The rejection of the view that all our actions are ultimately self-interested was perhaps what mattered most to Hutcheson. His position can be better understood once we understand why it could be so significant. To this end, a view of the intellectual landscape in which he was situated will help. First to be considered are the religious and moral notions that were inculcated in most people early in life.

Man's natural corruption

When considering the way people are and the things they do – human characters and actions – some will seem to us indifferent: neither good nor bad. But as for the rest, we inevitably divide them. We approve of some, disapprove of some; some are admired, some despised.

There have been times and places when this apparently natural way of thinking has met powerful opposition. The division into good and bad is rejected. In its place comes a different doctrine, one which denies that any human character or action can be good. Human nature is essentially flawed. The basic contrast is no longer that between the good and the bad. The only distinction that can have any application in real life is that between two ways in which the bad appears. The bad may appear in disguise, masquerading as something good; or it may appear undisguised.

This view seems at first sight to be strongly supported by the facts.

The pitfalls of the Hegelian dialectical method

In their original form, the Marxist conception of history and the socialist theory which rests upon it were worked out between 1844 and 1847, years when Western and Central Europe were in a state of great revolutionary ferment. They could be described as the most radical product of this epoch.

In Germany, this period was the epoch of mounting bourgeois liberalism. Here, as in other countries, the ideological representation of the class opposing the establishment far exceeded the practical requirements of that class. The bourgeoisie – by which I mean the broad stratum of non-feudal classes standing outside the wage relation – fought against the still semi-feudal state absolutism; its philosophical representation began with absolute rule in order to end with state rule.

The philosophical current which, in this respect, found its most radical representative in Max Stirner is known as the radical left wing of Hegelian philosophy. As Friedrich Engels remarked – like Marx, he came under its influence for a certain time; they both associated with the ‘Free’ at Hippel's wine bar in Berlin – the proponents of this tendency rejected the Hegelian system, only to fall all the more under the spell of its dialectic until first the practical struggle against positive religion (then an important aspect of the political struggle) and second the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach drove them into an unreserved acceptance of materialism.

In the post-war period academic philosophers took an interest in Hume's moral philosophy primarily because of his critique of rationalism and his subjectivism, which could be interpreted as a proto-non-cognitivism. It is in this perspective that Hume is above all the author of one single paragraph, the one in which Hume first observes that all the common systems of morality use is-statements at the outset, and ought-statements at the end, and then asks how the latter can be conclusions from the former. This has served as an important source of inspiration for many philosophers in the present century, who have advocated is–ought and fact–value dualisms. These dualisms are to the effect that statements of the former kind cannot alone imply statements of the latter kind. For instance, factual statements alone cannot imply a value-statement. To this has often been adjoined the additional assumption that only statements of the first kind can be true or have some kind of objectivity, and that value-statements are in an important sense subjective. Hutcheson was read in the same spirit as Hume was read. For instance, Peach comments in the very instructive introduction to his edition of Illustrations that ‘it is in this controversy [with rationalism] that Hutcheson probably has the greatest interest for the present-day reader’. Furthermore, Hutcheson was seen, like Hume, as a precursor of modern emotivist theories of ethics, and according to Peach, ‘[Hutcheson] has a theory of the meaning of moral judgements that is thoroughly noncognitive’.

Remarks on the meaning of Marx's theory of value

As we have seen, surplus value is, according to Marx's theory, the pivot of a capitalist society's economy. But to understand surplus value we must first know what value is. Marx's account of the nature and course of development of capitalist society therefore begins with the analysis of value.

According to Marx, the value of commodities in modern society consists in the socially necessary labour expended upon them, measured by time. However, this measure of value necessitates a number of abstractions and reductions. To begin with, pure exchange value must be developed, that is, abstracted from the particular use value of individual commodities. Then, in forming the concept of general or abstract human labour, we must set aside the peculiarities of particular kinds of labour (reducing higher or complex labour to simple or abstract labour). Then, in order to get the socially necessary labour time as the measure of the value of labour, we must set aside differences in the diligence, ability, and equipment of individual workers; and further, when we come to convert value into market value or price, we must set aside the socially necessary labour time required for the particular commodities taken separately.

Kant against cant

I have, at various points in this book, already referred to the great influence tradition has on the evaluation of facts and ideas, even in Social Democracy. I say expressly ‘even in Social Democracy’, because the power of tradition is a very widespread phenomenon from which no party, no literary or artistic tendency, is free, and which has a profound influence even on most of the sciences. Moreover, it is unlikely that it will ever be completely rooted out. There is always a lapse of time before people recognise that tradition is so far distant from the actual facts that they are prepared to discard it. Until this happens, or until it can happen without damage to the case in hand, tradition is normally the most powerful means of uniting those not otherwise bound together by any strong and continuous interest or external pressure. Hence the intuitive preference which all men of action have for tradition, however revolutionary their objectives may be. ‘Never swop horses whilst crossing a stream.’ This saying of Lincoln's is rooted in the same thought as Lassalle's well-known condemnation of ‘the nagging spirit of liberalism’, the ‘disease of individual opining and wanting to know better’. While tradition is essentially preservative, criticism is almost always destructive. When, therefore, the time comes to take important action, even criticism fully justified by the facts can be wrong and therefore reprehensible.

The scientific elements of Marxism

Today, German Social Democracy accepts as the theoretical basis of its activity the social doctrine which Marx and Engels worked out and called scientific socialism. That is to say that, although Social Democracy, as a fighting party, represents certain interests and tendencies, although it seeks to achieve goals set by itself, it does, in the final analysis, determine these goals in accordance with knowledge capable of objective proof, that is, knowledge which refers to, and conforms with, nothing but empirical experience and logic. For what is not capable of such proof is no longer science but rests on subjective impulses, on mere desire or opinion.

In any science, we can distinguish between pure theory and applied theory. The former consists of cognitive principles which are derived from the sum total of the relevant data and which are, therefore, regarded as universally valid. They are the constant element in the theory. An applied science is based on the application of these principles to particular phenomena or to particular cases of practice. The knowledge gained from this application, and put together in propositions, provides the principles of an applied science. These constitute the variable element in the system.

Introduction

The Sermon on the Mount is at the centre of Christian worship and morality. It contains both the Lord's prayer and the injunction to love not only neighbours but also enemies. Thus it makes a distinct statement about both Tables of the law. However, it was less the content of Christian revelation than its moral standing which was the concern of Burke's time.

The deists argued that God's moral character could not be reconciled with the partial distribution of revelation. The standing assumption was that revelation was necessary to salvation. But as it was diffused slowly over time and that to only a few countries, it followed that the means of salvation were not available to all mankind – in fact, to a few only. If one wished to suggest that God was fair to everyone, it followed that revelation, at best, was superfluous to salvation. As one writer put it:

If revelation was irrelevant, what was offered as a substitute? The complement of deist criticism was the assertion that what man could discover through his own reason, unassisted by revelation, was sufficient for his salvation. Thus, deism implied an assessment of reason.

Introduction

Richard Burke, who followed his father's career closely, suggested in 1790 that Edmund's political opinions never arose suddenly. ‘There is one thing … which I know from an intimate experience of many Years’, he wrote:

Nowhere is this reflection more fully realized than in Burke's view of the French Revolution.

When the summer of 1789 signalled the beginning of the French Revolution, Burke was about sixty years of age. His thought had developed continuously. Its basic stance had been established at an early stage, as is usually the case if thought is to develop and mature. The assumption that the divine order was manifested through inequality is found in writings produced before Burke was thirty. He had praised revelation and considered the benefits of a propertied order when an undergraduate. He had explored the way in which nature tended to form societies, elevate some men above others and encourage improvement in his Philosophical Enquiry of 1757 and shown the benefits in liberty and civilization accruing from one such society, in the Abridgement he wrote soon afterwards.

Introduction

When Burke reminisced about Ireland in 1780, after fifteen years devoted largely to the politics of England and America, he claimed that on first entering Parliament ‘What was first and uppermost’ in his thoughts was the hope ‘to be somewhat useful to the place of my birth and education, which in many respects, internal and external, I thought ill and impolitically governed’. This is likely enough, for Ireland preoccupied Burke from his teens. His earliest speeches and writings, composed as an undergraduate, provide many criticisms of Irish society, especially its disregard for good taste, its low morals and economic backwardness. These points focussed, in the end, on the failure of the propertied order of Irish society to provide the leadership which their station made possible.

Did Burke react against that order? He had a sense of its potential for good. He mentioned the case of one gentleman who had benefited his tenants greatly by a benevolent policy of improving his estate. The example was not entirely isolated. Another observer suggested that ‘a man has a figure in his country in proportion to the improvements he makes’. When Arthur Young toured Ireland a little later (in 1776) he found a number of agricultural improvers at work. A few years before Burke himself had arranged that ‘one of the finest bull calves … of the short-horned Holderness breed’ should be sent to a cousin's farm.

Edmund Burke is sometimes presented as an apostle of development. The description is apt in that his own work displays a continuous elaboration, sometimes theoretical and sometimes practical. The object of this collection is to illustrate its course by presenting a series of texts, dating from Burke's time as an undergraduate to his response to the French Revolution of 1789.

Burke's views embraced both theoretical disquisitions on theology, society and aesthetics, and practical reflections on Ireland, America, India and France. This profusion of themes in two modes of writing, one might feel, envelops ordered description in a cloud of complexity. The editor trusts that the apparatus of this small edition will do something to dispel that feeling. The introductory essay outlines Burke's interests and their connection. It considers the texts printed here (and some whose inclusion considerations of space forbade) as moments in Burke's story. The shorter introduction prefixed to each text says something more about its individual character, particularly about the political circumstances which called for the practical writings. The footnotes, the chronological table and the biographical entries are intended to assist the reader's progress by explaining historical and literary references in the text.

The edition aims to give a concise presentation of Burke's views before his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Because brief it concentrates on matters fundamental to understanding his thought, excluding others which would claim attention in a more extended treatment (just as it does not comment on the literature about Burke, save for the remarks in the bibliography). The editor will make good this omission elsewhere.

Political thought in eighteenth-century Britain reflected the circumstances of a post-revolutionary society. In the first half of the century the need to legitimate the Revolution of 1688 and its twin products, the new regime and the new British state, shaped the structure of political argument. In the second half, the increasing friction within the empire and the renewal of a demand to increase the extent of religious toleration introduced new themes and new stresses. Together, the colonial rebellion and the French Revolution were to pose the most severe challenge to the usefulness of the conceptual language of 1688.

Because the distinction between the person of the sovereign and the power of sovereignty was still being delineated in early modern Europe, and because it was (and remains) easier to generate loyalty to a person than to an abstraction, an altered royal succession undermined the foundations of obedience. The flight of James II and his replacement by William and Mary meant that the re-establishment of secure loyalty, last faced in England after the execution of Charles I and the creation of the Commonwealth (1649), was the chief political priority. In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, its defenders and opponents debated questions such as the legitimacy of resistance, the legalities of succession, the power of Parliament and the rights of kings.

The Preface

This publication owes its rise to the Remarks I wrote on Dr Brown's proposal for a code of education. Several persons who were pleased to think favourably of that performance, (in which I was led to mention the subject of civil and religious liberty) were desirous that I should treat of it more at large, and without any immediate view to the Doctor's work. It appeared to them, that some of the views I had given of this important, but difficult subject, were new, and showed it, in a clearer light than any in which they had seen it represented before; and they thought I had placed the foundation of some of the most valuable interests of mankind on a broader and firmer basis, than Mr Locke, and others who had formerly written upon this subject. I have endeavoured to answer the wishes of my friends, in the best manner I am able; and, at the same time, I have retained the substance of the former treatise, having distributed the several parts of it into the body of this.

In this second edition, I have also introduced what I had written on Church-authority, in answer to Dr Balguy's sermon on that subject, preached at Lambeth chapel, and published by order of the Archbishop.