it might, perhaps, be the case that ideas were loth born
with us and afterwards impressed upon us from without.All the laws of nature, Cumberland maintains, may be reduced to one, the law of universal benevolence, of effort to promote the happiness of all rational agents. This, he thinks, is the root and source of the entire world of moral good. " No action can be called morally good which does not in its own nature contribute somewhat to the happiness of men." The theory of Cumberland implies as an ante cedent the system of Hobbes. Had there not been a theory of selfishness, a doctrine which made self-love the universal principle of conduct, we should not have had the whole nature of virtue resolved into a principle of benevolence as it was by Cumberland. His opinion was evidently a reac tion from the opposite. In his dislike of the selfish theory he was tempted to carry his refutation of it to the uttermost and maintain the negative in the directest terms of antithesis. There was no other so forcible mode of denying the obnoxious theory as by positively affirming and defending its contrary,. that no virtuous action whatever is self-regarding, or, in. other words, that the only principle of right conduct is benevolence. The principle, therefore, which he lays down as fundamental is that to pursue to the utmost of our power the general good of the whole system of rational beings is to contribute to the utmost of our power to the good of each of its parts, our own individual happiness inclusive, and that to pursue an opposite end is to entail opposite results, and among others our own individual misery. It is just the opposite of the central idea of Hobbes. The happiness of the whole community, according to Hobbes, will be best promoted if each man looks to himself and attends to his own interests. The happiness of each individual, according to Cumberland, will be best promoted if each man begins by endeavouring to promote the happiness of the whole society. Both were right and both were wrong. Man is to a great extent ruled by selfishness ; the uncivilized man almost wholly. In savages and in children selfishness is a decidedly stronger principle than benevolence. The human being is keenly susceptible to its own sensational pleasures and pains when almost incapable of entertaining any wide or elevated con ceptions of general good. Benevolence as a steady and vigorous principle of action does not manifest itself early in the history either of the individual or of the race. Then, there is a good deal of sense and truth in saying, Let the individual take care of himself and the common good will be thereby best secured. It is far from certain that if every man were setting the common good before him as his direct and immediate object the great majority of them would not do more harm than good. If the selfishness of the ignorant be bad, there is danger of their benevolence being worse. On the other hand, Hobbes was wrong in affirming that man is governed solely by self-interest, and Cumberland was right in maintaining that disinterested benevolence is a principle of human nature; It exists from the first in the human constitution, although only in germ, and moral progress is marked throughout by its growth in strength. History shows us the obstacles inter posed by the narrowness and darkness of the human understanding, the coldness and selfishness of the human heart, the jealousies of classes, and the antipathies of nations continuously, if slowly, yielding in favour of universal benevolence, benevolence to all rational and even sentient beings. Thus far the truth is with Cumberland. His error is when he asserts that benevolence is the sole principle of virtue. This clearly is an error, although it is one in which he was followed by Hutcheson and some other philosophers. Benevolence cannot be legitimately made to include love to God and the exercises of piety nor what have been called the personal virtues. It is only itself virtuous when brought under conformity to the moral law.
In attempting to prove that all the virtues are forms or varieties of benevolence Cumberland never appeals to history, although he believed that the law of universal benevolence had been accepted by all nations and generations ; and he carefully abstains from arguments founded on revelation, feeling that it was indispensable to establish the principles of moral right on nature as a basis. There was another line of reasoning open to him, viz., deduction of the propriety of certain actions from the consideration of the character and position of rational agents in the universe ; and this is that which he follows. He argues that ull that we see in nature is framed so as to avoid and reject what is dangerous to the integrity of its constitution ; that the human race would be an anomaly in the world had it not for end its conservation in its best estate ; that benevolence of all to all is what in a rational view of the creation is alone accordant with its general plan ; that various peculiarities of man s body indicate that he has been made to co-operate with his fellow men and to maintain society ; and that certain faculties of his mind explicitly and positively show the common good to be more essentially connected with his perfection than any pursuit of private advantage. The whole course of his reasoning proceeds on, and is pervaded by, the principle of final causes.
To the question, What is the foundation of rectitude? he replies, the greatest good of the universe of rational beings. He may be regarded as the founder of the utili tarian school in England, which numbers a Hume, Bentham, the Mills, and Bain among its adherents. His utilitarianism is quite distinct from what is known as the selfish system ; it errs by going to the contrary extreme, by almost absorbing individual good in universal good. Nor does it look merely to the lower pleasures, the pleasures of sense, for the constituents of good, but rises above them to include especially what tends to perfect, strengthen, and expand our true nature. Existence and the extension of our powers of body, thought, and feeling are held to be good for their own sakes without respect to enjoyment. Cum berland s views on this point were long abandoned by utilitarians as destroying the homogeneity and self-consis tency of their theory; but J. S. Mill and some recent writers have reproduced them, without recognition of their paternity, as necessary to its defence against charges not less serious then even inconsistency.
The answer which Cumberland gives to the question, Whence comes our obligation to observe the laws of nature? is that happiness flows from obedience, and misery from disobedience to them, not as the mere results of a blind necessity, but as the expressions of the divine will the reward attached by that will to obedience, and the punish ment attached by it to disobedience. This reward and punishment, supplemented by future retribution, the happy immortality which awaits the good and the misery coming on the wicked, are, in his view, the sanctions of the laws of nature, the sources of our obligation to obey them. To the other great ethical question, How are moral distinctions apprehended 1 he replies that it is by means of reason, of right reason. But by right reason he means merely the power of rising to general laws of nature from particular facts of experience. It is no peculiar faculty or distinctive function of mind : it involves no original element of cogni tion ; it begins with sense and experience ; it is gradually generated and wholly derivative. This doctrine lies only in germ in Cumberland, but will be found in full flower in Hartley, Mackintosh, and later associationists.
and miscellaneous writer, was born in the Master's Lodge
of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the 19th of February