The English ethics of the period culminates in Shaftesbury (1671-1713), who, reared on the principles of his grandfather’s friend Locke, formed his artistic sense on the models of classical antiquity, to recall to the memory of his age the Greek ideal of a beautiful humanity.  Philosophy, as the knowledge of ourselves and that which is truly good, a guide to morality and happiness; the world and virtue, a harmony; the good, the beautiful as well; the whole, a controlling force in the particular—­these views, and his tasteful style of exposition, make Shaftesbury a modern Greek; it is only his bitterness against Christianity which betrays the son of the new era.  Among the studies collected under the title Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 1711, the most important are those on Enthusiasm, on Wit and Humor, on Virtue and Merit, and the Moralists.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Georg v.  Gizycki has written on Shaftesbury’s philosophy, 1876. [Cf.  Fowler’s Shaftesbury and Hutchison, English Philosophers Series, 1882.—­TR.]]

Shaftesbury’s fundamental metaphysical concept is aesthetic:  unity in variety is for him the all-pervasive law of the world.  In every case where parts work in mutual dependence toward a common result, there rules a central unity, uniting and animating the members.  The lowest of these substantial unities is the ego, the common source of our thoughts and feelings.  But as the parts of the organism are governed and held together by the soul, so individuals are joined with one another into species and genera by higher unities.  Each individual being is a member in a system of creatures, which a common nature binds together.  Moreover, since order and harmony are spread throughout the world, and no one thing exists out of relation to all others and to the whole, the universe must be conceived as animated by a formative power which works purposively; this all-ruling unity is the soul of the world, the universal mind, the Deity.  The finality and beauty of those parts of the world which we can know justifies the inference to a like constitution of those which are unapproachable, so that we may be certain that the numerous evils which we find in the details, work for the good of a system superior to them, and that all apparent imperfections contribute to the perfection of the whole.  As our philosopher makes use of the idea of the world-harmony to support theism and the theodicy, so, further, he derives the content of morality from it, thus giving ethics a natural basis independent of self-interest and conventional fancies.

A being is good when its impulses toward the preservation and welfare of the species is strong, and those directed to its own good not too strong.  The virtue of a rational being is distinguished from the goodness of a merely “sensible creature” by the fact that man not only possesses impulses, but reflects upon them, that he approves or disapproves his own conduct and that of others, and thus makes his affections