Chapter VII: Psychology (3)

If Mill's doctrine leads to an impossible strictness in one direction, it leads to less edifying results in another. We have omitted 'motive' and come to the critical question, How, after all, is the moral code to be enforced? By overlooking this question and declaring 'motive' to be irrelevant, we get the paradox already accepted by Bentham. His definition of virtue is action for the good of others as well as of ourselves. In what way is the existence of such action to be reconciled with this doctrine? What are the motives which make men count the happiness of others to be equally valuable with their own? or, in the Utilitarian language, What is the 'sanction' of morality? After all Bentham's insistence upon the 'self-preference principle' and Mill's account of selfishness in his political theory, we are suddenly told that morality means a lofty and rigid code in which the happiness of all is the one end. Here again Mill is entangled by the characteristic difficulty of his psychology. To analyse is to divide objects into separate units. When he has to do with complex objects and relations apparently reciprocal, he is forced to represent them by a simple sequence. The two factors are not mutually dependent but distinct things somehow connected in time. One result is his account of 'ends' or 'motives' (the two, as he observes, are synonymous).[605] The end is something to be gained by the act, the 'association' of which with the act constitutes a 'desire.' This, we have seen, always refers to the future.[606] In acting, then, I am always guided by calculations of future pleasures or pains. I believe this to be one of the most unfortunate because one of the most plausible of Utilitarian fallacies. If we are determined by pains and pleasures, it is in one sense as contradictory to speak of our being determined by future pains and pleasures as to speak of our being nourished to-day by to-morrow's dinner. The 'future pleasure' does not exist; the anticipated pleasure acts by making the present action pleasant; and we then move (as it is said) along the line of least resistance. Certain conduct is intrinsically pleasurable or painful, and the future pleasure only acts through the present foretaste. When, however, we regard the pleasure as future and as somehow a separable thing, we can only express these undeniable facts by accepting a purely egoistic conclusion. We are, of course, moved by our own feelings, as we breathe with our own lungs and digest with our own stomachs. But when we accept the doctrine of 'ends' this harmless and self-evident truth is perverted into the statement that our 'end' must be our own pleasure; that we cannot be really or directly unselfish. The analysis, indeed, is so defective that it can hardly be applied intelligibly. Hume observes that no man would rest his foot indifferently upon a stool or a gouty toe. The action itself of giving pain would be painful, and cannot be plausibly resolved into an anticipation of an 'end.' This, again, is conspicuously true of all the truly social emotions. Not only the conscience, but the sense of shame or honour, or pride and vanity act powerfully and instantaneously as present motives without necessary reference to any future results. The knowledge that I am giving pain or causing future pain is intrinsically and immediately painful to the normal human being, and the supposed 'analysis' is throughout a fiction. Mill, however, like Bentham, takes it for granted, but perceives more clearly than Bentham the difficulty to which it leads. How, from a theory of pure selfishness, are we to get a morality of general benevolence? The answer is given by the universal 'association.' We are governed, he holds, by our own emotions; our end is our own pleasure, and we have to consider how this end dictates a desire for general happiness. He expounds with great vigour the process by which the love of friends, children and parents and country may be gradually developed through the association of our pleasures with the fellow-creatures who caused them. J. S. Mill regards his exposition as 'almost perfect,'[607] and says that it shows how the 'acquired sentiments'--the moral sentiments and so forth--may be gradually developed; may become 'more intense and powerful than any of the elements out of which they may have been formed, and may also in their maturity be perfectly disinterested.' James Mill declares that the analysis does not affect the reality of the sentiments analysed. Gratitude remains gratitude, and generosity generosity, just as a white ray remains white after Newton had decomposed it into rays of different colours.[608] Here once more we have the great principle of indissoluble association or mental chemistry.

Granting that the emotions so generated may be real, we may still ask whether the analysis be sufficient. James Mill's account of the way in which they are generated leaves a doubt. Morality is first impressed upon us by authority. Our parents praise and blame, reward and punish. Thus are formed associations of praise and blame with certain actions. Then, we form further associations with the causes of praise and blame and thus acquire the sentiments of 'praiseworthiness' and 'blameworthiness.' The sensibility to praise and blame generally forms the 'popular sanction,' and this, when praiseworthiness is concerned, becomes the moral sanction.[609] Here we see that morality is regarded as somehow the product of a 'sanction'; that is, of the action of praise and blame with their usual consequences upon the individual. His sensibility causes him through association to acquire the habits which generally bring praise and blame; and ultimately these qualities become attractive for their own sake. The difficulty is to see where the line is crossed which divides truly moral or altruistic conduct from mere prudence. Admitting that association may impel us to conduct which involves self-sacrifice, we may still ask whether such conduct is reasonable. Association produces belief in error as well as in truth. If I love a man because he is useful and continue to love him when he can no longer be useful, am I not misguided? If I wear a ragged coat, because it was once smart, my conduct is easily explained as a particular kind of folly. If I am good to my old mother when she can no longer nurse me, am I not guilty of a similar folly? In short, a man who inferred from Mill's principles that he would never do good without being paid for it, would be hardly inconsistent. Your associations, Mill would say, are indissoluble. He might answer, I will try--it is surely not so hard to dissolve a tie of gratitude! Granting, in short, that Mill gives an account of such virtue as may be made of enlightened self-interest, he does not succeed in making intelligible the conduct which alone deserves the name of virtuous. The theory always halts at the point where something more is required than an external sanction, and supposes a change of character as well as a wider calculation of personal interest.

The imperfection of this theory may be taken for granted. It has been exposed by innumerable critics. It is more important to observe one cause of the imperfection. Mill's argument contains an element of real worth. It may be held to represent fairly the historical development of morals. That morality is first conceived as an external law deriving its sanctity from authority; that it is directed against obviously hurtful conduct; and that it thus serves as a protection under which the more genuine moral sentiments can develop themselves, I believe to be in full accordance with sound theories of ethics. But Mill was throughout hampered by the absence of any theory of evolution. He had to represent a series of changes as taking place in the individual which can only be conceived as the product of a long and complex social change. He is forced to represent the growth of morality as an accretion of new 'ends' due to association, not as an intrinsic development of the character itself. He has to make morality out of atomic sensations and ideas collected in clusters and trains without any distinct reference to the organic constitution of the individual or of society, and as somehow or other deducible from the isolated human being, who remains a constant, though he collects into groups governed by external sanctions. He sees that morality is formed somehow or other, but he cannot show that it is either reasonable or an essential fact of human nature. Here, again, we shall see what problem was set to his son. Finally, if Mill did not explain ethical theory satisfactorily, it must be added in common justice that he was himself an excellent example of the qualities for which he tried to account. A life of devotion to public objects and a conscientious discharge of private duties is just the phenomenon for which a cluster of 'ideas' and 'associations' seems to be an inadequate account. How, it might have been asked, do you explain James Mill? His main purpose, too, was to lay down a rule of duty, almost mathematically ascertainable, and not to be disturbed by any sentimentalism, mysticism, or rhetorical foppery. If, in the attempt to free his hearers from such elements, he ran the risk of reducing morality to a lower level and made it appear as unamiable as sound morality can appear, it must be admitted that in this respect too his theories reflected his personal character.

FOOTNOTES:

[464] For an account of these writers and their relation to the pre-revolutionary schools, see _Les Ideologues_ by F. Picavet (1891).

[465] Macvey Napier's _Correspondence_, p. 424.

[466] Charles Francois Dominique de Villers (1767-1815) was a French officer, who emigrated in 1792, and took refuge at Luebeck. He became profoundly interested in German life and literature, and endeavoured to introduce a knowledge of German speculation to his countrymen. His chief books were this exposition of Kant and an essay upon the _Reformation of Luther_ (1803), which went through several editions, and was translated by James Mill in 1805. An interesting account of Villers is in the _Biographie Universelle_.

[467] See Cockburn's _Memorials_ for a good notice of this.

[468] Stewart's _Works_, iv. 345.

[469] Lady Holland's _Life of Smith_, ii. 388.

[470] _Inquiry into the Relations of Cause and Effect_ (third edition), pp. 178, 180, and part iv. sec. 6.

[471] _Examination of Hamilton_ (fourth edition), p. 379.

[472] _Cause and Effect_, pp. 184-87.

[473] _Cause and Effect_, p. 197.

[474] _Ibid._ p. 239 _seq._

[475] _Ibid._ p. 244.

[476] _Ibid._ p. 150.

[477] _Ibid._ p. 357.

[478] _Cause and Effect_, p. 313.

[479] _Cause and Effect_, p. 482. Brown thinks that we can logically disprove the existence of motion by the hare and tortoise argument, and should therefore disregard logic.

[480] Brown's _Lectures_, (1851), p. 167, Lect. xxvi.

[481] Lecture xxv. This question as to whether Brown had or had not grossly misrepresented Reid and other philosophers, led to an entangled argument, in which Mill defended Brown against Hamilton. I will not ask whether Reid was a 'natural realist' or a 'cosmothetic idealist,' or what Descartes or Arnauld thought about the question.

[482] Reid's _Works_, p. 128.

[483] _Lectures_, pp. 150, 158-59.

[484] _Dissertations_, p. 98. Compare Brown's Twenty-fourth Lecture with Tracy's _Ideologie_, ch. vii., and the account of the way in which the infant learns from resistance to infer a cause, and make of the cause _un etre qui n'est pas moi_. The resemblance is certainly close. Brown was familiar with French literature, and shows it by many quotations, though he does not, I think, refer to Tracy. Brown, it must be noticed, did not himself publish his lectures, and a professor is not bound to give all his sources in popular lectures. An explanation would have been due in a treatise. Picavet quotes Rhetore's _Philosophie de Thomas Brown_ (a book which I have not seen) for the statement that Brown's lectures often read like a translation of Laromiguiere, with whom Brown was 'perhaps' acquainted. As, however, the _Lecons_, to which reference is apparently made, did not appear till 1815 and 1818, when Brown's lectures were already written, this seems to be impossible. The coincidence, which to me seems to be exaggerated by the statement, is explicable by a common relation to previous writers.

[485] _Lectures_, p. 166 (Lect. xxvi.).

[486] _Lectures_, p. 158 (Lect. xxv.).

[487] _Ibid._ p. 151 (Lect. xxiv.).

[488] _Lectures_, p. 177 (ch. xxviii.). Brown made the same remark to Mackintosh in 1812. (Mackintosh's _Ethical Philosophy_, 1872, 236 _n._)

[489] _Ibid._ p. 154 (Lect. xxiv.).

[490] See Hamilton's note to Reid's _Works_, p. 111.

[491] _Lectures_, p. 255 (Lect. xl.).

[492] _Ibid._ (Lect. xxxiii. and following).

[493] _Ibid._ p. 214-15 (Lect. xxxiii.). The phrase is revived by Professor Stout in his _Analytic Psychology_.

[494] _Lectures_, p. 213 (Lect. xxxiii.).

[495] This is one of the coincidences with Laromiguiere (_Lecons_ (1837), i. 103).

[496] _Lectures_, p. 210.

[497] _Lectures_, p. 315 (Lect. xlviii.).

[498] _Ibid._ p. 314.

[499] _Lectures_, p. 335 (Lect. li.). See Lect. xi. for a general explanation. The mind is nothing but a 'series of feelings'; and to say that 'I am conscious of feeling' is simply to say 'I feel.' The same phrase often occurs in James Mill.

[500] _Ibid._ p. 298 (Lect. xlvi.).

[501] _Ibid._ p. 498 (Lect. lxxiv.).

[502] _Lectures_, p. 622 (Lect. xciii.).

[503] _Dissertations_, p. 98.

[504] Froude's _Carlyle_, p. 25.

[505] _Miscellanies_ (1858), ii. 104. See, too, _Miscellanies_, i. 60, on German Literature, where he thinks that the Germans attacked the centre instead of the outworks of Hume's citadel. Carlyle speaks with marked respect of Dugald Stewart, who, if he knew what he was about, would agree with Kant.

[506] In Caroline Fox's _Memories of Old Friends_ (second edition), ii. 314, is a letter from J. S. Mill, expressing a very high opinion of Brown, whom he had just been re-reading (1840) with a view to the Logic. Brown's 'analysis in his early lectures of the amount of what we can learn of the phenomena of the world seems to me perfect, and his mode of inquiry into the mind is strictly founded upon that analysis.'

[507] I quote from this edition. Andrew Findlater (1810-1885), a Scottish schoolmaster, and editor of Chambers's _Cyclopaedia_, was a philologist (_Dictionary of National Biography_), and his notes chiefly concern Mill's adaptations of Horne Tooke.

[508] _Treatise_ (bk. i. pt. i. sec. iv.).

[509] J. S. Mill's _Autobiography_, p. 68.

[510] _Fragment on Mackintosh_, p. 314.

[511] _Analysis_, ii. 42. 'Odd,' because Brown was six years younger than Mill.

[512] 'Education,' p. 6.

[513] _Analysis_, i. 52.

[514] _Analysis_, i. xvii.

[515] _Ibid._ i. 70.

[516] _Analysis_, i. 71.

[517] _Ibid._ i. 78.

[518] _Ibid._ i. 83.

[519] _Analysis_, ii. 42.

[520] _Ibid._ i. 270.

[521] _Ibid._ i. 111.

[522] _Ibid._ i. 362.

[523] _Analysis_, i. 154 _n._

[524] _Ibid._ i. 161.

[525] _Analysis_, i. 189.

[526] _Ibid._ i. 163 _n._

[527] _Ibid._ i. 266.

[528] _Ibid._ i. 269.

[529] _Ibid._ i. 295.

[530] _Analysis_, i. 162 _n._, 187 _n._

[531] _Ibid._ ii. 21.

[532] _Ibid._ i. 224-25.

[533] _Analysis_, i. 342.

[534] _e.g._ _Ibid._ ii. 176.

[535] _Ibid._ i. 341.

[536] _Ibid._ i. 342 _n._

[537] _Ibid._ i. 331.

[538] _Ibid._ i. 345.

[539] _Ibid._ i. 352.

[540] _Ibid._ i. 381.

[541] _Analysis_, i. 363.

[542] _Ibid._ i. 402.

[543] _Ibid._ i. 402-23.

[544] _Analysis_, i. 423.

[545] _Ibid._ i. 413, 419.

[546] See especially his account of definition, _Logic_, bk. i. ch. viii., and the problem about the serpent and the dragon.

[547] _Analysis_, ii. 2.

[548] This point puzzles Destutt de Tracy. All error, he says, arises in judgments: 'Cependant les jugements, les perceptions de rapports, en tant que perceptions que nous avons actuellement, sont aussi certaines et aussi reelles que toutes les autres.'--_Elements d'Ideologie_ (1865), iii. 449.

[549] _Analysis_, ii. 6, 7.

[550] _Analysis_, ii. 18 _n._

[551] _Analysis_, ii. 24 _n._

[552] _Ibid._ ii. 132-33.

[553] _Analysis_, ii. 67-69.

[554] _Analysis_, ii. 113 _n._

[555] _Ibid._ i. 97 _n._

[556] Professor Bain points out that Mill is occasionally confused by his ignorance of the triple division, intellect, feelings: and will, introduced in the next generation.--_Analysis_, ii. 180 _n._

[557] _Analysis_, ii. 181-83.

[558] _Analysis_, ii. 351.

[559] Also privately printed in 1830. Later editions, edited by Whewell, appeared in 1836, 1862, 1873. I quote the last. See M. Napier's _Correspondence_, pp. 57-59, for the composition.

[560] Mill's _Fragment_ (Preface).

[561] See Bain's _James Mill_, pp. 374, 415-18.

[562] _Fragment_, pp. 190, 192, 213, 298, 307, 326.

[563] _Ibid._ p. 210.

[564] _Ethical Philosophy_ (1873), pp. 188, 193.

[565] M. Napier's _Correspondence_, p. 25.

[566] _Essay on Sir J. Mackintosh._

[567] _Essay on Lord Holland._

[568] _Lectures_, p. 500 (Lect. lxxv.).

[569] _Ibid._ p. 519 (Lect. lxxvii.).

[570] _Ibid._ p. 522 (Lect. lxxviii.).

[571] _Ethical Philosophy_ (Hobbes), pp. 62-64.

[572] _Ibid._ p. 85.

[573] _Ibid._ p. 145.

[574] _Ibid._ p. 9.

[575] _Ibid._ p. 120.

[576] _Ethical Philosophy_, pp. 14, 170.

[577] _Ibid._ p. 197.

[578] _Ibid._ p. 248.

[579] _Ibid._ p. 204.

[580] _Ethical Philosophy_ p. 242.

[581] _Ibid._ p. 251.

[582] _Ibid._ p. 262.

[583] _Ibid._ p. 264.

[584] _Ibid._ p. 169.

[585] _Fragment_, p. 173.

[586] _Ibid._ p. 323.

[587] _Ibid._ p. 221.

[588] _Fragment_, p. 247. Mackintosh quotes Mill's _Analysis_ at p. 197. It had only just appeared.

[589] _Fragment_, p. 11.

[590] _Fragment_, p. 246, etc.

[591] _Ibid._ p. 246.

[592] _Ibid._ pp. 269, 270.

[593] Cf. Newman's _Apologia_. 'The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul,--I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.' I should steal the farthing and assume the 'excuse.' I confess that I would not only lie, but should think lying right under the supposed circumstances.

[594] _Autobiography_, p. 51.

[595] _Fragment_, p. 251.

[596] Vol. i. p. 257.

[597] _Fragment_, p. 161.

[598] _Fragment_, pp. 315-16.

[599] _Ibid._ p. 164.

[600] _Ibid._ pp. 320-22.

[601] _Fragment_, p. 102.

[602] _Ibid._ p. 162.

[603] _Analysis_, p. 73.

[604] _Fragment_, p. 209.

[605] _Fragment_, p. 316.

[606] At one point, as J. S. Mill notes, he speaks of an 'unsatisfied desire' as a motive, which seems to indicate a present feeling; but this is not his usual view.--_Analysis_, ii. 361, 377 _n._

[607] _Analysis_, ii. 233 _n._ Mill adds that though his father explains the 'intellectual,' he does not explain the 'animal' element in the affections. This, however, is irrelevant for my purpose.

[608] _Fragment_, pp. 51-52.

[609] _Analysis_, ii. 292-300; _Fragment_, pp. 247-65. Note Mill's interpretation of this theory of 'praiseworthiness.'--_Analysis_, ii. 298 _n._