FOOTNOTES:

If you do not love virtue 'for its own sake,' said Mackintosh, you will break a general law wherever the law produces a balance of painful consequences. Mill replies with great vigour.[590]All general rules, it is true, imply exceptions, but only when they conflict with the supreme rule. 'There is no exception to a rule of morality,' says Mill, 'but what is made by a rule of morality.'[591]There are numerous cases in which the particular laws conflict; and one law must then be broken. The question which to break must then be decided by the same unequivocal test, 'utility.' If a rule for increasing utility diminishes utility in a given case, it must be broken in that case. Mackintosh's Fletcher of Saltoun illustrates the point.[592]What is the 'base' thing which Fletcher would not do to save his country? Would he not be the basest of men if he did not save his country at any cost? To destroy half a population and reduce the other half to misery has been thought a sacrifice not too great for such an end. Would not Mackintosh himself allow Fletcher, when intrusted with an important fortress, to sacrifice the lives and properties of innocent people in defence of his position?[593]What, then, does the love of virtue 'for its own sake' come to? If you refuse to save your country, because you think the means base, your morality is mischievous, that is, immoral. If, on the other hand, you admit that the means cease to be base, the supposed supremacy is an empty brag. The doctrine is then verbally maintained, but interpreted so as to conform to the criterion of utility. In other words, Mackintosh cannot reconcile his admission of utility as a 'criterion' with his support of a moral sense entitled to override the criterion. Mackintosh's moral sense is meant to distinguish the moral motive from 'expediency.' To this, again, Mill has a very forcible answer. A man is blameable who makes exceptions to laws in his own private interest. But if a man consistently and invariably acted for the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number,' and paid no more attention to his own happiness than to other people's, he would certainly have a very lofty and inflexible test, assuming—as we must allow Mill to assume—that we can calculate the effect of conduct upon happiness at large. Again, upon the assumption that 'moral' is equivalent to 'felicific,' we get a general rule entitled to override any individual tastes or fancies, such as Mill supposes to be meant by the 'Moral Sense.' The rule is derived from the interests of all, and gives an ultimate 'objective criterion.' J. S. Mill, describing his father's system, observes that the teaching of such a man was not likely to err on 'the sideof laxity or indulgence.'[594]It certainly did not. And, in fact, his criterion, however obtained, had in his eyes the certainty of a scientific law. This or that is right as surely as this or that food is wholesome. My taste has nothing to do with it. And, moreover, the criterion certainly gives a moral ground. If I know that any conduct will produce more happiness than misery that is a moral reason for adopting it. A 'moral sense' which should be radically inconsistent with that criterion, which should order me to inflict suffering as suffering, or without some ulterior reason, would be certainly at fault. Mackintosh indeed would have agreed to this, though, if Mill was right, at the expense of consistency.

Mill, however, deduces from his criterion doctrines which involve a remarkable paradox. The mode in which he is led to them is characteristic of the whole method. Mill, like Bentham, puts morality upon the same plane with law. Conduct is influenced either by the 'community in its conjunct capacity'—that is, by law; or by 'individuals in their individual capacity'—that is, by morality.[595]The sanction of one, we may infer, is force; of the other, approval and disapproval. With this we must take another Benthamite doctrine, of which I have already spoken.[596]'Mr. Bentham demonstrated,' says Mill, 'that the morality of an act does not depend upon the motive,' and, further, that it 'is altogether dependent on the intention.'[597]Upon this he constantly insists. Mackintosh's view that virtue depends upon motive will be 'scorned by every man who has any knowledge of the philosophy of the human mind....The virtue does not depend upon the motive. There is no bad motive. Every motive is the desire of good; to the agent himself or to some one else.'[598]He gives an analysis of action to put the point beyond doubt. Action supposes a 'motive,' a 'volition,' and an 'external act' or muscular contraction. So far there is nothing moral. But then an act has consequences, good or bad, to human beings, which constitute its utility. To make it moral, the agent must anticipate 'beneficial consequences,' and must have no reason to anticipate a balance of evil consequences. Intention means the calculation of consequences, and without that calculation there can be no morality.[599]Hence the morality is equivalent to a 'conviction of the general utility' of the action.[600]'All this,' he concludes, 'is settled by universal consent. It is vain, therefore, to think of disputing it.' One may, however, ask what it means. I have already observed that the view of the non-moral character of motive was a natural corollary from the purely legal point of view. I must now consider the results of applying it unreservedly in the inappropriate sphere of ethics.

In the first place, the denial of any moral quality in motive seems to be inconsistent with Mill's own principles. The Utilitarian, according to him, holds that the moral law is essentially the statement that certain conduct produces general happiness. If, then, we ask, Who is a good man? we first reply that he is a man whose conduct produces happiness. Another conclusion is obviously necessary, and is implied in Mill's statement that the 'intention' is essential to morality. The man, that is, must foresee that his conduct will produce happiness. The 'calculation' isprecisely what makes an action moral as well as accidentally useful. In other words, the man is good to whom the knowledge that an act will produce happiness is the same thing as a command to perform the act. The 'intention' could not affect conduct without the corresponding motive, and Mill can at times recognise the obvious consequence. The 'physical law' (meaning the law enforced by physical coercion), he says incidentally, has 'extrinsic' sanctions;[601]the moral law is different, because it sanctions good actions for their goodness. 'Moral approval' must therefore include approval of character. A man, to be moral, must be one who does useful things simply because they are useful. He must then, it would seem, be at least benevolent. The same thing is implied by the doctrine of 'intention' or 'calculation.' An action may be useful or the reverse without being moral when the consequences are unknown to the agent. To make it moral he must know the consequences—for otherwise he is merely acting at random; and the foreseen consequences constitute the 'intention.' To this Mill adds that he must have taken into account the consequences which 'might have been foreseen.'[602]Otherwise we should have to excuse a man because he had neglected to calculate, whereas to calculate is the very essence of virtue. A man who fired a gun down a crowded street would not be excusable because he had not thought of the result. He 'ought' to have thought of it. The question of moral approval of any given action turns upon these questions. Did a man foresee evil consequences and disregard them? He is then cruel. Did he neglect to consider them? He isthen culpably careless, though not actually malignant. Were the consequences altogether beyond the powers of reasonable calculation? Then he may be blameless. The whole moral question, therefore, depends upon the character indicated; that is, upon the motives which induce a man to calculate consequences and which determine his conduct when the calculation is made.

The truth is, I think, and it is characteristic of Mill's modes of analysis, that he is making an impossible abstraction. He is separating parts of a single process and treating them as independent. If actions are bad because they have bad consequences, motives are bad because they are causes of bad actions. You cannot suppress the effect without suppressing the cause, and therefore the cause of the cause. Mill relies chiefly upon one argument. The same conduct will produce the same consequences whatever the motives. That is undeniable. It is the same to me whether I am burnt because the persecutor loves my soul or because he hates me as a rebel to his authority. But when is conduct 'the same'? If we classify acts as the legislator has to classify them by 'external' or 'objective' relations, we put together the man who is honest solely from fear of the gallows and the man who is honest from hatred of stealing. So long as both act alike, the 'consequences' to their neighbours are alike. Neither is legally punishable. But if acts are classified by their motives, one is a rogue and the other virtuous; and it is only then that the question of morality properly arises. In that case, it is idle to separate the question of motive and consequences, because the character determines the motive and therefore the action. Nobody should have seen this more clearly than Mill as a good'determinist.' Conduct and character are related as the convex and concave of the curve; conduct is simply the manifestation of character, and to separate them is absurd.

Why did he not see this? For reasons, I think, which illustrate his whole method. From a scientific point of view, the ethical problem raises the wide questions, What are the moral sentiments? and, What functions do they discharge in regard to the society or to its individual members? We might hold that morality is justified by 'utility' in the sense that the moral rules and the character which they indicate are essential to the welfare of the race or its individual constituents. But to Mill this proposition is interpreted as identical with the proposition that conduct must be estimated by its 'consequences.' We are to consider not the action itself, but its effects; and the effects are clearly independent of the motive when once the action has been done. We may therefore get a calculus of 'utility': general rules stating what actions will be useful considered abstractedly from their motives. The method, again, might be plausible if we could further assume that all men were the same and differed only in external circumstances. That is the point of view to which Mill, like Bentham, is always more or less consciously inclining. The moral and the positive law are equally enforced by 'sanctions'; by something not dependent upon the man himself, and which he is inclined to suppose will operate equally upon all men. Such language could be justifiable only of an average and uniform 'man,' a kind of constant unit, whose varying behaviour must always be explained by difference in circumstance. We have sufficiently seen the results elsewhere, and in this ethical doctrine they are especially manifest.

Mackintosh recognised the fact that morality is essentially a function of character. Mill cannot fully admit that, because he virtually assumes all character to be the same. Regarding morality as something co-ordinate with law, he does not perceive that the very possibility of law implies the moral instincts, which correspond to the constitution of character, and belong to a sphere underlying, not on the same plane with, the legislative sphere. They are the source of all order; not themselves the product of the order. It is impossible to deduce them, therefore, from the organisation which presupposes them. Now, in one direction, Mill's theory leads, as his son remarked, not to laxity but to excessive strictness. The 'criterion' is laid down absolutely. The 'moral sense' is rejected because it means an autocratic faculty, entitled to override the criterion by its own authority. To appeal to 'motives' is to allow the individual to make his own feeling the ultimate test of right and wrong. If we follow Mill in this we are not really assuming the moral neutrality of motive or the indifference, but an impossible profession of character. Men are not governed by abstract principles but by their passions and affections. The emotions, as Mackintosh rightly said, cannot be resolved into the mere logic. Utility may give the true criterion of morality, but it does not follow that the perception of utility is implied in moral conduct. The motives are good which in fact produce useful conduct, though the agent does not contemplate the abstract principle. It is impossible that men should be moved simply by a desire for the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' What does and always must guide men is their personal relation to the little circle whichthey actually influence. The good man is the man so constituted that he will spontaneously fulfil his duties. The moral law, that is, will be also the law of his character and conduct. The mother is good because she loves her child, not because she sees that care of her child is dictated by the general maxim of utility. The 'utility' of character means the fitness of the agent to be an efficient member of the social structure to which he belongs. In particular cases this may lead to such problems as that of Fletcher of Saltoun. His sense of honour and his general benevolence, though both useful, might come into collision; and the most difficult of all questions of casuistry arise from such conflicts between private and public affections. Mill is justified in holding that a sense of honour cannot give an ultimate and autocratic decision. Under some pretext or other, we shall have to ask the Utilitarian question whether on the whole it may not be causing more misery than the virtuous action is worth. But that only means that the character must be so balanced as to give due weight to each motive; not that we can abstract from character altogether, as though human beings could be mere colourless and uniform atoms, embodying abstract formulæ.

Mill is following Bentham, and only brings out more clearly the psychological assumptions. A man, he says, acts from the 'same motive' whether he steals five shillings or earns it by a day's labour. The motive, in this sense, regards only one consequence, whereas the 'intention' regards all. The 'motive,' that is, is only one of the motives or a part of the character, and this way of speaking is one of the awkward resultsof turning 'motives' into 'things.' The obvious answer is that which Mill himself makes to Mackintosh. Mackintosh and Butler, he thinks, personify particular 'appetites.'[603]It is not really the 'conscience' which decides, but the man. That is quite true, and similarly it is the whole man who steals or works, not the 'personified' motive; and it is accordingly from the whole character that we judge. We have to consider the relation of the love of five shillings to the other qualities of industry and honesty. The same view appears in Mill's characteristic dislike of 'sentimentalism.' Wishing to attack Mackintosh's rhetoric about the delight of virtuous feeling, he for once quotes a novel to illustrate this point. When Parson Adams defined charity as a 'generous disposition to relieve the distressed,' Peter Pounce approved; 'it is, as you say, a disposition, and does not so much consist in the act as in the disposition to do it.'[604]When, therefore, Mackintosh says that he finds it difficult to separate the virtue from the act, Mill replies that nothing is easier. The virtue is 'in the act and its consequences'; the feeling a mere removable addition. Apparently he would hold that the good Samaritan and the Pharisee had the same feeling, though it prompted one to relieve the sufferer and the other to relieve himself of the sight of the sufferer. They had, of course, a feeling in common, but a feeling which produced diametrically opposite effects, because entering into totally different combinations.

If Mill's doctrine leads to an impossible strictness in one direction, it leads to less edifying results in another. We have omitted 'motive' and come to the criticalquestion, How, after all, is the moral code to be enforced? By overlooking this question and declaring 'motive' to be irrelevant, we get the paradox already accepted by Bentham. His definition of virtue is action for the good of others as well as of ourselves. In what way is the existence of such action to be reconciled with this doctrine? What are the motives which make men count the happiness of others to be equally valuable with their own? or, in the Utilitarian language, What is the 'sanction' of morality? After all Bentham's insistence upon the 'self-preference principle' and Mill's account of selfishness in his political theory, we are suddenly told that morality means a lofty and rigid code in which the happiness of all is the one end. Here again Mill is entangled by the characteristic difficulty of his psychology. To analyse is to divide objects into separate units. When he has to do with complex objects and relations apparently reciprocal, he is forced to represent them by a simple sequence. The two factors are not mutually dependent but distinct things somehow connected in time. One result is his account of 'ends' or 'motives' (the two, as he observes, are synonymous).[605]The end is something to be gained by the act, the 'association' of which with the act constitutes a 'desire.' This, we have seen, always refers to the future.[606]In acting, then, I am always guided by calculations of future pleasures or pains. I believe this to be one of the most unfortunate because one of the most plausible ofUtilitarian fallacies. If we are determined by pains and pleasures, it is in one sense as contradictory to speak of our being determined by future pains and pleasures as to speak of our being nourished to-day by to-morrow's dinner. The 'future pleasure' does not exist; the anticipated pleasure acts by making the present action pleasant; and we then move (as it is said) along the line of least resistance. Certain conduct is intrinsically pleasurable or painful, and the future pleasure only acts through the present foretaste. When, however, we regard the pleasure as future and as somehow a separable thing, we can only express these undeniable facts by accepting a purely egoistic conclusion. We are, of course, moved by our own feelings, as we breathe with our own lungs and digest with our own stomachs. But when we accept the doctrine of 'ends' this harmless and self-evident truth is perverted into the statement that our 'end' must be our own pleasure; that we cannot be really or directly unselfish. The analysis, indeed, is so defective that it can hardly be applied intelligibly. Hume observes that no man would rest his foot indifferently upon a stool or a gouty toe. The action itself of giving pain would be painful, and cannot be plausibly resolved into an anticipation of an 'end.' This, again, is conspicuously true of all the truly social emotions. Not only the conscience, but the sense of shame or honour, or pride and vanity act powerfully and instantaneously as present motives without necessary reference to any future results. The knowledge that I am giving pain or causing future pain is intrinsically and immediately painful to the normal human being, and the supposed 'analysis' is throughout a fiction. Mill, however, likeBentham, takes it for granted, but perceives more clearly than Bentham the difficulty to which it leads. How, from a theory of pure selfishness, are we to get a morality of general benevolence? The answer is given by the universal 'association.' We are governed, he holds, by our own emotions; our end is our own pleasure, and we have to consider how this end dictates a desire for general happiness. He expounds with great vigour the process by which the love of friends, children and parents and country may be gradually developed through the association of our pleasures with the fellow-creatures who caused them. J. S. Mill regards his exposition as 'almost perfect,'[607]and says that it shows how the 'acquired sentiments'—the moral sentiments and so forth—may be gradually developed; may become 'more intense and powerful than any of the elements out of which they may have been formed, and may also in their maturity be perfectly disinterested.' James Mill declares that the analysis does not affect the reality of the sentiments analysed. Gratitude remains gratitude, and generosity generosity, just as a white ray remains white after Newton had decomposed it into rays of different colours.[608]Here once more we have the great principle of indissoluble association or mental chemistry.

Granting that the emotions so generated may be real, we may still ask whether the analysis be sufficient. James Mill's account of the way in which they are generated leaves a doubt. Morality is first impressed upon us by authority. Our parents praise and blame, rewardand punish. Thus are formed associations of praise and blame with certain actions. Then, we form further associations with the causes of praise and blame and thus acquire the sentiments of 'praiseworthiness' and 'blameworthiness.' The sensibility to praise and blame generally forms the 'popular sanction,' and this, when praiseworthiness is concerned, becomes the moral sanction.[609]Here we see that morality is regarded as somehow the product of a 'sanction'; that is, of the action of praise and blame with their usual consequences upon the individual. His sensibility causes him through association to acquire the habits which generally bring praise and blame; and ultimately these qualities become attractive for their own sake. The difficulty is to see where the line is crossed which divides truly moral or altruistic conduct from mere prudence. Admitting that association may impel us to conduct which involves self-sacrifice, we may still ask whether such conduct is reasonable. Association produces belief in error as well as in truth. If I love a man because he is useful and continue to love him when he can no longer be useful, am I not misguided? If I wear a ragged coat, because it was once smart, my conduct is easily explained as a particular kind of folly. If I am good to my old mother when she can no longer nurse me, am I not guilty of a similar folly? In short, a man who inferred from Mill's principles that he would never do good without being paid for it, would be hardly inconsistent. Your associations, Mill would say, are indissoluble. He might answer, I will try—it is surely not so hard to dissolve a tie of gratitude! Granting,in short, that Mill gives an account of such virtue as may be made of enlightened self-interest, he does not succeed in making intelligible the conduct which alone deserves the name of virtuous. The theory always halts at the point where something more is required than an external sanction, and supposes a change of character as well as a wider calculation of personal interest.

The imperfection of this theory may be taken for granted. It has been exposed by innumerable critics. It is more important to observe one cause of the imperfection. Mill's argument contains an element of real worth. It may be held to represent fairly the historical development of morals. That morality is first conceived as an external law deriving its sanctity from authority; that it is directed against obviously hurtful conduct; and that it thus serves as a protection under which the more genuine moral sentiments can develop themselves, I believe to be in full accordance with sound theories of ethics. But Mill was throughout hampered by the absence of any theory of evolution. He had to represent a series of changes as taking place in the individual which can only be conceived as the product of a long and complex social change. He is forced to represent the growth of morality as an accretion of new 'ends' due to association, not as an intrinsic development of the character itself. He has to make morality out of atomic sensations and ideas collected in clusters and trains without any distinct reference to the organic constitution of the individual or of society, and as somehow or other deducible from the isolated human being, who remains a constant, though he collects into groups governed by external sanctions. He sees that morality is formedsomehow or other, but he cannot show that it is either reasonable or an essential fact of human nature. Here, again, we shall see what problem was set to his son. Finally, if Mill did not explain ethical theory satisfactorily, it must be added in common justice that he was himself an excellent example of the qualities for which he tried to account. A life of devotion to public objects and a conscientious discharge of private duties is just the phenomenon for which a cluster of 'ideas' and 'associations' seems to be an inadequate account. How, it might have been asked, do you explain James Mill? 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.

FOOTNOTES:[464]For an account of these writers and their relation to the pre-revolutionary schools, seeLes Idéologuesby F. Picavet (1891).[465]Macvey Napier'sCorrespondence, p. 424.[466]Charles François Dominique de Villers (1767-1815) was a French officer, who emigrated in 1792, and took refuge at Lübeck. He became profoundly interested in German life and literature, and endeavoured to introduce a knowledge of German speculation to his countrymen. His chief books were this exposition of Kant and an essay upon theReformation of Luther(1803), which went through several editions, and was translated by James Mill in 1805. An interesting account of Villers is in theBiographie Universelle.[467]See Cockburn'sMemorialsfor a good notice of this.[468]Stewart'sWorks, iv. 345.[469]Lady Holland'sLife of Smith, ii. 388.[470]Inquiry into the Relations of Cause and Effect(third edition), pp. 178, 180, and part iv. sec. 6.[471]Examination of Hamilton(fourth edition), p. 379.[472]Cause and Effect, pp. 184-87.[473]Cause and Effect, p. 197.[474]Ibid.p. 239seq.[475]Ibid.p. 244.[476]Ibid.p. 150.[477]Ibid.p. 357.[478]Cause and Effect, p. 313.[479]Cause and Effect, p. 482. Brown thinks that we can logically disprove the existence of motion by the hare and tortoise argument, and should therefore disregard logic.[480]Brown'sLectures, (1851), p. 167, Lect. xxvi.[481]Lecture xxv. This question as to whether Brown had or had not grossly misrepresented Reid and other philosophers, led to an entangled argument, in which Mill defended Brown against Hamilton. I will not ask whether Reid was a 'natural realist' or a 'cosmothetic idealist,' or what Descartes or Arnauld thought about the question.[482]Reid'sWorks, p. 128.[483]Lectures, pp. 150, 158-59.[484]Dissertations, p. 98. Compare Brown's Twenty-fourth Lecture with Tracy'sIdéologie, ch. vii., and the account of the way in which the infant learns from resistance to infer a cause, and make of the causeun être qui n'est pas moi. The resemblance is certainly close. Brown was familiar with French literature, and shows it by many quotations, though he does not, I think, refer to Tracy. Brown, it must be noticed, did not himself publish his lectures, and a professor is not bound to give all his sources in popular lectures. An explanation would have been due in a treatise. Picavet quotes Rhétoré'sPhilosophie de Thomas Brown(a book which I have not seen) for the statement that Brown's lectures often read like a translation of Laromiguière, with whom Brown was 'perhaps' acquainted. As, however, theLeçons, to which reference is apparently made, did not appear till 1815 and 1818, when Brown's lectures were already written, this seems to be impossible. The coincidence, which to me seems to be exaggerated by the statement, is explicable by a common relation to previous writers.[485]Lectures, p. 166 (Lect. xxvi.).[486]Lectures, p. 158 (Lect. xxv.).[487]Ibid.p. 151 (Lect. xxiv.).[488]Lectures, p. 177 (ch. xxviii.). Brown made the same remark to Mackintosh in 1812. (Mackintosh'sEthical Philosophy, 1872, 236n.)[489]Ibid.p. 154 (Lect. xxiv.).[490]See Hamilton's note to Reid'sWorks, p. 111.[491]Lectures, p. 255 (Lect. xl.).[492]Ibid.(Lect. xxxiii. and following).[493]Ibid.p. 214-15 (Lect. xxxiii.). The phrase is revived by Professor Stout in hisAnalytic Psychology.[494]Lectures, p. 213 (Lect. xxxiii.).[495]This is one of the coincidences with Laromiguière (Leçons(1837), i. 103).[496]Lectures, p. 210.[497]Lectures, p. 315 (Lect. xlviii.).[498]Ibid.p. 314.[499]Lectures, p. 335 (Lect. li.). See Lect. xi. for a general explanation. The mind is nothing but a 'series of feelings'; and to say that 'I am conscious of feeling' is simply to say 'I feel.' The same phrase often occurs in James Mill.[500]Ibid.p. 298 (Lect. xlvi.).[501]Ibid.p. 498 (Lect. lxxiv.).[502]Lectures, p. 622 (Lect. xciii.).[503]Dissertations, p. 98.[504]Froude'sCarlyle, p. 25.[505]Miscellanies(1858), ii. 104. See, too,Miscellanies, i. 60, on German Literature, where he thinks that the Germans attacked the centre instead of the outworks of Hume's citadel. Carlyle speaks with marked respect of Dugald Stewart, who, if he knew what he was about, would agree with Kant.[506]In Caroline Fox'sMemories of Old Friends(second edition), ii. 314, is a letter from J. S. Mill, expressing a very high opinion of Brown, whom he had just been re-reading (1840) with a view to the Logic. Brown's 'analysis in his early lectures of the amount of what we can learn of the phenomena of the world seems to me perfect, and his mode of inquiry into the mind is strictly founded upon that analysis.'[507]I quote from this edition. Andrew Findlater (1810-1885), a Scottish schoolmaster, and editor of Chambers'sCyclopædia, was a philologist (Dictionary of National Biography), and his notes chiefly concern Mill's adaptations of Horne Tooke.[508]Treatise(bk. i. pt. i. sec. iv.).[509]J. S. Mill'sAutobiography, p. 68.[510]Fragment on Mackintosh, p. 314.[511]Analysis, ii. 42. 'Odd,' because Brown was six years younger than Mill.[512]'Education,' p. 6.[513]Analysis, i. 52.[514]Analysis, i. xvii.[515]Ibid.i. 70.[516]Analysis, i. 71.[517]Ibid.i. 78.[518]Ibid.i. 83.[519]Analysis, ii. 42.[520]Ibid.i. 270.[521]Ibid.i. 111.[522]Ibid.i. 362.[523]Analysis, i. 154n.[524]Ibid.i. 161.[525]Analysis, i. 189.[526]Ibid.i. 163n.[527]Ibid.i. 266.[528]Ibid.i. 269.[529]Ibid.i. 295.[530]Analysis, i. 162n., 187n.[531]Ibid.ii. 21.[532]Ibid.i. 224-25.[533]Analysis, i. 342.[534]e.g.Ibid.ii. 176.[535]Ibid.i. 341.[536]Ibid.i. 342n.[537]Ibid.i. 331.[538]Ibid.i. 345.[539]Ibid.i. 352.[540]Ibid.i. 381.[541]Analysis, i. 363.[542]Ibid.i. 402.[543]Ibid.i. 402-23.[544]Analysis, i. 423.[545]Ibid.i. 413, 419.[546]See especially his account of definition,Logic, bk. i. ch. viii., and the problem about the serpent and the dragon.[547]Analysis, ii. 2.[548]This point puzzles Destutt de Tracy. All error, he says, arises in judgments: 'Cependant les jugements, les perceptions de rapports, en tant que perceptions que nous avons actuellement, sont aussi certaines et aussi réelles que toutes les autres.'—Éléments d'Idéologie(1865), iii. 449.[549]Analysis, ii. 6, 7.[550]Analysis, ii. 18n.[551]Analysis, ii. 24n.[552]Ibid.ii. 132-33.[553]Analysis, ii. 67-69.[554]Analysis, ii. 113n.[555]Ibid.i. 97n.[556]Professor Bain points out that Mill is occasionally confused by his ignorance of the triple division, intellect, feelings: and will, introduced in the next generation.—Analysis, ii. 180n.[557]Analysis, ii. 181-83.[558]Analysis, ii. 351.[559]Also privately printed in 1830. Later editions, edited by Whewell, appeared in 1836, 1862, 1873. I quote the last. See M. Napier'sCorrespondence, pp. 57-59, for the composition.[560]Mill'sFragment(Preface).[561]See Bain'sJames Mill, pp. 374, 415-18.[562]Fragment, pp. 190, 192, 213, 298, 307, 326.[563]Ibid.p. 210.[564]Ethical Philosophy(1873), pp. 188, 193.[565]M. Napier'sCorrespondence, p. 25.[566]Essay on Sir J. Mackintosh.[567]Essay on Lord Holland.[568]Lectures, p. 500 (Lect. lxxv.).[569]Ibid.p. 519 (Lect. lxxvii.).[570]Ibid.p. 522 (Lect. lxxviii.).[571]Ethical Philosophy(Hobbes), pp. 62-64.[572]Ibid.p. 85.[573]Ibid.p. 145.[574]Ibid.p. 9.[575]Ibid.p. 120.[576]Ethical Philosophy, pp. 14, 170.[577]Ibid.p. 197.[578]Ibid.p. 248.[579]Ibid.p. 204.[580]Ethical Philosophyp. 242.[581]Ibid.p. 251.[582]Ibid.p. 262.[583]Ibid.p. 264.[584]Ibid.p. 169.[585]Fragment, p. 173.[586]Ibid.p. 323.[587]Ibid.p. 221.[588]Fragment, p. 247. Mackintosh quotes Mill'sAnalysisat p. 197. It had only just appeared.[589]Fragment, p. 11.[590]Fragment, p. 246, etc.[591]Ibid.p. 246.[592]Ibid.pp. 269, 270.[593]Cf. Newman'sApologia. 'The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul,—I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.' I should steal the farthing and assume the 'excuse.' I confess that I would not only lie, but should think lying right under the supposed circumstances.[594]Autobiography, p. 51.[595]Fragment, p. 251.[596]Vol. i. p. 257.[597]Fragment, p. 161.[598]Fragment, pp. 315-16.[599]Ibid.p. 164.[600]Ibid.pp. 320-22.[601]Fragment, p. 102.[602]Ibid.p. 162.[603]Analysis, p. 73.[604]Fragment, p. 209.[605]Fragment, p. 316.[606]At one point, as J. S. Mill notes, he speaks of an 'unsatisfied desire' as a motive, which seems to indicate a present feeling; but this is not his usual view.—Analysis, ii. 361, 377n.[607]Analysis, ii. 233n.Mill adds that though his father explains the 'intellectual,' he does not explain the 'animal' element in the affections. This, however, is irrelevant for my purpose.[608]Fragment, pp. 51-52.[609]Analysis, ii. 292-300;Fragment, pp. 247-65. Note Mill's interpretation of this theory of 'praiseworthiness.'—Analysis, ii. 298n.

[464]For an account of these writers and their relation to the pre-revolutionary schools, seeLes Idéologuesby F. Picavet (1891).

[465]Macvey Napier'sCorrespondence, p. 424.

[466]Charles François Dominique de Villers (1767-1815) was a French officer, who emigrated in 1792, and took refuge at Lübeck. He became profoundly interested in German life and literature, and endeavoured to introduce a knowledge of German speculation to his countrymen. His chief books were this exposition of Kant and an essay upon theReformation of Luther(1803), which went through several editions, and was translated by James Mill in 1805. An interesting account of Villers is in theBiographie Universelle.

[467]See Cockburn'sMemorialsfor a good notice of this.

[468]Stewart'sWorks, iv. 345.

[469]Lady Holland'sLife of Smith, ii. 388.

[470]Inquiry into the Relations of Cause and Effect(third edition), pp. 178, 180, and part iv. sec. 6.

[471]Examination of Hamilton(fourth edition), p. 379.

[472]Cause and Effect, pp. 184-87.

[473]Cause and Effect, p. 197.

[474]Ibid.p. 239seq.

[475]Ibid.p. 244.

[476]Ibid.p. 150.

[477]Ibid.p. 357.

[478]Cause and Effect, p. 313.

[479]Cause and Effect, p. 482. Brown thinks that we can logically disprove the existence of motion by the hare and tortoise argument, and should therefore disregard logic.

[480]Brown'sLectures, (1851), p. 167, Lect. xxvi.

[481]Lecture xxv. This question as to whether Brown had or had not grossly misrepresented Reid and other philosophers, led to an entangled argument, in which Mill defended Brown against Hamilton. I will not ask whether Reid was a 'natural realist' or a 'cosmothetic idealist,' or what Descartes or Arnauld thought about the question.

[482]Reid'sWorks, p. 128.

[483]Lectures, pp. 150, 158-59.

[484]Dissertations, p. 98. Compare Brown's Twenty-fourth Lecture with Tracy'sIdéologie, ch. vii., and the account of the way in which the infant learns from resistance to infer a cause, and make of the causeun être qui n'est pas moi. The resemblance is certainly close. Brown was familiar with French literature, and shows it by many quotations, though he does not, I think, refer to Tracy. Brown, it must be noticed, did not himself publish his lectures, and a professor is not bound to give all his sources in popular lectures. An explanation would have been due in a treatise. Picavet quotes Rhétoré'sPhilosophie de Thomas Brown(a book which I have not seen) for the statement that Brown's lectures often read like a translation of Laromiguière, with whom Brown was 'perhaps' acquainted. As, however, theLeçons, to which reference is apparently made, did not appear till 1815 and 1818, when Brown's lectures were already written, this seems to be impossible. The coincidence, which to me seems to be exaggerated by the statement, is explicable by a common relation to previous writers.

[485]Lectures, p. 166 (Lect. xxvi.).

[486]Lectures, p. 158 (Lect. xxv.).

[487]Ibid.p. 151 (Lect. xxiv.).

[488]Lectures, p. 177 (ch. xxviii.). Brown made the same remark to Mackintosh in 1812. (Mackintosh'sEthical Philosophy, 1872, 236n.)

[489]Ibid.p. 154 (Lect. xxiv.).

[490]See Hamilton's note to Reid'sWorks, p. 111.

[491]Lectures, p. 255 (Lect. xl.).

[492]Ibid.(Lect. xxxiii. and following).

[493]Ibid.p. 214-15 (Lect. xxxiii.). The phrase is revived by Professor Stout in hisAnalytic Psychology.

[494]Lectures, p. 213 (Lect. xxxiii.).

[495]This is one of the coincidences with Laromiguière (Leçons(1837), i. 103).

[496]Lectures, p. 210.

[497]Lectures, p. 315 (Lect. xlviii.).

[498]Ibid.p. 314.

[499]Lectures, p. 335 (Lect. li.). See Lect. xi. for a general explanation. The mind is nothing but a 'series of feelings'; and to say that 'I am conscious of feeling' is simply to say 'I feel.' The same phrase often occurs in James Mill.

[500]Ibid.p. 298 (Lect. xlvi.).

[501]Ibid.p. 498 (Lect. lxxiv.).

[502]Lectures, p. 622 (Lect. xciii.).

[503]Dissertations, p. 98.

[504]Froude'sCarlyle, p. 25.

[505]Miscellanies(1858), ii. 104. See, too,Miscellanies, i. 60, on German Literature, where he thinks that the Germans attacked the centre instead of the outworks of Hume's citadel. Carlyle speaks with marked respect of Dugald Stewart, who, if he knew what he was about, would agree with Kant.

[506]In Caroline Fox'sMemories of Old Friends(second edition), ii. 314, is a letter from J. S. Mill, expressing a very high opinion of Brown, whom he had just been re-reading (1840) with a view to the Logic. Brown's 'analysis in his early lectures of the amount of what we can learn of the phenomena of the world seems to me perfect, and his mode of inquiry into the mind is strictly founded upon that analysis.'

[507]I quote from this edition. Andrew Findlater (1810-1885), a Scottish schoolmaster, and editor of Chambers'sCyclopædia, was a philologist (Dictionary of National Biography), and his notes chiefly concern Mill's adaptations of Horne Tooke.

[508]Treatise(bk. i. pt. i. sec. iv.).

[509]J. S. Mill'sAutobiography, p. 68.

[510]Fragment on Mackintosh, p. 314.

[511]Analysis, ii. 42. 'Odd,' because Brown was six years younger than Mill.

[512]'Education,' p. 6.

[513]Analysis, i. 52.

[514]Analysis, i. xvii.

[515]Ibid.i. 70.

[516]Analysis, i. 71.

[517]Ibid.i. 78.

[518]Ibid.i. 83.

[519]Analysis, ii. 42.

[520]Ibid.i. 270.

[521]Ibid.i. 111.

[522]Ibid.i. 362.

[523]Analysis, i. 154n.

[524]Ibid.i. 161.

[525]Analysis, i. 189.

[526]Ibid.i. 163n.

[527]Ibid.i. 266.

[528]Ibid.i. 269.

[529]Ibid.i. 295.

[530]Analysis, i. 162n., 187n.

[531]Ibid.ii. 21.

[532]Ibid.i. 224-25.

[533]Analysis, i. 342.

[534]e.g.Ibid.ii. 176.

[535]Ibid.i. 341.

[536]Ibid.i. 342n.

[537]Ibid.i. 331.

[538]Ibid.i. 345.

[539]Ibid.i. 352.

[540]Ibid.i. 381.

[541]Analysis, i. 363.

[542]Ibid.i. 402.

[543]Ibid.i. 402-23.

[544]Analysis, i. 423.

[545]Ibid.i. 413, 419.

[546]See especially his account of definition,Logic, bk. i. ch. viii., and the problem about the serpent and the dragon.

[547]Analysis, ii. 2.

[548]This point puzzles Destutt de Tracy. All error, he says, arises in judgments: 'Cependant les jugements, les perceptions de rapports, en tant que perceptions que nous avons actuellement, sont aussi certaines et aussi réelles que toutes les autres.'—Éléments d'Idéologie(1865), iii. 449.

[549]Analysis, ii. 6, 7.

[550]Analysis, ii. 18n.

[551]Analysis, ii. 24n.

[552]Ibid.ii. 132-33.

[553]Analysis, ii. 67-69.

[554]Analysis, ii. 113n.

[555]Ibid.i. 97n.

[556]Professor Bain points out that Mill is occasionally confused by his ignorance of the triple division, intellect, feelings: and will, introduced in the next generation.—Analysis, ii. 180n.

[557]Analysis, ii. 181-83.

[558]Analysis, ii. 351.

[559]Also privately printed in 1830. Later editions, edited by Whewell, appeared in 1836, 1862, 1873. I quote the last. See M. Napier'sCorrespondence, pp. 57-59, for the composition.

[560]Mill'sFragment(Preface).

[561]See Bain'sJames Mill, pp. 374, 415-18.

[562]Fragment, pp. 190, 192, 213, 298, 307, 326.

[563]Ibid.p. 210.

[564]Ethical Philosophy(1873), pp. 188, 193.

[565]M. Napier'sCorrespondence, p. 25.

[566]Essay on Sir J. Mackintosh.

[567]Essay on Lord Holland.

[568]Lectures, p. 500 (Lect. lxxv.).

[569]Ibid.p. 519 (Lect. lxxvii.).

[570]Ibid.p. 522 (Lect. lxxviii.).

[571]Ethical Philosophy(Hobbes), pp. 62-64.

[572]Ibid.p. 85.

[573]Ibid.p. 145.

[574]Ibid.p. 9.

[575]Ibid.p. 120.

[576]Ethical Philosophy, pp. 14, 170.

[577]Ibid.p. 197.

[578]Ibid.p. 248.

[579]Ibid.p. 204.

[580]Ethical Philosophyp. 242.

[581]Ibid.p. 251.

[582]Ibid.p. 262.

[583]Ibid.p. 264.

[584]Ibid.p. 169.

[585]Fragment, p. 173.

[586]Ibid.p. 323.

[587]Ibid.p. 221.

[588]Fragment, p. 247. Mackintosh quotes Mill'sAnalysisat p. 197. It had only just appeared.

[589]Fragment, p. 11.

[590]Fragment, p. 246, etc.

[591]Ibid.p. 246.

[592]Ibid.pp. 269, 270.

[593]Cf. Newman'sApologia. 'The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul,—I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.' I should steal the farthing and assume the 'excuse.' I confess that I would not only lie, but should think lying right under the supposed circumstances.

[594]Autobiography, p. 51.

[595]Fragment, p. 251.

[596]Vol. i. p. 257.

[597]Fragment, p. 161.

[598]Fragment, pp. 315-16.

[599]Ibid.p. 164.

[600]Ibid.pp. 320-22.

[601]Fragment, p. 102.

[602]Ibid.p. 162.

[603]Analysis, p. 73.

[604]Fragment, p. 209.

[605]Fragment, p. 316.

[606]At one point, as J. S. Mill notes, he speaks of an 'unsatisfied desire' as a motive, which seems to indicate a present feeling; but this is not his usual view.—Analysis, ii. 361, 377n.

[607]Analysis, ii. 233n.Mill adds that though his father explains the 'intellectual,' he does not explain the 'animal' element in the affections. This, however, is irrelevant for my purpose.

[608]Fragment, pp. 51-52.

[609]Analysis, ii. 292-300;Fragment, pp. 247-65. Note Mill's interpretation of this theory of 'praiseworthiness.'—Analysis, ii. 298n.

Back to Index Next