The Scottish Philosophy [227]
of the emotions, and defended the great truths of natural religion, including the existence of the deity and the immortality of the soul. Mill resolves all mental exercises into sensations and ideas, with laws of association connecting and combining them , and has left himself avowedly no religious belief whatever.
Dugald Stewart's teaching seems to have exercised little influence on his mind except to suggest the order in which he takes up his topics. I suspect he derived more from Hume than from Stewart. With Hume there is nothing in the mind but impressions and ideas; with Mill, only sensations and ideas; and both undermine our belief in the reality either of mind or body. He took advantage of all that has been done, in illustrating the influence Of association, by Hutcheson, Smith, Hume, Beattie, Alison, and Brown, and accounted by it for principles which these men reckoned original. He had also profoundly studied Hartley (" Observations on Man "), who had accounted for our complex mental feelings by sensations, ideas of sensations and association, connecting the whole with a theory of nerve vibrations, which Mill, following the Scottish school, abandoned.
Following the sensational school of France and Brown, he calls all the exercises of the mind " feelings." He begins with sensations, and goes over (Chap. I.) smell, hearing, sight, taste, touch, carefully separating from touch as Brown had done, and as Mr. Bain has since done, the feeling of resistance, extension, and figure, which he refers to muscular sensation; he also dwells fondly, as Mr. Bain has done, on the sensations of disorganization in the alimentary canal. He then treats of idea (Chap. II.); and now " we have two classes of feelings, one which exists when the object of sense is present, another that exists after the object of sense has ceased to be present. The one class of feelings I call sensations; the other class of feelings I call ideas." At this stage we wonder where or how he has got objects of sense with nothing but sensations and ideas. " As we say sensation, we might also say ideation: " " sensation would in that case be a general name for one part of our constitution, {380} ideation for another." It is clear that Mill's analysis has been the main book, or the only book on mental science, care fully studied by a certain class of London physiologists, -- such as Carpenter, Huxley, and Maudesley, -- who seldom rise above the contemplation of sensations and sensations reproduced. Verily it is an easy way of enunciating and unfolding all the varied processes of the mind to represent them as feelings, and put them under two heads, sensations and ideas; the ideas being copies of sensations, so that he is able to say: " There is nothing in the mind but sensations and copies of sensations." There is no room left for knowledge of objects or belief in objects, internal and external, no judgment or reasoning, no perception of moral good and evil. It is a more inadequate resolution than that of Condillac, who called in a sort of alchemical power, and spoke of "transformed sensations." Mr. Grote writes to the younger Mill: " It has always rankled in my thoughts that so grand and powerful a mind as he should have left behind it such insufficient traces in the estimation of successors." I do not wonder that such a meagre exposition should not have carried with it the highest minds of the age, which turned more eagerly towards the German speculators, and towards Cole ridge, Cousin, and Hamilton. But his book has had its influence over the school to which he belonged, including Mr. Grote, and over certain physiologists, who, if they have only sensations and copies of sensations to account for, are tempted to imagine that they can explain them all by organic processes. His son, John Stuart, and Mr. Bain, have been greatly swayed by the elder Mill, but have clearly perceived the enormous defects of the analysis, which they have sought to rectify in the valuable edition of the work published in it; the fundamental defects however remain, and the
Dugald Stewart's teaching seems to have exercised little influence on his mind except to suggest the order in which he takes up his topics. I suspect he derived more from Hume than from Stewart. With Hume there is nothing in the mind but impressions and ideas; with Mill, only sensations and ideas; and both undermine our belief in the reality either of mind or body. He took advantage of all that has been done, in illustrating the influence Of association, by Hutcheson, Smith, Hume, Beattie, Alison, and Brown, and accounted by it for principles which these men reckoned original. He had also profoundly studied Hartley (" Observations on Man "), who had accounted for our complex mental feelings by sensations, ideas of sensations and association, connecting the whole with a theory of nerve vibrations, which Mill, following the Scottish school, abandoned.
Following the sensational school of France and Brown, he calls all the exercises of the mind " feelings." He begins with sensations, and goes over (Chap. I.) smell, hearing, sight, taste, touch, carefully separating from touch as Brown had done, and as Mr. Bain has since done, the feeling of resistance, extension, and figure, which he refers to muscular sensation; he also dwells fondly, as Mr. Bain has done, on the sensations of disorganization in the alimentary canal. He then treats of idea (Chap. II.); and now " we have two classes of feelings, one which exists when the object of sense is present, another that exists after the object of sense has ceased to be present. The one class of feelings I call sensations; the other class of feelings I call ideas." At this stage we wonder where or how he has got objects of sense with nothing but sensations and ideas. " As we say sensation, we might also say ideation: " " sensation would in that case be a general name for one part of our constitution, {380} ideation for another." It is clear that Mill's analysis has been the main book, or the only book on mental science, care fully studied by a certain class of London physiologists, -- such as Carpenter, Huxley, and Maudesley, -- who seldom rise above the contemplation of sensations and sensations reproduced. Verily it is an easy way of enunciating and unfolding all the varied processes of the mind to represent them as feelings, and put them under two heads, sensations and ideas; the ideas being copies of sensations, so that he is able to say: " There is nothing in the mind but sensations and copies of sensations." There is no room left for knowledge of objects or belief in objects, internal and external, no judgment or reasoning, no perception of moral good and evil. It is a more inadequate resolution than that of Condillac, who called in a sort of alchemical power, and spoke of "transformed sensations." Mr. Grote writes to the younger Mill: " It has always rankled in my thoughts that so grand and powerful a mind as he should have left behind it such insufficient traces in the estimation of successors." I do not wonder that such a meagre exposition should not have carried with it the highest minds of the age, which turned more eagerly towards the German speculators, and towards Cole ridge, Cousin, and Hamilton. But his book has had its influence over the school to which he belonged, including Mr. Grote, and over certain physiologists, who, if they have only sensations and copies of sensations to account for, are tempted to imagine that they can explain them all by organic processes. His son, John Stuart, and Mr. Bain, have been greatly swayed by the elder Mill, but have clearly perceived the enormous defects of the analysis, which they have sought to rectify in the valuable edition of the work published in it; the fundamental defects however remain, and the