English philosophers and schools of philosophy

m

er- MICK

The Channels of English Literature

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

AND

SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY

The Channels of English Literature

Edited by OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A.

ENGLISH EPIC AND HEROIC POETRY.
By Professor W. MACNEILL DIXON, M.A.,
University of Glasgow.

ENGLISH LYRIC POETRY.
By ERNEST RHYS.

ENGLISH ELEGIAC, DIDACTIC, AND
RELIGIOUS POETRY.

By the Very Rev. H. C. BEECHING, D.D.,
D.Litt., Dean of Norwich, and the Rev.
RONALD BAYNE, M.A.

ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETRY.

By Professor F. E. SCHELLING, Litt.D.,
University of Pennsylvania.

ENGLISH SATIRIC AND HUMOROUS
LITERATURE.

By OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A., F.S.A.

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS AND SCHOOLS
OF PHILOSOPHY.

By Professor JAMES SETH, M.A., University
of Edinburgh.

THE ENGLISH ESSAY AND ESSAYISTS.
By Professor HUGH WALKER, LL.D., St.
David's College, Lampeter.

THE ENGLISH NOVEL.

By Professor GEORGE SAINTSBURY, LL.D.,
University of Edinburgh.

ENGLISH HISTORIANS AND SCHOOLS
OF HISTORY.

By Professor RICHARD LODGE, University
of Edinburgh.

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

By Professor J. W. H. ATKINS, University
College of Wales.

J. M. DENT &> SONS, LTD.

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

AND

SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY

BY

JAMES SETH, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
BEDFORD STREET, STRAND. 1912

NEW YORK: E. P. BUTTON & CO.

All rights reserved

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &> Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

TO

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL FRASER

DISTINGUISHED ALIKE AS A REPRESENTATIVE AND
AS AN EXPOSITOR OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY

THIS STUDY IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED
BY AN OLD PUPIL

PREFACE

THE aim of this volume is to trace the chief stages
in the development of English philosophy, through a study
of its leading representatives in their relation to one another
and to the general movement of English philosophical
thought. Such an exhaustive account of the subject as will
be found, so far as the seventeenth century is concerned,
in Charles de Remusat's Histoire de la Philosophic en Angle-
terre depuis Bacon jusqifa Locke, or in Professor Sorley's
admirable chapters in The Cambridge History of English
Literature, lies entirely beyond the scope of the present
work. The same may be said of such a treatment as
Green's in his well-known Introduction to Hume's
Treatise, or Professor Forsyth's in his recent careful and
suggestive study of the 'method and general develop
ment ' of English Philosophy.1 My effort has been to
concentrate attention on the epoch-making philosophers
rather than on the less important figures in the movement,
and on the actual thought of the individual philosophers
rather than on the logical sequence of English philo
sophy as a chapter in the development of ideas. More
over, in accordance with the plan of the Series, as well as
in accordance with the facts of the case, English philo
sophy has been regarded as a form of English literature.
At the same time the term 'philosophy' has been in-

1 English Philosophy : a Sttidy of its Alethod and General Develop
ment, by Thomas M. Forsyth (1910).

viii PREFACE

terpreted in a strict sense, which excludes such writers as
Carlyle or Matthew Arnold from the study here under
taken.

I have to make grateful acknowledgment of the help
which has been ungrudgingly rendered by my friend and
colleague, Mr. Henry Barker, Lecturer in Moral Philo
sophy in this University, who has carefully read the
entire work both in manuscript and in proof, and whose
advice has been of great value at many points. I have
also to thank Mr. John Handyside, Lecturer in Philo
sophy in the University of Liverpool, Mr. John Laird,
Assistant in Moral Philosophy in the University of St.
Andrews, and Mr. John Baillie, Assistant in Logic
and Metaphysics in this University, for their kindness
in revising the proofs, and for a number of important
suggestions.

JAMES SETH.

February, 1912.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PAGE

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY AS LITERATURE. ITS GENE
RAL CHARACTERISTICS : i. EXPERIENTIAL ;
2. EPISTOMOLOGICAL ; 3. PRACTICAL. ITS
BEGINNINGS IN THE THIRTEENTH AND
FOURTEENTH CENTURIES — ROGER BACON ;
WILLIAM OF OCKHAM . i

PART I
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

CHAP.

I. BACON : PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENTIFIC ME
THOD ....... 20

II. HOBBES : MATERIALISM AND POLITICAL PHILO
SOPHY ....... 56

III. THE IDEALISTIC REACTION : CAMBRIDGE

PLATONISM AND RATIONALISM . . -79

IV. LOCKE : THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE . 92

ix

x CONTENTS

PART II
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

CHAP. PAGE

I. BERKELEY : THE NEW IDEALISM . . .123
II. HUME : EMPIRICISM AND SCEPTICISM . -149

III. THE MORALISTS : i. THE MORAL SENSE

SCHOOL — SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHESON, AND
BUTLER ; 2. ASSOCIATION AND SYMPATHY
AS EXPLANATIONS OF THE MORAL SENSE —
HARTLEY AND ADAM SMITH ; 3. THE
EARLY UTILITARIANS — TUCKER AND PALEY 188

IV. THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM : PRICE AND

REID ....... 227

PART III

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

I. THE ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT OF HUME'S
EMPIRICISM : i. UTILITARIANISM AND
ASSOCIATION ISM — BENTHAM, JAMES MILL,
JOHN STUART MILL, BAIN ; 2. EVOLU
TIONISM — HERBERT SPENCER . . . 240

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

II. THE DEVELOPMENT AND CONSEQUENCES OF
THE SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON
SENSE : i . NATURAL REALISM AND THE
PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED — HAMIL
TON AND MANSEL ; 2. AGNOSTICISM —
SPENCER AND HUXLEY ; 3. RETURN TO
THE CHARACTERISTIC POINT OF VIEW OF
SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY — CALDERWOOD, MAR-
TINEAU, FRASER 298

III. THE IDEALISTIC ANSWER TO HUME : i.
SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY — COLERIDGE AND
NEWMAN ; 2. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM — EARLIER
VERSION : FERRIER AND GROTE ; 3. AB
SOLUTE IDEALISM — LATER VERSION : STIR
LING, CAIRO, GREEN, BRADLEY . -319

CONCLUSION
PRESENT TENDENCIES IN ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY 358

INDEX ........ 368

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS AND
SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY

INTRODUCTION

ENGLISH philosophy is entitled to be called literature in
a sense in which the philosophy of perhaps no other nation
has the same right to the name. Whether we think
of Bacon and Hobbes in the seventeenth century, of
Berkeley and Hume in the eighteenth, or of Coleridge
and Ferrier in the nineteenth, we cannot but recognise
qualities of style which entitle the writer to rank among
the masters of English prose of the expository and con
troversial type with the best essayists of our country.
Even if we take a philosopher of lower literary merit,
like Locke or Reid, we find that in comparison with the
philosophers of the Continent, and especially of Germany,
the style is characterised by the absence of severity and
technicality ; and while this may lead to a certain loss of
precision which causes difficulty in the interpretation of
the philosophy, the fact that the works are written in
the vernacular adds to their literary value. The un-
technical, as well as the literary, quality of the style of
English philosophy is doubtless in some measure due to
the fact that its chief representatives were not, like the
great German idealists, university professors, but men
of affairs, in close contact with the life of the nation.
This is true, more or less, of Bacon, Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, and the Utilitarians ; and even Hobbes tells us

2 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

that his chief works were the fruit of the stirring
events of his time. We cannot but note a certain de
terioration of style as the consequence of the increasingly
academic character of our national philosophy. In
the seventeenth century the Cambridge Platonists are
a group of academic thinkers, whose style is marred
by technicalities and spoiled by over-quotation ; while
Hutcheson and Adam Smith, Reid, Hamilton, and other
leaders of the Scottish school, as well as the repre
sentatives of Absolute Idealism in the nineteenth century,
are academic teachers. With the exception of Adam
Smith, Reid, and Ferrier, these later writers are either
without literary gifts, or tend to a style too technical and
academic.

A distinguished authority on the subject has remarked on
the unity of type which is characteristic of English philo
sophy from first to last. Speaking of the five dominating
names — Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume —
Croom Robertson says that i whatever their difference of
individual character and aims,' these philosophers ' display a
greater general similarity of intellectual vision than can
be matched, for such a succession of first-rate minds, from
the history of any other modern people.' In the various
systems of German thought, on the contrary, in spite of
their apparent uniformity, 'upon a closer view the dis
tance is seen to be enormous from the dogmatism of
Leibnitz to the critical spirit of Kant, or again from
Kant's sober reserve to the stupendous confidence of
Hegel; while after the lapse of 150 years from the
time of Leibnitz, a general change of face may be said to
have been made at last.' * While this contrast is, on the
whole, a real one, yet it must not be over-estimated. A
closer inspection discovers not only fundamental differences
between the philosophical ideas of Bacon and those of
Hobbes, but between Bacon and his later successors, Locke,
Berkeley, and Hume ; while in the philosophy of each of

1 Philosophical Remains, p. 40,

INTRODUCTION 3

these writers there is a diversity of philosophical tendency,
and if we take account of writers who, though of in
ferior merit, are yet of much significance — the Cambridge
Platonists, the i moral sense' school of moralists, the
Scottish intuitionists, and the advocates of absolute idealism
— we discover a contrariety of doctrine which suggests a
vigour and independence in the English philosophical
mind which is hardly less remarkable than the charac
teristic stream of tendency which is generally identified
with it.

Yet there is such a characteristic stream of tendency.
Three main features can hardly fail to arrest the attention
of the student of English philosophy, features which
differentiate it from the philosophy of the Continent.
These are (i) its experiential and inductive method, as '
distinguished from the rationalistic and deductive method
of Continental philosophy; (2) the epistemological character
of the former, in contrast with the ontological character
of the latter ; and (3) the practical or ethical interest which
dominates the English, as contrasted with the metaphysi
cal and speculative interest which dominates the Con
tinental philosophy.

(i) Bacon shares with Descartes the honour of inau
gurating the modern period of philosophy. Bacon's
protest against the principle of authority, a principle
which had been accepted with more or less unhesitating
loyalty by the Scholastic philosophers, is no less vigorous
than that of Descartes. Both alike are eager to substitute
for faith and tradition the independent effort of the indi
vidual mind in the pursuit of truth. Bacon extends his
protest to antiquity itself (for is not antiquity the youth of
the world ?), and to the chief philosopher of Greek anti
quity who was also ' the philosopher ' of the Middle
Ages. He repudiates the method of the Aristotelian
logic which had ruled the Scholastic philosophy in its
period of maturity — the syllogistic or deductive method
— and would substitute for it the inductive method of
modern science. Descartes insists upon * clear and
distinct ideas ' as the method of philosophical thought ;

4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

for Bacon the only fruitful method is a first-hand study
or observation of the facts of experience. Descartes is
the founder of the great speculative movement which
proceeds through Spinoza to Leibnitz and Kant and
Hegel ; Bacon is the founder of the English experiential
and inductive movement represented by Locke, Berkeley
and Hume, Hartley, the Mills, and Spencer. The
characteristic works of the Cartesian movement are the
Ethica more geometrico demomtrata of Spinoza and the Logic
of Hegel ; those of the Baconian are the Essay of Locke,
which follows the c historical, plain method,' and the
Treatise of Hume, 'an attempt to introduce the experi
mental method of reasoning into moral subjects.' The
ambition of the former movement is the attainment of
systematic completeness, the vision of all things in their
ultimate and perfect unity, or in God ; such a philosophy
rightly describes the subject-matter of its investigation,
as well as the point of view from which it seeks to solve
all its problems, in the words, De Deo. The ideal of the
latter is to keep close to reality, to verify all its conclusions
by reference to the facts of experience ; it is always
willing to sacrifice system and symmetry for faithfulness
to the data of experience, speculative completeness for
scientific correctness and empirical truth. The one effort
is inspired by a passion for system, the other by a passion
for actuality ; the temper of the one is idealistic, that of
the other realistic.

Though English philosophy begins, in Bacon, with an
ambitious attempt to construct, at least in outline, the
encyclopaedia of the sciences, the basis of the entire
structure being c natural history,' or a collection of all
the facts, it was not long before it narrowed its scope to
the more specific problems of philosophy, and the experi
ential became the psychological or introspective method,
the method of inner observation, which fixes attention
upon the inner side of experience, or upon experience as
such. This is the method common to Locke, Berkeley,
and Hume, to the associationists and the Scottish intui-
tionists.

INTRODUCTION 5

The experientialism of English philosophy must not
be confused with empiricism. Empiricism is developed
out of the experientialism of Locke by Hume and the
association ists ; but Locke himself is not, any more than
Bacon, a mere empiricist. Nor are we to understand the
contrast between the experientialism of English and the
rationalism of Continental philosophy in any absolute
sense. Not to speak of the experiential element in
Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, in Kant and Hegel, we
find a constantly recurring note of rationalism in English
philosophy — in Hobbes, in Locke, in the Cambridge
Platonists and kindred thinkers of the seventeenth century,
in the later speculations of Berkeley under the same
Platonic influence, in the intuitionism of the Scottish
school, and in the absolute idealism of the later nine
teenth century, developed under the influence of German
philosophy.

(2) Although Locke is the founder of English episte-
mology, it may be said that from the beginning of the
movement the question of the nature of knowledge, of
the true method of scientific explanation, forced itself
upon the attention of English philosophy. Bacon's attack
upon the Scholastic method, and his proposal to substitute
for it a more adequate method, amounted in reality to a
criticism of knowledge, as it had been previously under
stood, and a new theory of its essential nature and method
of procedure. The appeal to the facts of experience
which he inaugurated was at the same time a condemna
tion of the accepted method of deductive or dialectical
explanation. His account of the various idola or precon
ceptions which vitiate the knowledge of his age is, in the
main, a statement of the characteristic defects of the
Scholastic method. While Descartes also begins with a
repudiation of the old knowledge, and with a characterisa
tion of the new, which he proposes to substitute for it, he
quickly passes from the problem of knowledge to that of
metaphysical or ontological construction, and his example
is followed by his successors, who, with the notable
exception of Kant, accept the Cartesian ideal of know-

6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

ledge, and are preoccupied with metaphysical construc
tion rather than with the problem of knowledge or
method.1

Locke is the first English philosopher to substitute
the problem of knowledge for that of reality, holding,
like Kant in his proposed < criticism ' of human know
ledge, that this is the previous question which must be
answered before the metaphysical question of the nature
of reality can be attempted with any hope of success.
In his own memorable words, *It is ambition enough
to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the
ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that
lies in the way to knowledge.' 2 His main difficulty
is to show how knowledge can be at once general and
real ; and his conclusion is that it is either general and
unreal, or real but merely particular. Our deficiency of
certain knowledge is supplied, he holds, by that * opinion/
' faith,7 or i assent ' which is based upon probability, a
conclusion which may be compared with that of the later
Kantian criticism. While Locke had protested against
'innate ideas,' Berkeley's protest was directed against
4 abstract ideas ' ; and his nominalistic interpretation of
the significance of general terms, as reducibile to the
particular ideas which they represent, is closely connected
with his reduction of the esse of the material world to its
percipi. His theory of knowledge yields immediately
a corresponding theory of reality. All that was left for
Hume to do, to reach his sceptical dissolution of know
ledge, was to extend the Berkeley an nominalism from
matter to mind, and to identify the connexions between
impressions and ideas with the customary association
which Berkeley had already recognised under the name
of l suggestion.' Thus the result of the sustained effort

1 Hobbes, like Bacon, lays the basis of his system in a theory of
knowledge ; but his interest is rather in the materialistic system which
he proceeds to construct on this basis than in the security of the basis
itself. The Cambridge Platonists and other rationalistic critics of
Hobbes in the seventeenth century similarly propose a theory of know
ledge which carries with it a corresponding theory of reality.

2 Essay concerning Human Understanding^ Epistle to the Reader.

INTRODUCTION 7

of English philosophy during its best period to solve the
problem of knowledge is the sceptical dissolution of know
ledge into opinion, of certainty into probability, of rational
connexion into customary association. And while the
refutation of this scepticism is attempted independently
by the Scottish intuitionists and, under the inspiration of
Kant and his successors, by the idealists of the nineteenth
century, the doctrine of associationism is developed by
Hartley and the Mills, and Spencer invokes the aid of
the new principles of evolution and heredity to reinforce
the same view.

It may be said, therefore, without qualification that,
since Locke's epoch-making substitution of the episte-
mological for the ontological problem, the basis of
English metaphysical theory has always been sought in a
theory of knowledge. To take two notable examples
from opposite schools of thought, section i. of Ferrier's
Institutes of Metaphysic is devoted to ' the epistemology,
or theory of knowing,' section ii. to ' the agnoiology, or
theory of ignorance/ section iii. to < the ontology, or
theory of being ' ; part i. of Spencer's First Principles to
4 the unknowable,' part ii. to ' the knowable.' Before
proceeding to the exposition of his system, the former
writer thinks it necessary to prove that it is possible to
know reality and to distinguish knowledge from ignor
ance ; the latter to prove that we cannot know reality or
the absolute, but only the relative and phenomenal.
Gnosticism and agnosticism alike rest upon a theory of
knowledge. Although, in the light of the Kantian
4 criticism,' this view of the relation of the ontological
to the epistemological problem came home to these later
thinkers with a new clearness and conviction, it was a
lesson which they might have learned from the indepen
dent movement of English philosophy.

(3) It is important to observe the precise sense in
which English philosophy may be said to be dominated
by the practical or ethical interest, as contrasted with
the speculative or metaphysical interest which is the
inspiration of Continental philosophy. It cannot be

8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

rightly said that the English estimate of knowledge is
utilitarian, although Bacon's insistence upon the utility
of knowledge in his famous dicta that ' knowledge is
power,' and that its end is 'the improvement of man's
estate,' certainly suggest such an estimate. It is rather
that the intellectual interest, as such, is subordinated to
the moral, the theoretical to the practical ; that the
supreme interest is the conduct of life rather than what
Locke calls ' the conduct of the understanding.' Perhaps
the actual state of the case may be best brought out by
comparing the English with the Greek estimate of the
comparative values of theory and practice, of the life of
thought and that of action. The Greeks always saw in
philosophy the true ' way of life/* and the Socratic identi
fication of virtue with knowledge was only the explicit
statement of the conviction, which inspired all their philo
sophical activity, that without theoretic understanding
the practice of virtue must be blind and uncertain. But
the Greek admiration of < theory ' went further than this
interpretation of virtue as the expression of knowledge.
For Plato the life of ideal virtue is that of philosophic,
as contrasted with civic excellence, and for Aristotle the
entire life of practical activity and moral excellence is
instrumental to the higher life of theoretic activity and
intellectual excellence. The English mind is practical
in the sense that for it the supremely important thing
is action ; and not only does it place action above thought,
but it is apt to depreciate the practical importance of
knowledge, and to conclude that the limitations of human
knowledge point to practice rather than speculation as
the real destiny of man, and that for the practical conduct
of life, faith is a better guide than rational insight, and
probability serves where certainty is not to be reached.
The attitude thus described is not, of course, peculiar to
English philosophy. It is the characteristic attitude of
Kant, who in this as in other respects may be said to
combine the qualities of English with those of Conti
nental philosophy. As he refuses to leave the solid ground
of experience, and repudiates the * rational dogmatism '

INTRODUCTION 9

of his predecessors ; as he substitutes epistemology or
the 'criticism' of knowledge for the old ontology and
metaphysics, so he finds the ultimate clue to the nature
of reality in the practical rather than in the speculative
reason, in the ethical rather than in the intellectual inte
rest. Even for Spinoza, with all his intellectualism, the
moral and practical interest may be said to be supreme,
since the great service which the intellectual vision of
all things in the light of their divine unity and necessity
renders to man is to free him from * the bondage of the
passions ' ; for Spinoza, as for Socrates, virtue is know
ledge, and the supreme value of knowledge, in his eyes,
is that it makes virtue possible. The peculiarity of the
English view is that, depreciating the moral value of
knowledge, at least of the speculative type, and insisting
upon the necessity of supplementing the defects of know
ledge by a faith or practical certainty which satisfies the
needs of the moral life, it tends to diminish the ardour of
the pursuit of truth, and is even apt to lead to the appeal
to the ordinary practical understanding or the ' common ^
sense ' of mankind for the solution of purely speculative
problems.

It is not surprising that the English contribution to
ethical and political philosophy should be considerable
both in amount and in importance. The course of
political and constitutional history stimulated reflection
upon the nature and functions of the State and the
theoretic basis of that liberty of the subject which asserted
itself more and more as the ideal of the national aspiration.
The treatises, of Hobbes and Locke, the one maintaining
the absolute and inalienable character of the authority
of the sovereign, the other insisting that government is
a trust for the faithful discharge of which the holder may
rightfully be called to account by the people who have
committed it to him, are of epoch-making importance
for political theory. The importance of Hobbes's Leviathan
is not less for ethics than for politics. Proclaiming as it
does the radical individualism, the inherent selfishness of
human nature, it stimulated a succession of moralists to

io ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the effort to establish the opposite view ; the early in-
tuitionists and the advocates of a ' moral sense ' united in
a common protest against what they regarded as the
travesty of human nature offered by Hobbes. The most
notable result of this effort is found in Butler's Sermons
on Human Nature, which is, all in all, probably the most
important contribution of the English mind to the
theory of ethics. The union of the ethical and the
political interest which is characteristic of Hobbes, but
which falls into the background in his successors, again
becomes prominent in the utilitarians of the nineteenth
century.

The real beginning of English philosophy is to be
dated from Bacon's break with Scholasticism. The

/ Scholastic philosophy was not national ; it represents the
common intellectual effort of Christian Europe. As
Professor Sorley says, i The English language may be
said to have become for the first time the vehicle of
philosophical literature by the publication of Bacon's
Advancement of Learning, in 1605. . . . National charac
teristics are never so strongly marked in science and
philosophy as in other branches of literature, and their
influence takes longer in making itself felt. The English
birth or residence of a mediaeval philosopher is of little
more than biographical interest : it would be vain to
trace its influence on the ideas or style of his work.
With the Latin language went community of audience,
of culture and of topics. This traditional commonwealth
of thought was weakened by the forces which issued in
the renascence ; and, among these forces, the increased

i< consciousness of nationality led, gradually, to greater
differentiation in national types of culture and to the
use of the national language even for subjects which
appealed chiefly, or only, to the community of learned
men. However much he may have preferred the Latin
tongue as the vehicle of his philosophy, Bacon's own
action made him a leader of this movement ; and it so
happened that the type of thought which he expounded

INTRODUCTION 1 1

had affinities with the practical and positive achievements
of the English mind.'1

On the other hand, it has been suggested by Croom
Robertson that the beginnings of English philosophy are
to be sought within the Scholastic period. ' No nation
has kept more steadily to its line of thought . . . but,
also, none perhaps has thought so persistently. We seem
to have had a line before any other modern people. . . .
In gauging, historically, the philosophical performance of
the English mind, those who rate it low and those who
rate it high err alike, as it seems to me, in contracting
the vision too much. Always it is presumed that the first
note was struck by the famous Chancellor less than three
centuries ago . . . that before Bacon there was no philo
sophical thought in England, or none at least that could
be called English.' It is forgotten c how actively the
English or British intellect was at work in an age long
before Bacon and towards a result which he and his
followers are commonly thought to have been the first
to conceive.' ' Men of our race played a part of quite
singular prominence in the general intellectual movement
of Europe. . . . Almost might one say that as long as the
movement, from taking place within the fold of the
universal Church, was in the strict sense a collectively
European one, the start at every new stage of the course
was due to the initiative of a British schoolman.' 2 In
proof of his contention, Robertson cites the names of
John Scotus Erigena in the ninth century, John of
Salisbury in the twelfth/ Alexander of Hales and Roger
Bacon in the thirteenth, and Duns Scotus and William
of Ockham in the fourteenth. Of these names, however,
the only ones which can be said really to represent the
characteristic trend of later English philosophy are those
of Roger Bacon and William of Ockham, the experien-
tialism of the former and the nominalism of the latter
heralding the dawn of modern philosophy, and anticipating,

1 ' The Beginnings of English Philosophy,' Cambridge History of
English Literature, vol. iv., ch. xiv. p. 268.

2 Philosophical Remains, p. 28 ff.

12 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

along one of its main lines, the tendency of later English
thought.

'It is more than probable,' says the late Professor
Adamson, 'that in all fairness, when we speak of the
Baconian reform of science, we should refer to the for
gotten monk of the thirteenth century rather than to
the brilliant and famous Chancellor of the seventeenth.' l
' He had the same thought, the same ambition ; he con
ceived the same enterprise with the same courage and less
glory,' says Remusat.2 That enterprise was the reform of
philosophy by the substitution of the appeal to experience
for the method of argumentation from premises accepted
on authority. Like the later Bacon, he begins his plea
for reform by an enumeration of the chief causes of error,
or offendicula. Of such pestiferae causae he distinguishes
four kinds — authority, custom, the opinion of the unskilled
many, and the concealment of real ignorance with the
show or pretence of knowledge. Of these the first and
the last are the objects of his special denunciation, and he
finds them combined in the attitude of Scholastic philosophy
to its sources. Apart even from its roots in authority,
however, he condemns the Scholastic method of argumen
tation as a medium of truth. Experience alone certifies
or verifies the results of argument. 'If we wish to have
complete and thoroughly verified knowledge, we must
proceed by the methods of experimental science.' This
last is ' the mistress of all the sciences and the end of all
speculation ' (domina omnium scientiarum et finis totius
speculationis). But while he thus regards experience as
the indispensable verification of truth reached by deductive
reasoning, Bacon insists upon the value of the latter
method in its own place. In particular he emphasises the
importance of mathematics, which he calls 'the alphabet
of philosophy.' 'Physicists ought to know that their
science is powerless unless they call in the aid of mathe
matics.' In this recognition of the necessity of combining

1 Roger Bacon: the Philosophy of Science in the Middle Ages, p. 7.

2 Histoire de la Philosophic en Angleterre, i. 43.

INTRODUCTION 13

deduction with induction, and especially in his appreciation
of the scientific value of mathematics, Roger Bacon shows
a deeper insight into scientific method than the author of
the Novum Organum. c In wealth of words, in brilliancy
of imagination, Francis Bacon was immeasurably superior.
But Roger Bacon had the sounder estimate and the firmer
grasp of that combination of deductive with inductive
method which marks the scientific discoverer.'1

Like Francis Bacon, this remarkable thinker of the
thirteenth century rates the practical value of knowledge
above its theoretical value. ' He belongs to the order of
thinkers, typified by Pythagoras rather than by Aristotle,
who engage in speculation, not for its own sake alone,
but for social or ethical results that are to follow.' 2
Moral philosophy is for him the science to which all
the others lead up. Yet here also he balances with
fine perception the two sides of the case. ' Theory
is useless without practice, and practice blind without
theory.' Throughout the Opus Majus we cannot but
see that, in spite of his denunciations of Scholasticism,
he is deeply interested in the theological and religious
ideas of his age ; and although the demand for a reform
of philosophical method and the profound interest in
natural science which this work displays might lead us
to infer that its author had no interest in the characteristic
problems of Scholastic philosophy, the account which a
French writer has given of the contents of his many un
published manuscripts3 makes it clear that the great
controversy regarding the nature of universals fascinated
him hardly less than his contemporaries, and that, as Mr.
Bridges says, < we shall best understand Bacon's life and
work by regarding him as a progressive schoolman.' 4 It
is all the more surprising that he should have been so far
ahead of his time in his appreciation of the scientific aspect
of knowledge, and should have not merely anticipated but

1 J. H. Bridges, Introd. to Opus. Majus, p. xci.

2 Bridges, loc. cit.

3 Charles, Roger Bacon, sa vie et so, philosophic.

4 Bridges, Introd. p. xcii.

i4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

excelled Francis Bacon in his interpretation of scientific
method.

Of William of Ockham it has been said by a careful
student of his works that < he was the great English
schoolman, and his nationality appears everywhere in
his writings and actions, distinguishing him from the
other leaders of mediaeval thought. . . . We see in
William of Ockham some of the best features of the
English character.' * Haureau, the historian of Scholastic
philosophy, affirms that ' it is in reality upon the soil so
well prepared by the prince of nominalists that Francis
Bacon built his eternal monument.' 2 He carries further,
in the fourteenth century, that divergence from the
essential principles of Scholasticism which Roger Bacon
had inaugurated in the thirteenth. He so widens the
breach between faith and knowledge as to constitute an
irreconcilable dualism between these two spheres ; and
by his criticism of realism he undermines the Scholastic
method of abstract reasoning, and prepares the way for
the modern scientific method — the inductive investigation
of the concrete facts of experience.

Going further than any preceding Scholastic philosopher
in separating the spheres of theological and philosophical
truth, Ockham maintains that none of the truths of
theology can be proved philosophically, that in seeking
to prove even the existence of God we are involved in in
soluble contradiction. It is difficult to determine whether
his zeal in thus separating the things of faith from the
things of knowledge was the result of his concern for
religious or for scientific truth. The probability is that
he shared the tendency to religious mysticism which was
characteristic of the Franciscan Order, of which he was
a zealous member, and that his depreciation of theology
as a science is intended as an indirect defence of practical
religion. The actual result of his teaching, however, was
in the main destructive, lending force to the growing

1 T. M. Lindsay, British Quarterly Review, vol. Ivi. p. 3.

2 Histoire de la Philosophic Scolastique^ ii. 474.

INTRODUCTION 15

tendency to adopt the doctrine of a ' twofold truth '
which was fatal to the presupposition of Scholastic philo
sophy — the essential identity of the content of faith and
that of knowledge. Nor can it be doubted that a part at
least of Ockham's own interest in the distinction was the
freedom of scientific inquiry which it promised and which
constituted its positive significance for his successors in
English philosophy. The later Bacon and Hobbes draw
the same sharp and absolute line of distinction between
the spheres of faith and knowledge, the only difference
between these philosophers and William of Ockham
being that the religious interest in the distinction which
was apparently primary for him is in them entirely sub
ordinated to the scientific interest in intellectual freedom.
Probably it was the union in Ockham of these two
interests, no less than his struggle against the papal
authority, that appealed so powerfully to Luther, who
spoke of William as 'mein lieber Meister Ockham.'

But it is as the ' renewer of nominalism ' that Ockham
is best known in the history of philosophy. The doc
trine of realism, variously modified, had finally established
itself as the orthodox doctrine of Scholastic philosophy.
The victory of nominalism which marked the close of
the Scholastic age was the result of the persistence with
which Ockham urged the claims of a theory of knowledge
and reality which lay nearer to experience than that
which underlay the doctrine of realism, and at the same
time recognised and reinterpreted the truth which that
doctrine contained but had never succeeded in expressing.
The knowledge of existence is always, Ockham contends,
intuitive, never abstract or conceptual ; the real is always
individual, never universal. The realists have abstracted
the universal or common element from the individual
things in which alone it really exists ; they have hypos-
tatised these abstract universals, and attributed to them
a higher degree of reality than that possessed by the
individual things whose properties they are. Ockham's
fundamental principle is that ' plurality is not to be
predicated without necessity ' (Non est ponenda pluralitas

1 6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

sine necessitate), that ' entities are not to be unnecessarily
multiplied ' (Entia non sunt multiplicands praeter necessi-
tatem}. To predicate the independent or substantive
existence of the universal or conceptual is to postulate
plurality without necessity. The concept is not aliquid,
but quoddam fictum ; the universal is only a ' term ' or
' sign,* not a ' thing ' ; its f existence ' is only in the mind.
On the other hand, the new nominalism (or terminism)
differs from the old in recognising the importance of the
concept, and is therefore indistinguishable from the
doctrine of conceptualism. The name or term is not
without meaning. or real significance; it is a 'sign' of
reality, and has its warrant in the nature of reality.
There are real likenesses or agreements between the
individual things ; they are not mere individuals. As
Haureau says, cThe universal notion has a real basis in
the nature of things.' l The concept signifies several
individuals, whose 4 natural resemblance ' makes it,
though in itself particular, representative of them all.
The discovery of these real likenesses, the investigation
of the actual warrant in the nature of things for the
representative function of the universal concept, is the
work of science in the modern sense. It is in this sense
that Ockham is, like Roger Bacon, a founder of English
experientialism. Instead of reasoning down from uni-
versals, accepted on authority, he insists upon the necessity
of generalising from experience, of such a study of the
language of nature as shall discover to us the really signifi
cant universals or those which are truly representative of
the actual nature of things. It is a doctrine which we
find restated in somewhat modified forms by Hobbes and
Berkeley, as well as by Bacon ; but none of these later
statements of the doctrine is equal to that of Ockham in
adequacy and discrimination.

1 Op. «'/., ii. 467,

PART I

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

THE first task of philosophy in the seventeenth century
was to differentiate itself from theology, to assert the
freedom of the scientific intellect from the bondage of
authority, and to determine the proper method of this
independent investigation of the nature of reality. Modern
philosophy originates in a change of the centre of interest
from God and the supernatural to nature and the interests
of the secular life. Preoccupied with the problem of the
differentiation of science from theology, philosophy is less
interested in the question of its own differentiation from
the sciences. It conceives its function as the determination
of scientific method and the construction of the system
of the sciences, rather than as the solution of a problem
peculiar to itself and lying beyond the scope of the sciences
even in their sum. It is Locke who first clearly differen
tiates and defines the peculiar problem of philosophy as
the investigation of the nature and extent of human
knowledge, the previous question left unanswered by all
the special sciences. Bacon and Hobbes propose two
very different answers to the question of scientific method ;
and while the former never really gets beyond the question
of method, the latter proceeds to the construction of a
general metaphysical theory which, like his theory of
ethics, proved to be of great importance in stimulating
others, within his own century as well as later, to
speculation on the possibilities of a more adequate
solution of the problem. Bacon contended for the
substitution of an inductive and experiential for the

*7 B

1 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

deductive and dialectical method of Scholastic philosophy.
In his eyes a i natural history ' or a complete induction
of the facts was the only sufficient basis of true scientific
explanation ; and, in spite of his strenuous polemic against
Scholasticism, he was enough of a Scholastic to believe
in the existence of a fixed number of fundamental < forms '
or species, and to regard the function of science as the
discovery of these c forms.' Hobbes, on the other hand,
held that the essential feature of scientific explanation
was rational demonstration, and found himself forced to
conclude, as the result of such demonstration, that matter
alone was real. The Cambridge Platonists, who sought
to refute the materialism of Hobbes, were even more
consistently rationalistic in their method than Hobbes
himself, and endeavoured to demonstrate, after Plato, the
spiritual constitution of reality.

Locke followed Bacon in insisting upon the necessity
of adopting what he called ' the historical plain method,'
which, as applied to the facts of the human understanding,
is the psychological or introspective method. His chief
significance lies, however, as already pointed out, in his
new statement of the problem of philosophy as that of
the nature and extent of human knowledge and the
difference between knowledge and opinion or belief.
Both Bacon and Hobbes had affirmed the distinction, in
the interest rather of scientific freedom than in that of
revealed religion ; but neither had offered a reasoned
account of its nature and validity. Locke's supreme
concern is for the interests of the moral and religious life,
and the exigencies of his theory of knowledge lead directly
to the formulation of the distinction in question — ' our
knowledge being short, we want something else.' The
significance of Locke's new question is not limited to his
own century or to English philosophy ; henceforth its
paramount importance is matter of common acknow
ledgment.

The necessity of differentiating ethics, as well as science
and metaphysics, from theology was forced upon the
modern mind by the dissolution of the politico-ecclesi-

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 19

astical system of the Middle Ages. The assertion of
the independent authority of the State raised the question
of the basis of its authority and the grounds of political
obedience, and recourse was had to the Stoic conception
of a ' law of nature ' which had been adopted by the
Roman jurists. The interpretation of this conception
occupied the energies of the moral and political philosophy
of the seventeenth century. The anxieties of the political
situation in England, the rising tide of anarchy and
revolution, forced upon Hobbes the question of the nature
and seat of sovereign authority ; and in his eagerness to
secure the stability of the State he could see no alternative
to political absolutism, a doctrine which Locke set himself
to refute. Hobbes laid the foundation of this political
theory in a doctrine of ethical relativism and egoism
which shocked the moral sense of his contemporaries,
and led to the effort of the ethical rationalists to sub
stitute for it the doctrine of the absoluteness of moral
laws as expressions of the rational constitution of the
universe, and obligatory upon all men as rational beings.
Thus the alternative between a virtually utilitarian and
an intuitional theory of ethics is clearly stated, and the
issue between the two views fairly joined, before the
close of the century.

CHAPTER I

BACON: PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENTIFIC
METHOD

IN no other case in the history of philosophy is it so
difficult, as perhaps in no other case is it more important,
to determine the relation between the philosopher and
the man. To most of his biographers the character of
Bacon has presented a hopeless paradox and dualism,
which has served as a text to point the familiar moral
that the highest gifts may be turned to the basest uses
and the best insight blinded by worldliness and selfishness
of motive, that the corruption of the best is the worst.
The most superficial interpretation of the tragedy of his
career is that offered by Macaulay in his famous essay.
To him it is simply the exhibition, on a great scale, of
the disparateness of intellectual and moral greatness, of
the falseness of the Socratic maxirn that virtue is know
ledge. Bacon, that is to say, lived two totally discon
nected lives, the intellectual and the moral ; the temptations
which beset him in the latter could not possibly arise
in the former, nor could the high ideals of the philosopher
avail the politician or the man. Such a dualism between
the intellectual and the practical life is repudiated by
Kuno Fischer, who was the first to insist on the unity
of Bacon's character in the two spheres. But Kuno
Fischer himself reasserts the antithesis in a new form.
According to his view, it is to the extreme intellectualism
of Bacon's temperament, to his lack of emotional depth,
his poverty of natural human affection, the dispassionate
ness of his nature, that we must trace at once his splendid
intellectual achievement and the defects of his moral and

BACON 2 i

political life. His moral shortcomings are the defects of
his intellectual qualities ; it is because he was a great
thinker that he was not a great man. Even so careful
a writer as R. W. Church, solicitous as he was to do
complete justice to the character of Bacon as a statesman,
allows the dualism and contradiction to remain, and sees
in his political career nothing more than the effort to
provide himself with the wherewithal to pursue the
higher ends of the intellectual life, and even the constant
temptation to abandon the life of the student of nature
for that of the self-seeking man of affairs. In that
political activity which formed so large a part of Bacon's
life, he recognises only 'the distraction of his mind
between the noble work on which his soul was bent,
and the necessities of that "civil" or professional and
political life by which he had to maintain his estate.' l
Yet he admits that Bacon's political life had its own worthy
ideals and aspirations, no less than his intellectual life.
* So ended a career, than which no other in his time had
grander and nobler aims, aims, however mistaken, for the
greatness and good of England, aims for the enlargemen
of knowledge and truth, and for the benefit of mankind.' 2
While we must admit that Bacon's true greatness is
intellectual rather than moral, and that there is an element
of truth in the view of the writers just mentioned, yet it
is mechanical and superficial to separate the two lives
completely from one another, and to see in the one
simply the opposite and the negation of the other. In
spite of what he himself may have said, in moments of
professional and political disappointment, in disparagement
of the busy life of the lawyer, statesman, and courtier,
and the assertion of his true vocation as that of the seeker
after truth, it is impossible to contemplate his entire career
without concluding from it that his interest was no less
practical and political than intellectual and theoretic ;
that philosophy was, if the nobler occupation, still only
the occupation of his leisure ; that, from first to last, he

1 Bacon, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 100. 2 Ibid.) p. 171.

22 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

conceived his vocation to lie no less in the sphere of
statesmanship than in that of philosophy. It would have
been inconsistent with his practical and utilitarian esti
mate of knowledge to depreciate the work of the states
man, as he conceived it. If he regarded himself, in his
study of nature, as the servant of mankind, as the dis
coverer of Nature's laws that he might subdue her activi
ties to the uses of mankind and 'the relief of man's
estate,' in his political activity he no less regarded himself
as the servant of his country, discovering the path of her
true and permanent well-being, and persuading, if he
might, the king and parliament to follow that path. As
Nichol says, 'There is no more flagrant freak of criti
cism than to treat his public life as that of one playing
truant from his Academy or Porch. However he may
have deceived himself, half of Bacon's heart was set on
politics.' l ' His heart was as much set on establishing on
a basis of slowly broadening rights the foundations of the
Greater Britain of his dreams as on reading the riddles
of the earth and sky.' 2 There is no warrant for ascribing
his interest in politics to the gratification of selfish ambi
tion ; his aim was as essentially disinterested in the
political as in the intellectual life : nor was his ability less
conspicuous in the one case than in the other. ' Those
abilities,' says William Rawley, c which go single in
other men . . . were all conjoined and met in him.' In
him theoretic insight and practical sagacity were singu
larly combined ; so far as the union of knowledge with
ability to rule is concerned, he is the most remarkable
case, at least in English history, of the realisation of Plato's
dream of the philosopher-statesman. He realises at the
same time his own ideal of the true philosopher of the
modern type, who differs from his ancient and mediaeval
prototypes in being not a recluse, whether of the academic
or of the monastic sort, but a man of affairs, an active
citizen.

Nor is there historic warrant for the undiscriminating

1 Bacon, in ' Philosophical Classics,' vol. i. p. 3. 2 Ibid. i. 68.

BACON 23

condemnation which has so often been passed upon Bacon's
career as a statesman. As Gardiner has said, ' No one
to whom the history of that half-century [the half-
century following the period of Bacon's political activity]
is present can agree with those numerous writers who
speak of Bacon's political work as inferior to his scientific.' l
The primary cause of his failure as a statesman is to be
sought rather in the conditions which beset his political
activity than in essential defects either of insight or of
character. 'An intellectual unity,' says the same writer,
4 pervades the whole of the advice which he gave. He
may sometimes have held his tongue when he knew
that his counsel would be disregarded, but he never
prophesied smooth things to suit the wishes of those by
whom his counsel was required.' The truth is that he
was too much in advance of his time on all the deeper
questions of statesmanship to get the ear either of the
sovereign or of parliament, or even to convince his
colleagues in authority of the wisdom of his measures.
Without fit instruments it is impossible for the ablest to
achieve political success, and no statesman can command
the instruments. Even the worse than questionable
methods to which he had recourse in his endeavours to
compass his political ends were, to a considerable extent,
dictated to him by the conditions of his activity. As
Gardiner has pointed out, ' Bacon must look to achieve
a statesman's ends by the means of a courtier.' And
when we remember that the Court was that of Elizabeth
and of James, we shall not be so ready to blame Bacon
for the subserviency of his language or for the Machiavel-
lism of his policy as those have been who have forgotten
to make allowance for this limiting condition. Much
which we should not tolerate in a statesman of our own
day was practically inevitable in that age. Doubtless the
lower tendencies of Bacon's moral nature, as they are
revealed to us in the Essays, and still more nakedly in the
Comment arius Solutus, to which he seems to have confided

1 Art. ' Bacon,' Diet, of Nat. Biog.

*4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

his inmost thoughts and purposes, made it only too easy
for him to fall in with the prevailing usages of public life.
But, on the whole, his failure as a statesman must be set
down rather to his lack of opportunity than to his un
worthy use of the opportunity which he had.

Even the most damaging incident in his political career,
his treatment of Essex, assumes a somewhat different
aspect in the light of the dominant purpose of Bacon's life
as a statesman. He himself tells us that his interest in
Essex from the first was political rather than personal : it
was his anticipation for him of a great public career that
attached Bacon to Essex and, on Bacon's side at least,
formed the basis of their friendship. c I held at that time
my lord to be the fittest instrument to do good to the
State ; and therefore I applied myself to him in a manner
which I think happeneth rarely among men.' In acknow
ledging the Earl's gift of land, he thus carefully limits the
extent of the obligation under which he considers himself
to have come : * My lord, I see I must be your homager
and hold land of your gift ; but do you know the manner
of doing homage in law ? Always it is with a saving of
the faith to the king and his other lords ; and therefore,
my lord, I can be no more yours than I was, and it must be
with the ancient savings. . . . I reckon myself as a common
— and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common,
so much your lordship shall be sure to have. ... I confess
I love some things much better than I love your lordship,
as the queen's service, her quiet and contentment, her
honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the like.'
There could have been no clearer intimation that, if
the personal interests of friendship should ever conflict
with the higher claims of country and devotion to the
Crown, the forme'r must yield without reserve to the latter
claims. That Bacon did his best to avert the fatal collision
between Essex and Elizabeth by that ' faithful counsel '
in which he saw one of the best fruits of a true friendship,
is unquestionable. That, after the failure of his best efforts,
he should subordinate what he regarded as the lower to
what he regarded as the higher obligation, and should

BACON 25

remind his friend of ' the ancient savings,' was the only
course consistent with his ideal of public duty.

His conduct in his judicial capacity is more difficult to
explain or excuse. But the extent of his shortcomings
here is to be carefully noted. The evidence seems to show
that, while he fell in with the prevailing custom of receiv
ing presents from suitors, both while their suits were
pending and afterwards, and allowed himself to be influenced
by the constantly reiterated solicitations of Buckingham,
he never deliberately sold justice, or accepted a bribe.
This is Gardiner's conclusion, even in view of the
argument of Abbott and the special investigation of
the single doubtful case by Heath. Why, then, it may
be asked, did he plead guilty to the charges brought
against him ? The answer is to be found in the fact
that 'he knew that a trial of this kind was a trial only
in name.'1 Bacon himself saw in the accusation the
expression of a higher ideal of justice than that which
had guided previous judicial practice, and there seems no
good reason for refusing to accept his own characterisation
of it : 'I was the justest judge that was in England these
fifty years ; but it was the justest censure in parliament
that was these two hundred years.'

Yet in Bacon's conduct as a judge, as well as in his
treatment of Essex, there is revealed that 'poverty of moral
feeling,' as Gardiner describes it, which is, in part at
least, the secret of the tragedy of his public life, and in
which we must find the explanation of his moral failure.
How otherwise are we to explain his incapacity to realise
the gravity of the sentence, the finality of his degradation
in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen ? How otherwise can
we understand the apparent absence of regret, or even of
reluctance, in his prosecution of Essex, nay, his superfluous
eagerness to bring about the ruin of his friend ? It is here
that Kuno Fischer's insistence upon Bacon's lack of warm
human affection, what Gardiner calls 'the extraordin
arily unemotional character of Bacon's mind,' or what we

1 Church, Bacon, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 147.

26 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

may perhaps describe as his moral superficiality, becomes
important as a factor in the explanation of his conduct.
The whole passion of his nature seems to have exhausted
itself in the pursuit of knowledge, on the one hand, and of
the good of his country, on the other. To these two great
ends all more personal ends and interests were ruthlessly
subordinated, and the subordination does not appear to
have cost him any struggle. It was, of course, only in the
pursuit of the latter or political end that any real conflict
was liable to occur, and in his devotion to this end Bacon
seems to have been unscrupulous in the choice of means.
Political failure was his lot, even on these terms ; but it
had been better to have failed by reason of a greater regard
for moral considerations than to have purchased the possi
bility of political success at such a moral sacrifice. His
moral superficiality, his lack of moral sensitiveness, affects
even his intellectual life and seriously narrows his vision of
truth. He tells us that 'the human understanding is no
dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affec
tions ' ; but his own defect seems rather to have been a lack
of emotion and affection which made him incapable of
appreciating the significance of these elements in human
life. How otherwise are we to explain his lack of interest
in the metaphysical problems raised by the religious life,
the merely conventional character of his own religion, its
lack of real significance for his life, his conception of poetry
as merely ' feigned history,' or the mean prudentialism of
so many of his maxims of conduct in the Essays ? But if
his moral superficiality affects his intellectual as well as his
practical life, it at the same time enables us to understand
how he is greater in the former than in the latter sphere.
And it is with his intellectual achievement that we are
here concerned.

Whatever may have been the nature and the limits of
his political ambition, Bacon's intellectual ambition was
simply limitless. CI have taken all knowledge for my
province,' was an exaggerated statement of his function
and vocation in the intellectual field, but a literal defini-

BACON 27

tion of that function and vocation as he himself conceived
it. He regarded himself as the inaugurator of a new era
in philosophy, the founder of a new philosophy, destined
to supersede that of Aristotle, which had dominated the
thought of the Middle Ages. He trusted the judgment
of posterity to authenticate a claim too proud to be
acceptable to the men of his own age. Nor was his
confidence misplaced. The judgment of history has
awarded to Bacon, along with Descartes, the position of
founder of modern philosophy. If it has not confirmed
his condemnation of Aristotle and of ancient Greek
philosophy, but has rather seen in the new philosophy a
return to the point of view of the old, a revival of the
Greek spirit of free and independent inquiry, it has yet
recognised in the fearless repudiation of authority which is
common to Bacon and Descartes the decisive break with
Scholasticism and Mediae valism, and in Bacon's proclama
tion of experience as the only source, and of Induction as
the only fruitful method of knowledge, the watchword of
modern science and philosophy, as distinguished from
Greek speculation, on the one hand, and from Scholastic
dogmatism and disputation, on the other.

The new departure of Bacon in philosophy thus takes
its place in the wider movement of the Renaissance ; it is
the intellectual expression of that movement. The earlier
Renaissance, of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
had been humanistic ; its interest was in literature and
art. The later Renaissance, of the sixteenth century, of
which Bacon is the immediate product and expositor, was
naturalistic ; its predominant interest was in science, or
the interpretation of nature. The results of this new
direction of attention, especially in astronomy, were of
the most remarkable character. The Copernican theory
changed the centre of man's world from his own planet
to the sun round which it revolved. The discovery of
America, which resulted from the scientific study of the
earth and the application of science to navigation, ex
tended the horizon of English enterprise. Magnetic in
vestigations suggested new possibilities in physical science,

28 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

while Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood
was epoch-making for the science of physiology and the art
of medicine.

What chiefly impressed Bacon was the fruitfulness of
the new knowledge in its applications to human life. No
less than a revolution in the conditions of life, he feels,
has been brought about by the scientific activities of the
time ; man is rapidly becoming the master and ruler of
nature. The splendid fruits of the new knowledge
stimulated him to the great ambition of universalising this
dominion of man over nature. He felt that it would be
unworthy of the new age in which he was living to be
content with anything short of man's complete sovereignty.
i For this great building of the world has been in our
age wonderfully opened and thorough-lighted ... in
respect of our sea-voyages, by which the whole globe of
the earth has, after the manner of the heavenly bodies,
been many times compassed and circumnavigated. . . .
And this proficiency in navigation and discovery may
plant also great expectation of the further proficience and
augmentation of the sciences. . . . For so the prophet
Daniel, in speaking of the latter times, foretells " that many
shall go to and fro on the earth, and knowledge shall be
increased," as if the opening and thorough passage of the
world, and the increase of knowledge, were appointed to
be in the same age.' x Why should we not < make the
mind of man by help of art a match for the nature of
things?' The true philosophy is the Ars inveniendiy
the method at once of discovery and invention, a science
of Nature which shall teach man how to master Nature
and compel her to serve his purposes. For the secret of
this mastery is that obedience which is itself the result of
knowledge. * Nature is not conquered except by obedi
ence.' Man must be the servant of Nature if he would
be her lord. Art is but nature understood, and utilised
for human ends. * Human knowledge and human power
meet in one.' What the antiquated c Magic' of the

* De Aug. Set., Bk. ii. ch. x.

BACON 29

Middle Ages professed to accomplish by virtue of a
mysterious and supernatural craft is in truth the result
of insight into the nature of things, their natural quali
ties and behaviour. It is only our ignorance of Nature,
our foolish effort to compel her to act unnaturally, that
limits our power over her. But to know or under
stand nature, we must observe the facts : experience is
here our only guide. The secret of modern discovery
and invention is found in the new attitude of man to
nature, in the substitution of observation and experiment,
that is, of induction, for mere argument and conception,
or the deductive method of the schools. Real, as distin
guished from nominal or verbal, fruitful as distinguished
from fruitless knowledge, is possible only on these terms.

This conception of the end and method of knowledge
is opposed by Bacon as the new philosophy to the old
philosophy of the Greek and mediaeval schools ; and
since Aristotle was * the philosopher ' of the Middle
Ages, he especially opposes it to the philosophy of Aris
totle. We may therefore come at a better understand
ing of the Baconian view of knowledge by contrasting
it, under his own guidance, with the Aristotelian view.
And first, as regards the end of knowledge, or the relation
of theory to practice, Bacon seems to dissent entirely
from the doctrine of Aristotle. According to Aristotle,
theoretic insight was not a means to practical ends, but
itself the supreme end of human life : in speculation or
contemplation of truth lies man's supreme good. Accord
ing to Bacon, as we have seen, the end of knowledge is-
* the relief of man's estate ' ; its value lies in the
mastery over nature, the ' power ' which it secures to
man. The justification of science is found by him in its
fruits or practical applications. Referring to the Pytha
gorean parable that the best life was not that of the buyers
and sellers, or even of the competitors, at the Olympian
games, but that of the spectators, he says : c But men
must know that in this theatre of man's life, it is reserved
only for God and Angels to be lookers on. . . . For mere
contemplation which should be finished in itself without

30 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

casting beams of heat and light upon society, assuredly
divinity knows it not.' l It is in its practical utility that
he finds the value of knowledge. Learning c is not like
a lark, which can mount and sing and please itself and
nothing else ; ... it rather partakes of the nature of a
hawk, which can soar aloft, and can also descend and strike
upon its prey at pleasure.'2 At the same time he dis
tinguishes carefully between the superficial utilitarianism
which is impatient for the fruits of knowledge and the
patient temper which seeks primarily for light or insight,
and is content to wait for the harvest of works to appear
in its due season. 'For though it be true that I am
principally in pursuit of works and the active department
of the sciences, yet I wait for harvest-time, and do not
attempt to mow the moss or to reap the green corn. For
I well know that axioms once rightly discovered will
carry whole troops of works along with them, and produce
them, not here and there one, but in clusters. And that
unreasonable and puerile hurry to snatch by way of
earnest at the first works which come within reach, I
utterly condemn and reject, as an Atalanta's apple that
hinders the race.' 3 He accordingly signalises the superior
importance of ' light-giving ' (lucifera] to ' fruit-bearing '
(fructifera) experiments, on the ground that the interests
of the larger utility are better secured by the former than
by the latter. It is only in a high and ultimate sense, as
the instrument of man's sovereignty over nature, that a
utilitarian estimate of knowledge can justly be attributed
to Bacon.4 Nay, while he cannot separate its practical
fruits from knowledge, or conceive of a knowledge which
should be without such fruits, while he regards content
ment with the satisfaction of our intellectual curiosity as
essentially selfish, he yet seems in the end to agree with
the Aristotelian estimate of pure knowledge. ' And yet
(to speak the whole truth), as the uses of light are infinite,
in enabling us to walk, to ply our arts, to read, to recognise

1 De Aug. Sci» Bk. vii. ch. i. 2 Ibid., Bk. viii. ch. ii.

3 Nov. Org., Plan of the Work, p. 29.

* Cf. Windelband's Gcschichte der neueren Philosophic, vol. i. p. 132.

BACON 31

one another ; and nevertheless the very beholding of the
light is itself a more excellent and a fairer thing than all
the uses of it ; — so assuredly the very contemplation of
things, as they are, without superstition or imposture,
error or confusion, is in itself more worthy than all the
fruit of inventions.' * ' I am building in the human
understanding a true model of the world, such as it is in
fact, not such as a man's own reason would have it to be.
. . . Truth therefore and utility are here the very same
things ; and works themselves are of greater value as
pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of
life.' 2 And in the famous Essay on Truth he says :
' Howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved
affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth
that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or
wooing of it ; the knowledge of truth, which is the
presence of it ; and the belief of truth, which is the
enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.'

Bacon represents his dissent from Aristotle regarding
the method of knowledge as more radical than that
regarding its end. For the deductive method of Aristotle
he would substitute the inductive method ; for the
conceptual he would substitute the experiential, obser
vational, and experimental method. The syllogism, he
holds, is ' no match for the subtlety of nature.' 3 < The
syllogism consists of propositions, propositions consist of
words, words are symbols of notions. Therefore if the
notions themselves (which is the root of the matter)
are confused and over-hastily abstracted from the facts,
there can be no firmness in the superstructure. Our only
hope therefore lies in a true induction.' 4 c Men . . . must
force themselves for awhile to lay their notions by and
begin to familiarise themselves with facts.' 5 For ' there
is no soundness in our notions, whether logical or
physical. . . . All are fantastical and ill-defined.'6 The

1 Nov. Org., Bk. i. Aph. 129. 2 Ibid., Bk. i. Aph. 124.

3 Ibid., Bk. i. Aph. 13. 4 Ibid., Bk. i. Aph. 14.

5 Ibid., Bk. i. Aph. 36. 6 Ibid., Bk. i. Aph. 15.

32 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

only valid notions are those which are derived from a
careful study of the facts themselves. We must not
' anticipate ' nature by reading our own preconceptions
into the facts ; we must be content to ' interpret '
nature, we must allow her to dictate to us the conceptions
which shall truly represent the facts. 'There are and
can be only two ways of searching into and discovering
truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to
the most general axioms, and from these principles, the
truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds
to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And
this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms
from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and
unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general
axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet
untried.' l The former is the method of disputation ; all
that it secures is consistency with the premisses. The
latter is the method of discovery ; if we would ascertain
the actual nature of things, we must investigate the truth
of the premisses, or rather we must patiently travel to
the true principles or 'axioms' by an unprejudiced study
of the facts. Instead of attempting to reason out the
nature of things, we must be content to 'elicit reason
from the facts by a just and methodical process' of
interpretation. The futile and verbal disputation which
results from the employment of the deductive method is
illustrated by the ' degenerate learning ' of the School
men, ' who, having strong and sharp wits, and abundance
of leisure, and small variety of reading ; but their wits being
shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle
their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells
of monasteries and colleges ; and knowing little history,
either of nature or time ; did out of no great quantity
of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us
those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their
books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon
matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of

1 Nov. Org., Bk. i. Aph. 19.

BACON 33

God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby ;
but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web,
then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of
learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work,
but of no substance or profit.' l

Bacon is not to be understood, of course, as accusing
either the Schoolmen or their master of following the
purely deductive method, or evolving a philosophy of
nature out of their own minds. What he does accuse
them of is rash generalisation, hasty and unwarranted
induction. They are too easily satisfied as to the truth
of their premisses or axioms ; their chief, though not
their sole, interest is in the deduction of the consequences
of these hastily accepted principles. It is not that the
old philosophy was not based upon observation of the
facts, but that the observation was not wide enough or
varied enough, and that it was not supplemented by
experiment. Nature must be examined and cross-
examined ; the interrogation must proceed by * torture,'
if it is to be successful. The true induction proceeds
slowly and gradually in its generalisations. 'Then, and
then only, may we hope well of the sciences, when in a
just scale of ascent, and by successive steps not interrupted
or broken, we rise from particulars to lesser axioms ; and
then to middle axioms, one above the other ; and last of
all to the most general. For the lowest axioms differ but
slightly from bare experience, while the highest and most
general (which we now have) are notional and abstract
and without solidity. But the middle are the true and
solid and living, axioms, on which depend the affairs and
fortunes of men. . . . The understanding must not
therefore be supplied with wings, but rather hung with
weights, to keep it from leaping and flying.' 2

In their haste to arrive at general or ' first ' principles,
the Aristotelians have fallen into the error with which
Bacon specially charges the opposite school, namely, the
' empirics,' that of an uncritical induction which proceeds

1 Advancement of Learning, Works, iii. 285, 286.

2 Nov. Org., Bk. i. Aph. 104.

C

34 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

by ' simple enumeration ' of the instances which appear
to favour the conception or theory adopted, and fails to
take account of the ' negative instances,' or those which,
if they had been attended to, would have led to its
rejection. For this 'childish' type of induction Bacon
substitutes a critical induction which is on the outlook
for cases which contradict the theory suggested by a
superficial acquaintance with the facts. ' The induction
which is to be available for the discovery and demonstra
tion of sciences and arts, must analyse nature by proper
rejections and exclusions ; and then, after a sufficient
number of negatives, come to a conclusion on the affirma
tive instances.'1 It is only to such a careful scrutiny of
the facts that experience will yield the secret of the
nature of things. If the ' men of dogmas ' or ' reasoners '
4 resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own
substance,' the ' men of experiment ' are ' like the ant :
they only collect and use.' Bacon finds the analogue of
the true method in the example of the bee, which < takes
a middle course ; it gathers its material from the flowers
of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests
it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true
business of philosophy ; for it neither relies solely or
chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the
matter which it gathers from natural history and mechani
cal experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it
finds it ; but lays it up in the understanding altered and
digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league
between these two faculties, the experimental and the
rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be
hoped.' 2 This reconciliation between a true rationalism
and a true empiricism was clearly Bacon's ambition from
the first, and the source of peculiar satisfaction when he
finally accomplished it. In a letter to Burghley in 1592
he writes : * If I could purge it [knowledge] of two sorts
of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations,
confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experi-

1 Nov. Org., Bk. i. Aph. 105. 2 Ibid., Bk. i. Aph. 95.

BACON 35

ments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath com
mitted so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious
observations and profitable inventions and discoveries — the
best state of that province.' And in the Preface to the
Novum Organum he says : * I suppose that I have established
for ever a true and lawful marriage between the empirical
and the rational faculty, the unkind and ill-starred divorce
of which has thrown into confusion all the affairs of the
human family.'

The true method of knowledge is the Interpretation,
the false method is the Anticipation of nature. We must
derive our notions from the facts of experience, not deduce
the facts from our preconceived notions. We must come
to nature with an open mind, with the docility of the
little child ; for the kingdom of knowledge, like the
kingdom of heaven, is entered only sub persona infantis.
Instead of seeing in things the reflection of ourselves,
and interpreting the world after the analogy of man, we
must be content to let our minds reflect the nature of
things, and to interpret them after the analogy of the
universe. Bacon's conception of knowledge is that it is
the copy or reproduction of reality ; the mind — the sense
and the intellect — is, or may become, a true mirror of
things. The error, the distortion of reality, results from
our refusal to observe with sufficient care, and to be
content with the discovery of the order of things as that
order is revealed to careful observation and experiment.
' All depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed on the
facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as
they are. For God forbid that we should give out a
dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world ;
rather may He graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse
or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on
His creatures.' l

But there are certain defects in the mind as a mirror
of the world, defects partly innate, partly adventitious.

1 Nov. Org.y Plan of the Work, pp. 32, 33.

36 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

* The human understanding is like a false mirror, which,
receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the
nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.' J
' As an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects accord
ing to its own figure and section, so the mind, when it
receives impressions of objects through the sense, cannot
be trusted to report them truly, but in forming its notions
mixes up its own nature with the nature of things." 2
These false images, reflections of the mind itself, which,
coming between the mind and reality, vitiate knowledge,
Bacon calls ' Idols ' (etScoXa), and he distinguishes four
chief classes o? them. First there are the Idols of the
Tribe (Idola Tribus], which ' have their foundation in
human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men,' as,
for example, the tendency to observe the instances favour
able to any opinion we have adopted and to ignore those
which are unfavourable to it, a tendency which explains
the hold of superstitions upon the human mind as well as
the unwarranted inductions of the Aristotelian philo
sophers ; or the tendency to believe that things are as
we wish them to be, rather than as they are. Secondly,
there are the Idols of the Cave (Idola Specus}^ which ' take
their rise in the peculiar constitution, mental or bodily, of
each individual, and also in education, habit, and accident.'
For example, ' some minds are stronger and apter to mark
the differences of things, others to mark their resem
blances ' ; some are dominated by the love of antiquity,
others by the love of novelty ; the bias of a special science
or speculation affects its devotees. Thirdly, the Idols of
the Market-place (Idola Fori) are ' the most troublesome of
all : idols which have crept into the understanding through
the alliances of words and names,' and are so called be
cause they are formed by ' the intercourse and association
of men with each other,' and which cause that acceptance
of verbal fictions and confused notions which is character
istic of the vulgar understanding. Finally there are the
Idols of the Theatre (Idola Theatri) which, like the Idols

1 Nov. Org., Bk. i. Aph. 41. - Ibid., Plan of the Work, p. 27,

BACON 37

of the Market-place, are not innate, but are ' received
into the mind from the play-books of philosophical systems
and the perverted rules of demonstration.' ' These I
call Idols of the Theatre, because in my judgment all the
received systems are but so many stage-plays, representing
worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic
fashion.' They consist not only of wrong systems, but
of wrong methods of philosophy ; and from the latter
point of view Bacon distinguishes three schools of philo
sophy, each of which is to be carefully guarded against by
the mind that would discover the actual nature of things :
the Rational or Sophistical, represented by Aristotle and
the Schoolmen ; the Empirical, based upon an uncritical
and vague experience ; and the Superstitious, which
confuses theology with philosophy, and which he connects
especially with the names of Pythagoras and Plato.

In spite, however, of Bacon's determination to approach
Nature in the spirit of the little child, with a mind emptied
of all preconceptions, and especially the preconceptions
derived from the philosophy of Aristotle as interpreted by
the Schoolmen, he remained to the end in subjection to
one great 'Idol of the Theatre.' * No part of his design
is more definite,' says Nichol, l than the determination,
characteristic of his age, to break with the Past, although
no part of it was more incompletely fulfilled.'1 'The
position of Bacon ' is in reality, as Fowler remarks, c mid
way between Scholasticism, on one side, and Modern
Philosophy and Science, on the other.' 2 This is especi
ally true of that doctrine of c Forms ' which governs his
entire procedure in the investigation of nature. Accept
ing without question Aristotle's classification of causes as
material, efficient, formal and final, he assigns the investi
gation of the two former to Physics and that of the two
latter to Metaphysics. The discovery of the material and
efficient causes he regards as a mere preliminary to the
discovery of the formal and final ; the former are only the

1 Bacon, in ' Philosophical Classics,' vol. ii. pp. 3, 4.

2 Pref. to edition of Nov. Org. , p. vi.

38 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

phenomenal, the latter the real and essential aspect of the
case. The Form is what differentiates one thing from
others, that which makes it what it is, its essential and
characteristic being. 'The Form of a thing' he says,
' is the very thing itself, and the thing differs from the
form no otherwise than as the apparent differs from the
real, or the external from the internal, or the thing in
reference to man from the thing in reference to the
universe.' x In this Form of the thing he sees the clue to
the secret of its production. * On a given body to generate
and superinduce a new nature or new natures, is the work
and aim of human power.' 2 Bacon warns us, however,
not to confuse these ultimate i forms ' with the more
obvious qualities which we are apt to regard as primary or
essential. * When I assign so prominent a part to Forms,
I cannot too often warn and admonish men against apply
ing what I say to those forms to which their thoughts and
contemplations have hitherto been accustomed.' 3 The
Form of Heat, for example, is found in something appa
rently quite different from Heat itself, namely, certain
modes of motion. These Forms constitute the alphabet
of nature, out of the manifold combinations of whose
letters all the variety of its phenomena may be explained.
Bacon's ultimate category, it thus appears, is not cause
but substance. He conceives the world as a statical
combination of elements rather than as a development of
effects from causes. The Natural History which investi
gates the causal sequence of the phenomena is only the
preparation for the Natural Philosophy which traces the
complexities of the apparent qualities to the few simple
Forms or real differences which belong to the substance
of things. Bacon's point of view is that of Scholastic
realism, rather than that of modern science. We are
not to be misled by his identification of the Form with
the Law of the thing, as when he says that ' the Form
of Heat or the Form of Light is the same thing as the
Law of Heat or the Law of Light,' 4 or when he speaks

1 Nov. Org., Bk. ii. Aph. 13. 2 Ibid., Bk. ii. Aph. I.

3 Ibid., Bk. ii. Aph. 17. 4 Ibid., Bk. ii. Aph. 17.

BACON 39

of nature's * fundamental and universal laws which con
stitute Forms,' or says that 'though in nature nothing
really exists beside individual bodies, performing pure
individual acts according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy
this very law, and the investigation, discovery, and ex
planation of it, is the foundation as well of knowledge as
of operation. And it is this law, with its clauses, that I
mean when I speak of Forms.9 1 ' Law ' is clearly used,
in these passages, not in the modern scientific sense of a
uniformity of causal sequence between phenomena or
occurrences, but in the sense of a permanent and iden
tical essence which is to be found beneath the apparent
variety, a real simplicity beneath the apparent complexity
of nature ; the < law ' of the thing is the dictation of its
' form ' or essence to its properties and accidents.

Bacon comes nearer to the point of view of modern
science in his doctrines of ' latent schematism ' and < latent
process,' in which he recognises the continuity of all
phenomena and the molecular constitution of matter. By
the ' latent schematism ' he means the subtle and supra-
sensible structure or configuration of the material particles ;
by the ' latent process,' the no less subtle steps by which
the movement of those particles, or ' natures,' takes place.
The chief interest of these conceptions lies in the re
cognition which they imply of the dynamical aspect of
nature, so far as concrete things are concerned. They
appear, however, almost like an interlude in the exposition
of Bacon's serious doctrine ; his real interest, it is clear, is
in the abstract and formal aspect of reality, in the problem
of substance rather than in that of cause.

It is in his elaboration of the methods of reducing the
apparent complexity of nature to the simplicity of its
fundamental Forms that Bacon makes his great contri
bution to the logic of induction. As Fowler says,
' Inductive Logic, that is, the systematic analysis and
arrangement of inductive evidence, as distinct from the

1 Nov. Org., Bk. ii. Aph. 2.

40 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

natural induction which all men practise, is almost as much
the invention of Bacon as Deductive Logic is that of
Aristotle.'1 Theji/um labyrintht is found in the selection
of instances according to a principle ; without this clue
we shall never succeed in differentiating the essential from
the unessential elements. The first step is the preparation
of a ' Natural and Experimental History, sufficient and
good.' We must next construct 'Tables and Arrange
ments of Instances, in such a method and order that the
understanding may be able to deal with them ' ; and
finally we must interpret these instances by 'true and
legitimate induction, which is the very key of interpreta
tion.' 2

Bacon formulates three inductive methods or, as he calls
them, ' Tables of Presentation ' : the Table of Essence
and Presence, the Table of Deviation or of Absence in
Proximity, and the Table of Degrees or the Table of Com
parison. They correspond closely with Mill's Methods
of Agreement, of Difference, and of Concomitant Varia
tions. The Table of Essence and Presence consists in
' a muster or presentation before the understanding of all
known instances which agree in the same nature, though
in substance the most unlike,' for example, the heat of the
rays of the sun, of flame, and of animal bodies. The
Table of Deviation, or of Absence in Proximity, consists
of £a presentation to the understanding of instances in
which the given nature is wanting ; because the Form
. . . ought no less to be absent when the given nature is
absent, than present when it is present. But to note all
these would be endless. The negatives should therefore
be subjoined to the affirmatives, and the absence of the
given nature inquired of in those subjects only that are
most akin to the others in which it is present and forth
coming.' Of this Table Bacon gives as examples the
rays of the moon and of stars and comets, which 'are
found not to be hot to the touch.' In the Table of
Degrees or of Comparison ' we must make a presentation

1 Bacon, in ' English Philosophers,' p. 91.

2 Nov. Org., Bk. ii. Aph. 10.

BACON 41

to the understanding of instances in which the nature
under inquiry is found in different degrees, more or less ;
which must be done by making a comparison either of its
increase and decrease in the same subject, or of its amount
in different subjects, as compared one with another. For
... no nature can be taken as the true form, unless it
always decrease when the nature in question decreases,
and in like manner always increase when the nature in
question increases.' One of Bacon's examples of this
Table is that < the less the mass of a body, the sooner is
it heated by the approach of a hot body ; which shows
that all heat of which we have experience is in some sort
opposed to tangible matter.' In the use of these methods
the common prerequisite is the adoption of a negative and
critical attitude. ' If the mind attempt this affirmatively
from the first, as when left to itself it is always wont to do,
the result will be fancies and guesses and notions ill defined,
and axioms that must be mended every day . . . To God,
truly, the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to
the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an
affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the
first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man
can do, to whom it is granted only to proceed at first by
negatives, and at last to end in affirmatives, after exclusion
has been exhausted.' 1 This insistence upon the import
ance of taking account of the ' negative instances,' the
substitution of a critical induction for the uncritical pro
cedure * by simple enumeration ' of earlier scientific theory
and practice, is, as we have seen, the distinctive and
original feature of the Baconian method.

It is in this method that, as he himself knew, Bacon's
real contribution to knowledge consists, and if we are to
judge fairly of his work as a thinker, it is necessary to
keep in mind this limitation of his intellectual ambition.
Remusat quotes Laplace's criticism that ' Bacon has
given for the investigation of truth precept but not
example.' Such a criticism, supported as it is by the

1 Nov. Org., Bk. ii. Aph. 15.

42 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

many instances of scientific error to be found in Bacon's
works, is essentially unjust. As Kuno Fischer has said,
4 According to the judgment of De Maistre, Bacon was
not a scientific genius. Why ? Because he made no
discoveries himself, but only wrote on the art of making
discoveries ; because he was a theorist with respect to
this art. We may as well reproach the writer on aesthe
tics for not being himself an artist.' l Bacon's own
professions anticipate and answer all such criticism. c I
am but a trumpeter, not a combatant.' * The endeavours
and industry of a private man can be but as an image
in a crossway, that may point at the way, but cannot
go it.' 'I have provided the machine, but the stuff must
be gathered from the facts of nature.' 2 Even as regards
the finality of his method or 'machine,' his claims are
not extreme. c Nor do I mean to say that no improve
ment can be made upon these [rules of interpretation].
On the contrary, I that regard the mind not only in its
own faculties, but in its connection with things, must
needs hold that the art of discovery may advance as dis
coveries advance.' 3

Still it is not to be questioned that Bacon made great
claims for his method, and that he regarded it as in its
essential features the final method of scientific investi
gation. He evidently thought that, by putting into men's
hands this invaluable instrument, he had not only ensured
the progress of man's knowledge, and therefore of his
dominion over nature, but had once for all reduced men's
intellectual abilities to a common level. What had
hitherto depended upon the superior wit of the individual
would depend henceforth only upon the patient and
accurate use of an instrument which was equally available
for all. ' The course I propose for the discovery of
sciences is such as leaves but little to the acuteness and
strength of wits, but places all wits and understandings
nearly on a level.' 4 What are we to make of this tre
mendous claim ? The only possible answer is that, apart

1 Bacon, Eng. transl., p. 337 (1st ed.)« 2 Nov. Org., Dedication.
3 Ibid., Bk. i. Aph. 130. 4 Ibid., Bk. i. Aph. 61.

BACON 43

altogether from the merits or demerits of his method,
Bacon's enterprise was fundamentally mistaken and fore
doomed to failure. It is futile to attempt to reduce the
procedure of the scientific intellect to rules by following
which every investigator will be practically on the same
level. The facts do not suggest their own interpretation ;
the initiative always lies with the observing mind. Bacon
himself accentuates the idea of < interrogation,' as dis
tinguished from c anticipation ' of nature ; but he did not
realise that our success in compelling nature to give us
illuminating answers depends mainly upon our skill in
framing the questions, that a good question is more than
half the answer. Hypotheses non fingo was the great maxim
of Bacon, no less than of Newton. But, as Mill's more
adequate analysis of the method of scientific discovery has
clearly shown, and as the history of science on every page
confirms, it is in the framing and testing of likely hypo
theses, and not in the accumulation of facts, that the work
of science really consists. We must, in this sense, antici
pate nature if we are ever to arrive at its true inter
pretation. The only explanation of Bacon's failure to
see this, to us so obvious, element in scientific procedure
is to be found in his preoccupation with the idea of the
mind as the passive reflection of reality, in his revolt
against the a priori or deductive and conceptual method
of the Schoolmen, and in his determination to substitute
for this a thoroughly empirical and inductive method,
as well as in his horror of the unrestrained use of the
imagination which characterised the nature-philosophies
•of the Italian Renaissance. It is these historical con
ditions of his thought, rather than any essential one-sided-
ness of Bacon as a thinker, that must be held responsible
for the limitations which make his philosophy of science
so unsatisfactory to us.

Bacon himself seems to have recognised the necessity
of supplementing the use of his methods by some such
activity of the scientific intellect as that which we call the
employment of Hypothesis. While he protests against
the futility of the procedure of the Intellectus slbi permissus^

44 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

he yet concedes the legitimacy of this independent activity,
as likely to result in truth as well as error. c Since truth
will sooner come out from error than from confusion, I
think it expedient that the understanding should have
permission (ut fiat permhsio intellectus\ after the three
Tables of First Presentation . . . have been made and
weighed, to make an essay of the Interpretation of Nature
in the affirmative way. . . . Which kind of tentative
process I call the Indulgence of the Understanding (per-
missionem intellectus\ or the Incomplete Interpretation
(interpretatwnem inchoatam}, or the First Vintage.'1
Similarly, in the De Augmentis, he speaks of < learned
experience,' ' which is rather a sagacity and a kind of
hunting by scent, than a science.' 2 Moreover, he con
stantly makes use of the method of Analogy, and, as Kuno
Fischer remarks, ' in truth every analogy is an anticipatio
mentis? It has even been thought by some that Bacon
lost confidence in his own methods as time passed, and he
observed their failure to yield results ; and there is a
striking passage in one of his latest writings (the Prodromi]
which seems to favour this view. He there admits the
possibility of scientific discovery without the use of his
Organum, or Rule of Interpretation, so long as we reject
the Idols and apply ourselves to the first-hand interpreta
tion of nature.3 It is also significant that the fifth part
of the ' great Instauration ' was to consist of ' such things
as I have myself discovered, proved, or added — not, how
ever, according to the true rules and methods of interpreta
tion, but by the ordinary use of the understanding in
inquiring and discovering.' These truths, he remarks,
4 will serve in the meantime for wayside inns, in which
the mind may rest and refresh itself on its journey to
more certain conclusions.' 4 Had he perceived the organic
connection between these tentatively accepted truths and
the methods of establishing scientific truth as such, Bacon
would have succeeded in formulating the complete method
of the interpretation of nature.

1 Nov. Org., Bk. ii. Aph. 20. 2 De Aug., Bk. v. chap. ii.

3 Works, ii. 691. 4 Nov. Org., Plan of the Work, pp. 31, 32.

BACON 45

But, apart from the exaggerated importance which he
ascribes to Method, Bacon's statement of the methods
followed by science in testing the validity of the concep
tions hypothetically accepted at the outset is seriously
defective. As we have seen, the object of the entire
process of exclusions is the discovery of the c form ' which
constitutes the essence of the phenomenon under investiga
tion ; and the underlying assumption is that nature, truly
understood, consists of a finite, and indeed of a compara
tively small number of such essential forms, which
together make up what he calls the ' alphabet of nature.'
The validity of the process really depends upon the truth
of the initial assumption as to the exhaustiveness of our
knowledge of natural forms or species. No account is
taken of what Mill calls the ' plurality of causes,' on the
one hand, or of the possibility of reducing what seem
ultimate principles to principles still more ultimate, on
the other. As Ellis remarks, in his general introduction
to the philosophical works of Bacon,1 the 'alphabet of
the universe ' of which Bacon dreamed ' could at best be
only an alphabet of the present state of knowledge.'

Bacon seems himself to have felt that his account of
the Inductive Method, as it stood, was inadequate, for
he intimates his intention to add an account of the
several ' aids ' (adminlcula) of which it stands in need. The
only one of these, however, which he works out is that of
the ' prerogative instances,' that is, instances of the
phenomenon under consideration which are specially in
structive or suggestive to the investigator. Such examples
are ' solitary,' ' migratory,' ' striking,' ' clandestine,' ' bor
dering,' and, most important of all, ' instances of the
finger-post ' or ' crucial instances.' It cannot, however,
be said that what Bacon says under these heads adds sub
stantially to his general statement of the methods ; and
the fact that he left the account of the < aids' thus
incomplete inevitably suggests the inference that, as time
passed, he lost interest, if not confidence, in the methods
themselves. 'His trust in the New Natural History,'

1 Works, i. 39.

46 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

says Abbott, 'appears to increase in proportion to his
distrust of the New Induction. ' 1 In the Dedication
of the Phenomena of the Universe, published in 1622,
he tells us that ' a small and well-ordered Natural History
is the key of all knowledge ' ; and in the Preface to the
third part of the Instauratio Magna he says : ' It comes
therefore to this, that my Organum, even if it were
completed, would not without the Natural History much
advance the Instauration of the sciences, whereas the
Natural History without the Organum would advance it
not a little.' But a collection of facts which is not
informed by some anticipation of their theoretic signi
ficance can have little, if any, scientific value ; here, as
elsewhere, deductive and inductive reasoning, hypothesis
and verification, must go together. If a true natural
philosophy presupposes a wide and careful natural history,
it is no less true that a natural history which is to serve
as the basis of a natural philosophy itself presupposes a
provisional natural philosophy or theory of the facts. A
natural history which is not inspired by such a theoretic
interest in the facts collected will prove a waste of labour,
because its results will be irrelevant to the inquiry in
question. In Bacon's own language, it is not in the
' mere enumeration ' of facts, but in the discrimination of
the relevant or significant from the irrelevant and, therefore,
insignificant facts that the value of the natural history lies.
It is not the mere number of the facts, but the selection
of them, that determines their scientific value. Bacon's
over-confidence in Natural History is only an added proof
of the inadequacy of his conception of the method of
science.

In two other notable respects Bacon showed a defective
understanding of the scientific work which was actually
being done in his own time — in his depreciation of the
mathematical method and of specialisation in science.
Galileo and Kepler were applying mathematics to the
theory of astronomy ; but Bacon, in his love for the
experimental method and his suspicion of deductive

1 Francis Bacon, p. 400.

BACON 47

reasoning, regards such an application of mathematics as
a mere Supplement' to the true science of astronomy.
He speaks of specialisation like that of Gilbert (almost the
only one of his contemporaries whom he mentions) as if
it implied such a narrowness of outlook as disqualified
those who practised it from taking a philosophical view of
things, and he thinks Gilbert in danger of ' becoming a
magnet.' In both these respects the subsequent course
of scientific discovery has justified his contemporaries, and
condemned Bacon.

The truth is, as we have already seen, that Bacon
belonged as much to the Scholastic as to the modern age.
His place is that of a transition-thinker, and this constitutes
the importance of his work, while it at the same time limits
the possibilities of his achievement. The terms which he
constantly uses in speaking of material phenomena are
specially significant of this intermediate position. He
speaks of the ' appetites ' and < desires ' of things, of
* appetites which aim at a private good ' and < appetites
which aim at a more public good,' of < bodies delighting
in motion,' of 'spirits' where we should speak of
c forces.' With all his impatience of the * superstitions '
of the Schoolmen, he is himself too much of a Schoolman
to abandon their characteristic modes of thought and
speech. With all his scientific ardour, he is the author
rather of an impressive statement, or series of statements,
of the scientific ideal of his age than of the method of
realising that ideal. The influence which he exerted on
the scientific thought of his own and of succeeding ages
was that rather of a prophet than of a teacher ; he gave
articulate expression to their own ideal, he did not really
direct them in the realisation of that ideal. How great that
influence was may be gathered from the fact that, as
Fowler says, c the foundation of the Royal Society in
England, and possibly also that of similar societies on the
Continent, was due to the impulse given by Bacon to the
study of experimental science and the plans which he
devised for its prosecution,'1 and that in the words of

1 Introd. to Nov. Org., p. 116.

4 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Lord Morley, * the French Encyclopaedia was the direct
fruit of Bacon's magnificent conceptions.'1

Bacon's own interest was clearly more in Natural
Philosophy, or physical science, than in Philosophy, as
distinguished from Science — in the natural, as distin
guished from the human sciences ; yet his influence upon
the actual progress of the human or philosophical sciences
has been undoubtedly greater and more lasting than his
influence upon natural science. His significance for
the empirical movement of philosophical thought in his
own country is especially remarkable. While the influ
ence of Descartes is seen in the entire movement of
Continental speculation, giving all the great thinkers a
prevailingly rationalistic tendency, the influence of Bacon
is no less clearly visible in the entire movement of English
empiricism from Locke to Spencer. The spirit of the
movement is the Baconian spirit of observation and ex
periment, of distrust in conceptions and 'innate ideas,'
of a supreme regard for ' matters of fact,' of concern for
the practical as well as the theoretic aspects of truth, and
of comparative unconcern for, if not agnostic indifference
to, the attainment of an ultimate metaphysical or theo
logical synthesis. It is here, rather than even in the great
impulse which he gave to the movement of modern
science, that Bacon's work is really most important. It is
here, even more definitely than in the sphere of physical
science, that he is the inaugurator of a new era of human
thought, in which the break with Scholasticism is most
complete.

Bacon's interest in the ultimate questions of Meta
physics and Theology is rather to show that no answer
to these questions can be reached by the unaided intel
lect of man, than to attempt either a Metaphysic or a
Natural Theology in the usual sense of these terms. The
'key of his opposition to Descartes, who gets at Nature
through God, and not at God through Nature,' is, as

1 Diderot, vol. i. p. 116, quoted by Fowler, p. 77.

BACON 49

Nichol says,1 his view that ' Nature presents itself to our
understanding, as it were, by a direct ray of light, while
God is revealed to us only by a reflected one.' We
must not, however, press this figure, as if it meant that
nature is the image or reflection of God, so that our
knowledge of nature will be at the same time a know
ledge of God. 'If any man shall think, by view and
inquiry into these sensible and material things, to attain
to any light for the revealing of the nature or will of
God, he shall dangerously abuse himself. It is true that
the contemplation of the creatures of God hath for end
(as to the nature of the creatures themselves) knowledge,
but as to the nature of God, no knowledge, but wonder ;
which is nothing else but contemplation broken off or
losing itself.'2 Even of the nature of man we can know
nothing. ' The doctrine concerning the substance of the
rational soul . . . must be handed over to religion to be
determined and defined. . . . For since the substance of
the soul in its creation was not extracted or produced
out of the mass of heaven and earth, but was immediately
inspired from God ; and since the laws of heaven and
earth are the proper subjects of philosophy ; how can
we expect to obtain from philosophy the knowledge of
the substance of the rational soul ? It must be drawn
from the same divine inspiration, from which that sub
stance first proceeded.' 3

Bacon's criterion of knowledge being sensible verifica
tion, it follows that the reality or substance of nothing
— human, cosmic, or divine — is knowable. His ' forms '
are, after all, material qualities ; and the investigation of
these forms is the limit of human knowledge. Beyond
the sphere of knowledge, in all spheres alike, lies that of
faith. The very inadequacy of scientific knowledge
demonstrates the necessity of faith. While Natural

1 Bacon, in ' Philosophical Classics,' vol. ii. p. 128.

2 Works, iii. 218. Cf. Works, iii. 267 : ' The contemplation of God's
creatures and works produceth (having regard to the works and creatures
themselves) knowledge ; but having regard to God, no perfect know
ledge, but wonder, which is broken knowledge.'

3 De Aug., Bk. iv. ch. iii., Works, iv. 397, 398.

D

50 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Philosophy is certisslma superstitionis medlcina, it is at the
same time religlonis fidissima ancilla? 1 ' It is an assured
truth and a conclusion of experience, that a little or
superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind
of man to atheism, but a further proceeding therein
doth bring the mind back again to religion ; for in the
entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, which
are next unto the senses, do offer themselves to the
mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may induce
some oblivion of the highest cause ; but when a man
passeth on farther, and seeth the dependence of causes
and the works of Providence ; then, according to the
allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that the
highest link of Nature's chain must needs be tied to the
foot of Jupiter's chair.'2 If we would attain to that
Divinity or Inspired Theology which is * the haven and
sabbath of all man's contemplations,' we must 'step
out of the bark of human reason and enter into the ship
of the Church ; which is only able by the divine compass
to rightly direct its course. Neither will the stars of
philosophy, which have hitherto so nobly shone upon us,
any longer supply their light ; so that on this subject also
it will be as well to keep silence.'3 'The articles and
principles of religion are placed and exempted from ex
amination of reason.' 4 ' The " placets " of God are re
moved from question.' Although Natural and Revealed
Theology, as the * sciences ' of God, are placed alongside
Physics and Metaphysics, as the sciences of Nature, the
former are not strictly entitled, he holds, to the name of
science. * As for perfection or completeness in divinity,
it is not to be sought ; which makes this course of artificial
divinity the more suspect. For he that will reduce a
knowledge into an art, will make it round and uniform ;
but in divinity many things must be left abrupt.' 5 The

1 Nov. Org., Bk. i. Aph. 89.

2 Advancement of Learning, Bk. i., Works, iii. 267, 268.

3 De Aug., Bk. ix. ch. i.

4 Advancement of Learning, Bk. ii., Works, iii. 480.

5 Ibid., Works, iii. 484.

BACON 51

dualism between faith and reason is made as sharp and
absolute as possible. 'The prerogative of God comprehends
the whole man, extending to the reason as well as to the
will ; that man may deny himself entirely, and draw near
unto God. Wherefore as we are bound to obey the
divine law though we find a reluctation in our will, so
are we to believe His word, though we find a reluctation
in our reason. For if we believe only that which is
agreeable to our sense, we give consent to the matter
and not to the author, which is no more than we would
do to a suspected witness. . . . The more discordant
therefore and incredible the Divine mystery is, the more
honour is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is
the victory of faith.'1

While the roots of this dualism and agnosticism are
deep in his theory of knowledge, we cannot but feel
that the enthusiasm with which Bacon proclaims the
duty of man to submit his reason to the ' placets ' of
God, as interpreted by the Church, is due not so much
to his concern for the truths of religion as to his zeal
for the independence of science. Limited though its
province is, yet within that province science is to be free
from the bondage of ecclesiastical authority. His doctrine
of the dualism of faith and reason is part of Bacon's general
protest against the Scholastic confusion of theology and
philosophy. He is more interested in assigning to reason
the things of reason than in assigning to faith the things
of faith. That this is the true interpretation of his
position becomes still more clear when we take account
of his comparatively slight interest in the ultimate questions
of philosophy, the intensity of his interest in scientific
truth, his hostility to £ superstition,' more especially that
which he found in the Church of Rome, and his desire
to limit rather than extend the civil power of the Church.

Bacon is less concerned for the independence of moral
science, and quite content that it should be ' but a hand
maid to religion,' 'admitted into the train of theology,

1 De Aug., Bk. ix. ch. i., Works, v. ill, 112.

52 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

as a wise servant and faithful handmaid to be ready at
her beck to minister to her service and requirements.'1
The duty of accepting without question the divine
mysteries 'holds not only in those great mysteries which
concern the Deity, the Creation, and the Redemption ;
but it pertains likewise to a more perfect interpretation
of the moral law/ since ' it must be confessed that a
great part of the moral law is higher than the light of nature
can aspire to.' 2 It was left to Hobbes to complete the
Baconian revolt against the Scholastic principle of authority,
by extending it to the sphere of ethics as well as to that
of metaphysics, and to attempt for the first time to
construct an independent philosophy alike of nature and
of man.

The impression which Bacon made upon his contem
poraries is that which he still makes upon ourselves, of
remarkable versatility combined with an equally remarkable
gift of literary expression — ' a man so rare in knowledge,
of so many several kinds, endowed with the facility and
felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so
abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing a way of
words, of metaphors, of allusions as perhaps the world
hath not seen since it was a world.' 3 He ' fulfilled
all numbers,' says Ben Jonson, and 'stood as the mark
and d/cp) of our language.' ' When we come to the
Advancement of Learning^ says Church, ' we come to a
book which is one of the landmarks of what high thought
and rich imagination have made of the English language.
It is the first book in English prose of secular interest ;
the first book which can claim a place beside the Laws
of Ecclesiastical Polity'* The literary side of Bacon's
achievement is the more remarkable when we remember,
on the one hand, his own lack of faith in the future of
the language of Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare,
and, on the other, his strict subordination of the form to
the matter of his writing. 'These modern languages,'

1 Works, v. 20. 2 Works, v. 112, 113. 3 Sir Toby Matthew
4 Bacon, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 217.

BACON 53

he writes to Sir Toby Matthew, ' will at one time or
another play the bank-rowte with books, and since I
have lost much time with this age, I would be glad to
recover it with posterity.' In this conviction he either
wrote all his greater works in Latin or afterwards trans
lated them into that language. Of the Advancement of
Learning alone he says : ' It is a book that will live,
and be a citizen of the world, as English books are not.'
On the other hand, he seems to have felt profoundly the
new danger which beset the learning of his time from the
tendency to set choiceness of phrase above exactness of
thought and expression, 'that first distemper of learning,
when men study words and not matter,' and think rather
of ' the choiceness of the phrase . . . and the sweet fall
ing of the clauses,' than of the sense. This new verbalism
of the Renaissance writers was, in his eyes, no less fatal
than the older verbalism of the Schoolmen ; and he speaks
of himself, on the contrary, 'as being one that accounted
words to be subservient or ministerial to matter.' Yet
he himself, it has been truly said, writes ' the finest
English of the days when its tones were finest ' ; his
prose is the prose of 'a man who had in himself all of
the poet save the poet's heart ' ; his is ' a fancy among
the masters of prose equalled by Plato alone.'

The literary form, which Bacon especially favours, lends
itself to striking and picturesque expression. It is the
Aphorism, which he prefers to ' methodical delivery ' chiefly
because it answers to the incompleteness of knowledge as he
conceives it, but also from the unerring instinct of the
literary artist that it is best calculated to arouse attention
and create interest in what he has to say. ' Aphorisms,
representing a knowledge broken, do invite to enquire
farther.'1 Of this species of writing the great example is
the Essays^ or, as he describes them, 'dispersed medita
tions,' which, 'of all my other works, have been most
current ; for that, as it seems, they come home to men's
businesse and bosomes.' Of the third edition he says
that ' the Latin volume of them (being in the universal

1 Works, iii. 405.

54 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

language) may last as long as books last.' Though they
do not belong to Philosophy in the technical sense, they
contain many philosophical reflections, as their Latin title
indicates, * Faithful Discourses, or the Inwards of Things.'
They are the ripe fruit of Bacon's observation of men,
and of his own varied experience ; and, as Spedding remarks,
he was ' deeper read in the phenomena of the human
breast than in those of the material world.' 1 The style
of this famous work is apt at first to disappoint the modern
reader. The essays read more like notes or memoranda
on their subjects than like finished discourses. ' Nothing,'
says Church, c can be more loose than the structure of the
essays. There is no art, no style, almost, except in the
political ones, no order ; thoughts are put down and left
unsupported, unproved, undeveloped.'2 They are Mike
chapters in Aristotle's Ethics and Rhetoric on virtues and
characters.' Yet they are full of memorable sayings
which have become current coin in the world of later
culture. The very brevity of the statement and the
sharpness of antithesis — the absence of elaboration — lend
a piquancy to observations which in themselves are
neither strikingly profound nor original. At every turn
we are surprised by some happy analogy, some quaint
illustration, some illuminating allusion, which springs
from Bacon's c incorrigible imaginativeness,' from the
rare wealth of a fancy and wit that are classical rather
than modern in their peculiar quality.

The ethical content of the Essays is apt to disappoint
us no less than their style. They consist mainly of
maxims for the conduct of life ; but these maxims are,
for the most part, rules by obeying which a man may
become the 'architect of his fortune' or secure his
advancement in life, they inculcate a prudential rather
than an ideal morality. As Bacon puts it in another
place, 3 c We must strive with all possible endeavour to
render the mind obedient to occasions and opportunities,

1 Pref. to New Atlantis, Works, iii. 122.

2 Bacon, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 215.

3 De Aug., Bk. viii. ch. ii., Works, v. 70, 71.

BACON 55

and to be noways obstinate and refractory towards them.
Nothing is more politic than to make the wheels of the
mind concentric and voluble with the wheels of fortune/
The great occasions and opportunities are those offered
by the characters and actions of our fellow-men ; and
human nature, like nature itself, is not conquered except
by obedience. We must therefore study and watch our
fellows, with the patience and perseverance of the Natural
Philosopher, and with the same end in view, that of
obtaining power and advantage, in the one case as in the
other. The result is a Machiavellian policy : 'what
Machiavelli meant for princes Bacon transfers to indi
viduals.' In the higher teaching of the ethical books of
the De Augmentis, however, Bacon insists that we must
not make use of 'evil arts.' 'Men ought to be so far
removed from devoting themselves to wicked arts of this
nature, that rather . . . they ought to set before their eyes
not only that general map of the world, " that all things
are vanity and vexation of spirit," but also that more
particular chart, namely, "that being without well-being
is a curse, and the greater being the greater curse," and
"that all virtue is most rewarded, and all wickedness
most punished in itself."'1 The entire tone and spirit
of the teaching of this work is on a different level from
that of the Essays, and it must be remembered that in it,
and not in the Essays^ we have Bacon's complete state
ment of his ethical views. ' Men ought so to procure
serenity, as they destroy not magnanimity.' 2 ' Seek ye
first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either
be supplied, or their loss will not be felt.' 3 We hear
again this higher note, which is not unheard in the Essays
themselves, in the beautiful fragment of the New Atlantis^
written in the last years of his life, in which he describes
in language of tender admiration the life and manners of
the distant city of his dreams, where they are 'in God's
bosom, a land unknown.'

1 Bk. viii. ch. ii., Works, v. 76.

2 Bk. vii. ch. ii., Works, v. 14.

3 Bk. viii. ch. ii., Works, v. 78.

CHAPTER II

HOBBES: MATERIALISM AND POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY

WHILE Hobbes may be regarded, from some points of
view, as the successor of Bacon, he is, no less than Bacon
himself, an independent and original thinker. His works
bear no traces of Bacon's influence, and in fundamental
points of philosophical theory he is directly opposed to the
teaching of Bacon. The statement of the chief points of
agreement and difference will bring us at once to the
characteristic features of Hobbes's philosophy.

In the first place, Hobbes is in full agreement with
Bacon as to the practical value of knowledge ; it is
indeed to him, rather than to Bacon, that we owe the
dictum that 'knowledge is power.' * The end of know
ledge is power ; and the use of theorems (which, among
geometricians, serve for the finding out of properties) is
for the construction of problems ; and, lastly, the scope of
all speculation is the performance of some action, or thing
to be done.' l This practical or utilitarian interest in
knowledge is the dominating motive of Hobbes's whole
enterprise in philosophy. That enterprise embraces the
entire field of human knowledge, so that he might well
have said, with Bacon, that he had taken all knowledge for
his province. But the end to which all else is a means is
that scientific understanding of the ethical and political life
of man in which Bacon too had seen the culmination of
his scientific ambition, and the practical value of which
seems to Hobbes least open to question. While the

1 Works, i. 7.
56

HOBBES 57

utility of natural philosophy and geometry is measured by
the arts which they make possible and the benefits which
come to men through their possession, ' the utility of
moral and civil philosophy is to be estimated, not so much
by the commodities we have by knowing these sciences,
as by the calamities we receive from not knowing them.'
The greatest of calamities, or rather the cause of all avoid
able calamity, is war, and the cause of war is not perversity
of will, but intellectual blindness, ignorance of the rules of
civil life, or of ' those duties which unite and keep men
in peace.' l

Hobbes is, like Bacon, a herald of the new era, he is
filled with the new spirit of Naturalism. For him, as for
Bacon, the theological and supernatural world of the
Scholastic philosophy has lost interest ; nature and man,
rather than God, are the objects of his inquiry. With
regard to the knowledge of God he is as frankly agnostic
as his predecessor. ' Curiosity, or love of the knowledge
of causes, draws a man from the consideration of the
effect, to seek the cause ; and again, the cause of that
cause ; till of necessity he must come to this thought at
last, that there is some cause, whereof there is no former
cause, but is eternal ; which is it men call God. So that
it is impossible to make any profound inquiry into natural
causes, without being inclined thereby to believe there is
one God eternal ; though they cannot have any idea of
him in their minds, answerable to his nature. For as a
man that is born blind, hearing men talk of warming
themselves by the fire, and being brought to warm him
self by the same, may easily conceive, and assure himself,
there is somewhat there, which men call fire, and is the
cause of the heat he feels ; but cannot imagine what it is
like ; nor have an idea of it in his mind, such as they have
that see it ; so also by the visible things in this world, and
their admirable order, a man may conceive there is a cause
of them, which men call God ; and yet not have an idea,
or image of him in his mind.' 2

1 Works, i. 8. 2 Leviathan, pt. i. ch. xi.

58 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Here, however, Hobbes's quarrel with Scholasticism
ends ; it concerns the subject-matter, not the method, of
that philosophy. He does not join in Bacon's protest
against the Scholastic habit of anticipating nature, of
deducing facts from theories ; he has no thought of sub
stituting a scientific induction for the deductive ration
alism of Scholastic philosophy. So far as the question of
method is concerned, he is the opponent rather of Bacon
than of the Schoolmen ; for him science, as such, is
rationalistic or deductive, not empirical and inductive.
Rational insight, not empirical knowledge, is his scientific
ideal. That ' history ' of which Bacon had made so
much, he excludes from philosophy properly so called,
' because such knowledge is but experience, or authority,
and not ratiocination.'1 On the other hand, Hobbes sees
in the method of geometry which Bacon has so inade
quately appreciated the characteristic method of all truly
scientific knowledge ; and it is, therefore, in his, rather
than in Bacon's, account of the method of science that we
find the formulation of the actual procedure of modern
science. In this faith in the method of mathematical
demonstration Hobbes also reflects, far more truly than
Bacon, the spirit of the century to which both belong,
that spirit of which the Ethica of Spinoza, more geometrico
demonstrata^ is the most important philosophical product.
In that 'experience' in which Bacon had seen the
fountain of all knowledge he sees no true source of know
ledge at all. ' Experience concludeth nothing univer
sally.'2 'They that study natural philosophy study in
vain, except they begin at geometry.' 3

Hobbes accordingly defines Philosophy as ' such know
ledge of effects or appearances as we acquire by true
ratiocination from the knowledge we have first of their
causes or generation ; and again, of such causes or genera
tions as may be from knowing first their effects.' 4 He
distinguishes, therefore, two forms of ratiocination or

1 Works, i. 10, ii. 2 Works, iv. 18.

3 Works, i. 73. 4 Works, i. 3.

HOBBES 59

computation. ' To compute, is either to collect the sum
of many things that are added together, or to know what
remains when one thing is taken out of another. Ratio
cination, therefore, is the same with addition and sub
traction.' * These two methods are called by him the
synthetical and the analytical, and correspond to the
deductive and the inductive method respectively. The
superiority of the deductive or synthetic to the inductive
or analytic method follows from the nature of demon
stration, as resting upon first principles embodied in
definitions. While the particulars of sense are first for
us, the universals are first in nature, and it is in the
knowledge of these universals that all knowledge of causes
must ultimately rest.2

A definition is explained by Hobbes to be the statement
of the meaning of a name or term. A name is *a word
taken at pleasure to serve for a mark, which may raise in
our mind a thought like to some thought we had before,
and which being pronounced to others, may be to them
a sign of what thought the speaker had, or had not
before in his mind.' 3 From the stress which Hobbes
lays upon the importance of language, primarily for our
selves, as securing permanence for the results of previous
thought and, therefore, economy in the actual process of
thinking, and more especially from the stress he lays upon
the arbitrariness of language, it has been inferred that he
denies, implicitly at least, the objective validity of scientific
explanation, and reduces all philosophy to mere verbalism.
But the arbitrariness of words or names does not imply
the arbitrariness or subjectivity of the system of proposi
tions of which they are the elements. The mark or sign,
once chosen, is the symbol of the thing or of its qualities ;
and while, as Hobbes insists, initial agreement as to the
use of such names is the condition of intellectual inter
course, the common use of the accepted symbols does
not preclude those who use them from the apprehension
of real relations, or of things as they are in themselves.

1 Loc. dt. 2 Cf. Works, i. 70, 81. 3 Works, i. 16.

60 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

While he emphasises the necessity of sensation as providing
the mind with the materials of knowledge, he is equally
clear that knowledge itself is impossible without the
constructive activity of the knowing mind. ' Reason is
not, as sense and memory, born with us ; nor gotten by
experience only, as prudence is ; but attained by industry.
. . . And whereas sense and memory are but knowledge
of fact, which is a thing past and irrevocable ; science is the
knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact
upon another.' l

A further proof of the extreme view attributed to Hobbes
as to the part played by words in our so-called knowledge
is sometimes found in what Professor Taylor has called his
* ultra-nominalist position in logic.' There is no founda
tion, however, for such an interpretation of his position.
We find no denial, explicit or implicit, of the reality of
the common element which entitles the several individuals
to be called by the same name ; on the contrary, this
community of nature is implied in what he says as to the
applicability of the name, and especially in his account of
the office of the copula in the proposition. The copula
' makes us think of the cause for which those names were
imposed on that thing. As, for example, when we say a
body is movable, though we conceive the same thing to be
designed by both these names, yet our mind rests not there,
but searches farther what it is to be a body, or to be
movable, that is, wherein consists the difference between
these and other things, for which these are so called, others
not so called. They, therefore, that seek what it is to be
anything, as to be movable, to be hot, etc., seek in things
the causes of their names.' 2

It may appear a more fundamental objection to Hobbes's
account of the first principles of human knowledge that
definition, or the clear formulation of the ultimate principles
alike of knowledge and of reality, is rather the goal than
the starting-point of scientific inquiry. But what Hobbes
is really describing is not so much the actual starting-point

1 Lev., pt, i. ch. v. 2 Works, i. 31.

HOBBES 6 1

of the inquiry as the starting-point of a complete explana
tion, the ideal rather than the actual point of departure.
If we are really to demonstrate anything, to know or
understand it as the mathematician understands and demon
strates, the whole process of proof must be, as in geometry,
a strict concatenation of the consequences which follow
from certain initial conceptions. The analytic or inductive
method must be superseded by the synthetic or deductive,
and the latter method implies the apprehension of first
principles, or ultimate causal points of view, from which
we can see the entire chain of effects generated as a
necessary result. Is not such a transfiguration of ordinary
sense-experience, such a mathematical interpretation of
reality, a truer account of the ideal which inspires the
activity of modern science than the inductive investigation
of the facts with which Bacon had identified it ?

Yet all knowledge, according to Hobbes, begins in sensa
tion. A 'thought* is but ca representation or appear
ance, of some quality, or other accident of a body without
us, which is commonly called an object. Which object
worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of a man's
body ; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of
appearances. The original of them all, is that which we
call sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind,
which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten
upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that
original.'1 It must be noted, however, that in the
knowledge which we derive from sense, Hobbes includes
the judgment by which we compare and distinguish
sense-appearances. i Sense, therefore, properly so called,
must necessarily have in it a perpetual variety of phantasms,
that they may be discerned one from another ... it being
almost all one for a man to be always sensible of one and
the same thing, and not to be sensible at all of any
thing.'2

The immediate objects of the senses are, Hobbes finds,
mere ' phantasms ' or * appearances ' — as we should say,

1 Lev., pt. i. ch. i. 2 Works, i.. 393-4-

S*

62 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

states of consciousness, having no existence outside the
mind itself. c Light and colour, and heat and sound, and
other qualities which are commonly called sensible, are
not objects, but phantasms in the sentients.'1 It follows
that the object of sense-perception is purely subjective,
and totally unlike the real object, which is the cause of
the sense-appearance. This real object, or cause of the
sense-appearance, is in every case motion. All sensible
qualities are, * in the object, that causeth them, but so
many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth
our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed,
are they anything else but divers motions ; for motion
produceth nothing but motion.'2 Hobbes's theory of
knowledge, or 'logic,' as he calls it, thus results in the
acceptance of motion, or matter in motion, as the sole
reality ; and this becomes the fundamental principle of
his philosophy, which, so far as it conforms to his own
ideal of synthetic or strictly ratiocinative explanation, is
simply the result of the application of the principles of
the new science of the time, the science of Kepler and
Galileo and Harvey, to the whole of reality. Philo
sophy or metaphysics is only physical science universalised.
The only real causes are mechanical ; formal and final
causes are fictions of the Scholastic imagination. We
see the same influence of the current scientific concep
tions and methods in the great Continental philosophies
of the period, those of Descartes and Spinoza. The
difference in the case of Hobbes is that the mechanical
and materialistic point of view excludes the opposite, that
of mind or spirit ; for him mind is matter, thought is
motion. Any other interpretation of reality or cause is
for him simply inconceivable, because it is not scientific.
'The causes of universal things (of those, at least, that
have any cause) are manifest of themselves, or (as they
say commonly) known to nature ; so that they need no
method at all ; for they have all but one universal cause,
which is motion. . . . For though many cannot under-

1 Works, i. 391, 392. a Lev., pt. i. ch. i.

HOBBES 63

stand till it be in some sort demonstrated to them, that all
mutation consists in motion ; yet this happens not from
any obscurity in the thing itself (for it is not intelligible
that anything can depart either from rest, or from the
motion it has, except by motion), but either by having
their natural discourse corrupted with former opinions
received from their masters, or else for this, that they
do not at all bend their mind to the enquiring out
of truth.' 1

All reality being conceived as material, Hobbes's scheme
of philosophy falls into two main branches, Natural and
Civil Philosophy, dealing respectively with natural and
civil or artificial bodies. Civil Philosophy, again, consists
of two parts, Ethics and Politics, the first dealing with
man as the material of the State, the second with the
State itself. Nature or Body as such, Man — the most
important of bodies, especially as the nucleus of the State,
— and the Citizen : these are the three great topics
embraced in the universal scheme ; and Hobbes's plan
was to treat them in three successive works, De Corpore,
De Homine, and De Give. The exigencies of the political
situation, however, as well as his own really predominating
interest in the ethical and political parts of the inquiry,
precipitated the writing and publication of the second and
third parts before the completion of the first and funda
mental division of his philosophy. It was not till 1655
that the De Corpore was published, while the De Give
was privately printed in 1642, as Elementorum Philosophiae
Sectio Tertia ; the Human Nature, published in 1650, had
already been written in 1640, along with the De Corpore
Politico, and entitled The Elements of Law, Natural and
Politique ; and The Leviathan : or the Matter, Form, and
Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil, appeared
in 1651. The De Homine, published in 1658, is the
nominal completion of the scheme, but is really superfluous
after the Human Nature, and is devoted rather to Physics
than to Psychology.

1 Works, i. 69, 70.

64 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

It is not a mere accident of the order in which the
works were composed that the psychological and ethico-
political treatises contain rather an independent and em
pirical account of the nature of man and the State- than
a deduction of the consequences of Hobbes's general
philosophical principles when applied to the problems of
psychology, ethics, and politics. Even in the De Corpore
itself he finds it necessary, when he reaches, in Part iv.,
the subject of c Physics, or the Phenomena of Nature,5
to abandon the synthetic or deductive method which he
had employed, more or less consistently, in the preceding
parts. For the ' knowledge of effects acquired by true
ratiocination ' he now substitutes the method of c finding
out by the appearances or effects of nature which we
know by sense, some ways and means by which they may
be, I do not say they are, generated.'1 It is still more
obvious that, in the case of psychology and ethics, the
immediate bases of civil or political philosophy, we must
exchange the synthetic for the analytic method, and
Hobbes is no less explicit in his admissions here. ' The
causes of the motions of the mind are known, not
only by ratiocination, but also by the experience of
every man that takes the pains to observe those motions
within himself.' It follows that even those who ' have
not learned the first part of philosophy, namely, geometry
and physics, may, notwithstanding, attain the principles of
civil philosophy, by the analytical method.' 2

Hobbes's psychology is limited in its scope and, we
feel, to some extent biassed in its results, by the interest
in which it is undertaken, namely, 'the finding out
the first and most simple elements wherein the composi
tions of politic rules and laws are lastly resolved.'3 Its
main object is to establish the opposite view of human
nature, and of the motives which guide its activities, to
that which Aristotle had held and Grotius had recently
restated in his De Jure Belli et Pads. According to the
latter view, man is naturally a social and political being,

1 Works, i. 873. Works, i. 73. 3 Human Nahtre, eh. xiii.

HOBBES 65

recognising the claims of others upon him and finding his
own good in that of the community. Against this view
Hobbes contends that man is by nature a mere individual,
concerned only with his own good, which he is ready to
defend against the competing claims of all other individuals.
At the same time there is a great deal of sound psycho
logical observation, especially in the Human Nature, which
has little, if any, bearing upon this underlying polemical
motive. The fundamental characteristic, alike of Nature
and of man, Hobbes finds to be ' Endeavour,' or the
tendency of a being to persist in its present condition,
either of rest or of motion. Conscious endeavour is either
appetite for that which helps, or aversion from that which
hinders, 'the vital motion.' The objects which help
vitality are called pleasant, those which hinder it, painful.
While some appetites and aversions are congenital, all
those whose objects are 'particular things' are the pro
duct of experience. In both cases good and evil are
simply general names for the objects of desire and aversion
respectively. ' Every man, for his own part, calleth that
which pleaseth, and is delightful to himself, good ; and
that evil which displeaseth him : insomuch that while
every man differeth from another in constitution, they
differ also from one another concerning the common
distinction of good and evil.'1 There is 'nothing simply
and absolutely so ; nor any common rule of good and
evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects them
selves.' 2

The actions of man are always in the line of his own
apparent good, or determined by the prevailing appetite or
desire. In an act of will Hobbes recognises a further
important element, that of deliberation, or the * alternate
succession of appetite and fear during all the time the
action is in our power to do or not to do.' But will
itself is only 'the last appetite in deliberating.'3 It
follows, not only that will is not specifically different from
animal appetite, but that no act of will is free in the sense

1 Human Nature, ch. vii. 2 Lev., ch. vi. 3 Lev., ch. vi.

E

66 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

of not being determined by necessary causes, or in any
sense in which the animal is not equally free.1

The extremes to which Hobbes is prepared to carry
his view of the utter selfishness of human nature are illus
trated in his account of the passions. We may take as
examples the cases of pity, laughter, and charity. ' Pity
is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves,
proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity.'
4 The passion of laughter ' is ' nothing else but sudden
glory arising from some sudden conception of some emi
nence in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of
others, or with our own formerly.' 2 Even charity, love,
or goodwill is ruthlessly traced to the same selfish source.
4 There can be no greater argument to a man, of his own
power, than to find himself able not only to accomplish
his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs :
and this is that conception wherein consisted! charity.' 3

His own happiness, then, is the one object of each
man's pursuit. But since 'the felicity of this life con-
sisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied,' but is 'a
continual progress of the desire from one object to another,
the attaining of the former being still but the way to the
latter,' it follows that the value which man cannot but
put upon the continuance of his happiness, that is, of the
opportunity of satisfying his ever new desires in the future,
leads to a further * general inclination of all mankind, a
perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that
ceaseth only in death.' The chief cause of this restless
ness is the insecurity of our happiness without increase of
our powers or opportunities of future satisfaction. And
since riches, honour, and other forms of power are subjects
of competition, the result is ' contention, enmity, and war ;
because the way of one competitor to the attaining of his
desire is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other.' 4
i So that in the nature of man, we find three principal
causes of quarrel. First, competition ; secondly, diffidence ;
thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain ;

1 Cf. Works, i. 409. 2 Human Nature, ch. ix. ; cf. Lev., ch. vi.

3 Human Nattire, ch. ix. 4 Lev., pt. i. ch. xi.

HOBBES 67

the second, for safety ; the third, for reputation. . . .
Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live
without a common power to keep them all in awe, they
are in that condition which is called war ; and such a war,
as is of every man, against every man. For war consisteth
not in battle only, or the act of fighting ; but in a tract of
time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently
known. . . . For as the nature of foul weather lieth not
in a shower or two of rain ; but in an inclination thereto
of many days together : so the nature of war consisteth
not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto,
during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.
All other time is peace.' l That the ' state of nature '
is one of universal war is proved, Hobbes contends, by our
conduct as individuals and as nations. Do we not, when
we travel, arm ourselves with weapons of defence ; do we
not lock our doors and chests when we stay at home ?
Does not the man who thus protects himself against his
fellows i as much accuse mankind by his actions, as I do
by my words ? ' And are not nations ' in the state and
posture of gladiators ; having their weapons pointing, and
their eyes fixed on one another ; that is, their forts,
garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms ;
and continual spies upon their neighbours ; which is a
posture of war ? ' 2

In this * state of nature' there is no distinction
between justice and injustice ; might is the only rule
of right. ' To this war of every man, against every man,
this also is consequent ; that nothing can be unjust.
The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice,
have there no place. Where there is no common power,
there is no law : where no law, no injustice. Force,
and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. . . .
It is consequent also to the same condition, that there
can be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine
distinct ; but only that to be every man's, that he can
get ; and for so long, as he can keep it.' 3 The intoler-

1 Lev. , pt. i. ch. xiii. 2 Loc. cit. 3 Loc. cit.

68 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

able misery of such a condition is graphically described.
* Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war,
where every man is enemy to every man ; the same is
consequent to the time, wherein men live without other
security, than what their own strength, and their own
invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition,
there is no place for industry ; because the fruit thereof
is uncertain : and consequently no culture of the earth ;
no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be
imported by sea ; no commodious building ; no instru
ments of moving, and removing, such things as require
much force ; no knowledge of the face of the earth ;
no account of time ; no arts ; no letters ; no society ;
and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger
of violent death ; and the life of man solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.' 1 The contrast is more
succinctly stated in another work. f The natural state
hath the same proportion to the civil (I mean, liberty to
subjection), which passion hath to reason, or a beast to
a man.'2 < Justice and charity, the twin sisters of
peace,' and all the other virtues, are the fruit of that
settled order for which man is compelled, if he would
live at all, to exchange his natural right to all things.

The deliverance from this ' state of nature,' the means
of transition from war to peace, is found partly in the
passions or natural dispositions of man, partly in his
reason. 'The passions that incline men to peace, are
fear of death ; desire of such things as are necessary to
commodious living ; and a hope by their industry to
obtain them.' And i reason suggesteth convenient
articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to
agreement.' 3 These articles of peace are those i Laws
of Nature ' t by which a man is forbidden to do that which
is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of
preserving the same ; and to omit that, by which he
thinketh it may be best preserved.' 4 They are im
mutable and eternal, since ' it can never be that war

1 Lev., pt. i. ch. xiii. 2 Works, ii. 107.

8 Lev., pt. i. ch. xiii. 4 Ibid., pt. i. ch. xiv.

HOBBES 69

shall preserve life, and peace destroy it ' ; and * the science
of these is the true moral philosophy.' Virtue is 'the
means of peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living ' ; 1
vice is the opposite type of conduct.

The first law of nature is 'that every man ought to
endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it ;
and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and
use, all helps and advantages of war.' 2 The second is
' that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far
forth as for peace and defence of himself he may think
it necessary, to lay down his right to all things ; and be
contented with so much liberty against other men, as
he would allow other men against himself.' A right
may be laid down either by simple renunciation, ' when
he cares not to whom the benefit thereof redoundeth,'
or by transference, ' when he intendeth the benefit thereof
to some certain person, or persons.' When, in either
of these ways, a man has abandoned his natural right,
he is said to be ' obliged ' or i bound ' not to hinder its
new possessor from the benefit of it : ' he ought, and it
is his duty, not to make void that voluntary act of his
own;' 'such hindrance is injustice, and injury.'3 The
mutual transference of rights is what we mean by
' contract,' and the expression of contract by word or sign
is a 'covenant.' The third law of nature, therefore, is
' that men perform their covenants made.'

But these laws of nature, and the others which Hobbes
deduces from them, are contrary to our natural passions ;
and 'covenants without the sword are but words.' To
enforce these covenants, to make them binding in foro
externo, that is, in external deed, as well as in foro interno^
or in the will and disposition of the individual, it is
necessary to create a common power, which shall punish
those who break them. The only way to create such
a common power is for all the individuals to enter into
an original contract 'to confer all their power and
strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men,

1 Lev., pt. i. ch. xv. 2 Ibid., pt. i. ch. xiv. 8 Loc. cit.

70 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices,
unto one will : which is as much as to say, to appoint one
man, or assembly of men, to bear their person. . . . This
is more than consent, or concord ; it is a real unity of
them all, in one and the same person, made by covenant
of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every
man should say to every man, " I authorise and give
up my right of governing myself, to this man, or to this
assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy
right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner."
This done, the multitude so united in one person, is
called a commonwealth.' A commonwealth may there
fore be defined as ' one person, of whose acts a great
multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have
made themselves the author, to the end he may use the
strength and means of them all, as he shall think ex
pedient, for their peace and common defence.' 1 This
common or representative person, whether a man or an
assembly, is sovereign ; and the power of the sovereign
is, by its very nature, absolute and inalienable. The
sovereign cannot be deposed : the subjects cannot ' transfer
their person from him that beareth it, to another man,
or other assembly of men.' Nor can the sovereign power
be forfeited by breach of contract ; for the covenant to
which it owes its existence is only between the subjects,
not between the subjects and the sovereign, and covenants
are binding only by the compulsion of the sovereign
power itself. Finally, the sovereign power is one and
indivisible : a divided sovereignty, as, for example, between
King and Parliament, is a contradiction in terms.

The central feature of this theory of the State, the
so-called * social contract,' has been constantly misunder
stood, as implying that the State owes its historical origin
to such a contract. It is quite clear that what Hobbes
is really giving is a logical analysis of the implications or
presuppositions, not a historical account of the genesis,
of the State and political obligation. He distinguishes,

1 Lev., pt. i. ch. xvii.

HOBBES 71

moreover, between two modes in which the sovereign
power and, with it, the commonwealth itself, may be
established, namely, by ' institution ' and by ' acquisi
tion'; and he calls the latter the ' natural form of
political society. This type of State is exemplified not
only in all cases of dominion by conquest, but also in
the family and in the relation of master and servant. In
calling this kind of society natural, as Croom Robertson
remarks, 'he not obscurely suggests that the institutive
is first only in the logical, not the historical, order.
The state of nature, if it ever actually existed, must have
been put an end to by the superior might of some men
rather than by the deliberate consent of all ; but how
could it ever have existed in fact, when there never was a
time that there were no masters, or at least fathers ? ' l It
has often been asked, How could the original contract
ever have taken place, seeing that the parties to it must
have known that it was not binding in the state of nature
from which it was yet the only deliverance ? If, however,
we think of it as the logical presupposition of the State,
such a question becomes unmeaning.

To understand the theory, it is necessary to take
account of the political circumstances out of which it
arose, and which explain the practical, as well as the
theoretical, interest of the argument for Hobbes himself.
He speaks of 'my discourse of Civil and Ecclesiastical
Government' as 'occasioned by the disorders of the
present time,' and in the Preface to the Philosophical
Rudiments concerning Governments and Society he thus ex
plains the appearance of this treatise before the first and
second parts of his system : ' Whilst I contrive, order,
pensively and slowly compose these matters ... it so
happened in the interim, that my country, some few
years before the civil wars did rage, was boiling hot with
questions concerning the rights of dominion and the
obedience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an
approaching war ; and was the cause which, all those

1 Hobbes, in ' Philosophical Classics,' pp. 145-6.

72 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

other matters deferred, ripened and plucked from me this
third part. . . . Yet I have not made it out of a desire of
praise . . . but for your sakes, readers, who I persuaded
myself, when you should rightly apprehend and thoroughly
understand this doctrine I here present you with, would
rather choose to brook with patience some inconveniences
under government (because human affairs cannot possibly
be without some), than self-opinionatedly to disturb the
quiet of the public.' l The question raised by the civil
war and the revolution is, in the eyes of Hobbes, the same
as that which had chiefly perplexed the statesmanship of
Bacon, the question of the seat of sovereignty in the
English State ; and Hobbes agrees with Bacon in holding
not only that sovereignty cannot be divided between King
and Parliament, but that its seat is in the Monarch.
What was for Bacon merely a problem of practical states
manship seemed to Hobbes, who had neither the responsi
bility nor the opportunity of the statesman, a problem of
which the only satisfactory solution could be found in a
theory of the essential nature of sovereignty and of the
functions and rights of the sovereign. In the fate of the
sovereign was involved the fate of the State itself; the
attack upon the sovereign was in reality an attack upon
the State. Hobbes professes to be indifferent to the alter
natives of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But
whether the sovereignty be vested in one man or in an
assembly, large or small, it must reside in a single authority,
it must not be divided between King and Parliament : a
* mixed monarchy ' is a radically unsound form of political
constitution. And it is still more evident to him that a
revolution, as such, means the dissolution of the State, the
substitution of anarchy for the settled order of political
existence.

What Hobbes is concerned, therefore, above all things to
establish is the absoluteness and legal irresponsibility of the
sovereign power in the State. But since he is convinced
that, in defending the sovereign, he is defending the pre-

1 Works, ii. pp. xx.-xxii.

HOBBES 73

supposition of the very existence of the State, he finds it
necessary to raise the previous question of the value of
the State itself to man as an individual. And in spite of
the phrase * state of nature,' which has unfortunately
drawn the attention of his critics away from the central
point of his answer to this question, there can be no doubt
that his main purpose was to show how deeply natural
the State is, how it is nature's (or reason's) own way of
deliverance from the untold misery of unpolitical existence
or anarchy. The end which, in his judgment, justifies
the State and, therefore, absolute sovereignty, is the
common good. It is better, incomparably better, for the
individual to render unquestioning obedience to the
sovereign power, and thus to secure all the blessings of
life in an ordered society, than to purchase liberty at the
price of anarchy. As Professor Taylor points out, what
he is defending is not the doctrine of the 'divine right'
of the monarch : his view is thoroughly democratic, and
it was with a true insight that the later Utilitarians re
cognised its essential identity with their own. ' Though
Hobbes's argument amounts to a defence of absolutism,
the defence is throughout based on rationalistic and, con
sequently, democratic grounds. . . . There is much more
community of spirit between Hobbes and Locke or Sidney,
or even Rousseau, than between Hobbes and Filmer.' l

There was ever present to the mind of Hobbes a second
and quite different menace to the integrity of the State,
the rival claim of the Church to dominion over the indi
vidual ; and though he makes no discrimination between
the churches, Roman, Anglican, or Presbyterian, so far
as this claim is concerned, it is clearly the power of the
Papacy that he chiefly fears. The Church of Rome,
as such, claims to override the allegiance of the subject
to his earthly sovereign ; it would set up ( supremacy
against sovereignty ; canons against laws ; and a ghostly
authority against the civil.' Against the political and
temporal sanctions of conduct, it brings to bear upon man

1 Hobbes, in Constable's ' Philosophies Ancient and Modern,' pp. 91-2.

74 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the supernatural and eternal sanctions of religion. By
playing upon that ' superstitious fear of spirits,' that ' fear
of things invisible,' which is ' the natural seed ' of religion
and of superstition alike, it has succeeded in establishing
itself in the place of the Roman empire, and threatens
man with a more ignoble bondage. 'If a man consider
the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will
easily perceive, that the Papacy is no other than the
ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned
upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start up
on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power.' 1 The
acceptance of this claim means either a dualism between
the temporal and the spiritual power which negates the
sovereignty of the State, or the absorption of the State
in the Church, which contradicts no less violently the
idea of the State. Hobbes's solution of the problem is
to reverse the subordination, and to make the Church
the servant of the State. It is to the State, he holds, that
we owe the fundamental distinction between true religion
and vain superstition ; it is from the State, therefore, that
the Church derives her authority. ' Religion is not
philosophy, but law.' We know nothing, as we have
seen, about God and the supernatural ; in these questions,
as much as in questions of ordinary conduct, we must
be guided by the authority of the State. The only way
to save the integrity of the State is to absorb the Church
in it, and thus make the latter the organ and instrument
of the former. Church and State are a single society,
'which is called a civil State, for that the subjects of it
are men, and a Church, for that the subjects thereof are
Christians.'

In spite of the democratic purpose which really inspires
his political theory, the outcome of Hobbes's speculations
is thus seen to be the justification of the complete sub
jection of the individual to the State, the vindication
of a practically unqualified political despotism. The
essentially true doctrine of sovereignty becomes, in his

Lev., pt. iv. ch. xlvii.

HOBBES 75

hands, the false and pernicious doctrine that the despotic
type of government is the true and only possible consti
tution of the State. This disappointing result is due
partly to the political circumstances which were the
occasion of the whole inquiry, partly to fundamental
defects in Hobbes's own philosophy. So far as the first
of these causes is concerned, it is only fair to Hobbes
to remember that to him the only alternatives could
hardly fail to appear to be despotism and anarchy. It
would be unreasonable to expect him to have foreseen
the actual solution of the problem of sovereignty in a
constitutional monarchy, in a more truly democratic and
representative form of government in which the seat
of sovereignty is found rather in Parliament than in the
King. A theory more nearly answering to these facts
of the growing political life of England we shall find in
the important development and revision of the ' Social
Contract ' theory of the State which we owe to Locke.
The deeper explanation of the inadequacies of Hobbes's
political theory is to be found in his egoistic view of
human nature. If we are to derive the State from human
nature, as we must, it must be from such a nature as
Aristotle or Grotius ascribed to man, rational in a deeper
sense than Hobbes admits, and social in a sense which
he denies. An individual who cannot recognise a
common good, or any good at all except his own ' preser
vation ' and * delectation,' can never be a citizen ; such
individuals are incapable of any real 'social contract.7 It
was reserved for Rousseau to develop the fuller truth of
a political theory which, in its author's hands, remained
inevitably incomplete and misleading.

Even in Hobbes's own statement of it, however, there
are suggestions of this later development. Insistent as he is
upon the absoluteness and irresponsibility of the sovereign
power, he recognises the existence of certain limits to its
legitimate exercise. The essential limit is found in the
end for the realisation of which the State exists, namely,
the preservation of the life of the individual. 'If the
sovereign command a man, though justly condemned, to

76 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

kill, wound, or maim himself; or not to resist those that
assault him ; or to abstain from the use of food, air,
medicine, or any other thing, without which he cannot
live ; yet hath that man the liberty to disobey. . . . When,
therefore, our refusal to obey frustrates the end for which
the sovereignty was ordained ; then there is no liberty to
refuse : otherwise there is.' x Similarly, he argues, the
validity of the commands of the sovereign is conditioned
by his ability to discharge the office of sovereign, that is,
to protect his subjects. 'The obligation of subjects to
the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer,
than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect
them. For the right men have by nature to protect
themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no
covenant be relinquished. The sovereignty is the soul of
the commonwealth ; which once departed from the body,
the members do no more receive their motion from it.
The end of obedience is protection ; which, wheresoever
a man seeth it, either in his own, or in another's sword,
nature applieth his obedience to it, and his endeavour to
maintain it.' 2 And though, in the Leviathan^ he speaks of
the * office,' rather than of the c duty ' of the sovereign,
even in that treatise he recognises that the sovereign is
responsible to God, if not to his subjects, and in the De
Corpore Politico he says that ' the duty of a sovereign con-
sisteth in the good government of the people. And
although the acts of sovereign power be no injuries to the
subjects who have consented to the same by their implicit
wills, yet when they tend to the hurt of the people in
general, they be breaches of the law of nature, and of the
divine law ; and consequently, the contrary acts are the
duties of sovereigns, and required at their hands to the
utmost of their endeavour, by God Almighty, under the
pain of eternal death.'3

Whatever may be the merits or the demerits of the
philosophy of Hobbes, there can be only one opinion as to

1 Lev., pt. iv. ch. xxi. 2 Works, ii. 178.

3 Works, iv. 213. Cf. Works, iv. 213, 214.

HOBBES 77

the quality of its literary expression. Of his writings it is
even more true than of those of Bacon, that the language is
a well-nigh perfect instrument of philosophical exposition
and argument. * Among English writers,' says Masson,
' there are few comparable to Hobhes for combined per
spicuity and strength. Every sentence is as clear as can
be, and yet full of independence and character. Happy
and memorable expressions abound, and in page after page
there breaks out the sarcastic humour of one who sees the
faces of his readers as he writes, and of some readers in
particular, and hits the harder the more they wince.' J In
the Epistle Dedicatory to the Human Nature, he apologises
for the style, which is * the worse because, whilst I was
writing, I consulted more with logic than with rhetoric.'
But the supreme merit of his style is its perfect appropri
ateness to the subject and the argument. As Hallam says,
4 Hobbes's language is so lucid and concise, that it would
almost be as improper to put an algebraical process in
different terms as some of his metaphysical paragraphs.'
If he seldom moves us, or stimulates the imagination, as
Bacon does, yet in the essential qualities of lucidity and
vigour and in the characteristically Baconian quality of
succinctness, of packing a paragraph into a sentence or a
phrase, he is not second even to Bacon. These qualities
are sufficiently exemplified in the numerous citations which
have been made in the foregoing account of his philosophy ;
but it may perhaps be well to add two passages, chosen out
of many, as striking examples of his best writing. The
one is part of the comparison of Monarchy and Democracy
which occurs in the Philosophical Rudiments concerning
Government and Society :

' But perhaps for this very reason, some will say that a
popular State is to be preferred before a monarchical ;
because that where all men have a hand in public busi
nesses, there all have an opportunity to show their wisdom,
knowledge, and eloquence, in deliberating matters of the
greatest difficulty and moment ; which by reason of that

1 Life of Milton, vi. 288.

78 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

desire of praise which is bred in human nature, is to them
who excel in such-like faculties, and seem to themselves
to exceed others, the most delightful of all things. But
in a monarchy, this same way to obtain praise and honour
is shut up to the greatest part of subjects ; and what is a
grievance if this be none ? I will tell you : to see his
opinion, whom we scorn, preferred before ours ; to have
our wisdom undervalued before our own faces ; by an
uncertain trial of a little vain glory, to undergo most
certain enmities (for this cannot be avoided, whether we
have the better or the worse) ; to hate and to be hated, by
reason of the disagreement of opinions ; to lay open our
secret councils and advices to all, to no purpose and with
out any benefit ; to neglect the affairs of our own family :
these, I say, are grievances. But to be absent from a
trial of wits, although those trials are pleasant to the
eloquent, is not therefore a grievance to them ; unless
we will say, that it is a grievance to valiant men to be
restrained from fighting, because they delight in it.'1

The other passage is a brief paragraph which, accord
ing to Professor Sorley, c may be taken as having started
the line of thought which issued in the theory of associa
tion, for a long time dominant in English psychology : ' 2
'And yet in this wild ranging of the mind, a man
may oft-times perceive the way of it, and the dependence
of one thought upon another. For in a discourse of our
present civil war, what could seem more impertinent, than
to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman penny ?
yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the
thought of the war introduced the thought of the de
livering up the king to his enemies ; the thought of that
brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ ;
and that again the thought of the thirty pence, which
was the price of that treason ; and thence easily followed
that malicious question ; and all this in a moment of
time ; for thought is quick.' 3

1 Works, ii. 136.

2 Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. vii. ch. xii.

3 Lev., pt. i. ch. iii.

CHAPTER III

THE IDEALISTIC REACTION: CAMBRIDGE
PLATONISM AND RATIONALISM

IT was inevitable that the radical speculation of Hobbes,
alike in the spheres of metaphysics and of politics, should
provoke a reaction, and should rally to the defence of the
higher spiritual interests of human life those to whom
these interests seemed to be bound up with a spiritual
interpretation of the universe and a social interpretation
of human nature. Hobbes had indeed professed to be a
defender of the Christian faith ; but it was little wonder
that this new * Epicurism ' should seem to religious thinkers
4 but atheism under a mask,"1 and that the unmasking of
this hidden and, therefore, all the more dangerous, atheism
should seem the appointed task of the devout thinker.
The fundamental error of Hobbes, as well as of Bacon,
seemed to such men to be the absolute distinction and
separation of the spheres of faith and reason, of theology
and philosophy. Such a separation meant the ultimate
denial of the reasonableness of religion, the obliteration
of the distinction between religion and superstition. The
aim of the Cambridge Platonists was the reunion of these
two spheres, the vindication of the rational character of
religion.

Apart, however, from the polemical motive supplied by
the effort to refute the views of Hobbes, these thinkers,
who were all Churchmen as well as academic teachers,
were conscious of another danger to religion within the
Church itself. It is a notable fact that, with the excep
tion of More, the leading members of the school were
trained in Emmanuel College, the great Puritan founda-

79

8o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

tion ; and they were inspired by the common ideal of
emancipation from the narrowness and intolerance of
Puritan dogmatism, they revolted with one consent
against the subjection of reason to faith which was
demanded by the Protestant no less really than by the
Catholic theology. From Puritan dogmatism and intoler
ance, no less than from Prelatical formalism, they appealed
to life and conduct as the true measure of religion. They
are among the earliest defenders of the principle of tolera
tion. Subordinating doctrine to life, and regarding the
greater part of the doctrine of the Protestant i Confessions '
as mere matter of opinion, they came to be known as the
4 Latitudinarians,' and were eyed askance by the orthodox
of both theological parties. Their constant effort was to
extricate the essential truth of Christianity from the
accidents which had gathered round it in the course of
the centuries, and this essential core of truth was, in
their eyes, identical with goodness of life and, therefore,
accessible to all rational beings. If they did not deny
the distinction between natural and revealed truth, the
burden of their teaching was that all essential truth came
to men by < the light of nature,' that * the Spirit of a
Man is the Candle of the Lord, lighted by God, and light
ing us to God.'1

Still another influence must be mentioned as determin
ing the spirit and attitude of the Cambridge Platonists,
namely, that of Descartes. This influence is primarily
negative. Ignoring the spiritual side of the Cartesian
philosophy, they are repelled by its dualism of thought
and extension, its separation of the spheres of matter and
mind, and its authentication of the mechanical method
and point of view so far as the material world is con
cerned. In its exclusion of the action of spirit from the
latter sphere, and in its substitution of mechanical for
final causes, they see the same menace to the interests
of a spiritual or idealistic interpretation of reality as
they discover in the materialism of Hobbes. The Car-

1 Whichcote, Aphorisms, Campagnac's Cambridge Platonists , p. 70.

THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 81

tesians, says Cudworth, * have an undiscerned tang of the
mechanic Atheism hanging about them.' In opposition
to both Hobbes and Descartes, therefore, the Cambridge
idealists proclaim the spiritual constitution of the so-called
material world. Not only are there, as Descartes admitted,
spiritual as well as material substances, but spiritual sub
stance alone truly is. Matter, truly understood, is spirit.
Only from the spiritual constitution of the universe can a
divine or universal Spirit be inferred. On the other hand,
there can be no doubt that the Cambridge Platonists were
influenced positively, as well as negatively, by the Car
tesian philosophy, of which More especially was in his
youth an enthusiastic admirer. The great questions
with which they are concerned are the same as those
which had preoccupied Descartes — the existence of God
and the relation of matter to spirit. And their aim is the
same as his — to show the rational basis of faith, to reduce
its content to 'clear and distinct ideas.'1

While the only names that have become widely known
are those of Cudworth and More, three other names are
too important to be altogether overlooked. The move
ment owes its origin to the remarkable influence, as a
teacher and preacher, if not as a writer, of Benjamin
Whichcote, an influence which was extended by the
similar activities of John Smith and Nathaniel Culverwel,
although the latter, according to Professor Sorley, 'can
hardly be counted as belonging to the group.' It is to the
treatises of Ralph Cudworth on The True Intellectual
System of the Universe and on Eternal and Immutable
Morality that we must look for a systematic account
of the philosophy of the school. Henry More, whose
chief philosophical work is the Encheiridion Ethicum, ' re
presents,' as Tulloch says, ' more than any other member
of the school, the mystical and theosophic side of the
Cambridge movement.' 2 He is not the least interesting

1 Cf. Tulloch, Rational Theology in England in the Seventeenth
Century, ii. 17-20.

2 Ency. Brit.) Qth ed., art. ' Henry More.'

82 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

or important in a group of singularly impressive and
influential personalities.

If it was in More that the mystical tendency reached its
culmination, it is not to be denied that such a tendency
was present in the movement from the first. In its other
representative members, however, this tendency was kept
well subordinated to the rationalism which was even more
characteristic of the movement as a whole. It is true
that none of the so-called Cambridge Platonists clearly
distinguished between the original teaching of Plato
himself and that of the Neo-Platonists. As Tulloch says,
'The suspicion that Plotinus and Proclus, while building
upon the Platonic basis, may have had little or none of the
spirit of the master-builder, never disturbed them. Plato-
nism was to them a vast mass of transcendental Thought,
dating from Pythagoras and even Moses, and stretching
downwards through Alexandrian and mediaeval Jewish
schools ; and it was this Platonism of tradition — of the
successive spiritualistic schools which had contended for
a super-sensual philosophy, and peopled the world of faith
with many fantastic reveries — which ruled their spirits
and inspired their philosophic ambition. In this sense
alone can they be called Platonists.'1 On the other hand,
it is an exaggeration to say, with Coleridge, that they were
4 more truly Plotinists ' than Platonists,2 or to attribute
to them 'a corrupt, mystical, theurgical, pseudo-Plato-
nism, which infected the rarest minds under the Stuart
dynasty.' 3 It is true that they shared many of the super
stitious ideas of their age, and that their attitude to earlier
thinkers was uncritical ; that, in Tulloch's words, * they
leant too fondly on the past, and made too much of
ancient wisdom.' 4 But the main lines of their thought
are clearly derived from Plato himself, and from such
dialectical dialogues as the The&tetus and the Parmenides
hardly less than from the more poetical and mystical dia
logues. In Cudworth this return to the original and more
dialectical teaching of Plato is especially characteristic.

1 Rational Theology, ii. 481. 2 Notes on English Divines, i. 351.

3 Ibid.,\, 130. * Rational Theology, ii. 137.

THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 83

Their undue dependence upon the past shows its evil
influence not less in the style or manner than in the
matter of their writing. Their style is scholastic and
pedantic to a degree almost intolerable to the modern
reader. The quotations with which they fill their pages
fatally interrupt the continuity of the argument, and
would be intolerable even as foot-notes in a book of the
present day. It is as if they had not really mastered and
assimilated the thought of the past to which they are so
anxious to serve themselves heirs. They seem to feel it
necessary to dress out their own ideas in the borrowed
feathers of illustrious names ; afraid to trust to the inherent
weight of their argument, they seek some more sure
support for it in the wisdom of the ancients. 'They
crowd their books with specimens of all the intellectual
furniture which they have gathered in the course of their
studies.' * It is a remarkable testimony to the real power
of their thinking, as well as to their real gift of expression,
.that in spite of these defects their writings are studded
with so many fine and memorable sayings which them
selves bear well the ordeal of quotation. Of the founder
of the school Westcott says, ' There are few prose
writers of any time from whom one could gather more
"jewels five-words long" than from Whichcote.' 2

The philosophy of the Cambridge Platonists centres in
three main positions : (i) the unity of faith and reason, of
religion and life ; (2) the spiritual constitution of the
universe ; and (3) the reasonableness, as opposed to the
arbitrariness of morality, its foundation in reason rather
than in mere will, and hence its absolute, as opposed to
its merely relative validity.

(i) The essential identity of the content of faith with that
of reason is a favourite topic with all the writers of this
school ; it is indeed the starting-point of their entire intel
lectual effort. ' Truth is the Soul's Health and Strength,
natural and true Perfection. ... No sooner doth the

1 Tulloch, Rational Theology, ii. 477.

2 Religious Thought in the West, p. 371.

84 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Truth of God come to our Soul's Sight, but our Soul
knows her, as her first and old Acquaintance : which,
though they have been by some Accident unhappily parted
a great while ; yet having now, through the Divine
Providence, happily met, they greet one another, and
renew their Acquaintance, as those that were first and
ancient Friends.' 1 ' That which is the Height and Excel
lency of Humane Nature, viz. our Reason, is not laid aside
nor discharged, much less is it confounded by any of
the Materials of Religion ; but awakened, excited, em
ployed, directed, and improved by it.' ' In all things of
weight, in the great Points of Conscience, in the great
Materials of Religion, there is a Reason in the Things,
that doth enforce them, and enjoin them upon us, and
require Jthem of us.' * This is the peculiarity of Humane
Nature, that through the Reason of his Mind, he may
come to understand the Reason of Things : and this is that
you are to do ; and there is no coming to Religion but
this way.' 2 Very similar is the language of Smith in the
discourse on The Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion.
' It's a fond imagination that Religion should extinguish
Reason ; whenas Religion makes it more illustrious and
vigorous ; and they that live most in the exercise of
Religion, shall find their Reason most enlarged.' 'Un
reasonableness or the smothering and extinguishing the
Candle of the Lord within us is no piece of Religion, nor
advantageous to it : that certainly will not raise men up
to God, which sinks them below men.'

The intimate connection of such religious insight or
knowledge with life and conduct is no less emphatically
asserted. ' True piety and a Godlike pattern of purity '
is the * best way to thrive in all spiritual understanding ' ;
* a holy life ' is ' the best and most compendious way to a
right belief.' 'If we would indeed have our Knowledge
thrive and flourish, we must water the tender plants of
it with Holiness. . . . The reason why, notwithstanding
all our acute reasons and subtile disputes, Truth prevails

1 Whichcote, Evidence of Divine Truth, Campagnac, 3, 4.

2 Whichcote, Work of Reason, Campagnac, 51, 53.

THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 85

no more in the world, is, we so often disjoin Truth and
true Goodness, which in themselves can never be dis
united ; they grow both from the same Root, and live in
one another. . . . He that wants true Vertue, in heaven's
Logick is blindy and cannot see afar off? 1 The obverse side
of this relation, namely, that true religion must find its
expression in goodness of life, is no less frequently empha
sised ; but this, as a more obvious position, it is unnecessary
to illustrate by quotation.

(2) We find the general argument for a spiritual inter
pretation of the universe, as against the materialism of
Hobbes, set forth with much force and eloquence in
Smith's discourses on The Immortality of the Soul and on
The Existence and Nature of God. He protests against
4 that flat and dull Philosophy which these later ages have
brought forth,' and insists upon the higher validity of
those principles for which the mind of man is indebted,
not to the senses, but to its own inherent intellectual
power. i Whensoever it will speculate Truth itself, it will
not then listen to the several clamours and votes of these
rude Senses which always speak with divided tongues, but
it consults some clearer Oracle within itself.' In the
spiritual nature of the human soul he sees the true revela
tion of the nature of God and the proof of the divine
existence. But it is in Cudworth that we find the most
sustained and convincing refutation of the materialistic
view. Reducing materialism to sensationalism, Cudworth
sees in Hobbes the reviver of the Protagorean scepticism
and, with obvious indebtedness to the argument of Plato
in the Thecetetus, deduces from the self-contradictoriness
of such a scepticism the presence of rational elements in
all knowledge. Its essential feature he finds to be judg
ment. ' The Sight cannot judge of Sounds which belong
to the Hearing, nor the Hearing of Light and Colours ;
wherefore that which judges of all the Senses and their
several Objects, cannot be it self any Sense, but something

1 John Smith, Method of Divine Knowledge, Campagnac, 81, 82.

86 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

of a superior Nature. Moreover, that which judges that
the Appearances of all the Senses have somethingFantastical
in them, cannot possibly be itself Fantastical, but it must
be something which hath a Power of judging what Really
and Absolutely is or is not. This being not a Relative,
but an Absolute Truth, that Sensible Appearances have
something Fantastical in them.' 1 * Wherefore though
Men are commonly said to know things when they see and
feel them, yet in truth by their bodily Senses they perceive
nothing but their Outsides and External Induments. Just
as when a Man looking down out of a Window into the
Streets, is said to see Men walking in the Streets, when
indeed he perceives nothing but Hats and Cloaths, under
which, for ought he knows, there may be Daedalean
Statues moving up and down.' 2 By its very nature
sense can reveal to the percipient only appearance, or the
4 phantastical and relative.'

Reality, as distinguished from appearance, is constituted
by those intelligible forms or ideas which are the expres
sion of the rational constitution of the knowing mind
itself. { Knowledge is not a Passion from anything without
the Mind, but an Active Exertion of the Inward Strength,
Vigour and Power of the Mind, displaying it self from
within ; and the Intelligible Forms by which Things are
Understood or Known, are not Stamps or Impressions
passively printed upon the Soul from without, but Ideas
vitally protended or actively exerted from within it self. A
Thing which is merely Passive from without, and doth only
receive Foreign and Adventitious Forms, cannot possibly
Know, Understand or Judge of that which it receives,
but must needs be a Stranger to it, having nothing within
it self to know it by. The Mind cannot know any thing,
but by something of its own, that is Native, Domestic
and Familiar to it.' 3 Thus it is to the knowing intellect
that we owe the apprehension of the unity of the parts in
a total object ; intellect alone can ' comprehend the Formal
Reason of it, as a Whole made up of several Parts, according

1 Eternal and Immutable Morality, Bk. ii. ch. vi. Cf. Bk. iii.

2 Ibid., Bk. iii. ch. iii. 3 Ibid., Bk. iv. ch. i.

THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 87

to several Relations and Proportions contributing thereto.'
The idea of this whole ' was never stamped or impressed
upon the Soul from without, but upon occasion of the
Sensible Idea was excited and exerted from the inward
Active and Comprehensive Power of the Intellect itself.' 1
It follows that ' the Mind or Intellect may well be called
(though in another Sense than Protagoras meant it) The
Measure of all Things'*

From the rational constitution of knowledge Cudworth
infers the existence first of the rational self and, secondly,
of God. < For tho' it should be supposed that our Senses
did deceive us in all their Representations, and that there
were no Sun, no Moon, no Earth, that we had no
Hands, no Feet, no Body, as by Sense we seem to have,
yet Reason tells us that of Necessity That must be some
thing, to whom these things seem to be, because nothing
can seem to that that is not.' 3 On the other hand, the
constancy of the existence of things, independent of their
being actually ideas in *our particular created minds,' the
eternity and immutability of real existence, implies a
divine Mind or universal Intelligence. Geometrical truth
does not depend for its reality upon the apprehension of
the geometrician, or change with his advancing know
ledge. It follows that ' there is an Eternal Wisdom and
Knowledge in the World, necessarily existing, which was
never made, and can never cease to be or be destroyed ;
or, which is all one, that there is an Infinite, Eternal Mind
necessarily existing, that actually comprehends himself,
the Possibility of all Things, and the Verities Clinging to
them. In a word, that there is a God, or an Omnipotent
and Omniscient Being, necessarily existing, who therefore
cannot destroy his own Being or Nature, that is, his
Infinite Power and Wisdom.' 4

(3) The real interest of the metaphysical argument lies,
for these thinkers, in its ethical and religious consequences.
They find in reason the only secure basis for the absolute

1 Eternal and Immutable Morality, Bk. iv. ch. ii.

2 Ibid., Bk. iv. ch. i. 3 Bk. ii. ch. vi. 4 Ibid., Bk. iv. ch. iv.

88 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

obligatoriness of morality : it is not mere law, the
expression of arbitrary will, but the expression of the
nature of things, of the rational constitution of the uni
verse. Not even the divine Will is for them the ultimate
source of moral laws ; the divine Will is guided by the
divine Reason, or by regard to the essential nature of
things. This ethical deduction, which is only briefly
suggested by Cudworth, receives the chief emphasis in
Whichcote's discourses. Moral truths, he says, ' have a
deeper Foundation, greater Ground for them, than that
God gave the Law on Mount Sinai ; or that he did after
ingrave it on Tables of Stone ; or that we find the Ten
Commandments in the Bible. For God made Man to
them, and did write them upon the Heart of Man, before
he did declare them upon Mount Stnai^ before he ingraved
them upon the Tables of Stone, or before they were writ
in our Bibles ; God made man to them, and wrought His
Law upon Men's Hearts ; and, as it were, interwove it
into the Principles of our Reason ; and the things thereof
are the very Sense of Man's Soul, and the Image of his
Mind : so that a Man doth undo his own being, departs
from himself, and unmakes himself, confounds his own
Principles, when he is disobedient and unconformable to
them ; and must necessarily be self-condemned.' * It is
no less characteristic of man's nature to act conformably
to these rational principles than it is natural for a non-
rational being to be guided by sense and impulse. ' By
which you may see the Degeneracy of us Mortals ; in
that the State below us remains in the same Principle it
was created in ; but we Men do neither find out the
Reasons of things, nor comply with them. Our Deformity
is more ; because our Perfection is more and the Order of
our Being is higher . . . and we use to say, the Fault is
greater in him that is in a higher State.'2

Outside the school of Cambridge Platonism the move
ment of idealistic or rationalistic philosophy in England in

1 Evidence of Divine Truth, Campagnac, 5.

2 Christian Religion, Campagnac, 37.

THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 89

the seventeenth century is represented by two important
names, Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Richard Cumberland.
The first of these writers is specially remarkable as having
at a much earlier period arrived at a theory of knowledge
essentially identical with that of the Cambridge Platonists.
In the De dentate, published in 1624, Herbert of Cher-
bury formulated the view that, in addition to external and
internal sense and the discursive or reasoning faculty, it
is necessary to postulate what he calls, after the Stoics,
4 common notions ' or ' received principles of demonstration,'
which are apprehended by ' natural instinct* and must be
regarded as the presuppositions rather than as the products
of experience. The mind is, previous to experience, not a
tabula rasa, but a ' closed book,' which is opened by the
presentation of sensible objects. Referring to this theory,
Culverwel says : ' There is a Noble Author of our own,
that hath both his truth and his errour, (as he hath also writ
about both), who pleads much for his Instinctus naturales, so
as that, at the first dash, you would think him in a Platonical
strain ; but, if you attend more to what he says, you will
soon perceive that he prosecutes a far different Notion,
much to be preferred before the other phancy. For he
doth not make these instincts any connate Ideas, and repre
sentations of Things ; but tells us, that they are powers
and faculties of the Soul, the first-born faculties and begin
ning of the Soul's strength, that are presently espoused to
their Virgin-objects closing and complying with them,
long before Discourse can reach them ; nay, with such
objects as Discourse cannot reach at all in such a measure
and perfection. . . . If you ask, when these highest faculties
did first open and display themselves, he tells you, 'tis
then when they were stimulated, and excited by outward
Objects' l Lord Herbert is better known as ' the father of
Deism,' and he certainly rationalises religion to an extent
far beyond the daring of the Cambridge divines. Among
the < common notions' are those which constitute the
natural instinct of religion and the essence of ' natural

1 Light of Nature, ch. xi., Campagnac, 289, 290.

90 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

religion,' namely, the existence of God, the duty of worship,
the identity of worship and virtue, the duty of repentance,
and future reward and punishment. This natural core of
religion has been overlaid by subsequent accretions of
superstition and dogma ; in the case of Christianity, as
well as the other historical religions, priestcraft and guile
have obscured the simplicity of natural religion. But the
author himself seems more interested in the positive than
in the negative side of his argument ; his work is rather a
plea for religion, as fundamentally rational in its nature
and source, than a criticism of actual religion and theology,
or an exposure of their irrationality.

Richard Cumberland is a contemporary of the Cam
bridge Platonists, and has the same polemical purpose as
Cudworth, namely, the refutation of the views of Hobbes.
On the title-page of his De Leglbus Naturae, published in
1672, he professes to 'consider and refute' 'the elements
of Mr. Hobbes's Philosophy, as well Moral as Civil.' He
is no Platonist, and attacks the theory of Innate Ideas as a
Platonic error. ' The Platonists, indeed, clear up this
Difficulty in an easier manner, by the Supposition of innate
Ideas, as well of the Laws of Nature themselves, as of
those Matters about which they are conservant ; but,
truly, I have not been so happy as to learn the Laws of
Nature in so short a way. Nor seems it to me well
advised, to build the Doctrine of natural Religion and
Morality upon an Hypothesis, which has been rejected by
the generality of Philosophers, as well Heathen as Christian,
and can never be proved against the Epicureans, with whom
is our chief Controversy.' 1 Unlike his predecessors, he
limits the inquiry to ethics, and seeks to prove the
* naturalness ' of moral laws. Laws of Nature, in this
ethical reference, are defined by him as c propositions of
unchangeable Truth, which direct our voluntary Actions
about choosing Good and Evil ; and impose an Obliga
tion to external actions even without Civil Laws, and
laying aside all Considerations of those Compacts which
constitute Civil Government.' 2 He defines < Good ' as

1 Introd., sect. v. 2 Ch. i. p. 39.

THE IDEALISTIC REACTION 91

4 that which preserves, or enlarges and perfects, the
Faculties of any one Thing, or of several.' *• It follows
that the Law of Nature prescribes those actions which
4 will chiefly promote the common Good, and by which
only the entire Happiness of particular Persons can be
obtained.'2 From these statements it seems clear that,
while he accepts Hobbes's term i preservation,' he includes
both happiness and perfection, or development of faculty,
as inseparable elements in the Good. He is more con
cerned with the determination of the form of conduct
which will lead to the attainment of this end ; and his
conclusion is that the best method of securing it is that of
benevolence, or regard for the common good, as opposed
to selfish preoccupation with our own individual interests.
c The greatest Benevolence of every rational Agent towards
all, forms the happiest State of every, and of all the
Benevolent, as far as is in their Power ; and is necessarily
requisite to the happiest State which they can attain, and
therefore the common Good is the supreme Law.' 3 This
endeavour to promote the common good ' includes our
Love of God, and of all Mankind, who are the Parts of
this System. God, indeed, is the principal Part ; Men the
subordinate : A benevolence toward both includes Piety
and Humanity, that is, both Tables of the Law of
Nature.' 4 He repeatedly points out that the common
good includes our own, as one of its parts ; but it must
be sought only as a part, in subordination to the whole.
Cumberland's confidence in the perfect coincidence of
virtue, or benevolence, and individual happiness ultimately
depends upon his doctrine of the divine sanctions of the
Laws of Nature. But his main interest in the ethical
question is to insist, against Hobbes, upon the ' naturalness '
of the law of benevolence and the inherent unreasonable
ness of separating the individual and his good from the
system of rational beings of which he is in reality only a
part, and with whose good his own is inseparably bound up.

1 Ch. ii . p. 165. 2 Ch. v. p. 189.

3 Ch. i. 4 Introd., sect. xv. p. 20.

CHAPTER IV

LOCKE: THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE

IT was not the study of either Bacon or Hobbes that first
awakened Locke's interest in philosophy or determined
the direction of his own philosophical development.
Although there is much in his writings which we can
hardly but interpret as aimed against the views of these
thinkers, there is practically no mention of them in his
works. As an undergraduate at Oxford, he was compelled
to read the Scholastic philosophy, and was trained in the
art of disputation ; and his entire philosophical activity may
be regarded as a protest against the settlement of intellectual
questions by verbal disputation and submission to authority.
Following up his undergraduate course with professional
medical study, he came into contact with the Baconian
spirit of experimental investigation which was already
moving the life of the University. ( It might be inter
esting,' says Professor Campbell Fraser, < to speculate upon
the consequences to philosophy, in England and in Europe,
if Locke had spent his academical life at Cambridge instead
of Oxford, and had breathed its atmosphere of Platonism,
instead of pursuing physical experiments at Oxford, when
Oxford was giving birth to its Royal Society.' 1 But
while we must trace the spirit of intellectual freedom, and
the faith in experience, which are so characteristic of
Locke, to the influence, negative and positive, of his
academic environment, there can be no doubt that the
real influence which first set him thinking about the
problems of philosophy, and which determined the specific

1 Introd. to Essay , p. xxxiv.
92

LOCKE 93

nature of his own problem, was the early study of the
writings of Descartes. This influence was negative rather
than positive. The confidence of Descartes in the 'clear
ness and distinctness ' of our ideas as a criterion of truth
tempted him and his successors to attempt metaphysical
construction of a kind which roused suspicion in Locke's
more cautious English mind, and forced upon him the
previous question of the validity and extent of the know
ledge contained in such clear and distinct ideas.

Locke's real affinity is, therefore, rather with Bacon
than with either Hobbes or Descartes. Like Bacon, he
is a critic of human knowledge, a surveyor of the founda
tions rather than a builder of the structure of science and
philosophy. He contrasts the modesty of his own under
taking with the grander designs of the scientific minds of
the time. 'The commonwealth of learning is not at this
time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in
advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to
the admiration of posterity, but every one must not hope
to be a Boyle or a Sydenham ; and in an age that produces
such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable
Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambi
tion enough to be employed as an under-labourer in
clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the
rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.' x Like Bacon,
too, Locke is primarily interested in the practical utility
of knowledge. ' Our business here is not to know all
things, but those which concern our conduct. ... It is
of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line,
though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the
ocean. It is well he knows that it is long enough to
reach the bottom, at such places as are necessary to direct
his voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals
that may ruin him.' 2 The difference between Locke
and Bacon is that while Bacon sought to formulate the
true method of scientific investigation, Locke is concerned
with the previous question of the possibility of knowledge

1 Essay, « Epistle to the Reader.' 2 Ibid.

94 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

itself; how far it extends, and where the line must be
drawn between certain knowledge and probable opinion.
While Bacon sought to formulate the methods of scientific
knowledge, or to construct a system of inductive logic,
Locke comes, in the end, to the conclusion that no
4 science of bodies,' or certain knowledge of the real world,
is possible, and that the needs of practice are sufficiently
met by the probabilities of opinion, or belief.

So far as English philosophy is concerned, Locke is the
first to state the problem in this form ; his is the first
criticism of human knowledge, or epistemology.1 His
statement of the problem is of epoch-making importance
for the subsequent development of philosophy in England
and on the Continent, in the hands especially of Hume
and Kant. Locke himself seems to have been led to his
statement of it by his experience of the difficulties in
which the discussion of moral and religious questions
involves the human mind. We learn from his common
place books that he was in his early life much interested
in such questions, and in the ' Epistle to the Reader ' he
tells us : < Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of
this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meet
ing at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very
remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by
the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had
awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a
resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came
into my thoughts that we took a wrong course ; and
that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that
nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and
see what objects our understandings were, or were not,
fitted to deal with.' The discovery of the boundary line
that separates certainty from probability, knowledge from
opinion, will guide us in the profitable use of our under
standings : ' we shall then use our understandings right,
when we entertain all objects in that way and proportion

1 Unless Herbert of Cherbury's De Veritate is to be regarded as a
critical inquiry into the relations of knowledge and reality, as Professor
Sorley urges (Mind, N.S., iii. 49 1 &).

LOCKE 95

that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those
grounds they are capable of being proposed to us ; and
not peremptorily or intemperately require demonstration,
and demand certainty, where probability only is to be had,
and which is sufficient to govern all our concernments.' l
Of the practical sufficiency of our knowledge Locke never
has any doubt. ' For though the comprehension of
our understandings comes exceedingly short of the vast
extent of things, yet we shall have cause enough to
magnify the bountiful Author of our being for that
portion and degree of knowledge he has bestowed on us,
so far above all the rest of the inhabitants of this our
mansion. . . . We shall not have much reason to com
plain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but
employ them about what may be of use to us ; for of
that they are very capable. And it will be an unpardon
able, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the
advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it
to the ends for which it was given us, because there are
some things that are set out of the reach of it. It will be
no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not
attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had
not bright sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us
shines bright enough for all our purposes.' 2

At the very threshold of such an examination of
knowledge and opinion, however, Locke is met by the
objection that there is a part of human knowledge whose
validity is beyond question, that we have a set of ideas
which are not, like the rest, acquired, but c innate,' the
immediate and indubitable expression of reason itself.
* When men have found some general propositions that
could not be doubted of as soon as understood, it was, I
know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. This
being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of
search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning
all that was once styled innate. And it was of no small
advantage to those who affected to be masters and

1 Introd., sect. 5. 2 Loc. cit.

96 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

teachers, to make this the principle of principles — that
principles must not be questioned? 1 The first Book of the
Essay is accordingly devoted to the refutation of the doc
trine of Innate Ideas, in the sense just explained, or to
the refutation of the claim of any elements in our so-
called knowledge to exemption from the criticism which
he is about to undertake. All the parts of our knowledge,
he insists, have the same rank and the same history.
It is difficult to determine against whom the argument is
directed, or * to find any philosopher, then or since, who
would deny what Locke maintains.' 2 But when we note
Locke's polemical interest in the question, and remember
the significance for him of the empirical origin of all the
elements of human knowledge, we can afford to disregard
the doubtful relevancy of the argument, and be content
to see in it an earnest protest against the principle of
authority, a vindication of our right to examine critically
all the so-called 'principles' of human knowledge.

The elements, data, or materials of knowledge are
called by Locke * ideas,"* an idea being defined by him as
' whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man
thinks.' In one sense at least, therefore, the measure of our
knowledge will be found in the extent and clearness of our
ideas. What we actually know, we must have an idea of:
that of which we have no idea, or only an obscure and
inadequate idea, we cannot know, or can know only inade
quately. The limitation of our knowledge will be found
in the limitation of our ideas. Hence * the greater part
of a book treating of the understanding will be taken up
in considering ideas.' The earlier Books of the Essay are
devoted to this ' consideration ' of ideas, seeking, in a
* historical plain method,'' to give an ' account of the
ways whereby our understandings come to attain those
notions of things we have ' ; inquiring into ' the original
of those ideasy notions, or whatever else you please to call
them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself

1 I. iii. 25. 2 Fraser, Locke, in 'Philosophical Classics,' p. 117.

LOCKE 97

he has in his mind ; and the ways whereby the under
standing comes to be furnished with them,' while the
investigation of the question 'what knowledge the under
standing hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence,
and extent of it,' as well as 'the nature and grounds of
faith or opinion, whereby I mean that assent which we
give to any proposition as true, of whose truth yet we
have no certain knowledge,' is reserved for the fourth Book.
The object of the second Book, in particular, is to give
'a short and, I think, true history of the first beginnings of
human knowledge ; whence the mind has its first objects;
and by what steps it makes its progress to the laying in and
storing up those ideas, out of which is to be framed all
the knowledge it is capable of.' x ' Having thus given
an account of the original, sorts, and extent of our IDEAS,
with several other considerations about these (I know not
whether I may say) instruments, or materials of our know
ledge, the method I at first proposed to myself, would
now require that I should immediately proceed to show
what use the understanding makes of them, and what
KNOWLEDGE we have by them.' 2

In proceeding to consider Locke's account of the ways
by which the understanding comes to be furnished with
the ideas which form the materials of all its knowledge, it
is important to note the limitation of the inquiry. ' I
shall not at present meddle,' he says, ' with the physical
consideration of the mind ; or trouble myself to examine
wherein its essence consists ; or by what motions of our
spirits, or alterations of our bodies, we come to have any
sensation by our organs, or any ideas in our understandings ;
and whether those ideas do, in their formation, any or all
of them, depend on matter or not. These are speculations
which, however curious and entertaining, I shall decline as
lying out of my way in the design I am now upon. It
shall suffice to my present purpose, to consider the dis
cerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about
the objects which they have to do with.'3 Locke

1 II. xi. 15. 2 II. xxxiii. 19. 3 Introd., sect. 2.

G

9 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

assumes the existence of external things on the one hand,
and of the mind on the other, and the * operation ' of the
former upon the latter. How motion in the object and in
the sense-organ can produce ideas in the understanding, he
does not attempt to explain ; he is content to describe the
way in which our understandings conceive the relation in
question, to accept the facts as they report themselves
in the human understanding. Questions of physiological
psychology and of metaphysical theory are equally remote
from his purpose, at least in the second Book, where he is
simply giving an account of the genesis of our ideas and,
according to his ' historical plain method,' keeping con
sistently within the limits of these ideas themselves. What,
he virtually asks, are our ideas in their simplest form, and
what do these ideas tell us about the understanding on
the one hand and about things on the other ? The ques
tion of the validity or invalidity of that report — the real
question of the Essay — is reserved for the fourth Book.

The common source of our ideas is found by Locke in
experience, in one or other of its two forms, sensation and
reflection, or external and internal sense. To illustrate
the indebtedness of the understanding to experience for its
ideas, he uses two analogies : that of a sheet of white
paper, and that of a dark room. ' Let us then suppose the
mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters,
without any ideas ; — How comes it to be furnished ?
Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and
boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost
endless variety ? Whence has it all the materials of reason
and knowledge ? To this I answer, in one word, from
EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded ;
and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation,
employed either about external sensible objects, or about
the internal operations of our minds perceived and re
flected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our under
standings with all the materials of thinking. These two
are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the
ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.' *

1 II. i. 2.

LOCKE 99

' External and internal sensation are the only passages
that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These
alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which
light is let into this dark room. For, methinks, the under
standing is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from
light, with only some little openings left, to let in external
visible resemblances, or ideas of things without : would
the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there,
and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would
very much resemble the understanding of a man, in
reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.' 1

Taking these two sources of ideas in turn, Locke finds
that 'our senses, conversant about particular sensible
objects, do convey into the mind several distinct percep
tions of things, according to those various ways wherein
those objects do affect them. And thus we come by
those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard,
bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities ;
which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I
mean, they from external objects convey into the mind
what produces there those perceptions. This great source
of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon
our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I
call SENSATION.' 2 ' Secondly, the other fountain, from
which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas,
— is the perception of the operations of our own mind
within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got ; —
which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and
consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of
ideas, which could not be had from things without. And
such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning,
knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own
minds ; — which we being conscious of, and observing in
ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings
as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses.
This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself;
and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with
external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly

1 II. xi. 17. 2 II. i. 3.

ioo ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other
Sensation, so I call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords
being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own
operations within itself. By reflection, then, ... I would
be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes
of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason
whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the
understanding.'1

It is to the consideration of the ideas of sensation that
the inquiry is chiefly devoted. The simple ideas of
reflection are divided into two classes : Perception, or
Thinking ; and Volition, or Willing, and referred to
the two ' powers, abilities, or faculties,' called Under
standing (in the narrower sense) and Will respectively.
The account of the simple ideas of sensation is much
more complicated. In this case the idea is always the
idea of a quality, which is referred by the mind to a thing.
The classification of the ideas is therefore based upon the
distinction between the two kinds of qualities of which
our ideas inform us, primary and secondary. The primary
qualities are extension, figure, solidity, motion or rest,
and number ; all others are secondary. The former are also
called < real * qualities, since they actually belong to the
thing, whether it is perceived or not ; while the secondary
are called c imputed ' qualities, since they do not really
belong to the thing, but depend for their reality upon our
perception of them. * What I have said concerning
colours and smells may be understood also of tastes and
sounds, and other the like sensible qualities ; which,
whatever reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in
truth nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to
produce various sensations in us ; and depend on those
primary qualities, viz. bulk, figure, texture, and motion
of parts.' 2 It follows that the ideas of the primary
qualities resemble these qualities as they really exist in the
object, 'and their patterns do really exist in the bodies
themselves ' ; while in the case of the secondary qualities

1 II. i. 4. 2 II. viii. 14.

LOCKE 101

' there is nothing like our ideas, existing in the bodies
themselves. They are, in the bodies we denominate
from them, only a power to produce those sensations in
us ; and what is sweet, blue, or warm in idea, is but the
certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts,
in the bodies themselves, which we call so.'1 The
secondary qualities, while they are the product of the
primary, are yet dependent upon percipient mind for
their existence. c Take away the sensation of them ;
let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear
sounds ; let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell, and
all colours, tastes, odours, and sounds, as they are such
particular ideas^ vanish and cease, and are reduced to their
causes, i.e. bulk, figure, and motion of parts.' 2 So far
as real existence goes, that is to say, the qualitative is
resolved into the quantitative aspect of things ; the
qualitative aspect proper has a merely subjective or mental
existence. The distinction had been already made by
Bacon and Hobbes ; but it is made by Locke in a new
way, which immediately suggests the characteristically
modern and English form of the problem of external
reality. Locke's statement of the distinction between
the primary and the secondary qualities inevitably
suggested Berkeley's further question, How far is the
reality of external things mind-dependent ? Is the dis
tinction, as Locke has stated it, a real distinction ?

As the secondary qualities point to the primary for their
explanation, so the primary point to a 'support' or
'substance' in which they inhere and from which they
do result. 'The mind being . . . furnished with a great
number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses
as they are found in exterior things, . . . takes notice
also that a certain number of these ideas go constantly
together ; which being presumed to belong to one
thing, ... are called, so united in one subject, by one
name ; because, . . . not imagining how these simple
ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to

1 II. viii. 15. 2 jjg viij. I7.

102 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from
which they do result ; which therefore we call substance.
So that if any one will examine himself concerning his
notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has
no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he
knows not what support of such qualities which are capable
of producing simple ideas in us ; which qualities are
commonly called accidents. If any one should be asked,
what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres,
he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended
parts ; and if he were demanded, what is it that
solidity and extension inhere in, he would not be in a
much better case than the Indian before mentioned who,
saying that the world was supported by a great elephant,
was asked what the elephant rested on ; to which his
answer was, a great tortoise : but being again pressed
to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise,
replied — something^ he knew not what.'' *• The ' obscure and
relative idea of substance in general^ therefore, is ' nothing
but the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities
we find existing.'

This idea of substance in general lies at the basis of our
ideas of particular substances, which we acquire 'by col
lecting such combinations of simple ideas as are, by ex
perience and observation of men's senses, taken notice of
to exist together ; and are therefore supposed to flow from
the particular internal constitution, or unknown essence
of that substance.' 2 We can never be certain, how
ever, that we have discovered the real collection of qualities
which constitutes the ' particular substance ' in question,
for two reasons : first, because we can never know the
' general substance ' or c support ' of the primary qualities ;
and, secondly, because the primary qualities themselves,
upon which the co-existence of the secondary qualities
depends, as well as the connexion of the former with the
latter qualities, remain in every case beyond our know
ledge. The first of these reasons has been sufficiently

1 II. xxiii. I, 2. 2 II. xxiii. 3.

LOCKE 103

explained ; the second is stated in the account of the dis
tinction between the 'real' and the 'nominal' essence in
Book III. The former is * the real internal, but gener
ally (in substances) unknown constitution of things,
whereon their discoverable qualities depend ; ' l the latter
is * the artificial constitution of genus and species.9 There
must be some real constitution, ~ori~ which any collec
tion of simple ideas depends, — 'a real, but unknown,
constitution of their insensible parts ; from which flow
those sensible qualities which serve us to distinguish them
from one another, according as we have occasion to rank
them into sorts, under common denominations.'2 Our
divisions into genera and species are, therefore, artificial
and, so far, unreal ; there is a real foundation for these
distinctions and classifications, but we do not know it, or
know it only imperfectly. i The sorting of things by us,
or the making of determinate species, being in order to
naming and comprehending them under general terms,
I cannot see how it can be properly said, that Nature sets
the boundaries of the species of things ; or, if it be so, our
boundaries of species are not exactly conformable to those
in nature. For we, having need of general names for
present use, stay not for a perfect discovery of all those
qualities which would best show us their most material
differences and agreements ; but we ourselves divide them,
by certain obvious appearances, into species.' 3 Our col
lection of ideas (the nominal essence) is not identical with
the real collection (the real essence). If we knew the
inner constitution of things, our idea of any particular
substance * would be as far different from what it now
is, as is his who knows all the springs and wheels and
other contrivances within of the famous clock at Strasburg,
from that which a gazing countryman has of it, who
barely sees the motion of the hand, and hears the clock
strike, and observes only some of the outward appear
ances.' 4

Our idea of spiritual substance is of precisely the same

1 Ill.iii. 15. 2 III. iii. 17.

0 III. vi. 30. 4 III. vi 3.

io4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

kind as that of material substance — a something, different
from material substance, since it is the support of different
qualities, namely, ' the operations of the mind,' but equally
unknown. So entirely ignorant are we of the nature of
both material and spiritual substance that we cannot tell
whether they are really the same or different. * We have
the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never
be able to know whether any mere material being thinks
or no ; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation
of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether
Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter,
fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined
and fixed to matter, so disposed, a thinking immaterial
substance : it being, in respect of our notions, not much
more remote from our comprehension to conceive that
GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of
thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance
with a faculty of 'thinking'1

The idea of cause or power is, like that of substance,
traced by Locke to experience. We get it both from our
ideas of sensation and from reflecting on what passes
within the mind itself; in both cases we observe change
and, by considering the possibility of change, we come by
the idea of power. He thinks, however, that we get a
clearer and more distinct idea of active power from reflec
tion on the operations of our own minds than from
sensible observation of bodies. ' It seems to me we have,
from the observation of the operation of bodies by our
senses, but a very imperfect, obscure idea of active power ;
since they afford us not any idea in themselves of the
power to begin any action, either motion or thought.' 2

The < crucial instance ' of Locke's hypothesis of the
empirical origin of all our ideas is the idea of Infinity.
6 All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds,
and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and
footing here : in all that great extent wherein the mind
wanders, in those remote speculations it may seem to

1 IV. iii, 6. 2 II. xxi. 4.

LOCKE 105

be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas
which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation.' l
Anything that has parts — space, time, or number — is
capable of enlargement ad infinitum. While, therefore,
we have no ideas of infinite space, time, or number, we
have a negative idea of the infinity of each of these. The
idea of infinity arises directly from the experienced fact of
the absence of a limit to the possibilities of imagination or
thought in the field of space, time, and number. We thus
obtain a ' confused and comparative idea that this is not all,
but we may yet go further. ... So that what lies beyond
our positive idea towards infinity, lies in obscurity, and has
the indeterminate confusion of a negative idea.' 2

Such is Locke's account of the empirical origin of the
ideas which constitute the materials of human knowledge.
We must now look at his account of human knowledge
itself, its extent and its limits. Though he holds that all
our knowledge originates in experience, Locke is not an
empiricist. On the contrary, he recognises a rational
element in all knowledge, properly so called. Knowledge
consists in the perception of the agreement or disagree
ment of ideas, and such perception must be clear or
certain. He distinguishes two degrees of knowledge — in
tuition and demonstration. In the former case, the agree
ment or disagreement is immediately perceived ; in the
latter, it is perceived through the mediation of a third
idea, but each step in the demonstration is itself an in
tuition, the agreement or disagreement between the two
ideas compared being immediately perceived. This know
ledge, however, extends but a little way in matters of
real existence ; it comprises only two certainties : the
existence of ourselves, by intuition, and that of God, by
demonstration.

Locke agrees with Descartes that the existence of the
self is implied in every state of consciousness. Every
element of our experience, every idea of which we are

1 II, i. 24. 2 II. xvii. 15.

106 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

conscious, is a certificate of our own existence, as the
subject of that experience, the self that is conscious of that
idea. ' As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly
and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of
any proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than
our own existence. I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and
pain : can any of these be more evident to me than my
own existence ? If I doubt of all other things, that very
doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will not
suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel pain, it
is evident I have as certain perception of my own exis
tence, as of the pain I feel : or if I know I doubt, I have
as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting,
as of that thought which I call doubt. ... In every act of
sensation, reasoning, or thinking, we are conscious to our
selves of our own being ; and, in this matter, come not
short of the highest degree of certainty.' *

From the certainty of our own existence that of the
existence of God immediately follows. This is, according
to Locke, c the most obvious truth that reason discovers ' ;
its evidence is ' equal to mathematical certainty.' Man
knows intuitively that he is ' something that actually exists.9
' In the next place, man knows, by an intuitive certainty,
that bare nothing can no more produce any real being^ than it
can be equal to two right angles.' It is, therefore, ' an
evident demonstration, that from eternity there has been
something.'' And since all the powers of all beings must
be traced to this eternal Being, it follows that it is the
most powerful, as well as the most knowing, that is, God.
Eternal Mind alone can produce 'thinking, perceiving
beings, such as we find ourselves to be.' 2

Below the rank of knowledge proper, intuitive and
demonstrative, Locke recognises a third degree of know
ledge, not strictly entitled to the name — our sensitive
apprehension of external things, or of real objects other
than ourselves and God. 'These two, viz. intuition
and demonstration, are the degrees of our knowledge ;

i IV. ix. 3. 2 iv. x.

LOCKE 107

whatever comes short of one of these, with what
assurance soever embraced, is but faith or opinion^ but
not knowledge, at least in all general truths. There is,
indeed, another perception of the mind, employed about
the particular existence of finite beings without usy which,
going beyond bare probability, and yet not reaching
perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty,
passes under the name of knowledge. There can be nothing
more certain than that the idea we receive from an
external object is in our minds : this is intuitive knowledge.
But whether there be anything more than barely that
idea in our minds ; whether we can thence certainly
infer the existence of anything without us, which corre
sponds to that idea, is that whereof some men think there
may be a question made ; because men may have such
ideas in their minds, when no such thing exists, no such
object affects their senses.' * The difficulty is put elsewhere
in a more philosophical form : < It is evident the mind
knows not things immediately, but only by the inter
vention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge,
therefore, is real, only so far as there is a conformity
between our ideas and the reality of things. But what
shall be here the criterion ? How shall the mind, when it
perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree
with things themselves ? ' 2 Does not the very definition
of knowledge, as the perception of the agreement or dis
agreement of ideas with one another, preclude the percep
tion of the agreement of ideas with non-ideal reality ?

Locke's argument for the objective validity of sensitive
knowledge consists of several considerations. In the first
place, he urges, our ideas of sensation differ from those of
memory and imagination, that is from mere ideas, in being
produced in us without any action of our own, and there
fore ' must necessarily be the product of things operating
on the mind, in a natural way, and producing therein
those perceptions which by the Wisdom and Will of our
Maker they are ordained and adapted to.' They ' carry

1 IV. ii. 14. 2 IV. iv. 3.

io8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

with them all the conformity which is intended ; or which
our state requires : for they represent to us things under
those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us :
whereby we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of par
ticular substances, to discern the states they are in, and
so to take them for our necessities, and apply them to
our uses.' l Secondly, pleasure or pain often accompanies
the sensation, and is absent from the idea as it recurs in
memory or imagination ; and ' this certainty is as great as
our happiness or misery, beyond which we have no con
cernment to know or to be.' 2 Thirdly, our several senses
assist one another's testimony, and thus enable us to
predict our sensational experience. On these grounds
Locke concludes that < the certainty of things existing
in rerum natura when we have the testimony of our
senses for it is not only as great as our frame can attain
to, but as our condition needs. For, our faculties being
suited not to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect,
clear, comprehensive knowledge of things free from all
doubt and scruple ; but to the preservation of us, in whom
they are ; and accommodated to the use of life : they serve
to our purpose well enough, if they will but give us certain
notice of those things, which are convenient or incon
venient to us.' 3 The certainty which Locke attributes to
sensitive knowledge is thus seen to be practical, rather than
theoretical ; and it is impossible to distinguish this degree
of knowledge from the belief or opinion which results
from a balance of probabilities rather than from certain
perception.

But even granting that our sensitive apprehension of
external reality possesses the certainty which is the charac
teristic of knowledge, as distinguished from mere opinion,
we must observe within how very narrow limits it is con
fined. 'When our senses do actually convey into our
understandings any idea, we cannot but be satisfied that
there doth something at that time really exist without us,
which doth affect our senses, and by them give notice of

i IV. iv. 4. 2 IV. ii. 14. 3 IV. xi. 8.

LOCKE 109

itself to our apprehensive faculties, and actually produce
that idea which we then perceive : and we cannot so far
distrust their testimony, as to doubt that such collections of
simple ideas as we have observed by our senses to be
united together, do really exist together. But this know
ledge extends as far as the present testimony of our senses,
employed about particular objects that do then effect
them, and no further.'1 We cannot demonstrate the
necessity of the co-existence of those ideas which constitute
the modes or qualities of substances ; we cannot perceive
their ' necessary connexion or repugnancy.' The connexion
between the secondary and the primary qualities remains
inscrutable. ' And therefore there are very few general
propositions to be made concerning substances, which
carry with them undoubted certainty.'2 'Our know
ledge in all these inquiries reaches very little further
than our experience.' 3 Beyond the strict warrant
of experience, or the testimony of our senses, we may
venture upon 'opinion' or 'judgment' as to the co
existence of the qualities of substances, but we cannot
strictly 'know.' 'Possibly inquisitive and observing men
may, by strength of judgment, penetrate further, and, on
probabilities taken from wary observation, and hints well
laid together, often guess right at what experience has not
yet discovered to them. But this is but guessing still ; it
amounts only to opinion, and has not that certainty which
is requisite to knowledge.' 4

Locke finds himself compelled, therefore, to conclude
that the so-called 'science' of which Bacon had talked so
proudly, and of whose achievements he had himself
spoken so respectfully in the opening pages of the
Essay^ is not, in the strict sense, science at all ; that,
in his own words, there can be 'no science of bodies.'
It is vain to search for the 'forms' of the various
material substances, or to seek to verify ' the corpuscularian
hypothesis ' as to the connexion of the primary and the
secondary qualities of things. ' I am apt to doubt that, how

1 IV. xi. 9. * IV. vi. 7.

3 IV. iii. 13, I4. 4 IV.vi. 13.

i io ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

far soever human industry may advance useful and ex
perimental philosophy in physical things, scientifical will
still be out of our reach. . . . Certainty and demonstration
are things we must not, in these matters, pretend to.'1
' And therefore we shall do no injury to our knowledge,
when we modestly think with ourselves, that we are so
far from being able to comprehend the whole nature of
the universe, and all things contained in it, that we are
not capable of a philosophical knowledge of the bodies that
are about us, and make a part of us : concerning their
secondary qualities, powers, and operations, we can have
no universal certainty. ... In these we can go no further
than particular experience informs us of matter of fact, and
by analogy to guess what effects the like bodies are, upon
other trials, like to produce. But as to a perfect science of
natural bodies, (not to mention spiritual beings), we are, I
think, so far from being capable of any such thing, that
I conclude it lost labour to seek after it.'2 In that
'experience and history' to which Bacon had looked as
merely the preparation for scientific insight into the ' forms '
of things, and which Hobbes had still more disparaged,
Locke accordingly sees the only legitimate occupation of
physical inquiry. 'This way of getting and improving
our knowledge in substances only by experience and history^
which is all that the weakness of our faculties in this
state of mediocrity which we are in in this world can
attain to, makes me suspect that natural philosophy is not
capable of being made a science. We are able, I imagine,
to reach very little general knowledge concerning the
species of bodies, and their several properties. Experi
ments and historical observations we may have, from
which we may draw advantages of ease and health, and
thereby increase our stock of conveniences for this life ;
but beyond this I fear our talents reach not, nor are our
faculties, as I guess, able to advance.' 3

If we cannot attain to a science of bodies, still less can
we expect * scientifical ' understanding of spirits. Spiritual

1 IV. iii. 26. 2 IV. iii. 29. 3 IV. xii. io.

LOCKE 1 1 1

substance is, as we have seen, as unknown as material
substance ; and Locke finds additional reasons for limiting
our knowledge in this sphere. 'If we are at a loss in
respect of the powers and operations of bodies, I think it
is easy to conclude we are much more in the dark in
reference to spirits ; whereof we naturally have no ideas
but what we draw from that of our own, by reflecting on
the operations of our own souls within us, as far as they
come within our observation. But how inconsiderable a
rank the spirits that inhabit our bodies hold amongst
those various and possibly innumerable kinds of nobler
beings ; and how far short they come of the endow
ments and perfections of cherubim and seraphim, and
infinite sorts of spirits above us, is what by a tran
sient hint in another place I have offered to my reader's
consideration.'1

Our knowledge of ' sensible matters of facts,' or of the
coexistence of the ideas which represent the qualities of
substances, being thus confined to the particulars of ex
perience, we must look elsewhere for that knowledge
which is at once general and real. It is found in those
complex ideas other than those of substances, which,
4 being archetypes of the mind's own making, not in
tended to be the copies of anything, nor referred to the
existence of anything, as to their originals, cannot want
any conformity necessary to real knowledge.' 2 Here we
have to do not with the. relations of ideas to reality or to
matters of fact, but simply with the relations of ideas to
one another. Of this kind of knowledge Locke regards
mathematics as the type. ' I doubt not but it will be
easily granted that the knowledge we have of mathe
matical truths is not only certain, but real knowledge ; and
not the bare empty vision of vain, insignificant chimeras
of the brain : and yet, if we will consider, we shall find
that it is only of our own ideas.' 3 It is with ideal
figures and quantities, not with actual things, that the

1 IV. iii. 17. 2 IV. iv. 5. » IV. iv. 6.

ii2 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

mathematician is concerned. Locke holds, however, that
such general, yet certain knowledge is found in all similar
relations of ideas, in all similarly ideal sciences, and more
particularly, in ethics, ' our moral ideas, as well as mathe
matical, being archetypes themselves, and so adequate
and complete ideas.'1 'The idea of a supreme Being,
infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose work
manship we are, and on whom we depend ; and the
idea of ourselves, as understanding, rational creatures,
being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly
considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our
duty and rules of action as might place morality amongst
the sciences capable of demonstration : wherein I doubt not
but from self-evident propositions, by necessary con
sequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the
measures of right and wrong might be made out to any
one that will apply himself with the same indifferency
and attention to the one as he does to the other of these
5 2

sciences

The Essay closes, as it began, with the note of the
practical and the useful. The sharp limitation of human
knowledge should teach the lesson of contentment with
probability, where certainty is unattainable. ' The
understanding faculties being given to man, not barely for
speculation, but also for the conduct of his life, man would
be at a great loss if he had nothing to direct him but
what has the certainty of true knowledge. For that being
very short and scanty, as we have seen, he would be often
utterly in the dark, and in most of the actions of his life
perfectly at a stand, had he nothing to guide him in the
absence of clear and certain knowledge. He that will
not eat till he has demonstration that it will nourish him ;
he that will not stir till he infallibly knows that the
business he goes about will succeed, will have little else to
do but to sit still and perish. Therefore, as God has set
some things in broad daylight ; as he has given us some

1 IV. iv. 7. 2 IV. iii. 18.

LOCKE 113

certain knowledge, though limited to a few things in
comparison, probably as a taste of what intellectual
creatures are capable of, to excite in us a desire and
endeavour after a better state : so, in the greatest part of
our concernments, he has afforded us only the twilight,
as I may so say, of probability ; suitable, I presume, to
that state of mediocrity and probationership he has been
pleased to place us in here ; wherein, to check our over-
confidence and presumption, we might, by every day's
experience, be made sensible of our short-sightedness and
liableness to error ; the sense whereof might be a constant
admonition to us, to spend the days of this our pilgrimage
with industry and care, in the searching and following
of that way which might lead us to a state of greater per
fection. It being highly rational to think, even were
revelation silent in the case, that, as men employ those
talents God has given them here, they shall accordingly
receive their rewards at the close of the day, when their
sun shall set, and night shall put an end to their
labours.' 1

The closing chapters of Book IV. are accordingly
devoted to a consideration of that kind of apprehension
of reality which Locke calls 'judgment,' as distinguished
from 'knowledge.' 'The faculty which God has given
man to supply the want of clear and certain knowledge,
in cases where that cannot be had, is judgment : whereby
the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree ; or, which is
the same, any proposition to be true or false, without per
ceiving a demonstrative evidence in the proofs.' 2 So-called
'scientific' truths being generally of this kind, as we
have seen, one would have expected Locke to give here
some account of the procedure of inductive science, some
directions for the careful and methodical study of the
facts, and cautions against the temptations to hasty and
unwarranted generalisation, such as we find in Bacon's
Novum Organum. But instead of this, he contents himself
with general observations on the degrees of assent, on

1 IV. xiv. i, 2. 2 IV. xiv. 3.

H

1 14 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

reason (and syllogism), on faith and reason, on < enthu
siasm,' and on wrong assent, or error. The treatment
of Judgment, that is to say, is limited to general consider
ations regarding the function of faith and the relations
of faith and reason as guides of the human mind.

What is specially significant here is Locke's refusal to
oppose faith and reason in the fashion of Bacon and
Hobbes, his refusal to accept any authority which cannot
vindicate itself at the bar of reason. Even in his in
sistence upon the necessity of supplementing our know
ledge by faith, Locke remains a rationalist. < Faith is
nothing but a firm assent of the mind : which, if it be
regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything
but upon good reason ; and so cannot be opposite to it.
He that believes without having any reason for believing,
may be in love with his own fancies ; but neither seeks
truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due to his
Maker, who would have him use those discerning faculties
he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and
error. ... He governs his assent right, and places it
as he should, who, in any case or matter whatsoever,
believes or disbelieves according as reason directs him.
He that doth otherwise, transgresses against his own light,
and misuses those faculties which were given him to no
other end, but to search and follow the clearer evidence
and greater probability.' 1 Locke is at one with the
rationalist theologians of his century in their antagonism
to an c enthusiasm ' which would substitute for the insight
of reason and of rational faith the so-called * revelation '
of private experience. He speaks of ' a third ground of
assent, which with some men has the same authority, and
is as confidently relied on as either faith or reason ; I
mean enthusiasm : which, laying by reason, would set up
revelation without it. Whereby in effect it takes away
both reason and revelation, and substitutes in the room
of them the ungrounded fancies of a man's own brain,
and assumes them for a foundation both of opinion and

1 IV. xvii. 24.

LOCKE i i 5

conduct.'1 As against such a view, he insists upon
the necessity of judging revelation by reason. ' He,
therefore, that will not give himself up to all the extrava
gances of delusion and error must bring this guide of his
light within to the trial. God when he makes the prophet
does not unmake the man. He leaves all his faculties
in the natural state, to enable him to judge of his inspira
tions, whether they be of divine original or no. When
he illuminates the mind with supernatural light, he does
not extinguish that which is natural. If he would have
us assent to the truth of any proposition, he either evi
dences that truth by the usual methods of natural reason,
or else makes it known to be a truth which he would
have us assent to by his authority, and convinces us that
it is from him, by some marks which reason cannot be
mistaken in. Reason must be our last judge and guide in
everything.'' 2

Yet reason clearly limits the field of its own insight ;
it is only reasonable to believe where we cannot know
and yet must act. We have seen that it was the < difficulties
concerning morality and revealed religion ' that were the
occasion of the inquiry concerning human understanding.
The result of that inquiry is that the human under
standing is not commensurate with reality, that our line
is too short to sound the depths of the vast ocean of being,
that the interests of morality and religion cannot be com
passed by the reason of man, and that knowledge must be
supplemented by faith if man is to fulfil his divine destiny.
This is the point of view, not only of the closing chapters
of the Essay, but of the treatise on the Reasonableness of
Christianity, published five years later. The aim of this
treatise was to recall men from the contentions of the
theological schools to the simplicity of the gospel as the
rule of human life. 'The writers and wranglers in
religion fill it with niceties, and dress it up with notions,
which they make necessary and fundamental parts of it ;
as if there were no way into the church, but through the

1 IV. xix. 3. 2 IV. xix. 14.

n6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

academy or lyceum. The greatest part of mankind have
not leisure for learning and logic, and superfine distinctions
of the schools.'1 What men need is not intellectual
insight or theological dogma, but practical guidance. Locke
seems less confident than he was in the Essay of the
possibility of a rational science of morals. ' It should
seem, by the little that has hitherto been done in it, that
it is too hard a task for unassisted reason to establish
morality, in all its parts, upon its true foundation, with a
clear and convincing light. ... It is plain, in fact, that
human reason unassisted failed men in its great and proper
business of morality. It never from unquestionable
principles, by clear deductions, made out an entire body of
the " law of nature." And he that shall collect all the
moral rules of the philosophers, and compare them with
those contained in the new testament, will find them to
come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour, and
taught by his apostles ; a college made up, for the most
part, of ignorant, but inspired fishermen.'2

Though Locke never himself attempted the construction
of such a rational science of ethics as he had foreshadowed
in the Essay, he did, in the second of the two Treatises of
Government, attempt the formulation of a theory of
political obligation. The immediate object of these political
treatises was to disprove the theory of the divine and
absolute right of the Monarch, as it had been formulated
in Filmer's Patriarcha, and to establish on theoretical
grounds the righteousness of the Revolution ; c to establish
the throne of our great restorer, our present king
William ; to make good his title in the consent of the
people . . . and to justify to the world the people of
England, whose love of their just and natural rights, with
their resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when
it was on the very brink of slavery and ruin/ 3 In
showing, in the second of these treatises, £ the true original,
extent, and end of civil government,' Locke bases his

1 Works, 8th ed., iii. 98, 99. 2 Works, iii. 87, 88.

3 Preface.

LOCKE 117

argument, in the main, upon the principles already in
sisted upon by Hooker in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,
and his appeal is always to the 'just and natural rights'
which are presupposed in civil society and which it is the
function of government to defend from encroachment.
For Locke, as for Hooker, the fundamental laws of the
political society are the expression of those ' laws of nature '
which antedate the State and its legislation. 'The law of
nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as
well as others.' * Holding that men are ' by nature, all
free, equal, and independent,2 and that 'the power of
the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never
be supposed to extend further than the common good,' 3
Locke, like Hobbes, finds the origin of the State in a
contract. He distinguishes, however, the act by which
political society is constituted from the act by which
the 'legislative' or government is established. 'The
legislative ' is only the representative of the people,
and is responsible to the people whom it represents for
the faithful discharge of the trust committed to it.
Government is 'a trust that is put in them by the society
and the law of God and nature.' 4 'The legislative being
only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there
remains still " in the people the supreme power to remove
or alter the legislative," when they find the legislative
act contrary to the trust reposed in them.' 5 The exercise
of this supreme power directly by the people itself implies
the dissolution of government ; it means, in other words,
revolution. The supreme power, at such a crisis, ' reverts
to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme,
and continue the legislative in themselves ; or erect a
new form, or under the old form place it in new hands,
as they think good.' 6 To the hard question, ' Who shall
be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary
to their trust ? ' Locke boldly replies : ' The people shall
be judge ; for who shall judge whether his trustee or

1 Sect. 35. 2 Sect. 95.

3 Sect. 131. 4 Sect. 142.

5 Sect. 149. 6 Sect. 243.

n8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in
him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having
deputed him, have still a power to discard him, when he
fails in his trust ? ' 1

An all-important part of that civil liberty of which
Locke was so ardent an advocate is religious liberty, or
liberty of conscience. This, he thinks, has not yet been
sufficiently vindicated, and he is in full sympathy with
the plea for toleration which had been so earnestly made
by such theologians as Chillingworth and Jeremy Taylor,
as well as by the Cambridge Platonists, whose aversion to
dogmatic intolerance he fully shares. ' We have need of
more generous remedies than what have yet been made
use of in our distemper. It is neither Declarations of
Indulgence nor Acts of Comprehension, such as yet have
been practised or projected amongst us, that can do the
work. The first will but palliate, the second increase our
evil.'2 What is needed is ' equal and impartial liberty,'
and this can be secured only by the absolute separation of
the sphere of the Church from that of the State. The
State has properly to do only with the temporal well-being
of the individual ; his spiritual and eternal welfare is the
concern of the Church alone. So long as the Church
keeps within its own province, there can be no conflict
between ecclesiastical and civil authority. It is only
when the Church usurps the place of the State, and inter
feres with the individual's civil allegiance, as in the case
of the Church of Rome, that the State is compelled to
assert its authority. Here Locke finds the limit of the
principle of toleration, as well as in the case of any church
which is itself intolerant and in that of the atheistic dis
solution of the social order itself. In all other cases the
principle of toleration is absolutely valid. The opposite
principle inevitably defeats its own purpose, since not
only has the individual an indefeasible right to religious
freedom, but he cannot really be constrained in his
religious life. The State is able by its coercion to pro-

1 Sect. 240. 2 « To the Reader.'

LOCKE 119

duce hypocrites ; it cannot dictate to the free spirit of the
individual in that inner conduct of his spiritual life which
is alone rightly called religion.

It is usual with literary critics to condemn Locke as a
writer devoid of style. Mr. Gosse, for example, speaks
of the Essay as *a work particularly unengaging in its
mere style and delivery,1 1 and of its author as ( the most
innocent of style' of all English philosophers. 'As a
mere writer he may be said to exhibit the prose of the
Restoration in its most humdrum form. . . . His style is
prolix, dull, and without elevation ; he expresses himself
with perfect clearness indeed, but without variety or
charm of any kind. He seems to have a contempt for
all the arts of literature, and passes on from sentence to
sentence like a man talking aloud in his study, and intent
only on making the matter in hand perfectly clear to
himself.' 2 Mr. Gosse acknowledges that i this is not the
universal view,' and that c it is usual to speak of the home
spun style of Locke as " forcible," " incisive," and even
" ingenious." : That it possesses at least these qualities
must, I think, have been proved to the reader by the
quotations made in the course of this chapter. But I
should be inclined to claim more than this ; for while
Locke is certainly careless as to the literary form of his
argument, and often dull and tedious through his habitual
reiterativeness, his style has an individuality, and even a
distinction, which are appreciated only through long
familiarity with his writing ; and that he can on occasion
rise to real beauty and eloquence of literary expression is
shown by such a passage as the following : ' The memory
of some men, it is true, is very tenacious, even to a miracle.
But yet there seems to be a constant decay of all our
ideas, even of those which are stuck deepest, and in minds
the most retentive ; so that if they be not sometimes
renewed, by repeated exercise of the senses, or reflection
on those kinds of objects which at first occasioned them,

1 Eighteenth Centiiry Literatttre, p. 73. 2 Ibid.) p. 96.

120 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to
be seen. Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth,
often die before us : and our minds represent to us those
tombs to which we are approaching ; where, though the
brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced
by time, and the imagery moulders away.'1

1 Essay, II. x. 5.

PART II

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

THE problem of the English philosophers of the eighteenth
century is set for them by Locke's account of human
knowledge. In place of the efforts which occupy the
great philosophic minds of the seventeenth century to
construct a system of the sciences, a universal scheme of
things, such as we find Bacon and Hobbes attempting,
their work is controlled by the necessity of answering the
previous question, first raised by Locke, of the nature and
the limits of human knowledge. The theory of know
ledge leads, it is true, in Berkeley's hands, immediately
to a corresponding theory of reality. Locke's supposition
of an unknown and unknowable substance underlying
the known objects, or the objects so far as they enter
into human experience, having been discovered to be an
unmeaning abstraction, if not a self-contradictory con
ception, material reality is identified with the complex
of sensations, and an idealistic theory is substituted for
the crude realism which resulted from the Lockian theory
of knowledge ; the two substances of Locke are reduced
to the one spiritual substance of Berkeley. But Hume,
following out the same path, prescribed by Locke — the
path of experience as opposed to that of abstract thought,
the path of criticism as distinguished from that of un
critical prejudgment, is confronted once more with Locke's
problem of the nature and limits of knowledge, and finds
that spiritual substance is no less unmeaning and con-
/ tradictory than material ; that, as the esse of things is
, percipi, the esse of mind is percipere ; that the self, like the

122 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

not-self, is but a complex of ideas or states of conscious
ness. For Hume, moreover, as already in part for
Berkeley, the problem of knowledge changes its aspect
from the problem of substance to that of cause. Berkeley
insists upon the impotence of matter, even more than
upon its mind-dependent character ; but he is no less
confident than Locke himself that in spirit, whether
human or divine, we find the true fountain of causal
energy or power. Hume finds no greater validity in
spiritual than in material causes ; in both cases alike the
fact of experience is constant or uniform succession, and
the necessary connexion which we attribute to the relation
of cause and effect is discovered to be merely a subjective
habit or custom which results from the tendency to
associate events constantly conjoined in our experience,
not an objective characteristic of reality. The result of
the further investigation of the problem of knowledge, on
the empirical lines suggested by Locke himself, is thus the
sceptical reduction of knowledge and certainty to mere
opinion and probability : no science or certain know
ledge, whether of minds or bodies, is attainable by man.

This sceptical result of the Lockian empiricism recalls
attention to the rational constitution of knowledge, which
Locke had rather assumed than proved ; and we find
Reid, the founder of the Scottish philosophy of Common
Sense, insisting upon the rational elements which are
presupposed in all knowledge and in human experience
as we have it. At the end as at the beginning of the
century the all-important problem of philosophy is the
problem of knowledge.

In the ethical sphere, the problem is really set by
Hobbes, the unmitigated egoism of whose theory is op
posed by the c moral sense ' school, whose teaching, as
developed by Hume, occasions the attempts of Hartley
and Adam Smith to explain the moral sense by association
and sympathy, of Tucker and Paley to reduce virtue to
utility, and of Price to establish morality on a rational
basis.

CHAPTER I

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM

THE pre-eminent merits of Berkeley as a philosophical
writer are acknowledged by all competent judges. It
will be sufficient here to mention a single critic, Mr.
Gosse, who designates him as ' perhaps the most exquisite
writer of English in his generation,' and ' one of the
most exquisite writers of English prose.' Among the
writers of that time, ' it may perhaps be said that there
is not one who is quite his equal in style ; his prose is dis
tinguished as well for dignity and fulness of phrase, as for
splendour and delicacy of diction, without effeminacy.' x
For grace as well as lucidity of expression, Berkeley is un
rivalled among English philosophers. He is, moreover, a
master of that most difficult form of prose writing, the
dialogue. In the dramatic movement or 'action' of the
dialogue, and in the characterisation of the interlocutors,
his dialogues, especially the Alclphron series, remind us
forcibly of Plato.

It is not so easy to determine his real significance as a
philosopher. His writings are dominated throughout by
a frankly confessed religious or theological purpose, which
becomes only more pronounced and engrossing as we
pass from his earlier to his later works. His great foes,
from first to last, are 'Scepticism,' 'Atheism,' and that
' Materialism ' in which he sees their common philosophical
basis. Of the Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, his
first-published work, we find him writing (to Sir John

1 History of Eighteenth Century Liter attire, pp. 96, 203.
123

i24 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Percival) : ' In a little time I hope to make what is there
laid down appear subservient to the ends of morality
and religion.' In the Treatise concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge^ published in the following year, the
reader is told, on the title-page, that * the chief causes
of Error and Difficulty in the Sciences, with the grounds
of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are inquired into.'
The Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous are
intended to show, among other things, 'the Immediate
Providence of a Deity, in opposition to Sceptics and
Atheists.' The writings of the second period, that of
middle life, are more exclusively dominated by this theo
logical purpose. Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher is
entitled can Apology for the Christian Religion, against
those who are called Free-thinkers.' In Siris, the latest
product of Berkeley's reflection, the religious, if not the
theological, interest is supreme. The mood is often more
mystical than philosophical, and his sympathies have been
greatly widened, but he is as much concerned as ever
to determine what, in philosophical thought, is and is not
4 Atheism.' It cannot be denied, moreover, that he be
trays, especially in his prolonged controversy with the
deists of his time, a real unfairness which leads him
seriously to misrepresent the aims and arguments of his
opponents. This biassed and unsympathetic attitude is
apparent even in his discussion of Locke's doctrine of
' abstract ideas ' in the Introduction to the Principles,
and is too characteristic to be ascribed, as it is too
generously by Professor Campbell Fraser, to his natural
c impetuosity ' in controversy. It is a serious flaw in the
polemics of an author whose aims are so worthy and
whose ability as a controversialist ought to have saved
him from any such temptation.

It is a strange irony of fate that a philosophy whose
chief aim was the refutation of scepticism should itself
have come to be regarded as simply a link in the chain of
sceptical reasoning connecting Locke with Hume, so that
Berkeley is simply an incomplete Hume, and Hume
simply a Berkeley who has learned the implications of his

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 125

own philosophy. So far as the history of philosophy is
concerned, so far as Berkeley's philosophy has really
influenced his successors, it is summed up in his Immateri-
alism, or his refutation of Locke's doctrine of the sub
stantial or independent existence of material things or the
objects of sense-perception. By following out Locke's
own ' new way of ideas,' he found himself forced to the
conclusion that only particular things exist ; and since the
particular thing is always a complex of sensations, and
there is no essential difference between the so-called
primary and the secondary qualities, both being alike
mind-dependent, Locke's * material substance ' not only
loses its significance, but becomes a self-contradictory
or inconceivable conception. Since, moreover, ideas are
essentially passive, and cannot strictly cause, but merely
signify, one another ; since the only cause, as well as
the only substance, is found in the spiritual sphere, it
follows that the explanation of things in terms of material
or mechanical causes is no real explanation at all. So far
as ideas go, therefore — and Berkeley is only following out
Locke's own maxim that the elements of all knowledge
are ideas — we have no knowledge either of material sub
stance or of material cause. Hume has only to take the
final step to reach the sceptical goal of the new way of
ideas. He has only to point out that the same criticism
which Berkeley applied to Locke's material substance and
material cause applies to spiritual substance and spiritual
cause, to reach his sceptical dissolution of all real know
ledge. If we can explain only in terms of substance and
cause, and if both of these explanations are invalidated,
then reality becomes for us inexplicable, a mere enigma.

Nor is this historical interpretation of the significance
of Berkeley's philosophy really, on the whole, unjust. He
spent his best strength and did his real work in the de
structive criticism of Locke's account of external reality ;
his own doctrine of Immaterialism is his real contribution
to English philosophy and, indirectly if not directly, to
European philosophy. The work of reconstruction, to
which in his own mind this destructive criticism was always

126 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

subordinate, is comparatively ineffective. His doctrine of
the * notion,' as distinguished from the ' idea,' was never
developed with anything like the clearness which be
longed to his development of Locke's doctrine of ideas into
its negative consequences for the Lockian doctrine of
material reality. The existence of the self, of other selves,
and of God is rather assumed than proved. We cannot
resist the conclusion that Berkeley's positive or spiritual
doctrine rests rather upon common sense or religious faith
than upon a reasoned philosophy. The years of middle age
were too busy with practical and philanthropic activities
to permit of any resumption of the strenuous philosophical
effort of his youth ; their absorbing intellectual interest
was the defence of the faith from the attacks of deists
and ' free-thinkers.' And when at last he comes, in Siris,
to gather up the final results of his c philosophical Reflexions
and Inquiries,' pursued in the quiet closing years at Cloyne,
what he gives us is rather an eclectic philosophy culled
from the ancient writers, especially Plato and the Neo-
Platonists, something between a metaphysical idealism of
the Platonic type and a mysticism of the Neo-Platonic
sort, than a systematic development of his earlier immateri-
alism into a spiritual realism or rational idealism.

Yet, though the philosophy of Berkeley may justly be
regarded as only a splendid fragment, rather than a com
pletely developed system of thought, we must not mini
mise its real importance, which is much greater than such
a representation would suggest. Professor Fraser has
truly said of f the new conception of matter presented
by Berkeley' that 'its consequences justify us in regard
ing it as one of the conceptions that mark epochs, and
become springs of spiritual progress ' x His philosophic
genius may be said to have spent itself in a single flash
of insight, in the clear apprehension of one great truth
about external reality and man's knowledge of it ; but so
brilliant is this one achievement, so epoch-making is its
importance, not only for the sceptical reduction of Lockian

1 Selections from Berkeley, Introd., p. xiii.

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 127

principles in Hume, but for the subsequent movement of
philosophical reconstruction in Kant and his successors,
that it is not too much to say that Berkeley is the founder
of modern idealism, and that the ability to appreciate and
to assimilate his conception of external reality may be
taken as a ' touchstone of metaphysical sagacity.' For it
was Berkeley who first discovered the alternative of a
spiritual monism to the dualism alike of the Lockian
and of the Cartesian philosophy ; who first ventured the
affirmation that the esse of material and extended things is
percipi) that the primary reality is spiritual and the reality
of the material world mind-dependent ; that matter and
extension are neither substantial nor attributes, co-ordi
nate with thought, of one ultimate substance, but in their
very nature subordinate to thought and the thinking mind.
And if Locke had already hinted that true agency is to be
found only in the spiritual sphere, it was Berkeley who first
clearly apprehended the essentially passive and impotent
character of material * forces,' and pointed persistently to
mind or will as the one true cause. It was Berkeley who
first in modern philosophy discovered the importance of the
subject for knowledge ; who first clearly saw that, so far from
its being the function of the knowing mind to reproduce an
object presented to it from without, the object is de
pendent for its very existence upon the knowing subject.
This discovery of the true importance of the subject is
the very mark of modern as distinguished from ancient
idealism, of the idealism of Kant and Hegel as distin
guished from that of Plato and Aristotle. And if, in the
light of later reflection and deeper insight, Berkeley's
account of reality appears naive and fragmentary, it is yet
not difficult to recognise in his simple words the essential
message of later idealism. * Some truths there are so near
and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his
eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be,
viz. that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,
in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty
frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a
mind ; that their being is to be perceived or known ;

128 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

that consequently so long as they are not actually per
ceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or that of any
other created spirit, they must either have no existence at
all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit : it
being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the ab
surdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of
them an existence independent of a spirit.' *

We learn from Berkeley's Commonplace Book, written
from time to time during his undergraduate years at
Trinity College, Dublin, that the great formative influ
ence of his youth was Locke's Essay which, through the
influence of Molyneux, had been prescribed as a text-book
at Dublin, and appears to have excited this student at
any rate to independent critical activity. To appreciate
Berkeley's criticism, it is important to recall just how far
Locke himself had gone in the direction of idealising
reality, how far he had himself followed out his new way
of ideas. He had proclaimed that our knowledge of reality
consists of ideas and is, therefore, mind-dependent. But
he had at the same time recognised a non-ideal and inde
pendent aspect of reality, and distinguished the secondary
qualities, as merely ideal, from the primary, as having both
an ideal and a real, or independent, existence. The
secondary qualities, he had insisted, are reducible to the
primary, however mysterious the connexion between the
former and the latter may be. Finally, he had postulated
two kinds of substance as the substrata of the ideas of
sensation and the ideas of reflection respectively, and held
that, in some to us unintelligible way, the material sub
stance operates upon the spiritual, and produces in it those
ideas which correspond to the real qualities of material
things.

Now Berkeley argues that this Lockian theory of a
merely partial equivalence between the ideal and the real
object, this postulation of anon-ideal and, in its substantial
reality, unknowable object, is not merely superfluous but

1 Principles of Hitman Knowledge, sect. 6.

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 129

unmeaning. The only object of which we can speak in
telligently is the object as we know it, that is, the object
which consists in ideas or sensations. To speak of ideas
as corresponding to or resembling non-ideal objects, is
absurd : an idea can only resemble an idea. The distinc
tion between ideas and real things makes real knowledge
impossible, and leads inevitably to scepticism ; since, in
that case, we know only relations of ideas to one another,
never the relation of ideas to things. 'The referring
ideas to things which are not ideas, the using the term
" idea of," is one great cause of mistake.' l ' How can you
compare any things besides your own ideas ? ' 2 ' This,
which, if I mistake not, hath been shown to be a most
groundless and absurd notion, is the very root of Scepti
cism ; for, so long as men thought that real things sub
sisted without the mind, and that their knowledge was
only so far forth real as it was conformable to real things,
it follows they could not.be certain that they had any real
knowledge at all. For how can it be known that the
things which are perceived are conformable to those
which are not perceived, or exist without the mind ? ' 3
Locke had himself admitted that the secondary qualities
exist only in the mind that perceives them. The same
reasons ought to have led him to see that the so-called
' primary ' qualities are also exclusively mental, and there
fore that the only reality of which we can intelligently
speak is mind-dependent or ideal, that the esse of all
material things is percipi.

Locke had attributed our ignorance of the real essence
of things to the imperfection of our human faculties ; he
had accounted for the limitations of our knowledge by
reference to the practical uses which it is intended to
serve and for which, in spite of its theoretic inadequacy,
it is entirely sufficient. In Berkeley's judgment it is not
the defect of our faculties, but our misuse of them, that is
the cause of our ignorance of reality. c It is said the
faculties we have are few, and those designed by nature

1 Works, i. 35. 2 Works, i. 82.

3 Principles, sect. 86.

130 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

for the support and pleasure of life, and not to penetrate
into the inward essence and constitution of things. . . .
But, perhaps, we may be too partial to ourselves in placing
the fault originally in our faculties, and not rather in the
wrong use we make of them. . . . Upon the whole, I am
inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of
those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers,
and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing
to ourselves. We have first raised a dust, and then
complain we cannot see.' 1 The great obstacle to know
ledge is found by Berkeley, as it was found by Locke,
in the misuse of words, in the substitution of words for
ideas. It is c the mist and veil of words ' that has chiefly
obscured from us the true nature of reality. All our
ideas are really particular and concrete ; it is only be
cause we have been content to accept words in place of
ideas that we have imagined the possibility of 4 abstract '
general ideas. Locke himself has been the victim of such
verbalism and abstraction ; for what else is his c material
substance ' but an abstract idea, or a mere word which
represents no idea at all ?

The discussion of abstract ideas, to which Berkeley
devotes the Introduction to the Principles, is calculated to
produce a wrong impression both of Locke's views and of his
own. Using the term < idea ' in a much narrower sense
than that in which Locke had used it, he has no difficulty
in convicting Locke of absurdities of thought which are
entirely foreign to his actual views. For Locke an idea is
' whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a
man thinks': hence he uses it c to express whatever is
meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which
the mind can be employed about in thinking.' 2 For
Berkeley < idea ' means, as Professor Fraser says, < object
presented to the senses, or represented in imagination.' 3
An abstract idea, therefore, he has no difficulty in
showing, is a contradiction in terms, since it is equivalent
to an abstract image. It is impossible to imagine colour

1 Principles, Introd., sects. 2, 3. 2 Essay, Introd., sect. 8.

3 Selections, 5th ed., p. n, note 2.

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 131

in general, or a triangle which is neither equilateral,
isosceles, nor scalenon. But it does not follow that it is
impossible to think of colour in general or of a triangle
in general, or that abstract ideas, in the sense of general
ideas or thoughts, are impossible. Berkeley, in his
Commonplace Book, notes that there is ' a great difference
between considering length without breadth, and having
an idea, or imagining length without breadth.'1 And
while it has often been inferred from his argument against
abstract ideas that Berkeley was a strict nominalist, and
denied the validity of universals or concepts, the truth is that
he explicitly affirms his belief in the possibility of general,
as distinguished from abstract ideas, and in doing so parts
company with strict nominalism and, in his doctrine of
conceptualism, leaves open the possibility, if indeed he
does not imply the necessity, of realism in the only
sense in which such a doctrine is now held. While all
ideas are, in themselves, particular, any idea may acquire
generality by being used to represent other particular ideas
or the element common to a number of particular ideas.
* It is, I know, a point much insisted on, that all know
ledge and demonstration are about universal notions, to
which I fully agree. But then it does not appear to me
that those notions are formed by abstraction in the manner
premised — universality, so far as I can comprehend, not
consisting in the absolute, positive nature or conception of
anything, but in the relation it bears to the particulars
signified or represented by it ; by virtue whereof it is that
things, names, or notions, being in their own nature
particular, are rendered universal. Thus, when I demon
strate any proposition concerning triangles, it is supposed
that I have in view the universal idea of a triangle : which
ought not to be understood as if I could frame an idea of
a triangle which was neither equilateral, nor scalenon, nor
equicrural ; but only that the particular triangle I consider,
whether of this or that sort it matters not, doth equally stand
for and represent all rectilineal triangles whatsoever, and is

1 Works, i. 78.

132 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

in that sense universal. All which seems very plain and not
to include any difficulty in it.' l ' It must be acknowledged
that a man may consider a figure merely as triangular ;
without attending to the particular qualities of the angles,
or relations of the sides. So far he may abstract. ... In
like manner we may consider Peter so far forth as man, or
so far forth as animal, without framing the aforementioned
abstract idea, either of man or of animal ; inasmuch as all
that is perceived is not considered.' 2 It does not belong to
Berkeley's polemical purpose in the discussion to develop
the realistic implications of his position, or to show how
it is that an idea, in itself particular, is qualified to represent
other particular ideas of the same class. The abstract
terms which he is concerned to invalidate are merely
general. Of these the great example is Locke's abstract
* Matter,' from which all particular, and therefore all
general, qualities have been removed. Against such an
'abstract idea' as this his criticism is completely cogent.

If, then, we are not to content ourselves with mere
meaningless words, if the word c Matter ' is to stand for
an idea or to have a meaning, we must translate it into
the particular ideas of our experience. Abstract from any
of the concrete objects of our sense-perception all the
particular qualities of which we become aware only in
perception, and which are therefore dependent for their
existence upon percipient mind ; and what remains is not
the general or abstract idea of Matter, but simply nothing
at all. The reality of all external things consists in the
particular sensations from which they derive their names,
and by which they are distinguished from one another ;
think away these particular ideas, and the idea of the
thing vanishes with them. And if it be objected that
Matter must still be postulated as the substratum or support
of the qualities, that the ' thing ' is not to be resolved into
the 'qualities' which belong to it, Berkeley retorts with
the question, What can be the support of ideas or sensa
tions but percipient mind ? The thing is nothing but

1 Principles, Introd., sect. 15. 2 Ibid., sect. 16 (2nd ed.).

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 133

the sum of its qualities ; what is true of each of these
qualities is true of their sum. The thing itself, so far as
we can intelligently speak of it, depends for its existence
upon percipient mind.

The disappearance of Locke's material substance, the
reduction of Matter to terms of Mind, the discovery of
the esse of things in their perc'ipi, not only delivers us from
that scepticism which was the inevitable consequence of
the doctrine of the independent existence of matter ; it
delivers us also from that materialism which Berkeley
finds to be the common tendency of the Lockian and of
the Cartesian dualism, and of the spirit and method of the
science of his time. In our total ignorance of the nature
of substance, we could see no reason, according to Locke,
why Matter should not be endowed by God with the
power to think, so that finite spirits might, after all, be
merely material beings gifted with this strange power.
He had, moreover, explained the secondary qualities in
terms of the primary, accepting the ' corpuscularian
hypothesis' as to the causation of ideas in our minds by
material things outside us. In the Cartesian dualism
Berkeley saw the same tendency. The absolute separation
of the two spheres of thought and extension implied that
there could be no interaction of mind and matter, and
therefore that all explanation of material phenomena must
be in terms of matter and motion. And he found the
scientific minds of his age devoted to the investigation,
in the spirit of Bacon, of efficient, to the exclusion of final
causes ; fascinated by the same spell of the ' corpuscularian
hypothesis.' The logical implication of all this seemed to
him to be nothing less than the explicit and uncompromis
ing materialism of Hobbes. It is not so much Locke or
the Cartesians or the scientific thinkers of his own day
that he has in view as Hobbes, in whom he sees the full
fruition, in anticipation, of the tendencies which they
represent. Hobbes has once for all made explicit the
materialism and the atheism which are implicit in such
views ; and it is against this materialism and atheism that
Berkeley's entire philosophy, whether in the Essay on Vision

134 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

and the Principles of his youth, or in the Alciphron of his
middle age, or even in the Siris of his later years, is one
continued protest. The sceptical tendency was the
characteristic evil of the Lockian philosophy ; the ten
dency to materialism and atheism was the characteristic
vice of the age itself. If the interests of the spiritual life
were to be secured, if spirit was not to be reduced to
terms of matter, matter must be reduced to terms of
spirit.

With its substantiality, matter loses at the same time
its causal power. If matter consists in ideas, it is
clearly passive, and the sole agent is seen to be mind or
spirit. One idea cannot be the cause of another idea ; it
can only be its sign or symbol, suggesting it as a word
suggests its meaning to those who have learned what it
represents. The business of science is simply the inter
pretation of these natural signs, the study of this language
of nature. This new interpretation of natural causation
which, by convicting the material world of impotence, at
the same time discovers in it the revelation of the divine
Spirit speaking to the spirit of man in the language of
natural signs, is most fully unfolded in Berkeley's earliest
work, the Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. The
immediate object of the treatise was to give a preliminary,
and intentionally incomplete, account of the doctrine of
Immaterialism, which Berkeley had already formulated in
his own mind, and of which he gave a complete exposition
in the Principles, published in the following year. Its main
thesis accordingly is that the object of vision is merely
colour or coloured extension and, since this is obviously
an idea, that the object of vision is mind-dependent.
The view commonly held was that we see much more
than this, namely, external objects or distance outward
from the eye. But distance, Berkeley contends, cannot
strictly be seen ; we see only coloured points or the
ends of the rays of light which reach the eye, not the
rays themselves. Outness or space is a mere abstract
idea ; reduce it to its concrete particulars, and it becomes

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 135

the tactual sensations which are suggested by the visual
sensations, because they have been constantly connected
with the latter in our experience. We do not see distant
objects, we foresee or expect them ; and c they ' are not
so much future objects of vision as future objects of touch.
4 In treating of Vision,' he tells us in the later c Vindication '
of the theory, c it was my purpose to consider the effects
and appearances, the objects perceived by my senses, the
ideas of sight as connected with those of touch ; to inquire
how one idea comes to suggest another belonging to a
different sense, how things visible suggest things tangible,
how present things suggest things more remote and future,
whether by likeness, by necessary connexion, by geo
metrical inference, or by arbitrary institution.'1

So far as the problem of the mere psychology of vision
is concerned, Locke had suggested and, to a certain extent,
anticipated Berkeley's solution in a well-known passage.
4 The ideas we receive by sensation are often, in grown
people, altered by the judgment, without our taking
notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round
globe of any uniform colour, e.g. gold, alabaster, or jet,
it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted on our
mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed, with several
degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes.
But we having, by use, been accustomed to perceive what
kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in
us ; what alterations are made in the reflections of light
by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies ; — the
judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the
appearances into their causes. So that from that which
is truly variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure,
it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself
the perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour ;
when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane
variously coloured, as is evident in painting.'2 Berkeley
carries the psychological investigation further than Locke

1 The Theory of Visual Language Vindicated and Explained,
sect. 14.

2 Essay, II. ix. 8.

136 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

had done ; but his own interest in his theory of vision is
philosophical rather than psychological, and its philo
sophical interest for us, if not for his first readers, lies
not so much in its main thesis of the mind-dependent
character of the objects of vision, in the strict sense, as
in its formulation, with special reference to vision, of
the theory of sense-symbolism. The data of sight are
the signs of the data of touch ; and the connexion be
tween the sign and the thing signified is as arbitrary as
the connexion between a word and its meaning. That
this was Berkeley's own chief interest in the problem
of vision is evident from the following statement : * How
comes it to pass that we apprehend by the ideas of sight
certain other ideas, which neither resemble them, nor
cause them, nor are caused by them, nor have any necessary
connexion with them ? — The solution of this problem, in
its full extent, doth comprehend the whole Theory of
Vision. This stating of the matter placeth it on a new
foot, and in a different light from all preceding theories. . . .
To which the proper answer is — That this is done in virtue
of an arbitrary connexion, instituted by the Author of Nature' x
In the Principles this interpretation of natural causation is
generalised. £The connexion of ideas does not imply the
relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with
the thing signified. The fire which I see is not the cause
of the pain I suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark
that forewarns me of it. In like manner the noise that I
hear is not the effect of this or that motion or collision of
the ambient bodies, but the sign thereof. . . . Hence, it
is evident that those things which, under the notion of a
cause co-operating or concurring to the production of
effects, are altogether inexplicable and run us into great
absurdities, may be very naturally explained, and have a
proper and obvious use assigned to them, when they are
considered only as marks or signs for our information.
And it is the searching after and endeavouring to under
stand this Language (if I may so call it) of the Author of

1 The Theory of Visual Language Vindicated and Explained, sects.
42, 43-

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 137

Nature, that ought to be the employment of the natural
philosopher ; and not the pretending to explain things by
corporeal causes, which doctrine seems to have too much
estranged the minds of men from that Active Principle,
that supreme and wise Spirit " in whom we live, move,
and have our being." ' 1

The disproof of the validity of the conceptions of sub
stance and cause, when applied to the material world, that
is, the world of ideas or sensations, is for Berkeley in itself
the proof of the validity of their application to the world
of spirit. The proved unsubstantially and impotence of
things is the demonstration of the substantiality and power
of persons or spirits. In the first place, as the esse of things
is percipi, the esse of mind or spirit is percipere ; perception
implies a percipient mind. The percipient subject must
be distinguished from the perceptions of which it is the
presupposition. 'Besides all that endless variety of ideas
or objects of knowledge, there is likewise Something which
knows or perceives them ; and exercises divers operations,
as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. This
perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul,
or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of
my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein
they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are
perceived ; for the existence of an idea consists in being
perceived.'2 Of the self we have not an 'idea,' but a
4 notion.' < We may be said to have some knowledge or
notion of our own minds, of spirits and active beings ;
whereof in a strict sense we have not ideas. In like
manner, we know and have a notion of relations between
things or ideas ; which relations are distinct from the ideas
or things related, inasmuch as the latter may be perceived
by us without our perceiving the former. To me it seems
that ideas, spirits, and relations are all in their respective
kinds the object of human knowledge and subject of dis
course ; and that the term idea would be improperly

1 Principles , sects. 65, 66. 2 Ibid., sect. 2.

138 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

extended to signify everything we know or have any
notion of.'3

In the Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous
Berkeley has anticipated Hume's criticism that the same
objections which Berkeley has urged against the existence
of material substance are applicable to his own concep
tion of spiritual substance. i You acknowledge you have,
properly speaking, no idea of your own soul. You even
affirm that spirits are a sort of beings altogether different
from ideas. Consequently that no idea can be like a
spirit. We have therefore no idea of any spirit. You
admit nevertheless that there is a spiritual Substance,
although you have no idea of it ; while you deny there
can be such a thing as material Substance, because you
have no notion or idea of it. Is this fair dealing ? To
act consistently, you must either admit Matter or reject
Spirit. What say you to this ? ' Berkeley's answer is that
the cases differ in two all-important respects. First, the
notion of matter, as the unthinking support of ideas, is
' repugnant ' or self-contradictory, whereas ' it is no
repugnancy to say that a perceiving thing should be the
subject of ideas, or an active thing the cause of them.'
Secondly, while ' I have no reason for believing the
existence of Matter,' < the being of my Self, that is, my
own soul, mind, or thinking principle, I evidently know
by reflexion.' Hylas still objects: 'Notwithstanding all
you have said, to me it seems that, according to your
own way of thinking, and in consequence of your own
principles, it should follow that you are only a system of
floating ideas, without any substance to support them.
Words are not to be used without a meaning. And, as
there is no more meaning in spiritual Substance than in
material Substance, the one is to be exploded as well as
the other.' Berkeley's reply, in the person of Philonous,
is as follows : < How often must I repeat, that I know
or am conscious of my own being ; and that / myself am
not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking, active

1 Principles, sect. 89.

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 139

principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about
ideas. I know that I, one and the same self, perceive
both colours and sounds : that a colour cannot perceive
a sound, nor a sound a colour : that I am therefore one
individual principle, distinct from colour and sound ; and,
for the same reason, from all other sensible things and
inert ideas. But, I am not in like manner conscious
either of the existence or essence of Matter. On the
contrary, I know that nothing inconsistent can exist, and
that the existence of matter implies an inconsistency.
Farther, I know what I mean when I affirm that there
is a spiritual substance or support of ideas, that is, that
a spirit knows and perceives ideas. But, I do not know
what is meant when it is said that an unperceiving sub
stance hath inherent in it and supports either ideas or
the archetypes of ideas. There is therefore upon the
whole no parity of case between Spirit and Matter.'1

In the second place, Berkeley finds in Spirit the only
real cause or power. In this case also we have no ' idea,'
but a < notion.' < Such is the nature of Spirit, or that
which acts, that it cannot be of itself perceived, but only
by the effects which it produceth. ... So far as I can
see, the words, will, understanding, mind, sou/, spirit, do
not stand for different ideas, or, in truth, for any idea
at all, but for something which is very different from
ideas, and which, being an agent, cannot be like unto,
or represented by, any idea whatsoever. Though it must
be owned at the same time that we have some notion of
soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind, such as
willing, loving, hating — inasmuch as we know or under
stand the meaning of these words. I find I can excite
ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene
as oft as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and
straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy ; and by
the same power it is obliterated and makes way for
another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth very
properly denominate the mind active. Thus much is

1 Works, i. 449-451.

i4o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

certain and grounded on experience : but when we talk
of unthinking agents, or of exciting ideas exclusive of
volition, we only amuse ourselves with words.' * Similarly,
the existence of other finite spirits is at least a probable
inference, c if we see signs and effects indicating distinct
finite agents like ourselves, and see no sign or symptom
whatever that leads to a rational belief of Matter.' 2 The
most convincing ground of belief in the existence of our
fellow-men is their speaking to us, and we have the
same ground for believing in the existence of God, who
speaks to us in the universal sense-symbolism of Nature.
The test of reality is externality, in the sense that the
ideas are produced in our minds by no activity of our
own, but by another Spirit, and produced in such a
constant and uniform manner that, arbitrary as the
connexion between them is, we learn to predict what
will actually happen, and find that we are living in a
world that is identical with, in the sense of similar to,
that of our fellow-men. The significant and interpretable
character of the ideas presented to us in sense-experience
points to reason, as well as will, in its Author. The
permanence and continuity that characterise our changing
experience find their explanation in the reasonable con
stancy of the divine Will which is actively present in it
all. The world is a constant creation ; the infinite
Spirit is ever speaking to the spirits of men.

Such, in brief outline, is Berkeley's bold and brilliant
youthful speculation as to the nature of the material world
and its relation to man and God. The religious interest
which inspired it finds its complete satisfaction in the
result. The great obstacle which had prevented man's
apprehension of God was independent Matter. That
removed, sense is no veil that obscures the vision of God,
but rather the transparent medium of the divine self-
revelation. ' Spirit with spirit can meet,' God can speak
with man face to face. With this satisfying result

1 Principles, sects. 27, 28. 2 Works, i. 450.

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 141

Berkeley seems to have been content. Other interests
absorbed his middle life — practical philanthropy and
theological controversy. These busy years had indeed
one notable literary outcome, the series of seven Dialogues
entitled Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher, of which it
is no exaggeration to say that they are ' more fitted than
any in English literature to recall the charm of Plato and
Cicero.' * But their philosophical content is unfortunately
unequal to their literary merits. As a piece of con
troversial discussion, they suffer from the fatal defect of
unfairness and misrepresentation of the positions which it
is their aim to refute. Even Professor Fraser admits that
Berkeley's c natural impetuosity, added to indignation on
account of the exclusive claim of the " minute philosophers "
to free employment of reason in religion, tempt him to
use language hardly consistent with the philosophical
temper. Those whom he charged with atheism were
professed theists, engaged with the important question of
the nature and resources of what was called " natural
religion," and the duty of reason to investigate this without
restraint by ecclesiastical or other authority.' 2 Apart
from the merits of the controversy between Berkeley and
the deists of his time, whom he identifies with atheists,
and designates * minute philosophers ' because of their
inability to take large views of things, the controversy
itself, as it develops, belongs rather to the sphere of
theological apologetics than to that of philosophy proper.
The philosophical interest culminates in the fourth
Dialogue, in which the proof of the divine existence is
found in the language of vision. It is significant that
Berkeley not only republished the Theory of Vision as an
appendix to the Dialogues, but in the following year
published a Vindication of that theory. < Being persuaded
that the Theory of Vision, annexed to The Minute Philosopher,
affords to thinking men a new and unanswerable proof of
the Existence and immediate Operation of God, and the
constant condescending care of His Providence, I think

1 Fraser, Berkeley's Works, ii. 6. 2 Ibid., ii. 375.

1 42 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

myself concerned, as well as I am able, to defend and
explain it, at a time wherein Atheism hath made a greater
progress than some are willing to own, or others to
believe.' x The theory offers, he says, ' a new argu
ment of a singular nature in proof of the immediate
Care and Providence of a God, present to our minds, and
directing our actions.'2

The Third Dialogue is devoted to the question of
the nature of Virtue, and is directed against Shaftes-
bury's theory. While the discussion is vitiated by
misrepresentation of his opponent's position, it supplies
some interesting suggestions as to its author's ethical
views. It has been said that there is no real connexion
between these and his metaphysical position. c Bishop
Berkeley,' says Mr. Selby-Bigge, i was a most meta
physical person with very interesting views on the relation
of human and divine reason, which at once suggest to us
consequences of the most vital importance for morals, but
the ethical portions of his writings might, to all appear
ance, have been written by Paley.' 3 But Berkeley has
himself suggested that his war against abstractions might
have been carried into the sphere of ethics as well as into
that of natural philosophy and of metaphysics. < What
it is for a man to be happy, or an object good, every
one may think he knows. But to frame an abstract
idea of happiness, prescinded from all particular pleasure,
or of goodness from everything that is good, this is what
few can pretend to. So likewise a man may be just
and virtuous without having precise ideas of justice and
virtue. The opinion that those and the like words stand
for general notions, abstracted from all particular persons
and actions, seems to have rendered morality difficult
and the study thereof of less use to mankind. And
in effect one may make a great progress in school-ethics
without ever being the wiser or better man for it, or
knowing how to behave himself in the affairs of life
more to the advantage of himself or his neighbours than

1 Works, ii. 379, 380. 2 Works, ii. 385.

3 British Moralists, Introd., p. xx.

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 143

he did before.'1 Although he never carried out the
hint here conveyed of a reform of the science of ethics
on his own lines of thought about external reality,
he did, in the discourse on Passive Obedience^ directed
apparently against Locke's views of Sovereignty in his
Treatise of Civil Government, investigate the relation of
this duty to < the principles of the Law of Nature,'
developing the analogy between moral law and the laws
of the divine government of Nature in a striking and
suggestive way.

The impressive and beautiful words with which
Berkeley closes his last philosophical work are singularly
applicable to himself. c Truth is the cry of all, but the
game of a few. Certainly, where it is the chief passion,
it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views ; nor is it
contented with a little ardour in the early time of life ;
active, perhaps, to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and
revise. He that would make a real progress in knowledge
must dedicate his age as well as youth, the later growth
as well as first fruits, at the altar of Truth.' 2 In the
comparative quiet and seclusion of his later years at
Cloyne he found time and opportunity to ' weigh and
revise ' the results of his earlier thinking in the light of
past thought, the records of which he seems to have
studied with unabated ardour. The union in him of the
practical with the speculative interest, as well as the
intensity of his consciousness of the religious significance
of every element and incident of human life, is curiously
illustrated in this final work, published in 1744, thirty-five
years after the Essay on Vision. It is entitled f Siris : a
Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries concern
ing the Virtues of Tar-water and divers other subjects
connected together and arising one from another.' Its
primary concern is with the body and its ills, but its
ultimate concern is with the soul. 'If the lute be not
well tuned, the musician fails of his harmony. And, in.

1 Principles, sect. loo. 2 Siris, sect. 368.

H4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

our present condition, the operations of the mind so. far
depend on the right tone or good condition of its instru
ment, that anything which greatly contributes to preserve
or recover the health of the Body is well worth the
attention of the Mind. These considerations have moved
me to communicate to the public, the salutary virtues of
Tar-water ; to which I thought myself indispensably
obliged by the duty every man owes to mankind. And,
as effects are linked with their causes, my thoughts on
this low but useful theme led to farther inquiries, and
those on to others ; remote perhaps and speculative, but
I hope not altogether useless or unentertaining.' Living,
he says, c in a remote corner among poor neighbours,
who for want of a regular physician have often recourse
to me, I have had frequent opportunities of trial ' ; and
the result of these trials of its virtues was the conviction
that he had found in this simple drug the panacea for all
the bodily ills of men. The purpose of the book is at
once to describe the nature of this panacea and to develop
the metaphysical and religious reflections which are sug
gested by the marvellous properties of a thing apparently,
and in itself, so simple and so f low.'

Professor Fraser calls Siris * the most curious and pro
found of Berkeley's works.'1 It is the most profound in
the sense that it raises questions which had not occurred
to his mind in the earlier works ; but, as the same writer
remarks, ' the gold has to be separated from the dross.' 2
As the title suggests, the work is rather a series of * reflex
ions and inquiries ' than a systematic treatise. It is more
like a series of unconnected notes, such as we find in the
youthful Commonplace Book, than a sustained philosophi
cal argument, and it is as difficult as in the case of the
Cambridge Platonists to extricate the author's own views
from the mass of quotation and allusion to older writers
with which its pages are crowded. If it were not for the
occasional occurrence of a passage which only Berkeley
could have written, we should be apt to question the

1 Works, iii. 117.

2 Berkeley, in ' Philosophical Classics,' p. 198.

BERKELEY : THE NEW IDEALISM 145

authorship, judging from the style alone. The multifari
ous reading, of which it gives evidence, is ill-digested ;
the views of 'Platonists, Pythagoreans, Egyptians, and
Chaldeans' are strangely identified,1 nor is there any
attempt to distinguish the views of Plato himself from
those of the Neo-Platonists. There is the old effort to
discredit Atheism, by showing that < modern Atheism, be
it of Hobbes, Spinoza, Collins, or whom you will, is not
to be countenanced by the learning and great names of
antiquity.'2 On the other hand, Pantheism and Mysti
cism are distinguished from Atheism, on the ground that
' whoever acknowledgeth the universe to be made and
governed by an Eternal Mind cannot be justly deemed
an Atheist.' 3 There is the old hostility to l the cor-
puscularian and mechanical philosophy, which hath
prevailed for about a century.' ' This, indeed, might
usefully enough have employed some share of the leisure
and curiosity of inquisitive persons. But when it
entered the seminaries of learning, as a necessary ac
complishment and most important part of education, by
engrossing men's thoughts, and fixing their minds so
much on corporeal objects, and the laws of motion, it
hath, however undesignedly, indirectly, and by accident,
yet not a little, indisposed them for spiritual, moral, and
intellectual matters.' 4

The general drift of Berkeley's later thought, as
revealed in this book, is clearly in the direction of a more
transcendental and Platonic form of Idealism than that
which is unfolded in the Principles. He has come under
the spell of Plato, who 'had joined with an imagination
the most splendid and magnificent, an intellect not less
deep and clear,' 5 ' whose writings are the touchstone
of a hasty and shallow mind ; whose philosophy has been
the admiration of ages ; which supplied patriots, magis
trates, and lawgivers to the most flourishing States, as
well as fathers to the Church, and doctors to the
schools.' 6 We find accordingly a new disparagement of

1 Siris, sect. 362. 2 Ibid., sect. 354. 3 Ibid., sect. 352.

4 Ibid., sect. 331. 5 Ibid.* sect. 360. G Ibid., sect. 332.

K

146 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the senses and a new exaltation of purely intellectual
insight. Sense is only the first and lowest step in the
ascent of the soul from the world to God, the meanest
link in the Golden Chain that unites the finite to the
infinite Spirit. ' The perceptions of sense are gross ;
but even in the senses there is a difference. Though
harmony and proportion are not objects of sense, yet the
eye and the ear are organs which offer to the mind such
materials by means whereof she may apprehend both the
one and the other. By experiments of sense we become
acquainted with the lower faculties of the soul ; and from
them, whether by a gradual evolution or ascent, we
arrive at the highest. Sense supplies images to memory.
These become subjects for fancy to work upon. Reason
considers and judges of the imaginations. And these acts
of reason become new objects to the understanding. In
this scale, each lower faculty is a step that leads to one
above it. And the uppermost naturally leads to the
Deity ; which is rather the object of intellectual know
ledge than even of the discursive faculty, not to mention
the sensitive. There runs a Chain throughout the whole
system of beings. In this Chain one link drags another.
The meanest things are connected with the highest.' 1
The extreme links of this Chain are the c grossly sensible '
and the ' purely intelligible.' The earlier distinction
between the idea and the notion is now developed into
the contrast between * phenomena ' or * appearances '
on the one hand and Ideas (in the Platonic sense) or
Reality on the other. The senses, instead of being
regarded as the medium of the self-revelation of the
divine Spirit to the human, are condemned as veiling the
divine Reality from our spirits. The mind is c depressed
by the heaviness of the animal nature to which it is
chained ' ; we are c oppressed and overwhelmed by the
senses,' the world of which is a i region of darkness and
dreams.' 'Sense at first besets and overbears the mind.
The sensible appearances are all in all : our reasonings

1 Siris, sect. 303.

BERKELEY: THE NEW IDEALISM 147

are employed about them : our desires terminate in
them : we look no farther for realities or causes ; till
Intellect begins to dawn, and cast a ray on this shadowy
scene. We then perceive the true principle of unity,
identity, and existence. Those things that before seemed
to constitute the whole of Being, upon taking an intel
lectual view of things, prove to be but fleeting phantoms.' l
While Berkeley's earlier view of reality, so far at least
as the external world is concerned, was expressed in the
statement that ' the esse of things ispercipif the view which
we find in Siris might rather be expressed in the state
ment that 'the esse of things is concipi.' Reality, being
rationally constituted, can be apprehended only by
intellect or reason. * We know a thing when we under
stand it ; and we understand it when we can interpret or
tell what it signifies. Strictly, the sense knows nothing.
We perceive indeed sounds by hearing, and characters by
sight. But we are not therefore said to understand them.' 2
4 As understanding perceiveth not, that is, doth not hear,
or see, or feel, so sense knoweth not : and although
the mind may use both sense and fancy, as means
whereby to arrive at knowledge, yet sense or soul,
so far forth as sensitive, knoweth nothing.' 3 In such
sentences as these we see how Berkeley's centre of
speculative interest has changed from the world of the
senses to that of intellect or reason, and yet how closely
his later Idealism is related to his earlier doctrine of
Immaterialism ; how the one is rather a development than
a negation of the other. Even in the Principles he had
insisted upon the interpretability of the data of sensation,
upon their symbolic or significant character, as the feature
which makes science, on the one hand, and the practical
conduct of life, on the other, possible for man. Even in
the Principles he had insisted upon the necessity of supple
menting the * idea ' by the ' notion,' the perceptual by the
conceptual apprehension of reality, holding that only
through such notions can we apprehend relations or

1 Siris, sect. 294. 2 Ibid., sect, 253. 3 Ibid., sect. 305.

148 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

penetrate to spiritual substance and true causes. But his
early doctrine of Immaterialism, or of the sensational
character of external reality, has lost interest for him, in
view of the higher truth, which now preoccupies him,
of the rational constitution of the universe. In a new
and deeper sense he now holds that God speaks to man,
not merely in the simple language of Vision and of Sense,
but in the deeper and more intimate communion of the
divine with the human Reason.

CHAPTER II

HUME: EMPIRICISM AND SCEPTICISM

HUME is not only the greatest English philosopher ; he
is also one of the great figures in English literature. In
his ' Own Life ' he tells us that he 4 was seized very early
with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling
passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoy
ments.' It was not merely in the sphere of philosophy
proper, but in that of the essay and of history, that he
sought to gratify this passion, and as a writer he is equally
successful in all these spheres. His contribution to philo
sophy was the work of his youth, though he revised,
and to some extent modified it in later years ; the real
occupation of these later years was found in the production
of essays on political and economic subjects and of his
History of England. The revised statement of his philoso
phical opinions was confessedly undertaken rather with
a view to their more effective literary expression than
with any purpose of serious modification. ' I had always
entertained a notion, that my want of success in publish
ing the Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded more
from the manner than the matter, and that I had been
guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in going to the press
too early. I, therefore, cast the first part of that work
anew in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.'
He professes, in his Essays, to attempt *a union between
the learned and conversible worlds,' and it seems clear
that in philosophy he sought to effect the same union.
The general verdict of posterity, if not that of his own
contemporaries, has been that he succeeded in this
ambition. The one notable exception is the formidable

149

150 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

dictum of Dr. Johnson, that ' his style is not English ;
the structure of his sentences is French.' It can hardly
be doubted that his residence in France during the three
years of youth while he was writing the Treatise, and
his resulting familiarity with the French language and
literature, had some influence upon his English style,
and that this influence was one of the chief factors in his
education as a writer.

Perhaps the most competent German historian of philo
sophy has characterised Hume as ' without doubt the
clearest and most unprejudiced as well as the most compre
hensive and philosophically the best equipped thinker whom
the English nation has produced.'1 It is in virtue of the
relentless faithfulness with which he follows out the logical
consequences of the empirical point of view that we are
compelled to admit that in the Treatise of Human Nature
the logic of empiricism works itself out to its inevitable
conclusions. It would be unjust to both Locke and Berkeley
to say that they stopped short of these conclusions from
theological or other prejudices. The truth is that empiricism
was only a part of their philosophy, the other part being,
as we have seen, of a rationalistic or idealistic type ; so
that we cannot describe the sceptical philosophy of Hume
as the complete logical development of the Lockian and
Berkeleyan philosophy, but only as the logical completion
of the empirical element in the philosophy of his pre
decessors. That which had for them been a part becomes
for Hume the whole : he is an empiricist pure and simple,
and he shows us with singular insight the ultimate mean
ing and consequences of pure empiricism. Locke's em
piricism had been limited to the solution of the problem
of the origin of the materials or elements of knowledge ;
it had never occurred to him to give a purely empirical
account of knowledge itself, except in so far as he
thought that the question of the ' original ' of know
ledge had more than a merely psychological and genetic

1 Windelband, Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, i. 326.

HUME 151

significance. Hume disallows the distinction between
knowledge and its materials, and seeks to give an
empirical derivation and explanation of knowledge itself,
alike on its material and on its formal side. Berkeley
had traced the content of our knowledge of the material
world to its origin in ideas or sensations, and had denied
the reality of material substance and of material cause ;
but it had not occurred to him to give an empirical
account of the principles of substance and cause. With
out a i notional ' apprehension of these latter principles,
knowledge seemed to him impossible, and it was in vindi
cation of the validity of their true application that he
sought to disprove their applicability to the relations of
the data of our sensational experience to one another.
Similarly we have seen that neither Locke nor Berkeley
was a mere nominalist : nominalism was only a part of
their theory of knowledge and of reality. For Hume,
Berkeley's doctrine of the invalidity of 'abstract ideas'
is ' one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that
has been made of late years in the republic of letters.' l It
is for him the whole truth, and again he shows what are its
full consequences. Once more, the experimental or psycho
logical method had been the method only of the Second
Book of Locke's Essay ; it was not the method of Book IV.,
to which all that precedes is really introductory and
subsidiary, and in which alone the solution of his real
problem of the nature and limits of human knowledge is
attempted. Similarly for Berkeley the experimental or
psychological method seems appropriate to the solution of
the problem of the nature of that experience which we
describe in abstract terms as knowledge of the material
world ; but he regards that method as inadequate to the
solution of the deeper problem of the nature of that
spiritual reality, divine and human, to which he has
found himself experimentally forced to reduce material
reality. For Hume the experimental or psychological
method is equally applicable to all questions of reality or

1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. i. sect. 7.

152 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

* matters of fact,' the psychological explanation is the only
possible explanation : the sub-title of the Treatise is ' an
attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reason
ing into Moral Subjects.'

The limited scope assigned to the principle of empiri
cism or sensationalism by Locke and Berkeley, as contrasted
with the unlimited scope assigned to that principle by
Hume, may be summarised in the statement that while
his predecessors had no thought of reducing reason to
terms of sensation and experience, but always, implicitly
and explicitly, assumed the distinction between these to
be ultimate, Hume is a thorough-going empiricist, in the
sense that he seeks to give an empirical account or ex
planation of all our so-called 'rational' judgments, to
show that these judgments are simply impressions and
ideas associated by custom, expectations developed in us
by experience. The result is that while his predecessors
assume the distinction between the certainties of know
ledge and the probabilities of experience, and devote
themselves to the investigation of the nature and extent
of human knowledge, Hume sees in our so-called ' know
ledge ' only a fiction to be accounted for in terms of that
experience which is for him the only source of human
'understanding,' the only basis of that probability which
supersedes our imagined knowledge and certainty. Locke
and Berkeley had successively narrowed the range of
knowledge. Locke had found that there is ' no science
of bodies ' ; that, in the strict sense, we have no c know
ledge ' of external reality ; that our knowledge is either real
and particular or general and without real significance. But
that we do know or apprehend truth with certainty, that
intuition and demonstration are valid forms of such certain
knowledge, he had never questioned ; these are essential
features in his theory of knowledge. Berkeley had in
sisted, more strenuously than Locke, upon reducing our
abstract and general knowledge to concrete and particular
terms, or, in his own terminology, to ' ideas ' ; he had
further reduced causality, so far as the external world is
concerned, to sense-symbolism, and insisted upon the

HUME 153

arbitrary or the merely customary character of all natural
relations, substituting 'suggestion ' for reason as the organ
ising principle of our sense-experience. Yet it had not
occurred to him to doubt the rationality of the principles
of substance and cause. In the very arbitrariness of the
relations of the data of sensation he had seen the evidence
of the rationality of their source ; in the uniformity of
these relations he had seen the expression of a supreme
cosmic Reason. Hume^s denial of the distinction between
the rational and the empirical elements in knowledge leads
inevitably to the disintegration of knowledge ; certainty is
reduced to probability ; a thorough-going empiricism is
found to be the negation of knowledge, or to result in
universal scepticism.

The problem of knowledge changes, in Hume's hands,
from that of Substance to that of Cause. Although the
problem of substance had bulked more largely in the
discussions of his predecessors, he saw that the point of
real strategic interest was the validity of the causal
principle. This had been the central constructive prin
ciple in the philosophy of both Locke and Berkeley.
Locke had invoked material substance as the cause of our
sensations, and had appealed to the same causal principle
in his proof of the divine existence. Berkeley had similarly
sought to demonstrate the existence of God as the cause
of the ideas of sensation, arguing that such a cause could
be found only in mind, and since it is not found in the
human mind, it follows that Supreme Spirit is the universal
Cause. Of causal agency, whether in ourselves, in other
finite agents, or in God, we have a ' notion ' or rational
apprehension, if not an c idea ' or empirical conception.
What, Hume asks, is the origin, and therefore, the warrant
of this causal principle, by the employment of which alone
we are enabled to transcend the particulars of our percipient
experience, and to relate them in an apparent cosmos or
rational system ? Is it in reality a rational, or is it a merely
empirical and customary relation ? On the answer to this
question, he sees, depends the consistency of empiricism as
a complete and self-contained theory of knowledge.

154 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

There are not many references to other writers in
Hume's works ; but from the few such references which
do occur, as well as from the entire train of thought, it is
clear that he finds his point of departure in the writings
of his English predecessors. Although the Treatise was
written during his residence in France, there are, in the
metaphysical part of that work, few traces of the influence
of French philosophy, even that of Descartes. The plan
of the first Book is modelled on that of Locke's Essay, the
four parts being entitled ' Of Ideas,' ' Of the Ideas of
Space and Time,' c Of Knowledge and Probability,' ' Of
the Sceptical and other Systems of Philosophy.' Hume's
object clearly is to complete, by correcting and systematis-
ing, the philosophy of Locke and Berkeley. Speaking of
Locke's discussion of innate ideas, he says: c A like ambiguity
and circumlocution seem to run through that philosopher's
reasonings on this as well as most other subjects.' 1 In the
same work he says of Berkeley : ' Most of the writings of
that very ingenious author form the best lessons of scepti
cism, which are to be found either among the ancient or
modem philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He professes,
however, in his title-page (and undoubtedly with great
truth) to have composed his book against the sceptics as
well as against the atheists and free-thinkers. But that
all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in reality,
merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no
answer and produce no conviction. Their only effect is to
cause that momentary amazement and irresolution and
confusion, which is the result of scepticism.' 2 That
Hume was fully conscious of the novel and revolutionary
character of his own views, as substituting scepticism,
the result of a thorough-going empiricism, for the
mixture of empiricism and rationalism which he found
in Locke and Berkeley, is evident from a letter, written a
fortnight after the publication of the Treatise, when he
was waiting impatiently to learn its fate, in which he
says : ' Those who are accustomed to reflect on such

1 Enquiry concerning Htiman Understanding, sect, ii., note.

2 Ibid., sect. xii. pt. i., note.

HUME 155

abstract subjects, are commonly full of prejudices ; and
those who are unprejudiced are unacquainted with meta
physical reasonings. My principles are so remote from
all the vulgar sentiments on the subject, that were they to
take place, they would produce almost a total alteration
in philosophy ; and you know, revolutions of this kind are
not easily brought about.' J

The determination of Hume's precise position in philo
sophy is rendered much more difficult by the fact that he
has presented his views in two, considerably divergent,
forms : first in the Treatise, and later in the two Enquiries.
In an c advertisement ' prefixed to the posthumous edition
of the collected Essays, he repudiates the Treatise as a
4 juvenile work, which the Author never acknowledged,'
and desires that henceforth c the following Pieces may
alone be regarded as containing his philosophical senti
ments and principles.' In this work, he says, * some negli
gences in his former reasoning and more in the expression,
are, he hopes, corrected.' In a letter to Gilbert Elliot he
says: 'I believe the Philosophical Essays contain every
thing of consequence relating to the understanding, which
you would meet with in the Treatise ; and I give you my
advice against reading the latter. By shortening and
simplifying the questions, I really render them much
more complete. Addo dum minuo. The philosophical
principles are the same in both ; but I was carried away
by the heat of youth and invention to publish too precipi
tately. So vast an undertaking, planned before I was
one-and-twenty, and composed before twenty-five, must
necessarily be very defective. I have repented my haste a
hundred, and a hundred times.'2 In another letter he
confesses ca very great mistake in conduct, viz. my
publishing at all the " Treatise of Human Nature," a
book which pretended to innovate in all the sublimest
paths of philosophy, and which I composed before I was
five-and-twenty ; above all, the positive air which prevails

1 Burton's Life of Hume, i. 105. 2 Ibid., i. 337.

1 56 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

in that book, and which may be imputed to the ardour
of youth, so much displeases me, that I have not patience
to review it. But what success the same doctrines, better
illustrated and expressed, may meet with, adhuc sub judice
Us est: l

While no one will hesitate to accept Hume's estimate
of the literary superiority of the Enquiries, it is impossible
to follow his advice, and to substitute the Enquiries for the
Treatise. The ' corrections ' which the author himself
acknowledges he has made affect the doctrine too vitally,
at several points, to warrant us in accepting the later as the
equivalent of the earlier work. Mr. Selby-Bigge speaks
of c the lower philosophic standard ' of the first Enquiry,
and attributes this to the avoidance of difficulties which
would disturb unnecessarily the confidence of ordinary
opinion, and especially to the avoidance of c the general
question of the relation of knowledge and reality.' In the
second Enquiry, in particular, he detects < a very remark
able change of tone or temper, which, even more than
particular statements, leads him to suppose that the system
of Morals in the Enquiry is really and essentially different
from that in the Treatise.' 2 But I cannot help agreeing
with Grimm 3 that, even in the first Enquiry, the modifica
tions of view are of essential importance, and with Pro
fessor Campbell Fraser that while in the Treatise we have
Hume's statement of scepticism as the inevitable conse
quence of the empirical principles which he has adopted,
in the Enquiry we have his ' sceptical solution of sceptical
doubts.' 4 While the Treatise is undoubtedly the more im
portant work, and * to ignore it ' would be, as Mr. Selby-
Bigge says, ' to deprive Hume of his place among the
great thinkers of Europe,' to ignore the Enquiry would be
to neglect the modifications which later reflection, and not
mere considerations of literary effect or of popularity, in
duced Hume to make upon the earlier statement of his

1 Burton's Life, i. 98.

2 Introd. to edition of Enquiries, p. xxiii.

3 Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems, pp. 571-^96.

4 Introd. to Locke's Essay, p. cxxxviii.

HUME 157

philosophy. If the later statement is characterised by less
1 positiveness ' or confidence of tone, it is at the same
time the result of a new effort to deduce, from the nega
tions from which escape is still regarded as impossible,
conclusions less bewildering to the human mind.

Hume narrows the meaning of the term * idea ' still
further than Berkeley had done, and claims to ' restore
the word to its original sense, from which Mr. Locke
had perverted it, in making it stand for all our perceptions,'
by distinguishing ' ideas ' from ' impressions,' and includ
ing under the latter term ' all our sensations, passions, and
emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul,'
under ideas 'the faint images of these in thinking and
reasoning.' c The difference betwixt these consists in the
degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike
upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or
consciousness.' ' By the term of impression,' he says, 'I
would not be understood to express the manner, in which
our lively perceptions are produced in the soul, but merely
the perceptions themselves.' These impressions and ideas
are either simple or complex ; and while the complex
ideas are not in all cases the exact copies of our complex
impressions, 'after the most accurate examination, of
which I am capable, I venture to affirm,' says Hume,
' that the rule here holds without any exception, and that
every simple idea has a simple impression, which resembles
it, and every simple impression a correspondent idea. . . .
But if any one should deny this universal resemblance, I
know no way of convincing him, but by desiring him
to show a simple impression, that has not a correspondent
idea, or a simple idea, that has not a correspondent im
pression. If he does not answer this challenge, as 'tis
certain he cannot, we may from his silence and our
own observation establish our conclusion.' The thesis
of empiricism or sensationalism accordingly assumes the
form, 'That all our simple ideas in their first appearance
are derived from simple impressions, which are corre
spondent to them, and which they exactly represent.'

158 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

The philosophical significance of this thesis is developed
in the sequel of the argument, both in the Treatise and
in the Enquiry, and is thus summarised in the latter
work : ' Here, therefore, is a proposition, which not
only seems, in itself, simple and intelligible ; but, if a
proper use were made of it, might render every dispute
equally intelligible, and banish all that jargon, which has
so long taken possession of metaphysical reasonings, and
drawn disgrace upon them. . . . When we entertain,
therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is
employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too
frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is
that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to
assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion. By
bringing ideas into so clear a light we may reasonably
hope to remove all dispute, which may arise, concerning
their nature and reality.' l

In the Treatise Hume further distinguishes impressions
of sensation from those of reflexion, and points out an
important difference in their origins, which leads to a
modification of the general thesis as to the relation of
ideas to impressions. 'The first kind,' he says, 'arises
in the soul originally, from unknown causes. The second
is derived in a great measure from our ideas, and that
in the following order. An impression first strikes upon
the senses, and makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or
hunger, pleasure or pain of some kind or other. Of this
impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which
remains after the impression ceases ; and this we call an
idea. This idea of pleasure or pain, when it returns
upon the soul, produces the new impressions of desire and
aversion, hope and fear, which may properly be called im
pressions of reflexion, because derived from it. ... So
that the impressions of reflexion are only antecedent to their
correspondent ideas ; but posterior to those of sensation, and
derived from them.' 2 These ' impressions of reflexion ' he
otherwise describes as c passions, desires, and emotions.'

1 Enquiry, sect. ii. 2 Treatise, bk. i. pt. i. sect. 2.

HUME 159

He also distinguishes ideas of memory from those of
imagination. In the case of memory, the idea ' retains a
considerable degree of its first vivacity [as an impression],
and is somewhat intermediate between an impression and
an idea'; in the case of imagination, < it entirely loses
that vivacity, and is a perfect idea.' Moreover, * the
imagination is not restrained to the same order and form
with the original impressions ; while the memory is in a
manner tied down in that respect, without any power of
variation,' its peculiar function being < not to preserve
the simple ideas, but their order and position.'1 The
freedom of the imagination in the separation and com
bination of ideas is, however, limited, and a certain
uniformity secured, by a 'uniting principle' or cbond
of union' among ideas — ca gentle force, which com
monly prevails,' and is the substitute in the imagination
for ' that inseparable connexion, by which they are
united in our memory.' c Here is a kind of ATTRACTION,
which in the mental world will be found to have as extra
ordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as
many and as various forms.' The i principles of associa
tion ' he finds to be Resemblance, Contiguity in time or
place, and Causation ; and these principles of association
become for him the chief factors in the explanation of
our so-called c knowledge ' of reality.

Ideas may be related to one another either * naturally,'
according to the principles of association just named, or
4 philosophically,' that is, scientifically, according to the
different ways in which we see fit to compare them.
These philosophical relations are seven in number,
namely, resemblance, identity, space and time, quantity
or number, degrees in quality, contrariety (existence and
non-existence), and causation. Of four of these relations,
namely, resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, and
proportions in quantity or number, we have certain
knowledge ; the other three, namely, identity, situations
in time and place, and causation, are cases of mere

1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. i. sect. 3.

160 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

probability. In the former, the relation ' depends solely
upon ideas,' and accordingly is * the foundation of
science'; in the latter it 'depends not upon the idea,
and may be absent or present even while that remains the
same.' In the Enquiry this distinction is stated as one
between < relations of ideas ' and c matters of fact.' l

Hume's problem is, like Locke's, to determine the
nature and validity of our reasonings about matters of
fact, or, in his own language, the relation between ideas
and impressions. What, he asks, is the validity of any
' conclusion beyond the impressions of our senses ? '
c What is the nature of that evidence which assures us of
any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present
testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory ? ' 2
Strictly, it is only in the case of causation that we can be
said to ' reason ' about matters of fact, since only in that
case does the mind ' go beyond what is immediately
present to the senses, either to discover the real existence
or the relations of objects.' Our predication of the
invariableness of the relation of identity or of the situa
tion of the object in space or time will be found to be
really based on the relation of cause and effect. What,
then, is the nature of the causal inference ?

That it is not an c inference ' in the strict sense of a
conclusion for which we can give rational grounds, is
brought out more clearly in the Enquiry 3 than in the
Treatise. In the first place, he argues that ' the know
ledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by
reasonings a priori^ but arises entirely from experience,'
since * no object ever discovers, by the qualities which
appear to the senses, either the causes which produced it,
or the effects which will arise from it.' ' The mind can
never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause, by the
most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect
is totally different from the cause, and consequently can
never be discovered in it.' As Berkeley had argued, the

1 Sect. iv. pt. i. 2 Enquiry, sect. iv. pt. i. 3 Ibid.) sect. iv.

HUME 161

connexion between causes and effects is arbitrary, not
rationally necessary. In the second place, even experi
ence cannot be the basis of an inference to the future.
' For all inferences from experience suppose, as their
foundation, that the future will resemble the past, and
that similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible
qualities.'

The empirical derivation of the idea of causal con
nexion, the reduction of it to its origin in impression, is
traced much more carefully in the Treatise. Looking for
the impressional basis in the relation of the objects con
cerned, Hume finds that objects causally related are always
(i) contiguous, (2) successive to one another. These re
lations alone, however, are not sufficient ; an object may
be contiguous and successive to another without being
the effect of the latter. He finds (3) a necessary connexion
between the objects. To what impression can this idea
be traced ? The essence of the causal relation being the
connexion of a present impression, or of a past impression
retained in memory, with an idea of the imagination, the
problem is to account for the transition or * inference ' from
the impression to the idea, and for the nature and qualities
of the idea which entitle it to the name of c belief.' The
transition or inference is not to be accounted for by any
peculiar quality in the object perceived, by any new or
unique sense-impression. What is essential is the regularity
of the contiguity and succession of the impressions, their
'constant conjunction.' We find, as a matter of ex
perience, that Mike objects have always been placed in
like relations of contiguity and succession,' and this con
stant conjunction in the past leads us to expect the same
constant conjunction in the future. The perception of
the flame suggests the idea of its constant concomitant,
heat. The union of the present impression with the
idea of the other impression which has constantly accom
panied it in our past experience is a case of association.
4 Reason can never show us the connexion of one object
with another, tho' aided by experience, and the observa
tion of their constant conjunction in all past instances.

L

1 62 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

When the mind, therefore, passes from the idea or im
pression of one object to the idea or belief of another,
it is not determined by reason, but by certain principles,
which associate together the ideas of these objects, and
unite them in the imagination. Had ideas no more union
in the fancy than objects seem to have to the understand
ing, we could never draw any inference from causes to
effects, nor repose belief in any matter of fact. The
inference, therefore, depends solely on the union of
ideas. . . . Thus tho' causation be a philosophical relation,
as implying contiguity, succession, and constant conjunc
tion, yet 'tis only so far as it is a natural relation, and
produces an union among our ideas, that we are able to
reason upon it, or draw any inference from it.' 1

While the repetition of the same impressions in the
same relation to one another does not, in a sense, add
anything to our experience, and would not afford the
basis of a rational inference which is not already afforded
by the first instance of the related impressions, yet Hume
finds that the repetition does c produce a new impression,
and by that means the idea, which I at present examine.
For after a frequent repetition, I find, that upon the
appearance of one of the objects, the mind is determined
by custom to consider its usual attendant, and to consider
it in a stronger light upon account of its relation to the
first object. 'Tis this impression, then, or determination,
which affords me the idea of necessity.' The seat of
necessity is in the mind, not in the object. 'Either we
have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but
that determination of the thought to pass from causes to
effects, and from effects to causes, according to their
experienced union.' The distribution of the objective
and subjective factors in the process is admirably sum
marised in the statement < that objects bear to each other
the relations of contiguity and succession ; that like ob
jects may be observ'd in several instances to have like
relations ; and that all this is independent of, and ante-

1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 6.

HUME 163

cedent to the operations of the understanding. But if
we go any farther, and ascribe a power or necessary con
nexion to these objects ; this is what we can never
observe in them, but must draw the idea of it from what
we feel internally in contemplating them.'1

The resulting belief differs from other ideas simply in
the manner in which it is conceived ; it is only < an
additional force and vivacity ' that ' distinguishes the ideas
of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination.' A
belief may therefore be defined as ' a lively idea related to
or associated with a present impression ' ; and it derives
its additional force and vivacity from the impression with
which it is associated. Resemblance or contiguity may
lend an added strength to the association ; education or
passion may have the same influence as constant conjunc
tion. But, in any case, belief is a matter of feeling, not
of rational insight. ' Thus all probable reasoning is
nothing but a species of sensation. 'Tis not solely in
poetry and music, we must follow our taste and sentiment,
but likewise in philosophy. When I am convinced of
any principle, 'tis only an idea, which strikes more
strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one
set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide
from my feeling concerning the superiority of their
influence. Objects have no discoverable connexion
together ; nor is it from any other principle but custom
operating upon the imagination, that we can draw any
inference from the appearance of one to the existence of
another.' 2 { To consider the matter aright, reason is
nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our
souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and
endows them with particular qualities, according to their
particular situations and relations.' 3

Hume concludes his account of causation by offering
a few general 'rules by which to judge of causes and
effects.' In these rules he anticipates, in a rather
remarkable way, the later methods of inductive reason-

1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 14. a Ibid., bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 8.

3 Ibid.) bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 16.

1 64 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

ing, as formulated by Mill and others, but he states
them in the most summary fashion, concluding : ' Here
is all the LOGIC I think proper to employ in my reason
ing ; and perhaps even this was not very necessary, but
might have been supply'd by the natural principles of
our understanding. Our scholastic headpieces and logi
cians show no such superiority above the mere vulgar in
their reason and ability, as to give us any inclination to
imitate them in delivering a long system of rules and
precepts to direct our judgment, in philosophy. All the
rules of this nature are very easy in their invention, but
extremely difficult in their application ; and even ex
perimental philosophy, which seems the most natural and
simple of any, requires the utmost stretch of human
judgment.' l

The problem of Substance is for Hume, as we have
seen, a minor one, as compared with the central problem
of Causation ; and is dealt with only in the Treatise* But
the discussion is no less subtle than the more elaborate
treatment of Causation. First, as regards material sub
stance, or the ' existence of body,' the question is not, he
says, < Whether there be body or not ? ' but ' What causes
induce us to believe in the existence of body ? ' This
question breaks up into two : c Why we attribute a
continued existence to objects, even when they are not
present to the senses ; and why we suppose them to have
an existence distinct from the mind and perception.'
These two questions are so intimately connected that
4 the decision of the one question decides the other ' : it
the objects of perception have a continued existence,
they have also an independent existence, and conversely.
Hume agrees with Berkeley that neither in perception nor
in reason do we find any grounds for belief in the con
tinuous or independent existence of material things : for
us their esse is percipi. That belief, therefore, he concludes,
must be the product of the imagination. The imagination

J Treatise, bk. i. pt. iii. sect. 15. 2 Bk. i. pt. iv. sect. 2.

HUME 165

is stimulated to this activity by two characteristics which
belong to the objects of perception, their constancy and
their coherence (or the regularity of their changes).
Observing these characteristics, we imagine that to exist
continuously which appears to our senses to be subject to
interruption and to change. i The imagination, when set
into any train of thinking, is apt to continue, even when
its object fails it, and like a galley put in motion by the
oars, carries on its course without any new impulse,' and
this tendency of the imagination ' makes us easily enter
tain this opinion of the continued existence of body.'
What we have been accustomed to find constantly
repeated in the same way we soon come to regard, not as
similar in spite of its difference, but as numerically the
same. The identity of the object is an illusion of the
imagination, which is misled by the similarity of an
interrupted succession of related objects to uninterrupted
succession. 'A succession of related objects ... is
considered with the same smooth and uninterrupted
progress of the imagination, as attends the view of the
same invariable object. . . . The thought slides along the
succession with equal facility as if it considered only one
object ; and therefore confounds the succession with the
identity. ' To overcome the contradiction between the
supposed identity and the actual interruption or succession,
1 we disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, or
rather remove it entirely,by supposing that these interrupted
perceptions are connected by a real existence, of which
we are insensible.' Hence the philosophical hypothesis
of ' the double existence of perception and objects ; which
pleases our reason, in allowing, that our dependent per
ceptions are interrupted and different ; and at the same
time is agreeable to the imagination, in attributing a con
tinued existence to something else, which we call objects.'
This is, however, but ' a new fiction,' < only a palliative
remedy,' which ' contains all the difficulties of the vulgar
system, with some others, that are peculiar to itself.'
While the illusion of the popular imagination is inevitable,
that of the philosophical imagination is superfluous and,

1 66 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

instead of substituting a sounder view, is a relapse into
the old contradiction, which Berkeley has exposed, of
distinguishing the object as existent from the object of
perception.

The philosophical dogma of spiritual substance is, Hume
finds, equally indefensible with that of material substance.
His challenge to those who ' imagine we are every moment
intimately conscious of what we call our SELF ' is, as usual,
that they point out the impression from which this idea is
derived. ' But self or person is not any one impression,
but that to which our several impressions and ideas are
supposed to have reference. If any impression gives rise
to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably
the same, thro' the whole course of our lives ; since self is
supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no im
pression constant and invariable.' All that we find in
our conscious experience is a succession of particular, ever-
changing perceptions, — impressions and ideas. i For my
part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself^
I always stumble on some particular perception or other,
of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or
pleasure. I never can catch myself a£ any time without a
perception, and never can observe anything but the per
ception.' Men may call themselves persons, but in
reality < they are nothing but a bundle or collection of
different perceptions, which succeed each other with an
inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
movement. . . . The mind is a kind of theatre, where
several perceptions successively make their appearance ;
pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety
of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity
in it at one time, nor identity in different ; whatever
natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity
and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not
mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only,
that constitute the mind ; nor have we the most distant
notion of the place, where these scenes are represented,
or of the materials, of which it is composed.' The
explanation of the illusion of personal identity is the same

HUME 167

as in the case of that of material substance. In the one
case as in the other, a variable and interrupted existence
is mistaken by the imagination for an invariable and un
interrupted existence ; related objects are mistaken,
because related, for identical objects. ' Identity is nothing
really belonging to these different perceptions, and uniting
them together ; but is merely a quality, which we attri
bute to them, because of the union of their ideas in the
imagination, when we reflect upon them. . . . Our notions
of personal identity proceed entirely from the smooth and
uninterrupted progress of the thought along a train of
connected ideas.'1

The difficulty immediately suggested by this account of
the genesis of the idea of personal identity is, How can a
series of perceptions thus remember the preceding and
relate them causally to the present perceptions ? The
inadequacy of the constructive part of his theory, whether
on this or some other ground, seems to have forced itself
upon Hume himself, for in the Appendix, which he added
in the following year to the third volume of the Treatise, he
says : ' Upon a more strict review of the section con
cerning personal identity, I find myself involved in such a
labyrinth, that, I must confess, I neither know how to
correct my former opinions, nor how to render them con
sistent.' So far as the negative part of his argument is
concerned, he is still satisfied with it. ' But having thus
loosened all our particular perceptions, when I proceed to
explain \the principle of connexion, which binds them
together, and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity
and identity ; I am sensible, that my account is very
defective, and that nothing but the seeming evidence of
the precedent reasonings could have induced me to receive
it. ... All my hopes vanish, when I come to explain
the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our
thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory,
which gives me satisfaction on this head. . . . For my
part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess,
that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding. I

1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iv. sect. 6.

1 68 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

pretend not, however, to pronounce it absolutely insuper
able. Others, perhaps, or myself, upon more mature
reflections, may discover some hypothesis, that will recon
cile those contradictions.' That Hume did not discover
any such hypothesis, and that his sense of the difficulty
had meanwhile rather increased than diminished, appears
from the absence of the entire discussion from the Enquiry,
published eight years later.

That, in this theory of the self, we have the logical
issue of the nominalistic and empirical tendency so
prominent in the philosophy of Hume's English prede
cessors, Locke and Berkeley, is evident from a significant
statement in the Appendix from which I have just quoted :
' We can conceive a thinking being to have either many
or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduced even
below the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one
perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that
situation. Do you conceive anything but merely that
perception ? Have you any notion of self or substance ?
If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give
you that notion.' It does not occur to him that a single
or wholly unrelated perception would be as good as none,
or that the conception of self is necessitated by the very
plurality of ' perceptions,' not the mere ' addition of other
perceptions' but their combination or relation — the fact
that the plurality of perceptions is experienced as a unity,
or in one consciousness, which is what we mean by self.

Thus, so far as reality or matters of fact are concerned,
Locke's distinction between knowledge and belief, between
certainty and probability, is invalidated by Hume. What
we had supposed to be knowledge is seen to be only
belief; what had seemed to be certainty is seen to be
only probability. 'All knowledge resolves itself into
probability, and becomes at last of the same nature with
that evidence, which we employ in common life.'1
What we had supposed to be reasoning turns out to be

1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iv, sect i.

HUME 169

simply the custom-induced determination of the imagina
tion, ' more properly an act of the sensitive than of the
cogitative part of our natures.' We can never hope to
escape from what Bacon called the ' idols of the tribe ' ;
our so-called knowledge is tainted with a fatal subjectivity.
We can never escape from the shadow of our own nature ;
the only possible science is that of human nature, not that
of the nature of things. We can never hope to interpret
or explain things ex analogia universi ; we must always do
so ex analogia hominis.

The very ground of this scepticism, however, suggests
at once its limit and its cure. Our scepticism cannot be
permanently of the universal or ' Pyrrhonic ' type ; it is
always ' mitigated ' by that belief which is more natural
than any doubts to which reflection may give rise.
' Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has
determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel ; nor
can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a
stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary
connexion with a present impression, than we can hinder
ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake, or seeing
the surrounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards
them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken the pains to
refute the cavils of this total scepticism, has really disputed
without an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to
establish a faculty, which nature has antecedently im
planted in the mind, and rendered unavoidable.'1 The
sceptical argument is too abstract and remote from ordinary
human interests to hold the mind for long. ' Most for
tunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of
dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that
purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy
and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by
some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which
obliterates all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of
backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends ;
and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would

1 Loc. dt.

i yo ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and
strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to
enter into them any farther.'1 In surrendering himself
to this natural tendency to belief, the philosophical sceptic
consistently maintains his scepticism. ' I may, nay I must
yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my senses
and understanding ; and in this blind submission I show
most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles.'
Indolently to resign oneself to ' the current of nature '
is the very perfection of scepticism. ' In all the incidents
of life we ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we
believe, that fire warms, or water refreshes, 'tis only
because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise.
Nay if we are philosophers, it ought only to be upon
sceptical principles, and from an inclination, which we
feel to the employing ourselves after that manner.' <A
true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts,
as well as of his philosophical conviction ; and will never
refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon
account of either of them.' 2

In the Enquiry Hume strikes a more positive note, and
attempts the c sceptical solution ' of his sceptical doubts.
He insists upon the merely theoretical significance of his
scepticism. We need not fear 'that this philosophy,
while it endeavours to limit our enquiries to common life,
should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and
carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as
speculation.' * Custom is the great guide of human life.
It is that principle alone which renders our experience
useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar
train of events with those which have appeared in the
past.' In the fact that our expectations are determined by
the constant conjunctions of our past experience he even
finds assurance of the real significance of our reasonings
about matters of fact. c Here, then, is a kind of pre-
established harmony between the course of nature and
the succession of our ideas ; and though the powers and

Treatise, bk. i. pt. iv. sect. /• 2 Loc. cit.

HUME 171

forces, by which the former is governed, be wholly un
known to us ; yet our thoughts and conceptions have still,
we find, gone on in the same train with the other works
of nature. Custom is that principle, by which this corre
spondence has been affected ; so necessary to the sub
sistence of our species, and the regulation of our conduct,
in every circumstance and occurrence of human life.
Had not the presence of an object instantly excited the
idea of those objects, commonly conjoined with it, all our
knowledge must have been limited to the narrow sphere
of our memory and senses ; and we should never have
been able to adjust means to ends, or employ our natural
powers, either to the producing of good, or avoiding of
evil.'1 And the lesson which he draws from our in
evitable ignorance of the nature of things is the same
lesson as Locke had drawn from the narrow limits
of human knowledge, namely, 'the limitation of our
enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the
narrow capacity of human understanding. ... A correct
Judgement^ . . . avoiding all distant and high enquiries,
confines itself to common life, and to such subjects as fall
under daily practice and experience ; leaving the more
sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators,
or to the arts of priests and politicians. To bring us to so
salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable,
than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the
Pyrrhonian doubt, and of the impossibility, that anything,
but the strong power of natural instinct, could free us
from it. ... While we cannot give a satisfactory reason,
why we believe, after a thousand experiments, that a
stone will fall, or fire burn ; can we ever satisfy ourselves
concerning any determination, which we may form, with
regard to the origin of worlds, and the situation of nature,
from, and to eternity ? ' 2

The entire sceptical argument has reference, it will be
remembered, only to our reasonings about matters of fact,

1 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sect. v. pt. ii.

2 Ibid., sect. xii. pt. Hi.

172 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

and does not affect our knowledge of the relations of ideas.
Hume holds, with Locke, that while certain general pro
positions are merely verbal or ' trifling,' consisting in
identical statements or definitions of terms, certain others
are instructive, in spite of their generality. Of this type
are the propositions which constitute 'the sciences of
Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic.' ' Propositions of this
kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought,
without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the
universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in
nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever re
tain their certaintyand evidence.'1 While the Treatise clos.es
without explicit reference to the exclusion of the c abstract
sciences' from the scope of the sceptical conclusions of
that work, the Enquiry contains an explicit statement on
the subject, which is in keeping with its more positive
spirit. clt seems to me, that the only objects of the
abstract sciences or of demonstration are quantity and
number, and that all attempts to extend this more perfect
species of reasoning beyond these bounds are mere
sophistry and illusion. As the component parts of
quantity and number are entirely similar, their relations
become intricate and involved ; and nothing can be more
curious, as well as useful, than to trace, by a variety of
mediums, their equality or inequality, through their
different appearances. But as all other ideas are clearly
distinct and different from each other, we can never
advance farther, by our utmost scrutiny, than to observe
this diversity, and, by an obvious reflection, pronounce
one thing not to be another. ... It is the same case
with all those pretended syllogistical reasonings, which
may be found in every other branch of learning, except
the sciences of quantity and number ; and these may
safely, I think, be pronounced the only proper objects of
knowledge and demonstration.' 2

In the Treatise^ however, it is clear that Hume dis
allows the exactitude ot geometrical truth. He there

1 Enquiry, sect. iv. pt. i. Ibid., sect. xii. pt. iii.

HUME 173

seeks to give an empirical derivation of our ideas of space
and time, as well as of our other ideas. The empirical
basis of the idea of space is the impression of i coloured
and tangible points disposed in a certain way, ' and Hume
argues that the absolute quantities of geometrical science
are no less illusory than identical material and spiritual
substances. Even in the Enquiry he condemns the
absurdities which result from the logical procedure of this
science. ' The chief objection against all abstract reason
ings is derived from the ideas of space and time ; ideas,
which, in common life, and to a careless view, are very
clear and intelligible, but when they pass through the
scrutiny of the profound sciences (and they are the chief
object of these sciences) afford principles, which seem
full of absurdity and contradiction. No priestly dogmas^
invented on purpose to tame and subdue the rebellious
reason of mankind, ever shocked common sense more
than the doctrine of the infinite divisibility or extension,
with its consequences ; as they are pompously displayed
by all geometricians and metaphysicians, with a kind of
triumph and exultation. . . . But what renders the matter
more extraordinary, is, that these seemingly absurd
opinions are supported by a chain of reasoning, the clearest
and most natural : nor is it possible for us to allow the
premises without admitting the consequences.'' * On the
other hand, Hume has no such criticism to make in the
case of the sciences of Number. < We are possest of a
precise standard, by which we can judge of the equality
and proportion of numbers ; and according as they corre
spond or not to that standard, we determine their rela
tions, without any possibility of error. When two
numbers are so combined, as that the one has always an
unite answering to every unite of the other, we pro
nounce them equal ; and 'tis for want of such a standard
of equality in extension, that geometry can scarce be
esteemed a perfect and infallible science.' 'There re
main, therefore, algebra and arithmetic as the only sciences.,

1 Sect. xii. pt. ii.

174 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

in which we can carry on a chain of reasoning to any
degree of intricacy, and yet preserve a perfect exactness
and certainty.' l Even in the case of geometry, however,
Hume holds that ' its mistakes can never be of any conse
quence.' ' And this,' he says, ' is the nature and use of
geometry, to run us up to such appearances, as, by reason
of their simplicity, cannot lead us into any considerable
error.' 2

Hume devotes the two remaining Books of the Treatise
to that < Human Nature ' which ' is the only science of
man, and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.'
Book II. is concerned with the ' anatomy ' of the Passions,
Book III. with Morals. The former is full of psycho
logical interest, and distinguished by its illuminating re
marks on the subtler play of the elemental passions of
our nature, but is not so directly the basis of the ethical
theory offered in Book III. as to make any detailed account
of it necessary to the understanding of the latter. In
making the two leading principles Pride and Humility,
on the one hand, and Love and Hatred on the other,
Hume foreshadows the two governing principles of his
ethical theory, self-regard and benevolence. In the im
portance he attaches to sympathy and in his reduc
tion of the conflict between reason and passion to a
conflict between the calm and the violent passions, he at
once applies the principles of Book I. and anticipates the
ethical teaching of Book III. The latter point is argued
with no little insight. ' We speak not strictly and philo
sophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of
reason. ... A passion must be accompanied with some
false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable ; and
even then 'tis not the passion, properly speaking, which
is unreasonable, but the judgment. The consequences are
evident. Since a passion can never, in any sense, be called
unreasonable, but when founded on a false supposition, or
when it chuses means insufficient for the designed end,

1 Treatise, bk. i. pt. iii. sect. i. 2 Loc. dt.

HUME 175

'tis impossible that reason and passion can ever oppose
each other, or dispute for the government of the will and
actions. The moment we perceive the falsehood of any
supposition, or the insufficiency of any means, our passions
yield to our reason without any opposition.'1 Finally he
seeks to show the truth of the doctrine of Book I. 2 < that
there is but one kind of necessity, as there is but one kind
of cause, and that the common distinction between moral
and physical necessity is without any foundation in nature,'
arguing that the < liberty ' attributed to moral agents is the
same thing as ' chance,' which simply means that the
cause is unknown. The same argument is repeated in
the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, where it is
connected immediately with the general account of causa
tion, and the attempt is made to show that such a view
is compatible, as the doctrine of Liberty is not, with our
ordinary judgments about human conduct and our ordinary
conceptions of moral responsibility. 3

The connexion of the general psychology of the passions
with the ethical theory becomes more clear when we
take account of Hume's opposition to the view, common
to Locke and Cudworth, that ethics is a purely rational
science, like mathematics. ' There has been an opinion
very industriously propagated by certain philosophers, that
morality is susceptible of demonstration ; and tho' no one
has ever been able to advance a single step in those de
monstrations ; yet 'tis taken for granted, that this science
may be brought to an equal certainty with geometry or
algebra.' 4 Against < the system which establishes eternal
rational measures of right and wrong' he urges that the
distinction is one of sensibility, not of reason ; that its
basis is to be found, not in the object, but in the subject.
' The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider
the object. You never can find it, till you turn your
reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of
disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action.

1 Treatise, bk. ii. pt. iii. sect. 3. 2 Pt. iii. sect. 14.

3 Enquiry, sect. viii. * Treatise^ bk. iii. pt. i. sect. I,

176 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Here is a matter of fact ; but 'tis the object of feeling,
not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So
that when you pronounce any action or character to be
vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution
of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame
from the contemplation of it.' l The ' ought ' can never
be deduced from the * is,' the ' ought not ' from the ' is
not.' All that reason tells us is what is the tendency of
actions, beneficial or hurtful, to ourselves or to others ;
it enables us to decide between ' obscure or opposite
utilities.' Sentiment, or a preference of feeling, alone
can decide in favour of the end, — the happiness, as dis
tinguished from the misery, whether of ourselves or of
others. ' Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than
judged of ' ; it appeals to a 'moral sense' or disinterested
preference of good to evil. ' As virtue is an end, and is
desirable on its own account, without fee and reward,
merely for the immediate satisfaction which it conveys ;
it is requisite that there should be some sentiment which
it touches, some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you
may please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and
evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other.'2
While Hume appears, in the Enquiry^ to accept the
' moral sense ' view, as already formulated by Hutcheson,
and objects to a too ' systematic ' explanation of our moral
judgments, he seeks, in the Treatise, to reduce the sentiment
of moral approval and disapproval to terms of regard for
our own happiness, explaining it as a sympathetic appro
priation of the consequences of our actions for the happi
ness of others, and insisting that we ought to aim at
' simplicity ' in moral as in natural philosophy, and not to
invent new principles where old ones are sufficient.
Accordingly we find that while, in the Treatise, justice
is regarded as the one great social virtue, in the Enquiry
benevolence takes precedence of justice, and is explained
as a general regard for the interests of humanity, as such ;
the principles of sympathy and association are no longer

1 Treatise, bk. iii. pt. i. sect. I. 2 Enquiry, App. I.

HUME 177

invoked in the explanation of justice ; and a new emphasis
is laid upon the essential disinterestedness of the passions,
the indispensable instruments of a wise self-love.

In both works Hume insists upon the * artificial ' char
acter of justice. It is the result of a conventional under
standing between the members of a civilised society that
they will abstain from the possessions of each other, a
convention tacit and unexpressed, like that between the
rowers who 4 pull the oars by agreement or convention,
tho' they have never given promises to each other.' It is
a rule which 'arises gradually, and acquires force by a
slow progression, and by our repeated experience of the
inconveniences of transgressing it.' Justice is thus the
machinery by which the individual secures his own interest.
c There is no passion . . . capable of controlling the
interested affection, but the very affection itself, by an
alteration of its direction.' If men were unselfish, or if
nature offered in abundance all that was necessary to
satisfy their every want, there would be no occasion for
this mutual self-defence. c 'Tis only from the selfishness
and confined generosity of men, along with the scanty
provision nature has made for his wants, that justice
derives its origin.' 'Instead of departing from our own
interest, or from that of our nearest friends, by abstaining
from the possessions of others, we cannot better consult
both these interests, than by such a convention ; because
it is by that means we maintain society, which is so
necessary to their well-being and subsistence, as well as
to our own.'1 But while, in the sense explained, justice
has its origin in ' the artifice and contrivance of men,' it
is in another and deeper sense natural. * Mankind is an
inventive species ; and where an invention is obvious and
absolutely necessary, it may as properly be said to be
natural as anything that proceeds immediately from original
principles, without the intervention of thought or re
flexion. Tho' the rules of justice be artificial, they are
not arbitrary. Nor is the expression improper to call

1 Treatise, bk. iii. pt. ii, sect. 2.

M

i?8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

them Laws of Nature; if by natural we understand what
is common to any species, or even if we confine it to
mean what is inseparable from the species.' 1

In the Enquiry, the virtue of justice is subordinated to
that of benevolence, or disinterested regard for the general
happiness, which is accepted as the supreme end on * the
blind, but sure testimony of taste and sentiment.' This
is the result, it is contended, of f a natural, unforced
interpretation of the phenomena of human life.' While,
in the Treatise^ it was maintained that < the public
good is indifferent to us, except so far as sympathy in
terests us in it,' the doctrine of the Enquiry is that ' the
voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose
the selfish theory.' 'We must renounce the theory,
which accounts for every moral sentiment by the principle
of self-love. We must adopt a more public affection,
and allow, that the interests of society are not, even on
their own account, entirely indifferent to us. ... Every
thing, which contributes to the happiness of society,
recommends itself directly to our approbation and good
will.' ' It is needless to push our researches so far as
to ask, why we have humanity or a fellow-feeling with
others. It is sufficient, that this is experienced to be a
principle in human nature. We must stop somewhere
in our examination of causes ; and there are, in every
science, some general principles, beyond which we cannot
hope to find any principle more general.'2

In the second Appendix to the Enquiry Hume bases
his theory of the disinterestedness of our regard for the
happiness of others upon a new psychology of the pas
sions, which follows very closely Butler's account of
the object of desire and its relation to self-love. In
the Treatise he had maintained that * 'tis from the pros
pect of pain or pleasure that the aversion or propensity
arises towards any object.'3 He now distinguishes be
tween the original passion, which c points immediately to
the object, and constitutes it our good or happiness' and

1 Treatise, bk. iii. pt. ii. sect. I. 2 Enquiry, sect. v. pt. ii.

3 Bk. ii. pt. iii. sect. 3.

HUME 179

4 other secondary passions which afterwards arise and
pursue it as a part of our happiness.' * Were there no
appetite of any kind antecedent to self-love, that pro
pensity could scarcely ever exert itself; because we
should, in that case, have felt few and slender pains or
pleasures, and have little misery or happiness to avoid
or to pursue. Now where is the difficulty in conceiv
ing, that this may likewise be the case with benevolence
and friendship, and that, from the original frame of our
temper, we may feel a desire of another's happiness or
good, which, by means of that affection, becomes our
own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the combined
motives of benevolence and self-enjoyments ? Who sees
not that vengeance, from the force alone of passion, may
be so eagerly pursued, as to make us knowingly neglect
every consideration of ease, interest, or safety ; and, like
some vindictive animals, infuse our very souls into the
wounds we give an enemy ; and what a malignant philo
sophy must it be, that will not allow to humanity and
friendship the same privileges which are undisputably
granted to the darker passions of enmity and resentment ;
such a philosophy is more like a satyr than a true delinea
tion or description of human nature ; and may be a good
foundation for paradoxical wit and raillery, but is a very
bad one for serious argument or reasoning.'

But while the principle of benevolence or social utility
is ' the sole source of that high regard paid to justice,
fidelity, honour, allegiance, and chastity,' and is * insepar
able from all the other social virtues, humanity, generosity,
charity, affability, lenity, mercy, and moderation,' and is
therefore a foundation of the chief part of morals, which
has a reference to mankind and our fellow-creatures,' it is
not for Hume, as for Hutcheson, the all-inclusive ethical
principle ; virtue and benevolence are not convertible
terms. Qualities of action and of character useful or
immediately agreeable to ourselves are no less praiseworthy
than those which are useful or immediately agreeable
to others. Happiness is the only ultimate end, but it may
be either our own or that of others ; and Hume does not

i8o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

doubt the harmony of these two ends. And when he
comes, in the concluding section of the Enquiry? to the
consideration of obligation, he speaks of it as ' interested,'
and identifies the question of obligation with the question
4 whether every man, who has any regard to his own
happiness and welfare, will not best find his account in
the practice of every moral duty.' c What theory of
morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can
show, by a particular detail, that all the duties which it
recommends, are also the true interest of each individual ? '
In proof of the truth of his own theory he points to the
attractive picture of virtue which it offers, representing
her ' in all her genuine and most engaging charms,' and
making us 'approach her with ease, familiarity, and
affection.' ' The sole trouble which she demands, is that
of just calculation, and a steady preference of the greater
happiness.' A true psychology of human passion or pro
pensity shows that there is no more opposition between
selfishness and benevolence than between selfishness and
any other natural propensity, and that the presupposition of a
true self-love is disinterested interest in the objects of these
natural propensities. The only case in which a doubt
is possible regarding the coincidence of virtue and self-
interest is that of justice. c But in all ingenuous natures,
the antipathy to treachery and roguery is too strong to be
counterbalanced by any views of profit or pecuniary
advantage.' Such natures will indeed ( find their account '
in virtue. * Inward peace of mind, consciousness of
integrity, a satisfactory review of our past conduct ; these
are circumstances very requisite to happiness, and will be
cherished and cultivated by every honest man, who feels
the importance of them.'

To the restatement of his philosophical views in the
first Enquiry Hume added two essays in which he applies
his general principles to the solution of the problems of
Miracles, a Particular Providence and a Future State. It

1 Sect. ix. pt. ii.

HUME 181

is significant that, while he had not in the Treatise even
suggested any such applications, he should thus later have
endangered the symmetry of the Enquiry by this addition.
The explanation is to be found, I think, not so much in a
desire to disturb 'the zealots' as in a deepening interest
in such metaphysical and theological questions. His
interest in the problem of knowledge itself had been long
satisfied ; other interests had since absorbed his mind. c I
have thought, and read, and composed very little on
such questions of late,' he writes to Gilbert Elliot in
1751 ; c Morals, Politics, and Literature have employed
all my time.' Yet in the same letter he asks his friend's
opinion and advice about those Dialogues on Natural
Religion which, though they were not published until
after his death, had been already written. In 1757
appeared, among the Four Dissertations, an essay which
shows very considerable reading, as well as reflection,
entitled The Natural History of Religion. These consti
tute Hume's contribution to the philosophy of religion.

The Natural History of Religion is of minor interest,
though it shows Hume's sagacity in the adoption of the
historical and comparative method of investigating the
subject. Its main purpose is to prove that Theism is not
the primary or universal, but a later and secondary form
of the religious consciousness. The earliest product of
the religious imagination, he insists, is not a single Author
or Maker of the world, such as the world-order suggests to
later reflection, but a number of beings fashioned in man's
own image, < intelligent, voluntary agents, like ourselves;
only somewhat superior in power and wisdom.'1 As
one of these beings gradually rises to supremacy over
the others, polytheism gives place to theism ; while theism
tends in turn to degenerate into polytheism. 'It is re
markable, that the principles of religion have a kind of flux
and reflux in the human mind, and that men have a natural
tendency to rise from idolatry to theism, and to sink again
from theism into idolatry.'2 The lesson which Hume

1 Nat. Hist, of Religion, sect. v. 2 Ibid., sect. viii.

1 82 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

draws from the inevitableness of the process of degenera
tion and corruption in religion, from the impossibility of
maintaining the distinction between genuine religion, the
true ally of morality, and mere superstition, its enemy or
at best its uncertain friend, is that of philosophical in-
differentism. 'The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an
inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of
judgment appear the only result of our most accurate
scrutiny concerning this subject. But such is the frailty
of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of
opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be
upheld ; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one
species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling ;
while we ourselves, during their fury and contention,
happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure,
regions of philosophy.' l

The relation of the two essays, which were added to the
first Enquiry, to the central philosophical positions of that
work is really much closer than we might at first suppose.
The argument against miracles is based upon the view of
causation as identical with constant conjunction : a
miracle is a contradiction of the uniformity of nature to
which all our experience testifies, and is therefore in
credible, no matter what the testimony in its favour may
be. At the same time men's tendency to believe in the
miraculous is explained in terms of that human nature
which is, according to Hume, the ultimate term in all
explanation. The argument for a particular Providence
and future rewards and punishments rests, it is argued,
upon a false view of causation, refusing as it does to
interpret the cause in the light of the effect and adding
causal factors for which we have no warrant in corre
sponding effects. It at the same time repudiates the
empirical measure of reality which has been shown to be
the only human measure of it.

In this essay we have, on a smaller scale, Hume's views
on Natural Theology which are developed more fully in

1 Nat. Hist, of Religion^ sect. xv.

HUME 183

the Dialogues on Natural Religion. The position common
to both is neither that of mere scepticism or atheism, on
the one hand, nor that of theism, on the other, but that
of agnostic deism or, as Professor Campbell Fraser calls
it, 'attenuated theism.' The view which is controverted
is that of a dogmatic and imaginative theism, based upon
unwarranted anthropomorphism and resulting from
4 enthusiasm,' — zeal uncontrolled by reason or experience.
Huxley calls the view advocated in the Dialogues a
'shadowy and inconsistent theism,' and sees in it 'the
expression of his desire to rest in a state of mind, which
distinctly excluded negation, while it included as little as
possible of affirmation, respecting a problem which he
felt to be hopelessly insoluble.' l

The three interlocutors in the Dialogues are sufficiently
characterised by Hume himself, who contrasts ' the
accurate philosophical turn of Cleanthes ' with ' the
careless scepticism of Philo' and both with 'the rigid
inflexible orthodoxy of Demea.' The affinity of the
scepticism of Philo with the mysticism of Demea is
emphasised in the course of the discussion, in which
Philo accepts the term 'mystic' as their common desig
nation ; and so far as these two speakers are concerned,
Hume's intention clearly is to reduce mysticism to scep
ticism, or unconscious to conscious scepticism, and thus
to leave the issue between Philo and Cleanthes. He
makes the narrator of the conversation say at the close :
'I confess, that, upon a serious review of the whole, I
cannot but think that Philo's principles are more probable
than Demea's ; but that those of Cleanthes approach still
nearer to the truth.' In a letter to Gilbert Elliot, already
quoted, Hume says : ' You would observe by the sample
I have given you, that I make Cleanthes the hero of the
dialogue : whatever you can think of, to strengthen that
side of the argument, will be most acceptable to me.
Any propensity you imagine I have to the other side,
crept in upon me against my will.' The position of

, in 'English Men of Letters,' p. 157.

1 84 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Cleanthes is that of a philosophical theism which infers
the divine intelligence and goodness from the marks of
purpose in the world of our experience. ' I could wish,'
he continues in this letter, ' Cleanthes' argument could be
so analysed, as to be rendered quite formal and regular.
The propensity of the mind towards it, — unless that
propensity were as strong and universal as that to believe
in our senses and experience, — will still, I am afraid,
be esteemed a suspicious foundation. 'Tis here I wish
for your assistance ; we must endeavour to prove that this
propensity is somewhat different from our inclination to
find our own figures in the clouds, our faces in the moon,
our passions and sentiments even in inanimate matter.
Such an inclination may, and ought to be controlled, and
can never be a legitimate ground of assent.'1 He also
speaks of c the confusion in which I represent the sceptic,'
and in a letter to Strahan, written shortly before his death,
he says, ' I there introduce a Sceptic, who is indeed
refuted, and at last gives up the Argument, nay confesses
that he was only amusing himself by all his Cavils ; yet
before he is silenced, he advances several Topics, which
will give Umbrage, and will be deemed very bold and
free, as well as much out of the common Road.'2 In the
course of the argument, however, it will be found that,
as we should expect, Philo's criticisms are made to tell
heavily upon the positions of his opponent, which are
seriously modified in consequence. The 'confusion' of
Cleanthes is no less real than that of Philo ; indeed, the
latter succeeds in his argument, so far as it is seriously
intended, and is not a mere argumentum ad hominem.

The question of the Dialogues is not that of the
existence, but that of the nature of God. 4 Surely,' says
Philo, ' where reasonable men treat these subjects, the
question can never be concerning the Being, but only the
Nature of the Deity. The former truth, as you well
observe, is unquestionable and self-evident. Nothing
exists without a cause ; and the original cause of this

1 Burton's Life, i. 331-3. 2 Letters to Strahan, p. 330.

HUME 185

universe (whatever it be) we call God ; and piously ascribe
to him every species of perfection. . . . But as all perfec
tion is entirely relative, we ought never to imagine, that
we comprehend the attributes of this divine Being, or
to suppose, that his perfections have any analogy or like
ness to the perfections of a human creature. Wisdom,
Thought, Design, Knowledge ; these we justly ascribe
to him ; because these words are honourable among men,
and we have no other language or other conceptions, by
which we can express our adoration of him. But let us
beware, lest we think, that our ideas any wise correspond
to his perfections, or that his attributes have any resem
blance to these qualities among men. He is infinitely
superior to our limited view and comprehension ; and is
more the object of worship in the temple, than of disputa
tion in the schools.' 1 The polemic of Philo is directed
against the dogmatism and anthropomorphism of the
theologians, against the exaggeration of the argument
from analogy into a proof that the nature of God is the
counterpart of that of man. The basis of this argument
is found in the marks of design in the works of God in
Nature ; and it is the inference from design to the nature
of God, not the actuality of design, that is criticised by
Hume. The outcome of the discussion is to bring Philo
and Cleanthes to agreement as to the actuality of design.
' In many views of the universe, and of its parts, par
ticularly the latter, the beauty and fitness of final causes
strike us with such irresistible force, that all objections
appear (what I believe they really are) mere cavils and
sophisms ; nor can we then imagine how it was ever
possible for us to repose any weight on them.' 2 ' A
purpose, an intention, a design,' Philo says again, ' strikes
everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker ;
and no man can be so hardened in absurd systems, as at
all times to reject it.' 3

So far as the real question of the Dialogues — the question
of the validity of the inference from design to the attri-

1 Dialogues, pt. ii. 2 Ibid., pt. x. 3 Ibid., pt. xii.

1 86 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

butes which it implies in God — is concerned, Philo is made
ultimately to assent, in a sense, to the inference to the
divine intelligence. 'If we make it a question, whether,
on account of these analogies, we can properly call him
a mind or intelligence^ notwithstanding the vast differ
ence, which may reasonably be supposed between him
and human minds ; what is this but a mere verbal con
troversy ? No man can deny the analogies between the
effects : to restrain ourselves from enquiring concerning
the causes is scarcely possible : from this enquiry, the
legitimate conclusion is, that the causes have also an
analogy : and if we are not contented with calling the
first and supreme cause a God or Deity, but desire to
vary the expression ; what can we call him but Mind or
Thought, to which he is justly supposed to bear a con
siderable resemblance ? ' x It is the moral part of the
inference that proves intractable. The misery of the
world, and especially of human life, may possibly be
compatible with the goodness of God, but it certainly
cannot form the ground of an inference to his goodness.
' Why is there any misery at all in the world ? Not by
chance surely. From some cause then. Is it from the
intention of the Deity ? But he is perfectly benevolent.
Is it contrary to his intention ? But he is almighty.
Nothing can shake the solidity of this reasoning, so short,
so clear, so decisive ; except we assert, that these subjects
exceed all human capacity, and that our common measures
of truth and falsehood are not applicable to them ; a topic
which I have all along insisted on, but which you have,
from the beginning, rejected with scorn and indignation.
. . . Here, Cleanthes, I find myself at ease in my argu
ment. Here I triumph. . . . There is no view of human
life or of the condition of mankind, from which, without
the greatest violence, we can infer the moral attributes, or
learn that infinite benevolence, conjoined with infinite
power and infinite wisdom, which we must discover by
the eyes of faith alone.' 2 ' The true conclusion is, that

1 Loc. cit. 2 Ibid., pt. x.

HUME 187

the original source of all things is entirely indifferent to all
these principles, and has no more regard to good above
ill than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture,
or to light above heavy.' *

1 Ibid., pt. xi.

CHAPTER III

THE MORALISTS

I. The Moral Sense School: Shaftesburyy Hutcheson^ Butler

LIKE the rationalists of the seventeenth century, these
moralists of the eighteenth were stimulated to ethical
inquiry by opposition to the views of Hobbes. In Locke's
view of moral obligation, however, they saw a restatement
of Hobbes, which was all the more dangerous since it
was less paradoxical and fell in more naturally with the
current theological ideas. Locke, like Hobbes, had found
the basis of moral obligation, though not the explanation of
morality, in will, rather than in reason, but in the will of
God rather than in that of the earthly sovereign. Locke,
like Hobbes, had found the motive and sanction of virtue
in self-interest, but in divine rather than in political re
wards and punishments. The stress of the later polemic
is rather upon the altruism than upon the rationality or
absoluteness of morality. It is to be remembered that
Hutcheson and Butler have in view the coarser version of
egoism formulated by Mandeville in the Fable of the Bees^
or Private Vices Public Benefits^ and it cannot be doubted
that it was this extreme and repulsive development of the
implications of Hobbian and Lockian egoism that roused
these moralists to the defence of the altruistic element in
virtue.

In Shaftesbury we find all the characteristic positions of
the school — generally known as the ' moral sense ' school
— already formulated, though it required the more elaborate
and systematic restatements of his successors to make
clear the full significance of these positions. The only
real difference of opinion between them concerns the

188

THE MORALISTS 189

place of benevolence and its relation to self-love on the
one hand and to virtue, as such, on the other ; and it
is, on the whole, true to say that Butler corrects the
exaggerated claim made by Hutcheson for benevolence,
and re-affirms the more comprehensive view of the nature
of virtue originally formulated by Shaftesbury. As regards
the relation of virtue to the happiness of the virtuous
agent, or to self-love, it will also be found that Butler
does little more than restate the views of Shaftesbury. It
is in the sphere of Natural Theology, rather than in that
of Ethics, that Butler parts company with his predecessors,
and develops the vague optimism of Shaftesbury into a
novel and ingenious theory of his own devising.

Shaftesbury is not only the most original thinker
but, on the whole, the best writer of the school. While
it is doubtless an exaggeration to say, with Mackintosh,
that ' no thinker so great was ever so bad a writer ' as
Butler, yet when compared with other English philo
sophers, both earlier and later, Butler cannot be called
a good writer. On occasion he rises to something
like eloquence, and in general is not lacking in im-
pressiveness and individuality ; it has been truly remarked
that ' the lover of aphorisms might make an interesting
collection from the pages of Butler.'1 But his style is
careless and lacking in elegance and, above all, in the
essential excellence of a philosophical style, clearness.
Of Hutcheson, Mackintosh says that he is 'a chaste
and simple writer, who imbibed the opinions, with
out the literary faults of his master, Shaftesbury. He
has a charm of expression, and fulness of illustration,
which are wanting in Butler'2 Yet his writings fail
entirely to suggest that gift of expression which, by
general consent, was characteristic of his oral teaching ;
and if, as Leslie Stephen says, * in striking contrast to
Butler, he is smooth, voluble, and discursive,' yet ' the
even flow of his eloquence is apt to become soporific.' 3

1 Lucas Collins, Butler, in ' Philosophical Classics,' p. 78.

2 Dissertation, p. 204.

3 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 57.

190 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Shaftesbury, on the other hand, is no less concerned
about the form than about the substance of his
philosophical work. Of all things he abhors what he
calls the ' pedantry ' and ' scholasticism ' of the average
and professional philosopher ; in place of this he strives
after 'wit' and 'good humour.' An enemy of 'en
thusiasm,' he cultivates the art of satire or ' ridicule,'
which he regards as the touchstone of truth. Deeply im
bued with the classical philosophy, he attempts to revive
the dialogue as a form of philosophical discussion. The
result, however, is by no means entirely successful. His
writing strikes the modern reader as too conscious, and
not without a pedantry of its own. It is not only diffuse,
reiterative, and unmethodical, but, as Fowler says, ' stilted,'
marked by ' affectation ' and ' a falsetto note.' Charles
Lamb describes his style as 'lordly' and 'inflated' : 'he
seems to have written with his coronet on, and his earl's
mantle before him.' Leslie Stephen speaks not unjustly of
' Shaftesbury's rather turbid eloquence ?1 and Mackintosh
happily characterises the long and ambitious dialogue, The
Moralists^ as ' a modern antique.' 2 When compared not
only with the dialogues of Plato, after which it was
modelled, but with those of Berkeley, this work is felt
to be almost entirely lacking in characterisation and
dramatic movement.

The new answer to Hobbes finds its key in a new
account of human nature, in a new psychological interpre
tation of the 'naturalness' of virtue. Virtue is the ex
pression of the natural sociability or benevolence of
man, rather than of the universal ' nature of things.'
The psychological method is explicitly substituted for
the rationalistic method of the earlier opponents of Hobbes.
Shaftesbury, no less clearly than Butler, finds the clue
to the nature of virtue in the ' economy ' or ' constitution '
of human nature. It is not merely that in that nature

1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 57.

2 Dissertation, p. 162.

THE MORALISTS 191

there are social as well as self-regarding impulses or
affections, but that the system of human nature as a
whole points to the subordination of the self-regarding
to the social affections as the essential feature of the
' natural ' or virtuous life, because the means to the good
of man, constituted as he is and placed in a network of
relations to his fellow-men. < The parts and proportions of
the mind, their mutual relation and dependency, the con
nexion and frame of those passions which constitute the
soul or temper, may easily be understood by any one who
thinks it worth his while to study this inward anatomy.'1

It is because man is a rational being, 4 capable of form
ing general notions of things,' that he has the capacity
not merely of ' goodness,' but of * virtue ' or * merit.' He
can form such general notions of actions and affections,
as well as of objects, 'so that, by means of this reflected
sense, there arises another kind of affection towards those
very affections themselves which have been already felt,
and are now become the subject of a new liking or
dislike.' 2 This < moral sense ' apprehends the beauty or
deformity, the proportion or disproportion, of actions and
affections. ' It feels the soft and harsh, the agreeable and
disagreeable, in the affections ; and finds a foul and fair,
a harmonious and a dissonant, as really and truly here, as
in any musical numbers, or in the outward forms or
epresentations of sensible things. Nor can it withhold
its admiration and extasy, its aversion and scorn, any more
in what relates to one than to the other of these subjects.' 3

The guiding notion or standard of virtue is that of ' a
public interest ' : it is only from the point of view of
social welfare that we discover < the eternal measures, and
immutable independent nature of worth and virtue.' ' To
deserve the name of good or virtuous, a creature must
have all his inclinations and affections, his dispositions of
mind and temper, suitable, and agreeing with the good of
his kind, or of that system in which he is included, and
of which he constitutes a part. To stand thus well affected,

1 Characteristics, ii. 83. 2 Ibid., ii. 28. 3 Ibid., ii. 29.

192 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

and to have one's affections right and entire, not only in
respect of one's self, but of society and the public ; this is
rectitude, integrity, or virtue. And to be wanting in any
of these, or to have their contraries, is depravity, corrup
tion, and vice.' * Virtue implies, therefore, the subordina
tion of the self-regarding to the social or public affections.
4 There being allowed in a creature such affections as these
towards the common Nature, or System of the Kind, to
gether with those other which regard the private Nature,
or Self-system ; it will appear that in following the first of
these affections, the creature must on many occasions,
contradict and go against the latter. How else should
the species be preserved ? ' 2 Truly understood, however,
virtue consists rather in the harmony of the self-regarding
with the social affections than in the triumph of the latter
over the former. The lesser whole of the individual's
own good is included in the larger whole or system of the
social good. The ' Self-affections, which lead only to the
Good of the Private,' are no less natural than those which
c lead to the Good of the Public.' From both alike
Shaftesbury distinguishes the ' unnatural affections,' which
tend neither to public nor to private good. The vicious-
ness of the natural affections consists in their excessive or
defective strength ; and he recognises that 'as in particular
cases, public affection, on the one hand, may be too high ;
so private affection may, on the other hand, be too weak.
For if a creature be self-neglectful, and insensible of
danger ; or if he want such a degree of passion in any
kind, as is useful to preserve, sustain, or defend himself ;
this must certainly be esteemed vicious, in regard of the
design and end of nature.'3 c There are two things
which to a rational creature must be horridly offensive
and grievous ; viz. " To have the reflection in his mind
of any unjust action or behaviour, which he knows to be
naturally odious and ill-deserving : or, of any foolish
action or behaviour, which he knows to be prejudicial
to his own interest or happiness.'"4 Here we have the

1 Characteristics, ii. 77. 2 Ibid., ii. 78.

3 Ibid., ii. 89. 4 Ibid., ii. 119.

THE MORALISTS 193

same distinction as that subsequently drawn by Butler
between conscience and self-love ; and Shaftesbury adds,
' The former of these is alone properly called Conscience ;
whether in a moral, or religious sense.'

Shaftesbury's great objection to the theological ethics of
Locke and of popular opinion is that it destroys, with the
disinterestedness, the reality of virtue. Action inspired
by the motive of reward or punishment is, because self-
interested, not truly virtuous. Not until a man ' is come
to have any affection towards what is morally good, and
can like or affect such good for its own sake^ as good and
amiable in itself J can he rightly be called ' good and
virtuous.'1 The appeal to self-interest by rewards and
punishments may be a means of moral education used
by God, as it is used by parents and guardians and
by the State ; but its aim must be to educate us to the
disinterested love of virtue and of supreme Goodness.
Similarly, to make virtue dependent upon the will of
God is to destroy the very idea of virtue, and to make
the inference to supreme Goodness impossible. < For
how can Supreme Goodness be intelligible to those who
know not what Goodness itself is ? Or how can virtue
be understood to deserve reward, when as yet its merit
and excellence are unknown ? We begin surely at the
wrong end, when we would prove merit by favour,
and order by a Deity.' 2 The alternative between a
theological and an independent theory of ethics is, he
holds, the alternative between ethical nominalism and
realism. Shaftesbury's own view is that virtue is * really
something in itself and in the nature of things : not
arbitrary or factitious . . . constituted from without, or
dependent on custom, fancy, or will : not even on the
Supreme Will itself, which can no way govern it : but
being necessarily good, is governed by it, and ever uniform
with it.' 3

On the other hand, Shaftesbury finds it necessary, in
order to account for the ' obligation ' to virtue or the

1 Characteristics, ii. 66. 2 Ibid., ii. 267. 3 Loc. cit.

N

194 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

1 reason to embrace it,' to maintain the complete coinci
dence between virtue and self-interest, or that c to be well
affected towards the Public Interest and one's own, is not
only consistent, but inseparable : and that Moral Recti
tude, or Virtue, must accordingly be the advantage, and
Vice the injury and disadvantage of every creature/1
He argues c (i.) That to have the natural, kindly, or
generous affections strong and powerful towards the good
of the public, is to have the chief means and power of
self-enjoyment, and that to want them, is certain misery
and ill ; (ii.) That to have the private or self-affections
too strong, or beyond their degree of subordinacy to the
kindly and natural, is also miserable ; (iii.) That to have
the unnatural affections ... is to be miserable in the
highest degree.'2 It is impossible to read his im
pressive and subtle argument without feeling how much
Butler must have been indebted to Shaftesbury in his
better-known plea for the superior wisdom of a rational
self-love to that excessive preoccupation with our own
interest to which a blind selfishness would prompt us,
if not also in his theory of the objective or disinterested
character of desire.

In spite of his insistence upon the harmony of virtue
and self-interest, or of the self-regarding with the social
affections, Shaftesbury is convinced that the good is not
pleasure. < When Will and Pleasure are synonymous ;
when everything which pleases us is called pleasure, and
we never chuse or prefer but as we please, 'tis trifling to
say, " Pleasure is our Good." For this has as little meaning
as to say, " We chuse what we think eligible " ; and, " We
are pleased with what delights or pleases us." The ques
tion is, Whether we are rightly pleased, and chuse as
we should do.'3 The good is not mere satisfaction or
pleasure, but that which satisfies man as man. Shaftes
bury clearly states the alternative between a subjective or
hedonistic and an objective or idealistic interpretation of
Good. < Either that is every man's good which he fancies,

1 Characteristics, ii. Si. 2 Ibid., ii. 98. 3 Ibid.t ii. 226, 227. "!

THE MORALISTS 195

and because he fancies it, and is not content without it :
or otherwise, there is that in which the nature of man is
satisfied ; and which alone must be his good. If that in
which the nature of man is satisfied, and can rest con
tented, be alone his good ; then he is a fool who follows
that with earnestness, as his good, which a man can be
without, and yet be satisfied and contented.' *

Hutcheson, while in essential agreement with Shaftes-
bury, differs from him in the prominence assigned to the
' moral sense ' and in the emphasis placed upon benevolence
as the sum of virtue. ' His principal design,' he tell us in
the Preface to the < Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas
of Beauty and Virtue,' ' is to show that Human Nature was
not left indifferent in the affair of Virtue, to form to itself
observations concerning the advantage, or disadvantage, of
actions, and accordingly to regulate its conduct. . . . The
Author of Nature has much better furnished us for a
virtuous conduct, than our moralists seem to imagine, by
almost as quick and powerful instructions, as we have for
the preservation of our bodies. He has given us strong
affections to be the springs of each virtuous action ; and
made Virtue a lovely Form, that we might easily distin
guish it from its contrary, and be made happy by the
pursuit of it.' We have a ' moral sense of beauty in
actions and affections,' c a relish for a beauty in character,
in manners.' The aesthetic aspect of morality, already
prominent in Shaftesbury's theory, becomes therefore
still more prominent in that of Hutcheson, who is specially
concerned to show that virtue is not ' austere and ungainly,'
but beautiful and attractive. Shaftesbury had emphasised
the rationality, as well as the beauty of virtue ; for
Hutcheson its quality is purely aesthetic. While he
carefully distinguishes the doctrine of the ' moral sense '
from that of ' innate ideas,' the former being simply that
we have a natural susceptibility to moral distinctions which
is developed and educated by moral experience, he finds

1 Characteristics, ii. 436.

196 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

in this susceptibility the great evidence of the natural
ness of virtue, as answering to ' the very frame of our
nature.'

Hutcheson is not satisfied with the affirmation of the
disinterestedness of the ' moral sense,' or approval of virtue
and disapproval of vice. He maintains that the content
of virtue is benevolence, or regard for the general happi
ness. * If we examine all the actions which are counted
amiable anywhere, and inquire into the grounds upon
which they are approved, we shall find that in the opinion
of the person who approves them, they always appear as
benevolent, or flowing from good-will to others, and a
study of their happiness.' 1 As ' that action is best which
procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers,' 2
so is that agent most virtuous the purity of whose in
tention to minister to the greatest general happiness is
least corrupted by thoughts of self-seeking.

It would seem to follow that the life of ideal virtue ex
cludes regard for our own good or happiness. Hutcheson
holds, however, that actions proceeding from self-love are
strictly of neutral moral quality, innocent rather than
vicious. 'The actions which flow solely from self-love,
and yet evidence no want of benevolence, having no hurt
ful effects upon others, seem perfectly indifferent in a
moral sense, and neither raise the love or hatred of the
observer.' 3 They belong to the sphere of natural,
rather than to that of moral good. But the one sphere
may easily overlap the other, and natural good may
become moral. ' He who pursues his own private good
with an intention also to concur with that constitution
which tends to the good of the whole ; and much more
he who promotes his own good, with a direct view of
making himself more capable of serving God, or doing
good to mankind, acts not only innocently, but also
honourably and virtuously : for in both these cases bene
volence concurs with self-love to excite him to the
action. And thus a neglect of our own good may be

1 Inquiry, p. 166. 2 Ibid., p. 181. s Ibid., p. 175.

THE MORALISTS 197

morally evil, and argue a want of benevolence toward
the whole.' L Nay, he goes on to argue, self-love, as such,
may be interpreted as, in the last analysis, a form of
benevolence. Since 'every moral agent justly considers
himself as a part of this rational system which may be
useful to the whole, ... he may be, in part, an object of
his own benevolence. ... A man surely of the strongest
benevolence may justly treat himself as he would do a
third person, who was a competitor of equal merit with
the other ; and as his preferring one to another, in such a
case, would argue no weakness of benevolence, so, no more
would he evidence it by preferring himself to a man of
only equal abilities.' 2 He also follows Shaftesbury in
maintaining the coincidence of benevolence with a wise
self-love ('universal benevolence tends to the happi
ness of the benevolent'), and distinguishes 'calm self-
love ' from * particular passions,' and ' calm good-will '
or benevolence from * passionate love.'

While Butler is concerned, like Shaftesbury and Hutche-
son, to vindicate the ' naturalness' of benevolent or altru
istic conduct, he is led by the undue emphasis placed by
Hutcheson upon benevolence as the sum of virtue to insist,
with Shaftesbury, upon theclaimsof self-love as an element in
the life of complete virtue. His Sermons were first published
in the year after the publication of Hutcheson's Inquiry,
but had been written during the preceding eight years.
In the Dissertation, ' Of the Nature of Virtue,' appended
to the Analogy, published in 1736, he explicitly repudiates
the doctrine, held by 'some of great and distinguished
merit,' that ' the whole of virtue consists in singly aiming,
according to the best of their judgment, at promoting the
happiness of mankind in the present state ; and the whole
of vice, in doing what they foresee, or might foresee, is
likely to produce an overbalance of unhappiness in it ;
than which mistakes, none can be conceived more terrible.
For it is certain that some of the most shocking instances

1 Inquiry, p. 176. 2 Ibid., pp. 177-8.

198 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

of injustice, adultery, murder, perjury, and even of persecu
tion, may, in many supposable cases, not have the appear
ance of being likely to produce an overbalance of misery
in the present state ; perhaps sometimes may have the
contrary appearance. . . . The happiness of the world is
the concern of Him, Who is the Lord and the Proprietor
of it : nor do we know what we are about, when we
endeavour to promote the good of mankind in any ways,
but those which He has directed ; that is indeed in all
ways not contrary to veracity and justice. . . . And
though it is our business and our duty to endeavour,
within the bounds of veracity and justice, to contribute to
the ease, convenience, and even cheerfulness and diversion
of our fellow-creatures ; yet, from our short views, it is
greatly uncertain, whether this endeavour will in particular
instances produce an overbalance of happiness upon the
whole ; since so many and distant things must come into
the account.'

In place of such a utilitarian estimate of virtue Butler
affirms an intuitional theory. * The fact appears to be,
that we are constituted so as to condemn falsehood, un
provoked violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence
to some preferably to others, abstracted from all considera
tion, which conduct is likeliest to produce an overbalance
of happiness or misery.' Virtue, thus understood, includes
benevolence, but is not synonymous with it. In the
Preface to the second edition of the Sennons, published
in 1729, four years after the appearance of Hutcheson's
Inquiry, he says : ' Everything is what it is, and not
another thing. The goodness or badness of actions does
not arise from hence, that the epithet, interested or dis
interested, may be applied to them, any more than any
other indifferent epithet, suppose inquisitive or jealous,
may or may not be applied to them ; not from their
being attended with present or future pleasure or pain ;
but from their being what they are ; namely, what
becomes such creatures as we are, what the state of the
case requires, or the contrary. Or, in other words,
we may judge and determine, that an action is good or

THE MORALISTS 199

evil, before we so much as consider, whether it be in
terested or disinterested.' 1

Butler is not content with the denial of the identity
of benevolence and virtue ; he insists upon the equal
claims of self-love or self-interest as a principle of virtuous
action. 'Self-love in its due degree is as just and morally
good as any affection whatever.' 2 The cause of vice is
to be sought rather in the undue strength of ' the par
ticular passions' than in self-love. 'Upon the whole,
if the generality of mankind were to cultivate within
themselves the principle of self-love ; if they were to
accustom themselves often to set down and consider what
was the greatest happiness they were capable of attaining
for themselves in this life, and if self-love were so strong
and prevalent, as that they would uniformly pursue this
their supposed chief temporal good, without being diverted
from it by any particular passion, it would manifestly pre
vent numberless follies and vices. This was in a great
measure the Epicurean system of philosophy. It is indeed
by no means the religious or even moral institution of
life. Yet, with all the mistakes men would fall into
about interest, it would be less mischievous than the
extravagances of mere appetite, will, and pleasure ; for
certainly self-love, though confined to the interest of this
life, is, of the two, a much better guide than passion,
which has absolutely no bound or measure, but what is
set to it by this self-love, or moral considerations.' 3
Again, in the Dissertation, he says: 'It should seem
that a due concern about our own interest or happiness,
and a reasonable endeavour to secure and promote it,
which is, I think, very much the meaning of the word
prudence, in our language ; it should seem that this is
virtue, and the contrary behaviour faulty and blamable ;
since, in the calmest way of reflection, we approve of
the first, and condemn the other conduct, both in our
selves and others.' Hence he concludes that 'prudence
is a species of virtue, and folly of vice : meaning by folly

1 Sermons, Preface, sect. 39 (Bernard's ed.). 2 Loc. tit.

3 Sermons, Preface, sects. 39-41.

200 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

somewhat quite different from mere incapacity, a thought
less want of that regard and attention to our own happi
ness, which we had capacity for.' < The faculty within
us, which is the judge of actions, approves of prudent
actions, and disapproves imprudent ones.'

Self-love and benevolence, then, or the consideration
of our own happiness and that of others, as such, are
for Butler two equally rational principles of action, whose
office is to regulate the particular passions and affections.
< As human nature is not one simple uniform thing, but a
composition of various parts, body, spirit, appetites, par
ticular passions, and affections ; for each of which reason
able self-love would lead men to have due regard, and
make suitable provision : so society consists of various
parts, to which we stand in different respects and rela
tions ; and just benevolence would as surely lead us to
have due regard to each of these, and behave as the
respective relations require.' 1 Action in accordance with
these principles is natural in another sense than that in
which action in accordance with a particular appetite or
affection is natural : it is action in accordance with the
constitution of human nature as a whole, not merely
in accordance with present impulse. In the case of
benevolence, as well as in that of self-love, it is necessary
to distinguish the rational from the * passionate ' principle.
' When benevolence is said to be the sum of virtue, it
is not spoken of as a blind propension, but as a principle
in reasonable creatures, and so to be directed by their
reason : for reason and reflection comes into our notion
of a moral agent And that will lead us to consider dis
tant consequences, as well as the immediate tendency of
an action : it will teach us that the care of some persons,
suppose children and families, is particularly committed to
our charge by Nature and Providence ; as also that there
are other circumstances, suppose friendship or former obliga
tions, which require that we do good to some, preferably
to others. . . . Thus, upon supposition that it were in

1 Sermon xii. sect. 29.

THE MORALISTS 201

the strictest sense true, without limitation, that benevo
lence includes in it all virtues ; yet reason must come in
as its guide and director, in order to attain its own end,
the end of benevolence, the greatest public good.'1

It is in the ability to guide his conduct, not merely by
' instincts and propensions,' but by reflection upon the
results of following such natural impulses, that Butler sees
the distinctive element in human nature. The natural
impulse rests in its object as an end or good ; reflective
self-love and benevolence regard the objects of natural
impulse as means to the good or happiness of the indi
vidual and of other individuals respectively. Self-loving
and benevolent actions are, therefore, species of virtue,
as conduct determined by impulse, and contrary to these
principles, is a species of vice. These principles are
however, only two species of the genus virtue. The
principle of virtuous conduct, as such, is conscience, which
considers not the consequences of actions, but their ap
propriateness or inappropriateness to human nature as a
constitution or economy. It checks and limits the autho
rity of self-love and benevolence by considerations peculiar
to itself, considerations not of happiness or misery, but of
right and wrong. ' Let any plain honest man, before he
engages in any course of action, ask himself : Is this I am
going about right, or is it wrong ? Is it good, or is it
evil ? I do not in the least doubt, but that this question
would be answered agreeably to truth and virtue, by
almost any fair man in almost any circumstances.' 2

The aesthetic and emotional element in the 'moral sense '
of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson entirely disappears ; con
science is for Butler a purely rational principle. The ques
tion of obligation is also for the first time answered without
hesitation in purely rational terms. * Allowing that man
kind hath the rule of right within himself, yet it may be
asked, " What obligations are we under to attend and
follow it ? " I answer : it has been proved that man by
his nature is a law to himself, without the particular

1 Sermon xii. sect. 27. 2 Sermon iii. sect. 4.

202 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

distinct consideration of the positive sanctions of that
law ; the rewards and punishments which we feel, and
those which from the light of reason we have ground to
believe are annexed to it. The question then carries its
own answer along with it. Your obligation to obey this
law, is its being the law of your nature. That your
conscience approves of and attests to such a course of
action, is itself alone an obligation. Conscience does
not only offer itself to show us the way we should walk
in, but it likewise carries its own authority with it, that
it is our natural guide ; the guide assigned us by the
Author of our nature : it therefore belongs to our con
dition of being, it is our duty to walk in that path, and
follow this guide, without looking about to see whether
we may not possibly forsake them with impunity.'1 It
is here that Butler finds the theory of Shaftesbury inade
quate : that writer has failed to follow out the implication
of his own view that virtue is determined by the con
stitution of human nature. ' The very constitution of
our nature requires, that we bring our whole conduct
before this superior faculty ; wait its determination ;
enforce upon ourselves its authority, and make it the
business of our lives, as it is absolutely the whole business
of a moral agent, to conform ourselves to it.' 2 Even if
the obligations of conscience should conflict with those
of self-love, the latter must yield unquestioningly to
the former. We are not, in such a case, c under two
contrary obligations, i.e. under none at all.' ' The obliga
tion on the side of interest really does not remain. For
the natural authority of the principle of reflection is an
obligation the most near and intimate, the most certain
and known ; whereas the contrary obligation can at the
utmost appear no more than probable ; since no man can
be certain in any circumstances that vice is his interest in
the present world, much less can he be certain against
another ; and thus the certain obligation would entirely
supersede and destroy the uncertain one.' c The greatest

1 Sermon iii. sect. 5. 2 Sermons, Preface, sect. 25.

THE MORALISTS 203

degree of scepticism . . . will still leave men under the
strictest moral obligations, whatever their opinion be con
cerning the happiness of virtue.' l

Yet Butler finds it necessary to affirm 'the happy
tendency of virtue.' He is especially anxious to show the
complete coincidence of benevolence and self-love : that
* though benevolence and self-love are different ; though
the former tends most directly to public good, and the
latter to private, yet they are so perfectly coincident, that
the greatest satisfactions to ourselves depend upon our
having benevolence in a due degree ; and that self-love is
one chief security of our right behaviour towards society.' 2
His chief contribution here lies in his demonstration of
the disinterested character of all desire, directed as it is,
not to our own pleasure or satisfaction, but to the
attainment of its own appropriate object. Otherwise he
does little more than repeat the arguments of Shaftes-
bury and Hutcheson about the happiness of benevolent,
as compared with that of self-seeking, activity. It is to be
remembered that Butler's aim in thus seeking to reconcile
benevolence, and virtue generally, with the apparently
opposing claims of self-interest, as well as in emphasising
the principle of self-love, is, as he himself says, ' to obviate
that scorn which one sees rising upon the faces of people
who are said to know the world, when mention is made
of a disinterested, generous or public-spirited action.'3
Butler's purpose in the Sermons was rather practical than
purely theoretical; and in his case as in others, 'the
doctrine of moral consequences was had recourse to by
the divines and moralists as the most likely remedy of
the prevailing licentiousness.' 4

The coincidence of virtue and happiness, the harmony
of conscience and self-love, is however, at best, uncertain,
so far as the present world is concerned. ' It must be
owned a thing of difficulty to weigh and balance pleasures
and uneasinesses, each amongst themselves, and also
against each other, so as to make an estimate with any

1 Sermons, Pref., sects. 26, 27. 2 Sermon i. sect. 6.

3 Sermons, Pref., sect. 38. 4 Mark Pattison, Essays, ii. 114.

204 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

exactness, of the overplus of happiness on the side of
virtue. And it is not impossible that, amidst the infinite
disorders of the world, there may be exceptions to the
happiness of virtue.' 1 ' Virtue, to borrow the Christian
allusion, is militant here ; and various untoward accidents
contribute to its being often overborne : but it may
combat with greater advantage hereafter, and prevail
completely, and enjoy its consequent rewards, in some
future states.' 2 Nay, it follows from the moral per
fection of God < that virtue must be the happiness, and
vice the misery, of every creature ; and that regularity
and order and right cannot but prevail finally in a
universe under His government.' 3 As against the super
ficial optimism of the deists, and more especially of Shaftes-
bury, Butler emphasises the ' difficulties ' which beset
our interpretation of the moral order, and insists that,
since the system of nature is to be traced to the same
Author as the system of religion, natural and revealed,
the same kind of difficulties are to be expected in
the latter as in the former sphere. The exhibition of
this ' analogy ' is the aim of his great apology for the
Christian faith. The defence rests upon the inevitable
limitations of human knowledge, which imply that such
' difficulties ' must always exist for us. His aim is not to
prove the rationality of Christianity or its certain truth,
but merely its credibility, its probability.

Probability, not certainty, he maintains, is the guide
of human life. He recalls to a dogmatic and rationalistic
age Locke's lesson of the deficiency of man's knowledge
and of the indispensable part which i opinion,' more or less
probable, must play in the life of such a being as man.
' Probable evidence, in its very nature, affords but an
imperfect kind of information ; and is to be considered
as relative only to beings of limited capacities. For
nothing which is the possible object of knowledge, whether
past, present, or future, can be probable to an infinite
Intelligence ; since it cannot but be discerned absolutely

1 Analogy, pt. i. ch. iii. sect. 5 (Bernard).

2 Ibid., pt. i. ch. iii. sect. 20.

3 Ibid., Introd., sect. 10.

THE MORALISTS 205

as it is in itself, certainly true, or certainly false. But to
Us, probability is the very guide of life.' l

The characteristic lesson of the Baconian and the
Lockian philosophy, that of the dependence of knowledge
upon experience, is reasserted by Butler, in opposition
to the rationalism of his own age. < Forming our notions
of the constitution and government of the world upon
reasoning, without foundation for the principles which
we assume, whether from the attributes of God, or any
thing else, is building a world upon hypothesis like Des
Cartes. . . . But it must be allowed just, to join abstract
reasonings with the observation of facts, and argue from
such facts as are known, to others that are like them ;
from that part of the Divine government over intelligent
creatures which comes under our view, to that larger and
more general government over them which is beyond it ;
and from what is present, to collect what is likely, credible,
or not incredible, will be hereafter.'2 His final objection
to a priori argumentation is that ' we have not faculties
for this kind of speculation.' 3 Human reason is not
tainted with any incurable weakness. We must beware
of ' vilifying the faculty of reason which is " the candle
of the Lord within us," though it can afford no light
where it does not shine ; nor judge, when it has no
principles to judge upon.'4 It requires the premises of
fact as a basis for its procedure. We must always start
with 'the known constitution and course of things,'
4 the constitution of nature is as it is ' ; ' things are what
they are, and their consequences will be what they will
be ; ' ( it is fit things be stated and considered as they
really are.' So far as the ability to predict the course
of things, apart from experience, is concerned, our
ignorance is profound. ' Any one thing whatever may,
for ought we know to the contrary, be a necessary con
dition to any other.' 5 ' It is indeed in general no more
than effects, that the most knowing are acquainted with :

1 Analogy, Introd., sect. 3. 2 Ibid., Introd., sect. 7.

3 Ibid., Introd., sect. 10. 4 Ibid., pt. ii., Concl., sect. 2.

5 Ibid.y pt. i. ch. vii. sect. 3.

206 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

for as to causes, they are as entirely in the dark as the
most ignorant. What are the laws by which matter acts
upon matter, but certain effects ; which some, having
observed to be frequently repeated, have reduced to
general rules ? ' l

In such sentences Butler seems to anticipate the
thorough-going empiricism of Hume. But it never
occurs to him to deduce Hume's sceptical conclusion
from the merely empirical character of human knowledge.
The conclusion he draws is rather Locke's than Hume's.
' After all, the same account is to be given, why we were
placed in these circumstances of ignorance, as why nature
has not furnished us with wings ; namely, that we were
designed to be inhabitants of this earth. I am afraid
we think too highly of ourselves ; of our rank in the
creation, and of what is due to us. What sphere of
action, what business is assigned to man, that he has not
capacities and knowledge fully equal to ? ... If to
acquire knowledge were our proper end, we should indeed
be but poorly provided : but if somewhat else be our
business and duty, we may, notwithstanding our ignor
ance, be well enough furnished for it ; and the observation
of our ignorance may be of assistance to us in the dis
charge of it.'2 < Since the constitution of nature, and
the methods and designs of Providence in the government
of the world, are above our comprehension, we should
acquiesce in, and rest satisfied with, our ignorance, turn
our thoughts from that which is above and beyond us, and
apply ourselves to that which is level to our capacities, and
which is our real business and concern. Knowledge is
not our proper happiness.' 3 Like Bacon and Locke,
Butler finds the measure of the value of knowledge in its
practical utility, in its significance for action. ' Men of
deep research and curious inquiry should just be put in
mind, not to mistake what they are doing. If their
discoveries serve the cause of virtue and religion, in the
way of proof, motive to practice, or assistance in it ; or if

1 Sermon xv. sect. 5. 2 Ibid., sect. 10. 3 Ibid., sect. 16.

THE MORALISTS 207

they tend to render life less unhappy, and promote its
satisfactions ; then they are most usefully employed : but
bringing things to light, alone and of itself, is of no
manner of use, any otherwise than as an entertainment or
diversion. Neither is this at all amiss, if it does not take
up the time which should be employed in better work.
But it is evident that there is another mark set up for us
to aim at ; another end appointed us to direct our lives to ;
an end, which the most knowing may fail of, and the most
ignorant arrive at. ... The only knowledge, which is
of any avail to us, is that which teaches us our duty, or
assists us in the discharge of it. ... Our province is virtue
and religion, life and manners ; the science of improving
the temper, and making the heart better. This is the
field assigned us to cultivate. . . . He who should find
out one rule to assist us in this work, would deserve
infinitely better of mankind, than all the improvers of other
knowledge put together.' l

The argument of the Analogy belongs rather to the
province of Christian apologetics than to that of philo
sophy proper. It is concerned, moreover, with a now
antiquated controversy ; as an argumentum ad hominem to
the deists of the eighteenth century, it has lost most of its
interest for us. As Matthew Arnold finely expressed it,
4 It has the effect upon me, as I contemplate it, of a stately
and severe fortress, with thick and high walls, built of old
to control the kingdom of evil ; — but the gates are open,
and the guards gone.' 2 It is unfair and beside the point
to criticise it as a metaphysical argument, and to remark
Butler's ' feebleness in dealing with purely metaphysical
questions.' 3 He never deals with purely metaphysical
questions. It is true that ' he has taken for granted . . .
the answers to the most vital questions of philosophy ' ; 4
but he has done so deliberately, because on these vital
questions of philosophy — the questions of the existence of

1 Sermon xv. sect. 16.

2 Last Essays on Church and Religion ^ p. 140.

3 Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i. 298.

4 Ibid., i. 304.

2o8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

God as not only the Creator but the moral Governor of
the world, the freedom of man as a moral agent, his per
sonality, and the future life of the individual — there was no
difference of opinion between himself and his opponents.
His only difference with them was on the question of
the credibility of a Revelation, and therefore of Christi
anity as a religious system ; and Butler's whole effort is
directed to convince them that, if they are to be con
sistent with the views of God, of nature, and of man which
they share with him, they must admit the credibility of
the Christian Revelation, and therefore the reasonableness
of acting on the hypothesis of its truth.

2. Association and Sympathy as Explanations of the Moral
Sense ; Hartley and Adam Smith

The doctrine of the ultimateness and simplicity of
the 'moral sense,' common to Shaftesbury, Hutcheson,
and Butler, is repudiated by Hartley and Adam Smith,
the former explaining it in terms of Association, the
latter in terms of Sympathy. In the Preface to the
Observations on Man, published in 1749, Hartley ac
knowledges his indebtedness to an earlier writer, the
Rev. John Gay, who, in a ' Dissertation concerning the
Principle and Criterion of Virtue and the Origin of
the Passions,' prefixed to Law's translation of King's
Origin of Evil (1731), had 'asserted the possibility
of deducing all our intellectual pleasures and pains from
association.' 'This put me upon considering the power
of association. . . From enquiring into the power of
association I was led to examine both its consequences,
in respect of morality and religion, and its physical
cause.' Gay's little work is really of great importance
for the doctrines both of Associationism and of Utili
tarianism. The ' moral sense ' and ' public affections,'
to which Hutcheson had so confidently appealed, are
not, he argues, original instincts. To regard them as
such is, he thinks, ' rather cutting the knot than untying
it.' The ultimate end to which both point is ' our

THE MORALISTS 209

private happiness,' and 'whenever this end is not per
ceived, they are to be accounted for from the Association
of Ideas, and may properly enough be called Habits.'
'These approbations and affections are not innate or
implanted in us by way of instinct, but are all acquired,
being fairly deducible from supposing only sensible and
rational creatures dependent on each other for their
happiness.' The association of objects and actions with
the pleasures and pains which result from them not
only accounts for the transposition of ends and means,
as in the case of the love of money, but, as this case
also illustrates, may persist after the ends to which they
minister are forgotten or even abandoned.

Of Hartley, Mackintosh justly observes that < his style
is entitled to no praise but that of clearness, and a
simplicity of diction, through which is visible a singular
simplicity of mind.'1 He has no faculty of illustra
tion, and his work is deformed by an affectation of the
method of geometrical demonstration, reminiscent of the
previous century. Its interest and value are also injured
by its rather clumsy but persistent effort to connect
mental phenomena with the 'vibrations' and * vibrati-
uncles' in the 'medullary substance' of the brain which
form their physical concomitants. The chief influences
to be traced in his thinking are those of Locke and
Newton ; and it is rather the ideal of the Newtonian
physics than than of the Lockian psychology that is
decisive. While he seeks, under the influence of Locke,
to reduce the complexity of the mental life to its origin
in sensation, holding that ' reflection is not a distinct
source, as Mr. Locke makes it,' 2 he also ' seeks to do
for human nature what Newton did for the solar system.
Association is for man what gravitation is for the
planets.'3 At the same time, it is clear that he 'was
hardly alive to the tendency of his own method.' 4
That tendency clearly is in the direction of the materialism

1 Dissertation, p. 253. 2 Observations, i. 360.

3 Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 66.

* Ibid., i. 68.

210 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

to which it was reduced by Priestley and Erasmus
Darwin. It is perhaps not going too far to say, with
Stephen, that * his system clearly renders a soul a super
fluity, if not an anomaly,' that 'the will, the thoughts,
and the emotions, not only result from, but, as it would
seem, are "vibratiuncles" ' ; 1 and while he insists upon
the disparateness of the psychical and the physical
phenomena, he frankly accepts, as the logical consequence
of * the doctrines of association and mechanism,' the
necessity of human actions, the argument for which has
never been better stated. But it is impossible to reconcile
his undiscriminating acceptance of theological dogma with
his scientific method ; he is truly described by his son,2
as ' a partizan for the Christian religion.'

It is not in the statement of the principle of Associa
tion, but in its application, that the chief interest of
Hartley's treatment of the subject lies. So far as the
principle itself is concerned, his view of it practically antici
pates the view of present psychology, reducing association
to the single principle of contiguity, or the tendency of
ideas which have occurred together, or in immediate suc
cession, to recur together or to recall one another It is in
the application of this principle to the entire mental life,
and especially to the feelings and to the ' moral sense,' that
his originality consists. In the use of it as explaining the
genesis of conscience, moreover, he recognises two truths
of the greatest significance : first, that the product of the
association of old ideas may be an idea quite new, in the
sense of being different from the mere sum of its com
ponent factors ; secondly, that c that which is prior in the
order of nature is always less perfect and principal than
that which is posterior.' His aim, accordingly, is to
trace the gradual evolution of the higher pleasures out of
the lower, of the later out of the earlier — the progress
from the pleasures of sensation and self-interest to those
of ' perfect self-annihilation and the pure love of God.'

1 Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century ', ii. 65.

2 In the Life prefixed to the 'Notes and Additions' by Pistorius,
which forms the third volume of the Observations.

THE MORALISTS 211

* And thus we may perceive, that all the pleasures and
pains of sensation, imagination, ambition, self-interest,
sympathy, and theopathy, as far as they are consistent
with one another, with the frame of our natures, and
with the course of the world, beget in us a moral sense,
and lead us to the love and approbation of virtue, and to
the fear, hatred, and abhorrence of vice. This moral
sense, therefore, carries its own authority with it, inasmuch
as it is the sum total of all the rest, and the ultimate result
from them ; and employs the force and authority of the
whole nature of man against any particular part of it,
that rebels against the determinations and commands of
the conscience or moral judgment. It appears also that
the moral sense carries us perpetually to the pure love of
God, as our highest and ultimate perfection, our end,
centre, and only resting-place, to which we can never
attain.' l Yet he holds that < the love of God affords a
pleasure which is superior in kind and degree to all the
rest, of which our natures are capable,' 2 and that this
follows from 'the frame of our nature, and particularly
its subjection to the power of association ' or the tendency
' to connect God with each [pleasure] as its sole cause.' 3

In the ethical psychology of Hartley, as well as in that
of Hutcheson and of Hume, sympathy occupied a place of
much importance, but the point of view was still essen
tially individualistic. It was left to Adam Smith to at
tempt for the first time the explanation of the individual
conscience from the social point of view, and to make
sympathy the central principle of ethical psychology.
This account of the place of sympathy in the moral con
sciousness is offered as a substitute at once for the view of
Hutcheson, that the moral sense is an original and simple
faculty, and for the view of Hume, that utility, as such, is
morally approved. While admitting the general coinci
dence of propriety with utility, Smith distinguishes the
' sense of propriety ' from 4 the perception of utility,' but

1 Observations, i. 497. - Ibid., ii. 311. 3 Ibid., ii. 313.

212 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

insists, at the same time, that the sense of propriety is
always, in its origin, and potentially if not actually, a
sympathetic sense. It is in its emphasis on the social
aspect of conscience, and in its careful analysis of the
ethical function of sympathy, that the originality of the
Theory of Moral Sentiments consists.

To approve or disapprove of the affections of others,
that is, to judge of their propriety or impropriety, is to
sympathise or not to sympathise with these affections.
The effort of the spectator to sympathise with the senti
ments of the person principally concerned is the source of
4 the amiable virtues ' or c virtues of humanity ' ; the effort
of the person principally concerned to ' bring down his
emotions to what the spectator can go along with,' is the
source of ' the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues
of self-denial, of self-government.' i Hence it is that to
feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain
our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, con
stitutes the perfection of human nature.' x While the
sense of propriety is the result of a simple and direct
sympathy with the affections or motives of others, the
sense of merit and demerit is the result of a compound
sympathy, direct and indirect : in the one case, a direct
sympathy with the sentiments of the agent and an in
direct sympathy with the gratitude of those affected by
his action ; in the other, a direct antipathy to the senti
ments of the agent and an indirect sympathy with the
resentment of those who suffer from his action.

As we judge of the propriety and merit of the actions
of others by putting ourselves in their place and looking
at their motives and actions with their own eyes or from
their own point of view, by sympathetically identifying
ourselves with the agent and with those affected by his
actions, so we judge the propriety and merit of our own
actions, and of the affections of which they are the
expression, by looking at them with the eyes of others, by
seeing them with the eyes of the spectator, and sharing

1 Theory of Moral Sentiments^ pp. 43, 44.

THE MORALISTS 213

his sentiments concerning them. To correct the par
tiality of our own judgment it is necessary, however? that
we look at our own actions with the eyes not of the
actual spectator, who is always more or less partial and
more or less ill-informed, but with the eyes of the fully-
informed and completely impartial spectator. It is only
by thus distinguishing between the actual and the ideal
spectator, or ' the outward man ' and i the man within the
breast,' that we can distinguish between mere praise and
praiseworthiness. When we have realised this distinction,
' we are pleased to think that we have rendered ourselves
the natural objects of approbation, though no approbation
should ever actually be bestowed upon us ; and we are
mortified to reflect that we have justly incurred the blame
of those we live with, though that sentiment should
never actually be exerted against us.' 1 The judgments of
actual public opinion require to be thus corrected by
reference to the judgment of the ideal public or the ideal
spectator. For though society is the mirror in which we
first discover the propriety and merit, or impropriety and
demerit of our own actions, 'unfortunately this moral
looking-glass is not always a very good one.' In general,
Smith seems to hold, conformity to duty will mean
conformity to the ' general rules ' which result from the
perception of the particular proprieties, in so far as such
general rules are sufficiently definite for guidance. But it
is only the rules of justice that are really adequate. 'The
rules of justice may be compared to the rules of grammar ;
the rules of the other virtues, to the rules which critics
lay down for the attainment of what is sublime and
elegant in composition. The one are precise, accurate,
and indispensable. The other are loose, vague, and in
determinate, and present us rather with a general idea of
the perfection we ought to aim at, than afford us any
certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.'2

This theory is primarily and in the main a psycho
logical theory of the moral sentiments, rather than a

1 Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 248. 2 Ibid., p. 310.

2i4 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

solution of the proper problem of ethics, that of the
criterion of moral value or of the basis of moral dis
tinctions. It is the culmination of the psychological
tendency which is characteristic of the ' moral sense '
school of moralists ; and the author's own consciousness
of this limitation of the inquiry comes out in various
ways. For example, as regards utility, the question
which he discusses is not the relation of utility to pro
priety, but whether we are conscious of the utility or of
the propriety ; not whether the true aim of punishment is
the preservation of society, but whether this, or resent
ment, is the actual motive of punishment. He is not
attempting to account for, or to explain, the moral element
in our moral sentiments by reducing it to sympathy.
Hence the irrelevancy of the objection of Thomas
Brown, repeated by others, that 'the feelings with which
we sympathise are themselves moral feelings or senti
ments ; or if they are not moral feelings, the reflection of
them from a thousand breasts cannot alter their nature ' ; 1
and that c in either case it is equally evident, that sympathy
cannot be the source of any additional knowledge,'2 since
the echo of our own feelings in those of others can
only repeat the original feeling, — the l moral mirror ' can
only reflect the original moral judgment of the individual.
Smith himself does not hesitate to speak of ' natural pro
priety,' of i our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit
and propriety.' 3 What he is concerned to show is simply
the part which sympathy plays in the moral consciousness
of the individual, the essentially social nature of the
individual conscience ; that without society we could not
attain moral insight, not that moral insight is possible
without moral faculties, or even a ' moral sense.'

The only direct ethical significance of the theory is,
therefore, the essentially social nature of morality, the
inference that * man, who can subsist only in society,
was fitted by nature to that situation for which he was
made,'4 that in sympathy is found the real security for

1 Philosophy of the Human Mind, lect. 80. 2 Ibid., lect. 81.

3 Theory of Moral Sentiment s> p. 266. 4 Ibid., p. 188.

THE MORALISTS 215

the stability of * the great, the immense fabric of human
society, that fabric which to raise and to support seems
in this world, if I may say so, to have been the pecu
liar and darling care of nature.' * In the Theory of
Moral Sentiments, as in the Wealth of Nations, he recog
nises another bond, of great strength and value, in the
economic interests of the individual. < Tho' among the
different members of the society there should be no
mutual love and affection, the society, tho' less happy
and agreeable, will not necessarily be dissolved. Society
may subsist among different men, as among different
merchants, from a sense of its utility, without any mutual
love or affection ; and tho' no man in it should owe
any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other,
it may still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good
offices according to an agreed valuation.'2 This pruden
tial motive, however, is here assigned its true ethical
place, in subordination to the sympathetic appreciation
of the social value of our conduct. The ethical function
of sympathy is to substitute for the partiality of the
agent's self-love the impartiality of the spectator, that
is, of society, actual or ideal. The moral validity of our
motives depends, as Kant would say, upon the possibility
of universalising them — upon their approval, not by the
agent, but by the impartial spectator.

It is not to be denied, however, that Smith at
times forgets the limitations of his inquiry, as above
described, and indulges in general ethical observations
which have no real relation to it. Sidgwick has justly
noted the ' inferiority ' of his work ' when he passes from
psychological analysis to ethical construction.'3 This
is seen, for example, in his hasty identification of the
4 general rules' of conduct with the 'laws of God,' and
in his easy-going theological optimism. ' It is impossible,'
says Leslie Stephen, * to resist the impression, whilst we
read his fluent rhetoric, and observe his easy acceptance
of theological principles already exposed by his master

1 Theory of Moral Sentiments ) p. 190. 2 Ibid., p. 189.

3 history of Ethics, p. 223.

2i 6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Hume, that we are not listening to a thinker really
grappling with a difficult problem, so much as to an
ambitious professor who has found an excellent oppor
tunity for displaying his command of language, and
making brilliant lectures. The whole tone savours of
that complacent optimism of the time which retained
theological phrases to round a paragraph, and to save
the trouble of genuine thought.'1 But it is necessary
to remember that these discussions are really subsidiary
to the main argument ; and it shows a singular lack of
discernment to say that ' Smith's main proposition was
hardly original, though he has worked it out in detail, and
it is rather calculated to lead us dexterously round difficult
questions than to supply us with a genuine answer.'2

Smith's < command of language ' must strike every
reader of this work, as well as of the Wealth of Nations.
His style, though perhaps a trifle too fluent, is very
nearly up to the highest level of English philosophy,
and it has been justly remarked that ' the charm of the
Theory of Moral Sentiments lies not so much in its
principal thesis, as in its incidental discussions and illus
trations. In these the absent-minded scholar shows a
wide and subtle knowledge of human nature, and never
was a moralist more free from platitudes.' 3 One of
these illustrations may be quoted to show the quality
of Smith's style at its best, the passage in which he
explains how it is that < youth, the season of gaiety,
so easily engages our affections.' < That propensity to
joy which seems even to animate the bloom, and to
sparkle from the eyes of youth and beauty, tho' in
a person of the same sex, exalts even the aged to a
more joyous mood than ordinary. They forget, for a
time, their infirmities, and abandon themselves to those
agreeable ideas and emotions to which they have long
been strangers, but which, when the presence of so
much happiness recalls them to their breast, take their
place there, like old acquaintance, from whom they are

1 English Thought in tJie Eighteenth Century, ii. 77. 2 Loc, cit.

3 H. Laurie, Scottish Philosophy, p. 122.

THE MORALISTS 217

sorry to have ever been parted, and whom they embrace
more heartily upon account of this long separation."* 1

3. The Early Utilitarians : Tucker and Pa ley

The ethical inadequacy of the psychological or < moral
sense ' theory, even when developed by the aid of the
principles of Association and Sympathy, invited a more
deliberate and explicit effort to solve the problem of the
criterion of moral distinctions, such as we find in the
early Utilitarians, Tucker and Paley. These moralists
attach themselves, not, as might have been expected, to
Hume and his doctrine of natural altruism, but to Gay,
whose doctrine — that the general happiness is the criterion,
while one's own happiness is the motive, of virtuous
action, and that the obligation to right conduct is to be
found in the sanctions of reward and punishment, or in
its consequences to the individual himself — they set them
selves to elaborate. So far as the merit of originality can
be claimed for this development of the ideas so briefly
sketched by Gay, it is to Tucker, not to Paley, that such
merit belongs. In his Principles of Moral and Political
Philosophy Paley merely reduces to more succinct and
systematic form the views developed at wearisome length
and without due regard to system by Tucker, to whom
he frankly acknowledges his indebtedness. * I have found
in this writer,' he says, < more original thinking and
observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in
hand, than in any other, not to say, in all others put
together. . . . But his thoughts are diffused through a
long, various, and irregular work. I shall account it no
mean praise, if I have been sometimes able to dispose into
method, to collect into heads and articles, or to exhibit in
more compact and tangible masses, what, in that other
wise excellent performance, is spread over too much
surface.'2 Tucker himself makes no reference to his
obligations either to Gay or to Hartley, but is pro
fuse in his expressions of allegiance and indebtedness to

1 Theory of Moral Sentiments ; p. 89. 2 Principles, Preface.

2i 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Locke, whose < experimental method ' he professes to
apply to moral questions. t Whatever I may be able
to do, I stand indebted to Mr. Locke for, having learned
from him which way to direct my observation, and how
to make use of what I observe.' x He sets himself to
show that * we derive our inclinations and moral senses
through the same channel as our knowledge, without
having them interwoven originally into our constitution,' 2
and in the doctrine of the < moral sense ' he sees the
ethical version of the doctrine of < innate ideas ' which
Locke had so successfully exploded in its intellectual
applications. Like Hartley, he seeks to account for the
'moral sense' by the principle of Association, which he
calls ' Translation.'

Tucker is equally convinced that the c ultimate good '
is the general happiness, and that the only motive which
can ultimately actuate the individual is regard to his own
happiness. 'The fundamental article I have aimed at
establishing is that of universal charity, unreserved bene
volence or public spirit, not confined to our own country
alone, but extended to every member of the universe,
whereof we all are citizens.' 3 ' The grand funda
mental rule of conduct,' he holds, is that of ' labouring
constantly to increase the common stock [of good or
happiness] by any beneficial service or prevention of
damage among our fellow-creatures wherever we can,
preferring always the greater discoverable good and good
of the greater number, before the less.' 4 On the other
hand he tells us, ' I have examined human nature and
found that Satisfaction, every man's own satisfaction, is
the spring that actuates all his motions.'5 To prove
the obligatoriness of virtuous or altruistic conduct, it is
necessary, therefore, to show the complete coincidence of
such conduct with that dictated by true or enlightened
self-interest.

As to the general coincidence of prudential and virtuous
or benevolent conduct, Tucker has no doubts ; and the

1 Light of Nature Pursued, Introd. 2 Ibid., i. 151 (3rd ed.).

3 Ibid., ii. 677. * Ibid., ii. 670. 5 Ibid., i. 614.

THE MORALISTS 219

solution of the psychological difficulty of reconciling
disinterested or genuine benevolence with self-interest or
that regard for our own satisfaction, or pleasure on the
whole, which he takes to be the dominating motive of
all human action, is found by him in the principle of
4 Translation ' or Association. Through it he is able
to explain how the means acquire for us the importance
of the end, how virtue thus becomes an end in itself
and 'general rules' of conduct take the place of the
' ultimate good/ which is for the individual always his
own happiness. Yet the coincidence remains incom
plete : the highest acts of virtue, where the self-sacrifice
seems absolute, have not been reduced to terms of
prudence. 'We have found no reason to imagine
a wise man would ever die for his country or suffer
martyrdom in the cause of virtue, how strong propensity
soever he might feel in himself to maintain her interests.
For he would never act upon impulse nor do anything
without knowing why : he would cultivate a disposition
to justice, benevolence, and public spirit, because he
would see it must lead him into actions most conducive
to his happiness, and would place such confidence in
his rules as to presume they carried that tendency in
particular instances wherein it did not immediately appear.
But it is one thing not to see directly that measures
have such a tendency, and another to discern clearly
that they have a contrary ; and when they take away
all capacity of further enjoyment, this is so manifest
a proof of their inexpedience as no presumption whatever
can withstand. Therefore he will never let his love
of virtue grow to such an extravagant fondness as to
overthrow the very purposes for which he entertained
it.'1

Tucker thus finds himself forced, for the complete
solution of the ethical problem, beyond the field of ethics
into that of metaphysics or theology. So far, he has
proceeded 'solely upon the view of human nature, with-

1 Light of Nature Pursued, i. 272.

220 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

out any consideration of Religion or another world,*
and in the very incompleteness of the solution reached
from the former point of view he finds the proof of the
necessity of the latter. From the benevolence and equity
of God it follows that < the accounts of all are to be
set even,' or that the shares of all in that happiness
which is the ultimate good shall be made equal in
the long run. The loss or sacrifice of happiness which
virtue seems to call for on the part of the individual
can therefore be only apparent or temporary, as the
gain of wrong-doing also is. In the * Bank of the uni
verse,' whose transactions are much more exact and
secure than those of the Bank of England, ' all the good
a man does, stands placed to his account, to be repaid
him in full value when it will be most useful to him :
so that whoever works for another, works for himself;
and by working for numbers, earns more than he could
possibly do by working for himself alone . . . like a
thrifty merchant, who scruples not to advance consider
able sums, and even to exhaust his coffers, for gaining
a large profit to the common stock in partnership.' x
This idea of a partnership of mankind in a common
stock of happiness, by any addition to which gain must
accrue, in the future if not in the present life, to
the individual who makes it, is Tucker's grand solution
of the apparent contradiction between virtue and self-
interest. The conviction that, as Butler puts it, a man
will c find his account ' in virtue, though not the conscious
motive of all virtuous actions, yet seems to Tucker the
only possible justification of virtue to the reflective mind.

'It is exclusively as a psychologist and as a moralist,'
says Leslie Stephen, ' that Tucker has any great specula
tive merit ' ; 2 and, like the other moralists of his
age, with the exception of Butler and Hume, it is in
psychology rather than in ethics that he excels. To use
his own figure, he is an adept in the use of 'the micro
scope ' of psychological analysis, but only a tyro in that

1 Light of Nature Pursued, i. 666.

2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 112.

THE MORALISTS 221

of ' the telescope ' of metaphysical and theological specu
lation. In the latter sphere we feel, with Stephen, that
he is < a solitary and half-trained thinker.'1 His appeal
is from masters of speculation like Berkeley to ' the
first man you meet in the street ' ; he is too solici
tous to prove the orthodoxy of his views, too ' desirous,'
in his own words, < of keeping upon good terms with
everybody.' 2 Yet his sincerity is not to be denied ;
the reader cannot but assent to his claim that his en
quiry has been a real one to himself. ' My thoughts,'
he tells us, ' have taken a turn from my earliest youth
towards searching into the foundations and measures of
right and wrong ; my love for retirement has furnished
me with continual leisure, and the exercise of my reason
has been my daily employment.' 3 Throughout the
work we are conscious of the practical interest which
inspires the entire undertaking, and of the transparent
simplicity of the author's nature.

Tucker's qualities as a writer are remarkable. His
talent for illustration is, as Paley says, unrivalled ; * his
illustrations, quaint as they may be, have frequently the
merit of an almost incomparable felicity.'4 He tells
us that he had <a desire of enlivening abstruse matters,
and rendering them visible by familiar images,' and in
the number, the appositeness, and the quaintness of
these c familiar images ' he reminds us more of the ancient
Greek philosophers than of his own compatriots. As
in the case of Socrates and Plato, too, his humour is
irrepressible ; he is ' an example of that rarest of all
intellectual compounds, the metaphysical humourist.'5
He is always master of an easy and graceful, if un
ambitious style. Yet his faults as a writer are not less
obvious than his virtues, the faults of lack of system,
of almost unparalleled diffuseness and irrelevancy. His

English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 120.

Light of Nature Pursued, ii. 68 1.

Life, prefixed to Light of Nature Pursued.

Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 1 10.

Stephen, op. cit., ii. no.

222 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

book is, as he himself acknowledges, more like 'a tissue
of separate essays ' than an organic whole : ' in this my
investigation of that wilderness, the human mind ... I
have no preconcerted plan . . . and though not without
some general idea of the end to which my inquiries
will lead me, yet have I not a full prospect of the track
they will take.' He is not really writing for the reader
so much as for himself; 'I am not to be considered as
a professor instructing others in the science he is com
pletely master of, but as a learner seeking after an
improvement of my own knowledge.' l He will leave
nothing unsaid ; as Stephen remarks, * he utterly ignores
the principle that the secret of being tedious is to say
everything.'2 His lack of instinct for system leads him
into endless irrelevancies, and although these irrelevancies
are frequently delightful, in their cumulative effect they
add greatly to the weariness of the already much-tried
reader. It was in these defects of Tucker's exposition,
otherwise so admirable, that Paley saw his opportunity.

Paley's reputation in the fields of natural theology
and Christian apologetics is at least equal to his impor
tance as a moralist, and he himself regarded his works in
these different fields as constituting a system, consisting of
'the evidences of Natural Religion, the evidences of
Revealed Religion, and an account of the duties that
result from both.' 3 His experience as a Cambridge tutor
doubtless stimulated and educated his natural gifts as a
clear and convincing writer on such subjects ; he always
writes as ' a professor instructing others,' and his books
were at once adopted as text-books in the universities and
long held their place among the recognised fountains of
knowledge in these subjects. Of their style it is hardly
an exaggeration to say, with Mackintosh, that if inevitably
didactic and without any special grace, it is 'as near
perfection in its kind as any in our language.'

1 Light of Nature Pursued, i. 143-4.

2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. ill.

3 Natural Theology^ Dedication.

THE MORALISTS 223

Alike in his natural theology and in his ethics
Paley represents, as Stephen says, ' the commonplace
English mind,' * and, it may be added, the commonplace
eighteenth-century mind. His conception of the relation
of God to the world is that which is common to the
orthodox writers and their deistic opponents, that of an
external and mechanical ' First Cause ' ; and his one
contribution to the argument is contained in his famous
argument from the evidences of design in the phenomena
of nature, and especially of the animal organism, to a
divine Designer or Contriver. This single idea is illus
trated at great length, especially from the case of the
human organism ; and the opposing alternatives of im
personal law or order and of the development of organs
adapted by ' use ' to the demands of the external conditions
of their life are controverted with great vigour and no
little acuteness and argumentative skill. The impression
left upon the mind of the reader is rather that of a clever and
' lawyer-like ' mind, as Mackintosh says, than that of any
real or original metaphysical insight. In any case the entire
argument rests, like that of Butler in the Analogy, upon
presuppositions, readily accepted in the writer's own age,
which the progress of scientific as well as of metaphysical
thought has rendered no longer tenable. It belongs to
the pre-evolutionary epoch.

The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy is a work
of more permanent interest and value. Though its main
ideas are confessedly derived from Tucker, they are
developed and applied by Paley to i the situations which
arise in the life of an inhabitant of this country in these
times,' 2 and to the solution of many casuistical difficulties
with a skill, sagacity, and knowledge of life which give
them a new value and significance. Like his master,
Tucker, he is unusually successful in avoiding the common
place and in resisting the temptation to write for edifica
tion. The key-note of the work is to be found in a
sentence of Dr. Johnson's, quoted in the Preface, ' When

1 English Thought in tlie Eighteenth Century, i, 409.

2 Principles ) Preface.

224 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the obligations of morality are taught, let the sanctions of
Christianity never be forgotten.' Paley's aim is to develop
the system of ethics from the Christian standpoint ; but
he holds that what is peculiar to Christianity is not the
substance of Christian morality, but the sanctions by
which that morality is enforced, the new motive which
is invoked. The principle of morality, he agrees with
Tucker, is Utility : Virtue is ' the doing good to mankind.'
Christian virtue is 'the doing good to mankind, in obedi
ence to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting
happiness ' x The motive is, as with Tucker, self-interest,
but the larger self-interest which is appealed to by the
Christian idea of God as, in His benevolence, willing
the happiness of His creatures. Virtue thus implies obli
gation ; and 4a man is said to be obliged when he is
urged by a violent motive resulting from the command of
another.' 2 There is no obligation except from the
command of a superior, who offers a sufficient induce
ment for our obedience. * And from this account of
obligation it follows, that we can be obliged to nothing,
but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by ;
for nothing else can be a " violent motive " to us. As we
should not be obliged to obey the laws, or the magistrate,
unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow
or other, depended upon our obedience ; so neither should
we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is
right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of
God.' 3 In proof of these divine sanctions of virtue
and vice he appeals alike to Scripture and, as in the
Natural Theology, to the evidences of benevolent design
in the works of God as revealed in nature. Since the
design of God is the general happiness, we may infer the
congruity or incongruity of our actions with His will, their
virtuous or vicious character, by considering their conse
quences, in pleasure or pain, for mankind ; and it is to
this secondary or utilitarian criterion, rather than to the
ultimate rule of the will of God, that Paley generally

1 Principles, bk. i. ch. vii. 2 Ibid., bk. ii. ch. ii.

3 Loc. cit.

THE MORALISTS 225

refers. That the general happiness is the content of the
divine will, makes action which is conducive to that happi
ness, rather than to our own, obligatory upon us, ensuring
as it does the ultimate coincidence of virtue and self-
interest. The only difference between an act of prudence
and an act of duty is ' that, in the one case, we consider
what we shall gain or lose in the present world ; in the
other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in
the world to come.' J

The emphasis, throughout the work, is, however, rather
upon the substance than upon the sanctions of virtue.
Paley's effort is to develop the ethics of Utility, to trace
in detail the kind of conduct which is prescribed by regard
to the general happiness ; and the ultimate motive of self-
interest really drops out of sight. Having once for all
proved to his own satisfaction the obligatoriness of virtue,2
he devotes himself to the detailed delineation of virtue.
While he consistently denies any qualitative distinction
between pleasures, his interpretation of virtue in terms of
utility is saved from the consequences which, in less
careful hands, might have seemed to follow from such a
view. He sharply differentiates the true from the false
idea of happiness. It does not consist in the pleasures of
the senses, but in < the exercise of the social affections,' in
4 the exercise of our faculties, either of body or mind, in
the pursuit of some engaging end,' in ' the formation of
good habits and in health of body and of mind.' 3 He
distinguishes between the particular and the general
consequences or utility of the action, and deduces from
this distinction the necessity of ' general rules' which
must be obeyed unquestioningly, for the most part,
without any calculation of the results in the particular
case. It is by reference to this principle that he solves
the various questions of casuistry which arise in the life

1 Principles, bk. ii. ch. iii.

2 ' This solution goes to the bottom of the subject, as no farther ques
tion can reasonably be asked : therefore, private happiness is our motive,
and the will of God our rule.' — Ibid., bk. ii. ch. iii.

3 J«,bk. i. ch. vi.

P

226 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

of duty, the general rule not being different in its origin
from the rule of particular utility, but representing the
larger utility, with which the narrower is alv/ays liable to
conflict. Finally, he so fully recognises the utilitarian
value of character, or of formed habits of virtuous action,
and the practical necessity of allowing this all-important
means to take the place of the end, as to approximate
very closely to the acknowledgment of its intrinsic and
ultimate value. This is especially true of the doctrine
of probation, in the Natural Theology, which is practically
identical with that of Butler, in the Analogy. Of the
purpose or design c for which the state in which we are
placed is fitted, and which it is made to serve,' he says
1 the most probable supposition ' is ' that it is a state of
moral probation, and that many things in it suit with
this hypothesis, which suit no other. It is not a state
of unmixed happiness, or of happiness simply ; it is not a
state of designed misery, or of misery simply ; it is not a
state of retribution ; it is not a state of punishment. It
suits with none of these suppositions. It accords much
better with the idea of its being a condition calculated
for the production, exercise, and improvement of moral
qualities, with a view to a future state, in which these
qualities, after being so produced, exercised, and improved,
may, by a new and more favouring constitution of things,
receive their reward, or become their own.' ( Virtue per
haps is the greatest of all ends.' 1

1 Nat. Theol., ch. xxvi.

CHAPTER IV

THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM:
PRICE AND REID

THOUGH Reid, as the founder of the Scottish Philosophy
of Common Sense, as well as in virtue of the larger scale
of his philosophical work, is decidedly the more important
thinker, yet Price has an importance of his own, as the
earlier writer, and on account of the remarkable way in
which, in the ethical field, he anticipates some of the lead
ing positions of Kant. The originality of the Review of
the Principal Questions in Morals, published in 1757, is
considerably diminished by the extent to which Price is
indebted to Cudworth and Clarke, on the one hand, and
to Butler, on the other. The latter ' incomparable
writer ' is the special object of Price's admiration, and he
accepts, so far as they go, Butler's views of conscience, self-
love, and benevolence, agreeing with him especially in his
antagonism to Hutcheson's doctrines of the ' moral sense '
and of benevolence as the whole of virtue, against which
his own work is one sustained polemic. His chief aim is to
show, as against Hume's development of the doctrine
of the < moral sense,' the absolute and immutable nature
of moral distinctions. The original source of Hume's
empiricism and scepticism, in the intellectual as well as
in the ethical sphere, he finds in Locke's initial error of
deriving all * simple ideas' from sensation and reflection.
The understanding, he holds, gives us not merely know
ledge, but also new ' simple ideas.' Locke's denial of this
is the result of his confusion of understanding with imagi
nation. * It is a capital error, into which those persons
run who confound the understanding with the imagination

227

228 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

and deny reality and possibility to everything the latter
cannot conceive, however clear and certain to the former.
The powers of the imagination are very narrow ; and were
the understanding confined to the same limits, nothing
could be known, and the very faculty itself would be
annihilated. Nothing is plainer than that one of these
often perceives where the other is blind ; is surrounded
with light where the other finds all darkness ; and, in
numberless instances, knows things to exist of which the
other can frame no idea.' x While sense and imagination
have to do only with particulars, the understanding has to
do with universals. Understanding, as a source of self-
evident ideas, must also be distinguished from reasoning,
or the investigation of relations between objects, ideas of
which we already possess. If any one denies the self-
evidence of such original ideas of the understanding, we
can only 4 refer him to common sense. If he cannot find
there the perception I have mentioned, he is not farther
to be argued with, for the subject will not admit of argu
ment ; there being nothing clearer than the point itself
disputed to be brought to confirm it.' 2

Among the self-evident ideas apprehended by the
understanding are those of right and wrong. The ultimate
moral distinctions belong to the nature of things, the im
mutable order of the universe, and are no more capable of
proof than ultimate intellectual relations. 'There are,
undoubtedly, some actions that are ultimately approved, and
for justifying which no reason can be assigned ; as there
are some ends, which are ultimately desired, and for
choosing which no reason can be given. Were not this
true, there would be an infinite progression of reasons and
ends, and therefore nothing could be at all approved or
desired.' 3 The obligation of such actions rests upon
their intrinsic nature ; they are obligatory upon a
rational being, apart altogether from reward or punish
ment. A rational being, as such, ought to act not
from instinct, passion, or appetite, not even from self-love

1 Review, ch. i. sect. 2. 2 Loc. cit.

3 Ibid., ch. i. sect. 3.

THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM 229

or benevolence, but from purely rational considerations.
It is only < our deficiencies and weaknesses ' that give
occasion to actions of the former kind ; ' reason alone, did
we possess it in a higher degree, would answer all the
ends of them.' For example, ' there would be no need
of the parental affection, were all parents sufficiently
acquainted with the reasons for taking upon them the
guidance and support of those whom nature has placed
under their care, and were they virtuous enough to
be always determined by those reasons.' l i The intel
lectual nature is its own law. It has, within itself, a
spring and guide of action which it cannot suppress or
reject. Rectitude is itself an end, an ultimate end, an end
superior to all other ends, governing, directing, and limiting
them, and whose existence and influence depend on nothing
arbitrary. It presides over all. Every appetite and
faculty, every instinct and will, and all nature are subjected
to it. To act from affection to it, is to act with light,
and conviction, and knowledge. But acting from instinct
is so far acting in the dark, and following a blind guide.
Instinct drives and precipitates ; but reason commands.'' 2

It follows, for Price as for Kant, that 'an agent
cannot be justly denominated virtuous^ except he acts
from a consciousness of rectitude, and with a regard to
it as his rule and end9-, that 'the virtue of an agent is
always less in proportion to the degree in which natural
temper and propensities fall in with his actions, in
stinctive principles operate, and rational reflexion on
what is right to be done, is wanting.'3 Yet he also
appeals, in the spirit of his age, to considerations of
self-interest. Speaking of the probability, or even bare
possibility, of an eternal reward of virtue, he expresses
surprise that men < should so little care to put themselves
in the way to win this Prize, and to become adventurers
here, where even to fail would be glorious ' ; that they
should forget ' that by such a course as virtue and piety
require, we can in general lose nothingy but may gain

1 Review, ch. iii. 2 Ibid., ch. viii. 8 Loc cit.

2 30 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

infinitely ; and that, on the contrary, by a careless ill-
spent life we can get nothing, or at best (happen what
will) next to nothing^ but may lose infinitely* 1 Even
in the present life virtue is, in a real sense, its own
reward ; genuine virtue and happiness are inseparable,
and the delight which a man takes in virtuous action
is a sure criterion of the reality of his virtue. ' What
our hearts are most set upon will make the principal
part of our happiness. . . . Well therefore may he
suspect his character, who finds that virtuous exercises,
the duties of piety, and the various offices of love and
goodness to which he may be called, are distasteful
and irksome to him. Virtue is the object of the chief
complacency of every virtuous man ; the exercise of it
is his chief delight ; and the consciousness of it gives
him his highest joy.'2

Thomas Reid is the founder of the Scottish Philosophy
of Common Sense. His appeal to c Common Sense ' con
stitutes a new departure in English philosophy : it is his
answer to Hume, his method of vindicating the rationality
of Belief from Hume's sceptical attack. His essential
thesis is that the scepticism of Hume is the reductio ad
absurdum of the ' doctrine of ideas ' which is common to
Locke and Descartes. While accepting the experiential
and psychological method of Locke, he dissents from this
Cartesian or 4 ideal theory,' which limits our knowledge
to ideas and their relations. In this theory he finds the
initial and fatal error which leads to the scepticism of
Hume. It was Hume who woke Reid, like Kant, from
his dogmatic slumber, who first compelled him to question
the philosophical tradition in which he had grown up.
' I shall always avow myself your disciple in metaphysics,'
he writes to the great sceptic ; < I have learned more
from your writings in this kind than from all others put
together. Your system appears to me not only coherent
in all its parts, but likewise justly deduced from prin
ciples commonly received among philosophers ; principles

1 Review, Conclusion. 2 Ibid., ch. ix.

THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM 231

which I never thought of calling in question until the
conclusions you drew from them in the " Treatise of
Human Nature " made me suspect them.' 1

The inevitableness of the sceptical development of the
ideal theory is rapidly sketched by Reid in the following
characteristic passage. ' Ideas seem to have something in
their nature unfriendly to other existences. They were
first introduced into philosophy in the humble character
of images or representatives of things ; and in this char
acter they seemed not only to be inoffensive, but to serve
admirably well for explaining the operations of the human
understanding. But, since men began to reason clearly
and distinctly about them, they have by degrees supplanted
their constituents, and undermined the existence of every
thing but themselves. First, they discarded all secondary
qualities of bodies ; and it was found out by their means
that fire is not hot, nor snow cold, nor honey sweet ; and,
in a word, that heat and cold, sound, colour, taste, and
smell, are nothing but ideas or impressions. Bishop
Berkeley advanced them a step higher, and found out, by
just reasoning from the same principles, that extension,
solidity, space, figure and body, are ideas, and that there is
nothing in nature but ideas and spirits. But the triumph
of ideas was completed by the " Treatise on Human
Nature," which discards spirits also, and leaves ideas and
impressions as the sole existences in the universe. . . .
These ideas are as free and independent as the birds of
the air, or as Epicurus's atoms when they pursue their
journey in the vast inane. . . . They make the whole
furniture of the universe ; starting into existence, or
out of it, without any cause ; combining into parcels,
which the vulgar call minds ; and succeeding one another
by fixed laws, without time, place, or author of those
laws.'2

The initial error of Locke was, according to Reid, his
postulating ' simple ideas ' or ' simple apprehension ' as the
elementary datum or material of knowledge. Hume's

1 Hill Burton, Life of Hume, ii. 155. 2 Works, i. 109.

232 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

sceptical disintegration of knowledge into unrelated sensa
tions is the inevitable result of such a start. 'Simple
apprehension, though it be the simplest, is not the first
operation of the understanding ; and, instead of saying
that the more complex operations of the mind are formed
by compounding simple apprehensions, we ought rather
to say, that simple apprehensions are got by analysing
more complex operations.'1 The elementary feature of
knowledge is judgment or belief. We do not first have
the several ideas, and then proceed to compare and relate
them ; every idea ' suggests ' its relation at once to a
subject and to an object. The mere isolated sensation
is the product of abstraction ; in actual perception the
sensation always 'suggests,' or carries with it the belief
in a corresponding quality as belonging to the object.
In the case of the secondary qualities, all that is suggested
is some quality, quite unlike the sensation ; in the case of
the primary qualities, we know the quality, though it is
still unlike the sensation.2

These original and fundamental judgments Reid calls
'judgments of nature ' or 'natural suggestions,' as dis
tinguished from judgments and suggestions which are the
result of experience, on the one hand, or of reasoning, on
the other : they belong to ' our constitution,' and are the
presupposition of all other knowledge. The attempt to
prove them is, therefore, foredoomed to failure. They
are the ' first principles ' upon which all reasoning rests.
Of them 'we can give no other account but that they
necessarily result from the constitution of our faculties ' ; 3
they are 'not grounded upon any antecedent reasoning,
but upon the constitution of the mind itself.' 4 They
belong to the ' Common Sense and Reason ' of mankind.
' The power of judging in self-evident propositions . . .
is purely natural, and therefore common to the learned
and the unlearned, to the trained and the untrained. It
requires only ripeness of understanding, and freedom from
prejudice, but nothing else.'5 'In such controversies,

1 Works, i. 376. 2 Works, i. 313 ff. 3 Works, i. 455.

4 Works, i. 452. 6 Works, i. 434.

THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM 233

every man is a competent judge. . . . To judge of first
principles, requires no more than a sound mind free from
prejudice, and a distinct conception of the question.
The learned and the unlearned, the philosopher and the
day-labourer, are upon a level, and will pass the same
judgment, when they are not misled by some bias, or
taught to renounce their understanding from some mis
taken religious principle. In matters beyond the reach
of common understanding, the many are led by the few,
and willingly yield to their authority. But, in matters of
common sense, the few must yield to the many, when
local and temporary prejudices are removed.' l

Such statements as these have led to the criticism of
the Philosophy of Common Sense as an appeal from the
reasoned conclusions of philosophy to the vulgar prejudices
and unthinking beliefs of the ordinary man. This
criticism was first made by Priestley, in his Examination
of Reid's Inquiry, Eeatties Essay, and Oswald's Appeal to
Common Sense, published in 1774, and was repeated in a
well-known passage in Kant's Prolegomena. Instead of
solving Hume's problem in the sense in which he had
stated it, the Scottish philosophers have, Kant holds, missed
the point of Hume's scepticism. 'The always unfavour
able fate of metaphysics willed that he should be understood
by no one. It cannot be without feeling a certain regret that
one sees how completely his opponents, Reid, Oswald,
Beattie, and, lastly, Priestley,missed the point of his problem,
in taking that for granted which was precisely what he
doubted, and on the other hand in proving with warmth,
and in most cases great immodesty, what it had never
entered his head to question. ... It was not the question
whether the conception of Cause was correct and useful,
and in view of the whole knowledge of Nature, indis
pensable, for upon this Hume had never cast a doubt. . . .
The question was as to the origin of the idea, not as to
its practical necessity in use. . . . The opponents of this
celebrated man, to have done the problem full justice,

i Works, 1.438.

234 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

must have penetrated deeply into the nature of the
Reason, in so far as it is occupied solely with pure
thought, a thing which was inconvenient for them. They
invented therefore a more convenient means, by which,
without any insight, they might defy him, namely, the
appeal to the common sense of mankind. It is indeed a
great natural gift to possess, straightforward (or, as it has
been called, plain) common sense. But it must be proved
by deeds, by the thoughtfulness and rationality of what
one thinks and says, and not by appealing to it as an
oracle, when one has nothing wise to adduce in one's
justification. When insight and science are at a low ebb,
then and not before to appeal to common sense is one of
the subtle inventions of modern times, by which the
emptiest talker may coolly confront the profoundest
thinker and hold out against him. But so long as there
is a small remnant of insight left, one will be cautious
of clutching at this straw. And seen in its true light, the
argument is nothing better than an appeal to the verdict
of the multitude ; a clamour before which the philosopher
blushes, and the popular witling scornfully triumphs.
But I should think that Hume can make as good claim to
the possession of common sense as Beattie, and in addition,
to something the latter certainly did not possess, namely,
a critical Reason, to hold common sense within bounds
in order not to let it overreach itself in speculations. . . .
Chisel and hammer are quite sufficient to shape a piece
of deal, but for copper-engraving an etching-needle is
necessary.' l

The fact that Kant couples the philosophy of Reid
with that of Oswald and Beattie, and includes all three
in a common condemnation with their critic, Priestley,
suggests that his knowledge of the Scottish Philosophy
was derived from Beattie's work, if not from Priestley's
criticism, and amounts to a serious injustice to the founder
of the school. Neither Beattie, whom Sidgwick well de
scribes as 'a man of real, but chiefly literary ability, a

1 Prolegomena, Introd., Belfort Bax's trans., pp. 4-6.

THE REVIVAL OF RATIONALISM 235

poet by choice and a philosopher from a sense of duty,'
nor Oswald, whom the same writer calls <a theological
pamphleteer,' is to be compared with Reid in philo
sophical power ; and neither discriminates, as he does,
between the popular and the philosophical meaning of
the term Common Sense. ' There are ways of reasoning,
with regard to first principles,' he says, * by which those
that are truly such may be distinguished from vulgar
errors or prejudices.'1 Such principles can be proved
indirectly, if not directly, by showing the absurd and
self-contradictory consequences to which their denial
leads. Their evidence is found in 'what is common in
the structure of all languages,' which represent the
common and natural judgments of mankind. His appeal
is not to i the first man you meet,' but to the ideal
man ; the common basis of truth can be reached, he
holds, only by the process of critical reflection. His c first
principles' are the presuppositions of all reasoning, and
the insight into their originality and ultimateness, as such,
is itself the result of persistent philosophical reflection.
6 To judge of first principles, requires no more than a
sound mind free from prejudice, and a distinct conception
of the question ' ; but it implies these rare qualifications.
clt requires only ripeness of understanding, and freedom
from prejudice, but nothing else.' And when we follow
Reid's argument in refutation of the scepticism of Hume,
as it has been sketched above, we find that it consists
in a philosophical demonstration of the connexion between
Hume's conclusions and the premises, common to his
reasoning and that of Locke and Berkeley, not to speak
of Descartes and still earlier philosophers, the sceptical
result being taken to imply the unsatisfactory character
of the premises from which it is the logical conclusion.
In short, we find Reid, like Kant, endeavouring to escape
Hume's conclusion by rejecting Hume's premises which,
in the eyes of both philosophers, seem to have disproved
themselves by the unthinkableness of their consequences.

1 Works, i. 441.

236 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

It must be admitted, however, that there is another
Reid who is fitly coupled with Beattie and Oswald, as
the deeper Reid whose method we have described is
coupled with the names of Adam Ferguson and Dugald
Stewart, who did little else than express in better literary
form the thoughts of their more original predecessor.
There is the Reid who does not hesitate to make play
for the uninitiated with the results of the < theory of
ideas ' ; who asserts against Hume the necessity of that
practical belief of which Hume himself had proclaimed
the inevitableness ; who betrays fatal inability to under
stand the significance of the Berkeleyan idealism, or to
distinguish the speculative from the practical aspect of
philosophical questions. Even at his best, he is apt to
attribute a doctrine of Representation ism to philosophers
in whose theories there is no such tendency whatever, to
confuse the psychological with the philosophical question,
and to relapse into that very doctrine of Representationism
against which he so earnestly contends. It is, therefore,
greatly to the credit of the French philosophers of the
earlier half of the nineteenth century that they discovered
the deeper elements in the Scottish Philosophy, as formu
lated by its founder — its true feeling for the ethical and
practical interests, its enthusiastic acceptance of the ex
perimental method, its preference of factual observation
to abstract speculation and systematic completeness. In
consequence of these characteristics the philosophy of
the Scottish school became the official philosophy of
France, and was taught in its colleges, from 1816 to 1870.
In America, too, this philosophy acquired an equal influ
ence, and it is to a Scottish president of an American
university that we owe the most careful account of its
detailed development.1

1 J. M'Cosh, The Scottish Philosophy (1875).

PART III

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE philosophy of the nineteenth century in England
is no longer ' English philosophy ' in the strict sense
in which the philosophy of the preceding centuries can
be so described. The new influence of the great German
idealists, and especially of Kant, from whose ' critical '
philosophy these systems sprang, is now to be traced
as a determining factor in the thought of English writers
of all schools. This influence is partly negative, partly
positive. The more characteristically English movements
of thought whose earlier history we have traced are con
tinued in the nineteenth century with a growing con
sciousness of their antagonism to the absolute idealism
which German philosophers have developed out of
the Kantian criticism and transcendentalism. Mill and
Hamilton alike protest against the vagaries, as they regard
them, of German idealism ; while the idealistic tendency
which we have seen to be no less persistent, though less
prominent, in the English philosophy of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, receives a fresh impulse and
a fresh illumination from the new idealism of Germany.
But while this new influence of Continental thought
is not to be denied or under-estimated, it must not be
forgotten that the movement of English philosophy is
still, as before, national and independent. Whether it
sets itself in conscious and active opposition to the
Kantian and Hegelian movement of thought, or enthusi
astically proclaims the essential truth and significance
of that movement, it is never content to be the mere

23 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

pupil. Even when it accepts the lesson of German
idealism, it insists upon the necessity of a restatement of
that lesson in its own terms, upon the assimilation of
the foreign to the national type of philosophy. And
if it must be admitted that the importance of English
philosophy for European thought is not so great as
in the earlier centuries, that the centre of interest has
changed from England to Germany, it is to be remembered
that it was the philosophy of Hume that first, according
to his own well-known admission, awoke Kant from his
dogmatic slumber, that the Kantian philosophy is a new
departure necessitated by the issue in Hume's scepticism
of that empiricism which was one of the characteristic
elements in English philosophy.

A second new influence which is to be noted, especially
in the development of English empiricism in the nineteenth
century, is that of Natural Science. There is an earlier
phase of the movement which is strictly a continuation
of the empiricism and associationism of the eighteenth
century, represented by the names of Bentham, the two
Mills, and Bain. Its later phase, identified with the
name of Spencer, is an elaborate effort to formulate a
c scientific ' or evolutionary philosophy, alike in the meta
physical and in the ethical field. The agnosticism of
Spencer and Huxley is also, in part, the result of an
identification of the scientific with the philosophical
view of the universe, or of the limitation of knowledge to
the phenomenal standpoint of the natural sciences.

In the movement of English philosophy in the century
three main streams of thought may be distinguished.
First, there is the English development of Hume's
empiricism into utilitarianism, associationism, and evolu
tionism, the chief names being Bentham, James Mill,
J. S. Mill, Bain, and Spencer. Secondly, there is the
development of the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense
by Hamilton into the doctrines of Natural Realism and
Relativism ; its issues in the dualism of faith and reason, as
proclaimed by Hamilton and Mansel, and in the agnosticism
of Spencer and Huxley ; and the return to its charac-

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 239

teristic point of view in Calderwood, Martineau, and
Fraser. Thirdly, there is the idealistic answer to Hume
as formulated in the spiritual philosophy of Coleridge
and Newman, in the absolute idealism of Ferrier, and in
the Neo-Hegelian philosophy of the later decades of the
century, associated with the names of Stirling, Caird,
Green, and Bradley.

CHAPTER I

THE ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT OF HUME'S
EMPIRICISM : UTILITARIANISM (WITH AS-
SOCIATIONISM) AND EVOLUTIONISM

I. Utilitarianism and Associationism : Bentham,
James Mill, J. S. Mill, Bain

FOR the Utilitarians or Benthamites, as they were called
after the founder of the school, philosophy was only a
means to social and political reform. They were not so
much a philosophical school as a political party, and are
better described as c philosophical radicals.' Their Utili
tarianism was rather a political ideal than an ethical
principle, while their common empiricism and associa-
tionism were still more subordinate to the practical
purposes which united them in a common social effort.
As we advance from Bentham to James Mill, and
from the latter to J. S. Mill, we see the theoretical
element in the Utilitarian creed becoming more promi
nent. Bentham's interest is purely practical ; he
preaches Utilitarianism as an ideal of social and political
conduct. James Mill is the psychologist of the school.
As Hoffding says, ' his philosophical importance consists
mainly in the fact that he attempted to supply the
psychological basis which was lacking in Bentham's
ethics,' x but he extends the application of the principle of
Association to the whole field of human knowledge.
J. S. Mill is the philosopher of the school : he alone
attempts the * proof of the principle of utility, he alone

1 Hist, of Modern Phil., ii. 369 (Eng. trans.).
240

THE UTILITARIANS 241

investigates the nature of evidence generally. But even
J. S. Mill does not concern himself with the problem of
the obligatoriness of the general happiness upon the
individual, except in a psychological and practical sense.
The claim of the general happiness upon the individual is
assumed by all alike ; their common problem is how to
induce the individual to recognise this claim in his
conduct — the problem of the motivation of right con
duct or the * sanctions ' of duty.

The efforts of Bentham as a reformer embraced three
different but closely connected spheres : the reform of the
law, of methods of punishment, and of the English constitu
tion itself. In all three spheres he was equally radical in his
ideas, and in all three the results of his efforts were great
and far-reaching. In the last he became the leader of an
important, though small political group, who called them
selves ' Utilitarians ' or ' philosophical radicals,' and whose
efforts were directed, not to any abstract or Utopian ideal,
but to specific reforms which fell within the field of prac
tical politics. The great result of these efforts was the
Reform Act of 1832, for the passing of which Bentham,
chiefly through the personal influence of James Mill, is
entitled to a large share of credit. Bentham's watchword i
was Utility, or < the greatest happiness of the greatest
number,' which he substituted for the battle-cry of the
American and French Revolutionists, the ' rights of man,'
which was being taken up in England at the time. Man
has no ' natural rights,' he contends ; for all his rights he
is indebted to Law ; and the criterion of the goodness of
Law is the measure in which its observance contributes to
the general happiness. In the principle of utility he finds
the statement of the true ideal of democracy, the very
antithesis of all interests narrower than that of the com
munity as a whole, the condemnation of all * sinister'
private or class interests which militate against the public
weal. Renouncing the abstract ideal of 'equality' as a
natural right, he yet asserts the equal claim of every
individual to happiness ; his ideal is that of the most

Q

242 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

equal distribution of happiness, < the greatest happiness of
the greatest number,' * each to count for one and no one
for more than one.' Nor is it permissible to limit our
consideration to the members of our own community, of
our own country ; the complete expression of the principle
of Utility is a humanitarianism which recognises the claim
of every human being to equal consideration.

The standard, then, alike of public and private conduct
is the general happiness, and the moral quality of any action
is determined by its pleasant or painful consequences, so
far as these enter into the intention of the agent. The
motive, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the
morality of the action, and is in all cases self-interest.
Bentham, that is to say, agrees with Tucker and Paley in
taking an altruistic view of the end or criterion, and an
egoistic view of the motive, of virtuous conduct. His
real interest is in making the appeal to the self-interest
of the individual sufficiently strong to induce him to
subordinate his own to the general happiness ; in other
words, in making the ( sanctions ' of altruistic conduct
adequate. Besides the legal, he recognises the popular,
the social, and the religious sanctions ; as it is the function
of the legislator to make the former adequate, it is the
function of a true education to see to the efficiency of the
latter. The only addition made by Bentham to previous
statements of hedonistic ethics is his insistence upon the
necessity of an exact calculation of the consequences of
our action as the only sufficient guide to right conduct,
and his construction of a 'hedonistic calculus' for this
end. We must take account, not only of the intensity
and duration of each pleasure, but also of its certainty,
propinquity, fecundity or fruitfulness in further pleasures,
and its purity or barrenness in painful consequences. The
entire calculation is, of course, in terms of quantity ; the
end is the production of the maximum of possible pleasure
and the minimum of possible pain.

The chief importance of James Mill's Analysis of the
Phenomena of the Human Mind is psychological, but it is in

THE UTILITARIANS 243

an ethical interest that the psychological investigation is
undertaken. Bentham had been satisfied with a crude
doctrine of psychological hedonism, which he rightly
identified with egoism; and his reconciliation of psycho
logical egoism with ethical altruism had been equally hasty
and ill-considered. Mill's object is to show, by the em
ployment of the principle of Association, the psychological
possibility of altruistic or disinterested conduct on the part
of the egoistic or pleasure-seeking individual. He does
this by developing the doctrine of Association in two
directions : first, by insisting upon the growth of < in
separable associations' which transform what had at first
been merely means into ends which are sought for their
own sake or disinterestedly, and secondly, by interpreting
the result of association after the analogy of a chemical
product which is different from the sum of its elements,
rather than as a mechanical combination of these elements.
This analysis of what had seemed to be simple and ultimate
into a complex of simpler elements is at the same time
intended as a refutation of the intuitional or < moral sense '
interpretation of conscience, and as a demonstration of the
empirical and utilitarian, as against a rationalistic and in
tuitional account of the nature of morality. This ethical
significance of the whole inquiry is made more clear in
the Fragment on Mackintosh, in which Mill bitterly attacks
a 'theory of the moral sentiments' which, refusing to
follow out the doctrine of Association, as he thinks, to
its full logical consequences, accepts the ultimateness of
the moral, as distinguished from the utilitarian, element
in the judgments of conscience.

But the scope and interest of the Analysis are far from
being limited to ethics ; indeed, as we read it, we are
apt to lose sight of its underlying ethical purpose. It is
with justice that J. S. Mill describes his father as 'the
reviver and second founder of the Association psycho
logy ' ; x for in his hands that psychology becomes the
basis not merely of an ethical theory but of a theory of

1 Preface to ed. of Analysis, p. xii.

244 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

knowledge and reality. The result is a restatement of the
Humian view of the world and the self, and of the Humian
reduction of our so-called knowledge to customary belief.

The basis of the theory is laid in an extreme nominal
ism. All terms alike are simply the expression of the
meaning of names, and the only reality corresponding to
the name is some particular sensation or idea. General
terms are the names of classes, and these classes consist of
individuals. ' The business of classification is merely a
process of naming, and is all resolvable into association.' 1
' Men were led to class solely for the purpose of
economising in the use of names.' 2 He entirely ignores the
underlying connotation which accounts for the denotation
of the general term. As J. S. Mill says, ( The only
meaning of predicating a quality at all, is to affirm a
resemblance.'3 James Mill himself has to admit that
the i particular principle ' of association concerned in
classification is resemblance, which, though he suggests
that it might possibly be reduced to the principle of
contiguity (since like particulars occur, and therefore
recur, together), he finally accepts as an independent
principle.

The resulting theory of predication, as J. S. Mill points
out, ignores the element of belief involved in it. ' The
characteristic difference between a predication and any
other form of speech, is, that it does not merely bring to
mind a certain object (which is the only function of a
mark, merely as such) ; it asserts something respecting
it. ... Whatever view we adopt of the psychological
nature of Belief, it is necessary to distinguish between the
mere suggestion to the mind of a certain order among
sensations or ideas — such as takes place when we think
of the alphabet, or the numeration table — and the indica
tion that this order is an actual fact, which is occurring,
or which has occurred once or oftener, or which, in
certain definite circumstances, always occurs ; which are
the things indicated as true by an affirmative predication,

1 Analysis, i. 269. 2 Ibid., i. 260. 3 Ibid., i. 261, note.

THE UTILITARIANS 245

and as false by a negative one.'1 Belief, according
to James Mill, differs from imagination merely in the
strength of the association in the one case as com
pared with the other. The association of the ideas is,
in belief, inseparable ; in imagination, separable. The
proof of this would be, J. S. Mill says, cthe greatest
of all the triumphs of the Association psychology,' 2
but he does not think the attempted proof successful.
There may be inseparable association without belief,
and belief without inseparable association. ' The differ
ence between belief and mere imagination is the differ
ence between recognising something as a reality in nature
and regarding it as a mere thought of our own.'3 It
is this element of belief, thus objectively interpreted,
that, according to J. S. Mill, distinguishes memory from
imagination, a difference which James Mill interprets,
after Hume, as one merely of degree.4 The distinction
between belief and imagination, J. S. Mill contends, resists
analysis : it must be accepted as ' ultimate and primordial.'5
In the case of the Self, as in that of Belief, J. S. Mill
finds his father's theory inadequate. The explanation of
personal identity in terms of Association 'removes the
outer veil, or husk, as it were, which wraps up the idea
of the Ego. But after this is removed, there remains
an inner covering, which, as far as I can perceive, is
impenetrable.' Memory is explained by reference to
Self, and Self by reference to Memory. ' By doing
so, we explain neither. We only show that the two
things are essentially the same.' 6 Here, again, we
come to 'something ultimate.' James Mill speaks of
' that thread of consciousness, drawn out in succession,
which I call myself,'7 of 'that thread of conscious
ness in which, to me, my being consists,' ' the train of
consciousness, which I call myself.' 8 But, as J. S.
Mill contends, the bond which unites these various
states in the consciousness of an identical Self is not

1 Analysis, i. 162-3, note. 2 Ibid., i. 402. 3 Ibid., i. 418.

4 Ibid., i. 423. 5 Ibid., i. 412. 6 Ibid., ii. 173, 174.

7 Ibid., i. 17. 8 Ibid., ii. 197.

246 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

thereby explained. ' This succession of feelings, which
I call my memory of the past, is that by which I dis
tinguish my Self. Myself is the person who had that
series of feelings, and I know nothing of myself, by direct
knowledge, except that I had them. But there is a bond
of some sort among all the parts of the series, which makes
me say that they were feelings of a person who was the
same person throughout, and a different person from those
who had any of the parallel successions of feelings ; and
this bond, to me, constitutes my Ego. Here, I think, the
question must rest, until some psychologist succeeds better
than any one has yet done in shewing a mode in which the
analysis can be carried further.' x

The general criticism which J. S. Mill makes upon his
father's work is one with which there will be general
agreement. 'It is chiefly ... in leading him to identify
two ultimate facts with one another, that his love of
simplification, in itself a feeling highly worthy of a
philosopher, seems to mislead him.' 2 On the other
hand, we must admit, with the same kindly though
candid critic, that the Analysis abounds in ' specimens of
clear and vigorous statement, going straight to the heart
of the matter, and dwelling on it just long enough and no
longer than necessary.'3 And if we must also agree with
Leslie Stephen, that James Mill was * at most a man of
remarkable talent and the driest and sternest of logicians,' 4
and with Macaulay that his style is ' as dry as that of
Euclid's Elements,' we must remember that, as the former
writer says, ' Mill, as a publicist, a historian, and a busy
official, had not had much time to spare for purely philo
sophic 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 superstitions to which his political
opponents appealed for support.'5

One reason for the inadequate appreciation of James
Mill by his contemporaries was, in the judgment of his

1 Analysis, ii. 175. 2 Ibid., ii. 380. 3 Ibid., i. 133.

4 English Utilitarians, ii. 38. 6 Op. cit., ii. 288.

JOHN STUART MILL 247

son, that he was not thoroughly in sympathy with the
spirit of his own age. ' As Brutus was called the last of
the Romans, so was he the last of the eighteenth
century ; he continued its tone of thought and senti
ment into the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor
unimproved), partaking neither in the good nor in the
bad influences of the reaction against the eighteenth
century, which was the great characteristic of the first
half of the nineteenth.' l John Stuart Mill himself belongs
to the new age ; but the influence of Bentham and his
father remained with him to the last, and the result is a
curious mingling of the spirit of the two centuries. The
key at once to the importance and to the defects of his
philosophy is to be found in the peculiarity of his position
as the thinker of an age of transition ; in the fact that he
represents two points of view, which he considers himself
to have reconciled, but whose mutual opposition he never
sufficiently grasped to effect their reconciliation, — the
points of view of the eighteenth and of the nineteenth
century. It was with deliberate purpose that he under
took the task of reconciliation. ' Though, at one period
of my progress, I for some time undervalued that great
century [the eighteenth], I never joined in the reaction
against it, but kept as firm hold of one side of the truth as
I took of the other. The fight between the nineteenth
century and the eighteenth always reminded me of the
battle about the shield, one side of which was white and
the other black. I marvelled at the blind rage with which
the combatants rushed against one another. I applied to
them, and to Coleridge himself, many of Coleridge's
sayings about half truths ; and Goethe's device, " many-
sidedness," was one which I would most willingly, at this
period, have taken for mine.'2 'The besetting danger,'
he remarks in his essay on Coleridge, c is not so much
of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking part of
the truth for the whole.' 3 In ' the Germano-Coleridgian
doctrine ' he sees ' the revolt of the human mind against

1 Autobiography, p. 204. 2 Ibid., p. 162.

3 Dissertations, i. 399.

248 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the philosophy of the eighteenth century.' < It is onto-
logical, because that was experimental ; conservative,
because that was innovative ; religious, because so much
of that was infidel ; concrete and historical, because that
was matter-of-fact and prosaic.'1 He regards Bentham
and Coleridge as ' the two great seminal minds of England
in their age.' 2 ' Whoever could master the premises
and combine the methods of both, would possess the entire
English philosophy of his age. Coleridge used to say that
every one is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian : it
may be similarly affirmed, that every Englishman of the
present day is by implication either a Benthamite or a
Coleridgian ; holds views of human affairs which can
only be proved true on the principles either of Bentham
or of Coleridge.' 3 He is convinced of c the importance,
in the present imperfect state of mental and social science,
of antagonist modes of thought : which, it will one day
be felt, are as necessary to one another in speculation,
as mutually checking powers are in the political con
stitution.' 4

It is in this deliberate effort to combine two antagonistic
but, as he believes, complementary points of view, rather
than in any defect of philosophic strenuousness and per
sistence, that the explanation of Mill's 'inconsistencies' is
to be found. It is doubtless true that by the characteristic
temper of his mind, as well as by reason of his position in
the history of thought, he was incapable of resting in any
one position as finally satisfying ; that, as Lord Morley
has said, * he never desisted, or stood still,' but < was of the
Socratic household,' in that his mind was always open to
the apprehension of new truth, always ready to listen to
the voice of the argument and to accept its conclusions,
however disturbing to his previous convictions. He him
self speaks of c my great readiness and eagerness to learn
from everybody, and to make room in my opinions for
every new acquisition by adjusting the old and the
new to one another.' 5 As Professor MacCunn has said,

1 Dissertations, i. 403. 2 Ibid.,\. 331. 3 Ibid.,\. 397.

4 Ibid., i. 399. 5 Autobiography, p. 252.

JOHN STUART MILL 249

'Better Mill's "inconsistencies" than the limited com
pleteness of Bentham. Better his unsolved difficulties
than the arrogant, narrow, self-confident logic of his father.
For they are, at any rate, the fruits of an enlarged outlook
and an enriched experience.'1

But the inconsistencies remain, and they are of the very
essence of Mill's position as a transition-thinker. With
all his new insight, he never really outgrew Benthamism,
he never sufficiently revised his former premises in the
light of the new truths which he found himself compelled
to admit. He writes to Carlyle : ' You will see, partly,
with what an immense number and variety of explanations
my utilitarianism must be taken and that these explana
tions affect its essence, not merely its accidental forms. . . .
I am still, and am likely to remain, a utilitarian, though
not one of " the people called utilitarians " ; indeed,
having scarcely one of my secondary premises in common
with them ; nor a utilitarian at all, unless in quite another
sense from what perhaps any one except myself under
stands by the word.' 2 < What is now wanted,' he writes
in his Diary of 1854, lis the creed of Epicurus warmed
by the additional element of an enthusiastic love of the
general good.' 3 When we study the ethical theory,
which its author still calls ' Utilitarianism,1 and thus insists
upon affiliating to that of Bentham, we cannot but feel
with Martineau, that * these modifications were torn from
their connection and taken over to the Bentham side
without their root.' 4 Although he had felt the spell of
an ethical idealism the acceptance of which implied the
surrender at once of the egoism and of the hedonism of
the theory which he had been brought up to believe in as
true, he seems to have been persuaded that the Utilita
rianism of Bentham was capable of being developed into a
theory which would do justice to all those ideal aspects of
life and conduct which Bentham had ignored or misunder
stood. Similarly in political philosophy, after growing up
in the atmosphere of the extreme individualism of the

1 Six Radical Thinkers, p. 86. 2 Letters, i. 91.

3 Letters, ii. 385. * Dissertations, i. 493.

250 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

laissez faire doctrine of the Utilitarians or * Philosophical
Radicals,' he came later under the influence of French
socialism ; yet, after making remarkable concessions to
the latter theory in his Political Economy, he wrote that
essay on Liberty which has been regarded ever since as
the classical statement of individualism. Finally, so far
as the theory of knowledge and reality is concerned, in
spite of the lessons which he learned from German idealism
as conveyed to the English mind by Coleridge and Carlyle,
he never saw his way to the surrender of that doctrine of
Associationism which he had been taught by his father to
regard as the final solution of all metaphysical problems.

The reading of Bentham's work, in Dumont's transla
tion, was, Mill tells us in the Autobiography, ' an epoch in
my life ; one of the turning-points in my mental history.
My previous education had been, in a certain sense,
already a course of Benthamism. The Benthamite
standard of " the greatest happiness " was that which I had
always been taught to apply. . . . Yet in the first pages of
Bentham it burst upon me with all the force of novelty.'
What chiefly impressed him was Bentham's exposure of
the concealed dogmatism of other ethical theories. 'It
had not struck me before, that Bentham's principle put
an end to all this. The feeling rushed upon me, that all
previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed
was the commencement of a new era in thought.' This
impression was confirmed by the scientific form of
Bentham's reasoning, by ' the method of detail ' which he
employed. To the theoretical satisfaction were added
' the most inspiring prospects of practical improvement in
human affairs ' : * at every page he seemed to open a
clearer and broader conception of what human opinions
and institutions ought to be, how they might be made
what they ought to be, and how far removed from
it they now are. . . . When I laid down the first volume
of the Traite, I had become a different being. The
" principle of utility," understood as Bentham understood
it, and applied in the manner in which he applied it ...

JOHN STUART MILL 251

fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held
together the detached and fragmentary parts of my
knowledge and beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions
of things. I now had opinions ; a creed, a doctrine, a
philosophy ; in one among the best senses of the word,
a religion ; the inculcation and diffusion of which could
be made the principal outward purpose of a life. And I
had a grand conception laid before me of changes to
be effected in the condition of mankind through that
doctrine.' 1 Though he afterwards became conscious of
the serious limitations of Bentham's philosophical outlook,
and found it necessary to incorporate in the theory many
elements of crucial importance which its author had
ignored, Mill's early enthusiasm for the ' principle of
utility ' never really waned. In the essay on Whewell's
moral philosophy (1852) he says: 'It is by his method
chiefly that Bentham, as we think, justly earned a position
in moral science analogous to that of Bacon in physical.
It is because he was the first to enter into the right mode
of working ethical problems, though he worked many of
them, as Bacon did physical, on insufficient data.' 2 It
is necessary, he insists in the Utilitarianism^ to re
duce our various moral principles, accepted by the in-
tuitionists as equally ultimate, to 'one first principle, or
common ground of obligation.' ' The non-existence of
an acknowledged first principle has made ethics not so
much a guide as a consecration of men's actual senti
ments.' And he agrees with Bentham that ' the funda
mental principle of morality, and the source of moral
obligation ' is to be found in the principle of utility, or
* the influence of actions on happiness.'3

Perhaps the main factor in effecting the transition from
Benthamism to a more idealistic version of the Utilitarian
theory was the mental crisis through which Mill passed
in 1826, and from which he found deliverance in the
study of Wordsworth. The almost complete loss of
happiness, which was the result of a too introspective

1 Atttobiog., pp. 64-66. 2 Dissertations, ii. 462. 3 Utilit., ch. i.

252 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

pursuit of it, taught him the truth of * what at that time I
certainly had never heard of, the ariti-self-consciousness
theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the con
viction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct,
and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was
only to be attained by not making it the direct end.
Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds
fixed on some object other than their own happiness ; on
the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind,
even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but
as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else,
they find happiness by the way. . . . Ask yourself whether
you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance
is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as
the purpose of life. . . . This theory now became the
basis of my philosophy of life.' 1 This altered emphasis
was further encouraged by his friendship with Carlyle,
Maurice, and Sterling, as well as by the study of the
writings of Coleridge and the acquaintance which he
thus acquired with German idealism.

His close association with the leaders of the movement
called * Philosophical Radicalism,' and especially his regard
for his father's feelings, restrained Mill from the expression
of a dissent which he had gradually learned to entertain
from the theory of Utilitarianism, as formulated by
Bentham and accepted by his followers. But two years
after the death of his father, he published in the London
and Westminster Review (1832) an essay on Bentham
which clearly shows how far he had travelled from orthodox
Benthamism. While still emphasising Bentham's merits
as a practical reformer, Mill in this essay depreciates in the
most serious way his qualities as a moralist. His fatal
defect is his narrowness of moral vision, his limitation of
view ; and this, in turn, is the result of his defect of
sympathy and imagination. Bentham's disregard of all
previous theories, as £ vague generalities,' has blinded him to
much that is essential in the moral nature of man : ' these

1 Autobiography, p. 142.

JOHN STUART MILL 253

generalities contained the whole unanalysed experience of
the human race.' x This failure to take account of ' the
collective mind of the human race,' as reflected in the
theories of other philosophers, was the more disastrous,
in Bentham's case, on account of * the incompleteness of
his own mind as a representative of universal human
nature.' ' In many of the most natural and strongest
feelings of human nature he had no sympathy ; from many
of its graver experiences he was altogether cut off.' 2
' He saw accordingly in man little but what the vulgarest
eye can see ; recognised no diversities of character but
such as he who runs may read.' The result is that he
was 'a systematic half-thinker.' 'The truths which are
not Bentham's, which his philosophy takes no account
of, are many and important . . . and it is a com
paratively easy task that is reserved for us, to harmonise
those truths with his. To reject his half of the truth
because he overlooked the other half, would be to fall
into his error without having his excuse.' 3

Among the truths which Bentham failed to recognise,
Mill specially mentions that ' man is never recognised by
him as a being capable of pursuing spiritual perfection as
an end ; of desiring, for its own sake, the conformity of
his own character to his standard of excellence, without
hope of good or fear of evil from other source than his
own inward consciousness. Even in the more limited
form of Conscience, this great fact in human nature
escapes him. Nothing is more curious than the absence
of recognition in any of his writings of the existence
of conscience.'4 Similarly with * self-respect.' And
' he but faintly recognises, as a fact in human nature,
the pursuit of any other ideal end for its own sake.' 5
' How far,' Mill asks, 'will this view of human nature and
life carry any one ? . . . What will it do for the individual
and what for society ? It will do nothing for the
conduct of the individual, beyond prescribing some of the
more obvious dictates of worldly prudence and outward

1 Dissertations, i. 351. 2 Ibid., i. 353. 3 Ibid., i. 357.

4 Ibid.,\. 359- 6 Ibid., i. 360.

254 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

probity and beneficence. ... It will enable a society which
has attained a certain state of spiritual development, and
the maintenance of which in that state is otherwise
provided for, to prescribe the rules by which it may
protect its material interests. It will do nothing . . .
for the spiritual interests of society.' l If the principle
of utility is to be justly interpreted, it must be applied to
all the facts of our moral experience. In particular, it
must explain, not ignore or explain away, the conscien
tious feelings of mankind ; it must take account of, and
interpret, the ideal interests of human life. In the essay
on Liberty, published in 1859, but 'first planned and
written as a short essay in 1854,' he says: 'I regard
utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions ; but
it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the
permanent interests of man as a progressive being.' 2
He adopts as the motto of the essay the words of Von
Humboldt : i The grand, leading principle, towards which
every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges,
is the absolute and essential importance of human develop
ment in its richest diversity.' He quotes with approval
the same author's doctrine that { the end of man, or that
which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates
of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient
desires, is the highest and most harmonious development
of his powers to a complete and consistent whole,' and
that, therefore, the object * towards which every human
being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on which
especially those who design to influence their fellow-men
must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of power
and development.' 3 To < individuality as one of the
elements of well-being1 he devotes perhaps the most
important chapter of the work.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find Mill, in the essay
on Utilitarianism, first published as a series of articles
in Eraser's Magazine in 1861, announcing his great
innovation upon all previous versions of the hedonistic

1 Dissertations, i. 363-5. 2 Liberty, Introd. 3 Ibid., ch. iii.

JOHN STUART MILL 255

theory of morals — the doctrine that pleasures differ in
kind or quality, as well as in quantity or degree ; that
mental are superior to bodily pleasures, not only, as
previous hedonists have insisted, in their < circumstantial
advantages,' but in their l intrinsic nature.' * It is quite
compatible with the principle of utility to recognise
the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable
and more valuable than others. It would be absurd
that while, in estimating all other things, quality is
considered as well as quantity, the estimation of plea
sures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.'
1 A being of higher faculties requires more to make
him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering,
and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one
of an inferior type ; but in spite of these liabilities, he
can never really wish to sink into what he feels to
be a lower grade of existence.' This unwillingness
is due to <a sense of dignity, which all human beings
possess in one form or another, and in some, though
by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties,
and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those
in whom it is strong that nothing which conflicts with
it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of
desire to them.'1

Similarly he recognises the sense of duty or ' the con
scientious feelings of mankind,' as the c internal sanction ' of
right conduct, which he adds to the ' external sanctions '
of Bentham. * Its binding force . . . consists in the ex
istence of a mass of feeling which must be broken through
in order to do what violates our standard of right, and which,
if we do nevertheless violate that standard, will probably
have to be encountered afterwards in the form of remorse.
Whatever theory we have of the nature or origin of
conscience, this is what essentially constitutes it.' It
does not follow that, because the * moral feelings ' are
not innate but acquired, they are the less natural : * the
moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural

1 Utilit.^ ch. ii.

25 6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

outgrowth from it.' There is c a natural basis of senti
ment for utilitarian morality,' in which its real strength
is found. 'This firm foundation is that of the social
feelings of mankind ; the desire to be in unity with
our fellow creatures. . . . This feeling in most individuals
is much inferior in strength to their selfish feelings, and
is often wanting altogether. But to those who have
it, it possesses all the characters of a natural feeling.
It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition
of education, or a law despotically imposed by the power
of society, but as an attribute which it would not be
well for them to be without. This conviction is the ulti
mate sanction of the greatest happiness morality.' x

Although Hume had recognised the existence of
sympathy or disinterested regard for the general happiness,
Bentham, like Paley, had insisted upon self-interest as the
only possible motive of human conduct. Mill affirms
the possibility of altruism in the motive, as well as in
the end or criterion, of right action. ' Let utilitarians
never cease to claim the morality of self-devotion as a
possession which belongs by as good a right to them
as either to the Stoic or to the Transcendentalist. The
utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the
power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good
of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is
itself a good. ... As between his own happiness and that
of others, utilitarianism requires him [the individual] to
be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent
spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth we
read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do
as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour
as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian
morality. ... If the impugners of the utilitarian morality
represented it to their minds in this its true character,
I know not what recommendation possessed by any other
morality they could possibly affirm to be wanting to it ;
what more beautiful or more exalted developments of

1 Ibid., ch. iii,

JOHN STUART MILL 257

human nature any other ethical system can be supposed
to foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the
utilitarian, such systems rely on for giving effect to their
mandates.' l

Yet Mill defines Utilitarianism in Bentham's familiar
terms. ' The creed which accepts as the foundation of
morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds
that actions are right in proportion as they tend to pro
mote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the re
verse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure
and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness, pain and the
privation of pleasure.' The * supplementary explanations '
which require to be added to this definition, he affirms,
' do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of
morality is grounded — namely, that pleasure and freedom
from pain are the only things desirable as ends ; and that
all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utili
tarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for
the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to
the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.' 2
Moreover, he finds the 'proof of the principle of utility
in Bentham's theory of desire. ' No reason can be
given why the general happiness is desirable, except
that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable,
desires his own happiness.' 3 He explains the desire of
other things as either the desire of means to happiness
or the desire of things which, formerly desired as means,
have by association taken the place of the end itself. He
makes no attempt to reconcile this doctrine of psycho
logical hedonism either with his acknowledgment of the
naturalness of sympathy or with the obligatoriness of the
general happiness upon the individual.

The presence of these fundamental inconsistencies in
Mill's ethical theory may be partly explained by the fact
that for him, as well as for Bentham, the 'principle of
Utility ' was not so much an ethical principle as a method

1 Utilit., ch. ii, 2 Loc. tit. 3 Utilit., ch. iv.

R

258 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

of social and political reform, and that the principle of
individual liberty was more important, in his eyes as well
as in theirs, than that of utility. ' It is plain,' says Pro
fessor Dicey, 'that it is the doctrine of laissezfaire which
has really governed Benthamite legislation.' x ' Though
/aissez faire is not an essential part of utilitarianism it
was practically the most vital part of Bentham's legislative
doctrine, and in England gave to the movement for the
reform of the law, both its powers and its character.' 2
The intensity of the individualism of the Utilitarians
was chiefly due to their conviction that the great
social evil was the predominance of class-interests over
national interests in determining the action of Govern
ment. The constant object of their attack was that * sinister
interest ' which, in one form or another, was always
asserting itself as the rival of the true interest of society
and, therefore, of the individual. It was because the only
government they knew was a government vitiated by self-
interest, because in their experience ' a political trust was
habitually confounded with private property,' 3 that they
found it necessary to defend the individual from govern
mental interference with his interests. The representative
and democratic form of government does not save it from
this evil ; in some ways, as Mill argues, it only intensifies
the evil. Mill's essay on Liberty is the philosophical
statement of this Utilitarian view of the relation of
society to the individual. Professor Dicey says that it
'appeared, to thousands of admiring disciples, to provide
the final and conclusive demonstration of the absolute
truth of individualism, and to establish on firm ground
the doctrine that the protection of freedom was the one
great object of wise law and sound policy.'4 'Such
phrases as " self-government " and " the power of the
people over themselves,"' Mill argues, 'do not express
the true state of the case.' Even in a democracy it is

1 Law and Opinion in England, p. 145, note.

2 Ibid., p. 146.

3 Leslie Stephen, English Utilitarians, ii. 90.

4 Law and Opinion in England, p. 182,

JOHN STUART MILL 259

only a part of the people, the majority, that really
governs ; and the ' tyranny of the majority ' is not less
real than that of the individual despot ; it may well be an
even more oppressive form of tyranny, since it is social
as well as political, 'penetrating much more deeply into
the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.' The
inevitable result of this oppression of the individual by
society is the encouragement of mediocrity, the discourage
ment of distinction. 'Those whose opinions go by the
name of public opinion are not always the same sort of
public. . . . But they are always a mass, that is to say,
collective mediocrity.'

What, then, Mill asks, is the proper limit of govern
mental interference with the liberty of the individual ?
'The sole end/ he replies, 'for which mankind are
warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protec
tion. . . . The only purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised com
munity, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant. . . . The only part of the conduct of any one,
for which he is amenable to society, is that which con
cerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself,
his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself,
over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
. . . The only freedom which deserves the name, is that
of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we
do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their
efforts to obtain it.' This principle follows, Mill argues,
from that of ' Utility in the largest sense, grounded on the
permanent interests of man as a progressive being.' ' Man
kind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as
seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to
live as seems good to the rest.'1 The individual, as
he has the most intimate knowledge of his own good,
is also the best judge of the means which lead to it.

1 Liberty, Introd.

260 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Moreover, 'it is desirable that in things which do not
primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself.
Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions
or customs of other people, are the rules of conduct, there
is wanting one of the chief ingredients of human happi
ness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and
social progress.'1 It is desirable, in the interests of the
general well-being, that there should be as many and as
varied experiments in living as possible ; even eccentricity
is better than the dull and dead uniformity of type which
is encouraged by social and political control of the indi
vidual. Finally, every addition to the functions of govern
ment constitutes a new step in the direction of bureaucracy,
and bureaucracy is the grave of individuality.

On the other hand, it is to be noted that there is
nothing in Mill's theory of individual liberty to invalidate
the increasing interference of the State with the industrial
liberty of the individual ; and we know, from his treatise
on Political Economy (especially the chapter ' On the
Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes,') 2 as well as
from his Autobiography^ how far he was willing to go
in the direction of Socialism and how carefully he
sought to co-ordinate economic with ethical well-being.
Even in the essay on Liberty he protests against ' mis
applied notions of liberty,' as ' a real obstacle to the fulfil
ment by the State of its duties,' and affirms that 'the
State, while it respects the liberty of each in what specially
regards himself, is bound to maintain a vigilant control
over his exercise of any power which it allows him to
possess over others.' As regards the State's interference
with the industrial life, in particular, he insists upon
the distinction between economic and moral freedom.
* Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes of
trade, are indeed restraints ; and all restraint, qua restraint,
is an evil : but the restraints in question affect only that
part of conduct which society is competent to restrain. . . .
As the principle of individual liberty is not involved in the

1 Liberty, ch. iii. 2 Polit. Econ., bk. iv. ch. vii.

JOHN STUART MILL 261

doctrine of Free Trade, so neither is it in most of the
questions which arise respecting the limits of that doc
trine: as, for example . . . how far sanitary precautions,
or arrangements to protect work-people employed in
dangerous occupations, should be enforced on employers.
Such questions involve considerations of liberty, only in so
far as leaving people to themselves is always better, caeteris
paribus, than controlling them : but that they may be
legitimately controlled for these ends, is in principle unde
niable.' x As for the < liberty of combination/ which was
one of the burning questions of the time, he regards it as
so far from contradicting the doctrine of individual liberty
that it is the corollary of that doctrine. * From this
liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the
same limits, of combination among individuals ; freedom
to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others :
the persons combining being supposed to be of full age,
and not forced or deceived.' 2

Lord Morley has remarked of Mill that he * recognised
the social destination of knowledge, and kept the elevation
of the great art of social existence ever before him, as the
ultimate end of all speculative activity.' 3 This conviction
of the practical significance of philosophy finds expression
more than once in Mill's own works. ' Speculative
philosophy,' he says, < which to the superficial appears a
thing so remote from the business of life and the outward
interests of men, is in reality the thing on earth which
most influences them, and in the long run overbears every
other influence save those which it must itself obey.' 4
The difference between Intuitionism and Empiricism is,
as he understands it, practical as well as theoretical ; and
it was the practical aspect of the controversy that chiefly
interested him, and that prompted him to write the Logic.
4 The System of Logic supplies what was much wanted,
a text-book of the opposite doctrine [to the " German, or
a priori view of human knowledge, and of the knowing

1 Liberty, ch. v. 2 Ibid., Introd.

3 Critical Miscellanies, iii. 42. 4 Dissertations, i. 330.

262 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

faculties"] — that which derives all knowledge from ex
perience, and all moral and intellectual qualities principally
from the direction given to the associations. . . . The
notion that truths external to the mind may be known by
intuition or consciousness, independently of observation
and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the
great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad in
stitutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate
belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not
remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of
justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-
sufficient voucher and justification. There never was
such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-
seated prejudices.'1

Empiricism is ' the doctrine of the school of Locke and
of Bentham,' as opposed to that of German Transcenden
talism and Scottish Intuitionism ; and Mill is convinced
that the truth lies with the former type of philosophical
theory. ' We see no ground for believing that anything
can be the object of our knowledge except our experience,
and what can be inferred from our experience by the
analogies of experience itself ; nor that there is any idea,
feeling, or power in the human mind, which, in order to
account for it, requires that its origin should be referred
to any other source.' 2 Yet the Transcendentalists have
performed the important service of compelling that
' entire renovation ' of which the Lockian doctrine stood
in need. i It perhaps required all the violence of the
assaults made by Reid and the German school upon
Locke's system, to recall men's minds to Hartley's
principles, as alone adequate to the solution, upon that
system, of the peculiar difficulties which those assailants
pressed upon men's attention as altogether insoluble by
it.' 3 The repudiation of the shallow doctrine of French
Ideology, that corrupt version of the Lockian tradition,
was ' the first sign that the age of real psychology
was about to commence.' 4 In his Autobiography Mill

1 Autobiog., p. 225. 2 Dissertations, i. 409.

3 Ibid., i. 412. * Ibid., i. 411.

JOHN STUART MILL 263

speaks of ' analytic psychology ' as < that most impor
tant branch of speculation, on which all the moral
and political sciences ultimately rest.' 1 As his aim in
ethics is to develop the implications of the principle of
Utility, his purpose in the discussion of the wider
questions of general philosophy is to develop and apply
the principle of Association, the principle of Hartley, as
modified by his father in the Analysis. The result is
seen in the System of Logic and the Examination of Sir
William Hamilton s Philosophy, the former published in
1843, the latter in 1865.

The Logic is Mill's only systematic treatise in philo
sophy ; and apart from its speculative interest, it is a
work of epoch-making importance in logical theory. HofF-
d ing's estimate is hardly exaggerated when he says that
' it is not easy to find a parallel to this work unless we go
back to Aristotle ; what the latter did for the syllogism
and for deductive logic, Mill has done for induction,
for the logic of experimental science.' 2 As Aristotle
reduced to rule the procedure of the Socratic and Platonic
dialectic, Mill has formulated the methods underlying
and regulating the procedure of modern science.
As the Aristotelian logic states the methods of argu
mentation, Mill's logic states the methods of experi
mentation. The great merit of Mill, as compared with
Bacon, his only important predecessor in this field, is that
he appreciates the value of the deductive method as an
indispensable element in the complete method of science.
While he insists, no less emphatically than Bacon, upon
the inductive basis of all scientific explanation, he sees
the limitation of an induction which is not supplemented
by deduction. If Bacon's repudiation of the deduc
tive method was necessary as a protest against the
empty argumentation of Scholastic philosophy, the lesson
needed by the modern scientific mind is that the
complete scientific method is deductive as well as in
ductive, and that the ideal of scientific explanation is the

1 Autobiog.) p. 204.

2 Einleitung in die englische Philosophic unserer Zeit, p. 33.

264 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

combination of induction and deduction, of analysis and
synthesis.

The aim of all scientific investigation being the dis
covery of the causal relations of phenomena, and the cause
being the unconditional antecedent — that condition, or
sum of conditions, whose presence is followed by the
presence of the consequent and whose absence is followed
by the absence of the consequent, what is needed is some
clear guide to the detection of these causal relations.
Mill formulates five such guiding methods — the method of
agreement, that of difference, the joint or double method
of agreement and difference, the method of residues, and
that of concomitant variations. The common feature of
these methods — the one real method of scientific inquiry
— is, as Taine points out, that of elimination.1 All the
other methods are thus subordinate to the method of
difference. Here we have a case of the occurrence of the
phenomenon under investigation and a case of its non-
occurrence, these cases having every circumstance in
common save one, that one occurring only in the former ;
and we are warranted in concluding that this circumstance,
in which alone the two cases differ, is either the cause or
a necessary part of the cause of the phenomenon.

It is only in the simpler cases of causal connexion, how
ever, that we can apply these direct methods of observation
and experiment. In the more complex cases we have to
employ the c deductive method/ which consists of three
operations — induction, ratiocination or deduction, and
verification. < To the Deductive Method, thus charac
terised in its three constituent parts — Induction, Ratio
cination, and Verification — the human mind is indebted
for its most conspicuous triumphs in the investigation of
nature. To it we owe all the theories by which vast and
complicated phenomena are embraced under a few simple
laws, which, considered as the laws of those great pheno
mena, could never have been detected by their direct
study.' 2 We deduce the law or cause of a complex effect

1 Le positivisme anglais, Eng. trans., p. 58.

2 Logic, bk. iii. ch. xi. sect. 3.

JOHN [STUART MILL 265

from the laws of the separate causes whose concurrence
gives rise to it. For example, c the mechanical and
chemical laws of the solid and fluid substances composing
the organised body and the medium in which it subsists,
together with the peculiar vital laws of the different
tissues constituting the organic structure,' afford the clue
to ' the laws on which the phenomena of life depend.' 1
But these Maws of the different causes' must first be
ascertained by direct induction, and finally verified, as
the causes actually operative in the complex effect, by
comparison with the facts of the case. Thus the entire
process is based on induction. 'To warrant reliance
on the general conclusions arrived at by deduction, these
conclusions must be found, on careful comparison, to
accord with the results of direct observation wherever it
can be had. . . . Thus it was very reasonably deemed an
essential requisite of any true theory of the causes of
the celestial motions, that it should lead by deduction
to Kepler's laws ; which, accordingly, the Newtonian
theory did.' 2

The validity of the entire inductive process is thus
clearly seen to depend upon the validity of its underlying
assumption, the law of causation itself. Assuming that
every phenomenon has a cause, or invariable and un
conditional antecedent, we investigate the problem of
causation in detail. Is this fundamental assumption itself
valid ? Mill cannot avail himself of the theory that the
c law of universal causation ' is an intuition of reason or
an a priori and transcendental principle. For him the
only possible view is that 'the belief we entertain in the
universality, throughout nature, of the law of cause and
effect, is itself an instance of induction. . . . We arrive
at this universal law by generalisation from many laws of
inferior generality. We should never have had the notion
of causation (in the philosophical meaning of the term) as
a condition of all phenomena, unless many cases of causa
tion, or, in other words, many partial uniformities of

1 Logic, III. xi. i. 2 Ibid., III. xi. 3.

266 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

sequence, had previously become familiar. The more
obvious of the particular uniformities suggest, and give
evidence of, the general uniformity, and the general
uniformity, once established, enables us to prove the
remainder of the particular uniformities of which it is
made up.' l These early inductions, which result in
the law of universal causation, cannot belong to the same
type as those rigorous inductions which conform to the
canons of scientific induction and presuppose the law of
universal causation ; they belong to ' the loose and
uncertain mode of induction per enumerationem simp/icem.9
How, then, can a process whose basis is thus loose and
uncertain have any certain validity ? Mill's answer is
that induction by simple enumeration, or £ generalisation
of an observed fact from the mere absence of any known
instance to the contrary,' as contrasted with the critical
induction of science, is a valid, though a fallible process,
which must precede the less fallible forms of the inductive
process, and that 'the precariousness of the method of
simple enumeration is in an inverse ratio to the largeness
of the generalisation.' ' As the sphere widens, this un
scientific method becomes less and less liable to mislead ;
and the most universal class of truths, the law of causation,
for instance, and the principles of number and geometry,
are duly and satisfactorily proved by that method alone,
nor are they susceptible of any other proof.' 2

The universality of the law of causation, as it is an
induction from our experience, does not extend to * circum
stances unknown to us, and beyond the possible range of
our experience.' ' In distant parts of the stellar regions,
where the phenomena may be entirely unlike those with
which we are acquainted, it would be folly to affirm con
fidently that this general law prevails, any more than those
special ones which we have found to hold universally on
our own planet. The uniformity in the succession of
events, otherwise called the law of causation, must be
received, not as a law of the universe, but of that portion of

1 Logic, III. xxi. 2. 2 Ibid., III. xxi. 3.

JOHN STUART MILL 267

it only which is within the range of our means of sure
observation, with a reasonable degree of extension to
adjacent cases. To extend it further is to make a supposi
tion without evidence, and to which, in the absence of
any ground from experience for estimating its degree of
probability, it would be idle to attempt to assign any.'1
There is no difficulty in conceiving 'that in some
one, for instance, of the many firmaments into which
sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may
succeed one another at random without any fixed law ;
nor can anything in our experience, or in our mental
nature, constitute a sufficient, or indeed any, reason for
believing that this is nowhere the case.'2

The appearance of paradox in the view that the law of
causation is at once the presupposition and the result of
induction disappears, according to Mill, with 'the old
theory of reasoning, which supposes the universal truth,
or major premise, in a ratiocination, to be the real proof
of the particular truths which are ostensibly inferred
from it.' 3 His own view is that ' the major premise
is not the proof of the conclusion, but is itself proved,
along with the conclusion, from the same evidence.'
The old theory implies that the syllogism is a petitio
principii, since the conclusion which is supposed to be
proved is already contained in the major premise ; if we
know that ' all men are mortal,' we know, and do not
require to prove, that ' Socrates is mortal.' ' No reasoning
from generals to particulars can, as such, prove anything,
since from a general principle we cannot infer any
particulars, but those which the principle itself assumes
as known.' 4 The only use of the syllogism is to con
vict your opponent of inconsistency ; it cannot lead us
from the known to the unknown. In reality the major
premise is a register of previous inductions and a short
formula for making more. 'The conclusion is not an
inference drawn from the formula, but an inference drawn
according to the formula ; the real logical antecedent

i Logic, III. xxi. 4. 2 Ibid., III. xxi. I.

3 Ibid., III. xxi. 4. * Ibid., II. iii. 2.

268 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

or premise being the particular facts from which the
general proposition was collected by induction/1 The
major premise is merely a shorthand note, to assist the
memory. 'The inference is finished when we have as
serted that all men are mortal. What remains to be per
formed afterwards is merely deciphering our own notes.'
The mistake of the traditional view is ' that of referring a
person to his own notes for the origin of his knowledge.
If a person is asked a question, and is at the moment
unable to answer it, he may refresh his memory by turning
to a memorandum which he carries about with him. But
if he were asked, how the fact came to his knowledge,
he would scarcely answer, because it was set down in
his notebook : unless the book was written, like the
Koran, with a quill from the wing of the angel Gabriel.' 2
All inference is from particulars to particulars; the
syllogistic process is only an interpretation of our notes
of previous inferences. 'If we had sufficiently capacious
memories, and a sufficient power of maintaining order
among a huge mass of details, the reasoning could go on
without any general propositions ; they are mere formulae
for inferring particulars from particulars.'3

Syllogistic reasoning is thus a circuitous way of reaching
a conclusion which might have been reached directly,
like going up a hill and down again when we might
have travelled along the level road. There is no reason
why we should be compelled to take the ' high priori
road ' except ' the arbitrary fiat of logicians.' ' Not only
may we reason from particulars -to particulars without
passing through generals, but we perpetually do so
reason. All our earliest inferences are of this nature.'4
Mill, however, acknowledges ' the immense advantage,
in point of security for correctness, which is gained by
interposing this step between the real evidence and the
conclusion,' the importance of 'the appeal to former
experience in the major premise of the syllogism.'5
When we say that Socrates is mortal, because he is a

1 Logic, II. iii. 4. 2 Ibid., III. iii. 3. 3 Ibid., III. iv. 3.

4 Ibid., II. iii. 3. 5 Ibid., II. iii. 6.

JOHN STUART MILL 269

man, and all men are mortal, we assert that because he
resembles the other individuals in the attributes connoted
by the term man, he resembles them further in the
attribute mortality. ' Whether, from the attributes in
which Socrates resembles those men who have heretofore
died, it is allowable to infer that he resembles them also
in being mortal, is a question of Induction.'1 The
major premise is the record and reminder that we have
made that induction, and are therefore not merely
warranted, but required, to apply it in the particular case
before us.

<The chief strength of this false philosophy [intuitionism]
in morals, politics, and religion,' Mill remarks in his
Autobiography^ Mies in the appeal which it is accustomed
to make to the evidence of mathematics and of the
cognate branches of physical science. To expel it from
these, is to drive it from its stronghold : and because this
had never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even
after what my father had written in his Analysis of
the Mind, had in appearance, and as far as published
writings were concerned, on the whole the best of the
argument. In attempting to clear up the real nature
of the evidence of mathematical and physical truths,
the " System of Logic " met the intuitive philosophers on
ground on which they had previously been deemed un
assailable ; and gave its own explanation, from experience
and association, of that peculiar character of what are
called necessary truths, which is adduced as proof that
their evidence must come from a deeper source than
experience.' 2 The peculiar certainty and necessity attri
buted to these truths is, he argues, 'an illusion, in order
to sustain which, it is necessary to suppose that those
truths relate to, and express the properties of purely
imaginary objects.' As a matter of fact, the truths of
geometry do not hold, except approximately, of the real
world, but only of that imaginary world which cor
responds to its initial definitions. The truth is that

1 Logic, II. iii. 7. 2 Autobiog., p. 226.

270 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

geometry < is built on hypotheses ; that it owes to this
alone the peculiar certainty supposed to distinguish it ;
and that in any science whatever, by reasoning from
a set of hypotheses, we may obtain a body of conclusions
as certain as those of geometry, that is, as strictly in
accordance with the hypotheses, and as irresistibly com
pelling assent, on condition that those hypotheses are
true.'1 As for the axioms which, together with - the
definitions, form the basis of geometrical reasoning, they
are in reality < experimental truths, generalisations from
observation/ The great argument for their a priori
character is that their opposites are inconceivable. But
conceivability ' has very little to do with the possibility
of the thing in itself, but is in truth very much an
affair of accident, and depends on the past history and
habits of our own minds.' 2 It is the effect of habitual
association, itself the result of our earliest and most
widely based inductions from experience ; it is an ac
quired incapacity which can hardly but be mistaken for a
natural one, an experimental truth which can hardly but
be mistaken for a necessary one.

It is in the application of the inductive and psychological
method to social and political problems that Mill sees
the crowning achievement of scientific investigation.
This application has yet to be made ; the c Germano-
Coleridgian school' were 'the first (except a solitary
thinker here and there) who inquired with any compre
hensiveness or depth, into the inductive laws of the
existence and growth of human society.' 3 To the con
sideration of this new science of c Ethology,' or the
study of the causes influencing the formation of national
character, the final book of the Logic is devoted. In
thus seeking to inaugurate a scientific Sociology, Mill
was undoubtedly influenced by Comte, but he was also
proceeding on the familiar lines of the Utilitarians,
who always regarded character as the product of circum
stances, and looked to education to effect the transition

1 Logic, II. v. i. 2 Ibid., II. v. 6. 3 Dissertations, i. 425.

JOHN STUART MILL 271

from the present unsatisfactory state of things to one
more in accordance with their social ideal. The in
definite modifiability of human nature by circumstances
is the working hypothesis of the school ; all that Mill adds
is the demand that social life be conducted on scientific
principles. It is significant that Mill finally abandoned
the intention to construct the scheme of such a science,
and devoted his energies to the writing of his Political
Economy, published five years after the Logic, in 1848. It
would be difficult to reconcile the view of the growth
of character implied in the desiderated * Ethology ' with
his insistence upon the importance of individuality, and
his protest against the interference of society with the
liberty of the individual, in the essay on Liberty, published
in 1859.

Mill's only other work in general philosophy is the
Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, pub
lished in 1865. 'I mean in this book,' he writes to
Bain, c to do what the nature and scope of the " Logic "
forbade me to do there, to face the ultimate meta
physical difficulties of every question on which I touch.'1
The discussion of Hamilton's philosophy was intended,
as we learn from the Autobiography, to be made the
occasion of a thorough-going examination of the rival
philosophies of Intuitionism and Empiricism, the con
troversy between which had, in Mill's eyes, as we
have already seen, the utmost practical and social signifi
cance. 'The difference between these two schools of
philosophy, that of Intuition, and that of Experience
and Association, is not a mere matter of abstract specu
lation ; it is full of practical consequences, and lies at
the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical
opinion in an age of progress. The practical reformer
has continually to demand that changes be made in
things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread
feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and inde-,

1 Letters, i. 271.

272 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

feasibleness of established facts ; and it is often an indis
pensable part of his argument to show how those powerful
feelings had their origin, and how those facts came
to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore
a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which
discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts
by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat
them as ultimate elements of human nature ; a philosophy
which is addicted to holding up favourite doctrines as
intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice
of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher
than that of our reason. In particular, I have long
felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked
distinctions of human character as innate, and in the
main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that
by far the greater part of those differences, whether
between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not
only might but naturally would be produced by differences
in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the
rational treatment of great social questions, and one of
the greatest stumbling tblocks to human improvement.'
It was necessary, therefore, to determine the issue between
these two philosophies. The pretensions of Intuitionism
had received a series of salutary checks by the publication
of the elder Mill's Analysis, of Mill's own Logic, and of
4 Professor Bain's great treatise.' ' But I had for some
time felt that the mere contrast of the two philosophies
was not enough, that there ought to be a hand-to-hand
fight between them, that controversial as well as expository
writings were needed, and that the time was come when
such controversy would be useful. Considering then
the writings and fame of Sir W. Hamilton as the great
fortress of the intuitional philosophy in this country, a
fortress the more formidable from the imposing character,
and the in many respects great personal merits and mental
endowments, of the man, I thought it might be a real
service to philosophy to attempt a thorough examination
of all his most important doctrines, and an estimate
pf his general claims to eminence as a philosopher.' This

JOHN STUART MILL 273

resolution was confirmed by the * profoundly immoral '
view of religion which had been deduced by Mansel
from the Hamiltonian doctrine of Relativity.1

It is unnecessary to follow this hand-to-hand encounter
in detail. It shows Mill at his best, but does not add
materially to the statement of his own position already
given in the Logic. The only important addition is the
application of the ' psychological theory ' to our belief in
an External World and in Mind. As regards the former,
Mill elaborates his famous view of the External World
as ca Permanent Possibility of Sensation.'2 As re
gards the latter, he elaborates the view of the Self
already referred to, as stated more briefly in the Notes to
the Analysis, published three years later. 'If we speak
of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are obliged to
complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings
which is aware of itself as past and future ; and we are
reduced to the alternative of believing that the Mind, or
Ego, is something different from any series of feelings, or
possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox, that
something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can
be aware of itself as a series. The truth is, that we are
here face to face with that final inexplicability, at which,
as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when
we reach ultimate facts ; and in general, one mode of
stating it only appears more incomprehensible than
another, because the whole of human language is accom
modated to the one, and is so incongruous with the other,
that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not
deny its truth. The real stumbling block is perhaps not
in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. ... I
think, by far the wisest thing we can do, is to accept the
inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes
place ; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms
which assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as
to their meaning.' 3 In the Appendix to Chapters XI.
and XII. he speaks more positively of the Self. * The

1 Autobiog.y pp. 273-275. 2 Examination t ch. xi. 3 Ibid., p. 248.

s

274 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

inexplicable tie, or law, the organic union (as Professor
Masson calls it) which connects the present consciousness
with the past one, of which it reminds me, is as near as I
think we can get to a positive conception of the Self.
That there is something real in this tie, real as the sensa
tions themselves, and not a mere product of the laws of
thought without any fact corresponding to it, I hold to be
indubitable. . . . This original element, which has no
community of nature with any of the things answering to
our names, and to which we cannot give any name but
its own peculiar one without implying some false or
unguarded theory, is the Ego, or Self. As such, I ascribe
a reality to the Ego — to my own Mind — different from
that real existence as a Permanent Possibility, which is
the only reality I acknowledge in Matter : and by fair
experiential inference from that one Ego, I ascribe the
same reality to other Egoes, or Minds. . . . We are forced
to apprehend every part of the series as linked with the
other parts by something in common, which is not the
feelings themselves, any more than the succession of the
feelings is the feelings themselves : and as that which is
the same in the first as in the second, in the second as in
the third, in the third as in the fourth, and so on, must
be the same in the first and in the fiftieth, this common
element is a permanent element.'1

The posthumously published volume of Essays on Religion
contains three essays — on Nature, the Utility of Religion,
and Theism. The first and second were written between
1850 and 1858, that is, during the same period as the
essays on Utilitarianism and on Liberty, while the third
belongs to a much later time, having been written between
1868 and 1870, and is thus < the last considerable work
which he completed,' and ' shows the latest state of the
Author's mind, the carefully balanced result of the
deliberations of a lifetime.' 2

The first essay is a protest against the view that the ideal

1 Examination, pp. 262, 263. 2 Essays on Religion, Preface.

JOHN STUART MILL 275

of human conduct is found in conformity to Nature. It
reminds us of Huxley's later condemnation, in his famous
Romanes lecture on * Evolution and Ethics,' of the cosmic
process from the ethical point of view. <In sober truth,
nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned
for doing to one another, are nature's every day perform
ances.' l It is a protest rather against naturalistic ethics
than against Natural Theology, but the latter is included
in the same condemnation with the former type of theory.
The Author of Nature cannot be at once good and
omnipotent.

The main argument of the essay on the Utility of
Religion, which, like that on Nature, is a fine specimen
of Mill's philosophical style, is the sufficiency of the
Religion of Humanity and its superiority to all but the
best of the supernatural religions. * Let it be remembered
that if individual life is short, the life of the human species
is not short ; its indefinite duration is practically equiva
lent to endlessness ; and being combined with indefinite
capability of improvement, it offers to the imagination and
sympathies a large enough object to satisfy any reason
able demand for grandeur of aspiration.' 2 < The essence
of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the
emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognized as
of the highest excellence, and as rightfully paramount over
all selfish objects of desire. This condition is fulfilled by
the Religion of Humanity in as eminent a degree, and in
as high a sense, as by the supernatural religions even in
their best manifestations, and far more so than in any
of their others.'3 The characteristic tendency of super-
naturalism is to arrest the development not only of the
intellectual but also of the moral nature. Its appeal is to
self-interest rather than to disinterested and ideal motives ;
and like the intuitional theory of ethics, it stereotypes
morality. The special appeal of supernatural religion is
to our sense of the mystery which circumscribes our little
knowledge ; but the same appeal is made, and the same

1 Essays on Religion, p. 28. * Ibid., p. 106. 3 Ibid., p. 109.

276 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

service to the imagination rendered, by Poetry. c Religion
and poetry address themselves, at least in one of their
aspects, to the same part of the human constitution : they
both supply the same want, that of ideal conceptions
grander and more beautiful than we see realized in the
prose of human life.' x ' The idealization of our earthly
life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it
may be made,' is * capable of supplying a poetry, and, in
the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to
exalt the feelings, and (with the same aid from education)
still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any
belief respecting the unseen powers.' 2 Yet ' he to
whom ideal good, and the progress of the world towards
it, are already a religion ' may find consolation and en
couragement in the belief that he is ca fellow-labourer
with the Highest, a fellow-combatant in the great strife ;
contributing his little, which by the aggregation of many
like himself becomes much, towards that progressive
ascendancy, and ultimately complete triumph of good
over evil, which history points to, and which this doctrine
teaches us to regard as planned by the Being to whom we
owe all the benevolent contrivance we behold in Nature.
Against the moral tendency of this creed no possible objec
tion can lie : it can produce on whoever can succeed in
believing it, no other than an ennobling effect.' 3

The essay on Theism bears evidence, in the imper
fection of its construction and the inferiority of its style,
to its lack of the author's final revision. The argument
for a First Cause is condemned, on the ground that there
is a permanent element in nature itself ; ' as far as
anything can be concluded from human experience,
Force has all the attributes of a thing eternal and un
created.' 4 The argument from Design is found to be less
unsatisfactory. The principle of the survival of the fittest,
while not inconsistent with Creation, 'would greatly
attenuate the evidence for it.' But * leaving this remark
able speculation to whatever fate the progress of discovery

1 Essays on Religion, p. 103. 2 Ibid., p. 105.

3 Ibid., p. 117. 4 Ibid., p. 147.

JOHN STUART MILL 277

may have in store for it,' Mill concludes that < it must
be allowed that, in the present state of our knowledge,
the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of prob
ability in favour of creation by intelligence.' 1 On the
other hand, c it is not too much to say that every indica
tion of Design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against
the Omnipotence of the Designer.' 2 The necessity
of contrivance, or the adaptation of means to ends, implies
limitation of power in the agent. As to Immortality,
there is < a total absence of evidence on either side.'
Miracles, while not impossible, are extremely improbable,
even on the hypothesis of a supernatural Being. The
reasonable attitude, on all these questions, is that of
scepticism, as distinguished alike from belief and from
atheism. 'If we are right in the conclusions to which we
have been led by the preceding inquiry, there is evidence,
but insufficient for proof, and amounting only to one of
the lower degrees of probability. The indication given
by such evidence as there is, points to the creation, not
indeed of the universe, but of the present order of it, by
an Intelligent Mind, whose power over the materials was
not absolute, whose love for his creatures was not his
sole actuating inducement, but who nevertheless desired
their good.'3 Where belief is not warranted, how
ever, hope is permissible, and the imagination need not be
controlled by purely rational considerations. 'To me it
seems that human life, small and confined as it is, and as,
considered merely in the present, it is likely to remain
even when the progress of material and moral improve
ment may have freed it from the greater part of its present
calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and
greater height of aspiration for itself and its destination,
which the exercise of imagination can yield to it without
running counter to the evidence of fact ; and that it is a
part of wisdom to make the most of any, even small, prob
abilities on this subject, which furnish imagination with
any footing to support itself upon.' 4 Above all, the

1 Essays on Religion, p. 174. 2 Ibid., p. 176.

3 Ibid., p. 242. * Ibid., p. 245.

278 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

conception of a morally perfect being, and of his appro
bation, is an inspiration for the moral life which would be
sorely missed, and Christianity has provided us with an
' ideal representative and guide of humanity ' ; c nor, even
now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a
better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract
into the concrete, than to endeavour so to live that Christ
would approve our life.' : < The feeling of helping God '
in the struggle with evil is ( excellently fitted to aid and
fortify that real, though purely human religion, which some
times calls itself the Religion of Humanity and sometimes
that of Duty,' and which c is destined, with or without
supernatural sanctions, to be the religion of the Future.'

Bain's two great psychological treatises, The Senses and
the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the /F*// ( 1 8 5 9) ,
form the connecting link between the Associationism of
the Mills and the scientific and evolutionary philosophy of
Herbert Spencer. Their importance is fully acknowledged
both by J. S. Mill and by Spencer. Mill, referring to
a statement by McCosh that Bain had c elaborated into a
minute system the general statements scattered throughout
Mr. Mill's Logic,' says : * Mr. Bain did not stand in need
of any predecessor except our common precursors, and has
taught much more to me, on these subjects, than there is
any reasonable probability that I can have taught to him.' 2
'Estimated as a means to higher results,' says Spencer,
' Mr. Bain's work is of great value. . . . We repeat,
that as a natural history of the mind, we believe it
to be the best yet produced. It is a most valuable
collection of carefully elaborated materials. Perhaps we
cannot better express our sense of its worth than by
saying that to those who hereafter give to this branch
of psychology a thoroughly scientific organisation, Mr.
Bain's book will be indispensable.' 3 When we compare

1 Essays on Religion, p. 255.

2 Examination of Hamilton, p. 274, note.

3 Essays, ed. 1863, i. 121 (quoted by Ribot, English Psychology,
p. 250).

ALEXANDER BAIN 279

these treatises with the earlier works of the Scottish
philosophers, and even with that of James Mill, we cannot
help remarking that they are scientific in a sense in which
those were not. It is not merely that Bain is the first to
use effectively the physiological method, referring psycho
logical phenomena to their correlates in nerve and brain,
but that he adopts throughout the genetic, if not the
evolutionary method, tracing the complex to the simple
and the later to the earlier, and thus explaining, where
his predecessors had been content to do little more than
describe, the phenomena of the mental life. When we add
to this scientific purpose, resolutely held to throughout
the investigation, his remarkable gift of lucid exposition
and of apposite and telling illustration, we can under
stand the immense influence which Bain exerted as a
teacher upon his pupils and as a writer upon his successors
in this field of scientific inquiry. At the same time, it is
to be remarked that it is rather in the sphere of scientific
psychology than in that of speculative philosophy that his
influence is to be traced. In ethics, on the other hand,
the importance of his contribution to the Utilitarian theory
is not to be underestimated.

In psychology Bain is a convinced Associationist, and
he applies himself with all the ardour of the Mills to
trace to their common source in experience and associa
tion all those ideas which others have held to be intuitive,
and have attributed to some original faculty of the mind.
His statement and illustration of the laws of association is
not merely much fuller than those given by his prede
cessors, and applied to the emotional and volitional as
carefully as to the intellectual life ; it also shows a clearer
apprehension of the nature of the process. His definite
differentiation of Similarity from Contiguity, as an in
dependent and equally important principle of Association,
adds materially to the value of Association as a psycho
logical principle, while his sense of the limitations of its
validity saves him from the errors into which its earlier
advocates had been betrayed. Apart from the doctrine of
Association, his chief contributions to psychology are his

280 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

differentiation of the muscular and organic senses from the
traditional five senses of earlier psychology ; his insistence
upon the < Law of Relativity,' or the presence of discrimina
tion, or the apprehension of difference, as well as similarity,
and of retentiveness as the condition of both, in the most
rudimentary forms of knowledge ; his recognition of spon
taneity, or ' random movement,' as the basis of the later
purposive movements which are the elementary form of
Will ; his doctrine of the instinctive origin of all the
higher forms of mentality ; and his explanation of Belief,
not in terms of Association, but in its relation to action
and emotion.

The account of Belief is hardly less important from a
metaphysical than from a psychological point of view.
The crucial point is the bearing of action upon belief.
' Preparedness to act upon what we affirm is admitted on all
hands to be the sole, the genuine, the unmistakable criterion
of belief.' J We believe in an ' order of nature,' or a l course
of things ' as a series of means to ends, which we proceed to
realise by our choice of the means. * The first germ and
perennial substance of the state,' however, is ' primitive
credulity,' or an innate tendency to believe everything
indiscriminately, which Bain contrasts with that * acquired
scepticism ' which is the result of the shock of contradiction,
the thwarting of our expectations, by experience of the
actual order of nature. We start with ' an overweening
belief in the uniformity of nature,' which is gradually
checked and educated by our growing experience. The
great lesson of experience is that the warrant of belief or
disbelief is to be found not in the mere frequency or rarity
of the uniformities, but in their c comparative frequency.'
The function of experience and repetition is not to origi
nate, but to confirm or correct the original tendency to
belief, strengthening or weakening it according to the
number and the nature of the agreements and contradic
tions respectively. We are thus enabled to correct the
error of the Associationist explanation. * When James Mill

1 Emotions and Will, 3rd ed., p. 505.

ALEXANDER BAIN 281

represented Belief as the offspring of " inseparable associa
tion," he put the stress upon the wrong point. If two
things have been incessantly conjoined in our experience,
they are inseparably associated, and we believe that the
one will be followed by the other ; but the inseparable
association follows the number of repetitions, the belief
follows the absence of contradiction. We have a stronger
mental association between " Diana of the Ephesians " and
the epithet " great," than probably existed in the minds
of Diana's own worshippers ; yet they believed in the
assertion, and we do not.' * As against J. S. Mill's view
that the belief in the ideas of memory, as distinguished
from those of imagination, is inexplicable, Bain holds that
'the principal distinction between Memory and Imagina
tion lies in the setting of the respective ideas. Ideas of
Memory have a place in the continuous chain of our
remembered life ; ideas of Imagination correspond to
nothing in that chain ; or rather, they are consciously
combined from different ideas of Memory taken out of
their Memory-setting, and aggregated under a special
motive.'2 He also traces with great skill the influence
of emotion upon belief, and the ' power of the Will, as
representing our likings and dislikings, to shape our
creeds.' 3

Closely connected with his general theory of Belief is
the account which Bain gives of our belief in the material
or external world, or, more strictly, of the objective as
distinguished from the subjective element in consciousness.
The material or external object is not the product of
passive sensation, or of the influence of the non-ego upon
the ego ; an object out of relation to the subject, matter
independent of mind, is a contradiction in terms. The
real source of belief in the object is the forth-putting of
energy by the subject. * The sum total of all the
occasions for putting forth active energy, or for con
ceiving this as possible to be put forth, is our external
world.' 4 < The feeling that is the deepest foundation of

1 Emotions and Will, p. 527. 2 Ibid., p. 534.

3 Ibid., p. 525. 4 Senses and Intellect, 3rd ed., p. 377.

282 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

our notion of externality ' is the feeling of resistance, the
' mixed state, produced through reacting upon a sensation
of touch by a muscular exertion.' This reeling of resis
tance, or 'expended muscular energy,' is the objective
side of consciousness, as sensation wholly passive is its
subjective side. 'The doctrine of an external and inde
pendent world ' is a ' generalisation or abstraction grounded
on our particular experiences, summing up the past,
and predicting the future.'1 The doctrine of Natural
Realism is a species of that metaphysical Realism which
attributes reality to the abstract universals, rather than to
the concrete particulars of our experience from which
they are derived.

While accepting the general standpoint of Utilitarianism
in ethics, Bain works out the theory, in several points,
much more carefully and consistently than J. S. Mill.
He definitely rejects the view that the only possible
motive of action is desire of our own pleasure. ' It seems
to me that we must face the seeming paradox — that there
are, in the human mind, motives that pull against our
happiness.'2 Disinterested and purely altruistic action,
he holds, is not merely possible but normal, and virtue
in its highest form is always disinterested. He is thus
enabled to explain that * conscience ' which had for Mill
remained inexplicable. Distinguishing the dutiful or
obligatory from the virtuous or optional, he explains the
former in terms of social penalties, the latter in terms of
social rewards. ' The powers that impose the obligatory
sanction are Law and Society, or the community acting
through the Government by public judicial acts, and,
apart from the Government, by the unofficial expressions
of disapprobation and the exclusion from social good
offices.' 3 The result of this social pressure is not
merely the enforcement of the type of conduct socially
approved, but the development, in the mind of the indi
vidual who is subjected to it, of the sense of duty, or
conscience, which adds its own pressure to that which

1 Senses and Intellect, p. 382. 2 Emotions arid Will, p. 296.

3 Ibid., p. 264.

ALEXANDER BAIN 283

comes from without. Conscience is thus <an ideal re
semblance of public authority, growing up in the individual
mind, and working to the same end,'1 'an imita
tion within ourselves of the government without us.' 2
The sentiment of fear is gradually supplemented and
superseded by 'a sentiment of love or respect towards
the person of the superior,' until c the young mind is
able to take notice of the use and meaning of the pro
hibitions imposed upon it, and to approve of the end
intended by them.' c All that we understand by the
authority of conscience, the sentiment of obligation, the
feeling of right, the sting of remorse — can be nothing else
than so many modes of expressing the acquired aversion
and dread towards certain actions associated in the mind
with the consequences now stated. . . .The dread of antici
pated evil operating to restrain before the fact, and the
pain realized after the act has been performed, are per
fectly intelligible products of the education of the mind
under a system of authority, and of experience of the
good and evil consequences of actions.' 3 Out of the
' slavish conscience ' of the child is thus developed the
c citizen conscience ' of the adult, which has regard to
4 the intent and meaning of the law, and not to the mere
fact of its being prescribed by some power ' ; 4 the
individual conscience becomes independent of social
rewards and punishments. 'We may by rewards and
punishments make men perform their social duties ; but
such performance is by that fact rendered self-regarding.
To obtain virtue in its highest purity, its noblest hue, we
have to abstain from the mention of both punishment
and reward.' This is true even of the theological
sanctions : c in the thunders of eternal reward and punish
ment, there cannot be heard the still small voice of a
purely disinterested motive.' 5

1 Emotions and Will, p. 264. 2 Ibid., p. 285. 3 Ibid., p. 286.
4 Ibid., p. 288. 6 Ibid., p. 297.

284 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

2. Evolutionism : Herbert Spencer

It remained for a thinker more ambitious than
Bain, and more profoundly impressed with the philo
sophical significance of the principle of Evolution, to
develop a philosophy of evolution, to attempt the con
struction of a system of the sciences, or the complete
unification of knowledge, by the discovery in each of the
special sciences of a single identical phenomenon, that of
Evolution. This task was attempted by Spencer, whose
philosophy, in spite of its agnostic basis, is therefore
systematic in a sense in which that of none of his English
predecessors, with the possible exception of Hobbes, can
be so described. ' He alone,' says Lewes, * of all British
thinkers has organised a system of philosophy.' He
attempts to construct that system of the sciences which
Bacon did little more than sketch as an ideal to be realised
through the labours of his successors. His philosophy is
systematic in a sense in which hardly any other philosophy
can be so described. As Professor Dewey has said, 'The
other systems are such after all more or less ex post facto.
In themselves they have the unity of the development of
a single mind, rather than of a predestined planned
achievement. They are systems somewhat in and through
retrospect. Their completeness owes something to the
mind of the onlooker gathering together parts which
have grown up more or less separately and in response
to felt occasions, to particular problems. . . . But Spencer's
system was a system from the very start. It was a
system in conception, not merely in issue.'1 Spencer
himself speaks of the operation in him of ' the archi
tectonic instinct, the love of system-building, as it would
be called in less complimentary language. During these
thirty years it has been a source of frequent elation to
see each division, and each part of a division^ working
out into congruity with the rest — to see each com-

1 Phil. Rev., xiii. 160.

HERBERT SPENCER 285

ponent fitting into its place, and helping to make a
harmonious whole/1

Hardly less remarkable than Spencer's intellectual

ambition is his intellectual independence, what Professor

Dewey calls his ' singular immunity from all intellectual

contagion,' what he himself notes as ' an unusually small

tendency to be affected by others' thoughts.' ' It seems as

though the fabric of my conclusions had in all cases to be

developed from within — refused to be built, and insisted

upon growing. Material which could be taken in and

organised, or re-organised, so as to form part of a coherent

structure in course of elaboration, there was always a

readiness to receive. But ideas and sentiments of alien

kinds, or unorganisable kinds, were, if not rejected, yet

accepted with indifference and soon dropped away.' 2

Even the great classics of philosophical literature were, if

not unread, merely dipped into, and cast aside as soon as

it became clear, as it must very soon have become in most

cases, that their point of view was c alien' to Spencer's

own modes of thought. Plato's dialogues, for example, he

found it impossible to read. c Time after time I have

attempted to read, now this dialogue and now that, and

have put it down in a state of impatience with the in-

definiteness of the thinking and the mistaking of words

for things : being repelled also by the rambling form of

the argument. . . . When I again took up the dialogues,

I contemplated them as works of art, and put them

aside in greater exasperation than before.'3 * All through

my life Locke's Essay had been before me on my father's

shelves, but I had never taken it down ; or, at any rate, I

have no recollection of having ever read a page of it.'

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason fared no better. ' This I

commenced reading, but did not go far. The doctrine

that Time and Space are u nothing but" subjective forms

— pertain exclusively to consciousness and have nothing

beyond consciousness answering to them — I rejected at

once and absolutely ; and, having done so, went no

1 Autobiog., ii. 450. 2 Ibid., i. 242. 3 Ibid., ii. 442.

286 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

further.' l He adds that ' whenever, in later years, I have
taken up Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, I have similarly
stopped short after rejecting its primary proposition.'

In March, 1860, Spencer issued his prospectus of the
Synthetic Philosophy, under the title < A System of Philo
sophy,' to consist of the following parts : (i) First
Principles, containing the statement of the fundamental
principles of the system, and giving the system itself in
outline and in all its generality ; (2) passing over the
application of these First Principles to Inorganic Nature,
as being of less immediate importance and making the
scheme impracticably extensive, the Principles of Biology ;
(3) the Principles of Psychology ; (4) the Principles of
Sociology ; (5) the Principles of Morality, the contents
of which had been in part anticipated in Social Statics.
Ambitious as the programme is, it was fully carried out,
the First Principles appearing in 1862, and the last volume
of the Principles of Sociology in 1896.

Tracing the genesis of our 'ultimate scientific ideas/
Spencer finds the universal form of thought in Relation :
it is because to think is to relate, that we cannot know
Absolute Reality. Time and space are derived by abstrac
tion from the two kinds of relation, sequence and co
existence. ' The abstract of all sequences is Time. The
abstract of all co-existences is Space. . . . Time and Space
are generated, as other abstracts are generated from other
concretes : the only difference being, that the organisation
of experiences has, in these cases, been going on through
out the entire evolution of intelligence.' 2 The con
ception of Matter has a similarly empirical origin. c Our
conception of Matter, reduced to its simplest shape, is
that of co-existent positions that offer resistance ; as con
trasted with our conception of Space, in which the co
existent positions offer no resistance.' As consisting
of co-existing positions, Matter is also extended ; but ' of
these two inseparable elements, the resistance is primary,

1 Autobiog.) i. 252. 2 First Principles ; p. 164.

HERBERT SPENCER 287

and the extension secondary. Occupied extension, or
Body, being distinguished in consciousness from un
occupied extension, or Space, by its resistance, this attri
bute must clearly have precedence in the genesis of
the idea.' 1 The idea of Motion is derived from our
earliest experiences of force. ' Out of this primitive con
ception of Motion, the adult conception of it is developed
simultaneously with the development of the conceptions
of Space and Time : all three being evolved from the more
multiplied and varied impressions of muscular tension and
objective resistance. Motion, as we know it, is thus
traceable, in common with the other ultimate scientific
ideas, to experiences of force.' 2

Force is thus seen to be ' the ultimate of ultimates.'
4 Though Space, Time, Matter, and Motion, are ap
parently all necessary data of intelligence, yet a psycho
logical analysis . . . shows us that these are either built
up of, or abstracted from, experiences of Force.'3 As
to the relation of ' this undecomposable mode of con
sciousness ' to c the Power manifested to us through
phenomena,' Spencer does not seem clear. 'Force, as
we know it,' he says, l can be regarded only as a certain
conditioned effect of the Unconditioned Cause — as the
relative reality indicating to us an Absolute Reality by
which it is immediately produced.' The doctrine to
which we are brought is neither realism nor idealism,
but * transfigured realism.' ' Getting rid of all complica
tions, and contemplating pure Force, we are irresistibly
compelled by the relativity of our thought, to vaguely
conceive some unknown force as the correlative of the
known force. Noumenon and phenomenon are here
presented in their primordial relation as two sides of the
same change, of which we are obliged to regard the
last as no less real than the first.' 4 But at the end
of the chapter on 4 the persistence of force ' he says :
£ The force of which we assert persistence is that Absolute
Force of which we are indefinitely conscious as the neces-

1 First Principles, p. 166. 2 Ibid,,^. 168.

3 Ibid., p. 169. * Ibid., p. 170.

288 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

sary correlate of the force we know. By the Persistence
of Force we really mean the persistence of some Cause
which transcends our knowledge and conception. In
asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality, without
beginning or end. . . . The sole truth which transcends
experience by underlying it, is thus the Persistence of
Force. This being the basis of experience, must be the
basis of any scientific organisation of experiences. To
this an ultimate analysis brings us down ; and on this a
rational synthesis must build up.' 1

From the persistence of force follows the persistence of
relations among forces, or the uniformity of law. c The
general conclusion that there exist constant connexions
among phenomena, ordinarily regarded as an inductive
conclusion only, is really a conclusion deducible from the
ultimate datum of consciousness ' [the persistence of force].2
A further consequence is the transformation and equi
valence of all forces. This holds, according to Spencer,
of the relation of physical to mental forces, no less than in
the case of merely physical forces. 'The law of meta
morphosis, which holds among the physical forces, holds
equally between them and the mental forces. Those
modes of the Unknowable which we call motion, heat,
light, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transformable into
each other, and into those modes of the Unknowable
which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought :
these, in their turns, being directly or indirectly re-
transformable into the original shapes.' 3 Finally the
direction of motion is ' that of the greatest force,' or that
of the least resistance ; and the rhythm of motion, or the
doctrine of the alternate action and reaction of forces,
follows from c the co-existence everywhere of antagonistic
forces.'

We have not yet, however, reached the synthesis or
complete unification of knowledge in which philosophy
consists ; we have not yet formulated the law of the
cosmic process as a whole. All these are ' analytical

i First Principles, p. 192. 3 Ibid., p. 195. 3 Ibid., p. 217.

HERBERT SPENCER 289

truths ' ; what we are seeking for is ( a universal synthesis.'
' Having seen that matter is indestructible, motion con
tinuous, and force persistent — having seen that forces are
everywhere undergoing transformation, and that motion,
always following the line of least resistance, is invariably
rhythmic, it remains to discover the similarly invariable
formula expressing the combined consequences of the
actions thus separately formulated.' x This compre
hensive Maw of the continuous redistribution of matter
and motion ' is the Law of Evolution ; and it is reached
first inductively, from a study of the actual phenomena,
then deductively, as an implication of the persistence
of force.

In every evolving phenomenon we find three charac
teristic features — integration, differentiation, and deter
mination : a change from incoherence to coherence,
from homogeneity to heterogeneity, from indefiniteness to
definiteness. First, there is an integration of matter and
accompanying dissipation of motion. This is illustrated
by the evolution of the solar system from the primitive
nebular mass, of the plant or animal from the elements
which enter into the composition of its body, as well as
by the evolution of the State from the looser combinations
of tribal communities and by 4 the integrations of advanc
ing Language, Science, and Art.'2 Secondly, there is a
growing differentiation of structure, alike in the parts and
in the whole, as we see in the differentiation of the several
planets from one another, in .the evolution of the different
species of plant and animal, in the differentiation of struc
ture and function within the animal body as well as in
the social organism and in the psychological life of man.
Thirdly, there is a change from confusion to order, or
from the indefinite to the definite, as the same examples
show. Accompanying these changes we find a parallel
transformation of the retained motion. The complete
definition of Evolution, therefore, is : < Evolution is an
integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of

i First Principles* p. 276. * Ibid., p. 319.

T

2 9o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

motion ; during which the matter passes from an inde
finite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
heterogeneity ; and during which the retained motion
undergoes a parallel transformation.'1

Is it possible to exhibit the law of Evolution, thus
inductively established, as a result of deductive demon
stration ; to show that ' the redistribution of matter and
motion must everywhere take place in those ways, and
produce those traits, which celestial bodies, organisms,
societies, alike display ? ' 2 Can we deduce the pheno
mena of evolution from the Persistence of Force ? In the
first place, Spencer replies, the transition from the homo
geneous to the heterogeneous is an obvious consequence
of ' the instability of the homogeneous.' Secondly, ' action
and re-action being equal and opposite, it follows that in
differentiating the parts on which it falls in unlike ways,
the incident force must itself be correspondingly differen
tiated. Instead of being, as before, a uniform force,
it must thereafter be a multiform force — a group of
dissimilar forces.'3 This he calls the law of 'the
multiplication of effects,' or ' the production of many
changes by one cause.' While these two laws explain the
nature of Evolution as a movement from homogeneity to
heterogeneity, they do not explain it as a movement from
the incoherent to the coherent, from the indefinite to the
definite. But in the case of any aggregate of unlike
units, or groups of units, these are, by the indiscriminate
action of any force upon them, ' separated from each
other — segregated into minor aggregates, each consisting
of units that are severally like each other and unlike those
of the other minor aggregates.'4 And 'other things
being equal, the definiteness of the separation is in pro
portion to the definiteness of the difference between the
units.' 5

The tendency of Evolution being to equilibrium, the
attainment of this state constitutes its ' impassable limit.'
'The re-distributions of matter that go on around us

1 First Principles, p. 396. 2 Ibid., p. 398, 3 Ibid., p. 431.

4 Ibid., p. 461. 5 Ibid., p. 463.

HERBERT SPENCER 291

are ever being1 brought to conclusions by the dissipation
of the motions which effect them.' l The universal co
existence of antagonistic forces results not merely in
the rhythmic decomposition of every force into divergent
forces, but also in the 'ultimate establishment of a
balance.' * Every motion being motion under resistance
is continually suffering deductions ; and these unceasing
deductions finally result in the cessation of the motion.' 2
Dissolution is thus the inevitable complement of Evo
lution. 'When Evolution has run its course — when
the aggregate has at length parted with its excess
of motion, and habitually receives as much from its
environment as it habitually loses — when it has reached
that equilibrium in which its changes end ; it thereafter
remains subject to all actions in its environment which
may increase the quantity of motion it contains, and
which, in the lapse of time, are sure, either slowly or
suddenly, to give its parts such excess of motion as
will cause disintegration.'3 This rhythmic law holds
of i the entire process of things, as displayed in the
aggregate of the visible universe,' as well as of each
smaller aggregate. 'And thus there is suggested the
conception of a past during which there have been
successive Evolutions analogous to that which is now
going on ; and a future during which successive other
such Evolutions may go on — ever the same in principle
but never the same in concrete result.' 4

Spencer's ultimate interest in the systematic treatment
of all problems from the point of view of Evolution
was, according to his own account, practical rather than

1 First Principles, p. 483. ~ Ibid., p. 4 '"4. 3 Ibid.t p. 519.

4 Ibid., p. 537. The extreme vagueness and unintelligibility of the
above statement of Spencer's views is not to be set down to the
exigencies of condensation ; it is inherent in the ' System.' The
serious student cannot but feel, with Riehl, that Spencer's 'law of
development is merely a play with analogies, or at best a mere
schematic formula, which does not come in contact with phenomena
to explain them, but only describes a superficial similarity between
different kinds of natural processes ' (Science and Metaphysics^ Eng.
trans., p. 1 12).

292 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

theoretical. 'The whole system,' he says in the Auto
biography^- c was at the outset, and has ever continued
to be, a basis for a right rule of life, individual and
social.' In the Preface to the Data of Ethics, he
says : ' This last part of the task [the Principles of
Morality] it is, to which I regard all the preceding
parts as subsidiary. Written as far back as 1842, my
first essay, consisting of letters on The Proper Sphere of
Government, vaguely indicated what I conceived to be
certain general principles of right and wrong in political
conduct ; and from that time onwards my ultimate
purpose, lying behind all proximate purposes, has been
that of finding for the principles of right and wrong
in conduct at large, a scientific basis.'

His earliest work, Social Statics, was devoted to the
fundamental questions of ethics and politics ; and the
only essential difference between it and the later Principles
of Ethics is that in the former he accepts, in a somewhat
restricted form, the doctrine of a ' moral sense,' which
he definitely repudiates in the latter.2 In the earlier
work he condemns the doctrine of Expediency on account
of its empirical and unscientific character. In the later
he insists that i empirical utilitarianism is but a transitional
form to be passed through on the way to rational
utilitarianism ' ; that ' the utilitarianism which recognises
only the principles of conduct reached by induction is
but preparatory to the utilitarianism which deduces these
principles from the processes of life as carried on under
established conditions of existence.' 3 Or, as he puts
it in his letter to Mill, partly republished in the chapter
referred to, ' The view for which I contend is, that Morality
properly so-called — the science of right conduct — has for its
object to determine how and why certain modes of conduct
are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These
good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must
be necessary consequences of the constitution of things ;
and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science

*-,Autobiog., ii. 314. z Principles of Ethics, pt. ii. sect. 191.

3 Data of Ethics, ch. iv.

HERBERT SPENCER 293

to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of
existence, what kinds of actions necessarily tend to
produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness.
Having done this, its deductions are to be recognised
as laws of conduct ; and are to be conformed to irre
spective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.' l

Alike in the earlier and in the later work the stand
point of scientific ethics is identified with that of the
ideal or completely evolved social state. As the geo
metrician deals with the ideally straight line, 4so like
wise is it with the philosophical moralist. He treats
solely of the straight man. He determines the properties
of the straight man ; describes how the straight man
comports himself; shows in what relationship he stands
to other straight men ; shows how a community of
straight men is constituted. Any deviation from strict
rectitude he is obliged wholly to ignore. It cannot
be admitted into his premises without vitiating all his
conclusions. A problem in which a crooked man forms
one of the elements is insoluble by him.' 2 A dis
tinction is drawn, however, between two branches of
social philosophy, statics and dynamics, ' the first treating
of the equilibrium of a perfect society, the second of
the forces by which society is advanced towards perfec
tion ' ; 3 and progress is defined as gradual adaptation to
the conditions, especially the social conditions, or gradual
approximation to the perfect social state, in which the
individual acts as a member of the social organism. In
the Data of Ethics the same distinction is described as
that between Absolute and Relative Ethics. ' There
exists an ideal code of conduct formulating the behaviour
of the completely adapted man in the completely evolved
society. Such a code is that here called Absolute Ethics
as distinguished from Relative Ethics — a code the in
junctions of which are alone to be considered as absolutely
right in contrast with those that are relatively right
or least wrong ; and which, as a system of ideal conduct,

1 See Note, p. 297. 2 Social Statics, p. 57. 3 Ibid., p. 409.

294 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

is to serve as a standard for our guidance in solving,
as well as we can, the problems of real conduct.' l

Such a deductive or rational ethics must be a system
developed from a first principle. This first principle is,
in both works, identified with Justice, in the sense of
the equal right of every individual to act as he likes, so long
as he does not interfere with the same liberty on the part
of other individuals; and this principle is regarded, in Social
Statics, as an intuition or c instinct of personal rights.'
Although Spencer endeavours, in the Principles, to derive
this from ' animal justice,' it is in reality, as Professor
Albee points out, the antithesis of the latter, and is a
deduction from the eighteenth-century individualism in
which Spencer so devoutly believed rather than from
Evolutionism.2 As for the other two principles, — Prudence,
and Beneficence, negative and positive, Spencer accepts the
4 empirical utilitarian ' account in both works, and in the
Preface, subsequently withdrawn, to the Part of the
Principles which treats of them he confesses that ( the
Doctrine of Evolution has not furnished guidance to the
extent I had hoped. Most of the conclusions, drawn
empirically, are such as right feelings, enlightened by
cultivated intelligence, have already sufficed to establish.'

On the other hand, we find in the Data of Ethics an
interesting attempt to exhibit the biological significance
of pleasure and the conciliation which the evolution of
human conduct gradually effects between egoism and
altruism ; to give an evolutionary interpretation of the
sense of duty as the survival in consciousness of the
various pre-moral controls, political, religious, and social,
which gradually gives place to the sense of the intrinsic
authoritativeness of the higher, or more developed feelings
over the lower, or simpler and less developed, as guides of
conduct ; and finally to reconcile intuitionism and em
piricism, in ethics as in metaphysics, by the distinction
between the individual and the racial point of view.
This last position is clearly stated in the following

1 Data of Ethics, p. 275.

2 History of English Utilitarianism, pp. 342, 356.

HERBERT SPENCER 295

passage from Spencer's letter to Mill.1 ' Corresponding
to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral
Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the
race certain fundamental moral intuitions ; and . . .
though these moral intuitions are the results of ac
cumulated experiences of Utility, gradually organised
and inherited, they have come to be quite independent
of conscious experience. Just in the same way that
I believe the intuition of space, possessed by any living
individual, to have arisen from organised and consolidated
experiences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed
to him their slowly-developed nervous organisations —
just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to
be made definite and completed by personal experiences,
has practically become a form of thought, apparently
quite independent of experience ; so do I believe that the
experiences of utility organised and consolidated through
all past generations of the human race, have been pro
ducing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by
continued transmission and accumulation, have become in
us certain faculties of moral intuition — certain emotions
responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no
apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility.'

The individualism which underlies his account of
Justice becomes explicit enough when Spencer comes to
deal with the problem of the State. In spite of his belief
in the solidarity of the interests of the individual and
those of society, and his persistent use of the term ' social
organism ' in Social Statics, the antithesis between the
State and the individual is for him absolute. His jealousy
of State-interference with the liberty of the individual is
greater even than Mill's. The State, he holds, is not the
creator of rights : these are * natural,' and the State's only
legitimate function is to protect them. It is itself a
necessary evil, incidental to the transitional stage which
we have now reached on our way to that complete harmony
of individual and social interests which will supersede it.

1 Quoted in Data of Ethics, p. 123.

296 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

We are 'advancing from the one extreme, in which the
State is everything and the individual nothing, to the
other extreme, in which the individual is everything and
the State nothing,' : from the completely military to
the completely industrial type of social organisation.
The State is indispensable 4 during man's apprentice
ship to the social state ' ; and, here as elsewhere, fitness
for one function implies unfitness for others. But not
only is the State unfit for any other function than that
of protection, its attempt to do more is an interference
with nature and an invasion of the sacred rights of the
individual. On these grounds Spencer condemns the
Poor-Law and National Education, as well as all inter
ferences with religion and commerce. That he did not
abate the rigour of these views in later life is seen in
the essays republished from the Contemporary Review
under the title The Man versus the State (1884).

Sufficient quotations have been given to enable the
reader to judge of the merits and defects of Spencer's
style. Its one merit is its clearness and precision ; to this
all other qualities are deliberately sacrificed. It is hard,
technical, dry, entirely lacking in distinction and indi
viduality. When he becomes impassioned, as he not
seldom does when dealing with a practical question, he
lapses into mere popular declamation, and the effect is
decidedly incongruous. His own characterisation of his
style is very just. 'I have always felt a wish to make
both the greater arguments, and the smaller arguments
composing them, finished and symmetrical. In so far as
giving coherence and completeness is concerned, I have
generally satisfied my ambition ; but I have fallen short
of it in respect of literary form. The aesthetic sense has
in this always kept before me an ideal which I could
never reach. Though my style is lucid, it has, as
compared with some styles, a monotony that displeases
me. There is a lack of variety in its verbal forms and

1 Social Statics, p. 435.

HENRY SIDGWICK 297

in its larger components, and there is a lack of vigour in
its phrases.' J

NOTE.

In the Methods of Ethics, published in 1874, Henry
Sidgwick attempts to rationalise Utilitarianism by basing
it upon Intuitionism. Distinguishing carefully between
1 philosophical ' and 'dogmatic' Intuitionism, he argues
that the moral laws of the ordinary conscience, if taken as
possessing absolute validity, lead to confusion and mutual
conflict. Their practical is no measure of their theoretical
value ; and Common Sense itself, even in its unreflective
form, does not attribute to them absolute validity, but
adopts a critical and utilitarian attitude towards them,
limiting their authority by a consideration of the con
sequences of obedience to them. This implicit utilitari
anism of Common Sense suggests that the real conflict
is not between Intuitionism and Utilitarianism, but be
tween Intuitionism and Utilitarianism, on the one hand,
and Egoism, the third ' method of ethics,' on the other.
In Intuitionism, philosophically interpreted, Sidgwick
finds the rational basis which is lacking in the Utili
tarianism of Bentham and Mill. The three ultimate and
self-evident principles which ought to regulate our choices
of pleasure, or rather of the objects which reflection
finds to be merely means to pleasure, — the ultimate good,
are prudence, benevolence, and justice, dictating strict
impartiality as between ourselves and others, as well as
between the several parts or moments of our own in
dividual experience. The final conflict between prudence
and benevolence, between the claims of duty and those
of self-interest, remains an insoluble * dualism of the
practical reason,' necessitating for its solution the theo
logical postulate of a righteous government of the world,
which shall compensate the individual for the sacrifices
he has made in his devotion to duty.

1 Autobiography, ii. 451.

CHAPTER II

THE DEVELOPMENT AND CONSEQUENCES OF
THE SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON

SENSE

I . Natural Realism and the Relativity of Knowledge :
Hamilton and Mansel

IT is difficult for us to understand the extraordinary
and, we cannot but judge, exaggerated reputation which
Hamilton achieved among his contemporaries and im
mediate successors. That reputation has been finally
discredited for us by Mill's relentless Examination and
Hutchison Stirling's still more caustic Analysis of the
Hamiltonian philosophy. But apart from these criticisms,
the actual contribution of Hamilton to philosophy is so
slight that it fails to impress the present-day reader. It
consists of two series of class lectures, hastily prepared
during the first years of his tenure of the chair of logic
and metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, and
re-delivered year after year without revision ; of a few
articles contributed to ,the Reviews ; and of an edition
of Reid with elaborate notes and excursus. So far as the
substance of his philosophy can be gathered from these
scattered sources, all that he really added to the accepted
teaching of the Scottish school was the doctrine of the
Relativity of Human Knowledge ; and it is doubtless to
his enunciation of this doctrine and the subsequent
development of it by other thinkers that Hamilton's
reputation is chiefly due. But the impression which
he produced upon his contemporaries must also in no
small measure be attributed to his reputation for philo-

298

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON 299

sophical erudition. With the single exception of Bacon,
no English philosopher before his time had produced
this impression of learning ; with the single exception
of Reid, none had investigated the questions of philosophy
in the light of the history of their previous discussion.
Mill indeed finds in 'the enormous amount of time and
mental vigour which he expended on mere philosophical
erudition, leaving, it may be said, only the remains of his
mind for the real business of thinking,' part of the ex
planation of Hamilton's failure to contribute more
effectively to the solution of philosophical problems.1 Yet
even his erudition has been to some extent discredited.
Apart from errors in points of detail, he often fails entirely
to grasp the system or to appreciate the point of view of
the several philosophers to whom he refers ; he allows him
self to quote isolated statements, apart from their context
in the system as a whole. Mill thinks that Hamilton
was better fitted for the task of the historian of philosophy
than for that of philosophy itself; but he also points out
that the gift which his actual work in this field displays
is rather that of the philosophic annalist than that of the
historian proper. Still we can understand that Hamilton's
extensive and minute acquaintance with the history of
philosophical opinion was calculated to make a much
greater impression upon his contemporaries, to whom it
was something new, than upon those who have been
taught a higher standard of scholarship in philosophy.
Something is also doubtless to be set down to his ability
in the presentation of his views, especially in a polemical
interest. < What strength and nerve in his style,' remarks
Masson. It is true that his style is much more technical
than that of previous English philosophers; but this
very quality may well have helped to impress his con
temporaries with the scientific accuracy of his methods.
Whatever be the explanation, the fact remains that
Hamilton gave a new and a strong impulse to the study
of philosophy in England ; and it is rather as the originator

1 Examination of Hamilton, p. 637.

300 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

of such an impulse than in virtue of the importance of
his own contributions to the solution of its problems that
his significance is to be found.

Hamilton's quarrel is not merely, like Reid's, with the
scepticism of Hume and the ' ideal ' or ' representative '
theory of knowledge, of which it is the consequence,
but also with the opposite type of philosophy, that
absolute idealism or * omniscience ' which the German
successors of Kant have developed out of the Kantian
transcendentalism. To this he opposes the doctrine of
phenomenalism or relativism which he regards as the
true development of the < critical' philosophy. But he
at the same time reasserts Reid's doctrine of Natural
Realism or Dualism, in opposition to what he calls
Cosmothetic Idealism or Hypothetical Realism. Like
Reid, he insists upon the distinction between the primary
and the secondary qualities, regarding the former as
objectively real and the latter as subjective modifications ;
like Reid, he appeals to our ' common sense,' or immedi
ate c consciousness ' both of the ego and of the non-ego ;
like Reid, he signalises the distinction between sensation
and perception. So far as this side of his philosophy is
concerned, we have only to note the greater clearness
with which he conceives the relation of philosophy to
common sense and his indebtedness, even in this part of
the argument, to Kant. c Common Sense,' he says, c is
like Common Law. Each may be laid down as the
general rule of decision ; but in the one case it must
be left to the jurist, in the other to the philosopher, to
ascertain what are the contents of the rule ; and though
in both instances the common man may be cited as a
witness, for the custom or the fact, in neither can he be
allowed to officiate as advocate or as judge.' * This is
very different from the appeal, so frequent in Reid, from
the philosophers to the vulgar. The general position of
Reid is further greatly modified by the adoption of the
Kantian view of space and time as forms of perception 2

1 Reid's Works, ii. 752.

2 Hamilton calls them inaccurately ' forms of thought.'

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON 301

and of the general Kantian distinction between the
conditions and the results of experience, between the
a priori^ or necessary, and the a posteriori, or contingent
element in experience.

But it is on the other and negative side of the Hamil-
tonian doctrine, as the 'philosophy of the conditioned,'
that the influence of Kant is of chief importance. The
great lesson of Kant, as Hamilton conceives it, is the
lesson of our ignorance, complete and incurable, of ultimate
reality. The implication of that ' Copernican change of
standpoint ' which is the decisive factor in the Kantian
theory of knowledge is that since, to be known, things
must conform to the knowing mind and its ways of know
ledge, they can never be known as they are in themselves,
apart from the mind. To know is to relate things to the
mind ; it follows that the unrelated thing, the thing-in-
itself, can never be known. We know only phenomena ;
that is, we do not, in the strict sense, know at all. The
knowing subject, in the very act of knowing, weaves a
veil which hides from its sight the object as it truly is :
what we know is the subjective object, not the object as
it is in itself. When we seek to know ourselves, we are
involved in the same fatal circle of subjectivity and ap
pearance ; we know even ourselves only as we appear to
ourselves, not as we are in ourselves. Hamilton identifies
this agnosticism of Kant with the Lockian doctrine of the
inscrutability of substance, material and spiritual : in both
cases alike we know only the qualities, not the real sub
stance. ' Mind and matter, as known or knowable, are only
two different series of phenomena or qualities ; mind and
matter, as unknown and unknowable, are the two sub
stances in which these two different series of phenomena
or qualities are supposed to inhere. The existence of an
unknown substance is only an inference we are compelled
to make from the existence of known phenomena ; and
the distinction of two substances is only inferred from the
seeming incompatibility of the two series of phenomena
to coinhere in one.'1 The source of our ignorance is

1 Lectures on Metaphysics ', i. 138.

302 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

not so much the limitation of our faculties as the nature
of knowledge itself. * Were the number of our faculties
coextensive with the modes of being — had we for each
of these thousand modes a separate organ competent to
make it known to us — still would our whole knowledge
be, as it is at present, only of the relative. Of existence
absolutely and in itself, we should then be as ignorant
as we are now.' x

Mill and others find in this doctrine of Agnosticism
the contradiction of Hamilton's own theory of Natural
Realism ; but though Hamilton's statements can easily
be made to contradict one another, Masson's surmise is
doubtless the true one, namely, that the theory of Natural
Realism refers only to phenomenal or i cosmological ' reality,
and is not therefore contradicted by the doctrine of the
unknowableness of ultimate or < ontological ' reality. The
real difficulty in the latter theory lies in the underlying
conception of ultimate reality as the unconditioned, or
unrelated, a conception which Hamilton develops with
great explicitness in the article on < The Philosophy of the
Unconditioned.' Since to think is to condition, we cannot,
he argues, know the Unconditioned. Whenever we make
the attempt, we find that we have to choose between two
contradictory propositions, both inconceivable, of which,
according to the principle of excluded middle, one must be
true. The unconditioned is either the Absolute or the
Infinite, the unconditionally limited or the unconditionally
unlimited. Which of these contradictories is true, we
are in certain cases able, in other cases unable, to deter
mine. In any case, for Hamilton as for Kant, the ground
of decision between the contradictory alternatives is a
moral one. For example, the fact of moral responsibility
compels us to decide in favour of a first cause or absolute
beginning of our own actions,and against an infinite series of
causes. The absence of such grounds of decision between
the rival interpretations of God, as the Unconditioned,
condemns us to complete ignorance of the divine nature,

1 Lectures on Metaphysics, i. 153.

HENRY MANSEL 303

Hamilton concludes, with Kant, that where knowledge is
unattainable, belief is both possible and necessary ; but
instead of constructing, like Kant, a moral theology or a
metaphysic of ethics, he trusts to Common Sense and
Intuition, aided by supernatural Revelation, to assure us of
those truths which lie beyond the sphere of knowledge.

The title of MansePs famous Bam p ton Lectures (1858),
* The Limits of Religious Thought,' indicates the leading
interest of the author in the Hamiltonian i philosophy
of the conditioned,' namely, its theological implications.
He sets himself to undermine the rationalistic criticism
of revealed theology by showing that the philosophy
of the Infinite, on which it rests, is unattainable by
man, whose knowledge is, by its very nature, limited
to the finite. The true theology, he argues, is merely
4 regulative ' and practical, c not Speculative ' or scientific.
Religious intuition or instinct, belief as distinguished
from knowledge, is the organ by which we apprehend
God and our relation to Him. Our feeling of dependence
suggests to us the power, our conviction of moral obliga
tion the goodness, of God. Thus we form < regulative
ideas of the Deity, which are sufficient to guide our
practice, but not to satisfy our intellect ; which tell us,
not what God is in Himself, but how He wills that
we should think of Him.'1 Mansel follows Butler in
his contention that the divine government of the world is
4 a scheme imperfectly comprehended,' and argues that we
must be content with the apprehension of the analogy
of the divine nature to our own, where knowledge in
the strict sense is beyond our reach. We must rest
satisfied with ' the convictions forced upon us by our
religious and moral instincts.' 2 These convictions are
at once incapable of rational justification and superior
to it.

MansePs argument for the limitation of human know
ledge to the finite is essentially the same as that of Hamil-

1 Limits of Religious Thought, p. 84. 2 Metaphysics, p. 375.

304 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

ton, but it is more clearly- stated and somewhat expanded.
He abandons Hamilton's view of the opposition of the
absolute and the infinite, and finds the idea of the absolute
to be not only inconceivable but self-contradictory. * In
my language absolute is not opposed to incomplete, but
to relative, and means knowledge of an object as it
is in itself, apart from its relation to human faculties.'1
Hence 'a conception of the Deity, in His absolute
existence, appears to involve a self-contradiction ; for
conception itself is a limitation, and a conception of the
absolute Deity is a limitation of the illimitable.'2 Con
ception or consciousness implies not merely, as Hamilton
had argued, the relation of subject and object, but the
distinction of one object from another, the succession
and duration of these objects in time, and the attribution
of spiritual qualities to a common subject or person.
In all these respects a conception of the infinite is a
contradiction in terms. Even the moral consciousness
is limited to the relative, and acquaints us only with
appearance, not with reality. < If the standard of perfect
and immutable morality is to be found only in the eternal
nature of God, it follows that those conditions which
prevent man from attaining to a knowledge of the infinite,
as such, must also prevent him from attaining to more
than a relative and phenomenal conception of morality.' 3
' What that Absolute Morality is, we are as unable
to fix in any human conception, as we are to define
the other attributes of the same Divine Nature.' 4 It
follows that such a criticism of Revelation from the
ethical point of view as we find in Kant, implying as
it does the Kantian view of the absolute significance
of our human morality, is entirely without warrant,
and that we must accept without question the ' moral
miracles' of Revelation. Elsewhere, however, Mansel
seems to substitute for this strictly relativistic view of
human morality an interpretation of ethical knowledge

1 Limits of Religious Knowledge (Pref. to 4th ed.), p. xxx, note.

2 Metaphysics, p. 298. 3 Ibid., p. 386.
4 Limits of Religious Thought, p. 135.

AGNOSTICISM 305

as merely incomplete. ' Each principle of this kind,'
he says, 'recommends itself to the minds of all who
are capable of reflecting upon it, as true and irreversible
so far as it goes ; though it may represent but a limited
portion of the truth, and be hereafter merged in some
higher and more comprehensive formula.'1 He departs,
too, from the Hamiltonian doctrine at one notable point,
admitting that, in spite of the impossibility of transcending
the limits of consciousness, ' the self of consciousness
is the true self.'2 'In Psychology it cannot in any
sense be maintained that the real is that of which we
are not conscious. My own consciousness is not merely
the test of my real existence, but it actually constitutes
it.'3 The self, that is to say, is not, like other realities,
an unknown substance which must be apprehended apart
from its qualities, if it is to be known at all ; personality
is the one exception to the law of the inevitableness
of human nescience. But the theological consequences
of this exception are not developed by Mansel either
in his Metaphysics or in his Bampton lectures.

2. Agnosticism : Spencer and Huxley

In the agnosticism of Herbert Spencer we find the
doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, as proclaimed by
Hamilton and Mansel, followed out to its extreme logical
consequences, without any ulterior purpose of defending
religious truth from the attacks of rationalism. Spencer,
it is true, seeks, in the opening Book of his First Principles^
to reconcile not only the various rival religions with one
another, but also religion itself with science ; but the very
catholicity of his interest in religion, his complete indif
ference to the special claims of Christianity, clearly
differentiates his enterprise from that of those who would
magnify faith by belittling reason. In the doctrine of the
unknowableness of ultimate reality he finds the principle

1 Metaphysics, p. 388. 2 Ibid., p. 368

3 Ibid., pp. 354-5.

U

306 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

of reconciliation which he is seeking. clf Religion and
Science are to be reconciled, the basis of reconciliation
must be this deepest, widest, and most certain of all
facts — that the Power which the Universe manifests to
us is utterly inscrutable.'1 The ultimate consequence
of our scientific, no less than of our religious thought,
is self-contradiction and the sense of utter mystery.
Suppose the work of science completed, suppose ' the
appearances, properties, and movements of things' to have
been resolved into ' manifestations of Force in Space and
Time,' it would still remain that c Force, Space, and
Time pass all understanding.' Thus the scientific thinker
'learns at once the greatness and the littleness of the
human intellect — its power in dealing with all that
comes within the range of experience ; its impotence in
dealing with all that transcends experience. He realises
with a special vividness the utter incomprehensibleness
of the simplest fact, considered in itself. He, more
than any other, truly knows that in its ultimate essence
nothing can be known.'2 The inevitable inference
from this universal failure to think out our conceptions,
whether religious or scientific, is the merely symbolic
value of our so-called < knowledge.' c Ultimate religious
ideas and ultimate scientific ideas, alike turn out to be
merely symbols of the actual, not cognitions of it.' 3
But while the only defensible philosophy is that which
confines itself to the investigation of the laws or uni
formities which characterise the phenomena to which
our knowledge is limited, while philosophy differs
from science merely as completely unified from partially
unified knowledge of phenomena, and transcendental
notions have no role to play in philosophic thought, there
remains, as the basis of religious emotion, the indefinite
consciousness, rather than the thought or idea, of the
unknowable Reality which lies behind the phenomena
of our experience, * an indefinite consciousness of the
unformed and unlimited,' 4 a compelling sense of the

1 First Principles, p. 46. 2 Ibid., pp. 66, 67.

3 Ibid., p. 68. 4 Ibid., p. 94.

AGNOSTICISM 307

ultimate mysteriousness of the universe in which we find
ourselves.

Huxley, to whom we owe the invention of the name
'agnosticism' as the antithesis of ' gnosticism,' finds the
doctrine itself alike in Hume and Kant, though he learned
it first from Hamilton.1 ' The aim of the Kritik der
relnen Vernunft is essentially the same as that of the
Treatise of Human Nature, by which indeed Kant was
led to develop that " critical philosophy " with which his
name and fame are indisputably bound up : and, if the
details of Kant's criticism differ from those of Hume, they
coincide with them in their main result, which is the
limitation of all knowledge of reality to the world of
phenomena revealed to us by experience.' 2 But it is in
the ' mitigated scepticism ' or 'academical philosophy' of
' that prince of agnostics, David Hume,' rather even than
in the Critical Philosophy of Kant, that he finds the
classical statement of agnosticism ; and this interpretation
determines the entire presentation of Hume's philosophy
in the notable volume which he contributed to the
' English Men of Letters ' series.

While the name 'agnosticism' is a novelty of the
nineteenth century, and the doctrine of nescience which
it signifies is based by its advocates upon the results of
Humian and Kantian speculation, as interpreted by
Hamilton and Mansel, the doctrine itself is no novelty
of the century. It is that doctrine of inverted empiricism
with which we have already become familiar in the pages
of Locke's Essay and with which Huxley explicitly con
nects his own teaching. Since experience is the only
source from which the data of knowledge can be de
rived, it seems to Locke, as to Kant, to follow that we
cannot know that which transcends experience, and there
fore that we cannot know ultimate reality. Locke's
unknown and unknowable 'substance' corresponds to

1 See Essay on 'Agnosticism' in Essays on Some Controverted
Questions, p. 353-

2 Hume, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 60.

308 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Kant's unknown and unknowable c thing- in- itself.' As
Kant says that we know ' only phenomena ' or appearances,
Locke says that we know c only qualities ' ; essential and
substantial being we cannot know. For us reality,
whether in Nature or in ourselves, must remain a mere
4 something,' ' we know not what.' All that was left for
the agnostics of the nineteenth century to do was to
extend this view of the inscrutableness of reality to our
knowledge of God, that is, to deduce the theological
consequences which Locke had failed to draw from
the general view of human knowledge which he had so
emphatically stated.

3. Return to the Characteristic Point of View of Scottish
Philosophy : Calderwood, Martineau, Fraser

It was doubtless the development of Hamilton's doctrine
of Relativity by Mansel and Spencer that revealed to his
ablest pupils the perilous inadequacies of the Philosophy
of the Conditioned, and stimulated them to attempt the
revision and correction of their master's theory of know
ledge. The first sign of revolt was the publication of
The Philosophy of the Infinite, by Henry Calderwood,
afterwards professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh
and a strenuous defender of intuitional ethics. In this
work he contended that a * negative notion ' was c no
notion at all,' but a < mental impossibility,' and that the
removal of limitations does not annihilate the object of
knowledge, though it may make it indefinite. Hamilton's
4 Infinite ' is c a mere abstraction for which no one pleads
either in existence or in thought.' We may have a finite
or incomplete, yet real, knowledge of an infinite object.
Nor is it possible to believe in that which we cannot
conceive, that is, in some measure know. As to Hamilton's
charge of ' imbecility ' against our faculties of knowledge,
Calderwood asks, in the spirit of Ferrier, ' Does it prove
weakness of mind that we cannot think nothing ? What a
power of mind it would be to be able to think nothing — to
think and yet not to think ! '

THE SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY 309

Calderwood's concern was exclusively with the theo
logical aspect of the Hamiltonian theory. It was reserved
for Hamilton's successor in the chair of logic and meta
physics at Edinburgh, Alexander Campbell Fraser, who
had also come under the influence of the great teacher,
to develop a philosophy of his own on lines more charac
teristic of the Scottish Philosophy than those which
Hamilton himself had followed, to interpret and explain
the very doctrine of Nescience in a new way and to deduce
from it consequences very different from those above
described. Another thinker, slightly Eraser's senior, and
though not a pupil of Hamilton, yet closely allied to the
Scottish School in the tendencies of his thought and
following indeed more closely the traditional lines of that
school, is too impressive to be overlooked — James Mar-
tineau, for many years principal and professor in Man
chester New College (now Manchester College, Oxford),
and author of Types of Ethical Theory and A Study of
Religion.

Both Martineau and Fraser, following the lead of
Hamilton, subordinate the cosmological to the ontological
and theological problem. Both insist upon the ethical
aspect of Reality, or upon the reality of the ethical
element in human experience, and its validity as affording
the clue to the nature of God or ultimate Reality. The
philosophy of both is an ethical theism, as opposed alike
to an unethical atheism and to an unethical pantheism.
Both contend for a spiritual interpretation of the universe,
and find the key to the nature of the divine Spirit in the
human. For both man is the measure of reality, but the
whole man, the complete human personality, on its ethical
as well as on its intellectual side. It is in this insistence
upon the ethical element in the universe, as revealed in
human experience, not less than in their insistence upon
the validity of human knowledge, in spite of its inevitable
incompleteness or finiteness, that these thinkers together
represent the return to the more characteristic point of
view of the Scottish Philosophy.

Martineau, as I have said, follows much more closely

310 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

than Fraser the traditional lines of the Scottish School ;
he is distinctly the less original and speculative thinker.
This is true both of his metaphysical and of his ethical
theory. In the former he reproduces the Natural
Realism or Natural Dualism of Reid and Hamilton ; in the
latter he restates the Intuitionism of the school, with an
interesting modification. Fraser, on the other hand, has
been too profoundly influenced by that * ideal theory'
which was the bete noire of Reid, to attach much import
ance to the question of the independent reality of the
material world ; his interest is in ' spiritual realism '
rather than in c natural realism.' The consequence is
that, while Martineau finds speculative satisfaction in a
theory which shares the defects of the old mechanical
and deistic theology of the eighteenth century, Fraser,
under the combined influences of Coleridge and Berkeley,
finds himself compelled to recognise the element of
truth in the pantheistic theory, and to admit the im
manence of God in the universe, in nature as well as in
man. While both alike find pantheism finally unsatis
factory, and on the same ethical grounds, Martineau's
philosophy is simply a revised version of the Natural
Realism and the Natural Theology of the earlier Scottish
philosophers, Fraser's is a moral idealism, a new philo
sophy of theism which has shaped for itself a via media
between the deism of the eighteenth century and the
pantheism of the nineteenth.

In two early essays, on 'Sir W. Hamilton's Philo
sophy' (1853), and on c Mansel's Limits of Religious
Thought' (1859), Martineau clearly expressed his dissent
from the doctrine of Nescience as held by both Hamilton
and Mansel. Of Hamilton's 'law of the conditioned,'
he says : c What is this but the morbid lament of scepti
cism ? Faith in the veracity of our faculties, if it means
anything, requires us to believe that things are as they
appear — that is, appear to the mind in the last and highest
resort ; and to deal with the fact that they only appear as
if it constituted an eternal exile from their reality is to

JAMES MARTINEAU 311

attribute lunacy to universal reason.'1 To Mansel's
view, again, he pertinently objects, 'If intelligence consists
in distinguishing, how can distinguishing be an incompe-
tency to understand?'5 Mansel's theory of knowledge
* cuts away the only supports on which religious thought
can rest or move ; and nothing short of an unqualified
ontological scepticism is in agreement with his pre
misses.' 3

Martineau reached his own position in philosophy by
way of reaction from the sensationalism and associationism
in which, in its extreme Priestleyan form, he had been
educated. Though he at first accepted this view without
question, and even taught it for some years, further re
flection convinced him that it was invalidated by the facts
of our moral experience and by the principle of causality,
truly understood. Moral responsibility implies freedom,
as opposed to the necessity of Priestley ; conscience im
plies the obligatoriness of right conduct and, therefore,
the existence of a righteous Will to impose this obligation
upon us. Further, causation is not synonymous with
necessary succession ; the only cause we know is will,
or moral agency. It follows that God, as the ultimate
or first Cause, is Will. This conception of God as
supreme Will, at once the Creator of the world and
the sovereign Law-giver, was more sharply accentuated
by Martineau's later opposition to absolute idealism, which
he identified with pantheism and in which he saw a
menace to the ethical life no less serious than the sensa
tionalism and determinism which in his youth had
chiefly threatened its interests. The citadel of morality
he finds in the freedom of the human will ; and this seems
to him to imply the falsity not only of the identification
of the self with the character, but also of a doctrine of
the immanence of God in man and in nature which ex
cludes His transcendence. In the ethical field itself the
doctrine of Utilitarianism seems to him to explain away,
rather than to explain, the central fact of moral obligation ;

1 Essays, iii. 481. 2 ibid., iii. 135. 3 Ibid., iii. 133.

312 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

and his own ethical theory differs from the old Intuitionism
simply in the stress which it lays upon the motive or
'spring,' as distinguished from the action, and upon the
preferability of a higher to a lower spring, as distin
guished from the Tightness or wrongness of any single
action or motive, in itself, and as such.

We may well doubt, with R. H. Hutton, his pupil and
friend, c whether the historian of the English thought of
our time will credit Martineau with any distinct modifi
cation of the theological or philosophical opinions of this
age.' His teaching, Hutton adds, was * something that
went below opinion ; it was a revelation of spiritual
character and power. That was the impressive thing in
James Martineau.' x It is this that impresses his readers, as
it impressed his pupils — the personality of the writer rather
than the substance of his thought. It is in his religious
rather than in his philosophical writings, we must again
agree with Hutton, that * the real Martineau, the spiritual
teacher who will endure, has accomplished his greatest
and finest work.' His influence and popularity must be
attributed, in no small measure, to his gift of style.
Hutton calls it 'a singularly noble and remarkable prose
style.' But it is more appropriate to the sermon than
to the philosophical treatise ; it is much too ornate,
figurative, and rhetorical for the latter. Its wealth of
imagery, its very brilliance, are apt to pall ; even its
4 dignity ' is sometimes oppressive ; and it is fatally diffuse.
Yet it is characteristic, and a revelation of a nature
touched to fine issues, of an eloquent preacher rather than
an original thinker.

The influences which have chiefly determined the
philosophy of Fraser are the views of Locke and Berkeley
rather than those of the Scottish School. His sympathies
are with the Baconian and Lockian spirit of faithfulness, at
all costs, to the concrete facts of human experience rather
than with the Continental ambition to construct a com-

1 Spectator, Jan. 27, 1900.

CAMPBELL FRASER 313

pletely articulated system such as we find in the absolute
idealism of Hegel. < My inclination,' he tells us, 'was
to an English manner of treatment, so far as it keeps
firm hold of what is given in concrete experience, under
conditions of place and time, and refuses to pursue a unity
that is possible for men only in a world of abstractions.' 1
As the author of the classical editions of Berkeley's Works
and of Locke's Essay, he could not fail to assimilate the
English philosophical tradition, alike on its empirical and
on its idealistic side. Deeply impressed by Hume's scepti
cal reduction of the Lockian philosophy, he has grasped
the significance of Hume for the past and the future of
philosophy far more thoroughly than either Reid or
Hamilton had done. Of the Scottish philosophers, apart
from Hamilton, the one who most nearly influenced him
was Thomas Brown, whose thought is much more akin
to the scepticism of Hume than to the Natural Realism of
Reid. It was Brown's account of the nature of causation
that seems to have first awakened his interest in the ulti
mate questions of philosophy. <I was for a time fasci
nated,' he says, ' by the simplicity of Brown^s superficial
explanation. I had been wont to suppose that a " cause "
meant a mysterious something, also called " power,'' some
how contained within things, but distinct from the visible
things in which it was believed to reside. . . . Brown's
analysis dissolved this conception as an illusion. The
" powers " of things, he argued, must be the very things
themselves which we see and feel ; these, however, only
when looked at as the invariable antecedents of changes
which, under given conditions, make their appearance,
and which we call " effects " of the antecedents. Causa
tion, in short, is a relation of constant sequence, under
which one group of phenomena is transformed into an
other group.' 2 Deeper reflection, however, revealed the
unsatisfactoriness of this view : it left unexplained the
uniformity or constancy of the causal series which yet it
presupposed. ' So Brown's supposed world of constant

1 Biographia Philosophica^ p. 138. Ibid., pp. 48, 49.

3H ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

orderly antecedence and consequence gradually gave rise
to a mood of universal uncertainty. The very tie which
makes the universe a universe seemed to be loosed. . . .
Through Brown's dissolving view of causation, I seemed
bound to surrender to the total doubt of Hume, and the
last chapter of Hume's Treatise described the situation.'1
It was in Berkeley's conception of causation or power as,
in the strict sense, spiritual or the expression of will, that
Fraser found deliverance from the scepticism which had
resulted from an exclusive consideration of its physical and
scientific aspects. Berkeley taught him that physical causes
were really but signs, and that real causes or powers were
spiritual, the expression of spiritual purpose. The further
problem raised by the necessity of presupposing uniformity
in the world of natural events remained for later solution
in connexion with the question raised for him by Hamilton,
that of the nature and limits of human knowledge. But
the substitution of the Berkeleyan for the Humian con
ception of causation rendered conceivable the divine im
manence in the world of natural phenomena, or the
' supernatural ' character of c nature ' ; and the mere Im-
materialism which was all that had hitherto been discovered
in Berkeley became clearly subordinate in importance to
the ' spiritual realism ' which his account of causation was
seen to imply.

Fraser's central and ever-recurring question, discussed
tentatively in the Introductions and Notes to Berkeley and
Locke, as well as in the volumes devoted to the life and
thought of these philosophers, and finally in the Gifford
lectures on c The Philosophy of Thesim,' is the Hamil-
tonian question of the nature and limits of knowledge,
deepened and widened as seen in the light of the scepticism
of Hume. In an essay on i The Insoluble Problem,' in the
North British Review (1854), he 'pondered over this
supreme part of Hamilton's philosophy.' The article ex
pressed a somewhat critical attitude towards the Philosophy
of the Conditioned. < An exhaustive explanation of the

1 Biographia Philosophica, p. 51.

CAMPBELL FRASER 315

mysteries in the Divine Reality seemed possible only in
Omniscience ; but man is not and cannot become om
niscient. Yet this intellectual helplessness was not incon
sistent with a progressive human knowledge of the Active
Reason that is (so far) revealed in all the facts and laws of
the physical and spiritual universe.' 1 ' So-called human
knowledge, being at last necessarily incomplete and in-
completable, may be called knowledge or ignorance,
according to the way in which it is looked at, and the
meaning associated with these two terms.'2 In another
early essay, on i Scottish Metaphysics,' we find Fraser
suggesting * the value of some more precise and available
canon of conciliatory criticism, than the mere proclamation
of human ignorance concerning all which transcends contem
poraneous and successive nature. How can faith be main
tained amid an absolute negation of knowledge, which
implies a total suspense of judgment ? ' 3

We must, then, assume the validity of our knowledge
as far as it goes, incomplete as it is and must ever remain ;
but its validity is an assumption or postulate which we
can never prove. It is a postulate to be found at the
heart of all knowledge, scientific as well as moral and
religious ; and Fraser's challenge to the scientific Agnostic
is to abandon this postulate without at the same time
rendering his own scientific procedure unreasonable and
contradictory. A truly consistent agnosticism, he argues,
is synonymous with universal nescience or absolute scepti
cism. ' Hume sees that this agnosticism, when fully
thought out, involves total nescience, not merely theologi
cal ignorance. In truth the negative revolution which
was proposed by Hume, in his juvenile "Treatise of
Human Nature," is more bold and thorough than the
scientific agnosticism of Huxley, which claims him as ist
parent : it involves the complete dissolution of common
knowledge and science, not of theology alone. . . . All
assertion about what is outside present feeling must be
unproved assertion. Intellect can at the most only have

1 Biographia Philosophica, p. 148. a Ibid., p. I $6.

3 Essays in Philosophy, pp. 194, 195.

3i 6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

strength enough to extinguish itself.'1 The scientific
interpretability of nature is the presupposition of its scien
tific interpretation ; science, as well as action, assumes
the orderliness or uniformity of nature. But f is not this
interpretability of nature another name for its innate
divinity — its final supernaturalness ? ' 2 ' Faith in the
laws of nature is unconscious faith in God omni
present in nature. It is in this moral reliance on the
surroundings amidst which we live and move and have
our being that men are able to transcend their momen
tary perceptions, and to bring into a large or scientific
experience what is not actually present to their senses.'3
Thus ' the incoherent agnosticism that retains physical
science is not really a protest against faith ; it is only
an arrest of faith at the point at which faith advances
from a narrower to a larger interpretation of life and the
universe.' 4

But it is not only in its beginnings, but also in its
ultimate issues, that our knowledge necessitates faith in
that which transcends knowledge. If he does not, like
Hamilton, insist upon the ultimate self-contradictoriness of
human knowledge, Fraser does insist, with no less em
phasis, upon its ultimate mysteriousness. Whenever we
attempt to complete it, it loses itself in mystery. This
is especially true of space, time and causality, the three
categories of physical science. 'The understanding,
measuring by sense and imagination, tries to transcend
itself, and in doing so is always lost at last in the Infinite
Reality. How to reconcile finite places with the Immensity
in which place seems lost, or finite times with the Eternity
in which duration seems to disappear, — the placed with
the placeless, the timed or dated with the timeless, — is the
mystery of an experience which, like ours, is conditioned
by place and time, in a way that must always leave thought
at the last under a sense of intellectual incompleteness
and dissatisfaction.'5 The lesson of this final incom
pleteness of human knowledge is the necessity of faith

1 Philosophy of Theism, 2nd ed., pp. 112, 113. 2 Ibid., p. 116.
3 Ibid., p. US- 4 Ibid., p. 120. 5 Ibid., pp. 96, 97.

CAMPBELL FRASER 317

at the end as well as at the beginning, the equal im
possibility of universal nescience, or scepticism, and of
omniscience, or perfect insight. Man's true place is in
that < isthmus of a middle state ' which lies neither in
rational insight nor in total ignorance, but in a reasonable
faith.

This faith is a moral faith, or faith not merely in the
rationality, but in the goodness, of the ultimate Power.
The ultimate presupposition of the validity of human
knowledge is, as Descartes insisted, the divine veracity
or, in Fraser's words, the trustworthiness of our experience,
the assumption that the ultimate Power will not put us
to intellectual or moral confusion. * If God, or Perfect
Goodness, is supreme, external nature and my original
faculties cannot delude me. For this would be to suppose
that the Universal Nature and my nature are in contra
diction, so that I might be obliged to believe a lie. The
presupposition that forbids the entrance of this total scepti
cism is the presupposition that God or Perfect Goodness
is omnipresent and omnipotent. The trustworthiness of
my original nature and the interpretability of universal
nature, presuppose the constant action of morally perfect
Power at the heart of the Whole.' x As the presupposi
tion of all thought and of all reasonable action alike, the
existence, or rather the activity, of God or Perfect Good
ness cannot be proved ; it is itself the presupposition of
all proof. The ultimateness of the distinction between
moral or personal beings and impersonal things is the
great barrier to a complete knowledge of the universe ;
we cannot reconcile man's freedom with the necessity
of nature or with the omnipotence of God. The attempt
to demonstrate the existence and nature of the Ultimate
Reality leads inevitably to a pantheistic or non-moral in
terpretation of it, to the elimination of that which is the
guiding feature of Reality as we experience it, moral
personality.

But moral experience itself presents a great obstacle to

1 Philosophy of Theism, p. 176.

3i 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the belief in the perfect goodness of the ultimate Power.
' The great enigma of theistic faith ' is the fact of moral
evil. The alternative which it compels us to face is
' a universe, of non-moral things,' in which evil cannot
exist because good is equally impossible — a non-moral
universe on the one hand, or a universe which includes
4 persons, who, as persons, must have an absolute power
to make themselves bad' — a moral universe which, as
moral, implies the possibility of immoral actions, on the
other ; a universe of things or a universe in which things
serve the purposes and are the instruments of the moral
education of persons ; a universe which is neither good
nor evil, or a universe which, because it is not wholly
good, but contains within it the possibility of both good
and evil, may progressively become better. 'Is not a
world that includes persons better than a wholly non-
moral world, from which persons are excluded — say on
account of the risk of the entrance into existence of what
ought not to exist, through the personal power to act ill
implied in morally responsible individual agency ? ' A
person who is not free to do what he ought not to do
is not a person, and ' God cannot make actual what in
volves express contradiction — namely, the existence of a
person who is not a person ; for individual personality
involves responsible freedom to act ill. If this seems to
limit omnipotence, or make God finite, the alternative
supposition — that the existence of beings who are morally
responsible for their acts is impossible for God in a
perfectly constituted universe, is surely not less a limita
tion of omnipotence. It is a limitation, too, that is im
posed only on the ground of a residuum of incomplete or
mysterious conception implied in the idea of individual or
finite personality : whilst the obstacle to a being existing,
who is at once a responsible person, and yet unable to act
freely, lies not in its mysteriousness, but in its evident
absurdity.' 1

1 Philosophy of Theism, p. 268.

CHAPTER III

THE IDEALISTIC ANSWER TO HUME-
SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY AND ABSO
LUTE IDEALISM

I. Spiritual Philosophy — Coleridge and Newman

THE earliest, and in some ways the most influential, re
presentative of German Transcendental Philosophy in
England is the poet-philosopher, Coleridge. As we have
seen, Mill regarded him as dividing with Bentham the
allegiance of the thoughtful youth of the time, and Leslie
Stephen agrees that ' he was undoubtedly the most con
spicuous representative of the tendencies opposed to utili
tarianism.' 'The most remarkable thing/ says the latter
writer, ' is the apparent disproportion between Coleridge's
definite services to philosophy and the effect which he
certainly produced upon some of his ablest contemporaries.'
' His writings are a heap of fragments,' they consist of
'random and discursive hints.' 'His most coherent ex
position [in the Biographia Littraria] is simply appropriated
from Schelling, though he ascribes the identity to a " genial
coincidence of thought." M It is a striking testimony to
Coleridge's real speculative power that, in spite of these
obvious shortcomings in the form of its presentation, his
philosophical teaching should have made such a deep im
pression upon the readers of his books, as well as upon
those who came under the spell of his conversational
powers. The unfortunate and ominous literary plagiarism
to which Leslie Stephen gives such prominence by no
means cancels the fact of Coleridge's originality as a

1 English Utilitarians, ii. 373-4, 380.

320 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

thinker. He was no mere purveyor of German philo
sophy to the English public. Even where his views
approach most nearly to those of Kant and Schelling,
and are most clearly influenced by these philosophers,
with the one exception referred to, he maintains his in
dependence, and is apt to give the theory a turn of his
own which its original expositor would have entirely
repudiated.

Mill describes Coleridge as c the great awakener in this
country of the spirit of philosophy, within the bounds of
traditional opinions. He has been, almost as truly as
Bentham, " the great questioner of things established " ;
for a questioner need not necessarily be an enemy. By
Bentham, beyond all others, men have been led to ask
themselves, in regard to any ancient or received opinion,
Is it true ? and by Coleridge, What is the meaning of it ? ' -
Yet in Mill's eyes Coleridge is pre-eminently the represen
tative of a wise conservatism in the sphere of politics and
religion. After a graphic description of the state of things
which the eighteenth century had left as an inheritance to
the nineteenth, he says : c This was not a state of things
which could recommend itself to any earnest mind. It
was sure in no great length of time to call forth two sorts
of men — the one demanding the extinction of the institu
tions and creeds which had hitherto existed ; the other,
that they be made a reality : the one pressing the new
doctrines to their utmost consequences ; the other re
asserting the best meaning and purposes of the old. The
first type attained its greatest height in Bentham ; the last
in Coleridge ' 2 This is a characterisation to which
Coleridge himself might well have assented. The revolt
which he represents against the negative rationalism of the
eighteenth century might be described in his own language
as the revolt of the Reason against the Understanding.
The eighteenth century had been, on the whole, the reign
of the discursive understanding ; its criterion of truth had
been ' conceivability,' it had been the enemy of ' en-

1 Dissertations, i. 393. * Ibid., i. 436.

COLERIDGE 321

thusiasm,' of imagination, of the higher reason and its
intuitions. Coleridge would substitute a ' dynamic ' for
its 'mechanical' system, a spiritual for its materialistic
and naturalistic view of the world and human life. For
its futile ' Natural Theology ' and ' Natural Religion ' he
would substitute a philosophy which, by its spiritual in
sight, should end the old conflict between philosophy
and religion.

Mill's suggestion that Coleridge kept his questionings
' within the bounds of traditional opinions ' is apt to
suggest a serious misconception as to the limitations of
his philosophical experience. As a matter of fact, the
comparatively conservative views which he finally accepted
were reached after a wide and varied journey in the world
of speculative thought, just as his political and theological
conservatism was a reaction from the extremely radical
views on these questions entertained by him in his youth.
Like Wordsworth and Southey, Coleridge came under
the spell of the ideas that animated the French Revolu
tion. He had resolved to join Southey in realising a
* pantisocracy ' on the banks of the Susquehana, and later he
had attempted the role of Unitarian preacher. His earliest
philosophical enthusiasm, when a schoolboy at Christ's
Hospital, was the mysticism of Plotinus, as we learn from
Lamb's famous picture of ' the inspired charity-boy '
expounding that author to his school-fellows. The next,
and probably more serious, philosophical influence under
which he came was that of Hartley. He 'named his
first son after Hartley, and slept with the Observations on
Man under his pillow,' says one who grew up under the
same influence.1 Hartley was, to his youthful vision,

' He of mortal kind

Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes
Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.' 2

It was only after much further speculative experience,
and finally passing through a stage of Humian scepticism,

1 Martineau, Essays, iv. 490, 2 Religious Musings.

X

322 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

that he began to reconstruct a philosophy of his own on
more positive and conservative lines. Mr. Shawcross, in
his invaluable introduction to the Oxford edition of the
Biographia Literaria, makes it clear that he had reached his
characteristic positions before he made the acquaintance
of Kant, and later of Schelling, that in the main he used
what knowledge he acquired of these philosophers in the
interests of the views which he had thus independently
reached, and that he never attempted the accurate or
complete reproduction of philosophical systems with which
he only partially sympathised.

Coleridge's two leading doctrines, which he never
developed into a philosophical system, though he often
promised to do so, were the distinction between Imagination
and Fancy, and that between Reason and Understanding.
The former, which was partly worked out in conversa
tions with Wordsworth and in reference to that poet's
views as formulated in his well-known Preface to the
Poems, is found in the Biographia Liter aria (1817) ; the
latter in the Aids to Reflection (1825).

The question of the nature of Imagination, and how it
differs from Fancy, arose primarily, for Coleridge as for
Wordsworth, with reference to the nature of poetry, and
in the interests of a sound poetical criticism ; but for
Coleridge it ultimately expanded into the larger question
of the function and validity of the Imagination in the
search for truth. It was in listening to a poem of Words
worth's that the question first arose in his mind. c In
poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius pro
duces the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues
the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by
the very circumstance of their universal admission. . . .
This excellence, which in all Mr. Wordsworth's writings
is more or less predominant, and which constitutes the
character of his mind, I no sooner felt, than I sought to
understand. Repeated meditations led me first to suspect
(and a more intimate analysis of the human faculties, their
appropriate marks, functions, and effects, matured my con
jecture into full conviction), that fancy and imagination

COLERIDGE 323

were two distinct and widely different faculties, instead of
being, according to the general belief, either two names
with one meaning, or, at furthest, the lower and higher
degree of one and the same power.' l The essential
difference is that while Fancy is determined by mere
accidental and subjective association of ideas, Imagination
works under the dominion of objective law and the truth
of things ; while the former is merely reproductive, the
latter is truly creative. Imagination is the ' shaping and
modifying power,' Fancy 'the aggregative and associative
power.' 2 Coleridge therefore calls the former the ' esem-
plastic power,' and distinguishes two forms or degrees of
it, the primary and the secondary. By the primary imagina
tion he seems to mean the power by which the mind of
man weaves the web of its experience out of the data
of sensation ; by the secondary, that higher degree of the
same power, by which the poet and the philosopher seize
the essential meaning of this common experience. It is
this ' shaping spirit of Imagination ' that is the real source
of the beauty of Nature.

* O Lady ! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone doth Nature live !
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud ! '

The distinction between Imagination and Fancy, to
which so much importance is attached in the Biographia
Literarta, gives place, in the Aids to Reflection^ to the
distinction between Reason and Understanding. This
distinction, in the form in which it is stated, is borrowed
from Kant, with whose philosophy Coleridge made
acquaintance in 1801. 'To Kant,' says Mr. Shawcross,
' his obligations (as he was never tired of asserting) were
far greater than to any other of Kant's countrymen : to
him alone could he be said to assume in any degree the
attitude of pupil to master. Yet even to Kant his debt
seems on the whole to have been more formal than
material — to have resided rather in the scientific state-

i Biog. Phil., i. 60. * Ibid., i. 193-

324 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

ment of convictions previously attained than in the
acquisition of new truths. ... In nothing does this
appear more clearly than in the distinction of Reason and
Understanding. This distinction, as elaborated by Kant,
must have been hailed by Coleridge with especial joy ;
for it gave a rational basis to a presentiment of much
earlier date.'1 He accepts Leighton's definition of the
Understanding as 'the faculty judging according to
sense. ' ' Hence we add the epithet human^ without
tautology : and speak of the human understanding, in
disjunction from that of beings higher or lower than man.
But there is, in this sense, no human reason.' His own
definition of Understanding is 'The faculty by which we
reflect and generalise.' It follows that 'Understanding in
its highest form of experience remains commensurate with
the experimental notices of the senses from which it is
generalised. Reason, on the other hand, either prede
termines experience, or avails itself of a past experience
to supersede its necessity in all future time ; and affirms
truths which no sense could perceive, nor experiment
verify, nor experience confirm. Yea, this is the test and
character of a truth so affirmed, that in its own proper
form it is Inconceivable. For to conceive is a function of the
Understanding, which can be exercised only on subjects
subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the Under
standing all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as
an object of reflection and to be rendered expressible. ,'2
The appropriate sphere of the Understanding is the
natural, not the spiritual world. It is limited to the
objects of sense and of possible experience. ' Wherever
the forms of reasoning appropriate only to the natural
world are applied to spiritual realities, it may be truly
said, that the more strictly logical the reasoning is in all
its partS) the more irrational is it as a whole.'' 3

Though Coleridge does not distinguish clearly be
tween the speculative and the practical reason, it is
the latter rather than the former that he regards as

i Biog. Phil., Introd., p. xli. 2 Aids to Reflection, under Aph. viii.
3 Ibid., Introd. to Aph. x.

COLERIDGE 325

the organ of spiritual vision, ' If not the abstract
or speculative reason — and yet a reason there must be
in order to a rational belief — then it must be the
practical reason of man, comprehending the Will, the
Conscience, the Moral Being with its inseparable
interests and Affections — that Reason, namely, which
is the Organ of Wisdom^ and (as far as man is concerned)
the source of living and actual Truths.' * To the prac
tical reason he attributes knowledge of the ultimate
spiritual realities, while Kant limited knowledge to phe
nomena, and denied to the practical reason the privilege
of speculation. The truth seems to be that Coleridge
comes nearer to the doctrine of Jacobi than to that of
Kant, as Hort remarks in his excellent essay.2 * I should
have no objection,' says Coleridge, i to define reason with
Jacobi, and with his friend Hemsterhuis, as an organ bear
ing the same relation to spiritual objects, the universal, the
eternal, and the necessary, as the eye bears to material
and contingent phenomena. But then it must be added,
that it is an organ identical with its appropriate objects.
Thus God, the soul, eternal truth, etc., are the objects
of reason; but they are themselves reason.'3 Practical
reason thus becomes synonymous with Faith, which he
defines as * fidelity to our own being — so far as such
being is not and cannot become an object of the senses ;
and hence, by clear inference or implication, to being
generally, as far as the same is not the object of the
senses ; and again to whatever is affirmed or understood
as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the
same.' 4 In the Will or originative agency of man he
finds the clue to the distinction of Spirit from Nature.
These terms are properly antithetic, 'so that the most
general and negative definition of Nature is, Whatever is
not Spirit ; and vice versa of Spirit. That which is not
comprehended in Nature : or in the language of our
elder divines, that which transcends Nature. But nature

1 Aids to Reflection. Aph. ii. a Cambridge Essays, 1856.

3 The Friend, i. 208, ed. 1844, quoted by Hort, p. 322.

4 Essay on Faith.

326 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

is the term in which we comprehend all things that
are representable in the forms of time and space, and
subjected to the relations of cause and effect : and the
cause of the existence of which, therefore, is to be sought
for perpetually in something antecedent. ... It follows,
therefore, that whatever originates its own acts, or in any
sense contains in itself the cause of its own state, must be
spiritual, and consequently supernatural : yet not on that
account necessarily miraculous. And such must the
responsible WILL in us be, if it be at all.'1

The distinction between Reason and Understanding
gives the clue to the difference between true Morality
and mere Prudence. * Morality arising out of the Reason
and Conscience of Men, and Prudence, which in like
manner flows out of the Understanding and the natural
Wants and Desires of the Individual, are two distinct
things.' 2 A writer who, like Paley, reduces morality to
prudence, is not entitled to be called a moralist. * Schemes
of conduct, grounded on calculations of self-interest ; or
on the average consequences of actions, supposing them
general ; form a branch of Political Economy, to which
let all due honour be given. Their utility is not here
questioned. But however estimable within their own
sphere, such schemes, or any one of them in particular,
may be, they do not belong to Moral Science, to which,
both in kind and purpose, they are , in all cases foreign^
and, when substituted for it, hostile.'1 3 An action is good,
not in respect of its external consequences, but as an
expression of the unity of the human with the divine
will. 'Whatever seeks to separate itself from the Divine
Principle, and proceeds from a false centre in the agent's
particular will, is evil — a work of darkness and contradic
tion. It is sin, and essential falsehood.' 4 Morality con
sists in the identity of the will with the practical reason.
* Conscience is a witness respecting the identity of the will
and the reason effected by the self-subordination of the

1 Aids to Reflection, Introd. to Aph. x.

2 Ibid., under Aph. vii.

3 Ibid., Aph. xii. 4 Loc. cit.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 327

will, or self, to the reason, as equal to, or representing,
the will of God.'1

The reader cannot fail to be disappointed with the style
of the Aids to Reflection ,• it is certainly not to its literary
quality that its influence is to be traced. As Traill
says, it possesses Mess charm of thought, less beauty of
style, less even of Coleridge's seldom-failing force of
effective statement ' than almost any of his writings.2
The Biographia Literaria is written more in the author's
own manner, 'the manner of the great pulpit orators of
the seventeenth century,' whose spirit and style he had
caught from sympathetic study of their works. But the
real interest and value of both books lies in their sub
stance and spirit, in the thought and criticism which
they contain, in the moral earnestness which inspires
them, and communicates itself to the reader.

In an article written in 1839, quoted in the Apologia^
John Henry Newman connects Coleridge with Scott,
Southev, and Wordsworth, as a representative of 'the need
which was felt both by the heart and the intellect of the
nation for a deeper philosophy.' * While history in prose
and verse was thus made the instrument of Church feelings
and opinions, a philosophical basis for the same was laid
in England by a very original thinker, who, while he
indulged a liberty of speculation, which no Christian
can tolerate, and advocated conclusions which were
often heathen rather than Christian, yet after all in
stalled a higher philosophy into inquiring minds, than
they had hitherto been accustomed to accept. In this
way he made trial of his age, and succeeded in interest
ing its genius in the cause of Catholic truth.' 3 Newman
himself, in his Grammar of Assent (1870), attempts to
determine the true method of thought on the ultimate
questions. The work is of great philosophical, as well as
religious significance, and is a remarkable example of that

1 Essay on Faith.

2 Coleridge, in ' English Men of Letters,' p. 179'

3 Apologia, p. 97.

328 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

style, so characteristic of its author yet so impossible to
describe, which combines perfect lucidity and the total
absence of straining after effect with a beauty and dignity
all its own, the utmost simplicity with an undefinable
distinction.

Newman, like Coleridge, is the enemy of rationalism,
or the attempt, which he regards as foredoomed to
failure, to reduce faith to terms of logic. The ultimately
decisive element in Assent is, he holds, the personal
element. Certitude is a subjective feeling, varying with
the individual, rather than a unanimity determined by
reference to a common standard. 'We need the inter
position of a Power, greater than human teaching and
human argument, to make our beliefs true and our
minds one.' * We apprehend the ultimate Reality in the
same way as we apprehend ordinary matters of fact ; in
both cases alike Assent is implicitly rational, though it
transcends the limits of explicit proof. The faith which
is present in all our so-called knowledge is, we must
believe, entirely rational ; but it is vain to attempt to
rationalise it. The certainties of belief are themselves
the final resultant of a mass of probabilities ; the ( proofs '
which determine our Assent are not logical proofs, and
the attempt to establish the validity of these beliefs on
logical grounds can only result in incurable scepticism.

The entire argument rests upon the distinction between
the * notional ' and the c real,' the abstract and the concrete,
alike in apprehension and in assent. The notional has
to do with the abstractions of thought, the real with
the actual things, the matters of fact of our experience.
Real assent, or belief, since it depends upon experience,
is always personal, c the accident of this or that man.'
It is always complete ; we cannot rightly speak of
4 degrees of assent,' varying from probability to certainty
according to the evidence that determines it. Assent
is never merely ' the echo of an inference,' it is always
4 a substantive act.'2 We must further distinguish

1 Grammar of Assent, p. 37$. 2 Ibid., p. 166.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 329

4 certitude ' from assent. Certitude is a ' deliberate assent
given expressly after reasoning ' ; l * it follows upon
examination and proof, as the bell sounds the hour, when
the hands reach it.' 2 But the reasoning or inference
upon which it rests is informal, not formal, implicit, not
explicit. Formal inference is notional and abstract ; hence
the logic which formulates it tends always to the
symbolic form, it 'starves each term down till it has
become the ghost of itself, and everywhere one and
the same ghost, " omnibus umbra locis." ' 3 Logic
thus separates us from reality, and acquaints us with
a world of abstractions. 'This universal living scene
of things is after all as little a logical world as it is a
poetical ; and, as it cannot without violence be exalted
into poetical perfection, neither can it be attenuated
into a logical formula.'4 Formal inference leads, there
fore, only to probability ; it can never yield certainty.
Its premisses are assumed, not proved. It depends upon
1 first principles,' which * are called self-evident by their
respective advocates because they are evident in no
other way.' c It only leads us back to first princi
ples, about which there is interminable controversy.' 5
And its conclusions are always abstract, never concrete.
It confuses the similar with the identical, the general
with the universal. The real is always individual,
similar to other individuals, but never identical with
them ; our statements about it may have general, they
can never have universal validity. Compared with the
cumbrous and ineffective methods of formal logic, ' how
short and easy a way to a true conclusion is the logic
of good sense ; how little syllogisms have to do with
the formation of opinion ; how little depends upon the
inferential proofs, and how much upon those pre-existing
beliefs and views, in which men either already agree
with each other or hopelessly differ, before they begin
to dispute, and which are hidden deep in our nature,
or, it may be, in our personal peculiarities.'6

1 Grammar of Assent, p. 229. a Ibid., p. 236. 3 Ibid., p. 267.
4 Ibid., p. 268. 6 Ibid., p. 270. 6 Ibid., p. 277.

330 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

The real method by which we attain to concrete
certainties, by which conditional inference leads to un
conditional assent, is rather the intuitive judgment or
perception which seizes the conclusion as a result of
a mass of converging probabilities, the tact of the trained
intellect which cannot analyse the reasons that have
appealed to it, or formulate the hints and suggestions
that have led to its decision. ' It is the cumulation of
probabilities, independent of each other, arising out of
the nature and circumstances of the particular case which
is under review ; probabilities too fine to avail separately,
too subtle and circuitous to be convertible into syllogisms,
too numerous and various for such conversion, even
were they convertible.'1 In such a real inference we
feel the momentum of the mass of probabilities, con
firming and correcting one another, and the conclusion
is *an unwritten summing-up'; the mind is ' swayed
and determined by a body of proof, which it recog
nises only as a body, and not in its constituent parts.'2
Or, more accurately stated, the decisive factor in the
entire procedure is ' the living mind ' of the individual.
The impression which the body of proof makes upon
the individual mind varies with the individual ; for it
is not strictly an impression, but the result of the re
action of the mind itself. ' It follows that what to one
intellect is a proof is not so to another, and that the
certainty of a proposition does properly consist in the
certitude of the mind that contemplates it.'3

The ultimate principle, then, in belief, is a kind of
instinct or feeling for truth, what Newman calls ' the
Illative Sense,' or ' right judgment in ratiocination ' ; and
' such a living organon is a personal gift, and not a mere
method or calculus.'4 The ultimate premisses or first
principles of our reasoning are always personal. * Even
when we agree together, it is not perhaps that we learn
one from another, or fall under any law of agreement,
but that our separate idiosyncrasies happen to concur.' 5

1 Grammar of Assent, p. 288. 2 Ibid., p. 292. 3 Ibid., p. 293.
* Ibid., p. 316. 5 Ibid., p. 373.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 331

What guarantee have we, then, for the objectivity
of truth, if there is no common measure to which we
can appeal, if the only standard is the subjective feeling of
the individual ? The only answer is that we must trust
our faculties ; the ultimate sanction of truth is ' the
trustworthiness of the Illative Sense.'1 'There is no
ultimate test of truth besides the testimony borne to
truth by the mind itself.'2 It is 'unmeaning' to
* criticise or find fault with our own nature, which is
nothing else than we ourselves, instead of using it
according to the use of which it ordinarily admits.' Our
criticism, our very scepticism, is an exercise of that
nature, and implies that it is accepted as trustworthy.
We need not hope, by 'antecedent reasoning,' to prove
this trustworthiness or to escape the personal equation
in our apprehension of truth. ' What is left to us but
to take things as they are, and to resign ourselves to
what we find ? ' 3 What is left to us but to accept our
nature, in its intellectual as well as its moral faculties, as
the expression of the will of God ? Our trust in our
own nature is really trust in God, our Maker.

The difficulty itself, however, like Hume's sceptical
doubt which also finds its practical solution in trust in
' human nature,' arises from the failure to discriminate,
within that nature, the common or universal from the
merely individual and idiosyncratic element. While it
is obviously unmeaning to attempt to transcend human
nature and to find outside it a standard of truth to which
it must conform, and while the language of even such
a transcendentalist as Kant may well suggest such an
impossible procedure, it remains to ask whether, within
human nature, the rational and universal cannot be
discriminated from the subjective and individual. New
man's own central view of the implicit rationality of
true belief suggests the possibility of its indefinite
rationalisation. It does not follow that, because the
individual does not himself make the analysis of the

i Grammar of Assent, p. 359. * Ibid., p. 350. * Loc. cit.

332 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

rational grounds of his belief, his belief is incapable of
such analysis and justification. It was the ambition of
the Absolute Idealists to demonstrate the rationality and
objectivity of that Assent the grounds of which remained
for Newman inscrutable to reason.

2. Absolute Idealism : Earlier Version — Ferrier and Grote

The earliest, and in some ways the most impressive,
statement of absolute idealism in English philosophy is
that of J. F. Ferrier, professor of moral philosophy at
St. Andrews from 1845 to 1864. No less interested than
Coleridge and Newman in the affirmation of a spiritual
view of the universe, he holds that it is possible to
demonstrate the truth of such a view. In any case he
is convinced that it is the function of Philosophy to
demonstrate truth ; he defines it as * a body of reasoned
truth,' 'the attainment of truth by the way of reason*
Its method is the < speculative method, which means
nothing more than that we should expend upon the in
vestigation the uttermost toil and application of thought ;
and that we should estimate the truths which we arrive
at, not by the scale of their importance, but by the
scale of their difficulty of attainment, of their cost of
production. Labour, we repeat it, is the standard which
measures the value of truth, as well as the value of
wealth.' J He has no patience, therefore, with the pre
tensions of the 'Philosophy of Common Sense.' Of
Hamilton, whom he knew intimately, he says, ' I have
learned more from him than from all other philosophers
put together ; more, both as regards what I assented to
and what I dissented from ' ; but he regarded the time
spent by Hamilton in editing Reid's works as little better
than wasted. So far from Common Sense being the
criterion of philosophical truth, he holds that ' the con
ciliation of ordinary thinking, or " common sense," as it is
sometimes rather abusively called, and philosophy, can be

1 Philosophical Remains , ii. 431.

FERRIER 333

very well effected by the former giving in her submission
to the decisions of the compulsory reason.' l He has a
further ground of quarrel with the Scottish Philosophy,
namely, that it adopts the psychological method and believes
in a ' science of the human mind.' ' Perhaps no better or
more comprehensive description of the object of meta
physical or speculative philosophy could be given than
this : that it is a science which exists, and has at all times
existed, chiefly for the purpose of exposing the vanity and
confounding the pretensions of what is called the "science
of the human mind." ' 2 ' The best way of attaining
to correct opinions on most metaphysical subjects is by
finding out what has been said on any given point by the
psychologists, and then by saying the very opposite.'3

Already in his own lifetime Ferrier was regarded, as he
has been constantly represented since, as an adherent of
the Hegelian philosophy. Such an affiliation he strongly
denied, rightly claiming originality for the way in which
he reached a result which, it is true, coincides in the
main with that of the Hegelian dialectic. In an appendix
to the Institutes, he says : < Some of my critics assert that
my philosophy is nothing but an echo of Hegel's ; others
have doubted whether I know anything at all about that
philosopher. The exact truth of the matter is this : I
have read most of Hegel's works again and again, but
I cannot say that I am acquainted with his philosophy.
I am able to understand only a few short passages here
and there in his writings ; and these I greatly admire for
the depth of their insight, the breadth of their wisdom,
and the loftiness of their tone. More than this I cannot
say. If others understand him better, and to a larger
extent, they have the advantage of me, and I confess that
I envy them the privilege. But, for myself, I must
declare that I have not found one word or one thought
in Hegel which was available for my system, even if I had
been disposed to use it. If Hegel follows (as I do) the
demonstrative method, I own I cannot see it, and would

1 institutes of Metaphysic, Introd. , sect. 49.

? Remains, ii. 445. 3 Institutes, p. 315.

334 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

feel much obliged to any one who would point this out,
and make it clear. In other respects, my method is
diametrically opposed to his ; he begins with the con
sideration of Being ; my whole design compels me to begin
with the consideration of Knowing.' l In the Institutes itself
he speaks of Hegel as ' impenetrable, almost throughout,
as a mountain of adamant,' 2 and exclaims, * Hegel, — but
who has ever yet uttered one intelligible word about
Hegel ? Not any of his countrymen, — not any foreigner,
— seldom even himself.' 3 Internal evidence confirms
what these words suggest, that Ferrier worked his way
independently to his conclusions by correcting and de
veloping the idealism of Berkeley, which seems to have
formed the real starting-point of his own thinking, and
in which, as thus corrected and developed, he found the
substitute for the misleading views of Reid and Hamilton.
It was probably not so much the substance as the form
of Ferrier's system, different as the latter really is from
that of Hegel, that suggested the author's indebtedness to
the great German idealist. In the Institutes of Metaphysic
(1854), the argument is stated in a series of propositions,
each of which is demonstrated and made the basis of those
which follow, after the manner of Euclid or Spinoza,
rather than that of Hegel. On reading the book, Mill
wrote : i His fabric of speculation is so effectively con
structed, and imposing, that it almost ranks as a work
of art. It is the romance of logic.' 4 In some ways,
however, the form militates against the effectiveness of
the argument, giving it an air of artificiality, diminish
ing its cumulative force and, in spite of the directness,
lucidity, and strength of the style, seriously detracting from
the literary quality of the work. In literary quality, as
well as in freshness and spontaneity and in breadth and
richness of treatment, the Introduction to the Philosophy of
Consciousness, originally published as a series of articles in
Blackwood in 1838—39, must be placed higher; nor can
it be said that the later statement adds anything of material

1 Remains, i. 486. 2 Institutes, p. 40.

3 Ibid., p. 91. * Letters, i. 184.

FERR1ER 335

value to the earlier argument. In both works there is
a certain tendency to iteration and over-elaboration, in
part the result of the author's facility of expression and
tendency to rhetorical exaggeration. But the notable
absence of pedantry and technicality and the general
smoothness and crispness of the statement atone in great
measure for any such defects ; and the writer never
forgets his undertaking to make clear the successive steps
in the logical process of the argument.

In an essay on ' Berkeley and Idealism,' published in
1842, perhaps Ferrier's most perfect piece of philosophical
writing, he signalises both the essential truth and the
essential defect in a theory which was at the time much
less understood than it is now. Berkeley, he says,
* certainly was the first to stamp the indelible impress of
his powerful understanding on those principles of our
nature, which, since his time, have brightened into im
perishable truths in the light of genuine speculation.
His genius was the first to swell the current of that mighty
stream of tendency towards which all modern meditation
flows, the great gulf-stream of Absolute Idealism.' The
element of peculiar value in Berkeley's speculation is its con-
creteness, its faithfulness to reality. 'The peculiar endow
ment by which Berkeley was distinguished, far beyond his
predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost
every philosopher who has succeeded him, was the eye
he had for facts^ and the singular pertinacity with which
he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon them. . . .
No man ever delighted less to expatiate in the regions of
the occult, the abstract, the impalpable, the fanciful, and
the unknown. His heart and soul clung with inseparable
tenacity to the concrete realties of the universe ; and with
an eye uninfluenced by spurious theories, and unperverted
by false knowledge, he saw directly into the very life of
things.' 1 His theory needs only to be widened, and thus
corrected, to provide the true explanation of which phil
osophy is in search. How this is to be done, is more

1 Remains, ii. 293-4.

336 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

clearly stated in the Institutes. ' He saw that something
subjective was a necessary and inseparable part of every
object of cognition. But instead of maintaining that
it was the ego or oneself which clove inseparably to all
that could be known, and that this element must be
thought of along with all that is thought of, he rather
held that it was the senses, or our perceptive modes of
cognition, which clove inseparably to all that could be
known, and that these required to be thought of along
with all that could be thought of. These, just as much
as the ego, were held by him to be the subjective part
of the total synthesis of cognition which could not by any
possibility be discounted. Hence the unsatisfactory char
acter of his ontology, which, when tried by the test of
a rigorous logic, will be found to invest the Deity — the
supreme mind, the infinite ego, which the terms of his
system necessarily compel him to place in synthesis with
all things — with human modes of apprehension, with
such senses as belong to man — and to invest Him with
these, not as a matter of contingency, but as a matter
of necessity. Our only safety lies in the consideration —
a consideration which is a sound, indeed inevitable logical
inference — that our sensitive modes of apprehension are
mere contingent elements and conditions of cognition ;
and that the ego or subject alone enters, of necessity, into
the composition of everything which any intelligence can
know.' l

Although there are occasional references to Kant in
Ferrier's works, he develops his theory through a con
tinuous criticism of Reid, on the one hand, and of Hamilton,
on the other. Reid is, for him, the representative of
Psychology or the ' science of the human mind,' and
therefore, despite his own protestations to the contrary,
of c Representationism.' Hamilton is the representative
of Agnosticism, or the doctrine of the unknowableness
of the Absolute Reality. Against the former view, he
argues that we have a direct knowledge of Reality, both

1 Institutes, pp. 389, 390.

FERRIER 337

material and spiritual ; against the latter, he formulates
his ' agnoiology ' or ' theory of ignorance,' to prove that the
'ignorance' of which Hamilton would convict the human
mind is not properly called ignorance or defect, but is simply
that repudiation of the unintelligible or self-contradictory
which is the essential characteristic of intelligence, rather
than a defect peculiar to the human mind.

The fundamental error of Psychology is the acceptance
of sensation, or the ' state of consciousness,' as the original
datum of knowledge, the consequence being that the
inference to the existence of the object, as well as to
the subject, is more or less uncertain. As a matter of
fact, the subject and the object are inseparable. ' Matter
per se"* is never the object of knowledge; what we
perceive is always ' Matter mecum.' The elementary
fact of knowledge is not matter, but the perception of
matter, or the subject as conscious of the object, either
subjective or objective. Mere 'phenomena' never exist ;
what exists is always phenomenal to a self or subject.
If we define ' substance ' as that which is capable of
existing, or of being conceived, alone and independently,
then the conscious self, that is, the subject as conscious
of an object, is substance, and can be known. The
ego cannot know objects without knowing itself along
with them ; it cannot know itself except along with
objects. It is because the psychologists have ignored
the conscious, or rather the self-conscious self, which is
present in all knowledge, that they have been unable to
escape the conclusion that all we know is 'ideas' or
' phenomena ' which represent, and may misrepresent, the
object or substantial reality.

For the refutation of the Hamiltonian doctrine of
the Relativity of Knowledge, Ferrier formulated what
he regarded as an entirely original ' theory of ignorance.'
Ignorance, he holds, presupposes the possibility of know
ledge ; we can be ignorant only of that which it is
possible for us to know. It is not a defect, but a merit
of knowledge not to know that which cannot be known
because it is the unintelligible or the self-contradictory.

y

338 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Now we have seen that subject and object, or mind
and matter, per se^ are both alike unknowable in this
sense ; since they are never presented in consciousness
alone but always together, it follows that they cannot
be represented or thought in separation from one another.
It is of such an inconceivable or unintelligible reality
that Hamilton proclaims that ignorance is inevitable ; he
might as well proclaim the unknowableness of Nothing,
or of Nonsense. It is the glory, rather than the humilia
tion, of intelligence to repudiate the unintelligible or
self-contradictory.

On the basis of this < epistemology ' and < agnoiology '
Ferrier proceeds to construct his ' ontology.' Self-conscious
mind, the ultimate element in knowledge, is also the
ultimate element in existence. Repudiating the errors
of subjective idealism, he finds himself compelled to accept
absolute or objective idealism. The individual ego, along
with the universe of his thought, is not independent.
f The only independent universe which any mind or
ego can think of is the universe in synthesis with some
other mind or ego.' 1 And since one such other mind is
sufficient to account for the universe of our experience,
we are warranted in inferring that there is only one.
Ferrier thus summarises the argument which yields * this
theistic conclusion ' : i Speculation shows us that the
universe, by itself, is the contradictory ; that it is in
capable of self-subsistency, that it can exist only cum a/io,
that all true and cogitable and non-contradictory exist
ence is a synthesis of the subjective and the objective ;
and then we are compelled, by the most stringent neces
sity of thinking, to conceive a supreme intelligence as
the ground and essence of the Universal Whole. Thus
the postulation of the Deity is not only permissible, it
is unavoidable. Every mind thinks, and must think of
God (however little conscious it may be of the opera
tion which it is performing), whenever it thinks of
anything as lying beyond all human observation, or as

1 Institutes^ Ft. i. Prop. xiii.

JOHN GROTE 339

subsisting in the absence or annihilation of all finite in
telligences.'1

The ethical implications of such an idealism are strik
ingly suggested in the Philosophy of Consciousness, where
the parallelism between the functions of self-conscious
ness in the intellectual and in the moral spheres is made
clear, and it is shown that 'just as all perception origin
ates in the antagonism between consciousness and our
sensations, so all morality originates in the antagonism
between consciousness and the passions, desires, or inclina
tions of the natural man.' 2 It is in this refusal to accept
the guidance of the natural passions and inclinations, this
' direct antithesis ' of the ' 1 ' to the i natural man,' that
our moral freedom consists. What is this supreme act
by which man asserts his supremacy over nature, within
and without himself? 'What is it but the act of con
sciousness, the act of becoming "I," the act of placing
ourselves in the room which sensation and passion have
been made to vacate ? This act may be obscure in the
extreme, but still it is an act of the most practical kind,
both in itself and in its results. . . . For what act can
be more vitally practical than the act by which we realise
our existence as free personal beings ? and what act can
be attended by a more practical result than the act by
which we look our passions in the face, and, in the very
act of looking at them, look them down ? ' 3

An interesting statement of an essentially idealistic view
is worked out with great independence by another English
thinker, John Grote, Knightbridge professor of moral
philosophy, in succession to Whewell, at Cambridge from
1855 to 1866, in his Exploratio Philosophica^ the first part
of which was published in 1865, the year before the
author's death. Grote called the work, modestly but
truthfully, l rough notes,' and its unfinished literary form
is doubtless largely responsible for the neglect which has
been its fate. It contains, however, much vigorous and

1 Institutes, p. 512. 2 Remains, ii. 208. * Ibid., ii. 201.

340 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

suggestive thinking, and leaves the impression of distinct
speculative power. The author's own positions are de
veloped by the discussion of the views of such English
writers as Ferrier, Hamilton, Mill, and Whewell. His
point of view is clearly idealistic, and closely akin to that
of Ferrier. Speaking of his own theory of knowledge,
he says, <I think Mr. Ferrier, with a manner of ex
pression of his own, and a more ambitious, perhaps
a better, method, does not in its great features differ
from it.' * He thus states the great alternative of meta
physical thought as it has been formulated in the move
ment of English philosophy, and leaves us in no doubt as
to his own decision. * The difference as to philosophical
view which is a real and fundamental one, whereas almost
all differences which cannot be resolved into this have in
them more or less of vagueness and mutual misunder
standing, is that. between what I have called "positivism"
on the one side, and on the other a view contrasted with
this, which has no single name, though in application to
ethics I should call it "idealism." The point of the
difference is that in the former we look upon what we
can find out by physical research as ultimate fact, so far
as we are concerned, and upon conformity with it as the
test of truth ; so that nothing is admitted as true except
so far as it follows by some process of inference from this.
In opposition to this, the contrasted view is to the effect,
that for philosophy, for our entire judgment about things,
we must go beyond this, or rather go further back than
it, the ultimate fact really (however for the purposes of
physical science we may assume the former) for us —
the basis upon which all rests — being not that things
exist, but that we know them, i.e. think of them as ex
isting. ... In the former view, knowledge about things is
looked upon as a possibly supervening accident to them or
of them ; in the latter view, their knowableness is a part,
and the most important part, of their reality or essential
being. In the former view, mind is supposed to follow,

o^ pt. L, p. 56.

JOHN GROTE 341

desultorily and accidentally, after matter of fact ; in the
latter view mind or consciousness begins with recognising
itself as a part of an entire supposed matter of fact or
universe, and next as correspondent, in its subjective
character, to the whole of this besides as object, while
the understanding of this latter as known, germinates into
the notion of the recognition of other mind or reason
in it.'1

One of Crete's leading distinctions is that between
what he calls ' knowledge of acquaintance,' mere aware
ness or knowledge of, and i knowledge of judgment,'
logical or conceptual knowledge, or knowledge about.
The former is that immediate or intuitive apprehension
of reality without which no knowledge is possible, and in
which the distinctions of our later conceptual knowledge
are already implicit. This contrast must not be mis
conceived as one between matter and form, or things and
thought, as if the object gave the one and the subject the
other. The thing or object is simply the datum of
immediate experience understood or interpreted. Thought
is not the reading of relations into the chaotic or unrelated
material of sensation, but the discovery of the relations
actually present in the world of our experience ; the re
cognition, by the mind of the knowing subject, of the mind
or reason in the universe of reality. This distinction is
also described by Grote as one between c immediateness '
and * reflection,' the reflective being identified with the
philosophical point of view, and * positivism ' being con
demned as an attempt to rest in the immediacy of ex
perience as ultimate.

3. Absolute Idealism : Later Versions — Stirling, Caird,
Green, Bradley

In 1865, the year after the death of Ferrier, there
appeared a work which marked the inauguration of a new
era in the development of English idealism. This was
The Secret of Hegel, by James Hutchison Stirling. In

1 Exploratio, pt. i., p. 59-

342 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

an article in the Fortnightly Review for October 1867 (re-
published in the volume Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay]
the author passes a ruthless condemnation upon the
spurious reputation for a knowledge of German idealism
which had attached itself to the name of Coleridge, as
well as, in a minor degree, to that of De Quincey, and
fastens especially upon Coleridge's 'dreamy misapprehen
sions' and < strange misrepresentations' of the Kantian
philosophy. Himself profoundly convinced of the truth
of the Hegelian system, he set himself, in the Secret, to
explain and defend that system. Stirling undoubtedly
possessed ' the temperament of genius,' and was a man
of remarkable speculative insight ; but his style, though
often striking, is so marked by the influence of Carlyle,
and he so resolutely declines to conform to ordinary
standards of systematic exposition, that his work is almost
as difficult as the original which it is intended to illumi
nate. Yet its importance, and its influence at the time
of its appearance, are not to be underestimated ; it
certainly called the attention of the English-speaking world
to the significance of a system which even Ferrier had
pronounced unintelligible, and brought home to the
English mind the necessity of coming to terms, not only
with Hegel, but with his predecessors, Kant, Fichte, and
Schelling. For Stirling insisted upon going back to the
origins of Hegelianism in these earlier systems, and in
1 88 1 he followed up the Secret of Hegel with the Text
book to Kant, in which the defects of the earlier work
were less apparent and in which he supported a one
sided interpretation of the Kantian philosophy, as re
presented by the first two divisions of the Critique of
Pure Reason, with great learning and with remarkable
ability. His translation of Schwegler's History of Philosophy,
published in 1867, which passed through many editions
and was used by many generations of students, contains
a series of illuminating ' annotations ' which rival in
interest and value the substance of the History itself. A
little volume of lectures on The Philosophy of Law (1873)
and the Gifford lectures on Philosophy and Theology

EDWARD CAIRD 343

(1890) complete the list of Stirling's more important
contributions to philosophy. The standpoint is always
the same — that of the Hegelian idealism, which Stirling
is inclined to interpret in a theistic rather than in a
pantheistic sense.

The Secret was followed by a long series of works
devoted to the same purpose of acquainting the insular
English mind with the meaning of the German idealistic
systems. Of these the most notable, as expositions of Kant
and Hegel, were Edward Caird's Philosophy of Kant (1878)
and The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1889),
William Wallace's translations, with Prolegomena, of
Hegel's Logic (1874) and of the Philosophy of Mind (1894),
and Caird's little volume on Hegel in Blackwood's 'Philo
sophical Classics' (1883). Caird's works on Kant are,
however, by no means merely expository ; they are critical
in the sense of correcting the Kantian philosophy in the
light of what the writer regards as its deeper principles,
which were only imperfectly grasped by Kant himself,
and the comprehension of which delivers us from the
limitations of the Kantian philosophy. While, especially
in the second and larger work, Caird bestowed immense
pains upon the investigation of the actual text of the
Critiques, as well as of the gradual development of Kant's
thought, as shown in earlier works, his ulterior purpose, in
both books, is to use Kant as a stepping-stone to what he
regards as the more adequate system of Hegel. In his
lectures from the chair of moral philosophy in the Uni
versity of Glasgow from 1866 to 1893, and afterwards as
Master of Balliol College, Oxford, as well as in his Gifford
lectures on The Evolution of Religion (1892) and The
Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1903), he
used Hegelianism with great effectiveness as a point of
view from which to interpret the movement of philosophi
cal and religious thought, and as a weapon with which to
withstand the materialistic and agnostic tendencies of the
time. Discarding the technical details of the system, and
availing himself of its essential method, he sought to
substitute concrete for abstract thinking and to reconcile

344 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the contradictions of the scientific understanding in the
higher synthesis of the speculative reason. It was the
same work which Fencer had attempted with less ade
quate historical outfit ; and while the inspiration always
obviously came from Hegel, Caird's own words are true of
himself : ' The literal importation of Kant and Hegel
into another country and time would not be possible if it
were desirable, or desirable if it were possible. The mere
change of time and place, if there were nothing more,
implies new questions and a new attitude of mind in those
whom the writer addresses, which would make a bare
reproduction unmeaning. Moreover, this change of the
mental atmosphere and environment is itself part of a
development which must affect the doctrine also, if it is no
mere dead tradition, but a seed of new intellectual life.
Any one who writes about philosophy must have his work
judged, not by its relation to the intellectual wants of a
past generation, but by its power to meet the wants of the
present time — wants which arise out of the advance of
science, and the new currents of influence which are
transforming man's social and religious life.' *• Judged by
such a standard, Caird's contribution to the English
philosophical thought of his time must be accorded great
value and importance.

In Caird's own judgment, however, as expressed in the
same place, Thomas Hill Green, to whose memory the
volume is dedicated, was c an author who, perhaps more
than any recent writer on philosophy, has shown that it
is possible to combine a thorough appropriation of the
results of past speculation with the freshness and spon
taneity of an original mind.' His philosophy is no mere
reproduction of German idealism, even in the sense in
which Caird's work must be so described. While his < whole
work was devoted,' as the latter writer says, < to the
development of the results of the Kantian criticism of
knowledge and morals,' he cannot justly be described as a

1 Preface to Essays in Philosophical Criticism, edited by A. Seth and
R. B. Haldane (1883).

T. H. GREEN 345

disciple of Hegel. 'To Hegel he latterly stood in a
somewhat doubtful relation ; for while; in the main, he
accepted Hegel's criticism of Kant, and held also that
something like Hegel's idealism must be the result of the
development of Kantian principles rightly understood, he
yet regarded the actual Hegelian system with a certain
suspicion as something too ambitious, or, at least, premature.
" It must all be done over again," he once said, meaning
that the first development of idealistic thought in Germany
had in some degree anticipated what can be the secure
result only of wider knowledge and more complete
reflexion.' In a review, published in 1880, of John
Caird's Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, which,
he says, < represents a thorough assimilation by an eminent
Scotch theologian, who is also known as a most power
ful preacher and writer, of Hegel's " Philosophy of Re
ligion," ' Green thus defines his own attitude to Hegelian
idealism. * Hegel's doctrine has been before the world now
for half a century, and though it has affected the current
science and philosophy to a degree which those who
depreciate it seem curiously to ignore, yet as a doctrine
it has not made way. It may be doubted whether it has
thoroughly satisfied even those among us who regard it as
the last word of philosophy. When we think out the
problem left by previous inquirers, we find ourselves led to
it by an intellectual necessity ; but on reflection we become
aware that we are Hegelian, so to speak, with only a
fraction of our thoughts — on the Sundays of "speculation,"
not on the weekdays of " ordinary thought " ; and even if
we silence all suspicion as to the truth and value of the
" speculation," we still feel the need of some such media
tion between speculative truth and our judgments con
cerning matters of fact as will help philosophy to come
to an understanding with science, and either to answer
those questions of " Whence " and " Whither " which the
facts of the world suggest to us, or explain why they are
inexplicable.' 1

1 Works, iii. 141-2.

346 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

Although Green did not himself c do it all over again,'
he did make a serious effort so to restate the idealistic
position as to free it from the difficulties suggested in
the above criticism : and we have the result in the
Prolegomena to Ethics, published posthumously in 1883.
The presupposition of a theory of ethics is, he holds, the
demonstration of the spiritual nature of man ; a ' natural
science of man/ such as that from which Spencer had
recently attempted to deduce the ' data of ethics,' seemed
to Green to contradict the very idea of ethics. Accord
ingly he devotes the first book of his treatise to the
investigation of * the metaphysics of knowledge,' his object
being to show that there is a ' spiritual principle ' in
knowledge, and therefore in nature. Like Ferrier, he
insists upon the necessity of postulating a self-conscious
and self-differentiating subject at the heart of knowledge,
showing that Reality, as known, is a < system of relations '
which presupposes the synthetic activity of the self. The
finite subject of knowledge, whose function it is to relate
or think the data of sensation, and thus to constitute out
of them objects of knowledge, and a world of such objects,
is the reproduction in time of that Eternal Consciousness
which alone can account at once for the intelligibility of
nature and for our intellectual understanding of it. The
significance of such a view is pointedly suggested in the
review from which I have already quoted. * To assume,
because all reality requires thought to conceive it, that
therefore thought is the condition of its existence, is,
indeed, unwarrantable. But it is another matter if, when
we come to examine the constituents of that which we
account real — the determinations of things — we find that
they all imply some synthetic action which we only know
as exercised by our own spirit. Is it not true of all of
them that they have their being in relations ; and what
other medium do we know of but a thinking conscious
ness in and through which the separate can be united in
that way which constitutes relation ? We believe that
these questions cannot be worked out without leading to
the conclusion that the real world is essentially a spiritual

T. H. GREEN 347

world, which forms one inter-related whole because related
throughout to a single subject. . . . But when we have
satisfied ourselves that the world in its truth or full reality
is spiritual, because on no other supposition is its unity
explicable, we may still have to confess that a knowledge
of it in its spiritual reality — such a knowledge of it as
would be a knowledge of God — is impossible to us. To
know God we must be God. The unifying principle of
the world is indeed in us ; it is our self. But, as in us, it
is so conditioned by a particular animal nature that, while
it yields that idea of the world as one which regulates all
our knowledge, our actual knowledge remains a piece
meal process. We spell out the relations of things one
by one ; we pass from condition to condition, from effect
to effect ; but, as one fragment of truth is grasped, another
has escaped us, and we never reach that totality of ap
prehension through which alone we could know the
world as it is and God in it. This is the infirmity of our
discursive understanding. If in one sense it reveals God,
in another it hides him. Language which seems to imply
its identification with God, or with the world in its
spiritual reality, can lead to nothing but confusion.' On
the other hand, * that there is one spiritual self-conscious
being, of which all that is real is the activity or expres
sion ; that we are related to this spiritual being, not merely
as parts of the world which is its expression, but as par
takers in some inchoate measure of the self-consciousness
through which it at once constitutes and distinguishes
itself from the world ; that this participation is the source
of morality and religion ; this we take to be the vital
truth which Hegel had to teach.' l

As the self transforms impressions of sense into objects
of knowledge, so it transforms mere animal wants into
motives of action. A motive is an idea of personal good,
constituted by the identification of the self with some
solicitation of sensibility, this activity of the self establish
ing man's freedom in the moral as well as in the intellec-

1 Works, iii., 145-6.

348 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

tual life. The activity is in both cases alike spiritual, an
activity of thought, speculative and practical, by which in
the one case we idealise the real and in the other realise
the ideal. The good, the idea of which is the motive of
all virtuous action, is a common or social, while it is at
the same time a personal good. ' Social life is to person
ality what language is to thought.' l Man, as a social
being, is his own end. 'It is only in himself as he may
become, in a complete realisation of what he has it in
him to be, in his perfect character, that he can find
satisfaction.' What this perfection is in detail we know
only according to the measure of what we have so far
done or are doing for its attainment. And this is to say
that we have no knowledge of the perfection of man as
the unconditional good, but that which we have of his
goodness or the good will, in the form which it has
assumed as a means to, or in the effort after, the uncon
ditional good ; a good which is not an object of specula
tive knowledge to man, but of which the idea — the
conviction of there being such a thing — is the influence
through which his life is directed to its attainment.'2

The inevitable correlate of the moral as of the intel
lectual life is God. The moral ideal implies * the eternal
realisation for, or in, the eternal mind of the capacities
gradually realised in time. ... A state of life or con
sciousness not yet attained by a subject capable of it, in
relation to that subject we say actually is not ; but if there
were no consciousness for which it existed, there would
be no sense in saying that in possibility it 25, for it would
simply be nothing at all.' It follows that ' there must be
eternally such a subject which is all that the self-con
scious subject, as developed in time, has the possibility of
becoming ; in which the idea of the human spirit, or all
that it has in itself to become, is completely realised.
This consideration may suggest the true notion of the
spiritual relation in which we stand to God ; that He is
not merely a Being who has made us, in the sense that we

1 Prolegomena to Ethics, sect. 183. 2 Ibid., sect. 195.

F. H. BRADLEY 349

exist as an object of the divine consciousness in the same
way in which we must suppose the system of nature so to
exist, but that He is a Being in whom we exist ; with
whom we are in principle one ; with whom the human
spirit is identical, in the sense that He is all which the
human spirit is capable of becoming.' x

Finally, the capacity of moral development being
synonymous with that of personal development, the
personal immortality of man as a developing moral being
seems to follow as a necessary consequence. * A capacity
consisting in a self-conscious personality cannot be sup
posed ... to pass away. It partakes of the nature of
the eternal. . . . We cannot believe in there being a real
fulfilment of such a capacity in an end which should
involve its extinction, because the conviction of there
being an end in which our capacities are fulfilled is
founded on our self-conscious personality — on the idea of
an absolute value in a spirit which we ourselves are.
And for the same reason we cannot believe that the
capacities of men . . . can be really fulfilled in a state of
things in which any rational man should be treated
merely as a means, and not as in himself an end.'-

The latest, and perhaps we may venture to say the
most important, statement of Absolute Idealism in
English philosophy is that of Mr. F. H. Bradley, who in
his Appearance and Reality (1893) offers an interpretation
of the theory which differs materially from that of his
predecessors. The greater subtlety of the thought is
reflected in the greater compactness and luminousness of
the style, as compared with Green. While far from
aiming at literary effect, and always trusting to the
essential interest of the argument as an appeal to the
reader, Mr. Bradley is never unnecessarily obscure, and on
occasion surprises us with flashes of humour and even of
eloquence. In his hands, in spite of certain mannerisms,
language is made a remarkably effective instrument of philo-

1 Prolegomena to Ethics^ sect. 187. 2 Ibid., sect. 189.

350 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

sophical expression. His attitude to Hegel is certainly not
less independent than that of Green. In the Preface to
The Principles of Logic (1883) he says : ' For Hegel himself,
assuredly I think him a great philosopher, but I never could
have called myself an Hegelian, partly because I cannot say
that I have mastered his system, and partly because I could
not accept what seems his main principle, or at least part
of that principle.' In his earliest work, Ethical Studies
(1876), a book which, he tells us in Appearance and
Reality^ c in the main still expresses my opinions,' his
allegiance to the Hegelian philosophy is much more
marked. But at the close of the Logic he thus explicitly
proclaims his abandonment of the view, common to Hegel
and Green, that f the real is the rational,' that thought
and reality are identical. * Unless thought stands for
something that falls beyond mere intelligence, if " think
ing" is not used with some strange implication that never
was part of the meaning of the word, a lingering scruple
still forbids us to believe that reality can ever be purely
rational. It may come from a failure in my metaphysics,
or from a weakness of the flesh which continues to blind
me, but the notion that existence could be the same as
understanding strikes as cold and ghost-like as the dreariest
materialism. That the glory of this world in the end is
appearance leaves the world more glorious, if we feel it
is a show of some fuller splendour ; but the sensuous
curtain is a deception and a cheat, if it hides some colour
less movement of atoms, some spectral woof of impalpable
abstractions, or unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.
Though dragged to such conclusions, we cannot embrace
them. Our principles may be true, but they are not
reality. They no more make that Whole which com
mands our devotion, than some shredded dissection of
human tatters is that warm and breathing beauty of flesh
which our hearts found delightful.' 1

Mr. Bradley calls his chief work ' a sceptical study of first
principles,' 2 and its result is to establish the ultimate

1 Principles of Logic, p. 533. '

2 Appearance and Reality, Pref., p. xii.

F. H. BRADLEY 351

inadequacy of all our so-called knowledge. The contra
dictions of thought, he argues, prove our ignorance of
reality. Since our ideas contradict existence, as well as
one another, the world of thought is shown to be a world
of mere appearance. In its very nature, thought is vitiated
by a fatal flaw : it is discursive or relational, and relations
never express reality or existence. The very act of
judgment is fallacious. To judge is to predicate one idea
or concept of another, or rather of reality as already so
far conceived in the subject-concept ; but the two con
cepts are for ever different from one another. We
never succeed in solving 'the old puzzle, how to justify
the attributing to a subject something other than itself,
and which the subject is not.' l i The problem of
reconciling intelligibly the diversity with the unity . . .
so far has shown itself intractable.' 2 This holds of the
self, as well as of the not-self; * in whatever way the self
is taken, it will prove to be appearance.' 3 It follows that
we are limited to the apprehension of mere appearances.
Only the self-consistent is real, and our reality is never
self-consistent. ' Our failure so far lies in this, that we
have not found the way in which appearances can belong
to reality.' 4

On the other hand, we must admit the reality of the
appearances, although not as they appear. Since they
belong to, or are < owned ' by reality, the appearances must
be harmonious or self-consistent ; and to be harmonious,
they must submit to the modification which renders them
capable of such existence. < We may say that everything,
which appears, is somehow real in such a way as to be self-
consistent. The character of the real is to possess every
thing phenomenal in a harmonious form. . . . Appearance
must belong to reality, and it must therefore be concor
dant and other than it seems. The bewildering mass of
phenomenal diversity must hence somehow be at unity
and self-consistent ; for it cannot be elsewhere than in
reality, and reality excludes discord.'5 The clue to the

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 57. 2 Ibid., p. 58,

3 Ibid., p. 119. 4 Ibid., p. 132. 6 Ibid., p. 140.

352 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

nature of Reality or the Absolute is found in the unity of
that immediate experience, sentience or c feeling,' which
conceptual or discursive thought breaks up into distinct
objects and subjects, and which such thought is itself
unable to restore. The lower or infra-relational unity of
feeling suggests dimly to us the nature of the higher or
supra-relational unity in which the differences of the finite
or phenomenal world are overcome and fused in a single
all-inclusive and harmonious Whole. The same term, c ex
perience,' covers both — the unity which is below and that
which is above thought. The Absolute is a single, all-
inclusive, and perfectly harmonious experience. That
there is such a perfect experience, victorious over all the
difficulties which beset the human understanding, we
must assume ; but its nature we can apprehend only in
dim outline and by analogy with its lower prototype of
mere animal feeling. Its detailed content — how the con
tradictions are overcome — is beyond our grasp. All that
we can say is that ' somehow ' — we know not how —
these contradictions are overcome, and the Whole is
experienced as such.

While no finite object, or object of thought, survives
unchanged, or as such, in the Absolute, but all alike
suffer transmutation when resolved into the ultimate
Reality, yet this change may partake more of the nature
of supplementation or more of that of negation and
suppression. ' The Absolute, we may say in general, has
no assets beyond appearances ; and again, with appearances
alone to its credit, the Absolute would be bankrupt. All
of these are worthless alike apart from transmutation.
But, on the other hand once more, since the amount of
change is different in each case, appearances differ widely
in their degrees of truth and reality. There are predi
cates which, in comparison with others, are false and
unreal.' 1 ' The more an appearance, in being corrected,
is transmuted and destroyed, the less reality can such an
appearance contain ; or, to put it otherwise, the less

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 489.

F. H. BRADLEY 353

genuinely does it represent the Real.'1 The criteria of
Reality are inclusiveness, or expansion, and harmony,
or self-consistency : ' the amount of either wideness or
consistency gives the degree of reality and also of truth.' 2
These are, in reality, only two aspects of the same criterion.
4 For a satisfaction determined from the outside cannot
internally be harmonious, while, on the other hand, if it
became all-inclusive, it would have become also concor
dant.' 3 Since the Real is the individual, in which alone
4 the actual identity of idea and existence ' is attained, it
follows that ' throughout our world, whatever is individual
is more real and true ; for it contains within its own
limits a wider region of the Absolute, and it possesses
more intensely the type of self-sufficiency.' 4

The application of this standard of Reality and Truth
legitimates an idealistic, as opposed to a naturalistic inter
pretation of the world. Nature is absorbed in Spirit,
though Spirit itself is absorbed in the Absolute. We are
even warranted in saying that Nature, as apprehended by
the ordinary man, still more as seen and felt by the poet
and painter, is more real than Nature as scientifically
interpreted. ' The Nature, studied by the observer and by
the poet and painter, is in all its sensible and emotional
fulness a very real Nature. It is in most respects more
real than the strict object of physical science.' The
latter ' has not a high degree of reality and truth. It is
a mere abstraction made and required for a certain
purpose.' 'Our principle, that the abstract is the unreal,
moves us steadily upward. It forces us first to rejection
of bare primary qualities, and it compels us in the end to
credit Nature with our higher emotions. That process can
cease only where Nature is quite absorbed into spirit, and
at every stage of the process we find increase in reality.' 5
' In a complete philosophy the whole world of appearance
would be set out as a progress. . . . On this scale pure
Spirit would mark the extreme most removed from life
less Nature. And, at each rising degree of this scale, we

i Appearance and Reality, p. 376. 2 Ibid., p. 375-

3 Ibid., p. 412. *, Ibid., p. 382. 5 Ibid., p. 495-

z

354 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

should find more of the first character with less of the
second. The ideal of spirit, we may say, is directly
opposite to mechanism. Spirit is a unity of the manifold
in which the externality of the manifold has utterly
ceased. The universal here is immanent in the parts, and
its system does not lie somewhere outside and in the
relations between them. It is above the relational form
and has absorbed it in a higher unity, a whole in which
there is no division between elements and laws.' *

Yet even in Spirit we have not apprehended the
Absolute ; even it must be transmuted and absorbed in
that higher unity and totality. ' Pure spirit is not realised
except in the Absolute. It can never appear as such and
with its full character in the scale of existence. Per
fection and individuality belong only to that Whole in
which all degrees alike are at once present and absorbed.' 2
The interpretation of Reality as Spirit is the highest truth
we can reach about it ; but even Truth itself is not real.
4 Reality is concrete, while the truest truth must still be
more or less abstract.' 3 c It must be admitted that, in the
end, no possible truth is quite true. It is a partial and
inadequate translation of that which it professes to give
bodily. And this internal discrepancy belongs irremov-
ably to truth's proper character.' 4 We must indeed
insist upon the difference between i absolute ' and f finite '
truth. The former is not * intellectually corrigible.'
' There is no intellectual alteration which could possibly,
as general truth, bring it nearer to ultimate Reality. . . .
Absolute truth is corrected only by passing outside the
intellect. It is modified only by taking in the remaining
aspects of experience. But in this passage the proper
nature of truth is, of course, transformed and perishes. . . .
Truth is one aspect of experience, and is therefore made
imperfect and limited by what it fails to include ' 5 We
can know the universe only in its general character, not
in its details. ' It is not known, and it never, as a whole,
can be known, in such a sense that knowledge would be

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 498. 2 Ibid., p. 499

3 Ibid., p. 397- * Ibid., p.

•""•"'•j i" <-ti-y

544- 5 Ibid., p. 545-

F. H. BRADLEY 355

the same as experience or reality. For knowledge and
truth — if we suppose them to possess that identity — would
have been, therewith, absorbed and transmuted.' l ' Truth
is conditional, but it cannot be intellectually transcended.
To fill in its conditions would be to pass into a whole
beyond mere intellect.' 2

It does not follow, however, that the Absolute is an
unknowable Thing-in-itself. Mr. Bradley tells us that
his aim has been to avoid this error of the sheer tran
scendence of the Absolute, no less than the opposite one,
that of its complete and indiscriminate immanence in all
appearances alike. < It costs little to find that in the end
Reality is inscrutable. ... It is a simple matter to con
clude further, perhaps, that the Real sits apart, that it keeps
state by itself and does not descend into phenomena. Or
it is as cheap, again, to take up another side of the same
error. The Reality is viewed perhaps as immanent in
all its appearances, in such a way that it is, alike and
equally, present in all. Everything is so worthless on one
hand, so divine on the other, that nothing can be viler
or can be more sublime than anything else. It is against
both sides of this mistake, it is against this empty tran
scendence and this shallow Pantheism, that our pages may
be called one sustained polemic.' 3 ' Reality appears in
its appearances, and they are its revelation ; and otherwise
they also could be nothing whatever. The Reality comes
into knowledge, and, the more we know of anything, the
more in one way is Reality present with us. The Reality
is our criterion of worse and better, of ugliness and beauty,
of true and false, and of real and unreal. It in brief
decides between, and gives a general meaning to, higher
and lower. It is because of this criterion that appearances
differ in worth ; and, without it, lowest and highest
would, for all we know, count the same in the universe.
And Reality is one Experience, self-pervading and superior
to mere relations. Its character is the opposite of that
fabled extreme which is barely mechanical, and it is, in

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 545. 2 Ibid., p. 547.

3 I bid., p. 551.

356 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

the end, the sole perfect realisation of spirit. We may
fairly close this work then by insisting that Reality is
spiritual. There is a great saying of Hegel's, a saying too
well known, and one which without some explanation
I should not like to endorse. But I will end with some
thing not very different, something perhaps more certainly
the essential message of Hegel. Outside of spirit there is
not, and there cannot be, any reality, and, the more that
anything is spiritual, so much the more is it veritably
real.'1

How far Mr. Bradley has travelled from the positions
of earlier English idealists must be clear from the account
of his philosophy which has just been given. But we
may signalise, in conclusion, three important points in
which he dissents from the teaching of Green, his most
important predecessor. The first is the ultimateness of
personality. While Green confidently applied the con
ception of self-consciousness to God, Mr. Bradley regards
this conception, like all others, as inapplicable to the
Absolute. The self being, equally with the not-self,
mere appearance, and the conception of an infinite person
being self-contradictory, it follows that the Absolute is
supra-personal. Personality is indeed a higher degree of
reality than that of impersonal things. i It is better to
affirm personality than to call the Absolute impersonal.
But neither mistake should be necessary. The Absolute
stands above, and not below, its internal distinctions.'2
Secondly, he dissents from Green's doctrine of the ulti
mateness of morality ; this too is for him only appearance,
not reality. ' The radical vice of all goodness ' is seen
in the irreconcilable dualism of the ethical ideals of self-
realisation and self-sacrifice. < It is the essential nature of
my self, as finite, equally to assert and, at the same time,
to pass beyond itself; and hence the objects of self-sacri
fice and of self-advancement are each equally mine.' 3
This inconsistency of goodness, its 'self-contradiction in
principle,' proves that 4 goodness is not absolute or ulti-

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 552. 2 Ibid., p. 533.

3 Uid., p. 417.

F. H. BRADLEY 357

mate ; it is but one side, one partial aspect, of the nature
of things.' On the other hand, since in the Absolute no
appearance is lost, * the good is a main and essential factor
in the universe. By accepting its transmutation it both
realises its own destiny and survives in the result.' While
the opposition between good and evil is, like that between
truth and error, in the end unreal, 'it is, for all that,
emphatically actual and valid. Error and evil are facts,
and most assuredly there are degrees of each ; and whether
anything is better or worse, does without any doubt make
a difference to the Absolute. And certainly the better
anything is, the less totally in the end is its being over
ruled. But nothing, however good, can in the end be
real precisely as it appears. Evil and good, in short, are
not ultimate ; they are relative factors which cannot
retain their special characters in the Whole.'1 Finally,
the denial of the ultimateness of personality and morality
leads to the repudiation of Green's doctrine of personal
immortality as an implication of the moral life. Mr. Bradley
closes his discussion of the arguments for such a view
with the remark that they all < rest on assumptions
negatived by the general results of this volume. . . . And
to debate this special question, apart from an enquiry into
the ultimate nature of the world, is surely unprofitable.' 2

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 430. 2 Ibid., p. 510.

CONCLUSION

PRESENT TENDENCIES IN ENGLISH
PHILOSOPHY

IT is the task of the future historian to determine the
significance of the present tendencies of philosophical
thought in England. In philosophy, as in literature, it
is impossible to estimate the importance of a movement
before it has had time to develop its implications. What
absorbs the attention of the present generation may sink
into insignificance in the eyes of a later age. Still, it
seems fitting to conclude this study of English philosophy
with a brief, and necessarily tentative, indication of
the new developments which seem to be taking place in
the present day in that philosophy, and to suggest their
connexion with those earlier lines of thought which we
have endeavoured to trace.

Two new features, both of which date from the closing
decades of the nineteenth century, may be noted before
we attempt this characterisation. The first is the con
fluence of the two streams of English and American
philosophy. There has occurred, within a quite recent
period, a remarkable development of philosophical activity
in America, and philosophical discussion in England has
received a distinct impulse from that development. It
seems certain that, in the future, the movement of philo
sophical thought in England and America will be a single
movement, and that English philosophy will gain, in depth
as well as in volume, by the combination. The second
impulse has come from the new scientific spirit in which
the problems of psychology have recently been investigated,
the works which mark the inauguration of the new epoch

358

CONCLUSION 359

being Professor James Ward's article ' Psychology ' in the
ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1886) and
William James's Principles of Psychology (1890). The
' new ' psychology has been prosecuted in America with
an ardour greater even than in England ; and in both
countries the conviction has grown that, while it is
necessary to differentiate psychology with a new sharp
ness from metaphysics, as well as from logic and ethics,
full account must be taken of its results if our theories
in these departments of philosophy are to be scientifically
based. English philosophy has tended in the past, as
we have seen, to adopt the psychological method. The
more adequate understanding of the psychological problem
seems to promise much new light on the limitations of
psychology, as well as the correction of certain errors
in philosophy which were the result of an inadequate
psychology.

The most striking feature of the present situation is the
absence of any really constructive or reconstructive meta
physical effort. On all hands we find signs of dissatisfaction
with the results of such efforts in the past, of dissatisfaction
with idealism in particular. While the idealism of the nine
teenth century has still such distinguished representatives
as Mr. Bosanquet in England and Professor Royce in
America (to mention only the most outstanding names),
there is, even within the idealistic school, a reaction
against the intellectualistic tendency of that view. The
reaction against idealism takes various forms — that of the
reassertion of empiricism, of a * new realism,' and of prag
matism. The common feature of these reactions, over
and above their common hostility to idealism, is an effort
to approximate philosophy to science. They all alike
are mainly concerned with questions of the theory of
knowledge, of logic or methodology, rather than with
properly metaphysical questions ; and in all of them alike
we may see the effect, somewhat paralysing, of the great
scientific movement of the latter half of the nineteenth
century upon the philosophical mind of the English-
speaking race.

360 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

It is doubtless, in part, a consequence of the attention
drawn by psychology to the affective and volitional aspects
of the mental life, as well as in reaction from Green's
view of reality as a system of relations, that within,
as wel) as without the idealistic school, a protest has been
raised against c intellectualism ' or ' rationalism.' The
publication of Appearance and Reality (1893) marks a
turning-point in this direction. In that work Mr. Bradley
seems fatally to depreciate our knowledge, in the strict
sense, of the Absolute, insisting, as we have seen, upon
the inevitable inadequacy of Truth, and the necessity
of supplementing our intellectual apprehension of Reality
by other modes or attitudes which enable us to realise
its other aspects. It is not surprising, therefore, to find
that, among those who are in essential agreement with
the idealistic point of view, a new stress has recently
been laid on the significance of the life of will or moral
personality, a tendency which is in keeping with the
ethical trend of English philosophy in the past and not
unconnected with the influence of the Scottish school.1

Perhaps the most characteristic statement of the
empirical reaction against idealism, as well as one of
the most characteristic documents of contemporary English
philosophy, is found in Robert Adamson's Development of
Modern Philosophy (1903). Adamson's earlier works on
the philosophies of Kant and Fichte and his article on
4 Logic ' in the Encylopezdia Britannica (ninth edition) are
written from the standpoint of a convinced adherent of
idealism. The volumes just mentioned, published posthu
mously under the editorial care of Professor Sorley, contain
the substance of his lectures as professor of logic and meta
physics in the University of Glasgow, and indicate, in a
clear though brief and tentative way, how radically his
views had changed in the later years of his philosophical
activity. The keynote is struck in the inaugural address

1 Cf. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Scottish Philosophy (1885), Hegelian-
ism and Personality (1887), Man's Place in the Cosmos (1897); G. H.
How ison , The L imits of Evolution ( 1 90 1 ).

CONCLUSION 361

of I895.1 < Philosophy,' he says, 'must keep close to
experience and draw its sustenance therefrom.' What is
now needed in philosophy is a reconciliation between the
idealism of the early part of the nineteenth century and
the new scientific knowledge of detail which was the attain
ment of the second half of that century. Philosophy must
be reconstructed so as to interpret our growing experience
of nature and man. The fundamental error of idealism
is seen in the Kantian view that knowledge or experience
is the product of the activity of the knowing subject,
which introduces its own principles of unity into the
alien and chaotic material of sensation. In truth, mind
is rather the product of experience than its presupposition.
Since it is 'the space-character in certain contents of
our sense-experience ' that first leads to the differentiation
of subject and object, space cannot itself be a subjective
form or mental condition of that experience. Similarly,
it is the constant connexion, the ordered process of
experience, that first suggests the idea of cause, not the
idea of causal connexion that first makes such experience
possible. In general, the distinction between thought
and perception or experience is simply the distinction
between the more and the less developed, the more
and the less general or abstract, the more complex and
the simpler apprehension of reality. Idealism regards
the abstract and general as the presupposition of that
experience of which it is, in truth, the late result. If
the abstract order of thought is to have real significance,
it must be rooted in the actual character of reality as
apprehended in experience. 'In the long run, the basis
of all logical necessity is the necessity of fact.'

A more constructive statement, on experiential lines, is
to be found in Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's Metaphysic of
Experience (1898), in which, according to a recent writer,
'the traditional method of English philosophy is, at the
present day, expounded most clearly, and accepted most

1 Development of Modern Philosophy, ii. pp. 3-22.

362 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

unequivocally.'1 A reflective analysis of experience dis
closes, Mr. Hodgson holds, the distinctness, though in-
separableness, of consciousness and existence, knowledge
and reality, subject and object. Reality, as the content
of experience, is the object of consciousness or knowledge ;
but as existent, it is conditioned by, and continuous with
the entire context of that reality which includes conscious
ness no less truly than consciousness includes it. Con
sciousness, in other words, does not account for itself ; it
is part of a greater whole, in which the conditions of its
existence must be sought. And beyond the seen, or
finite and material conditions, lie the unseen and infinite
conditions which, though beyond the reach of speculative
knowledge, are the postulates of a practical faith in the
reality of moral distinctions.

The realistic reaction, which seems to be gaining force
both in England and in America, and which is associated
in this country with the names of Mr. Bertrand Russell
and Mr. George E. Moore, is difficult to describe, in
the absence of any systematic statement of the position.
It appears to be a subtler version of Natural Realism,
a doctrine of the distinct and independent existence of
the object, as unaffected by our knowledge of it. In
opposition to the idealistic view of relations as internal
or organic, constituted by the knowing mind, it is insisted
that relations are external, and do not affect the nature
of the things or terms related. In this view of relation
these writers seek a way out of the difficulties which
the idealistic interpretation has found to be insuperable.

Current statements of the view are mainly logical and
methodological, insisting upon the necessity of a new
logic as the presupposition of a better metaphysic. As
Mr. Russell says, l What seems to me so far firmly
established is a logic and a method, rather than any
positive metaphysical results.' 2

1 T. M. Forsyth, English Philosophy, p. 185.

2 Journal of Philosophy, viii. 1 60.

CONCLUSION 363

Perhaps the most novel, as it is certainly the most
prominent, form of the reaction against idealism is that
of Pragmatism, a name which suggests its affinity with
the practical and ethical trend which we have seen to
be one of the most characteristic features of English
philosophy in the past. But the new movement strikes
a note unheard till now in the national philosophy.
Those who had hitherto insisted upon the supremacy
of the ethical interest and the necessities of the practical
life claimed for faith the right and the ability to answer,
in its own practical way, the questions which were found
to be unanswerable in terms of knowledge ; they affirmed
the necessity of faith as a substitute for reasoned knowledge.
The new contention of Pragmatism is that knowledge
itself depends on practical considerations, that the intellect
always and inevitably works in subordination to the will
and its purposes, that all knowledge is utilitarian, and
that the criterion of truth is not conformity to reality,
but its instrumental value, the results which follow from
its acceptance.

The movement originated in America, and is associ
ated in that country with the names of William James
and Professor John Dewey, while its most important
English advocate is Dr. F. C. S. Schiller.1 James, to
whose gift of style and reputation as a psychologist the
theory owes much of its popularity, dedicated his Will to
Believe (1897) to Mr. C. S. Peirce, to whom, in Pragmatism
(1907), he attributes the origin of the name and the
theory. < In an article entitled " How to Make Our
Ideas Clear," in the Popular Science Monthly for January
1878, Mr. Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs
are really rules for action, said that, to develop a
thought's meaning, we need only determine what con
duct it is fitted to produce : that conduct is for us its
sole significance. And the tangible fact at the root of
all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there

1 Cf. Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory (1903) ; Schiller, Humanism
(1903), and Studies in Humanism (1907); Henry Sturt (and ( hers),
Personal Idealism (1902).

364 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but
a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clear
ness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only
consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind
the object may involve — what sensations we are to
expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare.
Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or
remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of
the object, so far as that conception has positive signifi
cance at all. This is the principle of Peirce, the principle
of pragmatism. It lay entirely unnoticed by any one for
twenty years, until I, in an address before Professor Howi-
son's philosophical union at the university of California,
brought it forward again and made a special application of
it to religion.'1

James's own statement of the method of pragmatism is
on the same lines as that of Peirce, making the criterion of
truth purely practical, and interpreting knowledge as the re
action of the intellect, in the service of the will, to the needs
of the practical life as these change with its changing circum
stances. < The pragmatic method,' he tells us, ' is to try to
interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical con
sequences. What difference would it practically make to
any one if this notion rather than that notion were true ?
If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the
alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute
is idle.'2 In other words, the theoretical must be re
duced to the practical difference. The pragmatic attitude
is ' the attitude of looking away from first things, principles,
" categories," supposed necessities ; and of looking towards
last things, fruits, consequences, facts.' 3 In an essay
on 'Reflex Action and Theism,' first published in 1881,
James offers the same interpretation of the function of
thought in the life of man. It is only ' the middle segment
of the mental curve, and not its termination ' : the mediator
between sensation and action, or, better, reaction. i As
the last theoretic pulse dies away, it does not leave the

1 Pragmatism, pp. 46, 47. 2 Ibid., p. 45.

8 Ibid., p. 54.

CONCLUSION 365

mental process complete : it is but the forerunner of the
practical moment, in which alone the cycle of mentality
finds its rhythmic pause. We easily delude ourselves
about this middle stage. Sometimes we think it final,
and sometimes we fail to see, amid the monstrous diversity
in the length and complication of the cogitations which
may fill it, that it can have but one essential function,
and that the one we have pointed out — the function of
defining the direction which our activity, immediate or
remote, shall take.' l l From its first dawn to its highest
actual attainment, we find that the cognitive faculty,
where it appears to exist at all, appears but as one element
in an organic mental whole, and as a minister to higher
mental powers — the powers of will. Such a thing as its
emancipation and absolution from these organic relations
receives no faintest colour of plausibility from any fact we
can discern.'2 In the Principles of Psychology (1890) he
had already pointed out that the whole activity of con
ception is determined by ' the necessity which my finite
and practical nature lays upon me. My thinking is first
and last and always for the sake of my doing. . . . Our
scope is narrow, and we must attack things piecemeal,
ignoring the solid fullness in which the elements of
Nature exist, and stringing one after another of them
together in a serial way, to suit our little interests as they
change from hour to hour.'3

The statement of the theory favoured by Professor
Dewey and Dr. Schiller is rather that which is suggested
by the actual procedure of science in the verification of
hypotheses by the service which they render in the inter
pretation of our experience. As Professor James himself
summarises their teaching : < Everywhere, these teachers
say, " truth " in our ideas and beliefs means the same
thing that it means in science. It means, they say,
nothing but this, that ideas (which themselves are but
parts of our experience) become true just in so far as
they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other

1 The Will to Believe, pp. 123-4- * Ibid« P- I4°'

3 Principles of Psychology, ii. 334*

366 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

parts of our experience, to summarise them and get about
among them by conceptual short-cuts instead of follow
ing the interminable succession of particular phenomena.
Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak ; any idea
that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our
experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily,
working securely, simplifying, saving labour ; is true for
just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally.' l
In the Principles of Psychology ^ however, James had himself
already clearly affirmed the teleological or instrumental
significance of conceptual thought, and had identified this
interpretation with that which connects theory with
practice. 'The conception with which we handle a bit
of sensible experience is really nothing but a teleological
instrument. This whole function of conceiving, of fixing,
and holding fast to meanings, has no significance apart
from the fact that the conceiver is a creature with partial
purposes and private ends.' 2

There are two main grounds on which the Pragmatists
rest their opposition to Absolute Idealism. The first is that
it is the expression of an abstractly theoretical, rationalistic,
or intellectualistic attitude, while the right attitude is practi
cal or voluntaristic. This has been made sufficiently clear
by the account now given of the pragmatic view of truth.
The second is that Absolute Idealism is a ' monistic '
view of reality, which fails to do justice to the detailed
facts of our experience, and especially to the facts of the
moral life and the individual freedom of initiative which
these facts imply. As against such an interpretation of
reality as a ' block-universe,' the Pragmatists maintain the
necessity of adopting a c pluralistic ' view.3 Such a plural
istic reaction against idealistic Monism is not, of course,
peculiar to the pragmatists ; but what distinguishes the
pragmatic assertion of this view is the ethical interest which
is its primary source, as we see from such a characteristic
utterance as the following from James's essay on c The
Dilemma of Determinism,' first published in 1884. 'The

1 Pragmatism, p. 58- 2 Principles of Psychology, i. 482.

3 Cf. James, A Pluralistic Universe (1909).

CONCLUSION 367

mdeterminism I defend, the free-will theory of popular
sense based on the judgment of regret . . . gives us a
pluralistic, restless universe, in which no single point of
view can ever take in the whole scene ; and to a mind
possessed of the love of unity at any cost, it will, no doubt,
remain forever inacceptable. . . . But while I freely
admit that the pluralism and the restlessness are repug
nant and irrational in a certain way, I find that every
alternative to them is irrational in a deeper way. The
indeterminism . . . offends only the native absolutism of
my intellect, — an absolutism which, after all, perhaps,
deserves to be snubbed and kept in check. But the
determinism . . . violates my sense of moral reality
through and through.'1

1 The Will to Believe, pp. 176-7.

INDEX

ABBOTT, E. A., quoted, 46
Adamson, R., 360, quoted, 12
Agnosticism, 7, 305
Albee, E., quoted, 294
American and English philosophy,

358

Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 207
Associationism, 208

BACON, FRANCIS, character, 20 ;
statesmanship, 23 ; as judge,
25 ; relation to the Renais
sance, 27 ; attitude to Aristotle,
29; induction, 31 ; methods of
induction, 40 ; interpretation
versus anticipation of nature,
35 ; idols, 35 ; forms, 37 ; in
fluence on English philosophy,
48 ; knowledge of God, 49 ;
ethical views, 51, 55 ; style,
52 ; Essays, 53 ; New Atlantis,

55

Bacon, Roger, II

Bain, Alexander, Mill on, 278 ;
Spencer on, 278; .physiological
and genetic method, 279 ; laws
of association, 279 ; contribu
tions to psychology, 280 ; be
lief, 280 ; external world, 281 ;
ethical theory, 282

Beattie, James, 236

Bentham, Jeremy, as social reformer,
241 ; principle of utility, 241 ;
end and motive, 242 ; sanc
tions, 242 ; hedonistic calculus,
242

Berkeley, George, style, 123 ; theo
logical interest, 125 ; imma-
terialism, 125 ; constructive
philosophy, 1 26 ; his new

idealism, 126; and Locke,
128; abstract ideas, 130;
matter, 132 ; materialism, 133;
causation, 1 34 ; theory of vision,
134; notions, 137; spiritual
substance, 137 ; spiritual cause,
139; Alciphron, 141; virtue,
142; passive obedience, 143 >
Siris, 143

Bosanquet, Bernard, 359

Bradley, F. H., style, 349 ; attitude
to Hegel, 351 ; thought and
reality, 350 ; appearance and
reality, 350; experience, 352;
the Absolute, 352, 354 ; degrees
of truth and reality, 352;
criterion of reality,- 353 5 the
individual, 353 ; nature and
spirit, 353; truth and reality,
354; transcendence and im
manence, 355; spirit and
reality, 356; differences from
Green, 356 ; personality of God,
356; goodness, 356; immor
tality, 357; referred to, 360

Bridges, J. H., quoted, 13

Brown, Thomas, 313

Butler, Joseph, style, 189 ; bene
volence, 198, 200 ; intuitionism,
198; self-love, 199, 200, 203;
conscience, 201 ; obligation,
20 1 ; desire, 203; virtue and
happiness, 203 ; probability,
204; experience, 205; know-

368

ledge and practice,
Analogy, 207

CAIRD, EDWARD, 343
Caird, John, 345
Calderwood, Henry, 308

206;

INDEX

Cambridge Platonists, toleration,
80 ; influence of Descartes, 80 ;
relation to Plato, 82 ; style, 83 ;
faith and reason, 83 ; spiritual
philosophy, 85; ethical views,
87

Charles, E., quoted, 13

Church, R. W., quoted, 21, 25, 52,
54

•Coleridge, S. T., quoted, 82, 83;
and transcendentalism, 319,
322; and Bentham, 320; and
Plotinus, 321; and Hartley,
321 ; imagination and fancy,
322 ; reason and understand
ing, 323 5 and Kant, 323, 325 ;
practical reason, 324; and
Jacobi, 325; faith, 325; spirit
and nature, 325 ; morality and
prudence, 326 ; style, 327 ;
Newman on, 327

Collins, W. Lucas, quoted, 189

Continental, contrasted with Eng
lish, philosophy, 3

Corpuscularian hypothesis, 133

Cudworth, Ralph, 85, 86

Culverwel, Nathanael, 89

Cumberland, Richard, 90

DESCARTES and Bacon, 3, 5 ; and
Cambridge Platonists, 80

Dewey, John, 363, 365; quoted,
284, 285

Dicey, A. V., quoted, 258, 261

ELLIS, R. L., quoted, 45

FAITH, and reason, 83

Ferguson, Adam, 236

Ferrier, J. F., on philosophical
method, 332 ; on Common
Sense, 332; on psychology,
333-336; and Hegel, 333;
and Berkeley, 334 ; style, 334 J
and Reid 336; and Hamilton,
336; subject and object, 337;
theory of ignorance, 337 ;
ontology, 338; ethical theory,

339

Fischer, Kuno, quoted, 20, 42, 44
Fowler, T., quoted, 37, 39, 40, 47,
190

369

Fraser, A. Campbell, and Martineau,
309; and English philosophy,
312; and Thomas Brown, 313;
and Berkeley, 314 ; and Hume,
3141 and Hamilton, 314; on
agnosticism, 315; on mystery,
315 ; on faith, 317 ; on perfect
goodness, 317 ; on moral evil,
318; on freedom, 318; quoted,
92, 96, 126, 130, 141, 144,
156,183

GARDINER, S. R., quoted, 23, 25

Gay, John, 208, 217

German philosophy, its influence
on English, 237

Gnosticism, 7

Gosse, E., quoted, 119, 123

Green, T. H., and Hegel, 344;
theory of knowledge, 346;
knowledge of God, 347 ; ethics,
3471 view of God, 348; im
mortality, 349

Grimm, E., referred to, 156

Grote, John, positivism and idealism,
340; knowledge of acquaint
ance and knowledge of judg
ment, 341

HALLAM, H., quoted, 77

Hamilton, Sir William, reputation,
298 ; style, 299 ; and Reid,
300 ; and Common Sense, 300 ;
natural realism, 300 ; Philo
sophy of the Conditioned, 301

Hartley, David, style, 209; influence
of Locke and Newton on, 209 ;
necessity, 210 ; association,
210; moral sense, 21 1 ; love
of God, 2H

Haureau, B., quoted, 14, 16

Herbert of Cherbury, 89, 94, n.

Hobbes, Thomas, and Bacon, 56 ;
on practical value of knowledge,
56 ; on ignorance of God, 57 ;
on scientific method, 58 ; on
definition, 59 ; on sensation,
61 ; on motion, 62 ; natural
and civil philosophy, 63 ; works,
63 ; method, 64 ; psychology,
64; good and evil, 65; will,
65 ; state of nature, 66 ; laws
of nature, 69 ; social contract,
2 A

INDEX

69 ; commonwealth defined,
70 ; sovereignty, 72 ; the State,
73 ; Church and State, 73 ;
defects of political theory, 74 ;
style, 76

Hodgson, Shadworth, 361

Hoffding, H., quoted, 240, 263

Hooker, Richard, 117

Howison, G. H., 360 n.

Hume, David, works, 149 ; style,
149; logic of empiricism, 150;
nominalism, 151 ; psychological
method, 151 ; knowledge and
experience, 152 ; problem of
cause, 153 ; relation of Treatise
and Enquiries, 155 ; impres
sions and ideas, 157 ; impres
sions of sensation and reflexion,
158; ideas of memory and
imagination, 159; association
of ideas, 159; philosophical
relations of ideas, 159, 162 ;
relations of ideas and matters
of fact, 1 60; the causal in
ference, 1 60 ; material sub
stance, 164 ; spiritual sub
stance, 166; personal identity,
167 ; scepticism, 168 ; mathe
matics, 172 ; ideas of space
and time, 173 ; the passions,
174 ; necessity and liberty, 175 ;
ethical theory, 175 ; the passions
and self-love, 178 ; benevolence
and virtue, 179 ; obligation,
1 80 ; philosophy of religion,
1 80 ; Natural History of Re
ligion, 181 ; Theism, 181, 184;
Miracles, 182; providence,
182 ; Dialectics on Natural
Religion, 183 ; argument from
design, 185; goodness or bene
volence of God, 1 86

Hutcheson, Francis, style, 189 ;
moral sense, 195 ; benevolence,
196 ; self-love, 196

Hutton, R. H., quoted, 312

Huxley, T. H., agnosticism, 307;
quoted, 183

JACOBI, 325

James, William, psychology, 359 ;
pragmatism, 363

KANT, compared with English
philosophers, 8

LAMB, CHARLES, quoted, 190
Latitudinarians, 80
Laurie, H., quoted, 216
Lindsay, T. M., quoted, 14
Locke, John, and Bacon, 92, 93 ;
and Hobbes, 92; and Descartes,
93 ; epistemology, 94 ; know
ledge and practice, 95 ; innate
ideas, 95 ; ' idea ' defined, 96 ;
plan of Essay, 96 ; limits of
inquiry, 97 ; experience, 98 ;
ideas of sensation and re
flexion, 100 ; primary and
secondary qualities, 100 ; ma
terial substance, 101 ; parti
cular substance, 102 ; nominal
and real essence, 103 ; spiritual
substance, 103 ; idea of cause
or power, 104 ; idea of infinity,
104 ; knowledge, its nature
and degrees, 105, 129, 133, 135;
knowledge of our own existence,
105 ; knowledge of the exist
ence of God, 106 ; knowledge
of the existence of external
things, 1 06; no 'science of
bodies,' 109 ; no science of
spirits, in; general knowledge,
in; mathematical knowledge,
in; ethics, 112, 116; pro
bability, 112;' judgment,' 113;
faith and reason, 114; ' en
thusiasm,' 1 14 ; political obliga
tion, 116 ; social contract, 117;
toleration, 118; Church and
State, 118; style, 119; and
agnosticism, 307

M'CosH, J., 236
MacCunn, J., quoted, 249
Mackintosh, Sir James, quoted,

189, 190, 209, 222, 223
Mandeville, Bernhard de, 188
Mansel, H. L., and Hamilton, 303 ;

on morality, 304 ; on the self,

305

Martineau, James, and Fraser, 309 ;
and Hamilton and Mansel, 310 ;
and Priestley, 311; freedom,

INDEX

311; ethical theory, 312;
style, 312 ; quoted, 249

Masson, David, quoted, 77

Mill, James, association, 243 ;
nominalism, 244 ; belief, 244 ;
the self, 245 ; J. S. Mill on,
246

Mill, John Stuart, on belief, 244 ;
the self, 245, 273 ; his recon
ciling project, 247 ; on Bentham
and Coleridge, 248, 320; his
inconsistencies, 248 ; crisis,
251 ; essay on Bentham, 252 ;
doctrine ot quality in pleasures,
255 ; conscience, 255 ; self-
sacrifice, 256 ; principle of
utility, 257 ; desire, 257 ;
liberty, 258 ; intuitionism and
empiricism, 261, 271 ; tran
scendentalism, 262 ; Logic,
263 ; scientific method, 263 ;
account of causation, 265 ;
the syllogism, 267 ; mathemati
cal knowledge, 269 ; ethology,
270; Examination of Hamilton,
271 ; theory of external world,
273 ; Essays on Religion, 274 ;
nature, 274 ; utility of religion,
275; religion of Humanity, 275 ;
supernaturalism, 275 ; poetry,
276 ; theism, 276 ; First Cause,
276 ; argument from design,
276 ; omnipotence and good
ness, 275, 277 ; immortality,
277 ; miracles, 277 ; imagi
nation, 277 ; Christianity, 278

Moore, G. E., 362

Morley, Lord, quoted, 48, 248

NEWMAN, J. H., on Coleridge, 327;
style, 328 ; assent, 328 ; notional
and real, 328 ; certitude, 329 ;
logic and reality, 329 ; nature
of proof, 330; the Illative
Sense, 330

Nichol, John, quoted, 22, 37, 48,

49
Nominalism, 6, 15

OCKHAM, William of, n, 14
Oswald, James, 236

PALEY, THOMAS, and Gay, 217
and Tucker, 217 ; style, 222
argument from design, 223
virtue and obligation, 224
happiness, 255; 'general rules,
225 ; probation, 226

Pattison, A. Seth Pringle-, 360 n.

Pattison, Mark, quoted, 203

Peirce, C. S., 363

Personal idealism, 360

Pluralism, 366

Pragmatism, 363

Price, Richard, and Butler, 227 ;
and Hume, 227 ; and Locke,
227 ; understanding and imagi
nation, 227 ; understanding
and reasoning, 228 ; Common
Sense, 228 ; ideas of right and
wrong, 228 ; obligation, 228 ;
reason and action, 229 ; and
Kant, 229 ; self-interest, 229

Psychological method of English
philosophy, 4 ; Ferrier on,
333,336

Psychology, the 'new,' 358

REALISM, ] Scholastic,' 15 ; f new,'
362

Reid, Thomas, ' philosophy of
Common Sense,' 230, 232 ;
the 'ideal theory,' 230; and
Hume, 230 ; ' simple appre
hension,' 231 ; judgment, 232 ;
'judgments of nature' or
4 natural suggestions,' 232;
and Priestley, 233 ; Kant on,
233; compared with Kant,
235 ; defects, 236

Remusat, Charles de, quoted, 12

Robertson, G. Croom, quoted, 2,
II, 71

Rousseau, 75

Royce, Josiah, 359

Russell, Bertrand, 362

SCHILLER, F. C. S., 363, 365

Scholasticism, 3, 5, lo, 14

Science, its influence on English
philosophy, 238, 359

Scottish philosophy, Reid the
founder of, 227, 230; in
France, 236 ; in America, 236

372

INDEX

Selby-Bigge, L. A., quoted, 142,
156

Shaftesbury, Earl of, style, 189 ;
constitution of human nature,
190; moral sense, 191; dis
interestedness of virtue, 193 ;
obligation, 193 ; the good and
pleasure, 194

Shawcross, J., quoted, 322, 323

Sidgwick, Henry, ethical theory,
297 ; quoted, 215

Smith, Adam, sympathy, 212 ;
psychological interest of his
theory, 213; social nature of
morality, 214; self-interest,
215 ; style, 216

Smith, John, 84

Sorley, W. R., quoted, 10, 78 ;
referred to, 94 n., 360

Spedding, James, quoted, 54

Spencer, Herbert, systematic
character of his philosophy,
284 ; his independence, 285 ;
the ' synthetic philosophy,'
286 ; ultimate scientific ideas,
286 ; force, 287 ; persistence
of force, 287 ; uniformity
of law, 288 ; equivalence of
forces, 288 ; law of evolution,
289; dissolution, 291 ; ethical
interest, 291 ; Social Statics,
292 ; moral sense, 292 ;
empirical and rational utili
tarianism, 292 ; absolute and

relative ethics, 293 ; justice,
294 ; prudence and beneficence,
294 ; evolution and ethics,
294 ; sense of duty, 294 ;
intuitionism and empiricism,
294 ; the individual and the
State, 295 ;' style, 296 ; ag
nosticism, 305

Spinoza, 9

Stephen, Leslie, quoted, 189, 190,
207, 209, 210, 215, 220, 221,

222, 223, 246, 258, 319

Stewart, Dugald, 236
Stirling, J. Hutchison, 341

TAINE, H., quoted, 264

Taylor, A. E., quoted, 60, 73

Toleration, 80, 118

Tucker, Abraham, and Gay, 217;
and Locke, 218; 'translation,'
218 ; ultimate good, 218 ; ^elf-
interest as motive, 218 ; virtue
and self-interest, 219 ; style,
221

Tulloch, John, quoted, 81, 82, 83

UTILITARIANS, The, 240

WALLACE, WILLIAM, 343
Ward, James, 359
Westcott, B. F., quoted, 83
Whichcote, Benjamin, 80, 84, 88
Windelband, referred to, 30 ;
quoted, 150

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &> Co.
Edinburgh &* London

SETH, JAMES

English philosophers

B

1111'
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