THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
The early part of the nineteenth century was not very prolific in the
department of speculative thought, but signs of movement may be detected
in the third decade. Each of the English universities became the centre of
a very active intellectual society. The Cambridge men showed a bent
towards general literature and philosophy, or to theology of a type
cognate to philosophy. In the works of Whately Oxford gave signs of a
philosophical revival; but she devoted herself mainly to theology, and the
practical isolation of Whately, a hard and arid though a vigorous man,
calls the more attention to her speculative poverty. The celebrated
'Oxford movement,' whose roots are in the twenties, though its visible
growth dates only from the thirties, is of incomparably greater importance
than this feeble revival.
[Sidenote: John Keble (1792-1866).]
Newman, the great artificer of the movement, rightly traces its inception
to the influence of John Keble. But Keble's true literary form is poetry,
and his principal contribution to poetry belongs to the preceding period.
His prose works are not in themselves of great importance. As Professor of
Poetry at Oxford he delivered lectures (in Latin) on critical subjects. In
his character of pastor he preached many sermons, and a selection from
them was published in 1847. The most famous of his pulpit utterances was
one preached in 1833 on 'National Apostasy.' 'I have ever considered and
kept the day,' says Newman, with regard to the delivery of this sermon,
'as the start of the religious movement of 1833.' Finally, in 1863,
appeared Keble's latest work of importance, a _Life of Bishop Wilson_.
Keble's influence was essentially personal, and was due to his saintly
life more than to anything he wrote, even in poetry. The Tractarian
movement took its rise in a longing for saintliness, of which Keble
furnished a living example. He was not to any considerable extent an
originator of theory. Certain germs of theory about the Church, about its
relation to pre-Reformation times, about authority in religion, were in
the air, and they became absorbed in Keble's system. But his was not a
creative mind, and his position at the head of the Anglo-Catholic movement
was little more than an accident. He was like a child who by a thrust of
his hand sends a finely-poised rock thundering down a hill. In his
literary aspects he is disappointing. A brilliant boy and a most blameless
man, he remains throughout too little of this world. The pale perfection
of his life is reflected in his works. He would have been better had he
been less good; he would have been much better had he been less feminine.
In the ranks of the movement so initiated were included an unusual number
of men who must be classed among the 'might-have-beens' of literature; men
of great reputation eclipsed by premature death, men who never wrote, or
men whose writings disappointed expectation. Nearly all its members had
literary tastes, a fact not surprising when we consider how large a part
imagination played in its start and development. But Hurrell Froude, one
of the most daring-minded men engaged in it, died early, leaving only
inadequate remains as evidence of his great gifts. W. G. Ward lived, but
only to prove by his _Ideal of a Christian Church_ that the power of
writing good English was not among his endowments; and if the poetry of
Keble is only second or even third-rate, that of Isaac Williams, a
versifier of the movement, is of lower grade still. Manning was more the
man of action than the man of letters; while the work of Dean Church and
Canon Liddon, both of whom had marked literary talents, falls principally
outside the limits of this period. There remain two remarkable men, one
the very soul of the movement, the other its greatest recruit, who have
attained, the first a great, the second a respectable place in letters.
These are Cardinal Newman and Pusey, of whom the latter may be considered
the exception to the rule that the Tractarians were by nature and instinct
men of letters. Pusey was not; he was rather the technical theologian with
no direct interest in letters at all.
[Sidenote: John Henry Newman (1801-1890).]
John Henry Newman has been described by J. A. Froude, in language hardly
too strong, as 'the indicating number' of the movement, all the others
being, in comparison with him, but as cyphers. The story of Newman's inner
life has been told with inimitable grace in the _Apologia pro Vita Sua_,
and this is not only his greatest contribution to literature, but the best
document for his life and doctrines. There are few studies more
interesting than the contrast presented by this book on the one side, and
the _Phases of Faith_ by its author's brother, F. W. Newman, on the other.
The younger Newman too has a mind prone to religion, but he decides to
rest in reason, while his brother leans upon authority. Not unnaturally
they drift very far apart; not unnaturally too the author of the _Phases
of Faith_ is amazed that it took his brother ten years to discover whither
he was going.
Newman's education was private till he went to Oxford, where, in 1822, he
won a fellowship at Oriel, then the great intellectual college of the
university. He was at this time a Calvinist in his religious views, and
held, among other things, that the Pope was Antichrist. At Oxford he came
under the influence of Whately, who, he says, taught him to think. But the
two men were essentially antipathetic and foredoomed to part, not the best
of friends. Newman drew gradually closer to men of a very different
stamp--R. J. Wilberforce, Hurrell Froude and Keble. His _Arians of the
Fourth Century_ was finished in 1832, and he took rest after the fatigue
of writing it in a memorable journey with Hurrell Froude in the
Mediterranean. During this journey he composed most of his verses printed
in the _Lyra Apostolica_, and towards the end of it the exquisite hymn,
'Lead, kindly light.'
After his return, in 1833, Newman began, 'out of his own head,' the
_Tracts for the Times_. They culminated in the celebrated _Tract XC_
(1841), which raised such a storm of opposition that the series had to be
closed. Contemporaneously with the _Tracts_, Newman was busied with other
works in defence of the _Via Media_. To this class belong _The Prophetical
Office of the Church_ (1837) and the _Lectures on Justification_ (1838).
He was moreover building up a great reputation as a preacher; and, as if
all this was not enough, he was for several years editor of _The British
Critic_. The storm raised by his opinions, and especially by _Tract XC_,
drove him into retirement at Littlemore in 1841. He called it his Torres
Vedras, in the conviction that he, like Wellington, was destined to 'issue
forth anew,' and to conquer. But the actual course was different. In 1843
he retracted his former strictures on Rome, and resigned his charge of St.
Mary's. For two years more he lingered in the Church of England,
foreseeing the inevitable end, but slow to take a step of such importance
without absolute assurance. In 1845 he was received into the Roman
communion. Here the history of his spiritual development may be said to
close. 'It was,' he says, 'like coming into port after a rough sea.' He
repudiates the idea that his mind was afterwards idle; but there was no
change, no anxiety, no doubt. He seems to be unconscious that this
individual peace may be dear bought for the human race, and that the
absence of doubt is, to use his own favourite word, the 'note' of a low
type.
Among the voluminous works of Newman, in addition to those of his Anglican
period already mentioned, the most important are _The Development of
Christian Doctrine_ (1845), the _Apologia pro Vita Sua_ (1864), _The Dream
of Gerontius_ (1865), and the _Grammar of Assent_ (1870).
Except the _Apologia_, no work of Newman's is more valuable or more
helpful to an understanding of him than _The Dream of Gerontius_, subtle,
mystical, imaginative. Newman's great reputation for prose, and the
supreme interest attaching to his life, seem to have obscured the fame he
might have won, and deserved, as a poet. His poetry is religious without
the weakness, or at any rate the limitedness, which mars so much religious
verse. He was, in poetry as well as in theology, a greater and more
masculine Keble, one with all the real purity of Keble, but with also the
indispensable flavour of earth. 'I was in a humour, certainly,' he says of
the Anglican divines, 'to bite off their ears;' and one loves him for it.
It is worth remembering also that he taught the need of hatred as well as
love; and though he explained and limited the teaching, there is meaning
in the very form of expression. There was iron in Newman's frame and gall
in his blood.
Newman's mind was fundamentally imaginative, and in him imagination,
though of an intellectual cast, was conjoined with an acutely sensitive
organisation. Moreover, he had a tendency to solitude which powerfully
influenced his development. Finally, along with his sensitiveness and
power of imagination there went a subtle gift of logic, subordinate upon
the whole to imagination, but clamorous until it had received what might
at least plausibly pass for satisfaction. These characteristics together
explain Newman's work.
There can be no dispute about the imaginative cast of Newman's mind. He
had, besides the poet's, the philosopher's or speculative imagination. He
pondered habitually over the secret of the universe. There is an often
quoted sentence at the beginning of the _Apologia_ which is vital to a
comprehension of him. 'I thought life might be a dream, or I an angel, and
all this world a deception, my fellow-angels by a playful device
concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a
material world.' It has been said that no one has any genuine gift for
philosophy who has never doubted the reality of material things. Newman
evidently had the necessary 'note' of philosophy, but he had it with a
morbid addition which, without careful control, might lead to strange and
even disastrous results. If Newman had only known German he would have
found in the German philosophers an idealism far more profound and more
rational than any he was ever able to frame for himself. But in England
the dominant philosophy was Benthamism, the dominant theology was equally
hard, and Newman turned from both in disgust, took to the theological
road-making of the _Via Media_, and finally found refuge in Rome, driven
by the conviction that 'there are but two alternatives, the way to Rome
and the way to atheism.'
Newman's sensitiveness produced a shrinking from intercourse and
strengthened a love of solitude probably constitutional and not altogether
wholesome. He was believed to be, and to have the ambition to be, the head
of a party. In truth, he shrank almost morbidly from the idea of
leadership, and it was in spite of himself that he gathered followers.
Even the few friends with whom he lived in familiar intercourse came
'unasked, unhoped.' It would have been better for him had he been able to
speak out more freely and to harmonise himself with the world around him.
Instead, he fell back upon himself and upon a study of the Fathers, hoping
to find the full truth in the primitive days of Christianity. This is a
fatal error which, in theory, vitiates most theology, but from the effects
of which a great deal of it is saved by inconsistency. Newman himself was
afterwards led in his course towards Rome to recognise development in
doctrine. The Fathers are doubtless excellent reading, but they are safe
reading to him only who can read them in the light of the present day. It
is vain to think of stopping the wheels of change even in theology. A
creed which meant one thing in the first century, even though its verbal
expression remain the same, means something widely different in the
nineteenth. Newman unfortunately could conceive of modern thought only as
a detestable and soul-deadening 'liberalism,' a halfway house to atheism,
as Anglicanism was, in his mature view, a halfway house to Rome. Had he
been more a real participant in contemporary life, his conceptions would
insensibly have taken their bent from the 'liberalism' he hated; and,
little as he thought it, he had something to learn from that liberalism,
just as it had something to learn from him.
Newman was moreover a logician, though he ultimately found refuge in a
communion where the _science_ of logic is little needed. The subtlety of
his logic is unquestionable. The doubt which some feel is rather with
regard to its honesty. This doubt however is only felt by those who fail
to understand how behind and beneath and above his logic there spread and
towered his imagination and his emotions. Newman was compelled by the law
of his nature to find a foundation for his religion; he neither understood
nor respected those who let it exist as a mere sentiment. 'I determined,'
says he with reference to a time of crisis, 'to be guided, not by my
imagination, but by my reason.' It was this resolve that kept him so long
out of the Church of Rome. He is wholly, even transparently sincere.
Nevertheless, in spite of himself, he _is_ guided by imagination after
all. The conclusion is at every point a foregone one; and his pause
results, not in genuine reasons for the change, but in increased strength
of feeling compelling it. This is what observers have noted in Newman's
logic, and what has led them to doubt his sincerity. His dice are always
loaded, but they are loaded against his own will. The absolute need for
him to rest on authority makes it certain from the start that authority
will win.
There is no way of using reason except by consenting to be wholly guided
by it. Newman never consented. He always knew the general character of the
answer he must receive, though he did not know the precise terms of it,
whether those of the _Via Media_ or those of Rome. This is the secret of
Newman's power, in his argumentative works, over those who already
fundamentally agree with him, and of his failure to move those who do not.
For surely it is remarkable how little real effect followed from his
secession, that blow under which, it has been said, the Church of England
reeled. Newman, unlike both his friends and his enemies, was well aware
that few would follow him to Rome; and he paused for years because he
believed, on the other hand, that his secession would shatter the party
for which he had so long toiled. The character of the Oxford movement was
changed by Newman's secession, because by that step many were awakened to
the fact that his brilliant logic had no sound foundation in reason.
Others had been awakened before. J. A. Froude in his _Nemesis of Faith_
tells how his eyes were opened by a sentence in one of Newman's sermons:
'Scripture says the earth is stationary and the sun moves; science, that
the sun is stationary and that the earth moves, and we shall never know
which is true until we know what _motion_ is.' Froude adds the common
sense criticism that if Scripture uses the word motion in a transcendental
sense it may equally use other words so, and we can never know what it
means.
When we add to this Newman's impulsiveness we have a sufficient
explanation of the aberrations of his reasoning. He tried to be and
thought he was cautious; but he was mistaken. The pause he was accustomed
to make before taking decisive action had only the appearance of caution;
and the real impulsiveness of his nature is indicated by several things in
his own narrative. For example, the phrase of St. Augustine, _Securus
judicat orbis terrarum_, rings in his ears and recurs to his mind and
produces more effect than volumes of argument. 'By those great words of
the ancient Father, interpreting and summing up the long and varied course
of ecclesiastical history, the theory of the _Via Media_ was absolutely
pulverised.' Was such a result ever before produced by such a cause? or
was it that the _Via Media_ was in truth built of loose rubbish over
shifting sand?
The fact is that Newman's talent for philosophy, though considerable, nay,
almost great even in a strict use of the word great, was insufficient to
construct a comprehensive system without better guidance than he could
find. He was
'Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born;'
and, unable himself to bring about the birth, he turned back upon the dead
old world, a conspicuous, though personally blameless and most attractive,
specimen of the class of those who sink 'from the van and the freemen'
back 'to the rear and the slaves.'
Great part of Newman's power and attractiveness depended upon his
exquisite literary gifts. His mind grew up at Oxford, and few have shown
so much of the _genius loci_. He is academical in the best sense. There is
a polished scholarliness in all his work, and very little English prose
can be ranked as superior to his. Yet it is perfectly simple. With the
true scholar's instinct he strives for lucidity rather than magnificence.
His writings frequently breathe passion, but there could be nothing less
like what is commonly called 'impassioned prose.' Compare him with De
Quincey or with Ruskin. They frequently betray a straining for effect,
Newman rarely or never. His passages of eloquence come, like his friends,
'unasked, unhoped,' because the fervour of his own thought, or the
pressure of circumstances, like the calumnies that provoked the
_Apologia_, wrings them from him. Always clear, faultless in taste,
capable of great elevation but never too high for the occasion, Newman's
prose is as likely to be permanently satisfying as any of this century.
[Sidenote: Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882).]
Edward Bouverie Pusey was, as regards his contributions to formal
theology, superior to Newman; both as a man and as a writer he was
indefinitely smaller. Pusey early won a great reputation for learning, and
Newman considered his accession to the movement an event of the first
importance. He had great tenacity, and his adhesion, once given, was sure.
Notwithstanding suspicions at the time of Newman's perversion, there never
was the least chance that Pusey would go over to Rome; the _Via Media_,
which had crumbled under Newman's feet, was solid enough for him. He was
not sufficiently imaginative to push his way into the bog which, like
another Chat's Moss, swallowed up all the material Newman could collect.
On the contrary, for the forty years of his life after Newman's secession,
he went on diligently stopping the holes which Stanley and others were
'boring in the bottom of the Church of England.' And it is certainly a
wonderful tribute to the strength of Pusey's character that, never
quailing beneath the blow of Newman's perversion, never yielding to the
opposition which looked so formidable when his party was small and feeble
and despised, unretarded and unhurried, he should have steadily pursued
his course and raised that party to a foremost place in the Church. One or
two events of his life make it matter of thankfulness that its temporal
power was not equal to its spiritual fervour. He did all he could to
maintain the Anglican exclusiveness of the universities; and he would, if
he could, have used the civil power to suppress opinions he deemed
dangerous.
Pusey's writings are purely technical theology, not literature like those
of Newman. Of their value diverse opinions will long be entertained. They
are oracles to the High Church party; but it is well to consider what
opponents think, especially such as have some grounds of sympathy. Pius
IX. compared Pusey to 'a bell, which always sounds to invite the faithful
to Church, and itself always remains outside.' In a similar spirit another
great Romish ecclesiastic, when questioned as to Pusey's chance of
salvation, is said to have playfully replied, 'Oh, yes, he will be saved
_propter magnam implicationem_.' These are just the criticisms of those
who have attacked the Puseyite position from the point of view of free
thought. They are also the criticisms implied in Newman's action. It is at
least remarkable that critics from both extreme parties, together with the
ablest of all the men who have ever maintained the views in question,
should concur in the same judgment.
[Sidenote: Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873).]
Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, deserves a passing mention, though
he was more remarkable as a man of affairs than as a man of letters. He
was of the High Church, but was opposed to the extreme Tractarians. He was
still more opposed to the advanced Liberals. He wrote an article in the
_Quarterly Review_ against _Essays and Reviews_, he framed the indictment
against Colenso, and he was one of the chief opponents of evolution before
it had been discovered that evolution is all contained in Genesis. His
most formal literary work is the allegorical tale of _Agathos_; but his
wit and power of expression find their best outlet in the letters which
give to his _Life_ a zest rare in ecclesiastical biography.
[Sidenote: John Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872).]
There is no other theological sect as compact as the Oxford school, but
there are two others of considerable importance and distinguished by
fairly well-marked characteristics. Both are imbued with that German
thought of which Newman was so unfortunately ignorant; and one of them
especially had what he would have considered a deep taint of the hated
'liberalism.' John Frederick Denison Maurice was the chief of the first
section, while Kingsley, who was more of a novelist than a theologian, and
perhaps F. W. Robertson, may be regarded as affiliated to it. Maurice went
to Cambridge, but was prevented by the Unitarian faith he then held from
proceeding to his degree, and ultimately he graduated at Oxford. He became
Professor of English Literature and History at King's College, London, but
fell into trouble because his views on eternal punishment were unsound. At
a later date Cambridge honoured him and herself by appointing him
Professor of Moral Philosophy.
Maurice's theology was always a little indefinite, but it seems best
described by the word broad. His friendship for the remarkable Scotch
theologian, Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, who, though not a Calvinist,
thanked heaven for his Calvinistic training, is significant on one side;
his position as a disciple of Coleridge on another. Coleridge made Maurice
more orthodox than he had previously been, but also preserved him from
narrowness. Thanks to Coleridge, reason fills a greater space in Maurice
than it does in the Tractarians. From Coleridge also Maurice derived some
of the mysticism, if not mistiness, which characterised his thought. The
want of clear outline is one of his chief defects. Though always
suggestive, he is often somewhat elusive; and perhaps it is for this
reason that his influence seems to dissipate itself without producing
anything like the effect anticipated from it. The practical outcome of the
school of Maurice is poor in comparison with that of the school of Pusey.
This however was not wholly Maurice's fault. The Oxford school has drawn
strength from what, nevertheless, may ultimately prove to be its
weakness,--the appeal to authority, so tempting to many minds for the
relief it promises. Maurice is not chargeable with this fault to the same
degree. But neither is he entirely free from a kindred fault. He too, like
Newman, argues to a foregone conclusion. In Mill's opinion, more
intellectual power was wasted in Maurice than in any other of his
contemporaries, and it was wasted because all Maurice's subtlety and
power of generalisation served only 'for proving to his own mind that the
Church of England had known everything from the first.'
The principal theological works of Maurice are _The Kingdom of Christ_
(1838), _The Doctrine of Sacrifice_ (1854), and _The Claims of the Bible
and of Science_ (1863). He wrote also a not very valuable treatise on
_Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy_ (1848-1862). And finally he wrote a
number of tracts on Christian Socialism, of which he was the originator.
The Christian Socialists made a well-meant but not very wise attempt to
raise the condition of the working classes. The name is unfortunate. If
the party had thought a little more carefully they must have seen that if
their socialism was economically sound there was nothing specially
Christian about it; while, if it was not sound, neither it nor
Christianity was benefited by the addition of the adjective. The Christian
Socialists had no more thought out their principles than they had
considered the name they chose, and for want of solid ground-work they
failed. Nevertheless, Christian Socialism has left a mark on literature,
in the works of Maurice himself, in the novels of Charles Kingsley, and to
some extent in the writings of John Sterling, who was for a time of the
school of Maurice.
[Sidenote: Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853).]
Frederick William Robertson owes his position entirely to the celebrated
sermons which he preached at Brighton during the last six years of his
life. They are not great in scholarship, nor even in eloquence, but they
exhibit a character of many-sided attractiveness which was the real secret
of Robertson's power.
[Sidenote: Mark Pattison (1813-1884).]
[Sidenote: Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893).]
The other section of theologians made a much firmer stand for freedom of
thought than Maurice. Their leader in the earlier days of opposition to
Tractarianism was Dr. Arnold of Rugby. Some of them were his pupils, and
all were influenced by his spirit. In many cases however they came to hold
very different ground from his, and supposing him to have lived and to
have remained stable in his opinions, he might have regarded his disciples
with as much disquiet and fear as he regarded the Tractarians. One of his
pupils was A. P. Stanley, who entered the Church and remained in it;
another was Clough, the story of whose doubts and unrest is written in his
poems; and the author of _Literature and Dogma_ was a third. Outside the
circle of Arnold's pupils but in general sympathy with them were Mark
Pattison, a quondam follower of Newman, and Benjamin Jowett, the
celebrated Master of Balliol, whose most important literary work, the
translation of Plato, comes after 1870, but whose struggle for freedom of
opinion and whose persecution in its cause belong to the period under
consideration. Jowett was Regius Professor of Greek, and the animosity of
those who detested his opinions took the contemptible shape of withholding
a reasonable salary. They mistook their man and their means. Jowett was no
money-lover; his enemies could not starve him out; and the effect followed
which experience proves to attend persecution when it cannot be made
crushingly severe. He became the hero of the more liberal-minded, and he
moulded almost as he pleased the best intellects of the most intellectual
college of the university.
Both Jowett and Pattison were writers in the celebrated volume entitled
_Essays and Reviews_ (1860). This was a collection of seven papers on
theological subjects, united only by a common liberalism of view. Few
books, in the main so harmless, have caused such a commotion. The volume
is valuable chiefly as a landmark. Some of the opinions would still be
considered heterodox, but they would be received now, if not with
satisfaction, at least with calmness. At that time however people were
sensitive on the point of orthodoxy. Darwin had just been promulgating an
obnoxious doctrine, and it seemed hard that the faith, in danger from
without, should be assailed also from within; for six of the seven
essayists were clergymen. Legal proceedings were taken against two of
them, but they only let off harmlessly humours which, if suppressed, might
have been dangerous. It was with respect to the Gorham controversy, ten
years earlier, that a Frenchman 'congratulated Stanley on the fact that
the English revolution had taken the shape of "_le pere_ Gorham."' The
truth underlying this remark applies to other things besides the Gorham
case.
In 1862 the excitement was renewed by the publication of Colenso's book on
the Pentateuch. It seems arid now, for there is nothing attractive in the
application of arithmetical formulas to Noah's Ark; but it was just the
kind of argument needed for the time and for the audience addressed. It is
commonly objected that criticisms of the Bible are a wanton unsettlement
of the faith of simple folk. One striking fact will demonstrate the need
of some liberalising work. In 1864 the Oxford Declaration on Inspiration
and Eternal Punishment was signed by 11,000 clergy; and according to
Bishop Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, the effect of this
declaration was that 'all questions of physical science should be referred
to the written words of Holy Scripture.'
[Sidenote: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).]
The society in which such a thing as this was possible stood in crying
need of an intelligent philosophy. The matter was all the worse because
this incident came after the great English school, dominant during the
first three quarters of the century, had grown and flourished, and was on
the point of decay. This was the school which in the early years of the
century had for its prophet Jeremy Bentham, and as inferior lights James
Mill and the economists. During the third decade we see the thinkers who
were in sympathy with these men gradually grouping themselves round John
Stuart Mill, whose family connexions, as well as his own ability, made him
a centre of the school. He was the son of the hard, dry, but able and
clear-headed Scotch philosopher and historian, James Mill, who, almost
from his son's cradle, set about the task of fashioning him in his own
image. In some respects James Mill's success was wonderful. 'I started,'
says J. S. Mill, 'I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a
century over my contemporaries.' But even he was aware of the concomitant
defects of the system. A want of tenderness on the part of James Mill led
to the educational error of neglecting the cultivation of feeling, and
hence to 'an undervaluing of poetry, and of imagination generally, as an
element of human nature.' There are indications all through the younger
Mill's life as of a warm-hearted, affectionate nature struggling to burst
the fetters linked around him by his early education; and there is a touch
of irony in the fact that in an early mental crisis John Mill found relief
in the 'healing influence' of Wordsworth.
[Sidenote: John Austin (1790-1859).]
Among those who frequented James Mill's house were Grote and the two
Austins, John and Charles, the latter a man of almost unequalled
reputation for brilliant talents, who contented himself with extraordinary
pecuniary success at the bar, and early retired with a fortune. The elder
brother, John Austin, was rather an independent thinker who adopted many
of the same views, than a disciple of James Mill. He never achieved what
was expected of him.
S. Mill says that his error was over-elaboration: he wore himself out
before his work was accomplished through incapacity to satisfy himself.
His writings are nevertheless full of redundancies; but he did a great
deal towards forming a terminology for scientific jurisprudence. His
works, _The Province of Jurisprudence Determined_ (1832), and _Lectures on
Jurisprudence_ (1863), are, like nearly all the writings of his school,
deficient in human interest.
Partly stimulated by and partly stimulating these men, John Mill began to
think for himself and to initiate movements. It was he who in the winter
of 1822-1823 founded the Utilitarian Society, the name of which was
borrowed from Galt's _Annals of the Parish_. A little later he was
brought, through the agency of a debating society, into contact with a
wider circle. The battles were originally between the philosophic Radicals
and the Tory lawyers; but afterwards they were joined by those whom Mill
describes as the Coleridgians, Maurice and Sterling. It was under the
attrition of these friendships and friendly discussions that Mill's mind
was formed and polished after it passed from under the immediate control
of his father. His interest from the start centred in philosophy. Before
1830 he had begun to write on logic, but his first important publication
was the _System of Logic_ (1843). For some years he edited the _London
Review_, afterwards entitled the _London and Westminster_. His _Political
Economy_ appeared in 1848. In 1851 he married a widow, Mrs. Taylor, to
whom he ascribes a share in some of his works scarcely inferior to his
own. Her influence is especially strong in the essay _On Liberty_ (1859),
though this was not published until after her death.
About this time Mill took up the question of parliamentary reform, and in
1861 published his _Considerations on Representative Government_. Nearly
contemporaneous in composition, though eight years later in publication,
was the _Subjection of Women_; while _Utilitarianism_ (1862) was the
result of a revision of papers written towards the close of Mill's married
life. _Auguste Comte and Positivism_ (reprinted from _The Westminster
Review_) and the _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_ both
appeared in 1865. There remain to mention only the _Autobiography_ and a
collection of essays, both posthumous. During these later years Mill's
life was for a time more public than it had previously been. In 1865 the
electors of Westminster asked him to be their representative, and he was
elected without the ordinary incident of a canvass. In the election of
1868 however he was defeated, and the constituency never had an
opportunity of redeeming its error.
Mill's writings may be grouped under the heads of philosophical, economic,
and political. The highly interesting but depressing and melancholy
_Autobiography_ stands outside these classes. Perhaps it is his best
composition from the point of view of literature; and certainly it is the
most valuable document for a study of the growth of his school. The three
divisions are not mutually exclusive, for, strictly speaking, the first
would embrace the other two. In it an attempt is made to lay down general
principles which are applied in them.
Mill's theory is contained in his _Logic_, his _Utilitarianism_, and his
books on Comte and Hamilton. It has become known by the name he gave it as
Utilitarianism; and as Bentham was the founder and first leader of the
school, so was Mill the successor to his position and authority. It is a
modern form of the theory associated with the name of the philosopher
Epicurus; and on that ground it has been subjected to moral censure.
Perhaps ultimately, as directed against the principle, the censure is
sound; but it cannot be fairly turned against individuals. Certainly no
thinkers of their time laboured more strenuously for the good of the
community than Mill and Bentham. In Bentham's exposition, the philosophy
crystallised itself in the often-quoted phrase, 'the greatest happiness of
the greatest number.' His contribution consists in the introduction of the
idea of the greatest number. Whether that idea is logically consistent
with a philosophy of pleasure may be questioned; but it was to Bentham's
addition that the maxim owed its power and its practical influence on
legislation. It was moreover this consideration, in addition to the fact
that he breathed Benthamite ideas from the cradle, that attracted Mill.
For he was a typically English philosopher. He never of his own choice
dwelt long on purely metaphysical problems, nor did he succeed well when
he was forced to attempt them. His attitude towards Hume's theory of
cause, after Kant's criticism of it, is vividly illustrative of his
speculative limitations. If Oxford is the place where German philosophies
go when they die, apparently London in Mill's time was the place where
German philosophies did not go at all; and even dead German philosophies
are better than the English predecessors which they slew in the day of
their vigour.
As a Utilitarian, Mill was more valuable for exposition than for the
original elements of his thought. In all his writings he is clear in
expression and abundant in illustration. This abundance, in truth, appears
to the reader not wholly ignorant of the subject to be cognate to
verbosity. It was however part of the secret of Mill's great influence. He
forced people to understand him. He talked round and round the subject,
looked at it from every point of view and piled example upon example,
until it was impossible to miss his meaning. When we add wide knowledge,
patient study, keen intelligence and a considerable, if not exactly a
great talent for original speculation, Mill's influence as a philosopher
is explained. He wielded, from the publication of his _Logic_ till his
death, a greater power than any other English thinker, unless Sir William
Hamilton is to be excepted for the earlier part of the period.
These characteristics, combined perhaps with a greater share of
originality, appear in the _System of Logic_ as well as in the Utilitarian
treatises. Its merit is proved by the fact that through many years of
adverse criticism it has maintained its ground at the universities as one
of the most useful books on the subject. The freshest section is that
which is devoted to Induction. The _Examination of Hamilton_ shows Mill to
have possessed the gift of acute and powerful criticism of philosophy. He
may not have succeeded in establishing his own position, but he certainly
damaged very seriously the rival system of Hamilton.
Mill's _Political Economy_ is, like his general philosophy, lucid, full
and thorough. Though cautious here, as always, in the admission of new
principles, Mill made considerable contributions to economics. The theory
of international exchanges is almost wholly his, and many particular turns
and details of economic doctrine are due to him. In a still greater number
of cases he has been, not the originator, but the best exponent of
economic theory. The caution and judiciousness of his reasoning were
qualities peculiarly valuable in this sphere; and where the views of
'orthodox' political economy are accepted at all, Mill's opinions are
treated with respect.
The time when Mill's authority was at its height was also the time when
political economy was held in greatest honour as a science. The writers on
it were numerous; and though, with the exception of Mill, they were not
individually very distinguished, their collective work was important. They
developed the doctrines of Adam Smith and Ricardo and Mill; while the
speculations of Malthus acquired through Darwin a new importance, until a
reaction, brought about more by sentiment than reason, led many to the
conviction, or the faith, that they could not possibly be sound. The
doctrine of _laissez faire_, so influential on government during the third
quarter of the century, was the work partly of the economists and partly
of the practical politicians of the Manchester school. It was never
followed out logically, and before the close of the period there were
signs of a movement which has since led to an opposite excess. Of the men
who did this work Nassau W. Senior (1790-1864), in the earlier part of the
period, and J. E. Cairnes (1823-1875) in the later deserve individual
mention. The former was a great upholder of the deductive theory of
political economy. The latter, in his treatise on _The Slave Power_
(1862), produced one of the most noteworthy special studies in economics,
and also one of the most powerful arguments in favour of the action of the
Northern States of America.
It was the practical aspect of the science that chiefly interested Mill in
economics. It was this still more, if possible, that inspired him in his
more specifically political works, the treatises on _Liberty_, on the
_Subjection of Women_, and on _Representative Government_. In his schemes
of reform Mill was, in his own time, considered extreme; he would now be
thought moderate. The caution of his speculation is nowhere more clearly
marked than in his _Liberty_. It pleads certainly for more power to the
state than the Manchester School would have granted; but it does so only
in order to preserve the real freedom of the individual. In the
_Subjection of Women_ Mill was a pioneer on a road which has been well
trodden since; and, for good or ill, there has been steady progress
towards the triumph of his ideas. In _Representative Government_ he shows
a faith, probably excessive, in political machinery; but, whether it can
do all Mill supposed or not, such machinery is necessary, and his labour
tended to make it better.
[Sidenote: William Whewell (1794-1866).]
Over against Mill, with some points of resemblance, but more of
difference, may be set William Whewell, who, in 1841, became Master of
Trinity College, Cambridge, and who acquired an immense reputation both
for encyclopaedic knowledge and for brilliant wit. On the human side he was
certainly more attractive than Mill. Like the latter, he was fascinated by
the great performances and the boundless promise of science; and he is one
of those whose task it has been to formulate a philosophy of science. To
this task he devoted himself more exclusively than Mill, and he brought to
it a greater knowledge of scientific processes and discoveries. Moreover,
his point of view was different. Mill was a pure empiricist. Whewell held
that empiricism alone could not explain even itself; and he therefore
taught that there was necessary truth as well as empirical truth. This was
at once the starting point of his controversy with Mill and the
ground-work of his writings, the _History of the Inductive Sciences_
(1837) and the _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_ (1840). He is best
known by his _Novum Organum Renovatum_, which was originally a portion of
the second work.
Whewell's strong point is his great knowledge of the history of science.
His inductive theory is somewhat loose. It amounts to no more than a
succession of tests of hypotheses; and of these tests the most stringent,
prediction and consilience of inductions, are open to the fatal objection
that they are not and cannot be applied to all inductions. Mill's
inductive methods also are more stringent in appearance than they prove to
be in reality; but they at least point to an ideal towards which it is
always possible to strive.
[Sidenote: Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856).]
Of a widely different school of thought was Sir William Hamilton,
Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Edinburgh from 1836 to his death.
Hamilton was a man of vast reading, and though it has been questioned
whether his learning was as exact and profound as it appeared to be, there
can hardly be a doubt that it was great enough to hamper the free play of
his thought, and that it explains two of his characteristic faults. One is
the excessive technicality of his diction. His style, otherwise clear and
good, is overloaded with words specially coined for the purposes of the
logician and metaphysician. The second fault is his inability to resist
the temptation of calling a 'cloud of witnesses,' without making any
serious attempt to weigh their evidence. Hamilton was a disciple of the
Scottish school of philosophy, and a great part of his life was devoted to
an elucidation of Reid, of whose works he published an elaborate edition
in 1853. But Reid's principle of Common Sense, as an answer to the
philosophic scepticism of Hume, is little better than an evasion; and
Hamilton had not much to add to it. Besides the edition of Reid Hamilton
published _Discussions on Philosophy and Literature_ (1852); and after his
death there appeared the _Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic_ (1859-1861),
by which he is best known.
[Sidenote: James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864).]
Hamilton had a great and not altogether a wholesome influence on James
Frederick Ferrier, who in the domain of purely metaphysical thought was
probably the most gifted man of his time. Ferrier describes his own
philosophy as Scotch to the core. There is in it, nevertheless, a
considerable tincture from the German, and Ferrier deserves the credit of
being one of the earliest professional philosophers who really grappled
with German thought. He was also the master of a very clear and attractive
style, which makes the reading of his philosophy a pleasure rather than a
toil.
[Sidenote: Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871).]
Henry Longueville Mansel, a pupil of Hamilton's, and joint editor of his
lectures along with John Veitch, afterwards Professor of Logic in Glasgow
University, was the ablest exponent of the Hamiltonian philosophy in
England. Mansel's power of acute and lucid reasoning was shown in his
_Prolegomena Logica_ (1851), and afterwards in his _Philosophy of the
Conditioned_ (1866). Both were developments of Hamilton's principles, and
they have suffered from the general discredit of the Hamiltonian school.
Mansel is better known now, by name at least, on account of his _Limits of
Religious Thought_, (constituting the Bampton lectures for 1858), which
was the occasion of a controversy between him and Maurice.
[Sidenote: Harriet Martineau (1802-1876).]
The other philosophical writers of the period were, with one exception, of
minor importance. Harriet Martineau was a woman of varied activity. She
wrote political economy, history and fiction; and her story, _Deerbrook_
(1839), is among the best and freshest of her works. She is however most
memorable, not as an original thinker, but as a translator and expounder.
She translated and condensed the philosophy of Comte, and did as much as
anyone to make it known in England. She had the great merits of
unshrinking courage, perfect sincerity and undoubting loyalty to truth.
[Sidenote: George Henry Lewes (1817-1878).]
Another miscellaneous writer of the Comtist school was George Henry Lewes,
who has been elsewhere mentioned in connexion with George Eliot. He was an
active-minded, energetic man, whose life touches literature at many
points. He too wrote novels, but they did not succeed. He was a critic of
no mean power. He took great interest in and possessed considerable
knowledge of science, and in 1859-1860 published a popular scientific
work, _The Physiology of Common Life_. But his best known book is the
_Life of Goethe_ (1855). It is an able biography and pleasant to read,
though perhaps, considering the calibre of the subject, rather lacking in
weight. It is however no small compliment to Lewes's work that it was for
many years accepted, both in Germany and in England, as the standard
biography of Goethe. Lewes's principal contributions to philosophy were _A
Biographical History of Philosophy_ (1845-1846), _Comte's Philosophy of
the Sciences_ (1853), and _Problems of Life and Mind_ (1873-1879). In all
of them Lewes shows himself an unswerving Positivist. He accepts and
reiterates his master's doctrine that the day of metaphysics is past, so
that his philosophy is, in a sense, the negation of philosophy.
[Sidenote: Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1806-1863).]
In the sphere of political science, the man next in power to Mill was Sir
George Cornewall Lewis. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first
administration of Lord Palmerston, Lewis had the opportunity of making a
practical acquaintance with his subject; but his theories were formed
earlier. Extensive knowledge, combined with clearness of intellect and
independence of judgment, gives value to his work. His _Inquiry into the
Credibility of Early Roman History_ (1855) was remarkable for its attack
upon the theories of Niebuhr, which were in those days accepted with an
almost superstitious reverence. But previous to this Lewis had written his
most important book, _The Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion_
(1849), a well reasoned and well written argument, worthy of attention in
these days when there seems to be a disposition to forget the limits
beyond which the influence is illegitimate. Lewis teaches the wisdom and
even the necessity of submitting to 'authority' where we cannot
investigate for ourselves, and where all who are competent to form an
opinion are agreed; but he is careful not to set up any absolute and
indefeasible authority which might dictate to reason and against reason.
Towards the close of the period there are noticeable traces of a new
school superseding both Utilitarianism and Positivism. This school,
nourished upon German idealism, had its centre at Oxford, and the men who
have done the principal work in it were pupils of Jowett. They belong
however to the later period and come within our present scope only as an
indication of tendency.
[Sidenote: Herbert Spencer (1820-1903).]
The root of thought in all these men is the idea of development, the great
formative idea of the present century. This idea however had an English as
well as a German growth. In England it is best known through Darwin. But
while Darwin shows its scientific side, the most celebrated of recent
English philosophers, Mr. Herbert Spencer (1820), makes it the basis of a
philosophy. _The Synthetic Philosophy_, just completed, is distinguished
for the vastness of its design, the accomplishment of which gives Mr.
Spencer a place among the few encyclopaedic thinkers of the world. His
philosophy is interesting also because it concentrates and reflects the
spirit of the time. No other thinker has so strenuously laboured to gather
together all the accumulations of modern knowledge and _to_ unite them
under general conceptions. The alliance between the Spencerian philosophy
and physical science is unusually close; and Mr. Spencer in his
illustrations shows an all-embracing range of knowledge, which becomes
minute in those branches of science bearing directly upon the phenomena of
life. The future only can determine the exact value of this knowledge, for
there are grave differences of opinion between Mr. Spencer and some of the
leading biologists, like Weismann; but it may at least be said of him that
he is the first philosopher since Bacon ('who wrote on science like a Lord
Chancellor'), or at latest Leibnitz, who has met men of science on
something like equal terms within the domain of science. Mr. Spencer's
unique interest is that he has attempted an exhaustive survey of all the
facts relating to the development of life and of society. He does not go
beyond that, to the origin of all things; for it is one of his cardinal
principles that behind the Knowable there is dimly visible a something not
only unknown but unknowable. We are compelled to regard every phenomenon
as the manifestation of an infinite and incomprehensible Power. In this
the philosopher finds the reconciliation of religion with science; a
reconciliation for which the religious have seldom shown much gratitude,
because they are forbidden to say anything specific about the Power whose
existence they may, and indeed must, assume. On this point there is a
quarrel between Mr. Spencer and the metaphysicians, who dispute the right
of any man to assert the existence of an Unknowable. If we can assert its
existence surely we know it at least in part; and if so may we not by
investigation come to know it better?
The Spencerian philosophy is the most comprehensive and ambitious
application of the principle of evolution ever attempted. Without showing
anywhere that mastery of detail and that power of marshalling facts in
evidence which give Darwin's great work its unequalled significance, the
_Synthetic Philosophy_ yet reaches at both ends beyond the limits Darwin
set himself. Mr. Spencer begins by recognising three kinds of evolution,
in the spheres of the inorganic, the organic and the super-organic; and
all the parts of the _Synthetic Philosophy_ find a place under one or
other of these; but the treatment of the first part is omitted as less
pressing and as adding too greatly to the magnitude of the scheme. After
the _First Principles_, in which are laid down the limits of the knowable
and the unknowable, there follows therefore the _Principles of Biology_
(1864-1867), where the evolution of life, the gradual differentiation of
functions and kindred topics are treated. Still within the sphere of the
evolution of the organic we have next the _Principles of Psychology_
(1855), where organisms exhibiting the phenomena of mind are examined from
various points of view to determine so far as possible the nature of mind,
its relations with the universe, the composition of its simpler elements,
etc. From psychology we step to super-organic evolution in the _Principles
of Sociology_ (1876-1896), which is probably regarded by the majority as
the most characteristic part of the Spencerian philosophy. It is certainly
one of the most interesting; for it combines in an unusual measure the
best results of ancient thought with full justice to modern individualism.
Mr. Spencer is a consistent individualist, but a far-sighted one. He sees
that 'the survival of the fittest,' and with it progress, are impossible
unless 'the fittest' both wins and keeps advantage to himself. Unlimited
altruism would be as bad as unlimited egoism, and would indeed foster
egoism, for it would in the end mean the stripping of generosity to pamper
greed. On the other hand, pure egoism is fatal to society; and the animal
for whom gregariousness is an advantage must fail in the struggle if he is
unfaithful to the social principle. Hence there arises a society which is
a balance between the two principles. It demands sacrifices from the
individual in return for benefits; but the law of its existence prohibits
the extension of this demand beyond the point where the individual
'fittest' survives and prospers. If the demand goes beyond this the course
is downwards; for, as society is composed of individuals, a society in
which the strongest has no advantage is a society in which progress is
impossible, but, on the contrary, deterioration is sooner or later
certain. There is no room on Spencerian principles for any socialism which
does not recognise difference of reward according to difference of
capacity.
In the _Principles of Ethics_ (1892-1893) Mr. Spencer attempts to apply
the results reached in the earlier parts of his scheme to the enunciation
of a theory of right living. It is here that an evolutionary system based
upon science is felt to be least convincing. There is a gulf never
satisfactorily bridged between ethical principles as gradually evolved out
of the non-moral state, and the 'moral imperative' as it is felt by the
human conscience. Hence, the man of religion insists, the necessity of
being specific about that vague Power dimly seen behind the philosophy of
evolution; and hence the necessity, in the view of the metaphysician, of
regarding evolution from above as well as from below. We learn much by
tracing things to their origin; but to learn all we must consider as well
what they ultimately become. It is in fact the final form that gives
importance to the question of origin. The temptation of evolution is
certainly to underrate the significance of the later stages; and the
higher we go the greater are the effects of such an error.
But whatever its faults the _Synthetic Philosophy_ remains unequalled in
the present age for boldness of conception and for the solidity derived
from its league with science. No other philosophy is so eminently modern
in spirit and method; and whatever modifications may prove to be required,
thought at once so daring and so patient can never be ignored.