Chapter 4

But however followed, the investigation of nature cannot fail to influence the mind in the direction of a more just appreciation of the necessity of system in arrangement, and of the principles which must regulate all attempts to express notions of system in a classification. Traces of this are not difficult to find in Mr. Mill's writings. It may be safely stated, that the chapters on classification in the "Logic" would not have taken the form they have, had not the writer been a naturalist as well as a logician. The views expressed so clearly in these chapters are chiefly founded on the actual needs experienced by the systematic botanist; and the argument is largely sustained by references to botanical systems and arrangements. Most botanists agree with Mr. Mill in his objections to Dr. Whewell's views of a natural classification by resemblance to "types," instead of in accordance with well-selected characters; and indeed the whole of these chapters are well deserving the careful study of naturalists, notwithstanding that the wonderfully rapid progress in recent years of new ideas, lying at the very root of all the natural sciences, may be thought by some to give the whole argument, in spite of its logical excellence, a somewhat antiquated flavor. How fully Mr. Mill recognized the great importance of the study of biological classifications, and the influence such a study must have had on himself, may be judged from the following quotation:--

"Although the scientific arrangements of organic nature afford as yet the only complete example of the true principles of rational classification, whether as to the formation of groups or of series, those principles are applicable to all cases in which mankind are called upon to bring the various parts of any extensive subject into mental co-ordination. They are as much to the point when objects are to be classed for purposes of art or business as for those of science. The proper arrangement, for example, of a code of laws, depends on the same scientific conditions as the classifications in natural history; nor could there be a better preparatory discipline for that important function than the study of the principles of a natural arrangement, not only in the abstract, but in their actual application to the class of phenomena for which they were first elaborated, and which are still the best school for learning their use. Of this, the great authority on codification, Bentham, was perfectly aware; and his early 'Fragment on Government,' the admirable introduction to a series of writings unequalled in their department, contains clear and just views (as far as they go) on the meaning of a natural arrangement, such as could scarcely have occurred to any one who lived anterior to the age of Linnaeus and Bernard de Jussieu" (_System of Logic_, ed. 6, ii., p. 288).

HENRY TRIMEN.

V

HIS PLACE AS A CRITIC

Mr. Mill's achievements as an economist, logician, psychologist, and politician are known more or less vaguely to all educated men; but his capacity and his actual work as a critic are comparatively little regarded. In the three volumes of his collected miscellaneous writings, very few of the papers are general reviews either of books or of men; and even these volumes derive their character from the essays they contain on the severer subjects with which Mr. Mill's name has been more peculiarly associated. Nobody buys his "Dissertations and Discussions" for the sake of his theory of poetry, or his essays on Armand Carrel and Alfred de Vigny, noble though these are in many ways. His essay on Coleridge is very celebrated; but it deals, not with Coleridge's place as a poet, but with his place as a thinker--with Coleridge as the antagonistic power to Bentham in forming the opinions of the generation now passing away. Still at such a time as this it is interesting to make some endeavor to estimate the value of what Mr. Mill has done in the way of criticism. It is at least worth while to examine whether one who has shown himself capable of grappling effectively with the driest and most abstruse problems that vex the human intellect was versatile enough to study poetry with an understanding heart, and to be alive to the distinctive powers of individual poets.

It was in his earlier life, when his enthusiasm for knowledge was fresh, and his active mind, "all as hungry as the sea," was reaching out eagerly and strenuously to all sorts of food for thought,--literary, philosophical, and political,--that Mr. Mill set himself, among other things, to study and theorize upon poetry and the arts generally. He could hardly have failed to know the most recent efflorescence of English poetry, living as he did in circles where the varied merits of the new poets were largely and keenly discussed. He had lived also for some time in France, and was widely read in French poetry. He had never passed through the ordinary course of Greek and Latin at school and college, but he had been taught by his father to read these languages, and had been accustomed from the first to regard their literature as literature, and to read their poetry as poetry. These were probably the main elements of his knowledge of poetry. But it was not his way to dream or otherwise luxuriate over his favorite poets for pure enjoyment. Mr. Mill was not a cultivator of art for art's sake. His was too fervid and militant a soul to lose itself in serene love and culture of the calmly beautiful. He read poetry for the most part with earnest, critical eye, striving to account for it, to connect it with the tendencies of the age, or he read to find sympathy with his own aspirations after heroic energy. He read De Vigny and other French poets of his generation, with an eye to their relations to the convulsed and struggling state of France, and because they were compelled by their surroundings to take life _au sérieux_, and to pursue, with all the resources of their art, something different from beauty in the abstract. Luxurious passive enjoyment or torpid half-enjoyment must have been a comparatively rare condition of his finely-strung, excitable, and fervid system. I believe that his moral earnestness was too imperious to permit much of this. He was capable indeed of the most passionate admiration of beauty, but even that feeling seems to have been interpenetrated by a certain militant apostolic fervor; his love was as the love of a religious soldier for a patron saint who extends her aid and countenance to him in his wars. I do not mean to say that his mind was in a perpetual glow: I mean only that this surrender to impassioned transports was more characteristic of the man than serene openness to influx of enjoyment. His "Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties," while clear and strenuous as most of his thoughts were, are neither scientifically precise, nor do they contain any notable new idea not previously expressed by Coleridge, except perhaps the idea, that emotions are the main links of association in the poetic mind: still his working out of the definition of poetry, his distinction between novels and poems, and between poetry and eloquence, is interesting as throwing light upon his own poetic susceptibilities. He holds that poetry is the delineation of the deeper and more secret workings of human emotion. It is curious to find one who is sometimes assailed as the advocate of a grovelling philosophy complaining that the chivalrous spirit has almost disappeared from books of education, that the youth of both sexes of the educated classes are growing up unromantic. "Catechisms," he says, "will be found a poor substitute for the old romances, whether of chivalry or faery, which, if they did not give a true picture of actual life, did not give a false one, since they did not profess to give any, but (what was much better) filled the youthful imagination with pictures of heroic men, and of what are at least as much wanted,--heroic women."

If Mr. Mill did not love poetry with a purely disinterested love, but with an eye to its moral causes and effects, neither did he study character from mere delight in observing the varieties of mankind. Armand Carrel the Republican journalist, Alfred de Vigny the Royalist poet, Coleridge the Conservative, and Bentham the Reformer, are taken up and expounded, not as striking individuals, but as types of influences and tendencies. This habit of keeping in view mind in the abstract, or men in the aggregate, may have been in a large measure a result of his education by his father; but I am inclined to think that he was of too ardent and pre-occupied a disposition, perhaps too much disposed to take favorable views of individuals, to be very sensitive to differences of character. It should not, however, be forgotten that in one memorable case he showed remarkable discrimination. Soon after Mr. Tennyson published his second issue of poems, Mr. Mill reviewed them in "The Westminster Review" for July, 1835, and, with his usual earnestness and generosity, applied all his powers to making a just estimate of the new aspirant. To have reprinted this among his miscellaneous writings might have seemed rather boastful, as claiming credit for the first full recognition of a great poet: still it is a very remarkable review; and one would hope it will not be omitted if there is to be any further collection of his casual productions. I shall quote two passages which seem obvious enough now, but which required true insight, as well as courageous generosity, to write them in 1835--

"Of all the capacities of a poet, that which seems to have arisen earliest in Mr. Tennyson, and in which he most excels, is that of scene-painting in the higher sense of the term; not the mere power of producing that rather vapid species of composition usually termed descriptive poetry,--for there is not in these volumes one passage of pure description,--but the power of creating scenery in keeping with some state of human feeling, so fitted to it as to be the embodied symbol of it, and to summon up the state of feeling itself with a force not to be surpassed by any thing but reality."

* * * * *

"The poems which we have quoted from Mr. Tennyson prove incontestably that he possesses in an eminent degree the natural endowment of a poet,--the poetic temperament. And it appears clearly, not only from a comparison of the two volumes, but of different poems in the same volume, that with him the other element of poetic excellence, intellectual culture, is advancing both steadily and rapidly; that he is not destined, like so many others, to be remembered for what he might have done rather than for what he did; that he will not remain a poet of mere temperament, but is ripening into a true artist.... We predict, that, as Mr. Tennyson advances in general spiritual culture, these higher aims will become more and more predominant in his writings; that he will strive more and more diligently, and, even without striving, will be more and more impelled by the natural tendencies of an expanding character, towards what has been described as the highest object of poetry,--'to incorporate the everlasting reason of man in forms visible to his sense, and suitable to it.'"

This last sentence might easily be construed into a prediction of "In Memoriam" and "The Idyls of the King."

If it is asked why Mr. Mill, with all his width of knowledge and sympathy, has achieved so little of a reputation as a miscellaneous writer, part of the reason no doubt is, that he sternly repressed his desultory tendencies, and devoted his powers to special branches of knowledge, attaining in them a distinction that obscured his other writings. Another reason is, that, although his style is extremely clear, he was for popular purposes dangerously familiar with terms belonging more or less to the schools. He employed these in literary generalizations, without remembering that they were not equally familiar to his readers; and thus general readers, like Tom Moore, or the author of the recent notice in "The Times," who read more for amusement than instruction, were disposed to consider Mr. Mill's style "vastly unreadable."

W. MINTO.

VI.

HIS WORK IN PHILOSOPHY

To a savage contemplating a railway train in motion, the engine would present itself as the master of the situation,--the determining cause of the motion and direction of the train. It visibly takes the lead, it looks big and important, and it makes a great noise. Even people a long way up in the scale of civilization are in the habit of taking these attributes, perhaps not as the essential ones of leadership, but at all events as those by which a leader may be recognized. Still that blustering machine, which puffs and snorts, and drags a vast multitude in its wake, is moving along a track determined by a man hidden away from the public gaze. A line of rail lies separated from an adjacent one, the pointsman moves a handle, and the foaming giant, that would, it may be, have sped on to his destruction and that of the passive crew who follow in his rear, is shunted to another line running in a different direction and to a more desirable goal.

The great intellectual pointsman of our age--the man who has done more than any other of this generation to give direction to the thought of his contemporaries--has passed away; and we are left to measure the loss to humanity by the result of his labors. Mr. Mill's achievements in both branches of philosophy are such as to give him the foremost place in either. Whether we regard him as an expounder of the philosophy of mind or the philosophy of society, he is _facile princeps_. Still it is his work in mental science which will, in our opinion, be in future looked upon as his great contribution to the progress of thought. His work on political economy not only put into thorough repair the structure raised by Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo, but raised it at least one story higher. His inestimable "System of Logic" was a revolution. It hardly needs, of course, to be said that he owed much to his predecessors,--that he borrowed from Whewell much of his classification, from Brown the chief lines of his theory of causation, from Sir John Herschel the main principles of the inductive methods. Those who think this a disparagement of his work must have very little conception of the mass of original thought that still remains to Mr. Mill's credit, the great critical power that could gather valuable truths from so many discordant sources, and the wonderful synthetic ability required to weld these and his own contributions into one organic whole.

When Mr. Mill commenced his labors, the only logic recognized was the syllogistic. Reasoning consisted solely, according to the then dominant school, in deducing from general propositions other propositions less general. It was even asserted confidently, that nothing more was to be expected,--that an inductive logic was impossible. This conception of logical science necessitated some general propositions to start with; and these general propositions being _ex hypothesi_ incapable of being proved from other propositions, it followed, that, if they were known to us at all, they must be original data of consciousness. Here was a perfect paradise of question begging. The ultimate major premise in every argument being assumed, it could of course be fashioned according to the particular conclusion it was called in to prove. Thus an 'artificial ignorance,' as Locke calls it, was produced, which had the effect of sanctifying prejudice by recognizing so-called necessities of thought as the only bases of reasoning. It is true, that outside of the logic of the schools great advances had been made in the rules of scientific investigation; but these rules were not only imperfect in themselves, but their connection with the law of causation was but imperfectly realized, and their true relation to syllogism hardly dreamt of.

Mr. Mill altered all this. He demonstrated that the general type of reasoning is neither from generals to particulars, nor from particulars to generals, but from particulars to particulars. "If from our experience of John, Thomas, &c., who once were living, but are now dead, we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we might surely, without any logical inconsequence, have concluded at once from those instances, that the Duke of Wellington is mortal. The mortality of John, Thomas, and others is, after all, the whole evidence we have for the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a general proposition." We not only may, according to Mr. Mill, reason from some particular instances to others, but we frequently do so. As, however, the instances which are sufficient to prove one fresh instance must be sufficient to prove a general proposition, it is most convenient to at once infer that general proposition, which then becomes a formula according to which (but not from which) any number of particular inferences may be made. The work of deduction is the interpretation of these formulas, and therefore, strictly speaking, is not inferential at all. The real inference was accomplished when the universal proposition was arrived at.

It will easily be seen that this explanation of the deductive process completely turns the tables on the transcendental school. All reasoning is shown to be at bottom inductive. Inductions and their interpretation make up the whole of logic; and to induction accordingly Mr. Mill devoted his chief attention. For the first time induction was treated as the _opus magnum_ of logic, and the fundamental principles of science traced to their inductive origin. It was this, taken with his theory of the syllogism, which worked the great change. Both his "System of Logic" and his "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy" are for the most part devoted to fortifying this position, and demolishing beliefs inconsistent with it. As a systematic psychologist Mr. Mill has not done so much as either Professor Bain or Mr. Herbert Spencer. The perfection of his method, its application, and the uprooting of prejudices which stood in its way,--this was the task to which Mr. Mill applied himself with an ability and success rarely matched and never surpassed.

The biggest lion in the path was the doctrine of so-called "necessary truth." This doctrine was especially obnoxious to him, as it set up a purely subjective standard of truth, and a standard--as he was easily able to show--varying according to the psychological history of the individual. Such thinkers as Dr. Whewell and Mr. Herbert Spencer had to be met in intellectual combat. Dr. Whewell held, not that the inconceivability of the contradictory of a proposition is a proof of its truth co-equal with experience, but that its value transcends experience. Experience may tell us what _is_; but it is by the impossibility of conceiving it otherwise that we know it _must be_. Mr. Herbert Spencer, too, holds that propositions whose negation is inconceivable have "a higher warrant than any other whatever." It is through this door that ontological belief was supposed to enter. "Things in themselves" were to be believed in because we could not help it. Modern Noumenalists agree that we can know nothing more of "things in themselves" than their existence, but this they continue to assert with a vehemence only equalled by its want of meaning.

In his "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," Mr. Mill gives battle to this mode of thought. After reviewing, in an opening chapter, the various views which have been held respecting the relativity of human knowledge, and stating his own doctrine, he proceeds to judge by this standard the philosophy of the absolute and Sir William Hamilton's relation to it. The argument is really on the question whether we have or have not an intuition of God, though, as Mr. Mill says, "the name of God is veiled under two extremely abstract phrases,--'The Infinite' and 'The Absolute.'" So profound and friendly a thinker as the late Mr. Grote held this raising of the veil inexpedient, but he proved, by a mistake he fell into, the necessity of looking at the matter in the concrete. He acknowledged the force of Mr. Mill's argument, that "The Infinite" must include "a farrago of contradictions;" but so also, he said, does the Finite. Now undoubtedly finite things, taken distributively, have contradictory attributes, but not as a class. Still less is there any one individual thing, "The Finite," in which these contradictory attributes inhere. But it was against a corresponding being, "The Infinite," that Mr. Mill was arguing. It is this that he calls a "fasciculus of contradictions," and regarded as the _reductio ad absurdissimum_ of the transcendental philosophy.

Mr. Mill's religious tendencies may very well be gathered from a passage in his review of Auguste Comte, a philosopher with whom he agreed on all points save those which are specially M. Comte's. "Candid persons of all creeds may be willing to admit, that if a person has an ideal object, his attachment and sense of duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life, that person has a religion; and though every one naturally prefers his own religion to any other, all must admit, that if the object of his attachment, and of this feeling of duty, is the aggregate of our fellow-creatures, this religion of the infidel cannot in honesty and conscience be called an intrinsically bad one. Many indeed may be unable to believe that this object is capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong; but this is exactly the point on which a doubt can hardly remain in an intelligent reader of M. Comte: and we join with him in contemning, as equally irrational and mean, the conception of human nature as incapable of giving its love, and devoting its existence, to any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity of personal enjoyment." Never has the libel of humanity involved in the current theology been more forcibly pointed out, with its constant appeal to low motives of personal gain, or still lower motives of personal fear. Never has the religious sentiment which must take the place of the present awe of the unknown been more clearly indicated. It is this noble sentiment which shines out from every page of Mr. Mill's writings and all his relations to his fellow-creatures: the very birds about his dwelling seemed to recognize it. It is this noble sentiment which infuses a soul of life into his teachings, and the enunciation and acting-out of which constitute him, not only the great philosopher, but also the great prophet of our time.

J. H. LEVY.

VII

HIS STUDIES IN MORALS AND JURISPRUDENCE