The Scottish Jurists (review)

492 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:3JULY i988 undermining his own doctrine of the autonomy of benevolence. But Butler is clear on the distinction between benevolence and virtue. Though God may be a utilitarian, conscience must be the supreme guide for men. The second part of the book (nearly two-thirds of it) is devoted to Butler's philosophy of religion, which Penelhum ranks second only to Hume. Butler's thought on religion is put in the form of an apology directed to a sophisticated Deistic audience which, although assuming a teleological universe, cannot accept Christianity because of its apparently superstitious and arbitrary doctrines of historical revelation, miracles, and a final judgment. Butler's task is to show, assuming a designing intelligence, that the evils and other features of the world make more sense if we suppose something like the Christian revelation to be true. With Humean hindsight, Penelhum admits that such an apology is of little interest today, for there is a simpler explanation of the evils of the world not available to Buder's contemporaries: atheism. The contemporary importance of Butler's apology lies elsewhere, namely as an exploration of the logic of Christian belief. Butler's analogical arguments show that, assuming the Christian revelation, we should expect the world to be pretty much as we find it. Butler succeeds in isolating Christianity as a total interpretation of experience. The standards of likelihood for weighing alternative total interpretations cannot be those of the empirical sciences. Penelhum argues that Buder succeeds in showing the Christian scheme to be more likely than its Deistic competitors, and that if we compare it to contemporary agnosticism or atheism, the problem is to match the greater depth and sensitivity of Christianity against the greater economy and scientific detachment of these positions. The result is often a deadlock with each side accusing the other of begging the question. Given such a deadlock, Buder's final move is to appeal to a prudential argument similar to Pascal's: that the serious claims of Christianity are themselves reasons to give it serious consideration over and above its theoretical likelihood . Penelhum defends a version of this argument and tries to determine how far the practical imperative of Christianity can constrain theory without loss of intellectual integrity. Penelhum observes that Butler's AnalogyofRelig'ionis the "greatest unread classic in philosophical theology." At present there is no edition of it in print. Penelhum's original and profound study of Butler's philosophy of religion, written in a style like unto Buder's own, which is open, persistently clear, and utterly realistic, will do much to revive interest in this important part of Butler's thought. DONALD LIVINGSTON EmoryUniversity David M. Walker. TheScottishJurists. Edinburgh: W. Green & Son, 1985. Pp. xvi + 49~s According to Hume it was supposed that his studious disposition suited him for the study of law, the profession of both his father and grandfather. But, he says in "My Own Life," while his family "fancyed I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and BOOK REVIEWS 493 Virgil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring." Notwithstanding this preference , Hume was later to suggest that the revival of learning in Europe could be traced to the rediscovery, in the twelfth century, ofJustinian's Pandects. Professor Walker's book makes only brief mention of the Voets (John and Paul) and Arnold Vinnen or Vinnius, and it is concerned with Roman law only insofar as this remained an influence on Scottish theory and practice, but it does provide us with information about the important Scottishjurisprudential tradition that may have influenced Hume and other Scottish philosophers, while two of these philosophers, Henry Home, Lord Kames and John Millar, are included for discussion. The book is divided into twenty-nine chapters. Except for the first ("The Concept of a Scottish Jurist") and the last ("The Contribution of the Scottish Jurists to the Science of Law in Scotland"), the organization is essentially chronological. The minorjurists of the five centuries (sixteenth to twentieth) covered are dealt with in five summary chapters, while chapters of greatly different lengths are devoted to the more important figures of the same five-century span. As one...