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 the object of a
higher, reflective, judging affection. This faculty of moral distinctions,
the sense for right and wrong, or, which amounts to the same thing, for
beauty and ugliness, is innate; we approve virtue and condemn vice by
nature, not as the result of a compact, and from this natural feeling for
good and evil exe