The gauntlet thus thrown down by Hobbes was taken up by *Cudworth* (A. D. 1617-1688), the most learned man of his time, whose “Intellectual System of the Universe” is a prodigy of erudition,—a work in which his own thought is so blocked up with quotations, authorities, and masses of recondite lore, that it is hardly possible to trace the windings of the river for the débris of auriferous rocks that obstruct its flow. The treatise with which we are concerned is that on “Eternal and Immutable Morality.” In this he maintains that the right exists, independently of all authority, by the very nature of things, in co-eternity with the Supreme Being. So far is he from admitting the possibility of any dissiliency between the Divine will and absolute right, that he turns the tables on his opponents, and classes among Atheists those of his contemporaries who maintain that God can command what is contrary to the intrinsic right; that He has no inclination to the good of his creatures; that He can justly doom an innocent being to eternal torments; or that whatever God wills is just because He wills it. *Samuel Clarke* (A. D. 1675-1729) followed Cudworth in the same line of thought. He was, it is believed, the first writer who employed the term _fitness_ as defining the ground of the immutable and eternal right, though the idea of fitness necessarily underlies every system or theory that assigns to virtue intrinsic validity. *Shaftesbury* (A. D. 1671-1713) represents virtue as residing, not in the nature or relations of things, but in the bearing of actions on the welfare or happiness of beings other than the actor. Benevolence constitutes virtue; and the merit of the action and of the actor is determined by the degree in which particular affections are merged in general philanthropy, and reference is had, not to individual beneficiaries or benefits, but to the whole system of things of which the actor forms a part. The affections from which such acts spring commend themselves to the moral sense, and are of necessity objects of esteem and love. But the moral sense takes cognizance of the affections only, not of the acts themselves; and as the conventional standard of the desirable and the useful varies with race, time, and culture, the acts which the affections prompt, and which therefore are virtuous, may be in one age or country such as the people of another century or land may repudiate with loathing. Las Casas, in introducing negro slavery into America, with the fervently benevolent purpose of relieving the hardships of the feeble and overtasked aborigines, performed, according to this theory, a virtuous act; but had he once considered the question of intrinsic right or natural fitness, a name so worthily honored would never have been associated with the foulest crime of modern civilization.