SOURCE: Hayman, John G. “Shaftesbury and the Search for a Persona.” SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 10, no. 2 (spring 1970): 491-504.

[In the following essay, Hayman examines Shaftesbury's use of a literary persona that embodies flexibility, composure, grace, and penetration, which the critic says marks the author as a deliberate artist.]

The preoccupation of Swift and Pope with the creation of personae has naturally received a good deal of attention, but the extent to which this preoccupation was also shared by other writers of the period has perhaps been insufficiently recognized. In discussions of Shaftesbury, for example, commentators have usually paid merely token respects to the gentlemanly air of his discourses and have then concentrated on the ideas that they advance.¹ Yet Shaftesbury was a highly conscious, if not altogether successful, literary artist, as much concerned with embodying and describing intellectual dispositions as with advancing a systematic body of thought. Indeed, there is a special sense in which—to use a current phrase—his medium is his message. An adequate understanding of his achievement has, as a result, to take account of his concern with literary expression. And since a major part of this concern relates to the problem of a literary persona, a consideration of this particular concern is, I believe, valuable for an appreciation of Shaftesbury's own works and the general preoccupation with personae at this time.

In part, it is the background to Shaftesbury's concern that makes this consideration valuable, for Shaftesbury was also concerned with the formulation of a “character” in everyday life. “All turns upon the nature of a Character,” he commented in a notebook, “and according to what the fancy make of this, so in general the conduct will prove.”² This problem of a social character was especially acute for Shaftesbury, moreover, since he maintained that “the end or design of nature in man is society” (PR, [The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury] p. 4), and yet he was at the same time highly critical of the actual society of his day. Furthermore, he consistently stressed the importance of an individual's “inward economy” (that is, the correct ordering of his different faculties), and this stress seems on occasion to have been independent of his concern with man's end as a social being. His solution of the problem of a “character” had, therefore, to take account of both the constant effort to maintain a deeply personal coherence and the need to appear sociable. A mode of “dissimulation” thus became almost inevitable:

Remember that sort of dissimulation which is consistent with true simplicity: and besides the innocent and excellent dissimulation which Socrates used, remember that other sort (not less his) which hides what passes within, and accommodates our manners to those of our friends and of people around us, as far as this with safety can be allowed.

(PR, p. 182)³

The mention of Socrates is significant here, for the “socratic character” is the essence of Shaftesbury's subsequently more detailed description of a correct persona, and it is also, as we shall notice, an important influence on his writings:

Remember, therefore, in manner and degree, the same involution, shadow, curtain, the same soft irony; and strive to find a character in this kind according to proportion both in respect of self and times. Seek to find such a tenour as this, such a key, tone voice, consistent with true gravity and simplicity, though accompanied with humour and a kind raillery, agreeable with a divine pleasantry.

(PR, p. 193)

It was obviously a tall order, and the complexity of its paradoxes is even more apparent as Shaftesbury continues: “neither solemnity nor drollery, neither seriousness nor jest. … Earnestness but not in earnest. Jest, but not really jest. … A mirth not out of the reach of what is gravest, a gravity not abhorrent to the use of … [socratic] mirth. In this balance seek a character, a personage, manner, genius, style, voice, action” (PR, pp. 194-195). But one is not, as one might suppose, listening simply to one private, isolated voice here. A somewhat diluted form of this model could, I believe, be pieced together from the comments of Addison and Steele. Much later in the century, in fact, we find the young Boswell attempting to formulate a “character” akin to that recommended by Shaftesbury and in the process associating it with the actual characters of Addison and Steele. Conscious that he had in the past been too much a “comical being,” delighting in the buffoonery and type of ridicule that Shaftesbury also despised, Boswell records:

I was now upon a plan of studying polite reserved behaviour, which is the only way to keep up dignity of character. … Indeed, I had accustomed myself so much to laugh at everything that it required time to render my imagination solid and give me just notions of real life and religion. But I hoped by degrees to attain to some degree of propriety. Mr. Addison's character in sentiment, mixed with a little of the gaiety of Richard Steele … were the ideas I aimed to realise.⁴

But Boswell's notebooks and journals disclose a succession of such “models”—Addison and Steele, Lord Chesterfield (“Study to be like Lord Chesterfield, manly”), Gray, and many others. Shaftesbury held to the socratic character. Consistent with this, Shaftesbury maintained, too, the value of irony—an evaluation that led naturally enough to the cultivation of personae in his writings.

In the opening treatises of the Characteristics (1711), the Letter concerning Enthusiasm (1708) and Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor (1709), Shaftesbury partially evaded the difficulty of an address to the general public, together with the problem of a persona, by using the form of a letter addressed to a particular person. That this was merely a literary device is of course obvious; Shaftesbury was immensely interested in the public reaction to the works. But he also maintained—and with good reason—that a reader should recognize the letter form. Thus, in a response to some critics of the Letter concerning Enthusiasm, he declared that they had failed to recognize that “there was a real Great Man characterized [Lord Somers] and suitable Measures of Address and Style preserved.”⁵ Similarly, in Sensus Communis, even though the character of the “friend” to whom the work is ostensibly addressed is not indicated very clearly, Shaftesbury commented at one stage in a footnote: “Our Author, it seems, writes at present, as to a young Gentleman chiefly of a Court-Breeding” (III, iv). More generally, the use of a letter-form permitted in both instances an apparent informality of organization, a free range among topics, and a use of raillery.

But while these features are particularly relevant to a letter addressed to Lord Somers and to the “Liberty of the Club” that is appealed to in Sensus Communis, Shaftesbury's manner in these works also has a kinship with that outlined in his private notebooks. In particular, it embodies both the urbanity of tone and the underlying seriousness of concern that are recommended there.

The use of private address for public ends is apparent, for example, from the opening section of the Letter concerning Enthusiasm. The section, as a whole, establishes the letter-form in that it renders a graceful compliment to Lord Somers on account of his inspiring the writer in the way that earlier writers had been inspired by their notion of a muse. But it does not merely demonstrate an urbanely indirect approach to a compliment. The initial remarks, which appear at first to be rather inconsequential, actually have a thematic relevance to the work's central concern. Thus, Shaftesbury's comment on the awkwardness with which a modern writer invokes a muse in whose existence he cannot really believe leads to the pertinent conclusion: “Truth is the most powerful thing in the World, since even Fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance.” Similarly, the suggestion that ancient writers may actually have had faith in their invocations introduces the notion of self-deception that is subsequently shown to accompany certain forms of “enthusiasm.” Indeed, their situation is explicitly compared to that of a “good Christian … [who] thinks he can never believe enough … [and who] may, by a small Inclination well improved, extend his Faith so largely, as to comprehend in it not only all Scriptural and Traditional Miracles, but a solid System of Old-Wives Stories.” In this way, then, the section illustrates both the focus of an address to a particular person and also the blend of urbanity and seriousness that is of general validity in the cultivation of a “correct” character.

The relevance of Shaftesbury's concern with a social character to these works is illustrated further by his use of raillery.⁶ This may be appreciated by noticing just a few instances of the form of raillery that emerges, I believe, as Shaftesbury's most important strategy: namely, his quiet ridicule of some attitude or belief by turning back upon it its unfortunate or self-contradictory implications. Thus, when contrasting the tolerance of free inquiry in ancient days with the intolerance of his contemporaries, Shaftesbury remarks in the Letter concerning Enthusiasm:

Reason had fair Play; Learning and Science flourished. Wonderful was the Harmony and Temper which arose from all these Contrarities. … But a new sort of Policy, which extends it self to another World, and considers the future Lives and Happiness of Men rather than the present, has made us leap the Bounds of natural Humanity; and out of a supernatural Charity, has taught us the way of plaguing one another the most devoutly.

(II)

The raillery that is directed here against religious zealots is similarly apparent when Shaftesbury touches on their attitude towards virtue: “They have made Virtue so mercenary a thing, and have talked so much of its Rewards, that one can hardly tell what there is in it, after all, which can be worth rewarding” (Sensus Communis: II, iii). Other attitudes are also subjected to such raillery. Shaftesbury notices, for example, that Hobbes was “a good sociable Man, as savage and unsociable as he would make himself appear by his Philosophy” (Sensus Communis, II, i). He suggests, too, that those who maintain that man consistently acts from motives of “self-interest” have misconstrued man's “true Interest” (Sensus Communis, III, iii). Such turns of raillery fit Shaftesbury's notion of a correct character for a number of reasons. They reflect, in a general way, the “sober kind of Cheerfulness … and easy pleasant way of Thought” that he wished both to recommend and embody. They direct a gentle ridicule at those religious zealots and Hobbesists who deny the value or existence of a primary value Shaftesbury wished to advance: “good nature.” And, perhaps most important of all, they register a particular aspect of that controlled state of mind which reveals itself in the movement between scepticism and affirmation. Thus, there is in the instances noticed the sceptical withholding of assent from some attitude or opinion—and the throwing of new light upon it by a use of ridicule. But in the complete procedure there is the final affirmation of an alternative attitude that is implicit in the raillery. The raillery is in this way part of a larger rhetorical device by which Shaftesbury sought to render the composure of a philosophical gentleman.⁷

But it seems that Shaftesbury also wanted to indicate explicitly what lay behind this gentlemanly air. There is a hint of this in the Letter concerning Enthusiasm, when he speaks of the importance of inward scrutiny. “We can never be fit to contemplate anything above us,” he declares, “when we are in no condition to look into ourselves, and calmly examine the Temper of our own Mind and Passions” (IV, iv). Shaftesbury does not, however, engage in self-examination in this work; the Letter is intended to appear the civilized result of such scrutiny. It is in Soliloquy: or Advice to an Author (1710) that he stressed the importance of “inward colloquy” and indicated a way of conducting this both in an individual's private life and in a literary form.

From the present point of view, the especial interest of this work is that it comments explicitly on the difficulty of writing in propria persona and reflects an attempt to resolve the difficulty by the use of an artificial persona. The difficulty itself seemed perhaps especially acute to Shaftesbury because of the acknowledged oddity of the intellectual discipline that he wished to recommend (I, i). But he also recognized more generally the difficulty confronting authors who wished to write sociably about deeply personal matters. “If their Meditation and Revery be obstructed by fear of a nonconforming Mein in Conversation,” he remarked, “they may happen to be so much the worse Authors for being finer Gentlemen” (I, i). For this reason, then, Shaftesbury adopted—with a deliberately self-conscious air—a persona. It was his intention, he declared, “not so much to give Advice, as to consider the Way and Manner of advising” (I, i). “My Science, if it be any, is no better than that of a Language-Master, or a Logician.” And yet by this guise he also hoped to express more than his notions concerning literary expression, as his comment in Miscellaneous Reflections reveals: “His pretence has been to advise Authors, and polish styles, but his Aim has been to correct Manners and regulate Lives” (III, ii). The guise is, in fact, a form of socratic depreciation, and it aims at the advantages that Shaftesbury associated in this particular work with the hero of the ancient dialogue:

The Philosophical Hero … was in himself a perfect Character; yet, in some respects, so veiled, and in a Cloud, that to the unattentive Surveyer he seemed often to be very different from what he really was: and this chiefly by reason of a certain exquisite and refined Raillery which belonged to his Manner, and by virtue of which he could treat the highest Subjects, and those of the commonest Capacity both together, and render 'em explanatory of each other.

(i, iii)

Shaftesbury's own success in achieving these ends is quite considerable. There is a range of considerations in the work—from the dramatic convention of the soliloquy to the developed procedure of self-analysis. Moreover, an actual demonstration of self-analysis both indicates its general value and serves as a means by which Shaftesbury advances some of his most crucial notions. But one may also feel that the guise is somewhat self-regarding in its mock modesty. Contrasting the coquetry of a modern writer who “purchases his Reader's Favor by all imaginable Compliances and Condescensions” (I, iii) with the ancient writer's cultivation of objectivity by means of a dialogue, Shaftesbury remarks of the latter procedure: “Here the Author is annihilated; and the Reader being by no way applied to, stands for No-body” (I, iii). Shaftesbury himself makes a show of “annihilating” the common reader; his publisher, he declares, is his amanuensis, and he writes only for fellow-writers. But one can scarcely feel that he has abstracted himself from the work.⁸

It was in his Miscellaneous Reflections, a work first published in the final volume of Characteristics (1711), that Shaftesbury came closer to achieving this end by adopting the persona of a “miscellany writer.” This strategy and its implications constitute, in fact, Shaftesbury's most fascinating solution to the problem of addressing a reader, even while the pose is not fully sustained and there remains some vacillation between direct statement, a rather transparent irony, and a fully characterized persona.

The essence of these varying effects is apparent from the first chapter alone. It opens with an obviously ironic celebration of “the ingenious way of Miscellaneous Writing,” but the adoption of a persona very soon becomes apparent as the writer outlines his intention “to descant cursorily upon some late Pieces of a British author.” The satirical gibe at miscellany writing that is by this stage already implicit in this guise is advanced, too, by the arrogance that the writer displays: “According to this Method, whilst I serve as Critic or Interpreter to this new Writer, I may the better correct his Flegm, and give him more of the fashionable Air and Manner of the World.” By the end of the chapter the characterization of a vain and obtrusive author is, indeed, fairly complete:

Nor ought the Title of a Miscellaneous Writer to be denied me on the account that I have grounded my Miscellanies upon a certain Set of Treatises already published. Grounds and Foundations are of no moment in a kind of work which, according to modern establishment, has properly neither Top nor Bottom, Beginning nor End. Besides that, I shall no way confine myself to the precise contents of these treatises, but, like my Fellow-Miscellanarians shall take occasion to vary often from my proposed subject, and make what Deviations or Excursions I shall think fit, as I proceed in my random Essays.

After such an overture, it would not even be surprising to encounter “A Digression in Praise of Digressions!” By the use of a persona at such points, Shaftesbury has, then, reversed his earlier procedures. No longer simply intent on embodying a “correct” intellectual disposition and a “correct” mode of writing, he is instead embodying the “faulty”—and in the process he exposes it to satirical effect. But, as in the Soliloquy, the persona serves more than one end. For Shaftesbury not only exposes something of the “Froth and Scum” of the miscellanarian; he also makes use of such a writer's digressive bent to effect the movement between different tones and different topics that he had himself attempted in his other works. After a serious consideration of the Letter concerning Enthusiasm, for example, the miscellany writer re-emerges and “lightens” the tone by an extended comparison of his procedure with the “variableness of the English climate” (I, iii). The passage is itself perhaps a little heavy-handed, but it is justifiable in dramatic terms—and it also effects a transition. Indeed, the guise may again be associated with that “involution, shadow, curtain … [and] soft irony” that we earlier noticed Shaftesbury associating with Socrates.

It is, however, the relationship of the work to Swift—and most especially to A Tale of a Tub—that is especially worth developing. It is even possible that Miscellaneous Reflections was influenced by the “Apology” that Swift added to the fifth edition of his work in 1710. There is certainly a similarity in the way the writers remark on themselves in the third person and defend their works. And they also display the kinship of attitude that had earlier resulted in Swift's being credited with the Letter concerning Enthusiasm, for they both maintain the permissibility of a ridicule directed against corruptions in religious belief. More specifically, too, they direct such ridicule against faulty forms of religious enthusiasm—and they even concur in viewing such enthusiasm as a form of “sexual sublimation.”

But one must also recall that Shaftesbury was highly critical of A Tale of a Tub (PR, p. 504), for the points of similarity between the works are offset by obvious differences. And this is revealed perhaps most vividly by their substantially different use of a persona. A convenient illustration of this is supplied by two passages which compare a writer's progress in his work with a journey. In A Tale of a Tub, we are clearly aware of Swift's digressive dupe at this point, as the “author” turns back to the “Tale” after two “Sections” of “Digressions”:

After so wide a Compass as I have wandred, I do now gladly overtake, and close it with my Subject, and shall henceforth hold on with it an even Pace to the End of my Journey, except some beautiful Prospect appear within the sight of my Way; whereof, tho' at present I have neither Warning nor Expectation, yet upon such an Accident, come when it will, I shall beg my Readers Favour and Company, allowing me to conduct him thro' it along with my self. For in Writing, it is as in Travelling: If a Man is in haste to be at home, (which I acknowledge to be none of my Case, having never so little Business, as when I am there) if his Horse be tired with long Riding, and ill Ways, or be naturally a Jade, I advise him clearly to make the straitest and the commonest Road, be it ever so dirty; But, then surely, we must own such a Man to be a scurvy Companion at best; he spatters himself and his Fellow-Travellers at every Step: All their Thoughts, and Wishes, and Conversation turn entirely upon the Subject of their Journey's End; and at every Splash, and Plunge, and Stumble, they heartily wish one another at the Devil.⁹

The image is pursued in a subsequent paragraph as the “author” demonstrates further the way he does indeed tend to digress when tempted by such delights as an extendable analogy. In contrast, Shaftesbury does not give his persona his head in this fly-away fashion, even though one may feel that something of a miscellanarian's luxuriant fancy is present in his use of the analogy—and that it is this backing that “justifies” the style of the passage:

The just Composure of a legitimate Piece is like an abler Traveller, who exactly measures his Journey, considers his Ground, premeditates his Stages and intervals of Relaxation and Intention to the very Conclusion of his Undertaking, that he happily arrives where he first proposed when he set out. He is not presently upon the Spur, or in his full Career, but walks his Steed leisurely out of his stable and settles himself in his Stirrups, and when fair road and season offer, puts on perhaps to a round Trot, thence into a Gallop, and after a while takes up. As Down or Meadow or shady Lane present themselves, he accordingly suits his Pace, favours his Palfrey; and is sure not to bring him puffing, and in a heat, into his last Inn.

(I, iii)

Here, as elsewhere, Shaftesbury's use of some touches of a miscellanarian's manner is not allowed to cloud his basic concern with coherence. Moreover, his specific concern throughout his works is with the coherence of character that an individual must cultivate, and this basic concern may well have checked the free development of a confused persona. It is fitting, then, that the aristocratic image of horsemanship should finally represent an ease of control and an artistry. The passage from A Tale of a Tub, on the other hand, illustrates the way Swift's predominantly satirical intention permits the more sustained use of a persona who embodies mental incoherence. Swift's ironical recommendation of chaotic movement stands in pointed contrast to Shaftesbury's positive image of an orderly journey.

Consistent with this difference, there is also Shaftesbury's pervasive uncertainty about the value of a mode of writing that consisted of “raillery and irony.” This uncertainty is apparent, for example, in Miscellaneous Reflections when the “author” turns from his sober consideration of An Inquiry concerning Virtue to The Moralists, and in doing so returns to his “original miscellaneous manner and capacity”:

'Tis here … that Raillery and Humour are permitted; and Flights, Sallies, and Excursions of every kind are found agreeable and requisite. Without this, there might be less Safety found, perhaps, in thinking. Every light Reflection might run us up to the dangerous state of Meditation. And in reality profound Thinking is many times the cause of shallow Thought. To prevent this contemplative Habit and Character, of which we see so little good effect in the World, we have reason perhaps to be fond of the Diverting Manner in Writing and Discourse, especially if the Subject be of a solemn kind. There is more need, in this case, to interrupt the long-spun thread of Reasoning, and bring into the Mind, by many different Glances and Broken Views, what cannot so easily be introduced by one steady bent or continued Stretch of Sight.

(IV, ii)

The argument is persuasive, and it is also consistent with the attitude which Shaftesbury had earlier outlined. But the “perhaps” that is included several times in the passage is by no means an empty gesture. Shaftesbury's doubts are more clearly expressed in his remarks on Leibnitz's criticism of his apparent recommendation of raillery. Writing of himself in the third person, Shaftesbury comments to Pierre Coste:

does he not seem to despise himself in his third and last volume of Miscellanies at the very entrance when, after having passed his principal and main philosophical work in the middle volume, he returns again to his mixed satirical ways of raillery and irony, so fashionable in our nation, which can be hardly brought to attend to any writing, or consider anything as witty, able, or ingenious which has not strongly this turn?

(PR, p. 504)

Even this comment, however, does not reflect a finally considered position, for Shaftesbury subsequently contemplated taking up the manner of Miscellaneous Reflections in his projected Second Characters.¹⁰ Essentially, one is left aware of the conflict between Shaftesbury's different attitudes towards the “satirical ways of raillery and irony” and more direct statement.

Against this uncertainty, however, there remains the clearly defined “character” that Shaftesbury described in his notebooks, and it is possible to relate his experiments with personae to this larger concern with the formulation of a sociable character that is consistent with an inward economy. No doubt the impetus behind this concern is closely connected with the social situation of the time—or, at least, to Shaftesbury's understanding of it. In particular, it appears to reflect Shaftesbury's contempt for the “men of pleasure” who are more usually associated with the Restoration era. But one may also see it, I believe, as a response to the philosophical questioning of personal identity that was very much in the air at this time. Certainly, this was a topic that Shaftesbury touched upon throughout his works, and he invariably appealed to the individual's consciousness of his own being and the possibility of developing a coherent character from this consciousness.¹¹ Moreover, this concern was by no means peculiar to Shaftesbury and the “speculators” of his time. It is reflected in Pope's Epistles I and II, where the search for a principle of order within man's being culminates in the discovery of a “new hypothesis”—the ancient and highly dubious theory of a “ruling passion.” And it might even be related to Swift's display in A Tale of a Tub of that uncontrolled sensation and thought which can find coherence only in megalomania—and perhaps also to the disintegration of character that gives to Part IV of Gulliver's Travels some of its compelling power. It is also against this background that some aspects of the narrower concern with literary personae are finally of most interest. For while a persona most commonly served as a satirical strategy and while the final volume of Characteristics displays the movement towards this use, Shaftesbury was again not alone in his quest for a positive stance that embodied flexibility and composure and reflected a poise with a distinctly social value. There is, for example, that section of Pope's literary career when the poet attempted both to carry good-breeding one step higher into gentlemanly philosophizing and to keep open at the same time the possibility of engaging in ridicule. A considerable part of Shaftesbury's value for us lies in his providing an explicit background to such endeavors. But as this consideration of his use of personae has intended to suggest, Shaftesbury's own artistry is also worthy of attention.

Notes

1. A notable exception to this is Martin Price's section, “The Method of Dialogue,” in To the Palace of Wisdom (Anchor Books, 1965), pp. 85-93. The importance of recognizing Shaftesbury's artistry has also been noticed by Ernest Tuveson (“The Importance of Shaftesbury,” ELH, XX (1953), 267-299: especially Footnotes 29 and 39), but the topic was not developed in this account.

2. The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, ed. Benjamin Rand (1900), p. 189. Hereafter cited in the text as “PR.”

3. The first type of dissimulation noticed here presumably refers to Socrates's pose of humility and ignorance.

4. London Journal, ed. F. Pottle (1950), pp. 61-62.

5. Miscellaneous Reflections, I, iii. Quotations throughout are taken from the 1714 edition of the Characteristics, but modern spellings have been introduced. Shaftesbury's own divisions are used in indicating the location of quotations.

6. Some agreement seems to have been reached among those concerned with explicating Shaftesbury's comments on “raillery” and “ridicule.” A. O. Aldridge has maintained that Shaftesbury “did not advance the theory of ridicule as a test of truth,” and he has further argued that “the chief value of ridicule to Shaftesbury was its use as a test of demeanour or attitude, as a weapon against imposture” (“Shaftesbury and the Test of Truth,” PMLA, LX [1945], 155). With this, Stuart Tave has concurred, though he has stressed, too, that a use of ridicule constituted a part of that free and good humored inquiry among equals that Shaftesbury was essentially intent on recommending (The Amiable Humorist [Chicago, 1960], pp. 36-39). In relating this use to the socratic procedure, his account agrees with that of Norman Knox, The Word IRONY and its Context (Durham, N. C., 1961), pp. 51-54. These analyses have removed a good deal of the confusion caused by Shaftesbury's free use of terminology. But it is of course only by examining Shaftesbury's actual use of raillery that the value of the practice can be recognized—and this examination has never, I believe, been undertaken by a modern commentator.

7. It can also be claimed that such raillery is not simply concerned with “demeanour or attitude”; ideas themselves are involved. Indeed, an argumentative procedure is involved in such raillery, and for this reason those critics who associated ridicule with “eloquence” and “Imagination, Passion, Prejudice, and preconceived Opinion” did not quite hit their target when attacking Shaftesbury on this issue (John Brown, Essays on the Characteristics [1750], pp. 43 and 54).

8. In adopting a dialogue-form, Shaftesbury ostensibly achieved this anonymity in The Moralists. In this work he also gave an objective form to an inward soliloquy; Philocles (a “sceptic”) and Theocles (a “sociable enthusiast”) represent two aspects of a mind engaged in such soliloquy. A kinship between Theocles and Shaftesbury is indicated by the relationship between several of Theocles's speeches and passages in the Philosophical Regimen.

9. A Tale of a Tub, ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nicoll Smith (Oxford, 1920), p. 188.

10. Ed. B. Rand (1914), pp. 6-8.

11. In the concluding section of An Inquiry concerning Virtue, Shaftesbury writes: “let us doubt, if we can, of everything about us; we cannot doubt of what passes within ourselves. Our Passions and Affections are known to us” (II, ii). Similarly, in The Moralists, a more distinctly metaphysical form of this notion is the climax to Theocles's “argument”: “In fine, continued Theocles (raising his Voice and Action), being thus, even by Scepticism itself, convinced the more still of my own being and this Self of mine ‘that 'tis a real Self drawn out and copied from another principal and original SELF (the Great One of the world),’ I endeavour to be really one with It and conformable to It, as far as I am able” (III, i).