannot analyse or explain the process by which 
 great discoveries suddenly dart their light over the 
 earth, truth taking the place of error, and knowledge, 
 once shed abroad, operating upon and modifying men's 
 thoughts without their being aware whence their new 
 and clear insight proceeds. So far we may perhaps, 
 with no irreverent feeling, assent to Warburton's com- 
 parison. But the burning up of the torch of science 
 from time to time is a most imperfect image of the 
 sunrise of the Gospel. The revolution of thought pro- 
 duced by the greatest discoveries is a very inadequate 
 representation, even so far as the rules and grounds of 
 morals only are considered, (which are all that we here 
 consider,) of the immeasurable improvement in man's 
 views of truth which the Christian revelation pro- 
 duced. Religion says, with regard to moral philoso- 
 phy, as well as with regard to man's relation to his 
 Master and Judge, "that which ye ignorantly believe 
 or blindly seek, that declare I unto you." But still 
 Religion recognizes the moral law, as a schoolmaster 
 whose previous training is a most valuable prepara- 
 tion and assistance to her own lessons. It is with 
 this training that my business liesj and it is of vast 
 
 10—2 
 
T48 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 importance tliat the principles taught in this stage of 
 man's progress should be pure and true. I have at- 
 tempted to show how far this was the case at that 
 point of the history of the subject at which we have 
 now arrived. And I have endeavoured to make it 
 appear that, by separating the idea of Obligation from 
 Natural Morality, and by transferring it entirely to 
 the Divine commands and promises, natural morality 
 was deprived of its peculiar instruction, and incapaci- 
 tated from bearing the testimony which it so readily 
 and emphatically renders, when it is allowed to speak 
 freely to the perfections of God's character and the 
 holiness of his law. 
 
 I now purposely turn away, as the course of my 
 subject requires me to do, from the consideration of 
 revealed morality, to resume the history of the dis- 
 cussions concerning the natural foundations of our 
 duties. 
 
 Warburton's system naturally exercised a great 
 influence upon the theologians and moralists of this 
 country. His peremptory analysis of the idea of ob- 
 ligation into the commands of a superior, appeared to 
 simplify the subject, and was very generally accepted. 
 For it resolved that element of a moral law which, 
 though essential to it, requires a peculiar effort of 
 abstract thought, into an external condition, easily un- 
 derstood, and, as at first appeared, easily applied. This 
 therefore soon became the common foundation of mo- 
 rality among a large class of English moralists, and 
 particularly divines. It appears especially to have 
 found favour in this University. 
 
 Among the persons who inclined to such views 
 was Edmund Law, afterwards bishop of Carlisle, who 
 held the Professorship in virtue of which I am now 
 addressing you, from 1760 to 1769. He was previ- 
 ously a Fellow of Christ's College, in this University j 
 a college, as we have already seen, most fertile in mo- 
 ralists. His Notes on Archbishop King's Origin of 
 Evil were published (with his translation of the work) 
 in 1732, and therefore before the Divine Legation. 
 And accordingly he does not in these Notes go to the 
 
LAW. JACKSON. 1 49 
 
 lengths of Warburton. He says that he does not place 
 the obligation of virtue in the mere will of God', "as 
 if his will were separated from his other attributes," 
 which of itself, he owns, " would be no ground of ob- 
 ligation at all; since upon such a blind principle we 
 could never be secure of happiness from any being 
 how faithfully soever we resemble him in perfection :" 
 that is, I presume, except we should believe what is 
 demanded of us to be good, as well as com/manded, we 
 could not pursue it with any confidence or satisfaction. 
 But still he approached sufficiently near the notion 
 of a morality founded upon mere extraneous will, to 
 incur remonstrance on that ground. At the time of 
 which I speak, Clarke's work On the Being and At- 
 tributes of God had excited considerable controversy, 
 as among men of a metaphysical turn of mind it was 
 natural it should do: and Law had declared himself 
 against the validity of the argument there urged. 
 Those who defended the cogency of Clarke's reasoning, 
 were very naturally also disposed to adhere to his 
 views of morality as founded upon the essential re- 
 lations of things; and these they maintained, at least 
 so far as this, that they conceived that these relations, 
 perceived by the Divine Mind, determined the com- 
 mands which he had given to man. Among the per- 
 sons who on this ground opposed Law, was John 
 Jackson, Rector of Ropington in Yorkshire, and 
 Master of "Wigston's Hospital in Leicester. He pub- 
 lished, in 1734, 4 Vindication of Dr Clarke's Demon- 
 stration; and in 1735, A ftm-ther Vindication, in an- 
 swer to a Book by Law entitled. An Enquvry into the 
 Ideas of Space, Time, ImTnensity amd Eternity, as also 
 the Self-existence, Necessofry Existence, and Unity of 
 the Divine NaMure. I do not here meddle with this 
 celebrated argument, except so far as it bears on the 
 ground and obligation of Morality, which is the subject 
 of a Postscript to Jackson's First Vindication. He 
 there says, " The author of the Notes desires to know 
 
 1 Vol. n. p. 313. 
 
150 HISTOET OF MOKAL PHILOSOFHT. 
 
 the precise meaning of the words Rectitude and Per- 
 fection of the Divine Nature, which I make to be the 
 ground of the Divine Acts. In answer, the author 
 of the thoughts may please to take my thoughts as 
 follows : The rectitude and perfection of the Divine 
 Nature which I make to be the ground of the DiTine 
 Acts, is the natural, essential, and perfect Intelligence 
 or Keason of the Divine Mind, that on which is founded 
 the unalterable disposition of God always to act ac- 
 cording to what he cannot but know is fit and right 
 in itself, or will naturally tend to the communication 
 of happiness to rational and moral agents." We here 
 see that the irremediable vagueness and emptiness of 
 the Clarkian notion of Fit and Eight, as apprehended 
 by reason alone, was driving his followers to lean upon 
 an object to which this fitness was subservient, namely, 
 the happiness of rational agents. This notion was no 
 doubt far more easily intelligible than a mere absolute 
 Eightness; but if followed out, and liberated from all 
 that was incongruous with it, it leads to a view con- 
 siderably different from that which it was brought to 
 support. For fitness to the moral nature of man, and 
 not mere subservience to his enjoyTnents, had been the 
 principle on which duties had been rested by the former 
 defenders of independent morality; but this principle 
 their successors were gradually allowing to sJip away 
 from their grasp. 
 
 As the Cambridge men in general thus rejected 
 the fitness of things, they were also indisposed to 
 admit the Moral Sense. Though Warburton, as we 
 have seen, was willing to accept the Moral Sense as 
 a part of the forces belonging to the cause of virtue, 
 the Cambridge moralists looked upon this new ally 
 with suspicion, as incapable of being entirely recon- 
 ciled to their philosophy. This feelmg appears from 
 a work in which the doctrine of the Moral Sense was 
 noticed, and which shows that the opposite system 
 was becoming a part of the habitual teaching of this 
 place. I speak of an Essay on the Nature and Obliga- 
 tions of Virtue, published in 1744, by "Dr Eutherforth, 
 Fellow ajid Tutor of St John's College. It is dedi- 
 
KDTHERFORTH. 151 
 
 cated to one of his former pupils, Anthony Thomas 
 Abdy, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn; to whom he says, 
 "There is little in the following sheets which you 
 have not heard me explain, upon different occasions, 
 while you were under my care at the University." In 
 this work he argues strenuously against Hutcheson's 
 opinions. "The common and ordinary feelings of 
 mankind, the senses and perceptions which are upper- 
 most in the human constitution and are most attended 
 to, plainly direct to private good, and instruct each 
 individual to provide for himself in the best manner 
 he can. But some of the later moralists," he says, 
 "think they have discovered another sense in man, 
 as natural to him as these are, though less observed — 
 an appetite for doing good ; a sense which has virtue 
 for its object, and gives a disinterested approbation 
 of all her dictates; an affection which though it may 
 perhaps be overlooked by the careless, or lie unculti- 
 vated in the minds of the dissolute, will yet sometimes 
 break out, and force even the most inattentive to take 
 notice of the charms of virtue, and the most aban- 
 doned to admire them." Hutcheson is referred to in 
 the margin ; and Kutherforth proceeds to disprove the 
 existence of this peculiar sense. And he afterwards 
 goes on to lay down his moral principles on much the 
 same basis as that with which we have since been so 
 familiar : — that " Every man's happiness is the ulti- 
 mate end which reason teaches him to pursue : and 
 that the constant and uniform practice of virtue to- 
 wards all mankind becomes our duty when revelation 
 has informed us that God will make us finally happy 
 in a life after this :" if we practise it. 
 
 This is teaching which undoubtedly is true as far 
 as it goes; and which would perhaps do little harm 
 in practice, so long as it was employed on the side 
 of good morals. But its inherent defectiveness cannot 
 be concealed; for how does our obedience to God on 
 this view differ from our obedience to an arbitraiy 
 tyrant invested with superior power, or from the ser- 
 vice which the idolater renders to an impure and cruel 
 deity 1 Undoubtedly no one can charge such writers 
 
152 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 as I have noticed ■with making any sach monstrous 
 confiision. But what I wish to remark is, that they 
 do not give the distinction its due place in the foun- 
 dation of their system, where it ought to appear. 
 
 It is evident that the consideration which makes 
 the difference between the cases is, that we have a 
 moral esteem for the character and the law of the true 
 God, as well as an obedience governed by his pro- 
 mises. We believe our Divine Kuler to be supremely 
 holy, just, and good; and therefore we obey him with 
 joy and love, as weU. as hope. But this distinction 
 necessarily implies that we can form an idea of moral 
 goodness, justice, holiness, quite other than obedience 
 tathe will of a superior; siuce it is only by combining 
 these two elements that we obtain a true view of 
 Christian virtue. And thus, when these two elements 
 of virtue have been separated, as for purposes of ana- 
 lysis they should be, if, instead of reuniting them in 
 one common service, we reject and despise one of them, 
 we obtain a mutilated and deformed system, which 
 has no real stability or completeness. This view is 
 very clearly expressed by Dr Waterland, who was 
 Master of Magdalene College in this University, and 
 was one of the ablest opponents of Clarke. " It may 
 be asked," he says', "whether, if God had commanded 
 raen to be unjust and ungrateful, it would have been 
 morally good to be unjust and nngratefuL To which. 
 I answer, that it is putting an absurd, self-contra- 
 dictory supposition : for it is supposing a Grod that is 
 not necessarily wise and good, a God and no God." 
 In this view all parties may unite: — but I confess, 
 I do not think a genidne moralist, or even a person 
 of genuine moral feeling, could really assent to what 
 Waterland subjoins. "Abstract from the considera- 
 tion of the Divine Law, and then consider what justice 
 and gratitude would amount to. To be just or grate- 
 ful so far as it is consistent or coincident with our 
 temporal interest or convenience, and no farther, has 
 
 1 M'urlis, V. p. 50S. 
 
"WATERLAND. 1 53 
 
 no more moral good in it than paying a debt for our 
 present ease in order to be trusted again; and the 
 being further just and grateful without future pro- 
 spects, has as much of moral virtue in it as folly pr 
 indiscretion has : so that the Deity once set aside, it 
 is a demonstration there could be no morality at all." 
 I cannot but think this a very harsh and repulsive 
 mode of stating that side of the question. Every 
 person of generous mind must be revolted when he 
 is told that to be just and grateful withovi futv/re pro- 
 spects has no more of good in it than any other folly 
 and indiscretion has. If men will propound their 
 opinions in such a form, we are obliged to answer 
 them also in a way that may seem somewhat severe. 
 If they hold, as Waterland here does, that an action 
 of justice or gratitude proposed for the sake of a small 
 future advantage has no moral character, they are 
 surely quite inconsistent in maintaining that the same 
 action derives its moral character from being performed 
 with a view to an immeasurably great reward. If to 
 aim at enjoyment in a future state on earth do not 
 promote, but rather destroys the morality of our acts, 
 how can they acquire a moral aspect from being di- 
 rected towards the happiness of a future state, even 
 in heaven ? It will be replied, I believe, that this 
 is so, because the happiness of heaven is inseparably 
 connected with goodness : and thus we come round to 
 the same point again; and thus too we see, as appears 
 to me, how arbitrarily those speculators proceed who 
 wish to separate these two considerations, which, as 
 soon as they are called upon to justify themselves, 
 they are compelled to reunite in order to make their 
 doctrine tolerable. 
 
LECTUEE X. 
 Gay. Tcckeb. Paley. 
 
 EDMUND Law's reasonings mther refeiTed to tte 
 previous thaai to the succeedrag aspect of moral 
 speculation. He was rather of importance as con- 
 futing opinions tiU then prevalent, than as antici- 
 pating doctrines afterwards generally accepted. But 
 there was prefixed to his translation of King's Origin 
 of Evil a dissertation which has a more manifest af- 
 finity with the succeeding course of Cambridge mo- 
 rality. This was a Dissertation coneeming the Funda- 
 jmntal Principle of Virtue or Morality, anonymous, 
 but written by Mr Gay, of Sidney CoUege. This piece 
 has been referred to by Mackintosh and others as en- 
 tertaining an anticipation of the opinions afterwards 
 put forwards by Hartley, respecting the results of the 
 principle of the Association of Ideas; and in that point 
 of view, it has an important place in the history of 
 the speculations upon that subject, to which Hartley's 
 doctrines led, in Scotland and elsewhere : but I here 
 consider Gray with reference to his place in the history 
 of Cambridge moralists rather than metaphysicians. 
 Law, in his notes on The Origin of EvU, rejected the 
 Clarkian doctrine of absolute relations, as the founda^ 
 tions of Eight and Wrong, and made a considerable 
 advance towards the morality founded merely upon 
 the plea.sure and pain resulting from actions. LaVs 
 speculations however were of the nature of the work 
 on which he commented, mixed up with discussions 
 concerning the h priori arguments respecting the being 
 of God, and the most abstract considerations which 
 the human mind can attaia to, respecting space and 
 
GAY. TUCKER. PALET. 1 55 
 
 time, cause and effect, good and evil: but Gay must 
 be regarded as the predecessor of Paley. 
 
 The course which I have pursued has led me to 
 the writers by whom the scheme of morality which 
 has been taught in this University for the last century 
 was framed, and I shall at present go on to describe 
 the further steps of the development and fixation 
 of this system. I may afterwards, if the time allow, 
 resume the consideration of the progress of moral 
 speculation among other classes of English writers 
 from the time of Warburton, downwards. The views 
 of Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, and Hartley, were pur- 
 sued into many interesting and instructive specula- 
 tions by Reid, Stewart, and Brown, and Mackintosh 
 himself. But our Cambiidge moralists employed them- 
 selves rather in constracting a system of morals on the 
 seMsh principle, than in metaphysical analysis. For 
 the latter task, an indifference or distaste seems to 
 have grown up in England about the time of which 
 I speak. There was no wish to move onwards. The 
 Scotch school of metaphysicians engaged with great 
 assiduity in the analysis of man's faculties and prin- 
 ciples, and endeavoured to advance further and further 
 in this wide speculation. But the English moralists 
 shunned rather than sought such enquiries. Cam- 
 bridge men had taken their stand upon Locke in 
 metaphysics, as they had taken their stand upon New- 
 ton in mathematics. They were weary of constantly 
 changing their ground, and seeking new modes of 
 defence against the enemies of morality. 
 
 I have already compared the attack of Hobbes and 
 his foUowei's upon the old defences of morality, to the 
 assault of Rome by the Gauls. The readers of Livy 
 wUl recollect that after that calamity the Romans 
 deliberated whether they should migrate in a body 
 to Veii; and that while they still doubted, a centurion 
 who had marched his company into the forum gave 
 the word, " Signifer, statue signum, hie manebimus 
 optime'." The Senate forthwith exclaimed, " that they 
 
 ' Livy, V. 55. 
 
156 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 accepted tte omen." In the same manner this Uni- 
 versity seemed to have accepted the omen of the Lock- 
 ian system, and to have resolved to rest at the point 
 which had been indicated by -words caught from the 
 lips of those eminent men -whose names I have just 
 uttered; and she long rejected as superfluous or per- 
 verse all attempts to lead her to move to any other 
 position; to add to or alter the system -which they 
 had thus adopted. As, ho-wever, the metaphysical 
 system of Locke did really require, to say the least, 
 important corrections, and as the moral system -which 
 -was deduced from his principles, at least as here in- 
 terpreted, involved most serious defects, -we may easily 
 conceive that the resolation not to change, prevented 
 us from sharing in the advances -which these sciences 
 made elsewhere; as a rigorous adherence to and ex- 
 clusive admiration of Ne-wton long prevented our 
 sharing in the progress of mathematics which took 
 place on the continent. I am far from thinking that 
 the teaching of a university ought to be readily sus- 
 ceptible of change, and eager in the adoption of novel- 
 ties. Such institutions have for their object, as I have 
 already said, to combine permanence -with progress. 
 But perhaps this caution was not enough attended 
 to in admUting the systems of Locke and his followers, 
 and therefore ought not to be held of paramount 
 weight as a reason for retaining them. If they were 
 too hastily accepted and established here, they ought 
 to be at least gradually removed and replaced, if not 
 suddenly discarded. 
 
 The morality of general consequences, in the naked 
 and harsh form in which it has prevailed here, would, 
 I do not doubt, have been modified and purified, as 
 was done in other places, if it had not been for its 
 singular felicity in finding an expounder, who at the 
 same time systematized it, and set it forth in language 
 of the most admirable clearness and poignancy. It 
 -will be imderstood that I speak of Paley; and having 
 elsewhere in what I have said, sufficiently perhaps, 
 stated my -views of the defects of his principles, I have 
 no desire to dwell upon the subject : but I shall make 
 
GAT. TirCKEE. PALEY. 1 57 
 
 a few remarks tending to show that his •work, like 
 most others which hare acquired a settled establish- 
 ment and permanent authority, was rather a clear and 
 systematic expression of opinions already current, than 
 an original Tiew, or even a set of original reasonings. 
 
 Gray, of whom I have already spoken as the author 
 of the Dissertation prefixed to the translation of Abp. 
 King, was, I believe, John Gay who took the degree 
 of B.A. at Sidney College in 1721, and was afterwards 
 Fellow of the College. I will quote one or two pas- 
 sages of Gay, that you may see how near he comes 
 to Paley in his leading views. He says : " Now it 
 is evident from the Nature of God, viz. his being 
 infinitely happy in himself from all eternity, and from 
 his goodness manifested in his works, that he could 
 have no other design in creating mankind than their 
 happiness; and therefore he wills their happiness; 
 therefore, the means of their happiness : therefore, that 
 my behaviour, as far as it may be a means of the hap- 
 piness of mankind, should be such. Here then we are 
 got one step further, or to a new criterion: not to a 
 new criterion of Yirtue immediately, but to a crite- 
 rion of the Will of God. For it is an answer to the 
 enquiry. How shall I know what the Will of God in 
 this particular is ? Thus the Will of God is the im- 
 mediate criterion of Virtue, and the happiness of man- 
 kind the criterion of the Will of God ; and therefore 
 the happiness of mankind may be said to be the cri- 
 terion of Virtue, but once removed." 
 
 You may recollect Paley's expression, " there are 
 many ends besides the far end." So Gay, " As there- 
 fore happiness is the general end of all acuions, so each 
 particular action may be said to have its proper and 
 peculiar end. Thus the end of a beau is to please 
 by his dress; the end of study, knowledge. But nei- 
 ther pleasing by dress, nor knowledge, are ultimate 
 ends; they still tend, or ought to tend, to something 
 farther, as is evident from hence, viz. that a man may 
 ask and expect a reason why either of them are pur- 
 sued. Now to ask the reason of any action or pursuit, 
 is only to enquire into the end of it : but to expect 
 
158 HISTOBT OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a reason, i. e. an end, to be assigned for an ultimate 
 end, is absurd. To ask why I pursue happiness, will 
 admit of no other answer than an explanation of the 
 terms." 
 
 Gay's definition of Virtue is wider than Palsy's : 
 "Yirtue is the conformity to a rule of life, directing 
 the actions of all rational creatures with respect to 
 each other's happiaess ; to which conformity every one 
 in aU cases is obliged: and every one that does so 
 conform, is, or ought to be approved of, esteemed, and 
 loved for so doing." 
 
 The interval from 1731 and 1756, the date of the 
 publications I have mentioned by Gay, Law, and 
 Rutherforth, to the publication of Paley's Principles 
 of Morality and Politics in 1785, is considerable; but 
 I am not aware of any events belonging to the in- 
 termediate time, and holding very important position 
 in the history of moral studies in this place. In 1765 
 PaJey had obtained one of the Bachelors' Essay Prizes, 
 for a comparison between the Stoic and Epicurean 
 philosophy. He had, as was natural with his habits 
 of mind, taken the Epicurean side. This was not an 
 effusion hastily and thoughtlessly flung from his pen, 
 for it was accompanied with elaborate notes in English, 
 and is still recollected for a genuine vivacity of thought 
 and expression which gave a promise of his future 
 style; as, for instance, when he called the Stoics 
 "those Pharisees in philosophy;" which however he 
 probably had from Taylor's Ciml Law, where the com- 
 parison of the Stoics with the Pharisees is quoted from 
 Josephus and from St Jerome (p. 67). During a por- 
 tion of the subsequent period (from 177 1) Paley him- 
 self lectured as Tutor of Christ's College', of which 
 he was a Fellow : and the subjects of his lectures were 
 Locke's Essay, Clarke On the Attributes, and Butler's 
 Analogy. He also lectured on Moral Philosophy, and 
 
 1 Law, the son of the Edmond 
 IJaw, Professor of Casuistry, Master 
 of Peterhouse, and afterwaids Bi- 
 
 shop of Carlisle, whom I have al- 
 ready mentioned, was his coadjutor 
 in the tuition. 
 
GAT. TUCKER. rALEX. 159 
 
 his views on this svibject were, I presume, mainly 
 ooiacident with those explained by Bishop Law in the 
 notes to his translation of King's Origin of Evil, and 
 with the opinions contained in the Preliminary Dis- 
 sertation to that work, which was, as I have said, by 
 Gay of Sidney. 
 
 We also find Paley mentioning with great praise 
 another work, The Light ofNaiurejpwsued, hy Edwa/rd 
 Search, Esq., really however written by Abraham 
 Tucker, of Betchworth Castle, near Dorking. The 
 first three volumes of his work were published in 
 1768; the last four after his death, which took place 
 in 1774. 
 
 This work, cannot, I think, be looked upon as 
 occupying any very important place ia the progress 
 of Moral Philosophy; but there is in it an original 
 unsystematic freedom of thinking, and a temperate 
 good sense and virtuous moral feeling, which are 
 peculiarly English. There is, moreover, and this is 
 the quality which has most struck the notice of its 
 admirers, a fertility and brilliance of illustration which 
 are almost unrivalled, and which make it a mine of 
 thought for its speculative readers. This merit has 
 so often been noticed, that it may, I think, be in- 
 teresting to give an example of it. I take for this 
 purpose his modification of an image of Plato's, which 
 is, as Mackintosh says', "of characteristic and tran- 
 scendent excellence." He is speaking of the relation 
 between Reason and Passion. 
 
 " The metaphor employed by Plato was that of 
 a charioteer driving his pair of horses, by which latter 
 he allegorized the concupiscible and irascible passions : 
 but as we have nowadays left off driving our own 
 chariots, but keep a coachman to do it for us, I think 
 the mind may be more commodiously compared to a 
 traveller riding a single horse, wherein reason is re- 
 presented by the rider, and imagination with all its 
 train of opinions, appetites and habits, by the beast. 
 
 1 Bus. p. 271, note. 
 
l6o HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHX. 
 
 Everybody sees the horse does all the work; the 
 strength and speed requisite for performing it are his 
 own; he carries his master along every step of the 
 journey, directs the motion of his own legs in walking, 
 trotting, galloping, or stepping over a rut, makes many 
 by-motions, as whisking the flies with his tail or play- 
 ing with his bit, all by his own instinct; and if the 
 road lie plain and open, without bugbears to affright 
 him or rich pasture on either hand to entice him, he 
 will jog on although the reins were laid upon his 
 neck, or in a well-acquainted road take the right 
 turnings of his own accord. Perhaps sometimes he 
 may move startish or restive, turning out of the way 
 or running into a pond to drink, maugre all endea- 
 vours to prevent him; but this depends greatly upon 
 the discipline he has been used to. The office of the 
 rider lies in putting his horse into the proper road 
 and the pace most convenient for the present purpose, 
 guiding and conducting him as he goes along, check- 
 ing him when too forward or spurring him w^hen too 
 tardy, being attentive to his motions, never dropping 
 the whip nor losing the reins, but ready to interpose 
 instantly whenever needful, keeping firm in his seat 
 if the beast behaves unruly, observing what passes 
 in the way, the condition of the ground ajid bearings 
 of the country, in order to take directions therefrom 
 for his proceeding. But this is not all he has to do, 
 for there are many things previous to the journey; 
 he must get his tackling into good order, bridle, spurs 
 and other accoutrements; he must learn to sit well 
 in the saddle, to understand the ways and temper of 
 the beast, get acquainted with the roads, and ensure 
 himself by practice to bear long journeys without 
 fatigue or galling; he must provide provender for his 
 horse and deal it out in proper quantities, for if weak 
 and jadish, or pampered and gamesome, he wiU not 
 perform the journey well; he must have him. weU 
 broke, taught all his paces, cured of starting, stum- 
 bling, runniug away, and all skittish or sluggish tricks, 
 trained to answer the bit and be obedient to the word 
 of command. If he can teach biTn to canter whenever 
 
GAT. TUCKER. PALEY. i6l 
 
 there is a smooth and level turf, and stop when the 
 ground lies rugged of his own accord, it will contri- 
 bute to make riding easy and pleasant; he may then 
 enjoy the prospects around or think of any business 
 without interruption to his progress. As to the choice 
 of a horse our rider has no concern with that, but 
 must content himself with such as nature and edu- 
 cation have put into his hands: but since the spirit 
 of the beast depends much upon the usage given him, 
 every prudent man will endeavour to proportion that 
 spirit to his own strength and skill in horsemanship; 
 and according as he finds himself a good or bad rider' 
 will wish to have his horse sober or mettlesome. For 
 strong passions work wonders where there is a stronger 
 force of reason to curb them : but where this is weak 
 the appetites must be feeble too, or they will lie under 
 no coutroul'." 
 
 I cannot refrain from adding some of his remarks 
 on selfishness: "Persons deficient in this quality 
 [benevolence] endeavour to run it down, and justify 
 their own narrow views by alleging that it is only 
 selfishness in a particular form : for if the benevolent 
 man does a good-natured thing for his own satisfac- 
 tion that he finds in it, there is self at bottom ; for he 
 acts to please himself Where then, say they, is his 
 merit ? What is he better than us ? He follows con- 
 stantly what he likes, and so do we : the only differ- 
 ence between us is, that we have a different taste 
 of pleasure from him. To take these objections in 
 order, let us consider that form in many cases is all 
 in all, the essence of things depending thei-eupon. 
 Fruit when come to its maturity, or during its state 
 of sap in the tree, or of earthly particles in the ground, 
 is the same substance all along : beef, whether raw or 
 roasted or putrefied, is still the same beef varying 
 only in form : but whoever shall overlook this dif- 
 ference of form will bring grievous disorders upon 
 his stomach : so then there is no absurdity in sup- 
 posing selfishness may be foul and noisome under one 
 
 i Light ofNabuTBj Vol. n. p. 176, 
 
 11 
 
1 62 BISTORT OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 form, but amiable and recommendable under another. 
 But we have no need to make this supposition, as 
 we shall not admit that acts of kindness, howmuch- 
 soever we may follow our own inclination therein, 
 carry any spice of selfishness. But men are led into 
 this mistake by laying too much stress upon ety- 
 mology, for selfishness being derived from self, they 
 learnedly infer that whatever is done to please one's 
 own inclination must fall under that appellation, not 
 considering that derivatives do not always retain the 
 fall latitude of their roots. Wearing woollen cloaths 
 «r eating mutton does not make a man sheepish, nor 
 does employing himself now and then in reading render 
 him bookish: so neither is eveiything selfish that re- 
 lates to oneself. If somebody should tell you that 
 such a'bna was a very selfish person, and for proof 
 of it give a long account of his being once catched 
 on horseback by a shower, that he took shelter under 
 a tree, that he alighted, put on his great coat, and 
 was wholly busied in muffling himself up, without 
 having a single thought all the while of his wife or 
 children, his friends or his country : would not you 
 take it for a banter ? or would you think the person 
 or his behaviour could be called selfish in any pro- 
 priety of speech 1 What if a man agreeable and 
 obliging in company should happen to desire another 
 lump of sugar in his tea to please his own palate, 
 would they p-onounce him a whit the more selfish 
 upon tbat accouat 1 So that selfishness is not having 
 a regard for oneself, but having no regard for any- 
 thing else. Therefore the moralist may exhort men 
 to a prudent concern for their own interests and at 
 the same time dissuade them from selfishness, without 
 inconsistency'." 
 
 Mackintosh has considered Tucker principally as 
 to his views of that analysis of our moral judgments, 
 which was the leading point of speculation of the 
 Scotch school. But as connected with the main sub- 
 ject of the present course of Lectures, we have to look 
 
 VoL n. pp. 313-^15. 
 
GAY. TUCKEK, PALEY. 163 
 
 prmcipally at his views of the foundations of morality. 
 In reference to this question, he obviously belongs 
 to the school who rest the obligation of duties upon 
 the consequences, in the way of pleasure and pain, 
 to which they lead. He states this view in many 
 parts of his work. For example, he has a chapter 
 entitled " Ultimate Good;" he informs his reader that 
 he intends this phrase as a translation of the swinmwm 
 bonum of the ancient schools of moralists. Nor can 
 it be questioned that this translation far more truly 
 brings before us the import of those ancient contro- 
 versies than any of the more usual ways of rendering 
 the phrase, as the "chief good." "For," he says, 
 " the enquiry was not to ascertain the degree of good- 
 ness in objects, to determine what possessed it in 
 the highest pitch beyond all others: but since the 
 goodness of things depends upon their serviceableness 
 towards procuring us something we want, to discover 
 what was that one thing intrinsically good which 
 contented the mind of itself, and rendered all others 
 desirable in proportion as they tended directly or 
 remotely to produce it'." Then, referring the reader 
 to his own account of motives, he says, "Whoever 
 shall happen to think they contain a just representa- 
 tion of human nature, need not be long in seeking 
 for this summum bonum; for he will perceive it to 
 be none other than pleasure, or satis&ction, which 
 is pleasure taken in the largest sense as comprising 
 every complacence of mind, together with the avoid- 
 ance of pain or uneasiness." "Perhaps," he adds, 
 " I shall be charged with reviving the old exploded 
 doctrine of Epicurus upon this article, but I am not 
 ashamed of joining with any man of whatever cha- 
 racter, in those parts where I think he has truth 
 on his side." In accordance with this profession, he 
 treats other parts of his subject. Thus when he comes 
 to speak of Rectitude and Right: "Right," he says 
 (p. 200), " belongs originally to lines, being the same 
 as straight in opposition to curve and crooked. . . . 
 
 1 VoL n. p. 182. 
 
 11—2 
 
164 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 From hence it has been applied by way of metaphor 
 to rules and actions, which lying in the line of our 
 progress to any purpose we aim at, if they be wrong, 
 they will carry us aside, and we shaU either wholly 
 miss of our intent, or must begin again and take a 
 longer compass than necessary to arrive at it : but if 
 they conduct effectually and directly by the nearest 
 way, we pronounce them right. Therefore the very 
 expression of right in Usdf is absurd, because things 
 are rendered right by their tendency to some end, 
 so that you must take something exterior into the 
 account in order to evince their rectitude." It is 
 curious that his own illustration here did not cause 
 at least some scruple in his mindj for in truth, we 
 do not take anything exterior into account to deter- 
 mine whether a line be straight or crooked. Its re- 
 ference to some given point, or other condition, may 
 determine whether it is in the right direction; but 
 it is a straight line in virtue of necessary relations 
 of space, and not of its leading to the given point. 
 If the difference between moral right and wrong can 
 be made to depend upon principles as pure from 
 external regards as the difference between straight 
 and crooked, the doctrine of morality sepai-ate from 
 the pursuit of pleasure will be as clearly established 
 as the doctrine of geometry separate from the mea- 
 surements of material objects. Again : " Everybody," 
 he say.s, "knows a right line is the shortest distance 
 between two points, so as to touch them both, and 
 the nearest approach from any. one to any other given 
 point is along such right Une. From hence," he adds, 
 "it has been applied by way of metaphor, to rules 
 and actions." But according to his own showing, and 
 that of all the assertors of dependent morality, the 
 analogy here fails altogether; for justice and virtuous 
 self-denial, which are the right roads to enjoyment, ac- 
 cording to their doctiine, are certainly not the shortest : 
 on the contrary, they are therefore right, because they 
 reach the end better, by a very circuitous process ; . 
 and the short cut to pleasure, which appetite and pas- 
 sion offer, is without hesitation pronounced wrong. 
 
GAY. TUCKER. PALET. 165 
 
 The same embarrassment in the management of 
 his principle of mere satisfaction, or utility, occurs 
 to him, as ' it must occur to all virtuous moralists, 
 when he comes to the best defined cases of moral 
 duties. Thus he says in pursuance of his general 
 principle, that justice is to be measured by utility, 
 and that an extreme case of inconvenience arising 
 from a common precept of justice, nullifies the rule 
 for that case. But yet he adds (p. 305), that "if 
 a righteous man be asked vhy he fulfils his engage- 
 ments though to his own manifest detriment, he will 
 answer, Because it would have been unjust to have 
 failed in them; for he wants no other motive to in- 
 duce him : and if the querist be righteous too, he 
 will want no other reason to satisfy him." And after 
 supposing the enquiry to be still prosecuted, he adds, 
 "But could it be made appear that injustice in some 
 single instance was to the general" [observe the gene- 
 rat] " advantage, he would not think himself warranted 
 to practise it, because the mischief of setting a bad 
 example and weakening the authority of a beneficial 
 rule would be greater than any present advantage 
 which might accrue from the breach of it." Here 
 the example is taken into the account; and it is 
 supposed that the evil which it occasions cannot be 
 remedied, by the fact that those who see the rule 
 violated, may see also the reasons of its violation. 
 But he goes further. " Even supposing his injustice 
 could be concealed from all the world, so that it could 
 do no hurt by example, still he would not believe 
 it allowable, for fear it should have a bad influence 
 upon his own mind." Thus we come to this result : 
 that the way to understand the true nature and 
 demands of justice, and the conditions under which 
 her rules admit of resemblance, is to look at the con- 
 sequences; but agaru, the way to avoid being misled 
 is not to look at the consequences, but to follow the 
 rules as rising above the region of exceptions. This 
 is the kind of dilemma which shows how insufficient 
 the contemplation of the consequences of actions alone 
 is, to lead to a system of morality which will satisfy 
 
1 66 HISTORT OF MORAL PHILOSOFHT. 
 
 the common judgments ■which practical life generates 
 in the breasts of virtuous men. 
 
 It is not my purpose to give a general analysis of 
 Tucker's Tirork, which, indeed, from its prolix, devious, 
 and unsystematic character, would be no easy task; 
 and which its place in the history of philosophy does 
 not render necessary. But I may remark, that the 
 author extends his speculations to the philosophy of 
 religion as well as of morality, treats of the connexion 
 of the two subjects, and supplies the deficiencies of 
 the one by the other. Thus in the former part of his 
 work, on Morality, he refers to the case of Regulus, 
 the ancient stock example of the schools for the state- 
 ment of the question between virtue and pleasure. 
 He decides that upon his principles, so far as he has 
 then pursued them, Regulus "acted imprudently'." 
 This in a chapter entitled LimHiatian of Virtue : but 
 further on in the work' there appears a chapter writ- 
 ten with express reference to this preceding one, and 
 entitled Re-erdargement of Virtue. And here taking 
 into account, though but vaguely and dimly, the pro- 
 spect of a future retribution, he reverses this decision. 
 I wiU give the whole passage. 
 
 " Therefore now we may do ample justice to Ee- 
 gnlus, whom we left under a sentence of folly for 
 throwing away life with all its enjoyments for a 
 phantom of honour. For he may allege that he had 
 not a fair trial before, his principal evidence being 
 out of the way, which having since collected in the 
 course of this second Book, he moves for a rehearing. 
 For he will now plead that it was not a fantastic 
 joy in the transports of rectitude, nor the Stoical 
 rhodomontade of a day spent in virtue containing 
 more enjoyment than an age of bodily delights, nor 
 his inability to bear a life of general odium and con- 
 tempt, had his duty so required, which fixed him in 
 his resolution: but the prudence of the thing upon 
 a full and calm deliberation. Because he considered 
 
 > VoL II. p. 373 sq. > VoL ill. p. 502, § 5. 
 
GAT. TUCKER. PALEY. 167 
 
 himself as a citizen of the universe, whose interests 
 ai-e promoted and maintained by the particular mem- 
 bers contributing their endeavours towards increasing 
 the quantity of happiness, wherever possible, among 
 others with whom they have connexion and inter- 
 course. 
 
 "He saw that his business lay with his fellow- 
 creatures of the same species, among whom a strict 
 attachment to faith and honour was the principal 
 bulwark of order and happiness, that a shameful con- 
 duct in his present conflict would tend to make a 
 general weakening of this attachment, which might 
 introduce disorders, rapines, violences and injuries 
 among multitudes, to far greater amount than his 
 temporary tortures; that if he behaved manfully, he 
 should set a glorious example, which might occasion 
 prosperities to be gained to his country and all be- 
 longing to her, overbalancing the weight of his suf- 
 ferings, especially when alleviated by the balmy con- 
 sciousness of acting right. He was persuaded likewise 
 that all the good a man does, stands placed to his 
 account, to be repaid him in full value when it will 
 be most useful to him : so that whoever works for 
 another, woi'ks for himself; and by working for num- 
 bers, earns more than he could possibly do by working 
 for himself alone. Therefore he acted like a thrifty 
 merchant, who scruples not to advance considerable 
 sums, and even to exhaust his coifers, for gaining 
 a large profit to the common stock in partnership. 
 Upon these allegations, supported by the testimony 
 of far-sighted philosophy, and confirmed in the ma- 
 terial parts by heaven-born religion, I doubt not the 
 jury will acquit him with flying colours, and the judge 
 grant him a copy of the record, to make his proper 
 use of, whenever he might be impeached or slandered 
 hereafter." 
 
 I have with the less unwillingness given these long 
 extracts from Tucker, since we have few English 
 writers of any merit to occupy this interval, and the 
 vivacity of his style makes it an ungrateful task to 
 reduce him to mere abstract assertions. Moreover, 
 
1 68 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPUY. 
 
 hia influence upon the subsequent progress of the sub- 
 ject was far from trifling; for as I have said, he was 
 the favourite author of Paley. This latter moralist, 
 so important from the place he has long held among 
 us, I have already begun to speak of, and I now 
 proceed with the further notice of the reception and 
 effect of his system. 
 
 Paley's ethical work is mainly employed in de- 
 ducing arguments for our duties, and rules for de- 
 ciding critical cases, from the principle of general 
 utility. If this undertaking had been kept in its 
 due place, moralists of all shades of opinion might 
 have received such a work with pleasure; for all agiee 
 that sound morality is invariably the road to the 
 greatest general good; and to trace the mode in which 
 the principles produce the result, is satisfactory and 
 instructive, even to those who do not think that such 
 a deduction discloses the full force and significance 
 of our duties. Moreover, in Paley's mode of executing 
 this task, he displayed a moderation, a shrewdness, 
 and a poignant felicity of idiomatic expression, which 
 it was impossible not to admire. If the work had 
 been entitled MoralUy as derived from the Frindple 
 of General Utility, and if the Principle had been 
 assumed as evident or undisputed (instead of being 
 rested on the proofs which Paley gives), the work 
 might have been received by the world with uumingled 
 gratitude; and the excellent sense and temper, which, 
 for the most part, it shows in the application of rules, 
 might have produced their beneficial effect without 
 any drawback. 
 
 But Paley chose to give proofs of his principles ; 
 and in doing this, he both fell into false philosophy, 
 and assumed a tone and temper unsuited to the occa- 
 sion. The doctrine of ultimate utility as the measure 
 and ground of moral rules had been so long current, 
 almost uncontradicted, among English writers, that 
 those who were formed in this school could not con- 
 ceive the possibility of its being rationally opposed, 
 and could not avoid treating with contempt and ridi- 
 cule those who rested on any other principle. Hence 
 
GAT. TUCKER. PALET. 1 69 
 
 •we find that Paley cannot speak of the opinion which 
 represents the soul to be superior to the body, the 
 rational to the animal part of our constitution, without 
 calling such views "much usual declamation." In 
 like manner, his account of the Law of Honour is 
 rather like the language of a poignant satirist, than a 
 moralist gravely and calmly stating an extensive prin- 
 ciple of hujnan action. " The Law of Honour is a 
 system of rules constructed by people of fashion, and 
 calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one an- 
 other, and for no other purpose... Profanen ess, neglect 
 of public worship or private devotion, cruelty to ser- 
 vants, rigorous treatment of tenants or other depend- 
 ants, want of charity to the poor, injuries done to 
 tradesmen by insolvency or delay of payment, with 
 numberless examples of the same kind, are accounted 
 no breaches of the Law of Honour... It allows of for- 
 nication, adultery, drunkenness, prodigality, duelling, 
 and of revenge, in the extreme." And it is to be 
 recollected that while he says this, he recognizes no 
 other ordinary rules of life than these, the Scriptures, 
 the Law of the Land, and this Law of Honour. 
 
 The fact is that Paley had no taste, and therefore 
 we may be allowed to say that he had little aptitude, 
 for metaphysical disquisitions. In this there would 
 have been no blame, if he had not entered into specu- 
 lations, which, if they were not metaphysically right, 
 must be altogether wrong. We often hear persons 
 declare that they have no esteem for metaphysics, and 
 intend to shun all metaphysical reasonings ; and this 
 is usually the prelude to some specimen of very had 
 metaphysics : for I know no better term by which to 
 designate the process of misunderstanding and con- 
 founding those elements of truth which are supplied 
 by the relations of our own ideas. That Paley had 
 no turn or talent for the reasoning which depends on 
 such relations, is plain enough. His examination of 
 the question of the Moral Sense throughout proves 
 this. For example, he states as an argument against 
 the doctrine of a moral sense, this consideration : If 
 such a principle of action were implanted in man, it 
 
170 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 could not subsist except there were implanted also 
 the ideas which it includes j and thus we are led to 
 innate ideas. The argument is well worthy notice; 
 so also is the reply : " The argument," it is replied, 
 " bears against all instincts, and against their exist- 
 ence in brutes as well as in men, but these certainly 
 do exist; hence the argument cannot be conclusive." 
 We have here a dilemma which must be solved in 
 some way before we can have any right to pronounce 
 upon the question at issue. Now what is Paley's 
 conduct in this case ? He simply states the argument 
 and the defence; and adds that as there is such a de- 
 fence, the argument will hardly, he supposes, produce 
 conviction, though it may be difficult to find an an- 
 swer to it. 
 
 We may remark, however, in justice to Paley on 
 this subject, that the habit of speaking of the Moral 
 Faculty as an Instinct, and of calling it the Moral 
 Sense, which practices were common in preceding 
 writers, naturally led a person whose mind like his, 
 had altogether a practical and not a metaphysical 
 turn, to embody this supposed Instinct or Sense in a 
 particular hypothetical instance, as he does in the 
 story of Caius Toranius. And thus this mode of 
 putting the question of the Moral Faculty, which has 
 justly been blamed as unphUosophical and irrelevant, 
 is not entirely to be charged upon Paley only. 
 
 In like manner a logical objection may be made 
 to his definition of Virtue', that it is inconsistent 
 with his own scheme, for it formally excludes duties 
 to God and to ourselves : besides the inherent vice of 
 his doctrine which it involves, in making no actions 
 virtuous which are not done from the prospect of a 
 future reward. This part of the subject has been so 
 often discussed that I shall not now dwell upon it. 
 
 It is a still more remarkable example of this want 
 of metaphysical turn in Paley, that he takes the no- 
 
 1 " Virtue is the doing good to I of God, and for the sake of ever- 
 vumklnd, in obedience to the will | liisHng happiness." 
 
GAT. TUCKER. PALET. 171 
 
 tibn of Obligation, which Warburton, and, after him, 
 the Cambridge moralists, had already degraded from 
 an internal element of a duty to an external and 
 material constraint; and degrades and materialises it 
 still further. He tries to aid himself by the idea of 
 a case in which he is obliged to give his vote to the 
 disposal of a powerful benefactor. It does not appear 
 to have occurred to him that he might be thus obliged 
 to vote for A, though he ought to vote for B. His 
 talent lay in adducing and estimating practical cases, 
 and he tried to apply this process, even in metaphy- 
 sical inquiries; although it is obviously the way to 
 complicate, not to elucidate, the ultimate analysis of 
 ideas. In no other way could any one have been led 
 to assert moral obligation to be the state of a man 
 who is " urged by a violent motive resulting from the 
 will of another." If it had been asserted that a man 
 so circumstanced is not an example of moral obliga- 
 tion, the statement would have been much more 
 nearly true. It is plain that a man committing some 
 great wickedness contrary to his own wish, under the 
 influence of the threats of a powerful tyrant, is the 
 strongest example we can conceive of a person im- 
 pelled by this kmd of moral obligation. . Or we may 
 put the objection in another form. When a large 
 class of English moralists had made obedience to the 
 will of God a necessary part of .the idea of virtue, 
 there was a principle involved in their views which 
 made them not only tolerable to genuine moralists, 
 but made this way of speaking appear to many good 
 and pious men, far more reverent, and more suited to 
 man's real condition, than any independent idea of 
 rectitude. "What was this principle which thus re- 
 commended the combination of external command 
 with. the other elements of virtue? It was, as we 
 have seen, that this external will was not any one's 
 will, but the will of God: that the external command 
 was not arbitrary command, but the laws of the Being 
 in whom we conceive all goodness and holiness neces- 
 sarily to reside. The most sensitive virtue was not 
 offended at being impelled by his promises; the most 
 
Jja HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 snow-white purity was not soiled by contact with hi 
 behest, which was itself purity. Hence, as we hav< 
 seen, those who asserted that God's command made 
 actions virtuous, stUl allowed that he could not com- 
 mand injustice or ingratitude; and those who asserted 
 that actions were in themselves right, allowed at once 
 that all such actions were commanded by God. And 
 thus the obligation which resided in the nature of 
 virtue itself, and the obligation which resulted from 
 the Divine Command, were never really separated. 
 They were like the circumference and center of a 
 circle which must coexist. But this necessary con- 
 nexion was a speculation of a kind for which Paley 
 had no relish, and from which he wished to free the 
 subject. Accordingly he at once tears the notion of 
 obligation loose from the idea of duty. We are 
 obliged when we are impelled by the will of another : 
 not, as hitherto, when we are commanded by him 
 whose commands we know to be right; — but by the 
 will of another — any other — for example, any candi- 
 date who canvasses us for a vote. Such was the con- 
 sequence of Paley's disposition to represent every 
 thing in a practical form. And thus obligation ceases 
 to have any connexion with what we ought to do; 
 and indeed to have any moral aspect whatever. In 
 previous ways of treating the subject, the circle of 
 our duties and obligations, or any part of it, was not 
 deformed, because it was referred to its natural center, 
 the central idea of God. But the center of the line 
 which represents Paley's obligation is arbitrary and 
 variable; and thus would tend to disfigure and con- 
 found the form of duty, if it were not corrected by 
 other considerations. 
 
 Leaving then this part of Paley's work, which 
 deals with the analysis of ideas, and the establish- 
 ment of the foundations of morality, as by no means 
 deserving of confidence or admiration ; I turn for an 
 instant to the superstructure, in order to make a 
 single remark. I have already said that his general 
 ])rinciple being assumed, his application of it is often 
 very instructive and happy. It may be asked how 
 
GAT. TUCKER. PALET. 173 
 
 the original vice of his system, his referring to the 
 resulting pleasure and utility as the test of moral 
 right, can ever be got over. Granting, it may be 
 said, that we believe that moral rectitude does best 
 promote human happiness, when we take in the whole 
 train of consequences, yet who can trace all the con- 
 sequences of any one single action 1 Who can prove 
 that if I tell an apparently harmless or agreeable lie, 
 it will in the long run, and taking all the history of 
 the world together, produce more pain than if I had 
 told a truth? If we throw a stone into a lake, we 
 can trace but a little way the waves which it pro- 
 duces; in like manner if we attend to the conse- 
 quences of any human action, we can trace them a 
 little space, but they soon ramify and spread and are 
 modified in a thousand ways, so that we are obliged 
 to call back our thoughts from the vain pursuit. 
 How then can we deduce from the contemplated con- 
 sequences of human actions, a system of morality 
 which shall determine all .imaginable cases? And 
 how can it be that Paley, having constructed his 
 Ethical system by such a consideration of conse- 
 quences, has nevertheless in most or in all cases, de- 
 termined right on doubtful questions, and obtained 
 sound and good rules of moral action? 
 
 To this I reply, that in systems so constructed the 
 unmanageable nature of one fundamental assumption 
 is remedied by another assumption. The moralist 
 assumes that human conduct is to be determined by 
 the consideration of the total consequent pleasure. 
 But this consideration is incapable of being developed 
 in finite terms; — (if I may be here allowed a mathe- 
 matical expression). The moralist then assumes an- 
 other principle : — that the consideration of conse- 
 quences is to be applied by means of general rules : — 
 that all like actions are to be forbidden :^that to 
 violate a general rule is itself an evil : — that this evil 
 is so great as to do more than balance the apparent > 
 good results of any action. 
 
 I speak of this as an asswmption: for the supreme 
 principle of the system cannot supply a rigorous proof 
 
174 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 of the assmnption. The supreme principle of the sys- 
 tem of which I speak is, the happiness resulting from 
 each action. General rules therefore are good, only 
 because, and so far as, they are subservient to happi- 
 ness. We have no light, on such principles, to demand 
 for them any greater generality, any greater rigour, 
 than we can establish by showing such a subsei-vience. 
 But in constructing such system of morality we do 
 demand more. We demand so much more, that we 
 make their very generality a ground for rejecting 
 perceived consequences. We do not limit the gene- 
 rality by the utility, by its tendency to produce bene- 
 fits of known kindsj we declare the generality to be 
 a new kind of utility'. 
 
 This assumption does in fact, if acted upon, bring 
 the two systems of morality, the dependent and the 
 independent, into very close proximity as to their re- 
 sults. Por as soon as it is held that rules must be 
 universal, we can have little doubt what the rules are 
 to be. It cannot, on any principles of morals, be 
 generally indifierent whether we tell the truth or tell 
 a lie : and we must have a rule of universal validity : 
 — therefore " Tell the truth," which must be the gene- 
 ral rxde, must be the universal rule. And thus the 
 system of dependent morality, from this point, may be 
 made to assume a form as firm and solid as if it had 
 for its base the essential distinctions of things. 
 
 I may observe that this is very much like what 
 has taken place in other biunches of science. In 
 many branches of science there have been controversies 
 whether the principles of the science are necessarily 
 true, or are known by experiment only; just as in 
 morals, the question constantly imder our notice has 
 been, whether the rules of ethics can be necessarily 
 deduced from the idea of moral rightness, or must be 
 learnt by tracing actions to their consequences^ Now 
 those who have maintained the empirical foundation 
 of such sciences, of mechanics for example, have still 
 
 1 See Paley, Book ii. a 7 and 8. 
 
GAT. TUCKER. PALEY. 1 75 
 
 held the propositions wHch the science contains to 
 be universally true. Take the case of any machine in 
 •which the machinist would calculate the effect. Sup- 
 pose that a projector brings forward some mechanical 
 contrivance, which possesses, as he maintains, powers 
 far greater than any hitherto known : however com- 
 plex, however novel the construction, the mechanical 
 philosopher proceeds unhesitatingly upon the principle, 
 that in the working of the machine what is gained in 
 power is lost in velocity. But how does he know 
 that the principle is true in this new case? He may 
 have proved its truth experimentally in other in- 
 stances; but here, the projector maintains that an 
 entirely novel construction is employed: — the old 
 maxims, he asserts, are no longer valid. The me- 
 chanist heeds him not: he does not waver as to the 
 truth of his mechanical principle. It must be true 
 in this case, though hitherto tested only in others. 
 Whence is this •confidence? How is it that experi- 
 mental mechanical truths thus assume the character 
 of necessity ? The answer is important : they must be 
 universal by their nature : and hence, proved in one 
 case, they hold for all others. Thus in the case just 
 referred to. Action and reaction must be equal : 
 action and reaction must depend upon the masses and 
 upon their velocities: — action and reaction are ^rojoor- 
 tional to the masses and velocities jointly; or else 
 they are not thus proportional : but in either case the 
 proposition is general. Action and reaction cannot be 
 one thing in one material combination, and another 
 thing in a different combination. Therefore the mea- 
 sure of action and reaction, the joint proportion of 
 the masses and velocities, is either universally true or 
 universally false. But we know that it is true in 
 many simple cases : — hence it is true in all cases, 
 however varied, however complex, however novel. 
 
 Thus this assumption of the necessary generality 
 of our propositions makes the procedure nearly alike, 
 after a certain point, of those who cultivate the sci- 
 ence asserting it to rest upon independent foundations 
 in the nature of our ideas, and of those who refer it 
 
176 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 entirely to empirical grounds. And this is the case 
 in morals as it is in mathematics. 
 
 A moral projector might come to the casuist, as- 
 serting that he was in possession of a falsehood which 
 it would be of the greatest service to mankind to 
 promulgate as a truth. What would the casuist say? 
 " It never can be right to promulgate falsehood." If 
 he were a moralist of expedience, if the question had 
 bejen proposed to Paley, he would have said: "It 
 must in the long run do more harm than good to put 
 about your lie." But the projector pleads that he has 
 calculated the good and the harm, and that the good 
 immensely predominates. The moralist has not calcu- 
 lated ; how can he know ?-JfcJ)oes the moralist hesitate 
 at this ? Not an ins^nt. He says, " You violate a 
 general rule. No other good can compensate for the 
 mischief of this." And thus he nobly leaps over his 
 barrier of calculated consequences, and places himself 
 at one bound, in defiance of his theory, upon the solid 
 basis of rules by their nature universal. And thus it 
 is that there is no inevitable divergence in the results 
 of the different, or even opposite schools of moralists, 
 as to rules of conduct : and in those of them who 
 accept the light of religion, even as a collateral aid, 
 there is the most remarkable coincidence, notwithstand- 
 ing the different courses they at first seem to pursue. 
 
 Yet it is still true, that the different spirit of 
 these different schools continues to pervade them, 
 even in their practical conclusions. Thus Paley, 
 though he avails himself of the consideration of the 
 necessary generality of rules, in order to gain a solid 
 footing for sound morality, still appears to have a 
 misgiving respecting this assumption, and shrinks 
 back again from the general rule to the special con- 
 sequences. " Not to violate a general nfle for the 
 sake of any particular good consequences we may 
 expect is for the most part" he -says, " a salutary 
 caution, the advantage seldom compensating for the 
 violation of the rule." Hence we see he introduces 
 words which infringe the integrity of the rule, and 
 indeed may easily be used to destroy it altogether. 
 
GAY. TUCKER. PALET. 1 77 
 
 In the same way, althougli general rules, if they 
 are of supreme importance in morals, must be allowed 
 also to be of great value in government, the considera- 
 tion of these appears to be laid aside when it ought to 
 be recollected most. Thna Paley says : " This prin- 
 ciple [of expediency] being admitted, the justice of 
 every particular case of resistance [in political con- 
 troversies] is reduced to a computation of the quantity 
 of the danger and grievance on the one side, and the 
 probability and expense of redressing it on the other." 
 Hence he appears to have left out of the account the 
 immense mischief of violating that long-tried and ap- 
 proved system of rules which we call the Constitution, 
 of which he might easily say, with as much truth 
 as of any system of moral rules, that not to violate 
 it is a salutary caution, the advantage so gained rarely 
 compensating the violation of the rule. 
 
 It is not my intention to discuss at present Paley's 
 views with regard to special duties. I shall have a 
 few remarks to make on the reception which his prin- 
 ciples met with in this University and this country; 
 and with these I shall conclude the historical sketch 
 ■which I have thus attempted. 
 
 12 
 
LECTURE XL 
 Paley. Gisboene. 
 
 IN order to make more complete our account of the 
 reception of Pale/s work in general, and especially 
 in this place, let us go back a few years. The works 
 of Eutherforth I conceive we may take as representing 
 the teaching common at Cambridge in the middle 
 of the last century. Besides the Essay which T have 
 mentioned, he published in 1754 and 1756, as I have 
 said, his Institutes of Nativral Law, being the substance 
 of a Course of Lectures on Grotius de Jure Belli et 
 Fads, read in St John's College, Cambridge. The 
 work consists of two volumes; the first being on the 
 Rights and Obligations of Mankind, considered as In- 
 dividuals; the second, on the Rights and Obligations 
 of Mankind, considered as Members of Civil Societies. 
 His work was, I believe, in common use in the Uni- 
 versity, tUl that of Paley was introduced. Although 
 it professes to be a Course of Lectures on Grotius, 
 neither the basis of the system, nor its arrangement, 
 have any close resemblance with those of Grotius. 
 The work of Grotius holds a very important place in 
 the history of Moral Philosophy ; but in order to ad- 
 here to my plan of pursuing at present the history of 
 this Philosophy in England only, I do not attempt to 
 speak of it now. I will only remark (as I believe I 
 have already done), that the fundamental doctrines of 
 Grotius are very nearly the same as those of Cumber- 
 land ; a general principle of sociality, or regard to the 
 good of human kind, being the main basis of their 
 morality. 
 
 This principle in Cumberland, as we then said, was 
 emphatically declared to be something far higher and 
 
PALEY. 179 
 
 •wider than a regard to private good. But the leading 
 English moralists, having now taken private good for 
 their foundation principle, it is proper to consider in 
 what manner they applied this principle in particular 
 cases. Supposing the controversy with their opponents 
 to be terminated, what did they teach their disciples! 
 Having demolished the ancient palace of Moral Rec- 
 titude, how did they proceed to give solidity to' the 
 commodious modern mansion which they undertook 
 to erect on its ruins? 
 
 We find, in the works of Eutherforth, examples 
 of the modes of procedure which, from this time, were 
 commonly pursued by our moralists for this purpose ; 
 these are, for the most part, attempts to deduce special 
 duties in detail, by tracing the special evils which arise 
 from the neglect of them. Thus, in his Essay, inso- 
 briety and other sensual indulgences are vices, because 
 they prevent our doing all the good we might, by dis- 
 turbing our health, occupying our time, distracting 
 our attention. We cannot help seeing how low and 
 lax is the morality to which we should thus be led. 
 It is true that purer precepts, borrowed from holier 
 sources, are constantly operating among Christian mo- 
 ralists, to correct and elevate the perverse and debased 
 conclusions which low and poor principles entailed 
 upon them; but then, in proportion as their moral 
 systems were made in this way practically harmless, 
 they were made theoretically worthless. The bright 
 and firm precepts of Christianity, like new pieces on 
 an old garment, shone here and there the more con- 
 spicuously for the sordid and flimsy ground on which 
 they were placed; but though, for the moment, they 
 might serve to conceal the nakedness of the wearers, 
 they tended rather to tear the theorist's robe into 
 tatters, than to render it a lasting and suitable ves- 
 ture. 
 
 From the time of which I speak, up to that of 
 Paley, I am not aware that any material alteration 
 took place in the nature of the Ethical Philosophy 
 generally received here. 
 
 I come now to the further consideration of Paley's 
 
 12—2 
 
1 86 HISTORY OF MORAL' PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ethical work, and of the reception which it met "with, 
 and especially its reception in this University. In- 
 deed, it is much more my purpose at present to con- 
 sider the manner in which the book was received, and 
 the place which it holds in the progress of moral 
 speculation in England, than further to discuss the 
 solidity or the weakness of the principles on which it 
 rests. Some indication of the arguments beaiing upon 
 this latter question will be requisite for my purpose : 
 for the place of a work in the histoiy of philosophy 
 cannot be exhibited without showing, in some measure, 
 how far it tended to promote truth, and how far to 
 propagate error. And among the criticisms delivered 
 by objectors to such a work, those only will demand 
 our notice, which contain or illustrate some of the 
 principles intimately involved in the establishment of 
 sound moral doctrines. So far, therefore, as the se- 
 lection of such criticisms goes, I cannot avoid at pre- 
 sent delivering some -judgment with respect to Paley's 
 moral system. But any direct and complete examina- 
 tion of the work, beyond that which an historical view 
 thus requires, I must reserve for future occasions. 
 
 You will recollect that Paley's work was but the 
 summing up of a system of teaching which had long 
 been current in the University, not a newly- introduced 
 subject or system. Moral Philosophy had never ceased 
 to be habitually taught in Cambridge; and the current 
 discussions upon that subject always excited a strong 
 interest among the speculators who were nourished 
 here. The great controversy respecting the d, priori 
 evidence of the fundamental principle of Theologv and 
 Morality had been zealously carried on in this Uni- 
 versity at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 John Balguy being the main combatant on the ct priori 
 side. In 1732, the translation of King's Origin of 
 Evil, with Gay's Dissertation and Law's Notes, showed 
 that the subject was by no means asleep ; and these 
 Notes of Law's were the matter of some controversies, 
 which I omit. In 1744, Rutherforth dedicated his 
 Essay on Virtue to his pupil, containing, he told him, 
 nothing which he had not heard him explain upon 
 
PALEY. l8l 
 
 different occasions -wMle he was under his care at the 
 University. In 1754 and 5, Rutherforth published 
 his Institutes of Natural Law, the substance of a 
 Course of Lectures read in St John's College. In 
 1755, too, Taylor published his Elements 0/ Civil Law, 
 which he had drawn up with a view to the education 
 of young men committed to his care. Gradually we 
 find ourselves in another generation of academics. 
 Thomas Balguy, the son of the John just mentioned, 
 and Powell, afterwards Master of the College, are 
 teachers at St John's. " I have ever thought my warm- 
 est gratitude due," says one of their pupils ', " to that 
 Being through whose kind providence the care of my 
 education was entrusted to Drs Powell and Balguy." 
 A little later (177 1), we find Law, son of the Bishop 
 of Carlisle, himself afterwards Bishop of Elphin, en- 
 gaged in the tuition at Christ's College, along with 
 Paley; the subjects of their Lectures being Locke's 
 Essay^ Clarke On the Attributes, and Butler's Analogy. 
 The heads of Balguy's Lectures were comprised in a 
 Syllabus, which was handed about to various persons 
 in the University; and from this Syllabus also Dr 
 Hey, the late Norrisian Professor, delivered Lectures 
 at Sidney College ^ Similar Lectures formed part of 
 the usual course of instruction in other colleges ; and 
 the value of the subject, as an element of education, 
 was invariably acknowledged. A large portion of these 
 Lectures were, doubtless, thoroughly Lockian in their 
 principles, although, from time to time, the natural 
 influence of higher principles would break through, 
 and produce a remedial inconsistency. Butler and 
 Clarke, as we have seen, were bound together in the 
 same bundle with Locke. But the general tendency 
 was to the morality of mere pleasure and pain, as 
 we have seen in Giay, the elder Law, Rutherforth, 
 and, as I might have shown, in others. Still the 
 doctrine of a higher ground of morality had its de- 
 fenders even here. The elder Balguy does not pecu- 
 
 I T. Ludlam's Logical Tracts. 
 
 s Pearson, JReinarke: Theor. p. 212, and p. ill. 
 
1 82 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 liarly belong to the academic line of writers. But 
 there were othera who, more or less, mitigated the 
 rigour of the Lockian morality. Thus Pearson, whom 
 I have to notice as one of the answerers of Paley, 
 speaks of "that school which boasts of the names of 
 Butler, Powell, Balguy, William Ludlam, and Hey;" 
 to which he adds Thomas Ludlam (p. vi). I shall, 
 however, now turn to the consideration of Paley's 
 Works, and their acceptance here. 
 
 The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 
 or, as it was originally entitled, The Principles of 
 Morals and Politics, was first published in 1785. It 
 was very favourably received by the public, and was 
 almost immediately adopted into the course of teach- 
 ing in this "University. Mr Jones, then senior tutor 
 of Trinity College, who discharged the duty of Mode- 
 rator in 1786 and 1787, introduced it as a standard 
 book in the disputations which were then held in the 
 schools upon a moral question, along with the mathe- 
 matical disputations: and also in the subsequent ex- 
 amination for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In 
 fact, as we have already seen, the principle upon 
 which Paley's book is based, the doctrine that actions 
 are good in as far as they tend to pleasure, and obli- 
 gatory in as far as they are commanded by a powerful 
 master, had already long been tanght in this Uni- 
 versity, and had undoubtedly taken a strong hold of 
 the minds of men. They had accustomed themselves 
 to look upon it as the only rational and tenable doc- 
 trine ; and one which was as superior in these respects 
 to the vague and empty doctrines, of loftier sound, 
 which had preceded the time of Locke, as the philo- 
 sophy of Newton was to that of Aristotle. Hence it 
 seemed to them quite natural and fitting, that a sys- 
 tem founded upon this principle should be produced, 
 displaying all the exactness, precision, and simplicity, 
 of a mathematical treatise. When, therefore, the 
 work t)f Paley appeared, in which the commonly- 
 received rules of morality are all professedly deduced 
 from this principle; in which there is a clearness of 
 statement and expression which produces the effect, 
 
PALET. GISBORNE. 183 
 
 for a moment, of demonstrative reasoning; and in 
 which the want of sound morality in the fundamental 
 principle, is tempered by good sense and good feeling 
 in almost all the instances, they at once saw, in this 
 work, the standard book which they had long wanted, 
 as a means of conveying these doctrines to their 
 pupils in the definite and connected form which ele- 
 mentary instruction requires. Perhaps we may add, 
 that they were not unwilling to join with Paley in 
 rejecting all the more profound investigations into the 
 foundations of moral principles, as useless metaphy- 
 sical subtleties or empty declamation ; and thus to 
 assume an air of superiority over those who took 
 any other road than theirs. We may add, too, that 
 though there were some points of morality on which 
 Paley's conclusions have been charged with being lax, 
 as well as his principles unsound, many of his con- 
 temporaries were, it is understood, willing to accept 
 such a decision as he gave on these very points; and 
 thus, were not repelled from the work by the appear- 
 ance, which some saw in it, of tampering with im- 
 portant moral precepts. So that the work had many 
 recommendations, internal and external, to publid 
 favour. 
 
 But though Paley's system was received with favour 
 by a large part of the public, and especially by those 
 who, in this place, had long held the opinions which 
 he had systematised with so much clearness and good 
 sense, there were not wanting, from the first, persons 
 who protested against its doctrines as false and im- 
 moral. 
 
 Such objections to Paley's doctrines were uged not 
 only by strangers, but by persons belonging to his 
 own university. Mr Gisborne, since appointed a pre- 
 bendary of Durham, favourably known to the public 
 as the author of several works on subjects connected 
 with Morals, remonstrated against the adoption of 
 Paley's principles by this University, in an Examina- 
 tion of tliem which he published in 1790'. "Thd 
 
 > This is the date of the Second Edition. 
 
184 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 subsequent Treatise," he says in the Preface to this 
 ■work, "was occasioned by an appointment -which I 
 understand to have taken place in the University of 
 Cambridge, that candidates for the degree of Bachelor 
 of Arts shall be examined in the Elements of Moral 
 and Political Philosophy." He proceeds to say that, 
 rejoicing that the study of Morality is thus made a 
 portion of academical instruction, he is still persuaded 
 that Paley's fundamental principle is exposed to most 
 grave objections. In the sequel, he states the objec- 
 tions to which he thus refers. His iirst argument is 
 from the impossibility of really and rigorously apply- 
 ing the criterion by -which Paley professes to decide 
 questions of morals. He takes in succession the steps 
 of Paley's reasoning: To the first, "that God -wills 
 and -wishes the happiness of his creatures," he assents; 
 as also to the second, that " those actions -which pro- 
 mote that happiness must be agreeable to him, and 
 the contrary." He then comes to the inference dra-wn 
 from these positions, "that the method of coming at 
 the will of Grod concerning any action, by the light of 
 nature, is to inquire into the tendency of that action 
 to promote or diminish the general happiness." Here 
 he stops, and refuses his assent. How does it appear, 
 he asks, that we can wield with good effect a principle 
 so vast and complex as this one of universal tendency ? 
 "Were the power of the human intellect unlimited, 
 and capable of deriving knowledge from any specified 
 source, of drawing it forth from every secret repository 
 in which it is stored, Mr Paley's conclusion would be 
 just. In that case, in order to indicate the method of 
 obtaining knowledge of any kind, nothing more could 
 be requisite than that the storehouse in which it is 
 hidden should be specified. But human faculties being 
 imperfect and circumscribed, no one can be justly held 
 to have pointed out the method of acquiring a know- 
 ledge either of the will of God or of any other subject, 
 unless, besides pointing out the source, he proves also 
 that man has faculties enabling him to derive it from 
 that source." But this Paley does not do. He con- 
 tents himself -with directing us to inquire, when he 
 
PALET. GISBORNE. 185 
 
 should have proved us able to discover. This defect 
 utterly destroys the validity of his argument, and 
 leaves, as an assertion unsupported by proof, the con- 
 elusion that the consideration of general expediency is 
 the method of learning the will of God. Mr Gisbome 
 then proceeds to illustrate this remark by comparison 
 ■with the case of a workman executing the plan of an 
 architect. This image appears to me by no means 
 happily chosen for his purpose; and has been retorted 
 by writers on the other side. But as the argument 
 against the doctrine of general expediency, drawn from 
 the impossibility of fitly applying it with our limited 
 views and faculties, is one of great importance, I will 
 take the liberty of offering an illustration of a differ- 
 ent kind, which, in this University at least, may, 
 I trust, be considered as allowable, and which seems 
 well fitted to throw light on the subject. I have on 
 former occasions endeavoured to point out an analogy 
 between the progress of the science of Morals and 
 other sciences ; and such a comparison is, I believe, 
 very far from being merely fanciful. I conceive we 
 may especially derive instruction regarding the pro- 
 gress of all branches of human knowledge, by con- 
 templating the history of a science of which the 
 successive steps and advances can all be distinctly 
 traced, and which has risen from gross en-ors, and 
 rudiments of mere practical knowledge, through vari- 
 ous gradations of partial truths, up to truths of the 
 most general kind, which, now that they are thus 
 established, appear to be self-evident. I speak of the 
 science of Mechanics. 
 
 Now it is well known to those who have attended 
 to the history of this science, that in the course of the 
 last century a principle termed the Frinciple of Least 
 Action, was propounded as a mode of determining the 
 course which a body would follow moving from point 
 to point under the influence of external agents. The 
 import of the principle was, that the body would 
 select such a path, and move in such a manner, that 
 the total action which took place in consequence 
 of the body's motion would be smaller than if the 
 
1 86 HISTORY OV MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 body had moved in any other line or in any other 
 manner. . 
 
 Maupertuis, the philosopher who first asserted this 
 principle, conceived that he could establish it as a 
 universal truth by reasonings drawn from the natiire 
 of the Deity and the rules of His operation. And if 
 true, it undoubtedly embraced all cases of motion 
 under all circumstances, and promised to give the 
 solution of all mechanical problems whatever. 
 
 The truth and the meaning of this principle were 
 the subject of a long and angry controversy; and, as 
 is usual in such controvei-sies, the meaning of the 
 principle was so modified as to ensure its truth. For 
 what is quantity of action? Many dififerent meanings 
 might be given to such a word : but it was found that 
 one very simple meaning might be assigned to it, 
 which would make the Principle include many me- 
 chanical truths. And in the sequel, it was proved by 
 Lagrange, that, with the definition which had been 
 adopted, the principle was a universal and necessary 
 truth in all possible combinations of bodies and mo- 
 tions. 
 
 Thus then the Principle of Least Action was 
 allowed and proved to be true. But how far was it 
 adopted as a means of solving special problems? Did 
 it supersede other methods of dealing with mechanical 
 questions? Did men apply it to the simf)le cases of 
 mechanical action which they had to consider ? Was 
 it desirable that they should do so? Could they have 
 done so if they had tried? 
 
 If a mathematician of Maupertuis' time had set 
 about solving a simple problem, or almost any pro- 
 blem, by means of the principle of Least Action, as 
 the best way of obtaining the solution, he would have 
 been very unwise. The principle then was precarious; 
 for every mechanical principle is precaiious so long as 
 it rests upon metaphysical reasonings alone, though 
 these may, perhaps, convert known truths into neces- 
 sary truths : — the principle was of doubtful meaning if 
 true, for its real meaning was only established when 
 its universal truth was proved. But, dismissing these 
 
PALEY, GISBORNE. 187 
 
 .objections, the method -was a bad method of solution, 
 as being superfluously and extravagantly general and 
 complex; — introducing the consideration of very many 
 indetinite and entangled elements, in a case which 
 really required but few and simple considerations. 
 And this is not th^ less the case, now that the princi- 
 ple is demonstrably confirmed. If any mechanical 
 calculator were to attempt to trace the path of a 
 projectile or a planet by Maupertuis' principle of 
 Least Action, he would be looked upon with a smile of 
 pity by all good mathematicians. He might perhaps 
 excite admiration in some novice, enthusiastic in his 
 love of generalities; but the probability is, that he 
 would fail in his attempt, arid be lost in the labyrinth 
 of symbols into which he had so unadvisedly and 
 unnecessarily rushed. 
 
 What the Principle of Least Action is in Mor 
 chanics, the Principle of Greatest resulting Good is in 
 Morals. No one questions its truth : every investigation 
 has more and more firmly established its reality. But 
 then, how hard to fix its precise meaning! What is 
 Good 1 Our judgments of the nature of Good change, 
 as our views of the tendency of all things to good 
 expand. Is Pleasure the Good? So says the system 
 of which we are speaking: but what pleasure? The 
 Pleasure of a calm mind, a pure conscience, a benevo- 
 lent heart : the Pleasure of a state of future happiness 
 when all sensual delights shall have passed away ? But 
 when we have given our principle this meaning, how 
 shall we apply it ? Who can foresee how far men's 
 actions tend to increase such good as this ? Who can 
 calculate all the efi^ect which his actions produce by 
 their consequences immediate and remote; by their 
 operation on his own character and habits; by their 
 influence in the way of example and reputation; by 
 their fitting him for another state of existence ? Can it 
 really be true that we cannot estimate the good or 
 evil of any of our doings, without summing the in- 
 finite series of such terms as these, which is appended 
 to each ? and each of these terms, too, depending upon 
 actions and thoughts of other men as its elements : — > 
 
1 88 HISTORY OF KORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 all these series, each in itself involving so much that 
 is indefinite, so much that is incalculable, all mixed 
 and entangled, and inter-dependent in modes innu- 
 merable. If we cannot call our actions good or evil 
 till we have performed this summation, till we have 
 balanced against each other the positive and the 
 negative quantities of such a calculation, we are 
 surely thrown upon a task for which our faculties are 
 quite unfit : we have the tangled course of life to run, 
 and are blindfolded by the band which is to assign 
 the prize. 
 
 But it will perhaps be said that we have no better 
 means of solving the moral problem of our being; it 
 will be demanded what other rule can be proposed for 
 determining the good or evil of our actions than the 
 consideration of their consequences. If such a ques- 
 tion were asked, we should have to reply, in the first 
 place, that this is not the matter under consideration. 
 Our business at present is to weigh the value of the 
 theory of morals which is based upon general expe- 
 diency. If this theory can be shown to be incapable 
 of being rightly employed, the arguments which prove 
 this are not turned aside by demanding some better 
 theory : nor would they lose their force if we were 
 driven to acknowledge that no general theory of 
 morals is attainable. And even if we are able to 
 construct a sounder and better system, this must be 
 a distinct task; and is not to he confounded with 
 the criticism which we apply to a system which is 
 held, by the objectors now under our review, to be 
 altogether unsatisfactory and false. It would merely 
 produce confusion and needless repetition, to quit this 
 ground, and to mix together the discussion of several 
 systems at once. Yet before quitting the illustration 
 which I have just employed, drawn from the science 
 of Mechanics, I may notice, in the slightest possible 
 manner, the instruction which it siiggests with regard 
 to the formation of any other sciences. 
 
 The science of Mechanics was not deduced, nor 
 could have been deduced, as we have seen, from the 
 general Principle of Least Action, though that Prin- 
 
PALEY. GISBORNE. 189 
 
 ciple is indisputably true. How then was this pro- 
 vince of human knowledge so demonstrably -proved, 
 and made into so solid and extensive a system of 
 truths, general and particular 1 The answer is plain. 
 It was by the consideration, in the first place, of 
 special problems, reasoned upon by means of princi- 
 ples which, in those narrower applications at least, 
 were self-evident; and — in pi-oportion as these limited 
 principles were clearly seen and steadily possessed — 
 by passing from these to others which were true be- 
 cause they included the partial truths at first dis- 
 covered ; and which were applicable to more com- 
 preheusive and complex cases : — universal principles 
 which include all possible cases, being arrived at only 
 through these intermediate ones: — and these very 
 general truths being dimly and vaguely apprehended 
 at first ; and never becoming, not even at last, the 
 best mode of obtaining practical results. 
 
 Now so far as this general description goes, I do 
 not think it at aU extravagant to . expect that the 
 history of the Science of Mechanics may be a type of 
 the genuine course of real progress in other sciences, 
 even in those which deal with the internal world of 
 thought and feeling, as well as in those that regard 
 only the external world of matter and motion. But 
 the further prosecution and development of this view, 
 if it is permitted to me to trace it to its consequences, 
 must be the work of future years, a;nd of a maturer 
 study of the subject. At present I have ventured to 
 refer to it, only because I would not seem to criticize 
 existing systems, without any steady belief that a 
 better may be found; or to declare a mode of pro- 
 ceeding to be wrong, without knowing which way to 
 look for the right. I shall now return to the recep- 
 tion of Paley's system among English readers. 
 
LECTURE XII. 
 GisBOBNE. Pearson. Price. Robert Hall. 
 
 BESIDES the argument against the doctrine of ex- 
 pediency, derived from the impossibility of ap- 
 pl3ring it, Mr Gisbome stated other objections to 
 Paley's ethical system. He urged that since actions 
 are asserted to be blameable only so fe.r as their con- 
 sequences are injurious, and since, of the probable 
 consequences, each man is for himself the judge; it 
 foUows that, if a man be persuaded that any action, 
 of those which are by the world called crimes, would 
 produce au overweight of good over bad consequences, 
 it ceases to be in him a crime, and becomes a duty: 
 and thus rapine, hypocrisy, peijnry, murder, may be 
 entitled to the highest rewards of virtue. 
 
 With regard to this argument, it goes to prove the 
 untenable character of PaJey's pretended analysis of 
 moral obligation, and has already been considered in 
 substance when I spoke of that subject. I may ob- 
 serve, however, that in stating this argument, Mr 
 Gisborne has anticipated the answer sometimes made 
 to it ; — that all moral rules must be applied in virtue 
 of the conviction of the agent, and by means of his 
 judgment; and that therefore the difficulty arising 
 from this circumstance, whatever it amount to, Ls no 
 argument against Paley's principles more than against 
 other systems of morals. Mr Gisborne repli^, that 
 the system of general utility is not upon an equal 
 footing with other systems in this respect. The 
 teachers of positive independent morality obtain 
 general definite rules; as, not to take what belongs to 
 another — to perform what we promise — and the like. 
 
GISBORNE, PEARSON, PRICE, ROBERT HALL. I9I 
 
 There is no confusion or vagueness in applying such 
 rules. Utility, on the contrary, leads us to no abso- 
 lute roiles; for she has never exhausted the stock of 
 possible consequences. She confirms such precepts as 
 the above ; but still, confirms them as liable to excep- 
 tion, and valid only upon the supposition that nothing 
 unforeseen alters the usual result. I think that we 
 cannot deny that the consideration of general conse- 
 quences, thus directly employed to establish moral 
 precepts, does, by its nature, leave them charged with 
 a large amount of insecurity and vagueness; and 
 indeed makes them in a great degree precarious. All 
 peremptory and rigorous moral rules become, on this 
 system, as I have already said, rather assumptions 
 made to suit the needs of practical morality, than fair 
 deductions from the principle, supported by just and 
 adequate demonstrations. 
 
 Mr Gisborne further urged, that Paley's rule is 
 irreconcileable with the Scriptures, which enjoin us 
 not to do evil that good may come: and he con- 
 demned, with a very natural severity, a passage to 
 which I have already referred, in which Paley dilutes 
 and almost nullifies this serious command, by terming 
 it a caution, salutary for the most part, the advantage 
 seldom compensating for the violation of the rule. 
 
 Mr Gisborne was not the only assailant of the 
 Paleian system on its introduction into this Univer- 
 sity. Dr Pearson, afterwards the Master of Sidney 
 College, also published two pamphlets (in 1800 and 
 1 801), one directed against the theoretical, and the 
 other against the practical part of Paley's ethical 
 work. Some of Dr Pearson's principal objections 
 were aimed at some of the defects of the work in 
 system and reasoning, which its most ardent admirers 
 could hardly deny ; as in the case of the confusion 
 (already noticed) which is to be found in Paley's defi- 
 nition of virtue. Dr Pearson's own definition of 
 Virtue is. Voluntary obedience to the will of God. 
 But he contends that the will of God may be ascer- 
 tained in various ways ; by the eternal fitness of 
 things, conformity to truth, the moral sense, and, if 
 
192 HISTORY OP MOKAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 really applicable, general utility : any of tliese prin- 
 ciples may, lie asserts, be employed in discovering the 
 path of our duties. As a practical rule, this commix- 
 ture of views fundamentally different, may be ad- 
 mitted; but it may be observed that we should never 
 in this way obtain a sound theory, or a coherent sys- 
 tem of ethics. It may be, that each of these prin- 
 ciples is true, and that each has its place in a true 
 system: but then, that place must be definite, and 
 must be assigned by the most profoimd and compre- 
 hensive philosophy which belongs to the subject. 
 Such philosophy can never countenance a tumultuary 
 assemblage of all the principles which have ever been 
 propounded, brought together on the supposition that 
 they have all equal and independent rights. 
 
 In 1797 a defence of Paley's Moral Philosophy 
 against its assailants was attempted by Dr Croft, of 
 Birmingham, formerly of University College, Oxford. 
 But this work was not of a nature to throw much 
 new light upon the subject : and at that period 
 Paley's boot was too firmly established as a standard 
 work on morals to need such a defender. It had be- 
 come a constant and prominent part of the teaching 
 and the examinations carried on in this University, 
 and both by the hold it thus obtained upon the minds 
 of many young men of good ability and good condi- 
 tion, by its own merits of style and execution, and by 
 its congruity with the principles and feelings of a 
 large portion of English society, its views and reason- 
 ings had pervaded the whole mass of English thought. 
 Every attempt at general abstract reasoning on moral 
 subjects was made after the manner of the reasonings 
 in Paley's works, and generally, upon the same fun- 
 damental principles ; and thus, besides the direct ope- 
 ration of the work, there was an indirect influence 
 exerted which, in time, tinged the habits of thinking, 
 reasoning 'and expression in this country, to at least 
 as great an extent as any previous moral doctriue had 
 ever done. 
 
 Besides those who thus objected to Paley's doc- 
 trine, and those who defended it, there was another 
 
GISBOENB, PEARSON, PEICE, EOBERT HALL. 1 93 
 
 class -wto gladly accepted the principle of morality 
 founded upon consequences, and of right and wrong 
 regulated by the bearing of actions upon general uti- 
 lity : and who accepted it only to carry it very much 
 farther than Paley or any of his predecessors had done, 
 and to strip it of all the cautions and limitations by 
 which he had endeavoured to render it salutary. 
 
 This body of speculators did not immediately show 
 itself upon the appearance of Paley's book, nor even 
 directly after its general reception and establishment 
 here. But when, by being constantly employed in 
 this University as the basis of our moral teaching, 
 the principles of which I speak had become firmly 
 fixed in men's minds, and recognized by a great part 
 of the nation as the true grounds of human conduct 
 and judgment, it was natural that persons with very 
 difierent views from Paley should try whether their 
 system might not be built on his foundations. His 
 system embodied in itself the Christian belief, recom- 
 mended the usually-acknowledged virtues, and was, 
 for the most part, opposed to changes in the state of 
 society and government. But persons who wished for 
 a system without such ingredients, found that they 
 could easily employ the doctrine of general utility so 
 as to obtain their own most cherished conclusions. 
 For this end, they held that the principle of the 
 greatest happiness required to be followed out more 
 rigidly, more resolutely, more purely, than Paley had 
 done it: and there were not wanting persons who 
 performed this task with joy and exultation, and then 
 very naturally called upon their countrymen, and 
 especially those of Paley's school, to admire what they 
 had done, and to give it its practical efiect. 
 
 I am not now going to discuss any further the 
 speculations to which I thus refer : for they belong to 
 our own time, and are hardly yet a subject for mere 
 history. I will only observe that, whatevef any one 
 may think obnoxious or dangerous in the conclusiona 
 to which such speculations have led, is by no means 
 to be cast as a matter of blame upon Paley. Even 
 if such conclusions were deducible in the most logical 
 
 13 
 
194 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and demonstrative manner from principles which 
 Paley lays down, stUl, as he himself does not acknow- 
 ledge, but on the contrary, disclaims and condemns 
 such opinions as those to which I refer, he is not 
 chargeable with them; for it has been generally 
 allowed that man, whose duties are practical, not 
 theoretical, is not to be made responsible for conse- 
 quences widch he does not intend or foresee, even if 
 they follow inevitably from what he does or says. He 
 is not morally bound always to reason in a perfect 
 manner. He is bound to reason as well as he 
 can, but not bound to rea.son better. He must use 
 his best endeavour to apply such faculties as God 
 has given him to the discovery of the truth; and if, 
 doing this, he faUs, his error is not necessarily his 
 sin. If, therefore, Paley did not see the necessity of 
 the offensive consequences which have been deduced 
 from his doctrine, or seeing them, conceived they 
 might be averted by the considerations which he 
 offered, he is not to bear the whole blame of the opi- 
 nions which others have thus promulgated. He may 
 be a bad philosopher, an unsound theorist; but he 
 may still continue a blameless writer, a virtuous man. 
 And if this be so, even assuming Paley's principles to 
 be identical with those which lead to dangerous and 
 immoral tenets, how much less is he answerable for 
 the conclusions of those who copy his mode of specu- 
 lation, but who leave out of theii' system that which 
 is the main and guiding element in his, the rewards 
 and punishments of another life ! The study of Paley's 
 Moral Philosophy in this place may have produced 
 evU, which may perhaps now have accumulated so as 
 to overbalance the good. But I hope it will always be 
 understood that I acquit Paley himself of blame ; — 
 consider him as an admirable and instructive writer 
 who has edified and directed practically aright an 
 immense body of readers; — and look up to him with 
 gratitude for many most valuable services to the cause 
 of religion and virtue. 
 
 Having thus considered the Moral and Political 
 Philosophy of Paley, and its reception, I have a very 
 
GISBOENE, PEARSON J PRICE, ROBERT HALL. 1 95 
 
 fe'w -words to add. The doctrine of Paley -was accept- 
 ed, as we have seen, in this University, and among 
 the moralists of the English Church in general. It 
 might seem that there is something congenial to the 
 mental habits of Englishmen in a philosophy of this 
 kind, which, assuming peremptorily an ultimate point 
 of analysis, receives with some impatience and some 
 contempt all endeavours to analyse further. " Obli- 
 gation is the command of a Master who can reward 
 and punish." This was a maxim which was all the 
 more easy to assent to, because it spared men the 
 effort of really understanding what Obligation means. 
 " Actions are right which tend to increase human hap- 
 piness." Here, again, was a principle which supplied 
 the means of stating arguments in favour of all com- 
 monly-received duties; and though from the same 
 principle, arguments might be adduced against many 
 of these duties; and though the principle supplied no 
 means of weighing one side against the other, the 
 Paleians rested in security on the repugnance and dis- 
 favour with which they knew that their hearers in 
 general would receive the reckoning of the pleasure 
 produced by vice, when put forwards as a moral ele- 
 ment. The usual mode of argumentation was simple. 
 When men spoke of right and wrong as independent 
 qualities, the English moralist demanded definitions, 
 or shrugged his shoulders, and declared that he could 
 not understand the phrases : — when men doubted whe- 
 ther vice might not sometimes produce an overplus of 
 pleasure, the English moralist again declared (and no 
 doubt in general with great truth) that it was disgust- 
 ful to him to have to balance such an account. 
 
 The Englishman who turned his thoughts towards 
 morals was willing to take the dignity and compla- 
 cency, but not the labour and risk, of philosophizing ; 
 — willing to reason, but not willing to confine himself 
 to precise ideas, so that his reasonings should be con- 
 clusive; — ^willing to reason in favour of virtue, but not 
 williag to weigh the reasons of her adversaries. Through 
 all his pretences at theorizing, he was, in fact, guided 
 by his practical understanding. He handled for a little 
 
 13—2 
 
196 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ■while the ancient Gordian knots of metaphysical con- 
 troversy, and then cut them across with the hard sharp 
 weapons which he Tised in daily life. If he were taxed "" 
 with this inconsistency, he would perhaps reply that 
 to tie and untie what was so weak a bond in practice, 
 could he little gain. Yet he might be reminded that 
 this process brings as its reward all the gain that 
 man's speculative nature looks for; — the preservation 
 of a coherent and continuous thread of thought and 
 reason, through aU the windings of human life and 
 action. When the strong man's sword alone divides 
 this complicated line, it presents to us nothing but 
 detached fiagments and unconnected ends, in which 
 the rational principle sees only contradiction and ab- 
 sui-dity ; and by, which the heart, so far as its views 
 are enlightened by the reason, is disturbed and discon- 
 tented. 
 
 But though in England men dealt so impatiently 
 with the great moral controversies and systems, these 
 controversies still went on, and these systems were 
 still matters of interest, in other parts of the empire. 
 I wiU give an instance or two of this before quitting 
 the subject. 
 
 It was assumed in this place, as proved, that men 
 have not a peculiar Moral Faculty; but elsewhere this 
 Moral Faculty and its analysis were the main subject 
 of discussion. I have already shown how the school 
 of Cudworth and Clarke, who ascribed the discern- 
 ment of moral differences to the Reason, were in a 
 great measure superseded by the school of Shaftesbury, 
 who ascribed this perception to a Moral Sense. "We 
 have seen how ably Hutcheson tore in pieces the old 
 Clarkian formula. David Hume reasoned with no less 
 acuteness on the same side. He thus argues against 
 the opinion that right and wrong consist in relations 
 of actions'. 
 
 " But it [crime] consists in certain moral relations, 
 discovered by reason, in the same manner as we dis- 
 cover, by reason, the truths of Geometry or Algebra. 
 
 r, VoL II. p. 322. 
 
GISBORNE, PEARSON, PRICE, ROBERT HALL. I97 
 
 But what are the relations, I ask, of which you here 
 talk? In the case stated above, I see first, good will 
 and good offices in one person; then Ul will and ill 
 offices in the other. Between these, there is the rela- 
 tion of contrariety. Does the crime consist in that 
 relation? But suppose a person bore me ill will, or 
 did me ill offices; and I, in return, were indifferent 
 towards him, or did him good offices. Here is the 
 same relation of contrariety; and yet my conduct is 
 often highly laudable. Twist and turn this matter as 
 much as you will, you can never rest the morality on 
 relation; but must have recourse to the decisions of 
 sentiment. 
 
 "When it is afGrmed that two and three are 
 equal to the half of ten; this relation of equality I un- 
 derstand perfectly. I conceive that if ten be divided 
 into two parts, of which one has as many units as the 
 other; and if any of these parts be compared to 
 two added to three, it wiU contain as many units as 
 that compound number. But when you draw thence 
 a .comparison to moral relations, I own that I am 
 altogether at a loss to understand you. A moral ac- 
 tion, a crime, such as ingratitude, is a complicated 
 object. Does the morality consist in the relation of 
 its parts to each other? How? After what manner ? 
 Specify the relation. Be more particular and explicit 
 in your propositions, and you will easily see their 
 falsehood. No, say you, the morality consists in the 
 relation of actions to the rule of right ? In what does 
 it consist? How is it determined? By reason, you 
 say, which examines the moral relations of actions. 
 So that moral relations are determined by the com- 
 parison of actions to a rule. And that rule is deter- 
 mined by considering the moral relations of objects. 
 Is not this fine reasoning?" 
 
 Hutcheson the Irishman, and Hume the Scotch- 
 man, thus seemed to trample on the very ruins of the 
 old fortress of immutable morality, which English mo- 
 ralists had abandoned. But a champion, and a very 
 able one, soon issued from Wales, and did no little to 
 restore the fortunes of the fight. I speak of Dr Price, 
 
1 98 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the son of a dissenting minister in Grlamorganshire, 
 himself also an eminent dissenting minister. He pub- 
 lished, in 1757, a volume of Essays, (republished in 
 1787), in which the foundations of morals are dis- 
 cussed ; and in this work there are, perhaps, the germs 
 of a greater change in the prevalent philosophy of the 
 subject than has yet taken place. He undertook the 
 then unpopular cause of Immutable and Eternal Mo- 
 rality. And in him we find that which gives a new 
 aspect to the controversy; the apprehension of the 
 imperfection of Locke's philosophy, as being the ground 
 of the moral fallacy. Price saw that the dogma, that 
 all our ideas are derived from Sensation and Reflection, 
 was not readily reconcileable with our apprehension 
 of Moral Good and Evil; which, it had appeared by 
 the course of speculation in this century, cannot be 
 traced to either of these sources. But then, he turns 
 round and asks, are these the only Ideas which we 
 cannot refer to these asserted fountains of all Ideas? 
 Far from it. All our knowledge of all universal truths 
 involves Ideas which, as much as these, are irreducible 
 to sensation and reflection. Whence, he asks, is the 
 idea of impenetrability? of inertia? of substance? of 
 duration? of space? of cause? These are not ideas of 
 sensation borrowed from the external world : nor are 
 they obtained simply by reflection on the world within. 
 No, — ^he says, — the Lockian account is incomplete. 
 The understanding itself is a source of new Ideas. Try 
 the very act of understanding what we contemplate, 
 we have convictions concerning it which are the source 
 of truth; and among such convictions, are our con- 
 ^'ictions of moral good and evil. Actions and active 
 principles have a nature and essence like anything 
 else; and when we contemplate them, the understand- 
 ing judges of these as of other objects. A rational 
 agent can see a difierence of fitness and unfitness in 
 actions- And if we have given to reason such a sense 
 that we cannot ascribe this judgment to that faculty; 
 we must at least ascribe it to that faculty, however we 
 analyse it, by which we understand, and not to any 
 sense which we do not understand, but only feeL 
 
GISBORNE, PEARSON, PRICE, ROBERT HALL. 1 99 
 
 I shall not pursue this subject further at present. 
 I ■will only observe that these views of Price seem to 
 me to be capable of being developed into a very valu- 
 able corrective of the errors of his contemporaries. 
 You will not be surprised to find that he expressed a 
 strong disapprobation of the .doctrine of Paley. In 
 1787 he published a new edition of his work, and in 
 this he inserted a Note upon Paley's work. After 
 giving his statement of some of Paley's principles 
 (p. 485), he says, " Never have I met with a theory of 
 morals which has appeared to me more exceptionable." 
 He then makes objections to some of Paley's special 
 conclusions, and adds, "I am very sensible of the 
 merit of many parts of this work. But these parts of 
 it (those to which he had referred) I have read with 
 surprise, and also with a concern, the pain of which 
 has been much increased by the reflection that they 
 contain principles which have been inculcated many 
 years at Cambridge, and which therefore have proba- 
 bly been imbibed by many young persons when under 
 preparation for public life." 
 
 Under present circumstances, it does not appear to 
 me that I could with advantage to you, my audience, 
 pursue the history of Moral Philosophy among suc- 
 ceeding writers. I have not shunned to declare my 
 conviction that the system of morals which is now 
 taught among us is unworthy of our descent and 
 office; and it will be my endeavour in future years, ■ 
 as far as my powers and opportunities allow, further 
 to point out, and, if possible, to remedy the defects 
 which I lament. That they are lamented by others 
 also, by a great body of the well-wishers to our com- 
 mon country, I do not doubt ; and I shall not hesitate 
 to conclude by a passage expressive of this feeling, 
 written by a great preacher of our own time, though 
 not of our own Church'. "Here I cannot forbear 
 remarking a great change which has taken place iu 
 the whole manner of reasoning on the topics of 
 
 1 Robert Hall's Sermm, on tlie Sentiments proper to the present Crisis 
 1803), p. 42. 
 
20O HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 morality and religion, from what prevailed in the last 
 century, and, as far as my information extends, in 
 any preceding age. This, which is an age of revolu- 
 tions, has also produced a strange revolution in the 
 .method of viewing these subjects, the most important 
 by far that can engage the attention of man. The 
 simplicity of our ancestors, noui-ished by the sincere 
 milk of the word, rather than by the tenets of a dis- 
 putatious philosophy, was content to let morality 
 remain on the firm basis of the dictates of conscience 
 and the will of God. They considered virtue as some- 
 thing ultimate, as bounding the mental prospect. 
 They never supposed for a moment there was any- 
 thing to which it stood merely in the relation of a 
 means, or that within the narrow confines of this 
 momentary state anything great enough could be 
 found to be its end or object. It never occurred to 
 their imagination that that religion which professes 
 to render us superior to the world is in reality 
 nothing more than an instrument to procure the 
 temporal, the physical good of individuals, or of 
 society. In their view it had a nobler destination; 
 it looked forward to eternity : and if ever they appear 
 to have assigned it any end or object beyond itself, it 
 was an union with its Author, in the perpetual fi^uition 
 of God. 
 
 "They arranged these things in the following 
 order : — Religion, comprehending the love, fear, and 
 service of the Author of our being, they placed first ; 
 social morality, founded on its dictates, confirmed by 
 its sanctions, next; and the mere physical good of 
 society they contemplated as subordinate to both. 
 Eveiything is now reversed. ' The pyramid is in- 
 verted : the first is last, and the last first. Religion 
 is degraded from its pre-eminence, into the mere 
 handmaid of social morality ; social morality into an 
 instrument of advancing the welfare of society ; and 
 the world is all in all. Nor have we deviated less 
 from the example of antiquity than from that of our 
 pious forefathers. The philosophers of antiquity, in 
 the absence of superior light, consulted with reverence 
 
GISBORNE, PEARSON, PRICE, ROBERT HALL. 201 
 
 the permanent principles of nature, the dictates of 
 conscience, and the best feelings of the heart, which 
 they employed all the powers of reason and eloquence 
 to unfold, to adorn, to enforce ; and thereby formed a 
 luminous commentary on the law written on the 
 heart. The virtue which they inculcated grew out of 
 the stock of human nature ; it was a warm and living 
 virtue. It was the moral man, possessing in every 
 limb and feature, in all its figure and movements, the 
 harmony, dignity, and variety which belong to the 
 human form ; an effort of unassisted nature to restore 
 that image of God which sin had mutilated and de- 
 faced. Imperfect, as might be expected, their morality 
 was often erroneous ; but in its great outlines it had 
 all the stability of the human constitution, and its 
 fundamental principles wei* coeval and coexistent 
 with human nature. There could be nothing fluctu- 
 ating and arbitrary in its more weighty decisions, 
 since it appealed every moment to the man within the 
 breast ; it pretended to nothing more than to give 
 voice and articulation to the inward sentiments of the 
 heart, and conscience echoed to its oracles. This, 
 wrought into different systems, and under various 
 modes of illustration, was the general form which 
 morality exhibited from the creation of the world till 
 our time. In this state revelation found it; and, 
 correcting what was erroneous, supplying what was 
 defective, and confirming what was right by its pecu- 
 liar sanctions, superadded a number of supernatural 
 truths and holy mysteries. 
 
 " How is it, that on a subject on which men have 
 thought deeply from the moment they began to think 
 and where consequently, whatever is entirely and fun- 
 damentally new, must be fundamentally false, how is 
 it, that in contempt of the experience of past ages, and 
 of all precedents human and divine, we have ventured 
 into a perilous path which no eye has explored, no foot 
 has trod ; and have undertaken, after the lapse of six 
 thousand years, to manufacture a morality of our own, 
 to decide by a cold calculation of interest, by a ledger- 
 book of profit and of loss, the preference of truth to 
 
202 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 falsehood, of piety to blasphemy, and of humanity and 
 justice to treachery and blood? 
 
 " In the science of morals we are taught by this 
 system to consider nothing as yet done ; we are invited 
 to erect a fresh fabric on a fresh foundation. All the 
 elements and sentiments which entered into the es- 
 sence of virtue before are melted down and cast into a 
 new mould. Instead of appealing to any internal 
 principle, every thing is left to calculation, and de- 
 termined by expediency. In executing this plan, the 
 jurisdiction of conscience is abolished, her decisions 
 are classed with those of a superannuated judge, and 
 the determination of moral causes is adjourned from 
 the interior tribunal to the noisy forum of speculative 
 debate. 
 
 " Everything, without exception, is made an affair 
 of calculation, under which are comprehended not 
 merely the duties we owe to our fellow-creatures, but 
 even the love and adoration which the Supreme Being 
 claims at our hands. His claims are set aside, or 
 suffered to lie in abeyance, until it can be determined 
 how far they can be admitted on the principles of ex- 
 pediency, and in what respect they may interfere with 
 the acquisition of temporal advantages. Even here, 
 nothing is yielded to the suggestions of conscience, 
 nothing to the movements of the heart : all is dealt 
 out with a sparing hand, under the stint and measure 
 of calculation. Instead of being allowed to love God 
 with all our heart, and all our strength, the first and 
 great commandment, the portion of love assigned him 
 is weighed out with the utmost scrupulosity, and the 
 supposed excess more severely censured than the real 
 deficiency." 
 
 To this I can only say, 
 
 Pudet hseo opprobria nobis 
 Et dici potuisee, et non potuisse refelli. 
 
 On us the shame 
 That we must bear and not refute the blame. 
 
LECTUEE XIII.' 
 
 Bentham— His Biography — His Style or Dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 IN order to complete our view of the progress of 
 Moral Philosophy in England in recent times, I 
 ■will give some account of Jeremy Bentham and his 
 speculations on the subjects with which we are here 
 concerned : for no moralist has been placed so high by 
 his admirers, or has been more resolute and compre- 
 hensive in applying his principles to practical policy 
 and legislation. The school of Bentham, for a time, 
 afforded as near a resemblance as modem times can 
 show, of the ancient schools of philosophy, which were 
 formed and held together by an almost unbounded 
 veneration for their master, and in which the disciples 
 were content to place their glory in understanding and 
 extending the master's principles. And though, to the 
 general public, the Benthamite doctrines had an ex- 
 ceedingly harsh and repulsive aspect, and were made 
 formidable by the sweeping purposes of reform with 
 which they were connected; yet Bentham 's real acute- 
 ness in discussion, his laborious perseverance, his ex- 
 hibitions of complete and exhaustive systems of analysis 
 and reasoning on many of the largest political ques- 
 tions; gave him great weight with many statesmen 
 both at home and abroad. Perhaps few moral and 
 political writers have exercised a greater influence 
 upon their generation than he has done; and to us 
 he is especially interesting as manifesting in a more 
 complete and consistent form the results of that scheme 
 of morality, which, in a less resolute manner, was put 
 forwards by Paley. 
 
 1 This and the following Lectures were not delivered in the first course. 
 
204 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Bentham lived in our own time, (lie died in 1832 ;) 
 and by the ardent zeal of his disciples and admirers, 
 and by his publications continued to the time of his 
 death, and the references of other writers to them, 
 was kept in a peculiar manner present to our minds 
 as a contemporary. Yet by the earlier period of his 
 life he belonged rather to the literature of the last 
 century. He belonged to a club where he met John- 
 son'; he was not much younger than Burke; he 
 attended Blackstone's Vinerian lectures, and after- 
 wards criticised the Gommenta/ries as a contemporary 
 work; he was anticipated unexpectedly by Paley in 
 publishing a theory of morals founded upon TJtility. 
 But he was, through his long period of literary ac- 
 tivity, eminently consistent. He adopted very early 
 the views and doctrines which he employed his life in 
 inculcating ; and he also showed very early that pe- 
 culiar onesidedness in his mode of asserting and urg- 
 ing his opinions which made him think all moderation 
 with regard to his opponents superfluous and absurd. 
 Here we are not concerned directly with the main 
 field of his exertions. Jurisprudence, and the Politics 
 of the time; but Morality, in his view and in our 
 view, is clearly connected with the former of these, 
 Jurisprudence; and his doctrines on Morality have 
 excited perhaps quite as much notice as on the other 
 subjects. 
 
 It may be worth our while to notice some circum- 
 stances connected with the earlier period of Bentham's 
 literary and personal history. He was bom in London 
 in 1748. His father was a prosperous attorney, ex- 
 tremely desirous of the worldly prosperity of his son, 
 whose precocious talents promised to gratify the pa- 
 ternal wish. He was sent to Queen's College, Oxford, 
 at the unusually early age of twelve; and took his 
 degree, not only of B.A. but of M. A. before he was of 
 full man's age. Many of his school and college ex- 
 ercises have been published by the affectionate zeal of 
 
 1 Johnson, b. 1709, 4 1784; Bnrke, b. 1730, d. 17157; Bentham, b. 1748, 
 d. 1832. 
 
BENTHAM — HIS BIOGRAPHY. 205 
 
 Ms biographer, (Dr Bowring,) and show an average 
 acquaintance witli the Latin language ; which is no- 
 ticeable, because at a later period Bentham, probably 
 having lost his acquaintance with the ancient writers, 
 in consequence of a contempt for them which he care-, 
 fully nourished and inculcated, scarcely ever made any 
 reference to Greek or Latin without showing some ex- 
 traordinary ignorance. 
 
 He appears to have been unhappy at Oxford, and 
 to have learnt little there: but in later life, he was 
 accustomed to refer to this period his adoption of his 
 favourite universal principle of Morals and Polities'. 
 Dr Priestley published his Essay on Government in 
 ij68. He there introduced in italics, as the only rea- 
 sonable and proper object of government, the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest Tvumber. Mr Bentham feU in 
 with this book at " a little circulating library belong- 
 ing to a little coffee-house " close to Queen's College. 
 By this expression of Priestley, Bentham conceived 
 that his own principles on the subject of Morality, 
 public and private, were determined. For us, who 
 have traced the progress of opinions on this subject 
 and of doctrines of this kind in other writers, it is 
 evident that there was in the general current of lite- 
 rature and thought at that time a set towards such 
 doctrines and such expressions ; and indeed Bentham 
 himself pointed out other previous writers iu whom 
 expressions and thoughts very similar occur. This 
 being the case, it is extraordinary that he should so 
 constantly have talked of himself, and have been 
 talked of by his admirers, as the discoverer of the 
 principle; the more so, as it was soon after, by Paley, 
 put forth in a systematic manner, and unfolded into a 
 treatise on Morality. But Bentham appears to have 
 been one of those persons to whom every thing which 
 passes throiigh their own thoughts assumes quite a 
 different character and value from that which the 
 same thing had when it passed through the thoughts 
 of other persons. 
 
 1 Deontol. i. 298. 
 
206 HISTOKT OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Bentham, from this time, was engaged ia follow- 
 LQg out his principle; but how far it assumed addi- 
 tional value in his hands we may afterwards have to 
 examine. He also then or soon afterwards assumed 
 the office, which he repeatedly exercised at subsequent 
 periods, of a severe and pungent critic of current doc- 
 trines and their authors. The disposition to such cri- 
 ticism gave rise to his first considerable publication, 
 A Fragment on Government. This subject was pro- 
 bably suggested to him in an .especial manner by his 
 residence at Oxford; for the work was a critique of 
 certain portions of the Commentaries of Blackstone, 
 whom, as I have said, he had himself heard lecturing. 
 The Commentaries on the Laws of Eriglamd, then re- 
 cently published, had been received with great general 
 favour, and acquired at once the reputation they stUl, 
 I believe, retain. Yet probably there are few persons 
 who, looking at the work carefully, will hold that it 
 is composed in a very philosophical spirit, or that the 
 general reasonings which are introduced, and those on 
 Government in particular, are rigorous and blameless. 
 Probably most of the admirers of the work, looking to 
 it for merit of quite other kinds — a clear and connect- 
 ed exposition of the existing law of England — ^would 
 not think the goodness or badness of logic and philo- 
 sophy of the author's general preliminary reflections, a 
 matter of much consequence. Not such was the tem- 
 per of Bentham. A fallacy, a sophism, or what he 
 thought such, was to him an inevitable provocation to 
 a vehement attack; and on this as on other occasions, 
 he rushed upon such things as his prey, with some- 
 thing of the instinctive keenness with which a cat 
 springs upon a mouse. I think we may allow that 
 many of his objections to Blackstone's loose general 
 talk are reasonable, though we may doubt whether it 
 was worth while to write a book about them; and still 
 more, whether it was worth while to publish in impe- 
 tuous haste, that Fragment of a book which referred 
 to these generalities, while the part which referred to 
 the main body of the work, "the Comment on the 
 Commentaries," which he also meditated, remained 
 
BENTHAM — HIS STYLE OF DISCUSSION. 207 
 
 behind unexecuted. But it ■was ngt unnatural that 
 ■with his vehement con^victions and with his lively 
 mind he should be eager to find some opportunity of 
 appearing before the public. 
 
 In this work he introduced Utility as the funda- 
 mental principle of political morality; — as the test, for 
 instance, ■when resistance to government is allowable. 
 Thus Ch. IV. Art. xx. " It is the principle of utility 
 accurately apprehended and steadily applied, that affords 
 the only clew to guide a man through these straights." 
 And Art. xxi. " It is then, we may say, and not till 
 then, allowable to, if not incumbent on, every man, as 
 well on the score of duty as of interest, to enter into 
 measures of resistance, when, according to the best 
 calculation he is able to make, the probable mischiefs 
 of resistance (speaking with respect to the community 
 in general) appear less to him than the probable mds- 
 chiefs of submission^ ." You will recollect how very 
 closely this approaches to the doctrine delivered by 
 Paley a few years later, (this was ui'iyye), and to the 
 manner of delivering it. It was a point to which the 
 doctrines of Locke and his successors had gradually 
 led; but which, when stated in this fearless and point- 
 ed manner, naturally excited some notice; startling 
 some, while to others it sounded like a new-discovered 
 axiom. 
 
 It does not appear that at this time Bentham had 
 learnt to consider the term utility as a far more im- 
 perfect expression of his favourite principle, than the 
 greatest ffood of the greatest number, which he after- 
 wards much preferred. We may remark in this Frag- 
 ment some specimens of a candour which' he seems 
 ever afterwards to have thought too weak to be re- 
 peated; for he speaks ■with considerable approbation 
 (in the Preface to the Fragment) of Blackstone's style, 
 and his exposition of the Law. So with regard to the 
 doctrine of the Original Compact, which Bentham con- 
 demns as a Fiction, and a Fiction which his admirers 
 
 1 So Ch. I, xlTiii. "Now this other { trhat other can it be than the prvn- 
 piinciple that still recurs upon us, | dpfeo/UTniTT?" 
 
208 HISTOET OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 consider him as having utterly demolished; — not, I 
 think, quite supported in this view by the subsequent 
 history of political discussion; — but with regard to 
 Fictions in general, on the occasion of this, he speaks 
 with a moderation which he afterwards altogether dis- 
 carded. (Ch. 1. Art. xxxvii.) "With regard to this 
 and other fictions, there was once a time, perhaps, 
 when they had their use. With instnunents of this 
 temper, I wiU not deny but that some political work 
 may have been done, and that, useful work which 
 under the then circumstances of things could hardly 
 have been done with any other." In the Preface to 
 the second edition, published at a long subsequent 
 period (1828), he no longer used such moderate lan- 
 guage. On the contrary he says (p. 243), " A fiction 
 of law may be defined a wilful falsehood, having for 
 its object the stealing legislative power by or for 
 hands which could not, or durst, not, openly claim it, 
 — and but for the delusion thus exercised could not 
 exercise it. Thus it was that, by means of mendacity, 
 usurpation was got up, exercised, and established." 
 And he then goes on to illustrate this '.'power-stealing 
 system," as he calls it, remarking that mendacity is a 
 name too soft for falsehood thus applied; — says that it 
 is practised to procure profit to the judge or judges; 
 — ^that they are called the court for the sake of letting 
 in the servants to a share of the worship paid to the 
 master, and so on. 
 
 This pass^e, in the second edition, is a specimen 
 of the impossibility, under which Bentham soon began 
 to labour, of seeing anything but felsehood, fraud, and 
 self-seeking greediness, in the character of those whose 
 doctrines he attacked. His constant habit is to assume 
 himself to be in the right, and to treat his adversaries 
 with ridicule and contempt: and among other forms 
 of contempt, with that of ascribing to them arguments 
 and expressions utterly different from those they ever 
 used : as if it was not worth while reading their books, 
 or. attending to what they say; and as if they were 
 not sufficiently his equals to make it possible that 
 they should be treated with injustice. He was in the 
 
BENTHAM — HIS STYLE OF DISCUSSION. 209 
 
 habit of declaiming against them whenever he had 
 occasion to mention them, undoubtedly with great 
 vivacity and fertility of language, but without the 
 smallest fairness; and very often he declaimed against 
 them, for their declamation, in a manner hardly less 
 comic than Sir Anthony Absolute's anger at his ne- 
 phew's anger. Thus he says (p. 8i), that "the all- 
 comprehensive, all-directing, greatest happiness-prin- 
 ciple, is in some shape or other, in some point or other 
 brought forward" in every attempt at reform. "But 
 of this fountain of all political as well as moral good, 
 the water is an- object of horror to all who are en- 
 gaged in the war of politics: the sound or the sight 
 of it is to them that which the touch of the salted 
 holy water is to the unclean spirits; to the unclean 
 spirits on both sides; and at the bottom no less than 
 at the top of the world of politics all spirits that move 
 in it are unclean. From this field of universal de- 
 pravity arises at all times a loud and indefatigable 
 cry of excellence," and so on (p. 81). The passage 
 ends with some phrases of religious reverence used in 
 ironical mockery, which is also, I am sorry to say, 
 not at all unusual in Bentham's writings. I shall, 
 however, have more to say of Bentham's mode of 
 arguing when we come to deal with his doctrines 
 themselves: for the present, I wish to point out in 
 some measure the manner in which they came before 
 the world. 
 
 The reception of the Fragment on Government was 
 not altogether unprosperous ; but probably far less 
 favourable than the author, in the glow of reforming 
 zeal and triumphant conviction, had expected. " No 
 sooner," he afterwards said, "had my farthing candle 
 been taken out of the bushel, thaji I looked for the 
 descent of torches to it from the highest regions : my 
 imagination presented to my view torches descending 
 in crowds to borrow its fire." Anything which could 
 be described precisely thus, did not happen. But the 
 work, published without the author's name, was as- 
 cribed to many of the greatest men of the day: to 
 Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, Lord Ashburton. It 
 
 U 
 
2IO HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 was the means of introducing Bentham to Lord Shel- 
 bume, and thus of making him a frequent visitor at 
 Bowood. And these visits formed the happiest part 
 of his life, and veiy much influenced his future career. 
 
 He had turned aside from the practice of the law, 
 in which his &ther had tried to involve him ; he now 
 ga,ve himseE entirely to his political and moral specu- 
 lations, and was soon looked upon by his friends as 
 an acute and powerftil thiaker, and a great master 
 of political and jurisprudential pjiilosophy; — of course 
 of the most liberal cast. He was employed upon a 
 work On the Principles of Morals ami Legislation, 
 which was already printed in 1781, though not pub- 
 lished tUl 1789. In his Prefe«e to the second edition, 
 — ^a most amusing piece of autobiography, — he nar- 
 rates, (Art. XII.) that Lord Shelbume got into his 
 hand^ the unpublished treasure of wisdom, and could 
 not be withheld from reading it to the ladies at the 
 breakfiist-table; and that, iuasmuch as all the great 
 springs of human action were distinctly referred to, 
 this occasioned some embarrassment. 
 
 But this Pre&ce is most curious as illustrating 
 what I have already said, that Bentham could not 
 conceive that those who dissented from him in any de- 
 gree, were not actuated by some selfish view and some 
 fraudulent purpose. He could not understand how 
 his Fragment had not drawn more public notice, and 
 led to greater results. He knew that it had been 
 seen by several eminent persons; as Wedderbum, 
 afterwards Lord Loughborough, Lord Mansfield, Lord 
 Camden, Mr Dunning, CoL Barr6: and the mode in 
 which he accounts for their slight notice of the work 
 is very curious and amusing. Wedderbum had said 
 that it was a dangerous book ; and Bentham declares 
 that at the time it was inconceivable to him. how 
 utility could be dangerous; but afberwards he came 
 to see clearly that Wedderbum meant that it would 
 be dangerous to the mass of power, wealth, and fac- 
 titious dignity which such persons as he enjoyed at 
 other people's expense. Lord Mansfield, when it was 
 read to him, had said at parts, "now he seems to be 
 
BENTHAM — HIS STYLE OP DISCUSSION. 211 
 
 slumbering;" and at other parts, "now he is awake 
 again." Bentham afterwards discovered that there 
 was a heart-burning between Lord Mansfield and 
 Blackstone, and at a later period he saw that the 
 wakeful pai-ts to Lord Mansfield were those in which 
 was seen the tormentor of Ms tormentor; the sleepy 
 plDrfcions, those in which there was a liberalism and 
 a logic threatening his despotism and rhetoric. Lord 
 Camden, who was a guest along with him at Bowood, 
 told him that he played too loud in accompanying 
 Miss Pratt on the violin, and that he ate too much; 
 besides never speaking to him of his book. Dunning 
 too was a guest there, and merely scowled at him. 
 Col. Barr6, another guest thpre, was to him stately 
 and distant; and when Bentham gave him an Essay 
 of his on Deodands to read. Col. Barr6 said, " Mr Ben- 
 tham, you have got yourself into a scrape;" which 
 Bentham afterwards discovered to mean that he had 
 written what was against the interest of the ruling 
 few. And Bentham is quite clear in his conviction 
 that it could not be anything in his own manners 
 that drew on him this repulsive behaviour : for Miss 
 Pratt did not share her father's rage at the loud 
 playing, nor did Mrs Dunning, whose music his violin 
 also accompanied. It was the fear of danger to their 
 own interests which made all those men neglect Ben- 
 tham's writings, treat him with coldness, and enter 
 into a confederacy to keep him back, which for a time 
 succeeded. Even Lord Shelbume's kindness to him 
 was stimulated, he thinks, by that nobleman's quarrel 
 with Blackstone; and when one day he said, " Mr Ben- 
 tham, what is it you can do for me V he wanted help 
 to his party which Bentham would not undertake to 
 give. Some years afterwards he surprised Lord Shel- 
 bume much by asking him for a seat in Parliament 
 somewhat vehemently (in a letter of sixty-one pages), 
 but took very good humouredly the refusal which was 
 involved in the reply. 
 
 But Bentham had already, as I have said, gone on 
 from the Fragment, to the composition and printing 
 of his Principles of Morals and Legislation. His 
 
 14—2 
 
212 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 friends already called him "the Newton of legisla- 
 tion," and imdoubtedly he expected that the pubKca- 
 tion of his ■work wonld make the world regard him in 
 that light. Why he delayed so long the publication 
 of the work already printed, I do not know : but a 
 little later he was induced by various causes to travel 
 into Bussia (1784). During the time that he was 
 there, Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Phi- 
 losophy was published, in 1785 ; and Bentham's friends 
 could not fail to see in how great a degree this antici- 
 pated his system. His correspondent, George Wilson, 
 gives him this account. "There is a Mr Paley, a 
 parson and archdeacon of Carlisle, who has written a 
 book called Principles of Moral and Political Philo- 
 sophy, in quarto, and it has gone through two editions 
 with prodigious applause. It is founded entirely on 
 utility, or, as he chooses to call it, the will of God as 
 declared by expediency, to which he adds, as a supple- 
 ment, the revealed will of Grod. But notwithstanding 
 this, and some weak places, particularly as to oaths 
 and subscriptions, where he is hampered by his pro- 
 fession and his past conduct, it is a capital book, and 
 by much the best that has been written on the subject 
 in this country. Almost everything he says about 
 morals, government, and our own constitution, is 
 sound, practical, and free from commonplace. He has 
 got many of your notions about punishment, which 
 I always thought the most important of your disco- 
 veries; and I could almost suspect, if it were possible, 
 that he had read your Introduction; and I do very 
 much fear that, if you ever do publish on those stib- 
 jects, you may be charged with stealing from him 
 what you have honestly invented with the sweat of 
 your own brow. But for all that, I wish you would 
 come and try; for I am stiU persuaded, my dear 
 Bentham, that you have for some years been throwing 
 away your time ; and that the way in which you would 
 be most likely to benefit the world and yourself is, by 
 establishing, in the first place, a great literary reputa- 
 tion in your own language, and in this country which 
 you despise." He goes on to notice as an example of 
 
BENTHAM — HIS STYLE OF DISCUSSION, 213 
 
 Paley's merits, his inquiry into the guilt of a drunken 
 man who kills another, and the quantum of punish- 
 ment which ought to be applied to him ; " which is," 
 he says, " as correct and exhaustive as if you had done 
 it yourself" 
 
 In reply to this, Bentham writes in a strain of 
 grotesque pleasantry : " I had ordered horses for Eng- 
 land to take triumphant possession of the throne of 
 legislation, but finding it full of Mr Paley, I ordered 
 them back into the stable. Since then I have been 
 torturing myself to no purpose, to find any blind alley 
 in the career of fame, which Mr Paley's magnanimity 
 may have disdained." And again, in the same letter, 
 "To speak seriously of Parson Paley, I should not 
 have expected so much from him, &c. People were 
 surprised to see how green my eyes were for some 
 time after I received your letter, but their natural 
 jetty lustre is now pretty well returned." It would 
 seem that some of his friends having their attention 
 fixed on Bentham alone, and not attending to the 
 course of thought in the rest of the world, could not 
 get rid of the absurd notion of Paley having had some 
 intimation of Bentham's doctrines. Wilson again re- 
 turns to it two years later: "I have often been 
 tempted to think that Paley had either seen your 
 Introduction or had conversed with some one who 
 was intimate with you." And the biographer who 
 publishes these letters gravely refers from the one 
 passage to the other, as if they confirmed each other. 
 But when driven, as any sober thought must drive 
 them, from this empty conjecture, they have recourse 
 to the most extravagant assertions of the difierence 
 between Paley's and Bentham's doctrines. Thus in 
 Bentham's Deontology we are told by the same bio- 
 grapher (Dr Bowring), that Paley " mentions the prin- 
 ciple of utility, but seems to have no notion of its 
 bearing on happiness." The person who writes thus 
 can hardly, it would seem, have seen Paley's book. 
 But he appears, like Bentham himself, to have thought 
 that he had means of knowing what Paley's doctrines 
 miist be, which made it superfluous to examine what 
 
214 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 they -were. " And if," adds this disciple of Bentham, 
 " Paley had any such idea" as that of the bearing of 
 utility on happiness, "he was the last man to give 
 expression to it." Observe the reason "why. "The 
 work was for the youth of Cambridge," of one of the 
 Colleges of which he was tutor. Now Paley had left 
 the Pniversity ten years before, and his book was not 
 adopted by the University till some time afterwards. 
 But let us hear the writer's account of Cambridge. 
 " In that meridian eyes were not strong enough, nor 
 did he desire they should be strong enough, to endure 
 the light from the orb of utilitarian felicity." But 
 how does the writer know what Paley desii-ed? By 
 deducing from a rumoured pleasantry of Paley, an 
 account of his character and habits utterly at variance 
 with known truth. " Insincere himself, and the bold, 
 often declared, advocate of insincerity, over his bottle 
 those who knew him, knew that he was the self- 
 avowed lover and champion of comiption, rich enough 
 to keep an equipage, but not (as he himself declared) 
 rich enough to keep a conscience." In general " con- 
 science" is not spoken of by the Benthamites with 
 much reverence; but let us not quarrel with their 
 inconsistency in this respect. Let us, however, look 
 once more at the state of their knowledge respecting 
 the English Universities. " For the remaining twenty 
 years of his (Paley's) life, his book was the text-book 
 of the Universities." For the ten preceding years 
 and all the remaining years of his life, Paley had no 
 share in the conduct of his University : the book was 
 gradually introduced into use by the taste of indi- 
 vidual examiners, but for a very long time not re- 
 cognized formally by the University of Cambridge; 
 and at Oxford it has never, I think, been at all coun- 
 tenanced. So far, however, as at any place it has 
 been received, it has been received as the exposition 
 of a system which founds morality upon the promotion 
 of human happiness; and it is a curious example of 
 jealousy for the master's honour overcoming regard 
 for the doctrine, when this admiring Benthamite goes 
 on to say that Paley "left the utilitarian controversy 
 
BENTHAM — HIS STYLE OF DISCUSSION, 215 
 
 as lie found it, not even honouring the all-beneficent 
 principle with one additional passing notice." 
 
 It may seem superfluous to notice misstatements 
 so gross and partiality so blind: but without at all 
 wishing to deny great merit to some of Bentham's 
 labours, (as I shall soon have to show), I am obliged 
 to say that such misrepresentations and such unfair- 
 ness are the usual style of controversy of him and his 
 disciples; and it is fit that we, in entering upon the 
 consideration of their writings, should be aware of 
 this. I conceive it was more to Paley's credit to 
 "leave the utilitarian controversy where he found it," 
 than to carry it forwards by such ways of managing it 
 as these : — although, in truth, it is difficult to see how 
 a writer could do more for the doctrine of utility than 
 Paley did, by deducing from it a system which, as 
 George Wilson, Bentham's great admirer, said, was 
 sound, practical, and free from commonplace. But 
 we shall now return to Bentham • and this I shall do 
 in the next Lecture. 
 
LECTURE XIY. 
 Bentham — His Pkinciples of Mokals and 
 
 LEGISIiATION. 
 
 BEFORE I notice any of Bentham's more peculiar 
 merits, I must again illustrate the extravagant 
 unfairness to adversaries which was habitual in him. 
 
 The Inlroduclvm, to the Principles of Morals wad 
 Legislation appeared before the public in 1789. The 
 first chapter of this work is "On the Principle of 
 Utility;" the second, "On Principles adverse to that 
 of Utility." These adverse principles are stated to 
 be two : The Prraciple of Asceticism, and the Prin- 
 ciple of Sympathy. The Principle of Asceticism is 
 that principle which approves of actions in proportion 
 as they tend to diminish human happiness, and con- 
 versely, disapproves of them as they tend to augment 
 it. (ch. II. § in.) The Principle of Sympathy (§ xii.) 
 is that which approves or disapproves of certain ac- 
 tions, "merely because a man finds himself disposed 
 to approve or disapprove of them, holding up that 
 approbation or disapprobation as a sufficient reason 
 for itself, and disclaiming the necessity of looking out 
 for any extrinsic ground." And these two Principles 
 are, it seems, according to Bentham's view, the only 
 Principles which are, or which can be, opposed to the 
 Principle of Utility ! 
 
 Now it is plain that these are not only not fair 
 representations of any principles ever held by moral- 
 ists, or by any persoiis speaking gravely and deli- 
 berately, but that they are too extravagant and fan- 
 tastical to be accepted even as caricatures of any such 
 
BENTHAM — HIS MORALS AND LEGISLATION. 217 
 
 principles. Tor who ever approved of actions because 
 they tend to make mankind miserable? or who ever 
 said anything which could, even in an intelligible 
 way of exaggeration, be so represented? Is it possible 
 to guess at whom a writer is pointing who allows him- 
 self such Kcense as this? To me, I confess, it appears 
 quite impossible. From, these phrases, I should have 
 had no conception what class of moralists were thus 
 held up to ridicule. For of course every one feels 
 that this description of them is given in order to 
 make them ridiculous, even while the expression is 
 grave and tranquil ; and Bentham's humour runs 
 into extremes which remove even the assumption of 
 gravity. 
 
 But who then are the ascetic school who are thus 
 ridiculed? We could not, I think, guess from the 
 general description thus given; but from a note, it 
 appears, that he had the Stoical Philosophers and the 
 Keligious Ascetics in his mind. With regard to the 
 Stoics, it would of course be waste of time and thought 
 to defend them from such coarse buflFoonery as this, 
 which does not touch their defects, whatever those 
 may be. With regard to the Religious Ascetics, I 
 may notice a further trait in Bentham's account of 
 them, in order to show how strongly the spirit of 
 satire grew upon him. He says that the principle of 
 following certain courses of action, because they make 
 men miserable, has been extensively pursued by men 
 in their treatment of themselves, but only rarely in 
 their treatment of others, and particularly in matters 
 of government; — that saints have often "voluntarily 
 yielded themselves a prey to vermin ; but though many 
 persons of this class have wielded the reins of empire, 
 we read of none who have set themselves to work and 
 made laws on purpose with a view of stocking the 
 body politic with the breed of highwaymen, house- 
 breakers, and incendiaries. If at any time they have 
 sufi'ered the nation to be preyed upon by swarms of 
 idle pensioners, or useless placemen, it has rather been 
 from negligence and imbecility than from any settled 
 plan of oppressing and plundering of the people." 
 
2l8 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 This might appear, one would think, severe and sar- 
 castic enough. But this moderation of his earlier 
 time, -when the habit of condemning had not been 
 enflamed by the deference of a school, did not satisfy 
 his later and more imperious mood. In a subsequent 
 edition he appends to this passage a note, " So thought 
 anno 1780 and 1789, not so anno 1814, J. Bentham." 
 To acquit the governors of nations of a settled plan of 
 oppressing and plundering the people out of a desire 
 for their misery, and of nourishing for this purpose 
 the vermiu of the body poUtic, was only possible for 
 Bentham in the guileless innocence and blind con- 
 fidence of his youth. 
 
 And so much for the ascetic principle according 
 to Bentham; for you will recoUect that at present, 
 I am not discussing his doctrines, but pointing out 
 his habits of thought and expression ; — a task which 
 will not be without its value in enabling us to esti- 
 mate his doctrines and his arguments. 
 
 Perhaps, however, in order to show the effect pro- 
 duced by this mode of arguing, if arguing it is to be 
 called, I may quote one of Mr Bentham's disciples, who 
 at a later period (in 1832) published the Deontology 
 of his master, and added some remarks of his own. 
 " The ascetic principle," he says, " received a mortal 
 wound from Mr Bentham, by his exposure of it in 
 the Introdiiction to Morals and Legislation. No man 
 is, perhaps, now to be found who would contend that 
 the pursuit of pain ought to be the great object of 
 existence." It is marvellous to find a man who had 
 so entirely confined his attention to Bentham's writ- 
 ings, as to suppose that there ever were such people, 
 merely because Bentham had said so, in what I must 
 be allowed to call his buffoonery. 
 
 But this is not a solitary instance of the kind 
 of worship with which Bentham was treated. Every 
 farcical representation which he gave of his opponents 
 was considered as a clear victory, because nobody 
 could be found to own it, as indeed it fitted nobody. 
 He had his world all to himself; for he described Ms 
 adversaries as he chose, and neither he nor his fol- 
 
BENTHAM — HIS MORALS AND LEGISLATION. 219 
 
 lowers generally took any pains to compare Us de- 
 scriptions of these adversaries with their own account 
 of their own opinions. 
 
 This may be seen in the case of the other Prin- 
 ciple, adverse to that of Utility, which Bentham men- 
 tions — the Principle of Sympathy. For who ever 
 asserted that he approved or disapproved of actions 
 merely because he found himself disposed to do so, 
 and that this was reason sufficient in itself for his 
 moral judgments? Or what advantage can be gained 
 to moral philosophy by such misrepresentations as 
 this, whatever it be which is thus misrepresented? 
 which is a point, here, as in the other case, quite 
 obscure, in consequence of the reckless extravagance 
 of the misrepresentation. In a note however, again, 
 we learn that the philosophers who are all included 
 in this account are Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, 
 Beattie, Price, Clarke, WoUaston, and many others. 
 And as a further example of Bentham's mode of deal- 
 ing with such matters, I may notice what he says of 
 one class of these. "One man says he has a thing 
 made on purpose to tell him what is right and what 
 is wrong : and that it is called a moral sense, and then 
 he goes to work at his ease, and says, such a thing is 
 right, and such a thing is wrong. Why? 'Because 
 my moral sense tells me so.'" And after treating 
 various other classes of moralists with the like fair- 
 ness, he has suitably led the way to the last class 
 which he mentions. " The fairest and openest of all 
 is the sort of man who speaks out and says, I am of 
 the number of the Elect: now God himself takes 
 care to inform the Elect what is right : &c. &c. If 
 therefore a man wants to know what is right and 
 what is wrong, he has nothing to do but to come 
 to me." 
 
 Extravagant as this ridicule is — for I should try 
 in vain to conceal my opinion that it is nothing better 
 than extravagant ridicule — it has been accepted in per- 
 fectly good faith and humble admiration by Mr Ben- 
 tham's followers. The editor of the Deontology says 
 with the greatest gravity (i. 321), "The antagonist to 
 
2 20 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the felicity -maximising principle is the ipse-dixit prin- 
 ciple." And he considers this as so settled a matter 
 that he proposes to use the derivatives of this term, 
 and to speak of ipse-dixitists and ipse-dixitism. Cer- 
 tainly, if there have ever been, in modern times, per- 
 sons who have quoted the words of their master with 
 a deference equal to that which in ancient times gave 
 rise to the phrase ipse dixit, the disciples of Mr Ben- 
 tham are peculiarly and eminently ipse-dixitists. 
 
 But wild as this mode of dealing with adverse 
 moralists is, (and we have seen that it is used towards 
 all the most eminent moralists of the preceding cen- 
 tury,) Bentham appears to have soon come to think 
 that it was too good for them. The Principle of Sym- 
 pathy and Antipathy, was, he began to think, too 
 tolerant a designation for the doctrine of those who 
 had recognized any other basis of morality than 
 Utility. In 1789, he added to his work a note in 
 which he said that the Principle ought rather to be 
 styled the Principle of Caprice. It is evident that 
 such an expression could only mean that the person 
 using it could not, or wovdd not, understand the 
 reasons given by those whom he thus called capricious. 
 And so fer, no doubt, it had a meaning. It is easy 
 for two opposite parties, who do not and will not 
 understand each other's views and opinions, to call 
 each other capricious, as it is to call each other by 
 any other condemnatory term; but it is plain this 
 shows nothing but the incapacity for arguing, in 
 those who use such terms. When men have written 
 long and careful and acute trains of reasoning and 
 speculations, as the moralists have whom Bentham 
 condemns, a man must have an almost fatuous con- 
 fidence in his own opinions, and in the deference of 
 his readers, who fancies he can dispose of the whole 
 of this by saying it merely expresses the Principle of 
 Caprice. 
 
 The same note contains another very curious ex- 
 ample of the incredible confidence in himself, and 
 carelessness of what was urged by others, with which 
 Bentham disposed of doctrines which he rejected. He 
 
BENTHAM — HIS MORALS AND LEGISLATION. 221 
 
 says that many maxims of law have derived their 
 authority merely from the love of jingle — which he 
 further illustrates by some laborious pleasantry about 
 Orpheus and Themis: and he gives, as his examples, 
 Delegatus non ^potest delega/re, and Servitus Servitutis 
 non datur. 
 
 I may notice, too, as examples of the boldness for 
 which we must be prepared in dealing with his doc- 
 trines, the imperious manner in which he rejects and 
 alters the significations of words. Thus, in illustrating 
 the Principle of Antipathy (§ xiv. note), he says that 
 it is on this principle that certain acts are repro- 
 bated, as being unnatural — for instance the practice 
 of exposing children. No, he says, this language is 
 not to be allowed. Unnatural, when it means any- 
 thing, means unfrequent ; and here it is not the un- 
 frequency, but the frequency of the act of which you 
 complain. It is curious that he should have thought 
 he could prevent men from calling, as they used to do, 
 acts unnatural, which are contrary to those natural 
 and universal feelings which aU men recognize as the 
 proper guides of life. But that was precisely the ground 
 of his displeasure with the word. It recognized, in 
 parental afiection, a natural and acknowledged guide 
 of human action: and this recognition was to be con- 
 tradicted. This however leads us to the doctrines 
 themselves, which we are not here discussing. 
 
 At a later period Bentham became quite wanton 
 and reckless in his innovations in language ; but even 
 at the period which we are now considering, that of 
 the publication of the Introduction, he altered the sig- 
 nification of many words in a very arbitrary manner; 
 a manner for which we ought to be prepared in read- 
 ing him. Thus, in estimating pleasures, he speaks of 
 their pv/rity as one element of their value : but by this 
 he does^ not mean their freedom from grossness — for 
 he aeknowledges no value in this kind of pv/rity, and 
 no evU in grossness : his purity is the freedom of plea- 
 sure from the mixture of pain. 
 
 Again he says, (c. v. i.) " Pains and pleasures may 
 be called by one word, interesting perceptions :" which 
 
222 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tHey may, only if we disregard the ordinary meaning 
 of the word. 
 
 I might ppint out, as examples of Bentham's sslf- 
 oomplacent boldness, his extraordinary misstatements 
 with regard to the classical languages and their lite- 
 rature; for instance, his ascribing the doctrine of the 
 four cardinal virtues to Aristotle; and the equally 
 extraordinary confusion which prevails in his attempt 
 to arrange the sciences, a confusion which necessarily 
 resulted from his complete ignorance of the subject. 
 But it is our more special business to regard him as a 
 moralist. 
 
 In considering Bentham's system of Morality, I 
 by no means wish to make it my sole business to 
 point out the errors and defects of it. On the con- 
 trary, it will be very important to my purpose to show 
 what amount of truth there resides in it; since by so 
 doing, I shall both account for the extensive accept- 
 ance which it has found, and shall be advancing to- 
 wards that system which contains all that is true in 
 all preceding systems : and that is plainly the system 
 at which we of this day ought to aim. 
 
 Of Bentham's system, indeed, we have in a great 
 measure spoken, in speaking of Paley's : for as I have 
 said, the two systems are in principle the same; and 
 the assertions of Bentham's followers as to the great 
 difference of the two systems, vanish on examination. 
 The basis of Paley's scheme is Utility: — Utility for 
 the promotion of Human Happiness. Human Hap- 
 piness is composed of Pleasures : — Pleasures are to be 
 estimated by their intensity and Duration. All this 
 Paley has. Has Bentham anything more? He has 
 nothing more which is essential in the scheme of Mo- 
 rality, so far as this groundwork goes. For though in 
 enumerating the elements in the estimate of pleasures, 
 Bentham adds to Intensity and Duration, others, as 
 Certainty, Propinquity, Fecundity, Purity (in- the 
 sense which I have spoken of); these do not much 
 alter the broad features of the scheme. But undoubt- 
 edly Bentham attempts to build upon this groundwork 
 more systematically than Paley does. If there is to 
 
BENTHAM — BIS MORALS AND LEGISLATION. 223 
 
 be a Morality erected on sucli a basis as that just 
 described, the pleasures (and the pains as well) which 
 are the guides and governors of human action must be 
 enumerated^ classed, weighed and measured. It is by 
 determioing the value of a lot of pleasure (the phrase 
 is Bentham's) resulting from an act, that the moral 
 value of an act is known, in this system. We must 
 therefore haye all the pleasures which man can feel, 
 passed in review; and all the ways in which these 
 pleasures can increase or diminish by human actions. 
 This done, we shall be prepared to pass judgment on 
 human actions, and to assign to each its rank and 
 value in 'the moral scale; its title to reward or punish- 
 ment on these principles. 
 
 Can this be done? Has Bentham done this? If 
 he has, is it not really a valuable task performed? 
 These questions naturally occur. 
 
 In reply, I may say that the task would undoubt- 
 edly be a valuable one, if it were possible; but that, 
 so fer as the moral value of actions is concerned, it is 
 not possible, for reasons which I will shortly state; 
 that even for the appropriation of punishment in the 
 construction of laws, — the purpose for which the author 
 mainly intended it, — it is far from completely exe- 
 cuted, or perhaps capable of being completely executed; 
 but that the attempt to execute it in a complete and 
 systematic manner, over the whole field of human 
 action, led to many useful and important remarks on 
 schemes of law and of punishment; and that these, 
 along with the air of system, which has always a 
 great effect upon men, not unnaturally won for Ben- 
 tham great attention, and even gave a sort of ascend- 
 ancy to the rough and distorting pleasantry which he 
 exercised towards opponents. I may afterwards speak 
 of his merits as a jural and political philosopher, but I 
 must first explain why, as I conceive, his mode of 
 estimating *the moral value of actions cannot suffice 
 for the purposes of Morality. 
 
 Let it be taken for granted, as a proposition which 
 is true, if the terms which it involves be duly under- 
 stood, that actions are right and virtuous in propor- 
 
2 24 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion as they promote the happiness of mankind ; the 
 actions being considered upon the whole, and with 
 regard to all their consequences. Still, I say, "we can- 
 not make this truth the basis of morality, for two 
 reasons : first, we cannot calculate all the consequences 
 of any action, ^nd thus cannot estimate the degree in 
 which it promotes human happiness ; — second, happi- 
 ness is derived from moral elements, and therefore we 
 cannot properly derive morality from happiness. The 
 calculable happiness resulting from actions cannot 
 determine their virtue ; first, because the resulting 
 happiness is not calculable ; and secondly, because the 
 virtue is one of the things which determines' the re- 
 sulting happiness. 
 
 These asisertions are, I think, tolerably evident of 
 themselves; but we may dwell upon them a little 
 longer. First, I say the amount of happiness result- 
 ing from any action is not calculable. If we ask 
 whether a given action will increase or diminish the 
 total amount of human happiness, it is impossible to 
 answer with any degree of certainty. Take ordinary 
 cases. I am tempted to utter a flattering falsehood: 
 to gratify some sensual desire contrary to ordinary 
 moral rules. How shall I determine, on the greatest 
 happiness-principle, whether the act is virtuous or the 
 contrary? In the first place, the direct efiect of each 
 act is to give pleasure, to another by flattery, to 
 myself by sensual gratification: and pleasure is the 
 material of happiness, in the scheme we are now con- 
 sidering. But by the flattering lie, I promote false- 
 hood, which is destructive of confidence, and so, of 
 human comfort. Granted that I do this, in some 
 degree,— although I may easily say, that I shall never 
 allow myself to speak falsely, except when it will give 
 pleasure, and thus, I may maintain that I shall not 
 shake confidence in any case in which it is of any 
 value; but granted that I do in some degree shake the 
 general fabric of mutual human confidence, by my 
 flattering lie,— still the question remains, how much I 
 do this; whether in such a degree as to overbalance 
 the pleasure, which is the primary and direct conse- 
 
BENTHAM — HIS MORALS AND LEGISLATION. 225 
 
 quence of the act. How small must be the effect of 
 my solitary act upon the whole scheme of human 
 action and habit ! how clear and decided is the direct 
 effect of increasiag the happiness of my hearer ! And 
 in the same way we may reason concerning the sen- 
 sual gratification. The pleasure is evident and cer- 
 tain; the effect on other men's habits obscure and 
 uncertain. Who will know it? Who will be influ- 
 enced by it of those who do know it? What appre- 
 ciable amount of pain will it produce in its conse- 
 quences, to balance the palpable pleasure, which, 
 according to our teachers, is the only real good? It 
 appears to me that it is impossible to answer these 
 questions in any way which will prove, on these 
 principles, mendacious flattery, and illegitimate sen- 
 suality, to be vicious and immoral. They may pos- 
 sibly produce, take in all their effects, a balance of 
 evil ; but if they do, it is by some process which we 
 cannot trace with any clearness, and the result is one 
 which we cannot calculate with any certainty or even 
 probability; and therefore, on this account, because 
 the resulting evil of such falsehood and sensuality is 
 not calculable or appreciable, we cannot, by calcula- 
 tion of resulting evil, show falsehood and sensuality 
 to be vices ; and the like is true of other vices ; 
 and on this ground the construction of a scheme 
 of Morality on Mr Bentham's plan is plainly im- 
 possible'. 
 
 But the disciples of Bentham will perhaps urge 
 
 1 The impossibility of really ap- 
 plying the principle that we are to 
 estimate the virtue of actions by 
 calculating the amount of pleasure 
 which they wUl produce, appears 
 further, by looking at the rude and 
 loose manner in which Bentham 
 makes such calculations. Among the 
 consequences of acts of robbery, for 
 instance, which make them vicious, 
 
 he reckons the alarm which such an 
 act produces ia other persons, and 
 the danger in which it places them. 
 And this alarm and danger are care- 
 fully explained, as to their existence 
 (ch. xir. § via.). But the probability 
 of each is not at all estimated. This 
 however is rather where he is looking 
 at the grounds of judicial punish- 
 ment than of moral condemnation^ 
 
 15 
 
226 BISTORT OF MORAL PHILOSOl'HT. 
 
 that falsehood is -wrong, even if it produce immediate 
 pleasure, because the violation of a general rule is 
 an evil which no single pleasurable consequence can 
 counterbalance; and because, by acts of falsehood, we 
 weaken and destroy our own habit of truth. And 
 the like might be said in the other case. Now when 
 men speak in this manner, they are undoubtedly ap- 
 proaching to a sound and tenable morality. I say 
 approaching to it; for they are still at a considerable 
 distance from a really moral view, as I shall have to 
 show. But though when men speak in this manner, 
 they are approaching to sound morality, they are re- 
 ceding from the fundamental principle of Bentham. 
 Eor on that principle, how does it appear that the 
 evil, that is the pain, arising from violating a general 
 rule once, is too great to be overbalanced by the 
 pleasurable consequences of that single violation ? The 
 actor says, I acknowledge the general rule? I do not 
 deny its value; but I do not intend that this one act 
 should be drawn into consequence. I assert my right 
 to look at the special case, as well as at the general 
 rule. I have weighed one against the other : I see 
 that the falsehood gives a clear balance of pleasure: 
 therefore on our Master's principles, it is right and 
 virtuous. What does the Master say to this? If he 
 say, " you must be wrong in violating the general rule 
 of truth — of veracity : no advantage can compensate 
 for that evil;" — if he say this, he speaks like a moral- 
 ist; but not like a Benthamite. He interposes, with 
 an imperative dogma drawn from the opposite school, 
 to put down the manifest consequences of his own 
 principles. If, on the other hand, he allow the plea; 
 — if he say, Be sure that your lie brings more plea- 
 sure than pain, and then lie, and know that you are 
 doing a virtuous act; — ^then indeed he talks like a 
 genuine assertor of Mr Bentham's principles, but he 
 ceases to be a moralist in any ordinary sense of the 
 term. 
 
 But let us look at the other reason against an act 
 of falsehood, that by such acts we weaken and destroy 
 our habit of truth. To this, the person concerned 
 
BENTHAM — HIS MORALS AND LEGISLATION, 227 
 
 might reply, that a habit of truth,, absolute and un- 
 conditional, is, on Bentham's principles, of no value ; 
 that if there be cases in ■which the pleasure arising 
 from falsehood is greater than the pleasure arising 
 from truth, then, in these cases, falsehood is virtuous 
 and veracity is vicious ; that, on these principles, the 
 habit to be cultiv&.ted is not a habit of telling truth 
 al/ways, but a habit of telling truth when it produces 
 pleasure more than pain. To this I do not know 
 what our Benthamite could reply, except that a habit 
 of telling truth so limited, is not a habit of veracity 
 at all; that the only way to form a habit of veracity 
 is, to tell truth always, and without limiting condi- 
 tions; that is, to tell truth if we tell anything; not to 
 tell falsehood. This again is teaching quite consistent 
 in the mouth of a moralist : but not consistent in the 
 mouth of a Benthamite. It makes the regulation of 
 our own habits, our own desires, paramount over any- 
 thing which can be gained, pleasure or profit, by the 
 violation and transgression of such regulation. Vera- 
 city comes first; pleasure and gain are subordinate. 
 And this is our morality. But the Benthamist doc- 
 trine is, pleasure first of all things : veracity, good it 
 may be; but good only because, and only so far as, it 
 is an instrument of pleasure. 
 
 The other branch of the argument will be pursued 
 in the next Lecture. 
 
 15—2 
 
LECTURE XV. 
 
 Bentham — Objections to his system. 
 
 IN" the last Lecture, I stated that the Benthamite 
 scheme of determining the m.orality of actions by 
 the amount of happiness which they produce, is inca- 
 pable of being executed for two reasons; first, that we 
 cannot calculate all the pleasure or pain resulting from 
 any one action; and next, that the happiness produced 
 by actions depends on their morality. I have attempt- 
 ed to illustrate the former argument. I now proceed 
 to the latter. 
 
 In the last lecture I tried to show that the Ben- 
 thamite doctrine, that acts are virtuous in proportion 
 as they calculably produce happiness, — ^that Ls, again, 
 according to the Benthamite analysis, pleasure, — can- 
 not be made the basis of morality, because we cannot 
 for such purposes calculate the amount of pleasure 
 which acts produce: and if we attempt to remedy 
 the obvious defects of calculations on such subjects, 
 by taking into account rules and habits, we run 
 away from the declared fundamental principle alto- 
 gether. 
 
 To show further how impossible it is to found 
 morality on the Benthamite basis, I now proceed to 
 observe that we cannot derive the moral value of 
 actions from the happiness which they produce, be- 
 cause the happiness depends upon the morality. Why 
 should a man be truthful and just? Because acts of 
 veracity and justice, even if they do not produce 
 immediate gratification to him and his friends in 
 other ways, (and it may easily be that they do not,) 
 
BENTHAM — OBJECTIONS TO HIS SYSTEM. 229 
 
 at least produce pleasure in tins way; — that they 
 procure him his own approval and that of all good 
 men. To us, this language is intelligible and signi- 
 ficant; but the Benthamite must analyse it further. 
 What does it mean according to him? A man's own 
 approval of his act, means that he thinks it virtuous. 
 And therefore, the matter stands thus. He (being a 
 Benthamite) thinks it virtuous, because it gives him 
 pleasure : and it gives him pleasure because he thinks 
 it virtuous. This is a vicious circle, quite as palpable 
 as any of those in which Mr Bentham is so fond of 
 representing his adversaries as revolving. And in 
 like manner, with regard to the approval of others. 
 The action is virtuous, says the Benthamite, because 
 it produces pleasure ; namely the pleasure arising from 
 the approval of neighbours ; — ^they approve it, and 
 think it virtuous, he also says, because it gives plea- 
 sure. The virtue' depends upon the pleasure, the 
 pleasure depends upon the virtue. Here again is a 
 circle from which there is no legitimate egress. We 
 may grant that, taking into account all the elements 
 of happiuess, — the pleasures of self-approval, — of peace 
 of mind and harmony within us, and of the approval 
 of others, — of the known sympathy of all good men ; — 
 we may grant that including these elements, virtue 
 always does produce an overbalance of happiness ; but 
 then we cannot make this moral truth the basis of 
 morality, because we cannot extricate the happiness 
 and the virtue, the one from the other, so as to make 
 the first, the happiness, the foundation of the second, 
 the virtue. 
 
 This consideration of virtue itself as one of the 
 sources of pleasure, — one of the elements of happi- 
 ness, — is a point at which, as appears to me, the 
 Benthamite doctrine loses all the clearness which, in 
 its early steps, it so ostentatiously puts forward. Con- 
 sidering the pretensions of the system to rigorous 
 analysis, I cannot but think there is something ro- 
 bustly rude in the mode in which these matters of 
 self-approval and approval from others are disposed of. 
 That self-approval, and the approbation of neighbours, 
 
230 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 are pleasures, cannot be denied. Accordingly, they 
 are reckoned by Bentham in his list of pleasures. 
 But these sentiments involve morality — the very 
 thing we are analysing into its elements : how are we 
 to give an account of this ingredient of pleasure? 
 How does Bentham make these into elementary plea- 
 sures ? or if not elementary, whence does he take the 
 moral element of these pleasures, having already pro- 
 fessed to resolve morality into pleasures? As I have 
 said, I think the answer to these questions is one 
 which deprives Bentham's analysis of Morality of aU 
 coherence and completeness. In order to make an 
 , opening, by which Morality may find its way into the 
 mind of the actor and of the spectators, he throws the 
 theatre open to an unbounded and undefined range of 
 external influences. He has recourse to the dimness 
 of childhood and to the confusion of the crowd, to 
 conceal his defect of logic. Whence does man get 
 his grounds of self-approval and self-condemnation? 
 "From Education." Where reside the rules by which 
 his neighbours applaud or condemn ? "In Public 
 Opinion." And thus these two wide and loose ab- 
 stractions. Education and Fublic Opinion, become the 
 real soui'ces of Morality. They are really the ele- 
 ments into which all Morality is analysed by Ben- 
 tham: — those, which themselves need analysis far 
 more than the subjects which he began to analyse, 
 Virtues and Vices. For is not Education (moral 
 Education) the process by which we learn what are 
 Virtues and what are Vices ? Is not Public Opinion 
 the Opinion which decides what acts are virtuous and 
 what are vicious ? What an analysis then is this ! 
 Virtue is what gives pleasure. Among the principal 
 pleasures so produced are self-approval and public ap- 
 proval. Self-approval is governed by what we have 
 been taught to think virtuous : Public approval, by 
 what the Public thinks virtuous. Surely we are here 
 again in a palpable circle j as indeed we must be, if we 
 want to have a Morality which does not depend on a 
 moral basis. 
 
 That Bentham really does recur to Public Opinion, 
 
BENTHAM — OBJECTIONS TO HIS SYSTEM. 23 1 
 
 however loose and insecure a foundation that may be, 
 for the basis of Morality, is indeed abundantly evident 
 from the general course of his discussion of the sub- 
 ject. Among the Sanctions by which the laws of 
 human conduct are toforced, he puts in a prominent 
 place, and constantly and emphatically refers to, what 
 he calls tha Popular or Moral Sanction; that is his 
 often-repeated phrase, — ^the Popular or Moral Sanc- 
 tion, — as an enforcing power, which stands side by 
 side with legal punishment, physical pain, and the 
 like. Popula/r and Moral with him, then, are, in this 
 application at least, synonymous, or coincident. He 
 cannot tell us what is moral, except he first know 
 what is popular. Popular Opinion is, with him, an 
 ultimate fact, upon which Morality depends. He 
 cannot correct Popular Opinion in any authoritative 
 manner, for it supplies one of his ruling principles ; 
 namely, one of the pleasures by which he determines 
 what is right and what is wrong. If murder, sensu- 
 ality, falsehood, oppression, be in any cases popular, 
 this popularity tends to make them virtues, for it 
 gives them the reward of virtue; and his virtue looks 
 only to reward, and to such reward among others. 
 True, — -"he may, in certain cases, say that the pain 
 produced by such acts overweighs the pleasure, even 
 including the pleasure of popular applause. But then, 
 if the applause bestowed by popular opinion be strong 
 enough, if the pleasure which it gives becomes still 
 greater, the opposite pain may thus be overbalanced, 
 and those acts are still virtues. That murder, sensu- 
 ality, falsehood, oppression, may, by many men, be 
 practised as virtues, on account of such applause, is, 
 no doubt, true ; but it cannot but sound strange to us, 
 to hear that doctrine called Morality, which approves 
 of them on this account. All mankind include in 
 their notion of moral rules this condition ; — that such 
 rules, when delivered by a person who, being a moral- 
 ist, cannot allow himself to assent to popular errors 
 and vices, shall correct and rebuke such errors and 
 such vices. But this he cannot do if he depend upon 
 Popular Opinion for one of the Sanctions of his 
 
232 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 Morality; and not only for one of these sanctions, but 
 for the only one which is specially called nwral. 
 
 Bentham does indeed attempt to make some stand 
 against popular judgment, at one period of his pro- 
 gress : for he "warns his disciples against the general 
 tendency to decide the character of actions and springs 
 of action, by giving to them names implying approval 
 and disapproval ; — ^what he calls eulogistic and dyslo- 
 gistic names. But these eulogistic and dyslogistic 
 names are part of the expression of public opinion ; 
 — ^part of the machinery by -vfhich the " popidar or 
 moral sanction" works. Men are deterred from ac- 
 tions that have a bad name; — led to actions that have 
 a good name. It is surely, on his grounds, fit that 
 they should be so. If they were not, where would be 
 the effect of this popular sanction ? If men were not 
 eulogistic and dyslogistic in their way of speaking of 
 actions, how should they express that moral judgment 
 which is an essential part of Bentham's system — 
 which is the broadest foundation stone of his edifice 
 of Morality? 
 
 Of course, we too know that such names have 
 their influence, and that, a very powerful one. We 
 know that the popular voice on subjects of morality 
 produces a mighty effect upon men. We rejoice in 
 this influence, when it is on the side of true morality. 
 We rejoice, too, to think that in general it is so; — 
 that truth, kindness, justice, purity, orderliness, are 
 generally approved by men ; and that, in general, the 
 popular voice enforces the moralist's precepts. But 
 we do not take from the popular voice our judgment 
 as to what actions are truthful, kind, just, pure, 
 orderly. Bentham might perhaps reply, but neither 
 does he thus form his judgments of actions ; — ^that he 
 too has grounds on which he can correct the popular 
 prejudices respecting actions. But still, he cannot but 
 allow that, according to him, the popular prejudice 
 does much to make l;hose actions virtuous which it 
 approves,^-those actions vicious which it condemns ; 
 since it can award to the one class, honour, to the 
 other, infamy: and ■where are there pleasures and 
 
BENTHAM — OBJECTIONS TO HIS SYSTEM. 233 
 
 pains greater than honour, and than infamy? Now 
 by the greatness of the pleasures, and the pains, re- 
 sulting from actions, their virtuous or vicious cha- 
 racter according to him is determined. So that, as 
 we have said, virtue and vice depending upon plea- 
 sures and pain, and pleasures and pain again depend- 
 ing upon the popular opinion of right and wrong, we 
 cannot here find any independent basis for virtue and 
 vice, and right and wrong. 
 
 But it may be asked, does not the popular judg- 
 ment of certain classes of actions as right, and certain 
 others as wrong, depend upon an apprehension, how- 
 ever obscure and confused, that the former class are 
 advantageous to the community, the latter disadvan- 
 tageous 1 To this I reply, that if by advantage be 
 meant external tangible advantage, independent of 
 mental pleasures, I conceive that they do not so 
 depend : and if we take in mental pleasures, we are 
 brought back to that independent moral element 
 which the utilitarians wish to ^iclude. But if it be 
 alleged that this (namely, general advantage) is the 
 ground of the public opinion of the rightness and 
 wrongness of actions, let it be shown that it is so. 
 Let the Benthamite begin by analysing public opinion 
 into such elements; and let him use, in his system, 
 those elements, and not the unanalysed opinion in 
 that compound concrete form in which he calls it 
 "the popular or moral sanction." If Morality de- 
 pend upon external advantage, both directly, and 
 through the popular apprehension of it, let this ad- 
 vantage be made, once for all, the basis of the system, 
 and not brought in both directly in its manifest form, 
 and indirectly, disguised as popidar or moral opinion. 
 But I think that Bentham has not so analysed public 
 opinion ; and has been unable to do so. And that he 
 despaired of so doing, I judge from the impatience 
 with which he speaks of the eulogistic and dyslogistic 
 phraseology by which such opinion is conveyed. If 
 he could have said, "the eulogistic terms imply a 
 supposed tendency to the increase of human pleasure, 
 and I will show you how far they are right;" these 
 
234 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT, 
 
 terms would have been useful steps to tie exposition 
 of his doctrine : instead of which, he everywhere 
 speaks of them as impediments in the way of the 
 truths which he wishes to disclose; — as disguises 
 which tend to conceal the true bearing of actions 
 upon the promotion of happiness. I conceive there- 
 fore that Bentham saw that public opinion concerning 
 %irtues and vices included some other element than 
 that which he wished alone to recogoize ; and that he 
 therefore accepted public opinion as implying some- 
 thing in addition to the elementary pleasures and 
 pains which he expressly enumerates. 
 
 But again : It may be said that the public opinion 
 of men, and of communities, as to what is right and 
 wrong, is a fact in man's nature ; and an important 
 fact, of which all moralists must recognize the in- 
 fluence : and it may be asked whether Bentham as- 
 cribes to it more influence than justly belongs to it. 
 And to this I reply, that the public opinion as to 
 what is right and wrong is undoubtedly a very im- 
 portant fact in man's nature; and that the most im- 
 portant lesson to be learnt from it appears to be this : 
 — that man cannot help judging of actions, as being 
 right or wrong; and that men universally reckon this 
 as the supreme difference of actions; — the most im- 
 portant character which they can have. I add, that 
 this characteristic of human nature marks man as a 
 moral being; as a being endowed with a faculty or 
 faculties by which he does thus judge; that is, by 
 which he considers that right and wrong are the 
 supreme and paramount distinctions of actions. That 
 this is an important point we grant, or rather we pro- 
 claim, as the beginning of all Morality : and we say 
 that if Bentham accepts the fact in this way, he gives 
 it no more than its just importance. We do not 
 require that this Faculty or those Faculties by which 
 man thus judges of right and wrong should be any- 
 thing peculiar and ultimate, but only that the distinc- 
 tion should be a peculiar and ultimate one. And if 
 Bentham, finding that men do so judge of actions, and 
 perceiving that he could not, consistently with the 
 
BENTHAM — OBJECTIONS TO HIS SYSTEM. 235 
 
 state of their minds, analyse this their judgment into 
 any perception of advantage and disadvantage, was 
 ■willing to leave it as he found it, and to make the 
 fact of such a judgment one of the bases of his system ; 
 so far he was right, and did not ascribe too much 
 importance to this judgment, — to this public opinion. 
 But then, if taking the moral ju.dgments of mankind 
 in this aspect, Bentham puts side by side with this 
 element, the other advantages, say bodily pleasure or 
 wealth, which certain actions may produce, we say 
 that he makes an incongruous scheme, which cannot 
 pass for Morality. If he say, for instance, ''public 
 opinion declares lying to be wrong, and I have no- 
 thing to say against that; for I cannot analyse this 
 opinion of a thing being wrong into any thing else. 
 But recollect, that though it be what they call wrong, 
 it may be very pleasant and profitable, and therefore 
 you may still have good reasons for lying; and you 
 wm have such, if the pleasure and profit which your 
 lie produces, to you and other persons, outweighs that 
 disagreeable thing, infamy, which public opinion in- 
 flicts upon the liar;" — if he were to say this, he would 
 hardly win any one to look upon him as a moralist. 
 Yet this, as appears to me, is a rigorous deduction 
 from the Benthamite doctrine, that the proper and 
 ultimate ground for our acting is the amount of plea- 
 sure and advantage which the action will produce, 
 including popular approval as one among other ad- 
 vantages. 
 
 As I have said, the real importance of the great 
 fact of the universal and perpetual judgments of man- 
 kind concerning actions, as being right and wrong, is, 
 that such judgments .are thus seen to be a universal 
 property of human nature : — a constant and universal 
 act, which man performs as being man. And it is 
 because man does thus perpetually and universally 
 form such judgments, that he is a moral creature, and 
 that his actions are the subjects of morality; not 
 because he is susceptible of pleasure and pain. And 
 this is the reason why animals are not the subjects of 
 morality; — they have no idea of right and wrong; — 
 
236 HISTORY OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 their acts are neither moral nor immoral. Animals 
 may be indeed the objects of morality. We may treat 
 them with kindness or with unkindness ; and cruelty 
 to animals is a vice, as well as cruelty to men. But 
 cruelty to animals and cruelty to men stand upon a 
 very different footing in morality. The pleasures of 
 animals are elements of a very different order from 
 the pleasures of men. We are bound to endeavour to 
 augment the pleasures of men, not only because they 
 are pleasures, but because they are huma/n pleasures. 
 We are bound to men by the universal tie of human- 
 ity, of human brotherhood. We have no such tie to 
 animals. We are to be humane to them, because we 
 are human, not because we and they alike feel animal 
 pleasures. The Morality which depends upon the in- 
 crease of pleasure alone would make it our duty to 
 increase the pleasures of pigs or of geese rather than 
 those of men, if we were sure that the pleasure we 
 could give them were greater than the pleasures of 
 men. 
 
 Such is the result of the doctrine which founds 
 Morality upon the increase of pleasure. Such is a fair 
 deduction from Bentham's principles. Do you think 
 this an exaggerated statement ? — an argument carried 
 too far ?— Not so. He has himself accepted this con- 
 sequence of his system. Thus he says (Oh. xix. § iv.) 
 " TJnder the Gentoo and Mahometan religion the in- 
 terests of the rest of the animal kingdom seem to have 
 met with some attention. Why have they not, univer- 
 sally, with as much as those of human creatures, allow- 
 ance made for the difference in point of sensibility ? 
 Because the laws that are, have been the work of 
 mutual fear; a sentiment which the less rational ani- 
 mals have not had the same means as man has of 
 turning ito accoimt. Why ow^Ai they not? No reason 
 can be given.... The day may come when the rest of 
 the animal creation may acquire those rights which 
 never could have been withholden from them but by 
 the hand of tyranny It may come one day to be re- 
 cognized that the number of the' legs, the viUosity of 
 the skin, or the termination of the oa sacrum, are 
 
BENTHAM^ — OBJECTIONS TO HIS SYSTEM.' 237 
 
 reasons insufi&cient for abandoning a sensitive being 
 to the caprice of a tormentor. What else is it that 
 should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of 
 reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a 
 full-grown horse or dog is beyond compaxiaon a more 
 rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than 
 an infant of a day, a week, or even a mouth old. But 
 suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail ? 
 The question is not, can they reason? nor, can they 
 speahl but, can they suffer i" 
 
 This appears to me a very remarkable passage, for 
 the light which it throws upon Bentham's doctrine, as 
 he foimd himself bound by the nature of his principle 
 to accept it, when logically unfolded. When he had 
 not only made pleasure his guide, but rejected all that 
 especially made it human pleasure, allowing no differ- 
 ences but those of intensity and duration ; he had, and 
 could have, no reason for stopping at the pleasures of 
 man. And thus his principle became, not the greatest 
 amount of human happiness, — as he had arbitrarily 
 stated it, with a baseless limitation, which he here re- 
 jects; — ^but the greatest amount of animal gratifica- 
 tion, including man among animals, with, it may be, 
 peculiar forms of pleasure, but those forms having no 
 peculiar value on account of their kind. But when 
 the principle is thus stated, we are surely entitled to 
 ask, why it is to be made our guide ? — why utility for 
 such an end is to be made the measure of the value of 
 our actions? For certainly, that we are to regulate 
 our actions so as to give the greatest pleasure to the ' 
 whole animal creation, is not a self-evident principle. 
 It is not only not our obvious, but to most persons not 
 a tolerable doctrine, that we may sacrifice the hap- 
 piness of men, provided we can in that way produce 
 an overplus of pleasure to cats, dogs and hogs, not to 
 say lice and fleas. Even those who, in the regions of 
 Oriental superstition, have felt and enjoined the great- 
 est tenderness towards animals, have done so, it would 
 seem, in all cases, not because they considered that 
 the pleasures of mere brutes were obviously as sacred 
 .as that of men, but because they imagined some mys- 
 
238 HISTOBT OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 terious comnmnity of nature between man and the 
 animals which they wished to save from pain. That 
 we are to increase human happiness where we can, 
 may be asserted, with some truth, to be universally 
 allowed, and in some measure self-evident: but that 
 we are to make it an object equally important in kind, 
 to increase the pleasures of animals, is not generally 
 accepted as a rule of human conduct; stiU less as a 
 basis of all rules. If we are asked to take this as the 
 ground of our morality, we must at least require some 
 reason why we should adopt such a foundation prin- 
 ciple. No such, answer is given : and thus, the whole 
 Benthamite doctrine rests, it seems, on no visible 
 foundation at all. It is, as we hold, false to make 
 even human pleasure the source of all virtue. We 
 think that we have other things to look at as our guides, 
 not overlooking this. But in order to estimate the 
 value of this standard, we have begun by allowing it 
 to be true ; and by denying only that it is either ap- 
 plicable or independent. But when we are required 
 to take the pleasures of all creatures, brute and hu- 
 man, into our account, and forbidden to take account 
 of anything else, we cannot submit. Such a standard 
 appears to us not only false, but false without any 
 show of truth. We can see no reason for it, and Mr 
 Bentham himself does not venture to offer us any. 
 Why, then, are we to take his standard at all? He 
 himself shows us what its true nature is; and so do- 
 ing, shows, as I conceive, that it is absurd, as well as 
 inapplicable and self-assuming. 
 
 I say nothing further of Mr Bentham's assumption 
 in the above passage, that because a child cannot yet 
 take care of itself, and cannot converse with us, its 
 pleasures are therefore of no more import to the mo- 
 ralist than those of a kitten or a puppy. We hold 
 that there is a tie which binds together all human 
 beings, quite different from that which binds them 
 to cats and dogs; — and that a man, at any stage of 
 his being, is to be treated according to his human 
 capacity, not according to his mere animal condition. 
 It "would be easy to show what strange results would 
 
BENTHAM — OBJECTIONS TO HIS SYSTEM. 239 
 
 follow from estimating the value of oliildren in men's 
 eyes by Mr Bentham's standard as here stated; but 
 I shall not pursue the subject. 
 
 There is another remark which I wish to make 
 on Mr Bentham's mode of proceeding, which is ex- 
 emplified in this passage,, among many other places. 
 Mr Bentham finding in the common judgments and 
 common language of men a recognition of a supreme 
 distinction of right and wrong, which does not yield 
 to his analysis, is exceedingly disposed to quarrel with 
 the terms which imply this distinction; while at the 
 same time he cannot really exclude this distinction 
 from his own reasonings; (as no man can;) nor avoid 
 using the terms which imply it, and which he so 
 vehemently condemns in others. The term ought is 
 one of these. In the Deontology, he says', " The talis- 
 man of arrogance, indolence and ignorance is to be 
 found in a single word, an authoritative imposture, 
 which in these pages it will be frequently necessary 
 to unveil. It is the word 'ought' — 'ought or ought 
 not,' as the case may be. In deciding ' you ought to 
 do this' — ' you ought not to do it' — is not every 
 question of morals set at rest?" "If," he goes on, 
 " the use of the word be admissible at all, it ought 
 to be banished from the vocabulary of morals." Yet 
 he finds it quite impossible to banish it from his own 
 vocabulary; and not only uses it, but uses it in the 
 way in which it is so commonly used by others, as 
 representing a final and supreme rule, opposed, it may 
 be, to the existing actual habits of action. Thus, in 
 the passage on the treatment of animals just quoted : 
 '!They are not treated as well as men. True as to 
 the fact. But oiu,ght they not!" And he puts the 
 word in italics to show how much he rests upon it. 
 So in giving a description of an altercation betwe'en 
 an ancient and a modem — ^he makes the former, with 
 whom he obviously sympathizes — say, " Our business 
 was to inquire not what people thvnk, but what they 
 
 ' I. 3l- 
 
240 HISTORY OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 oibght to ihinhi" again italicizing the word. Numerous, 
 almost innumerable, other examples might be pro- 
 duced'. 
 
 Perhaps it may be worth while considering for 
 a moment what may appear to be the reason for the 
 extraordinary manner in which Bentham and the 
 Benthamites have been in the habit of treating their 
 opponents; for their perpetual assertions that the oppo- 
 nents' principles are unmeaning — are mere assump- 
 tions — ^perpetual beggings of the question — ipse dixits 
 — ^vicious rounds of baseless reasons : — for this is their 
 usual mode of speaking of opponents. They rarely 
 quote them; and appear to conceive that men so ex- 
 tremely in error could not have injustice done them ; 
 — ^that any assertion might be made about them, for 
 their absurdity was so broad that the most random 
 shot must hit it. This appears to be the mood ia 
 which Bentham speaks of all opposing moralists. Now 
 you may ask, whether any probable reason can be 
 given why he should allow himself such liberties; — 
 why he should be so incapable of seeing any sense 
 or reason in any previous scheme of ethics. I do not 
 pretend to explain the matter: but I think we may 
 go as far as this : — That his mind was so completely 
 possessed by his own system of thought, that he could 
 not see any sense or reason in any differing system : 
 and that it was this want of any sense or reason 
 
 ' So, PriTiciples, Ch. xviii. Art. i 
 Classes of Offenses, Art. i. "It is 
 necessary at the outset to make a 
 distinction between snch acts as are 
 or maij be, and such as ov^ghX to be 
 offenses." 
 
 So, same Chap. Art. xxr, note, he 
 would call the person benefitted by 
 a trust, the benefidend^ry, " to pat 
 it more effectually ont of doubt that 
 the party meant was the party who 
 oujQhi to receive the benefit, whe- 
 
 ther he actually receives it or no." 
 
 So, same Chap. Art xivii. text 
 and note: "The trust is either of 
 the number of those which ought by 
 law-to subsist ... or is not" " What 
 articles ought to be created [pro- 
 perty], &a" The whole page and 
 note swarms with ovijhis. 
 
 So same Chap. Par. ilii. "Whe- 
 ther any and what modes of servi- 
 tude ought to be established and 
 kept on foot »" Again, Par. xivi, ixt 
 
BENTHAM — OBJECTIONS TO HIS SYSTEM. 24 1 
 
 apparent to him ia the opinions of others -w^hich raised 
 him into his strange mood of arrogance, his intoxi- 
 cation of self-complacent contempt for adverse systems 
 and arguments, which his admiring disciples held to 
 be so overwhelming to all opponents. I think we 
 may go further. We may see a little nearer why it 
 was that he found no meaning in opposite systems. 
 It appears to me to have been thus. He had set 
 himself to discover and lay down a general principle 
 of human action by which all rules of action must 
 be determined. His principle was, that we must aim 
 at a certain external end : — at happiness, as it is fii-st 
 stated: — but happiness is plainly not altogether ex- 
 ternal; happiness depends upon the mind itself. Di- 
 vest, then, the object of this condition; make it wholly 
 external to the mind : it then becomes pleasure. Plea- 
 sure, then, must be the sole object of human action; 
 and Pleasure variously transformed must give rise to 
 all the virtues. If you are not. satisfied with this, he 
 cries, show me any other external object which men 
 either do care for or can care for. Swimrvu/m Bormm, 
 Sonestum, Kakav, why should they care for these if 
 they give them no pleasure ? And if they do, say so 
 boldly, and have done with it. Of course the answer 
 is, that we are so made that we do care for things 
 on other grounds than are expressed, in any common 
 and simple way, by saying they give us pleasure. 
 Men's care for justice, honesty, truth, and female 
 purity, is not expressed in any appropriate or intel- 
 ligible or adequate way, by saying that these give 
 them pleasure. Men are so constituted as to care for 
 these things. But this idea of a constitution in man, 
 an internal condition of morality, was quite out of 
 Bentham's field of view. No, he said : I want you 
 to point out the thing which men get, and try to get, 
 by virtuous action. If you will not do this, I cannot 
 understand you. If you do this, you must come to 
 my standard. And this habit of mind was, I conceive, 
 in him, not afiected, but real : and after a whUe, broke 
 out, as I have said, in the most boisterous ridicule of 
 all who difiered from him. 
 
 16 
 
242 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 In quitting these general considerations, and turn- 
 ing to detail, it -wrould be unjust to Benthani not to 
 allow that in that portion of Ethics ia which his prin- 
 ciple is really applicable, there is a great deal of 
 felicity, and even of impressiveness, in the manner in 
 which he foUows out his doctrine. I speak of the 
 virtues and duties which depend directly upon Bene- 
 Tolence. He enjoins kindness, gentleness, patience, 
 meekness, good humour, in a manner which makes 
 him conspicuous among the kindlier moralists. He 
 has for instance such precepts as this : " Never do 
 evil for mere iU desert'," with many other like pre- 
 cepts (209), &c. At the same time, it must be said 
 that a great many of the precepts which he thus gives 
 are rather rules of good manners than rules of mo- 
 rality. And though he extends his injunctions to the 
 subjects of discourse and action in a wider view, he 
 appears to be most at home in pointing out what 
 Civility, or, as he cails it, negative efficient Bene- 
 volence, requires us to do, and to refrain from, in 
 the very rudest provinces of good manners ; and this 
 he traces with a gravity and a technical physiological 
 detail which are truly astounding^ 
 
 > Demtol a. 193. 2 ibid. 237, Sk. 
 
LECTURE XVI. 
 
 Bbuth AM— Classification of Offenses. 
 
 I HAVE found myself obliged to speak with so 
 much dispraise of Bentham's arrogance and un- 
 fairness, and of the narrow and erroneous basis of his 
 moral philosophy, that you may perhaps not expect 
 me to find in him anything which is valuable. This 
 however is far from being the case. He laboured 
 assiduously to reduce jurisprudence to a system ; and 
 such an attempt, if carried through with any degree 
 of consistency, could hardly fail to lead to vahiable 
 results. In a body of knowledge so wide and various, 
 all system-mating must bring into view real con- 
 nexions and relations of parts ; and even if the basis 
 of the system be wrong, the connexions and relations 
 which it points out will, admit of being translated into 
 the terms of a truer philosophy. As Bacon says, 
 truth emerges from error, sooner than from confusion. 
 But Bentham's principle, of general advantage as the 
 standard of good in actions, is really applicable to a 
 very great extent in legislation; and covers almost the 
 whole of the field with which the legislature is con- 
 cerned. Almost, I say, not quite the whole : and even 
 this almost applies only to the material and external 
 limitation of advantage, to which Bentham professes 
 and endeavours to confine himself. If we make such 
 advantage the absolute and uncorrected standard of 
 law, we shall find that we cannot advance to the 
 highest point of good legislation. But still the consi- 
 deration of general utility, as the object of laws, 
 extends so far, that an arrangement of the whole field 
 of law, formed on this principle, will not fail to ba 
 
 16—2 
 
244 HISTOET OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 interesting and instructive in a very high degree. 
 Accordingly, the parts of Bentham's writings -where 
 he employs himself on this task, appear to me to be 
 both the one and the other. In his mode of per- 
 forming the task, as in the -whole of his -writings, 
 there are great merits and great drawbacks. The 
 merits are, system, followed out with great acuteness, 
 illustrated with great liveliness, and expressed in a 
 neat, precise, luminous style; for at the period of 
 which I speak he was content to construct English 
 sentences, and to use English words ; limitations which 
 he afterwards discarded. The drawbacks are, the arro- 
 gance and self-conceit of which I have spoken, which 
 breaks out from time to time, even in the most tran- 
 quil portions of his discussion. Moreover, though 
 affecting much systematic rigour, he is really unable 
 to carry out his system consistently into every part 
 of his subject. Professing to classify offenses, for 
 instance, by what he calls an exhaustive method, 
 namely a method which exhausts all the kinds of dif- 
 ference among the things classified, and is therefore 
 necessarily complete, he is really obliged frequently to 
 desert his exhaustive process, and to take the classes 
 which are suggested by the common habits of thought 
 and language on such subjects. Thus he says of one 
 such group (ch. xviii. p. 54) : " It would be to little 
 purpose to attempt tracing them out a priori by any 
 exhaustive process : all that can be done is to pick up 
 and hang together some of the principal articles in 
 each catalogue by way of specimen." And he has 
 several times to say things of this kind, in excuse of 
 his de-viations from his professed method'. 
 
 I will now give some account of that Chapter of 
 Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation which 
 
 1 SoChap.XTin.Partx,Bote,Ben- 
 tliam laments : "But such is the fate 
 of science, and more particularly of 
 the moral branch ; the distribution 
 of things must in a great measure be 
 
 dependent on their names : arrange- 
 ment, the worlt of mature reflection 
 must be ruled by nomenclature, the 
 work of popular caprice." 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES. 245 
 
 is entitled Division of Offenses. I shall consider it in 
 some measure with reference to the classification of 
 Rights which I have myself given, as one of the steps 
 of Morality, and the enumeration of Wrongs accord- 
 ing to the English and Roman Law, which I have 
 given as exemplifying the historical form which this 
 subject necessarily assumes'. Bentham, on the con- 
 trary, professes to classify Offenses or Wrongs in a 
 manner independent of history, and equally applicable 
 to the Laws of all Nations; — a bold, and, as I have 
 said, an instructive attempt : but one which, I think, 
 we have good reason for deeming incapable of full 
 realization. His scheme, however, may very well 
 serve to suggest corrections and completions, of which 
 any other may stand in need; and I shall use it for 
 this among other purposes. I shall not attempt to 
 give the exhaustive process by which Bentham obtains 
 his results, but shall briefly consider some of the re- 
 sults themselves. 
 
 His first division of Offenses is into five Classes, 
 which are, 
 
 1. Private Offenses, detrimental to assignable in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 2. Semi-PvMic Offenses, detrimental to a class or 
 circle of persons, but not to assignable individuals. 
 
 3. Self-rega/rding Offenses, against a man's sel£ 
 
 4. Pyilic Offenses, against the whole community. 
 
 5. Multiform Offenses, (i) Offenses by Falsehood, 
 (2) Offenses against Trust. 
 
 We already see the incongruity of the character of 
 the fifth Class, as compared with the other four; we 
 see that the difficulty of a homogeneous and symme- 
 trical classification has not been overcome by Ben- 
 tham; and this he fairly acknowledges. And not- 
 withstanding this defect, we may allow that the clas- 
 sification is so &r, good, simple, and convenient. 
 
 I EUmenis of Morality, induding Polity, Book it. (znd edition.) 
 
246 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Bentham subdivides these classes according to the 
 interests which are aflfectedj and .thus he finds as 
 Divisions of Class i, 
 
 Offenses against, i, Person; 2, Property; 3, Be- 
 piUation; 4, Condition; 5, Person emd Beputation; 
 6, Person and Property. 
 
 You wiU recollect that our Divisions of Rights 
 were those of, i. Person; 2, Property; 3, Contract; 
 4, Family; and 5, Government. 
 
 And to see how far these are parallel with the clas- 
 sification of Bentham, we may observe that Offenses 
 against the rights of Contract are relegated by Ben- 
 tham into another general class, that of Multiform 
 Offenses, by an anungement which he allows to be ano- 
 malous ; while both the kinds of Rights in our scheme, 
 those of Family and those of Government, are violated 
 by Offenses against Condition : the term Condition 
 being used by Bentham in a very wide sense, to in- 
 clude the Rights of Master and Servant, Guardian 
 and Ward, Parent and Child, Husband and Wife. On 
 this we may remark, that some of these conditions are 
 rather expressed by Bights o/Contract than, by anything 
 requiring a separate class. Thus the Rights of Master 
 and Servant are, in this country at least. Rights of 
 that kind of Contract called Siring and Service ; whUe 
 the principal conditions, as Parent and Child, Hus- 
 band and Wife, are evidently expressed by Bights of 
 Family : and though it may perhaps be true that other 
 conditions, as Guardian and Ward, are not strictly 
 included in the Bights of Family, still they may be 
 classed with those of Family, as consequences, exten- 
 sions, and analogous conditions. Other conditions again, 
 as those of Patron and Client, may be more properly 
 arranged with the Bights of GovermwMt. And it is 
 plaiQ, in fact, that the transition from the relations of 
 Family to those of Government, that is, constitutiorud 
 relations, must be gradual in most societies, and va- 
 rious in all, according to their history. 
 
 Proceeding further with the subdivision of the sys- 
 tem, we come to what Mr Bentham calls the Gen&ra 
 of Class 1. And these we may in the first place, look 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OP OFFENSES. ^47 
 
 at, in the result at whicli lie arrives. I will insert 
 them in a note '. 
 
 1 Genbba of Pbivate Ofpekses. 
 Offenses against Person. 
 
 I Simple corporal injuries. 
 
 ■2 Irreparable corporal injuries, 
 
 3 Simple injurious restrainment fyit^<™' confinement, 
 
 4 £f£»i^fe injurious compulsion j^Xtirr '^' 
 
 5 "Wrongful confinement. 
 
 6 Wrongful banishment.. 
 
 7 Wrongful homicide.- 
 
 8 Wrongful menacement. 
 
 9 Simple mental injuries. 
 
 Offenses against Beputation. 
 
 1 Defamation. 
 
 2 Vilification. 
 
 Offenses against Property. 
 
 1 Wrongful non-investment of Property. 
 
 2 Wrongful interception of Property. 
 
 3 Wrongful divestment of Property. 
 
 4 Usurpation of Property. 
 
 5 Wrongful investment of Property. 
 
 6 Wrongful withholding of Services. 
 
 7 Wrongful destruction or endamagement. 
 
 8 Insolvency. 
 
 9 Wrongful obtainment of Services. 
 10 Wrongful imposition of Expence. 
 ri Wrongful imposition of Services. 
 
 12 Wrongful occupation, 
 
 13 Wrongful detention. 
 
 14 Wrongful' disturbance of proprietary Bights. 
 
 15 Theft. 
 
 16 Embezzlement. 
 
 17 Defraudment. 
 iS Extortion. 
 
 Offenses against Person <md Eeputation. 
 
 1 Corporal insults. 
 
 2 Insulting menacement. 
 
 3 Seduction. 
 
 4 Bape. 
 
 5 Forcible Seduction. 
 
 6 Simple lascivious injuries. 
 
 Offenses against Person and Property. 
 
 1 Forcible (wrongful) interception of property. 
 
 2 Forcible divestment of property. 
 
248 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 TMs laborioTis and complex analysis of the possible 
 forms of offenses is not without its interest It is not 
 
 3 rorcible usurpation. 
 
 4 Forcible investment. 
 
 5 Forcible destruction or endamagement. 
 
 6 Forcible occupation of moveables. 
 
 7 Forcible entry (immoveables). 
 
 8 Forcible detainment of moveables. 
 
 9 Forcible detainment of immoveables. 
 10 Robbery. 
 
 Offenses against Condition. 
 
 a. Of Legal Institution. 
 Master. 
 
 1 Wrongful non-investment of Mastership. 
 
 2 Wrongful interception of Mastership. 
 
 3 Wrongful divestment of Mastership. 
 
 4 Usurpation of Mastership. 
 
 5 Wrongftd investment of Mastership. 
 
 6 Wrongful abdication of Mastership. 
 
 7 Wrongful detrectation of Mastership. 
 
 8 Wrongful imposition of Mastership. 
 
 9 Abuse of Mastership. 
 
 10 Disturbance of Mastership. 
 
 11 Breach of duty in Servants. 
 
 12 Elopement of ^rvants. 
 
 13 Servant-stealingi 
 
 Servant. 
 
 I Wrongful non-investment of Servantship. 
 
 ■i Wrongful interception of Servantship, &c. 
 
 9 Abuse of Mastership. 
 
 10 Disturbance of Mastership. 
 
 11 Breach of duty in Servants, 
 
 1 2 Elopement. 
 
 13. Servant-stealing. 
 
 Guardian. 
 
 1 Wrongful non-investment of Guardianship. 
 
 2 Wrongful interception of Guardianship. 
 
 3 Wrongful divestment of Guardianship. 
 
 4 Usurpation of Guardianship. 
 
 5 Wrongful investment of Guardianship. 
 
 6 Wrongful abdication of Guardianship. 
 
 7 Detrectation of Guardianship, 
 
 8 Wrongful imposition of Guardianship. 
 
 9 Mismanagement of Guardianship. 
 
 10 Desertion of Guardianship. 
 
 11 Dissipation in prejudice of Wardship. 
 
 12 Feculatiqn in prejudice of Wardship. 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSITICATION OF OFFENSES. 249 
 
 however made, and I think cannot be made, the 
 groundwork of a code of law. For the law is natu- 
 
 13 Disturbance of Gruardianship. 
 
 14 Breach of Duty to Guardians. 
 
 15 Elopement from Guardians. 
 
 16 Ward-stealing. 
 
 17 Bribery in prejudice to Ward. 
 
 Ward. 
 I Wrongful non-investment of Wardship. 
 3 &e. Parallel to the other, 
 
 h. Of Natural Origin. 
 Parent. 
 
 1 Wrongful non-investment of Parentalifcy. 
 
 2 Wrongful interception of Parentality. 
 
 3 Wrongful divestment of Parentality. 
 
 4 Usurpation of Parentality. 
 
 5 Wrongful investment of Parentality. 
 
 6 Wrongful abdication of Parentality. 
 
 7 Wrongful detrectation of Parentality. 
 
 8 Wrongful imposition of Parentality. 
 
 9 Mismanagement of parental Guardianship. 
 
 10 Desertion of parental Guardianship. 
 
 1 1 Dissipation in prejudice of filial Wardship. 
 
 12 Peculation in prejudice of filial Wardship, 
 
 13 Abuse of parental Power. 
 
 14 Disturbance of parental Guardianship. 
 
 15 Breach of duty to Parents. 
 
 16 Elopement from Parents. 
 
 1 7 Child-stealing. 
 
 18 Bribery in prejudice of parental Guardianship. 
 
 Child. 
 I Wrongful non-investment of Filiation (filiality). 
 ■2 &o. Parallel to, the other. 
 
 Haahamd. 
 
 1 Wrongful non-investment of marital condition. 
 
 2 Wrongful interception of marital condition. 
 
 3 Wrongful divestment of marital condition. 
 
 4 Wrongful usurpation of marital condition. 
 
 5 Polygamy. 
 
 6 Wrongful investment of marital condition. 
 
 7 Wrongful abdication of marital condition. 
 
 8 Wrongful detrectation of marital condition. 
 
 9 Wrongful imposition of marital condition. 
 
 10 Mismanagement of marital Guardianship. 
 
 11 Desertion of marital Guardianship. 
 
 1 2 Dissipation in prejudice of marital Guardianship. 
 
250 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rally led to describe offenses directly by the loss or 
 damage which, they occasion, -without distinguishing 
 with any exactness the relation which is violated : as 
 Bentham himself allows, when he has run to the dregs 
 this head of OffeTises agamst Condition. Thus (IT 55) 
 he says, " If a baker sells bad bread for the price of 
 good it is" (not an offense against his condition of 
 baker,) "but a kind of fraud upon the buyer: and 
 perhaps an injury of a simple corporal kind done to 
 the health of an individual or a neighbourhood." " So 
 if a man be disturbed in his trade, the offense will 
 probably be a wrongful interception of the profit he 
 might have been presumed to be in a way to make 
 by it." These are obvious considerations, and show, 
 among other things, how little is gained for legislation 
 by Bentham's classification of offenses, and especially 
 by Ms class of Offenses against Condition. 
 
 Indeed the whole matter appears to me to become 
 much simpler by the establishment of a Division of 
 Bights of Contract, co-ordinate with the Rights of 
 Property, and a Division of Offenses consisting of 
 violations of these Eights, such as Fraud, Breach of 
 Contract, and the like. As I have already said, Ben- 
 tham puts Falsehood in an anomalous appendix at the 
 end of his larger classes of offenses, allowing that he 
 thus runs athwart the general division of the four 
 other classes, but asserting that the incongruity rights 
 
 13 Peculation in prejudice of marital Guardianship. 
 
 14 Abuse of marital power. 
 
 15 Disturbance of marital Guardianship. 
 
 16 Wrongful withholding of connubial services. 
 
 1 7 Adultery. 
 
 18 Breach of duty to Husbands. 
 
 19 Elopement from Husband. 
 
 20 Wife-stealing. 
 
 21 Bribery in prejudice of marital service. 
 
 Wife. 
 I &x. Parallel to the other. 
 
 Uncontiguous Relations (Uncle, Nephew, &c.) 
 
 Bank. 
 
 Profession. 
 
 Copyright, Patentright. 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES. 25 1 
 
 itseK in the sequel; which however it does not appear 
 to me to do. 
 
 But let us look at that part of Bentham's system 
 in which we may expect to find offenses of this kind : 
 — his head of Offenses by Falsehood, one of the two 
 divisions of his class of Multiform Offenses. 
 
 He takes Personation, Forgery and Perjury, as each 
 obviously distinguished from other modes of False- 
 hood by certain special circumstances; and calls all 
 other cases Simple Falsehood. But he attempts no 
 subdivision of these cases, observing only that they may 
 affect (IT 23) person, property, reputation, or condition, 
 and thus run over the same ground which is occupied 
 by the preceding classes (IT 24). And thus, we do not 
 find among the offenses which he enumerates, any 
 definite place for a vast body of cases, which consti- 
 tute a large and very definite part of ordinary Juris- 
 prudence, namely. Contracts and their kinds — as buy- 
 ing and selling — breaches of such Contracts, evidence 
 of such Contracts, Fraud, Debt, and the Uke; nor do 
 we find any distribution of Forgery into special cases. 
 And as there is no discussion of Contracts concerning 
 Transfer of property, so is there no discussion of the 
 rules and conditions of Delivery of property so con- 
 tracted for, or of what is called in English Law Bail' 
 ment. 
 
 The incompleteness and inconvenience of Bentham's 
 proceeding on such subjects appear from the mode of 
 speaking on them when they occur in his way. Thus 
 he says (IT 35), that wrongful interception of property, 
 if the collative event (the event which gave you the 
 right to such property) were an act by which the 
 offender expressed it as bis will that you should be 
 considered by law as the legal possessor of a sum of 
 money, is called Insolvency; though he allows, in a 
 note, that this may appear a novel and improper way 
 of looking at the subject; a prejudice which he tries 
 to remove by arguing that payment is not a mere 
 material transfer of money. He says also that when 
 in the commission of various wrongs against property, 
 falsehood {;wUful, or rather, advised felsehood) has 
 
252 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 served as an instrument, we may call the oSense frau- 
 dulent instead of vyrongfid^. The scantiness and con- 
 fusedness of the notices which Bentham bestows upon 
 this subject contrast most unfavourably with the lu- 
 minousness and precision which are exhibited in the 
 portion of the Roman Jurisprudence which belongs to 
 the same subject, and in the discussions of the Jurists 
 who had drunk at the usual fountains of law. 
 
 The other kind of Multiform Offenses are Offenses 
 against Trust (IT 25); on which subject however he 
 allows that Falsehood and Trust are not co-ordinate, 
 but altogether disparate (IF 30). Let us consider in 
 what relation these offenses stand to his system and to 
 ours. It may occur, he justly observes (IT 26), that a 
 Trust is sometimes spoken of as a property, and some- 
 times as a condition, but it is really different from 
 both. To which we may add, that Private Trusts 
 approach nearer to Contracts than to either; while 
 Public Trusts are a kind of Office, and therefore their 
 Rights may rank with Rights of Government. 
 
 Thus the Trustees of a Marriage Settlement accept 
 the Trust, and by so doing, contract to pay the annual 
 proceeds of the Trust to the married pair, and to keep 
 the principal from being dissipated. This is plainly a 
 Contract between the Trustors, the Trustees, and the 
 Beneficiary pair. On the other hand, the Trustees of 
 a School or of a Charity, who are to bestow the funds 
 upon indefinite persons, coming under the conditions, 
 may be considered as Officers of the State for that 
 purpose : the Founder having been allowed by the 
 State to elect such an Office, and the State under- 
 taking to enforce the Founder's will. It would seem 
 at first sight that Mr Bentham might arrange such an 
 Office among his Conditions, and make Offenses against 
 PubUe Trust Offenses against Condition. But as he 
 justly says, "The idea presented by the words Public 
 
 I The definition given of fraud 
 (1 35) is, that by which property is 
 not farly obtained— obtained by ad- 
 vised falsehood, and with the inten- 
 
 tion of not being amenable to law. 
 This is fraudulent ohtaiivment or de- 
 fraudttiemi : the 17th genus of offenses 
 against property. 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES. 253 
 
 Trust is clear and unambiguous : it is but an obscure 
 and ambiguous garb that that idea could be expressed 
 in by the words public condition." Indeed the more 
 •we consider Mr Bentham's group which he calls Of- 
 fenses against Condition, the more does it appear to be 
 ill-defined and inconvenient; including many incon- 
 gruous cases, as OflFenses against Family Eights, and 
 Offenses against Rights of Kank or Profession; and 
 separating cases very close to each Other, as Offenses 
 against the Eights of a Profession and against those 
 of a Trade. We, on the other hand, must grant that 
 some of his Conditions, as, for instance, those of Guar- 
 dian and "Ward, are not rigorously included in either 
 the Eights of Family or those of Government. But 
 still, they will stand between the two, and nearer to 
 the one or the other, according to circumstances : thus, 
 a Guardian appointed by Will is an extension of the 
 Eights of Family; a Guardian appointed by a Court 
 of Justice is an application of the Eights of Govern- 
 ment. In the consideration of such cases I find 
 nothing but what confirms our general division of 
 Eights. 
 
 I will make one other remark bearing upon the 
 general value of Mr Bentham's scheme of classifica- 
 tion. 
 
 Mr Bentham puts it forward (f 59) as one of the 
 advantages of his method, that by it " the very place 
 which any offense is made to occupy suggests the rea- 
 son of its being put there." And he observes (IT 35, 
 note) that " Usury which, if it must be an offense, is 
 an offense committed with consent, that is, with the 
 consent of the party supposed to be injured, cannot 
 merit a place in the catalogue of offenses, unless the 
 consent were either unfairly obtained or uufreely; in 
 the first case it coincides with defraudment, in the 
 second with extortion." Mr Bentham afterwards 
 wrote a work strongly condemning Usury Laws; and 
 his disciples are in the habit of appealing to the ia- 
 dication of the absurdity of Usury Law afforded by the 
 remark I have just quoted, (that they have no place 
 in the systematic catalogue) as a triumphant evidence 
 
254 HISTOET OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the value of Bentham's system. But it is plaia that 
 the account which he has given of them is altogether 
 different from that which has been entertained by the 
 legislators who have enacted such laws. It is not as 
 the remedy of wrong on the borrower, but as a part 
 of the general guardianship of the State, that they are 
 introduced. The State will not enforce contracts 
 which are, on the whole, means of encouraging pro- 
 digality and gambling. There may or may not be, on 
 such grounds, reason for Usury Laws. But there is 
 no more difficulty in finding a place in a coherent 
 system, for laws in protection of needy persons with 
 precarious expectations, than in finding a place for 
 laws in protection of minors or persons of imbecile 
 understanding. 
 
 In order to assign the ground of my system, in a 
 point in which it difiers from his, I observe also, that 
 Reputation, one of the heads of Mr Bentham's primary 
 classes of Eights, is excluded from our primary divi- 
 sion, as too factitious a right. 
 
 We are led then to the persuasion, by this exami- 
 nation of Mr Bentham's system, that our general 
 arrangement of Eights, as Eights of the Person, of 
 Property, oi Contract, oi Family, and of Government, 
 with an Appendix for Eights of Eeputation, is more 
 symmetrical and complete than Bentham's arrange- 
 ment of Offenses, into Offenses against Person, Pro- 
 perty, Eeputation, and Condition, with an Appendix 
 for Offenses of Falsehood, and Offenses against Trust. 
 
LECTURE XVIL 
 
 Bentham — Classification of Offenses 
 Continued. 
 
 I HAVE been considering Mr Bentham's classifica- 
 tion of offenses : the primary classes of that ar- 
 rangement, Private Offenses, Semi-Public, Public, and 
 Self-regarding Offenses, with an Appendix for' Offenses 
 of Falsehood and Offenses against Trust : and I have 
 considered the Divisions of the First Class, according 
 to his Heads, of Person, Property, Reputation and 
 Condition. As I have already said, it appears to me 
 that the Head of Condition, introduced by him, is not 
 really very useful; being included in other relations, 
 especially those of Family and Government; and that 
 the Head of Contract, which he omits, is really neces- 
 sary ; and thus we were led to prefer, to this arrange- 
 ment of Offenses, the one which we have given, of 
 Offenses against Person, Property, Contract, Rights of 
 Family, and Rights of Government. 
 
 This disposes of Bentham's First Class, Private 
 Offenses, or Offenses against Individuals. I have 
 already said that his leading division. Private Of- 
 fenses, Semi-Public, Public, and Self-regarding, is a 
 good and convenient one. Each of these classes will 
 undergo subdivision, according to the Heads already 
 noted for Private Offenses; namely, Person, Property, 
 &c. But not any very large number of these genera 
 require separate treatment, or indeed are really exact. 
 A few examples only need be noted. The scheme is 
 given below'. 
 
 1 Semi-Pdblic Offenses. 
 
 I, Against Person. 
 a. Through Calamity produced by imprudence or omission. 
 I Pestilence or Contagion. 
 
256 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 (Valm of Classification of Offenses.) Of the value 
 of a complete systematic arrangement of Offenses in a 
 
 1 Famine, &c. 
 
 3 Neglect of Idiots, Maniacs, Infants. 
 
 4 Beasts of Prey, &c. 
 
 5 CoUapsion of walls, earth, &c. 
 
 6 Inundation. 
 
 7 Tempest. 
 
 8 Blight. 
 
 9 Conflagration. 
 
 6. Through mere Delinquency. 
 
 I Offensive Trades. Poisoning springs, destroying fences, 
 
 &c. 
 1 Simple Injiirious"J as by threats for joining or forcing 
 restraint f to join in illuminations, acclama- 
 
 3 Simple Injurious f tions, undertakings, processions, 
 
 compulsions J &c. 
 
 4 Confinement ) by spoiling roads, bridges, ferries, pre 
 
 5 Banishment J occupying carriages or inns, &c. 
 
 6 Menacement against particular denominations, as Jews. 
 
 Catholics, Protestants. 
 
 7 Distressful, horrifjring, obscene, blasphemous expo 
 
 sures. 
 
 II. Against Property. 
 
 I Wrongs against Property of a Corporate Body. 
 1 Bubbles. 
 
 III. Person and Reputation. 
 None. 
 
 IV. Person and Property. 
 
 1 Incendiarism. 
 
 2 Criminal Inundation. 
 
 V. Condition in marriage. 
 
 Falsehoods or offenses against Classes of Marriages. 
 
 SBLF-RBGABDIlfG OPFENSBS. 
 I. Person. 
 
 I Fasting. On Continence. Self-torture. 
 1 Gluttony, &o. 
 3 Suicide. 
 
 II. Reputation, 
 
 1 Female Incontinency. 
 
 2 Incest, 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES. 257 
 
 natural order, there can be no doubt. As Bentham 
 himself says on this point, " The particular uses of 
 
 III. Person and Property. 
 
 1 Idleness. 
 
 2 Gaming. 
 
 3 Prodigality. 
 
 IV. Person and Beputation. 
 
 1 Sacrifice of virginity. 
 
 2 Indecencies not public. 
 
 V. Marriage. 
 
 Improvident marriage. 
 
 With regard to Public Offenses, Mr Bentham takes a wider 
 range, and makes an independent arrangement (in a note to Par. 
 LIV.) 
 
 I. Ofifenses against the external security of the State. 
 
 1 Treason. 
 
 2 Espionage in favour of foreigners. 
 
 3 Injuries to foreigners (Piracy). 
 
 4 Injuries to privileged foreigners (as ambassadors). 
 
 II. Offenses against Justice. 
 
 " I Against Judicial Trust, non-investment, interception, 
 &o. (as before). 
 Breach of Judicial Trust. But "the offences are too 
 multifarious and too ill-provided with names to be 
 examined here." 
 
 Evils resulting from these offenses. 
 
 III. Offenses against the Preventive Branch of the Police. 
 
 1 Against phthcmo-paranomie trust. 
 
 2 Against pMhano-symphorii: trust. 
 
 IV. Offenses against the Public Force. 
 
 1 Offenses against the military trust : desertion, &c. 
 
 2 Offenses against the management of muniments of war : 
 
 polemo-tamimtie trust. 
 
 V. Offenses against the Positive Increase of the National Fe- 
 
 licity. 
 
 1 Against Epihwo-ihreptic trust : Agatho-jpoimitie trust. 
 
 2 Against Eupcedagogue trust. 
 
 3 Against Noso-comial trust. 
 
 4 Against Moro-comial trust. 
 
 5 Against Ptocho-comial trust. 
 
 6 Against Antemhleik trust. 
 
258 HISTORY OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 method are various, but the general one is, to enable 
 men to understand the things that are the subject of 
 it." And he mentions at the end of Chap. xvni. 
 (IT 57) the reason why he calls his a Natural Method, 
 and the advantages which it procures :— namely, i. 
 That it assists the apprehension and memory. 2. That 
 it makes general propositions possible. (It is curious 
 
 VI. Offenses against the Public Wealth. 
 I Non-payment of forfeitures. 
 
 1 Non-payment of taxes. 
 
 3 Evasion of taxes. 
 
 4 Offenses against fiscal trust. 
 
 5 Offenses against demosio-tamieutic trust. 
 
 VII. Offenses against Population. 
 
 1 Emigration. 
 
 2 Suicide. 
 
 3 Procurement of impotence or barrenness. 
 
 4 Abortion. 
 
 5 Unprolific coition. 
 
 6 Celibacy. 
 
 VIII. Offenses against the National Wealth. 
 
 I Idleness. 
 
 ■2 Breach of the regulations made in the view of prevent- 
 ing the application of industry to purposes less 
 profitable, &c. 
 
 3 Offenses against ethno-plutistic trust. 
 
 IX. Offenses against the Sovereignty. 
 
 I Offenses against Sovereign trust. 
 
 X. Offenses against Keligion. 
 
 I Offenses tending to weaken the force of the religious 
 
 sanction, 
 i Offenses tending to misapply the force of the religious 
 
 sanction. 
 3 Offenses against religious trusts. 
 
 XI. Offenses against the National Interest. 
 
 1 Immoral Publications. 
 
 2 Offenses against the trust of an ambassador. 
 
 3 Offenses against the trust of a privy counsellor, 
 
 4 Prodigality on the part of persons who ai'e about the 
 
 sovereign. 
 c, Excessive gaming on the part of the same persons. 
 6 Taking presents from rival powers without leave. 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES. 259 
 
 that Bentham should have stumbled upon that which 
 is given by the best natural historians, Cuvier for 
 instance, as the condition and mark of a natural 
 TnetJiod.) 3. That the place of an oiFense in the sys- 
 tem suggests the reason of its being put there. 
 4. That this arrangement will serve for all nations. 
 (f6o.) 
 
 {General Propositions respecting Classes of Offenses.) 
 Bentham then proceeds to illustrate further his asser- 
 tion that this natural method makes general propo- 
 sitions possible, by giving some of the leading dis- 
 tinctions of the Glasses of Offenses. Thus the First 
 Class (Private Offenses) when consummated, produce 
 primary mischief (paiu), as well as secondary (alarm, 
 and danger) ; they affect assignable individuals ; they 
 admit of compensation; of retaliation; they produce 
 obvious mischief; are generally and constantly ob- 
 noxious to the censure of the world; are little able 
 to require different descriptions in different countries 
 and ages, &c. &c. The Second Class (Semi-publio 
 Offenses) produce no primary mischief; do not affect 
 assignable individuals; do not admit of compensation 
 or retaliation ; the misehief produced is tolerably ob- 
 vious, more so than that of Public Offenses ; they re- 
 quire, in a greater degree than private offenses, 
 different descriptions in different ages and countries ; 
 there may be grounds for punishing them when they 
 do not occasion any mischief to any individual; satis- 
 faction to an individual is not a ground for remitting 
 punishment. And in like manner characters may be 
 given of the other classes, Public Offenses, and Self- 
 regarding Offenses. 
 
 In all this, there is much that belongs to a true 
 philosophical method. The main defect of Bentham's 
 scheme is the anomaly which he has himself noticed, 
 of making a class determined by the instrument of 
 the offense. Falsehood, co-ordinate with other Classes 
 determined by the persons hurt by the Offense ; — ^to 
 which I add, as already stated, the further defect, 
 connected in some degree with the former one, which 
 arises from taking the term Condition so widely as he 
 
 17—2 
 
26o HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 does; so widely, for instance, as to include Contracts 
 of Hiring and Serving (Condition of Master and 
 Servant) : the only Conditions ■which really require 
 a place as such, being those of members of a Family 
 and those of members of a State, or Government. 
 
 The methodical division and arrangement of Of- 
 fenses, when once established, would of course be of 
 use in various ways in legislation ; mainly, it is pro- 
 bable, in suggesting and regulating the language in 
 which laws are enunciated. Such an arrangement 
 would thus be a means of establishing a clear relation 
 between olTense and punishment; and with a view to 
 this purpose it was, that Beutham laboured so assi- 
 duously at this task of arrangement. 
 
 {Punishment.) We are not to imagine, however, 
 that there is or can be a Scale of Punishments, which 
 will stand side by side with the Scale of Offenses, and 
 correspond, article by article, with the list of offenses. 
 Bentham has not pretended to establish any such 
 parallelism as this, although the assignation of pun- 
 ishment to offense is the main object of the work of 
 which I am now speaking. He, more wisely, takes 
 Punishment by itself, and attempts to classify its 
 kinds and properties, according to the nature of the 
 thing itself This part of his labours also is pointed 
 to with great admiration by his disciples; but its 
 merit appears to me to consist far more in a few 
 pointed suggestions, than in anything which depends 
 on the general method. He points out, as the objects 
 of punishment — to prevent offenses — to prevent the 
 worst— to keep down the mischief— and to act at the 
 least expense; and is thus led to various Rules con- 
 cerning punishment. And though making the re- 
 pression of the mischief of offenses the sole object of 
 punishment, and thus not recognizing the moral 
 quality of the act as any ground for punishment, he 
 is still led— by that natural connexion of moral and 
 social evil, which tends constantly to obliterate the 
 sharp distinctions of opposite moral theories— to pre- 
 sent the moral character of actions as one of their 
 most important aspects. Thus one of his Eules is 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES. 261 
 
 (Ch. XVI. IT 23), that an amount of punishment, not 
 otherwise permissible, may be allowed to exist as a 
 moral lesson. And though the phrases in which these 
 rules are presented is studiously divested of all moral 
 colour, and thus made to sound harsh and mechanical, 
 this view of law as a lesson, is partially applied in 
 subsequent portions of Bentham's labours. (See par- 
 ticularly on Marriage — the I'easons for marriage for 
 life.) 
 
 As an example of his mode of dealing with this 
 part of his subject (Punishment), we may look at 
 Chap. XVII. '■ Of the Properties to be given to a lot 
 of Punishment." These Properties he states to be: 
 I Variability, 2 Equability, 3 CommensurabUity, 4 
 Characteristicalness, 5 Exemplarity, 6 Frugality (in 
 the amount of punishment), 7 Subserviency to Re- 
 formation, 8 Efficacy in disabling the offender from 
 repetition, 9 Compensation, 10 Popularity, 11 Eemis- 
 sibility'. His attention to the subject of punishment 
 led him at an early period to propose what he called a 
 "Panopticon Penitentiary," of the successful opera- 
 tion of which he was exceedingly confident; and his 
 suggestions were to a certain extent listened to by 
 the Government. 
 
 {Other Works) I have hitherto spoken principally 
 of the early work in English, the Principles of Morals 
 and Legislation. Bentham afterwards pursued the 
 subject during the whole of a long life : but all the 
 main points of his general doctrines are, I think, to 
 be found in this earlier production. Several of the 
 works by which Bentham became best known were 
 
 1 To these he afterwards (see Prm- 
 ciples of Civil Code) added another 
 quality, Simplicity of Discipline. 
 
 It is noted by Dnmont upon this 
 passage, that Montesquieu had put 
 forward, as the proper attributes of 
 punishment, that they should be 
 d/ravmfrom the fiatwre of the Grimes^ 
 should be moderate, should be pro- 
 
 portioTwZ to the crvme, and should be 
 modest; and that Beccaria requires 
 that punishment should be cmalo- 
 gous to the crime, exemplary, gentle, 
 proportional; and also certai/n, 
 prompt, and i/nemtable. Howard also 
 had continually in view the amend- 
 ment of delinquents. 
 
262 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 published in French by Dtunont, translated from the 
 author's MSS. In this way appeared the Theory of 
 Rewards and Punishments, and the Treatises on Civil 
 and on P&rval Legislation. These are now published 
 in their English dress as the Principles of the Civil 
 Law, and the Principles of the Penal Law. 
 
 {Civil amd Penal Law.) I have used the terms 
 CivU and Penal Law, and I must now notice, what I 
 think is one of the best attempts at definition and 
 distinction which we find in Bentham's works ; namely, 
 his view of the relation of the Civil and the Penal 
 Law. It occurs in the first place, in a note at the 
 end of the Principles of Morals and Legislation. He 
 observes that there is nowhere to be found a State 
 which has had a Civil Code and a Penal Code, each 
 complete. He asks how, if complete, these Codes 
 would be distinguished : whether the civil code would 
 consist entirely of civil laws, and the penal code en- 
 tirely of penal laws. He answers that they would 
 not: this would not be the relation. And he gives 
 his own account thus : 
 
 Laws depend on Ofienses. Offenses are forbidden 
 by being Offenses. This is the imperative part of 
 each Law. But besides that, there must be an ex- 
 pository part of the law, explaining the terms in 
 which the offepses are described. Thus, stealing is 
 an offense. But what is stealing? We may say, 
 " The taking a thing which is another's by one who 
 has no Title to it, and is conscious of having none." 
 Here we are thrown upon the description of Titles, 
 which requires laws enumerating how Titles may be 
 acquired, and how they may be lost. 
 
 Now this being understood, the Penal Code con- 
 tains the Command with the Punishment; the CivU 
 Code mainly the masses of expository matter. We 
 may express this perhaps more pointedly by saying 
 that Wrongs are punished by the Penal Law, and 
 Rights defined by the CivU Law. 
 
 This distinction is probably as good a one as can 
 be briefly given, and falls in very well with most of 
 the purposes for which the distinction of Civil and 
 
BENTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES. 263 
 
 Penal Law is commonly referred to'. At the same 
 time you may observe, that it does not really (as at 
 first sight it seems to do and to profess to do) take 
 the distinction of Civil and Penal Law out of the 
 control of more popular and national notions, and give 
 to it a scientific fixity and exactness. For, in the 
 first place, if we thus say in a general manner that 
 Wrongs are forbidden by the Penal Law, and the 
 Terms involved in the definition of each Wrong ex- 
 pounded by the Civil Law; it is plain that the wrongs 
 thus forbidden, and needing to be explained, will be 
 selected from the general mass of human actions by the 
 common popular habit of thought which has dis- 
 tinguished them by special names. Assault, Theft, 
 Cheating, Adultery, Treason, and the like, are for- 
 bidden, suppose, by the Penal Law; and hence, the 
 laws of Personal Status, Property, Contract, Family 
 and Government, must be laid down by the Civil 
 Law. But stUl, there must remain cases of which it 
 is doubtful whether they do or do not come under any 
 of these denominations. For instance, two men quar- 
 rel about a bargain : one accuses the other of Fraud, 
 that is of a Penal Fraud, of Cheating ; or perhaps each 
 accuses the other of this. But it is possible that there 
 may be a doubt or mistake about the bargain, and 
 that neither of them may be justly liable, even to a 
 primd facie charge of cheating : and yet the quarrel 
 ought to be settled by Law : and if this be so, by the 
 CivU, not the Penal Law. Here it is doubtful to 
 which of the two bodies of Law the case belongs ; and 
 the head "Cheating," which we suppose now to be 
 
 ^ Penal Law is tlie Law concemiDg 
 Offenses: CItU Law is the Law cou- 
 cemlng Confliclong Bights. In cri- 
 minal cases an offense is (Jia/rged 
 against the doer ; it may be no offense, 
 no crime, because the accused may 
 have done only what he had a right 
 to do ; but it is charged as an offense, 
 or a Clime. In Civil Cases no crime 
 
 is charged, but the Bight is directly 
 contested. Hence Penal Law assumes 
 offenses, and legislates about them : 
 Civil Law defines Eights. But the 
 definition of Bights must be histo- 
 rical, for Bights have been establish- 
 ed as they exist by past laws and 
 transactions, public and private. 
 
264 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 one of the " Titles" of the Penal Law, and which 
 must necessarily be expounded (when expounded) into 
 an extensive and irregular mass of offenses, is borrowed 
 from the popular vocabulary, and must necessarily 
 bring with it much of the confusion which belongs to 
 popular thought, when it is made the starting point 
 of our determination as to what is, and what is not, a 
 pena? kind of wrong. 
 
 But further: not only the Heads of the Penal 
 Law, which are the starting points of the expository 
 matter, of which the Civil Law consists, are strongly 
 tinged with popular looseness of idea, and in some 
 measure, with national differences of thought: but 
 still more, all the Terms in which the exposition is 
 given will, at every step almost, contain references to 
 popular and national habits of thought, and to the 
 primary events of the national history, including, of 
 course, the history of its jurisprudence. You have 
 seen this in the definition which I gave of Theft: that 
 definition takes you at once to the term Title. Now 
 the very term Title implies certain settled habits of 
 possessing property and of justifying the possession of 
 it, which exist in very different degrees and forms in 
 different parts of the world. And when we come to 
 enumerate, (as I observed we must have to do in order 
 to carry out our exposition) the modes of acquiring 
 Title to property; as Descent, Purchase, Prescription, 
 and the like; we come to a series of events which 
 have different aspects in different countx-ies; and in 
 many cases must, in order to be intelligible and ap- 
 plicable to actual cases, be described by different terms 
 of a new order; and thus, give to the Civil Law of 
 each country a national form and aspect. 
 
 {Historical Element.) And thus the Civil Law of 
 each country must be different, and in some respects, 
 the Penal Law also, because it depends, as I have 
 said, partly upon the Civil Law, and partly, directly, 
 upon the national habits. There is, in every national 
 Code of Law, a necessary and fundamental historical 
 element: not a few supplementary provisions which 
 may be added or adapted to the local circumstances 
 
BBNTHAM — CLASSIFICATION OP OFFENSES. 265 
 
 after the great body of the Code has been constructed : 
 not a few touches of local colouring to be put in after 
 the picture is almost painted : but an element whicli 
 belongs to Law from its origin and penetrates to its 
 roots : — a part of the intimate structure ; a cast in the 
 original design. The national views of personal sta- 
 tus; property, and the modes of acquisition ; bargains, 
 and the modes of concluding them; family, and its 
 consequences; government, and its origin: — these 
 affect even the most universal aspects and divisions of 
 penal offenses; — these affect still more every step of the 
 expository process which the Civil Law applies to 
 Eights in defining penal Offenses. 
 
 I conceive it to have been one of the great defects, 
 — errors, I should venture to say — of Mr Bentham, 
 that he was not well aware of this principle. He ima- 
 gined that, to a certain extent, his schemes of Law 
 might be made independent of Local Conditions. 
 Thus, in speaking of the advantage of his classification 
 of offenses (C. xviii.), he says (IT 56), " The analysis, 
 as far as it goes, is as applicable to the legal concerns 
 of one country as of another; and where, if it had 
 descended into further details it would have ceased to 
 be so, there I have taken care always to stop." And 
 he says further (IT 60), that "this natural arrange- 
 ment, governed as it is by a principle which is re- 
 cognized by all men, will serve alike for the juris- 
 prudence of all nations. In a system of proposed law, 
 framed in pursuance of such a method, the language 
 will serve as a glossary by which all systems of posi- 
 tive law might be explained ; while the matter serves 
 as a standard by which they might be tried." This 
 fancy of a systematic view of a subject, which shall 
 supply an explanation of the terms of all national lan- 
 guages on that subject, and a standard of the justness 
 of all national opinions, is a very seductive, but it re- 
 quires no presumption to say, a very extravagant and 
 impracticable notion; and such I conceive all modes 
 of treating law, which leave out the historical element, 
 must always be. 
 
 It is very true that Bentham does propose to con- 
 
266 HISTOET OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sider tlie historical or national aspect of laws. He 
 says in the passage just quoted (IT 56), " That the 
 legal interests of different ages and countries have 
 nothing iu common, and that they have everything, 
 are suppositions equally distant from the truth." But 
 still, he desires, as appears by what I have quoted, to 
 make his plan independently of all national habits 
 and histories. He would not place the national histo- 
 rical element at the basis of the system, where, how- 
 ever, it must be. He has written an Essay on the 
 Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation; 
 and in this, he gives many examples of the way in 
 which local habits and circumstances modify the rea- 
 sons for laws. But he applies the maxims which he 
 thus gathers to the case in which laws are trans- 
 planted from one country to another: and, taking as 
 his example the transfer of the English Law to 
 Bengal, he is led rather to employ himself in vigorous 
 sarcasms, both against the Law itself and against its 
 effects as transferred, than in any discussions which 
 can be considered as adding anything to the philo- 
 sophy of the subject. There is, in this Essay, a good 
 deal of the dogmatism and depreciation of adverse 
 views, in which he so habitually indulges. There is 
 however, it must also be said, much condemnation of 
 dogmatism, and acknowledgement of the necessity and 
 wisdom of doubt and hesitation in such matters ; and 
 several pa.ssages of considerable force and beauty. 
 Thus Chap. II. p. 178, "By showing the real uncer- 
 taiuty of the most conclusive arguments that can be 
 offered on the subject, it will prevent us from giving to 
 less conclusive arguments more than their due weight : 
 it wiU. enable us to unravel the web of sophistry, and 
 to humble the pride of declamation : it wiU be of ser- 
 vice, in as far as the caution that accompanies a salu- 
 tary doubt, is preferable to the rashness that may be 
 the result of misconception. Such sort of instruction, 
 iadeed, brings little thanks to hiTn who gives it: to 
 be in doubt is to be imsatisfied; to be unsatisfied is to 
 be uneasy. People in general had rather be decided, 
 and in the wrong, than in the right and undecided." 
 
BENTHAM CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES. 267 
 
 The question, whetlier legislation is to be im- 
 proved by framing a systematic code, or by proceeding 
 with the elements of law which the national history 
 supplies, has been much discussed in modern times, 
 especially in Germany; and the two opposite Schools, 
 the historical and the systematic, have each had ad- 
 herents and assertors of great name. The question is 
 a highly interesting and important one; and it may 
 hereafter be very proper for us to pursue the discus- 
 sion by the aid of the best lights which the literature 
 of the subjects, both foreign and domestic, have fur- 
 nished ; but at present, looking at it only as it regards 
 Bentham, I need not pursue it further. I have suf- 
 ficiently indicated that I conceive one of his great 
 defects is to be found in his neglect or misapprehen- 
 sion of the true place of historical legislation in Juris- 
 prudence. 
 
 I may take the liberty of remarking that I have 
 treated of this subject, the necessary existence and 
 place of the historical element in legislation in the 
 Elements of Morality including Polity, B. iv. (Jus) 
 Chap. i. {Rights in general.) 
 
LECTUEE XVIII. 
 Bentham — Defect of his System. 
 
 HAVIITG thus noticed one great defect and error 
 in Bentham's system, his depreciation of histo- 
 rical law, I must now notice another point in which I 
 think him also altogether defective and erroneous; 
 namely in not fully recognizing the moral object of 
 Law. According to our views, Law has for its object 
 to promote, not merely the pleasure of man, but his 
 moral nature; — not merely to preserve and gratify, 
 but to teach him : — not to enable him to live a com- 
 fortable animal life, but to raise him above mere 
 animal life: in short, to conform to his nature as 
 man : — not merely as a sentient, not merely a grega- 
 rious, not merely a social creature, but a moral crea- 
 ture; — a creature to whose moral being and agency 
 all mere material possessions, enjoyments, and advan- 
 tages, are instruments, means and occasions. Punish- 
 ment is to be, not merely a means of preventing 
 suffering, but is also to be a moral Lesson {Morality, 
 Art. 988). Bentham, on the other hand, professes to 
 make the promotion of human happiness — such happi- 
 ness as can be resolved into mere pleasure or absence 
 of pain — the sole object of punishment. On this 
 view, there is no difference between laws restraining 
 men in consequence of some calamity in which they 
 are involved with no fault of theii-s, and punishments 
 for crime. Quarantine is not distinguishable from 
 imprisonment for theft. Restraints imposed on those 
 afflicted with contagious diseases are punishments, as 
 much as restraints on those who try to break into a 
 
BENTHAM — DEFECT OF HIS SYSTEM. 269 
 
 house. Now this is contrary to all common notions, 
 and to all real jural philosophy. But the fact ia, that 
 such a view cannot be consistently carried through. 
 And Bentham himself is obliged to defend laws 
 which have no solid gi-ound except their moral ten- 
 dency; — their effect in teaching men good morality. 
 
 As an example of the results of Bentham's attempt 
 to exclude morality, as such, in his legislation, let 
 us look at what he says respecting the Laws of Mar- 
 riage. 
 
 On this subject he argues strongly in favour of a 
 liberty of Divorce by common consent. He condemns 
 the law which makes marriages indissoluble, in the 
 strongest terms : he calls it cruel and absurd : he says 
 this law " surprizes the contracting parties in the ten- 
 derness of their youth, in the moments which open all 
 the vistas of happiness. It says to them, ' You unite 
 in the hope of being happy, but I tell you, you only 
 enter a prison whose door will be closed against you. 
 T shall be inexorable to the cries of your grief, and 
 when you dash j'ourselves against your fetters I shall 
 not permit you to be delivered.' " And as decisively 
 condemnatory of this policy he says, " The govern- 
 ment which interdicts them [divorces] takes upon 
 itself to decide that it understands the interests of 
 individuals better than they do themselves." [GivU 
 Code, Pt. III. c. V.) 
 
 Now upon this we may remark, that undoubtedly, 
 in this and in many other cases, government, both in 
 its legislation and administration, does assume that it 
 understands the interests of individuals, and the pub- 
 lio interest as affected by them, better than they do 
 themselves. What is the meaning of restraints im- 
 posed for the sake of public health, cleanliness and 
 comfort? Why are not individuals left to do what 
 they like with reference to such matters? Plainly 
 because carelessness, ignorance, indolence, would pre- 
 vent their doing what is most for their own interest. 
 Is there anything strange in assuming that legisla- 
 tion, looking at all the consequences of marriage to 
 the individuals and to society, to their comfort, for- 
 
270 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tune, and moral being, should judge better of tlie 
 conditions under wbich it ought to be contracted than 
 the parties in that delirium of feeling which Mr Ben- 
 tham describes ? Does not indeed almost the whole 
 of law suppose the government to understand men's 
 interests on many points better than they do them- 
 selves? Mr Bentham is very fond of using this sar- 
 casm, (for such it is rather than an argument,) when 
 he is disposed to disparage a particular law : but it is 
 rather a sarcasm against laws in general. 
 
 But is Mr Bentham ready to apply consistently 
 the principle which he thus implies, that in such mat- 
 ters individuals are the best judges of their own inter- 
 ests? Will he allow divorce to take place whenever 
 the two parties agi-ee in desiring it? As I understand 
 him, he would not. Indeed such a facility of divorce 
 as this, leaves hardly any difference possible between 
 marriage and concubinage. If a pair may separate 
 when they please, why does the legislator take the 
 trouble to recognize their being together? Such an 
 extension of Divorce seems to be inconsistent with 
 the existence of Families. Accordingly it does not 
 appear that Mr Bentham would carry divorce so far 
 as this; although, for aught I can see, his argument 
 just mentioned would. But he has other arguments 
 on the other side'. He allows that the comfort and 
 advantage of the parties, and especially of the woman 
 and her children, requires that the duration of the 
 connexion should be indefinite. Marriage for life is, 
 he says, the most natural marriage : if there were no 
 laws except the ordinary law of contracts, this would 
 be the most ordinary arrangement. 
 
 So far, good. But Mr Bentham having carried 
 his argument so far, does not go on with it. What 
 conclusion are we to suppose him to intend? This 
 arrangement would be very general without law, 
 therefore the legislator should pass a law to make it 
 imiversal? — This is not at all like his usual style of 
 
 1 CimlCode, Part m. c. v. 
 
BENTHAM — DEFECT OF HIS SYSTEM. 27I 
 
 reasoning. The more general it ■would be without 
 the law, the less need of the law, it would seem; and 
 Mr Bentham, of all persons, is the last to deem con- 
 straint a good when it is not needed. Or shall we 
 supply an additional step in the argument, and say 
 that the general tendency of men to make the mar- 
 riage contract a contract for life, shows that such a 
 contract is most for their happiness 1 — Tliis, again, is 
 not in the usual style of Bentham's reasoning. He is 
 not wont to estimate the happiness residting from a 
 rule by any opinion of persons under special circum- 
 stances, this opinion being only implied and con- 
 jectured, not expressed. His method is rather to 
 show how happiness is increased or diminished, by 
 resolving it iato its elements, and showing how these 
 are affected. I say therefore that I cannot see how 
 Bentham goes on from this point, or what his con- 
 clusion is as to the restraints which ought to be placed 
 upon Divorce. " Love," he says, " on the part of the 
 man, love and foresight on the part of the woman, all 
 concur with enlightened freedom and affection on the 
 part of parents in impressing the character of per- 
 petuity upon the contract of this alliance." But what 
 then? Does he say, "Let it be perpetual?" No. The 
 very next sentence is employed in showing the ab- 
 surdity of making the engagement one from which 
 the parties cannot liberate themselves by mutual con- 
 sent. And there is no attempt to reduce these two 
 arguments, or their results, to a consistency : no indi- 
 cation how marriages are to be perpetual, and yet 
 dissoluble at will : no provision for the case in which 
 the fickleness may come on while the children still 
 need the cares of both parents. The general good of 
 families points one way : the inclinations of the man 
 and woman may point the opposite way. There is no 
 rule given or suggested, as to which influence shall 
 prevail ia any given case. 
 
 But suppose that one party wish for a separation 
 while the other does not. Shall divorce then be per- 
 mitted? Not, it would seem, without the consent, of 
 the other. But suppose the consent to be obtained 
 
272. HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 by ill-treatment. Suppose the stronger party to mal- 
 treat the weaker for this very purpose. Is it tit 
 that the legislator should aid him in carrying his 
 purpose into effect? Is it fit that he should liberate 
 the man because he has by cruelty, or fear, or im- 
 portunity, induced the woman to allow him to abandon 
 her? 
 
 Mr Bentham's answer to this case shows, it seems 
 to me, how difScult it is for any writer, however 
 strictly he may try to follow out the results of a 
 theory— to get rid of the ordinary moral impressions 
 with which men look at actions. Mr Bentham's 
 decision on this point is, that in such a case, liberty 
 should be allowed to the party maltreated, and not to 
 the other. If a husband wish for a divorce from a 
 wife whom he hates, and ill use her so that she gives 
 her consent to the divorce, she may marry again, but 
 he may not. Now to this decision I have nothing to 
 object: but I must remark, that the view which 
 makes it tolerable, is its being a decision on moral 
 grounds, such as Mr Bentham would not willingly 
 acknowledge. The man may not take advantage of 
 his own wrong : that is a maxim which quite satisfies 
 us. But Mr Bentham, who only regards wrong as 
 harm, would, I think, find it difficult to satisfy the 
 man that he was fairly used. The man would say, 
 ' You allow every one else to separate from ill-sorted 
 partners on grounds of repugnance : you care for their 
 happiness; you have no regard for mine. I cannot 
 live with this woman without miseiy. By your own 
 principle, that is a reason why I should not live with 
 her at all. My happiness requires my union with 
 another. My present wife has consented. Why do 
 you interpose to make us all wretched? You say I 
 obtained my wife's consent by ill usage. I did no 
 more than was requisite to obtain it. I gave her no 
 pain which was not necessary for this purpose, and so, 
 for my own happiness : and in truth, for hers also, for 
 what happiness can she have in clinging to one whom 
 she makes wretched? But if she have ^.ught to accuse 
 me of in the way of ill usage, let that be punished in 
 
BENTHAM — DEFECT OF HIS SYSTEM. 273 
 
 the ordinary way, not by -this cruel prohibition; — a 
 refinement, of cruelty worthy of the great leaders of 
 the ascetic school, rather than of the professed pro- 
 moters of human happiness.' To this appeal, I do not 
 see what reply Mr Bentham could maJiie. We, as 1 
 have said, have no such difficulty. We say to the 
 man. We cannot allow you to take advantage of your 
 own wrong. His having ill-used his wife steels our 
 hearts to his complaints. His having thought only of 
 his own happiness makes his happiness of small ac- 
 count in our eyes. We exhort him to try to find 
 consolation and relief in promoting the happiness of 
 others : to bend to the yoke of duty, instead of merely 
 aiming at self-gratification. 
 
 Of course, no one can deny that such cases as this, 
 and many other cases, are questions of great difficulty : 
 nor do we say that the indissolubility of marriage is a 
 rule which, on mere human grounds, must necessarily 
 be the best. But we say that no good rule can be 
 established on this subject without regarding the mar- 
 riage union in a moral point of view; without assum- 
 ing it as one great object of the law to elevate and 
 purify men's idea of marriage ; — to lead them to look 
 upon it as an entire union of interests and feelings, 
 enjoyments and hopes, between the two parties. With 
 this view, the law prohibits polygamy, denies rights 
 to concubines and illegitimate children, invests the 
 Eamily with honours and advantages; and with the 
 same view, it only in cases of extreme necessity allows 
 Divorce '. 
 
 But let us consider Bentham's argument against 
 divorce on one-sided application a moment longer. He 
 says that such a law as he proposes would prevent the 
 liusband who wishes for a divorce from ill-treating the 
 wife; he would try to get her consent by fair means. 
 But what I urge is, that if he fails in this, he has just 
 
 1 1 need not discuss Bentham's 
 other arguments on this subject. 
 Tliey all, I think, admit of answer on 
 the same principles as those to which 
 
 I have referred. I have considered 
 the principal of them in the Morality, 
 Bk. V. c. 13. 
 
 18 
 
274 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 the same reason to complain, which, on Bentham's 
 grounds, both parties have who wish for a divorce 
 and are not allowed by the law to obtain one. It is 
 no fault of his that he is not odious to his wife, and 
 that he tries in vain to make himself so. 
 
 In trath, I believe Bentham in this case, as in 
 some others, to have been seduced by the apparently 
 happy thought of finding an appropriate punishment 
 for an offense, and thus, turning the edge of an ad- 
 verse argument. 
 
 Indeed this part of Bentham's writings — ^the dis- 
 covery of appropriate and effective punishments — the 
 Satiorude of Punishment, as he calls it, has been the 
 work of great labour. It is fuU of invention and in- 
 genuity, and, as I have already said, by being syste- 
 matic, it necessarily brings into view a number of 
 instructive relations among the matters considered. It 
 is one of Bentham's great titles to consideration as a 
 jural writer, though disfigured in some degree with 
 his usual feults. But this part of his writings does 
 not bear upon our subject, Morality, with so much 
 closeness as to make it suitable to dwell upon them. 
 
 I have said that Bentham's system of law is de- 
 fective in not giving due prominence to the moral 
 purpose of laws. Still, we must not forget that his 
 principle, that the promotion of human happiness is 
 the object of good laws, is really in almost every case 
 a valuable guide to legislation, even in its direct Ben- 
 thamite interpretation, where happiness is understood 
 as consisting merely of pleasures. The legislator, 
 though not the moralist, may take this principle for 
 his guide. The legislator will hardly be wrong if he 
 makes his laws with an intelligent and comprehensive 
 regard to the promotion of general happiness and the 
 prevention of misery; though the moralist is very 
 likely to be understood as teaching a low and scanty 
 morality, if he tell men they must always aim solely 
 at their own happiness. This I say on the Ben- 
 thamite analysis of happiness. But if we take that 
 wider sense of happiness, which agrees with the com- 
 mon feeling of mankind, and into which our Utilita- 
 
BENTHAM — DEFECT OF HIS SYSTEM. 275 
 
 rians have a perpetual tendency to slide — the happi- 
 ness which includes moral elements — the happiness 
 which arises from knowing that we neither do nor 
 suffer wrong — the happiness which arises from the 
 promotion of virtue in ourselves and others — the hap- 
 piness of kindness, justice, honesty, veracity, purity, 
 order — then indeed happiness becomes a perfect and 
 unerring guide — if only we can discover which way 
 her guidance points. But then, we invert the Ben- 
 thamite analysis, and make happiness depend upon 
 virtue, rather than virtue upon happiness. Yet to 
 this way of understanding the term happiness, the 
 -Utilitarian, if he be really a kind and virtuous man, 
 is perpetually prone to recur, swept away by the 
 sympathy of the general feelings of man. Thus when 
 Bentham has to speak of the reasons why there should 
 be laws against marriages between near relations, he 
 says. (Principles 0/ Civil Code, P. iii. c. v.), "If there 
 were not an insurmountable barrier against marriages 
 between near relations, called to live together in the 
 closest intimacy, this close connexion, these continual 
 opportunities, even friendship itself and its innocent 
 caresses, might kindle the most disastrous passions. 
 Families, those retreats in which repose ought to be 
 found in the bosom of order, and where the emotions 
 of the soul, agitated in the scenes of the world, ought 
 to sink to rest— families themselves would become the 
 prey of all the inquietudes, the rivalries, and the fiiry 
 of love. Suspicion would banish confidence; the 
 gentlest feelings would be extinguished; and eternal 
 enmities and revenges, of which the idea alone makes 
 one tremble, would usurp their place. The opinion 
 of the chastity of young women, so powerful an at- 
 traction to marriage, would not know upon what to 
 repose, and the most dangerous snares in the education 
 of youth would be found even in the asylum where 
 they could be least avoided." 
 
 Here we find that the good to be aimed at has 
 taken a moral tinge, and derives all its force from 
 .that. Friendship, innocence, repose in the bosom of 
 order, rest for the emotions of the soul; the calamities 
 
276 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of rivalry, passion, suspicion, mistrust, enmity, re- 
 venge; and finally, the opinion of female purity, are 
 put forwards as the grounds of such a rule. I do not 
 say that, even in this form, they appear to me to give 
 a sufficient basis for his views; and still less when he 
 carries them into detail. But they show, and espe- 
 cially the last phrase, how large a share moral consi- 
 derations must have in such questions; as, in truth, 
 such considerations must enter into the view of the 
 moralist at one point or other. If morality is not to 
 be a direct object of the law, it must still be an object 
 of the law on this account, that men care much about 
 it. If the legislator can see no positive and inde- 
 pendent value in female purity, still he must legislate 
 to preserve it, since the opinion of it is so highly 
 prized by men, and its loss is a ground of such bitter 
 grief and indignation. If the legislator will not be 
 himself an independent moralist, at least he has to 
 make laws for moral creatures; — for creatures who 
 think moral good and evil the most important and 
 ■weighty form of good and evil. If he will not hear a 
 moral voice in his own bosom, he cannot shut his ears 
 to the moral voice which proceeds from the people at 
 large ; and thus, by refusing to give morality an inde- 
 pendent place in his system, he makes his system 
 depend upon the popular cry. If he will not acknow- 
 ledge the moral rule as something which ought to 
 command and control the popular prejudice, he rnust 
 take moral elements from popular prejudices: if he 
 ■wUl not place a moral monitor above the applause and 
 vituperation of the popular voice, he must find one in 
 the popular voice. If he has no moral sanction pro- 
 perly so called, he must have a inoral or popida/r 
 sanction as identical: and this, we have seen, Ben- 
 tham has. 
 
 I have thus again brought my views of Bentham's 
 morality to the same poiat to which I formerly con- 
 ducted them; and this is, I conceive, the principal 
 view which it behoves us to take of Bentham's moral- 
 ity. I shaU not now think further consideration of 
 this celebrated writer necessary. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ON THE RECENT AEEANGEMENTS RESPECTING 
 MORAL STUDIES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 ACONSIDEEABLE portion of these Lectures has 
 been occupied in tracing the history of Moral 
 Philosophy iu the University of Cambridge; where, 
 as has been stated above, the teaching of Ethics, in 
 some form or other, has always been carried on. The 
 Moral Philosophy of Paley was, as has been said, 
 adopted for a time, and even admitted in official docu- 
 ments to a place in the Examinations of the Uni- 
 versity. But objections were felt to Paley's system 
 from the first. The doctrines were really inconsistent 
 with those of other English moralists, such as King 
 {On the Origin of EvU), Clarke {On the Attributes of 
 God), and Butler (Sermons on Human Nature), who 
 also, especially Butler, were authors recommended and 
 used in College Lectures and Examinations. More- 
 over, the natuitil and inevitable consequences of the 
 principles of Paley were worked out with great force 
 and unflinching logic by Bentham and his school, as 
 we have also seen. And thus the teaching of Paley 
 was often protested against in the University. 
 
 Perhaps it may be permitted me here to remind 
 Cambridge men, who take an interest in such matters, 
 that my dear fiiend Julius Hare and myself were 
 among the first persons who gave public utterance 
 to this feeling of dissatisfaction with the mode of 
 teaching Ethics thus prevailing here thirty years ago. 
 As an indication of this, I may quote what I wrote 
 in 1837, I had preached before the University in 
 
278 APPENDIX. 
 
 November of that year Sermons which I soon after- 
 wards published under the title of Four Sermons on 
 the Foundations of Morals, dedicating the book to 
 Mr Hare. In the Preface to these Sermons I said : 
 
 " In the following Discourses disapprobation is ex- 
 pi'essed of a work now in use in the Examinations of 
 the University of Cambridge — Paley's Moral Philo- 
 sophy. It is with great reluctance that I thus object 
 to a book which forms part of the University course 
 of reading on a very important subject, without point- 
 ing out some other book which may be substituted for 
 it with advantage. But it appeared to me that the 
 evils which arise from the countenance thus afforded 
 to the principles of Paley's system are so great as 
 to make it desirable for us to withdraw our sanction 
 from his doctrines without farther delay." 
 
 I then mentioned Butler as the principal repre- 
 sentative of a better system than Paley, and also re- 
 ferred to Stewart's Classification and Analysis of our 
 Active a/nd Moral Powers. 
 
 This practice of putting forwards Butler as a cor- 
 rective to Paley, and of referring to more recent 
 writers on such subjects, gradually strengthened the 
 repugnance to Paley, and led to a series of steps by 
 which his principles of morals were gradually excluded 
 from the University Examinations. 
 
 Moral Philosophy was thus excluded for a time 
 from the University Examinations; but the Univer- 
 sity was far from satisfied with this state of things. 
 And attempts were repeatedly made to introduce mea- 
 sures by which moral studies should be encouraged in 
 the same manner as the leading studies of the Uni- 
 versity, Mathematics and Classics, namely, by Uni- 
 versity Honours given to those who in a University 
 Examination were found well versed in moral studies. 
 And after various attempts and changes, there was 
 established a Tripos or Examination Idst, which may 
 be regarded as an important era in the history of 
 Moral Philosophy in England. The moral studies 
 thus encouraged were not only Moral Philosophy, but 
 Mental Philosophy and Logic; and further, as another 
 
APPENDIX. 279 
 
 group of studies, History and Political PMlosophy, 
 Political Economy, and Jurisprudence. 
 
 The rewards held out to distinction in such studies 
 are, among others, that a candidate by proficiency in 
 them obtains a claim to the degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts, as by proficiency in Mathematics or iu Classics. 
 
 For the information of Cambridge Students, I will 
 give the List of Books which the University autho- 
 rities have published : 
 
 List 0/ Books agreed to hy the Board of Moral Sciences 
 Studies. 
 
 "The following Lists of Authors and Books are 
 intended to mark the general course which the Exa- 
 mination is to take in the several subjects of the Moral 
 Sciences Tripos. The Board recommend that, in the 
 Examinations, questions be proposed having reference 
 to the books in these lists; and that opportunity also 
 be given to the Candidates to show a knowledge of 
 other works both ancient and recent, in -which the 
 same subjects have been treated with the same or dif- 
 ferent views. 
 
 1 . Moral Philosophy. 
 
 Plato, The Moral Dialogues. 
 
 Aristotle's Ethics. 
 
 Cicero de Finibus, de Officiis. 
 
 Clarke on the Attributes and on Unchangeable Morality. 
 
 Butler's Sermons. 
 
 Dugald Stewart on the Active Powers. 
 
 Paley's Moral Philosophy. 
 
 WheweU's Elements of Morality, and Lectures on History 
 
 of Moral Philosophy. 
 Kant's Ethical System. 
 Fichte's Ethical System (translated Works, Vol. i.) 
 
 2. Mental Philosophy. 
 
 Plato's Theaetetus. 
 
 Aristotle de Anima. 
 
 Descartes on Method. 
 
 Locke's Essay. 
 
 Heid's Philosophy (Hamilton's Notes and Dissertations). 
 
 Kant's Kritik der Eeinen Vernunft. (In Bohn's Series.) 
 
 Victor Cousin's Philosophic du XVIII Si^cle. 
 
 Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics. 
 
280 APPENDIX. 
 
 3. Logic. 
 
 Aristotle's Categories and Analytics. 
 
 Trendelenburg's Elementa Logices Aristotelicas. 
 
 Aldrich, with Mansel's Notes. 
 
 Whately's Logic. 
 
 Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Logic. 
 
 J. S. MUPs Logic. 
 
 W. Thomson's Laws of Thought. 
 
 Bacon's Novum Organon. 
 
 Whewell's Novum Organon Eenovatum. 
 
 4. History and Political Philosophy. 
 
 Plato's Bepu"blio. 
 Aristotle's Politics. 
 Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois. 
 
 Grujzot's History of Civilization, and History 'of Repre- 
 sentative Government. 
 Hallam's Middle Ages and Constitutional History. 
 Brougham's Political Philosophy. 
 
 "A knowledge of tlie facts of history as referred 
 to in the speculative works wiU be required. 
 
 5. Political Economy. 
 
 Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (M°Culloch's Edition), 
 Malthus on Population and on Political Economy. 
 Eioardo's Political Economy. 
 
 J. S. Mill's 
 
 McCuUooh's 
 
 E. Jones on Kent and on Political Economy. 
 
 Carey's Political Economy. 
 
 Michel Chevallier's Cours d'Eoonomie Politique. 
 
 6. General Jv/risprudence. 
 
 Grotius de Jure Belli et Facis. 
 
 Kutherforth's Institutes. 
 
 Wamkonig's Philosophia Juris. 
 
 Jebb's General Principles of Law, in Eneyc. Met. 
 
 Reddie's Inquiries in the Science of Law. 
 
 Bentham's Principles of Moral Philosophy and of the 
 
 Civil Code. 
 Lerminier's Philosophie du Droit. 
 
 7. The History of Philosophy, 
 
 Ancient and Modern." 
 
LECTrRE I. 
 Plato. 
 
 IN the earlier courses of Lectures 'whicli I delivered 
 as Professor of Moral Philosophy, I treated mainly 
 of the history of Moral Philosophy in Ungland; in 
 order, as I then stated, that I might have a subject 
 of limited and moderate extent to deal with, while 
 I had as yet had only a short time for preparation. 
 Afterwards I followed the history of the subject in 
 other times and countries, and gave some account of 
 the ethical speculations of the Greeks, the Romans, 
 the Fathers of the Church, the writers of the middle 
 ages, and the more recent writers upon such subjects 
 in England and in other countries. Of those Lectures 
 I now proceed to give some portions, as further con- 
 tributions to the History of Moral Philosophy in 
 general. 
 
 The origin of Moral Philosophy must be assigned 
 to Greece and to Socrates, or rather to the disciples 
 of Socrates. Por though the ethical speculators of 
 that time were in the habit of referring to the Poets 
 and the Wise men, Simonides and Pittaous for in- 
 stance', as their predecessors in such discussions, what 
 was uttered by these more ancient moral teachers 
 was rather Moralityj-'than Moral Philosophy. It was 
 Socrates who, by the questions which he was in the 
 habit of asking, awoke in the minds of those who 
 listened to him the craving for ethical principles and 
 ethical truths expressed in exact and abstract terms ; 
 and the attempts to satisfy this craving constitute 
 moral philosophy, as it has existed from that time to 
 this. 
 
 1 See, for instance, the Protagoras of Plato, § 8i, &c. 
 M. P. li. 1 
 
2 HISTORT OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lEOT. 
 
 Socrates asked the questions which led to this 
 result. He did not answer them; and thus he was 
 so far from being the founder of a special school of 
 moralists, that all the leading schools claimed descent 
 from his disciples. Aristippus, who made pleasure the 
 guide of life, Antisthenes, who taught men to scorn 
 pleasure and pain, were his admirers, no less than 
 Plato. But Plato is in a peculiar manner the first 
 writer on moral philosophy. We have a large series 
 of Dialogues by him on the subject, in all of which 
 Socrates is the principal interlocutor, and in which 
 the questions discussed include most of those which 
 even now constitute the main substance of moral 
 philosophy. 
 
 I have published translations of most of Plato's 
 ethical dialogues, accompanying them with such re- 
 marks as seem to me suited to show the meaning and 
 the force of the arguments used by him, and the Une 
 of questioning adopted by his master Socrates'. To 
 those translations and remarks I may therefore refer 
 for such a representation as I can give of the place 
 of Socrates and Plato in the history of moral philo- 
 sophy. I will here only notice very briefly some of 
 the features of their speculations. 
 
 Socrates, as I have said, gave the first impulse 
 to the subject by his questions. Among other kinds 
 of questions, he asked for Definitions — Definitions, 
 for instance, of Virtue in general, and of special Vir- 
 tues in particular : What is Courage ? What is Tem- 
 perance ? What is Priendship? and the like. A notion 
 seemed to prevail with him, that if he could learn 
 what these things are, he might learn how they were 
 to be taught. And this notion was probably suggested 
 by his seeing that his contemporaries had discovered 
 things which could be taught, so that there was no 
 doubt whether the learner had acquired them or not ; 
 such things were Geometry and Arithmetic, and other 
 parts of Greek learning. If Courage or Temperance 
 could be taught as surely as these, education might 
 
 ^ Platonic Didiogms for Engliigi Bcadtri. 
 
I.] PLATO. 3 
 
 be much, improved. But these sciences could be taught 
 because they were Knowledge : Knowledge undeniable 
 and demonstrable. And therefore Socrates asked im- 
 plicitly, and Plato in one class of his Dialogues puts 
 the questions explicitly, What kind of Knowledge is 
 Courage % is Temperance ? and the like. Is Courage 
 anything but the Knowledge of what is really safe 
 and what is really dangerous ? Is Temperance any- 
 thing but the Knowledge of what is really and per- 
 manently pleasant ? There is, as I have said, a class 
 of the Platonic Dialogues in which these questions 
 are discussed ; and these I have called the Diaiogues 
 of the Socratia School, since they contain, probably, 
 the discussions which went on among the hearers of 
 Socrates in his lifetime. 
 
 Plato was not satisfied with the result of the dis- 
 cussions as given in these Dialogues. Indeed he does 
 not represent any definite result as arrived at. And 
 his pursuit of such speculations under the eye of So- 
 crates was interrupted by a dire event — ^the trial and 
 death of his. master. Upon that event he is said to 
 have left Athens, and to have travelled for several 
 years. 'After his return, as I conceive, he proceeded 
 to publish a series of Dialogues, in which his object 
 was to refute the false morality and base political 
 maxims which he found prevailing at Athens; and 
 the bad methods of discussing moral and political 
 subjects. The Dialogues in which, he does this I 
 have classed together as the Anti-sophist Dialogues. 
 It is usual to speak of the antagonists of Socrates in 
 the Platonic Dialogues by the general term Sophists, 
 though their principles, line of argument, and relation 
 to their hearers, were of the most diverse kind : we 
 may adopt the term so far as to use this title. 
 
 In the Anti-sophist Dialogues we find some of the 
 elements and portions of the doctrines at which Plato 
 finally arrived: but these doctrines are delivered in 
 a more connected and complete form in the Polity — 
 the Bepuhlic, as it is commonly called. 
 
 The ethical system delivered in the Bepuhlic is 
 this -i — that the several virtues are not, as the Socratie 
 
 1—2 
 
4 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT, 
 
 questions supposed, really kinds of Knowledge:^ — there 
 are in the soul, besides the reason, which deals with 
 Knowledge, other faculties which are the Springs of 
 human action; and especially two which are prominent 
 and distinguishable. Desire and Anger. And the "Vir- 
 tues arise when Reason exercises a perfect control over 
 these two. Keason controlling Desire produces Tem- 
 perance; Reason directing Anger produces Courage 
 and vfrtuous Indignation against Wrong. Right Rea- 
 son itself is Wisdom. 
 
 To these three Virtues, Wisdom, Temperance and 
 Courage, Plato adds a fourth, Justice ; which, he says, 
 results when each of the three faculties keeps its own 
 place. 
 
 This account of Justice does not faU in very sym- 
 metrically with the other three. But this quater- 
 nion of virtues. Wisdom, Temperance, Courage and 
 Justice was generally adopted by succeeding moralists; 
 yet adopted in such a way as entirely to pervert its 
 meaning. 
 
 The four Cardinal Vvrtues, as they .were called, 
 were made, in their Latin form, Prudence, Temperance, 
 Fortitude, and Justice. But these are very 'inaccu- 
 rate renderings. Prudence is a word of far too narrow 
 la meaning to express that Reason rightly directed 
 which is the first of the Platonic virtues : and Por- 
 titude implies rather a passive bearing of evil than 
 the energetic action of the warlike elements of our 
 nature on the right side, which is the Platonic Virtue 
 otAndria or Courage. This perversion of the meaning 
 of the Platonic ethical scheme has continued to operate 
 even to our own. time. 
 
 This portion of the Platonic system bears mainly 
 upon the arrangement of Virtues or of Duties; and 
 is accordingly referred to for that purpose ; for instance, 
 by Cicero in his book On Duties (De Officiis). But 
 there is another part of the Platonic philosophy which 
 is more commonly referred to as especially Flafonic; 
 namely, the notion of an Idea of Good— the Supreme 
 Grood — the Srnnmum Bonum, which is the proper end 
 of human action. Plato appears to have aspired to 
 
I.] PLATO. 5 
 
 raise his own thoughts and those of his hearers to the 
 conception of a Supreme Good from which all other 
 goodness was derived : a good which should involve, 
 in the apprehension of it, the obligation of pursuing 
 it, as truth of every kind involves the evidence of its 
 own eternal stability. The Platonic Doctrine of Ideas 
 was an attempt to explain the possibility of such 
 stable and eternal truth. We cannot (it was held) 
 have such truths respecting objects of sense; which 
 are themselves unstable and transient; ever changing 
 like the waters at any point of a river. But we can 
 have stable and eternal truths respecting Ideas, which 
 are themselves stable and eternal. And as there is 
 thus a stable and eternal Truth, there is a stable 
 and eternal Good, which trae philosophy aspires to 
 realize and to participate in. 
 
 This Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and of the Idea 
 ,of the Supreme Good, is often referred to by the as- 
 sertoiB of Independent Morality; for instance. Cud- 
 worth'. The arguments in support of the doctrine of 
 Ideas are found in the ThecBtetus, from which Cud- 
 worth quotes them. The Idea of the Supreme Good 
 is most fully dwelt upon in the latter part of the Sixth 
 Book of the Hepublic. 
 
 We may notice in Plato's ethical philosophy three 
 main portions ; — that which treats of the constitution 
 of the human soul; that which treats of the law of 
 human action; and that which treats of the structure 
 of human society; — Psychology, Morality, Polity. Of 
 these, the second depends on the first; the classifica- 
 tion of virtues and duties depends upon the analysis 
 of the human soul. We have now to compare him 
 in this respect with his great successor as the master 
 of philosophy, Aristotle. 
 
 1 See Lect. IV. of the former Series. 
 
LECTTTRE II. 
 Aristotle's PsTCHOLoaT and List of Vietoes. 
 
 IN my Lectures on Plato and translations of his 
 Dialogues I considered some of the most prominent 
 points, as they appear to me, of Plato's moral philo- 
 sophy: I considered especially those of the residts of 
 his speculations which have taken a permanent place 
 in the current literature of the subject, and have been 
 habitually adopted or referred to by succeeding -writers. 
 I am however far jfrom supposing that a writer like 
 Plato influences the progress and form of the subject 
 on which he writes, only by positive results which he 
 delivers in a definite form, and which are stored up 
 as a part of a treasure, to be added to by his successors 
 labouring in their turn and in their manner. Some- 
 thing of this indeed is done by all those writers who 
 produce a permanent effect upon the minds of men in 
 any subject of speculation : but such m^en — ^men whose 
 minds exert an activity which excites the minds of 
 others by sympathy — such active speculators often 
 produce a greater effect by their influence upon the 
 manner of speculating than by their contributions to 
 positive knowledge. They do not so much deliver to 
 us truths which they have established, as teach us 
 how to seek for truth. We derive from them rather 
 the discipline of the battle-field than the fruits of 
 victory. This at least is held, by the admirers of 
 Plato, to be his especial claim to admiration. His 
 mode of tracing error to its consequences and thus 
 crushing its principles — his dignified and pure sen- 
 timents, which he still holds to though his reasonings 
 are insuflScient to support them — his serene superio- 
 rity to the temptations of sense and passion, the pre- 
 tensions of rhetoric and pedantry; — these are lessons 
 
LECT. II.] Aristotle's psychology. 7 
 
 for which many have hung over his pages in every 
 age with the love of ardent students. I am ready to 
 give my sympathy to this view of the character and 
 value of Plato's works ; but still, for the purpose 
 which I announced and which I have endeavoured 
 to pursue, it is necessary to point out, as far as we 
 can, the particular steps which moral philosophy, 
 considered as a progressive portion of knowledg* 
 may be said to owe to each of its great promoters, 
 and this I in some degree attempted with respect to 
 Plato. 
 
 I must now endeavour to perform the same task 
 with regard to another great name in the ancient 
 world of philosophy: — a writer whose influence upon 
 the aspect of the subject has been in some ways greater 
 than that of Plato. Of course you will understand 
 that I speak of Aristotle. I say his influence upon 
 the aspect of this subject has been greater than that of 
 Plato ; and I rather prefer to use this expression than 
 to say that Aristotle's writings pi-oduced a great efiect 
 upon the progress of the subject. There is, I think, 
 this peculiar circumstance attending all the wiitinga 
 of Aristotle; — that they contain arrangements, dis- 
 tinctions, definitions, tei-ms, which have been com- 
 monly received ever since his time, but which have, 
 in no instance, been made the instrument and means 
 of a further progress. He takes the words and the 
 notions which are in common usej — he defines and 
 distinguishes them, often with a curious and pointed 
 clearness; — and thus he takes possession of men's 
 minds, and enables them with little trouble to put his 
 technical expressions in the place of their common 
 phrases. But the fragments of the common half- 
 thoijghtfulness of daily life which he thits collects and 
 trims and accumulates, he does not connect by any 
 more deeply seated principles ; he does not give a real 
 tmity to that which is thus so widely gathered, — a 
 philosophical root to all these surface flowers. He 
 teaches men of the world little more than what he 
 learns from them, although he delivers it in more 
 exact and abstract phraseology. 
 
8 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 And hence, I think, it comes to pass that though 
 Aristotle is perpetually quoted, it is always for his 
 terms, and the definitions of them, his maxims, his 
 conclusions; — never, in any important case, for his 
 reasonings. Plato's reasonings with regard to the 
 nature of knowledge, with regard to the foundation of 
 wrtue, with regard to the immortality of the soul, 
 and other points, have even now a familiar place in 
 men's minds, and produce conviction in those who 
 read them, in his works, or in some derivative shape. 
 But I do not think that any part of Aristotle's writ- 
 ings operates in this manner. We go to him for clas- 
 sifications, nomenclature, history, description, in all 
 which he is full of instruction; — and for criticism, 
 literary and philosophical, in which also he has great 
 value; — but not for demonstration. 
 
 But we shall be led to see the character of Aris- 
 totle as a moral philosopher more clearly, by consider- 
 ing his writings according to that division of the 
 general subject of moral philosophy of which I have 
 already spoken, and of which the three provinces 
 were that which treats of the constitution of the 
 human soul — ^that which treats of the law of human 
 action — and that which treats of the structure of 
 human society — Psychology — Morality — Polity. In 
 each of these departrnents his character will appear: 
 in each of these his writings have, as I have said, 
 much influenced the aspect of the subject in succeed- 
 ing times. 
 
 Of the works of Aristotle relating to the subject of 
 Morality, the Nicomachean Ethics is the most import- 
 ant, and may be considered as the most undoubtedly 
 owing its authorship in its present form to Aristotle. 
 The other two treatises on Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, 
 and the "Great Ethics, (as the third work is called, 
 though considerably the smallest of the three,) have 
 such a relation to the first, as readily allows us to sup- 
 pose that they are made up from Notes of Aristotle's 
 scholars. Yet in some points they are more full and 
 explicit than the more genuine work; and both on 
 that and on other accounts may enable us to ex- 
 
II.] Aristotle's psychology. 9 
 
 plain some passages which otherwise might be less 
 intelligible. 
 
 The first portion of the Nicomaohean Ethics which 
 gives us Aristotle's Psychology as connected with his 
 Morality is Book i. Chapter 13. 
 
 The main point of this is the distinction of the 
 Soul into two parts ; one of which parts is properly ra- 
 tional; the other, though not a portion of reason, can 
 obey and harmonize with the reason, as it can also 
 disobey and resist it. This is Plato's analysis, and to 
 him, in another place, Aristotle refers it. But I do 
 not think that Aristotle anywhere so distinctly divides 
 the semirational part of the soul — if I may so caU it j 
 namely, in more modern language, the Affections — 
 into the two primary parts of Desire and Anger, as 
 Plato does. 
 
 In the Great Ethics indeed we have a sort of 
 enumeration of the Afiections or Sentiments (i. 7), 
 " We must now consider the Attributes of the Soul — 
 which are Afiections, Faculties, and Habits — for Virtue 
 must be some or other of these. Now the Afiections 
 are Anger, Fear, Hate, Desire, Zeal, Pity', and the 
 like, on which Grief and Joy commonly follow : the 
 Faculties are those by which we are said to be capable 
 of these afiections : as the Faculty of being Angry, of 
 Grieving, and the like : the Habits are those by which 
 we do these things well or ill : as when we are angry, 
 if we are not very passionate — if we are not angry 
 when there is no reason — and so in general, if we are 
 well conditioned with regard to anger :" and he is thus 
 led to his maxim of Virtue being a mean between two 
 extremes. But here we have still no full analysis of 
 the Soul which pretends, as in Plato, to afibrd a basis 
 for a complete survey of virtues. 
 
 In the treatise de Aniand we have an attempt at a 
 more complete analysis and description of the human 
 Soul than is given in any of the moral works ; but then 
 this analysis is of such a kind that it does not connect 
 
 h. JEudem. ii. 2, he adds Shame. 
 
10 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 itself in any very clear manner witli moral philosophy. 
 The greater part of the treatise is occupied -with an 
 account of the process of sensation, and an exami- 
 nation of the peculiarities of this process for each of 
 the senses. With regard to the division of the soul 
 for the purposes of moral philosophy, he criticizes what 
 had been said by preceding writers, but hesitates as to 
 his own conclusion. He says, {De Animd, iii. 9,) "There 
 is great difficulty in saying how many parts of the 
 soul there are, for in a certain sense they are infinite, 
 and not merely those parts which some "have put in 
 their divisions — Reason, Anger, Desire — or as others 
 say, the Rational and the Irrational Part. For ac- 
 cording to the differences by which they distinguish 
 these, there are other parts of the soul which have 
 greater differences than these; as the nutritive part, 
 which belongs to plants and animals as well as man ; 
 the sensitive, which we cannot very satisfectorily call 
 either rational or irrational; the imaginative (to 
 tjtavTaoTiKov), which again is difficult either to identify 
 with any of the others or to distinguish from them. 
 And in addition to these, the concupitive (impulsive 
 or appetitive; to opeKTucov), which cannot be separated 
 from the rest. Further, in the rational part there is the 
 WUl ; in the irrational, Desire and Anger : and if the 
 Soul consist of these three parts (Reason, Desire, 
 Anger) the Impulsive resides in each of these." But 
 if this mean that WUl, Desire and Anger each impel 
 man to act, it still does not show why the Impvlsive 
 must be a separate feculty or element from the rest, 
 nor is anything but confusion in Moral Philosophy 
 produced by making it such. 
 
 Aristotle is led to speak of all these powers of the 
 Soul, by assuming a Soul wherever he finds life. And 
 his assertion of five kinds of Powers in the Soul became 
 afterwards very current and very celebrated. These 
 Powers are, the nutritivum or vegetativum, the sensi- 
 tivum, appetitivum, motivum, intellectivum. The moti- 
 vmn, the principle of locomotion in animals, is discussed 
 De Animd, u. 9. 
 
 But in the Eudemian Ethics (11. i) he at once dis- 
 
II.] Aristotle's pstchologt. ii 
 
 misses a portion of this division, so far as the subject 
 of Ethics is concerned : he says the virtues do not 
 belong to the vegetative or appetitive man, for they 
 belong to man as man ; and thus as possessing Reason 
 and Command; that is, a commanding faculty. Now 
 the Eeason governs, not the Reason, but the Appetite 
 and Affections. 
 
 We are thus led at various points in Aristotle's 
 works to the same conclusion ■which we have already 
 had in Plato ; that man has, as Faculties, Reason, and 
 certain Affections, among which Desire and Anger 
 are prominent; and that in order to define what is 
 Virtue, we must- conceive the Reason controlling the 
 Affections. But this doctrine, though accompanied 
 with more technicalities in Aristotle, is really more 
 systematically and distinctly delivered in Plato; be- 
 sides the value which Plato's analysis has from its being 
 so very fully proved and explained. 
 
 But let us proceed to the next step in Aristotle's 
 account of Virtue. Virtue consisting in the control 
 exercised over the Affections by the Reason, the Vir- 
 tues might very well be thrown into a sort of classifi- 
 cation, approximate at least, if there were established 
 any enumeration and arrangement of the Affections. 
 Aristotle does not attempt any such enumeration and 
 arrangement of the Affections : at least not in such a 
 way as to found upon it any arrangement of virtues. 
 And in consequence of this defect in his system, his 
 morality, so far as the description of the Virtues is con- 
 cerned, is quite shapeless and indefinite; — contains no 
 systematic limitation of its extent, or determination of 
 its parts. And this is the more remarkable because 
 he introduces a condition in the definition of Virtue 
 which, if it were applied to a definite body of affections 
 as its materials, must have given a systematic scheme 
 of results. I speak of his maxim, that every virtue is 
 the mean between two extremes — the true medium 
 between too much and too little. I have already re- 
 ferred to the passage in the Great Ethics in which this 
 maxim is introduced. In the Eudemian Ethics he 
 gives a sort of argument in its support: "In every 
 
12 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 thing continuous and divisible there may be excess 
 and defect and medium. Now motion is continuous ; 
 and action is motion. And the medium relative to us 
 is the best condition, for it is that -which science and 
 reason require'. This is manifest," he adds, "both by 
 reasoning and by induction ; for contraries destroy each 
 other; now extremes are contrary both to the opposite 
 extremes and to the mean. And thus, ethical virtue 
 must be concerned with a mean, and must be itself a 
 medium condition." He then gives a triple list of virtues 
 and vices, and this must, I conceive, be Idoked upon as 
 the proof for induction which he had just mentioned. 
 The mode of introducing the subject in the Nicoma- 
 chean Ethics is not much different (ii. z and 6). And 
 in the 7th chapter he speaks of arranging the affec- 
 tions in a diagram. This diagram is however given in 
 a technical form only in the Eudemian Ethics. 
 
 If we were to ask Plato, Why his Virtues are Vir- 
 tues — why they are excellent and wherefore they are to 
 be followed? the answers which he would give would 
 be various in form, but all depending on the same 
 general view. He would say, as in the Fourth Book 
 of the Republic, — that Temperance and Courage arise 
 from placing Desire and Anger under the control of 
 Reason, aud that Reason by its nature ought to govern 
 those other impulses ; — that the right of Reason to go- 
 vern in man is like the right of wise and thoughtful 
 men to govern in a state ; — ^that the ascendancy of Rea- 
 son over Anger and Desire is the harmony, the health of 
 the soul, and that without this health, the soul is sick, 
 is diseased, and the man must be miseiable; — that while 
 the empire of Reason gives us a state resembling a 
 Monarchy or an Aristocracy governed by wise men, 
 the sway of Anger gives us what resembles a Military 
 Aristocracy, and the sway of the mob of our Desires 
 produces a turbulent and lawless Democracy; — which, 
 when one Master Desire obtains unbounded rule, offers 
 us the image of a Tyranny, in which the Tyrant though 
 
 1 Etk. Evdem. ii. 3. 
 
II.] Aristotle's psychology, 13 
 
 uncontrolled is immeasurably miserable. He would 
 offer other arguments, as that in the Sixth Book, that 
 Reason is the light of the mind, the eye of the mind ; — 
 that in the Ninth, that Reason can judge of Pleasure, 
 and of Resentment, and of Superiority of Strength, but 
 that the Love of Pleasure or the Emotion of Resentment 
 or the Love of Superiority have no organ with which 
 they can judge of Reason ; — and again, that the Plea- 
 sures of Desire or Anger are only seeming pleasures, 
 arising from the removal of pain, as a man seems to be 
 high when he has moved from below ; but that the Reason 
 alone judges of the true above and below; — and again, 
 that desire seeks to supply bodily needs with bodily 
 food ; but Reason seeks and finds the supply of intellec- 
 tual need with intellectual realities — realities more real 
 than bodily objects. These latter arguments we find in 
 the Ninth Book of the Republic, given as appendices 
 to the main argument. They are arguments which 
 Plato had already used in the Philehus and in the Gor- 
 gias, and which he could not, it would seem, prevail 
 upon himseK to lay aside ; though the leading argument 
 of the Republic is more simple and convincing. 
 
 Plato's analysis and arrangement of the cardinal 
 virtues naturally led to an arrangement of some of the 
 corresponding vices. The characters which in his ana- 
 logy correspond to the timocratical, oligarchical, de- 
 mocratical and tyrannical man are of course vicious; 
 but they are not, at first, marked by Plato in any dis- 
 tinct and brief manner, a compact ethical phraseology 
 being, as I have said, at that time unformed. We may 
 say that they represent respectively the ambitious, the 
 avaricious, the licentious, and the voluptuous and mi- 
 santhropical. But in the Ninth Book, when he has re- 
 presented Reason, Anger and Desire under the figure 
 of a Man, a Lion, and a Many-headed Brute, he men- 
 tions some especial vices by name. He says (c. xiii.) 
 that Intemperance (licentiousness, axoXaoratveiv,) arises 
 from the many-headed brute being uncontrolled; that 
 Arrogance and Moroseness (au^aSeia and 8ucrKoXia.)'grow 
 up when the lion is not kept in order; that Softness 
 and Cowardice (Tpv<f)7j and fiaXOaKia) come in when the 
 
14 HISTORY OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHT. [lECT. 
 
 lion is not strong enough; that Servility and Cring- 
 ing (KoAaK€ia and dveXevOepio.) arise when the lion-like 
 animal is made subservient to the many-headed brute, 
 and becomes ape rather than lion; that Vulgarity and 
 Meanness (Pavava-ta and x"poTex^"») occui- when the 
 man is too weak to rule the brutes. 
 
 Thus in Plato the enumeration of virtues, and of 
 the corresponding vices, was prescribed by the analysis 
 of man's soul into elements, which Plato had himself 
 given. 
 
 Returning now to Aristotle's more extensive and 
 various attempt at enumeration, we have, in the Eude- 
 mian Ethics (ii. 2), this diagram,: 
 
 Wrathfulness, 
 
 Eashness, 
 
 Impudence, 
 
 Intemperance, 
 
 Envy, 
 
 Gain, 
 
 Prodigality, 
 
 Boasting, 
 
 Flattery, 
 
 Arrogance, 
 
 LuxuriousnesB, 
 
 PompousnesB, 
 
 Ostentation, 
 
 Cunniog, 
 
 Mildness, 
 
 Courage, 
 
 Modesty, 
 
 Temperance, 
 
 Indignation, 
 
 Justice, 
 
 Liberality, 
 
 Truth, 
 
 Friendship, 
 
 Gravity, 
 
 Temperance, 
 
 Magnanimity, 
 
 Dignity in externals. 
 
 Prudence, 
 
 Insensibility (to anger). 
 
 Cowardice. 
 
 Sheepishness. 
 
 Apaliy (to pleasure). 
 
 Spiteful joy. 
 
 Loss. 
 
 IlUberality. 
 
 Mock modesty. 
 
 Hatred. 
 
 Obsequiousness. 
 
 Asceticism. 
 
 Little-mindedness. 
 
 Meanness in externals. 
 
 Folly. 
 
 To these, in the Nicomachean Ethics (11. 7), others 
 are added ; as 
 
 [Bad] Ambition, [Good] Ambition, "Want of Ambition, 
 Cringing, Pleasantry, Churlishness, 
 
 and the distinctions of the others are somewhat ob- 
 scured. Thus Flattery and Cringing (jtoXaKaa and dpc- 
 (jKcia.) are both of them opposed to Sociality in the Nico- 
 machean Ethics ; while in the Eudemian scheme there 
 are two virtues, Sociality (<^i\ta) and Gravity (o-e/tvonjs) 
 which are opposed to these two vices. 
 
 These are indications of the forced and imstable 
 character of this arrangement of virtues and vices, 
 and other indications of the same kind readily offer 
 themselves to us. In several of these instances if we 
 
II.] Aristotle's psychology. 15 
 
 were to have the virtues given, we should, I think, 
 find it impossible to conjecture what are the opposite 
 vices between which it is a mean. How, for example, 
 should we answer this question with regard to the 
 virtue oi Truth 1 "What are the too much and too little 
 between which Truth is a mean ? And do we wonder 
 that we did not guesS the reply to this question, when 
 we are told that Irony, dpioveia, is one of these ex- 
 tremes 1 No doubt this becomes more intelligible if for 
 truth we put plmn dealing or sincerity. Sincerity is 
 a mean, it may be said, between boastfulness, and that 
 irony or mock-modesty by which we disparage our 
 real merits. . But even this mode of illustrating the 
 Aristotelian view shows us how arbitrary and indistinct 
 are those shades of manners and characters which are, 
 in this scheme, enumerated among virtues and vices. 
 
 We may say the same in other instances. What 
 is the virtue which Aristotle calls Nemesis ? It is a 
 mean between ^Sovos, Envy, and an opposite vice 
 which in the Eudemian diagram is marked di/oJw/iov, 
 as having no namej but in the Nicomachean Ethics 
 is eTri)(aipeKaKLa. Even with all this explanation, the 
 virtue in question will hardly occur to our thoughts. 
 We may express Aristotle's view, however, by saying 
 that an honest indignation at the prosperity of the 
 worthless, is distinct on one side from envy which 
 grieves at the prosperity of aU alike, and on the other 
 from spiteful joy at»the success of the worthless. But 
 a collection of such maxims cannot be considered as a 
 list of so many separate virtues. According to this 
 mode of treating the subject the virtues are innumer- 
 able and their definitions and boundaries too vague 
 and complex for thought and language to follow. I 
 speak literally when I say, that the virtues in this 
 scheme would be innumerable; for every epithet 
 which ever was applied in mojal praise would give rise 
 to a virtue. And even with such epithets the list would 
 not be exhausted, since Aristotle constructs virtues 
 by giving special meanings to words, as in the case of 
 Nemesis and others; or discovers virtues which have 
 not yet had names given them; as for instance, a 
 
1 6 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 virtue intermediate between ambition and the want of 
 ambition. 
 
 Although however this arrangement of virtues 
 is fanciful and unphilosophical, it serves as a basis 
 for many very instructive remarks, full of acuteness 
 and knowledge, and it is in consequence of these 
 merits, as I conceive, joined with the reputation of 
 the writer, rather than for its philosophical value, that 
 the Ethics of Aristotle has had its great fame and 
 influence; — an influence which has made parts of its 
 phraseology familiar in moral treatises up to the pre- 
 sent day. 
 
 Among the examples of such phraseology I may 
 mention Aristotle's division of justice into distributive 
 and corrective, which latter is more commonly by other 
 writers called commutative. The former gives to each 
 his due; the latter corrects the incroachments of one 
 person upon another. By a very fanciful analogy he 
 compares the former to geometrical, the latter to 
 arithmetical proportion. The former, he says, makes 
 A's share to B's share as A's merits to B's merits. 
 The latter, when A and B have unequal shares, gives 
 to each the arithmetical mean of the two, and thus 
 restores the equality in which justice consists. It 
 would be difllcult to defend the distinction thus illus- 
 trated : nor is it easy to draw the line between distri- 
 butive and commutative justice; but, as I have said, 
 the distinction is so frequently aeferred to, that no 
 moralist can avoid having it brought under his notice, 
 and Aristotle's fifth book, in which it is contained, is 
 one of the most celebrated parts of the work. 
 
 Thus we see that Aristotle's scheme gives a forced 
 and confused extension of the catalogue of Virtues in 
 the case in which Plato's scheme had given an intelli- 
 gible analysis and distinction. I shall now consider 
 some of the discussions which have arisen from this 
 character of Aristotle's lists. 
 
 Before I quit the Nicomachean Ethics however 
 I wm make a remark on another portion of the book. 
 The sixth book also, concerning the intellectual 
 habits, has been much admired by the followers of 
 
II.] Aristotle's psychology, 17 
 
 Aristotle. The Intellectual Habits are five : — Science, 
 Art, Prudence, Wisdom, and what he calls Nous, 
 which by his explanation, is that habit of the In- 
 tellect by which it apprehends those first principles 
 on which the demonstrations of science are founded 
 (vi. 6). But these distinctions, howeyer exact and 
 important, are not a part of morals, or even of the 
 philosophy of morals, but rather of metaphysics in 
 general. 
 
 I will further consider this subject in a subsequent 
 Lecture, 
 
 M. p. II. 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 Objections to Ajustotle's List of Yirtues. 
 
 OBJECTIONS to the Aristotelian doctrine of the 
 Virtues being each a mean between tv^o ex- 
 tremes, are very old. They were urged by the Pla- 
 tonists. They are discussed by Plutarch'. The 
 objections are taken up by Grotius in his Prolegomena 
 to the De Jure Belli et Fads, where he especially 
 points out the incongruity between the application 
 of the formula to Justice and to the other virtues. 
 And still more recently objections to this part of 
 Aristotle's Ethical Scheme have been the subject of 
 discussion in Germany. Schleiermacher published, first 
 I believe in 1803, Crrundlinien einer KrUik der bisheri- 
 gen Sittenlehre — "Critical Examination of the Doctrine 
 of Morals as hitherto treated." In this work are many 
 expressions condemning, more or less, Aristotle's mode 
 of treating the subject in his Ethics. Among the rest, 
 with reference to the subject of which I have been 
 speaking, the Classification of the Virtues, Schleierma- 
 cher objects that "His Virtues only deserve the name 
 of a Mob, without a Kuler, and not possessing even a 
 probability in favour of their embracing the whole of 
 a moral disposition." This and the like depreciating 
 expressions towards Aristotle were conceived by the 
 Hegelians to be unjust. For they held, with their 
 master, that true Philosophy is contained in the philo- 
 sophies which already exist; that philosophical mo- 
 
 1 De rirtute Moraii, Cap, v. Leips. Ed. Vol. in. p. 211. 
 
LECT. in.] OBJECTIONS TO ARISTOTLE. 1 9 
 
 rality must be sought in the totality of special moral 
 principles; and that in the historical development of 
 the philosophical spirit all earlier and partial systems 
 ■must have a place, as pointing to the last and complete 
 system, — ^that of Hegel. 
 
 In 1827 Michelet, a zealous Berlin Hegelian, pub- 
 lished a little work the object of which was to apply 
 this view to the Ethics of Aristotle. His object, as 
 he describes it, was precisely that which I have repre- 
 sented as the true object of the history of philosophy : 
 . — ^to shew that each acquisition of the human mind 
 remains an imperishable treasure, whose value a later 
 and profounder system of philosophy does not over- 
 look or despise, but is alone able truly to recognize 
 and estimate. And of this indestructible progress he 
 conceived Aristotle's Ethical System to be a fine ex- 
 ample, and therefore made it his business to expound 
 it and to defend it from the too severe critique of 
 Sohleiermacher. 
 
 With regard to the objection which I have just 
 stated, the confused and indefinite nature of the Aris- 
 totelian classification of the virtues, I do not think his 
 reply is very satisfactory. Michelet rebukes Schleier- 
 macher for the expression of "a mob of virtues," 
 which he says is " somewhat unseemly," (etwas unzie- 
 mend,) and attempts to show what the order is which 
 prevails in this assemblage. He distinguishes man's 
 Springs of Action according to the nature of Desires and 
 Impulses which are to be controlled by the Reason; 
 and gives a list of those Springs of Action. Such are 
 the Desire of Preservation, the Desire of Possession, 
 the Desire of Honour, the Impulse of Anger, the 
 Desire of Society, Revenge; and from this system of 
 Impulses he obteins just so many virtues. N'ow to 
 such a system as this, I have no objection to offer. 
 It appears to me to be the best in form; and I am 
 ready to agree with the Hegelians that we shall do 
 well to look upon the previous progress of morality in 
 reference to its tendency to this or a similar system. 
 But when this is offered as a justification of Aristotle's 
 scheme of virtues, I think we cannot help saying that 
 
 2—2 
 
20 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. [lECT, 
 
 there is nothing at all of this principle of arrangement 
 in Aristotle; that it is altogether an invention of his 
 advocate; that it cannot possibly be applied to his 
 scheme; and that to urge such a defence of the Aristo- 
 telian diagram of virtues is to acknowledge in &ct 
 that it is indefensible. 
 
 But let us attend to the detail of the defence. 
 Michelet says the three self-seeking Impulses are — the 
 Impulse of Self-Preservation, of Possession, and of 
 Honour. The first of these is again doubled, as it is 
 Desire of Pleasure or Fear of Pain : and thus we have 
 the two virtues of Temperance and Courage. 
 
 Liberality and Magnificence manifestly are refer- 
 able to the Desire of Possession: and Magnanimity 
 and Love of Honour, to the Desire of Honour: and so 
 we see, says Michelet, that the apparently artless enu- 
 meration of virtues betrays the inward unconscious 
 master of his subject. 
 
 Anger, Love of Society and Revenge, have cor- 
 responding to them the virtues of Gentleness, the 
 three Social Yirtues (Truth, Good-humour and Priend- 
 liness), and the virtue of Justice ; and thus the ethical 
 virtues are exhausted. 
 
 Virtues for Self- {ivSpeia. Courage, 
 
 preservation, ( aa(l>po<r6vri. Temperance. 
 
 Virtues respecting I ^euBepiiriii. Liberality. 
 
 Possession. j^eyoXojr/j^Trfio. Magnificence. 
 
 Virtues respecting \iieya\o:l/vxta. Magnanimity. 
 Honour. \<j>CKoriiiLa.. Love of Honour. 
 
 UX-flBaa. Truth. 
 
 The Social Virtues.^ e&rpairefda. Good-Humour. 
 
 ( ipiKla. friendliness. 
 
 Now in Michelet's explanation I see no account 
 of several of the virtues of Aristotle's scheme, as 
 irpoonys, trc/AvoTT/s, oiScis, ve/ieo-is. But without dwelling 
 upon this, it is evident that if Michelet's account of 
 the spring of human action be complete, all virtues, 
 in any enumeration, however confused, must find their 
 place somewhere or other in his system, but that this 
 does not in the smallest degree show that a given enu- 
 
m.] OBJECTIONS TO ARISTOTLE. 21 
 
 meration is systematic. If Michelet have rightly clas- 
 sified the springs of hiimaii action, all the virtues, 
 (since they have reference to these springs of action,) 
 and Aristotle's virtues among the number, must have 
 places provided for them in Michelet's system j but this 
 does not show any identity, or even correspondence, 
 between the scheme of Aristotle and of Michelet. 
 If Michelet's or if Hegel's system of the springs of 
 action and the consequent distribution of virtues, or if 
 any other, be complete, it must include all previous and 
 imperfect systems, but cannot, by including, merely, 
 justify any one of them. After all that has been 
 said, I think we cannot hold the Aristotelian system 
 of virtues to be any other than arbitrary and formless. 
 What has been hitherto said applies to the ethical 
 virtues, as Michelet remarks. This refers to a distinc- 
 tion in the Aristotelian classification of virtues which 
 I have already mentioned ; and which is one of the 
 most noted parts of it, and is by no means without its 
 value. I mean, the distinction of ethioal and intel- 
 lectual virtues. Thus in the Eudemian Ethics (ii. 2), 
 there are two kinds of virtue, ethical and intellectual ; 
 ()/ [tXv ■qOi.K-q, 1) 8e SiavoijTtKi; ;) " for we praise not only 
 the just but also the intelligent and the wise:" it 
 being thus assumed that we may give the name of 
 Virtue to all those qualities which we praise, upon 
 which principle also Aristotle reasons in other pas- 
 sages. But these intellectual virtues belong to the 
 reason, and not to the ■760s, the disposition. When 
 we describe of what kind a person is as to his dispo- 
 sition (jToio's Tts TO ^6os), we do not say he is wise or 
 clever, but that he is courageous or meek. And the 
 intellectual virtues are enumerated and discussed both 
 in the fifth Book of the Eudemian Ethics, and at the 
 end of the first Book (i. 35) of the Great Ethics. 
 But the most full and complete account of the In- 
 tellectual Virtues is that contained in the Sixth 
 Book of the Nicomachean Ethics (vi. 3), a part of the 
 work much praised by the admirers of Aristotle. The 
 Intellectual Virtues are five— five faculties by which 
 the truth is discerned — namely, Art, Science, Pru- 
 
22 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 dence, Wisdom, Intuition. I give this last term, 
 Intuition, as the representative of Aristotle's term 
 Novs, and I think a little consideration wiU show that 
 this nearly expresses its meaning. " Science," Aristotle 
 says (vi. 6) "is an apprehension of universal and 
 necessary truths. Now all demonstration and all 
 science proceeds from principles. But the first prin- 
 ciples of science cannot be the subject of Science, nor 
 of Art, nor of Prudence : for the matter of Science is 
 demonstrative — ^but Art and Prudence are concerned 
 about contingent things which might be otherwise. 
 Nor is Wisdom the ground of our knowledge of these 
 principles of demonstration; for the wise man himself 
 may require demonstration in some cases. And thus 
 this knowledge of first principles of demonstration, 
 since it cannot be the business of Prudence, Science, or 
 Wisdom, must belong to another faculty, namely, In- 
 tuition." Whatever name we give to the Facvdty by 
 which we perceive first principles (for instance the 
 Axioms of Geometry, and of any other subject), it is 
 plain that that Faculty is here intended. The term 
 Reason is undoubtedly so employed by some philoso- 
 phical writers as to describe this Faculty ; but the term 
 Heason extends so much more widely than this 
 meaning, that it appears better to take a term of a 
 more definite application. 
 
 It is however to be observed, that these Intel- 
 lectual Virtues of Aristotle are not, properly speaking. 
 Virtues at all. They are Virtues in that wider sense 
 of the term, Excellences, or matters of praise, which, 
 as I have already said, Aristotle assumes. But they 
 are not Virtues in the special sense in which Morality 
 requires the term to be used. They are not Duties. 
 We cannot say that we transgress a moral Duty, if we 
 are not wise. The progression from merely practical 
 to purely speculative knowledge which we have in the 
 five terms. Art, Science, Prudence, Wisdom, Intuition 
 — is remarkable enough; but it is no part of morality 
 — not even of the philosophy of morality, but rather 
 of general psychology and metaphysics, as I have 
 already said. 
 
III.] OBJECTIONS TO ARISTOTLE, 23 
 
 Still yre are not to fall into the error of supposing 
 that there are no intellectual Virtues and intellectual 
 Duties. It is plain that Imprudence in moral matters is 
 a violation of Duty, and therefore Prudence is a Virtue. 
 And Aristotle has very properly dwelt at some length 
 upon Prudence ((^povijo-ts). He arranges under it other 
 subordinate habits of the same kind — evjSovXia, a-ivea-K, 
 yviafiri — Deliberation, Intelligence, Justness of thought. 
 The remarks which he makes on each of these subjects 
 are acute and lively, but they do not easily fall into a 
 systematic form, and have not, I think, much affected 
 subsequent systems. 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 Aeistotle on Justice aitd Equitt. 
 
 THEEE is another part of the Ethics of -which the 
 language and the divisions have been extensively 
 adopted in later times. I mean the fifth Book, on 
 Justice. Aristotle's division of Justice into distri- 
 butive and corrective or commutative Justice — Justice 
 in Distribution and Justice in Contracts (t. 3, 4, •n-epl 
 rov ev Suivojuais SikoCov and ircpl tov hf rois (rwaX- 
 \ay ftxunv huadao). These distinctions have been retained 
 in later times, and various attempts have been made to 
 divide Justice into two parts in some way analogous to 
 the meaning of these terms, though not, I think, -with 
 any great clearness or success. Aristotle explains his 
 division by a geometrical illustration. Distributive Jus- 
 tice makes A's share to B's share (of wealth or honour, 
 or the like) as A's claim to B's claim: and is thus a 
 geometrical proportion. Corrective Justice, on the 
 other hand, takes from B to give to A, so that their 
 shares, which have not the equality required by the 
 contract, may be made equal j and thus establishes an 
 arithmetical mean between them. It is not difGlcult to 
 see that these two kinds of proportion would coincide if 
 applied in similar cases : for if A and B have, by con- 
 tract, claims which are as 2 and i, this division is at 
 the' same time the proportion which distributive jus- 
 tice requires and the equaUiy which corrective justice 
 directs. But according to Aristotle's explanation of 
 his own terms, Distributive Justice is rather concerned 
 in establishing the distribution of property, and Cor- 
 rective Justice in restoring it when disturbed by wrong- 
 
LECT. IV.] ARISTOTLE ON EQUITY. 2$ 
 
 doing. He very properly distinguishes Injustice in a 
 large sense in which, it includes in its meaning all 
 violation of law, from Injustice as one of a class of 
 vices co-ordinate with those which we have already 
 spoken of. In this sense, Injustice is wrong done for 
 the sake of gain, when our misconduct arises from 
 the desire of promoting our own profit or honour, or 
 gain in any other form. 
 
 This Fifth Book is also noted for a chapter on the 
 origin and nature of Money, in which Aristotle's ad- 
 mirers find the basis of some of the most important 
 speculations of the economists of modem times. These 
 subjects however do not now concern us. 
 
 But I will briefly notice a quality which Aristotle 
 places as an appendix to Justice; and the more so, in- 
 asmuch as a similar appendix to Justice has been com- 
 monly introduced not only into Morality, but into Law. 
 I speak of the virtue which Aristotle calls iTrieiKeia, and 
 which is commonly translated Equity: a translation 
 which though not, I think, expressing the sense of the 
 Greek word, does very exactly indicate the relation to 
 Justice in the modem system which was intended in 
 the ancient ones. Indeed so close and familiar was 
 this identity, in moral aspect, of hntiKeua. and Equity, 
 that some later writers, in ages when the knowledge 
 of Greek was not very general, appear to have been 
 unable to persuade themselves that there was not an 
 etymological connection between the two. Thomas 
 Aquinas, in his enumeration of virtues, in a part of 
 his celebrated Secwnda Secvndce, in which he is 
 evidently following Aristotle — whether directly or 
 through derivative influence — mentions among his 
 virtues Upicheia, — adding, dicitur ab epi quod est 
 supra et caion quod est justwm,^. As you know, 
 hndnvjo. in its common use means fairness, in oppo- 
 sition to strict justice; or means even a yieldingness 
 which gives up beyond what reasonable equity as well 
 
 > I need not explain the entire ignorance of Greek which this derivation 
 implies. 
 
26 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 as strict justice could require. But in Aristotle's 
 explanation the term is plainly Reasonable Equity ia 
 opposition to strict verbaJ. Law; and the distinction 
 as drawn by liim is really sagacious and valuable. It 
 is, he says, the same as justice, but it is a better kind 
 of justice. " It is not legal right, it is a rectification 
 of legal right. And the reason is, that the law is 
 expressed in wniversal terms; but there are things 
 which it is impossible to express rightly in universal 
 terms. In these cases, the law takes the general con- 
 dition, not being ignorant that it is inaccurate; — and 
 it does rightly, for the inaccuracy is not in the law, 
 nor in the lawgiver, but in the nature of the case. 
 Such is the matter of which practice consists. And 
 thus when the law has expressed its command uni- 
 versally, and something happens which is out of the 
 circuit of the universal expression, it is right that the 
 defect should be supplied; — for this is what the law- 
 giver himself would have done, if he could be con- 
 sulted. And this is the nature of hnaK\<s — a cor- 
 rection of the law when it is defective by reason of its 
 universality;" — and exactly this, we may add, is the 
 nature of Equity. 
 
 These are some of the leading points bearing upon 
 the analysis of the human mind, and the classification 
 of moral qualities, which are contained in the ethical 
 works of Ajdstotle, and which have produced the 
 greatest effect upon succeeding ethical writers. But 
 indeed any amount of extracts from the work which 
 I could give you would not fully exhibit the extent 
 to which aU parts of the Nicomachean Ethics have 
 been familiar to moralists in succeeding times. Almost 
 every sentence has been repeatedly quoted and con- 
 stantly referred to. And this arises partly from a 
 character of the work which belongs especially to 
 Ajistotle. It does not contain a long continuous traia 
 of reasoning, like the Hepublie, and other dialogues 
 of Plato. Almost every part can be detached: and 
 though most of the parts have a technical aspect, they 
 are not so bound together by any logical tie as that 
 they are not intelligible separately. Then the style is 
 
IV.] ARISTOTLE ON EQUITY. 27 
 
 eminently close and pointed: and to those who have 
 mastered the author's phraseology, luminous and for- 
 cible, even in the technical parts; — ^while there are 
 constantly occurring sagacious and acute remarks, not 
 those of a theorist but those of a man of the world, 
 which must strike and please every reader. I do not 
 know whether it will appear strange to any of you to 
 say so, but it seems to me that the great character of 
 Aristotle's style is its liveliness. Moral maxims, me- 
 taphors, anecdotes, allusions, quotations, succeed each 
 other with a rapidity which implies great activity in 
 the writer, and puts the mind of the reader in action 
 to follow the quick succession of sudden turns. I will 
 read a chapter to exemplify this (Mco-m. Eth. vii. 6). 
 
 " Incontinency of anger appears a lesser deformity 
 than incontinency as to pleasure. The reasons of this 
 are, that anger seems to listen to reason, though it 
 does not hear it distinctly; like officious servants, 
 who before they have received their orders fuUy, are 
 in too great a hurry to execute them, and therefore 
 often do it wrong; and dogs which bark at the least 
 noise, before they know whether it proceeds from 
 a friend or an enemy. In the same manner anger, 
 without waiting for reason's last commands, is precipi- 
 tated through the warmth and quickness of its nature, 
 into over-hasty acts of inconsiderate vengeance; con- 
 cluding, at every real or supposed insult, that the 
 author of it is worthy of indignation and punishment. 
 The conclusions of anger are indeed often erroneous; 
 but sensuality, without stopping to draw any conclu- 
 sions at all, at the first prospect of pleasure, rushes to 
 enjoyment; it is therefore the more degrading imper- 
 fection of the two, since the sensualist yields to mere 
 appetite, whereas the angry man is led astray by the 
 appearance at least of reason. Besides this, it is to be 
 observed, that all our faults seem to be more or less 
 entitled to indulgence and pardon, in proportion as 
 they are more or less natiu:al, or more or less common. 
 But transports of anger are far more natural than 
 excesses in criminal pleasure : the former seem to be 
 congenial to some races of men; as in the family of 
 
28 HISTOKY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 him who apologized for beating his father by saying, 
 that he beat my grandfather, and my grandfather, the 
 fiither before him; and this little boy, pointing to his 
 son, will beat me when he is able; the fault runs in 
 our blood. Another, when dragged by his son to the 
 door, desired him to stop there, because he had only 
 dragged his own father thither. Anger besides is 
 open and undesigning; but the passion of voluptuous- 
 ness is artful, and therefore unjust. The cestus of 
 Venus is pregnant with wiles. 
 
 'In this was every art and every charm 
 To win the wisest and the coldest warm ; 
 Fond love, the gentle vow, the gay desire. 
 The kind deceit, the still reviving fire. 
 Persuasive speech and more persuasive sighs. 
 Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes '.' 
 
 The incontinency of voluptuousness is therefore worse 
 than that of anger, since it more nearly approaches to 
 deliberate wickedness." 
 
 You will recollect that I have in this lecture con- 
 sidered Aristotle's ethical doctrines only with refer- 
 ence to the first branch of moral philosophy of which 
 I spoke : — ^the analysis of the springs of human action, 
 and the classification of virtues. The other provinces 
 of the subject, so far as he is concerned in their pro- 
 gress, remain to be treated of; and these are perhaps 
 more important portions of morality than those now 
 discussed. But before quitting this part of the sub- 
 ject, I may observe that Aristotle's Bhetoric is a work 
 which throws great light upon his moral speculations. 
 In the Bhetoric we find the restdts of the Ethics 
 summed up as it were for the advocate's use in a 
 brief and pointed form. Thus in Book i. c. 9, we 
 have brief definitions of Justice, Courage, Temper- 
 ance, Liberality, Magnanimity, Pi-udence. In Book 
 II. we have in like manner definitions of Anger and 
 Mildness, of Love and Hate, of Fear, of Shame, of 
 Benevolence, of Compassion, of Indignation, of Envy, 
 
 1 IKad, xiT. V. 247, et seq. 
 
IV.] ARISTOTLE ON EQUITY. 29 
 
 of Emulation. Also in Book i. c. 13, is a very re- 
 markable development of the opinions concerning 
 Law, and Natural Law as distinguished from Written 
 Law. We have here a passage which is, I think, the 
 basis of most which were afterwards written con- 
 cerning a universal, eternal, immutable, natural Law. 
 " Right and wrong are defined by Laws of two kinds. 
 One is Law proper ; the other, universal Law. That 
 is Law proper which is settled as law by each com- 
 munity for itself; that is universal which is according 
 to nature. For there is, as all feel, an inward persua- 
 sion (o fuivTeuovTaC ti iravres) by nature, a universal 
 right and wrong, without any covenant or agreement 
 being made among men to that effect. As the Arir- 
 tigorte of Sophocles is made to say that it was right 
 in her to bury her brother Polynices, though forbidden, 
 as being right by nature. 
 
 "For this is not a law of yesterday, 
 But an eternal; nor its rise ia known." 
 
LECTUKE V. 
 Aristotle and Plato — On the Kule of Life. 
 
 IN a former lecture I spoke of the writings of Ari- 
 stotle, so far as they relate to the first of the divi- 
 sions into -which I distributed the subject of Moral 
 Philosophy; namely, the analysis of the human mind 
 or soul, and the classification of virtues thereupon 
 founded. I stated that though there is not iu Ari- 
 stotle the same continuous reasoning ■which we find 
 in Plato's dialogues, nor perhaps any points estab- 
 lished by reasoning so prominent as the Platonic doc- 
 trine of the virtues which result fi-om the control 
 exercised by the reason over Desire and Anger, yet 
 that there is in Aristotle a vast number of definitions 
 and distinctions and maxims which have commonly 
 attracted the attention of moralists in later times by 
 their acuteness of thought and pointedness of expres- 
 sion. These merits appear most conspicuously in the 
 province of which I have hitherto spoken, to which 
 definitions and distinctions more especially belong. 
 That part of the subject to which I now proceed is 
 more eminently a matter of reasoning, and is indeed 
 the field in which the antagonist reasonings of op- 
 posing schools peculiarly come into conflict : I mean, 
 as I have already described this second portion of 
 Moral Philosophy, the determiuation of the rule of 
 human action ; or, as it may otherwise be described, 
 the answers to the questions, What is Virtue? what 
 is our Duty 1 what is Eight 1 To supply satisfactoiy 
 answers to these questions has been the point to 
 
LECT. v.] THE RULE OF LIFE. 3 1 
 
 which moralists in every age have directed their 
 efforts : and according to the different answers which 
 they have given they have divided themselves into 
 sects and schools, and carried on from generation to 
 generation the war of argumentation. We have al- 
 ready seen, in the dialogues of Plato, opposite asser- 
 tions with regard to such questions come into view, 
 and the opposition which was there manifested in a 
 crude and juvenile form is afterwards matured into 
 a more fixed and coherent shape. We must now 
 consider what place Aristotle holds in the progress of 
 speculation on this subject. 
 
 Aristotle begins his Ethical speculations by speak- 
 ing of Happiness — 'EvSaifi.ovia — as the end of human 
 action, and prepares us to expect that the rule of 
 human action will be determined by him from a con- 
 sideration of the nature of this end. A large portion 
 of the first Book of the Nicomachean Ethics is on 
 this subject. He considers what is good in general ; 
 what is the good of man ; and in Chap. iv. what is 
 the greatest good (Trept tov aKpordrov dyaOov), which he 
 says is universally allowed to be identical with happi- 
 ness. In the fifth chapter he sets himself to prove 
 that happiness is not pleasure merely, nor wealth 
 merely, nor virtue merely. Not virtue merely, he 
 says, for a man may possess an inactive virtue, and 
 may sleep through life without applying himself to 
 practical action : besides, he may be afflicted with evils 
 and misfortunes. But having come to this conclusion 
 here, in the seventh chapter he says that happiness, 
 or the highest human good, is the activity of the 
 mind according to virtue. And thus the determina- 
 tion of the rule of life is made to depend upon vir- 
 tue, and in order to become definite requires a deter- 
 mination of what virtue is. 
 
 What then, according to Aristotle, is the true 
 idea of Virtue? I have already spoken of his maxim 
 that every virtue is a medium between two extremes : 
 but this is not a description of virtue in general 
 which can answer our purpose in the present stage 
 
32 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 of our enquiry. What is the nature of the extremes 
 to which vice tends 1 what is the faculty by which this 
 deviation is to be controlled, by which the mean is to 
 be sought and found? Plato would answer that it is 
 the Desires, the Affections, which tend to break their 
 due bounds, and that the Season restrains, subdues 
 and directs them; and that inasmuch as she does not 
 annihilate their energy, but only reduces them, to 
 obedience and guides them aright, there is a condition 
 of feebleness and inertness of the Desires and Affec- 
 tions which she excludes, as well as their insubordi- 
 nate vehemence. And thus the Platonic idea of the 
 constitution and good government of the soul would 
 be the foundation of the Aristotelian formula of the 
 mediocrity of virtue. 
 
 But is this Aristotle's view of the nature of virtue? 
 I think it is. Though I do not know that he any- 
 where expresses it very formally, he implies it in lus 
 expressions very constantly. Thus in the 7th chapter 
 (Book I.) he says that the proper life of man cannot 
 be one depending merely upon his vegetative powers, 
 nor upon sensation merely, nor even upon desire j for 
 all these he has in common with brutes; it must be 
 a life accordiag to reason. 
 
 And in the 13th chapter, where he gives an ac- 
 count of the parts of the soij, he says there is a part 
 which is not reason, but which obeys reason; ob- 
 viously implying that this is the proper and normal 
 condition of the soul. It may happen, he says, as in 
 paralytic bodies, so in the mind, that the inferior 
 powers refuse to obey the reason; but this is a state 
 of disease. And in the Eudemian Ethics (n. i) he 
 says, the virtue of man must contain Beason (Xoyio-- 
 (lov), and command, and act; but the reason governs 
 the desires and affections. And in the definition of 
 virtue as a mean again, it is a mean apurfuvrf \6y<a 
 jcai fc)s d (ftpovi/jioii opia-eie (ll. 6), "defined by reason 
 and as a reasonable man would define it." And thus I 
 conceive that Aristotle's fundamental conception of 
 the nature of virtue is the same with that of Plato, 
 
V.J THE RULE OF LIFE. 33 
 
 although he has not dwelt with any distinctness upon 
 this conception, or expressed it in a definition; but 
 has rather taken it for granted, and attempted to carry 
 the determinative process further. 
 
 But did Aristotle, then, agree with Plato as to 
 the supreme rule of human action? Is there no 
 modification introduced by the new mode in -which 
 the Eule is expressed? Does it come to the same 
 thing to say as Plato says, that the Eule of human 
 life is Virtue, and that Virtue is where Eeason con- 
 trols and directs Desire and AflFectionj and to say 
 as Aristotle says, the Eule of life is to seek Happi- 
 ness, and that Happiness requires Virtue; it being 
 understood that Virtue is Eeason controlling and 
 directing Desire and Affection? Are the Platonic 
 and the Aristotelian Morality thus identical? To 
 this I reply, that they are not : and that Aristotle by 
 the new form in which he presented the Eule of Life, 
 was led to alter it materially, and to divest it of its 
 pure Platonic character. For when he had once 
 abstracted from human action its universal end, 
 Happiness, and made this, as an end, a separate sub- 
 ject of contemplation, he no longer dared, like Plato, 
 to identify the tendency arising from the true rela- 
 tion of internal principles with the relation deter- 
 mined by the external object. He no longer dared 
 to say with Plato that the virtuous man is neces- 
 sarily happy, whatever be his external circumstances. 
 When Happiness was thus taken out of the soul itself 
 and made an object external to it — taken out of the 
 bosom and placed before the eyes — the way to it as 
 pointed out simply by the soul within no longer ap- 
 peared so sure and plain; the external object, happi- 
 ness, became entangled with other external objects, 
 wealth and honour and children and long life. This 
 difficulty of holding the old doctrine in the new form 
 operates so sharply, that it induces Aristotle to ex- 
 tend his definitipn of Happiness. Happiness is, he 
 says, the activity of the soul in the way of virtue, and 
 in a complete life (e'v )8mo rcXciii), Eth. Nic. 1. 7). This 
 appendage, "in a complete life," most significantly 
 
 M, P. II. 3 
 
34 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 points out to us how loosely Aristotle held the neces- 
 sary connection of happiaess and virtue. It is appa- 
 rently an attempt to avoid the rigorous and self- 
 denying aspect of the Platonic doctrine, and to 
 present morality in a form in which she would not 
 immediately repel the mere practical man or the 
 mere frivolous talker — the Thrasymachus, or Pole- 
 marchus, or Glaucon of his time. He wished to be, 
 as he says, practical and popular in his mode of 
 treating his subject. 
 
 But what is the result of thus sacrificing the con- 
 sistency of theoretical views to the habits of popular 
 discourse ? The definition, and with it the whole sys- 
 tem, became altogether incoherent : — incapable of being 
 followed into any conceivable consequences, or forming 
 a systematic whole. The description of Happiness, with 
 this addition, can no longer supply a Rule of Life. 
 How are we to act? We are to aim at Virtue, and at 
 a Complete Life. And a Complete Life includes, as 
 Aristotle himself explains, a certain competency in 
 property, it includes friends, honours, children, and 
 the like. If virtue poiat one way, and the complete- 
 ness of our life so far as property, for instance, is con- 
 cerned, point another, which course are we to take? 
 Plainly Aristotle's account of the end, the supreme 
 good of life, does not enable us to answer this question. 
 The definition of Happiness ceases to supply to us a 
 Rule of action ; for which purpose it was introduced, 
 and for which purpose mainly Morality requires us to 
 define this conception. 
 
 And what reason does he give for this appendage 
 to the definition of Happiness ? It must be introduced 
 he says, "For one swallow does not make a spring, 
 nor one day : and so one day or any short time can- 
 not entitle us to pronounce any one happy," (i. 7). 
 And to the same effect he discusses (i. 10) the saying 
 of Solon, that no one can be called happy before his 
 death. It is plain that by taking such arguments 
 into account he utterly destroys the value of his moral 
 principle as a Rule of Life. He removes the deter- 
 mination of our acts from an internal to an external 
 
■v.] THE RULE OF LIFE. 35 
 
 tribunal. To seek happiness is an intelligible Rule 
 for me, if I am taught how to form a true idea of 
 happiness in my own mind; but if I am to consider 
 •what I must do in order that the world, or even that 
 Solon himself, may call me a happy man, — may eudcd- 
 monize me — the Rule becomes altogether arbitrary, 
 precarious, and variable: it depends upon Solon's 
 judgment of me, and my judgment of Solon's judg- 
 ment, both of which may be wrong. 
 
 The objection which I thus make to the scheme 
 of Aristofle's Morality, as far as it depends upon his 
 definition of Virtue, has also, like other objections 
 which I have already mentioned, been the subject of 
 controversy in Germany between the admirers and 
 the critics of the philosopher. Schleiermacher, in 
 the Critical Enquiry into the Doctrine of Morality as 
 hitherto treated, which I have already referred to, 
 says, "Happiness or the Supreme Good is in Aristotle 
 a lawless accumulation and mutable mass — a mere 
 aggregate. It contains two component parts, easily 
 separable; and this separability the Epicureans and 
 the Stoics practically proved ; for they took the sepa- 
 rate parts, and made each respectively into the whole 
 of Happiness; — ^the Stoics, Virtue alone; the Epicu- 
 reans, Pleasure and external goods. And this inco- 
 herence arises from Aristotle's having had no true 
 apprehension of the peculiar method of Plato." And 
 again, "Aristotle was induced to reckon external 
 goods as a part of happiness, pa/rtly because he could 
 not bring himself to recognize moral worth in the 
 repose of the moral disposition, but only in the move- 
 ment of action ; and, as, according to the way in which 
 he connects morals with Politics, all action can only 
 be action in political society, there is required for this 
 action a sphere of activity of a certain extent, and 
 external means; — and partly again because he could 
 not finally grasp this moral value at a given moment, 
 and so contemplate it, but only in the uninterrupted 
 habit of a protracted time." — And again, " the con- 
 ception of a Good is altogether perverted by his 
 reckoning external goods among goods; for in this 
 
 3—2 
 
36 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 way he was led to hold that the moral power is in- 
 sofficient to the complete attainment of the external 
 End of Action." 
 
 Michelet offers answers to these objections. But 
 his reply to the principal one appears to me not to 
 be very clear and satisfactory to a reader not be- 
 longing to the Hegelian pale. "How," he says, "is 
 Aristotle to be freed from this accusation; from this 
 manifest contradiction 1 How are the two parts of 
 the Dissertation, time's ivipyeia Kar apenjv and ev )8t<i) 
 TcXeio) to be combined ? In this way," he replies. " Ari- 
 stotle in one case is looking to the inward element, 
 the essence of Happiness; that is, the virtuous dis- 
 position ; in the other he is looking at its manifestation 
 in the external world. In this latter case, undoubt- 
 edly, the simple conception of self-sufficingness and 
 completeness is spun out into the extent of time. 
 And although the appearance of Happiness may be 
 disturbed in any way by the want of external goods, 
 yet in its conception it is an eternal and unchangeable 
 thing." 
 
 He pursues this view in a more technical manner, 
 and adds (i. 46), " Aristotle is quite consistent in re- 
 garding the outward means of Virtue as Goods. They 
 are in harmony with the inner Good, and so to speak, 
 its last manifestation : for by the Means is the Eud 
 made manifest, and these means must, in so far as 
 they are truly such, carry upon their face the nature 
 and quality of the End. It was reserved for the abs- 
 traction of later times, and their disuniting habits of 
 thought, to break up this harmony which exists in 
 Aristotle, and to set apart each side of the combina- 
 tion—Virtue by the Stoics, External Good by the 
 Epicureans. When these things are once separated 
 in the Abstraction, the unity of their inward bein" 
 can no longer be recognized, and their connection be° 
 comes loose and arbitrary. Aristotle in a true specu- 
 lative spirit keeps fast hold of this unity of the in- 
 ward and outward, for he considers pleasure as a thing 
 immanent in activity; and expresses this speculative 
 connection of inward and outward Goods in a simple 
 
v.] THE RULE OP LIFE. 37 
 
 and artless manner, by calling the virtuous man the 
 friend of the Gods, endowed by them with the greatest 
 Goods; and saying that the Gods will make the 
 thoughtful wise man partaker of the highest pleasure 
 and happiness, such as they themselves only enjoy, 
 because in him they love themselves." (He here 
 refers to the conclusion of Nic. x. 8). 
 
 Now whatever truth there may be in this account 
 of the Conception of Happiness for other purposes, the 
 explanation does not remove the difficulty which I 
 have already pointed out, that by this combination 
 of two elements, which, as they present themselves in 
 common life, are detached and independent, the concep- 
 tion can no longer be made the foundation of the Kule 
 of Life; and we are left without any certain guide 
 to such a rule. And accordingly there is, I think, 
 no means of establishing such a rule given in Ari- 
 stotle's Morality; and he himself never attempts to 
 decide any questions which depend upon such a rule 
 being attainable. 
 
 The great lesson which moralists are to learn 
 from Aristotle's account of Happiness, is, as appears to 
 me, this : — that our conception of happiness is merely 
 this; — that happiness is the highest, ultimate, complete 
 aim of our action : and that, this being the essential 
 part of the conception, we cannot extract out of it aliy 
 Eule of action without introducing some other con- 
 ception which has reference, either to our internal 
 constitution, or our relation to other men and things. 
 And thus the term Happiness, as the Supreme Good, 
 may serve very well to state moral questions ; but can 
 be of little or no use in solving them. That Ari- 
 stotle's conception of Happiness is merely what I have 
 mentioned, the Supreme Good — the ultimate end of 
 human action, to which all other goods are only sub- 
 servient, and which if supposed to be attained, suffices 
 for every thing, — is manifest to any reader of the first 
 Book of the Ethics. It coincides also with the account 
 of Oood given in the Rhetoric, where, as I have said, 
 the results of ethical discussions are summed up for 
 rhetorical practice. " Good" he says, "may be defined 
 
38 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 as that whicli 13 to be chosen on its own account, and 
 on account of which we choose other things" {Rhet. 
 I. 6). But here too by his account of happiness, we 
 see how difficult it would be for him or his follow- 
 ers to use it as the basis of a moral Rule. One of 
 the definitions coiucides with the notion I have just 
 mentioned — avrapKaa iflnj<i — what suffices for the 
 purposes of life; another, euirpaila jj-er dperrj^, pro- 
 sperity with virtue, (i. 5), shows again that virtue was 
 only a part of his conception; and this becomes more 
 evident when he resolves prosperity into its parts 
 (l. 5). These are euyiveia — eureicvia, Koi ■jroX.vrcKvCa — 
 wAoCtos — evSo^Ca — ri/ii; — vyCeia — evyrjpia — 5roA.T)^tA.ia — 
 evTvxfa, — dpe-nj: — ^fair lineage — a prosperous and large 
 family — ^wealth — ^good name — honours — ^health — old 
 age coming mildly — troops of friends — good luck — 
 and virtue. 
 
 It is true these descriptions in the Rhetoric are 
 not' given as dogmas, but as hypotheses on which a 
 writer or speaker is to proceed for the purposes of per- 
 suasion; but it is evident that those descriptions 
 which, in the case of each conception, are put first, 
 really are the residts of his ethical speculations, and 
 are dwelt upon and applied in a manner which would 
 have been absurd if the author had supposed them 
 to be false. Indeed this same hypothetical form of 
 expression is also used in the Ethics; eoro), "let it be 
 assumed, <fcc." 
 
 There is another of the points criticized by Schleier- 
 macher, on which I may say a word of Michelet's 
 answer, sruce it carries us to the next part of the 
 subject of Moral Philosophy, namely Polity. Miche- 
 let says, iu reply to Schleiermacher's remark, that 
 Aristotle conceives no action but political action — 
 that if political be taken in our modem sense, this 
 accusation is quite baseless. For the State now has 
 little regard to the moral frame of mind of its citi- 
 zens, and only requires the loyalty of their actions. 
 But the democratic constitution of Greece rested 
 solely, as Montesquieu says, upon the notion of Virtue; 
 — ^referring to the well-lmown maxim of the Hsprit des 
 
v.] THE RULE OF LIFE. 39 
 
 Loix — that " the principle of a Democracy is Virtue, 
 of a Monarchy, Honour." " But to Aristotle, possessed 
 by the thought of the moral political life of his nation, 
 it is not indifferent in what view men act, but on the 
 contrary, this is a main point. He, like Plato, looks 
 upon the State not as merely a power exercising 
 restraint and establishing Rights, — jural Eights — but 
 also as the promoter and preserver of Morals and 
 "Virtues. And thus these philosophers had not advanced 
 to the separation of Morality and Legality, in the 
 sense in which Legality disregards motives. And so 
 Aristotle makes the good education of the youth a 
 main business of the State ; and though he does not, 
 like Plato, connect Morality and Polity so that they are 
 identical, he still recognizes their essential relation." 
 
 "It cannot be then," Michelet says, "in the way 
 in which he has connected Morals and Politics, that 
 Aristotle had no proper apprehension of the Method of 
 Plato : for in the philosophers of antiquity moral and 
 civil life pass into one another; and especially in 
 Plato, who makes the Rulers the perpetual Educators 
 of the Citizens, and does not allow the Citizens to take 
 a single step, even marriage, &c. without the direction 
 of the Rulers. That the two philosophers unite so 
 closely these two Sciences, instead of being a mistake, 
 shows a deep insight into the essence of the Greek 
 States. The earlier Moralists, the Cynics and the 
 Cyrenaics, had not yet elevated themselves to the Idea 
 of the State; and by the later, the Stoics and Epicu- 
 reans, this Harmony which thus appears in Plato and 
 Aristotle, was resolved back into the Self-sufScingness 
 of the Wise Man, including itself in itself, and wrap- 
 ping himself up in his Virtue ; which, when developed 
 in the Roman "World, had merely a negative relation 
 to the State, because it despaired of a political life 
 consonant to reason." 
 
 These appear to me to be very true and appro- 
 priate remarks, very fit to be borne in mind when 
 we proceed to Aristotle's and Plato's political specula- 
 tions, which must be our next subject of consideration. 
 
LECTTJEE VI, 
 Abistotle on Eights — Plato's Polity. 
 
 BEFOEE I turn to the political subject, I will 
 notice a point treated of in the ethical works, 
 which has a relation to politics, namely, the rela- 
 tion between Morality and Laws, or more precisely, 
 between Natural Law and Positive Law. This is, 
 in reality, one of the cardinal points of moral sys- 
 tems, and is a matter which has continued to embar- 
 rass and confuse moral reasoners up to the present 
 time. If Aristotle have thrown any distinct light 
 upon this question, he must be considered as having 
 thereby made a valuable contribution to ethics. I 
 will give the purport of passages in which he discusses 
 this point. In the Nic. Eth. (v. 8) he s'peaks thus: 
 " Eights (Political Eights, to -n-okiTiKov Blkouov) are of 
 two kinds, natural and legal (to /iev <j>xxn.Kdv, to Se 
 vo/ufjiov). That is natural which has everywhere the 
 same force, and does not depend upon convention; 
 that is legal (posUive law, in modem phrase) which 
 is at first indifferent, and may be one way or another : 
 as, that a mina only shall be required for the ransom 
 c£ a prisoner; and particular laws, as that Brasidas 
 shall be honoured with heroic worship; and all that 
 comes in the shape of decrees or resolutions. But 
 some think that all rights are of this kind ;" namely, 
 mere matters of positive institution. This is precisely 
 the point of difficulty. "For, they urge, what is 
 natural is immutable, and has everywhere the same 
 force: thus fire bums here and in Persia alike: but 
 
LECT. VI.] ARISTOTLE ON RIGHTS. 41 
 
 rights, they say, are various and changeable. But 
 this is not so," he says. " Things which are natu- 
 ral may yet be susceptible of change — at least in 
 this our world — (for I will not deny that among the 
 Gods in heaven what is natural is unalterable) — and 
 ' yet some things are natural and some are not. We 
 can see plainly what things, which are susceptible of 
 change, are natural, and what are not natural but 
 matters of institution and compact. The same dis- 
 tinction is observable in other things. The right hand 
 is naturally stronger, yet all men might have been 
 ambidexter." 
 
 " With regard to mattei-s of convention,'' he goes 
 on to say, " they are regulated by man's interests, like 
 the measures of wine and corn in different places. 
 And thus the rights which are not natural, but of 
 human institution merely, are not the same every- 
 where; for the political constitutions are different. 
 But there is one natural constitution which is the 
 best." . 
 
 I confess I do not see in this passage any solution 
 of the difficulty which so obviously presents itself : 
 ^^iow can we assert that there are universal natural 
 rights, when rights are different in every different 
 community? — If we look at the Greater Ethics for 
 the corresponding passage, we find the argument a 
 little more fully given (i. 34). After his illustration 
 about the right hand, he says : " Even if we were all to 
 practise our left hands so that we could use them like 
 the right, still the right is better than the left. That 
 the thing has undergone a change does not make it 
 cease to be natural. If for the most part and at most 
 times the left is the left hand and the right the right, 
 it is naturally so. And so with regard to natural 
 rights, it does not follow because they can be changed 
 by our practice that therefore they are not natural 
 rights. That which is a right for the most pa/rt is 
 plainly a natural right." 
 
 Now this is, as appears to me, quite intelligibley 
 and is an attempt to solve the difficulty which has. 
 been, in substance, often repeated in subsequent times. 
 
42 HISTORY OF MOBAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 It is an appeal to the general consent of nations in 
 favour of the natural character of certain rights. Those 
 rights which are found to obtain in all nations, or in 
 all with few exceptions, are held to be natural. But 
 it does not appear to me that this is a solution of the 
 difficulty, or even a remark of any value. If natural 
 rights are to be recognized by their prevailing in most 
 nations, we shall find it impossible to sanction any 
 distinction between natural and conventional rights; 
 for what amount of prevalence are we to require for 
 the first class? According to this account of the 
 matter, there is a gradation from the one class to the 
 other so entirely unbroken, that it is impossible to 
 draw any line or to preserve any distinction. What 
 kind of right has not been rejected in great bodies of 
 nations. Is a man's right to his own person, his own 
 limbs, his own labour, a natural right ? Surely if any 
 right be natural this must be so. And yet this right 
 has been denied, and unhappily is still denied, over 
 wide portions of the earth'^ surface, that is, wherever 
 slavery is established; — in almost all the old world in 
 old times ; in. a large portion of the new world even in 
 our own days. And if we cannot tell whether personal 
 freedom is a natural or a conventional right, how can 
 we say, with Aristotle, that it is easy to decide what 
 rights are natural and what are conventional? And 
 the same may be said of all other rights. Is private 
 property a natural right ? This again is so, if there be 
 any natural rights, and Aristotle himself has done 
 much to prove it so, in another place and on other 
 grounds. Yet how far is the right of private property 
 from universal prevalence! It was contrary to the 
 law at Sparta. It was excluded in Plato's Republic. 
 It is limited so that it may be reduced to nothing by 
 the power of the Sovereign in a Despotism, by taxes 
 and the fear of the people in Democracies. Is marriage 
 a natural right? Polygamy, a most wide-spread insti- 
 tution, divests women, in a great measure, of the 
 civil and social position which belongs to marriage as 
 a condition invested with rights; and the variations 
 which obtain in the conjugal relation in different 
 
VI.] ARISTOTLE ON RIGHTS. 43 
 
 countries leave us hardly any room to reason upon in 
 their agreement. Or at least, it is not the mere Fact 
 of actual agreement of institutions in. different countries 
 which must be the basis of our reasoning on this matter, 
 but their agreement in that which we, from our know- 
 ledge of human nature, its springs of action and their 
 operation, see to be a thing in which they must agree. 
 If indeed there be rights which are not only universal 
 among men, anomalies excepted, but also necessary 
 conditions of human being where its faculties are 
 unfolded, these may be considered as natural rights. 
 And the way in which I think we may conveniently 
 express this, is that the Conception of each of the 
 rights of which this is true belongs to the Idea of 
 Humanity, while the Definition of this Conception 
 is a matter belonging to the domain of things, not 
 of Ideas, — of practice, not of speculation; — is given by 
 the historical career and institutions of each country, 
 and consequently may be different in each. 
 
 But in another place, Aristotle has proved pri- 
 vate property to be a natural right, so far as is done 
 by proving it to be a necessary condition of man's 
 social existence. I speak of his refutation of that 
 part of Plato's institutions in his ideal Eepublic in 
 which the philosopher prohibits private property and 
 establishes a community of goods. Aristotle [Polit. 
 II. 3) argues against this arrangement with great force. 
 It would, he says, destroy the pleasure which we have 
 in thinking anything our own. It would destroy the 
 pleasure of bestowing anything upon our friends, or our 
 companions, or on deserving persons. There could be 
 no such virtue as liberality. Socrates was deceived. 
 He took for granted that the union of his citizens 
 could not be too intimate; whereas in reality this 
 union carried beyond certain limits .would prove the 
 destruction of the commonwealth. "Symphony is 
 good," he adds, illustrating the subject by a reference 
 to music, an art so familiar to his countrymen, " and 
 metre is good ; not symphony when it becomes iden- 
 tity of note; nor metre when it is the mere repetition 
 of the same beat (/Satrts)." 
 
44 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 The necessity of the Eight of Private Property has 
 been put in a somewhat more general and demonT 
 strative form in modern writers, but Aristotle's argu- 
 ment, expanded and pursued, is involved in such de- 
 monstrations. The proof has been thus stated. Man, 
 in order to act at aU, must have something to act 
 upon and to act with. His actions take place in a 
 world of things, and affect those things, and he must 
 have some fixed relation, some connection, with a por- 
 tion of these things, in order that his actions may be 
 referred to him. He must have something which he 
 can take, which he can give, which he can use, which 
 he can destroy, which he can preserve, increase, move, 
 in order that he may perform such actions as taking, 
 giving, using, destroying and the Hke, at all. If no- 
 thing is his, he is nothing; at least no independent 
 thing, however much he may be a member of a large 
 organized body. And thus, he is no moral agent on 
 this supposition. But though the argument in this 
 form is more general and abstract, it is more intel- 
 ligible and convincing to a common reader in the form 
 in which Aristotle puts it; and at any rate, to have 
 the aa-gumeut put in the popular and practical shape 
 in which it stands in The Politics, was a valuable step 
 towards the proof of the doctrine that the Eight of 
 Private Property is a necessary element of man's 
 moral condition. 
 
 Of course there may be urged arguments of the 
 same kind to show the necessity of Marriage, as those 
 which show the necessity of Property : and Aristotle 
 argues against the community of wives and of children 
 in the Platonic Eepublic as he does against the com- 
 munity of goods. The arguments are obvious and are 
 forcible. I shall not dwell upon them. Man without 
 property, without family, withoiit freedom to act and 
 to choose his line of action, is not man, the moral 
 agent, with which our morality, or any intelligible 
 morality, is concerned. Man in such a condition — what 
 has he to care for? to aim at? to do? He has to pro- 
 mote the hypothetical good of a State with which he 
 is not concerned by any ordinary human ties. Why 
 
vi.] Plato's polity. '45 
 
 should he do it? Aristotle very properly urges this 
 consideration. " Even the governors of the Socratic 
 commonwealth," he asija, (Folit. ii. 3), "subjected to 
 so many privations and bound to so many hard duties, 
 would not deserve to be called happy : and if happi- 
 ness does not belong to them, can we expect to find it 
 among the peasants and artisans? Socrates indeed 
 says that it is the business of a legislator to consult, 
 not the good of any particular class of men, but of the 
 whole State: he forgets that the whole cannot be 
 happy if the greater part, or all the parts, or at least 
 some, are not happy. Happiness is not like number, 
 where the whole may be even though the parts are 
 odd." 
 
 It will be observed that Aristotle in this criticism 
 regards Plato's Dialogues on the Republic as a pro- 
 posal for a Political Constitution in a State, and not 
 merely as an Analogical Image by which the consti- 
 tution of the Human Soul is to be illustrated; which 
 latter is the view we formerly took of it. And, in- 
 deed, taking into account Plato's own expressions, and 
 the manner in which in the Greek Idea, political and 
 moral life were inseparably connected, it cannot be 
 doubted, I conceive, that the political theory, as well 
 as the moral proof, belonged to Plato's intention. It 
 is true, that the Dialogues on the Laws are more 
 distinctly and expressly a proposal for a political con- 
 stitution; and in this the community of wives and of 
 possessions is rejected, and marriage is reckoned one 
 of the fundamental points of the State; although ever 
 here the liberty of individual action is much restrained. 
 But we may consider, as an explanation of the relation 
 between the two Polities — that of the Republic and 
 that of the Laws, — some passages in the latter work, 
 I refer especially to a passage in the fifth Book of the 
 Laws (v. 9, 10), where, after having delivered the general 
 Proem to the Code which his legislator is to promul- 
 gate (a Proem which is a summary of his moral sys- 
 tem and an exhortation to virtuous act and thought) 
 he says, before proceeding" to legislate concerning 
 property and the like — "Our legislation may now 
 
46 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 perhaps seem strange, but it is to be recollected that 
 it is the constitution of a second best state — (^oveiTai 
 OEvreptds av irdXts olKeitrOai irpos ro /SekTurrov." He 
 adds, " The best way is to describe the best form of 
 Polity, and the second best, and the third, and to 
 leave the master of the colony to choose among them. 
 The first and best polity — the best laws — are when 
 there prevails in every part of the constitution the 
 old maxim, Koiva ra ^tXtoi/, all things are common 
 among friends. If then this be any where the case, 
 or ever shall any where be, that all things are in com- 
 mon in a city — ^the wives, the children, the goods, 
 and if aU private possession (to keyofievov iSlov) is in 
 every way removed out of life — if contrivances are used 
 so that even those things which by nature belong to 
 individuals are, in a way, common — as eyes and ears 
 and hands — when men see in common, and hear and 
 act, and praise and blame, and joy and grieve, and 
 the laws make the city as much as possible one — ^then 
 will the nearest approach be made to perfect virtue. 
 This would be a city of the gods and the children of 
 the gods. This is the true paradigm of a Polity 
 which we ought first of aU to aim at : that which we 
 now describe wUl be next to that immortal type, and 
 second only to it." And accordingly, Aristotle, in 
 speaking of the Polity described in the Laws of Plato, 
 often calls it Plato's Second Polity. 
 
 It may be observed, that neither Aristotle nor any 
 succeeding writer has exposed more completely than 
 Plato himself has done, in the passage I have just 
 quoted, the utterly unnatural character of the Polity 
 which he describes in the Republic. His own expres- 
 sions show how repugnant the institutions which he ad- 
 vocates are to the attributes of humanity. A collection 
 of creatures who hear and see and feel, and continue 
 their kind, and joy and grieve, not as individuals, but 
 in common, is not a body of men. It is more like 
 one of the zoophyte coralline animals, in which a 
 number of mouths, belonging to one body, have each 
 a dim and obscure kind of individual action; but the 
 life of the united mass, which runs through the whole. 
 
VI.] • Plato's polity. 47 
 
 is more truly life than that of any member. Plato 
 has endowed the separate mouths of his zoophyte 
 •with some human faculties and with human con- 
 sciousness, while he retains that closeness of moral, 
 and even bodily connection, which makes his image 
 too much of a zoophyte to have any real resemblance 
 to a body of men. Hobbes's Leviathcm was an image 
 of society which represented it as a mere crowd, in 
 which the weaker are kept in awe by the stronger. 
 Plato's image, introduced for the same purpose, is a 
 compound polyp; and is hardly a better image than 
 a tree would be; for his individuals have hardly 
 more of individual human life than the buds of a 
 plant. However inadequately Hobbes's image may 
 express the real nature and organization of human 
 society, of a civil community, the relation of the in- 
 dividual is at least an intelligible human relation. 
 But in Plato's Eepublic men are supposed to be kept 
 together, not by hope or fear, — for the subjects of hope 
 and fear are excluded, — but by some necessity which 
 does not belong to human life, and must be conceived 
 as merely physiological or zoological. 
 
 I shall not pursue Aristotle's criticism of Plato's 
 second Polity — that proposed in the Laws : nor shall 
 I now attempt to lead you into Aristotle's own poli- 
 tical speculations, and his scheme of the best form of 
 Polity. I wUl not leave the subject however without 
 saying that this work of Aristotle — his Politics — is 
 in the highest degree instructive, interesting and able. 
 In this work it is, I think, that the author appears 
 to most advantage. His habit of taking a practical 
 view of his subject makes every sentence contain 
 something worthy of notice, and something which 
 throws light upon the subject: and the want of 
 solidity which seems to me to hang about his moral 
 doctrines does not manifest itself when he passes be- 
 yond the first and most general principles which 
 belong to the theoretical foundation of the subject. 
 Then his vast acquaintance with the political con- 
 dition of the world in his time, and of the previous 
 political writers, with his clear and calm statement 
 
48 HISTOET OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 of what he has collected, make his work a treasure- 
 house of knowledge of political experiments. And it 
 is not too much to say that many of the political 
 doctrines which have been received with applause 
 when delivered by subsequent writei-s, may be found 
 in him, plainly asserted. 
 
 I will only, as a specimen of his speculations of 
 this kind, give his enumeration of the necessary parts 
 of a state. This enumeration occurs in that which 
 is commonly printed as the Seventh Book ; but which 
 those who in modern times have translated the work, 
 into English and into French, have independently 
 seen undeniable reasons for placing immediately after 
 the Third Book (Gillies, and J. Barth€16my St ffilaire), 
 thus making it the Fourth. The Book contains Ari- 
 stotle's Idea of the best Polity; and is the 7th Chapter 
 of this Book (ed. Gbttling, vii. 7). 
 
 " We must consider what these parts are without 
 which the state cannot be. They are, first food ; then 
 arts ; for life requires many arts ; then arms ; for those 
 who are to live together must have arms to. keep the 
 disobedient under, and to resist external aggressions; 
 then a certain supply of money, both for their own 
 needs, and for war; and fifth and Jirst, the service of 
 the gods, the priesthood; and sixth and most neces- 
 sary of all, judgments concerning the interest of the 
 whole and the mutual rights of each. 
 
 " These parts a State must have, for a State is not 
 a casual crowd, but a collection of men provided with 
 all which human life requires. And if any of the 
 above parts be wanting, the community has not that 
 which life requires. And thus the City must contain 
 these classes: Agricultural Labourers, who provide 
 food; Artisans, Soldiers, Rich Men (to eun-opov), 
 Priests, and Judges of the public necessity and uti- 
 lity." 
 
 I may notice also his reference to his own Ethics 
 (Folit. VII. 1 2). " We have said in the Ethics {Nic. 
 I. 13) (if there be any utility in that work), that hap- 
 piness is a perfect activity and use of virtue, not 
 limited hypotheticaJly, but simply exerted. By hy- 
 
VI.] ARISTOTLE ON EIGHTS. 49 
 
 pothetical, I mean virtue applied in acts necessary by 
 a hypothesis : by simply, that which is ideally good. 
 Thus, punishment for offences and penal inflictions 
 are effects of virtue, but necessary, and good because 
 necessary : but it would be better if neither the state 
 nor individuals needed punishment. But what tends 
 to honour and wealth is simply good. The former 
 kind of acts are a choice of evils ; these are not : they 
 are simply productions and acquisitions of good." 
 
 M. P. n. 
 
LECTUEE VII, 
 Stoics and Epicukeans — Cicero. 
 
 THE great antithesis of moral systems, though, it 
 plainly shows itself in the school of Socrates, did 
 not produce a steady distinction and opposition tUl a 
 later period. The general and coherent tendency of the 
 Platonic dialogues is to oppose what is uierelj pleasant 
 to what is good in a higher sense, and to represent the 
 latter, the Good, as the proper object of human desire, 
 not the former, the Pleasant : — yet these two notions, 
 the good and the pleasant, are not there steadily and 
 resolutely kept asunder and opposed, as they were 
 when they had become the watch-words of rival sects. 
 Sometimes Plato appears as if he wished to try what 
 aspect his moral philosophy would take by compound- 
 ing these notions, and allowing them to be reducible to 
 identity, as in the latter part of the Protagoras. And 
 Aristotle still more obviously abstains from rejecting 
 pleasure altogether, as an end of human action. In 
 the end of the Second Book of the Nicomachean Ethics, 
 he tells us that we miist avoid by all means the in- 
 fluence of Pleasure, and urge her removal from our 
 state, as the Trojan old men wanted to have Helen's 
 pernicious beauty removed from among themj (refer- 
 ring to Homer, II. in. 156), 
 
 They cried. No wonder such celestial channs 
 For nine long years have set the world in arms. 
 Yet hence, Heav'n, convey that fatal face, 
 And from destruction save the Trojan race. 
 
 Yet in the last Book of the Ethics (x. i) he warns us 
 against too largely depreciating pleasure as the end of 
 
LECT.VII.J STOICS AND EPICUREANS — CICERO. 5 1 
 
 action. He says (p. 503, Gillies' Aristotle), "Severe 
 moralists, therefore, think that they cannot too much 
 stigmatise Pleasure, that those whom they wish to 
 benefit by their discourses may be deterred from ex- 
 cess, and confined within the bounds of propriety. 
 They should take care, however, lest this proceeding 
 be not attended with effects contrary to their expecta- 
 tion ; for in practical matters, men pay less attention 
 to what is said than to what is done ; and when opi- 
 nions, just and reasonable within certain limits, are 
 carried to a length manifestly inconsistent with expe- 
 rience, they are rejected disdainfully and completely; 
 even the truth which they contain being overwhelmed 
 and lost in the suiTOunding falsehood. Thus, those de- 
 tractors of pleasure, when they are observed on any 
 occasion to pursue it with much eagerness, appear to 
 the bulk of mankind no better than hypocritical volup- 
 tuaries; for the people at large are not capable of 
 making distinctions ; they consider things in the gross, 
 and therefore continually confound them. The truth, 
 therefore, best serves not only to enlighten our under- 
 standings, but to improve our morals. For when our 
 doctrines are true, our lives will more naturally be 
 conformable to them ; and our precepts being con- 
 firmed by examples, will produce conviction, and ex- 
 cite emulation of our virtues, in those with whom 
 we live." But the distinction between pleasure and 
 moral good, considered each as the supreme or sole 
 end of human action, became more apparent when 
 two sects were formed, one maintaining the one, and 
 the other the other of these two extreme opinions. 
 The Epicureans and the Stoics, who respectively held 
 these two opinions, may be looked upon as being de- 
 velopments of the tendencies of thought which we 
 have seen in Polemarohus and Thrasynoachus on the 
 one side, and in Socrates on the other, in the Eepvhlic. 
 And although we may assent to the prudence of Ari- 
 stotle's caution against expressing these oppositions in 
 a too vehement and partial manner, yet we shall find 
 that there is a real opposition in these trains of thought, 
 and that the views which are arrayed against each 
 
 4—2 
 
52 HISTORY OF MOBAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 other in the moral dialogues of Plato do natui-ally 
 unfold themselves into antagonist systems, such as 
 those of the Epicureans and the Stoics. 
 
 In order to bring before the reader the opposition 
 of these t-wo sects, 1 shall refer to Eoman rather than 
 to Greek writers — ^to Cicero, rather than to the accounts 
 ■which we have of the teaching of Epicurus and of 
 Zeno. For these contrasted schools had assumed more 
 of reality among the Romans than the disputations of 
 Greek schools alone could have given them. And 
 there is this further charm in the dialogues of Cicero : 
 they are invested with costume and circumstance, 
 which, though entirely different from those of the Pla^ 
 tonic dialogues, have the same national and local truth. 
 Eor the leading men of Rome in the time of Cicero, — 
 those who like him employed themselves in thoughtful 
 and literary occupations,— did really attach themselves 
 to one or other of the rival sects to which Greek 
 masters had given birth; and a comparison and balanc- 
 ing of the doctrines and arguments of these sects was 
 a favourite employment of their moments of leisure. 
 Cato loved to speak as well as to act Stoically; and in 
 his sphere of utterance and of action, in the senate and 
 the campaign, in the extreme positions of eminence 
 and peril in which public business and civil commo- 
 tions placed man, and that man a Roman, he was a far 
 more splendid and normal example of a Stoic than 
 Greek ingenuity without the aid of Roman history, 
 could have produced. It is to Cato that the office is 
 given of expounding the Stoical doctrines in the work 
 of Cicero to which I mainly refer at present ; the Dia- 
 logue De Finibus Bonorwm et Malonim,, Of the Ends of 
 action. That this is the meaning which he intends to 
 convey by the title of the work we see in the Eirst 
 Book of the Dialogue (c. 12, ad fin.), where he says : " Id 
 est vel .<?ummum bonum, vel ultimum vel extremum, 
 quod Graeci reXos nominant, quod ipsum nuUam ad 
 aUam rem, ad id autem res referuntur omnes." 
 
 It is well to mark distinctly the point in the 
 doctrine of the Stoics which gave it its great hold 
 on the minds of speculative men, and its influence oa 
 
VII.] STOICS AND EPICUREANS — CICERO. 53 
 
 the progress of moral philosophy. This was, that the 
 Stoical scheme did fix upon and distinguish the idea of 
 moral rectitude as something really peculiar and inde- 
 pendent; — not derived from other notions, other ends 
 of action, other elements. The Idea of Duty, — what 
 man ought to do, — was represented as something para- 
 mount and unique. This Idea was the proper guide 
 of human life, the proper governor of man's being, the 
 true principle of human action, the center and core of 
 human nature. And this being so, no other conside- 
 rations, no other ends or elements or objects or notions 
 could possibly stand on its level, or by its side, or in 
 any way come into comparison with it. All other 
 ends of human desire and aim, — pleasure and ease, 
 wealth and honour, — could not be compared with 
 duty : they were not merely vastly smaller objects, but 
 they were nothing. No amount of gain or pleasure 
 could be a valid reason for a violation of Duty. The 
 notions could not be compared: — ^they were incon- 
 gruous, heterogeneous, incommensurable. They be- 
 longed to different regions of thought, different schemes 
 of human life. 
 
 And it is this fundamental view, of the peculiar 
 and iacomparable nature of the Idea of Duty, which 
 explains the tendency of the Stoics to assert those 
 Paradoxes which became so famous for their extra- 
 vagance in the eyes of common men. 
 
 The Stoical wise man, they held, needed not, — ^he 
 could not need — those ordinary possessions of riches 
 and honours at which men in general aim. He was 
 so far from needing them that he might be said to 
 have them. Being what he was supposed to be, a man 
 whose moral being was complete, all external things 
 were hia, in the sense alone in which external things 
 are really objects of desire. To him it was no gain 
 to be rich, or great, or royal. He was rich and great 
 and kingly, so far as any admiration is due to such 
 circumstances. And again: Since the essential dis- 
 tinction of actions allows but of two characters, right 
 and wrong : — ^there was no meaning in inquiries whe- 
 ther an action was much or little wrong. As in geo- 
 
54 HISTORY OP MOBAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 metry, we prove that a line is straight, or that it is 
 not so : but it is a task which the geometer thinks un- 
 worthy his labour, when he can prove a line to be really 
 broken, to shew that it is not very far from straight. 
 
 I will now refer to a few passages in the Dialogue 
 De Finibus, and other parts of Cicero's writings, for 
 the purpose of showing in what manner he presents 
 these doctrines. In the Third Book in which Cato 
 expounds the Stoical scheme, he says (c. 7, ad fin.), 
 " Since this is the end and aim of human action, (you 
 will perceive that all along I am expressing the. reXos 
 of the Greek moralists, by calling it the End, or the 
 highest or ultimate Aim :) — Since then this is the end 
 and aim of human action to live in a manner con- 
 gruous to nature, it necessarily follows that all wise 
 men always live happily, prosperously, completely, 
 without let or hindrance, impediment or need." Cato 
 then goes on to give some of the brief arguments 
 which the Stoics used to prove these doctrines, that 
 right acting was the only good, and the like. They 
 are such as this, " Quod est bonum, omne laudabile 
 est; quod autem laudabile est, omne honestum estj 
 bonum igitur quod est, honestum est." This and 
 various other formulas of the Stoics are delivered by 
 Cato, and are afterwards referred to by Cicero him- 
 self in his further discussion of the subject. 
 
 The Fourth Book of the De Finibus contains Ci- 
 cero's criticism upon the exposition of the Stoical Sys- 
 tem which had been put in the mouth of Cato. Cicero 
 however does not so much argue against the truth of 
 the leading and pecidiar Stoical doctrines, as on the 
 one hand against their originality, and the necessity of 
 erecting the asserters of them into a separate sect ; 
 and oh the other hand, against the paradoxical asser- 
 tions which were appended by the Stoics as corollaries 
 to their general scheme. 
 
 Perhaps I shall best bring before you, or more 
 probably recall to your memories, the style of reason- 
 ing of this work by a short specimen. In the Fourth 
 Book he is reasoning against the Stoical Paradox that 
 all sins are equal (iv. 27). 
 
yil.J STOICS AND EPICUREANS — CICERO. 55 
 
 "Sins are equal, you say, but ho-w? Because 
 nothing is more virtuous than virtue; more vicious 
 than vice. Quia nee honesto quicquam, honestius, nee 
 turpi turpius. Well : but we are not agreed on this : 
 let us have the argument more expanded; let us 
 know in detail why all sins are equal. Wliy, they 
 reply, in a stringed instrument, if it be out of tune, it 
 is out of tune, whether the particular strings be dis- 
 cordant more or less ; so all sins, being sins, are out of 
 harmony with virtue; and being thus out of harmony, 
 they are equally, out of harmony, and all equal. But 
 here we have a fallacy put upon us. The strings are 
 equally out of tune, but they are not out of tune 
 equally. It is equally a property of all that they are 
 out of tune; but it is not a property of them all that 
 they are equally out. Your comparison does not help 
 you. All kinds of avarice we may say are equally 
 avarice; yes; but they are not all equally avaricious. 
 
 " But again we have another similitude of a thing 
 which is not similar. (Ecoe aliud simile dissimile.) 
 
 "The helmsman, they say, equally errs if he runs 
 aground his ship, laden with straw or laden with gold; 
 in like manner he sins equally, who beats his slave 
 boy and who beats his father. Here they do not see 
 that whether the ship is laden with straw or with gold 
 makes no difference in the goodness or badness of the 
 steering : but every man may and ought to know what 
 is the difference of the condition of a parent and of a 
 slave. In steering, it makes no difference ; in duty it 
 makes all the difference, under which of these circum- 
 stances the transgression takes place. And even in 
 steering, if the ship is run aground through careless- 
 ness the sin is greater if the lading be gold than if 
 it be straw. For in every art we require that quality 
 which is called common prudence; and this, all who 
 engage in any work of skill ought to have. So that 
 this argument again fails to prove all sins to be equal." 
 One of the standard arguments of the Stoics to 
 prove that virtue is the only good, was this : " Bonum 
 omne laudabile, laudabile autem omne honestum; igi- 
 tur omne bonum honestum." This argument Cicero 
 
56 HISTORY OJ MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 disposes of very summaiily — "O plnmbeiun pugionem ! 
 — ^What a dagger of lead is your boasted weapon. 
 Who will grant your first ? Who allows that every- 
 thing good is worthy of praise ? All our philosophers 
 say that health, wealth, strength, fame and the like 
 are good things. But they are not worthy of praise. 
 ' — Such worthiness belongs to virtue alone." 
 
 On these and the like grounds Cicero blames 
 Zeno for needlessly setting up a new sect; ascribes 
 his doing so to vanity and restlessness; and endea- 
 vours to show that having done so, he was obliged still 
 in reality to fall back upon the doctrines he had 
 attacked : since he also allowed that external things, 
 though they could not be goods, might still be fit 
 objects of the wise man's aims, or fit for him to have, 
 as being agreeable to nature. The Peripatetic doc- 
 trine is, Cicero maintains, a complete philosophy; out 
 of which various teachers have picked their tenets; 
 one from one part, another from another. At last 
 come the Stoics, who take, not this part or that, but 
 the whole structure of our philosophy, and disfigure it 
 that it may not be known, as tlueves obliterate the 
 marks of things which they steal (v. 25). 
 
 But though Cicero, in his critical discussions, thus 
 maintains that the Stoic doctrines are partly erroneons 
 and partly superfluous, we see, in his manner of treat- 
 ing positive morality, that the Stoical mode of selecting 
 and expressing the leading principles of morals had 
 really a prominent place in his view of the subject. In 
 his Offices he adopts the Stoical rather than any other 
 view. He says, as you wUl recollect, at the outset of 
 the work, that while those who make Pleasure the End 
 of human action cannot speak consistentiy and in- 
 telligibly of Duties, all the other sects can do so, as 
 the Stoics, Academics, and Peripatetics (i. 2). But 
 he adds that he intends especially to foUow the Stoics; 
 not as authority, but as sources out of which he is to 
 draw truth by has own methods. And his rule, that 
 the utUe can never really come into comparison with 
 the honestum, so that one shall be weighed against' the 
 other, is the simple expression of that whidi is true 
 
VII.] S1<0ICS AND EPICUREANS — CICERO. g/ 
 
 in the Stoical paradoxes. And this rule becomes more 
 evidently still a branch of the Stoical scheme, -when it 
 is expressed in the technical terms of the sect, as it is 
 in the Third Boot, Vsrhere the author speaks of the appa- 
 rent conflict of the utile and the honestvm,. He there 
 gives what he calls the Formula of the Stoics, as the 
 fundamental principle by which such cases are to be 
 decided. We shall take this formula, he says, (iii. 4), 
 because though our Academic and Peripatetic Schools 
 also teach that what is virtuous is to be preferred 
 to what is useful — quae honesta sunt aateponuntur 
 iis quae videntur utilia — ^yet this is more grandly ex- 
 pressed by the Stoics — splendidius hsec ab iis disse- 
 runtur, quibus quicquid honestum est idem utile 
 videtur : nee utile quidquam quod non honestum — 
 who say that what is virtuous is useful : that nothing 
 can be useful which is not right. And the Stoical 
 Formula which he gives is this : — " Detrahere aliquid 
 alteri, et hominem hominis incommodo suum augere 
 commodum, magis est contra naturam quam mors, 
 qnam paupfertas, quam dolor, quam csetera quse pos- 
 simt aut corpori accidere aut rebus extemis." We 
 see the conspicuous and cardinal place which is as- 
 sumed by this conception of things cmdrary to the 
 natv/re and according to the nature of man. And he 
 afterwards goes on to explain at more length how such 
 actions as he describes are contrary to the nature 
 which men have in common, and which binds them 
 together as a universal community. " To abstract from 
 another what is his, to increase your comfort by his 
 discomfort, is more contrary to nature than death, 
 poverty, pain, or any of the other things which can 
 happen to the body or to man's external condition. 
 In the first place it takes away the community of life 
 and social character which belongs to man. If we 
 are to be so purposed that each one may despoil or do 
 violence to another for his own gain, that society of 
 man with man which is the most natural condition of 
 man must be broken up. • Just as if each member of 
 the body had a separate sense, and were persuaded 
 that it would thrive by drawing to itself the strength 
 
58 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 of the neighbouring members, the result would be that 
 the whole body would perish : — so if each of us tries 
 to draw to himself the comforts of others, and takes 
 from others what he can, for the sake of his own 
 benefit; the social condition of man, his union into a 
 community, must be destroyed." And he goes on to 
 say that magnanimity, kindness, justice, liberality, 
 are more according to nature than pleasure, riches or 
 life itself We cannot but consider these expressions 
 as very significant and important, notwithstanding 
 that they may be complained of as being vague or 
 arbitrary, when we find them repeated by thoughtful 
 and acute moralists in all ages, down to our own. 
 You will recoUect that Bishop Butler, begins his dis- 
 sertation concerning virtue by reference to these very 
 expressions (Preface to Sermons), "The following 
 discourses... were intended to explain what is meant 
 by the nature of man when it is said, that vice is con- 
 trary to the nature of man, &c." 
 
 The doctrine of the Stoical sect found great fevour 
 at Rome, and entered largely into the opinions of the 
 more educated Eomans at the end of the Republic 
 and under the early emperors. By reducing the Rule 
 of Idfe to a single principle, this conformity to nature, 
 it gave to its scheme a symmetry and simplicity which 
 are strong recommendations to the mind of man; and 
 its denial of the value of external things was accepted 
 as a kind of protection from possible calamities, when 
 the tyranny of the emperors made all external advan- 
 tages insecure. The Roman, indignant at the loss of 
 his political freedom, found a kmd of internal free- 
 dom in the- philosophy which placed him above the 
 hope and fear of external gain and loss; and by its 
 precepts he disciplined himself to be ready to bear or 
 to terminate the most adverse lot. 
 
 We have Stoicism in this form in various writers 
 of this period. We find Seneca discussing the same 
 questions as Cicero, though embracing more openly the 
 Stoical doctriaes. He uses indeed almost the same 
 phraseology, which I have quoted from Cicero. Thus, 
 Epistle 95, "We are aU members of one body. Na- 
 
VII.] STOICS AND EPICUREANS — CICERO. 59 
 
 ture made us all cousins when she generated us from 
 the same origin to the same end. And so she instilled 
 into us a mutual love and made us capable of society, 
 (sociabiles), and so she gave being to justice and 
 equity. By the constitution which she has given us 
 it is more wretched to injure than to be injured. 
 Mutual help is her command. That verse of the poet 
 must be in our hearts as weU as our mouths : 
 
 Homo sum, humani nihil a, me alienum puto. 
 
 Human society is like an arch of stones, which would 
 fall to pieces if they did not support one another." 
 
 Moreover, the Stoical philosophy in its later 
 teachers elevated itself to a moral purity which drew 
 admiration, and combined with its uncompromising 
 sternness, a spirit both of kindliness and of natural 
 piety. We see it in this form in the Manual of Epic- 
 tetus; a work which has had no small influence even 
 up to modem times. It was translated into English 
 in the last generation by Mrs Carter; and we find 
 Mr Southey writing to his correspondent Mr Taylor 
 (Vol. I. p. 323), "You will perhaps smile to hear 
 that the first book that ever seriously influenced my 
 opinions and my conduct was the Manual of Epic- 
 tetus." Perhaps the purity, the benevolence, and the 
 piety of Epictetus were not all drawn from heathen 
 sources. He was the servant of Epaphroditus, a cour- 
 tier of Nero; and though we cannot assume that this 
 is Epaphroditus the friend of St Paul and his mes- 
 senger to the Philippians, it is very possible that Epic- 
 tetus was among those of Caesar's household who had 
 heard the preaching of Paul or of his immediate dis- 
 ciples. However that may be, it is impossible not to 
 be struck with the higher, more benevolent, and more 
 pious tone of the moral philosophers of this time : — 
 of Seneca, for instance, who, as the ancient fathers 
 have remarked, Clvristianizes. 
 
 But perhaps you may be disposed to ask, Since 
 this view of the Rule of human action, that man is to 
 aim at something which is right and excellent — ho- 
 nestum — koKov — at something which is good in a 
 
6o HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, [lECT. 
 
 peculiar and eminent sense — at something wMch is 
 morally good, and not merely a good such as gain or 
 pleasure is; — since this view is so generally assented 
 to and is accepted by successive generations, as that 
 vsrhich truly represents their convictions, as the 
 true voice of the human race; — since this is so, what 
 have those to say for themselves who take the oppo- 
 site side? How can men be found bold and perverse 
 enough to declare that mankind are and must be 
 governed by the desire of gain or of pleasui-e when 
 mankind repudiate such language as the expression 
 of their rule of action? How can men assert that 
 the rule of action is to do what is profitable, when the 
 language of all times has made an opposition between 
 what is profitable and what is right fe,miliar to us, 
 and has never hesitated in its preference of the 
 latter? How can the Epicurean venture to assert 
 that pleasure is the only good of man, when aU men 
 look upon him with suspicion and repugnance on. 
 account of this very assertion? 
 
 What the modes of presenting the Epicurean doc- 
 trine, and by what arguments it was supported, we 
 may see in the first Book of the Dialogue De Finibus. 
 Torquatus, who maintains the Epicurean side, 
 gives this account of the head of his sect (i. i8), 
 " Epicurus, that Epicurus whom you speak of as too 
 entirely given up to pleasure — ^he declares, he pro- 
 claims, that no one can live in pleasure who does not 
 live wisely, honestly, justly: and that no one can live 
 wisely, honestly, and justly, without living pleasur- 
 ably. For, he teaches, a State cannot be happy while 
 it is labouring under a sedition, nor a house while its 
 masters are at variance with one another : and thus a 
 mind which is at variance with itself, and in a condi- 
 tion of internal discord, cannot taste any portion of pure 
 and liquid pleasure. It must be distracted with op- 
 posing and contending aims, and unable to see its way 
 to quiet and peace. Now, if the comfort of life is 
 impeded by any gi-ave disease of the body, how much 
 more must it be impeded by diseases of the mind ! 
 And diseases, of the mind are such afi'ections as these, — • 
 
VII.] STOICS AND EPICUREANS — CICERO. 6j 
 
 Vast and craying desires of riches, glory, power, and 
 of the pleasures of sense : — to these we may add vex- 
 ,ation, discontent, grief, which gnaw the mind and 
 break it down with cares." He adds, indeed, as if 
 resolved to come back to his Epicurean key-note, 
 "with cares that men suffer because they do not 
 understand that nothing is really a matter of grief 
 which is not connected with pain of the iody, present 
 or future." But it is plain that this limitation of 
 all pain and trouble to a bodily origin is a mere 
 forraiila of the sect, not at all corresponding to the 
 condition of human nature. And the mode in which 
 he proceeds leaves no trace of this limitation. He 
 goes on. " Unwise men are always suffering under 
 these diseases, and are therefore unhappy." "And 
 ;so," he adds, after some other remarks, "no unwise 
 man is happy, and no wise man is unhappy ; and we 
 hold this much more truly and reasonably than the 
 Stoics. They deny that anything is good_ except 
 some shadowy kind of I know not what, which they 
 call right (honestum) — a name rather splendid than 
 sohd. They say that virtue supported by this recti- 
 tude requires no addition of pleasure, and is content 
 with itself for happiness. And this too may be said, 
 not only without our contradicting it, but even with 
 our approbation. For thus is the wise man always 
 introduced by Epicurus. His desires are limited; he 
 is not afraid of death: he thinks of the immortal 
 gods truly but fearlessly : he does not hesitate, if so 
 it be better, to migrate out of life : and thus prepared, 
 he is always in a state of pleasure." It is obvious 
 that this estimate of pleasure differs little from the 
 Stoical view of that composure which necessarily 
 follows virtue; and it is evident also that the Epi- 
 curean who teaches such a doctrine, feels himself 
 elevated above the mere votary of pleasure^ in its 
 ordinary sense, in virtue of the character which his 
 own mind and thoughts have impressed upon ordi- 
 nary objects of desire. He has given to the concep- 
 tion of pleasure a turn which makes it in a great 
 measure independent of external things and_ condi- 
 tions, and which really approaches, as it is here 
 
62 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. [lECT.VII. 
 
 allowed, to the view of the school of independent 
 morality. Accordingly Cicero, in his reply to the 
 Epicurean argument which he gives in the next Book, 
 seizes upon this disclosure of the inevitable moral 
 convictions' and habits which work in men's bosoms 
 when they pursue such discussions (ii. i6). "Your 
 Epicurus," he says, " though he speaks of pleasure as 
 the end of human action, is so conquered by nature, 
 that he says, as you have been saying, that men 
 cannot live happily except they live virtuously. And 
 you, Torquatus, when you said that Epicurus declares 
 and proclaims that no one can live in pleasure who 
 does not live honestly, wisely, justly, you seemed 
 to me to exult in what you said. So great a power 
 there was ia the words, on account of the dignity of 
 that which they signified, that you drew yourself up 
 to a greater stature, spoke in a more measured man- 
 ner, and looked proudly at us, calling upon us to bear 
 witness that virtue and justice were praised at times 
 by Epicurus. And very cheering it was in you to 
 use those words. If philosophers did not use such, 
 we should have no need of philosophy. It is through 
 the love they bear to those words, so rarely used by 
 EpicTU-us, the names of wisdom, fortitude, justice, 
 temperance, that the finest intellects among men have 
 been drawn to the study of philosophy." 
 
 And thus, without adopting the technicalities and 
 extravagances of the Stoics, we may consider that 
 the general body of speculative men in all ages, who 
 have turned their thoughts to morality, have accepted 
 their doctrine, that the true rule of human action is 
 derived from the nature of man ; and is fitly expressed 
 by speaking of a rectitude which is to govern Ms 
 actions, a virtue which is to be the mistress of his 
 life, a nature which is altogether opposed to violence 
 and fraud and ill done to others, and which shuns 
 such things more than it shuns pain and loss, and all 
 the other inflictions from which man's mere animal 
 nature jnost recoils. 
 
 But the Homans, besides thus arguing out the 
 opposition of the Grecian ethical sects, introduced 
 new views, which I will try to explain. 
 
LECTUEE VIII. 
 Jus. 
 
 THE Ethical speculations of the Greeks turned 
 much, as we have seen, on the definition and 
 classification of Virtues: but following this path, did 
 not lead to any distinct and abiding body of ethical 
 truth. When this essay had thus in some measure 
 failed, a new step was made which led to more per- 
 manent results, if not in Ethics, at least in a subject 
 very nearly related to Ethics. The definition and 
 classification of Rights was scrutinized instead of the 
 definition and classification of Virtues; and Juris- 
 prudence instead of Ethics became the study of those 
 who dealt with man's moral nature. 
 
 This step is remarkable, not only in itself, but be- 
 cause it was made by a nation whom we generally 
 consider as deficient in original philosophical genius : 
 as having, in philosophy, done nothing more than 
 transmit to us, somewhat modified, what they received 
 from the Greeks. The Eomans were a practical, not 
 a speculative people ; they did not produce wide theo- 
 ries which occupied the thoughts and formed the 
 opinions of men in all succeeding ages, but they con- 
 quered the world by their arms and governed it by 
 their laws. And in consequence of this very charac- 
 ter of theirs it was, that without being aware that 
 they were discoverers, they made an important step 
 in ethical theory. For morality is, as we have seen, 
 eminently and peculiarly a practical science; and its 
 truths must be acted first and contemplated after- 
 wards. The Koman, long before he was introduced 
 
64 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [leOT. 
 
 by his Greek teachers to the notion of a general abs- 
 tract morality, had his judgment of right and wrong 
 directed by the laws and customs of his country; for 
 which he had an unbounded reverence, which were 
 wrought into his character by the strong pressure of 
 a strict education, and which moulded his conduct and 
 his opinions in all the events of his life. Law was to 
 him something so venerable and sacred that he could 
 not look upon it otherwise than as the immediate 
 efflux and representative of Justice herself. You will 
 recollect how often Cicero expresses his enthusiastic 
 admiration for the Lawgivers of his own country, and 
 places them upon a level with the greatest of EthicaJ 
 philosophers. You will recollect too that he insists 
 upon the existence of a fundamental Natural Law, 
 which is the basis and source of all Enacted Law, and 
 which determines what is right and wrong with an 
 authority not bounded by time, or place, or human will. 
 Assertions of this kind, it wiU perhaps be said, 
 may be traced in earlier times, and are found ia the 
 writings of the Greeks ; and it is true, that in dim 
 and floating forms, we see such lines of thought in 
 the speculations of Grecian philosophers and poets. 
 But that which gives fixity and permanence to dis- 
 tinctions and arrangements of this nature, is their 
 being bound together in a single word, and stamped 
 with an appropriate term. When that is done, this 
 distinction is not only perceived and recognized, but 
 becomes a new starting-point for man's reasonings, 
 and as it were, a fresh element of thought. The 
 mark of the difference of the Grecian and the Roman 
 habit of thought on such matters, is the word Jus in 
 the Latin language, to which we have no correspond- 
 ing word in Greek. The Greeks, for instance, could 
 express the jus gentium only as vo/aos koivos, or in 
 some similar way; but a Latin writer would never 
 have said lex gentium in such a sense. 
 
 And a little attention will soon enable us to see 
 what is the relation of these two notions. Jus is the 
 foundation of Xea;; right is the foundation of law; and 
 especially to those Eoman habits of thought of which I 
 
VIII.J JUS. 65 
 
 have spoken, which repudiated the belief that law was 
 something accidental and arbitrary. 
 
 But it naay be said, How then does Jus differ from 
 the virtue of Justice ? Is not SiKaioavvr], or to Sikiuov, 
 according to the Greek moralists, the natural foundation 
 of law; and is not this truth all that is expressed by 
 the relation of the Latin words? And to this we shall 
 be able to reply, if we consider what is the difference, 
 when the words are rigorously taken, between justice 
 and right. Justice is a virtue existing in the mind of 
 man, and disposing him to give to each man what is 
 his due ; but Bight (substantive) is this due considered 
 as belonging to him to whom it is to be given. Be- 
 cause my neighbour has fights, I must act towards him 
 mth justice, and respect them. But further, though 
 Jtis is distinct from enacted Law, it is considered as 
 that which Law must necessarily confirm and assure ; 
 while SiKotov implies no such necessity. If the Law 
 do not give me my Right, the state of things in which 
 I live is imperfect and inconsistent; it does not realize 
 what I inevitably assume as the requisite condition of 
 human existence; that is, of civil existence; for, look- 
 ing at the matter as a Roman at least, I cannot admit 
 or conceive any human existence withoiit civil ties 
 and civil laws. And thus as Right is the natural 
 foundation of Law, Law is the necessary sanction of 
 Right. In merely calling an action or disposition just, 
 no such necessity, no such connection is implied. It 
 may be just that another man should be grateful for 
 good advice or consolation in sorrow ; but if he is not, 
 I have no right to gratitude from him, in any sense 
 in which Right is correlative with Law. Such rights 
 have by modern writers been called imperfect rights; 
 but they do not enter at all into the meaning of the 
 Roman Jus. 
 
 If this distinction appear at first somewhat subtle 
 and minute, I must justify it by again reminding you, 
 that the l^atin word Jus is a term to which no word 
 in previous speculations exactly corresponds : and that 
 this word, its derivatives and compounds, and the cor- 
 responding words in other languages, have, ever since 
 M. P. II. 5 
 
66 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 its introduction, had a great share in determining the 
 form and distribution of the doctrine of Ethics. The 
 relation expressed by Jws and Lex in Latin, by Right 
 amd Law in English, by Rtcht and Gesetz in German, 
 by Droit and Loi in French, requires to be carefully 
 attended to in our moral speculations. And one great 
 portion at least of the science of morality must be the 
 science of this Jus, this Right, this Recht, this Droit. 
 Now here our own language has a peculiarity which, 
 for our present purposes, must be felt as a disadvantage. 
 In Latin, German and French, the same word which 
 expresses the Rights, th^ AttriJnutes of persons, expresses 
 also the body of true Doctrines which relate to those 
 rights. Thus the body of rules of natural justice which 
 embrace all mankind, which is called Jus Gentium in 
 Latin, we cannot in English call the Right of Nations; 
 we are compelled to call it the Law of Nations; and 
 thus, to leave it doubtfiil whether or not we speak 
 of such Law as only arbitrary and conventionaL And 
 in like manner we are destitute of a term for the 
 Doctrine of Rights in general, although we shall find it 
 vain to attempt to frame a coherent system of morals, 
 without drawing an accurate distinction between the 
 doctrine of Rights and the doctrine of Moral Rectitude. 
 Some English writers have used the term Jurisprudence 
 as equivalent with the Latin Jus, the German Rechi, 
 the French Droit: while others have spoken of this 
 province as Legislation. The latter writers have gone 
 back to that resource to which the Greeks were driven 
 by the deficiency in their language. For the Roman 
 Jurists are, in the Greek of Justinian, called vo/jLoOeT^ 
 o-avres; and Theophilus, one of the framers of the Pan- 
 dects, cannot describe the objects of Doctrinal Jus 
 any other wise than by calling them that on which 
 voiioOwm is employed. The defect of this nomenclature 
 has already been stated. It leaves room to the assump- 
 tion, utterly fatal to the cultivation of the Doctrine 
 .of Rights, that the legislation of which we speak may 
 depend only upon the wiU of the legislator, or the 
 arbitrary conventions of those whom the laws afiect. 
 But to return to the Romans, and the influence of 
 
VIII.] JUS. 67 
 
 their juristical habits upon the progress of Ethical 
 Theory. Notwithstanding Cicero's strong love and ad- 
 miration for the laws and lawyers of his own country, 
 he was stiU so far under the dominion of his Grecian 
 masters in philosophy, that he introduced the points 
 of his legal lore into his moral writings only in the 
 way of illustration and confirmation of the theories 
 which he had adopted; and did not dream of any- 
 thing so bold as altering the tradicional arrangement 
 of Ethics, that it might the better include the max- 
 ims of jurisprudence and put them in their proper 
 place. Accordingly his treatise On Duties {De Offiolis) 
 is planned upon the ancient scheme of the four cardinal 
 virtues; and is of course, by this means, burthened 
 with the same obscurity and incoherence as other 
 treatises formed upon the same plan. You will recol- 
 lect the mode in which this division is introduced in 
 the First Book of the Offices. "Every thing which is 
 virtuous is of one kind out of four. Either it consists 
 in an insight into the truth and an acquaintance with 
 it; or in upholding the frame of human society and 
 giving to each his own, and maintaining the faith of 
 contracts ; or in the greatness and strength of a lofty 
 and unconquerable mind ; or in an order and moderation 
 of action which include modesty and temperance." It 
 is plain here that the last two members of the division 
 describe the temper in which the duties are to be per- 
 formed •which are included in the expression "in tuen- 
 da hominum societate, tribuendoque suum cuique, et 
 rerum contractarum fide :" while the fii'st member con- 
 sists of the knowledge which is requisite in order to 
 discern and define these duties. And thus, here again, 
 we are led to the result that in a distribution of duties, 
 justice may comprise them all. And this more espe- 
 cially if we include in it, as Cicero does {Off. i. 7), 
 " beneficentia, quam eandem vei benignitatem vel 
 liberalitatem appellari licet." 
 
 But in Cicero's Dialogues concerning the Republic 
 and the Laws, though they are, in many points, and in- 
 deed in their genei-al scheme, plainly imitated from 
 Hato's dialogues of the same names, we see the peculiar 
 
 5—2 
 
68 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 Roman Idea coming into view. The Right Reason by 
 which in the moral constitution of man all things must 
 be governed, which in the Platonic scheme was termed 
 Wisdom or Prudence, was by other philosophers called 
 Law; and this term wasfamiHar in the Ethical Schools 
 of Cicero's time. {Legg. i. 6) : " Ut idem definiunt, Lex 
 est ratio summa insita in natura, quae jubet ea quse 
 facienda sunt, prohibetque contraria." And this Law, 
 the expression of Prudence or Reason, the learned, he 
 says, think is called vo/i.os (from ve/tco), for this reason, 
 that it consists in distributing to each his own ; while 
 in our word lex the notion of selection of the proper 
 course is brought into view. Law then, in this large 
 and philosophical sense, he proceeds, is the foundation 
 of justice, the measure of right and wrong. But, he 
 adds, siuce our discussion is to be carried on in popular 
 language, we must speak with the people, and con- 
 fine the word Law to laws which in express written 
 words command or forbid the actions to which they 
 refer. We must consider that Supreme Law as the 
 oi'igin of Right, of Jus: recollecting that it had its 
 origin long before any law or state existed. He then 
 proceeds to show, by such reasonings as are thus 
 announced, "ex natura ortum esse jus " (i. 13). He does 
 not, however, proceed afterwards in these Dialogues on 
 Laws, to do that which would have given the work a 
 peculiar value in its bearing upon our subject, namely, 
 to divide human duties according to the views sug- 
 gested by the conception of Rights; but goes on to 
 propound certain imaginary laws for the Roman State, 
 framed after the manner of those of the Twelve Tables ; 
 containing in the second Book, the Laws which regard 
 the recognition and worship of the Gods ; and in the 
 third Book, those which refer to the Magistrates and 
 the constitution of the State. 
 
 Up to the times of the Roman Empire, the sys- 
 tems of the moralists were marred by their substi- 
 tuting an attempted analysis of human virtues, for a 
 classification of human duties, which might have re- 
 solved the subject into parts admitting of philoso- 
 phical distinction and discussion : while the lawyers, 
 
Vlll.] JUS. 69 
 
 who by the nature of their office were inevitably led 
 to classify Eights and Offenses, had not yet caught 
 so much of the spirit of philosophy as to attempt to 
 reduce their Codes, real or imaginary, to a consistent 
 and coherent system. Still, however, there was at 
 work a spirit which tended to give to morality the 
 reality of jurisprudence, and to impart to jurispru- 
 dence the philosophy of morality. The Roman law- 
 yer, formed by the institutions of his country, and 
 taught by the sages of Greece, believed that Law, 
 that Right, was something sublime and divine, having 
 its origin ia the Supreme Reason, and its seat in the 
 universal mind of man; and yet something which 
 must needs be realized and embodied in the institu- 
 tions of his State, and practically exhibited in the 
 procedure of the Tribunal. He believed, not only 
 theoretically, that this law was eternal and immu- 
 table, valid in all times and places, incapable of being 
 abrogated by king or tribune, senate or people: but 
 he applied its actual authority over the most distant 
 parts of the earth as a practical truth: and as the 
 empire expanded, and the Codes pervaded countries 
 which the legions had conquered, the universality of 
 Natural Law and Natural Right ceased to be a mere 
 empty boast of the schools; the jurist felt that he was 
 inevitably called upon to be a moralist; and the 
 legislator had his views and his phraseology elevated 
 to a comprehensive largeness and philosophical dig- 
 nity, by knowing that he was legislating for all civi- 
 lized nations, and was discharging the office of supreme 
 arbitrator upon earth of all human relations and for- 
 tunes. 
 
 In my next lecture I must add a few words more . 
 on the aspect of the Roman Law. 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 Roman Law. 
 
 IT may perhaps at first sight seem strange to some 
 of my hearers that I should consider the Civil 
 Law of Rome as having so close a bearing upon the 
 philosophy of morals : but this will not surprise any 
 one who has given any attention to the subjects and 
 arguments which occur in the discussions in which 
 the students of Civil Law are engaged. Many of 
 these, no doubt, are of a very limited and technical 
 nature; but there are others which involve the widest 
 and profoundest principles of natural morality. And 
 even many of the technical and special questions will 
 be found to be no unworthy exercises as a discipline 
 in moral reasoning; since they depend upon the ap- 
 plication and interpretation of maxims which are 
 neither arbitrary in their origin, nor narrow in their 
 field. The most minute discussions of law may serve 
 to cultivate the habit of tracing the consequences of 
 moral truths; just as the determination of the diflFer- 
 ent results of two nearly identical constructions in 
 geometry may serve to cultivate the habit of geome- 
 trical reasoning. 
 
 Li order to see how close the connection is be- 
 tween the maxims of the Roman Law and the doc- 
 trines of natural morality, we need only turn to the 
 first pages of those standard works which form the 
 principal subject of the jurist's study, the Insfifvtes, 
 Fand&As, and Code of the Emperor Justinian. These 
 great works were the result of a reformation of the 
 Roman Jurisprudence which the Emperor undertook 
 
LECT. IX.] ROMAN LAW. 7 1 
 
 when he ascended the throne m the year of Christ 527. 
 In the first year of his resign \ says Gibbon, he directed 
 Tribonian and other eminent lawyers to revLse the 
 ordinances which had been made in preceding ages 
 from the foundation of the city up to his own time. 
 The results of their labours were the Code, contain- 
 ing twelve Books or Tables; th« Hi^est or Pandects, 
 ip which was contained the spirit oif the rising juris- 
 prudence as extracted from the decisions and con- 
 jectures, the questions and disputes of the Eomaii 
 civilians; and the Institutes, which expounded the 
 elements, or general principles of the Law. 
 
 If we loolj; at the first page of the Institutes, we 
 cannot but be struck with th,e philosophical and 
 ethical tone which the legislator felt himself called 
 upon to assume. The work is addressed by the Em- 
 peror to the Law students, •' Cupidse legum juven^ 
 tuti" He tells them that after Tribonian, Theo- 
 philus and Dorotheus had compiled the fifty Books 
 of the Digests or Pandects containing the whole of 
 the ancient law, he had directed the four Books of 
 Instikttes to be composed, "ut sint totius scientise 
 legitimse prima elementa." The first Title (for that is 
 the name given to the Sections of the different Books) 
 is, De Justitia et Jv/re; and begins with definitions 
 of Justice and Jurisprudence : " Justitia est constans 
 et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique tribuendi." 
 " Jurisprudentia est divinarum et humanarum rerum 
 notitia, justi atque injusti scientia." The writer then 
 proceeds, as he says, " exponere jura populi Romani,'' 
 and lays down this as a general aphorism which is to 
 prepare the way to this task; "Juris precepta sunt 
 tria; honeste vivere, alterum non Issdere, suum cuique 
 tribuere." Without my now undertaking to make 
 such maxims as these the basis of a system, it will 
 be plain to you that attempts made by acute and 
 laborious men, constantly a(i3aonished and directed 
 by the lessons of actually occurring cases, to cany 
 
 1 Gibbon, Vol vjii. p. 45- 
 
72 HISTORY OJT MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 into detail a code of law professiag to be founded on 
 general ethical distinctions and maxims like these, 
 must give rise to arrangements and definitions from 
 which ethics might in turn learn precision and ac- 
 quire practical applicability. Accordingly, I think 
 we may regard the classification of Rights delivered 
 in the Institvies as a step forwards in the business 
 of cljCSsifying human duties; and consequently, as an 
 advance in ethical science. It is true that this ad- 
 vance has not been generally appropriated by suc- 
 ceeding moralists, who have, from various causes, been 
 commonly led to classify duties and virtues on other 
 principles. It is true also that moralists, not having 
 attached any great importance to the guidance of the 
 Civil Law, have not much troubled themselves to in- 
 terpret the lessons which jurisprudence might have 
 taught them in the arrangement of their subject; 
 while the jurists themselves have studied their system 
 as applicable to law, not to morality : so that neither 
 jurists nor moralists have sufficiently made it theii- 
 business to define, and improve, and trace to their 
 philosophical foundations, the systematic arrangements 
 of the Law considered as a portion of Morals. Still I 
 think we shall find that in later times nearly the 
 same arrangements have been suggested to moral phi- 
 losophers by an entirely different line of speculation; 
 and thus by the convergence of different testimonies, 
 we have that kind of evidence which in the history of 
 knowledge rarely or never fails us, that there is a 
 real value and significance in the general lines of the 
 system which thus demand our notice. 
 
 The leading distinction of which I speak is this : — 
 Eights are either those which belong to the condition 
 of the Persons, or which have reference to Things, 
 or which arise out of Aci,s by which one man has a 
 claim upon another : " Omne jus quo utimur, vel ad 
 Personas attinet, vel ad Res, vel ad Actiones:" the 
 actio being here the legal process for enforcing claims 
 which men possess. We may call the first kind of 
 Rights, Rights of Persons, but we must not, as 
 Blackstone has done, oppose to tluese the Rights of 
 
IX.] ROMAN LAW. 73' 
 
 Things : for Things can have no rights. The Rights 
 which pertain to things are rights of persons, no less 
 than the rights of persons which arise out of their 
 relation to other persons. The Rights which pertain 
 to things may all be included under the general term, 
 Eights of Property. The third kind of Eights, which 
 the Law terms Actions and Obligations, arise mainly 
 from Contract; although there are some forms of 
 those not rigorously included in this term. And thus 
 the division of which we speak becomes the division 
 into Rights of Persons, of Property, and of Con- 
 tract. 
 
 The subdivision of the Rights of Persons would 
 be the next important step in oonstracting a syste- 
 matic arrangement of Rights. But here we can no 
 longer follow the Roman lawyers as our guides in 
 our moral views. That which they state as the pri- 
 mary leading and universal distinction of persons, is 
 one which we must, as far as possible, obliterate from 
 the face of our morality. " All men," they say, " are 
 free, or slaves :" " Summa itaque divisio de jure per-- 
 sonarum, hoc est, quod omnes homines aut liberi sunt 
 aut servi." Yet even the Roman law acknowledges 
 that this condition is unnatuiral. " Servitus est con- 
 stitutio juris gentium quo quis dominio alicui contra 
 naturam subjicitur." And even if we pass over this 
 distinction, as one with which we have nothing to do 
 but to protest against it, we find the other distinc- 
 tions of persons so entangled with the special laws of 
 Rome and the peculiar conditions of Roman society, 
 that they cannot be held to be of much use in point- 
 ing out the relations which it behoves natural morality 
 to contemplate. 
 
 Still there is one main division of the rights of 
 persons, suggested at least by the Civil Law, which 
 we may take hold of as fitted to be of permanent use 
 and force. The rights arising from the condition of 
 persons are either those which have their origin in 
 the ties of Family, or those which depend upon the 
 Public Condition of the persons, their relation to the 
 State. It will be seen, by a moment's attention, that 
 
74 HISTORY OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHT. [lECT. 
 
 the former head is one of great extect, and one whieli 
 brings together a large class of closely eoanetsfced 
 questions of morals and rights. 'Far it not only in, 
 eludes the relations of Husband ajnd Wife, but of 
 Parents and Children, of Brothers and Sisters, of 
 Guardian and Ward; nor can we refer to any other 
 head the questions of Inheritance and Testament. 
 
 And the ethical tone of the Institutes is no less 
 remarkable in the mode in which it defines this re- 
 lation than in those parts which we have already 
 quoted : " Nuptise sive matrimonium est viri eit mu- 
 lieris eonjunctio, individuam vitse consuetudinem con^ 
 tinens." To trace the consequences of family rela- 
 tions, whether moral or legal, we must in each case 
 take into account the special conditions of each so- 
 ciety: but it will not be found easy to lay down a 
 better genereit description of that relation than these 
 words give. 
 
 With regard to the rights of persons relative to 
 their public condition, these belong to the Public Law 
 of the State, which is at the very outset of the Inslnr 
 tutes distinguished from the Private law : " Publicum 
 jus est quod ad statum rei Komanse spectat; priva- 
 tum quod ad singulorum utilitatem pertinet." 
 
 We thus have before us a fourfold division of 
 Eights, into those of Property, of Contract, of FavvJLy, 
 and of Pvhlic Condition; and that this division of 
 rights is fundamentally philosophical and sound, is 
 proved by the manner in which, by the doctors of the 
 Law, the rules founded upon this division have been 
 traced to their consequences and built up into a vast 
 and coherent system of scientific reasoning. This list 
 of Rights implies a corresponding list of Duties, and 
 thus may be made the basis of a moral system, at least 
 as far as such duties go. Ap.d thus it will appear 
 that an attention to the Roman Law, so far as I have 
 now brought it before your notice, is highly instruc- 
 tive to us as a part of the subject of Morality. 
 
 It will perhaps be said that the duties correlative 
 with such rights as have here been spoken of, — a bare 
 regard for the property of others, for our own con^ 
 
IX.] KOMAN LAW. 75 
 
 tracts, for tte ties of femily, — does not amotiiit to 
 morality at all. A cour.se of conduct limited merely 
 by the condition that it does not transgress the lav in 
 outward acts, is fitly named legality, and is not worthy 
 to form a leading part of such a system of ethics as 
 that to "which we ought to aspire. Now this is per- 
 fectly true. The performance of such duties as those 
 of which the law takes cognizance, which are those we 
 have been describing, is legality, and nothing more. 
 But yet such duties as we have mentioned above neces- 
 sarily form a part of every system of ethics. Morality 
 must include legality, however much its range be 
 wider, its principles deeper, its aims higher. If there- 
 fore these legal duties readily lend themselves to a 
 philosophical arrangement, this arrangement may fitly, 
 so far at least as they are concerned, form a portion of 
 our ethical system, and may perhaps put in our hands 
 a thread which may guide us through the more labyrin- 
 thian portions of the subject. And this may the more 
 confidently be expected, if we find that the arrange- 
 ment thus employed for the practical uses of law agrees 
 with that to which we are led by examining into the 
 springs of action by which human conduct is deter- 
 mined. If the ancient Roman lawyers and the mo- 
 dem psychologists are led towards the same point, we 
 cannot help supposing that they are tending to some 
 doctrine which affords a natural resting-place for the 
 human mind. 
 
 But we must now interrupt, and for a long inter- 
 val, the consideration of this advance thus made by 
 man towards an orderly and coherent arrangement of 
 rights, duties and virtues. 
 
 If the Roman Law alone had shaped the course 
 of ethical speculation, perhaps in time men's minds 
 might have proved vigorous enough to shake off the 
 load of technicalities which fettered and overwhelmed 
 the minds of the common herd of students, and to dis- 
 cern and drag forth the philosophical core of the system. 
 But a far different destiny was in store for the speeur 
 lative world. The schools of the jurists and of the 
 moralists were not left to themselves, to go on com- 
 
76 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 men ting on the ancient systems, and trying by their 
 own -wit and sagacity to frame new ones. A mighty 
 interruption took place in this long accustomed course 
 of things. The world of human thought and feeling 
 was shaken to its foundations. Men's views of their 
 actions, of their nature, of their condition, of their 
 destination, were suddenly transformed. A new ele- 
 ment was introduced into Ethics ; or rather Ethics was 
 absorbed into a subject of loftier and graver character 
 even than its own. Morality conld no longer pursue 
 her speculations on the ancient ground, in the ancient 
 spirit. She dared not to do so in presence of that 
 higher power into whose company she was now 
 brought. She felt that it would be vain and presump- 
 tuous to make such attempts. But also she felt that 
 it was no longer necessary. Her laborious searchings, 
 her acute conjectures, her subtle reasonings weie 
 superseded. There was to be found an authoritative 
 declaration concerning those things which she had so 
 long but dimly guessed; — plain instructions where she 
 had sought her way with doubtful success. A voice 
 had been uttered from above which seemed to silence 
 the wranglings of the schools and the lectures of 
 the master. The wise, the scribe, the disputer of 
 this world, where were they? Wisdom had become 
 foolishness : Christianity had come into the world, and 
 if it were anything, it was plain that it was a philo- 
 sopliy of life and morals, of man's duty and destiny, 
 which must reign supreme over all other philosophy on 
 such subjects : and other modes of looking at such 
 things could be tolerated only in so far as they were 
 conformable to this, and capable of becoming subordi- 
 nate and instrumental to it. 
 
 The fresh purity, love, hope and joy which Christi- 
 anity breathed into morality, were almost like infusing 
 life into a statue, making that a warm and active agent 
 which had before been a cold and rigid form. The 
 development of systematic morality was checked and 
 interrupted by the new direction which the Christian 
 religion had given to men's thoughts. All the pro- 
 foundest and acutest spirits of the time gave them- 
 
IX.] ROMAN LAW, -J-J 
 
 selves up to theology, and dwelt upon other subjects 
 only as they were connected with that. Morality was 
 no longer primarily and necessarily a philosophical 
 system. The plain commands and promises of our 
 heavenly Father, the lessons of our Divine Teacher, 
 the expositions and exhortations of his inspired Disci- 
 ples, these were the first and indisputable landmarks 
 of man's conduct. By these he rmist guide himselfl 
 Other considerations might be admissible, but these 
 were imperative and inevitable. Whether in this way 
 his morality formed a symmetrical system, an intel- 
 ligible philosophy, was comparatively of small moment. 
 If man could bring his philosophical views into har- 
 mony with sound religiousi doctrine, it was well. If 
 not, it could never be doubted which of the two should 
 give way. The scripture with its declarations and 
 precepts must stand : the scrolls of the philosophers, 
 the tables of the lawyers, might without a pang be 
 cast aside. Till philosophy had completely submitted 
 to theology, and resigned all thought of rivalry, there 
 could be no peace between the two. And thus, along 
 with the diffusion and establishment of Christianity in 
 the world, we have a repudiation of independent moral 
 philosophy, and a pause or regression in the progress 
 towards a sonnd and tenable system of that subject, 
 
LECTURE X. 
 Christian Mobalitt, — St Augustine on Lying. 
 
 IN" the early Christian writers, though there is much 
 on the subject of Morality, there is little or nothing 
 which can properly be called Moral Philosophy. Moral 
 questions are in those writings based almost entirely 
 on the commands and doctrines of Scripture. Yet 
 even in these cases, there enter necessarily into the 
 discussion the general principles of morality which are 
 universal in the human breast, and which must aid 
 Christians in understanding, reconciling and applying 
 the precepts of Scripture morality. Along with the 
 precepts also, the examples contained in Scripture ne- 
 cessarily attract notice ; and especially cases in which 
 persons represented as the objects of divine favotir are 
 related to have performed actions which were, or seem 
 at first sight to have been, at variance with the general 
 rules of ordinary morality. The discussion of such 
 cases led at an early period to a kind of Chidstian 
 Casuistry. It would be easy to say of this, as is so 
 often said of Casuistry in general, that it is a perverted 
 and dangerous morality; but it may also be said of 
 this, as may likewise be said of Casuistry in general, 
 that it consists of attempts to answer questions which 
 inevitably force themselves upon men's minds, which 
 are not answered to the satisfaction of any thoughtful 
 person by calling them pei-verted and dangerous, and 
 to which answers really moral and Christian, in some 
 form or other, must exist and ought to be pointed out 
 by Christian teachers. If it be asked, for instance, 
 whether Jacob did right, or was excusable, in person- 
 
LECT. X.J. CHRISTIAN MOEALITT. 79 
 
 ating his brother Esau, the proper answer may pos- 
 sibly be that he was ; or that he was not ; or that his 
 action is no example for 1135 or that it is not to have 
 common rules applied to it, being part of a special 
 scheme of divine government; or that we do uawisely 
 to seek to define a class of actions which are ex- 
 cusable though wrong: — or we might probably find 
 other answers which might possibly be given : but it 
 cannot be a matter of indifierence to us which of those 
 answers are more and which are less conformable to 
 Christian truth, and fitted to promote Christian mo- 
 rality in those who ask the question and look for the 
 answer as a part of their moral guidance. The con- 
 demnation of Casuistry applied to such cases should at 
 least be put in an intelligible and temperate and defi- 
 nite form; and when this is done, such condemnation 
 becomes itself a portion of Casuistry : of Casuistry in 
 a good sense ; meaning thereby an answer to the ques- 
 tion. What ought we to do in given cases: — a question 
 which can hardly be held to be a part of a perverse 
 and dangeroxis morality; for if we are to have moral 
 rules at all, we must include among them such ques- 
 tions as this, Nor can any generalities, such as a pro- 
 hibition of all fraud, a reverent estimate of the plans of 
 Providence, a contemplation of Scripture narratives 
 for edification, be of much use to us, if we are not 
 allowed to endeavour to make such injunctions con- 
 sistent with each other. 
 
 This accordingly, at an early period. Christian teach- 
 ers endeavoured to do. And though I have said that 
 they could not help doing this, I am very far from 
 saying that we are to accept, as necessarily authorita- 
 tive and conclusive for us, the answers to these moral 
 inquiries which in the earlier centuries they gave. 
 Nor am I going to maintain that even their modes of 
 Stating and discussing these questions are necessarily 
 laudable and moral. It may be that they were some- 
 times led by their speculations into a perverted and 
 oblique morality. It may be that they were on danger- 
 ous ground in their very foundations — if, for instance, 
 any of them were content to assume a class of actions 
 
8o HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT, 
 
 wrong but allowable; and to inquire whether given 
 actions, seemingly immoral, might be placed in this 
 class. But if some incurred such dangers as these, we 
 may with the more readiness turn to those who took 
 a better line : — who referred actions to a higher moral 
 standard; who delivered on such subjects a really Chris- 
 tian morality. It will hardly be thought likely that 
 there were in the earlier periods of Christianity no 
 teachers of this latter school; none who were truly 
 Christian casuists ; none who answered these questions, 
 or if they were not to be answered, dismissed them, in 
 the spirit of moralists who had received the teaching 
 of Christ and his disciples rightly : — in that spirit, in 
 short, in which we should seek to answer such ques- 
 tions, or, if answer be not possible, to dismiss them. 
 
 Of the Christian Moi-ality of this better school Au- 
 gustine appears to me to be a good example; and as it 
 cannot fail, I think, to be interesting to see how a 
 Christian moralist, of really Christian views and of a 
 clear and active mind, discussed difficult questions in 
 the fourth century, I shall take some specimens of his 
 treatment of such questions as I have spoken of: — some 
 Cases of Conscience such as the Scripture narratives 
 suggest. 
 
 The cases which I shall take will be cases of con- 
 science with regard to Veracity ; the most common, 
 yet often the most complex cases of conscience in all 
 times. Why cases with respect to Truth should offer 
 themselves more familiarly in our moral inquiries than 
 other classes of cases, it would, I think, be possible to 
 render reasons ; but I shall not at present stay to do 
 so. I shall proceed to mention some such cases which 
 have been from the earliest times of Christianity much 
 discussed among Christian teachers. 
 
 One of these cases is that of E^ihab the woman of 
 Jericho, who concealed the spies sent by Joshua {Joshtut 
 chap, ii.), and having hid them in the roof of her house 
 under the stalks of flax which she had laid in order, told 
 her countrymen that they had gone away from the city 
 at the time of nhutting the gate; and who was saved, 
 and had a place in the lineage of our Lord (Matt. i. 5). 
 
X.] CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 8 1 
 
 Another is that of the Hebrew midwives, who saved 
 the male-children of their countrywomen in opposition 
 to the commands of Pharaoh (Ex. i.), and gave him a 
 false account of what happened ; and of whom it is 
 said (ver. 20), "therefore God dealt well with the mid- 
 wives ; and it came to pass, because the midwives feared 
 God, that he made them houses." 
 
 It cannot be denied that iu these cases the deceit 
 employed so as to favour the cause of God's peculiar 
 people, the Jews, appears to be noticed in Scripture 
 with commendation. The author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews mentions Eahab (xi. 31) among the illustrious 
 examples of faith; and St James (ii. 25), among those 
 who were justified by works. And it is perhaps not 
 wonderful that the earlier Christian writers should 
 without hesitation give their admiration as well as 
 their approval to these actions. Chrysostom says (Orat. 
 u. De Fenitentia), & koKov if/ivSovs, <fec., " O noble lie. 
 laudable deceit, of her who would not betray the 
 cause of religion, but preserved true piety." And 
 Jerome (on Ezekiel xxviii. and Isaiah Ixv.) praises the 
 Hebrew midwives, and holds that they received an 
 eternal as well as a temporal reward, St Ambrose 
 holds the like opinion (ad Syagriwm, Lib. viii. Epist. 63). 
 
 There is no occasion, in order to discuss these 
 cases as questions of morality, to leave out of consi- 
 deration that they were the effects of faith in the 
 designs of Providence with regard to the Jews, and 
 not mere results pf the impulse of a human mind to 
 save the lives of human creatures in peril of death. 
 For still the question remains, whether, to forward 
 the purposes of God which we discern by faith, it be 
 agreeable to God's will to tell untruths. And if it 
 be said that Rahab and that the midwives may have 
 had a special revelation of God's will in these cases, 
 which exempted them from the obligation of his 
 general prohibition of falsehood, we must still say 
 that this does not appear to be taught in Scripture ; 
 and that as we do not know that it was so, we may 
 at least enquire what we are to think of these case.s, 
 supposing that it was not so : at any rate this is the 
 
 M. p. u. 6 
 
82 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 aspect under which Augustine discusses them, and it 
 may be worth our while to attend to his arguments 
 and views. 
 
 The cases along with others are discussed in two 
 of his short treatises : the first entitled De Mendada, 
 the second Contra Mendacium. In that interesting 
 literary autobiography of this Father which is con- 
 tained in his Rebractationes, (Notices of the occasion 
 of each of his works, with corrections of their errors, 
 especially of doctrine,) he tells us on what account 
 each of these two treati.ses was written. Of the first 
 he says, " I have also written a book On Lying." It 
 appears from its place in the Retractations to have 
 been written about a. d. 395. Of the second he says, 
 "Then also," (that is, A. d. 420), "I wrote a book. 
 Contra Mendacium." ■ , 
 
 The treatise Contra Mendobciimi, however, as well 
 as that De Mendacio, contains a discussion of the 
 doubtful cases, and especially of those which I have 
 particularly mentioned already: and indeed, in my 
 opinion is the more elevated and satisfactory of the 
 two as a moral treatise. In the De Mendacio we have 
 several cases treated which belong rather to subtle 
 and technical than to moral casuistry : as for instance 
 (Art. 4) whether it be a lie if a man may speak 
 truth with intent to deceive, or if a man speak falsely 
 in order that he may not deceive. Such questions, 
 proposed and answered in terms so general and per- 
 emptory as this, can hardly be of much service to 
 morality. But in both these treatises, what gives 
 them their main value is the disposition to carry the 
 claims of trath as high as possible, so that he does 
 not ever allow that falsehood is blameless, or that 
 the rule of speaking truth really admits of excep- 
 tions. And it is the more satisfactory to find a 
 Father of the church at this period taking this line, 
 inasmuch as some of the preceding Fathers had been 
 content with what we must needs call a lower stand- 
 ard of morality. They had not only commended 
 those who had spoken falsely in special'cases, such as 
 those which we have referred to, but had pretended 
 
X.] CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 83 
 
 to assign classes of cases in wHch lying is allowable, 
 as for instance, to enemies; as Chrysostom' and thosff 
 against whom the treatise Contra Mendacium is di- 
 rected, who held that simulation was permissible 
 when used to detect heretics. Against all such loose 
 dealing with morality, Augustine lifts up his voice; 
 although he is very far from denying the difficulty of 
 extreme cases of seeming conflict of duties, or, as he 
 calls them, sins of compensation, which may be pro- 
 posed. He states, in several instances, the case on 
 both sides, and sometimes seems to allow that the 
 falsehood, under great stress, may be regarded with- 
 out blame; but he always finally points out the 
 greater moral beauty of perfect truth. 
 
 We may illustrate this in the cases already before 
 us. At one f)lace he seems to go as far as Chrysos- 
 tom °, crying out, respecting the mid wives' conduct, 
 "0 magnum humanitatis ingenium! O pium pro 
 salute mendacium!" But when he comes to speak 
 deliberately as a Christian moralist, he only ventures 
 to say that these women were "according to their 
 degree approved and rewarded of God''." Their act 
 was better than a lie of malice, but it was not abso- 
 lutely good. " If a person that is accustomed to tell 
 lies for harm's sake comes to tell them for the sake 
 of doing good, that person has made great progress. 
 But it is one thing that is set forth as laudable in 
 itself; another, that in comparison with a worse is 
 preferred. It is one sort of gratulation that we ex- 
 press when a man is in sound health, another when 
 a sick man is getting better." And this view of the 
 moral character of such falsehoods, as though not 
 blameless, compatible with moral progress, is further 
 and better followed out in the treatise to Consentius : 
 the comparative justification of the women being there 
 rested upon their ignorance of the highest, that is, true 
 Christian morality. 
 
 ' Ve SacerdAMo, Lib, i. Cap. 5. See Grotius, B. et P.i u. 1. 17. 
 2 Lib. n. mper Exodum, See Grotius, B. et P. iii. 1. 16. 
 s De Mend. 7. 
 
 6—2 
 
84 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 He then says, ■with, great moral justice, as seems 
 to me {Gont. Mend. 33), "Whether it be ever right, 
 even for the saving of a man's life, to tell a lie, as it 
 is a question in resolving which even the most learned 
 do weary themselves, it did vastly sxrrpass the capa- 
 city of these poor women, set in the midst of those 
 nations and accustomed to those manners. Therefore 
 their ignorance in this as well as in those other things 
 of which they were alike unknowing, but which are 
 to be known by the children not of this world but 
 of that which is to come (that is, by Christians), the 
 patience of God did bear withal : who yet for their 
 human kindness which they had shown to his ser- 
 vants rendered unto them rewards of an earthly sort, 
 albeit signifying somewhat of a heavenly." He means 
 that God "making them houses" was a Reward com- 
 paratively of small or no value, except they were 
 finally admitted to the heavenly mansions. We see 
 here how carefully he so interprets their being com- 
 mended and rewarded as that their falsehood shall be 
 of no avail as an example for Christians. 
 
 And in the same manner he deals with the case 
 of Rahab. She, he says, for her humanity, received 
 a rev/ard, but temporal only, except so far as it pre- 
 figured an eternal hope. Such hope she might after- 
 wards attain to : for she, " delivered out of Jericho, 
 made transition to the people of God, when, being 
 proficient, she might attain to eternal and immortal 
 prizes which are not to be sought by any He." And 
 her lie, if excused, must be excused on account of the 
 moral imperfection of the state in which it was ut- 
 tered. For "at that time when she did for the Israelite 
 spies that good, she was not yet such that it should be 
 required of her. In your mouth let Yea he yea; Nay, 
 nay." This might suffice as her excuse, but this wiU 
 not excuse us. "For us, when we ask whether it be 
 the part of a good man sometimes to lie, we ask not 
 concerning a person pertaining to. Egypt or to Jeri- 
 cho, or to Babylon, or even to Jerusalem itself the 
 earthly, while it is in bondage with her children; but 
 concerning a citizen of that city which is above and 
 
X.] CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 85 
 
 free, our mother eternal in the heavens." This view 
 of the manner in which Christian morality is affected 
 by Scripture precedents is, I think, admirably adapted 
 to keep us out of error, and to point out the best 
 answer to all such questions of conflicting duties, by 
 shewing that there is a course which, if followed in 
 Christian obedience, trust and hope, cannot be bad, 
 though it may not be the only course which a good 
 man can take. 
 
 And what would this course have been in the 
 instances now discussed? Augustine does not fear 
 to follow out his views so as to answer this question 
 also (34). " Some man will say : Would then those 
 midwives and Rahab have done better if they had 
 shewn no mercy by refusing to lie?" — That is the 
 question : What is the answer of the unbending lover 
 of truth? "VerUy, those Hebrew women, if they 
 were such as that sort of persons of whom we ask 
 whether they oiTght ever to tell a lie," — if they were 
 seeking Christian perfection, that is, — "would both 
 eschew to say aught false, and would most frankly 
 refuse that foul service of killing the babes. But 
 thou wilt say, themselves would die." This does not 
 daunt him. " Yea ; but see what follows. They would 
 die with a heavenly habitation for their incomparably 
 more ample reward than those houses which they 
 made them on earth could be." And in the same 
 manner he treats the case of Eahab, except that he 
 takes account of the possibility of the Israelite spies 
 escaping even without her lie. " What of her of Je- 
 richo? If she did not by telling a lie deceive the 
 enquiring citizens, would she not, by speaking truth, 
 betray the trusting guests?" So there is a third pos- 
 sible case. " Could she not say to their questionings, 
 I know where they are ; but I fear God, I will not 
 betray them? She could say this, were she already 
 an Israelitess in whom there was no guile." This 
 course was blameless. " But they, hearing this, thou 
 wilt say, would slay her and search the house." Even 
 if this were done, he goes on to say, the Israelites 
 might escape, and she being slain for a work of mercy 
 
86 HISTOET OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 would have ended this life, which must needs come 
 to an end, by a happy death. And he goes on to say 
 that God's Providence can bring about its purposes 
 without being aided by the false utterances of men. 
 Such is the mode in which these cases are treated by 
 Augustine : and whatever else we may say of his de- 
 cision, we shall not, I think, find any temptation to 
 say that Casuistry like this tends to weaken morality, 
 or to involve men in perverted and low compromises. 
 Such a view of moral questions concerning truth is 
 the Stoicism of Christianity. And we cannot doubt 
 that if men could meet moral questions in this spirit, 
 believing that death itself, when incurred in obedience 
 to the will of God, is the gate of eternal happiness, 
 we could never have any moral question of which 
 there was not at least one unexceptionable solution. 
 
 But undoubtedly to solve all moral questions in 
 this manner is not only a procedure implying spi- 
 ritual habits too high for the greater part of man- 
 kind, even of those who are aiming at Christian per- 
 fection; but also does itself proceed upon an assump- 
 tion, which we can hardly think it safe for the greater 
 part of mankind to make, — ^that when they have to 
 decide on such questions, they may reckon upon the 
 fulness of Divine favour if their decision leads imme- 
 diately to their death. This must, we cannot but 
 suppose, depend upon other circumstances also; — upon 
 their previous lives and Christian progress, for iu- 
 stance: for it would be too much to suppose that 
 their own final act can obliterate or supersede all that 
 previously had tended to determine their lot in that 
 other life. The veiy mention of such a difficidty 
 shows us how hard it is to lay down rules for such 
 extreme cases as we are contemplating; but yet we 
 cannot doubt that one way in which we are to try to 
 obtain the Divine favour is by trying to shape our 
 course according to His will, even without assuming 
 that we are ready to meet His presence, or ju.stified in 
 laying down our Hves. It can hardly be said abso- 
 lutely that when life, our own or that of another, 
 cannot be preserved without a lie, the occurrence of 
 
X.] CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 87 
 
 the emergency is itself a motion from God that we 
 ought to part witli life. To those who feel it so — who 
 have so prepared for the great change that they dare 
 to interpret the dealings of Providence in this ijaan- 
 ner — it may be so: they are already, as Augustine 
 says, citizens of the eternal city, and may rightly and 
 unpresumptuously accept the first signal to enter its 
 gates. But there must be others who though they 
 are journeying towards that city, are not yet sure- of 
 their citizenship, and dare not present themselves be- 
 fore its Ruler without some more peremptory com- 
 mand. Such men are, no doubt, incomplete Christians, • 
 weak, imperfect, timorous, mistrustful ; but such the 
 greater part of Christians, it cannot be denied, are. 
 And being such, they have their doubts and their 
 questionings : and one way in which they are to be- 
 come less imperfect, less feeble, more trustful, more 
 courageous, is by acting on every occasion in such a 
 way as they believe, in all sincerity, after examiaa- 
 tion conducted with all care, to be the right way for 
 them. It is in the minds of such persons especially 
 that conflicts of duties, compensating sins, and the 
 like, produce disturbances and disquiet; and we con- 
 ceive that the examination of such questions, consi- 
 dered as a means of promoting Christian perfection, 
 may attain to that object. And Augustine also, 
 though he gives, as we have seen, the solution of the 
 cases before us on the highest ground, does not dis- 
 semble the difficulty which such questions raise in all 
 men's minds, and in his own among the rest. Thus 
 he says (36), " But for that we are men and among 
 men do live, and I confess that I am not yet" (not 
 yet, how just to his own \'iews !) " among the number 
 of those whom compensation-sins embarrass not, it 
 befalleth me in human affairs to be overcome by hu- 
 man feeling." And he then refers to the case of a 
 sick man to whom it is a question whether we shall 
 tell that his son is dead, the news being likely to 
 cause his death also. He puts the temptation to act 
 in the tender and humane method very strongly; and 
 the pressure of general opinion; "Who can hear men 
 
88 HISTOUT OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 casting up to him what a mischief it is to shun a lie 
 that might save .life, and to choose truth that murders 
 aman'i I am moved," he confesses, "by these ob- 
 jectipns exceedingly." But yet stiU, clinging to his 
 affection for absolute truth, he will not yield to the 
 temptation. "I am moved exceedingly," he says, 
 "but it were a marvel whether also wisely." And 
 he oscillates, as it were, between the state in which 
 the love of truth masters all other feelings, and the 
 more ordinary promptings of humanity. "When I 
 set before the eyes of my heart (such as they be) the 
 •intellectual beauty of Him out of whose mouth no- 
 thing false proceedeth, (albeit where truth in her ra- 
 diance doth more and more brighten upon me, there 
 my weak and throbbing sense is thrown bapk;) then I 
 am with love of that surpassing comeliness so set on 
 fire, that I despise all human regards which would 
 thence recall me." This is the impulse in one direc- 
 tion. " But," he adds, " it is much that this affection 
 persevere in that degree that in temptation it lack 
 not its effect." He goes on still further to express 
 and discuss the two sides, and briefly exclaims, TT/to 
 is sufficient for these things ? 
 
 This appears to me to be a noble manner of treat- 
 ing questions of conscience; and with such discus- 
 sions before him, I do not think that any one can 
 speak of Christian casuistry as tending to laxity or 
 lukewarmness. But for the reasons which I have 
 mentioned, it is proper for us to discuss moral ques- 
 tions without making the only ground of our deci- 
 sion a fervour of love for the idea of perfect good- 
 ness, such as is entertained in the minds of perhaps 
 few Christians only. And we may find in Augustine, 
 though as I have said, and as may now perhaps be 
 more fully understood, no decision in which the claims 
 of truth are deserted; yet we may find, I say, some 
 arguments and observations which may convey to 
 minds in a calmer mood, and only on their way to- 
 wards this exalted view, something on which they 
 may, according to their degree of proficiency, take 
 hold in their struggles with such questions as may 
 
X.] CHRISTIAN MORALITY i 89 
 
 come before them. The remarks -which I select may 
 not decide the questions, but they may be of use in 
 warning us against dangers, vhich by rash or light 
 decision -we might incur. 
 
 And there is one remark which Augustine re- 
 peatedly adduces as an argument, and which is of 
 great weight, against all decisions of moral questions 
 which allow us to deviate from an absolute general 
 rule, such as that of truth is; namely, that if we ever 
 allow that we may in any case tell a lie, it is difficult 
 to draw any line by which the permission can be 
 bounded ; and thus the love of trut]). may be utterly 
 destroyed. He applies this remark to the case which 
 we have just spoken of (37). After the exclamation 
 which I have quoted. Who is sufficient for these things i 
 he goes on, " Add to this (and here is cause to cry 
 out more piteously), that if we ever grant it to have 
 been right for the saving of that sick man's life to 
 tell him the lie that his son was alive, then by little 
 and little and by minute degrees the evil so grows 
 upon us, and by slight accessions to such a heap of 
 wicked lies does it, in its almost imperceptible en- 
 croachments, at last come, that no place can anywhere 
 be found on which this huge mischief, by smallest 
 additions rising into boundless strength, might be 
 resisted. "Wherefore most providently is it written. 
 He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and 
 little," (Ecclus. xix. i). He then goes on to say that 
 the reason, if accepted as excusing a lie, might be 
 urged as even, in a case of like necessity, justifying 
 perjury; and that this has been done: so that there 
 are learned men who even fix rules and set bounds 
 when it is a duty, when not a duty, to commit per- 
 jury. At this he expresses deep and indignant grief 
 "0 where are you, fountains of tears? and what shall 
 we do? whither go? where hide us from the ire of 
 Truth, if we not only neglect to shun lies, but dare 
 moreover to teach perjuries?" Though so exclama- 
 tory in its form, we cannot, I think, refuse to recognize 
 this as sound Christian morality; and must agree with 
 Augustine that, even if we may in circumstances of 
 
pO HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 extreme necessity tolerate a lie, we can never cease 
 to look with horror upon lies with the attestation of 
 God to witness them, till we have lost aU real sense 
 of religion. 
 
 But leaving this matter of perjury, and returning 
 to the question whether a lie may be tolerable in some 
 supposed case of necessity, there is another remark 
 of Augustin in this treatise which may, I conceive, 
 be applied generally to all these cases of conscience. 
 It is this. That it makes a great difference whether 
 we beforehand define a certain class of violations of 
 moral rules whigh may be tolerated under predeter- 
 mined circumstances, or consider how far some special 
 sin which has been committed tinder the stress of 
 strong fear, pity, or the like, may be looked back upon 
 with indulgence, and considered as compensated in 
 some degree by the feelings and intentions which ac- 
 companied it. He assumes it as granted that past 
 sins may be forgiven on account of good works after- 
 wards done; and then asks (in the character of an- 
 other person) (C. M. 32), " If sins done out of mere 
 earthly desire, not of mercy, are for the sake of 
 after works of mercy remitted, why are not those 
 through merit of mercy remitted which of mercy 
 itself are committed?" If an unmitigated sin be 
 blotted out by a subsequent work of mercy, surely 
 it would seem a less heinous sin may be blotted out 
 by the concomitant purpose of mercy. " So indeed," 
 he says, *' it may seem ; but in truth there is a differ- 
 ence. It is one thing to say, ' I ought not to have 
 sinned, but I wUl do works of mercy whereby I may 
 blot out the sin I did before ;' and another to say, ' I 
 ought to sin, because I cannot else show mercy.' It 
 is, I say, one thing to say, ' Because we have already 
 sinned let us do good,' and another to say, ' Let us sin 
 that we may do good.' Then it is said, ' Let us do 
 good because we have done evil;' but here. Let us do 
 evil that good may come. In the forHaer case we have 
 to wipe out a sin, in the latter to beware of a doctrine 
 which teacheth to sin." 
 
 Without accepting the theological views here im- 
 
X.] CHRISTIAN MORALITY. QI 
 
 plied, ■we may remark that this reluctance to look 
 forwards to sins as compensated by the accompany- 
 ing necessity, is, for the most part, a sound and whole- 
 some moral habit. And the preparation for a pure 
 and right condvict under the pressure of strong cases 
 of necessity will best be made by cherishing the love 
 of all the forms of goodness, and in regard to such 
 cases as we are here considering, the love of truth 
 which this Christian Father expresses in such glowing 
 language. Probably there are few cases where a mind 
 so disciplined would not be able to choose a course 
 free from sin ; but at least a, mind so disciplined would 
 commit the sin with a struggle and reluctance very 
 different from the feeling which would be generated 
 by supposing that there is a class of such cases in 
 which the violation of moral rule is allowable or jus- 
 tifiable: and such a discipline would be that which, 
 if the sin really be committed, would soonest and 
 most effectually bring back the sinner, by repentance 
 and amendment, into the course of Christian progress 
 and hope. Not to define beforehand cases of neces- 
 sity, at least in a peremptory and precise manner, is 
 one of the rules by which the moralist may best hope 
 to lead his hearers to meet such cases in a truly moral 
 spirit. 
 
 With regard to the case which is most frequently 
 taken as the type of such cases, the question whether 
 it be allowable or right to tell a lie to saye a man's 
 life, Augustine makes a remark which is much to the 
 purpose, though very often overlooked, — ^that the person 
 interrogated may refuse to answer, and that the sup- 
 posed alternative is arbitrarily assumed. He says (Be 
 Men. 22), that it would be braver and more excellent 
 to say, " I will neither betray nor lie." He relates that 
 a former Bishop of the Church of Thagastra, Firmus 
 by name, " and even more firm in will," did this, so 
 protecting a man who was taking refuge with him, 
 "when he had suffered so many torments of body 
 (for as yet the emperors were not Christians) he stood 
 firm in his purpose. Therefore," he goes on to re- 
 late, "being brought before the emperor his conduct 
 
92 HISTOBT OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 appeared so admirable that lie without any difficulty 
 obtained a pardon for the man he was trying to save." 
 This event of course does not solve the moral ques- 
 tion; but the approbation which we give to the con- 
 duct of the Bishop shows that such conduct was, as I 
 have before said, at least one form of moral solution 
 of such a case of necessity. 
 
 As my object at present is rather to exhibit to 
 you the Casuistry of St Augustine than to treat the 
 subject at large, I shall not further pursue these re- 
 marks, nor shall I attempt to give you an account of 
 all the parts of these two treatises. Some parts, in- 
 deed, would not be to our purpose, as those which 
 have especial bearing upon the position of character 
 of the PriscilHanists. Other parts refer to the inter- 
 pretation of Scripture in matters not specially moraL 
 Yet we may notice here the way in which he allows 
 (for it is in him a concession) that the actions of the 
 holy persons mentioned in the New Testament (for he 
 rejects Old Testament examples as not authoritative) 
 seem to aid us in understanding of the commands 
 (p. M. 27). Thus he remarks that the precept, When 
 thou art smitten on vne cheek, turn the other, did not 
 prevent St Paul, and even Him from whose mouth 
 the precept proceeded, from remonstrating when so 
 smitten; though, as he says, St Paul had his heart 
 ready to receive other blows, and to suffer for the 
 truth any. pain whatever. So the precept. Take no 
 thought Jbr the morrow, did not prevent the Lord and 
 his Apostles from having a bag in which was kept 
 what was needful, nor the Apostles from making 
 provision for a future famine. And in like manner 
 of other cases. Prom wMch he infers that the dispo:- 
 sition of the heart rather than outward action is the 
 object of such commands. And after discussing the 
 places in Scripture which condemn lying, he is led to 
 this conclusion (38), that whatever reasons may be 
 urged on the one side or the other, " Yet no man can 
 say that he finds this, either in. example or in the word 
 of the Scriptures, that any lie should seem a thing to be 
 loved, or not to be hated; howbeit sometimes by teUing 
 
X.] CHRISTIAN MOEALITT. 93 
 
 a lie thou must do that thou hatest, that what is 
 more .greatly to be detested may be avoided." And 
 he thus notices the danger of making our own desires 
 the measure of this comparative good and evil. 
 
 The only case in which Augustine appears willing 
 to allow that falsehood is permissible is, when it may 
 be the means of preserving a woman ftom " outrage 
 worse than death." The defence of female chastity 
 has always been by moralists and lawgivers placed 
 upon a footing as high, or nearly as high, as the de- 
 fence of life. If falsehood were justifiable in any 
 case, it would be so in this. You will easily conceive 
 that I cannot dwell upon this subject; but I may no- 
 tice that even in his judgment upon such a case, Au- 
 gustine is still consistent. He says {D. M. 41), "There 
 resulteth then from all these this sentence, that a lie 
 which doth not violate the doctrine of piety, nor 
 piety itself, nor innocence, nor benevolence, may on 
 behalf of pudieity of body be admitted." Yet he 
 does not even here quit his hold of that severer de- 
 cision which is in stricter conformity with the abso- 
 lute love of truth. "And yet," he says, "if (41) any 
 man should propose to himself so to love truth, not 
 only that which consists in contemplation, but also 
 m uttering the true thing... I know not whether any 
 could wisely say that that man errs." 
 
LECTUEE XL 
 Scholastic Morality. — ^Peter Lombard. 
 
 WHATEVER judgment we may form concerning 
 the cause of the decay which took place in hu- 
 man philosophy, the fact of such a decay no one can 
 doubt. During the decline of the Roman empire, 
 and the middle ages, we find no evidences of the 
 power of the human mind to discover tnith such as 
 we have in the philosophy of the Greeks. We have 
 no new systems of doctrine then framed, such as some 
 of these ancient ones were, — symmetrical and beau- 
 tiful to behold, yet consistent and solid, so that the 
 more they were studied the more clearly they were 
 established. On the contrary, we have a vast over- 
 prevalence of that practice which we have noticed, 
 as betraying the decay of original and exact thought-r 
 the habit of adopting the systems of preceding writers, 
 and of employing them with no true understanding 
 of their meaning. Tradition and commentation take 
 the place of philosophy. Moreover, "it is not the opi- 
 nions of preceding philosophers only which are the 
 subject of this tradition and commentation : but along 
 with these, and indeed far. more, the declarations of 
 the sacred Scriptures, and the artificial modes of pre- 
 senting and arranging the doctrines there contained, 
 which ingenious men had from time to time devised. 
 But further, though the learned men of the middle 
 ages were thus in reality servile and imitative, origi- 
 nating little or nothing, and employing themselves on 
 the thoughts which preceding ages had had before 
 them, they were still extremely acute in following ioto 
 detail the thoughts with which they began, subtle in 
 
LECT. XI.] SCHOLASTIC MORALITY. 95 
 
 distinction, and extravagantly fond of symmetry and 
 system in form. And I must now endeavour to show 
 you how these characteristics operated in that path of 
 speculation with which I have here to do ; and what 
 is the garb in which, owing to these causes, moral 
 philosophy shows itself in the ages of which I am 
 speaking. 
 
 The adherence to tradition, both philosophical 
 and theological, combined with the love of system, 
 determined the mode in which the schoolmen con- 
 structed their Ethical scheme. They took all the 
 portions of Aristotle and of Scripture which seemed 
 readily to offer themselves as parts of a methodical 
 system, and by putting together these, they framed a 
 structure, in which, without any real principle of dis- 
 tinction or arrangement, there was a great show of 
 division and sub-division. Thus from the Greeks they 
 took the scheme of the/oMr ca/rdinal vvrtues of which 
 we have spoken; Aristotle's notion of virtue as a 
 medium of opposite vices, and his enumeration of 
 virtues derived from this notion. From the Old 
 Testament they took the Ten CoTmnandmenUs as a 
 moi-al basis. From the Christian Scriptures they 
 adopted the three virtues of Faith, Hope, and Cha- 
 rity ; — the seven Beatitudes of our Saviour's sermon 
 on the mount (the blessing of the poor, (in spirit,) the 
 mourners, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, 
 those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, and 
 those that are persecuted for righteousness' sake); — and 
 the seven Petitions of the Lord's Prayer. They also 
 took from the Epistle to the Corinthians (i Cor. xii.) 
 the enumeration of diversities of Gifts; the word of 
 wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, the gift of 
 healing, the working of miracles, the discerning of 
 spirits, divers kinds of tongues, and the interpreta- 
 tion of tongues. And they found a further illustra- 
 tion of these Gifts in the seven Gifts of the Spirit which, 
 in their reading, are mentioned in the eleventh chapter 
 of Isaiah: "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest 
 upon him, the spirit of wisdom and wnderstamding, 
 the spirit of covmsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, 
 
96 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. £lECT, 
 
 of godliness, and of the fear of the Lord." Without 
 in the smallest degree yielding to these theologians in 
 reverence for the Scriptures, we may venture to say 
 that it is a highly precarious procedure to lay the foun- 
 dations of our philosophical systems by counting the 
 members of such enumerations as these. This, how- 
 ever, was the practice which prevailed for centuries, 
 and of which I must give an example or two. 
 
 One of the first great names among those who are 
 especially called the Schoolmen, is Peter the Lombard, 
 more commonly known as Magister Sententiarum, the 
 Master of Sentences, or decisions on a multitude of 
 questions ; which propositions served as a groundwork 
 for commentation and discussion in succeeding ages. 
 He died in a.d. i i 64. His Liber Sententiarum contains, 
 for the most part, questions of a theological nature, 
 with their solutions : but from these, in his 3rd book, 
 he gradually passes to moral questions. In his 23rd 
 Distinction he enquires If Christ had faith, hope and 
 charity — and in connection with this. What faith is; 
 How many kinds of it there are, and the like. After 
 treating of this virtue, and also of hope and ch'arity, 
 in his 34th Distinction he comes to the four cardinal 
 virtues, and enquires whether these virtues were in 
 Christ and in the angels. The next question is con- 
 cerning the seven gifts of the Spirit, which, as I have 
 already said, are supposed to be enumerated in the 
 xith chapter of Isaiah : and here too he enquires whe- 
 ther these are possessed by the angels. 
 
 But in the questions which foUow, his discussions 
 are more genuinely philosophical. Thus the next 
 question (35) is respecting the difference of the wis- 
 dom, the understanding, and the knowledge, mentioned 
 in the passage of Isaiah just refeiTed to. The next 
 (36) is the question whether the virtues are so con- 
 nected that they cannot be separated. The next ques- 
 tion (37) is concerning the ten commandments, and 
 how they are contained in the two precepts of love. 
 
 The consideration of the eighth commandment 
 leads him to the consideration of Lying, which forms 
 the subject of the 38th question : this with the 39th, 
 
XI.] SCHOLASTIC MORALITY. 97 
 
 upon perjuiy, and the 40th, upon "the letter that 
 killeth, and the spirit that giveth life," complete the 
 ethical portion of the Sentences. The book which suc- 
 ceeds is concerning the sacraments, and the future 
 life. 
 
 Perhaps you may wish to have some specimen of 
 the moral reasoning of this period : but in truth it is 
 not easy to give any which is characteristic. You 
 will see by what has been said already that the work 
 is in no small degree a commentary upon the Scrip- 
 tures; and the decisions on the questions propounded 
 by the author are not usually deduced by any reason- 
 ing from principles either moral or theological; but 
 given by calling in the words of some high, authority, 
 Augustine or Jerome, Isidore or Gratian, or the Scrip- 
 ture itself. Thus on the question whether all lying 
 is a sin, Augustine's decision is quoted. It is, how- 
 ever, also stated as an additional reason why lying is 
 sin, " Verba ideo sunt instituta non ut per ea homines 
 invicem fallant, sed ut per ea in alterius notitiam suas 
 cogitationes ferant. Verbis igitur uti ad fallaciam, 
 non et quse sunt instituta, peocatum est." This notion 
 of the sin of using words for a purpose different from 
 their true and proper end, is at least a genuine moral 
 principle. But we shall not find in the Master of the 
 Sentences the smallest approach towards a system 
 based upon such principles, or indeed, to any real sys- 
 tem at all, as may easily be supposed from the in- 
 coherent and incongruous materials of which, as I have 
 stated, the structure is built up. 
 
 M. p. II. 
 
LECTURE XII. 
 The Schoolmen.— Thomas Aqtjikas. 
 
 THUS an attempt was made to frame a system by 
 putting together the fragments of works of autho- 
 rity which presented in any degree an appearance of 
 system. This \indertaking thus entered upon by 
 Peter Lombard in the twelfth century, was carried 
 into effect in a much more complete manner by Tho- 
 mas Aquinas in the thirteenth, with regard to Theology 
 in general, and of course with regard to Ethics as a 
 portion of Theology. The Secunda SecwtvicB, the second 
 Section of the second Part of the Summa TheologicB, 
 contained a system of Ethics; it was the most cele- 
 brated part of the Stimma; and was long looked upon 
 with admiration and deference, as a standard and 
 classical work on the subject; and as indeed including 
 and superseding all other human systems of morals. 
 It had no doubt a powerful influence upon the ethical 
 speculations of succeeding times ; and on that account 
 well deserves our notice, as weU as for unquestionable 
 merits which it possesses. 
 
 Among these merits, however, as might be ex- 
 pected from what I have already said, we must not 
 look for that of a really philosophical arrangement, 
 truly dividing and exhausting the subject, and by its 
 form facilitating the treatment of the matter. On the 
 contrary, the same patchwork of incoherent fragments 
 of enumerations taken from various sources, which we 
 have already noticed in the Master of the Sentences, 
 occurs again in the works of the Angelic Doctor. Thus 
 the virtues are made seven by adding to the three 
 theological virtues. Faith, Hope and Charity, the four 
 
LECT. Xri.] SCHOOLMEN. — THOMAS AQUINAS. 99 
 
 cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and 
 Temperance. 
 
 The subject being thus distributed, considerable 
 skill is shown in devising such subdivisions of each 
 head, as shall, upon the whole, bring before the reader 
 all the main points of moral doctrine. To avoid re- 
 petition, he says he will, under each virtue consider 
 the virtue itself, the corresponding gifts, the opposite 
 vices, and the positive and negative precepts. Thus 
 Hope, as a Christian virtue, is the Hope of Eternal 
 Life. The corresponding gift is godly Fear : the op- 
 posite vices are Desperation and Presumption. Charity 
 has for its concomitant gifts Love, Joy, Peace, Pity, 
 Beneficence, Fraternal Correction ; for its opposites. 
 Hatred, Envy, Discord, Contention, Wai', Strife, Sedi- 
 tion, Scandal, and a peculiar foim of vice which the 
 writers of this time call Acidia or Acedia, and which 
 we may render apathy or melancholy, languor, indif- 
 ference. The account which Aquinas gives of this 
 habit of mind is this (Q. 35): "Acedia secundum 
 Damascenum est qusedam tristitia aggravans, quse 
 scilicet ita deprimit animum hominis ut nihil ei agere 
 liberet." Also it is "tsedium operandi; torpor mentis." 
 The word is a perversion of the Greek aKTySta. Cicero 
 writes to Atticus {Jip- ad Att. xii. 45), 'AKijSiix tua me 
 movet, etsi scribis nihil esse, " Your want of interest 
 in everything disturbs me, though you tell me that 
 it is nothing of any importance." But Aquinas was 
 not, it would seem, familiar with the Greek. He finds 
 another etymology for the word; it means, he says, 
 coldness, " sicut ea quae sunt adda, frigida sunt." 
 
 It may readily be conceived that with such a 
 framework as this all the questions of morals which 
 interest men may easily be brought under review. 
 Thus under the head of Charity, of which I have 
 just spoken, we have a discussion of various questions 
 concerning Almsgiving, and concerning the Lawful- 
 ness of War. As an example of the Questions, I 
 may state the four which he discusses on the last sub- 
 ject. They are — Whether any war be lawful ; Whe- 
 ther war be lawful in clerical persons; Whether in war 
 
 7—2 
 
100 HISTORT OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHT. [LECT. 
 
 we may use deceit; Whether war may be carried on 
 on festivals. The usual mode of discussing such ques- 
 tions, in Aquinas as in others of the schoolmen, is, 
 first to state a certain number of distinct arguments 
 on the vtrong side; then to give a decision, generally 
 in the words of some writer of authority, but also 
 supported by an argument; and then to give, in order, 
 an answer to each of the arguments first adduced. 
 
 It may easUy be conceived that this mode of treat- 
 ing a subject was well fitted for purposes of diq)utation ; 
 but at the same time, by involving each positive pro- 
 position in a cloud of objections and distinctions, it 
 exceedingly obscured the view of the doctrine which 
 was thus taught, and rendered the works thus con- 
 structed intolerably long and wearisome. It is a 
 formidable task, at the first aspect, to enter upon any 
 of these scholastic works. Their name is become 
 proverbial for unprofitable subtlety and overwhelming 
 prolixity. But yet it is not unlikely that if limited 
 portions of them were dressed up in modem forms, 
 the views and arguments would be very far from 
 meriting our contempt. The truth is, that in the 
 detail, these discussions exhibit, not only great acnte- 
 ness, but great good sense. I believe on most of the 
 questions discussed by Aquinas it would be very dif- 
 ficult to devise more pertinent and substantial argu- 
 ments than those which he brings; or to dispose more 
 fairly of the objections which he overrules. It is 
 easy to laugh at the schoolmen; but to have gone 
 through the whole of Theology and Morality, discuss- 
 ing so many questions, and weighing so many argu- 
 ments with the acuteness, vigour of mind, and range of 
 learning which Aquinas shows, is a task which few men 
 in the history of the world have been fit to perform. 
 
 The Secunda Secunclce contains 189 Questionsj and 
 these are divided into Articles, which are really so 
 many Questions discussed; and thus there are,. in fact, 
 515 Questions. And each of these is treated, by, we 
 may say upon an average, four arguments with the 
 responses to them, including a number of quotations 
 truly immense. 
 
XII.] SCHOOLMEN. — THOMAS AQUINAS. 101 
 
 Industry, vigour, acuteness, and sense, ttese we 
 cannot deny to Thomas Aquinas; but we must for 
 our purpose ask the question whether the Secunda 
 Secundm adds anything to the real store of ethical 
 philosophy ; — whether it contains any elements of pro- 
 gress in such speculations. And the answer must be, 
 that there is no such element to be found in it. How- 
 ever admirable special parts of the work may be, the 
 general plan and scheme of it is devoid of all trace 
 of philos&phical spirit. It is, as I have already said, 
 a heap of inconsistent materials. Accordingly the 
 subdivisions of the system do not fit into one another ; 
 and among some of the most subtle discussions which 
 occur, are those in which attempts are made to draw 
 lines which shall separate parts which by the struc- 
 ture of the scheme are inevitably thus confused in 
 their boundaries. The Wisdom which is a gift be- 
 longing to the theological virtue of charity, is hard to 
 distinguish from the Wisdom which forms part of the 
 ca/rdinal virtue of Prudence. A.gain, Religion, which 
 we should expect to find among the theological vir- 
 tues, comes before us again as a part of Justice. Con- 
 tumely, Detraction, Backbiting, Evil-speaking, are 
 also arranged as vices opposed to Justice, although 
 manifestly they are violations of charity no less, and 
 are not, in fact, distinguishable from the vices which 
 are given as the opposites of Charity. We have here 
 the confusion, already noticed, which necessarily arises 
 from the attempt to make Justice a virtue co-ordinate 
 with other virtues; and when, to this confusion is 
 added that which was produced by the further intro- 
 duction of a general view of Christian graces, thus 
 crushed into one corner of the old Ethical systems, we 
 may readily suppose that the attempted orderly scheme 
 became confusion worse confounded. 
 
 But the discussion of the questions concerning the 
 seven virtues does not occupy the whole of the Se- 
 cunda Secwndce. There is, besides this, another part 
 (beginning at Question 171) in which Aquinas treats 
 of the special duties of different conditions of life. 
 Here, however, we have stUl the same propensity to 
 
102 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lEOT. 
 
 borrow the general heads of his distribution, not from 
 any consideration of the subject itself, but from some 
 received authority. In his division of the conditions 
 of men, he professes to take for his guide the passage 
 of St Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians (iv. ii), "And 
 he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evange- 
 lists, some pastors, and teachers." But this division 
 he follows only so far as to make it the occasion of 
 deciding several questions with regard to the Special 
 Grace of God, of which the Prophets are instances. 
 He then turns to questions relative to the superior 
 excellence of an active or a contemplative life — an 
 ancient common-place of the Grecian schools — ^but to 
 which the Christian doctors gave a new and more 
 lively aspect, by considering it as exemplified in the 
 characters of Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus. 
 Finally, he professes to consider the offices and condi- 
 tions of men in general ; but here also his theological 
 habits of thinking fetter and limit his speculations; 
 and he hardly touches upon any conditions except 
 those of Bishops and Religious Orders. 
 
 I will only add further, that the theological basis 
 of Aquinas's work deforms, in other respects also, its 
 aspect as an ethical treatise. Thus the moral part of 
 the work contains no account at all of the duties 
 which arise from the relations of family; for Matri- 
 mony is a Sacrament; and therefore all which con- 
 cerns the obligations and consequences resulting from 
 the marriage union appertains to that division of the 
 work, the third part, in which the Sacraments are 
 treated of. 
 
 I have dwelt the more at length on the great work 
 of Aquinas so far -as it bears iipon our subject, inas- 
 much as it is not likely that many of you will make 
 much acquaintance with the work itself; and yet it is 
 desirable, in order to give completeness and connec- 
 tion to your view of the history of ethical systems, 
 that you should have a tolerably accurate notion of 
 those which reigned with so absolute a sway in the 
 middle ages. In general the schoolmen and their 
 doctrines are easily disposed of by popular thinkers 
 
XII.] SCHOOLMEN. — THOMAS AQUINAS. I03 
 
 and writers. A few phrases about "sctolastic tri- 
 fling," "scholastic subtlety," "scholastic dogmatism," 
 uttered at random, without any examination of the 
 wi-iters themselves, are considered as all that the oc- 
 casion requires. But we, taking a survey in which 
 we endeavour to understand aright the real office and 
 influence of each class of writers, and thus compelled 
 to ascertain for ourselves what they really have said, 
 and what is its bearing upon the doctrines of those 
 who preceded and followed them, are led to judgments 
 very difierent from these vulgar formularies. School- 
 men such as Aquinas were indeed men of acute, but 
 they were also men of vigorous minds. If we were 
 to invest with modern forms many of their disserta- 
 tions, it would be found impossible to give either a 
 better analysis of the question, or more solid argu- 
 ments, or a more judicious decision. 
 
 In what then, it may be asked, did that great 
 defect consist which rendered their speculations un- 
 fruitful of real truth, and condemned them to the 
 neglect, and in some measure to the scorn, of succeed- 
 ing times? Their great defect consisted in their re- 
 solving to have a complete system of science on each 
 subject, when the subject was not ripe for it, nor they 
 able to supply the true systematic idea. To make a 
 system is a work of genius : to draw the large lines, 
 to catch the real distinctions by which its genuine 
 form is defined, requires a mind sagacious, powerful, 
 and free. A true system cannot be made by accept- 
 ing, from any quarter accidentally, from tradition or 
 authority, an enumeration of points, and then endea- 
 vouring to elaborate a system by following these into 
 details. In such a way no philosophical system can 
 be constructed : but yet it was in this way that the 
 schoolmen would needs construct their systems. Their 
 aim was too high : their purpose too ambitious. They 
 undertook a great task without knowing how great 
 it was, and what mighty powers were requisite for 
 its execution. They were not aware how Uttle each 
 separate teacher can hope to add to the store of know- 
 ledge : and hence they aspired to fabricate universal 
 
104 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. XII. 
 
 schemes of science which should last for all time. 
 They imagined that their office was to produce large 
 bodies of unchangeable knowledge, instead of seeing 
 that all that an inquirer can hope for is to make 
 some small addition to progressive truth. And thus 
 their systems crumbled in pieces under their own 
 weight. There was in them, as systems, no real prin- 
 ciple of coherence; and succeeding generations re- 
 fused to be led through the mighty maze of their 
 works ; since, though not without a plan, its plan was 
 arbitrary and unmeaning: its paths not directed to 
 any point, but crossing each other and returning into 
 themselves. 
 
 And thus, to return to the bearing of this subject 
 upon the progress of moral philosophy, the attempt, 
 begun with the Greek schools and continued in those 
 of the middle ages, to frame a division and classifica- 
 tion of human virtues, may be considered as having 
 failed entirely, and ended in a scheme altogether un- 
 tenable and unphilosophicaj. 
 
LECTUEE XIII. 
 Eecapitulation. — De Samuel Claeke. 
 
 I HAVE in the twelve preceding Lectures now first 
 offered to the reader, endeavoured to exhibit the 
 aspect which Morality and Moral Philosophy have 
 exhibited at various periods of man's intellectual his- 
 tory, as seen in the more celebrated works which have 
 appeared on the subject; among the Greeks, in the 
 Platonic Dialogues, On Polity, On Lams, and in the 
 ethical Dialogues ; and in Aristotle's works. The Ethics, 
 The Politics, The Rhetoric: among the Romans in 
 Cicero's Dialogues on the Ends of Hwmam, Action, in 
 the Dialogue which he, imitating Plato, also wrote 
 respecting Laws; and in Seneca's Epistles. I have also 
 noticed the Roman Law in its ethical aspect. I have 
 then turned attention to the effect which the diffusion 
 of Christianity upon the earth produced upon the treat- 
 ment of ethical questions, and to the mode in which 
 the schoolmen made up a scheme by a combination of 
 philosophical and religious aphorisms. I have taken 
 Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas as the exemplifi- 
 cations of this scholastic period. As I have said, the 
 Secunda Secv/ndce of the latter author long continued 
 to influence ethical teaching, and had great weight in 
 the decisions of a class of writings which at a subse- 
 quent period appeared in great numbers, the Summce 
 or coUeotions of Gases of Conscience. Of several of 
 these writings I have given an account in the first 
 Lecture; and I have there, as a specimen of their 
 manner, noticed what is said in the Summa Angelica 
 of Acedia, a vice of which I have also quoted the ac- 
 count from Thomas Aquinas in the previous period. 
 
I06 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 In that first published series of Lectures, I went 
 on from the point thus reached to trace the history 
 of Moral Philosophy in England. I pointed out the 
 efiect produced upon Ethics by the Reformation. I 
 noticed Perkins's Treatise of Gases of Conscience, and 
 the work of Ames, De Conscientid : the Cases of Con- 
 science of Bishop Hall and Bishop Sanderson; Bishop 
 Jeremy Taylor's Sule of Conscience, and other works. 
 
 All these works proceed on the ground of there 
 being an essential difference of right and wrong ; and 
 during this period, the ancient controversy which had 
 occupied so prominent a place in the ancient schools 
 of moral philosophy, between those who hold that there 
 is such a difference, and those who maintain that right 
 and wrong are merely gain and loss, pleasure and pain, 
 had been hushed into silence. But in the middle of 
 the seventeenth century, Hobbes startled the world 
 by asserting in a somewhat new form, the old doctrine 
 that moral distinctions are artificial and accidental ; — 
 that Might is Right, and that conscience is only fear. 
 
 From that time a main feature in the writings on 
 moral philosophy has been the discussion of the ques- 
 tions thus raised. These qftestions we have already 
 seen discussed in Plato and in Cicero, and the argu- 
 ments are in a great degree the same in the modem as 
 in the ancient writers. I have noticed several of the 
 most prominent of these writers. Among the most 
 important of Hobbes's opponents are Cumberland, Cud- 
 worth and Clarke. 
 
 I will refer more particularly to what I have said 
 of Clarke, because I have been accused of doing him 
 injustice. As the criticism appears to me instructive, 
 I will annex it entire, though the critic's sentence is 
 delivered with an asperity which appears to me quite 
 uncalled for by the occasion. 
 
 I had said, " Clarke, then, is an asserter of the 
 independent and necessary character of moral distinc- 
 tions. But in making tMs assertion, he declares such 
 distinctions to be perceived by the Season; and this 
 he does, just at the time when, in virtue of the teach- 
 ing of Descartes, Locke, and others, the Reason had 
 
XIII.] RECAPITULATION. — DR S. CLARKE. IO7 
 
 been separated from the other faculties, limited to the 
 operations of the intellect, and deprived of its direct 
 intercourse with the emotions and affections, the mate- 
 rials of our moral nature. The cause of independent 
 morality was in this way presented under great disad- 
 vantages." 
 
 On this my critic remarks, " Clarke's * caiise,' then, 
 if we understand aright, had to smart for other people's 
 faults. He himself did not separate Reason from the 
 other faculties ; but Descartes had done so ; and Locke 
 had done so; and the time was past when their mis- 
 chief could be corrected. He himself was for giving 
 a moral empire to the intellect : but it had been so 
 long pensioned off, and banished to its books from the 
 active business of the world, that a restoration had 
 become impossible. Now what are the facts 1 
 
 " I. That Descartes and his school, instead of 
 separating the rational from, the acting faculty, re- 
 presented them as absolutely identical. 'Under the 
 name Thought,' says Descartes, ' I understand every- 
 thing, so far forth as we are conscious of it, that takes 
 place "in our conscious nature. And so not only un- 
 derstanding, willing, imagining, but even the having 
 sensation, is the same with thinking'.' But it is su- 
 perfluous to adduce citations in evidence of this philo- 
 sopher's belief in one of the all-pervading principles of 
 his philosophy; which expressed itself in his assertion 
 that thinking is the substance of the soul; and framed 
 itself into Spinoza's proposition, 'Voluntas et Intelleo- 
 tus unum et idem sunt.' 
 
 " 2. That Locke also included under the terms 
 'Reason' and 'Understanding' a realm indefinitely 
 beyond the circle of mere cognitive operations, — in 
 short, everything which we comprehend under the 
 phrase, 'human mind.' Whoever will but run over 
 in his memory the topics discussed in the ' Essay on 
 the Human Understanding,' has sufficient proof of this 
 assertion. 
 
 " 3. That the separation which these writers had 
 
 ,1 Prinajna PMloaophiee, P. I. 9. 
 
I08 HISTOEY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 not made between the cognitive and the active powers 
 was made, — made with sharpest distinction, — made 
 avowedly as against Locke, and tacitly as against both, 
 — ^by Clarke. He is led, in his defence of human 
 liberty, to discriminate precisely between the active 
 and the passive faculties of the mind. He lays it down 
 that activity and freedom are identical; that Under- 
 standing is purely passive and necessary in its pheno- 
 mena; that the assent of the Reason, even to the fitness 
 of an action contemplated in its moral relations, is 
 necessary; and that the Will alone, as an executive 
 power, is a free originating cause. He complains of 
 Locke, that from not obsei-ving this distinction, and 
 from mixing up contemplative preference with practi- 
 cal volition, he had left the discussion respecting free- 
 dom and necessity in a very confused condition. Let 
 one citation suffice. 'Understanding or judgment, or 
 assent or approbation, or liking, or whatever name 
 you please to call it by, can no more possibly be the 
 efficient cause of action, than rest can be the cause of 
 motion.' ' There is no connexion at all between them '.' 
 
 "Indeed, since Clarke referred to Human Beason 
 the power of discerning Moral Relations in a way pre- 
 cisely similar to the operations of the Divine Reason, 
 it is difficult to understand the extraordinary state- 
 ment, that he handed over to a 'crippled' and 'de- 
 graded ' faculty the function which Cudworth had en- 
 trusted only to a far nobler power^" 
 
 I have already acknowledged, in reprinting my 
 former Lecture, that it was not just to Clarke to say 
 that he ascribed the perception of moral distinctions 
 to the Reason, in the sense in which other metaphy- 
 sicians had distinguished the Reason from the other 
 faculties of the soul. In order to rectify this injustice, 
 and to present the controversy in its true aspect, I will 
 give an account more in detail of what Clarke has 
 reaUy said. 
 
 > "Clarke and Leibnitz Papers. Appendix on Collins, p. 9. And Reply 
 to 2nd Cambridge Letter, p. 409." 
 
 2 Prospective Hemew, Not. 1852, p. 563. 
 
XIII.] DR S. CLARKE. 109 
 
 Clarke's views on the subject under question are 
 given in- his Discourse concerning the Unchangeable 
 Obligations of Natural Religion, preached as the Boyle's 
 Lectures in 17,05. His Discou/rse on the Being and 
 Attrihut%s of God was in like manner composed of the 
 Sermons preached in the year 1704. The two Dis- 
 courses being commonly printed in the same volume, 
 the latter, the ethical one, has perhaps come to be less 
 noticed than the former, the theological dissertation. 
 The argument for the being of God founded on the 
 idea of self-existence, which occupies the principal place 
 in the Theological Treatise, is perhaps too abstruse and 
 metaphysical for most persons in these days to feel its 
 force: but the arguments against Hobbes's view of 
 human nature and human morality, which occur in the 
 later Discourse, are worthy of our attention, and may 
 still be accepted, as weighty and substantial, if we take 
 care not to be misled by the author's illustrations. 
 
 To the assertion of Hobbes, that there is not 
 by nature any such thing as justice and injustice, — 
 right and wrong, the answer is, that such an assertion 
 is contrary to the natural and universal conviction of 
 the human mind; — that we do constantly and necessa- 
 rily recognize such distinctions as right and wrong, 
 such qualities as justice and equity; and perceive in 
 these distinctions, and these qualities, an obligation to 
 follow one course of action and to shun another. This is 
 an answer to the Hobbian, — the antimoral doctrine, — 
 which, in one foi-m or other, all persons of ordinary 
 moral habits of thought are ready to make. 
 
 But in order to make this answer definite and precise 
 enough for the purposes of philosophical argumentation, 
 ethical writers have naturally attempted to explain, by 
 definition and comparison, the nature of this conviction. 
 We have an irresistible and inevitable conviction, as 
 we have said, that there are such relations as right 
 and wrong, just and unjust, and that rightness and 
 justice involve obligation on us. But in what Faculty 
 does the source of this conviction reside? Of irre- 
 sistible and inevitable convictions have we any other 
 examples by which we may illustrate these funda- 
 
no HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 mental moral convictions? To the latter inquiry, the 
 answer was obvious, that we have irresistible and in- 
 evitable convictions, necessary and universal truths, 
 concerning various external matters — concerning space, 
 time, and number, for instance; we have th^ axioms 
 of geometry, the ftindamental principles of arithmetic ; 
 — these are truths which we must hold and assent to 
 if we think on such subjects at all. These are truths 
 which are necessary and universal ; and the relations 
 on which they depend may be called eternal, for we 
 cannot conceive any world in which they do not exist, 
 and do not give rise to such truths; we cannot con- 
 ceive any mind which perceives the relations and does 
 not perceive the resulting truths. If the fundamental 
 moral convictions of which we have spoken be as firm 
 and sure as these, they belong to the most stable part 
 of our nature ; and the relations on which these con- 
 victions depend may also be called eternal. If this be 
 so, the denial of the existence of Tightness and justice, 
 in the cases ia which the relations exist from which 
 Tightness and justice result, is a contradiction of our 
 nature of the same kind as the denial of an evident 
 geometrical or arithmetical truth. 
 
 And Clarke, holding that this is the case, was led 
 to speak of antimoral doctrines in the same language 
 which we apply to geometrical falsities. The fitness 
 and unfitness of certain courses of action was held to 
 be as manifest as the congruities or incongruities of dif- 
 ferent mathematical figures (p. 177), "For a man endued 
 with Reason to deny the tmth of these things is as if 
 a man that understands Geometry or Arithmetic (p. 1 7 9) 
 should deny the most obvious and known proportions 
 of lines or numbers, and perversely contend that the 
 whole is not equal to all its parts, or that a square is 
 not double a triangle of equal base and height." And the 
 denial of such moral proportions can only arise " from 
 the extremest stupidity of mind, corruption of manners, 
 or perverseness of spirit." "Any man of ordinary ca- 
 pacity and unbiassed judgment, plainness, and simpli- 
 city; who had never read and never been told that 
 there were men and philosophers who had in earnest 
 
XIII.] DR S. CLARKE. Ill 
 
 asserted and attempted to prove that there is no natu- 
 ral and unalterable difference between good and evil ; 
 ■would at the first hearing, be as hardly persuaded to 
 believe that it could enter into the heart of any intel- 
 ligent man to deny all natural difference between right 
 and wrong, as he would be to believe that there could 
 be any geometer who would seriously and in good 
 earnest lay it down as a first principle, that a crooked 
 line is as straight as a straight one." " There are in 
 morals as in geometry certain eternal and unalterable 
 relations, aspects, and proportions of things, with they: 
 consequent agreements and disagreements (p. i86). 
 And what these absolutely and necessarily are in them- 
 selves, that also they appear to be to the understand- 
 ings of aU Intelligent Beings : except those only who 
 understand things to be what they are not, that is, 
 whose understandings are either very imperfect or 
 very much deformed. And by this understanding or 
 knowledge of the natural and necessary relations, fit- 
 nesses and proportions of things, the wills likewise of 
 all intelligent beings are constantly directed; except- 
 ing those only who wiU things to be what they are 
 not and cannot be; that is, whose Wills are corrupted 
 by particular Interests or Affections, or swayed by 
 some unreasonable and prevailing passion." 
 
 And this is put again and again. Thus p. 1 88 : " He 
 that refuses to deal with all men equitably, and as he 
 desires they should deal with him, is guilty of the very 
 same unreasonableness and contradiction in one case, 
 as he that in another case should affirm one number or 
 quantity to be equal to another, and yet that other at 
 the same time, not to be equal to the first." And if 
 rational creatures do not regulate their will by right 
 Keason and the necessary difference of good and evil ; 
 "these (p. 189), setting up their own unreasonable self- 
 will in opposition to the nature and reason of things, 
 endeavour (as much as in them lies) to make things be 
 what they are not and cannot be : which is the highest 
 presumption and greatest insolence, as well as the 
 greatest absurdity imaginable. 'Tis acting contrary 
 to that understanding, reason and judgment which 
 
1 12 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 God has implanted in their nature on purpose to enable 
 them to discern the difference between good and evil. 
 'Tis attempting to destroy that order by which the 
 universe subsists. 'Tis offering the greatest affi-ont 
 imaginable to the Creator of all things, who made 
 things to be what they are, and governs everything 
 according to the Laws of their several natures. In a 
 word, all wilful wickedness and perversion of Right is 
 the very same incoherence and absurdity in moral mat- 
 ters, as it would be in natural things for a man to pre- 
 ^nd to alter the certain proportions of numbers, to 
 take away the demonstrable relations and properties of 
 mathematical figures, to make darkness light and light 
 darkness; to call sweet bitter and bitter sweet." 
 
 In this language we have the attempt to claim 
 for our moral convictions the same degree of evidence 
 which belongs to our mathematical convictions; but 
 the attempt is inainly supported by these repeated 
 assertions that the evidence in one case is not only as 
 complete as in the other, but also that it is so far of 
 the same kind, that it may be illustrated by the other. 
 To cheat in a bargain, is compared to the act of con- 
 founding straight and curved. The former is as ab- 
 surd as the latter. The same phrases are applied to 
 the violation of moral rectitude, as of geometrical 
 tmth. 
 
 Now that the conviction in morals is as clear as in 
 geometry, maybe: but even if it be so, it is not of the 
 same kind; and the subject can only be confused by 
 an attempt to assimilate the expressions of moral con- 
 viction to those of mathematical certainty. The fact 
 is, that each of these classes of convictions has its 
 appropriate language. What we accept into our con- 
 viction in geometry, we accept as true; what we accept 
 in morality, we accept as right. In the one case, we 
 assent, in the other,' we approve. What we object in 
 mathematics, we deny, as false ; what we reject in 
 ethics, we condemn, as wrong. There is a fundamental 
 difference between these two classes of tmths. It does 
 not express our convictions, to say it is absurd to 
 cheat, to lie, to murder : absurd or not, it is wrong, it 
 
XIII.] DR S. CLARKE. II3 
 
 is wicked. It does not express our convictions to say 
 that it is insolent, •presumpiMous, to pretend to alter 
 the truths of geometry : it is simply absiM-d to talk of 
 it, for we cannot set about it. It does not express 
 our convictions to say that by violating moral rules -we 
 endeavour to make things what they are not; and that* 
 this is absurd, insolent, presumptuous, and therefore 
 to be avoided. To act as if we had not made a pro- 
 mise when we have done so, is fraudulent; but the 
 condemnation which we bestow on the act is not con- 
 veyed by calling it absurd, presumptuous and inso- 
 lent. When we refuse to pay our creditor, we treat 
 him as if he were not a creditor, and thus violate, it is 
 said, the nature of things : Be it so. But we treat 
 him as a person whose money is useful to us, which 
 may be quite agreeable to the nature of things. It 
 must be that especial natv/re of things which belongs 
 to morality, which is violated, and not merely some 
 wider nature of things which includes geometry, in 
 order that we may have moral convictions on the case. 
 All the progression of terms, from false and ahswd 
 at one extreme, to vmreasonahle, preswmptuous, inso- 
 lent — destructive of order — affrort to the Creator — at 
 the other extreme, are intended to make a transition 
 from eosistence to obligation — from being to duty — from 
 mathematical to moral truth — ^from the pure indicative 
 to the implied imperative — a transition which cannot 
 thus be made. And so far, Dr Clarke's scheme, or at 
 least his illustrations, are not satisfactory. 
 
 But if we suppose this defect remedied — ^if we 
 suppose the illustrations to express merely the degree 
 of conviction, and not the kind of truth: — will 
 Dr Clarke's views then deserve to be adopted ? Will 
 his arguments then have a good claim on our assent ? In 
 a great degree I conceive that they will. For we really 
 have a settled and unchajigeable conviction that there 
 is a difference of right and wrong, and that rightness 
 implies obligation on us to act. That an action is right, 
 is a reason for doing it, supreme above all other 
 reasons, and against which any other reason has no 
 force. To form the conviction of such Rightness in 
 
 M, P. II. 8 
 
1 14 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. [lECT. 
 
 actions is a fundamental and universal habit of the 
 human mind. 
 
 Bat may this conviction be properly said to be a 
 perception of a fitness arising from the eternal relations 
 of persons and actions, in the same sense in -which 
 • the conviction of the axioms of geometry arises from 
 a perception of the eternal relations of space? It 
 •would, I think, be somewhat bold, and a boldness by 
 which nothing is gained for ethical philosophy, to 
 use such language. Even in geometry, it is difficult 
 to see what we gain by calling the truths of the 
 science, or the relations on which they depend, eternaZ. 
 But however this be, it is plain that moral truths 
 depend upon the relations of human nature as it is ; 
 and though it may be impossible for us to conceive 
 a moral being other than such as we know man to be, 
 yet such as he is, we know him only by knowing 
 what other men are, and what we ourselves are: — 
 by observation, experience, consciousness. To call the 
 relations of persons, dispositions, actions, with which 
 morality has to do, eternal relations, is language neither 
 necessary for the dignity of moral truth, nor autho- 
 lized by an examiuation of the case. The fundamental 
 truths of morality may be as solid as we need, and as 
 comprehensive as their nature admits o^ though they 
 be limited to the time, place, manner, and conditions 
 of man's existence. But though there is nothing 
 gained by calling them etekn^al truths, it is of the 
 greatest value to us to know them to be truths. And 
 the conviction that they are so, which Clarke's ex- 
 pressions imply, belongs to that part of human nature 
 by which we (men in general) reject and disown such 
 antimoral doctrines as those of Hobbes. 
 
 The part of human nature in which these convic- 
 tions reside, Dr Clarke calls, as we have seen, the 
 Reason, the Under stamding, and the Uke. Is there 
 any ground for rejecting or condemning this phraseo- 
 logy- — If it he accepted according to the usage of 
 preceding English philosophical writers, I conceive that 
 there is not. The Reason was with them the faculty 
 by which we apprehend the truth oi first principles of 
 
Xm.] DR S. CLARKE. I15 
 
 reasoning, as -well as the faculty by wliich we reason 
 from first principles to consequent truths. And this 
 ■was understood so as to include the principles of moral 
 truths as well as of mathematical. And the Under- 
 standing differed from the Reason, when it was made 
 to differ at all, only as it accepted the results of the 
 Reason in an implicit and ultimate form, instead of 
 regarding explicitly the steps by which they were 
 obtained. So far therefore there was no obstacle to 
 Clarke's saying that by the use of Right Reason, we 
 discern the moral relations of persons and actions, the 
 difference of right and wrong, the superiority of justice 
 over injustice. 
 
 But though this was conformable to the usage of 
 preceding philosophical writers, and might then, and 
 may still, be properly said, Clarke himself had la- 
 boured much, in this very book, to make it appear that 
 the truths which Reason contemplates, and which she 
 can derive from first principles, are all of the nature 
 of mathematical truths. He had done this, as I have 
 said, by constantly comparing false moral propositions 
 with false mathematical propositions; and by applying 
 to the moral doctrines which he rejects, the expres- 
 sions which imply the grounds of rejection of mathe- 
 matical doctrines ;— -that they are absurd, — contrary to 
 the eternal relations of things, — and. the like. 
 
 I conceive, therefore, that it may truly be said of 
 Clarke (nearly as I have said of him p. 98), that he 
 ascribed great weight to intellectual relations, and 
 spohe as i/ he overlooked those relations in which the 
 intellect had not a direct or sole jurisdiction: and 
 that in this way, his language on the subject of moral 
 distinctions as perceived by the Reason, was not so 
 consistent and satisfactory as that of Cudworth and 
 the ancient philosophers. By him, in his illustrations 
 at least, the office of Reason had been narrowed and 
 bounded: and on this account it was less safe (or at 
 least less appropriate) to say that the distinctions of 
 moral good and evil were objects of the Reason, than 
 it had been before. But in saying, as I have said, 
 that this separation of Reason from the other facul- 
 
 8—2 
 
Il6 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT.^ 
 
 ties was made in virtue of the teaching of Descartes, 
 Locke and others, I have spoken erroneously. It 
 was the work of Clarke himself; who thus, in at- 
 tempting to make his doctrine precise, and to illus- 
 trate it luminously, really made it untenable; at least, 
 except we enlarge his view of the Keason as it is 
 exhibited in his illustrations. Moral distinctions and 
 consequent truths may be said to be perceived by 
 the Reason; but in order to avoid misapprehension we 
 may say that they are perceived by the Moral Reason, 
 as mathematical distinctions and consequent truths 
 are perceived by the Pure Intellect. 
 
 But when we say that moral distinctions and 
 moral truths are perceived by the Moral Reason, 
 we may be asked how we are to determine what truths 
 are thus perceived. Is the Moral Reason a Moral 
 Sense, which discerns truths directly without reasoning, 
 as any other sense discerns the qualities of its objects? 
 No: this is a doctrine which the use of the term 
 Beason excludes. Reason, as we have said, discerns 
 truths deduced from first principles of reasoning, and 
 discerns also such first principles themselves. In the 
 former sense it has been tei-med the Discursive Rea- 
 son ; in the latter, the Intuitive Reason. 
 
 But we may then be asked, what are the first 
 principles of morality which the Reason thus discerns? 
 Where are they to be found ? how many are they ? 
 how limited? how recognized? has Dr Clarke given 
 a list of them, or shown how such a list may be 
 constructed? Many such questions may naturally be 
 asked : and the answers, as contaiued in Dr Clarke's 
 books, are, I conceive, very imperfect. They are im- 
 perfect, among other reasons, for the reason already 
 stated: that he clothes his moral principles as much 
 as possible in language which implies a parallelism 
 with mathematical principles, and which is consistent 
 with the declaration that they are derived from the 
 eternal relations and difierences of things. Whereas, as 
 we have said, the differences and relations on which 
 moral truths depend, are the qualities of Human Na- 
 ture as we find it : 3,nd the firpt principles of morality 
 
XIII.] DR S. CLAEKE. II7 
 
 must depend on the Springs of Action by which men 
 are impelled, and the relations of human society which 
 the play of those springs requires. It is by taking 
 into account these springs of action, and these rela- 
 tions, that the Moral Eeason gives substance and dis- 
 tinctness to the first principles of which it perceives 
 the truth. We perceive, by the moral use of our 
 E.eason, a difference of Justice and of Injustice, and 
 the obligation of Justice upon our course of action. 
 But what is Justice? In order to be able to answer, 
 in general, we must assume the existence of Property, 
 a fact of Human Society, not properly described as an 
 eternal truth. The Eight of Property being estab- 
 lished, the Idea of Justice has something to operate 
 upon; without some such subject to deal with, the 
 Idea of Justice can scarcely take an intelligible form. 
 
 Thus Clarke's language prevented his following 
 into detail, at least in a complete and systematic 
 manner, his doctrine of fundamental moral truths 
 apprehended by the Eeason. We hold, as he held, that 
 there are certain moral truths of which all men are 
 convinced, and which are the basis of all real morality; 
 but we hold also that these truths are suggested, and 
 the application of them governed, by the kinds of 
 Eights which exist among men : and these kinds of 
 Eights are determined, as we have said, by the pre- 
 dominant Springs of human Action, and the Eolations 
 of society necessary for the orderly and permanent 
 operation of those springs of action. Such a determi- 
 nation of the various kinds of Eightness or Virtue, 
 by taking the various kinds of Eights as their fixed 
 points, and material centers, is, we conceive, needed 
 to complete the doctrine of the necessary perception of 
 moral truths by the Eeason of man. 
 
 I have dwelt the longer on Clarke's speculations, 
 because I conceive that, with the correction which 
 I have mentioned, the rejection of the attempt to 
 force the nature of moral truth to agree with that of 
 mathematical truth, his views would probably have 
 been accepted by Locke. I have been blamed for 
 injustice to Locke, as well as to Clarke : and I believe, 
 
Il8 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lEOT.XIII. 
 
 as I have said, that Locke would have rejected with 
 disgust the antimoral doctrines of Hobbes, and of his 
 followers. But it is not the less true that those doc- 
 trines were the natural consequence of the doctrines 
 of Locke himself. (See Lect. p. 96). Yet the expres- 
 sions which he uses (see Lect. p. 95) are such as would 
 very well faU in with Clarke's views. And I am willing 
 to allow that in what I have said in p. 92, I have 
 pressed too far what Locke has said; of good and evil 
 being nothing but pleasure and pain'. 
 
 1 On this subject see also Defena of Clarke, by Balguy, Lectnre, p. 13P. 
 See also p. 113. 
 
 Hunie's Objections to Clarke's doctrine that moral qualities are appre- 
 hended by the Beason 1 have stated in p. 196. 
 
LECTUEE XIV. 
 Reason and UNDEKSTANDUfa — S. T. Coleeidge. 
 
 IT has appeared in the last Lecture and elsewhere, 
 that the term Reason is sometimes used in a higher 
 sense, to denote a faculty -which discerns certain 
 truths by intuition, and sometimes in a lower sense, to 
 denote a faculty which deals with derivative truths. 
 Mr Coleridge and his admirers have attempted to mark 
 this difference, by calling the former faculty the Bea- 
 son, the latter the UnderstcmcKng. Coleridge's influ- 
 ence on the philosophy of England in our days has 
 been so great, and in many respects so beneficial, that 
 a distinction which was propounded by him as a 
 cardinal one deserves a careful consideration j and I 
 shall now examine what he has said on this subject. 
 The passages to which I refer are contained in the 
 book published under the title of Aids to RefleoUon. 
 In this book are given certain Aphorisms on Spiritiml 
 Religion; of which a portion consists of sentences 
 extracted from Archbishop Leighton, with a Comment 
 by Mr Coleridge. To the Comment on Aphorism viii. 
 is appended a Dissertation On the Difference in Kind 
 of the Reason a/nd Understa/nding . In this disserta- 
 tion are found the assertions of Mr Coleridge which 
 I have now to notice. 
 
 According to him, the Understanding is the faculty 
 which judges according to Sense, and obtains truth by 
 generalizing from experience; while Reason sees 
 Truth by Intuition. Thus, by the Understanding 
 we see that all the triangles which we observe have, 
 each of them, two sides together gres^ter than the 
 third. But by the Reason we know, without expe- 
 
I20 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 rience, that every triangle must have two sides 
 greater than the third. He draws up coliunns of 
 antitheses between the two, which run thus : Under- 
 stcmding is discursive, Eeason is fixed: Understanding 
 is the faculty of reflexion: Reason, of contemplation; 
 and so on. He, further, teaches that Understanding 
 is so far dilfferent from Eeason, that it is of the same 
 nature with the Instinct of brutes. 
 
 Now all this I conceive to be quite at variance 
 both with the universal use of our language, and with 
 any just analysis of our mental faculties. All good 
 writers agree in describing the Eeason, not the Under- 
 standing, as the faculty which is discursive, as well as 
 intuitive ; that is, which not only perceives first truths 
 by intuition, but also obtains second and third truths 
 by running backwards and forwards among these first 
 truths, in short, by reasoning. The very term Dis- 
 course is only an abbreviated expression for Discourse 
 of Reason, Discwrsus Rationis; so essentially is the 
 Eeason discursive^. 
 
 The distinction between the Eeason and the Under- 
 standing as substantives, is not so evident as the dis- 
 tinction between the verbs to reason and to under- 
 stand. These are often put in opposition. We may 
 say, for example, that we understand a thing at once, 
 without reasoning about itj — ^that we understand the 
 sense of a language, without reasoning about the ety- 
 mology or syntax. And I think the sense in which 
 the verb to umderstamd is thus taken is, as I have 
 stated^, that we understand anything when Ve mentally 
 apprehend it according to certain assumed ideas and 
 rules; whereas when we reason about the same thing, 
 
 1 We may remark that Milton makes the Intuitive Keason predominate 
 in natures superior to human^ while the Discursive Keason belongs more 
 properly to man. The Angel tells Adam that the productions of the material 
 world (P. L. Book v. 483I, 
 
 Man's nourishmentj by gradual scale sublimed. 
 To vital spirits asjjiie, t« animal. 
 To intellectual: give both life and sense. 
 Fancy and understanding: whence the soul 
 Beason receives, and reason is her being 
 Discursive or iittuiUve; discourse 
 Is oftest yourSt the latter most is ours^ 
 BifFering but in degree, of kind the same. 
 ' Elementa of Morality, Art 11. 
 
XIV.] REASON AND UNDERSTANDING. 121 
 
 •we do not assume otir rules, but prove them from 
 preceding truths. And thus, exactly contrary to what 
 Mr Coleridge says, Understanding is fixed (by assimip- 
 tion or previous proof), and Beason is discursive (in 
 ratiocination). 
 
 And this is the vie-w taken by old writers, and 
 by them confirmed by a reference to the supposed 
 origin of the two words. Thus Sir John Davies, in 
 his Poem on the Immortality of the Soul, says of the 
 Mind, 
 
 "When she rates things, and moves from ground to ground, 
 The name of Reason she obtains irom this ; (ratio) 
 
 But when by reason she the truth hath found. 
 And standeth firm, she Understanding is. 
 
 That is, the mind is called Reason, Batio, when it 
 rates and compares things, regarding them from dif- 
 ferent points of view: it is called Understanding, 
 when having acquired a fixed view, she remains steady 
 in that. We make our conviction to stajid under the 
 visible or sensible appearance, so as to give meaning 
 to it. This account of the origin of the word under- 
 stand may "be fanciful, and is etymologioally doubtful ; 
 but it is consistent with our view, and may serve to 
 fix that view in our minds. 
 
 Mr Coleridge, when he says that the Keason is 
 fixed and contemplative, while the Understanding is 
 discursive and reflective, does so, with a view of 
 placing the discursive fiiculty below the contemplative. 
 And no doubt the verb to reason is not generally re- 
 garded with so much respect as the substantive Rear- 
 son. The Reason has higher senses than Reasoning. 
 In the Femmes Sgavantes the master of the hpuse 
 complains that there is in his family so much Rea- 
 soning that there is no Reason j 
 
 Raison est I'emploi de toute ma maison, 
 Et le raisonnement en chasse la Raison. 
 
 The verb to reason is always employed to desig- 
 nate the discursive or ratiocinative operations of the 
 mind; and as the verb to understand implies a fixed 
 
122 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT. [lBCT. 
 
 contemplation, if we were to adopt Mr Coleridge's 
 account of the distinction of the substantives, we 
 should have to assert that by the Understcmdinff we 
 reason, and by the Reason we vnderstand. But, as I 
 have ventured to say elsewhere, this is neither good 
 English nor good philosophy. 
 
 Nor do we find any better support for Mr Cole- 
 ridge's view if we turn to the author to whom he him- 
 self refers. He ascribes to Archbishop Leighton the 
 definition of Understanding, that it is the Faculty 
 judging according to Sense : but Leighton's words are, 
 as "Eeason corrects the errors of sense,, so super- 
 natural Faith corrects the errors of Reason" (not Un- 
 derstanding,) "judging according to sense." 
 
 Mr Coleridge lays great stress upon this definition 
 of Understanding, that it is the Faculty judging ac- 
 cording to sense; and makes it the basis of a distinc- 
 tion of the Reason and the Understanding, at the 
 foot of which he writes Q. E. D. He also further ex- 
 alts the Reason, by ascribing to it the Newtonian 
 theory of the universe, while the Understanding, 
 judging according to sense, gave rise to the Ptolemaic 
 hypothesis. But this distinction and contrast is alto- 
 gether false and baseless. The Ptolemaic and the 
 Newtonian system do not proceed from different 
 faculties of the mind, but from the same power, exer- 
 cised more and more completely. By the Ptolemaic 
 theory we understand mttch of the motions of the 
 planets, as their cycles of movement and the like: 
 by the Newtonian theory we understand stOl more, 
 their elliptical paths, and the forces which guide them 
 therein. The Ptolemaic system introduces its own 
 constitutive Ideas and laws supplied by the Reason, 
 quite as much as the Newtonian system does : — indeed 
 more; for instance, the Idea and Law of uniform cir- 
 cular motion as universal : — a law not supplied by the 
 senses, and in fact, when carefully examined, contrary 
 to the phenomena. The Newtonian system intro- 
 duces its Ideas and Laws, of which the value and the 
 proof is that they are "according to sense," that is, 
 consistent with the phenomena. In both cases, by 
 
XIV.] REASON AND UNDERSTANDING. J 23 
 
 reasoning from the pienomena, and by applying our 
 Reason to them, we are in the end, able to wnderstamd 
 them. The work of the Reason is then completely 
 done when we Understand : so far is the understand- 
 ing (if the substantive have any connexion with the 
 verb,) from being a lower faculty than the Eeason, as 
 Mr Coleridge teaches. 
 
 Mr Coleridge says that the Ptolemaist was misled 
 by sense, in supposing the .earth to stand still. He 
 was so; and why? Because he did not understand 
 the effect of relative motion to produce apparent rest 
 in the spectator, and apparent motion in the station- 
 aiy center. It was not because he used his under- 
 standing only, but because he did not use it enough, 
 that he stopped short of the Copernican theory. The 
 Copemican, the Newtonian, employed no new organ, 
 no new faculty, neglected by the Ptolemaist. Each 
 of these in his turn used the same organ, his Reason, 
 so as to wnderstand the phenomena better. 
 
 In short, science gives no countenance to such a 
 distinction and subordination of faculties. There is 
 in science no faculty which judges according to sense 
 without doing something more; and no creative or 
 suggestive faculty which must not submit to have its 
 creations and suggestions tested by the phenomena. 
 False science is known precisely by its not bearing 
 this test. But true and false science proceed from the 
 same faculties, well or ill employed; and any attempt 
 to establish a ready criterion of truth and error, by 
 ascribing some theories and doctrines to Reason and 
 some to Understanding, is purely arbitrary; and can 
 only lead to ignorant dogmatism : — to groundless de- 
 l)reciation of the opinions thus rejected, and equally 
 groundless confidence in those adopted. 
 
 But the disposition to disparage the Understand- 
 ing appears in Mr Coleridge in another form, of 
 which it may be proper to say a few words, because 
 he urges it as very important; though I do not think 
 that really it bears much upon our moral or religious 
 systems. He asserts the Understanding of man to be 
 tibe same faculty in kind with the faculty by which 
 
124 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [LECT. 
 
 brutes act, and wliicli we commonly call Instinct. I 
 suppose that the antithesis between Reason and 7w- 
 stinct which is commonly current, while yet there are 
 many acts of animals which we can with difficulty, 
 or not at all, distinguish from rational actions, ap- 
 peared to him to receive a kind of solution by the 
 assumption of a lower faculty in man, of the same 
 kind with the faculties of animals : and by introducing 
 the Understanding as such an intermediate fecully, 
 the Ereason of man was, as it were, hedged off from 
 the lower faculties which brutes possess, and its dig- 
 nity preserved intact. But I do not think that tMs 
 mode of meeting the difficulty is justified either by 
 the use of language or by the facts of the case. If 
 we commonly say that animals are destitute of Rea- 
 son, we sny no less usually that they have no .Under- 
 standing. £e ye not like to horse and mule, which have 
 no wnder standing. In the language of Scripture, in- 
 deed. Understanding is used for the highest form of 
 mind : " Who hath stretched out the heavens by His 
 Understanding," Jer. li 15; and so, in many other 
 places. 
 
 In reality, the word understand is not nearly 
 so appb'cable to brutes as the word reascm. Instinct 
 is often called a blind, or unconscious, or undeveloped 
 Eeason; but it is never called a blind Understanding. 
 And this must needs be so; for Instinct leads to ac- 
 tion, and therefore may be the result of a Uind faculty ; 
 but to understand, involves seeing. A blind impulse, 
 producing effects like that of reason, shows itself in 
 instinctive actions; but it is only when the reason 
 acquires its power of sight, that it makes its possessor 
 understa/nd what he does. 
 
 We may illustrate this by a story of instinct told 
 by Sir W. Jardine, and diffeiing a little from the 
 stories which Mr Coleridge quotes from Kirby and 
 Spence. A cat lived near a mill, and notwithstanding 
 the adage, caught fish in the water. When the mUI 
 was stopped, the dam was closed, the water below 
 became shallow, and the cat could carry on her fishing 
 with success. After some time she became so well 
 
XIV.] REASON AND UNDEESTANDING. 125 
 
 acquainted with the order of events that whenever 
 she heard the mill-hoppei- stop, she ran to the water 
 and began the chase of her prey. Was this Reason 1 
 Was it Understanding? Perhaps many persons will 
 think that the process is sufficiently accounted for by 
 being ascribed to the Association of Ideas; or as in 
 this case, at least, we may better describe it, the 
 Association of Impressions. The silence of the mill 
 was by habit associated with the shallowness of the 
 water. And a human being, a man, as well as a cat, 
 might have done the same thing and on the same 
 ground; might have noticed that the silence of the 
 mill was constantly accompanied by the shallowness 
 of the water, and have acted on this observation. 
 But if the man knew nothing of the structure of the 
 mUl, he would say, I find that this is so, but I cannot 
 vmderdand why it is : and when be came to perceive 
 the mode of working of the stream, the sluice-gate 
 and the mill, he might say, Now I understand: that 
 is, precisely when he obtains the view which distin- 
 guishes the man from the brute, he wnderstamds. 
 Understanding is the peculiai'ly human faculty, 
 
 Nor does the assumption of an intermediate faculty 
 at all help to solve the real difficulty of the question 
 concerning the relation of Reason and Instinct. The 
 difficulty is suggested by the very phrase which I have 
 used; that Instinct is a blind Reason : for it being the 
 essence of Reason to see, how can she exist blind? or, 
 stating the matter otherwise, how can animals act as 
 if they had a knowledge of the relations of space, force, 
 and the like, when they have no such knowledge? If 
 their instinctive acts proved their knowledge, they 
 must have more knowledge than man has. How can 
 the effects of a profound Reason be produced in crea- 
 tures which are not rational? 
 
 And it is well known that this difficulty has ap- 
 peared to some persons so great that they have solved 
 it by saying, Beus est anima brutorum, God is the 
 soul of brutes. Without pretending fully to solve 
 this problem, we may remark that man has Instincts, 
 as well as other animals; but that in man these In- 
 
126 HISTORY or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 stincts are gradually superseded by Reason. Instinct 
 blindly assumes relations, -whicli Reason sees; but 
 Reason may come to see these relations, and then 
 the actions cease to be blindly instinctive. Instinct 
 is stimulated to act by the impressions of sense; 
 but these impressions also awake the Reason, by 
 which feculty we contemplate the relations of things. 
 Instinct and Reason in man are not two separate 
 spheres. They have a common center, the impres* 
 sions of the individual. But in man, the boundaries 
 of the sphere of Instinct are more and more oblite- 
 rated, as its elements are absorbed into the wider 
 sphere of Reason : and the sphere of Reason has no 
 discoverable boundary, but expands wider and wider, 
 and endeavours to extend its contemplations to the 
 whole universe. Instinct assumes the- relations of 
 things to be what they are : Reason aspires to know 
 what they are, and has a consciousness that the task 
 is hers. " The same views which lead men to say 
 that Gcod is the soul of brut-es, lead them also to 
 say that the Reason of man is derived from and has 
 something in common with the Universal Reason 
 which made the relations of things to be what they 
 are. 
 
 This doctrine is I think, really, the important part 
 of Mr Coleridge's speculations on this subject: and 
 this doctrine does not depend upon his distinction of 
 the Reason and the Understanding. The Reason, in 
 some of its aspects, may be regarded as the image or 
 participation of a Universal Reason. Reason is con- 
 sidered as the same in all men. It leads to truth, not 
 in virtue of individual personal impressions, but in 
 virtue of its own nature. To Reason, so understood, 
 Mr Coleridge has ground for applying the scriptural 
 expression, that It is the Light thai lighteth every one 
 thai Cometh into the world; though we must own that 
 the attempt to weave scriptural expressions into a 
 scheme of metaphysics is not without its inconveni- 
 ences and dangers. Reason so considered is not too 
 highly spoken of, when we describe it as .^n image of 
 the Divine mind; for truths which we conceive as 
 
XIV.] REASON AND UNDERSTANDING. 127 
 
 necessary aad universal, we must conceive to be con- 
 templated as truths by the Mind which framed the 
 universe and created other minds. In this sense, the 
 Reason of man implies a participation iu an Eternal 
 and Universal Reason. 
 
 But if this be so, we ai-e naturally led to ask, 
 What subjects come within the sphere of Reason so 
 considered? We plainly cannot content ourselves with 
 including in it merely the relations which sense per- 
 ceives, as space, mechanical action, and the like. 
 Reason, to make it answer such an account as we 
 have given, must include the things and actions which 
 belong to man's moral and spiritual nature : for these 
 also belong to the scheme which the Eternal and 
 Universal Mind has brought into being, and which 
 connect us with that mind. They do this, at least as 
 much as do the relations which can be apprehended by 
 our external sense. Have we then, with regard to 
 moral and spiritual things, as with regard to things of 
 sense, a Reason which is the source of universal and 
 necessary truths, such as sense could never assure us 
 of? Mr Coleridge maintains that we have. Even if 
 we follow him in this, we must, I think, allow that he 
 makes the transition from Reason in its application 
 to the sensible world, to Reason in its application to 
 the moral and spiritual world, somewhat abruptly and 
 unsatisfactorily. For after giving his proof (from the 
 example of geometrical truths) that Reason extends 
 the truths of sense farther than sense could prove 
 them, he asserts that Reason affirms truths which no 
 sense could perceive, nor experiment verify, nor expe- 
 rience confirm; assertions which his geometrical ex- 
 ample does not support. Not only so : but he goes on 
 to add fiirther, as a test and sign of such truth, that 
 it is inconceivable, and rrmst come out of the mould of 
 the Understanding in the disguise of two contradictory 
 propositions; which certainly is not the case with 
 geometrical truths. 
 
 The object of this startling saltus appears to be, 
 to claim the authority of Reason, thus exalted, for 
 some mysterious doctrines of religion, natural or 
 
128 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. [lECT. 
 
 . revealed : namely, That God is a circle the center of 
 which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere : 
 That the soul is all in every part : and the declaration 
 implying the eternal nature of God, Before Abraham 
 was, I a/m. But it can hardly be considered ■wise 
 to rush, so suddenly and abruptly at least, through 
 an inference from the principles of geometry to the 
 highest truths of religion : and I think that the con- 
 nexion of the two kinds of truth is not much illus- 
 trated by what Mr Coleridge says in these passages. 
 
 In the present work, I am priucipally concerned 
 with the bearing of such views on Moral Philosophy. 
 If there be a faculty such as Reason is thus described 
 to be, a source of truths of the highest order, which 
 truths are not capable of being derived, at least in 
 their folness, from experience, we naturally ask what 
 truths of this kind can be pointed out in the region of 
 Morality. Mr Coleridge has indicated that his philo- 
 sophy contains such truths, and has coupled, (as many 
 writers have done before him,) Right Reason and 
 Conscience. But such a conjunction requires some 
 explanation. There is, at first sight at least, a great 
 difference between a man's Conscience in its practical 
 personal operation; and Conscience in that larger 
 sense in which it is associated with Right Reason, and 
 almost, it would seem from Mr Coleridge's language, 
 made identical with that faculty. He does not give 
 any examples of truths discovered by the Conscience, 
 as he gives examples of truths discovered by the Reason ; 
 except perhaps in that part of his disquisition which 
 refers to Original Sin, where I shall not attempt to 
 follow him. 
 
 We may, however, I think, find examples of 
 truths derived from the Universal Conscience or eter- 
 nal Reason of man, and necessarily entering into our 
 view of morality. Such a truth I conceive is this: 
 That in order that a man may be really moral, not 
 only his external actions, but his internal springs of 
 action, must conform to the Moral Law. Tliis truth 
 is, I conceive, accepted with clear and iadestructible 
 conviction by every one who thinks steadily and con- 
 
XIV.] REASON AND UNDERSTANDING, 1 29 
 
 sistently on moral subjects, and yet cannot be proved 
 in its full extent in any other way. It is therefore, I 
 conceive, a dictate of the Universal Conscience 'or 
 Moral Reason of mankind. 
 
 The -work of Coleridge appears to be valued in 
 America for this reason especially, that it is supposed 
 to assert free-will in opposition to necessary connec- 
 tion; and to maintain the existence of a spiritual as 
 well as a natural world. See J. Marsh's Preface to 
 the American edition of the work. 
 
 In the preceding remarks, I have said that Reason 
 in its highest sense may be fitly described as an Image 
 of the Bivine Mind. This is an expression which has 
 often been used by the philosophers who have assigned 
 the most important office to Reason in the appre- 
 hension of moral, religious and spiritual truth. But I 
 am not aware that such philosophers have undertaken 
 to describe the relation of the Image to the Original 
 Reality otherwise than in the broadest and most gene- 
 ral terms. In the speculations which I have had to 
 pursue respecting the progress of scientific discovery, 
 I have found myself led to attempt to give a more 
 precise and definite account of this relation; and 
 though all attempts at definiteness on such a subject, 
 must be vastly imperfect and scanty, it still appeared 
 to me that we might justifiably proceed somewhat 
 beyond the more general and abstract expressions in 
 which the truth has hitherto been conveyed. In the 
 work which I have published On the PhUosopky of 
 Discovery, there is a Chapter (Chapter xxx.) entitled 
 The Theological Bearing of the Philosophy of JDiscovery, 
 which contains the views which result from the history 
 of human thought. And by comparing the aspect of 
 man as a moral and as a speculative creature, I am 
 led (Chapter xxxii.) to the aphorisms, that 
 
 Mam's Intellectual Progress consists in the Idealiza- 
 tion of Facts, and that man's Moral Progress consists 
 in the BealizaMon of Ideas : and further, that 
 
 M. P. II. , 9 
 
130 HISTORY 01" MORAL PHILOSOPHY, [lECT. XIV. 
 
 All the progress made hy man, ho(h in the Idealiza- 
 tion of Facts and in the Realization of Ideas, is, and 
 always will he, exceedingly scanty and incomplete. 
 
 And thus though by both these kinds of pro- 
 gress, man is constantly led and drawn towards the 
 Divine Nature, he must always remain at an im- 
 measurable distance below the Divine Eeality. The 
 Human Reason, however truly it may be termed an 
 Image of the Divine Mind, must always be an Image 
 immeasurably imperfect, dim and limited, when com- 
 pared with the Divine Light and Fulness : this we 
 can see even by the light of Reason itself. This 
 is true of the scientific Reason, the Mind of man, 
 which deals with speculative relations, some of which 
 we are capable of seeing with intuitive clearness. Still 
 more is this true of that moral Reason which we 
 ascribe to the Soul of man. These aspects of the 
 Reason, the Light that lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world, are emanations and beams of the Di- 
 vine Light : they can lead us but a little way towards 
 the Divine Light; and in the chasm of darkness which 
 intervenes between these emanations and their source, 
 we have abundant need and abundant room for any 
 helps which may be presented to the mind and soul 
 in such a way that Reason may i-ather take the name 
 of Faith. 
 
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