106 



appears more or less in the light of a selfish egoist. On the 

 other hand, it was further objected that social morality would 

 be entirely dependent on positive law and institution. 



2. CUDWORTH. 



Among the opponents of Hobbes' views of man and society 

 were the orthodox theologians of the time, particularly a small 

 group of men known as the Cambridge Platonists, who, under 

 the name Intellectualism, charged Hobbes with taking away 

 the essential and eternal discrimination of moral good and 

 evil, of just and unjust. Ralph Cudworth, 1 the most dis- 

 tinguished of this group of scholars, was among the first to 

 make the attack, although his work was not published until 

 more than forty years after his death in 1688. Cudworth 's 

 main contention in reply to Hobbes is that the "essential 

 and eternal distinctions of good and evil" are independent of 

 mere arbitrary will, whether human or divine Cudworth 

 here objecting not only to the doctrine of Hobbes, but also to 

 the doctrine of Duns Scotus and Occam and certain later 

 theologians, the latter regarding all morality as dependent upon 

 the mere will and positive appointment of God. 2 



Cudworth speaks as follows: "Wherefore in the first 

 Place, it is a Thing which we shall very easily demonstrate, 

 That Moral Good and Evil, Just and Unjust, Honest and Dis- 

 honest, (if they be not mere Names without any Signification, 

 or Names for Nothing else, but Willed and Commanded, but 

 have a Reality in Respect of the Persons obliged to do and 

 avoid them) cannot possibly be Arbitrary things, made by 

 Will without Nature; because it is Universally True, that 

 things are what they are, not by Will, but by Nature." As 

 it is the nature of a triangle to have three angles equal to two 

 right angles, so it is the nature of 'good things' to have the 

 nature of goodness, and things just, the nature of justice. 3 



Apparently classing Hobbes with the Protagorean phil- 

 osophers on account of his psychology, Cudworth treats at 

 great length the Greek doctrine, and makes a summary state- 

 ment of his treatment in the following words: "W r e have 

 now abundantly confuted the Protagorean Philosophy, which, 

 that it might be sure to destroy the Immutable Nature of Just 

 and Unjust, would destroy all Science or Knowledge, and make 

 it Relative and Phantastical. Having showed that this 



4617-1688. 



2 H. Sidgwick, "History of Ethics", p. 170. 



3 L. A. Selby Bigge, "British Moralists", Clarendon Press, 1897, 813. 

 Following quotations taken from this work will be indicated by "S.B." 



