The Scottish philosophy therefore

'was 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

thorough-going logic. The English politician was suspicious of

abstract principle, but would 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.'

The foregoing quotation may serve to indicate briefly the situation,

in politics and philosophy, at the time when Bentham, 'the patriarch

of the English Utilitarians,' appeared upon the scene. Mr. Stephen's

sketch of his life and doctrines, which occupies the latter half of

the book's first volume, is eminently instructive and often amusing.

He excels in tracing the continuity of ideas, and in showing how they

converge upon the point of view that is gradually reached by some

writer of superior force and activity, who rejects, alters, or uses

them in the process of working out the doctrines of some new school.

It was the spread of philanthropy, of a conscientious fellow-feeling

for those classes of society who suffered from neglect and misrule,

that fostered the movement towards political and social reform. This

feeling was represented in Bentham's celebrated formula, originally

invented by Hutcheson, about 'the greatest happiness of the greatest

number'; and the criterion of utility was laid down as having the

widest possible application to all sorts and conditions of men.

Self-help, individualism, _laisser-faire_, the economic view that each

should be left free to pursue his own interests, were principles

intended to operate for the removal of abuses and the destruction of

unfair privileges: they were promulgated for the relief of humanity at

large, although the system which was built up on them came afterwards

to be denounced as narrow, selfish, and materialistic. These ideas

were undoubtedly congenial to the habits and character of Englishmen,

who, like free men everywhere, had a traditional distrust of strong

and active government, preferring King Log, on the whole, to King

Stork. Inequalities and incomprehensible laws were to be seen in the

course of Nature no less than in the English Constitution; and in

either case a man might rely upon his wits and energy to deal with

them. It might be that the defects in human government could only be

remedied by employing the forces of government to cure them; but if

you began to set going the administrative engine there was no saying

where it might stop. Bentham held all government to be an evil, though

he differed from the modern anarchist in holding it to be a necessary

evil; yet he needed a strong scientific administration for the purpose

of rooting out inveterate abuses. And this was the dilemma that

confronted him. He worked out his solution of the problem by laying

out a whole system of morals and a science of politics, with Utility

as their base and standard, which has profoundly influenced all

subsequent legislation, and led eventually to much more extensive

theories regarding the sphere and duties of government than he himself

would have advocated or approved.

The principal events of Bentham's life, and the development of his

opinions, are condensed by Mr. Stephen into one chapter with his usual

biographical skill. Bentham started in life as a barrister, and

attended Blackstone's lectures, with the result that he was deeply

impressed by the fallacies of the legal theories there expounded, and

soon afterward vowed eternal war against the Demon of Chicane. He

struggled against narrow means and obscurity until he made the

acquaintance of Lord Shelburne, through whom he became acquainted with

other leading statesmen, and with Miss Caroline Fox, to whom he made a

futile proposal of marriage some years later. At Bowood he also met

Dumont, and thereby formed his connection with the French jurists,

though in his old age he declared that Dumont, his chief interpreter

abroad, 'did not understand a word of his meaning'; the true cause of

his quarrel being that Dumont criticised Bentham's dinners. He

travelled on the Continent, and lived some time in Russia. Soon

afterward the Revolution made a clean sweep of all the old

institutions in France, and thus laid open a bare and level ground

just suited, as Bentham thought, for an architect who had his

portfolio full of new administrative plans. It was long, indeed,

before he could understand why systematic reforms were not immediately

accepted as soon as their utility was logically demonstrated. He lost

no time in providing the French National Assembly with elaborate

schemes for the reconstruction of various departments of government,

and he even offered to go to France to set up his model prison,

proposing himself 'to become gratuitously the gaoler thereof.' The

Assembly requited his zeal by conferring on him the title of a French

citizen; but social reorganisation took the shape of September

massacres and the Reign of Terror, whereat Bentham was disgusted,

though in no way disheartened, as a theorist.

'Never' (says Mr. Stephen) 'was an adviser more at cross purposes

with the advised. It would be impossible to draw a more striking

portrait of the abstract reasoner, whose calculations of human

motives omit all reference to passion, and who fancied that all

prejudice can be dispelled by a few bits of logic.'

Here, in fact, we have the key to Bentham's character, to its weakness

and also to its strength. A philosopher who plunges into the practical

affairs of the world without taking human feelings and imagination

into account is sure to find himself stumbling about among blocks and

blockheads, and tripped up by the ill-will of vested interests; but on

the other hand, if he has taken the right direction, his ardent

energies have the impetus of some natural force. Bentham's earlier

notion had been that political reforms could be introduced like

improvements in machinery; you had only to prove the superior utility

of your new invention to obtain its adoption by all who were concerned

in the business. Latterly he made the surprising discovery that in the

public offices, in the Law, and in the Church, the heads of these

professions are usually quite satisfied with their own monopolies, are

opposed to change, and are always ready with a stock of plausible

arguments to show the folly and danger of innovation. If the

Utilitarian appeals to facts, common sense, and experience, so also

does the Conservative; and until public opinion is decidedly for

progress the dead weight prevails. Not for a day did Bentham relax his

strenuous exertions, but he changed his tactics; he turned from his

mechanical workshop to the study of political dynamics, and he found

what he wanted in the rising radicalism--'his principal occupation, in

a word, was to provide political philosophy for radical reformers.'

Of the philosophic creed which Bentham undertook to proclaim from his

hermitage at Ford Abbey, with James Mill as his leading apostle, Mr.

Stephen gives us a very shrewd and incisively critical examination.

The founder of a new faith has usually begun by the earnest and

authoritative declaration of a few simple truths and positive

doctrines, for which his disciples provide, in course of time, the

necessary philosophical basis. Bentham's voice had been crying

ineffectually in the wilderness; and he now set about laying with his

own hands the foundations of his beliefs upon primary scientific

principles, always with unswerving aim and application to concrete

facts. He was a thorough-going iconoclast, wielding, like Mohammed, a

single formula, to the destruction of idols of the market or tribe,

and to the confusion of those who fattened upon antique superstitions.

'All government is one vast evil,' and can only be kept from mischief

by minute regulations and constant vigilance. Whatever is plainly

illogical must be radically wrong--'to make a barrister a judge is as

sensible as it would be to select a procuress for mistress of a girls'

school;' and a parish boy, if he could read properly, might go through

the Church services with the Prayer Book and the Homilies, so that an

established Church is a costly and indefensible luxury. Taking

Utility, founded on observation of actual facts, as his guide and his

measure of existing institutions, he treated them as colossal

iniquities, as frauds upon the people, as dead and ineffectual for the

purposes of moral and political life. Nevertheless, although he

condemned the whole fabric as it stood, Bentham was an absolute

believer in the unlimited power of laws and institutions; nor was he

far from wishing to deal with them on the principles applicable to the

reform of prisons, as undesirable but necessary instruments of

coercion to be despotically administered upon a scientific model,

after the fashion of his favourite Panopticon. He was, in short, as

Mr. Stephen points out, an unconscious follower of Hobbes, with this

difference, that in Bentham's case the omnipotent Leviathan, for

control and direction, was to be enlightened public opinion. And he

was apparently convinced, without misgivings, that a model government,

framed logically upon that common sense which is a public property,

could be introduced and enforced under popular sanction as easily as

new regulations for an ill-managed gaol. He was fully prepared to make

liberal allowance, in framing his constitution, for the different

needs, circumstances, and habits of communities; he was quite aware

that precisely the same legislation would not suit England and India;

but he believed national circumstance and character to be extensively

modifiable by manifestly useful institutions, and he was ready to

begin the operation at once, 'to legislate for Hindostan as well as

for his own parish, and to make codes not only for England, Spain, and

Russia, but also for Morocco.'

Mr. Stephen has no difficulty in exposing the shortcomings and

inadequacy of these doctrines. But he is writing the history of

certain political ideas; so his main object is to show how such ideas

are formed, the course they have followed, and their influence upon

thought and action up to the present day. To trace the links and

continuity of ideas is to analyse their elements, and to show the

impress that they received from external circumstance, permanent or

temporary; it is an important method in the science of politics. Upon

the empiricism of English philosophy in the eighteenth century Bentham

constructed a Theory of Morals that purported to rest exclusively on

facts ascertained and verifiable, with happiness as our being's end

and aim, with pain and pleasure as the ultimate principles of conduct;

and upon this foundation he proceeded to build up his system of

politics and legislation. Any attempt to derive morality from other

sources, or to measure it by other standards, he denounced as

arbitrary and misleading; he threw aside metaphysics, and therefore

theology, as illusory. The exclusive appeal to experience, to plain

reasoning from the evidence of our senses, from actual observation of

human propensities, was sufficient for his purposes, and tallied with

his designs as a practical reformer. In these views he was a disciple

of Hume, whose influence has surreptitiously percolated all modern

thought, and his unintentional allies were the teachers of Natural

religion, with Paley as its principal exponent. Having thus defined

and explained the basis of ethical philosophy, the Utilitarian has to

build up the superstructure of legal ordinance; and he is at once

confronted by the difficult problem of distinguishing the sphere of

ethics from the province of law. Upon this vital question Mr. Stephen,

as an expert in ethics, gives a dissertation that is exceedingly acute

and instructive; and we may commend, in particular, his criticism of

the doctrine that the morality of an act depends upon its

consequences, not upon its motives. As he observes, this may be true,

with certain reserves, in law, where the business of the legislature

is to prohibit and punish acts that directly endanger the order and

security of a community. But 'the exclusion of motive justifiable in

law may take all meaning out of morality'; and yet nothing is more

complicated than the question of demarcating a clear frontier between

the two provinces. Mr. Stephen's examination of this question is the

more important because it involves the problem of regulating private

morals by public enactments; and also because the confusion of motives

with intentions lies at the bottom of much mischievous sophistry, for

some of the worst crimes in history have been suggested by plausible

motives, and have been defended on that ground. He shows that

Bentham's survey of the springs of human action was incomplete, that

he overstrained his formula to make it universally applicable, and

that he nevertheless gave a far-reaching impulse to clearer notions

and an effective advance in the simplification of legal procedure and

the codification of laws. As a moral philosophy, Bentham's system

appeared so arid and materialistic that its unpopularity has obscured

his real services. For he was the engineer who first led a scientific

attack up to the ramparts of legal chicanery, and made a breach

through which all subsequent reform found its entry.

The axiom that utility is the source of justice and equity is of very

ancient date, and indeed the word is sufficiently elastic to

comprehend every conceivable human motive; but no one before Bentham

had employed it so energetically as a lever to overturn ponderous

abuses, or had pointed his theory so directly against notorious facts.

On the other hand, since he despised and rejected historical studies,

he greatly miscalculated the binding strength of long usage and

possession. He forgot, what Hume had been careful to remember, that

whether men's reasoning on these subjects be right or wrong, the

conclusions have not really been reached by logic, but have grown up

out of instincts, and correspond with certain immemorial needs and

aspirations of humanity. Hume had sketched, before Bentham, his Idea

of a Perfect Commonwealth; yet he begins by the warning that

'It is not with forms of government as with other artificial

contrivances; where an old engine may be rejected if we can

discover another more accurate and commodious ... the bulk of

mankind' (he adds) 'being governed by authority, not by reason, and

never attributing authority to anything that has not the

recommendation of antiquity.'

Hume's mission was to undermine settled fallacies, and to scatter

doubt among conventional certitudes; and this loosening of foundations

prepared the way for a bolder political projector, who delivered his

frontal attack in disdain of the philosopher's warnings. Political

projectors, says the cautious Hume, are pernicious if they have power,

and ridiculous if they want it. Bentham was quite confident that if he

could only get the power he could radically change for the better the

circumstances of a people in any part of the world, by legislation on

the principles of Utility; and he was sure that character is

indefinitely modifiable by circumstances. That human nature is

constantly altering with, and adapting itself to, the environment, is

an undeniable truth; but in the moral as in the physical world the

natural changes occupy long periods, and to stir the soil hastily may

produce a catastrophe. The latter result actually followed in France;

while in England the doctrine of the unlimited power of legislation,

to be used for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and

wielded by a sovereign State according to the dictates of public

opinion, was met by alarm, suspicion, and protracted opposition. It

is the habit of Englishmen to admit no proposition, however clear and

convincing, until they discover what the propounder intends to do with

it. Yet it will be seen that Bentham's plans of reform, if not his

principles, did suggest, and to some extent shape, the main direction

of judicial and administrative changes during the nineteenth century,

though with some consequences that he neither anticipated nor desired.

He thought that the State might be invested with power to modify

society, and yet might be strictly controlled in the exercise of that

power. He might have foreseen, what has actually happened, that the

State, once established on a democratic basis, would exercise the

power and disregard his carefully drawn limitations. A tendency toward

State Socialism he would have detested above all things; and yet that

is the direction inevitably taken by supreme authority when the

responsibility for the greatest happiness of the greatest number is

imposed upon it by popular demand.

Mr. Stephen's second volume describes the later phase of the

Utilitarian creed, when it passed from its founder into the hands of

ardent disciples. The transition necessarily involves some divergence

of views and methods. In religious movements it usually begins after

the founder's death; but as Bentham lived to superintend his apostolic

successors, his relations with them were not invariably harmonious.

The leadership fell upon James Mill, whose early life and general

character, the development of his opinions, and the bearing of his

philosophy upon his politics, are the subjects of one of those

condensed biographical sketches in which Mr. Stephen excels. In the

_History of India_, which brought to James Mill reputation and

pecuniary independence, he could apply his deductive theories to a

remote and little known country without much risk of contradiction

from actual circumstances or of checks from the misapprehension of

facts. In England the Utilitarian doctrines, as propounded in Mill's

writings, raised up opposition and hostile criticism from various

quarters. The general current of ideas and feelings had now set

decidedly toward the suppression of inveterate abuses, and toward

constitutional reform. Radicalism was gaining ground rapidly, and even

Socialism had come to the surface, while Political Economy was in the

ascendant. But the old Tories closed their ranks for a fierce

resistance against theories that menaced, as it seemed to them,

nothing less than destruction to time-honoured institutions; and the

Whigs had no taste for doctrines that pretended to be reasonable, but

appeared to them in effect revolutionary. The different positions of

contending parties were illustrated, as Mr. Stephen shows, by their

respective attitudes towards Church Reform. The Tories defended

ecclesiastical establishment as one of the main bastions of the

citadel; the Whigs would preserve the Church in subjection to the

State; while James Mill, in the _Westminster Review_, declared the

Church of England to be a mere State machine, worked in subservience

to the sinister interest of the governing classes. He desired 'to

abolish all dogmas and ceremonies, and to employ the clergy to give

lectures on ethics, botany, and political economy, with decent dances

and social meals for the celebration of Sunday.' Mr. Stephen, after

observing that this plan exemplifies 'the incapacity of an isolated

clique to understand the real tone of public opinion,' adds that 'it

seems to have some sense, but one would like to know whether Newman

read his article.' Our own notion would be that it is a signal

instance of shortsightedness and of insensibility, on the part of a

psychologist, to the strength and persistence of one of the most

powerful among the emotions that dominate mankind. Mill's article

proclaiming these views appeared in 1835, just at the time when the

Oxford Movement was stirring up a wave of enthusiasm for the dogmas

and ritual which he treated as obsolete and nonsensical; nor is there

anything more remarkable or unexpected in the political changes of the

last sixty years, than the discomfiture of those prophets who have

foretold the decay of all liturgies and the speedy dissolution of

ecclesiastical establishments. This phenomenon is by no means confined

to England, or even to Europe; and at the present day, when the power

of religious idealism is better understood upon wider experience, no

practical politician attempts to disregard sentiments that defy logic

and pass the understanding.

Nevertheless Utilitarianism, as represented by James Mill's 'Essay on

Government,' was attracting increased attention, and was provoking

serious alarm. It was a period of confidence in theories which have

been partly confirmed and partly contradicted by subsequent

experiences of those 'principles of human nature' in which political

speculators so unreservedly trusted. In France, some fifty years

earlier, the destructive theorist had swept all before him; in

England, while he was assaulting with effect the entrenchments of

Conservatism, he was taken in flank by the moderate reformers. Mill

had denounced the Whigs as half-hearted and even treacherous allies,

who dallied with Radicalism to conceal their nefarious design of

obtaining political mastery with the fewest concessions possible. He

relied upon universal education to qualify the masses for the

possession of an extensive franchise, and upon enlightened

self-interest to guarantee their proper use of it. Macaulay rejoined,

in the _Edinburgh Review_, that the masses might possibly conclude

that they would get more pleasure than pain out of universal

spoliation; and that if his opponent's principles were correct and his

scheme adopted, 'literature, science, commerce, and manufactures might

be swept away, and a few half-naked fishermen would divide with the

owls and foxes the ruins of the greatest of European cities.' It was a

notable controversial tournament, at which the intelligent bystander

probably assisted with much satisfaction and no excessive alarm,

having little faith in the absolute theorist, and not much in the

disinterestedness of the Whigs. For the moment it was sufficient that

both parties agreed in supporting the Reform Bill, although, as Mr.

Stephen remarks, the Radical regarded it as a payment on account,

while the Whig hoped that it would be a full and final discharge. We

may observe, to the honour of a great Liberal family, that as the

first Lord Lansdowne discerned Bentham's talents and gave him his

start in life, so the impression made upon the second marquis by

Macaulay's articles induced him to offer the writer his first seat in

Parliament.

Mr. Stephen deals with the duel between Mill and Macaulay from the

standpoint of an impartial umpire, with an expert's appreciation of

their logical fencing and some humorous glances at the heated

combatants. Mill was an austere Puritan, who would fell the Tory like

an ox and would trample upon the cunning self-seeking Whig. The

Edinburgh Reviewers were a set of brilliant young men who represented

intellectual Liberalism; but 'they were men who meant to become

judges, members of Parliament, or even bishops, and nothing in their

social atmosphere had stimulated the deep resentment against social

injustice which makes the fanatic or the enthusiast.' As a sample of

Whiggism Mr. Stephen takes Mackintosh, who, on the subject of the

French Revolution, stood half-way between Burke's holy horror of a

diabolic outburst and the applause of root-and-branch Radicals. For a

type of Conservatism he gives us Robert Southey, whose fortune it was

to be fiercely abused by the Utilitarians and ridiculed by the Whigs.

Southey, like many others, had been frightened out of early Liberalism

into the conviction that Reform would be the inevitable precursor of

revolution; and in 1817 he had written to Lord Liverpool that the only

hope of saving the country lay in gagging the seditious press.

'Concessions,' he said, 'can only serve to hasten the catastrophe. Woe

be to the garrison who hoist a white flag to an enemy that gives no

quarter.' Yet Southey had a deep feeling for the misery of the lower

classes at this period of widespread distress. In his belief in the

power of Government to remedy social evils, he was much nearer the

accepted line of later public opinion than Macaulay, who would have

confined the State's business to the maintenance of order, the defence

of property, and the practice of departmental economy. And when

Southey, following Coleridge and preceding Gladstone, insisted upon

the vital importance of religion as a principle of State policy,

neither he nor Gladstone deserved all the ridicule cast upon them by

Macaulay in his brilliant essays; for at any rate no first-class

Government in Europe has hitherto ventured upon dissolving connection

with the Church.

For his philosophy, Mr. Stephen tells us, Southey was in the habit of

referring to Coleridge, whose hostility to the Utilitarians went on

different and deeper grounds. Coleridge had convinced himself that all

the errors of the time, and their political dangers, arose from a

false and godless empiricism. He declared that revolutionary periods

have always been connected with the popular prevalence of abstract

ideas, and that the speculative principles of men between twenty and

thirty are the great source of political prophecy. He developed this

view in a singular letter upon the state of affairs and opinions which

he also, like Southey, addressed to Lord Liverpool in 1817, and which

somewhat bewildered that veteran statesman. With the moderns, he said,

'nothing grows, all is made'; whereas growth itself is but a disguised

mode of being made by the superinduction of the _jam data_ on the _jam

datum_; and he insisted that 'the flux of individuals at any moment in

existence in a country is there for the value of the State, far more

than the State for them, though both positions are true

proportionately.' In other words, Coleridge pressed the evolutionary

view against the sharp set, shortsighted Utilitarian propositions; and

he would have agreed that antiquated prejudices are absurd only to

those who have not looked back to their origin, when they can be found

to proceed in logical order from natural causes. He had not been

always a resolute opponent of the Utilitarian theory of morals; but,

like other philosophers, he had become alarmed at the consequence of

being shut up within the prison of finite senses, and he grasped at

Kant's discovery of the difference between Understanding and Reason,

in order to retire upon a metaphysical basis of religion and morality,

and to withstand the prudential calculus. We are inclined to suggest

that Mr. Stephen, who does little more than glance at Coleridge's

position, has underestimated his influence upon the intellectual

direction of politics in the first half of this century. Coleridge

certainly provided an antidote to the crudity of eager Radicalism in

Church and State, and his ideas may be recognised not only in the

great High Church movement that was stirred up by the Tractarians, but

also in the larger comprehension of the duties and attributes of the

State that has been slowly gaining ground up to our own day.

It is, indeed, the growth and development of English opinion regarding

these public duties and attributes, as it is traced in Mr. Stephen's

book, that forms, in our opinion, its chief value; and we are

reviewing it mainly as a history of political ideas. This is, we

believe, the practical outcome of the increasing feeling of sympathy

between different classes of the community, of a sense of

responsibility, of what is called altruism, of solidarity among all

the diverse interests that have lately characterised our legislation:

'The two great rival theories of the functions of the State

are--the theory which was for so many years dominant in England,

and which may for convenience be called the Individualist theory;

and the theory which is stated most fully and powerfully by the

Greek philosophers, which we may call the Socialist theory. The

Individualist theory regards the State as a purely utilitarian

institution, a mere means to an end.... It represents the State as

existing mainly for the protection of property and personal

liberty, and as having therefore no concern with the private life

and character of the citizen, except in so far as these may make

him dangerous to the material welfare of his neighbour.

'The Greek theory, on the other hand, though it likewise regards

the State as a means to certain ends, regards it as something

more.... According to this theory, no department of life is outside

the scope of politics; and a healthy State is at once the end at

which the science aims, and the engine by which its decrees are

carried out.'[29]

Accepting this passage as a philosophical statement of tendencies, we

may observe that neither theory has ever been definitely adopted in

England. The Utilitarians desired to recast institutions for the

greater happiness of all citizens, but they were averse to investing

the State with autocratic powers of interference. The Tories, on the

other hand, were awakening to the conviction that the Government must

do more for the people; but their fear of change and their own

'sinister interests,' persuaded them that this might be done without

radical reforms. The Whigs faced both ways, and since in England the

truly valuable effect of extreme opinions is always to drive the

majority into a middle course, they rose to power on that compromise

which is represented by the Reform measures of 1832. The Reform Bill

was accepted by the Utilitarians as an instalment of the rightful

authority of the people over the conduct of public affairs, and

therefore a provisional method of promoting their welfare. The first

Tory statesman of that day, on the contrary, was convinced that for

the public welfare the existing Constitution could not be bettered:

'During one hundred and fifty years the Constitution in its present

form has been in force; and I would ask any man who hears me to

declare whether the experience of history has produced any form of

government so calculated to promote the happiness and secure the

liberties of a free and enlightened people.'[30]

Both parties, in fact, appealed to experience; but Peel took his stand

upon history, which the Utilitarians disregarded as a mere record of

unscientific errors, or at most as a lighthouse to give warning of

rocks, rather than a lamp to show the road ahead. And the point upon

which they joined issue was as to the consequences of staking the

whole fabric of government upon the basis of public opinion, operating

through almost unlimited popular suffrage. The Tory foretold that

this would end in wrecking the Constitution, with the ship among

breakers, and steering by ballot voting. The Benthamite persuaded

himself that enlightened self-interest, empirical perceptions of

utility, and general education, would prevail with the multitude for

their support of a rational system. But with those who demanded

sovereignty for the people a strict limitation of the sphere of

government was one essential maxim; and the Utilitarians would have

agreed with Guizot when he declared it to be 'a mere commonplace that

as civilisation and reason progress, the sphere of public authority

contracts.' They do not appear to have foreseen that whenever the

masses should have got votes legislation would become democratic, or

even socialistic, in order to capture them. This discovery was

eventually made by the Tories, who availed themselves of it to dish

the Whigs, and to come forward again upon a popular suffrage as the

true friends and guardians of the people.

In Mr. Stephen's second volume James Mill is the principal figure, as

the apostle of Benthamism, though he also describes briefly, in his

terse and incisive style, the lives and opinions of some notable men,

foes as well as friends to the party, who represented different

expressions of energetic protest against existing institutions. To

each of them is allotted his proper place in the line of attack, and

his due share in the general enterprise of rousing, by argument or

invective, the slow-thinking English people to a sense of their

lamentable condition. Cobbett and Owen were at feud with true

Utilitarians, and in unconscious alliance, against the orthodox

economists, with the Tories, who, as we have said, have eventually

found their advantage in the democratic movement. Cobbett fought for

the cause of the agricultural labourer, trodden under foot by squires

and parsons. Owen believed that the grasping capitalist, with his

steam machinery, would further degrade and impoverish the working

classes. Godwin, who is merely mentioned by Mr. Stephen, was a

peaceful anarchist, who proposed 'to abolish the whole craft and

mystery of government,' to abandon coercion and rely upon just

reasoning, upon the enlightened assent of individuals to the payment

of taxes. They all embodied ideas that are incessantly fermenting in

some ardent minds, and that maintain a perceptible influence on

political controversies at the present day. Godwin agreed with the

Utilitarians that government is a bad thing in itself, but he went

beyond them in concluding that it is, or ought to be, unnecessary to

society. To both Radical and Socialist, Utilitarianism, with its

frigid philanthropy and its reliance on self-help, prudence, and free

competition for converting miserable masses into a healthy and moral

population, was the gospel of selfishness, invented for the salvation

of landlords and capitalists. Malthus was the heartless exponent of

natural laws that kept down multiplication by famine, while the rich

man fared sumptuously every day; and the Ricardians, with their

mechanical balancing of supply and demand, were mocking distress by

solemn formulas. It must be admitted that these sharp assailants hit

some palpable rifts in the Utilitarian armour of proof; and we know

that popular sentiment has since been compelling later economists to

take up much wider ground in defence of their scientific position.

The doctrines of Malthus, of Ricardo and of Ricardo's disciples are

subjected to a searching analysis by Mr. Stephen, who brings out their

limitations very effectively. Yet it is by no means easy, even under

our author's skilful guidance, to follow the Utilitarian track

through the fields of economy, philosophy, and theology, and to show

in what manner or degree it led up to the issues under discussion in

our own time. All these 'streams of tendency' have had their influence

on the main current and direction of contemporary politics, but they

cannot be measured or mapped out upon the scale of a review. And, in

regard to political economy, we may even venture to question whether

the earlier dogmatic theories now retain sufficient interest to

justify the space which, in this volume, has been devoted to a

scrutiny of them; for their methods, as well as their conclusions,

have now become to a certain extent obsolete. A strictly empirical

science must be continually changing with fresh data and a broader

outlook; it is always shifting under stress of new interests, changed

feelings, and unforeseen contingencies; it is very serviceable for the

exposure of errors, but its own demonstrations are in time proved to

be erroneous or inadequate. Moreover, to explain the ills that afflict

a society, and to declare them incurable except by patience and slow

alterative medicines, is often to render them intolerable; nor is it

of much practical importance to lay out, on hard scientific

principles, the methodical operation of causes and effects that have

always been understood in a rough experimental way.

'The truth that scarcity meant dearness was apparently well known

to Joseph in Egypt, and applied very skilfully for his purpose.

Economists have framed a theory of value which explains more

precisely the way in which this is brought about. A clear statement

may be valuable to psychologists; but for most purposes of

political economy Joseph's knowledge is sufficient,'

If Joseph had written a treatise on the agrarian tenures of Egypt he

might not have bought them up so easily at famine prices, and he

might have entangled himself in a discussion upon peasant properties.

The economist who makes an inductive demonstration of unalterable

natural laws and propensities may be likened to the scientific

legislator who undertakes to codify prevailing usages: he turns an

elastic custom, constantly modified in practice by needs and

sentiments, into an unbending statute, when the bare unvarnished

statement of the principle produces an outcry. Natural processes will

not bear calm philosophic explanations that are understood to imply

approval of them as cruel but inevitable; not even in such an

essentially moralistic argument as that of Butler's 'Analogy,' which

some have regarded as a plea of ambiguous advantage to the cause of

natural religion. Malthus, for example, proved undeniably the

pernicious consequences of reckless propagation; but he who forces a

great evil upon public attention is expected to find the practical

remedy; and Malthus had little to prescribe beyond a few palliative

measures and the expediency of self-restraint, while his proposal to

abolish the poor laws in the interest of pauperism was interpreted as

a recommendation that poor folk should be starved into prudential and

self-reliant habits. Malthus held, indeed, that the improvement of the

condition of the labouring classes should be considered as the main

interest of society. But he also thought that

'to improve their condition, it is essential to impress them with

the conviction that they can do much more for themselves than

others can do for them, and that the _only_ source of their

permanent improvement is the improvement of their moral and

religious habits. What government can do, therefore, is to maintain

such institutions as may strengthen the _vis medicatrix_, or desire

to better our condition, which poor laws had directly tended to

weaken.'

There is much wisdom to be found in these counsels; but good advice

rather excites than allays the ignorant impatience of acute suffering,

and popular opinion soon began to inquire whether the _vis medicatrix_

might not be administered in some more drastic form by the State. The

conception of a rational government superintending, without

interference, the slow evolution of morals, had a kind of

correspondence, in the religious sphere, with the doctrine of

pre-established harmonies so clearly ordained that to suggest any need

of further Divine interposition to readjust them occasionally was a

reflection upon the wisdom and foresight of Providence. But the stress

and exigencies of modern party politics has rendered this attitude

untenable for the temporal ruler.

The pure economists, however, prescribed moral remedies without

investigating the elements of morality. They settled the laws of

production and distribution as eliminated from the observation of

ordinary facts; they corrected errors and registered the mechanical

working of human desires and efforts. It is Mr. Stephen's plan,

throughout this book, to show the bearing of philosophical speculation

on practical conduct; and accordingly, after his chapter on Malthus

and the Ricardians, he turns back again to philosophy and ethics. His

clear and cogent exposition of the views and conclusions put forward

on these subjects by Thomas Brown, with the express approval of James

Mill, is an illustration of Coleridge's dictum regarding the

connection between abstract theories and political movements.

Admitting the connection, we may again observe that there is a certain

danger in stating the theories too scientifically. Neither morals nor

religion are much aided by digging down into their foundations. Yet

the logical constructor of a new system usually finds himself driven

by controversy into a discussion of ultimate ideas, though the

Utilitarians refused to be forced back into metaphysics. No professor

of philosophy, however, can altogether avoid asking himself what

underlies experience and the formation of beliefs; and Brown did his

best for the Utilitarians by defining Intuition as a belief that

passes analysis, a principle independent of human reasoning, which

'does not allow us to pass a single step beyond experience, but merely

authorises us to interpret experience.' It was James Mill's mission to

cut short and to simplify philosophical aberrations for his practical

purposes:

'As a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, he had not much

time to spare for purely philosophic reading. He was not a

professor in want of a system, but an energetic man of business,

wishing to strike at the root of superstitions to which his

political opponents appealed for support. He had heard of Kant, and

seen "what the poor man would be at".'

His own views are elaborated in his book on the _Analysis of the

Phenomena of the Human Mind_, for a close criticism of which we must

refer readers to Mr. Stephen's second volume. The connection of these

dissertations with the social and political ends of the Utilitarians

lies, it may be said briefly, in the support which a purely

experiential psychology gives to the doctrine that human character

depends on external circumstance, and that such vague terms as the

'moral sense' only disguise the true identity of rules of morality

with the considerations that can be shown to produce general

happiness. Whenever there appears to be a conflict between these rules

and considerations, utility is the only sure criterion. To the extreme

situations in which casuistry revels, as when a man is called upon to

sacrifice his life or his personal honour for his country's good, the

Utilitarian would apply this unfailing test inexorably; in such cases

a man ought to decide upon a calculation of the greatest happiness of

the majority. He does not, in fact, apply this reckoning; he may

possibly not have time, at the urgent moment, to work it out; his

heroism is inspired by the universal praise or blame that reward

self-devotion or punish shrinking from it, and thus render acts moral

or immoral by the habitual association of ideas. The martyr or patriot

does not, indeed, stop to calculate; he does not feel the subtle

egoism that is hidden in the desire for applause; he believes himself

to be acting with the perfect disinterestedness which can only be

accounted for by superficial reasoners on the assumption of some such

abstract notion as religion, moral sense, or duty. Since the behaviour

of mankind at large, therefore, is invariably guided by a remote or

proximate consideration of utility; since conduct depends upon

character, and character is shaped by external conditions and positive

sanctions, it is possible to frame, on utilitarian principles,

scientific rules of behaviour which can be powerfully, though

indirectly, promoted by legislation and a system of enlightened

polity. For morality, it is argued, can be materially assisted by

pointing to, or even providing, the serious consequences that are

inseparable from human misdeeds, by proving that pain or pleasure

follows different kinds of behaviour; while motives are so complex

that they can never be verified with certainty, and must therefore be

left out of account. This anatomy of the springs of action obviously

lays bare some truths, although they fit in much better with the

department of the legislator than of the moralist. As Mr. Stephen

forcibly shows, although the consideration of motive may fall very

seldom within the sphere of legislation, yet no theory which should

exclude its influence on the moral standard could be tolerated, since

the motive is of primary importance in our ethical judgment of

conduct. Nor has motive, as discriminated from intention, ever been

kept entirely outside the criminal law, notwithstanding the danger of

admitting, as an extenuation of some violent crime, that the offender

had convinced himself that some religious or patriotic cause would be

served by it. James Mill's view of morals as theoretically coordinate

with law--because in both departments the intention is the essential

element in measuring actions according to their consequences--operated

in practical contradiction to his principle of restraining State

interference within narrow limits. It is this latter principle which

has since given way. For the general trend of later political opinion

has evidently been towards bringing public morality more and more

under administrative regulation; and this manifestly indicates a

growing expansion of ideas upon the legitimate duties and jurisdiction

of the State.

Upon James Mill's psychology Mr. Stephen's conclusion, with which we

may agree, is that his analysis of virtue into enlightened

self-interest is unsuccessful, and we have seen that his conception of

government, as an all-powerful machine resting upon, yet strictly

limited by, public opinion, has failed on the side of the limitations.

Yet although Mill could not explain virtue, he was, after his fashion,

a virtuous man, whose life was conscientiously devoted to public

objects.

'His main purpose, too, was to lay down a rule of duty, almost

mathematically ascertainable, and not to be disturbed by any

sentimentalism, mysticism, or rhetorical foppery. If, in the

attempt to free his hearers from such elements, he ran the risk of

reducing morality to a lower level, and made it appear as unamiable

as sound morality can appear, it must be admitted that in this

respect, too, his theories reflected his personal character.'

It is also probable that his theories, and his bitter controversies in

defence of them, reacted on his personal character, and that both

influences are to be traced beyond James Mill's own life, in the

mental and social prepossessions which he bequeathed to his son.

Mr. Stephen's third volume is chiefly occupied by the history of the

later Utilitarians, and the expansion of their cardinal principle in

its application to a changing temper of the times, under the

leadership of John Stuart Mill. We have, first, a closely written and

critical description of this remarkable man's early life, his

stringent educational training, the development of his opinions, and

their influence upon the orthodox tenets of the sect. Upon all these

subjects Mill has left us, under his own hand, more intimate and

circumstantial particulars than are to be found, perhaps, in any other

personal memoir. The writer who tells his own story usually passes

hastily over boyhood; the ordinary biographer gives some family

details, or endeavours to amuse us with trivial anecdotes of the child

who became an important man. J. S. Mill hardly alludes to any member

of his family except his father, and his early days are marked by a

total absence of triviality. He was bound over to hard intellectual

labour at home during the years that for most of us pass so lightly

and unprofitably at a public school; he was a voracious and

indefatigable reader and writer from his youth up, with a wolfish

hunger (as Browning calls it) for knowledge; he plunged into all the

current discussions of philosophy and politics; he became a practised

writer and made a good figure at debating clubs; he became so intent

on the solution of complex social problems as to acquire a distaste

for general society; his mental concentration blunted his sensibility

to the physical passions that so powerfully sway mankind.

Nevertheless, Mill's outlook upon the world was much wider than his

father's, and his aim was so to adjust the Utilitarian creed as to

bring it into closer working accord with the advancing ideas and

projects of the political parties to whom he was nearest in sympathy.

He allied himself in the beginning with the Philosophical Radicals, in

the hope of organising them for active service in the cause. But this

group soon broke up, and Mr. Stephen ascribes their failure in part to

their name, observing that the word '"Philosophical" in English is

synonymous with visionary, unpractical, and perhaps simply foolish.'

There would be less satire, and possibly more justice, in saying that

the word gives a chill to the energetic hot-gospeller of active

Radicalism, who pushes past the philosopher as one standing too far

behind the fighting line, although he may be useful in forging

explosives in some quiet laboratory. Mill himself was continually

hampered, as an ardent combatant, by the impedimenta which he brought

into the field in the shape of abstract speculations, which could not

be made to fit in with the immediate demands of thorough-going

partisans. His democratic fervour was tempered by his conviction of

the incapacity of the masses. He was a Socialist 'in the sense that he

looked forward to a complete, though distant, revolution in the whole

structure of society'; he discovered that the Chartists had crude

views upon political economy; his attitude toward factory legislation

was very dubious. Yet in the main purpose of his life and writings,

which was to mend and guide public opinion on social and political

questions by theoretical treatment--that is, by a logically connected

survey of the facts--he was undoubtedly successful, as is shown by

the popularity of his two great works on _Logic_ and _Political

Economy_, which became the text-books of higher study on these

subjects for a whole generation. On the other hand, he exposed himself

to the distrust and hostility that are always aroused by philosophical

arguments which strike at the roots of established beliefs and

prejudices, and are discovered to be really more dangerous to them

than a direct assault.

It was the philosophic strategy of J. S. Mill to prosecute the

Utilitarian war against metaphysics, and finally to exterminate

Intuitions, being convinced, as he said, that the _a priori_ and

spiritualistic thinkers still far exceeded the partisans of

experience, and that a great majority of Englishmen were still

Intuitionists. Is this actually a true account of English thought? Mr.

Stephen thinks not, for he believes that if Mill had not lived much

apart from ordinary folk he would have found Englishmen practically,

though not avowedly, predisposed to empiricism, which has been the

philosophic tradition in this country since Hobbes. We so far agree

with Mr. Stephen that we believe Englishmen, in general, to practise a

great deal more of empiricism than they avow. But Mill proposed to

demonstrate and declare it as a weapon in polemics and an engine of

action, and it was here, probably, that the main body of Englishmen

deserted him. They were not ready to cut themselves off from theology

and from all ideas that transcend experience, and they demurred to the

paramount jurisdiction of logic in temporal affairs. To every section

of Churchmen the relegation of moral sanctions within the domain of

verifiable consequences was a doctrine to be resisted strenuously.

With the high sacerdotalist it amounted to a denial of the Christian

mysteries; to the Broad Churchman it was ethically inadequate and

ignoble; to the scholastic professor of divinity it meant ruinous

materialism.

That a vigorous thinker should have begun by striking at what seemed

to him the root of obstructive fallacies was natural enough. He

supposed that a logical demonstration would clear the ground for his

plans of reform; whereas, on the contrary, it entangled him in

preliminary disputations, and his inflexible reasoning alarmed people

who followed experience as the guide of life, but instinctively felt

that there must be something beyond phenomenal existence. In political

economy Mill relied upon common sense and practice in affairs to make

the requisite allowance for general laws founded on human propensities

regarded abstractedly. His conviction was, in short, that nothing

should be taken for granted because everything might be explained; and

he desired to tie men down to accepting no belief, or even feeling,

that could not be justified by reason. His _System of Logic_ was, as

he has himself written, a text-book for the doctrine 'which derives

all knowledge from experience, and all moral and intellectual

qualities principally from the direction given to the associations.'

When he proceeded to construct a systematic psychology upon this

basis, he fell into the fundamental perplexities that are concisely

brought out by Mr. Stephen in his scrutiny of Mill's doctrine of

Causation. He followed Hume in severing any necessary connection

between cause and effect, and even invariable sequence became

incapable of proof. But when he resolved Cause into a statement of

existing conditions that can never be completely known until we have

mastered the whole series of physical phenomena, and showed that all

human induction is fallible because necessarily imperfect, it became

clear that Mill had very little to offer in substitution for those

grounds of ordinary belief that he was bent on demolishing. The word

Cause is reduced, for ordinary use, to a signification not unlike that

which is understood in loose popular language by the word Chance,

since Chance means no more than ignorance of how an event came to

pass; and in no case, according to Mill, can we ever calculate with

security what undiscoverable conditions may suddenly bring about an

unexpected event contrary to previous experience. The uniformity of

Nature, as Mr. Stephen remarks, is thus made exceedingly precarious;

and to the practical intelligence, which looks for some basis that

cannot be argued about, there is still something to be said for

Intuition. And when Mill, still in search of some precise formula,

undertook to interpret persistent sequences by his theory of Real

Kinds possessing an indeterminate number of coherent properties--so

that our belief in the invariable blackness of crows is justified as a

collocation of these visible properties--he merely throws the problem

of Causation farther backward. We have to be content with direct

observation of phenomena that can be classified as co-existent; we can

perceive that things accompany each other, but we can never be sure

that they follow each other, as they appear to do.

It may be doubted whether Mill's treatment of these problems has

materially affected subsequent psychological speculation, which has

since taken different and deeper courses. His main objective was

social and political.

'The notion,' he has written, 'that truths external to the mind may be

known by intuition, or consciousness, independently of observation and

experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times the great intellectual

support of false doctrines and bad institutions.' In confounding the

metaphysicians, and eliminating all mysterious assumptions or axioms,

he aimed at clearing the ground for a demonstrable science of

character, and to establish the great principle that character can be

indefinitely modified. The way is thus opened to questions of conduct,

to positive remedies for social and political evils which, as they

have been generated and fostered by external circumstances, can be

removed by a change of those circumstances.

'The greatest problems of the time were either economical or

closely connected with economical principles. Mill had followed the

political struggles with the keenest interest; he saw clearly their

connection with underlying social movements; and he had thoroughly

studied the science--or what he took to be the science--which must

afford guidance for a satisfactory working out of the great

problems. The Philosophical Radicals were deserting the old cause,

and becoming insignificant as a party. But Mill had not lost his

faith in the substantial soundness of their economic doctrines. He

thought, therefore, that a clear and full exposition of their views

might be of the highest use in the coming struggle.... The

_Political Economy_ speedily acquired an authority unapproached by

any work published since the _Wealth of Nations_.'

We cannot follow Mr. Stephen through his elaborate and effective

review of this celebrated book. Its appearance marked an epoch in the

history of Utilitarianism, for it took a much wider survey of social

and political considerations, and the author undertook to expand the

orthodox economic theories so that they might embrace and be

reconciled with some daring projects of comprehensive reform. But Mill

had to put some strain on the principles to which he adhered, and to

accommodate certain inconsistencies in order to keep pace with moving

ideas. He held on with some effort to the cardinal tenets of the older

Utilitarians, to a dislike of interference by governments, to

reliance on individual effort, to protest against the deadening

influence of paternal administration, to his own trust in the gradual

effect of educational agencies, and in the slow emancipation of the

popular mind from unreasoning prejudices. On the other hand, he

advocated a radical reform of the land laws, peasant proprietorship,

the acquisition by the State of railways and canals, the limitation of

the right of bequest; and he went even so far as to speak with

approval of laws in restraint of improvident marriages. All these

proposals could only be carried out by arbitrary and drastic

legislation. As he put it, the State must interfere for the purpose of

making the people independent of further interference; and he

overlooked or set aside the question whether the eventual result of

thus calling in the State's agency would not be contrary to the

principles and professed intentions of the Utilitarian school, whether

the provisional _regime_ would not become permanent, as, in fact, it

has been rapidly becoming ever since.

We can see, moreover, that while J. S. Mill's sympathy with the

popular cause and with the most ardent reformers was sincere, he was

at issue with them in regard to the means, though not in regard to the

ends; he wished to better the intelligence of the people as the first

step toward bettering their condition. But when he had convinced

himself, as he said, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind

are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental

constitution of their modes of thought, he had still to persuade men

who were stirring and pressing for immediate action that gradual

methods were the best. Most of them may have preferred to try whether,

if the lot of mankind were improved materially, the moral changes and

mental habits would not follow; for indeed Mill's proposition might

stand examination and hold good either way. It may be argued that an

elevation or widening of intellectual views is the consequence, as

often as it is the cause, of increasing comfort and leisure. He

thought that all reading and writing which does not tend to promote a

renovation of the world's belief is of very little value beyond the

moment, which is, of course, true in a general sense; though

literature can act much more directly than by dealing with first

principles. He welcomes Free Trade as one triumph of Utilitarian

doctrines, yet he sadly observes that the English public are quite as

raw and undiscerning on subjects of political economy since the nation

was converted to Free Trade as before. The nation, in fact, went

straight at the immediate point, got what it wanted at the moment, and

was satisfied.

Mr. Stephen's criticism of Mill's later writings exhibits further his

difficulties in adjusting the essential Utilitarian principles to

closer contact with the urgent questions of the day. Mill still held

to competition, to the full liberty of individuals, to the inevitable

mechanical working of economic laws; he still doubted the expediency

of factory legislation, and condemned any laws in restraint of usury.

He was opposed, broadly, to all authoritative intrusion upon human

existence wherever its necessity could not be proved conclusively to

be in the interest of a self-reliant community. Yet he was forced to

make concessions and exceptions in the face of actual needs and

grievances; and especially he found himself more and more impelled to

tolerate and even advocate interference by the State as the only

effective instrument for demolishing obstacles to the moral and

material betterment of the people. Since unjust social inequalities

could be traced to an origin in force or fraud, the legislature might

be logically called in to remove them; and as this is manifestly the

revolutionary argument (as embodied, for example, in the writings of

Thomas Paine), it enabled him to join hands with Radicalism in

proposing some very thorough-going measures. 'Landed property in

Europe derives its origin from force;' so the legislature is entitled

to interpose for the reclamation of rights unjustly usurped from the

community; while, as economical science shows that the value of land

rises from natural causes, the conclusion is that the State may

confiscate the unearned increment. But it was not so easy to convince

the hungry mechanic, by rather fine-drawn distinctions, that the

capitalist had a better right to monopolise profits than the landlord;

for the rise of value in manufactured commodities has very complex

causes, some of them superficially natural. So here, again, is a

plausible case of social injustice. Again, it may be affirmed that all

powerful associations, private as well as public, operate in

restriction of individual liberty. You may argue that great industrial

companies are voluntary; the question is whether they are innocuous to

the common weal, and we may add that this point is coming seriously to

the front at the present time. The distinction, as Mr. Stephen

remarks, drawn by the old individualism between State institutions and

those created by private combination is losing its significance; and,

what is more, public bodies are now continually encouraged to absorb

private enterprise in all matters that directly concern the people.

In short, we are on the high road to State Socialism, though Mill

helps us to console ourselves with having taken that road on strictly

scientific principles. It is the not unusual result of stating large

benevolent theories for popular application; the principle is accepted

and its limitations are disregarded. Nevertheless Mill contends

gallantly in his later works for intellectual liberty, complete

freedom of discussion, and the utility of tolerating the most

eccentric opinions. Into what practical difficulties and questionable

logical distinctions he was drawn by the necessity of fencing round

his propositions and making his reservations is well known; and Mr.

Stephen hits the weak points with keen critical acumen. We all agree

that persecution has done frightful mischief, at times, by suppressing

the free utterance of unorthodox opinions. But Mill argues that

contradiction, even of truth, is desirable in itself, because a

doctrine, true or false, becomes a dead belief without the

invigorating conflict of opposite reasonings. Resistance to authority

in matters of opinion is a sacred privilege essential to the formation

of belief; wherefore originality, even when it implies stupidity, is

to be carefully protected as a factor of human progress. We need not

follow Mr. Stephen in his victorious analysis of the arguments

wherewith Mill seeks to uphold this uncompromising individualism, and

to guard human perversity against the baneful influence of authority.

It is clear enough that society cannot waste its time in perpetual

wrangling over issues upon which an authoritative verdict has been

delivered; and for most of us a reasonable probability, founded on the

judgment of experts, is sufficient in moral or physical questions as

well as in litigation. The religious arena still remains open, where

experts differ and decisions are always disputable. Yet Mr. Arthur

Balfour devotes a chapter in his _Foundations of Belief_ to the

contention that our convictions on all the deeper subjects of thought

are determined not by reason but by authority; whereby he provides us

with an escape from the scepticism that menaces a philosopher who has

proved all experience to be at bottom illusory. Mill, on the other

hand, would make short work with authority wherever it checks or

discourages the unlimited exercise of free individual inquiry; and in

politics he would entrust the sovereign power to a representation of

the entire aggregate of the community, with the most ample

encouragement of incessant discussion. This is, indeed, the system

actually in force, and in England it has answered very well; but Mill

hardly foresaw that its tendency would be to make the State, as the

embodiment of popular will, not less but more authoritative, with a

tendency to encroach steadily upon the sphere of individual effort and

private enterprise.

It may be said that the abstract Utilitarian doctrine reached its

high-water mark in Mill's book on the Subjection of Women, to which

Mr. Stephen allots one section of a chapter. The book is a particular

enlargement upon Mill's general view that it is a pestilent error to

regard such marked distinctions of human character as sex or race as

innate and in the main indelible. What is called the nature of women

he treats as an artificial thing, an isolated fact which need not at

any rate be recognised by law; the proper test was, he argued, to

leave free competition to determine whether the distinction is radical

or merely the result of external circumstance. But, as Mr. Stephen

answers, such a plain physiological difference is at least not

negligible; and competition between the sexes may favour the despotism

of the stronger, while complete independence on both sides implies

freedom to separate at will; and Mill had only glanced evasively at

the question of divorce. Here, again, is a theory which the pressure

of social conditions, much more than abstract reasoning, is bringing

more and more into prominence with our own generation. On the wider

and more complicated question of race distinctions Mill never worked

out his argument against their indelibility into a regular treatise;

nor could he foresee the increasing influence upon contemporary

politics that is now exercised by racial feelings and their claims to

recognition. In the eighteenth century the French Encyclopedistes, who

were the direct philosophic ancestors of the Utilitarians, regarded

frontiers, classes, and races as so many barriers against the spread

of universal fraternity; and the revolutionary government took up the

idea as a war-cry. The armies of the French Republic proclaimed the

rights of the people in all countries, until Napoleon turned the

democratic doctrine into the form of Imperialism. M. Eugene de Voguee

has told us recently that this armed propaganda produced a reaction in

Europe toward that strong sentiment of nationality which has been

vigorously manifested during the second half of the nineteenth

century. The assertion of separate nationalities, by the demand for

political autonomy and by the attempt to revive the public teaching of

obscure languages, is the form taken in western and central Europe by

the problem of race. No movement could be more contrary to the views

or anticipations of the Utilitarians, for whom it would have been

merely a recrudescence of one of those inveterate and unreasoning

prejudices which still retard human progress, a fiction accepted by

indolent thinkers to avoid the trouble of investigating the true

causes that modify human character. Yet not only is national

particularism making a fresh stir in Europe, but the spread of

European dominion over Asia has forced upon our attention the immense

practical importance of racial distinctions. We find that they signify

real and profound characteristics; the European discovers that in Asia

he is himself one of a ruling race, and thereby isolated among the

other groups into which the population is subdivided. If he is a

sound Utilitarian he will nevertheless cherish the belief that

economical improvements, public instruction, good laws, and regular

administration will obliterate antipathies, eradicate irrational

prejudices, and reconcile Asiatic folk to the blessings of scientific

civilisation. But he will confess that it is a stubborn element, if

not innate yet very like such a quality; if not ineffaceable yet

certain to outlast his dominion. It is at least remarkable that Mill's

protest against explaining differences of character by race, to which

Buckle 'cordially subscribed,' should have been answered in our time

by a clamorous demand for the recognition of those very differences,

and by an increasing tendency to admit them.

Upon Mill's theological speculations Mr. Stephen has written an

interesting chapter, illustrating Mill's desire to treat religion more

sympathetically, with a deeper sense of its importance in life, than

in the absolute theories of the older Utilitarians. Bentham had

declared that the principle of theology, of referring everything to

God's will, was no more than a covert application of the test of

utility. You must first know whether a thing is right in order to

discover whether it is conformable to God's pleasure; and a religious

motive, he said, is good or bad according as the religious tenets of

the person acting upon it approach more or less to a coincidence with

the dictates of utility. The next step, as Bentham probably knew well,

is to throw aside an abstraction that has become virtually

superfluous, and to march openly under the Utilitarian standard. But

there was in Mill a moral and emotional instinct that deterred him

from resting without uneasiness upon such a bare empirical conclusion.

He rejected all transcendental conceptions; yet he did his best, as

Mr. Stephen shows, to find reasonable proofs of a Deity whose

existence and attributes may be inferred by observation and

experience. He agreed that such an inference is not inconsistent, _a

priori_, with natural laws, and the argument from design was admitted

as providing by analogy, or even inductively, a large balance of

probability in favour of creation by Intelligence. The difficulty is

to attain by these methods the idea of a Deity perfect in power,

wisdom, and goodness; for the order of Nature, apart from human

intervention and contrivances for making the earth habitable,

discloses no tincture of morality. We are thus reduced to the dilemma

propounded by Hume, between an omnipotent Deity who cannot be

benevolent because misery is permitted, and a benevolent Deity with

limited powers; and Mill sums up the discussion, doubtfully, in favour

of a Being with great but limited powers, whose motives cannot be

satisfactorily fathomed by the human intellect.

This halting conclusion indicates a departure from the pure empiricism

of his school, and even the inadequacy of the argument shows the

effort that Mill was making towards some fellow-feeling with spiritual

conceptions. As Mr. Stephen points out, there is a curious

approximation, on some points, between Mill and his arch-enemy

Mansel--between the conditioned and unconditioned philosophies. Both

of them lay stress on the moral perplexities involved in arguing from

the wasteful and relentless course of Nature to an estimate of the

divine attributes. And both agree that the existence of evil is a

serious difficulty; though Mansel's solution, or evasion, of it is by

insisting that the ways of the unconditioned are necessarily for the

most part unknowable, while Mill leans to the possibility that God's

power or intelligence may be incomplete. Upon either hypothesis we

must confess that our knowledge is imperfect and very fallible.

Mr. Stephen has no trouble in exposing the philosophical weakness

of Mill's attitude; but we are mainly concerned to compare it

briefly with the position of his predecessors, for the purpose of

continuing a rapid survey of the course and filiation of Utilitarian

doctrines. When the orthodox Utilitarians definitely rejected all

theology--though until Philip Beauchamp appeared, in 1822, they made

no direct attack upon it--they believed that the fall of theology

would also bring down religion, which they regarded as the source of

motives that were fictitious, misleading, and profoundly unscientific.

Mill agreed that a supernatural origin could not be ascribed to

received maxims of morality without harming them, because to

consecrate rules of conduct was to interdict free examination of them,

and to paralyse their natural development in accordance with changes

of circumstance. Looking back over the interminable controversies, and

the successive variations in form and spirit that every great religion

has undergone, this objection does not seem to us very formidable. But

Mill's evident object was to reconcile the cultivation of religious

feelings with his principle of free thought for individuals. In

accepting Comte's ideal of a religion of humanity, he had entirely

condemned Comte's reproduction of the spiritual authority in the shape

of a philosophical priesthood. And it is remarkable, as indicating a

radical discordance between the French and the English moralist, that

while Comte's adoration, in his later years, of a woman led him to

ordain a formal worship of the feminine representative of the Family,

coupled with the strict seclusion of women from politics, Mill's

lifelong attachment greatly strengthened his ardour for the complete

emancipation of the whole sex.

Our readers will bear in mind that we are endeavouring to measure the

permanent influence of Utilitarian doctrines, to determine how far

they have fixed the direction, and shaped the ends, of contemporary

thought and political action. It cannot be said that these doctrines

are now predominant in either of these two closely interacting

departments. National instincts and prepossessions have lost none of

their force; national character now divides neighbouring peoples more

sharply, perhaps, than a hundred years ago. Militarism is stronger

than ever; cosmopolitan philanthropy is overridden by the growth of

national interests; political economy is overruled by political

necessities; nor have ethical systems displaced the traditional

religions. Empiricism has fallen into discredit as a narrow and

inadequate philosophy; it is superseded in the spiritual world by

transcendental interpretations of dogmas as metaphysical

representations of underlying realities. Mr. Stephen's most

instructive work draws to its close with a dissertation on Liberalism

and Dogmatism, showing how and why Utilitarianism failed in convincing

or converting Englishmen to a practical assent to its principles and

modes of thought. Upon many minds they produced more repulsion than

attraction. Maurice earnestly protested that we were to believe in

God, not in a theory about God, though the distinction, as Mr. Stephen

says, is vague; he appealed to the inner light, to the conscience of

mankind; he went back into the slough of Intuitionism. Carlyle cried

aloud against materialistic views and logical machinery; he denounced

'the great steam-engine, Utilitarianism'; he was for the able despot

and hero-worship against grinding competition and government by

discussion. In theology the mystical spirit rose again with its

immemorial power of enchanting human imagination; the moral law is

discerned to be the vesture of Divinity, in which He arrays Himself

to become apprehensible by the finite intellect; and a Science that

tries to understand everything explains nothing. Authority, instead of

being discarded, is invoked to deliver men out of the great waters of

spiritual and political anarchy. The Tractarians struck in with a

fierce attack on Rationalism, propounding Faith and Revelation as

imperative grounds of belief. You must accept the dogmas, not as

useful, not as moral or reasonable, not even as derived intuitively,

but as the necessary fundamental truths declared by the infallible

Church to be essential to salvation. Those who could not find

infallibility in a State Church went over to Rome, abandoning the Via

Media; others were content with the high sacramental position of

Anglicanism; the moderate Rationalists took shelter with the Broad

Church; a few retreated into the cloudy refuge of transcendental

idealism. The two extreme parties, the Broad Church and the

Sacerdotalists, were at bitter feud with each other; yet they both

denounced the common enemy. Arnold 'agreed with Carlyle that the

Liberals greatly overrate Bentham, and the political economists

generally; the _summum bonum_ of their science is not identical with

human life ... and the economical good is often, from the neglect of

other points, a social evil.' Newman held that to allow the right of

private judgment was to enter upon the path of scepticism; and the

latest infidel device, he says, is to leave theology alone. He set up

the argument, well-worn but always impressive, that science gives no

certainty; and Mr. Stephen contends against it with the weapons of

empiricism:--

'The scientific doctrines must lay down the base to which all other

truth, so far as it is discoverable, must conform. The essential

feature of contemporary thought was just this: that science was

passing from purely physical questions to historical, ethical, and

social problems. The dogmatist objects to private judgment or free

thought on the ground that, as it gives no criterion, it cannot

lead to certainty. His real danger was precisely that it leads

irresistibly to certainty. The scientific method shows how such

certainty as is possible must be obtained. The man of science

advocates free inquiry precisely because it is the way to truth,

and the only way, though a way which leads through many errors.'

Mr. Stephen is himself a large-minded Utilitarian. He will have

nothing to do with a transcendental basis of morals; and the dogmatist

who dislikes cross-examination is out of his court. Dogmatic

authority, he says, stands only on its own assertions; and if you may

not reason upon them, the inference is that on those points reason is

against them. You may withdraw beyond this range by sublimating

religion into a philosophy, but then it loses touch with terrestrial

affairs, and has a very feeble control over the unruly affections of

sinful men. Newman himself resorted to scientific methods in his

theory of Development, that is, of the growth and evolution of

doctrine. We may agree that these destructive arguments have much

logical force, yet on the other hand such certitude as empiricism can

provide brings little consolation to the multitude, who require some

imperative command; they look for a pillar of cloud or fire to go

before them day and night, and a land of promise in the distance.

Scientific exposition works slowly for the improvement of ethics,

which to the average mind are rather weakened than strengthened by

loosening their foundations; and religious beliefs suffer from a

similar constitutional delicacy. Conduct is not much fortified by

being treated as a function of character and circumstance; for in

religion and morals ordinary humanity demands something impervious to

reasoning, wherein lies the advantage of the intuitionist.

Mr. Stephen, however, is well aware that empirical certitude will not

supply the place of religion. In his concluding pages he states,

fairly and forcibly, the great problems by which men are still

perplexed. Religion, as J. S. Mill felt, is a name for something far

wider than the Utilitarian views embrace.

'Men will always require some religion, if religion corresponds not

simply to their knowledge, but to the whole impression made upon

feeling and thinking beings by the world in which they must live.

The condition remains that the conception must conform to the

facts; our imagination and our desires must not be allowed to

over-ride our experience, or our philosophy to construct the

universe out of _a priori_ guesses.... To find a religion which

shall be compatible with all known truth, which shall satisfy the

imagination and the emotions, and which shall discharge the

functions hitherto assigned to the churches, is a problem for the

future.'

The Utilitarian doctrines, in short, though propagated by leaders of

high intellectual power, and inspired by a pure unselfish morality,

achieved little success in the enterprise of providing new and firmer

guidance and support to mankind in their troubles and perplexities.

But they were not content to look down from serene heights upon the

world, leaving the crowd

'Errare atque viam palantes quaerere vitae.'

They laboured devotedly to dispel ignorance and to advance knowledge;

they spared no pains to promote the material well-being of society.

They helped to raise the wind that filled the sails of practical

reform; they headed the attack upon legal and administrative abuses;

they stirred up the national conscience against social injustice; they

proclaimed a lofty standard of moral obligation. They laid down

principles that in the long run accord with human progress, yet in

their hopes of rapidly modifying society by the application of those

principles they were disappointed; for their systematic theories were

blocked by facts, feelings, and misunderstandings which had not been

taken into calculation. They were averse to coercion, as an evil in

itself; but though they would have agreed with Mr. Bright's dictum

that 'Force is no remedy,' they were latterly brought to perceive that

in another sense there is no remedy except force, and that the vested

interests and preconceptions of society make a stiff and prolonged

opposition to enlightened persuasion. They were disposed to rely too

confidently upon the spread of intelligence by general education for

preparing the minds of people to accept and act upon doctrines that

were logically demonstrable, and to reject what could not be proved.

Mr. Stephen has somewhere written that to support a religion by force

instead of by argument is to admit that argument condemns it. The

proposition is too absolutely stated even for the domain of spiritual

authority, since it might be replied that no great religion, certainly

no organised Church, has existed by argument alone, and it has usually

been supported by laws. But at any rate the temporal power subsists

and operates by coercion, and the sphere of the State's direct action,

instead of diminishing, as the earlier Utilitarians expected it to do,

with the spread of education and intelligence, is perceptibly

extending itself. The Utilitarians demurred to religion as an ultimate

authority in morals, and substituted the plain unvarnished criterion

of utility. Upon this ground the State steps in, replaces religious

precept by positive law, and public morality is enforced by Acts of

Parliament. They were for entrusting the people with full political

power, to be exercised in vigilant restraint of the interference by

Government with individual rights and conduct; the people have

obtained the power, and are using it more and more to place their

affairs and even their moral interests under the control of organised

authority. We do not here question the expediency of the movement; we

are simply registering the tendency.

There are few literary enterprises more arduous than the task of

following and demarcating from the written record of a period the

general course of political and philosophic movements. The tendencies

are so various, the conditions which determine them are so

complicated, that it is difficult to keep hold of the clue which

guides and connects them. Mr. Leslie Stephen's _History of English

Thought in the Eighteenth Century_ took the broad ground that is

denoted by its title; but, as he now tells us in his preface, he has

found it expedient to reduce his present work within less

comprehensive limits, by confining it to 'an account of the compact

and energetic school of the English Utilitarians.' This reduction of

its scope has not, however, damaged the continuity of the narrative,

since in the great departments of morals, religion, and political

philosophy the Utilitarians were mainly the lineal heirs of the

characteristic English writers in the preceding century. It is true

that Mr. Stephen has not been able to bring within the compass of his

three volumes the subject of general literature, especially of poetry

and novels, which in the nineteenth century have given their vivid

expression to the doubts and the hopes, to the aims and aspirations of

the time. But we can see that such an enlargement of his plan would

have rendered it unmanageable, and that Mr. Stephen may have wisely

considered the example of Buckle's _History of Civilisation in

England_, which was projected on too large a scale, exhausted the

author's strength, and remains unfinished. Mr. Stephen's present work

fulfils its promise and completes its design. The Utilitarians are

very fortunate in having found a historian whose vivacity of style,

consummate literary knowledge, and masculine power of thought will

have revived their declining reputations, and secured to them their

proper place in the literature of the nineteenth century.