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other subordinate precepts,-which may all be summed up in the simple formula, "Do not that to another which thou wouldest not have done to thyself," he calls "immutable and eternal laws of nature"; meaning that though a man is not unconditionally bound to realise them in act, he is bound as a reasonable being to desire and aim at their realisation. For they must always be means to the attainment of peace, and the "first and fundamental law of nature" -so far as man's relations to his fellows are concerned 2-is to "seek peace and follow it"; though if peace cannot be obtained, he may reasonably "seek and use all helps and advantages of war." It is equally opposed to nature's end of self-preservation (1) that an individual should render unreciprocated obedience to moral rules in the interest of others, and so "make himself a prey to others," and (2) that he should refuse to observe such rules when he has sufficient security that they will be observed by others, and so "seek not peace but war." For the state of nature, in which men must be supposed to have existed before government was instituted, and into which they would relapse if it were abolished, is indeed a

1 It is clear that Hobbes does not distinguish this formula from the well-known "golden rule" of the Gospel,-cf. Leviathan, ch. xv. p. 79, and ch. xvii. p. 85,-whereas the formula above quoted is, of course, the golden rule taken only in its negative application, as prescribing abstinences, not positive services. It is, perhaps, even more remarkable that Puffendorf, quoting Hobbes, should not have observed the difference between the two formulæ. -Cf. De Jure Naturæ et Gentium, II. ch. iii. § 13.

2 Hobbes takes the term "Law of Nature" in its widest ethical sense, and expressly recognises that "things tending to the destruction of particular men, such as drunkenness and all parts of intemperance, are "amongst those things which the Law of Nature has forbidden" '; but he is only concerned to expound the laws regulative of social conduct, and tending "to the conservation of men in multitudes."

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state free from moral restraints; but it is therefore utterly miserable. It is a state in which, owing to well-grounded mutual fear, every man has a right to everything, “even to one another's body," for it may conduce to his preservation; or, as Hobbes also expresses it, a state in which "right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place"; but it is therefore also a state of war in which every man's hand is against his neighbour's,—a state so wretched and perilous that it is the first dictate of rational self-love to emerge from it into the peace of an ordered commonwealth. Such a commonwealth may arise either by "institution," through compact of the subjects with each other to obey as sovereign a defined individual or assembly acting as one, or by “acquisition" through force, followed by a surrender of the vanquished to the victor at discretion; but in either case the authority of the sovereign must be unquestioned and unlimited. The sovereign is itself bound by the Law of Nature to seek the good of the people, which cannot be separated from its own good; but it is responsible to God alone for its fulfilment of this duty. Its commands are the final measure of right and wrong for the outward conduct of its subjects, and ought to be absolutely obeyed by every one, so long as it affords him protection, and does not threaten serious harm to him personally; since to dispute its dictates would be the first step towards anarchy, the

1 Hobbes does not recognise any formal contradiction between the two statements; because he defines Right (substantive) = Liberty= absence of external impediments; but he practically means by “a right" what most people ordinarily mean by it, i.e. a rightful liberty, a liberty claimed and approved by the individual's reason. In any case the statement that "the notions of right and wrong have no place" in the state of nature is too wide for his real meaning; for he would admit that intemperance is prohibited by the Law of Nature in this state. See preceding note.

one paramount peril outweighing all particular defects in legislation and administration.

It is easy to understand how, in the crisis of 1640,—when the ethico-political system of Hobbes first took written shape, -a peace-loving philosopher, weary of the din of warring sects, should regard the claims of individual conscience as essentially anarchical, and the most threatening danger to social wellbeing; but however strong might be men's yearning for order, a view of social duty, in which the only fixed positions were selfishness everywhere and unlimited power somewhere, could not but appear offensively paradoxical. Nevertheless, offensive or not, there was an originality, a force, an apparent coherence in Hobbism which rendered it undeniably impressive; in fact, we find that for two generations the efforts to construct morality on a philosophical basis take more or less the form of answers to Hobbes. From an ethical point of view Hobbism divides itself naturally into two parts, which are combined by Hobbes's peculiar political doctrines into a coherent whole, but are not otherwise necessarily connected. Its theoretical basis is the principle of egoism,-viz. that it is natural, and so reasonable, for each individual to aim solely at his own preservation or pleasure; while, for the practical determination of the particulars of duty it makes social morality entirely dependent on positive law and institution. It thus affirmed the relativity of good and evil in a double sense ;— good and evil, for any individual citizen, may from one point of view be defined as the objects respectively of his desire and aversion; from another point of view, they may be said to be determined for him by his sovereign. It is the latter part or aspect of the system which is primarily attacked by the first generation of writers that replied to Hobbes. This

§ 3. The Cambridge Moralists.

(16171688).

attack, or rather the counter-exposition of orthodox doctrine, is conducted on different methods by the Cambridge moralists and by Cumberland respectively. The former, regarding morality primarily as a body of knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil, rather than a mere code of rules, insist on its absolute character, independent of any legislative will, and its intuitive certainty. The latter is content with the legal view of morality, but endeavours to establish the validity of the laws of nature by basing them on the single supreme principle of rational regard for the "common good of all," and showing them, as so based, to be adequately supported by Divine sanctions.

Cudworth was the most distinguished of the little group of thinkers at Cambridge in the 17th century, commonly Cudworth known as the "Cambridge Platonists," who, embracing Platonic principles seen through a Neo-Platonic medium, but also influenced by the new thought of Descartes, endeavoured to blend rational theology with religious philosophy. In his treatise on Eternal and Immutable Morality (which was not published till more than forty years after his death in 1688), his main aim is to uphold the "essential and eternal distinctions of good and evil” as independent of mere arbitrary Will, whether human or divine. tains this thesis not only against Hobbes's view of good and evil as determined by the sovereign; but equally against the doctrine of Duns Scotus and Occam, and certain later theologians who regarded all morality as dependent upon the mere will and positive appointment of God. According to Cudworth, the distinctions of good and evil have an objective reality, cognisable by reason no less than the relations of space or number: the knowledge of them comes no doubt to the human mind from the Divine; but it is from the Divine

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Reason, in whose light man imperfectly participates, not merely from the Divine Will as such. Ethical, like mathematical, truth relates properly and primarily not to sensible particulars, but to the intelligible and universal essences of things, which are as immutable as the Eternal mind whose existence is inseparable from theirs: ethical propositions, therefore, are as unchangeably valid for the direction of the conduct of rational beings as the truths of geometry are. Cudworth does not take note of the sense in which Hobbes, in spite of his relativism, does yet maintain laws of nature to be eternal and immutable; nor does his refutation of Hobbism-which he treats as a "novantique philosophy," a mere revival of the relativism and atomism1 of Protagoras-appear to me generally penetrating or effective. His main polemical point is the argumentum ad hominem, by which he tries to show that Hobbes's atomic materialism involves the conception of an objective physical world, the object not of passive sense that varies from man to man, but of the active intellect that is the same in all; there is therefore, he urges, an inconsistency in refusing to admit a similar exercise of intellect in morals, and an objective world of right and wrong, which the mind by its normal activity clearly apprehends.

Cudworth, in the work above mentioned, gives no systematic exposition of the ethical principles which he holds to be thus intuitively apprehended. But we may supply this deficiency from the Enchiridion Ethicum of Henry More, More (1614another thinker of the same school. More gives a list of 1687). twenty-three Noemata Moralia, the truth of which will, he says, be immediately manifest. Some of these admit of a

1 Cudworth misspends some labour in proving that Protagoras-not Democritus-is the author of Atomism as well as Relativism.

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