An examination of Mr. J.S. Mill's philosophy : being a defence of fundamental truth

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Preface To Second Edition, V

p^edists ; with qualities fitted to stimulate a wild enthusiasm ; entertained by earnest and able men eager to propagate their opinions, supporting each other in important literary organs, and at the present moment buoyed up by the hopes of victory. Happily we have in this country (it is different, I fear, under the new Empire in France) many forces — unfortunately unconnected and distracted — to meet this, both in the hightoned philosophy which still lingers among us, and in a fervent religion widely spread, and fitted, I think, to keep the materialistic psychology from attaining to so great a sway as it reached in last century, and may still reach in this, on the continent. But the contest in England is a very serious one — the religious public being quite unaware of its importance, and not likely to be aroused till they see the practical effects, when it is too late to avert them. Thinking men, however, feel that they have a part to act in this crisis. I introduce my readers to one of the skirmishes of the great warfare.

In May, 1865, Mr. Mill published an Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy^ in which he unfolds principles fitted, as I think, to undermine fundamental truth. In the beginning of the following year, I published this work as a reply. In the third edition of his work, published in 1867, Mr. Mill replied to his critics, including myself. I place in Appendix II. to this edition my answer to Mr. Mill's strictures. The combatants are now brought to very close quarters. We now see clearly what are the questions at issue. The Appendix may be regarded as forming a sort of risumi of the whole controversy, not so far as it relates to Hamilton, but as it bears on what is far more important, — the fundamental truth which Mr. Mill has assailed.

COI^TTE^TS.

Chapter I. Pass

Intkoduotion — Sir William Hamilton and Me. Mill, . , 7

CHAPTER IL The Method of Investigation, 31

CHAPTER in.

^ 'I Me. Mill's Admissions, ^5

CHAPTER IV.

Sensations, 79

CHAPTER V.

Mind, Personality, Personal Identity, Substance, . , 8&

CHAPTER VI.

Body, . 112

CHAPTER VII.

The Physiology of the Senses, 159 viii CONTENTS,

CHAPTER VIII.

Memout, Association of Ideas, Belief, and Unconscious

Mental Operations, 187

CHAPTER IX.

Judgment or Comparison 215

CHAPTER X.

Relativity of Knowledge, ... .... 23]

CHAPTER XL Man's Power of Conception as a Test of Truth, . . . 251

CHAPTER XIL Self-Evidence and Necessity, the Tests op Intuition, . , 259

CHAPTER Xin.

Causation, 274

CHAPTER XIV.

The Logical Notion, 286

CHAPTER XV.

Logical Judgment, , . 305

CHAPTER XVI.

Reasoning, 318

CHAPTER XVII.

Secondary Logic; or Thought as Directed to Particular

Classes of Objects*, ggg

CONTENTS. ix

CHAPTER XVIII.

Logical Discussions : The Pbotince op Logic, . . . 350

CHAPTER XIX.

What is Truth"? Criteria op Truth, 372

CHAPTER XX.

Utilitarianism, 385

CHAPTER XXI.

Natural Theology, 415

Appendix

I. Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 433

II. Reply to Mr. Mill's Strictures in his Third Edition, . 435

AJSf :examinatio'n

OF

MR. J. S. MILUS PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION — SIR W. HAMILTON AND MR. MILL.

IF any one competent to oflFer an opinion on such a subject were asked. Who are the most influential philosophic thinkers of Britain, in this the third quarter of the nineteenth century? he would at once and unhesitatingly name Sir William Hamilton and Mr. John Stuart Mill. For the last twenty or thirty years the former has had great authority ia Scotland, and considerable power ia Oxford and among the Dissenting colleges of England; has been much admired in the United States of America ; has been favorably known in France, and heard of even in Germany, where few British metaphysicians attaiQ a name. Mr. MUl has quahties which specially recommend him to the EngHsh mind, and of late years he has got a firm hold of the rising thought of Oxford and Cambridge, where young minds, in the recoil from the attempt to impose the mediaeval forms unon them, have taken refuge in

8 IITTBODUCTIOir.

the Empiricism and Utilitarianism so lucidly expoimded by him; while writers bred at the great English Universities have, in certain portions of the London press, been constantly and apparently systematically quoting him, or referring to him, as possibly the only philosopher kno-\vn to them, or at least appreciated by them. It should be added that he is known in France as the English representor tive of their own Positive School; and his clear logical expositions have been esteemed by not a few in Germany, anxious to escape from the inextricable toils of Kant and Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

These two men are aUke in the greatness of their intellectual power, and in the range of their attainments. But they differ widely in their peculiar mental endowments and predilections, in the manner in which they have been trained, and the influences under which their opinions have been formed. Hamilton is known to have received a thoroughly complete collegiate education in classics and philosophy ; to have afterwards had his logical powers sharpened by the study of law, and his extensive information widened by his researches when Professor of History ; while his pursuits were made finally to centre in mental science by his appointment as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. Eeceiving his early college training in Glasgow, where the influence of Reid was predominant, he retained through life a

HAMILTOl^ AND MILL. 9

profound reverence for the common-sense philosopher. Completing his academic education at Oxford, he fell under the sway of Aristotle, and found in him much that was congenial to his own intellectual nature, and was led to study his philosophy not only in his own writings, but in the pages of his commentators, and in the modification of his logic constructed by the schoolmen. In the course of his multifarious reading he could not but fall in with constant references to Emmanuel Kant as a profound thinker, and, as he entered upon the study of his works, could not but be impressed with the vast logical power of the German metaphysician. These three, Eeid, Aristotle, and Kant, are the men who have exercised the greatest influence on the studies and the thoughts of the Scottish philosopher. But in his vast and rare reading he delighted to find truth scattered like gold dust in the pages of forgotten writers of aU ages and countries, and, rejoicing in the discovery, he often magnified its value as he hastened to bring it forth to the public view in an age and country which seemed to him greatly deficient in scholarship.

His intellectual features stand out very prominently. A discerning eye might have seen from the begianing that his independent and impetuous mind would impel him to follow a course of his own ; and that, while probably destined to lead, he would not be led — certainly would not be driven by others. He is evidently moved by a strong

10 INTBODUCTION.

internal appetency to master all learnings and he spent his life in accnmulating stores which, after all, feU immeasurably beneath his high ambition. Along with this he has a masterly capacity of retention and power of arrangement. His skill in seiziag the opinions of the men of aU ages and countries : the ancient Greeks, the philosophic fathers of the Church, the schoolmen, the thinkers of the age of the Kevival of Letters, — such as Scahger, and of the continental metaphysicians from the days of Descartes to about the year 1830, has never been equalled by any British philosopher. His powers of logical analysis, generalization, and distribution are scai'cely surpassed by those of Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas or Kant. I have to add, that while he has also superior powers of observation, he has, hke most metaphysicians, often overridden and overwhelmed them by logical processes, and hastened by dissection, division, and criticism to construct prematurely a completed system of philosophy — such as is to be built up, only as systems of physical science are formed, by the careful inductions of successive inquirers conducting their work through successive ages. In this respect he has imbibed the spirit of Kant, and has not followed the examples set by the more cautious school of Reid and Stewart.

His manner and style are very decided and very marked. Any man of sharp discernment could easily recognize him at a great distance, and detect him under the most rigid incognito. To some ears

HAMILTOIf AlfB MILL, 11

his nomenclature may somid npcouth and crabbed, being coined out of the Greek or borrowed from the Germans; but these persons forget that chemistry and geology and anatomy have all b,een obhged to create a new terminologyj in order to embody the distinctions which they have established. Hamilton is certainly without the power of poetical or oratorical amplification for which Brown and Chalmers of the same University were distinguished -, and he is deficient in the aptness of illustration in which such writers as Paley and Whately excel ; stOl his manner of writing has attractions of its own. His phraseology^ if at times it sounds technical or pedantic, is always carefully explained and defined, and is ever scholarlike in its derivation and articxdate in its meaning. His style is never loose, never tedious, never dull ; it is always clear, always terse, always masculine, and at times it is sententious, clinching, and apothegmatic. In reading his works, the reader need entertain no fear of being led into a Scotch mist, or being met by a fog from the German Ocean. Not unfrequently dogmatic, at times oracular, resolute in holding by his opinions when attacked, and on certain occasions, as in his assaults on Luther, Brown, Whately, and De Morgan, giving way to undue severity and passion, he is ever open, manly, and sincere. He uses a sharp chisel and strikes his hammer with a decided blow, and his ideas commonly stand out before us like a clean cut statue, standing firmly on its pedestal be-

12 INTBOBUCTIOm

tween us and a clear sky. Indeed, we migiit with justice describe his style as not only accurate, but even beautiful in a sense, from its compression, its compactness, its vigor, and its point. His thoughts, weighty and sohd as metal, are ever made to shiae with a metaUic lustre. At the places at which his speculations are the most abstract and his words the baldest, he often surprises us by an apt quotation from an old and forgotten author ; or a sudden hght is thrown upon the present topic by rays coming from a himdred poiats. If we have not the flowers or the riches, we are at the same time without the sultriness of a tropical climate ; and in the arctic region to which he carries us, if the atmosphere feels cold at times, it is always healthy and braciag, and the lights in the sky have a bright and scintillating lustre.

Mr. Mill's characteristics are of a diflerent kind. It is understood that he received no collegiate education : but it is clear that he has been instructed with care, and I should suppose upon a system, in the various branches even of academic learning. If not so technically erudite as Hamilton, it is evident that he is well acquainted with the various departments of physical science ; that he is extensively read in all historical and social questions; and that he is competently conversant with the opiaions of philosophers and logicians in different ages. His thinking has many of the qualities of a self-educated man : that is, it is fresh and iadepen-

HAMILTOir AND MILL, 13

dentj but, at the same time, it is often exclusive and angular, in consequence of its not being rubbed and polished and adjusted by being placed alongside of the philosophic and rehgious wisdom of the great and good men of the past. Taught to think for himself from his boyhood, he has prepared opinions on all subjects ; he has published many of these ia his writings, and has evidently many more to advance in due time, as circumstances may seem to require, and the world is able to bear them. He received, I rather think, his first intellectual impulse from his own father, of whom he always speaks with profound reverence, — a circumstance creditable alike to the father and the son. But Mr. James Mill, though a clear and independent, was by no means (so I think) a comprehensive or profound thinker. The title of his philosophical work. Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, indicates its character and its contents ; it is an analysis of the operations of the mind into as few elements as possible, and preceded by no careful observation of the nature and peculiarities of the mental phenomena which he seeks to decompose. One so trained could not but have his attention drawn to the specidations of Dr. Thomas Brown, who, largely following the Sensational School of France, had shown his ingenuity in deriving the complex phenomena of the mind from a few ultimate laws. Like the older Mr. Mill (in this respect unlike Dr. Brown), the younger Mr. Mill dehghts to trace ideas

14 INTB OB UGTIOJUr.

to sensations ; like Brown and James Mill, he represents all our mental states as " feelings/' and like them he generates our ideas by. means of suggestion or association.

These are evidently Mr. Mill's immediate predecessors in psychology. In historical speculation he was early seized with an admiration of the general principles of the philosophy of M. Auguste Comte, who was becoming known to a select few at the time when the character of the young Enghshman was being formed; and M. Littr^ claims Mr. John MiU as the first who gave " a pubhc adhesion to the method of the positive philosophy." Not that he has followed the founder of the Positive School in every respect ; in particular^ he has been prevented by his adherence to his father's metaphysics from following M. Comte in his denunciations of aU attempts to study the human mind by consciousness. But he was led by the influence of this teacher to regard it as impossible for the mind to rise to first or final causes, or to know the nature of things; and to adopt his favorite method of procedure, which is by deduction from an hypothesis, which he endeavors to show explains aU the phenomena. Though a fairly informed man in the history of philosophy, he has attached himself to a school which thinks it has entirely outstripped the past ; and so he has no sympathy with, and no appreciation of, the profound thoughts of the men of former times: these are supposed to belong to the theo-

HAMILTON AJSTD MILL. 15

logical or metaphysical ages, which have forever passed away in favor of the positive era which has now dawned upon our world. Bred thus in a revolutionary school of opinion, his predilections are in aU things in favor of those who are given to change, and agaiust those who think that there is immutable truth, or who imagine that they have discovered it. His expressed admiration of Coleridge may seem to contradict this statement, but it does so only in appearance, for he has no partiality for any of the favorite principles of that defender of transcendental reason ; it is clear that he delights in him chiefly because his speculations have been actr ing as a solvent to melt down the crystallized philosophical and theological opinions of England. The school of Comte has hitherto had no analyst of the mind (the founder of it was a phrenologist, and studied the mind through the brain) ; and Mr. MiU may be regarded as, for the present, the recognized metaphysician of the school, and will hold this place tiU he is superseded by the more comprehensive system, and the bolder speculative grasp of Mr. Herbert Spencer.

With an original clearness of intellectual apprehension, his whole training has disposed him towards distinct enunciations and practical results. Engaged for many years in a public ofl&ce, he has acquired habits which enable him. to understand the business of life and the condition of society. He is particularly fitted to excel in the exposition of those

16 INTEOBTJCTION.

media axiomata upon which, according to Bacon, "depend the business and fortune of mankind" With an Enghsh lave of the concrete, he has a French skill in reducing a complex subject into simple elements, and a French clearness of expres* sion. He is ever able to bring out his views ia admirable order, and his thoughts he in his style like pebbles at the bottom of a transparent stream, so that we see their shape and color without noticing the mediiun through which we view them, I have to add, that in his love of the clear, and his desire to translate the abstract into the concrete, he often misses the deepest properties of the objects examined by him ; and he seems to me far better fitted to co-ordinate the facts of social science than to deal with the first principles of fundamental philosophy. As to his spirit, there are evidences of a keen fire, of enthusiasm, perhaps of passion, burning within, but the surface is ever still and ever green.

These two eminent men, whose systems evidently stood all along so widely apart jfrom each other, have now been brought into violent collision by the publication of MUl's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, Such a coUision was inevitable. Hamilton was the ablest and most learned, I do not think the wisest or most consistent, defender of intuitive or a priori truth in our country in the past age. It was felt to be absolutely necessary, in these circumstances, by the British section

HAMILTON AND MILL, 17

of the school of M. Comte, that the ftmdamental positions of Hamilton should be removed out of the way of the advancing deductive empiricism. I rejoice that the attack has been made by Mr. Mill himself, so that we see aU that can be advanced by the acutest representative of the experiential or sensational philosophy in our age and country. It is to be hoped that the formidable assault will be met by some disciple of Hamilton who has caught the spirit and who understands the system of his master. As the result, the student of philosophy will be in circumstances to decide what he should receive with gratitude, and what he should refuse or reject with regret, in the philosophy of the last of the great Scottish metaphysicians.

In the title of his work, Mr. Mill announces it as an examination of " the principal philosophical questions discussed in his writings;" and in his introductory remarks he declares, " My subject, therefore, is not Sir W. Hamilton, but the questions which Sir "W. Hamilton discussed," It is this circumstance which makes the work so important in the view of the students of mental science generally, and which has induced me to review it. In examining his opponent, Mr. Mill has taken the opportunity of developing his own philosophic system, and has put us in a position to judge of its principles and results. It is true that we had the germs of that system embedded in his treatise on Logic, and germinating there. No doubt he is continually telling

18 INTBOBTICTIOIf.

US in that work that he avoids metaphysics, but there is a metaphysical system underl3aiig and running throughout all the deeper discussions. He refers, and evidently adheres to a large extent, to a sensational theory of the origin of our ideas in his chapter, " Of the Things denoted by Names ; " he seeks to undermine all intuitive truth in his chapters on " Demonstration " and " Causation ; " and he has exposefd with, a special zest the errors of the a priori school in his book on " Fallacies." He has thus been preparuig those who have studied his logic for accepting his metaphysics. In these circxmistances I rejoice that in his recent work he has furnished us with the means of thoroughly estimating his theory of the mind, of which we had only hints and glimpses in his logical treatise. It is this theory which I profess to examine in this volume.

In performing this special task it is not necessary to enter into the controversy between Mill and Hamilton. For more important questions than the merits of the individuals have been started. I certainly do not feel that it is a duty devolving on me to offer a defence of the philosophy of Hamilton. Since the year 1854, when I reviewed his doctrines of the " Kelativity of Knowledge " and of " Causation," in an appendix to the fourth edition of my work on the Method of the Divine Government^ I have been opposing certain of his favorite principles. I offered my strictures with excessive reluctance, as

HAMILTOir AND MILL. 19

feeling a profound reverence for the* vast erudition and logical power of the Edinburgh professor, and cherishing a hvely gratitude for the services he had rendered to philosophy in refutuig old and widelyreceived errors and establishing important trutL I advanced my criticisms whUe he was yet ahve, and I have continued them in articles in reviews, and in my work on The Intuitions of the Mindy while his reputation was at its greatest height, and his disciples were indignant at any attempt to dispute the infallibility of their master,

Hamilton, as it appears to me, was never able to weld into a consistent whole the reahstic matter he got from Keid with the subjective forms he took from Kant. In his review of M. Cousin, he took up a negative position, which did not leave him free to follow thoroughly tiie positive revelations of consciousness. In his Discussions he developed a theory of causation which prevented him from risiag from the phenomena of the world to a belief in the existence of Deity ; and he expounded a doctrine as to the relativity of knowledge which makes us . perceive objects under forms, and with additions imposed by the perceiving mind, which landed him avowedly iq a system of nescience. Kant is claimed, with some truth, by M. Littr^ as in fact a precursor of the school of Comte. I have felt all along that Hamilton adopted principles from the Critical Philosophy which made it impossible for him to stand up for the trustworthiness of our faculties and the

20 INTBODUCTION.

reality of things, which yet as a follower of Eeid he seemed to be establishing. I declared openly and repeatedly, and 'in a number of places, that the admissions he made would sooner or later be followed to their logical consequences ; that without meaning it, he was preparing the way for a nihilist philosophy ; and that it would be seen that he had not left himself ground from which successfully to repel the attacks of scepticism. When Dr. Mansel published his famous Bampton Lectures, On the Limits of Beligious Thought^ notwithstanding my great reverence for his erudition, his acuteness, and his high character, I immediately opposed his application of Hamilton's doctrine of the imconditioned to our knowledge of God and of good and evil, which I represented as being fraught with disastrous logical consequences. As having anticipated Mr, Mill in many of his objections to Hamilton's philosophy, and having advanced others against doctrines which Mr. Mill applauds and tmrns to his own uses, and believing it to be impossible to defend fundamental truth from the positions assumed by Hamilton, I feel that it is not for me to propose to defend the philosophy of the Scottish metaphysician from the assaults of Mr, Mill.^

At the same time, I cannot give my adherence to many of the objections which have been taken by his new opponent. Notwithstanding incongruities

1 1 have placed in an Appendix to tions I have taken to Sir William this volume a summary of the objec- Hamilton's Philosophy.

HAMILTON AND MILL. 21

in some parts of his system, he has furnished more valuable contributions to speculative philosophy than any other British writer in this century. No man has ever done more in clearing the literature of philosophy of commonplace mistakes, of thefts and impostures. He has shown that it is dangerous to quote without consultiag the original, or to adopt without examination the common traditions in philosophy ; that those who borrow at second-hand will be detected, and that those who steal without acknowledgment will sooner or later be exposed. He seems to experience a dehght in stripping modern authors of their borrowed feathers, and pursuing stolen goods from one Hterary thief to another, and giviag them back to their original owner. More than any other Enghshman, Scotchman, or Irishman, for the last two centuries, he has wiped away the reproach from British philosophy that it is narrow and insular. For years past ordinary authors have seemed learned, and for years to come will seem learned, by drawing from his stores. In incidental discussions, in foot-notes, and notes on foot-notes, he has scattered nuts which it will take many a scholar many a day to gather and to crack. It will be long before the rays which shine from him will be so scattered and diffiised through philosophic hterature, — as the sunbeams are through the atmosphere, — that they shall become common property, and men will cease to distinguish the focus from which they have come. By his admirable powers of division

22 INTRODTJCTIOJ^,

and subdivision he has placed the philosophic systems of various ages and countries into appropriate compartments, which enable us at once to see the form and the nature of each. Mr. MiE regrets that he " did not write the history of philosophy." I am not sure whether the Scottish professor had all the qualifications necessary for such a work; whether, in particular, he could always enter sympathetically into the spirit of the times in which the philosopher lived, and whether he* could have given us an easy and continuous narrative. But every student should be grateful to him for what he. has actually performed; for arranging under proper heads, and statingj always with admirable brevity, and commonly with unimpeachable accuracy, the opinions of philosophers, ancient and modem, on most of the topics of speciflative interest which still continue to be agitated. Looking to his original contributions to philosophy, his defence of the principles of common sense is characterized at once by extensive learning, by unsurpassed logical acumen and consiunmate judgment. ^ His immediate theory of sense-perception, if it does not remove all difficulties, appears to me to be more consistent than any other with the facts both of psychology and of physiology. His logic is too Kantian m its manner and spirit, and will require to be carefully sifted; but I beheve it is the most important addition made in our day to the analytic of the laws of thought. I am persuaded that his distribution of the mental faculties, given in

HAMILTOIf AND MILL. 23

the second volume of his Metaphysics^ is upon the whole the best we yet have, and any one who would improve it must make extensive use of it. Nor is it to be forgotten that he has introduced fresh topics into British philosophy, and has always thrown light upon them even when he has not succeeded in setthng them.

I am sure Mr. Mill means to be a just critic of his rival. But from havmg attached himself to a narrow and exclusive school of philosophy and of history, he is scarcely capable of comprehending, he is certainly utterly incapable of appreciating, some of Hamilton's profoimder discussions. It could be shown that not a few of the alleged inconsistencies of Hamilton arise from misapprehensions on the part of his critic. I have observed that some of the supposed contradictions are merely verbal, and origiaate in his using a phrase in its usual acceptation, perhaps to a promiscuous class in one place, and emplojang it in a more technical sense after explanation in another. Nor is it to be forgotten that the writiags pubhshed by himself appeared in the form of articles in reviews, and of notes and appendices to works edited by him; and that his Lectures^ which contain his complete system, though carefully edited by Professors Mansel and Veitch, had not the advantage of being reduced to thorough consistency by himself It has to be added, that, being willing to take a thought that struck him as true or important from any quarter, he was not always able to join the ma-

24 INTBOBUGTION.

terials he had gathered into a harmonious structiire. Hence his philosophy takes the appearance of a squared and diamonded mosaic, in which it is not always easy to discover the unity of the plan. But I verily beUeve that Hamilton had after aU a complete system, which, with some hiatuses and incongruities, and some fatal errors adopted from Kant, is, as a whole, consistent, and contains valuable truth. His critic, from his training and sectarian predilections, is incapacitated for forming a due estimate of many of his higher excellences, and everjr^here examines him from his own standpoint, which is very narrow, and by his own experiential system, which is lamentably defective. But I leave the work of defending Hamilton to his pupils and disciples, and I rqjoice to believe that in many points, and these very important ones, their defence will be triumphantly successful.

In that curious retribution which we often discover in the afiairs of this world, we find that those who are severe in judging others, may come in the end to be severely judged themselves.^ The late Sir W. Hamilton was often harsh, at times I think imjust (not intentionally) in his censures on those who had