I UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES T'he Channels of English Literature ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS AND SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 4473 9 The Channels of English Literature Edited by OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A. ENGLISH EPIC AND HEROIC POETRY. By Professor W. MACNEILL DIXON, M.A., University of Glasgow. ENGLISH LYRIC POETRY. By ERNEST RHYS. ENGLISH ELEGIAC, DIDACTIC, AND RELIGIOUS POETRY. By the Very Rev. H. C. BEECHING, D.D., D.Litt., Dean of Norwich, and the Rev. RONALD BAYNE, M.A. ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETRY. By Professor F. E. SCHILLING, Litt.D., University of Pennsylvania. ENGLISH SATIRIC AND HUMOROUS LITERATURE. By OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A., F.S.A. ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS AND SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY. By Professor JAMES SETH, M.A., University of Edinburgh. THE ENGLISH ESSAY AND ESSAYISTS. By Professor HUGH WALKER, LL.D., St. David's College, Lampeter. THE ENGLISH NOVEL. By Professor GEORGE SAINTSBURY, LL.D,, University of Edinburgh. ENGLISH HISTORIANS AND SCHOOLS OF HISTORY. By Professor RICHARD LODGE, University of Edinburgh. ENGLISH CRITICISM. By Professor J. W. H. ATKINS, University College of Walas. J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS AND SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY BY JAMES SETH, M.A. PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. BEDFORD STREET, STRAND. 1912 NEW YORK: E. P. BUTTON & CO. All rights reserved Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh JB im S-P9 TO ALEXANDER CAMPBELL FRASER DISTINGUISHED ALIKE AS A REPRESENTATIVE AND AS AN EXPOSITOR OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY THIS STUDY IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY AN OLD PUPIL PREFACE THE aim of this volume is to trace the chief stages ^ in the development of English philosophy, through a study p\ of its leading representatives in their relation to one another Treatise, or Professor Forsyth's in his recent careful and ""* suggestive study of the * method and general develop- ment' of English Philosophy. 1 My effort has been to concentrate attention on the epoch-making philosophers rather than on the less important figures in the movement, and on the actual thought of the individual philosophers rather than on the logical sequence of English philo- sophy as a chapter in the development of ideas. More- over, in accordance with the plan of the Series, as well as in accordance with the facts of the case, English philo- sophy has been regarded as a form of English literature. At the same time the term * philosophy ' has been in- 1 English Philosophy : a Study of its Method and General Develop- ment, by Thomas M. Forsyth (1910). viii PREFACE terpreted in a strict sense, which excludes such writers as Carlyle or Matthew Arnold from the study here under- taken. I have to make grateful acknowledgment of the help which has been ungrudgingly rendered by my friend and colleague, Mr. Henry Barker, Lecturer in Moral Philo- sophy in this University, who has carefully read the entire work both in manuscript and in proof, and whose advice has been of great value at many points. I have also to thank Mr. John Handyside, Lecturer in Philo- sophy in the University of Liverpool, Mr. John Laird, Assistant in Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrews, and Mr. John Baillie, Assistant in Logic and Metaphysics in this University, for their kindness in revising the proofs, and for a number of important suggestions. JAMES SETH. February, 1912. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY AS LITERATURE. ITS GENE- RAL CHARACTERISTICS : i. EXPERIENTIAL ; 2. EPISTOMOLOGICAL ; 3. PRACTICAL. ITS BEGINNINGS IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES ROGER BACON ; WILLIAM OF OCKHAM i PART I THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. I. BACON : PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENTIFIC ME- THOD ....... 20 II. HOBBES : MATERIALISM AND POLITICAL PHILO- SOPHY 56 III. THE IDEALISTIC REACTION : CAMBRIDGE PLATONISM AND RATIONALISM ... 79 IV. LOCKE : THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE . 92 CONTENTS PART II THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHAP. PAGE I. BERKELEY : THE NEW IDEALISM . . .123 II. HUME : EMPIRICISM AND SCEPTICISM . -149 III. THE MORALISTS: i. THE MORAL SENSE SCHOOL SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHESON, AND BUTLER ; 2. ASSOCIATION AND SYMPATHY AS EXPLANATIONS OF THE MORAL SENSE HARTLEY AND ADAM SMITH ; 3. THE EARLY UTILITARIANS TUCKER AND PALEY 188 IV. THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM : PRICE AND REID . 227 PART III THE NINETEENTH CENTURY I. THE ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT OF HUME'S EMPIRICISM : i. UTILITARIANISM AND ASSOCIATIONISM BfiNTHAM, JAMES MlLL, JOHN STUART MILL, BAIN ; 2. EVOLU- TIONISM HERBERT SPENCER . . . 240 CONTENTS xi CHAP. PAGE II. THE DEVELOPMENT AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE : i. NATURAL REALISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED HAMIL- TON AND MANSEL ; 2. AGNOSTICISM SPENCER AND HUXLEY ; 3. RETURN TO THE CHARACTERISTIC POINT OF VIEW OF SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY CALDERWOOD, MAR- TINEAU, FRASER . /' . . 298 III. THE IDEALISTIC ANSWER TO HUME : i. SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY COLERIDGE AND NEWMAN ; 2. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM EARLIER VERSION : FERRIER AND GROTE ; 3. AB- SOLUTE IDEALISM LATER VERSION : STIR- LING, CAIRO, GREEN, BRADLEY . -319 INDEX ... . . 368 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS AND SCHOOLS ^F PHILOSOPHY INTRODUCTION ENGLISH philosophy is entitled to be called literature in a sense in which the philosophy of perhaps no other nation has the same right to the name. Whether we think of Bacon and Hobbes in the seventeenth century, of Berkeley and Hume in the eighteenth, or of Coleridge and Ferrier in the nineteenth, we cannot but recognise qualities of style which entitle the writer to rank among the masters of English prose of the expository and con- troversial type with the best essayists of our country. Even if we take a philosopher of lower literary merit, like Locke or Reid, we find that in comparison with the philosophers of the Continent, and especially of Germany, the style is characterised by the absence of severity and technicality ; and while this may lead to a certain loss of precision which causes difficulty in the interpretation of the philosophy, the fact that the works are written in the vernacular adds to their literary value. The un- technical, as well as the literary, quality of the style of English philosophy is doubtless in some measure due to the fact that its chief representatives were not, like the great German idealists, university professors, but men of affairs, in close contact with the life of the nation. This is true, more or less, of Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and the Utilitarians ; and even Hobbes tells us A 2 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS that his chief works were the fruit of the stirring events of his time. We cannot but note a certain de- terioration of style as the consequence of the increasingly academic character of our national philosophy. In the seventeenth century the Cambridge Platonists are a group of academic thinkers, whose style is marred by technicalities and spoiled by over-quotation ; while Hutcheson and Adam Smith, Reid, Hamilton, and other leaders of the Scottish school, as well as the repre- sentatives of Absolute Idealism in the nineteenth century, are academic teachers. With the exception of Adam Smith, Reid, and Ferrier, these later writers are either without literary gifts, or tend to a style too technical and academic. A distinguished authority on the subject has remarked on the unity of type which is characteristic of English philo- sophy from first to last. Speaking of the five dominating names Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume Croom Robertson says that ' whatever their difference of individual character and aims,' these philosophers l display a greater general similarity of intellectual vision than can be matched, for such a succession of first-rate minds, from the history of any other modern people.' In the various systems of German thought, on the contrary, in spite of their apparent uniformity, 'upon a closer view the dis- tance is seen to be enormous from the dogmatism of Leibnitz to the critical spirit of Kant, or again from Kant's sober reserve to the stupendous confidence of Hegel; while after the lapse of 150 years from the time of Leibnitz, a general change of face may be said to have been made at last.' x While this contrast is, on the whole, a real one, yet it must not be over-estimated. A closer inspection discovers not only fundamental differences between the philosophical ideas of Bacon and those of Hobbes, but between Bacon and his later successors, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume ; while in the philosophy of each of 1 Philosophical Remains, p. 40. INTRODUCTION 3 these writers there is a diversity of philosophical tendency, and if we take account of writers who, though of in- ferior merit, are yet of much significance the Cambridge Platonists, the 'moral sense' school of moralists, the Scottish intuitionists, and the advocates of absolute idealism we discover a contrariety of doctrine which suggests a vigour and independence in the English philosophical mind which is hardly less remarkable than the charac- teristic stream of tendency which is generally identified with it. Yet there is such a characteristic stream of tendency. Three main features can hardly fail to arrest the attention of the student of English philosophy, features which differentiate it from the philosophy of the Continent. These are (i) its experiential and inductive method, as distinguished from the rationalistic and deductive method of Continental philosophy; (2) the epistemological character of the former, in contrast with the ontological character of the latter ; and (3) the practical or ethical interest which dominates the English, as contrasted with the metaphysi- cal and speculative interest which dominates the Con- tinental philosophy. (i) Bacon shares with Descartes the honour of inau- gurating the modern period of philosophy. Bacon's protest against the principle of authority, a principle which had been accepted with more or less unhesitating loyalty by the Scholastic philosophers, is no less vigorous than that of Descartes. Both alike are eager to substitute for faith and tradition the independent effort of the indi- vidual mind in the pursuit of truth. Bacon extends his protest to antiquity itself (for is not antiquity the youth of the world ?), and to the chief philosopher of Greek anti- quity who was also 'the philosopher' of the Middle Ages. He repudiates the method of the Aristotelian logic which had ruled the Scholastic philosophy in its period of maturity the syllogistic or deductive method and would substitute for it the inductive method of modern science. Descartes insists upon * clear and distinct ideas' as the method of philosophical thought; 4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS for Bacon the only fruitful method is a first-hand study or observation of the facts of experience. Descartes is the founder of the great speculative movement which proceeds through Spinoza to Leibnitz and Kant and Hegel ; Bacon is the founder of the English experiential and inductive movement represented by Locke, Berkeley and Hume, Hartley, the Mills, and Spencer. The characteristic works of the Cartesian movement are the Ethica more geometrlco demonstrate! of Spinoza and the Logic of Hegel ; those of the Baconian are the Essay of Locke, which follows the ' historical, plain method,' and the Treatise of Hume, 'an attempt to introduce the experi- mental method of reasoning into moral subjects.' The ambition of the former movement is the attainment of systematic completeness, the vision of all things in their ultimate and perfect unity, or in God ; such a philosophy rightly describes the subject-matter of its investigation, as well as the point of view from which it seeks to solve all its problems, in the words, De Deo. The ideal of the latter is to keep close to reality, to verify all its conclusions by reference to the facts of experience ; it is always willing to sacrifice system and symmetry for faithfulness to the data of experience, speculative completeness for scientific correctness and empirical truth. The one effort is inspired by a passion for system, the other by a passion for actuality ; the temper of the one is idealistic, that of the other realistic. Though English philosophy begins, in Bacon, with an ambitious attempt to construct, at least in outline, the encyclopaedia of the sciences, the basis of the entire structure being l natural history,' or a collection of all the facts, it was not long before it narrowed its scope to the more specific problems of philosophy, and the experi- ential became the psychological or introspective method, the method of inner observation, which fixes attention upon the inner side of experience, or upon experience as such. This is the method common to Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, to the associationists and the Scottish intui- tionists. INTRODUCTION 5 The experientialism of English philosophy must not be confused with empiricism. Empiricism is developed out of the experientialism of Locke by Hume and the associationists ; but Locke himself is not, any more than Bacon, a mere empiricist. Nor are we to understand the contrast between the experientialism of English and the rationalism of Continental philosophy in any absolute sense. Not to speak of the experiential element in Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, in Kant and Hegel, we find a constantly recurring note of rationalism in English philosophy in Hobbcs, in Locke, in the Cambridge Platonists and kindred thinkers of the seventeenth century, in the later speculations of Berkeley under the same Platonic influence, in the intuitionism of the Scottish school, and in the absolute idealism of the later nine- teenth century, developed under the influence of German philosophy. (2) Although Locke is the founder of English episte- mology, it may be said that from the beginning of the movement the question of the nature of knowledge, of the true method of scientific explanation, forced itself upon the attention of English philosophy. Bacon's attack upon the Scholastic method, and his proposal to substitute for it a more adequate method, amounted in reality to a criticism of knowledge, as it had been previously under- stood, and a new theory of its essential nature and method of procedure. The appeal to the facts of experience which he inaugurated was at the same time a condemna- tion of the accepted method of deductive or dialectical explanation. His account of the various idola or precon- ceptions which vitiate the knowledge of his age is, in the main, a statement of the characteristic defects of the Scholastic method. While Descartes also begins with a repudiation of the old knowledge, and with a characterisa- tion of the new, which he proposes to substitute for it, he quickly passes from the problem of knowledge to that of metaphysical or ontological construction, and his example is followed by his successors, who, with the notable exception of Kant, accept the Cartesian ideal of know- 6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS ledge, and are preoccupied with metaphysical construc- tion rather than with the problem of knowledge or method. 1 Locke is the first English philosopher to substitute the problem of knowledge for that of reality, holding, like Kant in his proposed * criticism ' of human know- ledge, that this is the previous question which must be answered before the metaphysical question of the nature of reality can be attempted with any hope of success. In his own memorable words, *It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.' 2 His main difficulty is to show how knowledge can be at once general and real ; and his conclusion is that it is either general and unreal, or real but merely particular. Our deficiency of certain knowledge is supplied, he holds, by that ' opinion,' * faith,' or ' assent ' which is based upon probability, a conclusion which may be compared with that of the later Kantian criticism. While Locke had protested against * innate ideas,' Berkeley's protest was directed against 4 abstract ideas ' ; and his nominalistic interpretation of the significance of general terms, as reducibile to the particular ideas which they represent, is closely connected with his reduction of the esse of the material world to its percipi. His theory of knowledge yields immediately a corresponding theory of reality. All that was left for Hume to do, to reach his sceptical dissolution of know- ledge, was to extend the Berkeleyan nominalism from matter to mind, and to identify the connexions between impressions and ideas with the customary association which Berkeley had already recognised under the name of * suggestion.' Thus the result of the sustained effort 1 Hobbes, like Bacon, lays the basis of his system in a theory of knowledge ; but his interest is rather in the materialistic system which he proceeds to construct on this basis than in the security of the basis itself. The Cambridge Platonists and other rationalistic critics of Hobbes in the seventeenth century similarly propose a theory of know- ledge which carries with it a corresponding theory of reality. * Essay concerning Human Understanding, Epistle to the Reader. INTRODUCTION 7 of English philosophy during its best period to solve the problem of knowledge is the sceptical dissolution of know- ledge into opinion, of certainty into probability, of rational connexion into customary association. And while the refutation of this scepticism is attempted independently by the Scottish intuitionists and, under the inspiration of Kant and his successors, by the idealists of the nineteenth century, the doctrine of associationism is developed by Hartley and the Mill?, and Spencer invokes the aid of the new principles of evolution and heredity to reinforce the same view. It may be said, therefore, without qualification that, since Locke's epoch-making substitution of the episte- mological for the ontological problem, the basis of English metaphysical theory has always been sought in a theory of knowledge. To take two notable examples from opposite schools of thought, section i. of Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysic is devoted to * the epistemology, or theory of knowing,' section ii. to * the agnoiology, or theory of ignorance,' section iii. to ' the ontology, or theory of being ' ; part i. of Spencer's First Principles to * the unknowable,' part ii. to ' the knowable.' Before proceeding to the exposition of his system, the former writer thinks it necessary to prove that it is possible to know reality and to distinguish knowledge from ignor- ance ; the latter to prove that we cannot know reality or the absolute, but only the relative and phenomenal. Gnosticism and agnosticism alike rest upon a theory of knowledge. Although, in the light of the Kantian Criticism,' this view of the relation of the ontological to the epistemological problem came home to these later thinkers with a new clearness and conviction, it was a lesson which they might have learned from the indepen- dent movement of English philosophy. (3) It is important to observe the precise sense in which English philosophy may be said to be dominated by the practical or ethical interest, as contrasted with the speculative or metaphysical interest which is the inspiration of Continental philosophy. It cannot be 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS rightly said that the English estimate of knowledge is utilitarian, although Bacon's insistence upon the utility of knowledge in his famous dicta that ' knowledge is power,' and that its end is 'the improvement of man's estate,' certainly suggest such an estimate. It is rather that the intellectual interest, as such, is subordinated to the moral, the theoretical to the practical ; that the supreme interest is the conduct of life rather than what Locke calls ' the conduct of the understanding.' Perhaps the actual state of the case may be best brought out by comparing the English with the Greek estimate of the comparative values of theory and practice, of the life of thought and that of action. The Greeks always saw in philosophy the true * way of life, 1 and the Socratic identi- fication of virtue with knowledge was only the explicit statement of the conviction, which inspired all their philo- sophical activity, that without theoretic understanding the practice of virtue must be blind and uncertain. But the Greek admiration of * theory ' went further than this interpretation of virtue as the expression of knowledge. For Plato the life of ideal virtue is that of philosophic, as contrasted with civic excellence, and for Aristotle the entire life of practical activity and moral excellence is instrumental to the higher life of theoretic activity and intellectual excellence. The English mind is practical in the sense that for it the supremely important thing is action ; and not only does it place action above thought, but it is apt to depreciate the practical importance of knowledge, and to conclude that the limitations of human knowledge point to practice rather than speculation as the real destiny of man, and that for the practical conduct of life, faith is a better guide than rational insight, and probability serves where certainty is not to be reached. The attitude thus described is not, of course, peculiar to English philosophy. It is the characteristic attitude of Kant, who in this as in other respects may be said to combine the qualities of English with those of Conti- nental philosophy. As he refuses to leave the solid ground of experience, and repudiates the 'rational dogmatism' INTRODUCTION 9 of his predecessors ; as he substitutes epistemology or the * criticism ' of knowledge for the old ontology and metaphysics, so he finds the ultimate clue to the nature of reality in the practical rather than in the speculative reason, in the ethical rather than in the intellectual inte- rest. Even for Spinoza, with all his intellectualism, the moral and practical interest may be said to be supreme, since the great service which the intellectual vision of all things in the light of their divine unity and necessity renders to man is to free him from 'the bondage of the passions ' ; for Spinoza, as for Socrates, virtue is know- ledge, and the supreme value of knowledge, in his eyes, is that it makes virtue possible. The peculiarity of the English view is that, depreciating the moral value of knowledge, at least of the speculative type, and insisting upon the necessity of supplementing the defects of know- ledge by a faith or practical certainty which satisfies the needs of the moral life, it tends to diminish the ardour of the pursuit of truth, and is even apt to lead to the appeal to the ordinary practical understanding or the c common sense ' of mankind for the solution of purely speculative problems. It is not surprising that the English contribution to ethical and political philosophy should be considerable both in amount and in importance. The course of political and constitutional history stimulated reflection upon the nature and functions of the State and the theoretic basis of that liberty of the subject which asserted itself more and more as the ideal of the national aspiration. The treatises of Hobbes and Locke, the one maintaining the absolute and inalienable character of the authority of the sovereign, the other insisting that government is a trust for the faithful discharge of which the holder may rightfully be called to account by the people who have committed it to him, are of epoch-making importance for political theory. The importance of Hobbes's Leviathan is not less for ethics than for politics. Proclaiming as it does the radical individualism, the inherent selfishness of human nature, it stimulated a succession of moralists to io ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS the effort to establish the opposite view ; the early in- tuitionists and the advocates of a ' moral sense ' united in a common protest against what they regarded as the travesty of human nature offered by Hobbes. The most notable result of this effort is found in Butler's Sermons on Human Nature, which is, all in all, probably the most important contribution of the English mind to the theory of ethics. The union of the ethical and the political interest which is characteristic of Hobbes, but which falls into the background in his successors, again becomes prominent in the utilitarians of the nineteenth century. The real beginning of English philosophy is to be dated from Bacon's break with Scholasticism. The Scholastic philosophy was not national ; it represents the common intellectual effort of Christian Europe. As Professor Sorley says, 'The English language may be said to have become for the first time the vehicle of philosophical literature by the publication of Bacon's Advancement of Learning, in 1605. . . National charac- teristics are never so strongly marked in science and philosophy as in other branches of literature, and their influence takes longer in making itself felt. The English birth or residence of a mediaeval philosopher is of little more than biographical interest : it would be vain to trace its influence on the ideas or style of his work. With the Latin language went community of audience, of culture and of topics. This traditional commonwealth of thought was weakened by the forces which issued in the renascence ; and, among these forces, the increased consciousness of nationality led, gradually, to greater differentiation in national types of culture and to the use of the national language even for subjects which appealed chiefly, or only, to the community of learned men. However much he may have preferred the Latin tongue as the vehicle of his philosophy, Bacon's own action made him a leader of this movement ; and it so happened that the type of thought which he expounded INTRODUCTION 1 1 had affinities with the practical and positive achievements of the English mind.' 1 On the other hand, it has been suggested by Croom Robertson that the beginnings of English philosophy are to be sought within the Scholastic period. * No nation has kept more steadily to its line of thought . . . but, also, none perhaps has thought so persistently. We seem to have had a line before any other modern people. . . . In gauging, historically, the philosophical performance of the English mind, those who rate it low and those who rate it high err alike, as it seems to me, in contracting the vision too much. Always it is presumed that the first note was struck by the famous Chancellor less than three centuries ago . . . that before Bacon there was no philo- sophical thought in England, or none at least that could be called English.' It is forgotten ' how actively the English or British intellect was at work in an age long before Bacon and towards a result which he and his followers are commonly thought to have been the first to conceive.' * Men of our race played a part of quite singular prominence in the general intellectual movement of Europe. . . . Almost might one say that as long as the movement, from taking place within the fold of the universal Church, was in the strict sense a collectively European one, the start at every new stage of the course was due to the initiative of a British schoolman.' 2 In proof of his contention, Robertson cites the names of John Scotus Erigena in the ninth century, John of Salisbury in the twelfth, Alexander of Hales and Roger Bacon in the thirteenth, and Duns Scotus and William of Ockham in the fourteenth. Of these names, however, the only ones which can be said really to represent the characteristic trend of later English philosophy are those of Roger Bacon and William of Ockham, the experien- tialism of the former and the nominalism of the latter heralding the dawn of modern philosophy, and anticipating, 1 ' The Beginnings of English Philosophy,' Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. iv., ch. xiv. p. 268. s Philosophical Remains, p. 28 ff. 12 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS along one of its main lines, the tendency of later English thought. 'It is more than probable,' says the late Professor Adamson, 'that in all fairness, when we speak of the Baconian reform of science, we should refer to the for- gotten monk of the thirteenth century rather than to the brilliant and famous Chancellor of the seventeenth.' a ' He had the same thought, the same ambition ; he con- ceived the same enterprise with the same courage and less glory,' says Remusat. 2 That enterprise was the reform of philosophy by the substitution of the appeal to experience for the method of argumentation from premises accepted on authority. Like the later Bacon, he begins his plea for reform by an enumeration of the chief causes of error, or offendicula. Of such pestiferae causae he distinguishes four kinds authority, custom, the opinion of the unskilled many, and the concealment of real ignorance with the show or pretence of knowledge. Of these the first and the last are the objects of his special denunciation, and he finds them combined in the attitude of Scholastic philosophy to its sources. Apart even from its roots in authority, however, he condemns the Scholastic method of argumen- tation as a medium of truth. Experience alone certifies or verifies the results of argument. * If we wish to have complete and thoroughly verified knowledge, we must proceed by the methods of experimental science.' This last is * the mistress of all the sciences and the end of all speculation ' (domina omnium scientiarum et finis totius speculationis). But while he thus regards experience as the indispensable verification of truth reached by deductive reasoning, Bacon insists upon the value of the latter method in its own place. In particular he emphasises the importance of mathematics, which he calls ' the alphabet of philosophy.' * Physicists ought to know that their science is powerless unless they call in the aid of mathe- matics.' In this recognition of the necessity of combining 1 Roger Bacon: the Philosophy of Science in the Middle Ages, p. 7. * Histoire de la Philosophic en Angleterre, i. 43. INTRODUCTION 13 deduction with induction, and especially in his appreciation of the scientific value of mathematics, Roger Bacon shows a deeper insight into scientific method than the author of the Novum Organum. * In wealth of words, in brilliancy of imagination, Francis Bacon was immeasurably superior. But Roger Bacon had the sounder estimate and the firmer grasp of that combination of deductive with inductive method which marks the scientific discoverer.' l Like Francis Bacon, this remarkable thinker of the thirteenth century rates the practical value of knowledge above its theoretical value. l He belongs to the order of thinkers, typified by Pythagoras rather than by Aristotle, who engage in speculation, not for its own sake alone, but for social or ethical results that are to follow.' 2 Moral philosophy is for him the science to which all the others lead up. Yet here also he balances with fine perception the two sides of the case. ' Theory is useless without practice, and practice blind without theory.' Throughout the Opus Majus we cannot but see that, in spite of his denunciations of Scholasticism, he is deeply interested in the theological and religious ideas of his age ; and although the demand for a reform of philosophical method and the profound interest in natural science which this work displays might lead us to infer that its author had no interest in the characteristic problems of Scholastic philosophy, the account which a French writer has given of the contents of his many un- published manuscripts 3 makes it clear that the great controversy regarding the nature of universals fascinated him hardly less than his contemporaries, and that, as Mr. Bridges says, ' we shall best understand Bacon's life and work by regarding him as a progressive schoolman.' 4 It is all the more surprising that he should have been so far ahead of his time in his appreciation of the scientific aspect of knowledge, and should have not merely anticipated but 1 J. H. Bridges, Introd. to Opus, Majus, p. xci. a , Bridges, loc. cit. 3 Charles, Roger Bacon, sa vie et sa philosophic. * Bridges, Introd. p. xcii. i 4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS excelled Francis Bacon in his interpretation of scientific method. Of William of Ockham it has been said by a careful student of his works that 'he was the great English schoolman, and his nationality appears everywhere in his writings and actions, distinguishing him from the other leaders of mediaeval thought. . . . We see in William of Ockham some of the best features of the English character.' l Haureau, the historian of Scholastic philosophy, affirms that * it is in reality upon the soil so well prepared by the prince of nominalists that Francis Bacon built his eternal monument.' 2 He carries further, in the fourteenth century, that divergence from the essential principles of Scholasticism which Roger Bacon had inaugurated in the thirteenth. He so widens the breach between faith and knowledge as to constitute an irreconcilable dualism between these two spheres ; and by his criticism of realism he undermines the Scholastic method of abstract reasoning, and prepares the way for the modern scientific method the inductive investigation of the concrete facts of experience. Going further than any preceding Scholastic philosopher in separating the spheres of theological and philosophical truth, Ockham maintains that none of the truths of theology can be proved philosophically, that in seeking to prove even the existence of God we are involved in in- soluble contradiction. It is difficult to determine whether his zeal in thus separating the things of faith from the things of knowledge was the result of his concern for religious or for scientific truth. The probability is that he shared the tendency to religious mysticism which was characteristic of the Franciscan Order, of which he was a zealous member, and that his ^depreciation of theology as a science is intended as an indirect defence of practical religion. The actual result of his teaching, however, was in the main destructive, lending force to the growing i T. M. Lindsay, British Quarterly Review, vol. Ivi. p. 3, * Histoire de la Philosophic Scolastique, ii. 474. INTRODUCTION 15 tendency to adopt the doctrine of a ' twofold truth ' which was fatal to the presupposition of Scholastic philo- sophy the essential identity of the content of faith and that of knowledge. Nor can it be doubted that a part at least of Ockham's own interest in the distinction was the freedom of scientific inquiry which it promised and which constituted its positive significance for his successors in English philosophy. The later Bacon and Hobbes draw the same sharp and absolute line of distinction between the spheres of faith and knowledge, the only difference between these philosophers and William of Ockham being that the religious interest in the distinction which was apparently primary for him is in them entirely sub- ordinated to the scientific interest in intellectual freedom. Probably it was the union in Ockham of these two interests, no less than his struggle against the papal authority, that appealed so powerfully to Luther, who spoke of William as l mein lieber Meister Ockham.' But it is as the 'renewer of nominalism' that Ockham is best known in the history of philosophy. The doc- trine of realism, variously modified, had finally established itself as the orthodox doctrine of Scholastic philosophy. The victory of nominalism which marked the close of the Scholastic age was the result of the persistence with which Ockham urged the claims of a theory of knowledge and reality which lay nearer to experience than that which underlay the doctrine of realism, and at the same time recognised and reinterpreted the truth which that doctrine contained but had never succeeded in expressing. The knowledge of existence is always, Ockham contends, intuitive, never abstract or conceptual ; the real is always individual, never universal. The realists have abstracted the universal or common element from the individual things in which alone it really exists ; they have hypos- tatised these abstract universals, and attributed to them a higher degree of reality than that possessed by the individual things whose properties they are. Ockham's fundamental principle is that * plurality is not to be predicated without necessity ' (Non est ponenda p/ura/itas 1 6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS sine necessitate), that * entities are not to be unnecessarily multiplied ' (Ent'ia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessi- tatem). To predicate the independent or substantive existence of the universal or conceptual is to postulate plurality without necessity. The concept is not aliquid, but quoddam fictum ; the universal is only a 'term' or 4 sign,' not a * thing ' ; its * existence ' is only in the mind. On the other hand, the new nominalism (or terminism) differs from the old in recognising the importance of the concept, and is therefore indistinguishable from the doctrine of conceptualism. The name or term is not without meaning or real significance ; it is a * sign ' of reality, and has its warrant in the nature of reality. There are real likenesses or agreements between the individual things ; they are not mere individuals. As Haureau says, 'The universal notion has a real basis in the nature of things.' l The concept signifies several individuals, whose l natural resemblance ' makes it, though in itself particular, representative of them all. The discovery of these real likenesses, the investigation of the actual warrant in the nature of things for the representative function of the universal concept, is the work of science in the modern sense. It is in this sense that Ockham is, like Roger Bacon, a founder of English experientialism. Instead of reasoning down from uni- versals, accepted on authority, he insists upon the necessity of generalising from experience, of such a study of the language of nature as shall discover to us the really signifi- cant universals or those which are truly representative of the actual nature of things. It is a doctrine which we find restated in somewhat modified forms by Hobbes and Berkeley, as well as by Bacon ; but none of these later statements of the doctrine is equal to that of Ockham in adequacy and discrimination. 1 Op. cit., ii. 467. JPART I THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THE first task of philosophy in the seventeenth century was to differentiate itself from theology, to assert the freedom of the scientific intellect from the bondage of authority, and to determine the proper method of this independent investigation of the nature of reality. Modern philosophy originates in a change of the centre of interest from God and the supernatural to nature and the interests of the secular life. Preoccupied with the problem of the differentiation of science from theology, philosophy is less interested in 'the question of its own differentiation from the sciences. It conceives its function as the determination of scientific method and the construction of the system of the sciences, rather than as the solution of a problem peculiar to itself and lying beyond the scope of the sciences even in their sum. It is Locke who first clearly differen- tiates and defines the peculiar problem of philosophy as the investigation of the nature and extent of human knowledge, the previous question left unanswered by all the special sciences. Bacon and Hobbes propose two very different answers to the question of scientific method ; and while the former never really gets beyond the question of method, the latter proceeds to the construction of a general metaphysical theory which, like his theory of ethics, proved to be of great importance in stimulating others, within his own century as well as later, to speculation on the possibilities of a more adequate solution of the problem. Bacon contended for the substitution of an inductive and experiential for the i? B 1 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS deductive and dialectical method of Scholastic philosophy. In his eyes a l natural history' or a complete induction of the facts was the only sufficient basis of true scientific explanation ; and, in spite of his strenuous polemic against Scholasticism, he was enough of a Scholastic to believe in the existence of a fixed number of fundamental ' forms ' or species, and to regard the function of science as the discovery of these * forms/ Hobbes, on the other hand, held that the essential feature of scientific explanation was rational demonstration, and found himself forced to conclude, as the result of such demonstration, that matter alone was real. The Cambridge Platonists, who sought to refute the materialism of Hobbes, were even more consistently rationalistic in their method than Hobbes himself, and endeavoured to demonstrate, after Plato, the spiritual constitution of reality. Locke followed Bacon in insisting upon the necessity of adopting what he called l the historical plain method,' which, as applied to the facts of the human understanding, is the psychological or introspective method. His chief significance lies, however, as already pointed out, in his new statement of the problem of philosophy as that of the nature and extent of human knowledge and the difference between knowledge and opinion or belief. Both Bacon and Hobbes had affirmed the distinction, in the interest rather of scientific freedom than in that of revealed religion ; but neither had offered a reasoned account of its nature and validity. Locke's supreme concern is for the interests of the moral and religious life, and the exigencies of his theory of knowledge lead directly to the formulation of the distinction in question ' our knowledge being short, we want something else.' The significance of Locke's new question is not limited to his own century or to English philosophy ; henceforth its paramount importance is matter of common acknow- ledgment. The necessity of differentiating ethics, as well as science and metaphysics, from theology was forced upon the modern mind by the dissolution of the politico-ecclesi- THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 19 astical system of the Middle Ages. The assertion of the independent authority of the State raised the question of the basis of its authority and the grounds of political obedience, and recourse was had to the Stoic conception of a * law of nature ' which had been adopted by the Roman jurists. The interpretation of this conception occupied the energies of the moral and political philosophy of the seventeenth century. The anxieties of the political situation in England, the rising tide of anarchy and revolution, forced upon Hobbes the question of the nature and seat of sovereign authority ; and in his eagerness to secure the stability of the State he could see no alternative to political absolutism, a doctrine which Locke set himself to refute. Hobbes laid the foundation of this political theory in a doctrine of ethical relativism and egoism which shocked the moral sense of his contemporaries, and led to the effort of the ethical rationalists to sub- stitute for it the doctrine of the absoluteness of moral laws as expressions of the rational constitution of the universe and obligatory upon all men as rational beings. Thus the alternative between a virtually utilitarian and an intuitional theory of ethics is clearly stated, and the issue between the two views fairly joined, before the close of the century. CHAPTER I BACON: PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN no other case in the history of philosophy is it so difficult, as perhaps in no other case is it more important, to determine the relation between the philosopher and the man. To most of his biographers the character of Bacon has presented a hopeless paradox and dualism, which has served as a text to point the familiar moral that the highest gifts may be turned to the basest uses and the best insight blinded by worldliness and selfishness of motive, that the corruption of the best is the worst. The most superficial interpretation of the tragedy of his career is that offered by Macaulay in his famous essay. To him it is simply the exhibition, on a great scale, of the disparateness of intellectual and moral greatness, of the falseness of the Socratic maxim that virtue is know- ledge. Bacon, that is to say, lived two totally discon- nected lives, the intellectual and the moral ; the temptations which beset him in the latter could not possibly arise in the former, nor could the high ideals of the philosopher avail the politician or the man. Such a dualism between the intellectual and the practical life is repudiated by Kuno Fischer, who was the first to insist on the unity of Bacon's character in the two spheres. But Kuno Fischer himself reasserts the antithesis in a new form. According to his view, it is to the extreme intellectualism of Bacon's temperament, to his lack of emotional depth, his poverty of natural human affection, the dispassionate- ness of his nature, that we must trace at once his splendid intellectual achievement and the defects of his moral and BACON 21 political life. His moral shortcomings are the defects of his intellectual qualities ; it is because he was a great thinker that he was not a great man. Even so careful a writer as R. W. Church, solicitous as he was to do complete justice to the character of Bacon as a statesman, allows the dualism and contradiction to remain, and sees in his political career nothing more than the effort to provide himself with the wherewithal to pursue the higher ends of the intellectual life, and even the constant temptation to abandon the life of the student of nature for that of the self-seeking man of affairs. In that political activity which formed so large a part of Bacon's life, he recognises only 'the distraction of his mind between the noble work on which his soul was bent, and the necessities of that "civil" or professional and political life by which he had to maintain his estate.' l Yet he admits that Bacon's political life had its own worthy ideals and aspirations, no less than his intellectual life. 4 So ended a career, than which no other in his time had grander and nobler aims, aims, however mistaken, for the greatness and good of England, aims for the enlargemen of knowledge and truth, and for the benefit of mankind.' 2 While we must admit that Bacon's true greatness is intellectual rather than moral, and that there is an element of truth in the view of the writers just mentioned, yet it is mechanical and superficial to separate the two lives completely from one another, and to see in the one simply the opposite and the negation of the other. In spite of what he himself may have said, in moments of professional and political disappointment, in disparagement of the busy life of the lawyer, statesman, and courtier, and the assertion of his true vocation as that of the seeker after truth, it is impossible to contemplate his entire career without concluding from it that his interest was no less practical and political than intellectual and theoretic ; that philosophy was, if the nobler occupation, still only the occupation of his leisure ; that, from first to last, he 1 Bacon, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 100. 2 Ibid., p. 171. 22 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS conceived his vocation to lie no less in the sphere of statesmanship than in that of philosophy., It would have been inconsistent with his practical and utilitarian esti- mate of knowledge to depreciate the work of the states- man, as he conceived it. If he regarded himself, in his study of nature, as the servant of mankind, as the dis- coverer of Nature's laws that he might subdue her activi- ties to the uses of mankind and * the relief of man's estate,' in his political activity he no less regarded himself as the servant of his country, discovering the path of her true and permanent well-being, and persuading, if he might, the king and parliament to follow that path. As Nichol says, c There is no more flagrant freak of criti- cism than to treat his public life as that of one playing truant from his Academy or Porch. However he may have deceived himself, half of Bacon's heart was set on politics.' x * His heart was as much set on establishing on a basis of slowly broadening rights the foundations of the Greater Britain of his dreams as on reading the riddles of the earth and sky.' 2 There is no warrant for ascribing his interest in politics to the gratification of selfish ambi- tion ; his aim was as essentially disinterested in the political as in the intellectual life : nor was his ability less conspicuous in the one case than in the other. * Those abilities,' says William Rawley, 'which go single in other men . . . were all conjoined and met in him.' In him theoretic insight and practical sagacity were singu- larly combined ; so far as the union of knowledge with ability to rule is concerned, he is the most remarkable case, at least in English history, of the realisation of Plato's dream of the philosopher-statesman. He realises at the same time his own ideal of the true philosopher of the modern type, who differs from his ancient and mediaeval prototypes in being not a recluse, whether of the academic or of the monastic sort, but a man of affairs, an active citizen. Nor is there historic warrant for the undiscriminating 1 Bacon, in ' Philosophical Classics,' vol. i. p. 3. f Ibid. L 68. BACON 23 condemnation which has so often been passed upon Bacon's career as a statesman. As Gardiner has said, * No one to whom the history of that half-century [the half- century following the period of Bacon's political activity] is present can agree with those numerous writers who speak of Bacon's political work as inferior to his scientific.' 1 The primary cause of his failure as a statesman is to be sought rather in the conditions which beset his political activity than in essential defects either of insight or of character. * An intellectual unity,' says the same writer, ' pervades the whole of the advice which he gave. He may sometimes have held his tongue when he knew that his counsel would be disregarded, but he never prophesied smooth things to suit the wishes of those by whom his counsel was required.' The truth is that he was too much in advance of his time on all the deeper questions of statesmanship to get the ear either of the sovereign or of parliament, or even to convince his colleagues in authority of the wisdom of his measures. Without fit instruments it is impossible for the ablest to achieve political success, and no statesman can command the instruments. Even the worse than questionable methods to which he had recourse in his endeavours to compass his political ends were, to a considerable extent, dictated to him by the conditions of his activity. As Gardiner has pointed out, ' Bacon must look to achieve a statesman's ends by the means of a courtier.' And when we remember that the Court was that of Elizabeth and of James, we shall not be so ready to blame Bacon for the subserviency of his language or for the Machiavel- lism of his policy as those have been who have forgotten to make allowance for this limiting condition. Much which we should not tolerate in a statesman of our own day was practically inevitable in that age. Doubtless the lower tendencies of Bacon's moral nature, as they are revealed to us in the Essays, and still more nakedly in the Commentarius Solutus, to which he seems to have confided 1 Art ' Bacon,' Diet, of Nat. Biog. 24 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS his inmost thoughts and purposes, made it only too easy for him to fall in with the prevailing usages of public life. But, on the whole, his failure as a statesman must be set down rather to his lack of opportunity than to his un- worthy use of the opportunity which he had. Even the most damaging incident in his political career, his treatment of Essex, assumes a somewhat different aspect in the light of the dominant purpose of Bacon's life as a statesman. He himself tells us that his interest in Essex from the first was political rather than personal : 'it was his anticipation for him of a great public career that attached Bacon to Essex and, on Bacon's side at least, formed the basis of their friendship. 1 1 held at that time my lord to be the fittest instrument to do good to the State ; and therefore I applied myself to him in a manner which I think happeneth rarely among men.' In acknow- ledging the Earl's gift of land, he thus carefully limits the extent of the obligation under which he considers himself to have come : * My lord, I see I must be your homager and hold land of your gift ; but do you know the manner of doing homage in law ? Always it is with a saving of the faith to the king and his other lords ; and therefore, my lord, I can be no more yours than I was, and it must be with the ancient savings. . . . I reckon myself as a common and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common, so much your lordship shall be sure to have. ... I confess I love some things much better than I love your lordship, as the queen's service, her quiet and contentment, her honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the like.' There could have been no clearer intimation that, if the personal interests of friendship should ever conflict with the higher claims of country and devotion to the Crown, the former must yield without reserve to the latter claims. That Bacon did his best to avert the fatal collision between Essex and Elizabeth by that ' faithful counsel ' in which he saw one of the best fruits of a true friendship, is unquestionable. That, after the failure of his best efforts, he should subordinate what he regarded as the lower to what he regarded as the higher obligation, and should BACON 25 remind his friend of * the ancient savings,' was the only course consistent with his ideal of public duty. His conduct in his judicial capacity is more difficult to explain or excuse. But the extent of his shortcomings here is to be carefully noted. The evidence seems to show that, while he fell in with the prevailing custom of receiv- ing presents from suitors, both while their suits were pending and afterwards, and allowed himself to be influenced by the constantly reiterated solicitations of Buckingham, he never deliberately sold justice, or accepted a bribe. This is Gardiner's conclusion, even in view of the argument of Abbott and the special investigation of the single doubtful case by Heath. Why, then, it may be asked, did he plead guilty to the charges brought against him ? The answer is to be found in the fact that 'he knew that a trial of this kind was a trial only in name.' 1 Bacon himself saw in the accusation the expression of a higher ideal of justice than that which had guided previous judicial practice, and there seems no good reason for refusing to accept his own characterisation of it : 'I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years ; but it was the justest censure in parliament that was these two hundred years.' Yet in Bacon's conduct as a judge, as well as in his treatment of Essex, there is revealed that 'poverty of moral feeling,' as Gardiner describes it, which is, in part at least, the secret of the tragedy of his public life, and in which we must find the explanation of his moral failure. How otherwise are we to explain his incapacity to realise the gravity of the sentence, the finality of his degradation in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen ? How otherwise can we understand the apparent absence of regret, or even of reluctance, in his prosecution of Essex, nay, his superfluous eagerness to bring about the ruin of his friend ? It is here that Kuno Fischer's insistence upon Bacon's lack of warm human affection, what Gardiner calls 'the extraordin- arily unemotional character of Bacon's mind,' or what we 1 Church, Bacon, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 147. 26 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS may perhaps describe as his moral superficiality, becomes important as a factor in the explanation of his conduct. The whole passion of his nature seems to have exhausted itself in the pursuit of knowledge, on the one hand, and of the good of his country, on the other. To these two great ends all more personal ends and interests were ruthlessly subordinated, and the subordination does not appear to have cost him any struggle. It was, of course, only in the pursuit of the latter or political end that any real conflict was liable to occur, and in his devotion to this end Bacon seems to have been unscrupulous in the choice of means. Political failure was his lot, even on these terms ; but it had been better to have failed by reason of a greater regard for moral considerations than to have purchased the possi- bility of political success at such a moral sacrifice. His moral superficiality, his lack of moral sensitiveness, affects even his intellectual life and seriously narrows his vision of truth. He tells us that * the human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affec- tions ' ; but his own defect seems rather to have been a lack of emotion and affection which made him incapable of appreciating the significance of these elements in human life. How otherwise are we to explain his lack of interest in the metaphysical problems raised by the religious life, the merely conventional character of his own religion, its lack of real significance for his life, his conception of poetry as merely * feigned history,' or the mean prudentialism of so many of his maxims of conduct in the Essays ? But if his moral superficiality affects his intellectual as well as his practical life, it at the same time enables us to understand how he is greater in the former than in the latter sphere. And it is with his intellectual achievement that we are here concerned. Whatever may have been the nature and the limits of his political ambition, Bacon's intellectual ambition was simply limitless. l l have taken all knowledge for my province,' was an exaggerated statement of his function and vocation in the intellectual field, but a literal defini- BACON 27 tion of that function and vocation as he himself conceived it. He regarded himself as the inaugurator of a new era in philosophy, the founder of a new philosophy, destined to supersede that of Aristotle, which had dominated the thought of the Middle Ages. He trusted the judgment of posterity to authenticate a claim too proud to be acceptable to the men of his own age. Nor was his confidence misplaced. The judgment of history has awarded to Bacon, along with Descartes, the position of founder of modern philosophy. If it has not confirmed his condemnation of Aristotle and of ancient Greek philosophy, but has rather seen in the new philosophy a return to the point of view of the old, a revival of the Greek spirit of free and independent inquiry, it has yet recognised in the fearless repudiation of authority which is common to Bacon and Descartes the decisive break with Scholasticism and Mediaevalism, and in Bacon's proclama- tion of experience as the only source, and of Induction as the only fruitful method of knowledge, the watchword of modern science and philosophy, as distinguished from Greek speculation, on the one hand, and from Scholastic dogmatism and disputation, on the other. The new departure of Bacon in philosophy thus takes its place in the wider movement of the Renaissance ; it is the intellectual expression of that movement. The earlier Renaissance, of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had been humanistic ; its interest was in literature and art. The later Renaissance, of the sixteenth century, of which Bacon is the immediate product and expositor, was naturalistic ; its predominant interest was in science, or the interpretation of nature. The results of this new direction of attention, especially in astronomy, were of the most remarkable character. The Copernican theory changed the centre of man's world from his own planet to the sun round which it revolved. The discovery of America, which resulted from the scientific study of the earth and the application of science to navigation, ex- tended the horizon of English enterprise. Magnetic in- vestigations suggested new possibilities in physical science, 28 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS while Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood was epoch-making for the science of physiology and the art of medicine. What chiefly impressed Bacon was the fruitfulness of new knowledge in its applications to human life. No less than a revolution in the conditions of life, he feels, has been brought about by the scientific activities of the time ; man is rapidly becoming the master and ruler of nature. The splendid fruits of the new knowledge stimulated him to the great ambition of universalising this dominion of man over nature. He felt that it would be unworthy of the new age in which he was living to be content with anything short of man's complete sovereignty. * For this great building of the world has been in our age wonderfully opened and thorough-lighted ... in respect of our sea-voyages, by which the whole globe of the earth has, after the manner of the heavenly bodies, been many times compassed and circumnavigated. . . . And this proficiency in navigation and discovery may plant also great expectation of the further proficience and augmentation of the sciences. . . . For so the prophet Daniel, in speaking of the latter times, foretells " that many shall go to and fro on the earth, and knowledge shall be increased," as if the opening and thorough passage of the world, and the increase of knowledge, were appointed to be in the same age.' l Why should we not ' make the mind of man by help of art a match for the nature of things?' The true philosophy is the Ars inveniendi, the method at once of discovery and invention, a science of Nature which shall teach man how to master Nature and compel her to serve his purposes. For the secret of this mastery is that obedience which is itself the result of knowledge. ' Nature is not conquered except by obedi- ence.' Man must be the servant of Nature if he would be her lord. Art is but nature understood, and utilised for human ends. l Human knowledge and human power meet in one.' What the antiquated 'Magic' of the . J De Aug. Sci., Bk. ii. ch. x. BACON 29 Middle Ages professed to accomplish by virtue of a mysterious and supernatural craft is in truth the result of insight into the nature of things, their natural quali- ties and behaviour. It is only our ignorance of Nature, our foolish effort to compel her to act unnaturally, that limits our power over her. But to know or under- stand nature, we must observe the facts : experience is here our only guide. The secret of modern discovery and invention is found in the new attitude of man to nature, in the substitution of observation and experiment, that is, of induction, for mere argument and conception, or the deductive method of the schools. Real, as distin- guished from nominal or verbal, fruitful as distinguished from fruitless knowledge, is possible only on these terms. This conception of the end and method of knowledge is opposed by Bacon as the new philosophy to the old philosophy of the Greek and mediaeval schools;, and since Aristotle was 'the philosopher' of the Middle Ages, he especially opposes it to the philosophy of Aris- totle. We may therefore come at a better understand- ing of the Baconian view of knowledge by contrasting it, under his own guidance, with the Aristotelian view. And first, as regards the end of knowledge, or the relation of theory to practice, Bacon seems to dissent entirely from the doctrine of Aristotle. According to Aristotle, theoretic insight was not a means to practical ends, but itself the supreme end of human life : in speculation or contemplation of truth lies man's supreme good. Accord- ing to Bacon, as we have seen, the end of knowledge is 1 the relief of man's estate ' ; its value lies in the mastery over nature, the * power ' which it secures to man. The justification of science is found by him in its fruits or practical applications. Referring to the Pytha- gorean parable that the best life was not that of the buyers and sellers, or even of the competitors, at the Olympian games, but that of the spectators, he says : * But men must know that in this theatre of man's life, it is reserved only for God and Angels to be lookers on. . . . For mere contemplation which should be finished in itself without 30 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS casting beams of heat and light upon society, assuredly divinity knows it not.' l It is in its practical utility that he finds the value of knowledge. Learning ' is not like a lark, which can mount and sing and please itself and nothing else ; ... it rather partakes of the nature of a hawk, which can soar aloft, and can also descend and strike upon its prey at pleasure.' 2 At the same time he dis- tinguishes carefully between the superficial utilitarianism which is impatient for the fruits of knowledge and the patient temper which seeks primarily for light or insight, and is content to wait for the harvest of works to appear in its due season. ' For though it be true that I am principally in pursuit of works and the active department of the sciences, yet I wait for harvest-time, and do not attempt to mow the moss or to reap the green corn. For I well know that axioms once rightly discovered will carry whole troops of works along with them, and produce them, not here and there one, but in clusters. And that unreasonable and puerile hurry to snatch by way of earnest at the first works which come within reach, I utterly condemn and reject, as an Atalanta's apple that hinders the race.' 3 He accordingly signalises the superior importance of ' light-giving ' (lucifera] to ' fruit-bearing ' (fructifera) experiments, on the ground that the interests of the larger utility are better secured by the former than by the latter. It is only in a high and ultimate sense, as the instrument of man's sovereignty over nature, that a utilitarian estimate of knowledge can justly be attributed to Bacon. 4 Nay, while he cannot separate its practical fruits from knowledge, or conceive of a knowledge which should be without such fruits, while he regards content- ment with the satisfaction of our intellectual curiosity as essentially selfish, he yet seems in the end to agree with the Aristotelian estimate of pure knowledge. ' And yet (to speak the whole truth), as the uses of light are infinite, in enabling us to walk, to ply our arts, to read, to recognise 1 De Aug. Sci,, Bk. vii. ch. i. * Ibid., Bk. viii. ch. ii. * Nov. Org., Plan of the Work, p. 29. Cf. Windelband's Gcschichte der neueren Philosophic, vol. i. p. 132. BACON 31 one another ; and nevertheless the very beholding of the light is itself a more excellent and a fairer thing than all the uses of it ; so assuredly the very contemplation of things, as they are, without superstition or imposture, error or confusion, is in itself more worthy than all the fruit of inventions.' 1 {\^ 0^* CHAPTER III THE IDEALISTIC REACTION: CAMBRIDGE PLATONISM AND RATIONALISM IT was inevitable that the radical speculation of Hobbes, alike in the spheres of metaphysics and of politics, should provoke a reaction, and should rally to the defence of the higher spiritual interests of human life those to whom these interests seemed to be bound up with a spiritual interpretation of the universe and a social interpretation of human nature. Hobbes had indeed professed to be a defender of the Christian faith ; but it was little wonder that this new * Epicurism ' should seem to religious thinkers 1 but atheism under a mask,' and that the unmasking of this hidden and, therefore, all the more dangerous, atheism should seem the appointed task of the devout thinker. The fundamental error of Hobbes, as well as of Baron, seemed to such men to be the absolute distinction and separation of the spheres of faith and reason, of theology and philosophy. Such a separation meant the ultimate denial of the reasonableness of religion, the obliteration of the distinction between religion and superstition. The aim of the Cambridge Platonists was the reunion of these two spheres, the vindication of the rational character of religion. Apart, however, from the polemical motive supplied by the effort to refute the views of Hobbes, these thinkers, who were all Churchmen as well as academic teachers, were conscious of another danger to religion within the Church itself. It is a notable fact that, with the excep- tion of More, the leading members of the school were trained in Emmanuel College, the great Puritan founda- 79 8o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS tion ; and they were inspired by the common ideal of emancipation from the narrowness and intolerance of Puritan dogmatism, they revolted with one consent against the subjection of reason to faith which was demanded by the Protestant no less really than by the Catholic theology. From Puritan dogmatism and intoler- ance, no less than from Prelatical formalism, they appealed to life and conduct as the true measure of religion. They are among the earliest defenders of the principle of tolera- tion. Subordinating doctrine to life, and regarding the greater part of the doctrine of the Protestant ' Confessions ' as mere matter of opinion, they came to be known as the * Latitudinarians,' and were eyed askance by the orthodox of both theological parties. Their constant effort was to extricate the essential truth of Christianity from the accidents which had gathered round it in the course of the centuries, and this essential core of truth was, in their eyes, identical with goodness of life and, therefore, accessible to all rational beings. If they did not deny the distinction between natural and revealed truth, the burden of their teaching was that all essential truth came to men by < the light of nature,' that * the Spirit of a Man is the Candle of the Lord, lighted by God, and light- ing us to God.' x Still another influence must be mentioned as determin- ing the spirit and attitude of the Cambridge Platonists, namely, that of ^Descartes. This influence is primarily negative. Ignoring the spiritual side of the Cartesian philosophy, they are repelled by its dualism of thought and extension, its separation of the spheres of matter and mind, and its authentication of the mechanical method and point of view so far as the material world is con- cerned. In its exclusion of the action of spirit from the latter sphere, and in its substitution of mechanical for final causes, they see the same menace to the interests of a spiritual or idealistic interpretation of reality as they discover in the materialism of Hobbes. The Car- J Whichcote, Aphorisms, Campagnac's Cambridge Platonists, p. 70. THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 81 tesians, says Cudworth, ' have an undiscerned tang of the mechanic Atheism hanging about them.' In opposition to both Hobbes and Descartes, therefore, the Cambridge idealists proclaim the spiritual constitution of the so-called material world. Not only are there, as Descartes admitted, spiritual as well as material substances, but spiritual sub- stance alone truly is. Matter, truly understood, is spirit. Only from the spiritual constitution of the universe can a divine or universal Spirit be inferred. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the Cambridge Platonists were influenced positively, as well as negatively, by the Car- tesian philosophy, of which More especially was in his youth an enthusiastic admirer. The great questions with which they are concerned are the same as those which had preoccupied Descartes the existence of God and the relation of matter to spirit. And their aim is the same as his to show the rational basis of faith, to reduce its content to * clear and distinct ideas.' * While the only names that have become widely known are those of Cudworth and More, three other names are too important to be altogether overlooked. The move- ment owes its origin to the remarkable influence, as a teacher and preacher, if not as a writer, of Benjamin Whichcote, an influence which was extended by the similar activities of John Smith and Nathaniel Culverwel, although the latter, according to Professor Sorley, 'can hardly be counted as belonging to the group.' It is to the treatises of Ralph Cudworth on The True Intellectual System of the Universe and on Eternal and Immutable Morality that we must look for a systematic account of the philosophy of the school. Henry More, whose chief philosophical work is the Etuheiridton Ethicum y * re- presents,' as Tulloch says, * more than any other member of the school, the mystical and theosophic side of the Cambridge movement.' 2 He is not the least interesting 1 Cf. Tulloch, Rational Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century, ii. 17-20. 2 Ency. Brit., gth ed., art. ' Henry More.' F 82 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS or important in a group of singularly impressive and influential personalities. If it was in More that the mystical tendency reached its culmination, it is not to be denied that such a tendency was present in the movement from the first. In its other representative members, however, this tendency was kept well subordinated to the rationalism which was even more characteristic of the movement as a whole. It is true that none of the so-called Cambridge Platonists clearly distinguished between the original teaching of Plato himself and that of the Neo-Platonists. As Tulloch says, 4 The suspicion that Plotinus and Proclus, while building upon the Platonic basis, may have had little or none of the spirit of the master-builder, never disturbed them. Plato- nism was to them a vast mass of transcendental Thought, dating from Pythagoras and even Moses, and stretching downwards through Alexandrian and mediaeval Jewish schools ; and it was this Platonism of tradition of the successive spiritualistic schools which had contended for a super-sensual philosophy, and peopled the world of faith with many fantastic reveries which ruled their spirits and inspired their philosophic ambition. In this sense alone can they be called Platonists.' 1 On the other hand, it is an exaggeration to say, with Coleridge, that they were 1 more truly Plotinists ' than Platonists, 2 or to attribute to them 'a corrupt, mystical, theurgical, pseudo-Plato- nism, which infected the rarest minds under the Stuart dynasty.' 3 It is true that they shared many of the super- stitious ideas of their age, and that their attitude to earlier thinkers was uncritical ; that, in Tulloch's words, ' they leant too fondly on the past, and made too much of ancient wisdom.' 4 But the main lines of their thought are clearly derived from Plato himself, and from such dialectical dialogues as the The&tetus and the Parmenides hardly less than from the more poetical and mystical dia- logues. In Cudworth this return to the original and more dialectical teaching of Plato is especially characteristic. i Rational Theology, ii. 481. z Notes on English Divines, i. 351. Ibid., i. 130. * Rational Theology, ii. 137. THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 83 Their undue dependence upon the past shows its evil influence not less in the style or manner than in the matter of their writing. Their style is scholastic and pedantic to a degree almost intolerable to the modern reader. The quotations with which 'they fill their pages fatally interrupt the continuity of the argument, and would be intolerable even as foot-notes in a book of the present day. It is as if they had not really mastered and assimilated the thought of the past to which they are so anxious to serve themselves heirs. They seem to feel it necessary to dress out their own ideas in the borrowed feathers of illustrious names ; afraid to trust to the inherent weight of their argument, they seek some more sure support for it in the wisdom of the ancients. 'They crowd their books with specimens of all the intellectual furniture which they have gathered in the course of their studies.' x It is a remarkable testimony to the real power of their thinking, as well as to their real gift of expression, that in spite of these defects their writings are studded with so many fine and memorable sayings which them- selves bear well the ordeal of quotation. Of the founder of the school Westcott says, * There are few prose writers of any time from whom one could gather more "jewels five-words long " than from Whichcote.' 2 The philosophy of the Cambridge Platonists centres in three main positions : (i) the unity of faith and reason, of religion and life ; (2) the spiritual constitution of the universe ; and (3) the reasonableness, as opposed to the arbitrariness of morality, its foundation in reason rather than in mere will, and hence its absolute, as opposed to its merely relative validity. (i) The essential identity of the content of faith with that of reason is a favourite topic with all the writers of this school ; it is indeed the starting-point of their entire intel- lectual effort. * Truth is the Soul's Health and Strength, natural and true Perfection. . . . No sooner doth the 1 Tulloch, Rational Theology, ii. 477. 1 Religious Thought in the West, p. 371. 84 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Truth of God come to our Soul's Sight, but our Soul knows her, as her first and old Acquaintance : which, though they have been by some Accident unhappily parted a great while ; yet having now, through the Divine Providence, happily met, they greet one another, and renew their Acquaintance, as those that were first and ancient Friends.' x 4 That which is the Height and Excel- lency of Humane Nature, viz. our Reason, is not laid aside nor discharged, much less is it confounded by any of the Materials of Religion ; but awakened, excited, em- ployed, directed, and improved by it.' ' In all things of weight, in the great Points of Conscience, in the great Materials of Religion, there is a Reason in the Things, that doth enforce them, and enjoin them upon us, and require them of us.' 'This is the peculiarity of Humane Nature, that through the Reason of his Mind, he may come to understand the Reason of Things : and this is that you are to do ; and there is no coming to Religion but this way.' 2 Very similar is the language of Smith in the discourse on The Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion. 4 It's a fond imagination that Religion should extinguish Reason ; whenas Religion makes it more illustrious and vigorous ; and they that live most in the exercise of Religion, shall find their Reason most enlarged.' * Un- reasonableness or the smothering and extinguishing the Candle of the Lord within us is no piece of Religion, nor advantageous to it : that certainly will not raise men up to God, which sinks them below men.' The intimate connection of such religious insight or knowledge with life and conduct is no less emphatically asserted. * True piety and a Godlike pattern of purity ' is the * best way to thrive in all spiritual understanding ' ; * a holy life ' is ' the best and most compendious way to a right belief.' 'If we would indeed have our Knowledge thrive and flourish, we must water the tender plants of it with Holiness. . . . The reason why, notwithstanding all our acute reasons and subtile disputes, Truth prevails 1 Whichcote, Evidence of Divine Truth, Campagnac, 3, 4. a Whichcote, Work of fieason, Campagnac, 51, 53. THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 85 no more in the world, is, we so often disjoin Truth and true Goodness, which in themselves can never be dis- united ; they grow both from the same Root, and live in one another. . . . He that wants true Vertue, in heaven's Logick is blind, and cannot see afar off? l The obverse side of this relation, namely, that true religion must find its expression in goodness of life, is no less frequently empha- sised ; but this, as a more obvious position, it is unnecessary to illustrate by quotation. (2) We find the general argument for a spiritual inter- pretation of the universe, as against the materialism of Hobbes, set forth with much force and eloquence in Smith's discourses on The Immortality of the Soul and on The Existence and Nature of God. He protests against * that flat and dull Philosophy which these later ages have brought forth,' and insists upon the higher validity of those principles for which the mind of man is indebted, not to the senses, but to its own inherent intellectual power. ' Whensoever it will speculate Truth itself, it will not then listen to the several clamours and votes of these rude Senses which always speak with divided tongues, but it consults some clearer Oracle within itself.' In the spiritual nature of the human soul he sees the true revela- tion of the nature of God and the proof of the divine existence. But it is in Cudworth that we find the most sustained and convincing refutation of the materialistic view. Reducing materialism to sensationalism, Cudworth sees in Hobbes the reviver of the Protagorean scepticism and, with obvious indebtedness to the argument of Plato in the Theestetus, deduces from the self-contradictoriness of such a scepticism the presence of rational elements in all knowledge. Its essential feature he finds to be judg- ment. * The Sight cannot judge of Sounds which belong to the Hearing, nor the Hearing of Light and Colours ; wherefore that which judges of all the Senses and their several Objects, cannot be it self any Sense, but something 1 John Smith, Method of Divine Knowledge, Campagnac, 81, 82. 86 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS of a superior Nature. Moreover, that which judges that the Appearances of all the Senses have somethingFantastical in them, cannot possibly be itself Fantastical, but it must be something which hath a Power of judging what Really and Absolutely is or is not. This being not a Relative, but an Absolute Truth, that Sensible Appearances have something Fantastical in them.' 1 * Wherefore though Men are commonly said to know things when they see and feel them, yet in truth by their bodily Senses they perceive nothing but their Outsides and External Induments. Just as when a Man looking down out of a Window into the Streets, is said to see Men walking in the Streets, when indeed he perceives nothing but Hats and Cloaths, under which, for ought he knows, there may be Daedalean Statues moving up and down.' 2 By its very nature sense can reveal to the percipient only appearance, or the * phantastical and relative.' Reality, as distinguished from appearance, is constituted by those intelligible forms or ideas which are the expres- sion of the rational constitution of the knowing mind itself. * Knowledge is not a Passion from anything without the Mind, but an Active Exertion of the Inward Strength, Vigour and Power of the Mind, displaying it self from within ; and the Intelligible Forms by which Things are Understood or Known, are not Stamps or Impressions passively printed upon the Soul from without, but Ideas vitally protended or actively exerted from within it self. A Thing which is merely Passive from without, and doth only receive Foreign and Adventitious Forms, cannot possibly Know, Understand or Judge of that which it receives, but must needs be a Stranger to it, having nothing within it self to know it by. The Mind cannot know any thing, but by something of its own, that is Native, Domestic and Familiar to it.' 3 Thus it is to the knowing intellect that we owe the apprehension of the unity of the parts in a total object ; intellect alone can ' comprehend the Formal Reason of it, as a Whole made up of several Parts, according 1 Eternal and Immutable Morality, Bk. ii. ch. vi. Cf. Bk. iii. ch. iv. Ibid., Bk. iii. ch. iii. 3 Ibid., Bk. iv. ch. i. THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 87 to several Relations and Proportions contributing thereto.' The idea of this whole * was never stamped or impressed upon the Soul from without, but upon occasion of the Sensible Idea was excited and exerted from the inward Active and Comprehensive Power of the Intellect itself.' 1 It follows that * the Mind or Intellect may well be called (though in another Sense than Protagoras meant it) The Measure of all Things.'* From the rational constitution of knowledge Cudworth infers the existence first of the rational self and, secondly, of God. ' For tho' it should be supposed that our Senses did deceive us in all their Representations, and that there were no Sun, no Moon, no Earth, that we had no Hands, no Feet, no Body, as by Sense we seem to have, yet Reason tells us that of Necessity That must be some- thing, to whom these things seem to be, because nothing can seem to that that is not.' 3 On the other hand, the constancy of the existence of things, independent of their being actually ideas in * our particular created minds,' the eternity and immutability of real existence, implies a divine Mind or universal Intelligence. Geometrical truth does not depend for its reality upon the apprehension of the geometrician, or change with his advancing know- ledge. It follows that * there is an Eternal Wisdom and Knowledge in the World, necessarily existing, which was never made, and can never cease to be or be destroyed ; or, which is all one, that there is an Infinite, Eternal Mind necessarily existing, that actually comprehends himself, the Possibility of all Things, and the Verities Clinging to them. In a word, that there is a God, or an Omnipotent and Omniscient Being, necessarily existing, who therefore cannot destroy his own Being or Nature, that is, his Infinite Power and Wisdom.' * (3) The real interest of the metaphysical argument lies, for these thinkers, in its ethical and religious consequences. They find in reason the only secure basis for the absolute 1 Eternal and Immutable Morality, Bk. iv. ch. ii. 2 Ibid., Bk. iv. ch. i. 3 Bk. ii. ch. vi. 4 Ibid., Bk. iv. ch. iv. 88 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS obligatoriness of morality : it is not mere law, the expression of arbitrary will, but the expression of the nature of things, of the rational constitution of the uni- verse. Not even the divine Will is for them the ultimate source of moral laws ; the divine Will is guided by the divine Reason, or by regard to the essential nature of things. This ethical deduction, which is only briefly suggested by Cudworth, receives the chief emphasis in Whichcote's discourses. Moral truths, he says, 'have a deeper Foundation, greater Ground for them, than that God gave the Law on Mount Sinai ; or that he did after ingrave it on Tables of Stone ; or that we find the Ten Commandments in the Bible. For God made Man to them, and did write them upon the Heart of Man, before he did declare them upon Mount Sinai, before he ingraved them upon the Tables of Stone, or before they were writ in our Bibles ; God made man to them, and wrought His Law upon Men's Hearts ; and, as it were, interwove it into the Principles of our Reason ; and the things thereof are the very Sense of Man's Soul, and the Image of his Mind : so that a Man doth undo his own being, departs from himself, and unmakes himself, confounds his own Principles, when he is disobedient and unconformable to them ; and must necessarily be self-condemned.' * It is no less characteristic of man's nature to act conformably to these rational principles than it is natural for a non- rational being to be guided by sense and impulse. ' By which you may see the Degeneracy of us Mortals ; in that the State below us remains in the same Principle it was created in ; but we Men do neither find out the Reasons of things, nor comply with them. Our Deformity is more ; because our Perfection is more and the Order of our Being is higher . . . and we use to say, the Fault is greater in him that is in a higher State.' 2 Outside the school of Cambridge Platonism the move- ment of idealistic or rationalistic philosophy in England in 1 Evidence of Divine Truth, Campagnac, 5. 1 Christian Religion, Campagnac, 37. THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 89 the seventeenth century is represented by two important names, Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Richard Cumberland. The first of these writers is specially remarkable as having at a much earlier period arrived at a theory of knowledge essentially identical with that of the Cambridge Platonists. In the De Veritate, published in 1624, Herbert of Cher- bury formulated the view that, in addition to external and internal sense and the discursive or reasoning faculty, it is necessary to postulate what he calls, after the Stoics, * common notions ' or ' received principles of demonstration,' which are apprehended by ' natural instinct ' and must be regarded as the presuppositions rather than as the products of experience. The mind is, previous to experience, not a tabula rasa, but a ' closed book,' which is opened by the presentation of sensible objects. Referring to this theory, Culverwel says : l There is a Noble Author of our own, that hath both his truth and his errour, (as he hath also writ about both), who pleads much for his Instinctus naturales, so as that, at the first dash, you would think him in a Platonical strain ; but, if you attend more to what he says, you will soon perceive that he prosecutes a far different Notion, much to be preferred before the other phancy. For he doth not make these Instincts any connate Ideas, and repre- sentations of Things ; but tells us, that they are powers and faculties of the Soul, the first-born faculties and begin- ning of the Soul's strength, that are presently espoused to their Virgin-objects closing and complying with them, long before Discourse can reach them ; nay, with such objects as Discourse cannot reach at all in such a measure and perfection. . . . If you ask, when these highest faculties did first open and display themselves, he tells you, 'tis then when they were stimulated, and excited by outward Objects' l Lord Herbert is better known as * the father of Deism,' and he certainly rationalises religion to an extent far beyond the daring of the Cambridge divines. Among the 'common notions' are those which constitute the natural instinct of religion and the essence of 'natural 1 Light of Nature, ch. xi., Campagnac, 289, 290. 90 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS religion,' namely, the existence of God, the duty of worship, the identity of worship and virtue, the duty of repentance, and future reward and punishment. This natural core of religion has been overlaid by subsequent accretions of superstition and dogma ; in the case of Christianity, as well as the other historical religions, priestcraft and guile have obscured the simplicity of natural religion. But the author himself seems more interested in the positive than in the negative side of his argument ; his work is rather a plea for religion, as fundamentally rational in its nature and source, than a criticism of actual religion and theology, or an exposure of their irrationality. Richard Cumberland is a contemporary of the Cam- bridge Platonists, and has the same polemical purpose as Cudworth, namely, the refutation of the views of Hobbes. On the title-page of his De Legibus Naturae, published in 1672, he professes to 'consider and refute' 'the elements of Mr. Hobbes's Philosophy, as well Moral as Civil.' He is no Platonist, and attacks the theory of Innate Ideas as a Platonic error. ' The Platonists, indeed, clear up this Difficulty in an easier manner, by the Supposition of innate Ideas, as well of the Laws of Nature themselves, as of those Matters about which they are conservant ; but, truly, I have not been so happy as to learn the Laws of Nature in so short a way. Nor seems it to me well advised, to build the Doctrine of natural Religion and Morality upon an Hypothesis, which has been rejected by the generality of Philosophers, as well Heathen as Christian, and can never be proved against the Epicureans, with whom is our chief -Controversy.' 1 Unlike his predecessors, he limits the inquiry to ethics, and seeks to prove the 'naturalness' of moral laws. Laws of Nature, in this ethical reference, are defined by him as ' propositions of unchangeable Truth, which direct our voluntary Actions about choosing Good and Evil ; and impose an Obliga- tion to external actions even without Civil Laws, and laying aside all Considerations of those Compacts which constitute Civil Government.' 2 He defines ' Good ' as 1 Introd., sect. v. * Ch. i. p. 39. THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 91 ' that which preserves, or enlarges and perfects, the Faculties of any one Thing, or of several.' 1 It follows that the Law of Nature prescribes those actions which ' will chiefly promote the common Good, and by which only the entire Happiness of particular Persons can be obtained.' 2 From these statements it seems clear that, while he accepts Hobbes's term ' preservation,' he includes both happiness and perfection, or development of faculty, as inseparable elements in the Good. He is more con- cerned with the determination of the form of conduct which will lead to the attainment of this end ; and his conclusion is that the best method of securing it is that of benevolence, or regard for the common good, as opposed to selfish preoccupation with our own individual interests. The greatest Benevolence of every rational Agent towards all, forms the happiest State of every, and of all the Benevolent, as far as is in their Power ; and is necessarily requisite to the happiest State which they can attain, and therefore the common Good is the supreme Law.' 3 This endeavour to promote the common good ' includes our Love of God, and of all Mankind, who are the Parts of this System. God, indeed, is the principal Part ; Men the subordinate : A benevolence toward both includes Piety and Humanity, that is, both Tables of the Law of Nature.' 4 He repeatedly points out that the common good includes our own, as one of its parts ; but it must be sought only as a part, in subordination to the whole. Cumberland's confidence in the perfect coincidence of virtue, or benevolence, and individual happiness ultimately depends upon his doctrine of the divine sanctions of the Laws of Nature. But his main interest in the ethical question is to insist, against Hobbes, upon the < naturalness ' of the law of benevolence and the inherent unreasonable- ness of separating the individual and his good from the system of rational beings of which he is in reality only a part, and with whose good his own is inseparably bound up. 1 Ch. ii . p. 165. 2 ch. v. p. 189. 3 Ch. i. * Introd., sect. xv. p. 20. CHAPTER IV LOCKE: THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE IT was not the study of either Bacon or Hobbes that first awakened Locke's interest in philosophy or determined the direction of his own philosophical development. Although there is much in his writings which we can hardly but interpret as aimed against the views of these thinkers, there is practically no mention of them in his works. As an undergraduate at Oxford, he was compelled to read the Scholastic philosophy, and was trained in the art of disputation ; and his entire philosophical activity may be regarded as a protest against the settlement of intellectual questions by verbal disputation and submission to authority. Following up his undergraduate course with professional medical study, he came into contact with the Baconian spirit of experimental investigation which was already moving the life of the University. * It might be inter- esting,' says Professor Campbell Fraser, * to speculate upon the consequences to philosophy, in England and in Europe, if Locke had spent his academical life at Cambridge instead of Oxford, and had breathed its atmosphere of Platonism, instead of pursuing physical experiments at Oxford, when Oxford was giving birth to its Royal Society.' 1 But while we must trace the spirit of intellectual freedom, and the faith in experience, which are so characteristic of Locke, to the influence, negative and positive, of his academic environment, there can be no doubt that the real influence which first set him thinking about the problems of philosophy, and which determined the specific 1 Introd. to Essay, p. xxxiv. 92 LOCKE 93 nature of his own problem, was the early study of the writings of Descartes. This influence was negative rather than positive. The confidence of Descartes in the ' clear- ness and distinctness ' of our ideas as a criterion of truth tempted him and his successors to attempt metaphysical construction of a kind which roused suspicion in Locke's more cautious English mind, and forced upon him the previous question of the validity and extent of the know- ledge contained in such clear and distinct ideas. Locke's real affinity is, therefore, rather with Bacon than with either Hobbes or Descartes. Like Bacon, he is a critic of human knowledge, a surveyor of the founda- tions rather than a builder of the structure of science and philosophy. He contrasts the modesty of his own under- taking with the grander designs of the scientific minds of the time. ' The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity, but every one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham ; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambi- tion enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.' 1 Like Bacon, too, Locke is primarily interested in the practical utility of knowledge. 'Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct. ... It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals that may ruin him.' 2 The difference between Locke and Bacon is that while Bacon sought to formulate the true method of scientific investigation, Locke is concerned with the previous question of the possibility of knowledge 1 Essay, ' Epistle to the Reader.' * Ibid. 94 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS itself ; how far it extends, and where the line must be drawn between certain knowledge and probable opinion. While Bacon sought to formulate the methods of scientific knowledge, or to construct a system of inductive logic, Locke comes, in the end, to the conclusion that no * science of bodies,' or certain knowledge of the real world, is possible, and that the needs of practice are sufficiently met by the probabilities of opinion, or belief. So far as English philosophy is concerned, Locke is the first to state the problem in this form ; his is the first criticism of human knowledge, or epistemology. 1 His statement of the problem is of epoch-making importance for the subsequent development of philosophy in England and on the Continent, in the hands especially of Hume and Kant. Locke himself seems to have been led to his statement of it by his experience of the difficulties in which the discussion of moral and religious questions involves the human mind. We learn from his common- place books that he was in his early life much interested in such questions, and in the * Epistle to the Reader ' he tells us : ' Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meet- ing at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course ; and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with.' The discovery of the boundary line that separates certainty from probability, knowledge from opinion, will guide us in the profitable use of our under- standings : * we shall then use our understandings right, when we entertain all objects in that way and proportion 1 Unless Herbert of Cherbury's De Veritatc is to be regarded as a critical inquiry into the relations of knowledge and reality, as Professor Sorley urges (Mind, N.S., iii. 491 ff.). LOCKE 95 that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those grounds they are capable of being proposed to us ; and not peremptorily or intemperately require demonstration, and demand certainty, where probability only is to be had, and which is sufficient to govern all our concernments.' 1 Of the practical sufficiency of our knowledge Locke never has any doubt. 'For though the comprehension of our understandings comes exceedingly short of the vast extent of things, yet we shall have cause enough to magnify the bountiful Author of our being for that portion and degree of knowledge he has bestowed on us, so far above all the rest of the inhabitants of this our mansion. . . . We shall not have much reason to com- plain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us ; for of that they are very capable. And it will be an unpardon- able, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it. It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not bright sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us shines bright enough for all our purposes.' 2 At the very threshold of such an examination of knowledge and opinion, however, Locke is met by the objection that there is a part of human knowledge whose validity is beyond question, that we have a set of ideas which are not, like the rest, acquired, but ' innate,' the immediate and indubitable expression of reason itself. 'When men have found some general propositions that could not be doubted of as soon as understood, it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate. And it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and 1 Introd., sect. 5. 3 Loc. cit. 96 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS teachers, to make this the principle of principles that principles must not be questioned' x The first Book of the Essay is accordingly devoted to the refutation of the doc- trine of Innate Ideas, in the sense just explained, or to the refutation of the claim of any elements in our so- called knowledge to exemption from the criticism which he is about to undertake. All the parts of our knowledge, he insists, have the same rank and the same history. It is difficult to determine against whom the argument is directed, or ' to find any philosopher, then or since, who would deny what Locke maintains.' 2 But when we note Locke's polemical interest in the question, and remember the significance for him of the empirical origin of all the elements of human knowledge, we can afford to disregard the doubtful relevancy of the argument, and be content to see in it an earnest protest against the principle of authority, a vindication of our right to examine critically all the so-called * principles ' of human knowledge. The elements, data, or materials of knowledge are called by Locke < ideas, 1 an idea being defined by him as * whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks.' In one sense at least, therefore, the measure of our knowledge will be found in the extent and clearness of our ideas. What we actually know, we must have an idea of: that of which we have no idea, or only an obscure and inadequate idea, we cannot know, or can know only inade- quately. The limitation of our knowledge will be found in the limitation of our ideas. Hence ' the greater part of a book treating of the understanding will be taken up in considering ideas.' The earlier Books of the Essay are devoted to this ' consideration ' of ideas, seeking, in a 1 historical plain method/ to give an 'account of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of things we have ' ; inquiring into * the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself 1 I. iii. 25. 2 Fraser, Locke, in 'Philosophical Classics,' p. 117. LOCKE 97 he has in his mind ; and the ways whereby the under- standing comes to be furnished with them,' while the investigation of the question 'what knowledge the under- standing hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it,' as well as'^the nature and grounds of faith or opinion, whereby I mean that assent which we give to any pfopasition as true, of whose truth yet we have no CeTTain knowledge, 7 is reserved for the fourth Book. Tfiti object of die second Book, irT~particular,is to give * a short and, I think, .true history of the first beginnings of human knowledge; whence the mind has its first objects; and by what steps it makes its progress to the laying in and storing up those ideas, out of which is to be framed all the knowledge it is capable of.' l ' Having thus given an account of the original, sorts, and extent of our IDEAS, with several other considerations about these (I know not whether I may say) instruments, or materials of our know- ledge, the method I at first proposed to myself, would now require that I should immediately proceed to show what use the understanding makes of them, and what KNOWLEDGE we have by them.' 2 In proceeding to consider Locke's account of the ways by which the understanding comes to be furnished with the ideas which form the materials of all its knowledge, it is important to note the limitation of the inquiry. * I shall not at present meddle,' he says, ' with the physical consideration of the mind ; or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists ; or by what motions of our spirits, or alterations of our bodies, we come to have any sensation by our organs, or any ideas in our understandings ; and whether those ideas do, in their formation, any or all of them, depend on matter or not. These are speculations which, however curious and entertaining, I shall decline as lying out of my way in the design I am now upon. It shall suffice to my present purpose, to consider the dis- cerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with.' 3 Locke 1 II. xi. 15. 2 II. xxxiii. 19. 3 Introd., sect. 2. G 98 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS assumes the existence of external things on the one hand, and of the mind on the other, and the l operation ' of the former upon the latter. How motion in the object and in the sense-organ can produce ideas in the understanding, he does not attempt to explain ; he is content to describe the way in which our understandings conceive the relation in question, to accept the facts as they report themselves in the human understanding. Questions of physiological psychology and of metaphysical theory are equally remote from his purpose, at least in the second Book, where he is simply giving an account of the genesis of our ideas and, according to his * historical plain method,' keeping con- sistently within the limits of these ideas themselves. What, he virtually asks, are our ideas in their simplest form, and what do these ideas tell us about the understanding on the one hand and about things on the other ? The ques- tion of the validity or invalidity of that report the real question of the Essay is reserved for the fourth Book. The common source of our ideas is found by Locke in experience, in one or other of its two forms, sensation and reflection, or external and internal sense. To illustrate the indebtedness of the understanding to experience for its ideas, he uses two analogies : that of a sheet of white paper, and that of a dark room. ' Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas ; How comes it to be furnished ? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety ? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge ? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded ; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and re- flected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our under- standings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.' 1 1 II. i. 2. LOCKE 99 * External and internal sensation are the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room. For, methinks, the under- standing is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without : would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.' 1 Taking these two sources of ideas in turn, Locke finds that 'our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct percep- tions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them. And thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities ; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION.' 2 * Secondly, the other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got ; which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without. And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds ; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly 1 II. xi. 17. 2 II. i. 3. ioo ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other Sensation, so I call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection, then, ... I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding.' 1 It is to the consideration of the ideas of sensation that the inquiry is chiefly devoted. The simple ideas of reflection are divided into two classes : Perception, or Thinking ; and Volition, or Willing, and referred to the two l powers, abilities, or faculties,' called Under- standing (in the narrower sense) and Will respectively. The account of the simple ideas of sensation is much more complicated. In this case the idea is always the idea of a quality, which is referred by the mind to a thing. The classification of the ideas is therefore based upon the distinction between the two kinds of qualities of which our ideas inform us, primary and secondary. The primary qualities are extension, figure, solidity, motion or rest, and number ; all others are secondary. The former are also called 'real' qualities, since they actually belong to the thing, whether it is perceived or not ; while the secondary are called ' imputed ' qualities, since they do not really belong to the thing, but depend for their reality upon our perception of them. ' What I have said concerning colours and smells may be understood also of tastes and sounds, and other the like sensible qualities ; which, whatever reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us ; and depend on those primary qualities, viz. bulk, figure, texture, and motion of parts.' 2 It follows that the ideas of the primary qualities resemble these qualities as they really exist in the object, 'and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves ' ; while in the case of the secondary qualities 1 II. i. 4. II. viii. 14. LOCKE 101 * there is nothing like our ideas, existing in the bodies themselves. They are, in the bodies we denominate from them, only a power to produce those sensations in us ; and what is sweet, blue, or warm in idea, is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts, in the bodies themselves, which we call so.' x The secondary qualities, while they are the product of the primary, are yet dependent upon percipient mind for their existence. c Take away the sensation of them ; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear sounds ; let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell, and all colours, tastes, odours, and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease, and are reduced to their causes, i.e. bulk, figure, and motion of parts.' 2 So far as real existence goes, that is to say, the qualitative is resolved into the quantitative aspect of things ; the qualitative aspect proper has a merely subjective or mental existence. The distinction had been already made by Bacon and Hobbes ; but it is made by Locke in a new way, which immediately suggests the characteristically modern and English form of the problem of external reality. Locke's statement of the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities inevitably suggested Berkeley's further question, How far is the reality of external things mind-dependent ? Is the dis- tinction, as Locke has stated it, a real distinction ? As the secondary qualities point to the primary for their explanation, so the primary point to a * support ' or ' substance ' in which they inhere and from which they do result. 'The mind being . . . furnished with a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses as they are found in exterior things, ... takes notice also that a certain number of these ideas go constantly together ; which being presumed to belong to one thing, . . . are called, so united in one subject, by one name ; because, . . . not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to 1 II. viii. 15. a II. viii. 17. 102 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result ; which therefore we call substance. So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us ; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts ; and if he were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension inhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on ; to which his answer was, a great tortoise : but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied something, he knew not what? x The * obscure and relative idea of substance in general^ therefore, is ' nothing but the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find existing.' This idea of substance in general lies at the basis of our ideas of particular substances, which we acquire 'by col- lecting such combinations of simple ideas as are, by ex- perience and observation of men's senses, taken notice of to exist together ; and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular internal constitution, or unknown essence of that substance.' 2 We can never be certain, how- ever, that we have discovered the real collection of qualities which constitutes the * particular substance ' in question, for two reasons : first, because we can never know the * general substance ' or ' support ' of the primary qualities ; and, secondly, because the primary qualities themselves, upon which the co-existence of the secondary qualities depends, as well as the connexion of the former with the latter qualities, remain in every case beyond our know- ledge. The first of these reasons has been sufficiently 1 II. xxiii. I, 2. a II. xxiii. 3. LOCKE 103 explained ; the second is stated in the account of the dis- tinction between the l real ' and the < nominal ' essence in Book III. The former is 'the real internal, but gener- ally (in substances) unknown constitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend ; ' 1 the latter is * the artificial constitution of genus and species.' There must be some real constitution, on which any collec- tion of simple ideas depends, 'a real, but unknown, constitution of their insensible parts ; from which flow those sensible qualities which serve us to distinguish them from one another, according as we have occasion to rank them into sorts, under common denominations.' 2 Our divisions into genera and species are, therefore, artificial and, so far, unreal ; there is a real foundation for these distinctions and classifications, but we do not know it, or know it only imperfectly. * The sorting of things by us, or the making of determinate species, being in order to naming and comprehending them under general terms, I cannot see how it can be properly said, that Nature sets the boundaries of the species of things ; or, if it be so, our boundaries of species are not exactly conformable to those in nature. For we, having need of general names for present use, stay not for a perfect discovery of all those qualities which would best show us their most material differences and agreements ; but we ourselves divide them, by certain obvious appearances, into species.' 3 Our col- lection of ideas (the nominal essence) is not identical with the real collection (the real essence). If we knew the inner constitution of things, our idea of any particular substance l would be as far different from what it now is, as is his who knows all the springs and wheels and other contrivances within of the famous clock at Strasburg, from that which a gazing countryman has of it, who barely sees the motion of the hand, and hears the clock strike, and observes only some of the outward appear- ances.' 4 Our idea of spiritual substance is of precisely the same 1 III. iii. 15. 2 III. iii. 17. 3 III. vi. 30. * III. vi 3. io 4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS kind as that of material substance a something, different from material substance, since it is the support of different qualities, namely, 'the operations of the mind,' but equally unknown. So entirely ignorant are we of the nature of both material and spiritual substance that we cannot tell whether they are really the same or different. * We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no ; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance : it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking' * The idea of cause or power is, like that of substance, traced by Locke to experience. We get it both from our ideas of sensation and from reflecting on what passes within the mind itself; in both cases we observe change and, by considering the possibility of change, we come by the idea of power. He thinks, however, that we get a clearer and more distinct idea of active power from reflec- tion on the operations of our own minds than from sensible observation of bodies. * It seems to me we have, from the observation of the operation of bodies by our senses, but a very imperfect, obscure idea of active power ; since they afford us not any idea in themselves of the power to begin any action, either motion or thought.' 2 The ' crucial instance ' of Locke's hypothesis of the empirical origin of all our ideas is the idea of Infinity. ' All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here : in all that great extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote speculations it may seem to 1 IV. iii, 6. 2 II. xxi. 4. LOCKE 105 be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation.' x Anything that has parts space, time, or number is capable of enlargement ad infinitum. While, therefore, we have no ideas of infinite space, time, or number, we have a negative idea of the infinity of each of these. The idea of infinity arises directly from the experienced fact of the absence of a limit to the possibilities of imagination or thought in the field of space, time, and number. We thus obtain a * confused and comparative idea that this is not all, but we may yet go further. ... So that what lies beyond our positive idea towards infinity, lies in obscurity, and has the indeterminate confusion of a negative idea.' 2 Such is Locke's account of the empirical origin of the ideas which constitute the materials of human knowledge. We must now look at his account of human knowledge itself, its extent and its limits. Though he holds that all our knowledge originates in experience, Locke is not an empiricist. On the contrary, he recognises a rational element in all knowledge, properly so called. Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagree- ment of ideas, and such perception must be clear or certain. He distinguishes two degrees of knowledge- in- tuition and demonstration. In the former case, the agree- ment or disagreement is immediately perceived ; in the latter, it is perceived through the mediation of a third idea, but each step in the demonstration is itself an in- tuition, the agreement or disagreement between the two ideas compared being immediately perceived. This know- ledge, however, extends but a little way in matters of real existence ; it comprises only two certainties : the existence of ourselves, by intuition, and that of God, by demonstration. Locke agrees with Descartes that the existence of the self is implied in every state of consciousness. Every element of our experience, every idea of which we are 1 II, i. 24. a II. xvii. 15. io6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS conscious, is a certificate of our own existence, as the subject of that experience, the self that is conscious of that idea. * As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of any proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than our own existence. I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain : can any of these be more evident to me than my own existence ? If I doubt of all other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as certain perception of my own exis- tence, as of the pain I feel : or if I know I doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt. ... In every act of sensation, reasoning, or thinking, we are conscious to our- selves of our own being ; and, in this matter, come not short of the highest degree of certainty.' * From the certainty of our own existence that of the existence of God immediately follows. This is, according to Locke, ' the most obvious truth that reason discovers ' ; its evidence is ' equal to mathematical certainty.' Man knows intuitively that he is ' something that actually exists? 1 In the next place, man knows, by an intuitive certainty, that bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be equal to two right angles.' It is, therefore, 'an evident demonstration, that from eternity there has been something? And since all the powers of all beings must be traced to this eternal Being, it follows that it is the most powerful, as well as the most knowing, that is, God. Eternal Mind alone can produce * thinking, perceiving beings, such as we find ourselves to be.' 2 Below the rank of knowledge proper, intuitive and demonstrative, Locke recognises a third degree of know- ledge, not strictly entitled to the name our sensitive apprehension of external things, or of real objects other than ourselves and God. 'These two, viz. intuition and demonstration, are the degrees of our knowledge ; i IV. ix. 3. 2 IV. x. LOCKE 107 whatever comes short of one of these, with what assurance soever embraced, is but faith or opinion, but not knowledge, at least in all general truths. There is, indeed, another perception of the mind, employed about the particular existence of finite beings without us, which, going beyond bare probability, and yet not reaching perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty, passes under the name of know ledge. There can be nothing more certain than that the idea we receive from an external object is in our minds : this is intuitive knowledge. But whether there be anything more than barely that idea in our minds ; whether we can thence certainly infer the existence of anything without us, which corre- sponds to that idea, is that whereof some men think there may be a question made ; because men may have such ideas in their minds, when no such thing exists, no such object affects their senses.' x The difficulty is put elsewhere in a more philosophical form : ' It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the inter- vention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge, therefore, is real, only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things. But what shall be here the criterion ? How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves ? ' 2 Does not the very definition of knowledge, as the perception of the agreement or dis- agreement of ideas with one another, preclude the percep- tion of the agreement of ideas with non-ideal reality ? Locke's argument for the objective validity of sensitive knowledge consists of several considerations. In the first place, he urges, our ideas of sensation differ from those of memory and imagination, that is from mere ideas, in being produced in us without any action of our own, and there- fore ' must necessarily be the product of things operating on the mind, in a natural way, and producing therein those perceptions which by the Wisdom and Will of our Maker they are ordained and adapted to.' They t carry 1 IV. ii. 14. 2 IV. iv. 3. io8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS with them all the conformity which is intended ; or which our state requires : for they represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us : whereby we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of par- ticular substances, to discern the states they are in, and so to take them for our necessities, and apply them to our uses.' l Secondly, pleasure or pain often accompanies the sensation, and is absent from the idea as it recurs in memory or imagination ; and ' this certainty is as great as our happiness or misery, beyond which we have no con- cernment to know or to be.' 2 Thirdly, our several senses assist one another's testimony, and thus enable us to predict our sensational experience. On these grounds Locke concludes that 'the certainty of things existing in rerum natura when we have the testimony of our senses for it is not only a^ great as our frame can attain to, but as our condition needs. For, our faculties being suited not to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect, clear, comprehensive knowledge of things free from all doubt and scruple ; but to the preservation of us, in whom they are ; and accommodated to the use of life : they serve to our purpose well enough, if they will but give us certain notice of those things, which are convenient or incon- venient to us.' 3 The certainty which Locke attributes to sensitive knowledge is thus seen to be practical, rather than theoretical ; and it is impossible to distinguish this degree of knowledge from the belief or opinion which results from a balance of probabilities rather than from certain perception. But even granting that our sensitive apprehension of external reality possesses the certainty which is the charac- teristic of knowledge, as distinguished from mere opinion, we must observe within how very narrow limits it is con- fined. 'When our senses do actually convey into our understandings any idea, we cannot but be satisfied that there doth something at that time really exist without us, which doth affect our senses, and by them give notice of i IV. iv. 4. 2 IV. ii. 14. 8 IV. xi. 8. LOCKE 109 itself to our apprehensive faculties, and actually produce that idea which we then perceive : and we cannot so far distrust their testimony, as to doubt that such collections of simple ideas as we have observed by our senses to be united together, do really exist together. But this know- ledge extends as far as the present testimony of our senses, employed about particular objects that do then effect them, and no further.' * We cannot demonstrate the necessity of the co-existence-of those ideas which constitute the modes or qualities of substances ; we cannot perceive their ' necessary connexion or repugnancy.' The connexion between the secondary and the primary qualities remains inscrutable. ' And therefore there are very few general propositions to be made concerning substances, which carry with them undoubted certainty.' 2 l Our know- ledge in all these inquiries reaches very little further than our experience.' 3 Beyond the strict warrant of experience, or the testimony of our senses, we may venture upon l opinion' or 'judgment' as to the co- existence of the qualities of substances, but we cannot strictly ' know.' ' Possibly inquisitive and observing men may, by strength of judgment, penetrate further, and, on probabilities taken from wary observation, and hints well laid together, often guess right at what experience has not yet discovered to them. But this is but guessing still ; it amounts only to opinion, and has not that certainty which is requisite to knowledge.' 4 Locke finds himself compelled, therefore, to conclude that the so-called * science ' of which Bacon had talked so proudly, and of whose achievements he had himself spoken so respectfully in the opening pages of the Essay, is not, in the strict sense, science at all ; that, in his own words, there can be 'no science of bodies.' It is vain to search for the * forms ' of the various material substances, or to seek to verify ' the corpuscularian hypothesis ' as to the connexion of the primary and the secondary qualities of things. 1 1 am apt to doubt that, how , * IV. xi. 9. IV. vi. 7. 8 IV. iii. 13, 14. * IV. vi. 13. no ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS far soever human industry may advance useful and ex- perimental philosophy in physical things, scientifical will still be out of our reach. . . . Certainty and demonstration are things we must not, in these matters, pretend to.' * 4 And therefore we shall do no injury to our knowledge, when we modestly think with ourselves, that we are so far from being able to comprehend the whole nature of the universe, and all things contained in it, that we are not capable of a philosophical knowledge of the bodies that are about us, and make a part of us : concerning their secondary qualities, powers, and operations, we can have no universal certainty. ... In these we can go no further than particular experience informs us of matter of fact, and by analogy to guess what effects the like bodies are, upon other trials, like to produce. But as to a perfect science of natural bodies, (not to mention spiritual beings), we are, I think, so far from being capable of any such thing, that I conclude it lost labour to seek after it.' 2 In that * experience and history ' to which Bacon had looked as merely the preparation for scientific insight into the ' forms ' of things, and which Hobbes had still more disparaged, Locke accordingly sees the only legitimate occupation of physical inquiry. 'This way of getting and improving our knowledge in substances only by experience and history, which is all that the weakness of our faculties in this state of mediocrity which we are in in this world can attain to, makes me suspect that natural philosophy is not capable of being made a science. We are able, I imagine, to reach very little general knowledge concerning the species of bodies, and their several properties. Experi- ments and historical observations we may have, from which we may draw advantages of ease and health, and thereby increase our stock of conveniences for this life ; but beyond this I fear our talents reach not, nor are our faculties, as I guess, able to advance.' 3 If we cannot attain to a science of bodies, still less can we expect * scientifical ' understanding of spirits. Spiritual 1 IV. iii. 26. 2 IV. iii. 29. 3 IV. xii. 10. LOCKE 1 1 1 substance is, as we have seen, as unknown as material substance ; and Locke finds additional reasons for limiting our knowledge in this sphere. l If we are at a loss in respect of the powers and operations of bodies, I think it is easy to conclude we are much more in the dark in reference to spirits ; whereof we naturally have no ideas but what we draw from that of our own, by reflecting on the operations of our own souls within us, as far as they come within our observation. But how inconsiderable a rank the spirits that inhabit our bodies hold amongst those various and possibly innumerable kinds of nobler beings ; and how far short they come of the endow- ments and perfections of cherubim and seraphim, and infinite sorts of spirits above us, is what by a tran- sient hint in another place I have offered to my reader's consideration.' 1 Our knowledge of * sensible matters of facts,' or of the coexistence of the ideas which represent the qualities of substances, being thus confined to the particulars of ex- perience, we must look elsewhere for that knowledge which is at once general and real. It is found in those complex ideas other than those of substances, which, 'being archetypes of the mind's, own making, not in- tended to be the copies of anything, nor referred to the existence of anything, as to their originals, cannot want any conformity necessary to real knowledge.' 2 Here we have to do not with the relations of ideas to reality or to matters of fact, but simply with the relations of ideas to one another. Of this kind of knowledge Locke regards mathematics as the type. 'I doubt not but it will be easily granted that the knowledge we have of mathe- matical truths is not only certain, but real knowledge ; and not the bare empty vision of vain, insignificant chimeras of the brain : and yet, if we will consider, we shall find that it is only of our own ideas.' 3 It is with ideal figures and quantities, not with actual things, that the 1 IV. iii. 17. 2 IV. iv. 5. IV. iv. 6. ii2 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS mathematician is concerned. Locke holds, however, that such general, yet certain knowledge is found in all similar relations of ideas, in all similarly ideal sciences, and more particularly, in ethics, * our moral ideas, as well as mathe- matical, being archetypes themselves, and so adequate and complete ideas.' 1 'The idea of a supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose work- manship we are, and on whom we depend ; and the idea of ourselves, as understanding, rational creatures, being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action as might place morality amongst the sciences capable of demonstration : wherein I doubt not but from self-evident propositions, by necessary con- sequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences '. 2 The Essay closes, as it began, with the note of the practical and the useful. The sharp limitation of human knowledge should teach the lesson of contentment with probability, where certainty is unattainable. 'The understanding faculties being given to man, not barely for speculation, but also for the conduct of his life, man would be at a great loss if he had nothing to direct him but what has the certainty of true knowledge. For that being very short and scanty, as we have seen, he would be often \, utterly in the dark, and in most of the actions of his life perfectly at a stand, had he nothing to guide him in the absence of clear and certain knowledge. He that will not eat till he has demonstration that it will nourish him ; he that will not stir till he infallibly knows that the business he goes about will succeed, will have little else to do but to sit still and perish. Therefore, as God has set some things in broad daylight ; as he has given us some 1 IV. iv. 7. 2 IV. iii. 18. LOCKE .113 certain knowledge, though limited to a few things in comparison, probably as a taste of what intellectual creatures are capable of, to excite in us a desire and endeavour after a better state : so, in the greatest part of our concernments, he has afforded us only the twilight, as I may so say, of probability ; suitable, I presume, to that state of mediocrity and probationership he has been pleased to place us in here ; wherein, to check our over- confidence and presumption, we might, by every day's experience, be made sensible of our short-sightedness and liableness to error ; the sense whereof might be a constant admonition to us, to spend the days of this our pilgrimage with industry and care, in the searching and following of that way which might lead us to a state of greater per- fection. It being highly rational to think, even were revelation silent in the case, that, as men employ those talents God has given them here, they shall accordingly receive their rewards at the close of the day, when their sun shall set, and night shall put an end to their labours.' 1 The closing chapters of Book IV. are accordingly devoted to a consideration of that kind of apprehension of reality which Locke calls 'judgment,' as distinguished from 'knowledge.' 'The faculty which God has given man to supply the want of clear and certain knowledge, in cases where that cannot be had, is judgment : whereby the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree ; or, which is the same, any proposition to be true or false, without per- ceiving a demonstrative evidence in the proofs.' 2 So-called ' scientific ' truths being generally of this kind, as we have seen, one would have expected Locke to give here some account of the procedure of inductive science, some directions for the careful and methodical study of the facts, and cautions against the temptations to hasty and unwarranted generalisation, such as we find in Bacon's Novum Organum. But instead of this, he contents himself with general observations on the degrees of assent, on 1 IV. xiv. 1,2. a IV. xiv. 3. H ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS reason (and syllogism), on faith and reason, on 'enthu- siasm,' and on wrong assent, or error. The treatment of Judgment, that is to say, is limited to general consider- ations regarding the function of faith and the relations of faith and reason as guides of the human mind. What is specially significant here is Locke's refusal to oppose faith and reason in the fashion of Bacon and Hobbes, his refusal to accept any authority which cannot vindicate itself at the bar of reason. Even in his in- sistence upon the necessity of supplementing our know- ledge by faith, Locke remains a rationalist. 'Faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind : which, if it be regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything but upon good reason ; and so cannot be opposite to it. He that believes without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies ; but neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due to his Maker, who would have him use those discerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and error. . . . He governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who, in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves according as reason directs him. He that doth otherwise, transgresses against his own light, and misuses those faculties which were given him to no other end, but to search and follow the clearer evidence and greater probability.' 1 Locke is at one with the rationalist theologians of his century in their antagonism to an ' enthusiasm ' which would substitute for the insight of reason and of rational faith the so-called ' revelation ' of private experience. He speaks of * a third ground of assent, which with some men has the same authority, and is as confidently relied on as either faith or reason ; I mean enthusiasm : which, laying by reason, would set up revelation without it. Whereby in effect it takes away both reason and revelation, and substitutes in the room of them the ungrounded fancies of a man's own brain, and assumes them for a foundation both of opinion and 1 IV. xvii. 24. LOCKE 115 conduct.' 1 As against such a view, he insists upon the necessity of judging revelation by reason. ' He, therefore, that will not give himself up to all the extrava- gances of delusion and error must bring this guide of his light within to the trial. God when he makes the prophet does not unmake the man. He leaves all his faculties in the natural state, to enable him to judge of his inspira- tions, whether they be of divine original or no. When he illuminates the mind with supernatural light, he does not extinguish that which is natural. If he would have us assent to the truth of any proposition, he either evi- dences that truth by the usual methods of natural reason, or else makes it known to be a truth which he would have us assent to by his authority, and convinces us that it is from him, by some marks which reason cannot be mistaken in. Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything* 2 Yet reason clearly limits the field of its own insight ; it is only reasonable to believe where we cannot know and yet must act. We have seen that it was the * difficulties concerning morality and revealed religion ' that were the occasion of the inquiry concerning human understanding. The result of that inquiry is that the human under- standing is not commensurate with reality, that our line is too short to sound the depths of the vast ocean of being, that the interests of morality and religion cannot be com- passed by the reason of man, and that knowledge must be supplemented by faith if man is to fulfil his divine destiny. This is the point of view, not only of the closing chapters of the Essay y but of the treatise on the Reasonableness of Christianity^ published five years later. The aim of this treatise was to recall men from the contentions of the theological schools to the simplicity of the gospel as the rule of human life. 'The writers and wranglers in religion fill it with niceties, and dress it up with notions, which they make necessary and fundamental parts of it ; as if there were no way into the church, but through the i i IV. xix. 3. * IV. xix. 14. n6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS academy or lyceum. The greatest part of mankind have not leisure for learning and logic, and superfine distinctions of the schools.' 1 What men need is not intellectual insight or theological dogma, but practical guidance. Locke seems less confident than he was in the Essay of the possibility of a rational science of morals. 'It should seem, by the little that has hitherto been done in it, that it is too hard a task for unassisted reason to establish morality, in all its parts, upon its true foundation, with a clear and convincing light. ... It is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted failed men in its great and proper business of morality. It never from unquestionable principles, by clear deductions, made out an entire body of the " law of nature." And he that shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers, and compare them with those contained in the new testament, will find them to come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour, and taught by his apostles ; a college made up, for the most part, of ignorant, but inspired fishermen.' 2 Though Locke never himself attempted the construction of such a rational science of ethics as he had foreshadowed in the Essay, he did, in the second of the two Treatises of Government, attempt the formulation of a theory of political obligation. The immediate object of these political treatises was to disprove the theory of the divine and absolute right of the Monarch, as it had been formulated in Kilmer's Patriarcha y and to establish on theoretical grounds the righteousness of the Revolution ; * to establish the throne of our great restorer, our present king William ; to make good his title in the consent of the people . . . and to justify to the world the people of England, whose love of their just and natural rights, with their resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when it was on the very brink of slavery and ruin.' 3 In showing, in the second of these treatises, * the true original, extent, and end of civil government,' Locke bases his 1 Works, 8th ed., iii. 98, 99. a Works, iii. 87, 88. 3 Preface. LOCKE 117 argument, in the main, upon the principles already in- sisted upon by Hooker in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and his appeal is always to the 'just and natural rights' which are presupposed in civil society and which it is the function of government to defend from encroachment. For Locke, as for Hooker, the fundamental laws of the political society are the expression of those ' laws of nature ' which antedate the State and its legislation. ' The law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others.' * Holding that men are * by nature, all free, equal, and independent, 2 and that 'the power of the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to extend further than the common good,' 3 Locke, like Hobbes, finds the origin of the State in a contract. He distinguishes, however, the act by which political society is constituted from the act by which the ' legislative ' or government is established. ' The legislative ' is only the representative of the people, and is responsible to the people whom it represents for the faithful discharge of the trust committed to it. Government is ' a trust that is put in them by the society and the law of God and nature.' 4 ' The legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still " in the people the supreme power to remove or alter the legislative," when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.' 5 The exercise of this supreme power directly by the people itself implies the dissolution of government ; it means, in other words, revolution. The supreme power, at such a crisis, ' reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves ; or erect a new form, or under the old form place it in new hands, as they think good.' 6 To the hard question, ' Who shall be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust ? ' Locke boldly replies : ' The people shall be judge ; for who shall judge whether his trustee or 1 Sect. 35. * Sect. 95. 3 Sect. 131. 4 Sect. 142. 6 Sect. 149. Sect. 243. n8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed him, have still a power to discard him, when he fails in his trust P' 1 An all-important part of that civil liberty of which Locke was so ardent an advocate is religious liberty, or liberty of conscience. This, he thinks, has not yet been sufficiently vindicated, and he is in full sympathy with the plea for toleration which had been so earnestly made by such theologians as Chillingworth and Jeremy Taylor, as well as by the Cambridge Platonists, whose aversion to dogmatic intolerance he fully shares. * We have need of more generous remedies than what have yet been made use of in our distemper. It is neither Declarations of Indulgence nor Acts of Comprehension, such as yet have been practised or projected amongst us, that can do the work. The first will but palliate, the second increase our evil.' 2 What is needed is c equal and impartial liberty,' and this can be secured only by the absolute separation of the sphere of the Church from that of the State. The State has properly to do only with the temporal well-being of the individual ; his spiritual and eternal welfare is the concern of the Church alone. So long as the Church keeps within its own province, there can be no conflict between ecclesiastical and civil authority. It is only when the Church usurps the place of the State, and inter- feres with the individual's civil allegiance, as in the case of the Church of Rome, that the State is compelled to assert its authority. Here Locke finds the limit of the principle of toleration, as well as in the case of any church which is itself intolerant and in that of the atheistic dis- solution of the social order itself. In all other cases the principle of toleration is absolutely valid. The opposite principle inevitably defeats its own purpose, since not only has the individual an indefeasible right to religious freedom, but he cannot really be constrained in his religious life. The State is able by its coercion to pro- 1 Sect. 240. a ' To the Reader.' LOCKE 119 duce hypocrites ; it cannot dictate to the free spirit of the individual in that inner conduct of his spiritual life which is alone rightly called religion. It is usual with literary critics to condemn Locke as a writer devoid of style. Mr. Gosse, for example, speaks of the Essay as 'a work particularly unengaging in its mere style and delivery, 1 l and of its author as ' the most innocent of style' of all English philosophers. 'As a mere writer he may be said to exhibit the prose of the Restoration in its most humdrum form. . . . His style is prolix, dull, and without elevation ; he expresses himself with perfect clearness indeed, but without variety or charm of any kind. He seems to have a contempt for all the arts of literature, and passes on from sentence to sentence like a man talking aloud in his study, and intent only on making the matter in hand perfectly clear to himself.' 2 Mr. Gosse acknowledges that * this is not the universal view,' and that * it is usual to speak of the home- spun style of Locke as " forcible," " incisive," and even " ingenious." : That it possesses at least these qualities must, I think, have been proved to the reader by the quotations made in the course of this chapter. But I should be inclined to claim more than this ; for while Locke is certainly careless as to the literary form of his argument, and often dull and tedious through his habitual reiterativeness, his style has an individuality, and even a distinction, which are appreciated only through long familiarity with his writing ; and that he can on occasion rise to real beauty and eloquence of literary expression is shown by such a passage as the following : ' The memory of some men, it is true, is very tenacious, even to a miracle. But yet there seems to be a constant decay of all our ideas, even of those which are stuck deepest, and in minds the most retentive ; so that if they be not sometimes renewed, by repeated exercise of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which at first occasioned them, 1 Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 73. * Ibid., p. 96. 120 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS the print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to be seen. Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often die before us : and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching ; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.' 1 1 Essay, II. x. 5. PART II THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE problem of the English philosophers of the eighteenth century is set for them by Locke's account of human knowledge. In place of the efforts which occupy the great philosophic minds of the seventeenth century to construct a system of the sciences, a universal scheme of things, such as we find Bacon and Hobbes attempting, their work is controlled by the necessity of answering the previous question, first raised by Locke, of the nature and the limits of human knowledge. The theory of know- ledge leads, it is true, in Berkeley's hands, immediately to a corresponding theory of reality. Locke's supposition of an unknown and unknowable substance underlying the known objects, or the objects so far as they enter into human experience, having been discovered to be an unmeaning abstraction, if not a self-contradictory con- ception, material reality is identified with the complex of sensations, and an idealistic theory is substituted for the crude realism which resulted from the Lockian theory of knowledge ; the two substances of Locke are reduced to the one spiritual substance of Berkeley. But Hume, following out the same path, prescribed by Locke the path of experience as opposed to that of abstract thought, the path of criticism as distinguished from that of un- critical prejudgment, is confronted once more with Locke's problem of the nature and limits of knowledge, and finds that spiritual substance is no less unmeaning and con- tradictory than material ; that, as the esse of things is percipiy the esse of mind is percipere ; that the self, like the 122 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS not-self, is but a complex of ideas or states of conscious- ness. For Hume, moreover, as already in part for Berkeley, the problem of knowledge changes its aspect from the problem of substance to that of cause. Berkeley insists upon the impotence of matter, even more than upon its mind-dependent character ; but he is no less confident than Locke himself that in spirit, whether human or divine, we find the true fountain of causal energy or power. Hume finds no greater validity in spiritual than in material causes ; in both cases alike the fact of experience is constant or uniform succession, and the necessary connexion which we attribute to the relation of cause and effect is discovered to be merely a subjective habit or custom which results from the tendency to associate events constantly conjoined in our experience, not an objective characteristic of reality. The result of the further investigation of the problem of knowledge, on the empirical lines suggested by Locke himself, is thus the sceptical reduction of knowledge and certainty to rrtere opinion and probability : no science or certain know- ledge, whether of minds or bodies, is attainable by man. This sceptical result of the Lockian empiricism recalls attention to the rational constitution of knowledge, which Locke had rather assumed than proved ; and we find Reid, the founder of the Scottish philosophy of Common Sense, insisting upon the rational elements which are presupposed in all knowledge and in human experience as we have it. At the end as at the beginning of the century the all-important problem of philosophy is the problem of knowledge. In the ethical sphere, the problem is really set by Hobbes, the unmitigated egoism of whose theory is op- posed by the * moral sense' school, whose teaching, as developed by Hume, occasions the attempts of Hartley and Adam Smith to explain the moral sense by association and sympathy, of Tucker and Paley to reduce virtue to utility, and of Price to establish morality on a rational basis. CHAPTER I BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM THE pre-eminent merits of Berkeley as a philosophical writer are acknowledged by all competent judges. It will be sufficient here to mention a single critic, Mr. Gosse, who designates him as * perhaps the most exquisite writer of English in his generation,' and 'one of the most exquisite writers of English prose.' Among the writers of that time, * it may perhaps be said that there is not one who is quite his equal in style ; his prose is dis- tinguished as well for dignity and fulness of phrase, as for splendour and delicacy of diction, without effeminacy.' l For grace as well as lucidity of expression, Berkeley is un- rivalled among English philosophers. He is, moreover, a master of that most difficult form of prose writing, the dialogue. In the 'dramatic movement or 'action' of the dialogue, and in the characterisation of the interlocutors, his dialogues, especially the Akiphron series, remind us forcibly of Plato. It is not so easy to determine his real significance as a philosopher. His writings are dominated throughout by a frankly confessed religious or theological purpose, which becomes only more pronounced and engrossing as we pass from his earlier to his later works. His great foes, from first to last, are 'Scepticism,' 'Atheism,' and that ' Materialism ' in which he sees their common philosophical basis. Of the Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, his first-published work, we find him writing (to Sir John 1 History of Eighteenth Century Literature, pp. 96, 203. 123 i2 4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Percival) : * In a little time I hope to make what is there laid down appear subservient to the ends of morality and religion.' In the Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, published in the following year, the reader is told, on the title-page, that 'the chief causes of Error and Difficulty in the Sciences, with the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are inquired into.' The Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous are intended to show, among other things, 'the Immediate Providence of a Deity, in opposition to Sceptics and Atheists.' The writings of the second period, that of middle life, are more exclusively dominated by this theo- logical purpose. Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher is entitled 'an Apology for the Christian Religion, against those who are called Free-thinkers.' In Siris, the latest product of Berkeley's reflection, the religious, if not the theological, interest is supreme. The mood is often more mystical than philosophical, and his sympathies have been greatly widened, but he is as much concerned as ever to determine what, in philosophical thought, is and is not ' Atheism.' It cannot be denied, moreover, that he be- trays, especially in his prolonged controversy with the deists of his time, a real unfairness which leads him seriously to misrepresent the aims and arguments of his opponents. This biassed and unsympathetic attitude is apparent even in his discussion of Locke's doctrine of ' abstract ideas ' in the Introduction to the Principles, and is too characteristic to be ascribed, as it is too generously by Professor Campbell Fraser, to his natural ' impetuosity ' in controversy. It is a serious flaw in the polemics of an author whose aims are so worthy and whose ability as a controversialist ought to have saved him from any such temptation. It is a strange irony of fate that a philosophy whose chief aim was the refutation of scepticism should itself have come to be regarded as simply a link in the chain of sceptical reasoning connecting Locke with Hume, so that Berkeley is simply an incomplete Hume, and Hume simply a Berkeley who has learned the implications of his BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 125 own philosophy. So far as the history of philosophy is concerned, so far as Berkeley's philosophy has really influenced his successors, it is summed up in his Immateri- alism, or_Jiis refutation of Locke's doctrine of the sub- stantial or independent existence of material things or the objects of sense-perception. By following out Locke's own * new way of ideas,' he found himself forced to the conclusion that only particular things exist ; and since the particular thing is always a complex of sensations, and there is no essential difference between the so-called primary and the secondary qualities, both being alike mind-dependent, Locke's ' material substance ' not only loses its significance, but becomes a self-contradictory or inconceivable conception. Since, moreover, ideas are essentially passive, and cannot strictly cause, but merely signify, one another ; since the only cause, as well as the only substance, is found in the spiritual sphere, it follows that the explanation of things in terms of material or mechanical causes is no real explanation at all. So far as ideas go, therefore and Berkeley is only following out Locke's own maxim that the elements of all knowledge areudeas we have no knowledge either of material sub- stance or of material cause. Hume has only to take the final step to reach the sceptical goal of the new way of ideas. He has only to point out that the same criticism which Berkeley applied to Locke's material substance and material cause applies to spiritual substance and spiritual cause, to reach his sceptical dissolution of all real know- ledge. If we can explain only in terms of substance and cause, and if both of these explanations are invalidated, then reality becomes for us inexplicable, a mere enigma. Nor is this historical interpretation of the significance of Berkeley's philosophy really, on the whole, unjust. He spent his best strength and did his real work in. the de- structive criticism of Locke's account of external reality ; his own doctrine of Immaterialism is his real contribution to English philosophy and, indirectly if not d'frectly, to European philosophy. The work of reconstruction, to which in his own mind this destructive criticism was always 126 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS subordinate, is comparatively ineffective. His doctrine of the * notion,' as distinguished from the * idea,' was never developed with anything like the clearness which be- longed to his development of Locke's doctrine of ideas into its negative consequences for the Lockian doctrine of material reality. The existence of the self, of other selves, and of God is rather assumed than proved. We cannot resist the conclusion that Berkeley's positive or spiritual doctrine rests rather upon common sense or religious faith than upon a reasoned philosophy. The years of middle age were too busy with practical and philanthropic activities to permit of any resumption of the strenuous philosophical effort of his youth ; their absorbing intellectual interest was the defence of the faith from the attacks of deists and * free-thinkers.' And when at last he comes, in Siris, to gather up the final results of his ' philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries,' pursued in the quiet closing years at Cloyne, what he gives us is rather an eclectic philosophy culled from the ancient writers, especially Plato and the Neo- Platonists, something between a metaphysical idealism of the Platonic type and a mysticism of the Neo-Platonic sort, than a systematic development of his earlier immateri- alism into a spiritual realism or rational idealism. Yet, though the philosophy of Berkeley may justly be regarded as only a splendid fragment, rather than a com- pletely developed system of thought, we must not mini- mise its real importance, which is rrmch greater than such a representation would suggest. C Professor Fraser has truly said of ( the new conception of matter presented by Berkeley' that 'its consequences justify us in regard- ing it as one of the conceptions that mark epochs, and become springs of spiritual progress ' x His philosophic genius may be said to have spent itself in a single flash of insight, in the clear apprehension of one great truth about external reality and man's knowledge of it ; but so brilliant is this one achievement, so epoch-making is its importance, not only for the sceptical reduction of Lockian 1 Selections from Berkeley ', Introd., p. xiii. BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 127 principles in Hume, but for the subsequent movement of philosophical reconstruction in Kant and his successors, that it is not too much to say that Berkeley is the founder of modern idealism, and that the ability to appreciate and to assimilate~~Tns conception of external reality may be taken as a * touchstone of metaphysical sagacity.' For it was Berkeley who first discovered the alternative of a spiritual monism to the dualism alike of the Lockian and of the Cartesian philosophy ; who first ventured the affirmation that the esse of material and extended things is percipi, that the primary reality is spiritual and the reality of the material world mind-dependent ; that matter and extension are neither substantial nor attributes, co-ordi- nate with thought, of one ultimate substance, but in their very nature subordinate to thought and the thinking mind. And if Locke had already hinted that true agency is to be found only in the spiritual sphere, it was Berkeley who first clearly apprehended the essentially passive and impotent character of material * forces,' and pointed persistently to mind or will as the one true cause. It was Berkeley who first in modern philosophy discovered the importance of the subject for knowledge ; who first clearly saw that, so far from its being the function of the knowing mind to reproduce an object presented to it from without, the object is de- pendent for its very existence upon the knowing subject. This discovery of the true importance of the subject is the ve7y mark of modern as distinguished from ancient idealism, of the idealism of Kant and Hegel as distin- guished from that of Plato and Aristotle. And if, in the light of later reflection and deeper insight, Berkeley's account of reality appears naive and fragmentary, it is yet not difficult to recognise in his simple words the essential message of later idealism. * Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz. that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind ; that their being is to be perceived or known ; 128 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS that consequently so long as they are not actually per- ceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit : it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the ab- surdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit.' 1 ^ We learn from Berkeley's Commonplace Book, written from time to time during his undergraduate years at Trinity College, Dublin, that the great formative influ- ence of his youth was Locke's Essay which, through the influence of Molyneux, had been prescribed as a text-book at Dublin, and appears to have excited this student at any rate to independent critical activity. To appreciate Berkeley's criticism, it is important to recall just how far Locke himself had gone in the direction of idealising reality, how far he had himself followed out his new way of ideas. He had proclaimed that our knowledge of reality consists of ideas and is, therefore, mind-dependent. But he had at the same time recognised a non-ideal and inde- pendent aspect of reality, and distinguished the secondary qualities, as merely ideal, from the primary, as having both an ideal and a real, or independent, existence. The secondary qualities, he had insisted, are reducible to the primary, however mysterious the connexion between the former and the latter may be. Finally^he had postulated two kinds of substance as the substrata of the ideas of sensation.- and the ideas of reflection respectively, and held that, in some to us unintelligible way, the material sub- stance operates upon the spiritual, and produces in it those ideas which correspond to the real qualities of material things. Now Berkeley argues that this Lockian theory of a merely partial equivalence between the ideal and the real object, this postulation of anon-ideal and, in its substantial reality, unknowable object, is not merely superfluous but 1 Principles of Human Knowledge, sect 6. BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 129 unmeaning. The only object of which we can speak in- telligently is the object as we know it, that is, the object which consists in ideas or sensations. To speak of ideas as corresponding to or resembling non-ideal objects, is absurd : an idea can only resemble an idea. The distinc- tion between ideas and real things makes real knowledge impossible, and leads inevitably to scepticism ; since, in that case, we know only relations of ideas to one another, never the relation of ideas to things.^ 'The referring ideas to things which are not ideas, the using the term " idea of," is one great cause of mistake.' l ' How can you compare any things besides your own ideas ? ' 2 ' This, which, if I mistake not, hath been shown to be a most groundless and absurd notion, is the very root of Scepti- cism ; for, so long as men thought that real things sub- sisted without the mind, and that their knowledge was only so far forth real as it was conformable to real things, it follows they could not be certain that they had any real knowledge at all. For how can it be known that the things which are perceived are conformable to those which are not perceived, or exist without the mind ? ' s Locke had himself admitted that the secondary qualities exist only in the mind that perceives them. The same reasons ought to have led him to see that the so-called ' primary ' qualities are also exclusively mental, and there- fore that the only reality of which we can intelligently speak is mind-dependent or ideal, that the esse of all material things is percipi. Locke had attributed our ignorance of the real essence of things to the imperfection of our human faculties ; he had accounted for the limitations of our knowledge by reference to the practical uses which it is intended to serve and for which, in spite of its theoretic inadequacy, it is entirely sufficient. In Berkeley's judgment it is not the defect of our faculties, but our misuse of them, that is the cause of our ignorance of reality. 'It is said the faculties we have are few, and those designed by nature 1 Works, i. 35. * Works, i. 82. 3 Principles, sect. 86. 130 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS for the support and pleasure of life, and not to penetrate into the inward essence and constitution of things. . . . But, perhaps, we may be too partial to ourselves in placing the fault originally in our faculties, and not rather in the wrong use we make of them. . . . Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselves. We have first raised a dust, and then complain we cannot see.* 1 The great obstacle to know- ledge is found by Berkeley, as it was found by Locke, in the misuse of words, in the substitution of words for ideas. It is ' the mist and veil of words ' that has chiefly obscured from us the true nature of reality. All our ideas are really particular and concrete ; it is only be- cause we have been content to accept words in place of ideas that we have imagined the possibility of * abstract ' general ideas. Locke himself has been the victim of such verbalism and abstraction ; for what else is his * material substance' but an abstract idea, or a mere word which represents no idea at all ? CThe discussion of abstract ideas, to which Berkeley devotes the Introduction to the Principles, is calculated to produce a wrong impression both of Locke's views and of his own.) Using the term c idea ' in a much narrower sense than that in which Locke had used it, he has no difficulty in convicting Locke of absurdities of thought which are entirely foreign to his actual views. (For Locke an idea is * whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks ' : hence he uses it * to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking.' 2 For Berkeley 'idea' means, as Professor Fraser says, 'object presented to the senses, or represented in imagination.' 3 An abstract idea, therefore, he has no difficulty in showing, is a contradiction in terms, since it is equivalent to an abstract image.) It is impossible to imagine colour 1 Principles, Introd., sects. 2, 3. ' Essay, Inlrod., sect. 8. 8 Selections, 5th ed., p. n, note z. BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 131 in general, or a triangle which is neither equilateral, isosceles, nor scalenon. But it does not follow that it is impossible to think of colour in general or of a triangle in general, or that abstract ideas, in the sense of general ideas or thoughts, are impossible. Berkeley, in his Commonplace Book, notes that there is ' a great difference between considering length without breadth, and having an idea, or imagining length without breadth.' l And while it has often been inferred from his argument against abstract ideas that Berkeley was a strict nominalist, and denied the validity of universals or concepts, the truth is that he explicitly affirms his belief in the possibility of general, as distinguished from abstract ideas, and in doing so parts company with strict nominalism and, in his doctrine of conceptualism, leaves open the possibility, if indeed he does not imply the necessity, of realism in the only sense in which such a doctrine is now held. QWhile all ideas are, in themselves, particular, any idea may acquire generality by being used to represent other particular ideas or the element common to a number of particular ideas. 'It is, I know, a point much insisted on, that all know- ledge and demonstration are about universal notions, to which I fully agree. But then it does not appear to me that those notions are formed by abstraction in the manner premised universality, so far as I can comprehend, not consisting in the absolute, positive nature or conception of anything, but in the relation it bears to the particulars signified or represented by it ; by virtue whereof it is that things, names, or notions, being in their own nature particular, are rendered universal. Thus, when I demon- strate any proposition concerning triangles, it is supposed that I have in view the universal idea of a triangle : which ought not to be understood as if I could frame an idea of a triangle which was neither equilateral, nor scalenon, nor equicrural ; but only that the particular triangle I consider, whether of this or that sort it matters not, doth equally stand for and represent all rectilineal triangles whatsoever, and is 1 Works, i. 78. 132 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS in that sense universal. All which seems very plain and not to include any difficulty in it.' 1 ' It must be acknowledged that a man may consider a figure merely as triangular ; without attending to the particular qualities of the angles, or relations of the sides. So far he may abstract. ... In like manner we may consider Peter so far forth as man, or so far forth as animal, without framing the aforementioned abstract idea, either of man or of arumal ; inasmuch as all that is perceived is not considered.' 2 / It does not belong to Berkeley's polemical purpose in the discussion to develop the realistic implications of his position, or to show how it is that an idea, in itself particular, is qualified to represent other particular ideas of the same class. The abstract terms which he is concerned to invalidate are merely general. Of these the great example is Locke's abstract ' Matter,' from which all particular, and therefore all general, qualities have been removed. Against such an 'abstract idea' as this his criticism is completely cogent. If, then, we are not to content ourselves with mere meaningless words, if the word ' Matter ' is to stand for an idea or to have a meaning, we must translate it into the particular ideas of our experience. Abstract from any of the concrete objects of our sense-perception all the particular qualities of which we become aware only in perception, and which are therefore dependent for their existence upon percipient mind ; and what remains is not the general or abstract idea of Matter, but simply nothing at all. The reality of all external things consists in the particular sensations from which they derive their names, and by which they are distinguished from one another ; think away these particular ideas, and the idea of the thing vanishes with them. And if it be objected that Matter must still be postulated as the substratum or support of the qualities, that the ' thing ' is not to be resolved into the 'qualities' which belong to it, Berkeley retorts with the question, What can be the support of ideas or sensa- tions but percipient mind ? The thing is nothing but 1 Principles, Introd., sect. 15. a Ibid., sect. 1 6 (2nd ed.)- BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 133 the sum of its qualities ; what is true of each of these qualities is true of their sum. The thing itself, so far as we can intelligently speak of it, depends for its existence upon percipient mind. The disappearance of Locke's material substance, the reduction of Matter to terms of Mind, the discovery of the esse of things in their percipi, not only delivers us from that scepticism which was the inevitable consequence of the doctrine of the independent existence of matter ; it delivers us also from that materialism which Berkeley finds to be the common tendency of the Lockian and of the Cartesian dualism, and of the spirit and method of the science of his time. In our total ignorance of the nature of substance, we could see no reason, according to Locke, why Matter should not be endowed by God with the power to think, so that finite spirits might, after all, be merely material beings gifted with this strange power. He had, moreover, explained the secondary qualities in terms of the primary, accepting the * corpuscularian hypothesis ' as to the causation of ideas in our minds by material things outside us. In the Cartesian dualism Berkeley saw the same tendency. The absolute separation of the two spheres of thought and extension implied that there could be no interaction of mind and matter, and therefore that all explanation of material phenomena must be in terms of matter and motion. And he found the scientific minds of his age devoted to the investigation, in the spirit of Bacon, of efficient, to the exclusion of final causes ; fascinated by the same spell of the ' corpuscularian hypothesis.' The logical implication of all this seemed to him to be nothing less than the explicit and uncompromis- ing materialism of Hobbes. It is not so much Locke or the Cartesians or the scientific thinkers of his own day that he has in view as Hobbes, in whom he sees the full fruition, in anticipation, of the tendencies which they represent. Hobbes has once for all made explicit the materialism and the atheism which are implicit in such views ; and it is against this materialism and atheism that Berkeley's entire philosophy, whether in the Essay on Vision 134 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS and the Principles of his youth, or in the Alciphron of his middle age, or even in the Siris of his later years, is one continued protest. The sceptical tendency was the characteristic evil of the Lockian philosophy ; the ten- dency to materialism and atheism was the characteristic vice of the age itself. If the interests of the spiritual life were to be secured, if spirit was not to be reduced to terms of matter, matter must be reduced to terms of spirit. (With its substantiality, matter loses *at the same time its causal power. > If matter consists in ideas, it is clearly passive, and the sole agent is seen to be mind or spirit. One idea cannot be the cause of another idea ; it can only be its sign or symbol, suggesting it as a word suggests its meaning to those who have learned what it represents. The business of science is simply the inter- pretation of these natural signs, the study of this language of nature. This new interpretation of natural causation which, by convicting the material world of impotence, at the same time discovers in it the revelation of the divine Spirit speaking to the spirit of man in the language of natural signs, is most fully unfolded in Berkeley's earliest work, the Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. The immediate object of the treatise was to give a preliminary, and intentionally incomplete, account of the doctrine of Immaterialism, which Berkeley had already formulated in his own mind, and of which he gave a complete exposition in the Principles, published in the following year. Its main thesis accordingly is that the object of vision is merely colour or coloured extension and, since this is obviously an idea, that the object of vision is mind-dependent. The view commonly held was that we see much more than this, namely, external objects or distance outward from the eye. But distance, Berkeley contends, cannot strictly be seen ; we see only coloured points or the ends of the rays of light which reach the eye, not the rays themselves. Outness or space is a mere abstract idea ; reduce it to its concrete particulars, and it becomes BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 135 the tactual sensations which are suggested by the visual sensations, because they have been constantly connected with the latter in our experience. We do not see distant objects, we foresee or expect them ; and ' they ' are not so much future objects of vision as future objects of touch. * In treating of Vision,' he tells us in the later c Vindication ' of the theory, * it was my purpose to consider the effects and appearances^ the objects perceived by my senses, the ideas of sight as connected with those of touch ; to inquire how one idea comes to suggest another belonging to a different sense, how things visible suggest things tangible, how present things suggest things more remote and future, whether by likeness, by necessary connexion, by geo- metrical inference, or by arbitrary institution.' 1 So far as the problem of the mere psychology of vision is concerned, Locke had suggested and, to a certain extent, anticipated Berkeley's solution in a well-known passage. 'The ideas we receive by sensation are often, in grown people, altered by the judgment, without our taking notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe of any uniform colour, e.g. gold, alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted on our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed, with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having, by use, been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us ; what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies ; the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes. So that from that which is truly variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure, it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour ; when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane variously coloured, as is evident in painting.' 2 Berkeley carries the psychological investigation further than Locke 1 The Theory of Visual Language Vindicated and Explained, sect. 14. 2 Essay, II. ix. 8. 136 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS had done ; but his .own interest in his theory of vision is philosophical rather than psychological, and its philo- sophical interest for us, if not for his first readers, lies not so much in its main thesis of the mind-dependent character of the objects of vision, in the strict sense, as in its formulation, with special reference to vision, of the theory of sense-symbolism. The data of sight are the signs of the data of touch ; and the connexion be- tween the sign and the thing signified is as arbitrary as the connexion between a word and its meaning. That this was Berkeley's own chief interest in the problem of vision is evident from the following statement : * How comes it to pass that we apprehend by the ideas of sight certain other ideas, which neither resemble them, nor cause them, nor are caused by them, nor have any necessary connexion with them ? The solution of this problem, in its full extent, doth comprehend the whole Theory of Vision. This stating of the matter placeth it on a new foot, and in a different light from all preceding theories. . . . To which the proper answer is That this is done in virtue of an arbitrary connexion^ instituted by the Author of Nature.' 1 In the Principles this interpretation of natural causation is generalised. 'The connexion of ideas does not imply the relation of cause and effect^ but only of a mark or sign with the thing signified. The fire which I see is not the cause of the pain I suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark that forewarns me of it. In like manner the noise that I hear is not the effect of this or that motion or collision of the ambient bodies, but the sign thereof. . . . Hence, it is evident that those things which, under the notion of a cause co-operating or concurring to the production of effects, are altogether inexplicable and run us into great absurdities, may be very naturally explained, and have a proper and obvious use assigned to them, when they are considered only as marks or signs for our information. And it is the searching after and endeavouring to under- stand this Language (if I may so call it) of the Author of 1 The Theory of Visual Language Vindicated and Explained, sects. 42, 43- BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 137 Nature, that ought to be the employment of the natural philosopher ; and not the pretending to explain things by corporeal causes, which doctrine seems to have too much estranged the minds of men from that Active Principle, that supreme and wise Spirit " in whom we live, move, and have our being." ' x } The disproof of the validity of the conceptions of sub- stance and cause, when applied to the material world, that is, the world of ideas or sensations, is for Berkeley in itself the proof of the validity of their application to the world of spirit. The proved unsubstantiality and impotence of things is the demonstration of the substantiality and power of persons or spirits, fin the first place, as the esse of things . is percipi, the esse of mind or spirit is percipere .yfcerception implies a percipient mind. The percipient subject must be distinguished from the perceptions of which it is the presupposition. ( { Besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise Something which knows or perceives them ; and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived ; for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived. ' 2 \ Of the self we have not an 'idea,' but a 4 notion.' * We may be said to have some knowledge or notion of our own minds, of spirits and active beings; whereof in a strict sense we have not ideas. In like manner, we know and have a notion of relations between things or ideas ; which relations are distinct from the ideas or things related, inasmuch as the latter may be perceived by us without our perceiving the former. To me it seems that ideas, spirits, and relations are all in their respective kinds the object of human knowledge and subject of dis- course ; and that the term idea would be improperly 1 Principles, sects. 65, 66. * Ibid., sect. 2. 138 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS extended to signify everything we know or have any notion of.' 1 } * ( In the Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous Berkeley has anticipated Hume's criticism that the same objections which Berkeley has urged against the existence of material substance are applicable to his own concep- tion of spiritual substance. * You acknowledge you have, properly speaking, no idea of your own soul. You even affirm that spirits are a sort of beings altogether different from ideas. Consequently that no idea can be like a spirit. We have therefore no idea of any spirit. You admit nevertheless that there is a spiritual Substance, although you have no idea of it ; while you deny there can be such a thing as material Substance, because you have no notion or idea of it. Is this fair dealing ? To act consistently, you must either admit Matter or reject Spirit. What say you to this ? ' Berkeley's answer is that the cases differ in two all-important respects. First, the notion of matter, as the unthinking support of ideas, is 1 repugnant ' or self-contradictory, whereas * it is no repugnancy to say that a perceiving thing should be the subject of ideas, or an active thing the cause of them.' Secondly, while 1 1 have no reason for believing the existence of Matter,' < the being of my Self, that is, my own soul, mind, or thinking principle, I evidently know by reflexion.' Hylas still objects: 'Notwithstanding all you have said, to me it seems that, according to your own way of thinking, and in consequence of your own principles, it should follow that you are only a system of floating ideas, without any substance to support them. Words are not to be used without a meaning. And, as there is no more meaning in spiritual Substance than in material Substance, the one is to be exploded as well as the other.' Berkeley's reply, in the person of Philonous, is as follows : * How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of my own being ; and that / myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking, active 1 Principles, sect. 89. BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 139 principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas. I know that I, one and the same self, perceive both colours and sounds : that a colour cannot perceive a sound, nor a sound a colour : that I am therefore one individual principle, distinct from colour and sound ; and, for the same reason, from all other sensible things and inert ideas. But, I am not in like manner conscious either of the existence or essence of Matter. On the contrary, I know that nothing inconsistent can exist, and that the existence of matter implies an inconsistency. Farther, I know what I mean when I affirm that there is a spiritual substance or support of ideas, that is, that a spirit knows and perceives ideas. But, I do not know what is meant when it is said that an unperceiving sub- stance hath inherent in it and supports either ideas or the archetypes of ideas. There is therefore upon the whole no parity of case between Spirit and Matter.' 1 In the second place,(Berkeley finds in Spirit the only real cause or power. / In this case also we have no * idea,' but a * notion/ 'Such is the nature of Spirit, or that which acts, that it cannot be of itself perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth. ... So far as I can see, the words, will, understanding, mind y soul y spirit , do not stand for different ideas, or, in truth, for any idea at all, but for something which is very different from ideas, and which, being an agent, cannot be like unto, or represented by, any idea whatsoever. Though it must be owned at the same time that we have some notion of soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving, hating inasmuch as we know or under- stand the meaning of these words. I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. It is no more than willing^ and straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy ; and by the same power it is obliterated and makes way for another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active. Thus much is 1 Works, i. 449-451. i 4 o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS certain and grounded on experience : but when we talk of unthinking agents, or of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse ourselves with words.' Of Similarly, the existence of other finite spirits is at least a probable inference, c if we see signs and effects indicating distinct finite agents like ourselves, and see no sign or symptom whatever that leads to a rational belief of Matter.' 2 ) The most convincing ground of belief in the existence of our fellow-men is their speaking to us, and we have the same ground for believing in the existence of God, who speaks to us in the universal sense-symbolism of Nature. The test of reality is externality, in the sense that the ideas are produced in our minds by no activity of our own, but by another Spirit, and produced in such a constant and uniform manner that, arbitrary as the connexion between them is, we learn to predict what will actually happen, and find that we are living in a world that is identical with, in the sense of similar to, that of our fellow-men. The significant and interpretable character of the ideas presented to us in sense-experience points to reason, as well as will, in its Author. The permanence and continuity that characterise our changing experience find their explanation in the reasonable con- stancy of the divine Will which is actively present in it all. The world is a constant creation ; the infinite Spirit is ever speaking to the spirits of men. } Such, in brief outline, is Berkeley's bold and brilliant youthful speculation as to the nature of the material world and its relation to man and God. The religious interest which inspired it finds its complete satisfaction in the result. The great obstacle which had prevented man's apprehension of God was independent Matter. That removed, sense is no veil that obscures the vision of God, but rather the transparent medium of the divine self- revelation. * Spirit with spirit can meet,' God can speak with man face to face. With this satisfying result 1 Principles, sects. 27, 28. * Works, i. 450. BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 141 Berkeley seems to have been content. Other interests absorbed his middle life practical philanthropy and theological controversy. These busy years had indeed one notable literary outcome, the series of seven Dialogues entitled Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher, of which it is no exaggeration to say that they are < more fitted than any in English literature to recall the charm of Plato and Cicero.' 1 But their philosophical content is unfortunately unequal to their literary merits. As a piece of Con- troversial discussion, they suffer from the fatal defect of unfairness and misrepresentation of the positions which it is their aim to refute. Even Professor Eraser admits that Berkeley's * natural impetuosity, added to indignation on account of the exclusive claim of the " minute philosophers " to free employment of reason in religion, tempt him to use language hardly consistent with the philosophical temper. Those whom he charged with atheism were professed theists, engaged with the important question of the nature and resources of what was called "natural religion," and the duty of reason to investigate this without restraint by ecclesiastical or other authority.' 2 Apart from the merits of the controversy between Berkeley and the deists of his time, whom he identifies with atheists, and designates ' minute philosophers ' because of their inability to take large views of things, the controversy itself, as it develops, belongs rather to the sphere of theological apologetics than to that of philosophy proper. The philosophical interest culminates in the fourth Dialogue, in which the proof of the divine existence is found in the language of vision. It is significant that Berkeley not only republished the Theory of Vision as an appendix to the Dialogues, but in the following year published a Vindication of that theory. ' Being persuaded that the Theory ofPtsien, annexed to The Minute Philosopher, affords to thinking men a new and unanswerable proof of the Existence and immediate Operation of God, and the constant condescending care of His Providence, I think 1 Fraser, Berkeley's Works, ii. 6. * Ibut. y ii. 375. 1 42 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS myself concerned, as well as I am able, to defend and explain it, at a time wherein Atheism hath made a greater progress than some are willing to own, or others to believe.' x The theory offers, he says, * a new argu- ment of a singular nature in proof of the immediate Care and Providence of a God, present to our minds, and directing our actions.' 2 The Third Dialogue is devoted to the question of the nature of Virtue, and is directed against Shaftes- bury's theory. While the discussion is vitiated by misrepresentation of his opponent's position, it supplies some interesting suggestions as to its author's ethical views. It has been said that there is no real connexion between these and his metaphysical position. * Bishop Berkeley,' says Mr. Selby-Bigge, 'was a most meta- physical person with very interesting views on the relation of human and divine reason, which at once suggest to us consequences of the most vital importance for morals, but the ethical portions of his writings might, to all appear- ance, have been written by Paley.' 3 (But Berkeley has himself suggested that his war against abstractions might have been carried into the sphere of ethics as well as into that of natural philosophy and of metaphysics. < What it is for a man to be happy, or an object good, every one may think he knows. But to frame an abstract idea of happiness, prescinded from all particular pleasure, or of goodness from everything that is good, this is what few can pretend to. So likewise a man may be just and virtuous without having precise ideas of justice and virtue. The opinion that those and the like words stand for general notions, abstracted from all particular persons and actions, seems to have rendered morality difficult and the study thereof of less use to mankind. And in effect one may make a great progress in school-ethics without ever being the wiser or better man for it, or knowing how to behave himself in the affairs of life more to the advantage of himself or his neighbours than 1 Works, ii. 379, 380. 2 Works, ii. 385. * British Moralists, Introd., p. xx. BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 143 he did before.' 1 J Although he never carried out the hint here conveyed of a reform of the science of ethics on his own lines of thought about external reality, he did, in the discourse on Passive Obedience^ directed apparently against Locke's views of Sovereignty in his Treatise of Civil Government^ investigate the relation of this duty to 'the principles of the Law of Nature,' developing the analogy between moral law and the laws of the divine government of Nature in a striking and suggestive way. The impressive and beautiful words with which Berkeley closes his last philosophical work are singularly applicable to himself. c Truth is the cry of all, but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views ; nor is it contented with a little ardour in the early time of life ; active, perhaps, to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as youth, the later growth as well as first fruits, at the altar of Truth.' 2 In the comparative quiet and seclusion of his later years at Cloyne he found time and opportunity to 'weigh and revise ' the results of his earlier thinking in the light of past thought, the records of which he seems to have studied with unabated ardour. The union in him of the practical with the speculative interest, as well as the intensity of his consciousness of the religious significance of every element and incident of human life, is curiously illustrated in this final work, published in 1744, thirty-five years after the Essay on Vision. It is entitled^* Siris : a Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries concern- ing the Virtues of Tar-water and divers other subjects connected together and arising one from another.' Its primar^jcjoncernis^with th_body and its_ills, but__its ^wTf n~tfieTsouT * If the lute be not well tuned, the musiciaiT~faiTs "of his harmony. And, in 1 Principles, sect. 100. 2 Siris, sect. 368. 144 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS our present condition, the operations of the mind so far depend on the right tone or good condition of its instru- ment, that anything which greatly contributes to preserve or recover the health of the Body is well worth the attention of the Mind. These considerations have moved me to communicate to the public, the salutary virtues of Tar-water ; to which I thought myself indispensably obliged by the duty every man owes to mankind. And, as effects are linked with their causes, my thoughts on this low but useful theme led to farther inquiries, and those on to others ; remote perhaps and speculative, but I hope not altogether useless or unentertaining.') Living, he says, ' in a remote corner among poor neighbours, who for want of a regular physician have often recourse to me, I have had frequent opportunities of trial ' ; and the result of these trials of its virtues was the conviction that he had found in this simple drug the panacea for all the bodily ills of men. The purpose of the book is at once to describe the nature of this panacea and to develop the metaphysical and religious reflections which are sug- gested by the marvellous properties of a thing apparently, and in itself, so simple and so ' low.' Professor Fraser calls Siris l the most curious and pro- found of Berkeley's works.' 1 It is the most profound in the sense that it raises questions which had not occurred to his mind in the earlier works ; but, as the same writer remarks, l the gold has to be separated from the dross.' 2 As the title suggests, the work is rather a series of * reflex- ions and inquiries ' than a systematic treatise. It is more like a series of unconnected notes, such as we find in the youthful Commonplace Book, than a sustained philosophi- cal argument, and it is as difficult as in the case of the Cambridge Platonists to extricate the author's own views from the mass of quotation and allusion to older writers with which its pages are crowded. If it were not for the occasional occurrence of a passage which only Berkeley could have written, we should be apt to question the 1 Works, iii. 117. * Berkeley, in ' Philosophical Classics,' p. 198. BERKELEY : THE NEW IDEALISM 145 authorship, judging from the style alone. The multifari- ous reading, of which it gives evidence, is ill-digested ; the views of 'Platonists, Pythagoreans, Egyptians, and Chaldeans ' are strangely identified, 1 nor is there any attempt to distinguish the views of Plato himself from those of the Neo-Platonists. There is the old effort to discredit Atheism, by showing that 'modern Atheism, be it of Hobbes, Spinoza, Collins, or whom you will, is not to be countenanced by the learning and great names of antiquity.' 2 On the other hand, Pantheism and Mysti- cism are distinguished from Atheism, on the ground that 1 whoever acknowledgeth the universe to be made and governed by an Eternal Mind cannot be justly deemed an Atheist.' 3 There is the old hostility to ' the cor- puscularian and mechanical philosophy, which hath prevailed for about a century.' 'This, indeed, might usefully enough have employed some share of the leisure and curiosity of inquisitive persons. But when it entered the seminaries of learning, as a necessary ac- complishment and most important part of education, by engrossing men's thoughts, and fixing their minds so much on corporeal objects, and the laws of motion, it hath, however undesignedly, indirectly, and by accident, yet not a little, indisposed them for spiritual, moral, and intellectual matters.' 4 The general drift of Berkeley's later thought, as revealed in this book, is clearly in the direction of a more transcendental and Platonic form of Idealism than that which is unfolded in the Principles. He has come under the spell of Plato, who ' had joined with an imagination the most splendid and magnificent, an intellect not less deep and clear,' 5 ' whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind ; whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages ; which supplied patriots, magis- trates, and lawgivers to the most flourishing States, as well as fathers to the Church, and doctors to the schools.' 6 We find accordingly a new disparagement of 1 Siris, sect. 362. 2 Ibid., sect. 354. 3 Ibid., sect. 352. 4 Ibid., sect. 331. 5 Ibid., sect. 360. 6 Ibid., sect. 332. K 146 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS the senses and a new exaltation of purely intellectual insight. Sense is only the first and lowest step in the ascent of the soul from the world to God, the meanest link in the Golden Chain that unites the finite to the infinite Spirit. < The perceptions of sense are gross ; but even in the senses there is a difference. Though harmony and proportion are not objects of sense, yet the eye and the ear are organs which offer to the mind such materials by means whereof she may apprehend both the one and the other. By experiments of sense we become acquainted with the lower faculties of the soul ; and from them, whether by a gradual evolution or ascent, we arrive at the highest. Sense supplies images to memory. These become subjects for fancy to work upon. Reason considers and judges of the imaginations. And these acts of reason become new objects to the understanding. In this scale, each lower faculty is a step that leads to one above it. And the uppermost naturally leads to the Deity ; which is rather the object of intellectual know- ledge than even of the discursive faculty, not to mention the sensitive. There runs a Chain throughout the whole system of beings. In this Chain one link drags another. The meanest things are connected with the highest.' 1 The extreme links of this Chain are the < grossly sensible ' and the l purely intelligible.' The earlier distinction between the idea and the notion is now developed into the contrast between c phenomena ' or ' appearances ' on the one hand and Ideas (in the Platonic sense) or Reality on the other. The senses, instead of being regarded as the medium of the self-revelation of the divine Spirit to the human, are condemned as veiling the divine Reality from our spirits. The mind is l depressed by the heaviness of the animal nature to which it is chained ' ; we are ' oppressed and overwhelmed by the senses,' the world of which is a * region of darkness and dreams.' (' Sense at first besets and overbears the mind. The sensible appearances are all in all : our reasonings 1 Siris, sect. 303. BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 147 are employed about them : our desires terminate in them : we look no farther for realities or causes ; till Intellect begins to dawn, and cast a ray on this shadowy scene. We then perceive the true principle of unity, identity, and existence. Those things that before seemed to constitute the whole of Being, upon taking an intel- lectual view of things, prove to be but fleeting phantoms.' ^ (While Berkeley's earlier view of reality, so far at least as the external world is concerned, was expressed in the statement that * the esse of things v&percipij the view which we find in Siris might rather be expressed in the state- ment that 'the esse of things is concipt.') Reality, being rationally constituted, can be apprehended only by intellect or reason. (* We know a thing when we under- stand it ; and we understand it when we can interpret or tell what it signifies. Strictly, the sense knows nothing. We perceive indeed sounds by hearing, and characters by sight. But we are not therefore said to understand them.' 2 1 As understanding perceiveth not, that is, doth not hear, or see, or feel, so sense knoweth not : and although the mind may use both sense and fancy, as means whereby to arrive at knowledge, yet sense or soul, so far forth as sensitive, knoweth nothing.' z ) In such sentences as these we see how Berkeley's centre of speculative interest has changed from the world of the senses to that of intellect or reason, and yet how closely his later Idealism is related to his earlier doctrine of Immaterialism ; how the one is rather a development than a negation of the other. Even in the Principles he had insisted upon the interpretability of the data of sensation, upon their symbolic or significant character, as the feature which makes science, on the one hand, and the practical conduct of life, on the other, possible for man. Even in the Principles he had insisted upon the necessity of supple- menting the ' idea ' by the * notion,' the perceptual by the conceptual apprehension of reality, holding that only through such notions can we apprehend relations or 1 Siris, sect. 294. 2 Ibid., sect. 253. 3 Ibid., sect. 305. 148 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS penetrate to spiritual substance and true causes. But his early doctrine of Immaterialism, or of the sensational character of external reality, has lost interest for him, in view of the higher truth, which now preoccupies him, of the rational constitution of the universe. In a new and deeper sense he now holds that God speaks to man, not merely in the simple language of Vision and of Sense, but in the deeper and more intimate communion of the divine with the human Reason. CHAPTER II HUME: EMPIRICISM AND SCEPTICISM HUME is not only the greatest English philosopher ; he is also one of the great figures in English literature. In his * Own Life ' he tells us that he 'was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoy- ments.' It was not merely in the sphere of philosophy proper, but in that of the essay and of history, that he sought to gratify this passion, and as a writer he is equally successful in all these spheres. His contribution to philo- sophy was the work of his youth, though he revised, and to some extent modified it in later years ; the real occupation of these later years was found in the production of essays on political and economic subjects and of his History of England. The revised statement of his philoso- phical opinions was confessedly undertaken rather with a view to their more effective literary expression than with any purpose of serious modification. ' I had always entertained a notion, that my want of success in publish- ing the Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded more from the manner than the matter, and that I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in going to the press too early. I, therefore, cast the first part of that work anew in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.' He professes, in his Essays, to attempt 'a union between the learned and conversible worlds,' and it seems clear that in philosophy he sought to effect the same union. The general verdict of posterity, if not that of his own contemporaries, has been that he succeeded in this ambition. The one notable exception is the formidable 149 150 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS dictum of Dr. Johnson, that ' his style is not English ; the structure of his sentences is French.' It can hardly be doubted that his residence in France during the three years of youth while he was writing the Treatise, and his resulting familiarity with the French language and literature, had some influence upon his English style, and that this influence was one of the chief factors in his education as a writer. Perhaps the most competent German historian of philo- sophy has characterised Hume as ' without doubt the clearest and most unprejudiced as well as the most compre- hensive and philosophically the best equipped thinker whom the English nation has produced.' 1 It is in virtue of the relentless faithfulness with which he follows out the logical consequences of the empirical point of view that we are compelled to admit that in the Treatise of Human Nature the logic of empiricism works itself out to its inevitable conclusions. It would be unjust to both Locke and Berkeley to say that they stopped short of these conclusions from theological or other prejudices. The truth is that empiricism was only a part of their philosophy, the other part being, as we have seen, of a rationalistic or idealistic type ; so that we cannot describe the sceptical philosophy of Hume as the complete logical development of the Lockian and Berkeleyan philosophy, but only as the logical completion of the empirical element in the philosophy of his pre- decessors. That which had for them been a part becomes for Hume the whole: he is an empiricist pure and simple, and he shows us with singular insight the ultimate mean- ing and consequences of pure empiricism. Locke's em- piricism had been limited to the solution of the problem of the origin of the materials or elements of knowledge ; it had never occurred to him to give a purely empirical account of knowledge itself, except in so far as he thought that the question of the * original ' of know- ledge had more than a merely psychological and genetic . J Windelband, Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, i. 326. HUME 151 significance. Hume disallows the distinction between knowledge and its materials, and seeks to give an empirical derivation and explanation of knowledge itself, alike on its material and on its formal side. Berkeley had traced the content of our knowledge of the material world to its origin in ideas or sensations, and had denied the reality of material substance and of material cause ; but it had not occurred to him to give an empirical account of the principles of substance and cause. With- out a ' notional ' apprehension of these latter principles, knowledge seemed to him impossible, and it was in vindi- cation of the validity of their true application that he sought to disprove their applicability to the relations of the data of our sensational experience to one another. Similarly we have seen that neither Locke nor Berkeley was a mere nominalist : nominalism was only a part of their theory of knowledge and of reality. For Hume, Berkeley's doctrine of the invalidity of ' abstract ideas ' is * one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters.' l It is for him the whole truth, and again he shows what are its full consequences. Once more, the experimental or psycho- logical method had been the method only of the Second Book of Locke's Essay ; it was not the method of Bock IV., to which all that precedes is really introductory and subsidiary, and in which alone the solution of his real problem of the nature and limits of human knowledge is attempted. Similarly for Berkeley the experimental or psychological method seems appropriate to the solution of the problem of the nature of that experience which we describe in abstract terms as knowledge of the material world ; but he regards that method as inadequate to the solution of the deeper problem of the nature of that spiritual reality, divine and human, to which he has found himself experimentally forced to reduce material reality. For Hume the experimental or psychological method is equally applicable to all questions of reality or 1 Treatise, hk. i. pt. i. sect. 7. 152 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS ' matters of fact,' the psychological explanation is the only possible explanation : the sub-title of the Treatise is * an attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reason- ing into Moral Subjects.' The limited scope assigned to the principle of empiri- cism or sensationalism by Locke and Berkeley, as contrasted with the unlimited scope assigned to that principle by Hume, may be summarised in the statement that while his predecessors had no thought of reducing reason to terms of sensation and experience, but always, implicitly and explicitly, assumed the distinction between these to be ultimate, Hurne is ji_diorough-going empiricist, in the sense that he seekstg^ give an empirical account or ex- planation ot all ourso-called ' rational ' judgments, to show that these judgments""are simply im press. 'Ti<; gnd iqeas^ associated by custom, expectations developed in us by experience. T he result is that while his predecessors assumethe distinction between the certainties of know- ledge and the probabilities of experience, and devote themselves to the investigation of the nature and extent of human knowledge, Hume sees in our so-called ' know- ledge ' only a fiction to be accounted for in terms of that experience which is for him the only source of human * understanding,' the only basis of that probability which supersedes our imagined knowledge and certainty. Locke and Berkeley had successively narrowed the range of knowledge. Locke had found that there is 'no science of bodies ' ; that, in the strict sense, we have no ' know- ledge' of external reality ; that our knowledge is either real and particular or general and without real significance. But that we do know or apprehend truth with certainty, that intuition and demonstration are valid forms of such certain knowledge, he had never questioned ; these are essential features in his theory of knowledge. Berkeley had in-_ sisted, more strenuously than Locke, upon reducing our jBstractarTd general knowledge to concrete and particular "terms, or, in his own terminology, to 'Ideas'"; he had further reduced causality, so far as the external world is concerned, to sense-symbolism, and insisted upon the HUME 153 arbitrary or the merely customary character of all natural relations, jmMtiwting ' suggestion ' fof Teason as the organ- ising principle of our sense-experience. Yet it had not occurred to him to doubt the rationality of the principles of substance and cause. In the very arbitrariness of the relations of the data of sensation he had seen the evidence of the rationality of their source ; in the uniformity of these relations he had seen the expression of a supreme cosmic Reason. Hume's denial of the distinction between the rational and the empirical elements in knowledge leads inevitably to the disintegration of knowledge ; certainty is reduced to^ probability; a thorough-going empiricism is found to be the negation bt knowledge, or to result in universal scepticism! The problem of knowledge changes, in Hume's hands, from that of Substance to that of Cause. Although the problem of substance had bulked more largely in the discussions of his predecessors, he saw that the point of real strategic interest was the validity of the causal principle. This had been the central constructive prin- ciple in the philosophy of both Locke and Berkeley. Locke had invoked material substance as the cause of our sensations, and had appealed to the same causal principle in his proof of the divine existence. Berkeley had sirrilarly ~ sought to demonstrate the existence ^of God as the cause_ or the ureas of sensation, arguing that such a cause couTcT be fo~und only in mind, and since it is not found in the TTumali mind, it follows that Supreme Spirit is the universal Cause? ur causal agency, whether in ourselves, in other finite agents, or in God, we have a * notion ' or rational apprehension, if not an * idea ' or empirical conception. What T Hume asks, is the origin, and therefore, the warrant of this causal principle, by the employment of which alorre we are enabled to transcend the particulars ot our percipient experience, and to relate~"tfiem in an apparent cosmos or rational system f Is it in reality a rational, or is it a merely empirical and customary relation ? On the answer to this j question, he sees, depends the consistency of empiricism as I a complete and self-contained theory of knowledge. 154 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS There are not many references to other writers in Hume's works ; but from the few such references which do occur, as well as from the entire train of thought, it is clear that he finds his point of departure in the writings of his English predecessors. Although the Treatise was written during his residence in France, there are, in the metaphysical part of that work, few traces of the influence of French philosophy, even that of Descartes. The plan of the first Book is modelled on that of Locke's Essay, the four parts being entitled * Of Ideas,' * Of the Ideas of Space and Time,' * Of Knowledge and Probability,' ' Of the Sceptical and other Systems of Philosophy.' Hume's object clearly is to complete, by correcting and systematis- ing, the philosophy of Locke and Berkeley. Speaking of Locke's discussion of innate ideas,hesays : ' A like ambiguity and circumlocution seem to run through that philosopher's reasonings on this as well as most other subjects.' l In the same work he says of Berkeley : < Most of the writings of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of scepti- cism, which are to be found either among the ancient or modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He professes, however, in his title-page (and undoubtedly with great truth) to have composed his book against the sceptics as well as against the atheists and free-thinkers. But thatt all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in reality, merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer and produce no conviction. Their only effect is to cause that momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion, which is the result of scepticism.' 2 That /Hume was fully conscious of the novel and revolutionary * character of his own views, as substituting scepticism, the result of a thorough-going empiricism, for the mixture of empiricism and rationalism which he found in Locke and Berkeley, is evident from a letter, written a fortnight after the publication of the Treatise, when he was waiting impatiently to learn its fate, in which he says : ' Those who are accustomed to reflect on such 1 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sect, ii., note. 2 Ibid., sect. xii. pt. i., note. HUME 155 abstract subjects, are commonly full of prejudices ; and those who are unprejudiced are unacquainted with meta- physical reasonings. My principles are so remote from all the vulgar sentiments on the subject, that were they to take place, they would produce almost a total alteration in philosophy ; and you know, revolutions of this kind are not easily brought about.' J The determination of Hume's precise position in philo- sophy is rendered much more difficult by the fact that he has presented his views in two, considerably divergent, forms : first in the Treatise, and later in the two Enquiries. In an ' advertisement ' prefixed to the posthumous edition of the collected Essays, he repudiates the Treatise as a * juvenile work, which the Author never acknowledged,' and desires that henceforth ' the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical senti- ments and principles.' In this work, he says, 'some negli- gences in his former reasoning and more in the expression, are, he hopes, corrected.' In a letter to Gilbert Elliot he says : ' I believe the Philosophical Essays contain every- thing of consequence relating to the understanding, which you would meet with in the Treatise ; and I give you my advice against reading the latter. By shortening and simplifying the questions, I really render them much more complete. Addo dum minuo. The philosophical principles are the same in both ; but I was carried away by the heat of youth and invention to publish too precipi- tately. So vast an undertaking, planned before I was one-and-twenty, and composed before twenty-five, must necessarily be very defective. I have repented my haste a hundred, and a hundred times.' 2 In another letter he confesses *a very great mistake in conduct, viz. my publishing at all the " Treatise of Human Nature," a book which pretended to innovate in all the sublimest paths of philosophy, and which I composed before I was five-and-twenty ; above all, the positive air which prevails 1 Burton's Life of Hume, i. 105. * Ibid., i. 337. 156 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS in that book, and which may be imputed to the ardour of youth, so much displeases me, that I have not patience to review it. But what success the same doctrines, better illustrated and expressed, may meet with, adhuc sub judice Ssett.' 1 While no one will hesitate to accept Hume's estimate of the literary superiority of the Enquiries, it is impossible to follow his advice, and to substitute the Enquiries for the Treatise. The * corrections ' which the author himself acknowledges he has made affect the doctrine too vitally, at several points, to warrant us in accepting the later as the equivalent of the earlier work/ Mr. Selby-Bigge speaks of ' the lower philosophic standard ' of the first Enquiry, and attributes this to the avoidance of difficulties which would disturb unnecessarily the confidence of ordinary opinion, and especially to the avoidance of ' the general question of the relation of knowledge and reality.' In the second Enquiry, in particular, he detects ' a very remark- able change of tone or temper, which, even more than particular statements, leads him to suppose that the system of Morals in the Enquiry is really and essentially different from that in the Treatise.' 2 But I cannot help agreeing with Grimm 3 that, even in the first Enquiry, the modifica- tions of view are of essential importance, and with Pro- fessor Campbell Fraser that while in the Treatise we have y Hume's statement of scepticism as the inevitable conse- quence of the empirical principles which he has adopted, in the Enquiry we have his 'sceptical solution of sceptical doubts.' 4 While the Treatise is undoubtedly the more im- portant work, and * to ignore it ' would be, as Mr. Selby- Bigge says, * to deprive Hume of his place among the great thinkers of Europe,' to ignore the Enquiry would be to neglect the modifications which later reflection, and not mere considerations of literary effect or of popularity, in- duced Hume to make upon the earlier statement of his 1 Burton's Life, i. 98. * Introd. to edition of Enquiries, p. xxiii. s Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems, pp. 57 1 596. 4 Introd. to Locke's Essay, p. cxxxviii. HUME 157 philosophy. If the later statement is characterised by less ' positiveness ' or confidence of tone, it is at the same time the result of a new effort to deduce, from the nega- tions from which escape is still regarded as impossible, conclusions less bewildering to the human mind. Hume narrows the meaning of the term * idea ' still further than Berkeley had done, and claims to * restore the word to its original sense, from which Mr. Locke had perverted it, in making it stand for all our perceptions,' ' by distinguishing < ideas ' from ' impressions,' and includ- ing under the latter term * all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul,' under ideas * the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning.' 'The difference betwixt these consists in the" degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness.' l By the term of impression,' he says, ' I would not be understood to express the manner, in which our lively perceptions are produced in the soul, but merely the perceptions themselves.' These impressions and ideas are either simple or complex ; and while the complex ideas are not in all cases the exact copies of our complex impressions, 'after the most accurate examination, of which I am capable, I venture to affirm,' says Hume, *"" ' that the rule here holds without any exception, and that every simple idea has a simple impression, which resembles it, and every simple impression a correspondent idea. . . . But if any one should deny this universal resemblance, I know no way of convincing him, but by desiring him to show a simple impression, that has not a correspondent idea, or a simple idea, that has not a correspondent im- pression. If he does not answer this challenge, as 'tis certain he cannot, we may from his silence and our own observation establish our conclusion.' The thesis of empiricism or sensationalism accordingly assumes the form, ' That all our simple ideas in their first appearance *- are derived from simple impressions, which are corre- spondent to them, and which they exactly represent.' 158 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS The philosophical significance of this thesis is developed in the sequel of the argument, both in the Treatise and in the Enquiry^ and is thus summarised in the latter work : * Here, therefore, is a proposition, which not only seems, in itself, simple and intelligible ; but, if a proper use were made of it, might render every dispute equally intelligible, and banish all that jargon, which has so long taken possession of metaphysical reasonings, and drawn disgrace upon them. . . . When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion. By bringing ideas into so clear a light we may reasonably hope to remove all dispute, which may arise, concerning their nature and reality.' l In the Treatise Hume further distinguishes impressions ! of sensation from those of reflexion, and points out an important difference in their origins, which leads to a modification of the general thesis as to the relation of \Xideas to impressions. 'The first kind,' he says, 'arises in the soul originally, from unknown causes. The second is derived in a great measure from our ideas, and that in the following order. An impression first strikes upon the senses, and makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain of some kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains after the impression ceases ; and this we call an idea. This idea of pleasure or pain, when it returns upon the soul, produces the new impressions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, which may properly be called im- pressions of reflexion, because derived from it. ... So that the impressions of reflexion are only antecedent to theTr correspondent ideas ; but posterior to those of sensation, and derived from them.' 2 These ' impressions of reflexion ' he otherwise drscribes as 'passions, desires, and emotions.' 1 Enquiry, sect. ii. ' Treatise, bk. i. pt. i. sect. 2. HUME 159 He also distinguishes jdeas^of j3^jgcLQxy___frqm those of " imaginatuSrfr I-rtTe"~case of memory, the idea * retains a consiHeraBle degree of its first vivacity [as an impression], and is somewhat intermediate between an impression and an idea'; in the case of imagination, 'it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect idea.' Moreover, 'the imagination is not restrained to the same order and form with the original impressions ; while the memory is in a manner tied""3own in that respect, without any power of variation,' its peculiar function being ' not to preserve the simple ideas, but their order and position.' 1 The freedom of the imagination in the separation and com- bination of ideas is, however, limited, and a certain uniformity secured, by a 'uniting principle' or 'bond of union' among ideas 'a gentle force, which com- monly prevails,' and is the substitute in the imagination for 'that inseparable connexion, by which they are united in our memory.' ' Here is a kind of ATTRACTION, which in the mental world will be found to have as extra- ordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms.' The < prinn'nlaa yfggpn'a-/ tio_n he finds to be Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Causation ; and these principles of association become for him the chief factors in the explanation of our so-called 'knowledge ' of reality. Ideas may be related to one another either ' naturally,' according to the principles of association just named, or ' philosophically,' that is, scientifically, according to the different ways in which we see fit to compare them. These philosophical relations are seven in number, ^ namely, resemblance, identity, space and time, quantity or number, degrees in quality, contrariety (existence and non-exisfence), and causation. Of four of these relations, namely, resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, and proportions in quantity or number, we have certain knowledge ; the other three, namely, identity, situations in time and place, and causation, are cases of mere 1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. i. sect. 3. i6o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS probability. In the former, the relation ' depends solely upon ideas,' and accordingly is * the foundation of science ' ; in the latter it c depends not upon the idea, and may be absent or present even while that remains the same.' In the Enquiry this flistinction is stated as one between ' relations of ideas ' and ' matters of fact.' l problem is, like Locke's, to determine the nature and validity of our reasonings about matters of fact, or, in his own language, the relation between ideas and impressions. What, he asks, is the validity of any ' conclusion beyond the impressions of our senses ? ' 4 What is the nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory ? ' 2 ,/Strictly, it is only in the case of causation that we can be said to * reason ' about matters of fact, since only in that case does the mind * go beyond what is immediately present to the senses, either to discover the real existence or the relations of objects.' Our predication of the invariableness of the relation of identity or of the situa- tion of the object in space or time will be found to be , really based on the relation of cause and effect. What, *" then, is the nature of the causal inference ? That it is not an * inference ' in the strict sense of a conclusion for which we can give rational grounds, is brought out more clearly in the Enquiry 3 than in the Treatise. In the first place, he argues that ,^the know- ledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience,*" since ' no object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either the causes which produced it, or the effects which will arise from it.' * The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause, by the most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it.' As Berkeley had argued, the 1 Sect. iv. pt. i. * Enquiry, sect. iv. pt. i. 8 Ibid., sect. iv. HUME 161 connexion between causes and effects is arbitrary, not rationally necessary. In the second place, even experi- ence cannot be the basis of an inference to the future. 'For all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible qualities.' The empirical derivation of the idea of causal con- nexion, the reduction of it to its origin in impression, is traced much more carefully in the Treatise. Looking for the impressional basis in the relation of the objects con- cerned, Hume finds that objects causally related are always (i) contiguous, (2) successive to one another. These re- lations alone, however, are not sufficient ; an object may be contiguous and successive to another without being the effect of the latter. He finds (3) a necessary connexion between the objects. To what impression can this idea be traced ? The essence of the causal relation being the connexion of a present impression, or of a past impression retained in memory, with an idea of the imagination, the problem is to account for the transition or * inference ' from , the impression to the idea, and for the nature and qualities of the idea which entitle it to the name of * belief.' The transition or inference is not to be accounted for by any peculiar quality in the object perceived, by any new or unique sense-impression. What is essential is the regularity of Ihe contiguity and succession of the impressions, their * constant conjunction.' We find, as a matter of ex- perie'ncejTth'at " < IIke~obj ects have always been placed in like relations of contiguity and succession,' and this con- stant conjunction in the past leads us to expect the same constant conjunction in the future. The perception of the flame suggests the idea of its constant concomitant, heat. The union of the present impression with the idea of the other impression which has constantly accom- panied it in our past experience is a case of association. ' Reason can never show us the connexion of one object with another, tho' aided by experience, and the observa- tion of thejr constant conjunction in all past instances. L 162 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS When the mind, therefore, passes from the idea or im- pression of one object to the idea or belief of another, it is not determined by reason, but by certain principles, which associate together the ideas of these objects, and unite them in the imagination. Had ideas no more union in the fancy than objects seem to have to the understand- ing, we could never draw any inference from causes to effects, nor repose belief in any matter of fact. The inference, therefore, depends solely on the union of ideas. . . . Thus tho' causation be a philosophical relation, as implying contiguity, succession, and constant conjunc- tion, yet 'tis only so far as it is a natural relation, and produces an union among our ideas, that we are able to reason upon it, or draw any inference from it.' 1 While the repetition of the same impressions in the same relation to one another does not, in a sense, add anything to our experience, and would not afford the basis of a rational inference which is not already afforded by the first instance of the related impressions, yet Hume finds that the repetition does * produce a new impression, and by that means the idea, which I at present examine. For after a frequent repetition, I find, that upon the; appearance of one of the objects, the mind is determined by custom to consider its usual attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light upon account of its relation to the first object. 'Tis this impression, then, or determination, which affords me the idea of necessity.' The seat of necessity is in the mind, not in the object. 'Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from causes to effects, and from effects to causes, according to their experienced union.' The distribution of the objective^ 7 and subjective factors in the process is admirably sum- marised in the statement * that objects bear to each other the relations of contiguity and succession ; that like ob- jects may be observ'd in several instances to have like relations ; and that all this is independent of, and ante- 1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 6. HUME 163 cedent to the operations of the understanding. But if I we go any farther, and ascribe a power or necessary con- \ nexion to these objects ; this is what we can never observe in them, but must draw the idea of it from what we feel internally in contemplating them.' 1 The resulting belief differs from other ideas simply in the manner in which it is conceived ; it is only ' an additional force and vivacity ' that * distinguishes the ideas ot the judgment from the fictions of the imagination.' A belief may therefore be defined as ' a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression ' ; and it derives its additional force and vivacity from the impression with which it is associated. Resemblance or contiguity may lend an added strength to the association ; education or passion may have the same influence as constant conjunc- tion. But, in any case, belief is a matter of feeling, not of ratfcnfrl iflsifrht. Thus all probable reasoning is nothing but a species of sensation. "Tis not solely in poetry and music, we must follow our taste and sentiment, but likewise in philosophy. When I am convinced of any principle, 'tis only an idea, which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence. Objects have no discoverable connexion together ; nor is it from any other principle but custom operating upon the imagination, that we can draw any inference from the appearance of one to the existence of another.' 2 'To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations.' 3 Hume concludes his account of causation by offering a few general * rules by which to judge of causes and effects.' In these rules he anticipates, in a rather remarkable way, the later methods of inductive reason- 1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 14. Ibid., bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 8. 8 Ibid., bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 16. 164 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS ing, as formulated by Mill and others, but he states them in the most summary fashion, concluding : * Here is all the LOGIC I think proper to employ in my reason- ing ; and perhaps even this was not very necessary, but might have been supply'd by the natural principles of our understanding. Our scholastic headpieces and logi- cians show no such superiority above the mere vulgar in their reason and ability, as to give us any inclination to imitate them in delivering a long system of rules and precepts to direct our judgment, in philosophy. All the rules of this nature are very easy in their invention, but extremely difficult in their application ; and even ex- perimental philosophy, which seems the most natural and simple of any, requires the utmost stretch of human judgment.' l The problem of Substance is for Hume, as we have seen, a minor one, as compared with the central problem of Causation ; and is dealt with only in the Treatise. 2 But the discussion is no less subtle than the more elaborate treatment of Causation. First, as regards material sub- stance, or the * existence of body/ the question is not, he says, ' Whether there be body or not ? ' but 'What causes induce us to believe in the existence of .body ? ' This question breaks up into twcT: '"Why we attribute ar continued existence to objects, even when they are not present to the senses ; and why we suppose them to have an existence distinct from the mind and perception.' These two questions are so intimately connected that 4 the decision of the one question decides^ the other ' : ir the objects of perception have a continued existence, they have also an independent existence, and conversely. Hume agrees with Berkeley that neither in perception nor in reason do we find any grounds for belief in the con- tinuous or independent existence of material things : for us their esse is percijn. That belief, therefore, he concludes, must be the product of the imagination. The imagination 1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 15. 2 Bk. i. pt. iv. sect. 2. HUME 165 is stimulated to this activity by two characteristics which belong to the objects of perception, their constancy and their coherence (or the regularity of their changes). Observing these characteristics, we imagine that to exist continuously which appears to our senses to be subject to interruption and to change. * The imagination, when set into any train of thinking, is apt to continue, even when its object fails it, and like a galley put in motion by the oars, carries on its course without any new impulse,' and this tendency of the imagination * makes us easily enter- tain this opinion of the continued existence of body.' What we have been accustomed to find constantly repeated in the same way we soon come to regard, not as similar in spite of its difference, but as numerically the same. The identity of the object is an illusion of the imagination, WfllUll IS HilSl&l Dy the similarity of an| interrupted succession of related objects to uninterrupted succession. ' A succession of related objects . . . is considered with the same smooth and uninterrupted progress of the imagination, as attends the view of the same invariable object. . . . The thought slides along the succession with equal facility as if it considered only one object ; and therefore confounds the succession with the identity/ To overcome the contradiction between the supposed identity and the actual interruption or succession, * we disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, or rather remove it entirely, by supposing that these interrupted perceptions are connected by a real existence, of which we are insensible.' Hence the philosophical hypothesis of ' the double existence of perception and objects ; which pleases our reason, in allowing, that our dependent per- ceptions are interrupted and different ; and at the same time is agreeable to the imagination, in attributing a con- tinued existence to something else, which we call objects.' This is, however, but * a new fiction,' ' only a palliative remedy,' which * contains all the difficulties of the vulgar system, with some others, that are peculiar to itself.' While the illusion of the popular imagination is inevitable, ' that of the philosophical imagination is superfluous and, 1 66 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS instead of substituting a sounder view, is a relapse into the old contradiction, which Berkeley has exposed, of distinguishing the object as existent from the object of perception. The philosophical dogma of spiritual substance is 1 Hume finds, equally indefensible with that of material substance. His challenge to those who * imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF ' is, as usual, that they point out the impression from which this idea is derived. * Rut self or peygon is nq* yiy qne impression, but that to whicHi our stfYyral impressions and ideas are supposed to have reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives ; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no im- pression constant and invariable.' All that we find in our conscious experience is a succession of particular, ever- changing perceptions, impressions and ideas. l For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the per- ception.' Men may call themselves persons, but ijjK^ reality * they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. . . . The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance ; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identttyin different ; whatever natural propension we~may haveloimagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind ; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is composed.' The explanation of the illusion of personal identity is the same HUME 167 as in the case of that of material substance. In the one case as in the other, a variable and interrupted existence is mistaken by the imagination for an invariable and un- interrupted existence ; related objects are mistaken, because related, for identical objects. * Identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions, and uniting theirri togetherzbut is merely a~ quality,"" Which we attri- bute to themTTvecause of the union of their ideas in the imagination, when we reflect upon them. . . . Our notions of personal identity proceed entirely from the smooth and uninterrupted progress of the thought along a train of connected ideas.' 1 The difficulty immediately suggested by this account of the genesis of the idea of personal identity is, How can a series of perceptions thus remember the preceding and re&ty flpem causally to the present perceptions ? The inadequacy of the constructive part of his theory, whether on this or some other ground, seems to have forced itself upon Hume himself, for in the Appendix, which he added in the following year to the third volume of the Treatise, he says : l Upon a more strict review of the section con- cerning personal identity, I find myself involved in such a labyrinth, that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them con- sistent.' So far as the negative part of his argument is concerned, he is still satisfied with it. ' But having thus loosened all our particular perceptions, when I proceed to explain \the principle of connexion, which binds them together, and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity ; I am sensible, that my account is very defective, and that nothing but the seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings could have induced me to receive it. ... All my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head. . . . For my part, I must plead the privilege t)f a sceptic, and confess, that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding. I 1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iv. sect. 6. 1 68 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS pretend not, however, to pronounce it absolutely insuper- able. Others, perhaps, or myself, upon more mature reflections, may discover some hypothesis, that will recon- cile those contradictions.' That Hume did not discover any such hypothesis, and that his sense of the difficulty had meanwhile rather increased than diminished, appears from the absence of the entire discussion from the Enquiry, published eight years later. That, in this theory of the self, we have the logical issue of the nominalistic and empirical tendency so prominent in the philosophy of Hume's English prede- cessors, Locke and Berkeley, is evident from a significant statement in the Appendix from which I have just quoted : * We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive anything but merely that perception ? Have you any notion of self or substance ? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion.' It does not occur to him that a single or wholly unrelated perception would be as good as none, or that the conception of self is necessitated by the very plurality of 'perceptions,' not the mere 'addition of other perceptions' but their combination or relation the fact that the. plurality of perceptions is experienced as a Unity, or in one consciousness, which is what we mean by self. Thus, so far as reality or matters of fact are concerned, Locke's distinction bet ween -knowledge and belief, between certainty and probability, is invalidated by Hume. What we had supposed to be knowledge is seen to be only belief; what had seemed to be certainty is seen to be / only probability. 'All knowledge resolves itself into 1 probability, and becomes at last of the same nature with that evidence, which we employ in common fife.' 1 What we had supposed to be reasoning turns out to be 1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iv. sect I. HUME 169 simply the custom^iflduced determination of the imagina- tion, ' more^foperly an act of the sensitive than of the cogitative part of our natures.' We can never hope to escape from what Bacon called the ' idols of the tribe ' ; our so-called knowledge is tainted with a fatal subjectivity. We can never escape from the shadow of our own nature ; the only possible science is that of human nature, riot that of the nature of things. We can never hope to interpret or explain things ex analogla univeni ; we must always do so ex analogla hominis. The very ground ot this scepticism, however, suggests at once its limit and its cure. Our scepticism cannot be permanently of the universal or c Pyrrhonic ' type ; it is always ' mitigated ' by that belief which is more natural than any doubts to which reflection may give rise. ' Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel ; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary connexion with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken the pains to refute the cavils of this total scepticism, has really dispated without an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to establish a faculty, which nature has antecedently im- planted in the mind, and rendered unavoidable.' 1 The sceptical argument is too abstract and remote from ordinary human interests to hold the mind for long. ' Most for- tunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterates all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends ; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would 1 Loc. dt. i yo ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.' 1 C-In surrendering himself to this natural tendency to belief, the philosophical sceptic consistently maintains his scepticism. 1 1 may, nay I must yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my senses and understanding ; and in this blind submission I show most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles.' Indolently to resign oneself to 'the current of nature' is the very perfection of scepticism. 'In all the incidents of life we ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe, that fire warms, or water refreshes, 'tis only because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise. Nay if we are philosophers, it ought only to be upon sceptical principles, and from an inclination, which we feel to the employing ourselves after that manner.' 'A true sceptic will be difHdent of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction ; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.' 2 In the Enquiry Hume strikes a more positive note, and attempts the * sceptical solution ' of his sceptical doubts. He insists upon the merely theoretical significance of his scepticism. We need not fear ' that this philosophy, while it endeavours to limit our enquiries to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation.' ' Custom is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.' In the fact that our expectations are determined by the constant conjunctions of our past experience he even finds assurance of the real significance of our reasonings about matters of fact. c Here, then, is a kind of pre- established harmony between the course of nature and the succession of our ideas ; and though the powers and 1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iv. sect. 7. 2 Loc. cit. HUME 171 forces, by which the former is governed, be wholly un- known to us ; yet our thoughts and conceptions have still, we find, gone on in the same train with the other works of nature. Custom is that principle, by which this corre- spondence has been affected ; so necessary to the sub- sistence of our species, and the regulation of our conduct, in every circumstance and occurrence of human life. Had not the presence of an object instantly excited the idea of those objects, commonly conjoined with it, all our knowledge must have been limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and senses ; and we should never have been able to adjust means to ends, or employ our natural powers, either to the producing of good, or avoiding of evil/J) And the lesson which he draws from our in- ifable ignorance of the nature of things is the same lesson as Locke had drawn from the narrow limits of human knowledge, namely, 'the limitation of our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding. ... A correct Judgement^ . . . avoiding all distant and high enquiries, confines itself to common life, and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience ; leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators, or to the arts of priests and politicians. To bring us U> so salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable, than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the Pyrrhonian doubt, and of the impossibility, that anything, but the strong power of natural instinct, could free us from it. ... While we cannot give a satisfactory reason, why we believe, after a thousand experiments, that a stone will fall, or fire burn ; can we ever satisfy ourselves concerning any determination, which we may form, with regard to the origin of worlds, and the situation of nature, from, and to eternity ? ' 2 Thejentire sceptical argument has reference^it will be remembered, only to our reasonings about matters of fact, 1 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sect. v. pt. ii. 2 Ibid. t sect. xii. pt. iii. 172 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS and does not affect our knowledge of the relations of ideas. Hume holds, with Locke, that while certain general pro- positions are merely verbal or ' trifling,' consisting in identical statements or definitions of terms, certain others are instructive, in spite of their generality. Of this type are the propositions which constitute 'the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic.' ' Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever re- tain their certainty and evidence.' 1 While the Treatise closes without explicit reference to the exclusion of the ' abstract sciences ' from the scope of the sceptical conclusions of that work, the Enquiry contains an explicit statement on the subject, which is in keeping with its more positive spirit. 'It seems to me, that the only objects of the abstract sciences or of demonstration are quantity and nujiiber, and that all attempts to extend this more perfect species of reasoning beyond these bounds are mere sophjstry and illusion. As the component parts of quantity and number are entirely similar, their relations become intricate and involved ; and nothing can be more curious, as well as useful, than to trace, by a variety of mediums, their equality or inequality, through their different appearances. But as all other ideas are clearly distinct and different from each other, we can never advance farther, by our utmost scrutiny, than to observe this diversity, and, by an obvious reflection, pronounce one thing not to be another. ... It is the same case with all those pretended syllogistical reasonings, which may be found in every other branch of learning, except the sciences of quantity and number ; and these may safely, I think, be pronounced the only proper objects of knowledge and demonstration.' 2 In the Treatise, however, it is clear that Hume djs- allows the exactitude ot geometrical truth. He there 1 Enquiry, sect. iv. pt. i. Ibid., sect. xii. pt. iii. HUME 173 seeks to give an empirical derivation of our ideas of space and time, as well as of our other ideas. The empirical basis of the idea of space is the impression of ' coloured and tangible points disposed in a certain way,' and Hume argues that the absolute quantities of geometrical science are no less illusory than identical material and spiritual substances. " Even in the Enquiry he condemns the absurdities which result from the logical procedure of this science. * The chief objection against all abstract reason- y ings is derived from the ideas of space and time ; ideas, which, in common life, and to a careless view, are very clear and intelligible, but when they pass through the scrutiny of the profound sciences (and they are the chief object of these sciences) afford principles, which seem full of absurdity and contradiction. No priestly dogmas, invented on purpose to tame and subdue the rebellious reason of mankind, ever shocked common sense more than the doctrine ofh.e infinite divisibility or extension, with its consequences ; as they are pompously displayed by all geometricrans and metaphysicians, with a kind of triumph and exultation. . . . But what renders the matter more extraordinary, is, that these seemingly absurd opinions are supported by a chain of reasoning, the clearest and most natural : nor is it possible for us to allow the premises without admitting the consequences. 1 x On the other hand, Hume has no such criticism to make in the case of the sciences of Number. ' We are possest of a precise standard, by which we can judge of the equality and proportion of numbers ; and according as they corre- spond or not to that standard, we determine their rela- tions, without any possibility of error. When two numbers are so combined, as that the one has always an unite answering to every unite of the other, we pro- nounce them equal ; and 'tis for want of such a standard of equality in extension, that geometry can scarce be - esteemed a perfect and infallible science.' * There re- main, therefore, algebra and arithmetic as the only sciences, 1 Sect. xii. pt. ii. 174 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS in which we can carry on a chain of reasoning to any degree of intricacy, and yet preserve a perfect exactness and certainty.' 1 Even in the case of geometry, however, Hume holds that l its mistakes can never be of any conse- quence.' * And this,' he says, ' is the nature and use of geometry, to run us up to such appearances, as, by reason of their simplicity, cannot lead us into any considerable error.' 2 ^ Hume devotes the two remaining Books of the Treatise to that l Human Nature ' which ' is the only science of man, and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.' Book II. is concerned with the * anatomy ' of the Passions, Book III. with Morals. The former is full of psycho- logical interest, and distinguished by its illuminating re- marks on the subtler play of the elemental passions of our nature, but is not so directly the basis of the ethical theory offered in Book III. as to make any detailed account of it necessary to the understanding of the latter. In making the two leading principles Pride and Humility, on the one hand, and Love and Hatred on the other, Hume foreshadows the two governing principles of his ethical theory, self-regard and benevolence. In the im- portance he attaches to sympathy and in his reduc- tion of the conflict between reason and passion to a conflict between the calm and the violent passions, he at once applies the principles of Book I. and anticipates the ethical teaching of Book III. The latter point is argued with no little insight. * We speak not strictly and philo- sophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. ... A passion must be accompanied with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable ; and even then 'tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment. The consequences are evident. Since a passion can never, in any sense, be called unreasonable, but when founded on a false supposition, or when it chuses means insufficient for the designed end, 1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iii. sect. I. * Loc, cit. HUME 175 'tis impossible that reason and passion can ever oppose each other, or dispute for the government of the will and actions. The moment we perceive the falsehood of any supposition, or the insufficiency of any means, our passions yield to our reason without any opposition.' 1 Finally he seeks to show the truth of the doctrine of Book 1. 2 * that there is but one kind of necessity, as there is but one kind of cause, and that the common distinction between moral and physical necessity is without any foundation in nature,' arguing that the ' liberty ' attributed to moral agents is the same thing as l chance,' which simply means that the cause is unknown. The same argument is repeated in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, where it is connected immediately with the general account of causa- tion, and the attempt is made to show that such a view is compatible, as the doctrine of Liberty is not, with our ordinary judgments about human conduct and our ordinary conceptions of moral responsibility. 3 The connexion of the general psychology of the passions with the ethical theory becomes more clear when we take account of Hume's opposition to the view, common to Locke and Cudworth, that ethics is a purely rational science, like mathematics. * There has been an opinion very industriously propagated by certain philosophers, that morality is susceptible of demonstration ; and tho' no one has ever been able to advance a single step in those de- monstrations ; yet 'tis taken for granted, that this science may be brought to an equal certainty with geometry or algebra.' 4 Against ' the system which establishes eternal rational measures of right and wrong ' he urges that the distinction is one of sensibility, not of reason ; that its basis is to be found, not in the object, but in the subject. * The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. 1 Treatise, bk. ii. pt. iii. sect. 3. * Pt. iii. sect. 14. 3 Enquiry, sect. viii. Treatise, bk. iii. pt. i. sect. I. i y6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Here is a matter of fact ; but 'tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.' 1 The * ought' can never be deduced from the ' is,' the l ought not ' from the 4 is not.' All that reason tells us is what is the tendency of actions, beneficial or hurtful, to ourselves or to others ; it enables us to decide between * obscure or opposite utilities.' Sentiment, or a preference of feeling, alone can decide in favour of the end, the happiness, as dis- tinguished from the misery, whether of ourselves or of others. l Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judged of ; it appeals to a * moral sense' or disinterested preference of good to evil. < As virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account, without fee and reward, merely for the immediate satisfaction which it conveys ; it is requisite that there should be some sentiment which it touches, some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you may please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other.' 2 While Hume appears, in the Enquiry, to accept the ' moral sense ' view, as already formulated by Hutcheson, and objects to a too * systematic ' explanation of our moral judgments, he seeks, in the Treatise, to reduce the sentiment of moral approval and disapproval to terms of regard for our own happiness, explaining it as a sympathetic appro- priation of the consequences of our actions for the happi- ness of others, and insisting that we ought to aim at 4 simplicity ' in moral as in natural philosophy, and not to ^ invent new principles where old ones are sufficient. Accordingly we find that while, in the Treatise, justice is regarded as the one great social virtue, in the Enquiry benevolence takes precedence of justice, and is explained as a general regard for the interests of humanity, as such ; the principles of sympathy and association are no longer 1 Treatise, bk. iii. pt. i. sect. I. 2 Enquiry, App. I. HUME 177 invoked in the explanation of justice ; and a new emphasis is laid upon the essential disinterestedness of the passions, the indispensable instruments of a wise self-love. In both works Hume insists upon the * artificial ' char- acter of justice. It is the result of a conventional under- standing between the members of a civilised society that they will abstain from the possessions of each other, a convention tacit and unexpressed, like that between the rowers who * pull the oars by agreement or convention, tho' they have never given promises to each other.' It is a rule which * arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it.' Justice is thus the machinery by which the individual secures his own interest. ' There is no passion . . . capable of controlling the interested affection, but the very affection itself, by an alteration of its direction.' If men were unselfish, or if nature offered in abundance all that was necessary to satisfy their every want, there would be no occasion for this mutual self-defence. * 'Tis only from the selfishness and confined generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin.' 'Instead of departing from our own interest, or from that of our nearest friends, by abstaining from the possessions of others, we cannot better consult both these interests, than by such a convention ; because it is by that means we maintain society, which is so necessary to their well-being and subsistence, as well as to our own.' 1 But while, in the sense explained, justice has its origin in * the artifice and contrivance of men,' it is in another and deeper sense natural. * Mankind is an inventive species ; and where an invention is obvious and absolutely necessary, it may as properly be said to be natural as anything that proceeds immediately from original principles, without the intervention of thought or re- flexion. Tho' the rules of justice be artificial, they are not arbitrary. Nor is the expression improper to call 1 Treatise, bk. iii. pt. ii, sect. 2. M 178 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS them Laws of Nature; if by natural we understand what is common to any species, or even if we confine it to mean what is inseparable from the species.' J In the Enquiry, the virtue of justice is subordinated to that of benevolence, or disinterested regard for the general happiness, which is accepted as the supreme end on * the blind, but sure testimony of taste and sentiment.' This is the result, it is contended, of ' a natural, unforced interpretation of the phenomena of human life.' While, in the Treatise, it was maintained that * the public good is indifferent to us, except so far as sympathy in- terests us in it,' the doctrine of the Enquiry is that ' the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.' 'We must renounce the theory, which accounts for every moral sentiment by the principle of self-love. We must adopt a more public affection, and allow, that the interests of society are not, even on their own account, entirely indifferent to us. ... Every- thing, which contributes to the happiness of society, recommends itself directly to our approbation and good- will.' 'It is needless to push our researches so far as to ask, why we have humanity or a fellow-feeling with others. It is sufficient, that this is experienced to be a principle in human nature. We must stop somewhere in our examination of causes ; and there are, in every science, some general principles, beyond which we cannot hope to find any principle more general.' 2 In the second Appendix to the Enquiry Hume bases his theory of the disinterestedness of our regard for the happiness of others upon a new psychology of the pas- sions, which follows very closely Butler's account of the object of desire and its relation to self-love. In the Treatise he had maintained that ' 'tis from the pros- pect of pain or pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises towards any object.' 3 He now distinguishes be- tween the original passion, which l points immediately to the object, and constitutes it our good or happiness ' and 1 Treatise, bk. iii. pt. ii. sect. I. 2 Enquiry, sect. v. pt. ii. 1 Bk. ii. pt. iii. sect. 3. HUME 179 * other secondary passions which afterwards arise and pursue it as a part of our happiness.' ' Were there no appetite of any kind antecedent to self-love, that pro- pensity could scarcely ever exert itself; because we should, in that case, have felt few and slender pains or pleasures, and have little misery or happiness to avoid or to pursue. Now where is the difficulty in conceiv- ing, that this may likewise be the case with benevolence and friendship, and that, from the original frame of our temper, we may feel a desire of another's happiness or good, which, by means of that affection, becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyments ? Who sees not that vengeance, from the force alone of passion, may be so eagerly pursued, as to make us knowingly neglect every consideration of ease, interest, or safety ; and, like some vindictive animals, infuse our very souls into the wounds we give an enemy ; and what a malignant philo- sophy must it be, that will not allow to humanity and friendship the same privileges which are undisputably granted to the darker passions of enmity and resentment ; such a philosophy is more like a satyr than a true delinea- tion or description of human nature ; and may be a good foundation for paradoxical wit and raillery, but is a very bad one for serious argument or reasoning.' But while the principle of benevolence or social utility is *the sole source of that high regard paid to justice, fidelity, honour, allegiance, and chastity,' and is * insepar- able from all the other social virtues, humanity, generosity, charity, affability, lenity, mercy, and moderation,' and is therefore a foundation of the chief part of morals, which has a reference to mankind and our fellow-creatures,' it is not for Hume, as for Hutcheson, the all-inclusive ethical principle ; virtue and benevolence are not convertible terms. Qualities of action and of character useful or immediately agreeable to ourselves are no less praiseworthy than those which are useful or immediately agreeable to others. Happiness is the only ultimate end, but it may be either our own or that of others ; and Hume does not i8o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS doubt the harmony of these two ends. And when he comes, in the concluding section of the Enquiry* to the consideration of obligation, he speaks of it as * interested,' and identifies the question of obligation with the question 1 whether every man, who has any regard to his own happiness and welfare, will not best find his account in the practice of every moral duty.' ' What theory of morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show, by a particular detail, that all the duties which it recommends, are also the true interest of each individual ? ' In proof of the truth of his own theory he points to the attractive picture of virtue which it offers, representing her * in all her genuine and most engaging charms,' and making us 'approach her with ease, familiarity, and affection.' * The sole trouble which she demands, is that of just calculation, and a steady preference of the greater happiness.' A true psychology of human passion or pro- pensity shows that there is no more opposition between selfishness and benevolence than between selfishness and any other natural propensity, and that the presupposition of a true self-love is disinterested interest in the objects of these natural propensities. The only case in which a doubt is possible regarding the coincidence of virtue and self- interest is that of justice. 'But in all ingenuous natures, the antipathy to treachery and roguery is too strong to be counterbalanced by any views of profit or pecuniary advantage.' Such natures will indeed ' find their account ' in virtue. ' Inward peace of mind, consciousness of integrity, a satisfactory review of our past conduct ; these are circumstances very requisite to happiness, and will be cherished and cultivated by every honest man, who feels the importance of them.' To the restatement of his philosophical views in the first Enquiry Hume added two essays in which he applies his general principles to the solution of the problems of Miracles, a Particular Providence and a Future State. It 1 Sect. ix. pt. ii. HUME 181 is significant that, while he had not in the Treatise even suggested any such applications, he should thus later have endangered the symmetry of the Enquiry by this addition. The explanation is to be found, I think, not so much in a desire to disturb ' the zealots ' as in a deepening interest in such metaphysical and theological questions. His interest in the problem of knowledge itself had been long satisfied ; other interests had since absorbed his mind. * I have thought, and read, and composed very little on such questions of late,' he writes to Gilbert Elliot in 1751 ; 'Morals, Politics, and LiteKtfure^huve employed all my time.' Yet in the same Letter he asksshis friend's opinion and advice about those Dialogues on^Natural Religion which, though they were not published until after his death, had been all appeared, among the Four Di$$ertatioi t shows very considerable readin) entitled The Natural History of tute Hume's contribution to the The Natural History of Religion is" though it shows Hume's sagacity in historical and comparative method oi subject. Its main purpose is to prove the primary or universal, but a later and secondary form of the religious consciousness. The earliest producf of the religious imagination, he insists, is not a single Author or Maker of the world, such as the world-order suggests to later reflection, but a number of beings fashioned in man's own image, l intelligent, voluntary agents, like ourselves ; only somewhat superior in power and wisdom.' J As one of these beings gradually rises to supremacy over the others, polytheism gives place to theism ; while theism tends in turn to degenerate into polytheism. 'It is re- markable, that the principles of religion have a kind of flux and reflux in the human mind, and that men have a natural tendency to rise from idolatry to theism, and to sink again from theism into idolatry.' 2 The lesson which Hume 1 Nat. Hist, of Religion, sect. v. 2 Ibid., sect. viii. 1 82 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS draws from the inevitable ness of the process of degenera- tion and corruption in religion, from the impossibility of maintaining the distinction between genuine religion, the true ally of morality, and mere superstition, its enemy or at best its uncertain friend, is that of philosophical in- differentism. 'The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld ; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling ; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.' 1 The relation of the two essays, which were added to the first Enquiry, to the central philosophical positions of that work is really much closer than we might at first suppose. The argument against miracles is based upon the view of causation as identical with constant conjunction : a miracle is a contradiction of the uniformity of nature to which all our experience testifies, and is therefore in- credible, no matter what the testimony in its favour may be. At the same time men's tendency to believe in the miraculous is explained in terms of that human nature which is, according to Hume, the ultimate term in all explanation. The argument for a particular Providence and future rewards and punishments rests, it is argued, upon a false view of causation, refusing as it does to interpret the cause in the light of the effect and adding causal factors for which we have no warrant in corre- sponding effects. It at the same time repudiates the empirical measure of reality which has been shown to be the only human measure of it. In this essay we have, on a smaller scale, Hume's views on Natural Theology which are developed more fully in 1 Nat. His I. of Religion^ sect. xv. HUME 183 the Dialogues on Natural Religion. The position common to both "is neither that of mere sceptipism or atheism, on the one hand, nor that of theism, on the other, but that of agnostic deism or, as Professor Campbell Fraser calls it, 'attenuated theism.' The view which is controverted is that of a dogmatic and imaginative theism, based upon unwarranted anthropomorphism and resulting from 4 enthusiasm,' zeal uncontrolled by reason or experience. Huxley calls the view advocated in the Dialogues a 'shadowy and inconsistent theism,' and sees in it 'the expression of his desire to rest in a state of mind, which distinctly excluded negation, while it included as little as possible of affirmation, respecting a problem which he felt to be hopelessly insoluble.' 1 The three interlocutors in the Dialogues are sufficiently characterised by Hume himself, who contrasts 'the accurate. ... philosophical turn of Cleanthes' with 'the careless_^cniicisjn of Philo r ancMboth with^_the rigid inflexible orthodoxy or JDernea.' The affinity of the scepticism of Philo with the mysticism of Demea is emphasised in the course of the discussion, in which Philo accepts the 'term 'mystic' as their common desig- nation ; and so far as these two speakers are concerned, Hume's intention clearly is to reduce mysticism to scep- ticism, or unconscious to conscious scepticism, and thus to leave the issue between Philo and Cleanthes. He makes the narrator of the conversation say at the close : 'I confess, that, upon a serious review of the whole, I cannot Inrtrthink that Philo's principles are more probable than Demea's ; but.that those of Cleanthes approach still nearqrjfo the truth.' In a letter to Gilbert Elliot, already quoteo, HumeTsays : ' You would observe by the sample I have given you, that I make Cleanthes the hero of the dialogue : whatever you can think of, to strengthen that side of the argument, will be most acceptable to me. Any propensity you imagine I have to the other side, crept in upon me against my will.' The position of 1 Hume, in 'English Men of Letters,' p. 157. 184 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Cleanthes is that of a philosophical theism which infers the divine intelligence and goodness from the marks of purpose in the world of our experience. * I could wish,' \he continues in this letter, * Cleanthes' argument could be so analysed, as to be rendered quite formal and regular. The propensity of the mind towards it, unless that propensity were as strong and universal as that to believe in our senses and experience, will still, I am afraid, be esteemed a suspicious foundation. 'Tis here I wish for your assistance ; we must endeavour to prove that this propensity is somewhat different from our inclination to find our own figures in the clouds, our faces in the moon, our passions and sentiments even in inanimate matter. Such an inclination may, and ought to be controlled, and can never be a legitimate ground of assent.' 1 He also speaks of ' the confusion in which I represent the sceptic,' and in a letter to Strahan, written shortly before his death, he says, ' 1 thirje_untroduce j^_ Scej?t-iCj jy no ^ s indeed refuted, and^at last gives up the_Argument, nay confesses -- that he was only amusing himself by all his Cavils ; yet before he is silenced, he advances several Topics, which will give Umbrage, and will be deemed very bold and free, as well as much out of the common Road.' 2 In the course of the argument, however, it will be found that, as we should expect, Philo's criticisms are made to tell heavily upon the positions of his opponent, which are seriously modified in consequence. The 'confusion' of Cleanthes is no less real than that of Philo ; indeed, the latter succeeds in his argument, so far as it is seriously intended, and is not a mere argumentum ad hominem. The question of the Dialogues is not that of the existence, but that of the nature of God. * Surely,' says Philo, ' where reasonable men treat these subjects, the question can never be concerning the Being, but only the Nature of the Deity. The former truth, as you well / observe, is unquestionable and self-evident. Nothing 1 -^, exists without a cause ; and the original cause of this 1 "'* 1 Burton's Life, i. 331-3. * Letters to Strahan, p. 330. HUME 185 universe (whatever it be) we call God ; and piously ascribe to him every species of perfection. . . . But as all perfec- tion is entirely relative, we ought never to imagine, that we comprehend the attributes of this divine Being, or to suppose, that his perfections have any analogy or like- ness to the perfections of a human creature. Wisdom, Thought, Design, Knowledge ; these we justly ascribe to him ; because these words are honourable among men, and we have no other language or other conceptions, by which we can express our adoration of him. But let beware, lest we think, that our ideas any wise correspond to his perfections, or that his attributes have any resem- blance to these qualities among men. He is infinitely superior to our limited view and comprehension ; and is more the object of worship in the temple, than of disputa- tion in the schools.' l The polemic of Philo is directed against the dogmatism and anthropomorphism of th theologians, against the exaggeration of the argument from aTialogy into a proof that the nature of God is the counterpart of that of man. The basis of this argu.nent is found in the marks of design in the works of God in Nature ; and it is the inference from design to_the nature of God, not the actuality of design, that is criticised by Hume. The outcome of the discussion is to bring Philo and~ Cleanthes to agreement as to the actuality or design. 4 In many views of the universe, and of its parts, par- ticularly the latter, the beauty and fitness of final causes strike us with such irresistible force, that all objections appear (what I believe they really are) mere cavils and sophisms ; nor can we then imagine how it was ever possible for us to repose any weight on them.' 2 *A purpose, an intention, a design,' Philo says again^ ^strikes everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker; and_ no man can be so hardened in absurd systems, as at all Times" IU fgjftCt It.* * So far as the real question of the Dialogues the question of the validity of the inference from design to the attri- 1 Dialogues, pt. ii. * Ibid., pt. x. 3 Ibid., pt. xii. 1 86 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS ^/ butes which Jt implies in God is concerned, Philo is made ultimately to assent, in a sense, to the inference to the divine intelligence. ' If we make it a question, whether, on account of these analogies, we can properly call him a mind or intelligence, notwithstanding the vast differ- ence, which may reasonably be supposed between him and human minds; what is this but a mere verbal con- troversy ? No man can deny the analogies between the effects : to restrain ourselves from enquiring concerning the causes is scarcely possible : from this enquiry, the legitimate conclusion is, that the causes have also an analogy : and if we are not contented with calling the first and supreme cause a God or Deity, but desire to vary the expression ; what can we call him but Mind or Thought, to which he is justly supposed to bear a con- siderable resemblance?' 1 It is the moral part of the / inference that proves intractable. The misery of thp world, and especially of human life, may possibly be compatible with the goodness of God, but it certainly cannot form the ground of an inference to his goodness. ' Why is there any misery at all in the world ? Not by chance surely. From some cause then. Is it from the intention of the Deity ? But he is perfectly benevolent. Is it contrary to his intention ? But he is almighty. Nothing can shake the solidity of this reasoning, so short, so clear, so decisive ; except we assert, that these subjects exceed all human capacity, and that our common measures of truth and falsehood are not applicable to them ; a topic which I have all along insisted on, but which you have, from the beginning, rejected with scorn and indignation. . . . Here, Cleanthes, I find myself at ease in my argu- ment. Here I triumph. . . . There is no view of human life or of the condition of mankind, from which, without the greatest violence, we can infer the moral attributes, or learn that infinite benevolence, conjoined with infinite power and infinite wisdom, which we must discover by the eyes of faith alone.' 2 ' The true conclusion is, that 1 Loc. cit. * Ibid., pt. x. HUME 187 the original source of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles, and has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture, or to light above heavy.' 1 1 Ibid., pt. xi. CHAPTER III THE iMORALISTS I . The Moral Sense School : Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler LIKE the rationalists of the seventeenth century, these moralists of the eighteenth were stimulated to ethical inquiry by opposition to the views of Hobbes. In Locke's view of moral obligation, however, they saw a restatement of Hobbes, which was all the more dangerous since it was less paradoxical and fell in more naturally with the current theological ideas. Locke, like Hobbes, had found the basis of moral obligation, though not the explanation of morality, in will, rather than in reason, but in the will of God rather than in that of the earthly sovereign. Locke, like Hobbes, had found the motive and sanction of virtue in self-interest, but in divine rather than in political re- wards and punishments. The stress of the later polemic is rather upon the altruism than upon the rationality or absoluteness of morality. It is to be remembered that Hutcheson and Butler have in view the coarser version of egoism formulated by Mandeville in the Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices Public Benefit^ and it cannot be doubted that it was this extreme and repulsive development of the implications of Hobbian and Lockian egoism that roused these moralists to the defence of the altruistic element in virtue. In Shaftesbury we find all the characteristic positions ot the school generally known as the * moral sense ' school already formulated, though it required the more elaborate and systematic restatements of his successors to make clear the full significance of these positions. The only real difference of opinion between them concerns the 188 THE MORALISTS 189 place of benevolence and its relation to self-love on the one hand and to virtue, as such, on the other ; and it is, on the whole, true to say that Butler corrects the exaggerated claim made by Hutcheson for benevolence, and re-affirms the more comprehensive view of the nature of virtue originally formulated by Shaftesbury. As regards the relation of virtue to the happiness of the virtuous agent, or to self-love, it will also be found that Butler does little more than restate the views of Shaftesbury. It is in the sphere of Natural Theology, rather than in that of Ethics, that Butler parts company with his predecessors, and develops the vague optimism of Shaftesbury into a novel and ingenious theory of his own devising. Shaftesbury is not only the most original thinker but, on the whole, the best writer of the school. While it is doubtless an exaggeration to say, with Mackintosh, that ' no thinker so great was ever so bad a writer ' as Butler, yet when compared with other English philo- sophers, both earlier and later, Butler cannot be called a good writer. On occasion he rises to something like eloquence, and in general is not lacking in im- pressiveness and individuality ; it has been truly remarked that 'the lover of aphorisms might make an interesting collection from the pages of Butler.' 1 But his Style is careless and lacking in elegance and, above all, in the essential excellence of a philosophical style, clearness. Of Hutcheson, Mackintosh says that he is Hartley ac- knowledges his indebtedness to an earlier writer, the Rev. John Gay, who, in a * Dissertation concerning the Principle and Criterion of Virtue and the Origin of the Passions,' prefixed to Law's translation of King's Origin of Evil (1731), had 'asserted the possibility of deducing all our intellectual pleasures and pains from association.' 'This put me upon considering the power of association. . . From enquiring into the power of association I was led to examine both its consequences, in respect of morality and religion, and its physical cause.' Gay's little work is really of great importance for the doctrines both of Associationism and of Utili- tarianism. The ' moral sense ' and ' public affections,' to which Hutcheson had so confidently appealed, are not, he argues, original instincts. To regard them as such is, he thinks, ' rather cutting the knot than untying jt.' The ultimate end to which both point is ' our THE MORALISTS 209 private happiness,* and * whenever this end is not per- ceived, they are to be accounted for from the Association of Ideas, and may properly enough be called Habits.' 4 These approbations and affections are not innate or implanted in us by way of instinct, but are all acquired, being fairly deducible from supposing only sensible and rational creatures dependent on each other for their happiness.' The association of objects and actions with the pleasures and pains which result from them not only accounts for the transposition of ends and means, as in the case of the love of money, but, as this case also illustrates, may persist after the ends to which they minister are forgotten or even abandoned. Of Hartley, Mackintosh justly observes that * his style is entitled to no praise but that of clearness, and a simplicity of diction, through which is visible a singular simplicity of mind.' l He has no - faculty of illustra- tion, and his work is deformed by an affectation of the method of geometrical demonstration, reminiscent of the previous century. Its interest and value are also injured by its rather clumsy but persistent effort to connect mental phenomena with the 'vibrations' and 'vibrati- uncles ' in the ' medullary substance ' of the brain which form their physical concomitants. The chief influences to be traced in his thinking are those of Locke and Newton ; and it is rather the ideal of the Newtonian physics than than of the Lockian psychology that is decisive. While he seeks, under the influence of Locke, to reduce the complexity of the mental life to its origin in sensation, holding that * reflection is not a distinct source, as Mr. Locke makes it,' 2 he also * seeks to do for human nature what Newton did for the solar system. Association is for man what gravitation is for the planets.' 3 At the same time, it is clear that he 'was hardly alive to the tendency of his own method.' 4 That tendency clearly is in the direction of the materialism 1 Dissertation, p. 253. 2 Observations, i. 360. 3 Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 66. 4 {bid., i. 68. Q 2io ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS to which it was reduced by Priestley and Erasmus Darwin. It is perhaps not going too far to say, with Stephen, that l his system clearly renders a soul a super- fluity, if not an anomaly,' that 'the will, the thoughts, and the emotions, not only result from, but, as it would seem, are " vibratiuncles " ' ; 1 and while he insists upon the disparateness of the psychical and the physical phenomena, he frankly accepts, as the logical consequence of ' the doctrines of association and mechanism,' the necessity of human actions, the argument for which has never been better stated. But it is impossible to reconcile his undiscriminating acceptance of theological dogma with his scientific method ; he is truly described by his son, 2 as * a partizan for the Christian religion.' It is not in the statement of the principle of Associa- tion, but in its application, that the chief interest of Hartley's treatment of the subject lies. So far as the principle itself is concerned, his view of it practically antici- pates the view of present psychology, reducing association to the single principle of contiguity, or the tendency of ideas which have occurred together, or in immediate suc- cession, to recur together or to recall one another It is in the application of this principle to the entire mental life, and especially to the feelings and to the * moral sense,' that his originality consists. In the use of it as explaining the genesis of conscience, moreover, he recognises two truths of the greatest significance : first, that the product of the association of old ideas may be an idea quite new, in the sense of being different from the mere sum of its com- ponent factors ; secondly, that * that which is prior in the order of nature is always less perfect and principal than that which is posterior.' His aim, accordingly, is to trace the gradual evolution of the higher pleasures out of the lower, of the later out of the earlier the progress from the pleasures of sensation and self-interest to those of * perfect self-annihilation and the pure love of God.' 1 Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 65. - In the Life prefixed to the 'Notes and Additions' by Pistorius, which forms the third volume of the Observations. THE MORALISTS 211 1 And thus we may perceive, that all the pleasures and pains of sensation, imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, and theopathy, as far as they are consistent with one another, with the frame of our natures, and with the course of the world, beget in us a moral sense, and lead us to the love and approbation of virtue, and to the fear, hatred, and abhorrence of vice. This moral sense, therefore, carries its own authority with it, inasmuch as it is the sum total of all the rest, and the ultimate result from them ; and employs the force and authority of the whole nature of man against any particular part of it, that rebels against the determinations and commands of the conscience or moral judgment. It appears also that the moral sense carries us perpetually to the pure love of God, as our highest and ultimate perfection, our end, centre, and only resting-place, to which we can never attain.' 1 Yet he holds that * the love of God affords a pleasure which is superior in kind and degree to all the rest, of which our natures are capable,' 2 and that this follows from 'the frame of our nature, and particula-ly its subjection to the power of association ' or the tendency * to connect God with each [pleasure] as its sole cause.' 3 In the ethical psychology of Hartley, as well as in that of Hutcheson and of Hume, sympathy occupied a place of much importance, but the point of view was still essen- tially individualistic. It was left to Adam Smith to at- tempt for the first time the explanation of the individual conscience from the social point of view, and to make sympathy the central principle of ethical psychology. This account of the place of sympathy in the moral con- sciousness is offered as a substitute at once for the view of Hutcheson, that the moral sense is an original and simple faculty, and for the view of Hume, that utility, as such, is morally approved. While admitting the general coinci- dence of propriety with utility, Smith distinguishes the 1 sense of propriety ' from * the perception of utility,' but 1 Observations, i. 497. 2 Ibid., ii. 311. 3 Ibid., ii. 313. 212 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS insists, at the same time, that the sense of propriety is always, in its origin, and potentially if not actually, a sympathetic sense. It is in its emphasis on the social aspect of conscience, and in its careful analysis of the ethical function of sympathy, that the originality of the Theory of Moral Sentiments consists. To approve or disapprove of the affections of others, that is, to judge of their propriety or impropriety, is to sympathise or not to sympathise with these affections. The effort of the spectator to sympathise with the senti- ments of the person principally concerned is the source of 'the amiable virtues' or * virtues of humanity ' ; the effort of the person principally concerned to * bring down his emotions to what the spectator can go along with,' is the source of * the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government.' * Hence it is that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, con- stitutes the perfection of human nature.' l While the sense of propriety is the result of a simple and direct sympathy with the affections or motives of others, the sense of merit and demerit is the result of a compound sympathy, direct and indirect : in the one case, a direct sympathy with the sentiments of the agent and an in- direct sympathy with the gratitude of those affected by his action ; in the other, a direct antipathy to the senti- ments of the agent and an indirect sympathy with the resentment of those who suffer from his action. As we judge of the propriety and merit of the actions of others by putting ourselves in their place and looking at their motives and actions with their own eyes or from their own point of view, by sympathetically identifying ourselves with the agent and with those affected by his actions, so we judge the propriety and merit of our own actions, and of the affections of which they are the expression, by looking at them with the eyes of others, by seeing them with the eyes of the spectator, and sharing 1 Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 43, 44. THE MORALISTS 213 his sentiments concerning them. To correct the par- tiality of our own judgment it is necessary, however, that we look at our own actions with the eyes not of the actual spectator, who is always more or less partial and more or less ill-informed, but with the eyes of the fully- informed and completely impartial spectator. It is only by thus distinguishing between the actual and the ideal spectator, or ' the outward man ' and * the man within the breast,' that we can distinguish between mere praise and praiseworthiness. When we have realised this distinction, * we are pleased to think that we have rendered ourselves the natural objects of approbation, though no approbation should ever actually be bestowed upon us ; and we are mortified to reflect that we have justly incurred the blame of those we live with, though that sentiment should never actually be exerted against us.' l The judgments of actual public opinion require to be thus corrected by reference to the judgment of the ideal public or the ideal spectator. For though society is the mirror in which we first discover the propriety and merit, or impropriety and demerit of our own actions, * unfortunately this moral looking-glass is not always a very good one.' In general, Smith seems to hold, conformity to duty will mean conformity to the ' general rules ' which result from the perception of the particular proprieties, in so far as such general rules are sufficiently definite for guidance. But it is only the rules of justice that are really adequate. 'The rules of justice may be compared to the rules of grammar ; the rules of the other virtues, to the rules which critics lay down for the attainment of what is sublime and elegant in composition. The one are precise, accurate, and indispensable. The other are loose, vague, and in- determinate, and present us rather with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at, than afford us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.' 2 This theory is primarily and in the main a psycho- logical theory of the moral sentiments, rather than a 1 Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 248. J Ibid., p. 310. 2i 4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS solution of the proper problem of ethics, that of the criterion of moral value or of the basis of moral dis- tinctions. It is the culmination of the psychological tendency which is characteristic of the 'moral sense' school of moralists ; and the author's own consciousness of this limitation of the inquiry comes out in various ways. For example, as regards utility, the question which he discusses is not the relation of utility to pro- priety, but whether we are conscious of the utility or of the propriety ; not whether the true aim of punishment is the preservation of society, but whether this, or resent- ment, is the actual motive of punishment. He is not attempting to account for, or to explain, the moral element in our moral sentiments by reducing it to sympathy. Hence the irrelevancy of the objection of Thomas Brown, repeated by others, that c the feelings with which we sympathise are themselves moral feelings or senti- ments ; or if they are not moral feelings, the reflection of them from a thousand breasts cannot alter their nature ' ; 1 and that ' in either case it is equally evident, that sympathy cannot be the source of any additional knowledge,' 2 since the echo of our own feelings in those of others can only repeat the original feeling, the 'moral mirror' can only reflect the original moral judgment of the individual. Smith himself does not hesitate to speak of ' natural pro- priety,' of ' our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety.' 3 What he is concerned to show is simply the part which sympathy plays in the moral consciousness of the individual, the essentially social nature of the individual conscience ; that without society we could not attain moral insight, not that moral insight is possible without moral faculties, or even a c moral sense.' The only direct ethical significance of the theory is, therefore, the essentially social nature of morality, the inference that 'man, who can subsist only in society, was fitted by nature to that situation for which he was made,' 4 that in sympathy is found the real security for 1 Philosophy of the Human Mind, lect. 80. a Ibid., lect. 81. ' Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 266. Ibid., p. 188. THE MORALISTS 215 the stability of * the great, the immense fabric of human society, that fabric which to raise and to support seems in this world, if I may say so, to have been the pecu- liar and darling care of nature.' l In the Theory of Moral Sentiments^ as in the Wealth of Nations, he recog- nises another bond, of great strength and value, in the economic interests of the individual. * Tho' among the different members of the society there should be no mutual love and affection, the society, tho' less happy and agreeable, will not necessarily be dissolved. Society may subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love or affection ; and tho' no man in it should owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other, it may still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation.' 2 This pruden- tial motive, however, is here assigned its true ethical place, in subordination to the sympathetic appreciation of the social value of our conduct. The ethical function of sympathy is to substitute for the partiality of the agent's self-love the impartiality of the spectator, that is, of society, actual or ideal. The moral validity of our motives depends, as Kant would say, upon the possibility of universalising them upon their approval, not by the agent, but by the impartial spectator. It is not to be denied, however, that Smith at times forgets the limitations of his inquiry, as above described, and indulges in general ethical observations which have no real relation to it. Sidgwick has justly noted the * inferiority ' of his work * when he passes from psychological analysis to ethical construction.' 3 This is seen, for example, in his hasty identification of the 4 general rules ' of conduct with the ' laws of God,' and in his easy-going theological optimism. 'It is impossible,' says Leslie Stephen, * to resist the impression, whilst we read his fluent rhetoric, and observe his easy acceptance of theological principles already exposed by his master 1 Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 190. * Ibid., p. 189. 3 history of Ethics, p. 223. 2i 6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Hume, that we are not listening to a thinker really grappling with a difficult problem, so much as to an ambitious professor who has found an excellent oppor- tunity for displaying his command of language, and making brilliant lectures. The whole tone savours of that complacent optimism of the time which retained theological phrases to round a paragraph, and to save the trouble of genuine thought.' l But it is necessary to remember that these discussions are really subsidiary to the main argument ; and it shows a singular lack of discernment to say that 'Smith's main proposition was hardly original, though he has worked it out in detail, and it is rather calculated to lead us dexterously round difficult questions than to supply us with a genuine answer.' 2 Smith's ' command of language ' must strike every reader of this work, as well as of the Wealth of Nations. His style, though perhaps a trifle too fluent, is very nearly up to the highest level of English philosophy, and it has been justly remarked that < the charm of the Theory of Moral Sentiments lies not so much in its principal thesis, as in its incidental discussions and illus- trations. In these the absent-minded scholar shows a wide and subtle knowledge of human nature, and never was a moralist more free from platitudes.' 3 One of these illustrations may be quoted to show the quality of Smith's style at its best, the passage in which he explains how it is that * youth, the season of gaiety, so easily engages our affections.' ' That propensity to joy which seems even to animate the bloom, and to sparkle from the eyes of youth and beauty, tho* in a person of the same sex, exalts even the aged to a more joyous mood than ordinary. They forget, for a time, their infirmities, and abandon themselves to those agreeable ideas and emotions to which they have long been strangers, but which, when the presence of so much happiness recalls them to their breast, take their place there, like old acquaintance, from whom they are 1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 77. * Loc. cit. * H. Laurie, Scottish Philosophy, p. 122. THE MORALISTS 217 sorry to have ever been parted, and whom they embrace more heartily upon account of this long separation.' 1 3. The Early Utilitarians : Tucker and Pa ley The ethical inadequacy of the psychological or 'moral sense ' theory, even when developed by the aid of the principles of Association and Sympathy, invited a more deliberate and explicit effort to solve the problem of the criterion of moral distinctions, such as we find in the early Utilitarians, Tucker and Paley. These moralists attach themselves, not, as might have been expected, to Hume and his doctrine of natural altruism, but to Gay, whose doctrine that the general happiness is the criterion, while one's own happiness is the motive, of virtuous action, and that the obligation to right conduct is to be found in the sanctions of reward and punishment, or in its consequences to the individual himself they set them- selves to elaborate. So far as the merit of originality can be claimed for this development of the ideas so briefly sketched by Gay, it is to Tucker, not to Paley, that such merit belongs. In his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy Paley merely reduces to more succinct and systematic form the views developed at wearisome length and without due regard to system by Tucker, to whom he frankly acknowledges his indebtedness. * I have found in this writer,' he says, * more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say, in all others put together. . . . But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregular work. I shall account it no mean praise, if I have been sometimes able to dispose into method, to collect into heads and articles, or to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses, what, in that other- wise excellent performance, is spread over too much surface.' 2 Tucker himself makes no reference to his obligations either to Gay or to Hartley, but is pro- fuse in his expressions of allegiance and indebtedness to 1 Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 89. 2 Principles, Preface. 2i 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Locke, whose ' experimental method ' he professes to apply to moral questions. * Whatever I may be able to do, I stand indebted to Mr. Locke for, having learned from him which way to direct my observation, and how to make use of what I observe.' 1 He sets himself to show that 'we derive our inclinations and moral senses through the same channel as our knowledge, without having them interwoven originally into our constitution,' 2 and in the doctrine of the * moral sense ' he sees the ethical version of the doctrine of ' innate ideas ' which Locke had so successfully exploded in its intellectual applications. Like Hartley, he seeks to account for the * moral sense ' by the principle of Association, which he calls l Translation.' Tucker is equally convinced that the * ultimate good ' is the general happiness, and that the only motive which can ultimately actuate the individual is regard to his own happiness. 'The fundamental article I have aimed at establishing is that of universal charity, unreserved bene- volence or public spirit, not confined to our own country alone, but extended to every member of the universe, whereof we all are citizens.' 3 * The grand funda- mental rule of conduct,' he holds, is that of ' labouring constantly to increase the common stock [of good or happiness] by any beneficial service or prevention of damage among our fellow-creatures wherever we can, preferring always the greater discoverable good and good of the greater number, before the less.' 4 On the other hand he tells us, 'I have examined human nature and found that Satisfaction, every man's own satisfaction, is the spring that actuates all his motions.' 6 To prove the obligatoriness of virtuous or altruistic conduct, it is necessary, therefore, to show the complete coincidence of such conduct with that dictated by true or enlightened self-interest. As to the general coincidence of prudential and virtuous or benevolent conduct, Tucker has no doubts ; and the 1 Light of Nature Pursued, Introd. 2 Ibid., {.151 (jrd ed.). 3 Ibid., ii. 677. * Ibid., ii. 670. 8 Ibid., i. 614. THE MORALISTS 219 solution of the psychological difficulty of reconciling disinterested or genuine benevolence with self-interest or that regard for our own satisfaction, or pleasure on the whole, which he takes to be the dominating motive of all human action, is found by him in the principle of 1 Translation ' or Association. Through it he is able to explain how the means acquire for us the importance of the end, how virtue thus becomes an end in itself and ' general rules ' of conduct take the place of the ' ultimate good,' which is for the individual always his own happiness. Yet the coincidence remains incom- plete : the highest acts of virtue, where the self-sacrifice seems absolute, have not been reduced to terms of prudence. 'We have found no reason to imagine a wise man would ever die for his country or suffer martyrdom in the cause of virtue, how strong propensity soever he might feel in himself to maintain her interests. For he would never act upon impulse nor do anything without knowing why : he would cultivate a disposition to justice, benevolence, and public spirit, because he would see it must lead him into actions most conducive to his happiness, and would place such confidence in his rules as to presume they carried that tendency in particular instances wherein it did not immediately appear. But it is one thing not to see directly that measures have such a tendency, and another to discern clearly that they have a contrary ; and when they take away all capacity of further enjoyment, this is so manifest a proof of their inexpedience as no presumption whatever can withstand. Therefore he will never let his love of virtue grow to such an extravagant fondness as to overthrow the very purposes for which he entertained it.' 1 Tucker thus finds himself forced, for the complete solution of the ethical problem, beyond the field of ethics into that of metaphysics or theology. So far, he has proceeded * solely upon the view of human nature, with- 1 Light of Nature Pursued, i. 272. 220 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS out any consideration of Religion or another world,' and in the very incompleteness of the solution reached from the former point of view he finds the proof of the necessity of the latter. From the benevolence and equity of God it follows that 'the accounts of all are to be set even,' or that the shares of all in that happiness which is the ultimate good shall be made equal in the long run. The loss or sacrifice of happiness which virtue seems to call for on the part of the individual can therefore be only apparent or temporary, as the gain of wrong-doing also is. In the * Bank of the uni- verse,' whose transactions are much more exact and secure than those of the Bank of England, ' all the good a man does, stands placed to his account, to be repaid him in full value when it will be most useful to him : so that whoever works for another, works for himself; and by working for numbers, earns more than he could possibly do by working for himself alone . . . like a thrifty merchant, who scruples not to advance consider- able sums, and even to exhaust his coffers, for gaining a large profit to the common stock in partnership.' 1 This idea of a partnership of mankind in a common stock of happiness, by any addition to which gain must accrue, in the future if not in the present life, to the individual who makes it, is Tucker's grand solution of the apparent contradiction between virtue and self- interest. The conviction that, as Butler puts it, a man will ' find his account ' in virtue, though not the conscious motive of all virtuous actions, yet seems to Tucker the only possible justification of virtue to the reflective mind. 'It is exclusively as a psychologist and as a moralist,' says Leslie Stephen, 'that Tucker has any great specula- tive merit'; 2 and, like the other moralists of his age, with the exception of Butler and Hume, it is in psychology rather than in ethics that he excels. To use his own figure, he is an adept in the use of 'the micro- scope ' of psychological analysis, but only a tyro in that 1 Light of Nature Pursued, \. 666. 2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 112. THE MORALISTS 221 of * the telescope ' of metaphysical and theological specu- lation. In the latter sphere we feel, with Stephen, that he is 'a solitary and half-trained thinker.' 1 His appeal is from masters of speculation like Berkeley to 'the first man you meet in the street ' ; he is too solici- tous to prove the orthodoxy of his views, too 'desirous,' in his own words, ' of keeping upon good terms with everybody.' 2 Yet his sincerity is not to be denied ; the reader cannot but assent to his claim that his en- quiry has been a real one to himself. ' My thoughts,' he tells us, ' have taken a turn from my earliest youth towards searching into the foundations and measures of right and wrong ; my love for retirement has furnished me with continual leisure, and the exercise of my reason has been my daily employment.' 3 Throughout the work we are conscious of the practical interest which inspires the entire undertaking, and of the transparent simplicity of the author's nature. Tucker's qualities as a writer are remarkable. His talent for illustration is, as Paley says, unrivalled ; ' his illustrations, quaint as they may be, have frequently the merit of an almost incomparable felicity.' 4 He tells us that he had 'a desire of enlivening abstruse matters, and rendering them visible by familiar images,' and in the number, the appositeness, and the quaintness of these ' familiar images ' he reminds us more of the ancient Greek philosophers than of his own compatriots. As in the case of Socrates and Plato, too, his humour is irrepressible ; he is ' an example of that rarest of all intellectual compounds, the metaphysical humourist.' 5 He is always master of an easy and graceful, if un- ambitious style. Yet his faults as a writer are not less obvious than his virtues, the faults of lack of system, of almost unparalleled diffuseness and irrelevancy. His 1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 120. 2 Light of Nature Pursued, ii. 68 1. 3 Life , prefixed to Light of Nature Pursued, * Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. no. 8 Stephen, op. cit., ii. no. 222 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS book is, as he himself acknowledges, more like ' a tissue of separate essays ' than an organic whole : ' in this my investigation of that wilderness, the human mind ... I have no preconcerted plan . . . and though not without some general idea of the end to which my inquiries will lead me, yet have I not a full prospect of the track they will take.' He is not really writing for the reader so much as for himself; 'I am not to be considered as a professor instructing others in the science he is com- pletely master of, but as a learner seeking after an improvement of my own knowledge.' 1 He will leave nothing unsaid ; as Stephen remarks, * he utterly ignores the principle that the secret of being tedious is to say everything.' 2 His lack of instinct for system leads him into endless irrelevancies, and although these irrelevancies are frequently delightful, in their cumulative effect they add greatly to the weariness of the already much-tried reader. It was in these defects of Tucker's exposition, otherwise so admirable, that Paley saw his opportunity. Paley's reputation in the fields of natural theology and Christian apologetics is at least equal to his impor- tance as a moralist, and he himself regarded his works in these different fields as constituting a system, consisting of 'the evidences of Natural Religion, the evidences of Revealed Religion, and an account of the duties that result from both.' 3 His experience as a Cambridge tutor doubtless stimulated and educated his natural gifts as a clear and convincing writer on such subjects ; he always writes as 'a professor instructing others,' and his books were at once adopted as text-books in the universities and long held their place among the recognised fountains of knowledge in these subjects. Of their style it is hardly an exaggeration to say, with Mackintosh, that if inevitably didactic and without any special grace, it is 'as near perfection in its kind as any in our language.' 1 Light of Nature Pursued, i. 143-4. 2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. III. 8 Natural Theology, Dedication. THE MORALISTS 223 Alike in his natural theology and in his ethics Paley represents, as Stephen says, * the commonplace English mind,' l and, it may be added, the commonplace eighteenth-century mind. His conception of the relation of God to the world is that which is common to the orthodox writers and their deistic opponents, that of an external and mechanical ' First Cause ' ; and his one contribution to the argument is contained in his famous argument from the evidences of design in the phenomena of nature, and especially of the animal organism, to a divine Designer or Contriver. This single idea is illus- trated at great length, especially from the case of the human organism ; and the opposing alternatives of im- personal law or order and of the development of organs adapted by ' use ' to the demands of the external conditions of their life are controverted with great vigour and no little acuteness and argumentative skill. The impression left upon the mind of the reader is rather that of a clever ind ' lawyer-like ' mind, as Mackintosh says, than that of any real or original metaphysical insight. In any case the entire argument rests, like that of Butler in the Analogy, upon presuppositions, readily accepted in the writer's own age, which the progress of scientific as well as of metaphysical thought has rendered no longer tenable. It belongs to the pre-evolutionary epoch. The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy is a work of more permanent interest and value. Though its main ideas are confessedly derived from Tucker, they are developed and applied by Paley to * the situations which arise in the life of an inhabitant of this country in these times,' 2 and to the solution of many casuistical difficulties with a skill, sagacity, and knowledge of life which give them a new value and significance. Like his master, Tucker, he is unusually successful in avoiding the common- place and in resisting the temptation to write for edifica- tion. The key-note of the work is to be found in a sentence of Dr. Johnson's, quoted in the Preface, ' When 1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 5. 409. 2 Principles, Preface. 224 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS the obligations of morality are taught, let the sanctions of Christianity never be forgotten.' Paley's aim is to develop the system of ethics from the Christian standpoint ; but he holds that what is peculiar to Christianity is not the substance of Christian morality, but the sanctions by which that morality is enforced, the new motive which is invoked. The principle of morality, he agrees with Tucker, is Utility : Virtue is ' the doing good to mankind.' Christian virtue is * the doing good to mankind, in obedi- ence to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness ' l The motive is, as with Tucker, self-interest, but the larger self-interest which is appealed to by the Christian idea of God as, in His benevolence, willing the happiness of His creatures. Virtue thus implies obli- gation ; and * a man is said to be obliged when he is urged by a violent motive resulting from the command of another.' 2 There is no obligation except from the command of a superior, who offers a sufficient induce- ment for our obedience. * And from this account of obligation it follows, that we can be obliged to nothing, but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by ; for nothing else can be a " violent motive " to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the laws, or the magistrate, unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our obedience ; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of God.' 3 In proof of these divine sanctions of virtue and vice he appeals alike to Scripture and, as in the Natural Theology, to the evidences of benevolent design in the works of God as revealed in nature. Since the design of God is the general happiness, we may infer the congruity or incongruity of our actions with His will, their virtuous or vicious character, by considering their conse- quences, in pleasure or pain, for mankind ; and it is to this secondary or utilitarian criterion, rather than to the ultimate rule of the will of God, that Paley generally 1 Principles, bk. i. ch. vii. 2 Ibi&, bk. . ch, ii, 1 Loc. cit. THE MORALISTS 225 refers. That the general happiness is the content of the divine will, makes action which is conducive to that happi- ness, rather than to our own, obligatory upon us, ensuring as it does the ultimate coincidence of virtue and self- interest. The only difference between an act of prudence and an act of duty is * that, in the one case, we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world ; in the other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world to come.' J The emphasis, throughout the work, is, however, rather upon the substance than upon the sanctions of virtue. Paley's effort is to develop the ethics of Utility, to trace in detail the kind of conduct which is prescribed by regard to the general happiness ; and the ultimate motive of self- interest really drops out of sight. Having once for all proved to his own satisfaction the obligatoriness of virtue, 2 he devotes himself to the detailed delineation of virtue. While he consistently denies any qualitative distinction between pleasures, his interpretation of virtue in terms of utility is saved from the consequences which, in less careful hands, might have seemed to follow from such a view. He sharply differentiates the true from the false idea of happiness. It does not consist in the pleasures of the senses, but in ' the exercise of the social affections,' in * the exercise of our faculties, either of body or mind, in the pursuit of some engaging end,' in 'the formation of good habits and in health of body and of mind.' 3 He distinguishes between the particular and the general consequences or utility of the action, and deduces from this distinction the necessity of 'general rules' which must be obeyed unquestioningly, for the most part, without any calculation of the results in the particular case. It is by reference to this principle that he solves the various questions of casuistry which arise in the life 1 Principles, bk. ii. ch. iii. 2 ' This solution goes to the bottom of the subject, as no farther ques- tion can reasonably be asked : therefore, private happiness is our motive, and the will of God our rule.' Ibid., bk. ii. ch. iii. 8 7*tt,bk. i. Ch. vi, P 226 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS of duty, the general rule not being different in its origin from the rule of particular utility, but representing the larger utility, with which the narrower is always liable to conflict. Finally, he so fully recognises the utilitarian value of character, or of formed habits of virtuous action, and the practical necessity of allowing this all-important means to take the place of the end, as to approximate very closely to the acknowledgment of its intrinsic and ultimate value. This is especially true of the doctrine of probation, in the Natural Theology, which is practically identical with that of Butler, in the Analogy. Of the purpose or design * for which the state in which we are placed is fitted, and which it is made to serve,' he says * the most probable supposition ' is < that it is a state of moral probation, and that many things in it suit with this hypothesis, which suit no other. It is not a state of unmixed happiness, or of happiness simply ; it is not a state of designed misery, or of misery simply ; it is not a state of retribution ; it is not a state of punishment. It suits with none of these suppositions. It accords much better with the idea of its being a condition calculated for the production, exercise, and improvement of moral qualities, with a view to a future state, in which these qualities, after being so produced, exercised, and improved, may, by a new and more favouring constitution of things, receive their reward, or become their own.' * Virtue per- haps is the greatest of all ends.' l 1 Nat. Theol., ch. xxvi. CHAPTER IV THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM: PRICE AND REID THOUGH Reid, as the founder of the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense, as well as in virtue of the larger scale of his philosophical work, is decidedly the more important thinker, yet Price has an importance of his own, as the earlier writer, and on account of the remarkable way in which, in the ethical field, he anticipates some of the lead- ing positions of Kant. The originality of the Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, published in 1757, is considerably diminished by the extent to which Price is indebted to Cudworth and Clarke, on the one hand, and to Butler, on the other. The latter * incomparable writer ' is the special object of Price's admiration, and he accepts, so far as they go, Butler's views of conscience, self- love, and benevolence, agreeing with him especially in his antagonism to Hutcheson's doctrines of the ' moral sense ' and of benevolence as the whole of virtue, against which his own work is one sustained polemic. His chief aim is to show, as against Hume's development of the doctrine of the l moral sense,' the absolute and immutable nature of moral distinctions. The original source of Hume's empiricism and scepticism, in the intellectual as well as in the ethical sphere, he finds in Locke's initial error of deriving all * simple ideas' from sensation and reflection. The understanding, he holds, gives us not merely know- ledge, but also new ' simple ideas.' Locke's denial of this is the result of his confusion of understanding with imagi- nation. * It is a capital error, into which those persons run who confound the understanding with the imagination 227 228 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS and deny reality and possibility to everything the latter cannot conceive, however clear and certain to the former. The powers of the imagination are very narrow ; and were the understanding confined to the same limits, nothing could be known, and the very faculty itself would be annihilated. Nothing is plainer than that one of these often perceives where the other is blind ; is surrounded with light where the other finds all darkness ; and, in numberless instances, knows things to exist of which the other can frame no idea.' 1 While sense and imagination have to do only with particulars, the understanding has to do with universals. Understanding, as a source of self- evident ideas, must also be distinguished from reasoning, or the investigation of relations between objects, ideas of which we already possess. If any one denies the self- evidence of such original ideas of the understanding, we can only * refer him to common sense. If he cannot find there the perception I have mentioned, he is not farther to be argued with, for the subject will not admit of argu- ment ; there being nothing clearer than the point itself disputed to be brought to confirm it.' 2 Among the self-evident ideas apprehended by the understanding are those of right and wrong. The ultimate moral distinctions belong to the nature of things, the im- mutable order of the universe, and are no more capable of proof than ultimate intellectual relations. * There are, undoubtedly, some actions that are ultimately approved, and for justifying which no reason can be assigned ; as there are some ends, which are ultimately desired, and for choosing which no reason can be given. \ /ere not this true, there would be an infinite progression 'f reasons and ends, and therefore nothing could be at i \ approved or desired.' 3 The obligation of such actio t s rests upon their intrinsic nature ; they are obligatory upon a rational being, apart altogether from reward or punish- ment. A rational being, as such, ought to act not from instinct, passion, or appetite, not even from self-love 1 Review, ch. i. sect. 2. * Loc, cit. 3 Ibid., ch. i. sect. 3. THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM 229 or benevolence, but from purely rational considerations. It is only * our deficiencies and weaknesses ' that give occasion to actions of the former kind ; ' reason alone, did we possess it in a higher degree, would answer all the ends of them.' For example, l there would be no need of the parental affection, were all parents sufficiently acquainted with the reasons for taking upon them the guidance and support of those whom nature has placed under their care, and were they virtuous enough to be always determined by those reasons.' * ' The intel- lectual nature is its own law. It has, within itself, a spring and guide of action which it cannot suppress or reject. Rectitude is itself an end, an ultimate end, an end superior to all other ends, governing, directing, and limiting them, and whose existence and influence depend on nothing arbitrary. It presides over all. Every appetite and faculty, every instinct and will, and all nature are subjected to it. To act from affection to it, is to act with light, and conviction, and knowledge. But acting from instinct is so far acting in the dark, and following a blind guide. Instinct drive* and precipitates ; but reason commands.'' 2 It follows, for Price as for Kant, that 'an agent cannot be justly denominated virtuous, except he acts from a consciousness of rectitude, and with a regard to it as his rule and end ' ; that * the virtue of an agent is always less in proportion to the degree in which natural temper and propensities fall in with his actions, in- stinctive principles operate, and rational reflexion on what is right to be done, is wanting.' 3 Yet he also appeals, in tie spirit of his age, to considerations of self-interest. Speaking of the probability, or even bare possibility, of an eternal reward of virtue, he expresses surprise that u\en 'should so little care to put themselves in the way to win this Prize, and to become adventurers here, where even to fail would be glorious ' ; that they should forget ' that by such a course as virtue and piety require, we can in general lose nothing, but may gain 1 Review, ch. iii. * Ibid., ch. viii. Loc cit. 230 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS infinitely ; and that, on the contrary, by a careless ill- spent life we can get nothing, or at best (happen what will) next to nothing, but may lose infinitely.' * Even in the present life virtue is, in a real sense, its own reward ; genuine virtue and happiness are inseparable, and the delight which a man takes in virtuous action is a sure criterion of the reality of his virtue. 'What our hearts are most set upon will make the principal part of our happiness. . . . Well therefore may he suspect his character, who finds that virtuous exercises, the duties of piety, and the various offices of love and goodness to which he may be called, are distasteful and irksome to him. Virtue is the object of the chief complacency of every virtuous man ; the exercise of it is his chief delight ; and the consciousness of it gives him his highest joy.' 2 Thomas Reid is the founder of the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense. His appeal to ' Common Sense ' con- stitutes a new departure in English philosophy : it is his answer to Hume, his method of vindicating the rationality of Belief from Hume's sceptical attack. His essential thesis is that the scepticism of Hume is the reductio ad abmrdum of the ' doctrine of ideas' which is common to Locke and Descartes. While accepting the experiential and psychological method of Locke, he dissents from this Cartesian or * ideal theory,' which limits our knowledge to ideas and their relations. In this theory he finds the initial and fatal error which leads to the scepticism of Hume. It was Hume who woke Reid, like Kant, from his dogmatic slumber, who first compelled him to question the philosophical tradition in which he had grown up. ' I shall always avow myself your disciple in metaphysics,' he writes to the great sceptic ; * I have learned more from your writings in this kind than from all others put together. Your system appears to me not only coherent in all its parts, but likewise justly deduced from prin- ciples commonly received among philosophers ; principles i Review, Conclusion. * Ibid., ch. ix. THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM 231 which I never thought of calling in question until the conclusions you drew from them in the "Treatise of Human Nature " made me suspect them.' 1 The inevitableness of the sceptical development of the ideal theory is rapidly sketched by Reid in the following characteristic passage. * Ideas seem to have something in their nature unfriendly to other existences. They were first introduced into philosophy in the humble character of images or representatives of things ; and in this char- acter they seemed not only to be inoffensive, but to serve admirably well for explaining the operations of the human understanding. But, since men began to reason clearly and distinctly about them, they have by degrees supplanted their constituents, and undermined the existence of every- thing but themselves. First, they discarded all secondary qualities of bodies ; and it was found out by their means that fire is not hot, nor snow cold, nor honey sweet ; and, in a word, that heat and cold, sound, colour, taste, and smell, are nothing but ideas or impressions. Bishop Berkeley advanced them a step higher, and found out, by just reasoning from the same principles, that extension, solidity, space, figure and body, are ideas, and that there is nothing in nature but ideas and spirits. But the triumph of ideas was completed by the "Treatise on Human Nature," which discards spirits also, and leaves ideas and impressions as the sole existences in the universe. . . . These ideas are as free and independent as the birds of the air, or as Epicurus's atoms when they pursue their journey in the vast inane. . . . They make the whole furniture of the universe ; starting into existence, or out of it, without any cause ; combining into parcels, which the vulgar call minds ; and succeeding one another by fixed laws, without time, place, or author of those laws.' 2 The initial error of Locke was, according to Reid, his postulating ' simple ideas ' or * simple apprehension ' as the elementary datum or material of knowledge. Hume's 1 Hill Burton, Life of Hume, ii. 155. * Works, i. 109. 232 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS sceptical disintegration of knowledge into unrelated sensa- tions is the inevitable result of such a start. ' Simple apprehension, though it be the simplest, is not the first operation of the understanding ; and, instead of saying that the more complex operations of the mind are formed by compounding simple apprehensions, we ought rather to say, that simple apprehensions are got by analysing more complex operations.' 1 The elementary feature of knowledge is judgment or belief. We do not first have the several ideas, and then proceed to compare and relate them ; every idea ' suggests ' its relation at once to a subject and to an object. The mere isolated sensation is the product of abstraction ; in actual perception the sensation always 'suggests,' or carries with it the belief in a corresponding quality as belonging to the object. In the case of the secondary qualities, all that is suggested is some quality, quite unlike the sensation ; in the case of the primary qualities, we know the quality, though it is still unlike the sensation. 2 These original and fundamental judgments Reid calls * judgments of nature ' or * natural suggestions,' as dis- tinguished from judgments and suggestions which are the result of experience, on the one hand, or of reasoning, on the other : they belong to ' our constitution,' and are the presupposition of all other knowledge. The attempt to prove them is, therefore, foredoomed to failure. They are the ' first principles ' upon which all reasoning rests. Of them 'we can give no other account but that they necessarily result from the constitution of our faculties ' ; 8 they are 'not grounded upon any antecedent reasoning, but upon the constitution of the mind itself.' 4 They belong to the ' Common Sense and Reason ' of mankind. * The power of judging in self-evident propositions . . . is purely natural, and therefore common to the learned and the unlearned, to the trained and the untrained. It requires only ripeness of understanding, and freedom from prejudice, but nothing else.' 6 'In such controversies, 1 Works, i. 376. * Works, i. 313 ff. 3 Works, i. 455. 4 Works, i. 452. 6 Works, i. 434. THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM 233 every man is a competent judge. . . . To judge of first principles, requires no more than a sound mind free from prejudice, and a distinct conception of the question. The learned and the unlearned, the philosopher and the day-labourer, are upon a level, and will pass the same judgment, when they are not misled by some bias, or taught to renounce their understanding from some mis- taken religious principle. In matters beyond the reach of common understanding, the many are led by the few, and willingly yield to their authority. But, in matters of common sense, the few must yield to the many, when local and temporary prejudices are removed.' 1 Such statements as these have led to the criticism of the Philosophy of Common Sense as an appeal from the reasoned conclusions of philosophy to the vulgar prejudices and unthinking beliefs of the ordinary man. This criticism was first made by Priestley, in his Examination of Reid's Inquiry, Seattle's Essay, and Oswald's Appeal to Common Sense, published in 1774, and was repeated in a well-known passage in Kant's Prolegomena. Instead of solving Hume's problem in the sense in which he had stated it, the Scottish philosophers have, Kant holds, missed the point of Hume's scepticism. * The always unfavour- able fate of metaphysics willed that he should be understood by no one. It cannot be without feeling a certain regret that one sees how completely his opponents, Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and, lastly, Priestley, missed the point of his problem, in taking that for granted which was precisely what he doubted, and on the other hand in proving with warmth, and in most cases great immodesty, what it had never entered his head to question. ... It was not the question whether the conception of Cause was correct and useful, and in view of the whole knowledge of Nature, indis- pensable, for upon this Hume had never cast a doubt. . . . The question was as to the origin of the idea, not as to its practical necessity in use. . . . The opponents of this celebrated man, to have done the problem full justice, i Works, 1.438. 234 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS must have penetrated deeply into the nature of the Reason, in so far as it is occupied solely with pure thought, a thing which was inconvenient for them. They invented therefore a more convenient means, by which, without any insight, they might defy him, namely, the appeal to the common sense of mankind. It is indeed a great natural gift to possess, straightforward (or, as it has been called, plain) common sense. But it must be proved by deeds, by the thoughtfulness and rationality of what one thinks and says, and not by appealing to it as an oracle, when one has nothing wise to adduce in one's justification. When insight and science are at a low ebb, then and not before to appeal to common sense is one of the subtle inventions of modern times, by which the emptiest talker may coolly confront the profoundest thinker and hold out against him. But so long as there is a small remnant of insight left, one will be cautious of clutching at this straw. And seen in its true light, the argument is nothing better than an appeal to the verdict of the multitude ; a clamour before which the philosopher blushes, and the popular witling scornfully triumphs. But I should think that Hume can make as good claim to the possession of common sense as Beattie, and in addition, to something the latter certainly did not possess, namely, a critical Reason, to hold common sense within bounds in order not to let it overreach itself in speculations. . . . Chisel and hammer are quite sufficient to shape a piece of deal, but for copper-engraving an etching-needle is necessary.' * The fact that Kant couples the philosophy of Reid with that of Oswald and Beattie, and includes all three in a common condemnation with their critic, Priestley, suggests that his knowledge of the Scottish Philosophy was derived from Seattle's work, if not from Priestley's criticism, and amounts to a serious injustice to the founder of the school. Neither Beattie, whom Sidgwick well de- scribes as 'a man of real, but chiefly literary ability, a 1 Prolegomena, Introd., Belfort Bax's trans., pp. 4-6. THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM 235 poet by choice and a philosopher from a sense of duty,' nor Oswald, whom the same writer calls 1 f r in his hands that psychology becomes the basis not merely of an ethical theory but of a theory of 1 Preface to ed. of Analysis, p. xii. 244 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS knowledge and reality. The result is a restatement of the Humian view of the world and the self, and of the Humian reduction of our so-called knowledge to customary belief. The basis of the theory is laid in an extreme nominal- ism. All terms alike are simply the expression of the meaning of names, and the only reality corresponding to the name is some particular sensation or idea. General terms are the names of classes, and these classes consist of individuals. ' The business of classification is merely a process of naming, and is all resolvable into association.' l 1 Men were led to class solely for the purpose of economising in the use of names.' 2 He entirely ignores the underlying connotation which accounts for the denotation of the general term. As J. S. Mill says, ' The only meaning of predicating a quality at all, is to affirm a resemblance.' 3 James Mill himself has to admit that the * particular principle ' of association concerned in classification is resemblance, which, though he suggests that it might possibly be reduced to the principle of contiguity (since like particulars occur, and therefore recur, together), he finally accepts as an independent principle. The resulting theory of predication, as J. S. Mill points out, ignores the element of belief involved in it. 'The characteristic difference between a predication and any other form of speech, is, that it does not merely bring to mind a certain object (which is the only function of a mark, merely as such) ; it asserts something respecting it. ... Whatever view we adopt of the psychological nature of Belief, it is necessary to distinguish between the mere suggestion to the mind of a certain order among sensations or ideas such as takes place when we think of the alphabet, or the numeration table and the indica- tion that this order is an actual fact, which is occurring, or which has occurred once or oftener, or which, in certain definite circumstances, always occurs ; which are the things indicated as true by an affirmative predication, 1 Analysis, i. 269. * Ibid., i. 260. 8 Ibid., i. 261, note. THE UTILITARIANS 245 and as false by a negative one.' l Belief, according to James Mill, differs from imagination merely in the strength of the association in the one case as com- pared with the other. The association of the ideas is, in belief, inseparable ; in imagination, separable. The proof of this would be, J. S. Mill says, 'the greatest of all the triumphs of the Association psychology,' 2 but he does not think the attempted proof successful. There may be inseparable association without belief, and belief without inseparable association. 'The differ- ence between belief and mere imagination is the differ- ence between recognising something as a reality in nature and regarding it as a mere thought of our own.' 3 It is this element of belief, thus objectively interpreted, that, according to J. S. Mill, distinguishes memory from imagination, a difference which James Mill interprets, after Hume, as one merely of degree. 4 The distinction between belief and imagination, J. S. Mill contends, resists analysis : it must be accepted as ' ultimate and primordial.' 5 In the case of the Self, as in that of Belief, J. S. Mill finds his father's theory inadequate. The explanation of personal identity in terms of Association ' removes the outer veil, or husk, as it were, which wraps up the idea of the Ego. But after this is removed, there remains an inner covering, which, as far as I can perceive, is impenetrable.' Memory is explained by reference to Self, and Self by reference to Memory. 'By doing so, we explain neither. We only show that the two things are essentially the same.' 6 Here, again, we come to 'something ultimate.' James Mill speaks of ' that thread of consciousness, drawn out in succession, which I call myself,' 7 of 'that thread of conscious- ness in which, to me, my being consists,' 'the train of consciousness, which I call myself.' 8 But, as J. S. Mill contends, the bond which unites these various states in the consciousness of an identical Self is not 1 Analysis, i. 162-3, note - a Ibid; 402. 3 Ibid., i. 418. * Ibid., i. 423. 5 Ibid., i. 412. * Ibid., ii. 173, 174. 7 Ibid., i. 17. 8 Ibid., ii. 197. 246 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS thereby explained. ' This succession of feelings, which I call my memory of the past, is that by which I dis- tinguish my Self. Myself is the person who had that series of feelings, and I know nothing of myself, by direct knowledge, except that I had them. But there is a bond of some sort among all the parts of the series, which makes me say that they were feelings of a person who was the same person throughout, and a different person from those who had any of the parallel successions of feelings ; and this bond, to me, constitutes my Ego. Here, I think, the question must rest, until some psychologist succeeds better than any one has yet done in shewing a mode in which the analysis can be carried further.' l The general criticism which J. S. Mill makes upon his father's work is one with which there will be general agreement. * It is chiefly ... in leading him to identify two ultimate facts with one another, that his love of simplification, in itself a feeling highly worthy of a philosopher, seems to mislead him.' 2 On the other hand, we must admit, with the same kindly though candid critic, that the Analysis abounds in 'specimens of clear and vigorous statement, going straight to the heart of the matter, and dwelling on it just long enough and no longer than necessary.' 3 And if we must also agree with Leslie Stephen, that James Mill was ' at most a man of remarkable talent and the driest and sternest of logicians,' 4 and with Macaulay that his style is ' as dry as that of Euclid's Elements,' we must remember that, as the former writer says, l Mill, as a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, had not had much time to spare for purely philo- sophic reading. He was not a professor in want of a system, but an energetic man of business, wishing to strike at the root of the superstitions to which his political opponents appealed for support.' 5 One reason for the inadequate appreciation of James Mill by his contemporaries was, in the judgment of his 1 Analysis, ii. 17 > * Ibid., ii. 380. 3 Ibid., i. 133. * English Utilitarians, ii. 38. 8 Op. cit., ii. 288. JOHN STUART MILL 247 son, that he was not thoroughly in sympathy with the spirit of his own age. * As Brutus was called the last of the Romans, so was he the last of the eighteenth century ; he continued its tone of thought and senti- ment into the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor unimproved), partaking neither in the good nor in the bad influences of the reaction against the eighteenth century, which was the great characteristic of the first half of the nineteenth.' x John Stuart Mill himself belongs to the new age ; but the influence of Bentham and his father remained with him to the last, and the result is a curious mingling of the spirit of the two centuries. The key at once to the importance and to the defects of his philosophy is to be found in the peculiarity of his position as the thinker of an age of transition ; in the fact that he represents two points of view, which he considers himself to have reconciled, but whose mutual opposition he never sufficiently grasped to effect their reconciliation, the points of view of the eighteenth and of the nineteenth century. It was with deliberate purpose that he under- took the task of reconciliation. < Though, at one period of my progress, I for some time undervalued that great century [the eighteenth], I never joined in the reaction against it, but kept as firm hold of one side of the truth as I took of the other. The fight between the nineteenth century and the eighteenth always reminded me of the battle about the shield, one side of which was white and the other black. I marvelled at the blind rage with which the combatants rushed against one another. I applied to them, and to Coleridge himself, many of Coleridge's sayings about half truths ; and Goethe's device, " many- sidedness," was one which I would most willingly, at this period, have taken for mine.' 2 'The besetting danger,' he remarks in his essay on Coleridge, c is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking part of the truth for the whole.' 3 In l the Germano-Coleridgian doctrine ' he sees ' the revolt of the human mind against 1 Autobiography, p. 204. a Ibid., p. 162. 3 Dissertations, i. 399. 248 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS the philosophy of the eighteenth century.' * It is onto- logical, because that was experimental ; conservative, because that was innovative ; religious, because so much of that was infidel ; concrete and historical, because that was matter-of-fact and prosaic.' 1 He regards Bentham and Coleridge as * the two great seminal minds of England in their age.' 2 'Whoever could master the premises and combine the methods of both, would possess the entire English philosophy of his age. Coleridge used to say that every one is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian : it may be similarly affirmed, that every Englishman of the present day is by implication either a Benthamite or a Coleridgian ; holds views of human affairs which can only be proved true on the principles either of Bentham or of Coleridge.' 3 He is convinced of * the importance, in the present imperfect state of mental and social science, of antagonist modes of thought : which, it will one day be felt, are as necessary to one another in speculation, as mutually checking powers are in the political con- stitution.' 4 It is in this deliberate effort to combine two antagonistic but, as he believes, complementary points of view, rather than in any defect of philosophic strenuousness and per- sistence, that the explanation of Mill's 'inconsistencies' is to be found. It is doubtless true that by the characteristic temper of his mind, as well as by reason of his position in the history of thought, he was incapable of resting in any one position as finally satisfying ; that, as Lord Morley has said, * he never desisted, or stood still,' but ' was of the Socratic household,' in that his mind was always open to the apprehension of new truth, always ready to listen to the voice of the argument and to accept its conclusions, however disturbing to his previous convictions. He him- self speaks of 'my great readiness and eagerness to learn from everybody, and to make room in my opinions for every new acquisition by adjusting the old and the new to one another.' 5 As Professor MacCunn has said, 1 Dissertations, i. 403. 2 Ibid., 1.331. 8 Ibid.,\. 397. * Ibid., i. 399. B Autobiography, p. 252. JOHN STUART MILL 249 4 Better Mill's " inconsistencies " than the limited com- pleteness of Bentham. Better his unsolved difficulties than the arrogant, narrow, self-confident logic of his father. For they are, at any rate, the fruits of an enlarged outlook and an enriched experience.' 1 But the inconsistencies remain, and they are of the very essence of Mill's position as a transition-thinker. With all his new insight, he never really outgrew Benthamism, he never sufficiently revised his former premises in the light of the new truths which he found himself compelled to admit. He writes to Carlyle : ' You will see, partly, with what an immense number and variety of explanations my utilitarianism must be taken and that these explana- tions affect its essence, not merely its accidental forms. ... I am still, and am likely to remain, a utilitarian, though not one of " the people called utilitarians " ; indeed, having scarcely one of my secondary premises in common with them ; nor a utilitarian at all, unless in quite another sense from what perhaps any one except myself under- stands by the word.' 2 ' What is now wanted,' he writes in his Diary of 1854, 'is the creed of Epicurus warmed by the additional element of an enthusiastic love of the general good.' 3 When we study the ethical theory, which its author still calls ' Utilitarianism, 1 and thus insists upon affiliating to that of Bentham, we cannot but feel with Martineau, that * these modifications were torn from their connection and taken over to the Bentham side without their root.' 4 Although he had felt the spell of an ethical idealism the acceptance of which implied the surrender at once of the egoism and of the hedonism of the theory which he had been brought up to believe in as true, he seems to have been persuaded that the Utilita- rianism of Bentham was capable of being developed into a theory which would do justice to all those ideal aspects of life and conduct which Bentham had ignored or misunder- stood. Similarly in political philosophy, after growing up in the atmosphere of the extreme individualism of the 1 Six Radical Thinkers, p. 86. 2 Letters, i. 91. 3 Letters, ii. 385. * Dissertations, i. 493. 250 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS laissez faire doctrine of the Utilitarians or * Philosophical Radicals,' he came later under the influence of French socialism ; yet, after making remarkable concessions to the latter theory in his Political Economy^ he wrote that essay on Liberty which has been regarded ever since as the classical statement of individualism. Finally, so far as the theory of knowledge and reality is concerned, in spite of the lessons which he learned from German idealism as conveyed to the English mind by Coleridge and Carlyle, he never saw his way to the surrender of that doctrine of Association ism which he had been taught by his father to regard as the final solution of all metaphysical problems. The reading of Bentham's work, in Dumont's transla- tion, was, Mill tells us in the Autobiography, ' an epoch in my life ; one of the turning-points in my mental history. My previous education had been, in a certain sense, already a course of Benthamism. The Benthamite standard of " the greatest happiness " was that which I had always been taught to apply. . . . Yet in the first pages of Bentham it burst upon me with all the force of novelty.' What chiefly impressed him was Bentham's exposure of the concealed dogmatism of other ethical theories. 'It had not struck me before, that Bentham's principle put an end to all this. The feeling rushed upon me, that all previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a new era in thought.' This impression was confirmed by the scientific form of Bentham's reasoning, by ' the method of detail ' which he employed. To the theoretical satisfaction were added * the most inspiring prospects of practical improvement in human affairs ' : * at every page he seemed to open a clearer and broader conception of what human opinions and institutions ought to be, how they might be made what they ought to be, and how far removed from it they now are. . . . When I laid down the first volume of the Traite, I had become a different being. The " principle of utility," understood as Bentham understood it, and applied in the manner in which he applied it ... JOHN STUART MILL 251 fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held together the detached and fragmentary parts of my knowledge and beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of things. I now had opinions ; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy ; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion ; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life. And I had a grand conception laid before me of changes to be effected in the condition of mankind through that doctrine.' 1 Though he afterwards became conscious of the serious limitations of Bentham's philosophical outlook, and found it necessary to incorporate in the theory many elements of crucial importance which its author had ignored, Mill's early enthusiasm for the * principle of utility ' never really waned. In the essay on Whewell's moral philosophy (1852) he says: 'It is by his method chiefly that Bentham, as we think, justly earned a position in moral science analogous to that of Bacon in physical. It is because he was the first to enter into the right mode of working ethical problems, though he worked many of them, as Bacon did physical, on insufficient data.' 2 It is necessary, he insists in the Utilitarianism^ to re- duce our various moral principles, accepted by the in- tuitionists as equally ultimate, to c one first principle, or common ground of obligation.' * The non-existence of an acknowledged first principle has made ethics not so much a guide as a consecration of men's actual senti- ments.' And he agrees with Bentham that ' the funda- mental principle of morality, and the source of moral obligation ' is to be found in the principle of utility, or * the influence of actions on happiness.' 3 Perhaps the main factor in effecting the transition from Benthamism to a more idealistic version of the Utilitarian theory was the mental crisis through which Mill passed in 1826, and from which he found deliverance in the study of Wordsworth. The almost complete loss of happiness, which was the result of a too introspective 1 Autobiog., pp. 64-66. * Dissertations, ii. 462. s Utilit., ch. i. 252 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS pursuit of it, taught him the truth of ' what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the con- viction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness ; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. . . . Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. . . . This theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life.' l This altered emphasis was further encouraged by his friendship with Carlyle, Maurice, and Sterling, as well as by the study of the writings of Coleridge and the acquaintance which he thus acquired with German idealism. His close association with the leaders of the movement called * Philosophical Radicalism, 'and especially his regard for his father's feelings, restrained Mill from the expression of a dissent which he had gradually learned to entertain from the theory of Utilitarianism, as formulated by Bentham and accepted by his followers. But two years after the death of his father, he published in the London and Westminster Review (1832) an essay on Bentham which clearly shows how far he had travelled from orthodox Benthamism. While still emphasising Bentham's merits as a practical reformer, Mill in this essay depreciates in the most serious way his qualities as a moralist. His fatal defect is his narrowness of moral vision, his limitation of view ; and this, in turn, is the result of his defect of sympathy and imagination. Bentham's disregard of all previous theories, as * vague generalities,' has blinded him to much that is essential in the moral nature of man : ' these 1 Autobiography, p. 142. JOHN STUART MILL 253 generalities contained the whole unanalysed experience of the human race.' * This failure to take account of ' the collective mind of the human race/ as reflected in the theories of other philosophers, was the more disastrous, in Bentham's case, on account of 'the incompleteness of his own mind as a representative of universal human nature.' ' In many of the most natural and strongest feelings of human nature he had no sympathy ; from many of its graver experiences he was altogether cut off.' 2 1 He saw accordingly in man little but what the vulgarest eye can see ; recognised no diversities of character but such as he who runs may read.' The result is that he was ' a systematic half-thinker.' ' The truths which are not Bentham's, which his philosophy takes no account of, are many and important . . . and it is a com- paratively easy task that is reserved for us, to harmonise those truths with his. To reject his half of the truth because he overlooked the other half, would be to fall into his error without having his excuse.' 3 Among the truths which Bentham failed to recognise, Mill specially mentions that ' man is never recognised by him as a being capable of pursuing spiritual perfection as an end ; of desiring, for its own sake, the conformity of his own character to his standard of excellence, without hope of good or fear of evil from other source than his own inward consciousness. Even in the more limited ' form of Conscience, this great fact in human nature escapes him. Nothing is more curious than the absence of recognition in any of his writings of the existence of conscience.' 4 Similarly with * self-respect.' And ' he but faintly recognises, as a fact in human nature, the pursuit of any other ideal end for its own sake.' 6 * How far,' Mill asks, ' will this view of human nature and life carry any one ? . . . What will it do for the individual and what for society ? It will do nothing for the conduct of the individual, beyond prescribing some of the more obvious dictates of worldly prudence and outward * Dissertations, \. 351. * Ibid., i. 353. 3 Ibid., i. 357. * Ibid., i. 359. * Ibid., i. 360. ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS probity and beneficence. ... It will enable a society which has attained a certain state of spiritual development, and the maintenance of which in that state is otherwise provided for, to prescribe the rules by which it may protect its material interests. It will do nothing . . . for the spiritual interests of society.' l If the principle of utility is to be justly interpreted, it must be applied to all the facts of our moral experience. In particular, it must explain, not ignore or explain away, the conscien- tious feelings of mankind ; it must take account of, and interpret, the ideal interests of human life. J In the essay on 1/rocftyj published in 1859, but * nrst planned and written as a short essay in 1854,' he says: 'I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions ; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.' 2 He adopts as the motto of the essay the words of Von Humboldt : 'The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human develop- ment in its richest diversity.' He quotes with approval the same author's doctrine that ' the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole,' and that, therefore, the object 'towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on which especially those who design to influence their fellow-men must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of power and development.' 3 To ' individuality as one of the elements of well-being' he devotes perhaps the most important chapter of the work. It is not surprising, therefore, to find Mill, in the essay on Utilitarianism, first published as a series of articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1861, announcing his great innovation upon all previous versions of the hedonistic 1 Dissertations, i. 363-5. * Liberty, Introd. 8 Ibid., ch. iii. JOHN STUART MILL 255 theory of morals the doctrine that pleasures differ in kind or quality, as well as in quantity or degree ; that mental are superior to bodily pleasures, not only, as previous hedonists have insisted, in their 'circumstantial advantages,' but in their 'intrinsic nature/ 'It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of plea- sures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.' ' A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type ; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence.' This unwillingness is due to 'a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or another, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them.' 1 Similarly he recognises the sense of duty or ' the con- scientious feelings of mankind,' as the ' internal sanction ' of right conduct, which he adds to the ' external sanctions ' of Bentham. 'Its binding force . . . consists in the ex- istence of a mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates our standard of right, and which, if we do nevertheless violate that standard, will probably have to be encountered afterwards in the form of remorse. Whatever theory we have of the nature or origin of conscience, this is what essentially constitutes it.' It does not follow that, because the ' moral feelings ' are not innate but acquired, they are the less natural : * the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural 1 Utility ch. ii. 256 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS outgrowth from it.' There is * a natural basis of senti- ment for utilitarian morality,' in which its real strength is found. * This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind ; the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures. . . . This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength to their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But to those who have it, it possesses all the characters of a natural feeling. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition of education, or a law despotically imposed by the power of society, but as an attribute which it would not be well for them to be without. This conviction is the ulti- mate sanction of the greatest happiness morality.' 1 Although Hume had recognised the existence of sympathy or disinterested regard for the general happiness, Bentham, like Paley, had insisted upon self-interest as the only possible motive of human conduct. Mill affirms the possibility of altruism in the motive, as well as in the end or criterion, of right action. * Let utilitarians never cease to claim the morality of self-devotion as a possession which belongs by as good a right to them as either to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist. The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. ... As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him [the individual] to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. ... If the impugners of the utilitarian morality represented it to their minds in this its true character, I know not what recommendation possessed by any other morality they could possibly affirm to be wanting to it ; what more beautiful or more exalted developments of 1 Ibid,, ch. iii. JOHN STUART MILL 257 human nature any other ethical system can be supposed to foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian, such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates.' * Yet Mill defines Utilitarianism in Bentham's familiar terms. VThe creed which accepts as the foundation of\ morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds ] that actions are right in proportion as they tend to pro- 1 mote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the rey verse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasjjre and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.' The ' supplementary explanations ' which require to be added to this definition, he affirms, * do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded namely, that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends ; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utili- tarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.' 2 Moreover, he finds the * proof of the principle of utility in Bentham's theory of desire. ' No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness.' 3 He explains the desire of other things as either the desire of means to happiness or the desire of things which, formerly desired as means, have by association taken the place of the end itself. He makes no attempt to reconcile this doctrine of psycho- logical hedonism either with his acknowledgment of the naturalness of sympathy or with the obligatoriness of the general happiness upon the individual. The presence of these fundamental inconsistencies in Mill's ethical theory may be partly explained by the fact that for him, as well as for Bentham, the * principle of Utility ' was not so much an ethical principle as a method - 1 Utilit., ch. ii. - Loc. cit. 3 Utilit., ch. iv. R ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS social and political reform, and that the principle of individual liberty was more important, in his eyes as well as in theirs, than that of utility. * It is plain,' says Pro- fessor Dicey, 'that it is the doctrine of laissezfaire which has really governed Benthamite legislation.' 1 'Though laissez faire is not an essential part of utilitarianism it was practically the most vital part of Bentham's legislative doctrine, and in England gave to the movement for the reform of the law, both its powers and its character.' 2 The intensity of the individualism of the Utilitarians was chiefly due to their conviction that the great social evil was the predominance of class-interests over national interests in determining the action of Govern- ment. The constant object of their attack was that ' sinister interest' which, in one form or another, was always asserting itself as the rival of the true interest of society and, therefore, of the individual. It was because the only government they knew was a government vitiated by self- interest, because in their experience 'a political trust was habitually confounded with private property,' 3 that they found it necessary to defend the individual from govern- mental interference with his interests. The representative and democratic form of government does not save it from this evil ; jin some ways, as Mill argues, it only intensifies the evil. /Mill's essay on Liberty is the philosophical statement of this Utilitarian view of the relation of society to the individual. Professor Dicey says that it ' appeared, to thousands of admiring disciples, to provide the final and conclusive demonstration of the absolute truth of individualism, and to establish on firm ground the doctrine that the protection of freedom was the one great object of wise law and sound policy.' 4 'Such phrases as "self-government" and "the power of the people over themselves,"' Mill argues, 'do not express the true state of the case.' Even in a democracy it is 1 Law and Opinion in England, p. 145, note. 2 Ibid., p. 146. 3 Leslie Stephen, English Utilitarians, ii. 90. * Law and Opinion in England, p. 182. JOHN STUART MILL 259 only a part of the people, the majority, that really governs ; and the c tyranny of the majority ' is not less real than that of the individual despot ; it may well be an even more oppressive form of tyranny, since it is social as well as political, 'penetrating much more deepht_uato the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. 5 ! The inevitable result of this oppression of the individual by society is the encouragement of mediocrity, the discourage- ment of distinction. 'Those whose opinions go by the name of public opinion are not always the same sort of public. . . . But they are always a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity.' What, then, Mill asks, is the proper limit of govern- mental interference with the liberty of the individual ? ' The sole end,' he replies, ' for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-prctec- tion. . . . The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised com- munity, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. . . . The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which con- cerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. . . . The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.' This principle follows, Mill argues, from that of 'Utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.' ' Man- kind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.' 1 The individual, as he has the most intimate knowledge of his own good, is also the best judge of the means which lead to it. 1 Liberty, Introd. 260 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Moreover, 'it is desirable that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions or customs of other people, are the rules of conduct, there is wanting one of the chief ingredients of human happi- ness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.' 1 It is desirable, in the interests of the general well-being, that there should be as many and as varied experiments in living as possible ; even eccentricity is better than the dull and dead uniformity of type which is encouraged by social and political control of the indi- vidual. Finally, every addition to the functions of govern- ment constitutes a new step in the direction of bureaucracy, and bureaucracy is the grave of individuality. On the other hand, it is to be noted that there is nothing in Mill's theory of individual liberty to invalidate the increasing interference of the State with the industrial liberty of the individual! and we know, from his treatise on Political Economy^ especially the chapter * On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes,') 2 as well as from his Autobiography, how far he was willing to go in the direction of Socialism and how carefully he sought to co-ordinate economic with ethical well-being. TTven in the essay on Liberty he protests against 'mis- applied notions of liberty,' as ' a real obstacle to the fulfil- ment by the State of its duties,' and affirms that ' the State, while it respects the liberty of each in what specially regards himself, is bound to maintain a vigilant control over his exercise of any power which it allows him to possess over otrjers.^- As regards the State's interference with the industnali life, in particular, he insists upon the distinction between economic and moral freedom. * Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes of trade, are indeed restraints ; and all restraint, qud restraint, is an evil : but the restraints in question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to restrain. . . . As the principle of individual liberty is not involved in the 1 Liberty, ch. iii. * Polit. Econ., bk. iv. ch. vii. JOHN STUART MILL 261 doctrine of Free Trade, so neither is it in most of the questions which arise respecting the limits of that doc- trine : as, for example . . . how far sanitary precautions, or arrangements to protect work-people employed in dangerous occupations, should be enforced on employers. Such questions involve considerations of liberty, only in so far as leaving people to themselves is always better, caeteris paribus, than controlling them : but that they may be legitimately controlled for these ends, is in principle unde- niable.' 1 As for the 'liberty of combination,' which was one of the burning questions of the time, he regards it as so far from contradicting the doctrine of individual liberty that it is the corollary of that doctrine. * From this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals ; freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others : the persons combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.' 2 Lord Morley has remarked of Mill that he * recognised the social destination of knowledge, and kept the elevation of the great art of social existence ever before him, as the ultimate end of all speculative activity.' 3 This conviction of the practical significance of philosophy finds expression more than once in Mill's own works. * Speculative philosophy,' he says, * which to the superficial appears a thing so remote from the business of life and the outward interests of men, is in reality the thing on earth which most influences them, and in the long run overbears every other influence save those which it must itself obey.' 4 The difference between Intuitionism and Empiricism is, as he understands it, practical as well as theoretical ; and it was the practical aspect of the controversy that chiefly interested him, and that prompted him to write the Logic. 'The System of Logic supplies what was much wanted, a text-book of the opposite doctrine [to the " German, or a priori view of human knowledge, and of the knowing 1 Liberty, ch. v. 2 Ibid., Introd. 8 Critical Miscellanies, iii. 42. * Dissertations, i. 330. 262 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS faculties"] that which derives all knowledge from ex- perience, and all moral and intellectual qualities principally from the direction given to the associations. . . . The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad in- stitutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all- sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep- seated prejudices.' 1 Empiricism is * the doctrine of the school of Locke and of Bentham,' as opposed to that of German Transcenden- talism and Scottish Intuitionism ; and Mill is convinced that the truth lies with the former type of philosophical theory. < We see no ground for believing that anything can be the object of our knowledge except our experience, and what can be inferred from our experience by the analogies of experience itself ; nor that there is any idea, feeling, or power in the human mind, which, in order to account for it, requires that its origin should be referred to any other source.' 2 Yet the Transcendentalists have performed the important service of compelling that ' entire renovation ' of which the Lockian doctrine stood in need. 'It perhaps required all the violence of the assaults made by Reid and the German school upon Locke's system, to recall men's minds to Hartley's principles, as alone adequate to the solution, upon that system, of the peculiar difficulties which those assailants pressed upon men's attention as altogether insoluble by it.' 3 The repudiation of the shallow doctrine of French Ideology, that corrupt version of the Lockian tradition, was * the first sign that the age of real psychology was about to commence.' 4 In his Autobiography Mill 1 Autobiog., p. 225. 2 Dissertations, i. 409. 3 Ibid., i. 412. Ibid., i. 411. JOHN STUART MILL 263 speaks of * analytic psychology ' as * that most impor- tant branch of speculation, on which all the moral and political sciences ultimately rest.' 1 As his aim in ethics is to develop the implications of the principle of Utility, his purpose in the discussion of the wider questions of general philosophy is to develop and apply the principle of Association, the principle of Hartley, as modified by his father in the Analysis. The result is seen in the System of Logic and the Examination of Sir William Hamiltorfs Philosophy, the former published in 1843, the latter in 1865. The Logic is Mill's only systematic treatise in philo- sophy ; and apart from its speculative interest, it is a work of epoch-making importance in logical theory. Hoff- d ing's estimate is hardly exaggerated when he says that 4 it is not easy to find a parallel to this work unless we go back to Aristotle ; what the latter did for the syllogism and for deductive logic, Mill has done for induction, for the logic of experimental science.' 2 As Aristotle reduced to rule the procedure of the Socratic and Platonic dialectic, Mill has formulated the methods underlying and regulating the procedure of modern science. As the Aristotelian logic states the methods of argu- mentation, Mill's logic states the methods of experi- mentation. The great merit of Mill, as compared with Bacon, his only important predecessor in this field, is that he appreciates the value of the deductive method as an indispensable element in the complete method of science. While he insists, no less emphatically than Bacon, upon the inductive basis of all scientific explanation, he sees the limitation of an induction which is not supplemented / by deduction. If Bacon's repudiation of the deduc- ( tive method was necessary as a protest against the C empty argumentation of Scholastic philosophy, the lesson needed by the modern scientific mind is that the complete scientific method is deductive as well as in- ductive, and that the ideal of scientific explanation is the 1 Autobiog., p. 204. 2 Einleitung in die englische Philosophic unserer Zeit, p. 33. 264 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS combination of induction and deduction, of analysis and synthesis. The aim of all scientific investigation being the dis- covery of the causal relations of phenomena, and the cause being the unconditional antecedent that condition, or sum of conditions, whose presence is followed by the presence of the consequent and whose absence is followed by the absence of the consequent, what is needed is some clear guide to the detection of these causal relations. Mill formulates five such guiding methods the method of agreement, that of difference, the joint or double method of agreement and difference, the method of residues, and that of concomitant variations. The common feature of these methods the one real method of scientific inquiry is, as Taine points out, that of elimination. 1 All the other methods are thus subordinate to the method of difference. Here we have a case of the occurrence of the phenomenon under investigation and a case of its non- occurrence, these cases having every circumstance in common save one, that one occurring only in the former ; and we are warranted in concluding that this circumstance, in which alone the two cases differ, is either the cause or a necessary part of the cause of the phenomenon. It is only in the simpler cases of causal connexion, how- ever, that we can apply these direct methods of observation and experiment. In the more complex cases we have to employ the 'deductive method,' which consists of three operations induction, ratiocination or deduction, and verification. * To the Deductive Method, thus charac- terised in its three constituent parts Induction, Ratio- cination, and Verification the human mind is indebted for its most conspicuous triumphs in the investigation of nature. To it we owe all the theories by which vast and complicated phenomena are embraced under a few simple laws, which, considered as the laws of those great pheno- mena, could never have been detected by their direct study.' 2 We deduce the law or cause of a complex effect 1 Le posilivisme anglais, Eng. trans. , p. 58. 1 Logic, bk. iii. ch. xi. sect. 3. JOHN [STUART MILL 265 from the laws of the separate causes whose concurrence gives rise to it. For example, c the mechanical and chemical laws of the solid and fluid substances composing the organised body and the medium in which it subsists, together with the peculiar vital laws of the different tissues constituting the organic structure,' afford the clue to * the laws on which the phenomena of life depend.' l But these Maws of the different causes' must first be ascertained by direct induction, and finally verified, as the causes actually operative in the complex effect, by comparison with the facts of the case. Thus the entire process is based on induction. 'To warrant reliance on the general conclusions arrived at by deduction, these conclusions must be found, on careful comparison, to accord with the results of direct observation wherever it can be had. . . . Thus it was very reasonably deemed an essential requisite of any true theory of the causes of the celestial motions, that it should lead by deduction to Kepler's laws ; which, accordingly, the Newtonian theory did.' 2 The validity of the entire inductive process is thus clearly seen to depend upon the validity of its underlying assumption, the law of causation itself. Assuming that every phenomenon has a cause, or invariable and un- conditional antecedent, we investigate the problem of causation in detail. Is this fundamental assumption itself valid ? Mill cannot avail himself of the theory that the ' ' law of universal causation ' is an intuition of reason or ' an a priori and transcendental principle. For him the only possible view is that ' the belief we entertain in the universality, throughout nature, of the law of cause and effect, is itself an instance of induction. . . . We arrive at this universal law by generalisation from many laws of inferior generality. We should never have had the notion of causation (in the philosophical meaning of the term) as a condition of all phenomena, unless many cases of causa- tion, or, in other words, many partial uniformities of 1 Logic, III. xi. i. Ibid., III. xi. 3. 266 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS sequence, had previously become familiar. The more obvious of the particular uniformities suggest, and give evidence of, the general uniformity, and the general uniformity, once established, enables us to prove the remainder of the particular uniformities of which it is made up.' 1 These early inductions, which result in the law of universal causation, cannot belong to the same type as those rigorous inductions which conform to the canons of scientific induction and presuppose the law of universal causation ; they belong to * the loose and uncertain mode of induction per enumerationem simplicem.'' How, then, can a process whose basis is thus loose and uncertain have any certain validity ? Mill's answer is that induction by simple enumeration, or ' generalisation of an observed fact from the mere absence of any known instance to the contrary,' as contrasted with the critical induction of science, is a valid, though a fallible process, which must precede the less fallible forms of the inductive process, and that * the precariousness of the method of simple enumeration is in an inverse ratio to the largeness of the generalisation.' 'As the sphere widens, this un- scientific method becomes less and less liable to mislead ; and the most universal class of truths, the law of causation, for instance, and the principles of number and geometry, are duly and satisfactorily proved by that method alone, nor are they susceptible of any other proof.' 2 The universality of the law of causation, as it is an induction from our experience, does not extend to * circum- stances unknown to us, and beyond the possible range of our experience.' * In distant parts of the stellar regions, where the phenomena may be entirely unlike those with which we are acquainted, it would be folly to affirm con- fidently that this general law prevails, any more than those special ones which we have found to hold universally on our own planet. The uniformity in the succession of events, otherwise called the law of causation, must be received, not as a law of the universe, but of that portion of 1 Logic, III. xxi. 2. z Ibid., III. xxi. 3. JOHN STUART MILL 267 it only which is within the range of our means of sure observation, with a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases. To extend it further is to make a supposi- tion without evidence, and to which, in the absence of any ground from experience for estimating its degree of probability, it would be idle to attempt to assign any.' 1 There is no difficulty in conceiving 'that in some one, for instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may succeed one another at random without any fixed law ; nor can anything in our experience, or in our mental nature, constitute a sufficient, or indeed any, reason for believing that this is nowhere the case.' 2 The appearance of paradox in the view that the law of causation is at once the presupposition and the result of induction disappears, according to Mill, with * the old theory of reasoning, which supposes the universal truth, or major premise, in a ratiocination, to be the real proof of the particular truths which are ostensibly inferred from it.' 3 His own view is that * the major premise is not the proof of the conclusion, but is itself proved, along with the conclusion, from the same evidence.' The old theory implies that the syllogism is a petitio principiij since the conclusion which is supposed to be proved is already contained in the major premise ; if we know that 'all men are mortal,' we know, and do not require to prove, that ' Socrates is mortal.' ' No reasoning from generals to particulars can, as such, prove anything, since from a general principle we cannot infer any particulars, but those which the principle itself assumes as known.' 4 The only use of the syllogism is to con- vict your opponent of inconsistency ; it cannot lead us from the known to the unknown. In reality the major premise is a register of previous inductions and a short formula for making more. * The conclusion is not an inference drawn from the formula, but an inference drawn according to the formula ; the real logical antecedent 1 Logic, III. xxi. 4. * Ibid., III. xxi. I. 8 Ibid., III. xxi. 4. * Ibid., II. iii. 2. 268 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS or premise being the particular facts from which the general proposition was collected by induction.' 1 The major premise is merely a shorthand note, to assist the memory. 'The inference is finished when we have as- serted that all men are mortal. What remains to be per- formed afterwards is merely deciphering our own notes.' The mistake of the traditional view is * that of referring a person to his own notes for the origin of his knowledge. If a person is asked a question, and is at the moment unable to answer it, he may refresh his memory by turning to a memorandum which he carries about with him. But if he were asked, how the fact came to his knowledge, he would scarcely answer, because it was set down in his notebook : unless the book was written, like the Koran, with a quill from the wing of the angel Gabriel.' 2 All inference is from particulars to particulars; the syllogistic process is only an interpretation of our notes of previous inferences. 'If we had sufficiently capacious memories, and a sufficient power of maintaining order among a huge mass of details, the reasoning could go on without any general propositions ; they are mere formulae for inferring particulars from particulars.' 3 Syllogistic reasoning is thus a circuitous way of reaching a conclusion which might have been reached directly, like going up a hill and down again when we might have travelled along the level road. There is no reason why we should be compelled to take the ' high priori road ' except < the arbitrary fiat of logicians.' ' Not only may we reason from particulars to particulars without passing through generals, but we perpetually do so reason. All our earliest inferences are of this nature.' 4 Mill, however, acknowledges * the immense advantage, in point of security for correctness, which is gained by interposing this step between the real evidence and the conclusion,' the importance of 'the appeal to former experience in the major premise of the syllogism.' 6 When we say that Socrates is mortal, because he is a 1 Logic, II. iii. 4. Ibid., III. Hi. 3. 8 Ibid., III. iv. 3. 4 Ibid., II. iii. 3. 5 Ibid., II. iii. 6. JOHN STUART MILL 269 man, and all men are mortal, we assert that because he resembles the other individuals in the attributes connoted by the term man, he resembles them further in the attribute mortality. ' Whether, from the attributes in which Socrates resembles those rrren who have heretofore died, it is allowable to infer that he resembles them also in being mortal, is a question of Induction.' 1 The major premise is the record and reminder that we have made that induction, and are therefore not merely warranted, but required, to apply it in the particular case before us. 'The chief strength of this false philosophy [intuitionism] in morals, politics, and religion,' Mill remarks in his Autobiography , 'lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the evidence of mathematics and of the cognate branches of physical science. To expel it from these, is to drive it from its stronghold : and because this had never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even after what my father had written in his Analysis of the Mind, had in appearance, and as far as published writings were concerned, on the whole the best of the argument. In attempting to clear up the real nature of the evidence of mathematical and physical truths, the " System of Logic " met the intuitive philosophers on ground on which they had previously been deemed un- assailable ; and gave its own explanation, from experience and association, of that peculiar character of what are called necessary truths, which is adduced as proof that their evidence must come from a deeper source than experience.' 2 The peculiar certainty and necessity attri- buted to these truths is, he argues, 'an illusion, in order to sustain which, it is necessary to suppose that those truths relate to, and express the properties of purely imaginary objects.' As a matter of fact, the truths of geometry do not hold, except approximately, of the real world, but only of that imaginary world which cor- responds to its initial definitions. The truth is that 1 Logic, II. iii. 7. 2 Autobiog., p. 226. 270 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS geometry * is built on hypotheses ; that it owes to this alone the peculiar certainty supposed to distinguish it ; and that in any science whatever, by reasoning from a set of hypotheses, we may obtain a body of conclusions as certain as those of geometry, that is, as strictly in accordance with the hypotheses, and as irresistibly com- pelling assent, on condition that those hypotheses are true.' 1 As for the axioms which, together with- the definitions, form the basis of geometrical reasoning, they are in reality * experimental truths, generalisations from observation.' The great argument for their a priori character is that their opposites are inconceivable. But conceivability 'has very little to do with the possibility of the thing in itself, but is in truth very much an affair of accident, and depends on the past history and habits of our own minds.' 2 It is the effect of habitual association, itself the result of our earliest and most widely based inductions from experience ; it is an ac- quired incapacity which can hardly but be mistaken for a natural one, an experimental truth which can hardly but be mistaken for a necessary one. It is in the application of the inductive and psychological method to social and political problems that Mill sees the crowning achievement of scientific investigation. This application has yet to be made ; the ' Germano- Coleridgian school ' were * the first (except a solitary thinker here and there) who inquired with any compre- hensiveness or depth, into the inductive laws of the existence and growth of human society.' 3 To the con- sideration of this new science of * Ethology,' or the study of the causes influencing the formation of national character, the final book of the Logic is devoted. In thus seeking to inaugurate a scientific Sociology, Mill was undoubtedly influenced by Comte, but he was also proceeding on the familiar lines of the Utilitarians, who always regarded character as the product of circum- stances, and looked to education to effect the transition 1 Logic, II. v. i. * Ibid., II. v. 6. * Dissertations, i. 425, JOHN STUART MILL 271 from the present unsatisfactory state of things to one more in accordance with their social ideal. The in- definite modifiability of human nature by circumstances is the working hypothesis of the school ; all that Mill adds is the demand that social life be conducted on scientific principles. It is significant that Mill finally abandoned the intention to construct the scheme of such a science, and devoted his energies to the writing of his Political Economy, published five years after the Logic, in 1848. It would be difficult to reconcile the view of the growth of character implied in the desiderated ' Ethology ' with his insistence upon the importance of individuality, and his protest against the interference of society with the liberty of the individual, in the essay on Liberty, published in 1859. Mill's only other work in general philosophy is the Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, pub- lished in 1865. 'I mean in this book,' he writes to Bain, * to do what the nature and scope of the " Logic " forbade me to do there, to face the ultimate meta- physical difficulties of every question on which I touch.' x The discussion of Hamilton's philosophy was intended, as we learn from the Autobiography, to be made the occasion of a thorough-going examination of the rival philosophies of Intuitionism and Empiricism, the con- troversy between which had, in Mill's eyes, as we have already seen, the utmost practical and social signifi- cance. 'The difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of Intuition, and that of Experience and Association, is not a mere matter of abstract specu- lation ; it is full of practical consequences, and lies at the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical opinion in an age of progress. The practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and inde- 1 Letters, i. 271. 272 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS feasibleness of established facts ; and it is often an indis- pensable part of his argument to show how those powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature ; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.' It was necessary, therefore, to determine the issue between these two philosophies. The pretensions of Intuitionism had received a series of salutary checks by the publication of the elder Mill's Analysis, of Mill's own Logic, and of * Professor Bain's great treatise.' ' But I had for some time felt that the mere contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that there ought to be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that controversial as well as expository writings were needed, and that the time was come when such controversy would be useful. Considering then the writings and fame of Sir W. Hamilton as the great fortress of the intuitional philosophy in this country, a fortress the more formidable from the imposing character, and the in many respects great personal merits and mental endowments, of the man, I thought it might be a real service to philosophy to attempt a thorough examination of all his most important doctrines, and an estimate of his general claims to eminence as a philosopher.' This JOHN STUART MILL 273 resolution was confirmed by the * profoundly immoral ' view of religion which had been deduced by Mansel from the Hamiltonian doctrine of Relativity. 1 It is unnecessary to follow this hand-to-hand encounter in detail. It shows Mill at his best, but does not add materially to the statement of his own position already given in the Logic. The only important addition is the application of the c psychological theory ' to our belief in an External World and in Mind. As regards the former, Mill elaborates his famous view of the External World as 'a Permanent Possibility of Sensation.' 2 As re- gards the latter, he elaborates the view of the Self already referred to, as stated more briefly in the Notes to the Analysis, published three years later. 'If we speak of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future ; and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that the Mind, or Ego, is something different from any series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox, that something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series. The truth is, that we are here face to face with that final inexplicability, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate facts ; and in general, one mode of stating it only appears more incomprehensible than another, because the whole of human language is accom- modated to the one, and is so incongruous with the other, that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth. The real stumbling block is perhaps not in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. ... I think, by far the wisest thing we can do, is to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes place ; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their meaning.' 3 In the Appendix to Chapters XI. and XII. he speaks more positively of the Self. 'The 1 Antobiog., pp. 273-275. a Examination, ch. xi. 3 Ibid., p. 248. S 274 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS inexplicable tie, or law, the organic union (as Professor Masson calls it) which connects the present consciousness with the past one, of which it reminds me, is as near as I think we can get to a positive conception of the Self. That there is something real in this tie, real as the sensa- tions themselves, and not a mere product of the laws of thought without any fact corresponding to it, I hold to be indubitable. . . . This original element, which has no community of nature with any of the things answering to our names, and to which we cannot give any name but its own peculiar one without implying some false or unguarded theory, is the Ego, or Self. As such, I ascribe a reality to the Ego to my own Mind different from that real existence as a Permanent Possibility, which is the only reality I acknowledge in Matter : and by fair experiential inference from that one Ego, I ascribe the same reality to other Egoes, or Minds. . . . We are forced to apprehend every part of the series as linked with the other parts by something in common, which is not the feelings themselves, any more than the succession of the feelings is the feelings themselves : and as that which is the same in the first as in the second, in the second as in the third, in the third as in the fourth, and so on, must be the same in the first and in the fiftieth, this common element is a permanent element.' * The posthumously published volume of Essays on Religion contains three essays on Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism. The first and second were written between 1850 and 1858, that is, during the same period as the essays on Utilitarianism and on Liberty, while the third belongs to a much later time, having been written between 1868 and 1870, and is thus 'the last considerable work which he completed,' and * shows the latest state of the Author's mind, the carefully balanced result of the deliberations of a lifetime.' 2 The first essay is a protest against the view that the ideal 1 Examination, pp. 262, 263. * Essays on Religion, Preface. JOHN STUART MILL 275 of human conduct is found in conformity to Nature. It reminds us of Huxley's later condemnation, in his famous Romanes lecture on * Evolution and Ethics,' of the cosmic process from the ethical point of view. 'In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's every day perform- ances.' 1 It is a protest rather against naturalistic ethics than against Natural Theology, but the latter is included- in the same condemnation with the former type of theory. The Author of Nature cannot be at once good and omnipotent. The main argument of the essay on the Utility of Religion, which, like that on Nature, is a fine specimen of Mill's philosophical style, is the sufficiency of the Religion of Humanity and its superiority to all but the best of the supernatural religions. 'Let it be remembered that if individual life is short, the life of the human species is not short ; its indefinite duration is practically equiva- lent to endlessness ; and being combined with indefinite capability of improvement, it offers to the imagination and sympathies a large enough object to satisfy any reason- able demand for grandeur of aspiration.' 2 * The essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognized as of the highest excellence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of desire. This condition is fulfilled by the Religion of Humanity in as eminent a degree, and in as high a sense, as by the supernatural religions even in their best manifestations, and far more so than in any of their others.' 3 The characteristic tendency of super- naturalism is to arrest the development not only of the intellectual but also of the moral nature. Its appeal is to self-interest rather than to disinterested and ideal motives ; and like the intuitional theory of ethics, it stereotypes morality. The special appeal of supernatural religion is to our sense of the mystery which circumscribes our little knowledge ; but the same appeal is made, and the same 1 Essays on Religion, p. 28. a Ibid., p. 106. 3 Ibid., p. 109. 276 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS service to the imagination rendered, by Poetry. * Religion and poetry address themselves, at least in one of their aspects, to the same part of the human constitution : they both supply the same want, that of ideal conceptions grander and more beautiful than we see realized in the prose of human life.' 1 * The idealization of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made,' is * capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers.' 2 Yet l he to whom ideal good, and the progress of the world towards it, are already a religion ' may find consolation and en- couragement in the belief that he is 'a fellow-labourer with the Highest, a fellow-combatant in the great strife ; contributing his little, which by the aggregation of many like himself becomes much, towards that progressive ascendancy, and ultimately complete triumph of good over evil, which history points to, and which this doctrine teaches us to regard as planned by the Being to whom we owe all the benevolent contrivance we behold in Nature. Against the moral tendency of this creed no possible objec- tion can lie : it can produce on whoever can succeed in believing it, no other than an ennobling effect.' 3 The essay on Theism bears evidence, in the imper- fection of its construction and the inferiority of its style, to its lack of the author's final revision. The argument for a First Cause is condemned, on the ground that there is a permanent element in nature itself; * as far as anything can be concluded from human experience, Force has all the attributes of a thing eternal and un- created.' 4 The argument from Design is found to be less unsatisfactory. The principle of the survival of the fittest, while not inconsistent with Creation, ' would greatly attenuate the evidence for it.' But * leaving this remark- able speculation to whatever fate the progress of discovery 1 Essays on Religion, p. 103. * Ibid., p. 105. * Ibid., p. 117. * Ibid., p. 147. JOHN STUART MILL 277 may have in store for it,' Mill concludes that ' it must be allowed that, in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of prob- ability in favour of creation by intelligence.' 1 On the other hand, * it is not too much to say that every indica- tion of Design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer.' 2 The necessity of contrivance, or the adaptation of means to ends, implies limitation of power in the agent. As to Immortality, there is *a total absence of evidence on either side.' Miracles, while not impossible, are extremely improbable, even on the hypothesis of a supernatural Being. The reasonable attitude, on all these questions, is that of scepticism, as distinguished alike from belief and from atheism. 'If we are right in the conclusions to which we have been led by the preceding inquiry, there is evidence, but insufficient for proof, and amounting only to one of the lower degrees of probability. The indication given by such evidence as there is, points to the creation, not indeed of the universe, but of the present order of it, by an Intelligent Mind, whose power over the materials was not absolute, whose love for his creatures was not his sole actuating inducement, but who nevertheless desired their good.' 3 Where belief is not warranted, how- ever, hope is permissible, and the imagination need not be controlled by purely rational considerations. 'To me it seems that human life, small and confined as it is, and as, considered merely in the present, it is likely to remain even when the progress of material and moral improve- ment may have freed it from the greater part of its present calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration for itself and its destination, which the exercise of imagination can yield to it without running counter to the evidence of fact ; and that it is a part of wisdom to make the most of any, even small, prob- abilities on this subject, which furnish imagination with any footing to support itself upon.' 4 Above all, the 1 Essays on Religion, p. 174. * Ibid., p. 176. 3 Ibid., p. 242. * Ibid., p. 245. 278 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS conception of a morally perfect being, and of his appro- bation, is an inspiration for the moral life which would be sorely missed, and Christianity has provided us with an ' ideal representative and guide of humanity ' ; c nor, even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life.' 1 'The feeling of helping God ' in the struggle with evil is * excellently fitted to aid and fortify that real, though purely human religion, which some- times calls itself the Religion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty,' and which c is destined, with or without supernatural sanctions, to be the religion of the Future.' Bain's two great psychological treatises, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the WlU(l&$$) form the connecting link between the Associationism of the Mills and the scientific and evolutionary philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Their importance is fully acknowledged both by J. S. Mill and by Spencer. Mill, referring to a statement by M'Cosh that Bain had l elaborated into a minute system the general statements scattered throughout Mr. Mill's Logic, says : * Mr. Bain did not stand in need of any predecessor except our common precursors, and has taught much more to me, on these subjects, than there is any reasonable probability that I can have taught to him.' 2 'Estimated as a means to higher results,' says Spencer, 'Mr. Bain's work is of great value. . . . We repeat, that as a natural history of the mind, we believe it to be the best yet produced. It is a most valuable collection of carefully elaborated materials. Perhaps we cannot better express our sense of its worth than by saying that to those who hereafter give to this branch of psychology a thoroughly scientific organisation, Mr. Bain's book will be indispensable.' 3 Wher we compare 1 Essays on Religion, p. 255. 1 Examination of Hamilton, p. 274, note. * Essays, ed. 1863, i. 121 (quoted by Ribot, English Psychology, p. 250). ALEXANDER BAIN 279 these treatises with the earlier works of the Scottish philosophers, and even with that of James Mill, we cannot help remarking that they are scientific in a sense in which those were not. It is not merely that Bain is the first to use effectively the physiological method, referring psycho- logical phenomena to their correlates in nerve and brain, but that he adopts throughout the genetic, if not the evolutionary method, tracing the complex to the simple and the later to the earlier, and thus explaining, where his predecessors had been co'ntent to do little more than describe, the phenomena of the mental life. When we add to this scientific purpose, resolutely held to throughout the investigation, his remarkable gift of lucid exposition and of apposite and telling illustration, we can under- stand the immense influence which Bain exerted as a teacher upon his pupils and as a writer upon his successors in this field of scientific inquiry. At the same time, it is to be remarked that it is rather in the sphere of scientific psychology than in that of speculative philosophy that his influence is to be traced. In ethics, on the other hand, the importance of his contribution to the Utilitarian theory is not to be underestimated. In psychology Bain is a convinced Associationist, and he applies himself with all the ardour of the Mills to trace to their common source in experience and associa- tion all those ideas which others have held to be intuitive, and have attributed to some original faculty of the mind. His statement and illustration of the laws of association is not merely much fuller than those given by his prede- cessors, and applied to the emotional and volitional as carefully as to the intellectual life ; it also shows a clearer apprehension of the nature of the process. His definite differentiation- of Similarity from Contiguity, as an in- dependent and equally important principle of Association, adds materially to the value of Association as a psycho- logical principle, while his sense of the limitations of its validity saves him from the errors into which its earlier advocates had been betrayed. Apart from the doctrine of Association, his chief contributions to psychology are his 2 8o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS differentiation of the muscular and organic senses from the traditional five senses of earlier psychology ; his insistence upon the ' Law of Relativity,' or the presence of discrimina- tion, or the apprehension of difference, as well as similarity, and of retentiveness as the condition of both, in the most rudimentary forms of knowledge ; his recognition of spon- taneity, or * random movement,' as the basis of the later purposive movements which are the elementary form of Will ; his doctrine of the instinctive origin of all the higher forms of mentality ; and his explanation of Belief, not in terms of Association, but in its relation to action and emotion. The account of Belief is hardly less important from a metaphysical than from a psychological point of view. The crucial point is the bearing of action upon belief. * Preparedness to act upon what we affirm is admitted on all hands to be the sole, the genuine, the unmistakable criterion of belief.' * We believe in an * order of nature,' or a ' course of things ' as a series of means to ends, which we proceed to realise by our choice of the means. * The first germ and perennial substance of the state,' however, is * primitive credulity,' or an innate tendency to believe everything indiscriminately, which Bain contrasts with that 'acquired scepticism ' which is the result of the shock of contradiction, the thwarting of our expectations, by experience of the actual order of nature. We start with 'an overweening belief in the uniformity of nature,' which is gradually checked and educated by our growing experience. The great lesson of experience is that the warrant of belief or disbelief is to be found not in the mere frequency or rarity of the uniformities, but in their * comparative frequency.' The function of experience and repetition is not to origi- nate, but to confirm or correct the original tendency to belief, strengthening or weakening it according to the number and the nature of the agreements and contradic- tions respectively. We are thus enabled to correct the error of the Associationist explanation. ' When James Mill 1 Emotions and Will, 3rd ed., p. 505. ALEXANDER BAIN 281 represented Belief as the offspring of " inseparable associa- tion," he put the stress upon the wrong point. If two things have been incessantly conjoined in our experience, they are inseparably associated, and we believe that the one will be followed by the other ; but the inseparable association follows the number of repetitions, the belief follows the absence of contradiction. We have a stronger mental association between " Diana of the Ephesians " and the epithet " great," than probably existed in the minds of Diana's own worshippers ; yet they believed in the assertion, and we do not.' x As against J. S. Mill's view that the belief in the ideas of memory, as distinguished from those of imagination, is inexplicable, Bain holds that * the principal distinction between Memory and Imagina- tion lies in the setting of the respective ideas. Ideas of Memory have a place in the continuous chain of our remembered life ; ideas of Imagination correspond to nothing in that chain ; or rather, they are consciously combined from different ideas of Memory taken out of their Memory-setting, and aggregated under a special motive.' 2 He also traces with great skill the influence of emotion upon belief, and the * power of the Will, as representing our likings and dislikings, to shape our creeds.* 3 Closely connected with his general theory of Belief is the account which Bain gives of our belief in the material or external world, or, more strictly, of the objective as distinguished from the subjective element in consciousness. The material or external object is not the product of passive sensation, or of the influence of the non-ego upon the ego ; an object out of relation to the subject, matter independent of mind, is a contradiction in terms. The real source of belief in the object is the forth-putting of energy by the subject. 'The sum total of all the occasions for putting forth active energy, or for con- ceiving this as possible to be put forth, is our external world.' 4 l The feeling that is the deepest foundation of 1 Emotions and Will, p. 527. 2 Ibid., p. 534. 3 Ibid., p. 525. * Senses and Intellect, 3rd ed., p. 377. 282 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS our notion of externality ' is the feeling of resistance, the * mixed state, produced through reacting upon a sensation of touch by a muscular exertion.' This feeling of resis- tance, or * expended muscular energy,' is the objective side of consciousness, as sensation wholly passive is its subjective side. ' The doctrine of an external and inde- pendent world ' is a ' generalisation or abstraction grounded on our particular experiences, summing up the past, and predicting the future.' 1 The doctrine of Natural Realism is a species of that metaphysical Realism which attributes reality to the abstract universals, rather than to the concrete particulars of our experience from which they are derived. While accepting the general standpoint of Utilitarianism in ethics, Bain works out the theory, in several points, much more carefully and consistently than J. S. Mill. He definitely rejects the view that the only possible motive of action is desire of our own pleasure. { It seems to me that we must face the seeming paradox that there are, in the human mind, motives that pull against our happiness.' 2 Disinterested: and^purely -Altruistic action, he holds, is not merely possible but normal, and virtue in its highest form is always disinterested. He is thus jenabled to explain that * conscience ' which had for Mill remained inexplicable. Distinguishing the dutiful or )bligatory from the virtuous or optional, he explains the former in terms of social penalties, the latter in terms of social rewards. ' The powers that impose the obligatory sanction are Law and Society, or the community acting through the Government by public judicial acts, and, apart from the Government, by the unofficial expressions of disapprobation and the exclusion from social good offices.' 3 The result of this social pressure is not merely the enforcement of the type of conduct socially approved, but the development, in the mind of the indi- vidual who is subjected to it, of the sense of duty, or conscience, which adds its own pressure to that which 1 Senses and Intellect, p. 382. * Emotions and Will, p. 296. 3 Ibid., p. 264. ALEXANDER BAIN 283 comes from without. Conscience is thus 'an ideal re- semblance of public authority, growing up in the individual mind, and working to the same end,' * ' an imita- tion within ourselves of the government without us.' 2 The sentiment of fear is gradually supplemented and superseded by 'a sentiment of love or respect towards the person of the superior,' until 'the young mind is able to take notice of the use and meaning of the pro- hibitions imposed upon it, and to approve of the end intended by them.' ' All that we understand by the authority of conscience, the sentiment of obligation, the feeling of right, the sting of remorse can be nothing else than so many modes of expressing the acquired aversion and dread towards certain actions associated in the mind with the consequences now stated. . . .The dread of antici- pated evil operating to restrain before the fact, and the pain realized after the act has been performed, are per- fectly intelligible products of the education of the mind under a system of authority, and of experience of the good and evil consequences of actions.' 3 Out of the ' slavish conscience ' of the child is thus developed the ' citizen conscience ' of the adult, which has regard to ' the intent and meaning of the law, and not to the mere fact of its being prescribed by some power ' ; 4 the individual conscience becomes independent of social rewards and punishments. ' We may by rewards and punishments make men perform their social duties ; but such performance is by that fact rendered self-regarding. To obtain virtue in its highest purity, its noblest hue, we have to abstain from the mention of both punishment and reward.' This is true even of the theological sanctions : ' in the thunders of eternal reward and punish- ment, there cannot be heard the still small voice of a purely disinterested motive.' 6 1 Emotions and Will, p. 264. 8 Ibid., p. 285. 3 Ibid., p. 286. 4 Ibid., p. 288. 6 Ibid., p. 297. 284 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS 2. Evolutionism : Herbert Spencer It remained for a thinker more ambitious than Bain, and more profoundly impressed with the philo- sophical significance of the principle of Evolution, to develop a philosophy of evolution, to attempt the con- struction of a system of the sciences, or the complete unification of knowledge, by the discovery in each of the special sciences of a single identical phenomenon, that of Evolution. This task was attempted by Spencer, whose philosophy, in spite of its agnostic basis, is therefore systematic in a sense in which that of none of his English predecessors, with the possible exception of Hobbes, can be so described. ' He alone,' says Lewes, ' of all British thinkers has organised a system of philosophy.' He attempts to construct that system of the sciences which Bacon did little more than sketch as an ideal to be realised through the labours of his successors. His philosophy is systematic in a sense in which hardly any other philosophy can be so described. As Professor Dewey has said, c The other systems are such after all more or less ex post facto. In themselves they have the unity of the development of a single mind, rather than of a predestined planned achievement. They are systems somewhat in and through retrospect. Their completeness owes something to the mind of the onlooker gathering together parts which have grown up more or less separately and in response to felt occasions, to particular problems. . . . But Spencer's system was a system from the very start. It was a system in conception, not merely in issue.' 1 Spencer himself speaks of the operation in him of 'the archi- tectonic instinct, the love of system-building, as it would be called in less complimentary language. During these thirty years it has been a source of frequent elation to see each division, and each part of a division, working out into congruity with the rest to see each com- 1 Phil, Rev., xiii. 160. HERBERT SPENCER 285 ponent fitting into its place, and helping to make a harmonious whole.' 1 Hardly less remarkable than Spencer's intellectual ambition is his intellectual independence, what Professor Dewey calls his < singular immunity from all intellectual contagion,' what he himself notes as * an unusually small tendency to be affected by others' thoughts.' * It seems as though the fabric of my conclusions had in all cases to be developed from within refused to be built, and insisted upon growing. Material which could be taken in and organised, or re-organised, so as to form part of a coherent structure in course of elaboration, there was always a readiness to receive. But ideas and sentiments of alien kinds, or unorganisable kinds, were, if not rejected, yet accepted with indifference and soon dropped away.' 2 Even the great classics of philosophical literature were, if not unread, merely dipped into, and cast aside as soon as it became clear, as it must very soon have become in most cases, that their point of view was * alien ' to Spencer's own modes of thought. Plato's dialogues, for example, he found it impossible to read. ' Time after time I have attempted to read, now this dialogue and now that, and have put it down in a state of impatience with the in- definiteness of the thinking and the mistaking of words for things : being repelled also by the rambling form of the argument. . . . When I again took up the dialogues, I contemplated them as works of art, and put them aside in greater exasperation than before.' 3 'All through my life Locke's Essay had been before me on my father's shelves, but I had never taken it down ; or, at any rate, I have no recollection of having ever read a page of it.' Kant's Critique of Pure Reason fared no better. * This I commenced reading, but did not go far. The doctrine that Time and Space are " nothing but " subjective forms pertain exclusively to consciousness and have nothing beyond consciousness answering to them I rejected at once and absolutely ; and, having done so, went no 1 Autobiog., ii. 450. 2 Z6id., i. 242. 3 Ibid., ii. 442. 286 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS further.' x He adds that l whenever, in later years, I have taken up Kant's Critique of Pure Reason^ I have similarly stopped short after rejecting its primary proposition.' In March, 1860, Spencer issued his prospectus of the Synthetic Philosophy, under the title l A System of Philo- sophy,' to consist of the following parts: (i) First Principles, containing the statement of the fundamental principles of the system, and giving the system itself in outline and in all its generality ; (2) passing over the application of these First Principles to Inorganic Nature, as being of less immediate importance and making the scheme impracticably extensive, the Principles of Biology ; (3) the Principles of Psychology ; (4) the Principles of Sociology ; (5) the Principles of Morality, the contents of which had been in part anticipated in Social Statics. Ambitious as the programme is, it was fully carried out, the First Principles appearing in 1862, and the last volume of the Principles of Sociology in 1896. Tracing the genesis of our * ultimate scientific ideas,' Spencer finds the universal form of thought in Relation : it is because to think is to relate, that we cannot know Absolute Reality. Time and space are derived by abstrac- tion from the two kinds of relation, sequence and co- existence. * The abstract of all sequences is Time. The abstract of all co-existences is Space. . . . Time and Space are generated, as other abstracts are generated from other concretes : the only difference being, that the organisation of experiences has, in these cases, been going on through- out the entire evolution of intelligence.' 2 The con- ception of Matter has a similarly empirical origin. l Our conception of Matter, reduced to its simplest shape, is that of co-existent positions that offer resistance ; as con- trasted with our conception of Space, in which the co- existent positions offer no resistance.' As consisting of co-existing positions, Matter is also extended ; but l of these two inseparable elements, the resistance is primary, 1 Autobiog., i. 252. * First Principles, p. 164. HERBERT SPENCER 287 and the extension secondary. Occupied extension, or Body, being distinguished in consciousness from un- occupied extension, or Space, by its resistance, this attri- bute must clearly have precedence in the genesis of the idea.' 1 The idea of Motion is derived from our earliest experiences of force. * Out of this primitive con- ception of Motion, the adult conception of it is developed simultaneously with the development of the conceptions of Space and Time : all three being evolved from the more multiplied and varied impressions of muscular tension and objective resistance. Motion, as we know it, is thus traceable, in common with the other ultimate scientific ideas, to experiences of force.' 2 Force is thus seen to be * the ultimate of ultimates.' * Though Space, Time, Matter, and Motion, are ap- parently all necessary data of intelligence, yet a psycho- logical analysis . . . shows us that these are either built up of, or abstracted from, experiences of Force.' 3 As to the relation of * this undecomposable mode of con- sciousness ' to * the Power manifested to us through phenomena,' Spencer does not seem clear. 'Force, as we know it,' he says, 'can be regarded only as a certain conditioned effect of the Unconditioned Cause as the relative reality indicating to us an Absolute Reality by which it is immediately produced.' The doctrine to which we are brought is neither realism nor idealism, but ' transfigured realism.' * Getting rid of all complica- tions, and contemplating pure Force, we are irresistibly compelled by the relativity of our thought, to vaguely conceive some unknown force as the correlative of the known force. Noumenon and phenomenon are here presented in their primordial relation as two sides of the same change, of which we are obliged to regard the last as no less real than the first.' 4 But at the end of the chapter on * the persistence of force ' he says : ' The force of which we assert persistence is that Absolute Force of which we are indefinitely conscious as the neces- 1 First Principles, p. 1 66. * Ibid., p. 168. 3 Ibid., p. 169. * Ibid., p. 170. 288 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS sary correlate of the force we know. By the Persistence of Force we really mean the persistence of some Cause which transcends our knowledge and conception. In asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality, without beginning or end. . . . The sole truth which transcends experience by underlying it, is thus the Persistence of Force. This being the basis of experience, must be the basis of any scientific organisation of experiences. To this an ultimate analysis brings us down ; and on this a rational synthesis must build up.' 1 From the persistence of force follows the persistence of relations among forces, or the uniformity of law. ' The general conclusion that there exist constant connexions among phenomena, ordinarily regarded as an inductive conclusion only, is really a conclusion deducible from the ultimate datum of consciousness ' [the persistence of force]. 2 A further consequence is the transformation and equi- valence of all forces. This holds, according to Spencer, of the relation of physical to mental forces, no less than in the case of merely physical forces. 'The law of meta- morphosis, which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces. Those modes of the Unknowable which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transformable into each other, and into those modes of the Unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought : these, in their turns, being directly or indirectly re- transformable into the original shapes.' 3 Finally the direction of motion is * that of the greatest force,' or that of the least resistance ; and the rhythm of motion, or the doctrine of the alternate action and reaction of forces, follows from * the co-existence everywhere of antagonistic forces.' We have not yet, however, reached the synthesis or complete unification of knowledge in which philosophy consists ; we have not yet formulated the law of the cosmic process as a whole. All these are ' analytical i First Principles, p. 192. * Ibid., p. 195. 3 Ibid., p. 217. HERBERT SPENCER 289 truths ' ; what we are seeking for is l a universal synthesis.' ' Having seen that matter is indestructible, motion con- tinuous, and force persistent having seen that forces are everywhere undergoing transformation, and that motion, always following the line of least resistance, is invariably rhythmic, it remains to discover the similarly invariable formula expressing the combined consequences of the actions thus separately formulated.' 1 This compre- hensive ' law of the continuous redistribution of matter and motion ' is the Law of Evolution ; and it is reached first inductively, from a study of the actual phenomena, then deductively, as an implication of the persistence of force. In every evolving phenomenon we find three charac- teristic features integration, differentiation, and deter- mination : a change from incoherence to coherence, from homogeneity to heterogeneity, from indefiniteness to definiteness. First, there is an integration of matter and accompanying dissipation of motion. This is illustrated by the evolution of the solar system from the primitive nebular mass, of the plant or animal from the elements which enter into the composition of its body, as well as by the evolution of the State from the looser combinations of tribal communities and by * the integrations of advanc- ing Language, Science, and Art.' 2 Secondly, there is a growing differentiation of structure, alike in the parts and in the whole, as we see in the differentiation of the several planets from one another, in the evolution of the different species of plant and animal, in the differentiation of struc- ture and function within the animal body as well as in the social organism and in the psychological life of man. Thirdly, there is a change from confusion to order, or from the indefinite to the definite, as the same examples show. Accompanying these changes we find a parallel transformation of the retained motion. The complete definition of Evolution, therefore, is : ' Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of 1 First Principles, p. 276. * Ibid., p. 319. T 290 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS motion ; during which the matter passes from an inde- finite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity ; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.' 1 Is it possible to exhibit the law of Evolution, thus inductively established, as a result of deductive demon- stration ; to show that ( the redistribution of matter and motion must everywhere take place in those ways, and produce those traits, which celestial bodies, organisms, societies, alike display ? ' 2 Can we deduce the pheno- mena of evolution from the Persistence of Force ? In the first place, Spencer replies, the transition from the homo- geneous to the heterogeneous is an obvious consequence of ' the instability of the homogeneous.' Secondly, * action and re-action being equal and opposite, it follows that in differentiating the parts on which it falls in unlike ways, the incident force must itself be correspondingly differen- tiated. Instead of being, as before, a uniform force, it must thereafter be a multiform force a group of dissimilar forces.' 3 This he calls the law of 'the multiplication of effects,' or * the production of many changes by one cause.' While these two laws explain the nature of Evolution as a movement from homogeneity to heterogeneity, they do not explain it as a movement from the incoherent to the coherent, from the indefinite to the definite. But in the case of any aggregate of unlike units, or groups of units, these are, by the indiscriminate action of any force upon them, 'separated from each other segregated into minor aggregates, each consisting of units that are severally like each other and unlike those of the other minor aggregates.' 4 And 'other things being equal, the definiteness of the separation is in pro- portion to the definiteness of the difference between the units.' 6 The tendency of Evolution being to equilibrium, the attainment of this state constitutes its ' impassable limit.' 'The re-distributions of matter that go on around us 1 First Principles i p. 396. * Ibid., p. 398. 8 Ibid., p. 431. * Ibid., p. 461. 6 Ibid., p. 463. HERBERT SPENCER 291 are ever being 1 brought to conclusions by the dissipation of the motions which effect them.' l The universal co- existence of antagonistic forces results not merely in the rhythmic decomposition of every force into divergent forces, but also in the ' ultimate establishment of a balance.' * Every motion being motion under resistance is continually suffering deductions ; and these unceasing deductions finally result in the cessation of the motion.' 2 Dissolution is thus the inevitable complement of Evo- lution. 'When Evolution has run its course when the aggregate has at length parted with its excess of motion, and habitually receives as much from its environment as it habitually loses when it has reached that equilibrium in which its changes end ; it thereafter remains subject to all actions in its environment which may increase the quantity of motion it contains, and which, in the lapse of time, are sure, either slowly or suddenly, to give its parts such excess of motion as will cause disintegration.' 3 This rhythmic law holds of 'the entire process of things, as displayed in the aggregate of the visible universe,' as well as of each smaller aggregate. 'And thus there is suggested the conception of a past during which there have been successive Evolutions analogous to that which is now going on ; and a future during which successive other such Evolutions may go on ever the same in principle but never the same in concrete result.' 4 Spencer's ultimate interest in the systematic treatment of all problems from the point of view of Evolution was, according to his own account, practical rather than 1 First Principles, p. 483. 2 Ibid., p. 4^4. 8 Ibid., p. 519. * Ibid., p. 537. The extreme vagueness and unintelligibility of the above statement of Spencer's views is not to be set down to the exigencies of condensation ; it is inherent in the ' System.' The serious student cannot but feel, with Riehl, that Spencer's ' law of development is merely a play with analogies, or at best a mere schematic formula, which does not come in contact with phenomena to explain them, but only describes a superficial similarity between different kinds of natural processes ' (Science and Metaphysics, Eng. trans., p. 112). 292 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS theoretical. 'The whole system,' he says in the Auto- biography i, 1 ' was at the outset, and has ever continued to be, a basis for a right rule of life, individual and social.' In the Preface to the Data of Ethics, he says : ' This last part of the task [the Principles of Morality] it is, to which I regard all the preceding parts as subsidiary. Written as far back as 1842, my first essay, consisting of letters on The Proper Sphere of Government, vaguely indicated what I conceived to be certain general principles of right and wrong in political conduct ; and from that time onwards my ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right and wrong in conduct at large, a scientific basis.' His earliest work, Social Statics, was devoted to the fundamental questions of ethics and politics ; and the only essential difference between it and the later Principles of Ethics is that in the former he accepts, in a somewhat restricted form, the doctrine of a * moral sense,* which he definitely repudiates in the latter. 2 In the earlier work he condemns the doctrine of Expediency on account of its empirical and unscientific character. In the later he insists that * empirical utilitarianism is but a transitional form to be passed through on the way to rational utilitarianism'; that 'the utilitarianism which recognises only the principles of conduct reached by induction is but preparatory to the utilitarianism which deduces these principles from the processes of life as carried on under established conditions of existence.' 3 Or, as he puts it in his letter to Mill, partly republished in the chapter referred to, ' The view for which I contend is, that Morality properly so-called the science of right conduct has for its object to determine how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things ; and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science l iAutobiog., ii. 314. * Principles of Ethics, pt. ii. sect. 191, 8 Data of Ethics, ch. iv. HERBERT SPENCER 293 to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of actions necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct ; and are to be conformed to irre- spective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.' * Alike in the earlier and in the later work the stand- point of scientific ethics is identified with that of the ideal or completely evolved social state. As the geo- metrician deals with the ideally straight line, 'so like- wise is it with the philosophical moralist. He treats solely of the straight man. He determines the properties of the straight man ; describes how the straight man comports himself; shows in what relationship he stands to other straight men ; shows how a community of straight men is constituted. Any deviation from strict rectitude he is obliged wholly to ignore. It cannot be admitted into his premises without vitiating all his conclusions. A problem in which a crooked man forms one of the elements is insoluble by him.' 2 A dis- tinction is drawn, however, between two branches of social philosophy, statics and dynamics, * the first treating of the equilibrium of a perfect society, the second of the forces by which society is advanced towards perfec- tion ' ; 3 and progress is defined as gradual adaptation to the conditions, especially the social conditions, or gradual approximation to the perfect social state, in which the individual acts as a member of the social organism. In the Data of Ethics the same distinction is described as that between Absolute and Relative Ethics. 'There exists an ideal code of conduct formulating the behaviour of the completely adapted man in the completely evolved society. Such a code is that here called Absolute Ethics as distinguished from Relative Ethics a code the in- junctions of which are alone to be considered as absolutely right in contrast with those that are relatively right or least wrong ; and which, as a system of ideal conduct, 1 See Note, p. 297. z Social Statics, p. 57. 8 Ibid., p. 409. 294 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS is to serve as a standard for our guidance in solving, as well as we can, the problems of real conduc :.' l Such a deductive or rational ethics must tea system developed from a first principle. This first principle is, in both works, identified with Justice, in the sense of the equal right of every individual to act as he likes, so long as he does not interfere with the same liberty on the part of other individuals; and this principle is regarded, in Soda! Statics, as an intuition or ' instinct of personal rights/ Although Spencer endeavours, in the Principles, to derive this from 'animal justice,' it is in reality, as Professor Albee points out, the antithesis of the latter, and is a deduction from the eighteenth-century individualism in which Spencer so devoutly believed rather than from Evolutionism. 2 As for the other two principles, Prudence, and Beneficence, negative and positive, Spencer accepts the * empirical utilitarian ' account in both works, and in the Preface, subsequently withdrawn, to the Part of the Principles which treats of them he confesses that ' the Doctrine of Evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent I had hoped. Most of the conclusions, drawn empirically, are such as right feelings, enlightened by cultivated intelligence, have already sufficed to establish.' On the other hand, we find in the Data of Ethics an interesting attempt to exhibit the biological significance of pleasure and the conciliation which the evolution of human conduct gradually effects between egoism and altruism ; to give an evolutionary interpretation of the sense of duty as the survival in consciousness of the various pre-moral controls, political, religious, and social, which gradually gives place to the sense o the intrinsic authoritativeness of the higher, or more developed feelings over the lower, or simpler and less developt 1, as guides of conduct ; and finally to reconcile intuitioMsm and em- piricism, in ethics as in metaphysics, by t ic distinction between the individual and the racial pi mt of view. This last position is clearly stated in he following 1 Data of Ethics, p. 275. 2 History of English Utilitarianism, pp. 342, 356. HERBERT SPENCER 295 passage from ^Spencer's letter to Mill. * * Corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral Science, th^re have been, and still are, developing in the race certain, fundamental moral intuitions ; and . . . though these moral intuitions are the results of ac- cumulated experiences of Utility, gradually organised and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious j experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space, possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from organised and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly-developed nervous organisations just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and completed by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience ; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organised and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been pro- ducing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which hav^ no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility.' The individualism which underlies his account of Justice becomes explicit enough when Spencer comes to deal with the problem of the State. In spite of his belief in the solidarity of the interests of the individual and those of society, and his persistent use of the term * social organism ' in, Social Statics^ the antithesis between the State and the individual is for him absolute. His jealousy of State-interference with the liberty of the individual is greater even v,han Mill's. The State, he holds, is not the creator of rights : these are * natural,' and the State's only legitimate function is to protect them. It is itself a necessary evirt, incidental to the transitional stage which we have now" reached on our way to that complete harmony of individual and social interests which will supersede it. 1 Quoted in Data of Ethics, p. 123. 296 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS We are * advancing from the one extreme, in which the State is everything and the individual nothing, to the other extreme, in which the individual is everything and the State nothing,' l from the completely military to the completely industrial type of social organisation. The State is indispensable 'during man's apprentice- ship to the social state ' ; and, here as elsewhere, fitness for one function implies unfitness for others. But not only is the State unfit for any other function than that of protection, its attempt to do more is an interference with nature and an invasion of the sacred rights of the individual. On these grounds Spencer condemns the Poor-Law and National Education, as well as all inter- ferences with religion and commerce. That he did not abate the rigour of these views in later life is seen in the essays republished from the Contemporary Review under the title The Man versus the State (1884). Sufficient quotations have been given to enable the reader to judge of the merits and defects of Spencer's style. Its one merit is its clearness and precision ; to this all other qualities are deliberately sacrificed. It is hard, technical, dry, entirely lacking in distinction and indi- viduality. When he becomes impassioned, as he not seldom does when dealing with a practical question, he lapses into mere popular declamation, and the effect is decidedly incongruous. His own characterisation of his style is very just. 'I have always felt a wish to make both the greater arguments, and the smaller arguments composing them, finished and symmetrical. In so far as giving coherence and completeness is concerned, I have generally satisfied my ambition ; but I have fallen short of it in respect of literary form. The aesthetic sense has in this always kept before me an ideal which I could never reach. Though my style is lucid, it has, as compared with some styles, a monotony that displeases me. There is a lack of variety in its verbal forms and 1 Social Statics, p. 435. HENRY SIDGWICK 297 in its larger components, and there is a lack of vigour in its phrases.' l NOTE. In the Methods of Ethics, published in 1874, Henry Sidgwick attempts to rationalise Utilitarianism by basing it upon Intuitionism. Distinguishing carefully between * philosophical ' and * dogmatic ' Intuitionism, he argues that the moral laws of the ordinary conscience, if taken as possessing absolute validity, lead to confusion and mutual conflict. Their practical is no measure of their theoretical value ; and Common Sense itself, even in its unreflective form, does not attribute to them absolute validity, but adopts a critical and utilitarian attitude towards them, limiting their authority by a consideration of the con- sequences of obedience to them. This implicit utilitari- anism of Common Sense suggests that the real conflict is not between Intuitionism and Utilitarianism, but be- tween Intuitionism and Utilitarianism, on the one hand, and Egoism, the third l method of ethics,' on the other. In Intuitionism, philosophically interpreted, Sidgwick finds the rational basis which is lacking in the Utili- tarianism of Bentham and Mill. The three ultimate and self-evident principles which ought to regulate our choices of pleasure, or rather of the objects which reflection finds to be merely means to pleasure, the ultimate good, are prudence, benevolence, and justice, dictating strict impartiality as between ourselves and others, as well as between the several parts or moments of our own in- dividual experience. The final conflict between prudence and benevolence, between the claims of duty and those of self-interest, remains an insoluble 'dualism of the practical reason,' necessitating for its solution the theo- logical postulate of a righteous government of the world, which shall compensate the individual for the sacrifices he has made in his devotion to duty. 1 Autobiography ', ii. 451. CHAPTER II THE DEVELOPMENT AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY OF COM-MON SENSE I . Natural Realism and the Relativity of Knowledge : Hamilton and Mansel IT is difficult for us to understand the extraordinary and, we cannot but judge, exaggerated reputation which Hamilton achieved among his contemporaries and im- mediate successors. That reputation has been finally discredited for us by Mill's relentless Examination and Hutchison Stirling's still more caustic Analysis of the Hamiltonian philosophy. But apart from these criticisms, the actual contribution of Hamilton to philosophy is so slight that it fails to impress the present-day reader. It consists of two series of class lectures, hastily prepared during the first years of his tenure of the chair of logic and metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, and re-delivered year after year without revision ; of a few articles contributed to ithe Reviews ; and of an edition of Reid with elaborate notes and excursus. So far as the substance of his philosophy can be gathered from these scattered sources, all that he really added to the accepted teaching of the Scottish school was the doctrine of the Relativity of Human Knowledge ; and it is doubtless to his enunciation of this doctrine and the subsequent development of it by other thinkers that Hamilton's reputation is chiefly due. But the impression which he produced upon his contemporaries must also in no small measure be attributed to his reputation for philo- 298 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON 299 sophical erudition. With the single exception of Bacon, no English philosopher before his time had produced this impression of learning ; with the single exception of Reid, none had investigated the questions of philosophy in the light of the history of their previous discussion. Mill indeed finds in 'the enormous amount of time and mental vigour which he expended on mere philosophical erudition, leaving, it may be said, only the remains of his mind for the real business of thinking,' part of the ex- planation of Hamilton's failure to contribute more effectively to the solution of philosophical problems. 1 Yet even his erudition has been to some extent discredited. Apart from errors in points of detail, he often fails entirely to grasp the system or to appreciate the point of view of the several philosophers to whom he refers ; he allows him- self to quote isolated statements, apart from their context in the system as a whole. Mill thinks that Hamilton was better fitted for the task of the historian of philosophy than for that of philosophy itself; but he also points out that the gift which his actual work in this field displays is rather that of the philosophic annalist than that of the historian proper. Still we can understand that Hanr'lton's extensive and minute acquaintance with the history of philosophical opinion was calculated to make a much greater impression upon his contemporaries, to whom it was something new, than upon those who have been taught a higher standard of scholarship in philosophy. Something is also doubtless to be set down to his ability in the presentation of his views, especially in a polemical interest. < What strength and nerve in his style,' remarks Masson. It is true that his style is much more technical than that of previous English philosophers ; but this very quality may well have helped to impress his con- temporaries with the scientific accuracy of his methods. Whatever be the explanation, the fact remains that Hamilton gave a new and a strong impulse to the study of philosophy in England ; and it is rather as the originator 1 Examination of Hamilton, p. 637. 300 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS of such an impulse than in virtue of the importance of his own contributions to the solution of its problems that his significance is to be found. Hamilton's quarrel is not merely, like Reid's, with the scepticism of Hume and the ' ideal ' or ' representative ' theory of knowledge, of which it is the consequence, but also with the opposite type of philosophy, that absolute idealism or l omniscience ' which the German successors of Kant have developed out of the Kantian transcendentalism. To this he opposes the doctrine of phenomenalism or relativism which he regards as the true development of the ' critical ' philosophy. But he at the same time reasserts Reid's doctrine of Natural Realism or Dualism, in opposition to what he calls Cosmothetic Idealism or Hypothetical Realism. Like Reid, he insists upon the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities, regarding the former as objectively real and the latter as subjective modifications ; like Reid, he appeals to our 'common sense,' or immedi- ate * consciousness ' both of the ego and of the non-ego ; like Reid, he signalises the distinction between sensation and perception. So far as this side of his philosophy is concerned, we have only to note the greater clearness with which he conceives the relation of philosophy to common sense and his indebtedness, even in this part of the argument, to Kant. * Common Sense,' he says, * is like Common Law. Each may be laid down as the general rule of decision ; but in the one case it must be left to the jurist, in the other to the philosopher, to ascertain what are the contents of the rule ; and though in both instances the common man may be cited as a witness, for the custom or the fact, in neither can he be allowed to officiate as advocate or as judge.' 1 This is very different from the appeal, so frequent in Reid, from the philosophers to the vulgar. The general position of Reid is further greatly modified by the adoption of the Kantian view of space and time as forms of perception 2 1 Reid's Works, ii. 752. 2 Hamilton calls them inaccurately 'forms of thought.' SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON 301 and of the general Kantian distinction between the conditions and the results of experience, between the a priori^ or necessary, and the a posteriori^ or contingent element in experience. But it is on the other and negative side of the Hamil- tonian doctrine, as the * philosophy of the conditioned,' that the influence of Kant is of chief importance. The great lesson of Kant, as Hamilton conceives it, is the lesson of our ignorance, complete and incurable, of ultimate reality. The implication of that < Copernican change of standpoint ' which is the decisive factor in the Kantian theory of knowledge is that since, to be known, things must conform to the knowing mind and its ways of know- ledge, they can never be known as they are in themselves, apart from the mind. To know is to relate things to the mind ; it follows that the unrelated thing, the thing-in- itself, can never be known. We know only phenomena ; that is, we do not, in the strict sense, know at all. The knowing subject, in the very act of knowing, weaves a veil which hides from its sight the object as it truly is : what we know is the subjective object, not the object as it is in itself. When we seek to know ourselves, we are involved in the same fatal circle of subjectivity and ap- pearance ; we know even ourselves only as we appear to ourselves, not as we are in ourselves. Hamilton identifies this agnosticism of Kant with the Lockian doctrine of the inscrutability of substance, material and spiritual : in both cases alike we know only the qualities, not the real sub- stance. ' Mind and matter, as known or knowable, are only two different series of phenomena or qualities ; mind and matter, as unknown and unknowable, are the two sub- stances in which these two different series of phaenomena or qualities are supposed to inhere. The existence of an unknown substance is only an inference we are compelled to make from the existence of known phaenomena ; and the distinction of two substances is only inferred from the seeming incompatibility of the two series of phaenomena to coinhere in one.' 1 The source of our ignorance is 1 Lectures on Metaphysics, i. 138. 302 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS not so much the limitation of our faculties as the nature of knowledge itself. l Were the number of our faculties coextensive with the modes of being had we for each of these thousand modes a separate organ competent to make it known to us still would our whole knowledge be, as it is at present, only of the relative. Of existence absolutely and in itself, we should then be as ignorant as we are now.' 1 Mill and others find in this doctrine of Agnosticism the contradiction of Hamilton's own theory of Natural Realism ; but though Hamilton's statements can easily be made to contradict one another, Masson's surmise is doubtless the true one, namely, that the theory of Natural Realism refers only to phenomenal or * cosmological ' reality, and is not therefore contradicted by the doctrine of the unknowableness of ultimate or ' ontological ' reality. The real difficulty in the latter theory lies in the underlying conception of ultimate reality as the unconditioned, or unrelated, a conception which Hamilton develops with great explicitness in the article on * The Philosophy of the Unconditioned.' Since to think is to condition, we cannot, he argues, know the Unconditioned. Whenever we make the attempt, we find that we have to choose between two contradictory propositions, both inconceivable, of which, according to the principle of excluded middle, one must be true. The unconditioned is either the Absolute or the Infinite, the unconditionally limited or the unconditionally unlimited. Which of these contradictories is true, we are in certain cases able, in other cases unable, to deter- mine. In any case, for Hamilton as for Kant, the ground of decision between the contradictory alternatives is a moral one. For example, the fact of moral responsibility compels us to decide in favour of a first cause or absolute beginning of our own actions, and against an infinite series of causes. The absence of such grounds of decision between the rival interpretations of God, as the Unconditioned, condemns us to complete ignorance of the divine nature. 1 Lectures on Metaphysics, i. 153. HENRY MANSEL 303 Hamilton concludes, with Kant, that where knowledge is unattainable, belief is both possible and necessary ; but instead of constructing, like Kant, a moral theology or a metaphysic of ethics, he trusts to Common Sense and Intuition, aided by supernatural Revelation, to assure us of those truths which lie beyond the sphere of knowledge. The title of Mansel's famous Bampton Lectures (1858), * The Limits of Religious Thought,' indicates the leading interest of the author in the Hamiltonian 'philosophy of the conditioned,' namely, its theological implications. He sets himself to undermine the rationalistic criticism of revealed theology by showing that the philosophy of the Infinite, on which it rests, is unattainable by man, whose knowledge is, by its very nature, limited to the finite. The true theology, he argues, is merely * regulative ' and practical, ' not * speculative ' or scientific. Religious intuition or instinct, belief as distinguished from knowledge, is the organ by which we apprehend God and our relation to Him. Our feeling of dependence suggests to us the power, our conviction of moral obliga- tion the goodness, of God. Thus we form * regulative ideas of the Deity, which are sufficient to guide our practice, but not to satisfy our intellect ; which tell us, not what God is in Himself, but how He wills that we should think of Him.' 1 Mansel follows Butler in his contention that the divine government of the world is 1 a scheme imperfectly comprehended,' and argues that we must be content with the apprehension of the analogy of the divine nature to our own, where knowledge in the strict sense is beyond our reach. We must rest satisfied with * the convictions forced upon us by our religious and moral instincts.' 2 These convictions are at once incapable of rational justification and superior to it. Mansel's argument for the limitation of human know- ledge to the finite is essentially the same as that of Hamil- 1 Limits of Religious Thought, p. 84. 8 Metaphysics, p. 375. 3 o 4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS ton, but it is more clearly stated and somewhat expanded. He abandons Hamilton's view of the opposition of the absolute and the infinite, and finds the idea of the absolute to be not only inconceivable but self-contradictory. 'In my language absolute is not opposed to incomplete, but to relative p , and means knowledge of an object as it is in itself, apart from its relation to human faculties.' 1 Hence *a conception of the Deity, in His absolute existence, appears to involve a self-contradiction ; for conception itself is a limitation, and a conception of the absolute Deity is a limitation of the illimitable.' 2 Con- ception or consciousness implies not merely, as Hamilton had argued, the relation of subject and object, but the distinction of one object from another, the succession and duration of these objects in time, and the attribution of spiritual qualities to a common subject or person. In all these respects a conception of the infinite is a contradiction in terms. Even the moral consciousness is limited to the relative, and acquaints us only with appearance, not with reality. * If the standard of perfect and immutable morality is to be found only in the eternal nature of God, it follows that those conditions which prevent man from attaining to a knowledge of the infinite, as such, must also prevent him from attaining to more than a relative and phenomenal conception of morality.' 3 1 What that Absolute Morality is, we are as unable to fix in any human conception, as we are to define the other attributes of the same Divine Nature.' * It follows that such a criticism of Revelation from the ethical point of view as we find in Kant, implying as it does the Kantian view of the absolute significance of our human morality, is entirely without warrant, and that we must accept without question the 'moral miracles' of Revelation. Elsewhere, however, Mansel seems to substitute for this strictly relativistic view of human morality an interpretation of ethical knowledge 1 Limits of Religious Knowledge (Pref. to 4th ed. ), p. xxx, note. 2 Metaphysics, p. 298. 3 Ibid., p. 386. 4 Limits of Religious Thought, p. 135. AGNOSTICISM 305 as merely incomplete. ' Each principle of this kind,' he says, 'recommends itself to the minds of all who are capable of reflecting upon it, as true and irreversible so far as it goes ; though it may represent but a limited portion of the truth, and be hereafter merged in some higher and more comprehensive formula.' 1 He departs, too, from the Hamiltonian doctrine at one notable point, admitting that, in spite of the impossibility of transcending the limits of consciousness, ' the self of consciousness is the true self.' 2 'In Psychology it cannot in any sense be maintained that the real is that of which we are not conscious. My own consciousness is not merely the test of my real existence, but it actually constitutes it.' 3 The self, that is to say, is not, like other realities, an unknown substance which must be apprehended apart from its qualities, if it is to be known at all ; personality is the one exception to the law of the inevitableness of human nescience. But the theological consequences of this exception are not developed by Mansel either in his Metaphysics or in his Bampton lectures. 2. Agnosticism : Spencer and Huxley In the agnosticism of Herbert Spencer we find the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, as proclaimed by Hamilton and Mansel, followed out to its extreme logical consequences, without any ulterior purpose of defending religious truth from the attacks of rationalism. Spencer, it is true, seeks, in the opening Book of his First Principles, to reconcile not only the various rival religions with one another, but also religion itself with science ; but the very catholicity of his interest in religion, his complete indif- ference to the special claims of Christianity, clearly differentiates his enterprise from that of those who would magnify faith by belittling reason. In the doctrine of the unknowableness of ultimate reality he finds the principle 1 Metaphysics, p. 388. * Ibid,, p. 368 3 Ibid., pp. 354-5. V 306 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS of reconciliation which he is seeking. c lf Religion and Science are to be reconciled, the basis of reconciliation must be this deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.' l The ultimate consequence of our scientific, no less than of our religious thought, is self-contradiction and the sense of utter mystery. Suppose the work of science completed, suppose * the appearances, properties, and movements of things' to have been resolved into * manifestations of Force in Space and Time,' it would still remain that ' Force, Space, and Time pass all understanding.' Thus the scientific thinker 1 learns at once the greatness and the littleness of the human intellect its power in dealing with all that comes within the range of experience ; its impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He realises with a special vividness the utter incomprehensibleness of the simplest fact, considered in itself. He, more than any other, truly knows that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known.' 2 The inevitable inference from this universal failure to think out our conceptions, whether religious or scientific, is the merely symbolic value of our so-called * knowledge.' ' Ultimate religious ideas and ultimate scientific ideas, alike turn out to be merely symbols of the actual, not cognitions of it.' 3 But while the only defensible philosophy is that which confines itself to the investigation of the laws or uni- formities which characterise the phenomena to which our knowledge is limited, while philosophy differs from science merely as completely unified from partially unified knowledge of phenomena, and transcendental notions have no role to play in philosophic thought, there remains, as the basis of religious emotion, the indefinite consciousness, rather than the thought or idea, of the unknowable Reality which lies behind the phenomena of our experience, * an indefinite consciousness of the unformed and unlimited,' 4 a compelling sense of the 1 First Principles, p. 46. * Ibid., pp. 66, 67. 1 Ibid,, p. 68. * Ibid., p. 94. AGNOSTICISM 307 ultimate mysteriousness of the universe in which we find ourselves. Huxley, to whom we owe the invention of the name * agnosticism ' as the antithesis of < gnosticism,' finds the doctrine itself alike in Hume and Kant, though he learned it first from Hamilton. 1 'The aim of the Krltik der reinen Vernunft is essentially the same as that of the Treatise of Human Nature, by which indeed Kant was led to develop that " critical philosophy " with which his name and fame are indisputably bound up : and, if the details of Kant's criticism differ from those of Hume, they coincide with them in their main result, which is the limitation of all knowledge of reality to the world of phenomena revealed to us by experience.' 2 But it is in the < mitigated scepticism ' or * academical philosophy ' of ' that prince of agnostics, David Hume,' rather even than in the Critical Philosophy of Kant, that he finds the classical statement of agnosticism ; and this interpretation determines the entire presentation of Hume's philosophy in the notable volume which he contributed to the { English Men of Letters ' series. While the name ' agnosticism ' is a novelty of the nineteenth century, and the doctrine of nescience which it signifies is based by its advocates upon the results of Humian and Kantian speculation, as interpreted by Hamilton and Mansel, the doctrine itself is no novelty of the century. It is that doctrine of inverted empiricism with which we have already become familiar in the pages of Locke's Essay and with which Huxley explicitly con- nects his own teaching. Since experience is the only source from which the data of knowledge can be de- rived, it seems to Locke, as to Kant, to follow that we cannot know that which transcends experience, and there- fore that we cannot know ultimate reality. Locke's unknown and unknowable * substance ' corresponds to 1 See Essay on ' Agnosticism ' in Essays on Some Controverted Questions, p. 353. 2 Hume, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 60. 308 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Kant's unknown and unknowable ' thing-in-itself.' As Kant says that we know < only phenomena ' or appearances, Locke says that we know * only qualities ' ; essential and substantial being we cannot know. For us reality, whether in Nature or in ourselves, must remain a mere ' something,' ' we know not what.' All that was left for the agnostics of the nineteenth century to do was to extend this view of the inscrutableness of reality to our knowledge of God, that is, to deduce the theological consequences which Locke had failed to draw from the general view of human knowledge which he had so emphatically stated. 3. Return to the Characteristic Point of View of Scottish Philosophy ; Calderwood y Martineau^ Fraser It was doubtless the development of Hamilton's doctrine of Relativity by Mansel and Spencer that revealed to his ablest pupils the perilous inadequacies of the Philosophy of the Conditioned, and stimulated them to attempt the revision and correction of their master's theory of know- ledge. The first sign of revolt was the publication of The Philosophy of the Infinite^ by Henry Calderwood, afterwards professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh and a strenuous defender of intuitional ethics. In this work he contended that a * negative notion ' was * no notion at all,' but a * mental impossibility,' and that the removal of limitations does not annihilate the object of knowledge, though it may make it indefinite. Hamilton's * Infinite ' is * a mere abstraction for which no one pleads either in existence or in thought.' We may have a finite or incomplete, yet real, knowledge of an infinite object. Nor is it possible to believe in that which we cannot conceive, that is, in some measure know. As to Hamilton's charge of * imbecility ' against our faculties of knowledge, Calderwood asks, in the spirit of Ferrier, * Does it prove weakness of mind that we cannot think nothing ? What a power of mind it would be to be able to think nothing to think and yet not to think ! ' THE SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY 309 Calderwood's concern was exclusively with the theo- logical aspect of the Hamilton ian theory. It was reserved for Hamilton's successor in the chair of logic and meta- physics at Edinburgh, Alexander Campbell Fraser, who had also come under the influence of the great teacher, to develop a philosophy of his own on lines more charac- teristic of the Scottish Philosophy than those which Hamilton himself had followed, to interpret and explain the very doctrine of Nescience in a new way and to deduce from it consequences very different from those above described. Another thinker, slightly Eraser's senior, and though not a pupil of Hamilton, yet closely allied to the Scottish School in the tendencies of his thought and following indeed more closely the traditional lines of that school, is too impressive to be overlooked James Mar- tineau, for many years principal and professor in Man- chester New College (now Manchester College, Oxford), and author of Types of Ethical Theory and A Study of Religion. Both Martineau and Fraser, following the lead of Hamilton, subordinate the cosmological to the ontological and theological problem. Both insist upon the ethical aspect of Reality, or upon the reality of the ethical element in human experience, and its validity as affording the clue to the nature of God or ultimate Reality. The philosophy of both is an ethical theism, as opposed alike to an unethical atheism and to an unethical pantheism. Both contend for a spiritual interpretation of the universe, and find the key to the nature of the divine Spirit in the human. For both man is the measure of reality, but the whole man, the complete human personality, on its ethical as well as on its intellectual side. It is in this insistence upon the ethical element in the universe, as revealed in human experience, not less than in their insistence upon the validity of human knowledge, in spite of its inevitable incompleteness or finiteness, that these thinkers together represent the return to the more characteristic point of view of the Scottish Philosophy. Martineau, as I have said, follows much more closely 310 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS than Fraser the traditional lines of the Scottish School ; he is distinctly the less original and speculative thinker. This is true both of his metaphysical and of his ethical theory. In the former he reproduces the Natural Realism or Natural Dualism of Reid and Hamilton ; in the latter he restates the Intuitionism of the school, with an interesting modification. Fraser, on the other hand, has been too profoundly influenced by that ' ideal theory ' which was the bete noire of Reid, to attach much import- ance to the question of the independent reality of the material world ; his interest is in * spiritual realism ' rather than in * natural realism.' The consequence is that, while Martineau finds speculative satisfaction in a theory which shares the defects of the old mechanical and deistic theology of the eighteenth century, Fraser, under the combined influences of Coleridge and Berkeley, finds himself compelled to recognise the element of truth in the pantheistic theory, and to admit the im- manence of God in the universe, in nature as well as in man. While both alike find pantheism finally unsatis- factory, and on the same ethical grounds, Martineau's philosophy is simply a revised version of the Natural Realism and the Natural Theology of the earlier Scottish philosophers, Fraser's is a moral idealism, a new philo- sophy of theism which has shaped for itself a via media between the deism of the eighteenth century and the pantheism of the nineteenth. In two early essays, on 'Sir W. Hamilton's Philo- sophy' (1853), and on 'Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought' (1859), Martineau clearly expressed his dissent from the doctrine of Nescience as held by both Hamilton and Mansel. Of Hamilton's Maw of the conditioned,' he says : * What is this but the morbid lament of scepti- cism ? Faith in the veracity of our faculties, if it means anything, requires us to believe that things are as they appear that is, appear to the mind in the last and highest resort ; and to deal with the fact that they only appear as if it constituted an eternal exile from their reality is to JAMES MARTINEAU 311' attribute lunacy to universal reason.' 1 To Mansel's view, again, he pertinently objects, 'If intelligence consists in distinguishing, how can distinguishing be an incompe- tency to understand?' 2 Mansel's theory of knowledge * cuts away the only supports on which religious thought can rest or move ; and nothing short of an unqualified ontological scepticism is in agreement with his pre- misses.' 3 Martineau reached his own position in philosophy by way of reaction from the sensationalism and association ism in which, in its extreme Priestleyan form, he had been educated. Though he at first accepted this view without question, and even taught it for some years, further re- flection convinced him that it was invalidated by the facts of our moral experience and by the principle of causality, truly understood. Moral responsibility implies freedom, as opposed to the necessity of Priestley ; conscience im- plies the obligatoriness of right conduct and, therefore, the existence of a righteous Will to impose this obligation upon us. Further, causation is not synonymous with necessary succession ; the only cause we know is will, or moral agency. It follows that God, as the ukimate or first Cause, is Will. This conception of God as supreme Will, at once the Creator of the world and the sovereign Law-giver, was more sharply accentuated by Martineau's later opposition to absolute idealism, which he identified with pantheism and in which he saw a menace to the ethical life no less serious than the sensa- tionalism and determinism which in his youth had chiefly threatened its interests. The citadel of morality he finds in the freedom of the human will ; and this seems to him to imply the falsity not only of the identification of the self with the character, but also of a doctrine of the immanence of God in man and in nature which ex- cludes His transcendence. In the ethical field itself the doctrine of Utilitarianism seems to him to explain away, rather than to explain, the central fact of moral obligation ; 1 Essays, iii. 481. 2 Ibid., iii. 135. 3 Ibid., iii. 133. 312 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS and his own ethical theory differs from the old Intuitionism simply in the stress which it lays upon the motive or * spring,' as distinguished from the action, and upon the preferability of a higher to a lower spring, as distin- guished from the Tightness or wrongness of any single action or motive, in itself, and as such. We may well doubt, with R. H. Hutton, his pupil and friend, * whether the historian of the English thought of our time will credit Martineau with any distinct modifi- cation of the theological or philosophical opinions of this age.' His teaching, Hutton adds, was * something that went below opinion ; it was a revelation of spiritual character and power. That was the impressive thing in James Martineau.' x It is this that impresses his readers, as it impressed his pupils the personality of the writer rather than the substance of his thought. It is in his religious rather than in his philosophical writings, we must again agree with Hutton, that ' the real Martineau, the spiritual teacher who will endure, has accomplished his greatest and finest work.' His influence and popularity must be attributed, in no small measure, to his gift of style. Hutton calls it { a singularly noble and remarkable prose style.' But it is more appropriate to the sermon than to the philosophical treatise ; it is much too ornate, figurative, and rhetorical for the latter. Its wealth of imagery, its very brilliance, are apt to pall ; even its * dignity ' is sometimes oppressive ; and it is fatally diffuse. Yet it is characteristic, and a revelation of a nature touched to fine issues, of an eloquent preacher rather than an original thinker. The influences which have chiefly determined the philosophy of Fraser are the views of Locke and Berkeley rather than those of the Scottish School. His sympathies are with the Baconian and Lockian spirit of faithfulness, at all costs, to the concrete facts of human experience rather than with the Continental ambition to construct a com- 1 Spectator, Jan. 27, 1900. CAMPBELL FRASER 313 pletely articulated system such as we find in the absolute idealism- of Hegel. 'My inclination,' he tells us, 'was to an English manner of treatment, so far as it keeps firm hold of what is given in concrete experience, under conditions of place and time, and refuses to pursue a unity that is possible for men only in a world of abstractions.' l As the author of the classical editions of Berkeley's Works and of Locke's Essay y he could not fail to assimilate the English philosophical tradition, alike on its empirical and on its idealistic side. Deeply impressed by Hume's scepti- cal reduction of the Lockian philosophy, he has grasped the significance of Hume for the past and the future of philosophy far more thoroughly than either Reid or Hamilton had done. Of the Scottish philosophers, apart from Hamilton, the one who most nearly influenced him was Thomas Brown, whose thought is much more akin to the scepticism of Hume than to the Natural Realism of Reid. It was Brown's account of the nature of causation that seems to have first awakened his interest in the ulti- mate questions of philosophy. 'I was for a time fasci- nated,' he says, * by the simplicity of Brown's superficial explanation. I had been wont to suppose that a " cause " meant a mysterious something, also called " power," some- how contained within things, but distinct from the visible things in which it was believed to reside. . . . Brown's analysis dissolved this conception as an illusion. The " powers " of things, he argued, must be the very things themselves which we see and feel ; these, however, only when looked at as the invariable antecedents of changes which, under given conditions, make their appearance, and which we call " effects " of the antecedents. Causa- tion, in short, is a relation of constant sequence, under which one group of phenomena is transformed into an- other group.' 2 Deeper reflection, however, revealed the unsatisfactoriness of this view : it left unexplained the uniformity or constancy of the causal series which yet it presupposed. * So Brown's supposed world of constant 1 Biographia Philosophica, p. 138. Ibid., pp. 48, 49. 3H ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS orderly antecedence and consequence gradually gave rise to a mood of universal uncertainty. The very tie which makes the universe a universe seemed to be loosed. . . . Through Brown's dissolving view of causation, I seemed bound to surrender to the total doubt of Hume, and the last chapter of Hume's Treatise described the situation.' * It was in Berkeley's conception of causation or power as, in the strict sense, spiritual or the expression of will, that Fraser found deliverance from the scepticism which had resulted from an exclusive consideration of its physical and scientific aspects. Berkeley taught him that physical causes were really but signs, and that real causes or powers were spiritual, the expression of spiritual purpose. The further problem raised by the necessity of presupposing uniformity in the world of natural events remained for later solution in connexion with the question raised for him by Hamilton, that of the nature and limits of human knowledge. But the substitution of the Berkeleyan for the Humian con- ception of causation rendered conceivable the divine im- manence in the world of natural phenomena, or the * supernatural ' character of * nature ' ; and the mere Im- materialism which was all that had hitherto been discovered in Berkeley became clearly subordinate in importance to the * spiritual realism ' which his account of causation was seen to imply. Fraser's central and ever-recurring question, discussed tentatively in the Introductions and Notes to Berkeley and Locke, as well as in the volumes devoted to the life and thought of these philosophers, and finally in the Gifford lectures on ' The Philosophy of Thesim,' is the Hamil- tonian question of the nature and limits of knowledge, deepened and widened as seen in the light of the scepticism of Hume. In an essay on ' The Insoluble Problem,' in the North British Review (1854), he * pondered over this supreme part of Hamilton's philosophy.' The article ex- pressed a somewhat critical attitude towards the Philosophy of the Conditioned. 'An exhaustive explanation of the 1 Biographia Philosophica, p. 51. CAMPBELL FRASER 315 mysteries in the Divine Reality seemed possible only in Omniscience ; but man is not and cannot become om- niscient. Yet this intellectual helplessness was not incon- sistent with a progressive human knowledge of the Active Reason that is (so far) revealed in all the facts and laws of the physical and spiritual universe.' 1 'So-called human knowledge, being at last necessarily incomplete and in- completable, may be called knowledge or ignorance, according to the way in which it is looked at, and the meaning associated with these two terms.' 2 In another early essay, on * Scottish Metaphysics,' we find Fraser suggesting * the value of some more precise and available canon of conciliatory criticism, than the mere proclamation of human ignorance concerning all which transcends contem- poraneous and successive nature. How can faith be main- tained amid an absolute negation of knowledge, which implies a total suspense of judgment ? ' 3 We must, then, assume the validity of our knowledge as far as it goes, incomplete as it is and must ever remain ; but its validity is an assumption or postulate which we can never prove. It is a postulate to be found at the heart of all knowledge, scientific as well as moral and religious ; and Fraser's challenge to the scientific Agnostic is to abandon this postulate without at the same time rendering his own scientific procedure unreasonable and contradictory. A truly consistent agnosticism, he argues, is synonymous with universal nescience or absolute scepti- cism. * Hume sees that this agnosticism, when fully thought out, involves total nescience, not merely theologi- cal ignorance. In truth the negative revolution which was proposed by Hume, in his juvenile "Treatise of Human Nature," is more bold and thorough than the scientific agnosticism of Huxley, which claims him as ist parent : it involves the complete dissolution of common knowledge and science, not of theology alone. . . . All assertion about what is outside present feeling must be unproved assertion. Intellect can at the most only have 1 Biographia Philosophica, p. 148. a Ibid., p. 156. 3 Essays in Philosophy, pp. 194, 195. 3i 6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS strength enough to extinguish itself.' 1 The scientific interpretability of nature is the presupposition of its scien- tific interpretation ; science, as well as action, assumes the orderliness or uniformity of nature. But ' is not this interpretability of nature another name for its innate divinity its final supernaturalness ? ' 2 ' Faith in the laws of nature is unconscious faith in God omni- present in nature. It is in this moral reliance on the surroundings amidst which we live and move and have our being that men are able to transcend their momen- tary perceptions, and to bring into a large or scientific experience what is not actually present to their senses.' 3 Thus 'the incoherent agnosticism that retains physical science is not really a protest against faith ; it is only an arrest of faith at the point at which faith advances from a narrower to a larger interpretation of life and the universe.' 4 But it is not only in its beginnings, but also in its ultimate issues, that our knowledge necessitates faith in that which transcends knowledge. If he does not, like Hamilton, insist upon the ultimate self-contradictoriness of human knowledge, Fraser does insist, with no less em- phasis, upon its ultimate mysteriousness. Whenever we attempt to complete it, it loses itself in mystery. This is especially true of space, time and causality, the three categories of physical science. ' The understanding, measuring by sense and imagination, tries to transcend itself, and in doing so is always lost at last in the Infinite Reality. How to reconcile finite places with the Immensity in which place seems lost, or finite times with the Eternity in which duration seems to disappear, the placed with the placeless, the timed or dated with the timeless, is the mystery of an experience which, like ours, is conditioned by place and time, in a way that must always leave thought at the last under a sense of intellectual incompleteness and dissatisfaction.' 6 The lesson of this final incom- pleteness of human knowledge is the necessity of faith 1 Philosophy of Theism, 2nd ed., pp. 112, 1 13. 2 Ibid., p. 1 16. * lbid. % p. 115. * Ibid., p. 1 20. 8 Ibid., pp. 96, 97. CAMPBELL FRASER 317 at the end as well as at the beginning, the equal im- possibility of universal nescience, or scepticism, and of omniscience, or perfect insight. Man's true place is in that ' isthmus of a middle state ' which lies neither in rational insight nor in total ignorance, but in a reasonable faith. This faith is a moral faith, or faith not merely in the rationality, but in the goodness, of the ultimate Power. The ultimate presupposition of the validity of human knowledge is, as Descartes insisted, the divine veracity or, in Eraser's words, the trustworthiness of our experience, the assumption that the ultimate Power will not put us to intellectual or moral confusion. 'If God, or Perfect Goodness, is supreme, external nature and my original faculties cannot delude me. For this would be to suppose that the Universal Nature and my nature are in contra- diction, so that I might be obliged to believe a lie. The presupposition that forbids the entrance of this total scepti- cism is the presupposition that God or Perfect Goodness is omnipresent and omnipotent. The trustworthiness of my original nature and the interpretability of universal nature, presuppose the constant action of morally perfect Power at the heart of the Whole.' 1 As the presupposi- tion of all thought and of all reasonable action alike, the existence, or rather the activity, of God or Perfect Good- ness cannot be proved ; it is itself the presupposition of all proof. The ultimateness of the distinction between moral or personal beings and impersonal things is the great barrier to a complete knowledge of the universe ; we cannot reconcile man's freedom with the necessity of nature or with the omnipotence of God. The attempt to demonstrate the existence and nature of the Ultimate Reality leads inevitably to a pantheistic or non-moral in- terpretation of it, to the elimination of that which is the guiding feature of Reality as we experience it, moral personality. But moral experience itself presents a great obstacle to 1 Philosophy of Theism, p. 176. 3 i 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS the belief in the perfect goodness of the ultimate Power. ' The great enigma of theistic faith ' is the fact of moral evil. The alternative which it compels us to face is *a universe, of non-moral things,' in which evil cannot exist because good is equally impossible a non-moral universe on the one hand, or a universe which includes * persons, who, as persons, must have an absolute power to make themselves bad* a moral universe which, as moral, implies the possibility of immoral actions, on the other ; a universe of things or a universe in which things serve the purposes and are the instruments of the moral education of persons ; a universe which is neither good nor evil, or a universe which, because it is not wholly good, but contains within it the possibility of both good and evil, may progressively become better. 'Is not a world that includes persons better than a wholly non- moral world, from which persons are excluded say on account of the risk of the entrance into existence of what ought not to exist, through the personal power to act ill implied in morally responsible individual agency?' A person who is not free to do what he ought not to do is not a person, and l God cannot make actual what in- volves express contradiction namely, the existence of a person who is not a person ; for individual personality involves responsible freedom to act ill. If this seems to limit omnipotence, or make God finite, the alternative supposition that the existence of beings who are morally responsible for their acts is impossible for God in a perfectly constituted universe, is surely not less a limita- tion of omnipotence. It is a limitation, too, that is im- posed only on the ground of a residuum of incomplete or mysterious conception implied in the idea of individual or finite personality : whilst the obstacle to a being existing, who is at once a responsible person, and yet unable to act freely, lies not in its mysteriousness, but in its evident absurdity.' 1 1 Philosophy of Theism, p. 268. CHAPTER III THE IDEALISTIC ANSWER TO HUME- SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY AND ABSO- LUTE IDEALISM I. Spiritual Philosophy Coleridge and Newman THE earliest, and in some ways the most influential, re- presentative of German Transcendental Philosophy in England is the poet-philosopher, Coleridge. As we have seen, Mill regarded him as dividing with Bentham the allegiance of the thoughtful youth of the time, and Leslie Stephen agrees that * he was undoubtedly the most con- spicuous representative of the tendencies opposed to utili- tarianism.' 'The most remarkable thing,' says the litter writer, ' is the apparent disproportion between Coleridge's definite services to philosophy and the effect which he certainly produced upon some of his ablest contemporaries.' ' His writings are a heap of fragments,' they consist of ' random and discursive hints.' c His most coherent ex- position [in the Biographia Literaria~] is simply appropriated from Schelling, though he ascribes the identity to a " genial coincidence of thought." ' * It is a striking testimony to Coleridge's real speculative power that, in spite of these obvious shortcomings in the form of its presentation, his philosophical teaching should have made such a deep im- pression upon the readers of his books, as well as upon those who came under the spell of his conversational powers. The unfortunate and ominous literary plagiarism to which Leslie Stephen gives such prominence by no means cancels the fact of Coleridge's originality as a 1 English Utilitarians, ii. 373-4, 380. 319 320 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS thinker. He was no mere purveyor of German philo- sophy to the English public. Even where his views approach most nearly to those of Kant and Schelling, and are most clearly influenced by these philosophers, with the one exception referred to, he maintains his in- dependence, and is apt to give the theory a turn of his own which its original expositor would have entirely repudiated. Mill describes Coleridge as * the great awakener in this country of the spirit of philosophy, within the bounds of traditional opinions. He .has been, almost as truly as Bentham, " the great questioner of things established " ; for a questioner need not necessarily be an enemy. By Bentham, beyond all others, men have been led to ask themselves, in regard to any ancient or received opinion, Is it true ? and by Coleridge, What is the meaning of it ? ' * Yet in Mill's eyes Coleridge is pre-eminently the represen- tative of a wise conservatism in the sphere of politics and religion. After a graphic description of the state of things which the eighteenth century had left as an inheritance to the nineteenth, he says : 'This was not a state of things which could recommend itself to any earnest mind. It was sure in no great length of time to call forth two sorts of men the one demanding the extinction of the institu- tions and creeds which had hitherto existed ; the other, that they be made a reality : the one pressing the new doctrines to their utmost consequences ; the other re- asserting the best meaning and purposes of the old. The first type attained its greatest height in Bentham ; the last in Coleridge' 2 This is a characterisation to which Coleridge himself might well have assented. The revolt which he represents against the negative rationalism of the eighteenth century might be described in his own language as the revolt of the Reason against the Understanding. The eighteenth century had been, on the whole, the reign of the discursive understanding ; its criterion of truth had been * conceivability,' it had been the enemy of * en- 1 Dissertations, \. 393. * Ibid., i. 436. COLERIDGE 321 thusiasm,' of imagination, of the higher reason and its intuitions. Coleridge would substitute a ' dynamic ' for its * mechanical' system, a spiritual for its materialistic and naturalistic view of the world and human life. For its futile * Natural Theology ' and * Natural Religion ' he would substitute a philosophy which, by its spiritual in- sight, should end the old conflict between philosophy and religion. Mill's suggestion that Coleridge kept his questionings * within the bounds of traditional opinions ' is apt to suggest a serious misconception as to the limitations of his philosophical experience. As a matter of fact, the comparatively conservative views which he finally accepted were reached after a wide and varied journey in the world of speculative thought, just as his political and theological conservatism was a reaction from the extremely radical views on these questions entertained by him in his youth. Like Wordsworth and Southey, Coleridge came under the spell of the ideas that animated the French Revolu- tion. He had resolved to join Southey in realising a * pantisocracy ' on the banks of the Susquehana, and later he had attempted the role of Unitarian preacher. His earliest philosophical enthusiasm, when a schoolboy at Christ's Hospital, was the mysticism of Plotinus, as we learn from Lamb's famous picture of ' the inspired charity-boy ' expounding that author to his school-fellows. The next, and probably more serious, philosophical influence under which he came was that of Hartley. He c named his first son after Hartley, and slept with the Observations on Man under his pillow,' says one who grew up under the same influence. 1 Hartley was, to his youthful vision, ' He of mortal kind Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.' 2 It was only after much further speculative experience, and finally passing through a stage of Humian scepticism, 1 Martineau, Essays, iv. 490. 2 Religious Musings. X 322 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS that he began to reconstruct a philosophy of his own on more positive and conservative lines. Mr. Shawcross, in his invaluable introduction to the Oxford edition of the Biographia Literaria, makes it clear that he had reached his characteristic positions before he made the acquaintance of Kant, and later of Schelling, that in the main he used what knowledge he acquired of these philosophers in the interests of the views which he had thus independently reached, and that he never attempted the accurate or complete reproduction of philosophical systems with which he only partially sympathised. Coleridge's two leading doctrines, which he never developed into a philosophical system, though he often promised to do so, were the distinction between Imagination and Fancy, and that between Reason and Understanding. The former, which was partly worked out in conversa- tions with Wordsworth and in reference to that poet's views as formulated in his well-known Preface to the Poems, is found in the Biographia Literaria (1817) ; the latter in the Aids to Re/lection (1825). The question of the nature of Imagination, and how it differs from Fancy, arose primarily, for Coleridge as for Wordsworth, with reference to the nature of poetry, and in the interests of a sound poetical criticism ; but for Coleridge it ultimately expanded into the larger question of the function and validity of the Imagination in the search for truth. It was in listening to a poem of Words- worth's that the question first arose in his mind. 'In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius pro- duces the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. . . . This excellence, which in all Mr. Wordsworth's writings is more or less predominant, and which constitutes the character of his mind, I no sooner felt, than I sought to understand. Repeated meditations led me first to suspect (and a more intimate analysis of the human faculties, their appropriate marks, functions, and effects, matured my con- jecture into full conviction), that fancy and imagination COLERIDGE 323 were two distinct and widely different faculties, instead of being, according to the general belief, either two names with one meaning, or, at furthest, the lower and higher degree of one and the same power.' * The essential difference is that while Fancy is determined by mere accidental and subjective association of ideas, Imagination works under the dominion of objective law and the truth of things ; while the former is merely reproductive, the latter is truly creative. Imagination is the ' shaping and modifying power,' Fancy ' the aggregative and associative power.' 2 Coleridge therefore calls the former the * esem- plastic power,' and distinguishes two forms or degrees of it, the primary and the secondary. By the primary imagina- tion he seems to mean the power by which the mind of man weaves the web of its experience out of the data of sensation ; by the secondary, that higher degree of the same power, by which the poet and the philosopher seize the essential meaning of this common experience. It is this * shaping spirit of Imagination ' that is the real source of the beauty of Nature. ' O Lady ! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone doth Nature live ! Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud ! ' The distinction between Imagination and Fancy, to which so much importance is attached in the Blographia UterartOj gives place, in the Aids to Reflection^ to the distinction between Reason and Understanding. This distinction, in the form in which it is stated, is borrowed from Kant, with whose philosophy Coleridge made acquaintance in 1801. 'To Kant,' says Mr. Shawcross, ' his obligations (as he was never tired of asserting) were far greater than to any other of Kant's countrymen : to him alone could he be said to assume in any degree the attitude of pupil to master. Yet even to Kant his debt seems on the whole to have been more formal than material to have resided rather in the scientific state - 1 Biog. Phil., i. 60. * Ibid., i. 193. 324 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS ment of convictions previously attained than in the acquisition of new truths. ... In nothing does this appear more clearly than in the distinction of Reason and Understanding. This distinction, as elaborated by Kant, must have been hailed by Coleridge with especial joy ; for it gave a rational basis to a presentiment of much earlier date.' 1 He accepts Leighton's definition of the Understanding as 'the faculty judging according to sense. * * Hence we add the epithet human, without tautology : and speak of the human understanding, in disjunction from that of beings higher or lower than man. But there is, in this sense, no human reason.' His own definition of Understanding is ' The faculty by which we reflect and generalise.' It follows that ' Understanding in its highest form of experience remains commensurate with the experimental notices of the senses from which it is generalised. Reason, on the other hand, either prede- termines experience, or avails itself of a past experience to supersede its necessity in all future time ; and affirms truths which no sense could perceive, nor experiment verify, nor experience confirm. Yea, this is the test and character of a truth so affirmed, that in its own proper form it is inconceivable. For to conceive is a function of the Understanding, which can be exercised only on subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the Under- standing all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection and to be rendered expressible.'* The appropriate sphere of the Understanding is the natural, not the spiritual world. It is limited to the objects of sense and of possible experience. * Wherever the forms of reasoning appropriate only to the natural world are applied to spiritual realities, it may be truly said, that the more strictly logical the reasoning is in all its parts, the more irrational is it as a whole.' 3 Though Coleridge does not distinguish clearly be- tween the speculative and the practical reason, it is the latter rather than the former that he regards as i Biog. Phil., Introd., p. xli. 2 Aids to Reflection, under Aph. viii. 3 Ibid., Introd. to Aph. x. COLERIDGE 325 the organ of spiritual vision. * If not the abstract or speculative reason and yet a reason there must be in order to a rational belief then it must be the practical reason of man, comprehending the Will, the Conscience, the Moral Being with its inseparable interests and Affections that Reason, namely, which is the Organ of Wisdom^ and (as far as man is concerned) the source of living and actual Truths.' 1 To the prac- tical reason he attributes knowledge of the ultimate spiritual realities, while Kant limited knowledge to phe- nomena, and denied to the practical reason the privilege of speculation. The truth seems to be that Coleridge comes nearer to the doctrine of Jacobi than to that of Kant, as Hort remarks in his excellent essay. 2 ' I should have no objection,' says Coleridge, * to define reason with Jacobi, and with his friend Hemsterhuis, as an organ bear- ing the same relation to spiritual objects, the universal, the eternal, and the necessary, as the eye bears to material and contingent phenomena. But then it must be added, that it is an organ identical with its appropriate objects. Thus God, the soul, eternal truth, etc., are the objects of reason ; but they are themselves reason.' 3 Practical reason thus becomes synonymous with Faith, which he defines as 'fidelity to our own being so far as such being is not and cannot become an object of the senses ; and hence, by clear inference or implication, to being generally, as far as the same is not the object of the senses ; and again to whatever is affirmed or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same.' 4 In the Will or originative agency of man he finds the clue to the distinction of Spirit from Nature. These terms are properly antithetic, 'so that the most general and negative definition of Nature is, Whatever is not Spirit ; and vice versa of Spirit. That which is not comprehended in Nature : or in the language of our elder divines, that which transcends Nature. But nature 1 Aids to Reflection, Aph. ii. 2 Cambridge Essays, 1856. 3 7^he Friend, i. 208, ed. 1844, quoted by Hort, p. 322. 4 Essay on Faith. 326 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS is the term in which we comprehend all things that are representable in the forms of time and space, and subjected to the relations of cause and effect : and the cause of the existence of which, therefore, is to be sought for perpetually in something antecedent. ... It follows, therefore, that whatever originates its own acts, or in any sense contains in itself the cause of its own state, must be spiritual, and consequently supernatural : yet not on that account necessarily miraculous. And such must the responsible WILL in us be, if it be at all.' 1 The distinction between Reason and Understanding gives the clue to the difference between true Morality and mere Prudence. * Morality arising out of the Reason and Conscience of Men, and Prudence, which in like manner flows out of the Understanding and the natural Wants and Desires of the Individual, are two distinct things.' 2 A writer who, like Paley, reduces morality to prudence, is not entitled to be called a moralist. * Schemes of conduct, grounded on calculations of self-interest ; or on the average consequences of actions, supposing them general ; form a branch of Political Economy, to which let all due honour be given. Their utility is not here questioned. But however estimable within their own sphere, such schemes, or any one of them in particular, may be, they do not belong to Moral Science, to which, both in kind and purpose, they are in all cases foreign, and, when substituted for it, hostile.' 3 An action is good, not in respect of its external consequences, but as an expression of the unity of the human with the divine will. * Whatever seeks to separate itself from the Divine Principle, and proceeds from a false centre in the agent's particular will, is evil a work of darkness and contradic- tion. It is sin, and essential falsehood.' * Morality con- sists in the identity of the will with the practical reason. 1 Conscience is a witness respecting the identity of the will and the reason effected by the self-subordination of the 1 Aids to Reflection, Introd. to Aph. x. * Ibid., under Aph. vii. * Ibid., Aph. xii. * Loc. tit. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 327 will, or self, to the reason, as equal to, or representing, the will of God.' 1 The reader cannot fail to be disappointed with the style of the Aids to Reflection ; it is certainly not to its literary quality that its influence is to be traced. As Traill says, it possesses 'less charm of thought, less beauty of style, less even of Coleridge's seldom-failing force of effective statement' than almost any of his writings. 2 The Biographia Literaria is written more in the author's own manner, * the manner of the great pulpit orators of the seventeenth century,' whose spirit and style he had caught from sympathetic study of their works. But the real interest and value of both books lies in their sub- stance and spirit, in the thought and criticism which they contain, in the moral earnestness which inspires them, and communicates itself to the reader. In an article written in 1839, quoted in the Apologia, John Henry Newman connects Coleridge with Scott, Southey, and Wordsworth, as a representative of * the need which was felt both by the heart and the intellect of the nation for a deeper philosophy.' * While history in prose and verse was thus made the instrument of Church feelings and opinions, a philosophical basis for the same was laid in England by a very original thinker, who, while he indulged a liberty of speculation, which no Christian can tolerate, and advocated conclusions which were often heathen rather than Christian, yet after all in- stalled a higher philosophy into inquiring minds, than they had hitherto been accustomed to accept. In this way he made trial of his age, and succeeded in interest- ing its genius in the cause of Catholic truth.' 3 Newman himself, in his Grammar of Assent (1870), attempts to determine the true method of thought on the ultimate questions. The work is of great philosophical, as well as religious significance, and is a remarkable example of that 1 Essay on Faith. 2 Coleridge, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 179. 3 Apologia, p. 97. 328 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS style, so characteristic of its author yet so impossible to describe, which combines perfect lucidity and the total absence of straining after effect with a beauty and dignity all its own, the utmost simplicity with an undefinable distinction. Newman, like Coleridge, is the enemy of rationalism, or the attempt, which he regards as foredoomed to failure, to reduce faith to terms of logic. The ultimately decisive element in Assent is, he holds, the personal element. Certitude is a subjective feeling, varying with the individual, rather than a unanimity determined by reference to a common standard. *We need the inter- position of a Power, greater than human teaching and human argument, to make our beliefs true and our minds one.' x We apprehend the ultimate Reality in the same way as we apprehend ordinary matters of fact ; in both cases alike Assent is implicitly rational, though it transcends the limits of explicit proof. The faith which is present in all our so-called knowledge is, we must believe, entirely rational ; but it is vain to attempt to rationalise it. The certainties of belief are themselves the final resultant of a mass of probabilities ; the * proofs ' which determine our Assent are not logical proofs, and the attempt to establish the validity of these beliefs on logical grounds can only result in incurable scepticism. The entire argument rests upon the distinction between the c notional ' and the c real,' the abstract and the concrete, alike in apprehension and in assent. The notional has to do with the abstractions of thought, the real with the actual things, the matters of fact of our experience. Real assent, or belief, since it depends upon experience, is always personal, * the accident of this or that man.' It is always complete ; we cannot rightly speak of * degrees of assent,' varying from probability to certainty according to the evidence that determines it. Assent is never merely ' the echo of an inference,' it is always 'a substantive act.' 2 We must further distinguish 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 375. * Ibid., p. 166. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 329 'certitude' from assent. Certitude is a 'deliberate assent given expressly after reasoning ' ; * 'it follows upon examination and proof, as the bell sounds the hour, when the hands reach it.' 2 But the reasoning or inference upon which it rests is informal, not formal, implicit, not explicit. Formal inference is notional and abstract ; hence the logic which formulates it tends always to the symbolic form, it 'starves each term down till it has become the ghost of itself, and everywhere one and the same ghost, " omnibus umbra locis." ' 3 Logic thus separates us from reality, and acquaints us with a world of abstractions. 'This universal living scene of things is after all as little a logical world as it is a poetical ; and, as it cannot without violence be exalted into poetical perfection, neither can it be attenuated into a logical formula.' 4 Formal inference leads, there- fore, only to probability ; it can never yield certainty. Its premisses are assumed, not proved. It depends upon ' first principles,' which ' are called self-evident by their respective advocates because they are evident in no other way.' ' It only leads us back to first princi- ples, about which there is interminable controversy.' 6 And its conclusions are always abstract, never concrete. It confuses the similar with the identical, the general with the universal. The real is always individual, similar to other individuals, but never identical with them ; our statements about it may have general, they can never have universal validity. Compared with the cumbrous and ineffective methods of formal logic, ' how short and easy a way to a true conclusion is the logic of good sense ; how little syllogisms have to do with the formation of opinion ; how little depends upon the inferential proofs, and how much upon those pre-existing beliefs and views, in which men either already agree with each other or hopelessly differ, before they begin to dispute, and which are hidden deep in our nature, or, it may be, in our personal peculiarities/ 6 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 229. a Ibid., p. 236. 3 Ibid., p. 267. * Ibid.t p. 268. 8 Ibid., p. 270. Ibid., p. 277. 330 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS The real method by which we attain to concrete certainties, by which conditional inference leads to un- conditional assent, is rather the intuitive judgment or perception which seizes the conclusion as a result of a mass of converging probabilities, the tact of the trained intellect which cannot analyse the reasons that have appealed to it, or formulate the hints and suggestions that have led to its decision. 'It is the cumulation of probabilities, independent of each other, arising out of the nature and circumstances of the particular case which is under review ; probabilities too fine to avail separately, too subtle and circuitous to be convertible into syllogisms, too numerous and various for such conversion, even were they convertible.' 1 In such a real inference we feel the momentum of the mass of probabilities, con- firming and correcting one another, and the conclusion is 'an unwritten summing-up'; the mind is 'swayed and determined by a body of proof, which it recog- nises only as a body, and not in its constituent parts.' 2 Or, more accurately stated, the decisive factor in the entire procedure is * the living mind ' of the individual. The impression which the body of proof makes upon the individual mind varies with the individual ; for it is not strictly an impression, but the result of the re- action of the mind itself. ' It follows that what to one intellect is a proof is not so to another, and that the certainty of a proposition does properly consist in the certitude of the mind that contemplates it.' 3 The ultimate principle, then, in belief, is a kind of instinct or feeling for truth, what Newman calls ' the Illative Sense,' or l right judgment in ratiocination ' ; and 1 such a living organon is a personal gift, and not a mere method or calculus.' 4 The ultimate premisses or first principles of our reasoning are always personal. ' Even when we agree together, it is not perhaps that we learn one from another, or fall under any law of agreement, but that our separate idiosyncrasies happen to concur.' 6 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 288. 2 Ibid., p. 292. 8 Ibid., p. 293. * Ibid., p. 316. 8 Ibid., p. 373- JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 331 What guarantee have we, then, for the objectivity of truth, if there is no common measure to which we can appeal, if the only standard is the subjective feeling of the individual ? The only answer is that we must trust our faculties ; the ultimate sanction of truth is ' the trustworthiness of the Illative Sense.' x ' There is no ultimate test of truth besides the testimony borne to truth by the mind itself.' 2 It is 'unmeaning' to 1 criticise or find fault with our own nature, which is nothing else than we ourselves, instead of using it according to the use of which it ordinarily admits.' Our criticism, our very scepticism, is an exercise of that nature, and implies that it is accepted as trustworthy. We need not hope, by 'antecedent reasoning,' to prove this trustworthiness or to escape the personal equation in our apprehension of truth. c What is left to us but to take things as they are, and to resign ourselves to what we find ? ' 3 What is left to us but to accept our nature, in its intellectual as well as its moral faculties, as the expression of the will of God ? Our trust in our own nature is really trust in God, our Maker. The difficulty itself, however, like Hume's sceptical doubt which also finds its practical solution in trust in ' human nature,' arises from the failure to discriminate, within that nature, the common or universal from the merely individual and idiosyncratic element. While it is obviously unmeaning to attempt to transcend human nature and to find outside it a standard of truth to which it must conform, and while the language of even such a transcendentalist as Kant may well suggest such an impossible procedure, it remains to ask whether, within human nature, the rational and universal cannot be discriminated from the subjective and individual. New- man's own central view of the implicit rationality of true belief suggests the possibility of its indefinite rationalisation. It does not follow that, because the individual does not himself make the analysis of the 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 359. * Ibid., p. 350. * Loc. cit. 332 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS rational grounds of his belief, his belief is incapable of such analysis and justification. It was the ambition of the Absolute Idealists to demonstrate the rationality and objectivity of that Assent the grounds of which remained for Newman inscrutable to reason. 2. Absolute Idea lism ; Earlier Version Ferrier and Grote The earliest, and in some ways the most 'impressive, statement of absolute idealism in English philosophy is that of J. F. Ferrier, professor of moral philosophy at St. Andrews from 1845 to 1864. No less interested than Coleridge and Newman in the affirmation of a spiritual view of the universe, he holds that it is possible to demonstrate the truth of such a view. In any case he is convinced that it is the function of Philosophy to demonstrate truth ; he defines it as * a body of reasoned truth,' 'the attainment of truth by the way of reason.' Its method is the ' speculative method, which means nothing more than that we should expend upon the in- vestigation the uttermost toil and application of thought ; and that we should estimate the truths which we arrive at, not by the scale of their importance, but by the scale of their difficulty of attainment, of their cost of production. Labour, we repeat it, is the standard which measures the value of truth, as well as the value of wealth.' * He has no patience, therefore, with the pre- tensions of the 'Philosophy of Common Sense.' Of Hamilton, whom he knew intimately, he says, 'I have learned more from him than from all other philosophers put together ; more, both as regards what I assented to and what I dissented from ' ; but he regarded the time spent by Hamilton in editing Reid's works as little better than wasted. So far from Common Sense being the criterion of philosophical truth, he holds that 'the con- ciliation of ordinary thinking, or " common sense," as it is sometimes rather abusively called, and philosophy, can be 1 Philosophical Remains , ii. 431. FERRIER 333 very well effected by the former giving in her submission to the decisions of the compulsory reason.' 1 He has a further ground of quarrel with the Scottish Philosophy, namely, that it adopts the psychological method and believes in a * science of the human mind.' l Perhaps no better or more comprehensive description of the object of meta- physical or speculative philosophy could be given than this : that it is a science which exists, and has at ail times existed, chiefly for the purpose of exposing the vanity and confounding the pretensions of what is called the "science of the human mind." ' 2 l The best way of attaining to correct opinions on most metaphysical subjects is by rinding out what has been said on any given point by the psychologists, and then by saying the very opposite.' 3 Already in his own lifetime Ferrier was regarded, as he has been constantly represented since, as an adherent of the Hegelian philosophy. Such an affiliation he strongly denied, rightly claiming originality for the way in which he reached a result which, it is true, coincides in the main with that of the Hegelian dialectic. In an appendix to the Institutes, he says : * Some of my critics assert that my philosophy is nothing but an echo of Hegel's ; others have doubted whether I know anything at all about that philosopher. The exact truth of the matter is this : I have read most of Hegel's works again and again, but I cannot say that I am acquainted with his philosophy. I am able to understand only a few short passages here and there in his writings ; and these I greatly admire for the depth of their insight, the breadth of their wisdom, and the loftiness of their tone. More than this I cannot say. If others understand him better, and to a larger extent, they have the advantage of me, and I confess that I envy them the privilege. But, for myself, I must declare that I have not found one word or one thought in Hegel which was available for my system, even if I had been disposed to use it. If Hegel follows (as I do) the demonstrative method, I own I cannot see it, and would 1 Institutes of Metaphy sic, Introd. , sect. 49. * Remains ', ii. 445. 3 Institutes, p. 315. 334 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS feel much obliged to any one who would point this out, and make it clear. In other respects, my method is diametrically opposed to his ; he begins with the con- sideration of Being ; my whole design compels me to begin with the consideration of Knowing.' l In the Institutes itself he speaks of Hegel as 'impenetrable, almost throughout, as a mountain of adamant,' 2 and exclaims, ' Hegel, but who has ever yet uttered one intelligible word about Hegel ? Not any of his countrymen, not any foreigner, seldom even himself.' 3 Internal evidence confirms what these words suggest, that Ferrier worked his way independently to his conclusions by correcting and de- veloping the idealism of Berkeley, which seems to have formed the real starting-point of his own thinking, and in which, as thus corrected and developed, he found the substitute for the misleading views of Reid and Hamilton. It was probably not so much the substance as the form of Ferrier's system, different as the latter really is from that of Hegel, that suggested the author's indebtedness to the great German idealist. In the Institutes of Metaphysic (1854), the argument is stated in a series of propositions, each of which is demonstrated and made the basis of those which follow, after the manner of Euclid or Spinoza, rather than that of Hegel. On reading the book, Mill wrote : * His fabric of speculation is so effectively con- structed, and imposing, that it almost ranks as a work of art. It is the romance of logic.' 4 In some ways, however, the form militates against the effectiveness of the argument, giving it an air of artificiality, diminish- ing its cumulative force and, in spite of the directness, lucidity, and strength of the style, seriously detracting from the literary quality of the work. In literary quality, as well as in freshness and spontaneity and in breadth and richness of treatment, the Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness, originally published as a series of articles in Blackwood in 1838-39, must be placed higher; nor can it be said that the later statement adds anything of material 1 Remains, i. 486. * Institutes, p. 40. 8 Ibid., p. 91. * Letters, i. 184. FERRIER 335 value to the earlier argument. In both works there is a certain tendency to iteration and over-elaboration, in part the result of the author's facility of expression and tendency to rhetorical exaggeration. But the notable absence of pedantry and technicality and the general smoothness and crispness of the statement atone in great measure for any such defects ; and the writer never forgets his undertaking to make clear the successive steps in the logical process of the argument. In an essay on 'Berkeley and Idealism,' published in 1842, perhaps Ferrier's most perfect piece of philosophical writing, he signalises both the essential truth and the essential defect in a theory which was at the time much less understood than it is now. Berkeley, he says, ' certainly was the first to stamp the indelible impress of his powerful understanding on those principles of our nature, which, since his time, have brightened into im- perishable truths in the light of genuine speculation. His genius was the first to swell the current of that mighty stream of tendency towards which all modern meditation flows, the great gulf-stream of Absolute Idealism.' The element of peculiar value in Berkeley's speculation is its con- creteness, its faithfulness to reality. c The peculiar endow- ment by which Berkeley was distinguished, far beyond his predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher who- has succeeded him, was the eye he had for facts^ and the singular pertinacity with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon them. . . . No man ever delighted less to expatiate in the regions of the occult, the abstract, the impalpable, the fanciful, and the unknown. His heart and soul clung with inseparable tenacity to the concrete realties of the universe ; and with an eye uninfluenced by spurious theories, and unperverted by false knowledge, he saw directly into the very life of things.' l His theory needs only to be widened, and thus corrected, to provide the true explanation of which phil- osophy is in search. How this is to be done, is more 1 Remains, ii. 293-4. 336 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS clearly stated in the Institutes. l He saw that something subjective was a necessary and inseparable part of every object of cognition. But instead of maintaining that it was the ego or oneself which clove inseparably to all that could be known, and that this element must be thought of along with all that is thought of, he rather held that it was the senses, or our perceptive modes of cognition, which clove inseparably to all that could be known, and that these required to be thought of along with all that could be thought of. These, just as much as the ego, were held by him to be the subjective part of the total synthesis of cognition which could not by any possibility be discounted. Hence the unsatisfactory char- acter of his ontology, which, when tried by the test of a rigorous logic, will be found to invest the Deity the supreme mind, the infinite ego, which the terms of his system necessarily compel him to place in synthesis with all things with human modes of apprehension, with such senses as belong to man and to invest Him with these, not as a matter of contingency, but as a matter of necessity. Our only safety lies in the consideration a consideration which is a sound, indeed inevitable logical inference that our sensitive modes of apprehension are mere contingent elements and conditions of cognition ; and that the ego or subject alone enters, of necessity, into the composition of everything which any intelligence can know.' 1 Although there are occasional references to Kant in Ferrier's works, he develops his theory through a con- tinuous criticism of Reid, on the one hand, and of Hamilton, on the other. Reid is, for him, the representative of Psychology or the l science of the human mind,' and therefore, despite his own protestations to the contrary, of * Representationism.' Hamilton is the representative of Agnosticism, or the doctrine of the unknowableness of the Absolute Reality. Against the former view, he argues that we have a direct knowledge of Reality, both 1 Institutes, pp. 389, 390. FERRIER 337 material and spiritual ; against the latter, he formulates his ' agnoiology ' or * theory of ignorance,' to prove that the 1 ignorance' of which Hamilton would convict the human mind is not properly called ignorance or defect, but is simply that repudiation of the unintelligible or self-contradictory which is the essential characteristic of intelligence, rather than a defect peculiar to the human mind. The fundamental error of Psychology is the acceptance of sensation, or the c state of consciousness,' as the original datum of knowledge, the consequence being that the inference to the existence of the object, as well as to the subject, is more or less uncertain. As a matter of fact, the subject and the object are inseparable. ( Matter per se* is never the object of knowledge; what we perceive is always ' Matter mecum? The elementary fact of knowledge is not matter, but the perception of matter, or the subject as conscious of the object, either subjective or objective. Mere ' phenomena' never exist; what exists is always phenomenal to a self or subject. If we define l substance ' as that which is capable of existing, or of being conceived, alone and independently, then the conscious self, that is, the subject as conscious of an object, is substance, and can be known. The ego cannot know objects without knowing itself along with them ; it cannot know itself except along with objects. It is because the psychologists have ignored the conscious, or rather the self-conscious self, which is present in all knowledge, that they have been unable to escape the conclusion that all we know is * ideas ' or ' phenomena ' which represent, and may misrepresent, the object or substantial reality. For the refutation of the Hamiltonian doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, Ferrier formulated what he regarded as an entirely original * theory of ignorance.' Ignorance, he holds, presupposes the possibility of know- ledge ; we can be ignorant only of that which it is possible for us to know. It is not a defect, but a merit of knowledge not to know that which cannot be known because it is the unintelligible or the self-contradictory. y 338 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS Now we have seen that subject and object, or mind and matter, per * on scientific method, 58 ; on definition, 59 ; on sensation, 61 ; on motion, 62 ; natural and civil philosophy, 63 ; works, 63 ; method, 64 ; psychology, 64 ; good and evil, 65 ; will, 65 ; state of nature, 66 ; laws of nature, 69 ; social contract, 2 A INDEX 69 ; commonwealth defined, 70 ; sovereignty, 72 ; the State, 73 ; Church and State, 73 ; defects of political theory, 74 ; style, 76 Hodgson, Shadworth, 361 Hoffding, H., quoted, 240, 263 Hooker, Richard, 117 Howison, G. H., 360 n. Hume, David, works, 149 ; style, 149; logic of empiricism, 150 ; nominalism, 151 ; psychological method, 151 ; knowledge and experience, 152 ; problem of cause, 153 ; relation of Treatise and Enquiries, 155 ; impres- sions and ideas, 157 ; impres- sions of sensation and reflexion, 158; ideas of memory and imagination, 159; association of ideas, 1 59 ; philosophical relations of ideas, 159, 162; relations of ideas and matters of fact, 1 60; the causal in- ference, 1 60 ; material sub- stance, 164 ; spiritual sub- stance, 1 66; personal identity, 167 ; scepticism, 168 ; mathe- matics, 172 ; ideas of space and time, 173 ; the passions, 174 ; necessity and liberty, 175 >' ethical theory, 175; the passions and self-love, 178 ; benevolence and virtue, 179; obligation, 1 80 ; philosophy of religion, 1 80 ; Natural History of Re- ligion, 181 ; Theism, 181, 184; Miracles, 182; providence, 1 82 ; Dialogues on Natural Religion, 183 ; argument from design, 185; goodness or bene- volence of God, 1 86 Hutcheson, Francis, style, 189; moral sense, 195 ; benevolence, 196 ; self-love, 196 Hutton, R H., quoted, 312 Huxley, T. H., agnosticism, 307 ; quoted, 183 JACOBI, 325 James, William, psychology, 359 ; pragmatism, 363 KANT, compared with English philosophers, 8 LAMB, CHARLES, quoted, 190 Latitudinarians, 80 Laurie, H., quoted, 216 Lindsay, T. M., quoted, 14 Locke, John, and Bacon, 92, 93 ; and Hobbes, 92; and Descartes, 93 ; epistemology, 94 ; know- ledge and practice, 95 ; innate ideas, 95 ; ' idea ' defined, 96 ; plan of Essay, 96 ; limits of inquiry, 97 ; experience, 98 ; ideas of sensation and re- flexion, 100 ; primary and secondary qualities, loo ; ma- terial substance, 101 ; parti- cular substance, 102 ; nominal and real essence, 103 ; spiritual substance, 103 ; idea of cause or power, 104 ; idea of infinity, 104 ; knowledge, its nature and degrees, 105, 129, 133, 135; knowledge of our own existence, 105 ; knowledge of the exist- ence of God, 106 ; knowledge of the existence of external things, 1 06; no 'science of bodies,' 109 ; no science of spirits, III ; general knowledge, in ; mathematical knowledge, Hi; ethics, 112, 116; pro- bability, 112 ; 'judgment,' 113; faith and reason, 114; 'en- thusiasm,' 1 14; political obliga- tion, 116 ; social contract, 117; toleration, Il8; Church and State, 118; style, 119; and agnosticism, 307 M'CosH, J., 236 MacCunn, J., quoted, 249 Mackintosh, Sir James, quoted, 189, 190, 209, 222, 223 Mandeville, Bernhard de, 188 Mansel, H. L., and Hamilton, 303 ; on morality, 304 ; on the self, 305 Martineau, James, and Fraser, 309 ; and Hamilton and Mansel, 310 ; and Priestley, 311; freedom, INDEX 311; ethical theory, 312; style, 312 ; quoted, 249 Masson, David, quoted, 77 Mill, James, association, 243 ; nominalism, 244 ; belief, 244 ; the self, 245 ; J. S. Mill on, 246 Mill, John Stuart, on belief, 244; the self, 245, 273 ; his recon- ciling project, 247 ; on Bentham and Coleridge, 248, 320; his inconsistencies, 248 ; crisis, 251 ; essay on Bentham, 252 ; doctrine of quality in pleasures, 255 ; conscience, 255 ; self- sacrifice, 256 ; principle of utility, 257 ; desire, 257 ; liberty, 258 ; intuitionism and empiricism, 261, 271 ; tran- scendentalism, 262 ; Logic, 263 ; scientific method, 263 ; account of causation, 265 ; the syllogism, 267 ; mathemati- cal knowledge, 269 ; ethology, 270; Examination a/Hamilton, 271 ; theory of external world, 273 ; Essays on Religion, 274 ; nature, 274 ; utility of religion, 275; religion of Humanity, 275 ; supernaturalism, 275 ; poetry, 276 ; theism, 276 ; First Cause, 276 ; argument from design, 276 ; omnipotence and good- ness, 275, 277 ; immortality, 277 ; miracles, 277 ; imagi- nation, 277 ; Christianity, 278 Moore, G. E., 362 Morley, Lord, quoted, 48, 248 NEWMAN, J. H., on Coleridge, 327 ; style, 328 ; assent, 328 ; notional and real, 328 ; certitude, 329 ; logic and reality, 329 ; nature of proof, 330; the Illative Sense, 330 Nichol, John, quoted, 22, 37, 48, 49 Nominalism, 6, 15 OCKHAM, William of, n, 14 Oswald, James, 236 PALEY, THOMAS, and Gay, 217 ; and Tucker, 217 ; style, 222 ; argument from design, 223 ; virtue and obligation, 224 ; happiness, 255; 'general rules,' 225 ; probation, 226 Pattison, A. Seth Pringle-, 360 . Pattison, Mark, quoted, 203 Peirce, C. S., 363 Personal idealism, 360 Pluralism, 366 Pragmatism, 363 Price, Richard, and Butler, 227 ; and Hume, 227 ; and Locke, 227 ; understanding and imagi- nation, 227 ; understanding and reasoning, 228 ; Common Sense, 228 ; ideas of right and wrong, 228 ; obligation, 228 ; reason and action, 229 ; and Kant, 229 ; self-interest, 229 Psychological method of English philosophy, 4 ; Ferrier on, 333, 336 Psychology, the 'new,' 358 REALISM, Scholastic, 15; 'new,' 362 Reid, Thomas, ' philosophy of Common Sense,' 230, 232 ; the ' ideal theory,' 230 ; and Hume, 230 ; ' simple appre- hension,' 231 ; judgment, 232 ; ' judgments of nature ' or 'natural suggestions,' 232; and Priestley, 233 ; Kant on, 233 ; compared with Kant, 235 ; defects, 236 Re*musat, Charles de, quoted, 12 Robertson, G. Croom, quoted, 2, ii,7i Rousseau, 75 Royce, Josiah, 359 Russell, Bertrand, 362 SCHILLER, F. C. S., 363, 365 Scholasticism, 3, 5, 10, 14 Science, its influence on English philosophy, 238, 359 Scottish philosophy, Reid the founder of, 227, 230"; in France, 236 ; in America, 236 372 INDEX Selby-Bigge, L. A., quoted, 142, 156 Shaftesbury, Earl of, style, 189 ; constitution of human nature, 190; moral sense, 191; dis- interestedness of virtue, 193 ; obligation, 193 ; the good and pleasure, 194 Shawcross, J. , quoted, 322, 323 Sidgwick, Henry, ethical theory, 297 ; quoted, 215 Smith, Adam, sympathy, 212 ; psychological interest of his theory, 213; social nature of morality, 214; self-interest, 215 ; style, 216 Smith, John, 84 Sorley, W. R., quoted, 10, 78 ; referred to, 94 ., 360 Spedding, James, quoted, 54 Spencer, Herbert, systematic character of his philosophy, 284 ; his independence, 285 ; the ' synthetic philosophy,' 286 ; ultimate scientific ideas, 286 ; force, 287 ; persistence of force, 287 ; uniformity of law, 288 ; equivalence of forces, 288 ; law of evolution, 289; dissolution, 291; ethical interest, 291 ; Social Statics, 292 ; moral sense, 292 ; empirical and rational utili- tarianism, 292 ; absolute and relative ethics, 293 ; justice, 294 ; prudence and beneficence, 294 ; evolution and ethics, 294 ; sense of duty, 294 ; intuitionism and empiricism, 294 ; the individual and the State, 295 ; style, 296 ; ag- nosticism, 305 Spinoza, 9 Stephen, Leslie, quoted, 189, 190, 207, 209, 210, 215, 220, 221, 222, 223, 246, 258, 319 Stewart, Dugald, 236 Stirling, J. Hutchison, 341 TAINE, H., quoted, 264 Taylor, A. E., quoted, 60, 73 Toleration, 80, 118 Tucker, Abraham, and Gay, 217 ; and Locke, 218; 'translation,' 218 ; ultimate good, 218 ; self- interest as motive, 218 ; virtue and self-interest, 219 ; style, 221 Tulloch, John, quoted, 81, 82, 83 UTILITARIANS, The, 240 WALLACE, WILLIAM, 343 Ward, James, 359 Westcott, B. F., quoted, 83 Whichcote, Benjamin, 80, 84, 88 Windelband, referred to, 30 ; quoted, 150 4t i Printed by BALLANTVNE, HANSON & Co. Edinburgh <5r> London UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. SEP1 LD-Uffl. Form L9-Series 444 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY A A r\f\+* . "I" I II A A 000011455