The Scottish Philosophy [55]
than a disciple of Epicurus. His system is the boldest form of self-love. " Human nature is originally formed to pleasure and pain." " There is, indeed, a. distinction of goodness into natural and moral, but the latter as well as the former lies wholly in pleasure." 'God and all mankind are governed by one common principle, viz., self-love." "They can favor or esteem no other beings but as they gratify this principle." " The affections and actions that correspond to the self-love of our own species are likewise agreeable to the self-love of the Deity." " From self-love we desire the love and esteem of other intelligent beings." There is a passage in which there is an anticipation of Smith's theory of sympathy: " Whatever tenderness we conceive in favor of other people, it comes from putting ourselves in their circumstances, and must therefore be resolved into self- love." He also wrote a treatise on the " Necessity of Revelation," 1739; and another, " Oratio de Vanitate Luminis Naturae." He thinks it impossible that man kind, left to themselves, should `discover' the great truths and articles of natural religion, or should be capable of giving a system to natural religion." He died in April, 1756. A posthumous work, " The Authenticity of the Gospel History," was published 1759. He was opposed by [Alexander Moncrieff].
X.-- ALEXANDER MONCRIEFF.[20]
A/LEXANDER\ M/ONCRIEFF\ Of Culfergie in the parish of Abernethy was educated at the grammar school of Perth and St. Andrews University, and became minister of his native parish. He was favorable to the Marrow school of divinity, and took part with the Erskines in defending the popular rights and in seceding from the Church of Scotland, being one of the four fathers of the secession. In 1724, he was made their professor of divinity. He {91} died in 1761. He wrote "An Inquiry into the Principle, Rule, and End of Moral Actions, wherein the Scheme of Selfish Love laid down by Mr. Archibald Campbell . . . is examined, and the received Doctrine vindicated." To quote the summary supplied by his biographers, he establishes the following propositions: " (1) To show that self-love is not, or ought not to be, the leading principle of moral virtue; (2) That self-interest or pleasure is not the only standard by which we can and should judge of the virtue of our own and others' actions, or that actions are not to be called virtuous on account of their correspondency to self-interest; (3) That self-love, as it exerts itself in the desire of universal, unlimited esteem, ought not to be the great remaining motive to virtuous actions," &c.
XI.-- RISE OF THE ABERDEEN BRANCH. T/HE\ north-east of Scotland, -- embracing Aberdeen, Banff, Murray, Mearns, and a large portion of Angus, -- though now very much amalgamated with the rest of Scotland, had a character of its own in the seventeenth century. The people had a large Scandinavian element in their composition, had a shrill intonation, and a marked idiom, and a harder aspect (though probably with quite as much feeling within) than the people of the south and west. When Samuel Johnson lumbered through the region in 1773, and visited Lord Monboddo, he found it miserably bare of trees; but, had he travelled a century or two earlier, he would have had to pass through wide-spread forests. These were cut down in the seventeenth century; and in the stead of the deer and wild animals a more industrious people substituted sheep and cattle, ranging over high mountains and large undulating plains, on which you would have seen patches of oats or bear here and there around the clay or turf dwellings of the tenants, but few fences or enclosures of any kind, except in the immediate neighborhood of the proprietors, whose castles and gardens, on the French model, relieved the wildness of the scene. On to the eighteenth century the rural population consisted of landlords, with rather small farmers absolutely dependent on them, and who paid their rent in the service, on certain occasions,
X.-- ALEXANDER MONCRIEFF.[20]
A/LEXANDER\ M/ONCRIEFF\ Of Culfergie in the parish of Abernethy was educated at the grammar school of Perth and St. Andrews University, and became minister of his native parish. He was favorable to the Marrow school of divinity, and took part with the Erskines in defending the popular rights and in seceding from the Church of Scotland, being one of the four fathers of the secession. In 1724, he was made their professor of divinity. He {91} died in 1761. He wrote "An Inquiry into the Principle, Rule, and End of Moral Actions, wherein the Scheme of Selfish Love laid down by Mr. Archibald Campbell . . . is examined, and the received Doctrine vindicated." To quote the summary supplied by his biographers, he establishes the following propositions: " (1) To show that self-love is not, or ought not to be, the leading principle of moral virtue; (2) That self-interest or pleasure is not the only standard by which we can and should judge of the virtue of our own and others' actions, or that actions are not to be called virtuous on account of their correspondency to self-interest; (3) That self-love, as it exerts itself in the desire of universal, unlimited esteem, ought not to be the great remaining motive to virtuous actions," &c.
XI.-- RISE OF THE ABERDEEN BRANCH. T/HE\ north-east of Scotland, -- embracing Aberdeen, Banff, Murray, Mearns, and a large portion of Angus, -- though now very much amalgamated with the rest of Scotland, had a character of its own in the seventeenth century. The people had a large Scandinavian element in their composition, had a shrill intonation, and a marked idiom, and a harder aspect (though probably with quite as much feeling within) than the people of the south and west. When Samuel Johnson lumbered through the region in 1773, and visited Lord Monboddo, he found it miserably bare of trees; but, had he travelled a century or two earlier, he would have had to pass through wide-spread forests. These were cut down in the seventeenth century; and in the stead of the deer and wild animals a more industrious people substituted sheep and cattle, ranging over high mountains and large undulating plains, on which you would have seen patches of oats or bear here and there around the clay or turf dwellings of the tenants, but few fences or enclosures of any kind, except in the immediate neighborhood of the proprietors, whose castles and gardens, on the French model, relieved the wildness of the scene. On to the eighteenth century the rural population consisted of landlords, with rather small farmers absolutely dependent on them, and who paid their rent in the service, on certain occasions,