Studies in Literature and History
had convinced himself that some religious or patriotic cause would be
served by it. James Mill's view of morals as theoretically coordinate
with law--because in both departments the intention is the essential
element in measuring actions according to their consequences--operated
in practical contradiction to his principle of restraining State
interference within narrow limits. It is this latter principle which
has since given way. For the general trend of later political opinion
has evidently been towards bringing public morality more and more
under administrative regulation; and this manifestly indicates a
growing expansion of ideas upon the legitimate duties and jurisdiction
of the State.
Upon James Mill's psychology Mr. Stephen's conclusion, with which we
may agree, is that his analysis of virtue into enlightened
self-interest is unsuccessful, and we have seen that his conception of
government, as an all-powerful machine resting upon, yet strictly
limited by, public opinion, has failed on the side of the limitations.
Yet although Mill could not explain virtue, he was, after his fashion,
a virtuous man, whose life was conscientiously devoted to public
objects.
'His main purpose, too, was to lay down a rule of duty, almost
mathematically ascertainable, and not to be disturbed by any
sentimentalism, mysticism, or rhetorical foppery. If, in the
attempt to free his hearers from such elements, he ran the risk of
reducing morality to a lower level, and made it appear as unamiable
as sound morality can appear, it must be admitted that in this
respect, too, his theories reflected his personal character.'
It is also probable that his theories, and his bitter controversies in
defence of them, reacted on his personal character, and that both
influences are to be traced beyond James Mill's own life, in the
mental and social prepossessions which he bequeathed to his son.
Mr. Stephen's third volume is chiefly occupied by the history of the
later Utilitarians, and the expansion of their cardinal principle in
its application to a changing temper of the times, under the
leadership of John Stuart Mill. We have, first, a closely written and
critical description of this remarkable man's early life, his
stringent educational training, the development of his opinions, and
their influence upon the orthodox tenets of the sect. Upon all these
subjects Mill has left us, under his own hand, more intimate and
circumstantial particulars than are to be found, perhaps, in any other
personal memoir. The writer who tells his own story usually passes
hastily over boyhood; the ordinary biographer gives some family
details, or endeavours to amuse us with trivial anecdotes of the child
who became an important man. J. S. Mill hardly alludes to any member
of his family except his father, and his early days are marked by a
total absence of triviality. He was bound over to hard intellectual
labour at home during the years that for most of us pass so lightly
and unprofitably at a public school; he was a voracious and
indefatigable reader and writer from his youth up, with a wolfish
hunger (as Browning calls it) for knowledge; he plunged into all the
current discussions of philosophy and politics; he became a practised
writer and made a good figure at debating clubs; he became so intent
on the solution of complex social problems as to acquire a distaste
for general society; his mental concentration blunted his sensibility
to the physical passions that so powerfully sway mankind.
Nevertheless, Mill's outlook upon the world was much wider than his
father's, and his aim was so to adjust the Utilitarian creed as to
bring it into closer working accord with the advancing ideas and
projects of the political parties to whom he was nearest in sympathy.
He allied himself in the beginning with the Philosophical Radicals, in
the hope of organising them for active service in the cause. But this
group soon broke up, and Mr. Stephen ascribes their failure in part to
their name, observing that the word '"Philosophical" in English is
synonymous with visionary, unpractical, and perhaps simply foolish.'
There would be less satire, and possibly more justice, in saying that
the word gives a chill to the energetic hot-gospeller of active
Radicalism, who pushes past the philosopher as one standing too far
behind the fighting line, although he may be useful in forging
explosives in some quiet laboratory. Mill himself was continually
hampered, as an ardent combatant, by the impedimenta which he brought
into the field in the shape of abstract speculations, which could not
be made to fit in with the immediate demands of thorough-going
partisans. His democratic fervour was tempered by his conviction of
the incapacity of the masses. He was a Socialist 'in the sense that he
looked forward to a complete, though distant, revolution in the whole
structure of society'; he discovered that the Chartists had crude
views upon political economy; his attitude toward factory legislation
was very dubious. Yet in the main purpose of his life and writings,
which was to mend and guide public opinion on social and political
questions by theoretical treatment--that is, by a logically connected
survey of the facts--he was undoubtedly successful, as is shown by
the popularity of his two great works on _Logic_ and _Political
Economy_, which became the text-books of higher study on these
subjects for a whole generation. On the other hand, he exposed himself
to the distrust and hostility that are always aroused by philosophical
arguments which strike at the roots of established beliefs and
prejudices, and are discovered to be really more dangerous to them
than a direct assault.
It was the philosophic strategy of J. S. Mill to prosecute the
Utilitarian war against metaphysics, and finally to exterminate
Intuitions, being convinced, as he said, that the _a priori_ and
spiritualistic thinkers still far exceeded the partisans of
experience, and that a great majority of Englishmen were still
Intuitionists. Is this actually a true account of English thought? Mr.
Stephen thinks not, for he believes that if Mill had not lived much
apart from ordinary folk he would have found Englishmen practically,
though not avowedly, predisposed to empiricism, which has been the
philosophic tradition in this country since Hobbes. We so far agree
with Mr. Stephen that we believe Englishmen, in general, to practise a
great deal more of empiricism than they avow. But Mill proposed to
demonstrate and declare it as a weapon in polemics and an engine of
action, and it was here, probably, that the main body of Englishmen
deserted him. They were not ready to cut themselves off from theology
and from all ideas that transcend experience, and they demurred to the
paramount jurisdiction of logic in temporal affairs. To every section
of Churchmen the relegation of moral sanctions within the domain of
verifiable consequences was a doctrine to be resisted strenuously.
With the high sacerdotalist it amounted to a denial of the Christian
mysteries; to the Broad Churchman it was ethically inadequate and
ignoble; to the scholastic professor of divinity it meant ruinous
materialism.
That a vigorous thinker should have begun by striking at what seemed
to him the root of obstructive fallacies was natural enough. He
supposed that a logical demonstration would clear the ground for his
plans of reform; whereas, on the contrary, it entangled him in
preliminary disputations, and his inflexible reasoning alarmed people
who followed experience as the guide of life, but instinctively felt
that there must be something beyond phenomenal existence. In political
economy Mill relied upon common sense and practice in affairs to make
the requisite allowance for general laws founded on human propensities
regarded abstractedly. His conviction was, in short, that nothing
should be taken for granted because everything might be explained; and
he desired to tie men down to accepting no belief, or even feeling,
that could not be justified by reason. His _System of Logic_ was, as
he has himself written, a text-book for the doctrine 'which derives
all knowledge from experience, and all moral and intellectual
qualities principally from the direction given to the associations.'
When he proceeded to construct a systematic psychology upon this
basis, he fell into the fundamental perplexities that are concisely
brought out by Mr. Stephen in his scrutiny of Mill's doctrine of
Causation. He followed Hume in severing any necessary connection
between cause and effect, and even invariable sequence became
incapable of proof. But when he resolved Cause into a statement of
existing conditions that can never be completely known until we have
mastered the whole series of physical phenomena, and showed that all
human induction is fallible because necessarily imperfect, it became
clear that Mill had very little to offer in substitution for those
grounds of ordinary belief that he was bent on demolishing. The word
Cause is reduced, for ordinary use, to a signification not unlike that
which is understood in loose popular language by the word Chance,
since Chance means no more than ignorance of how an event came to
pass; and in no case, according to Mill, can we ever calculate with
security what undiscoverable conditions may suddenly bring about an
unexpected event contrary to previous experience. The uniformity of
Nature, as Mr. Stephen remarks, is thus made exceedingly precarious;
and to the practical intelligence, which looks for some basis that
cannot be argued about, there is still something to be said for
Intuition. And when Mill, still in search of some precise formula,
undertook to interpret persistent sequences by his theory of Real
Kinds possessing an indeterminate number of coherent properties--so
that our belief in the invariable blackness of crows is justified as a
collocation of these visible properties--he merely throws the problem
of Causation farther backward. We have to be content with direct
observation of phenomena that can be classified as co-existent; we can
perceive that things accompany each other, but we can never be sure
that they follow each other, as they appear to do.
It may be doubted whether Mill's treatment of these problems has
materially affected subsequent psychological speculation, which has
since taken different and deeper courses. His main objective was
social and political.
'The notion,' he has written, 'that truths external to the mind may be
known by intuition, or consciousness, independently of observation and
experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times the great intellectual
support of false doctrines and bad institutions.' In confounding the
metaphysicians, and eliminating all mysterious assumptions or axioms,
he aimed at clearing the ground for a demonstrable science of
character, and to establish the great principle that character can be
indefinitely modified. The way is thus opened to questions of conduct,
to positive remedies for social and political evils which, as they
have been generated and fostered by external circumstances, can be
removed by a change of those circumstances.
'The greatest problems of the time were either economical or
closely connected with economical principles. Mill had followed the
political struggles with the keenest interest; he saw clearly their
connection with underlying social movements; and he had thoroughly
studied the science--or what he took to be the science--which must
afford guidance for a satisfactory working out of the great
problems. The Philosophical Radicals were deserting the old cause,
and becoming insignificant as a party. But Mill had not lost his