Humanism

The early education of the third Earl of Shaftesbury was supervised by none other than John Locke. The young man's mind was no blank slate—he grew up to argue, contra Locke, that men must have innate moral sensibilities.

Thus the wisdom of what rules, and is first and chief in nature, has made it to be according to the private interest and good of everyone to work toward the general good, which, if a creature ceases to promote, he is actually so far wanting to himself, and ceases to promote his own happiness and welfare.¹

Contrary to his emphasis on the complexity of the clock-like mechanism of human nature in the epigraph above, he seemed to believe that natural affections represented the true mainspring.² One could argue that it was easy in that day and age for an aristocrat to label pecuniary self-interest a vulgar, middle-class preoccupation.³

Shaftesbury's faith in natural benevolence was echoed by later writers, including Voltaire's favorite English poet, Alexander Pope, whose versified Essay on Man found a wide audience.⁴ Pope initially echoes the Hobbesian argument that men imposed rules of government upon themselves in order to provide for their own defense.⁵ But he quickly invokes natural benevo­lence: ‘‘Thus God and Nature link'd the gen'ral frame/ And bade Self-love and Social be the same.''⁶ The self feels so much affection for others that its own boundaries disappear. ⁷

God loves from Whole to Parts: but human soul

Must rise from Individual to Whole.

Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake; The centre mov'd, a circle strait succeeds,

Another still, and still another spreads,

Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace, His country next, and next all human race.⁸

Can such a boundless entity actually be called a self? Secular humanists like Shaftesbury and Pope praised Christian qualities but suggested that neither God nor the Church was necessary for their realization.⁹ Most men of God found this argument rather aggravating, for the obvious reason that it rendered them unnecessary as well. Heretics who rejected Christian virtues altogether were easier to stigmatize.