The watchword of deism was “independence in religion”; that of modern ethical philosophy is “independence in morals.”  Hobbes had given this out in opposition to the mediaeval dependence of ethics on theology; now it was turned against himself, for he had delivered morality from ecclesiastical bondage only to subject it to the no less oppressive and unworthy yoke of the civil power.  Selfish consideration, so he had taught, leads men to transfer by contract all power to the ruler.  Right is that which the sovereign enjoins, wrong that which he forbids.  Thus morality was conceived in a purely negative way as justice, and based on interest and agreement.  Cumberland, recognizing the one-sidedness of the first of these positions, announces the principle of universal benevolence, at which Bacon had hinted before him, and in which he is followed by the school of Shaftesbury.  Opposition to the foundation of ethics on self-love and convention, again, springs up in three forms, one idealistic, one logical, and one aesthetic.  Ethical ideas have not arisen artificially through shrewd calculation and agreement, but have a natural origin.  Cudworth, returning to Plato and Descartes, assumes an innate idea of the good.  Clarke and Woolston base moral distinctions on the rational order of things, and characterize the ethically good action as a logical truth translated into practice.  Shaftesbury derives ethical ideas and actions from a natural instinct for judging the good and the beautiful.  Moreover, Hobbes’s ethics of interest experiences, first, correction at the hands of Locke (who, along with a complete recognition of the “legal” character of the good, distinguishes the sphere of morality from that of mere law, and brings it under the law of “reputation,” hence of a “tacit” agreement), and then a frivolous intensification under Mandeville and Bolingbroke.  A preliminary conclusion is reached in the ethical labors of Hume and Smith.

Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae, 1672) turns to experience with the questions, In what does morality consist?  Whence does it arise? and What is the nature of moral obligation? and finds these answers:  Those actions are good, or in conformity to the moral law of nature, which promote the common good (commune bonum summa lex).  Individual welfare must be subordinated to the good of all, of which it forms only a part.  The psychological roots of virtuous action are the social and disinterested affections, which nature has implanted in all beings, especially in those endowed with reason.  There is nothing in man more pleasing to God than love.  We recognize our obligation to the virtue of benevolence, or that God commands it, from the rewards and punishments which we perceive to follow the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the law,—­the subordination of individual to universal good is the only means of attaining true happiness and contentment.  Men are dependent on mutual benevolence.  He who labors for the