RICHARD CUMBERLAND. [1632-1718.]

Cumberland’s’ Latin work, De Legibus Naturae, disquisitio philosophica contra Hobbium instituta, appeared in 1672.  The book is important as a distinctly philosophical disquisition, but its extraordinarily discursive character renders impossible anything like analysis.  His chief points will be presented in a fuller summary than usual.

I.—­The STANDARD of Moral Good is given in the laws of Nature, which may all be summed up in one great Law—­Benevolence to all rational agents or the endeavour to the utmost of our power to promote the common good of all.  His theory is hardly to be distinguished from the Greatest Happiness principle; unless it might be represented as putting forward still more prominently the search for Individual Happiness, with a fixed assumption that this is best secured through the promotion of the general good.  No action, he declares, can be called ’morally good that does not in its own nature contribute somewhat to the happiness of men.’  The speciality of his view is his professing not to make an induction as regards the character of actions from the observation of their effects, but to deduce the propriety of (benevolent) actions from, the consideration of the character and position of rational agents in nature.  Rules of conduct, all directed to the promotion of the Happiness of rational agents, may thus be found in the form of propositions impressed upon the mind by the Nature of Things; and these are then interpreted to be laws of Nature (summed up in the one great Law), promulgated by God with the natural effects of actions as Sanctions of Reward and Punishment to enforce them.

II.—­His Psychology of Ethics may be reduced to the following heads.

1.  The Faculty is the Reason, apprehending the exact Nature of Things, and determining accordingly the modes of action that are best suited to promote the happiness of rational agents.

2.  Of the Faculty, under the name of Conscience, he gives this description:  ’The mind is conscious to itself of all its own actions, and both can, and often does, observe what counsels produced them; it naturally sits a judge upon its own actions, and thence procures to itself either tranquillity and joy, or anxiety and sorrow.’  The principal design of his whole book is to show ’how this power of the mind, either by itself, or excited by external objects, forms certain universal practical propositions, which give us a more distinct idea of the happiness of mankind, and pronounces by what actions of ours, in all variety of circumstances, that happiness may most effectually be obtained.’ [Conscience is thus only Reason, or the knowing faculty in general, as specially concerned about actions in their effect upon happiness; it rarely takes the place of the more general term.]