Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

734 S H A -
punish it. ” Shaftesbury’s was in reality, though perhaps not in
appearance, a more truly religious philosophy. For with him
the incentives to well-doing and the deterrents from evil-doing are
to be sought not solely, or even mainly, in the opinion of man¬
kind, or in the rewards and punishments of the magistrate, or in
the hopes and terrors of a future world, but in the answer of a
good conscience approving virtue and disapproving vice, and in
the love of a God, who, by His infinite wisdom and His all-
embracing beneficence, is worthy of the love and admiration of
His creatures.
The main object of the Moralists is to propound a system of
natural theology, and to vindicate, so far as natural religion is
concerned, the ways of God to man. The articles of Shaftesbury’s
religious creed were few and simple, but these he entertained
with a conviction amounting to enthusiasm. They may briefly be
summed up as a belief in one God whose most characteristic
attribute is universal benevolence, in the moral government of
the universe, and in a future state of man making up for the
imperfections and repairing the inequalities of the present life.
Shaftesbury is emphatically an optimist, but there is a passage in
the Moralists (pt. ii. sect. 4) which would lead us to suppose
that he regarded matter as an indifferent principle, co-existent and
co-eternal with God, limiting His operations, and the cause of the
evil and imperfection which, notwithstanding the benevolence of
the Creator, is still to be found in His work. If this view of his
optimism be correct, Shaftesbury, as Mill says of Leibnitz, must
he regarded as maintaining, not that this is the best of all
imaginable but only of all possible worlds. This brief notice of
Shaftesbury’s scheme of natural religion would be conspicuously
imperfect unless it were added that it is popularized in Pope’s Essay
on Man, several lines of which, especially of the first epistle, are
simply statements from the Moralists done into verse. Whether,
however, these were taken immediately by Pope from Shaftesbury,
or whether they came to him through the papers which Boling-
broke had prepared for his use, we have no means of determining.
Shaftesbury’s philosophical activity was confined to ethics,
aesthetics, and religion. For metaphysics, properly so called, and
even psychology, except so far as it afforded a basis for ethics, he
evidently had no taste. Logic he probably despised as merely an
instrument of pedants,—a judgment for which, in his day, and
especially at the universities, there was only too much ground.
The influence of Shaftesbury’s writings was very considerable
both at home and abroad. His ethical system was reproduced,
though in a more precise and philosophical form, by Hutcheson,
and from him descended, with certain variations, to Hume and
Adam Smith. Nor was it without its effect even on the specula¬
tions of Butler. Of the so-called deists Shaftesbury was probably
the most important, as he was certainly the most plausible and
the most respectable. No sooner had the Characteristics appeared
than they were welcomed, in terms of warm commendation, by Le
Clerc and Leibnitz. In 1745 Diderot adapted or reproduced the
Inquiry concerning Virtue in what was afterwards known as his
Essai sur le Merite et la Vertu. In 1769 a French translation of
the whole of Shaftesbury’s works, including the Letters, was
published at Geneva. Translations of separate treatises into
German began to be made in 1738, and in 1776-1779 there
appeared a complete German translation of the Characteristics.
Hermann Hettner says that not only Leibnitz, Yoltaire, and
Diderot, but Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, and Herder, drew
the most stimulating nutriment from Shaftesbury. “ His charms,”
he adds, “ are ever fresh. A new-born Hellenism, or divine cultus
of beauty presented itself before his inspired soul.” Herder is
especially eulogistic. In the Adrastea he pronounces the Moralists
to be a composition in form well-nigh worthy of Grecian antiquity,
and in its contents almost superior to it. The interest felt by Ger¬
man literary men in Shaftesbury has been recently revived by the
publication of two excellent monographs, one dealing with him
mainly from the theological side by Dr Gideon Spicker (Freiburg
in Baden, 1872), the other dealing with him mainly from the philo¬
sophical side by Dr Georg von Gizycki (Leipsic, 1876).
In the foregoing article the writer has made free use of his monograph on
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson in the series of “English philosophers” (1882),
published by Sampson Low & Co. In that work he was able largely to sup¬
plement the printed materials for the Life by extracts from the Shaftesbury
papers now deposited in the Record Office. Tliese include, besides many letters
and memoranda, two lives of him, composed by his son, the fourth earl, one of
which is evidently the original, though it is by no means always closely followed,
of the Life contributed by Dr Birch to the General Dictionary. For a descrip¬
tion and criticism of Shaftesbury's philosophy reference may also be made to
Mackintosh’s Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Whewell’s History of Moral
Philosophy in England, Jouffroy’s Introduction to Ethics (Channing’s transla¬
tion), Leslie Stephen’s English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Martineau’s
Types of Ethical Theory, and the article Ethics in the present work (vol. viii.
pp. 599, 600). For his relation to the religious and theological controversies of
his day, see, in addition to some of the above works, Leland’s View of the
Principal Deistical Writers, Lechler’s Geschichte des Englische.n Deismus, Hunt’s
Religious Thought in England, Abbey and Overton’s English Church in the
Eighteenth Century, and A. S. Farrar’s Bampton Lectures. (T. F.)
SHAFTESBURY, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Seventh
Earl op (1801-1885), was the son of Cropley, sixth earl,
-S H A
and Anne, daughter of the third duke of Marlborough, and
was born 28th April 1801. He was educated at Harrow
and Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained a first class
in classics in 1822, and graduated M.A. in 1832. In
1841 he received from his university the degree of D.C.L.
He entered parliament as member for the pocket borough
of Woodstock in 1826; in 1830 he was returned for
Dorchester; from 1831 till February 1846 he represented
the county of Dorset; and he was member for Bath from
1847 till (having previously borne the courtesy title
Lord Ashley) he succeeded his father as earl in 1851.
Although giving a general support to the Conservatives,
his parliamentary conduct was greatly modified by his
intense interest in the improvement of the social condition
of the working classes, his efforts in behalf of whom have
made his name a household word. He opposed the Reform
Bill of 1832, but was a supporter of Catholic emancipa¬
tion, and his objection to the continuance of resistance to
the abolition of the Corn Laws led him to resign his seat
for Dorset in 1846. In parliament his name, more than
any other, is associated with the factory legislation (see
Factory Acts, vol. viii. p. 845). He was a lord of the
admiralty under Sir Robert Peel (1834-35), but on being
invited to join Peel’s administration in 1841 refused,
having been unable to obtain Peel’s support for the Ten
Hours’ Bill. Chiefly by his persistent efforts a Ten Hours’
Bill was carried in 1847, but its operation was impeded
by legal difficulties, which were only removed by successive
Acts, instigated chiefly by him, until legislation reached
a final stage in the Factory Act of 1874. The part which
he took in the legislation bearing on coal mines was equally
prominent. It is worthy of notice that his efforts in
behalf of the practical welfare of the working classes were
guided by his own personal knowledge of their circum¬
stances and wants. Thus in 1846 he took advantage of
his leisure after the resignation of his seat for Dorset to
explore the slums of the metropolis, and by the informa¬
tion he obtained not only gave a new impulse to the move¬
ment for the establishment of ragged schools, but was able
to make it more widely beneficial. For over forty years
he was president of the Ragged School Union. He was
also one of the principal founders of reformatory and
refuge unions, young men’s Christian associations, and
working men’s institutes. He took an active interest in
foreign missions, and was president of several of the most
important philanthropic and religious societies of London.
He died 1st October 1885. By his marriage to Lady
Emily, daughter of the fifth Earl Cowper, he left a large
family, and was succeeded by his eldest son Anthony, who
committed suicide shortly afterwards.
SHAGREEN. See Leather, vol. xiv. p. 390, and
Shark.
SHAhAbAD, a British district in the Patna division
of the lieutenant-governorship of Bengal, India, between
24° 3F and 25° 43' N. lat. and between 83° 23' and
84° 55' E. long., with an area of 4365 square miles. It
is bounded on the N. by the district of Ghazipur in the
North-Western Provinces and by Saran, on the E. by
Patna and Gayd districts, on the S. by Lohardaga, and
on the W. by Mirzapur, Benares, and Ghazipur districts
of the North-Western Provinces. About three-fourths of
the whole area lying to the north is an alluvial flat, wholly
under cultivation, and fairly planted with mangoes, bam¬
boos, and other trees; while the southern portion of the
district is occupied by the Kaimur Hills, a branch of the
great Yindhyan range, and is a densely wooded tract.
The chief risers are the Ganges and the Son, which unite
in the north-eastern corner of Shdh4b4d. A series of canals
on the Son are reported to have secured for the district
immunity from future famine. In the southern portion