Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/618

596 ETHICS maiutaiued 1 during the 16th and 17th centuries ; though scriptural texts, interpreted and supplemented by the light ol natural reason, now furnished the sole principles on which cases of conscience were decided. But in the 17th century the interest of this quasi-legal treatment of morality gradually faded ; and the ethical studies of edu cated minds were occupied with the attempt, renewed after so many centuries, to find an independent philosophical basis for the moral code. The renewal of this attempt was only indirectly due to the Reformation ; it is rather to be connected with the more extreme reaction from the mediceval religion which was partly caused by, partly expressed in, that enthusiastic study of the remains of old pagan culture that spread from Italy over Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. To this "humanism" the Reformation seemed at first more hostile than the Roman hierarchy; indeed, the extent to which this latter, had allowed itself to become paganized by the Renaissance was one of the points that especially roused the Reformers indignation. Not the less important is the indirect stimulus given by the Reformation towards the develop ment of a moral philosophy independent alike of Catholic and Protestant assumptions. Scholasticism, while reviving philosophy as a handmaid to theology, had metamorphosed its method into one resembling that of its mistress ; thus shackling the renascent intellectual activity which it stimulated and exercised by the double bondage to Aris totle and to the church. When the Reformation shook the traditional authority in one department, the blow was necessarily felt in the other. Not twenty years after Luther s defiance of the pope, the startling thesis " that all that Aris totle taught was false " was prosperously maintained by the youthful Rarnus before the university of Paris ; and almost contemporaneously the group of remarkable thinkers in Italy who heralded the dawn of modern physical science Cardanus, Telesius, Patritius, Campanella, Bruno began to propound their un-Aristotelian theories of the constitu tion of the physical universe. It was to be foreseen that a similar assertion of independence would make itself heard in ethics also ; and, indeed, amid the clash of dogmatic convictions, the variations and aberrations of private judg ment, that the multiplying divisions of Christendom exhibited after the Reformation, reflective persons would naturally be led to seek for an ethical method that might claim universal acceptance from all sects. IV. MODERN, ESPECIALLY ENGLISH, ETHICS. The need of such independent principles was most strongly felt in the region of man s civil and political relations, especially the mutual relations of communities. Accordingly we find that modern ethical controversy was commenced in the form of a discussion of the law of nature, of which first Ckotius Albericus Gentilis (1557-1611), then Hugo Grotius (1583 -1645) in his epoch-making work on international law, endeavoured to give a complete theoretical view. Natural law, according to Grotius, is that part of divine law which follows from the essential nature of man ; it is therefore as unalterable even by God himself as the truths of mathe matics, although it may be overruled in any particular case by express revelation ; hence it is cognizable a priori, from the abstract consideration of human nature, though its existence may also be known a ])osteriori from its universal acceptance in human societies. The conception, as we have seen, was taken from the later Roman jurists ; by them, however, the law of nature was hardly conceived as actually having a substantive existence independent of positive codes; it was rather something that underlay existing law, and was to be looked for through it, though 1 As the chief English casuists we ma> mention Perkins, Hall, Sander son, as well as the more eminent Jeremy Taylor, whose Ductor Dubi- f ant htm nppenril THRO. it might perhaps be expected ultimately to supersede it, and in the meanwhile represented an ideal standard, by which improvements in legislation were to be guided. Hence they do not seem to have framed, except in poetical or mythical imagination, the notion of a state of nature in which human beings were governed by the law of nature alone. But as soon as the principles of this code were contemplated as determining international rights and duties, it was obvious that in the present mutual relations of independent nations, regarded as corporate units, we have an actual example of this state of nature. Thus it was an easy step to suppose definitely that in prehistoric times individuals or single families lived similarly side by side, under none other than such " natural " laws as those prohibiting mutual injury, and mutual interference with each other s use of the goods of the earth that were common to all, giving parents authority over their children, impos ing on wives a vow of fidelity to their husbands, and obliging all to the observance of compacts freely entered into. It was not, of course, assumed that these laws were universally obeyed ; indeed, one point with which Grotius is especially concerned is the natural right of private war, arising out of the violation of more primary rights. Still a general observance was involved in the idea of a natural law as a " dictate of right reason indicating the agreement or disagreement of an act with man s rational and social nature ; " and we may observe that it was especially necessary to assume such a general observance in the case of contracts ; since it was by an " express or tacit pact " that the right of property (as distinct from the mere right to non-interference during use) was held to have been instituted ; and only by a similar " fundamental pact " could men be thought to pass legitimately from the state of nature to that of an organized society. The ideas above expressed were not peculiar to Grotius ; in particular the doctrine of the " fundamental pact " as the jural basis of- government had long been maintained, especially in England, where the constitution historically established readily suggested such a compact. At the same time the rapid and remarkable success of Grotius s treatise would bring his view of Natural Right into pro minence, and would suggest to penetrating minds such questions as " What is man s ultimate reason for obeying these laws? Wherein does this their agreement with his rational and social nature exactly consist 1 ? How far, and in what sense, is his nature really social ] " It was the answer which Hobbes (1588-1679) gave to Hobbes. these fundamental questions that supplied the starting-point for independent ethical philosophy in England. The nature of this answer was determined by the psychological views to which Hobbes had been led, partly under the influence of Bacon, 2 partly perhaps through association with his younger contemporary Gassendi, who, in two treatises, published between the appearance of Hobbes s De Give (1642) and that of the Leviathan (1651), endeavoured to revive interest in the life and teaching of Epicurus. Hobbes s psychology is in the first place materialistic ; he holds, that is, that in any of the psychophysical phenomena of human nature the reality is a material process of which the mental feeling is a mere "appearance." Accordingly he regards pleasure as essentially motion " helpi*ig vital action," and pain as motion "hindering" it. There is no logical connexion between this theory and the doc trine that appetite or desire has always pleasure (or the absence of pain) for its object ; still a materialist, 9 This influence was not exercised in the region of ethics. Bacon s brief outline of <moral philosophy (in tie Advancement of Learning) is highly pregnant and suggestive ; but the outline was never filled in, and does not seem to have ha,d any effect in determining the subse

quent course of thought in England.