Locke’s political philosophy is along the same via media. In his Treatises on Government he seeks to make good the title of King William to the British throne. He justifies the right of the individual to revolt under certain conditions. Political government is not a sacred innate idea, but has arisen out of experience as conducive to the happiness of man. The individuals and the government make a contract to serve each other. When either violates the contract, the State is at an end. To the advocates of the divine rights of kings, like Filmer, political law antedated “nature”; to Hobbes, law came after “nature”; to Locke, law is “nature.” To Filmer “nature” was a golden age; to Hobbes it was a shocking state to be got rid of; to Locke “nature” is harmony. Thus according to Locke the individual has through his experiences constructed his morality, his religion, and his government because they are conducive to his happiness, and at the same time they have their ground in the “nature” of things. The individual stands free among them, the central figure in the world.

The Influence of Locke. The philosophy of Locke became the fountain-head of the many divergent schoolsof thought of the Enlightenment. His Essay did not contain anything fundamentally new, and its presentation has little originality; but it voiced the thought of the eighteenth century so easily, and with such skillful avoidance of pitfalls, that it made Locke the most widely read and the most influential philosopher of his time. Four separate movements had their source in him: (1) From his theory of knowledge, in which the emphasis is laid upon the mind as active, came the empirical idealism of Berkeley and Hume; (2) from his psychological analysis in the second and third books of the Essay, in which the mind is regarded as passive, came the sensationalism of the French; (3) from his theory of religion came Deism; (4) from his associationalistic ethics came the utilitarian ethical theories of the English moralists. The most constructive followers of Locke were Berkeley and Hume. The others may be called the lesser Lockian schools; for although they may have exercised a much greater influence upon their own time, they were nevertheless only partial interpreters of Locke. We shall deal briefly with Deism and Ethics in England, next consider at length the philosophies of Berkeley and Hume, and then present in a summary but articulate way the development of the Enlightenment in France and Germany.

The English Deists. We have seen how Rationalism, especially in the case of Descartes, tried at the beginning to reconstruct theology without breaking with established dogma. Gradually, however, rationalism and revealed religion showed signs of divorce. Some of the rationalists came to take the stand that if reason can understand the nature of God, revelation is either incredible or superfluous. The revealed religions differ.The god of the mediæval people is not the same as the god of the heathen nor as the Jehovah of the Jews. There are many religions and many sects in each religion. There must be to them all a common basis, which is the true religion. This was the creed of Deism or Natural Religion. Positive religions are only the corruptions of natural religion, or the religion of reason. Deism sought to separate religion from special revelations, which were looked upon as the irrational elements of religion. Bacon and Descartes had freed natural science from church dogma; Hobbes had freed psychology from the same dogma; Grotius had freed the conception of law from dogma. The Deists would free religion from dogma.

Deism was founded on three principles; (1) the origin and truth of religion may be scientifically investigated; (2) the origin of religion is the conscience; (3) positive religions are degenerate forms of natural religion. The tendency of the Enlightenment was deistical, and the movement was powerful in England, France, and Germany. Deism was quite consistent with the central principle of this period—the self-sufficiency of the individual.

In England the first deist was Herbert of Cherbury (1581–1648), with his “five fundamental propositions of religion.” The body of English deists, however, got their cue from Locke’s identification of the moral law with the law of nature; but Locke himself was not a deist. The literature of deism coincides for the most part with the English moral philosophy of the period, but usually the group of English deists is supposed to include only Toland, Chubb, Tindal, Collins, Morgan, and Bolingbroke. These men lived in the first half of the Enlightenment.They were much despised by the scholars of the time as being mere dabblers in letters. “They were but a ragged regiment whose whole ammunition of learning was a trifle when compared with the abundant stores of a single light of orthodoxy; whilst in speculative ability they were children by the side of their antagonists.”[39]

The English deists passed from view at the end of the first half of the eighteenth century, crushed by the weight of the attack upon them. The more powerful orthodoxy, with its greater talent, was itself rationalistic, and could beat them on their own ground. The churchmen showed that the objections against the God of revelation would be equally effective against the deistic God of nature. The classic argument along this line against the deists is Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Religion. The battle was unequal, and the character of the books published during the controversy reveals the inequality of the contest. The deistic publications were small and shabby octavos, and were published anonymously. The orthodox publications were solid octavos and quartos in handsome bindings, with the credentials of powerful signatures. Even if the orthodoxy had not employed the arm of the law against the deists, the deists would have been broken by the intellectual force against them.

The English Moralists. Just as the motive of the deists was to free religion from the authority of theology, so the motive of the celebrated group of English moralists of the Enlightenment was to find a basis for morality outside of church dogma. Many of the Englishmoralists were also deists in belief. Their number is legion, as the list given below will show. The greatest among them was Shaftesbury.

The school began with Hobbes and received momentum from the associational psychology of Locke. All the members of this group sought to find an ultimate basis for morality—some seeking it with Locke in experience, others in innate ideas. Yet the starting-point with each of these moralists seems to be Hobbes and his selfish ethics, for nearly all ethical scholars have his ethics in mind, either to attack or to defend. For many years Hobbes was regarded by ethical scholars either as an evil spirit or as an inspired genius. In any case, his influence was felt in ethical discussion for a long time.

Chronological Table of the English Moralists.
1500160017001800
Hobbes88..79............
Cudworth..1788............
Locke..32..04..........
Cumberland....32..18........
Wollaston....5924..........
Mandeville....70..33........
Shaftesbury....7113..........
Clarke....75..29........
Berkeley....85....53......
Pope....88..44........
Butler....92....52......
Hutcheson....94..47........
Edwards......03..58......
Hartley......05..57......
Tucker......05....74....
Reid......10....96....
Hume......11....76....
Smith......23....90....
Price......23....91....
Paley........43....05..
Bentham........47....32..
Stewart..........53..28..
Whewell............95..66
Mill..............0673