[aa] Mr. Herbert Spencer has been freely criticized by Americans, in part as not being sufficiently thorough—in part as being untrue to his own position. A few quotations will be found in Additional Note [F], on "The Unknowable."
[ab] The paragraph, taken in its entireness, is pervaded with the vivid sense of a Moral Law which can neither change nor perish—a Law at once human and Divine. This strong protest is both in thought and expression a complete contrast to the ordinary tone of Mr. Mill's disquisitions, attempered as they generally are between benevolence and expediency. Instead of pondering the Utilities of a race which, comparatively speaking, began to exist yesterday, it appeals with decisive sternness, once and for ever, to the Immutable and the Absolute. It reminds one of a torch-bearing Prometheus pitted against the selfish despot of a new and morally enfeebled Olympus. See Additional Note G.
[112] This sentence contains two propositions; the question of speculative perplexity has been treated in this Chapter—that of reasonable necessity is reserved for our next.
[113] On Hamilton, p. 242.
[114] Mill on Hamilton, p. 232, note.
[115] Ibid. p. 233, note.
[116] Ibid. p. 227.
[117] British Association Report, 1870. lxxvii. lxxxiv.
[118] The remark above made respecting a "living laboratory" will be readily understood by every one who remembers the great mistakes committed, some years ago, in treating the stomach as a mere chemical workshop;—forgetful of its all-important endowment,—vitality. That oversight has been alluded to here because it may yield a lesson to Psychologists; for may not a far higher kind of endowment in like manner be forgotten when men materialize the principles one and all on which is conditioned the transforming power of mental assimilation?
[119] Lay Sermons, p. 160.