Part 10 (2/2)
*Cicero* considered himself as belonging to the New Academy. His instincts as an advocate, often induced by professional exigencies to deny what he had previously affirmed, made the scepticism of this school congenial to him; while his love of elegant ease and luxury and his lack of moral courage were in closer harmony with the practical ethics of the Peripatetics than with the more rigid system of the Stoics. At the same time, his pure moral taste and his sincere reverence for the right brought him into sympathy with the Stoic school. His ”De Officiis” is an exposition of the Stoic system of ethics, though by the professed disciple of another philosophy. It is as if a Mohammedan, without disclaiming his own religion, should undertake an exposition of the ethics of Christianity, on the ground that, though Mohammed was a genuine prophet, there was, nevertheless, a higher and purer morality in the New Testament than in the Koran.
Chapter XV.
MODERN HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
*For several centuries after the destruction of the Western Empire*, philosophy had hardly an existence except in its records, and these were preserved chiefly for their parchment, half-effaced, covered by what took the place of literature in the (so called) Dark Ages, and at length deciphered by such minute and wearisome toil as only mediaeval cloisters have ever furnished. For a long period, monasteries were the only schools, and in these the learned men of the day were, either successively or alternately, learners and teachers, whence the appellation of _Schoolmen_.
The learned men who bear this name were fond of casuistry, and discussed imagined and often impossible cases with great pains (their readers would have greater); but, so far as we know, they have left no systematic treatises on moral philosophy, and have transmitted no system that owes to them its distinguis.h.i.+ng features. Yet we find among them a very broad division of opinion as to the ground of right. The fundamental position of the Stoics, that virtue is conformity to nature, and thus independent of express legislation,-not created by law, human or divine, but the source and origin of law,-had its champions, strong, but few; while the Augustinian theology, then almost universal, replaced Epicureanism in its denial of the intrinsic and indelible moral qualities of actions. The extreme Augustinians regarded the positive command of G.o.d as the sole cause and ground of right, so that the very things which are forbidden under the severest penalties would become virtuous and commendable, if enjoined by Divine authority. William of Ockham, one of the most ill.u.s.trious of the English Schoolmen, wrote: ”If G.o.d commanded his creatures to hate himself, the hatred of G.o.d would be the duty of man.”
The *earliest modern* theory of morals that presented striking peculiarities was that of *Hobbes* (A. D. 1588-1679), who was indebted solely to the stress of his time, alike for his system and for whatever slender following it may have had. He was from childhood a staunch royalist, was shortly after leaving the University the tutor of a loyal n.o.bleman, and, afterward, of Charles II. during the early years of his exile; and the parliamentary and Puritan outrages seemed to him to be aimed at all that was august and reverend, and adapted to overturn society, revert progress, and crush civilization. According to him, men are by nature one another's enemies, and can be restrained from internecine hostility only by force or fear. An instinctive perception of this truth in the infancy of society gave rise to monarchical and absolute forms of government; for only by thus centralizing and ma.s.sing power, which could be directed against any disturber of the peace, could the individual members of society hold property or life in safety. The king thus reigns by right of human necessity, and obedience to him and to const.i.tuted authorities under him is man's whole duty, and the sum of virtue. Might creates right. Conscience is but another name for the fear of punishment. The intimate connection of religion with civil freedom in the English Commonwealth no doubt went far in uprooting in Hobbes all religious faith; and while he did not openly attack Christianity, he maintained the duty of entire conformity to the monarch's religion, whatever it might be, which is of course tantamount to the denial of objective religious truth.(22)
Hobbes may fairly be regarded as *the father of modern ethical philosophy*,-not that he had children after his own likeness; but his speculations were so revolting equally to thinking and to serious men, as to arouse inquiry and stimulate mental activity in a department previously neglected.
The gauntlet thus thrown down by Hobbes was taken up by *Cudworth* (A. D.
1617-1688), the most learned man of his time, whose ”Intellectual System of the Universe” is a prodigy of erudition,-a work in which his own thought is so blocked up with quotations, authorities, and ma.s.ses of recondite lore, that it is hardly possible to trace the windings of the river for the debris of auriferous rocks that obstruct its flow. The treatise with which we are concerned is that on ”Eternal and Immutable Morality.” In this he maintains that the right exists, independently of all authority, by the very nature of things, in co-eternity with the Supreme Being. So far is he from admitting the possibility of any dissiliency between the Divine will and absolute right, that he turns the tables on his opponents, and cla.s.ses among Atheists those of his contemporaries who maintain that G.o.d can command what is contrary to the intrinsic right; that He has no inclination to the good of his creatures; that He can justly doom an innocent being to eternal torments; or that whatever G.o.d wills is just because He wills it.
*Samuel Clarke* (A. D. 1675-1729) followed Cudworth in the same line of thought. He was, it is believed, the first writer who employed the term _fitness_ as defining the ground of the immutable and eternal right, though the idea of fitness necessarily underlies every system or theory that a.s.signs to virtue intrinsic validity.
*Shaftesbury* (A. D. 1671-1713) represents virtue as residing, not in the nature or relations of things, but in the bearing of actions on the welfare or happiness of beings other than the actor. Benevolence const.i.tutes virtue; and the merit of the action and of the actor is determined by the degree in which particular affections are merged in general philanthropy, and reference is had, not to individual beneficiaries or benefits, but to the whole system of things of which the actor forms a part. The affections from which such acts spring commend themselves to the moral sense, and are of necessity objects of esteem and love. But the moral sense takes cognizance of the affections only, not of the acts themselves; and as the conventional standard of the desirable and the useful varies with race, time, and culture, the acts which the affections prompt, and which therefore are virtuous, may be in one age or country such as the people of another century or land may repudiate with loathing. Las Casas, in introducing negro slavery into America, with the fervently benevolent purpose of relieving the hards.h.i.+ps of the feeble and overtasked aborigines, performed, according to this theory, a virtuous act; but had he once considered the question of intrinsic right or natural fitness, a name so worthily honored would never have been a.s.sociated with the foulest crime of modern civilization.
According to *Adam Smith* (A. D. 1723-1790), moral distinctions depend wholly on sympathy. We approve in others what corresponds to our own tastes and habits; we disapprove whatever is opposed to them. As to our own conduct, ”we suppose ourselves,” he writes, ”the spectators of our own behavior, and endeavor to imagine what effect it would in this light produce in us.” Our sense of duty is derived wholly from our thus putting ourselves in the place of others, and inquiring what they would approve in us. Conscience, then, is a collective and corporate, not an individual faculty. It is created by the prevalent opinions of the community.
Solitary virtue there cannot be; for without sympathy there is no self-approval. By parity of reason, the duty of the individual can never transcend the average conscience of the community. This theory describes society as it is, not as it ought to be. We are, to a sad degree, conventional in our practice, much more so than in our beliefs; but it is the part of true manliness to have the conscience an interior, not an external organ, to form and actualize notions of right and duty for one's self, and to stand and walk alone, if need there be, as there manifestly is in not a few critical moments, and as there is not infrequently in the inward experience of every man who means to do his duty.
*Butler* (A. D. 1692-1752), in his ”Ethical Discourses,” aims mainly and successfully to demonstrate the rightful supremacy of conscience. His favorite conception is of the human being as himself a household [_an economy_],-the various propensities, appet.i.tes, pa.s.sions, and affections, the members,-Conscience, the head, recognized as such by all, so that there is, when her sovereignty is owned, an inward repose and satisfaction; when she is disobeyed, a sense of discord and rebellion, of unrest and disturbance. This is sound and indisputable, and it cannot be more clearly stated or more vividly ill.u.s.trated than by Butler; but he manifestly regards conscience as legislator no less than judge, and thus fails to recognize any objective standard of right. It is evident that on his ground there is no criterion by which honestly erroneous moral judgments can be revised, or by which a discrimination can be made between the results of education or involuntary prejudice, and the right as determined by the nature of things and the standard of intrinsic fitness.
Of all modern ethical writers since the time of Cudworth and Clarke, none so much as approaches the position occupied by *Richard Price* (A. D.
1723-1791), a London dissenting divine, a warm advocate of American independence, and the intimate friend of John Adams. He maintained that right and wrong are inherent and necessary, immutable and eternal characteristics, not dependent on will or command, but on the intrinsic nature of the act, and determined with unerring accuracy by conscience, whenever the nature of the case is clearly known. ”Morality,” he writes, ”is fixed on an immovable basis, and appears not to be in any sense fact.i.tious, or the arbitrary production of any power, human or divine; but equally everlasting and necessary with all truth and reason.” ”Virtue is of intrinsic value and of indispensable obligation; not the creature of will, but necessary and immutable; not local and temporary, but of equal extent and antiquity with the Divine mind; not dependent on power, but the guide of all power.”(23)
*Paley* (A. D. 1743-1805) gives a definition of virtue, remarkable for its combination of three partial theories. Virtue, according to him, is ”the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of G.o.d, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.” Of this definition it may be said, 1. The doing good to mankind is indeed virtue; but it is by no means the whole of virtue. 2. Obedience to the will of G.o.d is our duty; but it is so, because his will must of necessity be in accordance with the fitting and right.
Could we conceive of Omnipotence commanding what is intrinsically unfit and wrong, the virtuous man would not be the G.o.d-server, but the Prometheus suffering the implacable vengeance of an unrighteous Deity. 3.
Though everlasting happiness be the result of virtue, it is not the ground or the reason for it. Were our being earth-limited, virtue would lose none of its obligation. Epictetus led as virtuous a life as if heaven had been open to his faith and hope.-Paley's system may be described in detail as Shaftesbury's, with an external was.h.i.+ng of Christianity; Shaftesbury having been what was called a free-thinker, while Paley was a sincere believer in the Christian revelation, and contributed largely and efficiently to the defence of Christianity and the ill.u.s.tration of its records. The chief merit of Paley's treatise on Moral Philosophy is that it clearly and emphatically recognizes the Divine authority of the moral teachings of the New Testament, though in expounding them the author too frequently dilutes them by considerations of expediency.
*Jeremy Bentham* (A. D. 1747-1832) is Paley _minus_ Christianity. The greatest good of the greatest number is, according to him, the aim and criterion of virtue. Moral rules should be constructed with this sole end; and this should be the pervading purpose of all legislation. Bentham's works are very voluminous, and they cover, wisely and well, almost every department of domestic, social, public, and national life. The worst that can be said of his political writings is that they are in advance of the age,-literally Utopian;(24) for it would be well with the country which was prepared to embody his views. But, unfortunately, his principles have no power of self-realization. They are like a watch, perfect in all other parts, but without the mainspring. Bentham contemplates the individual man as an agency, rather than as an intellectual and moral integer. He must work under yoke and harness for ends vast and remote, beyond the appreciation of ordinary mortals; and he must hold all partial affections and nearer aims subordinate to rules deduced by sages and legislators from considerations of general utility. Bentham's influence on legislation, especially on criminal law, has been beneficially felt on both sides of the Atlantic. In the department of pure ethics, there are no essential points of difference between him and other writers of the utilitarian school.(25)
In *France* there has been a large preponderance of sensualism, expediency, and selfishness in the ethical systems that have had the most extensive currency. There was a great deal of elaborate ethical speculation and theory among the French philosophers of the last century; but among them we cannot recall a single writer who maintained a higher ground than Bentham, except that Rousseau-perhaps the most immoral of them all-who was an Epicurean so far as he had any philosophy, sometimes soars in sentimental rhapsodies about the intrinsic beauty and loveliness of a virtue which he knew only by name.
*Malebranche* (A. D. 1638-1714), whose princ.i.p.al writings belong to the previous century, represents entirely opposite views and tendencies. He hardly differs from Samuel Clarke, except in phraseology. He resolves virtue into love of the universal order, and conformity to it in conduct.
This order requires that we should prize and love all beings and objects in proportion to their relative worth, and that we should recognize this relative worth in our rules and habits of life. Thus man is to be more highly valued and more a.s.siduously served than the lower animals, because worth more; and G.o.d is to be loved infinitely more than man, and to be always obeyed and served in preference to man, because he is worth immeasurably more than the beings that derive their existence from him.
Malebranche ascribes to the Supreme Being, not the arbitrary exercise of power in const.i.tuting the right, but recognition, in his government of the world and in his revealed will, of the order, which is man's sole law.
”Sovereign princes,” he says, ”have no right to use their authority without reason. Even G.o.d has no such miserable right.”
At nearly the same period commenced the ethical controversy between *Fenelon* (A. D. 1651-1715) and *Bossuet* (A. D. 1627-1704), as to the possibility and obligation of disinterested virtue. Fenelon and the Quietists, who sympathized with him, maintained that the pure love of G.o.d, without any self-reference, or regard for one's own well-being either here or here-after, is the goal and the test of human perfection, and that nothing below this-nothing which aims or aspires at anything less than this-deserves the name of virtue. Bossuet defended the selfish theory of virtue, attacked his amiable antagonist with unconscionable severity and bitterness, and succeeded in obtaining from the court of Rome-though against the wishes of the Pope-the condemnation of the obnoxious tenet.
The Pope remarked, with well-turned ant.i.thesis, that Fenelon might have erred from excess in the love of G.o.d, while Bossuet had sinned by defect in the love of his neighbor.
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