F. SlEFFERT.
[English ethics dates from Francis Bacon (q.v.), who by an empirical method presented the good as the useful. To Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679) the summum bonum was self-preservation. In the natural condition every man's hand was against his neighbor; the state is therefore necessary. The
Ethics
THE NEW SCHAFF HERZOG
two factors of his ethics were egoistic hedonism and absolute social authority. Since Hobbes ethical thought has taken several direcio. Ethics tions. (1) Intuitionalism, of which in England there is an earlier and a later school. and According to the Cambridge Platon- America. ists, Ralph Cudworth (q.v.; Eternal and Immutable Morality, London, 1731), Henry More (q.v.; Enchiridion Ethicum, 2 parts, London, 1667), and Samuel Clarke (q.v.; Being and Attributes of God, 2 vols., London, 1704), the intuitional philosophy was applied to ethics (see Cambridge Platonists). Good and evil are referred to eternal moral ideas a priori. This type of thought was followed by Richard Price (d. 1791; Review of the Principal Questions of Morals, London, 1758), by Thomas Reid (q.v.; Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, Edinburgh, 1788), by Dugald Stewart (q.v.; Philosophy of the Active and Moral Pouters of Man, 1828), and by William Whewell (q.v.; Elements of Morality, London, 1846). To these must be added Henry Calderwood (q.v.; Handbook of Moral Philosophy, London, 1888) and James Martineau (q.v.; Types of Ethical Theory, Oxford, 1885). (2) Utilitarianism or hedonism, deriving from Bacon and Hobbes, does not flow in a straight course, but in general to it belongs John Locke (see Deism) , who held that happiness was the ultimate motive of moral action. His great contribution to ethics was his doctrine on power (Essay concerning Human Understanding, book II., chap. xxi., London, 1690) which profoundly influenced Jonathan Edwards (q.v.) in his discussion of the will (A Careful and Strict Enquiry into Freedom of
the Will, Boston, 1754). David Hume (q.v.) in his Inquiry into the Principles of Morals (London, 1751) and Adam Smith (d. 1770) in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (London, 1759) resolve the motives to moral action into either utility or pleasure, and find in sympathy the ultimate quality of the moral sentiments. Closely allied with this movement was David Hartley (d. 1757; Observations on Man, London, 1749), who by a physiological and psychological method explained the ethical consciousness by the association of ideas, and showed how from the pleasures and pains of sensation are derived the higher pleasures and pains of imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, theopathy, and, finally, the moral sense. Somewhere between the intuitionalists and the utilitarians must be placed Bishop Joseph Butler (q.v.), who in his Sermons on Human Nature alleges three principles of action: self-love; benevolence; and conscience, which adjudicates between the claims of the other two. Later echoes of this teaching are heard in America in Nathaniel William Taylor's (q.v.) doctrine of selflove, in Noah Porter (q.v.; Elements of Moral Science, New York, 1885), Mark Hopkins (q.v.; The Law of Love and Love as Law, New York, 1869), and James Henry Fairchild (Moral Philosophy, Oberlin, 1869). The more modern advocates of thoroughgoing utilitarianism are William Paley (q.v.; Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, London, 1785), who derived obligation from the command of another to which one is urged by a violent motive; Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832; Prin-
ciples of Morals and Legislation, London, 1789), who holds the summum bonum to be the greatest good of the greatest number, and John Stuart Mill (d. 1873- Utilitarianism, London, 1861), who makes the end' to be the greatest amount of happiness altogether. According to Bentham, the sanctions of morality are physical, political, social, religious; according to Mill, they are external or internal. Other writers of this school are Henry Sidgwick (Methods of Ethics London, 1890) and A. Bain (Moral Science, New York, 1869). (3) Evolutionary Ethics— a form of hedonism — affirms in general that society is a developing social organism, the end of which is according to Herbert Spencer (Data of Ethics, London 1879) happiness, according to Leslie Stephens (Science of Ethics, London, 1882) health or efficiency, according to Samuel Alexander (Moral Order and Progress, London, 1889) equilibrium. Progress is determined by continuous adjustment of internal to external relations (Spencer) or by conflict of idols (Alexander). (4) Idealistic Ethics relates conduct to a rational ideal from the point of view of the source, evolution, sanctions, and principles of action. The rational ideal is that of a moral self in social union with other selves in a kingdom of personal ends. Representatives of this view in Great Britain are Thomas Hill Green (Prolegomena to Ethics, Oxford, 1883), Edward Caird (Critical Philosophy of Kant, London, 1877), Francis Herbert Bradley (Ethical Studies, London, 1876), John Henry Muirhead (Elements of Ethics, New York, 1892), William Ritchie Sorley (Ethics of Naturalism, London, 1885), John Stewart Mackenzie (Manual of Ethics, New York, 1901); and in America George Trumbull Ladd (Philosophy of Conduct, New York, 1902), George Herbert Palmer (Field of Ethics, Boston, 1901; and Nature of Goodness, ib. 1903), J. Royce (Philosophy of Loyalty, New York, 1908), and A. E. Taylor (Problem of Conduct, London, 1901). (5) Teleological Ethics — a combination of hedonistic and idealistic ethics in which the will to live the life which belongs to man is the summum bonum — is advocated by Frederick Thilly (Introduction to the Study of Ethics, New York, 1900) in reliance upon Friedrich Paulsen's System of Ethics (New York, 1899, Eng. transl. of System der Ethik). Allied with this is William James's Will to Believe (New York, 1897) resting upon the premises of pragmatism. (6) As distinguished from Germany, in Great Britain and America Christian as compared with philosophical ethics has received less attention. The subject has been treated under the title Christian Ethics by Thomas Banks Strong in the Bampton Lectures for 1895 (London, 1896), by Newman Smyth (New York, 1896), and by William Leslie Davidson (London, 1899). C. A. B.]
III. New Testament Ethics: There is no system of ethics in the New Testament, not even a conscious suggestio' of the need for system. The clearest evidence of this is given in the lack of unity in Rom. xii.-xv., the most considerable body of ethical teaching found in the New Testament outside the Gospels. But the conscious need of system belongs to the speculative individual, detached in some degree both from religious emotion and from corporate obligation; and while there is nothing in