cludes the affirmation (and its omission the negation) of a
truth. According to the law of nature, a rational being ought so to conduct
himself that he shall never contradict a truth by his actions, _i. e_., to
treat each thing for what it is. Every immoral action is a false judgment;
the violation of a contract is a practical denial of it. The man who is
cruel to animals declares by his act that the creature maltreated is
something which in fact it is not, a being devoid of feeling. The murderer
acts as though he were able to restore life to his victim. He who, in
disobedience toward God, deals with things in a way contrary to their
nature, behaves as though he were mightier than the author of nature. To
this equation of truth and morality happiness is added as a third identical
member. The truer the pleasures of a being the happier it is; and a
pleasure is untrue whenever more (of pain) is given for it than it is
worth. A rational being contradicts itself when it pursues an irrational
pleasure.--The course of moral philosophy has passed over the logical
ethics of Clarke and Wollaston as an abstract and unfruitful idiosyncrasy,
and it is certain that with both of these thinkers their plans were greater
than their performances. But the search for an ethical norm which should
be universally valid and superior to the individual will, did not lack
justification in contrast to the subjectivism of the other two schools of
the time--the school of interest and the school of benevolence, which made
virtue a matter of calculation or of feeling.

* * * * *

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