Chapter XXII: Hartley. 1705-1757

Celebrated as the earliest writer of the utilitarian school of morals. At the age of fifteen he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, of which he was afterwards elected a Fellow. Scruples of conscience about the “Thirty-nine Articles” would not allow him to subscribe them and take orders, and he turned to the medical profession, in which he reached considerable eminence.

His _Observations on Man: his Frame, his Duties, and his Expectations_, appeared in 1748. The principal interest in the book consists in the fact of its containing the germs of that school of moral philosophy of which Paley, Bentham, and Mill have been the most able expositors. He had imbibed the teaching of Locke upon the origin of ideas, which that first of English metaphysicians founded in Sensation and Reflection or Association, in contradiction to the old theory of _Innateness_. Although now universally received, it is hardly necessary to remark that at its first promulgation it met with as great opposition as all rational ideas experience long after their first introduction; and Locke’s controversy with the Bishop of Worcester is matter of history.

It has already been stated that David Hartley was the friend of Dr. Cheyne, whom he attended in his last illness, and he numbered amongst his acquaintances some of the most eminent personages of the day. His character appears to have been singularly amiable and disinterested. His theology is, for the most part, of unsuspected orthodoxy. The following sentences reveal the bias of his mind in the matter of _kreophagy_:--

“With respect to animal diet, let it be considered that taking
away the lives of [other] animals in order to convert them into
food, _does great violence to the principles of benevolence and
compassion_. This appears from the frequent hard-heartedness and
cruelty found among those persons whose occupations engage them
in destroying animal life, as well as from the uneasiness which
others feel in beholding the butchery of [the lower] animals. It
is most evident, in respect to the larger animals and those with
whom we have a familiar intercourse--such as Oxen, Sheep, and
domestic Fowls, &c.--so as to distinguish, love, and compassionate
individuals. They resemble us greatly in the make of the body in
general, and in that of the particular organs of circulation,
respiration, digestion, &c.; also in the formation of their
intellects, memories, and passions, and in the signs of distress,
fear, pain, and death. They often, likewise, win our affections by
the marks of peculiar sagacity, by their instincts, helplessness,
innocence, nascent benevolence, &c., &c., and, if there be any
glimmering of hope of an hereafter for them--if they should
prove to be our _brethren and sisters_ in this higher sense, in
immortality as well as mortality--in the permanent principle of our
minds as well as in the frail dust of our bodies--this ought to be
still further reason for tenderness for them.

“This, therefore, seems to be nothing else,” he concludes, “than an
argument to stop us in our career, to make us sparing and tender
in this article of diet, and put us upon consulting experience
more faithfully and impartially in order to determine what is most
suitable to the purposes of life and health, our compassion being
made, by the foregoing considerations in some measure, a balance to
our impetuous bodily appetites.”[154]

Dr. Hartley is not the only theologian who has suggested the possibility or probability of a future life for all or some of the non-human races. This question we must leave to the theologians. All that we here remark is, that Hartley is one of the very few amongst his brethren who have had the consistency and the courage of their opinions to deduce the inevitable inference.