SECT. I.

ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Pascal’s Provincial Letters--Taylor--Cudworth--Spinosa--Cumberland’s

Law of Nature--Puffendorf’s Treatise on the same Subject--Rochefoucault

and La Bruyere--Locke on Education--Fenelon._

|Casuistry of the Jesuits.|

|Pascal’s Provincial Letters.|

1. The casuistical writers of the Roman church, and especially of the

Jesuit order, belong to earlier periods; for little room was left for

anything but popular compilations from large works of vast labour and

accredited authority. But the false principles imputed to the latter

school now raised a louder cry than before. Implacable and unsparing

enemies, as well as ambitious intriguers themselves, they were

encountered by a host of those who envied, feared, and hated them.

Among those none were such willing or able accusers as the Jansenists

whom they persecuted. Pascal, by his Provincial Letters, did more to

ruin the name of Jesuit than all the controversies of Protestantism,

or all the fulminations of the parliament of Paris. A letter of Antony

Arnauld, published in 1655, wherein he declared that he could not find

in Jansenius the propositions condemned by the pope, and laid himself

open to censure by some of his own, provoked the Sorbonne, of which he

was a member, to exclude him from the faculty of theology. Before this

resolution was taken, Pascal came forward in defence of his friend,

under a fictitious name, in the first of what have been always called

Lettres Provinciales, but more accurately Lettres écrites par Louis de

Montalte à un Provincial de ses Amis. In the first four of them he

discusses the thorny problems of Jansenism, aiming chiefly to show

that St. Thomas Aquinas had maintained the same doctrine on

efficacious grace which his disciples the Dominicans now rejected from

another quarter. But he passed from hence to a theme more generally

intelligible and interesting, the false morality of the Jesuit

casuists. He has accumulated so long a list of scandalous decisions,

and dwelled upon them with so much wit and spirit, and yet with so

serious a severity, that the order of Loyola became a bye-word with

mankind. I do not agree with those who think the Provincial Letters a

greater proof of the genius of Pascal than his Thoughts, in spite of

the many weaknesses in reasoning which the latter display. They are at

present, finely written as all confess them to be, too much filled

with obsolete controversy, they quote books too much forgotten, they

have too little bearing on any permanent sympathies, to be read with

much interest or pleasure.

|Their truth questioned by some.|

2. The Jesuits had, unfortunately for themselves, no writers at that

time of sufficient ability to defend them; and being disliked by many

who were not Jansenists, could make little stand against their

adversaries, till public opinion had already taken its line. They have

since not failed to charge Pascal with extreme misrepresentation of

their eminent casuists, Escobar, Busenbaum, and many others, so that

some have ventured to call the Provincial Letters the immortal liars

(les immortelles menteuses). It has been insinuated, since Pascal’s

veracity is hard to attack, that he was deceived by those from whom he

borrowed his quotations. But he has declared himself, in a remarkable

passage, not only that far from repenting of these letters he would

make them yet stronger if it were to be done again, but that although

he had not read all the books he has quoted, else he must have spent

great part of his life in reading bad books, yet that he had read

Escobar twice through, and with respect to the rest, he had not quoted

a single passage without having seen it in the book, and examined the

context before and after, that he might not confound an objection with

an answer, which would have been reprehensible and unjust[877]: it is

therefore impossible to save the honour of Pascal, if his quotations

are not fair. Nor did he stand alone in his imputations on the Jesuit

casuistry. A book called Morale des Jesuites, by Nicolas Perrault,

published at Mons in 1667, goes over the same ground with less

pleasantry but not less learning.

[877] Œuvres de Pascal, vol. i., p. 400.

|Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium.|

3. The most extensive and learned work on casuistry which has appeared

in the English language is the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor,

published in 1660. This, as its title shows, treats of subjective

morality, or the guidance of the conscience. But this cannot be much

discussed without establishing some principles of objective right and

wrong, some standard by which the conscience is to be ruled. “The

whole measure and rule of conscience,” according to Taylor, “is the

law of God, or God’s will signified to us by nature or revelation; and

by the several manners and times and parts of its communication it

hath obtained several names:--the law of nature--the consent of

nations--right reason--the Decalogue--the sermon of Christ--the canons

of the apostles--the laws ecclesiastical and civil of princes and

governors--fame or the public reputation of things, expressed by

proverbs and other instances and manners of public honesty.... These

being the full measures of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful,

will be the rule of conscience and the subject of the present book.”

|Its character and defects.|

4. The heterogeneous combination of things so different in nature and

authority, as if they were all expressions of the law of God, does not

augur well for the distinctness of Taylor’s moral philosophy, and

would be disadvantageously compared with the Ecclesiastical Polity of

Hooker. Nor are we deceived in the anticipations we might draw. With

many of Taylor’s excellencies, his vast fertility and his frequent

acuteness, the Ductor Dubitantium exhibits his characteristic defects;

the waste of quotations is even greater than in his other writings,

and his own exuberance of mind degenerates into an intolerable

prolixity. His solution of moral difficulties is often unsatisfactory;

after an accumulation of arguments and authorities we have the

disappointment to perceive that the knot is neither untied nor cut;

there seems a want of close investigation of principles, a frequent

confusion and obscurity, which Taylor’s two chief faults, excessive

display of erudition and redundancy of language, conspire to produce.

Paley is no doubt often superficial, and sometimes mistaken; yet in

clearness, in conciseness, in freedom from impertinent reference to

authority, he is far superior to Taylor.

5. Taylor seems too much inclined to side with those who resolve all

right and wrong into the positive will of God. The law of nature he

defines to be “the universal law of the world, or of mankind, to which

we are inclined by nature, invited by consent, prompted by reason, but

which is bound upon us only by the command of God.” Though in the

strict meaning of the word, law, this may be truly said, it was surely

required, considering the large sense which that word has obtained as

coincident with moral right, that a fuller explanation should be given

than Taylor has even intimated, lest the goodness of the Deity should

seem something arbitrary and precarious. And, though in maintaining,

against most of the scholastic metaphysicians, that God can dispense

with the precepts of the Decalogue, he may be substantially right, yet

his reasons seem by no means the clearest and most satisfactory that

might be assigned. It may be added, that in his prolix rules

concerning what he calls a probable conscience, he comes very near to

the much decried theories of the Jesuits. There was indeed a vein of

subtlety in Taylor’s understanding which was not always without

influence on his candour.

|Cudworth’s immutable morality.|

6. A treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality, by Cudworth,

was first published in 1731. This may be almost reckoned a portion of

his Intellectual System, the object being what he has declared to be

one of those which he had there in view. This was to prove that moral

differences of right and wrong are antecedent to any divine law. He

wrote therefore not only against the Calvinistic school, but in some

measure against Taylor, though he abstains from mentioning any recent

author except Descartes, who had gone far in referring all moral

distinctions to the arbitrary will of God. Cudworth’s reasoning is by

no means satisfactory, and rests too much on the dogmatic metaphysics

which were going out of use. The nature or essence of nothing, he

maintains, can depend upon the will of God alone; which is the

efficient, but not the formal, cause of all things; a distinction not

very intelligible, but on which he seems to build his theory.[878] For

moral relations, though he admits that they have no objective

existence out of the mind, have a positive essence, and therefore are

not nothing; whence, it follows that they must be independent of will.

He pours out much ancient learning, though not so lavishly as in the

Intellectual System.

[878] P. 15.

|Nicole--La Placette.|

7. The urgent necessity of contracting my sails in this last

period, far the most abundant as it is in the variety and extent of

its literature, restrains me from more than a bare mention of several

works not undeserving of regard. The Essais de Morale of Nicole are

less read than esteemed, says a late biographer.[879] Voltaire however

prophesied that they would not perish. “The chapter especially,” he

proceeds, “on the means of preserving peace among men is a masterpiece

to which nothing equal has been left to us by antiquity.”[880] These

Essays are properly contained in six volumes; but so many other pieces

are added in some editions that the collection under that title is

very long. La Placette, minister of a French church at Copenhagen, has

been called the Protestant Nicole. His Essais de Morale, in 1692 and

other years, are full of a solid morality, rather strict in casuistry,

and apparently not deficient in observation and analytical views of

human nature. They were much esteemed in their own age. Works of this

kind tread so very closely on the department of practical religion

that it is sometimes difficult to separate them on any fixed

principle. A less homiletical form, a comparative absence of

scriptural quotation, a more reasoning and observing mode of dealing

with the subject, are the chief distinctions. But in the sermons of

Barrow and some others we find a great deal of what may be justly

called moral philosophy.

[879] Biog. Univ.

[880] Siècle de Louis XIV.

|Other writers.|

8. A book by Sharrock, De Officiis secundum Rationis Humanæ Dictata,

1660, is occasionally quoted, and seems to be of a philosophical

nature.[881] Velthuysen, a Dutch minister, was of more reputation. His

name was rather obnoxious to the orthodox, since he was a strenuous

advocate of toleration, a Cartesian in philosophy, and inclined to

judge for himself. His chief works are De Principiis Justi et Decori,

and De Naturali Pudore.[882] But we must now pass on to those who have

exercised a greater influence in moral philosophy, Cumberland and

Puffendorf, after giving a short consideration to Spinosa.

[881] Cumberland (in præfatione) De Legibus Naturæ.

[882] Biog. Univ., Barbeyrac’s notes on Puffendorf, passim.

|Moral system of Spinosa.|

9. The moral system, if so it may be called, of Spinosa, has been

developed by him in the fourth and fifth parts of his Ethics. We are

not deceived in what might naturally be expected from the unhesitating

adherence of Spinosa to a rigorous line of reasoning, that his ethical

scheme would offer nothing inconsistent with the fundamental pantheism

of his philosophy. In nature itself, he maintains as before, there is

neither perfection nor imperfection, neither good nor evil; but these

are modes of speaking, adopted to express the relations of things as

they appear to our minds. Whatever contains more positive attributes

capable of being apprehended by us than another contains, is more

perfect than it. Whatever we know to be useful to ourselves, that is

good; and whatever impedes our attainment of good is evil. By this

utility Spinosa does not understand happiness, if by that is meant

pleasurable sensation, but the extension of our mental and bodily

capacities. The passions restrain and overpower these capacities; and

coming from without, that is, from the body, render the mind a less

powerful agent than it seems to be. It is only, we may remember in a

popular sense, and subject to his own definitions, that Spinosa

acknowledges the mind to be an agent at all; it is merely so, in so

far as its causes of action cannot be referred by us to anything

external. No passion can be restrained except by a stronger passion.

Hence, even a knowledge of what is really good or evil for us can of

itself restrain no passion; but only as it is associated with a

perception of joy and sorrow, which is a mode of passion. This

perception is necessarily accompanied by desire or aversion; but they

may often be so weak as to be controlled by other sentiments of the

same class, inspired by conflicting passions. This is the cause of the

weakness and inconstancy of many, and he alone is wise and virtuous

who steadily pursues what is useful to himself; that is, what reason

points out as the best means of preserving his well-being, and

extending his capacities. Nothing is absolutely good, nothing

therefore is principally sought by a virtuous man, but knowledge, not

of things external, which gives us only inadequate ideas, but of God.

Other things are good or evil to us, so far as they suit our nature or

contradict it; and so far as men act by reason, they must agree in

seeking what is conformable to their nature. And those who agree with

us in living by reason, are themselves of all things most suitable to

our nature; so that the society of such men is most to be desired; and

to enlarge that society by rendering men virtuous, and by promoting

their advantage when they are so, is most useful to ourselves. For the

good of such as pursue virtue may be enjoyed by all, and does not

obstruct our own. Whatever conduces to the common society of mankind

and promotes concord among them is useful to all; and whatever has an

opposite tendency is pernicious. The passions are sometimes incapable

of excess, but of this the only instances are joy and cheerfulness;

more frequently they become pernicious by being indulged, and in some

cases, such as hatred, can never be useful. We should therefore, for

our own sakes, meet the hatred and malevolence of others with love and

liberality. Spinosa dwells much on the preference due to a social

above a solitary life, to cheerfulness above austerity, and alludes

frequently to the current theological ethics with censure.

10. The fourth part of the Ethics is entitled, On Human Slavery,

meaning the subjugation of the reason to the passions; the fifth, On

Human Liberty, is designed to show, as had been partly done in the

former, how the mind or intellectual man is to preserve its supremacy.

This is to be effected, not by the extinction, which is impossible,

but the moderation of the passions; and the secret of doing this,

according to Spinosa, is to contemplate such things as are naturally

associated with affections of no great violence. We find that when we

look at things simply in themselves, and not in their necessary

relations, they affect us more powerfully; whence it may be inferred

that we shall weaken the passion by viewing them as parts of a

necessary series. We promote the same end by considering the object of

the passion in many different relations, and, in general, by enlarging

the sphere of our knowledge concerning it. Hence, the more adequate

ideas we attain of things that affect us, the less we shall be

overcome by the passion they excite. But most of all it should be our

endeavour to refer all things to the idea of God. The more we

understand ourselves and our passions, the more we shall love God; for

the more we understand anything, the more pleasure we have in

contemplating it; and we shall associate the idea of God with this

pleasurable contemplation, which is the essence of love. The love of

God should be the chief employment of the mind. But God has no

passions; therefore he who desires that God should love him, desires,

in fact, that he should cease to be God. And the more we believe

others to be united in the same love of God, the more we shall love

him ourselves.

11. The great aim of the mind, and the greatest degree of virtue, is

the knowledge of things in their essence. This knowledge is the

perfection of human nature; it is accompanied with the greatest joy

and contentment; it leads to a love of God, intellectual, not

imaginative, eternal, because not springing from passions that perish

with the body, being itself a portion of that infinite love with which

God intellectually loves himself. In this love towards God our chief

felicity consists, which is not the reward of virtue, but virtue

itself; nor is anyone happy because he has overcome the passions, but

it is by being happy, that is, by enjoying the fulness of divine love,

that he has become capable of overcoming them.

12. These extraordinary effusions confirm what has been hinted in

another place, that Spinosa, in the midst of his atheism, seemed often

to hover over the regions of mystical theology. This last book of the

Ethics speaks, as is evident, the very language of Quietism. In

Spinosa himself it is not easy to understand the meaning; his

sincerity ought not, I think, to be called in question; and this

enthusiasm may be set down to the rapture of the imagination

expatiating in the enchanting wilderness of its creation. But the

possibility of combining such a tone of contemplative devotion with

the systematic denial of a Supreme Being, in any personal sense, may

put us on our guard against the tendency of mysticism, which may

again, as it has frequently, degenerate into a similar chaos.

|Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturæ.|

13. The science of ethics, in the third quarter of the seventeenth

century, seemed to be cultivated by three very divergent schools; by

that of the theologians who went no farther than revelation, or at

least than the positive law of God, for moral distinctions; by that of

the Platonic philosophers, who sought them in eternal and intrinsic

relations; and that of Hobbes and Spinosa, who reduced them all to

selfish prudence. A fourth theory, which, in some of its

modifications, has greatly prevailed in the last two centuries, may be

referred to Richard Cumberland, afterwards bishop of Peterborough. His

famous work, De Legibus Naturæ Disquisitio Philisophica, was published

in 1672. It is contained in nine chapters, besides the preface or

prolegomena.

|Analysis of prolegomena.|

14. Cumberland begins by mentioning Grotius, Selden, and one or two

more who have investigated the laws of nature _à posteriori_,

that is, by the testimony of authors and the consent of nations. But

as some objections may be started against this mode of proof, which,

though he does not hold them to be valid, are likely to have some

effect, he prefers another line of demonstration, deducing the laws of

nature, as effects, from their real causes in the constitution of

nature itself. The Platonic theory of innate moral ideas, sufficient

to establish natural law, he does not admit. “For myself, at least, I

may say that I have not been so fortunate as to arrive at the

knowledge of this law by so compendious a road.” He deems it therefore

necessary to begin with what we learn by daily use and experience,

preserving nothing but the physical laws of motion shown by

mathematicians, and the derivation of all their operations from the

will of a First Cause.

15. By diligent observation of all propositions which can be justly

reckoned general moral laws of nature, he finds that they may be

reduced to one, the pursuit of the common good of all rational agents,

which tends to our own good as part of the whole; as its opposite

tends not only to the misery of the whole system, but to our own.[883]

This tendency, he takes care to tell us, though he uses the present

tense (conducit), has respect to the most remote consequences, and is

so understood by him. The means which serve to this end, the general

good, may be treated as theorems in a geometrical method.[884]

Cumberland, as we have seen in Spinosa, was captivated by the apparent

security of this road to truth.

[883] Prolegomena, sect. 9.

[884] Sect. 12.

16. This scheme, he observes, may at first sight want the two

requisites of a law, a legislator, and a sanction. But whatever is

naturally assented to by our minds, must spring from the author of

nature. God is proved to be the author of every proposition which is

proved to be true by the constitution of nature, which has him for its

author.[885] Nor is a sanction wanting in the rewards, that is the

happiness which attends the observance of the law of nature, and in

the opposite effects of its neglect; and in a lax sense, though not

that of the jurists, reward as well as punishment may be included in

the word sanction.[886] But benevolence, that is love and desire of

good towards all rational beings, includes piety towards God, the

greatest of them all, as well as humanity.[887] Cumberland altogether

abstains from arguments founded on revelation, and is perhaps the

first writer on natural law who has done so, for they may even be

found in Hobbes. And I think that he may be reckoned the founder of

what is awkwardly and invidiously called the utilitarian school; for

though similar expressions about the common good may sometimes be

found in the ancients, it does not seem to have been the basis of any

ethical system.

[885] Sect. 13.

[886] Sect. 14.

[887] Sect. 15.

17. This common good, not any minute particle of it, as the benefit of

a single man, is the great end of the legislator and of him who obeys

his will. And such human actions as by their natural tendency promote

the common good may be called naturally good, more than those which

tend only to the good of any one man, by how much the whole is greater

than this small part. And whatever is directed in the shortest way to

this end may be called right, as a right line is the shortest of all.

And as the whole system of the universe, when all things are arranged

so as to produce happiness, is beautiful, being aptly disposed to its

end, which is the definition of beauty, so particular actions

contributing to this general harmony may be called beautiful and

becoming.[888]

[888] Sect. 16.

18. Cumberland acutely remarks, in answer to the objection to the

practice of virtue from the evils which fall on good men, and the

success of the wicked, that no good or evil is to be considered, in

this point of view, which arises from mere necessity, or external

causes and not from our virtue or vice itself. He then shows that a

regard for piety and peace, for mutual intercourse, and civil and

domestic polity, tends to the happiness of every one; and in reckoning

the good consequences of virtuous behaviour we are not only to

estimate the pleasure intimately connected with it, which the love of

God and of good men produces, but the contingent benefits we obtain by

civil society which we promote by such conduct.[889] And we see that

in all nations there is some regard to good faith and the distribution

of property, some respect to the obligation of oaths, some attachments

to relations and friends. All men therefore acknowledge, and to a

certain extent perform, those things which really tend to the common

good. And though crime and violence sometimes prevail, yet these are

like diseases in the body which it shakes off; or if, like them, they

prove sometimes mortal to a single community, yet human society is

immortal; and the conservative principles of common good have in the

end far more efficacy than those which dissolve and destroy states.

[889] Sect. 20.

19. We may reckon the happiness consequent on virtue as a true

sanction of natural law annexed to it by its author, and thus

fulfilling the necessary conditions of its definition. And though some

have laid less stress on these sanctions, and deemed virtue its own

reward, and gratitude to God and man its best motive, yet the consent

of nations and common experience show us that the observance of the

first end, which is the common good, will not be maintained without

remuneration or penal consequences.

20. By this single principle of common good, we simplify the method of

natural law, and arrange its secondary precepts in such subordination

as best conduces to the general end. Hence, moral rules give way in

particular cases, when they come in collision with others of more

extensive importance. For all ideas of right or virtue imply a

relation to the system and nature of all rational beings. And the

principles thus deduced as to moral conduct are generally applicable

to political societies, which in their two leading institutions, the

division of property and the coercive power of the magistrate, follow

the steps of natural law, and adopt these rules of polity, because

they perceive them to promote the common weal.

21. From all intermixture of scriptural authority Cumberland proposes

to abstain, building only on reason and experience; since we believe

the scriptures to proceed from God because they illustrate and promote

the law of nature. He seems to have been the first christian writer

who sought to establish systematically the principles of moral right

independently of revelation. They are indeed taken for granted by

many, especially those who adopted the Platonic language; or the

schoolmen may have demonstrated them by arguments derived from reason,

but seldom, if ever, without some collateral reference to theological

authority. In this respect, therefore, Cumberland may be deemed to

make an epoch in the history of ethical philosophy, though Puffendorf,

whose work was published the same year, may have nearly equal claims

to it. If we compare the Treatise on the Laws of Nature with the

Ductor Dubitantium of Taylor, written a very few years before, we

shall find ourselves in a new world of moral reasoning. The schoolmen

and fathers, the canonists and casuists, have vanished like ghosts at

the first daylight; the continual appeal is to experience, and never

to authority; or if authority can be said to appear at all in the

pages of Cumberland, it is that of the great apostles of experimental

philosophy, Descartes or Huygens, or Harvey or Willis. His mind,

liberal and comprehensive as well as acute, had been forcibly

impressed with the discoveries of his own age, both in mathematical

science and in what is now more strictly called physiology. From this

armoury he chose his weapons, and employed them, in some instances,

with great sagacity and depth of thought. From the brilliant success,

also, of the modern analysis, as well as from the natural prejudice in

favour of a geometrical method, which arises from the acknowledged

superiority of that science in the determination of its proper truths,

he was led to expect more from the use of similar processes in moral

reasoning than we have found justified by experience. And this analogy

had probably some effect on one of the chief errors of his ethical

system, the reduction, at least in theory, of the morality of actions

to definite calculation.

|His theory expanded afterwards.|

22. The prolegomena or preface to Cumberland’s treatise contains that

statement of his system with which we have been hitherto concerned,

and which the whole volume does but expand. His manner of reasoning is

diffuse, abounding in repetitions, and often excursive; we cannot

avoid perceiving that he labours long on propositions which no

adversary would dispute, or on which the dispute could be little else

than one of verbal definition. This however is almost the universal

failing of preceding philosophers, and was only put an end to, if it

can be said yet to have ceased, by the sharper logic of controversy,

which a more general regard to metaphysical inquiries, and a juster

sense of the value of words, brought into use.

23. The question between Cumberland and his adversaries, that is, the

school of Hobbes, is stated to be, whether certain propositions of

immutable truth, directing the voluntary actions of men in choosing

good and avoiding evil, and imposing an obligation upon them,

independently of civil laws, are necessarily suggested to the mind by

the nature of things and by that of mankind. And the affirmative of

this question he undertakes to prove from a consideration of the

nature of both; from which many particular rules might be deduced, but

above all that which comprehends all the rest, and is the basis of his

theory--namely, that the greatest possible benevolence (not a mere

languid desire but an energetic principle) of every rational agent

towards all the rest constitutes the happiest condition of each and of

all, so far as depends on their own power, and is necessarily required

for their greatest happiness; whence, the common good is the supreme

law. That God is the author of this law appears evident from his being

the author of all nature and of all the physical laws according to

which impressions are made on our minds.

24. It is easy to observe by daily experience that we have the power

of doing good to others, and that no men are so happy or so secure as

they who most exert this. And this may be proved synthetically and in

that more rigorous method which he affects, though it now and then

leads the reader away from the simplest argument, by considering our

own faculties of speech and language, the capacities of the hand and

countenance, the skill we possess in sciences and in useful arts; all

of which conduce to the social life of mankind and to their mutual

co-operation and benefit. Whatever preserves and perfects the nature

of anything, that is to be called good, and the opposite evil; so that

Hobbes has crudely asserted good to respect only the agent desiring

it, and consequently to be variable. In this it will be seen that the

dispute is chiefly verbal.

25. Two corollaries of great importance in the theory of ethics spring

from a consideration of our physical powers. The first is, that

inasmuch as they are limited by their nature, we should never seek to

transgress their bounds, but distinguish, as the Stoics did things

within our reach, τα εφ’ ἡμιν [ta eph' hêmin], from those beyond it, τα

ουκ εφ’ ἡμιν [ta ouk eph' hêmin], thus relieving our minds from anxious

passions, and turning them to the prudent use of the means assigned to

us. The other is one which applies more closely to his general

principles of morals; that as all we can do in respect of others, and

all the enjoyment we or they can have of particular things, is limited

to certain persons, as well as in space and time, we perceive the

necessity of distribution, both as to things, from which spring the

rights of property, and as to persons, by which our benevolence,

though a general rule in itself, is practically directed towards

individuals. For the conservation of an aggregate whole is the same as

that of its divided parts, that is, of single persons, which requires

a distributive exercise of the powers of each. Hence, property and

dominion, or meum and tuum, in the most general sense, are

consequences from the general law of nature. Without a support from

that law, according to Cumberland, without a positive tendency to the

good of all rational agents, we should have no right even to things

necessary for our preservation; nor have we that right, if a greater

evil would be incurred by our preservation than by our destruction. It

may be added as a more universal reflection, that as all we see in

nature is so framed as to persevere in its appointed state, and as the

human body is endowed with the power of throwing off whatever is

noxious and threatens the integrity of its condition, we may judge

from this that the conservation of mankind in its best state must be

the design of nature, and that their own voluntary actions conducing

to that end must be such as the author of nature commands and approves.

26. Cumberland next endeavours, by an enlarged analysis of the mental

and bodily structure of mankind, to evince their aptitude for the

social virtues, that is, for the general benevolence which is the

primary law of nature. We have the power of knowing these by our

rational faculty, which is the judge of right and wrong, that is, of

what is conformable to the great law; and by the other faculties of

the mind, as well as by the use of language, we generalise and reduce

to propositions the determinations of reason. We have also the power

of comparison, and of perceiving analogies, by means of which we

estimate degrees of good. And if we are careful to guard against

deciding without clear and adequate apprehensions of things, our

reason will not mislead us. The observance of something like this

general law of nature by inferior animals, which rarely, as Cumberland

supposes, attack those of the same species, and in certain instances

live together, as if by a compact for mutual aid; the peculiar

contrivances in the human body which seem designed for the maintenance

of society; the possession of speech, the pathognomic countenance, the

efficiency of the hand, a longevity beyond the lower animals, the

duration of the sexual appetite throughout the year, with several

other arguments derived from anatomy, are urged throughout this

chapter against the unsocial theory of Hobbes.

27. Natural good is defined by Cumberland, with more latitude

than has been used by Paley and by those of a later school, who

confine it to happiness or pleasurable perception. Whatever conduces

to the preservation of an intelligent being, or to the perfection of

his powers, he accounts to be good, without regard to enjoyment. And

for this he appeals to experience, since we desire existence, as well

as the extension of our powers of action, for their own sakes. It is

of great importance to acquire a clear notion of what is truly good,

that is, of what serves most to the happiness and perfection of

everyone; since all the secondary laws of nature, that is, the rules

of particular virtues, derive their authority from this effect. These

rules may be compared one with another as to the probability, as well

as the value of their effects upon the general good; and he

anticipates greater advantage from the employment of mathematical

reasoning and even analytical forms in moral philosophy than the

different nature of the subjects would justify, even if the

fundamental principle of converting the theory of ethics into

calculation could be allowed.[890]

[890] Ea quippe tota (disciplina morum) versatur in æstimandis

rationibus virium humanarum ad commune bonum entium rationalium

quicquam facientium, quæ quidem variant in omni casuum

possibilium varietate. Cap. ii., sect. 9. The same is laid down in

several other passages. By _rationibus_ we must understand

_ratios_; which brings out the calculating theory in the

strongest light.

28. A law of nature, meaning one subordinate to the great principle of

benevolence, is defined by Cumberland to be a proposition manifested

by the nature of things to the mind according to the will of the First

Cause, and pointing out an action tending to the good of rational

beings, from the performance of which an adequate reward, or from the

neglect of which a punishment, will ensue by the nature of such

rational beings. Every part of this definition he proves with

exceeding prolixity in the longest chapter--namely the fifth, of his

treatise; but we have already seen the foundations of his theory upon

which it rests. It will be evident to the reader of this chapter that

both Butler and Paley have been largely indebted to Cumberland.[891]

Natural obligation he defines thus:--No other necessity determines the

will to act than that of avoiding evil and of seeking good, so far as

appears to be in our power.[892] Moral obligation is more limited, and

is differently defined.[893] But the main point, as he justly

observes, of the controversy, is the connection between the tendency

of each man’s actions, taking them collectively through his life, to

the good of the whole, and that to his own greatest happiness and

perfection. This he undertakes to show, premising that it is twofold;

consisting immediately in the pleasure attached to virtue, and

ultimately in the rewards it obtains from God and from man. God, as a

rational being, cannot be supposed to act without an end, or to have a

greater end than the general good; that is, the happiness and

perfection of his creatures.[894] And his will may not only be shown

_à priori_, by the consideration of his essence and attributes,

but by the effects of virtue and vice in the order of nature, which he

has established. The rewards and punishments which follow at the hands

of men are equally obvious; and whether we regard men as God’s

instruments, or as voluntary agents, demonstrate that virtue is the

highest prudence. These arguments are urged rather tediously, and in

such a manner as to encounter none of the difficulties which it is

desirable to overcome.

[891] A great part of the second and third chapters of Butler’s

Analogy will be found in Cumberland. See cap. v., sect. 22.

[892] Non alia necessitas voluntatem ad agendum determinat, quam

malum in quantum tale esse nobis constat fugiendi bonumque

quatenus nobis apparet prosequendi. Cap. v., sect. 7.

[893] Sect. 27.

[894] Sect. 19.

29. Two objections might be alledged against this kind of proof; that

the rewards and punishments of moral actions are too uncertain to be

accounted clear proofs of the will of God, and consequently of their

natural obligation, and that by laying so much stress upon them we

make private happiness the measure of good. These he endeavours to

repel. The contingency of a future consequence has a determinate

value, which, if it more than compensates, for good or evil, the evil

or good of a present action, ought to be deemed a proof given by the

author of nature that reward or punishment are annexed to the action,

as much as if they were its necessary consequences.[895] This

argument, perhaps sophistical, is an instance of the calculating

method affected by Cumberland, and which we may presume, from the then

recent application of analysis to probability, he was the first to

adopt on such an occasion. Paley is sometimes fond of a similar

process. But after these mathematical reasonings, he dwells,

as before, on the beneficial effects of virtue, and concludes that

many of them are so uniform as to leave no doubt as to the intention

of the Creator. Against the charge of postponing the public good to

that of the agent, he protests that it is wholly contrary to his

principle, which permits no one to preserve his life, or what is

necessary for it, at the expense of a greater good to the whole.[896]

But his explication of the question ends in repeating that no single

man’s greatest felicity can, by the nature of things, be inconsistent

with that of all; and that every such hypothesis is to be rejected as

an impossible condition of the problem. It seems doubtful whether

Cumberland uses always the same language on the question whether

private happiness is the final motive of action, which in this part of

the chapter he wholly denies.

[895] Sect. 37.

[896] Sua cujusque felicitas est pars valde exigua finis illius,

quem vir verè rationalis prosequitur, et ad totum finem, scilicet

commune bonum cui a natura seu a Deo intertexitur, eam tantum

habet rationem quam habet unus homo ad aggregatum ex omnibus

rationalibus, quæ minor est quam habet unica arenula ad molem

universi corporis. Sect. 23 and sect. 28.

30. From the establishment of this primary law of universal

benevolence, Cumberland next deduces the chief secondary principles,

which are commonly called the moral virtues. And among these he gives

the first place to justice, which he seems to consider, by too lax an

use of terms, or too imperfect an analogy, as comprehending the social

duties of liberality, courtesy, and domestic affection. The right of

property, which is the foundation of justice, he rests entirely on its

necessity for the common good; whatever is required for that prime end

of moral action being itself obligatory on moral agents, they are

bound to establish and to maintain separate rights. And all right so

wholly depends on this instrumentality to good, that the rightful

sovereignty of God over his creatures is not founded on that relation

he bears to them, much less on his mere power, but on his wisdom and

goodness, through which his omnipotence works only for their

happiness. But this happiness can only be attained by means of an

absolute right over them in their Maker, which is therefore to be

reckoned a natural law.

31. The good of all rational beings is a complex whole, being nothing

but the aggregate of good enjoyed by each. We can only act in our

proper spheres, labouring to do good. But this labour will be

fruitless, or rather mischievous, if we do not keep in mind the higher

gradations which terminate in universal benevolence. No man must seek

his own advantage otherwise than that of his family permits; or

provide for his family to the detriment of his country; or promote the

good of his country at the expense of mankind; or serve mankind, if it

were possible, without regard to the majesty of God.[897] It is,

indeed, sufficient that the mind should acknowledge and recollect this

principle of conduct, without having it present on every single

occasion. But where moral difficulties arise, Cumberland contends that

the general good is the only measure by which we are to determine the

lawfulness of actions, or the preference due to one above another.

32. In conclusion, he passes to political authority, deriving it from

the same principle, and comments with severity and success, though in

the verbose style usual to him, on the system of Hobbes. It is,

however, worthy of remark, that he not only peremptorily declares the

irresponsibility of the supreme magistrate in all cases, but seems to

give him a more arbitrary latitude in the choice of measures, so long

as he does not violate the chief negative precepts of the decalogue,

than is consistent with his own fundamental rule of always seeking the

greatest good. He endeavours to throw upon Hobbes, as was not uncommon

with the latter’s theological opponents, the imputation of encouraging

rebellion while he seemed to support absolute power; and observes with

full as much truth that if kings are bound by no natural law, the

reason for their institution--namely, the security of mankind,

assigned by the author of the Leviathan, falls to the ground.

[897] Cap. viii., sect. 14, 15.

|Remarks on Cumberland’s theory.|

33. I have gone rather at length into a kind of analysis of this

treatise, because it is now very little read, and yet was of great

importance in the annals of ethical philosophy. It was, if not a

textbook in either of our universities, concerning which I am not

confident, the basis of the system therein taught, and of the books

which have had most influence in this country. Hutcheson, Law, Paley,

Priestley, Bentham, belong, no doubt some of them unconsciously, to

the school founded by Cumberland. Hutcheson adopted the principle of

general benevolence as the standard of virtue; but by limiting

the definition of good to happiness alone, he simplified the scheme of

Cumberland, who had included conservation and enlargement of capacity

in its definition. He rejected also what encumbers the whole system of

his predecessor, the including the Supreme Being among those rational

agents whose good we are bound to promote. The schoolmen, as well as

those whom they followed, deeming it necessary to predicate

metaphysical infinity of all the divine attributes, reckoned

unalterable beatitude in the number. Upon such a subject no wise man

would like to dogmatise. The difficulties on both sides are very

great, and perhaps among the most intricate to which the momentous

problem concerning the cause of evil has given rise. Cumberland, whose

mind does not seem to have been much framed to wrestle with mysteries,

evades, in his lax verbosity, what must perplex his readers.

34. In establishing the will of a supreme lawgiver as essential to the

law of nature, he is followed by the bishop of Carlisle and Paley, as

well as by the majority of English moralists in the eighteenth

century. But while Paley deems the recognition of a future state so

essential, that he even includes in the definition of virtue that it

is performed “for the sake of everlasting happiness,” Cumberland not

only omits this erroneous and almost paradoxical condition, but very

slightly alludes to another life, though he thinks it probable from

the stings of conscience and on other grounds; resting the whole

argument on the certain consequences of virtue and vice in the

present, but guarding justly against the supposition that any

difference of happiness in moral agents can affect the immediate

question except such as is the mere result of their own behaviour. If

anyone had urged, like Paley, that without taking a future state into

consideration, the result of calculating our own advantage will either

not always be in favour of virtue, or, in consequence of the violence

of passion, will not always seem so, Cumberland would probably have

denied the former alternative, and replied to the other, that we can

only prove the truth of our theorems in moral philosophy, and cannot

compel men to adopt them.

35. Sir James Mackintosh, whose notice of Cumberland is rather too

superficial, and hardly recognises his influence on philosophy,

observes that “the forms of scholastic argument serve more to encumber

his style than to insure his exactness.”[898] There is not, however,

much of scholastic form in the treatise on the Laws of Nature, and

this is expressly disclaimed in the Preface. But he has, as we have

intimated, a great deal too much of a mathematical line of argument

which never illustrates his meaning, and has sometimes misled his

judgment. We owe, probably to his fondness for this specious illusion,

I mean the application of reasonings upon quantity to moral subjects,

the dangerous sophism that a direct calculation of the highest good,

and that not relatively to particulars, but to all rational beings, is

the measure of virtuous actions, the test by which we are to try our

own conduct and that of others. And the intervention of general rules,

by which Paley endeavoured to dilute and render palatable this

calculating scheme of utility, seems no more to have occurred to

Cumberland than it was adopted by Bentham.

[898] Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, p. 48.

36. Thus as Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium is nearly the last of a

declining school, Cumberland’s Law of Nature may be justly considered

as the herald, especially in England, of a new ethical philosophy, of

which the main characteristics were, first, that it stood complete in

itself without the aid of revelation; secondly, that it appealed to no

authority of earlier writers whatever, though it sometimes used them

in illustration; thirdly, that it availed itself of observation and

experience, alledging them generally, but abstaining from particular

instances of either, and making, above all, no display of erudition;

and fourthly; that it entered very little upon casuistry, leaving the

application of principles to the reader.

|Puffendorf’s Law of Nature and Nations.|

37. In the same year, 1672, a work still more generally distinguished

than that of Cumberland, was published at Lund, in Sweden, by Samuel

Puffendorf, a Saxon by birth, who filled the chair of moral philosophy

in that recently-founded university. This large treatise, On the Law

of Nature and Nations, in eight books, was abridged by the author, but

not without some variations, in one perhaps more useful, On the Duties

of a Man and a Citizen. Both have been translated into French and

English; both were long studied in the foreign universities, and even

in our own. Puffendorf has been, perhaps, in moral philosophy, of

greater authority than Grotius, with whom he is frequently named in

conjunction; but this is not the case in international jurisprudence.

|Analysis of this work.|

38. Puffendorf, after a very diffuse and technical chapter on moral

beings, or modes, proceeds to assert a demonstrative certainty in

moral science, but seems not to maintain an inherent right and wrong

in actions antecedent to all law, referring the rule of morality

altogether to the divine appointment. He ends, however, by admitting

that man’s constitution being what it is, God could not, without

inconsistency, have given him any other law than that under which he

lives.[899] We discern good from evil by the understanding, which

judgment when exercised on our own actions is called conscience; but

he strongly protests against any such jurisdiction of conscience,

independent of reason and knowledge, as some have asserted. This

notion “was first introduced by the schoolmen, and has been maintained

in these latter ages by the crafty casuists for the better securing,

of men’s minds and fortunes to their own fortune and advantage.”[900]

Puffendorf was a good deal imbued with the Lutheran bigotry which did

no justice to any religion but its own.

[899] C. 2.

[900] C. 3.

39. Law alone creates obligation; no one can be obliged except towards

a superior. But to compel and to oblige being different things, it is

required for this latter that we should have received some great good

at the hands of a superior, or have voluntarily submitted to his will.

This seems to involve an antecedent moral right, which Puffendorf’s

general theory denies.[901] Barbeyrac, his able and watchful

commentator, derives obligation from our natural dependence on the

supreme authority of God, who can punish the disobedient and reward

others. In order to make laws obligatory, it is necessary, according

to Puffendorf, that we should know both the law and the lawgiver’s

authority. Actions are good or evil, as they conform more or less to

law. And, coming to consider the peculiar qualities of moral actions,

he introduces the distinction of perfect and imperfect rights,

objecting to that of Grotius and the Roman lawyers, expletive and

distributive justice.[902] This first book of Puffendorf is very

diffuse; and some chapters are wholly omitted in the abridgment.

[901] C. 6.

[902] C. 7.

40. The natural state of man, such as in theory we may suppose, is one

in which he was never placed, “thrown into the world at a venture, and

then left entirely to himself, with no larger endowments of body or

mind than such as we now discover in men.” This, however, he seems to

think physically possible to have been, which I should incline to

question. Man, in a state of nature, is subject to no earthly

superior; but we must not infer thence that he is incapable of law,

and has a right to everything that is profitable to himself. But,

after discussing the position of Hobbes that a state of nature is a

state of war, he ends by admitting that the desire of peace is too

weak and uncertain a security for its preservation among mankind.[903]

[903] L. ii. c. 2.

41. The law of nature he derives not from consent of nations, nor from

personal utility, but from the condition of man. It is discoverable by

reason; its obligation is from God. He denies that it is founded on

the intrinsic honesty or turpitude of actions. It was free to God

whether he would create an animal to whom the present law of nature

should be applicable. But supposing all things human to remain

constant, the law of nature, though owing its institution to the free

will of God, remains unalterable. He therefore neither agrees wholly

with those who deem this law as one arbitrary and mutable at God’s

pleasure, or those who look upon it as an image of his essential

holiness and justice. For he doubts whether the law of nature is

altogether conformed to the divine attributes as to a type; since we

cannot acquire a right with respect to God; so that his justice must

be of a different kind from ours. Common consent, again, is an

insufficient basis of natural law, few men having searched into the

foundations of their assent, even if we could find a more general

consent than is the case. And here he expatiates, in the style of

Montaigne’s school, on the variety of moral opinions.[904] Puffendorf

next attacks those who resolve right into self-interest. But,

unfortunately, he only proves that men often mistake their interest.

“It is a great mistake to fancy it will be profitable to you to take

away, either by fraud or violence, what another man has acquired by

his labour; since others have not only the power of resisting you, but

of taking the same freedom with your goods and possessions.” This is

evidently no answer to Hobbes or Spinosa.

[904] C. 3.

42. The nature of man, his wants, his powers of doing mischief to

others, his means of mutual assistance, show that he cannot be

supported in things necessary and convenient to him without

society, so that others may promote his interests. Hence, sociableness

is a primary law of nature, and all actions tending towards it are

commanded, as the opposite are forbidden by that law. In this he

agrees with Grotius; and, after he had become acquainted with

Cumberland’s work, observes that the fundamental law of that writer,

to live for the common good, and show benevolence towards all men,

does not differ from his own. He partly explains, and partly answers,

the theory of Hobbes. From Grotius he dissents in denying that the law

of nature would be binding without religion, but does not think the

soul’s immortality essential to it.[905] The best division of natural

law is into duties towards ourselves and towards others. But in the

abridged work, the Duties of a Man and a Citizen, he adds those

towards God.

[905] C. 8.

43. The former class of duties he illustrates with much prolixity and

needless quotation,[906] and passes to the right of self-defence,

which seems to be the debatable frontier between the two classes of

obligation. In this chapter Puffendorf is free from the extreme

scrupulousness of Grotius; yet he differs from him, as well as from

Barbeyrac and Locke, in denying the right of attacking the aggressor,

where a stranger has been injured, unless where we are bound to him by

promise.[907]

[906] C. 4.

[907] C. 5.

44. All persons, as is evident, are bound to repair wilful injury, and

even that arising from their neglect; but not where they have not been

in fault.[908] Yet the civil action _ob pauperiem_, for casual

damage by a beast or slave, which Grotius held to be merely of

positive law, and which our own (in the only applicable case) does not

recognise, Puffendorf thinks grounded on natural right. He considers

several questions of reparation, chiefly such as we find in Grotius.

From these, after some intermediate disquisitions on moral duties, he

comes to the more extensive province of casuistry, the obligation of

promises.[909] These, for the most part, give perfect rights which may

be enforced, though this is not universal; hence, promises may

themselves be called imperfect or perfect. The former, or _nuda

pacta_, seem to be obligatory rather by the rules of veracity, and

for the sake of maintaining confidence among men, than in strict

justice; yet he endeavours to refute the opinion of a jurist who held

_nuda pacta_ to involve no obligation beyond a compensation for

damage. Free consent and knowledge of the whole subject are required

for the validity of a promise; hence, drunkenness takes away its

obligation.[910] Whether a minor is bound in conscience, though not in

law, has been disputed; the Romish casuists all denying it unless he

has received an advantage. La Placette, it seems, after the time of

Puffendorf, though a very rigid moralist, confines the obligation to

cases where the other party sustains any real damage by the

non-performance. The world, in some instances, at least, would exact

more than the strictest casuists. Promises were invalidated, though

not always mutual contracts, by error; and fraud in the other party

annuls a contract. There can be no obligation, Puffendorf maintains,

without a corresponding right; hence, fear arising from the fault of

the other party invalidates a promise. But those made to pirates or

rebels, not being extorted by fear, are binding. Vows to God he deems

not binding, unless accepted by him; but he thinks that we may presume

their acceptance when they serve to define or specify an indeterminate

duty.[911] Unlawful promises must not be performed by the party

promising to commit an evil act, and as to performance of the other

party’s promise, he differs from Grotius in thinking it not binding.

Barbeyrac concurs with Puffendorf, but Paley holds the contrary; and

the common sentiments of mankind seem to be on that side.[912]

[908] L. iii., c. 1.

[909] C. 5.

[910] C. 6.

[911] C. 6.

[912] C. 7.

45. The obligations of veracity Puffendorf, after much needless

prolixity on the nature of signs and words, deduces from a tacit

contract among mankind, that words, or signs of intention, shall be

used in a definite sense which others may understand.[913] He is

rather fond of these imaginary compacts. The laxer casuists are in

nothing more distinguishable from the more rigid than in the

exceptions they allow to the general rule of veracity. Many, like

Augustin and most of the fathers, have laid it down that all falsehood

is unlawful; even some of the jurists, when treating of morality, had

done the same. But Puffendorf gives considerable latitude to

deviations from truth, by mental reserve, by ambiguous words, by

direct falsehood. Barbeyrac, in a long note, goes a good deal farther,

and indeed beyond any safe limit.[914] An oath, according to those

writers, adds no peculiar obligation; another remarkable

discrepancy between their system and that of the theological casuists.

Oaths may be released by the party in favour of whom they are made;

but it is necessary to observe whether the dispensing authority is

really the obligee.

[913] L. iv., c. 1.

[914] Barbeyrac admits that several writers of authority

since Puffendorf had maintained the strict obligation of veracity

for its own sake; Thomasius, Buddæus, Noodt, and above all, La

Placette. His own notions are too much the other way, both

according to the received standard of honourable and decorous

character among men, and according to any sound theory of ethics.

Lying, he says, condemned in Scripture, always means fraud or

injury to others. His doctrine is, that we are to speak the

truth, or to be silent, or to feign and dissemble, accordingly as

our own lawful interest, or that of our neighbour, may demand it.

This is surely as untenable one way as any paradox in Augustin or

La Placette can be the other.

46. We now advance to a different part of moral philosophy, the rights

of property. Puffendorf first inquires into the natural right of

killing animals for food; but does not defend it very well, resting

this right on the want of mutual obligation between man and brutes.

The arguments from physiology and the manifest propensity in mankind

to devour animals, are much stronger. He censures cruelty towards

animals, but hardly on clear grounds; the disregard of moral emotion,

which belongs to his philosophy, prevents his judging it rightly.[915]

Property itself in things he grounds on an express or tacit contract

of mankind, while all was yet in common, that each should possess a

separate portion. This covenant he supposes to have been gradually

extended, as men perceived the advantage of separate possession, lands

having been cultivated in common after severalty had been established

in houses and moveable goods; and he refutes those who maintain

property to be coeval with mankind, and immediately founded on the law

of nature.[916] Nothing can be the subject of property which is

incapable of exclusive occupation; not therefore the ocean, though

some narrow seas may be appropriated.[917] In the remainder of this

fourth book he treats on a variety of subjects connected with

property, which carry us over a wide field of natural and positive

jurisprudence.

[915] C. 3.

[916] C. 4. Barbeyrac more wisely denies this assumed compact,

and rests the right of property on individual occupancy.

[917] C. 5.

47. The fifth book of Puffendorf relates to price, and to all

contracts onerous or lucrative, according to the distinction of the

jurists, with the rules of their interpretation. It is a running

criticism on the Roman Law, comparing it with right reason and

justice. Price he divides into proper and eminent; the first being

what we call real value, or capacity of procuring things desirable by

means of exchange; the second the money value. What is said on this

subject would now seem common-place and prolix; but it is rather

interesting to observe the beginnings of political economy. Money, he

thinks, was introduced by an agreement of civilized nations, as a

measure of value. Puffendorf, of more enlarged views than Grotius,

vindicates usury which the other had given up; and mentions the

evasions usually practised such as the grant of an annuity for a

limited term.

48. In the sixth book we have disquisitions on matrimony and the

rights incident to it, on paternal and on herile power. Among

other questions he raises one whether the husband has any natural

dominion over the wife. This he thinks hard to prove, except as his

sex gives him an advantage; but fitness to govern does not create a

right. He has recourse therefore to his usual solution, her tacit or

express promise of obedience. Polygamy he deems contrary to the law of

nature, but not incest except in the direct line. This is consonant to

what had been the general determination of philosophers.[918] The

right of parents he derives from the general duty of sociableness,

which makes preservation of children necessary, and on the affection

implanted in them by nature; also on a presumed consent of the

children in return for their maintenance.[919] In a state of nature

this command belongs to the mother, unless she has waived it by a

matrimonial contract. In childhood, the fruits of the child’s labour

belong to the father, though the former seems to be capable of

receiving gifts. Fathers, as heads of families, have a kind of

sovereignty, distinct from the paternal, to which adult children

residing with them are submitted. But after their emancipation by

leaving their father’s house, which does not absolutely require his

consent, they are bound only to duty and reverence. The power of a

master over his servant is not by nature, nor by the law of war, but

originally by a contract founded on necessity. War increased the

number of those in servitude. A slave, whatever Hobbes may say, is

capable of being injured by his master; but the laws of some

nations give more power to the latter than is warranted by those of

nature. Servitude implies only an obligation to perpetual labour for a

recompence (namely, at least maintenance); the evil necessary to this

condition has been much exaggerated by opinion.[920]

[918] L. vi., c. 1.

[919] C. 2.

[920] C. 3.

|Puffendorf and Paley compared.|

49. Puffendorf and Cumberland are the two great promoters, if not

founders of that school in ethics, which abandoning the higher ground

of both philosophers and theologians, that of an intrinsic fitness and

propriety in actions, resolved them all into their conduciveness

towards good. Their _utile_ indeed is very different from what

Cicero has so named, which is merely personal, but it is different

also from his _honestum_. The sociableness of Puffendorf is

perhaps much the same with the general good of Cumberland, but is

somewhat less comprehensive and less clear. Paley, who had not read a

great deal, had certainly read Puffendorf; he has borrowed from him

several minor illustrations, such as the equivocal promise of Timur

(called by Paley Temures) to the garrison of Sebastia, and the rules

for division of profits in partnership. Their minds were in some

respects alike; both phlegmatic, honest, and sincere, without warmth

or fancy; yet there seems a more thorough good-nature and kindliness

of heart in our countryman. Though an ennobled German, Puffendorf had

as little respect for the law of honour as Paley himself. They do not

indeed resemble each other in their modes of writing; one was very

laborious, the other very indolent; one sometimes misses his mark by

circuity, the other by precipitance. The quotations in Puffendorf are

often as thickly strewed as in Grotius, though he takes less from the

poets; but he seems not to build upon their authority, which gives

them still more the air of superfluity. His theory indeed, which

assigns no weight to anything but a close geometrical deduction from

axioms, is incompatible with much deference to authority; and he sets

aside the customs of mankind as unstable and arbitrary. He has not

taken much from Hobbes, whose principles are far from his; but a great

deal from Grotius. The leading difference between the treatises of

these celebrated men is that, while the former contemplated the law

that ought to be observed among independent communities as his primary

object, to render which more evident he lays down the fundamental

principles of private right or the law of nature, the latter, on the

other hand, not only begins with natural law, but makes it the great

theme of his inquiries.

|Rochefoucault.|

50. Few books have been more highly extolled or more severely blamed

than the Thoughts or Maxims of the Duke of Rochefoucault. They have,

indeed, the greatest advantages for popularity; the production of a

man less distinguished by his high rank than by his active

participation in the factions of his country at a time when they

reached the limits of civil war, and by his brilliancy among the

accomplished courtiers of Louis XIV.; concise and energetic in

expression; reduced to those short aphorisms, which leave much to the

reader’s acuteness, and yet save his labour; not often obscure and

never wearisome; an evident generalisation of long experience, without

pedantry, without method, without deductive reasonings, yet wearing an

appearance at least of profundity, they delight the intelligent though

indolent man of the world, and must be read with some admiration by

the philosopher. Among the books in ancient and modern times which

record the conclusions of observing men on the moral qualities of

their fellows, a high place should be reserved for the Maxims of

Rochefoucault.

51. The censure that has so heavily fallen upon this writer is founded

on his proneness to assign a low and selfish motive to human actions,

and even to those which are most usually denominated virtuous. It is

impossible to dispute the partial truth of this charge. Yet it may be

pleaded, that many of his maxims are not universal even in their

enunciation; and that, in others, where, for the sake of a more

effective expression, the position seems general, we ought to

understand it with such limitations as our experience may suggest. The

society with which the Duke of la Rochefoucault was conversant could

not elevate his notions of disinterested probity in man, or of

unblemished purity in woman. Those who call themselves the world, it

is easy to perceive, set aside, in their remarks on human nature, all

the species but themselves, and sometimes generalise their maxims, to

an amusing degree, from the manners and sentiments which have grown up

in the atmosphere of a court or an aristocratic society. Rochefoucault

was of far too reflecting a mind to be confounded with such mere

worldlings; yet he bears witness to the contracted observation and the

precipitate inferences which an intercourse with a single class of

society scarcely fails to generate. The malignity of Rochefoucault is

always directed against the false virtues of mankind, but never

touches the reality of moral truths, and leaves us less injured than

the cold, heartless indifference to right which distils from the pages

of Hobbes. Nor does he deal in those sweeping denials of goodness to

human nature which are so frequently hazarded under the mask of

religion. His maxims are not exempt from defects of a different kind;

they are sometimes refined to a degree of obscurity, and sometimes,

under an epigrammatic turn, convey little more than a trivial meaning.

Perhaps, however, it would be just to say that one third of the number

deserve to be remembered, as at least partially true and useful; and

this is a large proportion, if we exclude all that are not in some

measure original.

|La Bruyere.|

52. The Characters of La Bruyere, published in 1687, approach to the

Maxims of La Rochefoucault by their refinement, their brevity, their

general tendency to an unfavourable explanation of human conduct. This

nevertheless is not so strongly marked, and the picture of selfishness

wants the darkest touches of his contemporary’s colouring. La Bruyere

had a model in antiquity, Theophrastus, whose short book of Characters

he had himself translated, and prefixed to his own; a step not

impolitic for his own glory, since the Greek writer, with no

contemptible degree of merit, has been incomparably surpassed by his

imitator. Many changes in the condition of society, the greater

diversity of ranks and occupations in modern Europe, the influence of

women over the other sex, as well as their own varieties of character

and manners, the effects of religion, learning, chivalry, royalty,

have given a range to this very pleasing department of moral

literature which no ancient could have compassed. Nor has Theophrastus

taken much pains to search the springs of character; his delineations

are bold and clear, but merely in outline; we see more of manners than

of nature, and the former more in general classes than in portraiture.

La Bruyere has often painted single persons; whether accurately or no,

we cannot at this time determine, but with a felicity of description

which at once renders the likeness probable, and suggests its

application to those we ourselves have seen. His general reflections,

like those of Rochefoucault, are brilliant with antithesis and

epigrammatic conciseness; sometimes perhaps not quite just or quite

perspicuous. But he pleases more, on the whole, from his greater

variety, his greater liveliness, and his gentler spirit of raillery.

Nor does he forget to mingle the praise of some with his satire. But

he is rather a bold writer for his age and his position in the court,

and what looks like flattery may well have been ironical. Few have

been more imitated, as well as more admired, than La Bruyere, who

fills up the list of those whom France has boasted as most conspicuous

for their knowledge of human nature. The others are Montaigne,

Charron, Pascal, and Rochefoucault; but we might withdraw the second

name without injustice.

|Education. Milton’s Tractate.|

53. Moral philosophy comprehends in its literature whatever has been

written on the best theory and precepts of moral education,

disregarding what is confined to erudition, though this may frequently

be partially treated in works of the former class. Education,

notwithstanding its recognised importance, was miserably neglected in

England, and quite as much, perhaps, in every part of Europe. Schools,

kept by low-born illiberal pedants, teaching little, and that little

ill, without regard to any judicious discipline or moral culture, on

the one hand, or, on the other, a pretence of instruction at home

under some ignorant and servile tutor, seem to have been the

alternatives of our juvenile gentry. Milton raised his voice against

these faulty methods in his short Tractate on Education. This abounds

with bursts of his elevated spirit; and sketches out a model of public

colleges, wherein the teaching should be more comprehensive, more

liberal, more accommodated to what he deems the great aim of education

than what was in use. “That,” he says, “I call a complete and generous

education which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and

magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and

war.” But when Milton descends to specify the course of studies he

would recommend, it appears singularly ill-chosen and impracticable,

nearly confined to ancient writers, even in mathematics and other

subjects where they could not be sufficient, and likely to leave the

student very far from that aptitude for offices of war and peace which

he had held forth as the reward of his diligence.

|Locke on Education. Its merits.|

54. Locke, many years afterwards, turned his thoughts to education

with all the advantages that a strong understanding and entire

disinterestedness could give him; but, as we should imagine, with some

necessary deficiencies of experience, though we hardly perceive much

of them in his writings. He looked on the methods usual in his age

with severity, or, some would say, with prejudice; yet I know not by

what proof we can refute his testimony. In his Treatise on Education,

which may be reckoned an introduction to that on the Conduct of the

Understanding, since the latter is but a scheme of that education an

adult person should give himself, he has uttered, to say the least,

more good sense on the subject than will be found in any preceding

writer. Locke was not like the pedants of his own or other ages, who

think that to pour their wordy book-learning into the memory is the

true discipline of childhood. The culture of the intellectual and

moral faculties in their most extensive sense, the health of the body,

the accomplishments which common utility or social custom have

rendered valuable, enter into his idea of the best model of education,

conjointly at least with any knowledge that can be imparted by books.

The ancients had written in the same spirit: in Xenophon, in Plato, in

Aristotle, the noble conception which Milton has expressed, of forming

the perfect man, is always predominant over mere literary instruction,

if indeed the latter can be said to appear at all in their writings on

this subject; but we had become the dupes of schoolmasters in our

riper years, as we had been their slaves in our youth. Much has been

written, and often well, since the days of Locke; but he is the chief

source from which it has been ultimately derived; and though the Emile

is more attractive in manner, it may be doubtful whether it is as

rational and practicable as the Treatise on Education. If they have

both the same defect, that their authors wanted sufficient observation

of children, it is certain that the caution and sound judgment of

Locke have rescued him better from error.

|And defects.|

55. There are, indeed, from this or from other causes, several

passages in the Treatise on Education to which we cannot give an

unhesitating assent. Locke appears to have somewhat exaggerated the

efficacy of education. This is an error on the right side in a work

that aims at persuasion in a practical matter; but we are now looking

at theoretical truth alone. “I think I may say,” he begins, “that of

all the men we meet with nine parts of ten are what they are, good or

evil, useful or not, by their education. It is this which makes the

great difference in mankind. The little or almost insensible

impressions on our tender infancies have very important and lasting

consequences; and there it is as in the fountains of some rivers,

where a gentle application of the hand turns the flexible waters into

channels that make them take quite contrary courses; and by this

little direction given them at first in the source, they receive

different tendencies, and arrive at last at very remote and distant

places.” “I imagine,” he adds soon afterwards, “the minds of children

as easily turned this or that way as water itself.”[921]

[921] Treatise on Education, § 152. “The difference,” he

afterwards says, “to be found in the manners and abilities of men

is owing more to their education than to anything else.” § 32.

56. This passage is an instance of Locke’s unfortunate fondness for

analogical parallels, which, as far as I have observed, much more

frequently obscure a philosophical theorem, than shed any light upon

it. Nothing would be easier than to confirm the contrary proposition

by such fanciful analogies from external nature. In itself, the

position is hyperbolical to extravagance. It is no more disparagement

to the uses of education that it will not produce the like effects

upon every individual, than it is to those of agriculture (I purposely

use this sort of idle analogy) that we do not reap the same quantity

of corn from every soil. Those who are conversant with children on a

large scale will, I believe, unanimously deny this levelling efficacy

of tuition. The variety of characters even in children of the same

family, where the domestic associations of infancy have run in the

same trains, and where many physical congenialities may produce, and

ordinarily do produce, a moral resemblance, is of sufficiently

frequent occurrence to prove that in human beings there are intrinsic

dissimilitudes, which no education can essentially overcome. Among

mere theorists, however, this hypothesis seems to be popular. And as

many of these extend their notion of the plasticity of human nature to

the effects of government and legislation, which is a sort of

continuance of the same controlling power, they are generally induced

to disregard past experience of human affairs, because they flatter

themselves that under a more scientific administration mankind will

become something very different from what they have been.

57. In the age of Locke, if we may confide in what he tells

us, the domestic education of children must have been of the worst

kind. “If we look,” he says, “into the common management of children

we shall have reason to wonder, in the great dissoluteness of manners

which the world complains of, that there are any footsteps at all left

of virtue. I desire to know what vice can be named which parents and

those about children do not season them with, and drop into them the

seeds of, as often as they are capable to receive them.” The mode of

treatment seems to have been passionate and often barbarous severity

alternating with foolish indulgence. Their spirits were often broken

down and their ingenuousness destroyed by the former; their habits of

self-will and sensuality confirmed by the latter. This was the course

used by parents; but the pedagogues of course confined themselves to

their favourite scheme of instruction and reformation by punishment.

Dugald Stewart has animadverted on the austerity of Locke’s rules of

education.[922] And this is certainly the case in some respects. He

recommends that children should be taught to expect nothing because it

will give them pleasure, but only what will be useful to them; a rule

fit, in its rigid meaning, to destroy the pleasure of the present

moment in the only period of life that the present moment can be

really enjoyed. No father himself, Locke neither knew how ill a parent

can spare the love of his child, nor how ill a child can want the

constant and practical sense of a parent’s love. But if he was led too

far by deprecating the mischievous indulgence he had sometimes

witnessed, he made some amends by his censures on the prevalent

discipline of stripes. Of this he speaks with the disapprobation

natural to a mind already schooled in the habits of reason and

virtue.[923] “I cannot think any correction useful to a child where

the shame of suffering for having done amiss does not work more upon

him than the pain.” Esteem and disgrace are the rewards and

punishments to which he principally looks, and surely this is a noble

foundation for moral discipline. He also recommends that children

should be much with their parents, and allowed all reasonable liberty.

I cannot think that Stewart’s phrase “hardness of character,” which he

accounts for by the early intercourse of Locke with the Puritans, is

justly applicable to anything that we know of him; and many more

passages in this very treatise might be adduced to prove his

kindliness of disposition, than will appear to any judicious person

over austere. He found in fact everything wrong; a false system of

reward and punishment, a false view of the objects of education, a

false selection of studies, false methods of pursuing them. Where so

much was to be corrected, it was perhaps natural to be too sanguine

about the effects of the remedy.

[922] Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclop. Britann.

[923] If severity carried to the highest pitch does prevail, and

works a cure upon the present unruly distemper, it is often

bringing in the room of it a worse and more dangerous disease by

breaking the mind; and then in the place of a disorderly young

fellow, you have a low-spirited moped creature, who however with

his unnatural sobriety he may please silly people, who commend

tame inactive children, because they make no noise, nor give them

any trouble; yet at least will probably prove as uncomfortable a

thing to his friends, as he will be all his life an useless thing

to himself and others. § 51.

58. Of the old dispute as to public and private education he says,

that both sides have their inconveniencies, but incline to prefer the

latter, influenced, as is evident, rather by disgust at the state of

our schools than by any general principle.[924] For he insists much on

the necessity of giving a boy a sufficient knowledge of what he is to

expect in the world. “The longer he is kept hood-winked, the less he

will see when he comes abroad into open daylight, and be the more

exposed to be a prey to himself and others.” And this experience will,

as is daily seen, not be supplied by a tutor’s lectures, any more than

by books; nor can be given by any course save a public education.

Locke urges the necessity of having a tutor well-bred, and with

knowledge of the world, the ways, the humours, the follies, the

cheats, the faults of the age he is fallen into, and particularly of

the country he lives in, as of far more importance than his

scholarship. “The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge

of it.... He that thinks not this of more moment to his son, and for

which he more needs a governor, than the languages and learned

sciences, forgets of how much more use it is to judge right of men and

manage his affairs wisely with them, than to speak Greek and Latin,

and argue in mood and figure, or to have his head filled with the

abstruse speculations of natural philosophy and metaphysics; nay, than

to be well versed in Greek and Roman writers, though that be much

better for a gentleman, than to be a good Peripatetic or Cartesian;

because these ancient authors observed and painted mankind

well, and give the best light into that kind of knowledge. He that

goes into the eastern parts of Asia will find able and acceptable men

without any of these; but without virtue, knowledge of the world, and

civility, an accomplished and valuable man can be found nowhere.”[925]

[924] § 70.

[925] § 94.

59. It is to be remembered, that the person whose education Locke

undertakes to fashion is an English gentleman. Virtue, wisdom,

breeding, and learning, are desirable for such an one in their order,

but the last not so much as the rest.[926] It must be had, he says,

but only as subservient to greater qualities. No objections have been

more frequently raised against the scheme of Locke than on account of

his depreciation of classical literature, and of the study of the

learned languages. This is not wholly true: Latin he reckons

absolutely necessary for a gentleman, though it is absurd that those

should learn Latin who are designed for trade, and never look again at

a Latin book.[927] If he lays not so much stress on Greek as a

gentleman’s study, though he by no means would abandon it, it is

because, in fact, most gentlemen, especially in his age, have done

very well without it; and nothing can be deemed indispensable in the

education of a child, the want of which does not leave a manifest

deficiency in the man. “No man,” he observes, “can pass for a scholar

who is ignorant of the Greek language. But I am not here considering

of the education of a professed scholar, but of a gentleman.”[928]

[926] § 138.

[927] § 189.

[928] § 195.

60. The peculiar methods recommended by Locke in learning languages,

especially the Latin, appear to be of very doubtful utility, though

some of them do not want strenuous supporters in the present day. Such

are the method of interlinear translation, the learning of mere words

without grammar, and, above all, the practice of talking Latin with a

tutor who speaks it well--a phœnix whom he has not shown us where to

find.[929] In general, he seems to underrate the difficulty of

acquiring what even he would call a competent learning, and what is of

more importance, and no rare mistake in those who write on this

subject, to confound the acquisition of a language with the knowledge

of its literature. The best ancient writers both in Greek and Latin

furnish so much of wise reflection, of noble sentiment, of all that is

beautiful and salutary, that no one who has had the happiness to know

and feel what they are, will desire to see their study excluded or

stinted in its just extent, wherever the education of those who are to

be the first and best of the country is carried forward. And though by

far the greater portion of mankind must, by the very force of terms,

remain in the ranks of intellectual mediocrity, it is an ominous sign

of any times when no thought is taken for those who may rise beyond

it.

[929] § 165.

61. In every other part of instruction, Locke has still an eye to what

is useful for a gentleman. French he justly thinks should be taught

before Latin; no geometry is required by him beyond Euclid, but he

recommends geography, history and chronology, drawing, and what may be

thought now as little necessary for a gentleman as Homer, the

jurisprudence of Grotius and Puffendorf. He strongly urges the writing

English well, though a thing commonly neglected, and after speaking

with contempt of the artificial systems of logic and rhetoric, sends

the pupil to Chillingworth for the best example of reasoning, and to

Tully for the best idea of eloquence. “And let him read those things

that are well writ in English to perfect his style in the purity of

our language.”[930]

[930] § 188.

62. It would be to transcribe half this treatise, were we to mention

all the judicious and minute observations on the management of

children it contains. Whatever may have been Locke’s opportunities, he

certainly availed himself of them to the utmost. It is as far as

possible from a theoretical book; and in many respects the best of

modern times, such as those of the Edgeworth name, might pass for

developments of his principles. The patient attention to every

circumstance, a peculiar characteristic of the genius of Locke, is in

none of his works better displayed. His rules for the health of

children, though sometimes trivial, since the subject has been more

regarded, his excellent advice as to checking effeminacy and

timorousness, his observations on their curiosity, presumption,

idleness, on their plays and recreations, bespeak an intense, though

calm, love of truth and goodness; a quality which few have possessed

more fully, or known so well how to exert, as this admirable

philosopher.

|Fenelon on female education.|

63. No one had condescended to spare any thoughts for female

education, till Fenelon, in 1688, published his earliest work, Sur

l’Education des Filles. This was the occasion of his appointment as

preceptor to the grandchildren of Louis XIV.; for much of this

treatise, and perhaps the most valuable part, is equally applicable to

both sexes. It may be compared with that of Locke, written nearly at

the same time, and bearing a great resemblance in its spirit. Both

have the education of a polished and high-bred youth, rather than of

scholars, before them; and Fenelon rarely loses sight of his peculiar

object, or gives any rule which is not capable of being practised in

female education. In many respects he coincides with our English

philosopher, and observes with him that a child learns much before he

speaks, so that the cultivation of his moral qualities can hardly

begin too soon. Both complain of the severity of parents, and

deprecate the mode of bringing up by punishment. Both advise the

exhibition of virtue and religion in pleasing lights, and censure the

austere dogmatism with which they were inculcated, before the mind was

sufficiently developed to apprehend them. But the characteristic

sweetness of Fenelon’s disposition is often shown in contrast with the

somewhat stern inflexibility of Locke. His theory is uniformly

indulgent; his method of education is a labour of love; a desire to

render children happy for the time, as well as afterwards, runs

through his book, and he may perhaps be considered the founder of that

school which has endeavoured to dissipate the terrors and dry the

tears of childhood. “I have seen,” he says, “many children who have

learned to read in play; we have only to read entertaining stories to

them out of a book, and insensibly teach them the letters, they will

soon desire to go for themselves to the source of their amusement.”

“Books should be given them well bound and gilt, with good engravings,

clear types; for all that captivates the imagination facilitates

study; the choice should be such as contain short and marvellous

stories.” These details are now trivial, but in the days of Fenelon

they may have been otherwise.

64. In several passages he displays not only a judicious spirit, but

an observation that must have been long exercised. “Of all the

qualities we perceive in children,” he remarks, “there is only one

that can be trusted as likely to be durable, which is sound judgment;

it always grows with their growth, if it is well cultivated; but the

grace of childhood is effaced; its vivacity is extinguished; even its

sensibility is often lost, because their own passions and the

intercourse of others insensibly harden the hearts of young persons

who enter into the world.” It is therefore a solid and just way of

thinking which we should most value and most improve, and this not by

any means less in girls than in the other sex, since their duties and

the occupations they are called upon to fill do not less require it.

Hence he not only deprecates an excessive taste for dress, but, with

more originality, points out the danger of that extreme delicacy and

refinement which incapacitate women for the ordinary affairs of life,

and give them a contempt for a country life and rural economy.

65. It will be justly thought at present, that he discourages too much

the acquisition of knowledge by women. “Keep their minds,” he says in

one place, “as much as you can within the usual limits, and let them

understand that the modesty of their sex ought to shrink from science

with almost as much delicacy as from vice.” This seems, however, to be

confined to science or philosophy in a strict sense; for he permits

afterwards a larger compass of reading. Women should write a good

hand, understand orthography and the four rules of arithmetic, which

they will want in domestic affairs. To these he requires a close

attention, and even recommends to women an acquaintance with some of

the common forms and maxims of law. Greek, Roman, and French history,

with the best travels, will be valuable, and keep them from seeking

pernicious fictions. Books also of eloquence and poetry may be read

with selection, taking care to avoid any that relate to love; music

and painting may be taught with the same precaution. The Italian and

Spanish languages are of no use but to enlarge their knowledge of

dangerous books; Latin is better as the language of the church; but

this he would recommend only for girls of good sense and discreet

conduct, who will make no display of the acquisition.

SECT. II.

ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Puffendorf--Spinosa--Harrington’s Oceana--Locke on Government--

Political Economy._

|Puffendorf’s theory of politics.|

66. In the seventh book of Puffendorf’s great work, he comes to

political philosophy, towards which he had been gradually tending for

some time; primary societies, or those of families, leading the way to

the consideration of civil government. Grotius derives the origin of

this from the natural sociableness of mankind. But this, as Puffendorf

remarks, may be satisfied by the primary societies. The real cause was

experience of the injuries which one man can inflict on another.[931]

And, after a prolix disquisition, he concludes that civil society must

have been constituted, first, by a covenant of a number of men, each

with each, to form a commonwealth, and to be bound by the majority, in

which primary covenant they must be unanimous, that is, every

dissentient would retain his natural liberty; next, by a resolution or

decree of the majority, that certain rulers shall govern the rest;

and, lastly, by a second covenant between these rulers and the rest,

one promising to take care of the public weal, and the other to obey

lawful commands.[932] This covenant, as he attempts to show, exists

even in a democracy, though it is less evident than in other forms.

Hobbes had admitted the first of these covenants, but denied the

second; Barbeyrac, the able commentator on Puffendorf, has done

exactly the reverse. A state once formed may be conceived to exist as

one person, with a single will, represented by that of the sovereign,

wherever the sovereignty may be placed. This sovereignty is founded on

the covenants, and is not conferred, except indirectly like every

other human power, by God. Puffendorf here combats the opposite

opinion, which churchmen were as prone to hold, it seems, in Germany

as in England.[933]

[931] L. vii., c. 1.

[932] C. 2.

[933] C. 3.

67. The legislative, punitive, and judiciary powers, those of making

war and peace, of appointing magistrates, and levying taxes, are so

closely connected that no one can be denied to the sovereign. As to

his right in ecclesiastical matters, Puffendorf leaves it for others

to determine.[934] He seems in this part of the work too favourable to

unlimited monarchy, declaring himself against a mixed government. The

sovereign power must be irresponsible, and cannot be bound by the law

itself has given. He even denies that all government is intended for

the good of the governed--a position strangely inconsistent with his

theory of a covenant--but if it were, this end, the public good, may

be more probably discerned by the prince than by the people.[935] Yet

he admits that the exorbitancies of a prince should be restrained by

certain fundamental laws, and holds, that having accepted such, and

ratified them by oath, he is not at liberty to break them; arguing,

with some apparent inconsistency, against those who maintain such

limitations to be inconsistent with monarchy, and even recommending

the institution of councils, without whose consent certain acts of the

sovereign shall not be valid. This can only be reconciled with his

former declaration against a mixed sovereignty, by the distinction

familiar to our own constitutional lawyers, between the joint acts of

A and B, and the acts of A with B’s consent. But this is a little too

technical and unreal for philosophical politics.[936] Governments not

reducible to one of the three simple forms he calls irregular; such as

the Roman republic or German empire. But there may be systems of

states, or aggregate communities, either subject to one king by

different titles, or united by federation. He inclines to deny that

the majority can bind the minority in the latter case, and seems to

take it for granted that some of the confederates can quit the league

at pleasure.[937]

[934] C. 4.

[935] C. 6.

[936] C. 6.

[937] C. 5.

68. Sovereignty over persons cannot be acquired, strictly speaking, by

seizure or occupation, as in the case of lands, and requires, even

after conquest, their consent to obey; which will be given, in order

to secure themselves from the other rights of war. It is a problem

whether, after an unjust conquest, the forced consent of the people

can give a lawful title to sovereignty. Puffendorf distinguishes

between a monarchy and a republic thus unjustly subdued. In the former

case, so long as the lawful heirs exist or preserve their claim, the

duty of restitution continues. But in the latter, as the people may

live as happily under a monarchy as under a republic, he thinks that

an usurper has only to treat them well, without scruple as to his

title. If he oppresses them, no course of years will make his title

lawful, or bind them in conscience to obey, length of possession being

only length of injury. If a sovereign has been justly divested of his

power, the community becomes immediately free; but if by unjust

rebellion, his right continues till by silence he has appeared to

abandon it.[938]

[938] C. 7.

69. Every one will agree that a lawful ruler must not be opposed

within the limits of his authority. But let us put the case that he

should command what is unlawful, or maltreat his subjects. Whatever

Hobbes may say, a subject may be injured by his sovereign. But

we should bear minor injuries patiently, and in the worst cases avoid

personal resistance. Those are not to be listened to who assert that a

king, degenerating into a tyrant, may be resisted and punished by his

people. He admits only a right of self-defence, if he manifestly

becomes a public enemy: in all this he seems to go quite as far as

Grotius himself. The next question is as to the right of invaders and

usurpers to obedience. This, it will be observed, he had already in

some measure discussed; but Puffendorf is neither strict in method,

nor free from repetitions. He labours much about the rights of the

lawful prince insisting upon them, where the subjects have promised

allegiance to the usurper. This, he thinks, must be deemed temporary,

until the legitimate sovereign has recovered his dominions. But what

may be done towards this end by such as have sworn fidelity to the

actual ruler, he does not intimate. It is one of the nicest problems

in political casuistry.[939]

[939] C. 8.

70. Civil laws are such as emanate from the supreme power, with

respect to things left indifferent by the laws of God and nature. What

chiefly belongs to them is the form and method of acquiring rights or

obtaining redress for wrongs. If we give the law of nature all that

belongs to it, and take away from the civilians what they have

hitherto engrossed and promiscuously treated of, we shall bring the

civil law to a much narrower compass; not to say that at present

whenever the civil law is deficient we must have recourse to the law

of nature, and that therefore in all commonwealths the natural laws

supply the defects of the civil.[940] He argues against Hobbes’s tenet

that the civil law cannot be contrary to the law of nature; and that

what shall be deemed theft, murder, or adultery, depends on the

former. The subject is bound generally not to obey the unjust commands

of his sovereign; but in the case of war he thinks it, on the whole,

safest, considering the usual difficulties of such questions, that the

subject should serve, and throw the responsibility before God or the

prince.[941] In this problem of casuistry, common usage is wholly

against theory.

[940] L. viii., c. 1.

[941] L. viii., c. 1.

71. Punishment may be defined an evil inflicted by authority upon view

of antecedent transgression.[942] Hence, exclusion, on political

grounds, from public office, or separation of the sick for the sake of

the healthy, is not punishment. It does not belong to distributive

justice, nor is the magistrate bound to apportion it to the malignity

of the offence, though this is usual. Superior authority is necessary

to punishment; and he differs from Grotius by denying that we have a

right to avenge the injuries of those who have no claim upon us.

Punishment ought never to be inflicted without the prospect of some

advantage from it; either the correction of the offender, or the

prevention of his repeating the offence. But example he seems not to

think a direct end of punishment, though it should be regarded in its

infliction. It is not necessary that all offences which the law

denounces should be actually punished, though some jurists have

questioned the right of pardon. Punishments ought to be measured

according to the object of the crime, the injury to the commonwealth,

and the malice of the delinquent. Hence, offences against God should

be deemed most criminal, and next, such as disturb the state; then

whatever affect life, the peace or honour of families, private

property or reputation, following the scale of the Decalogue. But

though all crimes do not require equal severity, an exact proportion

of penalties is not required. Most of this chapter exhibits the

vacillating, indistinct, and almost self-contradictory resolutions of

difficulties so frequent in Puffendorf. He concludes by establishing a

great truth, that no man can be justly punished for the offence of

another; nor even a community for the acts of their forefathers,

notwithstanding their fictitious immortality.[943]

[942] C. 3.

[943] C. 3.

72. After some chapters on the law of nations, Puffendorf concludes

with discussing the cessation of subjection. This may ordinarily be by

voluntarily removing to another state with permission of the

sovereign. And if no law or custom interferes, the subject has a right

to do this at his discretion. The state has not a right to expel

citizens without some offence. It loses all authority over a banished

man. He concludes by considering the rare case of so great a

diminution of the people, as to raise a doubt of their political

identity.[944]

[944] C. 11. 12.

|Politics of Spinosa.|

73. The political portion of this large work, is not, as will appear,

very fertile in original or sagacious reflection. A greater degree of

both, though by no means accompanied with a sound theory,

distinguishes the Political Treatise of Spinosa, one which must not be

confounded with the Theologico-political Treatise, a very different

work. In this he undertakes to show how a state under a regal

or aristocratic government ought to be constituted so as to secure the

tranquility and freedom of the citizens. Whether Spinosa borrowed his

theory on the origin of government from Hobbes, is perhaps hard to

determine: he seems acquainted with the treatise, De Cive; but the

philosophical system of both was such as, in minds habituated like

theirs to close reasoning, could not lead to any other result.

Political theory, as Spinosa justly observes, is to be founded on our

experience of human kind as it is, and on no visionary notions of an

Utopia or golden age; and hence politicians of practical knowledge

have written better on these subjects than philosophers. We must treat

of men as liable to passions, prone more to revenge than to pity,

eager to rule and to compel others to act like themselves, more

pleased with having done harm to others than with procuring their own

good. Hence, no state wherein the public affairs are entrusted to

anyone’s good faith can be secure of their due administration; but

means should be devised that neither reason nor passion should induce

those who govern, to obstruct the public weal; it being indifferent by

what motive men act if they can be brought to act for the common good.

74. Natural law is the same as natural power; it is that which the

laws of nature, that is the order of the world, give to each

individual. Nothing is forbidden by this law, except what no one

desires, or what no one can perform. Thus, no one is bound to keep the

faith he has plighted any longer than he will, and than he judges it

useful to himself; for he has not lost the power of breaking it, and

power is right in natural law. But he may easily perceive that the

power of one man in a state of nature is limited by that of all the

rest, and in effect is reduced to nothing; all men being naturally

enemies to each other; while, on the other hand, by uniting their

force, and establishing bounds by common consent to the natural powers

of each, it becomes really more effective than while it was unlimited.

This is the principle of civil government; and now the distinctions of

just and unjust, right and wrong, begin to appear.

75. The right of the supreme magistrate is nothing but the collective

rights of the citizens; that is, their powers. Neither he nor they in

their natural state can do wrong; but after the institution of

government, each citizen may do wrong by disobeying the magistrate;

that, in fact, being the test of wrong. He has not to inquire whether

the commands of the supreme power are just or unjust, pious or

impious; that is, as to action, for the state has no jurisdiction over

his judgment.

76. Two independent states are naturally enemies, and may make war on

each other whenever they please. If they make peace or alliance, it is

no longer binding than the cause, that is, hope or fear in the

contracting parties, shall endure. All this is founded on the

universal law of nature, the desire of preserving ourselves; which,

whether men are conscious of it or no, animates all their actions.

Spinosa in this, as in his other writings, is more fearless than

Hobbes, and though he sometimes may throw a light veil over his

abjuration of moral and religious principle, it is frequently placed

in a more prominent view than his English precursor in the same system

had deemed it secure to advance. Yet so slight is often the connection

between theoretical tenets and human practice, that Spinosa bore the

character of a virtuous and benevolent man. We do not know, indeed,

how far he was placed in circumstances to put his fidelity to the

test. In this treatise of politics, especially in the broad assertion

that good faith is only to be preserved so long as it is advantageous,

he leaves Machiavel and Hobbes at some distance, and may be reckoned

the most phlegmatically impudent of the whole school.

77. The contract or fundamental laws, he proceeds, according to which

the multitude transfers its right to a king or a senate, may

unquestionably be broken, when it is advantageous to the whole to do

so. But Spinosa denies to private citizens the right of judging

concerning the public good in such a point, reserving, apparently, to

the supreme magistrate an ultimate power of breaking the conditions

upon which he was chosen. Notwithstanding this dangerous admission, he

strongly protests against intrusting absolute power to any one man;

and observes, in answer to the common argument of the stability of

despotism, as in the instance of the Turkish monarchy, that if

barbarism, slavery, and desolation are to be called peace, nothing can

be more wretched than peace itself. Nor is this sole power of one man

a thing so possible as we imagine; the kings who seem most despotic

trusting the public safety and their own to counsellors and

favourites, often the worst and weakest in the state.

|His theory of a monarchy.|

78. He next proceeds to his scheme of a well regulated monarchy, which

is in some measure original and ingenious. The people are to be

divided into families, by which he seems to mean something like the

φρατριαι [phratriai] of Attica. From each of these, counsellors, fifty

years of age, are to be chosen by the king, succeeding in a rotation

quinquennial, or less, so as to form a numerous senate. This assembly

is to be consulted upon all public affairs, and the king is to be

guided by its unanimous opinion. In case, however, of disagreement,

the different propositions being laid before the king, he may choose

that of the minority, provided at least one hundred counsellors have

recommended it. The less remarkable provisions of this ideal polity it

would be waste of time to mention; except that he advises that all the

citizens should be armed as a militia, and that the principal towns

should be fortified, and, consequently, as it seems, in their power. A

monarchy thus constituted would probably not degenerate into the

despotic form. Spinosa appeals to the ancient government of Aragon, as

a proof of the possibility of carrying his theory into execution.

79. From this imaginary monarchy he comes to an aristocratical

republic. In this he seems to have taken Venice, the idol of

theoretical politicians, as his primary model, but with such

deviations as affect the whole scheme of government. He objects to the

supremacy of an elective doge, justly observing that the precautions

adopted in the election of that magistrate show the danger of the

office itself, which was rather retained in the aristocratical polity

as an ancient institution than from any persuasion of its usefulness.

But the most remarkable discrepancy between the aristocracy of Spinosa

and that of Venice is that his great council, which ought, as he

strongly urges, not to consist of less than 5,000, the greatness of

its number being the only safeguard against the close oligarchy of a

few families, is not to be hereditary, but its vacancies to be filled

up by self-election. In this election, indeed, he considers the

essence of aristocracy to consist, being, as is implied in its

meaning, a government by the best, who can only be pronounced such by

the choice of many. It is singular that he never adverts to popular

representation, of which he must have known examples. Democracy, on

the contrary, he defines to be a government where political power

falls to men by chance of birth, or by some means which has rendered

them citizens, and who can claim it as their right without regard to

the choice of others. And a democracy, according to Spinosa, may

exist, if the law should limit this privilege of power to the seniors

in age, or to the elder branches of families, or to those who pay a

certain amount in taxation; although the numbers enjoying it should be

a smaller portion of the community than in an aristocracy of the form

he has recommended. His treatise breaks off near the beginning of the

chapters intended to delineate the best model of democracy, which he

declares to be one wherein all persons, in their own power, and not

infamous by crime, should have a share in the public government. I do

not know that it can be inferred from the writings of Spinosa, nor is

his authority, perhaps, sufficient to render the question of any

interest, to which of the three plans devised by him, as the best in

their respective forms, he would have ascribed the preference.

|Amelot de la Houssaye.|

80. The condition of France under Louis XIV. was not very tempting to

speculators on political theory. Whatever short remarks may be found

in those excellent writers on other subjects who distinguish this

period, we can select no one book that falls readily into this class.

For Telemaque we must find another place. It is scarcely worth while

to mention the political discourses on Tacitus, by Amelot de la

Houssaye. These are a tedious and pedantic running commentary on

Tacitus, affecting to deduce general principles, but much unlike the

short and poignant observations of Machiavel and Bacon. A whole volume

on the reign alone of Tiberius, and printed at Paris, is not likely to

repay a reader’s trouble; at least, I have found nothing in it above

the common level. I have no acquaintance with the other political

writings of Amelot de la Houssaye, one of those who thought they could

make great discoveries by analysing the constitution of Venice and

other states.

|Harrington’s Oceana.|

81. England, thrown at the commencement of this period upon the

resources of her own invention to replace an ancient monarchy by

something new, and rich at that time in reflecting as well as learned

men, with an unshackled press, and a growing disdain of authority as

opposed to argument, was the natural soil of political theory. The

earliest fruit was Sir James Harrington’s Oceana, published in 1656.

This once famous book is a political allegory, partly suggested,

perhaps, by the Dodona’s Grove of Howell, or by Barclay’s Argenis, and

a few other fictions of the preceding age. His Oceana represents

England, the history of which is shadowed out with fictitious

names. But this is preliminary to the great object, the scheme of a

new commonwealth, which, under the auspices of Olphaus Megaletor, the

lord Archon, meaning, of course, Cromwell, not as he was, but as he

ought to have been, the author feigns to have been established. The

various laws and constitutions of this polity occupy the whole work.

82. The leading principle of Harrington is that power depends on

property; denying the common saying, that knowledge or prudence is

power. But this property must be in land, “because, as to property

producing empire, it is required that it should have some certain root

or foot-hold, which, except in land, it cannot have, being otherwise,

as it were, upon the wing. Nevertheless, in such cities as subsist

mostly by trade, and have little or no land, as Holland and Genoa, the

balance of treasure may be equal to that of land.”[945] The law fixing

the balance of lands is called by him agrarian, and without an

agrarian law, he holds that no government, whether monarchical,

aristocratic, or popular, has any long duration; this is rather

paradoxical; but his distribution of lands varies according to the

form of the commonwealth. In one best constituted the possession of

lands is limited to £2,000 a year; which, of course, in his time, was

a much greater estate than at present.

[945] P. 38, edit. 1771.

83. Harrington’s general scheme of a good government is one

“established upon an equal agrarian arising into the superstructure,

or three orders, the senate debating and proposing, the people

resolving, and the magistracy executing by an equal rotation through

the suffrage of the people given by the ballot.” His more particular

form of polity, devised for his Oceana, it would be tedious to give in

detail: the result is a moderate aristocracy; property, though under

the control of his agrarian, which prevents its excess, having so

great a share in the elections that it must predominate. But it is an

aristocracy of what we should call the middle ranks, and might not be

unfit for a small state. In general, it may be said of Harrington,

that he is prolix, dull, pedantic, yet seldom profound; but sometimes

redeems himself by just observations. Like most theoretical

politicians of that age he had an excessive admiration for the

republic of Venice.[946] His other political writings are in the same

spirit as the Oceana, but still less interesting.

[946] “If I be worthy to give advice to a man that would study

politics, let him understand Venice; he that understands Venice

right, shall go nearest to judge, notwithstanding the difference

that is in every policy, right of any government in the world.”

Harrington’s Works, p. 292.

|Patriarcha of Filmer.|

84. The manly republicanism of Harrington, though sometimes visionary

and, perhaps, impracticable, shines by comparison with a very opposite

theory, which, having been countenanced in the early part of the

century by our clergy, revived with additional favour after the

Restoration. This was maintained in the Patriarcha of Sir Robert

Filmer, written, as it appears, in the reign of Charles I., but not

published till 1680, at a time when very high notions of royal

prerogative were as well received by one faction as they were

indignantly rejected by another. The object, as the author declares,

was to prove that the first kings were fathers of families; that it is

unnatural for the people to govern or to choose governors; that

positive laws do not infringe the natural and fatherly power of kings.

He refers the tenet of natural liberty and the popular origin of

government to the schoolmen, allowing that all papists and the

reformed divines have imbibed it, but denying that it is found in the

fathers. He seems, indeed, to claim the credit of an original

hypothesis; those who have vindicated the rights of kings in most

points not having thought of this, but with one consent admitted the

natural liberty and equality of mankind. It is certain, nevertheless,

that the patriarchal theory of government as the basis of actual right

was laid down as explicitly as by himself in what is called Bishop

Overall’s Convocation Book, at the beginning of the reign of James I.

But this book had not been published when Filmer wrote. His arguments

are singularly insufficient; he quotes nothing but a few irrelevant

texts from Genesis; he seems not to have known at all the strength,

whatever it may be, of his own case, and it is hardly possible to find

a more trifling and feeble work. It had, however, the advantage of

opportunity to be received by a party with approbation.

|Sydney’s Discourses on Government.|

85. Algernon Sydney was the first who devoted his time to a refutation

of this patriarchal theory, propounded as it was, not as a plausible

hypothesis to explain the origin of civil communities, but as a

paramount title, by virtue of which all actual sovereigns, who were

not manifest usurpers, were to reign with an unmitigated despotism.

Sydney’s Discourses on Government, not published till 1698, are a

diffuse reply to Filmer. They contain, indeed, many chapters full of

historical learning and judicious reflection; yet the constant anxiety

to refute that which needs no refutation renders them a little

tedious. Sydney does not condemn a limited monarchy like the English,

but his partiality is for a form of republic which would be deemed too

aristocratical for our popular theories.

|Locke on Government.|

86. Locke, immediately after the revolution, attacked the Patriarcha

with more brevity, and laid down his own celebrated theory of

government. The fundamental principle of Filmer is, that paternal

authority is naturally absolute. Adam received it from God, exercised

it over his own children, and transmitted it to the eldest born for

ever. This assumption Locke combats rather too diffusely, according to

our notions. Filmer had not only to show this absolute monarchy of a

lineal ancestor, but his power of transmitting it in course of

primogeniture. Locke denies that there is any natural right of this

kind, maintaining the equality of children. The incapacity of Filmer

renders his discomfiture not difficult. Locke, as will be seen,

acknowledges a certain _de facto_ authority in fathers of families,

and, possibly, he might have found, as, indeed, he seems to admit,

considerable traces of a regard to primogeniture in the early ages of

the world. It is the question of natural right with which he is here

concerned; and, as no proof of this had been offered, he had nothing

to answer.

87. In the second part of Locke’s Treatise on Civil Government, he

proceeds to lay down what he holds to be the true principles upon

which society is founded. A state of nature is a state of perfect

freedom and equality; but within the bounds of the law of nature,

which obliges every one, and renders a state of liberty no state of

licence. And the execution of this law, in such a state, is put into

everyone’s hands, so that he may punish transgressors against it, not

merely by way of reparation for his own wrongs, but for those of

others. “Every offence that can be committed in the state of nature

may, in the state of nature, be punished equally, and as far forth, as

it may in a commonwealth.” And not only independent communities, but

all men, as he thinks, till they voluntarily enter into some society,

are in a state of nature.[947]

[947] L. ii., c. 2.

88. Whoever declares by word or action a settled design against

another’s life, puts himself in a state of war against him, and

exposes his own life to be taken away, either by the other party, or

by anyone who shall espouse his cause. And he who endeavours to obtain

absolute power over another, may be construed to have a design on his

life, or at least to take away his property. Where laws prevail, they

must determine the punishment of those who injure others; but if the

law is silenced, it is hard to think but that the appeal to Heaven

returns, and the aggressor may be treated as one in a state of

war.[948]

[948] C. 3.

89. Natural liberty is freedom from any superior power except the law

of nature. Civil liberty is freedom from the dominion of any authority

except that which a legislature, established by consent of the

commonwealth, shall confirm. No man, according to Locke, can by his

own consent enslave himself, or give power to another to take away his

life. For slavery, in a strict sense, is but a continuance of the

state of war between a conqueror and his captive.[949]

[949] C. 4.

90. The excellent chapter on property which follows would be

sufficient, if all Locke’s other writings had perished, to leave him a

high name in philosophy. Nothing can be more luminous than his

deduction of the natural right of property from labour, not merely in

gathering the fruits of the earth, or catching wild animals, but in

the cultivation of land, for which occupancy is but the preliminary,

and gives as it were an inchoate title. “As much land as a man tills,

plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is

his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the

common.” Whatever is beyond the scanty limits of individual or family

labour, has been appropriated under the authority of civil society.

But labour is the primary basis of natural right. Nor can it be

thought unreasonable that labour should confer an exclusive right,

when it is remembered how much of everything’s value depends upon

labour alone. “Whatever bread is more worth than acorns, wine than

water, and cloth or silk than leaves, skins, or moss, that is wholly

owing to labour and industry.” The superiority in good sense and

satisfactory elucidation of his principle, which Locke has manifested

in this important chapter over Grotius and Puffendorf, will strike

those who consult those writers, or look at the brief sketch of their

theories in the foregoing pages. It is no less contrasted with the

puerile rant of Rousseau against all territorial property. That

property owes its origin to occupancy accompanied with labour, is now

generally admitted; the care of cattle being of course to be

considered as one species of labour, and requiring at least a

temporary ownership of the soil.[950]

[950] C. 5.