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Title: The Philosophy of the Conditioned
Author: H. L. Mansel
Release Date: April 3, 2009 [EBook #28484]
Language: English
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED
Reprinted, with Additions, from "The Contemporary Review."
_Comprising some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_
_and on Mr. J.S. Mill's Examination of that Philosophy_
BY H.L. MANSEL, B.D.
WAYNFLETE PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER
LONDON AND NEW YORK
1866
MUIR AND PATERSON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
PREFACE
The circumstance that the following remarks were originally published as
an anonymous article in a Review, will best explain the style in which
they are written. Absence from England prevented me from becoming
acquainted with Mr. Mill's _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's
Philosophy_ till some time after its publication; and when I was
requested to undertake the task of reviewing it, I was still ignorant of
its contents. On proceeding to fulfil my engagement, I soon discovered,
not only that the character of the book was very different from what the
author's reputation had led me to expect, but also that my task would be
one, not merely of criticism, but, in some degree, of self-defence. The
remarks on myself, coming from a writer of Mr. Mill's ability and
reputation, were such as I could not pass over without notice; while, at
the same time, I felt that my principal duty in this instance was the
defence of one who was no longer living to defend himself. Under these
circumstances, the best course appeared to be, to devote the greater
portion of my article to an exposition and vindication of Sir W.
Hamilton's teaching; and, in the additional remarks which it was
necessary to make on the more personal part of the controversy, to speak
of myself in the third person, as I should have spoken of any other
writer. The form thus adopted has been retained in the present
republication, though the article now appears with the name of its
author.
My original intention of writing a review of the entire book was
necessarily abandoned as soon as I became acquainted with its contents.
To have done justice to the whole subject, or to Mr. Mill's treatment of
it, would have required a volume nearly as large as his own. I therefore
determined to confine myself to the _Philosophy of the Conditioned_, both
as the most original and important portion of Sir W. Hamilton's teaching,
and as that which occupies the first place in Mr. Mill's _Examination_.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.
The reader of Plato's _Republic_ will readily recall to mind that
wonderful passage at the end of the sixth book, in which the philosopher,
under the image of geometrical lines, exhibits the various relations of
the intelligible to the sensible world; especially his lofty aspirations
with regard to "that second segment of the intelligible world, which
reason of itself grasps by the power of dialectic, employing hypotheses,
not as principles, but as veritable hypotheses, that is to say, as steps
and starting-points, in order that it may ascend _as far as the
unconditioned_ ([Greek: mechri tou anypothetou]), to the first principle
of the universe, and having grasped this, may then lay hold of the
principles next adjacent to it, and so go down to the end, using no
sensible aids whatever, but employing abstract forms throughout, and
terminating in forms."
This quotation is important for our present purpose in two ways. In the
first place, it may serve, at the outset of our remarks, to propitiate
those plain-spoken English critics who look upon new terms in philosophy
with the same suspicion with which Jack Cade regarded "a noun and a verb,
and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear," by
showing that the head and front of our offending, "the Unconditioned," is
no modern invention of Teutonic barbarism, but sanctioned even by the
Attic elegance of a Plato. And in the second place, it contains almost a
history in miniature of the highest speculations of philosophy, both in
earlier and in later times, and points out, with a clearness and
precision the more valuable because uninfluenced by recent controversies,
the exact field on which the philosophies of the Conditioned and the
Unconditioned come into collision, and the nature of the problem which
they both approach from opposite sides.
What is the meaning of this problem, the solution of which Plato proposes
as the highest aim of philosophy--"to ascend to the unconditioned, and
thence to deduce the universe of conditioned existence?" The problem has
assumed different forms at different times: at present we must content
ourselves with stating it in that in which it will most naturally suggest
itself to a student of modern philosophy, and in which it has the most
direct bearing on the subject of the present article.
All consciousness must in the first instance present itself as a relation
between two constituent parts, the person who is conscious, and the
thing, whatever it may be, of which he is conscious. This contrast has
been indicated, directly or indirectly, by various names--mind and
matter; person and thing; subject and object; or, lastly, in the
distinction, most convenient for philosophy, however uncouth in sound,
between self and not self--the _ego_ and the _non-ego_. In order to be
conscious at all, I must be conscious of something: consciousness thus
presents itself as the product of two factors, _I_ and _something_. The
problem of the unconditioned is, briefly stated, to reduce these two
factors to one.
For it is manifest that, so long as they remain two, we have no
unconditioned, but a pair of conditioned existences. If the _something_
of which I am conscious is a separate reality, having qualities and modes
of action of its own, and thereby determining, or contributing to
determine, the form which my consciousness of it shall take, my
consciousness is thereby conditioned, or partly dependent on something
beyond itself. It is no matter, in this respect, whether the influence is
direct or indirect--whether, for instance, I see a material tree, or only
the mental image of a tree. If the nature of the thing in any degree
determines the character of the image--if the visible form of a tree is
different from that of a house because the tree itself is different from
the house, my consciousness is, however remotely, influenced by something
different from itself, the _ego_ by the _non-ego_. And on the other hand,
if I, who am conscious, am a real being, distinct from the things of
which I am conscious--if the conscious mind has a constitution and laws
of its own by which it acts, and if the mode of its consciousness is in
any degree determined by those laws, the _non-ego_ is so far conditioned
by the _ego_; the thing which I see is not seen absolutely and _per se_,
but in a form partly dependent upon the laws of my vision.
The first step towards the reduction of these two factors to one may
obviously be made in three different ways. Either the _ego_ may be
represented as a mode of the _non-ego_, or the _non-ego_ of the _ego_, or
both of a _tertium quid_, distinct from either. In other words: it may be
maintained, _first_, that matter is the only real existence; mind and all
the phenomena of consciousness being really the result solely of material
laws; the brain, for example, secreting thought as the liver secretes
bile; and the distinct personal existence of which I am apparently
conscious being only the result of some such secretion. This is
_Materialism_, which has then to address itself to the further problem,
to reduce the various phenomena of matter to some one absolutely first
principle on which everything else depends. Or it may be maintained,
_secondly_, that mind is the only real existence; the intercourse which
we apparently have with a material world being really the result solely
of the laws of our mental constitution. This is _Idealism_, which again
has next to attempt to reduce the various phenomena to some one
immaterial principle. Or it may be maintained, _thirdly_, that real
existence is to be sought neither in mind as mind nor in matter as
matter; that both classes of phenomena are but qualities or modes of
operation of something distinct from both, and on which both alike are
dependent. Hence arises a third form of philosophy, which, for want of a
better name, we will call _Indifferentism_, as being a system in which
the characteristic differences of mind and matter are supposed to
disappear, being merged in something higher than both.
In using the two former of these terms, we are not speaking of
Materialism and Idealism as they have always actually manifested
themselves, but only of the distinguishing principle of these systems
when pushed to its extreme result. It is quite possible to be a
materialist or an idealist with respect to the immediate phenomena of
consciousness, without attempting a philosophy of the Unconditioned at
all. But it is also possible, and in itself natural, when such a
philosophy is attempted, to attempt it by means of the same method which
has approved itself in relation to subordinate inquiries; to make the
relation between the human mind and its objects the type and image of
that between the universe and its first principle. And such attempts have
actually been made, both on the side of Materialism and on that of
Idealism; and probably would be made oftener, did not counteracting
causes frequently hinder the logical development of speculative
principles.
In modern times, and under Christian influences, these several systems
are almost necessarily identified with inquiries concerning the existence
and nature of God. The influence of Christianity has been indirectly
felt, even in speculations prosecuted in apparent independence of it; and
the admission of an absolute first principle of all things distinct from
God, or the acknowledgment of a God separate from or derived from the
first principle of all things, is an absurdity which, since the
prevalence of Christianity, has become almost impossible, even to
antichristian systems of thought. In earlier times, indeed, this union of
philosophy with theology was by no means so imperative. A philosophy like
that of Greece, which inherited its speculations from a poetical
theogony, would see no difficulty in attributing to the god or gods of
its religious belief a secondary and derived existence, dependent on some
higher and more original principle, and in separating that principle
itself from all immediate connection with religion. It was possible to
assume, with the Ionian, a material substance, or, with the Eleatic, an
indifferent abstraction, as the first principle of things, without
holding that principle to be God, or, as the only alternative, denying
the existence of a God; and thus, as Aristotle[A] has observed,
theologians endeavoured to evade the consequences of their abstract
principles, by attributing to the chief good a later and derived
existence, as the poets supposed the supreme God to be of younger birth
than night and chaos and sea and sky. But to a Christian philosophy, or
to a philosophy in any way influenced by Christianity, this method of
evasion is no longer possible. If all conditioned existence is dependent
on some one first and unconditioned principle, either that principle must
be identified with God, or our philosophical speculations must fall into
open and avowed atheism.
[A] _Metaph._, xiv. 4.
But at this point the philosophical inquiry comes in contact with another
line of thought, suggested by a different class of the facts of
consciousness. As a religious and moral being, man is conscious of a
relation of a personal character, distinct from any suggested by the
phenomena of the material world,--a relation to a supreme Personal Being,
the object of his religious worship, and the source and judge of his
moral obligations and conduct. To adopt the name of God in an abstract
speculation merely as a conventional denomination for the highest link in
the chain of thought, and to believe in Him for the practical purposes of
worship and obedience, are two very different things; and for the latter,
though not for the former, the conception of God as a Person is
indispensable. Were man a being of pure intellect, the problem of the
Unconditioned would be divested of its chief difficulty; but he is also a
being of religious and moral faculties, and these also have a claim to be
satisfied by any valid solution of the problem. Hence the question
assumes another and a more complex form. How is the one absolute
existence, to which philosophy aspires, to be identified with the
personal God demanded by our religious feelings?
Shall we boldly assume that the problem is already solved, and that the
personal God is the very Unconditioned of which we were in search? This
is to beg the question, not to answer it. Our conception of a personal
being, derived as it is from the immediate consciousness of our own
personality, seems, on examination, to involve conditions incompatible
with the desired assumption. Personal agency, similar to our own, seems
to point to something very different from an absolutely first link in a
chain of phenomena. Our actions, if not determined, are at least
influenced by motives; and the motive is a prior link in the chain, and a
condition of the action. Our actions, moreover, take place in time; and
time, as we conceive it, cannot be regarded as an absolute blank, but as
a condition in which phenomena take place as past, present, and future.
Every act taking place in time implies something antecedent to itself;
and this something, be it what it may, hinders us from regarding the
subsequent act as absolute and unconditioned. Nay, even time itself,
apart from the phenomena which it implies, has the same character. If an
act cannot take place except in time, time is the condition of its taking
place. To conceive the unconditioned, as the first link in a chain of
conditioned consequences, it seems necessary that we should conceive
something out of time, yet followed by time; standing at the beginning of
all duration and succession, having no antecedent, but followed by a
series of consequents.
Philosophical theologians have been conscious of this difficulty, almost
from the earliest date at which philosophy and Christian theology came in
contact with each other. From a number of testimonies of similar import,
we select one or two of the most striking. Of the Divine Nature, Gregory
Nyssen says: "It is neither in place nor in time, but before these and
above these in an unspeakable manner, contemplated itself by itself,
through faith alone; neither measured by ages, nor moving along with
times."[B] "In the changes of things," says Augustine, "you will find a
past and a future; in God you will find a present where past and future
cannot be."[C] "Eternity," says Aquinas, "has no succession, but exists
all together."[D] Among divines of the Church of England, we quote two
names only, but those of the highest:--"The duration of eternity," says
Bishop Pearson, "is completely indivisible and all at once; so that it is
ever present, and excludes the other differences of time, past and
future."[E] And Barrow enumerates among natural modes of being and
operation far above our reach, "God's eternity without succession,"
coupling it with "His prescience without necessitation of events."[F]
But it is needless to multiply authorities for a doctrine so familiar to
every student of theology.
[B] _C. Eunom._, i., p. 98, Ed. Gretser.
[C] _In Joann. Evang._, tract. xxxvii. 10.
[D] _Summa_, pars. i., qu. x., art. 1.
[E] _Minor Theol. Works_, vol. i., p. 105.
[F] Sermon on the Unsearchableness of God's Judgments.
Thus, then, our two lines of thought have led us to conclusions which, at
first sight, appear to be contradictory of each other. To be conceived as
unconditioned, God must be conceived as exempt from action in time: to be
conceived as a person, if His personality resembles ours, He must be
conceived as acting in time. Can these two conclusions be reconciled with
each other; and if not, which of them is to be abandoned? The true answer
to this question is, we believe, to be found in a distinction which some
recent critics regard with very little favour,--the distinction between
Reason and Faith; between the power of _conceiving_ and that of
_believing_. We cannot, in our present state of knowledge, reconcile
these two conclusions; yet we are not required to abandon either. We
cannot conceive the manner in which the unconditioned and the personal
are united in the Divine Nature; yet we may believe that, in some manner
unknown to us, they are so united. To conceive the union of two
attributes in one object of thought, I must be able to conceive them as
united in some particular manner: when this cannot be done, I may
nevertheless believe _that_ the union is possible, though I am unable to
conceive _how_ it is possible. The problem is thus represented as one of
those Divine mysteries, the character of which is clearly and well
described in the language of Leibnitz:--"Il en est de même des autres
mystères, où les esprits modérés trouveront toujours une explication
suffisante pour croire, et jamais autant qu'il en faut pour comprendre.
Il nous suffit d'un certain _ce que c'est_ ([Greek: ti esti]) mais le
_comment_ ([Greek: pôs]) nous passe, et ne nous est point
nécessaire."[G]
[G] _Théodicée, Discours de la Conformité de la Foi avec
la Raison, § 56._ Leibnitz, it will be observed, uses
the expression _pour comprendre_, for which, in the
preceding remarks, we have substituted _to conceive_.
The change has been made intentionally, on account of an
ambiguity in the former word. Sometimes it is used, as
Leibnitz here uses it, to denote an apprehension of the
manner in which certain attributes can coexist in an
object. But sometimes (to say nothing of other senses)
it is used to signify a complete knowledge of an object
in all its properties and their consequences, such as it
may be questioned whether we have of any object
whatever. This ambiguity, which has been the source of
much confusion and much captious criticism, is well
pointed out by Norris in his _Reason and Faith_ (written
in reply to Toland), p. 118, Ed. 1697: "When we say that
_above reason_ is when we do not comprehend or perceive
the truth of a thing, this must not be meant of not
comprehending the truth in its whole latitude and
extent, so that as many truths should be said to be
above reason as we cannot thus thoroughly comprehend and
pursue throughout all their consequences and relations
to other truths (for then almost everything would be
above reason), but only of not comprehending the union
or connection of those immediate ideas of which the
proposition supposed to be above reason consists."
_Comprehension_, as thus explained, answers exactly to
the ordinary logical use of the term _conception_, to
denote the combination of two or more attributes in an
unity of representation. In the same sense, M. Peisse,
in the preface to his translation of Hamilton's
_Fragments_, p. 98, says,--"Comprendre, c'est voir un
terme en rapport avec un autre; c'est voir comme un ce
qui est donné comme multiple." This is exactly the
sense in which Hamilton himself uses the word
_conception_. (See _Reid's Works_, p. 377.)
But this distinction involves a further consequence. If the mysteries of
the Divine Nature are not apprehended by reason as existing in a
particular manner (in which case they would be mysteries no longer), but
are accepted by faith as existing in some manner unknown to us, it
follows that we do not know God as He is in His absolute nature, but only
as He is imperfectly represented by those qualities in His creatures
which are analogous to, but not identical with, His own. If, for example,
we had a knowledge of the Divine Personality as it is in itself, we
should know it as existing in a certain manner compatible with
unconditioned action; and this knowledge of the manner would at once
transform our conviction from an act of faith to a conception of reason.
If, on the other hand, the only personality of which we have a positive
knowledge is our own, and if our own personality can only be conceived as
conditioned in time, it follows that the Divine Personality, in so far as
it is exempt from conditions, does not resemble the only personality
which we directly know, and is not adequately represented by it. This
necessitates a confession, which, like the distinction which gives rise
to it, has been vehemently condemned by modern critics, but which has
been concurred in with singular unanimity by earlier divines of various
ages and countries,--the confession that the knowledge which man in this
life can have of God is not a knowledge of the Divine Nature as it is in
itself, but only of that nature as imperfectly represented through
analogous qualities in the creature. Were it not that this doctrine has
been frequently denounced of late as an heretical novelty, we should
hardly have thought it necessary to cite authorities in proof of its
antiquity and catholicity. As it is, we will venture to produce a few
only out of many, selecting not always the most important, but those
which can be best exhibited _verbatim_ in a short extract.
CHRYSOSTOM.--_De Incompr. Dei Natura_, Hom. i. 3: "_That_ God is
everywhere, I know; and _that_ He is wholly everywhere, I know; but
the _how_, I know not: _that_ He is without beginning, ungenerated
and eternal, I know; but the _how_, I know not."
BASIL.--Ep. ccxxxiv.: "That God is, I know; but what is His essence
I hold to be above reason. How then am I saved? By faith; and faith
is competent to know that God is, not what He is."
GREGORY NAZIANZEN.--Orat. xxxiv.: "A theologian among the Greeks
[Plato] has said in his philosophy, that to conceive God is
difficult, to express Him is impossible. ... But I say that it is
impossible to express Him, and more impossible to conceive Him."
[Compare Patrick, _Works_, vol. iii., p. 39.]
CYRIL OF JERUSALEM.--Catech. vi. 2: "We declare not what God is,
but candidly confess that we know not accurately concerning Him.
For in those things which concern God, it is great knowledge to
confess our ignorance."
AUGUSTINE.--Enarr. in Psalm, lxxxv. 8: "God is ineffable; we more
easily say what He is not than what He is." Serm, cccxli.: "I call
God just, because in human words I find nothing better; for He is
beyond justice.... What then is worthily said of God? Some one,
perhaps, may reply and say, _that He is just._ But another, with
better understanding, may say that even this word is surpassed by
His excellence, and that even this is said of Him unworthily,
though it be said fittingly according to human capacity."
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA.--_In Joann. Evang_., 1. ii., c. 5: "For those
things which are spoken concerning it [the Divine Nature] are not
spoken as they are in very truth, but as the tongue of man can
interpret, and as man can hear; for he who sees in an enigma also
speaks in an enigma."
DAMASCENUS.--_De Fide Orthod_., i. 4: "That God is, is manifest;
but what He is in His essence and nature is utterly
incomprehensible and unknown."
AQUINAS.--_Summa_, pars. i., qu. xiii., art. 1: "We cannot so name
God that the name which denotes Him shall express the Divine
Essence as it is, in the same way as the name _man_ expresses in
its signification the essence of man as it is." _Ibid._, art. 5:
"When the name _wise_ is said of a man, it in a manner describes
and comprehends the thing signified: not so, however, when it is
said of God; but it leaves the thing signified as uncomprehended
and exceeding the signification of the name. Whence it is evident
that this name _wise_ is not said in the same manner of God and of
man. The same is the case with other names; whence no name can be
predicated univocally of God and of creatures; yet they are not
predicated merely equivocally.... We must say, then, that such
names are said of God and of creatures according to analogy, that
is, proportion."
HOOKER.--_Ecc. Pol._, I., ii. 2.--"Dangerous it were for the feeble
brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom
although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name, yet
our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He
is, neither can know Him."
USHER.--_Body of Divinity_, p. 45, Ed. 1645: "Neither is it [the
wisdom of God] communicated to any creature, neither can be; for it
is unconceivable, as the very essence of God Himself is
unconceivable, and unspeakable as it is."
LEIGHTON.--Theol. Lect. XXI., _Works_, vol. iv., p. 327, Ed. 1830:
"Though in the schools they distinguish the Divine attributes or
excellences, and that by no means improperly, into communicable and
incommunicable; yet we ought so to guard this distinction, as
always to remember that those which are called communicable, when
applied to God, are not only to be understood in a manner
incommunicable and quite peculiar to Himself, but also, that in Him
they are in reality infinitely different [in the original, _aliud
omnino_, _immensum aliud_] from those virtues, or rather, in a
matter where the disparity of the subjects is so very great, those
shadows of virtues that go under the same name, either in men or
angels."
PEARSON.--_Minor Theol. Works_, vol. i., p. 13: "God in Himself is
an absolute being, without any relation to creatures, for He was
from eternity without any creature, and could, had He willed, be to
eternity without creature. But God cannot naturally be known by us
otherwise than by relation to creatures, as, for example, under the
aspect of dominion, or of cause, or in some other relation."[H]
BEVERIDGE.--_On the Thirty-nine Articles_, p. 16, Ed. 1846: "But
seeing the properties of God do not so much denote what God is, as
what we apprehend Him to be in Himself; when the properties of God
are predicated one of another, one thing in God is not predicated
of another, but our apprehensions of the same thing are predicated
one of another."
LESLIE.--_Method with the Deists_, p. 63, Ed. 1745: "What we call
_faculties_ in the soul, we call _Persons_ in the Godhead; because
there are personal actions attributed to each of them.... And we
have no other word whereby to express it; we speak it after the
manner of men; nor could we understand if we heard any of those
unspeakable words which express the Divine Nature in its proper
essence; therefore we must make allowances, and great ones, when we
apply words of our nature to the Infinite and Eternal Being."
_Ibid._, p. 64: "By the word _Person_, when applied to God (for
want of a proper word whereby to express it), we must mean
something infinitely different from personality among men."
[H] Bishop Pearson's language is yet more explicit in
another passage of the same work, which we give in the
original Latin:--"Non dantur pro hoc statu nomina quæ
Deum significant quidditative. Patet; quia nomina sunt
conceptuum. Non autem dantur in hoc statu conceptus
quidditativi de Deo."--(P. 136.)
The system of theology represented by these extracts may, as we think, be
fairly summed up as follows: We believe that God in His own nature is
absolute and unconditioned; but we can only positively conceive Him by
means of relations and conditions suggested by created things. We believe
that His own nature is simple and uniform, admitting of no distinction
between various attributes, nor between any attribute and its subject;
but we can conceive Him only by means of various attributes, distinct
from the subject and from each other.[I] We believe that in verum, aut
bonum esse, aut omnino ipsum esse. His own nature He is exempt from all
relations of time; but we can conceive Him only by means of ideas and
terms which imply temporal relations, a past, a present, and a
future.[J] Our thought, then, must not be taken as the measure and
limit of our belief: we think by means of relations and conditions
derived from created things; we believe in an Absolute Being, in whose
nature these conditions and relations, in some manner unknown to us,
disappear in a simple and indivisible unity.
[I] This will be found most distinctly stated in the context
of the extract from Beveridge, and in the citations from
St. Augustine given in his notes; to which may be added
the following from _De Trinitate_, vi. 7:--"Deus vero
multipliciter quidem dicitur magnus, bonus, sapiens,
beatus, verus, et quidquid aliud non indigne dici
videtur; sed eadem magnitudo ejus est quæ sapientia,
non enim mole magnus est, sed virtute; et eadem bonitas
quæ sapientia et magnitudo, et eadem veritas quæ illa
omnia: et non est ibi aliud beatum esse et aliud magnum,
aut sapientem, aut verum, aut bonum esse, aut omnino
ipsum esse."
[J] Compare the remarkable words of Bishop Beveridge,
_l.c._, "And therefore, though I cannot apprehend His
mercy to Abel in the beginning of the world, and His
mercy to me now, but as two distinct expressions of His
mercy, yet as they are in God, they are but one and the
same act,--as they are in God, I say, who is not
measured by time, as our apprehensions of Him are, but
is Himself eternity; a centre without a circumference,
eternity without time."
The most important feature of this philosophical theology, and the one
which exhibits most clearly the practical difference between reason and
faith, is that, in dealing with theoretical difficulties, it does not
appeal to our knowledge, but to our ignorance: it does not profess to
offer a definite solution; it only tells us that we might find one if we
knew all. It does not profess, for example, to solve the apparent
contradiction between God's foreknowledge and man's free will; it does
not say, "This is the way in which God foreknows, and in this way His
foreknowledge is reconcileable with human freedom;" it only says, "The
contradiction is apparent, but need not be real. Freedom is incompatible
with God's foreknowledge, only on the supposition that God's
foreknowledge is like man's: if we knew exactly how the one differs from
the other, we might be able to see that what is incompatible with the one
is not so with the other. We cannot solve the difficulty, but we can
believe that there is a solution."
It is this open acknowledgment of our ignorance of the highest things
which makes this system of philosophy distasteful to many minds: it is
the absence of any similar acknowledgment which forms the attraction and
the seductiveness of Pantheism in one way, and of Positivism in another.
The pantheist is not troubled with the difficulty of reconciling the
philosophy of the absolute with belief in a personal God; for belief in a
personal God is no part of his creed. Like the Christian, he may profess
to acknowledge a first principle, one, and simple, and indivisible, and
unconditioned; but he has no need to give to this principle the name of
God, or to invest it with such attributes as are necessary to satisfy
man's religious wants. His God (so far as he acknowledges one at all) is
not the first principle and cause of all things, but the aggregate of the
whole--an universal substance underlying the world of phenomena, or an
universal process, carried on in and by the changes of things. Hence, as
Aristotle said of the Eleatics, that, by asserting all things to be one,
they annihilated causation, which is the production of one thing from
another, so it may be said of the various schools of Pantheism, that, by
maintaining all things to be God, they evade rather than solve the great
problem of philosophy, that of the relation between God and His
creatures. The positivist, on the other hand, escapes the difficulty by
an opposite course. He declines all inquiry into reality and causation,
and maintains that the only office of philosophy is to observe and
register the invariable relations of succession and similitude in
phenomena. He does not necessarily deny the existence of God; but his
personal belief, be it what it may, is a matter of utter indifference to
his system. Religion and philosophy may perhaps go on side by side; but
their provinces are wholly distinct, and therefore there is no need to
attempt a reconciliation between them. God, as a first cause, lives like
an Epicurean deity in undisturbed ease, apart from the world of
phenomena, of which alone philosophy can take cognisance: philosophy, as
the science of phenomena, contents itself with observing the actual state
of things, without troubling itself to inquire how that state of things
came into existence. Hence, neither Pantheism nor Positivism is troubled
to explain the relation of the One to the Many; for the former
acknowledges only the One, and the latter acknowledges only the Many.
It is between these two systems, both seductive from their apparent
simplicity, and both simple only by mutilation, that the Philosophy of
the Conditioned, of which Sir William Hamilton is the representative,
endeavours to steer a middle course, at the risk of sharing the fate of
most mediators in a quarrel,--being repudiated and denounced by both
combatants, because it declares them to be both in the wrong. Against
Pantheism, which is the natural development of the principle of
Indifferentism, it enters a solemn protest, by asserting that the
Absolute must be accepted in philosophy, not as a problem to be solved by
reason, but as a reality to be believed in, though above reason; and that
the pseudo-absolute, which Pantheism professes to exhibit in a positive
conception, is shown, by the very fact of its being so conceived, not to
be the true Absolute. Against Positivism, which is virtually Materialism,
it protests no less strongly, maintaining that the philosophy which
professes to explain the whole of nature by the aid of material laws
alone, proceeds upon an assumption which does not merely dispense with
God as a scientific hypothesis, but logically involves consequences which
lead to a denial of His very existence. Between both extremes, it holds
an intermediate position, neither aspiring, with Pantheism, to solve the
problems of the Absolute, nor neglecting them, with Positivism, as
altogether remote from the field of philosophical inquiry; but
maintaining that such problems must necessarily arise, and must
necessarily be taken into account in every adequate survey of human
nature and human thought, and that philosophy, if it cannot solve them,
is bound to show why they are insoluble.
Let us hear Hamilton's own words in relation to both the systems which he
opposes. Against Pantheism, and the Philosophy of the Unconditioned in
general, he says:--
"The Conditioned is the mean between two extremes,--two
inconditionates, exclusive of each other, _neither of which can be
conceived as possible_,[K] but of which, on the principles of
contradiction and excluded middle, _one must be admitted as
necessary_. On this opinion, therefore, our faculties are shown to
be weak, but not deceitful. The mind is not represented as
conceiving two propositions, subversive of each other, as equally
possible; but only as unable to understand as possible either of
the two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their
mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognise as true. We are
thus taught the salutary lesson, that the capacity of thought is
not to be constituted into the measure of existence; and are warned
from recognising the domain of our knowledge as necessarily
co-extensive with the horizon of our faith. And by a wonderful
revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability
to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a
belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the
sphere of all comprehensible reality."--_Discussions_, p. 15.
[K] It must be remembered that, to conceive a thing as
possible, we must conceive the manner in which it is
possible, but that we may believe in the fact without
being able to conceive the manner. Had Hamilton
distinctly expressed this, he might have avoided some
very groundless criticisms, with which he has been
assailed for maintaining a distinction between the
provinces of conception and belief.
Against Materialism, and virtually against Positivism in general, he
says:--
"If in man, intelligence be a free power,--in so far as its liberty
extends, intelligence must be independent of necessity and matter;
and a power independent of matter necessarily implies the existence
of an immaterial subject--that is, a spirit. If, then, the original
independence of intelligence on matter in the human
constitution--in other words, if the spirituality of mind in man be
supposed a datum of observation, in this datum is also given both
the condition and the proof of a God. For we have only to infer,
what analogy entitles us to do, that intelligence holds the same
relative supremacy in the universe which it holds in us, and the
first positive condition of a Deity is established, in the
establishment of the absolute priority of a free creative
intelligence. On the other hand, let us suppose the result of our
study of man to be, that intelligence is only a product of matter,
only a reflex of organization, such a doctrine would not only not
afford no basis on which to rest any argument for a God, but, on
the contrary, would positively warrant the atheist in denying His
existence. For if, as the materialist maintains, the only
intelligence of which we have any experience be a consequent of
matter,--on this hypothesis, he not only cannot assume this order
to be reversed in the relations of an intelligence beyond his
observation, but, if he argue logically, he must positively
conclude that, as in man, so in the universe, the phenomena of
intelligence or design are only in their last analysis the products
of a brute necessity. Psychological Materialism, if carried out
fully and fairly to its conclusions, thus inevitably results in
theological Atheism; as it has been well expressed by Dr. Henry
More, _Nullus in microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus_. I
do not, of course, mean to assert that all materialists deny or
actually disbelieve a God. For, in very many cases, this would be
at once an unmerited compliment to their reasoning, and an
unmerited reproach to their faith."--_Lectures_, vol. i, p.
31.[L]
[L] This part of Hamilton's teaching is altogether
repudiated by a recent writer, who, strangely enough,
professes to be his disciple, while rejecting all that
is really characteristic of his philosophy. Mr. Herbert
Spencer, in his work on _First Principles_, endeavours
to press Sir W. Hamilton into the service of Pantheism
and Positivism together, by adopting the negative
portion only of his philosophy--in which, in common with
many other writers, he declares the absolute to be
inconceivable by the mere intellect,--and rejecting the
positive portions, in which he most emphatically
maintains that the belief in a personal God is
imperatively demanded by the facts of our moral and
emotional consciousness. Mr. Spencer regards religion as
nothing more than a consciousness of natural facts as
being in their ultimate genesis unaccountable--a theory
which is simply a combination of the positivist
doctrine, that we know only the relations of phenomena,
with the pantheist assumption of the name of God to
denote the substance or power which lies beyond
phenomena. No theory can be more opposed to the
philosophy of the conditioned than this. Sir W.
Hamilton's fundamental principle is, that consciousness
must be accepted entire, and that the moral and
religious feelings, which are the primary source of our
belief in a personal God, are in no way invalidated by
the merely negative inferences which have deluded men
into the assumption of an impersonal absolute; the
latter not being legitimate deductions from
consciousness rightly interpreted. Mr. Spencer, on the
other hand, takes these negative inferences as the only
basis of religion, and abandons Hamilton's great
principle of the distinction between knowledge and
belief, by quietly dropping out of his system the facts
of consciousness which make such a distinction
necessary. His whole system is, in fact, a pertinent
illustration of Hamilton's remark, that "the phenomena
of matter" [and of mind, he might add, treated by
materialistic methods], "taken by themselves (you will
observe the qualification, taken by themselves), so far
from warranting any inference to the existence of a God,
would, on the contrary, ground even an argument to his
negation." Mr. Spencer, like Mr. Mill, denies the
freedom of the will; and this, according to Hamilton,
leads by logical consequence to Atheism.
In the few places in which Hamilton speaks directly as a theologian, his
language is in agreement with the general voice of Catholic theology down
to the end of the seventeenth century, some specimens of which have been
given on a previous page. Thus he says (_Discussions_, p. 15): "True,
therefore, are the declarations of a pious philosophy,--'A God understood
would be no God at all;' 'To think that God is, as we can think Him to
be, is blasphemy.' The Divinity, in a certain sense, is revealed; in a
certain sense is concealed: He is at once known and unknown. But the last
and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar [Greek:
Agnôstô Theô]--'_To the unknown and unknowable God._'" A little later
(p. 20) he says: "We should not recoil to the opposite extreme; and
though man be not identical with the Deity, still is he 'created in the
image of God.' It is, indeed, only through an analogy of the human with
the Divine nature, that we are percipient and recipient of Divinity." In
the first of these passages we have an echo of the language of Basil, the
two Cyrils, and John Damascene, and of our own Hooker and Usher; while in
the second we find the counter truth, intimated by Augustine and other
Fathers,[M] and clearly stated by Aquinas, and which in the last
century was elaborately expounded in the _Divine Analogy_ of Bishop
Browne,--namely, that though we know not God in His own nature, yet are
we not wholly ignorant of Him, but may attain to an imperfect knowledge
of Him through the analogy between human things and Divine.
[M] As _e.g._, by Tertullian (_Adv. Marc._, l. ii., c. 16):
"Et hæc ergo imago censenda est Dei in homine, quod
eosdem motos et sensus habeat humanus animus quos et
Deus, licet non tales quales Deus: pro substantia enim,
et status eorum et exitus distant." And by Gregory
Nazianzen, Orat. xxxvii.: "[Greek: Ônomasamen gar hôs
hêmin ephikton ek tôn hêmeterôn ta tou Theou]" And
by Hilary, _De Trin._, i. 19: "Comparatio enim
terrenorum ad Deum nulla est; sed infirmitas nostræ
intelligentiæ cogit species quasdam ex inferioribus,
tanquam superiorum indices quærere; ut rerum
familiarium consuetudine admovente, ex sensus nostri
conscientia ad insoliti sensus opinionem educeremur."
As regards theological results, therefore, there is nothing novel or
peculiar in Hamilton's teaching; nor was he one who would have regarded
novelty in theology as a recommendation. The peculiarity of his system,
by which his reputation as a philosopher must ultimately stand or fall,
is the manner in which he endeavoured to connect these theological
conclusions with psychological principles; and thus to vindicate on
philosophical grounds the position which Catholic divines had been
compelled to take in the interests of dogmatic truth. That the absolute
nature of God, as a supertemporal and yet personal Being, must be
believed in as a fact, though inaccessible to reason as regards the
manner of its possibility, is a position admitted, almost without
exception, by divines who acknowledge the mystery of a personal
Absolute--still more by those who acknowledge the yet deeper mystery of a
Trinity in Unity. "We believe and know," says Bishop Sanderson of the
mysteries of the Christian faith, "and that with fulness of assurance,
that all these things are so as they are revealed in the Holy Scriptures,
because the mouth of God, who is Truth itself, and cannot lie, hath
spoken them; and our own reason upon this ground teacheth us to submit
ourselves and it to _the obedience of faith_, for the [Greek: to hoti],
that so it is. But then, for the [Greek: to pôs], Nicodemus his
question, _How can these things be?_ it is no more possible for our weak
understandings to comprehend that, than it is for the eyes of bats or
owls to look steadfastly upon the body of the sun, when he shineth forth
in his greatest strength."[N] This distinction Hamilton endeavoured to
extend from the domain of Christian theology to that of philosophical
speculation in general; to show that the unconditioned, as it is
suggested in philosophy, no less than as it connects itself with revealed
religion, is an object of belief, not of positive conception; and,
consequently, that men cannot escape from mystery by rejecting
revelation. "Above all," he says, "I am confirmed in my belief by the
harmony between the doctrines of this philosophy, and those of revealed
truth.... For this philosophy is professedly a scientific demonstration
of the impossibility of that 'wisdom in high matters' which the Apostle
prohibits us even to attempt; and it proposes, from the limitation of the
human powers, from our impotence to comprehend what, however, we must
admit, to show articulately why the 'secret things of God,' cannot but be
to man 'past finding out.'"[O] Faith in the inconceivable must thus
become the ultimate refuge, even of the pantheist and the atheist, no
less than of the Christian; the difference being, that while the last
takes his stand on a faith which is in agreement alike with the authority
of Scripture and the needs of human nature, the two former are driven to
one which is equally opposed to both, as well as to the pretensions of
their own philosophy.
[N] _Works_, vol. i., p, 233.
[O] _Discussions_, p. 625.
Deny the Trinity; deny the Personality of God: there yet remains that
which no man can deny as the law of his own consciousness--_Time_.
Conditioned existence is existence in time: to attain to a philosophy of
the unconditioned, we must rise to the conception of existence out of
time. The attempt may be made in two ways, and in two only. Either we
may endeavour to conceive an absolutely first moment of time, beyond
which is an existence having no duration and no succession; or we may
endeavour to conceive time as an unlimited duration, containing an
infinite series of successive antecedents and consequents, each
conditioned in itself, but forming altogether an unconditioned whole. In
other words, we may endeavour, with the Eleatics, to conceive pure
existence apart and distinct from all phenomenal change; or we may
endeavour, with Heraclitus, to conceive the universe as a system of
incessant changes, immutable only in the law of its own mutability; for
these two systems may be regarded as the type of all subsequent
attempts. Both, however, alike aim at an object which is beyond positive
conception, and which can be accepted only as something to be believed in
spite of its inconceivability. To conceive an existence beyond the first
moment of time, and to connect that existence as cause with the
subsequent temporal succession of effects, we must conceive time itself
as non-existent and then commencing to exist. But when we make the
effort to conceive time as non-existent, we find it impossible to do
so. Time, as the universal condition of human consciousness, clings round
the very conception which strives to destroy it, clings round the
language in which we speak of an existence _before_ time. Nor are we more
successful when we attempt to conceive an infinite regress of time, and an
infinite series of dependent existences in time. To say nothing of the
direct contradiction involved in the notion of an unconditioned
_whole_,--a something completed,--composed of infinite parts--of parts
never completed,--even if we abandon the Whole, and with it the
Unconditioned, and attempt merely to conceive an infinite succession
of conditioned existences--conditioned, absurdly enough, by nothing
beyond themselves,--we find, that in order to do so, we must add moment to
moment for ever--a process which would require an eternity for its
accomplishment.[P] Moreover, the chain of dependent existences in this
infinite succession is not, like a mathematical series, composed of
abstract and homogeneous units; it is made up of divers phenomena, of a
regressive line of causes, each distinct from the other. Wherever,
therefore, I stop in my addition, I do not positively conceive the terms
which lie beyond. I apprehend them only as a series of unknown
_somethings_, of which I may believe _that_ they are, but am unable to
say _what_ they are.
[P] See _Discussions_, p. 29. Of course by this is not meant
that no duration can be conceived except in a duration
equally long--that a thousand years, _e.g._, can only be
conceived in a thousand years. A thousand years may be
conceived as one unit: infinity cannot; for an unit is
something complete, and therefore limited. What is meant
is, that any period of time, however long, is conceived
as capable of further increase, and therefore as not
infinite. An infinite duration can have no time before
or after it; and thus cannot resemble any portion of
finite time, however great. When we dream of conceiving
an infinite regress of time, says Sir W. Hamilton, "we
only deceive ourselves by substituting the _indefinite_
for the infinite, than which no two notions can be more
opposed." This caution has not been attended to by some
later critics. Thus, Dr. Whewell (_Philosophy of
Discovery_, p. 324) says: "The definition of an infinite
number is not that it contains all possible unities; but
this--that the progress of numeration, being begun
according to a certain law, goes on without limit." This
is precisely Descartes' definition, not of the
_infinite_, but of the _indefinite_. _Principia_, i. 26:
"Nos autem illa omnia, in quibus sub aliqua
consideratione nullum finem poterimus invenire, non
quidem affirmabimus esse infinita, sed ut indefinita
spectabimus." An indefinite time is that which is
capable of perpetual addition: an infinite time is one
so great as to admit of no addition. Surely "no two
notions can be more opposed."
The cardinal point, then, of Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy, expressly
announced as such by himself, is the absolute necessity, under any system
of philosophy whatever, of acknowledging the existence of a sphere of
belief beyond the limits of the sphere of thought. "The main scope of my
speculation,"[Q] he says, "is to show articulately that we _must
believe_, as actual, much that we are unable (positively) _to conceive_
as even possible." It is, of course, beyond the range of such a
speculation, by itself, to enter on an examination of the positive
evidences in support of one form of belief rather than another. So far as
it aims only at exhibiting an universal law of the human mind, it is of
course compatible with all special forms of belief which do not
contradict that law; and none, whatever their pretensions, can really
contradict it. Hence the service which such a philosophy can render to
the Christian religion must necessarily, from the nature of the case, be
of an indirect and negative character. It prepares the way for a fair
examination of the proper evidences of Christianity, by showing that
there is no ground for any _à priori_ prejudice against revelation, as
appealing, for the acceptance of its highest truths, to faith rather than
to reason; for that this appeal is common to all religions and to all
philosophies, and cannot therefore be urged against one more than
another. So far as certain difficulties are inherent in the constitution
of the human mind itself, they must necessarily occupy the same position
with respect to all religions alike. To exhibit the nature of these
difficulties is a service to true religion; but it is the service of the
pioneer, not of the builder; it does not prove the religion to be true;
it only clears the ground for the production of the special evidences.
[Q] Letter to Mr. Calderwood. See _Lectures_, vol. ii, p.
534.
Where those evidences are to be found, Sir W. Hamilton has not failed to
tell us. If mere intellectual speculations on the nature and origin of
the material universe form a common ground in which the theist, the
pantheist, and even the atheist, may alike expatiate, the moral and
religious feelings of man--those facts of consciousness which have their
direct source in the sense of personality and free will--plead with
overwhelming evidence in behalf of a personal God, and of man's relation
to Him, as a person to a person. We have seen, in a previous quotation,
Hamilton's emphatic declaration that "psychological materialism, if
carried out fully and fairly to its conclusions, inevitably results in
theological atheism." In the same spirit he tells us that "it is only as
man is a free intelligence, a moral power, that he is created after the
image of God;"[R] that "with the proof of the moral nature of man,
stands or falls the proof of the existence of a Deity;" that "the
possibility of morality depends on the possibility of liberty;" that "if
man be not a free agent, he is not the author of his actions, and has
therefore no responsibility, no moral personality at all;"[S] and,
finally, "that he who disbelieves the moral agency of man, must, in
consistency with that opinion, disbelieve Christianity."[T] We have
thus, in the positive and negative sides of this philosophy, both a
reasonable ground of belief and a warning against presumption. By our
immediate consciousness of a moral and personal nature, we are led to the
belief in a moral and personal God: by our ignorance of the
unconditioned, we are led to the further belief, that behind that moral
and personal manifestation of God there lies concealed a mystery--the
mystery of the Absolute and the Infinite; that our intellectual and moral
qualities, though indicating the nearest approach to the Divine
Perfections which we are capable of conceiving, yet indicate them as
analogous, not as identical; that we may naturally expect to find points
where this analogy will fail us, where the function of the Infinite Moral
Governor will be distinct from that of the finite moral servant; and
where, consequently, we shall be liable to error in judging by human
rules of the ways of God, whether manifested in nature or in revelation.
Such is the true lesson to be learnt from a philosophy which tells us of
a God who is "in a certain sense revealed, in a certain sense
concealed--at once known and unknown."
[R] _Lectures_, vol. i., p. 30.
[S] _Lectures_, vol. i, p. 33.
[T] _Ibid._, p. 42.
It is not surprising that this philosophy, when compared with that of a
critic like Mr. Mill, should stand out in clear and sharp antagonism. Mr.
Mill is one of the most distinguished representatives of that school of
Materialism which Sir W. Hamilton denounces as virtual Atheism. We do not
mean that he consciously adopts the grosser tenets of the materialists.
We are not aware that he has ever positively denied the existence of a
soul distinct from the body, or maintained that the brain secretes
thought as the liver secretes bile. But he is the advocate of a
philosophical method which makes the belief in the existence of an
immaterial principle superfluous and incongruous; he not only
acknowledges no such distinction between the phenomena of mind and those
of matter as to require the hypothesis of a free intelligence to account
for it; he not only regards the ascertained laws of coexistence and
succession in material phenomena as the type and rule according to which
all phenomena whatever--those of internal consciousness no less than of
external observation--are to be tested; but he even expressly denies the
existence of that free will which Sir W. Hamilton regards as the
indispensable condition of all morality and all religion.[U] Thus,
instead of recognising in the facts of intelligence "an order of
existence diametrically in contrast to that displayed to us in the facts
of the material universe,"[V] he regards both classes of facts as of
the same kind, and explicable by the same laws; he abolishes the primary
contrast of consciousness between the _ego_ and the _non-ego_--the person
and the thing; he reduces man to a thing, instead of a person,--to one
among the many phenomena of the universe, determined by the same laws of
invariable antecedence and consequence, included under the same formulæ
of empirical generalization. He thus makes man the slave, and not the
master of nature; passively carried along in the current of successive
phenomena; unable, by any act of free will, to arrest a single wave in
its course, or to divert it from its ordained direction.
[U] That this is the real battle-ground between the two
philosophers is virtually admitted by Mr. Mill himself
at the end of his criticism. He says:--"The whole
philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton seems to have had its
character determined by the requirements of the doctrine
of Free-will; and to that doctrine he clung, because he
had persuaded himself that it afforded the only premises
from which human reason could deduce the doctrines of
natural religion. I believe that in this persuasion he
was thoroughly his own dupe, and that his speculations
have weakened the philosophical foundation of religion
fully as much as they have confirmed it."--P. 549. Mr.
Mill's whole philosophy, on the other hand, is
determined by the requirements of the doctrine of
Necessity; and to that doctrine he intrepidly adheres,
in utter defiance of consciousness, and sometimes of his
own consistency. Which of the two philosophers is really
"his own dupe," Mr. Mill in believing that morality and
religion can exist without free will--that a necessary
agent can be responsible for his acts--or Sir W.
Hamilton in maintaining the contrary, is a question
which the former has by no means satisfactorily settled
in his own favour.
[V] Hamilton, _Lectures_, vol. i, p. 29.
This diametrical antagonism between the two philosophers is not limited
to their first principles, but extends, as might naturally be expected,
to every subordinate science of which the immediate object is mental, and
not material. Logic, instead of being, as Sir W. Hamilton regards it, an
_à priori_ science of the necessary laws of thought, is with Mr. Mill a
science of observation, investigating those operations of the
understanding which are subservient to the estimation of evidence.[W]
The axioms of Mathematics, which the former philosopher regards, with
Kant, as necessary thoughts, based on the _à priori_ intuitions of space
and time, the latter[X] declares to be "experimental truths;
generalizations from observation." Psychology, which with Hamilton is
especially the philosophy of man as a free and personal agent, is with
Mill the science of "the uniformities of succession; the laws, whether
ultimate or derivative, according to which one mental state succeeds
another."[Y] And finally, in the place of Ethics, as the science of the
_à priori_ laws of man's moral obligations, we are presented, in Mr.
Mill's system, with Ethology, the "science which determines the kind of
character produced, in conformity to the general laws of mind, by any set
of circumstances, physical and moral."[Z]
[W] Mill's _Logic_. Introduction, § 7.
[X] _Ibid._, book ii. 5, § 4.
[Y] Mill's _Logic_, book vi. 4, § 3.
[Z] _Ibid._, book vi. 5, § 4.
The contrast between the two philosophers being thus thoroughgoing, it
was natural to expect beforehand that an _Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy_, by Mr. Mill, would contain a sharp and vigorous
assault on the principal doctrines of that philosophy. And this
expectation has been amply fulfilled. But there was also reason to
expect, from the ability and critical power displayed in Mr. Mill's
previous writings, that his assault, whether successful or not in
overthrowing his enemy, would at least be guided by a clear knowledge of
that enemy's position and purposes; that his dissent would be accompanied
by an intelligent apprehension, and an accurate statement, of the
doctrines dissented from. In this expectation, we regret to say, we have
been disappointed. Not only is Mr. Mill's attack on Hamilton's
philosophy, with the exception of some minor details, unsuccessful; but
we are compelled to add, that with regard to the three fundamental
doctrines of that philosophy--the Relativity of Knowledge, the
Incognisability of the Absolute and Infinite, and the distinction between
Reason and Faith--Mr. Mill has, throughout his criticism, altogether
missed the meaning of the theories he is attempting to assail.
This is a serious charge to bring against a writer of such eminence as
Mr. Mill, and one which should not be advanced without ample proof.
First, then, of the Relativity of Knowledge.
The assertion that all our knowledge is relative,--in other words, that
we know things only under such conditions as the laws of our cognitive
faculties impose upon us,--is a statement which looks at first sight like
a truism, but which really contains an answer to a very important
question,--Have we reason to believe that the laws of our cognitive
faculties impose any conditions at all?--that the mind in any way reacts
on the objects affecting it, so as to produce a result different from
that which would be produced were it merely a passive recipient? "The
mind of man," says Bacon, "is far from the nature of a clear and equal
glass, wherein the beams of things shall reflect according to their true
incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of
superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced." Can what
Bacon says of the fallacies of the mind be also said of its proper
cognitions? Does the mind, by its own action, in any way distort the
appearance of the things presented to it; and if so, how far does the
distortion extend, and in what manner is it to be rectified? To trace the
course of this inquiry, from the day when Plato compared the objects
perceived by the senses to the shadows thrown by fire on the wall of a
cave, to the day when Kant declared that we know only phenomena, not
things in themselves, would be to write the history of philosophy. We can
only at present call attention to one movement in that history, which,
was, in effect, a revolution in philosophy. The older philosophers in
general distinguished between the senses and the intellect, regarding the
former as deceptive and concerned with phenomena alone, the latter as
trustworthy and conversant with the realities of things. Hence arose the
distinction between the sensible and the intelligible world--between
things as perceived by sense and things as apprehended by
intellect--between Phenomenology and Ontology. Kant rejected this
distinction, holding that the intellect, as well as the sense, imposes
its own forms on the things presented to it, and is therefore cognisant
only of phenomena, not of things in themselves. The logical result of
this position would be the abolition of ontology as a science of things
in themselves, and, _à fortiori_, of that highest branch of ontology
which aims at a knowledge of the Absolute[AA] [Greek: kat' exochên],
of the unconditioned first principle of all things. If the mind, in every
act of thought, imposes its own forms on its objects, to think is to
condition, and the unconditioned is the unthinkable. Such was the logical
result of Kant's principles, but not the actual result. For Kant, by
distinguishing between the Understanding and the Reason, and giving to
the latter an indirect yet positive cognition of the Unconditioned as a
regulative principle of thought, prepared the way for the systems of
Schelling and Hegel, in which this indirect cognition is converted into a
direct one, by investing the reason, thus distinguished as the special
faculty of the unconditioned, with a power of intuition emancipated from
the conditions of space and time, and even of subject and object, or a
power of thought emancipated from the laws of identity and
contradiction.
[AA] The term _absolute_, in the sense of _free from
relation_, may be used in two applications;--1st, To
denote the nature of a thing as it is in itself, as
distinguished from its appearance to us. Here it is used
only in a subordinate sense, as meaning out of relation
to human knowledge. 2ndly, To denote the nature of a
thing as independent of all other things, as having no
relation to any other thing as the condition of its
existence. Here it is used in its highest sense, as
meaning out of relation to anything else.
The theory of Hamilton is a modification of that of Kant, intended to
obviate these consequences, and to relieve the Kantian doctrine itself
from the inconsistency which gave rise to them. So long as the reason is
regarded as a separate faculty from the understanding, and things in
themselves as ideas of the reason, so long the apparent contradictions,
which encumber the attempt to conceive the unconditioned, must be
regarded as inherent in the constitution of the reason itself, and as the
result of its legitimate exercise on its proper objects. This sceptical
conclusion Hamilton endeavoured to avoid by rejecting the distinction
between the understanding and the reason as separate faculties, regarding
the one as the legitimate and positive, the other as the illegitimate and
negative, exercise of one and the same faculty. He thus announces, in
opposition to Kant, the fundamental doctrine of the Conditioned, as "the
distinction between intelligence _within_ its legitimate sphere of
operation, impeccable, and intelligence _beyond_ that sphere, affording
(by abuse) the occasions of error."[AB] Hamilton, like Kant, maintained
that all our cognitions are compounded of two elements, one contributed
by the object known, and the other by the mind knowing. But the very
conception of a relation implies the existence of things to be related;
and the knowledge of an object, as in relation to our mind, necessarily
implies its existence out of that relation. But as so existing, it is
unknown: we believe _that_ it is; we know not _what_ it is. How far it
resembles, or how far it does not resemble, the object apprehended by us,
we cannot say, for we have no means of comparing the two together.
[AB] _Discussions_, p. 633.
Instead; therefore, of saying with Kant, that reason is subject to an
inevitable delusion, by which, it mistakes the regulative principles of
its own thoughts for the representations of real things, Hamilton would
say that the reason, while compelled to believe in the existence of these
real things, is not legitimately entitled to make any positive
representation of them as of such or such a nature; and that the
contradictions into which it falls when attempting to do so are due to an
illegitimate attempt to transcend the proper boundaries of positive
thought.
This theory does not, in itself, contain any statement of the mode in
which we perceive the material world, whether directly by presentation,
or indirectly by representative images; and perhaps it might, without any
great violence, be adapted to more than one of the current hypotheses on
this point. But that to which it most easily adjusts itself is that
maintained by Hamilton himself under the name of _Natural Realism_. To
speak of perception as a _relation_ between mind and matter, naturally
implies the presence of both correlatives; though each may be modified by
its contact with the other. The acid may act on the alkali, and the
alkali on the acid, in forming the neutral salt; but each of the
ingredients is as truly present as the other, though each enters into the
compound in a modified form. And this is equally the case in perception,
even if we suppose various media to intervene between the ultimate object
and the perceiving mind,--such, _e.g._, as the rays of light and the
sensitive organism in vision,--so long as these media are material, like
the ultimate object itself. Whether the object, properly so called, in
vision, be the rays of light in contact with the organ, or the body
emitting or reflecting those rays, is indifferent to the present
question, so long as a material object of some kind or other is supposed
to be perceived, and not merely an inmaterial representation of such an
object. To speak of our perceptions as mere modifications of mind
produced by an unknown cause, would be like maintaining that the acid is
modified by the influence of the alkali without entering into combination
with it. Such a view might perhaps be tolerated, in connection with the
theory of relativity, by an indulgent interpretation of language, but it
is certainly not that which the language of the theory most naturally
suggests.
All this Mr. Mill entirely misapprehends. He quotes a passage from
Hamilton's Lectures, in which the above theory of Relativity is clearly
stated as the mean between the extremes of Idealism and Materialism, and
then proceeds to comment as follows:--
"The proposition, that our cognitions of objects are only in part
dependent on the objects themselves, and in part on elements
superadded by our organs or our minds, is not identical, nor _prima
facie_ absurd. It cannot, however, warrant the assertion that all
our knowledge, but only that the part so added, is relative. If our
author had gone as far as Kant, and had said that all which
constitutes knowledge is put in by the mind itself, he would have
really held, in one of its forms, the doctrine of the relativity of
our knowledge. But what he does say, far from implying that the
whole of our knowledge is relative, distinctly imports that all of
it which, is real and authentic is the reverse. If any part of what
we fancy that we perceive in the objects themselves, originates in
the perceiving organs or in the cognising mind, thus much is purely
relative; but since, by supposition, it does not all so originate,
the part that does not is as much absolute as if it were not liable
to be mixed up with, these delusive subjective impressions."--(P.
30.)
Mr. Mill, therefore, supposes that _wholly relative_ must mean _wholly
mental_; in other words, that to say that a thing is wholly due to a
relation between mind and matter is equivalent to saying that it is
wholly due to mind alone. On the contrary, we maintain that Sir W.
Hamilton's language is far more accurate than Mr. Mill's, and that the
above theory can with perfect correctness be described as one of _total
relativity_; and this from two points of view. First, as opposed to the
theory of partial relativity generally held by the pre-Kantian
philosophers, according to which our sensitive cognitions are relative,
our intellectual ones absolute. Secondly, as asserting that the object of
perception, though composed of elements partly material, partly mental,
yet exhibits both alike in a form modified by their relation to each
other. The composition is not a mere mechanical juxtaposition, in which
each part, though acting on the other, retains its own characteristics
unchanged. It may be rather likened to a chemical fusion, in which both
elements are present, but each of them is affected by the composition.
The material part, therefore, is not "as much absolute as if it were not
liable to be mixed up with subjective impressions."
But we must hear the continuation of Mr. Mill's criticism:--
"The admixture of the relative element not only does not take away
the absolute character of the remainder, but does not even (if our
author is right) prevent us from recognising it. The confusion,
according to him, is not inextricable. It is for us to 'analyse and
distinguish what elements' in an 'act of knowledge' are contributed
by the object, and what by our organs, or by the mind. We may
neglect to do this, and as far as the mind's share is concerned, we
can only do it by the help of philosophy; but it is a task to
which, in his opinion, philosophy is equal. By thus stripping off
such of the elements in our apparent cognitions of things as are
but cognitions of something in us, and consequently relative, we
may succeed in uncovering the pure nucleus, the direct intuitions
of things in themselves; as we correct the observed positions of
the heavenly bodies by allowing for the error due to the refracting
influence of the atmospheric medium, an influence which does not
alter the facts, but only our perception of them."
Surely Mr. Mill here demands much more of philosophy than Sir W. Hamilton
deems it capable of accomplishing. Why may not Hamilton, like Kant,
distinguish between the permanent and necessary, and the variable and
contingent--in other words, between the subjective and the objective
elements of consciousness, without therefore obtaining a "direct
intuition of things in themselves?" Why may he not distinguish between
space and time as the forms of our sensitive cognitions, and the things
perceived in space and time, which constitute the matter of the same
cognitions, without thereby having an intuition, on the one hand, of pure
space and time with nothing in them, or on the other, of things in
themselves out of space and time? If certain elements are always present
in perception, while certain others change with every act, I may surely
infer that the one is due to the permanent subject, the other to the
variable object, without thereby knowing what each would be if it could
be discerned apart from the other. "A direct intuition of things in
themselves," according to Kant and Hamilton, is an intuition of things
out of space and time. Does Mr. Mill suppose that any natural Realist
professes to have such an intuition?
The same error of supposing that a doctrine of relativity is necessarily
a doctrine of Idealism, that "matter known only in relation to us" can
mean nothing more than "matter known only through the mental impressions
of which it is the unknown cause,"[AC] runs through the whole of Mr.
Mill's argument against this portion of Sir W. Hamilton's teaching. That
argument, though repeated in various forms, may be briefly summed up in
one thesis; namely, that the doctrine that our knowledge of matter is
wholly relative is incompatible with the distinction, which Hamilton
expressly makes, between the primary and secondary qualities of body.
[AC] The assumption that these two expressions are or ought
to be synonymous is tacitly made by Mr. Mill at the
opening of this chapter. He opens it with a passage from
the _Discussions_, in which Hamilton says that the
existence of _things in themselves_ is only indirectly
revealed to us "through certain qualities _related to
our faculties of knowledge_;" and then proceeds to show
that the author did not hold the doctrine which these
phrases "seem to convey in the only substantial meaning
capable of being attached to them;" namely, "that we
know nothing of _objects_ except their existence, and
the impressions produced by them upon the human mind."
Having thus quietly assumed that "things in themselves"
are identical with "objects," and "relations" with
"impressions on the human mind," Mr. Mill bases his
whole criticism on this tacit _petitio principii_. He is
not aware that though Reid sometimes uses the term
_relative_ in this inaccurate sense, Hamilton expressly
points out the inaccuracy and explains the proper
sense.--(See _Reid's Works_, pp. 313, 322.)
The most curious circumstance about this criticism is, that, if not
directly borrowed from, it has at least been carefully anticipated by,
Hamilton himself. Of the distinction between primary and secondary
qualities, as acknowledged by Descartes and Locke, whose theory of
external perception is identical with that which Mr. Mill would force on
Hamilton himself, Hamilton says: "On the general doctrine, however, of
these philosophers, both classes of qualities, as known, are confessedly
only states of our own minds; and while we have no right from a
subjective affection to infer the existence, far less the corresponding
character of the existence, of any objective reality, it is evident that
their doctrine, if fairly evolved, would result in a dogmatic or in a
sceptical negation of the primary no less than of the secondary qualities
of body, as more than appearances in and for us."[AD] It is astonishing
that Mr. Mill, who pounces eagerly on every imaginable instance of
Hamilton's inconsistency, should have neglected to notice this, which, if
his criticism be true, is the most glaring inconsistency of all.
[AD] _Reid's Works_, p. 840.
But Hamilton continues: "It is therefore manifest that the fundamental
position of a consistent theory of dualistic realism is--that our
cognitions of Extension and its modes are not wholly ideal--that although
Space be a native, necessary, _à priori_ form of imagination, and so
far, therefore, a mere subjective state, that there is, at the same time,
competent to us, in an _immediate_ perception of external things, the
_consciousness_ of a really existent, of a really objective, _extended_
world." Here we have enunciated in one breath, first the subjectivity of
space, which is the logical basis of the relative theory of perception;
and secondly, the objectivity of the extended world, which is the logical
basis of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. It is
manifest, therefore, that Hamilton had not, as Mr. Mill supposes, ceased
to hold the one theory when he adopted the other.[AE]
[AE] See _Examination_, p. 28.
The key to all this is not difficult to find. It is simply that
_objective existence_ does not mean existence _per se_; and that a
_phenomenon_ does not mean a mere mode of mind. Objective existence is
existence _as an object_, in perception, and therefore in relation; and a
phenomenon may be material, as well as mental. The thing _per se_ may be
only the unknown cause of what we directly know; but what we directly
know is something more than our own sensations. In other words, the
phenomenal effect is material as well as the cause, and is, indeed, that
from which our primary conceptions of matter are derived. Matter does not
cease to be matter when modified by its contact with mind, as iron does
not cease to be iron when smelted and forged. A horseshoe is something
very different from a piece of iron ore; and a man may be acquainted with
the former without ever having seen the latter, or knowing what it is
like. But would Mr. Mill therefore say that the horseshoe is merely a
subjective affection of the skill of the smith--that it is not iron
modified by the workman, but the workman or his art impressed by iron?
If, indeed, Hamilton had said with Locke, that the primary qualities are
in the bodies themselves, whether we perceive them or no,[AF] he would
have laid himself open to Mr. Mill's criticism. But he expressly rejects
this statement, and contrasts it with the more cautions language of
Descartes, "ut sunt, vel saltem esse possunt."[AG] The secondary
qualities are mere affections of consciousness, which, cannot be
conceived as existing except in a conscious subject. The primary
qualities are qualities of body, as perceived in relation to the
percipient mind, _i.e._, of the phenomenal body perceived as in space.
How far they exist in the real body out of relation to us, Hamilton does
not attempt to decide.[AH] They are inseparable from our conception of
body, which, is derived exclusively from the phenomenon; they may or may
not be separable from the thing as it is in itself.
[AF] _Essay_, ii 8, § 23.
[AG] _Reid's Works_, p. 839.
[AH] We have been content to argue this question, as Mr.
Mill himself argues it, on the supposition that Sir W.
Hamilton held that we are directly percipient of primary
qualities in external bodies. Strictly speaking, however,
Hamilton held that the primary qualities are immediately
perceived only in our organism as extended, and
inferred to exist in extra-organic bodies. The external
world is immediately apprehended only in its
secundo-primary character, as resisting our locomotive
energy. But as the organism, in this theory, is a
material _non-ego_ equally with the rest of matter, and as
to press this distinction would only affect the verbal
accuracy, not the substantial justice, of Mr. Mill's
criticisms, we have preferred to meet him on the ground
he has himself chosen. The same error, of supposing that
"presentationism" is identical with "noumenalism," and
"phenomenalism" with "representationism," runs through
the whole of Mr. Stirling's recent criticism of Hamilton's
theory of perception. It is curious, however, that the
very passage (_Lectures_, i., p. 146) which Mr. Mill cites
as proving that Hamilton, in spite of his professed
phenomenalism, was an unconscious noumenalist, is
employed by Mr. Stirling to prove that, in spite of his
professed presentationism, he was an unconscious
representationist. The two critics tilt at Hamilton
from opposite quarters: he has only to stand aside and let
them run against each other.
Under this explanation, it is manifest that the doctrine, that matter as
a subject or substratum of attributes is unknown and unknowable, is
totally different from that of cosmothetic idealism, with which Mr Mill
confounds it;[AI] and that a philosopher may without inconsistency
accept the former and reject the latter. The former, while it holds the
material substance to be unknown, does not deny that some of the
attributes of matter are perceived immediately as material, though, it
may be, modified by contact with mind. The latter maintains that the
attributes, as well as the substance, are not perceived immediately as
material, but mediately through the intervention of immaterial
representatives. It is also manifest that, in answer to Mr. Mill's
question, which of Hamilton's two "cardinal doctrines," Relativity or
Natural Realism, "is to be taken in a non-natural sense,"[AJ] we must
say, neither. The two doctrines are quite compatible with each other, and
neither requires a non-natural interpretation to reconcile it to its
companion.
[AI] _Examination_, p. 23.
[AJ] _Examination_, p. 20.
The doctrine of relativity derives its chief practical value from its
connection with the next great doctrine of Hamilton's philosophy, the
incognisability of the Absolute and the Infinite. For this doctrine
brings Ontology into contact with Theology; and it is only in relation to
theology that ontology acquires a practical importance. With respect to
the other two "ideas of the pure reason," as Kant calls them, the human
soul and the world, the question, whether we know them as realities or as
phenomena, may assist us in dealing with certain metaphysical
difficulties, but need not affect our practical conduct. For we have an
immediate intuition of the attributes of mind and matter, at least as
phenomenal objects, and by these intuitions may be tested the accuracy of
the conceptions derived from them, sufficiently for all practical
purposes. A man will equally avoid walking over a precipice, and is
logically as consistent in avoiding it, whether he regard the precipice
as a real thing, or as a mere phenomenon. But in the province of theology
this is not the case. We have no immediate intuition of the Divine
attributes, even as phenomena; we only infer their existence and nature
from certain similar attributes of which we are immediately conscious in
ourselves. And hence arises the question, How far does the similarity
extend, and to what extent is the accuracy of our conceptions guaranteed
by the intuition, not of the object to be conceived, but of something
more or less nearly resembling it? But this is not all. Our knowledge of
God, originally derived from personal consciousness, receives accession
from two other sources--from the external world, as His work; and from
revelation, as His word; and the conclusions derived from each have to be
compared together. Should any discrepancy arise between them, are we at
once warranted in rejecting one class of conclusions in favour of the
other two, or two in favour of the third? or are we at liberty to say
that our knowledge in respect of all alike is of such an imperfect and
indirect character that we are warranted in believing that some
reconciliation may exist, though our ignorance prevents us from
discovering what it is? Here at least is a practical question of the very
highest importance. In the early part of our previous remarks, we have
endeavoured to show how this question has been answered by orthodox
theologians of various ages, and how Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy
supports that answer. We have now to consider Mr Mill's chapter of
criticisms.
It is always unfortunate to make a stumble on the threshold; and Mr.
Mill's opening paragraph makes two. "The name of God," he says, "is
veiled under two extremely abstract phrases, 'the Infinite and the
Absolute.'... But it is one of the most unquestionable of all logical
maxims, that the meaning of the abstract must be sought in the concrete,
and not conversely."[AK]--Now, in the first place, "the Infinite" and
"the Absolute," even in the sense in which they are both predicable of
God, are no more names of God than "the creature" and "the finite" are
names of man. They are the names of certain attributes, which further
inquiry may, perhaps, show to belong to God and to no other being, but
which do not in their signification express this, and do not constitute
our primary idea of God, which is that of a Person. Men may believe in an
absolute and infinite, without in any proper sense believing in God; and
thousands upon thousands of pious men have prayed to a personal God, who
have never heard of the absolute and the infinite, and who would not
understand the expressions if they heard them. But, in the second place,
"the absolute" and "the infinite," in Sir W. Hamilton's sense of the
terms, cannot both be names of God, for the simple reason that they are
contradictory of each other, and are proposed as alternatives which
cannot both be accepted as predicates of the same subject. For Hamilton,
whatever Mr. Mill may do, did not fall into the absurdity of maintaining
that God in some of His attributes is absolute without being infinite,
and in others is infinite without being absolute.[AL]
[AK] _Examination_, p. 32.
[AL] See _Examination_, p. 35.
But we have not yet done with this single paragraph. After thus making
two errors in his exposition of his opponent's doctrine, Mr. Mill
immediately proceeds to a third, in his criticism of it. By following his
"most unquestionable of all logical maxims," and substituting the name of
God in the place of "the Infinite" and "the Absolute," he exactly
reverses Sir W. Hamilton's argument, and makes his own attempted
refutation of it a glaring _ignoratio elenchi_.
One of the purposes of Hamilton's argument is to show that we have no
positive conception of an Infinite Being; that when we attempt to form
such a conception, we do but produce a distorted representation of the
finite; and hence, that our so-called conception of the infinite is not
the true infinite. Hence it is not to be wondered at--nay, it is a
natural consequence of this doctrine,--that our positive conception of
God as a Person cannot be included under this pseudo-concept of the
Infinite. Whereas Mr. Mill, by laying down the maxim that the meaning of
the abstract must be sought in the concrete, quietly assumes that this
pseudo-infinite is a proper predicate of God, to be tested by its
applicability to the subject, and that what Hamilton says of _this_
infinite cannot be true unless it is also true of God. Of this
refutation, Hamilton, were he living, might truly say, as he said of a
former criticism on another part of his writings,--"This elaborate parade
of argument is literally answered in two words--_Quis dubitavit?_"
But if the substitution of God for the Infinite be thus a perversion of
Hamilton's argument, what shall we say to a similar substitution in the
case of the Absolute? Hamilton distinctly tells us that there is one
sense of the term _absolute_ in which it is contradictory of the
infinite, and therefore is not predicable of God at all. Mr. Mill admits
that Hamilton, throughout the greater part of his arguments, employs the
term in this sense; and he then actually proceeds to "test" these
arguments "by substituting the concrete, God, for the abstract,
Absolute;" _i.e._, by substituting God for something which Hamilton
defines as contradictory to the nature of God. Can the force of confusion
go further? Is it possible for perverse criticism more utterly, we do not
say to misrepresent, but literally to invert an author's meaning?
The source of all these errors, and of a great many more, is simply this.
Mr. Mill is aware, from Hamilton's express assertion, that the word
_absolute_ may be used in two distinct and even contradictory senses; but
he is wholly unable to see what those senses are, or when Hamilton is
using the term in the one sense, and when in the other. Let us endeavour
to clear up some of this confusion.
Hamilton's article on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned is a criticism,
partly of Schelling, partly of Cousin; and Schelling and Cousin only
attempted in a new form, under the influence of the Kantian philosophy,
to solve the problem with which philosophy in all ages has attempted to
grapple,--the problem of the Unconditioned.
"The unconditioned" is a term which, while retaining the same general
meaning, admits of various applications, particular or universal. It may
be the unconditioned as regards some special relation, or the
unconditioned as regards all relations whatever. Thus there may be the
unconditioned in Psychology--the human soul considered as a substance;
the unconditioned in Cosmology--the world considered as a single whole;
the unconditioned in Theology--God in His own nature, as distinguished
from His manifestations to us; or, finally, the unconditioned _par
excellence_--the unconditioned in Ontology--the being on which all other
being depends. It is of course possible to identify any one of the three
first with the last. It is possible to adopt a system of Egoism, and to
maintain that all phenomena are modes of my mind, and that the substance
of my mind is the only real existence. It is possible to adopt a system
of Materialism, and to maintain that all phenomena are modes of matter,
and that the material substance of the world is the only real existence.
Or it is possible to adopt a system of Pantheism, and to maintain that
all phenomena are modes of the Divine existence, and that God is the only
reality. But the several notions are in themselves distinct, though one
may ultimately be predicated of another.
The general notion of the Unconditioned is the same in all these cases,
and all must finally culminate in the last, the Unconditioned _par
excellence_. The general notion is that of the One as distinguished from
the Many, the substance from its accidents, the permanent reality from
its variable modifications. Thought, will, sensation, are modes of my
existence. What is the _I_ that is one and the same in all? Extension,
figure, resistance, are attributes of matter. What is the one substance
to which these attributes belong? But the generalisation cannot stop
here. If matter differs from mind, the _non-ego_ from the _ego_, as one
thing from another, there must be some special point of difference,
which, is the condition of the existence of each in this or that
particular manner. Unconditioned existence, therefore, in the highest
sense of the term, cannot be the existence of _this_ as distinguished
from _that_; it must be existence _per se_, the ground and principle of
all conditioned or special existence. This is the Unconditioned, properly
so called: the unconditioned in Schelling's sense, as the indifference of
subject and object: and it is against this that Hamilton's arguments are
directed.
The question is this. Is this Unconditioned a mere abstraction, the
product of our own minds; or can it be conceived as having a real
existence _per se_, and, as such, can it be identified with God as the
source of all existence? Hamilton maintains that it is a mere
abstraction, and cannot be so identified; that, far from being "a name of
God," it is a name of nothing at all. "By abstraction," he says, "we
annihilate the object, and by abstraction we annihilate the subject of
consciousness. But what remains? _Nothing._" When we attempt to conceive
it as a reality, we "hypostatise the zero."[AM]
[AM] _Discussions_, p. 21.
In order to conceive the Unconditioned existing as a thing, we must
conceive it as existing out of relation to everything else. For if
nothing beyond itself is necessary as a condition of its existence, it
can exist separate from everything else; and its pure existence as the
unconditioned is so separate. It must therefore be conceivable as the
sole existence, having no plurality beyond itself; and as simple, having
no plurality within itself. For if we cannot conceive it as existing
apart from other things, we cannot conceive it as independent of them;
and if we conceive it as a compound of parts, we have further to ask as
before, what is the principle of unity which binds these parts into one
whole? If there is such a principle, this is the true unconditioned; if
there is no such principle, there is no unconditioned; for that which
cannot exist except as a compound is dependent for its existence on that
of its several constituents. The unconditioned must therefore be
conceived as one, as simple, and as universal.
Is such a conception possible, whether in ordinary consciousness, as
Cousin says, or in an extraordinary intuition, as Schelling says? Let us
try the former. Consciousness is subject to the law of Time. A phenomenon
is presented to us in time, as dependent on some previous phenomenon or
thing. I wish to pursue the chain in thought till I arrive at something
independent. If I could reach in thought a beginning of time, and
discover some first fact with nothing preceding it, I should conceive
time as absolute--as completed,--and the unconditioned as the first thing
in time, and therefore as completed also, for it may be considered by
itself, apart from what depends upon it. Or if time be considered as
having no beginning, thought would still be able to represent to itself
that infinity, could it follow out the series of antecedents for ever.
But is either of these alternatives possible to thought? If not, we must
confess that the unconditioned is inconceivable by ordinary
consciousness; and we must found philosophy, with Schelling, on the
annihilation of consciousness.
But though Hamilton himself distinguishes between the _unconditioned_ and
the _absolute_, using the former term generally, for that which is out of
all relation, and the latter specially, for that which is out of all
relation as complete and finished, his opponent Cousin uses the latter
term in a wider sense, as synonymous with the former, and the _infinite_
as coextensive with both. This, however, does not affect the validity of
Hamilton's argument. For if it can be shown that the absolute and the
infinite (in Hamilton's sense) are both inconceivable, the unconditioned
(or absolute in Cousin's sense), which must be conceived as one or the
other, is inconceivable also. Or, conversely, if it can be shown that the
unconditioned, the unrelated in general, is inconceivable, it follows
that the absolute and the infinite, as both involving the unrelated, are
inconceivable also.
We may now proceed with Mr. Mill's criticism. He says:--
"Absolute, in the sense in which, it stands related to Infinite,
means (conformably to its etymology) that which is finished or
completed. There are some things of which the utmost ideal amount
is a limited quantity, though a quantity never actually reached....
We may speak of absolutely, but not of infinitely, pure water. The
purity of water is not a fact of which, whatever degree we suppose
attained, there remains a greater beyond. It has an absolute limit:
it is capable of being finished or complete, in thought, if not in
reality."--(P. 34.)
This criticism is either incorrect or _nihil ad rem_. If meant as a
statement of Hamilton's use of the term, it is incorrect: _absolute_, in
Hamilton's philosophy, does not mean simply "completed," but "out of
relation as completed;" _i.e._, self-existent in its completeness, and
not implying the existence of anything else. If meant in any other sense
than Hamilton's, it is irrelevant. Can Mr. Mill really have believed that
Schelling thought it necessary to invent an intellectual intuition out of
time and out of consciousness, in order to contemplate "an ideal limited
quantity," such as the complete purity of water?
Mr. Mill continues:--
"Though the idea of Absolute is thus contrasted with that of
Infinite, the one is equally fitted with the other to be predicated
of God; but not in respect of the same attributes. There is no
incorrectness of speech in the phrase Infinite Power: because the
notion it expresses is that of a Being who has the power of doing
all things which we know or can conceive, and more. But in speaking
of knowledge, Absolute is the proper word, and not Infinite. The
highest degree of knowledge that can be spoken of with a meaning,
only amounts to knowing all that there is to be known: when that
point is reached, knowledge has attained its utmost limit. So of
goodness or justice: they cannot be more than perfect. There are
not infinite degrees of right. The will is either entirely right,
or wrong in different degrees."--(P. 35.)
Surely, whatever Divine power can do, Divine knowledge can know as
possible to be done. The one, therefore, must be as infinite as the
other. And what of Divine goodness? An angel or a glorified saint is
absolutely good in Mr. Mill's sense of the term. His "will is entirely
right." Does Mr. Mill mean to say that there is no difference, even in
degree, between the goodness of God and that of one of His creatures?
But, even supposing his statement to be true, how is it relevant to the
matter under discussion? Can Mr. Mill possibly be ignorant that all these
attributes are relations; that the Absolute in Hamilton's sense, "the
unconditionally limited," is not predicable of God at all; and that when
divines and philosophers speak of the absolute nature of God, they mean a
nature in which there is no distinction of attributes at all?
Mr. Mill then proceeds to give a summary of Hamilton's arguments against
Cousin, preparatory to refuting them. In the course of this summary he
says:--
"Let me ask, _en passant_, where is the necessity for supposing
that, if the Absolute, or, to speak plainly, if God, is only known
to us in the character of a cause, he must therefore 'exist merely
as a cause,' and be merely 'a mean towards an end?' It is surely
possible to maintain that the Deity is known to us only as he who
feeds the ravens, without supposing that the Divine Intelligence
exists solely in order that the ravens may be fed."[AN]--(P.
42.)
[AN] In a note to this passage, Mr. Mill makes some sarcastic
comments on an argument of Hamilton's against Cousin's
theory that God is necessarily determined to create. "On
this hypothesis," says Hamilton, "God, as necessarily
determined to pass from absolute essence to relative
manifestation, is determined to pass either from the
better to the worse, or from the worse to the better."
Mr. Mill calls this argument "a curiosity of
dialectics," and answers, "Perfect wisdom would have
begun to will the new state at the precise moment when
it began to be better than the old." Hamilton is not
speaking of states of things, but of states of the
Divine nature, as creative or not creative; and Mr.
Mill's argument, to refute Hamilton, must suppose a time
when the new nature of God begins to be better than the
old! Mr. Mill would perhaps have spoken of Hamilton's
argument with more respect had he known that it is taken
from Plato.
On this we would remark, _en passant_, that this is precisely
Hamilton's own doctrine, that the sphere of our belief is more extensive
than that of our knowledge. The purport of Hamilton's argument is to show
that the Absolute, as conceived by Cousin, is not a true Absolute
(_Infinito-Absolute_), and therefore does not represent the real nature
of God. His argument is this: "Cousin's Absolute exists merely as a
cause: God does not exist merely as a cause: therefore Cousin's Absolute
is not God." Mr. Mill actually mistakes the position which Hamilton is
opposing for that which he is maintaining. Such an error does not lead
us to expect much from his subsequent refutation.
His first criticism is a curious specimen of his reading in philosophy.
He says:--
"When the True or the Beautiful are spoken of, the phrase is meant
to include all things whatever that are true, or all things
whatever that are beautiful. If this rule is good for other
abstractions, it is good for the Absolute. The word is devoid of
meaning unless in reference to predicates of some sort.... If we
are told, therefore, that there is some Being who is, or which is,
the Absolute,--not something absolute, but the Absolute
itself,--the proposition can be understood in no other sense than
that the supposed Being possesses in absolute completeness _all_
predicates; is absolutely good and absolutely bad; absolutely wise
and absolutely stupid; and so forth."[AO]--(P. 43.)
[AO] In support of this position, Mr. Mill cites Hegel--"What
kind of an absolute Being is that which does not contain
in itself all that is actual, even evil included?" We
are not concerned to defend Hegel's position; but he was
not quite so absurd as to mean what Mr. Mill supposes
him to have meant. Does not Mr. Mill know that it was
one of Hegel's fundamental positions, that the Divine
nature cannot be expressed by a plurality of
predicates?
Plato expressly distinguishes between "the beautiful" and "things that
are beautiful," as the One in contrast to the Many--the Real in contrast
to the Apparent.[AP] It is, of course, quite possible that Plato may be
wrong, and Mr. Mill right; but the mere fact of their antagonism is
sufficient to show that the meaning of "the phrase" need not be what Mr.
Mill supposes it must be. In fact, "the Absolute" in philosophy always
has meant the One as distinguished from the Many, not the One as
including the Many. But, as applied to Sir W. Hamilton, Mr. Mill's
remarks on "the Absolute," and his subsequent remarks on "the Infinite,"
not only misrepresent Hamilton's position, but exactly reverse it.
Hamilton maintains that the terms "absolute" and "infinite" are perfectly
intelligible as abstractions, as much so as "relative" and "finite;" for
"correlatives suggest each other," and the "knowledge of contradictories
is one;" but he denies that a concrete thing or object can be positively
conceived as absolute or infinite. Mr. Mill represents him as only
proving that the "unmeaning abstractions are unknowable,"--abstractions
which Hamilton does not assert to be unmeaning; and which he regards as
knowable in the only sense in which such abstractions can be known, viz.,
by understanding the meaning of their names.[AQ]
[AP] _Republic_, book v., p. 479.
[AQ] This confusion between conceiving a concrete thing and
knowing the meaning of abstract terms is as old as
Toland's _Christianity not Mysterious_, and, indeed, has
its germ, though not its development, in the teaching of
his assumed master, Locke. Locke taught that all our
knowledge is founded on simple ideas, and that a complex
idea is merely an accumulation of simple ones. Hence
Toland maintained that no object could be mysterious or
inconceivable if the terms in which its several
attributes are expressed have ideas corresponding to
them. But, in point of fact, no simple idea can be
conceived as an object by itself, though the word by
which it is signified has a perfectly intelligible
meaning. I cannot, _e.g._, conceive whiteness by itself,
though I can conceive a white wall, _i.e._, whiteness in
combination with other attributes in a concrete object.
To conceive attributes as coexisting, however, we must
conceive them as coexisting in a certain manner; for an
object of conception is not a mere heap of ideas, but an
organized whole, whose constituent ideas exist in a
particular combination with and relation to each other.
To conceive, therefore, we must not only be able to
apprehend each idea separately in the abstract, but also
the manner in which they may possibly exist in
combination with each other.
"Something infinite," says Mr. Mill, "is a conception which, like
most of our complex ideas, contains a negative element, but which
contains positive elements also. Infinite space, for instance; is
there nothing positive in that? The negative part of this
conception is the absence of bounds. The positive are, the idea of
space, and of space greater than any finite space."--(P. 45.)
This definition of _infinite space_ is exactly that which Descartes
gives us of _indefinite extension_,--"Ita quia non possumus imaginari
extensionem tam magnam, quin intelligamus adhuc majorem esse posse,
dicemus magnitudinem rerum possibilium esse indefinitam."[AR] So too,
Cudworth,--"There appeareth no sufficient ground for this positive
infinity of space; we being certain of no more than this, that be the
world or any figurative body never so great, it is not impossible but that
it might be still greater and greater without end. Which _indefinite
increasableness_ of body and space seems to be mistaken for a _positive
infinity_ thereof."[AS] And Locke, a philosopher for whom Mr. Mill
will probably have more respect than for Descartes or Cudworth, writes
more plainly: "To have actually in the mind the idea of a space infinite,
is to suppose the mind already passed over, and actually to have a view
of all those repeated ideas of space, which an endless repetition can
never totally represent to it,--which carries in it a plain
contradiction."[AT] Mr. Mill thus unwittingly illustrates, in his own
person, the truth of Hamilton's remark, "If we dream of effecting this
[conceiving the infinite in time or space], we only deceive ourselves by
substituting the _indefinite_ for the infinite, than which no two notions
can be more opposed." In fact, Mr. Mill does not seem to be aware that
what the mathematician calls _infinite_, the metaphysician calls
_indefinite_, and that arguments drawn from the mathematical use of the
term _infinite_ are wholly irrelevant to the metaphysical. How, indeed,
could it be otherwise? Can any man suppose that, when the Divine
attributes are spoken of as infinite, it is meant that they are
indefinitely increasable?[AU]
[AR] _Principia_, i., 26.
[AS] _Intellectual System_, ed. Harrison, vol. iii., p. 131.
[AT] _Essay_, ii., 17, 7.
[AU] One of the ablest mathematicians, and the most
persevering Hamiltono-mastix of the day, maintains the
applicability of the metaphysical notion of infinity to
mathematical magnitudes; but with an assumption which
unintentionally vindicates Hamilton's position more
fully than could have been done by a professed disciple.
"I shall assume," says Professor De Morgan, in a paper
recently printed among the _Transactions of the
Cambridge Philosophical Society_, "the notion of
infinity and of its reciprocal infinitesimal: that a
line can be conceived infinite, and therefore having
points at an infinite distance. Image apart, which we
cannot have, it seems to me clear that a line of
infinite length, without points at an infinite distance,
is a contradiction." Now it is easy to show, by mere
reasoning, without any image, that this assumption is
equally a contradiction. For if space is finite, every
line in space must be finite also; and if space is
infinite, every point in space must have infinite space
beyond it in every direction, and therefore cannot be at
the greatest possible distance from another point. Or
thus: Any two points in space are the extremities of the
line connecting them; but an infinite line has no
extremities; therefore no two points in space can be
connected together by an infinite line.
In fact, it is the "concrete reality," the "something infinite," and not
the mere abstraction of infinity, which is only conceivable as a
negation. Every "something" that has ever been intuitively present to my
consciousness is a something finite. When, therefore, I speak of a
"something infinite," I mean a something existing in a different manner
from all the "somethings" of which I have had experience in intuition.
Thus it is apprehended, not positively, but negatively--not directly by
what it is, but indirectly by what it is not. A negative idea is not
negative because it is expressed by a negative term, but because it has
never been realised in intuition. If infinity, as applied to space, means
the same thing as being greater than any finite space, both conceptions
are equally positive or equally negative. If it does not mean the same
thing, then, in conceiving a space greater than any finite space, we do
not conceive an infinite space.
Mr. Mill's next string of criticisms may be very briefly dismissed.
First, Hamilton does _not_, as Mr. Mill asserts, say that "the
Unconditioned is inconceivable, because it includes both the Infinite and
the Absolute, and these are contradictory of one another." His argument
is a common disjunctive syllogism. The unconditioned, if conceivable at
all, must be conceived _either_ as the absolute _or_ as the infinite;
neither of these is possible; therefore the unconditioned is not
conceivable at all. Nor, secondly, is Sir W. Hamilton guilty of the
"strange confusion of ideas" which Mr. Mill ascribes to him, when he says
that the Absolute, as being absolutely One, cannot be known under the
conditions of plurality and difference. The absolute, as such, must be
out of all relation, and consequently cannot be conceived in the relation
of plurality. "The plurality required," says Mr. Mill, "is not within the
thing itself, but is made up between itself and other things." It is, in
fact, both; but even granting Mr. Mill's assumption, what is a "plurality
between a thing and other things" but a relation between them? There is
undoubtedly a "strange confusion of ideas" in this paragraph; but the
confusion is not on the part of Sir W. Hamilton. "Again," continues Mr.
Mill, "even if we concede that a thing cannot be known at all unless
known as plural, does it follow that it cannot be known as plural because
it is also One? Since when have the One and the Many been incompatible
things, instead of different aspects of the same thing?... If there is
any meaning in the words, must not Absolute Unity be Absolute Plurality
likewise?" Mr. Mill's "since when?" may be answered in the words of
Plato:--"[Greek: Ouden emoige atopon dokei heinai ei hen hapanta
apophainei tis tô metechein· tou henos kai tauta tauta polla tô
plêthous au metechein; all' ei ho estin hen, auto touto polla apodeixei,
kai au ta polla dê hen, touto êdê thaumasomai.]"[AV] Here we are
expressly told that "absolute unity" cannot be "absolute plurality." Mr.
Mill may say that Plato is wrong; but he will hardly go so far as to say
that there is no meaning in his words. In point of fact, however, it is
Mr. Mill who is in error, and not Plato. In different relations, no
doubt, the same concrete object may be regarded as one or as many. The
same measure is one foot or twelve inches; the same sum is one shilling
or twelve pence; but it no more follows that "absolute unity must be
absolute plurality likewise," than it follows from the above instances
that one is equal to twelve. And, thirdly, when Mr. Mill accuses Sir W.
Hamilton of departing from his own meaning of the term _absolute_, in
maintaining that the Absolute cannot be a Cause, he only shows that he
does not himself know what Hamilton's meaning is. "If Absolute," he says,
"means finished, perfected, completed, may there not be a finished,
perfected, and completed Cause?" Hamilton's Absolute is that which is
"_out of relation_, as finished, perfect, complete;" and a Cause, as
such, is both in relation and incomplete. It is in relation to its
effect; and it is incomplete without its effect. Finally, when Mr. Mill
charges Sir W. Hamilton with maintaining "that extension and figure are
of the essence of matter, and perceived as such by intuition," we must
briefly reply that Hamilton does no such thing. He is not speaking of the
essence of matter _per se_, but only of matter as apprehended in relation
to us.
[AV] _Parmenides_, p. 129.
Mr. Mill concludes this chapter with an attempt to discover the meaning
of Hamilton's assertion, "to think is to condition." We have already
explained what Hamilton meant by this expression; and we recur to the
subject now, only to show the easy manner in which Mr. Mill manages to
miss the point of an argument with the clue lying straight before him.
"Did any," he says (of those who say that the Absolute is thinkable),
"profess to think it in any other manner than by distinguishing it from
other things?" Now this is the very thing which, according to Hamilton,
Schelling actually did. Mr. Mill does not attempt to show that Hamilton
is wrong in his interpretation of Schelling, nor, if he is right, what
were the reasons which led Schelling to so paradoxical a position: he
simply assumes that no man could hold Schelling's view, and there is an
end of it.[AW] Hamilton's purpose is to reassert in substance the
doctrine which Kant maintained, and which Schelling denied; and the
natural way to ascertain his meaning would be by reference to these two
philosophers. But this is not the method of Mr. Mill, here or elsewhere.
He generally endeavours to ascertain Hamilton's meaning by ranging the
wide field of possibilities. He tells us what a phrase means in certain
authors of whom Hamilton is not thinking, or in reference to certain
matters which Hamilton is not discussing; but he hardly ever attempts to
trace the history of Hamilton's own view, or the train of thought by
which it suggested itself to his mind. And the result of this is, that
Mr. Mill's interpretations are generally in the potential mood. He wastes
a good deal of conjecture in discovering what Hamilton might have meant,
when a little attention in the right quarter would have shown what he did
mean.
[AW] Mr. Mill does not expressly name Schelling in this
sentence: but he does so shortly afterwards; and his
remark is of the same character with the previous one.
"Even Schelling," he says, "was not so gratuitously
absurd as to deny that the Absolute must be known
according to the capacities of that which knows
it--though he was forced to invent a special capacity
for the purpose." But if this capacity is an "invention"
of Schelling's, and if he was "forced" to invent it,
Hamilton's point is proved. To think, according to all
the real operations of thought which consciousness makes
known to us, is to condition. And the faculty of the
unconditioned is an invention of Schelling's, not known
to consciousness. In other words: all our real faculties
bear witness to the truth of Hamilton's statement; and
the only way of controverting it is to invent an
imaginary faculty for the purpose.
The third feature of Hamilton's philosophy which we charged Mr. Mill with
misunderstanding, is the distinction between Knowledge and Belief. In the
early part of this article, we endeavoured to explain the true nature of
this distinction; we have now only a very limited space to notice Mr.
Mill's criticisms on it. Hamilton, he says, admitted "a second source of
intellectual conviction called Belief." Now Belief is not a "source" of
any conviction, but the conviction itself. No man would say that he is
convinced of the truth of a proposition _because_ he believes it; his
belief in its truth is the same thing as his conviction of its truth.
Belief, then, is not a source of conviction, but a conviction having
sources of its own. The question is, have we legitimate sources of
conviction, distinct from those which constitute Knowledge properly so
called? Now here it should be remembered that the distinction is not one
invented by Hamilton to meet the exigencies of his own system. He
enumerates as many as twenty-two authors, of the most various schools of
philosophy, who all acknowledged it before him. Such a concurrence is no
slight argument in favour of the reality of the distinction. We do not
say that these writers, or Hamilton himself, have always expressed this
distinction in the best language, or applied it in the best manner; but
we say that it is a true distinction, and that it is valid for the
principal purpose to which Hamilton applied it.
We do not agree with all the details of Hamilton's application. We do not
agree with him, though he is supported by very eminent authorities, in
classifying our conviction of axiomatic principles as _belief_, and not
as _knowledge_.[AX] But this question does not directly bear on Mr.
Mill's criticism. The point of that criticism is, that Hamilton, by
admitting a _belief_ in the infinite and unrelated, nullifies his own
doctrine, that all _knowledge_ is of the finite and relative. Let us
see.
[AX] Hamilton's distinction is in principle the same as that
which we have given in our previous remarks (pp. 18,
19). He says, "A conviction is incomprehensible when
there is merely given to us in consciousness--_That its
object is_ ([Greek: hoti esti]), and when we are unable
to comprehend through a higher notion or belief _Why or
How it is_ ([Greek: dioti esti])."--(Reid's Works, p.
754.) We would distinguish between _why_ and _how_,
between [Greek: dioti], and [Greek: pôs]. We can give
no reason _why_ two straight lines cannot enclose a
space; but we can comprehend _how_ they cannot. We have
only to form the corresponding image, to see the manner
in which the two attributes coexist in one object. But
when I say that I believe in the existence of a
spiritual being who sees without eyes, I cannot conceive
the _manner_ in which seeing coexists with the absence
of the bodily organ of sight. We believe that the true
distinction between knowledge and belief may ultimately
be referred to the presence or absence of the
corresponding intuition; but to show this in the various
instances would require a longer dissertation than our
present limits will allow.
We may believe _that_ a thing is, without being able to conceive _how_ it
is. I believe _that_ God is a person, and also _that_ He is infinite;
though I cannot conceive _how_ the attributes of personality and infinity
exist together. All my knowledge of personality is derived from my
consciousness of my own finite personality. I therefore believe in the
coexistence of attributes in God, in some manner different from that in
which they coexist in me as limiting each other: and thus I believe in
the fact, though I am unable to conceive the manner. So, again, Kant
brings certain counter arguments, to prove, on the one side, that the
world has a beginning in time, and, on the other side, that it has not a
beginning. Now suppose I am unable to refute either of these courses of
argument, am I therefore compelled to have no belief at all? May I not
say, I believe, in spite of Kant, _that_ the world has a beginning in
time, though I am unable to conceive _how_ it can have so begun? What is
this, again, but a belief in an absolute reality beyond the sphere of my
relative knowledge?
"I am not now considering," says Mr. Mill, "what it is that, in our
author's opinion, we are bound to believe concerning the unknowable."
Why, this was the very thing he ought to have considered, before
pronouncing the position to be untenable, or to be irreconcilable with
something else. Meanwhile, it is instructive to observe that Mr. Mill
himself believes, or requires his readers to believe, something
concerning the unknown. He does not know, or at any rate he does not tell
his readers, what Hamilton requires them to believe concerning the
unknowable; but he himself believes, and requires them to believe, that
this unknown something is incompatible with the doctrine that knowledge
is relative. We cannot regard this as a very satisfactory mode of
refuting Hamilton's thesis.[AY]
[AY] In a subsequent chapter (p. 120), Mr. Mill endeavours to
overthrow this distinction between Knowledge and Belief,
by means of Hamilton's own theory of Consciousness.
Hamilton maintains that we cannot be conscious of a
mental operation without being conscious of its object.
On this Mr. Mill retorts that if, as Hamilton admits, we
are conscious of a belief in the Infinite and the
Absolute, we must be conscious of the Infinite and the
Absolute themselves; and such consciousness is
Knowledge. The fallacy of this retort is transparent.
The immediate object of Belief is a _proposition_ which
I hold to be true, not a _thing_ apprehended in an act
of conception. I believe in an infinite God; _i.e._, I
believe _that_ God is infinite: I believe that the
attributes which I ascribe to God exist in Him in an
infinite degree. Now, to believe this proposition, I
must, of course, be conscious of its meaning; but I am
not therefore conscious of the Infinite God as an object
of conception; for this would require further an
apprehension of the manner in which these infinite
attributes coexist so as to form one object. The whole
argument of this eighth chapter is confused, owing to
Mr. Mill not having distinguished between those passages
in which Sir W. Hamilton is merely using an _argumentum
ad hominem_ in relation to Reid, and those in which he
is reasoning from general principles.
But if Mr. Mill is unjust towards the distinction between Knowledge and
Belief, as held by Sir W. Hamilton, he makes ample amends to the injured
theory in the next chapter, by enlarging the province of credibility far
beyond any extent which Hamilton would have dreamed of claiming for it.
Conceivability or inconceivability, he tells us, are usually dependent on
association; and it is quite possible that, under other associations, we
might be able to conceive, and therefore to believe, anything short of
the direct contradiction that the same thing is and is not. It is not in
itself incredible, that a square may at the same time be round, that two
straight lines may enclose a space, or even that two and two may make
five.[AZ] But whatever concessions Mr. Mill may make on this point, he
is at least fully determined that Sir W. Hamilton shall derive no benefit
from them; for he forthwith proceeds to charge Sir William with confusing
three distinct senses of the term _conception_--a confusion which exists
solely in his own imagination,[BA]--and to assert that the Philosophy
of the Conditioned is entirely founded on a mistake, inasmuch as infinite
space on the one hand, and, on the other, both an absolute minimum and an
infinite divisibility of space, are perfectly conceivable. With regard to
the former of these two assertions, Mr. Mill's whole argument is
vitiated, as we have already shown, by his confusion between _infinite_
and _indefinite_; but it is worth while to quote one of his special
instances in this chapter, as a specimen of the kind of reasoning which
an eminent writer on logic can sometimes employ. In reference to Sir W.
Hamilton's assertion, that infinite space would require infinite time to
conceive it, he says, "Let us try the doctrine upon a complex whole,
short of infinite, such as the number 695,788. Sir W. Hamilton would not,
I suppose, have maintained that this number is inconceivable. How long
did he think it would take to go over every separate unit of this whole,
so as to obtain a perfect knowledge of the exact sum, as different from
all other sums, either greater or less?"
[AZ] In reference to this last paradox, Mr. Mill quotes from
_Essays by a Barrister_: "There is a world in which,
whenever two pairs of things are either placed in
proximity or are contemplated together, a fifth thing is
immediately created and brought within the contemplation
of the mind engaged in putting two and two together....
In such a world surely two and two would make five. That
is, the result to the mind of contemplating two twos
would be to count five." The answer to this reasoning
has been already given by Archdeacon Lee in his Essay on
Miracles. The "five" in this case is not the sum of two
and two, but of two and two _plus_ the new creature,
_i.e._, of two and two _plus_ one.
[BA] The sense in which Sir W. Hamilton himself uses the word
_conception_ is explained in a note to _Reid's Works_,
p. 377--namely, the combination of two or more
attributes in a _unity of representation_. The second
sense which Mr. Mill imagines is simply a mistake of his
own. When Hamilton speaks of being "unable to conceive
as possible," he does not mean, as Mr. Mill supposes,
physically possible under the law of gravitation or some
other law of matter, but mentally possible as a
representation or image; and thus the supposed second
sense is identical with the first. The third sense may
also be reduced to the first; for to conceive two
attributes as combined in one representation is to form
a notion subordinate to those of each attribute
separately. We do not say that Sir W. Hamilton has been
uniformly accurate in his application of the test of
conceivability; but we say that his inaccuracies, such
as they are, do not affect the theory of the
conditioned, and that in all the long extracts which Mr.
Mill quotes, with footnotes, indicating "first sense,"
"second sense," "third sense," the author's meaning may
be more accurately explained in the first sense only.
It is marvellous that it should not have occurred to Mr. Mill, while he
was writing this passage, "How comes this large number to be a 'whole' at
all; and how comes it that 'this whole,' with all its units, can be
written down by means of six digits?" Simply because of a conventional
arrangement, by which a single digit, according to its position, can
express, by one mark, tens, hundreds, thousands, &c., of units; and thus
can exhaust the sum by dealing with its items in large masses. But how
can such a process exhaust the infinite? We should like to know how long
Mr. Mill thinks it would take to work out the following problem:--"If two
figures can represent ten, three a hundred, four a thousand, five ten
thousand, &c., find the number of figures required to represent
infinity."[BB]
[BB] Precisely the same misconception of Hamilton's position
occurs in Professor De Morgan's paper in the _Cambridge
Transactions_, to which we have previously referred. He
speaks (p. 13) of the "notion, which runs through many
writers, from Descartes to Hamilton, that the mind must
be big enough to _hold_ all it can conceive." This
notion is certainly not maintained by Hamilton, nor yet
by Descartes in the paragraph quoted by Mr. De Morgan;
nor, as far as we are aware, in any other part of his
works.
Infinite divisibility stands or falls with infinite extension. In both
cases Mr. Mill confounds infinity with indefiniteness. But with regard to
an absolute minimum of space, Mr. Mill's argument requires a separate
notice.
"It is not denied," he says, "that there is a portion of extension
which to the naked eye appears an indivisible point; it has been
called by philosophers the _minimum visibile_. This minimum we can
indefinitely magnify by means of optical instruments, making
visible the still smaller parts which compose it. In each
successive experiment there is still a _minimum visibile_, anything
less than which cannot be discovered with that instrument, but can
with one of a higher power. Suppose, now, that as we increase the
magnifying power of our instruments, and before we have reached the
limit of possible increase, we arrive at a stage at which that
which seemed the smallest visible space under a given microscope,
does not appear larger under one which, by its mechanical
construction, is adapted to magnify more, but still remains
apparently indivisible. I say, that if this happened, we should
believe in a minimum of extension; or if some _à priori_
metaphysical prejudice prevented us from believing it, we should at
least be enabled to conceive it."--(P. 84.)
The natural conclusion of most men under such circumstances would be,
that there was some fault in the microscope. But even if this conclusion
were rejected, we presume Mr. Mill would allow that, under the supposed
circumstances, the exact magnitude of the minimum of extension would be
calculable. We have only to measure the _minimum visibile_, and know what
is the magnifying power of our microscope, to determine the exact
dimensions. Suppose, then, that we assign to it some definite
magnitude--say the ten billionth part of an inch,--should we then
conclude that it is impossible to conceive the twenty billionth part of
an inch?--in other words, that we have arrived at a definite magnitude
which has no conceivable half? Surely this is a somewhat rash concession
to be made by a writer who has just told us that numbers may be conceived
up to infinity; and therefore, of course, down to infinitesimality.
Mr. Mill concludes this chapter with an assertion which, even by itself,
is sufficient to show how very little he has attended to or understood
the philosophy which he is attempting to criticise. "The law of Excluded
Middle," he says, "as well as that of Contradiction, is common to all
phenomena. But it is a doctrine of our author that these laws are true,
and cannot but be known to be true, of Noumena likewise. It is not merely
Space as cognisable by our senses, but Space as it is in itself, which he
affirms must be either of unlimited or of limited extent" (p. 86). At
this sentence we fairly stand aghast. "Space as it is in itself!" the
Noumenon Space! Has Mr. Mill been all this while "examining" Sir William
Hamilton's philosophy, in utter ignorance that the object of that
philosophy is the "Conditioned in Time and _Space_;" that he accepts
Kant's analysis of time and space as formal necessities of thought, but
pronounces no opinion whatever as to whether time and space can exist as
Noumena or not? It is the phenomenal space, "space as cognisable by our
senses," which Sir W. Hamilton says must be either limited or unlimited:
concerning the Noumenon Space, he does not hazard an opinion whether such
a thing exists or not. He says, indeed (and this is probably what has
misled Mr. Mill), that the laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded
Middle, are laws of things as well as laws of thought;[BC] but he says
nothing about these laws as predicating infinite or finite extension. On
the contrary, he expressly classifies Space under the law of Relativity,
the violation of which indicates what may exist, but what we are unable
to conceive as existing. Briefly, the law of Excluded Middle (to take
this instance alone) is a law of things only in its abstract form,
"Everything must be A or not A" (_extended_, if you please, or _not
extended_); but in its subordinate form, "Everything extended must be
extended infinitely or finitely," it is only applicable, and only
intended by Hamilton to be applied, to those _phenomena_ which are
already given as extended in some degree.
[BC] _Discussions_, p. 603.
We have now examined the first six chapters of Mr. Mill's book,
containing his remarks on that portion of Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy
which he justly regards as comprising the most important of the doctrines
which specially belong to Hamilton himself. The next chapter is an
episode, in which Mr. Mill turns aside from Sir W. Hamilton to criticise
Mr. Mansel's _Bampton Lectures_. As our limits do not permit us to carry
on the argument at present through the remainder of Mr. Mill's remarks on
Hamilton himself, we shall conclude our notice with a few words on this
chapter, as closing the properly metaphysical portion of Mr. Mill's book,
and as affording ample proof that, in this department of philosophy at
least, Mr. Mill's powers of misapprehension do not cease when Sir W.
Hamilton is no longer their object.
Mr. Mill's method of criticism makes it generally necessary to commence
with a statement of the criticised theory as it really is, before
proceeding to his exposition of it as it is not. The present instance
offers no exception to this rule. Mr. Mansel's argument may be briefly
stated as follows. The primary and essential conception of God,
imperatively demanded by our moral and religious consciousness, is that
of a _person_. But personality implies intellectual and moral attributes;
and the only direct and immediate knowledge which we have of such
attributes is derived from the testimony of self-consciousness, bearing
witness to their existence in a certain manner in ourselves. But when we
endeavour to transfer the conception of personality, thus obtained, to
the domain of theology, we meet with certain difficulties, which, while
they are not sufficient to hinder us from _believing_ in the Divine
Personality as a fact, yet hinder us from _conceiving_ the manner of its
existence, and prevent us from exhibiting our belief as a philosophical
conclusion, proved by irrefragable reasoning and secured against all
objections. These difficulties are occasioned, on the one hand, by the
so-called Philosophy of the Unconditioned, which in all ages has shown a
tendency towards Pantheism, and which, in one of its latest and most
finished manifestations, announces itself as the exhibition of God as He
is in His eternal nature before creation; and, on the other hand, by the
limitations and conditions to which our own personality is subject, and
which, as we have pointed out in the earlier part of this article, have,
from the very beginning of Christian theology, prevented theologians from
accepting the limited personality of man as an exact image and
counterpart of the unlimited personality of God. These difficulties Mr.
Mansel endeavours to meet in two ways. On the one side, he maintains, in
common with Sir W. Hamilton, that the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, by
reason of its own incongruities and self-contradictions, has no claim to
be accepted as a competent witness in the matter; and on the other side,
he maintains, in common with many theologians before him, that human
personality cannot be assumed as an exact copy of the Divine, but only as
that which is most nearly analogous to it among finite things. But these
two positions, if admitted, involve a corresponding practical conclusion
as regards the criterion of religious truth or falsehood. Were we
capable, either, on the one hand, of a clear conception of the
Unconditioned, or, on the other, of a direct intuition of the Divine
Attributes as objects of consciousness, we might be able to construct,
deductively or inductively, an exact science of Theology. As it is, we
are compelled to reason by analogy; and analogy furnishes only
probabilities, varying, it may be, from slight presumptions up to moral
certainties, but whose weight, in any given case, can only be determined
by comparison with other evidences. There are three distinct sources from
which we may form a judgment about the ways of God--first, from our own
moral and intellectual consciousness, by which we judge _à priori_ of
what God ought to do in a given case, by determining what we should think
it wise or right for ourselves to do in a similar case; secondly, from
the constitution and course of nature, from which we may learn by
experience what God's providence in certain cases actually is; and
thirdly, from revelation, attested by its proper evidences. Where these
three agree in their testimony (as in the great majority of cases they
do) we have the moral certainty which results from the harmony of all
accessible evidences: where they appear to differ, we have no right at
once to conclude that the second or the third must give way to the first,
and not _vice versâ_; because we have no right to assume that the first
alone is infallible. In the author's own words: "The lesson to be learnt
from an examination of the Limits of Religious Thought is not that man's
judgments are _worthless_ in relation to Divine things, but that they are
_fallible_: and the probability of error in any particular case can never
be fairly estimated without giving their full weight to all collateral
considerations. We are indeed bound to believe that a Revelation given by
God can never contain anything that is really unwise or unrighteous; but
we are not always capable of estimating exactly the wisdom or
righteousness of particular doctrines or precepts. And we are bound to
bear in mind that _exactly in proportion to the strength of the remaining
evidence for the Divine origin of a religion, is the probability that we
may be mistaken in supposing this or that portion of its contents to be
unworthy of God._ Taken in conjunction, the two arguments may confirm or
correct each other: taken singly and absolutely, each may vitiate the
result which should follow from their joint application."[BD]
[BD] _Bampton Lectures_, p. 156, 4th edition.
In criticising the first part of this argument--that which is directed
against the deductive philosophy of the Unconditioned--Mr. Mill manifests
the same want of acquaintance with its meanings, and with the previous
history of the question; which he had before exhibited in his attack on
Sir W. Hamilton. He begins by finding fault with the definition of the
Absolute, which Mr. Mansel (herein departing, and purposely departing,
from Sir W. Hamilton's use of the term) defines as "that which exists in
and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other Being." On this,
Mr. Mill remarks: "The first words of his definition would serve for the
description of a Noumenon; but Mr. Mansel's Absolute is only meant to
denote one Being, identified with God, and God is not the only Noumenon."
The description of a Noumenon! This is almost equal to the discovery of a
Noumenon Space. Does Mr. Mill really suppose that all noumena are
self-existent? A _noumenon_ (in the sense in which we suppose Mr. Mill to
understand the term, for it has different meanings in different
philosophies) implies an existence out of relation to the human
mind.[BE] But is this the same as being out of all relation whatever,
as existing "in and by itself?" Does Mr. Mill mean to say that a
creature, whether perceived by us or not, has no relation to its Creator?
But Mr. Mill, as we have seen before, is not much at home when he gets
among "noumena." We must proceed to his criticism of the second part of
the definition,--"having no necessary relation to any other being." Of
these words he says, that "they admit of two constructions. The words in
their natural sense only mean, _capable of existing out of relation to
anything else_. The argument requires that they should mean _incapable of
existing in relation with anything else_." And why is this non-natural
sense to be forced upon very plain words? Because, says Mr. Mill,--
[BE] Strictly speaking, the term _noumenon_, as meaning that
which can be apprehended only by the intellect, implies
a relation to the intellect apprehending it; and in this
sense [Greek: to nooumenon] is opposed by Plato to
[Greek: to horômenon]--the object of intellect to the
object of sight. But as the intellect was supposed to
take cognisance of things as they are, in opposition to
the sensitive perception of things as they appear, the
term _noumenon_ became synonymous with _thing in itself_
([Greek: to hon kath' hauto]). And this meaning is
retained in the Kantian philosophy, in which the
_noumenon_ is identical with the _Ding an sich_. But as
Kant denied to the human intellect any immediate
intuition of things as they are (though such an
intuition may be possible to a superhuman intellect),
hence the term _noumenon_ in the Kantian philosophy is
opposed to all of which the human intellect can take
positive cognisance. Hamilton, in this respect, agrees
with Kant. But neither Kant nor Hamilton, in opposing
the _thing in itself_ to the _phenomenon_, meant to
imply that the former is necessarily self-existent, and
therefore uncreated.
"In what manner is a possible existence out of all relation,
incompatible with the notion of a cause? Have not causes a possible
existence apart from their effects? Would the sun, for example, not
exist if there were no earth or planets for it to illuminate? Mr.
Mansel seems to think that what is capable of existing out of
relation, cannot possibly be conceived or known in relation. But
this is not so.... Freed from this confusion of ideas, Mr. Mansel's
argument resolves itself into this,--The same Being cannot be
thought by us both as Cause and as Absolute, because a Cause _as
such_ is not Absolute, and Absolute, as such, is not a Cause; which
is exactly as if he had said that Newton cannot be thought by us
both as an Englishman and as a mathematician, because an
Englishman, as such, is not a mathematician, nor a mathematician,
as such, an Englishman."--(P. 92.)
The "confusion of ideas" is entirely of Mr. Mill's own making, and is
owing to his having mutilated the argument before criticising it. The
argument in its original form consists of two parts; the first intended
to show that the Absolute is not conceived _as such_ in being conceived
as a Cause; the second to show that the Absolute cannot be conceived
under different aspects at different times--first as Absolute, and then
as Cause. It was the impossibility of this latter alternative which drove
Cousin to the hypothesis of a necessary causation from all eternity. Mr.
Mill entirely omits the latter part of the argument, and treats the
former part as if it were the whole. The part criticised by Mr. Mill is
intended to prove exactly what it does prove, and no more; namely, that a
cause _as such_ is not the absolute, and that to know a cause _as such_
is not to know the absolute. We presume Mr. Mill himself will admit that
to know Newton as a mathematician is not to know him as an Englishman.
Whether he can be known separately as both, and whether the Absolute in
this respect is a parallel case, depends on another consideration, which
Mr. Mill has not noticed. The continuation of Mr. Mill's criticism is
equally confused. He says:--
"The whole of Mr. Mansel's argument for the inconceivability of the
Infinite and of the Absolute is one long _ignoratio elenchi_. It
has been pointed out in a former chapter that the words Absolute
and Infinite have no real meaning, unless we understand by them
that which is absolute or infinite in some given attribute; as
space is called infinite, meaning that it is infinite in extension;
and as God is termed infinite, in the sense of possessing infinite
power, and absolute in the sense of absolute goodness or knowledge.
It has also been shown that Sir W. Hamilton's arguments for the
unknowableness of the Unconditioned do not prove that we cannot
know an object which is absolute or infinite in some specific
attribute, but only that we cannot know an abstraction called 'The
Absolute' or 'The Infinite,' which is supposed to have all
attributes at once."--(P. 93.)
The fallacy of this criticism, as regards Sir W. Hamilton, has been
already pointed out: as regards Mr. Mansel, it is still more glaring,
inasmuch as that writer expressly states that he uses the term _absolute_
in a different sense from that which Mr. Mill attributes to Sir W.
Hamilton. When Mr. Mill charges Mr. Mansel with "undertaking to prove the
impossibility" of conceiving "a Being _absolutely_ just or _absolutely_
wise"[BF] (_i.e._, as he supposes, _perfectly_ just or wise), he
actually forgets that he has just been criticising Mr. Hansel's
definition of the Absolute, as something having a possible existence "out
of all relation." Will Mr. Mill have the kindness to tell us what he
means by goodness and knowledge "out of all relation;" _i.e._, a goodness
and knowledge related to no object on which they can be exercised; a
goodness which is good to nothing, a knowledge which knows nothing? Mr.
Mill had better be cautious in talking about _ignoratio elenchi_.
[BF] _Examination_, p. 95.
From the Absolute, Mr. Mill proceeds to the Infinite; and here he commits
the same mistake as before, treating a portion of an argument as if it
were the whole, and citing a portion intended to prove one point as if it
were intended to prove another. He cites a passage from Mr. Mansel, in
which it is said that "the Infinite, if it is to be conceived at all,
must be conceived as potentially everything and actually nothing; for if
there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby
limited; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it
is thereby excluded from being any other thing. But, again, it must also
be conceived as actually everything and potentially nothing; for an
unrealised potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the Infinite can be
that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as
incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually
everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be
distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of
consciousness." On this passage Mr. Mill remarks, "Can a writer be
serious who bids us conjure up a conception of something which possesses
infinitely all conflicting attributes, and because we cannot do this
without contradiction, would have us believe that there is a
contradiction in the idea of infinite goodness or infinite wisdom?" The
answer to this criticism is very simple. The argument is not employed for
the purpose which Mr. Mill supposes. It is employed to show that the
metaphysical notion of the absolute-infinite, as the sum, potential or
actual, of all possible existence, is inconceivable under the laws of
human consciousness; and thus that the absolutely first existence,
related to nothing and limited by nothing, the _ens realissimum_ of the
older philosophers, the _pure being_ of the Hegelians, cannot be attained
as a starting-point from which to deduce all relative and derived
existence. How far the empirical conception of certain mental attributes,
such as goodness or wisdom, derived in the first instance from our own
personal consciousness, can be positively conceived as extended to
infinity, is considered in a separate argument, which Mr. Mill does not
notice.
Mr. Mill continues, "Instead of 'the Infinite,' substitute 'an infinitely
good Being' [_i.e._, substitute what is not intended], and Mr. Mansel's
argument reads thus:--'If there is anything which an infinitely good
Being cannot become--if he cannot become bad--that is a limitation, and
the goodness cannot be infinite. If there is anything which an infinitely
good Being actually is (namely, good), he is excluded from being any
other thing, as being wise or powerful.'" To the first part of this
objection we reply by simply asking, "Is becoming bad a 'higher
perfection?'" To the second part we reply by Mr. Mill's favourite mode of
reasoning--a parallel case. A writer asserts that a creature which is a
horse is thereby excluded from being a dog; and that, in so far as it has
the nature of a horse, it has not the nature of a dog. "What!" exclaims
Mr. Mill, "is it not the nature of a dog to have four legs? and does the
man mean to say that a horse has not four legs?" We venture respectfully
to ask Mr. Mill whether he supposes that being wise is being "a thing,"
and being good is being another "thing?"
But, seriously, it is much to be wished that when a writer like Mr. Mill
undertakes to discuss philosophical questions, he should acquire some
slight acquaintance with the history of the questions discussed. Had this
been done by our critic in the present case, it might possibly have
occurred to him to doubt whether a doctrine supported by philosophers of
such different schools of thought as Spinoza, Malebranche, Wolf, Kant,
Schelling, could be quite such a piece of transparent nonsense as he
supposes it to be. All these writers are cited in Mr. Mansel's note, as
maintaining the theory that the Absolute is the _ens realissimum_, or sum
of all existence; and their names might have saved Mr. Mill from the
absurdity of supposing that by this expression was meant something
"absolutely good and absolutely bad; absolutely wise and absolutely
stupid; and so forth." The real meaning of the expression has been
already sufficiently explained in our earlier remarks. The problem of the
Philosophy of the Unconditioned, as sketched by Plato and generally
adopted by subsequent philosophers, is, as we have seen, to ascend up to
the first principle of all things, and thence to deduce, as from their
cause, all dependent and derived existences. The Unconditioned, as the
one first principle, must necessarily contain in itself, potentially or
actually, all that is derived from it, and thus must comprehend, in
embryo or in development, the sum of all existence. To reconcile this
conclusion with the phenomenal existence of evil and imperfection, is the
difficulty with which philosophy has had to struggle ever since
philosophy began. The Manichean, by referring evil to an independent
cause, denies the existence of an absolute first principle at all; the
Leibnitzian, with his hypothesis of the best possible world, virtually
sets bounds to the Divine omnipotence: the Pantheist identifies God with
all actual existence, and either denies the real existence of evil at
all, or merges the distinction between evil and good in some higher
indifference. All these conclusions may be alike untenable, but all alike
testify to the existence of the problem, and to the vast though
unsuccessful efforts which man's reason has made to solve it.
The reader may now, perhaps, understand the reason of an assertion which
Mr. Mill regards as supremely absurd,--namely, that we must believe in
the existence of an absolute and infinite Being, though unable to
conceive the nature of such a Being. To believe in such a Being, is
simply to believe that God made the world: to declare the nature of such
a Being inconceivable, is simply to say that we do not know how the world
was made. If we believe that God made the world, we must believe that
there was a time when the world was not, and when God alone existed, out
of relation to any other being. But the mode of that sole existence we
are unable to conceive, nor in what manner the first act took place by
which the absolute and self-existent gave existence to the relative and
dependent. "The contradictions," says Mr. Mill, "which Mr. Mansel asserts
to be involved in the notions, do not follow from an imperfect mode of
apprehending the Infinite and the Absolute, but lie in the definitions of
them, in the meaning of the words themselves." They do no such thing: the
meaning of the words is perfectly intelligible, and is exactly what is
expressed by their definitions: the contradictions arise from the attempt
to combine the attributes expressed by the words in one representation
with others, so as to form a positive object of consciousness. Where is
the incongruity of saying, "I believe that a being exists possessing
certain attributes, though I am unable in my present state of knowledge
to conceive the manner of that existence?" Mr. Mill, at all events, is
the last man in the world who has any right to complain of such a
distinction--Mr. Mill, who considers it not incredible that in some part
of the universe two straight lines may enclose a space, or two and two
make five; though he is compelled to allow that under our present laws of
thought, or, if he pleases, of association, we are unable to conceive how
these things can be.
It is wearisome work to wade through this mass of misconceptions; yet we
must entreat the reader's patience a little longer, while we say a few
words in conclusion on perhaps the greatest misconception of all--though
that is bold language to use with regard to Mr. Mill's metaphysics,--at
any rate, the one which he expresses in the most vehement language. Mr.
Mansel, as we have said, asserts, as many others have asserted before
him, that the relation between the communicable attributes of God and the
corresponding attributes of man is one not of identity, but of analogy;
that is to say, that the Divine attributes have the same relation to the
Divine nature that the human attributes have to human nature. Thus, for
example, there is a Divine justice and there is a human justice; but God
is just as the Creator and Governor of the world, having unlimited
authority over all His creatures and unlimited jurisdiction over all
their acts; and man is just in certain special relations, as having
authority over some persons and some acts only, so far as is required for
the needs of human society. So, again, there is a Divine mercy and there
is a human mercy; but God is merciful in such a manner as is fitting
compatibly with the righteous government of the universe; and man is
merciful in a certain limited range, the exercise of the attribute being
guided by considerations affecting the welfare of society or of
individuals. Or to take a more general case: Man has in himself a rule of
right and wrong, implying subjection to the authority of a superior (for
conscience has authority only as reflecting the law of God); while God
has in Himself a rule of right and wrong, implying no higher authority,
and determined absolutely by His own nature. The case is the same when we
look at moral attributes, not externally, in their active manifestations,
but internally, in their psychological constitution. If we do not
attribute to God the same complex mental constitution of reason, passion,
and will, the same relation to motives and inducements, the same
deliberation and choice of alternatives, the same temporal succession of
facts in consciousness, which we ascribe to man,--it will follow that
those psychological relations between reason, will, and desire, which are
implied in the conception of human action, cannot represent the Divine
excellences in themselves, but can only illustrate them by analogies from
finite things. And if man is liable to error in judging of the conduct of
his fellow-men, in proportion as he is unable to place himself in their
position, or to realise to himself their modes of thought and principles
of action--if the child, for instance, is liable to error in judging the
actions of the man,--or the savage of the civilised man,--surely there is
far more room for error in men's judgment of the ways of God, in
proportion as the difference between God and man is greater than the
difference between a man and a child.
This doctrine elicits from Mr. Mill the following extraordinary outburst
of rhetoric:--
"If, instead of the glad tidings that there exists a Being in whom
all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive,
exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world
is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they
are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government,
except that 'the highest human morality which we are capable of
conceiving' does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will
bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this,
and at the same time call this being by the names which express and
affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will
not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one
thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him.
I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that
epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me
to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go."--(P. 103.)
We will not pause to comment on the temper and taste of this declamation;
we will simply ask whether Mr. Mill really supposes the word _good_ to
lose all community of meaning, when it is applied, as it constantly is,
to different persons among our "fellow-creatures," with express reference
to their different duties and different qualifications for performing
them? The duties of a father are not the same as those of a son; is the
word therefore wholly equivocal when we speak of one person as a _good
father_, and another as a _good son_? Nay, when we speak generally of a
man as _good_, has not the epithet a tacit reference to human nature and
human duties? and yet is there no community of meaning when the same
epithet is applied to other Creatures? [Greek: Hê aretê pros to ergon
to oikeion]--the goodness of any being whatever has relation to the
nature and office of that being. We may therefore test Mr. Mill's
declamation by a parallel case. A wise and experienced father addresses a
young and inexperienced son: "My son," he says, "there may be some of my
actions which do not seem to you to be wise or good, or such as you would
do in my place. Remember, however, that your duties are different from
mine; that your knowledge of my duties is very imperfect; and that there
may be things which you cannot now see to be wise and good, but which you
may hereafter discover to be so." "Father," says the son, "your
principles of action are not the same as mine; the highest morality which
I can conceive at present does not sanction them; and as for believing
that you are good in anything of which I do not plainly see the
goodness,"--We will not repeat Mr. Mill's alternative; we will only ask
whether it is not just possible that there may be as much difference
between man and God as there is between a child and his father?
This declamation is followed by a sneer, which is worth quoting, not on
its own account, but as an evidence of the generosity with which Mr. Mill
deals with the supposed motives of his antagonists, and of the accuracy
of his acquaintance with the subject discussed. He says:--
"It is worthy of remark, that the doubt whether words applied to
God have their human signification, is only felt when the words
relate to his moral attributes; it is never heard of with regard to
his power. We are never told that God's omnipotence must not be
supposed to mean an infinite degree of the power we know in man and
nature, and that perhaps it does not mean that he is able to kill
us, or consign us to eternal flames. The Divine Power is always
interpreted in a completely human signification; but the Divine
Goodness and Justice must be understood to be such only in an
unintelligible sense. Is it unfair to surmise that this is because
those who speak in the name of God, have need of the human
conception of his power, since an idea which can overawe and
enforce obedience must address itself to real feelings; but are
content that his goodness should be conceived only as something
inconceivable, because they are so often required to teach
doctrines respecting him which conflict irreconcilably with all
goodness that we can conceive?"--(P. 104.)
On the latter part of this paragraph we will not attempt to comment. But
as regards the former part, we meet Mr. Mill's confident assertion with a
direct denial, and take the opportunity of informing him that the
conception of infinite Power has suggested the same difficulties; and has
been discussed by philosophers and theologians in the same manner, as
those of infinite Wisdom and infinite Goodness. Has Mr. Mill never heard
of such questions as, Whether Omnipotence can reverse the past?--Whether
God can do that which He does not will to do?--Whether God's perfect
foreknowledge is compatible with his own perfect liberty?--Whether God
could have made a better world than the existing one? Nay, has not our
critic, in this very chapter, been arguing against Mr. Mansel on the
question, whether the Absolute can be conceived as a Cause acting in
time: and what is this but a form of the question, whether power, when
predicated of God is exactly the same thing as power when predicated of
man? Or why has it been said that creation _ex nihilo_--an absolutely
first act of causation, is inconceivable by us, but from the
impossibility of finding in human power an exact type of Divine power? To
attribute discreditable motives to an opponent, even to account for
unquestionable facts, is usually considered as an abuse of criticism.
What shall we say when the facts are fictitious as well as the motives?
With regard to Mr. Mansel, the only person who is included by name in
this accusation, it is "worthy of remark," that the earliest mention of
the obnoxious theory in his writings occurs in connection with a
difficulty relating solely to the conception of infinite power, and not
at all to the moral attributes of God.[BG]
[BG] See _Prolegomena Logica_, p. 77 (2nd ed., p. 85.)
Mr. Mill concludes this chapter with another instance of that _ignoratio
elenchi_ which has been so abundantly manifested throughout his previous
criticisms. His opponent, he allows, "would and does admit that the
qualities as conceived by us bear _some likeness_ to the justice and
goodness which belong to God, since man was made in God's image." But he
considers that this "semi-concession" "destroys the whole fabric" of Mr.
Mansel's argument. "The Divine goodness," he says, "which is said to be a
different thing from human goodness, but of which the human conception of
goodness is some imperfect reflexion or resemblance, does it agree with
what men call goodness in the _essence_ of the quality--in what
_constitutes_ it goodness? If it does, the 'Rationalists' are right; it
is not illicit to reason from the one to the other. If not, the divine
attribute, whatever else it may be, is not goodness, and ought not to be
called by the name." Now the question really at issue is not whether the
"Rationalist" argument is licit or illicit, but whether, in its lawful
use, it is to be regarded as infallible or fallible. We have already
quoted a portion of Mr. Mansel's language on this point; we will now
quote two more passages, which, without any comment, will sufficiently
show how utterly Mr. Mill has mistaken the purport of the argument which
he has undertaken to examine.
"We do not certainly know the exact nature and operation of the
moral attributes of God: we can but infer and conjecture from what
we know of the moral attributes of man: and the analogy between the
Finite and the Infinite can never be so perfect as to preclude all
possibility of error in the process. But the possibility becomes
almost a certainty, when any one human faculty is elevated by
itself into an authoritative criterion of religious truth, without
regard to those collateral evidences by which its decisions may be
modified and corrected."[BH]... "Beyond question, every doubt
which our reason may suggest in matters of religion is entitled to
its due place in the examination of the evidences of religion; if
we will treat it as a part only, and not the whole; if we will not
insist on a positive solution of that which, it may be, is given us
for another purpose than to be solved. It is reasonable to believe
that, in matters of belief as well as of practice, God has not
thought fit to annihilate the free will of man, but has permitted
speculative difficulties to exist as the trial and the discipline
of sharp and subtle intellects, as He has permitted moral
temptations to form the trial and the discipline of strong and
eager passions.... We do not doubt that the conditions of our moral
trial tend towards good, and not towards evil; that human nature,
even in its fallen state, bears traces of the image of its Maker,
and is fitted to be an instrument in His moral government. And we
believe this, notwithstanding the existence of passions and
appetites which, isolated and uncontrolled, appear to lead in an
opposite direction. Is it then more reasonable to deny that a
system of revealed religion, whose unquestionable tendency as a
whole is to promote the glory of God and the welfare of mankind,
can have proceeded from the same Author, merely because we may be
unable to detect the same character in some of its minuter
features, viewed apart from the system to which they
belong?"[BI]
[BH] _Bampton Lectures_, p. 157, Fourth Edition.
[BI] _Bampton Lectures_, p. 166, Fourth Edition.
Surely this is very different from denouncing all reasoning from human
goodness to Divine as "illicit." To take a parallel case. The manufacture
of gunpowder is a dangerous process, and, if carried on without due
precautions, is very likely to lead to disastrous consequences. Surely it
is one thing to point out what precautions are necessary, and what evils
are to be apprehended from the neglect of them, and another to forbid the
manufacture altogether. Mr. Mill does not seem to see the difference.
We have now considered in detail all that part of Mr. Mill's book which
is devoted to the examination of Sir W. Hamilton's chief and most
characteristic doctrines--those which constitute the Philosophy of the
Conditioned. The remainder of the work, which deals chiefly with
subordinate questions of psychology and logic, contains much from which
we widely dissent, but which we cannot at present submit to a special
examination. Nor is it necessary, so far as Sir W. Hamilton's reputation
is concerned, that we should do so. If the Philosophy of the Conditioned
is really nothing better than the mass of crudities and blunders which
Mr. Mill supposes it to be, the warmest admirers of Hamilton will do
little in his behalf, even should they succeed in vindicating some of the
minor details of his teaching. If, on the other hand, it can be shown, as
we have attempted to show, that Mr. Mill is utterly incapable of dealing
with Hamilton's philosophy in its higher branches, his readers may be
left to judge for themselves whether he is implicitly to be trusted as
regards the lower. In point of fact, they will do Mr. Mill no injustice,
if they regard the above specimens as samples of his entire criticism. We
gladly except, as of a far higher order, those chapters in which he is
content with stating his own views; but in the perpetual baiting of Sir
W. Hamilton, which occupies the greater part of the volume, we recognise,
in general, the same captiousness and the same incompetence which we have
so often had occasion to point out in the course of our previous
remarks.
It is, we confess, an unpleasant and an invidious task, to pick to
pieces, bit by bit, the work of an author of high reputation. But Mr.
Mill has chosen to put the question on this issue, and he has left those
who dissent from him no alternative but to follow his example. He has
tasked all the resources of minute criticism to destroy piece-meal the
reputation of one who has hitherto borne an honoured name in philosophy:
he has no right to complain if the same measure is meted to himself:--
"Neque enim lex æquior ulla
Quam necis artifices arte perire sua."
But it is not so much the justice as the necessity of the case which we
would plead as our excuse. Mr. Mill's method of criticism has reduced the
question to a very narrow compass. Either Sir W. Hamilton, instead of
being a great philosopher, is the veriest blunderer that ever put pen to
paper, or the blunders are Mr. Mill's own. To those who accept the first
of these alternatives it must always remain a marvel how Sir W. Hamilton
could ever have acquired that reputation which compels even his critic to
admit that "he alone, of our metaphysicians of this and the preceding
generation, has acquired, merely as such, an European celebrity;" how he
could have been designated by his illustrious opponent, Cousin, as the
"greatest critic of our age," or described by the learned Brandis as
"almost unparalleled in the profound knowledge of ancient and modern
philosophy." The marvel may perhaps disappear, should it be the case, as
we believe it to be, that the second alternative is the true one.
But even in this case, it should be borne in mind that the blow will by
no means fall on Mr. Mill with the same weight with which he designed it
to fall on the object of his criticism. Sir W. Hamilton had devoted his
whole life to the study of metaphysics; he was probably more deeply read
in that study than any of his contemporaries; and if all his reading
could produce nothing better than the confusion and self-contradiction
which Mr. Mill imputes to him, the result would be pitiable indeed. Mr.
Mill, on the other hand, we strongly suspect, despises metaphysics too
much to be at the pains of studying them at all, and seems to think that
a critic is duly equipped for his task with that amount of knowledge
which, like Dogberry's reading and writing, "comes by nature." His work
has a superficial cleverness which, together with the author's previous
reputation, will insure it a certain kind of popularity; but we venture
to predict that its estimation by its readers will be in the inverse
ratio to their knowledge of the subject. But Mr. Mill's general
reputation rests on grounds quite distinct from his performances in
metaphysics; and though we could hardly name one of his writings from
whose main principles we do not dissent, there is hardly one which is not
better fitted to sustain his character as a thinker than this last, in
which the fatal charms of the goddess Necessity seem to have betrayed her
champion into an unusual excess of polemical zeal, coupled, it must be
added, with an unusual deficiency of philosophical knowledge.
POSTSCRIPT.
It was not till after the preceding pages had been sent to press that I
became acquainted with a little work recently published under the title
of _The Battle of the two Philosophies, by an Inquirer_. The author
appears to have been a personal pupil of Sir W. Hamilton's, as well as a
diligent student of his writings. At all events, he has "inquired" to
some purpose, and obtained a far more intelligent knowledge of Hamilton's
system than is exhibited by the majority of recent critics. It is
gratifying to find many of my remarks confirmed by the concurrent
testimony of so competent a witness. The following would have been
noticed in their proper places had I been sooner acquainted with them.
Of the popular confusion between the _infinite_ and the _indefinite_,
noticed above, pp. 50, 112, "An Inquirer" observes:--
"If we could realise in thought infinite space, that conception would be
a perfectly definite one; but the notion that is here offered us in its
place, though it may be real, is certainly not definite; it is merely the
conception of an indefinite extension.... In truth, when we strive to
think of infinite space, the nearest approach we can make to it is this
notion of an indefinite space, which Mr. Mill has substituted for it. But
these two conceptions are not only verbally, they are really wholly
distinct. An indefinite space is a space of the extent of which we think
vaguely, without knowing or without thinking where its boundaries are.
Infinite space has certainly, and quite distinctly, no boundaries
anywhere."--(Pp. 18-20.)
On Mr. Mill's strange distinction between the Divine Attributes, as some
infinite and others absolute, the author's remarks are substantially in
agreement with what has been said above on pp. 105-6.
"Mr. Mill argues that all the attributes of God cannot be infinite; but
that some, as power, may be infinite; and some, as goodness and
knowledge, must be absolute, because neither can knowledge be more than
complete, nor goodness more than perfect. When we know all there is to be
known, he says, knowledge has attained its utmost limit. But this is
merely begging the whole question. If there be an Infinite Being, He
cannot know all there is to be known unless He know Himself; and
adequately to know what is infinite is to have infinite knowledge. The
same thing would be true if there could be a Being whose power and
duration only were infinite. 'The will,' he adds, 'is either entirely
right, or wrong in different degrees: downwards there are as many
gradations as we choose to distinguish; but upwards there is an ideal
limit. Goodness can be imagined complete,--such that there can be no
greater goodness beyond it,'... But a Being of infinite power and finite
goodness would not be perfectly good, because His power would not be
wholly, but only in part directed by His goodness. Nay, as that which is
finite bears no proportion whatever to what is infinite: as, however
great it be absolutely, it is still infinitely less than infinity, such a
Being would be partly good and yet infinitely evil, which is absurd in
reason and impossible in fact."--(Pp. 24, 25.)
The following estimate of Mr. Mill's merits as a metaphysician coincides
with that which, contrary to my expectation, I found forced upon myself
after a careful examination of his book.--(See above, Pp. 62, 182.)
"We cannot but think that Mr. Mill in this, his first work in pure
metaphysics, has disappointed just expectation. In leaving the fields of
practical philosophy, he seems to have left his genius behind him. Even
the peculiar 'cunning of his right hand'--even his unexcelled logical
power avails him little, so continually does he fail to see distinctly
the conception with which he is fencing.... As long as he is applying
given principles to the solution of practical questions; as long as he
has to do with the process of an argument, he proves himself a most able
instructor and guide. But when he has to grapple with a metaphysical
problem, it almost invariably arrives that the central, the metaphysical
difficulty, escapes him."--(Pp. 78-80.)
MUIR AND PATERSON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
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