The Scottish Philosophy [297]
chemical power in association to transmute one thing into another, this would be a new and different capacity, not in the sensations and associations, but superinduced upon them. Mr. Mill's professed evolution of our higher ideas out of sensation by association, is a mere jugglery, in which he changes the elements without perceiving it, and overlooks the peculiarities of the com. posites he would explain.
He has been guilty of an equal error in very much overlooking the relations which the mind of man can discover; and, so far as he does notice them, in giving a very inadequate account of them. In this respect he is far behind Hume, who, we have seen, gives a very comprehensive summary of them. So far as Mr. Mill treats of them, he (followed by Professor Bain) seems to give the mind no other power of comparison than that of observing resemblances and differences. Nor is this his worst error. He confounds the judgments of the mind with associations, and thus endeavors, in a plausible but superficial way to account for that conviction of necessity which is appealed to as a test of fundamental truth. " If we find it," he says, "impossible by any trial to separate two ideas, we have all the feeling of necessity the mind is capable of " (P. 264). Now there is here the confounding of two things that are very different, the association of two ideas, so that the one always calls up the other, with the judgment which declares that two things are necessarily related. The letter A suggests the letter B; this is one mental phenomenon: we decide that two plus two makes four, and that it cannot be otherwise; this is an entirely different phenomenon. Now it is this necessity of judgment, and not the invariable association, that is the test of first truths. When we thus show that association cannot produce a new idea, and that judgment, especially necessary jud&nnents, are something different from associations, we deprive Mr. Mill's theory of the plausibility which has so deceived the London critics bred at the English universities, -- where, I may take the liberty of saying, they would be very much the better of instruction in a sound and sober philosophy. [40]Here again, from like premises, J.S. Mill has arrived at much the same conclusions. Mind, according to him, is "a series of feelings," with "a belief of the permanent possibility of the feelings." He is to be met by showing that in every conscious act we know self as existing; that when we remember, we remember self as in some state; and that, on comparing the former self with the present, we declare them to be the same. This implies more than a mere series of feelings, or a belief (he does not well know what to make of this belief) in possibilities; it implies a self existing and feeling, now and in time past. Again: "Matter may be defined the permanent possibility of sensation." He is to be met here by showing that we apprehend matter as an existence external and extended, and that we cannot get this idea of extension from mere sensations which are not extended. As to the contradiction between the senses and the reason, which Hume maintains, Mr. Mill makes the reason and senses say the same thing, that we can know nothing whatever of matter except as the " possibility of sensation," and that it "may be but a mode in which the mind repre sents to itself the possible modifications of the Ego" (p. 189), which Ego is but a series of feelings. This conclusion is quite as blank as that reached by Hume. [41]Mr. Mill has adopted Hume's doctrine of causation with a few modifications. The question is: Has he left to himself or to his followers an argument for the divine existence? He advises the defenders of theism to stick by the argument from design, but does not say that it has convinced himself. The advice is a sound one; we should not give up the argument from design because of the objections of Kant, which derive their force from the errors of his philosophy. Mr. Mill says, that we can " find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one Of the many firmaments into which sidereal
He has been guilty of an equal error in very much overlooking the relations which the mind of man can discover; and, so far as he does notice them, in giving a very inadequate account of them. In this respect he is far behind Hume, who, we have seen, gives a very comprehensive summary of them. So far as Mr. Mill treats of them, he (followed by Professor Bain) seems to give the mind no other power of comparison than that of observing resemblances and differences. Nor is this his worst error. He confounds the judgments of the mind with associations, and thus endeavors, in a plausible but superficial way to account for that conviction of necessity which is appealed to as a test of fundamental truth. " If we find it," he says, "impossible by any trial to separate two ideas, we have all the feeling of necessity the mind is capable of " (P. 264). Now there is here the confounding of two things that are very different, the association of two ideas, so that the one always calls up the other, with the judgment which declares that two things are necessarily related. The letter A suggests the letter B; this is one mental phenomenon: we decide that two plus two makes four, and that it cannot be otherwise; this is an entirely different phenomenon. Now it is this necessity of judgment, and not the invariable association, that is the test of first truths. When we thus show that association cannot produce a new idea, and that judgment, especially necessary jud&nnents, are something different from associations, we deprive Mr. Mill's theory of the plausibility which has so deceived the London critics bred at the English universities, -- where, I may take the liberty of saying, they would be very much the better of instruction in a sound and sober philosophy. [40]Here again, from like premises, J.S. Mill has arrived at much the same conclusions. Mind, according to him, is "a series of feelings," with "a belief of the permanent possibility of the feelings." He is to be met by showing that in every conscious act we know self as existing; that when we remember, we remember self as in some state; and that, on comparing the former self with the present, we declare them to be the same. This implies more than a mere series of feelings, or a belief (he does not well know what to make of this belief) in possibilities; it implies a self existing and feeling, now and in time past. Again: "Matter may be defined the permanent possibility of sensation." He is to be met here by showing that we apprehend matter as an existence external and extended, and that we cannot get this idea of extension from mere sensations which are not extended. As to the contradiction between the senses and the reason, which Hume maintains, Mr. Mill makes the reason and senses say the same thing, that we can know nothing whatever of matter except as the " possibility of sensation," and that it "may be but a mode in which the mind repre sents to itself the possible modifications of the Ego" (p. 189), which Ego is but a series of feelings. This conclusion is quite as blank as that reached by Hume. [41]Mr. Mill has adopted Hume's doctrine of causation with a few modifications. The question is: Has he left to himself or to his followers an argument for the divine existence? He advises the defenders of theism to stick by the argument from design, but does not say that it has convinced himself. The advice is a sound one; we should not give up the argument from design because of the objections of Kant, which derive their force from the errors of his philosophy. Mr. Mill says, that we can " find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one Of the many firmaments into which sidereal