RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Moralists
some latent element, while the coincidence of happiness with morality is teleological. Good-will, love of one's neighbor, altruism, the whole field of Christian morality, work in and for the common weal.
Related to the Cambridge school is Samuel
Clarke (q.v.), who accepts an absolute standard for
all positive laws. Moral distinctions are therefore
not accidental ; the standard which is
3. Clarke, represented in the typical ideas of
Hartley, the good, the righteous, the truthful, and Price, and so on, the moral judgment of the plain man, come from the necessary relations between the parts of the world, themselves all arising like mathematical relations from the idea of the whole, which, in turn, is dependent on the will of God. The above relations are assumed to be normal because the welfare and maintenance of the whole depends upon them. On this law of nature is based both positive human law and positive divine law, the latter bringing the completion of happiness through the idea of immortality. David Hartley (1705-57) derives from an original selflove the moral judgment in its objective shape; obligations associated with commands apart from the individual have the immediateness of an instinct. These different products of the psychological process are parts of the accomplishment of the divine purpose in man, hence the moral law has a divine necessary character, representing a deterministic pantheism. Richard Price (1723-91) represents the defense of the intuitional character of the moral judgments of approval and disapproval. What originally is confused in instinct is clarified by thought. These judgments do not stand for considerations of interest, are quite distinct from any sensuous feeling of pleasure, and rest ultimately on the system of values established in the divine mind. This rationalizing Christian ethics aimed to establish the derivation of individual and social moral ideas from the presence of God in man's soul. It recognized no distinction between religious and secular aims, and had no intimate connection between the teaching of grace and original sin, but the coincidence in the next world of moral worth and happiness was brought out. The autonomy and divine nature of moral law was not brought into connection with the acts or facts of individual social life. These thinkers were not concerned with the erection of a Christian state nor the separation between a religious morality and the morality of man as citizen and subject of law.
Against such a priori idealistic theories, John Locke (see Deism, I., § 4) worked out his a posteriori sensualistic system, opposed by his philosophy all innate ideas, making the foundation as well for ethics as for knowledge the inves-
4. John tigation of the simplest elements of
Locke. experience, viz., the feeling of pleasure and pain and the power of reflection. There was no criterion, according to him, of intuitive knowledge; this was proved by the great variety of ethical ideas in the field of ethnography and history. On the simplest elements of consciousness he based his principles of conduct. It is this common and simple basis that gives the character of necessity to morality. The law of nature is only an
abstraction from the acts of men directed toward happiness. But moral law depends on a positive legislative will, adding pleasure and pain to the fulfilment of these commands and requiting them by punishment and reward. In this way the divine law of Moses and of Christ is introduced into his system as holding the supreme place, and after that the law of civil society in the State and in justice, with its ordinances resting expressly or unconsciously on a social contract. A third type of law, lying outside of both of these two, is developed from the free intercourse and judgment of society, having its sanction in public opinion and its motive in social respect. These are the chief rules of human action, because the highest attainment of happiness comes through their pursuit; they correspond with the law of nature, and harmonize with the revealed law of God; they represent the principles by which the law of the State secures social welfare; they stand for the principles by which public opinion reaches its clearest form. The State law aims at the union of the religious and political autonomy of the individual with the welfare of the whole, while the other two types of law require self-control and benevolence. In Locke's system the Christian character of morality is preserved, but it has a very loose relation to the fundamental basis of his thought. It comes into view chiefly in his discussion of tolerance, the freedom of the Church, and the political freedom of the individual. But Locke's ethics was the point of departure for two movements, one which further reduced the religious element of Deism (q.v.) contained in it, while on the other side he was appealed to by the anti-deists who established a system of utility and ethical law characterized by rational supernatural elements (William Warburton, 1698-1779, and William Paley, 1743-1805, qq.v.). But after all, in deism the chief point was its criticism of positive religion, rather than its ethical teaching; nor can any real progress be shown by the opponents of deism, in their combination of a natural and rational with a supernatural eudemonism. The greatness of Locke's work consists in his denial of innate ideas and in his establishment of moral rules adequate to the manifold examples of historical morality. He widened the sphere of ethics also by making a place for political and social morality. The practical side of his teaching made him popular in England, although in appreciating the true character of ethical study, he was less profound than the Cambridge school.
The separation of this sensualistic empiristic eudemonism from Christian ethics was made more complete by Lord Shaftesbury (see Deism, I., § 8), who handled the subject as a kind of arithmetic of the feelings. His work shows the es- 5. Shaftes- thetic standpoint of ancient times and bury, But- the Renaissance, especially as he reler, and produces many Stoic points of view. Hutcheson. He opposes the rationalism of the Cambridge school, and rejects the place accorded to reflection by Locke. Man approves the altruistic impulses and feelings that tend to social progress in the State and society, and disapproves whatever disturbs the harmony of so-
moralists