table" truths, among which are the truths of ethics, that never once, in the course of the treatise just referred to, does he take the trouble to combat the egoism of Hobbes. Obviously we are not concerned with his system here. Cumberland, on the other hand, is singularly devoid of metaphysical interests, and the passages in his treatise De legibus naturae which do incidentally treat of metaphysical questions, are certainly the least satisfactory part of his work. To the side of Hobbes's system which teaches the arbitrary character of moral distinctions, he replies by reproducing what we have already seen to be the views of Grotius regarding Natural Law; while, in opposition to the egoism of Hobbes, he teaches what practically amounts to the system of Universalistic Hedonism. As the first English writer standing for this principle, he has been taken as the subject of the present paper.
More, whose Enchiridion Ethicum enjoyed an enormous popularity in its own generation,[1] is particularly hard to classify; but it is certainly safe to say that he occupies a position logically intermediate between the other two. The fact that he so nearly refrained from publishing his own work, owing to the supposed objections of Cudworth, is in itself a sufficient indication that the two authors concerned regarded their systems as standing for very much the same principles. On the other hand, however, while Cudworth had practically neglected the affective side of our nature in his own treatise, More makes the 'Boniform Faculty' (which is at once the touch-stone of virtue and that by which virtue in the moral agent is immediately and certainly rewarded) not only coördinate with Right Reason, but constantly suggests its primacy. It is difficult to express in a few words More's view of the relation in which these two faculties stand to each other. Sometimes he even seems to identify them, but, if one may venture upon a perilously concise statement, the case stands thus. In a 'state of grace,' the 'Boniform Faculty' (which plays much the same part as conscience) is all-sufficient. No
- ↑ See Whewell's Hist, of Mor. Phil, in England, Lect. iii. In spite of its popularity, however, the Enchiridion has never been translated into English.
