REVIEW OF THE WORK OF MR JOHN STUART MILL
ENTITLED, 'EXAMINATION OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTONS PHILOSOPHY'
BY GEORGE GROTE
AUTHOR OF
'THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT GREECE,'
'PLATO AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOCRATES,' ETC.
1868
_Reprinted from the 'Westminster Review,' January 1, 1866._
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS
_An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, and of the
Principal Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings_. By JOHN
STUART MILL. London: Longmans. 1865.
The work bearing the above title is an octavo volume, consisting of
twenty-eight chapters, and five hundred and sixty pages. This is no
great amount of print; but the amount of matter contained in it is
prodigious, and the quality of that matter such as to require a full
stretch of attention. Mr Mill gives his readers no superfluous
sentences, scarcely even a superfluous word, above what is necessary to
express his meaning briefly and clearly. Of such a book no complete
abstract can be given in the space to which we are confined.
To students of philosophy--doubtless but a minority among the general
circle of English readers--this work comes recommended by the strongest
claims both of interest and instruction. It presents in direct
antithesis two most conspicuous representatives of the modern
speculative mind of England--Sir W. Hamilton and Mr John Stuart Mill.
Sir W. Hamilton has exercised powerful influence over the stream of
thought during the present generation. The lectures on Logic and
Metaphysics delivered by him at Edinburgh, for twenty years, determined
the view taken of those subjects by a large number of aspiring young
students, and determined that view for many of them permanently and
irrevocably.[1] Several eminent teachers and writers of the present day
are proud of considering themselves his disciples, enunciate his
doctrines in greater or less proportion, and seldom contradict him
without letting it be seen that they depart unwillingly from such a
leader. Various new phrases and psychological illustrations have
obtained footing in treatises of philosophy, chiefly from his authority.
We do not number ourselves among his followers; but we think his
influence on philosophy was in many ways beneficial. He kept up the idea
of philosophy as a subject to be studied from its own points of view: a
dignity which in earlier times it enjoyed, perhaps, to mischievous
excess, but from which in recent times it has far too much
receded--especially in England. He performed the great service of
labouring strenuously to piece together the past traditions of
philosophy, to re-discover those which had been allowed to drop into
oblivion, and to make out the genealogy of opinions as far as negligent
predecessors had still left the possibility of doing so.
The forty-six lectures on Metaphysics, and the thirty-five lectures on
Logic, published by Messrs Mansel and Veitch, constitute the biennial
course actually delivered by Sir W. Hamilton in the Professorial Chair.
They ought therefore to be looked at chiefly with reference to the minds
of youthful hearers, as preservatives against that mischief forcibly
described by Rousseau--'L'inhabitude de penser dans la jeunesse en ôte
la capacité pendant le reste de la vie.'
Now, in a subject so abstract, obscure, and generally unpalatable, as
Logic and Metaphysics, the difficulty which the teacher finds in
inspiring interest is extreme. That Sir W. Hamilton overcame such
difficulty with remarkable success, is the affirmation of his two
editors; and our impression, as readers of his lectures, disposes us to
credit them. That Sir W. Hamilton should have done this effectively is
in itself sufficient to stamp him as a meritorious professor--as a
worthy successor to the chair of Dugald Stewart, whose unrivalled
perfection in that department is attested by every one. Many a man who
ultimately adopted speculative opinions opposed to Dugald Stewart,
received his first impulse and guidance in the path of speculation from
the lasting impression made by Stewart's lectures.
But though we look at these lectures, as they ought to be looked at,
chiefly with a view to the special purpose for which they were destined,
we are far from insinuating that they have no other merits, or that they
are useless for readers who have already a metaphysical creed of their
own. We have found them both instructive and interesting: they go over a
large proportion of the field of speculative philosophy, partly from the
point of view (not always the same) belonging to the author, partly from
that of numerous predecessors whom he cites. We recognize also in Sir W.
Hamilton an amount of intellectual independence which seldom accompanies
such vast erudition. He recites many different opinions, but he judges
them all for himself; and, what is of still greater moment, he
constantly gives the reasons for his judgments. To us these reasons are
always of more or less value, whether we admit them to be valid or not.
Many philosophers present their own doctrine as if it were so much
ascertained and acknowledged truth, either intimating, or leading you to
suppose, that though erroneous beliefs to the contrary formerly
prevailed, these have now become discredited with every one. We do not
censure this way of proceeding, but we prefer the manner of Sir W.
Hamilton. He always keeps before us divergence and discrepancy of view
as the normal condition of reasoned truth or philosophy; the
characteristic postulate of which is, that every affirmative and every
negative shall have its appropriate reasons clearly and fully
enunciated.
In this point of view the appendix annexed to the lectures is also
valuable; and the four copious appendixes or dissertations following
the edition of Reid's works, are more valuable still. How far Sir W.
Hamilton has there furnished good proof of his own doctrines on External
Perception, and on the Primary Qualities of Matter, we shall not now
determine; but to those who dissent from him, as well as to those who
agree with him, his reasonings on these subjects are highly instructive:
while the full citations from so many other writers contribute
materially not only to elucidate the points directly approached, but
also to enlarge our knowledge of philosophy generally. We set particular
value upon this preservation of the traditions of philosophy, and upon
this maintenance of a known perpetual succession among the speculative
minds of humanity, with proper comparisons and contrasts. We have found
among the names quoted by Sir W. Hamilton, and, thanks to his care,
several authors hardly at all known to us, and opinions cited from them
not less instructive than curious. He deserves the more gratitude,
because he departs herein from received usage since Bacon and Descartes.
The example set by these great men was admirable, so far as it went to
throw off the authority of predecessors; but pernicious so far as it
banished those predecessors out of knowledge, like mere magazines of
immaturity and error. Throughout the eighteenth century, all study of
the earlier modes of philosophizing was, for the most part, neglected.
Of such neglect, remarkable instances are pointed out by Sir W.
Hamilton.
While speaking about the general merits and philosophical position of
Sir William Hamilton, we have hitherto said nothing about those of Mr
Mill. But before we proceed to analyze the separate chapters of his
volume, we must devote a few words to the fulfilment of another
obligation.
Mr John Stuart Mill has not been the first to bestow honour on the
surname which he bears. His father, Mr James Mill, had already ennobled
the name. An ampler title to distinction in history and philosophy can
seldom be produced than that which Mr James Mill left behind him. We
know no work which surpasses his 'History of British India' in the main
excellencies attainable by historical writers: industrious accumulation,
continued for many years, of original authorities--careful and
conscientious criticism of their statements--and a large command of
psychological analysis, enabling the author to interpret phenomena of
society, both extremely complicated, and far removed from his own
personal experience. Again, Mr James Mill's 'Elements of Political
Economy' were, at the time when they appeared, the most logical and
condensed exposition of the entire science then existing. Lastly, his
latest avowed production, the 'Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human
Mind,' is a model of perspicuous exposition of complex states of
consciousness, carried farther than by any other author before him; and
illustrating the fulness which such exposition may be made to attain, by
one who has faith in the comprehensive principle of association, and has
learnt the secret of tracing out its innumerable windings. It is,
moreover, the first work in which the great fact of Indissoluble
Association is brought into its due theoretical prominence. These are
high merits, of which lasting evidence is before the public; but there
were other merits in Mr James Mill, less publicly authenticated, yet not
less real. His unpremeditated oral exposition was hardly less effective
than his prepared work with the pen; his colloquial fertility on
philosophical subjects, his power of discussing himself, and of
stimulating others to discuss, his ready responsive inspirations through
all the shifts and windings of a sort of Platonic dialogue--all these
accomplishments were, to those who knew him, even more impressive than
what he composed for the press. Conversation with him was not merely
instructive, but provocative to the dormant intelligence. Of all persons
whom we have known, Mr James Mill was one who stood least remote from
the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic--[Greek: _Tou didhonai kahi
dhechesthai lhogon_]--(the giving and receiving of reasons) competent
alike to examine others, or to be examined by them, on philosophy. When
to this we add a strenuous character, earnest convictions, and
single-minded devotion to truth, with an utter disdain of mere
paradox--it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful
intellectual ascendancy over younger minds. Several of those who enjoyed
his society--men now at, or past, the maturity of life, and some of them
in distinguished positions--remember and attest with gratitude such
ascendancy in their own cases: among them the writer of the present
article, who owes to the historian of British India an amount of
intellectual stimulus and guidance such as he can never forget.
When a father, such as we have described, declining to send his son
either to school or college, constituted himself schoolmaster from the
beginning, and performed that duty with laborious solicitude--when,
besides full infusion of modern knowledge, the forcing process applied
by the Platonic Socrates to the youth-Theætêtus, was administered by Mr
James Mill, continuously and from an earlier age, to a youthful mind not
less pregnant than that of Theætêtus--it would be surprising if the son
thus trained had not reached even a higher eminence than his father. The
fruit borne by Mr John Stuart Mill has been worthy of the culture
bestowed, and the volume before us is at once his latest and his ripest
product.
The 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy' is intended by Mr
Mill (so he tells us in the preface to the sixth published edition of
his 'System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive') as a sequel and
complement to that system. We are happy to welcome so valuable an
addition; but with or without that addition, the 'System of Logic'
appears to us to present the most important advance in speculative
theory which the present century has witnessed. Either half of it, the
Ratiocinative or the Inductive, would have surpassed any previous work
on the same subject. The Inductive half discriminates and brings into
clear view, for the first time, those virtues of method which have
insensibly grown into habits among consummate scientific inquirers of
the post-Baconian age, as well as the fallacies by which some of these
authors have been misled. The Ratiocinative half, dealing with matters
which had already been well handled by Dutrieu and other scholastic
logicians, invests their dead though precise formalism with a real life
and application to the actual process of finding and proving truth. But
besides thus working each half up to perfection, Mr Mill has performed
the still more difficult task of overcoming the repugnance, apparently
an inveterate repugnance, between them, so as chemically to combine the
two into one homogeneous compound; thus presenting the problem of
Reasoned Truth, Inference, Proof, and Disproof, as one connected whole.
For ourselves, we still recollect the mist which was cleared from our
minds when we first read the 'System of Logic,' very soon after it was
published. We were familiar with the Syllogistic Logic in Burgersdicius
and Dutrieu; we were also familiar with examples of the best procedure
in modern inductive science; but the two streams flowed altogether apart
in our minds, like two parallel lines never joining nor approaching. The
irreconcilability of the two was at once removed, when we had read and
mastered the second and third chapters of the Second Book of the 'System
of Logic;' in which Mr Mill explains the functions and value of the
Syllogism, and the real import of its major premiss. This explanation
struck us at the time as one of the most profound and original efforts
of metaphysical thought that we had ever perused, and we see no reason
to retract that opinion now.[2] It appears all the more valuable when we
contrast it with what is said by Mr Mill's two contemporaries--Hamilton
and Whately: the first of whom retains the ancient theory of reasoning,
as being only a methodized transition from a whole to its parts, and
from the parts up to the whole--Induction being only this ascending part
of the process, whereby, after having given a complete enumeration of
all the compound parts, you conclude to the sum total described in one
word as a whole;[3] while the second (Whately) agrees in subordinating
Induction to Syllogism, but does so in a different way--by representing
inductive reasoning as a syllogism, with its major premiss suppressed,
from which major premiss it derived its authority. The explanation of Mr
Mill attacks the problem from the opposite side. It subordinates
syllogism to induction, the technical to the real; it divests the major
premiss of its illusory pretence to be itself the proving authority, or
even any real and essential part of the proof--and acknowledges it
merely as a valuable precautionary test and security for avoiding
mistake in the process of proving. Taking Mr Mill's 'System of Logic' as
a whole, it is one of the books by which we believe ourselves to have
most profited. The principles of it are constantly present to our mind
when engaged in investigations of evidence, whether scientific or
historical.
Concerned as we are here with Mr Mill only as a logician and
philosopher, we feel precluded from adverting to his works on other
topics--even to his 'Elements of Political Economy,' by which he is
probably more widely known than by anything else. Of the many
obligations which Political Economy owes to him, one only can be noticed
consistent with the scope of the present article: the care which he has
taken--he alone, or at least, he more explicitly and formally than any
other expositor--to set forth the general position of that science in
the aggregate field of scientific research; its relation to sociology as
a whole, or to other fractions thereof, how far derivative or
co-ordinate; what are its fundamental postulates or hypotheses, with
what limits the logical methods of induction and deduction are
applicable to it, and how far its conclusions may be relied on as
approximations to truth. All these points will be found instructively
handled in the Sixth Book of Mr Mill's 'System of Logic,' as well as in
his smaller and less known work, 'Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in
Political Economy.' We find him, while methodizing and illustrating the
data of the special science, uniformly keeping in view its relation to
philosophy as a whole.
But there is yet another work in which the interests of philosophy, as a
whole, come into the foreground and become the special object of
vindication in their largest compass and most vital requirements. We
mean Mr Mill's 'Essay on Liberty,' one half of which takes for its
thesis the _libertus philosophandi_. He maintains, emphatically, in this
book, the full dignity of reasoned truth against all the jealous
exigencies of traditional dogma and self-justifying sentiment. He claims
the most unreserved liberty of utterance for negative and affirmative on
all questions--not merely for the purpose of discriminating truth from
falsehood, but also to keep up in individual minds the full sense and
understanding of the matters controverted, in place of a mere partial
and one-sided adhesion. At first sight, indeed, it might seem as if Mr
Mill was fighting with a shadow; for liberty of philosophizing is a
postulate which, in general terms, every one concedes. But when you come
to fathom the real feelings which underlie this concession, you discover
that almost every man makes it under reserves which, though acting in
silence, are not the less efficacious. Every one has some dogmas which
he cannot bear to hear advocated, and others which he will not allow to
be controverted in his presence. A writer has to consider not merely by
what reasons any novelty of belief or disbelief may be justified, but
also how much it will be safe for him to publish, having regard to the
irritable sore places of the public judgment. In July, 1864, we were
present at the annual meeting of the French Academy at Paris, where the
prizes for essays sent in, pursuant to subjects announced for study
beforehand, are awarded. We heard the titles of various compositions
announced by the President (M. Villemain), with a brief critical
estimate of each. Their comparative merits were appreciated, and the
prize awarded to one of the competitors. Among the compositions sent to
compete for the prize, one was a work by M. Taine, upon which the
President bestowed the most remarkable encomiums, in every different
point of view: extent of knowledge, force of thought, style,
arrangement, all were praised in a manner which we have rarely heard
exceeded. Nevertheless, the prize was not awarded to this work, but to
another which the President praised in a manner decidedly less marked
and emphatic. What was here the _ratio decidendi_? The reason was, and
the President declared it in the most explicit language, that the work
of M. Taine _was deeply tainted with materialism_. 'Sans doute,' said
the esteemed veteran of French literature in pronouncing his award,
'sans doute les opinions sont libres, _mais_'--It is precisely against
this _mais_--ushering in the special anathematized or consecrated
conclusion which it is intended to except from the general liberty of
enforcing or impugning--in matters of philosophical discussion, that Mr
Mill, in the 'Essay on Liberty,' declares war as champion of Reasoned
Truth.
He handles this grand theme--_eleythheroys eleythherôs
philosophein_--involving as it does the best interests of philosophy,
as an instructress to men's judgments, and a stimulus to their
intelligence--with great depth of psychological analysis sustained by
abundant historical illustration. And he in the same volume discusses
most profitably another question akin to it--To what extent, and by what
principles, the interference of others is justifiable, in restraining
the liberty of taste and action for each individual? A question at once
grave and neglected, but the discussion of which does not belong to our
present article.
A new work from one who has already manifested such mastery of
philosophy, both in principle and in detail, and a work exhibiting the
analysis and appreciation of the philosophical views of an eminent
contemporary, must raise the highest expectation. We think no reader
will be disappointed who peruses Mr Mill's 'Examination,' and we shall
now endeavour to give some account of the manner in which he performs
it. Upon topics so abstract and subtle as the contents of this volume,
the antithesis between two rival theories is the best way, and often the
only way, for bringing truth into clear view; and the 'Examination' here
before us is professedly controversy. But of controversy in its
objectionable sense--of captious or acrimonious personality--not a trace
will here be found. A dignified, judicial equanimity of tone is
preserved from first to last. Moreover, though the title and direct
purpose of the volume is negative and critical, yet the destructive
criticism is pervaded by many copious veins of constructive exposition,
embodying Mr Mill's own views upon some of the most intricate problems
of metaphysics.
Mr Mill begins his work by analyzing and explaining the doctrine called
the Relativity of Human Knowledge:
'The doctrine (chap. ii. p. 5) which is thought to belong in
the most especial manner to Sir W. Hamilton, and which was
the ground of his opposition to the transcendentalism of the
later French and German metaphysicians, is that which he and
others have called the Relativity of Human Knowledge. It is
the subject of the most generally known and impressive of
all his writings--the one which first revealed to the
English metaphysical reader that a new power had arisen in
philosophy. Together with its developments, it composes the
Philosophy of the Conditioned, which he opposed to the
French and German philosophies of the Absolute, and which is
regarded by most of his admirers as the greatest of his
titles to a permanent place in the history of metaphysical
thought. But, "the relativity of human knowledge," like most
other phrases into which the words _relative_ or _relation_
enter, is vague, and admits of a great variety of meanings,'
&c.
Mr Mill then proceeds to distinguish these various meanings, and to
determine in which of them the phrase is understood by Sir W. Hamilton.
One meaning is, that we only know anything by knowing it as
distinguished from something else--that all consciousness is of
difference. It is not, however, in this sense that the expression is
ordinarily or intentionally used by Sir W. Hamilton, though he fully
recognizes the truth which, when thus used, it serves to express. In
general, when he says that all our knowledge is relative, the relation
he has in view is not between the thing known and other objects compared
with it, but between the thing known and the mind knowing--(p. 6).
The doctrine in this last meaning is held by different philosophers in
two different forms. Some (e.g. Berkeley, Hume, Ferrier, &c.), usually
called Idealists, maintain not merely that all we can possibly know of
anything is the manner in which it affects the human faculties, but that
there is nothing else to be known; that affections of human or of other
minds are all that we can know to exist--that the difference between the
ego and the non-ego is only a formal distinction between two aspects of
the same reality. Other philosophers (Brown, Mr Herbert Spencer, Auguste
Comte, with many others) believe that the ego and the non-ego denote two
realities, each self-existent, and neither dependent on the other; that
the Noumenon, or 'thing _per se_,' is in itself a different thing from
the Phenomenon, and equally or more real, but that, though we know its
existence, we have no means of knowing what it is. All that we can know
is, relatively to ourselves, the modes in which it affects us, or the
phenomena which it produces--(pp. 9--11).
The doctrine of Relativity, as held by Kant and his many followers, is
next distinguished from the same doctrine as held by Hartley, James
Mill, Professor Bain, &c., compatible with either acceptance or
rejection of the Berkeleian theory. Kant maintains that the attributes
which we ascribe to outward things, or which are inseparable from them
in thought, contain additional elements over and above sensations _plus_
an unknowable cause--additional elements added by the mind itself, and
therefore still only relative, but constituting the original furniture
of the mind itself--inherent laws, partly of our sensitive, partly of
our intellectual faculty. It is on this latter point that Hartley and
those going along with him diverge. Admitting the same additional
elements, these philosophers do not ascribe to the mind any innate forms
to account for them, but hold that place, extension, substance, cause,
and the rest, &c., are conceptions put together out of ideas of
sensation, by the known laws of Association--(pp. 12--14).
Partial Relativity is the opinion professed by most philosophers (and by
most persons who do not philosophize). They hold that we know things
partly as they are in themselves, partly as they are merely in relation
to us.
This discrimination of the various schools of philosophers is highly
instructive, and is given with the full perspicuity belonging to Mr
Mill's style. He proceeds to examine in what sense Sir W. Hamilton
maintained the Relativity of Human Knowledge. He cites passages both
from the 'Discussions on Philosophy' and from the Lectures, in which
that doctrine is both affirmed in its greatest amplitude, and enunciated
in the most emphatic language--(pp. 17, 18, 22, 23). But he also
produces extracts from the most elaborate of Sir W. Hamilton's
'Dissertations on Reid,' in which a doctrine quite different and
inconsistent is proclaimed--that our knowledge is only partially, not
wholly, relative; that the secondary qualities of matter, indeed, are
known to us only relatively, but that the primary qualities are known to
us as they are in themselves, or as they exist objectively, and that
they may be even evolved by demonstration _à priori_--(pp. 19-26, 30).
The inconsistency between the two doctrines, professed at different
times, and in different works, by Sir W. Hamilton, is certainly
manifest. Mr Mill is of opinion that one of the two must be taken 'in a
non-natural sense,' and that Sir W. Hamilton either did not hold, or had
ceased to hold, the doctrine of the full relativity of knowledge (pp.
20-28)--the hypothesis of a flat contradiction being in his view
inadmissible. But we think it at least equally possible that Sir W.
Hamilton held both the two opinions in their natural sense, and enforced
both of them _at different times_ by argument; his attention never
having been called to the contradiction between them. That such
forgetfulness was quite possible, will appear clearly in many parts of
the present article. His argument in support of both is equally
characterized by that peculiar energy of style which is frequent with
him, and which no way resembles the qualifying refinements of one
struggling to keep clear of a perceived contradiction.
From hence Mr Mill (chap. iv.) proceeds to criticise at considerable
length what he justly denominates the celebrated and striking review of
Cousin's philosophy, which forms the first paper in Sir W. Hamilton's
'Discussions on Philosophy.' According to Mr Mill--
'The question really at issue is this: Have we or have we
not an immediate intuition of God? The name of God is veiled
under two extremely abstract phrases, "The Infinite and the
Absolute," perhaps from a reverential feeling; such, at
least, is the reason given by Sir W. Hamilton's disciple, Mr
Mansel, for preferring the more vague expressions; but it is
one of the most unquestionable of all logical maxims, that
the meaning of the abstract must be sought for in the
concrete, and not conversely; and we shall see, both in the
case of Sir William Hamilton, and of Mr Mansel, that the
process cannot be reversed with impunity.'--p. 32.
Upon this we must remark, that though the 'logical maxim' here laid
down by Mr Mill may be generally sound, we think the application of it
inconvenient in the present case. Discussions on points of philosophy
are best conducted without either invoking or offending religious
feeling. M. Cousin maintains that we have a direct intuition of the
Infinite and the Absolute: Sir W. Hamilton denies that we have. Upon
this point Mr Mill sides entirely with Sir W. Hamilton, and considers
'that the latter has rendered good service to philosophy by refuting M.
Cousin,' though much of the reasoning employed in such refutation seems
to Mr Mill unsound. But Sir W. Hamilton goes further, and affirms that
we have no faculties capable of apprehending the Infinite and the
Absolute--that both of them are inconceivable to us, and by consequence
unknowable. Herein Mr Mill is opposed to him, and controverts his
doctrine in an elaborate argument.
Of this argument, able and ingenious, like all those in the present
volume, our limits only enable us to give a brief appreciation. In so
far as Mr Mill controverts Sir W. Hamilton, we think him perfectly
successful, though there are some points in his reasoning in which we do
not fully concur.
In our opinion, as in his, the Absolute alone (in its sense as opposed
to relative) can be necessarily unknowable, inconceivable, incogitable.
Nothing which falls under the condition of relativity can be declared to
be so. The structure of our minds renders us capable of knowing
everything which is relative, though there are many such things which we
have no evidence, nor shall ever get evidence, to enable us to know. Now
the Infinite falls within the conditions of relativity, as indeed Sir W.
Hamilton himself admits, when he intimates (p. 58) that though it cannot
be known, it is, must be, and ought to be, _believed_ by us, according
to the marked distinction which he draws between belief and knowledge.
We agree with Mr Mill in the opinion that it is thinkable, conceivable,
knowable. Doubtless we do not conceive it adequately, but we conceive it
sufficiently to discuss and reason upon it intelligibly to ourselves and
others. That we conceive the Infinite inadequately, is not to be held as
proof that we do not conceive it at all; for in regard to finite things
also, we conceive the greater number of them only inadequately.
We cannot construe to the imagination a polygon with an infinite number
of sides (i.e. with a number of sides greater than any given number),
but neither can we construe to the imagination a polygon with a million
of sides; nevertheless, we understand what is meant by the first
description as well as by the second, and can reason upon both. There
is, indeed, this difference between the two: That the terms used in
describing the first, proclaim at once in their direct meaning that we
should in vain attempt to construe it to the imagination; whereas the
terms used in describing the second do not intimate that fact. We know
the fact only by trial, or by an estimate of our own mental force which
is the result of many past trials. If the difference here noted were all
which Sir W. Hamilton has in view when he declares the Infinite to be
unknowable and incogitable, we should accede to his opinion; but we
apprehend that he means much more, and he certainly requires more to
justify the marked antithesis in which he places himself against M.
Cousin and Hegel. Indeed, the facility with which he declares matters to
be incogitable, which these two and other philosophers not only cogitate
but maintain as truth, is to us truly surprising. The only question
which appears to us important is, whether we can understand and reason
upon the meaning of the terms and propositions addressed to us. If we
can, the subjects propounded must be cogitable and conceivable, whether
we admit the propositions affirmed concerning them or not; if we cannot,
then these subjects are indeed incogitable by ourselves in the present
state of our knowledge, but they may not be so to our opponent who
employs the terms.
In criticising the arguments of Sir W. Hamilton against M. Cousin, Mr
Mill insists much on a distinction between (1) the Infinite, and (2) the
Infinite in any one or more positive attributes, such as infinite
wisdom, goodness, redness, hardness, &c.[4] He thinks that Sir W.
Hamilton has made out his case against the first, but not against the
last; that the first is really 'an unmeaning and senseless abstraction,'
a fasciculus of negations, unknowable and inconceivable, but not the
last. We think that Mr Mill makes more of this distinction than the
case warrants; that the first is not unmeaning, but an intelligible
abstraction, only a higher reach of abstraction than the last; that it
is knowable inadequately, in the same way as the last--though more
inadequately, because of its higher abstraction.
As the finite is intelligible, so also is its negation--the Infinite: we
do not say (with M. Cousin) that the two are conjointly given in
consciousness--but the two are understood and partially apprehended by
the mind conjointly and in contrast. Though the Infinite is doubtless
negative as to a degree, it is not wholly or exclusively negative, since
it includes a necessary reference to some positive attribute, to which
the degree belongs; the positive element is not eliminated, but merely
left undetermined. The Infinite (like the Finite, [Greek: to
peperasmhenon--to hapeiron]) is a genus; it comprehends under it the
Infinitely Hard and the Infinitely Soft, the Infinitely Swift and the
Infinitely Slow--the infinite, in short, of any or all positive
attributes. It includes, doubtless, 'a farrago of contradictions;' but
so, also, does the Finite--and so, also, do the actual manifestations of
the real, concrete universe, which manifestations constitute a portion
of the Finite. Whoever attempts to give any philosophical account of the
generation of the universe, tracing its phenomena, as an aggregate, to
some ultra-phenomenal origin, must include in his scheme a _fundamentum_
for all those opposite and contradictory manifestations which experience
discloses in the universe. There always have been, and still are, many
philosophers who consider the Abstract and General to be prior both in
nature and time to the Concrete and Particular; and who hold further
that these two last are explained, when presented as determinate and
successive manifestations of the two first, which they conceive as
indeterminate and sempiternal. Now the Infinite (Ens Infinitum or Entia
Infinita, according to the point of view in which we look at it) is a
generic word, including all these supposed indeterminate antecedents;
and including therefore, of course, many contradictory agencies. But
this does not make it senseless or unmeaning; nor can we distinguish it
from 'the Infinite in some one or more given attributes,' by any other
character than by greater reach of abstraction. We cannot admit the
marked distinction which Mr Mill contends for--that the one is
unknowable and the other knowable.
It may be proper to add that the mode of philosophizing which we have
just described is not ours. We do not agree in this way either of
conceiving, or of solving, the problem of philosophy. But it is a mode
so prevalent that Trendelenberg speaks of it, justly enough, as 'the
ancient Hysteron-Proteron of Abstraction.' The doctrine of these
philosophers appears to us unfounded, but we cannot call it unmeaning.
In another point, also, we differ from Mr Mill respecting that inferior
abstraction which he calls 'the Infinite in some particular attribute.'
He speaks as if this could be known not only as an abstraction, a
conceivable, an ideal--but also as a concrete reality; as if 'we could
know a concrete reality as infinite or as absolute' (p. 45); as if there
really existed in actual nature 'concrete persons or things possessing
infinitely or absolutely certain specific attributes'--(pp. 55--93). To
this doctrine we cannot subscribe. As we understand concrete reality, we
find no evidence to believe that there exist in nature any real concrete
persons or things, possessing to an infinite degree such attributes as
they do possess: _e.g._ any men infinitely wise or infinitely strong,
any horses infinitely swift, any stones infinitely hard. Such concrete
real objects appear to us not admissible, because experience not only
has not certified their existence in any single case, but goes as far to
disprove their existence as it can do to disprove anything. All the real
objects in nature known to us by observation are finite, and possess
only in a finite measure their respective attributes. Upon this is
founded the process of Science, so comprehensively laid out by Mr Mill
in his 'System of Logic '--Induction, Deduction from general facts
attested by Induction, Verification by experience of the results
obtained by Deduction. The attributes, whiteness or hardness, in the
abstract, are doubtless infinite; that is, the term will designate,
alike and equally, any degree of whiteness or hardness which you may
think of, and any unknown degree even whiter and harder than what you
think of. But when perceived as invested in a given mass of snow or
granite before us, they are divested of that indeterminateness, and
become restricted to a determinate measure and degree.
Having thus indicated the points on which we are compelled to dissent
from Mr Mill's refutation of Sir W. Hamilton in the pleading against M.
Cousin, we shall pass to the seventh chapter, in which occurs his first
controversy with Mr Mansel. This passage has excited more interest, and
will probably be remembered by a larger number of readers, than any
portion of the book. We shall give it in his own words (pp. 99--103),
since the energetic phraseology is quite as remarkable as the thought:--
'There is but one way for Mr Mansel out of this difficulty,
and he adopts it. He must maintain, not merely that an
Absolute Being is unknowable in himself, but that the
Relative attributes of an Absolute Being are unknowable
also.[5] He must say that we do not know what Wisdom,
Justice, Benevolence, Mercy, &c., are, as they exist in God.
Accordingly, he does say so. "It is a fact" (says Mr Mansel)
"which experience forces upon us, and which it is useless,
were it possible, to disguise, that the representation of
God after the model of the highest human morality which we
are capable of conceiving, is not sufficient to account for
all the phenomena exhibited by the course of his natural
Providence. The infliction of physical suffering, the
permission of moral evil, the adversity of the good, the
prosperity of the wicked, the crimes of the guilty involving
the misery of the innocent, the tardy appearance and partial
distribution of moral and religious knowledge in the
world--these are facts, which no doubt are reconcilable, we
know not how, with the Infinite Goodness of God, but which
certainly are not to be explained on the supposition that
its sole and sufficient type is to be found in the finite
goodness of man."
'In other words' (continues Mr Mill commenting) 'it is
necessary to suppose that the infinite goodness ascribed to
God is not the goodness which we know and love in our
fellow-creatures, distinguished only as infinite in degree;
but is different in kind, and another quality altogether.
Accordingly Mr Mansel combats as a heresy of his opponents,
the opinion that infinite goodness differs only in degree
from finite goodness.--Here, then, I take my stand upon the
acknowledged principle of logic and of morality; that when
we mean different things we have no right to call them by
the same name, and to apply to them, the same predicates,
moral and intellectual. If, instead of the glad tidings that
there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the
highest human form can conceive, exist in a degree
inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled
by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are
we cannot learn, except that the highest human morality does
not sanction them--convince me of this and I will hear my
fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this,
and at the same time call this being by the names which
express and affirm the highest human morality, I say, in
plain terms, that I will not. Whatever power such a being
may have over me, there is one thing he shall not do; he
shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being
good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my
fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to
hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.'
This concluding declaration is memorable in many ways. Mr Mill announces
his resolution to determine for himself, and according to his own reason
and conscience, what God he will worship, and what God he will not
worship. For ourselves, we cordially sympathize with his resolution. But
Mr Mill must be aware that this is a point on which society is equally
resolved that no individual shall determine for himself, if they can
help it.[6] Each new-born child finds his religious creed ready
prepared for him. In his earliest days of unconscious infancy, the stamp
of the national, gentile, phratric, God, or Gods, is imprinted upon him
by his elders; and if the future man, in the exercise of his own
independent reason, acquires such convictions as compel him to renounce
those Gods, proclaiming openly that he does so--he must count upon such
treatment as will go far to spoil the value of the present life to him,
even before he passes to those ulterior liabilities which Mr Mill
indicates in the distance. We are not surprised that a declaration so
unusual and so impressive should have been often cited in critical
notices of this volume; that during the month preceding the last
Westminster election, it was studiously brought forward by some
opponents of Mr Mill, and more or less regretted by his friends, as
likely to offend many electors, and damage his chance of success; and
that a conspicuous and noble-minded ecclesiastic, the Dean of
Westminster, thought the occasion so grave as to come forward with his
characteristic generosity, for the purpose of shielding a distinguished
man suspected of heresy.
The sublime self-assertion, addressed by Prometheus to Zeus, under whose
sentence he was groaning, has never before been put into such plain
English.[7] Mr Mill's declaration reminds us also of Hippolytus, the
chaste and pure youth, whose tragic fate is so beautifully described by
Euripides. Hippolytus is exemplary in his devotions to the Goddess
Artemis; but he dissents from all his countrymen, and determines for
himself, in refusing to bestow the smallest mark of honour or worship
upon Aphroditê, because he considers her to be a very bad Goddess.[8] In
this refusal he persists with inflexible principle (even after having
received, from an anxious attendant, warning of the certain ruin which
it will bring upon him), until the insulted Aphroditê involves him,
along with the unhappy Phædra and Theseus himself, in one common abyss
of misery. In like manner Mr Mill's declaration stands in marked
contrast with the more cautious proceeding of men like Herodotus. That
historian, alike pious and prudent, is quite aware that all the Gods are
envious and mischief-making, and expressly declares them to be so.[9]
Yet, far from refusing to worship them on that account, he is assiduous
in prayer and sacrifice--perhaps, indeed, all the more assiduous in
consequence of what he believes about their attributes;[10] being
persuaded (like the attendant who warned Hippolytus) that his only
chance of mollifying their ungentle dispositions in regard to himself
is, by honorific tribute in words and offerings.
When, however, after appreciating as we are bound to do Mr Mill's
declaration of subjective sentiment, we pass to its logical bearing on
the controversy between him and Mr Mansel, we are obliged to confess
that in this point of view it has little objective relevancy. The
problem was, how to reconcile the actual evil and suffering in the
universe (which is recited as a fact by Mr Mansel, though in terms
conveying a most inadequate idea of its real magnitude) with the
goodness of God. Mr Mill repudiates the explanatory hypothesis tendered
by Mr Mansel, as a solution, but without suggesting any better
hypothesis of his own. For ourselves, we are far from endorsing Mr
Mansel's solution as satisfactory; yet we can hardly be surprised if he
considers it less unsatisfactory than no solution at all. And when we
reflect how frequently and familiarly predicates applicable to man are
applied to the Supreme Being, when they cannot possibly be understood
about Him in the same sense--we see no ground for treating the
proceeding as disingenuous, which Mr Mill is disposed to do. Indeed, it
cannot easily be avoided: and Mr Mill himself furnishes us with some
examples in the present volume. At page 491, he says:--
'It would be difficult to find a stronger argument in favour
of Theism, than that the eye must have been made by one who
sees, and the ear by one who hears.'
In the words here employed, _seeing_ and _hearing_ are predicted of God.
Now when we predicate of men, that they _see_ or _hear_, we affirm facts
of extreme complexity, especially in the case of _seeing_; facts partly
physical, partly mental, involving multifarious movements and agencies
of nerves, muscles, and other parts of the organism, together with
direct sensational impressions, and mental reconstruction of the past,
inseparably associated therewith; all which, so far as they are known,
are perspicuously enumerated in the work of Professor Bain[11] on the
'Senses and the Intellect,' Again, Mr Mill speaks (in p. 102 and
elsewhere) of 'the veracity of God.' When we say of our neighbour that
he is a veracious man, we ascribe to him a habit of speaking the truth;
that is, of employing his physical apparatus of speech, and his mental
power of recalling and recombining words lodged in the memory, for the
purpose of asserting no other propositions except such as declare facts
which he knows, or beliefs which he really entertains. But how either
_seeing_, or _hearing_, or _veracity_, in these senses, can be
predicated of God, we are at a loss to understand. And if they are to
be predicated of God in a different sense, this admits the same license
as Mr Mansel contends for in respect to Goodness, when he feels that
undeniable facts preclude him from predicating that epithet univocally
respecting God and respecting man.[12]
On the whole, it seems to us, that though Mr Mill will consent to
worship only a God of perfect goodness, he has thrown no new light on
the grave problem--frankly stated though imperfectly solved, by Mr
Mansel--how such a conception of God is to be reconciled with the extent
of evil and suffering actually pervading human life and animal life
throughout the earth. We are compelled to say, respecting Mr Mill's
treatment of this subject--what we should not say respecting his
treatment of any other--that he has left an old perplexing problem not
less perplexing than he found it.
Reverting, not unwillingly, from theology to philosophy, we now pass on
to Mr Mill's ninth chapter (p. 128 seq.), of the Interpretation of
Consciousness. There is assuredly no lesson more requiring to be taught
than the proper mode of conducting such interpretation; for the number
of different modes in which Consciousness has been interpreted is
astonishing. Mr Mill begins by citing from Sir W. Hamilton's lectures a
passage of some length, upon which he bestows considerable praise,
regarding it as--