Discussions, p. 603.
We have now examined the first six chapters of Mr. Mill’s book, containing his remarks on that portion of Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophy which he justly regards as comprising the most important of the doctrines which specially belong to Hamilton himself. The next chapter is an episode, in which Mr. Mill turns aside from Sir W. Hamilton to criticise Mr. Mansel’s Bampton Lectures. As our limits do not permit us to carry on the argument at present through the remainder of Mr. Mill’s remarks on Hamilton himself, we shall conclude our notice with a few words on this chapter, as closing the properly metaphysical portion of Mr. Mill’s book, and as affording ample proof that, in this department of philosophy at least, Mr. Mill’s powers of misapprehension do not cease when Sir W. Hamilton is no longer their object.
Mr. Mill’s method of criticism makes it generally necessary to commence with a statement of the criticised theory as it really is, before proceeding to his exposition of it as it is not. The present instance offers no exception to this rule. Mr. Mansel’s argument may be briefly stated as follows. The primary and essential conception of God, imperatively demanded by our moral and religious consciousness, is that of a person. But personality implies intellectual and moral attributes; and the only direct and immediate knowledge which we have of such attributes is derived from the testimony of self-consciousness, bearing witness to their existence in a certain manner in ourselves. But when we endeavour to transfer the conception of personality, thus obtained, to the domain of theology, we meet with certain difficulties, which, while they are not sufficient to hinder us from believing in the Divine Personality as a fact, yet hinder us from conceiving the manner of its existence, and prevent us from exhibiting our belief as a philosophical conclusion, proved by irrefragable reasoning and secured against all objections. These difficulties are occasioned, on the one hand, by the so-called Philosophy of the Unconditioned, which in all ages has shown a tendency towards Pantheism, and which, in one of its latest and most finished manifestations, announces itself as the exhibition of God as He is in His eternal nature before creation; and, on the other hand, by the limitations and conditions to which our own personality is subject, and which, as we have pointed out in the earlier part of this article, have, from the very beginning of Christian theology, prevented theologians from accepting the limited personality of man as an exact image and counterpart of the unlimited personality of God. These difficulties Mr. Mansel endeavours to meet in two ways. On the one side, he maintains, in common with Sir W. Hamilton, that the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, by reason of its own incongruities and self-contradictions, has no claim to be accepted as a competent witness in the matter; and on the other side, he maintains, in common with many theologians before him, that human personality cannot be assumed as an exact copy of the Divine, but only as that which is most nearly analogous to it among finite things. But these two positions, if admitted, involve a corresponding practical conclusion as regards the criterion of religious truth or falsehood. Were we capable, either, on the one hand, of a clear conception of the Unconditioned, or, on the other, of a direct intuition of the Divine Attributes as objects of consciousness, we might be able to construct, deductively or inductively, an exact science of Theology. As it is, we are compelled to reason by analogy; and analogy furnishes only probabilities, varying, it may be, from slight presumptions up to moral certainties, but whose weight, in any given case, can only be determined by comparison with other evidences. There are three distinct sources from which we may form a judgment about the ways of God—first, from our own moral and intellectual consciousness, by which we judge à priori of what God ought to do in a given case, by determining what we should think it wise or right for ourselves to do in a similar case; secondly, from the constitution and course of nature, from which we may learn by experience what God’s providence in certain cases actually is; and thirdly, from revelation, attested by its proper evidences. Where these three agree in their testimony (as in the great majority of cases they do) we have the moral certainty which results from the harmony of all accessible evidences: where they appear to differ, we have no right at once to conclude that the second or the third must give way to the first, and not vice versâ; because we have no right to assume that the first alone is infallible. In the author’s own words: “The lesson to be learnt from an examination of the Limits of Religious Thought is not that man’s judgments are worthless in relation to Divine things, but that they are fallible: and the probability of error in any particular case can never be fairly estimated without giving their full weight to all collateral considerations. We are indeed bound to believe that a Revelation given by God can never contain anything that is really unwise or unrighteous; but we are not always capable of estimating exactly the wisdom or righteousness of particular doctrines or precepts. And we are bound to bear in mind that exactly in proportion to the strength of the remaining evidence for the Divine origin of a religion, is the probability that we may be mistaken in supposing this or that portion of its contents to be unworthy of God. Taken in conjunction, the two arguments may confirm or correct each other: taken singly and absolutely, each may vitiate the result which should follow from their joint application.”[BD]
Bampton Lectures, p. 156, 4th edition.
In criticising the first part of this argument—that which is directed against the deductive philosophy of the Unconditioned—Mr. Mill manifests the same want of acquaintance with its meanings, and with the previous history of the question; which he had before exhibited in his attack on Sir W. Hamilton. He begins by finding fault with the definition of the Absolute, which Mr. Mansel (herein departing, and purposely departing, from Sir W. Hamilton’s use of the term) defines as “that which exists in and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other Being.” On this, Mr. Mill remarks: “The first words of his definition would serve for the description of a Noumenon; but Mr. Mansel’s Absolute is only meant to denote one Being, identified with God, and God is not the only Noumenon.” The description of a Noumenon! This is almost equal to the discovery of a Noumenon Space. Does Mr. Mill really suppose that all noumena are self-existent? A noumenon (in the sense in which we suppose Mr. Mill to understand the term, for it has different meanings in different philosophies) implies an existence out of relation to the human mind.[BE] But is this the same as being out of all relation whatever, as existing “in and by itself?” Does Mr. Mill mean to say that a creature, whether perceived by us or not, has no relation to its Creator? But Mr. Mill, as we have seen before, is not much at home when he gets among “noumena.” We must proceed to his criticism of the second part of the definition,—“having no necessary relation to any other being.” Of these words he says, that “they admit of two constructions. The words in their natural sense only mean, capable of existing out of relation to anything else. The argument requires that they should mean incapable of existing in relation with anything else.” And why is this non-natural sense to be forced upon very plain words? Because, says Mr. Mill,—
Strictly speaking, the term noumenon, as meaning that which can be apprehended only by the intellect, implies a relation to the intellect apprehending it; and in this sense τὸ νοούμενον is opposed by Plato to τὸ ὁρώμενον—the object of intellect to the object of sight. But as the intellect was supposed to take cognisance of things as they are, in opposition to the sensitive perception of things as they appear, the term noumenon became synonymous with thing in itself (τὸ ὃν καθ’ αὑτό). And this meaning is retained in the Kantian philosophy, in which the noumenon is identical with the Ding an sich. But as Kant denied to the human intellect any immediate intuition of things as they are (though such an intuition may be possible to a superhuman intellect), hence the term noumenon in the Kantian philosophy is opposed to all of which the human intellect can take positive cognisance. Hamilton, in this respect, agrees with Kant. But neither Kant nor Hamilton, in opposing the thing in itself to the phenomenon, meant to imply that the former is necessarily self-existent, and therefore uncreated.
“In what manner is a possible existence out of all relation, incompatible with the notion of a cause? Have not causes a possible existence apart from their effects? Would the sun, for example, not exist if there were no earth or planets for it to illuminate? Mr. Mansel seems to think that what is capable of existing out of relation, cannot possibly be conceived or known in relation. But this is not so.... Freed from this confusion of ideas, Mr. Mansel’s argument resolves itself into this,—The same Being cannot be thought by us both as Cause and as Absolute, because a Cause as such is not Absolute, and Absolute, as such, is not a Cause; which is exactly as if he had said that Newton cannot be thought by us both as an Englishman and as a mathematician, because an Englishman, as such, is not a mathematician, nor a mathematician, as such, an Englishman.”—(P. 92.)
The “confusion of ideas” is entirely of Mr. Mill’s own making, and is owing to his having mutilated the argument before criticising it. The argument in its original form consists of two parts; the first intended to show that the Absolute is not conceived as such in being conceived as a Cause; the second to show that the Absolute cannot be conceived under different aspects at different times—first as Absolute, and then as Cause. It was the impossibility of this latter alternative which drove Cousin to the hypothesis of a necessary causation from all eternity. Mr. Mill entirely omits the latter part of the argument, and treats the former part as if it were the whole. The part criticised by Mr. Mill is intended to prove exactly what it does prove, and no more; namely, that a cause as such is not the absolute, and that to know a cause as such is not to know the absolute. We presume Mr. Mill himself will admit that to know Newton as a mathematician is not to know him as an Englishman. Whether he can be known separately as both, and whether the Absolute in this respect is a parallel case, depends on another consideration, which Mr. Mill has not noticed. The continuation of Mr. Mill’s criticism is equally confused. He says:—