The English Utilitarians, Volume 1 (of 3)

by Leslie Stephen

From this, again, it follows that the 'notions we annex to the words Matter and Mind are merely relative.'[169] We know that mind exists as we know that matter exists; or, if anything, we know the existence of mind more certainly because more directly. The mind is suggested by 'the subjects of our consciousness'; the body by the objects 'of our perception.' But, on the other hand, we are totally 'ignorant of the essence of either.'[170] We can discover the laws either of mental or moral phenomena; but a law, as he explains, means in strictness nothing but a 'general fact.'[171] It is idle, therefore, to explain the nature of the union between the two unknowable substances; we can only discover that they are united and observe the laws according to which one set of phenomena corresponds to the other. From a misunderstanding of this arise all the fallacies of scholastic ontology, 'the most idle and absurd speculation that ever employed the human faculties.'[172] The destruction of that pseudo-science was the great glory of Bacon and Locke; and Reid has now discovered the method by which we may advance to the establishment of a truly inductive 'philosophy of mind.'

It is not surprising that Stewart approximates in various directions to the doctrines of the empirical school. He leans towards them whenever he does not see the results to which he is tending. Thus, for example, he is a thoroughgoing nominalist;[173] and on this point he deserts the teaching of Reid. He defends against Reid the attack made by Berkeley and Hume upon 'abstract ideas.' Rosmini,[174] in an elaborate criticism, complains that Stewart did not perceive the inevitable tendency of nominalism to materialism.[175] Stewart, in fact, accepts a good deal of Horne Tooke's doctrine,[176] though calling Tooke an 'ingenious grammarian, not a very profound philosopher,' but holds, as we shall see, that the materialistic tendency can be avoided. As becomes a nominalist, he attacks the syllogism upon grounds more fully brought out by J. S. Mill. Upon another essential point, he agrees with the pure empiricists. He accepts Hume's view of causation in all questions of physical science. In natural philosophy, he declares causation means only conjunction. The senses can never give us the 'efficient' cause of any phenomenon. In other words, we can never see a 'necessary connection' between any two events. He collects passages from earlier writers to show how Hume had been anticipated; and holds that Bacon's inadequate view of this truth was a main defect in his theories.[177] Hence we have a characteristic conclusion. He says, when discussing the proofs of the existence of God,[178] that we have an 'irresistible conviction of the necessity of a cause' for every change. Hume, however, has shown that this can never be a logical necessity. It must then, argues Stewart, be either a 'prejudice' or an 'intuitive judgment.' Since it is shown by 'universal consent' not to be a prejudice, it must be an intuitive judgment. Thus Hume's facts are accepted; but his inference denied. The actual causal nexus is inscrutable. The conviction that there must be a connection between events attributed by Hume to 'custom' is attributed by Stewart to intuitive belief. Stewart infers that Hume's doctrine is really favourable to theology. It implies that God gives us the conviction, and perhaps, as Malebranche held, that God is 'the constantly operating efficient Cause in the material world.'[179] Stewart's successor, Thomas Brown, took up this argument on occasion of the once famous 'Leslie controversy'; and Brown's teaching was endorsed by James Mill and by John Stuart Mill.

According to J. S. Mill, James Mill and Stewart represented opposite poles of philosophic thought. I shall have to consider this dictum hereafter. On the points already noticed Stewart must be regarded as an ally rather than an opponent of the Locke and Hume tradition. Like them he appeals unhesitatingly to experience, and cannot find words strong enough to express his contempt for 'ontological' and scholastic methods. His 'intuitions' are so far very harmless things, which fall in with common sense, and enable him to hold without further trouble the beliefs which, as a matter of fact, are held by everybody. They are an excuse for not seeking any ultimate explanation in reason. He is, indeed, opposed to the school which claimed to be the legitimate successor to Locke, but which evaded Hume's scepticism by diverging towards materialism. The great representative of this doctrine in England had been Hartley, and in Stewart's day Hartley's lead had been followed by Priestley, who attacked Reid from a materialist point of view, by Priestley's successor, Thomas Belsham, and by Erasmus Darwin. We find Stewart, in language which reminds us of later controversy, denouncing the 'Darwinian School'[180] for theories about instinct incompatible with the doctrine of final causes. It might appear that a philosopher who has re-established the objective existence of space in opposition to Berkeley, was in danger of that materialism which had been Berkeley's bugbear. But Stewart escapes the danger by his assertion that our knowledge of matter is 'relative' or confined to phenomena. Materialism is for him a variety of ontology, involving the assumption that we know the essence of matter. To speak with Hartley of 'vibrations,' animal spirits, and so forth, is to be led astray by a false analogy. We can discover the laws of correspondence of mind and body, but not the ultimate nature of either.[181] Thus he regards the 'physiological metaphysics of the present day' as an 'idle waste of labour and ingenuity on questions to which the human mind is altogether incompetent.'[182] The principles found by inductive observation are as independent of these speculations as Newton's theory of gravitation of an ultimate mechanical cause of gravitation.

Hartley's followers, however, could drop the 'vibration' theory; and their doctrine then became one of 'association of ideas.' To this famous theory, which became the sheet-anchor of the empirical school, Stewart is not altogether opposed. We find him speaking of 'indissoluble association' in language which reminds us of the Mills.[183] Hume had spoken of association as comparable to gravitation—the sole principle by which our 'ideas' and 'impressions' are combined into a whole; a theory, of course, corresponding to his doctrine of 'belief' as a mere custom of associating. Stewart uses the principle rather as Locke had done, as explaining fallacies due to 'casual associations.' It supposes, as he says, the previous existence of certain principles, and cannot be an ultimate explanation. The only question can be at what point we have reached an 'original principle,' and are therefore bound to stop our analysis.[184] Over this question he glides rather too lightly, as is his custom; but from his point of view the belief, for example, in an external world, cannot be explained by association, inasmuch as it reveals itself as an ultimate datum.

In regard to the physical sciences, then, Stewart's position approximates very closely to the purely 'empirical' view. When we come to a different application of his principles, we find him taking a curiously balanced position between different schools. 'Common sense' naturally wishes to adapt itself to generally accepted beliefs; and with so flexible a doctrine as that of 'intuitions' it is not difficult to discover methods of proving the ordinary dogmas. Stewart's theology is characteristic of this tendency. He describes the so-called a priori proof, as formulated by Clarke. But without denying its force, he does not like to lay stress upon it. He dreads 'ontology' too much. He therefore considers that the argument at once most satisfactory to the philosopher and most convincing to ordinary men is the argument from design. The belief in God is not 'intuitive,' but follows immediately from two first principles: the principle that whatever exists has a cause, and the principle that a 'combination of means implies a designer.'[185] The belief in a cause arises on our perception of change as our belief in the external world arises upon our sensations. The belief in design must be a 'first principle' because it includes a belief in 'necessity' which cannot arise from mere observation of 'contingent truths.'[186] Hence Stewart accepts the theory of final causes as stated by Paley. Though Paley's ethics offended him, he has nothing but praise for the work upon Natural Theology.[187] Thus, although 'common sense' does not enable us to lay down the central doctrine of theology as a primary truth, it does enable us to interpret experience in theological terms. In other words, his theology is of the purely empirical kind, which was, as we shall see, the general characteristic of the time.

In Stewart's discussion of ethical problems the same doctrine of 'final causes' assumes a special importance. Stewart, as elsewhere, tries to hold an intermediate position; to maintain the independence of morality without committing himself to the 'ontological' or purely logical view; and to show that virtue conduces to happiness without allowing that its dictates are to be deduced from its tendency to produce happiness. His doctrine is to a great extent derived from the teaching of Hutcheson and Bishop Butler. He really approximates most closely to Hutcheson, who takes a similar view of Utilitarianism, but he professes the warmest admiration of Butler. He explicitly accepts Butler's doctrine of the 'supremacy of the conscience'—a doctrine which as he says, the bishop, 'has placed in the strongest and happiest light.'[188] He endeavours, again, to approximate to the 'intellectual school,' of which Richard Price (1723-1791) was the chief English representative at the time. Like Kant, Price deduces the moral law from principles of pure reason. The truth of the moral law, 'Thou shalt do to others as you wish that they should do to you,' is as evident as the truth of the law in geometry, 'things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.' Stewart so far approves that he wishes to give to the moral law what is now called all possible 'objectivity,' while the 'moral sense' of Hutcheson apparently introduced a 'subjective' element. He holds, however, that our moral perceptions 'involve a feeling of the heart,' as well as a 'judgment of the understanding,'[189] and ascribes the same view to Butler. But then, by using the word 'reason' so as to include the whole nature of a rational being, we may ascribe to it the 'origin of those simple ideas which are not excited in the mind by the operation of the senses, but which arise in consequence of the operation of the intellectual powers among the various objects.'[190] Hutcheson, he says, made his 'moral sense' unsatisfactory by taking his illustrations from the 'secondary' instead of the 'primary qualities,'[191] and thus with the help of intuitive first principles, Stewart succeeds in believing that it would be as hard for a man to believe that he ought to sacrifice another man's happiness to his own as to believe that three angles of a triangle are equal to one right angle.[192] It is true that a feeling and a judgment are both involved; but the 'intellectual judgment' is the groundwork of the feeling, not the feeling of the judgment.[193] In spite, however, of this attempt to assimilate his principles to those of the intellectual school, the substance of Stewart's ethics is essentially psychological. It rests, in fact, upon his view that philosophy depends upon inductive psychology, and, therefore, essentially upon experience subject to the cropping up of convenient 'intuitions.'

This appears from the nature of his argument against the Utilitarians. In his time, this doctrine was associated with the names of Hartley, Tucker, Godwin, and especially Paley. He scarcely refers to Bentham.[194] Paley is the recognised anvil for the opposite school. Now he agrees, as I have said, with Paley's view of natural theology and entirely accepts therefore the theory of 'final causes.' The same theory becomes prominent in his ethical teaching. We may perhaps say that Stewart's view is in substance an inverted Utilitarianism. It may be best illustrated by an argument familiar in another application. Paley and his opponents might agree that the various instincts of an animal are so constituted that in point of fact they contribute to his preservation and his happiness. But from one point of view this appears to be simply to say that the conditions of existence necessitate a certain harmony, and that the harmony is therefore to be a consequence of his self-preservation. From the opposite point of view, which Stewart accepts, it appears that the self-preservation is the consequence of a pre-established harmony, which has been divinely appointed in order that he may live. Stewart, in short, is a 'teleologist' of the Paley variety. Psychology proves the existence of design in the moral world, as anatomy or physiology proves it in the physical.

Stewart therefore fully agrees that virtue generally produces happiness. If it be true (a doctrine, he thinks, beyond our competence to decide) that 'the sole principle of action in the Deity' is benevolence, it may be that he has commanded us to be virtuous because he sees virtue to be useful. In this case utility may be the final cause of morality; and the fact that virtue has this tendency gives the plausibility to utilitarian systems.[195] But the key to the difficulty is the distinction between 'final' and 'efficient' causes; for the efficient cause of morality is not the desire for happiness, but a primitive and simple instinct, namely, the moral faculty.

Thus he rejects Paley's notorious doctrine that virtue differs from prudence only in regarding the consequences in another world instead of consequences in this.[196] Reward and punishment 'presuppose the notions of right and wrong' and cannot be the source of those notions. The favourite doctrine of association, by which the Utilitarians explained unselfishness, is only admissible as accounting for modifications, such as are due to education and example, but 'presupposes the existence of certain principles which are common to all mankind.' The evidence of such principles is established by a long and discursive psychological discussion. It is enough to say that he admits two rational principles, 'self-love' and the 'moral faculty,' the coincidence of which is learned only by experience. The moral faculty reveals simple 'ideas' of right and wrong, which are incapable of any further analysis. But besides these, there is a hierarchy of other instincts or desires, which he calls 'implanted' because 'for aught we know' they may be of 'arbitrary appointment.'[197] Resentment, for example, is an implanted instinct, of which the 'final cause' is to defend us against 'sudden violence.'[198] Stewart's analysis is easygoing and suggests more problems than it solves. The general position, however, is clear enough, and not, I think, without much real force as against the Paley form of utilitarianism.

The acceptance of the doctrine of 'final causes' was the inevitable course for a philosopher who wishes to retain the old creeds and yet to appeal unequivocally to experience. It suits the amiable optimism for which Stewart is noticeable. To prove the existence of a perfect deity from the evidence afforded by the world, you must of course take a favourable view of the observable order. Stewart shows the same tendency in his Political Economy, where he is Adam Smith's disciple, and fully shares Smith's beliefs that the harmony between the interests of the individual and the interests of the society is an evidence of design in the Creator of mankind. In this respect Stewart differs notably from Butler, to whose reasonings he otherwise owed a good deal. With Butler the conscience implies a dread of divine wrath and justifies the conception of a world alienated from its maker. Stewart's 'moral faculty' simply recognises or reveals the moral law; but carries no suggestion of supernatural penalties. The doctrines by which Butler attracted some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. This, however, suggests a final remark upon Stewart's position.