any supernatural monitor within our breasts to warn us of what is pleasing to him. Our own natural instincts are sufficient to lead us, as the force of gravity is sufficient to keep the stars in their courses without further interference. And thus morality, like everything else, is merely the product of natural forces. Following his master Locke, Tucker has banished all innate ideas and everything that savours of the mysterious in human nature. The one simple force which drives the machinery is our desire for happiness. That is the ultimate end of all men. No one can assert more emphatically that the measure of morality is the tendency of actions to promote happiness, and that the aim of every particular individual is to secure his own happiness. In his chapter on 'Doing all for the Glory of God' he says that a man's first step must be by a thorough conviction of his judgment that acting for the divine Glory is acting most for his own benefit.' 'I have observed all along,' he adds, 'that self lies at the bottom of everything we do; in all our actions we constantly pursue the satisfaction grounded on something apprehended beneficial in our judgment or soothing in our fancy; the purest affections grow from one or other of these roots, and the sublimest of our virtues must be engrafted upon the former; therefore the love of God, to be sincere and vigorous, must spring from the settled opinion of his goodness and beneficence, and that every act of conformity to his will is beneficial to the performer.' The farsighted selfishness which teaches us to imitate God supplies also the motives for obeying his commands. Tucker gives us in one place a philosophical version of the Ten Commandments. He imagines an angel sent from heaven to deliver a divine message in these words: Know that if thou shalt worship chance or necessity, an uncreated nature, or any God beside me; if thou shalt,' in short, break any other of the commandments, 'know that in so doing thou actest foolishly, for by all these things thou wilt lose far greater enjoyment than thou canst gain for the present, and bring down intolerable mischiefs upon thy head.' God has spoken from this utilitarian Sinai, and declares to all his creatures that vice is a bad speculation. 127. The harshness of this selfish doctrine is partly 1 Tucker, 'Doing all for the Glory of God,' sec. 4, ii. 508. 2 Ib. Divine Justice,' sec. 4, i. 626. softened by the theory which Tucker had learnt from Hartley. The principle of association, or, as Tucker chooses to call it, translation, is that which transmutes the base metal of selfishness into the gold of benevolence. Though flowers,' he says, 'grow out of the dirt,' they retain nothing of the foulness of their original source; and so 'charity, though shooting most vigorously from rational self-love, yet, when perfectly formed, has no tincture remaining of the parent root." Thus we forget the ultimate end in the means, and from doing good because it is our interest, learn to do it without conscious reference to any ulterior purpose. The benevolent impulses, however, though thus transformed, retain far more of their original character than in the scheme of Hartley. The ultimate end is not taken into account in every action, but it always remains in the background to be referred to, if necessary, in justification of our conduct. We resemble travellers carrying a general map of the country, which exhibits the right path as leading, though often by a circuitous route, to our ultimate destination. For practical purposes, we are often content with more limited plans, which represent the path as apparently deviating from the true direction; but we are content because we know that the larger map will show that the deviation is only in appearance. 128. Thus Tucker discusses at intervals the critical case of Regulus, which was a kind of standing puzzle for the moralists of the time. If Regulus did right, he says, it must have been because he acted more for his own happiness in the sequel than he could have done by any breach of faith.' He admits it to be possible, theoretically, that the satisfaction which Regulus felt in acting rightly might have 'overbalanced the pain of the tenters.'3 And yet it seems, on further consideration, that a man ought to know when to make exceptions to general rules, and should have known in such a case that the suffering could not be compensated by the pleasure. 'Upon the whole,' he says, 'we are forced to acknowledge that hitherto we have found no reason to imagine a wise man would ever die for his country or suffer martyrdom in the cause of virtue, how strong propensity soever he might feel in himself to maintain her interests." After searching every corner of the human breast' we have found our own satisfaction to be the sole spring of all our actions and the ultimate end of all our contrivances.2 How, then, are we to escape from the dilemma? for Tucker begs his readers not to imagine, even for a time, that this atrocious condemnation of all self-sacrifice is really his last word. To discover a satisfactory solution of the enigma, Tucker has to lead us through all the labyrinths of his theological system. Ultimately he emerges with a discovery which is made known to us in a chapter on the Re-enlargement of Virtue.' After explaining its nature, we may now, he says, 'do ample justice to Regulus, whom we left under a sentence of folly for throwing away life with all its enjoyments for a phantom of honour. For he may allege that he had not a fair trial before, his principal evidence being out of the way, which, having since collected in the course of his second book, he moves for a rehearing.' In fact, Regulus now pleads that he was doing great good by his example. He was persuaded, likewise, that all the good a man does stands placed to his account, to be repaid him in full value when it will be most useful to him; so that whoever works for another works for himself, and by working for numbers, earns more than he possibly could by working for himself alone. Therefore he acted like a thrifty merchant, who scruples not to advance considerable sums, and even to exhaust his coffers, for gaining a large advantage to the common stock in partnership.'3 Regulus, therefore, is acquitted with flying colours. The mode in which Regulus is repaid appears very plainly by the comparison of heaven to a 'universal bank, where accounts are regularly kept and every man debited or credited for the least farthing he takes out or brings in. The bank of heaven has many advantages, indeed, over the Bank of England; not only is the security perfect, but the rate of interest is enormous; whenever and wherever I may be in want, 'the runner angel' will 'privately slip the proper sum into my hand at a time when I least expect it; and, finally, we can have no reason to be jealous of 14 1 Tucker, Temptation of Virtue,' sec. 8, i. 272. 2 Ib. i. 273. the larger balances of other customers, for we are all dealing in partnership and we shall all profit equally. 129. This last phrase suggests one curious whim of the worthy Tucker, with which I may conclude my account of his system. He persuades himself that, since God gives everything, he must give an equal share to everybody; or that, as he puts it, 'the value of each person's existence, computed throughout the whole extent of his being,' must be 'precisely the same.' 1 This singular reference would appear to cut at the very roots of Tucker's theory; for it would prove that, as in the long run all actions are indifferent, rational self-love could not prompt one course of conduct more than another. Tucker succeeds in reconciling himself to the conclusion by various ingenious devices, resting on the general principle that the mind can only take into account a certain length of time; we can see far enough before us to realise that vice will be punished in the next world, and not far enough to realise that the punishment will be finally compensated after some indefinitely vast lapse of time. A thousand years or so of torment would, he thinks, be enough to deter a man from wickedness, though they might be followed by an eternity of happiness. The strange whim, characteristic of a solitary and half-trained thinker, had the recommendation to him that it enables him to get rid of eternal punishment. He takes a view of our destinies almost as cheerful as that of Hartley. By a queer series of calculations, founded on certain hypothetical statistics as to the vehicular state, he persuades himself that our whole amount of suffering may be equivalent to a 'minute of pain once in every twenty-two years.' The minutes of trouble, however, often come so thick together' that they prevent us from seeing beyond them to the remoter ages of happiness. 2 130. Let us hope that this kindly extravagance solaced the good Tucker, when the evil of the world pressed too heavily on his soul; if it rather shakes our belief in his intellectual vigour, it helps to complete the portrait of a singularly innocent, cheerful, and kindly temperament. The moral theory which, in other hands, seems to involve a deTucker, Equality,' sec. 2, i. 597. 2 Ib. Divine Economy,' sec. 39, ii. 364. grading view of human nature, seems with him to be the natural expression of cheerful common sense. 131. Paley, in the preface to his 'Moral and Political Philosophy,' candidly acknowledges his great obligations to Tucker. Their theories are, in fact, nearly identical. The whimsical fancies which adorn or disfigure Tucker's pages have indeed disappeared. We hear nothing of the mundane soul, the vehicular state, or the equality of all human lives. Paley is a hard-headed North-countryman, whose chief mental sustenance has been a severe course of Cambridge mathematics. He is throughout a systematiser, not an original thinker; and his system begins by expelling as far as possible everything that is not as solid and tangible as a proposition in Euclid. Moreover, his ethical treatise is, in fact, intended for educational purposes. In such works, clearness and order are the cardinal virtues, and originality, if not a vice, is of equivocal advantage. Paley primarily is a condenser and a compiler; though he modestly enough claims to be 'more than a mere compiler.' ' He gives a lucid summary of the most generally accepted system; and if there is any gleam of originality in his writing, it is, for the most part, such as occasionally results from a rearrangement of old materials. Law, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle, and Waterland, were both heads of houses, and Rutherforth a professor of divinity at Cambridge. Paley was an intimate friend and colleague in the tuition of Christ College of John Law, son of the Bishop of Carlisle, and it was from the Bishop that he received his first preferment. Locke's Essay was the main authority upon which he relied in his college lectures. Thus, the influences under which he was placed were all favourable to that phase of utilitarianism which we are considering; and Paley, with his undeniable merits as a reasoner, was not the man to desert the paths into which he had been guided. He has simply given a compact statement of what may be called the orthodox theory. 132. Thus he attacks the moral sense theory by the arguments of Locke, with some additions from later writers Caius Toranius, he says, betrayed his father to the executioners under circumstances of special atrocity. Would the I Works, i. xlix. |