William Paley's Theological Utilitarianism in America

T THE books on moral philosophy and natural theology by William Paley were once as well known in American colleges as were the readers and spellers of William McGuffey and Noah Webster in the elementary schools.1 An investigation of the popularity of Paley's works in the first half of the nineteenth century might furnish some key to the morality which has been lamented recently and perennially as having passed from American public life. Or a renewed consciousness of an Atlantic commonwealth of ideas could be an incentive to study this English moral philosopher's contribution to our ethical concepts. And, without pursuing the philosophical lineage too far, we might even find some of the antecedents of the early pragmatic concept of truth in Paley's sincere regard for the consequences, not the motivations, of human ideas and actions. In any case, if Paley's ideas were so much a part of an accepted cultural pattern as to be considered commonplace, this in itself is reason enough for taking the measure of the Paleyan system of ethics or of the role which Paley played as an instructor in the rudimentary social sciences. The chief disseminators of Paleyan ethics were the moral philosophers of the academic community, and in their association with Paley's books lies the story of how a temperate brand of utilitarianism was once the implement * Mr. Smith is Instructor in History at Princeton University. 1While acknowledging their widespread use in post-Revolutionary America, recent historical scholarship has not dealt at length with the significance of Paley's textbooks in our intellectual development. Brief descriptions of Paley's importance for the old-time moral philosophers can be found in the following: Walter P. Rogers, Andrew D. White and the Modern University (Ithaca, I942), 34-35; Anna Haddow, Political Science in American Colleges and Universities, i636-I900 (New York, I939), 67n., 117, 152-I55; M. J. L. O'Connor, Origins of Academic Economics in the United States (New York, I944), 8I, 99, i6o; George P. Schmidt, The Old Time College President (New York, 1930), II4-II5, i2in.; Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (New York, 1946), 1, 242-243; Dirk J. Struik, Yankee Science in the Mating (Boston, 1948), 299-300, 38in; L. L. and J. S. Bernard, A Century of Progress in the Social Sciences, Social Forces, XI (1932-I933), 488-510

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