RECENT
BRITISH PHIILOSOPY:
A REVIEW, WITH CRITICISMS;
INCLUDING
SOiME COMIMENTS ON MR. MILL'S A4ivSWER TO
SIR WTILLIA-M/ HAMILTON.
BY
DAVID MASSON.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
443 & 445 BROADWAY.
1866.








THE substance of the greater portion of the following
pages was delivered, in the form of lectures, at the Royal
Institution of Great Britain, in Albemarle Street, on the
afternoons of March 21, 23, and 28, in the present
year.
LONDON, June, 1865.








C ONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
A SURVEY OF THIRTY YEARS,...                             9
CIHAPTEIR IL.
THE TRADITIONAL DIFFERENCES: HOW  REPEATED IN
CARLYLE, HAMILTON;  AND MILL,.                   30
I.-THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE.....   33
II.-COSMOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES,.....     53
III.-THE ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE.....   70
CHAPTER III.
EFFECTS  OF  RECENT  SCIENTIFIC  CONCEPTIONS ON
PHILOSOPHY,..                 142
CRAP TER I.
LATEST DRIFTS AND GROUPINGS,.                         195
I.-NATIVE SENIORS,...  195
II. —BRITISH COMTISM........ 200
III.-Mn. BAIN AND IMR. HERBERT SPENCER,....   20
IV. —HAIILTONIANIAISM AND ITS MODIFICATIONS,.... 216
V.-MR. FERRIER AND A BRITISH HEGELIAN,              221
VI.-SWEDENBORGIANISMI AND " SPIRITUALISM,"... 233
VII.-MR. MILL ON SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON,....   245








REUCENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
CHAP TER  I.
A SURVEY OF THIRTY YEARS.
BY recent British Philosophy I mean the Philosophy of this country during the last thirty years.
But what do I mean by British Phtilosophy during
that period? You have all a general notion of what
I mean. I mean the aggregate speculations during
that period of some of our ablest British minds in
what are vaguely called " the moral sciences " —their
aggregate speculations on those questions of most
deep and enduring interest to man which have occupied thoughtful minds in all ages of the world, which
are handed on from age to age, and which each
generation, however much of previous thought concerning them it may inherit and preserve, has to
revolve over again for itself. It has been proclaimed
among us, indeed, that Philosophy in this sense has
1*




10         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
at length happily ceased to exist-that great Pan is
dead. I do not believe it; and, if I did, I should be
sad. Whatever nation has given up PhilosophyI will be bolder, and, using a word very much out of
favour at present, I will say whatever nation has
given up  fetapkysgics-is in a state of intellectual
insolvency.  Though its granaries should be bursting, though its territories should be netted with
railroads, though its mills and foundries should be
the busiest in the world, the mark of the beast is
upon it, and it is going the way of all brutality.
Britain, notwithstanding temporary misrepresentations of her, is not yet in this state. We have not,
it is true, and we have not had for a long while, the
reputation among our Continental neighbours of being
a nation caring much for Philosophy. The Germans,
in particular, have long pitied us on this account. It
is more than forty years since one of their greatest
thinkers publicly denounced us by pointing out that
England was the only country in Europe where the
word Philosophy had become synonymous with natural science, where the barometer and thermometer
were spoken of as "philosophical instruments," and
where a so-called Philosophiical Journal treated of
agriculture, housekeeping, cookery, and the construetion of fire-places.*  Historically it might be shown
* Hegel as quoted by Mansel, Metaphysics, p. 4, note.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        11
that this very degradation of the word Philosophy
among us arose from what was originally a philosophical conception and may have been a good one. Not
the less was the taunt well deserved. And, though we
may have been recovering since then, our recovery,
it must be admitted, has been very gradual.
Exactly thirty years ago Mr. John Stuart Mill
could write as follows: "England once stood at the
head of European Philosophy. Where stands she
now?  Consult the general opinion of Europe. The
celebrity of England, in the present day, rests upon
her docks, her canals, her railroads. In intellect she
is distinguished only for a kind of sober good sense,
free from extravagance, but also void of lofty aspirations..... Instead of the ardour of research, the eagerness for large and comprehensive inquiry, of the educated part of the French and German youth, what
find we? Out of the narrow bounds of mathematical
and physical science, not a vestige of a reading and
thinking.public engaged in the investigation of truth
as truth, in the prosecution of thought for the sake of
thought. Among few except sectarian religionistsand what they are we all know-is there any interest
in the great problem of man's nature and life; among
still fewer is there any curiosity respecting the nature
and principles of human society, the history or the
philosophy of civilization, or any belief that from such




12         RECENT BRITISrH PHILOSOPHY.
inquiries a single important practical consequence can
follow?'9'
Even at the time when Mr. Mill wrote these words
I cannot but think they described matters as somewhat worse than they really were. When I remember that Coleridge and Bentham  and Mackintosh
were then but recently dead, that Mr. Mill's own
eminent father was yet alive, and that the poet Wordsworth, no less the philosophic sage than the poet,
survived as an honoured recluse, I cannot think that
the tradition of our national faculty in philosophy
had become then so utterly extinct. Possibly, however, the educated mind of Britain had, about thirty
years ago, sunk to its lowest in respect of interest in
philosophy, or any general notion of what philosophy
might be. For Mr. Mill was not the sole British
thinker who then looked round with something of this
conviction. Other voices had been crying in the
wilderness. Mr. MJill's senior, Sir William Hamilton,
had strongly uttered the same complaint. " The present contrast," he had written in 1830, "which the
philosophical enthusiasm  of France exhibits to the
speculative apathy of Britain is anything but flattering to ourselves. The new spirit of metaphysical inquiry which the French imbibed from Germany and
* Review of Professor Scdgwick's Discourse on the Studies of Cambridge, 1835; reprinted in Mill's -Dissertations.




RECENT JBRITEISH PHILOSOPHY.         13
Scotland arose with them precisely at the same time
when the popularity of psychological researches began to decline with ns; and now, when all interest in
these speculations seems here to be extinct, they
are there seen flonrislling in public favour with universality and vigour corresponding to their encouragement." e
Should another authority be wanted to the same
effect, it may be found in writings of Mr. Carlyle at
about the same date.  a"It is admitted on all sides,"
he had written in one of his Essays as early as 1829,
" that the Metaphysical and AMoral sciences are falling into decay, while the Physical are engrossing,
every day, more respect and attention. In most of
the European nations there is now no such thing as a
science of Mind; only more or less advancement in
the general science, or the special sciences, of
MSatter.  The French were the first to desert Metaphysics; and, thouigh they had lately affected to revive their school, it has yet no signs of vitality.
Among ourselves the Philosophy of MAlind, after a rickety infancy, which never reached the vigour of manhood, fell suddenly into decay, languished, and finally
died out with its last amiable cultivator, Professor
Stewart. In no nation but Germany has any decisive
~ Art. on the Philosophy of Perception, Edin. Review, Oct. 1830;
reprinted in Hamilton's Discussions.




14          RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
effort been made in psychological science, not to
speak of any decisive result." *-  In this passage, notwithstanding a difference in the tone from those written almost immediately afterwards by Hamilton and
Mill, there is substantially the same complaint.
Now, certainly, the  concurring testimonies of
three such minds may be taken as evidence, if not
that Philosophy was then at a lower ebb than usual
in ]Britain, at least that such British Philosophy as
was current did not come up to the standard of the
best critics, whether judging by their own requirements and aspirations, or by comparison with other
nations.
Let us admit, then, that thirty years ago the philosophical credit of Britain was justly low in Europe.
Has the state of affairs been changed since then?
Surely, to some extent, it has. Those three critics
themselves, as we all know, were not content with
crying in the wilderness.  Even while they were so
crying, they had begun their own best efforts that the
wilderness should rejoice and blossom.  Hamilton,
the eldest of them, had begun, in his maturity, to put
forth, from  his seclusion in Edinburgh, those occasional essays, the fruits of long previous thought, the
very titles of which took away people's breath, which
* Article "Signs of the Times," Edin. Review, 1829; reprinted in
Carlyle's Ifiscellanies.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.          15
probably not twenty persons in Britain could intelligently read, but which, where they were read, astonished by their profundity and erudition, and seemed
to herald a new era in formal speculation, if only by
rein stating difficulty where men had been taking their
ease. Carlyle, the second in age, had already put
forth, in the same periodical or in others, those earlier
essays of his in which, though they were in form literary or biographical, there was evidently the working of a great new philosophical force, and the deep
assumption of a new set of fundamental principles.
lie had also published his Scrrtor Resarluts, in which,
under such a poetico-grotesque guise as confounded all
precedent, and took both phantasy and reason by
storm, he compelled readers to behold his principles
and their developments in something like system.
Finally, Mill, the youngest of the three-he was
but twenty-nine years of age when he wrote the passage which I have quoted-had for several years been
writing, in the Westminsfter and other Reviews, articles from which it was to be inferred that, when his
courageous and truth-loving father, and that f'ather's
friend Bentham, should be gone from the earth, they
would leave behind them, in this heir of their hopes,
one fit to be an expositor of their ideas through another generation, but who was likely rather to look
right and left in that generation for himself, and to




16:RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
honour his descent, not by mere adhesion to what he
had inherited, but by an open-mindedness that should
even solicit contrary impressions, and push on passionately, at every break of light, in the quest of richer
truth. If the history of London during the last reign
and the present should ever come to be written, the
historian might be reminded of one building in it,
now no longer extant, of which rather particular mention might be desirable. It was the dingy old India
House in Leadenhall Street, of whose many interesting
legends it is now certainly not the least interesting
that, thirty years ago, young John Mill, not so well
known to the general public as he has been since,
had there his official room, to which, along intricate
passages, friends and admirers of his, seeking his conversation, would find their way on late afternoons.
If I have individualized Mivill, Carlyle, and Hamilton as the persons in whlom, if in any, there was the
likelihood, thirty years ago, of a new movement in
Britishl Philosophy, I have not done so without good
reason. Whatever other men, seniors or coevals of
these three, may be named as having co-operated with
them, either as urging views of their own, or as continuing the older philosophic influences (and I, for
one, think that the beneficial influence of Coleridge
was not exhausted at his death), certain it is that it is
to Carlyle, Hamilton, and Mill that all would point




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         17
as having been the most prominent leaders of free or
uncovenanted British speculation during the last thirty years. Probably first in the order of effect came
Carlyle, in all whose writings, historical or other,
down to the last, there have been veins and blasts of
that philosophy which the earliest of them announced,
and the resistless diffusion of which, and even of the
phrases and idioms in which it was couched, over the
entire surface and through the entire speech of these
islands, is a phenomenon not soon to be forgotten.
Hamilton's influence was long more local and obscure. But, for twenty years, he was teaching Logic
and Metaphysics to large classes in the University of
Edinburgh; and thus, as well as latterly by publications bearing his name, there was shed through educated British society some recognition of his system
of thought, and a certain ilamiltonian leaven which is
still working. M{ill, too, has more than fulfilled his
promise. To his logic, published in 1843, there have
succeeded his other well-known works, and with such
accumulated effect that, at the present moment, it
may be said that it is Mill, as a Philosopher, that is
in the ascendant in Britain. It is M[ill that our
young thinkers at the Universities, our young legislators in Parliament, our young critics in journals, and
our young shepherds on the mountains, consult, and
quote, and swear by.




18         RECENT BRITISH PIILOSOPIY.
But, of course, in every year since these three men
first stepped out as leaders, there have been additions
to the procession which they headed-in some cases,
perhaps, of mere recruits to one or other of them,
but, in others, of independent mind reasserting previous forms of thought, or even of such marked originality that they already divide attention with the
leaders, and, when the head of the column has wound
round the hill, they in their turn will seem the chiefs.
What the French or the Germans might think of
these late efforts of ours, if presented to them collectively, is, indeed, still a question. Not only do we labour
under the disadvantage of being an insular people, removed from the centre-a thing which tells in philosophy more than it once did; but it can hardly be
said that the majority of those among us who have
betaken themselves systematically to philosophy have
taken the necessary pains to acquaint themselves with
what have been gone through and. settled before,
within accessible ground, on the subjects of their research. As presenting in a vivid light the possible effects on our recent philosophical literature of these two
causes in combination-our geographical insularity
and our deficiency of learning-I will quote a sentence or two from one of the last metaphysical works
published in Britain. " What we shall take leave to
name the historic pabulum," says this resolute writer,




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.            19
"this alone is the appointed food of every successive
generation, this alone is the condition of the growth of
spirit; and, this food neglected, we have a generation
that but vacillates-vacillates, it may be, even into
temporary retrogression. This last is the unfortunate
position now.  The kistorice pabulum, passing from the
vessel of Hume, was received into that of Kant, and
thence finally into that of Hegel; but from the vessels of the two latter the generations have not yet eaten.
This is the whole-Europe (Germany as Germany
is itself no exception) has continued to nourish itself
from the vessels of Hume long after the  i8torifc pcbulum  had  abandoned  it for another and  others.
hence all that we see.  Hume is our Politics Hume
is our Trade, Hume is our Philosophy, Hume is our
Religion-it wants little but that Hume were even
our Taste.... In short, the only true means of progress have not been brought into service.  The historio pcablum, however greedily it has been devoured
out of Hu-me, has been left untouched in the vessel of
Hegel, who alone of all mankind has succeeded in
eating it all up out of the vessel of -Kant." *
You see what the writer means. There have been
three, and but three, all-comprehensive  European
* The Secret of Hegel: being the Hegelian System and Origin, Principle, Form, and Matter. By James Hutchison Stirling. 2 vols. London, 1865. Introd. pp. lxxiii. lxxiv.




20         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
thinkers during the last century —Hume in Britain,
and Kant and Hegel in Germany. You may fancy
them as three buckets or reservoirs, one behind the
other in a line, with intervals between them-I-lume
stationed in his completeness at about the year 1770,
IKant at about the year 1800, and Hiegel at about 1830.
There have been other philosophers in all countries
during the century, of some one of whom the historian of Philosophy may be bound to take account;
but, as respects philosophic result, they have, one and
all of them, been but as saucers and pannikins ranged
by the sides of the great buckets or in the intervals
between them.  There is nothing worth having in
the pannikins that is not in the buckets; and there is
a vast deal in the buckets-or, at least, in the last
two-that has never got into the pannikins. Then
why go to the pannikins for philosophy?  It is not
only Britain, it will have been noted, that the writer
accuses of this folly of not drawing its philosophy
from the main. But it is clearly our recent British
philosophizing that he has chiefly in view. iHe thinks
it, above all, inadequately informed with the true hereditary pabulum, and therefore either unconsciously
retrogressive, or, at best, beside the point, and needlessly repetitive. He thinks it made up, as he otherwise expresses it, of " contingent crumbs" from umknown tables.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        21
To all this what shall we reply? We may reply
that we are, or, at least may be, fully informed firom
Hnume, and that this, on the critic's own principle, is
something, seeing that it limits the distance to which
we need go back. We may reply that surely some
sufficient knowledge of Iant has been possessed by
some of our thinkers and scholars since Kant lived,
and has been digested in recent British speculation.
We may reply that, if Hlegel remains unknown, save
in a specimen-phrase or two, by reason of his terrible
abstruseness, one or two of the intermediates and purveyors between Kant and Hegel-such as Fichte and
Schelling —have not been without interpreters. We
may reply that, as Hiegel's date is 1830, it is about
time, in the nature of things, that there should be
a fourth European bucket somewhere, superseding
Hegel; that, as Britain produced the first, it is not
out of possibility that she may repeat her feat and
produce the fourth; and that towards such an
achievement a knowledge of Hegel may be essential,
but not a head-splitting knowledge of Hegel, or a
knowledge of all Hegel, or even a worshipping or
believing knowledge of Hegel.  No disrespect is
implied  to  Hegel.   But, whatever Hegel may
have been, he was not everybody collectively.
As Mr. Artemus Ward said to his American countrymen about the Negro, we ought perhaps to think of




22         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
him as an important kinsman, but not surely as our
grandfather,' uncle, aunt in the country, wife, sisters
and brothers, and several of our first wife's relations,
all in one. A good deal of the world of mind was and
is to be seen out of HIegel-a good deal even of what
went to make lIegel. May not British thought, starting as it can do from Hume, and with the power of
taking Kant in the way, make a leap to all intents and
purposes beyond Hegel without actually putting both
its hands on Hegel's bended baek?  Did not Hume
evolve his abstract philosophy from but an ounce or
so of transmitted material in the way of previous system-chiefly, indeed, by persistent native meditation
on one final doctrine of one previous thinker?
Granted that larger knowledge is necessary now
for anything really relevant to present intellectual
needs, and the very largest knowledge for anything
thorough and complete. Still may it not be possible
that in these insular British mists, in these sometimes
clear British airs, amid the suggestive bustle of this
rich British life, and under British stars that speak of
Infinity no less than do the German, diligent and serious British minds may have of late years been rumininating, without any express aid from Hegel, ideas and
conclusions of worth to us, and which even Hegel's
countrymen might be glad to get?
All this, and more to the same effect, might be




RECENT BRITISH PIILOSOPHY.                 23
said by way of laking it probable beforehand that
our recent philosophy, if not consummate, need not
have been mainly retrogressive, or all merely repetitive and beside the point. 13ut, after all, the best
method is to examine it.  If saucers and pannikins are
all that we have, let us at least take an inventory of
our saucers and pannikins.
CONSPECTUS OF RECENT WRITINGS AND WRITERS.
[VoIt broustht beyond Mlarch, 1865.]
SIR WILLLIAM HAMILTON (nat. 1788 —ob. 1856):-Article,
Philosophy of the Unconditioned, in the Edinburgh Review,
Oct. 1829; article, Philosophy of Perception, in the same Review, Oct. 1830; article, Logic, in the same Review, April,
1833; and other articles, from 1829 onwards; —all republished
collectively in 1852 as Sir Williarn Hamilton's -Discussions.Edition of Reid's Works with Notes and Dissertations (incomplete), 1846. —Lectures on /Ietaphysics, in 2 vols., 1859, edited
from Ea-Imilton's manuscripts by Mansel and Yeitch. —Lectutres
on Logic, 2 vols., 1860, similarly edited.
M1R. CARLYLE (nat. 1794):-Articles, State of German Literature and Signs of the Times, in the Edinburgh Review, 1827
and 1829; and other Essays, from that date downwards, reprinted as /R.iscellanies.-Sartor Resartus, 1833-'4. All his other writings to the present time; but, perhaps most particularly,
for the expression of theory, or for criticism of theories, his
Heroes and Hero-uworship, 1840, his Past and Present, 1843, his
Latter-day Pamphlets, 1850, and his Life of Sterling, 1851.
MR. JOHN STUART MILL (nat. 1806):-Articles in the Westminster Review and other periodicals from 1832 onwards (ineluding a celebrated Essay on Bentham, 1838, and a sequel on
Coleridge, 1840), reprinted as Mill's Dissertations and Discussions, 2 vols., 1859.-A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and In



24           RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY..ductive, 2 vols., 1843.-Principles of Politiccal Economy, 2 vols.,
1848. —Essay  On Liberty, 1859.-Essay On Utilitarianism,
1863.
DE QuiINcay (nat. 1786 —ob. 1859). Through many of Do
Quincey's Essays there runs a subtle vein of speculative thought,
derived from Wordsworth and Coleridge, or on the whole continuing and prolonging their philosophic influence.
AucrrBISHOP WHATELY (nat. 1787 —ob. 1863). Among various writings, subsequent to his Logic, published in 1826, may be
noted his Annotations to Bacon's Essays, 1856, and his Annotations to Paley, 1859.. G3EORGE COMBE (nat. 1788 —ob. 1858):-The Constitution of
Man, 1828; System of Phrenology, 1836; and other Phrenological Writings.
MR. Isaxc TAYLOR (nat. 1789): —Natural History of Enthusiasm, 1829; and, in a numerous series of subsequent works, perhaps more particularly his Physical Theory of Another Life,
1839, his Elements of Thought, 1843, his Restoration of Belief
1853, and his Ultimate Civilization, 1860.
REv. D. WI-IEWELL (nat. 1794):-Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 1840; Elements of Morality, 1845; Lectures on
the History of M2oral Phiilosophy in England, 1852; The Platonic -Diologues for English Readers, 1859-1861; etc.
DR. ARNOLD (nat. 1795-ob. 1842). The influence of Arnold
on English speculative thought may be still traced in eminent
disciples or admirers of his in the English Church.
MR. SAMUEL BAILEY (Author of "' Essays on the Formation
and Publication of Opinions," 1821, and of " Essays on the Pursuit of Truth," 1831):-A Review of Berkeley's Tlheory of Vision, 1842; A Theory of Reasoning, 1851; Letters on the Philosophy of the lHuzman Mind, 1855-1863.
DR. JOHN IIENRY NEWMAN (nat. 1801). Of the speculative
system that underlies Dr. Newman's Theology and Ecclesiasticism, and reveals itself more or less in the whole series of his
writings, some interesting and rather precise glimpses are given
by himself in his last publication, Apologia pro vita sud, 1864.
Miss HARRIET MARTINEAU (nat. 1802). Two of Miss Marti



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.                25
neau's works to be particularly noted in connexion with recent
British Philosophy are her Correspondence with Mr. Atkinson On the Laws of Man's Nature and -Development, 1851, and
her condensed Translation of C(omte's Positive Philosophy, 2
vols., 1853.
REv. F. D. IMAURIcE (nat. 1805). In the long series of Mr.
Maurice's works, all pervaded by his characteristic mode of
thought, may be specially noted his History of MAoral and Xetaphysical Philosophy in the Encyclopadia Metropolitana, reissued now in several separate volumes; his Theological Essays,
1853; and his two volumes of controversy with Mr. Mansel, entitled, What is Revelation? (1859), and Sequel to the Inquiry,
What is Revelation? (1860).Mi. F. W. NEWMAN (nat. 1805):-The Soul: Her Sorrows and
Aspirations, 1849; Phases of Faith, 1850; and other writings.
MR. BENJAMIN H. SMART:-Thought and Language: an Essay, having in view the NRevival, Correction, and Exclusive Establishment of Locke's Philosophy, 1855.
PROFEssOR DE MoRG AN (nat. 1806): —Formal Logic, 1849;
and occasional parts of his other acknowledged writings.
SIR GEoRGE ConNEWALL LEWIS (nat. 1806-ob. 1863): —Essay
on the Influence of Authority in 2Matters of Opinion, 1849;
On the Methocds of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, 1852.
PROFESSOR JAMES F. FEnnrIn  (nat. 1808-ob. 1864). Various Metaphysical Papers in Blackwood's Magazine; and Institutes of iletaphysic, or Theory of Knowing and Being, 1854.
PROFESSOR PATRICK C. MACDOUGALL:- Contributions to Philosophy, 1852.
Mn. HErNRY RoGERs:-Essays in the Edinburgh Review and
other periodicals, republished collectively 1850-'55; The Eclipse
of Faith (in reply to Mr. F. W. Newman), 1852; and 2Defence
of same (in rejoinder to Newman), 1854.
ALFRED TENNYSON (nat. 1810). To those who are too strongly possessed with our common habit of classifying writers into
kinds, as Historians, Poets, Scientific and Speculative Writers,
and so on, it may seem strange to include Mr. Tennyson in this
list. But, as I have advisedly referred to Wordsworth as one
2




t RECENT BETITISHI PHILOSOPHY.
of the representatives and powers of British Philosophy in the
age immediately past, so I advisedly named Tennyson as succeeding him in the same character. Though it is not power of
speculative reason alone that constitutes a poet, is it not felt that
the worth of a poet essentially is measured by the amount and
depth of his speculative reason? Even popularly do we not
speak of every great poet as the exponent of the spirit of his
age? What else can this mean than that the philosophy of his
age, its spirit and heart in relation to all the great elemental problems, finds expression in his verse? Hence I ought to include
other poets in this list, and more particularly MR. BROWNING and
MRs. BRowNING, and the late.MR. CLOIGH. But let the mention
of Mr. Tennyson suggest such other names, and stand as a sufficient protest against our absurd habit of omitting such in a connexion like the present. As if, forsooth, when a writer passed
into verse, he were to be abandoned as utterly out of calculable
relationship to all on this side of that boundary, and no account
were to be taken of his thoughts and doings except in a kind of
curious appendix at the end of the general register!  What if
Philosophy, at a certain extreme range, and of a certain kind,
tends of necessity to pass into poesy, and can hardly help being
passionate and metrical? If so, might not the omission of poets,
purely as being such, from  a conspectus of the speculative
writers of any time, lead to erroneous conclusions, by giving an
undue prominence in the estimate of all such philosophizing as
could most easily, by its nature, refrain from passionate or poetic
expression? Thus, would Philosophy, or one kind of Philosophy in comparison with another, have seemed to have been in
such a diminished condition in Britain about the year 1830, if
critics had been in the habit of counting Wordsworth in the philosophic list as well as Coleridge, Mackintosh, Bentham, and
James Mill? Was there not more of what might be called
Spinozism in Wordsworth than even in Coleridge, who spoke more
of Spinoza? But there hardly needs all this justification, as far
as Mr. Tennyson is concerned, of our reckoning hfim in the present list.  He that would exclude It Jifemoriamr  (1850), and
Maud (1855), from a conspectus of the philosophical literature




iECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.                27
of our time, has yet to learn what philosophy is. Whatever else
In  nZemoriam may be, it is a manual, for many, of the latest
hints and questions in British Metaphysics.
MR. ARTHruR HELPS: —Essays'written in the Intervals of
Business, 1841; Friends in Council, first series, 1847; second
series 1859; etc.
MR. WILLIAM SMITH (of Edinburgh):-Translations of various
works of Fichte, separately published, and collected in two volumes (with a Memoir) as The Popular FWorks of Fichte, 1844.
MR. J. D. MOuELL: —History of Speculative Philosophy in
the Nineteenth Century, 1846; Lectures on the Philosophical
Tendencies of the Age, 1848; Philosophy of Religion, 1849;
Elements of Psychology, 1853; Introduction to liental Philosophy, 1862.
MR. G. H. LuEwEs: —Biographical7 History of Ph2ilosophy,
1845 (second edition, 1857); Comte's Philosophy of the Positive
Sciences (an abridged exposition of Colnte), 1847.
DR. J. GARTRI WILXHNSON: —A  Popular Sketch of Swedenborg's Philosophicalc Works, 1847; nEmanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 1849; The IHuman Body and its Connexion with Macn,
1851.
ARCHBIsnoP THOMsON:-An Outline of the Necessary Laws
of Thought: A Treatise on Pure and Applied Logic.
REv. CHArLEs KINGasLE: —Phaethon, or Loose. Thoughts for
Loose Thinkers, 1852; Alexandria and Her Schools, 1854; with
speculative views in his Jiscellanies and his writings generally.
PROFESSOR MANSEL:-Prolegomena Logica, 1851; Lecture on
the Philosophy of Xcant, 1856; Limits of Religious Thought
(Bampton Lecture), 1858, and Controversy with Mr. Maurice
thereon; Metaphysics (reprinted fiom the Encyclopeadia Britannica), 1860.
lHENRP  THoMAs BurcKrLE:-History of Civilization in England, 2 vols., 1857, 1861.
PRoFEssoR  JAMES lMcCosn  (Belfast): —Intuitions of the
Hind Inductively Investigated, 1860 (new edition, 1865).
MR. iENPRY CALDERWOOD: —The Philosophy of the Infinite;




28           RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
with special reference to the Theories of Sir Williainm Hamilton
and 31. Cousin: 2d edition, enlarged, 1861.
PROFESSOR ALEXANDER BAIN (of Aberdeen): —The Senses and
the Intellect, 1856 (2d edition, 1864); The Emotions and the
Will, 1859; On the Study of Character, 1861.
PROFESSOR A. C. FRASER (Sir William Hamilton's successor
in the chair of Logic and Metaphysics in Edinburgh): —Essays
in Philosophy, 1856; Bational Philosophy in History and in
System, 1858; and various philosophical articles in the North
British Review.
REv. DR. JOHN CAIRNS: -Article Kant in the 8th edition of
the Encyclopmedia Britannica; Examination of Professor Ferrier's Theory of Knowing and Being, 1856; The Scottish Philosophy Vindicated, 1856; and various occasional Essays.
PRoFEssoR THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES (St. Andrews): —An
Essay on the New Analytic of Logical Forms, 1850; Translation
of the Port Royal Logic, with Introduction, 1851; Sir William
Hamilton (" Edinburgh Essays "), 1856.
PROFESSOR JoHN VEITCH (Glasgow); Joint-Editor with Dr.
Mansel of Sir William Hamilton's Lectures; author of Memoir
of Dugald Stewart in collected edition of Stewart's Works; also
of other occasional writings.
Mr. RICHARD LOWNDES:-An Introduction to the Phlilosophy
of.Necessary Beliefs, 1865.
MR. HERBERT SPENCER:-Social Statics, 1851; Principles of
Psychology, 1855; Essays, reprinted from periodicals (1st series
1858; 2d series 1863); Edcucation, 1861; First Priznciples (the
1st volume of a System of Philosophy now in progress), 1862.
MIR. JAMES HUTCHINSON STIRLING:-The Secret of Hegel:
Being the Hegelian System  in Origin, Principle, Form, and
Matter. 2 vols., 1865.
APPENDIX. Under this head may be included a number of
items of which it is difficult to take account in a more special
manner. (1) There is the extensive recent literature of so-called
"Spiritualism " or " Spirit-Manifestations "-a literature partly
of native production, but to a great extent imported from
America. In a conspectus like the present, which is statistical




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.                29
and not critical, at least a reference to this literature is demanded,
in order to bring before us the actual state of affairs. (2) There
have been importations from America of works of quite a
different speculative kind, of which Draper's EHistory of the
Intellectuca -Development of Europe (1863) may stand as an
example. (3) Among ourselves there is a large quantity of
speculative thought, of all varieties of tendency, diffused through
current Essay-writing in periodicals, or through much of our
higher prose-literature not professedly philosophical.  MR.
FROUDE, for example, who might have been named specially
in the list with reference to some of his earlier writings and
to more recent individual Essays, comes into the list not less
distinctly through his " History."  Criticisms and discussions
recognisable by a characteristic mode of philosophical thought,
and sometimes of expressly philosophical nature, might be
brought together, with but little trouble, from  some of our
leading periodicals, and associated, if I am not mistaken, with
the name of MR. FITZJAMES STEPHEN. Finally, not to multiply
names, a distinct vein of philosophical opinion, and of criticism
of prevailing opinion, has made its appearance in the Essays of
MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD.
It is of recent British Philosophy as represented
to the eye in this conspectus of recent writers and
writings that I mainly propose a review in the chapters
which follow.  The nature of the references made
will indicate on what writers my knowledge enables
me to lay the stress, and what others I have in view
but slightly.




30         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER II.
THE TRADITIONAL DIFFERENCES: HOW REPEATED IN
CARLYLE, HAMILTON, AND MILL.
Our conspectus presents us, certainly, with a sufficient medley. For an adequate review of the course
of recent British speculative thought as it is there
represented, we should have to disentangle those separate tissues or movements of speculative inquiry which
have received separate names according to the objects with which they are mainly conversant. rWe
should have to take account separately of recent
British Psychology, of recent British Logic, -of recent
British Ethics, of recent British Jurisprudence, of
portions of recent British Theology, and of what has
been done under such heads as the Philosophy of
Art, the Philosophy of History and Politics, and the
Science of Education. In each of these divisions of
Philosophy certain names would occur as peculiarly
prominent; nor, in pursuing the views of all thinkers




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         31
in each, is there any limit to the subdivisions that
might be necessary.
A survey of this kind is obviously not what we
can attempt here. We must employ some much more
summary method. Instead of trying to grasp the
extensive body of recent British Speculation, we must,
if possible, seize it at the very nape, where the trunk
and limbs are united with the head. That such a
method need not be impossible is indicated by the
fact that the different departments of speculative inquiry are obviously interconnected. It is rare to find
a thinker that does not pass from one department to
another; and he only is spoken of as a systematic
philosopher whose scheme of thought has taken some
account of them all. What does this imply but that
there are for every philosopher certain root-principles,
the thinking-out of which in all directions and in all
kinds of conjunctions constitutes his very business as
a philosopher.  Let there be a difference between
two thiinkers as to their root-principles, and this difference will shoot its correspondences into all the
subjects about which they speculate. Further, if any
set of differences as to root-principles can be pointed
out as repeating itself among philosophers generally,
we have here a means of classifying philosophers into
schools. Our concern, then, is to see whether we can
lay our hands on any set of ultimate differences which




32         RCEIENT 3BRITISH PIIILOSOPHYo
seem to have been constant or recurring in philosophy. If we can do so, we shall have an instrument
for our purpose.
The ultimate differences among philosophers hitherto are to be sought in Metaphysics proper. It is in
the views they take of certain metaphysical questions
that philosophers, first of all, or most essentially of
all, part company.  But Metaphysics is a terrible
bugbear of a word in these days. You know the
popular definition: When A talks to B, and B does
not know what A is saying, and A himself does not
very well know either, but both B and A keep up the
pretence and nod to each other wisely through the
fog-that is Metaphysics. We are all dearly in love
with the Physics; but we cannot abide the _/eta prefixed to them. Perhaps it is a pity. There are some
who would not object to see the beautiful Greek word
dancing out again in its clear pristine meaning, and
naming thoughts and objects of thought which must
be eternal everywhere whether there is a name for
them or not, but which it is an obstruction and beggarliness of spirit not to be able to name. We need
not go farther than Shakespeare for our warrant:
"The golden round
Which fate and mzetaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal."
Surely a word that Shakespeare used, and used so ex



RECENT BRITISI PHILOSOPHY.         33
actly and lightly, need not ever be un-English. But
there is no use in rowing against the stream; and, till
there is a restitution of the word Metaphysics to its
English estates, perhaps it is best to get on as much
as possible without it. I willtry to do so at present.
And yet I do not know that you will thank me, or
think I have hit on any great improvement as respects
perspicuity, when you hear what I propose to substitute. I believe, then, that the differences among philosophers hitherto may be resolved ultimately into (1)
a difference of Psychologic~al Theory, accompanied by
(2) certain differences of Cosmologiceal Conception, all
subject to or ending in (3) a difference in respect of
Ontological Faith.  Here are three phrases, each
more uncouth, it must seem at present, than the single term " Metaphysics," whose meaning I distribute
among them. But I will do my best to explain each,
and, in doing so, to make the reason for such a triplicity of terms apparent.
1.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE.
All that we know comes to us in what we call
lMIind or Consciousness. We may differ as to what
1Mind is-as to the origin of this strange thing, or
power, or organism, or mode of existence, which we
call Consciousness, and as to the gradations in which
2*




34         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
it may be found actually appearing up to Man, or
may be imagined as ascending beyond Mlan. Nay,
we may differ even as to the ultimate scientific necessity of that distinction between Mind and Matter,
Soul and Body, which has come down sanctioned by
immemorial usage, and pervades all our language.
But we all talk of Mind; nor, with whatever reserve
of liberty to speculate what it is, or how it came to
be, can we do otherwise. Nothing is known to us
except in and through mind. It is in this Consciousness, which each of us carries about with him, and
which, be it or be it not the dissoluble result of bodily
organization, is thought of by all of us not under any
image suggested by that organization, but rather as a
great chamber of aerial transparency, without roof,
without walls, without bounds, and yet somehow enclosed within us, and belonging to us-it is within
this chamber that all presents itself that we can know
or think about. Except by coming within this chamber, or revealing itself there, nothing can be known.
Whatever may exist, only as much as can break
through into this sphere, or send a glimmering of
itself into it, exists for our intelligence. From the
farthest ends of space, from the remotest moment of
time, whatever fact, object, or event would be known
by me as happening or existing, or as having ever
happened or existed, can be so only by having itself




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         35
announced, somehow or other, within this present
room or chamber which I call my mind. That comets are at this moment pursuing their curves at mighty
distances unseen from our Earth; that there was a
period when the Earth was a cooling mass of hot matter not yet habitable by organisms known to us; that
there came a later period when it was possessed by
strange saurians and other animal forms now extinct;
that there once lived a Julius Caesar; that the Earth
is a spheroid; that there is an Australian Continent —
for any of these conceptions or beliefs my sole warrant
lies in corresponding facts of my own consciousness.
The Universe, past, present, and to come, rolls into
my ken only through my mind. On this ground of
Consciousness then, as the repository, storehouse, or
conventicle of all knowledge, all philosophers take
their stand —even those who end by explaining Consciousness itself as a temporary result or peculiarly
exquisite juncture of the conditions which it employs
itself in recalling and unravelling. So far there is no
difference among philosophers, no division into schools.
Should any one attempt to set up as a philosopher on
any other ground, it could only be because he did not
understand the use of terms.
[But let us advance a step. What is the origin of
all those multitudinous ideas, notions, or informations
which flutter through our Consciousness-which rise




36          RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
there, at our bidding or without our bidding, in all
sorts of combinations, and out of which we construct
our knowledge or beliefs as to what has been, or is, or
is to be?  Whence come the ideas into our minds that
we find there, and that constitute our intellectual
stock?  Is any portion of our knowledge of a different origin from the rest, and of a different degree of
validity in consequence of that different origin? On
this question there has been a polar antagonism
among philosophers since there were philosophers in
the world.  In nothing have philosophers, in nothing
have men at large, differed so essentially as in the
answers they have given, knowingly or implicitly, to
this question.  Here is that difference of psycfhological
theory wherein, as I have said, we must look for the
first split among philosophers, and the explanation of
further discrepancies. The history of Philosophy hitherto has been mainly a struggle, varying in form from
age to age, but not in substance, between two raclically opposed psychological theories.
According to one school or series of philosophers
hitherto, all our knowledge, all our notions, all our
beliefs, are derived solely from Experience.  There is
a streaming into our minds, through the senses, of
multiform impressions from the external world, which
are combined within the mind by laws of association,
and are discriminated, classified, analysed, recollected,




RECENT BRIITISH PHILOSOPHY.        37
grouped, and what not, till they form the entire miscellany of our facts, cognitions, and habits, and even
our highest principles, propositions, axioms, and generalizations. All that is in Man —all that he calls
Truth (let it be even mathematical truth, or his highest notions of right and wrong, or any ideas he may
have of beauty, or nobleness, or even Deity)-is but
a deposit or induction from the circumstances in
which Man is placed. Had these conditions been
different, the deposit would have been different. All
truth, therefore, is contingent or historically arrived
at. There is no such thing as innate or d priori
truth, or direction to truth; and any higher certainty
that some truths may possess over others is but the
consequence of a wider, more perfect, and more frequently repeated induction.   Such, more or less
clearly recognized, avowed, and argued from, has
been the theory of one school or series of thinkers
since Philosophy began. It is usually called the
Empirical theory, or the theory of Sensationalism.
The former name (though it unfortunately has reproachful associations) is only intended to imply what
the philosophers in question avow when they say that
they own no other origin of our knowledge than Experience; and the latter name only expresses what
has also been admitted by the most thorough of these
philosophers-to wit, that the assertion that all our




38            RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
knowledge originates in experience is tantamount to
the assertion that it all comes into the mind through
the channels of the senses.  "' Nihil est in intetleceu
quod non prius fuerii in sensu "1 (" Nothing is in the
intellect which has not before been in the senses 9") is
the formula of this class of philosophers, propounded
by some of themselves, and adopted by others in describing them. Another of their phrases is that the
mind is to be conceived as originally a tab1ula rasa, or
white paper, containing no characters whatever, but
receiving whatever is inscribed upon it wholly firom
without.*
To this view, however, there has been, on the part
of other philosophers, a continued opposition.  There
have always been philosophers who maintained that
there is another source of our knowledge than Experience or Sense-that there are notions, principles, or
elements in our minds which could never have been
fabricated out of any amount of experience, but must
* The objection to the word Sensationalism, as defining the theory
of the resolvability of all Truth, or Knowledge, or Faculty, into Experience, is that some who hold the theory would repudiate such a name
for it. The objection to the name E2zpiricism is that it imports mere
popular prejudice into a philosophical question, by calling up associations
with the word "Empiric" as used in an opprobrious sense. As Mr.
3Mill has used the adjective " Experiential" as unexceptionably conveying the meaning for which a word is sought (Article on Comte in Westminster Review, April, 1865), perhaps the substantive Experienticalism,
though crude to the ear, might be brought into use.




RECENT BRITISHE PHILOSOPHY.            39
have been bedded in the very structure of the mind
itself. These are necessary beliefs, a priori notions,
innate ideas, constitutional forms of thought, truths
which we cannot but think.
" Yet hath the soul a dowry natural,
And sparks of light some common things to see,
Not being a blank where nought is writ at all,
But what the writer will may written be.
" For Nature in Man's Heart her laws doth pen,
Prescribing Truth to Wit, and Good to Will;
Which do accuse, or else excuse, all men
4For every thought or practice g9od or ill.
"And yet these sparks grow almost infinite,
Making the world and all therein their food,
As fire so spreads as no place holdeth it,
Being nourished still with new supplies of wood." *
There have been various forms of this doctrine, some
of them confused and mystical enough.  [But amid all
the diversities there is recognisable a common psychological theory, contradictory of that of Sensationalism.
It is known as the theory of d priori ideas, necessary
beliefs, or latterly as the theory of Intuitionalcism  or
Transcendentaclism.  By this last name is implied the
supposition that there are elements of knowledge, the
* Sir John Davies's Poem " On the Soul," written in 1592.




40         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
origin or reason of which transcends or lies beyond
the horizon of historical conditions.
Discerned in the ancient world in the form of
Aristotelianism  versus Platonism, traceable through
the middle ages in the controversy between the Nominalists and the Realists, this opposition of philosophies has been bequeathed into our modern times,
and has represented itself in Britain as well as in
other countries.
It is difficult to determine certainly, as regards
BAcoN (1561-1626), on which side he would have
ranged himself. He rather abstained from grappling
with the question at all, as too recondite for his purposes, and preferred going out with his whole strength
on the exposition of a method in which either set of
thinkers might find satisfaction. Yet the general
tenor of Bacon's writings leaves an impression as if
he had given a splendid impulse to Empiricism, and
tried to commit the British nation to a contented
futurity in that faith. Among Bacon's British contemporaries, however, there were not wanting respectable defenders of the other psychological theory.
And if, on coming on to the next generation, we find,
in the powerful figure of HoBBES (1588 —1679), an undoubted and avowed champion of Empiricism in its
most pronounced form, it is only to see around him
resolute maintainers of the contrary philosophy in




tRECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       41
such men as SI  THOMAS BiowNE (1605-1682),
HENIRY MORE (1614-1687), CUDWORTEH (161 7-1688),
and the Cambridge Platonists.
But then there arose LocKE (1632-1704), theo
"Father of English Philosophy," as he has so generally been called.  fe certainly did pledge his
nation, if any man could do such a thing, to a funturity that should reject from its philosophic faith
every rag or vestige of the doctrine of innate ideas.
He is indeed hazy in his language whenever he seeks
to define what he means by his cardinal principle that
all our ideas originate in experience-hazier, considerably, even than HIobbes had been. For he seems
to avoid or deny the conclusion that this would leave
but one ultimate original of our knowledge-to wit,
sensations of external objects; and he expressly constitutes another source of knowledge under the name
of "Reflection," the "Internal Sense," or the cognizance which the mind has of its own proceedings.
But critics of his language on this point have shown,
I think, that it can have no meaning unless it implies
a surrender of Locke's own principle. By self-consciousness, or the mind's reflection on its own proceedings, the mind certainly knows of these proceedings; but the very question is, whence these proceedings proceed. The mere knowledge of the proceedings,
if this is all that Locke means by "Reflection," can



42         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
not be a source, in the first instance, of any part of
the proceedings.  If material is once brought into
the mind, the mind may keep a register of what it
does with such material; but this mere keeping of the
register cannot be spoken of as an independent source
of any of the material. In short, though it may be
against Locke's will, his Empiricismr cannot stop short
of Sensationalism, and this has been seen and avowed
by his most consistent disciples.  " The mind is a
blank organism, receiving sensations from without,
and knowing and registering what it does with them "
-in some such form as this must the radical proposition of Locke's philosophy be expressed; and, if the
phrase "blank organism " be unintelligible, it can
only be, I apprehend, because the radical proposition
of the Empirical philosophy, as hitherto propounded,
is really unthinkable.  If knowledge is worked-up
sensation, then quite as important a constituent of
knowledge as the aggregate of sensation that has
been worked up is the mode in which it has been
worked lup; and this refers us to the structure of the
working-up machine, or mind itself, as having contributed its pressure to the result.
Little wonder, then, that, notwithstanding the
power with which Locke's philosophy has transmitted
itself in England-a power so great that Lockism and
its developments have been recognized abroad as pe



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         43
culiarly the English philosophy-it has never been
without assailants in England itself. " The question
in dispute could not," as Mr. Mill well says, "so long
have remained a question, if the more obvious arguments on either side had been unanswerable." *
CLARKE (1675-1729) and BUTLER (1692-1753) were
English representatives of the ac priori philosophy,
contemporary with Locke, or near his time. Abroad,
in DESCARTES (1596-1650), in SPiozA (1632-1677),
and in M[ILEBIZRANCHE (1638-1715), there had been
more systematic and illustrious maintainers of the
principle of such a philosophy; and their influence
had not been unknown in Britain. But what was
considered the staggering blow to the Lockian philosophy for the time came from the German LEIBNITZ
(1646-1714).  "N;ihil est in intellectt quod non
prius fuerit in sensu," was his famous retort upon
the maxim of the Sensationalists, "nisi intellectus
ipse:" I Nothing is in the intellect which has not before been in the senses-unless it be the intellect itself." This epigram of Leibnitz has been ridiculed as
meaningless; but it seems to me to have been, in its
time, one of the most perfect aphorisms ever uttered.
At all events, it defined with surprising exactness the
work that remained to be accomplished by another
X Essay on Coleridge, 1840, reprinted in Mill's Dissertations.




44         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
German, and a greater than Leibnitz, if the world
were not to be given over to Lockism and to what
Lockism might lead to.
In lBritain there had arisen a beautiful-minded
BERKELEY (1684 —1743), who, accepting the notion
that the sole furnishing of the mind consists of sensations, but alarmed at certain consequences which he
saw, or foresaw, from the prevalent use of that notion,
sought to set matters right by denying that the mind
had any right to pursue its sensations beyond its own
walls, or to attribute them to any real external world
of matter. What I am conscious of, all that I really
know of, is sensation it my mind, and not any external
material world beyond my mind; and if you, for your
part, adopt the gross and purely gratuitous supposition of such a world, I feel myself both far more
faithful to experience, and in possession of a creed far
more glorious and solacing when I reject all your external material world-all your hills, and seas, and
trees, and stones, and stars-as anything more than
existences or motions in some mind or minds! Not
that these images, so dear to all of us, are meaningless! What if they are possessed so familiarly by all of
us in common, and occur over and over again with such
constant regularity, only because they are hieroglyphic
and sacramental of the one unseen Spirit and Father
of all, ceaselessly communicating His nature and will




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         45
to His creatures in such well-chosen and sufficient
symbols?
But hardly had Berkeley thus made his assertion
of Mind or Thought as the only legitimately conceivable reality in the Universe, when there came a
HUJME (1711 —17T6), with his simple ruthlessness, to
show that, on the principles of philosophic reason,
even this reality must vanish from the universe, and
not a rack be left to float in the void. This succession of ideas, which is called Ml!ind and which is all
that is really known, has it, when you investigate sufficiently, any substratum of real continuous being? Is
not Mind, too, if you come to that, a hypothesis beyond the facts? Is there any certainty, any substantiality at all, anything but an illusive series of phantasms flitting in a vague nothingness of Time and
Space?
Doubt had in iEume reached its extreme limits.
Far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but
desolation, or at the utmost a phantasmagory of
merely empirical co-existences and successions floating over a pit of Nonentity. Aghast at this result of
philosophy, radical thinkers everywhere set themselves, as by a common impulse, to a re-examination
of that psychological theory of Empiricism itself to
which, it was generally seen, the result was to be credited.  On Locke's theory of Experience as the one




46         RECENT BRITISH PIHLOSOPIIY.
ultimate origin or reason of knowledge, no answer to
Hume seemed possibly forthcoming; all the possibilities in that direction seenmed to have been exhausted
and evaporated by Humne's criticism. If there was to
be a rebuilding at all of any edifice of human certainty on the desolated space which I-ume had swept, it
could only be on a foundation laid afresh in some form
of the psychological theory opposed to Locke's-the'
theory of necessary beliefs, or of d priori constituents
of knowledge. This is what makes iHume's name so
great, and his epoch so important, in the history of
European philosophy —that, having exhibited the one
of the two competing psychological theories in its
uttermost developments, and these such as the soul
could not abide in, he occasioned everywhere a disposition to revert to the other theory and take it on
trial.
In Hume's own country, while his philosophy was
yet flowing fresh and cold from the fountain-head,
REID, who was his senior by a year (1710 —1796), but
whose philosophical activity was first called forth by
him, offered that sober, and, if not subtle, yet rich
and grave " Philosophy of Common Sense," the essential character of which was that it fell back on a supposed equipment of necessary beliefs or elements of
knowledge, given in the very structure of the mind
itself, and not historically or empirically collected.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         47
Reid left his foundation of necessary beliefs in a
somewhat chaotic and questionable state; but he at
least established in North Britain, while -lume was
alive or well remembered, a philosophy of some sort,
that might witness to the possibility of a theory of
necessary beliefs against the persevering Lockism. of
South Britain. For, in England, the Empirical Philosophy of Locke, either ignoring its seeming self-explosions in the developments given it by Berkeley and
Hume, or else voting these seeming self-explosions to
be no self-explosions at all, but only blazes of irrelevant metaphysics kindled on the road by a fantastical
Irishman and a dialectical Scotchman, but not interrupting the road anything to speak of for practical
purposes-in England, I say, Locke's philosophy had
been persevering triumphantly as if nothing were
the matter. HARTLEY (1705-1757), ABRAHAM Tuc-rER (1705 —1774), PRIESTLEY (1733-1804), and PALrEY
(143 —1805), were all Lockians-differing  among
themselves, to be sure, and not thinking Locke's views
by any means final, but accepting his main principle as intact by anything that had happened, and acting on it in their different ways.
Nay, there was a waft into England of a more
thorough-going Sensationalism than it might have of
itself been able to excogitate out of Locke. This was
that philosophy of the French CONDILLAe (1715



48         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
1780) whcih some regard as only Lockism compelled
to know itself, and which, boldly reducing the mind
to the single function of animal sensibility, declared
all knowledge, all habit, all faculty, all belief, to be
but " transformed sensation."  With but Reid's sober
bequest of a so-called Scottish Philosophy of Common
Sense to antagonize all this mass of English and imported Sensationalism, what was Great Britain to do?
The help which British Transcendentalism, left at
such odds, was calling for, was to come to it from
without-was to come to it from that quarter from
which the entire Europe of the eighteenth century
was to derive its intellectual refreshing. Now it was
that there arose that fellow-countryman of Leibnitz
who was to remember his famous aphorism against
Locke, "nisi &ntellectds ipse," and was to give it a
significance and explication still wider in the world.
The Critical Philosophy of KANT (1724-1804) has
been spoken of as that one event of modern times
which is comparable for the dimensions of its spiritual effects to the French Revolution in the political
order of things. Of what Kant did all have now
some general idea. Feeling, as Reid had done, that
the inanity into which Hume had dissolved everything was a dreariness which the human soul could not
sustain, he addressed himself to the same task as Reid,
but by a different method, in an atmosphere freer




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         49
from  prejudice, and with a profounder reach of
spirit. The result was that he reported the mind to
be no mere blank organism, receiving sensations and
registering its own proceedings with them (even were
such a representation thinkable in its very terms), and
no mere concretion of transformed sensations round
a still-active centre of mere sensibility, but an organism of very definite powers and structure, flung from
a fathomless unknown into the world of sensible and
historical conditions, and seizing and interpreting these
conditions according to "forms" native to itself and
of dpriori origin. Sensibility itself had its formsSpace and Time not being external existences, but
structural habits of the perceiving mind; the Understanding proper had its forms-certain modes in
which, and in which alone, it could think of things;
nay, a-top of the Understanding, or forming its supreme part, was a certain highest faculty, which
might be called Reason, having a structural relation
to three boundless, unknowable, and yet necessarilyasserted objects-the World, the Soul, and God.
But, if Kant thus substantially reasserted the
theory of Transcendentalism against that of Empiricism, he did so in a way that set aside much of the
previous philosophizing of the Transcendentalists, and
prescribed to Transcendentalism in future a more
modest behaviour. By his very use of the phrase
3




50          RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
"necessary forms of thought," as at least an alternative for the phrase "innate ideas " till then generally
in use, he removed a stumbling-block.  He thus
brought into clearer view the essential assertion of
Transcendentalism-to wit, that the structure or ca
priori capability of the organism, called Mind,
which works uap the material given in sensation, has
at least as much to do with the worked-up result,
called Knowledge, as the material itself. But, by
the same means, he disowned and cleared away the
numerous theosophlic and metaphysical systems which
previous Transcendentalists had offered to a disgusted
world in the name of Transcendentalism-systems
which had, in many cases, consisted in first asserting
the principle of "a innate ideas," and then offering as
an authentic collection of these " innate ideas" some
set of very definite and locally-elaborated propositions
of some small particular person.  This two-edged
character of IKant's Philosophy has been sympathizingly remarked npon by a British expositor.  " The
result of Kant's Critical Philosophy," he says, "was
that, against the Sceptics, a whole system of knowledge,
underived from  experience, was proved to exist in
the mind, and that, against the Dogmatists, this
knowledge was declared to give no hold, at least so far
as speculation is concerned, over the nature of things,
or metaphysical truth. The Kantian Philosophy thus




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         51
substitutes for positive Mletaphysics a criticism of pure
Reason, explaining why there can be none, and at the
same time vindicates those elements of knowledge
that beget metaphysical inquiry from sceptical rejection and contemlpt." 
But no man can be final in this world; and the
German followers of Kant proceeded less on the restricting lesson of his teaching than he would perhaps have wished. FICHTE (1T62-1814) and ScrHELLIG (1775-1854), not to speak of HIEGEL (17701831), went on certainly into varieties of a tolerably
positive Metaphysics in the name of Transcendentalism, though of kinds that would never have existed
but for Iant, and that referred themselves to Iant;
and it is the aggregate of their speculations and those
of others, along with Kant's, that we think of now as
the German Philosophy.
This Philosophy had been long in progress before
any influence fromn it was felt within our islands.
Such easier native philosophizing as lay in the continuation and further development of the hereditary
Lockism  of England, partially antagonized by the
Scottish Philosophy of Reid, had sufficed for British
purposes. Surviving Priestley and Paley as a universally recognized representative of British Empiricism,
X Dr. Cairns: Art. IKant, Encyc. Britannica: 8th edit.




52        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
though a representative of novel and unique figure,
was BENTHAM (1749 —1834); beside whom, with more
of the keen faculty of the pure psychologist, appeared
JAiEs MILL (1773-1836). Admired and respected
through the island, on the other hand, as the classic
expositor of Reid's homely Scottish Philosophy in its
own territory, was DPUGALD STEWART (1753-1828);
the brilliant aberration from whom of his pupil
THoMAs BRowN (1778-1820) was compensated by
the greater, though eclectic, consistency of MAcKINTOSH (1765 —1832).  On the whole, though the
meeting of the 4two opposed tides was visible, it was
rather in a kind of would be commingling than in
any very violent conflict; and, but for the appearance
of one spokesman for Transcendentalism, of a richer
genius constitutionally than the thinkers of the Scottish School, and in secret correspondence with that
new German Philosophy of which they knew little
or nothing, iBenthamism in Britain would have had
no adequate counteractive.  This was COLERIDGE
(1772 —1834), whose philosophical function may be
defined by saying that through him there was transmitted an opportune suffusion of Kant and Schelling
into England, as of light softened through a stainedglass medium, and that into this suffusion he also
resumed whatever of Anglo-Platonism had been floating, long neglected, in the works of old English




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         53
Divines. At the back of Coleridge, however, in all
this, if one looked rightly, was to be seen, abetting
him in the main, if criticising him in particulars, the
massive personality of WORDSWORTH.
II.
COSMOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES.
Thus have I traced down, to the exact point of its
connexion with the British present, that struggle of
the two opposed Psychological Theories in which, in
Britain as in every other country, so much of the essence of the history of Philosophy is involved. Let
us now attend to that second difference, or set of differences, among philosophers which I described as a
difference or differences of Cosmological Conception.
Not the less because the view which I want here to
bring out is susceptible of popular exposition, and
may be invested with popular associations, am I disposed to set some store by it.
By "cosmological conception" I do, in effect,
mean very much that general image of the totality of things which each one carries about with
him, and which is sometimes spoken of more grandly
as his "theory of the universe." The beauty of the
thing for our purposes is that every one has it. A
"psychological theory" is a learned luxury, which




54        tRECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPEHY
the immense majority of people may go from their
cradles to their graves without consciously possessing;
but every one has a " cosmological conception,"
though he may not be aware of it under that pedantic-looking name. Yon cottager who spins at her
own door has her " cosmological conception," her
working-image of the world she lives in. There is
a past of mystery, all opaque beyond her own immediate memory or the traditions of her kith and kin,
save where the Bible lights up a gleaming islet or
two in the distant gloom; there is a present of toil
and care, not without help fiom on high; and a little
way on the hour is thought of when body and soul
shall be severed-the one to its rest under the churchyard-grass, the other to that heaven above the stars
where loved ones that have gone before will mayhap
be seen again:
" We'll meet and aye be fain
In the land o' the leal."
And, from the cottager upwards, we have endless variations of the cosmoilogical conception, according to
character and knowledge, and yet with wondrously
little difference in the main. Not that the variations
are without significance. That image of the totality
of things which any one carries about with him, and
under the power of which he is continually living and
acting, is, all-in-all, the most comprehensive expression




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPIY.          55
of his whole being anid its accquisitions.  It embodies
more of himself than his utmost reason, however
trained it may be, can reduce into thesis or proposition. For every thing in him  goes to make itthe very feelings, and longings, and last impressions
or inspirations which his reason-has not yet organized;
it is tremulous to every touch of new fact, or reading
or meditation.  The " cosmological conception" of
any man, his sensuous image of the world, would be,
if we could get at it, the truest abstract or representation of his whole mind or philosophy.
It is to be expected, in the case of philosophers,
that the cosmological conception shall be visibly in
accord with the psychological theory. This, however,
has not always happened. The history of philosophy
presents curious instances in which the cosmological
conception of a philosopher has seemed to be grander
than his set of avowed principles; or, on the other
hand, the propagandist of propositions of glorious capability has been seen dwelling personally in a cosmological conception little better than a hut.  hence,
in the case of any philosopher, the necessity of taking
account, if possible, of his cosmological conception as
well as of his psychological theory; and hence, again,
the necessity of having at least some general classification of the cosmological conceptions that have prevailed among philosophers, wherewith to supplement




56         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY,
or correct our mere distribution of them, on the
grounds of psychological theory, into the two schools
of Transcendentalists and Empiricists.
A classification of systems of philosophy according to the cosmological conceptions governing them
has actually been made. It is founded on a consideration of the differences among philosophers as to what
that totality of existence is which is to be accepted as
really vouched for by 1VMind. All agree, as we have
said, that mind is the sole voucher for anything; but
philosophers are divisible into schools according to
the various views they have taken of the constitution
of that phoenomenal Universe, that Cosmos, that total
round of things, of which we have a recurring assurance in every act of perception, and which is orbed
forth more or less fully for each man in his wider contemplations.
The popular or habitual conception of mankind in
general is that there are two distinct worlds mixed up
in the phlenomenal Cosmos-a world of Mind, consisting of multitudes of individual minds, and a world
of Matter, consisting of all the extended immensity
and variety of material objects. Neither of these
worlds is thought of as begotten of the other, but
each of them as existing independently in its own
proper nature and within its own definite bounds,
though they traffic with each other at present. Sweep




RECENT BRITISHi PHILOSOPHY.        57
away all existing minds, and the deserted Earth would
continue to spin round all the same, still whirling its
rocks, trees, clouds, and all the rest of its material
pomp and garniture, alternately in the sunshine and
in the depths of the starry stillness. Though no eye
should behold and no ear should hear, there would be
evenings of silver moonlight on the ocean-marge, and
the waves would roar as they broke and retired. On
the other hand, suppose the entire fabric of the material Universe abolished and dissolved, and the dishoused population of spirits would still somehow
survive in the imaginable vacancy. If this second
notion is not so easy or common as the first, it still
virtually belongs to the popular conception of the
contents or constitution of the Cosmos. The conception is that of a Natural Dualism, or of the contact
in every act of perception of two distinct spheres, one
an internal perceiving mind, and the other an external world composed of the actual and identical objects
which this mind perceives.
On the first exercise of philosophic thought, however, this conception is blurred. An immense quantity of what we all instinctively think of as really existing out of ourselves turns out, on investigation, not
to exist at all as we fancy it existing, but to consist
only of affections of the perceiving mind. The redness of the rose is not a real external thing, immutably
3*




~68        RECENT BRITISH PIILOSOPHY.
the same in itself; it is only a certain peculiar action
on my physiology which the presence of an external
cause or object seems to determine. Were my physiology different, the action would be different, though
the cause or object remained the same. Indeed, there
are persons in whom the presence of a rose occasions
no sensation of redness such as is known to me, but a
much vaguer sensation, not distinguishable from what
I should at once distinguish as greenness. And, as
colour is thus at once detected as no external independently-existing reality, but only a recurring physiological affection of myself and other sentient beings
like myself, so with a thousand other things which, by
habit or instinct, I suppose as externally and independently existing. When I imagine the depopulated
Earth still wheeling its inanimate rotundity through
the daily sunshine and the nocturnal shadow, or one
of its bays still resonant in moonlit evenings with the
roar of the breaking waves, it is because, in spite of
myself, I intrude into the fancy the supposition of a
listening ear and a beholding eye analogous to my
own. It is only by a strong effort that I can realize
that a great deal at least of what I thus think of as
the goings-on of things by themselves is not and cannot be their goings-on by themselves, but consists at
the utmost of effects interbred between them and a
particular sentiency in the midst of them. But tile




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY..        59
effort may be made; and, when it is made repeatedly,
in a great many directions, and with reference to a
great many of the so-called properties of matter, the
inevitable result for the philosophic mind is that the
popularly-imnagined substance of a real external world
finds itself eaten away or corroded, at least fto a certain depth. So far philosophers are agreed. It is
when they proceed to consider to wliac  depth the
popularly-imagined substance of the real external
world is thus eaten away, or accounted for, that they
begin to differ.
Some philosophers, departing as little as may be
from the popular judgment,.suppose that, however
much of the apparent external world may be resolved
into affections of the subjective sentiency, there still
remains an objective residue of such primary qualities
as extension, figure, divisibility, mobility, etc., belonging to external matter itself, and by the direct and
immediate cognizance of which the mlind- is l:brought
face to'face with external substance and knows something of its real goings-on.  Philosophers: of this
school are known generally as TRiA;mISTS. More numerous, however, are those who, not allowing an objective and independent reality even to the so-called
primary qualities of matter, but believing them as
well as colour, odour, or savour, to be only affections
of the sentiency, deny that the mind is in any sense




6 0        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
brought face to face with real external things such as
they seem in the act of perception. To thinkers of
this school there has been given the general name of
IDEALISTS.
This broad distinction of Philosophers cosmologically into REALISTS and IDEALISTS is so far convenient
enough. Cosmologically, or in respect of this present
Universe of ours, with its dualism of Mlind and Matter, every man must declare himself either a Realist
or an Idealist, if he understands the meanings attached to these terms. The distinction has reference
solely to his notion of the so-called external or material world in its relations to the perceiving mind. If
he abides, though only in part, by the popular conception, and regards the material world as a substantial
reality independent of the perceiving mind, and which
the mind, according to its powers, presses against and
directly apprehends in every act of perception, then
he is a REALIST. If, on the other hand, he cannot see
that there need be asserted any external material
world with such characters as we attribute to it, but
supposes that our unanimous agreement in the imagination of such an external world is merely a habit of
our own sentiency, projecting its own ideas or affections outwards and giving them a body, then he is an
IDEALIST.
The mere distribution of Philosophers, however,




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.           61
into the two great orders of REALISTs and IDEALISTS
does not answer all the historical requirements. Each
order has been subdivided, still on cosmological
grounds, into two sections. Among Realists, the Materialists or Afaterialistic Realists have been distinguished strongly from the -Dualistic Realists, called
also Natural Realists. Similarly, among Idealists,
there has been a large group of what may be called
Constructive Idealists, distinguishable from the Pure
Idealists.  But this is not all. Not only by this subdivision of each of the orders, still on cosmological
grounds, into two sects, are we provided with the four
sects of Mlaterialists, N!ttural Realists, Constructive
Idealists, and Pure Idealists; but (by bringing considerations into the classification which, I think, are
not exclusively cosmological) these four sects have
been flanked by two extreme sects, called respectively
Nihilists and Pantheists. The doctrine of these last
is called also, in recent philosophical language, the
doctrine of Absolute Identity.
Thus six systems in all, professedly cosmological,
have figured in the past history of Philosophy. Let
us re-enumerate them in the arrangement which will
be most convenient for us in the sequel, adding such
further explanations as may seem necessary.
(1.) There is the system of Nihilism, or, as it may
be better called, Non-Substantialism.  According to




62         RECIGENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
this system, the IPhaenomenal Cosmos, whether regarded as consisting of two parallel successions of
phmenomena (Mind and Matter), or of only one (Mind
or Matter), resolves itself, on analysis, into an absolute
Nothingness, —mere appearancles with no credible substratum of Reality; a play of phantasms in a void.
If there have been no positive or dogmatic Nihilists,
yet both ltume for one purpose, and Fichte for another, have propounded Nihilism as the ultimate issue
of all reasoning that does not start with some c priori
postulate.
(2.) There is the system of iaterializsm, or  allterialistic Realism. According to this system, a certain sum-total of real existence is assumed as underlying the conscious succession of ideas, but the seeming
dualism or co-ordinate independence of two worlds,
one of Mind and the other of Matter, is got rid of by
supposing Matter to be the primordial unity, and
MIind to be, or have been, educed,from it. There
have been avowed Materialists among philosophers,
of whom Hobbes is an early English example. But
many have been called lMaterialists who have really
not been such; nor, if we consider the contradictory
varieties of thought which may exist within one apparent drift of speculation, ought the name, while
odium attaches to it, ever to be applied to any one
without his own permission.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         63
(3.) There is the system of Natural Realism or
Natzturacl Dualismz. According to this system, while
Mind or Spirit is regarded as an undoubtedly real
essence, or substance, or energy of one origin and
nature, the extended Material World in the midst of
which this Mind or Spirit seems to find itself, and with
which it seems to have commerce, is also assumed as
a distinct reality, and not as a distinct reality of some
highly-removed sort, acting upon us illusively through
mediate signs and impulses, but as actually very much
that solid and substantial world which we get at
through our senses. There have been varieties, however, cruder and finer, of this Natural Realism.
What do mankind in general believe? They believe
that the material world is exactly and in every respect
the world which our senses report to us as external to
ourselves.  They believe that the rocks, the hills,
the trees, the stars, that we all see, are not mere hieroglyphics of a something different from themselves
and from us, but are really what is there. That outer
vastness of space in which orbs are shining and wheeling is no mere representation or visionary allegory of
something; it is the thing itself. This is, and always
has been, the popular belief of mankind in general.
All mankind may therefore be described, generally, as
Natural Realists. But, strange to say, Natural Realism has been the system of but one or two modern




64         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
philosophers —among whom Reid is named as a type.
Nay, more, among these philosophers it is not the
popular form of the belief that is entertained. Mankind in general snppose sweetness, shrillness, colour,
etc., to be qualities inherently belonging to the objects
to which they are attributed, while the philosophers
who are Natural Realists admit that at least these socalled " secondary qualities " of objects have no proper
outness, but are only physiological affections-affections of the organs of taste, hearing, sight, &c., produced by particular objects. Thus the Natural Realism of philosophers is itself a considerable remove
from the Natural Realism of the crude popular belief. It does not, with the crude popular belief, call
the whole apparent external world of sights, sounds,
tastes, tacts, and odours, the real world that would
be there whether man were there or not; but it
descries in that apparent world a block or core, if I
may so say, which would have to be thought of as
really existing, even if there were swept away all that
consists in our rich physiological interactions with it.
(4.) There is the system of Constructive Idealism.
It may be so called to distinguish it from the more developed and extreme Idealism presently to be spoken
of. According to this system, we do not perceive the
real external world immediately, but only mediately
-that is, the objects which we take as the things act



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.          65
ually perceived are not the real objects at all, but
only vicarious assurances, representatives, or nuntii
of real unknown objects. The hills, the rocks, the
trees, the stars, all the choir of heaven and earth, are
not, in any of their qualities, primary, secondary, or
whatever we choose to call them, the actual existences
out of us, but only the addresses of a " something " to
our physiology, or eductions by our physiology out
of a " something."  They are all Thoughts or Ideas,
with only this peculiarity involved in them, that they
will not rest in themselves, but compel a reference to
objects out of self, with which, by some arrangement
or other, they stand in relation.
Difficult as this system may be to understand, and
violently as it wrenches the popular common sense, it
is yet the system into which the great majority of philosophers in all ages and countries hitherto are seen,
more or less distinctly, to have been carried by their
speculations. While the Natural Realists among philosophers have been very few, and even these have
been Realists in a sense unintelligible to the popular
mind, quite a host of philosophers have been Constructive Idealists. These might be farther subdivided according to particular variations in the form of
their Idealism. Thus, there have been many Constructive Idealists who have regarded the objects rising to the mind in external perception, and taken to




66         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
be representative of real unknown objects, as something more than modifications of the mind itself-as
having their origin without. Among these have been
reckoned Malebranche, Berkeley, Clarke, Sir Isaac
Newton, Tucker, and possibly Locke. But there have
been other Constructive Idealists, who have supposed
the objects rising in the mind in external perception
to be only modifications of the mind itself, but yet, by
some arrangement, vicarious of real unknown objects,
and intimating their existence. Among such have
been reckoned Descartes, Leibnitz, Condillac, Kant,
and most Platonists. The general name "' Idealists,"
it will be seen, properly enough includes both the
classes as distinct from the Natural Realists, inasmuch
as both classes hold that what the mind is directly
cognizant of in external perception is only ideas.
But, inasmuch as these ideas are held by both classes,
though under divers hypotheses, to refer to real existences beyond themselves, and distinct from the perceiving mind, the thinkers in question may  also
properly enough be called Realists or Dualists, though
not "' Natural " Realists or Dualists. They occupy a
midway place between the Natural Realists and the
philosophers next to be mentioned.
(5.) There is the system of Pture Idecalismz, which
abolishes Mlatter as a distinct or independent existence in any sense, and resolves it completely into




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.                67
Mind.  Though this system  is named in the scheme,
for the sake of symmetry, and as the exact antithesis
to Materialism, it is difficult to cite representatives
that could be certainly discriminated from the merely
Constructive Idealists just mentioned on the one hand
and from the school of philosophers next following on
the other. Fichte is, perhaps, the purest example.
(6.) There is the system  of Absothe Idewntity.
According to this system, Mind and Matter are phenomenal  modifications of one common  Substance.
The whole Cosmos, both of Matter and of Mind, is
referred to a one Absolute Entity, of which it is to
be conceived as but the function, activity, manifestation, or forthrushing.  This system, it will be noted, is
at the opposite extreme from Nihilism. It is the system of Spinoza, and also, though with a difference, of
Schelling.
In this classification of Philosophical Systems from
one point of view I have followed, with some little
liberty of rearrangement and change of expression,
the best recent authority on the subject.*   Objections
* Sir William Hamilton's.Discussions (Articles " Philosophy of Perception" and "Idealism"); also his Lecturesd on Metaphysics (i. 293297); but particularly his -Dissertations on Reid (748, 749, and 816819). In these portions of Sir William's writings, his classification of
Philosophical Systems from the point of view of the Doctrine of External Perception is turned over and over again in all sorts of ways,
and with all sorts of side-lights. I have taken his authority for the




68             RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
may be taken  to the classification even in respect of
what it was intended for; nor, whatever may be its
worth as respects the past, do I think that it provides,
as it stands, a sufficient means of recognizing and
naming the various working cosmological conceptions now  extant among philosophers, and of which
it might be desirable to take account.*   But it goes
so far.  It brings out, at all events, what I wished to
bring out-to wit, that we can have by no means an
adequate collective view of the philosophers of our
time, so long as we trust to a mere preliminary division of them, however accurate, into Empiricists and
Transcendentalists. Behold what crossings and matchings, both of Empiricism  and Transcendentalism, infacts, but have modified and rearranged the classification to suit it to
my purpose in the text.
* For example, a very prevalent form of cosmological conception
* among thinkers of the present day is one which, if I am not mistaken,
it would be difficult to assign to any one of the six systems enumerated.
It is a compound of Mfaterialism with Constructive Idealism. A very
large number of thinkers, if I am not mistaken, always think of Mind
as bred out of Matter, and yet, when they study this Mind as perceiving
and taking cognizance of that World of Matter out of which it has
been bred, do not allow that it grasps the reality at all, but only that it
substitutes for the reality a hypothetical construction of its own affections. Sentiency, they think, is the child of Matter, but has never beheld, nor can behold, the real face of its mother. Are there not also
millions of forms and degrees of sentiency, from the lowest of living
creatures up to man, each apprehending the world according to a different measure of capacity? Is the dog's world-i. e. the construction
of his own affections to which the dog attributes an external realitythe same, even so far.as it goes, as his master's?




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         69
calculable beforehand, in even the cosmological classification so suggested to us! Empiricists among the
Idealists, side by side with Transcendentalists! On
the other hand, Transcendentalists in almost all the
six classes, and even in those where we should expect
only Empiricists! What if there should be such a
thing even as a Transcendental Materialist, or a Materialistic Transcendentalist?  I am not concerned
here with what ought to be possible or impossible in
cosmological conception consistently with either of
the two psychological theories. My statement is that
a philosopher may have a working cosmological conception which could not be reconciled with his avowed
psychological theory if he would think that theory
consistently out, or respecting which, at all events,
his opponents give him this assurance. In short, as
there have been strange crossings and matchings of
the psychological theories with the prevailing cosmological conceptions in the past, so there may be in the
future. And what if we were still farther to complicate the intertexture by introducing, even at this point,
the theological element?  There have been Atheistic
as well as Theistic Idealists; there have been Theistic
as well as Atheistic Empiricists; there are in the world
some whom rough popular speech does not hesitate to
describe as Transcendental Atheists; and, as there
have been examples of what might be called Theistic




70         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Materialism in the past, what if something still describable by that name should exist somewhere at
present, throwing stones both at Atheism and Pantheism?.
im.
THE ONTOLOGIOAL DIFFERENCE.
Mind or Consciousness, whatever it may be, is that
organism in the midst of all things through which all
our knowledge of all things must come. Philosophers,
therefore, mnay make a study of that g; and they have
done so under the name of Psychology. Round this
organism, howsoever related to it, is the vast and varied Cosmos, or phsenomenal and historical Universe,
which the organism reports to us as hung in Space
and voyaging through Time. Philosophers may make
a study of that; and such a study would be Cosmology. But, beyond this whole phsenomenal Universe
or Cosmos which has the Mind of Malln in its midst,
it has been the passion of Philosophy to assert or
speculate a transcendent Universe, or Enmpyrean of
Things in Themselves, of Essential Causes, of Absolute or Noumenal, as distinct from  Phsenomenal,
Existence. What enspheres the Cosmos, what supports it, of what absolute reality underneath and beyond itself is it significant, of what Absolute Meaning is it the expression, the allegory, the poem?




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         71
fMay not the entire Phaenomenal Cosmos, hung in
Space and voyaging through Time, be but an illusion-and this whether we consider it to be, within
itself, a play of Matter alone, or of Spirit alone, or
of both Matter and Spirit. If we feel that it is not,
on what warrant do we so feel? In what tissues of
facts and events, material or moral, in this phoenomenal Space-and-Time World shall we trace the likeliest filaments of that golden cord by which we then
suppose it attached to a World not of Space and
Time; and how shall we, denizens of Space and
Time, succeed in throwing the end of the cord beyond our Space-and-Time World's limits? Is the
Cosmos a bubble?  Then, what breath has blown it,
and into what Empyrean will it remelt when the separating film bursts?  Asking these questions in all
varieties of forms, Philosophy has debated the possibility of an Ontology, or science of things in themselves, in addition to a Psychology and a Cosmology.
These two are sciences of the Phsnomnenal, but ihat
would be a science of the: Absolute. It would be the
highest Metaphysic of all, and, indeed, in one sense,
the only science properly answering to that name. It
would be the science of the Supernatural. Can there
be such a science? A question this which seems to
break itself into two-Is there a Supernatural  and
can the Supernatural be known   It is the differences




$2         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
that have shown themselves among philosophers in
their answers, express or implied, to.these questions
that I have in view under the name of their differences in respect of Ontological Faith.
The Ontological difference is intertangled with
the Psychological and Cosmological differences, and
a discussion of tlhenb always brings it into sight. Most
probably, if matters were fully reasoned out, all the
three sets of differences might be knit together, and
it might be shown that adhesion to one of the two
psychological theories involved, in strict consistency,
an obligation to a particular mode of cosmological
conception, and that this again involved obligation to
a particular form of ontological faith. But the minds
even of philosophers, coming at separate times on
questions which are really inter-related, do not always march up to them in the same state of feeling,
but sometimes bring forces to the front in one case
which remain in the backgronnd in others. Hence,
just as it seemed impossible to infer with any precision from our knowledge of a philosopher's theory of
the Origin of our Ideas in which of the six systems
of conception as to the constitution of the Phaenomenal Universe he might be found ranking himself, so
neither from a philosopher's psychological theory nor
from his cosmological system would it be safe, as
things go, to infer his ontological faith.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        73
Take the first ontological question. Is there an
Absolute, a Supernatural, or is the Phoenomenal Universe all that exists?  It might seem that only the
Transcendentalist would be entitled to a strong affirmative to this question.  His very theory of the nMind
of M4an, as an organism bringing with it into the Phsenomenal World ideas or structural forms of ac priori
origin, refers one, if it has any meaning, to a Supernatural World or Empyrean, out of which the lMind
of MIlan is to be conceived as having proceeded, and
from which it still carries recollections or shreds of affinity.  From the Empiricist on the other hand it
might seem that the only answer to be expected to
the question is, " I do not know, nor can any man
know."  As all knowledge, according to the Empiricist, is the product of experience, and as there cannot
have been and never can be experience- of anything
beyond the bounds of Experience the assertion of an
Absolute or Supernatural, save in the sense of "the
yet unknown " or "all that nobody yet knows anything about," would seem to be incompetent to the
Empiricist. And yet there have been most positive
Theists and Theologians among the Empiricists-firm
and even dogmatic believers in an Absolute; and
there is nothing that such Theistic and Theological
Empiricists have resented more than the assertion of
Transcendentalists that their Theism was irreconcile4




a4         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
able with their Empiricism, and that they had no
right to leap to the conclusion of an Infinite Intelligence beyond the world or in it from the observation
of ever so much of worldly watch-making.
If thus, practically, the ontological creed of a
philosopher, even in its first article, cannot be always
inferred from him psychological theory, neither can it
be safely inferred from the form of his cosmological
conception. If any one could assert " There 8s no
Absolute," surely it nmight be the Nihilist, who has
analysed away bothl Matter and Thought, and attenuated the Cosmos into vapour and non-significance.
Yet, from the abyss of a speculatively reasoned Nihilism more void than Hume's, Fichte returned by a
convulsive act of soul —which he termedfaith-an intense, a burning, a blazing Ontologist. A fortiori,
the Materialist has not seen that he need deny an Absolute. Regarding the Cosmos, considered within itself, as wholly a development of Matter, he has not
always thought himself debarred, any more than other people, from assuming an Absolute from which
this Cosmos of developed matter may have its metaphysical tenure. For Natural Realists, again, and
for either Constructive Idealists or Pare Idealists, the
belief in a supernatural is obviously easy and congenial. Analysing the double series of phaenomena
which he finds in the Cosmos, and coming in each




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        75
case upon a substratum of ultimate reality-in the one
upon a Thinking Substance constituted in such and
such a manner, and in the other on an extended and
resisting Substance of Matter diversely constitutedthe Natural Realist feels as if at both points he were
actually grating on the rock of the Absolute. He
feels himself at both points in contact with some immeasurable Real Existence, beyond all phsenomenal
Nature, and yet determining it and projected into it.
With the Constructive Idealist it is the same, save
that, as his notion of Matter is more impalpable and
hypothetical than that of the Realist, his sense of
contact with the Supernatural is concentrated rather
in his notion of the necessity of a real noumenal origin
for the grand phsenomenon of Consciousness. In
this, the Pure Idealist, for whom the Universe resolves itself wholly into this single phaenomenon, may
well outdo his more hesitating brother. All that is,
was, or will be in this Space-and-Time World is, according to the Pure Idealist, but the organized, consolidated, and transmitted aggregate of the thoughts
of the Minds within it. All the more, therefore, must
that power of thinking which has involved itself in
such a vast cocoon of wonders be itself conceived as
originating in the fiat of some Absolute Cause. And
yet, as in the end, it is only a felt necessity or compulsion of thought that either Realists or Idealists can




76         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHIY.
plead when they assert a Supernatural beyond the
Phmenomenal, and as this feeling of necessity or compulsion is itself liable to alternations of strength and
weakness, both Realists and Idealists will be found to
have wavered greatly in respect even of that first article of any ontological faith which would simply aver
a Supernatural and stop there.
Thus Shelley, the very principle of whose life and
poetry was philosophical Idealism, seemed willing,
throughout a great part of his life, not only to be
bthought of, but to think of himself, as an Atheist.
And so it is quite conceivable that a Natural Realist,
even when grappling the rock of an Absolute through
his ultimate investigations of the two orders of cosmical phenomena whose distinctness he recognizes,
should have moments of doubt whether it is a rock he
is grappling, or only an illusio.n. In short, only those
whose interpretation of the Cosmos merges in a metaphysical doctrine of Absolute Identity would seem to
have got hold of a cosmological principle which, in
itself, and without aid from any act of the soul not
allowed for by its own terms, would positively and
continuously presuppose and assert a Supernatural.
W5ith them, Nature is the Supernatural in one of its
moments. The Cosmos does not swim in an Empyrean from which it is divided by any film, but is that
very state or embodiment of the entire Empyrean




RECENT BRITISH PHIILOSOPHIY.      77
which has been attained up to this instant. The
Phoenomenal is the life of the Absolute.
It is when we pass, however, to the second question propounded towards an Ontology that the interest grows most vivid. It being supposed that an
Absolute exists, is any knowledge thereof possible to
Man? Htere, of course, leaving out of sight all who
would actually deny that there is an Absolute, and
also all whose position in respect to that prior question is that they think an Ay or a Xo to it equally absurd, we need attend only to those who, in whatever
manner, stand by an affirmative to that prior question. What has been the history among them of the
farther question as to the cognisability of this affirmed
Absolute of things?  The history of the question, we
may say confidently, has consisted in a continuous,
emphatic, and nearly unanimous iteration of a negative answer to the question, accompanied all the
while by modes of thought, speech, and conduct, in
which a positive answer to it, and very definite forms
of a positive answer, have been practically assumed.
The almost unanimous assertion of philosophers,
since philosophy began, has certainly been to the
effect that in no form is an Ontology, or knowledge of
things in themselves, possible to  Man. It has been
the assertion not only of philosophers, but of the most
devout and most dogmatic of theologians. That the




78           PRE(CENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
finite cannot apprehend or conceive the Infinite; that
neither matter nor mind can be known in its essence;
that all man's knowledge can only be relative and
according to the measure and mode of his intelligence; that any attempt of human thought to transcend  the phenomenal world  is only as if a bird
should hope to soar above that element the beating of
its wings in which is the very cause of its soaring at
all; that it is blasphemy to think that God is as we
can think HIim to be-in these and a thousand other
ways the thing has been stated.  The Socratic definition of the highest human wisdom-that it is the
most assured knowledge of our own inevitable ignorance-has been repeated, in this connexion, till it is
the best-known of philosophical maxims.
The only loudly-heard voice from antiquity proclaiming the possibility of an Ontology seems to be
that of Socrates's disciple, Plato. The far-famed Idealism of Plato is, in fact, a theory of the cognisability
of the Absolute.*   Our Phsenomenal World, Plato
X Here we may note the confusion of practice in the use of the
word Idealism. It is used in three different senses, and in combinations of these. First, Transcendentalism in Psychology, inasmuch as it avows a belief in innate ideas, or necessary forms of
thought, is sometimes called Idealism. Secondly, there is the more
accurate and now the philosophically accepted use of the term, which
identifies Idealism with a particular form of Cosmological Conceptionthat, to wit, which resolves all material phaenomena into subjective
affections, or affections or ideas of Consciousness.  This is the




RECENT BRITISH  PHILOSOPHY.                  79
loves to fancy, is not so utterly and hopelessly disconnected from  the Absolute World of Noumena, Ideas,
or Things in  Themselves, but that for the pure and
persevering reason a passage from the one to the
other may be possible.  HI-e taxes his gorgeous imagination  for ways of representing  his notion  of this
transcendent possibility.  Human Life or the Cosmos
of Man, he says in  one place, may be likened  to a
dungeon or cave, the inmates of which  are chained,
with their faces towards the interior wall, and incapable of turning round.  Lo! on the wall on which
they gaze there flit strange shapes and phantasmagories-the phsenomena of this world. Voices also
are heard which they, the beholders of the phantasmagories, attribute to the phantasmagories, and connect
with them as well as they can. For the phlantasmagories on the wall, and the accompanying voices, are
sense in which the term has been employed, unless where there is
indication to the contrary, throughout the text. But, thirdly, there is
Plato's Idealism, which includes much more than mere Psychological
Idealism, and is quite different from Cosmological Idealism. IG is an
Ontological Idealism, or a theory how the phenomena of this world
may be but reproductions or disguises of the ideas or essential
realities of a Supernatural World, or Empyrean of things in themselves. There has been no end of misstatements arising, even in
histories of Philosophy, from inattention to these different meanings
of the word Idealist. Philosophers have been spoken of as Idealists
who were Idealists only in one of the senses and by no means in the
others. Nay, when a thinker declares of himself that he is an Idealist,
it is still necessary to ask in which of the three senses, or in what
combination of them, he uses the term.




80         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPIHYo
the sole realities to these tenants of the cave. B]ut
what if they could turn their faces round towards the
entrance to the cave, where it communicates with a
larger and freer world?  Then would they begin to
surmise difierently. For along the mouth of the cave,
though separated from it by an embankment, there
lies a bit of roadway, on which persons belonging to
that freer world are ever passing and repassing, carrying images or what not, and talking to each other the
while; and beyond the roadway there is a blazing
light; and the phantasmagories on the inner wall of
the cave are but shadows of the tops of the images
which the pedestrians on the bit of roadway in front
of the cave are carrying past it; and the voices heard
and attributed to the shadows are the voices of the invisible bearers of these images.
Thus in our World of Sense, all those phsenomena
whi h seem realities to us, are but the shadows and
echoes of real objects and ongoings in an unseen World
of Archetypes, Ideas, or Self-subsisting Intelligences.
If we could but turn round! Nay, what are philosophers but those who do contrive somehow to turn
round, and even though dazzled at first, to work their
way to such a full glimpse of the Archetypal World
as that they can bring back a report of it to the other
dwellers in the cave, and press upon them that explanation of the phlenomena of the cave which the re



RECENT BRITIS1 PHILOSOPHY.            81
port furnishes?  Or, again, as an alternative to this
theory of Archetype and Shadow, expounded in some
parts of Plato's writings, we have, in others, his theory
of Reminiscence.  Man, though now the denizen of
this World of Sense, has had a former and grander
life in the Empyrean of Ideas, and when here he investigates truth and arrives by contemplation at the
pure ideas or forms of phaenomena, these are but recollections or recoveries more or less faint, of the knowledge familiar to him in his former existence. Those
dpriori elements of knowledge, which Plato, as the
supreme Transcendentalist of antiquity, contended
for so strongly under the name of Ideas, were, therefore, in his language,  priori in a very special sense.
They were fragments of a former Absolute Existence,
actually shivered through our life amid the phsenomena of sense; and it was the very business of Philosophy to seek for the fragments and to piece them  together.  Wordsworth here is but a renderer of the
Transcendentalism of Plato:
" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
iath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home."
4*




82        PRECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY,
Allowance being made for the exuberance of
Plato, and for the perplexity as to some parts of his
final meaning arising from his very exuberance, it
seems inevitable to conclude that he did not limit the
possibilities of Philosophy to a Psychology and a Cosmology, but regarded it as the very work of Philosophy to push on through these to an Ontology, or
Science of Absolute Truth. Now, in this matter, men
in all time, or at least Transcendentalists in all time,
have felt with Plato, even while reasoning with Aristotle. If an Ontology is an impossibility for the human spirit, a Transcendentalism that should not root
itself in all assumed Ontology seems equally an impossibility. What has been the history of the Soul of the
World but a rage of Ontology?  Why have there
been wars, why have there been martyrdoms, but because one Supernaturalism sought to put down another?  What has genius been, what has religious
propagandism been, but a metaphysical drunkenness a
Conceive a spiritual teacher coming forward, and, in
reply to questions as to the certainty of his doctrine,
owning that he knew it only to be cosmologically
true, but whether true absolutely he could not tell.
Would not his virtue seem to be gone from him in
the very act of the confession?
Above all, if he were a Transcendentalist, contending for necessary and universal elements or ideas




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         83
in the human reason, and if, when put to it, he were
to admit that he knew even this mental organism, this
Soul with its necessary ideas of God and Right, only
and exclusively as a phaenomenon, and dared not affirm whether its necessary ideas had a basis in the
eternal nature of things or not, would not this diffidence be his ruin2 B3ut it never so happens. Men
do proceed on the notion that what they know to be
true Aas a foundation in the nature of things. Transcendentalists cannot use their phrase "c a priori
elements of the human soul " without implying strenuously not only that these elements come out of some
priority, but that they are bon Jfd7e intentions of that
priority, and not deceptions. But what is this but to
profess to know something about the Absolute? It is
not only to assert that there is an Absolute and stop
there (which would itself be something); it is also to
assert something very specific of the Absolute-to assert a something equivalent to what, in human speech,
is called veracity.
And yet, rationally, the Absolute is incognisable,
unthinkable! How is this? What is the reconciliation a There has been one almost invariable answer.
"The sphere of Faith transcends the sphere of Reason." There is, it is said, an organic necessity of
man's nature, or of his nature in certain moods, which
compels him to believe much that he cannot know.




84          RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
It is by Faith, it is said, and- not by Reason, that we
can refer the laws of our own consciousness, or the
constitution of the material world around us, to a valid
origin or purpose in Absolute Being; it is by Faith, and
not by Reason, that we can even assert an Absolute
at all, except as a mere blank, or negative, or paralysis of knowledge. Faith, and not Reason, is that condition of spirit in which Man, by his nature, must
ever ponder the ultimate problems.  And so it is at
this point that Christian  Theology comes in, and,
showing her credentials, offers instruction.  BuLt even
she presents herself not as capable of theorizing the
Absolute for human reason, but only as the bearer of
a special message.  Whatever authority she may assume as she proceeds with her teachings, her opening
address to man, when he first questions her metaphysically, is but as that of Raphael to Adam, when he
began, at Adam's request, the narrative of the events
of that supra-mundane Universe which had preceded
Man's:"High matter thou enjoinst me, 0 prime of Men,
Sad task and hard! - For how shall I relate
To human sense the invisible exploits
Of warring Spirits; how, without remorse,
The ruin of so many, glorious once
And perfect while they stood; how, last, unfold
The secrets of another World, perhaps




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.             85
Not lawful to be revealed? Yet, for thy good,
This is dispensed-; and what surmounts the reach
Of human sense I shall delineate so,
By likening spiritual to corporal forms,
As may express them best-though what if Earth
Be but the shadow of iHeaven, and things therein
Each to other like more than on Earth is thought?'"
In no modern philosopher is the attitude of Psychological Transcendentalism  to the question of the
possibility of an Ontology presented more interestingly than in Kant.  Hie was, as we have seen, the refounder of Transcendentalism in modern Europe.  In
an age when Empiricism  seemed to have taken universal possession, and killed out its opposite, he reproclaimed that opposite.  As the result of an investigation of the human mind more exact and profound
than had ever been undertaken before, he reasserted
the mind to be an organism of certain structural or a
priori capabilities, or forms of operation, which necessitated its mode of commerce with all matter of expe
rience, and the notions, thinkings, and beliefs that
might accrue from  that commerce.  Nay, as the supreme a p}riori elements of human reason, he recognised the ideas of three supra-sensuous or trans-conscious objects-God, the Soul, and the World.  In the
Soul of Man, at its very highest, what was perceived,
as structural and connate, was a straining after these




86         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
three objects of trans-conscious enormity. And yet,
in answer to the question whether, after all, this
might not be a mere straining into vacuum, a delusive
grappling towards objects in an ocean of no objects,
Kant declared speculative reason to be impotent.
tIere was the sceptical side to his Transcendental
Philosophy. As to the fact of an organic and necessary grappling of the mind in search of an Absolute
he had no doubt; but as to the positive existence of
an Absolute to answer the grappling, and much more
as to the nature of the being of such an absolute, if it
existed, he had nothing to say, in the name of Reason,
but that Reason could say nothing. A rational Ontology or Metaphysic was impossible.  Only in the
phsenomenal world did Msan's reason live, move, and
have its being; not an inch beyond that world could
it chase any phkenomenon whatever-not even the
momentous phaenomenon of its own constitution.
Objectively, therefore, the Absolute was nothing more
than a name for Unknowableness-Inconceivability.
Subjectively, however, or as a regulative principle or
fact of the mental organism itself, the notion of an
Absolute, or the instinctive straining towards the Unknowable, was to be considered as something more
for Man than mere nescience. In this position Kant
left the question, appending to his philosophy of the
Pure Reason a philosophy of the Practical Reason,




iRECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       87
wherein Man, returning from his hopeless attempt to
outfly the phsenomenal, might take consoling refuge.
Here it is that the post-Kantian philosophers of
Germany refused to abide with Kant.  The postKantian movement, as represented in Fichte, Schelling, and I-egel, was a strenuous exertion for the recovery of Ontology as that without which all the Psychology and all the Cosmology in the world would be
little better than blindman's buff. Thus, in the
speculative philosophy of Fichte, there were two
stages. The first landed him in pure Subjective Idealism, or that system which, annihilating the Cosmos,
save as the externalizing of one's own thoughts, may
be said to have merged Cosmology utterly in Psychology. Ontology itself, if there could be such a
science, was also merged in Psychology-for either
the only all-in-all or Absolute was that Self of which
the Cosmos was a poem, or, if there was a transcendent Absolute which had spun the Self which spun
the Cosmos, Self could not mount back to it. Dissatisfied, however, with this state of things, or with
the resolution which he began to think inevitable of
his Subjective Idealism into Nihilism, Fichte was latterly ravished with the notion of a doctrine which
should start with an Ontology from which Psychology
and Cosmology should be derivatives. If there were
assumed a one Absolute existence, identical both with




88           RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Self and Not-self-a kind of Neutrumr  of Self and
[Not-self, and of which the two together constituted
the life  or manifestation-here  Psychology  might
have a real ontological beginning.  It remained, however, for Schelling and Hegel to work out this famous
Identity doctrine, if, indeed, it did not belong to them,
or to one of them, originally more than to Fichte.
As Schelling first distinctly published the doctrine,
and as he outlived Hiegel for many years, it is with
Schelling's name that the doctrine has been nniversally assoeiated, and the place usually assigned to I[egel
has been that of an Aristotle contemporary with this
Plato in the most important part of his career, and
subjecting all his  views, the  Identity  doctrine included, to a vigorous logical grasp.:*  Taking the Identity doctrine, therefore, as Schelling's, and  leaving
Iegel out of account in the meantime, we can see
how, in the Schellingian doctrine, the world was made
aware of a form  in which the possibility of an Ontology might be vindicated.   The Absolute, according to this doctrine, is the one Infinite Existence or
* For some very interesting observations on the relations of Hegel
to Schelling in respect of the Identity doctrine, and on the relations of
both generally to Fichte, and of all three to Kant, see Mr. Stirling's
"Secret of Hegel," vol. i. pp. 20-31.  Mir. Stirling holds that the outcome of the German Philosophical movement was in Kant and Hegel,
and that Fichte and Schelling, though interesting historically, may be
neglected by the student of results.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        89
Essence of which both Mind and Nature are the
manifestations. The Absolute going forth expansively, or embodying itself in the finite or phsenomenal,
is Nature; the regressive or contractive movement of
the Absolute out of the finite or phaenomenal back
into itself, is the sum-total of Mind or Consciousness.
Being and Knowing are coincident; all that is
known is, and nothing is that is not known; the universe of Knowledge and the universe of Existence are
the same; Ontology is the self-consciousness of the
Absolute. But how can individual men rise to such
an ontology Ba   y participation in the self-consciousness of that Absolute of which they are items!  Eow
is this possible a By an act of " intellectual intuition"
the soul of man may swoon beyond the bounds of
mere individual consciousness, and may behold and
know the Eternal Essence of things!  It is on this
power in the reason of each of us to participate in the
self-knowledge of the Absolute, and to know itself as
a fibre in that Absolute, that the Universe proceeds
and holds together. It is this certain intuition of Absol-ute Truth, and not any spasmodic action of the soul
in the shape of a faith straining into a voidl, that has
been, is, and ever will be, the sustenance of mankind,
the basis of religion and of all great action. So, in
brief terms, I interpret the ontological doctrine of
Schelling.




90         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Having thus expounded severally the three great
differences, or sets of differences, that have been found
appearing and re-appearing hitherto in the history of
Philosophy —and having named them, for the sake of
easier reference, the Psychological Difference, the
Cosmologicct D)i;?erence, and the Ontological Dziference-let me proceed to inquire how far, and in what
forms, these differences have repeated themselves in
our British Philosophy of the last thirty years. In
this inquiry, as has been already explained, it is with
Sir William Hamilton, Mr. Carlyle, and Mr. John
Stuart Mill, that we must first concern ourselves:
I. hi. respect of the Psychological YDif)erence.
Here Mr. Carlyle and Sir William Hamilton obviously range themselves on one side, and Mr. Mill as obviously on the other.
Take lMr. Carlyle. "Our whole Metaphysics itself," he wrote in 1829, in that essay from which we
quoted his complaint as to the miserable condition into which Philosophy had fallen in Britain," our whole
Metaphysics itself from Locke's time downwards has
been physical-not a spiritual philosophy, but a material one. The singular estimation in which his Essay was so long held as a scientific work (an estimation grounded; indeed, on the estimable character of
the man) will one day be thought a curious indication




RECENT BRITISH PIHILOSOPHY.          91
of the spirit of these times."  This is surely an abjuration of Lockism.  Again, in the same Essay, he
writes, "To speak a little pedantically, there is a science of Dynamics in Man's fortunes and nature, as
well as of Mechanics.  There is a Science which
treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, un
modified forces and energies of Ian, the mysterious
springs of Love, and Fear, and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, and Religion, all which have a truly vital
and'in]nite character, as well as a Science which
practically addresses the fnite, modified developments
of these, when they take the shape of immediate' motives,' as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment.
Now it is certain that in former times the wise men,
the enlightened lovers of their kind, who appeared
generally as moralists, poets, and priests, did, without
neglecting the Mechanical province, deal chiefly with
the Dynamical." * This also is an assertion of the
principle of Transcendentalism. Indeed, in a previous Essay, Mr. Carlyle had approvingly expounded
the Transcendentalism of Kant's philosophy in opposition to the Empiricism of Locke and Hume.  " The
Germans," he had said, " take up the matter differently, and would assail HIume, not in his outworks, but in
his citadel. They deny his first principle, that Sense
* Art. " Signs of the Times," in Edin. Rev. 1829; reprinted in Carlyle's Miscellanies.




92         RiECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
is the only inlet of knowledge, that Experience is the
primary ground of belief. Their pure truth, however,
they seek, not historically and by experiment, in the
universal persuasions of -men, but by intuition, in the
deepest and purest nature of Man." e  But what need
of proving by particular quotations that Mir. Carlyle
then was, and since then has always continued to be,
a champion of the doctrine of necessary or a priori
truth or elements of truth? What else mean his wellknown phrases " Eternal Justice," " the Eternal Veracities," and the like? In short, if words have any
meaning, Mir. Carlyle, since Coleridge died, and with
an energy of genius more vehement and tumultuous,
has been the most conspicuous Transcendentalist, the
most conspicuous anti-Lockist, anti-Benthamist, in the
Literature of Britain.
What Mr. Carlyle has been implicitly, and for the
mind of the nation at large, in this aspect, Sir William
Hamilton has been explicitly, and for our philosophic
sceholars. He has been the founder of a philosophy
which, though it offered itself primarily as a continuation and improvement of that previously known (and
though old-fashioned) as the Scottish, and though it
might be properly enough called " Scoto-German," is
described most trruy of all as the IHamiltonian. And
* Art. "State of German Literature," in Edin. Rev. 1827; reprinted
in Carlyle's Miscellanies.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.          93
from first to last in this philosophy, and in almost
every scrap of writing that came from  Iamilton's
pen, we mark the strength of his conviction that only
on the theory of necessary ideas, c priori forms of
thought, could philosophy establish itself, or the spirit
of man find satisfaction.  " A very able disquisition,"
he would say again and again, commenting upon some
treatise or essay of the opposite school which he
thought worthy of praise; I" but I do not see how you
can fabricate this notion (naming it), out of experience!  A reduction of what was to be taken as nzecessgay in our beliefs to the smallest compass in which
it could be expressed —an essence of the fewest and
deepest propositions-was a task in the achievement
of which he foresaw results that might have made
Reid groan, and Kantists -uncomfortable.*  IIe did
not live to accomplish the task. Bnut the whole tenor
of his labours was towards an assertion, purification,
and redefinition of Transcendentalism; and, when he
died, he left the flag of Transcendentalism waving
anew over more than one citadel of the land.
It will be a dreary day for the world when disagreements cease, when there are not even fundamental differences. There is an old Wiltshire song,
which has this remarkable stanza: —
* See Dissertation A. appended to Edition of Reid, p. 743: footnote.




94          RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
"If all the world were of one Religion,
Many a living thing should die;
But I will never forget my true love,
Nor in any way his name deny."
Now, if there is any man among us who has preeminently helped to keep Britain from  that danger
of intellectual death to many which would arise from
her being of one Religion in Philosophy, it is Mr.
Mill.  He has never forgotten his true love, the
principle of Empiricism, nor in any way denied
its name-though the name "Empiricism" is one
which he would not himself choose, and for which
he would probably substitute Exyerientialism.  In
stating the question between the two metaphysical
schools in that essay on Coleridge which was so admirable an example in its time of the sympathetic
appreciation of a system of opinions different from
one's own,* {Mr. Mill thought it right to record his
own view, even when refraining from  arguing for it.
"It is," he said, "that the truth, on this much debated question, lies with the school of Locke and
B3entham." And his writings before this, and in all
his writings after this, the same assertion of the principle of his philosophical faith is continually made.
But, indeed, not only is this principle continually' Essay on Coleridge, London and Westminster Review, 1840; reprinted in Mill's Dissertations.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        95
avowed in Mr. Mill's writings; it is the key to the
nature of the writings themselves. Mr. Mill's lZogic
corresponds with what the science of Logic could
alone be consistently with his fundamental psychological principle. It could not be, like the old Logic
and Hamilton's Logic, a Science of the Necessary
Laws of Thought, but only a Science of the method
of quest after experimental truth or probability. So,
in his fine Essay on Liberty the radical idea is that one
can never be surer of anything, be it even the fortyseventh proposition of the first book of Euclid, than
in proportion as the chances of contradiction are
exhausted; and the high value set there upon human
freedom, and even upon eccentricity of thought or
action, seems to be grounded on the conviction that
the human race can never know what it may attain
to, in the shape either of knowlege or of power, until
it has sent out a rush of the largest number of individual energies simultaneously, and with the least restraint from law or custom or mutual disparagement,
on actual experiments and investigations in all directions. As for the Essay on Utilitarianismn, it is
expressly a restatement of Paley's and Bentham's theory of expediency as the sole possible foundation of
morals, but with a suggestion of this higher and
more exquisite definition of expediency, characteristic
of Mr. Mill, that it means the largest possible amount




96         RECENT BRITISI-I PHILOSOPHY.
of pleasure, and the least possible amount of pain,
not to you or me, or this age, or all mankind only,
but to the sum-total of sentient existence. In short,
if I am not mistaken, Mr. M1ill's writings prove that,
if he thinks of any one particular mode of thought
among his contemporaries as being more than any
other chargeable with the total mass of obstruction,
fallacy, and misery that yet rolls in the heart of
society-as being more than any other the False
God, or l3aal, or Moloch, of the human mind-it is
of the theory of necessary beliefs. One marks almost
an impatience of manner in his writings whenever
this word "'necessary" comes across him. "Never
name to me," he seems to say, " tlat brute of a word."
It required, indeed, that the cause of British
Empiricism should have no ordinary standard-bearer.
The learning and speculative profundity of a IHamilton, and the great spiritual energy of a Carlyle, were
a formidable conjunction of opposite forces. Even
numerically, in respect of the leaders, the odds were
as two to one. And, curiously enough, this is about
the numerical odds in which, if we take the whole
list of our recent philosophical writers, British Transcendentalism has continued to stand to British Enmpiricism to the present day. It is difficult to be exact
in such a matter, and I will not specialize at present;
but the names of Whewell and Tennyson at once sug



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        9
gest themselves on the one side, and that of the late
MIAr. Buckle on the Other.
II. In respect of the CosmologiccZ Dif)erences.
To think we had laid sufficient hold of the movement of British philosophical thought during the last
thirty years merely by the division of its representatives into two schools according to their difference
in respect of Psychological Theory, would (it must
be felt now, if it was not felt before) be the very
greenness of innocence. Hamilton, Carlyle, Whewell, and Tennyson-we may bracket these men
together and have a reason for it; but what would
the men themselves say?  IMethinks I see strange
mutual glances passing among them  -in  part,
glances of mutual liking, but not all of that character. Nor, though the conjunction of Buckle and
Mill might be less amiss, in respect of reputed
affinity, would that conjunction be beyond criticism.
In short, we must complicate matters by having recourse to the second means of distributing philosophers-the recognition of the differences of their
cosmological conceptions.  But here we are confronted with difficulty and chances of error. "Who
told you my cosmological conception, pray? " is what
many a man, and even many a writer, might say to a
critic professing to fasten one upon him and to ex5




98         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
ponnd it. What a man generally keeps to himself-is
precisely his cosmological conception. In this country
especially that which most men avoid, even when they
are our public teachers and writers-that which they
are compelled to avoid by the tyranny of a manyvoiced multitude, whose own cosmological conception was made for them long ago, and might be hung
up in the British Museum as a curiosity to-morrownay, worst of all, that which the cynicism of a lase'
literature of wit, and mutual clhaff, and a cultivated
antipathy to the large or grand, compels them to
avoid-is the attempt to present, in any approach
to complete form, systematic or poetical, their real
and total conception of the world. The more the
pity! Never was there a great book in the world
that did not flash out, and burn into the minds of its
readers, some outline of its author's cosmological conception. Nor, under all the discouragements of our
time, have our best and greatest forgotten the duty,
nor their right hands, in performing it, the true and
ancient cunning. What-and, here surely, if anywhere, we may name him-what of our laureate Tennyson? Or, again, of Mr. Carlyle? What is it that
breaks through upon us from all Mr. Carlyle's writings,
and seems to constitute, when we investigate through
all the rest, their distinguishing peculiarity?  What
but a pervading, continually presented, cosmological




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         99
conception of surpassing vastness, intense and stern at'the centre, where the moral forces meet round a solid
terrestrial core, but otherwise astronomically boundless? Nay, is it not his habit to have faith in this presentation again and again of a cosmological conception,
constant or slightly varying, as better than formal philosophizing 2 Reconceive if you can, my cosmological
conception, he seems to say; let it burst the obstructions and boundaries it meets with in your mind;
and from the new mental heaven there will doubtless be a rain, as far as is necessary, of the right
propositions!
Just because Mr. Carlyle's philosophy takes so
much the form of the incessant presentation of his
general cosmological conception that it refuses to argue about the conception itself, it is difficult to bring
him into a place in any of those six philosophical systems which have been enumerated as resulting from
the attempt to classify philosophers by attending to
their points of attachment to different theories of the
act of external perception. It might not be really impossible so to place him; but it would be difficult.
Let us, therefore, take leave of him, and attend to the
other two. In regard to them, from the nature of
their writings, there is not the same difficulty.
Six philosophical systems, we said, have been recognised as arising out of the different known interpre



100        REOCENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
tations of the so-called act of external perceptionNihilism or Nbn-SXubstantialisnz, liaterialism, Natuiral Realism, Constructive Idealism, Pure Idecalism3
and the Identity System. Of these six systems, I may
now say, only the middle four seem to me purely cosmological.  The two extreme systems,-Nihilism
and Absolutism,-involve ontological considerations.
They are not solely theories of the contents of the
Cosmos, considered in itself, but also theories on the
subject of the relatedness or non-relatedness of the
Cosmos, whatever may be the conception of its contents, to an essence of things beyond. The middle
four; however-]Zfaterialism,  caturatl Realism, Construcetive Idealism, and Pure Idealism —are more
strictly cosmological. Now, each of these four systems has had a footing in Britain, and the present
question is, to which of them Sir William Hamilton
and Mr. Mill respectively adhere.
Sir William Hamilton is a Natural Realist. He
regarded it, indeed, as perhaps the chief distinction of
his speculative philosophy that, in opposition to the
tradition of all former modern philosophers, save one
or two, it proclaimed the cosmological doctrine of
Natural Realism to be the true one.  His views on
the subject are expressed in his Edinltzrgh Review
articles-" The  Philosophy  of  Perception"  and
"Idealism" (reprinted in his Discussions); also in




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPfY.       101
his _Lectures on lfetlaphysics (Lectures XV. XVI.);
but they are to be gathered, with greatest abundance
of illustration and detail, from his Notes, B, C, D and
D*, appended to his edition of Reid. In these Notes
he first expounds, as all-important to his purpose, the
distinction between Presentative, Immediate, or Intuitive Knowledge, and the knowledge called Representative or Mediate.  Presentative -Knowledge is
that in which the mind apprehends a thing directly,
in itself, and as it were face to face; Representative
Knowledge is that in which the mind apprehends a
thing not directly, but through some sign, image, or
suggestion distinct from  the thing itself.  Now,
though the great mass of our accumulated knowledge
is undeniably Representative-all our knowledge, for
example, of the past and the distant-yet, in the centre of all, as the ever-welling momentary supply out
of which all the rest is evolved or woven, there is a
Presentative Knowledge in every act of present consciousness. More particularly in what is called the
act of external perception we have a direct, immediate, face-to-face knowledge of objects in an external
world. Most philosophers, Sir William proceeds to
say, have denied this, and have maintained that our
knowledge of an external world is only representative, or a bundle of inferences from certain signs in
our own affections, which may, or may not, be in




102        RECENT BRITISH PHIILOSOPtY.
analogy with the things they represent. Reid alone
had got hold of the doctrine of an immediate face-toface cognition of external nature in every act of perception. But Reid's use of the doctrine had been
vacillating, confused, and incomplete, insomuch that
he had been misunderstood in all that depended upon
it by his critics, and most of all by Brown. Hence,
vindicating Reid, and at the same time avowing his
own acceptance of Reid's doctrine, though he should
be left in a minority of one in supporting it, Hamilton does all he can to put the doctrine in proper
shape. "The developed doctrine of Real Presentationism, the basis of Natural Realism," he says,
"' asserts the consciousness or immediate perception of
certain essential attributes of matter objectively existing; while it admits that other properties of body are
unknown in themselves, and only inferred as causes
to account for certain subjective affections of which
we are cognizant in ourselves."  The attributes of
matter thus alleged to be immediately perceived as
really and objectively existing are mainly those which
since Locke's time had been generally known as the
"primary qualities,"-to wit, solidity or extension,
impenetrability, number or divisibility, size, figure,
mobility, and position in space. In addition to these
qualities Sir William discriminates two other classes
-the " secundo-primary qualities " (such as gravity,




RECENT BlRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        103
eohesion, repulsion, &c.), in which he recognizes,modifications of the primary by conjunction with a
subjective element; and the "secondary qualities "
proper (colour, sound, flavour, heat, &c.), which he allows to consist merely in determinations of the subjective sentiency.
Such is Sir William Hamilton's system of Natural:Dubalismz or Natucralc Realisn. In the course of his
expositions of his own system he has some criticisms
of the rival systems. If he were not a Natural Realist, then, he avows, he would be a Pure Idealist.
"Natural Realism and Absolute Idealism," he says
emphatically, " are the only systems worthy a philosopher." *  On the other hand, the rival system which
he liked least, and which he pronounced "the most
inconsequent of all systems," was that half-way kind
of Idealism which we have called Constructive Idealism. He admitted, nevertheless, that this was the
system which had been " embraced in various forms
by the immense majority of philosophers." t  Now,
as far as I have been able to ascertain, it is precisely
to this system that Mr. Mill would confess his allegiance. I make the statement somewhat diffidently.
It has seemed to me doubtful whether some of his
views might not be susceptible of an interpretation
* Note C to Edition of Reid, p. 817, footnote.
Jr Art. Philosophy of Perception, Discussions, p. 55.




104         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
into Pure Idealism. On the whole, however, I aml
inclined to think that, if any of the existing coslological systems might claim him, it is that of Constrmccuive Idealism.
In his logic there is a chapter devoted to an enumeration or classification of "the Things denoted by
names."  It results in the conclusion that there are
four classes of nameable things-(1) "Feelings, or
States of Consciousness; " (2) "The Minds which experience these feelings;" (3) "The Bodies, or external objects, which excite certain of these feelings;"
and (4) " The Successions and Coexistences, the Likenesses and lUnlikenesses, between feelings or States of
Consciousness."  This is so far a cosmological classification; but, from the paragraphs through which it is
arrived at, it distinctly appears that it is not Mr.
M3ill's ultimate classification of the contents of the
Cosmos as given in consciousness, but a classification
deferring, partly at least, and for the practical purposes of Logic, to  popular habits of speech and
thought.  In reading these paragraphs it is distinctly seen that, according to Mr. M1ill, the one and only
reality of the Cosmos for our knowledge consists in the
existence of the first of the four classes of nameable
things, or of the first comnpounded with the fourth.
All that we really know, or are in any way aware of,
is a series of feelings or states of consciousness, a




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        105
stream or succession of sensations, thoughts, emotions,
and volitions. When we speak either of Mind as a
substance undergoing these successive states, or of
Matter or Body as an external cause of some of them,
we go beyond what we know.  Thus, of Mind:
"There is a something I call Myself, or by another
form of expression, my mind, which I consider as distinct from these sensations, thoughts, &c.-a something which I conceive to be not the thoughts, but
the being that has the thoughts, and which I can conceive as existing for ever in a state of quiescence without any thoughts at all. But what this being is, although it is myself, I have no knowledge further than
the series of its states of consciousness." *  So of Matter or Body: " A body, according to the received doctrine of modern metaphysicians," says Mr. Mill, " may
be defined the external cause to which we ascribe our
sensations... The sensations are all of which I am directly conscious; but I consider them as produced by
something not only existing independently of my
will, but external to my bodily organs and to my
mind. This external something I call a Body.  It
may be asked, How came we to ascribe our sensations
to any external cause? and is there sufficient ground
for so ascribing them?2 It is known that there are
metaphysicians who have raised a controversy on this
* Logic: 1st Edit. vol. i. p. 82.
5*




106        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
point, maintaining the paradox that we are not warranted in referring our sensations to a cause such as
we understand by the word Body, or to any cause
whatever, unless, indeed, the First Cause..... A
fixed law of connexion, making the sensations occur
together, does not, say these philosophers, necessarily
require what is called a substrcatum to support them.
The conception of a substratum is but one of many
possible forms in which that connexion presents itself
to our imagination-a mode of, as it were, realizing
the idea. If there be such a substratum, suppose it
this instant annihilated by the flat of Omnipotence,
and let the sensations continue to occur in the same
order, and how would the substratum be missed? By
what signs should we be able to discover that its existence had terminated?  Should we not have as much
reason to believe that it still existed as we now have?
and, if we should not then be warranted in believing
it, how can we be so now? A body, therefore, according to these metaphysicians, is not anything intrinsically different from  the sensations which the
body is said to produce in us; it is, in short, a set
of sensations joined together according to a fixed
law.... These ingenious speculations have at no
time in the history of philosophy made many proselytes; but the controversies to which they have given
rise, and the doctrines which have been developed in




RECENT BRITISH PHMOSOPIY.         10t
the attempt to find a conclusive answer to them, have
been fruitful of important consequences to the Science
of Mind..... It was soon acknowledged by all who
reflected on the subject, that the existence of matter
could not be proved by extrinsic evidence. The
answer, therefore, now usually made to Berkeley and
his followers is, that the belief is intuitive-that mankind, in all ages, have felt themselves compelled, by a
necessity of their nature, to refer their sensations to an
external cause; that even those who deny it in theory
yield to the necessity in practice, and, in speech,
thought, and feeling do, equally with the vulgar, acknowledge their sensations to be the effects of something external to them.... But, though the extreme
doctrine of the Idealist metaphysicians, that objects
are nothing but our sensations and the laws which
connect them, has appeared to few subsequent thinkers to be worthy of assent, the only point of much
real importance is one on which these metaphysicians
are now very generally considered to have made out
their case-viz.: that all we know of objects is the sensations which they give us, and the order of the occurrence of these sensations..... There is not the
slightest reason for believing that what we call the
sensible qualities of an object are a type of anything
inherent in itself, or bearing any affinity to its own
nature. A cause does not, as such, resemble its ef



108    1 RECENT BRITISH PtILOSOP'HY.
fects; an east wind is not like the feeling of cold, nor:
is heat like the steam  of boiling water: why then
should matter resemble our sensations? why should
the inmost nature of fire or water resemble the impressions made by these objects upon our senses?
And, if not on the' principle of resemblance, on what
other principle' can the manner in which objects affect us through the senses afford us' any insight into
the inherent nature of these objects?  It may therefore safely be laid down as a truth, both obvious in
itself, and admitted by all whom it is at present necessary to take into consideration, that of the outward
world we know and can know absolutely nothing
except the sensations which we experience from it." *
Now, so far as these quotations indicate Mr Mill's
cosmological system, it is certainly not the XNcattral
R2ealism of Reid and Sir William Hamilton. But,
when we inquire with which of the other systems
Mr. Mill's views are to be identified, the atmosphere
does not seem so clear. There is evident,-indeed, a
broad general preference for the idealistic manner of
thought.  The sole cosmical certainty for us, Mr.
Mill avows, is a certain succession of ideas, or states
of consciousness; this is the one phenomenon which
we cannot transcend in knowlege, do what we will;
all else is faith, hypothesis, or inference. Now this,
* Logic: 1st Edit. vol. i. pp.'74-81.




RECENT BR3ITISH PHILOSOPIHY.      109
at first sight, looks like Pure Iceaism. It goes beyond even the Idealism  of Berkeley, which only
abolished Matter or Body: as an Independent cosmical factor, and retained Mind; and it approaches
the extreme Idealism of Hiume and Fichte, which,
by abrogating all knowledge of a substance of Mind
as well as all knowledge of a substance of 1Matter, left
nothing between one and Nihilism or Non-Substantition, save an act of ontological faith, which one
might experience or not, or wish to experience or not.
But Mr. Mill's language seems to show that, more willingly and easily than Humee, if not with such vehemence and passion as Fichte, he would allow as much of
ontological faith in lPhilosophy as would keep it from
the Nihilistic conception of the Cosmos as a mere baseless succession of ideas. True, all that we really know is
a succession of ideas or states of consciousness, and our
imagination either of a substance of Mind undergoing
these, or of an external world of Matter implicated in
some of them, may be purely illusive. But, as all
mankind proceed on the imagination, and can no
more shake themselves clear from it than they can
leap off their own shadows, Philosophy must risk the
illusion, especially as the character of order7liness in the
succession of ideas conveys to Philosophy itself (legitimately or illegitimately 2) a notion of ulterior law. In
short, some mystery, some hypothesis of an unknown,




110        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
must be allowed in Philosophy, and the question is,
how much? Allow the minimum, and we are brought
back to Pure Idealism, recovering itself from Nihilism, and positing in the Cosmos at least a something
nameable as Mind, an unknown something that feels
and thinks.  Mr. Mill is willing, however, to go
farther, and, always with the proviso that we are
talking in the dark, to allow another unknown something in the Cosmos, external to the mind, and which
is the determining cause of some of the mind's feelings. Accordingly he sums up thus: "As Body is
the mysterious something which excites the mind to
feel, so mind is the mysterious something which feels
and thinks."  Again, "As Body is the unsentient
cause to which we are naturally prompted to refer a
certain portion of our feelings, so Mind may be described as the sentient subject (in the German sense
of the term) of all feelings-that which has or feels
them. But of the nature of either body or mind,
further than the feelings which the former excites,
and which the latter experiences, we do not, according to the best existing doctrine, know any thing." *
Of Body, indeed, we may assume (so Mr. Mill has
already argued) that we know something negatively.
Whatever it is, it can hardly be, in any way or to
any degree, that which we are in the constant habit
* Logic: 1st Edit. i. pp. 81, 82.




RECENT BRITISH  PHILOSOPHY.                  111
of supposing it to be. When we speak of solidity,
impenetrability, size, figure, &c., as primary qualities
of bodies, and of colour, roughness, hardness, sourness, &c., as secondary qualities of the same bodies,
we but skeletonize an unknown and unknowable cause
in the form of some of its effects, and then clothe the
skeleton with a garment of others of its effects.  And
so, Mr. Mill's cosmological doctrine, as he seems willing that it should stand, after sufficient caveats and explanations, seems to be that of Constrzuctive IdealliJsm.
* Of attachment on Mr. Mill's part to the Jden!it;y-system, there is
no hint; and the only other of the six systems to which his views are
not adjusted in the text is Materialism. Now it is quite conceivable
that a Constructive Idealism such as has been described might resolve
itself scientifically into Materialismn. Might not Science, starting with
the conception of apresent Cosmos consisting of a sentient something
called Mind and an unsentient something else called Matter, and regarding both as apprehensible only in the successive states of the sentient something, reach the conclusion, through the manipulation of
these states themselves, that the unsentient is the more ancient of the
two, and that the sentient, which is thus finding out its own ancestry,
is but a development of the unsentient? Such a suicide of Constructive Idealism, or translation of itself into Materialism, is, as I have
hinted in a previous footnote, so far from impossible that it is the commonest of processes in the present state of Philosophy. The reason
why I note the fact again here is not that Mr. Mill is ever found forswearing his Idealism, but because the fact is interesting in connexion
with his great liking for the speculations of other philosophers who,
without denying that a succession of states of consciousness is the
sole known reality of the Cosmos, are yet conspicuous for the resoluteness with which they leave that contemplation behind, and assume a
material Cosmos of good thumping realities, mineral and other, as
having existed for ages before it had bred nerve or learnt any trick of
self-sentiency.




112        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
III. In respect of the Ontological Dif)erence.-So
far as we have gone, the result is that, compounding
the Psychological doctrine with the Cosmological in
the case of each of the two philosophers, and throwing out what alone seems to be doubtful in Mr. Mill's
case (to wit, whether under the latter doctrine he is a
Pure Idealist or only a Constructive Idealist), we may
define Sir William Hamilton's philosophy as a system
of Transcendental Natural -Realissm  or Dualistic
Transcendentalism, and Mr. Mill's as a system of
Emniri cal Idealism or Idealistic Emnpiricism. There
remains to be applied to each of tile philosophers,
however, the third of the traditional differencesthat which we have called the Ontological. Here, at
first sight, the two philosophers seem to meet and
shake hands. The agreement, however, even here, is
more apparent than real.
There are no portions of Sir William Hamilton's
writings better known than those in which he proclaimed his conviction of the utter impossibility of an
Ontology. The very first of his contributions to the
Edinburgh Review was his now famous Article " On
the Philosophy of the Unconditioned," criticising
more particularly Cousin's doctrine of the InfinitoAbsolute. In all his subsequent writings he assumes
this article as lying in the background, to be referred
to, if necessary, for the correct interpretation of what



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        13
ever new exposition'he may be engaged in; and on
several occasions- as, for example, in the eighth and
ninth of his Lectures on Metaphysics-he recurs to
the topic for a fresh treatment of it. The result has
been that there is no doctrine more strongly identified
at the present day with Sir William Hamilton's name
than the doctrine which he expressed most generally
by calling it " The Relativity of Human Knowledge."
Thousandfold as might be the differences of system among philosophers, and of vast importance as
might be not a few of these differences, yet all philosophers, Sir William Hamilton held, were bound, if
they really understood what they were talking about,
to agree in one proposition-to wit, that our knowledge is, and can be, only of the relative or phmlenomenal. This, which he called "the great axiom," he
asserted in many varieties of form and with many
varieties of illustration. " Omne qzuod cogneoscitur,"
he says, quoting with approbation the celebrated
maxim of Boethius, "non1 secundum, sui vinm, sed
sezcndcm cognzoseerntiun  poti&Cs comprehenditur facuctaWterm   " "All that is known is comprehended, not
according to the force of itself, but according rather
to the faculty of those knowing." Hence, not only is
human knowledge relative, but, even in its quality as
relative, it may be far inferior to such relative knowledge as might be attainable through an extension of




114        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
our faculties, or as may be even now in the possession
of beings with faculties more extended than ours.
Just as to a man who has been blind from his birth
the phsenomenal world or Cosmos of his conceptions
cannot be the same as that figured forth in the conceptions of his seeing fellow-creatures, but must lack
all those attributes which depend on the direct cooperation of Sight with the other senses, so, if a new
sense or two were added to the present normal number in man, that which is now the phaenomenal world
for all of us might, for all we know, burst into something amazingly wider and different in consequence
of the additional revelations through these new senses.
" The universe may be conceived as a polygon of
a thousand, or a hundred thousand sides or facetsand each of these sides or facets may be conceived as
representing one special mode of existence. Now,
of these thousand sides or modes all may be equally
essential, but three or four only may be turned towards
us or be analogous to our organs. One side or facet
of the Universe, as holding a relation to the organ of
sight, is the mode of luminous or visible existence;
another, as proportional to the organ of hearing, is the
mode of sonorous or audible existence; and so on." *
3ut, even were our organs or senses to be made conumerous with the modes of existence, our knowledge
* Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 142.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         115
would still be only of the phenomenal, though of a
phenomenal totality far more multiplex than the
present. IHad we faculties equal in number to all
the possible modes of existence, whether of mind or
matter, still would our knowledge of mind or matter
be only relative." * In every way, therefore, an Ontology, or knowledge of things in themselves, of Nonmena or Self-subsisting Actualities, as distinct from
Phaenomena, must be declared impossible. More expressly, in human Philosophy, must Ontology, or
speculation of the Absolute, be ab initio given up.
"As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly
call the conditioned) is the only possible object of
knowledge and of positive thought, thought necessarily supposes conditions.  To think is to condition; and
conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the
possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip his shadow, nor (by a more appropriate
simile) the eagle outsoar the atmosphere in which he
floats, and by which alone he may be supported,
so the mind cannot transcend that sphere of limitation
within and through which exclusively the possibility
of thought is realized." t  All Science, in short, is the
science of the phenomenal, or conditioned, or relative, and Philosophy is the science of this Science.
* Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 145.
jt Art. " Philosophy of the Unconditioned: " Discussions, p. 14.




116        RECENT tRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
In expounding so emphatically this great doctrine
of the Relativity of Knowledge, Sir William Hatmilton professed only to be bringing out into distinctness
a proposition which philosophers of all schools and
times, with hardly an exception, had announced or
assumed. "This is, indeed, a truth," he said, " in the
admission of which philosophers, in general, have
been singularly harmonious, and the praise that has
been lavished on Dr. Reid for this observation is
wholly unmerited. In fact, I am hardly aware of the
philosopher who has not proceeded on the supposition,
that there are few who have not explicitly enounced
the observation. It is only since Reid's death that
certain speculators have arisen who have obtained
celebrity by their attempt to found philosophy on an
immediate knowledge of the Absolute or lUnconditioned."   The speculators here referred to are the
post-Kantian philosophers of Germany, Schelling and
Hiegel, and their French disciples, more especially
Cousin. It is against the attempts of these modern
philosophers to establish an Ontology as a development or consummation of Philosophy, that Sir William's article " On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned " is from first to last directed. Cousin, as having made the most elaborate attempt to bring Ontology within the domain of reason, bears the brunt
*Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. I. pp. 138, 139




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       117
of the attack. Defining Cousin's opinion to be that
"the Unconditioned or Absolute is cognizable and
conceivable by consciousness and reflection, under relation, difference, and plurality," Sir William argues
that it is self-contradictory and in fact consists in calling Absolute that which is at the same time spoken
of in terms which are meaningless except as implying
relativity.  More briefly Schelling's opinion is set
aside-that opinion being thus defined: " The Unconditioned is cognizable, but not conceivable; it can be
known by a sinking back into identity with the Absolute, but is incomprehensible by consciousness and
reflection, which are only of the relative and the different." Of this theory of Schelling's, and of that
act of Intellectual Intuition by which he supposed the
cognition of the Absolute to be possible, Sir William
speaks all but derisively.  "Out of Lapluta or the
Empire," he says, "it would be idle to enter into an
articulate refutation of a theory which founds Philosophy on the annihilation of consciousness and the
identification of the unconscious philosopher with
God."  But even JKant, whose sobriety had kept him
far on this side of any such dreamy assertion, and one
of whose great services to the world had been that he
had most emphatically proclaimed or re-proclaimed
the proposition that all human knowledge can only be
of the Phomnomenal or Relative-even he, according




118        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
to Sir William, had inadvertently left in his Philosophy a stump of that Ontology of which he believed
himself to have cleared the rational world. Kant's
statement had been, according to Sir William's summary of it, that the Unconditioned or Absolute "is
not an object of knowledge, but its notion, as a regulative principle of the mind itself, is more than a5 mere
Wegation of the Conditioned."  In other words, though
the Supernatural, as an objective reality, was beyond
all cognisance or conception, and could be nothing
more to Philosophy than a name for Void Unknowableness, or the cessation of all power of apprehension
or predication, yet the psychological fact of a straining, in man's spirit, towards this vacuum, as if towards objects which might or might not be there, was
to have some allowance made for it in positive speculation. Not even this, however, would Sir William
allow; and accordingly, his own doctrine in respect
of the Philosophy of the Absolute outgoes even
Kant's. " The Unconditioned is incognizable and inconceivable, its notion being only negative of the conditioned, which last can alone be positively known or
conceived." *  Such, in contrast with the diverse
opinions of Kant, Schelling, and Cousin, is Sir William Hamilton's statement of his own opinion on the
question of the Absolute. To the Ontology of Plato's
* Art. " Philosophy of the Unconditioned:" Discussions," p. 12.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        119
philosophy, or of Spinoza's, or of the Oriental systems,
little reference is made in the course of the discussion.
How is Sir William  Hamilton's ontological doctrine, if we may so call a doctrine which simply repudiated Ontology, to be reconciled with those parts of
his Philosophy which we have had already before us
—. e. with the transcendentalism of his Psychological theory, and with the Natural Realism of his cosmological conception.  Here I am not sure but he
would have avoided certain chances of misapprehension if he had persistently employed some such distinct triplicity of terms, in describing the main divisions of philosophical inquiry, as that which we have
ventured to think desirable. Thus, at first sight, it
seems difficult to reconcile his strongly asserted principle that all our knowledge can only be of the relative or phenomenal, and can never reach substances or
things in themselves, with his resolute Natural Realism.
Has he not spoken, for example, of a direct, immediate presentative, or face-to-face knowledge of the external world of matter as given in every act of consciousness? Has he not even spoken of solidity, figure, size, and other so-called "primary qualities " of
matter, as being qualities to be attributed to natural
objects, considered in themselves, or in their own
proper nature, and as herein distinguishable from the
so-called " secondary " or " secundo-primary " qualities,




120        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
which have their origination more or less within the
sentiency?  Does he not here seem to imply that our,
knowledge of matter is, to a considerably large extent, real and not phenomenal-a knowledge of the
very thing itself? Sir William seems to have been
aware that there might be this apparent inconsistency
between those portions of his writings in which he expounded his disbelief in the possibility of an Ontology.
He several times incidentally guards himself by anticipation against the objection. Thus, "I have frequently asserted that in perception we are conscious of the
external object immediately and in itself. This is the
doctrine of Natural Realism.  But, in saying that a
thing is known in itself, I do not mean that this object is known in its absolute existence-that is, out
of relation to us. This is impossible; for our knowledge is only of the relative. To know a thing in itself or immediately is an expression I use merely in
contrast to the knowledge of a thing in a representation " or mediately," *  Perhaps it might have been
well if Sir William had more strongly and repeatedly
discriminated that sense of the phrase "knowledge of
a thing in itself" in which he maintained that we possess such knowledge, and that other sense of the
phrase in which he denied such knowledge to be possible. He might have done so by declaring that in
* Edition of Reid, p. 866, footnote.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        121
the former case he was speaking cosmoiogically, in the
latter ontologically. His meaning, at all events, may
be explained as follows: Cosmologically, or in respect
of that conception of the phaenomenal Cosmos which
is to be taken as the ultimate revelation of consciousness, I am  a Natural Realist; that is, I believe the
ultimate and universal fact of consciousness, as given
in every act of external perception, to be the antithesis of two independent but mutually-related factorsan Ego or Percipient, and a Non-Ego or Percept.
Firmly to distinguish  between these two, so that
neither may be merged in the other, I hold to be of
extreme importance in view of various philosophical
consequences. Now, though, on analysis, I find certain of the qualities popularly attributed to material
objects to be only affections of the sentient Ego somehow occasioned by the objects, yet there are others of
the qualities of matter-the so-called primary qualities-which I consider to belong really to the external
material objects apart from the perceiving mind. In
respect of these I say that we have a direct and inmediate knowledge of matter as it is in itself. But, in
talking so, I am still talking only cosmologically-i. e.
I am  only settling accounts between the two cosmical factors. - Vhen- I proceed to talk onrtologically, my
language must be different. From this point of view,
both the factors are phsenomenal; that antithesis of
6




122        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
the two which I hold to be revealed in every act of
perception is but a phkenomenon; consciousness itself
is but a phaenomenon; the Cosmos is a stupendous,
phaenomenon, with a character of duality.  By my
constitution I feel myself constrained to believe that
these phaenomena, are phenomenal of a Somewhat;
but, when you ask me of what they are phenomenal,
I can only say " of an Unknown."  Here I confront
an impenetrable mystery, for my knowledge is and
can be only of the relative. Thtis I who, talking cosmnologically, maintained that we have to some extent
a knowledge of matter "s as it is in itself," meaning
thereby only to partition rightly between the phaenomenal Percipient and the phaenomenal Percept,
must now, while talking ontologically, declare all
knowledge of BMind in itself, or of Matter in itself, or
of the cause of their phenomenal antithesis, to be equally impossible. Rightly to characterize the Phoenomenal is the business of philosophy, and a sufficiently
important and difficult business; but beyond the
Phenomenal all possible philosophy sums itself lip in
one word-mystery, incogitability, inconceivability,
nescience.
Such I believe to be a fair statement of Sir 5Williamn iamilton's ontological, or rather anti-ontological
doctrine, in connexion with his cosmological system
of Natural Realism. Without discussing objections




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       123
that may present themselves-the objection, for exa0mple, which some might feel, of the strangeness of
such a notion of the phsenomenal as would bind us to
think of Matter as a multiplex phsenomenon that
would persist the same in space, multiplex on its own
account, even were all created sentiency abolished to
which it could be phoenomenal-let us attend to Sir
William Hamilton's declarations of his views on questions of Theology.
Sir William HIamilton was a Theist, a Supernaturalist-no philosopher of modern times more strenuously, more passionately so. Not only did he answer
with a passionate affirmative the first question of all
Ontology,  18s there a Supernatural, or an Absolute
beyond the Phsenomenal, and on which the Phaenomenal depends?." he went on, not a whit the less vehemently because of his speculative doctrine of the
utter unknowableness of the Absolute, to assume for
himself, and to avow as assumed by him, certain definite beliefs as to this Absolute in relation to the Universe and Mankind. It might be improper to refer at
any length to what is known in this connexion of Sir
William Hamilton personally. Suffice it to declare
that this thinker of most severe and catholic reasonto whom all speculation was welcome if only it was
sincere and able, who defended philosophic scepticism
and wished there were more of it, who boldly upheld




124        RECENT BRITISH PHIILOSOPHY.
the fame of Hume as a good man and a great philosopher, and whose respect for the clergy was avowedly
far from great-was himself liable to fits of theistic
fervour such as the Church seldom hears of in a
modern bishop. There are writings of his also which
prove his interest, and something more than his
scholarly interest, in Christian Theology.  He found
noble men, and spirits with whom he could sympathize, in the old theologians, from Tertullian
and St. Augustine downwards. He had a special
admiration of Calvin, and he would have laughed
to scorn that wretched appreciation of this great
ecclesiastic which ignorance, namby-pambyism, and
the power of modern theology, have of late joined
to make current. But let us not go beyond his purely philosophical writings. Even there we shall find
expressions predicating, in Sir William's own name,
certain attributes of that ultra phenomenal Existence
of which he protests that, in the name of reason, nothing whatever can be predicated. To aver such an existence at all, to assume that the Phkenomenal Universe is not all that exists, is already the planting of
one huge predication in the region into which it was
declared the mood of predication could not rationally
go. It is the conversion of what was declared to be
a zero into a vast, if vague, positive. But the apparent contradiction does not stop here. "To suppose




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.          125
their falsehood," says Sir William in one place, where
he is speaking of these primary beliefs, or elements,
~or consciousness, for which, as a Transcendentalist in
Psychology, he contends, "is to suppose that we are
created capable of intelligence in order to be made the
victims of a delusion,-that God is a deceiver, and the
root of our nature a lie. But such a supposition, if
gratuitous, is manifestly  illegitimate."  Again,
speaking of the Constructive Idealists (called by him
the Cosmothetic Idealists), he says, "The Deity on
their hypothesis is a deceiver; for that hypothesis
assumes that our natural consciousness deludes us in
the belief that external objects are immediately, and
in themselves, perceived.  Either, therefore, maintaining the veracity of God, they must surrender their hypothesis; or, maintaining their hypothesis, they must
surrender the veracity of God." tI Nothing is more
characteristic of Sir William  Hamilton than the occurrence of such hot theistic phrases in his purely
speculative discussions. They never occur irrelevantly and certainly never in the form of those disgusting
petitiones pri3ncipii which are so rife in the argumentations of clerical and other writers, who in their viruzlent eagerness to blaspheme an opponent whom they
*e " On the Philosophy of Common Sense." Note A: Edition of
Reid, p. 743.
Ibid. p. 751.




126         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
cannot answer, clutch at the word Atheist and its cognates as a street blackguard does at stones or mud;
Their occurrence is very differently significant. It is;,
I think, nobly, and at the same time puzzlingly, significant. For are not these phrases most intensely and
definitely ontological, and has not Sir William  forsworn Ontology?  What is the explanation? How
can one be consistent who first maintains that nothing
can be predicated speculatively of the Absolute, and
then proceeds straightway not only to predicate existence of the Absolute, but to speak as if the human virtue of veracity must also be predicated of the same?
From Sir William here we have substantially the
same answer as from Kant, Fichte, and others. Facih
is the word that sums up the answer. "The sphere
of our belief," says Sir William Hamilton, " is much
more extensive than the sphere of our knowledge;
and therefore when I deny that the infinite can by
us be known, I am far from denying that by us it is,
must, and ought to be, believed." *  Now I am pretty
sure that I express the general feeling of all who are
acquainted with Sir William Hamilton's writings
when I say that, of all the gaps which they leave in
the interpretation of his entire system, there is none
which it would have been so interesting to see filled
* Letter to Mr. Henry Calderwood, appended to Lectures on
Metaphysics, vol. ii.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        127
up by himself as that which the above extract brings
to mind. A full exposition of Sir William Hlamilton's views of Faith in its connexion with Philosophy would have supplied the missing keystone to the
total arch. How would he have discriminated Belief from Knowledge?  How would he have distinguished between that faith in the Infinite the necessity and obligation of which he so strongly upheld and
either of those metaphysical doctrines which he disowned-Kant's supposition of " the notion of the Unconditioned as being, in its character of a regulative
principle of the mind itself, more than a mere negation of the Conditioned," or Schelling's doctrine of an
"intellectual intuition of the Absolute"  One can
divine, or infer from expositions of his disciples, what
might have been the nature of his replies; but the
absence of a full exposition firom himself is felt as a
serious blank. Here, in the shape of a passing note
on the word BELIEF or FAITH as one of the terms of the
philosophic vocabulary, is perhaps the most express
statement on the subject which he has left;-(BELIEF or FAITH (7rGVtf, Fides, Croyance, Foi, Glazdbe
&c.), simply or with one or other of the epithets, natural, primccry, instinctive, &c., and some other expressions of a similar import, as Conviction, Assent,
Tfrut, Adchesion, Holding for true or real, &c.
(1v1Yca-r6eoatlS, Assensus,.Fuerwahr-und-wirklichhcalten




128         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
&c.), have, though' not unobjectionable, found favour
with a great number of philosophers, as terms where,
by to designate the original warrants of cognition.
Among these may be mentioned Aristotle, Lucretius,
Alexander, Clement of Alexandria, Proclus, Algazel,
Luther, IHlume, Reid, lBeattie, Hemsterhuis, Kant,
Heidenreich, Fichte, Jacobi, Bouterweck, Kd5ppen,
Ancillon, Hermes, Biunde, Esser, Elvanich, &c., &c.
lNor can any valid objection be taken to the expression.  St. Austin accurately says,'We know what
rests upon reason; we believe what rests upon authority.' But reason itself must rest at last upon authority;
for the original data of reason do not rest on reason,
but are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority of what is beyond itself.  These data are, therefore, in rigid propriety, Beliefs or Trusts. Thus it is
that, in the last resort, we must, perforce, philosophically admit that belief is the primary condition of
reason, and not reason the ultimate ground of belief.
We are compelled to surrender the proud Intelige Ut
credas of Abelard, to content ourselves with the humble Crede ut intelligas of Anselm." *  The briefer
definition of Faith by the Apostle t would probably
have been accepted by Sir William. as conveying,
quite as unexceptionable as any words of his own, his
whole intended meaning: -"Now faith is the sub* Edition of Reid, p. 760.  f Heb. xi. 1-3.




RECENT B]RITISH PHILOSOPHY.         129
stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen (E7t 6~O 7ri-Srtg' i~XtO'toV6Ov V76'avracL, 7rpayjid[-wv
08eyXon ob P0oerotEv&ov). For by it the elders obtained
a good report. Through faith we understand that the
worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things
which are seen were not made of things which do
appear (el e-b TiO  bc Sativorveo'v v-r [73Xer6deva ye-yovvat)."
In respect of that difference among philosophers, therefore, which we have named the Ontological Difference, Sir William Hamilton may, on the
whole, be described as a philosopher who, while
denying speculatively in  the strongest terms the
possibility of an Ontology, was himself endowed in
an almost inordinate degree with the ontological feeling or passion.  Let us now turn to Mr. Mill.
Fortunately, while these pages have been passing
through the press, there has been published an essay
of Mr. Mill's, in which, while characterizing another
philosopher with whom he has a general and admiring sympathy, he has digested, in a more summary
and exact form than it would be easy for a reader of
his earlier works to do, his views on the metaphysical
questions at present concerning us.* I avail myself
the more readily of this essay, because, though M.
Comte is the philosopher criticised in it, the language
* Art., T7e Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (signed J. S.
M.), in the Westminster Review, April, 1865.
6*




130       PECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPItY.
in the passages which I shall quote is evidently adjusted to the state of the controversy with Sir William Hamilton: —Mr. Mill hardly likes Comte's terms
"Positive " and " Positivism " as names expressing
the character of his Philosophy. Thinking that the
essential principle of this philosophy is its thorough
adhesion to the Empirical or Experiential theory in
Psychology, as opposed to the theory of Transcendentalism, he hints that, in its subjective aspect, it
might be more intelligibly described as the Exzperiential Philosophy, or the Philosophy of Experientialism, and that in its objective aspect, the synonyms
for it might be the Phcenomenal Philosophy, or the
Philosophy of Phcenomenalism.  The fundamental
maxim of the Philosophy, at all events, is that all we
know or can know anything about is phsenomena.
" We have no knowledge of anything but Phsenomena; and our knowledge of phsenomena is relative,
not absolute. We know not the essence, nor the real
mode of production, of any fact, but only its relations
to other facts in the way of succession or of similitude. These relations are constant-that is, always
the same in the same circumstances. The constant
resemblances which link phsenomena together, and
the constant sequences which unite them  as antecedent and consequent, are termed their laws. The
laws of phsenomena are all we know respecting them.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       131
Their essential nature and their ultimate causes,
either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable
to us."  This conception of humnan knowledge, Mr.
]Mill goes on to say, does not belong originally to
Comte, or to any thinker in particular.  It has
been the growing conception of the scientific mind of
Europe from the time of Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo. These thinkers had it, but, almost inevitably
in their circumstances, not in its full clearness. "It
was, however, correctly apprehended by Newton.
But it was probably first conceived in its entire generality by Hume."  Hume, indeed, carried it to the
uttermost, "maintaining not merely that the only
causes of Phsenomena which can be known to us
are other phsenomena, their invariable antecedents,
but that there is no other kind of causes: cause, as
he interprets it, means invariable antecedent. This
is the only part of Hume's doctrine which was contested by his great adversary, Kant..... Among the
direct successors of HIume, the writer who has best
stated and defended Comte's fundamental doctrine is
Dr. Thomas Brown. The doctrine and spirit of
Brown's Philosophy are entirely Positivist, and no
better introduction to Positivism than the early
part of his Lectures has yet been produced.  Of
living thinkers we do not speak; but the same great
truth formed the groundwork. of all the speculative




132        REQENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
philosophy of Bentham, and pre-eminently of James
Mill. Sir William  HIamilton's famous doctrine of
the Relativity of Human Knowledge has guided
many to it, though we cannot credit Sir William
Htamilton himself with having understood the principle, or been willing to assent to it if he had."
Let us attend to the last sentence. Mr. Mill accepts Sir William Hamilton's doctrine that human
knowledge can only be of the Relative or Phsenomenal and not of the Absolute; but he holds this doctrine with a difference. With whcat difference? Here
again the habit of clearly distinguishing between the
cosmological part of a philosopher's creed and the ontological part will be found convenient. Sir William
Hamilton, as I have already explained, holds the ontological or anti-ontological doctrine of the Relativity
of Human Knowledge as it may be held by one who
is, cosmologically, a Natural Realist; Mr. Mill, if I
mistake not, holds the same doctrine as it may be held
by one who is, cosmologically, a Constructive Idealist. This seems confirmed by the fact that the philosophers whoml 3Mr. Mill cites as having, before Comte,
held the doctrine of Relativity in what he thinks
the true forin —to wit, Newton, Kant, Thomas Brown,
Bentham, and James Mill-'were all, like himself,
Constructive Idealists. For Hume, it will be noted,
is represented by Mr. Mill as standing by himself in




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHIY.        133
a peculiar position, far out beyond this group, in respect of his form  of the Relativity Doctrine; and
Hume was, cosmologically, a Nihilist or Non-Substantialist. Evidently, therefore, the clue to the difference of Mr.' Mifill's form of the Relativity Doctrine
from  Sir William  Hamilton's is to be found in the
prior difference of their cosmological conceptions.
The matter may be easily brought out. Sir William Hamilton and IMr. Mill agree in the statement
that all our knowledge is of the phenomenal only, but
with a prior difference of opinion as to what is to be
considered the true sphere or central fact of the lPhenomenal.  Sir William  considers that the central
fact of the Phaenomenal is a dualism or antithesis of
two series of phaenomena, given immediately in consciousness, the one constituting, if we let ourselves
think a substance or substratum  for it, the Ego or
Mind, the other, if we give ourselves a similar liberty,
the External World or Matter.  The whole conception of the phsenomenal Cosmos is the development,
by memory, imagination, and science, of this radical
belief of the consciousness. It is this Phsenomenal
Cosmos that is to be figured as hung, so far as speculation is concerned, in an infinity of the Unknowable;
it is round the perimeter of this Phsenomenal Cosmos
that the ontological beats everlastingly, and we seem
to hear the roar of its obdurate silence. With Mr.




134         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Mill, on the other hand, the radical fact of the phaenomenal is not a dualism at all, but simply a stream,
a flow, a succession of feelings, sensations, or states of
consciousness. Unwind the wrappages of the Cosmos
so as to get at the one physical fact of which they are
all self-swathings, and to this and this alone we must
come.  All knowledge, all belief, all known existence, has been generated out of this succession of
sensations or states of consciousness, registering
its own interrelations of recurrence, co-existence,
and  similitude.  The  paramount fact in the result certainly is the universal persuasion of men of
their own existence as beings distinct from an external
world around them. But this is a leap beyond the
original datum. Of a substance or substratum of
Mind, or a substance or substratum of Matter, underlying the phenomenal series of feelings or sensations
- nay even of a phenomenon Mind per se or a phenomenon Matter per se-we do, and can, know nothing. In speaking of such substrcata, or such phmenomena per se, and much more in averring their ultimate real or even phsenomenal distinctness, we make
a postulate or assumption, which, so far as we know,
may be quite illusive. The radical datum of speculative Philosophy is not "Cogito," nor is it ~"E st cogitabile," but only" Sunt cogitationes." iHere, if I do not
misrepresent Mr. Mill, he accepts, for the moment at




REOENXT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        135
least, Hume's utmost sceptical analysis of existence.
JBut he is not by any means anxious, as we have seen,
for any purpose of philosophy, to remain in IIume's
Non-substantialism or Nihilism. He is willing to be
a substantialist so far as to allow the existence of a
substance called M/find, which is the seat or subject of
the phmenomenal cogitatioines, provided always it is
granted that this substance is unknown and unknowable, and that, though a substance as regards the cogitationes which are then thought of as its modifications,
it is itself only a phaelomenon.  This brings him up
to Pure Idealism, so that he may exchange the proposition " Srunt cogitationes " for the proposition "C ogito," or, with reference to the multiplicity of phoenomenal sentiencies, " Cogitamnnt," or "Sunt cogitantes."
But he is willing, as we have farther seen, to go beyond even this, and, by allowing not only a thinking
or feeling subject, but also an independent external
cause of sensations in such a subject (always an unknown cause, however, and only phmnomenal even
were it known), to rank himself, with the majority of
philosophers, among the Constructive Idealists. On
the whole, this is the system which he practically prefers.  Sunt cogitationes  itmmo, si placet, sunt cogitantes; sunt etiaam fortasse cogitabilia extra cogitantes; Ahce tamen cogitabilia, si quomodo extaant, ni/il
certe cogitationibus ipsis consimilia sunt existimcanda




136        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
-so we may formulize the creed of Constructive
Idealism as entertained by Mr. Mill. Now, at whichever point of the creed we stop, it is evident that the
phsenomenal totality which it orbs forth as hung in an
unknown and unknowable infinite is not the same as
the phaenomenal totality in Sir William I-amilton's
system of Natural Realism. If we stop at the cogitationes, we plunge at once from them, as from a
curdling consistency of phsenomenal thought-phantasms into Ontology, or (Ontology being impossible)
into Nescience. If we go as far as the cogitantes, we
have, as the phenomenal Cosmos, Minds or Thinking
Beings, and all the evolution of their thoughts, and
from that comparative solidity we take the same
plunge into Nescience. If we add to the phsenomenal world, as Mr. Mill is willing to do, the cogita6ilia extra cogitantes, we so far complicate the vision
to which we belong, and have an option of another
phenomenal point from which to plunge into Nescience. But, even on this last supposition-accompanied as it is by the injunction not to think that the
external objects or causes of sensation which act upon
consciousness are at all such as consciousness represents them-there is still a difference between the
radical phenomenal totality of Constructive Idealism
and that of NTatural Realism. The Cosmos, in the
scheme of the Constructive Idealists, grapples the Ab



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       137
solute, if we may so say, by one available anchor
(Mind seeking its cause), and would grapple it by another if it knew where to find that other (the unknown
external cause of sensation, for which also, were it
realized, a cause would have to be sought); the Cosmos, in the scheme of the Natural Realist, grapples
the Absolute by two anchors, considered equally
available —Mind, and that Material Nature which
]Mind knows face to face as phsenomenally existing
out of itself.
Seeing it is confessed by both parties that the
grappling is hopeless-that this is a case in which all
anchors and all chains melt the moment they touch
the element into which they would insert themselves
-the difference may seem: unimportant.  But it did
not seem unimportant to Sir William Hamilton; nor
does it to Mr. Mill. The essential battle between
these two philosophers, indeed, reduces itself to the
battle cosmological-to the controversy as to what
the phsenomenal totality readily is and consists of.
As to the impossibility of transcending the phaenomenal speculatively they both agree. And yet with
this slpeculative agreement there is a 8entimental diversity.
Newton, Kant, Thomas Brown, Bentham, James
Mill, and Comte are collectively cited by Mr. John
Stuart Mill as philosophers who had realized the doc



138        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
trine of the Relativity of Knowledge in what he considers its correct form-that is, as I interpret, had appended the doctrine to a cosmological system of Constructive Idealism, and not to any such cosmological
system as the Hamiltonian one of Natural Realism.
Now it requires but the vaguest recollection of these
philosophers severally to see that, though thus
grouped together as all in the right speculatively on
the Relativity question, they differed enormously in
respect of the state of sentiment with which they confronted the UInknowability to which they confessed in
common.  Newton was a Theist and Theologian;
Kant was a Theist; Thomas Brown was a Theist;
of the others it may certainly be said that, though
they never denied real or Noumenal existence or
causes beyond the Phsenomenal world, they were not
theologically inclined. Here, then, is a difference,
and one of immense moment practically, among some
who have been cited as all in the right speculatively
on the great doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge,
or the impossibility of an Ontology. How is this?
Is it that they were not all equally in the right in their
apprehension of the doctrine, that there adhered to
some of them  inconsistencies which they had not
got rid of, chips of the ancient egg-shell?  This is
not the explanation which Mr. Mill suggests.  His
explanation is that Theism, and Theology, under cer



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       139
tain conditions, still are, and ought to be allowed to
remain, " open questions" in the most advanced
school of Philosophy. Referring to M1. Comte, and to
his avowed opinion that, when properly converted to
the positive mode of thought,'" mankind would cease
to refer the constitution of Nature to an intelligent
will, or to believe at all in a Creator and Supreme
Governor of the world," Mr. Mill takes occasion to
protest that this was unnecessarily encumbering the
true doctrine of Positivism, or the Relativity of
Knowledge, with a religious prejudice. "It is one of
M. Comte's mistakes," he says, " that he never allows
of open questions."  And he thus states his own views
of the whole matter:-" The positive mode of thought
is not necessarily a denial of the supernatural; it
merely throws back that question to the origin of
things. If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very conditions of the case, was supernatural; the laws of nature cannot account for their
origin. The Positive philosopher is free to form his
opinion on this subject according to the weight he attaches to the analogies which are called marks of design, and to the general traditions of the human race.
The value of these evidences is indeed a question for
Positive philosophy, but it is not one on which Positive philosophers must necessarily be agreed....
Positive philosophy maintains that, within the exist



140         RECENT BRITIMS  PHILOSOPHY.
ing order of the Universe, or rather of the part of it
known to us, the direct determining cause of every
phsenomenon is not supernatural but natural. It is
compatible with this to believe that the universe was
created and even that it is continuously governed by
an Intelligence, provided we admit that the intelligent
Governor adheres to fixed laws, which are only modified or counteracted by other laws of the same dispensation, and are never either capriciously or providentially departed from."  This is as explicit a statement
as is to be found in Mr. Mill's writings of his notion
of the amount of ontological sentiment that may properly mingle with philosophy; nor do I find any ontological passion in his own procedure as a philosopher
that is at all in excess of this.  Herein, I repeat,
there is a contrast between him and Sir William HIamilton, even where, at first sight, they seem most nearly to agree.
We may now end this chapter. The result, historically, is that, during the greater portion of the
last thirty years, the most prominent rival leaders in
formal or systematic British speculation have been two
philosophers, one of whom may be described as a
Transcendental Natural Realist, forswearing speculative Ontology, but with much of the ontological passion in his temper, and the other as an Empirical




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       141
Idealist, also repudiating Ontology, but doing so with
ithe ease of one in whom the ontological feeling was
at any rate suppressed or languid.  Transcendental
Natural Realism in Hamilton, announcing itself as
anti-ontological, but with strong theological sympathies, and Empirical Constructive Idealism in Mill,
also announcing itself as anti-ontological, but consenting to leave the main theological questions open on certain pretty strict conditions-such, it seems to me,
were the two philosophical Angels that began to contend formally for the soul of IBritain about thirty years
ago, and that are still contending for as much of it as
has not in the meantime transported itself beyond the
reach of either. Whether any has done so, and how
much, and where it has gone, are matters that remain
to be seen.




142        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER III.
EFFECTS OF RECENT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTIONS ON
PHILOSOPHY.
IHowEvER earnestly we may contend for such a
notion of Philosophy as shall keep up the tradition of
it as something more than Science, yet the perpetual
liability of Philosophy to modifications at the hands
of Science is a fact obvious to all. Not a new scientific discovery can be made, not a new scientific conception can get abroad, but it exercises a disturbing
influence on the previous system of thought, antiquating something, disintegrating something, compelling
some re-adjustment of the parts to each other, some
trepidation of the axis of the whole. Sometimes the
action is almost revolutionary. What a derangement
in men's ideas about everything whatsoever, what a
compulsion to new modes of thinking and to new
habits of speech, must have been caused by the propagation of the Copernican Astronomy! What a




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        143
wrench to all one's habits of thought, to be taught
that the little ball which carries us rotates on itself,
and is one of a small company of celestial bodies that
perform their periodical wanderings round the sun,
in lieu of the older astronomical faith, according to
which the earth was fixed in the centre, and the limitless azure with its fires was one vast spectacular
sphere, composed of ten successive and independent
spherical transparencies, made to wheel round the
earth diurnally for her solitary pleasure!  Man's
thoughts, even about himself and his destinies, could
not but be changed in some respects by this compulsion of his imagination to a totally new way of fancying physical immensity and our earth's share in its
proceedings.  True, the great spiritualities and moralities that the human race held within it, and that
constituted a million-fold more truly the real substance of its life than all its accompanying theories
and imaginations of things physical-these survived
intact and uninterrupted.  We read the old poets
now, the old historians, the old moralists, with no acquired sense that they, or their themes, or their teachings at the deepest, are appreciably removed from us
because of their pre-Copernicanism. It hardly occurs
to us to remember that they zwere pre-Copernicans.
What does it matter, in respect of the power over our
hearts and spirits as we read, what astronomical sys



144          RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
temrn we may fancy we detect in the Book of Job?
And yet not the less true is it that even the spiritualities and moralities that constitute the essence of philosophy are tremulous to our imaginations of physical
nature, and are ever re-adjusting the expressions of
themselves to the new  conceptions which Science
makes imperative. It would be possible to point out
in our greatest old poets, including Shakespeare, not
only pervading peculiarities of phraseology, but even
fashions of speculative thought, which might be debited to their pre-Copernicanism.*  And so throughout the whole history, and especially the recent history, of Philosophy. It is not every day, indeed, nor
every century, that there occurs such a vast compulsory shifting of the very axis of men's conceptions of
the physical universe as that which our ancestors had
so reluctantly to submit to only a century or two ago.
But every generation, every year brings with it a
quantum of new scientific conceptions, new scientific
truths.  They creep in upon us on all sides.  Is Philosophy to stand in the midst of them haughtily and
superciliously, taking no notice?  She cannot do so
Although Copernicus died in 1543, it was not till the end of the
seventeenth century that Copernicanism was the established belief even
of educated European minds. If it was the Roman Inquisition that
condemned Galileo, there were probably fewer persons at the time in
Britain than in Italy who thought Galileo's opinion right. We are
apt now to forget this.




iECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       145
and live. Whether she knows it or not, these are her
appointed food. She must eat them up or perish.
They do not constitute her vitality, any more than the
food that men eat constitutes the life that is in them;
but, just as men, in order merely to continue alive,
must refresh themselves continually with food, so Philosophy, that she may not fall down emaciated and
dead by the wayside, must not only not hold aloof from
Science, but must regard what Science brings as her
daily and delicious nutriment. Whatever definition
of Philosophy we adopt-whether we call it simply
and beautifully with Plato in one passage " a meditation of Death," or adopt some of the more laboured
definitions that have been given expressly to indicate
its relations to Science-it is equally certain that
a philosophy that should be out of accord with anyascertained scientific truth or tendency to truth, or
that should not in some efficient manner harmonize
for the reason all the conceptions and informations of
contemporary science, would be of no use for educated
intelligences, and would exist as a refuge for others
only by sufferance.  Shall Philosophy pretend to
regulate the human spirit, and not know what is passing within it-to supervise and direct man's thinkings, and not know what they are?  We can all
admire, indeed, and understand, the feeling  of
Wordsworth when he says:
7




146         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
" Great God  I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn,
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
We can feel with the poet in this passionate outburst.
But neecd we be suckled in an "outworn creed" to
hope for these glorious glimpses? Those mysterious
sights and sounds that took the lightsome Greek
with such quick awe and ravishment by the shore of
some ancient bit of blue iEgean bay, rise they not
yet, are they not to be heard yet, the same Proteus,
the same horn of Triton, by the shore of a greyer
and grander ocean? And what though the glimpses
should not all be pleasant? What though  they
should make some of us, for a moment or so, consciously more forlorn! Is there not good in such sorrow itself?
In no age so conspicuously as in our own has
there been a crowding in of new scientific conceptions of all kinds to exercise a perturbing influence
on Speculative Philosophy.  They have come in
almost too fast for Philosophy's powers of reception.
She has visibly reeled amid their shocks, and has not
yet recovered her equilibrium. Within those years
alone which we are engaged in surveying there have




RECENT BRITISH PI-IILOSOPHY.     147
been developments of native British science, not to
speak of influxes of scientific ideas, hints, and probabilities from without, in the midst of which British
Philosophy has looked about her scared and bewildered, and has felt that some of her oldest statements
about herself, and some of the most important terms
in her vocabulary, require re-explication. I think
that I can even mark the precise year 1848 as a
point whence the appearance of an unusual amount
of unsteadying thought may be dated-as if, in that
year of simultaneous European irritability, not only
were the nations agitated politically, as the newspapers saw, but conceptions of an intellectual kind
that had long been forming themselves underneath in
the depths were shaken up to the surface in scientific
journals and books. There are several vital points
on which no one can now think, even were he receiving four thousand a year for doing so, as he might
very creditably have thought seventeen years ago.
There have been during that period, in consequence
of revelations by scientific research in this direction
and in that, some most notable enlargements of our
views of physical nature and of history-enlargements even to the breaking down of what had formerly been a wall in the minds of most, and the substitution on that side of a sheer vista of open space.
But there is no need of dating from 1848, or from




148         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
any other year in particular. In all that we have
recently seen of the kind there has been but the pro-.
longation of an action from  Science upon Philosophy that had been going on for a considerable time
before 1848. It had been going on before British
Philosophy had assumed what I will now venture to
call its penultimate shape, or opposition of shapes-to
wit, that shape, or opposition of shapes, which it began to assume about thirty years ago, when  iamilton and Mill presented themselves as the likeliest
chiefs of formally opposed systems.
It is nine years since Sir William Hamilton died;
and, with hardly an exception, all his philosophical
remains, as they are now before the world, had left
his pen ten years before that-or more than nineteen
years ago.* Assume that there was-as his openmindedness and his insatiable appetite for all kinds
of knowledge make it likely that there was-the
most perfect adjustment in his ofn mind of his philosophical system at that time to the surrounding medium of the best and widest- scientific conceptions.
Still, is it not possible that, in the lapse of time, his
system, or some portion of it, may have lost its bite
upon the British mind?  May it not be different
questions that the intellect of the age is now refer* His Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, though posthumously
published, had been in manuscript substantially as they are before 1838.




RIECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.              149
ring to Philosophy, or, if the same questions, may not
the forms of them  be changed? As regards Mr. M~iill
the case is, happily, different. He is still among us
to hear what new  questions are asked, or what new
forms old questions assume, and to further Philosophy
by his answers. His Philosophy is not yet completed. Indeed, it has been the characteristic of his
writings hitherto that they rather avow and assume
the metaphysical principles of his system, and proceed to rich and interesting applications of them,
than fundamentally discuss them. Hence, up to the
present moment, and waiting what to-morrow  may
bring forth,* I am still inclined to hold that the state
of British Philosophy, as represented by Mlill in contrast with  Hamilton, in  respect of the  questions
selected in last chapter as most important, cannot be
considered the ultimate state, but only the penultimate.  Neither Hamilton's writings, nor Mill's, nor
both together, present these questions in  the exact
form in which, so far as I see, it would be now necessary to put them.
* Written in anticipation of Mr. Mill's Examination of Sir William
HamiltoW's Philosophy, which had been announced, but had not appeared, when this part of the text of these pages was in type. What
reference to this work seems necessary for the purposes of these
pages will be made farther on. My references to Mr. Mill in the present and previous parts of the text are to be considered independent of
that work, or such as, after my first perusal of that work, I have
thought fit to let stand, as true for the period referred to.




150        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHIIY
Let ns take the state of the controversy between
the two opposed psychological theories of Empiricism
and Transcendentalism, as it is exhibited in Mill's
writings, and Ilamilton's. I do not think that what
is exhibited there is the exact present state of the controversy. Believing that Transcendentalism and Empiricism are still locked in each other's grips and
struggling with each other as of old, I do not think
that they are now gripping each other and struggling
precisely as we see them in the writings of iamilton
and Mill. Nay, more, it seems to me that, of the two
writers, Mill is, in this respect, the farther back.
Whatever Mr. Mill may think of the value to general philosophy of Berkeley's prosecution of Locke's
doctrine into Idealism, and of Hume's more exhaustive thinking out of the same into universal Scepticism,
he seems, like previous English thinkers, to have regarded these early metaphysical demonstrations in
the path of Lockism only as air-clearing explosions,
after which there was nothing to do but to pursue the
path all the same. lCe it, as Hume has shown, that
all that Man is presented with is a mere vision or
phaenomenal aggregate of mental co-existences and sequences floating in a void, still, as this is the only universe of Knowledge that man has got, and as it is
mightily real for Azim, he must have a philosophy for
it!. Now, all the more, rather than all the less, for




REGENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        151
this shutting up of the human mind conclusively
in a phaenomenal world of co-existences and sequences with which to have commerce, that philosophy must be Lockism! Experience is the only rule
for such a Universe at any rate, whatever might be
the rule for others! In this spirit, and with very much
this appreciation of IH]ume's speculative services to
Philosophy, Hartley and Priestley proceeded straightforward from Locke. Now  Mr. Mill seems, as regards his fundamental psychological theory, to proceed straight from Locke too. IHe speaks with esteem of Hartley and Priestley, and more especially
of Hartley. ( "With respect," he says, "to those of
Locke's doctrines which are properly metaplhysical,
however the sceptical part of them may have been
followed up by others, and carried beyond the point at
which he stopped, the only one of his successors who
attempted and achieved any considerable improvement and extension of the analytical part, and thereby added anything to the explanation of the human
mind on Locke's principles, was Hartley." *  This
certainly implies a belief on Mr. Mill's part that
Locke's principle of experience was susceptible of farther scientific development, and that  Hartley contributed to that development by bringing his physiological method to the aid of psychology-i. e. by his studye Essay on Coleridge: Dissertations, vol. i.




152         RECENT BRITISH PHILOOPHY.
ing the radical mental phoenomenon, sensation, in and
through its physical equivalent or concomitant of
nerve-vibration. But BiMr. M4/ill, for himself, seems to
have abandoned that method, with only his good
wishes. He seems, for himself, rather to avoid that
mode of speech or of thought respecting the mind
which would refer the origin of our ideas, habits,
knowledge, and beliefs to infinite numbers of past
nerve-vibrations treasured up in the organism, there
associated in all varieties of simple and compound
combination, and recoverable on stimulus or demand.
He prefers, in the main, the older language of the
pure psychologists, who speak of Experience simply as
Experience, and begin their cognizance of mental actions when they may be observed as phkenomena, occurring, so to speak, within an inner chamber called
Mind or Consciousness, through whatever nervous
labyrinths they came there, or by whatever nervous
mechanism they were generated. I am not sure but
there is involved in this, among other things, a protest
on Mr. Mill's part against the resolution of Empiricism into Sensationalism. If he would let the word
Empiricism itself stand, as, though objectionable, yet
so far an established name in the Schools for Philosophy on Locke's principle, he would certainly disown
Sensationalism as an odious nickname even for this
Empiricism. Thus he rejects, almost with loathing,




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         153
the philosophy of Condillac and his school. He considers that philosophy an unwarrantable degradation
of the philosophy of Locke, and believes that it did
more than anything else to bring Locke's name into
disrepute. In what form, he asks, did Locke's philosophy present itself to European critics towards the
end of the last century and the beginning of the present? "In that," he says, "of the shallowest set of
doctrines which perhaps were ever passed off upon a
cultivated age as a complete psychological systemthe ideology of Condillac and his school; a system
which affected to revolve all the phaenomena of the
human mind into sensation by a process which eventually consisted in merely calling  all states of mind,
however heterogeneous, by that name; a philosophy
now acknowledged to consist solely of a set of verbal
generalizations, explaining nothing, distinguishing
nothing, leading to nothing." "  From this passage it
appears that, with whatever kindliness MIr. Mill,
when it was written, looked upon the English Hartley's psychological inroad upon psychology, he viewed
with anything but liking the French Condillac's extended reduction of Psychology under Physiology by
the generalization that all our thoughts, powers, and
feelings are but transformed sensation.
The upshot then is that Mr. Mill's statement of
* Essay on Coleridge, 1840, reprinted in Mill's fissertations.
7*




1.54    R(ECENT BRITISHI PHILOSOPHY.
his funimdamental psychological theory does not differ
much from Locke's.  "We see no ground for believing," he says,'" 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."    And again, " Not only what
man knows, but what he can conceive, depends upon
what he has experienced" —where MIr. Mill must
mean " wholly depends." t  Other passages might be
cited, but, so far as I remember, with no essential
change in the wording of the principle.
Now it seems to me that Mr. Mill, starting with
his principle in a form so little differing in appearance firom Locke's, has to run the gauntlet over again
of all those objections which were levelled at Locke's,
and from which it certainly did not escape unscathed.
In the end (he will be told, whether justly or not)
his " Experience" qmust mean " Sensation " and nothing more; for any allowance for the mind's consciousness of its proceedings with the matter given it in
sensation, whether under Locke's name of Reflection,
or any other, is, it will be reiterated, either a surrender of the principle, or an addition which turns out
* Essay on Coleridge.  t Logic, II. 109, 110.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.          155
meaningless, inasmuch as blank conscious retention of
a deposit adds nothing to the deposit. Then, farther,
this reduction of the mind aboriginally to a pure passivity to sensation, a mere receiving-surface for matter of experience, is liable to all the old objections
afresh. Leibnitz again starts up with his irrefragable
" n8isi intellectus ipse."  The mind must be more than
a pure passivity or receiving-surface; it must be an
organism of some kind, treating what is put upon it or
into it in some manner or manners dependent on its
structure.  The d priori nature of the intellectus ipse
must, from  the first, be a co-efficient with matter of
experience in the production of thought or knowledge.
On the whole, Condillac's theory, which Mr. Mill
speaks of with so much dislike, would seem at this
point to be the most natural resting-ground for Mr.
Mill himself as we can conceive him so pursued by
Transcendentalist critics.  Condillac does furnish a
way of looking at the thing by which the d priori
element, the co-efficiency of anything in the shape of
an endowed intelletus i7se, might be reduced to a
minimulm. All the so-called feelings and powers of the
mind are, according to him, conceivable as so much
past sensation transformed, indurated, or concreted,
by repetition and associationm into faculty or organ.
Give him, therefore, the smallest speck of sentiency to
begin with, and the rest would require but suitable




156        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
food for this sentiency, and time for its accumulated
sensations to transform  themselves into the various
habits or faculties of organized mind.  But here
arises Kant to confront even Condillac, and to maintain that his theory is but a delusive resting-ground.
Sentiency itselfi Kant declares, involves an c priori
element; there can be no sentiency, any more than
there can be thinking or intellection, except according to innate forms, or laws, of the sentient subject.
Nothing is gained then by going with Condillac. In
for a pennyworth of the d priori element, you may as
well go in for a pound's worth! And so Kant, not
because he desired any such hap-hazard plunge into
Transcendentalism in mere despite, but really because
he aimed at as rigid an economy as possible of that a
priori element, some considerable amount of which
seemed requisite to account for the facts of Experience,
hung up his famous definition or schema of the Mind
of Man, as a something feeling in Space and Time,
thinking according to Quantity, Quality, Relation, and
Mlodality, and carrying in it intuitions of such suprasensuous objects as God, the Soul, and the Universe.
Kant was cognisant of all that the Physiology of his
time had done or proposed to do for the relief or help
of Psychology; and, though his own method was the
psychological, he would doubtless have been willing
enough, for some purposes, to think of Man after the




RECENT BRITISH PHIIOSOPHY.      157
manner of the physiologists.  " Give me an organism," he might have said, "having the potencies and
functions enumerated in my Schema, and, whatever
is the look of it, or however it came to be, I will call
that Man or Human Reason." But it was a Soul, a
Spirituality, an Invisibility, an unbounded dynamical Something, possessing these potencies and functions, and not a Brain and Body, that he recommended Philosophy to think of as the real organism.
The question at the end of last century thus really
was whether Kant's notion of Mind or Condillac's
should prevail, whether ]Man should be regarded by
Philosophy psychologically or physiologically, whether the Anima should be studied in itself as heretofore or only through the Animal. Rightly or wrongly, the latter-the study of mind only physiologically,
of }Man as an animal organism-was that to which
Lockism, partly in England itself, and more generally
in France, had led. The reduction of Locke's'" experience" simply to "sensations " had fastened attention on sensibility as the radical or initial property of
the Anrima, out of the- action of which all else might
be shown to result as product or accretion; and sensibility was precisely that in the Animnc the study of
which, if undertaken on its account, would have conmpelled attention to the bodily and especially the nervous organization of the Animal. But, in truth, it




158        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPIHY
was not so muLch that Psychology had called in Physiology; it was that Physiology came in upon Psychology in its own natural course as a conquering power..
Physiology had come into conscious existence as a
science. All things that had life were her objects.
Looking at all other animals, and connecting the phaenomena of life in them unmistakeably with definite organic arrangements and actions of these arrangements,
was she to refrain from extending her researches and
comparisons to Man, simply because he was called
MIan a Really converted into a Psychology in respect
of some portions of her investigations of the lower animals, she merged, in her study of Man, at that extreme, into what had always been considered Psychology proper. Nay, it was only over modesty, or hypocrisy, if she did not proclaim what was the fact, that
the special Psychology then particularly in demand
among French psychologists themselves-to wit, the
science of the phaenomena of sensibility-it was for
her to furnish.  "For the sake of economy of labour," the Physiologists might then have said to the
Psychologists, "let there be a separation of our jurisdictions. Leave lus in possession of this circular
fringe or frontier of sensibility, which you have been
so particularly cultivating, but which belongs now to
us, and which we promise to do our best with. /Yot
retire into the interior, whither we will duly send




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHIY.     159
you as much authentic material as we can for your
especially psychological problem. That problem is,
as you yourselves own, the transformation of sensation
into feeling, habit, faculty, desire, will, conscience,
and the like; a very beautiful problem it is, and
worthy of your known abilities; do your very best
with it. We will not absolutely swear never to
follow you into the interior and undertake that problem too; but, in the meantime, we do not know the
extent of our resources-so, till you hear from us
again, let the circular fringe outside be Physiology,
and the concentric interior Psychology."
Matters, I say, were in this state between the
lineal heirs of Locke's Psychology in Europe, or
those who assume to be such, and the pioneers of a
noble new science of Animal Physiology, the hour of
whose appearance in the world had arrived. There
were in Europe, to be sure, the German Philosophy of Kant, and, in a much smaller and more local
way of business, the Scottish Philosophy of Reid.
But both of these, though they were not indifierent
to the advances of Physiology for reasons affecting
themselves, rather stood aloof from the negotiations
going on, with such an excess of power on one side,
between Physiology and what they considered their
fallen and bankrupt relative. She had brought the
crisis upon herself, and must get through it as she




160        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
could! HIence, for a time, what continued Psychology we see inl France, and all that portion of the
continent which obeyed French influence, is not so
much Psychology in the old sense as Physiology
carrying on the business in the name of Psychology.
In the hands of CABANIS (1757-1808) and others,
Condillac's Ideology became more and more merged
in Physiology, until it was a positive relief to all concerned to see the pretension of a distinction between
Physiology and Psychology put an end to, and the
affairs of the expiring firm finally wound up. This
was done by the physiologist GALL (1757-1828),
whose system of Cranioscopy, publishing itself under
the name of Phrenology, took such rapid possession
of every country, and had, and still has, such recommendations for the popular intelligence everywhere
as a science of Mind made easy. Gall's real merits,
it is now acknowledged by those physiologists who
retain least of his system, were very great. He gave
a stimulus to researches in the anatomy and physiology of the brain; and some of his leading conclusions were of provisional, if not of permanent, value.
At all events, Phrenology, the influence of which
was sufficiently powerful among ourselves, gave the
coup, de grace to the lingering remnant of what had
once been Locke's Philosophy in France.
The Philosophy that offered itself at this moment




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.      161
to fill the vacancy, and to satisfy any reawakened
desires of the French mind which Phrenology or
Physiology at large might not be meeting, was one
which grounded its. claims expressly on its repudiation of the essential principle of Lockism in all its
forms back to Locke himself and beyond. We have
all heard of that Philosophy-the Modern "Spiritualism" or "' Eclecticism " of France. It began to be
heard of towards the end of the First Empire, and it
was at its most brilliant epoch in the reign of LouisPhilippe. M. ROYER-CoLLARD, the father of- the new
School (1763 —1845), avowedly drew his ideas from the
Scottish Philosophy of Reid, and professed to import
that philosophy into France in a form adapted to the
mind of the nation as corrupted and debilitated by its
course of Condillac and Cabanis. Fresh elements
were added by M. MAINE-DE-BIRAN (1766 —1824),
Counsi (nat. 1792), and JOIFFROY (1796-1842), nntil
at length there was formed the system of views, compounded of Scottish psychology, fine native French
speculations, and an overwhelming intermixture of
ideas from the German Philosophy of Kant and his
successors, of which Cousin continued to be the acknowledged head.
The School of French Scotto-Germanism had certainly an energetic life, and its place in French History is a marked one. Apparently, however, it rather




162        RECENT B3RITISH PHILOSOPHY.
floated in the middle of the nation, as a splendid factitious philosophy of a few associated minds, than expressed the real workings going on at large in French
thought. Around it and underneath it, we can now
see, the real French mind, still full of speculative
life, but no longer detained by a Psychology as before, and having plenty of time after all the necessary
attention to Phrenology or to Physiology generally,
was tumbling about in all sorts of speculations as to
the construction of Society and the theory of Politics.
1" Satan finds some mischief still for un-psychological
hands to do," is the phrase in which the prejudice of
some would express its opinion of the cause and drift
of these speculations of an unusual order. But a more
sympathetic criticism  will recognise in such phenomena of the French intellectual world as SaintSimonianism and Fourierism not only facts pregnant
of much that was to come, but also the instinctive perception of Philosophy where her work lay if pure
Psychology were really obsolete or were to be overpassed. And this new notion of Philosophy respecting her future work found, in a man utterly out of the
school of Cousin, and whose training had been in
Saint-Simonianism and in all the sciences from MI3athematics to Physiology, a most competent exponent.
All the world has heard of AUGUSTE COMTE (1797
-1857). And what was Comte's proclamation? It




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       163
was that what had hitherto been known as Empiricism
was to transmute itself for ever into Positivisn or the
Positive PAzilosophy, the principle of which was to be
the utter rejection both of Theology and of Metaphysics, not only as fruitless, but as absolutely outgrown
modes of thinking, and the exclusive study of positive
~physical laws in all departments with a special view
to generalisations that might bear on the social wellbeing. Arranging the sciences in this order —iathematics, Astronomy, General Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology-he announced Sociology or the
Social Science as that ultimate and all-absorbing science of the world which it had been reserved for him
to describe, name, and inaugurate. Philosophy in future was to be simply Sociology; which, however, implied a study of all the preceding five sciences in their
social bearings. Such was his own Cours de Phdlosophie Positive, published in 1830-42. It was a series
of treatises on the methods and generalities of Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology
(i. e. Vegetable and Animal Physiology), ending in a
bulkier treatise on the Science of History and Politics.
He gave no separate place whatever to, Psychology or
the Science of Mind. He nipped it into nothing between the two great sciences of Biology and Sociology. He did this deliberately, and made his doing
so a characteristic merit of his system. Whatever of




164        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
study or speculation respecting Man was not.provided
for, and did not really find its only possible gratification, in Sociology, or the science of men's actions in
society, could only offer itself as that fragment or
highest reach of Biology which took account of the
phenomena and functions of nerve and brain in the
human subject. Thought, radically, of all kinds, was
cerebration; and only as cerebration could it be hopefully studied, except as it translated itself into the
grander tide of social feeling and activity.
Thus, at last, Kantism was confronted with its fully
developed European antagonist in Comtism. Previous physiological psychologists, including phrenologists, had generally shrunk from the extreme to which
their opponents said they were committed. They
had kept up the time-honoured distinction between
Mind and Body; they had used language implying
a recognition of some unknown Anima, or vital principle, concealed behind the animal organism; some
of them had been even anxious to vindicate their belief in the immateriality or transcendental nature of
this principle. But Comte ended all that shilly-shallying. Mind, he said, is the name for the functions
of Brain and Nerve; Mind is Brain and Nerve.
This destroyed, that ceases. You may fancy Mind or
Consciousnesss, if you like, as an inner chamber, in
which thoughts come and go like phantoms, or as a




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        165
vast transparent space, without roof, without walls,
without bounds, in which the very stars and celestial
systems seem to wheel and make Pythagorean music;
but that very fancy, I tell you, is the whimsical result
of the arrangements and actions of an intricate fleshand-blood organism of definite size and form. You
may call mind a Spirituality, an Invisibility, a Dynamnical Something, if you like. A Dynamical Something it certainly is; an Invisibility, in a sense, it is,
but much as the power of a galvanic pile is an invisibility; but a Spirituality, as I know you to have understood that word, it is not, and never was.-Thus, I
say, was Kantism at last confronted with its direct
European antagonist.
INow the Transcendentalism of Sir William Hamilton is a Transcendentalism which had adjusted itself, to its author's own satisfaction at least, with all
that had turned up in this long course of conflicting
speculation, as far, at any rate, as to IKant, his immediate German successors, and the allied school of
Cousin.  He had not, I thinlk, attended so much to
Comte as he would have done had he foreseen the extent to which Comtism was to diffuse itself out of
France. But he had attended closely to the movements of the physiological psychologists prior to their
change of name into Phrenologists, and he had ventured his neck into the camp of the Phrenologists




166        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
themselves that he might spy out their strength or
their weakness.  His Transcendentalism, therefore,
was in a state of formation fit, as he conceived, to
meet the enemy's latest line of battle. It is in this
respect that Mr. MIill's Empiricism, as it is to be gathered from those of his writings mentioned in our conspectus, does not seem to me to be equally adjusted
to the most recent exigencies of the question. That
Mr. Mill was likely to have been as intimately acquainted as any of his countrymen with the history
and varieties of philosophical opinion in the different
nations of Europe, from Locke's time downwards, may
be at once assumed. In extent and minuteness of acquaintance with French thought, at least, he can
have had few competitors. Was it not he that introduced Comte, now some three-and-twenty years ago,
to this country, and so opened up, in the Englishspeaking part of the world, a wider realm for that extraordinary French thinker than was prophesied by
any recognition he was receiving in France a But,
while it would be preposterous to imagine that Mr.
Mill had not, in his own mind, disposed his Empiricism in accordance with the exact state of the ground
and the likelihoods of the battle-that he had not
seen even to its outposts and pickets-it must be confessed, I think, that he kept his dispositions secret.
British Empiricism, as commanded by him, did not




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       167
seem to have itself so well in hand, or to know the
ground so well, as did British Transcendentalism,
commanded by Hamilton.
Thus, was it not always, or generally, the preKantian forms of Transcendentalism that Mr. Mill attacked-those forms which, asserting the doctrine of
innate or a priori elements of knowledge, usually produced a number of uncouth-looking propositions, expressing the private convictions, or hereditary and
professional tenets, of some individual or class, and
called then the necessary beliefs of mankind? But,
in doing so, was he not attacking fortresses evacuated
by the enemy long ago, and left, if with anything in
them, only with victuals and a guard of pensioners 
It was the Kantian doctrine of d priori " forms "of the very structure of the mind as a co-efficient a
priori in the production of Knowledge-that had become the real position of Transcendentalism. IHow
did Mr. Mill propose to attack this position a One
observed in him not so much an indisposition to attack it as a seeming non-apprehension of its existence
or whereabouts. If there was one thing that was
missed more than any other throughout Mill's writings by those who would impartially see it but between him and the Transcendentalists, it was an adequate recognition and appreciation of their all-important distinction between "Form" and " Matter."




168       RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.'
All the more because Mr. Mill was bound by his principles not to accept the distinction, but to war it
down, one would have liked to see him stating it to
himself, and keeping it before him, in the exact meaning given to it by his opponents.
But it was not only in the mode and direction of
his outgoings against Transcendentalism that one
missed satisfactory assurance that Mr. Mill had the exact state of the controversy in his view. When one
looked again at his own position, so little changed in
appearance since Locke's time, one could not see its
superior tenability in the new conditions of the campaign.
In protesting against Comte's abolition of Psychology, as an intermediate science between Biology
and Sociology, MLIr. Mill did what it was perfectly
competent for him to do, even while generously introducing Comte, and certifying to Englishmen the
great importance and value of Comte's main system
of speculation. By doing so Mir. Mill consulted the
best interests of whatever might be common between
his own philosophy and Comte's. He even supplied
a deficiency in Comtism which must have been felt
by Comtists themselves, though the master was resolute that it was no deficiency. It was quite competent for Mr. Mill to maintain, as he did so interestingly in his Logic, that there might still be, and




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        169
ought to be, a science which, assuming the genesis of
all the phaenomena of Consciousness in an organism,
should watch these phoenomena on their own account
as flitting through an imagined hall or chamber of
Consciousness, should register their co-existences and
sequences, and should arrive in the inductive way at
generalizations of the laws of mind. And not only
was it competent for him to do this; it was consistent
also with a certain fine anxiety, which he had already
shown, that what he believed to be Truth should
never waive her rights to any power she might fairly
possess over men's feelings of the becoming, the venerable, the grand, or the beautiful. We have seen
his repugnance to the incessant driving-up, by Condillac and his school, of all the feelings and powers
of mind into transformed sensation. This was, he
said, essentially only to ignore all the multiplicity
and variety of the mind's states and faculties, and to
call all of them by the name of lowest and least
agreeable associations. Was that so mighty a service
to Philosophy? If there were candour in it, was it
not only such candour as we meet with in men whose
notions of being truthful is that it is to be as brutally
offensive as possible?  Because a rose or a lily may
truly enough be spoken of as earth transformed, is
that any reason for never saying rose, or lily, or stalk,
or calyx? Is not the rosiness of the rose as lovely,
8




T70        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
hangs not the lily as whitely graceful, for him who
knows them to be resolvable as for him  who does
not?  And so, we doubt not, Mr. Mill felt when he
refused to let Psychology be nipped out of existence,
as Comte proposed, between a Biology and a Sociology. No good could be got by it, but much the reverse! Why give up such words as Soul, Spirit,
Heart, Conscience, Love, with all their noble associations?  Transcendentalists were too apt already to
assume that they alone had a theoretical right to
these words, and to the esteem and veneration engendered by them. As if, forsooth, the full rosiness even
of this rose of roses, the impassioned Soul of M1Van,
could not be known to the Empiricist! Now, as MI.
Comte agreed with all this-none more so; none
with a richer retention, in his own case, of phrases
from the vocabulary of popular and chivalrous emnotion-why, by the obstinate omission of a special
Science of Mind, give the Transcendentalists a cause
of triumph. Was it such a stroke into the citadel of
Truth to insist on translating thought into cerebration   WVhy not speak of thought, too, like other
people, and show that Empiricism has as high and
various a cognisance of all that is called thought as
Transcendentalism can have?
Still the real question recurs —What is MIind to
be called on the last analysis of it? What does the




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        171
science of the rose arrive at ultimately as the beginning, principle, or root of its utmost rosiness? IHIad
not the rose itself a start given it d priori in a certain
germn, a potentiality of being a rose and nothing else?
Could the rose be fabricated out of the mere experience of a preceding nothing in any set of conditions?
Why, in such a case, the emergence, should a flower
emerge at all, of a rose rather than a lily or any other
flower? The immediate answer to these questions we
can all divine. Well, is it the same answer that will
be given by the Empiricist if we push him to a precise explication of what he means when he declares
that there is not a particle of d priori composition in
the mind of Man? When Mr. Mill says that " there
is not 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 than Experience," what does he mean? He, of course, allows
that, if we consider a full-grown individual man acting or deliberating at any particular moment, we do
find in him an immense deal that, with reference to
that moment, is decidedly of d priori origin. The
man carries in him all his prior experience concreted
and organized into knowledge, habit, tendency, faculty, character; and it is with the strength and according to the forms and ideas of this peculiar dpriori
mass of endowment that he apprehends and deals with




172        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
the conditions of the new moment. Of course, therefore, in the statement that there is no d priori idea, or
feeling or power in the human mind, it is intended
that there shall be a regress to some point which shall
be taken as the commencement of the human mind.
But what shall be taken as that point? Shall a point
be taken for each man individually, and shall it be
when he began to exist? Shall it be maintained that
every man, intellectually and morally, is wholly built
up of his own experience from that point onward, and
that, with reference to his individual life as a whole,
there is nothing in his mind of ai priori derivation?
This would be to render it impossible to conceive why
he should have existed as a man at all. That which
did not start as some d priori potentiality of being a
man and nothing else might as easily have been anything else, or have remained nothing. Or, if we were
to try to suppose an a priori potentiality of being a
man without any farther d priori outfit to be one
kind of man rather than another (which, however,
would yield the point), would not this be to deny heredity, the connexion of each individual physiologically with the past, the transmission of qualities?
But, differ as people may as to the relative importance
of these two things to a man's character-his inherited
capability, and the education given him by circumstances-few, worth taking account of, now deny that




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        173
there is in every man an inherited element. Comte
certainly did not deny it. The Phrenologists resolutely asserted it, and offered their system  as the
means of taking account of transmitted qualities in
the business of education. Our regress, therefore, in
order to reach the point where Empiricism begins its
reckoning, must be farther back yet. Let it be said
that there is something of a _priori or ante-natal derivation in each mind, but that, as this may be referred
to past experience in the persons of parents and other
ancestors, the principle of the all-sufficiency of experience is not abandoned. Shall the human race then
be taken as a whole, and shall the allegation be that
as regards Mlan or Humanity in the generalized sense,
no idea, or feeling, or power is d priori, but all consists merely of organized and diversely-distributed
Experience? But for a certain haziness in the language used in the controversy-the signification of the
word " Man " alternating without warning between
some single individual thought of and Humanity at
large-we should probably have known that this was
meant, and recent Empiricists would have escaped
being charged with a form of their thesis which the
farthest-sighted of them never would have undertaken
to maintain.
If, however, up to this point, recent British Tran-l
scendentalism seems to have been more careful than




174:     - RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
recent British Empiricism to conform its enunciations
of itself to the new conceptions which Science was
bringing in, and to assert its entire durability in the
midst of these conceptions, we now reach a point beyond which both Transcendentalism and Empiricism
are seen as if carried out to sea, and equally swimming for their lives in strange waters.
The influx upon Philosophy of new and disorganizing scientific conceptions has never been greater
than during the seventeen years since 1848. Scientific conceptions unknown to the physiologists of the
earlier part of this century, unknown to the phrenologists, and not to be found even in the Coulrs de PhilosoepAeei Postive of Mi. Comte, —scientific conceptions,
I say, till recently unheard of, or existing only in the
form of certain vague drifts and conjectures of the
scientific mind-have of late years poured in upon us
in full flood. Dykes have been burst; boundaries removed; we hardly know the old landmarks. Now,
upon none of our previous modes of thought, whether
among philosophers or among people at large, has the
aggregate influence of these new conceptions been
greater than precisely upon that notion of Man or
Humanity as a whole over which, as we have said,
there might have been a general opinion among the
bystanders that the battle of Empiricism and Transcendentalism might at last be fought out. Lo! ere




RECENT BRITISII PHILOSOPIHY.      175
the battle could be begun, the very notion over which
it was to be fought is dissolved, agitated out of definite shape, or rolled away, on one side of it, into anl
edgeless mist! No flag-staff, we are now told, can we
plant at any one spot, however far back, in earthly
time, and say that at that point Humanity is to be
considered as beginning-that all before was a world
prehuman, but all after is a history with gMan in it.
In the first place, what of all those recent speculations as to the Antiquity of the Human Species?
It is not for me here to discuss these speculations, or
even to enumerate them in their mutual relations;
but to be speaking of Recent British Philosophy, and
not to recognise the vast question of Science so raised
as bearing upon British Philosophy, and as compelling her in some way or other to new explications
of herself, would be a piece of hypocritical cowardliness. How our popular system of Chronology is
faring, or may ultimately fare, at the hands of the
new Archseologists, let Time (which is the party
principally concerned) itself determine. It will fare
as Truth would have it, and no otherwise. But it is
more than the question of human chronology that is
now in agitation. Behind that question as to the
Antiquity of the Hluman Species lies the question as
to the Origin of all Species, as to the place and connexions of Man in the entire scheme of Animated




176        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Nature in our planet. Raised long ago in all varieties of ways by naturalists whose particular theories
are exploded, this question has been raised again, and
notably among ourselves, in forms that have brought
our scientific chiefs into earnest debate, and gathered
almost the whole population round them as spectators. The issue here too it is not for me to forecast.
But observe how, if the views so recently announced
should become general in any modification of them,
Condillac's resolution of all human thought, feeling,
belief, or faculty, into transformed sensation reappears in the world with its scope enlarged. Humanity itself then shades off by indefinite gradations into
preceding forms of life. It is not at any particular
point, however far back, assumed as the beginning of
human history, that Empiricism need then abandon the
battle, from the impossibility of accounting empirically for the then incipient organism, however poor
and wretched it was. That organism itself, with all
its stock of powers, was still, Empiricism might say,
only transformed or concreted experience.  Seas,
ages, meons of experience had preceded it, whose
essence was conserved and elaborated in its structure; and specimens of the intermediate organisms
through which this one had been reached, and also
the wrecks and shapes of myriads of others, lay
strewn about, showing the measureless energy of




RECENT BRITISII PHILOSOPHY.       17
Nature, and the enormous struggle of sentient inventiveness which she had carried in her bosom, during
periods anterior to the farthest ken of Man. And so,
on and on, bursting the Vertebrate in the way, bursting type after type, Imagination, growing dizzier and
dizzier in her ascent through an animated vagueness
of she knows not what, pursues and still pursues that
ideal of a by-past Eternity, at which Reason, following in her train, can take his stand and say, "Here
we may stop; here experience begins; nothing here
is d priori."  Utterly in vain!  Whither goes the
last phantasy of Science, still holding by the principle
of continuity, transformation out of prior elements,
the resolution of what is into what wvas? Whither
but beyond conceivable sentiency itself on our Earth,
nay beyond aught of a slush of vegetation conceivable
as preceding sentiency, on through theories of a
sheerly mineral geology, to alight at last on the steaming crust of a desolate planet of molten rotundity,
itself the convolved shred of what was once a spacefilling nebula a Here, from sheer fatigue, the imagination does rest for the present; here, if anywhere,
it seems possible to whisper to oneself a faint persuasion as if one need not think of anything apriori to
such a milk of thinness. Suppose the last word of
Science then to be that all that exists is transformed
nebula. With a thousand-fold more energy at such a
8*




178        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
last word in general knowledge than at Condillac's
last word in psychological knowledge may /IMr. Mill
utter his protest. Is it such a mighty thing, such a
stroke of universal explanation, simply to gather up
the world and all its glories and to call them "transformed nebula? "  No; but the particular question is
as to the ultimate resting-place of that theory of Experience which Mr. lMill himself holds. If water is
oxygen and hydrogen, why should we fear to say
so? We want to trace Experience to its fountain-head.
It seems to me, I repeat, that by the recent crowding in of such new scientific conceptions there has
been a disturbance of the relations of recent British
Empiricism as represented hitherto in Mill and recent
British Transcendentalism  as thrown into form by
Hamilton. Neither system seems to present its leading principle bent as one would like to see it into the
curves and junctures of the most anxious thought of
our time. Possibly Mr. Mill's system, from its comparative abstinence hitherto from the attempt to do so
-from its being so much more the rich forthgoing of
a philosophy the principles of which are avowed than
a metaphysical wrestle for these principles-will have
less difficulty in shaping itself to what it may recognize as the new requirements. It is by metagphysical
de fciency that it falls short of such a system of more
developed empiricism as one can conceive offering it



RECENT BRITISH PHOILSOPHY.       179
self in the midst of these requirements. On the other
hand, from the very elaborateness and exactness of the
metaphysical part of Hamilton's Philosophy, from its
consisting so peculiarly of a system of Metaphysics,
it is possible that the complaint against it may be
that of positive incompn aibility at many points with
present requirements. One can conceive a system of
Transcendentalism that should be provided with answers to some questions, different from those which
sufficed for Hamilton ere yet the questions had taken
their present shape. Might not that Kantian scheme
of the Mind of Man, for example, which represents it
as a complex organism of so many ad priori forms,
neither more nor fewer, encounter now-a-days a kind
of opposition that could not have been ready for it
when it was first promulgated? Might not Science,
in one of her new moods, object that it isolates Man
as the last term of a series from all the precedingnay, that it gives an account of Man fixed down, as it
were, for inspection and analysis, at one moment (two
or three thousand years long perhaps, but still a moment) of his own nominal existence? Is the organism
itself stable? May not the very constituting forms
of human thought have increased themselves, or
changed perceptibly by a touch here and there, even
within historic time, and may not the best present
list that could be given of these forms be inapplicable




180        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
to Man in the fuiture?  So I can conceive Science interrogating Transcendentalism, and perhaps explaining her meaning by means of a series of human crania
chronologically arranged; and I do not think that
such replies as Transcendentalism could give would
suggest themselves easily out of Hamilton.
Always it is necessary, as I explained in the last
chapter, to supplement any notion we may have
formed of a system of Philosophy from a consideration of the Psychological Theory which it avows,
by an independent look  at the system in reference to its ruling Cosmological Conception.  NTot
only have philosophers, as I there explained, been divided, psychologically, into the two great schools of
EMPInIcIsTs and TRANSCENDENTALISTS; they have been
distributed, in farther recognition of the varying Cosmological Conceptions in which either Empiricism or
Transcendentalism may be found housed (and not the
less really housed because sometimes perhaps inconsistently), into such classes as NiAihlists,.iatericlists, Natural Realists, Constructive Idealsts, Pure
Idealists, and believers in Absolute Identity. In the
view of this classification, I said, Sir William Hamilton was to be ranked, by his own profession, in that
class of Natural Realists whose representatives among
philosophers have yet been few, while Mr. Mill, as I




RECENT BRITISH PHHMOSOPHY.      181
thought, might be ranked, with the great majority of
philosophers hitherto, in the class of Constructive
Idealists. Now, here also, I go on to say, it appears
to me that the influx of recent scientific conceptions
has disturbed the equilibrium between the systems of
the two philosophers, or, if the fulcrum or middle
point has remained the same, has occasioned a shedding off of much of British thought from that point in
both directions towards the extremes.
Is it not precisely in the form of an alteration, or
of alterations, of the cosmological conceptions that
had served for us before, that the recent abundance
of new scientific teachings and revelations has most
visibly taken effect?  What is that battle of Faith
now going on among us, and painfully exercising so
many minds, but a struggle between the expanded
sort of cosmological conception which Science has
seemed to be making imperative on the imaginations
of us all and the little heap of propositions we have
heretofore guarded so fondly at the centre as the true
epitome to the reason of the whole physical vast of
things? And what expanded sort of cosmological conception does Science seem to have been making imperative? We have just been speaking of it. In running back the difference of the two psychological
theories to the extreme point to which Science
seemed to be driving it up, we ended in a tumult of




182         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Cosmology.  Whither had we run ourselves back.
Why —and this only because there seemed a defiance
of any conceivable going farther-to a universal
Nebula!  Let rhythm  re-snggest what prose is too
shame-faced to repeat:" Our hour is now: Erst, space was nebulous;
It whirled, and in the whirl the luminous milk
Broke out in rifts and curdled into orbsWhirled and still curdled, till the azure rifts
Severed and shored vast systems, all of orbs.
Each orb has had its history. For ours,
It blazed and steamed, cooled and contracted, till,
Tired of mere vapouring within the grasp
Of ruthless condensation, it assumed
Its present form, proportions, magnitudeOur tidy ball, axled eight thousand miles."
And so, on and on, Geology taking up the wondrous
tale, and navigating our ball and furbishing it, as she
only knows how, through the boundless series of ages
of her possession of it, till at length, not so very long
ago, History meets her emerging into a glimmering
light, and, the ball somehow having bred or been covered with populations of human beings, some of whom
had made great advances, and formed civilizations,
and taught themselves to read and write and think of
high matters, we see at last a Greek Herodotus walking
musingly round the margin of the Mediterranean, and




RECENT BRISTISH PHILOSOPHY.       183
collecting those legends of the past and those scraps
of information  respecting manners, customs, and
monuments, for which we bless him and think of him
with love! Thenceforward till now the voyage has
been in a more familiar sea, and all has been simpler
sailing.
Instead of trying, by farther description, and by
involving each of the more important recent speculations of science in its proper place and measure, to
body forth the cosmological Image which is becoming
prevalent in educated minds, let me despatch the matter more swiftly by saying that any change or expansion of the cosmological Image that has recently
taken place seems tt be the result of a synthesis of
three notions, each having its origin in scientific research:
(1) There is the notion of Evolution, as a fact or
law holding universally throughout existence. It is
the notion that every existing state has grown entirely
out of an immediately preceding state, has been
evolved out of that state by using up all its elements
or constituents. I need not stay to illustrate the notion. It is now tolerably familiar to most. A crude
form of the notion existed long ago, and still figures,
with a quantity of haze around it, in the word Progress. But, though Progress is a very good word, and
may still most usefully be kept in service as express



184        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
ing that advance from a worse state of things to a
better which is the sort of evolution to be preferred and
striven for, yet, for the general meaning now in view,
Progress, both from its excess and its deficiency, is not
nearly so good a word as its later substitute. Evolution, accordingly, has become the common word; it is
more and more showing itself in our literature, and
carrying the exact notion it expresses along with it.
And the result of the diffusion of this notion, and of
the exercise of it in the minds that have received it,
has been that more men have been accustomed to
thin/c back, as it were, all the heterogeneous universe
which we now behold, including our human society
in the heart of it, through its preceding series of states
making a complete rendition of all the contents of
each state into the body of its predecessor, still in the
direction of that simplest and homogeneous unity out
of which all may be conceived as evolved. Observe,
in this very statement of the notion of Evolution, the
implied sub-notion that the course or method of Evolution is the gradual presentation of what was once
simple and homogeneous in states more and more complex and heterogeneous. A name has been given to
this sub-notion too. It has been called Diferentiation.
(2) There is a notion which has not come into
such distinct recognition as to have received a special
name, but the existence and working of which in




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       185
many minds may certainly be detected, and which is
hinted at in many current forms of speculation.  I
will call it the notion of Interplanetary, or even Interstellar, Reciprocity. Imperceptibly, by the action
of many suggestions from different quarters, men have
of late contracted or recovered a habit of interplanetary recollectiveness in their thoughts about thingsa habit of consciously extending their regards to the
other bodies of our solar system, and even to other sidereal systems, and feeling as if somehow they were
not to go for nothing in the calculation of our
Earth's interests and fortunes. Not of course the sort
of interplanetary recollectiveness involved in the old
dream of Astrology, during the prevalence of which
dream men did, with an intensity which we seldom
realize, though iistory would be a fool to forget it,
bring down the high heavens into their being and
carry the very stars as golden bees in their bonnets.
It is not that we are becoming Guy M[annerings in
ruined towers and again casting horoscopes. Nor is
the habit of thought dependent on any continuance
or revival of the old controversy as to the Plurality of
Worlds. We are compelled to interplanetary recollectiveness in quite new ways. Seeing how we have
conquered our little Earth physically, and brought it
thoroughly into grasp with telegraphs and railroads,
it has even been a whimsy of some minds that we




186        RECENT JBRITISTH PHILOSOPJrY.
might begin to foresee a time when terrestrial work
alone would not suffice for the activity of the developed race of Earth's sons, and, in answer to their passionate longings, Nature might be bound to furnish
them an outlet of enterprise in interplanetary connexions. But, such mere whimsies apart, very stringent
teachings of real science are compelling to what may
be called an interplanetary habit of consciousness.
Those extraordinary recent revelations, by spectrumanalysis, as to the constitution of thle Sun and of other
celestial bodies, are they the curiosities merely of
chemical speculation. No; the general thought of
man drinks them  in, and is different, with them,
through a thousand correspondences, from what it
would have been without them. Or, again, has no
action of a vital kind been exerted upon general
thought by those marvellous calculations, founded on
the doctrine of the Correlation of Forces, as to probable endurance of that heat of the sun on which Science finds that all the movements, all the actions, all
the life of our Earth and the rest of the solar system
depend, and of which it views them as but conversions? I remember, indeed, that, when one of our
most distinguished scientific men put forth a popular
paper on the age of the Sun's Heat, stating the probability that in so many hundred millions of years the
whole stock of heat would be exhausted; and we




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        187
or our posterity should have to take the consequences, an English newspaper seriously objected to
the publishing of such things, on the ground that, as
the catastrophe was so far off, it could concern neither
man nor beast to think about it. Here was an instance of a kind of pig-headedness, or indifference to
ideas, which possess to a disastrous extent the current
literature of Britain, and would move to indignation
if it were not so comical. As if any man into whose
mind this idea of the exhaustibility of the Sun's
Heat, and consequently of the force energizing our
system, had once entered, could ever think a thought
about anything whatsoever that should not, in shape
and colour, be influenced by that idea? In short, just
as Science has made general, or is beginning to make
general, by her teachings, the notion of the evolution
of all the present cosmical variety and complexity of
things from some vast indistinct beginning, so, by some
of her late teachings, she has been persuading men to
embrace in their regards all parts of the present complexity as still vibrating together, and to think of
planets and stars and all starry systems, despite their
enormous interspaces, as glittering dispersed in one
entanglement.
(3) Distinct from either the notion of the past
evolution of all things physical from some one homogeneous beginning, or from the notion of their present




188        RECENT BRITIStI P ILOSOPlY.
inter-entanglement in all their places throughout the
purlieus of Immensity, as still holding from  that
beginning by the threads of its mazy outrush-distinct from both these notions, but completing them
and rounding them off towards the future, is the
notion of the tendency of all things to ultimctte acnd
universcal collapse. M. Comte, if I remember rightly,
has an inkling of this speculation in one of its particular forms. Anticipating for the human race an
almost indefinite career of farther development on
this Earth, thinking humanity yet not near midway
of the course of its mighty collective life, he nevertheless considers himself bound to announce it as an
inevitable conclusion of strict science, that even this
collective life of Humanity cannot go on foreverthat there must come a period, however far distant,
when all the elements of the collective organism of
Humanity shall have been used up or brought into
equilibrium, and when consequently the organism,
like any other, must begin to decay. Some day,
unless for a reserve of interferences of which we can
foresee nothing, our Earth will be carrying not its
present freight of nations, with their civilizations,
governments, agricultures, literatures, and libraries,
but only the unrecognisable wrecks of what had once
been such, crawling over its surface, and degenerating, through stages of meaner and meaner vitality,




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        189
back into shapelessness and extinction. But this
prognostication of IM. Comte's is as nothing compared
with the prognostications to which Science has been
led by the same principle. One might suppose, in
considering M. Comte's anticipation, the coming-in,
ere the period arrived for its fulfilment, of such a
reserve of interferences, now unimaginable, as should
hand on }Man and his belongings, together with the
tradition of our forsaken planet, into some wider
mode of existence. But it is the collapse or windingdown of the whole solar system that recent Science,
conjecturing onwards through time, has been prognosticating as inevitable in the distance. By a process which has been named the Equilibration of
Forces, and which is slowly going on, it seems to be
foreseen that a period will come when all the energy
locked up in the solar system, and sustaining whatever of motion or life there is in it, will be exhausted,
when the vivid play of its actions and interactions
shall cease, and all its parts through all their present
variousness will be stiffened or resolved, as regards
each other, in a defunct and featureless community
of rest and death. Nor is this all. Speculation dares
to go with her mathematics beyond the bounds of the
solar system itself, and, though professing to grope
here in a region the possibilities of which transcend
her accustomed grasp and make it falter and tremble,




190        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
yet sees no other end but that all the immeasurable
entanglement of all the starry systems shall also run
itself together at last in an indistinguishable equilibrium of ruin, as beads or fleeces of oily substance
hung in some gauze-work would trickle together in
burning tears at the touch of fire, and be consumed
in a steam. Thus, to something like that Universal
Nebula out of which all things are fancied as evolved
does Science, at her utmost daring, conceive of them
as tending to be resolved again. Universal dissolution, universal rest, universal death, is her last dream
of the drift of things in the infinite future. Or, if
she will not let it be finally a dream of Universal
Death, but will arouse herself even as she dreams, is
it not by an act which she confesses to be incompetent to herself as yet —by a kind of convulsive
shudder of her being at the touch of a ghostly hand,
and an unconscious turning in her sleep?  To this,
however, there are some who think she ought to consent. Hence, with some, the notion of the tendency
of all things back to a universal homogeneousness and
collapse is relieved by the farther speculation that,
when that state is reached, the process of evolution
will somehow begin again. Again the Nebula will
whirl; again there will be spun forth some wondrous
entanglement of starry systems through a blue Immensity; again there will be dances of orbs round




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.          191
their central suns; again the orbs will have their
strange particular histories; and again, when the
maximum of diversity and speciality is reached, there
will be a beginning of the revoke of all things into
involution and integration again. Thus is introduced
into the Cosmological Conception, as far as Science
can carry it or consent that it can be carried, the ultimate notion or imagination of a vast periodicity.
The Universe is a recurring beat or pulsation.  It is
a rhythm of alternate evolution and involution, expansion and contraction.  It is the opening and shutting of a hand. It is a Nothing ever manifesting
itself as a Something, and a Something ever returning
into a Nothing.
By the action of these various scientific notions or
speculations, there has been, I repeat, a disturbance
of the prior distribution of British thought among the
six traditional systems of which, so far as it discussed
the cosmological problem at all, it seemed to have
the option. Suppose these systems to be arranged in
a line thus:1       2      8        4       5       G
Nihilism,.  Natural Constructive  Pure  Absolute
or Non- Materalism Realism  Idealism  Idealism Identity
Substantialism
Then, I said, it was chiefly among the four middle
systems, from  Afaterialism  to Pure Idecalism, that




192        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
recent British philosophical thought seemed to have
distributed itself; and, if Sir William Hamilton and
Mr. Mill were taken as the chief representatives of
recent British philosophical thought, then, I added,
the division seemed to be most marked at the very
midmost point, between the two systems of Natural
Realism and Constructive Idealism. Now, however,
in consequence of the action of such recent scientific
conceptions as I have been expounding, it seems to me
that there have been drifts left and right, away from
the middle point, towards the two extremes of the
series. A large quantity of speculative thought has
taken, I think, the Materialistic direction —a good deal
remaining within the bounds of Materialism, but some
passing on to a kind of Nihilism, which is David
Hume's Nihilism over again, though reached by a
different method. On the other hand, unless I am
mistaken, there has been, or is now, a drift of a large
quantity of speculative thought on through Pure
Idealism, towards something like Schelling's and
I-egel's doctrine of the Absolute Identity of subject
and object.  Lastly, though this is a more obscure
matter, I am not sure but there might be recognised
among us some yet inconsiderable quantity of thought
which might be described as a blind struggling
towards a logic that should profess to unite the two
extremes, and intervolve the thought of Nothing in



RECENT BRITTSH PHILOSOPHY.            193
extricably, by a law of the intellect, with the thought
of Absolute Being.
To this most excruciating pass, as it must appear
to British souls, Science at the utmost seems to have
conducted Mnetaphysics.  tHow well the Laureate has
expressed the real pain of the crisis! Always one of
his peculiar merits is that he receives and ponders to
the utmost the last scientific informations of the time,
letting them  sway his thoughts and occultly shape
even the phrasing of his song; and no reader of the In
lenemoriam but must have noted this noble elegy, and
its full philosophical significance:-'So careful of the type?' But no.
From searped cliff and quarried stone
She cries,'A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.'Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.' And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law



194          RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPIY.
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creedWho lived, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons in the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.




IREOENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHIY.   195
CHAPTER IV.
LATEST DRIFTS AID GROUPINGS.
IN order to describe more exactly the present state
of [British. Philosophy, I can take no better plan than
that of attempting an enumeration of the chief currents and eddies of philosophical opinion that are now
meeting and traversing each other at all angles within
Great Britain.
I.
There may be grouped together a few eminent men
speaking to the British public from the platforms of
modes of thought announced as theirs long ago, and
which they do not seek to adjust now, in any systematic manner, to the surrounding medium.
In this class may be again named MR. CARLYLE.
We have seen how great, both extensively and intensively, has been hiMs influence on the British mind of
the last generation-how to omit the recognition of




196         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPIHY.
his? from  any history of recent British Philosophy
would be to omit the part of I-Hamlet's father from the
play of Hac9mlet. ~We all know, too, how his influence
continues. No man is wider-awake than he to this
day; no man catches more willingly and inquisitively, out of the roar of speculations and events around
him, the tones that are significant.  And, by his frequent voice in reply out of his characteristic solitude,
or visibly in our presence, we know that he is listening, and not only listening, but always revolving the
last news within his mind, and forming his judgments, and still caring for the state of Denmark. And,
as for a generation past, whatever communication
comes from that source flashes among us, in zig-zag,
from coast to coast of our Denmark, and ends not
even there. Nor, though the message may offendcl,
and irritate, or even enrage, is it ever felt to bewhat is the sole damnation of thought-irrelevant.
But of the systemi or mode of mind out of which there
still come these fresh communications, we have long
had the theory before us as fully as it is ever likely
to be. Wlhat a permanence of greatness in this personality!. At whatever time of his life, and by whatever aid from without, Mr. Carlyle contrived to extricate himself so absolutely as it is clear he must have
done from the coils of previous British systems, and to
start with his own set of ideas and principles, certain it




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.      197
is that, since he began his career as a public teacher,
we have seen him, more than most men, one and the
same. Let him be supposed, then, remaining still gigantically apart on his particular well-known part
of the stage, while we proceed with our general
survey.
Occupying also their various particular positions,
more or less known, from time past, and requiring
here but to be mentioned, are such thinkers and writers as AMR. IsAAC TAYLOR, DR. WHEWELL, Du. NEWMAN, M~Ru. MAuRIC:E, and MB. F. W. NETwMAT. There
might be an interesting study of the mode of philosophical thought exhibited in the writings of each of
these, and of its connexions with preceding powers
and movements in British Philosophy. Partly because most of them are theologians, and have inwound
their speculations with theological questions and controversies, I refrain from such a glance at each, as,
even from our present point of view, each might merit.
-   But I cannot but ask you to note how, in Dr. Newman's case, we have a splendid instance over again
of the power of a purely metaphysical notion once
formed and dwelt in, to dominate a man's whole life,
and determine the nature of his practical activity.
Dr. Newman had apparently at no time of his life
concerned himself with philosophy, except in and
through Theology; but he tells us, in his A4pologia




198        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
pro Vita Sua, how he recollects that from his very
boyhood he carried with him a certain constitutional
frame or condition of mind, resembling, if I do not
misinterpret his description of it, the Berkeleyan
Idealism. All the external Universe seemed to him a
deception, an angelic extravaganza, a spangled phantasmagory of-zodiacal signs and hieroglyphics, a vivid
environment of sacramental symbolisms and picturewritings, speaking to him of a great Being, besides
whom and his own soul there was no other.*  Dwelling long within the blazing cabalistic ether of this
cosmological conception, till his soul had learnt its
language and could think in no other, but tenacious
of a principle which had also strongly possessed him
from an early age, that of the necessity of dogma,
Dr. Newman passed on, gradually but logically, into
his peculiar ecclesiasticism, and became *what he has
become. It would be more difficult, in the case of
Mr. Maurice, to refer the origin of a theological
activity so different from Dr. Newman's to any recovering in its author's mind, by reading or native meditation, of any of the leading speculative systems in
particular of which there is record in the history of
philosophy. Mauricianism, as it is called, would require an explanation by itself, which could perhaps
be given only by one imbued with it. It is to be ob* See Apologia, p. 56, p. 59, and pp. 88-91.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        199
served, however, that Mr. Maurice, having written the
history of Philosophy, must carry in his mind, even
more than appears, a connected recollection of the alternations and vicissitudes of metaphysical systems
that have characterized its course, and the means
of thinking of his own Theology accurately in its historical as well as in its contemporary relations. That
there is more than a relation of mere sequence between him and Coleridge (in whom again, as I have
said, there was a resumption and re-issue of the
elements of a rich and free native Anglicanism, the
tradition of which had been long overborne or frittered away) seems to me a fair assertion, and, indeed,
in Mr. Maurice's Theology, if nowhere else, I should
find evidence that the influence of Coleridge's Philosophy, notwithstanding all that has intervened, is not
exhausted in England.
In this place, as naturally as anywhere else, may
be mentioned Mu. J. D. M.ORELL. Of his various
writings I do not know that any has contributed so
much to the diffusion of philosophical notions, and of
an interest in Philosophy, as his lucid and comprehensive "History of Speculative Philosophy in the
Nineteenth Century," published nearly twenty years
ago. It was a most welcome book at the time; and
to it, along with Mr. Lewes's " Biographical History
of Philosophy," our literary men, as well as readers




200        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
at large, are indebted to this day for more of their
best information on philosophical subjects than is always acknowledged.
II.
A very marked group of thinkers and writers
among us may be distinguished, fairly enough, as the
British Comtists.
Here let me take prejudice by the horns. No difference from Comte over the fundamental principle of
his philosophy, no recoil or aversion of the spirit (let
it be even as vehement as my own) from his final
theory of things, ought to prevent or will preventsave where fear of the Blatant Beast is allowed to
measure men's words-a recognition of Comte's great
services in the world of recent speculation. A figure
full of interest to me-an interest compounded of admiration, mournfulness, and yet a sense of the comic
-is that of the lonely Parisian, of little regard among
the authorities of his country, and whom they had deprived almost of bread, persevering till his death in
the work of building up, and finishing to its last detail and pinnacle, a system of thought in which, as he
conceived, all Htumanity, after its ages of weary wandering, might at last find rest. " Ho! all ye nations,
and especially ye five, the  ibte of Humanity-Frenchmen, Britons, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards!




IRECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       201
Ye have now nearly passed through the two stages, or
modes of thought, through which, as I can prove to
you, the mind of man must pass on all subjects whatsoever, before it teaches the third and last. It is time
that this third stage should be prepared for you, and
extended before your eyes in its reaches through a glorious future. This is my worlk; I am the herald, the
apostle of Positivism. All the materials that have
been accumulating for the new construction, all the
hints for its design, have come together in me, and
found the proper architect;-nay, not only have I
been the architect, but I have been the builder from
the foundation upwards, the carver, the gilder, the
decorator. The vast construction is ready. Leaving
all other systems, come, ye choicest spirits, my speculative kinsmen, from all ends of the earth; here we
shall dwell together in unity, understanding and even
reverencing the past, but regulating the present, and
looking forward tranquilly to that future to which we
shall have prescribed the true problem of Philosophy,
Art, and Government, all in one —' the reorganization
of human society, without God or King, through the
systematic worship of Humanity."' If there is something ludicrous to many in this over-estimate, in a
man's own case, of what it can possibly be given to
any one man to accomplish and leave permanent in
the world, there is not the less something majestic in
9*




202         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
the intensity of conviction, the indomitable faith in
ideas, which could lead to it. To our loss, we in
Britain have too little of this spirit of self-assertion
rather than too much. Given an intense idiosyncrasy, and a really powerful and inventive mind, and society around harms itself, rather than secures itself,
by an intolerance of the speculative extravagances,
the audacities of egotism, which might result, and by
the habit of beating them back with coldness, witticisms, and derision. It is hard, indeed, for Teutonic
flesh and blood to look on and see a Frenchman generalizing, to the utmost of his national manner when
it breaks loose, without a longing to knock him down,
and put him in a strait-waistcoat.  There is such a
confidence about him, such a systematizing rapidity,
such an unhesitating sureness about things, where we
Goths are clogged and restrained by traditional considerations and a sense of difficulty and complexity!
But there is something superb, nevertheless, in the
speculative movements of a first-rate French intellect.
In the works of NM. Comte, at all events, there is a
well of thought and suggestion on all sorts of subjects,
the value of which it does not need even an approach
to acquiescence in his philosophical basis to appreciate. There are propositions and generalizations of his,
more especially in the department of politics, the absorption of which into the general mind, or in the




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       203
working-creeds of professional statesmen, would considerably transform and exalt what now passes for
politics. Throughout Britain, indeed, this has been
long perceived in many quarters; and, while Mr. Mill
and others have expressed to the full their obligations
to Comte, even when defining their increasing differences from him, others have been secretly helping
themselves to Comte, and living on the results.
All in all, there is, I should say, a considerable
tinge of Comtism through our present speculative literature. It is not, however, of those among us who
have only in a general way received this tinge, as
they would have received a tinge from any other powerful intellectual influence of their time, that I speak
under the name of the British Coomtists. Under this
name I have in view a few writers and thinkers who
in a more express manner adhere to Comte, or to an
acknowledged adaptation of him.  Even here, however, there are degrees. One may distinguish, even
within Comte's own life-time, two Comtisms, of which
those who were inclined to be Comtists had the option. There was the " Earlier Comtism," if I may so
call it, represented in his completed Cours de PAilosophfie Positive; in which, though there was extravagance enough of opinion and expression to shock the
British mind, there was still a reining-in of the intellect
on this side of delirium. But this was ere long devel



204        R1ECENT B1RITISH PRHLOSOPHTY.
oped into the te  Later Comtism;" in which, impelled
by a sudden revelation that his system was deficient
as yet on the sentimental side, the author suddenly
broke down one of its gables, and did pass on, without his hat, into what irreverent lookers-on must
really call delirium and moonlight. Out from that
gable he built, as it were, a spacious verandah for a
new Religion, attached to his Positive Philosophy under the name of the Culte Systenca'ique de t'Hzmani'e'. Here there might be busts of three hundred and
sixty-five selected eminent men of the past (a large
proportion being, of course, Frenchmen), ranged in
niches, as gods for ordinary daily worship throughout
the year; besides more colossal busts of greater gods
for the weeks and months, and a striking peculiarity
of four black busts of Iistory's most retrograde scoundrels, at quarterly intervals, to serve as devils, or desirable objects of execration; while within all, in a
secret alcove, one might practise the sweetest and
keenest of all forms of the worship of Humanity-the
worship of Woman —by praying habitually to one's
own mother, or wife!
Some form even of the later or sacerdotal Comtism,
I believe, does exist among us in perfect earnest, and
without seeking to conceal itself; but, as might be
expected, it is chiefly the earlier or purely speculative
Comtism, and that with modifications, that has any




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        20"
following in Britain. If I reckon Mrf. LEFEs and Miss
MIATINEAU among British Comtists in this sense, it
must be only in as far as they themselves, in translating or expounding Coite, have signified their adhesion to his principles. Miss Martineau has had a
career of thought and activity of her own too marked
to make it conceivable that it can have merged absolutely in Comtism; and Mr. Lewes is too able and
spirited a man, too cultured, of too frank and quick
sympathies in all fine directions, that we should tie
him down very stringently to his own enthusiastic
expression, that "in the Cours de Philosophie Positive we have the grandest, because on the whole, the
truest system which Philosophy has yet produced." *
Still, there is a considerable amount of effective British Comtism among us-of that philosophy which abjures and protests against Metaphysics, or the thought
of the supernatural in any form whatsoever, as by this
time proved rubbish, and would direct the ploughshare of the humnan mind, in respect of the study of
Man, exclusively to Physiology and Sociology.
Into this British Comtism have been absorbed, I
think, all the relics, worth reckoning, of what was
once native British Secularism. Absorption into Comtism has been an elevation for it.
* Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy, Library Edition, p.
662.




206         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPlHY.
To be named in close connexion with the British
Comtists, though not decisively as one of them, is the
late MR. BUCKLE. His great idea, that for which he
lived and died, was the possibility of a Science of
History.  There was a paramount obligation of the
human mind in the present age to the study of History in a scientific manner, with all possible aids from
Physiology and the other sciences, in order to the discovery and establishment of a new body of truths bearing on the social well-being. In prosecuting this idea
Mr. Buckle himself put forth a number of more or
less suggestive conjectures and criticisms, and revealed also certain strong idiosyncrasies-in particular, his passion for liberty of thought, and his abomination of the theological spirit in all times and countries. There was a breaking away in him, too —as is
often interestingly the case with enthusiastic Empiricists of his type-into a consolatory private transcendentalism of his own, accessible from his general system by a wicket to which he only had the key. But,
on the whole, it must have been chiefly owing to the
small amount of public familiarity there was in this
country with exercises of speculation in the same general direction, and particularly with Comte's, that Mir.
Buckle's doctrines ran about with such a clamour of
rejection and acceptance. As far as I know, all that
was essential in them might have been cut out of a




RECENT BRITISHI PHIILOSOPHY.. 207
corner of Comte, or out of that with a portion of Mill
in addition —though I do not mean to say the author
got at them  by any such immediate method; and
there was a crudity about his statements of them, an
incoherence, and a sort of slap-dash contemptuousness
towards whole centuries and civilizations of the past,
on account of their using battle-axes, burning witches,
wearing shoe-ties, or some trifle of that sort, from
which the more comprehensive genius of Comte kept
him free. It was Mr. Buckle's intellectual courage,
his pugnacity for ideas that had roused and invigorated himself, that was his main merit. In our country it is a great merit, because still a rare one.
Thinking, therefore, how largely he possessed it, and
how prematurely and sadly Ae was cut off while others who have no such virtue are left, the words may
occur to us:
"How well could we have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!"
III.
I will now name together two writers, not because
they can be constituted into a class, but because each
of them is so important individually that there is a
propriety, on that account, in connecting them.
Associated with Mr. Mill by a mutual respect,




208        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
which has taken opportunities of expressing itself,
and also by substantial adhesion in principle, is MR.
ALEXANDER BAIX. His contribution to Philosophy
is mainly his large system of Psychology in two volumes, entitled The Senses and thee Itellect and 2T/1e
JEnotions and the Wtll.  It is perhaps the richest
Natural History of the Human MICind in the language
-the most fully mapped out, and the most abundant
in happy detail and illustration. The author decidedly belongs to the school of Empiricism, and he
roots his Psychology, more strenuously and extensively, I think, than any British psychologist since
Hartley, in Physiology. But, from the fact that his
Physiology is that of the present day, he does this
with greater intelligibility and effect. He does not
indeed reject from Psychology the method of the observation and registration of the phenomena of Mind,
as flitting, however generated, in a supposed inner
chamber of Consciousness; but he takes care to assert
at the outset that this inner chamber is a mere phantasy or trick of the mind. Sweeping away even the
imaginary sensorium, or central receptacle for impressions, of the older physiologists, he views Mind
as presenting itself in nerve-currents, the recoverabilily of nerve-currents, and the associability of nervecurrents, on and on, in ever-increasing complexity
and in ever-varying combinations. Beginning, there



RECENT BRITISH PHrosorPY.         209
fore, with Brain and Nerve as the seats of the nervecurrents, and educing thence those simplest and most
rudimentary states of mind which consist of instinctive muscular movements and sensations of the five
senses, he proceeds to show how, out of these, by the
processes of recoverability and association, all the
facts of the mind, all the habits and faculties of men,
all their cognitions and beliefs, all the varieties of
aptitude, intelligence, character, and genius, may be
conceivably built up. As he does this in a quiet,
gradually synthetic way-leaving the sufficiency of
his system to be judged of by his exhibition of its
ability to work through, and account for, all the
abundance of men's notions as to themselves and each
other, rather than debating it formally-it is only
incidentally, and here and there, that he touches on
the great questions of Metaphysics. And yet his
book, I should say, strews excellent new material over
these questions, and, if attended to, will not leave their
British forms precisely as they were. Thus, with
respect to the battle of the two opposed psychological
theories —that of Empiricism and that of Transcendentalism-Mr. Bain, I think, introduces a novelty in
his Psychology. Rightly or wrongly, he places it to
the credit of Empiricism; and, if rightly so placed, it
would improve the position of Empiricists, including
Mr. Mill, against their opponents. He finds, phys



210        REC:ENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
iologically, that among the rudimentary facts of the
human organism is that of a force of spontaneous
movement, as well as an equipment for passive sensibility-a power of generating active nerve-currents
from within outwards, as well as a liability to sensitive nerve-currents from without inwards; and through
all the complications of his farther expositions he
takes care to run this fund of automatic force, intermingled continually with mere sensation, as a something that may prove tantamount, when investigated,
to a good deal of that a priori element, apart from
sensation, for which Transcendentalists contend. lVIomentarily, as regards the individual human being,
Mr. Bain, by this provision of a physiological substitute for at least somewhat of the as priori element of
the Transcendentalists, does put a different complexion on the question between Empiricism and Transcendentalism, and alters the setting of it. As regards each individual, he provides, on physiological
evidence, an ever-flowing fountain of necessary or
innate impulse, independent of sensation from without, and intermingling with it. And, as thus, in the
very beginning of his Psychology, he offers what may
pass provisionally, in respect of the individual mind,
as a physiological substitute, as far as it will go, for
the important distinction of the JKantians between
Form and Matter, so at the end of his work, where




RECENT'BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.      211
he comes round to his last word on the ultimate metaphysical question-the question of the trustworthiness
of Consciousness in that conception of a double Universe, of Self and Not-Self, of Subject and Object,
which seems to be compelled in every act of external
perception-he makes the same notion reappear on
an extended scale, so as to take effect upon the state
of the controversy between the various systems of
Realism on the one side and those of Idealism on the
other. /Miovement and sensation, nerve-currents from
within outwards and nerve-currents from without inwards, being rudimentarily and from the first moment
the one radical contrast or antithesis in our feelings
-this contrast, always accompanying us, and, though
strengthened, enlarged, and educated by million-fold
repetitions and associations, yet always remaining
constant, swells out at last into that contrast between
the extended visible immensity of an external world
up to the stars, and a felt but invisible and unlike
immensity of spirit within, which all men carry with
them, and which has been the fascinating fact for
Metaphysics. The notion of Self or Subject is a generalization of the feelings of Active Movement: the
notion of Not-Self or Object is a generalization of the
feelings of Passive Sensation. What, then, must be
the answer of a philosopher to that question, as to the
last certainty accruing from the total evidence of




212        IEOENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Consciousness, to which philosophers mnay be expected
to possess an answer, although common men, not for
that matter philosophers themselves, except when they
philosophize, need not entertain it a Where shall one
rank oneself? Among Nihilists, among Materialists,
among Natural Realists, among Constructive Idealists,
among Pure Idealists, or among those who hold the
doctrine of Absolute Identity? Curiously enough, Mr.
Bain's premiss leads, on the one hand, out of any form
of Idealism, towards a peculiar, and what may be
called physiological, form of the doctrine of radical
Identity. Though the two generalizations of Self and
Not-Self, of the perceiving mind and of the world external to it, are carried apart practically by all men, and
life consists in a perpetual hypothesis of their opposition, yet the psychologist, knowing that they have
their roots inextricably united in the same organism,
and knowing no more than this, is bound to proclaim,
as the deepest fact of the phkenomenal universe arrived
at by his science, the identity, the inseparability, of
Subject and Object. Of course, as it is within the
bounds of his psychological theory of Empiricism that
Mr. Bain takes up this position, his Identity-system is
a very different thing, in its metaphysical bearings,
from the Identity-system of some of the Transcendentalists. They, or any of their brother-Transcendentalists, would be entitled to run M1r. Bain back, with




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       213
this physiological form of the Identity-system in his
hands, along that eternal track which the controversy
between Empiricism  and Transcendentalism  must
pursue in the quest of the real beginning. Such
farther interrogation, however, Mr. Bain implicitly
declines. Except through Psychology, and consequently except through Physiology, he refuses Metaphysics. Hie does so, I believe, on definite principle.
And, considering the great services he has done to
Psychology by preserving adherence to his own
method-the important novelties, I think I may say,
which he has introduced into British Psychology in
particular-we ought, most certainly, not to object to
his system that it does not give us what it never
undertook to give. Still, as Philosophy in its widest
sense asks, and always has asked, for instruction as
to the best mode of thought on those metaphysical
questions, at their highest and most extreme range,
which Mr. Bain declines to entertain, and as, at the
present moment in particular, it is obvious to all that
it is with these questions, as reset for it by an all-comprehensive and soul-exciting Cosmology, that British
Philosophy is passionately grappling, Mr. Bain's
treatise does not encircle all the requirements.
No such defeat can be charged against the other
writer whom  I am now to name- MR. HERBERT
SPEnCER. Of all our thinkers he is the one who, as




214         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
it appears to me, has formed to himself the largest
new scheme of a systematic philosophy, and, in relation to some of the greatest questions of philosophy in
their most recent forms, as set or reset by the last
speculations and revelations of science, has already
shot his thoughts the farthest. He both works out
his Philosophy physiologically and psychologically
from the centre, and-what seems to me an eminent
merit in relation to the intellectual needs of the time
-surveys it and contemplates it from  the circumference cosmologically. Indeed, I should say that he
is the British thinker who has most distinctly realized
the absolute necessity that Philosophy lies under, of
dealing with the total cosmological conception as well
as with the mere psychical or, physiological organism
(and this from the demonstrable inter-relatedness of
both), if it would grasp all the present throbbings of
the speculative intellect.  His writings take for
granted this necessity, and make it plainer than it
would otherwise be. Nowhere else are the various
sciences so fished for generalizations that may come
together as a whole to help in forming a Philosophy.
Nowhere else, at all events, is there a more beautiful
and fearless exposition of some of those recent scientific
notions which I spoke of in the last chapter as affecting our views of metaphysical problems. There
are parts of 3Mr. Spencer's writings, occupied with




RECENT BRITISH PHIOSOPHY.        215
such expositions, which, from sheer scientific clearness, and adequacy of language to the matter, have
all the effect of a poem. If even only for such renderings of high scientific conceptions, on the chance
of their somehow taking possession of the popular
soul, and uniting there to rectify previous forms of
thought, he would deserve honourable recognition.
But Mr. Spencer does not stop short in the character of an interpreter between Science and Philosophy,
handing on the conceptions of Science to that congress
of all the Powers where they are to be adjusted and
take effect. He assumes the work of the philosopher
proper. He seeks to enmesh the physical round of
things, as Science now orbs it to the instructed imagination, within a competent Metaphysic; he desires to
fix in the centre a competent Psychology, consistent
with this IMetaphysic, and yet empirically and physiologically educed; and he would fill up the interior,
or what of it the physical sciences leave void, with a
competent Ethics, a competent Jurisprudence, a competent 2Esthetics, a competent Science of Education,
and a competent Science of Government and Politics.
In this great work he is still engaged; and it will
not perhaps be till the whole is accomplished that
there will be the means of determining either the sufficiency of Mr. Spencer's philosophy for the higher
practical purposes of philosophy, or its exact intellect



216        RECENT BRITISiH PHILOSOPHY.
ual relations to previous systems. Already, in consequence both of the decisiveness of his views and the
variety of interesting subjects over which they extend,
Mr. Spencer, more than any other systematic British
thinker save Mill, has an avowed following both here
and in America; and, if any individual influence is
visibly encroaching on Mill's in this country, it is his.
For my own part, believing that no type of man
ought to be more precious to a nation than a resolute
systematic thinker, and believing Mr. Spencer to be
a very high specimen of this type, I anticipate nothing but good, nothing at least but a clearing away of
the bad, from what he has already done or may yet
do. And this I say, though differing as deeply and
at as many points from Mr. Spencer as from any man
whom I respect. His Metaphysic seems to me too
merely negative; and this negativeness of character I
trace through his views, so far as I know them, in
Politics, in Esthetics, and in all matters whatsoever.
Also I think —or it may be the same thing in a particular form-he undervalues history, erudition, and
the power of the historical element.
IV.
Although Hamilton is no more in the midst of us,
Hamiltonianism is not defunct. But why should I
say iHamiltonianism?  All our British speculative




RECENT BRITISH PHIOSOPHY.        211
thought, in every corner where intellect is still receptive and fresh, has been affected, at least posthumously, by the influence of that massive man, of the bold
look and the clear hazel eyes, whose library lamp
might have been seen nightly, a few years ago, by
late stragglers in one of the streets of Edinburgh,
burning far into the night when the rest of the city
was asleep. Oh! our miserable judgments!  Here
was a man probably unique in Britain; but Britain
was not running after him, nor thinking of him, but
was occupied as she always is and always will be,
with her temporary concerns and her riff-raff of temporary notabilities. And now one has to dig one's
way to the best of him through the small-type columns of perhaps the most amorphous book ever issued
from the British press. But some have done this,
who had no inducement to do so except their love of
Ideas, wherever they were to be found. Mill and
Bain, who are fundamentally opposed to Hamilton's
Transcendentalism, and Spencer, who is certainly not
a Hamiltonian, all acknowledge their respect for
Hamilton, and the obligations of British thought to his
labour. And it was the gymnastic of Philosophy, its
power to energize and elevate the mind in the pursuit
of truth, more than agreement with any one supposed
system of truth, whether his own or another, that he
himself cared for. Hence, if I say that there are still
10




218        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Hamiltonians among us, I do not mean that even
those whom I call such adhere to Hamilton's doctrines, but only that to Hamilton they confess, more
than others do, a sense of continued allegiance.
In England there is first to be mentioned MR.
BMANSEL, whose own works in Philosophy have earned
him justly so high a reputation, and who has given a
turn to one of Hamilton's doctrines, in connexion with
a form of English Theology, for which, some think,
the form of theology is more obliged to him than the
Hamiltonian doctrine.  Acknowledging specific obligations to Hamilton, but differing from him most of
all precisely where Mr. Mansel's agreement is greatest,
is DR. McCosu of Belfast, in the last edition of whose
Intuitions of the Jifnd Inductively Investigatedc will
be found some express criticisms of the ontological applications of Hamilton's Philosophy by Mir. Mansel
and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Along with Dr. MeCosh,
as also admiring Hamilton in the main, but dreading
the consequences of his Relativity, doctrine, may be
named MN. LowNDES, the author of a very shrewd and
clear little volume recently published under the title
of An Introduction to the Ph-bilosophy of Primary
Belief's; and there are still other writers that might
be named in the same connexion.- Naturally, however, it is in Scotland, and among Hamilton's own
pupils there, that Hamiltonianism lasts the strongest.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.      219
I can name one former student of Hamilton's now a
minister in what would be accounted in England one
of the straitest sects of Scottish Puritanism, and who
has consecrated to the duties of that calling the powers of a mind among the noblest I have known, and
the most learned in pure Philosophy. Any man who,
on any subject of metaphysical speculation, should
contend with D}. CAIRNS, of Berwick-upon-Tweed,
would have reason to know, ere he had done with
him, what strength for offence or defence there may
yet be in a Puritan minister's hand-grip. And, if I
mention him so, it is to bring out a fact which we are
too apt to forget in these days of increasing disrespect
for the clergy —to wit, that it is impossible for any
one to know, otherwise than by actual observation of
society, and a habit of estimating men not merely by
the apparent direction in which they are scudding,
whether with the prevalent breeze or not (which the
smallest ships may be doing), but by their weight and
build all in all, what combinations of native power
and of high speculative culture and insight may be
found with what inherited positions and systems of
belief, and honestly verifying them to their homeliest
letter. Dr. Cairns is, in the main, though with considerable modifications, an adherent to Hamilton's
speculative philosophy; and he has published interpretations and defences of portions of that philosophy




220         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
as well as occasional expositions and criticisms of
iKant and the later Germans. Freer and more at leisure by their positions to maintain Hamiltonianism,
or to go on modifying it or leading it out of itself, are
PROFEssoR FRASER, Hamilton's successor in the University of Edinburgh, PROFESSOR VEITCH of Glasgow,
the joint-editor, with Mr. Mansel, of Hamilton's Lectures, and PRoFEssoR T. SPENCER BAYNES, of St. Andrews-the last of whom, though a pupil of Hamilton
and for some time his assistant, is of English birth.
Thus, of the four Scottish Universities, three, so far as
the express chairs of Speculative Philosophy are concerned, are in the possession of former pupils of Hamilton-the fourth, that of Aberdeen, having Mr. Bain
for its philosophical chief. The influence of the three
is exerting itself as yet chiefly, as Hamilton's own did
so long, in the private conduct of their classes; nor is
there sufficient public means of measuring and characterizing it. All three, however, have given proofs
in occasional published writings of their ability and
of their fitness to lead philosophic thought; and MIr.
Fraser, in particular, besides teaching with admirable
success, classes larger than Hamilton's ever were, has
signalized his departure from some of Hamilton's
views both in essays openly to that effect, and in some
striking disquisitions, from a new point of view, on
older philosophers, particularly Berkeley. On the




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.             221
whole, in his case, if not among the Scottish Hamiltonians generally, I think I see, along with a resolute
adhesion to Transcendentalism in principle, a tendency to deviation from  Hatnilton's system  of Natural
Realism in the direction of Idealism.  At all events,
both Berkeley and Locke have received more extensive and profound attention from Mr. Fraser than has
been common recently among thinkers of the Scottish
school in Philosophy.*
V.
A frequent sign of a forward movement in Philosophy is an extravagant show  of disrespect among
those who represent it towards their immediate predecessors or their memory. The very sense of nearness
causes antagonism. It is easier to do justice to philosophers between whose views and one's own the distance is great, than to those from whom one has just
parted in order to shoot ahead.
Something of this kind, but rather implied than
expressed, I find in that very remarkable book, IJnstitutes of Jietaphysic: the LTheory of Knowing and
* See an article by Professor Fraser, entitled " The Real World of
Berkeley," in ]lacmillan's Magazine for July, 1862, and another, understood to be by him, entitled "Berkeley's Theory of Vision," in the
North British Review for August, 1864. A collected edition of Berkeley's works, of which Professor Fraser is to be the editor, has been announced as forthcoming from the Oxford University Press.




222        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Being, by the late PROFESSOR FERRIEi, of St.
Andrews.  It was published in 1854, while Sir
William Hamilton was still alive. It is throughout a
protest against Ilamiltonianism, and an effort to lead
on into a new system, having affinity with the postKantian metaphysics of Germany, and especially with
Schelling and Hegel, but constructed by the author
himself in a belief that, though there had been a
struggle towards the true philosophy, and incessant
and splendid glimpses of it in Plato, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Berkeley, and then in Kant and his German followers, yet the all-important cardinal proposition had never been seized and once for all articulated. "It may be affirmed with certainty," he said,
"that no man for at least two thousand years [since
Plato, he meant] has seen the true flesh-and-blood
countenance of a single philosophical problem." And
what was the all-important cardinal proposition the
missing of which had made the history of philosophy
one such wide welter of occasionally illuminated confusion? It was this: —-" Along with whatever any
intelligence knows, it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself."
Starting from this proposition, - and proceeding
through three sections of his treatise, entitled respectively "Epistemology, or the Theory of Knowing,"
"Agnoiology, or the Theory of Ignorance," and




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        223
"Ontology, or the Theory of Being " —Professor
Ferrier deduced from it, or attached to it, a series of
farther propositions, following each other numerically
like the propositions in Euclid, and professing to be
as strictly reasoned out, and offered in their totality
as constituting an irrefragable system of Mietaphysic
or:Necessary Truth. The last proposition in the
" Ontology" may be here quoted, as exhibiting Mr.
Ferrier's final landing-place in the question of the
Absolute.  "All absolute existences are contingent
except one; in other words, there is One, but only
one, Absolute Existence which is strictly necesscary;
and that existence is a supreme and infinite and everlasting Mind in synthesis with all things."  Repulsive to the general taste as is a system of Metaphysics
taking the form of a chain of such abstract propositions, like grinning death's heads, Mr. Ferrier's book
is unusually rich in popular expositions of philosophical questions. The intervals between the propositions
are filled with dissertations and elucidations of great
literary power and picturesqueness, and containing
passages eloquent with high feeling, and sparkling
with wit. There are blasts, in particular, of measureless contempt against the Scottish psychologists as a
body, and Dr. Reid as their type; there is a brave
yearning of the spirit back into sympathy with the
grander and more dynamic metaphysics of the past,




224          RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
unappreciated or misappreciatecd because of their
higher nature-the metaphysics of lPlato, Spinoza,
and Berkeley; there is an inquisitive, and also sympathetic, looking across the seas towards the German
iHegelianism, as if with the thought that noble elements might be brewing within that dark monstrosity
to British eyes, if only it could be penetrated; and
there are interesting historical sketches of the connexions of previous systems, and the mode of their gradual evolution. A fine speculative mind disappeared
from Britain when Professsor Ferrier died.
What is of interest to us here is the attempt of
British Transcendentalism, in Ferrier, to move out
of the Hamiltonian system  altogether, by leaving
Natural Realism in disgust, and then not stopping
even in any ordinary form  of Idealism, but passing
sheer on to the doctrine of Absolute Identity. The
inseparability of subject and object, the identity of
Knowing and Being-this was the doctrine to be
hung up in the centre for ever as the all-irradiating,
all-glorifying, all-cheering lamp of light. How it
would strike to quick transparence all the gloom!
How, seen at its highest, as the assertion of a one
Absolute Mind in synthesis with all things, it need
not fear, because it could overmatch and spiritualize,
through and through, and round and round, any expansion of the cosmological conception that Science




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        225
might empirically compel, if even into a vast periodicity from Nebula to Nebula again —clearing, as it
would, the whole periodicity of its materialistic
horror, or of its dread of being shored by a Nothingness; uniting Time past, present, and future in one
Consciousness, making the stars, once more, but orbs
or twinklings of Deity; and filling all within them,
to the earth and the heart of man, with His presence
and His love!-So, as I fancy, did the author represent to himself the consequences of his doctrine.
Still, observe how closely the doctrine itself, in its
simple verbal form, as respects the individual mind,
corresponds, though belonging to a system of high a'
priori Metaphysic, with the doctrine of lMr. Bain,
worked out physiologically, and stationed at the centre of his so different system. The systems are poles
apart,-the one that of utmost Transcendentalism,
the other that of the most exact Empiricism; but
they revolve, as nearly as possible, on exchangeable
pivots.
Since I began the preparation of these pages, there
has come into my hands a book which enables me, I
think, to point to a British representative of a metaphysical system beyond even Mr. Ferrier's, and a
representative of which was wanting to fill the only
place left vacant in otur scheme.
Let me repeat our arrangement, for the eye, of the
10*




226         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
six cosmological systems propounded and maintained
by metaphysicians. It was as follows:1       2      3        4       5       6
Nihilism,       Natural Constructive  Pure  Absolute
or Non- Materialism
ubstan- Mater   alism  Idealism  Idealism Identity
tialism
Assuming that the opposition of prevailing British
philosophies, as recently represented in Hamilton and
Mill, was most marked at about the mid-point of this
series, or between Natural Realism and Constructive
Idealism, there has been observable of late, I ventured
to say, a drifting away of British thought from  that
middle point in both directions towards the extremes.
There has been a drift leftwards, through Materialism
or Materialistic Realism, towards Nihilism, or the
conception of an ultimate nothingness, or, if the expression is preferred, the resolute non-conception of
an ultimate anything.  There has similarly been a
drift rightwards, through more and more refined
varieties of Idealism, towards the notion of Absolute
Identity, or an eternal real Oneness of Subject and
Object, of which all the vast cosmical periodicities
from  Nebula to Nebula, or whatever may be the
terms, are to be conceived as living pulsations. Mr.
Ferrier, as I have just said, seems, more distinctly
than any other recent British metaphysician, to have
carried Transcendentalism to this last point, and to




RECENT BRITISH PUIOSOPHvY.      227
have established, by so doing, a cousinship in this
country with Schelling and Hegel. Well, was anything more to be done? It seems difficult to conceive that anything remained to be done. One might
run backwards and forwards among the six schemes,
returning from Nihilism or from Absolute Identity
centrewards; but either to leap off Nihilism on the
one hand, or to leap off Absolute Identity on the
other, was a feat apparently beyond all rational gymnastic. Well, but what if the two extremes could be
united? What if a logical bridge could be thrown at
once from Nihilism to Absolute Identity, over-spanning all the intermediate systems? What if the mind
could be hung as a pendulum, necessarily taking the
exact arc from Nihilism to Absolute Being in its
every swing, so that one swing of it, one single act
of thought, should actually realize, apprehend, nay,
repeat and represent, that vast cosmical beat of
periodicity, from Nothing to completed Being, and
from completed Being back to Nothing again?
At such a suggestion we Britons naturally feel
uneasy. We would rather not have our mind swung
so! " For any sake, don't," we cry; " we haven't been
accustomed to it. Absolute Oneness, if you please, or
Nihilism, if you please; we should not so much mind
which; but who can live on a shuttle between
them? " And yet this is precisely what he whom his




228        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
admirers regard as the last of the world's great metaphysicians tells us we must do, and indeed are doing
every moment, whether we know it or not. And who
is he? Hegel, the terrible HIegel, the brain-benumbing iegel-on scraps of whose doctrines modern Germany is said to have been living for forty years, but
whose entire system no Germanl soul even is believed
to have yet fathomed or got round; who himself said,
after his system had been before the world for a sufficient time, and hundreds had been doing their best
with it, "' There is only one man living that understands me, and lie doesn't."  What Hegel gave to the
world, as principally wanted and as the foundation for
all else, was a new logic, or science of the necessary
laws of Thought; and in this l;ogic the foundation-principle was the identity, the inseparability in thought, of
the idea of Being and the idea of Nothing. The most
abstract thought of man, that in which he ends by the
most intense effort of reason, is the idea of pure B3eing; and absolutely and in every way, this idea is the
same as the idea of pure Nothing; and each merges
into the other necessarily; and both are forms of one
combining idea, the idea of Becoming. And this alternation between the idea of Nothing and the idea of Being, through the idea of Becoming, is the law of every
thought that man thinks or can think. Every thought
is a poise, a beat, a pulsation between the two con



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       229
tradictories, comprising them both in one organic act,
as inseparable, though distinguishable. And this law
of Thought is also the law of Being; and Logic,
which is the science of Thought, is also the science of
Being. Logic and Metaphysic are identical. What
takes place in every thought also takes place in every
fact. "Nowhere in heaven or in earth is there anything, that contains not both these-Being and Nothing." And, on the largest scale, with respect even to
the vast cosmical periodicity itself, the entire rounded
object of the cosmological conception, the same, according to Hegel, if I understand him, is the desired explanation.  The Universe is a thought, a beat, a
pulse, of the Absolute Mind. The apprehension of
the logical law of this thought constitutes our IMletaphysic; and again this Metaphysic reappears as the
Logic of our own minds, and of each of their minutest
acts. In the minutest act of our minds is the same
secret —logical, physical, metaphysical-as in the entire Universe!
Of course, we by no means see the complete
Hegel in this speculation, even if it has been rightly
stated. It is only the most abstract form of that one
special principle the leaven of which threw  German
Philosophy, as received by iegel from Kant, through
Fichte and Schelling, into a new universal ferment.
Hiegel had his Philosophy of Nature, his Philosophy




230        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
of History, his Philosophy of Art, his Politics,
&c., in addition to his Logic, but declared to be
in consistency with it. He had also his Theology,
which he discriminated from the Pantheism of the
mere Identity-system as it had remained in Schelling's hands. By the new HIegelian law of the pendulum-movement of the mind between Nothing and
Being, it was not Pantheism, but a theology much
more at one with the common theology, that was necessitated. And, in point of fact, most of the recent
religious developments of Germany, orthodox and
heterodox, Catholic and Protestant, Straussian and
anti-Straussian, refer themselves to tIegelianism. A
tincture of Hegelhas also appeared, with various effects, in the most recent speculative literature of
France. It is, I think, a later influence in the French
mind than that of Cousin or that of Comte. I trace it
in the writings of Proudhon, if not in those of Renan.
This influence, for better or worse, has broken in
among ourselves. 3[MR. JAMES IIUTCHISON STIRLINGof whom I know nothing more than I am now stating, but who is certainly no common person-has just
published, in two handsome volumes, an exposition of
Hegel, entitled, The Secret of Hegel: being the Hegelian System in Origi'n, Principle, brm and lMatter. It consists partly of translations from Hegel's
Logic, partly of introductions, comments, &c., by Mr.




RECEiNT BRITISH PHILOSOPIY.     231
Stirling himself, relating to Hegel, and to all things
in heaven or earth, from a Hegelian point of view. A
passage from the book, which I quoted in my first
chapter, will have given an idea of the author's views
and style. He thinks that there have been three, and
only three, all-comprehensive philosophical minds in
recent Europe-Hume, Kant, and Hegel —and that
any search for the real stuff of philosophy out of
these three, except in the way of historical and biographical episode and filling-up, is labour lost. But,
as Kant ate np all Hume, and redigested him, and
Hegel ate up all Kant and redigested him, Hegel is
the appointed food for these generations. Knowing
Hume from long ago, it has been the labour of Mr.
Stirling's own life to master Kant and Hegel. Hie
was almost beaten by Hegel; it has taken him years
to work himself into a knowledge of HIegel's system;
it was like going round and round a monstrous block
of flint, but he thinks he has succeeded. He has prepared an exposition of Kant and an exposition of
Hegel for the British public; but, for various reasons, he has published his exposition of Hegel first.
What the British public will say to the gift I can anticipate. They will say nothing at all; or they will
say that, if this is Hegel in English, he might as well
have remained in German. Mr. Stirling's translation
of Hegel, and even some parts of his exposition of He



232        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
gel in his own words, are more Hegelian than IIegel
himself. Yet the book deserves a cordial welcome,
not only as introducing Hegel among us more authentically and laboriously than hitherto, but also as introducing, in Mr. Stirling himself, a new British
philosophical writer of great, if somewhat uncouth,
strength. There is every probability, I should say,
that he will be yet better known; and, indeed, in addition to the exposition of Kant which he has ready
for publication as a companion to the present work,
he has announced, since the present work was published, a farther contribution to Philosophy in the
shape of a special criticism of Sir William Hamilton's
Logical opinions. This is one out of many signs that
our British literature of Speculation is most healthily
on the increase at present. In Mr. Stirling's present
volume he speaks of Sir William Hamilton throughout with what I cannot but consider unpardonable
disrespect and irreverence; but, as it is from the conceived vantage-ground of a knowledge of Kant and
Hegel possessed by no one else in Britain that Mr.
Stirling thus steps forth as an iconoclast, and as he is
impartially iconoclastic all round among our recent
British philosophical writers from this same conceived
vantage-ground (Mr. Buckle, for example, is termed
" a conceited schoolboy," and Coleridge and Mr. Mill
are mentioned only sneeringly), one feels at least a




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY,       233
roused anxiety about the message which Mr. Stirling
himself may be bringing, and a roused interest in the
way he may be able to comport himself in bringing it.
We have only as yet his first publication to judge
from. M1y impression of it is that it is certainly an
uncouth and turbid book, but yet with more in it both
of heat and of tight of certain kinds than I have met
with for a long time. As presented by this book,
HIegel's Philosophy, I should say, will appear among
us with such welcome as might be given to an
elephant, if, from the peculiar shape of the animal,
one were uncertain which end of him was his head.
VI.
If only on the principle that bulk entitles to recognition, it would be wrong to omit, in an enumeration of the elements composing the present state of
British philosophical opinion, a distinct reference to
British Swedenborgianism  and the widely-diffused
forms of analogous belief represented in the so-called
literature of Spiritualism or Spirit-manifestations.
Without entering on a criticism  of these peculiar
creeds, or trying to distinguish their forms and degrees-from the mere Animal-M3agnetism of Baron
Reichenbach and others, which professed to be nothing more than an enlargement of the science of nerve
in certain curious directions, up to the wildest recent




234         RECENT BRITISI  PHILOSOPHY.
imaginations of an interfusion of the ghostly with the
normally-physical —it will be enough to note what
seems to be the one common mode of thought which
these creeds in all their forms seek to contribute to
Philosophy, and the fact that they do contribute
which, in spite of whatever exaggeration and whatever admixture of delusion and folly, is perhaps a sufficient reason why they should exist. The chief influence, then, of all these forms of speculative research or bewilderment, worth noting here, seems to
be one of a cosmological kind. What they all inculcate, from the most moderate Animal MlIagnetism  up
to the most involved dreams of the Swedenborgians
and Spirit-rappers, is simply the idea that our familiar phsenomenal world, or cosmos, may not be the total sphere of the phsenomenal, or even of the phsenomenal as it may possibly be brought within our apprehension by appropriate experimentation and artifice. The idea is old enough. Shakespeare has furnished us with an expression of it which we are never
tired of quoting, and which has been a godsend to the
Spiritualists in particular. It is where Horatio and
Hamlet compare their impressions after the disappearance of the Ghost:Hor. 0 day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamn. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       235
With or without a ghost at hand to enforce the lesson, all philosophers of mark have taken care to provide a similar protest against that " Horatio" spirit
(if it be not maligning Hamlet's fi-iend to call it such)
which would identify the sphere of the hitherto
known with the sphere of all phmenomenal existence,
or even of the knowable. It is an obvious corollary
of the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge; and
we have seen how both Mr. Mill and Sir William
Hamilton recognize it as such. "The existing order
of the Universe, or rather of the part of it known to
uis," is a phrase of Mr. Mill's, which we have already
quoted; and Mr. 3Mill is most careful always to speak
in this manner, so as to foster, rather than discourage,
in his readers, the habit of conceiving that our cosmos may be but that snatch of a measurelessly greater
and more complex phsenomenal totality which is possible to the present conditions (these perhaps not
fixed, nor the same at all) of our sentiency. So also
Sir William Hamilton. We have quoted his striking
illustration of his doctrine of Relativity by the supposition of the total universe of the phenomenal as " a
polygon of a thousand, or a hundred thousand, sides
or facets," to only three or four of which we may be
organically related by our senses or faculties. But,
indeed, he went farther. He contended for " the recognition of occult causes " as a duty of Philosophy —




236         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
that is, for the admission that there are credible and
attested phoenomena in our present experience which
we are unable as yet " to refer to any known cause or
class."  He specially cited the " phenomena of Animal Magnetism " as an instance, expressing his surprise at the " difficult credence " accorded to these phenomena in Britain (he was writing in 1852) in contrast with the'" facile credence " accorded to what he
considered the baseless pretensions of Craniology.*
Now, so far as Swedenborgianism and its cognate
"Spiritualism" have had any appreciable influence
on recent British Speculative Philosophy, that influence has consisted, I believe, in their having diffused
through the philosophical mind (whether from any
background of real facts or no is a different question)
a stronger disposition than existed a little while ago
to acknowledge the existence of occult causes-a
stronger form of the always philosophical notion that
the phsenomenal cosmos of our sentiency is not necessarily the phenomenal cosmos of all contemporary
sentiency. I am confirmed in this by observing that
this is the sort of representation of the alleged phaenomena of spirit-rapping, clairvoyance, apparitions,
&c., given by that British believer in these phmenomena who has the greatest independent philosophical reputation, and whose name is always cited by
* Appendix to Discussions, pp. 611, 612.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.              237
the spiritualists as that of their weightiest supporter.
"When it comes to what is the cause of these phmenomena," says this writer, in a remarkable preface to a
recent book on spirit-manifestations, " I find I cannot
adopt any explanation which has yet been suggested.
If I were bound to choose among things which I can
conceive, I should say that there is some sort of action
of some combination of will, intellect, and physical
power, which is not that of any of the human beings
present.  But, thinking it very likely that the universe may contain a few agencies-say half a million
— about which no man knows anything, I cannot but
suspect that a small proportion of these agencies-say
five thousand —lay be severally competent to the
production of all the phoenomena, or may be quite up
to the task among them." *  This is precisely I Hamlet's rebuke to Horatio over again, though in different
language. It suggests simply that we may be under
a mistake in our habit of conceiving of the cosmos
orbed forth to us by our present science and experience as if it were the total cosmos of actual existence.
* "From Matter to Spirit: the Result of Ten Years' Experience in
Spirit-manifestation by C. D.; with a Preface by A. B. 1863." The
extract is from the Preface, the writer of which, though signing himself only " A. B.," was announced so generally at the time of the publication of the book to be Professor De Morgan that it would be an
affectation of etiquette not to name him here. For ingenuity and
sceptical suggestiveness, as well as wit, I know nothing in the " Liteiature of Spiritualism" comparable to this brief Essay.




238         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
It grounds this suggestion, however, on certain alleged
facts, believed in by the author, which seem to him
to prove that, even within the orb of our present
cosmos, and intermingling with its affairs, there are
hosts of occult agencies, of which, by momentary
accidents, or by known artificial arrangements, we
may be so far made cognisant as to hear, as it were,
the rustle, and feel the touch, of their passing wings.
Now observe that, in all this, there is no implication
respecting the alleged phsenomena, that, were they
true even to the utmost extent of the most openmouth credulity, they would bring us a single inch
nearer an Ontology, or knowledge of the central
Absolute. This is, indeed, what the mob of ladies
and gentlemen who amuse, excite, and stupefy thenselves with "mediums" and " s6ances " do always
assume; but the drift of the present critic's remarks
is very different. The result at the very utmost,
according to him, would only be an enlargement of
our notions of the phsenomenal, and by no means an
acquaintance with noumena-a perception that there
were more things in ou'r "heaven and earth' than
had usually been dreamt of in our philosophy; but
by no means a vision of any Empyrean or Heaven of
Heavens beyond the heaven and earth of the phoenomenal. Our present conception of the Cosmos
might be burst and honeycombed-which might be




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         239
attended with useful soul-shaking and an overpowering flood of mystery; but, after all, it would be only
a new Cosmology that we should have, and not in
the least an Ontology. In short, if we inweave the
whole substance of the speculation with that preceding philosophical doctrine of Relativity into which
it seeks to fit itself, the matter shapes itself as follows:
-It has been the general admission of Philosophy
that knowledge is in proportion to the grasp, or
mode, or faculty, of the particular sentiency knowing.
Now, there are, within our view, countless gradations
of sentiency, all busily existing-from those infinitesilually minute creatures which the microscope reveals to us swarming in and in among the mere interstices of things till invisibility is reached, up to ourselves, the chief possessors of the Earth, and the last
and highest of the visible scale. Make out a chain
of these sentiencies, and of each it must be supposed
that it has its cosmos, its proportionate apprehension
or cognisance of the phoenomenal.  The minutest
microscopic animalcule has its little nip of a cosmos,
its little pin-point apprehension of existence, be it
even existence in a water-drop, or in the fibre of
another animal's muscle. As we rise higher in the
scale, the same thing is borne in upon us by more
distinct evidence. Imagine a mole disturbed in a
field during its brief ramble above-ground for food on




240        RECOENT BRITISH PMILOSOPHIY.
a summer night.  Has not the sleek, black, and
almost eyeless little sentiency its momentary notion
of a cosmos, though that notion may go but a very
little way, may be compounded chiefly of petty
subterranean experiences, and may include nothing
of that wonder of the shimmering lawns around, and
none of those glimpses of the moon, which make the
walk poetic to the man whose approach has disturbed
it? And so' through the nobler animals-the watchdog in his lair, the lion roaming the forest-till " the
paragon" is reached. lM-ust our supposition of a
series of phsenomenal worlds, each the construction
of its particular native sentiency, and outsphering
and transcending each other according as the sentiency increases in grasp-must this supposition be
closed abruptly when we come to Man? One reason
may be alleged why it should. Man, as the last term
of the series, is able to look inward on the whole
range of the preceding terms till the microscope fails
him.  Well, does he not everywhere mark this
peculiarity-that each sentiency is aware of at least
some of the sentiencies higher than itself, and includes
these sentiencies in its cosmos?  Animalcules are
alert to escape the bigger neighbours that would
mnake them their prey; the mole, little fellow, has
experimental evidence of the existence of owls as
sharp and indubitable as if he could take their por



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        241
traits; the dog sees and knows of men, and will fly at
them, or look them in the face and understand what
they say. But in the cosmos of man what sentiencies
or intelligences are there of which man is sensibly
aware as preterhuman? According to orthodox modern science, none. He is himself the extreme of
known sentiency; and, when he looks out from himself, so far as physical experience can teach him,
it is into a void. He may, if he chooses, exercise his
imagination so as to fill that void with ideal forms of
sentiency and intelligence transcending his own, and
for such an exercise of imagination he may be made
more apt by constitutional peculiarities or by the
forn  of his religious belief. Science, though disinclined on its own account to such idealizing or personification of the metaphysical, need not prohibit it,
if certain conditions are observed. One may even
figure to oneself that the entire human cosmos is to
the totality of phsanomenal existence but as ons of
those glass globes in which, in a lighted drawingroom, in these days of aquaria, some of the guests
may be seen studying the little forms of filmy and
filamentous life attached to stones or weeds, or the
movements of the small fishes as they go round and
round, speculating confusedly with their eyes what is
all that glamour beyond the globe and away in the
distances of the room. Science will not prohibit even
11




242         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
this image to any who may find it satisfactory-only
taking care to point out that it fails in exactness.
Some of the creatures in the glass globe do testify
that their sentiency extends beyond the glass. Though
it may not take in mnuch of the spectacle of the room,
or be aware of the flirtation going on in one corner
of it, or the discussion on the politics of Brazil going
on in another, yet it distinctly recognises the finger
touching the outside of the glass, and shuns or follows
the tracing. In that cosmos of man which the image
compares to the glass globe, what is there analogous
to this H? IHere it is that the heterodox science of the
Swedenborgians and the spirit-manifestationists steps
in to differ from orthodox' science' It is maintained
by them that the tradition of the vulgar in all times
as to the occasional apprehension by man's sentiency
of the real activity of other sentiencies that are distinctly preterhuman has had a foundation in fact. It
is maintained that the percentage of such sentient
contact among men with this preterhuman world
may have exhibited historical increases and dimintions in' the past, and that it may depend on such
conditions as either. suddenly to expand itself without
solicitation from man, or to be capable of artificial
solicitation and extension. And so —on- the faith of
masses of alleged experience and experimentation, in
which not even the respect that ought to be felt for




IECENT BRITISH PHIrLOSOPHY.       243
men of great intellectual power entertaining the
faith, nor yet the most; studious disposition of Philosophy to act on IIamlet's rule of " giving welcome to
the stranger," ought to restrain one from declaring
that there has been more of the silly, the disgusting,
and the hideous in every way, than in almost any
other social extravagance of our time-out of these
alleged experimentations what are the items of belief
which the out-and-out manifestationists would seel to
add to our philosophy? Religion, independently of
Science, had already offered two beliefs that might
fill for the imagination of the pious the realms beyond
Appearance-the belief in the indestructibility, and
perpetual discriminated duration somewhere and
somehow, of all human sentiencies of the human
degree that had ever once existed; and the belief in
Angels, or superior Spirits, good and bad, also leading lives of inscrutable and preterhuman modes. To
these beliefs the manifestationists, or the extreme of
them, have sought to add a doctrine which, if developed, would assert nothing less than the phenomenal
recoverability within the Cosmos of all sentiency -that
had ever belonged to it, and the phenomenal presentability within it, on occasion or summons, of other
and non-native sentiencies, angelic or demonic. But,
go as far as they may, it is still only a cosmos that
they figure, still only a world of the phsenomenal.




244         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
In this little exposition, it will be perceived, there
has been a bearing on the question between Realism
and Idealism as alternative systems of cosmological
conception. In that supposition of a chain of sentiencies up to man, each grasping or construing its particular cosmos according to its amount of relatedness
to a potential sum-total conceived as existing, it is
the realistic hypothesis that seems most natural. It
seems most natural to assume an external totality remaining the same in its own nature, whether there
were any sentiency to grasp it or no, and apprehensible in different degrees of extent and intricacy by
different sentiencies, though by none wholly. In confirmation of this the fact may be dealt on that, where
the means of comparison among animals exist, notions
of the phsenomenal world possessed by one do not
seem to contradict those possessed by another. The
dog's world seems to corroborate man's, and man's
world the dog's, and on this feeling generalized not
only our sport but all our action proceeds. Is not
this as if there were a basis of independent reality to
which every sentiency helped itself according to its
appetite, but in such a manner that all can co-operate?
Not even so, however, need the Idealist be nonplussed.
Viewing the cosmos of each sentiency as a pure construction of that sentiency out of its subjective affections, he may find the reason of the manifest co



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.      245
operation of the sentiencies in a law of relation among
themselves, producing a unanimity of illusion.
VII.
MR. MILL ON SIR W. HAMILTON.
Let us return to surer ground. As, in the beginning of our review of recent British Philosophy,
Mr. John Stuart Mill was the thinker of whom it
seemed necessary to make mention almost first of all,
and as there is no thinker whom it has been necessary
to mention more frequently in the course of the review, so it chances that here, at the end of the review,
Mr. Mill is the last in the field. Since the greater
portion of the preceding pages was written, two publications of nM1r. Mill's have been given to the world,
expounding his philosophy in that shape in which its
chances of remaining the dominant British philosophy
of this generation may be best discussed. To one of
these publications-the Westminster Review article
on the Philosophy of Auguste Comte-we have been
able already to make such reference as seemed requisite. The other, and by far the more important, has
been reserved till now. It is Mr. Mill's Examination
of Sir Willicam iamzilton's Philosophy, and of the
Principal Philosophiccal Questions discucssed in his
Writings.




246        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Certainly, if the British public, or that portion of
it which is interested in philosophy, had been allowed
to hint to Mr. Mill the sort of volume that would be
most acceptable from him  after so much else that
they would not willingly let die, this is the volume
for which they would have petitioned.  With the
right instinct of high combat Mr. Mill has singled
out that recent British thinker who is universally regarded as the most formidable representative of the
antagonistic philosophy, and has undertaken the battle with that philosophy over again in the form of a
duel with him. That it is, in seeming, a duel of the
living with the dead, none regrets more than Mr. Mill.
"' In thus attempting," he says, " to anticipate, as far
as is yet possible, the judgment of posterity on Sir
William Hamilton's labours, I sincerely lament that,
on the many points on which I am at issue with him,
I have the unfair advantage possessed by one whose
opponent is no longer in a condition to reply. Personally, I might have had small cause to congratulate
myself on the reply whlich I might have received, for,
though a strictly honourable, he was a most unsparing controversialist, and whoever assailed even the
most unmimportant of his opinions might look for hard
blows in return. But it would have been worth far
more, even to myself, than any polemical success, to
have known with certainty in what manner he would




RECENT BRITISH PHIL.OSOPIEY.       247
have met the objections raised in this volume. I feel
keenly, with Plato, how much more is to be learnt by
discussing with a maln who can question and answer,
than with a book, which cannot."   Thus it is, in
the warfare of thought, no less than in cruder and
older warfare, that a true knight speaks and thinks of
his dead opponent.'" The Percy leaned on his hand,
And saw the Douglas dee;
He took the dead man by the hand,
And said,'Wo is me for thee! "'
But, though there is this chivalry of feeling towards the memory of his antagonist throughout fir.
Mill's volume, and there is not a word in it that does
not show the most anxious desire to do that antagonist
justice, I must confess that, on the whole, Mr. Mill's
estimate of Sir William HIamilton's intellect, and of
the worth of his services to British thought, seems to
me lower than was to be expected from so fit a judge.
The praises that a man bestows must be valued according to his habit in the matter of praising; and
adjectives which from  one man would mean much
will disappoint from another. Again and again M3r.
Mill uses expressions about Sir William  Hamilton
which, if they stood alone, would seem sufficiently
* Page 3.




248         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
hih-pitched.  Hie frequently praises Sir William
Hamilton's ability, his candour, his industry, and especially his great erudition.  Yet, when all these
exp"essions of admiration, taken together, are viewed
in the light of the summary appreciation of Sir William Hamilton with which the volume is wound up,
and vwhen the total estimate thus resulting is compared with the corresponding estimates which Mr.
AMill has given of other philosophers, not to speak of
his more casual eulogies of various writers miscellaneously on account of this or that pleasing to him
in their stray performances, the impression, I repeat,
falls short of the just expectation.  It is not only because, contemporaneously with Mr. Mill's judgment
of Hamilton, there has appeared his so much more
enfthusiastic appreciation of M. Comte-thouggh this
does make the contrast more striking. M. Comte was
a great European thinker; and they are but few that
would compare Hamilton's intellectual efficiency, or
probable influence, all in all, with M. Comte's. But,
when I find fMr. Mill saying, for example, of such
a distinctly inferior British thinker as Archbishop
Whately, that he "has done far greater service to
the worldcl, in the origination and diffusion of important thought, than Sir W. Hamilton, with all his
learning,'" * my sense of proportion is jarred.  Such
* Page 553.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       249
an opinion comes upon me as a phenomenon requiring
to be accounted for.
Partly it may be because Mr. Mill's acquaintance
with Sir William Htamilton's writings is not of old
date. One's recollections of early friends are more
affectionate than of later. Or, again, the cause may
be looked for in a certain high form of party-spirit,
which is no more unnatural in a philosopher than in
a politician. It is not unbecoming that one should
have a superior affection for those of whose opinions
one approves, and who are one's colleagues and auxiliaries in urging things in the direction in which it
is one's deepest conviction that they should go. Philosophy, as well as politics, will be in a strange pass
when there is no discount against a man for being on
the opposite benches. Mr. Mill's language seems to
imply that, on the whole, he thinks Sir William Hamilton the greatest representative of the Transcendental
Philosophy of late times in Britain; but then, as he
thinks this philosophy a wrong philosophy, it may be
his private opinion that no mind holding by it can be
first-rate. Yet, a generous controversialist may, after
all, have a greater respect for the powers and character of some antagonist than for those of any of his
own colleaguss, and may even recognize that antagonist's state of mind as less removed from his ownremoved, say, only by a single oscillation of the pen11*




250         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
dulum, whereas the interval in the case of the best
of his colleagues may be measured by two, or four,
or ten oscillations. Now, as Mr. Mill has given proof,
in other instances, of more than usual capacity of this
kind of feeling, it is to be inferred that there is something in the total style or form of Sir William Hamilton's intellect that has prevented A/im from becoming
the object of the feeling.
If I am not mistaken, something of this result is to
be attributed to a habit of preference, on Mr. Mill's
part, for a quality of intellect which he seems frequently to have in view under the names fertile and
fertility.   Afertile thinker " is one of his most characteristic phrases of praise; and what he seems to
mean by such a thinker is one who yields his readers
a large number of socially available propositions. I
was going to say " marketable propositions; " and, if
the expression were understood as implying nothing
derogatory, but simply as describing truths or ideas
adapted to the state of the intellectual demand, fitting felt needs, and useful at once for helping things
on, it might not be amiss. One descries, at least, a
certain ruling of Mr. Mill's critical judgments by his
own principle of Utilitarianism-a high and widely
sympathetic principle, certainly, in his interpretation
and exemplification of it; but still such as must exclude from his liking modes and displays of intellect




RECENT BRITISH PHIOSOPHY.         251
that are greatly impressive to others, who admire on
no such definite principle, but, as it were, instinctively and at large. Barbaric pearls and gold, we should
say, would have small chance with Mr. Mill. Hence,
doubtless, in part, his great admiration of M[. Comte.
He was pre-eminently a fertile thinker; his writings
are fields of valuable generalizations; whoever visits
them, if:he should read but a few pages, may carry
away in his pocket one or two propositions that will
serve for the purposes of a leading-article, a speech in
Parliament or even (though then the authority need
not be quoted) a discourse from the pulpit. With
Sir William Hamilton it is, at first sight, very different. One may say of him, indeed, that his greatest
and most characteristic merit among his contemporaries consisted in his having been, while he lived, the
most ardent and impassioned devotee to the useless
within Great Britain.
" Plague on't! " quoth Time to Thomas iearne,
"Whatever I forget you learn."
TWhat all the world besides had forgotten and given
up, Sir William Lamilton, for that very reason, would
overhaul and bring back into notice. Hence the unparalleled extent and range of his erudition. thence
also the profound bent of his own speculative endeavours. Problems which immediately preceding Brit



252         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
ish "s[e i>clation had ruled to be obsolete, in its own
mers hurry to get on, were hids daily and nightly
medi-:tf:!on. He even avowed (and this is one of
the pc:n-ts on which Mr. }Mill professes inability to
agree   i-':i him)his preference for philosophy considered as a gymnastic for the soul over philosophy considered as a purveyor of available truths.
The toi', the labour, the  pain of philosophizing
seemed to him  valuable to the individual spirit,
apart from  any teachable results.  Of course, just
as Ar. Mill would justify the toil and the pain of
philosophizing by bringing themn  within the scope
of his principle of utility, or of the utmost of pleasure
for all sentient existence, so Sir William Hamilton, in
passionately consenting to such toil and pain for himself, both confessed his own overpaying delight therein, and Foresaw, in a cloud, plenty of future utilities.
But try him  by any standard.  What a writer he
was! What strength and nerve in his style, what felicity in new philosophical expressions! Throw that
aside, and try him even in respect of the importance
of his effects on the national thought. Whether from
his learning, or by reason of his independent thinkings, was it not he that hurled into the midst of us
the very questions of metaphysics, and the very forms
of those questions, that have become the academic
theses everywhere in this British age for real meta



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       253
physical discussion? Throw this aside too, and let it
be said of Sir William Hamilton that, simply and by
whatever means, he did more than any other man to
reinstate the worship of Difficulty in the higher mind
of Great Britain. On this ground alone I should have
expected, still on the principle of utility, a considerably higher recognition of his services from Mr. Mill
than he has been able to accord. Mr. Herbert Spencer, it seems to me, speaks of Sir William Hamilton
with a juster sense of proportion. He even goes so
far as to confess, for himself, a greater indebtedness,
for special doctrines and suggestions, to Hamilton
than to Comte.
One tribute Mr. Mill has certainly paid to Sir
William  Hamilton, which  amply compensates all
omissions. IIe has written, in reply to Hamilton, a
book which will probably take rank as the ablest and
profoundest of even Mr. Mill's works. Were I to say
that, in the process of studying and answering Hamilton, Mr. Mill has become twice the metaphysician
he was, the expression might be over the mark; but
that Mr. Mill has been moved by this antagonism to
bring out twice the amount of his metaphysics ever
brought out before, will, I think, be questioned by no
competent critic. It is, indeed, a splendid treatise.
Almost at the outset of this volume we quoted
from an early essay of Mr. Mill's a passage of lam



254  RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHIY.
entation over the low state into which Speculative Philosophy had fallen in Britain at the time
when it was written. What does Air. Miill say in the
present work?  " The justification of the work,"
he says, " lies in the importance of the questions
to the discussion of which it is a contribution.
/England is often reproached by Continental thinkers with indifference to the higher philosophy.
But England did not always deserve this reproach,
and is already showing, by no doubtful symptoms,
that she will not deserve it much longer. IHer thinkers are again beginning to see, what they had only
temporarily forgotten, that a true Psychology is the
indispensable scientific basis of Morals, of Politics, of
thile Science and Art of Education; that the difficulties of Metaphysics lie at the root of all science; that
these difficulties can only be quieted by being resolved, and that until they are resolved, positively if
possible, but at any rate negatively, we are never assured that any human knowledge, even physical,
stands on solid foundations." *  Now, if Mr. Mill was
one of those who began that revival of Philosophy in
Britain of which he here -speaks, and if for thirty
years he has been one of the chief powers in the revival, he appears before us in this very volume as likely
to expedite, in a manner more vigorous than ever, that
* Page 2.




RECEiNT BRITISH PHILOSOPIHY.     255
farther desirable stage of the revival which shall lead
us out of our insular discredit, and enable us to hold
up our heads with the best that is going in Europe.
Tons of popular literature might be spared for a volume such as this! It will make men think. It is
Britain that will proximately be benefited, but the
volume will probably have a wider influence.
Considering how invigorating to the mind of the
nation at the present moment would be such a battle
of purely philosophical opinion as might be raised
over Mr. Mill's volume, one must hope that the volume will rouse opposition. It is certain to do so.
Replies may be expected, first of all, from the 1Hamiltonians-whether thosewho adhere in the main to
Hamilton's system, or those who do so only partially.
Mr. Mansel will, no doubt, come forward, if only in
defence of his own peculiar theological application of
one of Hamilton's doctrines. Something may surely
be looked for from Professor Veitch and Professor
Spencer Baynes; and these are points on which
Professor Fraser, notwithstanding those deviations
from some of Iiamilton's most important views of
which his writings have given evidence, will probably
think that fMr. Mill has missed his way, or failed in
his attack on Hamilton. If Dr. Cairns of Berwickupon-Tweed could be induced to lay aside other work




256        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
till he should have written a defence or re-explication
of the Hamiltonian Philosophy in reply to Mr. Mill,
I should expect that Mlr. Mill's regrets at not being
able to look for such an answer as the gladiator himself would have given, and to receive hAs " hard blows
in return," would be in some degree assuaged. But,
indeed, it is not only the Hamiltonian philosophy
that is assailed in Mr. Mill's volume, nor is it the adherents of any one school of speculative thought that
it may be expected to rouse. At one point or another
every form of philosophy, not reducible to Mr. Mill's
own ultimate interpretation of Locke's Empiricism, is
thrust at in tile volume through the ribs of Hamilton; and our pre-Hamiltonian British Transcendentalists, as well as our Ferrierists, our Kantians, and our
Hegelians (~o far as there are such among us), may all
feel themselves challenged. There are several points
on which Mr. Herbert Spencer, in consequence of his
modified agreement with notions of Hamilton, is involved by name in Mr. }Mill's criticisms.
My own impression is that Mr. SMill has made
good at least one general criticism respecting the
character of Hamilton's Philosophy as it is presented
to us in his remaining writings collectively-to wit,
that it is a philosophy of imperfect junctions. There
are blocks and obstacles, as if of unremoved embankments, between its several parts. One doctrine, pur



RIECENT BRITISH- PHILOSOPHY.      25i
sued at, one time, does not always meet or lead into
another, pursued at another time, or seem as if it
could meet or lead into it; much less is there ary
spacious central terminus whither the various doctrines are seen to converge, and from which access to
ally of them might be direct and easy. Mr. Mill,
applying a simile suggested by Sir William Hamilton
himself, has expressed this very happily. " I formerly
quoted from him," he says, " a felicitous illustration
drawn from the mechanical operation of tunnelling;
that process affords another, justly applicable to himself. The reader must have heard of that gigantic
enterprise of the Italian Government, the tunnel
through Mount Cenis. This great work is carried on
simultaneously from both ends, in well-grounded confidence (such is now the minute accuracy of engineering operations) that the two parties of workmen will
correctly meet in the middle. Were they to dis-'appoint this expectation, and work past one another
in the dark, they would afford a likeness of Sir W.
Hamilton's mode of tunnelling the human mind.' "
Every reader of Sir William Hamilton that has tried
to rethink his main doctrines so as to connect them
must have experienced something of this feeling; but
Mr. Mill's specific enumeration of the imperfect junctions, or actual inconsistencies and incompatibilities,
* Page 551.




258        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
between the several parts of Hamilton's philosophy,
will greatly increase the feeling. Mr. ]M~ill suggests
that one cause of this incompleteness or imperfect
centralization of Hiamilton's speculative labours may
have been " the enormous amount of time and mental
vigour which he expended in mere philosophical
erudition, leaving, it may be said, only the remains
of his mind for the real business of thinking." So
far as this suggestion is true, however, does it not
furnish an excuse admitting also of admiration?
Was it not the character of HIamilton's erudition that
it recovered not mere irrelevant facts and dry bones
of defunct ingennities, but thoughts and forms -of
thought on all philosophical questions which leaped
again into vitality and the full interest of relevancy
the moment they were re-stated by his powerful pen,
and some of which modern philosophy had voted to
be impedimenta only in its too great hurryto get on?
Was it not a service to Philosophy to compel it to reassume these so-called impedimenta, if they were not
such, but data and difficulties necessary to all philosophizing that would find itself solid and efficient in
the long run?  At all events, was not Hamilton's own
conception of a complete fabric of Philosophy rendered hereby so much more laborious that to have
failed to finish the fabric, or even to leave an adequate




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY,        259
conjecture how it might be consistently finished, was
hardly a discredit to one man's life?
Of those of M3r. Mill's criticisms of Sir William
Hamilton which fall within our scope in these pages,
the greater portion resolve themselves into a criticism,
repeated from all points of view, of Iamilton's doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge in connexion,vith his system of Natural Realism. Accepting the
doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, and thinking
it a-most important doctrine, and indeed the foundation-doctrine of all sound philosophy, Mr. Mill argues
again and again through the earlier chapters of his
volume, that there is a radical incompatibility between this doctrine, in any sense in which it would be
worth keeping, and that Natural Realism with which
in Hamilton's Philosophy it stands incorporated.
"If what we perceive in the thing," says Mr. Mill,
" is something of which we are only aware as existing, and as causing impressions onnus; our knowledge
of the thing is only relative. But, if what we perceive and cognise is not merely a cause of our subjective impressions, but a thing possessing, in its own
nature and essence, a long list of properties, Extension, Impenetrability, Number, Magnitude, Figure,
Mobility, Position, all perceived as'essential attributes' of the thing as' objectively existing'-all as'Modes of a Not-Self,' and by no means as an occult




260        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
cause or causes of any modes of Self-(and that such
is the case Sir W. Hamilton asserts in every form
of language, leaving no stone unturned to make us
apprehend the breadth of the distinction) then I am
willing to believe that, in affirming this knowledge to
be entirely relative to Self, such a thinker as Sir W.
Hamilton had a meaning, but I have no small difficulty in discovering what it is."*  Again, after
farther discussion, Mr. Mill thus sums up:-' It has
been shown, by accumulated proof, that Sir W.
Hamilton did not hold any opinion in virtue of which
it could rationally be asserted that all human knowledge is relative, but did hold, as one of the main
elements of his philosophical creed, the opposite doctrine of the cognoscibility of external things in certain of their aspects, as they are in themselves." t
Now, with all deference to Mr. Mill, we cannot see
that he has here fairly apprehended Sir William
Hamilton. Whether Sir William's doctrine of Natural Realism is true or false is one question; and it is
a question on which Mr. Mill, in other parts of his
volume, where he defends the Idealistic theory of
external perception, and developes it with reference
to the so-called "primary qualities" of matter, has
pressed Sir William very hard. He has also, I think,
convicted Sir William of a somewhat fast-and-loose
* Page 21.              + Page 31.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        261
habit in his use of the word Relativity, and of a want
of sufficient care to distinguish that sense in which
he alleged that we possess an intuitive, or face-to-face
knowledge of certain properties of matter " as it is
in itself," and that sense in which he denied the possibility of any knowledge of " things in themselves."
But, as we have already tried to show, vwhile anticipating this very objection (see ante, pp. 119-122),
there seems no necessary incompatibility between Sir
William  Hamilton's Natural Realism, or doctrine of
the cognoscibility of certain attributes as belonging
to matter itself, independently of the mind knowing,
and a very distinct and substantial sense of the doctrine of Relativity. Referring to our previous observations on this subject, we need only repeat that the
difference between Sir William  Hamilton and Mir.
Mill seems to be wholly cosmological, and not at all
ontological. They both agree that only the phaenomenal can be known, but they differ as to what is to be
taken as the sum or composition of the phoenomenal.
Sir William HIamilton, as a natural Realist, holds that
in the phsenomenal cosmos there are two directly
known constituents-a phenomenal world of Matter,
that has to be thought of as persisting the same in
itself apart from any percipiency that may be brought
to bear upon it; and a phsenomenal agency of mind,
so related to this world of matter as to apprehend




262        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
some of its real or independent qualities. There is a
cognising phsenomenon, and a phsenomenon cognised
in certain items of its own independent phsenomenal
nature. This doctrine may be wrong; and, as we
have already said, it gives a kind of wrench to the
cultivated or etymological notion of the meaning of
the word "phsenomenal," to be called upon to imagine a phsenomenon, or world of phsenomena, subsisting with no percipiency to which it could be phmnomenal. But, instead of the word "lphsenomenon"
use the word " nature 9 or " creation," and it is difficult to see why Sir William Hamilton could not have
held his particular cosmological system of Natural
Realism, its tenability once allowed, in perfect consistency with a very sturdy doctrine of the incognoscibility of the Absolute. The two creations, Mind
and M/Latter, might roll on together in a joint cosines,
so related that the one might have a conviction that
it toothed at some points into the independent constitution of the other; and yet both creations might be
thought of as equally melting away, in the last study
of them, into an Absolute unknown. Mr. Mill's error
seems to be in supposing that, when Sir William Hamilton spoke of our direct cognisance of certain qualities of matter as it is in itself, this was equivalent
to saying that we know something of Matter as a
Noumenon, of Matter in the absolute.  He never




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        2063
meant this, and he guarded himself in several incidental sentences against such a construction of his
meaning.  But, as we hinted, it might have been
better if he had done so at greater length, and with
a stronger partition between his cosmological and his
ontological statements.
Leaving Mr. Mill's criticisms of Sir William Hamilton after this mere reference to one of the chief of
them, let us note such re-explications of Mr. Mill's
own philosophical opinions, intermingled with the
criticisms or arising out of them, as may bring our
views of the principal articles of his metaphysical
system down to the latest date.
The most likely charge against Mr. Mill's previous
writings, we said, might have been that they left a
sense of metaphysical deficiency. While the charge
against Sir William  Halnilton is that of imperfect
junctions of the constituent portions of his system at
the critical points, the charge against Mr. Mill, with
reference to his previous writings, I can conceive to
have been that of a limpid evasion of the chief metaphysical difficulties as felt by others. As an instance
take the fact that in his beautiful essay on Utilitarianism he devoted but a few sentences to what seemed
to be the very knot of the whole question-the psychological genesis of the idea of right; the conversion




264        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
of the Prodest into the Oportet; the evolution of the
participle in dus out of never so much of the past participle passive; the demonstration how or why, if it
were granted that moral actions are those done with
a view to the greatest possible diminution of pain and
promotion of pleasure throughout the sentient universe, there should have arisen in connexion with this
class of actions the notion of moral obligation to do
them, unless on the principle of some d priori or connate notion of rightness that fitted itself on to that
class of actions.  The apparent deficiency in Mr.
Mill's writings of which this has been felt to be an
instance, may be attributed in part to the ease with
which MIr. Mill had grasped for himself the connexions of his system, and could evolve everything in it,
to his own satisfaction, inductively out of experience.
In part, however, it may have been owing to the peculiarity of Mr. Mill's literary style and method. Sir
William HIamilton's style and method are such as to
force his ideas upon his readers in their individual
distinctness. He heaps them up, as it were, in mounds,
each crowned by a signal-flag, so that there can be no
mistake about it. His plan is generally something
like this: "On this subject there are three opinions.
Primo, there is such and such an opinion; and that
is the opinion of such and such philosophers (naming
them). Secundo, there is such another opinion; and




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        265
this is what is held by so-and-so and so-and-so (naming
them).  Terijo, there is this third opinion (describing
it), and this is the opinion that I hold."  I-ence it results that there is hardly ever any difficulty in pinning
Sir William Hamilton to his opinions, and, if they are
inconsistent with each other, the inconsistencies almost solicit observation. Mr. Mill, on the other hand,
though admirably exact in his criticisms of the opinions of others, generally presented his own views on
philosophical subjects in what may be called clear
liquid lapses of exposition, over which one floated
with an agreeable sense of facility, feeling all the
while a fine and full element of meaning underneath
one —which meaning, however, it was more difficult,
afterwards, than in Sir William Hamilton's case, to
concentrate into definite propositions for the purposes
of recollection and controversy.  Sometimes, even,
there was a feeling as if there must have been points
of rocks concealed under the clear flow of the stream.
Whatever truth there may be in these remarks as
applied to MIr. Mill's previous writings, all critics will
admit that, to a great degree, they cease to be applicable to the present volume. I am not sure but
there are traces in it of effects of Sir William HIamilton's bold and strenuous rhetoric on the manner and
language of his opponent. At all events, in studying
Sir William Hamilton and replying to him, Mr. Mill
12




26.       IRECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
has felt the necessity of taking a harder grasp of some
of his chief philosophical opinions than before, and
re-issuing them in a more distinct manifesto.
There is a most interesting restatement in this
volume of Mr. Mill's peculiar cosmological Idealism.
The chapters containing this restatement (Chapters
XI., XII., XIII.) are, I should say, in some respects,
the best in the whole volume. They form, I believe,
a valuable contribution of new reasonings and happy
forms of phraseology to one branch of metaphysics.
Let me give as much of their substance as seems necessary by way of extension of our previous account
of Mr. Mill's Idealistic doctrine.
Stint  cogiationes, There are Thoughts or Feelings-such is still, Mr. Mill seems to hold, the one
radical fact, or phsenomenon of the Universe, from
which all Philosophy must be developed. Beyond
this fact, that there are thoughts, feelings, sensations,
cogitations, we cannot, by any analysis, go. Perhaps
cogitaction8, though not the word used by Mr. Mill, is
the word that would best convey his conception of
those ultimate phenomena out of which all else must
start. For what he insists on, in the same breath in
which he fastens attention on these ultimate phsenom



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        267
ena, is the fact of what may be called a curdling tendency among them-a tendency among them to form
associations with each other, according to relations of
coexistence, succession, and likeness.  Given sensations or feelings and their physical sociability (I say
physical, for as yet no notion of Mind as a distinct
entity, nor indeed of Matter either, must enter into
the- conception, though I think Mr. Mill inadvertently
permits it to enter in some parts of his language even
thus early in his account of things)-given these, and
all the rest is an evolution thencefrom.  The most
notable agency in the evolution is that of the repetition of certain associations between sensations or
the phenomena of feeling till they seem indissoluble
or inseparable. It is this Inseparability of Association
(why Mr. Mill should say " Inseparability" I do not
see: he seems entitled only to "Unseparatedness ")
that has been the agency in generating what are now
our most constant cognitions and beliefs. It is through
the action of the principle of association among the
ultimate phsenomena called feelings that we see taking place, first of all, that enormous self-separation of
the phsenomena into two orders or aggregates-that
now called 2Mind or Self, and that now called Matter
or Not-Self. The correct theory "maintains," says
Mr. Mill, " that there are associations, naturally and
even necessarily generated by the order of our sen



268         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
sations and of our reminiscences of sensation, which,
supposing no intuition of an external world to have
existed in consciousness, would inevitably have generated the belief, and would cause it to be regarded
as an intuition." *  And the notion of Mind or Self
admits, he contends, of "'a similar analysis."t  In
other words, that duality of Self and Not-Self which
is now the paramount fact or rule of all consciousness
known to us has been generated out of the curdling
or inter-association, according to laws of co-existence,
succession, and likeness, of phenomena in which, in
their prime or crude state, no such notion can have
subsisted. But, now that the notion does subsist, now
that the entire Cosmos seems to revolve on the poles
of this antithesis, what is Philosophy to make of it?
Is Philosophy-cognisant as it now is of the fact that
all has been the product of a process of cogitation, or
association on and on, among feelings in ever-growing
complexity-to uncoil the complexity to the uttermost, and, reaching a succession of associable feelings
or sensations, describable as phenomena, but undistinguished as either of Matter or DMind, to proclaim
that as the basis or ultimatumn of the Cosmos?  This
would be nearly the conception of the Non-Substlantiaclsts or X/ilhists, as represented by Hume. But
Mr. Mill, as before, shows no anxiety for going so far
* Page 192.         f Page 204.




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        269
back, unless where he thinks there mlay be benefit in
a bath of such final scepticism as may wash away
from the mind all notion of knowledge where we do
not absolutely know but only assume that we know.
INor is he content with such a rise out of Non-Substantialism as, economizing assumption the most possible, and assuming only one kind of substance, or
cause of phoenomena, behind the phmenomena themselves, should offer Jiaterialism or Pure Idealism as
the alternative. Whatever may be his reserve of scientific opinion as to the probable origin of sentiency,
the cosmological conception which he states and defends as the best working conception for Philosophy,
is, as before, that of Consiructive Idealism. But here
is perhaps the chief novelty of his volume. It is a
new and refined form of Constructive Idealism that
he now propounds-a form so expressed that, while it
will serve, he thinks, as a working conception fitted
for all the essential purposes of philosophy or science,
philosophy and science may sink back through its
meshes at will into all desirable vagueness and quest
of the homogeneous.
" As Body is the mysterious something which excites the mind to feel, so Mind is the mysterious something which feels and thinks "-thus, after all sorts of
caveats and explanations, we found 1MTr. Mill willing
formerly to sum up his doctrine of Constructive Ideal



270        RECE NT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
ism. He does not now reject this mode of speech,
but he substitutes another which is much more abstract. If we examine our assertion that we are cog.
nisant of a world external to ourselves, and of ourselves as having a being distinct from that world,
what is it, he asks, that we really imply? Nothing
more or less than this-that there seem to be two durations, distinct from each other, though in contact
from moment to moment, in each of which we are
aware, in every momentary contact, of a great deal
more than is ever then momentarily present. Take
first our notion of an external world. "What is it
we mean when we say that the object we perceive is
external to us, and not a part of our own thoughts?
We mean that there is in our perceptions something
which exists when we are not thinking of it; which
existed before we had ever thought about it, and
would exist if we were annihilated; and, further, that
there exist things which we never saw, touched, or
otherwise perceived, and things which never have
been perceived by man.  This idea of something
which is distinguished from our fleeting impressions
by what, in Kantian language, is called perdurability
-something which is fixed and the same while our
impressions vary-constitutes altogether our idea of
external substance. Whoever can assign an origin to
this complex conception has accounted for what we




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         271
mean by the belief in matter." "   Developing this
idea farther —calling attention to the fact that each
petty patch or flash of present sensation that we experience seems to us to certify a vast baclground of
permanent possibilities of sensation out of which it is
but the momentary emergence, and which we know
to be common to other sentient beings besides ourselves, while the present emerging patch or flash is
ours in particular —1r. Mill finds in the phrase "permanent or guaranteed possibilities of sensation' all
that he thinks included, or requiring to be included,
in the notion of an external world.  " Matter, then,'
he says, "may be defined a Permanent Possibility of
Sensation. If I am asked whether I believe in matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this definition of it. If he does) I believe in matter; and so do
all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this I do
not." t  Similarly, in the same notion of a present
shifting experience reposing on and certifying an infinitely wider non-present of possibilities, Mr. Mill
finds all that seems necessary for a definition of Mind
or Self.   Our notion of Mind, as well as of Matter,
is the notion of a permanent something, contrasted
with the perpetual flux of the sensations, and other
feelings or mental states which we refer to it —a
something which we figure as remaining the same
* Page 192.      f Page 198.




272         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
while the particular feelings through which it reveals
its existence change. This attribute of permanence,
supposing that there were nothing else to be considered, would admit of the same explanation when
predicated of Mind as of Matter.  The belief I entertain that my mind exists when it is not feeling, nor
thinking, nor conscious of its own existence, resolves
itself into the belief of a Permanent Possibility of
those States."    M Mr. Mill goes on to point out that
this " permanent possibility of feeling," constituting
our notion of Self, is distinguished by certain important differences from the " permanent possibilities of
sensation " constituting  our notion of an external
world.  Still Mindcl, as well as Matter, resolves itself,
iMr. M/ill concludes, into a patch of present upon the
ground of an unlimited non-present-into a series of
feelings varying and fugitive from  moment to moment, in a sea of possibilities of feeling. " Thus far,"
he says, "there seems no hindrance to our regarding
Mind as nothing but the series of our sensations (to
which must now be added our internal feelings), as
they actually occur, with the addition of infinite possibilities of feeling, requiring for their actual realization conditions which may or may not take place, but
which, as possibilities, are always in existence, and
many of them  present." t  And again, more briefly,
X Page 205.                Page 206.




RECENT BRITISH PHMOSOPHY.         273
" My Mind is but a series of feelings, or, as it has
been called, a thread of consciousness, however supplemented  by  believed possibilities of consciousness, which are not, though they might be, realized."'
Such is Mr. Mill's new version of his system of
Constructive Idealism. It is likely, I think, to be a
good deal canvassed in future metaphysical discussions. The objections that most naturally arise to it
are the following:It does not, as it stands, seem to answer the actual
and total conception which we all have of even the
present constitution of the cosmos. It seems to break
down at least on the side of MIind or Self: It does
not seem, on that side, to answer the felt requisites so
well as either the old Constructive Idealism of Berkeley and others, which supposed a permanent substance
or entity of Mind, determined by some external cause
or causes to imagine a world of material objects, or the
system of Pure Idealism, which supposes a substance
or entity of mind self-determined to the same exercise. A patch of present on an unlimited ground of
a non-present, a series of feelings varying and fugitive from moment to moment in a sea of possibilities
of feeling-this does not seem to be all that our notion of Mind or Self includes. It includes an organic
* Page 208.
12*




274        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
uniorn somehow of the present with the non-present,
the identity somehow, in one conscious organism, of
the was, the is, and the is to be. In a passage of singular candour, Mr. Mill has himself anticipated and
stated this objection to his theory of Mlind. After
disposing of certain "extrinsic" objections to the
theory he announces an " intrinsic" difficulty which
it seems to him " beyond the power of metaphysical
analysis to remove." This difficulty presents itself in
the mental phenomena of memory and expectation.'"Besides present feelings and possibilities of present feeling," he says, " there is another class of phaenomena to be included in an enumeration of the
elements making up our conception of Mind.  The
thread of consciousness which composes the mind's
phsenomenal life consists not only of present sensations, but likewise, in part, of memories and expectations. Now what are these?  In themselves, they
are present feelings, states of present consciousness,
and in that respect are not distinguished from sensations. They all, moreover, resemble some given sensations or feelings of which we have previously had
experience. —But they are attended with the peculiarity that each of them involves a belief in more than
its own present existence. A sensation involves only
this: but a remembrance of a sensations even if not
referred to any particular date, involves the sugges



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.          275
tion and belief that a sensation of which it is a copy
or representation actually existed in the past; and an
expectation involves the belief, more or less positive,
that a sensation or other feeling to which it directly
refers will exist in the future.  Nor can the phoenomena involved in these two states of consciousness be
adequately expressed without saying that the belief
they include is that I myself formerly had, or that I
myself, and no other, shall hereafter have, the sensations remembered or expected.  The fact believed is,
that the sensations did actually form, or willhereafter
form, part of the self-same series of states, or thread of
consciousness, of which the remembrance or expectation of those sensations is the part now present.  If,
therefore, 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."'*  Nothing could be fairer or braver
than this statement by Mr. Mill of the intrinsic objection to his proposed theory of MIind; for he goes on
to confess his conviction of its insuperability.  "The
* Pp. 212, 213.




276         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
truth is," he continues, "c that we are here fa:&E-to-face
with that final inexplicability at which, as Sir William 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 accommodated 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. The true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that
something which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be, in a manner, present —that a series
of feelings the infinitely greater part of which is past
or future, can be gathered up, as it were, into a single present conception, accompanied by a belief of
reality. 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." *  This, I
venture to say, is the most memorable passage, in its
philosophical consequence, in the whole of ISir. MIill's
volume. Were I to say that it reveals a trap-door
opened by Mr. Mill himself in the floor of his own
philosophy, I should say what others will feel as well
X Page 213,




PRECENT [BRITISH PH-ILOOPHY.      527
as myself. What concerns us here is that Mr. Mill
avows that the difficulty he has stated leaves his definition of MIind insufficient unless with the accompaniment of a paradox. What is the advantage, then,
of propounding such a definition?  Why not adhere
to the notion of Mind in the older Constructive Idealismn, which regarded it as the unknown substance, or
entity, or organism, which feels and thinks   Whatever objections there may be to the words "substance " and " entity," let them  die a natural death.
If the notion of Mind as " a series of feelings with a
background of possibilities of feeling " is not complete
without the rider that " the series of feelings can be
aware of itself as a series," or that " something which
has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still, in a
manner, be present," then the word 1" substance," with
all its faults, seems a very exact etymological equivalent for both notion and rider.
A second objection to Mr. Mill's new version of
Constructive Idealism, in competition with other cosmological systems, is that it is confessedly only a useful working conception of the present constitution of
the Cosmos, which we may rest in by voluntarily
stopping short of an ulterior scientific conception.
When Natural Realism speaks of a substance Mind,
and an independent substance Matter directly known
to some extent by M3ind, and calls these the two con



278         RE CENT BRITISH PHILOSOPIY.
stituents or factors of the phaenomenal cosmos, it professes to give the results of its utmost analysis of the
cosmos. When Materialism  resolves present M[ind
into quondamn Matter, it also professes to go the
whole length of the analysis to which it is competent.
When Pure Idealism asserts the contrary, and maintains that so-called Matter is but a figment of MLind,
this also is its final account of the sum-total of the
phsenomenal.  Nay, when the older Constructive
Idealism set up a substance or principle called Mllind,
and supposed it actuated by some force out of itself in
its ideas of external objects, not the less was this proffered as an analysis to the utmost of the total world of
phsenomena. But Mr. Mill's new Constructive Idealism does no such thing. When it speaks of the Cosmos as consisting of a series of feelings carrying in itself a sense of permanent internal possibilities of feeling, and aware of itself as in the midst of permanent
external possibilities of sensation, it professes nothing
more than an analysis arrested at a convenient point
for practical purposes.  Scientifically, it avows its
own ability to carry the analysis farther. These present notions or facts of Mind and Matter, it avows, are
ultimately to be conceived as generated out of a
prime original of phsenomena, definable in their original state neither as mind nor matter, but only as feelings or sensations and their associabilities.  Sunt




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         279
cogtlactones; ~fuerunt cogitationes-this is the ultimate statement to which we are led back.  A  curdling together of phsenomena, such as we now call feelings or sensations-this is the fact of the Cosmos at its
uttermost. It is but a secondary or subsequent fact,
that out of this curdling there has resulted that vast
self-differentiation of the curdled material whereby it
has happened that now, in every act of thought or
perception, there is, as by a necessary law of our being, a discrimination bursting asunder, or mutual release and disengagement, of two notions-the notion of
an external world of permanent possibilities of sensation, whirled away from us in extension up to the
clouds and the stars; and the notion of a distinct internal persistency of feeling, living on amid this -extension, and uniting in its consciousness the past, the
present, and the future. Now, is not Mr. Mill's Constructive Idealism only an account of the secondary
fact-an account of our notions of Ego and Non-Ego
as they have been generated for us out of a prior and
simpler consistency referred to by himself, and describable neither as Ego nor Non-Ego, but only as
cogitations or associable phsenomena of feeling? If
Mr. Mill is forced back to the very end of the avenue
which his own system opens to the view, does he not
cease to be, cosmologically, a Constructive Idealist, in
any preservable sense of the term, and lapse into




280         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
something else? It is difficult to see what name already in use would then describe his cosmological conception in its ultimate form. Owing to his describing
the ultimate cosmical phtenomena as " feelings," and
thus inducing us to think of them, however vaguely,
as phlenomena of what we now call the mental or
ideal order, there would still be a character of general
Idealism in his system. His ultimate resolution of
things would involve a preference for the language
of the idealistic over that of the materialistic hypothesis. What he would invite us to think of as the
prime " matter " of the Universe would be describable,
at all events, as " matter of feeling."  Yet it would
by no means be Idealism, as hitherto understood, to
which we should thus be brought; for, in Idealism,
as hitherto understood, the prime or genetic phoenomena have always been feelings imagined as functions
of some personality or personalities, whereas in M1r.
MIill's system personality is itself a mere notion
evolved out of the phsenomena, and therefore not to
be imported (though I think he does himself inadvertently import it) into the primary contemplation of
them. In some respects it is the Nihilism or NonSubstantialism of HIume to which Mid  Mill would
seem to be brought back, for in that system there is
no denial of anything of phkenomlenal fact that Mr.
Mill seems to think it necessary to keep. But, as Mr.




RECENT ]BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        281
Mill does perhaps make more of the natural associabilities of the prime phoenomena than Hulme, a more
positive name than }Nihilism or Non-Substantialism is
desirable for his system.  On the whole, if I were allowed to invent a term, I should say that 3Ir. Mill,
cosmologically, is now a Cogitationist.  The ultimate
fact of the phenomenal world, as recognized by him,
is neither Matter nor Mind in any present sense of
these terms, but a cogitation or coagulation of phnenomena which may be called feelings; out of which
cogitation or coagulation it has happened, in virtue of
the laws regulating it, that there is now that stupendous fact of all present, or at least of all human, sentiency-the instinctive furling off, in every conscious
or perceptive act, of a conceived external world of
possibilities from a conscious and persisting personality. If we stop at this fact —which we may do fbr
most practical purposes-our cosmological system
may be that of the new Constructive Idealism; but,
if we persevere in the analysis, we end in Cogitcatonism.
But can we end even here? Is even this Cogitationism, as it is propounded, ultimate? For, as we
have said, it is still a kind of Idealism. Those prime
phenomena, out of the coagulation of which, according to their laws of associability, he represents our
cosmos of Matter and Mlind to have been wholly




282         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
evolved, are, he is always studious to remind us,
phaenomena definable as feelings. What we have to
start with, in his scheme, as the prime cosmical matter, is still a matter of feeling-the facts or phaenomena of a crude original sort of sentiency, which has
not yet worked out the distinction of Ego and NonEgo, but is only engaged in working it out. He will
not even part with the word "consciousness;" but,
holding by the expressions " thread of consciousness,"
and " series of states of consciousness," as, in his opinion, equivalent to Mind, he follows lup the "thread"
or "series," in the case of each individual being, still
calling it consciousness, back into that infant confusion of first sensations with first muscular movements wherein the notions of Self and Not-Self are
to be conceived as lying yet unseparated and indistinct. Beyond this he does not go. But will the
theory serve us to the last extreme? Mr. Mill has
spoken of the difficulty of conceiving how that which,
ex hypothesi in his theory of Personality or Mind, is
but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a
series, or can grasp the non-present in the present.
He has represented this as the one stumbling-block in
the way of his total theory of Mind and Matter-the
final mystery or inexplicability which he can only accept, without attempting a solution. But are there
not mysteries on the back of this one?




IRECENT BRITISH PrIILOSOPIHY.     283
How, for example, about our belief in the existence of other sentiencies, or "threads of consciousness, "or successions of feelings," contemporaneous
with our own-whether our human fellow-creatures,
or the inferior sentiencies of all grades, from the largest
quadrupeds down to microscopic animalcules? Mr.
Mill sees no difficulty here. IHIe thinks his theory
may be easily relieved from that "extrinsic" objection which Reid threw in the way of Idealism, when
he maintained that it would leave us without evidence
of the existence of our fellow-creatures.  Reid, Mr.
Mill argues, was here under a complete mistake.
What is there, he asks, in the admission that Self or
Personality is nothing but a " succession of feelings"
or "thread of consciousness," that should prevent our
believing that there are other selves besides our own
-human, or inferior to human, or even hyperphysical
and divine-provided only these selves -are regarded
also but as " successions of feelings " or " threads of
consciousness? 9"  Among my permanent possibilities
of sensation there are recurring appearances-say of
bodies like my own, shaped and moving and behaving
like my own, and yet felt not to be my own —whence
I infer that there are around me other human minds
or possibilities of feeling besides myself; and from
similar marks or signs I conclude, with equal certainty, that there are hosts of sentiencies not human.




284f        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY,
Now, it is not the mere dizzying intricacy of the conception that would so arise that should prevent us
from allowing that MIr. Mill may be in the right here
against Reid. ]But the intricacy is worth noting.
According to Idealism, when I meet a man walking
in the street, he, as part of my Non-Ego, or possibilities of sensation, is really a production of my Self or
series of feelings, and yet I may know that the complimeirt is returned, and that I, as part of Mis NonEgo, am a production of his series of feelings. Again,
what is the butterfly I see fluttering in the garden but
a little object accounted for by the self-evolution of
my consciousness or series of feelings, respecting which
object nevertheless I am bound to conclude that it
also is a little series of feelings, working out its life as
self and not-self within the sphere of my Not-Self? 
Or, again, do not the French Emperor and the whole
of the French nation exist for me but as a portion of
the aggregate possibilities of sensation that have been
generated out of the experience of that series of feelings which constitutes Me, and yet, on the other hand,
as neither the French Emperor nor the French nation
ever heard of my existence, must I not think of my
series of feelings as a something lodging not yet realized amid the possibilities of sensation appertaining
to those transmarine threads of consciousness?  In
short, what, according to the Idealistic theory, are the




ieECENT BRITISH PHU;osOPHY.        285
millions of human beings of whose existence on the
earth contemporaneously with myself I am  so well
aware, and the countless hosts of inferior contemporary sentiencies with which Zoology amazes me,
but multitudinous "threads of consciousness" whirring and spinning their lives within the bounds of
that which is but a poem of my consciousness, and
making their poems there, all of which are different
from mine, and some of which outsphere mine? Illustrations of this kind might be multiplied, not in the
least for the purpose of ridiculing Idealism, but only
for the purpose of exhibiting the involutions of idealism within idealism to which the thinking out of the
theory leads. Of the Idealists metaphysically, as of
the Ptolemaists physically, it may be said that there
is an interest in knowing
"how they will wield
The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances; how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."
Whether lMr. Mill has adequately met the alleged
difficulty of reconciling such an idealistic theory as
his with the belief in the independent existence of
contemporary sentiencies I cannot undertake to say,
not having been able to think his explanation out to
my own satisfaction. It seems to me, however, that




286         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
the explanation is too summary, as it stands. It is
not in the least doubted that Idealism may work out
the notion of the existence of other beings besides
self. It seems only to be questioned whether, on the
idealistic hypothesis, this notion must not be regarded
as an illusion. For what is the idealistic hypothesis,
as entertained by Mr. Mill? Is it not that the sumtotal of existence for each sentiency is its own series
of feelings worked out?  What I am  aware of as
really existing in my thread of consciousness, my series of feelings. If, in the course of my series of feelings, there occurs to me the notion of another series
of feelings out of me, I may certainly call that an existence, inasmuch as it belongs to my series of feelings. But do I not leap beyond the fact when I set
up this second or notionary series of feelings in independent existence, as emancipated from  me, nay, as
approaching me for the first time out of circumjacent
vacancy where I had nothing to do with it, and even
as capable of making my series of feelings, of which
it is the creature, its creature in return? Yet is it
not in this sense that we believe in the existence of
our fellow-mortals?  How  can one thread of consciousness be aware of another conceived thread of
consciousness as anything more than its own conception? Will it be replied by Mr. Mill that this kind
or amount of existence is the same that the first thread




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        28T
of consciousness claims for itself. It does not seem
to be so. The Ego and Non-Ego of any thread of
consciousness are, according to Mir. Mill, conceptions
of that thread of consciousness experimentally arrived
at; but he has never said that the thread of consciousness itself is only a conception of the thread of consciousness. The thread of consciousness constituting
each man is followed up at last to a specific original
of feelings and their associabilities which formed that
man's peculiar infant existence, and was as yet the
neutrum  of his Ego and Non-Ego. The existence
which each man predicates of himself is, according
to Mr. Mill, derivability from that neutrum; but is
the existence which each man predicates of his fellowcreatures also derivability from that neutrum? If,
then, I admit the notion of the existence of my fellow-creatures to be a product of the experience of my
thread of consciousness, must I not admit also that
this notion corresponds to a fact of which my experience can give no account. But is this Empirical
Idealism?  Is it Empirical Idealism first to resolve
the whole of my Non-Ego into my acquired notion
of permanent possibilities of sensation, and then to
have to admit, respecting those moving bits of my
Non-Ego in which I recognise alien threads of consciousness or possibilities of feeling, that their existence is not rooted within my being?




288         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Let me not be misunderstood.  An Idealism  or
Cogitationism that should start with the assumption
that there is in the universe a plurality of minds, sentiencies, threads of consciousness, already discriminated from each other in the nature of things, might
very well explain the supposed existence of Matter on
the idealistic principle, and might adopt Mr. Mill's
definition of Matter as the happiest and most exact
that has yet been given. Each of these minds, sentiencies, or threads of consciousness comes to be aware
of "permanent possibilities of sensation," which it
figures, according to its ability, as a substantial world
of matter, external to itself, but the cause of which
may be in others minds or sentiencies. The cause of
all those sensations which each of us feels, and which
we body forth in so mighty a framework of imagery,
may be not, as the Natural Realists hold, the actual
existence out of us of any material objects at all such
as we suppose, but only the perpetual uniform determinations of our minds so to think in consequence of
influences or suggestions from other minds-say hyperphysical intelligences or one Supreme Mind. By
this kind of Idealism, which was very much Berkeley's, the Universe might be simplified into Thought
or Lotion.  But it postulates plurality of minds or
threads of consciousness in the present universe; and
here it is that Mr. Mill's Cogitationism seems to differ




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         289
from it. For, in Mr. Mill's system, not only is ltatter
resolved into a conception of each particular thread
of consciousness, worked out by the laws of association from its experienced feelings, but the existence
of other sentiencies or threads of consciousness is resolved into a conception of each particular thread of
consciousness, arrived at in the same way. Now, if it
is a conception merely, how can I predicate the existence of other minds in the same sense in which I
predicate my own? In the case of my own, I have
the guarantee of the fact of the thread of consciousness which has come at the conception; and, if I run
back that fact to the utmost, I come still, Mir. Mill
admits, to the indestructible fact of a specific initial
cogitation of phenomena called feelings, a specific
neutrum  of Ego and Non-Ego, emerging out of a
previous complexity of things, or let it be out of
nothingness. But, in the other case, I have no such
guarantee; and, unless I can assume the contemporaneity of other minds as vouched somehow in the
initial neutrum of my own consciousness, or can
break through that neutrum, so as to see it but as
one in a crowd of other neutra, prior or contemporaneous (both of which suppositions Mr. Mill's Empiricism would disallow), then I can predicate the
existence of other threads of consciousness only in the
sense that they are notions of my thread of conscious13




290        RECENT BRITISH - PHILOSOPHY.
ness. When I say that I exist, I do not mean, nor
does Mr. Mill's Cogitationism oblige me to mean, that
my thread of consciousness is a notion of my thread
of consciousness; but, when I say that my fellowcreatures exist, in what other sense Mr. Mlill's Cogitationism allows me to say it than that these fellowcreatures are notions of my thread of consciousness,
I confess I cannot see.
But farther. Let all difficulty be supposed overcome about the reconciliation of Mr. Mill's theory
with the belief in the existence of a countless plurality of minds and sentiencies contemporaneous with
our own. Let it be supposed also that the theory is
perfectly reconcileable with our belief in those ages
of mind and sentiency, anterior to the present, and
sustaining or constituting the history of things down
to the present, of which we have assurance in record
and in science. Has not recent science been malring
another conception incumbent upon us-the conception of a point in backward time at which not only
human sentiency, but all sentiency whatever, disappears from the scene, and yet the Cosmos is not annihi] atecld, but there remains'a more or less substantial
priority of non-sentiency, which had a history of its
own? Is it not worth while to look at Mr. lill's
Cogitationism, or at Idealism generally, in connexion
with this conception? A while ago the necessity of




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         291
such a test of cosmological Idealism was not likely to
be thought of. The emergence of the completed Cosmos from an Absolute Unknown was imagined as instant or sudden, and all known sentiency, including
that of M}an, was imagined as introduced into the
Cosmos within, at latest, the first week of it. Idealism, whose principle it is that esse is synonymous with
percipi, had only, as it were, to find the means of
supporting metaphysically a shell of esse, consisting
of the heavens and earth with all their material garnishment, for a brief day or two; after which the arrival within this shell of a competent native provision
of sentiency, or plurality of perceiving powers and
forms, relieved the chief amount of the strain. But
it is different now that the advent of sentiency into
the universe is conceived as gradual. There are long
tracts of an esse which could not be apercipi at all to
any native sentiencies, save of kinds decreasingly inferior to man; and again, beyond these, there are farther seons of an esse, claiming to be thought of as by
no means nothing, but a real and true ongoing of
phenomena, though bereft of all native percipiency
whatever.  How does cosmological Idealism, or Mr.
Mill's Cogitationismn, reconcile itself with this scientific
conception 
There is one plan, which I suppose was the plan
of the old Idealists in regard to that brief interval




292        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
over which they had to tide of a material esse in the
Cosmos before the advent of a native percipiency. It
is the plan of deputation to prior mind or percipiency.
For the interval which the older Idealists had to tide
over, they could suppose the shell of the material universe sustained or suspended, as it were, as an idea or
conception in the thoughts of non-native or hyperphysical intelligences, or in the creative mood of
Deity himself-this conception waiting for the native
sentiencies that were to leap on to it, or arise within
it, and were to inherit it as a prompting-ground for
their continued constitutional thinkings. By a little
adaptation the same plan of deputation might be
available for present Idealism.  A  world of some
kind might be sustained in existence backward, far
beyond the era of man, by fancying it as the conjoint
function of such inferior native sentiencies or percipiencies as were anterior to man. Or, if such a world
seemed too mean, resort might be had immediately to
that transcendent "metaphysical aid" which would
hlave finally to be resorted to, in any case, when all
native percipiency had been exhausted to the dregs,
and there still remained a vast priority of esse refusing to be abolished. Ityperphysical intelligences, to
whom our human measure of time is naught, might
be reading the marvellous poem of creation and celebrating its completion in chorus ere yet there was ap



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHIY.       293
pearance of any native sentiency in that creation to
take up the song. Or HIe to whom a thousand years
are as one day, and one day as a thousand years,
and of whom we are told that, surveying the emanation of His mind, Hie pronounced it good-might
not Hle have continued the necessary contemplation?
Of this mode of thought Idealism may avail itself, as
I believe all religious human feeling must avail itself
of some analogous mode of thought in the long run,
whether it calls itself Idealism or not. But it is to be
observed that it imports a transcendent reality into
Idealism. It does not require the particular reality
characteristic of Natural Realism-i. e. a real block
and history of a material world, distinct from all the
minds or sentiencies appertaining to it, and to which
they help themselves according to their capacities;
but it requires, as a substitute, a reality of previous
idea or thought, transmitted as a housing and pasturage for the sentiencies, minds, or threads of consciousness arriving within it, and furnishing them
with the suggestions that determine their perceptions
and thinkings.
What is the relation of Mr. Mill's Cogitationism
to Absolute Idealism we shall presently see. Meanwhile, it does not appear that it is of any such plan of
deputation as that just described that he would avail
himself in respect of the problem in question. Hie




294        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
holds, apparently, that his phrase " permanent possibilities of sensation," taken as expressing that NonEgo or material world which each individual mind
works out for itself, is amply sufficient to cover, for
that mind, all requisites of conceivability back to the
Nebula. He does not depute the burden of sustaining the conception of a world not yet tenanted by
man, or by any sentient forms, upon sulpposedl non
native or hyperphysical intelligences; but, leaving
the question of the existence of such intelligences
open, he thinks that each human intelligence is capable of sustaining the burden for itself without going
beyond the process of its own thoughts.
Now we cannot see how Mr. Mill makes this out.
There is not the least objection to his phrase " permanent possibilities of sensation" as an equivalent for
the material world. It is a phrase admirably chosen
in many respects, and one which Natural Realists, as
well as, Constructive Idealists, might accept as expressing what they agree in before they begin to differ. All
schools, indeed, agree that there are " permanent possibilities of sensation; " and the sole question among
them is as to the nature of the cause of these permanent possibilities. Natural Realists find the cause in
an actual external material world with which the
mind is so constituted as to hold intuitive commerce;
Construcetive Idealists find it in some agency, physical




ECOENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        295
or hyperphysical, determining the mind to uniform
sensations or images, but not necessarily in the least
like them in its own nature; Absolute Idealists find
it immediately in the thoughts of the Divine mind. In
each case there is a substratunzm for the possibilitiesa something out of which they are imagined as springing, and which is independent of the mind of the individual percipient. But in Mr. Mill's Cogitationisni
there is no such  substratum  allowed or taken for
granted. Each mind, or thread of consciousness, is
supposed to work out its notion of an external world
by a process confined to itself; and it is the notion of
4 permanent possibilities of sensation" so worked out
by each mind for itself thatt Mir. Mill must hold to be
a sufficient notion of a material world wherewith to
cover all that that mind may be called upon, by history
or science, to believe in as existing or having happened
before its own birth, or before the era of humanity
on the earth, or before the era of any forms of sentiency on the earth, or back, if need be, to the imagined
convolutions of a universal Nebula. But is any such
notion of'" permanent possibilities" as may be worked
out by the process of the individual consciousness sufficient for this immense burden? As far as I can see,
it is not. For either the " permanent possibilities"
are only a notion of the individual mind, evolved in
the course of that mind's development out of its origi



296        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
nal condition as a mere nentrum  of Ego and NonEgo, a mere bundle of feelings; or they are more
than a notion, and answer to a fact in the nature
of things beyond the individual mind taken in its
whole evolution from the first moment. If they are
a mere notion, what happens? One mind may then
fill antecedent time with any cloud of possibilities it
chooses, and it may elect to fill it with those precise
possibilities which history and science represent as
real occurrences. But in all this it is only filling antecedent time with a notion; and a notion won't do.
For it is out of antecedent time, and in consequence
of the conditions of antecedent time, whatever they
were, that the mind must think of itself as having
come to exist; and, if the sole contents of antecedent
time are a notion of the present mind, then the mind
that has formed the notion must think of itself as
springing out of the notion which itself has formed.
Physics and metaphysics are then at war. The world
of antecedent existence is, metaphysically, the child
of the conceiving mind, and this child is, physically,
the ancestor of its own mother. Mr. Mill then cannot
mean that the " permanent possibilities of sensation,"
which he offers as equivalent to all we know of an external world, are a mere notion of the individual
mind conceiving them, and nothing more.  Well,
then, let us take the other alternative-that these




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        29T
" permanent possibilities" are indeed a notion of the
individual mind, but a notion which it knows or believes to answer to a fact in the independent nature
of things. Here we should be all right; only this is
precisely the position with respect to our belief in an
external world from which Mr. Mill's Empirical Cogitationism seems to seek to drive us. That the mind,
without going beyond its own experience, may form
a notion of "permanent possibilities of sensation -
let it be granted that his theory is competent so far;
but, if what is wanted is that the mind may form such
a notion, and also know or believe that the notion
corresponds to a fact in the nature of things, then how
his theory will suffice, unless by knocking a hole in
itself, it is difficult to conceive. For to foi'm such a
notion, and to know or believe that the notion does not
end in itself, but shakes hands with a fact in naturewhat is this but to have an intuition, to acknowledge a structural compulsion to an act of faith, to refer out of the mind to a basis or security for its conceptions in things beyond?
In order to account, therefore, for our belief in an
antecedent history of things, whether back to the
Nebula, or to any other point that may be taken as
the proper cosmical beginning, must not Mr. Mill
considerably enlarge that ultimate inexplicability to
which (at the peril, as it seemed, of the principle of
13*




298         REICENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
his own philosophy) we found him willing to confess?
If the mind is to be spoken of as a " series of feelings" (which is the definition of Mlind he contends
for), then, he admitted, an inexplicable mystery must
be acknowledged in the mind's constitution. It must
be thought of as " a series of feelings which is aware
of itself as past and future." The alternative was
that either the definition of mind as " a series of feelings" must be abandoned, and the mind must be
thought of as " something different from any series of
feelings or possibilities of them," or the paradox must
be maintained that " that which, ex- ypothesi, is but
a series of feelings can be aware of itself as a series."
Keeping his definition, Mr. Mill must be supposed to
have accepted the accompanying paradox.  "The
true incomprehensibility," he said, "perhaps is, that
something which has ceased or is not yet in existence
can still be in a manner present —that a series of feelings the infinitely greater part of which is past or future can be gathered up into a single present conception caccomnpanied by ac belief of reality."  Observe
the last phrase. It exactly expresses what we have
arrived at in examining the reconcileability of Mr.
Mill's Cogitationism with the mind's knowledge of a
world pre-existing itself.  Only "as a present conception accompanied by a belief in reality" will M1r.
Mhill's Non-Ego or "permanent possibilities of sensa



RECENT BRITISH PHIILOSOPHY.         299
tion " cover our knowledge of an antecedent history
of things.  It is not the "present conception," but
the accompanying " belief in reality " that is the required factotum.  But it is a " belief in reality " of a
wider range than Mr. Mill then particularly bargained for, though he must surely have been aware of
its elasticity even to the present requirement.  For
then he was thinking only of the life of an individual
mind, and only of as much of that life as consisted in
the mind's self-consciousness.  Even so, in order to
account for the indubitable experience of every mind
within its own life, it was necessary to suppose an organic union of the successive moments of that life in a
sense of identity or personality.  It was necessary to
suppose that a series of feelings could be aware of itself as a series-that perhaps something which had
ceased, or was not yet in existence, could still be, in
a manner, present.  But for the requisites of our
present problem  must not this mystery be enlarged?
In order to account for a certainty in a world preceding ourselves, must not each series of feelings, constituting a self, be aware of itself. not only as a series,
but as a series that is not foreclosed at its own nominal beginning, but depends on a vaster series?  In
the total self, as well as in each moment of that self,
must there not be a sense of a something past which
is still in a manner present-i. e. of a bequest into self




300         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
of a something that was not self? No mere gathering
up of the past or future moments of the single thread
of consciousness into a single conception will suffice.
There must be a conception of the thread of consciousness transcending the whole thread of consciousness-which conception would be worthless unless accompanied by a belief in a reality corresponding.
What the reality is may be phrased in various ways,
by Materialists, Natural Realists, Constructive Idealists, and Absolute Idealists.  The belief in some
reality or other, supporting or yielding " the permanent possibilities of sensation" of which one figures
the past as composed, is what all systems alike require; and, if a single series of feelings, evolving itself from an initial neutrum, could generate the conception of the "permanent possibilities," how else
could it add the required belief in a corresponding reality than through some necessity so to believe, inwroughlt in the very nature of the neutrum?
Whatever farther objections may arise to M1r.
Mill's new cosmological doctrine will mostly resolve
themselves, I fancy, into the question, on which we
have just been trenching, of the reconcileability of the
doctrine with his principle of Empiricism.  We proceed, therefore, to a remark or two on Mr. Mill's vollume in as far as it illustrates his present state of feeling with respect to the fundamental principle of all




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         301
his philosophy hitherto. Had we adhered to our former order of topics, we should have taken this point
first. But there have been reasons for the slight difference of arrangement.
II.
IMr. ~Mill's volume, we now therefore say in the
second place, is wholly, and from first to last, a reassertion of his psychological theory of Empiricism
against the opposite theory of Transcendentalism. As
it is the latest, so it is the most uncompromising and
most thoroughgoing, British manifesto in favour of
Empiricism.  Its very purpose is to reassert Locke's
principle in a form adapted to the latest developments
of opinion, and to exhibit afresh its unversal competency. Not only is this the implied drift of every
chapter and page, but there are portions of the volume specially devoted to a re-explication of the principle of Experience and a demonstration of its sufficiency for every possible requirement of philosophy.
More particularly, there is brought forward, under
the name of " the law of inseparable association," a
reserve of strength in the experimental principle,
which Mr. Mill believes that tile Transcendentalists,
and especially Hamilton and Mansel, have uniformly
ignored.




302        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Now, with all our admiration of Mr. Mill's arguments, and with every willingness to admit that, in
consequence of some of them, Transcendentalism may
have to change some of its dispositions and re-intrenclh
itself (which is always the effect of a good attack, as
Empiricism has itself confessed again and again by
its own behaviour in like circumstances), we must
avow our general conviction that nri. Mill has left the
battle perfectly renewable on the side of Transcendentalism. We see not the least reason why, notwithstanding the immediate hurrahing that there will
be on the other side, and among mere bystanders,
over so vigorous and well-conducted an onslaught,
Transcendentalism may not be as lively among us as
ever, and quite confident of its power, if equally well
led, to inflict as valiant a retaliation.  Indeed we
must say that there is hardly any one of the old stock
arguments of the Transcendentalists against Locke's
principle that Mr. Mill's volume seems to have robbed
of its real force.  Leibnitz's " intellectus ipse," the
well-known illustration of the impossibility of conceiving that two straight lines should enclose a space, and
many more of the like, seem to me to survive all 1Mr.
Mlill's reasonings in the present volume, and to start
up again as popularly available as ever. There is no
use, however, in going back on these old forms of objection to the theory of Empiricism. Let us look at




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY ~        303
the theory in respect of its compatibility with that
cosmological system of Constructive Idealism, or, as
we have called it ultimately, Cogitationism, which Mr.
Mill has advanced in its interest. For it is expressly
in the interest of the principle of Empiricism that Mr.
Mill has advanced his new cosmological conception.
Of all our natural, or, as the Transcendentalists say,
intuitive beliefs, there is none surely more natural,
more intuitive, than our belief in the distinction or independent reality of these two things-an external
world or Non-Ego, and an internal personality or
Ego. If, then, the origin of this belief can be empirically accounted for, Empiricism may be said to
have been crucially tested. Now Mr. Mill's new cosmological Idealism is propounded expressly to show
that Empiricism  can stand  even  this test. It is
offered as a proof that the most immense and consequential of all our so-called natural beliefs can be accounted for on the principle of Experience without
any d p2riori supposition. Let us view it afresh in
this particular light.
First, as to the possibility of accounting empirically for our belief in an external world. "I proceed," says Mr. Mill, breaking ground first on this
part of his subject, " to state the case of those who
hold that belief in an external world is not intuitive,
but an acquired product." And how does he pro



304         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
ceed?  "This theory," he proceeds, "postulates the
following psychological truths, all of which are proved
by experience.... It postulates, first, that the human mind is capable of expectation —in other words,
that, after having had  actual sensations, we are
capable of forming the conception of possible sensations.... It postulates, secondly, the laws of the Association of Ideas. So far as we are here concerned,
these laws are the following: 1st. Similar phsenomena tend to be thought of together. 2nd. Phaenomena which have either been experienced or conceived
in close contiguity to one another tend to be thought
of together. The contiguity is of two kinds-simultaneity and immediate succession.... 3rd. Associations produced by contiguity become more certain
and rapid by repetition. Where two phenomnena
have been very often experienced in conjunction, and
have not in a single instance occurred separately,
either in experience or in thought, there has been produced between them what has been called Inseparable, or, less correctly, Indissoluble Association; by
which is not meant that the association must inevitably last to the end of life, that no subsequent experience or process of thought can possibly avail to
dissolve it, but only that, as long as no such experience or process of thought has taken place, the association is inevitable.... 4th. When an association




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.           305
has acquired this character of inseparability-when
the bond between the two ideas has been thus firmly
riveted-not only does the idea called up by association become, in our consciousness, inseparable from
the idea which suggested it, but the facts or phoenomena answering to these ideas come at last to seem inseparable in existence."@   If these postulates are
granted, there is no difficulty whatever, Mr. Mill
holds, in showing how a notion of an external world
or Non-Ego, including all that either people in general or the majority of philosophers require to be bound
up in that notion, may have grown up factitiously, as
a mere product of experience. For out of these conditions there would inevitably be formed a habit, or
call it instinct, of the mature mind, in every act of
sensation or conception, to regard what occurred in
that act as only the immediately present flash out of
an infinitely wider area of permanent external possibilities of sensation, more or less accessible. And
what more than this need any theory of the external
world include? Why assume the notion of a NonEgo as an original or intuitive datum of consciousness, when we can see so clear a way in which, though
it was not in consciousness from the beginning, it not
only might, but must have grown up there, so as now
to be perpetually and irresistibly present?
r Pp. 190, 191.




306        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
Of course, even were this analysis of our notion
of the Non-Ego to be accepted with acclamation as
absolutely and in every particular satisfactory, ]Mr.
Mill cannot mean that it would establish the principle of Empiricism.  It would only establish the
iBerkeleian Idealism. It would show that one most important notion or belief-that of the existence of an
external world-need not be held primitive, but may
be resolved into prior notions or beliefs; but, so far
from shutting us up therefore to the theory of a factitious origin for our notions and beliefs in general, it
would seem even to work the other way. By retiring
the d priori element from one wing, in which its
presence seemed unnecessary, it would only mass that
element in closer strength on the other wing. For
what does the speculation amount to? To what else
than this-that, given a mind, or thinking principle,
endowed with a capability of expectation, and with d
priori notions of likeness, coexistence, and succession
(and in this capability and these notions there seem to
be included the notions, or mental forms, of Time and
Number, or Plurality, if not also some others), then
the notion of an external world might well be a mere
result or factitious product of the experience of such a
mind? But surely, in what is here begged or postulated, in the shape of structural pre-equipment for the
mind ere the notion of an external world could be




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         307
generated out of its experience, the Transcendentalist
has a pretty large allowance of the sort of thing he
wants. Not at this stage, therefore, can Mr. ]Mill
think for a moment that the argument is closed.
iBut what if he can account empirically for the
notion of Mind too?  Then the whole field will be
swept,. and not a wrack of the mirage of Transcendentalism need disturb the nniversal clearness of the
view. To this feat, accordingly, Mr. fiill next addresses himself. Having demonstrated, in one chapter, that, according to the correct psychological theory,
the belief in matter "is but the form impressed by the
known laws of association upon the conception or notion, obtained by experience of contingent (i. e. nonpresent, but possible) sensations," he proceeds, in another chapter, "' to carry the inquiry a step farther, and
to examine whether the Ego, as a deliverance of consciousness, stands on any firmer ground than the NonEgo —whether, at the first moment of our experience,
we already have in our consciousness the conception
of Self as a permanent existence, or whether it is
formed subsequently, and admits of a similar analysis
to that which we have found that the notion of NotSelf is susceptible of."  What the issue of the inquiry
is we have already seen. It is that the sole effective
notion we all have, or can want, of MBind, is that of a
series of feelings reposing on, or, as we may say, navi



308        lECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
gating, infinite permanent possibilities of feeling. It
is a flashing-on of consciousness fromn moment to moment, each flash giving a horizon of a limited present,
but conveying also the irresistible conviction of endless other horizons of a non-present or possible. Now
the question is not about the acceptability of this definition of Mind-a definition which I can conceive
heated, and coloured, and glorified, till it should have
charms for the poet no less than for the metaphysician. The question is as to the possibility of an
empirical origin for the notion of MLind or Personality, taken as so defined. When 1Mr. }Mill says that
such a conception of Mind or Self admits of a " similar analysis " backl into experience to that of which
the notion of:Not-Self has been shown by him to be
susceptible, what does he mean? Does he require for
the evolution of the notion of the Ego the same postulates as in the case of the Non-Ego? Hardly the
same, surely, though he says nothing on the subject.
For what were these postulates a " That the human
mind is capable of expectation —that, after having
had actual sensations, we are capable of forming conceptions of possible sensations:" also the four laws
of the Association of Ideas-to wit, (1) that " similar
phsenomena tend to be thought of together; " (2) that
phaenomena experienced or conceived as either simultaneous or immediately sequent, "tend to be thought




tRECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       309
of together; " (3) that associations of this second class
"' become more certain and rapid by repetition," till,
by very frequent and uninterrupted coincidence, they
may acquire a character of inseparability; (4) that,
when an association of ideas has accquired this character of inseparability, the notion of inseparability is
transferred from the ideas to the phenomena thought
of. Mr. Mill cannot surely want this cumbrous allowance of postulation for the evolution of our conception
of an Ego out of conditions in which it was not originally present; or, if he does want it, we may be a
little astonished. For what would be virtually his
offer in such a case? What but that, if there were
given him a mind endowed with the capability of expectation, and structurally equipped with the notions
of likeness, coexistence, and succession (involving
Time and Plurality), then he would undertake to
show that out of such a mind's experience of phaenomena there might be generated the notion of
"Cpresent feelings with a background of permanent
possibilities of feeling." Would not this be very
much as if out of a four-horse stage-coach one were
to offer empirically to produce a tandem  or gig?
Empirically! —yes, save for the slight ca priori concession of the four-horse coach   Of course, I repeat,
Mr. Mill cannot possibly have meant any such absurdity. But he does not sufficiently guard against




310        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
the chance that it might be attributed to him. The
very title of his chapter, " The Psychological Theory
of Matter, how far applicable to Mind," suggests that
the process of the evolution of belief explained in
the preceding chapter as accounting for the origin of
the notion of Matter, is to be carried on into this
chapter as accounting also for the origin of the notion
of Mind; and I am much mistaken if the unwary
reader of the second chapter does not fancy that he
has the full benefit still of the postulates of the first.
There is no fornmal abrogation in the second chapter
of these postulates, nor any re-expression of them to
suit a new problem, to which, as they stand, their
very phraseology is repugnant; nor is there any sufficient suggestion of a new process whereby that
which was spoken of in the foregoing chapter (provisionally, it must be supposed) under such terms as
"the human mind," "we," "our," &c., and figured
as a structure of very definite forms and capabilities
holding converse with phenomena, might be now
seen to melt itself into the required " series of feelings
with permanent possibilities of feeling." In other
words, lVMr. Mill, in order to account empirically for
the notion of the Non-Ego, postulates in one chapter
an Ego which is wonderfully like the ordinary Ego
of the Transcendentalists; this Ego he resolves in the
next chapter into a form so different from the Ego




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       311
postulated that it would be interesting to know how,
if he were compelled to go back and work with it as
a substitute for the postulated Ego, he would be able
to repeat his preliminary exposition of the derivativeness of the notion of -Matter: but as to how this second notion of the Ego is arrived at, there is, within
the limits of the chapter, no detailed explanation.
We are not left in the dark, however. We can
fall back on the theory of Cogitationism as, from. various hints here and elsewhere, we can see that BMr.
Mill would work it in that earlier stage of the process
when as yet neither the Ego nor the Non-Ego has
been developed in the crude consciousness, but there
is only the initial neutrum of both. Here, of course,
we cannot speak of a mind observing phoenomena,
and forming conceptions and expectations according
to the laws of the association of ideas by likeness, coexistence, and succession. That is a form of language
not applicable till the mind is supposed sufficiently
extricated from  the phenomena of sensation and
movement to be able consciously to watch them as
something distinct from itself. We have not yet got
at Mind in this sense. What we are at work with is
the material out of which the notions both of mind
and matter are evolved. What is -that?  Feelings
and their associabilities; a certain curdling or cogitation of phmenomena definable simply as feelings;




312         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
that first kind of consciousness in which the Ego and
the iNon-Ego lie confused or intertwined.  It is out
of this state of things that iMr. Mill maintains that
our notions of Matter, as "a permanent possibility of
sensation,') and Mind, as  a permanent possibility of
feeling," might be generated empirically and without
any a_priori assumption.
It seems to me that a very large amount of d
priori assumption is implied in the very terms of the
statement. It is assumed, in the first place, that there
are certain predetermined associabilities among the
phsenolmena of feeling from the first-that they tend
to come together, or to grow together, according to
certain laws or rules of associability pre-imparted to
them. It is assumed, in the second place, that the
phsenomena themselves are, atomically, if I may so
express it, or in their own individual nature, apart
from their associabilities, of a certain kind, and no
other, by d priori derivation: —(1.) The Associabilities. These must be represented now not as associabilities by conscious likeness, coexistence, or succession (for these, with the involved notions of Time
and Plurality, are surely mental notions, the origin
of which requires to be accounted for as much as the
origin of thle notions of Matter and Mind, and can
hardly have been earlier), but rather as physical or
physiological associabilities, which we can character



RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         313
ize in the retrospect, as likenesses, coexistences, or
successions, but which, as acting among the phsenomena themselves, may have involved much not so describable.  If we take Mr. Bain's phrase " nervous
currents" as furnishing the physical equivalent to the
phsenomena of feeling, then we may say that coexistent or immediately consequent nervous currents tend
by repetition to form permanent associations, and also
perhaps (though this is farther-fetched) that like nervous currents tend to occur together; or there may be
other definitions of the associabilities of nerve-currents
that Physiology has yet to find out. Mr. Mill abstains
from the phrase " nerve-currents -preferring to talk
consistently with his metaphysical Idealism, according to which, if the nerve-currents are the causes of
the feelings, yet as these nerve-currents, like all other
things and existences, are only conceptions or notions
of their own effects, the effects must have the precedence in metaphysical discourse. This is very characteristic.  That there are feelings is certain; that
there are nerves or human bodies at all is but an item
in that conception of a material world which the Idealist maintains to be merely a conception; and, though
it may be an irresistible part of the conception that
the nerves originate or occasion the feelings, it would
be doing wrong to Idealism, in metaphysical argument, to start with the nerves.  But among these
14




314         RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.' phenomena of feeling" which Mr. Mill, as an Idealist, consistently does start with, he recognises associabilities not the less describable in the retrospect as
associabilities by likeness, coexistence, and succession.
Without these precise associabilities among the crude
phsenomena of feeling there would not be the result
he seeks-i. e. the generation of those notions of Mind
and Matter, of an Ego and a Non-Ego, which each
mature mind has. But, as these associabilities are
laws pre-imparted to the phlenomena, and regulating
most stringently the process of their cogitation, how
can the process be said to be empirical? Precisely
what Transcendentalism asserts in opposition to Empiricism is that in every process there must be conceived a derived or d prior element on which the result depends. It matters not how far the inquiry is
moved back. If the mature human mind is taken,
then Transcendentalism asserts that there is an d
priori element in it —forms or necessities of its structure, according to which it must and does think.  If
a certain coagulation of phsenomena, called feelings,
is taken as that out of which the human mind was
convolved into completed being, equally there Transcendentalism undertakes to place its finger on something and say, " That is d priori."  The associabilities
of the feelings are d priori; their reason and origin
transcend the process itself. (2). fThe Feelings them



RECOENIT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.      315
sevyes. There is an cd priori element here too. What
the result shall be depends on the d priori kind or
nature of the atoms, as well as on the pre-imparted
associabilities by which they are drawn into combinations. Else why should there be differences of sentiency. " Feelings" or " plisenomena of feeling" is
an indiscriminate Atlantic of a phrase. In fact, there
must be millions of kinds of " feelings " or " phmanomena of feeling," all in busy, already discriminated existence, out of ac priori depths of the Unfathomable;
so that, even if the same associabilities prevailed
among them in common, the results could never approximate. There are feelings and feelings. Why,
in one case, should the result of the cogitation of feeling be a dog, or an earwig, rather than a man? Why
but because there was an inherent dogginess or earwigginess in the given kind of associable feelings,
which, whatever the associations formed among the
feelings, would not let the result be anything else
than a dog or an earwig? Is there nothing d _priori
in this?
Deliberately I have brought the question between
Empiricism and Transcendentalism to this pass, knowing what will be said. " What is the mighty differerence," it will be said, "between Empiricism  and
Transcendentalism, if this is Transcendentalism?
Would Empiricism  deny aught. of what you have




316        RECEENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
here called it Transcendentalism to maintain?  If it
is the sole difference between Transcendentalism and
Empiricism  that the one maintains that in every
thing, or process, there is an a priori or inherited
element, necessarily assisting to determine what shall
be the history of the thing or the result of the process, while the other maintains that this also, on our
mounting higher in the evolution, may be resolved
into experience-if this is all, is it not only the old
story of looking at the gold-and-silver shield from opposite sides, and pronouncing it golden or silver according to the side looked at?."  Not so; I cannot
think that it is so. Send Transcendentalisml and Empiricismn back, tugging with each other on the very
terms described, through all stages of the evolution
from the present moment, and at every stage Transcendentalism is the mode of thought that keeps the
field, while Empiricism  must still be the fugitive.
That is something. And at the utmost, when the
Nebula, or whatever else may be deemed primordial
and homogeneous in the phenomenal evolution, is
reached and rushed through by the two combatants,
the pursued and the pursuing, is there not a mighty
consequence in the ultimate victory? If Empiricism,
fukgitive till then, can then turn at bay and conquer,
it can only be because its back is against Zero, against
Nihilism, against a wall of absolute blackness. If




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        317
Transcendentalism is still courageous and sure of the
victory, it can only be because it sees in the middle
of the wall of blackness a blazing gate, and knows it
to be the gate whence the chariots issued and issue of
an external d priori.  And here perspective is as
nothing. Wherever we stand, it is either the wall of
absolute blackness that terminates our view, or the
blazing gate shoots its radiance to where we are and
move.
III.
Mr. Mill having, throughout his volume, reasserted the principle of Experimentalism  or Empiricism against that of Transcendentalism in philosophy, and having, in one portion of his volume, put
forth, as the proper consequence of this principle
when applied to our notions of Matter and Mind,
that developed system of cosmological Idealism which
I have ventured to call Cogitationism, it becomes interesting to inquire, finally, in what attitude, on the
platform of such a total metaphysical system of Empirical Idealism, he leaves his readers standing in
view of the permanent ontological questions, or questions of the Supernatural.
Partly, we have already had hints and informations on this subject. Accepting the doctrine of the
Relativity of all knowledge, but declaring the doc



318        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
trine to be incompatible, in any sense in which it
would be worth keeping, with that cosmological system  of Natural Realism with which Sir William
Hamilton tried to associate it-nay, ultimately identifying the doctrine with the principle of Experimentalism itself, and denying by implication its compatibility with Transcendentalism  Mr. Mill, as we have
seen, agrees with Sir William Hamilton, or even outgoes him, in his formal repudiation of Ontology. All
our knowledge, he declares, can only be of the relative
or phoenomenal; of Nonumena, Absolute Causes, or
Things in themselves, we know, and can know, nothing. Again and again this declaration is made. It
pervades the entire volume. We have now to note,
however, two respects in which, notwithstanding this
formal agreement with Sir William Hamilton in the
repudiation of all Ontology, Mr. Mill is by no means
at one with Sir William on that last frontier of speculative philosophy where the shore of the ontological
is supposed to be reached.
(1.) Under the nalme of Faith, Sir William HIamilton affirmed, as Mr. Mill has himself explained, much
which he declared to be ntterly unpredicable in the
name of Reason. There is, he thought, a structural
necessity of the human mind whereby it is compelled
to believe much that it cannot know-to accept inexplicabilities, nay, inconceivabilities, as nevertheless




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        319
facts. It was on this principle (avowed, but not sufficiently explained) that Sir William Hamilton, notwithstanding his speculative doctrine of ultimate
Nescience, or the incognisability of the Absolute, assumed, with a fervour equal to that of any Ontologist,
the veritable Absolute of the Theists. Now, although
Mr. Mill has had at one point to resort practically for
himself to an ultimate salvo which looks very like
Faith-although to stop a hole in his theory of Mind,
he has had to assume an inexplicability, an inconceivability, a paradox, as nevertheless a fact —yet in his
general philosophy, he provides no room or function
whatever for Belief as distinct from Knowledge. If
we assert a Deity, it must be as a legitimate inference
from the phsenomena of our experience; if we predicate certain attributes or actions of this Deity, there
also must be rational inferences from the facts that
come within our observation, investigated according
to the ordinary principles of reasoning.  In other
words, if Theism and Theology are to sustain themselves at all, it can only be by the  po osteriori argument, and not by any form or forms of the d priori
one. This is certainly an interesting intimation of
lMr. Mill's opinion to professional theologians. That
Bridgewater Argument from Design which has been
so much derided of late is, after all, he asserts, the
only argument on which Theism can make any stand;




320        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
and the much-abused method of Paley, both in Natural Theology and in the matter of the Christian
Evidences, was, after all, the only right method. If
Paley fails, or rather if Paley's style of argument
fails, all is over. Herein, I say, there is certainly a
difference between Mr. Mill and Sir William Haamilton-a difference which will be construed by many as
giving the advantage to the HIamiltonian system in
connexion with Theism and Theology. For, without
foregoing whatever may be of worth in the d posteriori
argument, Sir William would reach Theism and Theology also, or primarily, through faith, or an a _priori
necessity of our mental constitution; and, since our
surfeit of Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises some
time ago, this is the kind of warrant for Religion that
has seemed deepest and strongest to most Theists.
(2.) Per contrac, however, Mr. ~Mill makes some
corrections of Sir William  HIamilton's doctrine of
Relativity, or our nescience of the Absolute, which
may be taken as relieving that doctrine itself from certain supposed impediments to rational religious belief.
For example, Sir William Hamilton's assertion was
that in our notion of the Absolute there is nothing
positive whatever -that our sole conception of the Absolute is that of " a negation of conceivability."
And Mr. Mansel, expanding the statement, declares
the Absolute and the Infinite to be but "names




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.         321
indicating, not an object of thought or consciousness at all, but the mere absence of the conditions under which consciousness is possible."  Many
critics of Hamilton, while agreeing with his doctrine
of the Relativity of Knowledge, or the Unknowableness of the Absolute, have dissented from this extreme
form of it, which would allow in our notion of the Absolute nothing else than a negation or paralysis of all
conception. Mr. Herbert Spencer, for one, has argued
at some length against this as'a grave error," even
while expounding approvingly Sir William's main
doctrine of Relativity.*  Ie contends for the necessarily positive character, however vague, of our consciousness of the Unconditioned.  In our notion of the
Unlimited, he argues, our consciousness of linmits is
abolished but not the consciousness of some kind of
being stretching out and away into an illimitable.
Here-and with considerable similarity in the mode
of argument-Mr. Mill follows and corroborates Mr.
Spencer in his criticism of Sir William  Hamilton's
Philosophy of the Conditioned. (Chapter VI.) So
long as we use the abstractions, " the Absolute,"9" the
Infinite," he says, it may be possible to assert that our
corresponding conceptions are utterly void of any
positive element-are in fact simple failures to conceive any meaning at all. But couple the predicate
* Mr. Spencer's First Principles, pp. 87-97.
14$




322        REOCENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
"Absolute " or " Infinite9 with a subject —say " Infinite Space," or "Absolute Goodness "-.and then
the mind is conscious of a tolerably positive element
in the compound effort of thought. When we think
of space as infinite, we think away the limits, but we
do not cease to think of it as continuing to be space;
when we try to imagine absolute Goodness, we fail in
realizing the predicate " absolute," but the Goodness
remains in our thoughts substantive enough. Or, if
what we mean by the abstractions "the Absolhite,'
"the Infinite," be (as MIr. Spencer understands, and
as Sir William -Hamilton himself doubtless understood, when he used these phrases independently),
"Absolute Existence" or " Infinite Being," then still,
Mr. Mill would say (as Mr. Spencer has said), there is
a positive element, however vague and general, present in our conception-inasmuch as we still thinkl of
Existence or Being as that something whose absoluteness or infinitude is inconceivable. Nor is all this
without consequence. Not unimiportant as regards
Sir William Hamilton's own philosophy, the error (as
IMr. Mill and Spencer agree in considering it) in his
statement of the doctrine of IRelativity, as bearing on
the question of rational Theism, swells into immense
proportions in l[r. Mansel's express application of the
Hamiltonian doctrine to Christian Theology.  Accordingly, Mr. Mansel's whole elaboration of Hamil



IRECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       323
ton's Philosophy of the Conditioned in its bearings on
Religion is assailed by Mr. Mill in a separate onslaught (Chapter VII.).  "tIe maintains," says Mr.
Mill, speaking of Mr. Mansel, " the necessary relativity of all our knowledge. He holds that the Absolute and the Infinite, or, to use a more significant
expression, an Absolute or an Infinite being, are inconceivable by us, and that, when we strive to conceive what is thus inaccessible to our faculties, we fall
into self-contradiction. That we are nevertheless warranted in believing, and bound to believe, the real existence of an absolute and infinite being, and that this
being is God; God, therefore, is inconceivable and
unknowable by us, and cannot even be thought of
without self-contradiction; that is (for Mr. Mansel is
careful thus to qualify the assertion), thought of as
Absolute, and as Infinite. Through this inherent impossibility of our conceiving or knowing God's essential attributes, we are disqualified from judging what
is or is not consistent with them. If, then, a religion
is presented to us, containing any particular doctrine
respecting the Deity, our belief or rejection of the
doctrine ought to depend exclusively upon the evidences which can be produced for the divine origin
of the religion; and no argument grounded on the incredibility of the doctrine, as involving an intellectual
absurdity, or on its moral badness as unworthy of a




324        RECENT BRITISHI PHILOSOPHY.
good or wise being, ought to have any weight, since
of these things we are incompetent to judge." a  Mr.
Mill's opinion of this doctrine being that it is " simply the most morally pernicious doctrine now current," he spares no pains in denouncing and exposing
it. There is probably no portion of his volume which
will be read with keener popular relish, or more frequently quoted from, than precisely that which contains his attack on Mr. IMansel.
It is an attack, as we have hinted, which the prevailing theology will pretty unanimously adopt, with
thanks to /[Mr. Mill. For, however common it has
been with theologians to avail themselves of a mild
form of Mr. Mansel's doctrine, and by the single averment that God's ways are not as our ways, to bar or
silence rational objections to particular dogmas of
Theology, yet Mr. Mansel's doctrine in full, as he
propounds it, is one from which all theologians, save
a few, would undoubtedly shrink. Whatever mysteries, or inexplicabilities, or inconceivabilities there
may be in Religion, few theologians would contend for
that kind of mystery which should maintain that, precisely beccause our sole notion of the Absolute or Deity
is that of a Being respecting whom we can make no
predicate whatever, or respecting whom we can only
say that he unites all possible predicates, including
* Pp. 88, 89.




RECENT BRITISlH PHILOSOPHY.       325
even those that are contradictory of each other, while
at the same time none of these predicates have the
same meaning that they would have if applied to a
hnman being, therefore no objection is to be made to
a Religion, miraculously attested, on account of the
intrinsic nature of any of its teachings. What is
called Rational Theology, at all events, has never
committed itself to this. Now here Mr. Mill comes
to the help of Rational Theology. He does not enter on the question of the possibility that any evidence whatever could attest to us that a Revelation
had come from Deity, if we had no preliminary notion of Deity whereby to be sure that the Revelation
had come from HIIim-no other notion of the source
of the revelation than that it was the inconceivable
home of no attribute, or of no attribute in a human
sense, or of all opposite attributes simultaneously, and
all in non-human senses. He confines himself to an
indignant protest, in the name of reason, against the
notion that such a Deity could be, on any terms, the
object of the religious sentiment. Only in so far as
Deity can be conceived as a Being endowed with
those attributes (goodness, wisdom, justice, power,
&c.) which we love and reverence in men, and with
those attributes in the very sense in which they are
predicated of men, albeit in Deity they are regarded as
raised to the degree of infinity and in that respect are




326        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
rolled beyond all grasp of our comprehension-only
in as far as Religion can offer such a Deity, ought reason, or morality, or common sense, or the heart of
man, Mr. Mill argues, to have satisfaction in Religion
or to tolerate it in the world. But he sees nothing in
the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, or Incognisability of the Absolute, rightly interpreted, to
deprive men of such a conception of Deity, if it can
be otherwise fairly arrived at by induction from the
phsenomena of experience. Speaking in behalf of
those " Rationalists," or believers in a "Rational
Theology," against whom Mr. Mansel's arguments are
principally directed, he says that they may "hold
with Mr. Mansel himself, the doctrine of the relativity
of human knowledge," and yet not be "touched by
his reasoning."  For they may reply to M/r. Mansel
thus: " We cannot know God as he is in himself;
granted: and what then?  Can we know man as he
is in himself, or matter as it is in itself? We do not
claim any other knowledge of God than such as we
have of man or of matter. Because I do not know
my fellow-men, nor any of the powers of nature, as
they are in themselves, am I therefore not at liberty
to disbelieve anything I hear respecting them as being inconsistent with their character? I know something of Man and Nature, not as they are in themselves, but as they are relatively to us; and it is as




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY,        327
relative to us, and not as he is in himself, that I suppose myself to know anything of God.  The attributes which I ascribe to him, as goodness, knowledge,
power, are all relative. They are attributes (says
the rationalist) which my experience enables me to
conceive, and which I consider as proved, not absolutely, by an intuition of God, but Iphenomenally, by
his action on the creation, as known through my
senses and my rational faculty.  These relative attributes, each of them in an infinite degree, are all I
pretend to predicate of God. When I reject a doctrine as inconsistent with God's nature, it is not as
being inconsistent with what God is in himself, but
with what he is as manifested to us. If my knowledge of him  is only phoenomenal, the  assertions
which I reject are phzenomenal too."   In short,
whatever theology is content to offer itself not as an
ontology or science of the Absolute itself, but simply
on the same terms as any other science, or as a generalization'of certain phlenomena in the supposition
that they are the phoenomena or effects of a Divine
personality antecedent to all nature, is safe, Mr. Mill
holds, from all injury from the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, as understood by true philosophy, and can only be' assailed, as any other theory
might be, on ordinary logical grounds. Such a the* Pp. 98, 99.




328        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
ology has only to prove itself to be the only adequate
theory or generalization of the phsenomena, or of certain phmanomena of nature, to make itself good; and
it is only a theology that should profess itself to be
more than this, to be a revelation of the absolute or
noumenal Existence underlying all phlenomenal nature, that true Philosophy must condemn beforehand.
In all this, however, Mr. Mill has spoken only vicariously, or by way of showing the compatibility of
certain views with certain defined conditions, provided
they have fulfilled certain other defined conditions.
What one wants to know is the final attitude in
which, according to PMr. Mill's own judgment of his
system of Empirical Cogitationism all in all, it ought
to leave men in respect of the great religious questions.
Here the last word of M1Yr. Mill's volume seems to
be simply what is implied in the very quotations in
which he has spoken vicamiously. It is a reiteration
of what we have seen him assert in his article on
Comte's Philosophy-to wit, that, so far as is yet visible, true philosophy (i. e. Empirical Idealism or Empirical COogitationism) may fairly leave these questions
open. The most explicit statement to this effect in
his own name, occurs, I think, in the chapter in
which, after expounding his idealistic or cogitational
theory of matter, he considers how far the same




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHIY.       329
theory is applicable to mind. It had been objected
by Reid to the idealistic theory that it left no evidence of the existence of our fellow-creatures, and no
evidence of the existence of God.  We have seen
how Mr. Mill disposes of the first part of the objection-to wit, that the theory would leave us without
evidence of the existence of other created minds or
sentiencies besides our own. This part of the objection disposed of, Mr. Mill proceeds to answer the second part. " As the theory," he says, " leaves the evidence of the existence of my fellow-creatures exactly
as it was before, so does it also with that of the existence of God. Supposing me to believe that the Divine Mind is simply the series of the Divine thoughts
and feelings prolonged through eternity, that would
be, at any rate, believing God's existence to be as real
as my own. And, as for evidence, the argument of
Paley's Natural Theology, or, for that matter, of his
Evidences of Christianity, would stand exactly where
it does. The Design argument is drawn from the
analogy of human experience. From the relation
which human works bear to human thoughts and
feelings, it infers a corresponding relation between
works more or less similar, but superhuman, and supernatural thoughts and feelings. If it proves these,
nobody but a metaphysician needs care whether or
not there is a mysterious substratum for them. Again,




330        RECENT BRITISH PIHILOSOPHIY.
the arguments for Revelation undertake to prove by
testimony that, within the sphere of human experience, works were done requiring a greater than human power, and words said requiring a greater than
human wisdom. These positions, and the evidences
of them, neither lose nor gain anything by our supposing that the wisdom means only wise thoughts and
volitions, and that the power means thoughts and volitions followed by imposing phenomena." *  The result of all which is that, if Theism will consent that the
Divine Mind, for whose existence it contends, is knowable only as our own minds are knowable-to wit, as
a series of thoughts and feelings, but these thoughts
and feelings transcendently hyperphysical or Divine,
or, again, as a thread of consciousness, but that consciousness transcendently hyperphysical or Divinethen Theism may remain an open question And so,
on the same terms of consistency with the mode of
thought of Empirical Cogitationism, other questions
of the supernatural, of similar moment, may also remain open questions.
Now, without returning on objections previously
urged against the reconcileability of Mr. Mill's idealistic theory with any knowledge of the existence of
other created sentiencies or threads of consciousness
tantamount to that which we have of our own exist* Pp. 210, 211.




RECENT 3RITISH PLmOSOPrHY.       331
ence (which objections, however, if valid in that connexion, would be as valid now against the reconcileability of the theory with the required knowledge of
the existence of a Divine Mlvind-i. e. the knowledge
of such a mind as more than a mere notion or conception of our own), let me simply say that I can see no
interpretation of IVr. Mill's fundamental principle of
Empiricism according to which those questions of a
Supernatural which he would keep open ought not to
be, at once and for ever, closed questions. Empiricism,
so far as I can see any meaning in it, leads inevitably
at last to Zero, Absolute Nihilism, or the resolute
non-conception of an ultimate anything.  It must
either stop there, or transmute itself at that point,
for the nonce, into an enormous all-including Transcendentalism. Unless as the name for the determining eternal c_ priori whence all else has proceeded, and has inherited law, structure, form, necessity, through every stage of the evolution, I can
see no meaning whatever for the word Deity. If Mr.
Mill vindicates the belief in such a Deity as compatible with true philosophy, well and good. Only how
he can then assert that the true philosophy is that
which supposes that every notion, belief, faculty, or
power of the human mind is entirely generated out
of experience, without the coefficiency of any innate
or structural tendency, form, capability, necessity, or




332        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
determination, passes my comprehension. I cannot
conceive anything as resulting from the experience of
a zero; and, unless I start with a human mind definable as zero, I must allow a very definite amount of
a priori bequest in that human mind wherewith to
grasp and mould experience. Or, if Empiricism pushes
the dispute farther back, and, allowing that bequest,
undertakes to resolve it into prior experience, still, at
every stage, the assertion recurs, 1" We are not yet at
zero; something is d priori, something structural and
predetermined, even here.') Or, if at last, somewhere
behind the Nebula, we do reach Zero, or Nothingness,
what becomes of Deity? Is Deity at the back of the
original zero or nothingness out of which all else has
been evolved or convolved empirically?  Then either
Zero would have remained such, and, as ex JniAilo nil
Jit, there would have been no evolution whatever, or
else the true origin of the whole evolution is not zero
but Deity. But, on this last supposition, what meaning, such as that claimed for it, remains in the principle of Empiricism.
Waiving this objection, however, and allowing
Mr. Mill's reservation of the question of Deity and
other cognate questions as open questions in philosophy to be perfectly consistent with Iis interpretation
of the principle of Empiricism (for which it may very
well happen that nmine is but a blundering substitute),




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.        333
let me look farther at that notion of Deity for which
Mr. Mill insists that a space is open in his philosophy.
Let us look at it in its connexion with his cosmological
theory of Idealism or Cogitationism. Here, I think,
there are curious results. For what is the Deity-or
Divine Mind whose existence then remains an open
question.  A Divine, or transcendent, superhuman,
thread of consciousness, or series of thoughts and feelings.  E'x h7ypotilesi, no other Deity is allowed than a
Deity conceivable according to the sublimed analogy
of our experience of our own minds. Now, what I
say is, not that such a Deity of Idealism may not be
a sufficient Deity for all the needs of religion or the
human mind, but only that there seems to be an interesting consequence of such a notion of Deity, which
Mr. Mill's Cogitationism implies, but which he has
left undeveloped. Was it not involved in Mr. Mill's
theory of the human mind as a thread of consciousness or series of feelings, that there must have been a
crude period in the history of that consciousness or
series of feelings, when as yet it had not worked out
the notions of the Ego and the Non-Ego, but existed
only as a confused neutrum of both. Is this analogy
to be transferred to the Divine Mind? If so, what do
we end in?  In what but the Absolute Idealism, or
Absolute Identity-system, of Schelling and Hegel,
which supposes an aboriginal Absolute Neutrum, of




334        RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.
which the universe as a whole is to be conceived as
the external forthrushing or Non-Ego, and Deity personally as the self-consciousness, or Ego, accompanying the forthrushing?
Yes, that final alternative to which we seem to
be led up by all other modes of purely speculative
thought seems to be also the alternative to which M1r.
Mill's Cogitationism leads us up. It is the alternative
of Nihilism  or Sumnmation in an tAbsolute.  The
choice between these alternatives seems to be the
question that is left open. 13ut to say that it is left
open at all is, I apprehend, the same as saying that
one has to choose, now as heretofore, between Enmpiricism and Transcendentalism in philosophy. This, it
seems, though with the scope and meaning of the two
terms marvellously enlarged by science, is still the essential distinction. Logically, Empiricism seems to
have its only termination in Nihilism, while Absolute
Identity seems to be but the modern principle of
Transcendentalism  reasoned back universally to its
uttermost. Are we here in that predicament where
it is only an act of faith, an impassioned throe of the
soul obeying its own structural necessity, that can
effect the solution 2  Are we in presence of the last
and most gigantic possible form  of that difficulty
which is said to lie at the root of all our thinkings




RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.       335
about anything whatsoever, and to be the very law
of our thinkings-the perpetual balance of two propositions, mutually contradictory, and both inconceivable, yet one of which must necessarily be true?  Or
where is the logic, Hegelian or any other, that shall
really dare the stricter solution of uniting the two
extremes, by showing how in one organic beat or
swing of thought there may be comprised the whole
arc between Nothingness and Absolute Being? On
these questions, as well as on all the crowd of homelier questions which concern the practical filling-up
of any metaphysical system to fit it for the needs and
uses of the human soul, much remains to be said, and
much presses on me that might be said.'But it will
be more consistent with the nature of this workwhich professes to be only a historical review of recent
British Philosophy, with interspersed criticisms-if I
stop, for the present, exactly at this point.
THE END.