Studies in Literature and History
causes that modify human character. Yet not only is national
particularism making a fresh stir in Europe, but the spread of
European dominion over Asia has forced upon our attention the immense
practical importance of racial distinctions. We find that they signify
real and profound characteristics; the European discovers that in Asia
he is himself one of a ruling race, and thereby isolated among the
other groups into which the population is subdivided. If he is a
sound Utilitarian he will nevertheless cherish the belief that
economical improvements, public instruction, good laws, and regular
administration will obliterate antipathies, eradicate irrational
prejudices, and reconcile Asiatic folk to the blessings of scientific
civilisation. But he will confess that it is a stubborn element, if
not innate yet very like such a quality; if not ineffaceable yet
certain to outlast his dominion. It is at least remarkable that Mill's
protest against explaining differences of character by race, to which
Buckle 'cordially subscribed,' should have been answered in our time
by a clamorous demand for the recognition of those very differences,
and by an increasing tendency to admit them.
Upon Mill's theological speculations Mr. Stephen has written an
interesting chapter, illustrating Mill's desire to treat religion more
sympathetically, with a deeper sense of its importance in life, than
in the absolute theories of the older Utilitarians. Bentham had
declared that the principle of theology, of referring everything to
God's will, was no more than a covert application of the test of
utility. You must first know whether a thing is right in order to
discover whether it is conformable to God's pleasure; and a religious
motive, he said, is good or bad according as the religious tenets of
the person acting upon it approach more or less to a coincidence with
the dictates of utility. The next step, as Bentham probably knew well,
is to throw aside an abstraction that has become virtually
superfluous, and to march openly under the Utilitarian standard. But
there was in Mill a moral and emotional instinct that deterred him
from resting without uneasiness upon such a bare empirical conclusion.
He rejected all transcendental conceptions; yet he did his best, as
Mr. Stephen shows, to find reasonable proofs of a Deity whose
existence and attributes may be inferred by observation and
experience. He agreed that such an inference is not inconsistent, _a
priori_, with natural laws, and the argument from design was admitted
as providing by analogy, or even inductively, a large balance of
probability in favour of creation by Intelligence. The difficulty is
to attain by these methods the idea of a Deity perfect in power,
wisdom, and goodness; for the order of Nature, apart from human
intervention and contrivances for making the earth habitable,
discloses no tincture of morality. We are thus reduced to the dilemma
propounded by Hume, between an omnipotent Deity who cannot be
benevolent because misery is permitted, and a benevolent Deity with
limited powers; and Mill sums up the discussion, doubtfully, in favour
of a Being with great but limited powers, whose motives cannot be
satisfactorily fathomed by the human intellect.
This halting conclusion indicates a departure from the pure empiricism
of his school, and even the inadequacy of the argument shows the
effort that Mill was making towards some fellow-feeling with spiritual
conceptions. As Mr. Stephen points out, there is a curious
approximation, on some points, between Mill and his arch-enemy
Mansel--between the conditioned and unconditioned philosophies. Both
of them lay stress on the moral perplexities involved in arguing from
the wasteful and relentless course of Nature to an estimate of the
divine attributes. And both agree that the existence of evil is a
serious difficulty; though Mansel's solution, or evasion, of it is by
insisting that the ways of the unconditioned are necessarily for the
most part unknowable, while Mill leans to the possibility that God's
power or intelligence may be incomplete. Upon either hypothesis we
must confess that our knowledge is imperfect and very fallible.
Mr. Stephen has no trouble in exposing the philosophical weakness
of Mill's attitude; but we are mainly concerned to compare it
briefly with the position of his predecessors, for the purpose of
continuing a rapid survey of the course and filiation of Utilitarian
doctrines. When the orthodox Utilitarians definitely rejected all
theology--though until Philip Beauchamp appeared, in 1822, they made
no direct attack upon it--they believed that the fall of theology
would also bring down religion, which they regarded as the source of
motives that were fictitious, misleading, and profoundly unscientific.
Mill agreed that a supernatural origin could not be ascribed to
received maxims of morality without harming them, because to
consecrate rules of conduct was to interdict free examination of them,
and to paralyse their natural development in accordance with changes
of circumstance. Looking back over the interminable controversies, and
the successive variations in form and spirit that every great religion
has undergone, this objection does not seem to us very formidable. But
Mill's evident object was to reconcile the cultivation of religious
feelings with his principle of free thought for individuals. In
accepting Comte's ideal of a religion of humanity, he had entirely
condemned Comte's reproduction of the spiritual authority in the shape
of a philosophical priesthood. And it is remarkable, as indicating a
radical discordance between the French and the English moralist, that
while Comte's adoration, in his later years, of a woman led him to
ordain a formal worship of the feminine representative of the Family,
coupled with the strict seclusion of women from politics, Mill's
lifelong attachment greatly strengthened his ardour for the complete
emancipation of the whole sex.
Our readers will bear in mind that we are endeavouring to measure the
permanent influence of Utilitarian doctrines, to determine how far
they have fixed the direction, and shaped the ends, of contemporary
thought and political action. It cannot be said that these doctrines
are now predominant in either of these two closely interacting
departments. National instincts and prepossessions have lost none of
their force; national character now divides neighbouring peoples more
sharply, perhaps, than a hundred years ago. Militarism is stronger
than ever; cosmopolitan philanthropy is overridden by the growth of
national interests; political economy is overruled by political
necessities; nor have ethical systems displaced the traditional
religions. Empiricism has fallen into discredit as a narrow and
inadequate philosophy; it is superseded in the spiritual world by
transcendental interpretations of dogmas as metaphysical
representations of underlying realities. Mr. Stephen's most
instructive work draws to its close with a dissertation on Liberalism
and Dogmatism, showing how and why Utilitarianism failed in convincing
or converting Englishmen to a practical assent to its principles and
modes of thought. Upon many minds they produced more repulsion than
attraction. Maurice earnestly protested that we were to believe in
God, not in a theory about God, though the distinction, as Mr. Stephen
says, is vague; he appealed to the inner light, to the conscience of
mankind; he went back into the slough of Intuitionism. Carlyle cried
aloud against materialistic views and logical machinery; he denounced
'the great steam-engine, Utilitarianism'; he was for the able despot
and hero-worship against grinding competition and government by
discussion. In theology the mystical spirit rose again with its
immemorial power of enchanting human imagination; the moral law is
discerned to be the vesture of Divinity, in which He arrays Himself
to become apprehensible by the finite intellect; and a Science that
tries to understand everything explains nothing. Authority, instead of
being discarded, is invoked to deliver men out of the great waters of
spiritual and political anarchy. The Tractarians struck in with a
fierce attack on Rationalism, propounding Faith and Revelation as
imperative grounds of belief. You must accept the dogmas, not as
useful, not as moral or reasonable, not even as derived intuitively,
but as the necessary fundamental truths declared by the infallible
Church to be essential to salvation. Those who could not find
infallibility in a State Church went over to Rome, abandoning the Via
Media; others were content with the high sacramental position of
Anglicanism; the moderate Rationalists took shelter with the Broad
Church; a few retreated into the cloudy refuge of transcendental
idealism. The two extreme parties, the Broad Church and the
Sacerdotalists, were at bitter feud with each other; yet they both
denounced the common enemy. Arnold 'agreed with Carlyle that the
Liberals greatly overrate Bentham, and the political economists
generally; the _summum bonum_ of their science is not identical with
human life ... and the economical good is often, from the neglect of
other points, a social evil.' Newman held that to allow the right of
private judgment was to enter upon the path of scepticism; and the
latest infidel device, he says, is to leave theology alone. He set up
the argument, well-worn but always impressive, that science gives no
certainty; and Mr. Stephen contends against it with the weapons of
empiricism:--
'The scientific doctrines must lay down the base to which all other
truth, so far as it is discoverable, must conform. The essential
feature of contemporary thought was just this: that science was
passing from purely physical questions to historical, ethical, and
social problems. The dogmatist objects to private judgment or free
thought on the ground that, as it gives no criterion, it cannot
lead to certainty. His real danger was precisely that it leads
irresistibly to certainty. The scientific method shows how such
certainty as is possible must be obtained. The man of science
advocates free inquiry precisely because it is the way to truth,
and the only way, though a way which leads through many errors.'
Mr. Stephen is himself a large-minded Utilitarian. He will have
nothing to do with a transcendental basis of morals; and the dogmatist
who dislikes cross-examination is out of his court. Dogmatic
authority, he says, stands only on its own assertions; and if you may
not reason upon them, the inference is that on those points reason is
against them. You may withdraw beyond this range by sublimating
religion into a philosophy, but then it loses touch with terrestrial
affairs, and has a very feeble control over the unruly affections of
sinful men. Newman himself resorted to scientific methods in his
theory of Development, that is, of the growth and evolution of
doctrine. We may agree that these destructive arguments have much
logical force, yet on the other hand such certitude as empiricism can
provide brings little consolation to the multitude, who require some
imperative command; they look for a pillar of cloud or fire to go
before them day and night, and a land of promise in the distance.
Scientific exposition works slowly for the improvement of ethics,
which to the average mind are rather weakened than strengthened by
loosening their foundations; and religious beliefs suffer from a
similar constitutional delicacy. Conduct is not much fortified by
being treated as a function of character and circumstance; for in
religion and morals ordinary humanity demands something impervious to
reasoning, wherein lies the advantage of the intuitionist.