Moral Science, Alexander Bain [top non fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

his chief controversy. Yet he declines to oppose the doctrine of innate ideas, because it looks with a friendly eye upon piety and morality; and perhaps it may be the case, that such ideas are _both_ born with us and afterwards impressed upon us from without.

4. Will, he defines as 'the consent of the mind with the judgment of the understanding, concerning things agreeing among themselves.' Although, therefore, he supposes that nothing but Good and Evil can determine the will, and that the will is even _necessarily_ determined to seek the one and flee the other, he escapes the conclusion that the will is moved only by private good, by accepting the implication of private with common good as the fixed judgment of the understanding or right reason.

5. He argues against the resolution of all Benevolence into self-seeking, and thus claims for man a principle of disinterested action. But what he is far more concerned to prove is, that benevolence of all to all accords best with the whole frame of nature, stands forth with perfect evidence, upon a rational apprehension of the universe, as the great Law of Nature, and is the most effectual means of promoting the happiness of individuals, viz., through the happiness of all.

III.--Happiness is given as connected with the most full and constant exercise of all our powers, about the best and greatest objects and effects that are adequate and proportional to them; as consisting in the enlargement or perfection of the faculties of any one thing or several. Here, and in his protest against Hobbes's taking affection and desire, instead of Reason, as the measure of the goodness of things, may be seen in what way he passes from the conception of Individual, to the notion of Common Good, as the end of action. Reason affirms the common good to be more essentially connected with the perfection of man than any pursuit of private advantage. Still there is no disposition in him to sacrifice private to the common good: he declares that no man is called on to promote the common good beyond his ability, and attaches no meaning to the general good beyond the special good of _all_ the particular rational agents in their respective places, from God (to whom he ventures to ascribe a Tranquillity, Joy, or Complacency) downwards. The happiness of men he considers as _Internal_, arising _immediately_ from the vigorous exercise of the faculties about their proper and noblest objects; and _External_, the _mediate_ advantages procurable from God and men by a course of benevolent action.

IV.--His Moral Code is arrived at by a somewhat elaborate deduction from the great Law of Nature enjoining Benevolence or Promotion of the Common Good of all rational beings.

This Common Good comprehends the Honour of God, and the Good or Happiness of Men, as Nations, Families, and Individuals.

The actions that promote this Common Good, are Acts either of the understanding, or of the will and affections, or of the body as determined by the will. From this he finds that _Prudence_ (including Constancy of Mind and Moderation) is enjoined in the Understanding, and, in the Will, _Universal Benevolence_ (making, with Prudence, _Equity_), _Government of the Passions_, and the Special Laws of Nature--_Innocence, Self-denial, Gratitude, &c._

This he gets from the consideration of what is contained in the general Law of Nature. But the obligation to the various moral virtues does not appear, until he has shown that the Law of Nature, for procuring the Common Happiness of all, suggests a natural law of _Universal Justice_, commanding to make and preserve a _division_ of Rights, _i.e._, giving to particular persons Property or Dominion over things and persons necessary to their Happiness. There are thus Rights of God (to Honour, Glory, &c.) and Rights of Men (to have those advantages continued to them whereby they may preserve and perfect themselves, and be useful to all others).

For the same reason that _Rights_ of particular persons are fixed and preserved, viz., that the common good of all should be promoted by every one,--two _Obligations_ are laid upon all.

(1) Of GIVING: We are to contribute to others such a share of the things committed to our trust, as may not destroy the part that is necessary to our own happiness. Hence are obligatory the virtues (_a_) in regard to Gifts, _Liberality, Generosity, Compassion, &c._; (_b_) in regard to Common Conversation or Intercourse, _Gravity and Courteousness, Veracity, Faith, Urbanity, &c._

(2) Of RECEIVING: We are to reserve to ourselves such use of our own, as may be most advantageous to, or at least consistent with, the good of others. Hence the obligation or the virtues pertaining to the various branches of a limited Self-Love, (_a_) with regard to our _essential parts_, viz., Mind and Body--_Temperance_ in the natural desires concerned in the preservation of the individual and the species; (_b_) with regard to _goods of fortune--Modesty, Humility, and Magnanimity_.

V.--He connects Politics with Ethics, by finding, in the establishment of civil government, a more effectual means of promoting the common happiness according to the Law of Nature, than in any equal division of things. But the Law of Nature, he declares, being before the civil laws, and containing the ground of their obligation, can never be superseded by these. Practically, however, the difference between him and Hobbes comes to very little; he recognizes no kind of earthly check upon the action of the civil power.

VI.--With reference to Religion, he professes to abstain entirely from theological questions, and does abstain from mixing up the doctrines of Revelation. But he attaches a distinctly divine authority to his moral rules, and supplements earthly by supernatural sanctions.


RALPH CUDWORTH. [1617-88.]

Cudworth's _Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality_, did not appear until 1731, more than forty years after his death. Having in a former work ('Intellectual system of the Universe') contended against the 'Atheistical Fate' of Epicurus and others, he here attacks the 'Theologick Fate' (the arbitrarily omnipotent Deity) of Hobbes, charging him with reviving exploded opinions of Protagoras and the ancient Greeks, that take away the essential and eternal discrimination of moral good and evil, of just and unjust.

After piling up, out of the store of his classical and scholastic erudition, a great mass of testimony regarding all who had ever founded distinctions of Right and Wrong upon mere arbitrary disposition, whether of God or the State of men in general, he shadows forth his own view. Moral Good and Evil, Just and Unjust, Honest and Dishonest (if they be not mere names without any signification, or names for nothing else but _Willed_ or _Commanded_, but have a reality in respect of the persons obliged to do and to avoid them), cannot possibly be arbitrary things, made by Will without nature; because it is universally true that Things are what they are not by Will, but by nature. As it is the nature of a triangle to have three angles equal to two right angles, so it is the nature of 'good things' to have the nature of goodness, and things just the nature of justice; and Omnipotence is no more able to make a thing good without the fixed nature of goodness, than to make a triangular body without the properties of a triangle, or two things like or equal, without the natures of Likeness and Equality. The Will of God is the supreme _efficient_ cause of all things, but not the _formal_ cause of anything besides itself. Nor is this to be understood as at all derogating from God's perfection; to make natural justice and right independent of his will is merely to set his Wisdom, which is a rule or measure, above his Will, which is something indeterminate, but essentially regulable and measureable; and if it be the case that above even his wisdom, and determining it in turn, stands his Infinite Goodness, the greatest perfection of his will must lie in its being thus twice determined.

By far the largest part of Cudworth's treatise consists of a general metaphysical argument to establish the independence of the mind's faculty of Knowledge, with reference to Sense and Experience. In Sense, according to the doctrine of the old 'Atomical philosophy' (of Democritus, Protagoras, &c.--but he thinks it must be referred back to Moses himself!), he sees nothing but _fancies_ excited in us by local motions in the organs, taken on from 'the motion of particles' that constitute 'the whole world.' All the more, therefore, must there exist a superior power of Intellection and Knowledge of a different nature from sense, a power not terminating in mere seeming and appearance only, but in the reality of things, and reaching to the comprehension of what really and absolutely is; whose objects are the immutable and eternal essences and natures of things, and their unchangeable relations to one another. These _Rationes_ or Verities of things are _intelligible_. only; are all comprehended in the eternal mind or intellect of the Deity, and from Him derived to our 'particular intellects.' They are neither arbitrary nor phantastical--neither alterable by Will nor changeable by Opinion.

Such eternal and immutable Verities, then, the moral distinctions of Good and Evil are, in the pauses of the general argument, declared to be. They, 'as they must have some certain natures which are the actions or souls of men,' are unalterable by Will or Opinion. 'Modifications of Mind and Intellect,' they are as much more real and substantial things than Hard, Soft, Hot, and Cold, modifications of mere senseless matter--and even so, on the principles of the atomical philosophy, dependent on the soul for their existence--as Mind itself stands prior in the order of nature to Matter. In the mind they are as 'anticipations of morality' springing up, not indeed 'from certain rules or propositions arbitrarily printed on the soul as on a book,' but from some more inward and vital Principle in intellectual beings, as such whereby these have within themselves a natural determination to do some things and to avoid others.

The only other ethical determinations made by Cudworth may thus be summarized:--Things called _naturally_ Good and Due are such as _the intellectual nature_ obliges to immediately, absolutely, and perpetually, and upon no condition of any voluntary action done or omitted intervening; things _positively_ Good and Due are such as are in themselves indifferent, but the intellectual nature obliges to them accidentally or hypothetically, upon condition, in the case of a command, of some voluntary act of another person invested with lawful authority, or of one's self, in the case of a specific promise. In a positive command (as of the civil ruler), what _obliges_ is only the intellectual nature of him that is commanded, in that he recognizes the lawful authority of him that commands, and so far determines and modifies his general duty of obedience as to do an action immaterial in itself for the sake of the formality of yielding obedience to lawfully constituted authority. So, in like manner, a specific promise, in itself immaterial and not enjoined by natural justice, is to be kept for the sake of the formality of keeping faith, which _is_ enjoined.

Cudworth's work, in which these are nearly all the ethical allusions, gives no scope for a summary under the various topics.

I.--Specially excluding any such External _Standard_ of moral Good as the arbitrary Will, either of God or the Sovereign, he views it as a simple ultimate natural quality of actions or dispositions, as included among the verities of things, by the side of which the phenomena of Sense are unreal.

II.--The general Intellectual Faculty cognizes the moral verities, which it contains within itself and brings rather than finds.

III.--He does not touch upon Happiness; probably he would lean to asceticism. He sets up no moral code.

IV.--Obligation to