Nature, so far from exciting rapturous enthusiasm, appears to him almost as a Moloch, delighting in the tortures of her creatures. Not that he is horror-struck or driven to despair. What is the use of being angry with the inevitable, or puzzling our heads over the inscrutable? Let us take what we can get in this blind, fierce struggle, and make ourselves as comfortable as we can under the circumstances.

Virtue is an empty pretence; for upon what can the service of this terrible deity repose except upon a clever calculation of our own interests? To feather our own nests as warmly as may be is our only policy in this pitiless storm. Lust and pride are realities; to gratify them is to secure the only genuine enjoyment. It is necessary, indeed, to use the conventional varnish of fine phrases, for flattery is a more potent instrument of success than open defiance of the world. But nothing is substantially satisfactory which is not perceptible to the senses. Mandeville, in short, is the legitimate precursor of those materialists of the last century who acknowledged the existence of nothing that could not be touched, tasted, and handled, and who were accustomed to analyse man into so much hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, and declare that nothing remained to be discovered. Ridicule his

conclusions by all means, as much as you please: condemn still more unequivocally the cynical levity with which he abolishes virtue, and proclaims the world to be a hateful farce. No language could be

too strong to convey our protest against such theories, were it not that they are too dead to need much protesting. But, after all is said that can or need be said, there is yet something on the other side. Mandeville's picture of the origin of society is far nearer the truth than Shaftesbury's, or than that of most contemporary philosophers. Partly, it is because his theories, which are a libel on civilised mankind, are not so far wrong when applied to man still half-brutal, and only showing the rudiments of religion or morality. But partly, too, the comparative accuracy of his results is due to the fact that his method is sound, though his spirit is detestable. An unflinching scepticism is a necessary, though a disagreeable, stage on the road to truth. Beautiful theories must be questioned, however attractive; and phantoms laid, whatever consolation they may have conferred. Mandeville, it is true, represents scepticism in its coarsest and most unlovely stage. He has taken the old theological system, and retained all that was degrading whilst summarily destroying what was elevating. If man be regarded as altogether vile, it is necessary to account for virtue by admitting the existence of some Divine element. But Mandeville will have nothing to do with the supernaturalism which has become incredible to him, nor with Shaftesbury's attempt to make nature itself Divine, which he regards as mere flimsy bombast. And thus he leaves nothing but a bare, hideous chaos, entirely godless in the sense that

it neither bears internal traces of Divine harmony, nor of the interference of Divine powers from without. Denying the reality of virtue, he sees no reason for providing any new form of belief round which the nobler impulses may gather. In short, he exhibits the result of taking the old theology and simply leaving out God. The result is naturally appalling. We have chaos without even a hint that some reconstructive process is necessary to supply the place of the old order. Without a God and without a hell and heaven, said theologians, there can be no virtue. Well, replies Mandeville in substance, we know nothing of God, and nothing of a future life; and I accept your conclusion that virtue is a humbug. True, it is a very convenient humbug; but men of sense may laugh at it amongst themselves, though of course men of sense will not laugh in public. To say this, though not quite in plain words, and to say it with a grin, does not imply a very noble character. Yet we may admit a kind of gratitude to the man whose sweeping demolition of the ancient superstructure evidences the necessity of some deeper and sounder process of reconstruction, and who, if the truth must be spoken, has, after all, written a very amusing book.

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CHAPTER VIII.

WARBURTON.1

IN the course of the once celebrated controversy between Warburton and Lowth, Lowth made one hit which must have told forcibly upon his opponent, He quoted the following passage from Clarendon's history :- Colonel Harrison was the son of a butcher near Nantwich, in Cheshire, and had been bred up in the place of a clerk, under a lawyer of good account in those parts; which kind of education introduces men into the language and practice of business, and, if it be not resisted by the great ingenuity of the person, inclines young men to more pride than any other kind of breeding, and disposes them to be pragmatical and insolent.' Now, my Lord,' says Lowth, as you have in your whole behaviour, and in all your writings, remarkably distinguished yourself by your humility, lenity, meekness, forbearance, candour, humanity, civility, decency, good manners, good temper, moderation with regard to the opinions of others, and a modest diffidence of your own, this unpromising cir

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1 Warburton's Works: London, 1811.

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cumstance of your early education' (that, namely, of being educated in the same way as Harrison) is so far from being a disgrace to you, that it highly redounds to your praise.' Which piece of irony, being translated, expresses the most conspicuous fact in Warburton's character; namely, that he was as 'proud, pragmatical, and insolent' as might be expected from a man who brought to theological controversies the habits of mind acquired in an attorney's office. Warburton, in fact, is the most perfect specimen of a type not unfrequent amongst clergymen. We may still, though less often than formerly, observe a man in the pulpit who obviously ought to be at the bar; and though the legal habit of mind may be a very useful corrective to certain theological tendencies, the more common result of thus putting the square man in the round hole is to produce that kind of incongruity which in another profession gives rise to the opprobrious term of sea-lawyer. Warburton was, as we shall presently see, a lawyer to the backbone in more senses than one; but the most prominent and least amiable characteristic, which suggested Lowth's sarcasm, was his amazing litigiousness.

(

For many years together he led the life of a terrier in a rat-pit, worrying all theological vermin. His life, as he himself observed in more dignified language, was a warfare upon earth; that is to say, with bigots and libertines, against whom I have denounced eternal war, like Hannibal against Rome, at the altar.'