Thomas Fowler and John Malcolm Mitchell

“ The main object of the Moralists is to propound a system of natural theology, and to vindicate, so far as natural religion is concerned, the ways of God to man. The articles of Shaftesbury’s religious creed were few and simple, but these he entertained with a conviction amounting to enthusiasm. They may briefly be summed up as a belief in one God whose most characteristic attribute is universal benevolence, in the moral government of the universe, and in a future state of man making up for the imperfections and repairing the inequalities of the present life. ”

“ To Lord Ashley this society was probably far more congenial than his surroundings in England. Unrestrained conversation on the topics which most interested him—philosophy, politics, morals, religion—was at this time to be had in Holland with less danger and in greater abundance than in any other country in the world. To the period of this sojourn in Holland must probably be referred the surreptitious impression or publication of an imperfect edition of the Inquiry concerning Virtue, from a rough draught, sketched when he was only twenty years of age. ”

“ Shaftesbury did not fully analyse see Hume) .
From this principle, it follows (1) that the distinction between right and wrong is part of the constitution of human nature; (2) that morality stands apart from theology, and the moral qualities of actions are determined apart from the arbitrary will of God; (3) that the ultimate test of an action is its tendency to promote the general harmony or welfare; (4) that appetite and reason concur in the determination of action; and (5) that the moralist is not concerned to solve the problem of freewill and determinism. ”

“ Shaftesbury's philosophical importance (see Ethics) is due mainly to his ethical speculations, in which his motive was primarily the refutation of Hobbes's egoistic doctrine. By the method of empirical psychology, he examined man first as a unit in himself and secondly in his wider relations to the larger units of society and the universe of mankind. ”

“ He poses too much as a fine gentleman, and is so anxious not to be taken for a pedant of the vulgar scholastic kind that he falls into the hardly more attractive pedantry of the aesthete and virtuoso. ”

“ So also he has drawn a close parallel between the moral and the aesthetic criteria. lust as there is a faculty which apprehends beauty in the sphere of art, so there is in the sphere of ethics a faculty which determines the value of actions. ”

“ His only son, Anthony Ashley, succeeded him as 4th earl, and his great-grandson was the famous philanthropist, the 7th earl.
Shaftesbury's amiability of character seems to have been one of his principal characteristics. Like Locke he had a peculiar pleasure in bringing forward young men. Among these may be especially mentioned Michael Ainsworth, a native of W'irnbor11e St Giles, the young man who was the recipient of the Letters addressed to a student at the university, and was maintained by Shaftesbury at University College, Oxford. ”

“ In the first place man as an individual is a complex of appetites, passions, affections, more or less perfectly controlled by the central reason. In the moral man these factors are duly balanced. “Whoever,” he says, “is in the least versed in this moral kind of architecture will find the inward fabric so adjusted, . ”