PHILOSOPHY
I. JOHN HORNE TOOKE
I have so far dwelt upon the social and political environment of the
early Utilitarian movement; and have tried also to point out some of the
speculative tendencies fostered by the position. If it be asked what
philosophical doctrines were explicitly taught, the answer must be a
very short one. English philosophy barely existed. Parr was supposed to
know something about metaphysics--apparently because he could write good
Latin. But the inference was hasty. Of one book, however, which had a
real influence, I must say something, for though it contained little
definite philosophy, it showed what kind of philosophy was congenial to
the common sense of the time.
The sturdy radical, Horne Tooke, had been led to the study of philology
by a characteristic incident. The legal question had arisen whether the
words, '_She, knowing that Crooke had been indicted for forgery_,' did
so and so, contained an averment that Crooke had been indicted. Tooke
argued in a letter to Dunning[144] that they did; because they were
equivalent to the phrase, 'Crooke had been indicted for forgery: she,
_knowing that_,' did so and so. This raises the question: What is the
meaning of 'that'? Tooke took up the study, thinking, as he says, that
it would throw light upon some philosophical questions. He learned some
Anglo-Saxon and Gothic to test his theory and, of course, confirmed
it.[145] The book shows ingenuity, shrewdness, and industry, and Tooke
deserves credit for seeing the necessity of applying a really historical
method to his problem, though his results were necessarily crude in the
pre-scientific stage of philology.
The book is mainly a long string of etymologies, which readers of
different tastes have found intolerably dull or an amusing collection of
curiosities. Tooke held, and surely with reason, that an investigation
of language, the great instrument of thought, may help to throw light
upon the process of thinking. He professes to be a disciple of Locke in
philosophy as in politics. Locke, he said,[146] made a lucky mistake in
calling his book an essay upon human understanding; for he thus
attracted many who would have been repelled had he called it what it
really was, 'a treatise upon words and language.' According to Tooke, in
fact,[147] what we call 'operations of mind' are only 'operations of
language.' The mind contemplates nothing but 'impressions,' that is,
'sensations or feelings,' which Locke called 'ideas,' Locke mistook
composition of terms for composition of ideas. To compound ideas is
impossible. We can only use one term as a sign of many ideas. Locke,
again, supposed that affirming and denying were operations of the mind,
whereas they are only artifices of language.[148]
The mind, then, can only contemplate, separately or together, aggregates
of 'ideas,' ultimate atoms, incapable of being parted or dissolved.
There are, therefore, only two classes of words, nouns and verbs; all
others, prepositions, conjunctions, and so forth, being abbreviations, a
kind of mental shorthand to save the trouble of enumerating the separate
items. Tooke, in short, is a thoroughgoing nominalist. The realities,
according to him, are sticks, stones, and material objects, or the
'ideas' which 'represent' them. They can be stuck together or taken
apart, but all the words which express relations, categories, and the
like, are in themselves meaningless. The special objects of his scorn
are 'Hermes' Harris, and Monboddo, who had tried to defend Aristotle
against Locke. Monboddo had asserted that 'every kind of relation' is a
pure 'idea of the intellect' not to be apprehended by sense.[149] If so,
according to Tooke, it would be a nonentity.
This doctrine gives a short cut to the abolition of metaphysics. The
word 'metaphysics,' says Tooke,[150] is nonsense. All metaphysical
controversies are 'founded on the grossest ignorance of words and the
nature of speech.' The greatest part of his second volume is concerned
with etymologies intended to prove that an 'abstract idea' is a mere
word. Abstract words, he says,[151] are generally 'participles without
a substantive and therefore in construction used as substantives.' From
a misunderstanding of this has arisen 'metaphysical jargon' and 'false
morality.' In illustration he gives a singular list of words, including
'fate, chance, heaven, hell, providence, prudence, innocence, substance,
fiend, angel, apostle, spirit, true, false, desert, merit, faith, etc.,
all of which are mere participles poetically embodied and substantiated
by those who use them.' A couple of specific applications, often quoted
by later writers, will sufficiently indicate his drift.
Such words, he remarks,[152] as 'right' and 'just' mean simply that
which is ordered or commanded. The chapter is headed 'rights of man,'
and Tooke's interlocutor naturally observes that this is a singular
result for a democrat. Man, it would seem, has no rights except the
rights created by the law. Tooke admits the inference to be correct, but
replies that the democrat in disobeying human law may be obeying the law
of God, and is obeying the law of God when he obeys the law of nature.
The interlocutor does not inquire what Tooke could mean by the 'law of
nature.' We can guess what Tooke would have said to Paine in the
Wimbledon garden. In fact, however, Tooke is here, as elsewhere,
following Hobbes, though, it seems, unconsciously. Another famous
etymology is that of 'truth' from 'troweth.'[153] Truth is what each man
thinks. There is no such thing, therefore, as 'eternal, immutable,
everlasting truth, unless mankind, _such as they are at present_, be
eternal, immutable, everlasting.' Two persons may contradict each other
and yet each may be speaking what is true for him. Truth may be a vice
as well as a virtue; for on many occasions it is wrong to speak the
truth.
These phrases may possibly be interpreted in a sense less paradoxical
than the obvious one. Tooke's philosophy, if so it is to be called, was
never fully expounded. He burned his papers before his death, and we do
not know what he would have said about 'verbs,' which must have led, one
would suppose, to some further treatment of relations, nor upon the
subject, which as Stephens tells us, was most fully treated in his
continuation, the value of human testimony.
If Tooke was not a philosopher he was a man of remarkably shrewd cynical
common sense, who thought philosophy idle foppery. His book made a great
success. Stephens tells us[154] that it brought him L4000 or L5000.
Hazlitt in 1810 published a grammar professing to incorporate for the
first time Horne Tooke's 'discoveries.' The book was admired by
Mackintosh,[155] who, of course, did not accept the principles, and had
a warm disciple in Charles Richardson (1775-1865), who wrote in its
defence against Dugald Stewart and accepted its authority in his
elaborate dictionary of the English language.[156] But its chief
interest for us is that it was a great authority with James Mill. Mill
accepts the etymologies, and there is much in common between the two
writers, though Mill had learned his main doctrines elsewhere,
especially from Hobbes. What the agreement really shows is how the
intellectual idiosyncrasy which is congenial to 'nominalism' in
philosophy was also congenial to Tooke's matter of fact radicalism and
to the Utilitarian position of Bentham and his followers.
NOTES:
[144] Published originally in 1778; reprinted in edition of EPEA
PTEROENTA or _Diversions of Purley_, by Richard Taylor (1829), to which
I refer. The first part of the _Diversions of Purley_ appeared in 1786;
and the second part (with a new edition of the first) in 1798.
[145] _Diversions of Purley_ (1829), i. 12, 131.
[146] _Ibid._ ii. 362. Locke's work, says Prof. Max Mueller in his
_Science of Thought_, p. 295, 'is, as Lange in his _History of
Materialism_ rightly perceived, a critique of language which, together
with Kant's _Critique of the Pure Reason_, forms the starting-point of
modern philosophy.' _See_ Lange's _Materialism_, (1873), i. 271.
[147] _Ibid._ i. 49.
[148] _Diversions of Purley_, i. 36, 42.
[149] _Ibid._ i. 373.
[150] _Ibid._ i. 374.
[151] _Diversions of Purley_, ii. 18. Cf. Mill's statement in
_Analysis_, i. 304, that 'abstract terms are concrete terms with the
connotation dropped.'
[152] _Ibid._ ii. 9, etc.
[153] _Ibid._ ii. 399.
[154] Stephens, ii. 497.
[155] _Life of Mackintosh_, ii. 235-37.
[156] Begun for the _Encyclopaedia Metropolitana_ in 1818; and published
in 1835-37. Dugald Stewart's chief criticism is in his Essays (_Works_,
v. 149-188). John Fearn published his _Anti-Tooke_ in 1820.
II. DUGALD STEWART
If English philosophy was a blank, there was still a leader of high
reputation in Scotland. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) had a considerable
influence upon the Utilitarians. He represented, on the one hand, the
doctrines which they thought themselves specially bound to attack, and
it may perhaps be held that in some ways he betrayed to them the key of
the position. Stewart[157] was son of a professor of mathematics at
Edinburgh. He studied at Glasgow (1771-72) where he became Reid's
favourite pupil and devoted friend. In 1772 he became the assistant, and
in 1775 the colleague, of his father, and he appears to have had a
considerable knowledge of mathematics. In 1785 he succeeded Adam
Ferguson as professor of moral philosophy and lectured continuously
until 1810. He then gave up his active duties to Thomas Brown, devoting
himself to the completion and publication of the substance of his
lectures. Upon Brown's death in 1820, he resigned a post to which he was
no longer equal. A paralytic stroke in 1822 weakened him, though he was
still able to write. He died in 1828.
If Stewart now makes no great mark in histories of philosophy, his
personal influence was conspicuous. Cockburn describes him as of
delicate appearance, with a massive head, bushy eyebrows, gray
intelligent eyes, flexible mouth and expressive countenance. His voice
was sweet and his ear exquisite. Cockburn never heard a better reader,
and his manners, though rather formal, were graceful and dignified.
James Mill, after hearing Pitt and Fox, declared that Stewart was their
superior in eloquence. At Edinburgh, then at the height of its
intellectual activity, he held his own among the ablest men and
attracted the loyalty of the younger. Students came not only from
Scotland but from England, the United States, France and Germany.[158]
Scott won the professor's approval by an essay on the 'Customs of the
Northern Nations.' Jeffrey, Horner, Cockburn and Mackintosh were among
his disciples. His lectures upon Political Economy were attended by
Sydney Smith, Jeffrey and Brougham, and one of his last hearers was Lord
Palmerston. Parr looked up to him as a great philosopher, and
contributed to his works an essay upon the etymology of the word
'sublime,' too vast to be printed whole. Stewart was an upholder of Whig
principles, when the Scottish government was in the hands of the
staunchest Tories. The irreverent young Edinburgh Reviewers treated him
with respect, and to some extent applied his theory to politics.
Stewart was the philosophical heir of Reid; and, one may say, was a Whig
both in philosophy and in politics. He was a rationalist, but within the
limits fixed by respectability; and he dreaded the revolution in
politics, and believed in the surpassing merits of the British
Constitution as interpreted by the respectable Whigs.
Stewart represents the 'common sense' doctrine. That name, as he
observes, lends itself to an equivocation. Common sense is generally
used as nearly synonymous with 'mother wit,' the average opinion of
fairly intelligent men; and he would prefer to speak of the 'fundamental
laws of belief.'[159] There can, however, be no doubt that the doctrine
derived much of its strength from the apparent confirmation of the
'average opinion' by the 'fundamental laws.' On one side, said Reid, are
all the vulgar; on the other all the philosophers. 'In this division, to
my great humiliation, I find myself classed with the vulgar.'[160] Reid,
in fact, had opposed the theories of Hume and Berkeley because they led
to a paradoxical scepticism. If it be, as Reid held, a legitimate
inference from Berkeley that a man may as well run his head against a
post, there can be no doubt that it is shocking to common sense in every
acceptation of the word. The reasons, however, which Reid and Stewart
alleged for not performing that feat took a special form, which I am
compelled to notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole
intellectual artillery of the Utilitarians. Reid, in fact, invented what
J. S. Mill called 'intuitions.' To confute intuitionists and get rid of
intuitions was one main purpose of all Mill's speculations. What, then,
is an 'intuition'? To explain that fully it would be necessary to write
once more that history of the philosophical movement from Descartes to
Hume, which has been summarised and elucidated by so many writers that
it should be as plain as the road from St. Paul's to Temple Bar. I am
forced to glance at the position taken by Reid and Stewart because it
has a most important bearing upon the whole Utilitarian scheme. Reid's
main service to philosophy was, in his own opinion,[161] that he refuted
the 'ideal system' of Descartes and his followers. That system, he says,
carried in its womb the monster, scepticism, which came to the birth in
1739,[162] the date of Hume's early _Treatise_. To confute Hume,
therefore, which was Reid's primary object, it was necessary to go back
to Descartes, and to show where he deviated from the right track. In
other words, we must trace the genealogy of 'ideas.' Descartes, as Reid
admitted, had rendered immense services to philosophy. He had exploded
the scholastic system, which had become a mere mass of logomachies and
an incubus upon scientific progress. He had again been the first to
'draw a distinct line between the material and the intellectual
world'[163]; and Reid apparently assumes that he had drawn it correctly.
One characteristic of the Cartesian school is obvious. Descartes, a
great mathematician at the period when mathematical investigations were
showing their enormous power, invented a mathematical universe.
Mathematics presented the true type of scientific reasoning and
determined his canons of inquiry. The 'essence' of matter, he said, was
space. The objective world, as we have learned to call it, is simply
space solidified or incarnate geometry. Its properties therefore could
be given as a system of deductions from first principles, and it forms a
coherent and self-subsistent whole. Meanwhile the essence of the soul is
thought. Thought and matter are absolutely opposed. They are contraries,
having nothing in common. Reality, however, seems to belong to the world
of space. The brain, too, belongs to that world, and motions in the
brain must be determined as a part of the material mechanism. In some
way or other 'ideas' correspond to these motions; though to define the
way tried all the ingenuity of Descartes' successors. In any case an
idea is 'subjective': it is a thought, not a thing. It is a shifting,
ephemeral entity not to be fixed or grasped. Yet, somehow or other, it
exists, and it 'represents' realities; though the divine power has to be
called in to guarantee the accuracy of the representation. The objective
world, again, does not reveal itself to us as simply made up of 'primary
qualities'; we know of it only as somehow endowed with 'secondary' or
sense-given qualities: as visible, tangible, audible, and so forth.
These qualities are plainly 'subjective'; they vary from man to man, and
from moment to moment: they cannot be measured or fixed; and must be
regarded as a product in some inexplicable way of the action of matter
upon mind; unreal or, at any rate, not independent entities.
In Locke's philosophy, the 'ideas,' legitimate or illegitimate
descendants of the Cartesian theories, play a most prominent part.
Locke's admirable common sense made him the leader who embodied a
growing tendency. The empirical sciences were growing; and Locke, a
student of medicine, could note the fallacies which arise from
neglecting observation and experiment, and attempting to penetrate to
the absolute essences and entities. Newton's great success was due to
neglecting impossible problems about the nature of force in
itself--'action at a distance' and so forth--and attention to the sphere
of visible phenomena. The excessive pretensions of the framers of
metaphysical systems had led to hopeless puzzles and merely verbal
solutions. Locke, therefore, insisted upon the necessity of ascertaining
the necessary limits of human knowledge. All our knowledge of material
facts is obviously dependent in some way upon our sensations--however
fleeting or unreal they may be. Therefore, the material sciences must
depend upon sense-given data or upon observation and experiment. Hume
gives the ultimate purpose, already implied in Locke's essay, when he
describes his first treatise (on the title page) as an 'attempt to
introduce the experimental mode of reasoning into moral subjects.' Now,
as Reid thinks, the effect of this was to construct our whole knowledge
out of the representative ideas. The empirical factor is so emphasised
that we lose all grasp of the real world. Locke, indeed, though he
insists upon the derivation of our whole knowledge from 'ideas,' leaves
reality to the 'primary qualities' without clearly expounding their
relation to the secondary. But Berkeley, alarmed by the tendency of the
Cartesian doctrines to materialism and mechanical necessity, reduces the
'primary' to the level of the 'secondary,' and proceeds to abolish the
whole world of matter. We are thus left with nothing but 'ideas,' and
the ideas are naturally 'subjective' and therefore in some sense
unreal. Finally Hume gets rid of the soul as well as the outside world;
and then, by his theory of 'causation,' shows that the ideas themselves
are independent atoms, cohering but not rationally connected, and
capable of being arbitrarily joined or separated in any way whatever.
Thus the ideas have ousted the facts. We cannot get beyond ideas, and
yet ideas are still purely subjective. The 'real' is separated from the
phenomenal, and truth divorced from fact. The sense-given world is the
whole world, and yet is a world of mere accidental conjunctions and
separation. That is Hume's scepticism, and yet according to Reid is the
legitimate development of Descartes' 'ideal system.' Reid, I take it,
was right in seeing that there was a great dilemma. What was required to
escape from it? According to Kant, nothing less than a revision of
Descartes' mode of demarcation between object and subject. The 'primary
qualities' do not correspond in this way to an objective world radically
opposed to the subjective. Space is not a form of things, but a form
imposed upon the data of experience by the mind itself. This, as Kant
says, supposes a revolution in philosophy comparable to the revolution
made by Copernicus in astronomy. We have completely to invert our whole
system of conceiving the world. Whatever the value of Kant's doctrine,
of which I need here say nothing, it was undoubtedly more prolific than
Reid's. Reid's was far less thoroughgoing. He does not draw a new line
between object and subject, but simply endeavours to show that the
dilemma was due to certain assumptions about the nature of 'ideas.'
The real had been altogether separated from the phenomenal, or truth
divorced from fact. You can only have demonstrations by getting into a
region beyond the sensible world; while within that world--that is, the
region of ordinary knowledge and conduct--you are doomed to hopeless
uncertainty. An escape, therefore, must be sought by some thorough
revision of the assumed relation, but not by falling back upon the
exploded philosophy of the schools. Reid and his successors were quite
as much alive as Locke to the danger of falling into mere scholastic
logomachy. They, too, will in some sense base all knowledge upon
experience. Reid constantly appeals to the authority of Bacon, whom he
regards as the true founder of inductive science. The great success of
Bacon's method in the physical sciences, encouraged the hope, already
expressed by Newton, that a similar result might be achieved in 'moral
philosophy.'[164] Hume had done something to clear the way, but Reid
was, as Stewart thinks, the first to perceive clearly and justly the
'analogy between these two different branches of human knowledge.' The
mind and matter are two co-ordinate things, whose properties are to be
investigated by similar methods. Philosophy thus means essentially
psychology. The two inquiries are two 'branches' of inductive science,
and the problem is to discover by a perfectly impartial examination what
are the 'fundamental laws of mind' revealed by an accurate analysis of
the various processes of thought. The main result of Reid's
investigations is given most pointedly in his early _Inquiry_, and was
fully accepted by Stewart. Briefly it comes to this. No one can doubt
that we believe, as a fact, in an external world. We believe that there
are sun and moon, stones, sticks, and human bodies. This belief is
accepted by the sceptic as well as by the dogmatist, although the
sceptic reduces it to a mere blind custom or 'association of ideas.' Now
Reid argues that the belief, whatever its nature, is not and cannot be
derived from the sensations. We do not construct the visible and
tangible world, for example, simply out of impressions made upon the
senses of sight and touch. To prove this, he examines what are the
actual data provided by these senses, and shows, or tries to show, that
we cannot from them alone construct the world of space and geometry.
Hence, if we consider experience impartially and without preconception,
we find that it tells us something which is not given by the senses. The
senses are not the material of our perceptions, but simply give the
occasions upon which our belief is called into activity. The sensation
is no more like the reality in which we believe than the pain of a wound
is like the edge of the knife. Perception tells us directly and
immediately, without the intervention of ideas, that there is, as we all
believe, a real external world.
Reid was a vigorous reasoner, and credit has been given to him by some
disciples of Kant's doctrine of time and space. Schopenhauer[165] says
that Reid's 'excellent work' gives a complete 'negative proof of the
Kantian truths'; that is to say, that Reid proves satisfactorily that we
cannot construct the world out of the sense-given data alone. But,
whereas Kant regards the senses as supplying the materials moulded by
the perceiving mind, Reid regards them as mere stimuli exciting certain
inevitable beliefs. As a result of Reid's method, then, we have
'intuitions.' Reid's essential contention is that a fair examination of
experience will reveal certain fundamental beliefs, which cannot be
explained as mere manifestations of the sensations, and which, by the
very fact that they are inexplicable, must be accepted as an
'inspiration.'[166] Reid professes to discover these beliefs by
accurately describing facts. He finds them there as a chemist finds an
element. The 'intuition' is made by substituting for 'ideas' a
mysterious and inexplicable connection between the mind and matter.[167]
The chasm exists still, but it is somehow bridged by a quasi-miracle.
Admitting, therefore, that Reid shows a gap to exist in the theory, his
result remains 'negative.' The philosopher will say that it is not
enough to assert a principle dogmatically without showing its place in a
reasoned system of thought. The psychologist, on the other hand, who
takes Reid's own ground, may regard the statement only as a useful
challenge to further inquiry. The analysis hitherto given may be
insufficient, but where Reid has failed, other inquirers may be more
successful. As soon, in fact, as we apply the psychological method, and
regard the 'philosophy of mind' as an 'inductive science,' it is
perilous, if not absolutely inconsistent, to discover 'intuitions' which
will take us beyond experience. The line of defence against empiricism
can only be provisional and temporary. In his main results, indeed, Reid
had the advantage of being on the side of 'common sense.' Everybody was
already convinced that there were sticks and stones, and everybody is
prepared to hear that their belief is approved by philosophy. But a
difficulty arises when a similar method is applied to a doctrine
sincerely disputed. To the statement, 'this is a necessary belief,' it
is a sufficient answer to reply, 'I don't believe it,' In that case, an
intuition merely amounts to a dogmatic assumption that I am infallible,
and must be supported by showing its connection with beliefs really
universal and admittedly necessary.
Dugald Stewart followed Reid upon this main question, and with less
force and originality represents the same point of view. He accepts
Reid's view of the two co-ordinate departments of knowledge; the science
of which mind, and the science of which body, is the object. Philosophy
is not a 'theory of knowledge' or of the universe; but, as it was then
called, 'a philosophy of the human mind.' 'Philosophy' is founded upon
inductive psychology; and it only becomes philosophy in a wider sense in
so far as we discover that as a fact we have certain fundamental
beliefs, which are thus given by experience, though they take us in a
sense beyond experience. Jeffrey, reviewing Stewart's life of Reid, in
the _Edinburgh Review_ of 1804, makes a significant inference from this.
Bacon's method, he said, had succeeded in the physical sciences, because
there we could apply experiment. But experiment is impossible in the
science of mind; and therefore philosophy will never be anything but a
plaything or a useful variety of gymnastic. Stewart replied at some
length in his _Essays_,[168] fully accepting the general conception, but
arguing that the experimental method was applicable to the science of
mind. Jeffrey observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest
reasonings' had brought us back to the view of the vulgar, and this,
too, is admitted by Stewart so far as the cardinal doctrine of 'the
common sense' philosophy, the theory of perception, is admitted.
From this, again, it follows that the 'notions we annex to the words
Matter and Mind are merely relative.'[169] We know that mind exists as
we know that matter exists; or, if anything, we know the existence of
mind more certainly because more directly. The mind is suggested by 'the
subjects of our consciousness'; the body by the objects 'of our
perception.' But, on the other hand, we are totally 'ignorant of the
essence of either.'[170] We can discover the laws either of mental or
moral phenomena; but a law, as he explains, means in strictness nothing
but a 'general fact.'[171] It is idle, therefore, to explain the nature
of the union between the two unknowable substances; we can only discover
that they are united and observe the laws according to which one set of
phenomena corresponds to the other. From a misunderstanding of this
arise all the fallacies of scholastic ontology, 'the most idle and
absurd speculation that ever employed the human faculties.'[172] The
destruction of that pseudo-science was the great glory of Bacon and
Locke; and Reid has now discovered the method by which we may advance to
the establishment of a truly inductive 'philosophy of mind.'
It is not surprising that Stewart approximates in various directions to
the doctrines of the empirical school. He leans towards them whenever he
does not see the results to which he is tending. Thus, for example, he
is a thoroughgoing nominalist;[173] and on this point he deserts the
teaching of Reid. He defends against Reid the attack made by Berkeley
and Hume upon 'abstract ideas.' Rosmini,[174] in an elaborate criticism,
complains that Stewart did not perceive the inevitable tendency of
nominalism to materialism.[175] Stewart, in fact, accepts a good deal of
Horne Tooke's doctrine,[176] though calling Tooke an 'ingenious
grammarian, not a very profound philosopher,' but holds, as we shall
see, that the materialistic tendency can be avoided. As becomes a
nominalist, he attacks the syllogism upon grounds more fully brought out
by J. S. Mill. Upon another essential point, he agrees with the pure
empiricists. He accepts Hume's view of causation in all questions of
physical science. In natural philosophy, he declares causation means
only conjunction. The senses can never give us the 'efficient' cause of
any phenomenon. In other words, we can never see a 'necessary
connection' between any two events. He collects passages from earlier
writers to show how Hume had been anticipated; and holds that Bacon's
inadequate view of this truth was a main defect in his theories.[177]
Hence we have a characteristic conclusion. He says, when discussing the
proofs of the existence of God,[178] that we have an 'irresistible
conviction of the _necessity_ of a cause' for every change. Hume,
however, has shown that this can never be a logical necessity. It must
then, argues Stewart, be either a 'prejudice' or an 'intuitive
judgment.' Since it is shown by 'universal consent' not to be a
prejudice, it must be an intuitive judgment. Thus Hume's facts are
accepted; but his inference denied. The actual causal nexus is
inscrutable. The conviction that there must be a connection between
events attributed by Hume to 'custom' is attributed by Stewart to
intuitive belief. Stewart infers that Hume's doctrine is really
favourable to theology. It implies that God gives us the conviction, and
perhaps, as Malebranche held, that God is 'the constantly operating
efficient Cause in the material world.'[179] Stewart's successor, Thomas
Brown, took up this argument on occasion of the once famous 'Leslie
controversy'; and Brown's teaching was endorsed by James Mill and by
John Stuart Mill.
According to J. S. Mill, James Mill and Stewart represented opposite
poles of philosophic thought. I shall have to consider this dictum
hereafter. On the points already noticed Stewart must be regarded as an
ally rather than an opponent of the Locke and Hume tradition. Like them
he appeals unhesitatingly to experience, and cannot find words strong
enough to express his contempt for 'ontological' and scholastic methods.
His 'intuitions' are so far very harmless things, which fall in with
common sense, and enable him to hold without further trouble the beliefs
which, as a matter of fact, are held by everybody. They are an excuse
for not seeking any ultimate explanation in reason. He is, indeed,
opposed to the school which claimed to be the legitimate successor to
Locke, but which evaded Hume's scepticism by diverging towards
materialism. The great representative of this doctrine in England had
been Hartley, and in Stewart's day Hartley's lead had been followed by
Priestley, who attacked Reid from a materialist point of view, by
Priestley's successor, Thomas Belsham, and by Erasmus Darwin. We find
Stewart, in language which reminds us of later controversy, denouncing
the 'Darwinian School'[180] for theories about instinct incompatible
with the doctrine of final causes. It might appear that a philosopher
who has re-established the objective existence of space in opposition to
Berkeley, was in danger of that materialism which had been Berkeley's
bugbear. But Stewart escapes the danger by his assertion that our
knowledge of matter is 'relative' or confined to phenomena. Materialism
is for him a variety of ontology, involving the assumption that we know
the essence of matter. To speak with Hartley of 'vibrations,' animal
spirits, and so forth, is to be led astray by a false analogy. We can
discover the laws of correspondence of mind and body, but not the
ultimate nature of either.[181] Thus he regards the 'physiological
metaphysics of the present day' as an 'idle waste of labour and
ingenuity on questions to which the human mind is altogether
incompetent.'[182] The principles found by inductive observation are as
independent of these speculations as Newton's theory of gravitation of
an ultimate mechanical cause of gravitation.
Hartley's followers, however, could drop the 'vibration' theory; and
their doctrine then became one of 'association of ideas.' To this famous
theory, which became the sheet-anchor of the empirical school, Stewart
is not altogether opposed. We find him speaking of 'indissoluble
association' in language which reminds us of the Mills.[183] Hume had
spoken of association as comparable to gravitation--the sole principle
by which our 'ideas' and 'impressions' are combined into a whole; a
theory, of course, corresponding to his doctrine of 'belief' as a mere
custom of associating. Stewart uses the principle rather as Locke had
done, as explaining fallacies due to 'casual associations.' It supposes,
as he says, the previous existence of certain principles, and cannot be
an ultimate explanation. The only question can be at what point we have
reached an 'original principle,' and are therefore bound to stop our
analysis.[184] Over this question he glides rather too lightly, as is
his custom; but from his point of view the belief, for example, in an
external world, cannot be explained by association, inasmuch as it
reveals itself as an ultimate datum.
In regard to the physical sciences, then, Stewart's position
approximates very closely to the purely 'empirical' view. When we come
to a different application of his principles, we find him taking a
curiously balanced position between different schools. 'Common sense'
naturally wishes to adapt itself to generally accepted beliefs; and with
so flexible a doctrine as that of 'intuitions' it is not difficult to
discover methods of proving the ordinary dogmas. Stewart's theology is
characteristic of this tendency. He describes the so-called _a priori_
proof, as formulated by Clarke. But without denying its force, he does
not like to lay stress upon it. He dreads 'ontology' too much. He
therefore considers that the argument at once most satisfactory to the
philosopher and most convincing to ordinary men is the argument from
design. The belief in God is not 'intuitive,' but follows immediately
from two first principles: the principle that whatever exists has a
cause, and the principle that a 'combination of means implies a
designer.'[185] The belief in a cause arises on our perception of change
as our belief in the external world arises upon our sensations. The
belief in design must be a 'first principle' because it includes a
belief in 'necessity' which cannot arise from mere observation of
'contingent truths.'[186] Hence Stewart accepts the theory of final
causes as stated by Paley. Though Paley's ethics offended him, he has
nothing but praise for the work upon _Natural Theology_.[187] Thus,
although 'common sense' does not enable us to lay down the central
doctrine of theology as a primary truth, it does enable us to interpret
experience in theological terms. In other words, his theology is of the
purely empirical kind, which was, as we shall see, the general
characteristic of the time.
In Stewart's discussion of ethical problems the same doctrine of 'final
causes' assumes a special importance. Stewart, as elsewhere, tries to
hold an intermediate position; to maintain the independence of morality
without committing himself to the 'ontological' or purely logical view;
and to show that virtue conduces to happiness without allowing that its
dictates are to be deduced from its tendency to produce happiness. His
doctrine is to a great extent derived from the teaching of Hutcheson and
Bishop Butler. He really approximates most closely to Hutcheson, who
takes a similar view of Utilitarianism, but he professes the warmest
admiration of Butler. He explicitly accepts Butler's doctrine of the
'supremacy of the conscience'--a doctrine which as he says, the bishop,
'has placed in the strongest and happiest light.'[188] He endeavours,
again, to approximate to the 'intellectual school,' of which Richard
Price (1723-1791) was the chief English representative at the time. Like
Kant, Price deduces the moral law from principles of pure reason. The
truth of the moral law, 'Thou shalt do to others as you wish that they
should do to you,' is as evident as the truth of the law in geometry,
'things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.'
Stewart so far approves that he wishes to give to the moral law what is
now called all possible 'objectivity,' while the 'moral sense' of
Hutcheson apparently introduced a 'subjective' element. He holds,
however, that our moral perceptions 'involve a feeling of the heart,' as
well as a 'judgment of the understanding,'[189] and ascribes the same
view to Butler. But then, by using the word 'reason' so as to include
the whole nature of a rational being, we may ascribe to it the 'origin
of those simple ideas which are not excited in the mind by the operation
of the senses, but which arise in consequence of the operation of the
intellectual powers among the various objects.'[190] Hutcheson, he says,
made his 'moral sense' unsatisfactory by taking his illustrations from
the 'secondary' instead of the 'primary qualities,'[191] and thus with
the help of intuitive first principles, Stewart succeeds in believing
that it would be as hard for a man to believe that he ought to sacrifice
another man's happiness to his own as to believe that three angles of a
triangle are equal to one right angle.[192] It is true that a feeling
and a judgment are both involved; but the 'intellectual judgment' is the
groundwork of the feeling, not the feeling of the judgment.[193] In
spite, however, of this attempt to assimilate his principles to those of
the intellectual school, the substance of Stewart's ethics is
essentially psychological. It rests, in fact, upon his view that
philosophy depends upon inductive psychology, and, therefore,
essentially upon experience subject to the cropping up of convenient
'intuitions.'
This appears from the nature of his argument against the Utilitarians.
In his time, this doctrine was associated with the names of Hartley,
Tucker, Godwin, and especially Paley. He scarcely refers to
Bentham.[194] Paley is the recognised anvil for the opposite school. Now
he agrees, as I have said, with Paley's view of natural theology and
entirely accepts therefore the theory of 'final causes.' The same theory
becomes prominent in his ethical teaching. We may perhaps say that
Stewart's view is in substance an inverted Utilitarianism. It may be
best illustrated by an argument familiar in another application. Paley
and his opponents might agree that the various instincts of an animal
are so constituted that in point of fact they contribute to his
preservation and his happiness. But from one point of view this appears
to be simply to say that the conditions of existence necessitate a
certain harmony, and that the harmony is therefore to be a consequence
of his self-preservation. From the opposite point of view, which Stewart
accepts, it appears that the self-preservation is the consequence of a
pre-established harmony, which has been divinely appointed in order that
he may live. Stewart, in short, is a 'teleologist' of the Paley variety.
Psychology proves the existence of design in the moral world, as anatomy
or physiology proves it in the physical.
Stewart therefore fully agrees that virtue generally produces happiness.
If it be true (a doctrine, he thinks, beyond our competence to decide)
that 'the sole principle of action in the Deity' is benevolence, it may
be that he has commanded us to be virtuous because he sees virtue to be
useful. In this case utility may be the final cause of morality; and the
fact that virtue has this tendency gives the plausibility to utilitarian
systems.[195] But the key to the difficulty is the distinction between
'final' and 'efficient' causes; for the efficient cause of morality is
not the desire for happiness, but a primitive and simple instinct,
namely, the moral faculty.
Thus he rejects Paley's notorious doctrine that virtue differs from
prudence only in regarding the consequences in another world instead of
consequences in this.[196] Reward and punishment 'presuppose the notions
of right and wrong' and cannot be the source of those notions. The
favourite doctrine of association, by which the Utilitarians explained
unselfishness, is only admissible as accounting for modifications, such
as are due to education and example, but 'presupposes the existence of
certain principles which are common to all mankind.' The evidence of
such principles is established by a long and discursive psychological
discussion. It is enough to say that he admits two rational principles,
'self-love' and the 'moral faculty,' the coincidence of which is learned
only by experience. The moral faculty reveals simple 'ideas' of right
and wrong, which are incapable of any further analysis. But besides
these, there is a hierarchy of other instincts or desires, which he
calls 'implanted' because 'for aught we know' they may be of 'arbitrary
appointment.'[197] Resentment, for example, is an implanted instinct, of
which the 'final cause' is to defend us against 'sudden violence.'[198]
Stewart's analysis is easygoing and suggests more problems than it
solves. The general position, however, is clear enough, and not, I
think, without much real force as against the Paley form of
utilitarianism.
The acceptance of the doctrine of 'final causes' was the inevitable
course for a philosopher who wishes to retain the old creeds and yet to
appeal unequivocally to experience. It suits the amiable optimism for
which Stewart is noticeable. To prove the existence of a perfect deity
from the evidence afforded by the world, you must of course take a
favourable view of the observable order. Stewart shows the same tendency
in his Political Economy, where he is Adam Smith's disciple, and fully
shares Smith's beliefs that the harmony between the interests of the
individual and the interests of the society is an evidence of design in
the Creator of mankind. In this respect Stewart differs notably from
Butler, to whose reasonings he otherwise owed a good deal. With Butler
the conscience implies a dread of divine wrath and justifies the
conception of a world alienated from its maker. Stewart's 'moral
faculty' simply recognises or reveals the moral law; but carries no
suggestion of supernatural penalties. The doctrines by which Butler
attracted some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his
writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling
and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the
rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. This, however,
suggests a final remark upon Stewart's position.
In the preface[199] to his _Active and Moral Powers_ (1828) Stewart
apologises for the large space given to the treatment of Natural
Religion. The lectures, he says, which form the substance of the book,
were given at a time when 'enlightened zeal for liberty' was associated
with the 'reckless boldness of the uncompromising freethinker.' He
wished, therefore, to show that a man could be a liberal without being
an atheist. This gives the position characteristic of Stewart and his
friends. The group of eminent men who made Edinburgh a philosophical
centre was thoroughly in sympathy with the rationalist movement of the
eighteenth century. The old dogmatic system of belief could be held very
lightly even by the more educated clergy. Hume's position is
significant. He could lay down the most unqualified scepticism in his
writings; but he always regarded his theories as intended for the
enlightened; he had no wish to disturb popular beliefs in theology, and
was a strong Tory in politics. His friends were quite ready to take him
upon that footing. The politeness with which 'Mr. Hume's' speculations
are noticed by men like Stewart and Reid is in characteristic contrast
to the reception generally accorded to more popular sceptics. They were
intellectual curiosities not meant for immediate application. The real
opinion of such men as Adam Smith and Stewart was probably a rather
vague and optimistic theism. In the professor's chair they could talk to
lads intended for the ministry without insulting such old Scottish
prejudice (there was a good deal of it) as survived: and could cover
rationalising opinions under language which perhaps might have a
different meaning for their hearers. The position was necessarily one of
tacit compromise. Stewart considers himself to be an inductive
philosopher appealing frankly to experience and reason; and was in
practice a man of thoroughly liberal and generous feelings. He was
heartily in favour of progress as he understood it. Only he will not
sacrifice common sense; that is to say, the beliefs which are in fact
prevalent and congenial to existing institutions. Common sense, of
course, condemns extremes: and if logic seems to be pushing a man
towards scepticism in philosophy or revolution in practice, he can
always protest by the convenient device of intuitions.
I have gone so far in order to illustrate the nature of the system which
the Utilitarians took to be the antithesis of their own. It may be
finally remarked that at present both sides were equally ignorant of
contemporary developments of German thought. When Stewart became aware
that there was such a thing as Kant's philosophy, he tried to read it in
a Latin version. Parr, I may observe, apparently did not know of this
version, and gave up the task of reading German. Stewart's example was
not encouraging. He had abandoned the 'undertaking in despair' partly
from the scholastic barbarism of the style, partly 'my utter inability
to comprehend the author's meaning.' He recognises similarity between
Kant and Reid, but thinks Reid's simple statement of the fact that space
cannot be derived from the senses more philosophical than Kant's
'superstructure of technical mystery.'[200]
I have dwelt upon the side in which Stewart's philosophy approximates to
the empirical school, because the Utilitarians were apt to misconceive
the position. They took Stewart to be the adequate representative of all
who accepted one branch of an inevitable dilemma. The acceptance of
'intuitions,' that is, was the only alternative to thoroughgoing
acceptance of 'experience.' They supposed, too, that persons vaguely
described as 'Kant and the Germans' taught simply a modification of the
'intuitionist' view. I have noticed how emphatically Stewart claimed to
rely upon experience and to base his philosophy upon inductive
psychology, and was so far admitting the first principles and the
general methods of his opponents. The Scottish philosophy, however,
naturally presented itself as an antagonistic force to the Utilitarians.
The 'intuitions' represented the ultimate ground taken, especially in
religious and ethical questions, by men who wished to be at once liberal
philosophers and yet to avoid revolutionary extremes. 'Intuitions' had
in any case a negative value, as protests against the sufficiency of the
empirical analysis. It might be quite true, for example, that Hume's
analysis of certain primary mental phenomena--of our belief in the
external world or of the relation of cause and effect--was radically
insufficient. He had not given an adequate explanation of the facts. The
recognition of the insufficiency of his reasoning was highly important
if only as a stimulus to inquiry. It was a warning to his and to
Hartley's followers that they had not thoroughly unravelled the
perplexity but only cut the knot. But when the insufficiency of the
explanation was interpreted as a demonstration that all explanation was
impossible, and the 'intuition' an ultimate 'self-evident' truth, it
became a refusal to inquire just where inquiry was wanted; a positive
command to stop analysis at an arbitrary point; and a round assertion
that the adversary could not help believing precisely the doctrine which
he altogether declined to believe. Naturally the empiricists refused to
bow to an authority which was simply saying, 'Don't inquire further,'
without any ground for the prohibition except the '_ipse dixitism_'
which declared that inquiry must be fruitless. Stewart, in fact, really
illustrated the equivocation between the two meanings of 'common sense.'
If by that name he understood, as he professed to understand, ultimate
'laws of thought,' his position was justifiable as soon as he could
specify the laws and prove that they were ultimate. But so far as he
virtually took for granted that the average beliefs of intelligent
people were such laws, and on that ground refused to examine the
evidence of their validity, he was inconsistent, and his position only
invited assault. As a fact, I believe that his 'intuitions' covered many
most disputable propositions; and that the more clearly they were
stated, the more they failed to justify his interpretations. He was not
really answering the most vital and critical questions, but implicitly
reserving them, and putting an arbitrary stop to investigations
desirable on his own principles.
The Scottish philosophy was, however, accepted in England, and made a
considerable impression in France, as affording a tenable barrier
against scepticism. It was, as I have said, in philosophy what
Whiggism was in politics. Like political Whiggism it included a large
element of enlightened and liberal rationalism; but like Whiggism it
covered an aversion to thoroughgoing logic. The English politician was
suspicious of abstract principles, but could cover his acceptance of
tradition and rule of thumb by general phrases about liberty and
toleration. The Whig in philosophy equally accepted the traditional
creed, sufficiently purified from cruder elements, and sheltered his
doctrine by speaking of 'intuitions and laws of thought.' In both
positions there was really, I take it, a great deal of sound practical
wisdom; but they also implied a marked reluctance to push inquiry too
far, and a tacit agreement to be content with what the Utilitarians
denounced as 'vague generalities'--phrases, that is, which might be
used either to conceal an underlying scepticism, or really to stop
short in the path which led to scepticism. In philosophy as in
politics, the Utilitarians boasted of being thoroughgoing Radicals,
and hated compromises which to them appeared to be simply obstructive.
I need not elaborate a point which will meet us again. If I were
writing a history of thought in general I should have to notice other
writers, though there were none of much distinction, who followed the
teaching of Stewart or of his opponents of the Hartley and Darwin
school. It would be necessary also to insist upon the growing interest
in the physical sciences, which were beginning not only to make
enormous advances, but to attract popular attention. For my purpose,
however, it is I think sufficient to mention these writers, each of
whom had a very special relation to the Utilitarians. I turn,
therefore, to Bentham.
NOTES:
[157] Nine volumes of Dugald Stewart's works, edited by Sir W. Hamilton,
appeared from 1854 to 1856; a tenth, including a life of Stewart by J.
Veitch, appeared in 1858, and an eleventh, with an index to the whole,
in 1860. The chief books are the _Elements of the Philosophy of the
Human Mind_ (in vols. ii., iii. and iv., originally in 1792, 1814,
1827); _Philosophical Essays_ (in vol. v., originally 1810); _Philosophy
of the Active and Moral Powers of Man_ (vols. vi. and vii., originally
in 1828); _Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy_ (in vol. i.;
originally in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, in 1815 and 1821). The lectures
on Political Economy first appeared in the _Works_, vols. viii. and ix.
[158] _Works_, vi. ('Preface').
[159] _Works_ (Life of Reid), x. 304-8.
[160] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 302.
[161] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 88.
[162] _Ibid._ 206.
[163] _Ibid._ 267.
[164] Stewart's remarks on his life of Reid: Reid's _Works_, p. 12, etc.
[165] _The World as Will and Idea_ (Haldane & Kemp), ii. 186. Reid's
'_Inquiry_,' he adds, is ten times better worth reading than all the
philosophy together which has been written since Kant.
[166] 'We are inspired with the sensation, as we are inspired with the
corresponding perception, by means unknown.'--Reid's _Works_, 188.
'This,' says Stewart, 'is a plain statement of fact.'--Stewart's
_Works_, ii. 111-12.
[167] See Rosmini's _Origin of Ideas_ (English translation), i. p. 91,
where, though sympathising with Reid's aim, he admits a 'great blunder.'
[168] Stewart's _Works_, v. 24-53. Hamilton says in a note (p. 41) that
Jeffrey candidly confessed Stewart's reply to be satisfactory.
[169] _Ibid._ ii. 46.
[170] _Ibid._ ii. 45-67.
[171] _Ibid._ ii. 159.
[172] _Ibid._ v. 21.
[173] Stewart's _Works_, ii. 165-93; iii. 81-97. Schopenhauer (_The
World as Will and Idea_, ii. 240) admires Reid's teaching upon this
point, and recommends us not 'to waste an hour over the scribblings of
this shallow writer' (Stewart).
[174] Rosmini's _Origin of Ideas_ (English translation), i. 96-176.
[175] _Ibid._ i. 147 _n._
[176] Stewart's _Works_, iv. 29, 35, 38, and v. 149-88.
[177] _Ibid._ ii. 97, etc., and iii. 235, 389, 417.
[178] _Works_, vii. 13-34.
[179] _Ibid._ vii. 26, etc.
[180] _Works_, iv. 265.
[181] _Ibid._ ii. 52.
[182] _Ibid._ v. 10.
[183] _Works_, ii. 155.
[184] _Ibid._ ii. 337.
[185] _Works_, vi. 46; vii. 11.
[186] _Ibid._ vii. 46.
[187] _Ibid._ i. 357.
[188] _Works_, vi. 320.
[189] _Ibid._ vi. 279.
[190] _Ibid._ vi. 297.
[191] _Works_, vi. 295. Cf. v. 83.
[192] _Ibid._ vi. 298-99.
[193] _Ibid._ v. 84.
[194] In _Works_, vi. 205-6, he quotes Dumont's _Bentham_; but his
general silence is the more significant, as in the lectures on Political
Economy he makes frequent and approving reference to Bentham's tract
upon usury.
[195] _Works_, vii. 236-38.
[196] _Ibid._ vi. 221.
[197] _Works_, vi. 213.
[198] _Ibid._ vi. 199.
[199] _Works_, vi. 111.
[200] _Works_, v. 117 18. I have given some details as to Stewart's
suffering under an English proselyte of Kant in my _Studies of a
Biographer_.