believe that Wesley was essentially a moral reformer, and that he
deserves corresponding respect. But instead of holding that his
contemporaries were bad people, awakened by a stimulus from without, I
hold that the movement, so far as really indicating moral improvement,
must be set down to the credit of the century itself. It was one
manifestation of a general progress, of which Bentham was another
outcome. Though Bentham might have thought Wesley a fanatic or perhaps a
hypocrite, and Wesley would certainly have considered that Bentham's
heart was much in need of a change, they were really allies as much as
antagonists, and both mark a great and beneficial change.

CHAPTER IV

PHILOSOPHY

I. JOHN HORNE TOOKE

I have so far dwelt upon the social and political environment of the
early Utilitarian movement; and have tried also to point out some of the
speculative tendencies fostered by the position. If it be asked what
philosophical doctrines were explicitly taught, the answer must be a
very short one. English philosophy barely existed. Parr was supposed to
know something about metaphysics--apparently because he could write good
Latin. But the inference was hasty. Of one book, however, which had a
real influence, I must say something, for though it contained little
definite philosophy, it showed what kind of philosophy was congenial to
the common sense of the time.

The sturdy radical, Horne Tooke, had been led to the study of philology
by a characteristic incident. The legal question had arisen whether the
words, '_She, knowing that Crooke had been indicted for forgery_,' did
so and so, contained an averment that Crooke had been indicted. Tooke
argued in a letter to Dunning[144] that they did; because they were
equivalent to the phrase, 'Crooke had been indicted for forgery: she,
_knowing that_,' did so and so. This raises the question: What is the
meaning of 'that'? Tooke took up the study, thinking, as he says, that
it would throw light upon some philosophical questions. He learned some
Anglo-Saxon and Gothic to test his theory and, of course, confirmed
it.[145] The book shows ingenuity, shrewdness, and industry, and Tooke
deserves credit for seeing the necessity of applying a really historical
method to his problem, though his results were necessarily crude in the
pre-scientific stage of philology.

The book is mainly a long string of etymologies, which readers of
different tastes have found intolerably