J. S. MILL ON OUR BELIEF IN THE EXTERNAL WORLD. "THE question of the external world" is still, as Mr Mill says, "the great battle-field of metaphysics." It has been so for some three thousand years, or since the time, whatever date that bears, when Indian philosophers first drove the thinking world distracted with their subtle doctrine that all we see and feel and believe of the external world is Maia or Delusion-that the space without us, if there be space, is filled only with imaginary forms, the creations of our own senses-that man can be conscious only of his own thoughts and feelings, which are nothing but properties of his own that he moves about in a world of his own invention, or rather dreams his dream of motion, for that he really moves, or has anything in his mode of existence so real as motion, cannot safely be predicated of him. Since that time great has been the struggle in this battle-field; nor has the human intellect anywhere put forth more power or displayed greater ingenuity. Many an effort has been made to bring back the solid, comfortable, external world to us in its homely realitythat is, to bring it back to the satisfaction of philosophers; for we need not say that the multitude without has all along been as indifferent and as unconscious of the debate as the external world itself. These efforts have not, strange to say, been hitherto successful. This battle-field still resounds with the ceaseless murmur of its dream-like controversy. Here we have in Mr Mill's book the last word spoken on the subject, and what does it say? This last word comes from one whom the voice of his country puts at the head of its living philosophers-it is uttered in an age distin guished for its application to physical science, and by one who has earned a large share of his reputation by tracing the processes of thought, and prescribing the rules of reasoning, by which men make discoveries in science-it is uttered by one who, rightly or not, has acquired the name of the "positive" philosopher, pre-eminently the lover of fact, the disperser of dreamsand this last word, uttered in the nineteenth century by one of the leaders of the age-what is it? It is the Indian doctrine of Maia or Delusion! - the old Brahminical no-faith, reasoned out on the advanced position of modern science, and by a master of logic. When Mr Mill, extending the old name of logic to the inductive processes of science, taught men how they had made their brilliant discoveries, he permitted, or seemed to permit, the man of science to reason about his atoms or forces as if they had an independent existence, and were not themselves the mere sensations, or thoughts of sensations, of him the man of science. But here, when Mr Mill turns from physics to metaphysics, he withdraws this permission. Here the atoms which the chemist so intently keeps his eye upon, through their numberless combinations, are dissolved in a menstruum that he had taken no account of, are lost to him in his own sensations. These forces which the mechanician measures with so much accuracy, lo! they are nothing but the force in his own arm; not even that-nothing but the sensation in his own muscle, in his own mind. To such elements, while the physicist is at work with his retorts and crucibles and voltaic batteries, does he find the world An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and of the Principal Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings.' By John Stuart Mill. reduced by a rival analyst. Physics and metaphysics apparently require, or produce, two very different conceptions of matter. The astronomer and the geologist-like the chemist with his atoms-speak of stars, and the sun, and the earth as real things existing in space-things whose mode of existence we set ourselves to learn-things that existed long before man came to look at them, came to submit his sensitive and intellectual nature to their influence, and thus produce in that twofold nature the last and most marvellous work of creation. The metaphysician, as represented by Mr Mill, refuses all knowledge of the thing, except as some product of his own senses; he ensconces himself within his sensitive nature only, and declares that the attempt to think of suns, or worlds, or atoms as existing, except as sensations of his own, leads us merely to delusion. This discrepancy between physics and metaphysics, to say the least of it, is embarrassing. Of course the metaphysician, of whatever school, will endeavour to show that scientific men might hold his doctrine of matter, and yet pursue their astronomical, or geological, or chemical researches with their old accustomed zeal. Scientific men, we may be certain, will not be disturbed in their course by any doctrine of the metaphysician, and will not need what sort of reassurance he may be able to afford them. It is by the inquirers into mental philosophy that the discrepancy will be chiefly felt; and were we bound to accept the conclusions of Mr Mill, we know not, for our part, how we should be able to reconcile them with modes of thought which science requires or renders inevitable. We do not, however, find ourselves compelled to accept of his conclusions; nor do we think that a sound psychology will leave us with this feeling of discrepancy between physics and metaphysics. Modern science assigns to matter no other properties than extension, resistance, motion, which are called its primary qualities. What are still sometimes called the secondary qualities of matter are recognised as the product of these on the sensitive organised creature. Now we are of opinion that these primary qualities are real facts-that extended, resisting, moving things are— whether we are there to be affected by them or not. We learn their existence through our sensations, but they are not merely other names for our sensations. There is something more than mere sensation engaged in the process of forming these ideas of extension, resistance, and motion, and consequently they cannot be resolved back into mere sensation. They are from the first cognitions as well as sensations. Such is the difference we have with Mr Mill on the present occasion. We have preferred to single out this topic from the many others discussed in his work rather than attempt to travel over the whole of its contents. We shall but cursorily glance at other portions of the book, that we may have space to examine with care the Idealism of Mr Mill. There is no better and certainly no more vivacious manner of expounding our own opinions than by criticising those of some distinguished predecessor. We add the zest of controversy to the interest belonging to the subject itself that we treat. Moreover, we define ourselves more sharply by this close contact with another; and so long as the spirit of controversy is subordinated to this end of a clear and vigorous exposition of our own views, it seems to be not only permissible, but wise and salutary. Whether Mr Mill, in his 'Examination of the Philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton,' has altogether restrained the spirit of controversy within these limits-whether he has not been carried on, in parts of this volume, into needless, pertinacious, and not altogether generous criticism-we shall leave every reader to judge for himself. It is certain that his volume gains in energy and sprightliness by the combat that he wages. A critic has always the advantage of the person criticised; he can choose his point of attack; can leave the solid breastplate unassailed, and direct his blade to where some loosened rivet betrays the joint in the armour. It is not suprising, therefore-especially when we consider the occasional, fragmentary, and fitful manner in which Sir William Hamilton wrote-if Mr Mill's strictures should be often as just as they are pungent. It is not always, however, that the assailant remains master of the field; and on this subject we have selected for discussion, it is our opinion that the elder philosopher holds his ground, and holds it only the more securely after the ineffectual assault of his antagonist. No man of such great powers as Sir W. Hamilton ever did so little justice to himself. He wrote, as we say, fitfully, at long intervals. To the last, his lectures were unfinished, fragmentary performances. Probably he supplemented them by oral instruction which has not found its way into print. As they were published after his death, they excited the surprise of the reader, who could scarcely understand how it was that a man whose knowledge of his own subject was so vast, should year after year have left his lectures-which it was his plain duty to make as complete as possible in the same state in which, pressed for time, he had hastily written them for the first year of his professorship. The fact was, that he loved the erudition of philosophy far more than the task of systematically developing his own opinions. He loved thinking over the book better than thinking over the pen; and, indeed, it is the more agreeable intellectual exercise of the two. In the writings of such a man, discrepancies and contradictions were certain to appear. Mr Mill meant, we are sure, to be generous; but it was, perhaps, impossible to be at war with an author through a large octavo volume and not be sometimes carried farther than necessary by the spirit of controversy. He meant to be generous, and he occasionally writes in that strain of courteous humility, which is, at all times, a grace of composition, if it is nothing else; but the spirit of strife, the ardour of the battle, will at other times prevail; the hand that is lifted for a salute, sometimes descends in a blow. In the final survey he takes of the intellectual character of Sir W. Hamilton, he regrets that a man of so great erudition, and of power so adapted to the task, had not written the history of philosophy. In the next paragraph he remarks, "I imagine he would have been much at a loss if he had been required to draw up a philosophical estimate of the mind of any great thinker. He never seems to look at any opinion of a philosopher in connection with the same philosopher's other opinions." If this was the nature of Sir William Hamilton's erudition, if such was the incapacity of his mind, it is hardly to be regretted that he did not write the history of philosophy. He could only have been the Dryasdust of such a history. The The first portion of Mr Mill's book is occupied with an examination of that philosophy of the Infinite and the Absolute which, owing to its application by Mr Mansel in his lectures on Limits of Religious Thought," has lately attracted so much attention. We need hardly say that we agree with Mr Mill in his strictures on the unfortunate line of thought into which the Oxford metaphysician was beguiled. Because an abstraction or a conception of some kind, called by the philosophers The Absolute, was pronounced to be altogether unintelligible, the world at large were told that they must resign the belief, which all creation blazons out to them, of an Eternal Wisdom as the source of all things-resign it as a truth developed by the processes of human reason. They were also told that their idea of the Infinite Being was not only inadequate, but a mere nullity. Mr Mill says here, with admirable force "But is a conception, by the fact of its being a conception of something infinite, reduced to a negation? This is quite true of the senseless abstraction, The Infinite. That, indeed, is purely negative, being formed by excluding from the concrete conceptions classed under it all their positive elements. But in place of the infinite,' put the idea of Something infinite, and the argument collapses at once. Something infinite is a conception which, like most of our complex ideas, contains a negative element, but which contains positive elements also. Infinite space, for instance: is there nothing positive in that? The negative part of this conception is the absence of bounds. The positive are, the idea of space, and of space greater than any finite space. So of infinite duration: so far as it signifies 'without end' it is only known or conceived negatively; but in so far as it means time, and time longer than any given time, the conception is positive. The existence of a negative element in a conception does not make the conception itself negative, and a nonentity. would surprise most people to be told that the life eternal' is a purely nega tive conception; that immortality is inconceivable. Those who hope for it for themselves have a very positive conception of what they hope for. True, we cannot have an adequate conception of space or duration as infinite; but between a conception which though ininadequate is real, and correct as far as it goes, and the impossibility of any conception, there is a wide difference. Sir W. Hamilton does not admit this difference. He thinks the distinction without meaning. To say that the infinite can be thought, but only inadequately thought, is a contradiction in adjecto; it is the same as saying that the infinite can be known, but only known as finite.' I answer that, to know it as greater than anything finite, is not to know it as finite. The conception of Infinite as greater than any given quantity, is a conception we all possess, It sufficient for all human purposes, and as genuine and as good a positive conception as one need wish to have. and we come to the same result. The Absolute,' as already shown, is a heap of contradictions, but absolute,' in reference to any given attribute, signifies the possession of that attribute in finished perfection and completeness. A Being absolute in knowledge, for example, is one who knows, in the literal meaning of the term, everything. Who will pretend that this conception is negative or form an adequate conception of a being unmeaning to us? We cannot, indeed, as knowing everything, since to do this we must have a conception, or mental representation of all that he knows. But neither have we an adequate conception of any person's finite knowledge. I have no adequate conception of a shoemaker's knowledge, since I do not know how to make shoes; but my conception of a shoemaker or his knowledge is a real conception; it is not a fasciculus of negations. If I talk of an Absolute Being (in the sense in which we are now employing the term), I use words without meaning; but if I talk of a Being who is absolute in wisdom and goodness, that is, who knows everything, and at all times intends what is best for every sentient creature, I understand perfectly what I mean."-P. 45. "Put Absolute instead of Infinite, With Mr Mansel, the term Absolute is generally restricted to that sense which German metaphysicians have made so familiar to us; not the absolute perfection of any property, but that absolute being in which all things have their ground, in which mind and matter are said to be identical. The reader would willingly have received from Mr Mill some further insight into a question which lies at the root of the matter:-How far is it true that all our conceptions of being are individual? or how far philosophers are justified in a favourite notion of a large class of them, that universal and veritable Being underlies all individualities, reducing them to what they call phenomenal beings?-whether, to use a somewhat barbarous nomenclature, our ultimate conception of Being is Individualism or Universalism? It is the attempt to combine the ideas of a Being with Being in this universal sense, that is the origin of the puzzle which Mr Mansel puts before us. So prevalent is this idea of unfathomable Being at once the One and the Universal, that even the Christian theist frequently detects that his conception of God takes for an instant a Pantheistic aspect, from which, however, he rapidly recalls it. Mr Mill would probably tell us that he purposely refrained from entering more minutely into questions which lie beyond the range of human insight; or, perhaps, that he has sufficiently indicated his opinion by calling the Absolute an "abstraction." Mr Mansel has unhappily said that the moral attributes of God do, or may, differ from those of man, not in degree only but in kind, leaving the human reason (in the face of any assertion made of God) without any guidance whatever. Into this unhappiness the metaphysics of the Oxford preacher had beguiled him; but, as Mr Mill remarks, Mr Mansel never thought of drawing from his statement all the fatal consequences which might be deduced from it; he uses it to parry an objection, and, having used it for this purpose, he would gladly lay it down. If goodness in God is not what we call goodness, we are left without any power of estimating and feeling the moral attributes of God-without any power of framing for ourselves, or understanding when revealed, a conception worthy of our worship. Never was an amiable and intelligent divine betrayed by his own ingenuity, and the energy of argument, into an error more patent or more to be regretted. Here no obscurity of the subject can shield him from the blow -here neither the mysteries of ontology, nor the darkest night of German metaphysics, can shelter him. "Language," as Mr Mill says, "has no meaning for the words Just, Merciful, Benevolent, save that in which we predicate them of our fellow-creatures; and unless that is what we intend to ex press by them, we have no business to employ the words. If, in affirming them of God, we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, differing only as greater in degree, we are neither philosophically nor morally entitled to affirm them at all. If it be said that the qualities are the same, but that we cannot conceive them as they are when 'raised to the infinite, I grant that we cannot adequately conceive them in one of their elements, their infinity. But we can conceive them in their other elements, which are the very same in the infinite as the finite development. Anything carried to the infinite must have all the properties of the same thing as finite, except those which depend upon the finiteness. Among the many who have said we cannot conceive of infinite space, did any one ever suppose that it was not space, that it does not possess all the properties by which space is characterised? Infinite space cannot be cubical or spherical, because these are modes of being bounded; but does any one imagine that in ranging through it we might arrive at some region which was not extended-of which one part was not outside another-where, though no Body intervened, motion was impossible-or where the sum of two sides of a triangle was less than the third side? The parallel assertion may be made respecting infinite goodness. What belongs to it as infinite (or more properly as absolute) I do not pretend to know; but I know that infinite goodness must be goodness, and that what is not consistent with goodness is not consistent with infinite goodness. If in ascribing goodness to God I do not mean the goodness of which I have some knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible substance, which, for aught I know, may be a totally different quality from that which I love and venerate-and even must, if Mr Mansel is to be believed, be in some important particulars opposed to this-what do I mean have I for venerating it? . . . Besides, by calling it goodness? and what reason suppose that certain unknown attributes are ascribed to the Deity in a religion, the external evidences of which are so conclusive to my mind as effectually to convince me that it comes from God. Unless I believe God to possess the same moral attributes which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good man, what ground of assurance have I of God's veracity?. All trust in a Revelation presupposes a conviction that God's attributes are the same in all but degree with the best human attributes." |