For several centuries after the destruction of the Western Empire, philosophy had hardly an existence except in its records, and these were preserved chiefly for their parchment, half-effaced, covered by what took the place of literature in the (so called) Dark Ages, and at length deciphered by such minute and wearisome toil as only mediæval cloisters have ever furnished. For a long period, monasteries were the only schools, and in these the learned men of the day were, either successively or alternately, learners and teachers, whence the appellation of Schoolmen. The learned men who bear this name were fond of casuistry, and discussed imagined and often impossible cases with great pains (their readers would have greater); but, so far as we know, they have left no systematic treatises on moral philosophy, and have transmitted no system that owes to them its distinguishing features. Yet we find among them a very broad division of opinion as to the ground of right. The fundamental position of the Stoics, that virtue is conformity to nature, and thus independent of express legislation,—not created by law, human or divine, but the source and origin of law,—had its [pg 208] champions, strong, but few; while the Augustinian theology, then almost universal, replaced Epicureanism in its denial of the intrinsic and indelible moral qualities of actions. The extreme Augustinians regarded the positive command of God as the sole cause and ground of right, so that the very things which are forbidden under the severest penalties would become virtuous and commendable, if enjoined by Divine authority. William of Ockham, one of the most illustrious of the English Schoolmen, wrote: “If God commanded his creatures to hate himself, the hatred of God would be the duty of man.”
The earliest modern theory of morals that presented striking peculiarities was that of Hobbes (A. D. 1588-1679), who was indebted solely to the stress of his time, alike for his system and for whatever slender following it may have had. He was from childhood a staunch royalist, was shortly after leaving the University the tutor of a loyal nobleman, and, afterward, of Charles II. during the early years of his exile; and the parliamentary and Puritan outrages seemed to him to be aimed at all that was august and reverend, and adapted to overturn society, revert progress, and crush civilization. According to him, men are by nature one another's enemies, and can be restrained from internecine hostility only by force or fear. An instinctive perception of this truth in the infancy of society gave rise to monarchical and absolute forms of government; for only by thus centralizing and massing power, which could be directed [pg 209] against any disturber of the peace, could the individual members of society hold property or life in safety. The king thus reigns by right of human necessity, and obedience to him and to constituted authorities under him is man's whole duty, and the sum of virtue. Might creates right. Conscience is but another name for the fear of punishment. The intimate connection of religion with civil freedom in the English Commonwealth no doubt went far in uprooting in Hobbes all religious faith; and while he did not openly attack Christianity, he maintained the duty of entire conformity to the monarch's religion, whatever it might be, which is of course tantamount to the denial of objective religious truth.[22]
Hobbes may fairly be regarded as the father of modern ethical philosophy,—not that he had children after his own likeness; but his speculations were so revolting equally to thinking and to serious men, as to arouse inquiry and stimulate mental activity in a department previously neglected.
The gauntlet thus thrown down by Hobbes was taken up by Cudworth (A. D. 1617-1688), the most learned man of his time, whose “Intellectual System of the Universe” is a prodigy of erudition,—a work [pg 210] in which his own thought is so blocked up with quotations, authorities, and masses of recondite lore, that it is hardly possible to trace the windings of the river for the débris of auriferous rocks that obstruct its flow. The treatise with which we are concerned is that on “Eternal and Immutable Morality.” In this he maintains that the right exists, independently of all authority, by the very nature of things, in co-eternity with the Supreme Being. So far is he from admitting the possibility of any dissiliency between the Divine will and absolute right, that he turns the tables on his opponents, and classes among Atheists those of his contemporaries who maintain that God can command what is contrary to the intrinsic right; that He has no inclination to the good of his creatures; that He can justly doom an innocent being to eternal torments; or that whatever God wills is just because He wills it.
Samuel Clarke (A. D. 1675-1729) followed Cudworth in the same line of thought. He was, it is believed, the first writer who employed the term fitness as defining the ground of the immutable and eternal right, though the idea of fitness necessarily underlies every system or theory that assigns to virtue intrinsic validity.
Shaftesbury (A. D. 1671-1713) represents virtue as residing, not in the nature or relations of things, but in the bearing of actions on the welfare or happiness of beings other than the actor. Benevolence constitutes virtue; and the merit of the action and [pg 211] of the actor is determined by the degree in which particular affections are merged in general philanthropy, and reference is had, not to individual beneficiaries or benefits, but to the whole system of things of which the actor forms a part. The affections from which such acts spring commend themselves to the moral sense, and are of necessity objects of esteem and love. But the moral sense takes cognizance of the affections only, not of the acts themselves; and as the conventional standard of the desirable and the useful varies with race, time, and culture, the acts which the affections prompt, and which therefore are virtuous, may be in one age or country such as the people of another century or land may repudiate with loathing. Las Casas, in introducing negro slavery into America, with the fervently benevolent purpose of relieving the hardships of the feeble and overtasked aborigines, performed, according to this theory, a virtuous act; but had he once considered the question of intrinsic right or natural fitness, a name so worthily honored would never have been associated with the foulest crime of modern civilization.
According to Adam Smith (A. D. 1723-1790), moral distinctions depend wholly on sympathy. We approve in others what corresponds to our own tastes and habits; we disapprove whatever is opposed to them. As to our own conduct, “we suppose ourselves,” he writes, “the spectators of our own behavior, and endeavor to imagine what effect it would in this light produce in us.” Our sense of duty is derived [pg 212] wholly from our thus putting ourselves in the place of others, and inquiring what they would approve in us. Conscience, then, is a collective and corporate, not an individual faculty. It is created by the prevalent opinions of the community. Solitary virtue there cannot be; for without sympathy there is no self-approval. By parity of reason, the duty of the individual can never transcend the average conscience of the community. This theory describes society as it is, not as it ought to be. We are, to a sad degree, conventional in our practice, much more so than in our beliefs; but it is the part of true manliness to have the conscience an interior, not an external organ, to form and actualize notions of right and duty for one's self, and to stand and walk alone, if need there be, as there manifestly is in not a few critical moments, and as there is not infrequently in the inward experience of every man who means to do his duty.
Butler (A. D. 1692-1752), in his “Ethical Discourses,” aims mainly and successfully to demonstrate the rightful supremacy of conscience. His favorite conception is of the human being as himself a household [an economy],—the various propensities, appetites, passions, and affections, the members,—Conscience, the head, recognized as such by all, so that there is, when her sovereignty is owned, an inward repose and satisfaction; when she is disobeyed, a sense of discord and rebellion, of unrest and disturbance. This is sound and indisputable, and it cannot be more [pg 213] clearly stated or more vividly illustrated than by Butler; but he manifestly regards conscience as legislator no less than judge, and thus fails to recognize any objective standard of right. It is evident that on his ground there is no criterion by which honestly erroneous moral judgments can be revised, or by which a discrimination can be made between the results of education or involuntary prejudice, and the right as determined by the nature of things and the standard of intrinsic fitness.
Of all modern ethical writers since the time of Cudworth and Clarke, none so much as approaches the position occupied by Richard Price (A. D. 1723-1791), a London dissenting divine, a warm advocate of American independence, and the intimate friend of John Adams. He maintained that right and wrong are inherent and necessary, immutable and eternal characteristics, not dependent on will or command, but on the intrinsic nature of the act, and determined with unerring accuracy by conscience, whenever the nature of the case is clearly known. “Morality,” he writes, “is fixed on an immovable basis, and appears not to be in any sense factitious, or the arbitrary production of any power, human or divine; but equally everlasting and necessary with all truth and reason.” “Virtue is of intrinsic value and of indispensable obligation; not the creature of will, but necessary and immutable; not local and temporary, but of equal extent and antiquity with the Divine mind; not dependent on power, but the guide of all power.”[23]
Paley (A. D. 1743-1805) gives a definition of virtue, remarkable for its combination of three partial theories. Virtue, according to him, is “the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.” Of this definition it may be said, 1. The doing good to mankind is indeed virtue; but it is by no means the whole of virtue. 2. Obedience to the will of God is our duty; but it is so, because his will must of necessity be in accordance with the fitting and right. Could we conceive of Omnipotence commanding what is intrinsically unfit and wrong, the virtuous man would not be the God-server, but the Prometheus suffering the implacable vengeance of an unrighteous Deity. 3. Though everlasting happiness be the result of virtue, it is not the ground or the reason for it. Were our being earth-limited, virtue would lose none of its obligation. Epictetus led as virtuous a life as if heaven had been open to his faith and hope.—Paley's system may be described in detail as Shaftesbury's, with an external washing of Christianity; Shaftesbury having been what was called a free-thinker, while Paley was a sincere believer in the Christian revelation, and contributed largely and efficiently to the defence of Christianity and the illustration of its records. The chief merit of Paley's treatise on Moral Philosophy is that it clearly and emphatically recognizes the Divine authority of the [pg 215] moral teachings of the New Testament, though in expounding them the author too frequently dilutes them by considerations of expediency.