Plato. "For Aristotle perceiving the proud emptiness and swelling frothiness of such Platonic bubbles, he was fain to search for certainty somewhere else; and casting his eye upon the ground, he spied the bottom of it laying in sense, and laid there by the wise dispensation of God Himself: from thence he looked up to the highest top and pinnacle of certainty placed in the understanding. Sense is but the gate of certainty; the understanding is the throne of it. First principles and common notions, with those demonstrations that stream from them, only remain as the basis of certainty, and he that will not cast anchor upon these, condemns himself to perpetual scepticism." (202-203). Here is not only an anticipation of Locke, but a formal statement of the fundamental principle of the Scottish philosophy. Culverwel thinks the Platonists were right in regarding the spirit of a man as the "Candle of the Lord" "though they were deceived in the time when it was lighted". (132). Culverwel holds that without sensation the mind could never rise to any knowledge at all, as the soul is endowed with "no other innate light but only the power and principle of knowing and reasoning". (128). This power of knowing and reasoning comes, through experience, upon knowledge and common principles of morality.

Culverwel's theory of ethics is but an extension of his theory of knowledge. It shows many points in common with Aristotle and the Stoics a well as with modern intuitionalism. His conception of law and liberty is striking. "Law is founded in intellectuals, in the reason, not in the sensitive principle. It supposes a noble and free-born creature, for where there is no liberty there is no law, a law being nothing else but a rational restraint and limitation of absolute liberty. Now all liberty is radically in the intellect; and such creatures as have no light, have no choice, no moral variety." (62). To him a natural law was as real as to any seventeenth century writer. This law is grasped by the reason, or revealed in the reason. It is common and universal among men. Culverwel lays great stress upon

universal consent, and declaims with warmth against those who attribute universal agreement to a revelation to the Jews, which spread itself into Greece. "Surely, Aristotle never thought that his sheet of blank paper could have nothing printed upon it, till a Jew gave it an imprimatur." (95). He holds that common notions are the common property of man, as man. 'Should new nations or worlds appear, every rational nature in them would comply with and embrace the several branches of this law; and as they would not differ in those things that are intrinsical to sense, so neither in those that are essential to the understanding'. (116. 113.93.) Culverwel makes use of the inductive method, both in his theology and ethics. "As we ascend to the first and Supreme Being by the steps of second causes, we may climb up to a sight of this eternal law by these fruitful branches of secondary laws, which seem to have their root in earth, when, in reality, it is in heaven." (51.) Basing certainty of moral truth upon universal reason, he founds its nature and sanction in the Divine Will. "Now this eternal law is not distinguished from God himself, for nothing exists from eternity but God himself." "God being truth itself, eternal immutable truth. Wisdom and power which are the chief ingredients of law, can only dwell in Deity." Here Culverwel distinguishes between law and its obligation. Natural law has its seat in the understanding of God, and is made known to man by the voice of reason. But it is only the will of God, willing natural law to be moral law, that gives it life, vigor, sanction, and places men under obligation. "Not the understanding, but the will of a lawgiver makes a law." (45-55). Culverwel argues with great force that reasca cannot bind in its own name, but only in the name of its supreme Lord and Sovereign. No naked essence though never SO pure and noble can lay a moral engagement upon its own self, or bind its own being; for this would make the very same being superior to itself as it gives a law, and inferior to itself, as it must obey it. In the commonwealth of human

nature that proportion which actions bear to reason is indeed a sufficient foundation for a law to build upon, but it is not the law itself, nor a formal obligation. For the perfection of a law "there must come a command from some superior power, from whence will spring a moral obligation also, and make up the formality of a law." (74-77). Thus Culverwel holds that natural law, which the reason recognises, is imposed by God as a revelation in the reason, and as such, has its source, obligation, and sanction in the Supreme Being. Culverwel also holds it to be express blasphemy to say that either God, or the word of God, ever did or ever will, oppose right reason. (218). If Hobbes represents the stationary point of departure, Culverwel represents and indicates the line of departure which has guided the course of the most influential schools of English ethics till our own day. Although Culverwel's treatise was not a professed reply to Hobbes, it yet attacks the Leviathan in its chief strongholds, not only in affirming the rational, social, and moral nature of man, but also by maintaining that moral "law is born from the brain of Jove, and it is not the secular arm, but the heavenly, that must maintain it." (52).

IV. Cumberland. 1632-1718.1) The Light of Nature" had inaugurated a new movement in ethical philosophy, alongside of the Leviathan. The work of Culverwel was carried on by Cumberland, Cudworth, and Locke, open an

tuta.

1) De legibus naturae disquisitis philosophica contra Hobbium instiLondon. 1672. Done into English by T. Maxwell. London 1727 French by Barbeyrac, Amst. 1744. The work consists of a Prolegomena and nine chapters. Appended to the treatise are two dissertations: a) The City of God, or the Defects of Heathen Deism, b) The Imperfections of Heathen Morality, which is an interesting discussion of the ethical doctrines of the Stoics and Epicureans. Sidgwick; 'History of Ethics'. p. 172, remarks that Cumberland "has furnished material to more than one better known moralist"; while Remusat, in his "Philosophie en Angleterre", II. 56, regards Cumberland's work as "le premier traité philosophique, qui, en Angleterre, ait été dicté purement par l'esprit moderne". These judgments may be equally true of Culverwel.

tagonists of the philosophy of Hobbes. Cumberland, like Culverwel repudiated the doctrine of innate ideas, insisted upon the harmony of faith and knowledge, declared moral principles eternal and unchangeable in their nature, and endeavoured to establish ethical philosophy on a psychological basis, independent of Revelation. But Cumberland went far beyond Culverwel in anticipating modern ethical. theory, as well as in prescribing the method of philosophical investigation. Cumberland promises "to avoid the sure and easy expedient of the Platonists . . . . not being so fortunate as to posess innate ideas." He hopes to show against Hobbes that man is a rational, social, and benevolent being, capable of disinterested action, and that morality is not a mere matter of conventionalism and the State, but inherent

in human nature. The Prolegomena gives the outline of his system. He defines the law of nature to be; "Certain propositions of unchangeable truth which direct our voluntary actions about choosing good and refusing evil; and impose an obligation to external actions even without civil laws, and laying aside all considerations of those compacts which constitute civil government. That some such truths are, from the nature of things and of men, necessarily suggested to the minds of men, and by them understood and remembered whilst the faculties of their minds continue unhurt, and that therefore they really exist there. This is what we affirm, and our said adversaries as expressly deny." But how do we know that there are any such laws or truths? The answer to this question shows the advance which was made by Cumberland. He agrees with Grotius and Culverwel that there is much force in an appeal to history and literature, as showing the universality of these laws, but this is not his method. He would show that man is constituted in harmony with the laws of nature, which are the universal laws of right reason. He announces an experimental method. We must prosecute moral science as we do natural science, "by direct and well conducted observations and experiments." He makes a study of the intel

lectual, moral, and religious capacities of man, views him in his different relations, and seeks to analyze the nature and constitution of both man and the world. Natural good is defined to be that which preserves, enlarges, or perfects the powers of an intelligent being. He maintains that the growth and existence of the institutions of property, with its rights in labor and things, and of the family with love and benevolence between parent and child, not only prove the social nature of man, but insure its perpetuity. The reason is the faculty which apprehends moral distinctions. In his system, conscience is the reason concerned about right and wrong. It is sometimes called the practical reason. "The dictates of practical reason are propositions which point out the end, or means thereto, in every man's power." Again, it means right reason, "whoever determines his judgment and his will by right reason must agree with all others who judge according to right reason in the same matter." (II. 8.) We come to moral knowledge just as we come to any other kind of knowledge. Some actions have evil results, others good results. By experience we come to a knowledge of these two classes. Virtue carries with it true happiness, and vice, misery. Morality is capable of mathematical certainty. (Proleg. XII. II, 9.) Cumberland, from his analysis of human nature, seeks one general law of nature from which all other particular laws are deduced. This is found in the law of benevolence. "The greatest possible benevolence of every rational agent toward all the rest, constitutes the happiest state of each and all, so far as depends on their own power, and is necessarily required for their happiness; therefore the common good is the supreme law." (Proleg. IX. cf. I. 4-12.) In his second chapter Cumberland defends the law of benevolence, as a law of human nature and right reason, and shows that the highest good of one and all can only be realized in the living energetic benevolence of each and all. No action is "morally good that does not in its Own nature contribute somewhat to the happiness of men." On such grounds