The doctrines of Malthus, of Ricardo and of Ricardo"s disciples are subjected to a searching a.n.a.lysis by Mr. Stephen, who brings out their limitations very effectively. Yet it is by no means easy, even under our author"s skilful guidance, to follow the Utilitarian track through the fields of economy, philosophy, and theology, and to show in what manner or degree it led up to the issues under discussion in our own time. All these "streams of tendency" have had their influence on the main current and direction of contemporary politics, but they cannot be measured or mapped out upon the scale of a review. And, in regard to political economy, we may even venture to question whether the earlier dogmatic theories now retain sufficient interest to justify the s.p.a.ce which, in this volume, has been devoted to a scrutiny of them; for their methods, as well as their conclusions, have now become to a certain extent obsolete. A strictly empirical science must be continually changing with fresh data and a broader outlook; it is always shifting under stress of new interests, changed feelings, and unforeseen contingencies; it is very serviceable for the exposure of errors, but its own demonstrations are in time proved to be erroneous or inadequate. Moreover, to explain the ills that afflict a society, and to declare them incurable except by patience and slow alterative medicines, is often to render them intolerable; nor is it of much practical importance to lay out, on hard scientific principles, the methodical operation of causes and effects that have always been understood in a rough experimental way.
"The truth that scarcity meant dearness was apparently well known to Joseph in Egypt, and applied very skilfully for his purpose.
Economists have framed a theory of value which explains more precisely the way in which this is brought about. A clear statement may be valuable to psychologists; but for most purposes of political economy Joseph"s knowledge is sufficient,"
If Joseph had written a treatise on the agrarian tenures of Egypt he might not have bought them up so easily at famine prices, and he might have entangled himself in a discussion upon peasant properties.
The economist who makes an inductive demonstration of unalterable natural laws and propensities may be likened to the scientific legislator who undertakes to codify prevailing usages: he turns an elastic custom, constantly modified in practice by needs and sentiments, into an unbending statute, when the bare unvarnished statement of the principle produces an outcry. Natural processes will not bear calm philosophic explanations that are understood to imply approval of them as cruel but inevitable; not even in such an essentially moralistic argument as that of Butler"s "a.n.a.logy," which some have regarded as a plea of ambiguous advantage to the cause of natural religion. Malthus, for example, proved undeniably the pernicious consequences of reckless propagation; but he who forces a great evil upon public attention is expected to find the practical remedy; and Malthus had little to prescribe beyond a few palliative measures and the expediency of self-restraint, while his proposal to abolish the poor laws in the interest of pauperism was interpreted as a recommendation that poor folk should be starved into prudential and self-reliant habits. Malthus held, indeed, that the improvement of the condition of the labouring cla.s.ses should be considered as the main interest of society. But he also thought that
"to improve their condition, it is essential to impress them with the conviction that they can do much more for themselves than others can do for them, and that the _only_ source of their permanent improvement is the improvement of their moral and religious habits. What government can do, therefore, is to maintain such inst.i.tutions as may strengthen the _vis medicatrix_, or desire to better our condition, which poor laws had directly tended to weaken."
There is much wisdom to be found in these counsels; but good advice rather excites than allays the ignorant impatience of acute suffering, and popular opinion soon began to inquire whether the _vis medicatrix_ might not be administered in some more drastic form by the State. The conception of a rational government superintending, without interference, the slow evolution of morals, had a kind of correspondence, in the religious sphere, with the doctrine of pre-established harmonies so clearly ordained that to suggest any need of further Divine interposition to readjust them occasionally was a reflection upon the wisdom and foresight of Providence. But the stress and exigencies of modern party politics has rendered this att.i.tude untenable for the temporal ruler.
The pure economists, however, prescribed moral remedies without investigating the elements of morality. They settled the laws of production and distribution as eliminated from the observation of ordinary facts; they corrected errors and registered the mechanical working of human desires and efforts. It is Mr. Stephen"s plan, throughout this book, to show the bearing of philosophical speculation on practical conduct; and accordingly, after his chapter on Malthus and the Ricardians, he turns back again to philosophy and ethics. His clear and cogent exposition of the views and conclusions put forward on these subjects by Thomas Brown, with the express approval of James Mill, is an ill.u.s.tration of Coleridge"s dictum regarding the connection between abstract theories and political movements.
Admitting the connection, we may again observe that there is a certain danger in stating the theories too scientifically. Neither morals nor religion are much aided by digging down into their foundations. Yet the logical constructor of a new system usually finds himself driven by controversy into a discussion of ultimate ideas, though the Utilitarians refused to be forced back into metaphysics. No professor of philosophy, however, can altogether avoid asking himself what underlies experience and the formation of beliefs; and Brown did his best for the Utilitarians by defining Intuition as a belief that pa.s.ses a.n.a.lysis, a principle independent of human reasoning, which "does not allow us to pa.s.s a single step beyond experience, but merely authorises us to interpret experience." It was James Mill"s mission to cut short and to simplify philosophical aberrations for his practical purposes:
"As a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, he had not much time to spare for purely philosophic reading. He was not a professor in want of a system, but an energetic man of business, wishing to strike at the root of superst.i.tions to which his political opponents appealed for support. He had heard of Kant, and seen "what the poor man would be at"."
His own views are elaborated in his book on the _a.n.a.lysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, for a close criticism of which we must refer readers to Mr. Stephen"s second volume. The connection of these dissertations with the social and political ends of the Utilitarians lies, it may be said briefly, in the support which a purely experiential psychology gives to the doctrine that human character depends on external circ.u.mstance, and that such vague terms as the "moral sense" only disguise the true ident.i.ty of rules of morality with the considerations that can be shown to produce general happiness. Whenever there appears to be a conflict between these rules and considerations, utility is the only sure criterion. To the extreme situations in which casuistry revels, as when a man is called upon to sacrifice his life or his personal honour for his country"s good, the Utilitarian would apply this unfailing test inexorably; in such cases a man ought to decide upon a calculation of the greatest happiness of the majority. He does not, in fact, apply this reckoning; he may possibly not have time, at the urgent moment, to work it out; his heroism is inspired by the universal praise or blame that reward self-devotion or punish shrinking from it, and thus render acts moral or immoral by the habitual a.s.sociation of ideas. The martyr or patriot does not, indeed, stop to calculate; he does not feel the subtle egoism that is hidden in the desire for applause; he believes himself to be acting with the perfect disinterestedness which can only be accounted for by superficial reasoners on the a.s.sumption of some such abstract notion as religion, moral sense, or duty. Since the behaviour of mankind at large, therefore, is invariably guided by a remote or proximate consideration of utility; since conduct depends upon character, and character is shaped by external conditions and positive sanctions, it is possible to frame, on utilitarian principles, scientific rules of behaviour which can be powerfully, though indirectly, promoted by legislation and a system of enlightened polity. For morality, it is argued, can be materially a.s.sisted by pointing to, or even providing, the serious consequences that are inseparable from human misdeeds, by proving that pain or pleasure follows different kinds of behaviour; while motives are so complex that they can never be verified with certainty, and must therefore be left out of account. This anatomy of the springs of action obviously lays bare some truths, although they fit in much better with the department of the legislator than of the moralist. As Mr. Stephen forcibly shows, although the consideration of motive may fall very seldom within the sphere of legislation, yet no theory which should exclude its influence on the moral standard could be tolerated, since the motive is of primary importance in our ethical judgment of conduct. Nor has motive, as discriminated from intention, ever been kept entirely outside the criminal law, notwithstanding the danger of admitting, as an extenuation of some violent crime, that the offender had convinced himself that some religious or patriotic cause would be served by it. James Mill"s view of morals as theoretically coordinate with law--because in both departments the intention is the essential element in measuring actions according to their consequences--operated in practical contradiction to his principle of restraining State interference within narrow limits. It is this latter principle which has since given way. For the general trend of later political opinion has evidently been towards bringing public morality more and more under administrative regulation; and this manifestly indicates a growing expansion of ideas upon the legitimate duties and jurisdiction of the State.
Upon James Mill"s psychology Mr. Stephen"s conclusion, with which we may agree, is that his a.n.a.lysis of virtue into enlightened self-interest is unsuccessful, and we have seen that his conception of government, as an all-powerful machine resting upon, yet strictly limited by, public opinion, has failed on the side of the limitations.
Yet although Mill could not explain virtue, he was, after his fashion, a virtuous man, whose life was conscientiously devoted to public objects.
"His main purpose, too, was to lay down a rule of duty, almost mathematically ascertainable, and not to be disturbed by any sentimentalism, mysticism, or rhetorical foppery. If, in the attempt to free his hearers from such elements, he ran the risk of reducing morality to a lower level, and made it appear as unamiable as sound morality can appear, it must be admitted that in this respect, too, his theories reflected his personal character."
It is also probable that his theories, and his bitter controversies in defence of them, reacted on his personal character, and that both influences are to be traced beyond James Mill"s own life, in the mental and social prepossessions which he bequeathed to his son.
Mr. Stephen"s third volume is chiefly occupied by the history of the later Utilitarians, and the expansion of their cardinal principle in its application to a changing temper of the times, under the leadership of John Stuart Mill. We have, first, a closely written and critical description of this remarkable man"s early life, his stringent educational training, the development of his opinions, and their influence upon the orthodox tenets of the sect. Upon all these subjects Mill has left us, under his own hand, more intimate and circ.u.mstantial particulars than are to be found, perhaps, in any other personal memoir. The writer who tells his own story usually pa.s.ses hastily over boyhood; the ordinary biographer gives some family details, or endeavours to amuse us with trivial anecdotes of the child who became an important man. J. S. Mill hardly alludes to any member of his family except his father, and his early days are marked by a total absence of triviality. He was bound over to hard intellectual labour at home during the years that for most of us pa.s.s so lightly and unprofitably at a public school; he was a voracious and indefatigable reader and writer from his youth up, with a wolfish hunger (as Browning calls it) for knowledge; he plunged into all the current discussions of philosophy and politics; he became a practised writer and made a good figure at debating clubs; he became so intent on the solution of complex social problems as to acquire a distaste for general society; his mental concentration blunted his sensibility to the physical pa.s.sions that so powerfully sway mankind.
Nevertheless, Mill"s outlook upon the world was much wider than his father"s, and his aim was so to adjust the Utilitarian creed as to bring it into closer working accord with the advancing ideas and projects of the political parties to whom he was nearest in sympathy.
He allied himself in the beginning with the Philosophical Radicals, in the hope of organising them for active service in the cause. But this group soon broke up, and Mr. Stephen ascribes their failure in part to their name, observing that the word ""Philosophical" in English is synonymous with visionary, unpractical, and perhaps simply foolish."
There would be less satire, and possibly more justice, in saying that the word gives a chill to the energetic hot-gospeller of active Radicalism, who pushes past the philosopher as one standing too far behind the fighting line, although he may be useful in forging explosives in some quiet laboratory. Mill himself was continually hampered, as an ardent combatant, by the impedimenta which he brought into the field in the shape of abstract speculations, which could not be made to fit in with the immediate demands of thorough-going partisans. His democratic fervour was tempered by his conviction of the incapacity of the ma.s.ses. He was a Socialist "in the sense that he looked forward to a complete, though distant, revolution in the whole structure of society"; he discovered that the Chartists had crude views upon political economy; his att.i.tude toward factory legislation was very dubious. Yet in the main purpose of his life and writings, which was to mend and guide public opinion on social and political questions by theoretical treatment--that is, by a logically connected survey of the facts--he was undoubtedly successful, as is shown by the popularity of his two great works on _Logic_ and _Political Economy_, which became the text-books of higher study on these subjects for a whole generation. On the other hand, he exposed himself to the distrust and hostility that are always aroused by philosophical arguments which strike at the roots of established beliefs and prejudices, and are discovered to be really more dangerous to them than a direct a.s.sault.
It was the philosophic strategy of J. S. Mill to prosecute the Utilitarian war against metaphysics, and finally to exterminate Intuitions, being convinced, as he said, that the _a priori_ and spiritualistic thinkers still far exceeded the partisans of experience, and that a great majority of Englishmen were still Intuitionists. Is this actually a true account of English thought? Mr.
Stephen thinks not, for he believes that if Mill had not lived much apart from ordinary folk he would have found Englishmen practically, though not avowedly, predisposed to empiricism, which has been the philosophic tradition in this country since Hobbes. We so far agree with Mr. Stephen that we believe Englishmen, in general, to practise a great deal more of empiricism than they avow. But Mill proposed to demonstrate and declare it as a weapon in polemics and an engine of action, and it was here, probably, that the main body of Englishmen deserted him. They were not ready to cut themselves off from theology and from all ideas that transcend experience, and they demurred to the paramount jurisdiction of logic in temporal affairs. To every section of Churchmen the relegation of moral sanctions within the domain of verifiable consequences was a doctrine to be resisted strenuously.
With the high sacerdotalist it amounted to a denial of the Christian mysteries; to the Broad Churchman it was ethically inadequate and ign.o.ble; to the scholastic professor of divinity it meant ruinous materialism.
That a vigorous thinker should have begun by striking at what seemed to him the root of obstructive fallacies was natural enough. He supposed that a logical demonstration would clear the ground for his plans of reform; whereas, on the contrary, it entangled him in preliminary disputations, and his inflexible reasoning alarmed people who followed experience as the guide of life, but instinctively felt that there must be something beyond phenomenal existence. In political economy Mill relied upon common sense and practice in affairs to make the requisite allowance for general laws founded on human propensities regarded abstractedly. His conviction was, in short, that nothing should be taken for granted because everything might be explained; and he desired to tie men down to accepting no belief, or even feeling, that could not be justified by reason. His _System of Logic_ was, as he has himself written, a text-book for the doctrine "which derives all knowledge from experience, and all moral and intellectual qualities princ.i.p.ally from the direction given to the a.s.sociations."
When he proceeded to construct a systematic psychology upon this basis, he fell into the fundamental perplexities that are concisely brought out by Mr. Stephen in his scrutiny of Mill"s doctrine of Causation. He followed Hume in severing any necessary connection between cause and effect, and even invariable sequence became incapable of proof. But when he resolved Cause into a statement of existing conditions that can never be completely known until we have mastered the whole series of physical phenomena, and showed that all human induction is fallible because necessarily imperfect, it became clear that Mill had very little to offer in subst.i.tution for those grounds of ordinary belief that he was bent on demolishing. The word Cause is reduced, for ordinary use, to a signification not unlike that which is understood in loose popular language by the word Chance, since Chance means no more than ignorance of how an event came to pa.s.s; and in no case, according to Mill, can we ever calculate with security what undiscoverable conditions may suddenly bring about an unexpected event contrary to previous experience. The uniformity of Nature, as Mr. Stephen remarks, is thus made exceedingly precarious; and to the practical intelligence, which looks for some basis that cannot be argued about, there is still something to be said for Intuition. And when Mill, still in search of some precise formula, undertook to interpret persistent sequences by his theory of Real Kinds possessing an indeterminate number of coherent properties--so that our belief in the invariable blackness of crows is justified as a collocation of these visible properties--he merely throws the problem of Causation farther backward. We have to be content with direct observation of phenomena that can be cla.s.sified as co-existent; we can perceive that things accompany each other, but we can never be sure that they follow each other, as they appear to do.
It may be doubted whether Mill"s treatment of these problems has materially affected subsequent psychological speculation, which has since taken different and deeper courses. His main objective was social and political.
"The notion," he has written, "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 inst.i.tutions." In confounding the metaphysicians, and eliminating all mysterious a.s.sumptions or axioms, he aimed at clearing the ground for a demonstrable science of character, and to establish the great principle that character can be indefinitely modified. The way is thus opened to questions of conduct, to positive remedies for social and political evils which, as they have been generated and fostered by external circ.u.mstances, can be removed by a change of those circ.u.mstances.
"The greatest problems of the time were either economical or closely connected with economical principles. Mill had followed the political struggles with the keenest interest; he saw clearly their connection with underlying social movements; and he had thoroughly studied the science--or what he took to be the science--which must afford guidance for a satisfactory working out of the great problems. The Philosophical Radicals were deserting the old cause, and becoming insignificant as a party. But Mill had not lost his faith in the substantial soundness of their economic doctrines. He thought, therefore, that a clear and full exposition of their views might be of the highest use in the coming struggle.... The _Political Economy_ speedily acquired an authority unapproached by any work published since the _Wealth of Nations_."
We cannot follow Mr. Stephen through his elaborate and effective review of this celebrated book. Its appearance marked an epoch in the history of Utilitarianism, for it took a much wider survey of social and political considerations, and the author undertook to expand the orthodox economic theories so that they might embrace and be reconciled with some daring projects of comprehensive reform. But Mill had to put some strain on the principles to which he adhered, and to accommodate certain inconsistencies in order to keep pace with moving ideas. He held on with some effort to the cardinal tenets of the older Utilitarians, to a dislike of interference by governments, to reliance on individual effort, to protest against the deadening influence of paternal administration, to his own trust in the gradual effect of educational agencies, and in the slow emanc.i.p.ation of the popular mind from unreasoning prejudices. On the other hand, he advocated a radical reform of the land laws, peasant proprietorship, the acquisition by the State of railways and ca.n.a.ls, the limitation of the right of bequest; and he went even so far as to speak with approval of laws in restraint of improvident marriages. All these proposals could only be carried out by arbitrary and drastic legislation. As he put it, the State must interfere for the purpose of making the people independent of further interference; and he overlooked or set aside the question whether the eventual result of thus calling in the State"s agency would not be contrary to the principles and professed intentions of the Utilitarian school, whether the provisional _regime_ would not become permanent, as, in fact, it has been rapidly becoming ever since.
We can see, moreover, that while J. S. Mill"s sympathy with the popular cause and with the most ardent reformers was sincere, he was at issue with them in regard to the means, though not in regard to the ends; he wished to better the intelligence of the people as the first step toward bettering their condition. But when he had convinced himself, as he said, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental const.i.tution of their modes of thought, he had still to persuade men who were stirring and pressing for immediate action that gradual methods were the best. Most of them may have preferred to try whether, if the lot of mankind were improved materially, the moral changes and mental habits would not follow; for indeed Mill"s proposition might stand examination and hold good either way. It may be argued that an elevation or widening of intellectual views is the consequence, as often as it is the cause, of increasing comfort and leisure. He thought that all reading and writing which does not tend to promote a renovation of the world"s belief is of very little value beyond the moment, which is, of course, true in a general sense; though literature can act much more directly than by dealing with first principles. He welcomes Free Trade as one triumph of Utilitarian doctrines, yet he sadly observes that the English public are quite as raw and undiscerning on subjects of political economy since the nation was converted to Free Trade as before. The nation, in fact, went straight at the immediate point, got what it wanted at the moment, and was satisfied.
Mr. Stephen"s criticism of Mill"s later writings exhibits further his difficulties in adjusting the essential Utilitarian principles to closer contact with the urgent questions of the day. Mill still held to compet.i.tion, to the full liberty of individuals, to the inevitable mechanical working of economic laws; he still doubted the expediency of factory legislation, and condemned any laws in restraint of usury.
He was opposed, broadly, to all authoritative intrusion upon human existence wherever its necessity could not be proved conclusively to be in the interest of a self-reliant community. Yet he was forced to make concessions and exceptions in the face of actual needs and grievances; and especially he found himself more and more impelled to tolerate and even advocate interference by the State as the only effective instrument for demolishing obstacles to the moral and material betterment of the people. Since unjust social inequalities could be traced to an origin in force or fraud, the legislature might be logically called in to remove them; and as this is manifestly the revolutionary argument (as embodied, for example, in the writings of Thomas Paine), it enabled him to join hands with Radicalism in proposing some very thorough-going measures. "Landed property in Europe derives its origin from force;" so the legislature is ent.i.tled to interpose for the reclamation of rights unjustly usurped from the community; while, as economical science shows that the value of land rises from natural causes, the conclusion is that the State may confiscate the unearned increment. But it was not so easy to convince the hungry mechanic, by rather fine-drawn distinctions, that the capitalist had a better right to monopolise profits than the landlord; for the rise of value in manufactured commodities has very complex causes, some of them superficially natural. So here, again, is a plausible case of social injustice. Again, it may be affirmed that all powerful a.s.sociations, private as well as public, operate in restriction of individual liberty. You may argue that great industrial companies are voluntary; the question is whether they are innocuous to the common weal, and we may add that this point is coming seriously to the front at the present time. The distinction, as Mr. Stephen remarks, drawn by the old individualism between State inst.i.tutions and those created by private combination is losing its significance; and, what is more, public bodies are now continually encouraged to absorb private enterprise in all matters that directly concern the people.
In short, we are on the high road to State Socialism, though Mill helps us to console ourselves with having taken that road on strictly scientific principles. It is the not unusual result of stating large benevolent theories for popular application; the principle is accepted and its limitations are disregarded. Nevertheless Mill contends gallantly in his later works for intellectual liberty, complete freedom of discussion, and the utility of tolerating the most eccentric opinions. Into what practical difficulties and questionable logical distinctions he was drawn by the necessity of fencing round his propositions and making his reservations is well known; and Mr.
Stephen hits the weak points with keen critical ac.u.men. We all agree that persecution has done frightful mischief, at times, by suppressing the free utterance of unorthodox opinions. But Mill argues that contradiction, even of truth, is desirable in itself, because a doctrine, true or false, becomes a dead belief without the invigorating conflict of opposite reasonings. Resistance to authority in matters of opinion is a sacred privilege essential to the formation of belief; wherefore originality, even when it implies stupidity, is to be carefully protected as a factor of human progress. We need not follow Mr. Stephen in his victorious a.n.a.lysis of the arguments wherewith Mill seeks to uphold this uncompromising individualism, and to guard human perversity against the baneful influence of authority.
It is clear enough that society cannot waste its time in perpetual wrangling over issues upon which an authoritative verdict has been delivered; and for most of us a reasonable probability, founded on the judgment of experts, is sufficient in moral or physical questions as well as in litigation. The religious arena still remains open, where experts differ and decisions are always disputable. Yet Mr. Arthur Balfour devotes a chapter in his _Foundations of Belief_ to the contention that our convictions on all the deeper subjects of thought are determined not by reason but by authority; whereby he provides us with an escape from the scepticism that menaces a philosopher who has proved all experience to be at bottom illusory. Mill, on the other hand, would make short work with authority wherever it checks or discourages the unlimited exercise of free individual inquiry; and in politics he would entrust the sovereign power to a representation of the entire aggregate of the community, with the most ample encouragement of incessant discussion. This is, indeed, the system actually in force, and in England it has answered very well; but Mill hardly foresaw that its tendency would be to make the State, as the embodiment of popular will, not less but more authoritative, with a tendency to encroach steadily upon the sphere of individual effort and private enterprise.
It may be said that the abstract Utilitarian doctrine reached its high-water mark in Mill"s book on the Subjection of Women, to which Mr. Stephen allots one section of a chapter. The book is a particular enlargement upon Mill"s general view that it is a pestilent error to regard such marked distinctions of human character as s.e.x or race as innate and in the main indelible. What is called the nature of women he treats as an artificial thing, an isolated fact which need not at any rate be recognised by law; the proper test was, he argued, to leave free compet.i.tion to determine whether the distinction is radical or merely the result of external circ.u.mstance. But, as Mr. Stephen answers, such a plain physiological difference is at least not negligible; and compet.i.tion between the s.e.xes may favour the despotism of the stronger, while complete independence on both sides implies freedom to separate at will; and Mill had only glanced evasively at the question of divorce. Here, again, is a theory which the pressure of social conditions, much more than abstract reasoning, is bringing more and more into prominence with our own generation. On the wider and more complicated question of race distinctions Mill never worked out his argument against their indelibility into a regular treatise; nor could he foresee the increasing influence upon contemporary politics that is now exercised by racial feelings and their claims to recognition. In the eighteenth century the French Encyclopedistes, who were the direct philosophic ancestors of the Utilitarians, regarded frontiers, cla.s.ses, and races as so many barriers against the spread of universal fraternity; and the revolutionary government took up the idea as a war-cry. The armies of the French Republic proclaimed the rights of the people in all countries, until Napoleon turned the democratic doctrine into the form of Imperialism. M. Eugene de Vogue has told us recently that this armed propaganda produced a reaction in Europe toward that strong sentiment of nationality which has been vigorously manifested during the second half of the nineteenth century. The a.s.sertion of separate nationalities, by the demand for political autonomy and by the attempt to revive the public teaching of obscure languages, is the form taken in western and central Europe by the problem of race. No movement could be more contrary to the views or antic.i.p.ations of the Utilitarians, for whom it would have been merely a recrudescence of one of those inveterate and unreasoning prejudices which still r.e.t.a.r.d human progress, a fiction accepted by indolent thinkers to avoid the trouble of investigating the true causes that modify human character. Yet not only is national particularism making a fresh stir in Europe, but the spread of European dominion over Asia has forced upon our attention the immense practical importance of racial distinctions. We find that they signify real and profound characteristics; the European discovers that in Asia he is himself one of a ruling race, and thereby isolated among the other groups into which the population is subdivided. If he is a sound Utilitarian he will nevertheless cherish the belief that economical improvements, public instruction, good laws, and regular administration will obliterate antipathies, eradicate irrational prejudices, and reconcile Asiatic folk to the blessings of scientific civilisation. But he will confess that it is a stubborn element, if not innate yet very like such a quality; if not ineffaceable yet certain to outlast his dominion. It is at least remarkable that Mill"s protest against explaining differences of character by race, to which Buckle "cordially subscribed," should have been answered in our time by a clamorous demand for the recognition of those very differences, and by an increasing tendency to admit them.
Upon Mill"s theological speculations Mr. Stephen has written an interesting chapter, ill.u.s.trating Mill"s desire to treat religion more sympathetically, with a deeper sense of its importance in life, than in the absolute theories of the older Utilitarians. Bentham had declared that the principle of theology, of referring everything to G.o.d"s will, was no more than a covert application of the test of utility. You must first know whether a thing is right in order to discover whether it is conformable to G.o.d"s pleasure; and a religious motive, he said, is good or bad according as the religious tenets of the person acting upon it approach more or less to a coincidence with the dictates of utility. The next step, as Bentham probably knew well, is to throw aside an abstraction that has become virtually superfluous, and to march openly under the Utilitarian standard. But there was in Mill a moral and emotional instinct that deterred him from resting without uneasiness upon such a bare empirical conclusion.
He rejected all transcendental conceptions; yet he did his best, as Mr. Stephen shows, to find reasonable proofs of a Deity whose existence and attributes may be inferred by observation and experience. He agreed that such an inference is not inconsistent, _a priori_, with natural laws, and the argument from design was admitted as providing by a.n.a.logy, or even inductively, a large balance of probability in favour of creation by Intelligence. The difficulty is to attain by these methods the idea of a Deity perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness; for the order of Nature, apart from human intervention and contrivances for making the earth habitable, discloses no tincture of morality. We are thus reduced to the dilemma propounded by Hume, between an omnipotent Deity who cannot be benevolent because misery is permitted, and a benevolent Deity with limited powers; and Mill sums up the discussion, doubtfully, in favour of a Being with great but limited powers, whose motives cannot be satisfactorily fathomed by the human intellect.
This halting conclusion indicates a departure from the pure empiricism of his school, and even the inadequacy of the argument shows the effort that Mill was making towards some fellow-feeling with spiritual conceptions. As Mr. Stephen points out, there is a curious approximation, on some points, between Mill and his arch-enemy Mansel--between the conditioned and unconditioned philosophies. Both of them lay stress on the moral perplexities involved in arguing from the wasteful and relentless course of Nature to an estimate of the divine attributes. And both agree that the existence of evil is a serious difficulty; though Mansel"s solution, or evasion, of it is by insisting that the ways of the unconditioned are necessarily for the most part unknowable, while Mill leans to the possibility that G.o.d"s power or intelligence may be incomplete. Upon either hypothesis we must confess that our knowledge is imperfect and very fallible.
Mr. Stephen has no trouble in exposing the philosophical weakness of Mill"s att.i.tude; but we are mainly concerned to compare it briefly with the position of his predecessors, for the purpose of continuing a rapid survey of the course and filiation of Utilitarian doctrines. When the orthodox Utilitarians definitely rejected all theology--though until Philip Beauchamp appeared, in 1822, they made no direct attack upon it--they believed that the fall of theology would also bring down religion, which they regarded as the source of motives that were fict.i.tious, misleading, and profoundly unscientific.
Mill agreed that a supernatural origin could not be ascribed to received maxims of morality without harming them, because to consecrate rules of conduct was to interdict free examination of them, and to paralyse their natural development in accordance with changes of circ.u.mstance. Looking back over the interminable controversies, and the successive variations in form and spirit that every great religion has undergone, this objection does not seem to us very formidable. But Mill"s evident object was to reconcile the cultivation of religious feelings with his principle of free thought for individuals. In accepting Comte"s ideal of a religion of humanity, he had entirely condemned Comte"s reproduction of the spiritual authority in the shape of a philosophical priesthood. And it is remarkable, as indicating a radical discordance between the French and the English moralist, that while Comte"s adoration, in his later years, of a woman led him to ordain a formal worship of the feminine representative of the Family, coupled with the strict seclusion of women from politics, Mill"s lifelong attachment greatly strengthened his ardour for the complete emanc.i.p.ation of the whole s.e.x.
Our readers will bear in mind that we are endeavouring to measure the permanent influence of Utilitarian doctrines, to determine how far they have fixed the direction, and shaped the ends, of contemporary thought and political action. It cannot be said that these doctrines are now predominant in either of these two closely interacting departments. National instincts and prepossessions have lost none of their force; national character now divides neighbouring peoples more sharply, perhaps, than a hundred years ago. Militarism is stronger than ever; cosmopolitan philanthropy is overridden by the growth of national interests; political economy is overruled by political necessities; nor have ethical systems displaced the traditional religions. Empiricism has fallen into discredit as a narrow and inadequate philosophy; it is superseded in the spiritual world by transcendental interpretations of dogmas as metaphysical representations of underlying realities. Mr. Stephen"s most instructive work draws to its close with a dissertation on Liberalism and Dogmatism, showing how and why Utilitarianism failed in convincing or converting Englishmen to a practical a.s.sent to its principles and modes of thought. Upon many minds they produced more repulsion than attraction. Maurice earnestly protested that we were to believe in G.o.d, not in a theory about G.o.d, though the distinction, as Mr. Stephen says, is vague; he appealed to the inner light, to the conscience of mankind; he went back into the slough of Intuitionism. Carlyle cried aloud against materialistic views and logical machinery; he denounced "the great steam-engine, Utilitarianism"; he was for the able despot and hero-worship against grinding compet.i.tion and government by discussion. In theology the mystical spirit rose again with its immemorial power of enchanting human imagination; the moral law is discerned to be the vesture of Divinity, in which He arrays Himself to become apprehensible by the finite intellect; and a Science that tries to understand everything explains nothing. Authority, instead of being discarded, is invoked to deliver men out of the great waters of spiritual and political anarchy. The Tractarians struck in with a fierce attack on Rationalism, propounding Faith and Revelation as imperative grounds of belief. You must accept the dogmas, not as useful, not as moral or reasonable, not even as derived intuitively, but as the necessary fundamental truths declared by the infallible Church to be essential to salvation. Those who could not find infallibility in a State Church went over to Rome, abandoning the Via Media; others were content with the high sacramental position of Anglicanism; the moderate Rationalists took shelter with the Broad Church; a few retreated into the cloudy refuge of transcendental idealism. The two extreme parties, the Broad Church and the Sacerdotalists, were at bitter feud with each other; yet they both denounced the common enemy. Arnold "agreed with Carlyle that the Liberals greatly overrate Bentham, and the political economists generally; the _summum bonum_ of their science is not identical with human life ... and the economical good is often, from the neglect of other points, a social evil." Newman held that to allow the right of private judgment was to enter upon the path of scepticism; and the latest infidel device, he says, is to leave theology alone. He set up the argument, well-worn but always impressive, that science gives no certainty; and Mr. Stephen contends against it with the weapons of empiricism:--
"The scientific doctrines must lay down the base to which all other truth, so far as it is discoverable, must conform. The essential feature of contemporary thought was just this: that science was pa.s.sing from purely physical questions to historical, ethical, and social problems. The dogmatist objects to private judgment or free thought on the ground that, as it gives no criterion, it cannot lead to certainty. His real danger was precisely that it leads irresistibly to certainty. The scientific method shows how such certainty as is possible must be obtained. The man of science advocates free inquiry precisely because it is the way to truth, and the only way, though a way which leads through many errors."
Mr. Stephen is himself a large-minded Utilitarian. He will have nothing to do with a transcendental basis of morals; and the dogmatist who dislikes cross-examination is out of his court. Dogmatic authority, he says, stands only on its own a.s.sertions; and if you may not reason upon them, the inference is that on those points reason is against them. You may withdraw beyond this range by sublimating religion into a philosophy, but then it loses touch with terrestrial affairs, and has a very feeble control over the unruly affections of sinful men. Newman himself resorted to scientific methods in his theory of Development, that is, of the growth and evolution of doctrine. We may agree that these destructive arguments have much logical force, yet on the other hand such cert.i.tude as empiricism can provide brings little consolation to the mult.i.tude, who require some imperative command; they look for a pillar of cloud or fire to go before them day and night, and a land of promise in the distance.
Scientific exposition works slowly for the improvement of ethics, which to the average mind are rather weakened than strengthened by loosening their foundations; and religious beliefs suffer from a similar const.i.tutional delicacy. Conduct is not much fortified by being treated as a function of character and circ.u.mstance; for in religion and morals ordinary humanity demands something impervious to reasoning, wherein lies the advantage of the intuitionist.
Mr. Stephen, however, is well aware that empirical cert.i.tude will not supply the place of religion. In his concluding pages he states, fairly and forcibly, the great problems by which men are still perplexed. Religion, as J. S. Mill felt, is a name for something far wider than the Utilitarian views embrace.
"Men will always require some religion, if religion corresponds not simply to their knowledge, but to the whole impression made upon feeling and thinking beings by the world in which they must live.
The condition remains that the conception must conform to the facts; our imagination and our desires must not be allowed to over-ride our experience, or our philosophy to construct the universe out of _a priori_ guesses.... To find a religion which shall be compatible with all known truth, which shall satisfy the imagination and the emotions, and which shall discharge the functions. .h.i.therto a.s.signed to the churches, is a problem for the future."
The Utilitarian doctrines, in short, though propagated by leaders of high intellectual power, and inspired by a pure unselfish morality, achieved little success in the enterprise of providing new and firmer guidance and support to mankind in their troubles and perplexities.
But they were not content to look down from serene heights upon the world, leaving the crowd
"Errare atque viam palantes quaerere vitae."
They laboured devotedly to dispel ignorance and to advance knowledge; they spared no pains to promote the material well-being of society.
They helped to raise the wind that filled the sails of practical reform; they headed the attack upon legal and administrative abuses; they stirred up the national conscience against social injustice; they proclaimed a lofty standard of moral obligation. They laid down principles that in the long run accord with human progress, yet in their hopes of rapidly modifying society by the application of those principles they were disappointed; for their systematic theories were blocked by facts, feelings, and misunderstandings which had not been taken into calculation. They were averse to coercion, as an evil in itself; but though they would have agreed with Mr. Bright"s dictum that "Force is no remedy," they were latterly brought to perceive that in another sense there is no remedy except force, and that the vested interests and preconceptions of society make a stiff and prolonged opposition to enlightened persuasion. They were disposed to rely too confidently upon the spread of intelligence by general education for preparing the minds of people to accept and act upon doctrines that were logically demonstrable, and to reject what could not be proved.
Mr. Stephen has somewhere written that to support a religion by force instead of by argument is to admit that argument condemns it. The proposition is too absolutely stated even for the domain of spiritual authority, since it might be replied that no great religion, certainly no organised Church, has existed by argument alone, and it has usually been supported by laws. But at any rate the temporal power subsists and operates by coercion, and the sphere of the State"s direct action, instead of diminishing, as the earlier Utilitarians expected it to do, with the spread of education and intelligence, is perceptibly extending itself. The Utilitarians demurred to religion as an ultimate authority in morals, and subst.i.tuted the plain unvarnished criterion of utility. Upon this ground the State steps in, replaces religious precept by positive law, and public morality is enforced by Acts of Parliament. They were for entrusting the people with full political power, to be exercised in vigilant restraint of the interference by Government with individual rights and conduct; the people have obtained the power, and are using it more and more to place their affairs and even their moral interests under the control of organised authority. We do not here question the expediency of the movement; we are simply registering the tendency.
There are few literary enterprises more arduous than the task of following and demarcating from the written record of a period the general course of political and philosophic movements. The tendencies are so various, the conditions which determine them are so complicated, that it is difficult to keep hold of the clue which guides and connects them. Mr. Leslie Stephen"s _History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century_ took the broad ground that is denoted by its t.i.tle; but, as he now tells us in his preface, he has found it expedient to reduce his present work within less comprehensive limits, by confining it to "an account of the compact and energetic school of the English Utilitarians." This reduction of its scope has not, however, damaged the continuity of the narrative, since in the great departments of morals, religion, and political philosophy the Utilitarians were mainly the lineal heirs of the characteristic English writers in the preceding century. It is true that Mr. Stephen has not been able to bring within the compa.s.s of his three volumes the subject of general literature, especially of poetry and novels, which in the nineteenth century have given their vivid expression to the doubts and the hopes, to the aims and aspirations of the time. But we can see that such an enlargement of his plan would have rendered it unmanageable, and that Mr. Stephen may have wisely considered the example of Buckle"s _History of Civilisation in England_, which was projected on too large a scale, exhausted the author"s strength, and remains unfinished. Mr. Stephen"s present work fulfils its promise and completes its design. The Utilitarians are very fortunate in having found a historian whose vivacity of style, consummate literary knowledge, and masculine power of thought will have revived their declining reputations, and secured to them their proper place in the literature of the nineteenth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] _The English Utilitarians._ By Leslie Stephen. 3 vols. London, Duckworth and Co., 1900.--_Edinburgh Review_, April 1901.
[29] _The Greek Theory of the State_, by Charles John Shebbeare, B.A., 1895.
[30] Sir Robert Peel"s speech on Reform, March 1831.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MR. SWINBURNE"S POETRY[31]