Of course, it will be understood that I am not denying the moral superiority of some pleasures and courses of life over others. I am only showing that Mill's attempt to reconcile his ideas on the subject with the Utilitarian theory hopelessly fails. The few pleasant pages in which he makes this attempt (Utilitarianism, pp. 8-28), form, in fact, a most notable piece of sophistical reasoning. Much of the interest of these undoubtedly interesting passages arises from the kaleidoscopic way in which the standing difficulties of ethical science are woven together, as if they were logically coherent in Mill's mode of presentation. The ideas involved are as old as Plato and Aristotle. The high aspirations correspond to τὸ καλὸν of Plato. The superior man who can judge both sides of the question is the βέλτιστος ἀνήρ of Aristotle. The Utilitarian doctrine is that of Epicurus. Now, Mill managed to persuade himself that he could in twenty pages reconcile the controversies of ages.
Nor is it to be supposed that Bentham, in making his analysis of the conditions of pleasure, overlooked the difference of high and low; he did not overlook it at all—he analyzed it. A pleasure to be high must have the marks of intensity, length, certainty, fruitfulness, and purity, or of some of these at least; and when we take Altruism into account, the feelings must be of wide extent—that is, fruitful of pleasure and devoid of evil to great numbers of people. It is a higher pleasure to build a Free Library than to establish a new Race Course; not because there is a Free-Library-building emotion, which is essentially better than a Race-Course-establishing emotion, each being a simple unanalyzable feeling; but because we may, after the model of inquiry given by Bentham, resolve into its elements the effect of one action and the other upon the happiness of the community. Thus, we should find that Mill proposed to give "geniality" to the Utilitarian philosophy by throwing into confusion what it was the very merit of Bentham to have distinguished and arranged scientifically. We must hold to the dry old Jeremy, if we are to have any chance of progress in Ethics. Mill, at some "crisis in his mental history," decided in favour of a genial instead of a logical and scientific Ethics, and the result is the mixture of sentiment and sophistry contained in the attractive pages under review.
In order to treat adequately of Mill's ethical doctrines it would no doubt be necessary to go on to other parts of the Essays, and to inquire how he treats other moral elements, such as the Social or Altruistic Feelings. The existence of such feelings is admitted on p. 46, and, indeed, insisted on as a basis of powerful natural sentiment, constituting the strength of the Utilitarian morality. But it would be an endless work to examine all phases of Mill's doctrines, and to show whether or not they are logically consistent inter se. They are really not worth the trouble. Just let us notice, however, how he treats the question whether moral feelings are innate or not. On this point Mill gives (p. 45) the following characteristic deliverance:—"If, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason the less natural. It is natural to man to speak, to reason, to build cities, to cultivate the ground, though these are acquired faculties. The moral feelings are not indeed a part of our nature, in the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in all of us; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted by those who believe the most strenuously in their transcendental origin. Like the other acquired capacities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain small degree, of springing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being brought by cultivation to a high degree of development." If life were long enough, I should like, with the assistance of the "Methods of Ethics," to analyze the ideas involved in this passage. I can merely suggest the following questions:—If acquired capacities are equally natural with those not acquired, what is the use of introducing a distinction without a difference? If moral feelings can spring up spontaneously, even in the smallest degree, and then be developed by "natural outgrowths," how do any of our feelings differ from natural ones? What does Mill mean, at the top of the next page, by speaking of "moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation?" Are these also not the less natural because they are of artificial creation? If not, we should like to know how to draw the line between acquired and artificial capacities. How, again, are we to interpret the use of the word natural, on p. 50, where, speaking of the deeply-rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being, he says—
"This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength to their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But to those who have it, it possesses all the characters of a natural feeling. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition of education," &c.
Here a natural feeling is contrasted to the product of education, although we were before told that acquired capacities, like speaking, building, cultivating, were none the less natural. But I must candidly confess that when Mill introduces the words nature and natural, I am completely baffled. I give it up. I can no longer find any logical marks to assist me in tracking out his course of thought. The word nature may be Mill's key to a profound philosophy; but I rather think it is the key to many of his fallacies.
I often amuse myself by trying to imagine what Bentham would have said of Benthamism expounded by Mill. Especially would it be interesting to hear Bentham on Mill's use of the word "natural." No passage in which Bentham analyzes the meaning of "nature," or "natural," occurs to me, but the following is his treatment of the word "unnatural," as employed in Ethics:—
"Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent: and there it means something; although nothing to the present purpose. But here it means no such thing: for the frequency of such acts is perhaps the great complaint. It therefore means nothing; nothing, I mean, which there is in the act itself. All it can serve to express is, the disposition of the person who is talking of it: the disposition he is in to be angry at the thoughts of it."[84]
Would that the grand old man, as he still sits benignly pondering in his own proper bones and clothes, in the upper regions of a well-known institution, could be got to deliver himself in like style about feelings which are not the less natural because they are acquired.
Before passing on, however, I must point out, in the extract from p. 45, the characteristic habit which Mill has of minimizing things which he is obliged to admit. Instead of denying straightforwardly that we have moral feelings, he says they are not present in all of us in any "perceptible degree." The moral faculty is capable of springing up spontaneously "in a certain small degree." This will remind every reader of the way in which, in his "Essays on Religion," instead of flatly adopting Atheism or Theism, which are clear logical negatives each of the other, he concludes that though God is almost proved not to exist, He may possibly exist, and we must "imagine" this chance to be as large as we can, though it belongs only "to one of the lower degrees of probability." Exactly the same manner of meeting a weighty question will be discovered again in his demonstration of the non-existence of necessary truths. I shall hope to examine carefully his treatment of this important part of philosophy on a future occasion. We shall then find, I believe, that his argument proves non-existence of such things as necessary truths, because those truths which cannot be explained on the association principle are very few indeed. I beg pardon for introducing an incongruous illustration, but Mill's manner of minimizing an all-important admission often irresistibly reminds me of the young woman who, being taxed with having borne a child, replied that it was only a very small one.
Such are the intricacies and wide extent of ethical questions, that it is not practicable to pursue the analysis of Mill's doctrine in at all a full manner. We cannot detect the fallacious reasoning with the same precision as in matters of geometric and logical science. This analysis is the less needful too, because, since Mill's Essays appeared, Moral Philosophy has undergone a revolution. I do not so much allude to the reform effected by Mr. Sidgwick's "Methods of Ethics," though that is a great one, introducing as it does a precision of thought and nomenclature which was previously wanting. I allude, of course, to the establishment of the Spencerian Theory of Morals, which has made a new era in philosophy.[85] Mill has been singularly unfortunate from this point of view. He might be defined as the last great philosophic writer conspicuous for his ignorance of the principles of evolution. He brought to confusion the philosophy of his master, Bentham; he ignored that which was partly to replace, partly to complete it.