Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles

by B. F. Cocker

The survey of Natural Theism we have completed in the previous chapter will enable us still further to indicate the exact points against which their attacks are directed, and also to estimate the character and force of the weapons employed. With or without design, they are, each in their way, assailing one or other of the principles upon which we rest our demonstration of the being of God. As we proceed, we shall find that Mill and the Constructive Idealists are really engaged in undermining "the principle of substance;" their doctrine is a virtual denial of all objective realities answering to our subjective ideas of matter, mind, and God. The assaults of Comte and the Materialists of his school are mainly directed against "the principle of causality" and "the principle of intentionality;" they would deny to man all knowledge of causes, efficient and final. The attacks of Hamilton and his school are directed against "the principle of the unconditioned," his philosophy of the conditioned is a plausible attempt to deprive man of all power to think the Infinite and Perfect, to conceive the Unconditioned and Ultimate Cause; whilst the Dogmatic Theologians are borrowing, and recklessly brandishing, the weapons of all these antagonists, and, in addition to all this, are endeavoring to show the insufficiency of "the principle of unity" and the weakness and invalidity of "the moral principles," which are regarded by us as relating man to a Moral Personality, and as indicating to him the existence of a righteous God, the ruler of the world. It is necessary, therefore, that we should concentrate our attention yet more specifically on these separate lines of attack, and attempt a minuter examination of the positions assumed by each, and of the arguments by which they are seeking, directly or indirectly, to invalidate the fundamental principles of Natural Theism.

(i.) We commence with the Idealistic School, of which John Stuart Mill must be regarded as the ablest living representative.

The doctrine of this school is that all our knowledge is necessarily confined to mental phenomena; that is, "to feelings or states of consciousness," and "the succession and co-existence, the likeness and unlikeness between these feelings or states of consciousness." [²²⁶] All our general notions, all our abstract ideas, are generated out of these feelings [²²⁷] by "inseparable association," which registers their inter-relations of recurrence, co-existence, and resemblance. The results of this inseparable association constitute at once the sum total and the absolute limit of all possible cognition.

[Footnote 226: ][ (return) ] J. S. Mill, "Logic," vol. i. p. 83 (English edition).

[Footnote 227: ][ (return) ] In the language of Mill, every thing of which we are conscious is called "feeling." "Feeling, in the proper sense of the term, is a genus of which Sensation, Emotion, and Thought are the subordinate species."--"Logic," bk. i. ch. iii. § 3.

It is admitted by Mill that one apparent element in this total result is the general conviction that our own existence is really distinct from the external world, and that the personal ego has an essential identity distinct from the fleeting phenomena of sensation. But this persuasion is treated by him as a mere illusion--a leap beyond the original datum for which we have no authority. Of a real substance or substratum called Mind, of a real substance or substratum called Matter, underlying the series of feelings--"the thread of consciousness"--we do know and can know nothing; and in affirming the existence of such substrata we are making a supposition we can not possibly verify. The ultimate datum of speculative philosophy is not "I think," but simply "Thoughts or feelings are." The belief in a permanent subject or substance, called matter, as the ground and plexus of physical phenomena, and of a permanent subject or substance, called mind, as the ground and plexus of mental phenomena, is not a primitive and original intuition οf reason. It is simply through the action of the principle of association among the ultimate phenomena, called feelings, that this (erroneous) separation of the phenomena into two orders or aggregates--one called mind or self; the other matter, or not self--takes place; and without this curdling or associating process no such notion or belief could have been generated. "The principle of substance," as an ultimate law of thought, is, therefore, to be regarded as a transcendental dream.

But now that the notion of mind or self, and of matter or not self, do exist as common convictions of our race, what is philosophy to make of them? After a great many qualifications and explanations, Mr. Mill has, in his "Logic," summed up his doctrine of Constructive Idealism in the following words: "As body is the mysterious something which excites the mind to feel, so mind is the mysterious something which feels and thinks." [²²⁸] But what is this "mysterious something?" Is it a reality, an entity, a subject; or is it a shadow, an illusion, a dream? In his "Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," where it may be presumed, we have his maturest opinions, Mr. Mill, in still more abstract and idealistic phraseology, attempts an answer. Here he defines matter as "a permanent possibility of sensation," [²²⁹] and mind as "a permanent possibility of feeling." [²³⁰] And "the belief in these permanent possibilities," he assures us, "includes all that is essential or characteristic in the belief in substance." [²³¹] "If I am asked," says he, "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. But I affirm with confidence that this conception of matter includes the whole meaning attached to it by the common world, apart from philosophical, and sometimes from theological theories. The reliance of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of possibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no sensations are actually experienced." [²³²] "Sensations," however, let it be borne in mind, are but a subordinate species of the genus feeling. [²³³] They are "states of consciousness"--phenomena of mind, not of matter; and we are still within the impassable boundary of ideal phenomena; we have yet no cognition of an external world. The sole cosmical conception, for us, is still a succession of sensations, or states of consciousness. This is the one phenomenon which we can not transcend in knowledge, do what we will; all else is hypothesis and illusion. The non-ego, after all, then, may be but a mode in which the mind represents to itself the possible modifications of the ego.

[Footnote 228: ][ (return) ] "Logic," bk. i, ch. iii. § 8.

[Footnote 229: ][ (return) ] "Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i. p. 243.