A History of English Philosophy
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"FROM the end of the eighth century, when Alcuin of York was summoned to the court of Charles the Great, down to the middle of the fourteenth century, there was an almost constant succession of scholars of British birth among the writers who contributed to the development of philosophy in Europe. The most important names in the succession are John Scotus Erigena, John of Salisbury, Alexander of Hales, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Thomas Bradwardine." --A History of English Philosophy (Cambridge, 1920) by William Ritchie Sorley "Ferrier has not only an epistemology, or theory of knowledge, but also an agnoiology, or theory of ignorance, the main doctrine of which is that we can be ignorant only of what can possibly be known."--A History of English Philosophy (Cambridge, 1920) by William Ritchie Sorley |
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A History of English Philosophy (Cambridge, 1920) is a book on English philosophy by William Ritchie Sorley. It was later published as A History of British Philosophy to 1900.
It features an idiosyncratic account of the British tradition centered in British Idealism.
Full text[1]
W. R. SORLEY, LITT.D., LL.D.
Professor in the University of Cambridge Fellow of the British Academy
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920
FEB 2 5 1952
PREFACE
THE purpose of this book is to trace the history of philosophy in Great Britain from the time when it began to be written in the English language until the end of the Victorian era.
There are two ways of writing the history of philosophy. One of them sets out from the standpoint of philosophy as conceived by the writer; the other from that of the philosophers themselves. On the former method the fundamental problems of philosophy will be presented at the outset, and each step taken towards their definition and solution will then be noted; whatever is irrelevant to the main issue will be left out of sight, however important it may have been in the minds of some of the philosophers. On the latter method the subject will be approached as it appeared to each philosopher in turn, and the presen tation of definite concepts and clear issues will emerge gradually as the story progresses. Each of these methods has its own advantages and its own dangers. The former concentrates upon the essential, but it is liable to miss historical proportion by stressing certain features and overlooking others. The latter keeps in close touch with the documents, but care is needed to prevent the meaning of the whole from being obscured by details.
The accounts of English thought contained in the general histories of modern philosophy have, for the most part, followed the former method; and the result has often been one-sided and misleading, so that even English readers have been led to misjudge the character of their
vi PREFACE
national philosophy. The other method has been followed in the present treatise. All the leading philosophical writers have been passed under review; they have been studied in their lives and in their books; and an effort has been made to seize and to express what was essential in their contribution to thought.
I am fully aware of the difficulties of the plan, but I have done my best to surmount them. Biographical and bibliographical detail has been introduced, but it has been used to explain and illustrate thought. Minor writers, now seldom read, have been dealt with, but only by giving a concise estimate of the contribution which each had to make to the subject; and they have been grouped round the leading representatives of a period or type of thought. These leading writers have been made the central figures in successive chapters of the history. In carrying out this plan the scope of philosophy itself has been understood in the wider sense which most of the writers gave it in their own minds. The boundaries which separate it from theology, economics, and political theory have not been drawn very sharply, or, rather, they have been allowed to become more sharply marked in the course of the history just as they did in the minds of successive thinkers.
By strict economy of phrase it has been found possible to deal with the subject within the compass of a single volume. The great writers have indeed not received all the space that might have been fitly devoted to them; but an effort has at least been made to preserve a due proportion. Yet even this statement is true only on the whole. It seemed more important to recognise the signifi cance of early and now almost forgotten philosophers than to give a full account of the well-known writers who
PREFACE Vll
have lent distinction to the philosophical literature of this and the immediately preceding generation. In the case of these latter little more has been done than to convey an impression of the purpose and outcome of their work. Living writers have been rarely mentioned and then only under a sort of intellectual compulsion lest their omission should convey a false impression of the state of philosophy in the closing years of the nineteenth century. The book, as it now appears, is based upon a series of chapters contributed to The Cambridge History of English Literature. The proofs have been read by Professor Gibson, of the University College of North Wales, to whom I am indebted for a number of valuable sugges tions.
W. R. S.
March 1920
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE Y
CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY
English philosophy in the Middle Ages I
John Scotus Erigena 2
Roger Bacon 5
John Duns Scotus 6
William of Ockham 7
The Renaissance and the Scholastic revival 8
John Case; John Sanderson 8
Everard Digby 9
William Temple 10
Physical Science: William Gilbert 12
CHAPTER II FRANCIS BACON X
Philosophical writing in English 14
Bacon s life and writings 15
The Renewal of the Sciences 21
Bacon s leading general ideas 23
The unity of science 23
The practical aim of knowledge 24
The tendencies to error in the human mind 24
The doctrine of forms 27
The new method 28
Its defects 31
Political and moral theory 3 2
Influence and importance of Bacon 33
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER III HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS
PAGE
Herbert s life and writings 35
The enquiry into the nature of truth 36
The activity of mind 37
The doctrine of common notions 39
The comparative study of religions 41
Platonic and Aristotelian influence 41
Davies; Fotherby; Hakewill 41
The mysticism of Lord Brooke 42
The doctrine of a law of nature 44
The casuists; Jeremy Taylor 44
Political and juridical theory: John Selden 45
CHAPTER IV THOMAS HOBBES *j
Hobbes s life, writings, and controversies 47
His scientific idea and the political occasion 52
Style and thought 57
His chief works 59
The mechanical theory of reality as a whole 61
The psychological theory 62
The natural state of man 64
The laws of nature 65
Sovereignty in state and church 66
Characteristics of Leviathan 68
Critics of Hobbes
Harrington and his Oceana 69
Previous imaginary commonwealths: More s Utopia and
Bacon s New Atlantis 69
Sir Robert Filmer 72
Clarendon; Bramhall; Tenison; Eachard ... 73
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER V THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS
PAGE
Characteristics of the school 75
Whichcote and his influence 76
Henry More 78
Life and writings 78
Influences: Plato; Descartes; occultism 79
The limits of mechanism 80
The nature of knowledge : innate ideas 81
The nature of spiritual substance 83
The orders of created spirits 85
Ethical views 86
Ralph Cudworth 88
The spiritual nature of reality, and the method of establishing it
in The True Intellectual System 89
The theory of knowledge contained in his Eternal and Immutable
Morality 94
John Smith 96
Nathanael Culverwel 99
Other contemporary writers
Joseph Glanvill too
Parker; Gale; Pordage 102
Richard Cumberland . . 102
CHAPTER VI JOHN LOCKE
Life and writings 104
The controversy with Stillingfleet 108
Origin and problem of his Essay 109
Ideas as the objects of the understanding m
Their origin in sensation or reflection n 3
The universal element in knowledge 1 15
The idea of substance 1*7
The reference to reality in knowledge n8
xii CONTENTS
PAGE
The certainty of knowledge 119
Knowledge of morality 119
Knowledge of real existence 120
Theory of the ground and limits of government .... 121
Economic views 123
Doctrine of toleration 124
Theological views 126
\ Educational doctrines 127
Critics and contemporaries of Locke 127
John Sergeant 127
Zachary Mayne (?) 129
Richard Burthogge 129
John Norris 1 30
CHAPTER VII BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES ^/
The influence of Locke 132
I. METAPHYSICIANS
George Berkeley 133
Life, writings, and missionary enterprise . . . .133
The background of his idealism 1 36
Ideas as significant or possessing meaning . . . .137
The ideal theory of nature 1 39
Spiritual reality and the notion 141
Arthur Collier and his immaterialism 143
II. DEISTS
Early Deism: Charles Blount 143
John Toland 145
Anthony Collins 149
Matthew Tindal 150
Woolston; Annet; Chubb; Dodwell; Bolingbroke . . .151 Other theological writers: Whiston; Middleton; Warburton . 153 III. MORALISTS
Samuel Clarke 155
Other intellectualist moralists: Balguy; Wollaston . . .158
CONTENTS xin
PAGE
~ Lord Shaftesbury 159
Francis Hutcheson 161
Bernard Mandeville 162
Joseph Butler: ethical and theological theories .... 163
CHAPTER VIII
DAVID HUME ^S
His passion for literature, life and writings, and the importance of
his first work 166
His experimental method of reasoning . . . . . .171
Impressions and ideas 172
The classification of philosophical relations 173
Matters of fact and relations of ideas 175
The analysis of causation 176
The theory of belief 177
His explanation of the sceptical result 179
Theory of morality 180
Criticism of theology 181
Political and economic views 183
CHAPTER IX
ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS
I. ADAM SMITH
The two periods of his literary career 186
The ethics of sympathy 188
Social and economic philosophy 189
The work of Sir James Steuart 189
Smith s method of economic reasoning 190
The natural effort of the individual and the natural progress
of opulence : economic harmony 192
II. OTHER WRITERS
The problem set by Hume . . 194
David Hartley 195
Abraham Tucker 196
Richard Price .198
Joseph Priestley 199
William Paley 200
xiv CONTENTS
CHAPTER X THOMAS REID AND OTHERS
PAGE
The Reply to Hume 203
Campbell; Beattie; Oswald 203
Reid s criticism of the ideal theory 204
His natural realism 205
The doctrine of suggestion 206
The principles of Common Sense 207
Dugald Stewart 207
Thomas Brown 209
CHAPTER XI BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS
The Utilitarian school 211
Bentham s life and writings 212
The influence of James Mill 215
Bentham s criticism of Blackstone 216
The principle of utility 218
Quantitative utilitarianism 219
The criterion in politics and in ethics 221
The hedonic calculus 223
The indirect method 225
The utilitarian sanctions 226
Estimate of Bentham 228
His political theories and activities 229
His views on religion and education 231
Godwin and Malthus 231
Significance of Malthus s work 232
Utilitarian economics: David Ricardo 234
The work of James Mill . 236
CONTENTS XV
CHAPTER XII THE VICTORIAN ERA
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION
Period of decline in speculative interest 239
II. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND OTHERS
Hamilton s reputation 240
His new orientation of English philosophy .... 242
His new analytic of logical forms 243
Baynes; Thomson; de Morgan; Boole .... 244
His philosophy of perception 244
His philosophy of the conditioned 246
H. L. Mansel 248
III. JOHN STUART MILL AND OTHERS
Mill s intellectual development 249
His estimates of Bentham and Coleridge . . . .251 Logical theory
Predecessors: Whately; Herschel; Whewell . . .253
Theory of inductive inference 255
Theory of the external world and of mind .... 256
Ethical theory 257
Social and political doctrines 258
J. F. Stephen s criticism 259
Economic theory 259
Attitude to ultimate questions 260
Reaction against Mill s views: Jevons 261
Adherents of Mill: G. Grote; Bain; Robertson . . . 261
English positivism: Congreve; Bridges; Harrison . . 263
IV. RATIONAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHERS
John Grote 264
Maurice; Newman; Martineau 265
V. HERBERT SPENCER AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION
Spencer s life and writings 267
His view of philosophy 268
The unknowable 269
xvi CONTENTS
PAGE
The interpretation of life, mind, and society . . . 270
His individualism 272
George Henry Lewes 273
Thomas Henry Huxley 275
Leslie Stephen 276
The historical method in the social sciences .... 277
Maine; Cliff e Leslie; Bagehot 278
VI. HENRY SIDGWICK AND SHADWORTH HODGSON
Sidgwick s philosophical and ethical work .... 279
Hodgson s analysis of experience 282
VII. IDEALISTS
Influence of post-Kantian speculation 283
James Frederick Ferrier 284.
James Hutchison Stirling 286
Thomas Hill Green 287
William Wallace 289
Edward Caird 290
Francis Herbert Bradley 291
VIII. OTHER WRITERS
Alexander Campbell Fraser 293
Simon Somerville Laurie 294
James Ward 295
Robert Adamson 296
CHAPTER XIII RETROSPECT
General characteristics of English philosophy 298
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 303
BIBLIOGRAPHY 323
INDEX
375
CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY
FROM the end of the eighth century, when Alcuin of York was summoned to the court of Charles the Great, down to the middle of the fourteenth century, there was an almost constant succession of scholars of British birth among the writers who contributed to the development of philosophy in Europe. The most important names in the succession are John Scotus Erigena, John of Salisbury, Alexander of Hales, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Thomas Bradwardine. They wrote in Latin; and with the Latin language went community of culture, of topics, and of audience. All these they shared with an international com monwealth of scholars. National characteristics are never so strongly marked in science and philosophy as in other branches of literature, and their influence takes longer in making itself felt. The British birth or residence of a medieval philosopher is of little more than biographical interest; and the attempt to trace its influence on the ideas or style of his work is apt to be conjectural and arbitrary. His work belongs to a tradition only slightly affected by the differences between nation and nation; it is a part of the history of philosophy, without being distinctively British. In this place, accordingly, it must suffice to characterise in general terms the movement of which the British schoolmen formed part, and some of the direc tions in which their ideas exercised an influence on later science and speculation.
The philosophy of the Middle Ages was, above all things, an attempt at the systematisation of knowledge. The instrument for this synthesis was found in the logical
S. E. P. I
2 THE BEGINNINGS [CH.
conceptions and method of Aristotle. Its material con sisted of the existing records of ancient philosophy and science, what was learned from contemporary experience, and the teachings of the church. In the heterogeneous mass of material thus brought together, a pre-eminent position was assigned to religious doctrine. The claims of theology were based upon revelation, interpreted by ecclesiastical authority. Philosophy, on the other hand, belonged to the province of reason, as distinct from that of faith ; but it was essential that its results should be in harmony with theological doctrine. In this way it came to be regarded as ancillary to theology, and this feature became characteristic of the scholastic method and a fre quent ground of objection to it in its decline. Connected with it was another and a more favourable feature. In accepting and interpreting theological doctrine the thought of the period recognised the independent value of the facts of the spiritual life. What the Scriptures and the fathers taught was confirmed by inner experience. In the laborious erudition and dialectical subtleties of the schoolmen there is seldom wanting a strain of this deeper thought, which attains its full development in medieval mysticism. Thus, in the words of a recent historian, " it dawned upon men that the spiritual world is just as much a reality as the material world, and that in the former is man s true home. The way was prepared for a more thorough investigation of spirit and matter than was possible to antiquity. Above all things, however, a sphere of experience was won for human life which was, in the strictest sense, its own property, into which no external powers could penetrate 1 ."
To Erigena may be traced both medieval mysticism and some anticipations of the scholastic method. He seems to have been born in Ireland about 810, and to have proceeded to France some thirty years later. Charles the Bald appointed him to the schola palatina at Paris.
1 Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Eng. tr. i, p. 6.
I] JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 3
He appears to have had no further connection with Ireland or with England, and to have died in France about 877. It was probably owing to the protection of the king that he escaped the graver results which usually followed a suspicion of heresy. His works were officially condemned by papal authority in 1050 and 1225. Erigena was the predecessor of scholasticism but not himself one of the schoolmen. His anticipation of them consists not only in his dialectical method, but also in his recognition of the authority of the Bible and of the fathers of the church as final. But this recognition is guarded by the assertion that it is impossible for true authority and true reason really to conflict; and he deals quite freely with the letter of a doctrine, while he interprets its spirit in his own way. On the development of mystical thought he exercised an even greater influence. The fundamental conceptions and final outcome of his great work, De divisione naturae, are essentially mystical in tone; and, by his translation of the pseudo-Dionysian writings, he made accessible the storehouse from which medieval mystics derived many of their ideas. These writings are first heard of distinctly in the early part of the sixth century; even in that uncritical age they were not received without question; but they soon gained general acceptance as the genuine work of Dionysius the Areopagite who " clave unto " St Paul after the address on Mars hill, and who was supposed to have become bishop of Athens. The work attributed to him contains an interpretation of Christian doctrine by means of Neoplatonic ideas. It exercised a strong in fluence upon Erigena himself and upon subsequent medieval thought; and this influence was powerfully re inforced long afterwards by the study of Plato and the Neoplatonists at the time of the revival of learning.
Erigena s work opens with a division of the whole of reality into four classes that which creates and is not created, that which both is created and creates, that which is created but does not create, and that which neither
I 2
4 THE BEGINNINGS [CH.
creates nor is created. The last class is not mere non- existence. In general, it may be said to signify the po tential as distinguished from the actual; in ultimate analysis, it is the goal or end towards which all things strive that in it they may find rest. It is therefore God as final cause, just as the first class in the division the uncreate creator is God as efficient cause. God is thus at once the beginning and end of all things, from which they proceed and to which they return. From the un create creator proceed the prototypes or ideas which con tain the immutable reasons or grounds of all that is to be made. The world of ideas is created and yet eternal, and from it follows the creation of individual things. Their primordial causes are contained in the divine Logos (or Son of God), and from these, by the power of the divine Love (or Holy Spirit), is produced the realm of created things that cannot themselves create. God created the world out of nothing, that is to say, out of his ineffable divine nature, which is incomprehensible to men and angels. And the process is eternal: in God vision does not precede operation. Nor can anything subsist outside God: "the creature subsists in God, and God is created in the creature in a wonderful and ineffable manner, mani festing himself, the invisible making himself visible, and the incomprehensible comprehensible, and the hidden plain, and the unknown known 1 ." Thus, while God, as creator and as final cause, transcends all things, he is also in all things. He is their beginning, middle, and end. And his essence is incomprehensible; nay, "God himself knows not what he is, for he is not a what. " Hence, all expressions used of God are symbolical only. Strictly speaking, we cannot even ascribe essence to him: he is super-essential; nor goodness: he is beyond good (vnep-
Erigena was more influenced by Plato than by Aristotle. His acquaintance with the latter s works was restricted to
1 De divisions naturae, m, 18, ed. Schliiter (1838), p. 238.
I] ROGER BACON 5
certain of the logical treatises. The greater part of the Aristotelian writings became known to the schoolmen at a later date and mainly by means of Latin translations of Arabic translations of a Syriac version. The new Aristo telian influence began to make itself distinctly felt about three centuries after Erigena s time. Alexander of Hales is said to have been the first schoolman who knew the whole philosophy of Aristotle and used it in the service of Christian theology. The metaphysical and physical writ ings of Aristotle were at first viewed with suspicion by the church, but afterwards definitely adopted, and his authority in philosophy became an article of scholastic orthodoxy. The great systems of the thirteenth century especially the most lasting monument of scholastic thought, the Summa of St Thomas Aquinas are founded on his teaching.
But uniformity of opinion was not maintained com pletely or for long, and three English schoolmen are to be reckoned among the most (if not as the most) im portant opponents of St Thomas. These are Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.
Roger Bacon, who was born about 1214 and died in 1294, was the earliest in time of the three named, and also the greatest and the most unfortunate. He lived and wrote under the shadow of an uncongenial system then at the height of its power. He suffered persecution and long imprisonments; his popular fame was that of an alchemist and a wizard; his works were allowed to lie unprinted for centuries; and only later scholars have been able to appreciate his significance. His learning seems to have been unique; he read Aristotle in Greek, and ex pressed unmeasured contempt for the Latin translations then in vogue; he was acquainted with the writings of the Arabian men of science, whose views were far in advance of all other contemporary knowledge. He does not appear himself to have made the original scientific discoveries with which he used to be credited, but he had
6 THE BEGINNINGS [CH.
thoroughly mastered the best of the science and philo sophy of his day. There is, of course, much in his writings that may be called scholasticism, but his views on the method of science are markedly modern. His doctrine of method has been compared with that of his more famous namesake Francis Bacon. He was as decided as the latter was in rejecting all authority in matters of science; like him, he took a comprehensive view of knowledge and attempted a classification of the sciences; like him, also, he regarded natural philosophy as the chief of the sciences. The differences between the two are equally remarkable and serve to bring out the merits of the older philosopher. He was a mathematician; and, indeed, he looked upon mathematical proof as the sole type of demonstration. Further, he saw the importance in scientific method of two steps that were inadequately recognised by Francis Bacon the deductive application of elementary laws to particular cases, followed by the experimental verifica tion of the results. "Roger Bacon," it has been said, "has come very near, nearer certainly than any preceding and than any succeeding writer until quite recent times, to a satisfactory theory of scientific method 1 ."
The work of Duns Scotus (1265? 1308?) disturbed the harmony of faith and reason which had been asserted by St Thomas, and which was of the essence of orthodox scholasticism. And "Scotism" became the rival of "Thomism" in the schools. Scotus was not himself here tical in religious belief, nor did he assert an antagonism between faith and reason; but he was critical of all in tellectual arguments in the domain of theology. The leading school had not attempted a justification by reason of such specifically Christian doctrines as those of the Trinity or the Incarnation (as Erigena, for instance, had done). These were accepted as mysteries of the faith, known by revelation only. But certain doctrines such
1 R. Adamson, Roger Bacon: the Philosophy of Science in the Middle Ages (1876), p. 33.
I] WILLIAM OF OCKHAM 7
as the being of God, the immortality of the soul, and the creation of the world out of nothing were held to admit of rational proof, and thus to belong to "natural theology." The arguments for the latter doctrines are subjected to criticism by Scotus. He denied the validity of natural theology except in so far as he recognised that a certain vision of God may be reached by reason, although it needs to be reinforced by revelation. In restricting the power of intellect, Scotus exalted the significance of will. Faith is a voluntary submission to authority, and its objective ground is the unconditional will of God.
At the hands of Ockham (d. 1349?), who was a pupil of Duns Scotus, the separation between theology and philosophy, faith and reason, was made complete. He admitted that there are probable arguments for the ex istence of God, but maintained the general thesis that whatever transcends experience belongs to faith. In this way, he broke with Scotism as well as with Thomism on a fundamental question. He denied the real existence of ideas or universal s and reverted to the doctrine known as nominalism, of which he became the greatest exponent. Entities are not to be postulated without necessity shown. The universal exists only as a conception in the individual mind: though it signifies, without change of meaning, any one of a number of things. The only reality is the individual, and all knowledge is derived from experience. Ockham is equally remarkable for his political writings, in which he defended the independent power of the temporal sovereign against the claims of the pope. His philosophical doctrines had many followers and oppo nents: but he is the last of the great scholastics, for his criticisms struck at the root of the scholastic presupposi tions.
For more than two centuries after Ockham s death, only one writer of importance can be reckoned among English philosophers. That writer was John Wyclif (d. 1384), in whose case a period of philosophical authorship
8 THE BEGINNINGS [CH.
on scholastic lines preceded his theological and re ligious activity. After him comes a blank of long duration. The leaders of the Renaissance, both in philosophy and in science, belonged to the continent; and, although their ideas affected English scholarship and English literature, philosophical writings were slow to follow. And the theo logical controversies of the Reformation led to no new enquiry into the grounds of knowledge and belief. On the universities the teaching of Aristotle retained its hold, at least as regards logic, even after the introduction of the new "humanistic" studies.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century Aristotelian- ism experienced an academic revival, though its sup porters, in all cases, were suspected of papistical leanings. John Case of St John s College, Oxford (B.A. 1568), gave up his fellowship on this ground (it is said), married, and was allowed by the university to give lectures on logic and philosophy in his house. In 1589 he took the M.D. degree and, in the same year, became a canon of Salisbury. He died in 1600. Between 1584 and 1599 he published seven books text-books of Aristotelianism dealing with logic, ethics, politics, and economics. His Speculum moralium questionum in universam ethicen Aristo- telis (1585) was the first book printed at Oxford at the new press presented by the Earl of Leicester, chancellor of the university. John Sanderson, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A. 1558), was appointed logic reader in the university in 1562, but, in the same year, was expelled from his fellowship for suspicious doctrine. He became a student at Douay in 1570, was ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church, and was appointed divinity professor in the English college at Rheims. He died in 1602. The only work of his that is known is Institutionum Dialecticarum libri quatuor^ printed at Ant werp in 1589 and at Oxford in 1594.
About the year 1580 a vigorous controversy regarding the merits of the old logic and the new was carried on
I] EVERARD DIGBY 9
between two fellows of Cambridge colleges, Everard Digby and William Temple. They were both younger in academic standing than Sanderson or Case, but they published 1 earlier. Digby took his B.A. degree in the beginning of 1571, and became fellow of St John s early in 1573, shortly before Francis Bacon entered Trinity College as an undergraduate. He began to give public lectures on logic soon after this date. It is possible we have no evidence on the point that Bacon attended these lectures. If he did, they may have been the means of arousing his interest in the question of method, and they may also, at the same time, have awakened the spirit of criticism in him and led to that discontent with the philosophy of Aristotle which, according to his own account, he first acquired at Cambridge.
Digby s career was chequered. He was suspected of "corrupt religion," and he made enemies in his own society by his contempt for the authorities. In the end of December 1587, on the nominal ground of an irregu larity in his payments for commons, he was deprived of his fellowship by Whitaker, master of the college and a stern puritan. But Digby seems to have had friends in high place. He appealed to Burghley the chancellor and to Archbishop Whitgift. By their order a commission was appointed to enquire into the grounds of his dis missal, and, as a result, Digby was restored 28 May 1588. But, by the end of the same year, he seems to have been got rid of how, we do not know 1 . Probably, the real ground of objection to him his lukewarm protestantism made it prudent for him to leave the university. Digby was famous in his day for his eloquence as a lecturer, his skill in the disputations of the schools, and his learning. His learning, however, is much less than appears from the mere array of authorities which he cites. These are
1 All the ascertainable facts were for the first time brought together by R. F. Scott in Tbe Eagle (St John s College magazine), October term, 1906, pp. 1-24.
10 THE BEGINNINGS [CH.
often taken from Reuchlin s De arte cabbalistica (1517), the fictitious personages of this work being sometimes referred to as actual authors. Digby wrote in the true scholastic spirit; for him Aristotle s doctrines vvere au thoritative, and to disagree with them was heresy. At the same time, his own Aristotelianism was coloured by a mystical theology for which he was largely indebted to Reuchlin. Digby s chief work, Theoria analytic^ viam ad monarchiam scientiarum demonstrans, was published in 1579. This was followed next year by two books a criticism of Ramus entitled De duplici methodo^ and a reply to Temple s defence of the Ramist method. He was also the author of a small treatise De arte natandt (1587), and of an English Dissuasive from taking away the lyvings and goods of the Church (1589).
William Temple passed from Eton to King s College, Cambridge, in 1573; in due course he became a fellow of the latter society, and was soon engaged in teaching logic. From about 1582 till about 1585 he was master of Lincoln grammar school. He then became secretary to Sir Philip Sidney (to whom his edition of the Dialectica of Ramus had been dedicated). After the latter s death he occupied various secretarial posts, and was in the service of the Earl of Essex when he was obliged by the favourite s fall to leave England. He does not seem to have returned till after the accession of King James. In 1609 he was made provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and, a few months later, master of chancery in Ireland. He was knighted in 1622, and died in January 1627.
Temple s important philosophical writings belong to the early part of his career. He was a pupil of Digby at Cambridge, and wrote in terms of warm appreciation of his master s abilities and fame and of the new life that he had put into philosophical study in England. But he had himself found a more excellent way of reasoning in the logical method of Ramus, then coming to be known in this country. When scarcely twenty years of age, Ramus
I] WILLIAM TEMPLE II
had startled the university of Paris by his strenuous oppo sition to the doctrines of Aristotle; he had allied himself to the Calvinists; and he ended his life as a victim of St Bartholomew s eve. The protestant schools, accord ingly, tended to favour his system, in which logic, as the art of discourse, was assimilated to rhetoric and given a practical character. Ascham indeed, in a letter of 1552 and again in his Scholemaster (1570), expressed his dis approval of it. But, as early as 1573, we hear of its being defended in Cambridge 1 . And in 1574, when Andrew Melville returned from Geneva and was appointed prin cipal of the University of Glasgow, he "set him wholly to teach things not heard in this country of before 2 ," and the Dialectica of Ramus took the place of Aristotle s Organon or the scholastic manual elsewhere current in the universities of Great Britain. By his published works Temple became celebrated on the continent as well as at home as an expositor and defender of Ramist doctrine; and, doubtless, it is to his activity that Cambridge ac quired a reputation in the early part of the seventeenth century as the leading school of Ramist philosophy 3 . Temple began authorship in 1580, under the pseudonym of Franciscus Mildapettus Navarrenus 4 , with an Ad- monitio to Digby in defence of the single method of Ramus. Other controversial writings on the same text, against Digby and Piscator of Strasbourg, followed in 1581 and 1582. In 1584 he published an annotated edition of Ramus s Dialectic^ and in the same year he issued, with a preface by himself, a disputation against Aristotle s
1 Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, u, p. 411.
2 James Melvill s Diary (Edinburgh, Wodrow Society, 1842), p. 49; cf. T. McCrie, Life of Melville, i, p. 73; Sir A. Grant, Story of tbt University of Edinburgh, i, p. 80.
3 See Mullinger, op. cit. n, p. 412.
4 "Navarrenus" proclaims the author s allegiance to Ramus, who was educated at the Parisian college de Navarre; "Franciscus" may indicate nothing more than the French origin of the doctrine; the word " Mildapettus " is obscure.
12 THE BEGINNINGS [CH.
doctrine concerning the generation of simple and complex bodies, written by James Martin of Dunkeld, then a pro fessor at Turin. These two books must have been among the first published by the university press, after the restoration of its licence by Burghley, the chancellor, in this year 1 .
In clearness of thought and argumentative skill Temple was far superior to Digby. On the more special point in dispute between them whether the method of know ledge is twofold, from particulars to universals and from universals to particulars, or whether there is only one method of reasoning, that from universals the truth was not entirely on Temple s side. Nor had his method any thing in common with the induction used in the physical sciences. But, in spite of its theoretical weakness, the new logic he recommended had the advantage of clearness and practicality, and was free from the complicated subtleties of the traditional systems. That Bacon was acquainted with the works of Digby and Temple is highly probable, though it cannot be conclusively established. Their in fluence upon him, however, must have consisted mainly in stimulating his interest in the question of method: they did not anticipate his theory of induction.
While these questions occupied the schools, William Gilbert, fellow of St John s College, Cambridge (1561), president of the Royal College of Physicians (1600), was engaged in the laborious and systematic pursuit of ex periments on magnetism which resulted in the publication of the first great English work of physical science, De Magnete, magnetitisque corporibus (1600). Gilbert ex pressed himself as decidedly as did Bacon afterwards on the futility of expecting to arrive at knowledge of nature by mere speculation or by a few vague experiments. He had indeed no theory of induction; but he was conscious that he was introducing a "new style of philosophising." His work contains a series of carefully graduated experi- 1 See Mullinger, op. at. n, pp. 297, 405.
I] WILLIAM GILBERT 13
ments, each one of which is devised so as to answer a particular question, while the simpler and more obvious facts were set forth first, and their investigation led by orderly stages to that of the more complex and subtle. It is unfortunate that Baccn was so little appreciative of Gilbert s book, as a careful analysis of the method actually employed in it might have guarded him from some errors. Gilbert has been called "the first real physicist and the first trustworthy methodical experimenter 1 ." He was also the founder of the theory of magnetism and electricity; and he gave the latter its name, vis electrica. He explained the inclination of the magnetic needle by his conception of the earth as a magnet with two poles; he defended the Copernican theory; and, in his discussion of the attraction of bodies, there is a suggestion of the doctrine of universal gravitation. He had also reached a correct view of the atmosphere as extending only a few miles from the surface of the earth, with nothing but empty space beyond.
On an altogether different plane from Gilbert were two younger contemporaries of Bacon. Robert Fludd, a graduate of Oxford, was a man of fame in his day. He followed Paracelsus, defended the Rosicrucians and at tacked Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler, and Galileo. His works are distinguished by fantastic speculation rather than by scientific method. Nathanael Carpenter, a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, attacked the physical theory of Aristotle in his Philosophia liber a (1621). The works of William Harvey belong to the period following Bacon s death, although he had announced his discovery of the circulation of the blood in 1616.
1 K. Lasswitz, Gescbichte der Atomistik (1890), i, p. 315.
CHAPTER II FRANCIS BACON
THE English language may be said to have become for the first time the vehicle of philosophical literature by the publication of Bacon s Advancement of Learning in 1605. Hooker s Ecclesiastical Polity, which preceded it by eleven years, belongs to theology rather than to philosophy; the nature of William Baldwin s Treatise of Moral Phylosophie, containing the Sayings of the Wyse (1547) is sufficiently indicated by its title; and the little-known treatise of Sir Richard Barckley, entitled A Discourse of the felicitie of man: or his Summum bonum (1598), consists mainly of amusing or improving anecdotes, and contains nothing of the nature of a moral philosophy. In the sixteenth century, however, a beginning had been made at writing works on logic in English. In 1552, Thomas Wilson published The Rule of Reason, conteining the arte of logique. The innovation was not without danger at the time, if it be true that his publication on this subject in a vulgar tongue led to the author s imprisonment by the Inquisi tion at Rome. His example was followed in safer circum stances by Ralph Lever, who, in his Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft, teaching a -perfect way to argue and dispute (1573), not only wrote in English, but used words of English derivation in place of the traditional terminology -foreset and backset for "subject" and "predicate," in- holder and inbeer for "substance "and "accident," saywhat for "definition" and so on. This attempt was never taken seriously; and a considerable time had to elapse before English became the usual language for books on logic. In the seventeenth century, as well as in the sixteenth, the demands of the universities made the use of Latin almost essential for the purpose.
CH. II] HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS 15
Bacon s predecessors, whether in science or in philo sophy, used the common language of learned men. He was the first to write an important treatise on science or philosophy in English; and even he had no faith in the future of the English language 1 . In the Advancement he had a special purpose in view: he wished to get support and cooperation in carrying out his plans; and he re garded the book as only preparatory to a larger scheme. The works intended to form part of his great design for the renewal of the sciences were written in Latin. But the traditional commonwealth of thought was weakened by the forces which issued in the Renaissance; and, among these forces, the increased consciousness of nation ality led gradually to greater differentiation in national types of culture, and to the use of the national language even for subjects which appealed chiefly or only to the community of learned men. However much he may have preferred the Latin tongue as the vehicle of his philosophy, Bacon s own action made him a leader of this movement; and it so happened that the type of thought which he expounded had affinities with the practical and positive achievements of the English mind. In this way Bacon has come to be regarded, not altogether correctly, not only as the beginner of English philosophy, but also as repre sentative of the special characteristics of the English philosophical genius.
Francis Bacon was the younger of the two sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the great seal, by his second wife Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and sister-in-law of Lord Burghley. He was born at York House, London, on 22 January 1561. In April 1573 he was sent, along with his brother Anthony, to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained (except for an absence of about six months when the plague raged there) till Christmas 1575. Of his studies in Cambridge we know little or nothing; and it would be easy to lay too 1 Letters and Life, ed. Spedding, vn, p. 429.
1 6 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
great stress on the statement long afterwards made to Rawley, his first biographer, that, before he left the uni versity, he "fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way." In 1576 he was sent by his father to France with Sir Amyas Paulet, the ambas sador, and in his suite he remained until recalled home by Sir Nicholas s sudden death in February 1579. This event had an unfortunate effect upon his career. A sum of money which his father had set apart to purchase an estate for him had not been invested, and he inherited a fifth part of it only. He had therefore to look to the bar for an income and to the grudging favour of the Cecils for promotion. He was called to the bar in 1582, and entered parliament in 1584: sitting in each successive House of Commons until he became lord keeper. But office was long in coming to him. The queen had been affronted by an early speech of his in parliament in which he had criticised the proposals of the court; and the Cecils always proved more kin than kind. The objects which he sought were never unworthy nor beyond his merits; but he sought them in ways not always dignified. He pleaded his cause in many letters to Burghley and Salisbury and Buckingham; and the style of his supplications can hardly be accounted for altogether by the epistolary manners of the period. In 1589 Burghley got him the reversion of an office in the Star Chamber, worth about 1600 a year; but to this he did not succeed till 1608. From about 1597 he had come to be employed regularly as one of the queen s learned counsel. In 1604 he was made one of his ordinary counsel by King James, with a salary of 40; and Bacon reckoned this as his first preferment. He was made solicitor-general in 1607, attorney-general in 1613, privy councillor in 1616, lord keeper in 1617, lord chancellor in 1618. He was knighted in 1603, DUt > to his chagrin, along with a crowd of three hundred others;
II] HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS 17
he was created Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St Albans in 1621. A few weeks later charges of having received bribes from suitors in his court were brought against him in the newly-summoned House of Commons; these were remitted to the House of Lords for trial; he was convicted on his own confession, and sentenced to deprivation of all his offices, to imprisonment in the tower during the king s pleasure, to a fine of 40,000, to ex clusion from the verge of the court, and to incapacity from sitting in parliament. The imprisonment lasted a few days only; the fine was made over to trustees for Bacon s benefit; the exclusion from the verge was soon removed; but, in spite of many entreaties, he was never allowed to sit in parliament again.
In the midst of the legal and political work which crowded these years, Bacon never lost sight of his larger ambitions. He published the first edition of his Essays in 1597, the second (enlarged) edition appearing in 1612 and the third (completed) edition in 1625. The Advance ment of Learning was published in 1605, addressed to King James, De Sapientia Veterum in 1609, Novum Or- ganum in 1620. After his disgrace he lived at Gorham- bury, the paternal estate to which he had succeeded on the death of his brother Anthony in 1601, and there he devoted himself to writing. The History of Henry VII appeared in 1622, and De Augmentis Scientiarum in 1623; the New Atlantis was written in 1624; at his death he was at work on Syfoa Syfoarum-, and he left behind him many sketches and detached portions of his great but incomplete design. Bacon had been married in 1606 to Alice Barnham, the daughter of an alderman. He died on 9 April 1626, from the effects of a chill caught by moving out of his carriage in order to try an experiment on the antiseptic properties of snow.
Bacon s plan for the renewal of the sciences was never fully elaborated by himself, and it has never been de liberately and systematically followed by others. In his
S. E. P. 2
1 8 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
personal career, too, there are some events that still remain obscure. But material is not lacking for forming a judg ment on his philosophy and on his life. We cannot expect to remove either from the range of controversy. But the life-long devotion of Spedding may be said with confi dence to have made one thing clear. Pope s famous epigram " the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind " and the brilliant elaboration of the same in Macaulay s essay cannot be made to fit the facts. Bacon was not a monster; and his character and genius cannot be ex plained by being set in sharp antithesis. Life and philo sophy are revelations of the same mind, and we must expect one to shed light on the other. It is on this account that it is necessary to attempt an estimate of Bacon s character and to touch upon the disputed events in his career, although the questions cannot be discussed at length, and little more can be done than indicate results.
In a fragment 1 written about 1603, and apparently intended as a preface to his great work, Bacon set forth the ambitions which guided his life; and there is no reason for doubting the substantial accuracy of his ac count. Believing (he begins) that he was born for the service of mankind, he set himself to consider for what service nature had fitted him best. He saw that the good effects wrought by practical statesmen " extend over narrow spaces and last but for short times; whereas the work of the Inventor, though a thing of less pomp and shew, is felt everywhere and lasts for ever." And for this end he thought nature had destined him. " I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things (which is the chief point), and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish
1 De interpretatione natures procemium, Works, in, pp. 518-520. In this and other quotations from the Latin works the translations contained in Ellis and Spedding s edition have been used.
II] HIS AIMS IN LIFE 19
their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. So I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with Truth." His first object, therefore, was the knowledge that would extend and establish the empire of man over nature. But birth and education had introduced him to the service of the state, and " a man s own country has some special claims upon him." For these reasons he sought civil employment; and the service of the State may be said to have been his second object in life. Finally, he adds, " I was not without hope (the condition of Religion being at that time not very prosperous) that if I came to hold office in the state, I might get something done too for the good of men s souls." According to Bacon s own account, therefore, the service of mankind to which he held himself born was to be carried out by devotion to three objects: the discovery of truth, the welfare of his country, and the reform of religion. And of these three objects the first always held the highest place in his thoughts. " I confess," he wrote to Burghley about 1592, "that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have mode rate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province 1 ."
This greatness of design was characteristic of the mind of the period as well as of Bacon personally. But it was accompanied by inadequate preparation in the methods and principles of the exact sciences as understood at the time, and often by an imperfect grasp of details. If the latter defect may be traced in his intellectual work, it is still more apparent in his practical activity. It is not fanciful to connect with this characteristic some of the actions for which he has been most censured. Throughout
1 Letters and Life, i, p. 109.
20 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
his career he was never free from financial difficulties; and, when he had obtained high preferment, he main tained a magnificent style of living without exercising any effective control over the expenditure of his household. When the charge of taking bribes was made against him he was much surprised, but he had no defence. It may be true, as he asserted, that he never allowed a present from a suitor to influence his decision ; nor do any of his judgments appear to have been reversed on this ground. It may be true also that Bacon only followed the custom of his time: though, on this point, it is difficult to get evidence. But he himself saw the impropriety of a judge being " twice paid " to quote the mild term of censure used in his New Atlantis. And he took no care to guard against the impropriety in his own conduct. In the main he was probably a just, as well as an efficient, judge. But he was too tenacious of his office as he had been too eager to obtain it; and it is hardly possible to resist the evidence for the conclusion that, on one occasion at least 1 , he allowed the court favourite Buckingham to influence his decision. In another matter that of the trial of the Earl of Essex Bacon s conduct has been blamed in a manner too unqualified. The benefits which he had received at the hands of Essex would not have been a sufficient reason for his standing aside when the need arose for his taking part in the prosecution. The rebellion of Essex had been a real danger to the state and not merely an explosion of bad temper. It was essential that the prosecution should not fail through the case being badly presented; and Bacon s intervention was not merely excusable: it may be argued that it was his duty to safeguard the interests of the state, and to subordinate to them the claims of private friendship and gratitude, in spite of the tragedy of the personal situation. At the same time, it must be admitted that the record of the trial does not suggest that he felt
1 See the letter of D. D. Heath (one of the editors of the Works) in Bacon s Letters and Life, vn, pp. 579-588.
II] THE RENEWAL OF THE SCIENCES 21
the tragedy. Judging from the manner in which he pressed home the charge, the personal factor seems to have touched him but slightly. And this perhaps is characteristic. He was capable of high enthusiasm for ideas and for causes. His philosophical works are inspired by the former; and his writings on public affairs show a spirit of devotion to the common weal as well as political wisdom. But, on the side of personal sentiment, his nature seems to have been cold not easily stirred to the love or hate which unite and divide mankind.
Bacon intended that his Great Instauration or Renewal of the Sciences should be set forth in six parts. These he enumerated as follows: (i) The Division of the Sciences; (2) The New Organon, or Directions con cerning the Interpretation of Nature; (3) The Phenomena of the Universe, or a Natural and Experimental History for the foundation of Philosophy; (4) The Ladder of the Intellect; (5) The Forerunners, or Anticipations of the New Philosophy; (6) The New Philosophy, or Active Science. Of these parts, the last was to be the work of future ages; for the fourth and fifth only prefaces were written; the first three are represented by considerable works, although in none of them is the original design carried out with completeness. Latin was to be the lan guage of them all. The Advancement of Learning^ which, in great part, covers the ground of the first division, was not written as part of the plan ; but De Augmentis^ which takes its place in the scheme, is, so far, little more than an extended Latin translation of the Advancement. Bacon s last work, Sylva Sylvarum, which belongs to the third part,
- was written in English.
Bacon, as he said himself, took all knowledge as his province; his concern was not so much with particular branches of science as with principles, method, and system. For this purpose he sets out by reviewing the existing state of knowledge, dwelling on its defects and pointing out remedies for them. This is the burden of the first
22 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
book of the Advancement and of De Augmentis. Tn the second book he proceeds to expound his division of the sciences. The principle with which he starts in his classifi cation is psychological: " The parts of human learning have reference to the three parts of man s understanding, which is the seat of learning: history to his memory, poesy to his imagination, and philosophy to his reason." The subdivisions of these, however, are based on differ ences in the objects, not in the mental faculty employed. History is divided into natural and civil. To the latter of these, ecclesiastical and literary history are regarded as subordinate (although made coordinate in the Ad vancement}. Poetry is held to be " nothing else but feigned history," and is subdivided into narrative, repre sentative, and allusive or parabolical. But it is with the last of the three main divisions of learning that Bacon is chiefly concerned.
" In Philosophy," he says, "the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to nature, or are reflected or reverted upon himself. Out of which several enquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine philosophy, Natural philosophy, and Human philo sophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character, of the power of God, the difference of nature, and the use of man." But, as the three divisions all spring from a common root, and certain observations and axioms are common to all, the receptacle for these must constitute " one universal science, by the name of Philosophia Prima, Primitive or Summary Philosophy." Among the three divisions of philosophy, Bacon s most important thoughts concern natural philosophy. One of his fundamental ideas is ex pressed by its distinction into two parts " the inquisi tion of causes, and the production of effects; Speculative, and Operative; Natural Science, and Natural Prudence." More subtle is the distinction of natural science into physic and metaphysic. The latter term is not used in its
Il] NOVUM ORGANUM 2$
traditional sense, nor is it synonymous with what Bacon calls summary philosophy, which deals with axioms com mon to several sciences. Both physic and metaphysic deal with natural objects: physic with their material and efficient causes, metaphysic with their formal and final causes. Thus, " Physic is situate in a middle term or distance between Natural History and Metaphysic. For Natural History describeth the variety of things; Physic, the causes, but variable and respective causes; and Meta physic, the fixed and constant causes." In elaborating this view, Bacon covers ground traversed again in the Novum Organum.
Both for its style and for the importance of the ideas which it conveys, the Novum Organum ranks as Bacon s greatest work. To its composition he devoted the most minute care. Rawley tells us that he had seen no less than twelve drafts of it in Bacon s own handwriting, re written from year to year. As it was at last published its stately diction is a fit vehicle for the prophetic message it contains. The aphorisms into which the matter is thrown add impressiveness to the leading ideas, without seriously interfering with the sequence of the argument. It is chiefly to it that we must go if we would understand the message and the influence of Bacon. And this under standing will be facilitated if we distinguish, as he himself never did, between certain leading ideas which he, more than anyone else, impressed upon the mind of succeeding ages, and his own more special conception of nature and of the true method for its investigation.
Of those leading and general ideas, two have been already indicated. One of these is the belief in the unity of science. His classification of the sciences had in view not only their differences but also their essential oneness. 4 The divisions of knowledge," he says, 44 are like branches of a tree that meet in one stem (which stem grows for some distance entire and continuous, before it divides itself into arms and boughs)." They are;to k be
24 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
accepted " rather for lines to mark or distinguish, than sections to divide and separate 1 ."
The second of these leading ideas is the practical aim of knowledge. This is a constantly recurring thought, and is, in his own mind, the most fundamental; it is the first distinction which he draws between his own new logic and the old, and it was meant to characterise the new philosophy of which he claims to have made only the beginning. And he enforces it in memorable words: The matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortunes of the human race, and all power of operation. For man is but the servant and interpreter of nature : what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of nature s order in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed. And so those twin objects, human knowledge and human power, do really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation fails 2 ."
Bacon s object was to establish or restore the empire of man over nature. This empire depends upon know ledge; but, in the mind of man, there are certain obstacles to knowledge which predispose it to ignorance and error. The doctrine of the tendencies to error inherent in the human mind is another of his fundamental thoughts. These tendencies to error he called idola mentis images or phantoms by which the mind is misled. The name is taken from Plato and contrasted with the Platonic idea ; and emphasis is laid on the difference between the idols of the human mind, which are abstractions that distort and misrepresent reality, and the ideas of the divine mind, which are "the creator s own stamp upon reality, im pressed and defined in matter by true and exquisite lines 3 ." This doctrine had long occupied Bacon s thought; it was
1 De Augmentis, HI, i; iv, i; Works, i, pp. 540, 580.
2 Novum Organum, distributio opens. 3 N.O., i, 124.
II] THE IDOLS OF THE MIND 25
stated in the Advancement^ where, however, the last of the four classes of idols is wanting; and it was completely set forth for the first time in the Novum Organum.
In the latter work four classes of idols are distinguished : idols of the tribe, idols of the cave, idols of the market place, and idols of the theatre. Under these graphic titles Bacon works out a doctrine which shows both originality and insight. The originality is conspicuous in what he says concerning the idols of the tribe. They are deceptive tendencies which are inherent in the mind of man as such and belong to the whole human race. The understanding, he says, is like a false mirror that distorts and discolours the nature of things. Thus, it supposes more order and regularity in the world than it finds, as when it assigns circular motion to the celestial bodies; it is more moved and excited by instances that agree with its preconcep tions than by those that differ from them; it is unquiet, and cannot rest in a limit without seeking to press beyond it, or in an ultimate principle without asking for its cause; it "is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections"; it depends on the senses, and they are "dull, incompetent, and deceptive"; and it is "prone to abstractions and gives a substance and reality to things which are fleeting." The idols of the cave belong not to the race but to the individual. They take their rise in his peculiar constitution, and are modified by education, habit, and accident. Thus some minds are apt to mark differences, others resemblances, and both tend to err, though in opposite ways; or again, devotion to a par ticular science or speculation may so colour a man s thoughts that everything is interpreted by its light. The idols of the market-place are those due to the use of language, and they are the most troublesome of all. " For men believe that their reason governs words ; but it is also true that words react on the understanding; and this it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive." Finally, the idols of the theatre are due to
26 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
" philosophical systems and the perverted rules of demon stration." In this connection Bacon classifies " false philosophies" as sophistical, empirical, and superstitious. In his amplification of this division, his adverse judgment upon Aristotle may be discounted; his want of apprecia tion of Gilbert is a more reasonable matter of regret; but, at bottom, his view is sound that it is an error either to "fashion the world out of categories" or to base a system on "the narrowness and darkness of a few experiments."
This criticism of the sources and kinds of error leads directly to an explanation of that " just and methodical process " of arriving at truth which Bacon calls the inter pretation of nature. The process is elaborate and precisely defined; and it rests on a special view of the constitution of nature. Neither this view nor the details of the method have exerted much influence upon the progress of science. But underlying them both was the more general idea of the importance of an objective attitude to nature and of the need of systematic experiment; and of this general idea Bacon was, not indeed the originator, but the most brilliant and influential exponent. In the study of nature all preconceptions must be set aside; we must be on our guard against the tendency to premature "anticipations" of nature: "the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument"; men must be led back to the particular facts of experience, and pass from them to general truths by gradual and unbroken ascent; " we must begin anew from the very foundation," for " into the kingdom of nature as into the kingdom of grace entrance can only be obtained sub -persona infantis 1 "
These general but fruitful ideas do not exhaust Bacon s teaching. He looked forward to the speedy establishment of a new philosophy which should be distinguished from the old by the completeness of its account of reality and by the certainty of its results. His new method seemed to give him a key to the subtlety of nature; and this
1 N.O., i, 68.
II] THE DOCTRINE OF FORMS 27
method would, incidentally, tend to equalise intellectual capacities 1 so that all minds who followed it with care and patience would be able to find truth and use it for fruitful works.
" It is a correct position," says Bacon, "that true know ledge is knowledge by causes." But the way in which he understands this position is significant. He adopts the Aristotelian division of causes into four kinds : material, formal, efficient, and final. Physic deals with the efficient and material causes; but these, apart from their relation to the formal cause, " are but slight and superficial, and contribute little, if anything, to true and active science." The enquiry into the other two belongs to that branch of natural philosophy which he calls metaphysic. " But of these the final cause rather corrupts than advances the sciences, except such as have to do with human action," and " the discovery of the formal is dispaired of 2 ." Yet forms must be investigated if nature is to be understood and controlled. Thus the second book of the Novum Organum opens with the aphorism, "On a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature is the work and aim of human power. Of a given nature to discover the form ... is the work and aim of human knowledge."
What, then, does Bacon mean by form ? He gives many answers to this question, and yet the meaning is not altogether easy to grasp. Form is not something mental; it is not an idea, nor is it a mere abstraction; it is itself physical. According to Bacon, nothing really exists in nature except individual bodies. But the forms of substances are so complicated that their investigation, if possible at all, must be postponed until enquiry has been made into forms of a simpler kind those of the qualities or natures possessed by substances 3 . The form is the condition or ground of these natures: its presence determines the presence of the relative nature;
1 N.O., i, 61. 2 A .O., ii, 2 ; cp. Works, i, p. 364, iv, p. 360.
3 De Augmentis, in, 4; Works, i, p. 365.
28 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
with its absence the nature vanishes; further, a true form deduces the given nature from some source of being or essence which is inherent in many different things 1 . Thus the form would seem to be expressed by a definition per genus et differ entiam. This explanation, however, is supplemented by another which identifies form with law. When I speak of forms," he says, " I mean nothing more than those laws and determinations of absolute actuality which govern and constitute any simple nature, as heat, light, weight, in every kind of matter and subject that is susceptible of them. Thus the form of heat or the form of light is the same thing as the law of heat or the law of light 2 ." And again, " The form of a thing is the very thing itself, and the thing differs from the form no otherwise than as the apparent differs from the real, or the external from the internal, or the thing in reference to man from the thing in reference to the uni verse 3 ."
The complexity of the physical universe is due to the combination, in varied ways, of a limited number of forms which are manifested to us in sensible qualities. If we know the form, we know what must be done to super induce the quality upon a given body. Hence the practical character of Bacon s theory. Here also is brought out an idea that lies at the basis of his speculative doctrine the idea that the forms are limited in number. They are, as it were, the alphabet of nature; when they are under stood, the whole language will be clear. Philosophy is not an indefinite striving after an ever-receding goal. Its completion may be expected in the near future, if only the appropriate method is followed.
The new method leads to certainty. Bacon is almost as contemptuous of the old induction, which proceeded from a few experiments to general laws, as he is of the syllogism. His new induction is to advance by gradual
1 N.O., ir, 4 ; cp. Fowler s edition, 2nd ed., pp. 54 ff.
2 N.O., n, 17. 3 N.O., ii. 13.
II] THE INDUCTIVE METHOD 29
stages of increasing generality, and it is to be based on an exhaustive collection of instances. This collection of instances is the work of what Bacon called natural history, and he laboured to give specimens of the collections re quired. He always recognised that the collaboration of other workers was needed for their completion and that the work would take time. His sense of its magnitude seems to have deepened as it progressed; but he never realised that the constant process of development in nature made an exhaustive collection of instances a thing im possible.
Given the requisite collection of instances, the inductive method may be employed without risk of error. For the form is always present where the nature (or sensible quality) is present, absent where it is absent and increases or decreases with it. The first list of instances will consist of cases in which the nature is present: this is called the table of essence and presence. Next come the instances most akin to these in which nevertheless the nature is absent: this is called the table of absence in proximity. Thirdly, a list is made of instances in which the nature is found in different degrees, and this is the table of de grees or comparison. True induction begins here, and consists in a rejection or exclusion of the several natures which do not agree in these respects with the nature under investigation. The non-essential are eliminated; and, provided our instances are complete and our notions of the different natures adequate, the elimination will proceed with mechanical precision. Bacon saw, however, that the way was more intricate than this statement sug gests especially owing to the initial difficulty of getting sound and true notions of simple natures 1 . Aids therefore must be provided. In the first place, he. will allow the understanding to essay the interpretation of nature on the strength of the instances given. This " commencement of interpretation," which, to some extent, plays the part of
1 N.O., a, 19.
30 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
hypothesis (otherwise absent from his method), receives the quaint designation of First Vintage. Other helps are then enumerated which Bacon proposes to treat under nine heads: prerogative instances; supports of induction ; rectification of induction; varying the investigation ac cording to the nature of the subject; prerogative natures (or what should be enquired first and what last); limits of investigation (or a synopsis of all natures in the universe); application to practise; preparations for investi gation; ascending and descending scale of axioms. Only as regards the first of these is the plan carried out. The remainder of the Novum Organum is taken up with the discussion of twenty-seven kinds of prerogative instances; and here are to be found many of his most valuable sug gestions, such as his discussion of solitary instances and of crucial instances.
Although the new method was never expounded in its completeness, it is possible to form a judgment on its value. In spite of the importance and truth of the general ideas on which it rests, it has two serious defects, of which Bacon himself was not unaware. It gives no security for the validity and accuracy of the conceptions with which the investigator works, and it requires a complete collec tion of instances, which, in the nature of things, is im possible. Coupled with these defects, and resulting from them, are Bacon s misunderstanding of the true nature and function of hypothesis, upon which all scientific ad vances depend, and his condemnation of the deductive method, which is an essential instrument in experimental verification. The method of scientific discovery and proof cannot be reduced to the formulae of the second book of the Novum Organum.
In spite of the width of his interests, especially in the domain of science, Bacon himself did not make any new discovery. His suggestions sometimes show insight, but also a certain crudity of conception which is connected with his inadequate general view of nature. The exposi-
II] DEFECTS OF THE METHOD 31
tion of his method in the second book of the Novum Organum is illustrated throughout by an investigation into the form or cause of heat. The result at which he permits himself to arrive as the first vintage of the enquiry exhibits this combination of insight and crudity. He reaches the conclusion that heat is a particular case of motion. The specific differences which distinguish it from its genus are that it is an expansive motion ; that its direction is towards the circumference of the body, pro vided the body itself has a motion upwards ; that it is a motion in the smaller parts of the body; and that this motion is a rapid motion of fine (but not the finest) particles of the body. This and other investigations of his own were abandoned without reaching a clear result. His knowledge of science was also deficient, especially in the region of the exact sciences. He looked for an increase of astronomical knowledge from Galileo s telescope, but he appears to have been ignorant of the work of Kepler; he ignored Napier s invention of logarithms and Galileo s advances in mechanical theory; and his judgment on the Copernican theory became more adverse at the very time when that theory was being confirmed by Galileo and Kepler 1 . These defects in his own scientific equipment were closely connected with some of the peculiarities in detail of the method he recommended. And the two things together may explain the sneer of his contem porary Harvey, that he wrote philosophy like a lord chancellor. Nor is it very difficult to understand the atti tude of most subsequent men of science, who have honoured him as the originator of the experimental method but silently ignored his special precepts. His method was not the method of the laboratory. When the objects investigated can be observed only directly as they occur in nature, greater importance must be assigned to the exhaustive enumeration of facts upon which Bacon insisted. Darwin, for example, has recorded that, in
1 Compare Spedding, in Bacon s Works, HI, pp. 511, 725.
32 FRANCIS BACON [CH.
starting his enquiry, he " worked on true Baconian prin ciples, and, without any theory, collected facts on a wholesale scale 1 ." But Bacon did not recognise that, in investigations of this sort also, the enumeration must be guided by an idea or hypothesis, the validity of which is capable of being tested by the facts. He overlooked the function of the scientific imagination a power with which he himself was richly endowed.
According to Bacon, " human knowledge and human power meet in one "; and the stress which he laid upon this doctrine lends interest to his discussions on practical principles. His views on ethical and political theory, how ever, were never set forth systematically or with complete ness. They are to be found in the second book of the Advancement and in the seventh and eighth books of De Augmentis, as well as in the Essays and in some of his occasional writings. His observations on private and public affairs are full of practical wisdom, for the most part of the kind commonly called worldly. He was under no illusions about the ordinary motives of men, and he thought that " we are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do and not what they ought to do." Fundamental principles are dealt with less frequently, but they are not altogether neglected. A pre ference is expressed for the active over the contemplative life, for " men must know that in this theatre of man s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on." Aristotle s reasons for preferring the contemplative life have respect to private good only. But the "exemplar or platform of good" discloses a double nature: "the one, as everything is a total or substantive in itself; the other, as it is a part or member of a greater body; whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, be cause it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form (formae ampHoris} 2 " In this way Bacon introduced
1 Charles Darwin: bis life told in an autobiographical chapter (1902), p. 40.
2 De Augmentis, VH, I ; Advancement, n ; Works, i, p. 717, nr, p. 420.
II] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 33
into English ethics the distinction, on which many controversies have turned, between private and public good. But the nature of this good is not subjected to philosophical analysis.
A similar remark has to be made regarding Bacon s contributions to political theory. There is much discussion of matters of detail, but first principles are barely men tioned. The arts of government are said to contain three duties: the preservation, the happiness and pros perity, and the extension, of empire; but only the last is discussed. Bacon maintained the independence of the civil power, and, at the same time, defended the royal prerogative; nevertheless, his ideal of the state was not arbitrary government but the rule of law. In the Ad vancement he had noted that " all those which have written of laws have written either as philosophers or as lawyers, and none as statesmen. As for the philosophers, they make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths ; and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high. For the lawyers, they write according to the states where they live, what is received law, and not what ought to be law." And he goes on to say that " there are in nature certain fountains of justice, whence all civil laws are derived but as streams." To this subject he returns in the eighth book of De Augmentis^ which closes with a series of aphorisms on universal justice. In these aphorisms all civil authority is made to depend on " the sovereign power of the government, the structure of the constitution, and the fundamental laws "; law does not merely protect private rights; it extends to " everything that regards the well-being of the state "; its end is or should be the happiness of the citizen; and " that law may be set down as good which is certain in meaning, just in precept, convenient in execution, agree able to the form of government, and productive of virtue in those that live under it."
Bacon s contributions to human philosophy do not
S. E. P. 3
34 FRANCIS BACON [CH. II
rank in importance with his reforming work in natural philosophy; and his influence on the moral sciences was later in making itself felt, though it was similar in char acter to his influence on natural science. He often ap pealed for help in carrying out his new philosophy; but neither in natural science, nor in moral science, nor in philosophy generally, did he found a school. The philo sophical writings which belong to the period following Bacon s death show but slight traces of his influence. His genius was recognised, and he was quoted now and again on special points ; but his leading doctrines were generally ignored. No new logic appeared on the lines described in his Novum Organum. The writers of logical treatises followed the traditional scholastic method or adopted the modifications of it introduced by Ramus. Even Milton s logic, which is founded on that of Ramus, pays no atten tion to the Baconian revolution. Harvey s unfavourable judgment on his work has been already quoted. Hobbes, who acted for a time as his secretary, does not seem to have been influenced by him in any important manner. And yet it is the leading thinkers men such as Leibniz and Hume and Kant who acknowledge most fully the greatness of Bacon. His real contribution to intellectual progress does not consist in scientific discoveries or in philosophical system; nor does it depend on the value of all the details of his method. But he had the insight to discover, the varied learning to illustrate, and the elo quence to enforce, certain principles regulative of the mind s attitude to the world which, once grasped, became a permanent possession. He did more than anyone else to help to free the intellect from preconceived notions and to direct it to the unbiased study of facts, whether of nature, of mind, or of society; he vindicated an indepen dent position for the positive sciences; and to this, in the main, he owes his position in the history of modern thought.
CHAPTER III
HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS
WHILE Bacon was engaged upon his plan for the renewal of the sciences, his younger contemporary Edward Her bert was at work upon a similar problem. But the two men had little in common except their vaunted inde pendence of tradition and their interest in the question of method. And their thinking diverged in result. Bacon is claimed as the father of empirical or realistic philosophy; Herbert influenced, and to some extent anticipated, the characteristic doctrines of the rationalist or intellectualist school of thought.
Edward Herbert, the representative of a branch of the noble Welsh family of that name, and elder brother of George Herbert the poet, was born at Eyton in Shropshire on 3 March 1583, matriculated at University College, Oxford, in 1 595, married in 1 599, and continued to reside at Oxford till about 1600, when he removed to London. He was made a Knight of the Bath soon after the accession of King James. From 1 608 to 1 6 1 8 he spent most of his time on the continent, as a soldier of fortune: seeking occasionally the society of scholars, in the intervals of the campaign, the chase, or the duel. In 1619 he was ap pointed ambassador at Paris; after his recall in 1624 King James rewarded him with an Irish peerage. He was created an English peer as Baron Herbert of Cherbury in 1629. The civil war found him unprepared for decision; but he ultimately saved his property by siding with the parliament. He died in London on 20 August 1648.
His works were historical, literary, and philosophical. His account of the Duke of Buckingham s expedition to Rhe and his history of Henry VIII were written with a
32
36 HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS [CH.
view to royal favour. The latter was published in 1649; a Latin version of the former appeared in 1658, the English original not till 1 8 60. His literary works poems and autobiography are of much higher merit. The former were published by his son in 1665; the latter was first printed by Horace Walpole in 1764. His philo sophical works give him a distinct and interesting place in the history of thought. His greatest work, De Veritate, was, he tells us, begun in England and " formed there in all its principal parts." Hugo Grotius, to whom he submitted the manuscript, advised its publication; but it was not till this advice had been sanctioned (as he thought) by a sign from heaven that he had the work printed (Paris, 1624). To the third edition (London, 1645) he added a short treatise De Causis Errorum, a dissertation entitled Religio Laid, and an Appendix ad Sacer dotes. In 1663 appeared his De Religione Gentilium a treatise on what is now called comparative religion. A popular account of his views on religion was published in 1768 under the title A Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil, by Edward Lord Herbert of Chirbury, and, although the external evi dence is incomplete, it may have been from his pen.
Herbert does not stand in the front rank of speculative thinkers; but his claims as a philosopher are worthy of note. Like Bacon he was occupied with the question of method; and his enquiry went deeper, though it was less effective upon philosophical opinion. Bacon, it may be said, investigated the criteria and canons of evidence, whereas Herbert sought to determine the nature and standard of truth. Descartes soon afterwards referred to the question and put it aside, saying of Herbert 1 : " he examines what truth is; for myself, I have never doubted about it, as it seems to me to be a notion so transcen- dentally clear that it is impossible to ignore it." The problem which Herbert put before himself concerned the conditions of knowledge; and it has a bearing upon later
1 In a letter of i6Oct. 1639; Otuvres,cd. Adam and Tannery, n,pp. 576f.
Ill] THE ACTIVITY OF MIND 37
thought, though it arises out of traditional views. In the end of the following century Kant said that his own new point of view was due to discarding the belief that "all our cognitions must conform to objects," which had been " hitherto assumed." This was, indeed, the prevailing doctrine. Perception was held to be a passio mentis produced by the activity of the object which impressed its image (or, to use the term which Descartes and Locke made familiar, an idea) upon the mind. This view was rejected by Herbert as decidedly as by Kant, though he did not anticipate the Kantian revolution by assuming that "objects must conform to our cognition."
The distinction between mind and body had not yet been sharpened and turned into antagonism by the Car tesian dualism. Man is a complex of mind and body, and, according to Herbert, all that is passive in him is body 1 though body itself is not purely passive. Mind, however, is never passive. It acts but is not acted upon 2 . Things do not act upon it but are put within the sphere of its operation 3 . Nevertheless, it requires an occasion, or the presence of objects, to awaken its activity, even in its highest operations 4 . Herbert s expressions are not quite consistent, for this awakening of mental activity is itself an effect upon mind ; but perhaps he might have de fended his doctrine by appealing to the harmony which exists between faculty and object. For in this lies his fundamental conception different alike from the tradi tional view that cognition must conform to objects, and from the Kantian view that objects must conform to cog nition. The mental faculty supplies a form analogous to the object as it exists 5 ; the object, again, neither undergoes an alteration of nature nor produces one, but only enters, as it were, into the faculty s range of view. The whole process is only intelligible on the supposition of a harmony
1 De Feritate, 3rd ed., p. 72. 2 Ibid. p. 91.
3 Ibid. p. 95. * Ibid. p. 27.
5 Ibid. p. 95.
38 HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS [CH.
between the world and man s mind. In this harmony the human body, fashioned out of the material of the external world and containing the sense-apparatus which lead to the inner court of consciousness, forms the bond of union.
Herbert s doctrine of the nature of truth rests on this conception of harmony. "Truth," he says, "is a certain harmony between objects and their analogous faculties 1 ." Four kinds or degrees of truth are distinguished by him : truth of the thing; truth of appearance; truth of concept; and truth of intellect. These seem to be arranged in an ascending scale. The first does not exclude the others; the last includes all the preceding, being the conformity of the several conformities they involve. The conditions of truth are also made to explain the possibility of error, for the causes of error lie in the intermediate stages be tween the thing and the intellect. The root of all error is in confusion in the inappropriate connection of faculty and object and it is for the intellect to expose the in appropriate connection and so to dissipate the error.
The doctrine arrived at is summed up in seven propo sitions 2 ; and all these hinge upon the postulate that mind corresponds with things not only in their general nature but in all their differences of kind, generic and specific. Every object is cognate to some mental power or faculty, and to every difference in the object there corresponds a different faculty. Herbert attempts no account of nature, and his psychology is only introduced in the interests of his doctrine of truth ; but it is clear that there cannot be fewer faculties than there are differences of things. A faculty is defined as any internal force which unfolds a different mode of apprehension (sensus) to a different object 3 ; and faculties are spoken of as radii animae, which perceive objects, or rather the images given out by ob jects, in accordance with mutual analogy. These images
1 De Feritate, p. 68. 2 Ibid. pp. 8-12.
3 Ibid. p. 30.
Ill] THE PERVASIVENESS OF INTELLECT 39
may be conveyed by the same sense-apparatus and yet be apprehended by different faculties, as is the case with figure and motion 1 . Hence countless faculties; but their very multiplicity suggests that Herbert cannot have at tributed to them the same degree of independence as did the faculty-psychologists of a recent generation. They may be said to be simply modes of mental operation ; and mind operates differently as different kinds of objects are brought before it, showing always an aspect of its cog nitive power analogous to the object.
Reflecting upon the various modes of mental activity, we may arrange these faculties into four classes: natural instinct, internal sense, external sense, and discourse or reasoning. These are not separate powers; and, although Herbert may have sometimes spoken of them as such, another doctrine may be found in his writings. According to this doctrine all mental faculty is regarded as informed in less or greater measure by the intellect, which is itself a manifestation in man of the universal divine providence. " Our mind," he says, " is the highest image and type of the divinity, and hence whatever is true or good in us exists in supreme degree in God. Following out this opinion, we believe that the divine image has also com municated itself to the body. But, as in the propagation of light there is growing loss of distinctness as it gets farther from its source, so that divine image, which shines clearly in our living and free unity, first communicates itself to natural instinct or the common reason of its providence, then extends to the numberless internal and external faculties (analogous to particular objects), closes into shade and body, and sometimes seems as it were to retreat into matter itself 2 ."
The name natural instinct is badly chosen; but it is not difficult to see what Herbert means by it. In parti cular, it is the home of those common notions (as he calls them) which may be said to underlie all experience
1 De Veritate, p. 78. 2 Ibid. p. 70.
40 HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS [CH.
and to belong to the nature of intelligence itself. Some of these common notions are formed without any assist ance from discourse or the ratiocinative faculty; others are only perfected by the aid of discourse. The former class is distinguished by certain tests or marks. Some of these tests are logical (such as independence, certainty, and necessity); others are psychological (such as priority in time and universality). But it is the last-named mark or "universal consent" that is made by him "the highest rule of natural instinct 1 ," and "the highest criterion of truth 2 ."
This appeal to universal consent makes Herbert a pre cursor of the philosophy of Common Sense, and lays him open to the criticism urged by Locke that there are no truths which can satisfy the test, there being nothing so certain or so generally known that it has not been ignored or denied by some. Herbert made little if any use of the tests by which he might have shown that certain common notions are presupposed in the constitution of experience, and thus failed to carry out the theory of knowledge of which at times he had a clear view.
The common notions are practical as well as theoretical yield the first principles of morals as well as those of science. But he attempted no complete account of them and limited his investigation to the common notions of religion. To this portion of his work his direct influence as a thinker is chiefly due, for it determined the scope and character of the English Deistical movement. The common notions of religion are, he holds, the following : (i) that there is a supreme Deity; (2) that this Deity ought to be worshipped; (3) that virtue combined with piety is the chief part of divine worship; (4) that men should repent of their sins and turn from them ; (5) that reward and punishment follow from the goodness and justice of God, both in this life and after it. These five articles contain the whole doctrine of the true catholic church, 1 De Feritate, p. 60. 2 Ibid. p. 39.
Ill] SIR JOHN DAVIES 41
that is to say, of the religion of reason. They also formed the primitive religion before the people "gave ear to the covetous and crafty sacerdotal order." What is contrary to the five points is contrary to reason and therefore false; what is beyond reason but not contrary to it may be revealed: but the record of a revelation is not itself revela tion but tradition; and the truth of a tradition depends upon the narrator and can never be more than probable. A separate work De Religione Gentilium was devoted to the verification of these results on the field of what is now called comparative religion. In respect of this work the claim may be justly made for Herbert that he was one of the first if not the first to make a systematic effort after a comparative study of religions. But he had no idea of the historical development of belief, and he looked upon all actual religions in so far as they went beyond his five articles as simply corruptions of the pure and primitive rational worship.
^Religion is as powerful a stimulus to philosophical thought as science is, ajid it is apt to lead more directly" to the study of ultimate problems. It was the chief interest in the speculative writings of Herbert of Cherbury, and the same interest is even more directly obvious in other writings. In 1599 Sir John Davies had published his philosophical poem Nosce Teipsum, in which a view of the nature of the soul and arguments for its immortality are "expounded in two elegies." Utilising Platonic, as well as Aristotelian, ideas, the author worked out a spiritual philosophy in which the soul is regarded as akin to the universal order,
For Nature in man s heart her lawes doth pen; Prescribing truth to wit, and good to will, Which doe accuse, or else excuse all men, For euery thought or practise, good or ill:
and therefore the soul can find no true satisfaction in earthly things :
42 HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS [CH.
Wit, seeking Truth, from cause to cause ascends, And never rests till it the first attaine: Will, seeking Good, finds many middle ends, But neuer stayes, till it the last doe gaine.
The same influence led to work of a philosophical kind among theologians, usually conveyed in a scholastic manner. In his Atheomastix (1622), Martin Fotherby, bishop of Salisbury, relied chiefly on St Thomas Aquinas in his demonstration of the being of God, and maintained that there is a natural prenotion that there is a God. The work of George Hakewill, archdeacon of Surrey, entitled An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Provi dence of God (1627), touches on philosophy without being genuinely philosophical in character. Bacon is referred to for his "noble and worthy endeavour. . .so to mix and temper practice and speculation together, that they may march hand in hand"; but his new method is not spoken of, though both Ramus and Lully are referred to in the section on advances in logic. Nor does the discussion on truth contain any observations beyond the ordinary com monplaces : it does not show any knowledge of Herbert of Cherbury s enquiry, and can hardly have suggested ideas to Lord Brooke. The real importance of the book lies in the fact that the author s eyes are turned to the future, not to the past. It is an elaborate argument against the view that the history of the world is a record of de terioration from an earlier golden age. As described on the title-page, it is "an examination and censure of the common error touching nature s perpetual and universal decay."
Much more important is the work of Lord Brooke, in whom the puritan temper was combined with the mystic. Robert Greville, cousin and adopted son of Fulke Greville, first Lord Brooke, was born in 1608, and entered parlia ment in 1628. In the civil war he acted as a general of the parliamentary army, gained the victory of Kineton in 1642, took Stratford-on-Avon in February 1643, an< ^ was
Ill] LORD BROOKE 43
killed at the attack on Lichfield a few weeks later. He was an ardent puritan, and in 1641 wrote A Discourse opening the nature of that Episcopate which is exercised in England^ aimed at the political power of the bishops. In the same year was published his philosophical work The Nature of Truth. In this work he refuses to distinguish between philosophy and theology. "What is true philo sophy but divinity? " he asks, " and if it be not true, it is not philosophy." He appeals to reason and reflection alone for an answer to his question; but his method differs from that of Herbert of Cherbury in dealing with the same subject: it is less logical and thorough, and more mystical. He had "dived deep," his editor says, "into prophetic mysteries." He was also well read in specu lative, especially Neoplatonic, writings.
The revival of Platonism had already affected English literature; its influence may be seen in the works of Sir Thomas More and in Davies s Nosce Teipsum, and it had coloured the Aristotelianism of Everard Digby; but Brooke was the first Englishman to present in an original treatise the fundamental ideas which, later in the same century, bore riper fruit in the works of the Cambridge Platonists. The two doctrines of the unity of reality and the emanation of all things from God rule his thought; and he thinks that difficulties about truth are solved when we see that the understanding, the soul, light, and truth are all one: all being is but one emanation from above, diversified only in our apprehension. Faith and reason differ in degree only, not in nature; knowledge and affec tion are but several shapes under which truth is present to our view: " what good we know, we are; our act of understanding being an act of union." The author goes on to explain that all the diversities of things even space and time themselves are without reality and are only appearances to our apprehension. The whole physical world, accordingly, is merely phenomenal; in it there is no true being, nor are there any true causes, though it
44 HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS [CH.
is allowable," when you see some things precede others," to "call the one a cause the other an effect." In these expressions have been found anticipations of the idealism of Berkeley and of Hume s theory of causation. In pre senting his doctrine Brooke wrote like a seer, rather than as a logician who has tested its consistency and adequacy. But he had the seer s vision, and the vision gave him courage, " for if we knew this truth," he says, " that all things are one, how cheerfully, with what modest courage, should we undertake any action, reincounter any occur rence, knowing that that distinction of misery and happi ness, which now so perplexeth us, has no being except in the brain."
The doctrine of a law of nature was commonly relied upon by the more philosophical writers who dealt with the details of moral duty. Among the moralists of this class may be reckoned William Perkins, author of Armilla aurea (1590) (Englished as A Golden Chaine, 1600), and of The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience (1608); William Ames, a Calvinistic theologian, who wrote De Conscientia et ejus jure vel casibus (1630); and Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln, who wrote not only a Latin compendium of logic (Oxford, 1615), but many works besides, including De juramenti promissorii obligatione (1647), and De obligatione conscientiae. The former of these is said to have been translated into English by King Charles during his imprisonment. Joseph Hall, bishop of Norwich and satirist, was the author of Characters of Vertues and Vices (1608) and of Decisions of diverse Prac tical Cases of Conscience (1649). But tne greatest work of the kind in English, and perhaps the greatest treatise on casuistry ever written by a protestant theologian, is the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor (1660). Publishing shortly after the Restoration, and dedicating his book to the king, the author rejoices that "now our duty stands on the sunny side." He professes to open out a way
Ill] JEREMY TAYLOR 45
untrodden before. He will not collect individual cases of conscience, for they are infinite; but he seeks to provide a "general instrument of moral theology, by the rules and measures of which the guides of souls may determine the particulars that shall be brought before them." The work opens with a description of conscience as a reflection of the divine law "the brightness and splendour of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the divine majesty, and the image of the goodness of God." It proceeds to de scribe the characteristics of individual consciences when brought into contact with the problems of conduct; it passes on to an enquiry into the nature of law in general, and of particular laws, divine and human; and it closes with a discussion of the nature and causes of good and evil. The whole forms a comprehensive treatise on Chris tian ethics, based undoubtedly on traditional scholastic doctrines, but holding firmly to the inwardness of morality, and illustrated by an extraordinary wealth of concrete examples.
It is only to a small extent that the writings of John Selden, historian, jurist, and political writer, fall within the scope of this work. His treatise De Dis Syris (1617), his Historic of Tithes (1618), and most of his other works lie beyond its range. But, in his treatment of the law of nature, he entered upon topics which are common to him and the philosophers. In his Mare Clausum (1635) he maintained two propositions against Grotius : first, that, by the law of nature, the sea is not common to all men but is capable of private sovereignty or proprietorship, equally with the earth; and, secondly, that the king of Great Britain is sovereign of the surrounding seas, as an indi vidual and perpetual appanage of the British empire. As was usual in his day and for long afterwards, he identified the law of nature with international law. This identifica tion is seen in the title of his work De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Hebraeorum (1640). But here he has in view not the law or custom which regulates the
46 HERBERT OF CHERBURY AND OTHERS [CH. Ill
relation of state to state, but the natural or moral law which is common to all men independently of positive enactment divine or human. With the wealth of learning in which he was without a rival in his day, he traces the opinions of the Jews on the subject of moral obligation, and, at the same time, brings out his own view of the law of nature. He holds, with most jurists, that law requires an authority to prescribe it, and that therefore reason cannot be the source of law. At the same time, he allows that God has imprinted certain moral rules in the minds of all men.
Speculation on these and kindred topics was soon to enter upon a new stage under the impulse derived from the original mind of Hobbes. Before his work is dealt with, two other writers may be mentioned. Sir Kenelm Digby, remarkable in many departments of life and letters, was also a philosopher, and wrote a treatise on the im mortality of the soul (1644). In 1655 Thomas Stanley, well known as a classical scholar, published the first History of Philosophy written in the English language.
CHAPTER IV THOMAS HOBBES
THOMAS HOBBES was born at Westport, adjoining Malmes- bury in Wiltshire, on 5 April 1588. His father, the vicar of the parish (so Aubrey 1 tells us), "was one of the ig norant Sir Johns of Queen Elizabeth s time, could only read the prayers of the church and the homilies, and valued not learning, as not knowing the sweetness of it." His mother came of yeoman stock. Of her we know nothing beyond the story of her dread of the Spanish Armada: the air was full of rumours of its approach; and her terror led to the premature birth of her second son. As he put it long afterwards, "she brought forth twins myself and fear." The expression is significant, used, as it was, when he could look back on more than eighty years of life, begun amidst the terror of invasion and afterwards harassed by civil war and unstable government. To seek peace and follow it became, in his view, the funda mental law of nature; and the philosopher was himself (to use his own phrase) a "man of feminine courage." "The first of all that fled" at the threat of civil war, he was afterwards quick to return when the French govern ment seemed likely to offer less protection than the Commonwealth. But the importance of these events for his life and doctrine has sometimes been exaggerated. He had passed his fiftieth year before the threat of danger touched him, and, by that time, he had already completed a work which contains in outline the essential features of his philosophy. Throughout the long years of preparation which fitted him to take his place among the greatest of
1 John Aubrey (1626-97), Letters written by eminent persons . . . and Lives of eminent men, 1813; Brief Lives, ed. by A. Clark, 1898.
48 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
modern philosophers, Hobbes led a sheltered and leisured life, and it is not to be supposed that dreams of the Armada disturbed his quiet. His education was provided for by an uncle, a solid tradesman and alderman of Malmesbury. He was already a good Latin and Greek scholar when, not yet fifteen, he was sent to Magdalen Hall, Oxford. The studies of the university were then at a low ebb; and no subsequent reforms affected his low opinion of them. Yet he seems to have learned the logic and physics of Aristotle, as they were then taught, though he preferred to " lie gaping on maps " at the stationers shops. On leaving Oxford, in 1608, he became com panion to the eldest son of Lord Cavendish of Hardwicke (afterwards created Earl of Devonshire), and his connec tion with the Cavendish family lasted (although not with out interruptions) till his death. Through this connection he gained security and leisure for his own work, oppor tunities of travel, and ready admission to the society of statesmen and scholars.
Three times in his life Hobbes travelled on the con tinent with a pupil. His first journey was begun in 1610, and in it he visited France, Germany, and Italy, learning the French and Italian languages, and gaining experience, but not yet conscious of his life s work. On his return (the date is uncertain), he settled down with his young lord at Hardwick and in London. His secretarial duties were light, and he set himself to become a scholar; with the society and books at his command, he did not "need the university" (he said); he read the historians and poets, both Greek and Latin, and taught himself a clear and accurate Latin style. To these studies his first published work bears witness an English translation of Thucydides, sent to press in 1628, but completed some years earlier. To this period, also, belongs his acquaintance with Bacon, Herbert of Cherbury, Ben Jonson, and other leading men of the time. Of his association with Bacon (probably sometime in the years between 1621 and 1626) we know
IV] RELATIONS WITH BACON 49
little beyond what Aubrey tells us that he translated some of Bacon s essays into Latin, that, on occasion, he would attend with ink and paper and set down Bacon s thoughts when he contemplated and dictated " in his delicious walks at Gorhambury," and that " his lordship would often say that he better liked Mr Hobbes s taking his thoughts, than any of the others, because he under stood what he wrote." There is no evidence, however, that their discourse turned on strictly philosophical ques tions; nor does it appear that philosophical interest had, as yet, become dominant in Hobbes s mind; certainly, he was never a pupil of Bacon; and it is an error to attempt, as has sometimes been done 1 , to affiliate his philosophy to the Baconian. They agreed in their opposition to medievalism, and both attempted to elaborate a compre hensive scheme; the vague term empirical may also be applied to both; but Hobbes set small store by ex periment 2 , and his system differed fundamentally from Bacon s in method, temper, and scope. One important point only was common to both their acceptance of the mechanical theory; and for this theory there is ample evidence, external as well as internal, that Hobbes was indebted not to Bacon but directly to Galileo.
Hobbes s pupil and friend died in 1628, two years after the death of the first earl ; his son and successor was a boy of eleven ; his widow did not need the services of a secretary; and, for a time, there was no place in the household for Hobbes. In 1629 he left for the continent again with a new pupil, returning from this second journey in 1631 to take charge of the young earl s educa tion. Little is known of his travels, but this period of his life is remarkable for two things his introduction to the study of geometry, and his first effort towards a philo sophy. As regards the former, there is no reason for doubting Aubrey s story, which throws light both on his
1 E.g., by Kuno Fischer, cp. Ges. d. neuern Phil., Jubilaumsausg.,x, p. 355.
2 English Works, ed. Molesworth, vol. iv, pp. 436-7; vol. vn, p. 117.
s. E. P.
50 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
early education and on the controversies of his later years. "He was forty years old before he looked on geometry, which happened accidentally; being in a gentleman s library in ... Euclid s Elements lay open, and it was the 47 prop. lib. i. So he reads the proposition, By G , says he, this is impossible ! So he reads the demonstra tion of it, which referred him back to another, which also he read, et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstra tively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry." About this time also, or soon afterwards, his philosophical views began to take shape. Among his manuscripts there is a Short Tract on First Principles 1 ^ which has been conjectured to belong to the year 1630 and cannot have been much later. It shows the author so much impressed by his reading of Euclid as to adopt the geometrical form (soon afterwards used by Descartes) for the expression of his argument. It shows further that he had already fixed on the conception of motion as fundamental for the explanation of things, but also that he had not yet relinquished the scholastic doctrine of species in explaining action and perception.
When Hobbes made his third visit to the continent, which lasted from 1634 to 1637 and on which he was accompanied by the young Earl of Devonshire, he is found taking his place among philosophers. At Paris he was an intimate of Mersenne, who was the centre of a scientific circle that included Descartes and Gassendi; and at Florence he held discourse with Galileo. There is an earlier record, in January 1633, of Hobbes searching the shops in London for a copy of Galileo s Dialogue 2 , and searching vainly, as the small supply had been sold out. And now he seems to have arrived at the view that not only is motion the fundamental conception for explaining the physical world, but that man and society also can be explained on the same mechanical theory. After his
1 See Hobbes s Elements of Law, ed. Tonnies, 1889, pp. 193-210.
2 Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo, 1632.
IV] THE ELEMENTS OF LAW 51
return to England he wrote, with a view to publication, a sketch of his new theory, to which he gave the title Elements of Law natural and politic. The physical doctrine of which he had taken firm hold lies at the basis of this work, but it deals in detail only with the mind of man and the principles of social order. The introduction to his Thucydides had already shown his interest in the latter subject, and the side of politics to which he leaned himself, by the emphasis lie laid on the historian s preference for the monarchical form of government. In his dedication of The Elements (dated 9 May 1640), Hobbes says that his object is to reduce the doctrine of justice and policy in general to "the rules and infallibility of reason" after the fashion of mathematics. This volume is the "little treatise in English" to which he afterwards referred as written in the days of the Short Parliament. He says that "Of this treatise, though not printed, many gentlemen had copies, which occasioned much talk of the author: and had not his majesty dissolved the parliament, it had brought him into danger of his life." The treatise was never published by Hobbes, nor did it appear as a con nected whole until 1889, although in 1650, probably with his consent, its first thirteen chapters were issued with the title Human Nature, and the remainder of the volume as a separate work De Corpore Politico. In November 1640, when the Long Parliament began to show signs of activity, Hobbes fled to France, where he remained for the next eleven years.
These years were fruitful in many ways. From the beginning he was in constant intercourse with Mersenne and the brilliant group of men of science who frequented his monastery. Soon too he was followed to Paris by other English emigrants of the royalist party, among whom was the Marquis of Newcastle, a member of the Cavendish family, to whom the unpublished Elements of Law had been dedicated. By his influence Hobbes was appointed to teach mathematics to Charles, Prince of
42
52 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
Wales, who arrived in Paris in 1646. His position in the exiled court was ultimately rendered impossible by the suspicions of its clerical members; but Charles s friendship was of importance to him in later years, after the restora tion of the monarchy. It was Newcastle s desire to hear both sides of a question that led, during his residence in France, to discussion, and afterwards to a somewhat acri- monius controversy on the problem of free-will, with John Bramhall, bishop of Derry. Of greater interest is another literary correspondence which followed close upon his arrival in Paris. Mersenne was then collecting the opinions of scholars on the forthcoming treatise by Des cartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, and in January 1641 Hobbes s objections were ready and forwarded to his great contemporary in Holland. These, with the re plies of Descartes, afterwards appeared as the third set of Qbjectiones when the treatise was published. Further com munications followed on the Dioptrique which had ap peared along with the famous Discours de la m ethode in 1637. Descartes did not discover the identity of his two critics; but he did not approve of either; and indeed, as regards the subject-matter of the Meditationes, the thinking of the two philosophers moved in such different worlds that mutual understanding was almost impossible. To Descartes, mind was the primal certainty and independent of material reality. Hobbes, on the other hand, had already fixed on motion as the fundamental fact, and his originality consisted in his attempt to use it for the ex planation not of nature only, but also of mind and society. Two or three years after his correspondence with Des- : cartes, Hobbes contributed a summary of his views or physics and a Tractates Opticus to works published b) Mersenne.
At latest by the beginning of his residence in Paris ir 1 640 Hobbes had matured the plan for his own philo- : sophical work. It was to consist of three treatises, dealing respectively with matter or body, with human nature, anc ,
IV] DE GIVE AND LEVIATHAN 53
with society. It was his intention, he says, to have dealt with these subjects in this order, but his country "was boiling hot with questions concerning the rights of do minion, and the obedience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an approaching war," and this cause, as he said, "ripened and plucked from me this third part" of the system the book De Give, published at Paris in 1642. Hobbes s first political publication was thus di rectly occasioned by the troubles of the time. Onl) a small edition seems to have been printed. Gassendi spoke of the difficulty of procuring a copy, and expressed his satisfaction when the author allowed a new and enlarged edition to be printed at the Elzevir press in Amsterdam in 1647. In this edition the description of the book as the third part of a philosophical system was removed, at the publisher s request, from the title-page, and a new preface was added in which the author explained his plan. The book was a tract for the times as well as a philoso phical treatise; but it was not till four years later, when stable government seemed to have been re-established by the Commonwealth, that he had it published in London, in an English version from his own hand, as Philoso phical Rudiments concerning Government and Society. The same year, 1651, saw the publication, also in London, of his greatest work, Leviathan, and his own return to England, which now promised a safer shelter to the philo sopher than France, where he feared the clergy and was no longer in favour with the remnant of the exiled English court. In the case of De Give, and still more in that of Leviathan, the political situation led to greater fulness of detail and also to a more fervid manner of utterance than had been shown in his earliest treatise. In particular, the danger arising from the claim to independence or to ! direction on the part of the ecclesiastical power gave occasion for a much more comprehensive treatment of ,the subject of religion. As early as 1641 he had expressed the opinion that the dispute "between the spiritual and
54 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
civil power has of late, more than any other thing in the world, been the cause of civil wars in all places of Chris tendom," and had urged that "all church government depend on the state and authority of the kingdom, without which there can be no unity in the church." This was not palatable doctrine to any of the sects, and there was much more to cause them alarm in the theological discussions contained in his Leviathan. But, after the Restoration, in a dedication to the king, he was able to claim that all had been "propounded with submission to those that have the power ecclesiastical," holding that he had not given any ground of offence " unless it be for making the authority of the church [depend] wholly upon the regal power; which I hope your majesty will think is neither atheism nor heresy."
The last twenty-eight years of Hobbes s long life were spent in England; and there he soon returned to the house of his old pupil the Earl of Devonshire, who had preceded him in submitting to the Commonwealth and like him welcomed the king on his return. For a year or two after his home-coming Hobbes resided in London, busied with the completion of his philosophical system, the long- delayed first part of which, De Corpore, appeared in 1655, and the second part, De Homine, in 1656. The latter work contains little or nothing of importance that Hobbes had not said already; but the former deals with the logical, mathematical, and physical principles which were to serve as foundation for the imposing structure he had built. A new world had been revealed to him, many years ago, when, at the age of forty, he had first chanced upon Euclid s Elements. He had designed that his own philo sophy should imitate the certainty of mathematics. In the dedication to his first treatise he had called mathematics the one branch of learning that is " free from contro versies and dispute." Yet, strangely enough, when we remember how provocative of controversy were all his leading views, it was disputes about the most certain of
IV] CONTROVERSIAL WRITINGS 55
all subjects that filled and harassed the last five and twenty years of his life.
The author of Leviathan could hardly have expected to escape controversy, and he did not do anything to avoid it. The views of human nature set forth in the book became for generations the favourite battle-ground for contending philosophies; its political theory was not fitted to please either party; and, on its religious doctrine, the clergy would have something to say when they came to their own again. His dispute with Bramhall on the ques tion of free-will began in his Paris days and has been already recorded. But it was not allowed to be forgotten. In 1654 the tract Of Liberty and Necessity -, which he had written eight years before in reply to the bishop s argu ments, was published by some person unnamed into whose hands it had fallen. Not suspecting Hobbes s inno cence in the matter of the publication, Bramhall replied with some heat on the personal question and much fulness on the matter in hand in the following year; and this led to Hobbes s elaborate defence in The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, published in 1656.
By this time, however, the storm of controversy had already broken out in another quarter. Hobbes remem bered Oxford as it was in his student days and made little allowance for altered manners and the reform of studies. In the fourth part of Leviathan, which is devoted to "the kingdom of darkness," he had taken occasion to pro nounce judgment on the universities: they are a bulwark of papal power; their philosophy is but " Aristotelity " ; for them, "till very late times," geometry was but an "art diabolical." But Oxford had undergone a change since the days when Hobbes could afford to despise its learning. In particular, the Savilian professorships, founded in the interval, were held by two men of emin ence, Seth Ward and John Wallis the latter a mathe matician of the first rank. They were acknowledged masters of a science in which Hobbes seems to have been
56 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
only a brilliant and capricious amateur the greatest of circle-squarers. The dispute began, mildly enough, in a vindication of the university by Ward against another critic, Hobbes being dealt with in an appendix. This was in 1654; but next year Hobbes s own mathematical dis coveries were published with much parade in De Corpore. The opportunity was then seized by Wallis, who, in a few months, was ready with a reply in which the pre tended demonstrations were torn to shreds. From this time onwards the war of pamphlets raged unremittingly. Hobbes maintained his opinions with a tenacity which would have been wholly admirable if they had been better grounded; and he was bold enough to carry the war into the enemy s camp, though with unfortunate results, and to engage other adversaries, such as Robert Boyle, but with no better success. It is unnecessary to follow the controversy in detail 1 , but incidentally it produced one document of great personal interest a defence of his own reputation in the form of a letter to Wallis written in 1662.
In addition to these and connected controversies, more serious trouble threatened the philosopher s later years. After the Restoration, he was well received by the king, who took pleasure in his conversation. But he had an enemy in the clergy; his opinions were notorious; it was easy to connect them with the moral licence shown in high places; and, after the great Plague and the great Fire, at a time when recent disaster made men s con sciences sensitive and their desires welcome a scape-goat, Hobbes was in no little danger. A bill aimed at blas phemous literature actually passed the Commons in January 1667, and Leviathan was one of two books mentioned in it. The bill never passed both houses; but
1 A lucid and admirable sketch of its successive stages is given in Croom Robertson s monograph on Hobbes (1886). It should be added, however, that Tonnies (Hobbes, 1896, p. 55, 2nd ed., p. 230) thinks that Robertson has dealt too hardly with Hobbes in his account of the controversy.
IV] LATEST WRITINGS 57
Hobbes was seriously frightened; he is said to have be come more regular at church and communion ; he studied the law of heresy also, and wrote a short treatise on the subject, proving that there was no court by which he could be judged. But he was not permitted to excite the public conscience by further publications on matters of religion. A Latin translation of Leviathan (containing a new ap pendix bringing its theology into line with the Nicene creed) was issued at Amsterdam in 1668. Other works, however, dating from the same year, were kept back the tract on Heresy^ the answer to Bramhall s attack on Leviathan^ and Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England. About the same time was written his Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England. His Historia Ecclesiastica, in elegiac verse, dates from about his eightieth year. When he was eighty-four he wrote his autobiography in Latin verse. Neither age nor controversy seemed to tire him. Although controversy had the last word he published Decameron Physiologicum at the age of ninety he turned in old age for solace and employment to the literature which had been his first inspiration. In 1673 ne published a translation in rhymed quatrains of four books of the Odyssey ; and he had completed both Iliad and Odyssey when, in 1675, ne ^ e ^ London for the last time. There after he lived with the Cavendish family at one of their seats in Derbyshire. He died at Hardwick on 4 De cember 1679.
Hobbes is one of a succession of English writers who are as remarkable for their style as for the originality of their thought. Bacon, Hobbes, Berkeley, and Hume to mention only the greatest names must be counted amongst the masters of language, wherever language is looked upon as conveying a meaning. And, in each case, the style has an individual quality which suits the thought and the time. Bacon s displays a wealth of imagery and allusion significant of the new worlds which man s mind
58 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
was to enter into and to conquer; it has the glamour not of enchantment but of discovery; greater precision and restraint of imagery would not have befitted the pioneer of so vast an adventure. The musical eloquence of Berkeley is the utterance of a soul rapt in one clear vision and able to read the language of God in the form and events of the world. Hume writes with the unimpassioned lucidity of the observer, intent on technical perfection in the way of conveying his meaning, but with no illusions as to its importance. Hobbes differs from all three and, in his own way, is supreme. There is no excess of imagery or allusion, though both are at hand when wanted. There is epigram; but epigram is not multiplied for its own sake. There is satire; but it is always kept in restraint. His work is never embellished with ornament: every ornament belongs to the texture of the argument. There is never a word too many, and the right word is always chosen. His materials are of the simplest; and they have been formed into a living whole, guided by a great thought and fired by the passion for a great cause.
Aubrey tells us something of his method of work. "He had read much, if one considers his long life, but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say, that if he had read as much as other men, he should have continued still as ignorant as other men. The manner of writing \Le c viathan\ was thus. He walked much and contemplated, and he had in the head of his cane a pen and ink-horn, carried always a note-book in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, he presently entered it into his book, or otherwise might have lost it." This careful forethought for idea and phrase was always controlled by the dominant purpose, which was to convince by demon stration. How the method worked may be seen from a characteristic passage. Speaking of undesigned trains of thought, he says: "And yet in this wild ranging of the mind, a man may oft-times perceive the way of it, and the dependance of one thought upon another. For in a dis-
IV] UNDERLYING IDEAS 59
course of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent, than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the 30 pence, which was the price of that treason; and thence easily followed that malicious question ; and all this in a moment of time; for thought is quick." Here the illustration strikes home; the sarcasm hits the party he hated most; and the last four words clinch the whole and bring back the discourse to the matter in hand. Attention is arrested, not diverted, so that the single paragraph in which these sentences occur may be taken as having started the line of thought which issued in the theory of association, for a long time dominant in English psychology.
To understand the underlying ideas of Hobbes s philo sophy, portions of his Latin work De Corpore must be kept in view; but his lasting fame as a writer rests upon three books: Elements of Law, Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society (the English version of De Cive\ and Leviathan. The first of these books is a sketch, in clear outline and drawn with unfaltering hand, of the bold and original theory which he afterwards worked out and applied but never altered in substance. It con tains less illustration and less epigram than the later works, but it yields to neither of them in lucidity or in confidence. The circumstances which led to its issue in two fragments, arbitrarily sundered from one another, have hindered the general recognition of its greatness. Nor did it appear at all till De Cive was well known and Leviathan ready for press. The latter works are less severe in style : they have a glow from the " bright live coal" which (we are told) seemed to shine from Hobbes s eye when he spoke. De Cive is re stricted to the political theory; but his whole view of human life and the social order is comprehended in Leviathan.
60 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
The title-page of Leviathan depicts its purpose. The upper half of the page has, in the foreground, a walled town with tall church spires; behind, the country rises towards a hill out of which emerges the figure of a man from the waist upwards; a crown is on his head; his right hand wields a sword, his left grasps a crosier; his coat of mail consists of a multitude of human figures, with their faces turned to him, as in supplication. On the lower half of the page, on either side the title, are represented a castle and a church, a coronet and a mitre, a cannon and lightning, implements of war and weapons of argument, a battle-field and a dispute in the schools. Over all runs the legend Non est potestas super terram quae comparetur ei. This is the design "of that great Leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that mortal God," whose gene ration and power Hobbes sets out to describe.
The figure of the leviathan dominates the whole book, and Hobbes argues over and over again that there is no alternative between absolute rule and social anarchy. Its lurid picture of the state of nature, contrasted with the peace and order instituted by sovereign power, undoubt edly reflects the troubles and emotions of the time; but it is no mere seventeenth century version of In Darkest England and the Way Out. Far less is Hobbes s whole philosophy to be put down to the fear of civil tumult and the desire to think out a theory of government adequate to its restraint. L,e e viathan is a work of great and enduring importance just because it is not a mere political pamphlet. It owes life and colour to the time at which it was written ; but another force also contributed to its making a con ception of larger scope, which gives it the unity of a philosophical masterpiece.
This underlying conception and all the author s most striking ideas are to be found in the treatise completed in 1640 when political troubles were obviously at hand but as yet no personal danger threatened. In logic and lucidity this earlier treatise is not surpassed by the later
IV] THE MECHANICAL THEORY 6 1
work, though it fails to give the same constant impression of reality. It is a text-book such as philosophers have sometimes written for statesmen, to instruct them in the principles of their craft; and it did not entirely escape the usual fate of such efforts. Before Hobbes set about writing it the fundamental idea of a philosophy had taken root in his mind; and this idea he owed to the new mechanical theory, and in particular to Galileo s teaching. Motion, he came to think, was the one reality; all other things are but "fancies, the offspring of our brains." He did not now, or indeed afterwards, work out a mechanical theory of the physical universe, as Descartes, for instance, was doing. But he had a bolder if an impossible project. Descartes restricted mechanism to the extended world, maintained the independence of mental existence, and held the latter to be of all things most certain. Hobbes did not thus limit the applications of his new idea. He thought he could pass from external motions to " the internal motions of men," and thence to sovereignty and justice. This is his own account, and it agrees with what we know otherwise. Neither the mechanical theory, nor the psychology, is an afterthought introduced to bolster up a foregone political conclusion. They have their roots too deep in Hobbes s mind. It is true that the desired transitions could not logically be made, and Hobbes found out the difficulty later. But, when civil disturbance forced his hand and led to the elaboration of his ethical and po litical doctrine, this doctrine was found to be in harmony with the idea from which his view of the universe started. The external and mechanical character of the political theory is an indication of its unreality, but it bears witness also to the unity of conception that dominates the whole philosophy.
All things, according to Hobbes, "have but one uni versal cause, which is motion." But for him, as for other writers of his day, motion is not a merely abstract con ception ; it includes movement of masses or of particles.
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From geometry, which treats of abstract motion, he thus passes without a break to physics, and thence to moral philosophy; for the "motions of the mind" have physical causes. And, by this synthetical method, proceeding from principles, we "come to the causes and necessity of con stituting commonwealths." This method he always kept in view, and it gives unity to his theory. But he never carried out the impossible task of applying it in detail. He admits that there is another and an easier way: "For the causes of the motions of the mind are known, not only by ratiocination, but also by the experience of every man that takes the pains to observe those motions within him self." If he "will but examine his own mind," he will find " that the appetites of men and the passions of their minds are such that, unless they be restrained by some power, they will always be making war upon one ano ther." By adopting this method Hobbes thinks he can appeal to each man s experience to confirm the truth of his doctrine.
Leviathan is divided into four parts, which treat, re spectively, of Man, of a Commonwealth, of a Christian Commonwealth, and of the Kingdom of Darkness. Man comes first, for he is both the matter and the artificer of the Leviathan; and, at the outset, he is considered alone, as an individual thing played upon by external forces; "for there is no conception in a man s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense." Diverse external motions produce di verse motions in us; and, in reality, there is nothing else; "but their appearance to us is fancy," though this name is commonly restricted to "decaying sense." The thoughts thus raised succeed one another in an order sometimes controlled by a "passionate thought," sometimes not. By "the most noble and profitable invention of speech, names have been given to thoughts, whereby society and science have been made possible, and also absurdity: for words are wise men s counters, they do but reckon by
IV] THE PASSIONS OF MAN 63
them; but they are the money of fools." Reason is but reckoning; addition and subtraction are its processes; logic is "computation." So far, man is regarded as if he were a thinking being only. But he is also active. The internal motions set up by the action of objects upon the senses become reactions upon the external world; and these reactions are all of the nature of tendencies towards that which "helps the vital motion," that is, ministers to the preservation of the individual, or tendencies away from things of an opposite nature. Thus we have appetite or desire for certain things, and these we are said to love, and we call them good. In a similar way we have aversion from certain other things, which we hate and call evil. Pleasure is " the appearance or sense of good "; dis pleasure, " the appearance or sense of evil." Starting from these definitions, Hobbes proceeds to describe the whole emotional and active nature of man as a consistent scheme of selfishness. The following characteristic sum mary comes from The Elements of Law :
The comparison of the life of man to a race, though it holdeth not in every point, yet it holdeth so well for this our purpose, that we may thereby both see and remember almost all the passions before mentioned. But this race we must suppose to have no other goal, nor other garland, but being foremost; and in it:
To endeavour, is appetite.
To be remiss, is sensuality.
To consider them behind, is glory.
To consider them before, humility.
To lose ground with looking back, vain glory.
To be holden, hatred.
To turn back, repentance.
To be in breath, hope.
To be weary, despair.
To endeavour to overtake the next, emulation.
To supplant or overthrow, envy.
To resolve to break through a stop foreseen, courage.
To break through a sudden stop, anger.
To break through with ease, magnanimity.
To lose ground by little hindrances, pusillanimity.
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To fall on the sudden, is disposition to weep.
To see another fall, disposition to laugh.
To see one out-gone whom we would not, is pity.
To see one out-go we would not, is indignation.
To hold fast by another, is to love.
To carry him on that so holdeth, is charity.
To hurt one s-self for haste, is shame.
Continually to be out-gone, is misery.
Continually to out-go the next before, is felicity.
And to forsake the course, is to die.
Out of this contention of selfish units Hobbes, in some way, has to derive morality and the social order. Yet in the state of nature there are no rules for the race of life not even the rule of the strongest, for Hobbes thinks that there is little difference between men s faculties, and at any rate " the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest." Thus for gain, for safety, and for reputation (which is a sign of power) each man desires whatever may preserve or enrich his own life, and indeed by nature "every man has a right to everything, even to one another s body." Thus the natural state of man is a state of war, in which "every man is enemy to every man." In this condition, as he points out, there is no place for industry, or knowledge, or arts, or society, but only " con tinual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Nor, in this state, is there any difference of right and wrong, mine and thine; "force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues."
Hobbes betrays some hesitation in speaking of the historical reality of this state of universal war. But the point, perhaps, is not fundamental. What is essential is the view of human nature as so constituted as to make every man his neighbour s enemy. The view was not entirely new; he was not the first satirist of the golden age. His originality lies in the consistency of his picture of its anarchy, and in the amazing skill with which he makes the very misery of this state lead on to social order :
IV] THE LAWS OF NATURE 65
the freedom of anarchy yields at once and for ever to the fetters of power. The transition is effected by the social contract an instrument familiar to medieval philosophers and jurists. So long as the state of nature endures, life is insecure and wretched. Man cannot improve this state, but he can get out of it. The fundamental law of nature is to seek peace and follow it; and from this emerges the second law, that, for the sake of peace, a man should be willing to lay down his right to all things, when other men are also willing to do so. From these two are derived all the laws of nature of the moralists.
The laws of nature are immutable and eternal, says Hobbes, and in so saying conforms to the traditional view but with one great difference. Hooker, who fol lowed the older theory, had said that the laws of nature "bind men absolutely, even as they are men, although they have never any settled fellowship, never any solemn agreement amongst themselves." This is not Hobbes s view. He says indeed that "the laws of nature oblige in foro interno" but this means simply that "they bind to a desire they should take place"; on the other hand they do not always bind "in foro externo, that is, to the putting them in act." "For he that should be modest, and tract able, and perform all he promises, in such time and place where no man else should do so, should but make himself a prey to others, and procure his own certain ruin, con trary to the ground of all laws of nature, which tend to nature s preservation." As defined by Hobbes, the law of nature (lex naturalis] is as egoistic in its reference as the right of nature (Jus naturale}. The latter is "the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say of his own life." And the law of nature " is a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is for bidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved." The one
S. E. P.
66 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
asserts a liberty, the other imposes an obligation. But what is permitted and what is required are equally, for each man, his own preservation. Justice, gratitude, etc., are among Hobbes s laws of nature; but their authority is not absolute; it is strictly conditional on other men being willing to obey them; and this requires an agree ment of wills a contract. Contracts, again, require a power to enforce them : " covenants of mutual trust where there is a fear of not performance on either part are in valid"; and the only way to obtain such a common power is for all men to give up their rights to one man, or one assembly of men, and to acknowledge his acts as their own " in those things which concern the common peace and safety." This man, or assembly, will thus bear the person of the whole multitude. They have contracted with one another to be his subjects. But the sovereign himself is under no contract: he has rights but no duties.
From this it follows logically that sovereignty cannot be limited, divided, or forfeited. The conduct of the com monwealth in peace and war, and the rights of subjects against one another, are decided by the sovereign. He is sole legislator, supreme ruler, and supreme judge. And this holds whether the sovereignty lie in one man or in an assembly. Hobbes always maintained the superiority of monarchy to other forms of government; but he never thought that this superiority was capable of the demon strative proof that he claimed for his general theory. There is a story that, before leaving Paris, Hobbes told Edward Hyde (afterwards Earl of Clarendon) that he was pub lishing Leviathan because he "had a mind to go home." If he was serious in making the remark reported by Clarendon, he must have been referring to the Review and Conclusion, with which the work closes, and in which he speaks of the time at which submission to a conqueror may lawfully be made. The book in no way modifies his earlier views on the merits of monarchy.
IV] A CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH 67
A man cannot serve two masters: "mixed govern ment" is no government; nor can the spiritual power be independent of the temporal. The doctrines "that every private man is judge of good and evil actions," and "that whatsoever a man does against his conscience is a sin," are seditious and repugnant to civil society. By living in a commonwealth a man takes the law for his conscience. These positions may seem to complete the political theory, and few readers now care to pursue the matter further. But Hobbes s commonwealth professes to be a Christian commonwealth. He must show the place which religion occupies in it, and also expose the errors which have led to nations being overshadowed by the spiritual power. His theory is Erastianism pushed to its extremest limits. The inner life the true home of religion for the religious man shrinks to a point; while its external expression in doctrine and observance is described as part of the order that depends on the will of the sovereign. Hobbes can cite Scripture for his purpose; he anticipates some of the results of modern Biblical criticism; and he has theories about God, the Trinity, the atonement, and the last judgment all of them in harmony with his general principles. His doctrine of God is, in modern phrase, agnostic. The attributes we ascribe to him only signify our desire to honour him: "we understand nothing of what he is, but only that he is." In this Hobbes follows the doctrine of negative attributes, worked out by some medieval theologians. But his doctrine of the Trinity is surely original. It is " in substance this: that God who is always one and the same was the person represented by Moses, the person represented by his Son incarnate, and the person represented by the apostles." Again, the kingdom of God is a real kingdom, instituted by covenant or contract: which contract was made by Moses, broken by the election of Saul to the kingship, restored by Christ, and proclaimed by the apostles. But the kingdom of Christ "is not of this world"; it is of the world to come after the
52
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general resurrection; "therefore neither can his ministers (unless they be kings) require obedience in his name."
There are two things specially opposed to this theory. On the one hand, there is the enthusiasm which results from the claim either to personal illumination by the spirit of God or to private interpretation of Scripture. On the other hand, there is the claim to dominion on the part of the organised spiritual power. Both claims were rampant in Hobbes s day, and he seeks to undermine them both by criticism. There is no argument, he says, by which a man can be convinced that God has spoken immediately to some other man, " who (being a man) may err, and (which is more) may lie." And, as regards Scripture, it is for sovereigns as the sole legislators to say which books are canonical, and therefore to them also must belong the authority for their interpretation. Of all the abuses that constitute what Hobbes calls the Kingdom of Darkness, the greatest arise from the erroneous tenet " that the present church now militant on earth is the kingdom of God." Through this error not only the Roman, but also the presbyterian, clergy have been the authors of darkness in religion, and encroached upon the civil power. The Roman Church alone has been thorough in its work. The pope, in claiming dominion over all Christendom, has forsaken the true kingdom of God, and he has built up his power out of the ruins of heathen Rome. For "the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."
Taken as a whole, Hobbes s Leviathan has two char acteristics which stamp it with the mark of genius. In the first place, it is a work of great imaginative power, which shows how the whole fabric of human life and society is built up out of simple elements. And, in the second place, it is distinguished by a remarkable logical consecutiveness, so that there are very few places in which any lack of coherence can be detected in the thought. It is true that the social order, as Hobbes presents it, pro-
IV] IDEAL COMMONWEALTHS 69
duces an impression of artificiality; but this is hardly an objection, for it was his deliberate aim to show the artifice by which it had been constructed and the danger which lay in any interference with the mechanism. It is true also that the state of nature and the social contract are fictions passed off as facts; but, even to this objection, an answer might be made from within the bounds of his theory. It is in his premisses, not in his reasoning, that the error lies. If human nature were as selfish and anar chical as he represents it, then morality and the political order could arise and flourish only by its restraint, and the alternative would be, as he describes it, between complete insecurity and absolute power. But, if his view of man be mistaken, then the whole fabric of his thought crumbles. When we recognise that the individual is neither real nor intelligible apart from his social origin and traditions, and that the social factor influences his thought and motives, the opposition between self and others becomes less funda mental, the abrupt alternatives of Hobbism lose their validity, and it is possible to regard morality and the state as expressing the ideal and sphere of human activity, and not as simply the chains by which man s unruly passions are kept in check.
The most powerful criticism of Hobbes s political theory which appeared in his lifetime was contained in the Oceana of James Harrington, published in 1656; and the criticism gained in effectiveness from the author s own constructive doctrine. This he set forth under the thin disguise of a picture of an imaginary commonwealth. The device was familiar enough at the time. More and Bacon in England, and Campanella 1 in Italy, had already fol lowed the ancient model by describing an ideal state, which both More and Bacon placed in some unknown island of the west. The Utopia of Sir Thomas More was published in 1516 and Englished by Ralph Robynson in
1 Realis philosopbiae epilogisticae paries iv (containing civitas soils), 1623.
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1551. The work is a political romance. The spirit of the Renaissance was still fresh when the author wrote, and it made him imagine a new world to which the old order might conform and, by conforming, escape the evils of its present condition. There is not in it any attempt at a philosophical analysis of the nature of the state, but only an account of a government and people devoted to the cause of social welfare. Supreme power is in the hands of a prince, but he and all other magistrates are elected by the people; and it is in its account of the life of the people that the interest of the work lies. They detest war " as a thing very beastly" and "count nothing so much against glory as glory gotten in war." Their life is one of peace and freedom, of justice and equality. There is no oppres sion, industrial or religious; but work and enjoyment are shared alike by all: "In other places, they speak still of the commonwealth, but every man procureth his own private gain. Here, where nothing is private, the common affairs be earnestly looked upon.... Nothing is distributed after a niggish sort, neither is there any poor man or beggar. And though no man have any thing, yet every man is rich."
Bacon s fable New Atlantis (1627) is only a fragment, and has little of the charm that distinguishes More s romance. Its interest lies in the description of Solomon s House, which may be taken as Bacon s ideal of the public endowment of science. We are told that " his lordship thought also in this present fable to have composed a frame of laws, or of the best state or mould of a common wealth"; but, unfortunately, he preferred to work at his natural history, so that we learn nothing about the govern ment of his ideal community, and little about the social characteristics of the people, though he descants on the dignity of their manners and on the magnificence of their costumes.
Harrington s Oceana is a work of a different kind. It has none of the imaginative quality of Utopia or even of
IV] HARRINGTON S OCEANA 71
New Atlantis. Much of it reads like a state paper or the schedules of a budget. The reference to present affairs is too thinly disguised for any artistic purpose. Oceana* is of course England, and the Lord Archon pervades the book as his prototype, Oliver, pervaded the English government. In all the councils of Oceana he has always the last word, and his speeches are long, convincing, and wearisome; he will even digress into sketching the history of the world. The author was probably ill-advised when he threw his work into the romantic form. He has a real insight into politics, and can see some things which were concealed from Hobbes s vision. He never loses sight of the important fact that government is only one factor in social life. The form of government, he holds, will follow the distribution of property: "where there is inequality of estates there must be inequality of power; and where there is inequality of power there can be no common wealth." The commonwealth should exhibit equality both in its foundation and in the superstructure. The former is to be secured by an agrarian law limiting the amount of property which can be held by one man, so that "no one man or number of men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy, can come to overpower the whole people by their possessions in land"; and Harrington explained the recent change in the government of the country by the gradual shifting of the balance of property from king and lords to the commons. Equality in the superstructure will be attained by means of a rotation or succession to the magistracy secured by " the suffrage of the people given by the ballot." In this way will be constituted the three orders: " the senate debating and proposing, the people resolving, and the magistracy executing." The need for distinguishing the orders is emphasised in Harrington s Political Aphorisms , where he says that " a popular assembly without a senate cannot be wise," and that a " senate without a popular assembly will not be honest." A commonwealth thus rightly instituted, so he
72 THOMAS HOBBES [CH.
thinks, can never swerve from its principles, and has in it no "principle of mortality." Yet the constitution which he proposed comes short of consistent democracy, and falls in with the spirit of the time. The function of the one great man is recognised: " a parliament of physicians would never have found out the circulation of the blood, nor would a parliament of poets have written Virgil s Aeneis." Thus the great man is right to aim at the sove reignty when the times are out of joint, so that he may set them right and establish the reign of law; and the book ends with his proclamation as Lord Archon for life. The nobility or gentry have also their place: " there is something first in the making of a commonwealth, then in the governing of it, and last of all in the leading of its armies, which... seems to be peculiar only to the genius of a gentleman." Like Milton, Harrington argues for liberty of conscience in matters of religion though he would disallow "popish, Jewish, or idolatrous" worship. Unlike Milton, however, he does not exclude the state from the sphere of religion: " a commonwealth is nothing else but the national conscience. And if the conviction of a man s private conscience produces his private religion, the conviction of the national conscience must produce a national religion."
Sir Robert Filmer was also among the critics of Hobbes s politics, though he owes his fame to the circumstance that he was himself criticised by Locke. He maintained the doctrine of absolute power as strongly as Hobbes did, and like him thought that limited monarchy meant an archy; and he had written on these topics in King Charles s time. But he would not admit that this power could rest on contract, and, in his Original of Government (1652), attacked Hobbes as well as Milton and Grotius. His own views are set forth in his Patriarchy or the Natural Power of Kings, first published in 1680, twenty-seven years after his death. Filmer was by no means devoid of critical insight. He saw that the doctrine that all men are by
IV] CRITICS OF HOBBES 73
nature free and equal is not true historically and, therefore, is no good ground for making popular consent the origin of government. "Late writers," he says, "have taken up too much upon trust from the subtle schoolmen who, to be sure to thrust down the king below the pope, thought it the safest course to advance the people above the king." He thinks that " a great family, as to the rights of sove reignty, is a little monarchy," and Hobbes had said the same; but Filmer traces all kingship to the subjection of children to their parents, which is both natural and a divine ordinance. There has never been a more absolute dominion than that which Adam had over the whole world. And kings are Adam s heirs. In developing this thesis, the author diverges into a reading of history more fantastic than anything suggested by Bellarmine or Hobbes, and delivers himself up an easy prey to Locke s criticism.
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, is also to be counted among the critics of Hobbes s political theory. His Brief Survey of the dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church and State in Mr Hobbes s book (1674) is a protest against the paradoxes of Leviathan, but is lacking in any element of constructive criticism.
John Bramhall, bishop of Derry, and afterwards arch bishop of Armagh, was one of the most vigorous and persistent of Hobbes s critics. His first work was in defence of the royal power (1643). Afterwards he en gaged in a discussion of the question of freewill with Hobbes when they were both in France. When the con troversy was renewed and became public, he wrote A Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions from Ante cedent and Extrinsical Necessity (1655). Hobbes replied, and Bramhall followed in 1658 with Castigations of Mr Hobbes, to which there was an appendix called "The Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale." In this ap pendix, more famous than the rest of the treatise, he attacked the whole religious and political theory of Hobbes,
74 THOMAS HOBBES [CH. IV
and gave rise to the complaint of the latter that the bishop "hath put together diverse sentences picked out of my Leviathan, which stand there plainly and firmly proved, and sets them down without their proofs, and without the order of their dependance one upon another; and calls them atheism, blasphemy, impiety, subversion of religion, and by other names of that kind."
Two younger polemical writers may be mentioned along with Bramhall. Thomas Tenison, a future archbishop of Canterbury, was one of the young churchmen militant who must needs try their arms " in thundering upon Hobbes s steel-cap." In The Creed of Mr Hobbes ex amined (1670), he selected a number of Hobbes s con fident assertions and set them together so as to show their mutual inconsistencies. In two dialogues, published in 1672 and 1673, J onn Eachard, afterwards master of St Catharine s Hall, Cambridge, adopted a similar method, and showed no little wit and learning in his criticism.
These writers are the most notable of a number of early critics of Hobbes who made no independent contributions of their own to philosophy. And their criticism dealt with results rather than with principles. A satisfactory criticism of Hobbes has to penetrate to the principles of the me chanical philosophy which he adopted, and to the view of human nature which he set forth in conformity with those principles. Criticism of this more fundamental kind was attempted by certain of the Cambridge Platonists, especially by Cudworth and More; and they were fitted for the task by their sympathetic study of the spiritual philosophy of Plato in the ancient world and of Descartes in their own day two thinkers for whom Hobbes had no appreciation.
CHAPTER V
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS is the name given to a group of religious thinkers who flourished at Cambridge in the middle and latter half of the seventeenth century. They are referred to by Gilbert Burnet, who had visited Cambridge in 1663, as a " set of men " who had pre vented the Church of England from having "quite lost her esteem over the nation." "These," he says, "were generally of Cambridge, formed under some divines, the chief of whom were Drs Whichcote, Cudworth, Wilkins, More, and Worthington." Other names are commonly included in the list John Smith, Nathaniel Culverwel, George Rust, Edward Fowler, and Simon Patrick. But there is no good ground for counting Wilkins among them. He was an Oxford man who held the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, for a year before the Restoration ; he was eminent as a man of science 1 and was one of the founders of the Royal Society; but his theo logical leanings do not seem to have been the same as those of the Cambridge school.
The writers enumerated were not all Platonists or even all philosophers. It was their religious attitude that led, in the first instance, to their being spoken of as a school and receiving a common name. And so they were called latitude men. They appeared when the High Church system of Laud was in the ascendant; they flourished under the rule of the presbyterians and of the independents; and the Restoration scarcely disturbed them. They did not take sides with any existing parties; and it is to the
1 And author of An Essay towards a real Character and a Philosophical Language, 1668.
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credit of all parties that they were allowed to carry on their work at the university. Whichcote alone lost his office the provostship of King s College at the Re storation, and retired to a parish where he was not inter fered with. Their doctrine was equally removed from Calvinism and from High Churchism. They avoided the subtleties of the prevailing theologies, opposed credulity and enthusiasm (or the claim to private inspiration), held that true religion must harmonise with rational truth, and laid stress on the moral and spiritual factors in religion.
Benjamin Whichcote (161083) is regarded as the originator of the movement. Burnet says that he "set young students much on reading the ancient philosophers, chiefly Plato, Tully, and Plotin"; and, in the university, his former tutor blamed him for setting Plato and Plotinus above the gospel and reason above the spirit. Burnet s statement was made long after the days of which he wrote and cannot be counted strong evidence; and the con temporary criticism shows a theological animus of the kind which often loses touch with accuracy. It is doubtful how far Whichcote guided the reading of his pupils into Platonic or even philosophical channels, and it is not likely that he would have described himself as a philosopher. But there can be no doubt that he encouraged a more rational and spiritual view of Christian doctrine than was prevalent at the time. The more famous Cambridge Platonists (with the notable exception of More) were students at Emmanuel College during the period (1632 44) of his tutorship there; and for twenty years (1636 56) he lectured each week in Trinity Church, where the members of the university generally flocked to hear him.
A few sermons, discourses, and aphorisms, the first publication of which was in 1698, are all that remain to us of these discourses, and form almost the only record of his thought. They contain few references to Platonic philosophers, such as filled the pages of his followers, and it would be vain to read a system of philosophy into
V] BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE 77
them. But they show an attitude of mind, never too common and rare in those troubled times, which combines spiritual religion with intellectual reflection. "Religion," he holds and this, after all, is very near the central doc trine of the Platonists "is the introduction of the divine life into the soul of man "; and the mind must be free from passion in order to admit it: "there is no genuine and proper effect of religion where the mind of man is not composed, sedate, and calm." The first operation in religion is mental and intellectual." It banishes credu lity and enthusiasm. In words which remind us of those used by Hobbes 1 in the interest of a far different view of the world, Whichcote writes, "If you say you have a revelation from God, I must have a revelation from God too before I can believe you." God indeed reveals himself in the mind of man "more than in any part of the world besides "; but this revelation cannot conflict with the universal reason of mankind. Nor does it favour corporate authority any more than private enthusiasm : "the sense of the Church is not a rule but a thing ruled" And the revelation does not extend to intricacies of theological doctrine: " truth lies in a little compass and narrow room." One thing, however, is unalterable and final, and that is the moral part of religion ; it remains certain and binding whatever controversy there may be about par ticular doctrines of theology. I will not," he said, " break the certain laws of charity for a doubtful doctrine or of uncertain truth."
There may be little philosophy in all this; but it is teaching which is well fitted to be the basis of philoso phical reflection and to give it stimulus. At least it reveals the atmosphere which the Cambridge Platonists breathed. Inspired by it they set to work to build up a system of thought which would refute and replace the naturalism of Hobbes; and the main doctrines of their system were derived from the school of Plato. The most important of
1 Cp. above, p. 68.
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these philosophical writers are More, Cudworth, Smith, and Culverwel.
Henry More, the son of a country gentleman in Lincolnshire, was born at Grantham in 1614 and edu cated at Eton and Christ s College, Cambridge. He entered Christ s in December 1631, six months before Milton left, and he made his home in the college till his death in 1687. Even as an undergraduate, he says, "the knowledge of natural and divine things seemed to me the highest pleasure and felicity imaginable." He took no part in affairs, and passed through Civil War, Common wealth, and Restoration without disturbance. But he was keenly interested in all that concerned the life of mind, and followed the scientific investigations of the day as well as its theological controversies. His father was a Calvinist in theology; but this creed he seems never to have accepted, and he early discovered an affinity for the doctrines of Plato and his school. He was also immedi ately attracted by the writings of Descartes. In his first publication (APlatonical Song of the Sou/, 1 642, afterwards included in his Philosophical Poems, 1647) he professed himself a follower of Plato and Plotinus; and his first letter to Descartes (dated 7 December 1648) expressed an almost equal admiration for the modern author. He was a prolific writer and would return again and again to his books, adding prefaces and scholia, but doing little or nothing in the way of revision or condensation. His chief works are An Antidote against Atheism, 1653; Conjectura Cabbalistica, 1653; Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, 1656; The Immortality of the Soul, 1659; The Grand Mystery of Godliness, 1660; The Mystery of Iniquity [anti-papal and prophetic], 1664; Enchiridion Ethicum, 1666; Divine Dialogues, 1668; Philosophiae Teutonicae Censura, 1670; Enchiridion Metaphysicum, 1671. In 1662 he published A Collection of Philosophical Writings, and he afterwards issued a Latin translation of his works: Opera Theologica in 1675, and Opera Philosophica (two volumes) in 1679.
V] HENRY MORE 79
More s thought was rooted in the Christian religion; but there were other formative influences at work. In the first place that of Plato: and More was perhaps the earliest writer who can be called, in strictness of language, a Cambridge Platonist. Then there was the influence of Descartes, whose writings are said to have been made known in Cambridge, some years before, by a senior fellow of Christ s who had met the author on the continent 1 . In addition mention must be made of the influence derived from writings and records of experiences which may be brought together under the name occult. Of these in fluences the Platonist was the most persistent, though that of ocultism seems to have increased, whereas the influence of Descartes waned.
More conceived the Christian religion as " rational throughout," and had proved it so, he thought, in his Mystery of Godliness. The design of his philosophical works was "not to theologise in philosophy but to draw an exoteric fence or exterior fortification about theology" by rebutting the arguments against theism and immor tality, and to this purpose was due his "interweaving of Platonism and of Cartesianism." Both contributed to the refutation of the materialism which Hobbes was now im pressing upon the world. Plato had given a spiritual interpretation of the universe, and Descartes, in working out his mechanical theory, showed the bounds which mechanism could not pass.
In the letters to Descartes More s admiration is ex pressed in the warmest terms: no other philosophy, he says, unless it be the Platonic, is so opposed to atheism. But he has two objections to Descartes identification of extension with body, and to the view that the brutes are automata. From the latter doctrine his mind revolts; he would rather admit the immortality of all animals, if that is the only alternative. Both objections have to do with the range of the mechanical theory, but the former is the
1 Cp. J. Bass Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, in, p. 606.
8o THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS [CH.
more fundamental of the two. Descartes, in his reply, urged that true extension is found only in bodies, and further that body, if defined otherwise than as extended, would have to be defined as sensible, that is to say, by its relation to us, and would thus lose its claim to be regarded as an independent substance. The discussion then went on to the question of incorporeal extension which More attributed to God and the angels and the mind of man, while its possibility was denied by Descartes. The infinity of God it was argued by the latter does not consist in his existing everywhere, but in his power: to which More replied that the power of God is a mode of God s essence, so that, if the power of God is every where, God is everywhere. The correspondence was broken off by the death of Descartes.
The discussion concerned the limits of mechanism. Descartes dualism gave a perfectly precise method for determining them, but it led to the paradox that animals were mere machines. More started by trying to draw the line elsewhere, but he was gradually led to see that it could not be drawn by separating reality into two distinct parts, one of which was mechanically determined and the other was not. His contemporary Hobbes saw the same. Both relinquished dualism : Hobbes from the first offering a mechanical interpretation of all reality, whereas More ended with the conclusion " that there is no purely mechanical phenomenon in the whole universe 1 ."
With many digressions and much repetition More was working towards a spiritual view of the world as a whole. There is no general principle, he says, which distinguishes his writings from others that "are writ with freedom and reason." He lays down one "royal rule," however: "not to judge of the truth of any proposition till we have a settled and determinate apprehension of the terms thereof" ; and to this he adds the caveat that " what will prove anything will prove nothing." But reason itself needs 1 Divine Dialogues (1668), to the Reader, p. x.
V] INNATE IDEAS 8 1
something to go upon. According to his view there is "a certain principle more noble and inward than reason itself, and without which reason will falter or at least reach but to mean and frivolous things." He calls this principle Divine Sagacity though it is of " so retruse a nature" that he hesitates how to name it. It is better than reason, being due to the operation of the divine spirit, and it needs purity in man s spirit for its reception. This intuitive insight (if it may be called so) is afterwards con firmed by the exact methods of reason itself. And so he describes it as "a more inward, compendious, and com prehensive presentation of truth, even antecedaneous to that reason which in theories of greatest importance ap proves itself afterwards, upon the exactest examination, to be most solid and perfect every way 1 ."
More defends the doctrine of innate notions or ideas. That doctrine is questioned, he thinks, because men mistake the extrinsecal occasion of thinking for its adequate or principal cause. External objects are rather "the reminders than the first begetters or implanters" of our knowledge 2 . And he gives an example of his meaning: "Exhibit to the soul through the outward senses the figure of a circle; she acknowledged presently this to be one kind of figure, and can add forthwith that if it be perfect, all the lines from some one point of it drawn to the perimeter must be exactly equal.. .But this accuracy ... cannot be set out in any material subject: therefore it remains that she hath a more full and exquisite knowledge of things in herself than the matter can lay open before her." Further, relative notions or ideas, such as cause, effect, whole and part, like and unlike, "cannot be impresses of any material object from without"; but "are from the soul herself within, and are the natural furniture of human understanding 3 ." These innate ideas are not sensible but intellectual, "our own modes of con-
1 Philosophical Writings, preface general.
2 Antidote against Atheism, book i, ch. v. 3 Ibid, i, vi.
s. E. P. 6
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sidering sensible objects"; they include "many logical, metaphysical, mathematical, and some moral notions 1 ."
The argument for Immortality is preceded by a series of axioms. One of these is that the only faculties for determining truth are "common notions, external sense, and evident and undeniable demonstration." Common notions are defined as "whatever is noematically true, that is to say, true at first sight to all men in their wits, upon a clear perception of the terms, without any further dis course or reasoning." Another axiom is that " the subject, or naked essence or substance of a thing, is utterly un conceivable to any of our faculties." Hence the immediate attributes of a substance are indemonstrable; and further, if some power, property, or operation be discovered which is incompatible to one substance, another substance must exist to which it is compatible.
From his view of knowledge as depending on the nature of the soul itself follows More s first argument for the existence of God. We have an idea of an absolutely perfect being, that is, a spiritual substance, eternal, infinite in essence and goodness, omnipotent, omniscient, and of itself necessarily existent. This is not a fortuitous or arbi trary concept but necessary and natural to the soul, and therefore "true according to the light of nature." More does not confuse essence and existence; but he holds that there is one idea, though only one, in which they cannot be separated. In this respect he follows Anselm; but he is not more successful than Anselm was in establishing that in this one case essence does involve existence. He is aware also that it has been pointed out that existence is not a perfection or any quality; and he tries to meet the objection by the argument that it is better than non- existence 2 .
This ontological argument is supported by proofs of the cosmological and teleological varieties from the final
1 Antidote, appendix, ch. ii, 5.
2 Ibid, appendix, iv, I.
V] SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE 83
cause of the implanting of the idea of God in the soul, from conscience and from mental affections, and from the phenomena of external nature. Under these heads comes a survey of the world from the order of the heavens to the signatures of plants; and this is followed by a col lection of ghost stories which More takes as evidence of the reality of spiritual existence. All the evidence confirms the thesis: "the external appearances of things in the world so faithfully seconding the undeniable dictates of the innate principles of our own minds 1 ."
God is defined by More as "spiritual substance." His perfection shows that he cannot be corporeal; and the existence of immaterial substance is further proved by the necessity for a cause of motion, seeing that matter cannot move itself, and by reason being required to explain " the order and admirable effect of this motion in the world" as well, of course, as by the existence of apparitions 2 . More is careful to explain what he means by spirit. All substance, in his view, is extended. Matter is a substance which consists of parts discerpible from one another; its ultimate particles, however, are indiscerpible, al though they may be capable of intellectual analysis. These indiscerpible particles are without figure: " as infinite greatness has no figure, so infinite littleness has none either" although both are extended. Further, matter is impenetrable : no particle of matter can be in the same place as another particle. Body, therefore, may be defined as "a substance impenetrable and discerpible." If we discover, as we do, powers or attributes inconsistent with these, they must belong to a different substance a "sub stance penetrable and indiscerpible." And this is Spirit 3 .
More labours to make this notion clear. It is only to be expected, he thinks, that "the souls of men, the lowest dregs of all the intellectual orders 4 ," should be puzzled by things spiritual and intellectual. So clouded are their
1 Antidote, HI, xvi. 2 Immortality, i, xi-xiii.
3 Immortality, i, iii. 4 Antidote, appendix, iii, I.
62
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fancies, that even the notion of matter "in which they tumble and wallow" "seems unimaginable and con tradictious." Yet the notion of spirit is neither incon sistent nor inconceivable. Spirit is like matter in this that it is extended, but in this only. The extension of a spiritual being does not imply divisibility or separability into parts. It implies the "absolute powers of self-contraction and dilatation," along with the "relative faculties of pene trating, moving, and altering of the matter." Of this he gives an illustration. " Suppose a point of light from which rays out a luminous orb, according to the known principles of optics. This orb of light does very much resemble the nature of a spirit, which is diffused and extended and yet indivisible." Here then is a symbol of dilatation, in which the central essence of a spiritual sub stance " spreads out into a secondary substance." Further, the rays from the luminous point may meet an obstacle from which, without losing their virtue or being, they are reflected back towards the shining centre. And this is a symbol of self-contraction. In the exercise of these powers the soul of man is limited : it is so closely united to its terrestrial body that it can neither withdraw itself from any part of the body nor press beyond it, unless the bond of life be loosened.
In the preface to his treatise on Immortality More had recommended the reading of Descartes in the universities in order that " students of philosophy may be thoroughly exercised in the just extent of the mechanical powers of matter, how far they will reach and where they fall short." His final view was that there was nothing purely mechani cal. Mechanism, as it might be put, is an aspect of nature, but not by itself the explanation of anything in nature. God has not simply created the material world and put it under mechanical laws. The whole physical universe is pervaded by Spirit. This all-pervading spirit is not God himself, but the Spirit of Nature or (to use the old term) anima mundi. It is "a substance incorporeal but without
V] THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 85
sense and animadversion," which exercises a "plastical power" upon matter, "raising such phenomena in the world, by directing the paths of the matter and their motion, as cannot be resolved into mere mechanical powers 1 ." It may be said to do for nature as a whole what the soul of a plant does for the plant; and it is its further business " to lodge every soul according to her rank and merit whenever she leaves the body," and thus to act alone as " the great quarter-master-general of divine providence 2 ."
Of subordinate spirits More distinguishes four main species: seminal forms (\oyol a-TrepfiartKoi)^ the created spirits which organise duly prepared matter into life and vegetation, proper to this or the other kind of plant; the souls of brutes, which, in addition to this intrinsical power of vegetation, have also that of sensation; the human soul, which, along with the foregoing, has reason as well (its plastic or seminal part being distributed over the body but residing chiefly in the heart, its perceptive part being situated in the brain); and the souls which actuate or inform the vehicles of angels and which cannot, like the human soul, be born in a terrestrial vehicle. He also refers to the "other orders of spirits or immaterial sub stances, as the i^oe? and e^aSe?," of which "the Platonists write"; but he passes their speculations by, as having "more subtlety than either usefulness or assurance."
For the immortality of the soul More does not rely on the metaphysical argument from its indiscerpibility: his doctrine of creation would have placed a difficulty in the way of such an argument. His demonstration rests on the veracity, the justice, and especially the goodness of God. A man s mind must be sympathetic to morality to feel the full force of the argument; " and the noblest and most generous spirit will be the most firmly assured of the immortality of the soul 3 ." With the immortality goes the
1 Immortality, m, xii, I. 2 Ibid, in, xiii, 10.
3 Ibid, n, xviii, 12.
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pre-existence of the soul; this doctrine also is "a necessary result of the wisdom and goodness of God 1 ." But the soul is never entirely separate from matter: for then it would be out of the world, "the whole universe being so thick set with matter or body that there is not to be found the least vacuity therein 2 ." At death the soul is separated from its terrestrial body, but only to inhabit an aerial, from which again it may pass into an ethereal or celestial body. In the aerial vehicle, such as demons also inhabit, the soul is not quite exempt from fate; but in the celestial vehicle it is perfect and secure "out of the reach of that evil principle whose dominion is commensurable with misery and death." The upward progress of the soul de pends on its moral development; and of it More gives a detailed description, although only to show that his hypo thesis is intelligible, and not as "solicitous whether things be just so as I have set them down." Of the downward path if it be a downward path which leads to incarna tion he tells us nothing.
More himself was, he says, incapable of "the least tinc ture of superstition." By superstition he probably meant the attitude of mind that seeks salvation in rites and cere monies. He was certainly credulous when alleged facts were recorded that seemed to confirm his spiritual view of the world. Stories of apparitions of all kinds were wel comed by him and embodied in his serious philosophical arguments. He gives the evidence for them which it is no longer possible to test. And it must be remembered that he was not alone in believing: he belonged to one of the recurring epochs in history in which men s minds turn eagerly to abnormal phenomena as a guide towards the truth of things.
His Enchiridion Ethicum is a text-book of ethics which follows traditional lines in the main but has some original features. In three books it deals with happiness and virtue in general; with the several virtues, which are distin-
1 Immortality, n, xii, 7. 2 Ibid. HI, xix, 8.
v] MORE S ETHICAL VIEWS 87
guished into principal and derivative; and with the means by which virtue is attained, this last book including a defence of the doctrine of freewill. He holds that virtue is not a habit but a power an intellectual power of the soul overruling the passions. His treatment of the pas sions is based upon that of Descartes, but goes on to show their relation to good and evil. Seeing that the passions are antecedent to deliberation and choice, they come from nature and therefore from God; and consequently they are good, if followed according to the law of nature. This law is a " whisper of the divine law," whose voice is most clear and audible in the intellectual state. Passion, therefore, is subject not only to nature but to right reason. Just as the essence of a thing is taken in by the under standing, and a triangle (for instance) is what right reason conceives it to be, so it is in ethics. There are unchange able ideas of good and evil, concerning which the mind judges. There are certain first truths of morals ethical noemata or axioms. In More s statement, these are mainly formal in character, though they include a classification of duties (to self, others, God, and virtue itself) and an assertion of the golden rule/ Good is defined as that which is grateful, pleasant, and congruous to a conscious being and contributory to its preservation. At the same time he holds it mere madness to assert that whatever is grateful or pleasant is therefore good, and that this is the measure of human actions 1 .
More s doctrine of ethical axioms entitles him to a place among the beginners of the intellectualist tradition in English ethics. He has also been regarded as having anticipated the moral sense* school by his doctrine of the boniform faculty/ In some respects this is his most characteristic contribution to ethics; but his expressions are misunderstood if held to imply that the boniform faculty is allied to sensibility rather than to intellect. It is true that he says that what is absolutely good is "judged
1 Enchiridion Ethicum, i, v, 7.
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by right reason, but its savour and sweetness are perceived by the boniform faculty of the soul," and that by it "we relish or savour what is absolutely best and rejoice in it alone." But it is not, like sense, inferior to intellect and its provider with material. Rather is it super-intellectual. "All moral good, properly so called," says More, "is intellectual and divine: intellectual in so far as its essence and truth are defined and known by the intellect; divine, in so far as its sweetness is most pleasant and most effec tually enjoyed in that divine faculty in which we cleave unto God the most pure and absolute good 1 ." The boni form faculty, therefore, would seem to be simply the ethical aspect of the divine sagacity spoken of in the preface to his Philosophical Writings. Like divine sagacity, it is not acknowledged by every one, for some are without the sense of God or divine things; and, on this account, his treatise is designed to show that intellect of itself re cognises the first principles of morals.
Ralph Cudworth, who is generally regarded as the leading member of the Cambridge school, was born in 1617 and began residence at Emmanuel College in 1632 the year following that in which More (his senior in age by three years) matriculated at Christ s. He soon gained a great reputation as a scholar and teacher. He became master of Clare Hall in 1644, professor of Hebrew in 1645, and in 1654 master of Christ s College, where he lived till his death in 1688. His intellectual affinity with More was very close, but their modes of life differed. More was a retired scholar who wrote and published book after book, with new editions of them, new prefaces, and copious annotations in spite of his leisure, careless of literary form. Cudworth, on the other hand, was immersed in the affairs of his college and the duties of his professor ship and was consulted on public business. His earlier publications were not numerous and were not philoso-
1 Enchiridion Etbicvm, i, v, I.
V] RALPH CUDWORTH 89
phical in character. But he must have been an unwearied worker, as is shown by the masses of manuscript he left behind him as well as by the one philosophical book pub lished in his life-time.
This book is The True Intellectual System of the Universe, the first part of which the only part to be completed appeared in 1678. It is an impressive monument of the scholarship of the time; and, unwieldy as it is, it shows a systematic plan carried out in a great manner. It is learning in the interests of thought; and, although the reader may easily go astray among its learned digressions, he feels that the author himself kept the reins of his argu ment well in hand. Cudworth s object, like that of More, is to establish the spiritual nature of reality. The revival of materialism by Hobbes, and the bearing of that theory on the moral life, gave occasion to his endeavour. Hobbes is to be refuted; but Hobbes is a modern exponent of an ancient theory; materialism must be tracked to its source in antiquity and its faults exposed at their origin. Des cartes also, having given a mechanical explanation of the physical world, repeated to that extent the error of Democritus. What Cudworth did not see was that both Descartes and Hobbes had got hold of a method of en quiry which was independent of traditional opinion, and that mere learning was wasted upon them. The view has been held that the ancients were somehow nearer the fountain-head of truth than the moderns, and that sound doctrine should be sought in the past. This view was favoured by ecclesiastical tradition and, although Cud- worth did not adopt it, its influence may be traced on his method. At the same time, judged by modern stan dards, his historical method and the same may be said of More s was essentially uncritical. And, where the historical matter bulks so largely, it is difficult to disen tangle the elements of value in the work as a whole.
When he first started to write, Cudworth had in view "only a discourse concerning liberty and necessity." But
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he saw that this took in other things so many things indeed that he never reached his intended subject. The fatalism which he set out to refute was of three kinds: first, the materialistic and atheistic fatalism, which he calls Democritic ; secondly, the "theistic but immoral fatal ism," which refers everything to God and makes the distinction between good and evil rest on arbitrary enact ment only; and thirdly, another form of theistic fatalism which, although admitting moral attributes in God, leaves no place for liberty anywhere "and therefore no distri butive or retributive justice in the world." Now for Cudworth three doctrines form the essentials of true re ligion: the being of God; the eternal nature of goodness; and the freedom of man. These three things he has to defend against the three forms of fatalism; and to each he had designed to devote a separate book of his great work. But only the first book that against atheism was completed and published.
The ancient atomists before Democritus so Cudworth thinks he can prove were theists and believed in in corporeal as well as in corporeal substance. The grounds for his statement are interesting as showing what may be taken for historical evidence. According to Strabo, Pythagoras conversed at Sidon with the successors of one Moschus and introduced their doctrine into Greece. This Moschus lived before the Trojan war; he was a Sidonian or Phoenician a Semite of sorts; and his name bears some resemblance to Moses with whom therefore he may be identified. His doctrine the ancient or " Mos- chical" philosophy had two parts: "atomical physiology and theology or pneumatology." Democritus, "being atheistically inclined," adopted the former and discarded the latter; Plato took the reverse course.
Cudworth reviews the various arguments urged against theism, and his review is elaborate, subtle, and fair- minded. He distinguishes also four forms of atheism: the "hylopathian or Anaximandrian," which derives all
V] THE ARGUMENT FOR THEISM 91
things from matter in the way of qualities and forms; the "atomical or Democritical, which doth the same thing in the way of atoms and figures"; the " cosmoplastic or Stoical," which refers everything to "one plastic or methodical but senseless nature"; and the "hylozoic or Stratonical," which ascribes to matter as such "a certain living and energetic nature, but devoid of all animality, sense, and consciousness." Cudworth s learning was of course bounded by the opportunities of his time, and it is not surprising that he held that all atheists were ma terialists or (as he calls them) "corporealists" that they were afflicted by pneumatophobia or "an irrational but desperate abhorrence from spirits or incorporeal sub stances." But he shows insight in not limiting materialism to atomism or the mechanical theory. His discussions of hylozoism and of the theory of a plastic nature are of interest by bringing out the critical difficulty for all non- theistic theories the explanation of the life of mind. On the plastic nature he has a long appendix. He holds that it is a reality, not as taking the place of God, but as a subordinate instrument of the Deity an incorporeal sub stance which is the divine art embodied in nature. It acts for ends, but is not conscious of them, and it operates "fatally and sympathetically" according to the laws im pressed upon it by perfect intellect. Its business is the orderly disposal of matter, but it works "vitally and magically" and not, like human art, mechanically.
Cudworth s positive argument for theism is prefaced by the postulate that "there must of necessity be some thing self-existent from eternity." At first he seems to adopt the ontological argument: "the true and proper idea of God, in its most contracted form, is this, a being absolutely perfect; for this is that alone to which necessary existence is essential and of which it is demonstrable 1 ." But afterwards he goes more fully into the matter. He sees that it may be urged against the argument that it
1 True Intellectual System (ed. 1845), i, p. 307.
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only shows "that if there be anything absolutely perfect, it must exist necessarily and not contingently; but it doth not follow that there must of necessity be such a perfect being existing." He then sets down the best he can on the other side, but thinks it " not very probable that many atheists will be convinced thereby," and so leaves the question to "the intelligent and impartial reader 1 ." He has, however, an argument of his own, which is of the same order and which runs somewhat as follows : God is at least possible, seeing that the idea of God does not involve a contradiction; now this idea includes necessary existence in it; and from these two premisses (if not from the latter alone) it follows that God actually is. "A perfect neces sarily-existent being, upon the bare supposition of its non- existence, could no more possibly have been than it could possibly hereafter be; because, if it might have been though it be not, then would it not be a necessary existent being": "a necessary existent being, if it be possible, it is 2 ."
Cudworth does not rely upon this argument alone. The whole world for him is probative of God. He deals equally with the problems of out of nothing and with the marks of design in nature. He lays stress upon the need for an explanation of motion (taking occasion to dissect the mechanical explanation of things) and especially of the phenomena of life and mind. Were there no other sub stance than matter, he argues, tHere could be neither motion nor intellection nor volition, "but all would be a dead lump, nor could any one thing penetrate another 3 ." The idea of incorporeal substance is not derived from the essences of the scholastics. These are called eternal, not as being themselves substances, but because the know ledge of them is eternal: there being an Eternal Mind which comprehends them, of which other minds partake 4 . Sensationalism and nominalism are also dismissed. "Just and unjust are greater realities in nature than hard and
1 True Intellectual System, in, pp. 39-41. 2 Ibid, m, p. 49. 3 Ibid, in, p. 225. 4 Ibid, in, p. 226.
V] THE PLATONIC TRINITY 93
soft." There is a scale of being, with God at the head and at the foot inanimate matter 1 . But on the scale of our knowledge God does not come first. The view that know ledge of God is "a praecognitum of all other science" has a "plausibility of piety about it"; but it is self- destructive. Not omnipotence itself can alter the nature of truth. Truth is not made^ but is. " The divine will and omnipotence itself hath no imperium upon the divine understanding: for if God understood only by will, he would not understand at all 2 ."
Cudworth s historical insight was not equal to his learning, and he wasted a mass of erudition in trying to show that pagan polytheism had at its back a belief in the one God. In the same connection he entered upon a lengthy comparison of the Platonic trinity the "three divine hypostases," as Plotinus called them, of monad, mind, and soul with the Christian. They were opposed in some of their developments, but were in essence at one; and this is not surprising seeing that the Platonic doctrine was probably "at first derived from a divine or Mosaic cabala 3 ." Yet this was dangerous ground for Cudworth. Controversialists found heresy in his utter ances on this point and neglected the constructive argu ment of his book. And it has been thought that dis appointment with its reception had something to do with his failure to complete his original design.
When More was persuaded to issue a text-book of ethics, Cudworth resented the plan as an intrusion into a field which he had made his own. He had himself, he said, had a " design concerning Good and Evil, or Natural Ethics." The reference may be to a manuscript on Moral Good and Evil of nearly a thousand pages, which has never been printed; or it may be to a shorter work A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality which was published in 1731, forty-three years after the author s
1 True Intellectual System, in, p. 412.
2 Ibid, in, p. 33. 3 Ibid, ii, p. 340.
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death. The latter treatise begins and ends with ethical conceptions, but, for the most part, it is occupied with questions belonging to the theory of knowledge. It is a striking contribution to epistemology, and, in literary form, it is comparatively free from learned irrelevancies.
Cudworth starts with moral distinctions and contends that they are not relative or arbitrary. But the position is perfectly general and is not limited to morality. " Things are what they are not by will but by nature." God can make a thing exist or not exist; but he cannot make it different from its nature or essence. Nothing can be without a nature, and the natures or essences of all things are immutable. This, however, is not to say that things are independent of God; but they depend upon or par ticipate in his eternal and immutable wisdom, and not upon his mere will 1 . In this work the author covers a good deal of ground which he had already traversed, but he goes on to explore anew the nature of knowledge as "an inward and active energy of the mind itself." His fundamental position is that "the intelligible forms by which things are understood or known are not stamps or impressions passively printed upon the soul from without, but ideas vitally protended or actively exerted from within itself." Thus knowledge is not reminiscence of something known before birth, but it does involve "anticipations" of experience. The power of knowing or intellection is not received from the senses; and it implies an object of intellect. Whereas the objects of sense are particular corporeal things, the objects of intellection are the in telligible rationes or reasons of things, and are them selves nothing else than modifications of the knowing mind. Such are concepts like justice, duty, truth, cause, etc.; such also are certain propositions, for example, nothing can be and not be at the same time. Of these things no image or phantasm can be formed; they cannot
1 Eternal and Immutable Morality, book i, ch. iii, 7.
V] INNATE IDEAS 95
be derived from sense-perception. It is different with the general ideas of natural objects (e.g., rose ). They contain elements both of understanding and of sense: " there is a complication of something noematical and something phantasmatical together."
Of innate ideas some are non-relative, as wisdom, knowledge, truth, etc.; others relative, as cause, effect, means, end, order, etc., involving the comparing activity of mind. Neither sort is derived from sense, though sense may be "the outward occasion by which they are excited." Although modifications of intellect, they are not mere entia rationis or subjective (in the modern meaning of the term), and this for two reasons: in the first place because a mode of intellect is a mode of something which is real and has more entity in it than matter or body; and, in the second place, because they are valid for things without us. Thus art and wisdom, for example, beget real and important effects in nature and human life; and rela tions are "ingredients" in the true nature or essence of things whether natural or artificial. Hence also it follows that the idea of a composite thing cannot be passively stamped upon the mind but is "comprehended only by the large unitive power of the intellect": it requires, as we may put it, using Kantian language, a synthetic act of the understanding.
In some parts of his discussion Cudworth comes very near modern theories, for example, the distinction of per ceptual and conceptual space. Sense, he points out (as does More also), does not present us with exact straight lines or circles. The visible appearances can only have been the occasions which induced the mind actively to form the accurate and precise "intelligible ideas" of straight line or circle. He comes also upon the analogy of sense- perception to a "divine language," which was afterwards developed by Berkeley. "Nature," he says, "doth as it were talk with us in the outward objects of sense"; and " the soul, as by a certain secret instinct, . . .understanding
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nature s language, . . . perceives and takes cognisance of many other things."
"Knowledge," he says again, "doth not begin in in dividuals but end in them. . . And if we know as God knows, then do we know or gain knowledge by uni- versals." Only the intelligible natures or essences of things are objects of certain knowledge. Considered formally, they exist only in the mind, but yet they have an immutable nature of their own. Were all finite things and minds annihilated, mathematical and other verities would remain in the mind of God. An infinite mind therefore necessarily exists, which "always actually com- prehendeth himself, the essences of all things, and their verities; or rather, which is the rationes, essences, and verities of all things."
But for Cudworth, as for Descartes, the question arises how we are to distinguish truth from error; and their answers are similar. The immediate objects of intellection exist in the mind itself. We may not measure them by external things; we cannot consult their archetypes in the eternal divine intellect; the criterion of true knowledge is clear intelligibility. "Whatever is clearly conceived is an entity and a truth." But for Cudworth, unlike Descartes, error arises not from bias of will but from obscurity or confusion : falsehood is a non-entity and therefore cannot be clearly conceived, for "omnipotence itself cannot make a non-entity to be an entity."
The result applies to the first principles of morality. Moral good and evil, justice and injustice, signify a reality, either absolute or relative, in the things so denominated; they have natures which cannot be altered by will or opinion. And these moral principles exist in the infinite eternal mind, "whose nature is the first rule and exemplar of morality." With this conclusion Cudworth has estab lished the "eternal and immutable" nature of morality; into its detailed applications he does not enter at all.
John Smith, perhaps the most attractive figure of the
V] JOHN SMITH 97
Cambridge group, was born in 1618 and died in 1652. He was the son of a small farmer in Northamptonshire, entered Emmanuel College in 1636, and became a fellow of Queens College in 1644. He was a scholar ("a living library," it was said) and an independent thinker, and he had also the teacher s gifts of sympathy and utterance: " no less happy in expressing his mind than in conceiving." His short and busy life did not give him time for com posing a philosophical treatise; and all that survives of his work is a volume of Discourses^ published in 1660. "Calmly and closely reasoned, they are at the same time inspired" is Tulloch s judgment upon them 1 . The dis courses are ten in number, and their chief topics, in a philosophical regard, are the true way or method of attaining to divine knowledge, the immortality of the soul, the existence and nature of God, and the ex cellency and nobleness of true religion. They are re markable discourses to have been preached in a college chapel at any time, but especially in the middle of the seventeenth century. Smith illustrates the Christian life and Christian doctrine by means of the ideas of Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus. His pages are full of quotations from these masters. He is so distinctly and even con troversially Platonic that he warns his hearers against Aristotle, who "defaced the sacred monuments of the ancient metaphysical theology," and against Aristotle s "late interpreters," who "are as little sometime ac quainted with his meaning and design as they are with that elder philosophy which he so corrupts."
Smith was a Christian Platonist, and among the finest examples of the type. It is not chiefly the doctrine of ideas that attracts him, but rather the spiritual interpretation of life and reality as a whole, which he finds both in Plato and in Plotinus. And the thought is more simply expressed by him than by More or Cudworth. His quotations are
1 Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seven teenth Century, 2nd ed., n, p. 135.
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certainly numerous, but they always illustrate his own thought. And his tone must have sounded strange even if attractive to hearers nurtured on the prevailing theo logy of the day. "Salvation," he said, "is nothing else but a true participation of the divine nature. Heaven is not a thing without us, nor is happiness anything distinct from a true conjunction of the mind with God in a secret feeling of his goodness and reciprocation of affection to him." God is to be sought within a man s own soul; and a good life is "the prolepsis and fundamental principle of man s soul." Smith is far from holding the doctrine of the utter depravity of man. The radical principles of knowledge may be darkened, but they cannot easily be obliterated. And knowledge may pass from discourse into an immediacy like that of sense: "that which before was only faith well built upon sure principles (for such our science may be) now becomes vision."
The discourse on Immortality contains his most com plete argument. It proceeds from the postulate "that no substantial and indivisible thing ever perisheth," and then goes on, in the first place, to distinguish soul from body. Our notion of body never reaches the clearness of our notion of mind as "something within us that thinks, apprehends, reasons, and discourses." All the operations of mind bring out its nature as distinct from body. Smith (after Proclus) enumerates four degrees of knowledge through which the distinction is made increasingly clear. First comes the naked perception of sensible impressions, without any reason; then the knowledge of opinion, in which impressions are collated with our more obscure ideas; thirdly, discourse or reason, as exemplified in mathematics ; and, beyond these, a fourth kind of know ledge the "naked intuition of eternal truth which is always the same, which never rises nor sets, but always stands still in its vertical, and fills the whole horizon of the soul with a mild and gentle light," thus giving evi dence of "some permanent and stable essence in the soul
V] NATHANAEL CULVERWEL 99
of man." The soul partakes "of time in its broken and particular conceptions and apprehensions, and of eternity in its comprehensive and stable contemplations." Once on the top of this high Olympus, the soul will no longer "doubt whether any drowsy sleep shall hereafter seize upon it," but will grasp "fast and safely its own immor tality andviewitself in the horizon of eternity." Thus, in the scale of knowledge, each degree corrects that below it and leads to a higher apprehension till, in the consciousness of eternal truth, the soul cannot doubt its own eternity.
Of Nathanael Culverwel personally little is known. Even the dates of his birth and death are uncertain. He entered Emmanuel College in 1633, the year after Whichcote became tutor, being thus a -year junior to Cudworth and three years senior to John Smith. His Discourse of the Light of Nature was published posthu mously in 1652, and he is said to have died either one or two years previously. Although bred in the very temple of the new school of thought, he did not altogether share its creed. He can scarcely be described as a Platonist. Unlike More, he would not come to terms with the doc trine of the pre-existence of souls, and he even rejected the theory of ideas. The mysticism of Lord Brooke was also alien to him; he had no sympathy with the union of con tradictories ; and he quotes with approval the criticism of Brooke published, in 1643, by John Wallis, under the title Truth tried. Nor can Culverwel be described as a latitude man. He remained constant to Calvinism and, on the whole, to the puritan spirit. But he was far re moved from the extremists of his party, of whom he writes that "if you do but offer to make a syllogism, they will straightway cry it down for carnal learning." "The Church," he said, "hath more security in resting upon genuine reason than in relying upon some spurious tradi tions." The purpose of his book is to show the true relation between faith and reason: "to give faith her full scope
72
100 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS [CH.
and latitude, and to give reason also her just bounds and limits. This," he says, "is the first-born, but the other has the blessing." Two propositions sum up his doctrine: "(i) That all the moral law is founded in natural and common light, in the light of reason ; and (2) That there is nothing in the mysteries of the gospel contrary to the light of reason." The law of nature belongs to reason, not to sense, and is essential to a rational creature. The voice of reason promulgates the law; but its obligation and binding virtue rest "partly in the excellency and equity of the commands themselves; but they principally depend upon the sovereignty and authority of God him self, thus contriving and commanding the welfare of His creature, and advancing a rational nature to the just per fection of its being." As Aquinas holds, the law of nature
- is a copy of the eternal law, and "this eternal law is not
| really distinguished from God himself." This view of the laws of nature was not altogether new, even in English. Hooker had already given classical expression to a doc trine essentially the same and drawn from similar sources. But no one had a clearer view than Culverwel of the essence of the doctrine. He never inclines to the theory that all knowledge arises out of sensation, and yet he never lapses into mysticism. His theory is a pure and elevated rationalism, though he holds that our reason needs illumination from the fuller light of faith. His style is worthy of the subject, if perhaps too full of learned references and occasionally oratorical; and it is hardly too much to say of the book that "it is almost a poem in its grandeur and harmony of conception, and the lyrical enthusiasm with which it chants the praise of reason 1 ."
Joseph Glanvill was intimately associated with some members of the Cambridge school in particular, with Henry More but he was himself educated at Oxford, and he was not a Platonist. He had, however, many points
1 Tulloch, Rational Theology, n, p. 411.
V] JOSEPH GLANVILL IOI
of sympathy with them. He was attracted by the new philosophy of Descartes he calls it the " best philo sophy" whereas he had nothing but criticism for the Aristotelianism that still ruled the schools of Oxford. He was in sympathy also with the broad and reasonable tone that distinguished the theology of the Cambridge Plato- nists from the prevailing attitude of the puritan divines. Glanvill s mind was sensitive to all the influences of the time: the new science, the human culture, the contending doctrines in philosophy and theology. The result was a distrust of all dogmatic systems, combined with a certain openness of mind a readiness to receive light from any quarter. His first and most famous book was The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661), and a revised edition of the same was published in 1665 with the title Scepsis scientifica: or Congest Ignorance the way to Science. This was dedicated to the Royal Society, of which he had become a fellow in 1664.
In philosophy Glanvill professed himself a seeker. He discoursed on the defects in our knowledge even of the things nearest to us, such as the nature of the soul and the body: he held that reason is swayed by the emotions, so that "most of the contests of the litigious world pre tending for truth are but the bandyings of one man s affections against another s." His chief censures were for the dogmas of the Aristotelians, and this involved him in controversy with "the learned Mr Thomas White," a priest of Douay, collaborator with Sir Kenelm Digby and a voluminous author, who answered The Vanity of Dogma tizing in a Latin treatise entitled Sciri, sive sceptices et scepticorum a jure disputationis exclusio. It is in his reply to this writer that Glanvill defines his scepticism as a "way of enquiry, which is not to continue still poring upon the writings and opinions of philosophers, but to seek truth in the great book of nature." The Royal Society, realising Bacon s prophetic scheme of Solomon s House, had adopted this method, and had done more for the improvement of
102 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS [CH.
useful knowledge "than all the philosophers of the no tional way since Aristotle opened his shop in Greece." Glanvill himself ventured upon a "continuation of the New Atlantis" in his essay Antifanatick Theologie, and Free Philosophy. His openness of mind and his conviction that authority and sense are our only evidence on such matters led to his belief in supernatural appearances. He thought that "the testimony of all ages" established their reality. And he distrusted the dogmatism of what he called "modern Sadducism"; to him, it was a "matter of astonishment that men, otherwise witty and ingenious, are fallen into the conceit that there s no such thing as a witch or apparition."
Other writers of the period showed the influence of the new ideas. From the scholastic point of view, Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford, criticised both Hobbes and Descartes, a treatise on Cartesianism having been pub lished in England in 1675 by Antoine Legrand, of Douay, a Franciscan friar and member of the English mission. In his Court of the Gentiles (1669 77), Theophilus Gale traced all ancient learning and philosophy to the Hebrew Scriptures. John Pordage wrote a number of works, the mysticism of which was inspired by Jacob Boehme.
The treatise De legibus naturae, published in 1672, by Richard Cumberland, afterwards bishop of Peterborough, is much more than a criticism of Hobbes. It puts forward a doctrine of morality which is based upon the law of nature, and this is accompanied by a running criticism of Hobbes s views. Cumberland looks upon the law of nature as capable of being inferred from observation of physical and mental phenomena (themselves due to the will of God), and at the same time as pointing out "that possible action of a rational agent which will chiefly pro mote the common good." Good is defined by him as "that which preserves, or enlarges and perfects, the
Vj RICHARD CUMBERLAND 103
faculties of any one thing or of several," but he also uses the term as equivalent to happiness. And he thinks that the rules of life are as plain as the art of numbering, the following propositions being laid down as necessarily true: (i) "that the good of all rational beings is greater than the like good of any part of that aggregate body, that is, that it is truly the greatest good"; (2) "that in promoting the good of this whole aggregate, the good of individuals is contained and promoted"; and (3) "that the good of every particular part requires the introducing and settling of distinct property in such things, and such services of rational agents, as contribute to the common happiness." The work as a whole is heavy in style, weak in its philosophical analysis, and confused in argument. But its insistence on the social nature of man, and its doctrine of the common good as the supreme principle of morality, anticipate the direction taken by much of the ethical thought of the following century.
CHAPTER VI
JOHN LOCKE
JOHN LOCKE may be regarded as, on the whole, the most important figure in English philosopjv^. Others excelled him in genius; he had not the comprehensive grasp of Hobbes, or the speculative originality of Berkeley, or the subtlety of Hume; but he was surpassed by none.. in can dour, sagacity, and shrewdness. These qualities recom mended him to his countrymen, and the width of his interests reconciled them to his philosophy. He was a physjcian, always on the outlook for new knowledge, an adviser of statesmen, a sufferer in the cause of freedom, and an amateur theologian. His writings on economics, on politics, and on religion expressed the best ideas of the time the ideas that were about to become dominant. He was the philosopher of the Revolution settlement; and, when the~settlemenf~was made, he came home to publish the books which he had prepared in exile. Even his great work, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, may have seemed only to show the grounds in the human mind for the lessons of honesty, liberty, and toleration which he constantly inculcated. It is almost with a shock of surprise that one realises that this same Essay, by its historical plain method, gave a-JiaLjlirCtion_tQ_Euro- pean jphilosophy and provided a new basis for the science of psychology^
Locke was born at Wrington, a village in Somerset, on 29 August 1632. He was the son of a country solicitor and small landowner who, when the civil war broke out, served as a captain of horse in the parliamentary army. "I no sooner perceived myself in the world than I found myself in a storm," he wrote long afterwards,
CH. Vl] LIFE AND STUDIES 105
during the lull in the storm which followed the king s return. But political unrest does not seem to have seri ously disturbed the course of his education. He entered Westminster school in 1 646, and passed to Christ Church, Oxford, as a junior student, in 1652; and he had a home there (though absent from it for long periods) for more than thirty years till deprived of his studentship by royal mandate in 1684. The official studies of the university were uncongenial to him; he would have preferred to have learned philosophy from Descartes instead of from Aristotle; but evidently he satisfied the authorities, for he was elected to a senior studentship in 1659, and, in the three or four years following, he took part in the tutorial work of the college. At one time he seems to have thought of the clerical profession as a possible career; but he declined an offer of preferment in 1666, and in the same year obtained a dispensation which enabled him to hold his studentship without taking orders. About the same time we hear of his interest in experimental science, and he was elected a fellow^ol the Royal Society in 1668. Little is known of his early medical studies. He cannot have followed the regular course, for he was unable to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine. It was not till 1674 that he graduated as bachelor of medicine. In the following January his position in Christ Church was re gularised by his appointment to one of the two medical .studentships of the college.
His knowledge of medicine and occasional practice of the art led, in 1666, to an acquaintance with JLord Ashley (afterwards, from 1672, Earl of Shaftesbury). The ac quaintance, begun accidentally, had an immediate effect on Locke s career. Without severing his connection with Oxford, he became a member of Shaftesbury s household, and seems soon to have been looked upon as indispen sable in all matters domestic and political. He saved the statesman s life by a skilful operation, arranged a suitable marriage for his heir, attended the lady in her confine-
106 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
ment, and directed the nursing and education of her son afterwards famous as the author of Characteristics. He assisted Shaftesbury also in public business, commercial and political, and followed him into the government service. When Shaftesbury was made lord chancellor in 1672, Locke became his secretary for presentations to benefices, and, in the following year, was made secretary to the board of trade. In 1675 n * s official life came to an end for the time with the fall of his chief.
Locke s health, always delicate, suffered from the London climate. When released from the cares of office, he left England in search of health. Ten years earlier he had had his first experience of foreign travel and of public employment, as secretary to Sir Walter Vane, ambassador to the Elector of Brandenburg during the first Dutch war. On his return to England, early in 1666, he declined an offer of further service in Spain, and settled again in Oxford, but was soon induced by Shaftesbury to spend a great part of his time in London. On his release from office in 1675 he sought milder air in the south of France, made leisurely journeys, and settled down for many months at Montpellier. The journal which he kept at this period is full of minute descriptions of places and customs and institutions. It contains also a record of many of the reflections that afterwards took shape in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. He returned to England in 1679, when his patron had again a short spell of office. He does not seem to have been concerned in Shaftesbury s later schemes; but suspicion naturally fell upon him, and he found it prudent to take refuge in Holland. This he did in August 1683, less than a year after the flight and death of Shaftesbury. Even in Holland for some time he was not safe from danger of arrest at the instance of the English government; he moved from town to town, lived under an assumed name, and visited his friends by stealth. His residence in Holland brought political occupations with it, among the men who were
VI] LIFE AND WRITINGS 107
preparing the English revolution. It had at least equal value in the leisure which it gave him for literary work and in the friendships which it offered. In particular, he formed a close intimacy with Philip van Limborch, the leader of the Remonstrant clergy, and the scholar and liberal theologian to whom Epistola de Tolerantia was dedi cated. This letter was completed in 1685, though not published at the time; and, before he left for England, in February 1689, the Essay concerning tinman Under standing seems to have attained its final form, and an abstract of it was published in Leclerc s Eibliotheque uni verse lie in 1688.
The new government recognised his services to the cause of freedom by the offer of the post of ambassador either at Berlin or at Vienna. But Locke was no place hunter; he was solicitous also on account of his health; his earlier experience of Germany led him to fear the "cold air" and "warm drinking"; and the high office was declined. But he served less important offices at home. He was made commissioner of appeals in May 1689, and, from 1696 to 1700, he was a commissioner of trade and plantations at a salary of 1000 a year. Although official duties called him to town for protracted periods, he was able to fix his residence in the country. In 1691 he was persuaded to make his permanent home at Gates in Essex, in the house of Sir Francis and Lady Masham. Lady Masham was a daughter of Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist; Locke had manifested a growing sympathy with his type of liberal theology; intellectual affinity increased his friendship with the family at Gates; and he continued to live with them till his death on 28 October 1704.
With the exception of the abstract of the Essay and other less important contributions to the Eibliotheque uni- t verselle^ Locke had not published anything before his return to England in 1689; and by this time he was in his fifty-seventh year. But many years of reflection and preparation made him ready now to send forth books
I08 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
from the press in rapid succession. In March 1689 his Epistola de Tolerantia was published in Holland; an English translation of the same, by William Popple, ap peared later in the same year, and in a corrected edition in 1690. The controversy which followed this work led, on Locke s part, to the publication of a Second Letter, and then of a Third Letter, in 1690 and 1692 respectively. In February 1690 the book entitled Two Treatises of Government was published, and in March of the same year appeared the long expected Essay concerning Human Understanding, on which he had been at work intermit tently since 1671. It met with immediate success, and led to a voluminous literature of attack and reply; young fellows of colleges tried to introduce it at the universities, and heads of houses sat in conclave to devise means for its suppression. To one of his critics Locke replied at length. This was Edward Stillingfleet. bishop of Wor cester, who, in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1696), had attacked the new philosophy. It was the theological consequences which were drawn from the doctrines of the Essay, not so much by Locke himself as by Toland, in his Christianity not Mysterious, that the bishop had chiefly in view; in philosophy for its own sake he does not seem to have been interested. But his criticism drew attention to one of the least satisfactory (if also one of the most suggestive) doctrines of the Essay its ex planation of the idea of substance; and discredit was thrown on the " new way of ideas " in general. In January 1697 Locke replied in A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. Stillingfleet answered this in May; and Locke was ready with a second letter in August. Stillingfleet replied in 1698, and Locke s lengthy third letter appeared in 1699. The bishop s death, later in the same year, put an end to the controversy. The second edition of the Essay was pub lished in 1694, the third in 1695, an< ^ t ^ ie f ur th in 1700. The second and fourth editions contained important ad ditions. An abridgment of it appeared in 1696, by John
VI] LIFE AND WRITINGS 109
Wynne, fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; it was translated into Latin and into French soon after the appearance of the fourth edition. The later editions contain many modi fications due to the author s correspondence with William Molyneux, of Trinity College, Dublin, a devoted disciple, for whom Locke conceived a warm friendship. Other correspondents and visitors to Oates during these years were Sir Isaac Newton and Anthony Collins, a young squire of the neighbourhood, who afterwards made his mark in the intellectual controversies of the time.
Other interests also occupied Locke during the years following the publication of his great work. The financial difficulties of the new government led in 1691 to his publication of Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money, and of Further Considerations on the latter question, four years later. In 1693 he published Some Thoughts con cerning Education, a work founded on letters written to a friend, and in 1695 appeared The Reasonableness of Chris tianity, and later A Vindication of the same against certain objections; and this was followed by a second vindication two years afterwards. Locke s religious interest had al ways been strongly marked, and, in the later years of his life, much of his time was given to theology. Among the writings of his which were published after his death are commentaries on the Pauline epistles, and a Discourse on Miracles, as well as a fragment of a Fourth Letter for Toleration. The posthumously published writings include further An Examination of Father Malebranche s Opinion of Seeing all things in God, Remarks on Some of Mr Norris s Books, and most important of all the small treatise on The Conduct of the Understanding, which had been origin ally designed as a chapter of the Essay. - -t
Locke opened a new way for English philosophy. L Stillingfleet saw dangers ahead in that way; but its dis- * covery was Locke s title to fame. It was no new thing, certainly, to lay stress upon method. Herein he followed
1 10 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
the example of Bacon and J^bbes_ajHLathej: .pioneers of modern philosophy. .bacorT had_donejnor_e : he had found dangers and defects in the natural_working of men s minds, and had devised means to correct them. But Locke went^^ste^ further, and undertook a systematic investigation of the human understanding with a vieWto-
s r\ _ ..__. O ____
determiningj30jneTRing else namely,thetruth aricTcer- tainTy of knowledge, and the grounds of belief on all matts~a bout which men are in the^ habit of making assertions, in this way he introduced a newTfeparTment, or a new method, of philosophical enquiry, which has come to be known as theory of knowledge or episte- mplogy ; and, in this respect^ he was the" precursor ~of Kant and anti_rjpatpH wMt "Kant called the critical method.
We have Locke s own account~~of the ~origiiT~of the problem in his mind. He struck out a new way because he found the old paths blocked. Five or six friends were conversing in his room, probably in London and in the winter of 1670 I, "on a subject very remote from this"; the subject, as we learn from another member of the party, was the "principles of morality and revealed religion"; but difficulties arose on every side, and no progress was made. Then, he goes on to say, " it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we set our selves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our under standings were, or weTe~not, fitted to deal_w_ith." At the request ol his friends, L,ocke~ agreed to set down his thoughts on this question against their next meeting; and he expected that a single sheet of paper would suffice for the purpose. So little did he realise the magnitude of the issues which he raised and which were to occupy his leisure for nearly twenty years.
Locke s interest centres in the traditional__rjToblerns the nature of self, the world, and God, and the grounds of our knowledge of them. We reach these questions only in llje fourth and4astrbook of the Essay. But tothej
VI] THE PROBLEM OF THE ESSAY in
enquiry of the first threcjjooks is preliminary, though it has, and Locke saw that it had^ an importance of its own. His introductory sentences make this plain: "Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. The under standing, like the eye, while it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon our minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts in the search of other things."
Locke will not "meddle with the physical consideration of the mind"; he has no theory about Jts essence or. its relation to the body; at thejsambjime, he. has. no doubt that, if duejDams be take_n,_the understanding can be studiedTfke anything else: we_ can observe its objects and the^ays^m which it operates upon them. ATI iHe_oB[ect:s of the understanding are descrjhcd 3. ideas, and ideas are spoken of as being in the mind 1 . Locke s first problem, therefore, is to "trace the origin and history of ideas, and the ways in which the understanding operates upon them,
s - Cj A- _L___ _ -
in order_lhaLjie_rnav be able to see what knowledge is and how far it reaches. This wide use of the Ferm idea is inheriteafrom "Descartes. The term in modern psychology which corresponds with it most nearly is presentation. But presentation is, strictly, only one variety Jyf Locke s idea,, wJricJiJncTudes_jds^ and image, per^
cept, and concept or notion.^jiis usage of the term tEus differs so widely from the old Platonic meaning that the danger of confusion between them is not great. It suited 1 Cp. Essay, introduction, 2; book n, ch. i, 5; book n, ch. viii, 8.
112 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
the author s purpose also from being a familiar word in ordinary discourse as well as in the language of philo sophers. Herein, however, lay a danger from which he did not escape. In common usage idea" 1 carries with it a suggestion of contrast with reality; and the opposition which the "new way of ideas" excited was due to the doubt which it seemed to cast on the claim of knowledge to be a knowledge of real things.
The Essay is divided into fpur_ books; the first is a polemic against the doctrine^fmnatejprinciples ajid ideas; the_others dealjwith ideas, with words, and with know ledge respectively .Trie first book is remarkable for the way in which the author brings to bear upon the question all the facts that could then be ascertained regarding the ideas and beliefs of primitive and savage races. He points to the variety of human experience, and to the dilficuljy of forming general and abstract ideas, and he ridicules the view that any such ideas can be antecedent to experi ence. _It~is in its most extreme form thaFfKeTdbctrine of innate ideas is attacked; but he cannot see any alternative between that form and his own view that all ideas have their origin in experience.
Locke wishes to avoid any presupposition about matter, or mind, or_thelr reJatJon. "It is not difficult to see that the notions which he has expelled often re-enter unbidden. But the peculiar value of his psychology consists in his attempt to keep clear of them. He begins neither with mind nor with matter, but with ideas. Their exisrejice needs ncT pro o fr "everyoneT is conscious of them in him self, and men s words and actions will satisfy him that they are in others." His^first enquiry is "how they come in Jo- tbe-JXlind," ; his npvt J^girifiSF 1g *"> ^ho w that they constitute the whole material of our knowledge. In his answerTo the forrner~quesltoll wc-distover The influence of traditional philosophy, or rather_oiLQrdinary common- sens^ views 01 existence,, upon his thought. ^AlpiuOcleas, he says, come from experience. The mmdha.sjrio innate
VI] SENSATION AND REFLECTION 113
ideas^but it has innate faculties: it perceives, remembers,
and combines the ideas that come to it from without; it
also desires, deliberates, and wills; and these mental ac-
Hvities-are themselves the ymfoc of a newcIasToF ideas.
Experience is therefore twofold. Our observation may
be employed either about" external sensible objects, or?)ts
about the internal operations of our__rmn.ds. The former
is the source of most of the ideas" which we have, and, as
it depends "wholly upon our_senses," is called "sensa- >. .
tion. The jatter^s a /source of Ideas which "every man *
has wholly in himself," and it might be called "internal
J - - lm ^^^__, _ _, __ . . *y ^j _, __ __
sense "i_tp_it he_gives thejiame " reflection/ *
Hence the pecuTTarity of Lockejs position. There are no innate ideas stamped upon the mrncT^Trom birth; and yet impressions of sense are not the_qnly^ source of knowledge : ""the mind^" h^jsayjjj "furnishes L the under- standi n g_wi th_ideas_._ No distinction is implied here be- tweerjr"mind" and "undersBiHgingT" so that the sen- ten clTmTiprtT : un7 nr TH^ withjdeas."
As to what these ideas are, we are not lett in doubt: they
are "ideas of Jt^&wjij^eratiaris," WhejLlhe-.rm\niLax:jts, it has an idea of its ^aitioiv-thalL is. it ia-self-c
- ____ i ______ "
and, as
such, is assumed to be an origiraj_sjouxce_ofj)ur knowledge. Afterwards both Hume_ana Condillac rejased^lo_admit^ reflection as an original source of ideas, and both, accord-
- _ i O - ^^i^ 7 J
ingly, found that they had_tojae_lhe -problem _ojf tracing the growtTi^ofseTf^consciousness out _of a succession of sensations. According toXocke, reflection js_an ^^ original, rather than an independent^source^jof^ ideas. Withojit_ sensation mind would have not^hing_tg^ operatejoj^onj ^nd thereforje_j^ujd_have_jio__ideas of its operations. It is "when he first has any sensation" that "a man begins to have any ideas 2 ." The operaj-jpns of the mind., are not themsely^s^roduced by sensation, but sensation is re quired to give the mind material for working on.
114 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
The ideas which sensation gives "enter by the senses simple_and unmixed 1 "; they stand in need of the activity of mind to bind them into the complex unities required fcux-k-nowlodg^.The complex ideas of substances, modes, and relations are all the procfucFof the combimhg and
- " """ " - *" - - _ , -^ ^ ._ nwL _,, , E _ - O
abstracting activity of mind operating upon simple ideas, which liave been given, without any connection, by sensa tion or reflection. Locke s doctrine of knowledge has thus two_si_de.s. On the onZjsIcle, all the material of knowledge the simple idea. On the other side, the pro
cesses which transform this_crudejnaterial irjICLkaowledge are actiyities_of mind which themselves cannot be reduced tojcisas- Loclce s metaphors oF~tEe tabula rasa, "white paper 2 ," and "dark room" misled his critics and sug gested to some of his followers a theory very different from his own. The metaphors only illustrate what he had in hand at the moment. Without experience, no char acters are written on the "tablets" of the mind; except through the "windows" of sensation and reflection, no light enters the understanding. No ideas are innate; and there is no source of new simple ideas other than those two. But knowleHge. involves relations, and relations are the_work of the mind; it requires complex_jdea.s r . J arid complex ideas are mental formations. Simple ideas do not, of themselves, enter into relation and form complex ideas. Locke does not, like Hobbes before him and Hume and Condillac after him, look to some unexplained natural attraction of idea for idea as bringing about these forma tions. Indeed, his treatment of the association of ideas is an afterthought, and did not appear in the earlier editions of the Essay.
Starting from the simple ideas which we get from sen sation, or from observing- mental operations as they take
1 ii, n, i.
2 The same metaphor was used by Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, book i, ch. vi : " The soul of man being therefore at the first as a book, wherein nothing is, and yet all things may be imprinted."
VI] THE UNIVERSAL IN KNOWLEDGE 115
place, Locke has., two things to explain: the universal ^4L
1 ^* L _ t / \
element^ that is, the general conceptions with which knowledge is concerned or which it implies; and the refer ence tCLreality which it claims. With the former pro"bfem Locke deals at great length; and the general method of lys exposition is clear enough. Complex ideas arfslTffom simple ideas by the processes of combmatiorTand ubstra~c- tion carri_edj3uJT)ythe^ind. It would be unfair to expect completeness from his enterprise; but it cannot be denied that his intricate and subtle discussions left many pro blems unsolved. Indeed, this is one of his great merits. He raised qu^stionsJujruch. j. way; as to prpyoTce further enquiry. Principles such as the causal relation, apart from which knowledge " of nature would be impossible, are qnirtjy fnhrn for prnntrrlj nftrn without any enquiry into the grounds for assuming them. Further, the difficulty of accounting for universals is unduly simplified by de scribing certain products as simple ideas, although thought has obviously been at work upon them.
In this connection an important inconsistency becomes apparent in his account of the primary data of experience. It is, indeed, impossible even to name the mere parti cular the this, here, and now of sense without giving it a flavour of generality. But, at_the outset, Locke tries to get as near_it_aS-^Qssible. "Simple ideas _(p_f sensation) are exemplified by yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, and so forth 1 . But, towards the end of the seconcLbook 2 , a very different list is given : extension, solidity, and mo bility (from" sensation) ; perceptivity and motivity (from reflection); and existence, duration, and number (from both sensation and reflection). These are sj^_to..b_lLour originaHdeas^ and the restjt:^ Kg^jlfliy^^" fro-^ to " depend" or) them. It is difficult to compare the two lists, instance by instance; but one example may be taken. According to the first list, hard is a simple idea; according to the second list, solidity is the original (and therefore
1 ii, i, 3- 2 n > xxi > 75-
Il6 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
simple) idea, and hard will be derived from it and depend on it. It is clear that, in making the former list, Locke
- O *jp " niiii 1 1 i | I,
was trying to ge.Lback to the primary data^pfpur individual experience ; whereas, in the second list, he is raffier think ing Qjthe~bbjectiye reality mi which our experience de pends and which, he assumes, IFTeveals. But he does not obsgryethe difference. He seerns~fo forget his view that the original of all knowledge is to be round in the parti cular, in something simple andjinmixed." Thus he says 1 without hesitation, "TTahy one asks me, what this solidity is, I send him to his senses to inform him. Let him put a flint or a football between his hands, and then endeavour to join them, and he will know." But he will not know without going a long way beyond the simple idea. The simple ideas in the case are certain muscular and tactual sensations; and he interprets these by other means (in cluding knowledge of external objects and his own organ ism) when he says that the flint or the football is solid.
His doctrine ofmodes is also affected by this ^same oblivion of the l^ctthat a simpTe~ idea must ~5e^ really
simpler Thnq HP hnlrU fhaf- Jj^pqr^^p-^yt/^c^n * } s a
simple idea given both by sightand by touch 2 . One would expect, therefore, that the original and simple idea of space would be the particular patch seen at any moment or the particular feel of the exploring limb. But we are told that "each idea of any different distance, or space, is a simple mode" of the idea of space 3 . Here again the simple idea is unwittingly generalised,. He pro fesses to begin with the mere particulars_Q.f external and internal spnspj qnd to show riow^nowledge which is necessarily general is evolved from them. But, in doing so, he assumes a general or universal element as already given in the simple ideal
Having gone so far, he might almost have been ex pected to take a further step and treat the perceptions of
1 ii, iv, 4. 2 n, v.
3 n, xiii, 4.
VI] THE IDEA OF SUBSTANCE 117
particular things as modes of the simple idea substance. But this he does not do. Substance is an idea regarding which he was in earnest with his own fundamental theory (although perplexed about the origin oFtKe idea of "sub- stance in general" as well as of the ideas of "particular sorts of substances" 1 ); and the^ifficultiesin which his theory in volved him on this head were both provocaHve~ot v crifTcTsm and fnaitruTTbr tfte progresa_Qf thought. He admits that substance is a complex idea ; that is to say, it is formed by the mine s action Q 11 *" of simrjj_fi_tHea.s. Now, tHs~idea o substancejuarks the difference between having sensations and perceiving things. Its importano^^ r efo?e,~Is clear; but there is no clearness in explaining it. We are told that there is a "supposed or confused idea of substance" to which are joined (say) " the simple idea of a dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility and fusibility," and, as a result, "we have the idea of lead A difficulty might have-been avoided Jf substance could h.?.Y _.-k pp P inf-prprpfpH ^s simply the combination by the understanding ji-wjb4t hard, etc.,
cluster of ideas of sensation. Butjt^was not Locke s way thus to ignore facts. He JJL that something _ more^is neededTtrianjhese ideas of sensation. They are only joined to "the supposed or colifused iclea of substance," which is there and "always the first and chief 2 ." He holds to it that the i^r 3 ^ g q r nmp^ i^ and so made by the mind;
but he is PnHrply flf <* IngQ fr> qf^ni^pt fnr tl-na mntprin In-^gmf-
of w-hich it is made. We cannot imagine how simple ideas can subsist by themselves, and so "we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist," and this we call siiBstance. In one place, he even vacillates between the assertions that we have no clear idea of substance and that we have no idea oTlt^at
s113 jf jg "3 <mppr>gitirm nt hp k-nr>wg nrf txrKoi- " TMo
uncertainty, as will appear presently, throws its shadow over our whole knowledge of nature.
1 Cp. ii, xxiii, 1-3. 2 n, xii, 6. 3 i, iii, 19.
Il8 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
The npv way_^ida&liajLbus,,hard put to it in ac counting for the universal element in knowledge; it has even greater difficulties ^fo~face~ln^efending_the realitypf knowledge. And, in the latter case, the author._doe5-Qot see the difficulties so clearly. His^yiewjs that the-simple /idea. Is the te^j^and standard of reality. Whatever the mind contributes to our ideas removes them further from the reality of things; in
loses touch with things. But not q|| ymple ideas carry with jhem the same "significance for reality. Colours, smells, tastes, sounds, and the like are simple ideas, yet nothing resembles them in the bodies themselves; but, owing to a certain bulk, figure, and motion of their in sensible parts, bodies, havej a power to producethose sensations in us." These, therefore, are called u secondary
On the other hand, " solidity, ex-
tension, figure, motion or rest, and number" are also held by Locke to be simple ideas; an^J:hes are resem.- bla^^sj^i;^liti^in_body ; " their patterns do really _exist in the bodies themselves _ ; accordmgTy.. they are ^primary qualitTes of bodies 1 ." In this way, b)LJm plication if not expressly, T ^^kp g<? -Vf r g ; instead of establishing, the^con- nection_hetwii_simple ideas_a^LreaIiiy. *The only ideas which can make good their claim to be regarded as simple ideas have nothing resembling them in things. Other ideas, no doubt, are said to resemble bodily qualities (an assertion for which no proof is given and none is possible); but these ideas have only a doubtful claim to rank as simple ideas. Locke sj^revailing tendency is to identify reality with the simple idea, but he sometimes comes j witnm an ace of the opposite view that the reference to reality is the work of thought.
1 A similar distinction between qualities of body was formulated by Galileo, Hobbes, and Descartes; its origin maybe traced to Democritus; and the words primary and secondary were occasionally used in this connection by Robert Boyle, Origins of Formes and Qualities (1666), pp. 10, 43, loo-l; cp. Tracts (1671), introduction, p. 18.
Vl] THE CERTAINTY OF KNOWLEDGE 119
In the fourth book of his Essay, Locke proceeds to apply these results so as to determine the nature and extent of knowledgeT"As ideas are the s"6Te~immediate orjjects" oT thejninrl, knowledge can be nothing else than~ ft "trre~per- ^hg nnnpYinn"jQf^and agreement, or disagree-
ment and repugnancy, of any of our Ideas. >r TRis ligree- menToF"dTsagreement is said to be of four sorts : identity relation; co-existence or necessary __connec-
__
real existence] Each of these kinds of knowledge raises its own questions; but, broadly speaking, one dis tinction may be taken as fundamental. In the same para graph in which he restricts knowledge to the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, he admits one kind of know ledge which goes_ .^yp.n^jyie_Meis_thLg^seJy.?l.., to the signiricance_which they have for_ real_ex^ stence - When the reference does not go beyond the ideas ^in the mind, the problems that arise are of one order; when there is a further reference to real things, another problem arises. The preceding books have prepared the way for the solu tion of both sets of problems.
When ideasare together in the mind, we can discover
tn n^f annthpr- ^3^^ ^__^hey__are_ not
taken to represent archetypes outside the mind, there is no obstacle to certainty of JThowIecTee. ^ATI relation ter-
- , - - T - - T. _______ j i a --------- ^^
minates in, and is ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got from sensation or reflection" 1 ; but "general and certain truths, are only founded in the habitudes and relations of abstract ideas 2 ." In this way Locke vindicates the certainty of mathematics: although instructive, the science is merely ideal, and its propositions do not hold of things outside the mind. He thinks also that "morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics." But, in spite of the entreaties of his friend Molyneux, he never set out his ethical doctrine in detail. In the second book he had reduced moral good and evil to the, pleasure and pain which as reward and punish- 1 ii, xxviii, 1 8. 2 iv, xii, 7.
120 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
ment come to us from some lawgiver; thus they point to a source outside the mind. But his ground for main taining the demonstrative character of morality is that moral ideas are "mixed modes," and therefore mental products, so that their "precise real essence. . .may be perfectly known." He ventures upon two examples only of this demonstrative morality; and neither of them is more than verbal or gives any information about good or evil. Yet the doctrine is significant as showing the influence upon Locke of another type of thought, of which there are many traces both in the Essay and in his other works.
The real existences J-Q. kir>> Ifnnwl^gq extends are self, Go^ and the world of nature. Of the first we have, says Locke, an intuitiy^Juioadfidge, of the second a de- jiion^tratiye^kaaadedge. of the third a sensitiuekuQw^ ledge. This view he proceeds to explain and defend. Locke holds that the existence PJLthe_self is known by iiBm^iarteJntuition^ Like Descartes, he thin^that_doubt nn this hfad is excluded. But he fails to point out how self can be an idea and thus belong to the material of know ledge. An_idea of self cannot come_from sensation ; and the simple ideas of reflection are all of mental operations, and not of the subject or agent of these operations. On the other hand, when he had occasion to discuss personal identity, he followed his new way ofj.deas, and made it depend on_rnemry^. His proof of the existence of God befong sTo the order called by philosophers cosmological. It starts .with _the_existence of j^ J:hinking jself oFrmhd, and argues_lmm this position to the necessity for an in telligent first cause. Locke assumes, without question, tKe validity of the causal principle even beyond the range of possible experience. It was left for David Hume to take the momentous step of questioning this principle.
Regarding self and God, therefore, Locke does not show any special originality of view. It is when he faces the question of ffre real e.^jsj^nce of external bodies that
VI] THE KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE 121
his doctrine of ideas as the sole immediate object of the understanding comes into play, and casts uncertainty upon the_propositicms of natural science. He does not, indeed, question the transition from the presence of an idea of sensation to the existence "at thaj^time" of a thing which causes the idea in us 1 . Here, heTthrnks, we have "an assijLrjjiclliatdeserves the name of knowledge 2 , although he admits that it is " not altogether so certain as our in tuitive knowledge, or the deductions of our reason em ployed about the clear abstract ideas of our own minds." Knowledge of this sort is merely sensitive; it does not extend beyond "the pfesenT testimony oFour senses em ployed about particular objects that do then affect them 3 / Necessary connection Here is beyond our reach. Any assertion aboiif Things, except in respect of their Imme diate presence to the senses all the generalisations of natural science, therefore fall short of knowledge strictly so called. ^God has set some things in broad daylight 4 "; but the science of nature is not one of them; there, as in many other matters, we have only "the twilight of pro bability"; but probability j^sufficient_for_ our purposes. This sober practical note marks trie outcome of the whole enquiry: "our faculties being suited not to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect, clear, comprehensive knowledge of things free from all doubt and scruple; but to the preservation of us, in whom they are; and accommodated to the use of life 5 ." ^,,^
In his other works Locke s practical interests find ample scope; he deals with most of the questions that attracted the mind of the day, and he left upon them the mark of his thought. In Two Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to refute the doctrine of absolute power, as it had been put forward by Sir Robert Filmer, and to
1 iv, xi, 2. 2 iv, xi, 3.
3 iv, xi, 9. 4 iv, xii, I .
5 iv, xi, 8.
122 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
establish a theory which would reconcile the liberty of the citizen with political order. The criticism of Filmer is complete. His theory of the absolute sovereignty of Adam, and so of kings as Adam s heirs, has lost all interest; and Locke s argument has been only too effec tive: the exhaustive reply to so absurd a thesis becomes itself wearisome. There is little direct reference to the more enduring work of Hobbes; but this work seems to have been in Locke s mind when he argued that the doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and sub jects in the state of nature towards one another.
The constructive doctrines which are elaborated in the second treatise became the basis of social and political philosophy for many generations. Labour is the origin and justification of property; contract or consent is the ground of government and fixes its limits. Behind both doctrines lies the idea of the independence of the indi vidual man. The state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God. Men are born free and equal in rights. Whatever a man "mixes his labour with" is his to use. Or, at least, this was so in the primi tive condition of human life in which there was enough for all and "the whole earth was America." Locke sees that, when men have multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond those which the moral law or law of nature supplies. But the origin of govern ment is traced not to this economic necessity, but to another cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not always kept. In the state of nature all men equally have the right to punish transgressors: civil society ori ginates when, for the better administration of the law, men agree to delegate this function to certain officers. Thus government is instituted by a social contract ; its powers are limited, and they involve reciprocal obligations ; moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by the au thority which conferred them. Locke s theory is thus no
VI] ECONOMIC VIEWS 123
more historical than the absolutism of Hobbes. It is a rendering of the facts of constitutional government in terms of thought, and it served its purpose as a justifica tion of the Revolution settlement in accordance with the ideas of the time.
Locke s writings on economic subjects do not rank in importance with his treatises on government. They deal with particular questions raised by the necessities of the political situation. No attempt had yet been made to isolate the fact of wealth and make it the subject of a special science 1 . The direction of industry and commerce was held to be part of the statesman s duty; but, in the seventeenth century, it began to be carried out with less thoroughness than before; and at the same time new pro blems were opened up by the growth of the national life. The American colonies, the enterprise of the East India Company, the planting of Ireland, the commercial rivalry with Holland and with France, as well as questions re garding the rate of interest and the currency, occupied the attention of a crowd of writers in the second half of the century. Locke s own contributions were occasioned by the financial problems which faced the new govern ment after the revolution. His reflections on the rate of interest show the growing disfavour with which appeals for state interference were beginning to be met. He points out the obstacles to trade that are caused when the rate of interest is fixed by law, and he argues in favour of free dom for what he calls, in words which suggest Adam Smith, "the natural interest of money." Money "turns the wheels of trade"; therefore its course should not be stopped. At the same time, he holds no general brief against the interference of the state in matters of com merce; nor is the language of the mercantilists foreign to him. Riches consist in plenty of gold and silver, for these command all the conveniences of life. Now, "in a country not furnished with mines, there are but two ways
1 Cp. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, 206.
124 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
of growing rich, either conquest or commerce." For us commerce is the only way; and Locke condemns "the amazing politics of some late reigns" which had "let in other competitors with us for the sea." In the concluding portion of Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money (1691), Locke laid stress on the importance of a uniform and stable measure of values ; four years later, in his Further Considerations, he defended his view against the proposals, involving a depreciation of the standard, which William Lowndes, secretary of the treasury, had set forth in An Essay for the amendment of the silver coins (1695).
Locke s plea for toleration in matters of belief has be come classical. His Common-Place Book shows that his mind was clear on the subject more than twenty years before the publication of his first Letter. The topic, indeed, was in the air all through his life, and affected him nearly. When he was a scholar at Westminster, the powers of the civil magistrate in religious matters were the subject of heated discussion between presbyterians and independents in the assembly of divines that held its sessions within a stone s throw of his dormitory; and, when he entered Christ Church, John Owen, a leader of the independents, had been recently appointed to the deanery. There had been many arguments for toleration before this time, but they had come from the weaker party in the state. Thus Jeremy Taylor s Liberty of Prophesying appeared in 1646, when the fortunes of his side had suffered a decline. For Owen the credit has been claimed that he was the first who argued for toleration "when his party was upper most 1 ." He was called upon to preach before the House of Commons on 31 January 1649, an d performed the task without making any reference to the tragic event of the previous day; but to the published sermon he appended a remarkable discussion on toleration. Owen did not take
1 W. Orme, Memoirs of John Owen, prefixed to the latter s Works, 1826, i, p. 76.
VI] DOCTRINE OF TOLERATION 125
such high ground as Milton did, ten years later, in his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes affirming that "it is not lawful for any power on earth to compel in matters of religion." He abounds in distinctions, and indeed his position calls for some subtlety. He holds that the civil magistrate has duties to the church, and that he ought to give facilities and protection to its ministers, not merely as citizens but as preachers of the truth ; on the other hand he argues that civil or corporal penalties are inappropriate as punishments for offences which are purely spiritual.
The position ultimately adopted by Locke is not alto gether the same as this. He was never an ardent puritan; he had as little taste for elaborate theologies as he had for scholastic systems of philosophy; and his earliest attempt at a theory of toleration was connected with the view that, in religion, "articles in speculative opinions [should] be few and large, and ceremonies in worship few and easy." The doctrines which he held to be necessary for salvation would have seemed to John Owen a meagre and pitiful creed. And he had a narrower view also of the functions of the state. " The business of laws," he says, "is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man s goods and person. And so it ought to be. For truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received, and I fear never will receive, much assistance from the power of great men, to whom she is but rarely known, and more rarely welcome. She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into the minds of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by the assistance of foreign and borrowed succours. But if truth makes not her way into the understanding by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any borrowed force violence can add to her."
A church, according to Locke, is "a free and voluntary society"; its purpose is the public worship of God; the
126 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
value of this worship depends on the faith that inspires it: "all the life and power of true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the mind"; and these matters are entirely outside the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate. Locke therefore (to use later language) was a voluntary in religion, as he was an individualist on ques tions of state interference. There is an exception, however, to his doctrine of the freedom of the individual in religious matters. The toleration extended to all others is denied to papists and to atheists; and his inconsistency in this respect has been often and severely blamed. But it is clear that Locke made the exception not for religious reasons but on grounds of state policy. He looked upon the Roman Catholic as dangerous to the public peace because he professed allegiance to a foreign prince; and the atheist was excluded because, on Locke s view, the existence of the state depends upon a contract, and the obligation of the contract, as of all moral law, depends upon the divine will.
Locke s theological writings exhibit the characteristic qualities which his other works have rendered familiar. The traditions of theologians are set aside in them much as philosophical tradition was discarded in the Essay. He will search the Scriptures for religious doctrine just as he turned to experience for his philosophy, and he follows a method equally straightforward. Locke does not raise questions of Biblical criticism, such as Hobbes had al ready suggested and some of his own followers put for ward soon afterwards; and the conclusions at which he arrives are in harmony with the Christian faith, if without the fulness of current doctrine. At the same time, his work belongs to the history of liberal theology and is intimately connected with the deism which followed; it treats religion like any other subject, and interprets the Bible like any other book; and, in his view of the nature of religion, he tends to describe it as if it consisted almost entirely in an attitude of intellectual belief- a tendency
VI] THE CRITICS OF LOCKE 127
which became more prominent in the course of the eighteenth century.
Locke s Thoughts concerning Education and his Conduct of the Understanding occupy an important place in the history of educational theory, though only a scanty refer ence can be made to them here. The subject had a right to prominence in his thought. The stress he laid on ex perience in the growth of mind led him to magnify, per haps overmuch, the power of education. He held that "the minds of children [are] as easily turned, this way or that, as water itself." He underrated innate differences : "we are born with faculties and powers, capable almost of anything"; and, "as it is in the body, so it is in the mind, practice makes it what it is." Along with this view went a profound conviction of the importance of educa tion, and of the breadth of its aim. It has to fit men for life for the world, rather than for the university. In struction in knowledge does not exhaust it; it is essentially a training of character.
Locke had the gift of making philosophy speak the language of ordinary life. As a consequence, his writings were followed by a whole literature of attack and defence. Of his critics Stillingfleet was the most prominent; he breathed an atmosphere of controversy, and his powers were displayed on many fields; he was not Locke s equal in intellectual fence; but he was a formidable opponent, and the difficulties in Locke s doctrine were pressed home by him with no little power.
Another critic, who made some stir at the time, was John Sergeant (1622 1707), a convert to Roman Catho licism and an ardent controversialist. In The Method to Science (1696), he maintained that all inference can be reduced to a single type and that all truths are identical propositions; cause and effect are really identical, and knowledge of one fact implies knowledge of all. That things are what thiey are is, he held, the fundamental
128 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
principle of all knowledge 1 . This book was nearly finished, he tells us, before he became acquainted with Locke s Essay. A "cursory look" raised his hopes, but these were dashed by a "fuller view"; and, in 1697, he pub lished Solid Philosophy asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists. It consists of two parts: first a number of pre liminaries, and then a series of reflections on separate portions of the Essay. Sergeant s fundamental contention is against Locke s view of the idea as the representative or semblance of a reality other than itself. With idea in this sense he will have nothing to do; we must beware of phantasms and of philosophising by fancy instead of by reason. He urges that we could never have a right to assert that an idea resembles the reality: "the thing re sembled must be known, not only besides the idea, but by other means than by it, which can be no way but by the thing itself existing in the understanding." This he calls notion, and "a notion is the very thing itself ex isting in my understanding." He recognises that people will regard this as a paradox, but "unless this thesis be as true as it is strange, it is impossible any man living should know anything at all." And therefore he will put the paradox clearly. "When I say the glass is in the window, . . .the very glass itself which is in the window must be also in my mind." But the paradox is lessened when we find that "the self-same thing may have both a natural and an intellectual manner of existing." Things existed in the divine understanding before they were created, and still exist there; and a similar truth holds of the soul which knows any thing: it "is intellectually that thing." Notion, we might therefore say, is the thing known, qua intellectual; and the question arises whether this intellectual existence or being in the understanding means anything more than simply being known. Sar- geant anticipated the objections to the theory of repre sentative perception made by the realists who criticised
1 Cp. Adamson, Short History of Logic, pp. 147-8.
VI] THE CRITICS OF LOCKE
Hume ; but he did not adopt their theory of immediate perception, nor would he have been content with it. Yet his own doctrine does not explain knowledge.
Among the critics of Locke, mention may also be made of Henry Lee, William Sherlock, Archbishop King, John Broughton, and Thomas Burnet (author of Sacra telluris theorid). Another Thomas Burnet, of Kemnay in Aber- deenshire, was the intermediary through whom Locke received the Reflexions of Leibniz upon the Essay. The Nouveaux Essais of Leibniz, in which the doctrines of the Essay were criticised section by section, were ready for publication when Locke s death occurred, but, owing to this event, their appearance was postponed indefinitely. Amongst the writers who sided with Locke were Samuel Bold, Vincent Perronet, and Mrs Catherine Cockburn. Also of note is an anonymous work entitled Two Disserta tions concerning Sense, and the Imagination. With an Essay on Consciousness (1728), which has been ascribed to Zachary Mayne 1 . The Essay investigates the functions of consciousness and self-consciousness, and is, as the author claims, the first independent enquiry into the subject. The Dissertations maintain that understanding is distinct from both sense and imagination. Although it is not easy, he says, "so to express a perception of sense as that some intellectual notion shall not unawares creep in," sense-perception and notion have different charac teristics and are due to different faculties: the former supplies the matter; the latter, the form of our knowledge.
Two other writers of the period deserve further mention on their own account. These are Richard Burthogge and John Norris.
Burthogge had no great reputation in his own day, and
1 A writer, chiefly on religion, who died in 1694. The ultimate authority (so far as I can trace) for ascribing the book to him is R. Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica(\%2^); but the preface "to the Reader" seems to meto imply that the book was not posthumously published. Noah Porter (Ueberweg s Hist, of Phil., E.T., n, p. 368) suggests that it was by a son of Mayne; but the son refer red to was not named Zachary, and the suggestion appears to be merely a guess. The only copy of the book known to me is in the British Museum.
s. E. P.
130 JOHN LOCKE [CH.
was almost entirely forgotten afterwards, till recent his torians drew attention to his merits. His chief work, An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits^ was published in 1 694 and dedicated to Locke " as to a person . . . acknow ledged by all the learned world for one of the greatest masters of reason." But he cannot be counted either as a follower or as a critic of Locke. His characteristic doc trines had been expressed in an earlier work, Organum vetus et novum, published in 1678. He had come into contact independently with the Cartesian reform; he was acquainted (though he did not sympathise) with the work of Malebranche; and he may have been influenced directly by Geulincx, who was lecturing in the University of Leyden when Burthogge studied medicine there and, in 1662, graduated M.D. Burthogge s object was to reconcile the experimental or mechanical with the scholastic method. His most striking doctrine, however, concerns the sub jective factor in knowledge, and this led to his assertion of the relativity of all knowledge. What Descartes and Locke had said of the secondary qualities is generalised. The understanding apprehends things only by its own notions : these are to it what colours are to the eye or sounds to the ear; whole and part, substance and accident, cause and effect are but "entities of reason conceived within the mind," and "have no more of any real true existence without it, than colours have without the eye, or sounds without the ear." With this radical doctrine of relativity Burthogge combined a Neoplatonic metaphysic. He held that there is one spirit that actuates and acts in all, in men as well as in nature, and that the spirit of nature is not (as Henry More taught) an incorporeal substance, but simply the "plastic faculty" of the spirit of God.
John Norris, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and rector of Bemerton, was a man of much greater and more enduring reputation. He was a voluminous author of discourses, letters, and poems, as well as of the longer and more systematic work on which his fame depends,
VI] JOHN NORRIS 131
An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World, the first part of which was published in 1701, and the second in 1704. In temper of mind Norris may be regarded as the antithesis of Locke. He represents mysti cism as against the latter s critical empiricism. But it would be a mistake to regard him as lacking in clearness of logical faculty. He was diffuse, and his argument would sometimes break off into devotional reflection, or into verse; but, from these digressions, he would return to the argument refreshed and ready to abide by its logic. Different as he is from Locke, both exhibit the powerful influence that swept over European thought from the mind of Descartes. But Locke was critical of the more speculative elements in the philosophy of Descartes, whereas these were the thoughts that appealed most strongly to Norris. The course of his studies, especially in Plato and St Augustine, and the tone of his mind, made him welcome the speculative, if mystical, development of Cartesianism due to Father Malebranche. Malebranche had a number of followers in England at this time; and two translations of the Recherche de la Verite appeared in the year 1694; but Norris was the only writer of note who adopted his views; and his importance is due to the fact that he was no mere follower. He had thought out one may even say, he had lived the theory for himself. In his work he considers the ideal theory, first, as it is in itself, and then in its relation to our knowledge. He holds that the very nature or essences of things (as dis tinguished from their existence) are divine ideas or "de grees of being in the divine nature 1 "; and by the same theory he explains our perception of things. Tis gener ally allowed that the things without us are not perceived im mediately by themselves, but by their ideas. The only ques tion is, by what ideas, or what these ideas are ? " His answer to this question is, that they are the divine ideas, or, in the words of Malebranche, that we " see all things in God 2 ."
1 Ideal or Intelligible World, i, p. 232. 2 Ibid, n, pp. 442-3.
92
CHAPTER VII BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
THE period of English thought which followed Locke s death was fruitful both in great writers and in important movements. Locke s own influence was felt everywhere. His new way of approaching the subject, his freedom from the traditional technicalities of the schools, and hjsjappli- cation ot his method to a "wTde~rah geof human interests, made philosophy count for more with retierlTvg_wrifpr<; generally, and determined the line of thought taken by
f - = - - -- . --- , -- i -- ~ _ L
the greater minds. Speculation turned mainly upon three problems the problem oj^ knowledge, the problem of problem ofjrnorality. The treatment" of
each problem led to striking developments; and Locke s influence affected them all, though in unequal degrees. The idealism of Berkeley-followed directly from hisjun da- mental positions ; the leaders of the deists professed them selves his disciples, though they arrived at conclusions different from his ; the work of the moralists was less fully determined by his speculations, though his ethical views were perhaps seldom far from their minds. In the present chapter, this division of problems will be followed; it will treat, in succession, of the metaphysicians, the deists, and the moralists. Most writers, indeed, did not limit their interests to a single problem; and their place here will have to be determined by a view of the permanent im portance of their work in different departments. Strict chronological order also, to some extent, will be sacrificed. In this way, consideration of the writings of Samuel Clarke although he was a prominent figure in the whole philosophical movement, and one of the earliest to attain eminence will be postponed till the last section of the chapter.
CH. VII] GEORGE BERKELEY 133
I. METAPHYSICIANS
George Berkeley was born at Dysert castle, county Kilkenny, Ireland, on 12 March 1685, and educated at Kilkenny school and Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered in 1 700 and where he remained, first as a scholar, afterwards as fellow and tutor, till January 1713. These early years are the most remarkable in Berkeley s literary career. He published, anonymously, two mathematical tracts in 1 707 ; his Essay_jowards a New Theory of Vision appeared in 1709, his PrinctpTel~l)T ~HUman [ Knmukdre~ Part /, in 1710; and when, in 1713, he got leave of absence from his college and set out for London, it was "to print liis new book" -Three Dialogue^ between Hylas and J^hilonoiLS as well as "to make acquaintance with men of merit." These three books reveal the new thought which inspired his~life~;"~anT}"the evidence of his Common place Book (discovered and published by Campbell Fraser in 1871) shows that he was barely twenty years of age when this new thought took hold of him. Berkeley was absent from Ireland for eight years, spending his time in London, France, and Italy (where, on a second visit, he resided four years). During this period he did little literary work; he made some progress, indeed, with the second part of his Principles, but the MS. was lost in his travels, and the work was never resumed; his Latin treatise De motu was written as he was on his way home in 1720, and published in 1721; he collected materials for a natural history of Sicily, but this MS. also was lost; a journal written in Italy, however, and many letters remain to show his appreciation of the beauties of nature and art.
His return to England gave a new direction to his energy. The country was going through the period of collapse which follows ~a spe cuTaHve mania ^ ana EerEfeTey saw the true cause ot trle~national decadence in the declige of j^ljgion^the^eca^ of .public. spinV ami
134 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
corruption qf_manners. One hundred and forty years later, Mark Pattison described the period as "an age whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, and whose public men were without character 1 ." A similar judgment forms the burden of Berkeley s Essay towards preventing the ruin of Great Britain, published anonymously in 1721. He returned to Ireland and to Trinity College later in the same year, and was presented to the deanery of Dromore. The office attracted him because it would give him leisure for re flection and for philanthropic work; but a legal question arose as to the right of presentation, and his hopes re ceived a check. Berkeley is one of the most perfect char acters among men of letters ; but his perfection was not colourless. He threw himself with energy into the defence of his rights, and at least had the satisfaction of a pro tracted lawsuit. While the case was still pending, in 1724, he was appointed to a much more valuable preferment the deanery of Derry. "It is said to be worth 1500 a year," he wrote, "but I do not consider it with a view to enriching myself. I shall be perfectly contented if it facili tates and recommends my scheme of Bermuda."
This scheme seems to have taken hold of Berkeley s mind about two years previously 2 ; to it he devoted his fortune and ten years of his life. His plan was to found a college in the Bermudas, with the twofold object of "the reformation of manners among the English in our western plantations, and the propagation of the gospel among the American savages." Berkeley spent four years in London in endeavouring to extract a charter and grant of money from a reluctant government and subscriptions from an unbelieving generation; he had to frequent the
1 Essays and Reviews, 1860, p. 254.
8 " It is now about ten months since I have determined with myself to spend the residue of my days in the Island of Bermuda, where I trust in Providence I may be the mean instrument of doing good to mankind." Lettei of 4 March 1723, in Rand, Berkeley and Percival (1914), p. 203.
VII] BERKELEY IN AMERICA 135
court and dispute twice a week with Samuel Clarke before Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales; he listened to the banter of the wits of the Scriblerus Club, and then replied with such eloquence and enthusiasm that they "rose all up together, with earnestness exclaiming, Let us set out with him immediately" ; he canvassed every member of parliament with such effect that, in the Com mons, there were only two opponents of the vote; even Walpole subscribed to the scheme, though he secretly determined that the government grant of money should never be paid. Bermuda became the fashion, and Berkeley was idolised. But he grudged the waste of time, and at last with only a promise from Walpole that the grant would be paid he set sail from Greenwich in September 1728 with his newly-married wife. In January 1729 he landed at Newport, Rhode Island. There he remained for nearly three years, waiting vainly for the government to fulfil its promises. This it never did; he never reached Bermuda, and his college was never founded. But he left his impress upon the early efforts of American philosophy; his inter pretation of the material world modified the thinking of Jonathan Edwards, the metaphysician and theologian of New England; and the memory of his visit has been treasured by the American mind. The new world also affected Berkeley s imagination and led to a set of Verses on the prospect of planting arts and learning in America. One of his lines "Westward the course of empire takes its way" has come to be looked upon as prophetic; but his idea was not geographical; it was that better times would follow better morals, "where nature guides and virtue rules."
Berkeley remained in London for more than two years after his return to England; and a new period of author ship began, during which he joined in the controversies of the age. In Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732), written in the seclusion of his home in Rhode Island, he applied his general principles in defence of religion
136 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
against the free-thinkers. In 1733 appeared his Theory of Vision, or Visual Language Vindicated and Explained; and in the following year he published The Analyst, in which he criticised the positions of the new mathematksjjvhich, in his view, were^cpnnected with a materialistic concep tion of the world, i his bold attemptjtp_carry^the waFTnto the enemy s country called forthjnany pamphlets^on the otHer side. In the same year Berkeley returned to Ireland as bishop of Cloyne; and henceforth his literary work was divided between questions of social reform and re ligious reflection. The reform is represented by The Querist (1735), a WOI "k full of penetrating remarks; both subjects are combined in Siris: a Chain of Philosophical Reflexions (1744), which begins by expounding the medi cinal virtues of tar-water, and ends in an exposition of idealism in which the Lockean strain has given place to the^Platojiic. A Miscellany containing several tracts was published in October 1752. Two months earlier he had left Cloyne that he might spend the remainder of his days at Oxford; and there he died on 14 January 1753. When Berkeley launchedjiis idealism upon an unsym-
ibranche
pathetic world, he had read Descartes and Malebranche and been attracted by theTphilosophy of Plato; he was also acquainted with the works of the ciathematicians and natural philosophers, and subjected ajrend to materialism in their_theories ; but hjs_tnought had beenTormed under the influence of Locke, whose Essay found earlier recog nition from the academic authorities at Dublin than from those of English universities. At the time when Berkeley entered Trinity College and for ten years afterwards, the provost was Peter Browne, afterwards bishop of Cork, a student and critic of the Essay. He had already attracted attention by an Answer to Toland (1697). His more original works followed after a long interval The Pro cedure, extent and limits of human understanding, in 1728, and the work called, for short, Divine Analogy, in 1733. These two books are connected with Berkeley s later
VIl] THE IMMATERIAL HYPOTHESIS 137
work, for the theory of our knowledge of God propounded in the former is criticised in one of the dialogues of Alci- phron^ and the criticisms are replied to in Browne s Divine Analogy. Browne could not accept Locke s account of knowledge by means of ideas, when it came to be applied to jmincL Mind/and body, he jielcl,are not known in the samejjyay.. We have, indeed, ideas ot pur mental o pera- tions as these aTe con n^cted wheljodrB utlrimds or
spirits whether divine_or_ human canbe known " only by, analogy. This viewTBerkeley. in later life, attacked:
J . - -r~+ - *~" - / - __ _
but it points to a difficulty in his own theory also a difficulty which he came to see, without fully resolving it. There is, however, no sufficient evidence for saying that Browne had any direct influence upon Berkeley s early speculation.
Berkeley s theory emerges full-grown, if not fully armed. Even in his Common-place Book there is no hesi tation in the references to "my doctrine/ "the immaterial hypothesis." Only^j^rjsgjnj^xist: "all otHer thmgs are not" so~~much existences as rrmjjn_ers_of_lhe__existnce,j3f j persons^ 1 he knows that a mighty sect of men will oppose me," that he will be called young, an upstart, a pretender, vain; but his confidence is not shaken: "Newton begs his principles; I demonstrate mine." He did not, at first, reveal the whole truth to the world. An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision deals with one point only the relation "BeTween trie objects of sight ^and tho.se of to_ucb. Molyneux Had""once"seT the problem to Locke. wTiether a man born blind, if he recovered his sight, would be able by sight alone to distinguish from one another a cube and a sphere, with both which he had been previously acquainted by touch. Molyneux answered his own question in the negative, and Locke expressed agree ment with his solution and admiration for the insight which it showed. Berkeley was of one mind with them about the answer to the query, but for a more funda mental reason. If extension be an idea common to sight
138 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
andtouch fas Locke held), then visible squareness must be*~the same as, or have something "iiT^comirroir-^nth, tangiBlFsuareness~In virtue oFthis7tHe"niarrBorTrbiind, so~sooh as he is made to see, should be able to distinguish between a visible square and a visible circle, and to identify this distinction with the distinction between the square and the circle already known by touch. If Jie js unable to do^sp, it is because there is nothing in common between V the visible object and the tangible. And thisjsJBerksley s Tview^ "J. ne objects of sight_and touch," he says, "make, if I may so say, two sets of ideas which are widely different
from each other A man born blind, being made to see,
would at first have no idea of distance by sight: the sun and stars, the remotest objects as well as the nearer, would all seem to be in his eye, or rather in his mind."
A great part of the Essay is devoted to an explanation of the apparent immediateness with which the distance of anobject is seeh. But the~essence of the~who!e " conststs in two propositions that the objects (or ideas) of sight havenothing in comnion_with the objects of touch, and thatlhe connection of sight and touch is arbitrary and learned by~experience only. The connection is arbitrary; but it is regular and ronsTant. What we see suggests to us what we may expect to touch and handle. The whole visible world as was further enforced in his Theory of Vision or Visual Language consists of a set of signs which, like a language, have for the7r~purpose to_cbnvey a mean ing; though, like the worcls~ln a languageT^EKey neither fesFmble nof cailSC that meamng ? nor have any necessary connection witti it. In using sight to guide our jrnove- menFs we interpret the language ToR^od 7
Some of the details ot Kerkeley^Essay need revision in the light of modern study of the senses. But this does not obscure its merit as one of the most brilliant pieces of psychological analysis in the English language. A more serious objection to it is that the author pushes too far his war against abstractions. It is true, as riFurges, thaFsight
VII] IDEAS AND THINGS 139
and touch have no common element that can IDC separated from" both and become an indepen^ent^^resentation. Against abstract ideas of this sort, his polemic was Fully justified. But the different senses are not disconnected either in genesis or in function^ and reflection may dis- coveF certain litteir~6Tl>ImiIarity among their processes. Berkeley decides too quickly that the connection is arbi- trarYi_because of the striking difference in their contents, andbecause one cannot be called cause anct^notheFeffecF; and he argues too easily from this arbitrary__connection Jo divine volition. He never gave the same close attention^* to the conceptual factor in knowledge as he gave to sense > and imagination, and in his early work the conceptual \ factor is almost entirely ignored.
The Essay did not disclose all that was in Berkeley s mind. It kept to its topic, the relation of the objects of sight to those of toucE, and it did notquestion the views commonly held about-the latter. The full revelation came, a year afterwards, in 4 Treatise concerning the^Principles of Human Knowledge. This small volume, more talkecT about than read at the time it took twenty-four years to reach a second edition is one of the works which have had a critical influence upon the course of European thought. Its importance, in this respect, ranks it with Locke s Essay and Hume s Treatise of Human Nature. The fresh step which Berkeley took was short and simple_anJ_eagy when take 1 !!, it allows uij the whole world fromTajiejaLpoint of view. Lo^kejiad said that all the objects of knowledge
are ideas, and he ria^__yms_jrmch dimclolty-^alsindeed Descartes had had before him irTdefending the reality of the_thmgs which he supposed to be represented by the! ideas/berkeley solves the difficulty b)T denyin^thecTis- tinction.jrfie ideas are the things. " it is indeed an oplmc? strangelyprevailmg amongst men, that houses, moun tains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being per ceived by the understanding." But the opinion needs
140 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
only to be called in question to show the contradiction it involves,; for these objects are, the things we perceive by sense^and we perceive nothing but our own ideas.~Witn magnificent confidence he passes at once to the assertion : " Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz. that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a rnindj^ that their being is to be perceived or knownT^
As~regards material things, therefore, a single phrase expresses Berkeley s thought : their esjis percipi. Theirs is a passive, dependent existence. Active, inde- peijcjent existengEZcarT oeTong to minds or persons only. From this position he never wavered, though there is a good deal of difference between his earlier and his later views. He saw that, as the existence of ideas consists in being perceived, so mind must be~ regarded as perceiving. " Existence. . .is percipi or pertipere" is one of his earliest statements; and, as men may sleep or be rendered uncon scious, he is willing, at first, to accept the consequence that "men die or are in a state of annihilation oft in a day." But this solution seemed too dangerous and was soon relinquished, and thus he held it "a jolajn conse quence that the soul always thinks." As there is no ma- terial substance, so also there can be no material ause. Material things, being our ideas and altogether passive, are^relatecTto one another not as cause and effect~5u"ron1v as siginTand thing signified. We learrTto understancTtheir grouping, and tnusTone idea suggests others, the like of which have followed it in previous experience; while further experience confirms the anticipation. What we call laws of nature, therefore, are simply a statement of
^f l | ~ _7_ ^^m*J*~** i . M , J .-; *
the orderlyseguences m which the ideas oF the senses occur in our minds. The material substance to which philosophers reter fKese ideas as their cause is, he labours
VII] SPIRITUAL REALITY 141
to prove, an unmeaning and self-contradictory abstraction. Certain ideas those which we call icieas of imagination arelcon,s,tructecl By^the individual mind; but theTcfeas of sense, or sens!1STe things r J:jiough they exist only inTEe- mmd,~are not caused by my mind or by any other finite jrjjprL There must, therefore, be an omnipresent eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and ex- hibits them to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules, as he himself hath ordained, and are by us termed the laws of nature"
Berkeley s works, for the most part, are of the nature of introductions, vindications, and polemics. He ex plained his new principle and defended it and applied it to current controversies with wonderful resource of argu ment and beauty of language, and with the power that came from intense conviction. In Hylas and in Alciphron he used the dialogue form, with a skill never excelled in English philosophical literature, to bring out the diffi culties in his view and to set forth their triumphant solu tion. But he did not work out his spiritual interpretation
ould
of reality into p. sysfpm. He would answer an objection without following out the bearing of his answer upon other portions of his philosophy. He began,_ likeJLpcke, by asserting that all the objects ot ourKnowledge jare ideas.; and he_divided ideas into three classes: those_of sense, those ot mental 6jperations T amTlliasje-jQj[IrnniQry orjmagmation. To whichjdass then j^we may ask) do knowledge of self, of other finite spirits^Qf _God^ and of the laws of" nature belong? The question does not seem to~Eave occurred fb ~BefkeTey when, with all the ardour of a discoverer, he wrote his Principles. But he raises it in Hylas, and says that, in reflection, we have an immediate knowledge of self as an ax tiyenbeingjjnd., hy .inference therefrom., or otheTITnite spirits and oGod. Xhii_know- ledge, as well_as our knowledge of laws of nature^js not through ideas, and he_callsjt notion. We have, therefore, not merely ideas~~o7 sensible things and_of mental opera-
m
142 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
tions and of remembered or imagined objects, but also notions of spirits and nf kws. The terminology was used again when he came to issue the second edition of the Principles , but he did not see that it required a modifica tion of the first sentence of that work, which declares that all the objects of human knowledge are ideas. How idea and notion are related to one another in knowledge, we cannot gather from him. BuTthis is clear: that ideas are inerr~ana_fleeting7^nd thaMjtjs through notion that we become acquainted with_jhe permanent active forces of the real universe.
Berkeley stood at a parting of the ways in thought, though he was hardly conscious of their divergence. On the one hand, his principles that all knowledge is of ideas, and that all ideas are ot one or other oTlhe three kinds enumerated by him, lead to a view~wriicK excludes from knowledge not only material substance, buLjUJnd also ami the reign ~of lajv^Jn_nature. At Times, especially in his Common-place Book, he seems on the verge of drawing this conclusion, and thus of anticipating Hume. After wards, he sees it only as sometKihg to be guaTded against. He could not think of the idea as, so to speak, self- supporting. It exists only in so tarlis it is "in the mind": mincHsjbrie true reality, the only agency; ideas exist only in minds, finite or infinite: Imcf the laws of nature are the order in which ideas are produced in us by the infinite Mind. Spirjtual^agmgYi spirituaj_^gality^,js thus his fundamental thought; and in Siris, the last of his philo sophical works, this thought emerges from the midst of reflections on empirical medicine and old-fashioned physio logy. No longer^ dominated by the Lockean heritage_of the sensitive origin~oTTaiowledge, his idealismjsjissimi- lated to the JFlatomc. The work is full of comments on Neoplatonic writers, ancient and modern ; and there is an absence of the simplicity and clearness of his earlier writings; systematic development of his theory is still absent; but there is hardly a page without remarks of
VII] ARTHUR COLLIER 143
pregnant insight, and he is everywhere loyal to the vision of truth with which his career opened.
In 1713, three years after the appearance of Berkeley^. Principles, Arthur Collier, rector of Langford Magna near Salisbury, published a work entitled Clavis Universalis and professing to be "a demonstration of the non-existence or impossibility of an external world." Collier was born in 1680, and, like Berkeley, seems to have formed his con clusions at an early age: for he says that it was "after a ten years pause and deliberation " that he decided to put his arguments before the reader. His results are almost identical with Berkeley s; but he arrived at them in a different way. He seems to have been uninfluenced by Locke; Descartes, Malebranche, and Norris were his favourite authors; and there was enough in their writings to raise the question. Collier writes in a straightforward and simple style; he has none of Berkeley s imagination or eloquence; he does not contend that he has the plain man on his side, nor does he apply his results to current controversy. But he has no less confidence than Berkeley had in the truth of his views; and his arguments are clearly put. Often they resemble Berkeley s; though greater use is made of traditional metaphysical discussions. Among these the most notable is the argument from the anti nomies of philosophical thought. The external worTd,~con- ceivecfas independent of mind, has Been held infinite in extent ? and also it has been heldTlo be finite; and equally good ancT" conclusive reasons can BIT given for either alternative. Similarly, it is "both finitely and infinitely divisible." But a thing cannot have two contradictory predicates. ExternaLma~tter therefore, does not exist.
II. DEISTS
The first half of the eighteenth century was the period of the deistical controversy in English theology. The writers commonly classed together as deists are Charles
144 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
Blount, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Woolston, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Chubb, Peter Annet and Henry Dodwell the younger. Among deists are also reckoned Bolingbroke and the third Earl of Shaftesbury, who differed from the rest in paying little attention to the details of theological controversy, and differed from one another in their philosophical interest and importance.
The works of Charles Blount belong to the last quarter of the seventeenth century. He accepted the five points of Lord Herbert of Cherbury 1 . This marked him as a deist, and he did not reject the name. In his Anima Mundi (1679) he defended the system of natural religion, and, at the same time, emphasised the comparative merits of the heathen religions. His Great is Diana of the Ephes- ians (1680) is an attack on priestcraft. In the same year he published an English translation of The two first books of Philostratus, concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus. On each chapter of this followed "illustrations" by the translator, in which it was easy to find an attack on the Christian miracles and on the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. "Faith," he says, is "like a piece of blank paper whereon you may write as well one miracle as another"; whereas his own Christianity was founded exclusively on reason. Blount committed suicide in 1693 because he was prevented from marrying his deceased wife s sister. Two years afterwards his Miscellaneous Works (including The Oracles of Reason) were published by his disciple Charles Gildon. Gildon defended both the doctrine and the suicide of his master; but, not long after, was himself converted to the orthodox belief by reading Charles Leslie s Short and Easy Method with the Deists (1698).
So far as Blount was concerned, the controversy might have ended here. For, despite his learning and ability, he was something of a free-lance; he could not match himself with his opponents in Christian theology or in biblical learning; his criticism and his own doctrines revealed an
1 See above, p. 40.
VII] THE RISE OF DEISM 145
outside point of view. There were, however, many sympa thisers with his general attitude among wits, and perhaps also among scholars: Leslie s reply is a testimony to the prevalence of deism. And, shortly before the publication of that triumphant reply, there appeared a work by a new author Toland s Christianity not Mysterious with which the controversy entered upon a fresh phase. Within the English church the Roman controversy had died down, and the protestant faith had been firmly established. The time was ripe for the discussion of the content and basis of protestant theology; and the great trinitarian contro versy followed. At this point, the chief stimulus to theo logical thought came from within the church, indeed, but from outside the ranks of professional theologians. Locke s Reasonableness of Christianity appeared in 1695, and marked out the ground to be occupied by almost all controversialists for a long time to come. In his straight forward way Locke went to the Scriptures : miracles and prophecy convinced his reason of their authority; the same reason was used for understanding the doctrines they revealed. He did not linger over the former the external evidences, as they were called, of religion. His interest was in the content of the faith. The same interest dominates the controversies of the first half of the eigh teenth century; it was only afterwards that the question of the external evidences came to the front. Throughout the whole century, however, and by both parties, the question was debated in the court of reason. The con troversy was not between rationalists and those who dis trusted reason. The question was what, on rational grounds, ought to be believed. And, as Clarke and Tillotson and Butler appealed to reason not less than Toland and Collins and their successors did, so too there was another point of agreement between the orthodox and the leaders of the deists. The latter also, for the most part, and in the earlier stages of the dispute, at any rate, pro fessed to accept the Christian faith. The problem was as
S. E. P. 10
146 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
to its content: what was its genuine meaning and the significance of its essential doctrines?
This much must be borne in mind by anyone who would understand Toland, especially in his earliest and most celebrated work. Toland was born near Londonderry in Ireland in 1670 and died at Putney near London in 1722. His education was varied. He was at school in Ireland, went to the University of Glasgow, took his degree at Edinburgh, afterwards studied at Leyden, and spent some time at Oxford, where he wrote Christianity not Mysterious (1696). He led a strenuous and varied life, with somewhat uncertain means of livelihood. He was the object of bitter attack by the controversialists opposed to him; and they called in the aid of the civil power. After the publication of his first book, he had to leave Ireland to escape arrest by the Irish parliament, and in England he was for a time in danger of prosecution. He busied himself in political as well as in theological controversy, defended the protestant succession, took part, though un officially, in important missions, and became known to the Electress Sophia and her daughter the Queen of Prussia, to whom his Letters to Serena (1704) were ad dressed. He made some influential friends also, and Leibniz was among his correspondents.
Christianity not Mysterious shows the influence of Locke of his Essay, however, rather than of his Reasonableness of Christianity^ which, published only a year before Toland s book, does not seem to have affected its argument. Locke s name is not mentioned by Toland; but Locke s view of knowledge, as consisting in the agreement of ideas, forms the starting-point of his argument, and in the preliminary matter he often adopts Locke s words. But he is more aggressive in applying his principles. Locke s aim was to show that Christianity was reasonable; Toland s, to de monstrate that nothing contrary to reason, and nothing above reason, can be part of Christian doctrine. There are no mysteries in it. Revelation has unveiled what was
VII] JOHN TOLAND 14?
formerly mysterious. Whoever reveals anything must do so in words that are intelligible, and the matter must be possible. The things revealed, therefore, are no longer mysteries. This holds whether the revelation come from God or from man. The only difference between the two cases is that a man may lie and God can not. Without ideas neither faith nor knowledge is possible; and, "if by knowledge be meant understanding what is believed, then I stand by it that faith is knowledge." The ideas may not be adequate; but, in nature as well as in divinity, we have to be content without adequate ideas; even a "spire of grass" is not known in its real essence; we understand only its properties or attributes; and God and the soul are known in the same way.
Toland was a scholar and boasted acquaintance with more than ten languages. He was also a theologian and could meet his opponents on their own ground. This interest dominated his literary career; even his political work was in the service of the protestant religion, and his scholarship was chiefly shown in the field of Christian origins. His own theological views went through various modifications. He was brought up a Roman Catholic; at the age of sixteen he became "zealous against popery"; afterwards he was connected with protestant dissenters; when Christianity not Mysterious was published he reckoned himself a member of the Church of England, his sym pathies being with the broad (or, as it was then called, low) church party. When his book was burned at the door of the Irish house of parliament, he may have felt his churchmanship insecure. His later works exhibit its gradual disappearance.
In Amyntor (1699), a defence of his Life of Milton (1698), he gave, in answer to an opponent, a long list of early apocryphal Christian literature. His interest in researches of this kind was shown afterwards in Naza- renus ; or Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity (1718). His text, in this work, was an Italian manuscript
148 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
with Arabic annotations, which he had discovered. He took it for a translation from the Arabic and identified it with the lost Gospel of Barnabas. In both conjectures later scholarship has shown that he was in error. But his discovery led to some remarkable reflections on the differ ences between the Jewish and Gentile Christians in the early church. He maintained that the former, who kept the Jewish law themselves but without enforcing it on the Gentiles, represented "the true original plan of Christianity"; and he declared that he himself took "less exception to the name of Nazaren than to any other." More than a century afterwards the same distinction as that upon which he laid stress was made fundamental in the explanation of early church history offered by F. C. Baur and his followers.
Among other topics in the Letters to Serena was a dis cussion of Spinoza, which perhaps shows the trend of Toland s speculation. Leibniz, at any rate, in a letter to him of 30 April 1709, remarks that Toland, in several of his books, refers to the opinion that there is no other eternal being than the universe but offers no refutation of this "pernicious" error. In his reply Toland promises an answer to this point in his next; but he does not seem to have kept his word. Pantheism, at any rate, was the doctrine with which he ended, if we may trust the evidence of Pantheisticon (1720). This curious piece was issued anonymously, with Cosmopolis on the title-page as the place of publication. But the author took no pains to conceal his identity, for the preface is signed "Janus Julius Eoganesius." Now, Inis Eogain or Inishowen was the place of Toland s birth; and Janus Julius were the extraordinary names by which he was christened and known, till a sensible schoolmaster changed them to John. The little book, which is written in Latin, describes the ritual of certain (supposed or real) pantheistic societies. It imitates the fashion of a prayer-book, gives the responses of the congregation, and is printed with red rubrics. As
VII] ANTHONY COLLINS 149
a whole, it is a clever skit, though in the very worst taste. But Toland had not received any favours from fortune; he had been harshly attacked by his opponents, even when he regarded himself as a defender of the Christian faith ; and perhaps it gave him satisfaction to retaliate bitterly.
Toland thus began as a liberal or rational theologian, and ended with some form of pantheistic creed. His writings do not enable us to trace accurately the steps in this change of view; but there is no evidence that he ever accepted the cardinal point of what is commonly called deism the idea of God as an external creator who made the world, set it under certain laws, and then left it alone 1 . He was a free-thinker rather than a deist. And this also describes the position occupied by Anthony Collins, the friend and disciple of Locke, in his best-known work, A Discourse of Free-thinking, occasioned by the rise and growth of a sect call d Free-thinkers (1713). Bentley s brilliant criticism of this book, in his Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-thinking, gained for it an unenviable reputation. The Remarks admitted of no answer; but they were more successful in demolishing a free-thinker than in refuting free-thinking; and perhaps this was Bentley s sole object in exposing the author s slipshod scholarship. But he was not blind to an ambiguity of which Collins had taken advantage. Free-thinking may mean nothing more than the exercise of reason. If this had been all that Collins argued for, there would have been little point in his con tention, for both parties claimed that they followed reason.
1 Samuel Clarke (Being and Attributes of God, 9th ed., pp. 159 ff.) dis tinguishes four classes of Deists: (i) those who "pretend to believe the existence of an eternal, infinite, independent, intelligent Being; and... teach also that this Supreme Being made the world: though at the same time... they fancy God does not at all concern himself in the government of the world, nor has any regard to, or care of, what is done therein"; (2) those who, also, admit divine providence in nature; (3) those who, further, have some notion of the moral perfections of God; (4) those who, in addition, acknowledge man s duties to God, and see the need for a future state of rewards and punishments but all this only "so far as tis discoverable by the light of nature."
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So far, Tillotson would certainly have been with him, and indeed Collins claims his support. But he used the term also to cover the attitude or doctrines of a "sect of free thinkers," without any clear account of their position, or any suggestion that the word had more than one meaning. The ambiguity is connected with the duality of the motives which seem to have determined the writings of Collins. One of these was faith in reason a faith which he had inherited from Locke; the other was a suspicion and dis like of priestcraft. These two motives are indicated by the titles of his earliest works Essay concerning the use of Reason (1707), and Priestcraft in Perfection (1709). They are combined in A Discourse of Free-thinking in a way which generates more heat than light. Collins held firmly to a belief in God as established by reason ; but (though sometimes in guarded language) he was a hostile critic of the Christian creed. His works produced a crowd of con troversial literature: his chief later work Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) having called forth no less than thirty-five replies in two years. He was also the author of a small book called A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty and Ne cessity (1715) an acute and clearly- written argument in favour of the necessitarian solution of the problem.
In some respects and these perhaps the most im portant the most significant work of the whole deistical movement was Tindal s Christianity as Old as the Creation : or, the Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730). It is no mere defence of the use of reason or attack on Christian mysteries. It is a masterly presenta tion of the prevalent philosophical ideas of the time and a comparison of them with the rational theology which found favour with leaders of the church. "The will of God," said Samuel Clarke, then the most prominent figure in British philosophy and theology, "always determines itself to act according to the eternal reason of things," and "all rational creatures are obliged to govern them-
VII] MATTHEW TINDAL 151
selves in all their actions by the same eternal rule of reason." "The religion of the Gospel," said Sherlock, preaching a missionary sermon, "is the true original re ligion of reason and nature," and its precepts are "de clarative of that original religion which was as old as the creation." These extracts Tindal prints on his title-page; and his own aim is to show that "natural religion and external revelation, like two tallies, exactly answer one another, without any other difference between them but as to the manner of their being delivered." Tindal grasps firmly the principles of natural religion, as they were taught by Clarke and Wollaston and other theologians of the day. Reason convinces us of the being and attributes of God, and of the truths of morality; the goodness of God makes it impossible that he should have concealed from any of his creatures what was necessary to their well-being. Christianity, therefore, cannot displace deism, as Clarke held that it could: it can only confirm it. And, as reason suffices to establish the truths of deism, it would seem that Christianity is superfluous. Tindal, however, did not expressly draw this conclusion: he was seventy years of age when he wrote this book, and he retained his fellowship at All Souls, through many changes of govern ment and of personal creed, till his death.
The remaining deistical writers require only the briefest notice. Thomas Woolston was an enthusiast in patristic study, and his enthusiasm seems to have verged on in sanity in his later years. He had two passions "love of the fathers and hatred of the protestant clergy 1 ." The latter was intensified by his being deprived of his fellowship at Cambridge; the former led to his allegorical interpretation of Scripture. This method he applied to the New Testa ment miracles, in his series of Discourses (1727 30), ridiculing the ordinary view of them as actual events. The historical occurrence of the miracles was, about the same time, defended by Sherlock in The Trial of the Witnesses 1 J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England, n, p. 40.
152 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
(1729); and to this work Peter Annet replied in The Resurrection of Jesus examined by a Moral Philosopher (1744), in which the expressions are of an open, not to say scandalous, kind rare in the earlier literature of deism. Thomas Chubb, an obscure tradesman of Salisbury, with no pretentions to scholarship or education, published a number of tracts in which points of the Scriptures were criticised and views similar to those of Tindal asserted. The same doctrine was stated once more by Thomas Morgan, a physician, in The Moral Philosopher (1737 41). In the main he follows Clarke and Tindal; but he also recalls the investigations of Toland by the prominence which he gives to the opposition between the Judaising and the universal factors in early Christianity. Christianity not founded on argument, a pamphlet published in 1742 by Henry Dodwell (son of a theologian and scholar of the same name), is one of the latest publications of this school of thought.
Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury stand in a different rela tion to the deistical movement from that of the writers already named. Bolingbroke was not a philosopher, though various occasional writings of his were collected and published by Mallet as Philosophical Works (1752). But he illustrates the way in which the fundamental doc trines of deism had permeated the thinking of the men of mark in their day who were interested in ideas; and he did much to confirm this attitude and to extend its in fluence. Voltaire regarded his views as significant, and the superficial optimism of Pope s clear-cut verse, in the Essay on Man^ was directly due to Bolingbroke. Shaftes bury may have been coupled with Bolingbroke as a deist, in the popular mind, and may also have lent inspira tion to Pope. But he had a far profounder view of the problems of thought, which will receive consideration in connection with the group of writers distinguished as moralists.
The line between deists and churchmen was not always
VII] THE TWO PARTIES 153
drawn very clearly. There was a good deal of common ground in the assumptions of both parties; and there was, besides, a general ferment of theological thought which disregarded customary boundaries. The latter character istic is exhibited in the works of William Whiston, mathe matician and theologian. They were related to the con troversy, but hardly belong to it. Whiston was a man of active and original mind, which led him outside the established church, but in a direction of his own, different from that of Toland or Tindal. He was opposed to ra tionalism, and a believer in prophecy and miracle; but he came to the conclusion that the Arian heresy represented the true and primitive Christian creed. His views are fully developed in Primitive Christianity Revived (1711 12); but they had previously become notorious, and had led in 1710 to his being deprived of the Cambridge professorship in which he had succeeded Newton. He founded a society to promote the true faith, as he held it, and composed a revised liturgy for its use; and he wrote on a variety of topics, not all of them theological. His translation of Josephus (1737), however, has proved of more lasting value than his original works. Conyers Middleton, on the other hand, showed how near a clergy man might come to the deistical position. He was im mersed in the controversy, and he did something to infuse into it a new historical spirit. The whole tendency of his contributions, however, was critical and destructive. He separated himself from most apologists of the day by denying verbal inspiration; and he examined and rejected the evidence for the ecclesiastical miracles in a manner which admitted of wider application. This argument is contained in his most important theological work, entitled A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are sup posed to have existed in the Christian Church through several successive Ages (i 748). Of the content of religion Middle- ton takes little account, except as a bulwark of the social order. His work shows that interest, was drifting away
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from the question of content, from which it had started, towards the question of external evidences which suited so well the genius of the later eighteenth century.
Among the opponents of the deists, the two greatest were Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler. Their contribu tions to the thought of the period are reserved for dis cussion in the last section of this chapter. Of the others some have been already referred to; most do not call for more than bibliographical mention ; but one name figures so largely in the controversy as to require further notice. By his learning, but still more by his mental vigour and resource, William Warburton made an impression upon his time which is not yet forgotten. He was born in 1698 and died in 1779. Bred in a solicitor s office, he took orders without having passed through a university, and, after other preferments, became bishop of Gloucester in 1759. He was ready for almost any kind of literary work controversy preferred. He wrote The Alliance between Church and State (1736); defended the orthodoxy of Pope s Essay on Man; edited Shakespeare (1747); pub lished a hostile View of Lord Eolingbroke s Philosophy (1754), and had the courage to write Remarks on Hume s Natural History of Religion (1757). His most famous work was The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist (1737 41). This vast work, which was never completed, was designed to meet a deistical objection to the Old Testament Scriptures that the books of Moses contain no reference to the doctrine of a future life. An objection of this sort does not seem to have been prominent in the writings of the greater deists; but it suited Warburton s purpose and enabled him to propound an ingenious paradox. He agrees that morality needs the support of a belief in a future life of rewards and punishments; he agrees that Moses did not appeal to any such belief or teach any such doctrine, although it was common among ancient authors of other countries. But just this, he argues, proves the divine
VII] SAMUEL CLARKE 155
legation of the lawgiver. The laws of nature are an in sufficient support for morality; without the belief in a future life government cannot be maintained except by miracle. The absence of the belief among the Jews is, therefore, taken as a proof that they were under the im mediate providence of God, working by means outside natural law. The defence of this paradoxical theory gave Warburton ample scope for displaying his learning and his controversial talent on a great variety of topics, the relevance of which is not always apparent. Of his learning, Bentley said that he had a "monstrous appetite and bad digestion." His ability to get up a case and score a point has been traced to his legal training; a critic of his own day attributed to the same source some of the coarser and more violent features of his controversial method. Of insight into history, philosophy, or religion, he does not seem to have had any conspicuous share.
III. MORALISTS
Samuel Clarke was not a man of original genius ; but, by sheer intellectual power, he came to occupy a leading position in English philosophy and theology. He touched the higher thought of the day at almost every point. The new physics, deism, the trinitarian controversy, biblical and classical study all occupied him. Only as to Locke, and the new turn which Locke gave to many problems, he never defined his position. Fie was born in 1675 and died in 1729. In 1697 he published an annotated Latin translation of the Cartesian Renault s Traite de -physique^ and thereby prepared the way, as he intended to do, for the reception of Newton s works as text-books at Cambridge; he also translated Newton s Optics. In 1699 his controversies with the deists began, with Toland s Amyntor for a text. In 1 704 and 1 705 he delivered two courses of Boyle Lectures, entitled, respectively, A De monstration of the Being and Attributes of Goo 7 , and A Dis course concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural
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Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. He published editions of Caesar s Commen taries (1712) and Homer s Iliad (1729), as well as many books of biblical exegesis. His treatise entitled The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) brought upon him the accusation of Arianism, and led to trouble with Con vocation. In 1715 1 6 he was engaged in a controversy with Leibniz, which arose from a comment of the latter on a remark of Newton s in which space was spoken of as the sensorium of God, branched out into fundamental questions of metaphysics, and came to an end only with the death of the German philosopher.
Clarke s Boyle Lectures may be safely reckoned his greatest work. They contain little that is strikingly new; but the arrangement of the separate points and the logical consecutiveness of the whole are masterly; and they show, nearly always, an elevation of tone and clearness of phrase which were often lacking in the controversies of the age. Clarke arranges his argument in a series of propositions which he first states and then proceeds to demonstrate; but otherwise he did not imitate mathematical method, as Descartes and Spinoza had done. Nor did he, like Descartes, rely on the purely ontological argument. He argued from existence not from idea: maintaining that there must be a self-existent being to account for existing things, and then going on to show the attributes which must belong to this self-existent being. When he has to prove that intelligence and wisdom are among these attri butes, he relies expressly on a posteriori reasoning. The whole argument therein resembling Locke s belongs to the cosmological variety. Clarke s system has been represented as only a less logical Spinozism; but the com parison is superficial. One salient point of resemblance the view of space as an attribute of God means something different in the two systems; for Clarke does not identify space with matter. And the method of his argument leaves room for the recognition of freedom and for a
vn] CLARKE S ETHICAL THEORY 157
distinction of morality from nature, which were impossible for Spinoza.
Clarke s theory of morality has exerted a more per manent influence, and shows more traces of originality, than any of his other doctrines. He had an idea of a moral universe constituted by moral relations, analogous to the physical relations of the physical universe. There are certain "fitnesses of things" over and above their merely physical relations: "there is," he says, "a fitness or suitableness of certain circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitableness of others, founded in the nature of things and in the qualities of persons, antecedent to will and to all arbitrary or positive appointment whatsoever." Many illustrations are given of these " relations of things" ; but their nature is not further explained. Fitness, agreement, suitableness are the terms by which they are described. They differ, therefore, from the causal re lations with which physical science is concerned. They indicate a different aspect the moral aspect of reality. But they are known in the same way by reason. As they are in themselves, so they appear to be to the under standing of all intelligent beings. And, so far as they are intelligent, all reasonable beings guide their conduct by them. God is a free being; but, being rational, it is im possible that he can act against them: he is, therefore, necessarily good. The same relations ought to determine human conduct; but the will of man is deflected by his passions and particular interests, and his understanding is imperfect, so that moral error is possible and common. For this reason also the obligation of virtue needs the support of religion.
Clarke thus gave a new reading of an old doctrine. The view that morality is not arbitrary, but belongs to the order of the universe, had found frequent expression in theories of the law of nature ; Cudworth, influenced by Platonic idealism, had insisted that the nature or essence of things is immutable, and that good and evil are qualities
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which belong to that essence; Clarke goes one step further in holding that goodness is a certain congruity of one thing with another, or rather of a person with a thing a relation as eternal as is the nature of the things 1 . But he gave no further definition of this congruity, beyond the description of it by a variety of terms. That it needed very careful statement became obvious from some of the con sequences drawn by his followers. His views were de fended, against the first of a new school of psychological moralists, by John Balguy, in The Foundation of Moral Goodness (1727 8). Still earlier, William Wollaston, in his Religion of Nature delineated (1722), had given point to the intellectualism of the moral theory propounded by Clarke. What Clarke had called fitness was interpreted by him as an actual existing relation or quality. A wrong act he held to be simply the assertion in conduct of a false proposition. Thus, "if a man steals a horse and rides away upon him," he does not "consider him as being what he is," namely, another man s horse; and "to deny things to be as they are is the transgression of the great law of our nature, the law of reason." Bentham s criticism
1 Clarke does not refer to Locke; but both seem to have been influenced by Cudworth, and their views may be compared. Both held (l) that moral relations are apprehended intuitively, (2) that they are to be conceived as laws of God, (3) that they need reinforcement by reli gious sanctions. They differ, however, in the way in which they would have interpreted the second point. Locke speaks, indeed, of the ideas of God and ourselves as the " foundations of our duty " ; but his examples of moral rules do not in any way involve the idea of God (Essay, iv, iii, 18). Clarke, on the other hand, attempts to show "how the nature and will of God himself must be necessarily good and just," and he holds that the difference between good and evil is " antecedent to all laws " (Being and Attributes, p. 125) whereas Locke s notion of moral good and evil depends upon a reference to law (n, xxviii, 5). He would have agreed with Locke s statement that moral knowledge is concerned with " the congruity and incongruity of the things themselves" (in, xi, 16), but Locke s reason for this statement that these "moral things," being mixed modes," are of "man s making" (in, xi, 15) would not have satisfied him.
VII] THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY 159
of this is hardly a caricature: " if you were to murder your own father, this would only be a particular way of saying he was not your father."
A more fruitful line of ethical thought was entered upon by Clarke s contemporary, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, grandson of the first earl, Locke s patron, and himself educated under Locke s supervision. He was debarred by weak health from following an active political career, and his life was thus mainly devoted to intellectual interests. After two or three unhappy years of school life at Win chester, he travelled abroad, chiefly in Italy, with a tutor; in early manhood he resided in Holland; in later life his health drove him to Italy once more. He was an ardent student of the classics, especially of Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, a devotee of liberty in thought and in political affairs, and an amateur of art at once a philo sopher and a virtuoso. His writings were published in three volumes, entitled Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, in 1711; a second edition, carefully re vised and enlarged, was ready at the time of his death in 1713. Several of the treatises comprised in these volumes had been previously published. The most important of them, An Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit, was surrep titiously printed from an early draft, in 1 699, by Toland whom he had befriended and financed; The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody appeared in 1709; A Letter con cerning Enthusiasm in 1708; Sensus Communis : an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in 1709; Soliloquy : or Advice to an Author in 1710. Two of the treatises in later editions were posthumous: A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, 1713, and Miscellaneous Reflections, 1714. Long afterwards, a work entitled Philosophical Regimen was published in 1900, and a volume of Second Characters or the Language of Forms in 1913. Shaftesbury s style is nearly always clear, and it has the great merit of avoiding traditional technicalities; but it is over-polished and often artificial
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too genteel, as Lamb said. Its decorations pleased con temporary taste; but the rhapsodies of The Moralists fall coldly on the modern ear, and the virtuoso has obscured the philosopher.
Shaftesbury was reckoned among the deists, and per haps not without reason, though his first publication was an introduction to the sermons of Whichcote, the Cam bridge Platonist, and he remained a churchman to the end. His sympathies were with that spiritual view of the world which is common to Christianity and to Plato and Marcus Aurelius. He had no taste for the refinements of theo logical controversy or for modern religious fanaticisms. He hated still more the method of suppressing the latter by persecution; and this led to his suggestion that they would be better met if their absurdities were left to ridi cule. He never said that ridicule was the test of truth; but he did regard it as a specific against superstition ; and some of his comments, in illustration of this thesis, not unnaturally gave offence. He himself, however, was not without enthusiasms, as is shown by his concern for the good of his friends and his country and by his devotion to his view of truth.
For him the enemy was the selfish theory of conduct, which he found not in Hobbes only but also, in a more insinuating form, in Locke. His own ethical writings were intended to show that the system of man s nature did not point to selfishness. There are affections in man which have regard to his own interest or happiness; but there are also social (or, as he calls them, natural) affections which are directed to the good of the species to which he belongs; and he labours to prove that there is no conflict between the two systems. And the mind of man has a still higher reach. "The natural affection of a rational creature " will take in the universe, so that he will love all things that have being in the world: for, in the universal design of things, "nothing is supernumerary or unnecessary"; "the whole is harmony, the numbers entire, the music perfect."
VII] FRANCIS HUTCHESON l6l
Further, the mind of man is itself in harmony with the cosmic order. Connate in it is a "sense of right and wrong," to which Shaftesbury gives the name "the moral sense." And it is for his doctrine of the moral sense that he is now most often remembered. In his own century his writings attained remarkable popularity: Berkeley (in Alciphrori) was one of his severest critics; Leibniz and Diderot were among his warmest admirers.
The doctrine of the moral sense led to immediate de velopment, especially at the hands of Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson, a native of Ulster, was educated at the Uni versity of Glasgow, and in 1729 returned there as pro fessor of moral philosophy. Among the more notable British philosophers he was the first to occupy a pro fessor s chair; and his lectures are said by Dugald Stewart "to have contributed very powerfully to diffuse, in Scot land, that taste for analytical discussion, and that spirit of liberal enquiry, to which the world is indebted for some of the most valuable productions of the eighteenth cen tury." Before his appointment as professor Hutcheson had published two volumes An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), and An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1726) each containing two treatises. Text-books on logic, metaphysics, and ethics followed; his System of Moral Philosophy (1755) was pub lished after his death. The ideas of Shaftesbury reappear in these works in a somewhat more systematic form, but without his metaphysical basis and with an increased tendency towards a psychological interpretation of them. Hutcheson maintained the disinterestedness of benevo lence; he assimilated moral and aesthetic judgments; he elaborated the doctrine of the moral sense, sometimes speaking of it as merely a new source of pleasure or pain ; and he identified virtue with universal benevolence: in the tendency towards general happiness he found the standard of goodness. In this respect he was historically
s. E. P.
1 62 BERKELEY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES [CH.
the forerunner of the utilitarians. In his first work he even used the formula "the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers" afterwards, with only a slight verbal change, made famous by Bentham 1 . He anticipated Bentham, also, in the attempt to form a calculus of pleasures and pains.
Hutcheson s first work was described on the title-page as a defence of Shaftesbury against the author of The Fable of the Be.s. In 1705 Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch physician resident in London, had published a pamphlet of some four hundred lines of doggerel verse entitled The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turned Honest. This was re- published as a volume in 1714, together with "an inquiry into the original of moral virtue" and "remarks" on the original verses, and again in 1723 with further additions the whole bearing the title The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Fices, Public Benefits. Mandeville marks a reaction against the too facile optimism which was common with the deists and to which Shaftesbury gave philosophical expression, and against the conventions associated with popular morality. But he did not draw nice distinctions: convention and morality are equally the objects of his satire. He was clever enough to detect the luxury and vice that gather round the industrial system, and perverse enough to mistake them for its foundation. He reverted to Hobbes s selfish theory of human nature, but was without Hobbes s grasp of the principle of order. He looked upon man as a compound of various passions, governed by each as it comes uppermost, and he held that "the moral virtues are the political offspring which
1 Hutcheson, Inquiry, p. 164. Although Bentham thought and said (Works, x, 46, 142) that he got the formula from Priestley, it is not to be found in Priestley s works, and was, almost certainly> taken from Beccaria. Beccaria s words (Dei Delitti e delle Pene, 1764) were la massima felicitci divisa nel maggior numero, and these were rendered in the English transla tion (1767) by "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" the exact words which Bentham first used in 1776. The dependence of Beccaria on Hutcheson is not established.
VII] JOSEPH BUTLER 163
flattery begot upon pride." The combination of ability and coarseness with which this view was developed led to many other answers than Hutcheson s. Berkeley re plied in Alctphron\ and William Law, as his manner was, went to the heart of the matter in a brilliant pamphlet, Remarks upon a late book, entituled The Fable of the Bees (1723). Law also made his mark in the deist controversy by The Case of Reason (1731), a reply to Tindal, in which he anticipated the line of argument soon afterwards worked out by Butler.
Joseph Butler, bishop of Durham during the last two years (1750 52) of his life, did not make any contribu tions to pure metaphysics; but his is the greatest name both in the theological and in the ethical thought of the period. He published two books only a volume of Fifteen Sermons (1726), which (in particular, the first three sermons, entitled on human nature ) express his ethical system, and The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736). These works are without any pretentions to literary elegance; and it is only in rare passages that the usually sombre style glows with the fire of restrained eloquence. But they are com pact of profound thought. The names of other writers are rarely mentioned; but all their arguments have been con sidered; no difficulties are slurred over, and no opinion is accepted without being probed to the bottom. There is an air of completeness and finality about the reasoning, which needs no grace of diction.
Butler s condensed and weighty argument hardly ad mits of summary. Yet his view of things as a whole may be expressed in the one word teleological. Human nature is a system or constitution ; the same is true of the world at large; and both point to an end or purpose. This is his guiding idea, suggested by Shaftesbury, to whom due credit is given; and it enables him to rise from a refutation of the selfish theory of Hobbes to the truth that man s nature or constitution is adapted to virtue. The old
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argument about selfish or disinterested affections is lifted to a higher plane. He shows that the characteristic of impulse, or the particular passions, is to seek an object, not to seek pleasure, while pleasure results from the at tainment of the object desired. Human nature, however, is not impulsive merely; there are also reflective principles by which the tendency of impulses is judged and their value appraised. On this level selfishness is possible; but self-love is not the only reflective principle of conduct; beside it stands the moral sense or, as Butler preferred to call it, conscience. The claim to rule, or "superinten- dency" (a point overlooked by Shaftesbury), is of the very nature of conscience; and, although Butler labours to prove the harmony of the dictates of the two principles, it is to conscience that he assigns ultimate authority. It is true that, in an oft-quoted sentence, he admits "that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this [/ .., moral rectitude] or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it." But, even if we disregard the "let it be allowed" that introduces the admission, the single sentence is hardly sufficient to justify the assertion that Butler held the authority of self-love to be equal to, or higher than, that of conscience. The passage is, rather, a momentary concession to the selfish spirit of the age; and it has to be interpreted in the light of his frequent assertions of the natural superiority of conscience. "To preside and govern, from the very economy and constitu tion of man, belongs to it," he says. "Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world."
Since the essence of human nature is expressed in this spiritual principle, Butler is able to justify the assertion that man is adapted to virtue. But here his ethics may be said almost to stop short. He does not explain further the nature of conscience in relation to reason and will, or derive from it, in any systematic way, the content of
vn] BUTLER S ANALOGY 165
morality. In his first work the conduct approved by con science seemed to be identified with benevolent actions or such as aimed at the common good. But in the "Disser tation on Virtue" appended to The Analogy, he took a different view. "Without enquiring how far, and in what sense, virtue is resolvable into benevolence," he main tained that "we are so constituted as to condemn false hood, unprovoked violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to some preferably to others, abstracted from all consideration which conduct is likeliest to produce an overbalance of happiness or misery." Butler did not work out a system ; he was distrustful of any attempt at a com plete philosophy, and resigned to accept probability as the guide of life.
The same fundamental conception and the same limita tion reappear in Butler s still more famous work, The Analogy. The world is a system " a scheme in which means are made use of to accomplish ends, and which is carried on by general laws." It is neglect of this truth which makes men think that particular instances of suffer ing virtue or successful vice are inconsistent with "the wisdom, justice, and goodness of the constitution of nature." In the constitution and government of the world, nature and morality are so closely connected as to form a single scheme, in which "it is highly probable that the first is formed and carried on merely in subserviency to the latter." The imperfections of our knowledge make it impossible to demonstrate this in detail. But grant, as the deists granted, that God is the author of nature, and it can then be shown that there is no difficulty in the doctrines of religion, whether natural or revealed, which has not a parallel difficulty in the principle common to both sides in the argument. This is the analogy to the establishment of which in detail Butler s reasonings are directed. They are so exhaustive, so thorough, and so candid, that critics of all schools are agreed in regarding his as the final word in a great controversy.
CHAPTER VIII
DAVID HUME
OF David Hume and Adam Smith it has been truthfully said that "there was no third person writing the English language during the same period, who has had so much influence upon the opinions of mankind as either of these two men 1 ." There were many other writers on the same or cognate subjects, who made important contributions to the literature of thought; but Hume and Adam Smith tower above them all both in intellectual greatness and in the permanent influence of their work.
In the sketch of his Own Life, which he wrote a few months before his death, Hume says that he was "seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments." Another document of much earlier date (1734), which Hume himself revealed to no one, but which has been discovered and printed by his biographer 2 , gives us a clear insight into the nature of this literary ambition and of the obstacles to its satisfaction. This is his own account of his motive and aims: "As our college educa tion in Scotland, extending little further than the lan guages, ends commonly when we are about fourteen or fifteen years of age, I was after that left to my own choice in my reading, and found it incline me almost equally to books of reasoning and philosophy, and to poetry and the polite authors. Every one who is acquainted either with the philosophers or critics, knows that there is nothing yet established in either of these two sciences, and that they contain little more than endless disputes, even in the
1 J. H. Burton, Life and Correspondence of David Hume, i, p. 117.
2 Ibid, i, pp. 30-39.
CH. vni] HUME S RULING PASSION 167
most fundamental articles. Upon examination of these, I found a certain boldness of temper growing in me, which was not inclined to submit to any authority in these sub jects, but led me to seek out some new medium by which truth might be established. After much study and re flection on this, at last, when I was about eighteen years of age, there seemed to be opened up to me a new scene of thought, which transported me beyond measure, and made me, with an ardour natural to young men, throw up every other pleasure or business to apply entirely to it. ...Having now time and leisure to cool my inflamed imagination, I began to consider seriously how I should proceed in my philosophical inquiries. I found that... every one consulted his fancy in erecting schemes of virtue and of happiness, without regarding human nature, upon which every moral conclusion must depend. This, therefore, I resolved to make my principal study, and the source from which I would derive every truth in criticism as well as morality." These passages show, not only that Hume s ambition was entirely literary, but also that his literary ambition was centred in philosophy and that he was convinced he held in his grasp a key to its problems. Literary ambition never ceased to be Hume s ruling pas sion, and it brought him fame and even affluence. But his early enthusiasm for the discovery of truth seems to have been damped by the reception of his first and greatest work, or by the intellectual contradiction to which his arguments led, or by both causes combined. In philo sophy he never made any real advance upon his first work, A Treatise of Human Nature \ his later efforts were devoted to presenting its arguments in a more perfect and more popular literary form, or to toning down their destruc tive results, and to the application of his ideas to questions of economics, politics, and religion, as well as to winning a new reputation for himself in historical composition.
His career contained few incidents that need to be recorded beyond the publication of his books. He was
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born at Edinburgh on 26 April 1711, the younger son of a country gentleman of good family but small property. His "passion for literature" led to his early desertion of the study of law; when he was twenty-three, he tried commerce as a cure for the state of morbid depression in which severe study had landed him, and also, no doubt, as a means of livelihood. But, after a few months in a merchant s office at Bristol, he resolved to make frugality supply his deficiency of fortune, and settled in France, chiefly at La Fleche, where, more than a century before, Descartes had been educated at the Jesuit college. But he never mentions this connection with Descartes; he was occupied with other thoughts; and, after three years, in 1737, he came home to arrange for the publication of A Treatise of Human Nature, the first two volumes of which appeared in January 1739. If the book did not literally, as Hume put it, fall "dead-born from the press," it excited little attention; the only literary notice it re ceived entirely failed to appreciate its significance. He was bitterly disappointed, but continued the preparation for the press of his third volume, " Of Morals." This appeared in 1740; and in 1741 he published a volume of Essays Moral and Political, which reached a second edition and was supplemented by a second volume in 1742. The success of these essays gratified Hume s literary ambition, and perhaps had a good deal to do with the direction of his activity towards the application and popularisation of his reflections rather than to further criticism of their basis. About this time Hume resided, for the most part, at the paternal estate (now belonging to his brother) of Ninewells in Berwickshire; but he was making efforts to secure an independent income: he failed twice to obtain a university professorship; he spent a troublesome year as tutor to a lunatic nobleman; he accompanied General St Clair as his secretary on his expedition to France in 1746, and on a mission to Vienna and Turin in 1748. In the latter year was published a third volume of Essays
VIII] LIFE AND WRITINGS
Moral and Political, and also Philosophical Essays con cerning Human Understanding, afterwards (1758) entitled An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in which the reasonings of book i of A Treatise of Human Nature were presented in a revised but incomplete form. A second edition of this work appeared in 1751, and, in the same year, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (founded upon book in of the Treatise] which, in the opinion of the author, was of all his "writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best." A few months later (February 1752), he published a volume of Political Dis courses which, he said, was "the only work of mine that was successful on the first publication." According to Burton 1 , it "introduced Hume to the literature of the continent." It was translated into French in 1753 and again in 1754. In 1752 he was appointed keeper of the advocates library a post which made a small addition to his modest income and enabled him to carry out his historical work. In 1 753 4 appeared Essays and Treatises on several subjects , these included his various writings other than the Treatise and the History, and, after many changes, attained their final form in the edition of 1777. The new material added to them in later editions con sisted chiefly of Four Dissertations published in 1757. The subjects of these dissertations were the natural history of religion, the passions (founded on book n of the Treatise}, tragedy, and taste. Essays on suicide and on immortality had been originally designed for this volume, but were hurriedly withdrawn on the eve of publication.
For more than two years, 1763 to 1765, Hume acted as secretary to the English embassy at Paris, where he was received with extraordinary enthusiasm by the court and by literary society. "Here," he wrote, "I feed on am brosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe incense only, and walk on flowers." He returned to London in January 1766, accompanied by Rousseau, whom he had befriended 1 Life and Correspondence of Hume, i, p. 365.
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and who, a few months later, repaid his kindness by pro voking one of the most famous of quarrels between men of letters. Before the close of the year he was again in Scotland, but, in the following year, was recalled to London as under-secretary of state, and it was not till 1769 that he finally settled in Edinburgh. There he re joined a society less brilliant and original than that he had left in Paris, but possessed of a distinction of its own. Prominent among his friends were Robertson, Hugh Blair, and others of the clergy men of high character and literary reputation, and representative of a religious attitude, known in Scotland as moderatism 1 , which did not disturb the serenity of Hume. He died on 25 August 1776.
After his death his Own Life was published by Adam Smith (1777), and his Dialogues concerning Natural Re ligion by his nephew David (1779). We hear of these Dialogues more than twenty years earlier; but he was dissuaded from publishing them at the time, though he was concerned that they should not be lost and subjected the manuscript to repeated and careful revision. His philosophical activity may be said to have come to an end in 1757 with the publication of Four Dissertations, when he was forty-six years old. In spite of many criticisms he refused to be drawn into controversy; but, in an "ad vertisement " to the final edition of Essays and Treatises, he protested with some irritation against criticisms of A Treatise of Human Nature "the juvenile work which the Author never acknowledged."
This disclaimer of his earliest and greatest work is interesting as a revelation of Hume s character, but cannot affect philosophical values. If he had written nothing else, and this book alone had been read, the influence of his ideas on general literature would have been less marked; but his claim to rank as the greatest of English philoso-
1 For a definition of moderatism by an observer of its decline, see Lord Cockburn s Journal, n, pp. 289-291.
VIII] METHOD OF ENQUIRY 1 71
phers would not be seriously affected : it would be recog nised that he had carried out a line of thought to its final issue, and the effect upon subsequent speculation would have been, in essentials, what it has been.
Hume is quite clear as to the method of his enquiry. He recognised that Locke and others had anticipated him in the "attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects." Locke had also opened the way for deriving a system of philosophy from the science of the human mind; but Hume far excelled him in the thoroughness and consistency with which he fol lowed this way. Locke s express purpose was to examine the understanding that he might discover "the utmost extent of its tether." He does not doubt that knowledge can signify a reality outside the mind; but he wishes to determine the range of this cognitive power. From the outset Hume conceives the problem in a wider manner. All knowledge is a fact or process of human nature; if we are able, therefore, "to explain the principles of human nature," we shall "in effect propose a complete system of the sciences." Without doubt this utterance points back to his early discovery of a "new medium by which truth might be established" a discovery which, at the age of eighteen, had transported him beyond measure. In saying that "a complete system of the sciences " would result from "the principles of human nature," Hume did not mean that the law of gravitation or the circulation of the blood could be discovered from an examination of the understanding and the emotions. His meaning was that, when the sciences are brought into system, certain general features are found to characterise them; and the explana tion of these general features is to be sought in human nature in other words, in our ways of knowing and feel ing. His statement, accordingly, comes simply to this, that mental science, or what we now call psychology, takes the place of philosophy is itself philosophy.
Hume is commonly, and correctly, regarded as having
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worked out to the end the line of thought started by Locke. But, in the width of his purpose, the thoroughness of its elaboration, and his clear consciousness of his task, he may be compared with Hobbes a writer who had little direct effect upon his thought. For Hume is Hobbes inverted. The latter interprets the inner world the world of life and thought by means of the external or material world, whose impact gives rise to the motions which we call perception and volition. Hume, on the other hand, will assume nothing about external reality, but interprets it by means of the impressions or ideas of which we are all immediately conscious. And, as Hobbes saw all things under the rule of mechanical law, so Hume also has a universal principle of connection. "Here," he says, that is to say, among ideas, "is a kind of Attraction, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to shew itself in as many and as various forms." The law of gravitation finds its parallel in the law of the association of ideas; as the movements of masses are explained by the former, so the latter is used to account for the grouping of mental phenomena.
In enumerating these mental facts he modifies the doctrine of Locke. According to Locke the material of knowledge comes from two different sources sensation and reflection. The view hardly admitted of statement without postulating both a mental and a material world existing over against one another. Hume tries to avoid any such postulate. His primary data are all of one kind ; he calls them "impressions," and says that they arise "from unknown causes." Ideas are distinguished from impressions by their lesser degree of " force and liveli ness." Hume makes the generalisation that " every simple idea has a simple impression which resembles it"; an idea is thus the "faint image" of an impression; and there are degrees of this faintness : the " more lively and strong " are ideas of memory, the weaker are ideas of imagination. Further, certain ideas, in some unexplained way, reappear
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with the force and liveliness of impressions, or, as Hume puts it, "produce the new impressions" which he calls "impressions of reflection" and which he enumerates as passions, desires, and emotions. Reflection is thus derived from sensation, although its impressions in their turn give rise to new ideas. All mental facts (in Hume s language, all "^perceptions") are derived from sense-impressions, and these arise from unknown causes. Simple ideas are distinguished from simple impressions merely by their comparative lack of force and liveliness; but these fainter data tend to group themselves in an order different from that of their corresponding impressions. By this "asso ciation of ideas " are formed the complex ideas of relations, modes, and substances.
Such are the elements of Hume s account of human nature; out of these elements he has to explain knowledge and morality; and this explanation is, at the same time, to be "a complete system of the sciences." He is fully alive to the problem. In knowledge ideas are connected together by other relations than the "association" which rules imagination; and he proceeds at once to an enquiry into "all those qualities which make objects admit of com parison." These he calls "philosophical relations," and he arranges them under seven general heads : resemblance, identity, space and time, quantity, degree of quality, con trariety, cause and effect.
All scientific propositions are regarded as expressing one or other of these relations. Hume regards the classi fication as exhaustive; and, at least, it is sufficient to form a comprehensive test of his theory. Since we have nothing to go upon but ideas and the impressions from which I ideas originate, how are we to explain knowledge of these s relations? Hume s enquiry did not answer this question even to his own satisfaction; but it set a problem which has had to be faced by every subsequent thinker, and it has led many to adopt the sceptical conclusion in which the author himself finally landed.
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The " philosophical relations," under his analysis, fall into two groups. On the one hand, some of them depend entirely on the ideas compared: these are resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, and proportions in quantity or number. On the other hand, the relations of identity, space and time, and causation may be changed without any change in the ideas related; our knowledge of them thus presents an obvious difficulty, for it cannot be derived from the ideas themselves. Hume does not take much trouble with the former class of relations, in which this difficulty does not arise. He is content to follow on Locke s lines and to think that general propositions of demon strative certainty are obviously possible here, seeing that we are merely stating a relationship clearly apparent in the ideas themselves. He does not ask whether the rela tion is or is not a new idea, and, if it is, how it can be explained from what impression it took its rise. And he gives no explanation of the fixed and permanent char acter attributed to an idea when it is made the subject of a universal proposition.
It is important to note, however, that he does not follow Locke in holding that mathematics is a science which is at once demonstrative and instructive. The propositions of geometry concern spatial relations, and our idea of space is received " from the disposition of visible and tangible objects"; we have "no idea of space or extension but when we regard it as an object either of our sight or feeling" (i.e., touch); and in these perceptions we can never attain exactness: "our appeal is still to the weak and fallible judgment which we make from the appearance of the objects, and correct by a compass or common measure." Geometry, therefore, is an empirical science; it is founded on observations of approximate accuracy only, though the variations from the normal in our obser vations may be neutralised in the general propositions which we form. Hume did not apply the same doctrine to arithmetic, on the ground (which his principles do not
VIII] RELATIONS AND MATTERS OF FACT 175
justify) that the unit is something unique. He was thus able to count quantity and number in his first class of relations and to except algebra and arithmetic from the effect of his subtle analysis of the foundations of geometry. In his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, however, he de serts, without a word of justification, the earlier view which he had worked out with much care and ingenuity, and treats mathematics generally as the great example of demonstrative reasoning. In this later work, in which completeness is sacrificed to the presentation of salient features, he speaks, not of two kinds of relations, but of "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact"; and, in each, he seeks to save something from the general ruin of the sciences to which his premisses lead. The last paragraph of the book sets forth his conclusion: "When we run over our libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
This passage, startling and ruthless as it sounds, is chiefly remarkable for its reservations. It was easy to condemn "divinity or school metaphysics" as illusory; they had for long been common game. But to challenge the validity of mathematics or of natural science was quite another matter. Hume did not temper the wind to the shorn lamb; but he took care that it should not visit too roughly the sturdy wethers of the flock. Yet we have seen that, according to his principles, mathematics rests upon observations which fall short of accuracy, while natural science, with its "experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact," depends upon the relation of cause and effect.
The examination of this relation occupies a central posi-
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tion in both his works; and its influence upon subsequent thought has been so great as sometimes to obscure the importance of other factors in his philosophy. He faced a problem into which Locke had hardly penetrated, and of which even Berkeley had had only a partial view. What do we mean when we say that one thing is cause and another thing its effect, and what right have we to that meaning? In sense-perception we have impressions of flame and of heat, for instance; but why do we say that the flame causes the heat, what ground is there for as serting any "necessary connection" between them? The connection cannot^ be derived Jrom any comparison of the ideas of flame a.ndof heat ; it must come From impression, therefoTe^ but there is no separate impression of cause or causation which could serve as the link between two objects. What then is the origin of the connection? To use the terminology of the Enquiry, since cause is not a "relation of ideas," it must be a "matter of fact" an impression. But it is not itself a separate or simple im pression; it must therefore be due to the mode or manner in which impressions occur. In our experience we are accustomed to find flame and heat combined; we pass constantly from one to the other; and the custom becomes so strong that, whenever the impression of flame occurs, the idea of heat follows. Then we mistake this mental or subjective connection for an objective connection. Neces sary connection is not in the objects, but only in the mind; yet custom is too strong for us, and we attribute it to the objects.
This is a simple statement of the central argument of Hume s most famous discussion. The "powers" which Locke attributed to bodies must be denied as Berkeley denied them. The consciousness of spiritual activity on which Berkeley relied is equally illusory on Hume s principles. " If we reason a -priori" says Hume, "any thing may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun,
VIII] THE ANALYSIS OF CAUSATION 177
or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits." This striking utterance is, strictly, little better than a truism. No philosopher ever supposed that such know ledge about definite objects could be got in any other way than by experience. But Hume s negative criticism goes much deeper than this. We have no right to say that the extinction of the sun needs any cause at all, or that causa tion is a principle that holds of objects; all events are loose and separate. The only connection which we have a right to assert is that of an idea with an impression or with other ideas the subjective routine which is called asso ciation of ideas. Hume s constructive theory of causa tion is an explanation of how we come to suppose that there is causal connection in the world, although there is really nothing more than customary association in our minds.
If we admit Hume s fundamental assumption about impressions and ideas, it is impossible to deny the general validity of this reasoning. Any assertion of a causal con nection the whole structure of natural science therefore is simply a misinterpretation of certain mental processes. At the outset Hume himself had spoken of impressions as arising from "unknown causes"; and some expres sions of the sort were necessary to give his theory a start and to carry the reader along with him ; but they are really empty words. Experience is confined to impressions and ideas; causation is an attitude towards them produced by custom by the mode of sequence of our perceptions; its applicability is only within the range of impressions or ideas; to talk of an impression as caused by something that is neither impression nor idea may have a very real meaning for any philosopher except Hume; but for Hume it cannot have any meaning at all.
The discussion of causation brings out another and still more general doctrine held by Hume his theory of belief. When I say that flame causes heat, I do not refer to a connection of ideas in my own mind; I am expressing
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belief in an objective connection independent of my mental processes. But Hume s theory of causation re duces the connection to a subjective routine. Now, some other impression than flame might precede the idea of heat the impression cold, for instance. How is it, then, that I do not assert cold causes heat ? The sequence cold heat may be equally real in my mind with the sequence flame heat. How is it that the former does not give rise to belief in the way that the latter does? Hume would say that the only difference is that the asso ciation in the former case is less direct and constant than in the latter (in which the association had been set a-going by the repeated sequence of impression upon impression), and thus leads to an idea of less force and liveliness. Belief, accordingly, is simply a lively idea associated with a present impression. It belongs to the sensitive, not to the rational, part of our nature. And yet it marks the fundamental distinction between judgment and imagina tion.
In the Treatise, at any rate, there is no faltering of purpose or weakening of power when the author proceeds to apply his principles to the fabric of knowledge. It is impossible, in this place, to follow his subtle and compre hensive argument; but its issue is plain. With objections not unlike Berkeley s he dismisses the independent ex istence of bodies, and then he turns a similar train of reasoning against the reality of the self: " When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist 1 ." According to Hume s own illustration, the mind is but the stage on which perceptions pass
1 A Treatise of Human Nature, i, iv, 6.
Vlll] THE SCEPTICAL RESULT 179
and mingle and glide away. Or rather, there is no stage at all, but only a phantasmagory of impressions and ideas.
Hume s purpose was constructive; but the issue, as he faces it, is sceptical. And he is a genuine sceptic; for even as to his scepticism he is not dogmatic. Why should he assent to his own reasoning? he asks; and he answers, " I can give no reason why I should assent to it, and feel nothing but a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view." The propensity, however, is strong only when the " bent of mind " is in a certain direction; a dinner, a game of backgammon, makes such speculations appear ridiculous; and "nature" suffices to "obliterate all these chimeras." A year later Hume referred again to this sceptical impasse, in an appendix to the third volume of his Treatise 1 ; and there, with remarkable insight, he diagnosed the causes of his own failure. The passage de serves quotation, seeing that it has been often overlooked and is, nevertheless, one of the most significant utterances in the history of philosophy. " In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences^ and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real con nexion among them, there would be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess that this difficulty is too hard for my under standing. I pretend not, however, to pronounce it abso lutely insuperable. Others, perhaps, or myself, upon more mature reflexions, may discover some hypothesis that will reconcile those contradictions." Hume himself seems to have made no further attempt to solve the problem. His followers have been content to build their systems on his foundation, with minor improvements of their own, but 1 Ed. Green and Grose, i, p. 559; ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 636.
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without overcoming or facing the fundamental difficulty which he saw and expressed.
The logical result of his analysis is far from leading to that " complete system of the sciences " which he had anticipated from his "new medium"; it leads, not to reconstruction, but to a sceptical disintegration of know ledge; and he was clearsighted enough to see this result. Thenceforward scepticism became the characteristic atti tude of his mind and of his writings. But his later works exhibit a less thorough scepticism than that to which his thinking led. Even his Enquiry concerning Human Under standing shows a weakening of the sceptical attitude, in the direction of a " mitigated scepticism " which resem bles modern positivism and admits knowledge of pheno mena and of mathematical relations.
When he came to deal with concrete problems his principles were often applied in an emasculated form. But the "new medium" was not altogether discarded: appeal was constantly made to the mental factor impres sion and idea. This is characteristic of Hume s doctrine of morality. " Here is a matter of fact; but tis the object of feeling not of reason. It lies in yourself not in the object 1 ." And from this results his famous definition of virtue. " Every quality of the mind," he says in the Treatise*, " is denominated virtuous which gives pleasure by the mere survey; as every quality which produces pain is called vicious " ; or, as he puts it in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals* ; , virtue is "whatever mental action or quality gives to the spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary." The "sentiments of approbation or blame," which thus arise, depend in all cases on sympathy. Sympathy with the pleasures and pains of others is postulated by Hume as an ultimate
1 Treatise, in, i, I ; ed. Green and Grose, n, p. 245 ; ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 469.
2 in, iii, l; ed. Green and Grose, n, p. 348; ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 591.
3 App. i; ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 289; Essays, ed. Green and Grose, n, p. 261.
VIII] THE THEORY OF MORALITY l8l
fact; the reasonings of Butler and Hutcheson prevented him from seeking to account for it as a refined form of selfishness, as Hobbes had done; and yet, upon his own premisses, it remains inexplicable. In his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals his differences from Hobbes, and even from Locke, are still more clearly shown than in the Treatise ; he defends the reality of disinterested benevolence; and the sentiment of moral approbation is described as " humanity," or " a feeling for the happiness of mankind," which, it is said, " nature has made universal in the species 1 ." This sentiment, again, is always directed towards qualities which tend to the pleasure, immediate or remote, of the person observed or of others. Thus Hume occupies a place in the utilitarian succession; but he did not formulate a quantitative utili tarianism, as Hutcheson had already done. He drew an important distinction, however, between natural virtues, such as benevolence, which are immediately approved and which have a direct tendency to produce pleasure, and artificial virtues, of which justice is the type, where both the approval and the tendency to pleasure are mediated by the social system which the virtue in question supports. Hume exerted a profound influence upon theology, not only by the general trend of his speculation, but also through certain specific writings. The most important of these writings are the essay Of Miracles contained in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the disser tation entitled The Natural History of Religion, and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The first-named is the most famous ; it produced a crowd of answers, and it had a good deal to do with public attention being attracted to the author s works. It consists of an expansion of a simple and ingenious argument, which had occurred to him when writing his Treatise of Human Nature^ but which, strangely enough, is inconsistent with the principles of
1 Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, sect. I and app. i; ed. Selby-Bigge, pp. 173, 286; ed. Green and Grose, n, pp. 172, 259.
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that work. It regards laws of nature as established by a uniform experience, miracles as violations of these laws, and the evidence for miracles as necessarily inferior to the testimony of the senses which establishes the laws of nature. Whatever validity these positions may have on another philosophical theory, the meaning both of laws of nature, and of miracles as conflicting with these laws, evaporates under the analysis by which, as in Hume s Treatise^ all events are seen as loose and separate. The Natural History of Religion contains reflections of greater significance. Here Hume distinguishes between the theoretical argument which leads to theism and the actual mental processes from which religion has arisen. Its " foundation in reason " is not the same thing as its "origin in human nature"; and he made an important step in advance by isolating this latter question and treat ing it apart. He held that religion arose "from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind," and, in particular, from the melancholy rather than from the agreeable passions; and he maintained the thesis that polytheism preceded theism in the historical development of belief.
" The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery." Such is the concluding reflection of this work. But a further and serious attempt to solve the riddle is made in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. This small book contains the author s mature views on ultimate questions. It is written in his most perfect style and shows his mastery of the dialogue form. There is none of the usual scenery of the dramatic dialogue; but the persons are distinct, the reasoning is lucid, and the interest is sustained to the end. The traditional arguments are ex amined with an insight and directness which were only equalled afterwards by Kant; but, unlike Kant, and with insight more direct if not more profound, Hume finds the most serious difficulties of the question in the realm of
VIIl] CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION 183
morals. The form of the work makes it not altogether easy to interpret; and some commentators have held that Hume s own views should not be identified with those of the more extreme critic of theism. Hume himself says as much at the close of the work; but his habitual irony in referring to religious topics is part of the difficulty of interpretation. All the speakers in the Dialogues are repre sented as accepting some kind of theistic belief; and it is not necessary to attribute expressions of this kind simply to irony. The trend of the argument is towards a shadowy form of theism "that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence"; and, in a remarkable footnote, the author seems to be justifying his own right to take up such a position: " No philosophical Dogmatist denies, that there are difficulties both with regard to the senses and to all science; and that these difficulties are in a regular, logical method, absolutely insolvable. No Sceptic denies, that we lie under an absolute necessity, notwithstanding these difficulties, of thinking, and believing, and reasoning with regard to all kind of subjects, and even of frequently as senting with confidence and security." In other words, his logic leads to complete scepticism; but, just because the "difficulties " are insoluble, he claims a right to dis regard them, and to act and think like other men, when action and thought are called for.
For this reason his theory of knowledge has little effect upon his political and economical essays, although these are closely connected with his ethical and psychological views. The separate essays were published, in various volumes, between 1741 and 1777; and, in the interval, political philosophy was profoundly influenced by the works of Montesquieu 1 and Rousseau 2 . The essays do not make a system, and economics is in them not definitely
1 De V esprit des lois, 1748.
2 Discours sur les sciences et les arts, 1750; Discours sur I origine et les fondemens de Vinegalite parmi les bommes, 1755; Du contrat social, 1762.
184 DAVID HUME [CH.
distinguished from politics; but both system and the dis tinction are suggested in the remarks on the value of general principles and general reasonings which he pre fixed to the essays on commerce, money, and other econo mical subjects. " When we reason upon general subjects," he says, " our speculations can scarcely ever be too fine, provided they be just."
In both groups of essays Hume was not merely a keen critic of prevailing theories and conceptions; his know ledge of human nature and of history guided his analysis of a situation. A growing clearness of doctrine also may be detected by comparing his earlier with his later utter ances. In later editions he modified his acceptance of the traditional doctrines of the natural equality of men and of consent as the origin of society. The essay Of the Origin of Government, first published in 1777, makes no mention either of divine right or of original contract. Society is traced to its origin in the family; and political society is said to have been established " in order to ad minister justice " though its actual beginnings are sought in the concert and order forced upon men by war. Again, whereas, in an earlier essay, he had said that " a constitu tion is only so far good as it provides a remedy against maladministration," he came later to look upon its tendency to liberty as marking the perfection of civil society although there must always be a struggle be tween liberty and the authority without which government could not be conducted. His political thinking, accord ingly, tends to limit the range of legitimate governmental activity; similarly, in economics, he criticises the doctrine of the mercantilists, and on various points anticipates the views of the analytical economists of a later generation. Perhaps, however, nothing in these essays shows better his insight into the principles of economics than the letter which, shortly before his death, he wrote to Adam Smith upon receipt of a copy of The Wealth of Nations. In this letter, after a warm expression of praise for, and satis-
VIII] VIEWS ON ECONOMICS 185
faction with, his friend s achievement, he makes a single criticism I cannot think that the rent of farms makes any part of the price of the produce, but that the price is determined altogether by the quantity and the demand which suggests that he himself had arrived at a theory of rent similar to that commonly associated with the name of Ricardo.
CHAPTER IX
ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS
I. ADAM SMITH
ADAM SMITH was born at Kirkcaldy on 5 June 1723. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he had Hutcheson as one of his teachers, and in 1 740 he pro ceeded to Oxford, where he resided continuously through term and vacation for more than six years. Like Hobbes in the previous century, and Gibbon and Bentham shortly after his own day, he has nothing that is good to say of the studies of the university. His own college of Balliol gave small promise of its future fame : it was then chiefly distinguished as a centre of Jacobitism, and its authorities confiscated Smith s copy of Hume s Treatise of Human Nature ; but its excellent library enabled him to devote himself to assiduous study, mainly in Greek and Latin literature. After some years spent at home, he returned to Glasgow as professor of logic (1751), being transferred in the following year to the chair of moral philosophy. In 1759 he published his Theory of Moral Sentiments, which brought him immediate fame. Early in 1764 he resigned his professorship in order to accompany the young Duke of Buccleuch on a visit to France, which lasted over two years.
This change in his career marks the beginning of the second and more famous period of his literary work. He found Toulouse (where they first settled) much less gay than Glasgow, and therefore started writing a book " in order to pass away the time 1 ." This is probably the first reference to the great work of his riper years. But it does not mark the beginning of his interest in economics. By
1 Cp. J. Rae, Life of Adam Smith, p. 179.
CH.IX] SMITH S LIFE AND WRITINGS 187
tradition and by his own preference, a comprehensive treatment of social philosophy was included in the work of the moral philosophy chair at Glasgow; and there is evidence to show that some of his most characteristic views had been written down even before he settled there 1 . When, in 1765 6, Smith resided for many months in Paris with his pupil, he was received into the remarkable society of economists (commonly known as the physio crats 2 ). Quesnay, the leader of the school, had published his Maximes generales de gouvernement economique and his Tableau economique in 1758; and Turgot, who was soon to make an effort to introduce their common principles into the national finance, was at this time writing his Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses^ although it was not published till some years later. Smith held the work of the physiocrats, and of Ouesnay in par ticular, in high esteem; only death robbed Quesnay of the honour of having The Wealth of Nations dedicated to him. The exact extent of Smith s indebtedness to the school is matter of controversy. But two things seem clear, though they have been sometimes overlooked. He shared their objection to mercantilism and their approval of commercial freedom on grounds at which he had arrived before their works were published; and he did not accept their special theory that agriculture is the sole source of wealth, or the practical consequence which they drew from the principle that the revenue of the state should be derived from a single tax on land. After his return from France Smith settled down quietly with his mother and cousin at Kirkcaldy, and devoted himself to the composi tion of The Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. In 1778 he removed to Edinburgh as commis sioner of customs; he died on 17 July 1790.
1 Cp. Dugald Stewart, Life and Writings of Adam Smith in Works, i, pp. 67, 68; Lectures of Adam Smith, ed. Cannan, pp. 157 ff.
2 This term was invented by Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), a younger member of the school.
1 88 ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS [CH.
Apart from some minor writings Adam Smith was the author of two works of unequal importance. These two works belong to different periods of his life the pro fessorial, in which he may be looked upon as leading the ordinary secluded life of a scholar, and the later period, in which he had gathered wider knowledge of men and affairs. And the two works differ in the general impression which they are apt to produce. According to the earlier, sympathy, or social feeling, is the foundation of morality; the ideal of the later work is that of a social system in which each person is left free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and the author throws gentle ridicule upon the " affectation " of " trading for the public benefit." Undue stress has, however, been laid upon the difference; it is superficial rather than fundamental, and results from the diversity of subject and method in the two works rather than from an opposition between their underlying ideas. Indeed, it might be argued that the social factor in the individual, which is brought out in the ethical treatise, is a necessary condition of that view of a harmony between public and private interests which underlies the doctrine of " natural liberty " taught in The Wealth of Nations.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments covers much ground already traversed by preceding British moralists. It is an elaborate analysis of the various forms and objects of the moral consciousness. It is written in a flowing and elo quent, if rather diffuse, style; it is full of apt illustration; and the whole treatise is dominated by a leading idea. Smith s central problem, like that of his predecessors, is to explain the fact of moral approval and disapproval. He discards the doctrine of a special moral sense, imper vious to analysis, which had been put forward by Shaftes- bury and Hutcheson. Like Hume he regards sympathy as the fundamental fact of the moral consciousness; and he seeks to show, more exactly than Hume had done, how sympathy can become a test of morality. He sees that it is not, of itself, a sufficient test. A spectator may
IX] THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS 189
enter imaginatively into the emotional attitude of another man, and this is sympathy; but it is not a justification of the man s attitude. The spectator may have misunder stood the circumstances, or his own interests may have been involved. Accordingly, the only sympathy that has ethical value is that of an " impartial and well-informed spectator." But this impartial and well-informed spec tator, whose sympathy with our passions and affections would be their adequate justification, is not an actual but an ideal person; and indeed Smith recognises as much when he says that we have to appeal from " the opinions of mankind " to " the tribunal of [our] own conscience " to " the man within the breast." The great merit of the theory, as worked out by Smith, is its recognition of the importance of the social factor in morality, and of sympathy as the means by which this social factor operates. The individual man, in his view, is a being of social structure and tendencies. But the social side of his nature is not exaggerated: if man " can subsist only in society," it is equally true that " every man is by nature first and principally recommended to his own care." These points modify the contrast between the teaching of his first work and the individualism of his economic theory.
Adam Smith is frequently spoken of as the founder of political economy. By this is meant that he was the first to isolate economic facts, to treat them as a whole, and to treat them scientifically. But, nine years before the pub lication of The Wealth of Nations^ another work appeared which may be regarded as having anticipated it in these respects Sir James Steuart s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy (1767). Steuart was a Jacobite laird, who, in 1763, returned from a long exile abroad. He had travelled extensively, and his work contains the results of observation of different states of society as well as of systematic reflection ; but it is without merit in respect of literary form. It is presented to the public as "an attempt towards reducing to principles, and forming into a regular
1 90 ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS [CH.
science, the complicated interests of domestic policy." It deals with " population, agriculture, trade, industry, money, coin, interest, circulation, banks, exchange, public credit, and taxes "; and the author has a definite view of scientific method. He speaks, indeed, of " the art of political economy," using the term " political economy " in much the same sense as that in which Smith used it in dealing with " systems of political economy " in the fourth book of his great work. But this art is the statesman s business; and behind the statesman stands "the specu lative person, who, removed from the practice, extracts the principles of this science from observation and reflec tion" Steuart does not pretend to a system, but only to " a clear deduction of principles." These principles, how ever, are themselves gathered ftom experience. His first chapter opens with the assertion, " Man we find acting uniformly in all ages, in all countries, and in all climates, from the principles of self-interest, expediency, duty and passion." And, of these, " the ruling principle " which he follows is " the principle of self-interest." From this point the author s method may be described as deductive, and as resembling that of Smith s successors more than it does Smith s own. Further, he recognises that the con clusions, like the principles from which they proceed, are abstract and may not fit all kinds of social conditions, so that "the political economy in each [country] must neces sarily be different." How far Smith took account of Steuart s reasonings we cannot say; he does not mention his name : though he is reported to have said that he under stood Steuart s system better from his talk than from his book.
Adam Smith does not begin with a discourse on me thod; he was an artist in exposition; and he feared, perhaps unduly, any appearance of pedantry. He plunges at once into his subject: "The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the neces saries and conveniences of life which it annually con-
IX] THE WEALTH OF NATIONS
sumes." These first words suggest the prevailing theme. Wealth consists not in the precious metals, but in the goods which men use or consume; and its source or cause is labour. On this foundation he builds the structure of his science; and although he says nothing about it we can trace the method which he regarded as appropriate to his enquiry. It may be described shortly as reflection and reasoning checked and reinforced by historical investiga tion. The main theorems of the analytical economics of a later period are to be found expressed or suggested in his work; but almost every deduction is supported by con crete instances. Rival schools have thus regarded him as their founder, and are witnesses to his grasp of prin ciples and insight into facts. He could isolate a cause and follow out its effects; and, if he was apt sometimes to exaggerate its prominence in the complex of human mo tives and social conditions, it was because the facts at his disposal did not suggest the necessary qualifications of his doctrine, although further experience may have shown that the qualifications are needed.
Adam Smith isolates the fact of wealth and makes it the subject of a science. But he sees this fact in its con nections with life as a whole. His reasonings are grounded in a view of human nature and its environment, both of which meet in labour, the source of wealth and also, as he thinks, the ultimate standard of the value of com modities. In the division of labour he sees the first step taken by man in industrial progress. His treatment of this subject has become classical, and is too well known for quotation; it is more to the purpose to point out that it was an unerring instinct for essentials which led him, in his first chapter, to fix attention on a point so obvious that it might easily have been overlooked and yet of far- reaching importance in social development generally. The division of labour, according to Smith, is the result of " the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another." But his analysis of motives goes deeper
192 ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS [CH.
than this; and, so far as they are concerned with wealth, human motives seem to be reduced by him to two: " the passion for present enjoyment " which " prompts to ex pense," and " the desire of bettering our condition " which " prompts to save." Both are selfish; and it is on these two motives of self-interest, or on a view of one s own advantage, that Smith constantly relies. He con structs an economic commonwealth which consists of a multitude of persons, each seeking his own interest and, in so doing, unwittingly furthering the public good thus promoting " an end which was no part of his in tention." The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition," he says, " when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations."
Smith, like many other philosophers of the time, as sumed that there was a natural identity of public and private interests. It is a comfortable belief that society would be served best if everybody looked after his own interests; and, in an economist, this belief was perhaps an inevitable reaction from a condition in which state regulation of industry had largely consisted in distributing monopolies and other privileges. In Smith s mind the belief was also bound up with the view that this identity of interests resulted from the guidance of " the invisible hand " that directs the fate of mankind. But the belief itself was incapable of verification, and subsequent in dustrial history refutes it. Indeed, in various places in his work, Smith himself declines to be bound by it. He thinks that the interests of the landowners and of the working class are in close agreement with the interests of society, but that those of "merchants and master manu facturers" have not the same connection with the public
IX] THE NATURAL ORDER 193
interest. The interest of the dealers," he says, " is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public." The harmony of interests, there fore, is incomplete. Nor would it be fair to say that Smith had relinquished, in The Wealth of Nations^ his earlier view of the social factor in human motive. What he did hold was rather that, in the pursuit of wealth, that is to say, in industry and commerce, the motive of self-interest pre dominates; in famous passages, he speaks as if no other motive need be taken into account; but he recognises its varying strength; and it is only in the class of "merchants and master manufacturers" that he regards it as having free course : they are acute in the perception of their own interest and unresting in its pursuit; in the country gentle man, on the other hand, selfish interest is tempered by generosity and weakened by indolence 1 .
From the nature of man and the environment in which he is placed, Smith derives his doctrine of " the natural progress of opulence." Subsistence is " prior to con- veniency and luxury "; agriculture provides the former, commerce the latter ; the cultivation of the country, there fore, precedes the increase of the town ; the town, indeed, has to subsist on the surplus produce of the country; foreign commerce comes later still. This is the natural order, and it is promoted by man s natural inclinations. But human institutions have thwarted these natural in clinations, and, " in many respects, entirely inverted" the natural order. Up to Adam Smith s time, the regulation of industry had been almost universally admitted to be part of the government s functions; criticism of the prin ciples and methods of this regulation had not been want ing; the theory of " the balance of trade," for instance, important in the doctrine of the mercantilists, had been examined and rejected by Hume and by others before him. But Smith made a comprehensive survey of the means by which, in agriculture, in the home trade, and
1 The Wealth of Nations, bk. i, ch. xi, conclusion, s. E. P. 13
194 ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS [CH.
in foreign commerce, the state had attempted to regulate industry; these attempts, he thought, were all diversions of the course of trade from its " natural channels "; and he maintained that they were uniformly pernicious. Whether it acts by preference or by restraint, every such system " retards, instead of accelerating, the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness; and dimin ishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its land and labour." When all such systems are swept away, " the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord 1 ."
The ideas and arguments of Adam Smith were influ ential, at a later date, in establishing the system of free trade in Great Britain; and, perhaps, it would be not far wrong to say that a generation of economists held his views on this question to be his most solid title to fame. He regarded liberty as natural in contrast with the arti ficiality of government control ; and the term natural plays an ambiguous part in his general reasonings, chang ing its shade of meaning, but always implying a note of approval. In this, he only used the language of his time though Hume had pointed out that the word was treacherous. But it has to be borne in mind that, while he extolled this natural liberty as the best thing for trade, he did not say that it was in all cases the best thing for a country. He saw that there were other things than wealth which were worth having, and that of some of these the state was the guardian. Security must take precedence of opulence, and on this ground he would restrict natural liberty, not only to defend the national safety 2 , but also for the protection of the citizens generally 3 .
II. OTHER WRITERS
As we look back upon the development of philoso phical problems, it might seem that, for a philosophical
1 The Wealth of Nations, bk. iv, ch. is.
2 Ibid. bk. iv, ch. ii. 3 Ibid. bk. n, ch. ii.
IX] DAVID HARTLEY 195
thinker after Hume, there was but one thing worth doing to answer him, if possible; and, if that were not possible, to keep silent. But the issue was not quite so clear to his contemporaries. Indeed, his own example did not press it home. It showed, on the contrary, that work of import ance might be done in certain departments even when the contradiction was ignored to which Hume had reduced the theory of knowledge. Soon after the publication of A Treatise of Human Nature, valuable writings appeared on psychology, and on moral and political theory; there were also critics of Hume in considerable number; and one of that number had both the insight to trace Hume s scepticism to its logical origin and the intellectual capacity to set forth a theory of knowledge in which the same difficulty should not arise.
Among the psychologists the most important place belongs to David Hartley, a physician, and sometime fellow of Jesus college, Cambridge, whose Observations on Man: his frame, his duty, and his expectations appeared in 1749. The rapid march of philosophical thought in the previous forty years was ignored by, and probably un known to, the author. The whole second part of his book, in which he works out a theological theory, may be re garded as antiquated. He does not mention Berkeley; he seems never to have heard of David Hume. But the first or psychological part of the book has two striking fea tures: it is a systematic attempt at a physiological psycho logy, and it developed the theory of the association of ideas in a way which influenced, far more than Hume did, the views of the later associational school of James Mill and his successors. The physiological doctrine was suggested by certain passages in Newton s Optics. Hartley supposes that the contact of an external object with the sensory nerves excites " vibrations in the aether residing in the pores of these nerves "; these vibrations enter the brain, are "propagated freely every way over the whole
132
196 ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS [CH.
medullary substance," and sensations are the result; fur ther, they leave vestiges or traces behind them, and this is the origin of ideas, which depend on minute vibrations or " vibratiuncles." Motor activity is explained in a similar way. This physiological view is the basis of his whole doctrine of mind and, more particularly, of the doctrine of association. In respect of the latter doctrine, Hartley wrote under the influence of Locke ; but he has left it on record that the suggestion to make use of associa tion as a general principle of psychological explanation came from John Gay, fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, who had written A Dissertation prefixed to Law s English translation of Archbishop King s Origin of Evil (173 1), in which the doctrine was used to explain the connection of morality with private happiness. Hartley offered a physiological explanation of association itself, gave a generalised statement of its laws, and applied it to the details of mental life. He did not see, as Hume had seen, the special difficulty of applying it so as to explain judgment, assent, or belief.
Abraham Tucker was a psychologist of a different temper from Hartley. He was a constant critic of Hart ley s physiological doctrines, and he excelled in that in trospective analysis which has been practised by many English writers. Tucker was a country gentleman whose chief employment was a study of the things of the mind. The first fruit of his reflection was a fragment Freewill, Foreknowledge and Fate (1763), published under the pseu donym of Edward Search ; certain criticisms of this piece produced, also in 1763, Man in quest of Himself: or a Defence of the Individuality of the Human Mind, " by Cuthbert Comment." Thereafter, he did not turn aside from his great work, The Light of Nature pursued, of which the first four volumes were published by himself (again under the name of Search) in 1768, and the last three appeared after his death (1778). The author was a man of leisure himself, and he wrote for men of leisure; he was
IX] ABRAHAM TUCKER 197
not without method; but his plan grew as he proceeded; when new fields of enquiry opened, he did not refuse to wander in them; and he liked to set forth his views de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. Indeed, it is a work of inordinate length, and the whole is of unequal merit. Many of the long chapters have lost their interest through lapse of time and the changes which time has brought. Others perhaps may appeal to us only when we can catch the author s mood. Such are the speculations put for ward as purely hypothetical concerning the soul s ve hicle, the mundane soul, and the vision of the disembodied soul. Mysticism is apt to appear fantastic when expressed in language so matter of fact; but the writer has a rare power of realising his fancies. The chapters, however, which deal more specifically with human nature are a genuine and important contribution to the literature of mind and morals. The writer was as innocent of Hume as was Hartley; he criticised Berkeley, though seldom with insight and never with sympathy; and he took Locke as his master. But he was not a slavish follower; it would be difficult to instance finer or more exhaustive criticism than his examination of the Lockean view that all action has for its motive the most pressing uneasiness. His moral doctrine is perhaps still more remarkable for the candour and elaboration with which he discussed the problem which faced all followers of Locke the con sistency of an analysis of action in terms of personal pleasure and pain with a theory of morality in which benevolence is supreme. Herein he provided most of the material afterwards made use of by Paley. Into the details of his teaching it is impossible to enter. But perhaps it is not too much to say that only his diffuseness has prevented him from becoming a classic. The mere mass of the book is deterrent. Yet he would be an unlucky reader who could spend half-an-hour over its pages without finding something to arrest his attention and even to enthral his interest. The author sees mankind and the human lot with
198 ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS [CH.
shrewd but kindly eyes ; his stores of illustration are in exhaustible and illuminate subjects which in other hands would be dull; even the subtlest points are made clear by a style which is free and simple and varied ; there is never any trace of sentimentality; but there are passages of humour and of pathos worthy of Goldsmith.
Richard Price, a native of Glamorgan, who became a Unitarian minister in London, left his mark on more than one department of thought. His Observations on Rever sionary Payments (1771) made a distinct advance in the theory of life assurance. His Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt (1771) is said to have con tributed to the reestablishment of the sinking fund. He was drawn into the current of revolutionary politics and became a leading exponent of their ideas. His Observa tions on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Govern ment, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America made him famous in two continents. The preface to the first edition was dated 8 February, that to the fifth edition 12 March, 1776. Additional Observations on the same subject appeared in 1777, and a General Introduction and Supplement to the two tracts in 1778. The revolution in France was the occasion for A Discourse on the Love of our Country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789; and this he closed with a Nunc dimittis: " After sharing in the benefits of one Revolution, I have been spared to be a witness to two other Revolutions, both glorious." This Discourse had the further distinction of provoking Burke s Reflections on the Revolution in France. But, famous as his political partisanship made him at the time, Price has a better title to be remembered for his first work, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1757; 3rd edn, revised and enlarged, 1787).
Price has the mathematician s interest in intellectual concepts and his power of dealing with abstractions. In philosophy he is a successor of Cudworth and Clarke,
IX] PRICE AND PRIESTLEY 199
and the theories of knowledge of both Locke and Hume are attacked at the roots. The understanding or reason (he argues) has its own ideas, for which it does not depend upon sense-impression. Necessity, possibility, identity, cause are instances of such abstract ideas. They are " in telligible objects " discovered by " the eye of the mind." Reason is thus " the source of new ideas "; and among them are the ideas of right and wrong; these are simple ideas and perceived by an immediate " intuition " of the understanding: "morality is a branch of necessary truth." The system which Price bases on his view has become, more than any other, the type of modern intuitional ethics.
Joseph Priestley had many points of sympathy with Price. They belonged to the same profession the uni- tarian ministry and they were prominent on the same side in the revolutionary politics of the day. But, in spite of this similarity and of their personal friendship, they represent different attitudes of mind. Price was a mathe matician, familiar with abstract ideas, and an intellectualist in philosophy. Priestley was a chemist, busied in experi ments, a convinced disciple of the empirical philosophy, and a supporter of materialism. He was the author of The History and present State of Electricity (1767), and afterwards of numerous papers and treatises on chemical subjects, which recorded the results of his original investi gations and have established his fame as a man of science. He came early under the influence of Hartley and pub lished a simplification of his book omitting the doctrine of vibrations and laying stress solely on the principle of the association of ideas; but he rejected Hartley s view of mind as an immaterial principle and held that the powers termed mental are the result " of such an organi- cal structure as that of the brain." His philosophical views were expressed and defended in Disquisitions re lating to Matter and Spirit (1777), in The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity (1777), and in A Free Discussion
200 ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS [CH.
(1778) on these topics with Price; and he also published (l 774) An Examination of the doctrines of Reid and others of the new school of Scottish philosophers. Of greater interest than these, however, is the short Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768). This forms a con trast to the a priori arguments in which Price delighted although its practical tendency is the same. It propounds " one general idea," namely, " that all people live in society for their mutual advantage," and draws the con clusion that their happiness is " the great standard by which every thing relating to that state must finally be determined." Priestley thus set the example, which Bentham followed, of taking utilitarian considerations for the basis of a philosophical radicalism, instead of the dogmas about natural rights common with other revolu tionary thinkers of the period. He did not anticipate Bentham in using the famous utilitarian formula (as he is often said to have done 1 ), but he did precede him in taking the happiness of the majority as the test in every political question, and he made it easier for Bentham to use the same standard in judging private conduct.
In a somewhat similar way the exhaustive analyses of Tucker led to the theological utilitarianism of William Paley, archdeacon of Carlisle, sometime fellow of Christ s College, Cambridge, and senior wrangler in 1763. Paley was not a writer of marked originality. If, in his Prin ciples of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), he owed much to Tucker, in his View of the Evidences of Christ ianity (1794), he depended on the Criterion (1752) of John Douglas, bishop of Salisbury a reply to Hume s argu ment against miracles and on Nathaniel Lardner s Cre dibility of the Gospel History (1723 55), and, in his Natural Theology (1804), he drew much material from John Ray s The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), from William Derham s Physico-
1 See above, p. 162 n.
IX J WILLIAM PALEY 2OI
Theology (1713), and from the work of the Dutchman Nieuwentyt, which had been translated into English in 1730 as The Religious Philosopher. His Horae Paulinae (1790) is said to be the most original, and to have been the least successful, of his publications. These four books form a consistent system. Probably no English writer has ever excelled Paley in the power of marshalling argu ments or in clearness of reasoning; and these merits gave some of his works a longer life as academic text-books than their other merits can justify. Paley was essentially a man of his time and his views were its views, though expressed with a skill which was all his own.
In his Moral Philosophy there is no trace of the vacilla tion at critical points which marks most of his empirical predecessors. The only criticism to which it lies open is that morality vanishes when reduced to a calculation of selfish interests. A man s own happiness is always his motive; he can seek the general happiness only when that way of acting is made for his own happiness also; and this can be done only by the rewards and punishments of a lawgiver. Locke distinguished three different sorts of law, and Paley followed him rather closely. But the law of honour is insufficient, as having little regard to the general happiness; and the law of the land is inadequate, for it omits many duties as not fit objects for compulsion and it permits many crimes because incapable of definition; there remains, therefore, only the law of Scripture (that is, of God) which alone is obviously sufficient. Hence the famous definition, " Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of ever lasting happiness."
This conclusion leads up to the argument of his later works. His Horae Paulinae and Evidences have to demon strate the credibility of the New Testament writings and the truth of the Christian revelation; and this position assumes the existence of God which, in his Natural Theo logy^ he proves from the marks of design in the universe
202 ADAM SMITH AND OTHERS [CH. IX
and, in particular, in the human body. In these works we see how complete is the shifting of interest to which reference has been previously made 1 . Attention is con centrated on the question of external evidences, and the content of religion is almost entirely overlooked. God is the superhuman watchmaker who has put the world- machine together with surprising skill, and intervenes miraculously, on rare occasions, when the works are getting out of order. Paley developed a familiar analogy with unequalled impressiveness; he should not be blamed for failing to anticipate the effect upon his argument which has been produced by the biological theory of natural selection; but he did not pause to examine the underlying assumptions of the analogy which he worked out; he had no taste for metaphysics; and his mind moved easily only within the range of the scientific ideas of his own day.
1 See above, pp. 153 f.
CHAPTER X
THOMAS REID AND OTHERS
THE most powerful reply to Hume indeed, the only competent attempt to refute his philosophy as a whole came from one of a group of scholars in Aberdeen who had formed themselves into a philosophical society. Of this group Thomas Reid, a professor in King s College, was the most notable member, and he was the founder of the school of Scottish philosophy known as the Common Sense school. With him were associated George Campbell and James Beattie, professors (the former afterwards prin cipal) in Marischal College, as well as other men of mark in their day. The earliest contribution to the controversy Campbell s Dissertation on Miracles (1763) dealt with a side issue; but it is of interest for its examination of the place of testimony in knowledge; whereas experience (it is argued) leads to general truths and is the foundation of philosophy, testimony is the foundation of history, and it is capable of giving absolute certainty. Campbell s later work, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), contains much excellent psychology. Beattie s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) is not a work of originality or of distinction; but it is a vigorous polemic; it brought him great temporary fame, and he has been immortalised by the art of Reynolds as serenely clasping his book whilst Hume and other apostles of error are being hurled into limbo. About the same time James Oswald, a Perthshire clergyman, published An Appeal to Common Sense in behalf of Religion (1766 72). Reid, Beattie, and Oswald were placed together by Priestley for the purpose of his Exami nation; and the same collocation of names was repeated by Kant; but it is entirely unjust to Reid.
204 THOMAS REID AND OTHERS [CH.
Reid s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense was published in 1764; in the same year he removed to Glasgow to fill the chair vacated by Adam Smith. His later and more elaborate works Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of Man appeared in 1785 and 1788 respectively. In his philosophical work Reid has the great merit of going to the root of the matter, and he is perfectly fair- minded in his criticism. He admits the validity of Hume s reasonings; he does not appeal to the vulgar against his conclusions; but he follows the argument back to its premisses and tests the truth of these premisses. This is his chief claim to originality. He finds that the sceptical results of Hume are legitimate inferences from the ideal theory which Locke took over from Descartes, and he puts to himself the question, " what evidence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind? " He points out (what is un doubtedly true) that neither Locke nor Berkeley nor Hume produced any evidence for the assumption. They started with the view that the immediate object of knowledge is something in the mind called ideas or (as by Hume) im pressions ; and they were consequently unable to prove or defend the existence of anything outside the mind and even of mind itself, or to explain the relations required for any knowledge of things. " Ideas," says Reid, " seem to have something in their nature unfriendly to other ex istences."
The ideal theory had made two assumptions which were acknowledged and formulated by Hume 1 : (i) " that all our distinct perceptions \i.e^ impressions and ideas] are distinct existences "; and (2) " that the mind never per ceives any real connexion among distinct existences." Hume found himself unable " to renounce either of them "; but Reid rejects them both. He maintains that the ideal system went wrong at the outset by assuming
1 See above, p. 179.
x] REID S CRITICISM OF HUME 205
that bare ideas are primary data and that we must first get these and then proceed to make judgments about them. " Nature does not exhibit these elements separate, to be compounded by us." Not the simple idea, but judgment is the unit. " The simple apprehension [of the idea] is performed by resolving and analysing a natural and original judgment." This judgment, belief, or know ledge accompanies sensation, and it cannot be defined any more than sensation can 1 ; but "every operation of the senses, in its very nature, implies judgment or belief as well as simple apprehensions 2 ."
This criticism brings out the point that Locke and Hume have mistaken the results of their psychological analysis for primary data of experience, and have thus fallen into the unwarranted assumption that these results the simple ideas of Locke, the impressions of Hume are distinct existences. And there is another ambiguity in the use of the term idea on which Reid lays stress. It may mean either the operation of the mind or the object of that operation 3 ; and the two meanings are confused by Hume, as indeed his system does not allow of his distinguishing them. Now, it is the idea as object whose existence Reid calls in question. The ideas," he says, " of whose existence I require the proof, are not the operations of any mind, but supposed objects of those operations 4 ." And he denies the existence of any such " images of external things " in the mind.
Having got rid of the only existences which Hume allowed, Reid is able to re-assert the real existence of mind and external objects, which Hume denied. And it is not mere assertion. He reaches his position by means of a new analysis of relations. These are not got by comparing distinct ideas. It is not by having first the notions of mind and sensation, and then comparing them together, that we perceive the one to have the relation of a subject
1 Reid s Works, ed. Hamilton, p. 107 a.
2 Ibid. p. 209 a. 3 Ibid. p. 224 a. 4 Ibid. p. 208 b.
206 THOMAS REID AND OTHERS [CH.
or substratum, and the other that of an act or operation : on the contrary, one of the related things to wit, sensa tion suggests to us both the correlate and the relation 1 ." In like manner, sensations suggest qualities existing in external things (without at all resembling these qualities) 2 . Sensation is different from the " perception of external objects," which it accompanies: regarded by itself, it is an act of mind which has no object distinct from the act 3 . The perception, on the other hand, is an act of knowledge whose object is the real external thing.
Hume had said that his difficulties would vanish if our perceptions [impressions or ideas] inhered in something simple and individual, or if the mind perceived some real connection among them. And the claim may be made for Reid that he proposed a positive theory of knowledge which gives the required assurance on these points. Reid pointed to certain principles in the constitution of ex perience, more fundamental than distinct ideas or im pressions; but he did not give any thorough account of their nature or of the way in which they determine the structure of knowledge. His terminology is not happy, and his thought is not always clear. The word suggests, for instance, is badly chosen, and to it is largely due the lack of clearness in his doctrine of immediate perception. He is aware of the ambiguity without effectively guarding against it. The word gold suggests a certain substance; " in like manner, a sensation of touch suggests hardness." But there is an important difference between the two suggestions : "in the first, the suggestion is the effect of habit and custom ; in the second it is not the effect of habit, but of the original constitution of our minds 4 ." He uses the word suggestion for the latter process, he says, " because I know not one more proper to express a power of the mind, which seems entirely to have escaped the notice of philosophers, and to which we owe many of
1 Works, p. in a. 2 Ibid. p. 121 b.
3 Ibid. p. 229. 4 Ibid. p. 121 b.
X] THE PRINCIPLES OF COMMON SENSE 207
our simple notions which are neither impressions nor ideas, as well as many original principles of belief 1 ."
These principles are to be taken for granted, not be cause of their acceptance by the vulgar, but because " the constitution of our nature leads us to believe them "; and he calls them " the principles of common sense 2 ." The term Common Sense (from which his philosophy has derived one of its names) has given rise also to serious misunderstandings, for which he is not entirely blameless. Perhaps he laid too great weight on the contention that " all men that have common understanding agree in such principles " a contention which may favour the mis leading appeal to general consent. Yet he reached these principles, not by appealing to general consent, but by an analysis of experience; and he puts them forward as " the foundation of all reasoning and of all science 3 ." He did not give them systematic development; but, if we read him sympathetically, we may see that he had hold of a truth of fundamental importance. The isolated im pressions or ideas with which Locke and Hume began are fictions; they do not correspond to anything real in experience. The simplest portion of our experience is not separate from its context in this way; it implies a reference to mind and to an objective order, and thus involves the relations which Reid ascribed to natural suggestion or common sense.
The tradition of this type of philosophy which has come to be known as the Scottish Philosophy was carried on in the next generation, and through the period of Bentham s supremacy, by Dugald Stewart. Stewart was born in 1753 and died in 1828 ; for twenty-five years (1785 1810) he was professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh. His lectures were the most powerful forma tive influence upon the principles and tastes of a famous generation of literary Scotsmen, and they attracted be sides many hearers from F,ngland, the continent, and
1 Works, p. in b. 2 Ibid. p. 108 b. 3 Ibid. p. 2306.
208 THOMAS REID AND OTHERS [CH.
America. " Perhaps few men ever lived," said Sir James Mackintosh, one of his pupils, " who poured into the breasts of youth a more fervid and yet reasonable love of liberty, of truth, and of virtue. . . Without derogation from his writings, it may be said that his disciples were among his best works." His writings also were numerous. The first volume of his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind appeared in 1792, the second in 1814, the third in 1827. His Outlines of Moral Philosophy was published in 1794, Philosophical Essays in 1810, a dissertation entitled The Progress of Metaphysical^ Ethical^ and Political Philo sophy since the Revival of Letters (contributed to The Encyclopaedia Britannica) in 1815 and 1821, The Philo sophy of the Active and Moral Powers in 1828; and accounts of the lives and writings of Adam Smith, Robertson, and Reid were contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Himself, in his youth, a pupil of Reid, Stewart re mained his follower in philosophy. But he avoided the use of the term common sense, which, as employed by Reid, had produced the impression that questions of philosophy could be decided by an appeal to popular judgment. He speaks, instead, of" the fundamental laws of human belief, or the primary elements of human reason"; and these he regards not as the data upon which conclusions depend, but rather " as the vincula which give coherence to all the particular links of the chain, or (to vary the metaphor) as component elements without which the faculty of reasoning is inconceivable and impossible." He differed from Reid also on many special points, often approximating to the positions of writers of the empirical school; but, according to Mackintosh, he " employed more skill in contriving, and more care in concealing, his very important reforms of Reid s doctrines, than others exert to maintain their claims to originality." His works often betray their origin in the lecture-room, and are full of quotations from, and criticisms of, other authors. They
X] THOMAS BROWN 209
are written in a style which is clear and often eloquent, without ever being affected; but the exposition and criti cism are devoted to those aspects of philosophical con troversy which were prominent in his own day, and they have thus lost interest for a later generation. Nor did he show any such profundity of thought, or even distinction of style, as might have saved his work from comparative neglect. Among his numerous writings there is no single work of short compass which conveys his essential con tribution to the progress of thought.
A position intermediate between the associationism of Mill and the traditional doctrines of the Scottish school was taken by Thomas Brown, professor of moral philo sophy at Edinburgh from 1810 till his death in 1820. By the time he was twenty years of age Brown had pub lished Observations on the Zoonomia of Erasmus Darwin (1798), which was recognised as a mature criticism of that work. Seven years afterwards, in 1805, an ecclesiastico- academical controversy drew from him a small volume entitled Observations on the Nature and Tendency of the Doctrine of Mr Hume concerning the Relation of Cause and Effect, of which a second enlarged edition was published in 1 806, and a third edition, further enlarged and modified in arrangement and title, in 1817. In this book he main tained the view that causation means simply uniform ante cedence, " to whatever objects, material or spiritual, the words may be applied "; but he held also that there was an intuitive or instinctive belief that, " when the previous circumstances in any case are exactly the same, the re sulting circumstances also will be the same."
Brown s work on causation certainly showed him to be possessed of an intellect of penetrating philosophical quality; and it may be noted that, in his preface to the second edition of it, he already laid down two principles which distinguished his subsequent writing. One was that the * philosophy of mind is to be considered as a
S. E. P. 14
210 THOMAS REID AND OTHERS [CH. X
science of analysis; the other was the implicit rejection of the doctrine of mental faculties as it had figured in pre vious academic philosophies. Functions such as memory or comparison, he says, are merely names for the resem blances among classes of mental facts. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1820), published after his death, these principles were applied to the details of perception and cognition. He made the important dis tinction between the muscular sense and touch proper, resolved knowledge of extension into a succession of muscular sensations, and knowledge of the external world into a number of constituent sensations, but held, never theless, to the real existence of the physical object, on the ground that it was implied in the intuitive belief in causality. In these doctrines, and in his analysis of rela tive suggestion, he made contributions to psychology which were largely original, although he was considerably indebted to De Tracy 1 and other predecessors. The elo quence of his style, as well as the subtlety of his analyses, made his lectures famous during his lifetime and, in their printed form, for many years after his death. They were written hastily, each lecture to meet the demand of the following day, and they are too ornate in style for scientific purposes. The shortness of the author s life, and his own unfortunate preference for his poetical works over his philosophical, prevented a thorough revision of what he had written or a consistent and adequate development of his views.
1 Elements d ideologie, 1801-15.
CHAPTER XI BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS
JEREMY BENTHAM is famous as the leader of a school of thought and practice which is known sometimes as utili tarianism, sometimes as philosophical radicalism. Before his day the philosophical school was not a characteristic feature of English speculation. The greater writers in fluenced the course of ideas without transmitting a definite body of doctrines to a definite group of followers. Bacon proclaimed a philosophical revolution; but he sought in vain for assistants and collaborators, and the details of his theory were commonly ignored. Hobbes formulated a compact system, but he had no disciples. Locke struck out a new way which many followed to conclusions often very different from his own Berkeley never lost courage, but he could not open other eyes to his own vision, and the verdict of the day upon his speculations seems to be not unfairly represented by Hume s statement that his arguments " admit of no answer and produce no convic tion 1 ." For his own sceptical results Hume himself seemed to desire applause rather than converts. The works of these writers never led to a combination for the defence and elucidation of a creed to any philosophical school which can be compared with Peripateticism, Stoicism, or Epicureanism in ancient Greece or with the Cartesian, Kantian, or Hegelian schools in modern thought. The nearest approach to such a phenomenon was of the nature of a revival the new Platonic movement of the seven teenth century, associated with the names of Cudworth, Henry More, and other Cambridge scholars. In this way
1 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sect, xii, pt. i, ed. Selby-Bigge, p. 155; Essays, ed. Green and Grose, n, p. 127.
142
212 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
the utilitarian group presents an appearance unknown before in English philosophy a simple set of doctrines held in common, with various fields assigned for their application, and a band of zealous workers, labouring for the same end and united in reverence for their master.
Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748 and died in 1832, when his fame was at its height and his party was on the eve of a great triumph 1 . He was a prodigy from his childhood; he read history and French, Latin, and Greek, when other boys ot his years were feeding their imagina tions with fairy tales; at the tender age of thirteen his religious sensibilities were hurt and theological doubts raised in his mind when he was required to sign the thirty-nine articles on matriculating at Queen s College, Oxford; he submitted, however, completed his course there, and afterwards duly entered upon the study of law in London. His father had marked his abilities and ex pected them to raise him to the woolsack; he had several causes at nurse for him before he was called to the bar; and, when Jeremy neglected the practical for the theore tical side of his profession, the father said in his grief that the boy would never be anything more than " the obscure son of an obscure attorney." But he made life easy for his son financially, and had some compensation for the dis appointment of his ambition in the reputation made by Jeremy s first book, A Fragment on Government, which was published anonymously in 1776, and which the public voice ascribed to one or another of several great men, in cluding Burke and Mansfield.
Bentham spent almost his whole life in London or its neighbourhood or at his house in the country; but, for over two years, 1785 88, he made an extended tour in the east of Europe and paid a long visit to his younger brother Samuel, who held an important industrial appoint ment at Kritchev in Russia. There he wrote his Defence
1 He died on 6 June, the day before the royal assent was given to the Reform Bill.
xi] BENTHAM S WRITINGS 213
of Usury (published 1787). There also, from his brother s method of inspecting his work-people, he derived the plan of his panopticon a scheme for prison management, which was to dispense with Botany Bay. On this scheme he laboured for five and twenty years; the government played with it and finally rejected it, giving him a large sum by way of compensation for the still larger sums which he had expended on its advocacy; but the failure of this attempt to influence administration left its mark on his attitude to the English system of government.
After his return from Russia, Bentham published, in 1789, the work which, more than any other, gives him a place among philosophers An Introduction to the Prin ciples of Morals and Legislation. It had been printed nine years earlier, and only the urgency of his friends (who disliked his being anticipated by Paley) induced him to make it public. As an author Bentham was singularly careless about publication and as to the form in which his writings appeared. He worked assiduously, in accordance with a plan which he formed early in life; he passed from point to point methodically; each day he produced a number of pages of manuscript, indicated their place in his scheme, and then put them aside and never looked at them again. A doubtful proposition would lead him to turn to a new line of enquiry, which might mean a new book. According to one of the friends of his early years, he was " always running from a good scheme to a better. I n the meantime life passes away and nothing is completed. " This method of working had its effect upon his style. His early writings were clear and terse and pointed, though without any attempt at elegance. Afterwards he seemed to care only to avoid ambiguity, and came to imitate the formalism of a legal document. He was overfond also of introducing new words into the language; and few of his inventions have had the success of the term " inter national," which was used for the first time in the preface to his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.
214 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
It was fortunate for Bentham s reputation that he soon came to be surrounded by a group of devoted friends, who were convinced of the value of his ideas and eager to help in making them known. And he was content to leave in their hands the selection, revision, and publication of his more important manuscripts. His first work had brought him to the notice of Lord Shelburne (afterwards first Marquis of Lansdowne), at whose house he met a number of the statesmen and political thinkers of the day. There also he met Etienne Dumont, who afterwards gave literary form to the principles of legislation and adminis tration which Bentham elaborated. Dumont was a citizen of Geneva, and had been minister of one of its churches; driven from his native town by political troubles, he settled for some time in St Petersburg, and in 1785 came to London as tutor to Lansdowne s son; in 1788, and again in 1789, he visited Paris and was in close relations, literary and political, with Mirabeau. On the earlier of these visits he was accompanied by Sir Samuel Romilly, with whom he had become intimate and who was already known to Bentham; Romilly showed him some of Ben tham s manuscripts, written in French, and Dumont became an enthusiastic disciple and one of the chief agents in spreading the master s ideas. With Bentham s manu scripts and published work before him, and with oppor tunities for conversation with the author, he produced a series of works which made the new jurisprudence and political theory known in the world of letters. He trans lated, condensed, and even supplied omissions, giving his style to the whole; but he did not seek to do more than put Bentham s writings into literary form, and, in Bentham s collected Works, published after his death, many of the most important treatises are retranslations into English from Dumont s versions. The first of Dumont s treatises appeared in 1802, the last in 1825. It is stated that, by 1830, forty thousand copies of these treatises had been sold in Paris for the South American trade alone.
XI] THE INFLUENCE OF JAMES MILL 215
Other helpers surrounded Bentham during his long life; but his acquaintance with James Mill, which began in 1808, led, for the first time, to the association of a master-mind with his own in pursuit of common objects. Mill was less of a jurist than Bentham, but more of a philosopher, and better equipped for the defence of their fundamental principles on psychological and general grounds. He was also a man of affairs, familiar with practical business and accustomed to deal with other men, and his influence counted for much in making philoso phical radicalism an effective political force. Bentham was a recluse occupied with ideas and projects, infinitely patient in elaborating them on paper, and convinced that they would be carried into effect so soon as he had demon strated their value. The men who sought him out regarded him as a sage, hung upon his lips, and approved his doctrines; and he expected other men, especially political leaders, to be equally rational. During the first half of his career he was not a democrat in politics; but the failure of his scheme for a panopticon, which he regarded as an administrative reform of the first importance, and in the advocacy of which he had incurred lavish expendi ture, gave him a new if also somewhat perverted insight into the motives of party politicians, and led to a distrust of the governing classes. His mind was thus fitted to receive a powerful stimulus from James Mill, a stern and unbending democrat too stern sometimes for Bentham, who once let drop the caustic phrase that Mill s creed resulted " less from love to the many than from hatred of the few 1 ."
Up to this time the utilitarian philosophy had not met with great success as an instrument of political propa- gandism; it had failed adequately to influence the old political parties; an organisation of its own was needed with a programme, an organ in the press, and represen tatives in parliament. The new party came to be known
1 See Bentham s Works, ed. Bowring, x, p. 450.
2l6 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
as philosophical radicals. Their organ was The West minster Review, founded by Bentham in 1824; their pro gramme laid stress on the necessity for constitutional reform before legislative and administrative improvements could be expected; and a number of eminent politicians became the spokesmen of the party in parliament. It is not possible to assign to the philosophical radicals their exact share in bringing about the changes which gradually ensued; many other influences were working in the same direction. Their power was not due to their numbers, but to the great ability of many members of the group and to the clear and definite policy which they advocated. Bentham was the head of this party; but perhaps it is not too much to say that James Mill was its leading spirit. Mill also joined with others in giving literary assistance to Bentham; he edited, with modifications of his own, A Table of the Springs of Action (1817); he prepared, from the author s manuscripts, an Introductory view of the Ra tionale of Evidence (printed, in part, in 1812, and published in the Works}; and his brilliant son, John Stuart Mill, then just out of his teens, edited The Rationale of Evidence in five volumes 1 (1827). Another prominent assistant was John Bowring, who was the first editor of The West minster Review, wrote from the author s dictation the Deontology (a work whose accuracy, as an expression of Bentham s mind, was impugned by the Mills), and be came Bentham s biographer and editor of his collected Works.
Bentham s Fragment on Government is the first attempt to apply the principle of utility in a systematic and me thodical manner to the theory of government; it takes the form of " a comment on the Commentaries " a detailed criticism of the doctrine on the same subject which had been set forth in Blackstone s famous work. Sir William Blackstone was born in 1723; he practised at the bar, lectured on the laws of England at Oxford, and in 1758
1 Reprinted in Bentham s Works, vols. vi and vn.
Xl] THE CRITICISM OF BLACKSTONE 217
was appointed to the newly-founded Vinerian professor ship of law; in 1770 he was made a judge, first of the court of king s bench, afterwards of the court of common pleas; he died in 1780. He edited the Great Charter and was the author of a number of Law Tracts (collected and republished under this title in 1762); but his fame rests upon his Commentaries on the Laws of England^ the first volume of which appeared in 1765 and the fourth and last in 1769. It is a work of many conspicuous merits. In it the vast mass of details which makes up the common and statute law is brought together and presented as an organic structure; the meaning of each provision is em phasised, and the relation of the parts illustrated : so that the whole body of law appears as a living thing, animated by purpose and a triumph of reason. The style of the book is clear, dignified, and eloquent. Bentham, who had heard Blackstone s lectures at Oxford, says that he, " first of all institutional writers, has taught jurisprudence to speak the language of the scholar and the gentleman." These merits, however, were accompanied by defects, less ob vious to the general reader. The author was more prone to see similarities than differences. His analytical power has been praised; but it was inadequate to the conceptions with which he had to deal. His treatment of natural law, in the second section of the introduction, is a case in point; another instance is the discussion of society and the original contract which Bentham criticises. His emphasis on meaning and purpose adds interest to his exposition, and shows insight into the truth that law is not a haphazard collection of injunctions and prohibitions; but this con ception also leads him astray; he does not distinguish clearly enough historical causes from logical grounds ; his exposition takes on the character of an encomium; and he is too apt to discover, at every point of the English con stitution, " a direction which constitutes the true line of the liberty and happiness of the community 1 ." 1 Blackstone, Commentaries (ed. 1836), i, p. 135.
21 8 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
In the preface to his Fragment Bentham offers a criti cism of the Commentaries in general; but the body of his work is restricted to an examination of a few pages, of the nature of a digression, which set forth a theory of govern ment. In these pages Blackstone gave a superficial sum mary of the nature and grounds of authority, in which the leading conceptions of political theory were used with more than customary vagueness. Bentham finds the doc trine worse than false; he finds it unmeaning. He wishes " to do something to instruct, but more to undeceive, the timid and admiring student, . . to help him to emancipate his judgment from the shackles of authority." He insists upon a precise meaning for each statement and each term; and, while he reduces Blackstone s doctrine to ruins, he succeeds, at the same time, in conveying at least the outline of a definite and intelligible theory of government. There are two striking characteristics in the book which are significant for all Bentham s work. One of these is the constant appeal to fact and the war against fictions; the other is the standard which he employs the principle of utility. And these two are connected in his mind: " the footing on which this principle rests every dispute, is that of matter of fact." Utility is matter of fact, at least, of " future fact the probability of certain future contin gencies." Were debate about laws and government re duced to terms of utility, men would either come to an agreement or they would " see clearly and explicitly the point on which the disagreement turned." " All else," says Bentham, " is but womanish scolding and childish altercation, which is sure to irritate and which never can persuade."
In an interesting footnote Bentham gives an account of the way in which he arrived at this principle. Many causes, he tells us, had combined to enlist his " infant affections on the side of despotism." When he proceeded to study law, he found an " original contract " appealed to " for reconciling the accidental necessity of resistance
Xl] THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY 219
with the general duty of submission." But his intellect revolted at the fiction. To prove fiction, indeed/ said I, there is need of fiction; but it is the characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth. . . Thus continued I unsatis fying, and unsatisfied, till I learnt to see that utility was the test and measure of all virtue; of loyalty as much as any; and that the obligation to minister to general happi ness, was an obligation paramount to and inclusive of every other. Having thus got the instruction I stood in need of, I sat down to make my profit of it. I bid adieu to the original contract: and I left it to those to amuse themselves with this rattle, who could think they needed it." It was from the third volume of Hume s Treatise of Human Nature that the instruction came. " I well re member," he says, " no sooner had I read that part of the work which touches on this subject than I felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes. I then, for the first time, learnt to call the cause of the people the cause of Virtue. . . That the foundations of all virtue are laid in utility, is there demonstrated, after a few exceptions made, with the strongest evidence: but I see not, any more than Helvetius saw, what need there was for the exceptions."
Hume s metaphysics had little meaning for Bentham, but it is interesting to note that his moral doctrine had this direct influence upon the new theory of jurisprudence and politics. Hume was content with showing that utility, or tendency to pleasure, was a mark of all the virtues; he did not go on to assert that things were good or evil according to the amounts of pleasure or pain that they entailed. This quantitative utilitarianism is adopted by Bentham from the start. In the preface to the Fragment, the " fundamental axiom," whose consequences are to be developed with method and precision, is stated in the words, "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." Haifa century earlier, Hutcheson had formulated this axiom almost
220 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
in the same words; but Bentham does not seem to have been influenced directly by him. Helvetius, whom he had studied closely, comes very near the same doctrine 1 , and Priestley had preceded Bentham in using a similar standard in political reasoning. Priestley is not mentioned in this place, though the preface begins with a reference to his scientific discoveries, and Bentham has elsewhere recorded his youthful enthusiasm for his writings. He even says that he had found the phrase " greatest happi ness of the greatest number " in one of Priestley s pam phlets; but in this his memory must have deceived him, for the phrase does not seem to have been used by Priestley. So far as Bentham was concerned, its origin (as he in one place suggests) must be traced to Beccaria 2 , the Italian jurist whose work on the penal law proceeded on the same principles as Bentham s and had a notable effect upon the latter. Beccaria s book on Crimes and Punishments was translated into English in 1767, and, in this translation, the principle of utility is expressed in the exact words in which, through Bentham s influence, it soon became both an ethical formula and a party watch word. Bentham himself used the word " utilitarian " as early as 1781, and he asserted that it was the only name for his creed 3 ; but, in later life, he came to prefer the alternative phrase " greatest happiness principle." The word utility" he said, in a note written in July 1822*, " does not so clearly point to the ideas of pleasure and pain as the words happiness and felicity do : nor does it lead us to the consideration of the number of the interests affected." A few months after the latter date, the term " utilitarian " was revived by John Stuart Mill 5 , who seems to have been unaware that it had been previously
1 " La justice consiste...dans la pratique des actions utiles au plus grand nombre." De F Esprit (1758), discours n, chap. 24.
2 See above, p. 162 n.
3 Works, vol. x, pp. 92, 392.
4 Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. 1879, p. I n.
5 Autobiography, pp. 79, 80; Utilitarianism, p. 9 n.
XI] POLITICS AND ETHICS 221
employed and afterwards discarded by Bentham; he found the word in Gait s Annals of the Parish, where it is used in describing some of the revolutionary parties of the early nineties of the preceding century; and, "with a boy s fondness for a name and a banner," he adopted it as a " sectarian appellation." After this time, " utilitarian " and " utilitarianism " came into common use to designate a party and a creed.
The evidence goes to show that the " greatest happiness principle," or principle of utility, was arrived at by Bentham, in the first instance, as a criterion for legislation and administration and not for individual conduct as a political, rather than an ethical, principle. His concern was with politics ; the sections of Hume s Treatise which chiefly influenced him were those on justice; Beccaria wrote on the penal law; and it was expressly as a political principle that Priestley made use of "the happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members, of any state," as his standard. The point is important, seeing that, from the time of Locke, the action of every individual had been commonly interpreted as determined by his own pleasure and pain. It is difficult to reconcile this interpre tation (which Bentham accepted) with an ethical theory which makes the greatest happiness of all the end for each. But the same difficulty does not arise when the point of view is shifted from the individual to the state. Indeed, an analogical argument will now be open: since each person is concerned with his own greatest happiness, the end for the community may be taken to be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. And, when the " greatest happiness of the greatest number " has been accepted in this way, it is easy though it is not logical to adopt it as not merely a political, but also in the strict sense an ethical, principle.
It is to his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation that we must look for Bentham s fullest and clearest account of the underlying principles, psycholo-
222 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
gical and ethical, of his enterprise. The interests of the individual do not always agree with the interests of the community; and this divergence sets the problem for penal law. Again, the rule of right is one question, and the causes of action is another question; and it is im portant not to confuse the ethical with the psychological problem. This distinction is made, and ignored, in the arresting paragraph that opens the work: " Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light."
These sentences give the gist of Bentham s simple philosophy. Everything rests upon pleasure and pain. They are, in the first place, the causes of all human actions. Man is a pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding animal. It is true, he has many different impulses, springs of action, or motives ; and of these the author essays some account in this book; and, in A Table of the Springs of Action, he comprehends them all in a diagram with their sources and their corresponding interests. But the strength of each impulse or motive lies entirely in the pleasure or pain connected with it; and there are only quantitative differences among pleasures themselves, or among pains themselves; and pains can be compared with pleasures,
XI] THE HEDONIC CALCULUS 223
and marked on the same scale by their distance below the indifference or zero point where there is neither pleasure nor pain. To this theory a later writer 1 has given the name psychological hedonism. It still counts many psychologists among its adherents, but Bentham held it in a special form which hardly admits of defence. It is not the actual pleasure or pain experienced at the moment of action which, according to him, determines action, but the estimate formed by the agent of the probable balance of pleasure that is likely to result to him from the action. The cause, as well as the standard, of human action is thus matter of future fact only. Had this phrase been used by Blackstone, Bentham might have pointed out that, so long as anything is future, it is not a fact but only an expectation of a fact ; it is an estimate of proba bilities. Not pleasure, therefore, but an idea of pleasure, is the actual motive. Although he thinks that pleasure is man s only object, Bentham always treats him as pursuing this object in a deliberate and intelligent way under the guidance of ideas or opinions; he commits the philo sopher s fallacy of substituting a reason for a cause; he overlooks the fact that man was an active being before he was a rational being, that he is a creature of impulses, inherited and acquired, that it is only gradually that these impulses come to be organised and directed by reason, and that this rationalising process is never completed.
Bentham s views on this point lend emphasis to the importance of his hedonic calculus. If men are always guided by estimates of pleasures and pains, these estimates should be rendered as exact as possible. For this purpose Bentham analyses the circumstances that have to be taken into account in estimating the force or value (notions which, for him, are identical) of pleasures and pains. A pleasure or pain, he says, taken by itself, will vary in the four circumstances of intensity, duration, certainty, and
1 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, book i, chap. iv.
224 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
propinquity 1 . If we consider its effects, we must take into account two other circumstances: its fecundity, or the chance of its being followed by other feelings of the same kind; and its purity, or the chance of its not being followed by feelings of an opposite kind. If more than one person is concerned, then account must also be taken of the number of persons, that is, the extent of the pleasure or pain. It we would estimate the benefit to a community of any particular action, then each person affected by it must be considered separately; each distinguishable plea sure caused by the action must have its value for him calculated in accordance with the six circumstances first mentioned; and each distinguishable pain must have its value calculated in the same way. When this has been done for every person affected, and the sum of all the pains subtracted from the sum of all the pleasures, then the surplus of pleasure will measure the good tendency of the act; or, if the pains exceed the pleasures in total amount, then the balance of pain will measure the evil tendency of the act.
This may seem an elaborate calculation, but it gives only a faint idea of the minute detail into which Bentham pursued an estimate of good or evil. The significant feature of his method is that it is quantitative. The same method had been suggested by Hutcheson and others before him; his contemporary Paley used it to some extent; but Bentham was the first to follow it out into all its ramifica tions by an exhaustive enumeration and classification of every conceivable consequence. His aim was to make morals and legislation as precise and certain as the physical sciences. For this purpose, he saw that quantitative pro positions were necessary. He did not stop to enquire
1 Sidgwick points out that, on a rational estimate, propinquity in time (apart from the greater certainty which it implies) is not an independent ground of value. Bentham follows Beccaria in introducing it; but Beccaria had a different question in view in his enquiry, namely, the actual deter rent effect of an immediate, as compared with a remote, punishment.
XI] THE HEDONIC CALCULUS 225
whether quantity was applicable at all to pleasure and pain; he assumed that it was; and perhaps the assumption was correct. Neither did he seek too curiously for a standard of measurement of these quantities, such as every physical science possesses for its purposes. Even in the exact observations which instruments of precision render possible in the physical sciences, allowance has to be made for the personal equation of the observer. But Bentham almost disregarded the personal equation, even in matters of feeling. He did not adequately allow for the difference of individual susceptibilities, or for the degree in which they change in a single lifetime and in the history of the race; nor did he avoid the fallacy of arguing as if one man s pleasure were always a safe guide for another. Just as he assumed that men were constantly controlled by intellectual considerations, so here he also assumes that men are much more alike than they really are: and the two assumptions account for many of the weaknesses, and even absurdities, of his projects.
Later utilitarians have avoided some of these difficulties by laying stress on the importance, in personal and social life, of the permanent objects which are sources of pleasure, rather than upon particular pleasant experiences. Ben tham himself, in another work 1 , follows similar lines in enumerating four subordinate ends on which the happiness of society depends. These are subsistence, abundance, equality, and security. Subsistence and security are the most important of the four: " without security equality could not last a day; without subsistence abundance could not exist at all." With subsistence and abundance, law has little or no direct concern : " You may order produc tion; you may command cultivation; and you will have done nothing. But assure to the cultivator the fruits of his industry, and perhaps in that alone you will have done enough." Bentham s treatment of equality is remarkable for certain "pathological propositions" (as he calls them)
1 Theory of Legislation, trans. Hildreth, 1876, pp. 96 ff. s. E. P. 15
226 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
which he lays down regarding the effect of wealth upon happiness. But the chief care of law is security; and the principle of security extends to the maintenance of all those expectations which law itself has created. Security, one may say, is a necessity for social life and for any moderate degree of human happiness; equality is rather of the nature of a luxury, which legislation should promote when it does not interfere with security. As for liberty, it is not one of the principal objects of law, but a branch of security, and a branch which law cannot help pruning. Rights of any kind, especially rights of property, can be created or maintained only by restricting liberty; "in particular all laws creative of liberty are, as far as they go, abrogative of liberty."
These suggestions point to a better way of estimating value than the enumeration of separate pleasures and pains. But the latter is Bentham s prevailing method; and he brings into clear light a point which, on any theory such as his, should not be obscured the difference be tween the greatest happiness of an individual and the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Even Bentham hesitates, both in his earlier and in his later writings, to assert that it is each man s duty to promote the happiness of all. How indeed can it be so, in Bentham s view, unless there is sufficient motive to require such conduct? He says that a man is never without motives to act in this direction : he has the social motive of sympathy and the semi-social motive of love of reputation. But a man may have, and commonly has, motives which tend in a different direction and may render those insufficient or powerless. The divergence may be read between the lines of the halting sentences in which Bentham speaks of the coin cidences between private ethics and legislation. There is no mental fusion between the two classes of motives (the selfish and the social) ; there is no natural identity between the courses of conduct to which they tend ; the identifica tion of self-interest with public interest can only be brought
XI] THE UTILITARIAN SANCTIONS 227
about artificially 1 by means of superadded pleasures and pains, especially the latter. These are the sanctions of the principle of utility, which Bentham reduces to four : the physical, the political, the moral (or popular), and the religious. The physical sanction results from natural law, and is exemplified by the headache that follows intem perance: it sanctions prudence, but not benevolence. The popular sanction results from the illwill of society in any of its non-political expressions; it is often a powerful de terrent, but it is apt to be variable and inconsistent, and it has no exact correspondence with public interest. On the religious sanction Bentham does not rely. There re mains the political sanction, the rewards and punishments employed by society organised as a state. But rewards count for little. The whole weight of the doctrine that general happiness is the rule of right and wrong for individual conduct thus rests upon the penal law; it is the "duty-and-interest-junction-prescribing principle." And this principle also is found to be imperfect. Even when punishment is neither groundless nor needless, there are cases in which it would be inefficacious, and others in which it would be unprofitable by causing more unhappiness than it would avert. In general, it can compel probity but it cannot compel beneficence. Thus the doctrine of sanctions fails to establish the thesis of utilitarianism that general happiness is the ethical standard. And the failure is not covered by the retort: " if the thunders of the law prove impotent, the whispers of simple morality can have but little influence."
In the preface to his Principles of Morals and Legislation Bentham gave a list of the works which he had in pre paration or contemplation and in which his great design would be completed. According to this list works were
1 These terms fusion of interests, natural identity of interests, artificial identification of interests describe different solutions of the same problem and have been introduced by Halevy, Formation du radicalisme philoso- pbique, i, pp. 15 ff.
152
228 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
to be written on the principles of legislation in the follow ing nine matters: civil law; penal law; procedure; reward; constitutional law; political tactics (that is, rules for the direction of political assemblies so that they may attain the end of their institution); international law; finance; political economy; and these were to be followed by a tenth treatise, giving a complete plan of law in all its branches, in respect of its form, including all that properly belongs to the topic of universal jurisprudence. In the course of his life he dealt with all these subjects, as well as with many others, in separate works. In the more important and complete of his works he depended on the literary assistance of Dumont and others. But the ideas and the method were always his own. For the exposure of the anomalies of English law, and for the elaboration of a rational and businesslike system to serve as a model for its reform, he deserves almost the sole credit.
Bentham s power was derived from the combination in his mind of two qualities the firm grasp of a single principle, and a truly astonishing mastery of details. Every concrete situation was analysed into its elements and these followed out into all their ramifications. The method of division and subdivision was artificial; but it tended to clearness and exhaustiveness, and it could be applied to any subject. Whatever did not yield to this analysis was dismissed as " vague generality." Applying this method with infinite patience, he covered the whole field of ethics, jurisprudence, and politics. Everything in human nature and in society was reduced to its elements, and then re constructed out of these elements. And in each element only one feature counted, whether in respect of force or of value its quantum of pleasure or pain. The whole system would have been upset if an independent qualitative dis tinction between pleasures had been allowed, such as Plato contended for, or John Stuart Mill afterwards at tempted to introduce into utilitarianism. " Quantity of pleasure being equal," says Bentham, " pushpin is as good
Xl] THE IDEAS OF THE REVOLUTION 229
% as poetry." As regards the principle itself there was no opportunity for originality: Hume had suggested its im portance to his mind; Priestley had shown its use in political reasoning; he picked up the formula from Beccaria; and in his exposition of its nature there is perhaps nothing that had not been stated already by Helvetius. But the relentless consistency and thorough ness with which he applied it had never been anticipated; and this made him the founder of a new and powerful school.
His method was not that most characteristic of the re volutionary thought of the period. The ideas of the revo lution centred in certain abstract conceptions. Equality and freedom were held to be natural rights of which men had been robbed by governments, and the purpose of the revolutionists was to regain and realise those rights. This mode of thought was represented in England by Richard Price; through Rousseau it came to dominate the popular consciousness; in the American Declaration of Indepen dence of 1776 it was made the foundation of a democratic reconstruction of government. The year 1776 is of note in literary history also. It marks the death of Hume, and the publication of The Wealth of Nations, of the first volume of Gibbon s Decline and Fall, and of Bentham s Fragment on Government. The last-named work preaches a radical reform, but without appealing to natural or ab stract rights. Although he was an admirer of the American constitution, Bentham was never deceived by the crude
- metapolitics (to use Coleridge s word) of the Declara
tion of Independence, or by the same doctrine as it was expounded at greater length in the " Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen," decreed in the French Constituent Assembly of 1791. His Anarchical Fallacies, written about this time, is a masterly exposure of the crudities and confusions of the latter document. All rights, in his view, are the creation of law; " natural rights
230 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense nonsense upon stilts." Yet the difference between Bentham s theory and that of conti nental and American revolutionists was not immediately obvious. He was in correspondence with some of the leaders of the revolution, recommended his panopticon scheme for adoption in France, and offered himself as chief gaoler; in 1792 he was made a citizen of France. Never theless his Anarchical Fallacies made his position clear: and it is owing to him that philosophical radicalism in England, unlike the corresponding revolutionary doctrines in other countries, was based upon an empirical utilitarian ism and not upon a -priori ideas about natural rights. A comparison of his argument in Anarchical Fallacies with his criticism of our "matchless constitution" in The Book of Fallacies (1824) shows that he was a foe to all kinds of loose thinking, whether in praise of revolutionary ideals or in the interests of the established order.
The Constitutional Code, which Bentham published to wards the end of his life, exhibits an endeavour to give to the people concerned the fullest possible control over the acts of government. The author had become increas ingly impressed by the extent to which " sinister inter ests," especially the personal and class interests of the rulers, interfered with public interest; and he seeks to check their operation at every turn. His work is intended " for the use of all nations and all governments professing liberal opinions." Some years earlier he had published Codification Proposals, offering his services in the matter to any nation that wanted them. Portugal had already applied to him for assistance. He had negotiations of a similar, if less official, kind with Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, the United States, Russia, Greece, and Tripoli. The world seemed to be at his feet, anxious to learn from him the arts of law and government; and he was willing to instruct all comers. He sometimes overlooked, but he did not entirely disregard, differences of national character and
XI] GODWIN AND MALTHUS 231
historical conditions. In his essay on The Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation he attributes immuta bility to the grounds of law rather than to the laws them selves, and rebukes as " hot-headed innovators " those legislators who " only pay attention to abstract advan tage."
Bentham s genius was comprehensive and tenacious rather than profound. He covered an extensive field, always following the same clue. He passed from social science to religion, and analysed its influence " upon the temporal happiness of mankind," part of his work being edited by a disciple, George Grote, and published under a pseudonym (1822). He wrote also a number of papers on education under the title Chrestomathia (1816); and he and his friends projected a chrestomathic school in which the youth of the middle and upper classes were to be trained in correct utilitarian principles. Thus he dealt in a way with the deeper things of life, and yet only with the surface-aspect of these things. With forces and values that cannot be measured in terms of pleasure or pain he had no concern; into history, art, and religion he had little insight; but he was unconscious of his limitations, and he attempted to deal with these things by his own scale of values.
On the ground of his general principles Thomas Robert Malthus may be counted among the utilitarians; but he was a follower of Tucker and Paley rather than of Bentham. He did not share Bentham s estimate of the intellectual factor in conduct, and the exaggeration of this estimate in other thinkers of the time was the indirect cause of his famous work. Hume had spoken of reason as the slave of the passions; but William Godwin wrote as if men were compact of pure intellect. He too was a utilitarian, in the sense that he took happiness as the end of conduct; but he was under the sway of the revolu tionary idea; he put down all human ills to government,
232 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
regarding it as an unnecessary evil, and thought that, with its abolition, man s reason would have free play and the race would advance rapidly towards perfection. It was this doctrine of the perfectibility of man that gave Malthus pause. His criticism of the doctrine was first thrown out in conversation with his father. The elder Malthus, a friend and executor of Rousseau, expressed approval of the idea of human perfectibility set forth in 1793 in Godwin s Political Justice and in Condorcet s Esquisse d*un tableau historique desprogrls de I esprit humain. Robert Malthus took a more sombre view of things than his father; he had had a scientific education; and, as a clergyman, he knew something of the life of the people; above all, he was of the new generation, and the dreams of an earlier day did not blind him to existing facts. He saw an obstacle in the way of all Utopias. Even if equality and happiness were once attained, they could not last; population would soon expand beyond the means of sub sistence; and the result would be inequality and misery. The argument thus struck out in the course of debate was expanded, soon after, in An Essay on the Principle of Popu lation (1798). A storm of controversy followed its publi cation; but its teaching made notable converts, such as Pitt among statesmen and Paley among philosophers; and it soon came to be adopted as part of the orthodox utili tarian tradition. To his critics Malthus replied with the thoroughness of an honest enquirer; he travelled on the continent, studied social conditions, and investigated the actual circumstances which had kept the numbers of the people and their food in equilibrium. The answer came in the second edition of his Essay (1803) which, in con tents, is practically a new book. Even the title is modified. The first edition discusses the principle of population "as it affects the future improvement of society"; the second is "a view of its past and present effects on human happiness." The former shattered the picture of a future golden age, to be reached by the abolition of government
Xl] THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION 233
or by some communistic device; the effect which the book produces on the reader is one of unrelieved depression; mankind is in the power of an instinct hostile to welfare; only vice and misery prevent the world from being over peopled. The second edition turns from the future to the past and the present; it is informed by a fuller study of facts; it finds that the pressure of the people on the food has diminished with the advance of civilisation; not vice and misery only, but morality also, is reckoned among the checks to the increase of population. Thus, as he says in the preface, he " tried to soften some of the harshest conclusions of the first essay."
The main doctrine of Malthus was not entirely new. The question of the populousness of ancient and modern nations had been discussed by a number of writers, in cluding Hume; there were anticipations of Malthus in Joseph Townsend s Dissertation on the Poor Laws (1786); and still earlier, in 1761, Robert Wallace, in his Various Prospects of Mankind, had at first suggested community of goods as a solution of the social problem, and then pointed out that the increase of population, which would result from communism, was a fatal flaw in his own solution. But Malthus made the subject his own, and showed by patient investigation how population, as a matter of fact, had pressed upon the means of subsistence, and by what measures it had been kept in check. He produced a revolution in scientific opinion and powerfully affected popular sentiment, so that pure literature took up the theme :
Slowly comes a hungry people as a lion creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.
It is hardly too much to say that the prospect weighed on the social mind of the nineteenth century like a nightmare. The mind of the twentieth century has shaken it off like a dream, but it has not answered the main thesis for which Malthus contended. It is true that his exposition is not
234 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
above criticism. The terms in which he stated his thesis that population tends to increase in a geometrical ratio and food in an arithmetical ratio are, at best, inexact. Perhaps also he did not allow sufficiently for the effects of new methods and inventions in increasing the supply of food and for the possible reaction of quality upon numbers among men. The darker side of his picture of the human lot may be read in his criticism of the poor law. But he was not blind to considerations of a more favourable kind. He saw that the "struggle for exist ence " (the phrase is his) was the great stimulus to labour and a cause of human improvement. Thus, at a later date, Darwin and A. R. Wallace, working independently, found in his book a statement of the principle, of which they were in search, for an explanation of biological de velopment.
The publication of An Essay on the Principle of Popula tion determined the career of Malthus, which thenceforth was devoted to teaching and writing on economics. His Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, his Principles of Political Economy, and his correspondence with Ricardo are of importance in the history of economic theory, though they were not fitted to exert any notable influence upon thought and literature in general. In all that he wrote Malthus kept in close touch with the actual facts of social and industrial life; in this respect his writings form a contrast in method to the works of Ricardo, in whose abstract reasonings the economics of the Benthamite school attained their most characteristic expression.
Thus the economic doctrines characteristic of the utili tarian school were elaborated by a writer who cannot be regarded as a member of it and who indeed was not interested in philosophy or even in the larger questions of social theory. David Ricardo the son of a Dutch Jew who had settled in London and himself a successful stock broker had already made his mark as a writer on the
Xl] THE UTILITARIAN ECONOMICS 235
currency when he became acquainted with James Mill, by whose encouragement, as well as by that of other friends, he was induced in 1817 to publish his chief work, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Ricardo received his impetus towards economic study from Adam Smith. He did not share the latter s breadth of social outlook or his psychological insight; but he had a masterly power of abstract reasoning which enabled him to present economic doctrines in the form of a deductive science. He was concerned not so much with the " nature and causes " as with the distribution of wealth. This distribu tion has to be made between the classes concerned in the production of wealth, namely, the landowner, the capi talist, and the labourer; and Ricardo seeks to show the conditions which determine the share of each. Here his theory of rent is fundamental. According to this theory rent is the price which a landowner is able to charge for the special advantages of his land; it is the difference between its return to a given amount of capital and labour and the similar return of the least advantageous land which has to be cultivated. Consequently it rises as the margin of cultivation spreads to less fertile soils. Ob viously this doctrine leads to a strong argument in favour of the free importation of foreign goods, especially corn. It also breaks with the economic optimism of Adam Smith, who thought that the interest of the country gentleman harmonised with that of the mass of the people; for it shows that the rent of the landowner rises as the increasing need of the people compels them to have resort to inferior land for the production of their food.
The value of an article is determined, according to Ricardo, by the amount of labour required to produce it
- under the least favourable conditions; in the distribution
\ of this value the share of wages depends on the price of necessaries (that is, chiefly, of food) ; and the law of popu lation (which he takes over from Malthus) prevents any further rise of wages. On the other hand, the profits of
236 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH.
the employer depend on low or high wages. Thus, in the progress of society, the " natural tendency " of profits is to fall, until " almost the whole produce of the country, after paying the labourers, will be the property of the owners of land and the receivers of tithes and taxes." There is, therefore, an opposition of interests within the body economic; and this opposition is held to be the result of natural and inevitable law " happily checked," however, at repeated intervals, by improvements and dis coveries. For their effect Ricardo made allowance. But he took no account of other than economic motives in human conduct; he may be said to have invented the fiction of the economic man, though he did not use the phrase. And he regarded the economic structure of society as rigid, though his doctrines often read like satires upon it, and they became, in the hands both of contem porary 1 and of later socialist writers, a powerful argument for fundamental social changes.
Ricardo s method was to proceed from a few very general propositions about society and human nature, and to draw out their consequences deductively. That his premisses were one-sided generalisations, and that his conclusions at best had only hypothetical validity, he did not recognise. This method was also characteristic of the Benthamite reasoning in political theory generally. Thus it was that, in economics, James Mill professed himself Ricardo s disciple. Mill s Political Economy (1821) reduces Ricardo s doctrines to text-book form, and states them with the concise and confident lucidity which distin guished the author. For Mill however, unlike Ricardo, economics was only one amongst a large number of topics, social and philosophical, which were open to the same general method of treatment, and which appealed to his interest. Mill was closely associated with Bentham at
1 See the bibliography by H. S. Foxwell, in appendix n (pp. 191-267) of the English translation of A. Menger s Right to the Whole Produce of Labour (1899).
IX] JAMES MILL 237
any rate, from 1808 onwards and it is difficult to find any originality in the fundamental doctrines of his creed. At the same time he had certain points of superiority. Much inferior to Bentham in jurisprudence and all that concerned the details of law, he had perhaps a clearer view of political theory and certainly a wider knowledge of historical conditions. He was, of course, a whole hearted adherent of the greatest happiness principle, and added nothing to its statement; but he was better equipped for its defence on philosophical grounds and he could supplement Bentham s deficiencies as a psychologist. But the necessity of making an income by literary work, and afterwards the demands of official employment, as well as always the engrossing interest of public affairs, left him little leisure for philosophy.
Mill s systematic work in political theory is contained in certain articles, especially an article on government, contributed to the supplement of The Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica, edited by Macvey Napier (1820). In these articles the author proceeds methodically to determine the best form of political order by deductive reasoning; and his method was the object of severe criticism by Macaulay in an article contributed to The Edinburgh Review in 1829, but not republished in his collected Essays. This article contained also an attack on the utili tarians generally; and Mill s rejoinder, so far as he made any, is to be found in A Fragment on Mackintosh (1835). This consists of " strictures on some passages " of A Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy which Sir James Mackintosh had contributed to the seventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Like Mill, Mackintosh was keemy interested in philosophy, although his career gave him little time for its pursuit. In this, his only con tribution to the subject, he reviewed the work of the English moralists with appreciation and insight. It con tained criticisms of the utilitarians and of their intellectual predecessors which aroused Mill s hostility, and its occa-
238 BENTHAM AND THE UTILITARIANS [CH. XI
sional lack of precision of thought laid it open to attack. Mill s strictures are limited to a few points only, and expose the weaknesses of his antagonist s positions in a manner which would have been more effective if it had been less violent although his friends had induced him to moderate its tone before making it public.
Mill s chief philosophical work was, however, his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829). In this he laid the foundation in psychology for the utilitarian superstructure. It is a compact statement of a theory of mind elaborated by the same method as that by which any department of nature might be studied. Mental pheno mena are reduced to their simplest elements, and the association of these into groups and successions is investi gated, all association being reduced by him to one law that of contiguity. In general Mill follows Hume and Hartley but Hartley much more than Hume. He dis regards, however, the physiological side of Hartley s theory, so that his own doctrines are purely psychological. To the psychological school of a later date, whose leading representatives were John Stuart Mill and Alexander Bain, his chief positive contribution was the doctrine of inseparable association; in addition, he marked out afresh the lines to be followed by a theory which attempts to explain the facts of consciousness from the association of ultimate elements called sensations, which were as sumed not to be themselves in need of explanation.
CHAPTER XII
THE VICTORIAN ERA
I. INTRODUCTION
ENGLISH philosophy may be said to have touched low- water mark in or about the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. The general public had ceased to be occupied with matters of speculative thought, and the universities did little or nothing to keep an interest in them alive. Writing in 1835, John Stuart Mill complained that philo sophy was falling more and more into disrepute and that great events had ceased to inspire great ideas. " In the intellectual pursuits which form great minds," he said, " this country was formerly pre-eminent. England once stood at the head of European philosophy. Where stands she now?... Out of the narrow bounds of mathematical and physical science, not a vestige of a reading and thinking public engaged in the investigation of truth as truth, in the prosecution of thought for the sake of thought. Among few except sectarian religionists and what they are we all know is there any interest in the great problem of man s nature and life: among still fewer is there any curiosity respecting the nature and principles of human society, the history or the philosophy of civiliza tion; nor any belief that, from such inquiries, a single important practical consequence can follow 1 ." About the same time, or a few years earlier, similar views concerning the low estate of English philosophy had been expressed by Sir William Hamilton and by Thomas Carlyle 2 ; and a foreign observer Hegel had spoken with scorn of
1 Dissertations and Discussions, vol. i, pp. 96, 97.
2 Cp. Masson, Recent British Philosophy, 3rd edn, pp. 2-5.
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the usage of the word philosophy in the English lan guage 1 .
The writers who made this complaint were foremost in bringing about a change. Without any approach to philo sophical method, Carlyle forced upon public attention ideas concerning the ultimate meaning and value of life, and, in his own way, had an influence upon the thought of his time which may be compared with that of Coleridge in the generation immediately preceding. Hamilton and Mill were the leaders of a marked revival of interest in speculative topics, which reinstated philosophy in its due place in the national culture; and this revival took two different directions connected with their diverse views and training.
Philosophy, however, had not merely to overcome the public indifference referred to by John Stuart Mill; it had also to contend against itself, or at least against its dominant form. The Benthamite creed, which was in the ascendant, was not favourable to speculative enquiry. The great problem of man s nature and life " was re garded as solved in a sense which made metaphysics and theology alike impossible; ethical principles were held to be finally settled by Bentham, so that nothing remained but their application to different situations; even political and social theory, the field of the chief triumphs of the utilitarians, was divorced from history and from every ethical idea save that of utility; psychology alone stood in need of more adequate treatment than Bentham could give it, and James Mill had supplied the school with a theory of mind which was in harmony with their other views.
II. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND OTHERS
Hamilton s reputation has not withstood the test of time; but, in his own day and for a number of years afterwards, his was one of the two names which stood for
1 Encyklopadie der pbilosophischen Wissenschaften, 7.
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the revival of philosophical thought in Great Britain. His pre-eminence was not altogether undisputed, however. Even from his younger contemporaries who did most for Scottish metaphysics, different opinions regarding his merit may be gathered. Ferrier looked upon him, morally and intellectually, as " amongst the greatest of the great 1 ": whereas Hutchison Stirling found in him "a certain vein of disingenuousness that, cruelly unjust to individuals, has probably caused the retardation of general British philosophy by, perhaps, a generation 2 ." The truth lies somewhere between these extreme views, and it is im portant to arrive at a correct estimate of Hamilton s work in order to understand the course of British philosophy. Sir William Hamilton was born in 1788, in the old college of Glasgow, where his father was a professor. He was educated there and at Oxford, was called to the Scottish bar and, in 1836, appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics at Edinburgh. In 1844 he had a stroke of paralysis, and, although he was able to continue the work of his professorship until his death in 1856, he never recovered his physical strength. His published work began with a number of articles in The Edinburgh Review, republished in 1852 as Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform. The most important of these were three articles on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, the Philosophy of Perception and Logic, which appeared between 1829 and 1833. He afterwards devoted himself to the preparation of an edition of Reid s Works^ which he illustrated with elabo rate appended Notes, chiefly historical in character. This work was published in 1846; but the Notes were never completed and are of the nature of material rather than of literature. After his death his Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic were published in four volumes (1858 60).
1 J. F. Ferrier, Scottish Philosophy: the old and the new (1856), pp. 15, 1 6.
2 J. H. Stirling, Sir W. Hamilton: being the Philosophy oj Perception (i 865), p. vii.
s. E. P. 16
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Hamilton s positive contributions to philosophy are connected with the topics of the three articles already named. Indeed, except as regards logic, these articles contain almost all that is essential and original in his work. But other points have to be taken into account in esti mating his influence upon philosophical thought
Since the time of Descartes continental thought had had little effect upon English philosophy. Leibniz and even Spinoza were hardly more than names. Helvetius had influenced Bentham, and De Tracy Thomas Brown; but Helvetius and De Tracy themselves worked on lines laid down in England the lines of Locke. The doctrines of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, together with the ideas of the deistical movement, had entered into the European tradition; but the reaction which they produced, and which began with Kant, was for long ignored in England. One or two enthusiasts tried to make Kant known, but their efforts were without result; an article on Kant by Thomas Brown in the second number of The Edinburgh Review (1803) only showed the poverty of the land. Coleridge, indeed, was a much more important medium; he brought into English literature ideas which had been derived from Kant and his successors, and he was recog nised by John Stuart Mill as representing a type of thought, antagonistic to the dominant Benthamism, which had to be reckoned with. But the teaching of Coleridge was prophetic rather than scientific, and the philosophical student had to be approached in his own language and by a master who had the command of traditional learning as well as fresh doctrines to teach.
It was here that Hamilton s cosmopolitan learning broke in upon British philosophy and lifted it out of the narrow grooves into which both the Scottish academic teachers and the English Benthamites had fallen. Hamilton s learning struck most of his contemporaries as almost superhuman; it was certainly vast, and, as certainly, without precedent at the time. It made possible
XIl] THE NEW ANALYTIC 243
a new orientation in philosophy. The special problems to which discussion had become restricted were seen as part of a larger field of enquiry which extended over the whole of western thought from ancient Greece to modern Germany. Hamilton, however, had the defects of his qualities. He never obtained easy mastery of his own learning; he would summon a "cloud of witnesses" when
O
a single good argument would have been more to the purpose; and his selection of "authorities" was often ill-judged: they were numbered instead of weighed; and he would spend time over third-rate schoolmen or equally third-rate modern Germans which would have been better spent if devoted to a sympathetic understanding of Kant and Hegel. Nevertheless, Hamilton s work in this respect is important. He overcame the provincialism of English thought and he brought it into connection with the greatest of the new German philosophers. It may have been an imperfect Kant that he revealed; Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel were introduced for the purpose of criticism only. But the traditional circle of English thought was broken, and new ideas were brought within it.
Hamilton came forward as a reconciler of Scottish and German thought of Reid with Kant. It was only an imperfect synthesis that he worked out, but the enterprise was notable. His logical work, indeed, stands to some extent apart. He followed Kant in his strictly formal treatment, and he devoted a large amount of time, and no little ingenuity, to the elaboration of a modification of the formal doctrine of the traditional logic. This modified doctrine made a great stir for many years, and was even hailed as the greatest logical discovery since the time of Aristotle 1 . It is known as the Quantification of the Predicate. Hamilton s own expositions of it are incom plete and are contained in appendixes to his Discussions and to his Lectures. The clearest accounts of his views have to be sought in An Essay on the New Analytic of
1 T. S. Baynes, Essay on the New Analytic (1850), p. 80.
1 6 2
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Logical Forms (1850) by his pupil, Thomas Spencer Baynes, and in An Outline of the Laws of Thought (the first edition of which was published in 1842) by William Thomson, afterwards archbishop of York. But the gist of the matter can be put very shortly. According to the traditional view, in a judgment or proposition, an assertion is made about something; that is to say, the subject is said to possess or not to possess the quality signified by the predicate. When made not about an individual thing, but about a group or class, then the assertion may be meant to apply to every member of the class or only to some of them; it is, therefore, necessary to indicate this, or to express the quantity of the subject. The predicate is not similarly quantified. But a quality is always poten tially a class the class of things which possess that quality. The most elementary of logical operations implies that it can be treated as such and assigned a quantity as the subject of a new proposition. Hamilton s new analytic depends upon the contention that the quantity thus implied should be always explicitly stated, and con sists in following out the changes in formal procedure which seem to him to result from this being done. But Hamilton was not thorough enough in the elaboration of his theory. He did not see that his view of the judgment as an assertion of the quantitative relation between two classes would lead to a very different classification of propositions from his and, in general, to a much more radical revision of logical forms. Two contemporary mathematicians Augustus de Morgan and George Boole went further than he did; and the latter s treatise en titled The Laws of Thought (1854) laid the foundations of V .Xhe modern logical calculus.
Hamilton s article on the Philosophy of Perception is both a defence of Reid and, at the same time, a relentless attack upon Thomas Brown. It is also an attempt to formulate and justify the doctrine of natural realism or natural dualism in a form less ambiguous than that
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in which it had been stated by Reid. " In the simplest act of perception," says Hamilton, " I am conscious of myself as the perceiving subject and of an external reality as the object perceived." As regards the latter factor what we have is said to be " an immediate knowledge of the external reality." This clear view almost disappears, how ever, in the process of discussion and elaboration which it underwent in Hamilton s later thought. In the course of his psychological analysis he distinguished sharply and properly between the subjective and the objective factors in the act of cognising external reality; the former he called sensation proper and the latter perception proper; and he even formulated a law of their inverse ratio. He elaborated also the old distinction of primary and secondary qualities of matter, to which, more suo, he added an intermediate class of secundo-primary qualities. As a result of these distinctions the doctrine of "immediate knowledge of the external reality" is transformed. The ob ject of perception proper, it is now said, is either a primary quality or a certain phase of a secundo-primary. But we do not perceive the primary qualities of things external to our organism. These are not immediately known but only inferred; the primary qualities which we do perceive " are perceived as in our organism" That is to say, when we perceive a table, we do not perceive the shape or size of the table; knowledge of these is got by inference; the shape and size which we perceive are in our own bodies. The existence of an extra-organic world is apprehended through consciousness of resistance to our muscular energy, which Hamilton calls a "quasi-primary phasis of the secundo-primary" qualities 1 . From this view it follows that no immediate knowledge of external reality is given by sight; and yet it would be hard to show that the "testimony of consciousness," to which Hamilton con stantly and confidently appeals, makes any such distinc tion between things seen and things touched.
1 Reid s Works, ed. Hamilton, Note D*, pp. 881, 882.
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The value of Hamilton s philosophy of the condi tioned, as he called it, is not easy to estimate, chiefly owing to the difficulty of stating the exact sense in which he held his favourite doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge. His most striking publication is the first article he wrote that on the Philosophy of the Un conditioned/ It is a review not directly of Schelling or Hegel, but of the eclectic system of his French contem porary, Victor Cousin. The unconditioned, in his use of the term, is a genus of which the infinite (or uncondi tionally unlimited) and the absolute (or unconditionally limited) are the species; and his contention is that it is not an object of thought at all, but " merely a common name for what transcends the laws of thought." His argument follows lines similar to those used by Kant in exhibiting the antinomies of rational cosmology, though it is applied to the conclusions of post-Kantian specula tion. According to him there cannot be any knowledge of that which is without conditions, whether it is called infinite or absolute; knowledge lies between two contra dictory inconceivables, one of which must be true though neither can be conceived; all true philosophy is a philo sophy of the conditioned. "To think," he says, "is to condition."
This statement, however, involves two positions which he does not take care to keep distinct. It implies that we cannot know the infinite or whole, which in its nature must be without any conditions; and it may also be taken as implying that our knowledge of the finite parts is not a knowledge of them as they truly exist, but only as they are modified by our way of knowing. This latter position, though very definitely stated by Hamilton, is not clearly carried out. He follows Kant by laying chief stress on space and time as the forms under which we know objects; but he departs from Kant in holding that these forms are also modes of things as actually existing. It would there fore appear that the fact of their being (as Hamilton calls
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them) a priori " forms of thought " does not interfere with the objective truth of our spatio-temporal know ledge; it is a knowledge, under the forms of space and time, of things which really exist in space and time. Hamilton s doctrine of immediate perception necessitates some such view. He saw, moreover, that some kind of reconciliation was required; but a parenthetical paragraph in his article on the Philosophy of Perception exhausts what he has to say on this important problem. To obviate misapprehension," he asserts that all that we know is " those phases of being which stand in analogy to our faculties of knowledge." This vague phrase may mean little more than that we cannot know what we are in capable of knowing. Because the nature of a thing is " in analogy to our faculties " may be the reason why we are able to know it; it cannot show that we do not know it as it is or in its actual nature. But Hamilton s mind seemed to work in two distinct compartments belonging respec tively to the philosophy of perception and to the philo sophy of the conditioned. The two lines of thought seldom met, and when they did meet the result was sometimes curious. Rerumque ignarus^ imagine gaudet is the taunt he flings at Brown and the representationists; but, when he poses as the philosopher of the conditioned, he takes the same tag as his own motto rerumque ignarus^ imagine gaudet.
As regards our supposed knowledge of the absolute or of the infinite, that, he holds, is merely a negative con ception. On this topic he can hardly be said to have set forth anything substantially new, though his arguments were novel and striking to the English reader of the day. Nor, even here, on this fundamental point, can his view be said to be free from ambiguity. His doctrine seems to lead logically to a form of positivism; he will not even allow that the moral consciousness or practical reason has the significance assigned to it by Kant; but yet he asserts emphatically that what cannot be known can be
248 THE VICTORIAN ERA * [CH.
and ought to be believed. What then is belief? By classi fying it as a form or faculty of cognition, Hamilton strikes at the root of his doctrine that thought excludes the notion of the absolute or infinite. When on the war path against the unconditioned, the imbecility of human knowledge is asserted to the fullest extent; when religious belief is in question, the unknown God is represented as somehow the object of consciousness. Sometimes it would even appear as if his view were simply that know ledge of the highest object which consciousness can appre hend cannot, like our knowledge of particular things, imply a reference to some higher concept.
The theological results of the philosophy of the con ditioned were worked out thoroughly and with effective logic by Henry Longueville Mansel, an Oxford professor who was dean of St Paul s for the three years preceding his death in 1871. Mansel was a scholar of less mis cellaneous learning than Hamilton, and his thinking was less original; but his thought was not obscured by his learning. In the notes and appendixes to his edition of Aldrich s Artis Logicae Rudimenta (1849), an< ^ * n n ^ s Prole gomena Logica (1851), he defined and defended a formal view of the science similar to Hamilton s. His Metaphysics (1860), originally contributed to The Encyclopaedia Britan- nica, is the best connected exposition of the philosophy that may be called Hamiltonian; and, in his Philosophy of the Conditioned (1866), the doctrine was defended against the criticisms of Mill. He was also the author of a brilliant brochure, in the form of an Aristophanic comedy, entitled Phrontisterion (republished in Letters, Lectures and Re views, 1873), in which academic reformers and German philosophers are satirised. But his wider fame came from his Bampton lectures, The Limits of Religious Thought (1858). This work is a Christian apologetic founded on the doctrine of agnosticism (to use the modern term) which he shared with Hamilton. Since knowledge of God,
XII] JOHN STUART MILL 249
in his absolute existence, is self-contradictory, since * abso lute morality is equally beyond human knowledge and since our moral conceptions can only be relative and phenomenal, he seeks to disallow any criticisms of theo logical doctrine which are based upon human conceptions of good and evil. The indignation with which this doctrine was repudiated by John Stuart Mill formed one of the most striking, but not one of the most important, features of his criticism of the philosophy of Hamilton.
III. JOHN STUART MILL AND OTHERS
John Stuart Mill is, on the whole, the most interesting and characteristic figure in English philosophy in the nineteenth century. He was successively the hope and the leader, sometimes also the despair, of the school of thought which was regarded as representative of English traditions. He was born in London on 20 May 1806, and was the eldest son of James Mill. He was educated entirely by his father and was deliberately shielded from association with other boys of his age. From his earliest years he was subjected to a rigid system of intellectual discipline. As a result of this system, knowledge of what are considered the higher branches of education was ac quired by him in childhood, and he started on his career, according to his own account, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over his contemporaries. This is probably an overstatement of a very remarkable intel lectual precocity; and John Mill recognised, in later life, that his father s system had the fault of appealing to the intellect only and that the culture of his practical and emotional life had been neglected, while his physical health was probably undermined by the strenuous labour exacted from him. James Mill s method seems to have been designed to make his son s mind a first-rate thinking machine, so that the boy might become a prophet of the utilitarian gospel. In this he succeeded. But the interest one may almost say, the tragedy of the son s life arose
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from the fact that he possessed a much finer and subtler nature than his father s a mind which could not be en tirely satisfied by the hereditary creed. He remained more or less orthodox, according to the standards of his school; but he welcomed light from other quarters, and there were times when Grote and others feared that he might become a castaway. " A new mystic " was Carlyle s judgment upon some of his early articles. Mill never became a mystic; but he kept an open mind, and he saw elements of truth in ideas in which the stricter utilitarians could see nothing at all.
He had no doubts at the outset of his career. On reading Bentham (this was when he was fifteen or sixteen) the feeling rushed upon him " that all previous moralists were superseded." The principle of utility, he says, under stood and applied as it was by Bentham, " gave unity to my conception of things. I now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion ; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life." Soon afterwards he formed a small Utilitarian Society, and, for some few years, he was one of " a little knot of young men " who adopted his father s philosophical and political views " with youthful fanaticism." A position under his father in the India Office had secured him against the misfortune of having to depend on literary work for his livelihood; and he found that office- work left him ample leisure for the pursuit of his wider interests.
He was already coming to be looked upon as a leader of thought when, in his twenty-first year, the mental crisis occurred which is described in his Autobiography. This crisis was a result of the severe strain, physical and mental, to which he had been subjected from his earliest years. He was " in a dull state of nerves "; the objects in life for which he had been trained and for which he had worked lost their charm; he had " no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything
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else"; a constant habit of analysis had dried up the fountains of feeling within him. After many months of despair he found, accidentally, that the capacity for emo tion was not dead, and " the cloud gradually drew off." But the experience he had undergone modified his theory of life and his character. Happiness was still to be the end of life, but it should not be taken as its direct aim. " Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life." Further, he ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the order ing of outward circumstances, and, " for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the indi vidual." In this state of mind he found in the poems of Wordsworth "the poet of unpoetical natures," as he calls him that very culture of the feelings which he was seeking. From him he learned " what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed."
Mill s widened intellectual sympathies were shown by his reviews of Tennyson s poems and of Carlyle s French Revolution in 1835 an< ^ I ^37- The articles on Bentham and on Coleridge, published in 1838 and 1840 respec tively, disclose his modified philosophical outlook and the exact measure of his new mental independence. From the position now occupied he did not seriously depart through out the strenuous literary work of his mature years. The influence of the new spirit, which he identified with the thinking of Coleridge, did not noticeably develop further; if anything, perhaps, his later writings adhered more nearly to the traditional views than might have been anticipated from some indications in his early articles on Bentham and Coleridge.
These two articles provide the key for understanding Mill s own thought. He looks upon Bentham as a great constructive genius who had first brought light and system
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into regions formerly chaotic. No finer or juster apprecia tion of Bentham s work has ever been written. Mill agrees with Bentham s fundamental principle and approves his method. Bentham made morals and politics scientific. But his knowledge of life was limited. " It is wholly empirical and the empiricism of one who has had little experience." The deeper things of life did not touch him; all the subtler workings of mind and its environment were hidden from his view. It is significant that Mill assumes that, for light on these deeper and subtler aspects of life, we must go not to other writers of the empirical tradition but to thinkers of an entirely different school. He dis agrees with the latter fundamentally in the systematic presentation of their views whether these be defended by the easy appeal to intuition or by the more elaborate methods of Schelling or Hegel. What we really get from them are half-lights glimpses, often fitful and always imperfect, into aspects of truth not seen at all by their opponents. Coleridge represented this type of thought. He had not Bentham s great constructive faculties; but he had insight in regions where Bentham s vision failed, and he appreciated, what Bentham almost entirely over looked, the significance of historical tradition.
The ideas which Mill derived from the writings of Coleridge, or from his association with younger men who had been influenced by Coleridge, did not bring about any fundamental change in his philosophical standpoint, but they widened his horizon. And in nearly all his books we can trace their effect. He seems conscious that the analysis which satisfied other followers of Bentham is im perfect, and that difficulties remain which they are unable to solve and cannot even see.
Mill s System of Logic was published in 1843, anc ^ ran through many editions, some of which especially the third (1850) and the eighth (1872) were thoroughly revised and supplemented by the incorporation of new, mainly controversial, matter. It is probably the greatest
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of his books. In spite of Hobbes s treatise, and of the suggestive discussions in the third book of Locke s Essay, the greater English philosophers almost seem to have conspired to neglect the theory of logic. It had kept its place as an academic study, but on traditional lines; Aristotle was supposed to have said the last word on it, and that last word to be enshrined in scholastic manuals. English thought, however, was beginning to emerge from this stage. Richard Whately had written a text-book, Elements of Logic (1826), which, by its practical method and modern illustrations, gave a considerable impetus to the study, and Hamilton s more comprehensive researches had begun. From them Mill did not learn much or any thing. What he set himself to work out was a theory of evidence in harmony with the first principles of the em pirical philosophy; and this was an almost untouched problem. He may have obtained help from Locke; he acknowledges the value for his thinking of Dugald Stewart s analysis of the process of reasoning; he was still more indebted to his discussions with a society of friends. Thus he worked out his theory of terms, propositions, and the syllogism; and then the book was laid aside for five years. When he returned to it, and proceeded to analyse the inductive process, he found rich material to hand not only in Sir John Herschel s Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830), but also in William Whewell s History of the Inductive Sciences (1837). After his theory of induction was substantially complete, he became acquainted with, and derived stimulus and assistance from, the first two volumes of Comte s Cours de philosophic posi tive (1830). These were the chief influences upon his work, and their enumeration serves to bring out the originality of his performance. His work marks an epoch in logical enquiry, not for English philosophy only but in modern thought.
The reputation of Mill s Logic was largely due to his analysis of inductive proof. He provided the empirical
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sciences with a set of formulae and criteria which might serve the same purpose for them as the time-worn formulae of the syllogism had served for arguments that proceeded from general principles. In this part of his work he derived important material from Whewell, much as he differed from him in general point of view, and he found his own methods implicitly recognised in Herschel s Discourse. The importance and originality of Mill s contribution, however, cannot be denied. His analysis is much more precise and complete than any that had been carried out by his immediate predecessors. He seeks to trace the steps by which we pass from statements about particular facts to general truths, and also to justify the transition: though he is more convincing in his psychological account of the process than in his logical justification of its validity. When he is brought face to face with the fundamental problem of knowledge, as Hume had been before him, he does not show Hume s clearness of thought.
Mill s work is not merely a logic in the limited sense of that term which had become customary in England. It is also a theory of knowledge such as Locke and Hume attempted. The whole is rendered more precise by its definite reference to the question of proof or evidence; but the problem is Hume s problem over again. The ultimate elements of knowledge are subjective entities "feelings or states of consciousness" but knowledge has objective validity. The elements are distinct, though the laws of association bind them into groups and may even fuse them into inseparable wholes but knowledge unites and distinguishes in an order which is not that of the laws of association. The theory of knowledge, accordingly, has to explain how our thinking, especially in the transition from assertion to assertion which we call proof, has validity for objective reality, and, in doing so, it has to give a tenable account of the universal principles postu lated in these transitions. In Mill s case, as in Hume s, this has to be done on the assumption that the immediate
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object in experience is something itself mental, and that there are no h -priori principles determining the connections of objects. In his doctrine of terms and propositions Mill emphasises the objective reference in knowledge, although he cannot be said to meet, or even fully to recognise, the difficulty of reconciling this view with his psychological analysis. He faces much more directly the problem of the universal element in knowledge. He contends that, ultimately, proof is always from particulars to particulars. The general proposition which stands as major premiss in a syllogism is only a shorthand record of a number of particular observations, which facilitates and tests the transition to the conclusion. All the general principles involved in thinking, even the mathematical axioms, are interpreted as arrived at in this way from experience: so that the assertion of their universal validity stands in need of justification.
In induction the essential inference is to new particulars, not to the general statement or law. And here he faces the crucial point for his theory. Induction, as he ex pounds it, is based upon the causal principle. Mill fol lowed Hume in his analysis of cause. Now the sting of Hume s doctrine lay in its subjectivity the reduction of the causal relation to a mental habit. Mill did not succeed in extracting the sting; he could only ignore it. Through out, the relation of cause and effect is treated by him as something objective: not, indeed, as implying anything in the nature of power, but as signifying a certain con stancy (which he unwarrantably describes as invariable) in the succession of phenomena. He never hesitates to speak of it as an objective characteristic of events, but without ever enquiring into its objective grounds. Ac cording to Mill it is only when we are able to discover a causal connection among phenomena that strict induc tive inference is possible either to a general law or to new empirical particulars. But the law of universal causation, on his view, is itself an inference from a number of par-
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ticular cases. Thus it is established by inductive inference and yet, at the same time, all inductive inference depends upon it. Mill seeks to resolve the contradiction by main taining that this general truth, that is to say, the law of causation, is indeed itself arrived at by induction, but by a weaker form of induction, called per enumerationem simp/teem, in which the causal law is not itself assumed. Such a bare catalogue of facts, not penetrating to the principle of their connection, would not, in ordinary cases, justify an inference that can be relied on. But Mill thinks that the variety of experience that supports it in this case, its constant verification by new experience and the proba bility that, had there been any exception to it, that excep tion would have come to light, justify our confidence in it as the ground of all the laws of nature. He does not recognise that these grounds for belief whatever their value may be all assume the postulate of uniformity which he is endeavouring to justify.
A later and more comprehensive discussion of his philo sophical views, especially in a psychological regard, is given in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton s Philo sophy and of the principal philosophical questions discussed in his writings. This work was published in 1865; and, as his habit was, the author amplified it greatly in subsequent editions by replies to his critics. In this case the criticisms were exceptionally numerous. The book focused the whole controversial energy of the period belonging to the two opposed schools, the intuitional and the empirical; and, in spite of its controversial character, it became the leading text-book of that psychological philosophy which had been adumbrated by Hume. It is a work which shows Mill s powers at their most mature stage. He criticises with severity the theory which he sets out to examine; but he is alive to the awkward places in his own position. Among the numerous doctrines on which he left the impress of his workmanship, none excited more attention at the time of the book s publication, or are of greater
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permanent importance, than his doctrines of the external world and of the self. There is nothing fundamentally original about his views on these topics; but his discussion of both illustrates his ability to see further into the facts than his predecessors, and his candour in recording what he sees, along however with a certain disinclination to pursue an enquiry which might land him definitely on the other side of the traditional lines. Mill s doctrine is essen tially Humean though, as regards the external world, he prefers to call it Berkeleyan; and here he is the inventor of a phrase: matter is " permanent possibility of sensa tion." The phrase is striking and useful; but a possibility of sensation is not sensation, and the permanence which he attributes to the possibility of sensation implies an ob jective order: so that the reduction of matter to sensation is implicitly relinquished when it appears to be affirmed in words. Mind, in somewhat similar fashion, is reduced to a succession of feelings or states of consciousness. But the fact of memory proves a stumblingblock in his way; he cannot explain how a succession of feelings should be conscious of itself as a succession; and he implicitly admits the need of a principle of unity. Thus he almost relin quishes his own theory and only avoids doing so explicitly by falling back on the assertion that here we are in pre sence of the final inexplicability in which ultimate ques tions always merge.
In spite of the prominence of the ethical interest in his mind, and in spite also of numerous ethical discussions in his other writings, Mill s sole contribution to the funda mental problem of ethical theory was his small volume Utilitarianism, which first appeared in Fraser s Magazine in 1 86 1 and was reprinted in book-form in 1863. Perhaps he regarded the fundamental positions of Benthamism as too secure to need much elaboration. What he offers is a finely conceived and finely written defence of utilitarian ethics, into which his own modifications of Bentham s doctrine of life are worked. He holds that the sanctions
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of this doctrine are not weaker than those of any other doctrine, and that, in its own nature, it is neither a selfish nor a sensual theory. It is not selfish, because it regards the pleasures of all men as of equal moment; it is not sensual, because it recognises the superior value of intel lectual, artistic, and social pleasures as compared with those of the senses. But Mill fails in trying to establish a logical connection between the universal reference of the ethical doctrine and the egoistic analysis of individual action to which his psychology committed him. And he is so determined to emphasise the superiority of the pleasures commonly called higher, that he maintains that, merely as pleasures, they are superior in kind to the pleasures of the senses, irrespective of any excess of the latter in respect of quantity. In so doing he strikes at the root of hedonism, for he makes the ultimate cri terion of value reside not in pleasure itself but in that characteristic whatever it may turn out to be which makes one kind of pleasure superior to another.
Mill s social and political writings, in addition to occa sional articles, consist of the short treatise Considerations on Representative Government (1860), Thoughts on Parlia mentary Reform (1859), the essays On Liberty (1859) and On the Subjection of Women (1869), Essays on some Un settled Questions of Political Economy (1831, 1844) and Principles of Political Economy (1848). The method appro priate to these topics had been already discussed in the chapters on the Logic of the Moral Sciences included in his Logic. He sought a via media between the purely empirical method and the deductive method. The latter, as employed by his father, was modelled on the reasonings of geometry, which is not a science of causation. The method of politics, if it is to be deductive, must belong to a different type, and will (he holds) be the same as that used in mathematical physics. Dynamics is a deductive science because the law of the composition offerees holds; similarly, politics is a deductive science because the causes
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with which it deals follow this law: the effects of these causes, when conjoined, are the same as the sum of the effects which the same causes produce when acting sepa rately a striking and unproved assumption. Like his predecessors, Mill postulated certain forces as deter mining human conduct: especially self-interest and mental association. From their working he deduced political and social consequences. He did not diverge from the principles agreed upon by those with whom he was associated. Perhaps he did not add very much to them. But he saw their limitations more clearly than others did : the hypothetical nature of economic theory, and the danger that democratic government might prove antagon istic to the causes of individual freedom and of the common welfare. To guard against these dangers he proposed cer tain modifications of the representative system. But his contemporaries, and even his successors, of the same way of thinking in general, for long looked upon the dangers as imaginary, and his proposals for their removal were ignored. The essay On Liberty the most popular of all his works is an eloquent defence of the thesis " that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection"; but, as an argu ment, it meets everywhere with the difficulty of deter mining the precise point at which the distinction between self-regarding and social (even directly social) activity is to be drawn. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, accepting Mill s utilitarian criterion, raked his positions with a fire of brilliant and incisive, if unsympathetic, criticism in Liberty , Equality , Fraternity (1873).
Mill s Political Economy has been variously regarded as an improved Adam Smith and as a popularised Ricardo. Perhaps the latter description is nearer the mark. Its essential doctrines differ little, if at all, from those of Ricardo; the theory of the wages fund, for example, is formulated quite in the spirit of Ricardo, though this
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theory was afterwards relinquished or modified by Mill in consequence of the criticisms of William Thomas Thornton. But the work has a breadth of treatment which sometimes reminds one of Adam Smith: the hypothetical nature of economic theory was not overlooked, and the " applications to social philosophy " were kept in view. In spite of his adherence to the maxim of laissez faire, Mill recognised the possibility of modifying the system of distribution, and, with regard to that system, he displayed a leaning to the socialist ideal, which grew stronger as his life advanced. His methodical and thorough treatment of economics made his work a text-book for more than a generation, and largely determined the scope of most of the treatises of his own and the succeeding period, even of those written by independent thinkers.
Mill died at Avignon in 1873. After his death were published his Autobiography (1873) and Three Essays on Religion: Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism (1874). These essays were written between 1850 and 1870 and include the author s latest thoughts on ultimate questions. He had been educated in the belief that speculation on ultimate questions is futile; in his works he had always maintained the attitude afterwards called agnosticism, for which he was willing to adopt Comte s term positivism; he accepted also in general Comte s doctrine on this point, though always dissociating himself from the latter s poli tical and social theories. But, even while, in his book Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865), accepting the view that the essential nature and ultimate causes of things are inscrutable, he holds that this " positive mode of thought is not necessarily a denial of the supernatural," but only throws it back beyond the limits of science. His posthu mous essays show a further development. In that on nature (the earliest of the series) he dwells upon the im perfections of the cosmic order as showing that it cannot have been the creation of a being of infinite goodness and power; in the last essay of the volume he approaches a
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tentative and limited form of theism the doctrine of a finite God.
For more than a generation Mill s influence was dominant in all departments of philosophical and political thought; he had the initiative, and set the problems for his opponents as well as for his adherents; and his works became university text-books. This holds of politics, economics, ethics, psychology, and logic. A striking- reac tion against his influence is shown in the work of William Stanley Jevons, professor at Manchester and afterwards in London, whose economic and logical writings are dis tinguished by important original ideas. In his Theory of Political Economy (1871) he introduced the conception of final (or marginal) utility, which has been greatly developed subsequently in the analytic and mathematical treatment of the subject. In logic also he laid the foundations for a mathematical treatment in his Pure Logic (1864) and Substitution of Similars (1869); and, in his Principles of Science (1874), he fully elaborated his theory of scientific inference, a theory which diverged widely from the view of induction expounded by Mill. As time went on, Jevons became more and more critical of the foundations of Mill s empirical philosophy, which he attacked unsparingly in discussions contributed to Mind.
George Grote, the historian of Greece, an older con temporary and early associate of Mill, deserves mention here not only for his works on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, but also for some independent contribu tions to ethics, published together under the title Frag ments on Ethical Subjects (1876). He had little sympathy with Mill s approximations to types of thought opposed to the traditional utilitarianism. In this respect he agreed with Alexander Bain, professor at Aberdeen, a writer of far greater importance in a philosophical regard. Bain was younger than Mill and long outlived him; he assisted him in some of his works, especially the Logic; he wrote
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numerous works himself; but his pre-eminence was in psychology, to which his chief contributions were two elaborate books, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) an< ^ The Emotions and the Will (1859). The psychology of James Mill and of J. S. Mill was, in the main, derived from Hartley; but it was Hartley as expurgated by Priestley, Hartley with the physiology left out. Bain rein stated the physiological factor, not in Hartley s rather speculative manner, but by introducing facts of nerve and muscle whenever they could serve to elucidate mental process. That came to be, as a rule, whenever the mental process itself was obscure or difficult. The result is some times confusing, because it mixes two different orders of scientific conceptions. But Bain s work is wonderfully com plete as a treatment of the principle of the association of ideas; and perhaps he has said the last word that can be said in favour of this principle as the ultimate explanation of mind. His range of vision may have been narrow, but he had a keen eye for everything within that range. He was persistent in his search for facts and shrewd in ex amining them; and he had no illusions except the great illusion that mind is a bundle of sensations tied together by laws of association. It is interesting to note how this clear-sighted and unimaginative writer made observations which suggest doctrines, different from his own, which have gained prominence later. His observations on spon taneous movement and his teaching as to fixed ideas strike at the roots of the analysis of volition to which he adhered, and might lead naturally to a view of mind as essentially active and no mere grouping of sensations or feelings. He offered also a new analysis of belief (though he sub sequently withdrew it) which resolved it into a prepared ness to act; and here the latent activism in his thinking might have led, if developed, to something of the nature of pragmatism.
George Croom Robertson, professor in University College, London, was in general sympathy with Mill s
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school of thought sympathy tempered, however, by wide knowledge and appreciation of other developments, includ ing those of recent philosophy. Circumstances prevented his producing much literary work beyond a few articles and an admirable monograph on Hobbes (1886). He is re membered not only for these, and for his lectures, some of which have been published (1896), but also for his skilful and successful work as editor of Mind during the first sixteen years of its existence. Mind was the first English journal devoted to psychology and philosophy, and its origin in 1876 is a landmark in the history of British philosophy.
In Mill s day and afterwards there was an active, though not very widespread, propaganda of the positive philosophy of Comte. The study of Comte s system was greatly facilitated by the admirable condensed translation of his Positive Philosophy issued by Harriet Martineau in 1853. The chief teachers of positivist doctrine in England were a group of writers who had been contemporaries at Oxford; but a serious disagreement arose amongst them regarding the prominence to be given to the inculcation of Comte s religion of humanity. Their activity was shown in lectures and addresses and in many translations of Comte s works. The Catechism of Positive Religion was translated by Richard Congreve in 1858; Comte s General View of Positivism by John Henry Bridges in 1865; and System of Positive Polity by Bridges and Frederic Harrison in 1875. Their independent writings were inspired by the positivist spirit, even when they did not add much to its defence on philosophical grounds. In The Unity of Comte s Life and Doctrine (1866), Bridges replied to the criticisms of J. S. Mill. He published also Five Discourses on Positive Religion in 1882; and his Essays and Addresses (1907) were collected and edited after his death.
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IV. RATIONAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHERS
Although Mill s fame overshadowed the other philo sophers of his day, there were a number of contemporary writers who were not merely his followers or critics, but independent thinkers. Of note among these was John Grote, younger brother of the historian, who held the chair of moral philosophy at Cambridge from 1855 to 1866. Grote himself issued only one volume on philo sophy Exploratio Philosophic^ Part i (1865). After his death three volumes were compiled from his manuscripts : An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy in 1870, A Treatise on the Moral Ideals in 1876, and the second part of Exploratio in 1900. They are all "rough notes" as the author himself describes the first on its title-page. They have no place in literature. Grote thought and wrote simply to get at the truth of things and without any view of impressing the public. A " belief in thought " upheld him: " a feeling that things were worth thinking about, that thought was worth effort 1 ." He did not seek reputation as a philosophical writer, and he has not gained it. His direct influence has been restricted to a limited number of other thinkers, through whom it has passed to wider circles without any definite trace of its origin. His books are largely filled with criticism of contemporary writers. But none of the criticism is merely destructive : it aims always at elucidating the core of truth in other men s opinions, with a view to a comprehensive synthesis. Often it leads to bringing out important doctrines which, if not altogether new, are set in a new light. An instance of this is his whole doctrine of "the scale of sensation or knowledge," and, in particular, the elaboration and appli cation of the distinction of two kinds of knowledge, or rather the twofold process of knowledge, which he formu lated as the distinction between acquaintance with a thing and knowing about it. He sought to assign its due value
1 Exploratio Pkilosopkica, i, p. xxxv.
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to phenomenalism or positivism, at the same time as he contended for the more complete view " rationary " or idealist which recognised in positivism " an abstraction from the complete view of knowledge 1 ." Similarly, in moral philosophy, there was a science of virtue, or " aretaics," existing side by side with " eudaemonics," or the science of happiness. Fundamentally, his theory is a doctrine of thought: "the fact that we know is prior to, and logically more comprehensive than, the fact that what we know is." To be known, things must be know- able, or fitted for knowledge. Knowledge is the sym pathy of intelligence with intelligence, through the medium of qualified or particular existence 2 ."
Religious philosophy in England was stimulated and advanced by the work of three men all born in the year 1805. These were Maurice, Newman, and Martineau. Frederick Denison Maurice had already an ecclesiastical career behind him when, in 1866, he succeeded Grote as professor at Cambridge. Of his numerous works only a few deal with philosophy; the most important of these, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, originally appeared in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitan** in 1847 and is a historical sketch which is chiefly devoted to ancient thought. Maurice s influence was due to his personality more than to his books; and he was a social reformer and religious teacher rather than a philosopher. But his work, both in social reform and in religion, derived stimulus and direc tion from philosophical ideas. John Henry Newman was still less of a philosopher, though his Grammar of Assent propounds a theory of the nature and grounds of belief. More significant, however, is the appearance in Newman s work of the idea of development, which was beginning to transform all departments of thought. He had started in his thinking with the quasi-mechanical view of a fixed
1 Exploratio Philosophica, n, p. 298. 14 Ibid, n, 296.
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norm of belief existing in the past; but for this (in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1846) he substituted the view of the church as an organism whose life and doctrine were in process of growth. The only philosopher among those who joined the Roman Church about the same time as Newman was William George Ward, who, in various articles, carried on a controversy with Mill concerning free-will and necessary truth. These and other articles by him were collected after his death and published as Essays on the Philosophy of Theism (1884). Of much greater importance than these, in a philoso phical regard, was James Martineau. His philosophy also was essentially religious philosophy; individual freedom and the being and presence of God were his fundamental certainties, and these he defended in many writings during his long life. His earlier works were mainly religious rather than philosophical, though, in a series of essays, he showed his power as a critic of materialism and naturalism, and gave an outline of the ethical views which he afterwards worked out in detail. He was eighty years old, or upwards, when his chief books appeared Types of Ethical Theory (1885), A Study of Religion (1888), and The Seat of Authority in Religion (1890). The first of these is the most notable, and works out the original view of the moral criterion which had been previously indicated by him. It suffers from faulty arrangement, from the undue prominence given to the psychological factor in moral judgment, and from the incompleteness of the psychological analysis. As a whole it does not impress the reader. But, taken in detail, it is seen to be full of penetrating criticism and to be inspired by insight into the spiritual meaning of life. Traces of age are to be found only in its defective order and perhaps in its diffuseness; its style shows no marks of weariness: it is brilliant, pellucid, eloquent, rhetorical sometimes, and coloured by emotion, but never falling below the dignity of his theme. Martineau did not make any important advance in specu-
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lative construction; he was not in sympathy with the idealist metaphysic that had risen to the ascendant in England even before his books were published; the ideas which he elucidated and defended were those which had been distinctive of spiritual thought for many centuries. In his criticisms, on the other hand, he did not restrict himself to the older forms of materialist and sensationalist doctrine; he was prompt to recognise the difference made by more recent scientific views, and he showed no lack of power or effectiveness in dealing with the claims of the philosophy of evolution.
V. HERBERT SPENCER AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION
The publication of Darwin s Origin of Species in 1859 marks a turning-point in the history of thought. It had a revolutionary effect upon the view of the world held by educated men similar to that which had been produced more slowly, three centuries before, by the work of Copernicus; on philosophical ideas its influence may, perhaps, be better compared with that of the theory of mechanics chiefly due to Galileo. The latter contributed to philosophy the conception of nature as a mechanical system; Darwin contributed the conception of evolution and, owing largely to his influence, biological ideas gained greater prominence than mathematical in philosophical construction.
The acknowledged leader of the new movement in philosophy was Herbert Spencer. He was born at Derby on 27 April 1820, and his early training was as an en gineer. This profession he relinquished at the age of twenty-five. He had previously, in 1842, contributed a series of letters on the Proper Sphere of Government to The Nonconformist, and from 1848 to 1853 he acted as sub-editor of The Economist. In these years he wrote his book Social Statics (1850) and began the publication of longer essays in reviews, among which mention should
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be made of the essays The Development Hypothesis (1852), The Genesis of Science (1854), and Progress: its law and cause (1857). He also published Principles of Psychology, in one volume, in 1855. His essays show, even by their titles, that he was working towards a theory of evolution before he had any knowledge of Darwin s researches, the results of which were still unpublished. Then, in 1860, he issued his Programme of a System of Synthetic Philosophy, on which he had been at work for some time, and to the elaboration of which he devoted his life. It is impossible to speak too highly of the single- minded purpose with which he carried out his task, in spite of inherent and extraneous difficulties. He continued to work, without haste and without rest, publishing First Principles in 1862, Principles of Biology (two volumes) in 1864 7, Principles of Psychology (two volumes) in 1 870 2, Principles of Sociology (three volumes) in 1876 96 and Principles of Ethics (two volumes) in 1879 92. Besides these he designed a series of charts of Descriptive Sociology, which were compiled by his assistants, until the work had to be suspended from lack of funds; and he also produced smaller works on Education (1861), The Classifi cation of the Sciences (1864), The Study of Sociology (1872), The Man versus The State (1884), and Factors of Organic Evolution (1887). Thus his perseverance enabled him to complete his scheme: except, indeed, that he omitted the detailed treatment of inorganic evolution, and thus gained the incidental advantage of avoiding the awkward pro blem of the origin of life. And he produced a considerable amount of subsidiary writing, including an Autobiography (published in 1904, the year after his death), which con tains a minute and elaborate account of his life, character, and work.
Spencer s idea of philosophy is a system of completely coordinated knowledge the sciences consisting of know ledge partially coordinated. In this sense his system is synthetic. It is a scheme in which everything is to find
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its place, and is to be seen as a resultant of a single prin ciple. His elaboration of this scheme approaches com pleteness, and, in this respect, his system stands by itself: no other English thinker since Bacon and Hobbes had even attempted anything so vast. The system itself fitted in admirably also with the scientific conceptions of the early Darwinians, and thus obtained wide currency in all English-speaking countries and, to a less extent, on the continent of Europe. Darwin hailed him as " our great philosopher," for he made evolution a universal solvent and not merely a means for explaining the different forms of plants and animals. At the same time, the support which it received from modern science seemed to give Spencer s philosophy a more secure position than that of those speculative systems of which the English mind tended to be suspicious.
The view of philosophy as science further coordinated brings Spencer s doctrine into line with positivism. He did not, however, entirely ignore the question of the nature of ultimate reality. Perhaps he was not much interested in questions of the kind, and he had certainly small acquaintance with previous speculation regarding them. But he had great skill in adapting current doctrines to his uses; and he found what he needed in the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge set forth by Hamilton and Mansel. On this he based his doctrine of the limits of knowledge. But he found, as others have found, that it was necessary to recognise something which lay beyond the sphere of exact knowledge. Hamilton had called this the sphere of belief; Spencer says that we have an inde finite consciousness of what he nevertheless calls the un knowable. The nature of this indefinite consciousness is not explained by him; yet its object is not treated by him, as one would expect it to be, as a mere blank; it is said to be " growing clearer "; the unknowable is constantly referred to as a power, and it is even asserted that it makes for the happiness of mankind. These inconsistencies soften
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his paradox that religion and science can be reconciled by assigning to the latter the region of the knowable and restricting the former to the unknowable. On his view all that we know consists of manifestations of the in scrutable power behind phenomena; and these manifes tations depend ultimately upon a single first principle the persistence of force. Spencer s interpretation of this principle is somewhat flexible and has been attacked by mathematicians and physicists as loose and unscientific. Nevertheless Spencer holds that from it every other scientific principle must be deduced even the law of evolution itself. He has provided a " formula," or rather definition, of evolution. He defines it as " an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion ; during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." All phenomena of whatever kind are subject to this law. It is throughout conceived as a law of progress, which will issue in a highest state establishing " the extremest multiformity and most complete moving equilibrium." But this stage also cannot be permanent; and Spencer contemplates the history of the universe as a succession of cycles " alternate eras of evolution and dissolution."
Spencer displayed much ingenuity in fitting organic, mental, and social facts into this mechanical framework. His early training as an engineer seems to have influenced his ideas. He built a system as he might have built a bridge. It was a problem of strains and of the adaptation of material. Regarded thus, the whole problem was me chanical and had to be solved in terms of matter and motion. His purpose was, as he says, " to interpret the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of matter, motion, and force." Hence, life, mind, and society are treated as stages of increasing complexity in phenomena of the same kind, and so far as this treatment is adhered
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to the characteristic functions of each stage are left unexplained. But the method of treatment is supple mented by another in which the facts are dealt with more directly. This is seen especially in psychology, where the " subjective aspect " is recognised with only a suggestion of an attempt to deduce it from the objective aspect. Spencer was a keen observer and fertile in his reflections on what he observed. His power of coordinating facts may perhaps be seen at its best in his Psychology and Sociology. His generalisations may be often unsound ; but, if we compare these works with earlier and then with later treatises on the same subjects, it is not possible to deny the great stimulus to thought which they gave.
Spencer himself set the greatest store upon his work on ethics. To it, he said, all his other work led up; and this induced him to issue the first part of it called The Data of Ethics out of due order and before his Sociology was completed. The first part is undoubtedly the most instructive section of the book as ultimately finished. The facts of morality are regarded as belonging to the same order of evolution as the facts dealt with in previous volumes, being only more special and complicated; full consideration is given to their biological, sociological, and psychological aspects; the respective rights of egoism and of altruism are defended; and the ethics of evolution is distinguished from the utilitarian ethics not by having some other ultimate end than happiness but by its different method and working criterion. Where the author fails is in giving any adequate proof for his assumption that evolution tends to greatest happiness an assumption upon which his ethical theory depends. And, like all the exponents of the ethics of evolution who have followed him, he does not distinguish clearly between the historical process explained by the law of evolution and the ground of its authority for conduct if such authority be claimed for it. He finds the standard for right conduct in what he calls " absolute ethics," by which he means a description
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of the conduct of fully-evolved man in fully-evolved sur roundings. In this state there will be complete adapta tion between the individual and his environment; so that, even if action is still possible, no choice of better or worse will remain. The system of absolute ethics is worked out in the succeeding parts of the work, but with very meagre success. Indeed, at the end, the author is fain to admit that evolution had not helped him to the extent he had anticipated.
In his ethical, and still more in his political, writings we see the supreme value set by Spencer on the individual, and the very restricted functions which he allowed to the state or other organised community of individuals. Per haps the point is not easy to reconcile with the doctrine of evolution as otherwise expounded by him. But there were two things which seem to have been more funda mental in his thought than evolution itself. One of these has been already referred to as the group of ideas which may be described as mechanism and which is exhibited both in the basis and in the plan of his whole structure. The other is his strong bias towards individualism. If the former may plausibly be connected with his training as an engineer, the origin of the latter may, with still greater probability, be traced to the doctrines current in that circle of liberalism in which he was nurtured. He wrote political essays and a political treatise (Social Statics] before his mind seems to have been attracted by the conception of evolution; and, although in some points he afterwards modified the teaching of that treatise, its essential ideas and its spirit characterise his latest writings on political theory. It showed ingenuity rather than insight on his part to bring them within the grasp of the evolution doctrine; but, in spite of many criticisms, he held stead fastly to his doctrine of what has been called " adminis trative nihilism."
No other writer rivalled Spencer s attempt at a recon-
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struction of the whole range of human thought. But many of his contemporaries preceded or followed him in apply ing the new doctrine of evolution to the problems of life, mind, and society. Some of these were men of science, who felt that an instrument had been put into their hands for extending its frontiers; others were primarily inter ested in moral and political questions, or in philosophy generally, and evolution seemed to provide them with a key to old difficulties and a new view of the unity of reality. Darwin himself, though he never posed as a philosopher, was aware of the revolutionary effect which his researches had upon men s views of the universe as a whole; what was more important, he made a number of shrewd and suggestive observations on morals and on psychology in his Descent of Man and also in his later volume The Ex pression of the Emotions. But his contributions were only incidental to his biological work. Others, writing under the intellectual influence which he originated, were con cerned more directly with problems of philosophy.
Among these writers the first place may be given to George Henry Lewes, although in his earlier works he was influenced by Comte, not by Darwin. Lewes was a man of marvellous literary versatility as essayist, novelist, biographer, and expositor of popular science. This versa tility also marks his work in philosophy. At first Comte s influence was supreme. His philosophical publications began with The Biographical History of Philosophy (1845 6), a slight and inaccurate attempt to survey a vast field, and apparently designed to show that the field was not worth the tillage; later editions of this work, however, not only greatly increased its extent and removed many blemishes but showed the author s ability to appreciate other points of view than that from which he had started. After an interval he produced books entitled Comte s Philosophy of the Sciences (1853), and Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science (1864). But, for a long time, Lewes had been at work on investigations of a more
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constructive and original kind, partly philosophical and partly scientific, the results of which were not fully pub lished at the time of his death in 1878. These results were contained in Problems of Life and Mind, the first two volumes of which, entitled The Foundations of a Creed, appeared in 1874 5, and the fifth and final volume in 1879.
In this work the author has advanced far from his early Comtism, and it shows in many respects a much more adequate comprehension of philosophical problems than can be found in Spencer, whose knowledge of the history of thought was limited and sketchy, and whose criticisms of other philosophers were nearly always external in the worst sense of the word. But Lewes had fitted himself for writing, not only by original researches in physiology and related branches of science, but also by a considerable and sympathetic study of modern philosophy. He is thus able to appeal to other readers than those who have limited their intellectual enquiries to a predetermined range. He rejected as metempirical what lay beyond possible ex perience; but he would not, like Spencer, affect to derive comfort from the unknowable. There was room for meta physics, he thought, as the science of the highest generali ties, or the codification of the most abstract laws of cause, and he sought to transform it by reducing it to the method of science. In working out this aim, he relied on and illustrated the distinction between immediate experience or feeling and the symbols or conceptual constructions used for its codification. He also criticised the current mechanical interpretation of organic processes, holding that sensibility was inherent in nervous substance. And he was one of the first to emphasise the importance of the social factor in the development of mind and to exhibit its working. He defended the conception of the general mind, not as expressing a separate entity, but as a symbol; and, for him, the individual mind also was a symbol. The problems with which he dealt were partly general
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enquiries into knowledge, truth, and certitude partly psychophysical and psychological. His Problems shows the prolonged and eager reflection of an active mind. In it the multifarious writings of many years were reduced and expanded. But it may be doubted whether the reduction was carried far enough. There is a good deal of repetition, but hardly a central argument; the separate discussions are often important and suggestive; but the fundamental position regarding subject and object does not seem to be adequately defended or even made perfectly clear. Lewes had more philosophical insight than Spencer, but he had not the latter s architectonic genius.
Thomas Henry Huxley, the distinguished zoologist and advocate of Darwinism, made many incursions into philosophy, and always with effect. From his youth he had studied its problems unsystematically; he had a way of going straight to the point in any discussion; and, judged by a literary standard, he was a great master of expository and argumentative prose. Apart from his special work in science, he had an important influence upon English thought through his numerous addresses and essays on topics of science, philosophy, religion, and politics. Among the most important of his papers relevant here are those entitled The Physical Basis of Life (1868), and On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata (1874), along with a monograph on Hume (1879) and the Romanes lecture Ethics and Evolution (1893). Huxley is credited with the invention of the term agnosticism to describe his philosophical position : it expresses his attitude towards certain traditional questions without giving any clear delimitation of the frontiers of the knowable. He regards consciousness as a collateral effect of certain physical causes, and only an effect never also a cause. But, on the other hand, he holds that matter is only a symbol, and that all physical phenomena can be analysed into states of consciousness. This leaves mental facts in the peculiar position of being collateral effects of
1 8 2
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something that, after all, is only a symbol for a mental fact; and the contradiction is left without remark. His contributions to ethics are still more remarkable. In a paper entitled Science and Morals (i 8 8 8), he concluded that the safety of morality lay "in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social disorgani sation on the track of immorality." His Romanes lecture reveals a different tone. In it the moral order is contrasted with the cosmic order; evolution shows constant struggle; instead of looking to it for moral guidance, he " repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence." He saw that the facts of historical process did not constitute validity for moral conduct; and his plain language compelled others to see the same truth. But he exaggerated the opposition between them and did not leave room for the influence of moral ideas as a factor in the historical process.
Another man of science, William Kingdon Clifford, professor of mathematics in London, dealt in occasional essays with some central points in the theory of knowledge, ethics, and religion. In these essays he aimed at an inter pretation of life in the light of the new science. There was insight as well as courage in all he wrote, and it was conveyed in a brilliant style. But his work was cut short by his early death in 1879, and his contributions to philo sophy remain suggestions only.
It was natural that men of science with a philosophical turn of mind should be among the first to work out the more general consequences of the theory of evolution. But the wide range which the theory might cover was fairly obvious, and was seen by others who approached philosophy from the point of view of studies other than the natural sciences. Foremost among these was Leslie Stephen, a man of letters keenly interested in the moral sciences. The portion of his writings which bear upon philosophy is small only in relation to his total literary output. His History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
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Century (1876) places the philosophers and moralists in their due position in the whole literary activity of the period, and is penetrating and usually just in its estimate of their work. A further stage of the same history The English Utilitarians (1900) was completed towards the end of his life. His own independent contribution is given in The Science of Ethics (1882). After Spencer s Dafa, this is the first book which worked out an ethical view deter mined by the theory of evolution. As such it is significant. The author had sat at the feet of John Stuart Mill; he had eagerly welcomed Darwin as an ally of the empirical and utilitarian creed; but he came to see that more extensive changes were necessary. Spencer s compromise between hedonism and evolutionism failed to satisfy him, and he found the ethical bearing of evolution better expressed by the conception of social vitality than by that of pleasure. The great merit of the work consists in its presentation of the social content of morality in the individual mind as well as in the community; but it does not sufficiently recognise the distinction between the historical process traced by the evolution theory and the ethical validity which evolution is assumed to possess.
The transformation of the biological sciences by the theory of evolution was connected with a wider move ment, which consisted in the greatly extended use of the historical method in explaining the nature of things. This applies chiefly to the social sciences. It is to be remem bered that both Darwin and Wallace owed the suggestion of their hypothesis of natural selection to a work on social theory. The underlying doctrine was, simply, that facts were to be understood by tracing their origins and his torical connections. How far this historical understanding could take the enquirer became the point at issue between what may be called the evolution philosophy and its critics: it may be expressed in the question whether or not origin determines validity. It was only gradually,
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however, that the point of controversy became clear; and meanwhile the application of the historical method vastly aided the understanding of the social order. In this refer ence the treatise entitled Ancient Law (1861) by Sir Henry Maine marks an epoch in the study of law and institutions, and it had a much wider influence upon thought generally by furthering the use of the method which it employed. An early example of the application of the same method in economics may be found in the series of essays by Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie, repub- lished as Essays in Political Economy (1888); and the historical side of economics has subsequently been ex haustively worked.
Walter Bagehot s Physics and Politics (1869) is still more closely connected with the doctrine of evolution. It is described on the title-page as thoughts on the appli cation of the principles of natural selection and inheritance to political society. Luminous and suggestive though these studies are, it cannot be said that the influence of the theory of evolution expresses the leading character istic of Bagehot s mind, especially as shown in his other political and economic works The English Constitution (1867), Lombard Street (1873), anc ^ Economic Studies (i 880). It was his insight into the actual forces, especially the human forces, at work that chiefly distinguished his treatment. Whereas even Mill looked upon economic and political processes as due to the composition of a few simple forces such as desire of wealth and aversion from labour, Bagehot knew the actual men who were doing the work, and he recognised the complexity of their motives and the degree in which they were influenced by habit, tradition, and imitation. In this way he gave a great im pulse to realistic study, as contrasted with the abstract method of the older economics and politics.
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VI. HENRY SIDGWICK AND SHADWORTH HODGSON
These writers had not much in common beyond the two points which have led to their being placed together here. They both saw that evolution was not an open sesame to the secrets of philosophy, and neither owed allegiance to the idealist movement which rose to promi nence in their time. They were probably the ablest and most influential writers who made independent advances on lines more closely connected with the older English tradition.
Sidgwick taught philosophy for many years at Cam bridge, and held the chair of moral philosophy there from 1883 until 1900, the year of his death. His reputation as a philosophical writer was made by his first book, The Methods of Ethics (1874). He afterwards published trea tises on a similar scale on political economy and on politics; and, after his death, various occasional articles were issued in collected form, and a considerable series of books was compiled from his manuscripts, dealing with general philosophy, with contemporary ethical systems, and with political constitutions. Within certain limits Sidgwick may be regarded as a follower of John Stuart Mill, at least in ethics, politics, and economics. In these subjects he took Mill s views as the basis of his own criticisms and reflections, and he accepted the utilitarian criterion. At the same time he gave much more weight than Mill had done to the intellectualist tradition in philo sophy. He saw that the empirical philosophy was based on conceptions which it was unable to justify by its cus tomary method of tracing their origin in experience. This did not lead, however, to any agreement with Kant s analysis of knowledge. He was an adverse and somewhat unsympathetic critic of the Kantian theory. He inclined, rather, to a return to the natural realism * of Thomas Reid, on the question of the knowledge of external reality;
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and his ethical doctrine includes a synthesis of the views of Clarke and Butler with those of Mill.
His first book remains his most striking contribution to philosophy and the most accurate index of his philo sophical attitude. In spite of his utilitarian sympathies, its starting-point and most fundamental ideas show the influence of a different type of thought. He starts with the fundamental notion of ought or duty, and argues that enquiries into its origin in our consciousness do not affect its validity. The knowledge that there is something right or rational to be done depends, in the last resort, upon an intuition or immediate view of what is right or reasonable. All the old arguments of the utilitarians are swept away; the analysis of conduct into pursuit of plea sure is shown not only to be itself incorrect, but to be irreconcilable with the acceptance of general happiness as the ethical end. His own utilitarianism is based upon a new synthesis of intuitionism and empiricism. Here enters his central doctrine of the axioms of the practical reason. These do not prescribe any concrete end as good that has to be determined in another way; but they are formal principles eternally valid whatever the nature of goodness may prove to be. To these formal principles are given the names prudence, benevolence, and justice; but they include much less than is usually covered by these terms and may, perhaps, be adequately summed up in the statement that neither the time at which, nor the person by whom, a good is enjoyed affects the degree of its goodness. From the distinction and yet equal validity of the axioms of prudence and benevolence, Sidgwick s ethical theory terminates in a doctrine of the dualism of the practical reason. It would appear, however, that this dualism was not adequately tested by him and that it really arises from the ambiguity of the term prudence. Prudence may mean either " regard for one s own good on the whole " or (what is not the same thing) the prin ciple that " hereafter as such is neither less nor more
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valuable than now." Both forms of statement are used by Sidgwick; but only the latter has a claim to express an absolute ethical principle; and it is not inconsistent with the axiom of benevolence. The other side of his utilitari anism the reduction of goodness to terms of pleasure is carried out by analysing conscious life into its elements and showing that each in its turn (except pleasure), when taken alone, cannot be regarded as ultimate good. This analytic method is characteristic of Sidgwick s thinking, as it was of that of most of his predecessors intuitionist as well as empirical. It rests on the assumption that the nature of a thing can be completely ascertained by ex amination of the separate elements into which it can be distinguished by reflection an assumption which was definitely discarded by the contemporary school of ideal ists, and on which the evolutionist writers also do not seem to have relied.
As was natural, therefore, Sidgwick did not produce a system of philosophy. He made many suggestions to wards construction, but, in the main, his work was critical. He was severely critical of the attempts at specu lative construction made in his day, and he carried on some controversies in which his subtlety and wit had full play: neither Spencer nor Green was his match in dia lectics. It was not, however, of systems and theories only that he was a great critic. His powers are seen at their highest when he analysed and described the moral opinions of ordinary men, not as they are reflectively set down in philosophical books, but as they are expressed in life, compact of reason and tradition, fused by emotion and desire. The third book of his Methods of Ethics consists, in large part, of an examination of the morality of common- sense. It is an elucidation and sifting of the ideas under which men act, often without clear consciousness of them; and it shows the sympathetic apprehension of a mind which shares the thoughts it describes and can yet see them in perspective and sum up their significance. Both
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the excellence of the matter and the distinction of the style should give at least this portion of his work a per manent place in literature.
Shadworth Hodgson s life was an example of rare devo tion to philosophy. He had no profession and filled no public office, but spent his time in systematic reflection and writing; and his long life gave him the opportunity of reviewing, confirming, and improving upon his first thoughts. There were two periods in his activity. In the former of these he published three books : Time and Space in 1865, The Theory of Practice in 1 870, and The Philosophy of Reflection in 1878. Shortly thereafter he was instru mental in founding the Aristotelian Society for the sys tematic study of philosophy, and he remained its president for fourteen years. This led to contact with other minds who looked at the same subjects from different points of view. He read many papers to the society, which were published in pamphlet form and in its Proceedings, and he built up his own system afresh in the light of familiar criticism. It took final form in The Metaphysic of Ex perience, a work of four volumes published in 1898.
As an analysis of experience, Hodgson s philosophy falls into line with a characteristic English tradition. It agrees with this tradition also in taking the simple feeling as the ultimate datum of experience. But, even here, and wherever there is experience, there is a distinction to be drawn not the traditional distinction between subject and object, but that between consciousness and its object. There are always two aspects in any bit of experience that of the object itself or the objective aspect, and that of the awareness of it or the subjective aspect; and these two are connected by the relation of knowledge. The sciences are concerned with the objective aspect only; philosophy has to deal with the subjective aspect, or the conscious process which is fundamental and common to all the various objects. Beyond this conscious reference
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there is nothing. The mirage of absolute existence, wholly apart from knowledge, is a common-sense pre judice 1 ." Consciousness is commensurate with being; all existence has a subjective aspect. But this doctrine, he holds, is misinterpreted when mind and body are supposed to interact or when mental and bodily facts are regarded as parallel aspects of the same substance. In psychology Hodgson may be called a materialist, unfit as that name would be to describe his final philosophical attitude. Ideas do not determine one another, nor does desire cause voli tion ; the only real condition known to us is matter. And yet matter itself is a composite existence; it can be analysed into empirical percepts; and therefore it is itself conditioned by something which is not material: the very term existence implies relativity to some sort of consciousness or other. This is the conclusion of the general analysis of experience. Of the unseen world which lies beyond the material part of the world we cannot, he contends, have any speculative knowledge. But the ethical judgment and our own moral nature bring us into practical relation with that unseen world and thus permit a positive, although not a speculative, knowledge of it 2 . In this way, in the final issue of his philosophy as well as in its fundamental positions, Hodgson regards himself as correcting and completing the work of Kant.
VII. IDEALISTS
The latter half of the nineteenth century was marked by the work of a number of writers who were influenced by the speculations which, in Germany, had turned the results of Kant s criticism into a direction which he had not anticipated. This influence, shared by them all, and their constant controversy with current empirical philo sophy united these writers into what may be termed a school; and this school is sometimes described as neo-
1 Mttaphysic of Experience, i, p. 17. a Ibid, iv, p. 401.
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Kantian, more commonly as Hegelian or neo-Hegelian. But its members describe it simply as idealism, though it is an idealism of a form new in English thought. Before them Kant s speculative successors had not obtained currency in England, unless perhaps in a slight measure through some of the utterances of Coleridge; and the powerful influence of Hamilton s criticism had been almost sufficient to put a ban on what he called " the philosophy of the unconditioned."
The first important work of the new movement was The Institutes of Metaphysic (1854) by James Frederick Ferrier, professor at St Andrews. Before this date he had written a number of philosophical articles, and in par ticular a series of papers entitled The Philosophy of Consciousness/ which showed the trend of his thinking. After his death these were collected and published to gether along with a series of lectures as Lectures on Greek Philosophy and other -philosophical remains (1866). As a historian of philosophy Ferrier did not pretend to ex ceptional research; but he had a remarkable power of entering into the mind of earlier thinkers and of giving a living presentation of their views. The history of philo sophy was, for him, no mere record of discarded systems but "philosophy itself taking its time." He was a sympa thetic student also of the German philosophers banned by his friend Hamilton. It is difficult to trace any direct influence of Hegel upon his own doctrine, and indeed he said that he could not understand Hegel. But both his earlier and his later writings have an affinity with Fichte especially in their central doctrine: the stress laid on self-consciousness, and its distinction from the mental states with which the psychologist is concerned. This doctrine connects him with Berkeley also. He was one of the first to appreciate the true nature of Berkeley s thought, as not a mere transition-stage between Locke and Hume, but as a discovery of the spiritual nature of reality.
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The philosophy which he worked out in The Institutes of Metaphysic is, however, strikingly original. He claimed that it was " Scottish to the core." But it is very different from the traditional Scottish philosophy. It disclaims all connection with psychology. He even formulates a false and psychological theorem as the counterpart of each true and metaphysical theorem. And this reiterated opposi tion, it must be confessed, grows a little wearisome, and can be excused only by the backward state of psychology, and its confusion with philosophy, at the time when the book was written. Further, the Scottish philosophy relied on intuition or immediate apprehension of reality; Ferrier s method is that of rational deduction from a first principle. Philosophy is " reasoned truth," he says; and " it is more proper that philosophy should be reasoned, than that it should be true." Unfortunately he takes Spinoza s method as his model, though he does not follow the model in all details. There is no array of defini tions, axioms, and postulates, but only propositions, each deduced from the preceding. Thus a heavy weight is thrown on the first proposition of the series. This proposition formulates the primary law or condition of all know ledge, and is stated in the words, " Along with whatever any intelligence knows it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself." What follows is little more than the elaboration of this statement. Ferrier has not only an epistemology, or theory of knowledge, but also an agnoiology, or theory of ignorance, the main doctrine of which is that we can be ignorant only of what can possibly be known. Through this, in his ontology or theory of being, he reaches the conclusion that absolute existence is " a supreme and infinite and everlasting mind in synthesis with all things." Ferrier s writings had, and continue to have, a considerable repu tation, yet a reputation hardly commensurate with their philosophical insight and perfect style. Perhaps the formalism of his method counteracted the lucidity of the
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thought. Soon after his death (1864) English philosophy came under the influence of the more comprehensive genius of Hegel.
The first English work directly due to the influence of Hegel was The Secret of Hegel ( 1 8 6 5) by James Hutchison Stirling. Educated as a physician, he first heard of Hegel in accidental conversation. Hegel was described as the reconciler of philosophy and religion, and Stirling, fas cinated by the thought, soon afterwards threw up his practice, settled for some years on the continent in Germany and in France and devoted himself with ardour to philosophical study, especially to the mastery of Hegel s system. He returned to publish the results of his work; and, although he wrote many books afterwards espe cially an important Text-book to Kant (1881) The Secret of Hegel remains his greatest work. It consists of transla tion, commentary, introduction, and original discourse; and it shows the process by which the author approached and grappled with his subject. Sometimes it is as difficult as its original ; more frequently it illuminates Hegel both by a persistent effort of thought and by occasional flashes of insight. Its style is characteristic. Altogether lacking in the placid flow of the academic commentator, and suggesting the influence of Carlyle, it is irregular but forceful and imaginative, a fit medium for the thinking which it expressed. What Stirling meant by the secret of Hegel was presumably the relation of Hegel s philo sophy to that of Kant. In Hegel s construction he found a method and point of view which justified the funda mental ideas of religion, and, at the same time, made clear the one-sidedness of the conceptions of the " age of en lightenment," at the end of which Kant stood, still ham pered by its negations and abstractions. And Stirling s favourite and most lively criticisms were directed against the apostles of the enlightenment and their followers of the nineteenth century.
XII] THOMAS HILL GREEN 287
Stirling was first in the field, and, although cut off from any academic position, he continued to exercise a strong intellectual influence. Independently of him, and soon after he began to publish, the influence of Hegel was shown by a number of other writers, most of whom were connected with Oxford or Glasgow. Like Stirling, they brought out the ideas in Kant which pointed to Hegel s view; but, on the other hand, most of them paid little attention to, or altogether disregarded, the details of the Hegelian method. Of these writers one of the earliest and, in some respects, the most important was Thomas Hill Green, professor of moral philosophy at Oxford. His work was constructive in aim and, to a large extent, in achievement; and it was inspired by a belief in the im portance of right thinking for life. The latter character istic Green shared with most of the writers who sympa thised with his philosophical views, and it accounted for much of the enthusiasm with which these views were received. His constructive work, however, was preceded by a very thorough criticism. He saw that it was neces sary, first of all, to expose the assumptions and incon sistencies involved in the systems of Mill and Spencer, and to show that these systems were derived from the philo sophy of Hume. Green s dissection of the latter appeared in 1874 in the form of two elaborate introductions to a new edition of Hume s Treatise. This work, as he confesses, was " an irksome labour." He deals at length with Locke and Hume, more shortly with Berkeley and some of the moralists ; and he follows these writers from point to point of their argument with unwearying, though sometimes wearisome, persistence. But he was an un sympathetic critic. Locke and Hume were rather careless of the niceties of terminology, and some of the contradic tions which he finds are perhaps only verbal, and might have been avoided by a change of expression. Enough remain, however, amply to justify his accusation that their thought was full of incoherences; and, if these had been
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brought into clearer relief, and distinguished from merely verbal inconsistencies, the effectiveness of his criticism might have been increased. But he did succeed in showing "that the philosophy based on the abstraction of feeling, in regard to morals, no less than to nature, was with Hume played out." He appealed to " Englishmen under five- and-twenty " to close their Mill and Spencer and open their Kant and Hegel; and this appeal marks an epoch in English thought in the nineteenth century.
In the years following the introductions to Hume, Green published some occasional articles on philosophical topics. He also exerted a great influence by his academic lectures, the more important of which are printed in his collected Works (three volumes, 1885 8). His greatest book, Prolegomena to Ethics, appeared in 1883, the year after his death. This book does not profess to be a system either of metaphysics or of ethics; but it supplies the groundwork for such a system. It is a vindication of the spiritual nature of the world and of man. Neither nature nor man can be constructed out of the sensations or feelings which formed the data of the empirical philosophers. Our knowledge " presupposes " that there is a connected world to be known. The relations involved, inexplic able on empirical methods, can be understood only as implying the action of mind. The action of one self- conditioning and self-determining mind " is, therefore, a postulate of all knowledge, and our knowledge is a " re production " of this activity in or as the mind of man. In the same way our moral activity is a reproduction in us of the one eternal mind. Under all the limitations of organic life and of the time-process generally, the mind of man carries with it the characteristic, inexplicable on the theory of naturalism, of " being an object to itself." This position is not to be established by deductive or inductive methods; in this sense it cannot be proved. But it is a point of view from which and from which alone we can understand both the world and ourselves and see
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how it is that "we are and do what we consciously are and do." In the later books of his Prolegomena this doctrine is applied to the interpretation of the history of the moral life and of moral ideas ; and this portion of his work shows his powers as a writer at their best. In other writings the same conception is applied to social and religious questions. It is conspicuous in his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, where he maintains that will, not force, is the basis of the state, and gives a fresh reading of the doctrine of the general will.
In his metaphysics, Green does not follow the method of Hegel s dialectic; and in his reading of history there is no trace of the Hegelian theory that development in time follows the same stages as logical development. The gradual steps by which the realisation of reason or of self is brought about in the time-process are not investigated. Only, it is assumed that the process is purposive and that history is the "reproduction" of the eternal mind. How it comes about that error and moral evil affect the process is not explained, and the metaphor of " reproduction," as well as the whole relation of the time-process to eternal reality, is left somewhat vague.
Of the numerous writers who represent a type of thought similar to Green s in origin and outlook only a few can be mentioned here. In 1874, the year in which Green s introductions to Hume were published, there appeared also The Logic of Hegel, translated from the latter s Encyklopadie by William Wallace, who was after wards Green s successor in the chair of moral philosophy at Oxford. A second edition of this work, in which the introductory matter was considerably extended, was issued in 1892; and this was followed, in 1 894, by Hegel s Philo sophy of Mind, and in 1898 (after the author s death), by Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics. Wallace devoted himself more directly than his associates to the elucidation of Hegel s thought; but it may be doubted whether he himself adhered any more closely than they
S.E P. IQ
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did to the details of the dialectic. The prolegomena and introductory essays, by which his translations were pre faced, are not merely explanatory of difficulties. They have often the character of original interpretations; they ap proach the subject from different points of view and show a rare power of selecting essential factors. Wallace had wide intellectual sympathies and found matter of agree ment with philosophers of different schools; but all, in his hands, led towards a central idealism. His work con sisted in pointing out the various avenues of approach to the temple of idealism, rather than in unveiling its mysteries.
In An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1880), John Caird, principal of the University of Glasgow, pro duced a work, original in manner, but essentially Hegelian in doctrine. A similar character marked all the work of his younger brother, Edward Caird, professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow, and afterwards master of Balliol College, Oxford. The influence of Edward Caird rivalled that of his friend Green, and their teaching was in funda mental agreement. Caird, however, had a facility of literary expression such as Green did not possess; he was also more inclined to attack questions by the method of tracing the historical development of thought. His first important work was A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant (1877), which was superseded by The Critical Philo sophy of Immanuel Kant (two volumes, 1889). This work is a triumph of philosophical exposition and criticism, in the interests of a type of thought different from Kant s own. Based upon a mastery of the whole range of Kantian scholarship, it brings into relief the leading ideas by which Kant himself was guided, and, through criticism of his arguments, gives an interpretation of it as tending, when consistently worked out, towards a system of speculative idealism. A brilliant and sympathetic exposition is con tained in his monograph on Hegel (1883). His Gifford lectures, The Evolution of Religion (1893), deal less than
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his other works with the criticism of philosophers; they are a study of the nature of religion, especially as exhibited in the development of the Christian faith.
The writings of Francis Herbert Bradley gave a new direction to the idealistic movement of the nineteenth century. His achievement has been differently viewed: sometimes as being the finest exposition of idealism, sometimes as marking its dissolution. His first philo sophical work, Ethical Studies, appeared in 1876, about the same date as the first books of Green and Caird. It is full of brilliant criticism of conventional ethical ideas. The manner was different; but the doctrine seemed to agree with that which was beginning to be taught in the lecture-rooms. Here also " self-realisation," that is, the realisation of the " true self," was the watchword. His Principles of Logic, published in 1883, broke new ground and showed also a further development of the dialectical manner. The inadequacy of the "particular," the impli cation of the " universal " in all knowledge, were familiar enough, but the defects of empirical logic had never been exposed with such depth of insight, such subtlety of reasoning, such severity of phrase. The work was a tri umph for the idealistic theory of knowledge. It is note worthy that these two books have never been reprinted in England, presumably because the author became more or less dissatisfied with their teaching. There is, at least, a difference of emphasis in the teaching of his next and greatest work, Appearance and Reality (1893), which has been allowed to pass through several editions.
This remarkable book has probably exerted more in fluence upon metaphysical thinking in English-speaking countries than any other treatise of the last thirty years. But no summary can convey a clear idea of its teaching. The conceptions of popular thought and of metaphysics alike are in it subjected to detailed, relentless criticism. Even the distinction, within the book, between the chap ters devoted to " appearance " and those described as
192
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" reality " seems artificial, for everything is found to be riddled with contradictions. And these contradictions all belong to our thought because it is relational. Green had held that experience requires relations, and had argued thence to the need for a relating mind as the principle of reality. Bradley too insists that "for thought what is not relative is nothing " but he draws the very different con clusion that " our experience, where relational, is not true." Of this doctrine all the brilliant disquisitions that follow are applications, with the exception of the author s own assertions about the absolute, which however, being relational, must also be affected by the same vice of con tradiction. If his argument about relations is valid, the idealism of Green and Caird falls to the ground. His method is more akin to Hegel s than theirs was; but he also ignores the Hegelian triad; he does not attempt any consecutive evolution of the categories; even his doctrine of "degrees of reality " is more Spinozistic than Hegelian. As a whole, the book is a great original achievement a highly abstract dialectical exercise, in which the validity of every argument depends upon the fundamental position that relations necessarily involve contradiction. A later book, Essays on Truth and Reality (1914), deals in great part with controversies which belong to the twentieth century; without giving up the positions of the earlier work, it is much less negative in its tendency and more devoted to the discovery of elements of truth than to the exposure of contradictions.
The work of Bernard Bosanquet has affinity on funda mental points with that of Bradley. Before the turn of the century he had made his mark by a comprehensive treatise on Logic (1888) and by a book on the Philosophical Theory of the State (1899) as well as by other writings. But the full development of his r^iilosophical views is contained in two books (The Principle of Individuality and Falue, 1912; The Value and Destiny of the Individual, 1913) which belong to the twentieth century.
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VIII. OTHER WRITERS
In the latter part of the nineteenth century there were other philosophical tendencies at work than those already mentioned. There were idealist writers whose idealism was of a different type, resembling Berkeley s rather than Hegel s, and who are sometimes called personal idealists; there was a movement of reaction from the type of idealism last described in the direction of philosophical realism or naturalism; and there were indications of the new move ments of thought which have characterised the early years of the twentieth century.
Among the writers classed as personal idealists may be counted Alexander Campbell Fraser. His philosophical career, as student, professor, and thinker, began before the Victorian era and lasted into the present reign. He was a pupil of Hamilton at Edinburgh, was for ten years professor of philosophy in New College there and suc ceeded to the university chair on Hamilton s death in 1856. His first book, Essays in Philosophy, was published in 1856, his last, a small monograph entitled Berkeley and Spiritual Realism, in 1908. Apart from minor works, among which special mention should be made of his monographs on Locke (1890) and Berkeley (1881), he is best known as the editor of the standard editions of Berkeley s Works (1871) and of Locke s Essay (1894), and as the author of Gifford lectures on The Philosophy of Theism (1896). He also wrote an interesting and valuable account of his life and views entitled Biographia Philosophica (1904).
For a great many years, Fraser, Caird, and Bain power fully affected philosophical thought in Scotland through their university teaching. Owing to the position of philo sophy in the academic curriculum, their influence upon the wider intellectual life of the country was almost equally great, though less easy to trace with any exactness. From Bain, his pupils learned precision in thinking and an
294 THE VICTORIAN ERA [CH.
interest in psychology as a science, but a somewhat limited comprehension of philosophical problems. Caird gave an insight into the history of thought and provided a point of view from which the world and man s life might be understood; many of his pupils have shown in their writings that they had learned his language and were able to develop and apply his ideas. Fraser did not teach a system or found a school; he awakened and stimulated thought, without controlling its direction; he called forth in his hearers a sense of the mysteries of existence, and he encouraged in many the spirit of reflection. He had no system; but his thought was essentially constructive, though the construction was based on an almost Humean scepticism. On one point, however, he never yielded to sceptical analysis the reality of the self as conscious activity. He found the same thought in Berkeley, and he may almost be said to have rediscovered Berkeley for modern readers. Of the world beyond self he could find no theory which could be satisfactorily established by strict reasoning. But he saw (as Hume saw in his first work) that science has its assumptions as well as theology. In particular, he looked upon the postulate of uniformity as an act of moral faith in the rationality of the universe, and it was as a "venture of faith" that he interpreted the universe as grounded in the reason and goodness of God. Philosophy was the supreme interest of Simon Laurie, though his career as an educationalist restricted his pur suit of that interest to hours of leisure. In the middle of the sixties he published two contributions to ethics. Nearly twenty years later he issued, under the pseudonym of Scotus Novanticus, two books one on metaphysics, the other on ethics: the former being described by him as " a return to dualism." When, after another twenty years, the fruits of his reflection were garnered in two volumes of meditations entitled Synthetica (1906), his system might still be called, as it has been called, natural realism.
XII] JAMES WARD 295
But the realism is " transfigured " by the vision of an Absolute which is in all things and through which they form a unity. His process of thought is a dialectic not uninfluenced by Hegel, yet differing from his in method and results. It is less formal and systematic it is not the slave of a triad. The starting point is individual ex perience "the feeling of a somewhat which is not the being that feels." Here is subject-object; and criticism of it forms his method of advance. The whole argument rests on a criticism of knowledge from pure feeling, through ascending planes or levels, until the plane of reason is reached, "and passes again into feeling as now supra-rational intuition." The absolute is always given, but it is apprehended with increasing clearness though never perfectly. The God whom we have been trying to unveil does not transcend experience, as Kant would say: He is the presupposition and possibility of all ex perience, and also its end and sum."
The most important work of living writers belongs in most cases to the present century. Amongst them only one other will be mentioned here, because of the influence which he had upon philosophy even before the end of the Victorian era.
The writings of James Ward, professor at Cambridge, are partly psychological, partly metaphysical. His article on Psychology, which was published in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1886, exercised an in fluence upon psychological enquiry which is probably with out precedent among writings which were not published independently. It marks a definite break with the traditional doctrine of presentationism, and it gives a new analysis and interpretation of the facts of association. Experience is no longer regarded as an automatic combination of data of sensation given in isolation, but as a continuum into which distinctions and connections are gradually intro duced by the action of selective attention ; the develop ment of mind is shown to be ruled by subjective selection
296 THE VICTORIAN ERA [CH.
as well as by natural selection; and all mental process to depend upon and imply a subjective reference. Two other articles on the same subject in later editions of the En cyclopaedia and many contributions to journals prepared the way for his classical treatment of Psychological Prin ciples^ published in 1918. In Naturalism and Agnosticism (1899) the two doctrines named are subjected to ex haustive and perhaps final criticism, a theory of scientific conceptions is worked out, and a constructive view of reality, idealistic or spiritual in character, is maintained. Founding on the implication of subject and object in all experience, the author reaches a metaphysical position according to which the universe is throughout inter preted as spiritual; and this spiritual nature is found in a plurality of finite conscious centres of experience. In a later work, The Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism (1911), he brings into prominence the conception of worth, and passes from a review of non-theistic pluralism to a discussion and defence of the theistic view of the world. The metaphysic worked out in these two books may be regarded as a return to monadism in contrast with the monism of Green. But the new monadism differs from that of Leibniz as much as Green s monism differs from the monism of Spinoza. It is in many respects more in harmony with the spiritual realism of Berkeley. For its monads are regarded as influencing one another and as working out their ends in interaction both with one another and with an environment of laws and values which express the infinite mind.
The reaction from idealism is most strikingly illustrated in the writings of Robert Adamson. The most learned of his contemporary philosophers, his earlier works were written from the standpoint of a neo-Hegelian idealism. These works are a small volume On the Philosophy of Kant (1879), a monograph on Fichte (1861), and an article on logic (1882), long afterwards (1911) republished in book
XII] ROBERT ADAMSON 297
form. The fundamental opposition of philosophical doc trines he regarded as " the opposition between Hegelian- ism on the one hand and scientific naturalism or realism on the other "; and he rejected the latter doctrine because its explanation of thought as the product of antecedent conditions was incompetent to explain thought as self- consciousness. The problem which he set himself was to re-think from the former point of view the new material concerning nature, mind, and history provided by modern science. He came gradually to the opinion that this could not be done that idealism was inadequate. His posthu mously published lectures entitled The Development of Modern Philosophy (1903) show that he was engaged in working out a reconstruction from the point of view which he had at first held incompetent that of realism. But his suggestions do not point to a theory of mechanism or materialism. Although mind has come into being, it is as essential as nature: both are partial manifestations of reality. But he had not an opportunity fully to work out his constructive theory or to examine its adequacy and coherence.
The new tendencies which distinguish more recent philosophy illustrate also the increasing reaction of the literature of the United States of America upon English thought. The theory known as pragmatism is definitely of trans-Atlantic origin, and forms of what is called the new realism seem to have been started independently in the United States and in this country. The latter theory is largely a revival of older views: both the natural realism of Reid and the scholastic doctrine of the reality of universals appear to have contributed to its formation. Pragmatism is a more original doctrine; but its seeds also lie in the past: it has been connected with the prevailingly practical tone of much English thought; and more definite anticipations of its leading idea might be found in some of the later English writers of the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER XIII RETROSPECT
THE preceding survey of English philosophy breaks off at a moment when the interest is at its height. Neverthe less, the end of a century and the close of a long reign do also, in this case, mark a period in the history of thought. The leading schools, evolutionary and idealistic, had elaborated their views very fully; both had been subjected to thorough criticism ; and interest was beginning to turn to new questions or new ways of putting old ones. The year 1900 is thus a convenient date for ending an historical record. Reviewing this record as a whole, it may be possible to make some general remarks on the features which characterise three centuries of English thought.
English philosophy is one of the results of the awakening of the European mind known as the Renaissance. It had its roots in the older learning of the Scholastics ; but its national character is seen clearly only after it began to be written in the English language. The intellectual ferment of the time, the wide sweep of its imagination, and its confidence in the future triumphs of mind were ex pressed by Bacon. Hobbes seized upon a leading con ception of the new science, and by its aid constructed a system. Both made use of the ideas of their day, but in philosophy they were pioneers. After them English thought, like European thought generally, came under the influence of Descartes. But, from this time onwards, until the influence of Kant and Hegel made itself felt in the nineteenth century, English philosophy pursued an independent course. Spinoza was little known and
CH. XIIl] RETROSPECT 299
avoided possibly for theological reasons. Leibniz was equally neglected perhaps, in some measure, owing to the controversy with Newton. No doubt the disregard of these great thinkers entailed some loss; but it gave free course to original developments, and it did not prevent a powerful reaction of English upon continental philosophy. In France, Condillac and Helvetius drew their ideas from Locke; his influence and that of his followers among the deists were prominent in the period of the " Enlighten ment" in France and Germany; and one side of his work culminated in Hume and stimulated Kant to a new criticism of knowledge. After Kant, and in the brilliant period of German speculation which followed, English influence diminished. The Scottish philosophy, it is true, had its echo in France; and, later in the nineteenth cen tury, the empirical logic of John Stuart Mill, and the ideas of Darwin, which Spencer worked into a system, left their mark upon philosophy throughout the world. But, on the whole, philosophy in Great Britain not only lost its influence abroad but at home also began to pay the penalty for its independence. For a vigorous life the influence of new ideas from other strains of thought was needed; and these new ideas came from many quarters, but chiefly from the group of thinkers of whom Hegel was the greatest.
Before this influence made itself felt especially in the earlier decades of the last century English philosophy had suffered a decline: it was written in the minor key; the more speculative topics were avoided; and great figures were scarce. There was never any real gap in the development, any time at which thought was dead. But for the time it dwindled, whereas other periods, before and since, were marked by greater intensity, wider interests, and more influential thinkers. In the three centuries under review perhaps no other country can show more names of the first rank in philosophy and of greater permanent influence upon the course of human thought.
I
300 RETROSPECT [CH.
The English philosophers were not great system- builders. Between Hobbes and Herbert Spencer there was no important writer who attempted a complete survey of the whole realm of thought from his point of view and articulated it into a system. The importance of philo sophical ideas cannot be estimated rightly by their ex pression as a compact body of doctrine. Indeed there is a danger in the premature reduction of ideas to system. We need not say with Nietzsche that " the will to system is a lack of rectitude"; but the system-builder in philo sophy has many temptations to stray from the path of strict intellectual honesty. Historians of philosophy also are apt to be unjust when they force the ideas of others into system and describe them by some general term. English writers Locke in particular have suffered much in this way at the hands of erudite German his torians on the look-out for system rather than for thought; and Kuno Fischer has even described English philosophy as a whole as a stage in the development of realism or empiricism. It is unnecessary to discuss such a view, for it does not admit of defence and hardly of excuse. English philosophy produces a very different impression when its documents are read at first hand and without theoretical preconceptions. It is true that the problems and the issue of a particular type of thought may be traced, better than anywhere else, in the works of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Spencer. But even their message is not exhausted by the term empiricism ; there is as good reason, for instance, to describe Locke as the first critical philosopher as to call him the apostle of empiri cism. Besides, there were never wanting representatives of a different outlook. Berkeley is improperly regarded as a thinker half-way between Locke and Hume ; and the idealistic tradition was maintained throughout the cen turies by Herbert of Cherbury, More, Cudworth, Norris, Shaftesbury, Reid, and many others thinkers who fell short of the first rank but bear witness to the speculative insight of the English mind.
XIII] RETROSPECT 301
Comprehensiveness rather than system marked the attitude. Most of the greater writers are characterised by the width of their interests; and they did not take a narrow, or rigidly professional, view of the boundaries of philosophy. In this matter, as in so many others, Locke is representative of the national tradition. He dealt with questions of theology, of politics, of economics, and of education, as well as with the fundamental problems of knowledge. He had no ambition to bring these writings together into a compact whole; and, unless in the eyes of some academic student, his work has not suffered. The lack of system has even given freer play to his ideas and encouraged freer criticism of them. Yet his individual point of view may be seen in all that he wrote. He had a clue and he followed it wherever it promised to lead to discovery. It was the same with others. There is no national philosophy which is less a concern of the school than the English. Many of its great writers have been men of leisure or men of affairs, who were not occupied with philosophy professionally but were attracted by the perennial interest of its problems. They did not easily unite into schools of thought; they were too careless sometimes of logical technique; each was apt to look from his own angle of vision; but all were intent upon arriving at some understanding of the position of the individual self in the universe. These are features in that "individual character" which marks English philosophy and which to quote a recent judgment 1 "entitles it to rank as one of the most important phases in the history of human thought."
1 J. T. Merz, A Fragment on the Human Mind (1919), p. I.
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
giving the dates of the chief works in English philosophy along with the dates of some other writings, English and foreign, and of some leading events.
304 COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
English philosophy English literature and science
Bacon, Essays. 1597
1605 Bacon, Advancement of Learning
Gilbert, De magnate. 1600 Shakespeare, Hamlet. 1602 Florio, transl. of Montaigne, 1603 Ben Jonson, Volpone. 1605 Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster. 1608
Donne, Anatomy of the World. 1610 Authorised transl. of the Bible. 1611
Ralegh, History of the World. 1614
1620 Bacon, Novum organum
1623 Bacon, De augmentis
1624 Herbert, De veritate
Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. 1621 Shakespeare, first folio. 1623
Harvey, De motu cordis et sanguinis. 1628 George Herbert, The Temple. 1633
1640 Hobbes, Elements of Law (circu
lated in manuscript)
1641 Brooke, Nature of Truth
1642 Hobbes, De cive
Milton, Comus. 1637 (written 1634)
Sir T. Browne, Religio medici. 1642
J. Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying. 1647
1651 Hobbes, Leviathan
1652 Culverwel, Light of Nature
1653 More, Antidote against Atheism
1659 More, Immortality of the Soul
1660 Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium Sauderson ; De obligatione con-
scientiae
1 66 1 Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing
1662 More, Philosophical Writings
Harrington, Oceana. 1656
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 305
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science Mariana, De rege. 1599
Althusius, Politica. 1603
Cervantes, Don Quixote, part i. 1605
Kepler, Astronomia nova. 1609
Bohme, Aurora. 1612
Suarez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore. 1617
Kepler, Harmonia mundi. 1619 Campanella, De sensu rerum. 1620
GrotiuSj De jure belli et pacis. 1625
Galileo, Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo. 1632
Corneille, Le cid. 1636
Descartes, Discours de la me thode. 1637
Descartes, Meditationes. 1641-2 Descartes, Principia philosophiae. 1644
Escobar, Theologia moralis. 1646 Descartes, Les passions de Tame. 1650
Pascal, Lettres & un provincial. 1656 Moliere, Les pre cieuses ridicules. 1659
Arnauld and Nicole, L art de penser. 1 562
Geulincx, Logica. 1662
Leibniz, De principio individui. 1663
s. E. P.
Events
English East India Co. founded.
1600
Bruno burned at Rome. 1600 Union of English and Scottish
crowns. 1603
Plantation of Virginia. 1607 Plantation of Ulster. 1609
Deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes. 1616
Thirty Years War begun. 1618
The "Mayflower" takes English emigrants from Leyden to America. 1620
Petition of Right. 1628
Laud archbp. of Canterbury.
633 French Academy founded. 1635
Scottish National Covenant. 1638
English Civil War begins. 1642 Westminster Assembly of Di vines. 1643
Execution of Laud. 1645 Origin of the Society, afterwards (1662) the Royal Society. 1645
Treaty of Westphalia. 1648 Execution of Charles I. 1649
Cromwell Lord Protector. 1653 Vaudois Persecution. 1656
Restoration of the Stuarts. 1660
Act of Uniformity. 1662
20
306 COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
English philosophy English literature and science
Butler, Hudibras. 1662-78
1666 More, Enchiridion ethicum
Milton, Paradise Lost. 1667
1671 More, Enchiridion metaphysicum
1678 Cudworth, True Intellectual System Bunyan, Pilgrim s Progress. 1678 Burthogge, Organum vetus et novum
Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel. 1681 Petty, Political Arithmetic. 1682
Newton, Principia. 1687
1689 Locke, Epistola de tolerantia
1690 Lockej Treatises of Government Locke, Essay concerning Human
Understanding
1694 Burthogge, Reason and the Nature
of Spirits
1695 Locke, Reasonableness of Christi
anity
1696 Toland, Christianity not mysterious Sergeant, Method to Science
1697 Sergeant, Solid Philosophy
1701-4 Norris, Ideal or Intelligible World
Newton, Optics. 1704 Clarendon, History of the Rebellion 1705 Clarke, Being and Attributes of God (written 1646-48,1668-70). 1704
1709 Berkeley, New Theory of Vision
1710 Berkeley, Principles of Human
Knowledge
1711 Shaftesbury, Characteristics Pope, Essay on Criticism. 1711
Addison, Spectator. 1711-14
1713 Berkeley, Hylas and Philonous Collier, Clavis universalis Collins, Discourse of Free-thinking
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 307
Events Great Plague. 1665
Great Fire in London. 1666 Acquisition of Bombay. 1668
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science La Rochefoucauld, Maximes. 1665 Journal des savants (begun). 1665
Racine, Andromache. 1667 Bossuet, Oraisons funebres. 1669-87
Pascal, Pens6es. 1670
Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus. 1670
BoileaUj L art poetique. 1674
Malebranche, Recherche de la v^rite. 1674
Geulincx, Ethica. 1675
Spinoza, Ethica. 1677
Racine, Phedre. 1677
Borelli, De motu animalium. 1680-81 Accession of Peter the Great.
Acta eruditorum (begun). 1682 1682
Edict of Nantes (1598) revoked.
1685
La Bruyere, Les Caracteres. 1688-94
Perrault, Paralleledes anciens et des modernes. 1688 English Revolution. 1688 Malebranche, Entretiens sur la metaphysique.i688 Malpighi, De structura glandularum. 1689 Toleration Act. 1689
Bill of Rights. 1689
Bank of England founded. 1694
Leibniz, Systeme nouveau de la nature. 1695 Freedom of the English Press.
1695
Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique. 1697
Muratori, Delia perfetta poesia. 1705-6 Vauban, Dime royale. 1707
Leibniz, Theodice e. 1710
Wolf, Vernunftige Gedanken von den Kraften des menschlichen Verstandes. 1712
Leibniz, Monadologie. 1714
Fe nelon, Traite de 1 existence de Dieu. 1715
Treaty of Ryswick. 1697 Berlin Academy of Sciences
(with Leibniz as president)
founded. 1700
English Act of Settlement. 1701 First daily newspaper in
England. 1702 Battle of Blenheim. 1704
Union of English and Scottish
Parliaments. 1707 Battle of Pultowa. 1709
Treaty of Utrecht. 1713
Accession of George I. 1714 Death of Louis XIV. 1715
308 COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
English philosophy English literature and science
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. 1719 1722 Wollaston, Religion of Nature
Burnet, History of my own time. 1724
1 725 Hutcheson, Inquiry into Beauty and
Virtue
1726 Butler, Sermons Swift, Gulliver s Travels. 1726
Law, A Serious Call. 1729
1730 Tindal, Christianity as old as the
Creation
1731 Cudworth, Eternal and Immutable
Morality
1732 Berkeley, Alciphron Pope, Essay on Man. 1732
1736 Butler, Analogy
Bolingbroke, A Patriot King. 1738 1739 Hume, Human Nature
1741-2 Hume, Essays moral and political Fielding, Joseph Andrews. 1742 1744 Berkeley, Siris
1748 Hume, Philosophical Essays (after- Richardson, Clarissa Harlowe. 1748
wards entitled Enquiry) concern ing Human Understanding
1749 Hartley, Observations on Man Fielding, Tom Jones. 1749
Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes. 1749
1751 Hume, Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals
Hume, History of England, vol. i. 1754
1755 Hutcheson, System of Moral Philo- Johnson, Dictionary. 1755
sophy Burke, Sublime and Beautiful. 1756
1757 Price, Principal Questions in Morals
1759 Adam Smith, Moral Sentiments Goldsmith, Citizen of the World. 1759
Johnson, Rasselas. 1759 Sterne, Tristram Shandy. 1760 Macpherson, Ossian. 1760 Wallace, Prospects of Mankind. 1761 Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism. 1762
1764 Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind Goldsmith, Traveller. 1764
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 309
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science Wolf, Ver. Ged. von Gott, Welt und Seele. 1719 Voltaire, Henriade. 1723
Vico, Scienza nuova. 1725
Events
Voltaire in England. 1726-9
Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais. 1734 Linnaeus, Systema naturae. 1735
Brucker, Historia philosophiae. 1741 D Alembert, Dynamique. 1743
Lamettrie, Histoire naturelle de Tame. 1745 Vauvenargues, Maximes et pensees. 1746 Condillac, Origines des connaissances humaines.
1746
Diderot, Pense es philosophiques. 1746 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois. 1748 Lamettrie, L homme machine. 1748.
Buff on, Histoire naturelle. 1749
Baumgarten, Aesthetica. 1750
Diderot and D Alembert, Encyclopedic, vols. i, il.
1751
S. Johnson (America), Elementa philosophica. 1752 J. Edwards (America), Freedom of the Will. 1754 Condillac, Traite des sensations. 1754 Rousseau, Sur 1 origine de 1 inegalite. 1755 Kant, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte. 1755 Haller, Elementa physiologiae. 1757-60 Boscovitch, Philosophia naturalis. 1758 Helvtius, De 1 esprit. 1758 Quesnay, Tableau economique. 1758
Voltaire, Candide. 1759
Rousseau, La nouvelle H61o ise. 1760. Contrat social. 1762. Emile. 1764
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique. 1764 Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene. 1764
Repeal of English statutes against witchcraft. 1736
Accession of Frederick the
Great. 1740 Fall of Walpole. 1742 First Methodist conference. 1 744
Battle of Culloden. 1746
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. 1748
Seven Years War begun. 1756 Battle of Plassey. 1757
Accession of George III. 1760
First proceedings against Wilkes. 1763
310
English philosophy
1768 Priestley, First Principles of Govern ment 1768-78 Tucker, Light of Nature
English literature and science
Blackstone, Commentaries. 1765 Percy, Reliques. 1765 Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield. 1766 Ferguson, Essay on Civil Society. 1767
Letters of Junius. 1769 Goldsmith, Deserted Village. 1770 Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discon tents. 1770
1776 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations Price, Nature of Civil Liberty Bentham, Fragment on Government
1777 Priestley, Disquisition on Matter
and Spirit
Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. i. 1776
Johnson, Lives of the Poets. 1779 Cowper and Newton, Olney Hymns. 1779
1785 Paley, Moral Philosophy
Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers
1788 Reid, Essays on the Active Powers
Burns, Poems. 1786
1789 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Blake, Songs of Innocence. 1789
Legislation White, Natural History of Selborne. 1789
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution. 1789
Boswell, Life of Johnson. 1791 Mackintosh, Vindiciae Gallicae. 1791 T. Paine, Rights of Man. 1791
1792 Dugald Stewart, Philosophy of the M. Wolstonecraft, Rights of Women. 1792 Human Mind, vol. i
Godwin, Political Justice. 1793 T. Paine, Age of Reason. 1794 E. Darwin, Zoonomia. 1794 Hutton, Theory of the Earth. 1795
W. Wilberforce, A Practical View. 1797 The Anti-Jacobin. 1797
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science Events
Lessing , Laocoon. 1766
Turgot, Reflexions sur la formation et la distribu tion des richesses. 1766
Holbach, Systeme de la nature. 1770 Kant, De mundi forma et principiis. 1770
Goethe, Leiden des jungen Werthers. 1774 Lessing, Wolfenbiitteler Fragmente (of Reimarus).
1774-8 Kant, Anthropologie. 1775
First partition of Poland. 1772
American Declaration of Inde pendence. 1776 Death of Hume. 1776
Lessing, Erziehung d. mensch. Geschlechts. 1780
Schiller, Die Rauber. 1781
Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 1781
Herder, Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte.
1784-91 Jacobi, Briefe iiber Spinoza. 1785
Lagrange, Me canique analytique. 1788 Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. 1788 Marten, Precis du droit des gens moderne. 1789 Lavoisier, Traite elementaire de chimie. 1789 Alfieri, Tragedie. 1789
Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft. 1790
Federal Constitution of U.S.A. framed. 1787
French Revolution. 1789
Fichte, Kritik aller Offenbarung. 1792 Schulze, Aenesidemus. 1792 Condorcet, Esquisse d un tableau historique. 1793 Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre. 1794
Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum. 1795
Laplace, Systeme du monde. 1796
French Convention establishes
a republic. 1792 Second partition of Poland. 1793
Institute of France (in place of the academies, abolished in 1793) founded. 1795
Third partition of Poland. 1795
312 COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
English philosophy 1798 Malthus, Essay on Population
English literature and science
Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Bal lads. 1798
1802 Paley, Natural Theology
Edinburgh Review (begun). 1802
1805 T. Brown, Relation of Cause and Effect
Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel. 1805 Colebrooke, Essay on the Vedas. 1805
Lamb, Specimens of the English Drama tists. 1808
Dalton, New System of Chemical Philo sophy. 1808-27
Byron, ^nelish Bards and Scotch Re viewers. 1809
Coleridge, The Friend. 1809
Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare. 1811
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility. 1811
Owen, New View of Human Society. 1813 Walter Scott, Waverley. 1814
1817 Coleridge, Biographia literaria
1820 T. Brown, Lectures
Ricardo, Pol. Econ. and Taxation. 1817
Shelley, Revolt of Islam. 1818
Keats, Endymion. 1818
Hallam, History of the Middle Ages. 1818
James Mill, History of British India. 1818
Byron, Don Juan. 1819
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science
Schleiermacher, Reden iiber die Religion. 1799
Laplace, Mecanique celeste. 1799-1825
Herder, Metakritik. 1799
Schelling, System des transcendentalen Idealismus.
1800
Mme de Stael, De la litterature. 1800 Gauss, Disquisitiones arithmeticae. 1801
Chateaubriand, G6nie du christianisme. 1802 Schelling and Hegel, Krit. Journ. d. Phil. 1802 Maine de Biran, Memoires sur 1 habitude. 1803 Schleiermacher, Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre.
1803
Senancour, Obermann. 1804 Jean Paul Richter, Flegeljahre. 1804-05 Destutt de Tracy, Clemens d idologie. 1804 Krause, Entwurf des Systems d. Phil. 1804
Herbart, Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik. 1806
Fries, Neue Kritik der Vernunft. 1807 Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes. 1807 Goethe, Faust, part i. 1808
Events Battle of the Nile. 1798
Napoleon Bonaparte first con sul. 1799
Union of parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland. 1800
First English census. 1801
C.M.S. established. 1801
First English Factory Act. 1802
Napoleon emperor. 1804 French Code civil. 1804
Battle of Trafalgar. 1805 Battle of Austerlitz. 1805 Battle of Jena. 1806 Holy Roman Empire formally
terminated. 1806 Act abolishing slavery in British
dominions. 1807 Peninsula War. 1808-13
Oken, Naturphilosophie. 1809
Berlin University founded. 1810
Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral. 1812 Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte. 1812 Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik. 1812
Savigny, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit fur Gesetzgebung.
1814 Lamarck, Histoire naturelle des animaux sans
vertebres. 1815
Cuvier, Regne animal. 1817
Napoleon s Retreat from Mos cow. 1812
Battle of Leipzig. 1813 Abdication of Napoleon. 1814
Battle of Waterloo. 1815 French Academy revived. 1816
Schopenhaur, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. 1819 Lamartine, Mediations poetiques. 1820
3H COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
English philosophy English literature and science
Chalmers, Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns. 1821-6
Combe, Constitution of Man. 1828
1829 James Mill, Analysis of the Pheno mena of the Human Mind Hamilton, Philosophy of the Un conditioned (article)
Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1830-32
1832 Austin, Province of Jurisprudence Tennyson, Poems. 1832 determined
Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (in Eraser s Mag.). 1833
Browning, Paracelsus. 1835 Dickens, Pickwick. 1836
1838 J. S. Mill, Bentham (article) 1840 J. S. Mill, Coleridge (article)
Whewell, Philosophy of the In ductive Sciences
Newman, Tract No. XC. 1841
Joule, Mechanical Value of Heat (paper 1843 J- S. Mill, System of Logic at Brit. Ass.). 1843
Faraday, Experimental Researches in
Electricity. 1844-55 W. G. Ward, Ideal of a Christian Church.
1846 Hamilton, ed. of Reid 1844
J. H. Newman, Essay on the Develop ment of Christian Doctrine. 1846
1847 De Morgan, Formal Logic Grote, History of Greece. 1846-56
Thackeray, Vanity Fair. 1848
J. S. Mill, Political Economy. 1848
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 315
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science De Maistre, Soirees de St Pe tersbourg. 1821 Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube. 1821-22 Hegel, Philosophic des Rechts. 1821 Heine, Gedichte. 1821 Baader, Fermenta cognitionis. 1822 Herbart, Psychologic als Wissenschaft. 1824 Leopardi, Canzoni. 1824 Manzoni, I promessi sposi. 1827 Cousin, Introduction a Phist. de la phil. 1828
Victor Hugo, Hernani. 1830
Rosmini, SulPorigine delle idee. 1830
Comte, Philosophic positive. 1830-42
Victor Hugo, Notre Dame. 1831
Goethe, Faust, part ii. 1832
Hegel, Religionsphilosophie. 1832
Jouffroy, Melanges philosophiques. 1833
Joh. Miiller, Handbuch der Physiologic. 1833-40
Saint-Simon, Reorganisation de la societe euro-
penne. 1834 Balzac, Pere Goriot. 1834 Maine de Biran, Rapports du physique et du moral.
Lamennais, Paroles d un croyant. 1834
De Tocqueville, Democratic en Am6rique. 1835
Quetelet, La physique sociale. 1835
Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie. 1835
Strauss, Leben Jesu. 1835
De Musset, Confession d un enfant du siecle. 1836
Cournot, Recherches sur les principes math6
matiques de la thdorie des richesses. 1838 Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen. 1840 Proudhon, Qu est-ce que la propriete. 1840
Lamennais, Esquisse d une philosophic. 1841-46 Vatke, Die menschliche Freiheit. 1841 Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums. 1841 List, Das nationale System der politischen
Okonomie. 1841
Emerson, Essays (first series). 1841 George Sand, Consuelo. 1842-44 Stirner [C. Schmidt], Der Einzige und sein Eigen-
thum. 1844
Rothe, Theologische Ethik. 1845 A. v. Humbolt, Kosmos. 1845
Events
Catholic Emancipation Act. 1829
Young Italy founded by
Mazzini. 1831 English Reform Act. 1832 French Academy of moral and
political sciences revived. 1833 New English Poor Law. 1834
Accession of Victoria. 1837 Chartist movement begun. 1838
Abolition of duty on Corn in England. 1846
Helmholtz, Erhaltung der Kraft. 1847
Communist manifesto by Marx and Engels. 1847
316 COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
English philosophy English literature and science
Macaulay, History of England. 1848-50
1850 Spencer, Social Statics Tennyson, In Memoriam. 1850
1851 Mansel, Prolegomena logica Ruskin, Stones of Venice. 1851
1853 H. Martineau, transl. of Comte
1854 Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysic Boole, Laws of Thought
1855 Bain, The Senses and the Intellect Spencer, Principles of Psychology
George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life. 1857 Buckle, History of Civilisation. 1857
1858 Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought Meredith, Ordeal of Richard Feverel. 1858 1858-60 Hamilton, Lectures FitzGerald, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
1858 Darwin, Origin of Species. 1859
Essays and Reviews. 1860
Maine, Ancient Law. 1861
1862 Spencer, First Principles
1863 J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism Lyell, Antiquity of Man. 1863
Huxley, Man s Place in Nature. 1863 J. H. Newman, Apologia. 1864 1865 J. S. Mill, on Hamilton Seeley, Ecce homo. 1865
J. Grote, Exploratio philosophica, M. Arnold, Essays in Criticism. 1865
part i Lubbock, Pre-historic Times. 1865
Hodgson, Time and Space Tylor, Early History of Mankind. 1865
Stirling, Secret of Hegel McLennan, Primitive Marriage. 1865
Thomson and Tait, Natural Philosophy.
1867 Bagehot, English Constitution. 1867
Browning, Ring and the Book. 1868-69
1869 Barratt, Physical Ethics Bagehot, Physics and Politics. 1869
1870 J. Grote, Examination of the Utili- Galton, Hereditary Genius. 1870
tarian Philosophy Crookes, Spiritualism and Science. 1870
J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent
1871 Fraser, ed. of Berkeley Jevons, Theory of Political Economy.
1871 Darwin, Descent of Man. 1871
1872 Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical M. Arnold, Literature and Dogma. 1872
Philosophy
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 317
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi (begun). 1849
Turgueniev, Papers of a Sportsman. 1852 Leconte de Lisle, Poemes antiques. 1853 Renouvier, Essais de critique ge"nerale. 1854-64 Fischer, Geschichte der Philosophic. 1854 Biichner, Kraft und Stoff. 1855 Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations. 1856 Lotze, Mikrokosmus. 1856-64 Flaubert, Madame Bovary. 1857 Baudelaire, Fleurs du mal. 1857 Taine, Philosophes frangais. 1857 Renan, fitudes d histoire religieuse. 1857 Vacherotj La metaphysique et la science. 1858
Events
Second French Republic; revo lutions and insurrections in Italy, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Poland. 1848
Fugitive Slave Law, U.S.A. 1850
Coup d etat of Louis Napoleon. 1851
Gladstone s first Budget. 1853
Crimean War. 1854-56
Indian Mutiny. 1857-58
Lazarus and Steinthal, Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsy- War of Italy and France against
chologie und Sprachwissenschaft (begun). 1859 Austria. 1859 Fechner, Elem. d. Psychophysik. 1860 Tolstoy, War and Peace. 1860
Victor Emanuel King of Italy.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables. 1862 1861
Renan, Vie de Jesus. 1863 American Civil War. 1861-65
Fustel de Coulanges, La cite antique. 1864
Pasteur, litudes sur le vin. 1866
Ibsen, Brand. 1866
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. 1866
Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus. 1866
Karl Marx, Das Kapital. 1867
W. T. Harris, Journal of Speculative Philosophy
(St Louis, U.S.A., begun). 1867 Helmholtz, Physiologische Optik. 1867 Haeckel, Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte. 1868 Hartmann, Philosophic des Unbewussten. 1869 Taine, Theorie de 1 intelligence. 1870 Ritschl, Lehre von der Rechtfertigung. 1870-74
Janet, Problemes du xix e siecle. 1872 Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube. 1872
Atlantic cable laid. 1866 Battle of Koniggratz. 1866
English Reform Act. 1867 North German Confederation. 1867
Suez Canal opened. 1869 Irish Church disestablished. 1869 English Education Act. 1870 Papal Infallibility decreed. 1870 Battle of Sedan. 1870 German Empire proclaimed.
1871
Third French Republic. 1871 Political Reformation in Japan,
1871
318 COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
English philosophy English literature and science
1873 J. F. Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Clerk Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism.
Fraternity 1873
1874 Jevons, Principles of Science Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd. Lewes, Problems, vol. i 1874
Green, Introductions to Hume Wallace, Logic of Hegel Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics Flint, Philosophy of History
1876 Bradley, Ethical Studies
L. Stephen, English Thought in the
Eighteenth Century J. Grote, Moral Ideals
1877 E. Caird, Critical Account of the G. Allen, Physiological Aesthetics. 1877
Philosophy of Kant Flint, Theism
1879 Spencer, Data of Ethics Adamson, On the Philosophy of
Kant
Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt
1880 J. Caird, Philosophy of Religion
1 88 1 Venn, Symbolic Logic
1882 L. Stephen, Science of Ethics Seeley, Natural Religion. 1882
1883 Barratt, Physical Metempiric Seebohm, English Village Community. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics 1883
Bradley, Principles of Logic Sidgwick, Political Economy. 1883
Seeley, Expansion of England, 1883
1885 J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Pater, Marius the Epicurean. Theory
1886 J. Ward, Psychology (article) Dicey, Law of the Constitution. 1886
1887 Seth (Pringle Pattison), Hegelian- J. C. Morison, Service of Man. 1887
ism and Personality
1888 J. Martineau, Study of Religion Bosanquet, Logic
1889 E. Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant Bryce, American Commonwealth. 1889
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science Events
Sigwart, Logik. 1873-78
Wundt, Physiologische Psychologic. 1874 Boutroux, Contingence des lois de la nature. 1874 Brentano, Psychologic vom empirischen Stand-
punkte. 1874 Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy. 1874
319
Renan, Dialogues et fragments philosophiques.
1876
Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus. 1876-87 Tiele, Geschiedenis van den Godsdienst. 1876 Lombroso, L uomo delinquente. 1876 Carducci, Le odi barbare. 1877
Ethical Societies founded in America. 1875
Russo-Turkish War. 1877-78
Strindberg, Master Oluf. 1878
Nietzsche, Menschliches, allzumenschliches. 1878-
90
Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Aeterni Patris. 1879 Zola, L assommoir. 1879 Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. i. 1879
Henry George, Progress and Poverty. 1881 Ribot, L heredite psychologique. 1882 Bourget, Essais de psychologic contemporaine. 1883 Lester Ward, Dynamic Sociology. 1883 Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften.
1883-89 Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra. 1883-91
Jung Deutschland (poems). 1885
Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy. 1885
Lachelier, Psychologic et Metaphysique (article).
1885
Ardigo, La morale dei positivisti. 1885 Guyau, Esquisse d une morale. 1885 Mach, Beitrage zur Analyse der Empfindungen.
1886
Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Bose. 1886 Sudermann, Frau Sorge. 1886
Triple Alliance. 1882
New Franchise Act in Great Britain. 1884
Gladstone s first Home Rule Bill. 1886
Anatole France, La vie litteraire. 1888 Avenarius, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung. 1888-90 Bergson, Donnees immediates de la conscience. 1 889
320 COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
English literature and science
English philosophy
Alexander, Moral Order and Pro gress
1891 Sidgwick, Elements of Politics Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx
1893 Bradley, Appearance and Reality E. Caird, Evolution of Religion Huxley, Ethics and Evolution
1895 Balfour, Foundations of Belief Fraser, Philosophy of Theism
1896 Stout, Analytic Psychology McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian
Dialectic
Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge 1896-1914 Merz, History of European Thought in the nineteenth century
1898 Hodgson, Metaphysic of Experience Wallace, Natural Theology and
Ethics
1899 J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnostic
ism
Bosanquet, Philosophical Theory of the State
Marshall, Principles of Economics. 1890 Frazer, The Golden Bough. 1890
Westermarck, History of Marriage. 1891 C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People
in London. 1892-97 Pearson, National Life and Character.
1893
Webb, History of Trade Unionism. 1894
Kidd, Social Evolution. 1894
Pollock and Maitland, History of English
Law. 1894
Seeley, Growth of British Policy. 1895 Hardy, Jude the Obscure. 1895 Lecky, Democracy and Liberty. 1896
Crozier, History of Intellectual Develop ment. 1897
Webb, Industrial Democracy. 1897 Bodley, France. 1898
COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 321
Foreign philosophy, literature, and science Events
Wundt, System der Philosophic. 1889
arde. Lois de 1 imitation. 1890 Fall of Bismarck. 1890
. James, Principles of Psychology. 1890 runetiere, L evolution des genres, vol. i. 1890 ohm-Bawerk, Positive Theorie des Kapitals. 1891 mmel, Moralwissenschaft. 1892
irdou, Madame Sans-Gene. 1893
ouillee, Psychologic des idees-forces. 1893
urkheim, Division du travail social. 1893
ddings, Principles of Sociology. 1893
cinong, Psy.-eth. Unters. zur Werththeorie. 1894
Rontgen s discovery of X-rays.
1895 ergson, Matiere et memoire. 1896
abatier, Philosophic de la religion. 1897 L James, The Will to Believe. 1897 irenfels, System der Werttheorie. 1897-8
The Tsar s Peace Rescript. 1898 Spanish-American War. 1898
einong, Ueber Gegenstande hoherer Ordnung First Hague Conference. 1899 (article). 1899 South African War. 1899-1902
oyce, The World and the Individual. 1900 Death of Queen Victoria. 1901
S. E. P. 21
IN the following bibliography the names of writers are arranged chronologically, the date of each writer being determined by the date of publication of the earliest work whose title appears in the list. The list does not profess to be exhaustive. It does not include medieval writers; it has been found necessary to apply a more rigorous principle of selection as recent times are approached; articles in journals are omitted; and writers whose important works are subse quent to 1900 are not mentioned. Following upon the list of his books, in certain cases references are given to critical estimates of the writer s work.
The views of the more important writers mentioned are summarised or
discussed in the leading histories of modern philosophy. There are also two books
which deal with English philosophy as a whole: J. Seth s English Philosophers
and Schools of Philosophy, 1912; and T.M. Forsyth s English Philosophy, 1910.
The following deal with periods in the history of English philosophy: C. de
Re"musat, Histoire de la philosophic en Angleterre depuis Bacon jusqu a Locke,
1875; J. Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in
the Seventeenth Century, and ed., 1874; J. Leland, View of the Principal
Deistical Writers, 1754-6; G. V. Lechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus,
1841; A. S. Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 1862; J. Hunt, Religious
Thought in England, 1870-2; L. Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century, 1876; G. Lyon, L idealisme en Angleterre au xviii 6 siecle, 1888;
J. McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, 1875; A. S. Pringle Pattison, Scottish
Philosophy, 1885; J. Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy, 1 893 ;L. Stephen,
The English Utilitarians, 1900; E. Halevy, Formation du Radicalisme philo-
sophique, 1901-4; E. Albee, History of English Utilitarianism, 1902; J. T. Merz,
History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century (especially vols. in, iv),
1896-1914; A. W. Benn, English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 1906;
D. Masson, Recent British Philosophy, 1865; G. Dawes Hicks, in Ueberweg-
Heinze, Geschichte der Philosophic, loth ed., part iv, 54-62, 1910; H. Hoff-
ding, Die englische Philosophic unserer Zeit (German transl.), 1889.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SIR THOMAS MORE
Libellvs vere avrevs nee minvs salvtaris qvam festiuus, de optimo reip.
statu. deque noua Insula Vtopia. (Louvain, 1516; rptd, Paris, 1518;
2nd ed., Basle, 1518.) A fruteful and pleasaunt worke of the beste state of a publyque weale,
and of the newe yle called Utopia... translated into Englyshe by
Ralphe Robynson. 1551.
WILLIAM BALDWIN Treatise of moral Phylosophie, contayning the Sayinges of the Wyse. 1 547.
THOMAS WILSON
The Rule of Reason, conteining the arte of logique. 1552. The Arte of Rhetorique. 1553.
RALPH LEVER Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft. 1573.
EvERARD DlGBY
Theoria analytica, Viam ad Monarchiam Scientiarum demonstrans, totius Philosophiae et reliquarum Scientiarum, necnon primorum postremo- rumque Philosophorum mysteria arcanaque dogmata enucleans. 1579.
De duplici methodo libri duo, unicam P. Rami methodum refutantes. 1580.
Everardi Digbei Cantabrigiensis admonitioni Francisci Mildapetti... responsio. 1580.
De Arte Natandi. 1587. [Believed to be the earliest treatise on swimming published in England; transl. C. Middleton, 1595.] Cp. J. Freudenthal, Beitrage zur Geschichte der englischen Philo sophic (two articles) in Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophic, vol. iv,
1891.
WILLIAM TEMPLE
Francisci Mildapetti Navarreni ad Everardum Digbeium Anglum Ad- monitio de unica P. Rami Methodo rejectis ceteris retinenda. 1580.
Pro Mildapetti de unica methodo defensione contra Diplodophilum, com- mentatio Gulielmi Tempelli, e Regio Collegio Cantabrigiensis. Hue accessit nonnullarum e physicis et ethicis quaestionum explicatio,
324 BIBLIOGRAPHY
una cum epistola de Kami dialectica ad Joannem Piscatorem Argenti-
nensem. 1581. Frankfort, 1584. P. Kami Dialecticae libri duo, scholiis G. TempelliCantabrigiensisillustrati.
Cambridge, 1584. Frankfort, 1591, 1595. Jacob! Martini Scoti Dunkeldensis philosophiae professoris publici, in
Academia Taurinensi, de prima simplicium et concretorum corporum
generatione disputatio. Cambridge, 1584. Frankfort, 1591, 1595.
(Martin s book was first published at Turin, 1577.) Cp. J. Freudenthal, Beitrage zur Geschichte der englischen Philo sophic in Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophic, vol. v, 1892.
JOHN CASE
Summa veterum interpretum in universam Dialecticam Aristotelis. 1584.
Oxford, 1592. Frankfort, 1593. Speculum moralium questionum in universam ethicen Aristotelis. Oxford,
1585. Frankfort, 1589. Sphaera civitatis. Oxford, 1588. Reflexus speculi moralis. Oxford, 1596. Thesaurus Oeconomicae. Oxford, 1597. Lapis philosophicus. Oxford, 1599. London, 1612. Ancilla philosophiae. Oxford, 1599.
JOHN SANDERSON
Institutionum dialecticarum libri quatuor. Antwerp, 1589. Oxford, 1594, 1602.
WILLIAM PERKINS
Armilla aurea. 1590. Eng. transl. 1600. The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience. 1608.
FRANCIS BACON 1
Philosophical Works
i. Parts of the Instauratio Magna
Instauratio magna. 1620. (After two pages beginning Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogitavit, an epistle dedicated to the king, preface, distributio operis, and a page announcing deest pars prima instaura- tionis, quae complectitur partitiones scientiarum, there follows a second title-page : Pars Secunda Operis, quae dicitur Novum Organum, sive Indicia Vera de interpretatione naturae. The same volume also contains: Parasceve ad Historiam Naturalem et Experimentalem.)
Opera. Tomus primus. Qui continet De Augmentis Scientiarum libros ix. 1623. (The second title is : de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum libri ix.)
1 In enumerating Bacon s separate works, Spedding s arrangement (instead of chronological order) has been followed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 325
Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis ad condendam philosophiam : sive
Phaenomena Universi: quae est Instaurationis Magnae pars tertia.
1622. (This volume contains Historia Ventorum, also titles and
aditus to five other Historiae, namely, Densi et Rari, Gravis et
Levis, Sympathiae et Antipathiae Rerum, Sulphuris Mercurii et Salis,
Vitae et Mortis.) Historia Vitae et Mortis. Sive Titulus Secundus in Historia Naturali et
Experimentali ad condendam philosophiam: quae est Instaurationis
Magnae pars tertia. 1623. Historia Densi et Rari (I658) 1 . Sylva Sylvarum: or A Natural History. In ten centuries. Written by the
Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam, Viscount St Alban.
Published after the author s death by William Rawley. 1627. Scala intellectus, sive Filum Labyrinthi (1653) (a preface intended for the
fourth part of the Instauratio). Prodromi, sive Anticipationes Philosophiae Secundae (1653) (a preface
intended for the fifth part of the Instauratio).
ii. Works connected with the Instauratio, but not intended to be included in it.
Cogitationes de natura rerum (16153).
De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris (1653).
De Principiis atque Originibus secundum Fabulas Cupidinis et Coeli (1653).
New Atlantis: a work unfinished. (First published by Rawley at the end
of the volume containing Sylva Sylvarum in 1627. Ed. G. C. M.
Smith, Cambridge, 1900.)
iii. Works originally designed for parts of the Instauratio but superseded or abandoned.
Cogitationes de Scientia Humana. (A series of fragments of uncertain
date, first published by Spedding (Bacon s Works, vol. in), who
supplied the title.) Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature; with the annotations
of Hermes Stella (1734). The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement
of Learning Divine and Humane. 1605. Filum Labyrinthi, sive Formula Inquisitionis (1734) (little else than an
English version of the Cogitata et Visa). De Interpretatione Naturae Prooemium (1653). Temporis Partus Masculus sive Instauratio Magna Imperii Humani in
Universum (1653). Partis Instaurationis Secundae Delineatio et Argumentum, et Redargutio
philosophiarum (1653, in part).
1 Writings published for the first time in posthumous collections have the date of the collection given in parentheses. Titles will be found under Editions.
326 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cogitata et Visa: de Interpretatione Naturae, sive de Scientia Operativa
(1653). .
Filum Labyrinth!; sive Inquisitio Legitima de Motu (1653). Sequela Cartarum; sive Inquisitio Legitima de Galore et Frigore (1734). Historia et Inquisitio Prima de Sono et Auditu, et de Forma Soni et
Latente Processu Soni; sive Sylva Soni et Auditus (1658). Phaenomena Universi; sive Historia Naturalis ad Condendam Philoso-
phiam (1653).
Descriptio Globi Intellectualis et Thema Coeli (1653). De Interpretatione Naturae Sententiae XII (1653). Aphorismi et Consilia (1653).
Literary Works
Essayes. Religious Meditations. Places of perswasion and disswasion. Scene and allowed. 1597. (There are ten essays in this volume. The Religious Meditations are in Latin and are entitled Meditationes Sacrae; the Places of perswasion and disswasion are in English and are entitled Coulers of Good and Evill; a fragment. Reprinted in 1598, 1604 and 1606.)
The Essaies of Sir Francis Bacon Knight the kings sollicker generall. 1612. (This volume contains essays only thirty-eight in number, twenty- nine of them new, and the rest corrected and enlarged.)
The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, of Francis Lo. Verulam, Vis count St Alban. 1625. (This volume contains fifty-eight essays, twenty of them being new and most of the rest altered and enlarged.)
De Sapientia Veterum Liber, ad inclytam academiam Cantabrigiensem. 1609.
The Historic of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh. 1622.
Advertisement touching an Holy Warre. Written in the year 1622. 1629.
Of the True Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain (1734).
Apothegmes new and old. 1625.
Promus of Formularies and Elegancies (begun 1594, published 1882, and in part by Spedding, vol. vn).
Translation of Certain Psalmes into English Verse. 1625.
Professional Works
Maxims of the Law (written about 1597; first printed 1630).
Reading on the Statute of Uses (read at Gray s Inn in the Lent vacation, 1600; first printed in 1642).
The Arguments of Law of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, The King s Solicitor- General, in certain great and difficult cases. (Revised by Bacon in 1616, but not published by him; first printed by Blackbourne in
I730-).
Argument in Chudleigh s Case. (Easter Term, 1594.) (Translated from Law French and printed in Spedding s edition, vol. vn.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY 327
The Argument of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, His Majesty s Solicitor- general, in the Case of the Post-Nati of Scotland. (Delivered before Easter Term, 1608; first printed in 1641.)
The Argument of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, Attorney-General in the King s Bench, in the Case De Rege Inconsulto. (Delivered Jan. 25, 1616; first printed in Collectanea Jurid.)
A Preparation towards the Union of Laws.
Occasional Writings (a selection)
An Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England
(written 1589; first published as pamphlet, 1640). A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed
by Robert, late Earle of Essex. 1601. A Brief Discourse touching the Happy Union of the Kingdoms of England
and Scotland (written 1603). Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edification
of the Church of England (written 1603). Sir Francis Bacon his Apologie, in certaine imputations concerning the
late Earle of Essex. 1604. A Proposition to His Majesty... touching the Compiling and Amendment
of the Laws of England (written 1616, first published 1653).
Editions
1. Collections chiefly of works unpublished in his life-time:
(a) Collected by W. Rawley: Certaine Miscellany works. 1629.
Operum moralium et civilium tomus primus. 1638. Resus- citatio. 1657. Opuscula varia posthuma. 1658.
(b) Collected by I. Gruter: Scripta in naturali et universali
philosophia. Amsterdam, 1653.
(c) Collected by R. Stephens: Letters written during the reign
of King James. 1702. Letters and Remains. 1734.
2. Editions of collected works: by Schonwetter and Gruter, Frankfort,
1665 ; Mallet, 4 vols., 1740; Stephens, Locker and Birch, 5 vols., 1765 ; A. Lasalle, French translation, 15 vols., Dijon, 1801-4; Montagu, 16 vols., 1825-36; J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath, 14 vols., 1857-74. I n the last-named edition, vols. i-m contain the Philo sophical Works, vols. iv-v translations of the same, vols. vi-vn Literary and Professional Works, vols. vin-xiv the Letters and the Life. The Philosophical Works were edited in one volume by J. M. Robertson, 1905.
3. Among editions of separate works mention may be made of the editions
of the Advancement of Learning by W. A. Wright, Oxford, 1869, 5th ed., 1900, and by T. Case, Oxford, 1906, and of the Novum Organum by T. Fowler, Oxford, 1878, 2nd ed., 1889.
328 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works on Bacon s Life and Philosophy
E. A. Abbott. Bacon and Essex. 1877. Bacon: an account of his life and works. 1885.
R. Adamson. In Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed.
H. W. Blunt. Bacon s Method. Proc. of Aristotelian Soc. N.S. iv.
E. Cassirer. In his Erkenntnisproblem in der Phil. u. Wissenschaft.
R. W. Church. Bacon. 1884.
R. L. Ellis. General Preface to the Philosophical Works, Bacon s Works, vol. i. 1857.
Fischer, Kuno. Francis Bacon und seine Schule. Entwicklungsgeschichte der Erfahrungsphilosophie. Vol. x of the Jubilaumsausgabe of his Gesch. d. neuern Phil. Heidelberg, 1904. (Third revised edition of a work originally published in 1856, translated into English by J. Oxen- ford, 1857.)
T. Fowler. Bacon. 1881.
J. v. Liebig. Ueber Francis Bacon und die Methode der Naturforschung. Munich, 1863.
Lord Macaulay. In Edinburgh Review, July 1837; rptd in Essays.
J. Nichol. Bacon. Edinburgh, 1888-9.
C. de Remusat. Bacon: sa vie, son temps, sa philosophic, et son influence jusqu a nos jours. Paris, 1857.
W. Whewell. Philosophy of Discovery. Chaps, xv, xvi. 1860.
SIR RICHARD BARCKLEY
A Discourse of the Felicitie of Man: or his Summum bonum. 1598.
SIR JOHN DAVIES
Nosce Teipsum. This Oracle expounded in two Elegies. I. Of Humane knowledge. ^. Of the Soule of Man, and the immortalitie thereof. 1599. [The Complete Poems. Ed. A. B. Grosart, 1869, 1876.]
WILLIAM GILBERT
Guilielmi Gilbert! Colcestrensis, medici londinensis, de Magnete, magneti- cisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure; Physiologia nova, plurimiG et argumentis, et experimentis demonstrata. 1600. DC Mundo nostro Sublunari Philosophia Nova. Opus posthumum. Am sterdam, 1651.
GEORGE DOWN HAM
In Petri Rami Dialecticam. 1606.
JOSEPH HALL
Characters of Vertues and Vices. 1608. Resolutions and Decisions of Diverse practicall cases of Conscience. 1649.
JOHN SELDEN The Duello or Single Combat. 1610.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 329
De Dis Syris Syntagmata II. 1617.
The Historic of Tithes. 1618.
Mare Clausum seu de dominio maris. 1635.
De Successionibus ad leges Ebraeorum. 1638.
De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Hebraeorum. 1640.
Brief Discourse of the Powers of the Peers and Commons. 1640.
Table Talk... edited by R. Milward. 1689.
Opera Omnia. Ed. D. Wilkins. 1723.
ROBERT SANDERSON
Logicae artis compendium. Oxford, 1615.
De juramenti promissorii obligatione praelectiones septem. Habitae...
A.D. MDCXLVI. 1647. - translated into English by his Majesties speciall command. 1655.
De obligatione conscientiae praelectiones decem...habitae A.D. MDCXLVII. 1660. (Ed., with Eng. notes, by W. Whewell, Cambridge, 1851, and in Eng. trans, by Wordsworth, bp Chr., Lincoln, 1877.)
Works. Ed. W. Jacobson. Oxford, 1854.
ROBERT FLUDD
Utriusque Cosmi majoris scilicet et minoris, Metaphysica, physica atque
technica Historia. Frankfort, 1617. Medicina Catholica, seu mysticum artis medicandi sacrarum (Integrum
Morborum mysterium). Frankfort, 1629. Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae. Frankfort, 1633. Philosophia Moysaica. Gouda, 1638 (in English, 1659).
RICHARD CRAKANTHORP
Introductio in metaphysicam. Oxford, 1619. Logicae libri quinque de praedicabilibus. 1622. De Providentia Dei tractatus. Cambridge, 1623.
NATHANAEL CARPENTER
Philosophia libera, triplici exercitationum Decade proposita, in qua adversus hujus temporis Philosophos dogmata quaedam nova dis- cutiuntur. Ed. secunda. Oxford, 1622. (ist ed. in 1621.)
MARTIN FOTHERBY Atheomastix; clearing foure truthes, against atheists and infidels. 1622.
EDWARD HERBERT De Veritate, prout distinguitur a Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possibili, et
a Falso. Paris, 1624.
De Religione Gentilium, errorumque apud eos causis. Amsterdam, 1663. Eng. transl. 1709. Cp. C. Guttler, Lord Herbert von Cherbury, 1897; G. V. Lechler,
33 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Geschichte des englischen Deismus, 1841; C. de Remusat, Lord Herbert de Cherbury, 1874; W. R. Sorley, in Mind, October, 1894.
GEORGE HAKEWILL
An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God. Oxford, 1627.
THOMAS HOBBES
Eight Books of the Peloponnesian War written by Thucydides the son of
Olorus interpreted with faith and diligence immediately out of the
Greek. 1629. De Mirabilibus Pecci. 1636. [With Eng. trans, by a person of quality.
1678.] The Elemen^ of Law Natural and Politic. (Circulated in MS. 1640, first
published as a whole and under this title by F. Tonnies, 1889.) Objectiones ad Cartesii Meditationes de prima philosophia vulgo dictae
Objectiones Tertiae. (First published in Descartes s Meditationes,
1641.) Tractatus Opticus. (Published by Mersenne in his Cogitata Physico-
Mathematica, 1644.) Elementorum Philosophiae, Sectio tertia, De Give. Paris, 1642. [The 2nd
ed., with new notes and preface, was entitled Elementa Philosophica
De Give, Amsterdam, 1647.] Humane Nature ; or the Fundamental Elements of Policy. 1650. [Consists
of chaps, i-xin of The Elements of Law.] De Corpore Politico; or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politick. 1650.
[Consists of chaps, xiv-end of The Elements of Law.] Epistolica dissertatio de principiis justi et decori; continens apologiam
pro tractatu de cive. Amsterdam, 1651. Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society. 1651.
[An English version of De Give.] Leviathan Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesi-
asticall and Civil. 1651. Of Liberty and Necessity. 1654. [A publication, not authorized by
Hobbes, of a reply by him to the arguments of Bishop Bramhall,
written for the marquis of Newcastle in 1646.] Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio prima, De Corpore. 1655. (Eng. trans.
with an appendix entitled Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathe matics, 1656.) The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance. 1656.
Ayeco/Aerptas, AypoiKtas, AvrtVoAiTeias, A/xa^eia?, or Marks of
the Absurd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish Church Politics, and
Barbarisms, of John Wallis. 1657.
Elementorum Philosophiae sectio secunda, De Homine. 1658. Examinatio et Emendatio Mathematicae hodiernae qualis explicatur in
libris Johannis Wallisii. 1660.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 331
Dialogus Physicus, sive de Natura Aeris.. . .Item de duplicatione cubi. 1661 .
Seven Philosophical Problems and Two Propositions of Geometry... with an Apology for Himself and his Writings. 1662.
Problemata Physica. 1662.
Mr Hobbes considered in his loyalty, religion, reputation and manners. 1662, 1680. [The latter ed. entitled Considerations upon the Repu tation, etc.]
De Principiis et Ratiocinatione Geometrarum. 1666.
Opera Philosophica, quae Latine scripsit, Omnia. Amsterdam, 1668. [Part I rpts De Corpore, De Homine and De Give; Part n, other mathematical and physical pieces; Part in is a Latin trans, of Levia than, with a new appendix instead of the former Review and Con clusion. ]
Quadratura Circuli. Cubatio Sphaerae. Duplicatio Cubi. 1669.
Rosetum Geometricum...cum censura brevi doctrinae Wallisianae de motu. 1671.
Three Papers presented to the Royal Society against Dr Wallis. 1671.
Lux Mathematica excussa collisionibus Johannis Wallisii et Thomae Hobbesii. 1672.
Principia et Problemata aliquot geometrica antehac desperata nunc breviter explicata et demonstrata. 1674.
The Travels of Ulysses, as they were related by himself in Homer s 9th, loth, nth, and I2th books of his Odysses. 1673.
The Iliads and Odysses of Homer. Translated out of Greek into English. 1676.
Decamerum Physiologicum ; or Ten Dialogues of Natural Philosophy. 1678.
Behemoth; The History of the Civil Wars of England. 1679 (imperfect), 1682.
Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Vita carmine expressa. 1679. (Eng. trans. 1680.)
An Historical Narration concerning Heresie and the punishment thereof. 1680.
A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England. 1681.
The Whole Art of Rhetoric. 1681 (written some thirty years before).
An answer to a Book published by Dr Bramhall called the Catching of the Leviathan. 1682 (written 1668).
Historia Ecclesiastica carmine elegiaco concinnata. 1688. (Eng. trans. 1722.)
Editions of Hobbes Works The only complete edition of the works is that by Sir W. Molesworth,
Latin Works, 5 vols., English Works, 1 1 vols., 1839-45. Elements of Law
and Behemoth were ed. from a revision of the MSS. by F. Tonnies, in 1889.
Leviathan has been rptd, Oxford, 1 88 1 and 1909, and the text ed. by
A. R. Waller, Cambridge, 1904.
332 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works on Hobbes ]. J. Baumann. Lehren von Raum, Zeit und Mathematik. 1868. (i.
pp. 237-356.)
G. Lyon. La philosophic de Hobbes. 1893. R. Mondolfo. La morale di T. Hobbes. 1903. G. C. Robertson. Hobbes. 1886. Sir L. Stephen. Hobbes. 1904.
G. Tarantino. Saggio sulle idee morali e politiche di T. Hobbes. 1900. A. E. Taylor. Hobbes. 1909.
F. Tonnies. Hobbes, Leben und Lehre. 1896 ; 2nd ed., 1912. Anmerkungen iiber die Philosophic des Hobbes (4 articles), in Viertel- jahrsschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophic. 1879-81.
WILLIAM AMES De conscientia et ejus jure vel casibus. 1630. (English trans. 1639.)
ROBERT GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE
A Discourse opening the nature of that Episcopacie which is exercised in
England. 1641. The Nature of Truth, its union and unity with the Soule. 1641.
Cp. J. Freudenthal, Beitrage zur Geschichte der englischen Philo sophic (two articles), in Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophic, vi, 1893.
HENRY MORE
Psychozoia Platonica: or a Platonicall Song of the Soul. 1642. Philosophical Poems [including the above]. 1647. Edited by A. B. Grosart,
1878.
An Antidote against Atheism. 1653. Conjectiva Cabbalistica. 1653. Enthusiasmus Triumphatus. 1656. The Immortality of the Soule. 1659. The Grande Mystery of Godliness. 1660. A Collection of several Philosophical Writings, 2nd ed., 1662. Enchiridion Ethicum. 1666. Divine Dialogues. 1668. Enchiridion Metaphysicum. 1671. Opera omnia. 1675-79.
RALPH CUDWORTH
Discourse concerning the true notion of the Lord s Supper. 1642.
Sermon preached before the House of Commons, 31 March 1647.
The True Intellectual System of The Universe. 1678; Latin trans, with
notes by J. L. Mosheim. Jena, 1733. A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. With preface
by E. Chandler. 1731.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 333
JOHN WALLIS
Truth tried, or Animadversions on a Treatise published by Robert lord
Brook. 1643.
Elenchus geometriae Hobbianae. Oxford, 1655. Due correction for Mr Hobbes; or schoole discipline, for not saying his
lessons right. Oxford, 1656. Hobbiani puncti dispunctio...in answer to M. Hobs s cmyp.a.i. Oxford,
1657.
Hobbius heauton-timorumenos. Oxford, 1662. Thomae Hobbes quadratura circuli...confutata. Oxford, 1669.
SIR KENELM DIGBY Two Treatises, in the one of which, the Nature of Bodies; in the other,
the Nature of Mans soule; is looked into: in way of Discovery of the
Immortality of reasonable soules. Paris, 1644. Of bodies, and of man s soul. To discover the immortality of reasonable
souls. With two discourses of the power of sympathy and of the
vegetation of plants. 1669.
JOHN BRAMHALL The Serpent Salve; or, A Remedy for the biting of an Aspe. 1643/4.
[A defence of monarchy, and criticism of the view that all power is
derived from the people.] A Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions from Antecedent and
Extrinsicall Necessity. 1655. Castigations of Mr Hobbes his last Animadversions in the case concerning
Liberty and Universal Necessity. With an appendix concerning the
catching of Leviathan or the great Whale. 1658. Works. Dublin, 1674-7; Oxford, 1842.
ALEXANDER Ross The Philosophicall Touch-Stone; or Observations upon Sir K. Digbie s
Discourses. 1645. Arcana Microcosmi. 1652.
Ilara-cjSeia: or, a View of all Religions in the World. 1653. Leviathan drawn out with a hook; or Animadversions on Mr Hobbes his
Leviathan. 1653.
THOMAS WHITE Institutionum Peripateticarum ad mentem...K. Digbaei pars theorica.
Leyden, 1646 (in Eng. 1656).
The Grounds of Obedience and Government. 1655. Sciri, sive sceptices et scepticorum a jure disputationis exclusio. 1663.
SIR ROBERT FILMER
The Free-holders Grand Inquest, Touching our Sovereign Lord the King And His Parliament. 1647.
334 BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy. 1648. The Necessity of the Absolute Power of all Kings. 1648. Observations concerning the Originall of Government. 1652. Patriarchal or the Natural Power of Kings. 1680.
SETH WARD A philosophicall essay towards an eviction of the being and attributes of
God. 1652. Vindiciae academiarum,...with an appendix concerning what M. Hobbs
and M. Dell have published on this argument. 1654. In Tho. Hobbii philosophiam exercitatio epistolica. 1656.
NATHANAEL CULVERWEL
An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature. 1652. (Ed. J. Brown. Edinburgh, 1857; SelectionsinCampagnac, The Cambridge Platonists, 1901, pp. 211-321.)
JOHN WORTHINGTON
The Christian s Pattern: a translation of the De Imitatione of Thomas a
Kempis. 1654. Select Discourses. 1725. Diary and Correspondence; ed. by J. Crossley. Manchester, 1847-86.
THOMAS STANLEY
The History of Philosophy: containing The Lives, Opinions, Actions and Discourses of the Philosophers of every Sect. 1655.
JOHN PORDAGE Truth appearing. 1655. Theologia mystica. 1683.
JAMES HARRINGTON
The Common-wealth of Oceana. 1656.
The Prerogative of Popular Government. 1658.
A Discourse shewing that the spirit of Parliaments with a Council in the interval, is not to be trusted for a Settlement. 1659.
A Discourse upon this saying the Spirit of the nation is not yet to be trusted with Liberty. 1659.
The Art of Law-giving: in in books. 1659.
Aphorisms political. [1659.]
Political Discourses: tending to the introduction of a free... Common wealth in England. 1660.
The Oceana and other Works... collected... by John Toland. 1700. Cp. J. Russell Smith, Harrington and his Oceana. 1914.
MATTHEW WREN
Considerations on Mr Harrington s... Oceana. 1657. Monarchy asserted... in vindication of the Considerations upon Mr Har rington s Oceana. Oxford, 1659.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 335
THOMAS PIERCE AuTOKo.TaKpicris...with occasional reflexions on... Master Hobbs. 1658.
JEREMY TAYLOR
Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience in all her measures; serving as a great Instrument for the determination of Cases of Conscience. 1660.
HENRY STUBBE
The Commonwealth of Oceana put into the Ballance. 1660. Campanella revived, or an inquiry into the history of the Royal Society. 1670.
HON. ROBERT BOYLE
New Experiments Physico-mechanical. 1660.
An Examen of Mr T. Hobbes his Dialogus physicus de natura aeris. 1662.
New Experiments and Observations touching Cold... To which are added
an Examen of antiperistasis, and an examen of Mr Hobs s doctrine
about cold. 1665. (3rd ed. with defence against Hobbes s objections.
1682.) Tracts, containing... 2 Animadversions upon Mr Hobbes s problemata de
vacuo. 1674.
JOHN SMITH
Select Discourses. 1660. (Selections in Campagnac, The Cambridge Platonists, 1901, pp. 77-157.)
JOSEPH GLANVILL
The Vanity of Dogmatizing: or Confidence in Opinions. 1661. Scepsis Scientifica: or, Confest Ignorance, the Way to Science. 1665. Plus Ultra ; or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days
of Aristotle. 1668. Philosophia Pia; or, a discourse of the religious temper, and tendencies of
the experimental philosophy which is profest by the Royal Society.
1671. Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion. 1676.
[Contains: (i) Against Confidence in Philosophy; (ii) Of Scepticism
and Certainty; (iii) Modern Improvements of Knowledg; (iv) The
Usefulness of Philosophy to Theology; (v) The Agreement of Reason
and Religion; (vi) Against Sadducism in the Matter of Witchcraft;
(vii) Antifanatick Theologie, and Free Philosophy. In a continuation
of the New Atlantis.] Sadducismus Triumphatus ; or, Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches
and Apparitions. 1681.
SIMON PATRICK
A brief account of the new Sect of Latitude-Men together with some reflections on the New Philosophy. 1662.
336 BIBLIOGRAPHY
WILLIAM LUCY
Observations, Censures and Confutations of notorious errours in Mr Hobbes his Leviathan and other his bookes [a revised issue of two tracts, published in 1656 (?) and 1657, under the pseudonym of William Pyke]. 1663. Cp. T. Loveday, in Mind, N.S., vol. xvn, pp. 493-501.
GEORGE LAWSON An Examination of the Political part of Mr Hobbs his Leviathan. i66r
JOSEPH BEAUMONT (1616-99)
Some Observations upon the Apologie of Dr H. More for his Mystery of Godliness. Cambridge, 1665.
SAMUEL PARKER
Tentamina physico-theologica de Deo. 1665.
A free and impartial censure of the Platonick Philosophic. Oxford, 1666.
An account of the nature and extent of the Divine Dominion and Good ness, especially as they refer to the Origenian Hypothesis concerning the Pre-existence of Souls. Oxford, 1667.
A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politic, wherein the authority of the Civil Magistrate over the Consciences of Subjects in matters of external religion, is asserted; the mischiefs and inconveniences of Toleration are reprobated, and all pretences pleaded on behalf of Liberty of Conscience are fully answered. 1670 [answered by John Owen. Truth and Innocence Vindicated. 1670].
Disputationes de Deo et divina providentia. 1678.
A demonstration of the divine authority of the Law of Nature and of the Christian Religion. 1681.
JOHN WILKINS
An Essay towards a real Character and a Philosophical Language. 1668. On the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion. 1678.
THEOPHILUS GALE
The Court of the Gentiles. 1669-77. Idea Theologiae. 1673. Philosophia Generalis. 1676.
THOMAS TENISON The Creed of Mr Hobbes examined. 1670.
ANTOINE LEGRAND Philosophia veterum e mente Renati Descartes more scholastico breviter
digesta. 1671. Institutio philosophiae secundum principia Renati Descartes. 1672.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 337
Apologia pro R. Des-Cartes contra Samuelum Parkerum. 1679. An entire body of Philosophy, according to the principles of R. Des-Cartes ...translated... by R. Blome. 1694.
FRANCIS GLISSON
Tractatus de Natura Substantiae energetica, seu de vita naturae ejusque tribus primis facultatibus. 1672.
JOHN MILTON Artis logicae plenior institutio. 1672.
RICHARD BURTHOGGE
Ta.ya.6ov, or Divine Goodness explicated and vindicated. 1672. Causa Dei; or, an Apology for God. 1675.
Organum vetus et novum; or, a Discourse of Reason, and Truth. 1678. An Essay upon Reason, and the Nature of Spirits. 1604. Of the Soul of the World, and of Particular Souls. 1699.
Cp. G. Lyon, L Idealisme en Angleterre au xvm e siecle, 1888, pp. 72-96; E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem, 1906, vol. i, pp. 464-473.
JOHN EACHARD Mr Hobbs s State of Nature Considered, In a Dialogue between Philautus
and Timothy. 1672. Some Opinions of Mr Hobbs considered in a second dialogue between
Philautus and Timothy. 1673.
RICHARD CUMBERLAND
De legibus Naturae disquisitio philosophica. 1672. [English trans, by John Maxwell, 1727; by J. Towers, Dublin, 1750.]
GEORGE RUST A Discourse of Truth. 1677; Edited by Glanvill. 1682.
JOHN WHITEHALL The Leviathan found out : or the Answer to Mr Hobbes s Leviathan. 1679.
CHARLES BLOUNT Anima Mundi. 1679. Great is Diana of the Ephesians. 1680. The Two First Books of Philostratus concerning the Life of Apollonius
Tyaneus. 1680. Miscellaneous Works, with preface by Charles Gildon. 1695.
JAMES TYRRELL
Patriarcha non Monarcha. 1681.
A Brief Disquisition of the Law of Nature... as also confutations of... Hobbs s principles. 1692.
S. E. P. 22
33$ BIBLIOGRAPHY
THOMAS BURNET Telluris theoria sacra. 1681-9. The Theory of the Earth. 1684.
Remarks upon an Essay concerning Humane Understanding. 1697. Second Remarks upon an Essay, etc. 1697. Third Remarks upon an Essay, etc. 1699.
JOHN DOWELL
The Leviathan heretical: or... refutation of a book of his, entituled The Historical Narration of Heresie. Oxford, 1683.
JOHN NORRIS
A Collection of Miscellanies. 1687. The Theory and Regulation of Love, a Moral Essay, to which are added
Letters Philosophical and Moral between the Author and Dr Henry
More. 1688. Christian Blessedness... to which is added Reflections upon a late Essay
concerning the Human Understanding. 1690. Letters concerning the Love of God. 1695. An Account of Reason and Faith in relation to the Mysteries of Christianity.
1697. An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World, design d
for two parts. 1701-4. A Philosophical Discourse concerning the Natural Immortality of the Soul.
1708.
Cp. G. Lyon, L Idealisme en Angleterre, Paris, 1888; F. I. Mackinnon, The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton, Baltimore, 1910.
JOHN LOCKE
Epistola de Tolerantia ad clarissimum virum T. A. R. P. T. O. L. A. [i.e., theologiae apud Remonstrantes professorem, tyrannidis osorem, Limburgium Amstelodamensem] scripta a P. A. P. O. J. L. A. [i.e., pacis amico, persecutionis osore, Joanne Lockio Anglo]. Tergou, 1689. (Translated into English by William Popple, 1689.)
Two Treatises of Government. In the former, the false Principles and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his Followers, are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter is an Essay concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government. 1690. (French transl. 1795; German transl. 1718; Italian transl. 1778.)
An Essay concerning Humane Understanding. 1690. (French transl. 1700; Latin transl. 1701; Dutch transl. 1736; German transl. 1757.)
A second Letter concerning Toleration. 1690.
Some Considerations of The Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money. 1691.
A Third Letter for Toleration. 1692.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 339
Some Thoughts concerning Education. 1693. (French transl. 1695; German transl. 1729; Italian transl. 1782.)
Further Considerations concerning Raising the Value of Money. 1695.
The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures. 1695. (Dutch transl. 1729; German transl. 1733; French transl. 1740.)
A Vindication of The Reasonableness of Christianity, from Mr Edwards s Reflections. 1695.
A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity. 1697.
A Letter to the Right Reverend Edward Ld. Bishop of Worcester, concern ing Some Passages relating to Mr Locke s Essay of Humane Under standing: in a late Discourse of his Lordships in Vindication of the Trinity. 1697.
Mr Locke s Reply to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Worcester s Answer to his Letter. 1697.
Mr Locke s Reply to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Worcester s Answer to his Second Letter. 1699.
A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle of St Paul to the Galatians, &c. 1 705 .
Posthumous Works. 1706.
Some Familiar Letters between Mr Locke and several of his friends. 1708.
A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr John Locke, published by M. Des Maiseaux under the direction of Mr Anthony Collins. 1720.
Original Letters of Locke, Algernon Sidney, and Lord Shaftesbury. By T. Forster. 1830.
Lettres inedites a ses amis. Publiees par M. H. Ollion. La Haye, 1913.
Collected Editions of Locke s Works In three volumes folio, 1714 etc.; in four vols. quarto, 1768 etc.; in nine
vols. octavo, 1791; in ten vols. 1801, 1812, 1823. The Philosophical Works. Ed. J. A. St John. 1843, 1854.
Editions of separate tvorks
Essay concerning Human Understanding. By A. C. Fraser. Oxford, 1 894. On the Conduct of the Understanding. By T. Fowler. Oxford, 1881. Some Thoughts concerning Education. By R. H. Quick. Cambridge, 1880.
Selected Works on Locke s Life and Philosophy
S. Alexander. Locke. (Philosophies Ancient and Modern.) 1908. J. J. Baumann. Lehren von Raum, Zeit und Mathematik, vol. i, pp. 357-
472. Berlin, 1868.
H. R. Fox Bourne. Life of John Locke. 1876. John Brown. Locke and Sydenham, in Horae Subsecivae. 1858. Pierre Coste. ^loge de M. Locke, Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres,
February, 1705.
M. Ferrari. Locke e il sensismo francese. Milan, 1900. P. Fischer. Die Religionsphilosophie des John Locke. Erlangen, 1893.
22 2
34 BIBLIOGRAPHY
T. Fowler. Locke. (English Men of Letters.) 1880.
A. C. Fraser. Locke. (Blackwood s Philosophical Classics.) 1890.
Prolegomena to his edition of Locke s Essay. Oxford, 1894.
J. Gibson. Locke s Theory of Knowledge and its historical relations. 1917. T. H. Green. Introduction to Hume s Treatise, 1874, 1-154. Works, vol. i. 1885.
Principles of Political Obligation, 51-63. Works, vol. n. 1886. G. Graf von Hertling. Locke und die Schule von Cambridge. Freiburg
i/B., 1892.
Lord King. Life and Letters of John Locke. 1829. J. Le Clerc. Bibliotheque Choisie. 1716. G. W. von Leibniz. Nouveaux Essais sur 1 entendement humain. First
published in QEuvres Philosophiques, publiees par R. E. Raspe. 1765. Sir F. Pollock. Locke s Theory of the State. Proc. of the British Academy,
1904.
R. Sommer. Lockes Verhaltniss zu Descartes. 1887. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. Horae Sabbaticae. 2nd ser. 1892. [Essays
7-10 on Locke.] T.E.Webb. The Intellectualism of Locke. 1858.
JOHN EDWARDS
A Demonstration of the Existence and Providence of God. 1690. Some Thoughts concerning the several Causes and Occasions of Atheism...
with some brief Reflections on Socinianism and on a late Book entituled
"the Reasonableness of Christianity." 1695. The Socinian Creed. 1697. A Brief Vindication of the Fundamental Articles of The Christian Faith...
from Mr Lock s Reflections. 1697.
JONAS PROAST
The Argument of the Letter concerning Toleration consider d and ans-
wer d. 1690. A Third Letter concerning Toleration. 1691.
JOHN RAY The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation. 1691.
RICHARD BENTLEY
Matter and Motion cannot think; or, a Confutation of Atheism from the
faculties of the Soul. 1692. Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-thinking. By Phileleutherus Lip-
siensis. 1713.
WILLIAM MOLYNEUX Dioptrica Nova. 1692. A memorial of the life of W. Molyneux; an autobiography. (Published in
BIBLIOGRAPHY 341
An account of the family, etc., by Sir Capel Molyneux. Evesham,
1820.)
MATTHEW TINDAL
Essay of Obedience to the Supreme Powers. 1694. Essay on the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind in
Matters of Religion. 1697. The Liberty of the Press. 1698. The Rights of the Christian Church. 1706. Four Discourses on Obedience, Laws of Nations, Power of the Magistrate
and Liberty of the Press. 1709. A Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church, znded. 1709. [Burned
by order of the House of Commons, 1710.] Christianity as old as the Creation ; or the Gospel a Republication of the
Religion of Nature. 1730. (German transl., 1741.)
JAMES LOWDE
A Discourse concerning the Nature of Man. 1694.
Moral Essays wherein some of Mr Lock s and Monsi r Malbranch s opinions are briefly examin d. 1699.
JOHN KEILL
Examination of Dr Burnet s Theory of the Earth. 1695. Introductio ad veram physicam. 1701.
JOHN TOLAND
Christianity not mysterious. 1696. Life of Milton. 1698.
Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton s Life. 1699. The Art of Governing by Parties. 1701. Anglia Libera. 1701. Vindicius Liberius. 1702. Letters to Serena. 1704.
An Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover. 1705. Adeisidaemon. The Hague, 1709. Origines Judaicae. The Hague, 1709.
Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity. 1718. Tetradymus. 1720.
Pantheisticon, sive Formula celebrandae Sodalitatis Socraticae. 1720. A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr John Toland (with life by Des Mai-
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CHARLES LESLIE (1650-1722) The Snake in the Grass. 1696.
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342 BIBLIOGRAPHY
JOHN SERGEANT The Method to Science. 1696. Solid Philosophy asserted, against the fancies of the Ideists, with Reflexions
on Mr Locke s Essay concerning Human Understanding. 1697. Transnatural Philosophy, or Metaphysicks. 1700.
EDWARD STILLINGFLEET
Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity. 1696. The Bishop of Worcester s Answer to Mr Locke s Letter. 1697. The Bishop of Worcester s Answer to Mr Locke s Second Letter. 1698.
JOHN WYNNE
An Abridgement of Locke s Essay concerning Humane Understanding. 1696.
WILLIAM WHISTON (1667-1752)
A New theory of the Earth. 1696.
Primitive Christianity revived. 5 vols. 1711-12.
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The Works of Josephus translated. 1737.
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SAMUEL BOLD
Discourse on the True Knowledge of Jesus Christ. 1697.
Consideration of the Objections to the Essay on the Human Understanding. 1699.
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Select Sermons, with a preface by the (third) Earl of Shaftesbury. 1698. Select Discourses, published by J. Jeffery. 1701. Moral and Religious Aphorisms, republished with additions by S. Salter.
1753-
(Selections from the Sermons and Aphorisms in Campagnac, The Cam bridge Platonists, 1901, pp. 1-75.)
PETER BROWNE (d. 1735)
Letter in answer to a Book entitled Christianity not Mysterious. 1699. Procedure, Extent, and Limits of the Human Understanding. 1728. Things Divine and Supernatural conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Human. 1733.
SAMUEL CLARKE
Some Reflections on that part of a book called Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton s Life, which relates to the Writings of the Primitive Fathers, and the Canon of the New Testament. 1699.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 343
A Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. 1705, 1706. [Two courses of Boyle lectures, 1704 and 1705.]
A Letter to Mr Dodwell, wherein all the arguments in his Epistolary Discourse are particularly answered. 1706.
The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. 1712.
A Collection of Papers which passed between the late learned Mr Leibnitz and Dr Clarke (to which are added Remarks upon a book entitled A Philosophical Enquiry concerning Human Liberty). 1717.
A Letter to Benjamin Headly, F.R.S., occasioned by the controversy relating to the proportion of Velocity and Force in Bodies in Motion. (Phil. Trans. No. 401.) 1728. Cp. J. E. Le Rossignol, Ethical Philosophy of S. Clarke, Leipzig, 1892;
G. von Leroy, Die phil. Probleme in dem Briefwechsel zw. Leibniz und
Clarke, Giessen, 1893.
JOHN MILNER
An account of Mr Lock s religion, out of his own writings, and in his own words. 1700.
WILLIAM KING
De Origine Mali. Dublin and London, 1702. (Engl. transl. by Edmund
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THOMAS TAYLOR
The Two Covenants of God with mankind, or the Divine Justice and Mercy explained and vindicated in an Essay designed to show the use and advantages of some of M r Malebranch s Principles. 1704.
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344 BIBLIOGRAPHY
THOMAS WOOLSTON
The Old Apology for the Truth of the Christian Religion... revived. 1705. The Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate. 1725. Discourses. 1727-9.
WILLIAM CARROLL
A Dissertation upon the tenth chapter of the Fourth Book of Mr Locke s Essay concerning Humane Understanding; wherein that author s endeavours to establish Spinoza s atheistical hypothesis... are dis- cover d and confuted. 1706.
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that the Soul is a principle naturally mortal, but immortalized actually
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A Preliminary Defence of the Epistolary Discourse. 1707. The Natural Mortality of Human Souls clearly demonstrated. 1708.
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Arithmetica absque Algebra aut Euclide demonstrata. Dublin, 1707. Miscellanea Mathematica. Dublin, 1707. An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. Dublin, 1709. A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Part i. Dublin, 1710. (2nd ed., with " Part i " omitted from title, London,
7340
Passive Obedience : or, The Christian Doctrine of not resisting the Supreme
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Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. 1713. De motu : sive de motus principio et natura, et de causa communicationis
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 345
to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of
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The Analyst, or, A Discourse addressed to an infidel mathematician. 1734. A Defence of Free-Thinking in Mathematics. 1735. The Querist (three parts, Dublin, 1735, 1736, 1737; published together
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Editions appeared in 1784, 1820, 1837, 1843, 1871, 1897-8, 1901. The standard edition is that by A. Campbell Fraser, 4 vols., Oxford, 1871, revised, 1901. This is the first really complete edition, and contains the Commonplace Book, formerly unknown. Fraser has also published Selections from Berkeley, 1874 (frequently re-edited) and Berkeley (in Blackwood s Phil. Classics), 1 88 1. In these and in the 1901 edition of the Works copious bibliographical references will be found. On the text of the Commonplace Book, see T. Lorenz, in Mind, N.S., vol. xin, and in Archiv fur Ges. d. Phil., vol. i, 1897. See also M. C. Tyler, Three Men of Letters. (On G. B. and his American visit.) New York, 1895.
ANTHONY ASTLEY COOPER, THIRD EARL OF SHAFTESBURY Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 1711; 2nd ed., 1713.
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Letters to a Young Man at the University. 1716. Second Characters, ed. by B. Rand. 1914.
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BERNARD MANDEVILLE
Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions. 1711. The Fable of the Bees; or Private Vices, Public Benefits. 1714. (With
An Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, and A Search into the
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Free Thoughts on Religion. 1720.
The Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War. 1732. Cp. P. Sakmann, Mandeville und die Bienenfabel-Controverse. Freiburg i/B., 1897.
BENJAMIN HAMPTON
The Existence of Human Soul after Death proved... Wherein Mr Locke s notion that understanding may be given to matter,... and all other such... opinions, are... confuted. 1711.
ARTHUR COLLIER
Clavis Universalis : or, a New Inquiry after Truth. Being a Demonstration of the Non-Existence, or Impossibility, of an External World. 1713. (Rptd, Edinburgh, 1836 (with letters to Clarke, etc.); in Parr s Meta physical Tracts, 1837; Chicago, 1909.)
ASpecimenof True Philosophy; in a Discourse on Genesis, the first chapter and the first verse. Sarum, 1730. (Rptd in Parr s Metaphysical Tracts, 1837.)
Logology, or a Treatise on the Logos or Word of God, in seven sermons on John, i. i, 2, 3, 14. 1732.
WILLIAM DERHAM
Physico-Theology (Boyle lectures). 1713. Astro-Theology. 1715. Christo-Theology. 1730.
THOMAS CHUBB
The Supremacy of the Father asserted. 1715. A Discourse concerning Reason. 1731. The True Gospel of Jesus Christ. 1739. Posthumous Works. 1748.
JOHN CLARKE (1682-1757)
An Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of Evil. (Boyle lecture, 1720.) [Defended the views of his brother, Samuel Clarke.]
WILLIAM WOLLASTON The Religion of Nature Delineated. 1722.
Cp. Drechsler, Ueber Wollaston s Moralphil. Erlangen, 1802.
WILLIAM LAW
Remarks upon a late Book entituled the Fable of the Bees. 1723. The Case of Reason, or Natural Religion, fairly and fully stated. 1732.
FRANCIS HUTCHESON
An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, in two treatises. 1725.
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An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense. 1728. (French transl., Amsterdam, 1749; German transl., Frankfort, 1762.)
Philosophiae moralis institutio compendiaria. Glasgow, 1742. (English transl., Glasgow, 1747.)
Metaphysicae Synopsis. Glasgow, 1742.
A System of Moral Philosophy. Glasgow, 1755.
Logicae Compendium. Glasgow, 1756.
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JOHN CLAK.KE (d. 1730)
An Examination of the [Wollaston s] Notion of Moral Good and Evil. 1725. The Foundation of Morality in theory and practice. York [1730]. [A
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1730. An Examination of the Sketch or Plan of an Answer [by C. Middleton] to
a Book entitled Christianity as old as the Creation. 1734.
THOMAS MORGAN
Philosophical Principles of Medicine. 1725. A Collection of Tracts. 1726.
The Moral Philosopher. In a Dialogue between Philalethes a Christian Deist, and Theophanes a Christian Jew. 1737.
Vol. n. Being a farther Vindication of Moral Truth and Reason.
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Vol. in. Superstition and Tyranny inconsistent with Theocracy. 1740.
JOHN BALGUY A Letter to a Deist concerning the Beauty and Excellency of Moral
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JOSEPH BUTLER
Fifteen Sermons preached at the Chapel of the Rolls Court. 1726. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and
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EDMUND LAW
An Essay on the Origin of Evil. By [Abp] W. King. Translated from the Latin with notes. 1731.
Inquiry into the Ideas of Space, Time, Immensity and Eternity. Cam bridge, 1734.
JOHN GAY
A Dissertation concerning the Principle and Criterion of Virtue and the Origin of the Passions. (Prefixed to Law s transl. of King s Essay on the Origin of Evil.) 1731.
JOSEPH CLARKE
Treatise of Space [a criticism of Samuel Clarke]. 1733.
A further examination of Dr Clarke s Notions of Space. 1734.
ANDREW BAXTER
Enquiry into the nature of the Human Soul, wherein the Immateriality of the Soul is evinced from the principles of Reason and Philosophy.
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JOHN JACKSON
The Existence and Unity of God proved from his Nature and Attributes [a defence of Clarke]. 1734.
VINCENT PERRONET
A Vindication of Mr Locke. 1736. A Second Vindication of Mr Locke. 1738.
Some Enquiries chiefly relating to Spiritual Beings, in which the opinions of Mr Hobbes...are taken notice of. 1740.
WILLIAM WARBURTON
The Alliance between Church and State. 1736. loth ed. 1846.
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A Collection of the Tracts of a certain Free Enquirer. 1739-45. The Resurrection of Jesus considered. 3rd ed. 1744.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature: being an Attempt to introduce the experi mental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Vols. i and n, 1739; vol. in, 1740.
Essays Moral and Political. Edinburgh, 1741. Vol. n, 1742.
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O. Quast. Der Begriff der Belief bei Hume. 1903.
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HENRY DODWELL (THE YOUNGER) Christianity not founded on argument. 1742.
DAVID HARTLEY Conjecturae quaedam de sensu motu et idearum generatione. 1746. In
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THOMAS REID
An Essay on Quantity, in Phil. Trans. 1748. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense.
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JAMES HARRIS
Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar. 1751. Philosophical Arrangements. 1775. Philological Inquiries in three parts. 2 vols. 1781.
HENRY HOME, LORD KAMES Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion. 1751. (German
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Introduction to the Art of Thinking. 1761. Elements of Criticism. 1762. Sketches of the History of Man. 1774.
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RICHARD PRICE A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals. 1757.
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Observations on Reversionary Payments. 1771. 4th ed. 1783. An Appeal to the Public on the subject of the National Debt. 1772. Observations on the nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government,
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ADAM SMITH The Theory of Moral Sentiments; or an essay towards an analysis of the
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GEORGE CAMPBELL A Dissertation on Miracles. 1762. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. 1776.
ABRAHAM TUCKER
Freewill, Foreknowledge and Fate. By Edward Search. 1763.
Man in quest of Himself: or a Defence of the Individuality of the Human
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JAMES OSWALD An Appeal to Common Sense in behalf of Religion. Edinburgh, 1766.
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Essay on the History of Civil Society. 1767.
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JOSEPH PRIESTLEY
The History and Present State of Electricity. 1767.
An Essay on the First Principles of Government. 1768. 2nd ed. 1771.
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JAMES BEATTIE
An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in opposition to sophistry and scepticism. Edinburgh, 1770. With other essays. Edinburgh, 1776.
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Of the Origin and Progress of Language. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1773-6. 2nd ed. 6 vols. 1774-92.
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Three Tracts relating to Spanish and Portuguese Affairs. 1821.
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Not Paul but Jesus, by Gamaliel Smith. 1823.
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The Rationale of Reward. 1825.
The Rationale of Evidence. (Ed. J. S. Mill.) 5 vols. 1827.
The Rationale of Punishment. 1830. (This work and The Rationale of Reward are translated from Dumont, with assistance from the manu script of Bentham written about 1775.)
Constitutional Code for the use of all Nations and all Governments professing Liberal Opinions. Vol. i. 1830.
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Deontology or Science of Morality. (Ed. J. Bowring.) 2 vols. 1834.
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Tactique des Assemblies deliberantes et Traite des Sophismes politiques.
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Principles of the Civil Code (translated from Dumont) ; Principles of the Penal Code (translated from Dumont); View of a Complete Code of Laws (translated from Dumont); Principles of International Law; Junctiana, Proposal for a junction of the Atlantic and Pacific; Essay on Political Tactics (translated from Dumont); Anarchical Fallacies (summary in Dumont); Protest against Law Taxes; Manual of Political Economy; Pannomial Fragments; Nomography, or the Art of Inditing Laws; Logical Arrangements, or Instruments of Invention and Discovery; Emancipate your Colonies; Securities
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ROBERT ADAMSON Roger Bacon : the philosophy of science in the 1 3th century. Manchester,
1876.
On the Philosophy of Kant. Edinburgh, 1879. (German transl. 1880.) Fichte. (Blackwood s Philosophical Classics.) 1881. The Development of Modern Philosophy, with other lectures and essays.
1903.
The Development of Greek Philosophy. 1908. A Short History of Logic. 1911.
Cp. G. Dawes Hicks, Adamson s Philosophical Lectures, in Mind (new series), vol. xin.
FRANCIS HERBERT BRADLEY Ethical Studies. 1876. Mr Sidgwick s Hedonism. 1877.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 369
The Principles of Logic. 1883. Appearance and Reality. 1893. Essays on Truth and Reality. 1914.
Cp. B. Bosanquet, Knowledge and Reality, 1885; A. S. Pringle Pattison, A New Theory of the Absolute, in his Man s Place in the Cosmos, 2nd ed., 1902; H. Rashdall, The Metaphysic of Mr F. H. Bradley, in Proc. of the Brit. Acad., 1912; G. F. Stout, Mr Bradley s Theory of Judgment, in Proc. Arist. Soc., 1903; H. Sturt, Idola Theatri, 1906; H. Hoffding, Modern Philosophers (English trans.), 1915.
SIR LESLIE STEPHEN History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. 2 vols. 1876.
3rd ed. 1902.
The Science of Ethics. 1882. An Agnostic s Apology. 1893. Social Rights and Duties. 1896. The English Utilitarians. 1900.
Cp. F. W. Maitland, Life and Letters of Sir Leslie Stephen. 1906.
EDITH SIMCOX
Natural Law: an Essay in Ethics. 1877. Primitive Civilizations. 1894.
GRANT ALLEN
Physiological Aesthetics. 1877. The Colour Sense. 1879. The Evolutionist at large. 1881. The Evolution of the Idea of God. 1897.
EDWARD CAIRO
A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant. 1877. Hegel. (Blackwood s Philos. Classics.) 1883. The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. 1889. Essays on Literature and Philosophy. 1892. The Evolution of Religion. (Gilford Lectures.) 1893. The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers. (Gifford Lectures.)
1904.
FREDERICK MAX MULLER The Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religions of India.
1878.
Kant s Critique of the Pure Reason translated. 1 88 1. Science of Thought. 1887. Natural Religion. 1889. Physical Religion. 1890. Anthropological Religion. 1891. Theosophy or Psychological Religion. 1892.
s. E. P. 24
370 BIBLIOGRAPHY
GEORGE JOHN ROMANES
A candid examination of Theism, by Physicus. 1878. Animal Intelligence. 1881. Mental Evolution in Animals. 1883. Mental Evolution in Man. 1888. Darwin and after Darwin. 1892. Mind and Motion and Monism. 1895. Thoughts on Religion. 1896. Essays. 1897.
Cp. Life and Letters, by E. Romanes. 1896.
CARVETH READ
On the Theory of Logic. 1878. Logic, Deductive and Inductive. 1898. The Metaphysic of Nature. 1905. Natural and Social Morals. 1909.
THOMAS MARTIN HERBERT The realistic assumptions of modern science examined. 1879.
THOMAS EDWARD CLIFFE LESLIE Essays in political and moral philosophy. 1879. Essays in political economy. 2nd ed. [of the preceding]. 1888.
EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY Religion and Progress. 1879.
Comte, the successor of Aristotle and St Paul. 1883. Comte as a moral type. 1885.
WILLIAM KINGDON CLIFFORD Seeing and Thinking. 1879. Lectures and Essays, ed. by Sir L. Stephen and Sir F. Pollock. 1879. 2nd
ed. 1886. The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, ed. by K. Pearson. 1885.
THOMAS NORTON HARPER The Metaphysics of the School. 1879-84.
RIGHT HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR A Defence of Philosophic Doubt. 1879. Essays and Addresses. 1893. The Foundations of Belief. 1895. Decadence. (Sidgwick Memorial Lecture.) 1908. Theism and Humanism. 1915.
JOHN CAIRO
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 1880. Spinoza. (Blackwood s Philos. Classics.) 1888.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 371
EDMUND GURNEY The Power of Sound. 1880.
Phantasms of the Living. (With F. W. H. Myers and F. Podmore.) 1886. Tertium Quid: chapters on various disputed questions. 2 vols. 1887. Cp. F. W. H. Myers, in Proc. of Soc. for Psychical Res., vol. v, p. 359.
THOMAS DAVIDSON
The Philosophical System of Rosmini-Serbati. 1882. Aristotle and ancient Educational ideals. 1892. The Education of the Greek People. 1895. Rousseau and Education according to Nature. 1898. A History of Education. 1900. * The Education of the Wage-Earners, ed. C. M. Bakewell. Boston, Mass.,
1904. The Philosophy of Goethe s Faust, ed. C. M. Bakewell. Boston, Mass.,
1906. Cp. W. Knight, Memorials of Thomas Davidson. 1907.
ANDREW SETH PRINGLE PATTISON From Kant to Hegel. 1882.
Philosophy as Criticism of Categories, in Essays in Phil. Criticism. 1883. Scottish Philosophy: a comparison of the Scottish and German Answers
to Hume. 1885.
Hegelianism and Personality. 1887.
Man s Place in the Cosmos and other essays, 1897. 2nd ed. 1907. The Philosophical Radicals and other essays. 1907. The Idea of God in the light of Modern Philosophy. (Gifford Lectures.)
1917.
DAVID GEORGE RITCHIE
The Rationality of History, in Essays in Phil. Criticism. 1883.
Darwinism and Politics. 1889.
Principles of State-Interference. 1891.
Darwin and Hegel, with other philosophical studies. 1894.
Natural Rights. 1895.
Studies in Social and Political Ethics. 1902.
Philosophical Studies. Ed. by R. Latta. 1905.
BERNARD BOSANQUET
Logic as the Science of Knowledge, in Essays in Phil. Criticism. 1883. Knowledge and Reality. 1885.
Logic, or the Morphology of Knowledge. 1888. 2nd ed. 1911. History of Aesthetic. 1892. The Psychology of the Moral Self. 1897. The Philosophical Theory of the State. 1899. 3rd ed. 1920. The Principle of Individuality and Value. (Gifford Lectures.) 1912. The Value and Destiny of the Individual. (Gifford Lectures.) 1913.
24 2
372 BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Distinction between Mind and its Objects. (Adamson Lecture.) 1913. Three Lectures on Aesthetic. 1915. Social and International Ideals. 1917. Some Suggestions in Ethics. 1918. Implication and Linear Inference. 1920.
RICHARD BURDON (VISCOUNT) HALDANE
The Relation of Philosophy to Science (with J. S. Haldane) in Essays in
Phil. Criticism. 1883. The Pathway to Reality. (Gifford Lectures.) 1903, 1904.
WILLIAM GEORGE WARD Essays on the Philosophy of Theism. *Ed. by Wilfrid Ward. 2 vols. 1884.
AUBERON E. W. M. HERBERT A Politician in trouble about his soul. 1884. The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State. 1885. The True Line of Deliverance (in A Plea for Liberty, 1891). The Voluntaryist Creed. 1908.
GEORGE CROOM ROBERTSON Hobbes. (Blackwood s Philos. Classics.) 1886. Philosophical Remains. Ed. by A. Bain and T. Whittaker. 1895. Elements of General Philosophy. Ed. by C. A. F. Rhys Davids. 1896. Elements of Psychology. Ed. by C. A. F. Rhys Davids. 1896.
JAMES WARD Psychology, in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 9th ed. 1886. lothed. 1903.
nth ed. 1910.
Naturalism and Agnosticism. (Gifford Lectures.) 1899. 4th ed. 1915. The Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism. (Gifford Lectures.) 1911. Heredity and Memory. (Sidgwick Lecture.) 1913. Psychological Principles. 1918.
THOMAS CASE Physical Realism. 1888.
SAMUEL ALEXANDER Moral Order and Progress. 1889. Space, Time, and Deity. (Gifford Lectures.) 1920.
HASTINGS RASHDALL Doctrine and Development. 1889. The Theory of Good and Evil. 1907. Philosophy and Religion. 1909. Is Conscience an Emotion ? 1914.
JOHN STUART MACKENZIE
An Introduction to Social Philosophy. 1890. 2nd ed. 1895. A Manual of Ethics. 1893. 7th ed. 1910.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 373
Outlines of Metaphysics. 1902. 2nd ed. 1906. Lectures on Humanism. 1907. Elements of Constructive Philosophy. 1917. Outlines of Social Philosophy. 1918.
SIR HENRY JONES
Browning as a philosophical and religious teacher. 1891. The Philosophy of Lotze. 1895. Idealism as a practical creed. 1909. The Principles of Citizenship. 1919.
FERDINAND CANNING SCOTT SCHILLER Riddles of the Sphinx. 1891. New ed. 1910. Humanism. 1903. 2nd ed. 1912. Studies in Humanism. 1907. 2nd ed. 1912. Plato or Protagoras ? 1908. Formal Logic, a Scientific and Social Problem. 1912.
JOHN HENRY MUIRHEAD
The Elements of Ethics. 1892. 3rd ed. 1910. Chapters from Aristotle s Ethics. 1900. Philosophy and Life, and other essays. 1902. The Service of the State. 1908. German Philosophy in relation to the War. 1915. Social Purpose [with H. J. W. Hetherington]. 1918.
JAMES SETH
A Study of Ethical Principles. 1894. roth ed. 1908. English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy. 1902.
LEONARD TRELAWNEY HOBHOUSE The Theory of Knowledge. 1896. Mind in Evolution. 1901. 2nd ed. 1915. Morals in Evolution. 1906. 2nd ed. 1915. Development and Purpose. 1913. The Metaphysical Theory of the State. 1918.
GEORGE FREDERICK STOUT Analytic Psychology. 1896. A Manual of Psychology. 1898. The Groundwork of Psychology. 1903.
JOHN MCTAGGART ELLIS MCTAGGART Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic. 1896. Studies in Hegelian Cosmology. 1901. Some Dogmas of Religion. 1906. A Commentary on Hegel s Logic. 1910.
RICHARD LEWIS NETTLESHIP Philosophical Lectures and Remains. 1897.
INDEX 1
Abercrombie, J., 358
Adamson, R., 6 ., 128 ., 296 f., 368
Alcuin of York, i
Alexander S., 372
Alison, Archibald, 356
Allen, Grant, 369
Ames, W., 44, 332
Annet, Peter, 144, 152, 349
Anselm, 82
Aquinas, St Thomas, 5 f., 42, 100
Argyll, eighth Duke of, 365
Aristotle, 2, 5, 8-n, 26, 32, 48, 97,
102, 243, 253, 261 Ascham, R., 1 1 Aubrey, John, 47, 49, 58 Augustine, St, 131 Austin, John, 359
Bacon, Anthony, 15, 17
Bacon, Francis, 6, 9, 12 f., 14-34, 35 f -> 48 f-, 57, 69 f., 102, no, 211, 269, 298, 324; Advancement of Learning, 14 f., 21 f., 25, 32 f.; Essays, 17, 32; De Augmentis Scientiarum, 17, 21 f., 24, 27, 32 f. ; New Atlantis, 17, 20, 701., 102; Novum Organum, 17, 23-31, 34; Sylva Sylvarum, 17, 21
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 151.
Bacon, Roger, i, 5 f.
Bagehot, W., 278, 366
Bailey, Samuel, 357
Bain, A., 238, 261 f., 293 f., 362
Baldwin, W., 14, 323
Balfour, A. J., 370
Balguy, John, 158, 347
Barckley, R., 14, 328
Barratt, Alfred, 367
Baur, F. C., 148
Baxter, Andrew, 348
Baynes, T. S., 243 ., 244, 362
Beattie, James, 203, 352
Beaumont, Joseph, 336
Beccaria, Marchese de, 162 ., 220, 224 ., 229
Beesly, E. S., 370
Bellarmine, R. F. R., 73
Bentham, George, 358
Bentham, Jeremy, 158, 162, 186, 200, 207, 211-231, 236 f., 240, 242, 250-2, 257, 353
Bentham, Samuel, 212
Bentley, R., 149, 155, 340
Berkeley, George, 44, 57 f., 95, 104, 132-143, 161, 176, 195, 197, 204, 21 1, 242, 284, 287, 293 f., 296, 300, 344; Alcipbron, 135, 137, 141; Common-place Book, 133, 137, 142; Hylas, 133, 141; New Theory of Vision, 133, 137-9; Principles of Human Knowledge, 133, 139-142; Siris, 136, 142
Blackstone, Sir W., 216-8
Blair, Hugh, 170
Blount, Charles, 144 f. ; 337
Boehme, Jacob, 102
Bold, Samuel, 129, 342
Bolingbroke, Lord, 144, 152, 350
Boole, George, 244, 361
Bosanquet, B., 292, 371
Bowring, Sir J., 216
Boyle, Robert, 56, iiSn., 335
Bradley, F. H., 291 f., 368
Bradwardine, Thomas, I
Bramhall, John, 52, 57, 73 f., 333
Brandenburg, Elector of, 106
Bridges, J. H., 263, 364
Brooke, Lord, 42-4, 99, 332
Broughton, John, 129, 343
Brown, Thomas, 209 f., 242, 244, 247,
357
Browne, Peter, 1361., 342 Buccleuch, third Duke of, 186 Buckingham, first Duke of, 16, 20, 35
1 The Index contains the personal names which occur in the text or notes and the names in the bibliography which are printed in capitals.
376 INDEX
Burghiey, Lord, 9, 12, i5f., 19 Burke, Edmund, 198, 212 Burnet, Thomas, 129, 338 Burnet, Thomas (of Kemnay), 129 Burthogge, R., 129!., 337 Burton, J. H., i66., 169 Butler, Joseph, 145, 154, 163-5, 28o > 347
Caird, Edward, 290-4, 369
Caird, John, 290, 370
Calderwood, H., 362
Campanella, T., 69
Campbell, George, 203, 352
Carlyle, T., 2391., 250 f., 286, 359
Caroline, Queen, 135
Carpenter, N., 13, 329
Carpenter, W. B., 368
Carroll, W., 344
Case, John, 8 f., 324
Case, Thomas, 372
Chalmers, T., 357
Charles I, 44, 72
Charles II, 51, 54
Charles the Bald, 2
Charles the Great, i
Chubb, Thomas, 144, 152, 346
Cicero, 76
Clarendon, Earl of, 66, 73
Clarke, John, 346
Clarke, John, junior, 347
Clarke, Joseph, 348
Clarke, Samuel, 132, 135, 145, 149 n. :
150-2, 154-9, 198, 280, 342 Cliffe Leslie, T. E., 278, 370 Clifford, W. K., 276, 370 Cobbe, F. P., 363 Cockburn, C., 129, 343 Cockburn, Lord, \jon. Coleridge, S. T., 229, 240, 242, 251 f.,
284, 357
Collier, Arthur, 143, 346 Collins, Anthony, 109, 144 f., 149 f.,
344
Combe, George, 357 Comte, A., 253, 260, 263, 273 Condillac, E. B. de, 113, 299 Condorcet, Marquis de, 232 Congreve, R., 263, 363 Cooke, Sir Anthony, 15 Copernicus, 13, 267 Cousin, V., 246
Crakanthorp, R., 329
Cromwell, Oliver, 71
Cudworth, R., 741., 88-96, 97, 99,
I0 7> *57 f -> !9 8 211, 3> 332 Culverwel, N., 75, 78, 99-100, 334 Cumberland, Richard, 102 f., 337 Cunningham, W., 123 n.
Darwin, C., 31, 234, 267-9, 273, 277,
299
Davidson, T., 371
Davies, Sir John, 41-43, 328
Democritus, 89 f., ii8w.
de Morgan, A., 244, 360
Derham, W., 200, 346
Descartes, R., 36 f., 50, 52, 61, 74, 78-80, 84, 87, 89, 96, 101 f., 105, in, n8w., 120, 130 f., 136-9, 143, 156, 1 68, 204, 242, 298
Devonshire, first Earl of, 48 f.
Devonshire, second Earl of, 48 f.
Devonshire, third Earl of, 49 f., 54
Diderot, Denis, 161
Digby, Everard, 9-12, 43, 323
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 46, 101, 333
Dionysius the Areopagite, 3
Dodwell, Henry, 344
Dodwell, Henry, junior, 144, 152, 350
Douglas, J., 200
Dowell, John, 338
Downham, John, 328
Dumont, E\, 214, 228
Duns Scotus, John, i, 5-7
Dupont de Nemours, P. S., 187 n.
Eachard, John, 74, 337 Edwards, John, 340 Edwards, Jonathan, 135 Elizabeth, Queen, 16, 47 Ellis, R. L., i8. Epictetus, 159 Erigena, John Scotus, i, 2-6 Essex, Earl of, 10, 20 Euclid, 50, 54
Ferguson, Adam, 352 Ferrier, J. F., 241, 284-6, 362 Fichte, J. G., 243, 284, 297 Filmer, Sir R., 72 f., 121 f., 333 Fischer, Kuno, 49 n., 300 Flint, Robert, 368 Fludd, R., 13, 329
INDEX
377
Fotherby, M., 42, 329 Fowler, E., 75 Fowler, T., 28 ., 366 Foxwell, H. S., 236 M. Fraser, A. C., 293 f., 363
Gale, Theophilus, 102, 336
Galileo, G., 13, 31, 49 f., 61, n8.,
267
Gait, J., 221 Gassendi, Pierre, 50, 53 Gay, John, 196, 348 Geulincx, Arnold, 130 Gibbon, E., 186, 229 Gilbert, W., 12 f., 26, 328 Gildon, Charles, 144 Glanvill, Joseph, 100-102, 335 Glisson, Francis, 337 Godwin, W.. 231 f. Goldsmith, 6., 198 Graham, W., 367 Grant, Sir A., 1 1 n. Green, T. H., 281, 288-292, 296, 367 Grosseteste, Robert, i Grote, George, 231, 250, 261, 364 Grote, John, 264 f., 365 Grotius, H., 36, 45 f., 72 Gurney, Edmund, 371
Hakewill, G., 42, 330
Haldane, Lord, 372
Hales, Alexander of, i, 5
Halevy, E., 227 n.
Hall, Joseph, 44, 328
Hamilton, Sir W., 239-249. 253, 256,
269, 284, 293, 361 Hampton, B., 346 Harper, T. N., 370 Harrington, James, 69-72, 334 Harris, James, 350 Harrison, F., 263 Hartley, David, 195-7, 199, 238, 262,
35
Harvey, W., 13, 31, 34 Heath, D. D., 20 n. Hegel, G. F. W., 239, 243, 246, 252,
284, 286-90, 293, 295, 298 f. Helvetius, C. A., 219 f., 229, 242, 299 Herbert, A. E. W. M., 372 Herbert, George, 35 Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 35-43, 48,
H4> 3> 329
Herbert, T. M., 370
Herschel, Sir J., 253 f., 358
Hinton, James, 366
Hobbes, T., 34, 46, 47-74, 77, 79 f., 89, 102, 104, no, n8n., 122 f., 160, 162 f., 172, 186, 211, 253, 263, 269, 298, 300, 3io;Decive, 53, 59; De corpore, 54, 59; De corf ore politico, 51; De homine, 54; Ele ments of Law, 51, 59, 63; Human Nature, 51; Leviathan, 53-69; Of Liberty and Necessity, 5 5 ; Philo sophical Rudiments, 53, 59; Ques tions concerning Liberty, 55; Short Tract on First Principles, 50
Hobhouse, L. T., 373
Hodgson, S. H., 279, 282 f., 365
Hoffding, H., 2 n.
Hooker, R., 14, 65, 100, n^n.
Hume, David, 34, 44, 57 f., 104,
113 f., I2O, 129, 139, 142, l66-l86,
188, 195-7, 199, 203-7, 211, 219,
221, 229, 231, 233, 238, 242, 254-6,
284, 288 f., 294, 299 f., 349; Dialogues concerning Natural Re ligion, 170, 181-3; Enquiry con cerning Human Understanding, 169, 175 f., i8of.; Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 169, 180 f. ; Essays and Treatises, 1 69 f . ; Essays Moral and Political, 168; Four Dissertations, 1 69 f . ; Natural His tory of Religion, 154, 168-170, 181 f.; Of Miracles, 181 f.; Political Discourses, 169, 183 f. ; Treatise of Human Nature, 139, 167-181, 195
Hunt, J., 151 n.
Hutcheson, Francis, 161-3, 188, 219, 224, 346
Huxley, T. H., 275-6, 364
Jackson, John, 348 James I, 10, i6f., 35 Jevons, W. S., 261, 366 Jones, Sir H., 373 Jonson, Ben, 48
Kames, Lord, 350
Kant, I., 34, 37, 110, 182, 203, 242 f.,
246 f., 279, 283 f., 286-8, 290,
295, 299 Keill, John, 341
378
Kepler, 13, 31
King, W., 129, 196, 343
INDEX
Lamb, C., 160
Lansdowne, Marquis of, 214
Lardner, N., 200
Lasswitz, K., 13 n.
Laud, W., 75
Laurie, S. S., 294 f., 365
Law, Edmund, 196, 348
Law, W.. 163, 346
Lawson, G., 336
Leclerc, Jean, 107
Lee, Henry, 129, 343
Legrand, Antoine, 102, 336
Leibniz, G. W.v., 34, 129, 146, 148, 156,
242, 296, 299 Leicester Earl of, 8 Leslie, Charles, 144 f., 341 Lever, Ralph, 14, 323 Lewes, G. H., 273-5, 3^ Limborch, Philip van, 107 Locke, J., 37, 40, 72 f., 104-132,
W 6 -^* H3> HSf-j I 49 f - ) i55 f - 158 n., 159 f., 171 f., 174, 197, 199,
201, 204 f., 211, 221, 242, 253 f., 284, 293, 299-301, 338; Conduct of the Understanding, 109, 127; E pis- tola de Tolerantia, 107 f., 124-6; Essay concerning Human Under standing, 104, 106-121, 136, 139, 146; Letters to the Bishop of Worcester, 108; Reasonableness of Christianity, 109, i26f., 145 f-; Some Considerations of Interest and Money, 109, 123 f. ; Some Thoughts concerning Education, 109, 127; Two Treatises of Government, 106, 121-3
Lowde, James, 341
Lowndes, W., 124
Lucy, W., 336
Lully, R., 42
Macaulay, Lord, 18, 237 M c Cosh, James, 362 Machiavelli, N., 32 Mackenzie, J. S., 372 Mackintosh, Sir J., 208, 237, 356 M c Taggart, J. M C T. E., 373 Maine, Sir H. J. S., 278, 364 Malebranche, N., 109, 130 f., 136, 143
Mallet, B., 152
Malthus, T. R., 231-5, 356
Mandeville, B., 162, 345
Mansel, H. L., 248 f., 269, 362
Mansfield, Lord, 212
Marcus Aurelius, isgf.
Martin, J., 12
Martineau, H., 263, 362
Martineau, J. ; 265-7, 359
Masham, Lady, 107
Masham, Sir Francis, 107
Masson, D., 239 n.
Maurice, F. D., 265, 366
Mayne, Zachary, 129, 347
Melville, A., 1 1
Melville, J., n n.
Menger, A., 236 n.
Mersenne, Marin, 50-52
Merz, J. T., 301 n.
Middleton, C., 153
Mill, James, 195, 209, 21 5 f., 235-8,
240, 249, 262, 358 Mill, J. S., 216, 220, 228, 238-40, 242,
248-64, 277-80, 288, 299 f., 358 Milner, John, 343 Milton, John, 34, 72, 78, 125, 337 Mirabeau, Comte de, 214 Molyneux, William, 109, 119, 137, 340 Monboddo, Lord, 353 Montesquieu, E. L. de S., 183 More, Henry, 74-6, 78-89, 93, 95, 97,
99 f., 130, 211, 300, 332 More, Sir Thomas, 43, 69 f., 323 Morell, J. D., 361 Morgan, Thomas, 144, 152, 347 Moschus, 90 Moses, 67, 90 Muirhead, J. H., 373 Miiller, F. Max, 369 Mullinger, J. B., 11 ., 12 n.
Napier, John, 31
Napier, M., 237
Nettleship, R. L., 373
Newcastle, Marquis of, 51 f.
Newman, J. H., 265 f., 361
Newton, Sir Isaac, 109, 137, 153,
155 f - 5 T 95> 2 99 Nietzsche, F. W., 300 Nieuwentyt, 201 Norris, John, 109, 129-131, 143, 300,
338
INDEX
379
Ockham, William of, i, 5, 7 Orme, W., I24. Oswald, James, 203, 352 Owen, John, 124 f.
Paley, W., 197, 200-2, 213, 224,
231 f-, 355 Paracelsus, 13 Parker, Samuel, 102, 336 Patrick, Simon, 75, 335 Pattison, Mark, 134 Paulet, Sir Amyas, 16 Perkins, W., 44, 324 Perronet, V., 129, 348 Picton, J. A., 367 Pierce, Thomas, 335 Piscator of Strasbourg, 1 1 Pitt, W., 232 Plato, 74-79, 90, 97 f., 131, 136,
159 f., 228, 261 Plotinus, 76, 78, 93, 97 f. Pope, A., 1 8, 152 Popple, William, 108 Pordage, 102, 334 Porter, Noah, 12971. Price, Richard, 198-200, 229, 351 Priestley, Joseph, 162 ., 199 f., 203,
_22of., 229, 262, 352 Pringle Pattison, A. S., 371 Proast, Jonas, 340 Proclus, 97 f. Pythagoras. 90
Quesnay, Francois, 187
Rae, J., i86n.
Ramus, Peter, iof., 34, 42
Rand, B., 13471.
Rashdall, H., 372
Rawley, W., 16, 23
Ray, John, 200, 340
Read, Carveth, 370
Reid, Thomas, 200, 203-8, 241, 243-5,
279>. 2 97 3, 35 Reuchlin, J., 10 Reynolds, Sir J., 203 Ricardo, D., 185, 234-6, 259, 357 Ritchie, D. G., 371 Robertson, G. Croom, 56 ., 262 f., 372 Robertson, W., 170, 208 Robynson, Ralph, 69 Romanes, G. J., 370
Romilly, Sir S., 214
Ross, A. 333
Rousseau, J. J., 169, 183, 229, 232
Rust, George, 75, 337
St Paul, 3
Salisbury, Earl of, 16
Salisbury, John of, i
Sanderson, John, 8 f., 324
Sanderson, R., 44, 329
Schelling, F. W., 243, 246, 252
Schiller, F. C. S., 373
Scott, R. F., 9 n.
Selden, John, 45 f., 328
Sergeant, John, 127-9, 342
Seth, James, 373
Shaftesbury, first Earl of, 105 f.
Shaftesbury, third Earl of, 106, 144,
152, 159-161, 163 f., 188, 300, 345 Sherlock, W., 129, 150, 343 Sidgwick, H., 223 ., 279-282, 367 Sidney, Sir Philip, 10 Simcox, Edith, 369 Smith, Adam, 123, 166, 170, 184,
186-194, 204, 208, 235, 259 f.,
351; Moral Sentiments^ 186-9;
Wealth of Nations, 187-194 Smith, John, 75, 78, 96-99, 335 Smith, W. H., 359 Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 146 Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prussia,
146
Spalding, W., 364 Spedding, J., 18, 31 n. Spencer, Herbert, 267-272, 274, 277,
281, 288, 299 f., 360 Spinoza, B., 1561., 296, 298 Stanley, T., 46, 334 Stephen, Sir J. F., 259, 367 Stephen, Sir L., 276-7, 369 Steuart, Sir James, 189 f., 352 Stewart, Dugald, 161, 187 ., 207-9,
2.53, 356
Stillingfleet, Edward, 108 f., 127, 342 Stirling, J. H., 241, 286-8, 365 Stout, G. F., 373 Strabo, 90 Stubbe, Henry, 335 Sully, James, 368
Taylor, Isaac, 358
Taylor, Jeremy, 44 f., 124, 335
380 INDEX
Taylor, Thomas, 343
Taylor, T. (1758-1835), 355
Temple, William, 9-12, 323
Tenison, T., 74, 336
Tennyson, Lord, 251
Thomson, W., 244, 360
Thornton, W. T., 260, 361
Tillotson, J., 145, 150
Tindal, Matthew, 144, 150 f., 153,
163, 341 Toland, John, 108, 136, 145-9, X 53>
155, 34i
Tonnies, F., 50 M., 56 . Townsend, J., 233 Tracy, A. Destutt, Comte de. 210,
242
Tucker, A., 196!., 231, 352 Tulloch, J., 97, 100 n., 363 Turgot, A. R. J., 187 Tyrrell, J., 337
Vane, Sir Walter, 106 Veitch, John, 366 Venn, John, 366 Voltaire, 152
Wallace, A. R., 234, 277
Wallace, R., 233
Wallace, W., 289 f., 368
Wallis, John, 55!., 99, 333
Walpole, A., 36
Walpole, Sir R., 135
Warburton, W., i54f., 348
Ward, James, 295 f., 372
Ward, Seth, 551., 334
Ward, W. G., 266, 372
Watt, R., 129 n.
Whately, R., 253, 358
Whewell, W., 253 f., 360
Whichcote, B., 75-77, 99, 160, 342
Whiston, W., 153, 342
Whitaker, W., 9
White, Thomas, 101, 333
Whitehall, J., 337
Whitgift, J., 9
Wilkins, J., 75, 336
Wilson, Thomas, 14, 323
Wollaston, W., 151, 158, 346
Woolston, Thomas, 144, 344
Wordsworth, W., 251
Worthington, J., 75, 334
Wren, Matthew, 334
Wyclif, John, 7
Wynne, John, 109, 342
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