Richard Cumberland

CUMBERLAND, RICHARD (1631-1718), English phi losopher and bishop of Peterborough, the son of a citizen of London, was born in London on July 15, 1631. He was educated in St. Paul's school, and at Magdalene college, Cambridge, and in 1667 was presented to the rectory of Allhallows at Stamford.

At the age of 4o he published his earliest work, entitled

De legibus naturae disquisitio philosophica, in qua earum forma, summa capita, ordo, promulgatio, et obligatio e rerum natura investigantur; quip etiam elementa philosophiae Hobbianae, cum moralis turn civilis, considerantur et re f utantur (1672). It ap peared during the same year as Pufendorf's De jure naturae et gentium, and was highly commended in a subsequent publication by Pufendorf, whose approbation must have had the effect of mak ing it known on the continent. Having thus established a solid reputation, Cumberland next prepared a work on a very different subject—An Essay towards the Recovery of the Jewish Measures and Weights, comprehending their Monies; by help of ancient standards, compared with ours of England (1686).

In 1691 he became bishop of Peterborough. He died on Oct. 9, 1718.

The philosophy of Cumberland is expounded in the treatise De legibus naturae. Its main design is to combat the principles of Hobbes.

He defines the laws of nature as "immutably true propo sitions regulative of voluntary actions as to the choice of good and the avoidance of evil, and which carry with them an obli gation to outward acts of obedience, even apart from civil laws and from any considerations of compacts constituting govern ment." This definition, he says, will be admitted by all parties. Some deny that such laws exist, but they will grant that this is what ought to be understood by them. There is thus common ground for the two opposing schools of moralists to join issue.

The existence of such laws may, according to Cumberland, be established in two ways. The inquirer may start either from effects or from causes. Cumberland prefers that from causes to effects, as showing more convincingly that the laws of nature carry with them a divine obligation. In the prosecution of this method he expressly declines to have recourse to what he calls "the short and easy expedient of the Platonists," the assumption of innate ideas of the laws of nature. He cannot assume, he says, that such ideas existed from eternity in the divine mind, but must start from the data of sense and experience, and thence by search into the nature of things discover their laws. It is only through nature that we can rise to nature's God. His attributes are not to be known by direct intuition. But the Cambridge Platonists have his support in their battle with Hobbes, and he grants that ideas might be both born with us and afterwards im pressed from without.

Cumberland's ethical theory

(see ETHIcs) is summed up in his principle of universal Benevolence, the one source of moral good. "No action can be morally good which does not in its own nature contribute somewhat to the happiness of men." The theory is important in comparison (I) with that of Hobbes, and (2) with modern utilitarianism.

I. Cumberland's Benevolence is, deliberately, the precise an tithesis to the Egoism of Hobbes. His method was the deduc tion of the propriety of certain actions from the consideration of the character and position of rational agents in the universe. He argues that all that we see in nature is framed so as to avoid and reject what is dangerous to the integrity of its constitution ; that benevolence of all to all is what in a rational view of the creation is alone accordant with its general plan ; that both man's body and his mind show him to be designed for the pursuit of common good rather than his own private advantage. The whole course of his rea soning proceeds on, and is pervaded by, the principle of final causes.

2.

To the question, What is the foundation of rectitude? he replies, the greatest good of the universe of rational beings. He may be regarded as the founder of English utilitarianism, but his system goes to the opposite extreme from what is known as the selfish system, by absorbing individual in universal good.

Nor did he restrict good to the pleasures of sense ; a point in which his views were abandoned by the utilitarians, but revived later by Mill. The doctrine of right reason, regarded as a purely derivative function of the mind which lies only in germ in Cum berland, will be found in full flower in Hartley, Mackintosh and later associationists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The care of Cumberland's posthumous publications Bibliography.—The care of Cumberland's posthumous publications devolved upon his domestic chaplain and son-in-law, Squier Payne, who soon after the bishop's death edited "Sanchoniato's Phoenician History, translated from the first book of Eusebius, De praeparatione evangelica: with a continuation of Sanchoniato's history of Eratos thenes Cyrenaeus's Canon, which Dicaearchus connects with the first Olympiad. These authors are illustrated with many historical and chronological remarks" (172o) . The preface, moreover, contains an account of the life, character and writings of the author, which was likewise published in a separate form. The sequel to the work was likewise published by Payne—Origines gentium antiquissimae; or At tempts for discovering the Times of the First Planting of Nations: in several Tracts (1724). Editions of the De legibus naturae (Lubeck, 1683 and 1694) ; English versions by J. Maxwell (172 7) and John Towers (175o) ; French translation by Jean Barbeyrac (1744) ; James Tyrrell (1642-1718), grandson of Archbishop Ussher, published an abridgment of Cumberland's views in A Brief Disquisition of the Laws of Nature according to the Principles laid down in the Rev. Dr. Cum berland's Latin Treatise (1692 ; ed. 17o1) . For biographical details see also Cumberland's Memoirs (1807), i. 3-6; Pepys' Diary. For his phi losophy, see E. Albee, Philosophical Review, iv. 3 (1895) , pp. 264 and 371; F. E. Spaulding, R. Cumberland als Begriinder der englischen Ethik (1894) ; and text-books on ethics.