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The Significance of Shaftesbury in English Speculation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William E. Alderman
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Extract

It has been repeatedly pointed out that Shaftesbury derived many, if not the most, of his philosophical ideas from his immediate and more remote predecessors. Nevertheless, the recognition of this fact does not detract from the originality and power of Shaftesbury himself. The ideas gleaned from a wide reading and companionship passed through the medium of his keen and generous mind and emerged a new intellectual compound.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 38 , Issue 1: American Bibliography for 1922 , March 1923 , pp. 175 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1923

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References

1 Walpole, Royal and Noble Authors, London, 1806, IV, 55.

2 Introduction to Letters from the Late Earl of Shaftesbury to Robert Molesworth, Esq., 1721.

3 Dedication to Free-Thinkers of Divine Legation, 1738, London, 1811, I, p. 163. For further light concerning Shaftesbury's relationship to the ancients see Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, New York, 1883, pp. 97-99.

4 See E. T. Campagnac, The Cambridge Platonists, 1901.

5 See C. F. Sharp, Mind, XXXVII, 387; Lyons, Shaftesbury's Ethical Principles of Adaptation to Universal Harmony, New York, 1900, pp. 32-34.

6 Robertson's Characteristics, London, 1900, I, p. xxxii et seq.

7 C. A. Moore, P. M. L. A., XXXI, 267 note.

8 Works of Pope, Bowles Edition, London, 1806, III, 58.

9 Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor, Part III, section 1.

10 Inquiry concerning Virtue, Bk. II, Pt. 1, section 1. See also Wit and Humor, Pt. II, section 1 ; Pt. III, section 3.

11 First Letter in Several letters Written by a Noble Lord to a young Man at the University.

12 Essay concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I, Ch. 3, section 6.

13 Several Letters, No. 8, p. 59.

14 Inquiry concerning Virtue, Pt. III, section 1.

15 Advice to an Author, Pt. III, section 1.

16 Freedom of Wit and Humor, Pt. III, section 1.

17 Inquiry concerning Virtue, Pt. III, section 2.

18 Cited by Fowler, p. 60.

19 Rand, Life, Letters, and Philosophical Regimen, London, 1900, p. xxvii.

20 Rand, Ibid., p. xxvii.

21 Warton Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, London, 1806, II, 97.

22 See Skelton, Deism Revealed, I, 34-35, for a succinct statement of the Deistical Creed. Leland in The Principal Deistical Writers, London, 1754, I, 77 ff., classes Shaftesbury among the Deists. Hefelbower (The Relation of John Locke to English Deism, Chicago, 1918, pp. 177-178), holds a contrary view.

23 See Hefelbower, op. cit., pp. 172-184, for a fuller discussion of this point.

24 Select Sermons of Dr. Whichcot, in two parts, London, 1698.

25 Wishart's Preface to the Select Sermons of Dr. Whichcot, Edinburgh, 1742, p. iii.

26 Select Sermons, 1742, p. xviii.

27 Ibid., xxi-xxxv.

28 This Preface was reprinted in Letters of the Earl of Shaftesbury, 1758.

29 Burnet, History of his Own Times, London, 1850, p. 127.

30 Preface to Select Sermons, 1698.

31 Preface to Select Sermons, 1742.

32 Select Sermons, 1698, p. 100.

33 Ibid., p. 352.

34 Ibid., p. 4.

35 Ibid., p. 451.

36 Select Sermons, p. 106.

37 Ibid., p. 112.

38 Ibid., p. 152.

39 Ibid., p. 109. See also pp. 69, 72.

40 Ibid., p. 99.

41 Ibid.,p, 59.

42 Ibid., p. 95.

43 Ibid., p. 164.

44 Ibid., p. 213.

45 Ibid., p. 382.

46 Select Sermons, p. 181.

47 Ibid., p. 363.

48 Ibid., p. 381.

49 Ibid., p. 25.

50 Ibid., p. 6.

51 Ibid., p. 38.

52 Ibid., p. 92.

53 Ibid., p. 133.

54 Ibid., pp. 59-60.

55 Ibid., p. 39. See also pp. 40, 93, 156, 350.

56 Ibid., p. 215.

57 Select Sermons, p. 448.

58 Ibid., p. 167. Cf. pp. 359, 398.

59 Ibid., p. 9.

60 Ibid., p. 40.

61 Ibid., p. 8.

62 Ibid., p. 5.

63 Ibid., p. 355.

64 No attempt has been made to reproduce all of the tenets of Whichcote. What he taught concerning the “Suitableness of the Principles of revealed Religion, and the Discoveries of the Gospel, to the lapsed and fallen Condition of Man,” to use one of Wishart's phrases, has been omitted. A succinct statement of his doctrines may be found in Select Sermons, 1742, pp. v, vi. See also Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries, London, 1914, pp. 288-304.

65 It is quite probable that he did not become acquaited with the writings of Spinoza until 1698. Leibnitz's Theodicée was not published until 1710.

66 The dates of the English editions are: 1711, 1714, 1723, 1727, 1732, 1733, 1737, 1744, 1749, 1773, 1790. Editions also appeared in France and Germany.

67 See The Influence of the Writings of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury on the Literature of the Eighteenth Century, by the present writer, in MS. in the library of the University of Wisconsin; The Style of Shaftesbury, also by the present writer, Modern Language Notes, Vol. XXXVIII; Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets by C. A. Moore, P. M.L.A. XXXI, 264-325.

68 For a study of the spread and development of Shaftesbury's ideas, see the studies by Moore and by the present writer referred to in the note immediately preceding.

69 English Romantic Movement, pp. 4-5.

70 Essentials of Poetry, p. 240.

71 A Eistory of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, p. 252.

72 Preface to Second Edition.

73 Quoted from Stephen's summary in English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, II, 415.

74 Characteristics, p. xxxvi, where he cites Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd ed. 1771, pp. 257-261 and Dr. Conway's Centenary of the South Place Society, 1894, pp. 80, 89 as sources of information.

75 This interesting suggestion was made to the author by Professor Arthur Beatty of the University of Wisconsin.

76 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, II, 370.

77 See also the essay on Enthusiasm by J. E. V. Croftes in An Oxford Miscellany, Clarendon Press, 1909, pp. 127-151.

78 See Works, London, 1811, I, 150.

79 Roderick Random, Ch. XXII.