better than the man who breaks it when at liberty.

There is

no more of rectitude, piety, or sanctity in a creature thus reformed than there is of weakness or gentleness in a tiger strongly chained, or innocence and sobriety in a monkey under the discipline of the whip.'1 The greater the obedience, the greater the servility. The habit of acting from such motives strengthens self-love and discourages the disinterested love of God for his own sake. In short, 'the excellence of the object, not the reward or punishment, should be our motive,' though where the higher motive is inadequate the lower may be judiciously brought in aid. 'A devil and a hell,' as he elsewhere puts it, may prevail where a gaol and a gallows are thought insufficient;' but such motives, he is careful to add, are suited to the vulgar, not to the 'liberal, polished, and refined part of mankind,' who are apt to show that they hold such 'pious narrations to be no better than children's tales for the amusement of the more vulgar.' Hell, in short, is a mere outpost on the frontiers of virtue, erected by judicious persons to restrain the vulgar and keep us from actual desertion; but not to provide an animating and essential part of the internal discipline.

་

31. Meanwhile, the removal of this external barrier naturally associates itself with a vigorous assertion of the efficacy of the internal guidance. The doctrine, however, is radically transformed. To believe in a supernatural interference with our conduct would be to fall into the errors of enthusiasm. Human nature is itself divine, and the external guide becomes a natural organ. The term 'moral sense,' which Shaftesbury invented to express his doctrine, became a technical phrase with his successors. With him, it indicates that natural tendency to virtue which was implicitly denied in the dogma of human corruption. The moral sense, as a divine or natural instinct (for the two phrases are equivalent), directs us by its own authority, and thus in practice supersedes the necessity of an appeal to our selfish instincts. Should anyone ask me, he says, why I would avoid being nasty when nobody was present, I should think him a very nasty gentleman to ask the question. If he insisted, I should reply, Because I have a 3 Misc. iii ch. ii.

1 'Virtue,' book i. part iii. sec. 3.

nose. If he asked further, What if you could not smell, I should reply that I would not see myself nasty. But if it was in the dark? Why even then, though I had neither nose nor eyes, my sense of the matter would still be the same; my nature would rise at the thoughts of being sordid; or, if it did not, I should have a wretched nature indeed, and hate myself for a beast.' Our hatred to vice, then, is a primitive instinct; and Shaftesbury is rather inclined to cut summarily the knot, which arises from the possible conflict between interest and virtue. He declares roundly that it does not exist. To be wicked and vicious,' as he argues elaborately and with much vigour, 'is to be miserable and unhappy;' and 'every vicious action must be self-injurious and ill.' Why, then, one is disposed to ask, is it so hard to be virtuous? But to be a consistent optimist, one must learn the art of shutting one's eyes.

32. The moral sense thus supplies-to the 'virtuoso' at least the necessary sanctions and motives; and it is in this vindication of human nature from the charges made against it by cynics and by theologians that Shaftesbury's merits are most conspicuous. The further question remains, what is the criterion of morality thus established? What are the actions which the moral sense approves? To such questions, Shaftesbury replies—so far as he makes any explicit reply—by dwelling upon his favourite doctrine of the universal harmony. The moral sense is merely a particular application of the faculty by which we apprehend that harmony. The harmony, as revealed to our imagination, produces the sense of the beautiful; as partially understood by reason, it generates philosophy; as shown in the workings of human nature, it gives rise to the moral sense. The æsthetic and the moral perceptions are in fact the same, the only difference lying in the objects to which they are applied. 'Beauty and good with you, Theocles,' he says, 'I perceive, are still one and the same.'3 Or, as he elsewhere puts it, 'what is beautiful is harmonious and proportionable; what is harmonious and proportionable is true; and what is at once both beautiful and true is of consequence agreeable and good.' And thus

1 'Wit and Humour,' part iii. sec. 4.

(

2 Virtue,' conclusion.

36

'Moralists,' part iii. sec. 2. 4 Misc. iii. ch. ii.

Shaftesbury's last word is cultivate your taste. The virtuoso is the best judge of manners as of art. Criticism is of surpassing importance with him, because criticism gives the theory of judging in religion, in art, or in morality. Human passions are divided into the natural affections, which lead to the public good; the 'self-affections' (the 'self-regarding affections,' as later utilitarians would say), 'which lead only to the good of the private,' and those which, as simply injurious, may be called the 'unnatural affections.'1 To eliminate the last, and to establish a just harmony between the others, is the problem of the moralist; and he will judge of the harmonious development of a man as a critic would judge of the harmony of a pictorial or a musical composition. Man, again, can be fully understood only as part of the human He is a member of a vast choir, and must beat out his part in the general music. Hence, Shaftesbury dwells chiefly on the development of the social affections, though admitting that they may be developed in excess. The love of humanity must be the ruling passion. To the objection that one may love the individual but not the species, which is too metaphysical an object,' 2 he replies by maintaining that to be a 'friend to anyone in particular, it is necessary to be first a friend to mankind.' He has been in love, he says, with the people of Rome in many ways, but specially under the symbol' of a beautiful youth called the genius of the people.'3 But the full answer to the difficulty is given in the Hymn to Nature, of which I have already quoted a fragment.

race.

33. But what, after all, it might be asked, was this 'harmony' of which Shaftesbury speaks so fluently? Does not his moral system crumble in one's hands when one endeavours to grasp it firmly? Admit that a 'virtuoso' is the ideal man, and who is to decide between the virtuosoes? Is the standard of morality to be as fluctuating and uncertain as the standard of æsthetic taste? One 'virtuoso' swears by Gothic and one by Greek architecture-which is right? The answer might conceivably be, it does not much matter. Let each man go his own way. But that answer is scarcely open to the moralist whose object is to discover some inflexible moral

1

standard, and who is put off with this elastic virtuoso jargon. Lord Shaftesbury is doubtless a polished gentleman, but when he gives us his canons of criticism in place of a moral rule, we feel that he is a rather poor substitute for St. Paul or Marcus Aurelius. Shaftesbury anticipated and endeavoured to answer this objection. He declared that political maxims, drawn from considering the balance of power, were as 'evident as those in mathematics;' and inferred that moral maxims, founded on a theory as to the proper balance of the passions, would be equally capable of rigid demonstration. The harmony of which he spoke had an objective reality. The moral sense required cultivation to catch the divine concords which run through creation; but the judgment of all cultivated observers would ultimately be the same. If a writer on music were to say that the rule of harmony was caprice, he would be talking nonsense. For harmony is harmony by nature, let men judge ever so ridiculously of music.' Symmetry and proportion are equally founded in nature, 'let men's fancy prove ever so barbarous, or their fashions ever so Gothic in their architecture, sculpture, or whatever other designing art. 'Tis the same case where life and manners are concerned. Virtue has the same fixed standard. The same numbers, harmony, and proportion will have place in morals; and are discoverable in the characters and affections of mankind, in which are laid the just foundations of an art and science, superior to every other of human practice and comprehension.'2 Shaftesbury thus vindicates his claim to be a 'realist' in his theism and his morality. Virtue is a reality, and can be discovered by all who will go through the same process of self-culture. And yet one would like to have a rule rather more easy of application than this vague analogy of music. With thy harmony, one might say, thou beginnest to be a bore to us.

34. This pedantic fine gentleman, whose delicacy placidly ignores the very existence of vice and misery, who finds in the cultivated taste of a virtuoso sufficient guidance and consolation through all the weary perplexities of the world, had very real power in him in spite of his pedantry; but he was ill qualified to impress shrewd men of the world, or the philosophical school, which refuses to sink hard facts

1 'Wit and Humour,' part iii. sec. I.

2 Soliloquy,' part iii. sec. 3.

in obedience to fine-spun theories. In Germany, where sentimentalism is more congenial to the national temperament, he found a warmer reception than amongst his own countrymen. In England, the contempt for flimsy speculation, which often leads to the rejection of much that is valuable because it is not palpable and definite, brought Shaftesbury into unmerited neglect. The first critic who laid a coarse hand on his pretentious philosophy was Mandeville.

35. Bernard de Mandeville published the 'Fable of the Bees' in 1723.2 It consists of a doggrel poem, setting forth how a hive of bees were thriving and vicious, and how, on their sudden reformation, their prosperity departed with their vice. A comment follows, expounding his theory in detail. In subsequent editions there were added an 'Essay on Charity and Charity Schools,' a 'Search into the Nature of Society,' and a series of dialogues upon the Fable. The Fable of the Bees' was presented as a nuisance by the Grand Jury of Middlesex. Mandeville became a byword with all the respectable authors of the day; and his book was attacked as a kind of pot-house edition of the arch-enemy Hobbes. Berkeley, Law, Hutcheson, Warburton, and Brown may be named amongst his most eminent opponents. To say the truth, the indignation thus excited was not unnatural. Mandeville is said to have been in the habit of frequenting coffee-houses, and amusing his patrons by ribald conversation. The tone of his writings harmonises with this account of his personal habits. He is a cynical and prurient writer, who seems to shrink from no jest, however scurrilous, and from no paradox, however grotesque, which is calculated to serve the purpose, which he avows in his preface to be his sole purpose, of diverting his readers-readers, it may be added, not very scrupulous in their tastes. Yet a vein of shrewd sense runs through his book, and redeems it from anything like contempt. Nay, there are occasional remarks which show great philosophical acuteness. A hearty contempt for the various humbugs of this world is not in itself a bad thing. When a man includes

1 See some remarks on this in Spicker's 'Shaftesbury.'

2 The poem itself was first published in 1714. It did not excite much attention until republished with comments in 1723.

VOL. II.

C