62 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
concerning Virtue (1699)/® Robertson’s remark ‘‘that Shaftes¬ 
bury should at the age of eighteen have produced from his own 
meditations a finished and formal treatise, of which the theses were 
capable of influencing European thought for a century, would be 
an extravagant assumption, is misleading, if not absolutely 
wrong as to date. Evidently he is thinking of the years 1698 and 
1699, for he goes on to say that Shaftesbury could have learned 
his Spinoza in Holland at this time. This would make Shaftesbury 
twenty-eight rather than eighteen—a considerable difference, in¬ 
deed! He can hardly be thinking of what Fowler^® styles a 
‘‘rough draft” sketched when the Third Earl was twenty. Nor 
did Shaftesbury regard this premature publication as “finished 
and formal,” for in the First Edition of the Char act eristicks (1711) 
the statement is made that the essay was “formerly printed from 
an imperfect copy; now corrected and publish’d intire. ’ ’ However 
complete the revision may have been,^® it is certain that long before 
the publication of the Preface to Whichcote’s Sermons, Shaftes¬ 
bury was thinking deeply on questions that were to lead him to 
his system of ethics. The contradiction between zeal and lack of 
humanity in religion gave him occasion to inquire “what honesty 
or virtue is, considered by itself, and in what manner it is in¬ 
fluenced by religion; how far religion necessarily implies virtue; 
and whether it be a true saying that it is impossible for an atheist 
to be virtuous, or share any real degree of honesty or merit. ’ 
The so-called French Prophets, or poor Cevenol Protestants, 
by their extravagant enthusiasm and insane practices drew forth 
the opinion of Shaftesbury in A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm 
(1708) addressed to Lord Somers. Various methods of dealing 
with them had been proposed, but Shaftesbury contended that 
“raillery” and “good humor” were most potent against false 
enthusiasm, that “Ridicule and not Punishment, is the most 
effective weapon of Fanaticism.” The Letter stirred up three re¬ 
plies in 1708 and 1709, and Shaftesbury returned to his general 
Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, II, 20, note, remarks that the 
“Essay on ‘Virtue’ had been published in an imperfect state by Toland in 1698.’’ 
Shaftesbury did go to Holland in 1698, hut did not return to England until November 
10, 1699. Evidently the publication took place in this latter year, for the essay is 
described in the first edition of the Characteristics, 1711, as “first published in 1699.’’ 
Characteristics, Vol. I, p. XXXII. 
«P. 15. 
Shaftesbury bought up the whole impression of Toland when but a few copies had 
been sold; consequently it is almost impossible to get hold of the earlier version for 
purposes of comparison. 
^ Inquiry concerning Virtue, Bk. I, Pt. I, section 1. 
