Author: Leslie Stephen

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-07-04

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9781330699898

Excerpt from History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 2 of 2 2. But wider speculations as to morality inevitably occur as soon as the vision of God becomes faint; when the AI mighty retires behind second causes, instead of being felt as an immediate presence, and his existence becomes the subject of logical proof, or belief is refined into sentiment. If the old system of government disappears, what is to take its place The prohibition of murder is no longer uttered by a visible Deity from Mount Sinai. Why, then, should we not commit murder? And how do we know that it is wrong? Hell no longer yawns before us; what punishment has the murderer to dread? The sentiment of disapproval survives the clearly divine character of the prohibition. What, then, is its meaning and origin? Attention had been called to these most important questions by Hobbes, the keenest and most audacious of all contemporary speculators. Through out the seventeenth and the first years of the eighteenth century he represented the evil principle to moralists as well as to theologians. The two classes are indeed one. The whole theology of the eighteenth century has a specially moral turn. Religion was regarded far less as providing ex pression for our deepest emotions, or as a body of old tradi tion invested with the most touching poetical associations, than as a practical rule of life. This preoccupation with the direct moral bearing of theology gives a prosaic turn to the writing of the day but, in fact, this aspect of the great pro blem was of vital importance. How could order be preserved when the old sanctions were decaying? Can a society of atheists be maintained? Was a question put by Bayle, and taken up by Shaftesbury. It was nothing more than an epigrammatic form of a question, to which it was of the' deepest importance to find an answer, and which was rightly discussed with an eagerness tending rather to cast into the shade the more poetical aspects of religion. How, to put. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.