I have still to speak of the (Third) Earl of Shaftesbury, whose style
has rescued his writings from entire neglect. His special interest was
ethics. While the valuable work of most of the heterodox writers of this
period lay in their destructive criticism of supernatural religion, they
clung, as we have seen, to what was called natural religion— the belief
in a kind and wise personal God, who created the world, governs it by
natural laws, and desires our happiness. The idea

[149] was derived from ancient philosophers and had been revived by Lord
Herbert of Cherbury in his Latin treatise On Truth (in the reign of
James I). The deists contended that this was a sufficient basis for
morality and that the Christian inducements to good behaviour were
unnecessary. Shaftesbury in his Inquiry concerning Virtue (1699) debated
the question and argued that the scheme of heaven and hell, with the
selfish hopes and fears which they inspire, corrupts morality and that
the only worthy motive for conduct is the beauty of virtue in itself. He
does not even consider deism a necessary assumption for a moral code; he
admits that the opinion of atheists does not undermine ethics. But he
thinks that the belief in a good governor of the universe is a powerful
support to the practice of virtue. He is a thorough optimist, and is
perfectly satisfied with the admirable adaptation of means to ends,
whereby it is the function of one animal to be food for another. He
makes no attempt to reconcile the red claws and teeth of nature with the
beneficence of its powerful artist. “In the main all things are kindly
and well disposed.” The atheist might have said that he preferred to be
at the mercy of blind chance than in the hands of an autocrat who, if he
pleased Lord Shaftesbury’s sense

[150] of order, had created flies to be devoured by spiders. But this
was an aspect of the universe which did not much trouble thinkers in the