2. Background

Very little is known of Newcome's life and, in spite of its warm reception by her contemporaries, her work has received almost no attention from historians of philosophy.Footnote ¹ She was born in Durnford, Wiltshire in 1685 but spent most of her adult life in Cambridge. She most likely moved there in the 1720s, after her marriage to John Newcome, and remained until her death in 1763. The two major works known to be by Newcome are Enquiry into the Evidence of the Christian Religion (1728, revised 1732) and The Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper Not Drawn from or Founded on Scripture (first part 1737, second part 1738).Footnote ² The latter work is a polemical contribution to a contemporary theological controversy. The former is of greater philosophical interest and will be the focus of this article.Footnote ³

The title of Newcome's Enquiry gives a fair summary of the work's purpose and content. She seeks to show that there is compelling evidence for belief in the revelations of Jesus and the truth of Christianity. One part of her strategy involves arguing that nothing in Christianity is contrary to reason. Put differently, she wants to argue that the revealed theology of Christianity is agreeable to the findings of natural theology. Her exposition of natural theology – which includes a proof of God's existence, an enumeration of his attributes, and an argument to the effect that we might expect God to provide us with some revelation – provides the setting for her consideration of moral themes. She argues that by considering the nature of humans and the nature of God we are able to delineate our fundamental moral obligations.

In an important sense, moral theory is not the primary focus of the Enquiry. Much that is of philosophical interest in the Enquiry (e.g., an innovative proof of God's existence and an analysis of suitable conditions for belief in miracles) has little to do with morality. Nevertheless, moral considerations are central to the larger project of the Enquiry and it is fair to say that the work contains the fundamentals of a complete moral theory. A review of the first edition of the Enquiry recognized this and offered the following summary of Newcome's moral views:

This quotation accurately captures the core tenets of Newcome's moral philosophy. The following sections will exposit her views in more detail and situate them in their historical context.

3. Hedonism

Accurately characterizing a philosophical theory as influential and variegated as utilitarianism can be difficult. That being said, classical utilitarianism is arguably defined by two core commitments. The first is a hedonist approach to the good: pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic bad. The second is a consequentialist approach to right action. This approach holds that the consequences of actions are the proper loci of moral evaluation and that agents ought to choose the action with the best possible consequences.Footnote ⁵ These two commitments are foundational for Newcome's understanding of morality. This section explores Newcome's hedonist approach to the good. The following section discusses her consequentialism.

Pleasure and pain are very much at the center of Newcome's larger project in the Enquiry. Indeed, she claims in the Preface to the first edition that all of her findings in the book are “built only on a Postulatum allowed by every body, which is, that Pleasure is preferable to Pain”.Footnote ⁶ Newcome takes pleasure and pain as primitives and asserts that defining them would be both impossible and unnecessary.Footnote ⁷ But while pleasure and pain are not themselves defined, they play a fundamental role in many of the definitions and propositions she offers at the beginning of her work.Footnote ⁸

Especially in these early definitions and propositions, Newcome emphasizes the importance of pleasure and pain by giving them a central role in human cognition and action. Put differently, Newcome develops a theory of what, using contemporary terminology, we might refer to as psychological or motivational hedonism. This is captured most clearly in Section III, Propositions I and II: “To all sensible Beings Pleasure is preferable to Pain” and “If to all sensible Beings Pleasure is preferable to Pain, then all such Beings must will and desire Pleasure, and will an Avoidance of Pain” (p. 4).Footnote ⁹ So the preferability of pleasure has direct implications for our motivational sets.

Another traditional component of the utilitarian theory of the good is the idea that happiness can be defined in terms of, or is reducible to, pleasure. One of Newcome's definitions makes it clear that this is her view: “Happiness, is a Term for collected, Pleasure, or a Sum Total of Pleasure” (p. 3). Subsequent definitions suggest that Newcome understands pleasure to be quantifiable or at least sees pleasures as the kinds of things that can aggregate and be balanced against pains. Definition V, for example, states that “Every Being is in some Degree Happy, the Sum Total of whose Pleasure exceeds his Pains” (p. 3).Footnote ¹⁰ In keeping with this logic, “perfect Happiness” is equated with the “highest Degree of Pleasure” (pp. 3, 23). This point will be important in the next section.

In addition to her psychological or motivational hedonism, Newcome was also a proponent of ethical or evaluative hedonism. Put differently, Newcome held that pleasure is good and that is it the only or primary good. She defined happiness in terms of pleasure, and argued that it is fit and rational to pursue and to possess pleasure. All of this strongly indicates that she takes it to be good, but we might still want an explicit statement to this effect. Fortunately, Newcome supplies one. It comes in the context of her enumeration and analysis of the divine attributes in Section VI. Having already argued that God must be maximally happy, she offers the following account of divine beneficence:

From this it follows that there is a very tight link between happiness, and therefore pleasure, and goodness. Admittedly, Newcome links goodness more closely to the production of happiness, than to happiness itself. But the connection nonetheless establishes her hedonist bona fides.

Is pleasure the only good for Newcome? Newcome never explicitly affirms this claim, but it clearly seems to be her view. Given the central role awarded to pleasure and the way in which it lies at the heart of so many other concepts, it is difficult to see what other candidates there might be for fundamental goods. Certainly none are mentioned. Some things traditionally classed as primary goods (e.g., happiness, virtue, and justice) are reduced to pleasure.Footnote ¹² And Newcome argues that other things often categorized as primary goods (e.g., rationality, knowledge, and wisdom) are mere instrumental goods; their value lies in the way they facilitate the pursuit of pleasure.Footnote ¹³ Only pleasure seems to remain as an intrinsic good.

Another argument that pleasure is the sole good for Newcome might run through her theology. As discussed above, Newcome analyzes divine beneficence in terms of God's disposition to promote happiness. One important component of this discussion centers on a claim about what God can will, compatible with his nature:

This passage suggests that it would be impossible for God to will something other than happiness, which is defined in terms of pleasure, to his creatures. One could conclude from this that pleasure is the sole consideration the most perfect being uses in considering what is good; it is the only thing relevant to the perfection of God's works. At a minimum, this passage shows that if there are any other goods they cannot be in competition with pleasure. Their realization must be compatible with the realization of pleasure. What seems most likely, however, is that Newcome simply believed that pleasure was the sole good.

The above paragraphs clearly show that Newcome endorsed hedonism. We might now ask about her reasons for endorsing it. On the one hand, one would be hard pressed to locate free-standing arguments in favor of either psychological or ethical hedonism in the Enquiry. On the other hand, Newcome's approach, which seems to assume that hedonism is obviously correct or at least not in need of defense, was commonplace among early utilitarians. To take just one famous example, Jeremy Bentham asked of the principle of utility “Is it susceptible of any proof?” and gave the following answer: “it should seem not: for that which is used to prove every thing else, cannot itself be proved: a chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere. To give such proof is as impossible as it is needless.”Footnote ¹⁵ Newcome takes a similar line. In a passage already cited she claims that her key postulate, that pleasure is preferable to pain, is allowed by everyone. If there is universal agreement on this point, and if hedonism follows from this claim, then Newcome may have seen no need to argue in favor of hedonism. A reviewer of the second edition of the Enquiry seems to have agreed, writing that her starting propositions are “undeniable”.Footnote ¹⁶

Alternatively, one might answer the question about whether Newcome argues in favor of hedonism by appealing to the logical structure of the Enquiry. Although the contents of the work are not presented strictly more geometrico, Newcome clearly intended for the work to have certain formal elements and for it to capture aspects of this approach. She begins the Preface to the first edition with the following:

From this we might infer that the truth of hedonism is meant to follow from the stipulative definitions that Newcome provides in the first two sections; her claim that pleasure is preferred to pain will be a postulatum in the proper sense of the word. If we see the Enquiry as having this type of structure then those readers satisfied with the conclusions that Newcome generates are free to accept the validity of her starting presuppositions. The proof of the pudding, on this interpretation, will be in the eating. Of course, those who reject Newcome's conclusions are free to either find fault with her reasoning or challenge her initial definitions and propositions. But it is worth noting that the passage quoted above can be read as containing an implicit challenge. To avoid rendering their disagreement “perplexed” and “unsatisfactory” it is incumbent on Newcome's detractors to offer alternative definitions and propositions.

Before moving on, it will be worthwhile to examine Newcome's account of fitnesses. This will serve to further emphasize the central role she saw pleasure as playing in God's construction of the universe as well as the critical role for pleasure in structuring the ends of human life. It will also facilitate a transition from Newcome's theory of value to her views on obligation and the duties of moral agents.

Fitnesses play an important role in the Enquiry. On Newcome's view, that which is most “fit” for sensible beings is that which they “prefer, will, and desire” (p. 4). Given the views discussed above, this is equivalent to the claim that what is most fit for sensible creatures is that which produces the most pleasure. The concept of fitness had played a role in moral philosophy prior to the Enquiry. It is worth briefly exploring its use by one prominent author, Samuel Clarke, in order to more fully understand the way in which Newcome appropriates the concept.Footnote ¹⁷

Clarke was animated by the idea that morality was necessary, immutable, and eternal. He was opposed to both conventionalist theories which made morality contingent on agreements between humans and voluntarist accounts which made it contingent on nothing other than the free choices of God. On his view, beings have natures or essences that are fixed and unalterable, even by God.Footnote ¹⁸ These natures give rise to various relations between things. A fitness is a relation between things that tends to their welfare and an unfitness one that tends to their detriment (Clarke, ii, 608). Clarke's claim that the “congruities” between objects can provide a basis for morality has some initial plausibility. And an account of morality derived from these fitnesses would have the sort of independence and objectivity that Clarke sought. Unfortunately, Clarke's examples of how various moral duties arise from these fitnesses is frustratingly vague and his moral theory came in for numerous attacks in the decades after its publication.Footnote ¹⁹

Newcome's alternative account of what a fitness is moves the concept in a distinctly utilitarian direction. Newcome retains the objectivity of Clarkean fitnesses. Her fitnesses arise “from the Natures of sensible Beings” and are therefore “antecedent to all Law and Appointment” (p. 4). So the fundamental building blocks of Newcome's moral theory have a sort of independence. But while Clarke and Newcome agree that fitnesses are grounded in the natures of beings, they disagree about what is fit and unfit. Clarke's account of fitnesses was tied to a somewhat nebulous conception of the good and was intended to give rise to a wide variety of heterogenous obligations. By contrast, Newcome's hedonism leads her to the view that something is fit if and only if it is conducive to pleasure and something is unfit if and only if it is conducive to pain. This understanding of fitnesses, combined with the claim that fit things ought to be pursued and unfit things ought to be avoided, constitutes a major step in the articulation of the logic of utilitarianism.

Setting aside its utilitarian orientation, there are two ways in which Newcome's theory of fitnesses might be seen as an improvement on Clarke's. The first has already been hinted at. Clarke's account of fitnesses ran into difficulties in large part because it attempted to do a great deal of work. It was difficult to see the precise connections Clarke hoped to establish between various goods and duties. Newcome's account is much more streamlined and thus allows for a higher degree of precision. The ways in which different things give rise to pain and pleasure in sentient creatures are highly tractable. As a result, Newcome has a clearer path from her conception of fitness to the articulation of concrete moral duties. Second, the link to pleasure and pain also gives Newcome's account of fitnesses resources for responding to critiques of Clarke's account developed by authors like Hume. Clarke's rationalist approach was often seen as being motivationally impotent. How could a perceived relation between things lead to action?Footnote ²⁰ Newcome's account, because of her psychological hedonism, provides a bridge between fitness and motivation.

4. Consequentialism

Consequentialism is the view that things, most notably actions, should be morally evaluated on the basis of their consequences and solely on that basis. Classical utilitarians combine consequentialism with hedonism to get the view that actions are good insofar as they produce or generate pleasure and are bad insofar as they produce or generate pain. Additionally, utilitarians have traditionally adopted a maximizing theory of obligation according to which we morally ought to produce the best consequences or produce the maximum amount of pleasure possible in a given situation.

The previous section has already provided a glimpse of Newcome's consequentialism in particular with respect to her account of fitnesses. Insofar as happiness is fit for sensible beings and misery is unfit for them, she argues, “whatever is a Means to the Happiness of Sensible Beings, is likewise fitting, or fit, and that whatever is a Means to the Misery of sensible Beings, is unfitting, or unfit” (p. 4). Actions, in particular, are fit insofar as they lead to happiness, but the same is also true of knowledge and its pursuit (p. 4). And we saw above that divine benevolence was analyzed in consequentialist terms. But Newcome's more general definition of what is required to be a good agent also displays her consequentialism: “A good Being is one who always wills the Happiness of Beings, and promotes it as far as he has Power” (p. 24). So moral goodness is clearly identified with not just the willing or intending of happiness but also with the promotion and generation of happiness. This, combined with her assertion that we have a duty to be good beings, should be sufficient to establish her consequentialism (p. 42).

Newcome's clearest statement of her consequentialism comes in the course of her discussion of perfection and what it is for various kinds of things to be counted as perfect. She writes as follows:

There are a few components of this passage worth emphasizing. First, it captures the idea that consequences are what have moral importance; things are valuable insofar as they are a means to the end of happiness. Second, the passage contains the maximizing logic central to classical utilitarian thought. The most perfect being is the one who successfully employs her powers to the end of generating the highest degree of happiness. Put differently, what it is to be a good or a perfect being for Newcome is to perform good actions. Elsewhere she makes the point by characterizing “a good Being” as “one who wills and promotes the Happiness of all Mankind, as much as is in his Power” (p. 35). Finally, the passage hints at a type of impartiality often endorsed by utilitarians. What matters is the promotion of happiness, rather than the promotion of any particular individual's happiness. Newcome gestures at this in writing about the happiness of the agent as well as other beings. This kind of impartiality is also on display in a different passage where Newcome writes that “All Beings must prefer Pleasure to Pain. They must prefer it as such, wherever it is, and in other Beings, as well as in themselves” (p. 24).

In Section VII, Newcome transitions from her discussion of the divine nature and the nature of perfection to a more direct examination of our moral duties. Like other moral philosophers in the period, she divides our duties into those owed to God, to ourselves, and to others. Newcome's views also largely resemble those of her contemporaries in terms of the specific obligations we are under. What is distinctive, though, and what makes Newcome significant with respect to the development of utilitarianism, is the justification she gives for those duties. In each instance, she works to show that our obligations are fundamentally grounded in our duty to promote pleasure. Examining our duties to others will offer an illustration of how this looks in practice.

With respect to other creatures, Newcome claims that we have two fundamental duties. First, we are required to be just, which she takes to involve a respect for the rights of others and the rendering to each their due. Second, we are required to generate as much happiness as we are able (p. 35). The second of these is obviously utilitarian in nature. The first requires some analysis.

At first glance, it might seem as though our duties of justice have their foundation in something other than the promotion of happiness. But this is not the case. Our obligation to respect the rights of others stems from the fact that “Every Man is by the Frame and Constitution of Things, posses'd of some Right or Property, which cannot be violated without Pain and Injury to him” (p. 35). Our obligation to render to others their due has a similar basis: “all Mankind, by the Frame and Constitution of Things, stand in certain Relations to each other, from which Relations there arise Dues and Rights which cannot be with-held from those to whom they are due, without Pain and Injury to them” (p. 36). Newcome's talk here of the “frame and constitution of things” and the “relations” in which things stand to one another constitutes a clear reference to the concept of fitness discussed above. To use Newcome's terminology, these things are unfit. Put differently, when someone's rights are violated it is not the fact that a right was violated that makes the person unhappy. Rather, they are made unhappy because a violation of rights involves the type of action (or omission) that generates unhappiness or pain for the individual involved. So, while under the heading of justice Newcome does argue that things like murder, adultery, theft, lying, undutifulness of children to parents, disturbing the peace, and breach of contract are morally forbidden, it is clear that the reason for this is that she believes that – given the structure of humans and their relations with one another – these are the sorts of actions that harm people.Footnote ²¹ So even our obligations with respect to justice have utilitarian foundations.

It was noted above that Newcome's enumeration of our specific moral duties largely resembles those given by her contemporaries. There are, however, two significant departures. Both give evidence that Newcome is operating with a clear understanding of the logic of utilitarianism, especially insofar as there are affinities between the views she endorses and prominent strands in contemporary utilitarian thought. First, since at least the publication of Peter Singer's “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, utilitarians have argued that our obligation to donate money or resources to those in need are more stringent than is commonly thought.Footnote ²² In discussing the ways in which humans might fall short of their duty, Newcome writes that a person “may say, he fed [the hungry], he cloath'd [the naked]; but when that which should feed and cloath, is to be parted with by himself, in that Thing desire to be pardon'd: But [. . .] Man must, if he would be acceptable to God, promote Happiness whenever he has the Opportunity” (pp. 37–38).Footnote ²³ Newcome does not expressly claim that we must reduce ourselves to the level of marginal utility, but she does claim that when it comes to acts like feeding the hungry and delivering the oppressed, a person must do these things “as often as he has Opportunity” (p. 38). There are, of course, antecedents in the Christian tradition for this kind of view, but the resonances with utilitarianism are still striking.Footnote ²⁴

Second, Newcome's account of the duties we owe to non-human animals are also distinctive for the period and contain elements of utilitarianism. Drawing on her concept of fitness, Newcome does argue that non-human animals can and should serve human purposes. But she is nonetheless sensitive to their sentient nature and the ways in which their pain and pleasure contribute to “the Good of the whole Creation” (p. 39). Consequently, when using animals for labor, Newcome argues that they should be treated well and suffer “no unnecessary severity” and that when killing animals for food we must do it “in that Manner which is least painful to them” (p. 39).Footnote ²⁵ Admittedly, this falls short of some contemporary utilitarian arguments for complete animal liberation. But again, the structural similarities are telling.

5. Anglican utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham is the thinker most commonly associated with the origins of utilitarianism, and for good reason. But the origins of utilitarianism pre-date Bentham. Certain utilitarian themes can be traced back to antiquity and are also found in a number of prominent early modern authors. Aspects of utilitarianism feature in the moral theories of figures like Richard Cumberland, John Locke, George Berkeley, and Francis Hutcheson.Footnote ²⁶ But the first authors who can properly be called utilitarians wrote in England in the middle part of the eighteenth century. Colin Heydt has called this group the Anglican utilitarians, emphasizing their shared commitment to hedonism and consequentialism situated within mainstream Church of England orthodoxy.Footnote ²⁷

Heydt's list of prominent Anglican utilitarians includes John Gay, John Brown, Soame Jenyns, Edmund Law, Abraham Tucker, Thomas Rutherforth, and William Paley. With the exception of Tucker, all of these men were Cambridge educated. Gay was at Cambridge from 1717 to 1732, Law from 1720 to 1727 and again from 1755 to 1787, Jenyns from 1722 to 1725, Rutherforth from 1726 to (probably) 1737 and again from 1756 to 1771, Brown from 1732 to 1735, and Paley from 1758 to 1775. An essay by John Stephens has attempted to give an overview of some of the philosophical activity of Cambridge at this time, particularly as it oriented around Edmund Law. And a number of these thinkers play key roles in his account. While he allows that mapping the personal and philosophical relationships between these individuals is “difficult and complex” it seems they did constitute a unified school of thought.Footnote ²⁸

In particular, it seems in the early eighteenth century there was a gradual shift away from Platonism at Cambridge. A number of younger philosophers there came to adopt a broadly Lockean account of the mind. This led, in turn, to an attempt to replace the rationalist epistemology undergirding Clarke's ethics with a posteriori reasoning. Paired with this was an effort within the group to move beyond William King's theodicy to a more complete moral theory. The resulting outlines of this moral theory, were, of course, broadly utilitarian. As indicated above, these thinkers were committed Anglicans and their broadly orthodox theology provided an important backdrop for their moral theorizing. Stephens, in the essay mentioned above, even emphasizes a critical attitude toward deism as one of their shared preoccupations.

The earliest of these Anglican utilitarians was John Gay (1699–1745). In 1731 Edmund Law published a translation of William King's De Origine Mali with the title An Essay on the Origin of Evil. The text was prefaced by an anonymous Preliminary Dissertation: Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality. In the fourth edition of his translation, published in 1758, Law revealed that Gay was the author of the Preliminary Dissertation. On the basis of the views contained in this Preliminary Dissertation, Gay has often been cited as the first utilitarian.Footnote ²⁹ But the first edition of Newcome's Enquiry was published in 1728, three years before Gay's work appeared in print. On the basis of the interpretation offered above, Newcome, rather than Gay, should be recognized as having priority.

On its own, this might be interesting but not dramatically so. Claims to priority can be messy and difficult to adjudicate.Footnote ³⁰ Moreover, it is often possible for two thinkers to independently arrive at the same view. What makes this case more interesting is the fact that Stephens’ description of the interests and goals of the group around Law could serve equally well as a description of Newcome's interests and goals in the Enquiry. And, much more importantly, the case is more interesting because Newcome lived and worked in precisely the same intellectual circles as did the rest of the Anglican utilitarians.

It is difficult to pin down with any certainty whether members of this group might have come into contact with Newcome and, if so, what kinds of exchanges they may have had. But the available evidence is highly suggestive. Recall from above that Newcome moved to Cambridge in the 1720s, likely in the middle or later portion of the decade, and lived there until her death in 1763. Newcome's husband John, while undistinguished as a scholar, held a number of important academic and administrative positions in Cambridge. And it seems likely that Newcome's marriage granted her at least some access to the intellectual life of the university. In this connection, St John's College assumes an important role. John Newcome entered St John's as a sizar in 1700 and held various positions in the college until 1728. He returned to St John's when elected Master in 1735, a position he held until his death in 1765. Brown, Jenyns, Law, and Rutherforth were all undergraduates at St John's. Rutherforth stayed on at the college, holding a number of positions and taking several more degrees. He also seems to have been one of John Newcome's protégés.Footnote ³¹ So there was, at a minimum, a strong basis for a personal connection between Newcome and many of these early Anglican utilitarians.

And while the historical record is somewhat sparse, what we do know of Newcome gives ample evidence that she kept abreast of developments in philosophy and theology. The best evidence of this is, of course, her published work. The second edition of the Enquiry was partly motivated by a desire to respond to the Deist arguments of Matthew Tindal. And the Plain Account is a contribution to an ongoing dispute originally provoked by the work of Benjamin Hoadly. We also know that she contributed notes to the 1744 edition of Samuel Butler's Hudibras prepared by Zachery Grey. Thomas Baker, a sometime fellow of St John's who assembled materials for a history of the college, thought very highly of her learning and mentions her “pamphlet or two on moral subjects, which I have heard much commended”.Footnote ³² He also reports that “Mr. Edward Clarke told me, he had heard her speak upon literary subjects, when himself and many others dined at the master's lodge” (ii, p. 1028). This picture of Newcome – of someone very much in touch with the figures and ideas around her – can only make it seem more likely that she was in touch with some of the other early utilitarians under consideration here.

A few other pieces of the historical record are worth mentioning in this regard. They all point toward the fact that Newcome, despite having published anonymously, enjoyed something of a reputation as a writer and thinker throughout the eighteenth century. Thomas Birch, writing in 1749, included her on a list of “Women eminent for their Writings, or Skill in the learned Languages” and mentions both of her major works.Footnote ³³ Henry Grove, in the third edition of his A System of Moral Philosophy, includes her in his taxonomy of writers on ethics.Footnote ³⁴ A number of eighteenth-century catalogues prepared by booksellers and auctioneers contain the Enquiry and properly attribute it to Newcome.Footnote ³⁵ And several contemporary reports note that she had achieved recognition for her learning and literary output.Footnote ³⁶

We can also note that the printer for both editions of the Enquiry as well as both parts of Newcome's Plain Account was William Innys. Innys was a major printer in the period, publishing works by authors like Francis Hutcheson, George Berkeley, and Ralph Cudworth. More importantly, Innys was also one of the booksellers listed on the title-page of Law's translation of King, the work containing Gay's Dissertation. All of this this can only increase the likelihood that some of the other Anglican utilitarians were aware of Newcome's work.

One connection between Newcome and this group can be established with certainty. Edmund Law, at least by the later stages of his career, was aware of the Enquiry and was aware that it was written by Newcome. Moreover, he thought well of the book. The seventh edition of his Considerations on the Theory of Religion approvingly cites “Mrs. Newcome's Enquiry into the evidence of the Christ. Relig.”.Footnote ³⁷ Unfortunately, it remains unclear when he read Newcome and how her moral theory might have influenced him.

It is not possible, in the space of this article, to offer a full account of Newcome's place within the context of eighteenth-century British moral theory. But given the robust geographical, temporal, social, and intellectual connections just outlined, it will be useful to briefly situate Newcome's views with respect to those of John Gay and, to a lesser extent, the other Anglican utilitarians. This will have the added benefit of enriching the interpretation of her views provided in previous sections. Similarities between Newcome and the other Anglican utilitarians (e.g., her broadly Lockean outlook) have already been noted above. But alongside these similarities, there are some important differences between Newcome and figures like Gay. The most notable ones center on a cluster of issues relating to our motivations for acting beneficently toward others and the ultimate source of moral obligation.

Gay's view is that, at base, we are obligated to do that which makes us happy.Footnote ³⁸ One consequence of this view is that God plays an important role in what we are obligated to do. Because God has power over us, specifically the ability to guarantee our future happiness or misery by attaching rewards and punishments to various actions, we are always obligated to do what God commands. As it happens, God wills us to promote the happiness of mankind. But the important point here is the priority that the will of God has in setting the content of our obligations. As Gay writes: “the Will of God is the immediate Criterion of Virtue” and “the Happiness of Mankind may be said to be the Criterion of Virtue, but once removed” (p. xix). This gives Gay's moral theory a decidedly voluntarist cast. Promoting the happiness of mankind is only obligatory because it has been commanded by God. Newcome, by contrast, takes a more intellectualist stance. As discussed in Section 3, Newcome's account of fitnesses and unfitnesses that exist prior to any divine decree left her, like Clarke, well positioned to reject voluntarism.Footnote ³⁹ For her, the fitness of something alone makes it binding. And God's commands are a response to these pre-existing moral facts. Indeed, it would be impossible for God to will anything other than the happiness of creatures (pp. 25, 29).

This point about obligation is particularly important because of the way it interacts with issues of moral motivation. Those who adopt a hedonist account of the good have a clear explanation for why individuals might be motivated to pursue their own good. Individuals are motivated to experience pleasure. What is more difficult is accounting for how and why individuals might be motivated to promote the pleasure of others. Because we cannot experience the pleasure of others, it is hard to see why we could have any immediate motive to pursue what is good for them. Newcome and Gay both consider this issue, but they appeal to different resources in addressing it.

Following a line sketched by Locke, Gay and others believe that the promise of heaven or hell could explain why fundamentally self-interested agents ought to be motivated to care for others (Heydt, pp. 29–30). If God commands us to care for others and promises punishment for those who fail to do so, then even if it may be in my short-term interest to not care for others, it is in my long-term interest to comply with God's command. Newcome, while allowing that it is rational to expect divine reward and punishment, takes a more interesting route. She acknowledges that in many instances the wicked prosper and the just suffer. And she agrees that a just God would not allow this to go without remediation. But her claim that humans naturally feel pleasure at having done good and naturally feel pain at having done wrong obviates the need for divine reward and punishment. All that is required is continued existence beyond death: “if Existence is only prolong'd to Man, and the Righteous and Good cease from suffering, and the Evil from oppressing, the former will be happy in their own Reflexions, and the latter miserable in theirs, without any positive Rewards or Punishments from God” (p. 46).Footnote ⁴⁰ What we can know of our souls strongly suggests they are immortal and a just God would certainly ensure that we continue to exist after this life. So the mere fact that we will be rewarded or condemned by our own conscience should be enough to motivate us to put self-interest aside when doing good for others.

Of course, not everyone will have fully considered these issues. Put differently, Newcome and Gay have given accounts of why people ought to pursue the interests of others. But those who have not thought carefully about their happiness in the next life might be unaware of what is objectively in their own best interest. So Gay and Newcome also need accounts of why so many people do, in fact, pursue the happiness of others. And here, again, they part ways.

For Gay, the relevant mechanism is psychological associationism.Footnote ⁴¹ Drawing on resources from Locke, he notices that the mind will often link two ideas in such a way that they are consistently experienced together. Gay's view is that we often experience the good of others coinciding with our own good. This forms an association between our own pleasure and the good of others. And this, in turn, motivates us to work for the good of others (pp. xxx–xxxiii). Associationism, while obviously not an essential component of utilitarian moral theory, was picked up by other Anglican utilitarians and came to be closely associated with utilitarianism.Footnote ⁴² Newcome, by contrast, does not believe that our inclination to do good for others is acquired over time through a process of association. Rather, she takes it to be a fixed feature of our psychology that doing good for others causes us pleasure and doing harm to others causes us pain (pp. 26–27). The Enquiry offers an extended argument to the effect that “the Practice of Virtue, is naturally productive of Happiness” (pp. 41, 43–45).Footnote ⁴³ So, in this respect, Newcome is much more like Francis Hutcheson than like Gay.

Newcome has title to be recognized as an Anglican utilitarian but the differences between her version of the view and that espoused by figures like Gay are notable. First, they show that Newcome had a unique voice within the group. This is likely due to the fact that she stands at the head of the tradition and was writing before a consensus view emerged among other authors. Second, while there is still a profound theological cast to Newcome's moral thought, there is a sense in which her views are more naturalistic than, for example, Gay's. Gay requires God's commands and the promise of heaven or hell to do significant philosophical work. In Newcome's thought, this work is done by the relations that obtain between the natures of things and key features of human psychology. In this sense, her views are much closer to contemporary utilitarianism than those of Gay and the other Anglican utilitarians.