HERBERT, EDWARD, lord of CHERBURY. — Statesman, poet, and philosopher, born at Eyton (Shropshire) on 3 March 1583 (W. Windelband gives the date as 1581), died in London on 20 August 1648. He studied at the University of Oxford, then moved to London in 1600. From 1608 to 1618 he was on the Continent, in Germany, France, and Italy. In 1619 he was ambassador to Paris; in 1624 he was appointed an Irish peer and in 1629 an English peer.
He wrote poems in Latin and English (recent ed. by C. G. Moore Smith, Oxford 1923), an Autobiography (ed. S. L. Lee, London 1886, with bibliography), and a Life of Henry VIII (1748). His principal work is the De veritate prout distinguitur a revelatione, a versimili, a possibili et a falso (Paris 1624). In the 3rd ed. (London 1645), he added a brief treatise, De causis errorum, a dissertation, Religio laici, and an Appendix ad sacerdotes. He thought that if reflective minds professed a few principles consecrated by reason, fanaticism would be disarmed and the possibility of religious wars removed. In 1663 there appeared the De religione gentilium, perhaps the first systematic attempt at a comparative study of religions, which it falsely regarded as mere corruptions of pure and primitive rational worship.
Truth, according to H., is a certain harmony between objects and the faculties of the mind, which is always more or less active, things being merely an occasion for the unfolding of this activity.
The spirit bears within itself a quantity of general truths, identical in all human beings and therefore universally recognizable. With regard to faith, man possesses a natural instinct, from which develops a series of innate forms of knowledge that constitute the content of rational religion, such as the existence of God, the duty of worshipping him through virtue and piety, and the existence of a divine sanction in this life or the next.
A critique of the innateness of these propositions is offered by Locke in Book I of his Essay.