Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/826

812 CLARKE he cried, out, " Boys, boys, bo wise ; here comes a fool." This turn of his miiid is confirmed by Dr Warton, who, in his observations upon the line of Mr Pope, " Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise," says, " Who could imagine that Locke was fond of romances; that Newton once studied astrology ; that Dr Clarke valued himself on his agility, and frequently amused him self in a private room of his house in leaping over the tables and chairs ; and that our author himself was a great epicure 1" [Clarke, although in no department a genius of the first order, was a man of great general ability. He was eminent as a theologian, a mathematician, a metaphysician, and a philologist. His chief strength lay in his logical power. He was so disciplined and skilful a reasoner as to be able to contend on equal terms even with a Butler or a Leibnitz. Few have defended so well so many good causes. The materialism of Hobbes, the pantheism of Spinoza, the empiricism of Locke, the determinism of Leibnitz, Collins s necessitarianism, Dod well s denial of the natural immortality of the soul, rationalistic attacks on Christianity, and the selfish morality of the sensationalists, all found in him a formidable opponent, possessed of great strength of mind, extraordinary dialectic skill, and a thorough conviction of the importance and truth of the principles which he advocated. His fame as a theologian and philosopher rests to a large extent on his demonstration of the existence of God and his theory of the foundation of rectitude. The former is not, as it is often described, a purely a priori argument, noi ls it presented as such by its author. It starts from a fact, and it often explicitly appeals to facts. The intelligence, for example, of the self-existence and original cause of all things the main question between theists and atheists is admitted to be " not easily proved a priori" but argued to be " demonstrably proved a posteriori from the variety and degrees of perfection in things, and the order of causes and effects, from the intelligence that created beings are con fessedly endowed with, and from the beauty, order, and final purpose of things." The propositions maintained in the argument are " 1. That something has existed from eternity ; 2. That there has existed from eternity some one immutable and independent being ; 3. That that immutable and independent being, which has existed from eternity, without any external cause of its existence, must be self- existent, that is, necessarily existing ; 4. What the substance or essence of that being, which is self-existent or necessarily exist-ing, is, we have no idea, neither is it at all possible for us to comprehend it ; 5. That though the substance or essence of the self-existent being is itself absolutely incom prehensible to us, yet many of the essential attributes of his nature are strictly demonstrable, as well as his existence, and, in the first place, that he must be of necessity eternal ; 6. That the self-existent being must of necessity be infinite and omnipresent, 7. Must be but one, 8. Must be an intelligent being, 9. Must be not a necessary agent, but a being indued with liberty and choice, 10. Must of necessity have infinite power, 11. Must be infinitely wise, and 12. Must of necessity be a being of infinite goodness, justice, and truth, and all other moral perfections, such as become the supreme governor and judge of the world." In order to establish his sixth proposition, Dr Clarke contends that time and space, eternity and immensity, are not substances but attributes, the attributes of a self- existent being. Edmund Law, Dugald Stewart, Lord Brougham, and many other writers, have, in consequence, represented Clarke as arguing from tha existence of time and space to the existence of Deity. This is -a serious mistake. The existence of an immutable, independent, and necessary being is supposed to be proved before any reference is made to the nature of time and space. Clarke has been generally supposed to have derived the opinion that time and space are attributes of an infinite immaterial and spiritual being from the Scholium Generate, first published in the second edition of Newton s Principia (1714). The truth is that his work on the Being and Attributes of God appeared nine years before that Scholium. The view propounded by Clarke may have been derived from the Midrash, the Kabbalah, Philo, Henry More, or Cudworth, but not from Newton. It is a view difficult to prove, and probably few will acknowledge that Clarke has conclusively proved it. His theory as to the naturs, foundation, and obligation of virtue is to the following effect. Things differ from one another in their natures. They necessarily, therefore, stand in different relations to one another. From these different relations of things there must arise an agreement or disagreement of some things to others, a fitness or unfitness of the application of different things one to another. Thus there is a fitness or suitableness of certain acts in certain circumstances to certain persons and an unsuitableness of others founded on the nature of things and persons, apart from all positive appointment whatso ever. It is only imperfection or perversion of intelligence which can make the relations of things, and the fitness and unfitness involved in them, appear to be other than what they are. The fundamental truths of morals are absolutely and in themselves what they seem, no less than the truths of geometry. The obligation to virtue is involved in the very recognition of the moral relations which arise out of the necessary and eternal differences of things. It is impossible for us to apprehend them otherwise than as laws of reason which ought to guide our actions. Prior to all consideration of the divine will or law there is obligation ; and God, although under no necessity to create, must, having resolved to create, have respect to certain propor tions, abstractly of eternal necessity, and, having resolved to act, must determine His will according to eternal reason. His own law to himself is the law which He has given to every rational being, and which He has sanctioned by rewards and punishments. These are a secondary source of obligation. This theory has been misunderstood and misrepresented in various ways. Jouffroy, Ame de e Jacques, Sir James Mackintosh, Dr Thomas Brown, &c., criticise it on the assumption that Clarke made virtue consist in conformity to the relations of things universally, although the whole tenor of his argument shows him to have had in view only conformity to such relations as belong to the sphere of moral agency. We may admit, however, that he might have pro fitably insisted more on the fact that the relations and fitnesses spoken of are those which afford a reason and rule of action to the will. In this respect the doctrine of the distin guished German philosopher Herbart, which, while resolving morality into relations, lays stress on the fact that these relations are relations of will, may be regarded as an improvement of that of Clarke. It is erroneous to represent Clarke as confounding mathematical and moral relations, as overlooking that the relations involved in morality must be distinct from those involved in mere truth, or as meaning by the " fitness " which is constitutive of morality the adaptation of means and ends. In reality, he simply states an analogy between mathematical and moral truths, assigns to moral principles the distinctive peculiarity of being related to the will, and being liable to be set aside,- and denotes by fitness the accordance of things with a standard by which they can be judged. When Clarke s doctrine, that rectitude is a conformity to certain relations, has been accurately understood, it cannot

fail to be obvious that, although it must be vindicated from