[1] Mommsen, however (Corpus Inscrip. Latin. x., Berlin, 1883, p.
170), rightly throws considerable doubt on the existence of
Parthenope and even of Palaeopolis, of which there is some mention in
Roman annals; under both he is inclined to trace Cumae itself.
CUMANA, a city and port of Venezuela, capital of the state of Bermudez,
situated on the Manzanares river about 1 m. above its mouth, 52 ft.
above sea-level and 180 m. E. of Caracas. It is the oldest existing
European settlement on the South American continent, having been founded
by Diego Castellon in 1523 under the name of Nueva Toledo. The city was
almost totally destroyed by an earthquake in 1766, and again in 1797.
Slight shocks are very frequent, some of them severe enough to cause
considerable damage to the buildings. The mean annual temperature is 83
deg. F. and the climate is enervating. In colonial times the city was
rich and prosperous and enjoyed a lucrative trade with the mother
country, its population at that time being estimated at 30,000, but much
of its prosperity has disappeared and its population is now estimated at
10,000. Excellent fruits are produced in its vicinity, and its exports
include cacao, coffee, sugar, hides, tobacco and sundry products in
small quantities. A tramway connects the city with its port at the mouth
of the Manzanares.
CUMBERLAND, DUKES AND EARLS OF. The earldom of Cumberland was held by
the family of Clifford (q.v.) from 1525 to 1643, when it became extinct
by the death of Henry, the 5th earl. The 1st earl of Cumberland was
Henry, 11th Lord Clifford (1493-1542), a son of Henry, 10th Lord
Clifford (c. 1454-1523). Created an earl by Henry VIII. in 1525, Henry
remained loyal during the great rising in the north of England in 1536,
and died on the 22nd of April 1542. His son and successor, Henry, the
2nd earl (c. 1517-1570), married Eleanor (d. 1547), a daughter of
Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, and Mary, daughter of King Henry VII.;
he had the tastes of a scholar rather than a soldier, and died early in
1570. By his first wife, Eleanor, he left an only daughter Margaret
(1540-1596), who married Henry Stanley, 4th earl of Derby, and who in
1557 was regarded by many as the rightful heiress to the English throne.
By his second wife he left two sons and a daughter; his elder son George
succeeding to the earldom in 1570, and his younger son Francis
succeeding his brother in 1605. George, 3rd earl of Cumberland
(1558-1605), was born on the 8th of August 1558, and married Margaret
(c. 1560-1616), daughter of his guardian, Francis, 2nd earl of Bedford.
Although interested in mathematics and geography he passed his early
years in dissipation and extravagance; then he took to the sea,
commanded the "Bonaventure" against the Spanish Armada, and from this
time until his death on the 30th of October 1605 was mainly engaged in
fitting out and leading plundering expeditions, some of which,
especially the one undertaken in 1589, gained a large amount of booty.
The earl left no sons, and his barony was claimed by his only daughter
Anne (1590-1676), the wife successively of Richard Sackville, 3rd earl
of Dorset, and of Philip Herbert, 4th earl of Pembroke and Montgomery;
while his earldom was inherited by his brother Francis (1559-1641). A
long law-suit between the new earl and the countess Anne over the
possession of the family estates was settled in 1617. The 5th earl was
Francis's only son Henry (1591-1643), who was born on the 28th of
February 1591, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He was a
supporter of Charles I. during his two short wars with the Scots, and
also during the Civil War until his death on the 11th of December 1643.
He left no sons; his earldom became extinct; his new barony of Clifford,
created in 1628, passed to his daughter Elizabeth (1618-1691), wife of
Richard Boyle, earl of Cork and Burlington; and the Cumberland estates
to his cousin Anne, countess of Dorset and Pembroke.
In 1644 the English title of duke of Cumberland was created in favour of
Rupert, son of Frederick V., elector palatine of the Rhine, and nephew
of Charles I. Having lapsed on Rupert's death without legitimate issue
in 1682, it was created again in 1689 to give an English title to
George, prince of Denmark, who had married the lady who afterwards
became Queen Anne. It again became extinct when George died in 1708, but
was revived in 1726 in favour of William Augustus, third son of George
II. As this duke was never married the title lapsed on his death in
1765, but was revived in the following year in favour of Henry Frederick
(1745-1790), son of Frederick, prince of Wales, and brother of George
III. Having again become extinct on Henry Frederick's death, the title
of duke of Cumberland was created for the fifth time in favour of Ernest
Augustus, who was made duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in 1799. In
1837 Ernest (q.v.) became king of Hanover, and on his death in 1851 the
title descended with the kingdom of Hanover to his son King George V.
(q.v.), and on George's death in 1878 to his grandson Ernest Augustus
(b. 1845). In 1866 Hanover was annexed by Prussia, but King George died
without renouncing his rights. His son Ernest, while maintaining his
claim to the kingdom of Hanover, is generally known by his title of duke
of Cumberland.
CUMBERLAND, RICHARD (1632-1718), English philosopher and bishop of
Peterborough, the son of a citizen of London, was born in the parish of
St Ann, near Aldersgate. He was educated in St Paul's school, and at
Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. He took
the degree of B.A. in 1653; and, having proceeded M.A. in 1656, was next
year incorporated to the same degree in the university of Oxford. For
some time he studied medicine; and although he did not adhere to this
profession, he retained his knowledge of anatomy and medicine. He took
the degree of B.D. in 1663 and that of D.D. in 1680. Among his
contemporaries and intimate friends were Dr Hezekiah Burton, Sir Samuel
Morland, who was distinguished as a mathematician, Sir Orlando
Bridgeman, who became keeper of the great seal, and Samuel Pepys. To
this academical connexion he appears to have been in a great measure
indebted for his advancement in the Church. When Bridgeman was appointed
lord keeper, he nominated Cumberland and Burton as his chaplains, nor
did he afterwards neglect the interest of either. Cumberland's first
preferment, bestowed upon him in 1658 by Sir John Norwich, was the
rectory of Brampton in Northamptonshire. In 1661 he was appointed one of
the twelve preachers of the university. The lord keeper, who obtained
his office in 1667, invited him to London, and soon afterwards bestowed
upon him the rectory of Allhallows at Stamford, where he acquired new
credit by the fidelity with which he discharged his duties. In addition
to his ordinary work he undertook the weekly lecture. This labour he
constantly performed, and in the meantime found leisure to prosecute his
scientific and philological studies.
At the age of forty he published his earliest work, entitled _De legibus
naturae disquisitio philosophica, in qua earum forma, summa capita,
ordo, promulgatio, el obligatio e rerum natura investigantur; quin etiam
elementa philosophiae Hobbianae, cum moralis tum civilis, considerantur
et refutantur_ (London, 1672). It is dedicated to Sir Orlando Bridgeman,
and is prefaced by an "Alloquium ad Lectorem," contributed by Dr Burton.
It appeared during the same year as Pufendorf's _De jure naturae et
gentium_, and was highly commended in a subsequent publication by
Pufendorf, whose approbation must have had the effect of making it known
on the continent. Having thus established a solid reputation, Cumberland
next prepared a work on a very different subject--_An Essay towards the
Recovery of the Jewish Measures and Weights, comprehending their Monies;
by help of ancient standards, compared with ours of England: useful also
to state many of those of the Greeks and Romans, and the Eastern
Nations_ (London, 1686). This work, dedicated to Pepys, obtained a
copious notice from Leclerc, and was translated into French.
About this period he was depressed by apprehensions respecting the
growth of Popery; but his fears were dispelled by the Revolution, which
brought along with it another material change in his circumstances. One
day in 1691 he went, according to his custom on a post-day, to read the
newspaper at a coffee-house in Stamford, and there, to his surprise, he
read that the king had nominated him to the bishopric of Peterborough.
The bishop elect was scarcely known at court, and he had resorted to
none of the usual methods of advancing his temporal interest.
"Being then sixty years old," says his great-grandson, "he was with
difficulty persuaded to accept the offer, when it came to him from
authority. The persuasion of his friends, particularly Sir Orlando
Bridgeman, at length overcame his repugnance; and to that see, though
very moderately endowed, he for ever after devoted himself, and
resisted every offer of translation, though repeatedly made and
earnestly recommended. To such of his friends as pressed an exchange
upon him he was accustomed to reply, that Peterborough was his first
espoused, and should be his only one."
He discharged his new duties with energy and kept up his episcopal
visitations till his eightieth year. His charges to the clergy are
described as plain and unambitious, the earnest breathings of a pious
mind. When Dr Wilkins (David Wilke) published the New Testament in
Coptic he presented a copy to the bishop, who began to study the
language at the age of eighty-three. "At this age," says his chaplain,
"he mastered the language, and went through great part of this version,
and would often give me excellent hints and remarks, as he proceeded in
reading of it." He died in 1718, in the eighty-seventh year of his age;
he was found sitting in his library, in the attitude of one asleep, and
with a book in his hand.[1] His great-grandson was Richard Cumberland,
the dramatist.
Bishop Cumberland was distinguished by his gentleness and humility. He
could not be roused to anger, and spent his days in unbroken serenity.
The basis of his ethical theory is Benevolence, and is the natural
outcome of his temperament. He was a man of a sound understanding,
improved by extensive learning, and left behind him several monuments of
his talents and industry. His favourite motto was that a man had better
"wear out than rust out."
The philosophy of Cumberland is expounded in the treatise _De legibus
naturae_. The merits of the work are almost confined to its speculative
theories; its style is destitute of strength and grace, and its
reasoning is diffuse and unmethodical. Its main design is to combat the
principles which Hobbes had promulgated as to the constitution of man,
the nature of morality, and the origin of society, and to prove that
self-advantage is not the chief end of man, that force is not the source
of personal obligation to moral conduct nor the foundation of social
rights, and that the state of nature is not a state of war. The views of
Hobbes seem to Cumberland utterly subversive of religion, morality and
civil society, and he endeavours, as a rule, to establish directly
antagonistic propositions. He refrains, however, from denunciation, and
is a fair opponent up to the measure of his insight.
Laws of nature are defined by him as "immutably true propositions
regulative of voluntary actions as to the choice of good and the
avoidance of evil, and which carry with them an obligation to outward
acts of obedience, even apart from civil laws and from any
considerations of compacts constituting government." This definition, he
says, will be admitted by all parties. Some deny that such laws exist,
but they will grant that this is what ought to be understood by them.
There is thus common ground for the two opposing schools of moralists to
join issue. The question between them is, Do such laws exist or do they
not? In reasoning thus Cumberland obviously forgot what the position
maintained by his principal antagonist really was. Hobbes must have
refused to accept the definition proposed. He did not deny that there
were laws of nature, laws antecedent to government, laws even in a sense
eternal and immutable. The virtues as means to happiness seemed to him
to be such laws. They precede civil constitution, which merely perfects
the obligation to practise them. He expressly denied, however, that
"they carry with them an obligation to outward acts of obedience, even
apart from civil laws and from any consideration of compacts
constituting governments." And many besides Hobbes must have felt
dissatisfied with the definition. It is ambiguous and obscure. In what
sense is a law of nature a "proposition"? Is it as the expression of a
constant relation among facts, or is it as the expression of a divine
commandment? A proposition is never in itself an ultimate fact although
it may be the statement of such a fact. And in what sense is a law of
nature an "immutably true" proposition? Is it so because men always and
everywhere accept and act on it, or merely because they always and
everywhere ought to accept and act on it? The definition, in fact,
explains nothing.
The existence of such laws may, according to Cumberland, be established
in two ways. The inquirer may start either from effects or from causes.
The former method had been taken by Grotius, Robert Sharrock (1630-1684)
and John Selden. They had sought to prove that there were universal
truths, entitled to be called laws of nature, from the concurrence of
the testimonies of many men, peoples and ages, and through generalizing
the operations of certain active principles. Cumberland admits this
method to be valid, but he prefers the other, that from causes to
effects, as showing more convincingly that the laws of nature carry with
them a divine obligation. It shows not only that these laws are
universal, but that they were intended as such; that man has been
constituted as he is in order that they might be. In the prosecution of
this method he expressly declines to have recourse to what he calls "the
short and easy expedient of the Platonists," the assumption of innate
ideas of the laws of nature. He thinks it ill-advised to build the
doctrines of natural religion and morality on a hypothesis which many
philosophers, both Gentile and Christian, had rejected, and which could
not be proved against Epicureans, the principal impugners of the
existence of laws of nature. He cannot assume, he says, that such ideas
existed from eternity in the divine mind, but must start from the data
of sense and experience, and thence by search into the nature of things
discover their laws. It is only through nature that we can rise to
nature's God. His attributes are not to be known by direct intuition.
He, therefore, held that the ground taken up by the Cambridge Platonists
could not be maintained against Hobbes. His sympathies, however, were
all on their side, and he would do nothing to diminish their chances of
success. He would not even oppose the doctrine of innate ideas, because
it looked with a friendly eye upon piety and morality. He granted that
it might, perhaps, be the case that ideas were _both_ born with us and
afterwards impressed upon us from without.
Cumberland's ethical theory (see ETHICS) is summed up in his principle
of universal Benevolence, the one source of moral good. "No action can
be morally good which does not in its own nature contribute somewhat to
the happiness of men." The theory is important in comparison (1) with
that of Hobbes, and (2) with modern utilitarianism.
1. Cumberland's Benevolence is, deliberately, the precise antithesis to
the Egoism of Hobbes. To this fact it owes its existence and also its
extravagance. Feeling that the most forcible method of attacking Hobbes
was to assert the opposite in the same form, he maintained that the
whole-hearted pursuit of the good of all contributes to the good of each
and brings personal happiness; that the opposite process involves misery
to individuals including the self. If, then, Hobbes went to the one
extreme of postulating selfishness as the sole motive of human action,
Cumberland was equally extravagant as regards Benevolence. The testimony
of history shows, _prima facie_ at least, that both motives have
operated throughout, and just as self-interest has been increasingly
modified by conscious benevolence, so benevolence alone does not explain
all personal virtue nor love to God. But it is essential to notice that
Cumberland never appealed to the evidence of history, although he
believed that the law of universal benevolence had been accepted by all
nations and generations; and he carefully abstains from arguments
founded on revelation, feeling that it was indispensable to establish
the principles of moral right on nature as a basis. His method was the
deduction of the propriety of certain actions from the consideration of
the character and position of rational agents in the universe. He argues
that all that we see in nature is framed so as to avoid and reject what
is dangerous to the integrity of its constitution; that the human race
would be an anomaly in the world had it not for end its conservation in
its best estate; that benevolence of all to all is what in a rational
view of the creation is alone accordant with its general plan; that
various peculiarities of man's body indicate that he has been made to
co-operate with his fellow men and to maintain society; and that certain
faculties of his mind show the common good to be more essentially
connected with his perfection than any pursuit of private advantage. The
whole course of his reasoning proceeds on, and is pervaded by, the
principle of final causes.
2. To the question, What is the foundation of rectitude?, he replies,
the greatest good of the universe of rational beings. He may be regarded
as the founder of English utilitarianism, but his utilitarianism is
distinct from what is known as the selfish system; it goes to the
contrary extreme, by almost absorbing individual in universal good. Nor
does it look merely to the lower pleasures, the pleasures of sense, for
the constituents of good, but rises above them to include especially
what tends to perfect, strengthen and expand our true nature. Existence
and the extension of our powers of body and mind are held to be good for
their own sakes without respect to enjoyment. Cumberland's views on this
point were long abandoned by utilitarians as destroying the homogeneity
and self-consistency of their theory; but J. S. Mill and some recent
writers have reproduced them as necessary to its defence against charges
not less serious than even inconsistency.
The answer which Cumberland gives to the question, Whence comes our
obligation to observe the laws of nature?, is that happiness flows from
obedience, and misery from disobedience to them, not as the mere results
of a blind necessity, but as the expressions of the divine will. Reward
and punishment, supplemented by future retribution, are, in his view,
the sanctions of the laws of nature, the sources of our obligation to
obey them. To the other great ethical question, How are moral
distinctions apprehended?, he replies that it is by means of right
reason. But by right reason he means merely the power of rising to
general laws of nature from particular facts of experience. It is no
peculiar faculty or distinctive function of mind; it involves no
original element of cognition; it begins with sense and experience; it
is gradually generated and wholly derivative. This doctrine lies only in
germ in Cumberland, but will be found in full flower in Hartley,
Mackintosh and later associationists.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Editions of the _De legibus naturae_ (Lubeck, 1683 and
1694); English versions by John Maxwell, prebendary of Connor, _A
Treatise of the Laws of Nature_ (London, 1727), and John Towers
(Dublin, 1750); French translation by Jean Barbeyrac (Amsterdam,
1744); James Tyrrell (1642-1718), grandson of Archbishop Ussher,
published an abridgment of Cumberland's views in _A Brief Disquisition
of the Laws of Nature according to the Principles laid down in the
Rev. Dr Cumberland's Latin Treatise_ (London, 1692; ed. 1701). For
biographical details see Squier Payne, _Account of the Life and
Writings of R. Cumberland_ (London, 1720); Cumberland's _Memoirs_
(1807), i. 3-6; Pepys's _Diary_. For his philosophy, see E. Albee,
_Philosophical Review_, iv. 3 (1895), pp. 264 and 371; F. E.
Spaulding, _R. Cumberland als Begrunder der englischen Ethik_
(Leipzig, 1894); and text-books on ethics.