THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Determinism seems to destroy the value of ethics altogether, while indeterminism may be made to harmonize with the recognition of grace. There is bound to come up also the principle of autonomy, that is, whether conduct is necessarily subordinated to the principles of rational insight or to the effects of psychological motives. From this point of view, all individuals stand alike. It is really an application of the convictions of political equality and ecclesiastical toleration, as they were developed in the course of the seventeenth century. The next problem is concerned with the relation of morality and religion. Under the older system they were identical; no true morality was possible without faith. The new point of view was to treat religion as a kind of by-product, a special modification of a common natural morality. Religion itself became the subject of psychological analysis. The question arose as to the necessary relation between divine sanction or the fate of man in the next world and man's striving and willing in this. Finally, it became necessary to establish a formulation of the content of the moral law as a psychological principle in such a way that its obligations could be established as ultimate derivatives from the principles above classified and analyzed. If the Biblical standards were abandoned as necessarily authoritative, in what way could Christian ethics be brought into relation with this general analysis outlined above? The problem was finally solved by turning over the discussion of Christian ethics to theology, although at first the general formulation of moral ideas was certainly influenced by Christian types of thought. But these attempts were unsatisfactory, old scholastic conceptions were seen to lack clearness, and in proportion to the degree of removal of extraneous elements from the moral idea, the more its autonomy became plain and independent by right. These were the problems which the political and social condition of England in the seventeenth century forced into the atmosphere of thought and discussion, as they are represented in the speculations of Hobbes, the ideas of the Levellers (q.v.), and the practical program of the Erastians (see Erastcs, Thomas, Erastianism). III. Specific Contributions: It was Hobbes (q.v.; and see Deism, I., § 2), writing under the influence of the French and Italian Renaissance, who opposed the practical workings of the i. Hobbes Reformed independent ideal, the rigand Man- oristic spiritualism of their Christian deville. social order, and tried to found morality on a purely sensualistic basis. His political ideal of the State was that of Machiavelli, and the weapons he employed against spiritualism were the sensualistic ideas of Pierre Gassendi (q.v). But the whole structure of his thought is based on keen psychological analysis. He accomplished a complete and radical revolution in ethics, finding the source of the moral law in the secular sphere. The law of nature and divine law he interprets in an entirely novel way. The law of nature is differentiated from natural law, which by itself implies a primitive war of all against all. The law of nature is maintained because man's interests demand i^. The abso-
lute State which comes into existence through its operation has also the right to establish the true religion, for the divine law has also its sanctions from the existence of that absolute political system which man, coming out of his original confusion and discord, discovers as the sole condition of his social existence. Hobbes brings Christianity into full conformity with his absolute State. The State decides what form of Christianity shall be adopted by its subjects; even heathen states have the right of maintaining untrue religions for the sake of common welfare, and must not be resisted on this account. Hobbes' originality consists in his concentration on secular interests, his psychological analysis, and his introduction of historical illustrations into his system. Mandeville (1670-1733; see Deism, I., § 8) is important as attempting to show that moral conceptions are artificial creations intended to hold the mass of people in subjection, and from his arguments that the specific ideas of Christian ethics can not be accommodated to political, social, commercial needs.
In the Restoration there was a strong reaction against the sensualism and nominalism of Hobbes, showing itself in an attempt to establish the necessity and the apriority of moral ideas by metaphysics, and more particularly the metaphysics 2. Cam- of Platonism. This was the work of bridge the Cambridge school (see Cambridge School, Platonists) which allied itself with Cudworth, Anglican rationalism and Arminian- More, and ism and was antagonistic to Calvinis- Cumberland. tic positivism and rigorism. The law of nature is completed, according to this school, in the divine law. Stress is laid upon the necessary element of ethics and the impossibility of a purely psychological foundation. The head of the school was Cudworth (q.v.), who, like Kant and Plato, insisted upon the absolute character of morality. He asks whether the mind as the source of all necessary truth is the first factor and the experience of sense, the simple material of mind, is the second; or whether the reverse is true, so that the spiritual and the necessary must be derived from the accidental and occasional. He himself, of course, defends the necessariness of ethical ideas on the basis of the eternally necessary relations of minds to one another, which relation is based ultimately on God and is, in a fragmentary way, reflected from the conceptually necessary in God's mind to the mind of man. Henry More (q.v.) introduces the element of psychological analysis, applying it to the feelings and emotions, and combining morality with the happiness of the whole community and the individual member. It is in what he calls the " boniform faculty " that he finds the special sphere for the moral principles. The coincidence of happiness with moral conduct follows from the divine plan of the world. Richard Cumberland (1631- 1718), whose special interest lay in contesting Hobbes' view of the original condition of man, shows the a priori character of the moral demands by proving that the faithful maintenance of Hobbes' contract between the individual and the State depends on a previously existing moral element. The operations and processes of sense only bring out