CHARACTERISTICS. Shaf tesbury's consisting of six treatises col lected and published in 1711: (A Letter Con cerning Enthusiasm> • (An Essay On The Free dom Of Wit And To An Author); (An Inquiry Concerning Virtue Or Merit); Moralists' ; and (Miscellaneous Reflections.' The book is the principal life work of a cultivated and high-minded Whig nobleman who, debarred by ill health from a public career, dedicated himself to the study, practice and inculcation of moral philosophy. Writing for a sceptical and rationalizing age, Shaftesbury is pri marily concerned to show that goodness and beauty are not determined by revelation, authority, opinion or fashion, but by the essen tially constant and inalterable nature of man and things. From his Philosophical Regimen,> first published in 1900, it appears that he had reached his own convictions by a rigorous process of self-examination and self-discipline in imitation of his favorite classical masters, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. in common with the Stoics of antiquity and the Deists of his own time, he finds in the general harmony of the universe objective evidence of a su premely benevolent Mind, to whose purposes it is the part of every man's wisdom to conform. In distinction from Hobbes, he holds that human society was not created by a contract but was inherent, from the first appearance of man in the world, in the natural and necessary relationships of male and female, parents and offspring. In distinction from Locke, the supervisor of his early education, he denies that all our ideas are derived from experience, in sisting that our conceptions of right and wrong are, if not precisely innate, yet predetermined and appointed for, us by our physical and mental constitutions and by our destiny as social beings. To study the °natural° law of one's own being and of one's relationship to one's fellow beings and to the universe is es sential, Shaftesbury persuades us, to the char acter of a fine gentleman and a man of sense. "To philosophize, in a just signification, is but to carry good-breeding a step higher. For the accomplishment of breeding is to learn what ever is decent in company or beautiful in arts; and the sum of philosophy is, to learn what is just in society and beautiful in Nature and the order of the world." This passage suggests
what is perhaps the most personal aspect of Shaftesbury as a moralist, namely, his aesthetic sensibility, his identification of the good with the beautiful, his insistence that conduct is a fine art with principles analogous to those of music and sculpture, and to be relished by every ,gentleman of taste. To a public begin ning to take pride in its civility, in its tolerant and equable temper, in its devotion to common sense, Shaftesbury's studious ease and serenity appeared admirable, his urbanity worthy of emulation, his suave irony delicious and his benevolent and optimistic metaphysics an ac ceptable antidote to the egoism of Hobbes and the pessimism of the theologians. He attained in the 18th century a wide reputation in Eng land and abroad, influencing such men as Leibnitz, Herder, Franklin, Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Pope, Hutcheson, Hume and Butler. In the reaction which followed the French Revolution his political and religious liberalism was disparaged as atheistical and revolutionary; whereupon it was discovered that his style was artificial and pedantic. Within recent years there have been some at tempts at a critical restoration, notably in J. M. Robertson's edition of the 'Characteristics> (1900), and in Benjamin Rand's 'The Life, Unpublished Letters And Philosophical Regi men' (1900), where Shaftesbury is ranked with Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius as one of "the three great exponents of stoical philos ophy." Consult also Hatch, incomplete edition of 'Characteristics> (1870) ; Gizycki, 'Die Philosophic Shaftesburys' ( 1876) ; Stephen, 'English Thought in The Eighteenth Century> (1876) ; Fowler, 'Shaftesbury and Hutcheson' (1882) ; Martineau's 'Types Of Ethical Theory' (1885); Hatch, I. C., Einfluss Shaftesburys auf Herder' (1901) ; Moore, C. A., 'Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in Eng land' (in Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc., 1916) ; Wal zel, 'Shaftesbury and das deutsche Geitesleben des 18 Jahrhunderts> (1909).