grand arcanum of the school, while intended to answer some of these
difficulties, raises others. Mill seems to insist upon splitting a
unit into parts in order that it may be again brought together by
association. So J. S. Mill, in an admiring note, confirms his father's
explanation ('one of the most important thought in the whole
treatise') of the infinity of space.[554] We think space infinite
because we always 'associate' position with extension. Surely space is
extension; and to think of one without the other implies a
contradiction. We think space infinite, because we think of a space as
only limited by other space, and therefore indefinitely extensible.
There is no 'association,' simply repetition. Elsewhere we have the
problem, How does one association exclude another? Only, as J. S. Mill
replies, when one idea includes the idea of the absence of the
others.[555] We cannot combine the ideas of a plane and a convex
surface. Why? Because we have never had both sets of sensations
together. The 'commencement' of one set has always been 'simultaneous
with the cessation of another set,' as, for instance, when we bend a
flat sheet of paper. The difficulty seems to be that one fact cannot
be contradictory of another, since contradiction only applies to
assertions. When I say that A is above B, however, I surely assert
that B is below A; and I cannot make both assertions about A and B at
the same time without a contradiction. To explain this by an
association of simultaneous and successive sensations seems to be a
curiously roundabout way of 'explaining.' Every assertion is also a
denial; and, if I am entitled to say anything, I am enabled without
any help from association to deny its contradictory. On Mill's
showing, the assertion and the denial of its contradiction, instead of
being identical, are taken to be two beliefs accidentally associated.
Finally, I need only make one remark upon the fundamental difficulty.
It is hard to conceive of mere loose 'ideas' going about in the
universe at large and sticking accidentally to others. After all, the
human being is in true sense also an organised whole, and his
constitution must be taken into account in discovering the laws of
'ideation.' This is the point of view to which Mill, in his anxiety to
get rid of everything that had a savour of _a priori_ knowledge about
it, remains comparatively blind. It implies a remarkable omission.
Mill's great teacher, Hartley, had appealed to physiology in a
necessarily crude fashion. He had therefore an organism: a brain or a
nervous system which could react upon the external world and modify
and combine sensations. Mill's ideas would have more apparent
connection if they could be made to correspond to 'vibratiuncles' or
physical processes of some kind. But this part of Hartley's hypothesis
had been dropped: and all reality is therefore reduced to the whirl
of vagrant and accidentally cohering ideas in brains and clusters. His
one main aim is to get rid of everything that can be called mystical
and to trace all mental processes to 'experience,' as he understands
experience--to show that we are never entitled to assert that two
ideas may not be joined in any way whatever.
The general tendency of the 'Association Philosophy' is sufficiently
clear. It may be best appreciated by comparing it to the method of the
physical sciences, which it was intended to rival. The physicist
explains the 'laws of nature' by regarding a phenomenon as due to the
varying arrangements of an indefinite multitude of uniform atoms. I
need not ask whether these atoms are to be regarded as realities, even
the sole realities, or, on the other hand, as a kind of logical
scaffolding removable when the laws are ascertained. In any case, the
assumption is necessary and most fruitful in the search for accurate
and quantitative formulae. Mill virtually assumes that the same thing
can be done by breaking up the stream of consciousness into the ideas
which correspond to the primitive atoms. What precisely these atoms
may be, how the constantly varying flow of thought can be resolved
into constituent fractions, is not easy to see. The physicist at least
supposes his atoms to have definite space relations, but there is
nothing clearly corresponding to space in the 'ideas.' They are
capable of nothing but co-existence, sequence, and likeness; but the
attempt to explain the meaning of those words ends in nothing but
repeating them. One result is the curious combination of the absolute
and the indefinitely variable. We get absolute statements because the
ultimate constituents are taken to be absolutely constant. We have
indefinite variability because they may be collocated in any
conceivable or inconceivable way. This becomes evident when we have to
do with organisms of any kind: with characters or societies an
organism varies, but varies along definite lines. But, on Mill's
showing, the organic relations correspond to the indefinitely
variable. Education is omnipotent; state constitutions can be
manufactured at will, and produce indefinite consequences. And yet he
can lay down laws of absolute validity, because he seems to be
deducing them from one or two formulae corresponding to the essential
and invariable properties of the ultimate unit--whether man or ideas.
From this follows, too, the tendency to speak as if human desires
corresponded to some definite measurable things, such as utility in
ethics, value in political economy, and self-interest in politics.
This point appears in the application of Mill's theories to the moral
sciences.
III. JAMES MILL'S ETHICS
James Mill in his ethical doctrine follows Bentham with little
variation; but he shows very clearly what was the psychology which
Bentham virtually assumed. I may pass very briefly over Mill's theory
of conduct[556] in general. The 'phenomena of thought,' he says, may
be divided into the 'intellectual' and the 'active' powers. Hitherto
he has considered 'sensations' and 'ideas' merely as existing; he will
now consider them as 'exciting to action.'[557] The phenomena consist
in both cases of sensations and ideas, combined into 'clusters,' and
formed into trains 'according to the sense laws.' We have now to
consider the ideas as active, and 'to demonstrate the simple laws into
which the phenomena of human life, so numerous and apparently so
diversified, may all be easily resolved.'
A desire is an 'idea' of a pleasant sensation; an 'aversion' an idea
of painful sensation. The idea and the sensation are not two things,
but two names for the same thing. Desire, again, has a 'tacit
reference to future time' when applied to a given case. We associate
these pains and pleasures with the causes; and in the important case
our own actions are the causes. Thus the association produces the
motive, and the readiness to obey the motive is, as Bentham says, the
'disposition.' Then, following Hartley, Mill explains the will. Bodily
actions are muscular contractions, which are slowly co-ordinated by
habit--association, of course, acting at every stage of the process.
Now, it is a plain fact that muscular contractions follow 'ideas.' It
is easy, then, to see how the 'idea of a pleasure should excite the
idea of the action which is the cause of it; and how, when the idea
exists, the action should follow.'[558] An 'end' is a pleasure
desired, and gives the 'motive.' When we start from the motive and get
the pleasure the same association is called 'will.' 'Free-will' is of
course nonsense. We have a full account of the human mechanism, and
can see that it is throughout worked by association, admitting the
primary fact of experience that the idea causes the muscular
contraction.
This, and the ethical conclusions which follow, substantially
coincide with Bentham's doctrine, or supply the first principles from
which Bentham might be deduced. A fuller exposition of the ethics is
given in the _Fragment on Mackintosh_. Mackintosh, in 1829, wrote a
Dissertation upon 'Ethical Philosophy,' for the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_.[559] The book stirred Mill's 'indignation against an
evil-doer.'[560] He wrote a _Fragment on Mackintosh_, which was
suppressed for a time in consequence of his antagonist's death in
1832, but published in the year of his own death, 1835.[561] According
to Professor Bain, the book was softened in consequence of
remonstrances from Bickersteth. It would be curious to see the
previous version. Professor Bain says that there are 'thousands' of
books which contain 'far worse severities of language.' I confess that
I cannot remember quite 'a thousand.' It is at least difficult to
imagine more unmitigated expressions of contempt and aversion.
Mackintosh, says Mill, uses 'macaroni phrases,' 'tawdry talk,'
'gabble'; he gets 'beyond drivelling' into something more like
'raving'; he 'deluges' us with 'unspeakable nonsense.' 'Good God!'
sums up the comment which can be made upon one sentence.[562] Sir
James, he declares, 'has got into an intellectual state so thoroughly
depraved that I doubt whether a parallel to it is possible to be
found.'[563] There is scarcely a mention of Mackintosh without an
insult. A partial explanation of Mill's wrath may be suggested by the
chapter upon Bentham. Mackintosh there accused the Utilitarians
generally of 'wantonly wounding the most respectable feelings of
mankind'; of 'clinging to opinions because they are obnoxious'; of
taking themselves to be a 'chosen few,' despising the multitude, and
retorting the dislike which their arrogance has provoked by using
still more exasperating language.[564] He suggested that they should
do more justice to 'the Romillys and the Broughams,' who had been the
real and judicious reformers; and he illustrated the errors of Bentham
by especial reference to Mill's arguments upon government and
education. There had long been an antipathy. Mackintosh, said Mill in
1820, 'lives but for London display; _parler et faire parler de lui_
in certain circles is his heaven.'[565]
Mackintosh would have been most at home in a professorial chair. He
was, indeed, professor at Haileybury from 1818 to 1824, and spoken of
as a probable successor to Brown at Edinburgh. But he could never
decidedly concentrate himself upon one main purpose. Habits of
procrastination and carelessness about money caused embarrassment
which forced him to write hastily. His love of society interfered with
study, and his study was spread over an impossible range of subjects.
His great abilities, wasted by these infirmities, were seconded by
very wide learning. Macaulay describes the impression which he made at
Holland House.[566] He passed among his friends as the profound
philosopher; the man of universal knowledge of history; of ripe and
most impartial judgment in politics; the oracle to whom all men might
appeal with confidence, though a little too apt to find out that all
sides were in the right. When he went to India he took with him some
of the scholastic writers and the works of Kant and Fichte, then known
to few Englishmen. One of Macaulay's experiences at Holland House was
a vision of Mackintosh verifying a quotation from Aquinas.[567] It
must have been delightful. The ethical 'dissertation,' however, had to
be shortened by omitting all reference to German philosophy, and the
account of the schoolmen is cursory. It is easy to see why the suave
and amiable Mackintosh appeared to Mill to be a 'dandy' philosopher,
an unctuous spinner of platitudes to impose upon the frequenters of
Holland House, and hopelessly confused in the attempt to make
compromises between contradictory theories. It is equally easy to see
why to Mackintosh the thoroughgoing and strenuous Mill appeared to be
a one-sided fanatic, blind to the merits of all systems outside the
narrow limits of Benthamism, and making even philanthropy hateful. Had
Mackintosh lived to read Mill's _Fragment_, he would certainly have
thought it a proof that the Utilitarians were as dogmatic and acrid as
he had ever asserted.
Mackintosh's position in ethics explains Mill's antagonism. Neither
Aquinas nor Kant nor Fichte influenced him. His doctrine is the
natural outcome of the Scottish philosophy. Hutcheson had both
invented Bentham's sacred formula, and taught the 'Moral Sense' theory
which Bentham attacked. To study the morality from the point of view
of 'inductive psychology' is to study the moral faculty, and to reject
the purely 'intellectual' system. To assign the position of the moral
faculty in the psychological system is to show its utility. On the
other hand, it was the very aim of the school to avoid the sceptical
conclusions of Hume in philosophy, and in ethics to avoid the complete
identification of morality with utility. There must be a distinction
between the judgments, 'this is right,' and 'this is useful'; even
'useful to men in general.' Hence, on the one hand, morality is
immediately dictated by a special sense or faculty, and yet its
dictates coincide with the dictates of utility. I have spoken of this
view as represented by Dugald Stewart; and Brown had, according to his
custom, moved a step further by diminishing the list of original first
principles, and making 'virtue' simply equivalent to 'feelings' of
approval and disapproval.[568] Virtue, he said, is useful; the utility
'accompanies our moral approbation; but the perception of that utility
does not constitute our moral approbation, nor is it necessarily
presupposed by it.'[569] He compares the coincidence between virtue
and utility to Leibniz's pre-established harmony.[570] The position is
familiar. The adaptation of an organism to its conditions may be taken
either as an explanation of its development or as a proof of a
creative purpose.
Mackintosh takes nearly the same position. Ethical inquiries, he says,
relate to 'two perfectly distinct subjects.' We have the problem of
the 'criterion' (What is the distinction between right and wrong?) and
the problem of the 'moral sentiments' (What are the feelings produced
by the contemplation of right and wrong?). In treating of the
feelings, again, we must avoid the confusion caused in the older
philosophy by the reduction of 'feeling' to 'thought.'[571] Reason
and sensation are distinct though inseparably combined; and hence, he
argues, it is a fallacy to speak with Clarke as if reason could by
itself be a motive. An argument to influence conduct must always be in
the last resort an appeal to a 'feeling.'[572] It is idle to tell a
man that conduct is infamous unless he _feels_ infamy to be painful.
We have then to ask what are the feelings which prompt to morality. So
far as the criterion is concerned, Mackintosh fully agrees with Hume,
whose theory that 'general utility constitutes a general ground of
moral distinctions can never be impugned until some example can be
produced of a virtue generally pernicious or a vice generally
beneficial.'[573] Hume, however, overlooks the 'rightful supremacy of
the moral faculty over every other principle of human action.'
Mackintosh thought that his best service, as he told Macvey
Napier,[574] had been his 'endeavour to slip in a foundation under
Butler's doctrine of the supremacy of the conscience, which he left
baseless.' To slip in a foundation is a very delicate operation in
logical as in material architecture; and the new foundation seems here
to be in danger of inverting the edifice. The 'supremacy of
conscience'[575] means with him that the 'moral sentiments' form a
separate class. They are the feelings with which we contemplate
voluntary actions in general, and therefore those aroused by the
character and conduct of the agent. Mackintosh thus takes an aesthetic
view of morality. We have a 'moral taste' or perception of beauty. The
same qualities which make a horse beautiful make him also swift and
safe, but we perceive the beauty without thinking of the utility, or
rather when we do not think of it. So we admire a hero or martyr for
the beauty of his character without reference to his services to
us.[576] This moral taste, though not identical with the conscience,
becomes 'absorbed into it.' The conscience differs from the 'moral
taste' because it acts upon the will. But its supremacy seems to be
this quality which it shares with or derives from the taste--its
immediate and spontaneous operation. It is, he seems to mean, a direct
perception of beauty in character applied to the regulation of
conduct. Virtue corresponds to an instinctive and so far ultimate
appreciation of beauty of character. Mackintosh insists upon this
intrinsic charm of virtue in the language which struck Mill as simply
foppish affectation. The pleasure of 'benevolence' itself, says
Mackintosh, is infinitely superior to the pleasures to which it may
lead. Could it become 'lasting and intense,' it would convert the
heart into a heaven.[577] To love virtue, you must love it 'for its
own sake.'[578] The delights of being virtuous (as he interprets the
phrase) are greater than any delight from the consequences of virtue.
And he holds up as a model Fletcher of Saltoun, who would 'lose his
life to serve his country, but would not do a base thing to save
it.'[579]
How, then, is this view to be reconciled with the unreserved admission
of 'utility' as the 'criterion' of right and wrong? One answer is that
Mackintosh fully accepts Hartley's doctrine of association. He even
criticises previous philosophers for not pushing it far enough. He
says that association, instead of merely combining a 'thought' and a
'feeling,' 'forms them into a new compound, in which the properties of
the component parts are no longer discoverable, and which may itself
become a substantive principle of human virtue.'[580] The question of
origin, therefore, is different from the question of nature. He
follows Hartley in tracing the development of various desires, and in
showing how the 'secondary desires' are gradually formed from the
primitive by transference to different objects.[581] We must start
from feelings which lie beneath any intellectual process, and thus the
judgment of utility is from the first secondary. We arrive at the
higher feelings which are 'as independent as if they were
underived,'[582] and yet, as happiness has been involved at every
stage as an end of each desire, it is no wonder that the ultimate
result should be to make the general happiness the end. The
coincidence, then, of the criterion with the end of the moral
sentiments is 'not arbitrary,' but arises necessarily from 'the laws
of human nature and the circumstances in which mankind are
placed.'[583] Hence we reach the doctrine which 'has escaped Hartley
as well as every other philosopher.'[584] That doctrine is that the
moral faculty is one; it is compound, indeed, in its origin; but
becomes an independent unit, which can no longer be resolved even in
thought into its constituent elements.
The doctrine approximates, it would seem, to Mill's; but was all the
more unpalatable to him on that account. The agreement implies
plagiarism, and the difference hopeless stupidity. To Mill Bentham was
the legitimate development of Hartley, while to Mackintosh Bentham
was the plausible perverter of Hartley. Mill regarded Mackintosh as a
sophist, whose aim was to mislead honest Utilitarians into the paths
of orthodoxy, and who also ignored the merits of Mill himself. 'It was
Mr. Mill,' he says, 'who first made known the great importance of the
principle of the indissoluble association';[585] 'Mr. Mill' who had
taken up Hartley's speculations and 'prosecuted the inquiry to its
end';[586] 'Mr. Mill' who explained affections and motives and
dispositions;[587] and 'Mr. Mill' who had cleared up mistakes about
classification which 'had done more to perpetuate darkness on the
subject of mind than any other cause, perhaps than all other causes
taken together.'[588] Sir James blundered because he had not read
Mill's book, as he pretended to have done. Mill does not say all this
from vanity; he is simply stating an obvious matter of fact.
Mill's polemic against the Moral Sense theory, even against a moral
sense produced by association, reveals the really critical points of
the true Utilitarian doctrine. Mill would cut down the moral sense
root and branch. The 'moral sense' means a 'particular faculty'
necessary to discern right and wrong. But no particular faculty is
necessary to discern 'utility.'[589] Hence the distinction between the
'criterion' and the 'moral sentiments' is absurd. The utility is not
the 'criterion' of the morality but itself constitutes the morality.
To say that conduct is right, according to the Utilitarians, is the
same thing as to say that it produces happiness. If the moral sense
orders conduct opposed to the criterion, it is so far bad. If it
never orders such conduct, it is superfluous. Happiness, as with
Bentham, is a definite thing--a currency of solid bullion; and
'virtue' means nothing except as calculated in this currency. Mill,
again, like Bentham, regards the 'utility' principle as giving the
sole 'objective' test. The complaint that it sanctions 'expediency' is
a simple fallacy.
If you do not love virtue 'for its own sake,' said Mackintosh, you
will break a general law wherever the law produces a balance of
painful consequences. Mill replies with great vigour.[590] All general
rules, it is true, imply exceptions, but only when they conflict with
the supreme rule. 'There is no exception to a rule of morality,' says
Mill, 'but what is made by a rule of morality.'[591] There are
numerous cases in which the particular laws conflict; and one law must
then be broken. The question which to break must then be decided by
the same unequivocal test, 'utility.' If a rule for increasing utility
diminishes utility in a given case, it must be broken in that case.
Mackintosh's Fletcher of Saltoun illustrates the point.[592] What is
the 'base' thing which Fletcher would not do to save his country?
Would he not be the basest of men if he did not save his country at
any cost? To destroy half a population and reduce the other half to
misery has been thought a sacrifice not too great for such an end.
Would not Mackintosh himself allow Fletcher, when intrusted with an
important fortress, to sacrifice the lives and properties of innocent
people in defence of his position?[593] What, then, does the love of
virtue 'for its own sake' come to? If you refuse to save your country,
because you think the means base, your morality is mischievous, that
is, immoral. If, on the other hand, you admit that the means cease to
be base, the supposed supremacy is an empty brag. The doctrine is then
verbally maintained, but interpreted so as to conform to the criterion
of utility. In other words, Mackintosh cannot reconcile his admission
of utility as a 'criterion' with his support of a moral sense entitled
to override the criterion. Mackintosh's moral sense is meant to
distinguish the moral motive from 'expediency.' To this, again, Mill
has a very forcible answer. A man is blameable who makes exceptions to
laws in his own private interest. But if a man consistently and
invariably acted for the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number,'
and paid no more attention to his own happiness than to other
people's, he would certainly have a very lofty and inflexible test,
assuming--as we must allow Mill to assume--that we can calculate the
effect of conduct upon happiness at large. Again, upon the assumption
that 'moral' is equivalent to 'felicific,' we get a general rule
entitled to override any individual tastes or fancies, such as Mill
supposes to be meant by the 'Moral Sense.' The rule is derived from
the interests of all, and gives an ultimate 'objective criterion.' J.
S. Mill, describing his father's system, observes that the teaching of
such a man was not likely to err on 'the side of laxity or
indulgence.'[594] It certainly did not. And, in fact, his criterion,
however obtained, had in his eyes the certainty of a scientific law.
This or that is right as surely as this or that food is wholesome. My
taste has nothing to do with it. And, moreover, the criterion
certainly gives a moral ground. If I know that any conduct will
produce more happiness than misery that is a moral reason for adopting
it. A 'moral sense' which should be radically inconsistent with that
criterion, which should order me to inflict suffering as suffering, or
without some ulterior reason, would be certainly at fault. Mackintosh
indeed would have agreed to this, though, if Mill was right, at the
expense of consistency.
Mill, however, deduces from his criterion doctrines which involve a
remarkable paradox. The mode in which he is led to them is
characteristic of the whole method. Mill, like Bentham, puts morality
upon the same plane with law. Conduct is influenced either by the
'community in its conjunct capacity'--that is, by law; or by
'individuals in their individual capacity'--that is, by morality.[595]
The sanction of one, we may infer, is force; of the other, approval
and disapproval. With this we must take another Benthamite doctrine,
of which I have already spoken.[596] 'Mr. Bentham demonstrated,' says
Mill, 'that the morality of an act does not depend upon the motive,'
and, further, that it 'is altogether dependent on the intention.'[597]
Upon this he constantly insists. Mackintosh's view that virtue depends
upon motive will be 'scorned by every man who has any knowledge of the
philosophy of the human mind.... The virtue does not depend upon the
motive. There is no bad motive. Every motive is the desire of good; to
the agent himself or to some one else.'[598] He gives an analysis of
action to put the point beyond doubt. Action supposes a 'motive,' a
'volition,' and an 'external act' or muscular contraction. So far
there is nothing moral. But then an act has consequences, good or bad,
to human beings, which constitute its utility. To make it moral, the
agent must anticipate 'beneficial consequences,' and must have no
reason to anticipate a balance of evil consequences. Intention means
the calculation of consequences, and without that calculation there
can be no morality.[599] Hence the morality is equivalent to a
'conviction of the general utility' of the action.[600] 'All this,' he
concludes, 'is settled by universal consent. It is vain, therefore, to
think of disputing it.' One may, however, ask what it means. I have
already observed that the view of the non-moral character of motive
was a natural corollary from the purely legal point of view. I must
now consider the results of applying it unreservedly in the
inappropriate sphere of ethics.
In the first place, the denial of any moral quality in motive seems to
be inconsistent with Mill's own principles. The Utilitarian, according
to him, holds that the moral law is essentially the statement that
certain conduct produces general happiness. If, then, we ask, Who is a
good man? we first reply that he is a man whose conduct produces
happiness. Another conclusion is obviously necessary, and is implied
in Mill's statement that the 'intention' is essential to morality. The
man, that is, must foresee that his conduct will produce happiness.
The 'calculation' is precisely what makes an action moral as well as
accidentally useful. In other words, the man is good to whom the
knowledge that an act will produce happiness is the same thing as a
command to perform the act. The 'intention' could not affect conduct
without the corresponding motive, and Mill can at times recognise the
obvious consequence. The 'physical law' (meaning the law enforced by
physical coercion), he says incidentally, has 'extrinsic'
sanctions;[601] the moral law is different, because it sanctions good
actions for their goodness. 'Moral approval' must therefore include
approval of character. A man, to be moral, must be one who does useful
things simply because they are useful. He must then, it would seem, be
at least benevolent. The same thing is implied by the doctrine of
'intention' or 'calculation.' An action may be useful or the reverse
without being moral when the consequences are unknown to the agent. To
make it moral he must know the consequences--for otherwise he is
merely acting at random; and the foreseen consequences constitute the
'intention.' To this Mill adds that he must have taken into account
the consequences which 'might have been foreseen.'[602] Otherwise we
should have to excuse a man because he had neglected to calculate,
whereas to calculate is the very essence of virtue. A man who fired a
gun down a crowded street would not be excusable because he had not
thought of the result. He 'ought' to have thought of it. The question
of moral approval of any given action turns upon these questions. Did
a man foresee evil consequences and disregard them? He is then cruel.
Did he neglect to consider them? He is then culpably careless, though
not actually malignant. Were the consequences altogether beyond the
powers of reasonable calculation? Then he may be blameless. The whole
moral question, therefore, depends upon the character indicated; that
is, upon the motives which induce a man to calculate consequences and
which determine his conduct when the calculation is made.
The truth is, I think, and it is characteristic of Mill's modes of
analysis, that he is making an impossible abstraction. He is
separating parts of a single process and treating them as independent.
If actions are bad because they have bad consequences, motives are bad
because they are causes of bad actions. You cannot suppress the effect
without suppressing the cause, and therefore the cause of the cause.
Mill relies chiefly upon one argument. The same conduct will produce
the same consequences whatever the motives. That is undeniable. It is
the same to me whether I am burnt because the persecutor loves my soul
or because he hates me as a rebel to his authority. But when is
conduct 'the same'? If we classify acts as the legislator has to
classify them by 'external' or 'objective' relations, we put together
the man who is honest solely from fear of the gallows and the man who
is honest from hatred of stealing. So long as both act alike, the
'consequences' to their neighbours are alike. Neither is legally
punishable. But if acts are classified by their motives, one is a
rogue and the other virtuous; and it is only then that the question of
morality properly arises. In that case, it is idle to separate the
question of motive and consequences, because the character determines
the motive and therefore the action. Nobody should have seen this more
clearly than Mill as a good 'determinist.' Conduct and character are
related as the convex and concave of the curve; conduct is simply the
manifestation of character, and to separate them is absurd.
Why did he not see this? For reasons, I think, which illustrate his
whole method. From a scientific point of view, the ethical problem
raises the wide questions, What are the moral sentiments? and, What
functions do they discharge in regard to the society or to its
individual members? We might hold that morality is justified by
'utility' in the sense that the moral rules and the character which
they indicate are essential to the welfare of the race or its
individual constituents. But to Mill this proposition is interpreted
as identical with the proposition that conduct must be estimated by
its 'consequences.' We are to consider not the action itself, but its
effects; and the effects are clearly independent of the motive when
once the action has been done. We may therefore get a calculus of
'utility': general rules stating what actions will be useful
considered abstractedly from their motives. The method, again, might
be plausible if we could further assume that all men were the same and
differed only in external circumstances. That is the point of view to
which Mill, like Bentham, is always more or less consciously
inclining. The moral and the positive law are equally enforced by
'sanctions'; by something not dependent upon the man himself, and
which he is inclined to suppose will operate equally upon all men.
Such language could be justifiable only of an average and uniform
'man,' a kind of constant unit, whose varying behaviour must always be
explained by difference in circumstance. We have sufficiently seen the
results elsewhere, and in this ethical doctrine they are especially
manifest.
Mackintosh recognised the fact that morality is essentially a
function of character. Mill cannot fully admit that, because he
virtually assumes all character to be the same. Regarding morality as
something co-ordinate with law, he does not perceive that the very
possibility of law implies the moral instincts, which correspond to
the constitution of character, and belong to a sphere underlying, not
on the same plane with, the legislative sphere. They are the source of
all order; not themselves the product of the order. It is impossible
to deduce them, therefore, from the organisation which presupposes
them. Now, in one direction, Mill's theory leads, as his son remarked,
not to laxity but to excessive strictness. The 'criterion' is laid
down absolutely. The 'moral sense' is rejected because it means an
autocratic faculty, entitled to override the criterion by its own
authority. To appeal to 'motives' is to allow the individual to make
his own feeling the ultimate test of right and wrong. If we follow
Mill in this we are not really assuming the moral neutrality of motive
or the indifference, but an impossible profession of character. Men
are not governed by abstract principles but by their passions and
affections. The emotions, as Mackintosh rightly said, cannot be
resolved into the mere logic. Utility may give the true criterion of
morality, but it does not follow that the perception of utility is
implied in moral conduct. The motives are good which in fact produce
useful conduct, though the agent does not contemplate the abstract
principle. It is impossible that men should be moved simply by a
desire for the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' What does
and always must guide men is their personal relation to the little
circle which they actually influence. The good man is the man so
constituted that he will spontaneously fulfil his duties. The moral
law, that is, will be also the law of his character and conduct. The
mother is good because she loves her child, not because she sees that
care of her child is dictated by the general maxim of utility. The
'utility' of character means the fitness of the agent to be an
efficient member of the social structure to which he belongs. In
particular cases this may lead to such problems as that of Fletcher of
Saltoun. His sense of honour and his general benevolence, though both
useful, might come into collision; and the most difficult of all
questions of casuistry arise from such conflicts between private and
public affections. Mill is justified in holding that a sense of honour
cannot give an ultimate and autocratic decision. Under some pretext or
other, we shall have to ask the Utilitarian question whether on the
whole it may not be causing more misery than the virtuous action is
worth. But that only means that the character must be so balanced as
to give due weight to each motive; not that we can abstract from
character altogether, as though human beings could be mere colourless
and uniform atoms, embodying abstract formulae.
Mill is following Bentham, and only brings out more clearly the
psychological assumptions. A man, he says, acts from the 'same motive'
whether he steals five shillings or earns it by a day's labour. The
motive, in this sense, regards only one consequence, whereas the
'intention' regards all. The 'motive,' that is, is only one of the
motives or a part of the character, and this way of speaking is one of
the awkward results of turning 'motives' into 'things.' The obvious
answer is that which Mill himself makes to Mackintosh. Mackintosh and
Butler, he thinks, personify particular 'appetites.'[603] It is not
really the 'conscience' which decides, but the man. That is quite
true, and similarly it is the whole man who steals or works, not the
'personified' motive; and it is accordingly from the whole character
that we judge. We have to consider the relation of the love of five
shillings to the other qualities of industry and honesty. The same
view appears in Mill's characteristic dislike of 'sentimentalism.'
Wishing to attack Mackintosh's rhetoric about the delight of virtuous
feeling, he for once quotes a novel to illustrate this point. When
Parson Adams defined charity as a 'generous disposition to relieve the
distressed,' Peter Pounce approved; 'it is, as you say, a disposition,
and does not so much consist in the act as in the disposition to do
it.'[604] When, therefore, Mackintosh says that he finds it difficult
to separate the virtue from the act, Mill replies that nothing is
easier. The virtue is 'in the act and its consequences'; the feeling a
mere removable addition. Apparently he would hold that the good
Samaritan and the Pharisee had the same feeling, though it prompted
one to relieve the sufferer and the other to relieve himself of the
sight of the sufferer. They had, of course, a feeling in common, but a
feeling which produced diametrically opposite effects, because
entering into totally different combinations.
If Mill's doctrine leads to an impossible strictness in one direction,
it leads to less edifying results in another. We have omitted 'motive'
and come to the critical question, How, after all, is the moral code
to be enforced? By overlooking this question and declaring 'motive' to
be irrelevant, we get the paradox already accepted by Bentham. His
definition of virtue is action for the good of others as well as of
ourselves. In what way is the existence of such action to be
reconciled with this doctrine? What are the motives which make men
count the happiness of others to be equally valuable with their own?
or, in the Utilitarian language, What is the 'sanction' of morality?
After all Bentham's insistence upon the 'self-preference principle'
and Mill's account of selfishness in his political theory, we are
suddenly told that morality means a lofty and rigid code in which the
happiness of all is the one end. Here again Mill is entangled by the
characteristic difficulty of his psychology. To analyse is to divide
objects into separate units. When he has to do with complex objects
and relations apparently reciprocal, he is forced to represent them by
a simple sequence. The two factors are not mutually dependent but
distinct things somehow connected in time. One result is his account
of 'ends' or 'motives' (the two, as he observes, are synonymous).[605]
The end is something to be gained by the act, the 'association' of
which with the act constitutes a 'desire.' This, we have seen, always
refers to the future.[606] In acting, then, I am always guided by
calculations of future pleasures or pains. I believe this to be one of
the most unfortunate because one of the most plausible of Utilitarian
fallacies. If we are determined by pains and pleasures, it is in one
sense as contradictory to speak of our being determined by future
pains and pleasures as to speak of our being nourished to-day by
to-morrow's dinner. The 'future pleasure' does not exist; the
anticipated pleasure acts by making the present action pleasant; and
we then move (as it is said) along the line of least resistance.
Certain conduct is intrinsically pleasurable or painful, and the
future pleasure only acts through the present foretaste. When,
however, we regard the pleasure as future and as somehow a separable
thing, we can only express these undeniable facts by accepting a
purely egoistic conclusion. We are, of course, moved by our own
feelings, as we breathe with our own lungs and digest with our own
stomachs. But when we accept the doctrine of 'ends' this harmless and
self-evident truth is perverted into the statement that our 'end' must
be our own pleasure; that we cannot be really or directly unselfish.
The analysis, indeed, is so defective that it can hardly be applied
intelligibly. Hume observes that no man would rest his foot
indifferently upon a stool or a gouty toe. The action itself of giving
pain would be painful, and cannot be plausibly resolved into an
anticipation of an 'end.' This, again, is conspicuously true of all
the truly social emotions. Not only the conscience, but the sense of
shame or honour, or pride and vanity act powerfully and
instantaneously as present motives without necessary reference to any
future results. The knowledge that I am giving pain or causing future
pain is intrinsically and immediately painful to the normal human
being, and the supposed 'analysis' is throughout a fiction. Mill,
however, like Bentham, takes it for granted, but perceives more
clearly than Bentham the difficulty to which it leads. How, from a
theory of pure selfishness, are we to get a morality of general
benevolence? The answer is given by the universal 'association.' We
are governed, he holds, by our own emotions; our end is our own
pleasure, and we have to consider how this end dictates a desire for
general happiness. He expounds with great vigour the process by which
the love of friends, children and parents and country may be gradually
developed through the association of our pleasures with the
fellow-creatures who caused them. J. S. Mill regards his exposition as
'almost perfect,'[607] and says that it shows how the 'acquired
sentiments'--the moral sentiments and so forth--may be gradually
developed; may become 'more intense and powerful than any of the
elements out of which they may have been formed, and may also in their
maturity be perfectly disinterested.' James Mill declares that the
analysis does not affect the reality of the sentiments analysed.
Gratitude remains gratitude, and generosity generosity, just as a
white ray remains white after Newton had decomposed it into rays of
different colours.[608] Here once more we have the great principle of
indissoluble association or mental chemistry.
Granting that the emotions so generated may be real, we may still ask
whether the analysis be sufficient. James Mill's account of the way in
which they are generated leaves a doubt. Morality is first impressed
upon us by authority. Our parents praise and blame, reward and
punish. Thus are formed associations of praise and blame with certain
actions. Then, we form further associations with the causes of praise
and blame and thus acquire the sentiments of 'praiseworthiness' and
'blameworthiness.' The sensibility to praise and blame generally forms
the 'popular sanction,' and this, when praiseworthiness is concerned,
becomes the moral sanction.[609] Here we see that morality is regarded
as somehow the product of a 'sanction'; that is, of the action of
praise and blame with their usual consequences upon the individual.
His sensibility causes him through association to acquire the habits
which generally bring praise and blame; and ultimately these qualities
become attractive for their own sake. The difficulty is to see where
the line is crossed which divides truly moral or altruistic conduct
from mere prudence. Admitting that association may impel us to conduct
which involves self-sacrifice, we may still ask whether such conduct
is reasonable. Association produces belief in error as well as in
truth. If I love a man because he is useful and continue to love him
when he can no longer be useful, am I not misguided? If I wear a
ragged coat, because it was once smart, my conduct is easily explained
as a particular kind of folly. If I am good to my old mother when she
can no longer nurse me, am I not guilty of a similar folly? In short,
a man who inferred from Mill's principles that he would never do good
without being paid for it, would be hardly inconsistent. Your
associations, Mill would say, are indissoluble. He might answer, I
will try--it is surely not so hard to dissolve a tie of gratitude!
Granting, in short, that Mill gives an account of such virtue as may
be made of enlightened self-interest, he does not succeed in making
intelligible the conduct which alone deserves the name of virtuous.
The theory always halts at the point where something more is required
than an external sanction, and supposes a change of character as well
as a wider calculation of personal interest.
The imperfection of this theory may be taken for granted. It has been
exposed by innumerable critics. It is more important to observe one
cause of the imperfection. Mill's argument contains an element of real
worth. It may be held to represent fairly the historical development
of morals. That morality is first conceived as an external law
deriving its sanctity from authority; that it is directed against
obviously hurtful conduct; and that it thus serves as a protection
under which the more genuine moral sentiments can develop themselves,
I believe to be in full accordance with sound theories of ethics. But
Mill was throughout hampered by the absence of any theory of
evolution. He had to represent a series of changes as taking place in
the individual which can only be conceived as the product of a long
and complex social change. He is forced to represent the growth of
morality as an accretion of new 'ends' due to association, not as an
intrinsic development of the character itself. He has to make morality
out of atomic sensations and ideas collected in clusters and trains
without any distinct reference to the organic constitution of the
individual or of society, and as somehow or other deducible from the
isolated human being, who remains a constant, though he collects into
groups governed by external sanctions. He sees that morality is
formed somehow or other, but he cannot show that it is either
reasonable or an essential fact of human nature. Here, again, we shall
see what problem was set to his son. Finally, if Mill did not explain
ethical theory satisfactorily, it must be added in common justice that
he was himself an excellent example of the qualities for which he
tried to account. A life of devotion to public objects and a
conscientious discharge of private duties is just the phenomenon for
which a cluster of 'ideas' and 'associations' seems to be an
inadequate account. How, it might have been asked, do you explain
James Mill? His main purpose, too, was to lay down a rule of duty,
almost mathematically ascertainable, and not to be disturbed by any
sentimentalism, mysticism, or rhetorical foppery. If, in the attempt
to free his hearers from such elements, he ran the risk of reducing
morality to a lower level and made it appear as unamiable as sound
morality can appear, it must be admitted that in this respect too his
theories reflected his personal character.
FOOTNOTES:
[464] For an account of these writers and their relation to the
pre-revolutionary schools, see _Les Ideologues_ by F. Picavet (1891).
[465] Macvey Napier's _Correspondence_, p. 424.
[466] Charles Francois Dominique de Villers (1767-1815) was a French
officer, who emigrated in 1792, and took refuge at Luebeck. He became
profoundly interested in German life and literature, and endeavoured
to introduce a knowledge of German speculation to his countrymen. His
chief books were this exposition of Kant and an essay upon the
_Reformation of Luther_ (1803), which went through several editions,
and was translated by James Mill in 1805. An interesting account of
Villers is in the _Biographie Universelle_.
[467] See Cockburn's _Memorials_ for a good notice of this.
[468] Stewart's _Works_, iv. 345.
[469] Lady Holland's _Life of Smith_, ii. 388.
[470] _Inquiry into the Relations of Cause and Effect_ (third
edition), pp. 178, 180, and part iv. sec. 6.
[471] _Examination of Hamilton_ (fourth edition), p. 379.
[472] _Cause and Effect_, pp. 184-87.
[473] _Cause and Effect_, p. 197.
[474] _Ibid._ p. 239 _seq._
[475] _Ibid._ p. 244.
[476] _Ibid._ p. 150.
[477] _Ibid._ p. 357.
[478] _Cause and Effect_, p. 313.
[479] _Cause and Effect_, p. 482. Brown thinks that we can logically
disprove the existence of motion by the hare and tortoise argument,
and should therefore disregard logic.
[480] Brown's _Lectures_, (1851), p. 167, Lect. xxvi.
[481] Lecture xxv. This question as to whether Brown had or had not
grossly misrepresented Reid and other philosophers, led to an
entangled argument, in which Mill defended Brown against Hamilton. I
will not ask whether Reid was a 'natural realist' or a 'cosmothetic
idealist,' or what Descartes or Arnauld thought about the question.
[482] Reid's _Works_, p. 128.
[483] _Lectures_, pp. 150, 158-59.
[484] _Dissertations_, p. 98. Compare Brown's Twenty-fourth Lecture
with Tracy's _Ideologie_, ch. vii., and the account of the way in
which the infant learns from resistance to infer a cause, and make of
the cause _un etre qui n'est pas moi_. The resemblance is certainly
close. Brown was familiar with French literature, and shows it by many
quotations, though he does not, I think, refer to Tracy. Brown, it
must be noticed, did not himself publish his lectures, and a professor
is not bound to give all his sources in popular lectures. An
explanation would have been due in a treatise. Picavet quotes
Rhetore's _Philosophie de Thomas Brown_ (a book which I have not seen)
for the statement that Brown's lectures often read like a translation
of Laromiguiere, with whom Brown was 'perhaps' acquainted. As,
however, the _Lecons_, to which reference is apparently made, did not
appear till 1815 and 1818, when Brown's lectures were already written,
this seems to be impossible. The coincidence, which to me seems to be
exaggerated by the statement, is explicable by a common relation to
previous writers.
[485] _Lectures_, p. 166 (Lect. xxvi.).
[486] _Lectures_, p. 158 (Lect. xxv.).
[487] _Ibid._ p. 151 (Lect. xxiv.).
[488] _Lectures_, p. 177 (ch. xxviii.). Brown made the same remark to
Mackintosh in 1812. (Mackintosh's _Ethical Philosophy_, 1872, 236
_n._)
[489] _Ibid._ p. 154 (Lect. xxiv.).
[490] See Hamilton's note to Reid's _Works_, p. 111.
[491] _Lectures_, p. 255 (Lect. xl.).
[492] _Ibid._ (Lect. xxxiii. and following).
[493] _Ibid._ p. 214-15 (Lect. xxxiii.). The phrase is revived by
Professor Stout in his _Analytic Psychology_.
[494] _Lectures_, p. 213 (Lect. xxxiii.).
[495] This is one of the coincidences with Laromiguiere (_Lecons_
(1837), i. 103).
[496] _Lectures_, p. 210.
[497] _Lectures_, p. 315 (Lect. xlviii.).
[498] _Ibid._ p. 314.
[499] _Lectures_, p. 335 (Lect. li.). See Lect. xi. for a general
explanation. The mind is nothing but a 'series of feelings'; and to
say that 'I am conscious of feeling' is simply to say 'I feel.' The
same phrase often occurs in James Mill.
[500] _Ibid._ p. 298 (Lect. xlvi.).
[501] _Ibid._ p. 498 (Lect. lxxiv.).
[502] _Lectures_, p. 622 (Lect. xciii.).
[503] _Dissertations_, p. 98.
[504] Froude's _Carlyle_, p. 25.
[505] _Miscellanies_ (1858), ii. 104. See, too, _Miscellanies_, i. 60,
on German Literature, where he thinks that the Germans attacked the
centre instead of the outworks of Hume's citadel. Carlyle speaks with
marked respect of Dugald Stewart, who, if he knew what he was about,
would agree with Kant.
[506] In Caroline Fox's _Memories of Old Friends_ (second edition),
ii. 314, is a letter from J. S. Mill, expressing a very high opinion
of Brown, whom he had just been re-reading (1840) with a view to the
Logic. Brown's 'analysis in his early lectures of the amount of what
we can learn of the phenomena of the world seems to me perfect, and
his mode of inquiry into the mind is strictly founded upon that
analysis.'
[507] I quote from this edition. Andrew Findlater (1810-1885), a
Scottish schoolmaster, and editor of Chambers's _Cyclopaedia_, was a
philologist (_Dictionary of National Biography_), and his notes
chiefly concern Mill's adaptations of Horne Tooke.
[508] _Treatise_ (bk. i. pt. i. sec. iv.).
[509] J. S. Mill's _Autobiography_, p. 68.
[510] _Fragment on Mackintosh_, p. 314.
[511] _Analysis_, ii. 42. 'Odd,' because Brown was six years younger
than Mill.
[512] 'Education,' p. 6.
[513] _Analysis_, i. 52.
[514] _Analysis_, i. xvii.
[515] _Ibid._ i. 70.
[516] _Analysis_, i. 71.
[517] _Ibid._ i. 78.
[518] _Ibid._ i. 83.
[519] _Analysis_, ii. 42.
[520] _Ibid._ i. 270.
[521] _Ibid._ i. 111.
[522] _Ibid._ i. 362.
[523] _Analysis_, i. 154 _n._
[524] _Ibid._ i. 161.
[525] _Analysis_, i. 189.
[526] _Ibid._ i. 163 _n._
[527] _Ibid._ i. 266.
[528] _Ibid._ i. 269.
[529] _Ibid._ i. 295.
[530] _Analysis_, i. 162 _n._, 187 _n._
[531] _Ibid._ ii. 21.
[532] _Ibid._ i. 224-25.
[533] _Analysis_, i. 342.
[534] _e.g._ _Ibid._ ii. 176.
[535] _Ibid._ i. 341.
[536] _Ibid._ i. 342 _n._
[537] _Ibid._ i. 331.
[538] _Ibid._ i. 345.
[539] _Ibid._ i. 352.
[540] _Ibid._ i. 381.
[541] _Analysis_, i. 363.
[542] _Ibid._ i. 402.
[543] _Ibid._ i. 402-23.
[544] _Analysis_, i. 423.
[545] _Ibid._ i. 413, 419.
[546] See especially his account of definition, _Logic_, bk. i. ch.
viii., and the problem about the serpent and the dragon.
[547] _Analysis_, ii. 2.
[548] This point puzzles Destutt de Tracy. All error, he says, arises
in judgments: 'Cependant les jugements, les perceptions de rapports,
en tant que perceptions que nous avons actuellement, sont aussi
certaines et aussi reelles que toutes les autres.'--_Elements
d'Ideologie_ (1865), iii. 449.
[549] _Analysis_, ii. 6, 7.
[550] _Analysis_, ii. 18 _n._
[551] _Analysis_, ii. 24 _n._
[552] _Ibid._ ii. 132-33.
[553] _Analysis_, ii. 67-69.
[554] _Analysis_, ii. 113 _n._
[555] _Ibid._ i. 97 _n._
[556] Professor Bain points out that Mill is occasionally confused by
his ignorance of the triple division, intellect, feelings: and will,
introduced in the next generation.--_Analysis_, ii. 180 _n._
[557] _Analysis_, ii. 181-83.
[558] _Analysis_, ii. 351.
[559] Also privately printed in 1830. Later editions, edited by
Whewell, appeared in 1836, 1862, 1873. I quote the last. See M.
Napier's _Correspondence_, pp. 57-59, for the composition.
[560] Mill's _Fragment_ (Preface).
[561] See Bain's _James Mill_, pp. 374, 415-18.
[562] _Fragment_, pp. 190, 192, 213, 298, 307, 326.
[563] _Ibid._ p. 210.
[564] _Ethical Philosophy_ (1873), pp. 188, 193.
[565] M. Napier's _Correspondence_, p. 25.
[566] _Essay on Sir J. Mackintosh._
[567] _Essay on Lord Holland._
[568] _Lectures_, p. 500 (Lect. lxxv.).
[569] _Ibid._ p. 519 (Lect. lxxvii.).
[570] _Ibid._ p. 522 (Lect. lxxviii.).
[571] _Ethical Philosophy_ (Hobbes), pp. 62-64.
[572] _Ibid._ p. 85.
[573] _Ibid._ p. 145.
[574] _Ibid._ p. 9.
[575] _Ibid._ p. 120.
[576] _Ethical Philosophy_, pp. 14, 170.
[577] _Ibid._ p. 197.
[578] _Ibid._ p. 248.
[579] _Ibid._ p. 204.
[580] _Ethical Philosophy_ p. 242.
[581] _Ibid._ p. 251.
[582] _Ibid._ p. 262.
[583] _Ibid._ p. 264.
[584] _Ibid._ p. 169.
[585] _Fragment_, p. 173.
[586] _Ibid._ p. 323.
[587] _Ibid._ p. 221.
[588] _Fragment_, p. 247. Mackintosh quotes Mill's _Analysis_ at p.
197. It had only just appeared.
[589] _Fragment_, p. 11.
[590] _Fragment_, p. 246, etc.
[591] _Ibid._ p. 246.
[592] _Ibid._ pp. 269, 270.
[593] Cf. Newman's _Apologia_. 'The Catholic Church holds it better
for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and
for all the millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so
far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul,--I will not say
should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, tell one
wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.' I
should steal the farthing and assume the 'excuse.' I confess that I
would not only lie, but should think lying right under the supposed
circumstances.
[594] _Autobiography_, p. 51.
[595] _Fragment_, p. 251.
[596] Vol. i. p. 257.
[597] _Fragment_, p. 161.
[598] _Fragment_, pp. 315-16.
[599] _Ibid._ p. 164.
[600] _Ibid._ pp. 320-22.
[601] _Fragment_, p. 102.
[602] _Ibid._ p. 162.
[603] _Analysis_, p. 73.
[604] _Fragment_, p. 209.
[605] _Fragment_, p. 316.
[606] At one point, as J. S. Mill notes, he speaks of an 'unsatisfied
desire' as a motive, which seems to indicate a present feeling; but
this is not his usual view.--_Analysis_, ii. 361, 377 _n._
[607] _Analysis_, ii. 233 _n._ Mill adds that though his father
explains the 'intellectual,' he does not explain the 'animal' element
in the affections. This, however, is irrelevant for my purpose.
[608] _Fragment_, pp. 51-52.
[609] _Analysis_, ii. 292-300; _Fragment_, pp. 247-65. Note Mill's
interpretation of this theory of 'praiseworthiness.'--_Analysis_, ii.
298 _n._