WILLIAM WOLLASTON (1659-1724), author of the ’Religion of Nature Delineated,’ is usually put into the same class of moralists with Clarke.  With him, a bad action (whether of commission or omission) contains the denial of a true proposition.  Truth can be denied by actions as well as by words.  Thus, the violation of a contract is the denial by an action that the contract has been concluded.  Robbing a traveller is the denial that what you take from him is his.  An action that denies one or more true propositions cannot be good, and is necessarily bad.  A good action is one whose omission would be bad or whose contrary is bad, in the above sense.  An indifferent action is one that can be omitted or done without contradicting any truth.  Reason, the judge of what is true and false, is the only faculty concerned; but, at the same time, Wollaston makes large reference to the subject of Happiness, finding it to consist in an excess of pleasures as compared with pains.  He holds that his doctrine is in conformity with all the facts.  It affirms a progressive morality, that keeps pace with and depend upon the progress of Science.  It can explain errors in morals as distinct from vice.  An error is the affirmation by an action of a false proposition, thought to be true; the action is bad, but the agent is innocent.

JOHN LOCKE. [1632-1704.]

Locke did not apply himself to the consecutive evolution of an Ethical theory; whence his views, although on the whole sufficiently unmistakeable, are not always reconcileable with one another.

In Book I. of the ‘Essay on the Understanding’ he devotes himself to the refutation of Innate Ideas, whether Speculative or Practical.  Chap.  III. is on the alleged Innate Practical Principles, or rules of Right and Wrong.  The objections urged against these Principles have scarcely been added to, and have never been answered.  We shall endeavour to indicate the heads of the reasoning.

1.  The Innate Practical Principles are for the most part not self-evident; they are, in this respect, not on an equal footing with the Speculative Principles whose innate origin is also disputed.  They require reasoning and explanation in order to be understood.  Many men are ignorant of them, while others assent to them slowly, if they do assent to them; all which is at variance with their being innate.

2.  There is no Practical Principle universally received among mankind.  All that can be said of Justice is that most men agree to recognize it.  It is vain to allege of confederacies of thieves, that they keep faith with one another; for this keeping of faith is merely for their own convenience.  We cannot call that a sense of Justice which merely binds a man to a certain number of his fellow-criminals, in order the more effectually to plunder and kill honest men.  Instead of Justice, it is the essential condition of success in Injustice.