The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy by George Turnbull (review)

79 GEORGE TURNBULL. The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy, ed. Alexander Broadie. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005. Pp. xxi, xvi ⫹ 935. $40; $24 (paper). Two hundred and sixty-five years after its first and only publication, Turnbull’s Principles returns in a handsomely produced two-volume set as part of a series ‘‘Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics .’’ Born in 1698, Turnbull was four years junior to Francis Hutcheson, whom he largely resembles, partly through a mutual dependence on Shaftesbury— Turnbull was by 1716 or 1717 a member of Edinburgh’s Rankenian Club, devoted to the discussion of Shaftesbury’s ideas —and partly through direct influence: Turnbull acknowledges a debt to Hutcheson (whose first work appeared in 1725), ‘‘the writer from whom I have borrowed most.’’ Turnbull developed his philosophy in 1721–1727 as a regent at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he was, Mr. Broadie notes in his Introduction , ‘‘the first of a long line of Scottish moralists to speak explicitly about the introduction of the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects.’’ Leaving Scotland in 1727 and ordained in the Church of England in 1739, Turnbull spent much of his remaining twenty-one years as a private tutor to young gentlemen on the grand tour. Turnbull’s Principles seeks to ground moral philosophy on principles of natural religion. Invoking the authority of Shaftesbury and the ancient Stoics (Plutarch , Seneca, and above all Cicero), he argues with a confidence none of them shared that the immortality of the virtuous soul is ‘‘highly probable, nay, absolutely certain.’’ The ‘‘better ancients . . . had a very firm persuasion of an infinitely wise and good administration, actually prevailing at present throughout the whole of nature. . . . They were able to discern . . . that man is very well fitted and qualified for attaining to a very high degree of moral perfection even here.’’ Turnbull works within the classical virtue-ethics revived by Shaftesbury, a type of ethical theory that asks, what behavior would perfect the sort of being I am? Turnbull argues—never very clearly or persuasively—that such an ethics implies that our ‘‘moral perfection must be arrived to full maturity’’ in a future state. Differently stated, the moral fact that virtue is its own reward on earth shows ‘‘providence to be already most seriously concerned about her, and thoroughly interested on her side in her first probationary state,’’ a state which then becomes prognostic for ‘‘a succeeding life.’’ Turnbull’s Principles consists of two separate volumes, the first and most interesting being Principles of Moral Philosophy, the themes of which are amplified in volume two, Christian Philosophy . This later volume has little to do with Christian doctrine, which is adduced only insofar as it conforms to the ‘‘doctrine of reason.’’ Principles of Moral Philosophy is largely and by design a prose explication and elaboration of Pope’s Essay on Man. One of the volume ’s two epigraphs (the other is from Newton) is from I.162: ‘‘Account for Moral, as for Nat’ral Things.’’ His Preface praises Pope’s Essay—recently defended by Warburton—over two pages, concluding, ‘‘such a poet, indeed, deserves the ancient venerable name so justly appropriated to poets,’’ ‘‘divinus.’’ In all, by my count, Turnbull quotes 463 lines from Pope’s Essay, or 35% of the poem. Turnbull’s professed aim is ‘‘to vindicate human nature, and the ways of GOD to man.’’ He follows Pope in accounting for a cosmos in which certain 80 relative evils are necessary to the greater absolute good; in which the passions are a valuable part of our moral constitution; in which self-love and social are the same; and, finally, in which virtue alone is happiness below and—Turnbull emphasizes as Pope does not—above as well. Adam Potkay The College of William & Mary DAVID ORMROD. The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and The Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650– 1770. New York: Cambridge, 2003. Pp. xvii ⫹ 400. $75. The Dutch and the English had much in common during the early modern period . So much was this the case that some historians have argued that the Glorious Revolution of 1689 was a conquest of England by the Dutch, who installed their own man as...