Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/98

84 Price, with extracts from Cudworth and Wollaston, and additional extracts from Balguy in the Appendix, as representative of the intellectual school. In the Appendix to this volume appear also extracts from the 'theological utilitarians,' Brown, J. Clarke, and Paley. Kames and Gay are included as more or less independent critics. Of Mandeville I have only given a specimen. Hobbes and Locke have really no business in the book except for convenience of reference. Cudworth belongs to the period because his ethical work was not published till 1731."

It is so easy, on the one hand, to make plausible adverse criticisms of any editorial work of this kind, and on the other hand, the present editor is so eminently qualified for the task which he has undertaken, that one feels some diffidence in suggesting what may appear to one to be defects of method. I cannot help thinking, however, that the effort to preserve balance, and thus make two volumes about equal in size and coordinate in importance, has led to a dichotomous principle of classification which is likely to be seriously misleading to one who is not already familiar with the general historical development of ethical speculation in England. For instance, while the 'intellectual school' is quite properly, though 'apparently at disproportionate length,' represented by S. Clarke, Balguy, Price, Cudworth and Wollaston, it seems wholly arbitrary to group together under the certainly misleading term 'sentimental school' authors as diverse in tendency as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, Adam Smith and Bentham. One is interested to see from the introduction, to which we shall have occasion almost immediately to refer, that Mr. Selby-Bigge appreciates the originality and extreme importance of the ethical work of Butler; but to sandwich him in between Shaftesbury and Hutcheson on the one hand, and Adam Smith and Bentham on the other, seems to me hardly consistent with a recognition of his unique position in English ethics. Moreover, to treat Brown, J. Clarke and Paley as 'theological utilitarians,' without explanation or qualification was scarcely fortunate, though this, of course, is the conventional view of those writers. It is important to call the attention of the student to the fact that the earlier utilitarians (with the exception of Cumberland and Hume) were necessarily 'theological utilitarians,' for the simple reason that they assumed the egoistic character of the moral motive, and therefore could not vindicate the notion of complete moral obligation with, out referring to extra-mundane sanctions. Altogether more misleading, however, is the indefinite reference to Kames and Gay as 'more or less independent critics.' Gay was one of the most original, even