BOOKS.
MR. J. S. MILL ON SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.* [Finer NOTICE.]
WE hold this to be Mr. Mill's greatest book, requiring far greater powers both of imagination and exposition than are required by his Political Economy, and showing those powers in a higher degree than his System of Logic. Its power is no doubt due in a great measure to the maturity of thought brought to the task and the comparative leisure which he has enjoyed to achieve it, but also in some degree to the critical form which Mr. Mill has so happily chosen for what in many respects is not in effect a critical, but a constructive work. Again, the masterly ease with which he handles thoughts of the metaphysical class, and brings them out of that technical atmosphere in which we scarcely know whether an argument is worth anything or not —so little is it like those which we ordinarily use—to the same testa as are applied by cultivated mei in all other departments of life, is a fascination in itself, -though it is a fascination belonging chiefly to the critical portion of the book. It is written in a style which makes metaphysical questions once more real, even to men long ago plunged into practical life, while most writers on these subjects write in a style absolutely revolting to the practised thoughts of grown-up men, and tolerable only at that age at which we have not learned the difference between the comparative reality of theory and practice, nay, at which theory seems the more real of the two. Beyond and above all questions of style, or even subtlety, there is a grave and restrained fire in many parts of the book such as have never shown themselves before in Mr. Mill's writings except in the volume on Liberty, and here it is free from a certain soreness of tone and, as we think, an undue, if not unjust, disposition to indict modern society for ima- ginary sins which tempered the pleasure with which we read some of the finest portions of that wise and eloquent book. We say all this without acquiescing in the foundations of Mr. Mill's philo- sophy, which, as receiving the sanction of so wide and profound a
• An Faamination of Sir A,pinm Hamilton's Philosophy, and of the Principal Philosophical Questions Discrased in his Wnlings. By John Rim t lieu. Londo : Longman.
mind, we view with simple amazement ; but heartily acquiescing in the justice and admiring the accomplished ease of much of the destructive criticism directed against Sir William Hamilton's philosophical crotchets, and thoroughly impressed with the inten- sity of the love of truth which breathes through the whole.
It is hard work reviewing to any purpose in a newspaper a great and original essay, every chapter of which—often every page—suggests a criticism that might occupy the whole space at our disposal. As, however, the only object of such articles as a newspaper admits is not to cope with books like these, but to in.. duce others to read them and supply a few hints as to the points requiring most careful scrutiny, we will first indicate the greatest services which we believe Mr. Mill has rendered to metaphysics and theology by this book, and subsequently touch the two funda- mental points in which he seems to us to be less a reasoner than a conjurer who breaks out of the prison of sensation in which he has voluntarily immured himself without tools into an external world, and who dexterously manipulates moral necessity till it resembles as nearly as possible its opposite, moral liberty.
Curiously enough, the great service which this book seems to us to render to the world is theologieal,—we say " curiously," for the book does not commit its author to any theology, leaving it almost undetermined whether he has any, but only to the re- jection of a particular system which prides itself on knowing nothing of the God it professes to adore. Nevertheless the rejec- tion of that theology seems to us the condition sine qud non of any genuine theology, and its philosophical pretensions have been so arrogant, and its success so considerable of late years, that Mr. Mill's masterly refutation of it, in striking at the only dangerous Atheism, the Atheism which professes to be devout, will, we believe, render a great and permanent service to all true faith. Sir William Hamilton had a passion for Dialectic which to some considerable extent obscured the genuine re- alism of his philosophy. Like Kant, he discovered that human reason was beset by a large set of twin contradictions (called Antinomies), in one or other of every pair of which it is obliged to take refuge, and yet both of which are equally incredible. In other words, Sir William Hamilton held that in relation to certain subjects there are two alternatives in our mind, both absolutely inconceivable, yet one of which must be true. And in saying so he used t inconceivable' in a much stronger sense than "incapable of a positive image," for he meant by it " conflicting with the laws or our thought." Now Mr. Mill goes far beyond Sir William Hamilton in his scepticism as to the universal validity of human reason ; he will admit and even maintain that there are possible workUin which two and two do not make four,—and in which our assumption as to the infinitude of space shall turn out to be a delusion, so that one of Euclid's diagrams might be begun so unfortunately near to the edge of space that part of it should overlap and commit suicide in that world which has no space in it, and which yet hedges space in. We are not joking in this, and it is worth while insisting on it for a moment, because it gives more significance to Mr. Mill's masterly defence of the actual consis- tency of human reason with itself in this universe that he is so anxious to assert the possibility of some other universe where our best reason shall be summarily abolished. " In some other existence," he says, " we may be transported to the end of space, when, being apprised of what had happened by some impression of a kind utterly unknown to us now, we should at the same instant become capable of conceiving the fact, and learn that it was true." Of course if this hardy suggestion be reasonable, we shall (also at the same instant) learn that all our geometry is a tissue of false criteria, that, for example, lines in the same plane which never meet in space are not necessarily parallel, because their aspiration to meet may be only defeated by the hi:landed reign of space and the unmanageable nature of the world beyond, and that, in general, oar geometry is true not as universal science, but as a local custom which must not be applied too near the boundary even of its proper sphere. So also of our Arithmetic, Mr. Mill holds, with an able but amazingly credulous essayist in the Saturday Review, that if there were a world in which 44, whenever two Oaks of things are either placed in proximity or are contemplated together, a fifth thing is immediately created and brought within the contemplation of the mind engaged in putting two and two together,"—" in such a world two and two would make five." In other words, Mr. Mill believes that we should lose our power of identifying the old four units simply because a fifth unit was invariably added on their simultaneous enumeration. Well, if Mr. Mill and the able Saturday reviewer think so, all we can say is they are able to think a world in which thought is impossible, for the most essential of all principles of
thought is 81- identification of A with A. That A may by change
cease to and become B, every one holds to be true ; —but that
A may both itself and not itself, or that 2 plus 2 may be at the sum meat both 2 plus 2, and also 2 plus 2 plus 1, can only be tray in a world where true' has no meaning. However, thus
hol Mr. MilL There is no limit to his anxiety to impress n us that every foundation of our reason here, indeed, reason i :elf,—nay, for anything we know, his favourite law of associ- tion, which is to his mind the cause of reason, —may be in some future world upset, revolutionized, abolished. But we insist on this, mainly to contrast his zeal in favour of possible in- tellectual revolutions, with what seems to us his much wiser zeal in favour of the actual reason of " such creatures as we are in such a world as the present." If Sir William Hamilton had only attempted to show that the ultimate data of our reason here may be false and upset in future, no one would have cheered him on like Mr. Mill. But without going so far, he in some sense went further. He believed our reason to be of universal validity, but ventured to think that such reason as we have lands us in pairs of absolute contradictions, one of which must be true, and yet neither of which apparently can be true. Against this Mr. Mill's clear understanding absolutely revolts. He claims to be able to believe that the universal reason of man may turn out idiotic, but prudently finds every anticipation of such indictment here, premature, and refutes it with admirable lucidity. We think he is right in his choice of the alternative, if either alternative be necessary. We would rather believe in an only possible idiocy of the human race under circumstance= as yet quite inconceivable with Mr. Mill, than in any clear symptom of its actual imbecility, paralysis, or impotence with Sir William Hamilton. For our parts, we feel no fear of that universal Bedlam in which space is to be bounded by something that is not space, and in which two and two will make five. But we do feel a little anxious when it is apparently proved to us that, even with our present faculties, Reason trips up itself, and that God is an unknown metaphysical quantity, telegraphing messages to us in a cypher which means one thing when read by His key, and quite another thing when read by ours.
Nothing can be more admirable than this part of Mr. Mill's book,—his explosion of Sir William Hamilton's supposed "law of the conditioned," and above all, his noble answer to Mr. Mansel's thesis that human and divine morality are essentially different things. We have not room to cite any illustrations except those which bear directly on Mr. Mansel's peculiar application of Sir William Hamilton's hints to prove the inconceivability of God.
"The Infinite," says Mr. Mansel, "if it is to be conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially everything and actually nothing, for if there is anything general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything particular which it actually is, it is thereby ex- cluded from being any other thing. But, again, it must also be conceived as actually everything and potentially nothing, for an unrealized potentiality is likewise a limitation. If -the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection; if it is actually every- thing, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distin- guished from anything else, and discerned as an object of conscious- ness."
On which Mr. Mill remarks:— "There certainly is an infinite whose infinitude does not seem to be of much use to it. But can a writer be serious who bids.us conjtue up a conception of something which possesses infinitely all conflicting attributes, and because' we cannot do this without contradiction, would have us believe that there is a contradiction in the idea of infinite good- ness or infinite wisdom? Instead of 'the Infinite' substitute 'an infmitely good Being,' and Mr. Mansel's argument reads thus If there is anything which an infinitely good Being cannot become—if he cannot become bad—that is a limitation, and the goodness cannot be infinite. If there is anything-which an infinitely good Being actually is (namely, good), he is excluded from being any other thing, as from being wise and powerful.' I hardly think that Sir W. Hamilton would patronize this logic, learnt though it be in his schooL" Still more impressive is Mr. Mill's refutation of Mr. Mansel's further inference that because God is infinite and absolute, His infinite goodness must be essentially different in type froni our finite goodness, and that the " vulgar Rationalism " which wor- ships in God only what it approves in man is destructive of -revelation and ,worthy of all condemnation. I Mr. Mill replies, with admirableprecision, — " Anything carried to the infinite must have all the properties of the same thing as finite except those which depend upon the finiteness. Among the many who have said that we cannot conceive infinite space, did any one ever suppose that it is not space, — that it does not possess all the properties by which space is characterized / In- finite space cannot be cubical or spherical, because these are modes of being bounded ; but does any one imagine that in ranging through it we might arrive at some region which was not extended, of which one part was not outside another, where, though noBody intervened, motion was impossible, or where the sum of two sides of a triangle was less than the third side ? The parallel assertion may be made re- specting infinite goodness. What bilongs to it as Infinite (or more properly as Absolute) I do not pretend to know ; but I think that infinite goodness must be goodness, and that what is not consistent with goodness is not consistent with infinite good- ness. If in ascribing goodness to God, I do not meanowhat I mean by goodness, if I do not mean the goodness of which j have some knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible substance, which for aught I know may be a totally different quality from that which I love and venerate—and even must, if Mr. Mansel is to be believed, be in some important particulars opposed to this—what do I mean by calling it goodness, and what reason have I for venerat- ing it ? If instead of the 'glad tidings' that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that 'the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving does not sanction them ;' convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. What- ever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do; he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good who is.not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures, and if such a being can sentence me to holl for not so calling him,—to hell I will go !"
We do not know how far Mr. Mill does accept these glad tidings of which he so eloquently speaks, but we do know that this passage is the true language of prophets and apostles about God, who never yet asked any one to worship Him without declaring His goodness in the language in which it had been manifested in our Lord and come straight home to the heart of man.
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