the Deistic movement was to reduce religion essentially to a life of moral conduct. Indeed, in the unimaginative temper of the age, which was in most cases quite incapable of entering into the deeper aspects of religious experience, this was where practically the emphasis was laid, even by those theologians who stood as opponents of Deism. But now from this emphasis an important consequence arose. The attempt to find for morality a foundation independent of theology, brought about the first development of ethical theory on a large scale in modern times. To the chief phases of this we may turn briefly.

The starting-point of English ethics is Hobbes, and his selfish theory of human nature. This naturally called forth strong opposition, and nearly all the succeeding moralists have Hobbes more or less directly in view. Among the earlier theorists, the most important is Richard Cumberland. Cumberland denies that man is wholly selfish, and adds to the egoistic motives of Hobbes, social and benevolent affections also, which are equally original. Man is thus

social in his nature, and finds a direct satisfaction in doing good to others, apart from the indirect benefits he may hope to gain. Moreover, there is a necessary connection between individual and social welfare, which makes it impossible to secure individual happiness, except by subordinating oneself to the good of mankind. This connection is decreed by God, who thus supplies the ultimate ground for the obligation to perform those benevolent acts which the welfare of mankind demands, and in which morality consists.

Other attempts to give to ethics a foundation which should not seem to destroy its rational justification, are represented by Cudworth, Clarke and Wollaston, and Shaftesbury. Ralph Cudworth Ralph Cudworth-a Platonist - had recourse to innate ideas of reason. Samuel Clarke, again, attempted to find a criterion in the notion of conformity to the fitness or harmony of things—a relation which, like mathematics, is capable of being known as self-evident,

and which is even independent of the will of God. With William Wollaston, who was influenced by Clarke, this takes the form that a wrong act is ultimately a false judgment, or a lie. A rational being should act in accordance with the true relations of things; and it is because his act implicitly denies this truth, that it is wrong. Thus the murderer acts as though he were able to restore life to his victim; the man who is cruel to animals declares by his act that the creature is a being devoid of feeling.

More important than any of the preceding names, is that of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury's conception of the ethical end is the full expression of human life, the complete carrying out of its potentialities into the flower of a beautiful personality. In opposition to Hobbes, these potentialities involve unselfish, social tendencies, as well as those that are purely self-seeking. But morality does not have to do simply with the former, as Cumberland had thought. It is found rather in the harmonious interaction of the two, by which each is given its rights; and it is assumed that there can be no ultimate conflict. Another significant side of Shaftesbury's thought is his conception of the source of our ethical judgments. This he finds in an instinctive good taste in ethical matters, which the man of refinement possesses, and which is entirely analogous to æsthetic taste. The source of moral judgments thus goes back, not to reason, but to feeling. Shaftesbury has a disciple in Francis Hutcheson, who emphasizes this conception of a moral sense, which he conceives as an innate faculty of ethical judgment common to all men. The same general tendency appears in Bishop Butler's conception of conscience as the voice of God in human life.

Meanwhile, another tendency connects itself more directly with Hobbes. This went back to the common-sense view of pleasure as the end which man seeks. Morality, then, can only come in as this self-seeking is subjected to some law, either the law of the state, or, going beyond this, a law imposed by God. In either case, however, this

looks in the direction of making morality essentially a social matter, and so of setting up the happiness of society as the criterion of the moral act. This tendency at last succeeded in working itself out clearly in the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, who made the phrase "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" the watchword of later English ethics. A further question must arise, however, in regard to the motive which is to lead the individual to adopt this standard, and act for the common good. In Locke's case, as will be remembered, this is found ultimately in the individual's own self-interest. God has attached certain penalties, here and hereafter, to the violation of his laws, which make the life of virtue the only way of procuring happiness in the long run. This receives a bald statement in Paley's famous definition of virtue: virtue consists in seeking "the happiness of mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." A more careful psychological analysis, in Hume and Adam Smith, attempted to show the impossibility of reducing all motives to interested self-seeking, and brought the feeling of sympathy to the front as the real spring of altruistic action.

LITERATURE

Berkeley, Alciphron.

Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.

Cairns, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century.

Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity.

Butler, Analogy of Religion, Sermons on Human Nature.
Collins, Butler.

Selby-Bigge, British Moralists.

Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times.

Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson.

Mackintosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy during the Seven

teenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

Patten, Development of English Thought.

Albee, History of English Utilitarianism.

§ 35. The French Enlightenment. clopedists. The Materialists. Herder

Voltaire and the EncyRousseau. Lessing and

1. The French Enlightenment. The results of the English Enlightenment were introduced into France by Voltaire, who had been influenced by Locke during a sojourn in England. This influence took root in a brilliant circle of Frenchmen, who, from their connection with the new Encylopedia, which was to embody the knowledge that mankind had so far attained, were known as the Encylopedists. Connected more or less closely with this enterprise, were such men as Diderot, d'Alembert, Voltaire, Holbach, Turgot, Montesquieu, Helvetius, and others. In addition to some positive scientific achievements, the French Enlightenment directed its weapons, as in England, against the popular religious beliefs which seemed to it to be irrational and harmful. But by reason of conditions in France, the strife took on here a far sharper and more virulent tone. The Deistic controversy which in free England was largely a matter of scholastic discussion, was in France a real battle against forces of obscurantism and oppression which were very much in evidence. Medieval institutions, both of Church and State, still maintained themselves, and the result was in both cases practical abuses of the worst sort. Against the intolerance and oppression of a corrupt clergy, who used the instrument of traditional belief as a weapon against all efforts at reform, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists stood out as the deadliest foes. They set themselves, with every resource of scientific knowledge, clear reasoning, and biting wit, to discredit the foundation on which the influence of their opponents rested. It is this unceasing and fearless hatred of injustice, which gives to the figure of Voltaire heroic proportions, in spite of all his intellectual limitations, and personal faults.

This practical aim, also, determined to a considerable

extent the course which the French Enlightenment was to take, in opposition to the scepticism which had been the outcome of English thought in Hume. As a weapon against a real and dangerous foe, Hume's results were too fine spun, too far from common sense, too impractical, to appeal to the French reformers. In distinction from the Idealism of England, the more significant side of the French Enlightenment tended, in the fight against tradition, to a thoroughgoing and consistent scientific view of the world

that is, to Materialism — without bothering itself very much about the theoretical difficulties of this view. In the beginning, indeed, the Enlightenment was Deistic. It still held to natural religion, and the somewhat vague and contentless God who stands as the original source of the world. But such remnants of a religious faith were not very deepseated, and they quickly tended to disappear altogether as naturalism and sensationalism were carried out to their logical results. Lamettrie, in his L'Homme Machine, reduces man, as Descartes had reduced the animal, to a mere automaton-a body governed by purely physical and necessary laws. The innumerable facts which show the close dependence of the mind on bodily conditions were insisted on with much skill and impressiveness. The conscious life is composed entirely of sensations, which are directly dependent on bodily processes. This sensationalism was worked out theoretically by Condillac, who supposes a statue endowed simply with the sense of smell, and then tries to show how all the mental faculties can be evolved out of this. And while Condillac did not draw the ultimate consequences of this sensationalism, other men stood ready to perform the task. Helvetius, in particular, carries the same principle into the practical and moral realm. The sole motive of our acts is egoism and self-interest, and the most exalted virtues reduce themselves to self-love, and a desire for pleasure.

These movements are summed up in Holbach, and the System of Nature, where they take a form which is