Moral causation; or, Notes on Mr. Mill's notes to the chapter on 'Freedom' in the third edition of his 'Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy';

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II. Note — page 565

' In answer to the statement that " what I am ahh to do " is not a subject of consciousness," Mr Alexander says (p. 22 et seq.): — "Perhaps it is not; but what I/eeZ I am " able to do is surely a subject of consciousness. As to Mr " Mill's ' consciousness is not prophetic ; we are conscious of " what is, not of what wiU, or can be,' it seems enough to say, " that if we are conscious of a free force of volition continu- " ously inherent in us, we are conscious of what is." If we can be conscious of a force, or feel an abUity independently of any present or past exercise thereof, the fact has nothing similar or analogous in all the rest of our nature. "We are not conscious of a muscular force continuously inherent in us. If we were born with a cataract, we are not conscious, previous to being couched, of an ability to see. We should not feel able to walk, if we had never walked, nor to think, if we had never thought. AbUity and force are not real entities, which can be felt as present when no effect follows • they are abstract names for the happening of the effect on the occurrence of the needful conditions, or for our expectation of its happening.'

I must confess myself in some difficulty with the clause I have put in italics, illustrated, as it is, by what follows. If nothing is to be held valid as conscioiisness unless it can be shown to exist in consciousness, antecedent to the special experience through which it is in consciousness educed, it should seem that the very possibility of consciousness is denied, an impossible consciousness hefore, consciousness being needed to constitute its validity. We are not conscious of sensation, as Mr Mill seems good enough to admit, 'independently of any present or past exercise of our sensitive susceptibility; only on the application of the appropriate stimulus, is the organ stung into activity, and sensation evoked in consciousness. We do not, however, on that account discredit our consciousness of sensation. So of Force — it may very well be, that solely by our exercise of force, is that force revealed to us in consciousness ; is it therefore to be denied, that when we consciously exercise force, we are conscious of force in its exercise ? Mr Mill would seem to maintain this ; and he is welcome of course to his denial, though I cannot profess to understand it.i

1 "Wlien a philosopher assures me that, in the act of knocking another down, let ns say — in the light of the sole interview between Adam Smith and Dr Johnson, which so much amused Sir Walter Scott,* it

* Note contributed "by Scott to Croker's Edition of Boswell : — "Mr Boswell has chosen to omit, for reasons which will be presently obvious, that Johnson and Adam Smith met at Glasgow; but I have been assured by Professor John Miller that they did so, and that Smith, leaving the party where he

14 Consciottsness of Freedom.

'We are not conscious of a muscular force continuously inherent in us.' It is not asserted tliat we are; not the less we are conscious, and onlyconscious, of ourselves, as living force, self-exercised in various modes, of which the muscular mode is one. 'If we are born with a cataract, we are ' not conscious, previous to being couched, of an ' ability to see ! ' Of this, after careful study, I can make no more than an announcement of the not very

is perhaps allowable to suppose such a compliment as this passing between two philosophers — he is conscious of no exercise of form or power, except in the sense of knowing the meaning of his words, I certainly do not understand him ; though I can quite understand how, as accepting Dr Brown's Analysis of Causation — in which Power, whilst retained as a word, is emptied of all real meaning, and virtually extruded from the universe — he might come to make such an assertion. And from this point of view it is, of course, that Mr Mill here writes throughout. On the other hand, we find Professor Mansel, as representative of a diiferent school of thought, thus writing : ' My first and ' only presentation of power or causality is thus to he found in mj' con- ' sciousness of myself willing ; every man who has been conscious of an ' act of will has been conscious oi power therein ; and to any one who ' has not been so conscious, no verbal description can supply the ' deficiency ' (Prolegomena Logica, p. 139). When divergencies of thought are, as here, fundamental, all argument, of course, is simply so much mere waste of words.

had met Johnson, happened to come to another where Miller was. Knowing that Smith had heen in Johnson's society, they were anxious to know what had passed, and the more so, as Smith's temper seemed much lUfQed. At first Smith would only answer — ' He's a brute — he's a brute ! ' But on closer examination it appeared that Johnson no sooner saw Smith than he attacked him for some point of his famous letter on the death of Hume. Smith vindicated the truth of his statement. ' What did Johnson say ? ' was the universal inquiry. 'Why, he said,' replied Smith, with the deepest impression of resentment — 'he said, " You lie I'"

'And what did you reply!' 'I said, "You are a son of a ."' On such terms,"

concludes Sir Walter, '* did these two gi'cat Moralists meet and part ; and such was the classical dialogue between two great teachers of Philosophy."

recondite fact, that in order to see we must first have an eye to see with. 'We should not feel able to ' walk if we had never walked,' &c. Of course not; and Mt Mill, in turn, will perhaps admit, that without first heing able to walk, we should never either have walked, or fdt able, so to do. But how these obvious truisms, that we cannot see without eyes, or walk without being able to walk, prove Mr Mill's conclusion from them, that ' force is no real entity,' meantime remains obscure to me. They seem quite as much to favour the opposite conclusion, that force, is the only real entity, of the two perhaps the more intelligible, and likely to meet with acceptance.

' It is of course possible that this may be aU wrong,' writes Mr Mill ingenuously, instantly after delivering himself as above. It is really just possible, even though Mr MUL is the person so delivering himself. That the Ego primarily reveals itself in consciousness as an energy, and as such is, in consciousness, selfrecognised throughout, is an opinion which may be held ; which has been held by philosophers of some note ; which Professor rerrier,^ in particular, seems to have a good deal to say for ; and which Mr Mill, however for himself he may decline to entertain it, win find it not easy to disprove. But in truth, it would be idle to concern one's self further with what seems merely a frivolous verbal dispute. The consciousness of Freedom asserted is sufficiently defined

1 Vide "Eemains" — Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness.

as a natural, universal, ineradicable belief, feeling, or conviction of mankind, finding its ratification under the ancient canon of Semper, ubique, ah omnibus. About the ah omnibus there is, however, some little difficulty ; for though some exceedingly stout ISTecessitarians have admitted that they had such a feeling, while clearly convinced of its absurdity, others of the school, among whom Mr Mill is to be numbered, protest they have not any feeling of the kind, nor ever had.^ This ' practical feeling ' of Freedom — of a power in us to have willed and done otherwise than as we did — was never yet, that I know of, denied, however, by any one who had not, as philosopher, committed himself to the opposite theory. The suspicion, as inference, seems reasonable that the theory and the denial stand related, as in some sort cause and effect. From this point of view it was that I ventured to suggest, as the proper authority in the matter, ' the ' general consciousness of the race, philosophers with ' rigour excepted.' Taking literally this sweeping exclusion, really meant as no more than a bit of quasihumorous exaggeration (I admit there seems no mighty humour in it), Mr Mill treats me, in regard of it, to a little easy, but not, as it seems to me, exceedingly felicitous sarcasm. ' If this,' he says (the tendency, that is, to interpret facts in conformity with ' precon- ' ceived opinion'), ' be the normal effect of Philosophy;

^ Not in the strictest sense accurate as regards Mr Mill, who steadily, and even, as we shall see, obstinately, declines to give any distinct deliverance as to his genuine feeling in the matter. (See next Section).

' if the effect of cultivating our power of mental dis- ' crimination be to pervert it, let us close our books, ' and accept Hodge as a better authority in meta- ' physics than Locke or Kant ; and, I suppose, in as- ' tronomy than Newton.' WeU, if tMs is not accurately to be called the ' normal effect of philosophy,' which has other effects less questionable, it is not unfrequently one effect. Does Mr Mill really deny this? He can scarcely intend to do so, I should say, judging from the remark (p. 620) in his comparison of Kant and Hamilton — ' but in abihty to discern psychological ' truths, uiicoloured by a theory, he (Kant) seems to me ' inferior to Hamilton.' Kant, in his observation of the facts of consciousness, had, it seems, then — in common with Mr MiU and others — a trick of looking at them through the coloured medium of his theories. Mr Mill will perhaps not decline to admit that Hodge, as not having any theories, has, at least to that extent, distinctly the advantage of Kant. As to ' Hodge being ' a better authority in metaphysics than Kant, and, I ' suppose, in astronomy than Newton,' Mr Mill must have been aware, in writing this, that he only attained his little points at some expense of intellectual confusion. But perhaps he was so pleased with his points, he thought he had them cheap at the price. As regards the particular consciousness in question, I don't mind saying, with all plainness, that I consider the despised Hodge — admitted somewhat the inferior in the matters of astronomy and metaphysic — greatly preferable, as an authority, to Mr MiU ; and if I can

B

1 8 Freedom as tested by Experience.

clearly show — as I shall find no difficulty in doing — that Mr Mill, whilst quite declining to admit that he has this feeling of Freedom, has it all the same, just as Hodge has, I think I shall have shown fair ground for my preference of the last-named philosopher.

Meantime, to proceed with Mr Mill's note : ' Mr ' Alexander denies that the belief that I was free to ' act can possibly be tested by experience, a posteriori; ' since experience only tells me the way in which I ' did act, and says nothing about my having been able ' to act otherwise.' What I said was in effect this, — that experience — as Mr Mill uses the term in the passage I was engaged in criticising — experience, simpliciter, or in its separate items, as distinct from the reasoned 'induction from experience,' on which he elsewhere relies, and the force of the argument from which it is fruitless to seek to evade,^ can ' neither confirm nor invalidate ' our consciousness of Freedom, as asserted. On this obvious gTound — our sole possible experience is, that of two alternatives we have chosen one ; from this experience there can certainly be no inference in us of a power to have chosen the other ; and as little can there be inference in us of defect in such a power ; for supposing such power to exist in us, we could still have only chosen 07ie of the alternatives, though, possibly, it might have been the other. Experience tells us what we did ; as to what we could

1 In so far, that is, as it amounts to a demonstration of the Causation of human actions ; but this, again, amounts, as we shall see, to no contradiction oi the fact of human Freedom (p. 137).

Freedom: as tested by Experietice. 1 9

do, it tells us something ; as to the other thing which we did not do, it makes no deliverance whatever, either of could or covld not. Mr Mill's reply to this ought, I think, as coming from such a man, to take rank as a curiosity of literature, in this particular branch of it : — ' Mr Alexander's idea of the ' conditions of proof by experience is not a very ' enlarged one. Suppose that my experience of myself ' afforded two undeniable cases, alike in all the mental ' and physical antecedents, in one of which cases T ' acted in one way, and in the other in the direct ' opposite ; there would then be proof by experience, ' that I had been able to act either in the one way or ' the other.' There would, indeed, tTwn be proof, as stated. But nobody living ought to know better than Mr Mill, that his instance of experience supposed is one utterly impossible; that 'two tmdeniahle cases, alike ' in all the mental and physical antecedents' never occurred, or could occur, either in his 'experience of ' himself,' or in any other person's experience ; that the mere difference in point of time, in itself inessential for the argument, must needs involve and necessitate other and most essential differences in the ' mental and 'physical antecedents,' so that the identity supposed 'undeniable' would not only be extremely deniable, but is not, without plain absurdity, to be asserted. Surely in the second of Mr MiU's two cases supposed, there could not but be present a whole series of antecedents, not present in the first; to wit, the highly important series evolved hy the first case itself, the

20 Freedom as tested by Experience.

antecedent of having acted so, with other antecedents to be summed as the intermediate result of his having so acted. In this obvious consideration alone, were there no others, Mr Mill's supposition is stultified. Its futility may be further made manifest, by considering how Mr Mill would deal with such a case as that put by himself, if he found it alleged against him. Constantly it occurs that a man who in certain circumstances has acted in a particular way, on a recurrence of circumstances which se,em to be precisely similar, is found, on some incalculable whim or caprice, to act in a way quite different. Dr Eeid was capable of drawing from such a case an inference of human Freedom. Does Mr Mill admit the inference ? Not in the least ; he would scout with scorn the notion that the two sets of antecedents, however they might seem to be alike, actually w&re so; and infer some subtle occult difference in the causes to account for the difference in the effect. No amount of evidence would, in such a case, avail to convince Mr Mill of the identity of the two sets of antecedents. It is, however, possible, according to Mr Mill, to find ' two undeniable cases, alike in all ' the antecedents.' Let us suppose Mr Mill to have found them ; he has convinced himself, by an accurate and exhaustive analysis, that ' all the antecedents are alike;' the identity is to Mr MiU undeniable. And now suppose— unless Mr MiU means boldly to beg the question in his own favour, he must admit the legitimacy of the supposition — that much to Mr Mill's surprise, a different action should in the second case be

Freedom as tested by Expe^Hejice. 2 1

found to ensue! Mr Mill would fhm be bound to admit Freedom. But would he admit it % Nothing of the kind, of course ; Mr Mill would merely hum and haw a little, as men do when they find themselves in difficulty ; surmise, as indeed he well might, that there must have been some mistake; that his analysis of the conditions could not have been quite so exhaustive as he had supposed it; and conclude with resolutely denying the identity before announced undeniable. Certainly, wherever he might find himself at a loss, it could scarce be in the reasonings by which he sought to show that in announcing the identity undeniable, he had been somewhat a rash philosopher, and more or less oblivious of principles elsewhere by himself insisted on. It would be well if Mr Mill, in this relation, would bethink him of his own arguments, exhibiting the futility of the 'Experimental Method,' as applied to the phenomena of Society. They equally exhibit its futility, as here applied by himself, to illustrate a psychological problem. No more in the one than in the other field, can the Past, by any possibility, reproduce itself with exactitude sufficient to ground any valid induction. In a word, Mr Mill's supposed ' two ' undeniable cases, alike in all the mental and physical ' antecedents,' can exist only as a temporary hallucination in the brain of Mr Mill supposing them. My 'idea of the conditions of proof by experience' may not be ' very enlarged,' but Mr Mill is not likely to succeed in enlarging it by a fabrication of instances outside of all possible experience, and which, were it

2 2 Freedom not to be tested by Experience.

fairly put to him, he could not but admit to be so.^ If Mr Mill can only confute my argument as to experience, by the putting of cases which could never in experience occur, it seems plain that in seeking to confute, he has somewhat forcibly confirmed it. I must therefore continue to think that in here writing as he did — ' If our ' so-caUed Consciousness of what we are able to do (of ' Freedom) is not horm out hy experience, it is a delu- ' sion,' Mr Mill exhibited some little misapprehension as to the relation of Experience to the matter in hand ; making Freedom, as test of its truth, demand from experience a ratification, in the very nature of the case impossible, were Freedom thrice over assumed.

As a mere point of curiosity, it is perhaps worth a moment's consideration, to what extent the experience which Mr Mill considers possible of 'undeniable cases alike,' &c., supposing it not to confirm, would invalidate our alleged consciousness of Freedom. Of tv)o alternatives we choose one. From the experience that we did choose one, there is plainly no inference whatever against our power to have chosen the other. No one will be so absurd as to aUege in a man's choice of one of two alternatives, a contradiction by experience of

1 I venture to presume Mr Mill would admit this, were it only on the evidence of such passages as the following : — ' There is not one of ' the facts surrounding a human being, or of the events which happen ' to him, that does not influence in some mode or degree his subsequent 'mental history." 'It is certain that our mental states, and our ' mental capacities and susceptibilities, are modified, either for a time ' or permanently, by everything which happens to us in life ' (in which last the clause 'for a time' had better, I think, be extruded on grounds sufficiently obvious).— Zogrjc, vol. ii., chap. "Ethology."'

Freedom an 'Interpretation of Experience! 23

his consciousness of a power to have chosen eiiher of the two. And now, suppose an ' undeniable case ' in which all the antecedents are exactly reproduced, and in which it is found that again this one alternative is chosen. Experience, which before told us that the man acted so, now tells us he has acted so twice,; but it seems as far as before from telling us that he could not have acted otherwise. Supposing a man free to act otherwise, surely he might yet act so, and again and again so act. And as of two cases, so it might almost seem of two thousand — the two thousandth case of his acting so, would prove no more than the first perhaps, that he coidd not have acted otherwise. Experience would simply assure us that the man had acted in the one way two thousand times in succession. As the cases are plainly supposititious, and could never in experience emerge, it does not seem to matter a pinch of snuff whether I am right or wrong in this.

In a postscript to the little Essay which Mr Mill has honoured with some share of his attention, intended to correct somewhat of suspected crudity in my first statement of this particular point, I noted Mr Mill's averment that our so-called Consciousness of Freedom ' has ' no title to credence except as an interpretation of ex- 'perience, and if it is a false interpretation, it must ' give way ; ' and I did not seek to deny, that if it was, as Mr Mill said, merely ' an interpretation of experience,' it ran some risk, as conflicting with Mr Mill's ' complete induction from experience.' But I asked of what special ' experience ' it was that Mr Mill supposed

' it an interpretation ; ' and whether it was not wildly absurd to suppose that we should habitually ' interpret ' our experience (the sole one possible for us) of having done one of two things, into a consciousness of being able to have done the otlier. Wild as seems the absurdity, I cannot but think, Mr MOl, who offers no explanation, is still fully committed to it. It might indeed be alleged, in reply, that I ignore the previous deliberative experience, of which probably it is — it might be said, — and not of the immediate experience of act, that Mr Mill considers our ' so-called consciousness,' a mis- interpretation.' Two courses of conduct are before us, and we are in doubt which to choose. The mind oscillates between the two, considering now one, now the other ; and feehng, whilst each is before it, an inclination to choose it, and a sense of ability to do so. Finally it chooses one; and recalhng those items of the deliberative experience of which the other was the object, it illusively transfers them to the instant of act, and infers its ability at that instant to have actually chosen, not the one it did choose, but the other — infers, in a word, its Freedom. In this sense our consciousness of Freedom might, with some plausibility, be represented as an inference from, or interpretation of, experience — which, 'if shown to be false, must give way.' Had this been the ground occupied by Mr MiU, the further inquiry would necessarily have emerged, whether in the very experience interpreted there was not already involved the authentic consciousness of Freedom, said to be a merely erroneous ' inter-

Mr Mill in the right. 25

pretation ' of it ? But, as against Mr Mill, it is happily not necessary to discuss this somewhat nice and obscure question ; for of the saving suggestions above he cannot in the least have the benefit. The ' experience ' he really means is quite too clearly indicated — ' We never know ' that we are able to do a thing except from our having ' done it. We should not know that we are capable of ' action at all if we had never acted. Having acted, ' we know, as far as that experience readies, hoiu we are ' able to act', &c. ; and it seems positively to shut him Tip to the surely rather ludicrous notion that we ' interpret ' our doing of one thing to mean, not that we really did that thing, but that we could have done — another} A little further on in this ISTote (p. 566), I admit correction at the hand of Mr Mill ; and I am aU. the more bound to do so, that my falsely made point against him was precisely of a kind likely to be rather telling with the ruck of half-instructed readers — 'It ' would hardly be worth while to notice a pretended ' inconsistency discovered by Mr Alexander between

1 The account hypothetically here given of our conviction of Freedom, as merely a hallucinatory reminiscence of what takes place in the process of deliberation, is plainly that pointed at hy Hume, when in ' Note F (Essays),^ he says that ' the Will moves easily every, way, ' and produces an image of itself (or a velleity, as it is called iu the ' schools), even on that side, on which it did not settle.' The question, a somewhat nice one, as to whether or no the origination of our feeling of Freedom can be thus sufficiently accounted for, I have not to discuss with Mr Mill, by whom it is not mooted. Further on (p. 127), it will be found that I return to this point — which I do not remember to have seen investigated — offering simply so much remark on it as seems needful for the purpose in hand.

26 Mr Mill in the right.

' what is here said and my recognition in a former work ' of a " practical feeling of Free-will," " a feeling of ' Moral Freedom we are conscious of," if Mr Alexander ' had not inferred from it that I " was at one time con- ' scions" of what I now, for the convenience of my ' argument, deny to be a subject of consciousness. Mr ' Alexander himself quotes the words in which I spoke ' of thi^ practical feeling of free-will as not one of ' free-will at all in a sense implying the theory, ' and took pains to describe what it really is.' The justice of Mr Mill's criticism here I quite frankly allow ; — the more readily that, without aid from Mr Mill, I had already, on a reconsideration of the matter, detected the mistake I had fallen into. Dr Johnson, once upon a time, when questioned by a lady at a literary tea-party as to how he could possibly have been guilty of some trivial admitted error in his Dictionary, answered with brusque candour, ' Ignorance, madam, was the cause of it — gross and ' inexcusable ignorance.' I suppose I may as well emulate the Doctor, and simply admit here stupidity. My stupidity, I admit, was gross ; and I have only this little excuse to offer for it. When Mr Mill, in the opening of his chapter on this subject in the Logic, spoke of the 'practical feeling of Free-will common to all mankind,' naturally, I humbly submit, though I grant very incompetently (the chapter being studied as a whole), I supposed him to mean the practical feeling in the matter, which really is ' common to all mankind ; ' and when he afterwards

Mr Mill in the right. 2 7

spoke of 'the sense of moral Freedom we are conscious of/ I merely went on in my blunder, omitting to note sharply that this sense of moral Freedom was expressly by Mr Mill defined as no more than 'a feeling of being able to modify our character, if we, wish.' But this is not, I maintain, 'the practical feeling of Free-will common to all mankind,' Mr Mill himself included. Mr Mill's own ' practical feeling of Freedom' is something considerably more than this. If — as with no great pains I hope to be able to do presently — I can distinctly show this, I shall not, indeed, have acquitted myself of misunderstanding Mr Mill ; but, more or less, I may have made obvious how it was that, not altogether inexcusably perhaps (some admitted laxity in perusal allowed for), I came to so misunderstand him.

III. Note — -ipage, 567

With a certain deep end of my own, premising that, within the space of a minute, Mr Mill was to put his finger to one side of his nose or the other, I desired to be informed — apologising for the somewhat too homely nature of the instance — ^whether, having touched the left side of his nose, Mr Mill did not f&d he could have willed to touch, and touched, its right side ? This to more than one of my critics has seemed to be shocking irreverence. The coarse insinuation that Mr Mill has actually a nose, these critics have gravely resented as an insult to so profound a philosopher. Had I insinuated that Mr Mill was destitute of a nose, I could have better understood their objection. Mr Mill himself, in regard of my 'homely instance,' is less sensitive than some of his friends, and has nothing more savage to say of it than that it ' reminds him of the asinus Buridani! 'Mr Alexander's naif ' expectation that his opponent's answer will be differ- ' ent, because of the futility of the example, reminds ' one of the asinus Bwiclani.' Seeing I purposely constructed it somewhat on that model, I cannot be at all surprised at this. From Buridan's puzzle it differs but slightly; yet the two are not quite identical. Had I asserted that on Mr Mill's principles, in the absence of any assignable motive to determine him to touch one side of his nose rather than the other, he could not, when asked to do so, have touched his nose at aU on either side, the identity would have been nearly complete. As it is, the similarity is sufficient to account for Mr Mill's being reminded of the more ancient example.