Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/746

722 P R I P R I clouded by solitude and dejection. It was illuminated, however, by one bright gleam, the eager satisfaction with which he witnessed the passing events of the French Revolution. " I could almost say, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. . . . After sharing in the benefits of one Revolution, I have been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions, both glorious." l The darker side of the picture he happily did not live to see. On the 19th of April 1791 he died, worn out with suffering and disease. His funeral was conducted at Bunhill Fields by Dr Kippis, and his funeral sermon was preached on the following Sunday by Dr Priestley, names which, like his own, are specially honourable in the roll of English Nonconformist divines. On the 4th of November 1789 Price had preached at the meeting-house in the Old Jewry, before the Society for commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain, his celebrated sermon on the Love of our Country. This sermon, together with a speech subsequently made by him at a public dinner at the London Tavern, rendered him peculiarly obnoxious to Burke, and brought down upon him some of the fiercest denunciations of that brilliant but impassioned writer in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Price s reputation rests mainly upon the position which he occupies in the history of moral philosophy. His ethical theories are contained in the treatise already mentioned, a Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, the third edition of which, express ing "the author s latest and maturest thoughts," ivas published in 1787. This work is professedly directed against the doctrines of Hutcheson, but the treatment as a whole is constructive rather than polemical. Price s views approximate more closely to those of Cudworth than to those of any other English moralist ; but they are mainly interesting in the history of morals on account of their resemblance to the theories subsequently propounded by Kant. The main positions of Price s treatise are three, which may be stated as follows : (1) actions are in themselves right or wrong ; (2) right- and wrong are simple ideas incapable of analysis ; (3) these ideas are perceived immediately by the intuitive power of the reason or understanding, terms which he employs indifferently. To the first of these positions it is not, at first sight, easy to attach any precise meaning, nor does even a careful perusal of the work altogether remove the ambiguity. The most natural inter pretation, perhaps, of the expression that "an action is right in itself" is that it is right without any relation to the nature of the agent, the end aimed at, or the circumstances under which it is performed. But, apart from the fact that the objections to such a theory would be too obvious to be overlooked, the following passage is sufficient to show that Price cannot have entertained it: "All actions being necessarily right, indifferent, or wrong ; what deter mines which of these an action should be accounted is the truth of the case, or the relations and circumstances of the agent and the objects. In certain relations there is a certain conduct right. There are certain manners of behaviour which we unavoidably approve, as soon as these relations are known. Change the rela tions, and a different manner of behaviour becomes right. Nothing is clearer than that what is due or undue, proper or improper to be done, must vary according to the different natures and circum stances of beings. If a particular treatment of one nature is right, it is impossible that the same treatment of a different nature, or of all natures, should be right" (ch. vi.). What, then, does he mean by the phrase that " an action is right or wrong in itself" ? Excluding the meaning which we have set aside, he may wish to express either that actions are right or wrong irrespectively of their consequences, or that the same action would appear right or wrong not to man only but to all intelligent beings, or, as seems to be the case, he may sometimes wish to express one of these meanings and sometimes the other. The second and third positions, that right and wrong are simple ideas incapable of analysis, and that they are perceived by an intuitive act of the reason, are succinctly stated in the following passage : " Tis a very necessary previous observation that our ideas of right and wrong are simple ideas, and must therefore be ascribed to some power of immediate perception in the human mind. He that doubts this, need only try to give definitions of them, which shall amount to more than synonymous expressions " (ch. i. sect. 1). In this and similar passages the question in dispute between the rival schools of moralists is brought to a definite issue. Does 1 Sermon on the Love of our Country. the term "right" admit of any explanation, definition, or analysis, or is it simply inexplicable ? The majority of moralists have adopted the former alternative, and have endeavoured to explain the idea of right in subordination to that of good. Any course of action which has, on the whole, a tendency to promote the happiness or to alleviate the misery of mankind they denominate as right ; and any course of action which has a contrary tendency they denomi nate as wrong. Price, on the other hand, maintains that when wo say an action is right we can give no further account of it, that we state an ultimate fact which neither requires nor can receive any further explanation. The connexion of the third with the first and second positions is obvious. Right and wrong, being simple, ideas, and being, moreover, qualities of actions, considered in them selves, are regarded by Price as being perceived immediately by the reason just in the same way that colour is perceived by the eye or sound by the car. That they are perceived immediately follows from the fact that they are simple ideas, incapable of analysis ; that they are perceived by the reason or understanding, and not by a sense, is maintained in an elaborate course of argument against Hutcheson. When the reason or understanding has once apprehended the idea of right, it ought to impose that idea as a law upon the will ; and thus it becomes, equally with the affections, a spring of action. The place of the emotional part of our nature in this system is not very clear. The predominant view, however, appears to be that, while it is the source of all vicious action, it may, when enlightened by reason, aid in the determination of virtuous conduct. The school of Hutcheson, on the other hand, maintains that the emotions are, in the last analysis, the original source of all conduct, be it virtuous or vicious. As already stated, the English moralist with whom Price has most affinity is Cudworth. The main point of difference is that, while Cudworth regards the ideas of right and wrong as poT^ara or modifications of the intellect itself, existing first in germ and after wards developed by circumstances, Price seems rather to regard them as acquired from the contemplation of actions, though acquired necessarily, immediately, and intuitively. Those who are familiar with the writings of Kaut (which arc posterior to those of Price) will recognize many points of resemblance both in the fundamental ideas and in the modes of expression. Amongst these points are the exaltation of reason ; the depreciation of the affections ; the unwillingness of both authors to regard the "partial and accidental structure of humanity," the "mere make and constitution of man," as the basis of morality, in other words, to recognize ethical distinctions as relative to human nature ; the ultimate and irresolvable character of the idea of rectitude ; the notion that the reason imposes this idea as a law upon the will, becoming thus our independent spring of action ; the insistence upon the reality of liberty or "the power of acting and deter mining"; the importance attached to reason as a distinct source of ideas ; and, it may be added, the discrimination (so celebrated in the philosophy of Kant) of the moral (or practical) and the speculative understanding (or reason). 2 Price s ethical theories are almost the antithesis of those of Paley, whose Moral and Political Philosophy appeared in 1785. Speak ing of this work in his third edition Price says, " Never have I met with a theory of morals which lias appeared to me more exception able." Most of Price s more important works have been already mentioned. To these may be added an Essay on the Population of England (2d ed., 1780) ; two Fast-day Sermons, published respectively in 1770 and 1781 ; and Observations on, the importance of the American Revolution and the means of rendering it a benefit to the World, 1784. A complete list of his works is given as an appendix to Dr Priestley s Funeral Sermon. Notices of Price s ethical system occur in Mackintosh s Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Jouffroy s Introduction to Ethics, Whewell s History of Moral Philosophy in England, Bain s Mental and Moral Sciences, the article on ETHICS (vol. viii. pp. C03, 604), and a monograph on Shaftesbury and Hutcheson by the writer of this article in Sampson Low & Co. s series of English Philosophers. Tho authority for his life is a memoir by his nephew, William Morgan. (T. F.) PRICHARD, JAMES COWLES (1786-1848), the founder of ethnology or anthropology in England, was born on 1 1th February 1786 at Ross in Herefordshire. His parents were of the Society of Friends, and his career in after life partly turned on his not receiving the then narrow course of school education, but a wider home training in modern languages and general literature. Living at Bristol, he occupied himself much in examining the natives of different countries who were to be met with amongst the shipping of the port, and he would occasionally bring a foreigner to his father s house. Thus in early life he laid a foundation for his later researches, and he was mainly led to adopt medi cine as a profession from the facilities which its study offered 2 Price does not, like Kant, distinguish between the words "reason"

and " understanding. "