Other writers. 8. A book by Sharrock, De Officiis secundum Rationis Humanæ Dictata, 1660, is occasionally quoted, and seems to be of a philosophical nature.[881] Velthuysen, a Dutch minister, was of more reputation. His name was rather obnoxious to the orthodox, since he was a strenuous advocate of toleration, a Cartesian in philosophy, and inclined to judge for himself. His chief works are De Principiis Justi et Decori, and De Naturali Pudore.[882] But we must now pass on to those who have exercised a greater influence in moral philosophy, Cumberland and Puffendorf, after giving a short consideration to Spinosa.
[881] Cumberland (in præfatione) De Legibus Naturæ.
[882] Biog. Univ., Barbeyrac’s notes on Puffendorf, passim.
Moral system of Spinosa. 9. The moral system, if so it may be called, of Spinosa, has been developed by him in the fourth and fifth parts of his Ethics. We are not deceived in what might naturally be expected from the unhesitating adherence of Spinosa to a rigorous line of reasoning, that his ethical scheme would offer nothing inconsistent with the fundamental pantheism of his philosophy. In nature itself, he maintains as before, there is neither perfection nor imperfection, neither good nor evil; but these are modes of speaking, adopted to express the relations of things as they appear to our minds. Whatever contains more positive attributes capable of being apprehended by us than another contains, is more perfect than it. Whatever we know to be useful to ourselves, that is good; and whatever impedes our attainment of good is evil. By this utility Spinosa does not understand happiness, if by that is meant pleasurable sensation, but the extension of our mental and bodily capacities. The passions restrain and overpower these capacities; and coming from without, that is, from the body, render the mind a less powerful agent than it seems to be. It is only, we may remember in a popular sense, and subject to his own definitions, that Spinosa acknowledges the mind to be an agent at all; it is merely so, in so far as its causes of action cannot be referred by us to anything external. No passion can be restrained except by a stronger passion. Hence, even a knowledge of what is really good or evil for us can of itself restrain no passion; but only as it is associated with a perception of joy and sorrow, which is a mode of passion. This perception is necessarily accompanied by desire or aversion; but they may often be so weak as to be controlled by other sentiments of the same class, inspired by conflicting passions. This is the cause of the weakness and inconstancy of many, and he alone is wise and virtuous who steadily pursues what is useful to himself; that is, what reason points out as the best means of preserving his well-being, and extending his capacities. Nothing is absolutely good, nothing therefore is principally sought by a virtuous man, but knowledge, not of things external, which gives us only inadequate ideas, but of God. Other things are good or evil to us, so far as they suit our nature or contradict it; and so far as men act by reason, they must agree in seeking what is conformable to their nature. And those who agree with us in living by reason, are themselves of all things most suitable to our nature; so that the society of such men is most to be desired; and to enlarge that society by rendering men virtuous, and by promoting their advantage when they are so, is most useful to ourselves. For the good of such as pursue virtue may be enjoyed by all, and does not obstruct our own. Whatever conduces to the common society of mankind and promotes concord among them is useful to all; and whatever has an opposite tendency is pernicious. The passions are sometimes incapable of excess, but of this the only instances are joy and cheerfulness; more frequently they become pernicious by being indulged, and in some cases, such as hatred, can never be useful. We should therefore, for our own sakes, meet the hatred and malevolence of others with love and liberality. Spinosa dwells much on the preference due to a social above a solitary life, to cheerfulness above austerity, and alludes frequently to the current theological ethics with censure.
10. The fourth part of the Ethics is entitled, On Human Slavery, meaning the subjugation of the reason to the passions; the fifth, On Human Liberty, is designed to show, as had been partly done in the former, how the mind or intellectual man is to preserve its supremacy. This is to be effected, not by the extinction, which is impossible, but the moderation of the passions; and the secret of doing this, according to Spinosa, is to contemplate such things as are naturally associated with affections of no great violence. We find that when we look at things simply in themselves, and not in their necessary relations, they affect us more powerfully; whence it may be inferred that we shall weaken the passion by viewing them as parts of a necessary series. We promote the same end by considering the object of the passion in many different relations, and, in general, by enlarging the sphere of our knowledge concerning it. Hence, the more adequate ideas we attain of things that affect us, the less we shall be overcome by the passion they excite. But most of all it should be our endeavour to refer all things to the idea of God. The more we understand ourselves and our passions, the more we shall love God; for the more we understand anything, the more pleasure we have in contemplating it; and we shall associate the idea of God with this pleasurable contemplation, which is the essence of love. The love of God should be the chief employment of the mind. But God has no passions; therefore he who desires that God should love him, desires, in fact, that he should cease to be God. And the more we believe others to be united in the same love of God, the more we shall love him ourselves.
11. The great aim of the mind, and the greatest degree of virtue, is the knowledge of things in their essence. This knowledge is the perfection of human nature; it is accompanied with the greatest joy and contentment; it leads to a love of God, intellectual, not imaginative, eternal, because not springing from passions that perish with the body, being itself a portion of that infinite love with which God intellectually loves himself. In this love towards God our chief felicity consists, which is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; nor is anyone happy because he has overcome the passions, but it is by being happy, that is, by enjoying the fulness of divine love, that he has become capable of overcoming them.
12. These extraordinary effusions confirm what has been hinted in another place, that Spinosa, in the midst of his atheism, seemed often to hover over the regions of mystical theology. This last book of the Ethics speaks, as is evident, the very language of Quietism. In Spinosa himself it is not easy to understand the meaning; his sincerity ought not, I think, to be called in question; and this enthusiasm may be set down to the rapture of the imagination expatiating in the enchanting wilderness of its creation. But the possibility of combining such a tone of contemplative devotion with the systematic denial of a Supreme Being, in any personal sense, may put us on our guard against the tendency of mysticism, which may again, as it has frequently, degenerate into a similar chaos.
Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturæ. 13. The science of ethics, in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, seemed to be cultivated by three very divergent schools; by that of the theologians who went no farther than revelation, or at least than the positive law of God, for moral distinctions; by that of the Platonic philosophers, who sought them in eternal and intrinsic relations; and that of Hobbes and Spinosa, who reduced them all to selfish prudence. A fourth theory, which, in some of its modifications, has greatly prevailed in the last two centuries, may be referred to Richard Cumberland, afterwards bishop of Peterborough. His famous work, De Legibus Naturæ Disquisitio Philisophica, was published in 1672. It is contained in nine chapters, besides the preface or prolegomena.
Analysis of prolegomena. 14. Cumberland begins by mentioning Grotius, Selden, and one or two more who have investigated the laws of nature à posteriori, that is, by the testimony of authors and the consent of nations. But as some objections may be started against this mode of proof, which, though he does not hold them to be valid, are likely to have some effect, he prefers another line of demonstration, deducing the laws of nature, as effects, from their real causes in the constitution of nature itself. The Platonic theory of innate moral ideas, sufficient to establish natural law, he does not admit. “For myself, at least, I may say that I have not been so fortunate as to arrive at the knowledge of this law by so compendious a road.” He deems it therefore necessary to begin with what we learn by daily use and experience, preserving nothing but the physical laws of motion shown by mathematicians, and the derivation of all their operations from the will of a First Cause.
15. By diligent observation of all propositions which can be justly reckoned general moral laws of nature, he finds that they may be reduced to one, the pursuit of the common good of all rational agents, which tends to our own good as part of the whole; as its opposite tends not only to the misery of the whole system, but to our own.[883] This tendency, he takes care to tell us, though he uses the present tense (conducit), has respect to the most remote consequences, and is so understood by him. The means which serve to this end, the general good, may be treated as theorems in a geometrical method.[884] Cumberland, as we have seen in Spinosa, was captivated by the apparent security of this road to truth.