Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/451

  

CLARKE, SAMUEL (1675–1729), divine, was born at Norwich on 11 Oct. 1675. His father, Edward Clarke, was an alderman of Norwich, and represented the town in William III's last parliament. Clarke was educated at the Norwich free school, and entered Caius College, Cambridge, in 1691. His abilities won for him the name of 'the lad of Caius.' He became familiar with Newton's discoveries, and gained credit by defending one of the Newtonian principles in the act for his B.A. degree (1695). His tutor, Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Ellis, set him to make a fresh Latin translation of Rohault's 'Physics' to replace that already in use (by Théophile Bonnet, 1674). Rohault was a follower of Descartes, and Newton's 'Principia' (1st ed. 1687) had not yet been accepted at Cambridge. Clarke, though a disciple of Newton, thought that he could best propagate the new doctrine by publishing Rohault, with notes suggestive of the necessity of modifying Descartes' theories. His translation became the Cambridge text-book; it reached a fourth edition in 1718; Clarke's brother, dean of Salisbury (1682–1757) [q. v.], published an English translation in 1723, and Rohault was still, according to Hoadly, the Cambridge textbook in 1730, the date of his life of Clarke.

In 1697 Clarke accidentally met William Whiston (1667–1752), then chaplain to Bishop Moore of Norwich, at a Norwich coffee-house. They discussed Newton, to whose professorship Whiston succeeded in 1702, and Whiston, greatly impressed by Clarke's ability, introduced him to Moore. In 1698 Clarke succeeded to Whiston's chaplaincy. He held this post for nearly twelve years, and was greatly valued by the bishop, who afterwards made him his executor. He now took to studying divinity, for which Moore's famous library gave him great opportunities. In 1699 he published 'Three practical Essays on Baptism, Confirmation, and Repentance,' which Whiston considered to be the most serious of his treatises. He also published anonymously an answer to Toland's 'Amyntor,' defending the authenticity of some of the early christian writings. In 1701-2 he published paraphrases of the Gospels. Bishop Moore gave him the rectory of Drayton, near Norwich, and a small living in the city. In 1704 and 1705 Clarke delivered the Boyle lectures. They at once gave him a conspicuous position. Locke died in 1704, and for the next quarter of a century Clarke was generally regarded as the first of English metaphysicians. His à priori philosophy was entirely opposed to the spirit of Locke's teaching, and he rejected the sceptical conclusions of Locke's disciples. The substance of Clarke's argument for the existence of a God is, of course, not original. It has been suggested that he owes something to Howe's 'Living Temple,' where (chap, ii.) it is stated in a similar form. The peculiarities, however, of Clarke's mode of reasoning are sufficiently explicable from the general characteristics of the philosophical teaching of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and their schools. His work is the principal literary result of the speculative movement of which the contemporary English deism was one result. Rationalists, both within and without the limits of orthodoxy, were his followers. The ethical theory expounded in the same sermons is of great importance. He was the founder of the so-called 'intellectual' school, of which Wollaston and Price were the chief English followers, which deduced the moral law from a logical necessity. It is, according to him, as absurd to deny that I should do to my neighbour as he should do to me as to assert that, though two and three are equal to five, five is not equal to two and three. The best modern exposition of this theory as compared with the congenial theory of Kant may be found in Professor Sidgwick's 'Methods of Ethics.'

Clarke's theological doctrine gave offence on both sides. Orthodox divines condemned him for preaching a disguised deism, while the deists condemned him for retaining orthodox phraseology and an historical element of belief. He thus became involved in controversies with many thinkers of opposite schools.

In 1706 he attacked Henry Dodwell, the nonjuror, who had argued that the soul was naturally mortal, and received immortality through the efficacy of legitimate baptism. Clarke's reply, setting forth the à priori arguments for immortality, brought him into collision with [q. v.] Clarke showed a dialectical superiority, whatever the merits of the argument itself. In the same year Bishop Moore procured for Clarke the rectory of St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, and introduced him to Queen Anne. The queen appointed him one of her chaplains in ordinary, and in 1709 presented him to the rectory of St. James's, Westminster. He now took his D.D. degree at Cambridge, and performed an act, in defence of the thesis that no article of the christian faith was opposed to right reason,