II.--His Psychology of Ethics is to be studied in the detail. Whether in the natural or in the social state, the Moral Faculty, to correspond with the Standard, is the general power of Reason, comprehending the aims of the Individual or Society, and attending to the laws of Nature or the laws of the State, in the one case or in the other respectively.
On the question of the Will, his views have been given at length.
Disinterested Sentiment is, in origin, self-regarding; for, pitying others, we imagine the like calamity befalling ourselves. In one place, he seems to say, that the Sentiment of Power is also involved. It is the great defect of his system that he takes so little account of the Social affections, whether natural or acquired.
III.--His Theory of Happiness, or the Summum Bonum, would follow from his analysis of the Feelings and Will. But Felicity being a continual progress in desire, and consisting less in present enjoyment than in _assuring_ the way of future desire, the chief element in it is the Sense of Power.
IV.--A Moral Code is minutely detailed under the name of Laws of Nature, in force in the Natural State under Divine Sanction. It inculcates all the common virtues, and makes little or no departure from the usually received maxims.
V.--The relation of Ethics to Politics is the closest imaginable. Not even Society, as commonly understood, but only the established civil authority, is the source of rules of conduct. In the _civil_ (which to Hobbes is the only meaning of the _social_) state, the laws of nature are superseded, by being supposed taken up into, the laws of the Sovereign Power.
VI.--As regards Religion, he affirms the coincidence of his reasoned deduction of the laws of Nature with the precepts of Revelation. He makes a mild use of the sanctions of a Future Life to enforce the laws of Nature, and to give additional support to the commands of the sovereign that take the place of these in the social state.
Among the numberless replies, called forth by the bold speculations of Hobbes, were some works of independent ethical importance; in particular, the treatises of Cumberland, Cudworth, and Clarke. Cumberland stands by himself; Cudworth and Clarke, agreeing in some respects, are commonly called the _Rational_ moralists, along with Wollaston and Price (who fall to be noticed later).