H́nh ảnh trang
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

A Sketch of Moral Philosophy in England from 1650-1690.

I. Chaotic Condition. The England of the seventeenth century is unique both in its men and events. The civil wars which began in 1642, and brought on revolution after revolution until the settlements in 1689, mark the most turbulent period in England's history. In this period were born the parties and policies, constitutional and commercial forms, which have played the leading part in the political movements of the last two centuries. This period is not less significant in its influence upon religious and philosophic thought. Perhaps never, before or since, has a single nation in one century known so many illustrious men. Such were, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden; Bacon, Hobbes and Locke; Newton, Boyle, Harvey and Huygens; Baxter, Bunyan, Taylor and Tillotson. Yet, however brilliant this century may appear as we look back upon it, and think of its vast fruitage for later times, it appeared to its great men as dark, chaotic, and disheartening. Milton thought that 'all the winds of heaven were let loose to play upon the earth'. The better part of the clergy recognised 'an age wherein men talked of religion most, and lived it least'. In 1660 Locke wrote, "I no sooner perceived myself in the world, but I found myself in a storm which has lasted almost hitherto." After the Restoration, Locke seriously contemplated joining his countrymen in America. Later, he was compelled by the Stuart to seek refuge in Holland. It was the open, flagrant immorality of the age that caused the deepest concern for the nation. This moral havoc was, in part, the natural

Curtis, Locke's Ethical Philosophy.

1

accompaniment of the political revolutions; in part a result of the writings of Hobbes. Speaking of the condition of society in this period, Macaulay says, "Ethical philosophy had recently taken a form well suited to please a generation equally devoted to monarchy and to vice. Thos. Hobbes had, in language more precise and luminous than has ever been employed by any other metaphysical writer maintained, that the will of the Prince was the standard of right and wrong, and that every subject ought to be ready to profess Popery, Mohammedanism, or Paganism at the royal command. Thousands who were really incompetent to appreciate what was really valuable in his speculations eagerly welcomed a theory which, while it exalted the kingly office, relaxed the obligations of morality, and degraded religion into a mere affair of state. Hobbism soon became an almost essential part of the character of the fine gentleman. Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the prevailing immorality, but those persons who made politics their business were perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt society.")

II. Hobbes. 1588-1679. In the summer of 1651 appeared the "Leviathan". It bore a striking frontispiece. Towering above the mountains, and overlooking the country with its cities and villages, is a crowned giant, grasping a sword in his right hand, and a crozier in his left. His vast body is made up of miniature people, representing the different professions and classes of men, all bending the knee, and facing the crowned head. Above all is the inscription "Non est potestas Super Terram, quae Comparetur ei." This is the Civitas of Hobbes. We may regard it as one man, or as an assembly of men. What is strictly demanded is one crowned head, governing all. Here is the formal philosophy of Hobbes; here is the political philosophy of the houses of Stuart and Bourbon in the Seventeenth Century. "L'Etat, c'est moi." The Leviathan comprehends

1) Hist. of England. Vol. I. ch. 2.

the substance of the entire philosophy of Hobbes.1) In center and circumference his work is political. It is in part a result of his convictions, in part of his devotion to absolute monarchy. Even his translation of Thucydides was designed to show the evils of popular government. His aim in the Leviathan is to crystallize the prevailing politicoreligious dogmas into a consistent and popular philosophy. These dogmas were ready at hand. They lay close to the hearts of the Stuarts; they were woven into the polity of the Church. The Clergy had always been the only authorised teachers of public morality. But from the time of Henry VIII the Church was more and more identified with the interests of the Crown. As early as 1530, the Bishop of Chichester wrote a work defending Henry VIII, and exhorting all to reverence the King as the "Supreme head of the Church and the nation." One year later Henry imposed his supremacy on the Clergy. James I was able to proclaim the divinity of his office, and define the duties of his subjects. The thought of the politic Bacon was the conviction of many. "Kings are mortal Gods on earth, unto whom the living God has lent his own name as a great honour." For more than a century the Church had been rendering unto Caesar the things that were God's, and had come upon many of the elements of Hobbism. The view of the natural man was not better than that of Hobbes, while some of the consequences of this view had been put into dogmatic form. If the Church held that all government

25.

1) Leviathan, or, the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. By Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, London. Printed for Andrew Clarke, 1651. The dedication is dated Paris, Apr. 15 1651. Early in 1640 Hobbes had sketched his political system on paper. Hobbes, in his dedication to the King of the "Seven Philosophical Problems", 1662, indicates the purpose of his Leviathan. He declares; "There is nothing in it against Episcopacy. Why am I called an Atheist, or a man of no religion, unless it is for making the authority of the Church depend wholly upon the royal power, which I hope your Majesty will think neither atheism nor heresy, . . . . snatching up all the weapons to fight against your enernies."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

is of divine origin and appointment, as against Hobbes, it held with him that the King is the Viceregent of God, with divine right of administering government, and that the duties of subjects are comprehended in passive obedience and non-resistance. The Church sanctioned Cranmer's Homily, which declared it to be "the calling of God's people to render obedience to governors, although they were wicked and wrongdoers, and in no case to resist." Throughout the stormy times of this period such doctrines were promulgated in sermons, pamphlets and treatises. Locke speaks of the prevalence of these doctrines in the introduction to his "Two Treatises on Government"; the first of which is a reply to the posthumous work "Patriarcha" by Sir Robert Filmer. The first edition of Filmer's work appeared in 1680, defending the most extreme doctrine of divine rights and absolutism. It was popular enough to come to a new edition in 1685. Preparatory to demolishing the argument of Filmer, Locke remarks, "I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman long since past answering, had not the pulpit of late years publicly owned his doctrine, and made it the current divinity of the times. . . . . I should not have taken the pains to show his mistakes, inconsistencies, and want of proofs, were there not men amongst us, who, by crying up his books, and espousing his doctrine, save me against the reproach of writing against a dead adversary."

That a Church depending on the State, and regarding the Crown as the State, should, in revolutionary times, become a mere political faction, seems to be unavoidable.1)

1) It has been computed that within the twenty years from 1640–1660, not less than thirty thousand pamphlets and treatises issued from the press on the subject of ecclesiastical and civil government. In the reign of James II there were published one thousand dissertations for and against Popery, and developing the general principles of toleration. For the relations of Church and State during this period, see, Blakey, History of Political Literature Vol. II. 141. Makintosh Hist. of the Revolution in England. 1688. Vol. II. 43. Dr. Samuel Parker, Ecclesiastical Polity 1670. South, Peculiar Care and Concern of Providence for the Protection and Defence of Kings, 1675. Hallam, Literature of Europe. Vol. III. 206. etc.

This condition of affairs throws some light upon Locke's failure to take orders. It is clear that his father intended him for the Church, that many of his friends expected and urged him to take orders, that he held offices in Christ Church, Oxford, as lecturer on Greek and Rhetoric, and Censor of moral philosophy which were generally assigned to clergymen. It is also clear that by 1666 he had abandoned the idea. In view of Locke's letters and works we suggest that his feeling on the subject was not very different from that of his great contemporaory, Milton. "The Church", says Milton, "to whose service, by the intention of my parents and friends, I was destined of a child, and in mine own resolutions, till coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had pervaded in the Church, that he who could take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either straight perjure or split his faith, I thought it better to preserve a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking bought and begun with servitude and foreswearing".1)

The doctrine by which the Leviathan is supported is of the most vigorous and trenchant character. Its fundament is the conception of man as organized material endowed with sense and selfishness.2) No Calvinist ever thought less of the natural man than Hobbes or preached with more power the unalterable decrees. With him, man is by nature selfish, brutal, violent, controlled only by fear and self-interest. Right and might are identical, "homo homini lupus". Thus his state of nature is a state of war, "bellum omnium contra omnes". All men are by nature equal, but this equality is a condition for war. Being equal, in the faculties of the body and mind, insures the general havoc to that point where compact is possible. Natural inequality would insure the survival of the strongest, and instead of compact, we

1) Milton. "The Reason of Church Government".

2) Human Nature. XI. 5. compare Lev III. 34. and Lev I. I.

« TrướcTiếp tục »