LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF ETHICS IN THE
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
Hartley, Holbach. Devotion as Enlightened Egoism
MODERN times find world- and life-affirmation so self-evident that
they feel no need to give them a sure foundation, and to deepen them,
by thought about the world and life. Pessimism they brush aside as
reactionary folly, without suspecting how deep down into thought it
has sent its roots.
They do, however, see the necessity of establishing the nature of the
ethical. How do they proceed to do this?
That the ethical means action directed to promoting the common good is
their firm belief from the first, and they are safe from the fate of
ancient thought, viz. sticking fast in the mud of resignation while
trying to give the ethical a proper foundation. Instead of that they
have to answer the question how the unegoistic makes it appearance
beside the egoistic, and in what inner relation they stand to each
other.
A performance now begins like that which went on after the appearance
of Socrates, only the task is proposed this time not by an individual
but by the spirit of the time. Another attempt is made to consider the
ethical problem in isolation, as if it consisted in reflexions on the
relation of the individual to himself and to society, these having no
need to settle their position with regard to ultimate questions of the
meaning of the world and of life. The ethical problem seems, too, to
be a much easier one than it was then, because world-affirmation and
activity directed towards the general welfare no longer have to be
proved, but appear among the presuppositions which are taken for
granted.
[pg 072]
There are three ways in which the relations between the egoistic and
the altruistic can be made clear. Either one assumes that the egoistic
in the thought of the individual is automatically converted into the
altruistic by consistent meditation. Or one supposes the altruistic to
have its beginning in the thought of society and thence to pass over
into the convictions of the individual. Or one retires to the position
that egoism and altruism are both among the original endowments of
human nature. All three explanations are attempted, each with most
varied arguments. They are not always carried to a conclusion without
intermixture, and with many thinkers there is interplay of one with
another.
The attempt to deduce devotion to the common welfare from egoism by
psychological considerations is made in the most systematic way by
David Hartley (1705-1757)_(_12_)_ and Dietrich von Holbach
(1723-1789)._(_13_)_
Hartley, a theologian who betook himself to the practice of medicine,
claims to see in altruism a purposive ennoblement of original
selfishness which comes into play under the influence of rational
thought. The much-reviled Holbach ascribes its origin to the fact that
the individual, if he rightly understands his own interest, will
always form his conception of it in connection with the interest of
society, and therefore direct his activities to the latter as well.
Both attempt to carry up their building, so far as it goes, with
materialistic considerations and then to roof it with idealist ones.
But neither with the coarser nor with the finer considerations nor
with both together can the psychological derivation of altruism from
egoism produce any convincing result.
The coarser ones do not carry us very far. It is acknowledged, [pg
073] of course, that the prosperity of society depends upon the moral
disposition of its members and that the better the moral condition of
society the better is the individual’s expectation of prosperity. But
it does not follow that the individual becomes more moral, the better
he understands his own interests. The mutual relation between him and
society is not of such a character that he derives benefit from the
latter just in proportion as he himself by his moral conduct helps to
establish its prosperity. If the majority of its members are with
short-sighted egoism intent only on their own good, then the man who
acts with wider outlook makes sacrifices from which there is no
prospect of gain for himself, even if the best happens and they are
not lost without benefiting the community. If, on the other hand,
through the moral conduct of the majority of its members the condition
of society is favourable, the individual profits by it even if he
fails to behave towards it as morality demands. By conduct which
disregards both past and future, he will carve for himself an unduly
big share of personal prosperity out of the prosperity of the
community, milking the cow which the rest feed. The influence of the
individual on the prosperity of the community and the reaction of
social prosperity on that of the individual do not stand in a simple
relation to each other which acts equally in both directions. The
consideration, therefore, that egoism, rightly understood, will oblige
the individual to resolve on activity which is directed to promoting
the common good, is a ship which sails well, but leaks.
The psychological derivation of altruism from egoism must, then, in
some way or other, make an appeal to the self-sacrifice of the
individual. This it does by inducing him to consider that in happiness
there is a spiritual element as well as a material. Man needs (it is
said) not only external prosperity, but to be respected by others and
to be satisfied with himself, and he can have this double experience
only when he concerns himself about the [pg 074] prosperity of others.
Even Holbach, who tries to be inexorably matter-of-fact, lets these
considerations speak loudly.
The attempt is made, therefore, above the prolonged bass note of the
conception of happiness derived from ordinary egoism, to modulate into
the spiritualized conception of it.
The path which this attempt has to follow runs parallel to that which
led the successors of Socrates into the abyss of the paradoxical. In
order to get from egoism into altruism and so think out to a
conclusion the ethic of the rationally-pleasurable, the Epicureans
wished to use the same scale of values for spiritual and material
pleasure alike. The only result was that their ethic transformed
itself into resignation. Now again, in modern times, and again for the
sake of ethics, spiritual happiness is to be regarded as happiness in
the same way as material happiness is, and here again the result is a
paradox.
Material and spiritual happiness are not so related that the one can
find its continuation in the other. If the second is for the sake of
ethics called in with the first, it does not strengthen the first, but
paralyses it. The man who does earnestly try to guide himself by the
light of spiritual as well as material happiness, ends by finding that
the recognition accorded him by his fellow-men, which at first seemed
to him to make almost the whole of spiritual happiness, becomes more
and more meaningless. It is to him a miserable lump of solder which
drops down between material and spiritual happiness without being able
to fasten them together. More and more exclusively he experiences
spiritual happiness as the condition in which he is at one with
himself and therefore can justifiably accord himself a certain amount
of self-appreciation.
Spiritual happiness is sufficient unto itself. Either the man is led
to resolve on ethical conduct because he expects from it a moulding of
the outward circumstances of his being which will bring him profit and
pleasure; or he chooses it because he finds his happiness in obeying
his inner compulsion to ethical action. In the latter case he [pg 075]
has left far behind him all calculations about the interdependence of
his morality and his material happiness. The fact that he is a moral
man is in itself his happiness, even though it land him in the most
disadvantageous situations.
But if spiritual happiness can never be welded into union with
material, it is useless trouble to try to depict altruism as an
ennobling of egoism.
If the ordinary conception of pleasure, that it may be brought into
union with ethics, is submitted to a process of refining, it ends by
being refined away. In ancient ethics, in which the refining is done
under the influence of an ethical system which is definitely egoistic,
it transforms itself into the pleasure of being without pleasure, and
allows ethics to end in resignation. In modern ethics, in which the
pleasure to be refined is under the influence of altruism, it works
itself up into an irrational and immaterialistic enthusiasm. In both
cases there is the same paradoxical proceeding, only that in one case
it goes in the negative direction, in the other in the positive.
Whenever, then, thought wishes to conceive ethics as springing from
pleasure or happiness, it arrives at resignation or enthusiasm, at
spiritualised egoistic or at spiritualised expansive conduct.
There is no way in which natural pleasure can, in really deep
thinking, be brought into connexion with ethics.
Hobbes, Locke, Helvetius, Bentham
The explanation that altruism is a principle of action which the
individual takes over from society is to be found expressed in
characteristic ways by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679),_(_14_)_ John Locke
(1632-1704),_(_15_)_ Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)_(_16_)_ and Jeremy
Bentham (1748-1832)._(_17_)_
[pg 076]
Hobbes represents the State as commissioned and empowered by the
majority of the individual citizens to engage the whole body in action
for the common advantage. In this way alone, he asserts, is it
possible to realise the common good in which the egoism of individuals
finds the highest possible degree of prosperity. Left to themselves,
men would never be able to get free from their short-sighted egoism,
and would, therefore, miss prosperity. Their only possible course,
then, is to join in setting up an authority which will drive them into
altruism.
With external means only, however, organized society cannot engage the
individual in all the activities which are needed for the common good.
It must strive to ensure its power over him by means of spiritual
conviction as well. Locke takes this need into consideration.
According to him it is God and society together who force altruism
upon the individual by appealing at the same time to his egoism. These
two authorities have, that is to say (as our reason enables us to
recognize), so ordered the course of things that actions beneficial to
society are rewarded, and those injurious to it are punished. God has
at his disposal rewards and punishments of endless duration. Society
works in two different ways: through the power given to it by the
criminal law, and through the law of public opinion in which it uses
praise and blame as spiritual means of compulsion. Man being guided
both by pleasure and absence of it, he manages to accommodate himself
to those rules which defend the general good so effectually, and he
thereby becomes moral.
In spite of all their differences on single points, Hobbes and Locke
agree in having this external conception of ethics. The essential
point of distinction between them is [pg 077] that with Hobbes society
alone plies the whip, while with Locke God and society handle it
together.
Helvetius, who belonged to a family which had migrated from the
Palatinate into France, is more refined and more inward. In his life
as a farmer of taxes and a property-owner, he always tried, along with
his noble-minded wife, to act with kindness and justice as he explains
them in his book. It is clear to him that ethics means somehow or
other enthusiastic action, that is, action which springs out of
feeling._(_18_)_ Society cannot, therefore, force these virtues into
the individual; it can only educate him into them, and it does in fact
apply all the means and devices which are at its disposal to influence
his egoism in their direction. Above all it makes good use of his
striving to win recognition and fame. The praise which it pours on
that which is “good” in its own sense of the word is for the mass of
men the strongest inducement to take up work for its interests.
Helvetius would perhaps have offered a less external conception of how
ethical action is realized, if he had not, with the best intentions,
taken so much trouble to depict morality as something which can be
taught.
In the view that morality is enthusiastic action to which the
individual is roused by society, Bentham agrees entirely with
Helvetius, but he carries it through in a much deeper way. Out of the
_Romanza_ he makes a hymn.
The part played by society in bringing morality into existence cannot,
according to Bentham, be emphasized too strongly. In vehement words he
opposes the view that the human conscience can decide between good and
evil. Nothing can be left to subjective feeling. Man is truly moral
only when he receives his ethics at the hand of society and works them
out with ardour.
But if society is to decide about ethics, it must first bring order
into its own ethical views, and therefore, says Bentham, must learn to
combine clear and definite notions [pg 078] with its presentation of
the general good. That done, it must make up its mind to apply this
principle with absolute consistency as a foundation for legislation
and the establishment of ethical standards, excluding all
considerations of a different character. A “moral arithmetic” should
be constructed which allows the calculating in correct utility values
of all decisions that have to be made.
Dealing in a dry, practical way with all cases of penal legislation,
and of establishment of standards by the moral law, Bentham then shows
that the principle of the greatest good of the greatest number is
applicable in all of them, and guides us safely and accurately in
questions of good and evil.
“Moral philosophy, in its general meaning, is the theory underlying
the art of so directing the actions of men that there is produced the
greatest possible amount of happiness.”
It is legislation that decides what moral actions the community can
order to be performed, and if it is to exert an educative influence it
must be humane through and through.
“But there are many actions which, though useful to the community,
legislation may not command. There are even many injurious actions
which it may not forbid, although moral philosophy does so.
Legislation is, in a word, a circle with the same centre as moral
philosophy, but its circumference is smaller.”
When law ceases to be available, there is nothing that society can do
except be continually putting before the individual personally how
greatly he contributes to his own welfare by furthering that of
others. Bentham does not make it do this with educative guile as does
Helvetius. Society appeals to his feeling for truth. It throws itself
at his feet and entreats him for the sake of the general welfare to
listen to the voice of reason. Thus the dry way in which Bentham
writes about ethics has in it something peculiarly impressive, and
explains the powerful influence which this [pg 079] eccentric member
of the House which looks across the Park at Westminster has exercised
all over the world through the individuals who were inspired by him.
The most influential parts of his work are those in which he
intensifies the seriousness of men and sharpens their outlook by
leading them to reflect not only on the immediate but also on the more
distant consequences of anything done or left undone, and, further,
not only on the material consequences but on the spiritual ones. It
does one good to note the courage with which this fanatic for utility
ventures to represent material blessings as the foundation of
spiritual ones.
Bentham is one of the most powerful moralists who have ever appeared
in the world, but his mistakes are as great as his insight. The latter
is shown in this, that he conceives morality as a kind of enthusiasm.
His mistake is that he thinks he must guarantee the rightness of this
enthusiasm by making it nothing higher than a judgement of society
which is taken over by the individual.
This compels us to rank Bentham with Hobbes, Locke, and Helvetius,
although in other respects he stands high above them. He, like them,
makes morality arise outside the individual. He, like them, in order
to find his explanation of the altruistic, puts out of action the
ethical personality which is in man, and, to compensate for this,
raises society to an ethical personality that he may then by a
transmission of energy connect individuals with this central
power-station. The difference is only that with the other commonplace
moralists the individual is a marionette directed by society on
ethical principles, whereas in Bentham he carries out with deep
conviction the movements suggested to him.
Ethical thought falls from one paradox into another. If, as in
antiquity, it thinks out a system in which the activity that must be
directed to the common good is not sufficiently represented, it
arrives at ethics which are no longer ethics, and ends in resignation.
If it assumes and starts from such an activity directed to the common
good, [pg 080] it arrives at an ethic in which there is no ethical
personality. It is, strange to say, unable to mark out the middle
course and let an activity which is directed to the promotion of the
common good spring out of the ethical personality itself.
Altruism as a natural quality. Hume, Adam Smith
The explanations of altruism as an ennobling of egoism which has a
spontaneous origin through the activity of reason, or which is brought
into existence through the influence of society, are obviously
unsatisfying both psychologically and ethically. Utilitarianism must
therefore necessarily come to admit that altruism is somehow or other
given independently in human nature side by side with egoism. It is
true that it always appears there as the backward twin-brother who can
be reared only with the most careful nursing, and therefore the
upholders of the third alternative given above appeal to the
considerations used for the first two. They continually allow the
capacity for altruistic feeling to be exposed to the influence of
considerations which seem calculated to let egoism discharge its
waters into altruism. The two first views are taken into service as
wet-nurses for the third. David Hume (1711-1776)_(_19_)_ and Adam
Smith (1723-1790)_(_20_)_ must be named here.
Hume agrees with the other utilitarians in allowing that the principle
of seeking to promote the common good must be accepted as the dominant
principle of morality. Whether actions are good or bad is decided
solely by whether they are directed towards the production of general
happiness [pg 081] or not. There is nothing which is in itself ethical
or unethical.
To the idea that ethics can have as their object the self-perfecting
of the individual as little weight is given by Hume as by the other
utilitarians. Like them, he opposes asceticism and other life-denying
demands of Christian ethics, because he cannot discover in them
anything profitable for the general welfare.
But what makes men decide to work together for the common good?
Consistent utilitarians answer: Reflexion about what the common good
means. Of this one-sidedness Hume is not guilty, because he does not
find it to be in accord with psychological facts. It is not out of
high-minded reflexion, he asserts, but out of direct sympathy that the
emotions and actions of benevolence arise. The virtues which serve the
common good have their origin in feeling. We can resolve on acts of
love only because there is in us an elementary feeling for the
happiness of men, and a dislike of seeing them in misery. We become
moral through sympathy.
It would not have been a big step further to explain this sympathy as
a form of the egoistic need of happiness, more or less through the
assumption that in order to be really happy a man must see happiness
all round him. But Hume does not use such roads as that. He does not
aim at constructive thought but at stating facts, and it is enough for
him that direct sympathy with other men be proved to be a principle
inherent in human nature. We have to stop somewhere or other, he says
in one place, in our search for causes. In every science there are
certain general principles beyond which there is no more general
principle still for us to discover.
Among the elements which are effective in developing moral feeling,
Hume attributes great importance to the love of fame. This keeps us
considering ourselves in the light in which we wish to appear in the
eyes of others, for the effort to secure the respect of others is a
potent educator in virtue. On this point he thinks like Frederick the
Great, from whom comes the sentence: “The love of fame [pg 082] is
innate in noble souls; you have only to arouse it and urge it on, and
men who till then merely vegetated, will seem to you, when explained
by this happy instinct, to be changed into demi-gods.”_(_21_)_
Adam Smith wishes to trace out the idea of sympathy in all its
manifestations, and in doing so he discovers that our capacity for
sympathy covers more than participation in the weal or woe of others.
It brings us, he says, to a community of thought with those who are
doing something. We feel ourselves directly attracted or repelled by
the actions of others and the motives at the back of them. Our ethics
are the product of these sympathetic experiences. We come in time to
take care that an impartial third party can justify and sympathise
with the mainspring and the tendency of our actions. Innate sympathy
not only with the actions but also with the experience of others is
thus the beneficent regulator of the behaviour of men to one another.
This feeling God has implanted in human nature that it may keep men
faithful to work for the common good.
How far this somewhat artificial extension of the notion of sympathy
through the doctrine of the impartial third party really means a step
forward beyond Hume we may leave undiscussed.
In his famous work, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations_ (1776), Adam Smith founds this prosperity purely
upon the entirely free and intelligent activity of egoism. About the
part to be played by ethics in economic questions he says nothing.
Economic development he leaves to be determined by its own internal
laws, and is confident that, if these are left a free course, the
result will be favourable. Adam Smith, the moral philosopher, is also,
because he is endowed with a rationalistic optimism, the founder of
the _laissez-faire_ form of economic [pg 083] doctrine, that of the
Manchester school, as it is called. He led industry and commerce in
their struggle for liberation from the petty and injurious tutelage of
authority. To-day, when economic life among all peoples is again
delivered over to the most short-sighted ideas of authorities who
never think in terms of economics, we can measure the greatness of his
performance.
Like Adam Smith, Bentham also is an adherent of the principle of
freedom in economic life. At the same time he has an ethical
conception of society, and demands from it that in a spirit of
progress it shall help to level out as far as possible the differences
between rich and poor.
What, then, do Hume and Adam Smith mean for ethics? They introduce
into the treatment of them the element of empirical psychology. They
believe that through the value they give to the significance of
sympathy they are giving a natural foundation to utilitarianism,
though in reality this psychology begins to correct it and to
undermine its position. There hovers before the mind of utilitarianism
the great conception that ethics are a result of reflexion. It thinks
to make men moral by keeping their attention fixed on the deep nature
of ethics and the necessity of the ends at which it aims.
This conception draws its life from the conviction that thought has
been given complete control over the will. The absolute rationality of
the ethical is the foundation on which it builds, and if it is not to
get quite bewildered about its own nature, it cannot allow itself to
recognize as presuppositions of the ethical, facts which are given it
by psychology and cannot be verified independently.
With Hume and Adam Smith, who trace ethics back to something given in
human nature which resembles instinct, there crops up the problem how
ethics can be something natural, and at the same time something
subordinate to thought, for that they are subordinate to thought has
to be assumed even by the champions of this psychological
utilitarianism. If they were nothing but the exercise of an instinct,
they would not be capable of widening and [pg 084] deepening, nor
could they be imparted to all and sundry with convincing force. Yet
how is it conceivable that thought influences the sympathetic
instinct? What have the two in common that the work of one can be
carried further by the other?
If Hume and Adam Smith had suspected the far-reaching character of
this great problem of ethics which they brought into the field of
discussion, they would have had to go on and settle the extent and the
depth of this sympathy which they adopted in their scheme, in order to
understand how it continues to function in the domain of thought.
But they fail to notice the far-reaching character of what they lay
down, and believe they have done nothing but give by means of
psychology an explanation of altruism which is superior to these
currents. The spirit of the time, in its wonderful capacity for
holding various ideas side by side, takes possession of their view,
and the popular utilitarianism now confidently appeals to it as
declaring that altruism is to be conceived as a rational ennobling of
egoism, as a result of the influence of society, and in addition as a
manifestation of a natural instinct.
It is, really, only in appearance that the psychological conception of
ethics imparts new life to utilitarianism. It is rather a consumption
germ which the latter absorbs. The establishment of a natural element
in ethics, when the consequences of it begin to make themselves felt,
can only end in its devouring rationalist utilitarianism, as becomes
evident in the nineteenth century when biological thought becomes
influential in ethics. The funeral procession of rationalist
utilitarianism begins to assemble with Hume and Adam Smith, though it
is a long time before the coffin is taken to the cemetery.
The English ethic of self-perfecting
Against the utilitarians, who would derive from the content of the
moral the essential nature of it, and the [pg 085] obligation to
morality, the “Intellectualists” and the “Intuitionists” enter the
lists. The empirical derivation of ethics seems to them to be an
endangering of the majesty of the moral. Morality—this is the thought
before their minds—is a striving after perfection, and this develops
itself in us because it is implanted in us by nature. Action for the
common advantage does not by any means constitute ethics; it is only a
manifestation of the struggle after self-perfecting.
To this deeper and more comprehensive conception of ethics, however,
the Intellectualists and Intuitionists do not give correct expression.
For that they are still too much entangled in a lifeless and
semi-scholastic philosophizing.
Their chief strength lies in their showing up of the weaknesses of the
foundation which Hobbes and Locke give to ethics, and to these they
principally devote themselves, bringing to their task a great deal
that is correct about the directly and absolutely binding character of
the moral law. That the meaning of the moral is not to be found merely
in the useful character of the actions inspired by it but also in the
self-perfecting of the agent which is effected by them, and that
morality presupposes a moral personality, is emphasized by them in
many happy turns of expression.
When, however, the task before them is to describe exactly in what way
men carry in them the idea of the good as a force which works
effectively upon their character, the Intellectualists and the
Intuitionists land themselves in a psychologizing which is sometimes
ingenious, but often artificial and commonplace. They occupy
themselves with logical distinctions instead of investigating in a
practical fashion the nature of man. Instead of really developing the
problem in answer to the innovators, they work at it with data taken
from an out-of-date philosophy. They hark back largely to Plato, and
again they argue largely, anxiously or unconsciously, not as
philosophers, but as theologians.
On individual points they diverge from each other, and [pg 086] attack
each other’s positions according as they would have the foundations of
the ethical more intellectualist, or more sentimental and mystical, or
more theological.
The majority of these anti-utilitarians belong to the Cambridge
Platonizing school. We must name here Ralph Cudworth
(1617-1688),_(_22_)_ Henry More (1614-1687),_(_23_)_ the Rev. Samuel
Clarke (1675-1729),_(_24_)_ Bishop Richard Cumberland
(1632-1718),_(_25_)_ and William Wollaston (1659-1724)._(_26_)_
According to Cudworth the truths of morality are just as evident as
these of mathematics. For More the ethical is an intellectual power of
the soul meant for the control of natural impulses. Cumberland finds
the moral law given in the reason which has been bestowed upon man by
God. Clarke, living in the thought world of Isaac Newton, sees it as
the spiritual phenomenon which corresponds to the law of nature.
Wollaston defines it as that which is logically right.
Pressed back to their fundamental meaning, these thinkers do nothing
but amplify the statement that the ethical is ethical. They assert
that the utilitarian view of ethics is pitched too low, but they do
not succeed in establishing, in contrast to it, a more exalted
principle in such a way that a higher and more comprehensive content
of ethics can be derived from it. As to content their ethic does not
really differ from that of the utilitarians. It merely lacks the great
enthusiastic driving-force which shows itself in the latter. To
establish a living ethic of self-perfecting is beyond the capacity of
the Intellectualists and the Intuitionists.
What is the inner connexion between the struggle for self-perfecting
and action for the common advantage? That [pg 087] is the weighty
question of ethics which crops up in the settlement of differences
between the utilitarians and their conservative opponents. At first it
remains veiled, and it does not come to clear expression till we reach
Kant.
* * * * *
A peculiar position in the ethical thought of the eighteenth century
is held by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury
(1671-1713)._(_27_)_ He opposes not only the utilitarians, but the
Intellectualists and the Intuitionists as well, and tries to secure a
mediating position between them. That the content of ethics is
utilitarian he openly admits, but he derives the ethical neither from
considerations of usefulness nor from the intellect; he places its
origin in feeling. At the same time he emphasizes, as does Adam Smith
also a few years later, its relationship to the æsthetic.
But the important thing is that he puts forward a living philosophy of
nature which connects itself with ethics. He is convinced that harmony
reigns in the universe and that man is meant to experience this
harmony in himself. Æsthetic feeling and ethical thinking are for him
forms of a growing union with the divine life, which struggles to find
expression in the spiritual being of man as it does in nature.
With Shaftesbury ethics descend from a rocky mountain range into a
luxuriant plain. The utilitarians know as yet nothing of a world.
Their ethic is contained in considerations about the relation of the
individual to society. The anti-utilitarians have some idea of a
world, but not a correct one. They elaborate ethics with a formal
theology and a formal philosophizing about the All, but Shaftesbury
plants ethical thought in the universe of reality, which he himself
contemplates through an idealising optimism, reaching thereby a direct
and universal notion of the moral.
[pg 088]
A mysticism based on a philosophy of nature begins to spin its magic
threads through European thought. The spirit of the Renaissance rules
again, no longer, however, like a raging storm, as in Giordano Bruno,
but as a gentle breeze. Shaftesbury thinks pantheistically, more
pantheistically than he confesses to himself, but his is not a
pantheism which throws his age into struggles about world-views, and
comes into conflict with theism. It is the pantheism which rules in
Hinduism and in Late Stoicism also; one which is not dangerous, and
raises no question of principle, desiring only to be regarded as a
vivifying of belief in God.
Shaftesbury exerts also a liberating influence on the spiritual life
of his time by giving ethics a much freer attitude towards religion
than anyone had ventured to do up to that time. Religion, according to
him, has not to give decisions about ethics, but on the contrary must
test its own claims to be true by its relation to pure ethical ideas.
He even ventures to represent the Christian teaching about rewards and
punishment as not consistent with pure ethical considerations.
Morality, he says, is pure, only when good has been done simply
because it is good.
His optimistic-ethical philosophy of nature is offered by Shaftesbury
only as a sketch. He throws out his ideas without proving that they
are well founded, and without feeling any necessity for thinking them
out to a conclusion. He steps with an easy stride across all problems.
What a difference between his philosophy of nature and Spinoza’s! Yet
his meets the needs of his time. He offers what is new to it, and what
inspires it: ethics bound up with a living world-view.
The belief in progress now clothes itself in a living world-view which
really suits it. This is the process which, thanks to Shaftesbury,
began in the first decades of the eighteenth century and went on
developing till the end of it. Hence the appearance of his writings,
which were immediately spread abroad through the whole of Europe, [pg
089] is the great event for the spiritual life of the eighteenth
century. Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Condorcet, Moses Mendelssohn,
Wieland, Herder, and Goethe too, are under his influence, and he
dominates popular thought completely. Hardly ever has any man had so
direct and so powerful an influence on the formation of the world-view
of his time as the invalid whose life ended at Naples when he was only
forty-two.
Direct continuators of Shaftesbury’s ethic are found in Francis
Hutcheson (1694-1747)_(_28_)_ and Bishop Joseph Butler
(1692-1752),_(_29_)_ but they take from it just that soft
indefiniteness which gives it its charm and its strength. Hutcheson,
who strongly emphasizes theology’s independence of ethics, the
relationship of the latter to the æsthetic, and their utilitarian
content, stands nearer to his teacher than does Butler, who does not
go as far in his welcome of utilitarianism, and also opposes, from the
Christian standpoint, the optimism of Shaftesbury’s world-view.
But Shaftesbury’s true successor is J. G. Herder (1744-1803). In his
_Ideas on the Philosophy of Human History_ (4 vols., 1784-1791), he
carries the optimistic-ethical nature-philosophy on into a
corresponding philosophy of history.
[pg 090]