Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Ent.i.tled, "Examination of Sir William Hamilton"s Philosophy."
by George Grote.
_An Examination of Sir William Hamilton"s Philosophy, and of the Princ.i.p.al Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings_. By JOHN STUART MILL. London: Longmans. 1865.
The work bearing the above t.i.tle is an octavo volume, consisting of twenty-eight chapters, and five hundred and sixty pages. This is no great amount of print; but the amount of matter contained in it is prodigious, and the quality of that matter such as to require a full stretch of attention. Mr Mill gives his readers no superfluous sentences, scarcely even a superfluous word, above what is necessary to express his meaning briefly and clearly. Of such a book no complete abstract can be given in the s.p.a.ce to which we are confined.
To students of philosophy--doubtless but a minority among the general circle of English readers--this work comes recommended by the strongest claims both of interest and instruction. It presents in direct ant.i.thesis two most conspicuous representatives of the modern speculative mind of England--Sir W. Hamilton and Mr John Stuart Mill.
Sir W. Hamilton has exercised powerful influence over the stream of thought during the present generation. The lectures on Logic and Metaphysics delivered by him at Edinburgh, for twenty years, determined the view taken of those subjects by a large number of aspiring young students, and determined that view for many of them permanently and irrevocably.[1] Several eminent teachers and writers of the present day are proud of considering themselves his disciples, enunciate his doctrines in greater or less proportion, and seldom contradict him without letting it be seen that they depart unwillingly from such a leader. Various new phrases and psychological ill.u.s.trations have obtained footing in treatises of philosophy, chiefly from his authority.
We do not number ourselves among his followers; but we think his influence on philosophy was in many ways beneficial. He kept up the idea of philosophy as a subject to be studied from its own points of view: a dignity which in earlier times it enjoyed, perhaps, to mischievous excess, but from which in recent times it has far too much receded--especially in England. He performed the great service of labouring strenuously to piece together the past traditions of philosophy, to re-discover those which had been allowed to drop into oblivion, and to make out the genealogy of opinions as far as negligent predecessors had still left the possibility of doing so.
The forty-six lectures on Metaphysics, and the thirty-five lectures on Logic, published by Messrs Mansel and Veitch, const.i.tute the biennial course actually delivered by Sir W. Hamilton in the Professorial Chair.
They ought therefore to be looked at chiefly with reference to the minds of youthful hearers, as preservatives against that mischief forcibly described by Rousseau--"L"inhabitude de penser dans la jeunesse en ote la capacite pendant le reste de la vie."
Now, in a subject so abstract, obscure, and generally unpalatable, as Logic and Metaphysics, the difficulty which the teacher finds in inspiring interest is extreme. That Sir W. Hamilton overcame such difficulty with remarkable success, is the affirmation of his two editors; and our impression, as readers of his lectures, disposes us to credit them. That Sir W. Hamilton should have done this effectively is in itself sufficient to stamp him as a meritorious professor--as a worthy successor to the chair of Dugald Stewart, whose unrivalled perfection in that department is attested by every one. Many a man who ultimately adopted speculative opinions opposed to Dugald Stewart, received his first impulse and guidance in the path of speculation from the lasting impression made by Stewart"s lectures.
But though we look at these lectures, as they ought to be looked at, chiefly with a view to the special purpose for which they were destined, we are far from insinuating that they have no other merits, or that they are useless for readers who have already a metaphysical creed of their own. We have found them both instructive and interesting: they go over a large proportion of the field of speculative philosophy, partly from the point of view (not always the same) belonging to the author, partly from that of numerous predecessors whom he cites. We recognize also in Sir W.
Hamilton an amount of intellectual independence which seldom accompanies such vast erudition. He recites many different opinions, but he judges them all for himself; and, what is of still greater moment, he constantly gives the reasons for his judgments. To us these reasons are always of more or less value, whether we admit them to be valid or not.
Many philosophers present their own doctrine as if it were so much ascertained and acknowledged truth, either intimating, or leading you to suppose, that though erroneous beliefs to the contrary formerly prevailed, these have now become discredited with every one. We do not censure this way of proceeding, but we prefer the manner of Sir W.
Hamilton. He always keeps before us divergence and discrepancy of view as the normal condition of reasoned truth or philosophy; the characteristic postulate of which is, that every affirmative and every negative shall have its appropriate reasons clearly and fully enunciated.
In this point of view the appendix annexed to the lectures is also valuable; and the four copious appendixes or dissertations following the edition of Reid"s works, are more valuable still. How far Sir W.
Hamilton has there furnished good proof of his own doctrines on External Perception, and on the Primary Qualities of Matter, we shall not now determine; but to those who dissent from him, as well as to those who agree with him, his reasonings on these subjects are highly instructive: while the full citations from so many other writers contribute materially not only to elucidate the points directly approached, but also to enlarge our knowledge of philosophy generally. We set particular value upon this preservation of the traditions of philosophy, and upon this maintenance of a known perpetual succession among the speculative minds of humanity, with proper comparisons and contrasts. We have found among the names quoted by Sir W. Hamilton, and, thanks to his care, several authors hardly at all known to us, and opinions cited from them not less instructive than curious. He deserves the more grat.i.tude, because he departs herein from received usage since Bacon and Descartes.
The example set by these great men was admirable, so far as it went to throw off the authority of predecessors; but pernicious so far as it banished those predecessors out of knowledge, like mere magazines of immaturity and error. Throughout the eighteenth century, all study of the earlier modes of philosophizing was, for the most part, neglected.
Of such neglect, remarkable instances are pointed out by Sir W.
Hamilton.
While speaking about the general merits and philosophical position of Sir William Hamilton, we have hitherto said nothing about those of Mr Mill. But before we proceed to a.n.a.lyze the separate chapters of his volume, we must devote a few words to the fulfilment of another obligation.
Mr John Stuart Mill has not been the first to bestow honour on the surname which he bears. His father, Mr James Mill, had already enn.o.bled the name. An ampler t.i.tle to distinction in history and philosophy can seldom be produced than that which Mr James Mill left behind him. We know no work which surpa.s.ses his "History of British India" in the main excellencies attainable by historical writers: industrious acc.u.mulation, continued for many years, of original authorities--careful and conscientious criticism of their statements--and a large command of psychological a.n.a.lysis, enabling the author to interpret phenomena of society, both extremely complicated, and far removed from his own personal experience. Again, Mr James Mill"s "Elements of Political Economy" were, at the time when they appeared, the most logical and condensed exposition of the entire science then existing. Lastly, his latest avowed production, the "a.n.a.lysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind," is a model of perspicuous exposition of complex states of consciousness, carried farther than by any other author before him; and ill.u.s.trating the fulness which such exposition may be made to attain, by one who has faith in the comprehensive principle of a.s.sociation, and has learnt the secret of tracing out its innumerable windings. It is, moreover, the first work in which the great fact of Indissoluble a.s.sociation is brought into its due theoretical prominence. These are high merits, of which lasting evidence is before the public; but there were other merits in Mr James Mill, less publicly authenticated, yet not less real. His unpremeditated oral exposition was hardly less effective than his prepared work with the pen; his colloquial fertility on philosophical subjects, his power of discussing himself, and of stimulating others to discuss, his ready responsive inspirations through all the shifts and windings of a sort of Platonic dialogue--all these accomplishments were, to those who knew him, even more impressive than what he composed for the press. Conversation with him was not merely instructive, but provocative to the dormant intelligence. Of all persons whom we have known, Mr James Mill was one who stood least remote from the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic--[Greek: _Tou didhonai kahi dhechesthai lhogon_]--(the giving and receiving of reasons) competent alike to examine others, or to be examined by them, on philosophy. When to this we add a strenuous character, earnest convictions, and single-minded devotion to truth, with an utter disdain of mere paradox--it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful intellectual ascendancy over younger minds. Several of those who enjoyed his society--men now at, or past, the maturity of life, and some of them in distinguished positions--remember and attest with grat.i.tude such ascendancy in their own cases: among them the writer of the present article, who owes to the historian of British India an amount of intellectual stimulus and guidance such as he can never forget.
When a father, such as we have described, declining to send his son either to school or college, const.i.tuted himself schoolmaster from the beginning, and performed that duty with laborious solicitude--when, besides full infusion of modern knowledge, the forcing process applied by the Platonic Socrates to the youth-Theaetetus, was administered by Mr James Mill, continuously and from an earlier age, to a youthful mind not less pregnant than that of Theaetetus--it would be surprising if the son thus trained had not reached even a higher eminence than his father. The fruit borne by Mr John Stuart Mill has been worthy of the culture bestowed, and the volume before us is at once his latest and his ripest product.
The "Examination of Sir William Hamilton"s Philosophy" is intended by Mr Mill (so he tells us in the preface to the sixth published edition of his "System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive") as a sequel and complement to that system. We are happy to welcome so valuable an addition; but with or without that addition, the "System of Logic"
appears to us to present the most important advance in speculative theory which the present century has witnessed. Either half of it, the Ratiocinative or the Inductive, would have surpa.s.sed any previous work on the same subject. The Inductive half discriminates and brings into clear view, for the first time, those virtues of method which have insensibly grown into habits among consummate scientific inquirers of the post-Baconian age, as well as the fallacies by which some of these authors have been misled. The Ratiocinative half, dealing with matters which had already been well handled by Dutrieu and other scholastic logicians, invests their dead though precise formalism with a real life and application to the actual process of finding and proving truth. But besides thus working each half up to perfection, Mr Mill has performed the still more difficult task of overcoming the repugnance, apparently an inveterate repugnance, between them, so as chemically to combine the two into one h.o.m.ogeneous compound; thus presenting the problem of Reasoned Truth, Inference, Proof, and Disproof, as one connected whole.
For ourselves, we still recollect the mist which was cleared from our minds when we first read the "System of Logic," very soon after it was published. We were familiar with the Syllogistic Logic in Burgersdicius and Dutrieu; we were also familiar with examples of the best procedure in modern inductive science; but the two streams flowed altogether apart in our minds, like two parallel lines never joining nor approaching. The irreconcilability of the two was at once removed, when we had read and mastered the second and third chapters of the Second Book of the "System of Logic;" in which Mr Mill explains the functions and value of the Syllogism, and the real import of its major premiss. This explanation struck us at the time as one of the most profound and original efforts of metaphysical thought that we had ever perused, and we see no reason to retract that opinion now.[2] It appears all the more valuable when we contrast it with what is said by Mr Mill"s two contemporaries--Hamilton and Whately: the first of whom retains the ancient theory of reasoning, as being only a methodized transition from a whole to its parts, and from the parts up to the whole--Induction being only this ascending part of the process, whereby, after having given a complete enumeration of all the compound parts, you conclude to the sum total described in one word as a whole;[3] while the second (Whately) agrees in subordinating Induction to Syllogism, but does so in a different way--by representing inductive reasoning as a syllogism, with its major premiss suppressed, from which major premiss it derived its authority. The explanation of Mr Mill attacks the problem from the opposite side. It subordinates syllogism to induction, the technical to the real; it divests the major premiss of its illusory pretence to be itself the proving authority, or even any real and essential part of the proof--and acknowledges it merely as a valuable precautionary test and security for avoiding mistake in the process of proving. Taking Mr Mill"s "System of Logic" as a whole, it is one of the books by which we believe ourselves to have most profited. The principles of it are constantly present to our mind when engaged in investigations of evidence, whether scientific or historical.
Concerned as we are here with Mr Mill only as a logician and philosopher, we feel precluded from adverting to his works on other topics--even to his "Elements of Political Economy," by which he is probably more widely known than by anything else. Of the many obligations which Political Economy owes to him, one only can be noticed consistent with the scope of the present article: the care which he has taken--he alone, or at least, he more explicitly and formally than any other expositor--to set forth the general position of that science in the aggregate field of scientific research; its relation to sociology as a whole, or to other fractions thereof, how far derivative or co-ordinate; what are its fundamental postulates or hypotheses, with what limits the logical methods of induction and deduction are applicable to it, and how far its conclusions may be relied on as approximations to truth. All these points will be found instructively handled in the Sixth Book of Mr Mill"s "System of Logic," as well as in his smaller and less known work, "Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy." We find him, while methodizing and ill.u.s.trating the data of the special science, uniformly keeping in view its relation to philosophy as a whole.
But there is yet another work in which the interests of philosophy, as a whole, come into the foreground and become the special object of vindication in their largest compa.s.s and most vital requirements. We mean Mr Mill"s "Essay on Liberty," one half of which takes for its thesis the _libertus philosophandi_. He maintains, emphatically, in this book, the full dignity of reasoned truth against all the jealous exigencies of traditional dogma and self-justifying sentiment. He claims the most unreserved liberty of utterance for negative and affirmative on all questions--not merely for the purpose of discriminating truth from falsehood, but also to keep up in individual minds the full sense and understanding of the matters controverted, in place of a mere partial and one-sided adhesion. At first sight, indeed, it might seem as if Mr Mill was fighting with a shadow; for liberty of philosophizing is a postulate which, in general terms, every one concedes. But when you come to fathom the real feelings which underlie this concession, you discover that almost every man makes it under reserves which, though acting in silence, are not the less efficacious. Every one has some dogmas which he cannot bear to hear advocated, and others which he will not allow to be controverted in his presence. A writer has to consider not merely by what reasons any novelty of belief or disbelief may be justified, but also how much it will be safe for him to publish, having regard to the irritable sore places of the public judgment. In July, 1864, we were present at the annual meeting of the French Academy at Paris, where the prizes for essays sent in, pursuant to subjects announced for study beforehand, are awarded. We heard the t.i.tles of various compositions announced by the President (M. Villemain), with a brief critical estimate of each. Their comparative merits were appreciated, and the prize awarded to one of the compet.i.tors. Among the compositions sent to compete for the prize, one was a work by M. Taine, upon which the President bestowed the most remarkable encomiums, in every different point of view: extent of knowledge, force of thought, style, arrangement, all were praised in a manner which we have rarely heard exceeded. Nevertheless, the prize was not awarded to this work, but to another which the President praised in a manner decidedly less marked and emphatic. What was here the _ratio decidendi_? The reason was, and the President declared it in the most explicit language, that the work of M. Taine _was deeply tainted with materialism_. "Sans doute," said the esteemed veteran of French literature in p.r.o.nouncing his award, "sans doute les opinions sont libres, _mais_"--It is precisely against this _mais_--ushering in the special anathematized or consecrated conclusion which it is intended to except from the general liberty of enforcing or impugning--in matters of philosophical discussion, that Mr Mill, in the "Essay on Liberty," declares war as champion of Reasoned Truth.
He handles this grand theme--_eleythheroys eleythheros philosophein_--involving as it does the best interests of philosophy, as an instructress to men"s judgments, and a stimulus to their intelligence--with great depth of psychological a.n.a.lysis sustained by abundant historical ill.u.s.tration. And he in the same volume discusses most profitably another question akin to it--To what extent, and by what principles, the interference of others is justifiable, in restraining the liberty of taste and action for each individual? A question at once grave and neglected, but the discussion of which does not belong to our present article.
A new work from one who has already manifested such mastery of philosophy, both in principle and in detail, and a work exhibiting the a.n.a.lysis and appreciation of the philosophical views of an eminent contemporary, must raise the highest expectation. We think no reader will be disappointed who peruses Mr Mill"s "Examination," and we shall now endeavour to give some account of the manner in which he performs it. Upon topics so abstract and subtle as the contents of this volume, the ant.i.thesis between two rival theories is the best way, and often the only way, for bringing truth into clear view; and the "Examination" here before us is professedly controversy. But of controversy in its objectionable sense--of captious or acrimonious personality--not a trace will here be found. A dignified, judicial equanimity of tone is preserved from first to last. Moreover, though the t.i.tle and direct purpose of the volume is negative and critical, yet the destructive criticism is pervaded by many copious veins of constructive exposition, embodying Mr Mill"s own views upon some of the most intricate problems of metaphysics.
Mr Mill begins his work by a.n.a.lyzing and explaining the doctrine called the Relativity of Human Knowledge:
"The doctrine (chap. ii. p. 5) which is thought to belong in the most especial manner to Sir W. Hamilton, and which was the ground of his opposition to the transcendentalism of the later French and German metaphysicians, is that which he and others have called the Relativity of Human Knowledge. It is the subject of the most generally known and impressive of all his writings--the one which first revealed to the English metaphysical reader that a new power had arisen in philosophy. Together with its developments, it composes the Philosophy of the Conditioned, which he opposed to the French and German philosophies of the Absolute, and which is regarded by most of his admirers as the greatest of his t.i.tles to a permanent place in the history of metaphysical thought. But, "the relativity of human knowledge," like most other phrases into which the words _relative_ or _relation_ enter, is vague, and admits of a great variety of meanings,"
&c.
Mr Mill then proceeds to distinguish these various meanings, and to determine in which of them the phrase is understood by Sir W. Hamilton.
One meaning is, that we only know anything by knowing it as distinguished from something else--that all consciousness is of difference. It is not, however, in this sense that the expression is ordinarily or intentionally used by Sir W. Hamilton, though he fully recognizes the truth which, when thus used, it serves to express. In general, when he says that all our knowledge is relative, the relation he has in view is not between the thing known and other objects compared with it, but between the thing known and the mind knowing--(p. 6).
The doctrine in this last meaning is held by different philosophers in two different forms. Some (e.g. Berkeley, Hume, Ferrier, &c.), usually called Idealists, maintain not merely that all we can possibly know of anything is the manner in which it affects the human faculties, but that there is nothing else to be known; that affections of human or of other minds are all that we can know to exist--that the difference between the ego and the non-ego is only a formal distinction between two aspects of the same reality. Other philosophers (Brown, Mr Herbert Spencer, Auguste Comte, with many others) believe that the ego and the non-ego denote two realities, each self-existent, and neither dependent on the other; that the Noumenon, or "thing _per se_," is in itself a different thing from the Phenomenon, and equally or more real, but that, though we know its existence, we have no means of knowing what it is. All that we can know is, relatively to ourselves, the modes in which it affects us, or the phenomena which it produces--(pp. 9--11).
The doctrine of Relativity, as held by Kant and his many followers, is next distinguished from the same doctrine as held by Hartley, James Mill, Professor Bain, &c., compatible with either acceptance or rejection of the Berkeleian theory. Kant maintains that the attributes which we ascribe to outward things, or which are inseparable from them in thought, contain additional elements over and above sensations _plus_ an unknowable cause--additional elements added by the mind itself, and therefore still only relative, but const.i.tuting the original furniture of the mind itself--inherent laws, partly of our sensitive, partly of our intellectual faculty. It is on this latter point that Hartley and those going along with him diverge. Admitting the same additional elements, these philosophers do not ascribe to the mind any innate forms to account for them, but hold that place, extension, substance, cause, and the rest, &c., are conceptions put together out of ideas of sensation, by the known laws of a.s.sociation--(pp. 12--14).
Partial Relativity is the opinion professed by most philosophers (and by most persons who do not philosophize). They hold that we know things partly as they are in themselves, partly as they are merely in relation to us.
This discrimination of the various schools of philosophers is highly instructive, and is given with the full perspicuity belonging to Mr Mill"s style. He proceeds to examine in what sense Sir W. Hamilton maintained the Relativity of Human Knowledge. He cites pa.s.sages both from the "Discussions on Philosophy" and from the Lectures, in which that doctrine is both affirmed in its greatest amplitude, and enunciated in the most emphatic language--(pp. 17, 18, 22, 23). But he also produces extracts from the most elaborate of Sir W. Hamilton"s "Dissertations on Reid," in which a doctrine quite different and inconsistent is proclaimed--that our knowledge is only partially, not wholly, relative; that the secondary qualities of matter, indeed, are known to us only relatively, but that the primary qualities are known to us as they are in themselves, or as they exist objectively, and that they may be even evolved by demonstration _a priori_--(pp. 19-26, 30).
The inconsistency between the two doctrines, professed at different times, and in different works, by Sir W. Hamilton, is certainly manifest. Mr Mill is of opinion that one of the two must be taken "in a non-natural sense," and that Sir W. Hamilton either did not hold, or had ceased to hold, the doctrine of the full relativity of knowledge (pp.
20-28)--the hypothesis of a flat contradiction being in his view inadmissible. But we think it at least equally possible that Sir W.
Hamilton held both the two opinions in their natural sense, and enforced both of them _at different times_ by argument; his attention never having been called to the contradiction between them. That such forgetfulness was quite possible, will appear clearly in many parts of the present article. His argument in support of both is equally characterized by that peculiar energy of style which is frequent with him, and which no way resembles the qualifying refinements of one struggling to keep clear of a perceived contradiction.
From hence Mr Mill (chap. iv.) proceeds to criticise at considerable length what he justly denominates the celebrated and striking review of Cousin"s philosophy, which forms the first paper in Sir W. Hamilton"s "Discussions on Philosophy." According to Mr Mill--
"The question really at issue is this: Have we or have we not an immediate intuition of G.o.d? The name of G.o.d is veiled under two extremely abstract phrases, "The Infinite and the Absolute," perhaps from a reverential feeling; such, at least, is the reason given by Sir W. Hamilton"s disciple, Mr Mansel, for preferring the more vague expressions; but it is one of the most unquestionable of all logical maxims, that the meaning of the abstract must be sought for in the concrete, and not conversely; and we shall see, both in the case of Sir William Hamilton, and of Mr Mansel, that the process cannot be reversed with impunity."--p. 32.
Upon this we must remark, that though the "logical maxim" here laid down by Mr Mill may be generally sound, we think the application of it inconvenient in the present case. Discussions on points of philosophy are best conducted without either invoking or offending religious feeling. M. Cousin maintains that we have a direct intuition of the Infinite and the Absolute: Sir W. Hamilton denies that we have. Upon this point Mr Mill sides entirely with Sir W. Hamilton, and considers "that the latter has rendered good service to philosophy by refuting M.
Cousin," though much of the reasoning employed in such refutation seems to Mr Mill unsound. But Sir W. Hamilton goes further, and affirms that we have no faculties capable of apprehending the Infinite and the Absolute--that both of them are inconceivable to us, and by consequence unknowable. Herein Mr Mill is opposed to him, and controverts his doctrine in an elaborate argument.
Of this argument, able and ingenious, like all those in the present volume, our limits only enable us to give a brief appreciation. In so far as Mr Mill controverts Sir W. Hamilton, we think him perfectly successful, though there are some points in his reasoning in which we do not fully concur.
In our opinion, as in his, the Absolute alone (in its sense as opposed to relative) can be necessarily unknowable, inconceivable, incogitable.
Nothing which falls under the condition of relativity can be declared to be so. The structure of our minds renders us capable of knowing everything which is relative, though there are many such things which we have no evidence, nor shall ever get evidence, to enable us to know. Now the Infinite falls within the conditions of relativity, as indeed Sir W.
Hamilton himself admits, when he intimates (p. 58) that though it cannot be known, it is, must be, and ought to be, _believed_ by us, according to the marked distinction which he draws between belief and knowledge.
We agree with Mr Mill in the opinion that it is thinkable, conceivable, knowable. Doubtless we do not conceive it adequately, but we conceive it sufficiently to discuss and reason upon it intelligibly to ourselves and others. That we conceive the Infinite inadequately, is not to be held as proof that we do not conceive it at all; for in regard to finite things also, we conceive the greater number of them only inadequately.
We cannot construe to the imagination a polygon with an infinite number of sides (i.e. with a number of sides greater than any given number), but neither can we construe to the imagination a polygon with a million of sides; nevertheless, we understand what is meant by the first description as well as by the second, and can reason upon both. There is, indeed, this difference between the two: That the terms used in describing the first, proclaim at once in their direct meaning that we should in vain attempt to construe it to the imagination; whereas the terms used in describing the second do not intimate that fact. We know the fact only by trial, or by an estimate of our own mental force which is the result of many past trials. If the difference here noted were all which Sir W. Hamilton has in view when he declares the Infinite to be unknowable and incogitable, we should accede to his opinion; but we apprehend that he means much more, and he certainly requires more to justify the marked ant.i.thesis in which he places himself against M.
Cousin and Hegel. Indeed, the facility with which he declares matters to be incogitable, which these two and other philosophers not only cogitate but maintain as truth, is to us truly surprising. The only question which appears to us important is, whether we can understand and reason upon the meaning of the terms and propositions addressed to us. If we can, the subjects propounded must be cogitable and conceivable, whether we admit the propositions affirmed concerning them or not; if we cannot, then these subjects are indeed incogitable by ourselves in the present state of our knowledge, but they may not be so to our opponent who employs the terms.
In criticising the arguments of Sir W. Hamilton against M. Cousin, Mr Mill insists much on a distinction between (1) the Infinite, and (2) the Infinite in any one or more positive attributes, such as infinite wisdom, goodness, redness, hardness, &c.[4] He thinks that Sir W.
Hamilton has made out his case against the first, but not against the last; that the first is really "an unmeaning and senseless abstraction,"
a fasciculus of negations, unknowable and inconceivable, but not the last. We think that Mr Mill makes more of this distinction than the case warrants; that the first is not unmeaning, but an intelligible abstraction, only a higher reach of abstraction than the last; that it is knowable inadequately, in the same way as the last--though more inadequately, because of its higher abstraction.
As the finite is intelligible, so also is its negation--the Infinite: we do not say (with M. Cousin) that the two are conjointly given in consciousness--but the two are understood and partially apprehended by the mind conjointly and in contrast. Though the Infinite is doubtless negative as to a degree, it is not wholly or exclusively negative, since it includes a necessary reference to some positive attribute, to which the degree belongs; the positive element is not eliminated, but merely left undetermined. The Infinite (like the Finite, [Greek: to peperasmhenon--to hapeiron]) is a genus; it comprehends under it the Infinitely Hard and the Infinitely Soft, the Infinitely Swift and the Infinitely Slow--the infinite, in short, of any or all positive attributes. It includes, doubtless, "a farrago of contradictions;" but so, also, does the Finite--and so, also, do the actual manifestations of the real, concrete universe, which manifestations const.i.tute a portion of the Finite. Whoever attempts to give any philosophical account of the generation of the universe, tracing its phenomena, as an aggregate, to some ultra-phenomenal origin, must include in his scheme a _fundamentum_ for all those opposite and contradictory manifestations which experience discloses in the universe. There always have been, and still are, many philosophers who consider the Abstract and General to be prior both in nature and time to the Concrete and Particular; and who hold further that these two last are explained, when presented as determinate and successive manifestations of the two first, which they conceive as indeterminate and sempiternal. Now the Infinite (Ens Infinitum or Entia Infinita, according to the point of view in which we look at it) is a generic word, including all these supposed indeterminate antecedents; and including therefore, of course, many contradictory agencies. But this does not make it senseless or unmeaning; nor can we distinguish it from "the Infinite in some one or more given attributes," by any other character than by greater reach of abstraction. We cannot admit the marked distinction which Mr Mill contends for--that the one is unknowable and the other knowable.
It may be proper to add that the mode of philosophizing which we have just described is not ours. We do not agree in this way either of conceiving, or of solving, the problem of philosophy. But it is a mode so prevalent that Trendelenberg speaks of it, justly enough, as "the ancient Hysteron-Proteron of Abstraction." The doctrine of these philosophers appears to us unfounded, but we cannot call it unmeaning.
In another point, also, we differ from Mr Mill respecting that inferior abstraction which he calls "the Infinite in some particular attribute."
He speaks as if this could be known not only as an abstraction, a conceivable, an ideal--but also as a concrete reality; as if "we could know a concrete reality as infinite or as absolute" (p. 45); as if there really existed in actual nature "concrete persons or things possessing infinitely or absolutely certain specific attributes"--(pp. 55--93). To this doctrine we cannot subscribe. As we understand concrete reality, we find no evidence to believe that there exist in nature any real concrete persons or things, possessing to an infinite degree such attributes as they do possess: _e.g._ any men infinitely wise or infinitely strong, any horses infinitely swift, any stones infinitely hard. Such concrete real objects appear to us not admissible, because experience not only has not certified their existence in any single case, but goes as far to disprove their existence as it can do to disprove anything. All the real objects in nature known to us by observation are finite, and possess only in a finite measure their respective attributes. Upon this is founded the process of Science, so comprehensively laid out by Mr Mill in his "System of Logic "--Induction, Deduction from general facts attested by Induction, Verification by experience of the results obtained by Deduction. The attributes, whiteness or hardness, in the abstract, are doubtless infinite; that is, the term will designate, alike and equally, any degree of whiteness or hardness which you may think of, and any unknown degree even whiter and harder than what you think of. But when perceived as invested in a given ma.s.s of snow or granite before us, they are divested of that indeterminateness, and become restricted to a determinate measure and degree.
Having thus indicated the points on which we are compelled to dissent from Mr Mill"s refutation of Sir W. Hamilton in the pleading against M.
Cousin, we shall pa.s.s to the seventh chapter, in which occurs his first controversy with Mr Mansel. This pa.s.sage has excited more interest, and will probably be remembered by a larger number of readers, than any portion of the book. We shall give it in his own words (pp. 99--103), since the energetic phraseology is quite as remarkable as the thought:--