to conform to the principles of the Established Church. On finishing his university course he decided to enter the ministry of the Church, and was ordained in 1717. He occupied a number of more or less important ecclesiastical posts, among them the rectorship of Stanhope, the deanship of St. Paul's in London, the bishoprics of Bristol and Durham. His benevolence is said to have been something extraordinary.

comprise

Works. Butler's philosophical "works" (fifteen) "Sermons" on ethical and religious topics (1726), "The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature" (1736), “Two Brief Dissertations on Personal Identity, and the Nature of Virtue," appended to the "Analogy," and a few Letters to Samuel Clarke. The "Analogy" was a reply to Tindal's Christianity as Old as Creation," the so-called "Bible of Deism."

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Philosophy.

Butler possesses some importance as an opponent of the Deistic doctrine of religion, but owes his place (not a mean one) in the history of philosophy chiefly to his ethical doctrines.

Theory of Religion. — In opposition to the Deists, Butler attempts to show (1) that nothing in " reason or "experience" precludes for us the probability and probability, he says, is our only guide in such matters that we are immortal, and that the future state is a state of rewards and punishments: in other words, that the government of the world is a moral government (as taught by revealed religion); (2) that, in view of the imperfection of reason and experience, Revelation is probable, and that it is no more (nor less) impossible of comprehension than the ordinary. course of nature. In connection with the question "the most important that can possibly be asked "of immortality, arises that of the "meaning of that identity or sameness of person which is implied in the notion of our living now and hereafter in any two successive moments." On this point, Butler answers that we live and act constantly

as if we were the same to-day that we were yesterday and shall be to-morrow, that only real beings — not mere abstract ideas are capable of life and action, happiness and misery, and that every person is "conscious that he is now the same person or self he was as far back as his remembrance reaches."

Ethics. "That which renders beings capable of moral government" is the " having a moral nature, - moral faculties of perception and action." And, on the other hand, the being moral is the exercise of these faculties. The moral faculties of man comprise, according to Butler, four classes of principles: (1) certain "propensions, aversions, passions, and affections" having relations to external objects which constitute "human nature" in relation to such objects; (2) self-love, which constitutes our moral nature as respects ourselves; (3) a natural “principle of benevolence,"

our nature as regards others, "which is in some degree to society what self-love is to the individual;" (4) a "principle of reflection," conscience, by "which we approve and disapprove our own actions." In the most general sense of the term, moral action is action from and according to any one of these principles, — any part of our moral nature; in a less wide sense it is action from and according to whichever is the strongest; in a more restricted sense still it is action from and according to a principle which prevails, not by reason of mere strength, but by virtue of its nature as representing most fully human nature as a unit and the whole, and as being therefore the most excellent. This last principle is doubtless the "principle of reflexion," or conscience, which, only, is unequivocally peculiar to man as distinguished from the brute; no action that is not "suitable" or "proportionable" to this principle has a truly moral character or is truly good. "The very constitution of our nature requires that we bring our whole conduct before this faculty; wait its determination; enforce upon ourselves its authority; and make it the business of our lives, as it is absolutely the whole business of a moral

agent, to conform ourselves to it." Next in rank to this is self-love, which implies a certain degree of "calculation," or reflection. "Reasonable self-love and conscience are the chief or superior principles in the nature of man." That self-love, though condemned by moralists who disapprove of Hobbes's making it the sole principle of ethics, is a real principle of our nature, becomes evident from the consideration of the fact that while as "members of one another " we are "made for society," we are "intended to take care of our own life and health and private good." Self-love is not necessarily inconsistent with love for others, but may be involved in that, or, on the other hand, involve that, without detriment to it. Without self-love benevolence would often be without an object, except the indefinite one of merely avoiding pain. "The goodness or badness. of actions does not arise from hence, that the epithet 'interested' or 'disinterested' may be applied to them, any more than that any other indifferent epithet, suppose 'inquisitive' or 'jealous,' may or may not be applied to them; not from their being attended with future pleasure or pain, but from their being what they are, namely, what becomes such creatures as we are, what the state of the case requires, or the contrary. Or, in other words, we may judge that an action is morally good or evil before we so much as consider whether it be interested or disinterested. . . . Self-love in its one degree is as just and morally good as any other affection whatever. Benevolence towards particular persons may be to a degree of weakness, and so be blamable; and disinterestedness is so far from being commendable that the utmost possible depravity which we can in imagination conceive is that of disinterested cruelty." Injustice is done to self-love by confounding it with the pursuance of the gratifications of the passions, which in themselves are not directly related to the self, but to the external world. It is this gratification rather than real self-love that is "unfriendly to benevolence." Self-love is distinguished from the "particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular

external objects in that it belongs to man as a "reasonable creature," whereas they, though a part of human nature, are quite distinct from reason as such. Self-love is further distinguished from the passions in that the gratification of them is a source of happiness, whereas "people may love themselves with the utmost unbounded affection, and yet be extremely miserable ;" and if "self-love wholly engrosses us and leaves no room for any other principle, there can be no such thing at all as happiness or enjoyment of any kind whatever." Butler gives special attention to resentment, compassion, love of neighbor, among the moral sentiments. He distinguishes two sorts of resentment, one of which is "sudden " and "instinctive," and has for its object to defend ourselves from impending bodily "harm,” the other reflective, and relates to a “moral injury.” The former is justifiable only in special instances; the latter is justifiable in the form of moral indignation. Compassion has for its final causes to prevent misery (by restraining resentment, envy, unreasonable self-love) and to relieve misery. Resentment, compassion, love of neighbor, are all subject to the dictates of conscience. The sanctions of virtue are, according to Butler, conscience, and the knowledge of God as the rewarder and punisher of virtue and its opposite. The obligation to obey conscience rests upon the fact that it is the law of our nature, or, in another aspect, the will of God.

Result. Butler, it is scarcely necessary to remark, is an intuitionist. He is in an important sense a disciple of Shaftesbury; his " conscience being the "moral sense of Shaftesbury, tinged with an element of reflection, and less æsthetic in its action. His view of self-love may be regarded as a reaction against Shaftesbury's somewhat onesided view of "benevolence," itself a reaction against the egoistic ethics of Hobbes. Butler seems to come very near regarding benevolence and self-love as one and the same thing, but, after all, left the identification of the two through the reason, which comprehends both self and other,

subject and object, to later moralists. He has been rightly deemed one of the greatest moralists between Aristotle and Kant. He has been somewhat neglected by historians.

§ 67.

Samuel Clarke (1675-1729).—Clarke, after a course in the school of his birthplace, Norwich, entered the University of Cambridge and pursued studies in mathematics and philosophy. Becoming acquainted with the Newtonian principles of physics, he adopted them, and upheld them in opposition to those of Descartes. He studied divinity, took orders, became chaplain at court, and "resident chaplain" of the Bishop of Worcester, a position held by him till his death.

Works. Clarke's principal philosophical works, treating particularly of the being and attributes of God, the principles of morality, freedom and necessity, and the nature of space and time, are: "A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, more particularly in answer to Mr. Hobbes, Spinoza, and their followers" (1705); "Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation" (1706); “A Collection of Papers which passed between the late learned Mr. Leibnitz and Dr. Clarke," etc., together with a reply to Collins's "Philosophical Enquiry Concerning Human Liberty" (1711).

Philosophy: The Being and Attributes of God. It has been asserted1 of Clarke's metaphysico-religious doctrine that it "was intimately connected with his Natural Philosophy, and Newton was hardly less his guide in the former than in the latter." Whether it was Newton or Spinoza who was his guide, Clarke assumes that the mathematical method was the method of metaphysics, and attempts to prove the existence, omnipresence, and the infinite wisdom and beneficence of the Creator, "geometrico ordine" (as Spinoza says). The notion of an infinite chain of

1 See Martineau, " Types of Ethical Theory," ii. 428 (1st ed.).