JOHN STUART MILL.[250]
In 1764, Hume met, at the house of Baron d'Holbach, a party of the most celebrated Frenchmen of that day; and the Scotchman took occasion to introduce a discussion concerning the existence of an atheist, in the strict sense of the word; for his own part, he said, he had never chanced to meet with one. "You have been unfortunate," replied Holbach; "but at the present moment you are sitting at table with seventeen of them."
Whether or not the leading men among the positivists and cosmists of England to-day are prepared to be as frank as the Baron d'Holbach, we shall not venture to say; at all events, John Stuart Mill, to whom they all looked up with the reverence of disciples for the master, has taken care that the world should not remain in doubt concerning his opinions on this subject, which, of all others, is of the deepest interest to man. Among those who in this century have labored most earnestly to propagate an atheistic philosophy, based on the assumption that the human mind is incapable of knowing aught beyond relations, he certainly holds a place of distinction, and, as a representative of what is called scientific atheism, the history of his opinions is worthy of serious attention.
It was known some time before his death that he had written an autobiography; and when it was announced that his step-daughter, Miss Taylor, whom he had made his literary executrix, was about to publish the work, the attention of at least those who take interest in the profounder controversies of the age was awakened.
As an autobiography, the book has but little merit; though this should not be insisted on, since success in writing of this kind is extremely rare. If it is almost as difficult in any case to write a life well as to spend it well, when one attempts to become the historian of his own life, there is every probability that he will either be ridiculous or uninteresting. Mill, too, it must be conceded, had but poor material at his command. His life was uneventful, uninviting even, in its surroundings; and when the patchwork of his philosophical opinions is taken away, there is little left in it that is not wholly commonplace.
He was born in London, in 1806, and was the eldest son of James Mill, who was a charity student of divinity at the University of Edinburgh, but, becoming disgusted with the doctrines of Presbyterianism, gave up all idea of studying for the ministry, and in a short while renounced Christian faith, and became an avowed atheist, though his atheism was negative; his belief in what is called the relativity of knowledge not justifying him in affirming positively that there is no God, but only in holding that the human mind can never know whether there be a God or not. He, however, did not stop here, but, scandalized by the suffering which is everywhere in the world, forgot his own principles, and maintained that it is absurd to suppose that such a world is the work of an infinitely perfect being, and was rather inclined to accept the Manichean theory of a good and evil principle, struggling against each other for the government of the universe. But of God, as revealed in Christ, he had a hatred as satanical as that of Voltaire.
"I have a hundred times heard him say," writes his son, "that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on, adding trait after trait, till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it. This ne plus ultra of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity."[251] In other words—for Mill can mean nothing less—he held that the character of Christ, as portrayed in the Gospel, is the highest possible conception of all that is depraved and repulsive; that Christ, instead of being incarnate God, is the essence of wickedness clothed in bodily form; that, compared with him, or at least with the God whom he called his father, Moloch, Astarte, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Bacchus are pure divinities; and from the manner in which the son narrates these opinions of his father, he evidently desires that we should infer that they are also his own.
The elder Mill, who seems to have been a natural pedagogue, took the education of his son exclusively into his own hands, and was most careful not to allow him to acquire any impressions contrary to his own sentiments respecting religion. Instead of teaching him to believe that God created the heavens and the earth, he taught him to believe that we can know nothing whatever of the manner in which the world came into existence, and that the question, "Who made you?" is one which cannot be answered, since we possess no authentic information on the subject.
To show, however, his father's conviction of the logical connection between Protestantism and infidelity, he records that he taught him to take the strongest interest in the Reformation, "as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought."