in the minds of many of their hearers ;-to take for granted maxims which cannot be seen to be true without a certain

discipline of mind. Before such an audience, if physical astronomy were the matter in discussion, the Cartesian, with his vortices, would carry his hearers with him farther than the Newtonian; for all men can understand that a body may be swept along by a current which is in contact with it; but to see how a distant force produces a regular orbit, the disciple must have his mind furnished with clear mechanical conceptions. And in like manner, before such an audience, he who asserts that men are and must be constantly governed by material tangible interests, will be more likely to persuade, than he who holds that the true governing power of the moral system is the central Idea of Moral Good.

The opponents of Hobbes found this difficulty in their task. The course and state of the times increased the difficulty; for the audience to which moralists and metaphysicians had now to appeal was of a far more popular cast than it had been in earlier times. Literature now addressed itself to a very extensive and miscellaneous public; not, as of yore, to a few persons, all of whom were, more or less studious, learned and thoughtful. All persons claimed a right to judge on such matters, though few had had their intellects disciplined so as to understand the principles; or were acquainted with any study which made them feel the force of philosophical reason. The young age, as was natural, wished to show itself independent of the past, by rejecting its doctrines. To contradict the ancient a teachers was an easy mode of throwing off the humiliation of being their scholars. But besides this advantage on the part of the assailants, the assertors of independent morality had not developed their own genuine principle, and formed their own coherent system to such an extent as to be

well prepared for a conflict. This appears plainly enough in the vacillation of thought respecting the real foundations of morality which prevails among the English writers of the time we speak of. For some of the opponents of Hobbes so far assented to the language in which his doctrines were expressed, that they allowed the proper end of human action to be the pursuit of happiness, or rather of well-being: but then, they maintained that the well-being which is found in the practice of virtue is of a peculiar and superior kind, elevated above the pleasures of sense, and the advantages of extraneous consequences. Others rejected altogether this notion of virtue as deriving its essence from the direction of our aims to ulterior objects; and held that in the very ideas of moral good and evil there was something which established their obligation, and needed no extrinsic support to make them recognized as the proper guides of man's life and will. But neither of these views was unfolded and confirmed with rigour and clearness enough to enable it to stem the torrent of the revolution which was taking place in philosophy. The assertors of the former doctrine, when they had once allowed moral good to rest upon an external foundation of some other good, were never able to fix any firm boundary which should preserve men in general from sliding continually downwards, till they were driven to the palpable good of mere pleasure. And the maintainers of independent morality, the more genuine antagonists of the sensual and Hobbian school, did not succeed, at least at the time, in bringing into clear view, to the satisfaction of the popular audience, (to which, as I have said, the appeal was now made,) the native authority of virtue, or the universal and indestructible existence. of the faculty by which this authority is recognized. And thus, the common crowd of reasoners on morals, who, having their natural feelings of morality revolted and stimulated

D

to opposition by the startling paradoxes of the Hobbian system, sought some clear and solid ground on which they might take their stand and fight their battle, were driven from one position to another, and perpetually found their line of defence broken, and their flank turned, by the admissions which their leaders had made, or by the obscurity of the principles to which they were compelled to appeal.

And besides these disadvantages, they were pressed and borne down by another, perhaps more overwhelming still; I mean the influence of new systems, both of physics and of metaphysics, with which the new philosophy of morals allied itself. For in these new systems, much was so clearly convincing, that it was impossible to resist the evidence of its truth. And it was a matter of great difficulty, requiring profound thought and great acuteness, and even with these advantages, requiring time and experience also, to discern how far and in what form these new truths were to be accepted, and built into the edifice of human knowledge, so that the eternal foundations of right and wrong should not be moved or undermined. And thus, the defence of a genuine and independent morality was conducted in a manner disunited, vacillating, sometimes illogical, sometimes doggedly opposed to the most boasted discoveries of modern times. To re-construct moral philosophy after the ancient systems of philosophy had been shaken to their foundations by the powerful hands of Descartes and Hobbes, Bacon and Newton, was no easy task. Strenuous and persevering efforts, skill and genius, were needed to remove the rubbish of the ruin; to work down again to the foundation-stones; to show that these were still in their places, and to build up upon them a fair and solid edifice. In the mean time, men were content, or compelled, to dwell in huts made of wrecks and fragments, building for the day, providing for the hour, daring not to dig downwards, nor to raise any

loftier pile. Such indeed has been in a great measure the condition of the common structures of morals up to the present time. But it will be proper to point out more in detail the historical facts which illustrate this state of things; and this I shall proceed to do in the next Lecture.

LECTURE III.

HENRY MORE-WHICHCOTE, &c.

HAVE said that after the sensual system of morals of

I which Hobbes was the promulgator in England had been

brought before the public, it was opposed in two different

ways.

Hobbes had declared the sole intelligible end of man's actions to be his own gratification, and had made virtue into a mere means, subordinate to this end. In opposition to this doctrine, one class of writers allowed that the proper end of man's actions was the pursuit of happiness or wellbeing, but asserted that virtue was in a peculiar and eminent manner the condition of this well-being: the other class held that virtue by its own nature was the right rule and end of human action; and I have stated, that the difficulty of successfully maintaining either of these systems was increased by the changes which about this time took place in other parts of philosophy. I shall now offer some further remarks on this period of the history of Ethics.

Without attempting to enumerate all the writers who belong even to the English branch of this controversy, or to give a full account of those whom I mention, I may observe that to the former class belong Sharrock, Henry More, and Cumberland, to the latter, Cudworth and Clarke.

The greater number of writers on these subjects at the time of which I speak, belonged to the University of Cambridge, but Sharrock was a Fellow of New College, Oxford. His work was printed in 1660, and was entitled 'Yπócots nouky, De Officiis secundum Naturæ Jus, seu De Moribus ad Rationis Normam conformandis Doctrina; unde Casus omnes