Samuel Clarke · 23 of 54

Proposition I. · Part 3

The law of nature eternal, universal, and absolutely unchangeable. From these three great and general branches, all the smaller and more particular instances of moral obligations may (as I said) easily be deduced.

5. And now this, (this eternal rule of equity, which I have been hitherto discribing,) is that right reason which makes the principal distinction between man and beasts. This is the law of nature, which (as Cicero excellently expresses it) is of universal extent, and everlasting duration, which can neither be wholly abrogated, nor repealed in any part of it, nor have any law made contrary to it, nor be dispensed with by any authority; which was in force before ever any law was writen, or the foundation of any city or commonwealth was laid; which was not invented by the wit of man, nor established by the authority of any people, but its obligation was from eternity, and the force of it reaches throughout the universe; which, being founded in the nature and resaon of things, did not then begin to be a law, when it was first writen and enacted by men, but is of the same original with the eternal reasons or proportions of things, and the perfections or attributes of God himself, so that if there was no law at Rome against rapes at that time when Tarquin offered violence to Lucretia, it does not therefore follow that he was at all the more excusable, or that his sin against the eternal rule of equity was the less heinous. This is that law of nature to which the reason of all men, everywhere as naturally and necessarily assents, as all animals conspire in the pulse and motion of their heart and arteries, or as all men agree in their judgment concerning the whiteness of snow or the brightness of the sun. For though in some nice cases, the bounds of right and wrong may indeed (as was before observed,) be somewhat difficult to determine; and in some few even plainer cases, the laws and customs of certain barbarous nations may be contrary one to another, (which some have been so weak as to think a just objection against there being any natural difference between good and evil at all,) yet in reality this no more disproves the natural assent of all men’s unprejudiced reason to the rule of right and equity than the difference of men’s countenances in general, or the deformity of some few monsters in particular, proves that there is no general likeness or uniformity in the bodies of men. For, whatever difference there may be in some particular laws, it is certain, as to the main and principal branches of morality, there never was any nation upon earth but owned that to love and honour God, to be grateful to benefactors, to perform equitable compacts, to preserve the lives of innocent and harmless men, and the like, were things fitter and better to be practised than the contrary. In fine, this is the law of nature, which, being founded in the eternal reason of things, is as absolutely unalterable, as natural good and evil, as mathematical, or arithmetical truths, as light and darkness, as sweet and bitter, as pleasure and pain: The observance of which, though no man should commend it, would yet be truly commendable in itself. Which to suppose depending on the opinions of men, and the customs of nations, that is to suppose that what shall be accounted the virtue of a man depends merely on imagination or customs to determine, is as absurd as it would be to affirm that the fruitfulness of a tree, or the strength of a horse, depends merely on the imagination of those who judge of it. In a word, it is that law, which if it had its original from the authority of men, and could be changed by it, then all the commands of the cruellest and most barbarous tyrants in the world would be as just and equitable as the wisest laws that ever were made, and to murder men without distinction, to confound the rights of all families by the grossest forgeries, to rob with unrestrained violence, to break faith continually, and defraud and cheat without reluctance, might, by the decrees and ordinances of a mad assembly, be made lawful and honest: In which matters, if any man thinks that the votes and suffrages of fools have such power as to be able to change the nature of things, why do they not likewise decree (as Cicero admirably expresses himself) that poisonous things may become wholsome, and that any other thing which is now destructive of mankind may become preservative of it.

6. Eternal moral obligations antecedent in some respect even to this consideration, of their being the will and command of God himself. Further yet: As this law of nature is infinitely superior to all authority of men, and independent upon it, so its obligation, primarily and originally, is antecedent also even to this consideration, of its being the positive will or command of God himself: For, as the addition of certain numbers necessarily produces a certain sum, and certain geometrical or mechanical operations give a constant and unalterable solution of certain problems or propositions; so in moral matters there are certain necessary and unalterable respects or relations of things which have not their original from arbitrary and positive constitution, but are of eternal necessity in their own nature. For example; as, in matters of sense, the reason why a thing is visible is not because it is seen, but it is therefore seen because it is visible; so in matters of natural reason and morality, that which is holy and good (as creatures depending upon and worshiping God, and practising justice and equity in their dealings with each other, and the like,) is not therefore holy and good, because it is commanded to be done, but is therefore commanded of God, because it is holy and good. The existence, indeed, of the things themselves, whose proportions and relations we consider, depends entirely on the mere arbitrary will and good pleasure of God; who can create things when he pleases, and destroy them again whenever he thinks fit. But when things are created, and so long as it pleases God to continue them in being, their proportions, which are abstractly of eternal necessity, are also in the things themselves absolutely unalterable. Hence God himself, though he has no superior from whose will to receive any law of his actions, yet disdains not to observe the rule of equity and goodness, as the law of all his actions in the government of the world, and condescends to appeal even to men for Ezekiel xviii. the equity and righteousness of his judgments. To this law, the infinite perfections of his divine nature make it necessary for him (as has been before proved,) to have constant regard, and (as a learned prelate of our own has excellently shown,) not barely his infinite power, but the rules of this eternal law are the true foundation and the measure of his dominion over his creatures. (For, if infinite power was the rule and measure of right, it is evident that goodness and mercy, and all other divine perfections, would be empty words without any signification at all.) Now, for the same reason that God, who hath no superior to determine him, yet constantly directs all his own actions by the eternal rule of justice and goodness; it is evident all intelligent creatures, in their several spheres and proportions, ought to obey the same rule according to the law of their nature, even though it could be supposed separate from that additional obligation of its being the positive will and command of God; and, doubtless there have been many men in all ages, in many parts of the heathen world, who, not having philosophy enough to collect from mere nature any tolerably just and explicit apprehensions concerning the attributes of God, much less having been able to deduce from thence any clear and certain knowledge of his will, have yet had a very great sense of right and truth, and been fully persuaded in their own minds of many unalterable obligations of morality: But this speculation, though necessary to be taken notice of in the distinct order and method of discourse, is in itself too dry, and of less use to us, who are abundantly assured that all moral obligations are, moreover, the plain and declared will of God, as shall be shown particularly in its proper place.

7. The law of nature obligatory, antecedent to all consideration of particular rewards and punishments. Lastly, This law of nature has its full obligatory power, antecedent to all consideration of any particular private and personal reward or punishment, annexed, either by natural consequence or by positive appointment, to the observance or neglect of it. This also is very evident; because if good and evil, right and wrong, fitness and unfitness of being practised, be (as has been shown) originally, eternally, and necessarily, in the nature of the things themselves, it is plain that the view of particular rewards or punishments, which is only an after-consideration, and does not at all alter the nature of things, cannot be the original cause of the obligation of the law, but is only an additional weight to enforce the practice of what men were before obliged to by right reason: There is no man, who has any just sense of the difference between good and evil, but must needs acknowledge that virtue and goodness are truly amiable, and to be chosen for their own sakes and intrinsic worth, though a man had no prospect of gaining any particular advantage to himself, by the practice of them; and that, on the contrary, cruelty, violence, and oppression, fraud, injustice, and all manner of wickedness, are of themselves hateful, and by all means to be be avoided; even though a man had absolute assurance that he should bring no manner of inconvenience upon himself by the commission of any or all of these crimes. This likewise is excellently and admirably expressed by Cicero: Virtue, saith he, is that which, though no profit or advantage whatsoever was to be expected to a man’s self from the practice of it, yet must, without all controversy, be acknowledged to be truly desirable for its own sake alone. And, accordingly, all good men love right and equity, and do many things without any prospect of advantage at all, merely because they are just and right and fit to be done: On the contrary, vice is so odious in its own nature, and so fit to be avoided, even though no punishment was to ensue, that no man, who has made any tolerable proficiency in moral philosophy, can in the least doubt, but, if he was sure the thing could be for ever concealed entirely both from God and men, so that there should not be the least suspicion of its being ever discovered, yet he ought not to do any thing unjustly, covetously, wilfully, passionately, licentiously, or any way wickedly, Nay, if a good man had it in his power to gain all his neighbour’s wealth by the least motion of his finger, and was sure it would never be at all suspected either by God or man, unquestionably he would think he ought not to do it; and whoever wonders at this, has no notion what it is to be really a good man: Not that any such thing is possible in nature, that any wickedness can be indeed concealed from God, but only, upon such a supposition, the natural and necessary difference between justice and injustice is made to more clearly and undeniably.

Thus far is clear. Yet it does not from thence at all follow, either that a good man ought to have no respect to rewards and punishments, or that rewards and punishments are not absolutely necessary to maintain the practice of virtue in this present world. But now from hence it does not at all follow, either that a good man ought to have no respect to rewards and punishments, or that rewards and punishments are not absolutely necessary to maintain the practice of virtue and righteousness in this present world. It is certain, indeed, that virtue and vice are eternally and necessarily different; and that the one truly deserves to be chosen for its own sake, and the other ought by all means to be avoided, though a man was sure, for his own particular, neither to gain nor lose any thing by the practice of either. And if this was truly the state of things in the world, certainly that man must have a very corrupt mind, indeed, who could in the least doubt, or so much as once deliberate with himself, which he would choose. But the case does not stand thus. The question now in the general practice of the world, supposing all expectation of rewards and punishments set aside, will not be, whether a man would choose virtue for its own sake, and avoid vice; but the practice of vice is accompanied with great temptations and allurements of pleasure and profit; and the practice of virtue is often threatened with great calamities, losses, and sometimes even with death itself. And this alters the question, and destroys the practice of that which appears so reasonable in the whole speculation, and introduces a necessity of rewards and punishments. For though virtue is unquestionably worthy to be chosen for its own sake, even without any expectation of reward, yet it does not follow that it is therefore entirely self-sufficient, and able to support a man under all kinds of sufferings, and even death itself, for its sake, without any prospect of future recompense. Here, therefore, began the error of the Stoics, who taught that the bare practice of virtue was itself the chief good, and able of itself to make a man happy, under all the calamities in the world. Their defence indeed of the cause of virtue was very brave: they saw well that its excellency was intrinsic, and founded in the nature of things themselves, and could not be altered by any outward circumstances; that therefore virtue must needs be desirable for its own sake, and not merely for the advantage it might bring along with it; and if so, then consequently neither could any external disadvantage, which it might happen to be attended with, change the intrinsic worth of the thing itself, or ever make it cease to be truly desirable. Wherefore, in the case of sufferings and death, for the sake of virtue; not having any certain knowledge of a future state of reward, (though the wisest of them did indeed hope for it, and think it highly probable;) they were forced, that they might be consistent with their own principles, to suppose the practice of virtue a sufficient reward to itself in all cases, and a full compensation for all the sufferings in the world. And accordingly they very bravely indeed taught, that the practice of virtue was not only infinitely to be preferred before all the sinful pleasures in the world; but also that a man ought without scruple to choose, if the case was proposed to him, rather to undergo all possible sufferings with virtue, than to obtain all possible worldly happiness by sin. And the suitable practice of some few of them, as of Regulus, for instance, who chose to die the cruelest death that could be invented, rather than break his faith with an enemy, is indeed very wonderful, and to be admired. But yet, after all this, it is plain that the general practice of virtue in the world can never be supported upon this foot. The discourse is admirable, but it seldom goes further than mere words: And the practice of those few who have acted accordingly, has not been imitated by the rest of the world. Men never will generally, and indeed it is not very reasonable to be expected they should, part with all the comforts of life, and even life itself, without expectation of any future recompense. So that, if we suppose no future state of rewards, it will follow, that God has indued men with such faculties, as put them under a necessity of approving and choosing virtue in the judgment of their own minds; and yet has not given them wherewith to support themselves in the suitable and constant practice of it. The consideration of which inexplicable difficulty ought to have led the philosophers to a firm belief and expectation of a future state of rewards and punishments, without which their whole scheme of morality cannot be supported. And because a thing of such necessity and importance to mankind was not more clearly and directly and universally made known, it might naturally have led them to some farther consequences also, which I shall have occasion particularly to deduce hereafter.

Thus have I endeavoured to deduce the original obligations of morality from the necessary and eternal reason and proportions of things. Some have chosen to found all difference of good and evil, in the mere positive will and power of God: But the absurdity of this, I have shown elsewhere. Others have contended, that all difference of good and evil, and all obligations of morality, ought to be founded originally upon considerations of public utility. And true indeed it is, in the whole, that the good of the universal creation does always coincide with the necessary truth and reason of things. But otherwise, (and separate from this consideration, that God will certainly cause truth and right to terminate in happiness,) what is for the good of the whole creation, in very many cases, none but an infinite understanding can possibly judge. Public utility is one thing to one nation, and the contrary to another: And the governors of every nation will and must be judges of the public good: And by public good they will generally mean the private good of that particular nation. But truth and right (whether public or private) founded in the eternal and necessary reason of things, is what every man can judge of, when laid before him. It is necessarily one and the same, to every man’s understanding, just as light is the same to every man’s eyes.

He who thinks it right and just, upon account of public utility, to break faith (suppose) with a robber, let him consider that it is much more useful to do the same by a multitude of robbers, by tyrants, by a nation of robbers: And then all faith is evidently at an end. For, mutato nomine de te, &c. What fidelity and truth are, is understood by every man; but between two nations at war, who shall be judge which of them are the robbers? Besides: To rob a man of truth and of eternal happiness, is worse than robbing him of his money and of his temporal happiness: And therefore it will be said that heretics may even more justly, and with much greater utility to the public, be deceived and destroyed by breach of truth and faith, than the most cruel robbers. Where does this terminate?

The manifold absurdities of Mr Hobbes’s doctrines concerning the original of right shown in particular. And now, from what has been said upon this head, it is easy to see the falsity and weakness of Mr Hobbes’s doctrines, that there is no such thing as just and unjust, right and wrong, originally in the nature of things; that men in their natural state, antecedent to all compacts, are not obliged to universal benevolence, nor to any moral duty whatsoever; but are in a state of war, and have every one a right to do whatever he has power to do; and that, in civil societies, it depends wholly upon positive laws or the will of governors to define what shall be just or unjust. The contrary to all which having been already fully demonstrated, there is no need of being large, in further disproving and confuting, particularly, these assertions themselves. I shall therefore only mention a few observations, from which some of the greatest and most obvious absurdities of the chief principles, upon which Mr Hobbes builds his whole doctrine in this matter, may most easily appear.

1. First, then, the ground and foundation of Mr Hobbes’s scheme, is this, that all men being equal by nature, and naturally desiring the same things, have every one a right to every thing, are every one desirous to have absolute dominion over all others; and may every one justly do whatever at any time is in his power, by violently taking from others either their possessions or lives, to gain to himself that absolute dominion. Now this is exactly the same thing as if a man should affirm that a part is equal to the whole, or that one body can be present in a thousand places at once. For to say that one man has a full right to the same individual things, which another man at the same time has a full right to, is saying that two rights may be contradictory to each other; that is, that a thing may be right, at the same time that it is confessed to be wrong. For instance; if every man has a right to preserve his own life, then it is manifest I can have no right to take any man’s life away from him, unless he has first forfeited his own right, by attempting to deprive me of mine. For otherwise, it might be right for me to do that which, at the same time, because it could not be done but in breach of another man’s right, it could not be right for me to do; which is the greatest absurdity in the world. The true state of this case, therefore, is plainly this. In Mr Hobbes’s state of nature and equality, every man having an equal right to preserve his own life, it is evident every man has a right to an equal proportion of all those things which are either necessary or useful to life. And consequently, so far is it from being true, that any one has an original right to possess all, that, on the contrary, whoever first attempts, without the consent of his fellows, and except it be for some public benefit, to take to himself more than his proportion, is the beginner of iniquity, and the author of all succeeding mischief.

2. To avoid this absurdity, therefore, Mr Hobbes is forced to assert, in the next place, that since every man has confessedly a right to preserve his own life, and consequently to do every thing that is necessary to preserve it, and since, in the state of nature, men will necessarily have perpetual jealousies and suspicions of each other’s encroaching, therefore just precaution gives every one a right to endeavour, for his own security, to prevent, oppress, and destroy all others, either by secret artifice or open violence, as it shall happen at any time to be in his power, as being the only certain means of self-preservation. But this is even a plainer absurdity, if possible, than the former. For (besides that, according to Mr Hobbes’s principles, men, before positive compacts, may justly do what mischief they please, even without the pretence of self-preservation,) what can be more ridiculous that to imagine a war of all men against all, the directest and certainest means of the preservation of all? Yes, says he, because it leads men to a necessity of entering into compact for each other’s security. But then to make these compacts obligatory, he is forced (as I shall presently observe more particularly) to recur to an antecedent law of nature, and this destroys all that he had before said. For the same law of nature which obliges men to fidelity, after having made a compact, will unavoidably, upon all the same accounts, be found to oblige them before all compacts, to contentment and mutual benevolence, as the readiest and certainest means to the preservation and happiness of them all. It is true, men, by entering into compacts, and making laws, agree to compel one another to do what perhaps the mere sense of duty, however really obligatory in the highest degree, would not, without such compacts, have force enough of itself to hold them to in practice; and so, compacts must be acknowledged to be in fact a great addition and strengthening of men’s security. But this compulsion makes no alteration in the obligation itself, and only shows that that entirely lawless state, which Mr Hobbes calls the state of nature, is by no means truly natural, or in any sense suitable to the nature and faculties of man, but, on the contrary, is a state of extremely unnatural and intolerable corruption, as I shall presently prove more fully from some other considerations.

3. Another notorious absurdity and inconsistency in Mr. Hobbes’s scheme, is this: That he all along supposes some particular branches of the law of nature (which he thinks necessary for the foundation of some parts of his own doctrine,) to be originally obligatory from the bare reason of things; at the same time that he denies and takes away innumerable others, which have plainly in the nature and reason of things the same foundation of being obligatory as the former, and without which the obligation of the former can never be solidly made out and defended. Thus, he supposes that, in the state of nature, before any compact be made, every man’s own will is his only law; that nothing a man can do, is unjust: and that whatever mischief one man does to another is no injury nor injustice; neither has the person, to whom the mischief is done, how great soever it be, any just reason to complain of wrong; (I think it may here reasonably be presumed, that if Mr. Hobbes had lived in such a state of nature, and had happened to be himself the suffering party, he would in this case have been of another opinion:) And yet at the same time he supposes, that in the same state of nature men are by all means obliged to seek peace, and to enter into compacts to remedy the fore-mentioned mischiefs. Now if men are obliged, by the original reason and nature of things to seek terms of peace, and to get out of the pretended natural state of war, as soon as they can; how come they not to be obliged originally by the same reason and nature of things, to live from the beginning in universal benevolence, and avoid entering into the state of war at all? He must needs confess they would be obliged to do so, did not self-preservation necessitate them every man to war upon others: But this cannot be true of the first aggressor; whom yet Mr Hobbes, in the place now cited, vindicates from being guilty of any injustice; and therefore herein he unavoidably contradicts himself. Thus, again; in most instances of morality, he supposes right and wrong, just and unjust, to have no foundation in the nature of things, but to depend entirely on positive laws; that the rules or distinctions of good and evil, honest and dishonest, are mere civil constitutions; and whatever the chief magistrate commands, is to be accounted good; whatever he forbids, evil; that it is the law of the land only which makes robbery to be robbery; or adultery to be adultery; that the commandments, to honour our parents, to do no murder, not to commit adultery, and all the other laws of God and nature, are no further obligatory than the civil power shall think fit to make them so; nay, that where the supreme authority commands men to worship God by an image or idol, in heathen countries, (for in this instance he cautiously excepts Christian ones,) it is lawful, and their duty to do it; and (agreeably, as a natural consequence to all this,) that it is men’s positive duty to obey the commands of the civil power in all things, even in things clearly and directly against their conscience; (that is, that it is their positive duty to do that which at the same time they know plainly it is their duty not to do;) keeping up indeed always in their own minds an inward desire to observe the laws of nature and conscience, but not being bound to observe them in their outward actions, except when it is safe so to do; (He might as well have said that human laws and constitutions have power to make light be darkness, and darkness light; to make sweet be bitter, and bitter sweet: And, indeed, as one absurdity will naturally lead a man into another, he does say something very like it; namely, that the civil authority is to judge of all opinions and doctrines whatsoever; to determine questions philosophical, mathematical; and, because indeed the signification of words is arbitrary, even arithmetical ones also; as whether a man shall presume to affirm that two and three make five or not:) And yet at the same time, some particular things, which it would either have been too flagrantly scandalous for him to have made depending upon human laws; as that God is to be loved, honoured, and adored; that a man ought not to murder his parents; and the like: Or else, which were of necessity to be supposed for the foundation of his own scheme; as that compacts ought to be faithfully performed, and obedience to be duly paid to civil powers: The obligation of these things he is forced to deduce entirely from the internal reason and fitness of the things themselves; antecedent to, independent upon, and unalterable by all human constitutions whatsoever: In which matter he is guilty of the grossest absurdity and inconsistency that can be. For if those greatest and strongest of all our obligations; to love and honour God, for instance, or, to perform compacts faithfully; depend not at all on any human constitution, but must of necessity (to avoid making obligations reciprocally depend on each other in a circle,) be confessed to arise originally from, and be founded in, the eternal reason and unalterable nature and relations of things themselves; and the nature and force of these obligations be sufficiently clear and evident; so that he who dishonours God, or wilfully breaks his faith, is (according to Mr Hobbes’s own reasoning) guilty of as great an absurdity in practice, and of as plainly contradicting the right reason of his own mind, as he who in a dispute is reduced to a necessity of asserting something inconsistent with itself; and the original obligation to these duties can from hence only be distinctly deduced: Then, for the same reason, all the other duties likewise of natural religion; such as universal benevolence, justice, equity, and the like, (which I have before proved to receive in like manner their power of obliging from the eternal reason and relations of things,) must needs be obligatory, antecedent to any consideration of positive compact, and unalterably and independently on all human constitutions whatsoever: And consequently Mr Hobbes’s whole scheme, (both of a state of nature at first wherein there was no such thing as right or wrong, just or unjust, at all; and of these things depending afterwards, by virtue of compact, wholly and absolutely on the positive and arbitrary determination of the civil power;) falls this way entirely to the ground, by his having been forced to suppose some particular things obligatory, originally, and in their own nature. On the contrary, if the rules of right and wrong, just and unjust, have none of them any obligatory force in the state of nature, antecedent to positive compact, then, for the same reason, neither will they be of any force after the compact, so as to afford men any certain and real security; (excepting only what may arise from the compulsion of laws, and fear of punishment, which, therefore, it may well be supposed, is all that Mr Hobbes really means at the bottom.) For if there be no obligation of just and right antecedent to the compact, then whence arises the obligation of the compact itself, on which he supposes all other obligations to be founded? If, before any compact was made, it was no injustice for a man to take away the life of his neighbour, not for his own preservation, but merely to satisfy an arbitrary humour or pleasure, and without any reason or provocation at all, how comes it to be an injustice, after he has made a compact, to break and neglect it? Or what is it that makes breaking one’s word, to be a greater and more unnatural crime, than killing a man merely for no other reason but because no positive compact has been made to the contrary? So that this way also, Mr Hobbes’s whole scheme is entirely destroyed.