The English Utilitarians Volume II Part 18

We may then say briefly that Brown carries out in his own fashion the conception of psychology which makes it an inductive science parallel to the physical sciences, and to be pursued by the same methods. We have to do with 'feelings' instead of atoms, and with mental instead of 'material' chemistry. Our sole method is still an a.n.a.lysis such as guides us in unravelling complex physical phenomena. We have, indeed, to admit certain first truths--the belief in our own ident.i.ty is one of them--which are necessary to our very existence, although the a.s.sertion of such principles was carried to an extravagant and ridiculous length 'by Reid and some of his friends.' When, however, we come to ask what these principles are, it must be admitted that they are very innocent. They are not dangerous things, like 'innate ideas,'

capable of leading us to a transcendental world, but simply a.s.sertions that we are warranted in trusting our sensations and applying a thoroughly inductive and empirical method. They are the cement which joins the feelings, and which, as Mill thought, could be supplanted by 'indissoluble a.s.sociations.' The indefinite power thus attributed to a.s.sociation became, as we shall see, Mill's most characteristic doctrine. Meanwhile, I will only mention one inference which ill.u.s.trates Brown's philosophical tendencies. Stewart had spoken doubtfully of the ontological argument for theology. Brown throws it over altogether. He does not even change it into an 'intuition.' He has always, he says, regarded it as 'absolutely void of force' unless it tacitly a.s.sumes the 'physical argument.' Nay, it is one proof of the force of this physical argument that it has saved us from doubts which would be rather strengthened than weakened by the 'metaphysical arguments.'[502] The 'physical argument' means the argument from design, which thus becomes the sole support of theology.

Hamilton naturally regards Brown as a mere sceptic in disguise. His theory of perception destroys his theory of personal ident.i.ty. He has refused to accept our intuitive belief in one case, and cannot appeal to it in the other. He leaves no room for 'liberty of will,' and advances 'no argument in support of this condition of our moral being.'[503] Indeed, as Stewart complained, Brown, by identifying 'will' and 'desire,' has got rid of the will altogether. It is only natural that a man who is making a scientific study of the laws of human nature should find no room for an a.s.sertion that within a certain sphere there are no laws. A physiologist might as well admit that some vital processes are uncaused.

Brown thus ill.u.s.trates the gravitation of the 'common-sense'

philosophy to pure empiricism. He was the last in the genuine line of Scottish common-sense philosophers. When after what may be called the unphilosophical interregnum which followed Brown's death, Hamilton became professor, the Scottish tradition was blended with the very different theories derived from Kant. Upon Brown's version, the Scottish philosophy had virtually declared itself bankrupt. The substance of his teaching was that of the very school which his predecessors had attempted to confute, carefully as the fact might be hidden by dexterous rhetoric and manipulation of technical terms. He agrees with Hume's premises, and adopts the method of Condillac. This was perceived by his most remarkable hearer. Carlyle went to Edinburgh at the end of 1809. Brown, 'an eloquent, acute little gentleman, full of enthusiasm about simple suggestions, relative, etc.,' was 'utterly unprofitable' to him, disspiriting 'as the autumn winds among withered leaves.'[504] In _Signs of the Times_ (1829) Carlyle gave his view of the Scottish philosophy generally. They had, he says, started from the 'mechanical' premises suggested by Hume. 'They let loose instinct as an indiscriminatory bandog to guard them against (his) conclusions': 'they tugged l.u.s.tily at the logical chain by which Hume was so coldly towing them and the world into bottomless abysses of Atheism and Fatalism. But the chain somehow snapped between them, and the issue has been that n.o.body now cares about either--any more than about Hartley's, Darwin's, or Priestley's contemporaneous doings in England.'[505] The judgment goes to the root of the matter. The method of Reid inevitably led to this result. Consider the philosophy as based upon, if not identical with, an inductive science of psychology, and the end is clear. You may study and a.n.a.lyse the phenomena as carefully as you please; and may, as the Scottish professors did, produce, if not a scientific psychology, yet a ma.s.s of acute prolegomena to a science. But the a.n.a.lysis can only reveal the actual combinations, chemical or mechanical, of thought. The ultimate principles which the teachers profess to discover are simply provisional; products not yet a.n.a.lysed, but not therefore incapable of a.n.a.lysis. It was very desirable to point them out: an insistence upon the insufficiency of Hume's or Condillac's theories was a most valuable service; but it was valuable precisely because every indication of such an unresolved element was a challenge to the next comer to resolve it by closer a.n.a.lysis. And thus, in fact, the intuitions, which had played so great a part with Reid, come in Brown's hands to be so clearly limited to the materials given by sensation or experience that any show of 'philosophy,' meaning an independent theory of the universe, was an illusory combination of fine phrases.[506]

II. JAMES MILL'S 'a.n.a.lYSIS'

James Mill's _a.n.a.lysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_ is on the one hand an exposition of the principles implied in Bentham's writings, and, on the other hand, a statement of the position from which the younger Mill started. J. S. Mill discussed the book with his father during its composition, and in 1869 he published a new edition, with elaborate notes by himself, George Grote, Professor Bain, and Andrew Findlater.[507] The commentary is of great importance in defining the relation between the two successors to the throne of Bentham.

Mill's _a.n.a.lysis_, though not widely read, made a deep impression upon Mill's own disciples. It is terse, trenchant, and uncompromising. It reminds us in point of style of the French writers, with whom he sympathised, rather than of the English predecessors, to whom much of the substance was owing. The discursive rhetoric of Brown or Stewart is replaced by good, hard, sinewy logic. The writer is plainly in earnest. If over confident, he has no petty vanity, and at least believes every word that he says. Certain limitations are at once obvious. Mill, as a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, had not had 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 the 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.' Later German systems, had he heard of them, would have been summarily rejected by him as so much transcendental moonshine. The problem of philosophy was, he held, a very simple one, if attacked in a straightforward, scientific method.

Mill, like his Scottish rivals, applies 'Baconian' principles. The inductive method, which had already been so fruitful in the physical sciences, will be equally effective in philosophy, and ever since Locke, philosophy had meant psychology. The 'philosophy of the mind'

and the philosophy of the body may be treated as co-ordinate and investigated by similar methods. In the physical sciences we come ultimately to the laws of movement of their const.i.tuent atoms. In the moral sciences we come in the same way to the study of 'ideas.' The questions, How do ideas originate? and how are they combined so as to form the actual state of consciousness? are therefore the general problems to be solved. Hume had definitely proposed the problem.

Hartley had worked out the theory of a.s.sociation of ideas which Hume had already compared[508] to the universal principle of gravitation in the physical world; and had endeavoured to show how this might be connected with physiological principles. Hartley's followers had been content to dwell upon the power of a.s.sociation. Abraham Tucker, Priestley, Erasmus Darwin, and Belsham represented this tendency, and were the normal antagonists of Reid and Stewart. In France the 'ideologists' mainly followed Condillac, and apparently knew nothing of Hartley. Mill, as his son testifies, had been profoundly influenced by Hartley's treatise--the 'really master-production,' as he esteemed it, 'in the philosophy of mind.'[509] Hartley's work, as the younger Mill thought, and the elder apparently agreed, was very superior to the 'merely verbal generalisation of Condillac.' James Mill, however, admired Condillac and his successors. In his article upon education, Mill traces the a.s.sociation theory to Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, the last of whom, he says, was succeeded by the two 'more sober-minded'

philosophers, Condillac and Hartley; while he especially praises Erasmus Darwin, Helvetius, and Cabanis. Mill, therefore, may be regarded as an independent ally of the ideologists whose influence upon Brown has been already noticed. Mill had not read Brown's _Lectures_ when he began his _a.n.a.lysis_, and after reading them thought Brown 'but poorly read in the doctrine of a.s.sociation.'[510]

He had, however, read the essay upon causation, which he rather oddly describes as 'one of the most valuable contributions to science for which we are indebted to the last generation.'[511] He accepted Brown's view _minus_ the 'intuition.'

The pith of Mill's book is thus determined. His aim is to give a complete a.n.a.lysis of mental phenomena, and therefore to resolve those phenomena into their primitive const.i.tuent atoms. Here we have at once a tacit a.s.sumption which governs his method. Philosophy, speaking roughly, is by some people supposed to start from truths, and thus to be in some way an evolution of logic. According to Mill it must start from facts, and therefore from something not given by logic. To state clearly, indeed, the relation between truth and fact may suggest very intricate problems. Mill, at any rate, must find a basis in fact, and for him the ultimate facts must be feelings. The reality at least of a feeling is undeniable. The _Penser c'est sentir_, or the doctrine that all 'ideas' are transformed sensations is his starting-point. The word 'feeling,' according to him, includes every 'phenomenon of the mind.'

'Think,' he says elsewhere,[512] does not include all our experience, but 'there is nothing to which we could not extend the term "I feel."'

He proceeds to infer that our experience is either a knowledge of the feelings separately, or 'a knowledge of the order in which they follow each other; and this is all.' We may add that the knowledge is the feeling. Reid, Kant, and the Germans have indeed tried to show that there are feelings not derived from the sensations, but this, as Hartley and Condillac have shown, is a mistake. This is his first principle in a nutsh.e.l.l, and must give a clue to the various applications.

The next step is familiar. Hume had distinguished impressions and ideas. 'Ideas' are copies of previous 'impressions.' It is for psychology to say what are the laws by which they are related to their originals. The ultimate origin cannot be explained by psychology alone. Impressions are caused by the outward world acting in some way upon the mind; and the psychologist can only cla.s.sify the various modes in which they present themselves. Mill therefore begins by the usual account of the five senses, through which comes all knowledge of the external world. He adds to Reid's list muscular sensations, and those derived from the internal organs, to which last Cabanis in particular had called attention. So far he is following the steps of his predecessors. He is, he says, simply a.s.serting an 'indisputable'

fact.[513] We have sensations and we have ideas, which are 'copies of sensations.' We may then consider how far these facts will enable us to explain the whole series of mental phenomena. 'Ideation,' which he suggests as a new word--the process by which a continuous series of thoughts goes on in our minds--is the general phenomenon to be considered. Without, as yet, p.r.o.nouncing that sensations and copies of sensations will turn out to form the whole contents of our consciousness, he tries to show for what part of those contents they will account.

Here we come to the doctrine which for him and his school gave the key to all psychological problems. It was James Mill's real merit, according to his son, that he carried the principle of a.s.sociation of ideas further than it had been carried by Hartley or other predecessors.[514] The importance of the doctrine, indeed, is implied in the very statement of the problem. If it be true, or so far as it is true, that our consciousness reveals to us simply a series of 'sensations' and 'ideas,' the question must be how they are combined.

'Thought succeeds thought, idea follows idea incessantly,'[515] says Mill; and this phrase a.s.sumes 'thoughts' and 'ideas' to be separable atoms. How, then, do they come to coalesce into an apparently continuous stream? The mind is a stream of 'ideas.' If the stream is composed of drops, we must, of course, consider the drops as composing the stream. The question is, What laws can we a.s.sign which will determine the process of composition? The phrase 'a.s.sociation'

admittedly expresses some general and very familiar truths.

Innumerable connections may be established when there is no a.s.signable ground of connection in the ideas themselves other than the fact of a previous contact. One idea not only calls up the other, but in some way generates a belief in an independent connection. We hear thunder, for example, and think of lightning. The two ideas are entirely distinct and separate, for they are due to different senses. Yet we not only think of lightning when we hear thunder, but we have no doubt that there is a causal connection. We believe in this connection, again, though no further explanation can be given of the fact.

Thunder and lightning have occurred together, and we infer that they will, and even must, occur together. When we examine our whole structure of belief, we find such 'arbitrary' a.s.sociations pervade it in every direction. Language itself is learned simply by a.s.sociation.

There is no connection whatever between the sound of the word 'man'

and the 'ideas' which the word excites, beyond the fact that the sound has been previously heard when the ideas were excited. Here, then, is a phenomenon to be explained or generalised. We have in countless cases a certain connection established for which no further reason can be a.s.signed than the fact of its previous occurrence. On such a ground, we believe that fire burns, that bread is wholesome, that stones fall; and but for such beliefs could know nothing of the outside world. 'Contingent' truth, therefore, or truth derived from mere contact, pervades, if it does not const.i.tute, the whole fabric of our whole knowledge. To prove that all our knowledge is derived from experience is, according to Mill, to prove that in some sense or other a.s.sociation of ideas lies at the base of all intellectual processes.

When Locke introduced a chapter upon 'a.s.sociation of Ideas' into the fourth edition of his essay, he treated it as the exceptional case.

Some ideas had a connection traceable by reason; others were only connected by 'chance and custom.' a.s.sociation does not explain reasoning, only the deviations from reasoning. But with Hume and Hartley the relation is inverted. The principle, instead of being an exceptional case, is simply the universal rule from which logical connection may be deduced as a special case.

The facts upon which Mill relied, and the account of them which he gave, require notice and embodiment in any sound psychology. In some shape or other they form the starting-point of all later systems.

Mill's vigorous application of his principle, worked out with imperfect appreciation and with many oversights, had therefrom, at least, the merit of preparing the ground for a more scientific method.

In any case, however, his conclusions, so far as sound, must be placed in a different framework of theory. It becomes necessary to dwell chiefly upon the curious defects of his theory, if taken as he wished it to be taken, for an ultimate scientific statement. The fact that there is a synthesis and an a.n.a.lysis is expressed by 'a.s.sociation.'

But what more can we say? What are the 'laws' of a.s.sociation? Unless some rule can be given, we shall get nothing that can be called a theory. One idea is not suggested by the other through any logical process. They are still 'conjoined' but not 'connected.' The connection, therefore, must be given by something different from the ideas themselves. Now the order of the original 'sensations' depends upon the 'objects of nature,' and is therefore left to 'physical philosophy.'[516] They occur, however, either in 'synchronous' or in 'successive' order. Then 'ideas' spring up in the order of 'sensations,' and this is the 'general law of a.s.sociation of ideas.'[517] The synchronous sensations produce synchronous ideas and the successive sensations successive ideas. Finally, the strength of the a.s.sociation between the ideas depends upon 'the vividness of the a.s.sociated feelings, and the frequency of the a.s.sociation.'[518] Hume had said that a.s.sociation depended upon three principles, 'contiguity in time and place,' 'causation,' and 'resemblance.' Contiguity in time corresponds to the successive, and contiguity in place to the synchronous, order. Causation, as Brown had finally proved,[519] means simply antecedence and consequence. 'Resemblance' remains and is, as Mill afterwards says,[520] a most important principle; but in an unlucky moment he is half inclined to reduce even 'resemblance' to 'contiguity.'[521] Resemblance is, he even suggests, merely 'a case of frequency,' because we generally see like things together. When we see one tree or sheep, we generally see several trees or sheep. J. S. Mill mildly remarks upon this quaint suggestion as the 'least successful simplification' in the book. He argues the point gravely. Sheep, it is clear, are not seen to be like because they often compose a flock, but are considered to be a flock because they are seen to be like. To do James Mill justice, he drops the argument as soon as he has struck it out. It is only worth notice as showing his aim. 'Likeness' seems to imply a relation dependent on the ideas themselves; not purely external and arbitrary. If we could get rid of likeness, all a.s.sociation would ultimately be 'contiguity.' 'The fundamental law of a.s.sociation,' as he says elsewhere,[522] 'is that when two things have been frequently found together, we never perceive or think of the one without thinking of the other.' The two ideas are a.s.sociated as two b.a.l.l.s are a.s.sociated when they are in the same box. So far as they are themselves concerned, they might be separated without any alteration in their own properties. What, then, corresponds to the 'box'?

a.s.sociation depends upon relations of time and s.p.a.ce. Things are a.s.sociated by occurring in succession or together; the red colour of a rose is in the same place with the shape of the leaf; the scent is perceived at the same time with the colour. The thunder follows the lightning. What, then, he might ask, are 'time' and 's.p.a.ce'? Are they 'ideas' or 'sensations' or qualities of the objects? or, in any case, as supplying the ultimate principle of a.s.sociation, do they not require investigation? Before coming to that problem, however, we have to settle other knotty points. We must clear away illusions which seem to introduce something more than a.s.sociation. Elements of thought not at first sight expressible simply in terms of sensations and ideas must be a.n.a.lysed to show that they are only disguises for different combinations of the facts. Reasoning, according to most logicians, supposes, first, concepts, and therefore some process of cla.s.sification of the objects of thought; and, secondly, some process of combining these concepts to bring out hitherto unknown truths.

What, then, is the meaning of the general or abstract symbols employed in the process? Mill's provision of raw materials consists so far of sensations and ideas, which are worked up so as to form 'cl.u.s.ters'

(the word is taken from Hartley) and 'trains.' This corresponds to synchronous and successive a.s.sociations. How does the logical terminology express these 'cl.u.s.ters' and 'trains'? Mill answers by a theory of 'naming.' Language fulfils two purposes; it is required in order to make our ideas known to others; and in order to fix our own ideas. Ideas are fluctuating, transitory, and 'come into the mind unbidden.' We must catch and make a note of these shifting crowds of impalpable ent.i.ties. We therefore put marks upon the simple sensations or upon the 'cl.u.s.ters.' We ticket them as a tradesman tickets bundles of goods in his warehouse, and can refer to them for our own purposes or those of others. As the number of objects to be marked is enormous, as there are countless ideas and cl.u.s.ters and cl.u.s.ters of cl.u.s.ters of endless variety to be arranged in various ways, one main object of naming is economy. A single word has to be used to mark a great number of individuals. This will account for such general names as are represented by noun-substantives: man, horse, dog, and so forth. Mill then proceeds, with the help of Horne Tooke, to explain the other grammatical forms. An adjective is another kind of noun marking a cross division. Verbs, again, are adjectives marking other sets of facts, and enabling us to get rid of the necessity of using a new mark for every individual or conceivable combination into cl.u.s.ters. J. S. Mill remarks that this omits the special function of verbs--their 'employment in predication.'[523] James Mill, however, has his own view of 'predication.' 'Man' is a mark of John, Peter, Thomas, and the rest. When I say 'John is a man,' I mean that 'man is another mark to that idea of which John is a mark.'[524] I am then able to make a statement which will apply to all the individuals, and save the trouble of repeating the a.s.sertion about each. 'Predication,'

therefore, is simply a subst.i.tution of one name for another. So, for example, arithmetic is simply naming. What I call two and two, I also call four. The series of thoughts in this case is merely 'a series of names applicable to the same thing and meaning the same thing.'[525]

This doctrine, as J. S. Mill remarks, is derived from Hobbes, whom Leibniz in consequence called _plus quam nominalis_.[526] My belief that two and two make four explains why I give the same name to certain numbers; but the giving the name does not explain the belief.

Meanwhile, if a cla.s.s name be simply the mark which is put upon a bundle of things, we have got rid of a puzzle. Mill triumphs over the unfortunate realists who held that a cla.s.s meant a mysterious ent.i.ty, existing somewhere apart from all the individuals in which it is embodied. There is really nothing mysterious; a name is first the mark of an individual, the individual corresponding to a 'cl.u.s.ter' or a set of 'simple ideas, concreted into a complex idea.'[527] Then the name and the complex idea are a.s.sociated reciprocally; each 'calls up' the other. The complex idea is 'a.s.sociated' with other resembling ideas.

The name becomes a talisman calling up the ideas of an indefinite number of resembling individuals, and the name applied to one in the first instance becomes a mark which calls up all, or, as he says, is the 'name of the whole combination.' Cla.s.sification, therefore, 'is merely a process of naming, and is all resolvable into a.s.sociation.'[528] The peculiarity of this theory, as his commentators again remark, is that it expressly omits any reference to abstraction.

The cla.s.s simply means the aggregate of resembling individuals without any selection of the common attributes which are, in J. S. Mill's phrase, 'connoted' by the cla.s.s-name. Abstraction, as James Mill explains, is a subsidiary process, corresponding to the 'formation of _sub-species_.'[529]

Mill has now shown how the various forms of language correspond to ideas, formed into cl.u.s.ters of various orders by the principle of a.s.sociation. The next step will naturally be to show how these cl.u.s.ters are connected in the process of reasoning. Here the difficulty about predication recurs. J. S. Mill[530] remarks that his father's theory of predication consistently omits 'the element Belief.' When I say, 'John is a man,' I make an affirmation or a.s.sert a belief. I do not simply mean to call up in the mind of my hearer a certain 'cl.u.s.ter' or two coincident cl.u.s.ters of ideas, but to convey knowledge of truths. The omission of reference to belief is certainly no trifle. Mill has cla.s.sified the various ideas and combinations of ideas which are used in judgment, but the process of judgment itself seems to have slipped out of account. He may have given us, or be able to give us, a reasoned catalogue of the contents of our minds, but has not explained how the mind itself acts. It is a mere pa.s.sive recipient of ideas, or rather itself a cl.u.s.ter of ideas cohering in various ways, without energy of its own. One idea, as he tells us, calls up another 'by its own a.s.sociating power.'[531] Ideas are things which somehow stick together and revive each other, without reference to the mind in which they exist or which they compose. This explains his frequent insistence upon one a.s.sertion. As we approach the question of judgment he finds it essential. 'Having a sensation and having a feeling,' he says, 'are not two things.' To 'feel an idea and be conscious of that feeling are not two things; the feeling and the consciousness are but two names for the same thing.'[532] So, again, 'to have a sensation and to believe that we have it, are not distinguishable things.'[533] Locke's reflection thus becomes nothing but simple consciousness, and having a feeling is the same as attending to it.[534] The point is essential. It amounts to saying that we can speak of a thought as though it were simply a thing.

Thus belief not only depends upon, but actually _is_ a.s.sociation. 'It is not easy,' he says, 'to treat of memory, belief, and judgment separately.'[535] As J. S. Mill naturally asks, 'How is it possible to treat of belief without including in it memory and judgment?' Memory is a case of belief, and judgment an 'act of belief.'[536] To James Mill, however, it appears that as these different functions all involve a.s.sociation, they may be resolved into varying applications of that universal power. Memory involves 'an idea of my present self' and an 'idea of my past self,' and to remember is to 'run over the intervening states of consciousness called up by a.s.sociation.'[537]

Belief involves a.s.sociation at every step. The belief in external objects is, as 'all men admit' ... 'wholly resolvable into a.s.sociation.'[538] 'That a cause means and can mean nothing to the human mind but constant antecedence' (and therefore 'inseparable a.s.sociation,' as he thinks) 'is no longer a point in dispute.'[539]

a.s.sociation, it is true, may produce wrong as well as right beliefs; right beliefs when 'in conformity with the connections of things,'[540] and wrong beliefs when not in conformity. In both cases the belief is produced by 'custom,' though, happily, the right custom is by far the commonest. The 'strength of the a.s.sociation follows the frequency.' The crow flies east as well as west; but the stone always falls downwards.[541] Hence I form an 'inseparable a.s.sociation'

corresponding to a belief in gravitation, but have no particular belief about the direction of a crow's flight.

This gives the doctrine of 'indissoluble a.s.sociation'--the pivot of the whole scheme--the doctrine, says J. S. Mill, which, 'if it can be proved, is the greatest of all the triumphs of the a.s.sociation Philosophy.'[542] The younger Mill always insisted upon the vast importance of the principle; but he here admits a difficulty. In a long note[543] upon James Mill's chapter on 'Belief,' conspicuous for his usual candour, he confesses the inadequacy of his father's view.

The comment indicates the point of divergence and yet shows curiously the ground common to both. James Mill's theory states facts in some sense undeniable. Our 'ideas' cohere and combine to form a tissue: an imagery or series of pictures which form the content and are somehow the ground of our beliefs. The process of formation clearly involves 'a.s.sociation.' The scent of the rose is a.s.sociated with the colour: both with the visible form and so forth. But is this process the same thing as believing, or have we to explain the belief by some mental activity different from, however closely connected with, the imagination, or in his phrase the 'ideation'? Here J. S. Mill finds a difficulty. The statement, 'I believe that thunder will follow lightning,' is something more than the statement, 'the sight suggests or calls up the sound.' The mental picture considered by itself may be described as a fact, without considering what belief, or whether any belief, is implied. J. S. Mill therefore makes a distinction intended to clear up his father's confusion. There is a difference, he says, between remembering 'a real fact' and remembering a 'thought.'[544] He ill.u.s.trates this by the difference between the idea of Lafayette and the idea of Falstaff. Lafayette was real, and had been seen by the rememberer. Falstaff is a figment who, having never existed, can never have been seen. Yet the idea of Falstaff may be quite as vivid as the idea of Lafayette. What, then, is the difference between the two states of mind? One, says J. S. Mill, is a belief about 'real facts'; the other about 'thoughts.' This, he observes, corresponds to James Mill's distinction between a 'sensation' and an 'idea,'[545] a difference which he had admitted to be 'primordial.' Then, says J. S.

Mill, we may as well admit that there is an 'element' in the remembrance of a real fact not implied in the remembrance of a thought and not dependent on any difference in the 'ideas' themselves. It, too, may be taken as 'primordial,' or incapable of further a.n.a.lysis.

This doctrine becomes important in some of Mill's logical speculations,[546] and is connected with his whole theory of belief in an external world. It has an uncomfortable likeness to Reid's 'common-sense' view, and even to the hated 'intuitionism'; and Mill deserves the more credit for his candour.

Meanwhile it seems clear that the criticism implies an important confusion. The line of distinction is drawn in the wrong place. So far as the simple 'imagination' is concerned, there may be no question of belief or disbelief. The picture of Falstaff or of Lafayette, a horse or a centaur, arises equally, and is put together, let us suppose, by simple a.s.sociation. But as soon as I think about either I believe or disbelieve, and equally whether I judge the object to be a thought or to be a 'real fact,' whether I say that I could have seen Lafayette, or that I could not have seen Falstaff. It is not a question between reality or unreality, but between two cla.s.ses of reality. A dream is a real dream, just as a man is a real man. The question is simply where or how it exists, not whether it exists. The picture is, in one case, put together by my mind; in the other, due to a stimulus from without; but it exists in both cases; and belief is equally present whether I put it in one cla.s.s of reality or the other: as we form a judgment equally when we p.r.o.nounce a man to be lying, and when we p.r.o.nounce him to be speaking the truth. J. S. Mill seems to suppose that a.s.sociation can explain the imagination of a centaur or a Falstaff, but cannot explain the belief in a horse or Lafayette. The imagination or 'ideation,' he should have said, accounts in both cases for the mere contents of the thought; but in neither case can it by itself explain the judgment as to 'reality.' That is to say, James Mill may have described accurately a part of the process by which the mental picture is constructed, but has omitted to explain the action of the mind itself. Belief, we may agree, is a 'primordial' or ultimate faculty; but we must not interpret it as belief in a 'real fact' as distinguished from belief in 'a thought': that is a secondary and incidental distinction.

This confusion, as I have said, apparently prevents J. S. Mill from seeing how deeply his very frank admissions cut into the very structure of his father's system. He has, as I have said, remarked upon the singular absence of any reference to 'belief,' 'abstraction,'

and so forth; but he scarcely observes how much is implied by the omission. His criticism should have gone further. James Mill has not only omitted a faculty which enables us to distinguish between 'thoughts' and 'things,' images of fancy and pictures of reality, but also the faculty which is equally present whenever we properly think instead of simply seeing images pa.s.sively; and equally whether we refer an image to fact or fancy. His 'a.n.a.lysis of the mind' seems to get rid of the mind itself.

The omission becomes important at the next step. 'Under the modest t.i.tle of an explanation of the meaning of several names,' says his son, James Mill discusses 'some of the deepest and most intricate questions in all metaphysics.' A treatise on chemistry might almost as well be 'described as an explanation of the names, air, water, pota.s.s, sulphuric acid, and so forth.'[547] Why does the chapter come in this place and in this peculiar form? Probably because James Mill was partly conscious of the inadequacy of his previous chapters. The problems which he has been considering could not be adequately treated by regarding ideas as 'things' bound together by a.s.sociation. What, after all, is a proposition? What is meant by 'true' or 'false,' as distinguished from real and unreal? If an a.s.sociation actually _is_ a truth, what is the difference between right and wrong a.s.sociations?

Both are facts, and the very words 'right' and 'wrong,' that is, true and false, apply not to facts but to propositions.[548] The judgment is tested in some way by correspondence to the 'order of Nature,' or of our sensations and ideas. What precisely is meant by this order? So far as we have gone, it seems as if ideas might be combined in any order whatever, and the most various beliefs generated in different minds. Perhaps, however, the principle of a.s.sociation itself may reveal something as to the possible modes of coalescence. Mill makes contiguity an ultimate ground of a.s.sociation; and contiguity implies that things have certain relations expressible in terms of s.p.a.ce and time and so forth. These primitive relations now come up for consideration, and should enable us to say more precisely what kind of order is possible. In fact, Mill now endeavours to a.n.a.lyse the meanings of such words as relation in general, time, s.p.a.ce, number, likeness, personal ident.i.ty and others. The effect of his a.n.a.lysis is that the principles, whatever they may be, which might be supposed to underlie a.s.sociation appear to be products of a.s.sociation. He begins by asking what is the meaning of 'relative terms.' Their peculiarity is that they 'always exist in pairs,' such as 'father and son,' 'high and low,' 'right and left.' 'If it is asked, Why do we give names in pairs? the general answer immediately suggests itself; it is because the things named present themselves in pairs, that is, are joined by a.s.sociation.'[549] J. S. Mill thinks that no part of the _a.n.a.lysis_ is more valuable than the 'simple explanation' which follows. There is no 'mystical bond called a relation' between two things, but 'a very simple peculiarity in the concrete fact' marked by the names. In 'ordinary names of objects, the fact connoted by a name ... concerns one object only'; in the case of relative names, 'the fact connoted concerns two objects, and cannot be understood without thinking of them both.' A 'fact concerning an object' is a curiously awkward expression; but one point is clear. If the two objects concerned are the same, whether considered apart or together, the 'relation' must be something more than the facts, and therefore requires to be specified.

If they are, in fact, one thing, or parts of a continuous process, we must ask how they come to be distinguished, and what ground there is for speaking of a.s.sociation. James Mill, by considering the problem as a mere question of 'names,' seems to intimate that the relation is a mere figment. In fact, as J. S. Mill perceives, the 'explanations'

become nugatory. They simply repeat the thing to be explained. He begins with 'resemblance.' To feel two things to be alike is, he says, the same thing as to have the two feelings. He means to say, apparently, that when there are two 'ideas' there is not also a third idea of 'likeness.' That would be what Bentham called a 'fict.i.tious ent.i.ty.' But this cannot 'explain' the likeness of the ideas. 'Their being alike,' as his son interprets, 'is nothing but their being felt to be alike--which does not help us.'[550] So 'antecedence and consequence' are 'explained' by saying that one of two feelings calls up the other; or, as the son again remarks, antecedence is explained by antecedence, and succession by succession. Antecedence and consequence, like likeness and unlikeness, must therefore, according to J. S. Mill, be 'postulated as universal conditions of Nature, inherent in all our feelings whether of external or internal consciousness.'[551] In other words, apparently, time is an ultimate form of thought. Time and s.p.a.ce, generally, as James Mill thinks, are the 'abstract names' respectively of successive and simultaneous order, which become 'indissolubly a.s.sociated with the idea of every object.'[552] s.p.a.ce, of course, is said to be a product of touch and muscular sensations, and the problem as to how these varying sensations and these alone give rise to apparently necessary and invariable beliefs is not taken into consideration. Mill is here dealing with the questions which Kant attempted to answer by showing how the mind imposes its forms upon sense-given materials, forms them into concepts, and combines the concepts into judgments and reasoning.

Mill evades the mysterious and transcendental at the cost of omitting reason altogether. He represents the result of accepting one horn of a dilemma, which presses upon philosophies of loftier pretensions. Those who accept the other horn speak of a 'fact' as though it were a truth, and argue as though the world could be spun out of pure logic, or a tissue be made of relations without any things to be related. Mill, with scarcely a glance at such doctrines, tries systematically to speak of a truth as if it were a fact. The world for him is made up of ideas sticking together; and nothing else exists. The relation is the fact; belief is the a.s.sociation; consciousness and reflection, considered apart, are nothing but the sensations, ideas, cl.u.s.ters, and trains. The attempt to base all truth upon experience, to bring philosophy into harmony with science was, as I hold, perfectly right.

Only, upon these a.s.sumptions it could not be carried out. Mill had the merit which is implied even by an unsuccessful attempt to hold by fact. He raises a number of interesting questions; and I think that it is more remarkable that so many of his observations have still an interest for psychologists than that so much is obviously wrong. Mill, it may be said, took an essay upon a.s.sociation for a treatise upon psychology in general. He was writing what might be one important chapter in such a treatise, and supposes that he has written the whole, and can deduce 'philosophy' from it, if, indeed, any philosophy can be said to remain. Meanwhile, I may observe, that by pushing his principles to extremes, even his 'a.s.sociation' doctrine is endangered.

His _a.n.a.lysis_ seems to destroy even the elements which are needed to give the simplest laws of a.s.sociation. It is rather difficult to say what is meant by the 'contiguity,' 'sequence,' and 'resemblance,'

which are the only conditions specified, and which he seems to explain not as the conditions but as the product of a.s.sociation. J. S. Mill perceived that something was wanting which he afterwards tried to supply. I will just indicate one or two points, which may show what problems the father bequeathed to the son. James Mill, at one place, discusses the odd problem 'how it happens that all trains of thought are not the same.'[553] The more obvious question is, on his hypothesis, how it happens that any two people have the same beliefs, since the beliefs are made of the most varying materials. If, again, two ideas when a.s.sociated remain distinct, we have Hume's difficulty.

Whatever is distinguishable, he argued, is separable. If two ideas simply lie side by side, as is apparently implied by 'contiguity,' so that each can be taken apart without change, why should we suppose that they will never exist apart, or, indeed, that they should ever again come together? The contiguity does not depend upon them, but upon some inscrutable collocation, of which we can only say that it exists now. This is the problem which greatly occupied J. S. Mill.

The 'indissoluble' or 'inseparable' a.s.sociation, which became the grand arcanum of the school, while intended to answer some of these difficulties, raises others. Mill seems to insist upon splitting a unit into parts in order that it may be again brought together by a.s.sociation. So J. S. Mill, in an admiring note, confirms his father's explanation ('one of the most important thought in the whole treatise') of the infinity of s.p.a.ce.[554] We think s.p.a.ce infinite because we always 'a.s.sociate' position with extension. Surely s.p.a.ce is extension; and to think of one without the other implies a contradiction. We think s.p.a.ce infinite, because we think of a s.p.a.ce as only limited by other s.p.a.ce, and therefore indefinitely extensible.

There is no 'a.s.sociation,' simply repet.i.tion. Elsewhere we have the problem, How does one a.s.sociation exclude another? Only, as J. S. Mill replies, when one idea includes the idea of the absence of the others.[555] We cannot combine the ideas of a plane and a convex surface. Why? Because we have never had both sets of sensations together. The 'commencement' of one set has always been 'simultaneous with the cessation of another set,' as, for instance, when we bend a flat sheet of paper. The difficulty seems to be that one fact cannot be contradictory of another, since contradiction only applies to a.s.sertions. When I say that A is above B, however, I surely a.s.sert that B is below A; and I cannot make both a.s.sertions about A and B at the same time without a contradiction. To explain this by an a.s.sociation of simultaneous and successive sensations seems to be a curiously roundabout way of 'explaining.' Every a.s.sertion is also a denial; and, if I am ent.i.tled to say anything, I am enabled without any help from a.s.sociation to deny its contradictory. On Mill's showing, the a.s.sertion and the denial of its contradiction, instead of being identical, are taken to be two beliefs accidentally a.s.sociated.

Finally, I need only make one remark upon the fundamental difficulty.

It is hard to conceive of mere loose 'ideas' going about in the universe at large and sticking accidentally to others. After all, the human being is in true sense also an organised whole, and his const.i.tution must be taken into account in discovering the laws of 'ideation.' This is the point of view to which Mill, in his anxiety to get rid of everything that had a savour of _a priori_ knowledge about it, remains comparatively blind. It implies a remarkable omission.

Mill's great teacher, Hartley, had appealed to physiology in a necessarily crude fashion. He had therefore an organism: a brain or a nervous system which could react upon the external world and modify and combine sensations. Mill's ideas would have more apparent connection if they could be made to correspond to 'vibratiuncles' or physical processes of some kind. But this part of Hartley's hypothesis had been dropped: and all reality is therefore reduced to the whirl of vagrant and accidentally cohering ideas in brains and cl.u.s.ters. His one main aim is to get rid of everything that can be called mystical and to trace all mental processes to 'experience,' as he understands experience--to show that we are never ent.i.tled to a.s.sert that two ideas may not be joined in any way whatever.

The general tendency of the 'a.s.sociation Philosophy' is sufficiently clear. It may be best appreciated by comparing it to the method of the physical sciences, which it was intended to rival. The physicist explains the 'laws of nature' by regarding a phenomenon as due to the varying arrangements of an indefinite mult.i.tude of uniform atoms. I need not ask whether these atoms are to be regarded as realities, even the sole realities, or, on the other hand, as a kind of logical scaffolding removable when the laws are ascertained. In any case, the a.s.sumption is necessary and most fruitful in the search for accurate and quant.i.tative formulae. Mill virtually a.s.sumes that the same thing can be done by breaking up the stream of consciousness into the ideas which correspond to the primitive atoms. What precisely these atoms may be, how the constantly varying flow of thought can be resolved into const.i.tuent fractions, is not easy to see. The physicist at least supposes his atoms to have definite s.p.a.ce relations, but there is nothing clearly corresponding to s.p.a.ce in the 'ideas.' They are capable of nothing but co-existence, sequence, and likeness; but the attempt to explain the meaning of those words ends in nothing but repeating them. One result is the curious combination of the absolute and the indefinitely variable. We get absolute statements because the ultimate const.i.tuents are taken to be absolutely constant. We have indefinite variability because they may be collocated in any conceivable or inconceivable way. This becomes evident when we have to do with organisms of any kind: with characters or societies an organism varies, but varies along definite lines. But, on Mill's showing, the organic relations correspond to the indefinitely variable. Education is omnipotent; state const.i.tutions can be manufactured at will, and produce indefinite consequences. And yet he can lay down laws of absolute validity, because he seems to be deducing them from one or two formulae corresponding to the essential and invariable properties of the ultimate unit--whether man or ideas.

From this follows, too, the tendency to speak as if human desires corresponded to some definite measurable things, such as utility in ethics, value in political economy, and self-interest in politics.

This point appears in the application of Mill's theories to the moral sciences.

III. JAMES MILL'S ETHICS

James Mill in his ethical doctrine follows Bentham with little variation; but he shows very clearly what was the psychology which Bentham virtually a.s.sumed. I may pa.s.s very briefly over Mill's theory of conduct[556] in general. The 'phenomena of thought,' he says, may be divided into the 'intellectual' and the 'active' powers. Hitherto he has considered 'sensations' and 'ideas' merely as existing; he will now consider them as 'exciting to action.'[557] The phenomena consist in both cases of sensations and ideas, combined into 'cl.u.s.ters,' and formed into trains 'according to the sense laws.' We have now to consider the ideas as active, and 'to demonstrate the simple laws into which the phenomena of human life, so numerous and apparently so diversified, may all be easily resolved.'

A desire is an 'idea' of a pleasant sensation; an 'aversion' an idea of painful sensation. The idea and the sensation are not two things, but two names for the same thing. Desire, again, has a 'tacit reference to future time' when applied to a given case. We a.s.sociate these pains and pleasures with the causes; and in the important case our own actions are the causes. Thus the a.s.sociation produces the motive, and the readiness to obey the motive is, as Bentham says, the 'disposition.' Then, following Hartley, Mill explains the will. Bodily actions are muscular contractions, which are slowly co-ordinated by habit--a.s.sociation, of course, acting at every stage of the process.

Now, it is a plain fact that muscular contractions follow 'ideas.' It is easy, then, to see how the 'idea of a pleasure should excite the idea of the action which is the cause of it; and how, when the idea exists, the action should follow.'[558] An 'end' is a pleasure desired, and gives the 'motive.' When we start from the motive and get the pleasure the same a.s.sociation is called 'will.' 'Free-will' is of course nonsense. We have a full account of the human mechanism, and can see that it is throughout worked by a.s.sociation, admitting the primary fact of experience that the idea causes the muscular contraction.

This, and the ethical conclusions which follow, substantially coincide with Bentham's doctrine, or supply the first principles from which Bentham might be deduced. A fuller exposition of the ethics is given in the _Fragment on Mackintosh_. Mackintosh, in 1829, wrote a Dissertation upon 'Ethical Philosophy,' for the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.[559] The book stirred Mill's 'indignation against an evil-doer.'[560] He wrote a _Fragment on Mackintosh_, which was suppressed for a time in consequence of his antagonist's death in 1832, but published in the year of his own death, 1835.[561] According to Professor Bain, the book was softened in consequence of remonstrances from Bickersteth. It would be curious to see the previous version. Professor Bain says that there are 'thousands' of books which contain 'far worse severities of language.' I confess that I cannot remember quite 'a thousand.' It is at least difficult to imagine more unmitigated expressions of contempt and aversion.

Mackintosh, says Mill, uses 'macaroni phrases,' 'tawdry talk,'

'gabble'; he gets 'beyond drivelling' into something more like 'raving'; he 'deluges' us with 'unspeakable nonsense.' 'Good G.o.d!'

sums up the comment which can be made upon one sentence.[562] Sir James, he declares, 'has got into an intellectual state so thoroughly depraved that I doubt whether a parallel to it is possible to be found.'[563] There is scarcely a mention of Mackintosh without an insult. A partial explanation of Mill's wrath may be suggested by the chapter upon Bentham. Mackintosh there accused the Utilitarians generally of 'wantonly wounding the most respectable feelings of mankind'; of 'clinging to opinions because they are obnoxious'; of taking themselves to be a 'chosen few,' despising the mult.i.tude, and retorting the dislike which their arrogance has provoked by using still more exasperating language.[564] He suggested that they should do more justice to 'the Romillys and the Broughams,' who had been the real and judicious reformers; and he ill.u.s.trated the errors of Bentham by especial reference to Mill's arguments upon government and education. There had long been an antipathy. Mackintosh, said Mill in 1820, 'lives but for London display; _parler et faire parler de lui_ in certain circles is his heaven.'[565]