"I think so; at least, in all the principal features of his works."
He (with almost naïve astonishment), "But is there actually anything to
understand?"
I did what I could to reply to this singular and rather diffusive
question, and Mill, by no means convinced, yet as though he entered
into my thought, said, "I understand very well the reverence, or the
gratitude, you cherish for Hegel. We are always grateful to those who
have taught us to think."
Never have I felt so keenly, as during this conversation, how
thoroughly Mill was a man cast in one mould, a genuine Englishman,
wilful and obstinate, equipped with a singularly iron will, and
absolutely devoid of any flexible critical power of appropriation.
What took the deepest hold of me, however, was the impression of the
ignorance in which the most noteworthy men of different countries, even
of the few lands most closely akin to their own, are of their mutual
merits, and that in this second half of our nineteenth century. It
seemed to me one could do much good by simply studying, confronting,
and understanding these great minds that fail to understand one another.
I endeavored to bring into play against the principles of empirical
philosophy the mode of contemplation I owed to my university training.
To my astonishment, all the arguments I brought forward, and on whose
effect upon Mill I had counted much, had long been familiar to him.
"Those," said he, "are the old German arguments." He traced them all
back to Kant, and had his answers to them ready.
It would not be in place in these pages to treat of the real
significance of the controversy between the two modern schools, a
problem which, in Germany, by almost all thinkers, is solved from the
Teutonic point of view; as a matter of course, Stuart Mill would not
admit that David Hume had been refuted by Kant, an opinion which I now
thoroughly share with him, and which I believe will be universally
prevalent when the Kant worship begins to be somewhat on the decline.
(I already find a trace of this change of conception in Germany in
Fr. Paulsen's admirable work on Kant's "Theory of Knowledge.") At that
time, to be sure, I had a presentiment that there must be some way of
reconciling the rationalistic and the empiric theory of knowledge, but
I did not yet know Herpert Spencer's simple solution of the problem.
Mill spoke briefly but decidedly against all attempts at mediation, and
concluded, with the mingling of modesty and decision that was peculiar
to him, in the following words, which have remained fixed in my memory,
"I believe that we must choose between the theories."
In the same spirit he expressed himself concerning the various
modern philosophers, whose thought was nearly related to his own. He
recommended me to become acquainted with Herbert Spencer, yet would
not advise me, he said, to study Spencer's later works; he thought
that in these Spencer had deviated from the "good method." On the
other hand, he urgently commended to me Spencer's "Principles of
Psychology," and the two chief works of his, in my estimation, far
less intellectual contemporary Bain,--"The Senses and the Intellect"
and "The Emotions and the Will." He presented me with a copy of the
"Analysis of the Human Mind," by his much-revered father (the edition
prepared and supplied with notes by himself and Bain), extolling the
book to me as the main work of the English school in this century;
and I having expressed to him my admiration of his critique of
Hamilton's philosophy, he sent me the book the very next day. Almost
of itself the conversation fell on Taine's recently issued volume, "De
l'intelligence," in which Mill is so zealously investigated, profited
by, and refuted, and in which the English tendency has perhaps placed
its most enduring monument in French philosophy. Mill praised Taine,
called his book one of the most profound and important works of modern
France, and said about the same things to me regarding it that I found
repeated later in his review of it ("Fortnightly Review," July, 1870).
As a whole, he liked the book; but he had the same kind of objections
to offer against the last chapters as against the later works of
Herbert Spencer. We must, according to his conviction, most decidedly
"choose," once for all, between the conditional knowledge of empiricism
and the absolute certainty of intuition, and Taine, in the last volume
of his work, had attempted to establish axioms which, not being derived
from experience, had validity for the whole universe, independent
of the boundaries of our experience. Mill, himself, thought, as is
well known, that even the propositions of algebra and of geometry,
whose empiric origin he endeavored to establish, could only be sure
of a limited dominion. He extolled to me the little book "Essays by a
Barrister," from which he himself quoted a few sentences. The barrister
finds it quite conceivable that our multiplication-table, as well as
our Euclid, may be utterly valueless in another solar system. "The
question is," he says, "whether our certainty of the truth of the
multiplication table arises from experience or from a transcendental
conviction, excited by experience, but anterior to and formative of
it." To illustrate the former of these views he presents a few striking
examples:--
"There is a world in which, whenever two pairs of things are either
placed in proximity or are contemplated together, a fifth thing is
immediately created, and brought within the contemplation of the
mind engaged in putting two and two together. This is surely neither
inconceivable, for we can readily conceive the result by thinking of
common puzzle tricks, nor can it be said to be beyond the power of
Omnipotence, yet, in such a world, surely two and two may be five;
that is, the result to the mind of contemplating two twos would be
to count five. This shows that it is not inconceivable that two and
two might make five; but, on the other hand, it is perfectly easy to
see why in this world we are absolutely certain that two and two make
four. There is probably not an instant of our lives, in which we are
not experiencing the fact. We see it whenever we count four books,
four tables or chairs, four men in the street, or the four comers of a
paving stone, and we feel more sure of it than of the rising of the sun
to-morrow, because our experience upon the subject is so much wider,
and applies to such an infinitely greater number of cases. Nor is it
true that every one who has once been brought to see it is equally sure
of it. A boy who has just learned the multiplication table is pretty
sure that twice two are four, but is often extremely doubtful whether
or not seven times nine are sixty-three. If his teacher told him that
twice two made five, his certainty would be greatly impaired.
"It would be possible to put a case of a world, in which two straight
lines should be universally supposed to include a space. Imagine a man,
who had never had any experience of straight lines through the medium
of any sense whatever, suddenly placed upon a railway, stretching
out on a perfectly straight line to an indefinite distance in each
direction. He would see the rails, which would be the first straight
lines he ever saw, apparently meeting, or at least tending to meet,
at each horizon; and he would thus infer in the absence of all other
experience that they actually did enclose a space, when produced
far enough. Experience alone could undeceive him. A world in which
every object was round with the exception of a straight, inaccessible
railway, would be a world in which every one would believe that two
straight lines enclosed a space." In his conversation, Mr. Mill
expressed his adherence to these humorous sophistries, which have
been so keenly criticised by Spencer, and he added, "If we possessed
the sense of sight without the sense of touch, we would have no doubt
that two or more bodies might exist in the same place, so completely
is every so-called _a priori_ axiom dependent on the character of our
organs and experiences."