faltering faith and zeal! that when he comes again, for Judgment, who came of old a wayfaring man, we may be found at his right hand! that when he rules, as rule he will, from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth, we each may have part in that great triumph! And unto God, revealed in Jesus, be now and ever all the praise! Amen. ART. VII.-MR. MILL AND HIS CRITICS.* Indirectly, Mr. Mill's "Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy" has been of great service to metaphysical science. It has stimulated inquiry and discussion, and given a fresh interest to the investigation of old problems. Through the cloud of replies, examinations, and criticisms which it has evoked, it has even contributed largely to the establishment of sound doctrine. After all, Mr. Mill's book was not more an attempted refutation of Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy, than an exposition and defense of his own system of metaphysics. He thus gained a slight advantage in the outset; since the philosophy which he attacked was made responsible, by impli cation at least, for any errors or defects discoverable in his adversary's statement of it; while his own system was apparently strengthened by every such exposure of the seeming weakness of its rival. But an advantage of this sort is soon lost; Sir W. Hamilton's part in the controversy is fast slipping out of notice, and Mr. Mill's own system has become the target against which most of the shots are now directed. In the first edition 1. The Philosophy of the Conditioned, comprising some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, and on Mr. J. S. Mill's Examination of that Philosophy. By H. L. Mansel, B. D. 2. An Examination of Mr. John Stuart Mill's Doctrine of Causation in relation to Moral Freedom. By Patrick P. Alexander, M. A. 3. The Battle of the Two Philosophies. By an Inquirer. 4. An Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Philosophy, being a Defense of Fundamental Truth. By James McCosh, D. D. 5. Moral Causation, or Notes on Mr. Mill's Notes to the Chapter on Freedom in the Third Edition of his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy. By Patrick P. Alexander, M. A. 6. Letters to J. Stuart Mill, M. P., on Causation. By Rowland G. Hazard, of Peacedale, R. L. [Privately printed.] of his book, he appeared as an assailant; in the third, he stands on the defensive against a host of opponents. As a critic, Mr. Mill is disposed to be just and candid. We can not call him generous; for he ought, before frequently charging his opponent with inconsistency and self-contradiction, to have kept more constantly in view what indeed he has stated in the first chapter of his book, that Sir W. Hamilton's system was given to the world only in fragments, at long intervals, during the last twenty-seven years of a busy life; and that his "Lectures," the only approach to a consecutive exposition of it, were a posthumous publication of what was probably never intended by him for any other use than as manuscript notes, though they were printed nearly as they were first written by him some twenty years before his death. Extracts from these Lectures, written in 1836, ought not to have been compared, so frequently to his disadvantage, with statements of his more matured opinions made in his edition of Reid in 1846, or in his "Discussions," which passed to a second edition in 1853. Hamilton was eminently a progressive student and a candid and independent thinker, who never dreaded the imputation of a change of opinion, or shrank from modifying a statement which appeared to his calmer thought ill-judged or excessive. His philosophy can be fairly estimated only from his own latest published exposition of it, the second edition of his "Discussions;" or, if these are compared with his edition of Reid, it should be, not for the purpose of charging him with inconsistent opinions or incoherent thought, but to show the gradual development of his doctrines in his own mind. For his Lectures, we are persuaded that, during the last ten years of his life, he would have declined to consider himself as at all responsible, since they were hurriedly written at the outset, each Lecture, as the Editors tell us, being "usually written on the day, or more properly, on the evening and night, preceding its delivery;" "they never were revised by him with any view to publication;" and the manuscripts probably were not destroyed only because "he intended to make some use of portions of them, which had not been incorporated in his other writings, in the promised 'Supplementary Dissertations to Reid's Works."" Mr. Mill himself observes, "one of the unfairest, though commonest, tricks of controversy is that of directing the attack exclusively against the first crude form of a doctrine." We do not believe Mr. Mill ever consciously violated this sound principle; but if he had always remembered it, he would have withdrawn, or essentially modified, several passages in the third and eighth chapters of his book. No fair opponent will now hold him responsible for those statements in his first edition, which he has silently altered, or avowedly abandoned, in the third. It is curious that neither Mr. Mill nor any of his critics seems to have been aware, that "the Philosophy of the Conditioned" was Hamilton's only by adoption, since it is at least two centuries old, having been set forth in all its essential features, even in the theological application which Mr. Mansel has made of it, by Pascal. Hamilton could not have been ignorant of this fact, since Pascal was one of his favorite authors, . and he frequently borrows from the Pensées arguments and illustrations either of the theory itself, or which stand in close juxtaposition with passages in which the theory is explicitly set forth. He probably regarded his obligations to that marvellous child of genius as so obvious as not to need mention. The fact is of some importance, since Mr. Mill openly attributes the paralogisms into which he thinks Hamilton was betrayed, in attempting to prove that the Infinite and the Infinitely Divisible are both inconceivable, to his ignorance of mathematics. Now these "puzzles concerning infinity" are, to a considerable extent, directly borrowed from Pascal, who was certainly the greatest mathematical genius of his age. "It is a weakness natural to man," argues Pascal, "to believe that he possesses the truth directly; hence it happens that he is always disposed to deny every thing which is incomprehensible to him; whereas, in fact, he is naturally conversant only with falsehood, and he ought to accept as true only those propositions of which the contradictory seems to be false. This is why we ought always, when a proposition is inconceivable, to suspend our judgment concerning it, and not to deny it on this account, but examine its contradictory; and if we find this is necessarily false, we may boldly affirm the former one, incomprehensible as it is. Let us apply this rule to our subject." "There is no mathematician who does not believe that space is infinitely divisible; and yet there is no one who comprehends an infinite division. We oomprehend perfectly well, that by dividing a given extension ever so many times, we can never arrive at a portion of it which is indivisible—that is, which has no extension. For what is more absurd than to maintain that, when a portion of space is divided, its two halves should remain indivisible and without any extension, so that these two nothings of extension, when taken together, should constitute an extension? For I would ask those who think they have this idea, whether they conceive clearly that the two indivisibles touch each other; if they touch throughout, then they constitute only one and the same thing, and yet the two together are indivisible; if not throughout, then they touch only in part; then they have parts; then they are not indivisible." "Let them confess, then, as in truth they do when they are pressed, that their proposition, [that space is not infinitely divisible,] is just as inconceivable as the other, [that space is infinitely divisible;] and let them acknowledge that it is not by our capacity of conceiving things, that we ought to judge of their truth; since the two contraries [contradictories] being both inconceivable, it is still absolutely certain that one of them is true." In like manner, he argues : "However great a number may be, we may always conceive a greater one, and then one which is greater than this last, and so on to infinity, without ever arriving at one which can not be any farther augmented. And, on the contrary, however small a number may be, as the hundredth or ten thousandth part, we may always conceive a smaller one, and so on to infinity, without arriving at zero or nothing." soever, "In a word, for any movement, any number, any space, and any time whatthere is always a greater and a less; so that they are all sustained between nothing and infinity, being always infinitely remote from these extremes." "All these truths can not be demonstrated; and yet they are the very foundations and principles of mathematics. But as the reason which makes them incapable of demonstration is not their obscurity, but their extreme evidence, this want of proof is not a fault, but rather a perfection." "Those who see clearly these truths, will be able to admire the grandeur and the power of nature, in this double infinity which surrounds us on all hands, and learn from this marvellous consideration to know themselves, by regarding themselves as placed between an infinity and a nothing of extension, between an infinity and a nothing of number, between an infinity and a nothing of motion, between an infinity and a nothing of time; and thereby one may learn to estimate himself at his true value, and form reflexions which are worth more even than all the rest of mathematics." "For, in fine, what is man in nature? A nothing in re:ard to the infinite, an all in regard to nothing, a middle term betwixt nothing and all. Infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are, for him, veiled forever in impenetrable secrecy; and he is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness whence he was drawn and the infinite in which he is ingulfed." “Unity added to infinity does not at all augment it, any more than a foot increases an infinite measure. The finite is annihilated in presence of the in finite, and becomes a pure nothing. So is it with our spirit before God; so with our justice before the Divine justice. There is not so great a disproportion between unity and infinity, as between our justice and that of God." "We know that there is an infinite, and we are ignorant of its nature, since we know it is not true that numbers are finite; then we know that there is an infinite in number, but we know not what it is. It is neither odd nor even, for adding unity to it does not change its nature. And yet it is a number, and every number is either odd or even." Thus we may well know that there is a God, without knowing what he is." "Think you it is impossible that God should be infinite, and yet without parts? But I will show you a thing which is both infinite and indivisible; it is a point moving in all directions with an infinite swiftness; for it is in all places, and it is all in each place." There can not be a more distinct and forcible exposition of the Philosophy of the Conditioned than is presented in these eloquent fragments. Mr. Mill only skirmishes on the outskirts of the subject, when he makes an elaborate attempt to prove, that Hamilton's discussion of it confounds three distinct meanings of the word conception; we can hardly believe that he is serious in thus raising a dust which only obscures the question. And a similar doubt, whether he is in earnest, will inintrude, when we find him gravely affirming that "we can not conceive two and two as five, because an inseparable association compels us to conceive it as four;" and that we can not conceive two straight lines, as enclosing a space, because "the mental image of two straight lines which have once met, is inseparably associated with the representation of them as diverging." It is rather hard to believe that a mathematician has no better reason for affirming either of these truths, than a French rustic has for persistently calling a cabbage a chou, or an English peasant for invariably denominating it a cabbage. The etymology of the word con-capio, indicates clearly enough, that to conceive means to grasp together attributes in a unity of representation before the mind,that is, to individualize them by an act of imagination. Of course, the attempt to do this must fail, either when there are no attributes, except negative ones, to be grasped together, as is the case with the Infinite, or with pure *Pensées. Edition Faugère. Vol. I. pp. 139, 136, 137, 147. Vol. II. pp. 66, 163-5, 170. |
