onsiderable then as it now appears, or Berkeley would not
have deemed it necessary to controvert his arguments in the third
Dialogue of his _Alciphron_. Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally
makes use of the dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's
incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving one the
impression that the author is affected, and wishes to say fine things,
is at its best fresh and lucid. The reader will observe that whatever be
the topic Shaftesbury professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his
principles as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher. His
inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation of the
'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded blows at the faith which he
never openly opposes.

Thus his essay on the _Freedom of Wit and Humour_ is chiefly written in
defence of raillery in the discussion of serious subjects, when managed
'with good breeding,' and for 'a liberty in decent language to question
everything' amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as the
antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and perfection of
nature, and considers that evil only exists in our ignorance. Mr. Leslie
Stephen, whose impartiality in estimating an author like Shaftesbury
will not be questioned, calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer,
whose rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality
which redeems him from contempt.'

Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place in the history of
literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up
quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief
in the perfectibility of human nature through the aid of culture,
appealed, as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to
the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a
natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables
the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a
man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be
dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of
reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had
no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.

Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the _Essay on Man_ and of the
_Characteristics_. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who made the fable
fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolin