Bampton Lectures, p. 157, Fourth Edition.
Bampton Lectures, p. 166, Fourth Edition.
Surely this is very different from denouncing all reasoning from human goodness to Divine as “illicit.” To take a parallel case. The manufacture of gunpowder is a dangerous process, and, if carried on without due precautions, is very likely to lead to disastrous consequences. Surely it is one thing to point out what precautions are necessary, and what evils are to be apprehended from the neglect of them, and another to forbid the manufacture altogether. Mr. Mill does not seem to see the difference.
We have now considered in detail all that part of Mr. Mill’s book which is devoted to the examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s chief and most characteristic doctrines—those which constitute the Philosophy of the Conditioned. The remainder of the work, which deals chiefly with subordinate questions of psychology and logic, contains much from which we widely dissent, but which we cannot at present submit to a special examination. Nor is it necessary, so far as Sir W. Hamilton’s reputation is concerned, that we should do so. If the Philosophy of the Conditioned is really nothing better than the mass of crudities and blunders which Mr. Mill supposes it to be, the warmest admirers of Hamilton will do little in his behalf, even should they succeed in vindicating some of the minor details of his teaching. If, on the other hand, it can be shown, as we have attempted to show, that Mr. Mill is utterly incapable of dealing with Hamilton’s philosophy in its higher branches, his readers may be left to judge for themselves whether he is implicitly to be trusted as regards the lower. In point of fact, they will do Mr. Mill no injustice, if they regard the above specimens as samples of his entire criticism. We gladly except, as of a far higher order, those chapters in which he is content with stating his own views; but in the perpetual baiting of Sir W. Hamilton, which occupies the greater part of the volume, we recognise, in general, the same captiousness and the same incompetence which we have so often had occasion to point out in the course of our previous remarks.
It is, we confess, an unpleasant and an invidious task, to pick to pieces, bit by bit, the work of an author of high reputation. But Mr. Mill has chosen to put the question on this issue, and he has left those who dissent from him no alternative but to follow his example. He has tasked all the resources of minute criticism to destroy piece-meal the reputation of one who has hitherto borne an honoured name in philosophy: he has no right to complain if the same measure is meted to himself:—
“Neque enim lex æquior ulla
Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.”
But it is not so much the justice as the necessity of the case which we would plead as our excuse. Mr. Mill’s method of criticism has reduced the question to a very narrow compass. Either Sir W. Hamilton, instead of being a great philosopher, is the veriest blunderer that ever put pen to paper, or the blunders are Mr. Mill’s own. To those who accept the first of these alternatives it must always remain a marvel how Sir W. Hamilton could ever have acquired that reputation which compels even his critic to admit that “he alone, of our metaphysicians of this and the preceding generation, has acquired, merely as such, an European celebrity;” how he could have been designated by his illustrious opponent, Cousin, as the “greatest critic of our age,” or described by the learned Brandis as “almost unparalleled in the profound knowledge of ancient and modern philosophy.” The marvel may perhaps disappear, should it be the case, as we believe it to be, that the second alternative is the true one.
But even in this case, it should be borne in mind that the blow will by no means fall on Mr. Mill with the same weight with which he designed it to fall on the object of his criticism. Sir W. Hamilton had devoted his whole life to the study of metaphysics; he was probably more deeply read in that study than any of his contemporaries; and if all his reading could produce nothing better than the confusion and self-contradiction which Mr. Mill imputes to him, the result would be pitiable indeed. Mr. Mill, on the other hand, we strongly suspect, despises metaphysics too much to be at the pains of studying them at all, and seems to think that a critic is duly equipped for his task with that amount of knowledge which, like Dogberry’s reading and writing, “comes by nature.” His work has a superficial cleverness which, together with the author’s previous reputation, will insure it a certain kind of popularity; but we venture to predict that its estimation by its readers will be in the inverse ratio to their knowledge of the subject. But Mr. Mill’s general reputation rests on grounds quite distinct from his performances in metaphysics; and though we could hardly name one of his writings from whose main principles we do not dissent, there is hardly one which is not better fitted to sustain his character as a thinker than this last, in which the fatal charms of the goddess Necessity seem to have betrayed her champion into an unusual excess of polemical zeal, coupled, it must be added, with an unusual deficiency of philosophical knowledge.