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 ENGLISH ETHICS. 195 religious feeling, which, in happy prescience, rises above the earthly circle of moral duties to the world beyond, or for the involuntary, historically necessary origin and growth of the particular forms of religion. Here, again, we find that turning away from will and feeling to thought, from history to nature, from the oppressive complexity of that which has been developed to the simplicity of that which is original, which we have noted as one of the most prom- inent characteristics of the modern period. 3. Moral Philosophy. The watchword of deism was " independence in religion "; that of modern ethical philosophy is " independence in morals." Hobbes had given this out in opposition to the mediaeval dependence of ethics on theology ; now it was turned against himself, for he had delivered morality from ecclesiastical bondage only to subject it to the no less oppressive and unworthy yoke of the civil power. Selfish consideration, so he had taught, leads men to transfer by contract all power to the ruler. Right is that which the sovereign enjoins, wrong that which he forbids. Thus morality was conceived in a purely negative way as justice, and based on interest and agreement. Cumberland, recog- nizing the one-sidedness of the first of these positions, announces the principle of universal benevolence, at which Bacon had hinted before him, and in which he is followed by the school of Shaftesbury. Opposition to the founda- tion of ethics on self-love and convention, again, springs up in three forms, one idealistic, one logical, and one aesthetic. Ethical ideas have not arisen artificially through shrewd calculation and agreement, but have a natural origin. Cudworth, returning to Plato and Descartes, assumes an innate idea of the good. Clarke and Wollaston base moral distinctions on the rational order of things, and characterize the ethically good action as a logical truth translated into practice, Shaftesbury derives ethical ideas and actions from a natural instinct for judging the good and the beau- tiful. Moreover, Hobbes's ethics of interest experiences, first, correction at the hands of Locke (who, along with a complete recognition of the "legal " character of the good,