THE PRINCETON REVIEW. JULY 1840. No. III. ART. I.-Three Sermons upon Human Nature, being the first, second, and third of fifteen Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel. By Joseph Butler, LL.D., late Lord Bishop of Bristol; as published in two volumes at Glasgow, in 1769. DURING a long period after the commencement of philosophical inquiries concerning morals, it seems to have been. taken for granted, that all motives to action in men, as in mere animals, originate in regard for self, and the natural tendency of all sensitive beings to self-preservation. The appetites, the desires, and even in most instances the social affections were resolved into modifications of self-love. The instinctive pursuit of self-gratification was the principle to which all action must be reduced; and somewhere in that sort of transmuted essence the elements of morals were presumed to reside. No sentiment was entertained, by some of the most popular philosophers, of the reality of moral distinctions. Law and morality were considered as mere suggestions of interest, changing with circumstances. And by those who, with Grotius, recoiled from this revolting degradation of man's moral nature, the highest point of approximation towards a satisfactory theory of morals was the NO. 3. VOL. XII. 39 proposition that all law, and all the precepts and sentiments of morality are the discoveries of reason, exercised in discerning what is suitable and convenient in promoting the peace and prosperity of society. Thus far and no farther had the science of morals advanced, when, in the early part of the seventeenth century, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes and Grotius turned the current of European philosophy into a new channel. Hobbes laid his harsh and heavy hand on the existing theory of mental and moral philosophy; obliterated the broad distinction between thought and feeling; dashed the whole moral nature of man into a confused mixture with the understanding; and "thrust forward the selfish system in its harshest and coarsest shape." The prodigious impulse given by the powerful intellect and the daring and dogmatic temper of Hobbes, to the ethical speculations of Europe, resulted in the overthrow of his influence, at one time great and dangerous to truth and virtue; and in the establishment of several fundamental articles of a just theory of morals on a lasting base. Nearly an entire century, however, was occupied in vehement controversy, which, although conducted by the greatest minds of the age, such as Cumberland, Cudworth, Clarke, Shaftesbury, Leibnitz, and Malebranche, achieved little else for moral science than the satisfactory refutation of the theory of Hobbes. They established no new and valuable principle. Lord Shaftesbury, indeed, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, gave original and clear intimations of a more satisfactory account of certain moral phenomena in man; and his suggestions were valuable to succeeding philosophers. But, either from want of a just estimation of his discoveries, or from ignorance of their proper and comprehensive application to the system of ethical doctrine, he only threw out the gem from the rubbish, laid open its brilliancy to public view, and left it; not even employing it for his own subsequent purposes. He seems to have valued the principle, and stated it with cautious formality, while he appears not to have known its use. It was reserved for Butler, afterwards Lord Bishop of Bristol, and still later, of Durham, the author of "the Analogy," to introduce the new era in the progress of ethical philosophy. His views are expressed at large in the three Dissertations which he has chosen to call Sermons, named at the head of this article. The theory of the conscience is more particularly treated in the second and third. The fol |