138 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



problem of the Good, in all its different aspects, having 

 many times turned over the several individual and 

 distinct problems which together constitute that supreme 

 inquiry. Nor had the study of these various problems 

 in this country neglected what had been done by the 

 great thinkers of classical antiquity or by the foremost 

 writers among the schoolmen. The influence of Plato 

 and Aristotle, of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, 

 even — though to a lesser extent — that of Descartes and 

 Spinoza, has been active in the development of ethical 

 doctrine in this country.^ The criteria of morality, 

 hensiveness the nature of obligation, the question of higher or lower 



of ethics in o ' x o 



England. g^^([ Qf ultimate sanctions, the connection of virtue and 

 happiness, of the utility and beauty of goodness, the 

 problem of sin and evil, the controversies of determinism 

 and freewill, the phenomena of conscience and moral 

 sense ; all these questions, and many others of a more 

 practical application, had been propounded and discussed 



Compre- 



^ According to Henry Sidgwick 

 in his ' Outlines of the History of 

 Ethics' (1st ed. 1886 and many 

 following editions), the only two 

 contemporary Continental thinkers 

 who, up to the middle of the 

 nineteenth century, had any direct 

 influence on British ethics, were 

 Puffendorf and Helvetius (1715- 

 1771). The 'Law of Nature' of 

 Puffendorf, " in which the general 

 view of Grotius was restated with 

 modifications — partly designed to 

 effect a compromise with the 

 new doctrine of Hobbes — seems 

 to have been a good deal read 

 at Oxford and elsewhere. Locke 

 includes it among the books 

 necessary to the complete educa- 

 tion of a gentleman." Only in the 

 derivation of Benthamism do we 



find that an important element is 

 supplied by the works of a French 

 writer, Helvetius ; as Beutham 

 himself was fully conscious. It 

 was from Helvetius that he learned 

 that, men being universall}' and 

 solely governed by self-love, the so- 

 called moral judgments are really 

 the common judgments of any 

 society as to its common interests ; 

 that it is, therefore, futile on the 

 one hand to propose any standard 

 of virtue, except that of conducive- 

 ness to general happiness, and, on 

 the other hand, useless merely to 

 lecture men on duty and scold 

 them for vice ; that the moralist's 

 proper function is rather to exhibit 

 the coincidence of virtue with 

 private happiness" (pp. 267 and 

 270). 



