Page:The ethics of Hobbes (IA ethicsofhobbes00hobb).pdf/59
tled An Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit, he endeavors to show that an analysis of man reveals the fact that he has "natural affections" which impel him to activity for the public good, as well as self-affections which impel him to seek his own private good. Bishop Butler, also, even more strongly than Shaftesbury, attempts to refute the psychological egoism of Hobbes. In his famous Sermons on Human Nature he endeavors to establish the thesis "that there are as real and the same kind of indications in human nature, that we were made for society and to do good to our fellow-creatures; as that we were intended to take care of our own life and health and private good; and that the same objections lie against one of these assertions, as against the other." This psychological treatment of ethics, which resulted from Hobbes founding moral relations ultimately on the essential constitution of man, has largely characterized English ethics from that day to the present time.[1]
In the field of political speculative thought we find the influence of Hobbes's speculations very manifest. In Great Britain, Clarenden, in his Brief Views and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State, in Mr. Hobbes's Book entitled "Leviathan," vigorously opposed the theory of Hobbes concerning sovereignty. The sovereign's absolute independence of his subjects was an especially objectionable feature of Hobbes's theory in the opinion of Clarenden. On the Continent the influence of Hobbes's speculations are manifest, especially in the writings of Spinoza and Rousseau. Spinoza, both in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and his Tractatus Politicus, adopts a number of the cardinal features of the theory of Hobbes concerning the organization of the commonwealth.[2] He agrees with Hobbes in his conception of