His optimistic-ethical philosophy of nature is offered by Shaftesbury only as a sketch. He throws out his ideas without proving that they are well founded, and without feeling any necessity for thinking them out to a conclusion. He steps with an easy stride across all problems. What a difference between his philosophy of nature and Spinoza’s! Yet his meets the needs of his time. He offers what is new to it, and what inspires it: ethics bound up with a living world-view. The belief in progress now clothes itself in a living world-view which really suits it. This is the process which, thanks to Shaftesbury, began in the first decades of the eighteenth century and went on developing till the end of it. Hence the appearance of his writings, which were immediately spread abroad through the whole of Europe, [pg 089] is the great event for the spiritual life of the eighteenth century. Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Condorcet, Moses Mendelssohn, Wieland, Herder, and Goethe too, are under his influence, and he dominates popular thought completely. Hardly ever has any man had so direct and so powerful an influence on the formation of the world-view of his time as the invalid whose life ended at Naples when he was only forty-two. Direct continuators of Shaftesbury’s ethic are found in Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747)_(_28_)_ and Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752),_(_29_)_ but they take from it just that soft indefiniteness which gives it its charm and its strength. Hutcheson, who strongly emphasizes theology’s independence of ethics, the relationship of the latter to the æsthetic, and their utilitarian content, stands nearer to his teacher than does Butler, who does not go as far in his welcome of utilitarianism, and also opposes, from the Christian standpoint, the optimism of Shaftesbury’s world-view. But Shaftesbury’s true successor is J. G. Herder (1744-1803). In his _Ideas on the Philosophy of Human History_ (4 vols., 1784-1791), he carries the optimistic-ethical nature-philosophy on into a corresponding philosophy of history. [pg 090] CHAPTER VIII LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF CIVILIZATION IN THE AGE OF RATIONALISM The Mentality and the Achievements of the Ethical Belief in Progress