Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/760

Rh 734 S H A S H A punish it." Shaftesbury's was in reality, though perhaps not in appearance, a more truly religious philosophy. For with him the incentives to well-doing and the deterrents from evil-doing are to be sought not solely, or even mainly, in the opinion of man- kind, or in the rewards and punishments of the magistrate, or in the hopes and terrors of a future world, but in the answer of a good conscience approving virtue and disapproving vice, and in the love of a God, who, by His infinite wisdom and His all- embracing beneficence, is worthy of the love and admiration of His creatures. The main object of the Moralists is to propound a system of natural theology, and to vindicate, so far as natural religion is concerned, the ways of God to man. The articles of Shaftesbury's religious creed were few and simple, but these he entertained with a conviction amounting to enthusiasm. They may briefly be summed up as a belief in one God whose most characteristic attribute is universal benevolence, in the moral government of the universe, and in a future state of man making up for the imperfections and repairing the inequalities of the present life. Shaftesbury is emphatically an optimist, but there is a passage in the Moralists (pt. ii. sect. 4) which would lead us to suppose that he regarded matter as an indifferent principle, co-existent and co-eternal with God, limiting His operations, and the cause of the evil and imperfection which, notwithstanding the benevolence of the Creator, is still to be found in His work. If this view of his optimism be correct, Shaftesbury, as Mill says of Leibnitz, must be regarded as maintaining, not that this is the best of all imaginable but only of all possible worlds. This brief notice of Shaftesbury's scheme of natural religion would be conspicuously imperfect unless it were added that it is popularized in Pope's Essay on Man, several lines of which, especially of the first epistle, are simply statements from the Moralists done into verse. Whether, however, these were taken immediately by Pope from Shaftesbury, or whether they came to him through the papers which Boling- broke had prepared for his use, we have no means of determining. Shaftesbury's philosophical activity was confined to ethics, aesthetics, and religion. For metaphysics, properly so called, and even psychology, except so far as it afforded a oasis for ethics, he evidently had no taste. Logic he probably despised as merely an instrument of pedants, a judgment for which, in his day, and especially at the universities, there was only too much ground. The influence of Shaftesbury's writings was very considerable both at home and abroad. His ethical system was reproduced, though in a more precise and philosophical form, by Hutcheson, and from him descended, with certain variations, to Hume and Adam Smith. Nor was it without its effect even on the specula- tions of Butler. Of the so-called deists Shaftesbury was probably the most important, as he was certainly the most plausible and the most respectable. No sooner had the Characteristics appeared than they were welcomed, in terms of warm commendation, by Le Clerc and Leibnitz. In 1745 Diderot adapted or reproduced the Inquiry concerning Virtue in what was afterwards known as his Essai sur le Mirite et la Vertu. In 1769 a French translation of the whole of Shaftesbury's works, including the Letters, was published at Geneva. Translations of separate treatises into German began to be made in 1738, and in 1776-1779 there appeared a complete German translation of the Characteristics. Hermann Hettner says that not only Leibnitz, Voltaire, and Diderot, but Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, and Herder, drew the most stimulating nutriment from Shaftesbnry. " His charms," he adds, " are ever fresh. A new-born Hellenism, or divine cultus of beauty presented itself before his inspired soul." Herder is especially eulogistic. In the Adrastea he pronounces the Moralists to be a composition in form well-nigh worthy of Grecian antiquity, and in its contents almost superior to it. The interest felt by Ger- man literary men in Shaftesbury has been recently revived by the publication of two excellent monographs, one dealing with him mainly from the theological side by Dr Gideon Spicker (Freiburg in Baden, 1872), the other dealing with him mainly from the philo- sophical side by Dr Georg von Gizycki (Leipsic, 1876). In the foregoing article the writer has made free .use of his monograph on Shaftesbnry and Hutcheson in the series of " English philosophers " (1882), published by Sampson Low & Co. In that work he was able largely to sup- plement the printed materials for the Life by extracts from the Shaftesbury papers now deposited in the Record Office. These include, besides many letters nnd memoranda, two lives of him, composed by his son, the fourth earl, one of which is evidently the original, though it is by no means always closely followed, of the Life contributed by Dr Birch to the General Dictionary. For a descrip- tion and criticism of Shaftesbnry's philosophy reference may also be made to Mackintosh's Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Whewell's History of Moral Philosophy in England, Jouffroy's Introduction to Ethics (Channing's transla- tion), Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, and the article ETHICS in the present work (vol. vlii. pp. 599, 600). For his relation to the religious and theological controversies ol his day, see, In addition to some of the above works, Leland's View of the Principal Deistical Writers, Lechler's Oeschichte des Englischen Deixmus, Hunt's Religious Thought in England, Abbey and Overton's English Church in the Eighteenth Century, and A. S. Farm's Hampton Lectures. (T. F.) SHAFTESBURY, ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, SEVENTH EARL OF (1801-1885), was the son of Cropley, sixth earl, and Anne, daughter of the third duke of Marlborough, and was born 28th April 1801. He was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained a first class in classics in 1822, and graduated M.A. in 1832. In 1841 he received from his university the degree of D.C.L. ETe entered parliament as member for the pocket borough of Woodstock in 1826; in 1830 he was returned for Dorchester; from 1831 till February 1846 he represented the county of Dorset ; and he was member for Bath from 1847 till (having previously borne the courtesy title Lord Ashley) he succeeded his father as earl in 1851. Although giving a general support to the Conservatives, liis parliamentary conduct was greatly modified by his intense interest in the improvement of the social condition of the working classes, his efforts in behalf of whom have made his name a household word. He opposed the Reform Bill of 1832, but was a supporter of Catholic emancipa- tion, and his objection to the continuance of resistance to the abolition of the Corn Laws led him to resign his seat for Dorset in 1846. In parliament his name, more than any other, is associated with the factory legislation (see FACTORY ACTS, vol. viii. p. 845). He was a lord of the admiralty under Sir Robert Peel (1834-35), but on being invited to join Peel's administration in 1841 refused, having been unable to obtain Peel's support for the Ten Hours' Bill. Chiefly by his persistent efforts a Ten Hours' Bill was carried in 1847, but its operation was impeded by legal difficulties, which were only removed by successive Acts, instigated chiefly by him, until legislation reached a final stage in the Factory Act of 1874. The part which he took in the legislation bearing on coal mines was equally prominent. It is worthy of notice that his efforts in behalf of the practical welfare of the working classes were guided by his own personal knowledge of their circum- stances and wants. Thus in 1846 he took advantage of his leisure after the resignation of his seat for Dorset to explore the slums of the metropolis, and by the informa- tion he obtained not only gave a new impulse to the move- ment for the establishment of ragged schools, but was able to make it more widely beneficial. For over forty years he was president of the Ragged School Union. He was also one of the principal founders of reformatory and refuge unions, young men's Christian associations, and working men's institutes. He took an active interest in foreign missions, and was president of several of the most important philanthropic and religious societies of London. He died 1st October 1885. By his marriage to Lady Emily, daughter of the fifth Earl Cowper, he left a large family, and was succeeded by his eldest son Anthony, who committed suicide shortly afterwards. SHAGREEN. See LEATHER, vol. xiv. p. 390, and SHARK. SHAHABAD, a British district in the Patna division of the lieutenant-governorship of Bengal, India, between 24 31' and 25 43' N. lat. and between 83 23' and 84 55' E. long., with an area of 4365 square miles. It is bounded on the N. -by the district of Ghazipur in the North-Western Provinces and by Saran, on the E. by Patna and GayA districts, on the S. by Lohardaga, and on the W. by Mirzapur, Benares, and Ghazipur districts of the North-Western Provinces. About three-fourths of the whole area lying to the north is an alluvial flat, wholly under cultivation, and fairly planted with mangoes, bam- boos, and other trees ; while the southern portion of the district is occupied by the Kaimur Hills, a branch of the great Vindhyan range, and is a densely wooded tract. The chief rivers are the Ganges and the Son, which unite in the north-eastern corner of Shahabad. A series of canals on the Son are reported to have secured for the district immunity from future famine. In the southern portion