What is fundamental in speaking of attributes, is inherent in the very term itself. It is not the being in its essential nature, even though always found there, but what is rightly attributed to the being as such; and in speaking of God this is not without importance; and the difference will be found very simple. Attributes are relative; hence God, who is absolute, cannot be spoken of as being the attribute itself. It is only a character which belongs to Him. God is something in Himself. But He is also something in relationship to other things when they exist or are supposed to exist. The attributes may be a necessary consequence of what He is, and I suppose in God always are, but they are not what He is Himself.
Further, no attribute can be rightly appropriated to God, which removes Him from His place as God, in necessary and absolute supremacy. The Being to whom I attribute it is gone if I do so. God cannot be the object of judgment, or He has wholly lost His place as God; yea, he who judges sets himself up in His place, and puts God in subjection to him. Evidently He is thus no longer God. Cicero says in the de Officiis, "Quasi material ... subjecta est veritas." Now this evidently God can never be, for my mind is here supreme, and God subject to it. This is at once the pride and the folly of man. This is what modern Rationalism (and I suppose the mind of man has always so acted) calls the supremacy of conscience, by which revelation and everything else is judged of. But if conscience, as my action and judgment, is supreme, there is no God at all. A God who is not alone supreme, is no God.
Has man, then, no thought of God at all? Not so. He cannot judge by his mind, but he has the knowledge of good and evil -- conscience. It may be corrupted, perverted, hardened, but he makes the difference of right and wrong. Scripture shews us he got this by the fall, and so as under sin. Still it brings in God, saying "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." It is not a law, a rule from without, imposed, but what is intrinsic (in man). He says, That is a good thing, that a bad one; and he concludes at once, God cannot approve a wrong thing, nor condemn a good thing. A man may, from passions, education, habit, have a very wrong measure of right and wrong; and demon-gods may make him put evil for good, and good for evil; but he makes the difference, and the sense of right or wrong in itself leads him to attribute right to God, and not wrong. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
But this right and wrong is connected with obligation, and is measured by relationships. I owe to a father, a husband, my neighbour, what belongs to that relationship: so to God. That is, the unperverted sense of right and wrong puts God in His place, does not judge Him. It is not an idea formed, but a relationship recognised, and hence subjection. Thus Adam lived in peace before the fall. Divine supremacy and authority was there, and owned, and then with knowledge the relationship was transgressed.
But supposing this sense of right and wrong in man, and that it is connected with the relationships in which we stand, I do hold that God loves righteousness and hates iniquity, because I intrinsically know right and wrong, but right and wrong being apprehended in the relationship, God is supreme to my mind; that is the first of rights. He is God, as much as my father is my father, and I own subjection to Him as God. I do say, He must be righteous, for that is the expression of acting on what is right and good in the relationships in which He has placed others, as far as consistent with supremacy and righteousness. But this is not supremacy of conscience, as if I were judge, and my measure of right and wrong, or my discernment of it perfect; but that I do conclude from right and wrong abstractedly to right in God, but at the same time to supremacy and perfection as the point I start from. One must not confound the measure of right and wrong with the sense of it. To speak of the supremacy of conscience, is to assume that its measure is perfect and adequate, not obligation under it. When I judge God or any one, I take a measure to judge by, and may misjudge from the state of my own mind. That is not conscience. Conscience with God recognises authority also over it, and supreme authority, or God is not recognised at all, and that is simply atheism. What these modern infidels claim -- is to make their consciences the measure of right and wrong. This is false and grossly pretentious, and destroys the nature of God, and right as regards Him.
But we have already got into the discussion of relative qualities in God. This is what supposes other things besides the absolute being. If God is righteous, though He be so, He must be so towards others; it is relative. There are two words applied to God, which reveal His nature -- Love and Light -- and only these two. They affirm what He is in nature -- not any attribute. Love is goodness, but in supremacy; for, in its abstract nature goodness is identified with supremacy, for it must be free. It is in this it is different from desire, even when it is a holy desire.
Love is used, I know, in human language for desire, in the best and most amiable sense. But though the same word be used in the sense of an inferior to a superior, or even an equal, this is in connection with a motive -- is moved.
But love, as goodness itself, is blessed in itself and free in its actings, unless want or misery draw it out; but it has not a motive which characterises it by its object. This is always the case in desire, even when it is in no way evil, but has the character of affection. In ordinary desires it forms so far the character; money, power, pleasure, give their character to the man who seeks them; but though love be used as to them, it is evidently in a lower sense, and, where desires are, the desired object so far rules over us. Where love exists in a divinely-formed relationship, it is, or may be a just affection. I say, "may be," because it may run into a mere desire and be idolatry, and the relationship falsified. But when rightly in exercise, save as man in certain aspects represents God, it looks up, and characterises the person in the affection. It is conjugal, filial, and the like. A husband and a father in certain respects represent God in those relationships, and so far it partakes of what He is. But in the closest relationship where it is not this, it has the character I speak of: "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
But God suffices to Himself, and goodness makes Him infinitely happy in Himself. For goodness is happy if it has no object, though happy in goodness when it is exercised towards one. Hence it is free, because it suffices for itself. Hence though, in certain relationships, man may be the image of God, yet as he cannot suffice to himself, and so be free and sovereign, he is not said to be love, though he is to walk in it. He is as to any right state subject and recipient. The divine nature is in the Christian, and he loves; still "we love because"!
But we are light in the Lord. The purity of nature which belongs essentially to God is made ours in the new man; as far as it acts in us it manifests everything around us in its true character. Christ was love in the world, and the light of the world. He is the measure of both for us. It is a blessed thing that the two essential names of God should be the expression of the new man in us; only, as we have seen, we are not said to be love. But that which is the nature of God characterises us, and makes us to enjoy Him, and to act according to that character here through grace.
These, as I have said, are not attributes. Attributes are ideas which we attach to God in connection with what is outside Himself, though belonging necessarily to Him as God. He is omnipotent, omniscient, supreme; even righteous, holy; these, though more connected with His nature, are relative terms. I must think of God's dealings and claims to call Him righteous. He judges of something when He is righteous, only it affirms He always judges right. To call Him holy, I must think of evil which He rejects. Hence He is not called righteousness and holiness, but righteous and holy. What He says is truth, but He is not truth. Truth is what is rightly affirmed of something else. But God is not affirmed of something else. We can say Christ is the Truth, because He does tell exactly what everything is -- what God is, perfect man is, and by contrast what evil man is, what the world is, who is its prince. Through Him all is exactly brought out in its true character. Hence we say, God in Himself is absolutely Love and Light -- the last expressing perfect purity (invisible in itself), and manifesting everything as it is before God, and shewing the way before us: and God is righteous, holy, omniscient, omnipotent, supreme, and the like -- all of which are relative terms -- the former moral, the latter natural attributes.
Righteousness is perfectness in, or consistency with the relationship in which anyone stands; evil and good being known. Holiness, the aspect of heart, which intrinsic purity of nature bears towards other things, according to their character. We may speak of things as holy when entirely set apart to God, and separated from all profane use; but properly it applies to persons expressing their abhorrence of evil and delight in that which is pure and good. God is holy in Himself, abhorring evil and delighting in what answers to His perfect nature. The creature can only be holy as separated to God in what He is in His perfectness, because its nature can have no true and perfect object but Him, and its object gives its character to a nature in a creature, and holiness is the expression of a nature, not the obligation of a relationship. We are holy as far as every movement of thought answers to the impress and character of God, having Him for its object. Anything taken up in itself, apart from Him, is necessarily independency and sin. So far God is set aside. We have no object which makes the heart right but Him. Although we cannot leave God out as the author of, and as giving authority to, the relations in which we stand; yet, as we are placed in certain relationships, righteousness has somewhat more extensive range, though as a sanction God must be brought in. But whenever a relationship owned of God exists, it is unrighteous not to act up to it: not to be faithful to obligation in it.
Now God, as righteous, maintains judicially every obligation which any relationship imposes on us. But first and above all, relationship to Himself according to His supremacy and moral nature; this is the basis and stay of every other. Only Christianity has brought out a second and more perfect measure of this. It recognises what is due from man according to the measure of man, his obligations in the place he is in towards God and his neighbour. Of this the law is the perfect measure, God making allowance for ignorance of the measure.
But besides this, God Himself has been perfectly glorified by the blessed Lord. All that He is, where sin gave occasion to the full revelation of all that He is, has been glorified in Christ, and a new ground of relationship formed according to what He is, based on what Christ has wrought. Hence man is in the glory of God, and God's righteousness is displayed in that.
Judgment is based on the actual obligations founded on the relationship in which man is. Acceptance goes much farther, and is according to the worth of the Lord's work; we are made the righteousness of God in Him. But God in righteousness maintains all the relationships in which man stands according to His will.
It is well also to distinguish between the righteousness of God in government, and the immutable character of God, according to which we must stand before Him, if in His revealed presence. His revealed requirement of righteousness forms, with long patience exercised on His part, through goodness, the basis of His righteous government, never to be fully revealed until Christ comes; partially displayed in Israel, where needed to maintain the recollection of it everywhere; and in a signal way in the flood which closed the old world.
But standing before God fully revealed, supposes not our obligations to Him in government exercised to maintain His authority, and the natural sense, or revealed rule of right or wrong, but fitness for His own presence. This is in Christ only. This is fully revealed in Christianity alone, and wrath from heaven in connection with it; Romans 1: 1-20.
When I speak of what is holy, it is not judicial authority, as in the case of righteousness, but what purity of nature abhors and rejects, or delights in. Righteous and holy are the attributes which attach themselves to the moral nature of God and His supreme authority.
But there is that in God, the sense of which is with difficulty lost in man, though he be without God in the world. This has turned the sense of a being above himself, perfect in knowledge and power, a Supreme Being, into what is the fruit of imagination or servile dread -- Mythology and Fetishism. The visible powers of nature were deified, because a God was wanting for the heart. The legends of ancient days were turned into myths of the gods. Terror told of a revengeful power, and a world of retribution loomed to an unsatisfied conscience. Man would animate planets, because they moved without him: he would have poetical lusts in superficial and self-satisfied Greece; more calculated sobriety in Egypt, a sunny south of gods, and northern immensity of giants, and storms, and mountains in Scandinavia; or seek to solve the mystery of good and evil in Ahriman and Ahurmazdha in Arva, or revel in monstrous reveries in India. Cruelty and poetry might divide the world under the name of gods, but behind all there was everywhere Tertullian's "Testimonium animae naturaliter christianae," an "unknown God" -- a Brahm, the origin of all things, a primeval source or power.
In Fetishism -- degraded into a dread of some terrible unknown power, which priests used for their own purposes; in more cultivated religions, kept as the secret mysterious knowledge belonging to them, or to the initiated only, while the vulgar were kept in play with the more convenient everyday materials of popular mythology -- the gods and goddesses of nature and imagination; yet still, though inconsistently, clothing them with attributes and powers which, if true, could only belong to one supreme God. And this was so true, that each local mythology had this twofold character, and that, even to particular cities.
In India, in the sects of Vaishnavas and Saivas, and one supreme God above the rest, the idea of God, and attributes of supremacy, omniscience and omnipotence, ran through all, however confused and inconsistent. These attributes were symbolised, too, as in the winged bulls, and lions, and men of Assyria -- symbols recognised in Scripture; with this immense difference, that in heathen symbols, save in the vague idea of divinity, God was thought of no further than the attributes or symbols.
In Judaism, these formed but the throne of a known God who sat above them; the clearest expression, on the one hand, of the mind of man losing itself without God in knowledge it could not retain or carry, and on the other, of the clearness of the revelation which made one true God known.+ Supremacy, omniscience, omnipotence, attach themselves necessarily to our idea of one God the moment the thought takes a definite form, and the attributes involved in them are not lost in mythological associations.
In heathenism, where these activities are attributed to subordinate energies, the one original God was mere abstract, inert godhead -- abstract existence.
In India, sole existence, sometimes springing into activity of thought and desire, all which became creation, including the gods, and was Maia, or Illusion, and returning into abstract godhead again, when Brahm's occasional activity ceased.
Modern Materialism does little more than substitute scientific activities of nature for poetical activities, and is worth about as much; for after all, we must want a cause. Phosphorus may put activity into the brain, not moral thought; but what puts activity into phosphorus, or gives it this mental character? Indeed, wherever I find a regular difference in a like agency, I find a difference-maker! The tubers of a plant, which convert the elements of the same soil into a geranium or an oak, force on me the conviction of design and mind.
+See the beginning of Ezekiel: God was seated above these figures. The extreme perverseness, and I must add, superficiality of man's mind and infidelity are shewn in Max Muller's "Science of Religion," and such-like works, licensing and promoting mythology, because it had the thought of God behind it all, as if it were the expression of it; whereas it was the gross departure of man's mind, when he had it, to degrade the idea of God when he had departed from Him; and that in connection with the basest defilement and cruelty, so that God in His true nature and conscience were alike lost -- morally gone -- though neither could be destroyed.
I do not connect omnipresence and eternity as attributes with God, not because they may not, in an ordinary sense, be said to be so; and Scripture itself so speaks practically, and it always speaks practically, because truly; but that in our minds they are connected with time and space, which do not apply to God. There is no time when God is not; no place where His eye and hand, to use human language, are not. "I AM" is the proper expression of His existence. While time rolls on "I am" remains unchanged, and when time has rolled away "I am" subsists the same. It can hardly be called an attribute. This being understood, we may speak of eternal as a natural attribute of God.
As to omnipresence, God has no more to do with space than with time. He has created all things in a way apprehensible thus to us. In this creation nothing escapes Him. He is, morally speaking, omnipresent. He is not of, or in it, but pervades it. He is "through all"! He upholds everything, as He creates everything. He is not morally concerned in any motive (save as working in man in grace), but not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him.
Omnipotence is involved in this -- the power to do whatever it is His will to do. Omniscience is involved in it also. Did not God know all things, He could neither know what to do rightly, nor judge morally. Supremacy is involved in our very idea of God as one, and active in power. They are inherent in our idea of God, and (when once the heathenish additions of what are confessedly imaginations are removed) cannot be separated from the idea of God. That which it is important to get fast hold of is, that there is a will in God. No moral being can be without it; a will guided by righteousness and holiness, and to which omnipotence and omniscience are subservient, but which is the source and origin of all that exists outside Himself, not of its state, for moral beings have a will, but of its existence.
He is a Creator. I do not say that simple existence can be proved to be a matter of creation by logical deduction. But simple existence is an abstraction. Man sees trees, planets moving; in a word, evidence of design, and that, which has been so often argued, involves a designer. The distinct knowledge of a Creator is a matter of faith. Yet if man does suppose the abstract existence of matter without a cause, he violates the first principles of necessary thought. He is accustomed to see man form many things out of comparatively formless matter, so he has an idea of this latter. But if he begins to think of why anything existed, he cannot avoid the thought of a cause. Why, implies it? and I can say Why? and it is my nature to say Why? I am so constituted as to look for a cause. I may not be able to define cause,+ nor can I conceive creation; but I cannot conceive, on the other hand, a thing existing without it. My mind may be inert, and so far take what exists as I find it; but as soon as it is in activity, it looks for why a thing exists. The same thing proves I cannot know a first cause, but only that there must be one. I cannot conceive a thing existing without a cause, therefore I say there must be one. But a first cause means what exists without one. That is, I cannot conceive it. Hence, too, I cannot conceive creation, though I know there must be a Creator. It is merely saying, I am a creature, and must think in the order of my being.
+A cause, I apprehend, is power producing from a will working somewhere. I say "somewhere," as school-men speak, there is a "cause causata," and "causa causans."
Goodness or love, omniscience and omnipotence, involve in them perfect wisdom; only all this supposes a God, with a free will to exist, before any attribute can be assigned to Him. If not free to act, omniscience and omnipotence are simply null.
One class of philosophers -- unable as we are, in the nature of things as creatures, to conceive a creation (for the creature must think in his own order, that is, creature order; he can no more have an idea of creation than create -- power is not in him), judges "Ex nihilo nihil fit."+ For him it is true; but it is only the great fallacy, common to philosophy, of taking our capacity of thought and action as the measure of what may be, which is simply absurd. It is our measure as to power, be it of thought or action; we must think or act according to our nature, and can think no more as to forming ideas. But it is wholly false if it deny the consciousness of what is above us and applicable to us receptively. We may be acted on mentally and physically by that which is no possessed power in us. Active power or capacity for it is not the measure of receptivity.
+Out of nothing, nothing is made.
Further, I may negatively be conscious of the necessity of a thing of which I can form no idea, because it is beyond my order of being. Thus I naturally ascribe an effect to a cause, a power producing it. I see a thing becomes, begins to exist, as it is before me; I at once ascribe it to some cause. I am so formed as to suppose a why? It cannot be without some cause. It is not a formed idea of what the cause is, but the conviction that there must be one. It appears to me as an effect, and effect contains the idea of a cause in it. Hence I believe in creation. Not that I form an idea of it, but that negatively it cannot but be.
I have already said, the nature of the proof demonstrates that I cannot form an idea of the thing proved in itself. But there is clearly seen eternal power and godhead. And here note that creative power involves eternal power, for all begins by creation, and all creation begins. But what creatures must be, that is, exist absolutely without a beginning. "I am," therefore, or absolute existence, is the one just revelation of God as such.
We have thus one personal God -- "I am," supreme, absolutely free, omniscient, omnipotent, wise, the Creator. These are, so to speak, natural attributes; moral ones are righteous, holy, good; known to man not by ideas or thinking, which is impossible, for then man's mind would be at least the equal of God, that is, He would not be God at all; but by conscience, or the knowledge of good and evil, the proofs in the creation around us of creative power and wisdom, and in spite of the undeniable, utter degradation of man, in corruption and violence, and the monstrous deities into which he had merged it, the idea of God, the abiding sense of unity, supremacy, absolute godhead, everywhere found.
If Jupiter be suckled by a goat in Crete, the idea of supremacy remains. If Krishna lives with the milkmaids, in time he is an incarnation of Vishnu, and Vishnu is Brahm, the rest Maia or Illusion. The gods are mortal; God is not. It may be Bathos, or Silence, or as unknown as you please, when the feeble mind of man tries to have a formed idea; but before it acts, behind the gods of imagination or lusts or fears, there is not only godhead, but one God. The Manitou of the Indian, the eternal being before Ahurmazdha, was active for good, or Ahriman, to spoil his work.
And remark here, that where ideas flow from a relationship in which we exist, which belongs to our nature in its original constitution, it may be by thinking and imagination, education, habit in religious things, priestcraft, be perverted, falsified, degraded (and the mind with it), or reasoned against from the inadequacy of the mind to master it as an idea; but the roots of it are in the nature. To have it falsified, there must be something to falsify. "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret." Hence, prone as the human mind is to indulge its imagination, stop short of God whom it fears, and have gods and idols which it can manage after its own lusts and thoughts, yet, when the truth of the relationship is brought out, the soul recognises it.
The unity, supremacy, omniscience, omnipotence, of God, and our responsibility to Him, are owned, when divine revelation has brought them out, as the only truth, by all. I do not mean by that, that the mind of man cannot or does not seek to disprove it, and have no God at all, because it does not like one, does not like responsibility, and likes to be supreme -- at least to have no one above it. But this is an effort, and an effort whose effects never last with the masses; that is, with man according to nature -- an effort, too, always connected with oppression or violence and profligacy, as in the fall of the Roman Empire and in the French Revolution. Morality must disappear; for there can be no morality without responsibility, and responsibility without God is impossible. For to whom am I responsible if there be not one above me? Responsibility refers to relationship, and all relationship, even human, is founded on relationship to Him. Without Him self-will acts; each one will have his own, and man becomes a mixture of the devil and the brute, or is kept down by power because it must be, or worse; while power in result will cultivate superstition, because of its sway over men's minds. And, indeed, where faith or revelation does not give a true sphere outside self, man cannot rest in self, and he will make a false one. Hence, under Satan's power, the religions of the world.
Revelation, in making known the true God, meets -- not the knowledge, but the wants of the human mind. It is the witness of its own truth, because it meets and clears out those springs in the soul which were the subjective adaptation to the relationship in which it stood in truth with God; and the objective revelation perfectly meets them, fits in, and so far God is known.+
+Hence, where revelation exists, God is owned where there is no true conversion. Hence the superiority morally of Protestantism (which owns the true revelation, and uses it personally) to Popery, which has set up a mythological system of saints, etc., and established a priesthood, which is always, and must be, if God be not known directly and immediately. In Protestantism the conscience has to say to God immediately as revealed: in Romanism not -- the priest is a director.
If we take Scripture, we find there the attributes of God -- the one true and only God -- shine out, and in every page, with unclouded lustre. He is one, supreme, the Creator of heaven and earth, of all things; knows all things. If we go to heaven, He is there; to hades, He is there (Jeremiah 23: 24); can do all things. His eye and presence are everywhere; He is the eternal God; He is righteous and holy; His goodness is over all His works. The cravings of the heart of man are met with the clearest and fullest revelation of God. I refer to the Old Testament, because there God, as such -- the one true God -- is fully and specially revealed in contrast with idols and man's imaginations. It is its special, direct revelation, with the law of His mouth -- though promises and prophecies accompany it.
The New fully confirms it, I need not say; but there is a much fuller revelation in the Father sending the Son for the accomplishment of His ways in grace, and this characterises it. He does not give a revelation, He is revealed. Hence, though of course the attributes remain true, it is not attributes which characterise it, but what He is -- light and love; righteousness and holiness necessarily coming in -- but His own. Not the requirements of man's for Him, which quite alters the character of them as revealed. In the Old we could say, "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness." "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Now, He -- Christ -- is our righteousness; we are made the righteousness of God in Him. It is in the New Testament we find God revealed in Christ as light and love, and we, "light in the Lord," and partakers of the divine nature, have to walk in the light, and know, through the redemption that is in Christ, that perfect love that casts out fear.
This is more than attributes, as we have said, though it confirms, is in a certain sense the source of, and makes us to know them all, and give each its own and full place.
I have been looking into the force of the Hebrew words for most High. That it ultimately refers to God in the millennium as the supreme God then manifested, to the exclusion of what is false, is evident. This is the force of the word -- One who, to the exclusion of and superiority over all others, holds the place of the one true God, but exalted as supreme in government. Jehovah is, as we know, the God who is in relationship with Israel, but He is the supreme God, the Most High. The full statement of the title, and the time of taking it, is in Genesis 14: 19, 20, 22. Israel's enemies are entirely discomfited, and delivered into his hand, and the heir of promise blessed of Him who possesses heaven and earth. He is supreme, and has taken all things into His possession.
Still God is, of course, always such, and referred to in trial as the One who will set all right. When the Lord is just coming into the world to set all in order, the question is raised, Where is the secret place of the Most High? Where is He to be found as a protection? Whoever finds Him will have the protection of Abraham's God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the place of promise. Jehovah is it, the God of Israel. And in fact the full divine care of the supreme God, the God of promise, is found, possessor of heaven and earth, revealed in connection with the Melchisedec priest.
Hence, too, when Nebuchadnezzar is restored from a state that represents the character of the empires which began in him, he owns the Most High; Daniel 4: 25-34.
In the Psalms the use of it is frequent. In Psalm 21 it is connected with the royalty of Christ as the glorified Man and King. His hand will find out all His enemies and by the favour of the Most High He will not be moved. In Psalm 46 God is again in the midst of His people on Messiah's triumph (Psalm 45). The tabernacles are those of the Most High. His power is fully displayed in the earth, Jehovah being with Jacob. So more fully as to the world in Psalm 47. In Psalm 50 Most High is connected with the judgment of God in power. In Psalms 9, 10, 55, and 57, it is calling upon Him in this character by the remnant when in distress, the first of the two latter speaking of the distress, the second of the delivering supremacy over all the earth. Psalm 73 is the first of the third book, and the power of the Most High despised by the adversaries; but, going into the sanctuary, their judgment is discovered. The years of the Most High are remembered in Psalm 77, His way is in the sanctuary and in the sea; not looking to heart-failing in man, but to Jehovah, the Supreme, who accomplishes His good pleasure. In this and the next it is Jehovah's right to this name, as in all the history of Israel. For this is all Israel. Psalms 82 and 83 are both judgment at the close, and in the fullest way to recognise that Jehovah is the Most High over all the earth. Psalm 91 has been spoken of. Psalm 92 is the same perishing of the enemies, and exalting the true David. Psalm 97 is expressly as Jehovah reigning, and as Most High over all the earth, and exalted above the gods when He comes to judgment. In Psalm 107 it is Israel re-gathered, who celebrates God's government, and His chastisement for their rebellion against Jehovah who is the Most High.
We have the Most High in Daniel 7, though in most of the occurrences it is in the plural for "high" or "heavenly places." There its connection with God's title, and making good His dominion, and this connected with Israel, is evident. Thus, though Jehovah is looked back to in self-judgment in the history of Israel, as Psalms 56, 57, 73, 77, yet the force of the title is evident.
The application of numerals to divine or any moral being is absurd.+ We do not mean the same thing by unity in figure and in minds. But I deny that God was, or ever could be, fully revealed as one. He is one; but He never was revealed as one. He was revealed to be one in contrast with a multiplicity of gods. But when revealed to be one, He was not fully revealed. He existed always in trinity in unity -- not that I pretend to fathom this, but I know it, because, when fully revealed, He is so revealed. When He was revealed as one, He did not suffer Himself to be approached, carefully shewed this, dwelt (as so made known) behind the veil. In a word, He used various sensible figures to shew that He was not known, that the true light did not shine, and that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest.
But when He does reveal Himself, the Son is on earth, yet in the bosom of the Father. He is the image of the invisible God. He that has seen Him has seen the Father. The light of God was in the world, but man did not see or comprehend it. The revealed One, the Father, was known or to be known in goodness by the Son. Though the invisible God was made known by Him who was His image, yet if He had ceased to be invisible, Christ would have ceased to be a special revealer and image. If He had not perfectly shewn and revealed Him as really manifested (that is, if He had not been God), no love, goodness, forbearance, patience, power -- no revelation would have been. If He had not been Son, He could not have revealed the Father to us as such.
But this is not all. The darkness comprehended not the light. The Holy Ghost became power (when the needed work was done to put us according to God's holy and righteous nature into that place, without which He would not have been so known, that is, in truth) to give competency of apprehension, and to reveal, not as object but as communicating power, having quickened us so as to have a capacity to apprehend. I am not saying this by mere deduction, but from the revelation of God.
Without the Trinity love was not known, righteousness, holiness -- the spiritual nature of God and purity as such. That is, He never was revealed as He is and always was. All the true nature of God, that is, what He is, without the Trinity is unknown. The Father wills; the Son quickens whom He will; but because we have separate wills, why necessarily have the Father and the Son? The Spirit distributes to whom He will; but this is not separate from the will of the Father and the Son. They have not the same counsel but one counsel, mind, purpose, thought; yet they act distinctly in the manifestation of that counsel. The Father sends the Son, and the Son the Spirit. Yet when the Son comes, He is not thereby separate from the Father. "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." So He casts out demons by the Spirit of God; yet He casts them out. There is unity in all that constitutes oneness when we speak spiritually -- not unity as one by arriving at the same things, or union, or by being united, as we are by having only one Spirit dwelling in all, but -- by being one in eternal being; so that all else flows from that one will and counsel, yet so as that distinction in action in that will is revealed to us: not distinct will, but distinct willing.
+This refers to ideas opposing the Trinity as set out in Scripture.
Not that I have the least pretension to fathom this divine mystery where all are God, all one God, God all three; yet the Father is revealed, the Son reveals, the Holy Ghost quickens and makes known. The Son who reveals is not different from the Father whom He reveals, or He would not reveal Him. By the Spirit who quickens and makes known, we are born of God and know God dwelling in us. He reveals Him to us by His own presence and is in every way the power of God, active in the creature.
Nor could the creature reach to God; or God would not be God. It is simply impossible; for if finite reach to infinite, there is neither finite nor infinite. And the infinite God could not, as such, reveal Himself to a finite creature. Nor is this mentally true only; for if God in His glory had done so, the creature could not have existed before Him. So if morally revealed (that is, as righteous and holy, and simple glory, that is, "in essential glory"), man could not have stood before Him. There was contrariety morally. Not even love would do; for what was it to man as he was? No link, no desire, and, if man was a sinner, no fitness in the simple display of it.
But in the Son by the Holy Ghost, by the work of Christ and the operation of the Holy Ghost, God is revealed; and in the love of the Father, righteousness and holiness are maintained and glorified, with capacity of communion in enjoyment of both the Father and the Son and intelligence of all these ways conferred by the presence of the Holy Ghost.
Hence, while John says God so loved the world, we find, whenever he speaks of grace and power bringing man into the knowledge and enjoyment of God, he speaks of the Father and the Son, adding afterwards in the words of Christ the presence and work of the Comforter. John is the one who speaks specially of the revelation of God, not of the presentation of man to God, though he does this; as Paul also speaks of the revelation of God, but specially of man's presenting to God.
Thus we see that there could be no full revelation of God, but through the Son by the Spirit, and thereby of the Father. The full revelation of the one God is only thus -- Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This, this only, is what the one God is, one identity of will and being, so that they are essentially one and one only, yet distinct in willing and acting (and we can distinguish them in willing and acting: hence we commonly speak of persons), yet never willing or acting but in the common will and unity of nature.
I fear much human language on this. But I affirm that the only full revelation of the one true God is the revelation of Him in the Trinity. Our prayers rise up the same. Through Him (Christ the Son) we have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
There can be no absolute knowledge in man by his own reason, but only relative. God only is absolute; all other existences can be only relative, because there is only God absolute.
There is that which is next to it -- the "I," which is out of time and space, and by its nature as such precludes relation; but it does not make the "I" absolute. First, there is no consciousness of absoluteness in it, though it helps one to the idea from the negation of relationship, while a negation is not a notion of the thing contradictory of that denied. But, further, consciousness (or the "I") is corrected by perception; for I perceive other things -- not the "I." Be they ideas or things, it is all one, they are not the "I"; and the "I" becomes relative, is not absolute, existing in itself or infinite. The "I" is not "I am." "Am" is affirming something about "I": and as man I get into relativeness at once. When one says "I," infiniteness is excluded as time; but when the "I" reflects on itself, there is (I do not doubt) the consciousness that it is not absolute but dependent, has a source or cause, cannot say "being," though it can say "am" -- not "becoming" (that is false) but "am." If I say "being" in any other sense than "am," I make myself God, as "I am." But, not being, I have to inquire what I am becoming, because what is not absolute has possibility of change: and what has possibility of change in becoming has necessity of becoming to be, that is, though existing, is not absolute, but flows from and depends on an absolute Being.
If it be inquired, if my relationship even with perceived things denies my absoluteness, has God not relationship with what exists, with me? None but what is the fruit of His own will. I am necessarily in relationship with what has caused me to be, by reason of which I have become, or with things which exist without my will. I am in relationship according to my being; I exist in that condition: God does not. He may form such relationships; but they are the fruit of His will; and His being remains in its own absoluteness. I have no doubt that man has an intuitive consciousness of relationship, and of relationship to a superior Being, independent of himself, with whom he is in relationship, though his ideas of that Being may be utterly false and corrupted; but that which is false and corrupted is in his natural intuition. Mind cannot know God, because relative cannot know absolute. But if imagination works, it corrupts the intuition mythologically. If mind works, it shews by its efforts its incapacity to reach what it is; but both the mythology and the efforts shew that there is the intuitive idea which sets the imagination and mind respectively in movement. But there is more than this. The immensely wider extent and preponderance of superstition, the rareness and shortlivedness of mental rejection of God theoretically, prove the power and strength of the intuition above mere mind. This may despise in its pretentiousness the intuition of a Being above us on which we are dependent; but the intuition is master of it always. Indeed, in detail the strongest minds are therefore grossly superstitious, because the want of the soul has not through the mind its natural pabulum.
Hence Renan and Scherer are perfectly right when they say, "all is relative"; and perhaps even when they say, "all [save the 'I'] is relation." Even what the "I" is, is entirely relative. But it is because they are wholly ignorant of God, who alone is absolute.
That science is become history is true, because thought has run itself out to the conviction of its incompetency, and can only relate what it has been thinking with a partial point of truth in it, but not the truth, of which the mind is incapable and owns itself such by making history of science. That this is all that can be, it is incompetent to say. It can only say and does admit that this is all it is competent for; because it cannot go beyond itself, and, being only itself cannot say of itself that there is nothing else which is competent, or that in some other way it cannot be arrived at or received. I admit and accept of its confession of incompetency.
Scherer reduces man to the lowest estimate of judgment of God and good. "Le vrai n'est plus vrai en soi" (the true is no more true in itself): a ridiculous sentence, because "le vrai" then cannot be. "Le vrai, le beau, le juste meme se font perpetueilement ... ils ne sont autre chose que l'esprit humain." (The true, the beautiful, the just reproduce themselves perpetually: they are nothing but the mind of man). -- (Revue des deux M., Feb. 15, 1861.) Now this is a statement that no nature can be, in apprehension or being, above man; or else "le vrai, le beau, le juste," may be "vrai, beau, juste en soi." Nor is this all. As to man they are relative, because he is so; yet, if there be a superior relation to One who is absolute, there is a fixed "vrai, beau, juste" morally in relation to Him, because He is the Absolute. It is simply a total denial of God or anything beyond the changing states or apprehensions of man; and makes man the end and beginning of himself; for if there be another thing or being to which he is in relation as end or beginning, there is as regards man a fixed measure of true, beautiful, just. So that this is merely the declaration that there is no relation beyond self; for if man is the measure and changes, it is simply self. This is philosophy.
Now I admit the partial truth (with a cloud of thoughts about it in philosophising), of which modern philosophy can only give a history, being, even as to this partial truth, past the power of conceiving truth. But progress is questionable. One man reasons from perceptions and sensation to prove God, another from final causes, another from intuitions, another from an innate perception of the absolute. All are true as a subjective, intuitive, or intellectual necessity; but they never reach objective knowledge either way: and man vacillates between all of them and arrives at -- concludes -- nothing! But the want and the craving do prove the truth, not of what the object is, but that there is an object -- an unknown one. It is the "unknown God." You cannot know, but you cannot dispersuade that there is something to know. Hunger is not food, or the knowledge of food as possessed; but it is an undeniable proof to the hungry (take it as reasoning or want) that there is food to be known. And this moral condition is because man, in whose nostrils was breathed the breath of life from God, is thus in nature formed for God, and has not God.
Thus, when men have made the Logos the human mind or the human reason -- the impersonal reason -- with a vast system of philosophy to give it a body, there is a germ of truth; for there is that spirit in man which comes from the inbreathing of God originally. Yea, in wretched Pantheism there is a germ of truth; for God is above all and through all. All too live and move and have their being in Him. By Him all things consist. But where God is not known objectively, this centres in self: "Ils ne sont autre chose que l'esprit humain" (the most degraded of sentences); and centring in self is the perfection of degradation. But all these germs of truth, the truth (the word of God) gives us as certain truth in two words without the cobweb spinning of philosophy which proves its incompetency, the mind of man vacillating between systems formed from their germs without the true object of them; for that is philosophy.
But the truth does more; it gives us their true object as beginning, present fulness, and end, with the assurance of knowing as we are known, knowledge being now in part. And it takes us out of self by an object. And now see the divine wisdom with which this is done. I want the absolute but cannot have it, because I am in a relative condition; yet, if I have it not, I am reduced to what "n'est qu'humain" -- self occupied with self. In Christ I have the absolute become relative, giving me the absolute goodness in coming into relation, perfect love and perfect light. But I have it more fully. I have the truth as to everything from the supreme God to sin, the world, the devil its prince, death itself and the dust of death with triumph over it. If I can see, I have the perfect "vrai, beau, juste"; and if not, I have it relatively to me -- to man. But now I have it maintained to my soul in God, in Christ's life as perfect man relatively to God, and to the whole character of God in the atonement on the cross. I get absolute moral attributes glorified in God at the cost of abnegation of self in man (that is, in man who was the Son of God), love, righteousness, majesty, and truth. God was glorified in Him.
Thus I have the absolute in qualities maintained for my mind -- my moral mind -- in the cross, and self absolutely gone in man; I have the absolute in good become relative, so that my heart can and does know and delight in it. Could God's ways be more perfect or more wise?
Wise philosophy objects to this display of God's absolute character at Christ's expense, not seeing that it is the additional beauty and moral excellence of His giving Himself -- the moral perfection of man, as absolute as what is relative can be, and absolute in Christ because He could give Himself. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again," yet this, that it might be perfect in man, obedience to His Father -- "this commandment have I received of my Father." But how can philosophy understand this? "Ils ne sont autre chose que l'esprit humain"; that is, self varied in its hopeless efforts to enlarge but never getting out of self. We cannot but in a subordinate sense give ourselves, because we are relative: we are not our own; for what is relative is bound to conformity to that relation. But, God having revealed Himself in Christ in grace to us, the discovery of this supreme relationship in absolute claim does free us from all others and lead us to give up self in all things in which it is sought, while sanctioning the relationships in which God had originally placed man, or to which he is rightly subjected as being of God Himself, such as magistracy, etc. Yet these may be given up (I mean natural relationships as connected with self) by a superior motive, the divine object taking possession of the soul in active love to others.
How admirable and divine the whole scheme is! The very wants suit, taking man out of self by the absolute become relative and perfection in the relative toward God and toward man, while the absolute is maintained to our souls in every sense by the sacrifice of Christ and man's perfect abnegation of self in the same to glorify God. The result is man dwelling in God (and God in him) and that in glory; this last known only in hope through positive revelation, yet felt to be necessary because of the preparation laid for it (see beginning of John 17), the rest enjoyed now, though this could only have been by divine actings (and we have it by divine communication as to truth and power, which is another subject), but when known, enjoyed as known truth in itself. He that believes not has made God a liar; he has not believed the record or testimony; but he that believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself.
But if all be relative and relation, according to logic by the doctrine of excluded middle there must be an absolute. Not that this makes us know anything but that there must be the thing. For the truth of excluded middle is, I suspect, always simply that the term is really a negative or involves one -- that is, proves that there is an intuitive consciousness that there is the thing negatived, not that we know it, and I suspect is never true but in the case of the absolute. Thus, if I say, It is good or bad, it is only if I view the term absolutely that I can say so. It is a colour, therefore not white or black, both which negative absolutely all colour. It is when a term implies that it embraces in its nature all but its opposite. Both need not (indeed cannot) be absolute, but one must be; and the reasoning is always from the non-absolute to the absolute, which can exist without anything else existing. Nothing else can; for a thing, not being absolute, is in relation. It is simply therefore the proof of the intuition of the existence of the absolute.
It is a mistake to suppose that metaphysical scepticism denies the certainty of knowledge within the sphere of knowledge. It only affirms that the finite cannot know the infinite -- that no conclusion is the truth, because it is not the knowledge of God. Truth is what is told, not what is concluded; and hence, as to what is beyond physical fact, it must be a revelation. Once God is admitted, certain abstract general conclusions can be drawn because they are involved in the meaning of the word; they are merely the expression of the relation. But they are not the truth, because this speaks of fact. Now it is not necessarily a fact that the relation subsists intact, and that man has not denied it: Christianity teaches that he has. At any rate, it is not proved he has not -- yea, it may be proved he has. For fatalism and the moral immutability of man are absurdities. Our will is at work. Nor does the unchangeableness of general laws as to facts or results touch the question of will. If it proves motives, it proves a will to be moved: of this I have spoken elsewhere. Until a will be denied, it cannot be denied that a given state in relationship may be departed from. Hence even right conclusions as to the relationship are not necessarily the truth, though they be right. Indeed all the effort to insist on general laws is the revolt of man's heart against the relation with God being according to what we are, and the unwillingness to admit we have broken it.
I do not enter on the proofs of general laws from without, because physical general laws do not touch the question. That man acts by a will, without contradicting them, is evident; yet as to him all depends on what his will was. He builds or does not build a house: gravity and every other law remains the same. But he may have been selfish, or unjust, or generous in doing it, whether they be or not. I think my nature as ideally abstract as most philosophers'; but this does not affect the question whether there are divine facts which meet these ideas, and whether they are not the just idea for which God formed as so having them. Thus, supposing man God's image in his constitution, the ideas flowing from this would not be the source or end. But God (or the revelation of God as being the truth) the cravings of a dependent creature sought after, but heeded not. Yet it is equally true, whenever he pretended to have anything to meet the wants or to form a system by them without God, he was in open rebellion by independency. And this is what shews the fulness of simple Christianity (which totally rejected, as evil, heathenism and philosophy), and yet the measure of truth but real departure from God of the Clements and Origens, [that is, the so called "fathers,"] who accepted these cravings as part of the truth. They were not, though the truth met them when not simply lusts. Christ alone is the truth; His word is, because He is as He said, "altogether that which I also say to you," John 8: 25.
I do not lose sight of the absolute in speaking of absolute qualities: if I have one, I have the other; and what is relative is, if simple, absolute as a quality. In common use it is found by negation of what is or of variety. Some words or qualities are only relative. Still, when truly known, they become absolute. Thus "heavy" is simply relative; but when I know it, it is attraction: if there were none, it is absolutely negative in respect of weight; and as weight is relative, I can conceive its absence, because its presence is not necessary; for it is a relative quality. Absolute Being is God alone. But, taking man as a centre, we may speak practically of certain things as absolute when they are negative.
The great blunder of Schleiermacher, and the source of the worst infidelity now, is that he has taken the Holy Ghost's work in us -- very likely in himself -- for intuition, or specially collective Christian consciousness. He made divine teaching, in which case it is real, to be a title of human judgment on what the Holy Ghost gave. This is, I suspect, the key to the whole system, itself probably the fruit of Kantian philosophy and its offsets. The whole hangs on the church's not believing in the positive operation of the Holy Ghost. For all that Scherer and Bunsen, etc., pretend on their best side is simply Schleiermacher. Thus the Bible is Christian consciousness then: we judge it by Christian consciousness now. Hence it is, as Scherer says, the mere history of partial apprehension of truth; and of course, as every philosopher trusts himself, we judge scripture. That is, there is no revelation; for revelation must have authority or is false. Be it that the church was before the New Testament and the latter written for believers; yet the question is not thereby touched, whether it was not written by the power and direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost to give certainty and a divine record of those things in which they had been instructed. If the consciousness of believers was there, it was not to reproduce this but something else. It was to confirm and correct theirs by a divine statement of it, and give a sure record of that divinely-taught truth. Thus its being given to believers is, as far as it goes, a proof that it was not merely the expression of religious consciousness as then developed.
I have largely sought to shew elsewhere that knowledge is relative; that is, necessarily according to the form and measure of being which knows. I am so constituted as to conclude certain things; and they are true to me. I meet a closed door, and am such that I say, matter exists, and is extended, etc.; and two cannot be in the same place at once; and it is true for me. But a spiritual body could pass through a closed door. This, however, is not my manner of existence nor consequently of knowledge. I cannot know what is true for spiritual bodies, because it is not my mode of existence.
But when Mr. Mansel accepts Hegel's dictum that the Absolute must include all that is actual, even evil, I deny it. It is all a confusion of terms. What is relative or moral is confounded with essential attributes. I do not say with Augustine, that evil is a negation; but I do say it is failure or inconsistency with a relationship in which anything is, and supremely with God; and hence it cannot be connected with Absolute, because this is the opposite of failure in the relationship. In a creature there is nothing absolute, and the only right thing is dependence and obedience. If I cease either, I get out of relationship to the Absolute, and yet I cannot be the Absolute; I am only false to what ought to be my relationship to it. Absolute is the truth of everything: but in all but the Absolute, in the nature of things there is only dependence on it; and if not this, there is not truth (that is, there is the opposite of the Absolute, and this cannot be in the Absolute). Satan was a liar from the beginning and stood not in the truth, for there was no truth in him. Dependence in nature, in independence of will, is not in the truth; but that, in the nature of things, cannot be in the Absolute.
Mr. Mansel's pretended analogous syllogism is false in every way. A circular parallelogram is a contradiction in terms, and within the scope of human knowledge it cannot exist. The Absolute can exist. Hence there is no comparison. The contradiction in terms is in saying evil can be in the Absolute, because evil is falseness to relationship, and this is, by the very idea of the Absolute, a contradiction. The whole in Hegel and Mansel is a want of moral discernment. Power is in the Absolute, as is the truth of everything. Hence power (that is, independent power) out of the Absolute cannot exist -- is a lie if it be set up. But a lie cannot exist in the Absolute, because all in it is in the truth of it, for it exists; and what is pretended to and is evil, because it exists only in the Absolute, does exist in truth in the Absolute, and therefore it is not evil.
There is another point. It is a mistake to suppose that I cannot be certain of the necessity of the existence of that of which I cannot conceive as existing. For my form of existence obliges me to recognise the existence of that which is out of the form of my existence, and which I consequently cannot conceive. If I have a relative existence, it is in relation to an absolute; for, in result, relation supposes this; but because it is relative, I cannot conceive it. Thus in a particular instance argued on elsewhere, I am so constituted as to see that there cannot be a thing existing stamped by design without a designer. In a word, I am so constituted that I believe in causes -- hence in a first cause. I feel that for what is there must be a cause. But this is just what is false as to a first cause. I am so formed as to have the sense of cause and effect, because I exist as an effect. This is my relationship. Hence I have no idea of what an existence is which has no relationship to a cause, because, in my nature and necessary form of thought, I exist in such relationship; yet this very relationship forces me to see and own there is. Hence I have an idea of the Absolute, but not of how it subsists. But if I set up to be without the Absolute (that is, not in relation to a cause), or to be absolute, it is evil -- false. But this evil is not therefore in the Absolute, because that existence in Him is truth, not false; the evil does not, cannot, exist in Him; for the Absolute is, in the nature of things, absolute truth. That is, each thing in Him is the truth -- is what it is in its true nature, or is not the thing. All that Hegel and Mansel say is from the want of perceiving what Absolute and evil mean.
But I do think, in spite of all that has been said, that in Christ we have a revelation of the Absolute, not in itself (for a revelation seems to me to deny this in its nature, for it is not being, but the revelation of being); but still that which is is revealed. Hence He is the truth. But He is, and so manifests Him who is; He emptied Himself to do it; Philippians 2. Now reason has nothing to do with the truth, because it has only ideas in the mind; and they must exist in the mind. It can only conclude what must be, never what is. This is in its very nature the nature and value of reasoning, such as it is. But truth is the declaration of what is; it is not what is, nor is it a conclusion of what must be, which is only a result in my mind; but it is the declaration of what is.
Hence no theology is the truth. But Christ is the declaration of what is; He declares what God is. He that has seen Him has seen the Father. "I have manifested thy name." He is not as truth the Absolute in itself; but He is the Absolute in Himself. All the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him. Hence, as revealing it through a medium, as a concrete person down here, He is not the Absolute; but as the Absolute is in Him, and He makes Himself nothing (He is, as man, a mere servant), the Absolute is perfectly revealed. And so even as to man; because man being in Him an absolute and perfect servant, yet perfect in service, we have the truth of man. As to evil, it was revealed as to both its weakness and its power in man and Satan by its relationship to Him and God in Him: so this was the truth.
What is the Absolute? Self-existence, love, purity. I do not think there is more. If I have a feeling that is not love, I am acted on by something (that is, something is above me). I am not independent; but divine love is not moved by what is lovely (though God may delight in it when it is). And purity (figuratively light) means that there is nothing inconsistent with perfect existence -- independence of all that could be or make inconsistency with love. If corruption were there, something has acted on self-being to make it what it was not when incorrupt. Light is not hidden by anything and shews what everything is, and hence is justly called by the image -- name of light.
I do not call power the Absolute (though God be Almighty); for its action supposes will; that is, it is not what is in its nature. The Absolute can be preceded by nothing, but is itself: love is itself; light is itself. Power is wielded by -- it is what the Self-being ('who is') has, not what He is. God, though all-wise, is not wisdom more than power, and for the same reason. I do not call righteousness or holiness the Absolute. They are the relation of power and nature to something else. Hence the written word, which is the truth, calls God "God," "love," "light"; not power, nor righteousness, nor holiness. Power and wisdom belong to Him: He is righteous and holy. But these are relative, particularly the two last -- hence not what is, though they characterise.
But then man has no apprehension at all of love and light by reasoning; he may have in effect of power and righteousness by seeing the effects. God reveals Himself, and makes us partakers of the divine nature, by which we understand it. It is not as if we were it; for as men, we must be nothing (as Christ made Himself) to be in the truth and know God. For if we are something in ourselves, we deny the one Selfbeing and our relationship to Him. In the degree in which we are nothing by the revelation of God and the enjoyment of Him in the divine nature, so far we know the Absolute. But God has outwardly, that we may be nothing, revealed His love and acted in it when we were nothing -- were independent in will without self-being, and hence haters of God. This was fully brought out in the cross where we had only sin, and thus it was pure and supreme love in God; and hence death of the old man that hates is brought in, by which it is nothing; and then the willing nothingness of the new man (we are servants) in which we enjoy the Absolute, God, and serve, which is love -- the proof downwards that we are partakers of the divine nature. In the temptation in the wilderness the enemy sought to take the blessed One out of the place of God being all and Himself the servant.
Mysticism (and self-scrutiny as often preached) has a right principle; but from ignorance of there being no good in us, and that it is by positive action of love and light towards us that we are made nothing of, and that God in love and light is all, it goes all astray and sets up the self it would have done with. It is by the foolishness of the cross and of preaching -- by divine love wholly outside us, and our salvation accomplished wholly outside us, and grace so manifested, our sins so purged by a work of God in Christ and dealing with Him -- that self is made nothing of. We never know we are nothing, nor are glad to be it, till we know we are worse than nothing.
But no Hegelian or Fichtean spreading out of individuality into the race, or a kind of absolute of humanity, can do this; because after all self makes a part of the whole, though largely volatilised. It is not the denial of self, because I go to make up a part of the idea -- that is, self does. But God is outside myself, and I as a Christian am absolutely delivered from it. Christianity seems to me in this divinely wise; and the more simply it is received, the more we have its wisdom, because self is thus done with and God glorified. On the other hand, it is true that we must be born of God. If I am not partaker of the divine nature, I cannot know Him. I am light, and I love in my new nature in the Lord and in the power of the Holy Ghost, or I could not know God who is such. It is not knowing myself, because I am no self-being, but a partaker of this nature; but being so, I am capable of knowing the Absolute morally, though not as a self-being. And thus I am in the truth, because this dependence is my true relationship. A holy loving nature delights in God being what we are not -- in His being above us: if not, self would not be destroyed, we should be evil and not the Absolute.
"Cogito; ergo sum" (I think, so I exist) does not seem to me unambiguously true. If I say, I think or feel, and therefore there must be an "I" (that is, I must exist), it is true. But "I am" is something more; it means properly self-being. Now, I apprehend, self-being does not think, it knows. Thinking implies ignorance, imperfection, drawing conclusions (which is the opposite of knowing). "I am" is the necessary source of all -- hence must know all. "I know" expresses the order in necessary precedence of things (perhaps this led to Plato's idea). "I think" is therefore not I am, but I exist.
I do not admit that, if I could judge of the attributes of God by my mind, I do not need a revelation; because acts may be needed for my reconciliation, both as to guilt and moral condition, and the exercise of grace which I may require to know to make them available. I may need, in order to the attribute being exercised, to know them from Himself. The only other supposition is that I so know what God is that I can conclude absolutely to what He will do, so as to be able to announce all He must do. But this would not reveal that it was done. It would be only a mental deduction. Nor would this be possible, because it supposes that I am as perfect as God, or I could not judge, as He, what to do. Besides, His doing may be in connection with some constitution of the Godhead which is not an attribute at all, but a fact known only by revelation. Note, as such, action of God must be in time for us, because we are in time. There is the question of its being done; and if God is love, He will shew it at some time and in some way suited to the object. If I am a sinner (and who will be mad enough to say that this world or his own heart is in its normal state? All know they are not), the whole thing is absurd, because it disables me from knowing intellectually, and the exercise of attributes must be of a special kind toward such, which a perfect man could not even conceive -- he could not even understand the want. The sinner confessedly would be alike incapable of knowing; and his supposing himself an object of it would prove him unfit for it and insensible to it. In every point of view the supposition that a knowledge of attributes (if it existed) would preclude a revelation is wholly false. If God be love, the knowledge of this would make His own expression of it (that is, a revelation) a part of the display of that attribute, and a necessary one.
It is a great blunder to think that our knowledge of qualities is all that constitutes religion or even the basis of human affection. All this reasoning I deny. Besides, attributes are not known by man so as to form a religious basis. If they are, shew the example before Judaism or Christianity. The theology of Kant is as bad as the religion of the devil, or worse -- it has not a divine affection in it.
For two and indeed three reasons, I do not think much of the argument from qualities in us to the attributes of God. For if I say I feel goodness is a good thing, and it must be infinite in God, it is really an innate consciousness of God, of which I suppose the seed is in every one; and I should not say much against it. God must be perfect: I feel this is good, and it must be infinitely in Him. But there is a combination of qualities -- goodness, justice, holiness, power. In man, say goodness, justice. Now in finite and imperfect man I understand this, though they may be at the expense of each other. But when I make them infinite, they really exclude each other logically. I do not know how to combine them; and my infinite perfection of a quality in me becomes absurd. First, because we must look for combination; and this in infinitude I am incapable of. I doubt very much that there is any combination of qualities in God. Each act is right relatively to Himself and displays Himself; but we must speak of them so. Next, according to my powers what is infinite excludes all else. Thirdly, when a being is superior, the qualities of attributes are completely changed. I believe the cross has taught me the perfect reconciliation of these attributes in infinitude; and now I have the way, it confirms me in the conviction that they could not be in God Himself simply as such. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him."
The reasoning which speaks of the Absolute comprehending all is to me mere confusion, because it takes physical and moral infinitude as identical, as if being and qualities were the same. The Absolute, if I connect it with physical existence, becomes simple pantheism, because being or existence must be absolute. And all these things have a side of truth. But qualities are not beings. In particular, evil cannot be infinite, because it is relative and supposes something pre-existing as to which it is evil.
Further, all the reasoning as to forgiveness by God, simply because we can, is stupid confusion. I admire one that forgives, because he gives up self. And in this sense God may be said to forgive freely, though it is not quite exact. But when one forgives in the sense of wrong or disorder (not to self, but) either to others or to common moral order, there is a giving up not of self but of good. It is either indifference to evil, a giving up of all public moral order, or saying that there is no moral government nor ought to be. And so we judge in human things. A judge or a law that forgave all crimes would be nonsense; nor would men admire it at all even if selfishness were not concerned. Ought there not to be a moral government testifying to the difference of good and evil, right and wrong? The beauty of forgiving personal wrongs has nothing to do with it, proves nothing about it, is sophistical clap-trap. They have to prove, not that it is beautiful for man to forgive as giving up self, but that there ought to be no moral government, which is quite another question.
"Sustaining modes of being" is, I apprehend, very confused and loose language. Is it a mode or a being which is contained? What contains them? What is a mode of being? or can there be modes of being in the Absolute? I should deny it. Absolute is really an abstract conception, not a being at all. A being is itself, and cannot have or contain modes: if absolute, it has its own. When men speak of an absolute being, they do not think of a personal being. Supposing an absolute personal being to create, does the being cease to be absolute because a creature exists and is in relation to it? Yet it cannot have a creature mode of being, for it is absolute. Absolute (unless it is a mere abstraction, that is, nothing) supposes nothing before it on which it depends, but does not suppose nothing after it and dependent on it -- does not hinder its being infinite, unless we confound ideal with physical infinitude. But its being absolute precludes its containing a mode of being which is not absolute. The Absolute supposes not only a possible but an actual existence out of all relation; but it toes not suppose that it ceases in se to be absolute because it becomes a cause. A cause cannot as such be absolute: the terms have no correlation. But a Being who is absolute does not cease to be so by being a cause, by willing. That is, there is no contradiction.
So when it is said, If infinite, it cannot become (that is, a cause), this is merely a loose employment of the word "become." It becomes nothing in se by being a cause; it remains absolutely the same. Something is produced outside itself by its will. If infinitude meant material extended, then indeed it would be impossible. It will be said that it acts, while before it was quiescent. It does not change, but displays itself. Display of self is not change, or self is not displayed. Had it been always displayed, it would be in a limited, not absolute, state. If creation were always, then it was not creation, or display had a necessary relation. Will was part of the Absolute. It displays will in creating and in not always creating. Had it always created, it would not have been a display of self in this respect. It was absolute and sufficient in itself: this was displayed by only creating when it pleased. By creating it displays that it was not necessarily quiescent (that is, dependent on something, not absolute).
Thus the difficulty (that is, if it be good to create and will was to be a cause, must it not have been always?) is only introducing time into the thought of the Infinite and Absolute. It is a confusion of thought; and this does prove that I cannot conceive how the absolute exists -- though I know it does -- because I exist not absolutely.
There is no necessary relation in causing: indeed the idea of causing denies it (though I am aware there are those who hold a law of order and no being, but this is not properly a cause). When there is an I a Being -- who causes, there is no necessary relationship but the contrary; in the caused being there is. If it can be said, I am, I create, I destroy, there is absoluteness and no necessary relation. Aristotles, and Origens, and Fichtes may deny it, because they introduce time (that is, my mode of being, into God's) to get an idea of how. But if this confusion be avoided, and it is only confusion, creation and absoluteness are not contradictory. The idea of eternal matter is not really possible to us if we reflect; because we, being caused, are so constituted as to feel the need of a cause for existence, forcing us to infer that there must be a self-existent Being, but making it impossible to conceive that mode of existence. Pantheism reduces existence to matter, and so denies absoluteness and unchangeableness.
I admit creation is an object of faith, not of knowledge; I can only know it when created. But it is no coming out of God as emanation, and going back. What I am in relation to, God has formed according to the apprehensions of it He has created in me. There is no existence independent of Him, nor place where He is not sustainingly; but He does not exist in it. All these difficulties the simple words of scripture make as plain as possible: "God created"; but "by him all things consist." Their difficulties arose from making pure intellect God. Then you must have the intelligent and the intelligible (that is, ideal objects in the mind at least).
All effort to make consciousness, or self-consciousness, a rational perception of difference and identity is simply infirmity in abstraction. If I think of another, I know that I am not that other; but this is not necessary to, and no part of, the consciousness that I exist. When not asleep, I live in the perpetual consciousness of my existence without thinking of any other. Consciousness is necessary to human psychical existence. When I reflect on it, I may draw conclusions as to another; but this is reasoning about consciousness. Neither is it intelligence. This means "I know," and has an object; but I am conscious of myself. To say that I am conscious of "I" makes "I" an object of "I" is absurd, and is really a denial of consciousness. When I speak of it to another and reason about it, then I make the conscious "I" an object of my reasoning; but then it has ceased to be consciousness.
It is this supposing with Plato that pure intellect is the beginning of existence which has falsified the reasoning on these points. Take Hegel's definition of subject without predicate, and you get at once the counter-proof of what I say. My affirming something about "I" does determine it; but this is a proposition, not consciousness, which, it must be repeated, ceases the moment I reason. For thus I have before me a thought which is not consciousness. It is the thought of "I" looked at as an object of reasoning. And this is not self-consciousness of existence; for "I" as a thought is not "I" existing, but a mere thought. The moment I have a thought, I have something about which "I" is occupied, which is not self-consciousness. Where logic begins, self-consciousness ceases. We are constituted so as to be conscious of ourselves.
There is every confusion by making infinitude of good in God an extension; and this runs through ancients and moderns, Aristotle, Hegel, etc. Mansel answers them well, but does not, I think, reach the truth. If we speak of ideas we have human thought, and, of course, no conception of the infinite. Thus, when Aristotle says, The infinite is the whole potentially but not actually, we have parts, extension, and -- nonsense; but not an approach to infinitude as it refers to God. "The whole" -- of what? If applied to God, this is necessarily materialism or pantheism; it is very true if speaking of mere mathematics. But it is only an abstraction; and, applied to being, it is a contradiction; for a being is actual, and has ceased to be simply potential. The secret of all their fallacy (into which Mansel has fallen) is this: their infinite is the infinite of matter, that is, the infinite of finite, which is infinite nonsense. It may be all well enough on their ground, because they go no farther. But as to consciousness and infinitude, Mansel has not taken up any ground of truth as to man or God. The whole theory is materialism or Brahminism.
But consciousness, self-consciousness, is the hinge of all this. I affirm that I am so constituted that I have the instinctive consciousness of "I." This Mansel has not at all seen. I do not take Descartes' dictum -- "I think and therefore am" (that is, as if it made no difference). When one says "I think," one must have a thought to think (that is, an object, the intelligible as well as the intelligent). But when one says "I," there is self-consciousness. I am so created as to say "I." This does not say Descartes is wrong: he is right; but in his syllogism consciousness is the object of his reasoning. "I" is a thinking being, and therefore "I" is a being. But this is drawn from consciousness, and has no force save in it. Yet it remains true that I can say "I" as the expression of self-consciousness. But, having this self-consciousness, I have senses; I am so constituted as to have the knowledge of existence with self-consciousness, and that as an excellence. It is that to which thought attaches itself. I cannot have knowledge without it; I can have sense and memory, but not reflective thought.
Hence, I attribute self-consciousness to God as necessary to intelligent existence, though I may not know the mode of it in God; I have no doubt it will be different and infinitely superior. I believe it to be different in God, because these reflex acts on self appear to be a state of imperfection -- those reflex acts which are not consciousness, but through which I reason and estimate it. I cannot have consciousness of an object, and therefore cannot say that a dog has self-consciousness, because, it cannot be such if I see it in another. My knowledge of what it is in myself is imperfect: there it is an object; but the consciousness is there to have knowledge (perfect or imperfect). Hence I do not know how it exists in God, because I cannot have knowledge of it. This is objective knowledge, imperfect even as to myself, absolutely impossible as to the how in God.
Only unconscious existence is brute matter -- is what we mean by brute matter. It may have power by attraction, whatever it is; but consciousness makes the difference of having a basis for reflection: hence language.
The confounding moral infinitude (that is, absoluteness of perfection) with extension, which I have noticed is a very great blunder. But then I freely own that in strictness we cannot speak of attributes in God (moral ones). It is only a human way which (speaking reverently) divides God into parts. God cannot be or do evil: to say this is a limitation of power is only a delusion. If I say that He cannot do what He pleases, for He cannot do evil, the "cannot" applies to "what He pleases," not to the power of God. As to acts of power, He can do everything. It is morally impossible that there should be in Him the contrary of what He is, that is of good and right. But this is not limiting power or anything; it is denying a limit to goodness, and saying it is absolute. Infinite goodness means merely goodness always perfect as goodness. That this is after an imperfect thought as to God I admit, because it takes one characteristic by itself (that is through our finite nature), for nothing in God is characteristic (that is, special and in part). It has been noticed elsewhere how thus Christ had no character, but was always what He ought to be wherever He was. Perfect goodness He was, but not goodness by itself as we conceive it. He was firm and severe where He ought, and good in that; He was tender and affectionate where He ought, and good in that; He was seemingly hard and deaf to seed, and unchanged in goodness in that -- in all love to His Father, and obedience. The divine nature in man which produced one produced all, perfect in each place in relation because perfect in itself.
Fichte's statement as to personality is totally false. It is not what you have become acquainted with in yourself, but the you that has become acquainted. Mansel's answer is economically true, because they go on this ground, but it is inadequate. I judge the whole system false for the reason stated, that thought is confounded with consciousness. Further, all confound the knowledge of with the knowledge that. I know certainly that I am; I have no real knowledge of what a soul is, or of its mode of acting through senses and a body. Whether it be separate or not, I am so constituted that, when I do not think or reason (perhaps if I do), I believe in a cause of effects, and that existence in form or with anything characteristic supposes a cause -- hence, a First Cause. But for the same reason that I know there must be, I cannot know or conceive it. That is, knowledge that is not and may prove that I cannot have knowledge of. So I may have knowledge that there is such a thing as endless, infinite, eternal; while the very words prove that I do not -- cannot -- conceive it. But the negative of finite is not the same as the conception of infinite (that is, as its affirmation); and I have the sense of negativing finite though no positive conception.
Further, if I think about myself, I am finite and relative. If I judge the consciousness in connection with other things, consciousness is not relative and not finite or the contrary in itself. I do not admit that absolute must be infinite or finite. Consciousness is absolute; it has no qualities, no objective appearances or anything else. It is "I." I am something; I think, do, perceive, etc. Hence I learn that the "I" is finite; but consciousness is only "I."
Now I cannot conceive an infinite "I," because I am a finite "I"; that is, I can have no positive knowledge of it; but its absoluteness as consciousness in me makes me understand the possibility of the existence of another absolute consciousness which may not be finite. As I learn the finiteness of my conscious "I," and can in certain respects understand it, so I learn the certain existence of an "I" which must be conscious (that is, not as a stone), and that it cannot be, as I am, finite, which is absolute in its "I," but relative if it pleases, because I know it has pleased. But the how or what of its consciousness or relations (that is, creation, sonship, redemption) I do not and cannot know that, because I negative the finiteness of that which is my knowledge. But I do not think a negative is the same as an affirmative, or is nothing in mind, though it be nothing positive. To say so is to say that all must be clear in my mind or that it does not exist, which is false. I have a thinking, feeling, perceiving, judging, and, if right, adoring, if wrong, God-hating, inward existence. What it is I have not in the smallest degree a clear idea of. So I have of God, to whom I clearly deny necessary relationship, finiteness or material infiniteness, whom I do not limit in will so as to deny relationship, yet in finite knowledge I cannot say what He is, but existence of whom (I can say what He is not) is not nothing in my mind, though I cannot say what it is, because I do know by consciousness what it is to exist, and I deny the conditions in which I exist.
I cannot quite accept the denial of capacity to abstract in the human mind (that is, the estimate of a quality without a being it is attached to). It is apt to run into personification in order to get a clear idea. To say I must think of some one good to think of goodness is not true. It is merely saying that, if I think of good acts, I must think of some one. But attributes, though for us a necessary conception, are a very inadequate one of God; if pushed to consequences, even false. We may speak attributively (practically), but not predicate anything of God; because then I separate the quality and get it in itself. I must make it infinite, and so exclusive in my mind; and other attributes are reasoned against. Thus if I say God is good, and therefore cannot do this or that, I have made Him only this, and all is false.
I deny that consciousness is in time, or has a "before" or "after." Consciousness denies it in fact and in the nature of things. You must add "was," or "will be"; but then I have lost consciousness, which is necessarily only present, and this is not time -- is not measured, nor is time thought of.
Mansel at the end of Lecture III happily contradicts himself. He is not exact. Thus, when he says we can conceive such attributes at the utmost only indefinitely ... but we cannot conceive them as infinite, how can he make the distinction if he cannot tell what infinite is? That one word proves the fallacy of his whole statement. But infinite, I have already said, does not mean material in infinitude; and attributes (that is, predicates) spoken of God are always false when taken as the truth.
To say that things may not be what their appearances are is nonsense. What is a thing? what an appearance? I know nothing of a thing save its appearance, that is, its relation to me. I have no other thing as a thing than that. The only other thing to mark it is its resistance to will, its contrast with the "I"; so that will goes where I cannot. It hinders the change of the relationship of "I." That is, I know its existence in contrast with "I" active in its absoluteness, or "I" as a spirit. This we call matter: why not? Hyle, if you please (a spiritual body not so; but this is faith; it confirms the other).
Indefinite and infinite are not the same. Indefinite does not know whether a thing stops or where. We are so constituted as to believe necessarily in the infinite (finite implying it), but the reason of that precludes my knowing it. Finite is some apparent (or possibly apparent) being in what is the object of perception; but because that is finite as perceptible existence, I speak of its ending. Being limited, I must and do therein suppose and mean that beyond a limit there is what is beyond limit, illimitable. My idea of limit supposes this: I limit knowable existence, but its being a limit is in my mind in every case in spite of me. A thought that its being stopped or limited is a possibility of prolongation. It might go farther (that is, I have an idea of what is beyond limit). Finite instead of excluding is founded on the idea of infinity. I have the idea that it is, must be, in idea; for stopping gives (or is identical with) as an idea, not stopping, but proves that the sense that there must be is identical with the sense of. The thought that it stops is founded on being stopped somewhere, that is, that it might go on. It is merely saying, I am constituted with the sense that there is space (that is, where a thing may stop or not stop) and duration (that is, where it may or may not cease). I cannot but think infinite must be, but never think of it as the object of human power of thinking, for when, as to a clear conception of what is, I think of what is, I think of what stops so far as any object of thought can go. I deny that mere infinitude in the sense of space has anything to do with God. Endless time onward is more accessible to me because I can have the idea of continuance when I have existence.
In space the object of thought becomes itself extended, whereas a thing only exists in time or eternity. It is no part of itself. It may always exist, does not need to stop, the past (as they say) cannot in itself be thought of, because I have no known existence to go on with but in time or now. Taking now, however, I can conceive continuance; but the thought is more imperfect though certain in its nature.
We feel no need to suppose God infinite in space (on the contrary, it shocks us); but in time we do. The reason is simple. Infinitude in space is gross, material not a moral central will and action. I do not judge of God as finite in space, because I do not materialise Him; but if He ceases in duration, and that is finite as to it, He ceases to be, because to endure when anything exists is not to cease to be. I fully believe there is an instinctive sense of God as supreme, that is, supreme as to us, and reasoning on what He is is consequent on this. It is a blunder to suppose that not being the author of evil limits Him. He can, as to power, do anything; but limiting means a stop being put to something in the direction in which it tends or might continue; whereas no evil is in God to be stopped. Power does not create evil. Were God the author of evil (save physical evil or punishment), it would be a limit to what He is -- good. Mansel has not kept clear of the material idea of infinity. His adversaries are on that ground; but his great defect is not seizing consequences, at least in his reasonings, for he does state the thing in Lecture IV.
But I deny the sense of responsibility and a law to be the same thing or either of them the knowledge of good and evil. A law may be the rule according to which we are responsible to One who has authority over us, but it is not the responsibility itself. Man was responsible before he had the knowledge of good and evil; and he had a law which implied no such knowledge. Responsibility is to a person: a law may be its measure. The knowledge of good and evil is a capacity of nature to discern right and wrong where there is no law. "So the man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." A law may give me God's measure of it as to me, and so the divine law did as to man. But obedience always and in everything is what we are responsible for if the One above us is supreme -- has such claims over us -- to keep the law, if He has given one, and every commandment He gives. But this is only what the responsibility is shewn in. The knowledge of right and wrong is in itself a contrast with law, because it is in us, and there is no one to whom (if that be all) we are responsible. We may be also responsible to another; and he, if a moral governor -- not otherwise, holds us responsible according to that knowledge.
All as to law, moral obligations, man a law to. himself by reflecting God's law, is false. Conscience is not pleasure, because there is lust; and conscience and sin came in together. Will and lust combine, and conscience is against them. But moral obligation is only rightly known at all when God's claim of obedience is allowed; for mere conscience is mere misery, or combines with pride and self-approbation. To say that the knowledge of good and evil is necessarily implanted as a law by a lawgiver is utterly false. For this knowledge is in God, and what higher spiritual being has implanted it in Him as a lawgiver? It can therefore be otherwise. We have it by sin.
The absolute claim of obedience is the highest obligation, moral obligation, if you please. Now that I have got a knowledge of good and evil, I shall surely attribute that to God and own His judgment. But only when Christ is revealed can it be said that the nature of the Deity is the absolute standard; for requirements from, are not necessarily conformity to, His will, which cannot be dissociated from His nature as a requirer. But duty does not flow from the nature of the superior, but in all cases (superior is not) from the relation in which the obliged person stands to the superior or any other person. No doubt, if the relation be with a divine Being or formed by Him, it will be right, and from some higher motive be right, though the relation be evil as a Christian slave. But obedience is right to God, though there be no law (it may be tested by a law) and no knowledge of good and evil in itself. Then a knowledge of good and evil enters by disobedience. We become as to this as God; Genesis 3. Hence there is the knowledge of right and wrong without reference to a superior, though reference may exist, and, I doubt not the least, has been perfected with it. Lastly, a law may be given, testing the obedience, not in innocence, but with a perfect measure of right and wrong, including all moral relationships. Christ is more than all this. He is the manifestation of the divine nature in man, and, when we are partakers of it, becomes the model and example, as well as the source of our walk and duty.
It is obedience as His was, because He was a man, to His Father, in the place in which He stood, and so our mould of obedience, not to a claiming law, but having no will but God's perfect in moral estimate; but it is also love as Christ's was, because it is the divine nature. Being holy too (that is, with a knowledge of good and evil), it has a horror of evil and is separated from it, but in us it is separated to God, which alone can be the separation from evil in us -- in a creature which must have an object.
This gives a special character to Christ though He ever looked to His Father, and, as man, lived in dependence on Him, and, as man too, rejoiced in the joy that was before Him. Yet He was an object, instead of having one.
As regards personality, the conscious "I" is personality, though it cannot explain by reason in what it consists; but absolute dependence on God destroying personal freedom is all confusion. Dependence is equivocal. It means that I must derive existence and all here -- more, have all from Him, or that I feel dependent on Him -- look to Him. All this leaves out will, as contrasted with the obligation of obedience. Most of what is called personal freedom is simply sanction of sin. I ought always to obey -- "Lo, I come to do thy will" was Christ's uniform and sole motive. If freedom means that God does not purpose evil or hinder good, it is quite true; but if it means a right to have a will of one's own, it is sin -- atheism. A man being really set to choose between evil and good (he may be, for trial to shew him what he is) is alike horrible and absurd; because it supposes the good and evil to be outside, and himself neither. If he is one or other in disposition, the choice is there. To have a fair choice, he must be personally indifferent; but to be in a state of indifference to good and evil is perfectly horrible. If a man has an inclination, his choice is not free: a free will is rank nonsense morally; because, if he have a will, he wills something. God can will to create. But will in moral things means either self-will, which is sin (for we ought to obey); or an inclination to something, which is really a choice made as far as will goes. In truth it is never so. Man was set in good, though not externally forced to remain so. He first exercised his will -- free-will, morally speaking -- in eating the forbidden fruit, and was therein and thereby lost, and since then he has been inclined to evil. Dependence lies in this -- that a creature must depend on God. He does so joyfully in perfect good, and on whom it comes has the claim when he knows God. Independence in will (there cannot be in fact), and disobedience, its fruit, are the condition of the old man. Dependence and obedience are the characteristics of the new man -- of Christ. Save what grace works, God does leave the will free; but it tends in its nature away from God; because it is will. And the not looking to God must have an object below man. That wretched freedom man has, and perseveres in it but for grace, and resists the motives of grace, because it calls to God, to dependence and obedience of heart. And will wills itself: only one can be born of God, and have a new nature -- Christ as our life, and so be a new creature.
Personality is evidently in self-consciousness. Reality, that is, material reality, is that which hinders in its nature my will from finding nothing. I cannot of course have the consciousness of another's personality or self-consciousness; but I can see that he is one who has it, and know what it is by my own self-consciousness. Is a person in a swoon? I have lost part of the evidence of what shews personality. And if personality be lost in a swoon or like state, it only shews we do not know by reason what constitutes it, the link between soul and body being momentarily suspended; but the spring from which to reason is gone, has ceased, so that there can be none: I cannot say "I," which begins reasoning. I have no doubt it is the soul. But if the swoon was for ever, and I knew there was no self-consciousness, I could not conceive of it as a person. Yet if a soul was there and it could be two hundred years asleep with the body, I should conceive of it as a person. If I did not know it had a soul, I should say I could not tell.
Mansel's notion of body is merely the scholastic notion of substance. I say there is matter because according to my constitution two bodies cannot be in the same place. I cannot go through a door (a spirit can); but by God's will it is such that what I meet resists my will without any will of its own.
Nor do I say consciousness moulds, nor that we only know phenomena, as Kant, etc., though there are apparent truth in this. God has so constituted things, and me, and others, that certain things produce certain effects and impressions on me. If a man with jaundice sees yellow, it is merely that he for the moment is so constituted, being in an abnormal state; but the knowledge of the constitution in both is in the same thing producing regularly the former effect.
To say with Kant, that the object is a phenomenon is nonsense, because the phenomenon includes the perception in me. If it appears, it appears to some one. But a thing is what produces the effect. If it be asked, What is it? I cannot tell. Not a phenomenon, but what has produced a certain idea in me and others. What I think of first is my perception; but perception makes me think of what produces it. A dream only shews that memory and combination, without the conscious will. may continue in that state.
That the truths as to God are only regulative is abominable and untrue. Truths do not regulate passions; and in religion, if true, God is revealed in His absolute nature: not as material extension, of course, it is a low material idea, but as He is. He is light -- He is love; Christ is the perfect revelation of Him. It does not satisfy philosophy, because philosophy has nothing to do with it -- it has only ideas, and no idea is love. "He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." To say that action, not knowledge, is man's destiny is very bad indeed. The knowledge of God -- that is, the Father -- and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, is eternal life. And we have fellowship with them. Action is a mere consequence in its place, because we are then, as partaking of the divine nature, like God, and have to act in love in our little sphere. And this correspondence with the Absolute is exactly what, if not required, is given. We know God and are imitators of God; we are dependent, no doubt, but truly.
The energy of matter is said to be motion; of mind, consciousness. I doubt this. Mansel always leaves out self-consciousness -- its truest and deepest name. Will is the energy of the soul. For either consciousness or will we cannot find the link with matter. There are pairs of nerves, one of sensation (consciousness), another of motion. But the energy in Mansel's sense -- analogous to motion -- is clearly in the latter. No man can discover the link, it is true, how will raises my hand. But Mansel is infected with what he reasons against. Gracious kindness, goodness, relationship with man according to divine qualities, are not inferior to the natural notions of infinitude, etc, which are really material.
It may be alleged that will is no action of the mind. This is matter to be decided by the definition of mind. If taken strictly as the thinking power, thinking (not consciousness) is its energy. Mansel has blundered all through, because he has judged thought to be the first element of mind, and infinitude to relate to matter or space where God is spoken of. In the last he has fallen into the trap of the enemy.
As to cause, it is power operating by design; not that the design and the power are necessarily united in the agent producing. The design may be in one only mind, and power set in motion in another. Hence causes have been distinguished in nature, inaccurately perhaps in division, but justly, into causa causans and causa causata. Will. design. Power in activity are a cause. The how may not be known; but this does not hinder my seeing a cause and effect. When I say cold causes water to swell, God is supposed to have so constructed as to design, His will to have led Him so to form it, and the power is seen in effect. How it comes about physical science may or may not discover, but can only come at last to created ordinances. God may have produced uniformly or universally operative force, which we call a law, and sustains that continually by His will. It can only be so at any moment by His will. When He does not will it, it ceases. Laws need not be changed for a miracle, but that the same will should operate sovereignly by those laws. Thus suppose the presence of the soul in a body according to a given law animates it in a given way which we call life. A person dies. God calls the soul back into the body to be perfect according to the given law. No law is changed, but a miracle is performed. Supposing nerves and muscles operate in a particular way where communication is established with the brain, the communication has been interrupted, never formed. By one word (that is, by His will) God, or one acting by His command, restores the communication. Now law is changed, but a miracle is performed. It is not a mere general law. It is the will which formed the law acting, not in suspending it in any case, but causing by an act of power the existence of a case in which its operation was renewed or begun where it did not before. A body specifically heavier than water sinks. The attractive power of the earth is not changed, but the body is so constructed by will and power for a time that it does not operate on it, and a man walks on the water. This does not suppose the action of the will and power of God: that is a miracle, but not a change in the laws of nature. The will of God may withdraw an individual from the power of a law without changing the law as a law at all. The exception only proves the rule. Men have said, If God stopped the earth for Joshua, so as to make the sun and moon stand still for Joshua, all would have been flooded and destroyed; just as if He would not have stopped the motion of all at the same time (that is, the action of the moving power). What stopped the earth stopped all with it, my head as well as my heels. This is ridiculous. The question is, Can God will? He is not God if He cannot. Can I?
Mansel is on wholly false ground as to this, because (while saying it is impossible by ideas) he confounds the revelation of God with ideas of Him, or human knowledge. He does not see here revelation of God in Christ, with the Holy Ghost giving perception of it and dwelling in us. Hence he runs back to acknowledge the incapacity which is true of mind as absolutely true, and makes the test of truth the harmonious consent of man's faculties. If so, I have no test as to God; for they cannot know or test Him. A revelation is another thing; first, objectively, and then by divine capacitating power to the soul. God is light; Christ was the light of the world. God is love; Christ was love in the world; but the eyes must be opened to see the light, a new nature be communicated to enjoy it. The same thing must be to estimate the love, as shewn to me a sinner (without which in its own uncaused unsustained character, that is, as divine, it is not known) and as enjoyed by a saint -- perfect as putting me in the absolute enjoyment of it, for it makes us to be as Christ (see 1 John 4), and that in full righteousness and holiness. (See his Lecture 5.) How sad that any sentence should be exactly the opposite of what Christ meant!
Even if I take the conscious "I" as marking knowledge of a person, I have no objection to use it as regards the Trinity in speaking of human language. For why -- because the conscious "I" in man supposes distinctness from any other "I" -- should the divine consciousness be a human one? Why not the consciousness of subsisting in unity -- not ours? We cannot conceive it by our minds so as to explain it in language, but yet can recognise as truth undoubtingly "I and my Father are one." We apprehend it not by thought, but by the Spirit. He "hath given us an understanding that we should know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life." The perfect revelation of God in Christ is the strongest proof that limited existence to our minds (or the contrary) has nothing to do with the perfect revelation and knowledge of God. Love, holiness, absence of evil, presence of good, were there. He was limited as a man on earth as to space, yet He was all the while in heaven. He conferred power to work miracles elsewhere, and wrought them far off from Himself; yet it was a power in Him. He was the truth. He shewed that everything was from God by direct revelation, and all evil, its opposition to Himself, vanity by the revelation of the true God. I recognise a perfect absolute revelation of God in Christ. I "know God." But this is a revelation of the Trinity -- Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, yet one God.
When I have spoken of the consciousness of personality, yet of unity, I would not darken counsel by words without knowledge, or pretend to speak metaphysics on what is known only by revelation (but of which, when revealed, I may see the perfectness), but find the Lord saying, "I and my Father" (that is, consciousness of personal distinctness), yet He adds, "are one"; so that there was the consciousness of unity. And why not? Why should not distinctness of willing and acting, and the consciousness of it be there, yet in perfect community of undistinguished Godhead without separate being, as a source of being able to say "I am"? None could have known it (part of its character as known is in revelation): but when revealed, I see not why we may not see its perfectness, and that indeed (which is the way we know it too) man would have had nothing to say to God as a moral being without it, or only in this way. And so it really is; but we come to it by our wants, not by metaphysics, which I have no thought of applying to the doctrine. But having a revelation, one sees how it connects itself with the human conception of it.
As to moral law, the notion that it is of necessary and universal obligation, and so absolute (that is, not subject to the forms of human conception), that it must be "the measure and adequate representation of the moral nature of God," and that our knowledge of the divine Being is identical with that of our own moral duties, is just the fruit -- wise as men may think themselves -- of unsound educational or traditional ideas about the law, as if it were the highest rule, the transcript of the divine mind. It is nothing of the sort. Had men only seen God's activity of love in Christ, and that it is our pattern and rule -- in a word, Christ as the full revelation of God in every way, all this confusion would have been avoided.
Law is an authoritatively imposed obligation. This cannot be God's nature and position. His liberty in love (and there is no love without, but in, liberty) is wholly set aside (that is, the whole activity of His nature, His nature itself, for He is love) if this principle be true. To make law my nature is to make love impossible.
Besides, the application of the moral law to God as law is impossible, whether we take it as love to God or your neighbour, or the prohibition of evil, as is evident. But it is not because i the moral law is not absolute, that is, above human thoughts. Such reasoning is just the fruit of not getting beyond thought (Mansel's and Kant's error here).
Morality, or moral obligation, is in the nature of all relations which imply a claim; it is the bond flowing from them. That man has had all manner of rules is true; but when God says, "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil," it certainly implies that right and wrong was of an absolute nature. But it is the application of a law which makes obligatory a course imposed by authority (though it may be moral too). The knowledge of good and evil is the perception of it in itself, without a law or its being imposed. God does know, doubtless, good and evil according to the perfection of His own nature. But it is a condition of His nature to discern it; it was not of Adam's before his fall. He was innocent; he enjoyed God's goodness unsuspectingly, and did nothing else. There was no occasion to discern, nor capacity to do so. In the fall he acquired this capacity. He could now say, This is good and that evil; but he was under sin.
That moral law is excellent and absolute, because we discern good and evil, is a mistaken way of putting it. What we have is a capacity to discern right and wrong, not a law, but a moral condition of my mind. But, on the other hand, it is not subject to forms of thought, because it is not a question of thought. It is in the nature of the relationship; it is conscience, and not thought; it may be in us misled by thought.
It is all a blunder to say obligations cannot arise by relationship; because I may learn the existence of a relationship, or I may be brought into a relationship. Thus, so far from thinking a moral obligation cannot be formed, I affirm that all obligations of a Christian are new, because he reckons himself dead and alive to God through Christ as risen. His obligations flow wholly from his new condition. This may call for recognising under the condition something that subsisted before, as parents and children, etc.
The reason it is wholly untrue that the knowledge of good and evil gives us God's nature is, that the knowledge of good and evil is the source of discerning right and wrong, which right and wrong flow from the relationship a being is in. Now God is either in none (unless within Himself, of which we cannot judge, because it is so), or, if He enter into any in creative will, He is not in the same as we are. Hence the obligation cannot be the same. All we say is, that He will not destroy (as between ourselves or between us and Him) the terms of relationship in which He has set us. If I had slaves or children and gave them something to enjoy in equal shares, it would be wrong for one to take from or defraud the other; but if I had not given up the title, I might do so. If God has revealed His nature to me and my relationship to Him, He does not change, and so the duty abides. But if the relationship changes and I become a son, the duty does.
The capacity to discern good and evil is the capacity to discern these duties or the breach of them. But if the relationship is one of authority, then there is duty to obey. There may be a mere arbitrary command; and I say the thing (if I have the knowledge of good and evil) was not bad in itself, but obedience is the place of one subject. Thus it was with Adam: there was no evil in eating of the tree if it had not been forbidden. It was only the test of obedience. Now we have more than this. I say such a thing is wrong even if not forbidden. As to the measure of it, I may be misled Hence God has given a prescribed measure -- the law. But the faculty of such discernment is in me. I call something wrong. I have a personal faculty to discern that the act does not suit -- is not conformed to the relation in which the responsible being stands. One takes a knife from another: I hold it to be evil. A parent does so from a very young child: it is not evil, but good. It depends on the relationship.
Hence the only true absolute good is free. It is love, God Himself, and that in fact in the highest sense where there is no obligation at all, but where the responsible one had failed. If God, though surely sovereign, gives a promise, I expect Him to fulfil it, though I do not deny higher reasons may lead to its not being accomplished. But as a general promise, I reckon on it, because in that act He has been pleased to put Himself in relationship. If there be a higher claim, it may fail, but is in His own sovereign knowledge. But I can say, It is impossible for God to lie, because when He has given His word, He has been pleased to oblige Himself. He might for higher reasons destroy the one to whom the promise was made, and it would fail; but He cannot be inconsistent with what He is. But it is important to remember, what moralisers seem anxious to forget, that the knowledge of good and evil came to man in and by that in which he fell.
That relationship is the basis of the sense of right and wrong is every way evident. Thus, not knowing the relationship of angels among themselves, I cannot tell what is right and wrong among themselves; I do of human creatures; I say they must love one another, and love and obey God. I must not worship them: they must worship God.
Moral duties then are absolute in so far as that they do not depend on ideas as formed by any means at all, but are the judgment of an internal capacity; they only subsist in known relationships and last as long as they. But they belong to relationships; they are the expression of one's consistency with it. And as long as I conceive it, I conceive the duty. Right and wrong did not exist for Adam in themselves (that is, without a command). It is not merely responsibility personally to God; that there was. God forbade. Man might not eat; but there was no sense of a thing wrong in itself, because inconsistent with a relationship, he being able to judge of it itself. There was nothing inconsistent in Adam's mind with his relationship to God; his mind followed it without a question. He could think of nothing in itself inconsistent with it; that nature of thought was not in his nature.
But there is a difference between God's knowledge of good and evil, and mine. I deny wholly that human morality is manifested in the form of a law of obligation. The knowledge of good and evil is the internal consciousness of what is conformable to position and relationship without a law of obligation. Yet it is not properly absolute, because it flows from relationship; only it attaches to the idea of the relationship as so contained in it. Moralists on both sides seem wholly wrong here. Goodness, properly speaking, is not morality, but love exercised where there is not an obligation. The only difficulty is to distinguish Adam's case from right and wrong. The eating of the tree was no departure from conformity to the relationship Adam was in to God; he would have eaten it innocently as a matter of course. It was wrong simply to do what was forbidden, because forbidden. This leads to distinguish responsibility to a person absolutely, and the knowledge of right and wrong. That is, law and morality are opposed in nature; though law be the right measure of right when it recognises existing relationship, but where the law makes the obligation of the particular case, this means that otherwise there was not and could not be any knowledge of right and wrong (it would have denied Adam's innocence to suppose any), but an arbitrary command, however wise a one.
To say that duty ought to be followed, is only saying there is duty. But two straight lines enclosing space is somewhat different; it means if two do not approach they do not meet. God knows good and evil, that is, He recognises relationship as it exists. I know good and evil now (that is, my will apart). I recognise these relationships as they exist; but what has this to do with God's nature? His morality, speaking reverently, would be based on the relationship. He is in Himself; but He is in none, as we have seen, unless He pleases to put Himself in one: I am by virtue of my place. He recognises mine, and judges, but is not in it. I deny eternal morality save as an idea; it has no relation to Him at all. Absolute morality is nonsense. God did not create morality, but the relationship without which there could be none. If one supposes only the absolute God, there is no morality. Morality in respect of what? I cannot suppose it but with created responsibility, that is, creatures and consequently relationship.
I am disposed to think that, such as man was, he must have fallen to get the knowledge of good and evil. He knew no good objectively so as to prefer it in innocence. The test he was under was not preference of good to evil or evil to good, but obedience. It could not have been the former, because he must have known the two to decide (that is, not have been innocent). But then to go right with that knowledge he must have been a holy being, that is, a being with a spiritual nature divine or sustained of God which in nature delighted in good and abhorred evil, so as not to be in a state of probation because the decision was in the nature itself, so that there was nothing to test. But if he came to know good and evil, and was not decided against evil, he was already in an evil state. Besides he could not get into a condition to decide between good and evil; and if he had not known them before, he must decide; he has to exercise a will as free, and thus he is out of obedience (the only right state) and is in evil. A nature formed holy and sustained of God is decided in nature, and then only obeys. God could have given such a nature to man; but then it would have been a new creation, as it is now.
It is a mistake to think infinite power in itself inconsistent with finite power. Two infinite independent powers cannot be, because they contradict each other. They are not infinite, for they cannot destroy each other. But power being only the faculty to do all things, not the actual doing of them, the existence of a finite subordinate power is no contradiction to God. Creation tends to give the idea of a final cause, a framing will, and hence can hardly be ascribed to a finite agent. But forming new objects on subsisting laws may well belong to such.
The question is a grave one, how far, when no general idea or quality is predicated of an object, but it is only said "is," two objects are before the mind. But Mr. Mill is, as to this, all wrong and inaccurate. When I say "the sun," I already suppose such a thing and its existence, or I can have no object before my mind at all. "A round square" gives no object or idea to be -- Mr. Mill's example -- affirmed about. What he does not see (and the whole book is in my judgment very shallow) is that what is affirmed in saying "the sun exists" involves unexpressed that it exists now. Time present is affirmed; but whether I say "was," "is," or "will be," I have an object of which the existence is before my mind, or there is no object before it. He shirks the word idea, because an idea in the mind supposes an object with which it is occupied. It may be only a poetical possibility, but its existence is assumed poetically. If I say "is," or "exists," I affirm that it is a fact now. It may go farther, for the present supposes in its nature all times or none; it affirms a fact, and leaves past and future wholly out. If I say, "I am," I cannot say "I" without a conscious object; "am" adds little to any idea of it. There is no other object. "I" carries "am" with it; and the only danger is that "am" makes it too absolute by excluding beginning, "was" and "will be." "I" involves my existence as spoken of. "I thought "; that is passed. "I will give "; that supposes an "I," an existing object I have in my mind. Yet I may not exist to do it; but the object is an object in the mind, and existing there as an object thought, whatever is affirmed about it. The verb substantive affirms that it is not only an ideal object, but an actually existing one -- "God is." If I say "God," I have a thought object, an object before my mind; if there be no such thing thinkable (as "a round square "), I am talking nonsense. It is an assumed object, and I cannot think it without thinking of it as an existence. I do not say "existing," for that says now, but an existence. When I say "is," I affirm actual existence now, and past and future are not in my mind. It is an existing fact, and, as every present puts me in a present time (that is, has no time at all), it is an affirmation, taken by itself, of eternal existence.
+ A System of Logic, by John Stuart Mill, 8th edition. The reader must bear in mind that these are only MSS notes jotted down while reading the book.
It is totally false that no belief can be afforded. If I say "my father," my hearer believes, if he receives what I say, that I have had or have one, and disbelieves what I say if he does not think so. Thus, if I say "Adam's father," I disbelieve the whole account in Genesis. If I say "Cain's father," and another does not reject what is said, it is believing he had one, at least agreeing in it. If I say a "round square," he has no object before his mind to affirm about. When it is said "affirmed of something," something is affirmed before anything is affirmed about it. The sun exists, or my father exists, goes on to say it or he which is exists now. And the present involves no time -- that is, contemplates no duration for a time, and hence is either the simple fact of now, which has no duration, or involves eternity -- a now that never ceases to be now,+ for now is unity, not duration -- when the present is used not as now, it is a true unabgeschlossenes Aorist (i.e. Aorist of unspecified time). "I dine every day": what time is that?
When I say, "God is," I affirm no time, but existence: and, if I add nothing, eternal existence. Existence only is affirmed of Him, and, if true, always true. If I say to any one "God," I call his attention to an object, which I cannot do if there be no such object. I do not say in existence now, but as an object to be thought of as existing (I do not say when). But I think of His Sein, though not necessarily as seiend. If "the sun" suggests a meaning, what meaning? That there is such a thing as sun as an object of thought; not "is," as presently existing, but as an existence. If I say "round square," I have no object of thought at all; it is not an existence even for thought; it has no meaning. The importance of this in "I am," "God is," is evident. And this is evident when other words are used predicatively. "God created the world." If "God" does not convey the thought of an existing object, the proposition has no sense at all. That is, without affirming at all that God exists or did exist then, naming Him affirms, not as an inference but in the word itself, an existence, a Being which did that. So if I say, "the sun heats," "sun" gives me the thought of an existing thing. I say something about it, but I speak of something about which I affirm. And one could pertinently say, There is no such thing as a sun to heat. That is, he does not believe, not the proposition about heating or the sun's heating, but what is contained in the word "sun." If I say "The moon heats," one might say, No, it does not. That is, he disbelieves what I say about the moon, he denies the proposition; but, in denying the proposition, he accepts the affirmation that there is a moon to heat or not to heat, and knows it is affirmed, and believes it. In what I have said of the sun, he disbelieves it. Thus if one speak of, say "a round square," I say there is no such thing, I disbelieve what is said.
+Hence, when I say "God is," "God" necessarily represents to the mind an eternal, self-existing, or uncreated Being. No beginning and no ending is in the thought; and it can be said absolutely of such only. "Is" affirms being. It may be used for "exists," and then it has not its absolute sense. San and dasein are not the same thing. Man exists; the world around us exists; but I could not say "is."
And this Mill really admits in chapter 1, sec. 3 when he says, "What we do, what passes in our mind, when we affirm or deny two names of one another, must depend on what they are names of; since it is with reference to that, and not to the mere names themselves, that we make the affirmation or denial." Just so; but then there is a "that" which we affirm or deny about. This is "what we do, what passes in our mind" -- that is, mind takes cognisance of the reality of the object as an existence, believes it, or can have no proposition about it. Again, Names, chapter 2, sec. 1. "Names are not intended only to make the hearer conceive what we conceive, but also to inform him what we believe. Now, when I use a name for the purpose of expressing a belief, it is a belief concerning the thing itself, not concerning my idea of it." If then a name expresses my belief in the thing, he, if he goes in with what I affirm about it, acquiesces in the thing as an existence, a thing; just what I insist on. It is a complete contradiction in terms of what he had said: "There is as yet nothing to believe." If I express a belief concerning the thing, so can he, or (as I said) tacitly acquiesce in the belief I express, to go on to something else said about it.
Names are the names of things. And when I say "Franklin," or "sun," or, what is infinitely more important, "God," I am naming a thing and "expressing my belief" in that thing, and the hearer too, if he acquiesces, whatever else I may affirm about it. But I cannot talk of Franklin if there be no Franklin to talk about; nor about the sun if there be none. All propositions assume then the subject and predicate as things or existences.
Hence it is evident that reasoning, inference, logic, supposes existence, an object; that is, it is always preceded by belief. I cannot reason about nothing, I cannot infer from nothing. I do not say, therefore, logic has nothing to do with belief; but that it is based on belief. To put it in a more palpable way, suppose I say "Drumdrum is white." If you think I am serious, you will say, What is "Drumdrum"? If I answer, There is no such thing, you will at once say, Then you cannot say it "is white": that is a proposition, supposes the subject to be a real thing, that is, believes it. "Is" goes farther when it is a copula -- that is, affirms a quality of the subject. It affirms present existence. If I say "gold is yellow," I speak of it not only as a thing, but as an existing thing. If I say "Fuimus Troes," "fuit Ilion," I speak of a thing, but as no longer existing. That is, belief is necessarily antecedent to all reasoning, first, of the affirmation in the premises; secondly, further, that the thing affirmed about is a thing, the word therefore conveying an objective idea to my mind. But more, the conclusion is never an object of belief, though in practical life it becomes so. It is a conclusion, a necessary consequence if the premises are true, involved really in them, and so a means of belief practically. But all that is affirmed is, not that the conclusion is true, but that it is involved in the premises and no more. What I believe or deny is what is in the premises. I say, "then so and so follows." What I say is "must be" -- "gold is yellow." Then, I believe there is a thing called gold, and that it is yellow. I add, all yellow things are ugly. I believe that of yellow things; but gold is a yellow thing; consequently if these two propositions are believed, gold must be ugly too. But I infer the thing, because I have no direct evidence of the fact, or I should want no inference. I quite admit that practically it induces the belief if gold still exists, but I must believe this to turn the inference to a fact I believe.
I believe by experience or testimony, and by that only; I conclude from the nature of language and thought, which never goes into fact, because it is only the nature of thought, but supposes it, because I cannot have thought without an object thought of, a thing. When my knowledge arises from testimony, reasoning may help me as to the credibility of testimony from experience of the world and men and the like, from which I reason to the credibility; but what I believe is still the experience or the testimony. I believe that there is an innate consciousness of God -- not an idea of God. Such as I have may be true or false as to many things I affirm about Him. I believe that He can make Himself known. This is experience. I believe that He has made Himself known in an external way, that is, by a revelation. But this is not a matter of inference, nor can it be, but of experience or testimony, supposing capacity to receive it. I may reason to banish the folly of false reasoning; but that appeals to facts, as all reasoning must. A conclusion must rest on premises, that is, on facts; but they are known by experience or testimony. And so even scripture speaks. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself; and he that believeth not hath made God a liar." That is experience and testimony. In conclusion, then, belief precedes logic always. If I say "gold is yellow," I affirm two things -- that is, believe them or present them for belief -- that gold is, and is of a certain colour; but I have drawn no conclusion at all. There is no reasoning as yet whatever, no logic. It is what is stated as believed by experience or testimony. Mill's statement is wholly and essentially wrong, and is the basis of his infidelity. And a very poor one it is, and only shews how very inaccurate and illogical a mind he has.
The extreme looseness and carelessness of the book is surprising. There is a kind of impudence in its character. "Truths are known to us in two ways: some directly and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness," Introduction, section 4; in the note he tells us others make a difference between the two: Intuition of objects external to our minds; Consciousness of our mental phenomena; but he uses them indiscriminately; and then he admits that something is known antecedent to all reasoning, but, if known, believed; then he gives being vexed yesterday as consciousness, whereas this is memory; by inference only, about what took place when we were absent, the events recorded in history, or the theorems of mathematics. The two former we infer from the testimony adduced; but this is not an inference at all, it is belief of the testimony, right or wrong, without any inference at all; or traces of what has happened. This may be called inference; but to put knowing what has happened by testimony, or theorems of mathematics, on the same ground of inference, is nonsense or impudence, or rather both. It is to get rid of knowledge by testimony, which he states thus: "Whatever we are capable of knowing must belong to the one class or to the other; must be in the number of the primitive data, or of the conclusions which can be drawn from these." Now, I know it is cold at the poles, and that Constantinople is a city in Turkey. But it is not primitive data, nor a conclusion drawn from any such. People have told me so, which is neither one nor the other. This is not honest, that is the fact; and so to state it is impudence. It is convenient for infidelity.
I deny that logic judges anything but the justness of an inference; nor does it determine whether evidence has been found. It settles whether, the premises being given, the conclusion is just, and no more. Whether the premises are true is a question with which it has nothing to do, save as they may be a conclusion from prior reasoning. It only says, granting the premises, such a conclusion necessarily follows; that is all. It may use subsidiary helps, as definitions, divisions, etc.; but inference from is all it judges of -- of truth, never. Hence the scholastic rule, "Contra negantem principia non disputandum est," page 9.
In page 3 Mill says every author has a right to give whatever provisional definition he pleases of his own subject; but if the definition be false, he deceives from one end to the other, as all the reasoning depends on it. Thus in Milner's End of Controversy, the author says, A rule of faith, or means of communicating Christ's religion, and hence proves the Protestant rule of faith unfit to be such. It sounds all fair, the Bible being used to communicate religious knowledge; but a rule and a means of communicating are not the same thing, and his whole book is a fallacy, unanswerable in great part if the definition be let pass. A mother may communicate Christ's religion, but she is no rule of faith. People have no right to deceive and mislead by a fraudulent or false definition, and this Mill does.+ Thus when Mill says testimony to a fact happening when we are absent, or a theorem of mathematics, are alike inference, he is deceiving his reader if he has not his eyes open to what he is about. So, when he says -- for thus he uses his false division -- "Whether God, and duty, are realities, the existence of which (page 8) is manifest to us a priori by the constitution of our rational faculty; or whether our ideas of them are acquired notions," etc., not of consciousness or intuition, but of evidence and of reasoning, it does not follow it is rational faculty or acquired notions. It is not necessarily nor really one or the other; nor are our ideas of them the same thing as their being realities; all is grossly loose. Nor is it the same either to say, "not of consciousness or intuition, but of evidence and reasoning." For a priori rational faculty is not intuition or consciousness; and, so far from admitting the greater portion of our knowledge to be matter of inference, I deny that inference gives any true knowledge at all. It may be a help or a short end to get at what is sufficiently near it to act on, but it is never knowledge. I agree with Bain (page 43), that to say such a smell or sound is not white, is nonsense; colour does not apply to either. It is astonishing what an inaccurate mind Mill has.
+He also professes to take "cause" as meaning merely an antecedent, without entering into effectual causes, and so to define it; but, when the statement is lost sight of, he takes it as a certain and proved point.
In page 7, "The science, therefore, which expounds the operations of the human understanding," etc. What science is that? We have had none such spoken of. Here he speaks of it to exclude metaphysical inquiries from logic. Be it so, though it be difficult save as a mere examination of the laws of inference, at any rate from its subsidiary parts as definitions. But then logic is a science (page 2). Logic is a science -- "the analysis of the mental process which takes place whenever we reason," "a right understanding of the mental process itself, of the conditions it depends on, and the steps of which it consists." Now, these two statements are contradictory to one another, only so vague, so indeterminate, that though one affirms and the other denies as to logic, a certain part of a general science not elsewhere named, it is impossible to say they do or do not so contradict one another. Still "a right understanding of the mental process itself" is pretty much the same as "expounds the operations of the human understanding," and so far he plainly contradicts himself. Again, the whole book depends on the difference of intuition and logical inference, yet no one could tell from it what intuition is. Nay, it is carefully obscured by the statements in page 5: The object of logic is to know how we come by that portion of our knowledge which is not intuitive (whatever that is). Yet "logic neither observes, nor invents, nor discovers, but judges," page 9. But judging is not coming to any part of knowledge, but ascertaining the accuracy of what is before my mind, eliminating what is not accurate. If logic discovers nothing, it is no way of coming to any knowledge. It is not practically true that it discovers nothing; it does not in fact or directly, but it does to my mind. I would dissuade a man from ascending Mont Blanc. Constant white is bad for the eyes, but snow is constant white: snow is bad for the eyes. This is very simple; the conclusion is, as often argued, involved in the premises, but it is not in my mind before, and in this sense I discover it. It is the means of putting two things together in my mind by means of a middle thing, which were not together there before. Everything is not so simple. Every man is an animal; all animals die; man dies. This is not exact knowledge; it involves man being a mere animal, and the second premise assumes that, and may be false if the first be absolutely true. It affirms that an animal necessarily and universally, in the sense in which it is used in the first premise, is subject to death, for that is what "die" means here; and in the absolute sense I may combat both premises. This makes the statement of two names for one thing, as Hobbes, evidently false. Man may be an animal as to qualities which make anything such; but if all other animals die, he may be exempt from it. It states that man and death are colimitaneous, of which we have no proof; though a matter of general observation, which is in general sufficient for conduct, but it is never truth in itself. This could be met by denying the major, that all animals die. Death is not a quality necessary to constitute anything an animal. If it were nothing else, it assumes that what has happened constantly always must happen, which is not necessarily true. There may be impeding causes. Man may have to act on it in the world in which he does observe, but it is never truth.
As regards "relative" and "relationship" (page 45), Mill's adopted statement is poverty and superficiality itself. It has nothing to do with a series of events. They may be the fundamentum relationis, but cannot be the relation itself. Relative or relation is merely that a thing is before the mind in relation or reference to something else, not simply in itself, in what it is related. Where this is an important and constant reference, there is very commonly a word expressing it, as subject, son, father. And even the verb is so used. I say, relatively to Asia, India is a small tract of land, but relatively to England a very large one, and so on. That dissertation relates to political, not physical, geography. Hence more widely; he related to me his history. (This may be from another etymological sense of the word.) At any rate relative is when, in thinking of anything or speaking of anything, my mind or even the word refers to something besides that of which I think or speak, and states, where it is a relative word, the nature of the reference: what I said related to such an one, that is, referred to him. Hence a relative word is one which expresses this reference, as "son" makes me think of "father," "subject" of "king" or other ruling authority, "citizen" of "state." But the thought as to the two is not the same as Mr. Mill asserts. The fact is not the same, not even in father and son. One is the attribute of paternity, the other of filiality. Begetting is only the way it is formed; father is not a series of events, but present reference to what he is towards a son. Begetting, in man's case at any rate, is the cause of that, but not it, for it is continuous and begetting is not. Begetting is not the relationship at all. It is over before the relationship begins. So in king and subject. Subjection is thought of when I say subject, and in the subject; authority in the king, when I say king. And here by what events he got it has nothing to do with the matter. It may be birth, conquest, election: the relation is in all cases consequent on an event if referring to it. It is a character in one which refers to another, and is a link or tie in thought to them. Mill's account is degrading and false too, for the series of events must be finished before the relationship begins. But it gives him the opportunity of denying all moral character to it; whereas relationship in living beings gives duties and affections according to the nature of the being. There is no relationship of this kind between an apple-tree sprung from a pippin and the tree the pippin came from. I he kind, if according to nature, may be the same. So that if I say apple, I suppose an apple-tree, but there is no subsisting tie or link formed by God. In mere animals this is merely animal as long as the necessities of animal nature require it, but that is all.
Where there is a moral nature, there is a moral relationship according to it. Husband and wife are that. It means a relationship in which the formed tie is to be maintained according to its nature. I quite admit that this is outside logic; but then all duties and right affections, all thoughts and ideas connected with the relationship are outside logic; that is, everything that man is as a moral being. Hence no rationalist has ever found a basis of morality. Conscience, happily, is often better than logic; but one time it is general utility, another following nature, and other things. It is wholly and only living up to the relationships we are placed in. Yet Mill says (page 8) nearly the whole of human conduct is amenable to the authority of logic. Logic has nothing good or bad to do with it. Nor is it, as he says, the science of evidence. Logic has nothing to do with it. There is no science of evidence. There is observation of human nature, and the motives which govern it, which help to ascertain whether evidence is reliable. But he carefully obscures this word, as he does others. I must say, to seek to defeat truth. Evidence or testimony has on the face of it nothing to do with proof by inference (see note, page 5), but he obscures this point too. There testimony is spoken of, and as to this it is said (page 9), logic does not find evidence. Then we have the evidence of consciousness. But is the testimony of another evidence, supposing it proved credible, or thought so? Find it out from Mr. Mill if you can. It would open a door to faith on adequate testimony, without reasoning or inference, and that would be intolerable.
From what I have said of constancy of link or tie, another distinction arises as to relative words and relation. There are many relative words where there is no relation. Thus, robber is a relative word, but you cannot speak of a relationship between them, nor have you a word for him who is thought of in the relative word. I say lessor, that is a subsisting relation, and I have lessee. I rather think, at any rate it is so in many cases; the relative word, where there is only one, exists where the character abides in that one, specially in the active and passive, -er, -or, and -ee. At any rate, where the relative character subsists, there is a relation in common language. Where not, there may be a relative word. Where the relative word expresses a relation, it is never an event or series of events. The assertion is merely an effort to put a pig and a man on the same level, and deny subsisting relationship and duty. (See page 8, sec. 4.? All active words are relative, but there is generally no relationship.
As regards page 49, the only thing logical proof does is to shew that the conclusion, which I have not yet admitted, is contained in the premises, which I have, though of course in reasoning I may deny them. All that is believed is what is stated in the premises, upon whatever ground it may be, consciousness, sight, experience, or previous proof even. The statement implies and means to say that formal proof, as afforded by logic, is that which produces belief, or makes it tantamount.+ I believe what I am conscious of, have by intuition, which he admits is no part of logic. I would add experience of what goes on outside us, and, I add, testimony to facts which are not properly propositions, though as to some of course they may be so stated, but are believed, not by logical proof. So that, if a proposition or assertion be made of it, there is no logical proof, it is believed by sight or testimony.
All he says as to this is radically false. Nor can existence as a fact be said to be two things, one predicated about another, like qualities. When I say "the sun exists," as we have seen, unless the thought "now" be introduced, it is not affirming a second thing about a first, but that the first "is," which is involved in saying the sun. For if no sun's existence is before the mind, I cannot say "the sun" as we have seen. Introducing the idea of time "was" or "now is" is another thing affirmed about it, when I recognise it as a thing, that is, mentally its existence. Even if I say "the sun was," I say nothing about it; there is no attribute attached to it.
If I say such a man is a good man, it is a proposition, but the facts of his life shew it. My testimony may be believed. I may make a conclusion of it, as he who does so-and-so is a good man, but he does so-and-so; he is a good man, then. That he does so-and-so is believed; there is no logical inference, if I say he does so-and-so as the proof: it is merely defining goodness if I put it in a proposition to infer from it. That is what I mean by goodness; the acts experienced prove the heart of the man, not logic. If I say, he who does so-and-so is a good man; A does so-and-so; he is a good man; I turn it into a logical form; but what I know and believe is that A does so-and-so, from experience or testimony, and that is the proof of his goodness; the first premise is merely what I mean by goodness, or at least the testimony of what I mean by goodness experimentally to my mind. His doing so-and-so, not logic, proves goodness; the facts do, if what I mean by goodness is proved by them; but a definition is not an inference. When I say good, I mean something without any inference at all; the facts that shew it are no inference, but I believe the goodness because of them. But all this is a vital principle. The statement is tacit infidelity, as all that went before is. Belief is not by logical proof, never even. The things believed are in the premises, as I have said; and besides, consciousness and intuition, and, I add, testimony, are grounds of belief. The two first, he admits, are no part of logic; the latter he shirks.
+But this is wholly false, and at any rate applies only to discourse (Logos). I see a man; I believe it without any proposition. If I say such a one is there or here, there or here is asserted about him; but when I see him I know or believe it without any logical inference at all. Existence, we have seen, asserts nothing save in mentally adding "now."
Mill's inaccuracy of mind certainly unfits him to write on logic. In his Categories, page 55, feeling is a state of consciousness. This is false really, and according to the next sentence. There it is said, "Everything is a feeling of which the mind is conscious "; but then I am conscious of the feeling, and the two things are distinct, which they are. Feeling is an effect produced in me by some external cause. I am conscious of this. In consciousness there is a reflex activity of "I" as to what I feel. I take cognisance of it. When I say "I am," I introduce an activity of "I" about something. "The mind is conscious," that is, the mind (or "I" mentally) is in operation about something; that something produces the feeling.
Let it be colour supposed in the object, or the effect of it my mind if I am so to take it, is an object of which I take notice. But if it be "of which," it is not the state of consciousness I am in about it. If the language of philosophy is no more accurate than this, it had better not set about to teach. The division, too, lower down, is false; for thought is as large as feeling if it embraces everything we are conscious of; only here he has proved what I have said above. We think and so have the consciousness, and the red colour is something we think of. The whole statement is the utmost confusion and inaccuracy of statement.
I doubt too the accuracy of distinguishing imaginary objects from the thoughts of them; because they exist only in the mind, and what exists there, and only there, is a thought. I may so connect it with other things as to give it a thought reality, as with yesterday and eating the loaf, or the plant and the bud; but the thing itself is only a thought. There is no object in the mind save the thought itself. Existence may be added to the thought by circumstances, but the thought is all there is. His distinction of sound and colour (page 56) as being, or not, a name of the sensation, is all groundless. I think of the sound in a trumpet as well as in my ear, and the colour in the object as well as in my eye. There is no name of sensation distinct from what produces it. It is merely the nature of sight connecting it more sensibly with the object. A trumpet and sound are two things, because the sound is produced, not in the trumpet. Whereas in a white box I conceive the white as always in it, not being produced in it as sound.
What is in page 57 is the same confusion we have spoken of, confounding consciousness with the feeling we are conscious of. If I am hurt in my body and feel it, say pain in my hand, my mind is not pained. That is quite a different thing. My mind is conscious of the pain, but that is not the pain itself. How it comes by nerves is another question. But I may be conscious of a mental sensation or a bodily one, and these are not the same. As to the perception of an external object, no doubt what I am conscious of is the sensation produced in me. But I judge it comes from a given body; for where the action of that is intercepted, the sensation is not there. But this is judgment. But we have certainty of the relative existence of material objects, because they make the action of my will impossible. I cannot walk through a wall. It is not feeling or touch, but my purpose in hindered. But this is only relative, as some other being may be able -- I believe, can.
Page 59 is all inaccurate. Some do and some do not. Sovereign and subject do not. "Physician" does not, it is hardly a relative term. Some are a single act, as mortgagor and mortgagee, and with others suppose a title, as sovereign, and no acts. All is utterly inaccurate, but mortgagor and mortgagee connote nothing about a court of justice. The want of accuracy of his mind is puerile. Indeed, superficiality marks the book.
As to substances, I admit that what the mind takes notice of passes in it. Yet, as I have said, material resistance of matter, where my will works, proves the existence relatively to me of matter. It is not a sensation; it is a fact. Thus, when Mill on relation speaks of the judge's dealing with a debtor as only a sensation, supposing he had the debtor put in prison, it is not merely a sensation. Prison means being shut up, so that, sensation or no sensation, you cannot get out. You are a prisoner. Your body is shut in. But further, if white be only a sensation, it may exist without saying "of." I can think of whiteness without an object, and have the sensation, though more dimly perhaps; in a dream quite as vividly, which, however complex, is only sensation. Next, if I say "it produces," I affirm a quality; let it be intuition, or habits of thought and language formed experimentally. When I say snow is white, I have as much the thought of snow as of whiteness. It is defined unexceptionably, he tells us; the external cause to which we ascribe our sensations. Well then (be it that I am so constituted, as the way of explaining it, to which I do not at all except), I have the thought in my mind of an external cause, as well as of that which is the particular sensation or attribute. The sensation in my mind gives me the thought of an external cause, as well as of whiteness or any other attribute. I can say "red snow "; but, red or white, my thought of snow is distinct therefore from my thought of red or white. And I have this thought. So if I say snow is white and paper is white; objects are in my mind, call them bodies, external cause, or what you like, as well as whiteness. When I say external cause, I speak of something, but of what is other than the effect it produces. Cause and effect are not the same.
Nor is it the same thing really to say opium puts me to sleep, and to say it has soporific virtues. One affirms the fact as true; the other positively asserts, rightly or wrongly, a quality existing in opium as a universal fact about opium. Nor is it true that a man having no child, I do not call him father merely; he is not a father. This is false, and the whole comment on it is beating about the bush. I do not talk scholastically of substance and attributes. It is a mere ideal abstraction. But an external cause of a sensation and a sensation are not the same thing. And I judge rightly that, if an object always produces a sensation, and in its absence it is not produced, but by an effort of mind having been received, there is what men call an external cause. I may know that it is a mere effect of the reflection of light from a given body, but there is an external cause, be that cause scientifically what it may. I knock my shin against a stone, I have the sensation of pain; pain is not a stone. You will tell me it comes from muscles. Well, pain is not muscles, but a sensation through an effect produced by the stone on the muscles conveyed by the nerves. But whatever the cause, it is not the sensation caused. Further, I doubt the justness of the statement -- "to the senses nothing is apparent but the sensations." This is not correct. They produce the sensation, or rather it is produced in them, and the mind takes cognisance of it. The external cause acts on the senses, and, by these, causes, produces the sensation, which, I readily admit, the consciousness of my mind notices (page 63). If I know only my sensations, I cannot conceive an object but by them, nor, consequently, their non-existence. I may conceive the others without one of them supplanted by a different one; but I cannot conceive no conception. Hence the whole argument has no ground at all, and for sensation there could be no residuum when the absence of the sensations is supposed. It proves nothing but that there is no sensation when there is none. I have already noticed sensations apparent to senses as a fallacy.
The proof of the existence of matter is elsewhere, and untouched, excluding other matter, and obstructing my will; that is, it exists relatively to me. If there is an external cause, no matter what you call it. But here also is a mistake. The materiality is not the cause of the sensations. There are external causes commonly called qualities or attributes. Of these I can only say there is a cause of something which produces the sensation. The substratum is not, as such, the cause of them, unless it be touch, which in one aspect is the perception of matter. Nature of the thing (page 65) is too vague to have any value in reasoning. "Nature of" generally means qualities. The existence of matter for me is known; its nature is to hinder progress of other matter, as my body. Beyond this "nature" conveys no idea at all.
I can only know what affects "I." So that the word has no meaning; I can only know it by "I," that is, by my power of knowledge. "I" is necessarily the limit of "I's" knowledge by the power of "I." Only I may be acted on by a power above or beyond "I." But Cousin is wrong; for if there was no "sujet sentant, on ne peut pas dire qu'ils agiraient encore." There would be nothing affected, and I can suppose them physically inert. To conceive them existing, moreover, there is a conceiving power, and, if by acting I mean in a being conscious of it, it involves the consciousness also, and it must be mine, or I know nothing about it. I cannot think of a consciousness I have not got; if I realise it, I have it. Hence all Cousin's argument falls through. I cannot say "agiraient autrement," for I cannot conceive "autrement" than I conceive. All this really means the powers I have cannot go beyond themselves, which is the meaning of the word "power"; but that I am made so as to be acted on, and in this I go no farther than I am acted on. I am conscious of it. That is not the being acted on, feeling, but my perceptions of it. Of course that ends in itself, save that, when acted on, something acts on me, for it is not constant. Of this I am conscious, but only in that in which it acts on me. I am in a relative state, and it exists in that in which it acts on me, relatively to me. The result is really this: I am in relationship with a scene around me, and outwardly part of it, formed to act on certain sensibilities I have, with a mind which takes notice of the sensation produced -- is conscious of it by taking notice of it. But this does not go farther than the attributes or qualities which then by long habit and constitution we attribute to the object which so acts.
This is not a logical conclusion, nor merely long experience. A child tries to take hold of an object which it sees; it may measure wrong, but seeks the object; so even does a dog when attracted to it. Matter is not perceived abstractedly, but something known sensitively by its attributes or qualities. But matter is proved by its resistance to other matter and my will; for I, having a material body, as well as senses and mind, am in relation to matter as disabling my will from doing what it seeks. Matter is obstructive. But all this is only my relationship with a world, of which, in this respect, I form a part. But then, note, this only recognises a material sensible world, subject to me in thought, if not in fact. I discover it and its qualities, and its materiality, but no more. It is pure materialism in the limits of thought. If I go no farther, all action me other than on my senses, or material obstruction to my will, is ignored or denied. There can in the nature of things be no morality, no influence even of a stronger mind on mine.
As to the knowledge of God, or any idea of Him (though idea is an incorrect word), it is impossible, because He is not the object of sense or physical obstruction of will. But this is false upon the face of it, because men have an idea of God, not an object of senses or material. I do not go so far as to say this is a proof that He exists, though this may be strongly urged, and has been, for I think the true knowledge of God is mainly at any rate from another source or inlet; but I say that it proves all this and other metaphysics wrong, because men have, not exactly an idea, for it is not from sense or physically obstructed will, but an apprehension of God for which this system gives no place. I do not say how they got it, but they have it, and that these systems fail to account for moral qualities, goodness, love to a parent, authority, right and wrong, which are in our minds, but do not enter into this account of names or things at all.
Mill is so very inaccurate and careless, correcting others only by inaccuracy of mind, that save for this he is hardly worth reading. He says thus (page 88), we affirm that something is not, which is absurd on the face of it, for if I can say something, I cannot say it is not. I can take a supposed being; there is a griffin, or a dodo; and deny the proposition. There is not, etc. A particular quality may be denied of something. We say it familiarly.
The true word is, there is not anything, or no such thing. If it be merely a predicated quality, then It is a positive affirmation about the subject. "Maoris are not black." This affirms something about Maoris. What? not black. But the secret of this is, he has settled that a copula "is" is another word than "is" exists. But though modified by the predicated quality, it is still the identically same "is." It means not that the subject is simply (that is, exists), but that the quality exists, or does not exist in that subject. But it is always affirmation, or supposition, of existence of something. Where "not" is placed, I am quite indifferent.
Again he says we know mortality by one death as by number. This is an utter blunder. I know death as well, but not mortality, which means that men are liable to death. For men mortality is an inference to universality from multiplied experience; where one man's death does not prove that at all.
I have already said his division of feeling is wholly false, for either thought is a mere sensation (and he confounds consciousness, and what we are conscious of), or it is an active exercise of mind, and not a feeling. Volition is not a feeling, unless I confound consciousness, and what I am conscious of. Matter gives us no sensations (unless the pain of a blow be so called, save obstructing the will, of which he does not speak); attributes or qualities do. So that the unknown body is not the cause of our sensations; for, were it so, it would be known by them. I know white and black. The substratum is assumed to exist as sustaining these so-called inherent qualities, but it produces no sensations.
As to mind, I am conscious of knowing, not merely receiving a sensation, but of activity about them. So far I know it. Saying "unknown recipient" (page 68) means nothing, or supposes it to be an object sensible so as to form an idea, really assuming objective materialism in it (which denies its nature, which is thinking). To say recipient is equally false, as leaving out the principal distinctive part of it. Mind is known in its own consciousness. It knows itself not objectively, but consciously; and recipiency is not its principal character. I am so constituted as to receive impressions of objects, but this is not properly mind, which begins when I begin to judge of the impression, or go on farther. Mind (and other capacities) may be acted on by higher mind, but this is another point.
I add, in page 68 there is the usual looseness. Myself cannot be my mind, because my mind supposes myself distinct from mind, and mind to be something I possess.
As to attributes (page 69) there are no other states of consciousness, which is the knowledge of attributes, but sensations. They may produce pleasure, but that is not knowledge of an attribute. Relation I have already spoken of. He is all wrong. "Father" has nothing to do with any fact or phenomenon. You can only say we are so constituted as to have a sense of the relationship. Of my being generated I know nothing, and I am a child only after all that is over. I did not exist till it was. It was a relationship with one by whom I was begotten.
As to present facts, the accomplishment of them all would not make a man a father, nor produce the sense of the relationship. Filiality, as in the mind, is a part of our nature, and even of animal nature, as far as it goes. We are so made. In a large class of relations the acting of a cause produces a relationship, but it is not the relationship itself. This is a state in which one is toward another, not what caused that state. Those not such are quantity.
I have spoken of propositions. A word on their nature (page 94). I do not admit that "man is mortal" is the same thing as "every man is mortal." The last is a fact as to every individual, the former an assertion as to his nature, which is quite a different proposition. So as to wine or food, it has nothing to do with quantity; it affirms something of the nature or quality. Food is necessary, or metal is requisite, is a thing characterised by that word. It is food, it is metal -- that thing.
Assent is merely that I make the proposition mine, and affirm it. "Mahomet is the apostle of God." My assent is merely that my mind too says so. If I say "No, he is not," I reject it, I disaffirm it. If I do not know, it is left as no proposition in my mind about it. The looseness of Mill is inconceivable. In page 93 "general name" is used without a word of what that means. In page 97 we have "these theories" without any distinct theories having been mentioned. Again, "a golden mountain" is no proposition at all. I do not see any difficulty in seeing what the mind does in believing. I affirm the proposition. I say "gold is yellow." Propositions are not assertions about two things, and this contradicts his whole previous system that attributes are never anything but our conceptions; substance or body, an external thing that causes them. When I say gold is yellow, I affirm that gold is the external cause of the sensation of yellow in my mind. When I say Mahomet is or is not the apostle of God, I affirm or deny what 'apostle of God' represents in my mind of the person Mahomet. The predicate is always a conception of the mind, not a thing; the subject is a real or supposed object. If I say a centaur is a fiction of the poets, fiction of the poets is what I conceive as characteristic of it; but centaur is a real thing; not an animal, but I speak of a real thing, a description in the poets. And of that which does exist in that description, I affirm that it is a fiction; what I think of is not an animal, but a description, which I affirm to be a fiction. Further, my belief has not reference to things as he states. The impression made by that outward thing upon the human organs has not, save as a simple sensation in the mind, anything to do with the matter. He denies his previous teaching. And if a sensation, it is his conception of gold.
The whole of this (page 97) denies what is previously taught. He does not believe a fact in saying yellow, but a conception in his mind; for nothing else, he has told us, is meant by yellow. Besides, what does he believe? -- a fact relative to the outward thing gold, or to the impression made by it? Two distinct things, the former of which he has stoutly denied before. (See pages 67, 69, and 70.) We assert simply that we have a particular sensation (page 98). Digging is not a proposition; so that is all nonsense. When I say "fire causes heat," I do say that the thing called fire causes a sensation in me. Yet I admit that logic is not concerned in belief, but in shewing that the conclusion is contained in what is believed already, namely, the two premises. But then he is wrong altogether. I inquire neither into what believing is nor into the thing believed, but into the conclusions being rightly contained in the premises. If I take the simple proposition, the only question is, Do I affirm it in my mind? Does my mind say "gold is yellow"? Of this evidence alone is the ground, and this has nothing to do with logic. The question is, Does or does not gold produce in men's minds the sensation called yellow? That is a question of fact, the effect of something in the mind; and I cannot begin arguing till that is settled. This may be a conclusion drawn to start afresh with as true; but it always starts from what is believed on evidence, and when it is a fact that is believed, logic has nothing to do with it -- cannot in its nature. He confounds assent or belief with the evidence of truth.
Hobbes is wrong, because the quality is not the name of the thing which has it. Man, if six feet high, is not called by the name six feet high; one is not capable of being called by the other. Logically, it would make the predicate of an affirmative proposition universal, which it is not. White is not connotative. It attributes the quality whiteness to any given object, and connotes nothing. If I think of white without an object, I can only think of whiteness, and white is the form of word which attributes this to any object. (See page 104, sec 3.) Snow is white. I think only of snow, and the sensation it gives me. Hobbes's mistake is in calling wise a name of Socrates, as if they embraced the same extent. It is a quality of Socrates, but may be affirmed of a thousand other things, or else we could say, wise is Socrates (page 102). But the explanation of connotation is extremely confused (page 31).
So, in page 102, it is not the attributes connoted by man which are mortal at all; they are not necessarily accompanied by the attribute mortal. It is the man in whom they are who is mortal. Man may have all the attributes of a man, except mortality, or many of the same attributes be found in one who is not a man. Hence, he speaks of objects possessing the attributes, which falsifies all his statements. When man suggests or connotes a number of attributes which make up the idea, mortality is another attribute I add to these, but not another name for the united attributes which go to make up the name man. It is not a name of man, but of one of his attributes. The predicate is one attribute of the subject, but, if it have become the name of a class, the class is formed of all that have attribute. "Plato is a philosopher" only says, Plato has the quality so predicated of him; but if men have agreed to make a class of all possessing that quality, the word puts him in that class. If I say a potato is a solanum, deadly night-shade is a solanum. It merely in each case attributes a quality or qualities; but men have agreed, rightly or wrongly, to classify a set of plants by having that quality or qualities. It is not the name which makes them a class, but the common possession of the quality expressed by the name. If I call a monopetalous flower, possessing certain other phenomena of form, a solanum, whatever has these forms is a solanum; the name only states it has. If I say a dog barks, does not mew, barking is not a class, because barking, as a fact, does not make a class, because the thing does not characterise sufficiently other individuals to bring them together in my mind. See further on this point more clearly and fully discussed. I affirm (page 105) that the object did already belong to the class, though I did not know of it. A single sensible attribute does not make a class, and some classes are in nature, indeed, all really; but many may be formed for scientific convenience which are not obvious classes, as pig, ox, horse are, metal even. If the diamond is combustible, it always was combustible; all the difference was the ignorance of men. Combustible means what can be burnt; and that was always true of diamond, though man, through his ignorance, could not say so.
The more I read on these points, the clearer it is to me that we are created in a system of which, corporeally and in our natural faculties, we form a part; consequently all our competency of perception and conception is within the limits and necessarily so, of the system of which we form part. We may be mentally a more reflective, and so superior, part. I do not speak here of what connects us with the Divinity, but of our natural faculties. We may have superior powers of reflection as to what we perceive, but our perceptions are all of it and necessarily according to it, for we are part of it. And if I can say, as a matter of proof, that what is material exists, I can for that reason, as already said, only know it relatively. My reflective powers create a difficulty, because I know it is an image on the retina I perceive, not the object directly. The dog sees by an object on his retina, and has no difficulty, but seizes a man or a piece of beef, and he is right; and if nothing hinders, he succeeds, and defends his master from a robber, or satisfies his hunger. So does man; but he is not quite sure it is a man or a piece of beef he sees, rather sure it is not, because he is wise. But the whole truth is, that all is relatively true, most of the accounting for it is nonsense; but we belong to a system, and can only think in it. For after all I do not see an image on the retina any more than the object which produces it. It is only an object, and the conception formed in my mind is only that I am created (or, if that offends, constituted) so to perceive; and objects in the same creation or world around me are constituted to produce the impression with which mind occupies itself, no more to be accounted for than the impression produced.
We are so constituted (that is the whole matter), and confined to the constituted system we belong to, only perhaps to rule it. Hence language cannot get out of it, for we think and so speak according to this constitution. And these wiseacres cannot get out of it. Substance is something that causes a sensation. Is it then something or not? You only know the sensation, a point further as to your reflective powers of analysis and reasoning. But you must say "something." Try and do without it. Just so of attributes, only another kind of something. You have got sensations; you are so constituted. Something produces it. The system you are in is so constituted. But you have a will as well as sensations. And with the best will in the world a man in a secure dungeon cannot get out. He has, no doubt, the sensation of the door and walls. But he has more -- a will wholly arrested, because as to his body he is of the same system as the wall, and, thief or philosopher, he cannot get out. The dog is in the same plight; as to this he is part of the same system. Only the philosopher, seeing we know only sensations, tells me I have no knowledge that a wall is there, or conceals his ignorance on the same ground by saying substance is "something" which produces a sensation.
But I will follow yet some details.
All seems to me confusion and inaccuracy in page 98. Heat, we have been told, is only known as a sensation in me. Now it is not my idea of heat, but heat itself. If heat is in the fire, the fire does not cause it; if in other objects, the whole sentence is obscure.
But, to turn to the import of propositions in page 112, I deny that in a noumenon they affirm causation. If I say Socrates, I think of a person existing, but not of his causing anything. If I say John Brown lives in Brentford, I am not thinking of a cause of anything. The definition is false. If I say a stone, as believing the existence of matter as a noumenon, I do not think of its causing anything. If I go on and add its attributes -- hardness, compactness, weight, form, whatever else -- these are phenomena known by sensation, not as noumena at all. Sameness is not resemblance. Resemblance supposes a difference in something, but certain phenomena in the objects alike. Two perfectly white things have the same colour, they resemble each other in that, but that supposes other phenomena in which they do not. There may be perfect likeness, if the object itself be known to be different, as a portrait, or two brothers. But in some way the objects are known to be different.
Next, all is confusion as to what he says of a class. A class is where many objects, different in a number of qualities, have some characteristic ones the same, and in this sense essential ones, so that a common name is given to them. To call snow, as he does, a class, is just nonsense. It is one thing, though a general name for repeated cases of that one thing existing. But when I say man is mortal, I do not speak of a class at all, though the word may imply it if such a class be known. I affirm of man the quality which makes him a member of the class designated by it, if such a class be known. Some predicates are merely a quality, as mortal; others are a class already formed, as animal. But there is another thing to be noted here. Very often, in predicating a quality which may form a class, I predicate only as regards the subject partially, if the subject be a compound idea. I speak only according to the phenomena.
Thus, "man is a corporeal being" does not mean wholly so for one who believes he has a soul distinct from his body. Corporeal means he has a body, which is true, but not that the body is the whole of man, or a different name for the same thing. It only affirms that man has that quality. So man is mortal, that is, he naturally dies. Only that quality is affirmed of him. What else there may be of him, or may not be, nothing is said about. The class is merely by having a body, or dying as a being here; and, so far as regards that quality, he belongs to the class distinguished by it, but no more. If I say man is a corporeal being, but man is one person, composed of body and soul, but all corporeal beings are divisible, therefore souls are divisible as well as bodies, it is sophistry; and here logical forms are justly used to detect it, because corporeal applies simply to the fact of having a body. Here the sophistry is evident; it identifies soul and body, which I have therefore expressly added, which possession of a body, though it classifies man, does not. It is not using the class, but affirming the quality of man, which, if there be such a class, puts him in it, as to the point expressed in the quality.
Now snow is not a class, because it is not a quality predicable of different objects which can be so qualified; snow is an object, and is snow. But then, though Mill has partly stated what I have insisted on above, by want of distinguishing, in fact, he has misapprehended the matter. White is a primary sensation, and indeed hardly makes a class; but the great mass of class words are not so, they are experimentally formed, and the quality experimental, not sensational, or at least scientific discovery of like qualities known by sensation so as to form classes. Hence, though the proposition only affirms the possession of a quality, the quality is as used a general one formed by experiment. Thus, diamond is combustible; combustible means simply can be burned by heat, a word invented on discoveries of what could be consumed by heat. When I say snow is white, white is a simple sensation, though it can in certain cases classify where sensations of colours are in question; but combustible, though a mere quality, is not a primarily sensible one, but a class word. That a diamond is so was not yet discovered, but combustibility was, and by discovery a diamond to be such. So mortal is properly still more a class. When applied to a class, man or all men, it is only a conclusion drawn from all we know dying, affirming that men are naturally all subjected to it, as animals also are. They cease to be in this state of existence; and what is quasi-universal is felt to be necessary. It is strictly a class experimentally formed.
A man might die, and I could not say man is mortal. It might be only criminals, or only good people, or only man in some circumstances died, till I found the contrary. Thus some classes are formed, and the only inquiry is, if the individual belongs to it. It can hardly be strictly said so of mere sensible qualities; but belonging to a class even in this case is very often the only important point where the sensible quality connotes some other which constitutes the major. Snow is white, but white dazzles the eye -- snow dazzles the eye. But I cannot say, as he alleges, gold is a metal, if there are no others, unless certain various qualities combined are agreed to be called metal; but words are not so formed but by the experiment of several having certain qualities, coherence, weight, ductility, etc. It may so happen, as "Christians are men," and men from singular qualities being alone; but then it is not a class, but observed unity in these qualities. It is a word representing a definition only.
But when I say such a thing is white (page 116), it is not resemblance. When the name was first given, however this was, it meant that sensation; and when I say a thing is white, I merely say it produces that sensation; it connotes nothing nor any resemblance. My mind may go on to this (page 117). I doubt the possibility of the co-existence of two states of consciousness. As I always find in a thing attributes which cause certain sensations, and pass instantaneously from one to another, I conclude their simultaneous co-inherence. It is not, therefore, simultaneity in time, but a conclusion to coexistence in what produces the different sensations; hence that they are all constantly there.
In page 119, "thoughtlessness is dangerous," is not the same as thoughtless actions; one is a state of mind or character, the other the effect of these. The latter may be actually fatal. Thoughtlessness is dangerous because it tends to these; when the act is there, it is over, and the danger passed in ruin, mischief, or escape. Nor are any of his propositions in this page the same. "Prudence is a virtue," states what prudence is. Prudent persons, etc., affirms something of persons, and may be taken as a conclusion drawn from the other. The attachment of the virtue to a person is different from something being a virtue; and this indeed he goes on to shew. Nor can I say in so far as they are prudent, for, as he says, prudence in a wicked man is no benefit to society at all. But then all his reasoning about it and equivalents is confusion. Prudent persons or acts are no way the same thing as prudence. Prudence is a good thing always in itself; when you pass into persons or acts, the whole matter is changed. A prudent act or person may be pure mischief, and more mischief by being prudent, because acts or persons introduce other things besides prudence into the thought, and what is good per se may lose its goodness when connected with something else mixed with it or using it. I use it now merely to shew that such are not equivalent propositions. Even whiteness as a colour is not the same as the sensation of white; for whiteness is the supposed producer of the sensation, and not the sensation itself. If I say whiteness is not to be attained or produced, it is not the same as to say the sensation of white is not.
I return to page 104. What he says here is all wrong, because when I say snow is white, I assume the known class white already gathered up from various objects. The conception of white does not follow the judgments, but, white being known, I know by the conception various objects are so. Now white is a class for me, and so I use it in the proposition, because white connotes other things which I want to affirm of snow, which forms my minor. Thus, snow is white, but white dazzles the eye -- snow dazzles the eye. Classes are made by attributing certain qualities to various objects common to them all, and not to other objects, as I say metal. And the objects with the line drawn round them by this word "metal" belong to the class, and, materially speaking, form it. I cannot say, till I have made a class by the conceptions contained in it, gold is metal. I say gold is heavy, malleable, ductile, etc.: when I say so is platinum, silver, etc., I then have a name including these or other qualities, and call those having them "metals" as a class.
It may be one attribute, as white, but one attribute hardly forms a class from its being only a single conception, and it is simply a repetition of the same conception, not a class of objects which has received a distinct common name so as to form them into a class, as metal. If I say white is pleasant, it is really whiteness, and not a class, but a single conception. If I say white flowers are beautiful, I classify them, because I have a selection of objects combined into one set by themselves, and so a class. For a class is a class of some things distinguished from others which might by certain common qualities be confounded with them, but are distinguished by others peculiar to a certain number of them. He is wrong in saying (page 115) it does not retain the same meaning. It does, but another individual is brought into the class because it has the qualities which form the meaning of that class word. It did belong to that class, but we did not know it. This is unintelligent: and the framers of language did and do what he says is so absurd, as when they said metal. If other metals have been discovered, that is, things having the qualities embraced in the name, that alters nothing. We may, of course, from fuller knowledge of qualities, change or improve classification. Common distinguishing qualities make a class. A mere single conception of sense, to say the least, is a bad class word; because it does not combine by adequate resemblance in what is peculiar what distinguishes things from others generally like them so as to be confounded. Connected with other analogous things it may; nor can it be said it cannot form a class. Classification is "an arrangement and grouping of definite and known individuals."
Pages 108-9 are also false, because when I say all men are mortal, it is true that I speak of men as known by the attributes expressed by the word. But this is only the phenomenon presented to sense or matter of evidence. Hence I can only say that the connotation is of men as phenomenal here. Hence, really the subject of the proposition is taken strictly in its extension, not in all it does or may connote -- all men who are the subject of my observation of men in general down here; and hence it is absolutely necessary to bring in extension strictly, for so only it is true. It is thought of only through the "intension" or attributes; but this only includes ordinary phenomenal man, and can only apply to those whom I know or see; that is, the proposition is TRUE ONLY as taken in extension. Add here, the proposition is only a conclusion from a particular to a universal, for the only phenomenon I have is death, not mortality. The extent of the class, therefore, is "apprehended and indicated directly "; for if I say man from phenomena or attributes, I take in only what is phenomenal. All the cases of ordinary phenomenal man we have seen have died; therefore phenomenal man is subject to death; the phenomenon has accompanied the other phenomena, but this strictly brings in extension. Phenomenal men are all that we speak of, and speak of all of them as such.
As to his minuter analysis (page 119) of "prudence is a virtue," all is as usual vague and unsatisfactory. It gives definitions of virtue which are no equivalents at all; a virtue is not equivalent to a mental quality, etc. Just now prudence was equivalent to prudent persons or actions; they are not a mental quality. Nor is virtue a mental quality. Virtue gives a whole class and order and principle of conduct in spite of difficulties, and when he says a mental quality because prudence is one, he confounds the subject and predicate, because the definition must give the whole of what is defined; and if I say a mental quality, virtue is only one mental quality and if prudence is that, there is no other. His statement is that a mental quality is equivalent to or a definition of virtue -- can take its place. But, further, it is not a cause of God's approval but the object of it, whatever causes Him so to approve it; nor, though it is not so thoroughly false, is a quality beneficial. Still beneficial refers to what the beneficial thing causes; approval is a state of mind in another caused by the motives which govern it. What he states of the ground or foundation of the prudence is the prudence itself. If these things are in a man, I say he is prudent, because they are prudence. But if no conduct follows, nothing is beneficial. What he calls facts or phenomena which are the ground of the attribute are no facts or phenomena, save as prudence itself is one. The whole statement is in the highest degree unsatisfactory. When I say "prudence is a virtue," I give a character to prudence, without any facts, phenomena, sequence, coexistence, causation, or resemblance whatever. He admits it does not involve any conduct; consequently there is nothing caused by it. When I say beneficial, I suppose some activity towards others, or deliberate abstinence from it in which others are concerned. Whereas prudence is merely an abstract quality, and I declare it a good one without any facts or phenomena.
But there is a use of logic flowing from classification which I must notice.+ A main distinctive feature is taken to form an under-class or species, that is, the under-class is made by it of a wider class (or genus), and by this feature the class is denoted, as rational animal; and the subject comes under it, the predicate expressing the species and genus containing it, the class word forming the species expressing only a given important attribute of the class. But it is important to designate another attribute as belonging to the subject, one unknown to or unnoticed by the person reasoned with. That this other attribute exists in the predicate is affirmed in the minor, and so is affirmed of the subject. Thus, all men are mortal, that is, subject to death, but all mortal beings are so by living by blood (or by blood being their life): therefore all men live by blood. Now mortal, though forming a class, only speaks of liability to death; that is the meaning of the word and no more, and I say no more. I affirm a second truth in the minor -- namely, how or why beings die or are subject to death, in no way comprised in the word mortal, but giving a reason for all mortality. The syllogism merely gives a secure method of affirming the facts so that the conclusion follows. The word mortal means something and only that, liability to death; but if man be in this class, mortal, and I shew that something else does belong always to this class, though not in thought contained in the word it is named by, I have added something to the knowledge contained in the major.++
+Locke takes all the properties. Of this farther on. It is important to note that some predicates express only an attribute, as mortal, though a class may be made out of them; others are a class, as animal.
++ All this on classification in Mill is wrong.
In verbal or essential propositions classes are of different kinds, some natural and obvious, some from experimental observation, some more arbitrary. A man is a real thing or being. It is not merely that a class of two-legged mammals without reason is not reputed a man. I care not about the word; but here the word does not make the class, but the class the word: call it homo, or anthropos, or mensch, is all alike. Universal intelligence has distinguished that kind of being; the class existed, or the nature which constitutes it, before it got a name. I believe (and important principles are contained in that) God gave it as Adam did to the animals; but whether this were so or not, the thing was there before it got a name. It was not a horse nor an ox, nor a biped mammal with no more reason than these. A man was there to be called and have a name, and a distinguishing name, as horses, oxen, etc., were, and the difference known. In other cases the class was the result of experience, as weight, ductility, and other distinguishing qualities existed, and men made a class for convenience; but the qualities on which the class was founded were not words, but things. I am not now reasoning how or when the knowledge was acquired, whether by sensations produced or not. I accept that in general; but language is formed in the relative sphere of existence in which we are and in which we know, and the language is formed according to the system and accepts the things as real; and if men are to speak, for whom the sphere around them exists relatively, the language which expresses their thoughts must express the existence of things, which, relatively to them and their thoughts, do so exist. They may grow in this knowledge -- form, where experiment has been their ground, more satisfactory classes; but, though in different ways, the difference which makes a class is not verbal but real, and the word is only the expression of it.
Hence saying a biped mammal without reason is not a man means merely not reputed a man, is false. He is not reputed 8 man because he is not one. Such a thing may exist, but it is not that thing to which the name has been given, and which is in fact a totally different thing from what the irrational biped is. You may call the irrational biped mammal man if you like, and the rational one fear or crut, if you like to be foolish, but the two things are as distinct as they were before. The fear is a fear, and the man is man. Mill's statement is childish trifling. Nor is it the whole of the attributes, which assumes all classes to have no existence but in words, as the nominalists, confounding different kinds of classes. If a man was born with one leg, or six fingers, he is a man still, though some of the regular physical attributes are wanting or excess. You will say this is only accidental difference. That is, you fall into the distinction of essential and accidental. Besides, attributes as a whole differ. There are black or Negro races, Turanian and Caucasian races. Supposing for a moment I say all descendants of Adam are Caucasian. But he Negro is not a Caucasian; therefore he is not a descendant of Adam. Suppose the Negro has the general physical constitution of man, the power of progress, the faculties, language, the consciousness of responsibility, conscience, reference to the idea of God, abiding relative affections of wife and children, has to say to God and men, as subject and fellows, an immortal soul, for we are only supposing, should I say he is not a man?
I do not believe a word of the theory of distinct races, and the want of truth in the idea makes the conclusion difficult to me; because known relationship to God is shut out by it, which I believe to be of the essence of man's nature; but if all this were true that God had created two races of men, "A man's a man for a' that." I utterly reject the idea, but the difference of black and white, prognathism, and even woolly hair, would not hinder his being a man if God had created him apart. It would set aside one great and important origin of a class, namely, common origin. The only question would be, Is that essential to being a man? I believe it is fully, but on Mr. Mill's ground it would not. They have not the same attributes, but in his sense they would be men, they have the attributes which constitute a man. His reasoning is false. I believe the theory to be wholly false, because it denies what is, as revealed, essential to man. Actually in relationship to God I do not believe such men could be; but if they were, they would be men, though the whole of their phenomenal attributes were not the same, and they had not the same ancestor. If you take in all men as one race, as I do, there may be several attributes different; but while their moral nature, and even physical, essentially is the same, they are men, Adam's children. If there be no essential attributes (that is, what makes man a man), and accidental ones, a yellow-haired German of olden time is not a man if I am.
This may seem long on such a point, but it is vital; because it makes phenomenal attributes everything, and the real classification of things -- the fact that things are what they are besides mere phenomena -- is wholly denied. Men may make classes for inconvenience, and give a name to represent each; but even here there is no real ground for a class but in actual things which distinguish some from others; and there are classes of being which God has made, and one wherein man stands alone, though in certain essential aspects, not connoting all that is in him, or in the name of the class, he may be classified in these aspects with others. As I may say, created intelligent beings are responsible. Angels are created intelligent beings, and so is man, or the like. To have classes true, we must have the qualities in common which they have by God's creation, or at least His providential ordering. I have nothing to do with any scholastic speculations on essences to explain essential differences.
I have already shewn that to say giving an attribute, as "rational," to man teaches nothing is a fallacy. It is the direct path to knowledge where the predicate involves a quality not affirmed in it about man. Man is a rational being. I only affirm about man that he is a rational being. And it unfolds, as to that, what man is, one particular quality: but supposing that quality involves in man or anywhere else consequences not pressed in it, as every rational being is responsible to God, this will be as true of an angel, say. It is not merely what is in man as an equivalent; it leads me by another larger proposition, applicable to man and other beings, and not known to be true of man till the knowledge of the second proposition acquired. It is not a phenomenal attribute of man like rationality. It is true of rationality wherever it is, from the relationship in which all rational beings stand. I am not speaking of man, but of rationality; but he, being so, comes under my new proposition as belonging to that class.
And this is a most important element of error in these logical and metaphysical systems, that they can only take up what is phenomenal, and all the greater and more important part of what man is and truth is -- relationship -- is left out. They can discuss his relationship with mere phenomena by sense or consciousness, but this last only mentally or in the reason, and that is all. All that is true and abides, naturally or spiritually, is outside this. Death, or the dissolution of things, closes phenomenal, and, as to mere mind, now possessed state. Hence it is said in Job as to wisdom, "Death and destruction have heard the fame thereof with their ears"; they know the end of what man has now; of what is beyond, of positive knowledge, of what abides, they can tell nothing. All logical knowledge is phenomenal with its consequences. The mind, as such, cannot see beyond the system with which it is in relation as such. Only it should not deny anything beyond it, but own its own limits which indeed it cannot help, only honestly.
But as Mill returns to his classes, I must add a few words to clear this point up. He is all wrong. Some predicates are class words formed by man, some a particular attribute. Thus, man is an animal: that is a class word, a class formed by man as to language, but from nature and by a difference existing in it. So really gold is a metal. This is a word formed to designate, by a collection of attributes, several objects which possess them, and are characterised by them, and distinguish them thus from others which do not. When I say man is mortal, it is one attribute, not a class in itself. I merely affirm one thing about man. Now, if I use a class word which only takes up one or some attributes to make a class, and leave others unnoticed, and if I affirm of the subject all that may be said of my class predicate absolutely, I may contradict something in the subject which does not come in question in the predicate. There may be some quality in the subject which does not hinder the class word being predicated of it, but may make untrue that which is true of others in the class. Thus all animals at some period cease to exist. This is phenomenally true. Man is an animal. Man ceases to exist. I conclude from what happens phenomenally to all animals, and even to man as such phenomenally, what may not be true of him for some other reason. If I assume, as I believe, he has an immortal soul, which does not come into the list of attributes included in the class word "animal," though phenomenally as an animal externally he does. And so Ecclesiastes takes him up. It is what is under the sun, the days of the life of his vanity. This comes from assuming phenomena to be all, which, with consciousness, is all man's reason can do. But he cannot say, man cannot have an immortal soul.
And the possibility proves the reasoning defective and false. And this is the whole question with metaphysicians and logicians; for experimental reasoning is their all, and it must be incompetent to pronounce beyond its own power, limited by the sphere to which it belongs, while it cannot say there is nothing beyond it, for it does not see beyond it. When I merely predicate one attribute, it is not quite so much so because I confine myself to the phenomenon predicated, as man is mortal. Only I may pursue it farther, and so run into it; but it is then not speaking from the known qualities of a class, but a positive new affirmation going beyond the predicated phenomenon. If I merely say "man is mortal," I merely affirm the phenomenon that we see men die as a rule, which is true, phenomenally true; though it be not beyond the reach of preventive power if God so will, but for man's sphere it is true. If I say all that is mortal ceases to exist, I go beyond the phenomenon and introduce a new proposition. It ascribes a new sense, or attribute, to mortal. Taken as a phenomenal class, animals do, and man too as animals in this world. It is as a class true; it is not true that the attribute mortality contains in it "ceases to exist." The statement goes beyond the phenomenon, for as to that they do cease to exist.
But a word more on classes. The notion that general terms or essences of classes are only the meaning of the name, that the whole of the attributes means the essence, and the taking all classes to be of the same nature, makes all the reasoning of Locke and Mill to be false. Some classes man has made for convenience of arrangement, some more from the nature of things, as a metal; but some general terms are not classes. Thus when I say "man," it is a being I know, not a class made by man from attributes or phenomena. I am conscious of a personal living existence. I know others through intercourse or through facts. They are a race, not a class. I know what a man is, for I am one, and find others of the same race, born as I am, and like me. I am not a dog, nor a horse, nor a pig, nor an ox, nor if there were Houyhnhnms who had reason would they be men. Man is a known race. Reason is essential to man. Yet if there be an idiot born of a human father and mother, he is a man, an exceptional idiotic man; whereas if there were a race physically just what men are without reason, I should not call them men; they are not of the same race.
Races are real things. Essential differences are negative. Not having them excludes from the class, as want of reason the supposed race; possession of them may make a class, but does not make a race, as the supposed Houyhnhnms. Hybrids, which some insist on, only prove this. They are called mules, distinguished from the races their progenitors belonged to. According to creation races may approximate in their extremes as to make it difficult to classify them; but this proves nothing, however interesting, as to God's way of acting. You may shew that the nucleus of a cell is the inorganic seat of life, and write a long book about protoplasm; but this does not prove a man is a pig, or a pig a man. I may have to learn the attributes of this race, or many of them, after I know it. The word "man" is not a collection of attributes, but a general term for that race; and I then learn what the attributes of that race are. He is a living being, with reason and power of abstraction, hence capable of progress. He has an immortal soul. But all this I learn about man after I know him de facto as a race. If true, they were always true of man, at least as now known to me, but they formed no part of my idea of man. I know the race, and then learn about the race. When the word speaks of a class distinguished experimentally, as metal, then, though often vague, still in principle it involves in it the whole of the attributes which constitute the force of the word. So of all races as well as men. What is a pig? It is an animal born of a boar and a sow. I learn that it is carnivorous and herbivorous, but I knew what a pig was before I knew that. Of course there may be varieties and species, and we may turn pig into a class name.
What Bain says, note to page 112, is utterly false, indeed absurd. Supposing there was a report that the dodo existed, and search is made say all over the world, Mauritius and all, and I say the dodo does not exist, in fact it really never had, what has that to do with its disappearing and becoming extinct? (My family had a large life-size good picture of a dodo, now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.) When I say dodo, I mean a supposed bird thus thought of, and I say it is a supposition, it does not exist. Such reasoning is child's play. I exist, and am conscious of it; what is that in contrast with? I admit relativity in phenomena, and insist on it. But that is not all. I could not use the word "is," or "exists," without its giving the idea of existence to my mind; and, if used with any word by itself, it affirms that idea of it -- predicates the fact that there is really such a thing. I doubt its being a category. All the rest, at any rate, assume existence.
I have spoken of classes. White is not a class really, because it does not really give an attribute which adequately distinguishes other like things from one white set (unless I speak of colours, when it does). For class means attribute or attributes, by which certain things are distinguished from other like ones, and so clubbed together. Mill accepts most of what I have said, but by denying races makes all false. I have said that many classes are the act of men, but founded on natural qualities, as metal. That is, man invents a word to combine many distinct things in community of certain characteristic qualities which distinguish them; and the word is invented to give a common name to things which have the qualities, not to express the qualities themselves, so as that, if there were only one, it could be used. It is the result of the experimental knowledge of several having them. But if we call races classes, then it is not the act of man which has formed the class in any sense.
I do not think that class is a good word for this. If I say a man and a pig, it is no act of man's mind which makes any class. He calls an animal of that race a pig, and knows it is not a man. But there is no mental combination to form the class, if class it is to be called. A pig is a pig by creation, and now by birth. Nay, so far from it being the whole of the attributes that make a class or verbal general name equivalent to one where the whole of the attributes are included in the idea, there is no class at all; for if all the individuals have them, they are the same, there is no distinction. A class is only, when there are some qualities common to a certain number of objects otherwise distinct, that I classify them by a word expressing their possession of them in common, as metal, including gold, iron, copper, etc.; but if each individual object had all the qualities of gold there would be no class, all would be gold. Thus man is not a class, animal is, because there may be and are man and brutes connected in particular qualities. But he is wholly wrong in taking the general name as being the expression of qualities, so as to make it indifferent if one object or many, and a class or not, as being the meaning of the name and a class word, indifferently or not.
There are class words. Animal is, metal is, founded on qualities no doubt, but qualifying objects by their common possession of them. If I have only a word embracing all the qualities of a being, it is not and cannot be a class; if only some, it may. Thus, God is a general term, he says, to the Christian or polytheist. But the Christian or Jew, when he says God, takes in in principle all His attributes. He is one, almighty, eternal, omniscient; He is, and He only, absolutely. "God" takes in, at any rate, such attributes as absolutely preclude His being a class. There is no quality in common with the polytheist's God, for he has many of them, which exclude the qualities of the one. Even if I say mermaid or ghost, as in thought I take in all that they are, it cannot be a class, for all who are such are the same wholly; mermaid is mermaid. Where all the attributes are not taken in, it may become the name of a class, though where there is a race, and not man's combination, they will be only, as woolly-haired men, accidental differences. In fanciful names it is merely a question whether the fancy has formed a class or not. There may be many dragons having certain fanciful qualities in common, others not, and so be under a common name of class. Here, of course, all is man's creation, and he may invent as he likes. His statement that every name, the signification of which is constituted by attributes, is potentially name of an indefinite number of objects, need not be of any, may be of only one, is false. Suppose unity and omnipotence or even the last, be among the attributes, there can be only one. But if constituted by attributes, and I take in all, it is not a class; it may be a race. If only of one, it is no general term at all. We do not create a class by general names.
All this theory is wrong. If I say man, it is a general name; but if I take the whole of his attributes, it is a race of the same beings, not a class. Classes are made by men, by selecting qualities, and combining and distinguishing by them. In a word the whole of this is wrong, and wrong in the most important way. Races are popularly called classes, but then they do not rest on the meaning of words, nor are formed by men mentally (pages 132-139). Pages 139-141 are all obscurity and confusion. The question is not whether one or infinite qualities are in question. The essential difference is negative; it does not make the class, but the class is not the class without it. One quality, as white, or Christian, or mathematician, does not make a class (unless in respect of things constituted by colour or sciences or religions), because a man is just as much a man whether a Christian or a mathematician or not. These ideas do not enter into the conception of man; reason does. A being formed as man, as a general term (a race so qualified), without reason is not a man; but, if reason be in an angel or a dog, he is not therefore a man. A man represents a being not with the knowledge of all his attributes, but of such as constitute a man. (This is a question of the possession of language as expressing thoughts which normally is inseparable from human reason; that is, man is so constituted.) If one of these be not there, he is not a man.
Thus, if Negroes and Turanians were created apart, still if they had these qualities they would be phenomenally men; that is what man means. They might then be considered sub-classes, and man would be a class word, because there would be qualities in the Negro or Turanian inseparable from their being such not in the others which enter into the class. If I say pictures very white in their colouring are not pleasing -- are too glaring; paintings are things formed by colours, hence one colour or another is part of their constituted existence, and so as to paintings they form species, though white or green be a single sensation. So in various earthly substances. Some have a set of qualities which make them metals; here, though natural differences, they are of sufficient importance to man by these qualities to make them a class; they melt, etc.; if they will not, they are not metals. Other things may melt, as sugar; that does not make it a metal, but what will not melt is not a metal. It may be one or many qualities which distinguish, but what makes a class is what distinguishes a certain number of objects from others similar in other respects, when the difference is such that where, if what makes it is absent, it would not be of those things to which the name is attached.
But when Mill says men have made classes, "a sense artificially given to the word for technical purposes," in the case of races, as man, ox, it is not so; it is merely observation of real differences. The word is expressive of the object as an object. When used as a class, it is not artificial but real, as observed. If a true class, the name is given because of real differences observed. That man gives a name to those that have is merely saying language belongs to him; but he cannot make a class without adequate distinctions belonging to beings of the same general sort, combining many of them together, part from others of the same sort. To lose this by scholastic mistakes of essences is only blinding oneself. Names for classes may be made by men; but if rightly made, the class is not made but discovered or known intuitively, which is only a way of discovering. I know a man is not an ox. Man and ox express this, they do not make the distinction. I may have then to ascertain by thought what makes the difference. They both live as animals live; have flesh, bones, blood, die as existence here (for that is all I can say phenomenally) -- that is, in many very important things they have qualities in common.
What makes the difference? It is not artificially given for the purposes of science; the form is different, the race is different. In the genus animal I distinguish two classes; the name is quite immaterial Man has given that (the ox cannot) but I have to discover what is the real point, the quality or qualities without which a man is not a man normally, is not of that class in the genus animal. It is not a question of some or inexhaustible differences, but adequately distinctive qualities which combine a certain set of things contained in a larger class formed by having common properties. I have ascertained these distinctions combining many individuals of a larger division, without which they are not so combined or divided, as contrasted with a quality which leaves the differences which constitute the class where they were, so that, with or without it, the class subsists just the same, as red hair in a man. I thus possess the class. I may discover afterwards differences more or less important, which confirm the justice of the classification, or inform me as to the qualities; but if already adequate, I have my class. Thus language with man, cooking if you please, a sign it may be of the reflective use of materials as contrasted with instinct, but which is useless, as it may be merely the expression of reason, a thing by which reason may be discovered, however poor a one. It is quite immaterial what caused them to have the essential difference. I believe it was God; but for logic or man's mind it is merely phenomenal. And, save the notion of substantial essences, the Schoolmen were right, and Mill wrong. If the Schoolmen seized on what the name connoted, so as adequately to distinguish, by means of certain properties, those things which had them from those which had not, they did right. It is what makes a class, and that only, though others may be discovered.
Thus if I discover, by whatever means, that man has an immortal soul, I have a quality which, as well as reason, constitutes man what he is, as contrasted with other animals, and a more important difference; but, with reason, the class is right, because there is in man what there is in no other animal. And when I have arrived at what makes man to be man, all the rest which do not unmake his being man form no species. I have an infima species. Suppose there were men with reason, and not with immortal souls, I have two classes of men, if I still call them men; at any rate I have two kinds, which I can separate into classes. I do not believe this possible, because I have no idea of existence in moral things but as God made them; and thus the thought is necessarily inaccurate. But infima species is right -- that is, a class adequately distinguished by qualities which make it what it is, which consequently cannot be subdivided, so that one division should not possess what makes them both the same thing essentially as man, though you may add qualities which leave it what it is, as woolly-haired, black-skinned, etc., Caucasian, Turanian; but all possess what makes them men. For the ethnologist they may conveniently be made species of. A man without a soul or reason is not a man as God made him. A red-haired or black-haired man is alike a man; but if the qualities which constitute the class remain, it is of that. That is the infima species. Whether classes be rightly formed is another question: but it is a question whether we have rightly followed facts; and here races come largely into question, because the distinguishing qualities follow them, and they are more readily perceived than others, and they are classes which God has made, and from which man with all his wisdom cannot get out. If God has approximated classes in given cases as He has, man may make hybrids, but he only proves his impotency by doing so. The distinction therefore between differentia and accidens is in the nature of things, and the foolish instance of cooking proves it. It is merely an expression of man's having reflective reason to use materials. It is not accidental, but what proves, however poorly, the essential difference. What he states as making the difference of genus and species is only true phenomenally or in the measure of man's mind as acting, not as acted on or even conscious.
In section 6, page 144, he merely puts forward what I have noticed in the case of colour, that if we take a word for a genus from any real fact, and use the species without adding any quality to make one, confining the difference to what is true only within the genus, then we may form classes, but we no quality. When I say man is a rational animal, I add a quality to animal. It is not merely what is not connoted in the word, but I falsify the use of the word itself as expressing the class if I add it, for thus an ox is not an animal, only man is. But when I say man is an animal, with four incisors, one canine -- leaving out erect, for man only is, it is an added quality to animal -- with four or two incisors, or no canines, an animal is as much an animal as before. It does not add any quality. These facts do not come into the circle of connotation of animal, and he is as much what is called animal as before, and only animal. When I say rational, it admits animality, but adds what is not in the notion of animality; when I say four incisors, he is no more than an animal, after all, nothing besides being an animal -- nothing is added. I have already said the possession of an essential difference does not make a thing to be of the same class (strange to say, Mill takes the two examples I took), the want of it puts him out of it (save the question of normal state of a race); but if a dog had reason, it would not make him a man, but we should have two classes of rational animals.
But God has not formed things so. He has made classes; and so man must take them, for his reason is relative, and within the sphere so made, and we cannot really go beyond it. It may (for reasons beyond, sometimes perhaps within, our ken), be morally impossible. We do not know in everything, we may in some, how things are adapted in creation to one another. Comparative anatomy has shewn it within nature. Without it the reasons may be weightier and deeper. Thus os homini sublime dedit, not to go farther than outside, and feet and hands, instead of only hands or feet, may be so adapted to reason, or more, that we cannot suppose, say, that a dog should have reason, with any just thought at all. To meet their reasoning, I have sometimes supposed things which are not: but I deeply feel man as having reason is within the sphere where he is placed -- the highest in it no doubt, but in it. I have no doubt there is a relation to God also, but his reason is phenomenal in its source: I deny that it knows God at all. We may prove there must be a cause; but, as said elsewhere, if we can, it proves we cannot know it.
But in this part (pages 144-147) Mill is again all wrong in virtue of his principle, for Linnean or other classes do not add an idea to animal; they are as much a mere animal as before (very convenient for science no doubt, but that is all); not a species, though possibly necessarily as I have said, suited to it, because it adds nothing to the contents of the word animal -- with four or all incisors he is an animal just the same. When I say rational, it adds an idea to animal which makes it really another thing from a mere animal. Man has not really two meanings, because it is not merely an artificial designation, but the name of a being we know, of which we give the true character by the difference or class term, as an animal by what is purely animal. Cooking is really a proprium, and proprium is merely what is caused by the essential difference.
Demonstration is not another kind, but merely proving it is so, caused by or necessarily connected with the essential quality, as, save organic defects, language belongs to reason (or rather to thought) in man. It may be convenient to distinguish, but it goes with what makes the species. Only some may be more obvious than others -- some essential differences involve more consequences than others -- but the propria are really more identified with ess. diff. than with accident. The accident we have practically spoken of; it is what leaves the individual or individuals in the universality of the class they belong to. It adds nothing to what the class name connotes; a yellow-haired race of men leaves what is meant by man where it was. A rational animal does not leave what is so, where animal puts him.
But if there be reality in classes (and there is when justly made), a definition by genus and specific difference gives more knowledge than the sum of all the attributes. In the first place, the latter is impossible and false, because there are many which contradict each other, and have nothing to do with the real explanation of the word, as woolly-haired, red-haired, prognathous, brachiocephalous, and dolichocephalous. I cannot introduce all these and their contraries as describing man. They do not make the difference of man and other things, but only of men amongst themselves. You cannot numerate all the attributes; and if you do, you have lost what makes him man. But this makes differentia and accidens clearly distinct in meaning: one a quality, without which a thing is not the thing named, a difference from other things: accidens, a difference in individuals, which still are the thing named. Proprium also is a constant difference caused by essential difference.
I do not dwell on giving a definition of one's own meaning of a word; it is arrogant. Words may be ambiguous, or their meaning changed by time, then of course we may explain; but it is at best the extreme of nominalism that there can be no definition of a thing. If so, there can be no mathematics, for though words must be used, they are part of human nature, and we are men; but be it circle, kreis, circolo, or what it may (and variety of language proves it), I am defining, if I can, a thing. And if the thing does not exist, you cannot it, as Mr. Mill's "round square." Some definitions are poor ones, as the shortest line between two points. That is a fact about a straight line. I say a line described by a point always moving to the same fixed point; a curve, one described by a point which never does, but always turns farther from it. This is by the bye.
(Page 152.) Provided the attributes are what make the difference of man (phenomenal man), and that involves adequacy and reality of difference from things not man. But if I use a class word embracing them, with the essential difference or differences, it is much more informing, because I connect it thereby with a large class in very important elements as such already formed in my mind, as a rational animal formed so and so, as given by Mill. You cannot define a simple sensation as white, because it is that, and that only -- has no qualities but whiteness.
What he says of eloquence is all false; he defines it by its effects, which may fail by the state of those addressed, and yet the eloquence be sublime. It is perfectly intelligible to say, "all his eloquence, however elevated, produce no effect whatever: they were stern and unmoved." Eloquent is not the name of one attribute only. It is the power of presenting facts or thoughts in a way adapted to stir up the feelings or thoughts emotionally natural to man, or desired by the speaker or writer. A white object is quite another thing than white (page 155).
(Sec. 3, page 155.) I do not admit what declares the whole of the facts to be the only adequate definition, but do not enlarge on it; because the difference is often more important, as rational animal denies rationality of other animals than man. This may be inadequate too if there is more than one essential difference, but generally or often these are only propria. But what I have already noted is all important, all this is only phenomenal. The Houyhnhnms, which I supposed before, not being realities, do not really come in question, because it cannot be said that it is possible. The form of man may be a necessary proprium. At any rate, classes are derived from observed facts, and cannot go beyond them. I deny that we can make classes which will be really such; and as Mill admits they are taken from nature, he must admit it. But of this I have spoken, only I should speak more strongly of it now.
It is true that this judgment of definition by genus and difference or differences only applies to the created world. Such only is phenomenal, so that we can in any ordinary way classify it (it is all that is subjected to our language) -- at any rate classify adequately. When I come to Creator, it is evident that class can have no sense; but then I cannot define Him either. He cannot be measured by an inferior mind, and if it be not inferior, He is not really God; there is no God. And there is no summun genus at all really, for the highest carries me up to One who cannot be a genus, or He is not what He is. My summum genus must be a creature, not being, unless I deny creation and am an atheist, which, though he may strive to be, I do not believe man can be, though he may forget God for the creature, or corrupt the thought of God. Being is not exact, because though I may take it in a general way as a thing existing de facto, yet if I drop out creation, I falsify the idea of being when not being per se. Because, if I say I or a man exists, it is true; but I cannot say I, a man, without having the idea of having begun to be. And being, when applied to God, means one who did not begin to be, or some one was supremely before Him who caused Him to begin to be; and of one who never began to be I can form no idea, for I am finite; it is out of the sphere in which I exist, out of the power of mind. Human thought always and necessarily ascribes beginning as an idea. Negatively I can speak of it. I say infinite, etc., but I cannot conceive it positively in thought, because I am finite. I exist as to my status of thought in time. I may drop the idea of time, and only think of present being, I, and put together always and is. But when I think of that really, I must think of Creator and created. I can conceive what is always going on, because it is. But I cannot think of a living thing nor a formed thing (and man knows no other), without a beginning in its very nature. We talk of matter, but it is scholastic mysticism, of substance which gives no idea at all. We know nothing but what is formed, whatever formed it. There is no abstract idea of matter. For convenience we may make an abstraction. But there is no idea or conception, all our knowledge is phenomenal.
As to page 157, it is all well as phenomenal, but only in that way. And I suspect that all definitions are just solely in the relationship in which they are used, at any rate so far as forming classes. Thus a rational animal, or take all the essential attributes and enumerate them. It is what man is in this visible creation of which he forms a part, corporeally in distinctive form, as compared with other animals. It is man in this created sphere: all well in its way, in what is subject to mind. But if it be in relationship with God, that has nothing to do with it. I must take in an immortal soul, conscience, responsibility, subjection, lusts, passions, love morally to God and man, consequent guilt, and so on. Hence, as I have said, metaphysicians have no ground of morality or obligation of relationship. The very definition becomes different, though the other remains true in its own sphere, but convertible in the sphere it professes to define, only in the sphere and relationship in which it is spoken of; in another it has nothing to do with it, or is false. Mind deals with what is subject to it: subjecta veritas quasi materia; but this excludes God and all moral thought, all I am subject to or any action on me.
This confining of definition to particular relationships, a really material point, is proved by Cuvier's definition cited page 158): Man is a mammiferous animal, having two hands. I have no objection to this. It refers to his classification as an animal. That is a particular relationship in which he stands, leaving out therefore, as to reason, what essentially distinguishes him from other animals. It is just in the relationship he is viewed in, but leaves out, and properly, what belongs to another aspect and relationship. So of the alleged adequate enumeration of attributes. It may be true and adequate in the relationship it refers to, totally false if another relationship be in question. If I say he is only that, it cannot be said. He is that in a given relationship, and that is all the justness and adequacy definition can be said to have. They belong to such a sphere, and are true in it. I admit man's knowledge is phenomenal, or some inference from it as existing in the sphere he does; but the question remains, Is there no other? Cuvier says what man is qua corporeal animality, metaphysicians what he is mentally; and we may add, in connection with the world subject to him, and that is all he can mentally, that is, by the power of intellect. But is that all the relationship he is in? I wholly deny it. It will be said, Prove there is another, or how can we know it? Not by intellect, as is evident, for professedly it is outside it. But intellect never loves: is that nothing in man? Love did not, it is true, exist in Greek.
But to go down -- parent, child, husband, wife; I take natural relationships on purpose. Intellect cannot deal with them at all. Have not men hated Christ, the thought of Christ? What has intellect to do with that? Do not they dislike to think of God and responsibility? What has that to do with intellect? Intellect does not hate. Why is a child to obey its parents? -- will intellect tell him?
While on the topic of definitions, I would notice as a signal instance (page 153) of utter mental incapacity and incorrectness, I believe through moral blindness and absence of sense of responsibility falsifying every mental apprehension (for man is a moral being, and must think morally to think rightly) -- at any rate, as an instance of incapacity to define -- "Fault may be defined a quality productive of evil or inconvenience." Unless I introduce character -- a fault in his character, which is loose and inaccurate and only fit to be used when it is failure in responsibility -- it is his fault, otherwise defect is the word; but unless in this special way fault is not a quality at all. It is an actual failure. All the confusion in pages 160, 161, is from not seeing that his whole system of definition and classifying is false.
Man as such is popularly known, as Mill says. The enumeration of all the attributes never enters into men's minds, nor even a definition, till men begin to think and analyse their thoughts. Thus adequate definition is one thing, complete knowledge another; definition seizes such attributes as suffice to determine and define it in the midst of and from other subjects, as a rational animal of such a form. The thing is known in itself. I can see and hear a man. This defines it in the midst of others only in the relationship in which it is defined. The full knowledge of what man is must tell me all his attributes, and, if really full, in all his necessary relationships, that is, the relationships in which he exists as man.
As to scientific definitions, they are not arbitrary, but pass from the obvious qualities to more exact distribution by the progress of knowledge, and though drawn from nature, are, as a class, made for convenience. Thus acid meant sour, and does, but a man must be a chemist to know what the word has come to mean in chemistry. But, in what is ordinary phenomenal, not scientific, discovery, thought and language cannot be separated; we think in language, and a great deal of the dissertation on "verbal and real" consequently is beating the Horse is a mere word, but I think of a thing if I say air. A horse leaps; it is not a word leaps. No doubt forms of propositions are the same, as I may say a centaur leaps; but if I do say it, I am thinking of a thing real or fictitious, half man and half horse, believed true experimentally, I suppose, from the Thessalians being horsemen; so that Mill is all wrong here. When you come to facts, you can only take in centaur that which is thought, what attaches to the word; in triangle too; only centaur, being taken from imagination, cannot go beyond it, whereas triangle being taken from a mathematical shape, I can pass from the thought thing to the examination of the actual thing. What is implied has nothing to do with the matter, it is what is expressed is in question in any proposition.
Again (page 165) we arrive at no truth by reasoning, but only at conclusions; if the premises are just, then the conclusion is necessary. The name denotes the thing, and in reasoning by means of the name, I reason about the thing, man being so constituted as to think of things by words. He cannot invent a thought; I believe he may put them together, as a centaur or a griffin, but he thinks a thing in doing so. He seems to me always to forget that human knowledge and definition is drawn from phenomena. Thus a circle is not learned by "may exist," but from what I observe and know, even if not physically described, but thought of according to certain known qualities. The whole of the statement in pages 165-7 is absurd.
"Through the point B draw a line returning into itself, on which every point shall be at an equal distance from the point A," is a definition of what you are doing, as circle is a word for what you have done. A circle is a figure every point of whose boundary-line is at an equal distance from a given point (A) within it. You may call it 'bosh' if you like, but such a figure Englishmen are accustomed to call circle; and the thing is what I think of when I say a circle, and so does Mr. Mill, for without ceremony he says, the circle being now described. Hence B C D being a circle, that is, such a figure agreed to be called circle, two certain lines are by supposition equal. All that is a settled fact, when I have got my circle and my radii; but by drawing the secant of the arc within the two radii I have an isosceles triangle, and can go on farther in my mathematics. I do not reason about the word circle, but about a thing to which having certain qualities that name in English is given. When he says B A is equal to C A, not because B C D is a circle, but because B C D is a figure with the radii equal, it is about as much sense that man is not a quadruped, not because he is a biped, but because he has two legs or feet. All I see nearly "self-evident" is that he is talking arrant nonsense.
The question of dragons or serpents is decided by the very important principle that the conclusion of a syllogism never states a truth, but a conclusion; that if the premises are true, the conclusion follows. It is a mere consequence of the premises. It does follow justly that there are such serpents, if dragons are such things, etc. The question of truth lies in the premises. A dragon is not a dragon means; this is another statement. Hence the conclusion always is "therefore." The whole of this, too, is nonsense.
A definition does in one sense refer to the meaning of words; but the word represents a reality, and, as we think in language, the word represents the thing thought of as the basis of further reasoning, the attributes of the thing represented by the word being taken, as far as known, for granted. Thus, if I say there can be no quadrature of the circle, it is not of the word circle there can be no quadrature, but of the figure represented in my mind by that word. All this is folly; so of page 168. Suppose I say the figure called circle is a figure having a boundary-line of which every point is equidistant from one given point in it; or a circle is a figure which, etc.; one is a definition as much as another. Adding "idea of" merely puts it in the mind, and defines it there as such. It is just as much a definition of that idea, only dragon having no reality, it makes it untrue de facto; but the two are definitions one as much as another. A dragon being a thing, etc., the idea of the dragon is the idea of the thing, etc.; one is exactly as much definition as the other, one taking it as an assumed fact, really an idea, the other as an idea. It is true that a circle has such an attribute, also true that what has not is not a circle. What man can make is not the question. A straight line is as clear an idea as possible, and justly reasoned about as such; very likely a man could not make one. Points and lines are all ideal; but the great point here is that there is no demonstrative truth, but merely demonstrative conclusions, truth being assumed. The therefore is a plain proof of it.
The absence of all moral feeling and basis for it in the author's mind is shewn in the remarks on "just," as well as the loose character of his thinking. "Just" is what is due to a person in the relation in which we stand towards him. The want of reality, and all being words in his mind, makes even his logic poor. I add a syllogism is really this, If so-and-so is such, and if such be so-and-so, then, etc. There is such a total absence of the power of abstraction and analysis in the book, that it is wearisome to deal with its statements. He has no idea of just, or noble, or mean, but by a comparison of objects so called to find a common principle. The moral instinct of man seizes the force of words so employed without always asking why it so estimates them; but the moral nature estimates morally. Of this, of course, he has no idea. It may be a useful exercise of mind to analyse its thought, but that is all; the apprehension is there without it. Moral sense, though not of course infallible, determines it.
A few words as to mathematical terms. All here, too, is superficial. He never can distinguish between objects with qualities and the quality itself. Of length he says, that is, of long objects; but the two things are quite different. In common use we are occupied with objects, but we are here defining. Now we exist in space as in time; it is our mode of existence, and both are measured and partitive. A point is nothing; it is where a thing begins, or, more strictly, a division of space or time begins; it is where a given thing begins, and its absence ceases by the existence of the thing; it is that in which the division of space begins, or of anything existing in space. Length is the distance, when the same direction is followed from a given point to a given point, the part of space in distance between the beginning and end. It is not the thing, but the part of space in which, from the first point of the thing to the last point, the thing exists. Now, we do think of things in space and of space as occupied by them, the object being wholly immaterial; divisible space is our necessary way of thinking: so far from not thinking it we cannot think otherwise. Length is the quantity of space in one direction; breadth is exactly the same thing, only for convenience, as occupied with objects, we take the same thought of one object in another direction, strictly at right angles perhaps; but the direction only is different, not the idea. A point is merely where the distance in space or division of space begins, and can have no existence consequently in it; a line is merely a metaphorical use of a physical thing used to measure distance; length is merely the direct distance between the two points where the division of space contemplated begins and ends. If I postulate, I must think of an object, but space is not an object: it is the manner of existence of objects for us, or of our finite mode of thinking. Everybody knows what space means. No one can define it, because it is the mode of existence and thought for us, in which exists everything we can think of, in the sphere we exist in as thinkers.
Nor is the inquiry what is just or virtuous, justice and virtue, the definition of a name merely; because if I define the word, it is by stating what the thing is (if it denote really anything) which the name speaks of. If I say virtue is the moral energy which does what is right and just in spite of the difficulties or temptations which stand in our way, and there be such qualities or character, I state the real qualities or character of which the word stands as the sign in the remarkable instrument of thought and communication bestowed on man, called language. An infidel may think there is no such thing really as virtue, but there is; and when, if needed, I explain the word, I explain or define it by what the thing is. I can hardly conceive a lower moral state, without question of religion, than that of which this part of Mill gives evidence.
A circle seems to me a line described by a point moving round another given fixed one, always at exactly the same distance; it then necessarily, if carried all the way round, enters into and ends at the point started from. There is no postulate to describe it. "Always at the same," or "not always at the same," is as easy one as another; and to say it postulates something is to say that we must postulate describing any figure at all, to deny which is to deny the existence of mathematics. Circle is merely a word which, for the convenience of language, represents such a figure. Take a fixed pivot and move a steel line attached to it round, and you have It as to the means of objective thought; and, so far from it being a postulate that such a line or a circle can be drawn or may exist, I do not believe it can be drawn, and so Mr. Mill states. Whether it may exist I know nothing of; but in both cases I know what I want to draw, and do it as nearly as I can, assuming its perfection, which is in its definition and nowhere else, and from that I reason.
Though, of course, there are equivalent propositions which prove nothing, many are not so. And I reject, as I have done, the sum of attributes being a definition. Objects are really known, as a man, and then defined by what distinguishes them to the mind, and the words stand for the object known, and the distinctive quality may be discovered to involve truths not present to the mind in the object, and so further knowledge be acquired. I reject also, if it is what follows, its being a truth, as he says (page 180). It is not a truth as so following but a proved consequence -- if the premises are true, and no more. Logic has nothing to do with truth. Truth rests on testimony.
As an instance of the looseness and inaccuracy of Mill's mind, I notice (page 181) "incapable of reason," which is nonsense -- of reasoning perhaps. Nor do I accept his list of predicables. The making the definition of a word the sum of its attributes falsifies the effect of the syllogism, as does his inaccuracy. I have already stated that what makes a being a man to me is not the sum of his attributes. I am ignorant of the half of them; but he is a man to me, and to a savage, and rightly so (yea, even to an animal). Hence if the minor applies a quality from the admitted predicate of the major, not in my idea of man, I increase my knowledge. Supposing I know nothing of life being in the blood, and it is discovered as to animals, and I admit man is an animal, I have to conclude he so dies. I have already said truth and belief are only in the premises. Of course all that is true was always true in the system I am of; but my growth in knowledge is by discovery, and I may by general terms of acquired knowledge learn particular things by just conclusions as to what is included in the general term.
But, further, death is not mortality. There is an inference that because so many have died, all do; but this has nothing to do with the syllogism, save as the believed premise. The kind of syllogism is not a fair test, because the subject of the minor is only an individual of that of the major; whereas, as said above, a class word justly predicated may contain or involve an attribute not included in the mental idea of the subject of the major; whereas, by the rule de omni et nullo, in the instance given, it is on the face of it not true when it is an individual of the class. But no observation has made me know even here that the Duke of Wellington dies. It is a direct and mere inference from the premises that all men do, however I had learned that. Unless I had heard of God's sentence I could not have told it, that I know of, for Adam's lifetime. It might have been a puzzle for centuries. The syllogism never proves the fact, but the consequence. All men are mortal is not the cause that the Duke of Wellington dies. It assumes it, if he be a man; but it proves it to me because I cannot deny either of the premises. Logic has nothing to do with facts, but with mental consequences. It is this (as often said) that makes all Mill's reasoning false. It proves he must die, not a fact but a consequence. For here the fact is not so. The Duke of Wellington is not dead; but, as men are mortal, and he a man, he must die -- at least is mortal. Testimony is the only proof of truth or fact, save personal experience. Nor was mortality known because death was, identified here with Mill's usual inaccuracy.
But the whole idea of Mill as to syllogistic reasoning is wrong. It is only reasoning, and this to prove the justness of a conclusion, not heretofore admitted, from what I do admit; and he admits "it is indispensable to throw our reasoning into this form when there is any doubt of its validity." This is all it is meant for. It may thus convince of facts as to a given subject which form no part of my idea of the subject, which having been otherwise discovered and admitted are predicated in the major, and then, the subject of the major being in the class predicated, this asserted in the minor brings the subject of the major into the condition so asserted. But, as I have already stated, the only thing believed is what is in the two premises (which of course may be contested but is assumed by the syllogism); but if the form be right, no doubt remains as to conclusion so far as phenomena go. A syllogism is only, "If so and so, then "; and this it does perfectly in the sphere of man's knowledge, what is subject to sense and experience; but the statement that the inference is in the premises, as I have said, has nothing to do with the matter. They are assumed truths, and the syllogism has nothing to do with how acquired; they may be by observation, or consciousness; they may be, if I believe it, by revelation, or by any other way. The syllogism assuming their truth says that excessive brightness dazzles the eye; I say to one who has never seen snow, But snow in sunshine is excessively bright (which he believes on my testimony); therefore, snow in sunshine dazzles the eye. The syllogistic conclusion is just, there is no difference at all in the premises. He knows by experience what dazzling the eye means, by testimony what snow is. The conclusion is certain -- he knows what snow does, which he did not know before.
But all Mill's ground is false. In reasoning from particulars to particulars, the fact may be true, but it is false reasoning, and not what thoughtful men do. His instance only shews his inaccuracy. "A burnt child dreads the fire," is not reasoning, it is instinctive fear; and if a thing looks like fire, it is equally afraid of it -- an instinct mercifully put in animal life even, but not reasoning; its reasoning value is found in another proverb, "The scalded dog fears cold water." The man must have had an extraordinary opinion of himself, with such a mind, to undertake to write on logic, pace Sir J. Herschel, Archbishop Whately, and Mr. Bailey. But it is also all false that, if John and Thomas die, etc., the Duke of Wellington will die. I suppose before Adam died, Enoch went up to heaven; should I rightly say Adam will? If ten had done so, not more truly. When Cain killed Abel, I had seen death. Man was capable then of being put to death. But would he die if let alone? I had seen him live 600 or 700 years, and nobody died; then I should have concluded he could not, he was not in se mortal. But when I have seen or known everybody die for thousands of years, I conclude that man (this being, this race) is mortal -- that is, dies as left to the natural phenomenonal course of his race. It is not that particular men have died. Man is mortal, or even all men are mortal, is quite a different proposition. There has been an induction as to the nature of the race, Enoch and Elijah being excepted, as happening by the intervention of extrinsic power. Consequently I say the Duke of Wellington certainly (if no such power intervenes) will die, for he is a man, and such is the fate of his race. I can say, as a conclusion phenomenally considered, the Duke of Wellington must die, etc. It is a perfectly correct conclusion, supposing I believe in revelation, and, spite of all the Mills and Voltaires, there are those who, by grace at least, have sense enough to do it; but this is not my question. Supposing I believe that the sentence of death lies on man, I say man is mortal (save by intervention of extrinsic power). Some may suppose that great men or wise men do not, are taken to heaven like Hasisadra, or deified like Hercules or Nimrod; I say, No, he is a man, and he is mortal. The conclusion is as perfect and as certain. And that is what the syllogism is and does; it draws a conclusion from assumed truths. How they are discovered has nothing to do with the syllogism, which is just as sound a conclusion if the premises were false as if they were true. The premises being true has nothing to do with the justness of the conclusion, nor has the way the truth of them has been discovered. It is not necessarily by inference at all. The discovery, be it of Sir W. Hamilton, Mill, or Berkeley, is a mare's nest (pages 209-240). The form merely assures accuracy in drawing the conclusion.
I repeat here (page 232), saying that man is mortal is not the same as that A B C, etc., died. The difference is as real as it is grave. It may be, if universal, a just induction; but dying as a fact, and subjection to death, are distinct things. I might have seen the whole world destroyed by the flood, and not justly conclude that men must die of themselves naturally, as we say, and therefore I could not have said the Duke of Wellington will or must die. Put the syllogism and try. So many millions of men died, perished in the flood, therefore the Duke of Wellington will die (without it). Is there any just conclusion there? As to conclusions to particulars and general formula being the same, it is the same; it is every way false; the induction in either case is false as reasoning. It may contain motives in the structure of the particular case involving the result; but then it is a general formula, in its nature applying to that structure, and the proposition is only true because it is general -- that is, true in the nature of the thing, so that it is false from particular to particular, and always is so as reasoning. But Mill is all wrong (as is Whately) when he says that the major is an affirmation of the sufficiency of the evidence on which the conclusion rests. It states the proposition, but says nothing of the evidence one way or another, nor of the induction on which it is founded, nor is it necessarily founded on an induction. It is the basis of assumed fact on which the syllogistic reasoning is founded. In the common disputations they denied the major or the minor as facts (or distinguished), or the conclusion, which last alone referred to the syllogistic process.
(Page 235). All his reasoning here shews nothing but the grossest mental incapacity. No one doubts we infer from particulars very often, as that Tenterden steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands; but it is never sound as reasoning, save as above when it involves a general proposition which sagacity often instinctively sees. So that Mill is wholly wrong, does not see how it becomes a general proposition, which alone makes the conclusion just. Some men die, therefore others do, is never just as reasoning; all men do, therefore such and such will, is; though I may call in question the truth of the general proposition. And though all men include the one, the reasoning is just because it does. The question is, if Thomas will die? I say all men do, and he is one of the all, therefore he will -- not that he dies because of it, but that I know he will because he is. He dies because he is mortal. The conclusion is not generally necessarily, but to the truth as to some from what is true as to all; and the conclusion as to some from other some is no just conclusion at all -- never is. Why should I die because Socrates does? But if I have justly arrived at the subjection to death of all, with which induction the syllogism has nothing to do but assumes it, it is true of Socrates or any one else. That is, the general proposition is essential to the conclusion; if not, the dying of all other men would prove nothing as to all. Man is mortal, such as he is; it is his nature. Man is mortal, that is, the general proposition, which is everything; the "conditions of legitimate induction" (page 236) cannot be realised as to the Duke of Wellington at all without the general proposition, however arrived at. Mill does not even see what he is reasoning about. I admit that "the general conclusion is never legitimate unless the particular one would be so too," that is, as to the fact; if it were not, the general one would not be true. But that is arguing from the general to the particular; which is exactly the conclusion of the syllogism, by means of a middle term.
The question is, Can we arrive at the conclusion as to the particular one without the general one being true first? That is, can we justly say A B C died, therefore the Duke of Wellington is mortal? That is "Mill's logic." His statement is quite true, being the principle of syllogism, and refutes, if it were needed, his whole system. That we take the trouble of stating the general proposition has nothing to do with the matter; but it is an indispensable condition of the validity of the inference. Thus if I say A B will die, for he is a man, this truth assumes that all men do. For clear inference the latter is stated as the major premise. If all men do not die, I cannot say the Duke of Wellington will; he may be of those who do not.
I have, singularly enough, anticipated in my notes nearly every question Mill has raised. Here (page 224) he confutes himself completely. "There is no contradiction in supposing that all these persons have died, and that the Duke of Wellington may notwithstanding live for ever." Just so; that is, you cannot argue syllogistically or really from particulars to particulars, which is what he says you can. If 999 millions and 900 thousand had died, and 100 thousand not, there is no proof at all that A B will die; it may be 9999 to one he will, but there is no proof of anything. You must have a general proposition for proof. The way, as I have said, I acquire the general proposition has nothing at all to do with the proof in the syllogism which assumes and starts from the general one (liable, of course, to be contested by the adverse disputant). If I had lived in Adam's time, and no one had shewn mortality (not death merely), and I believed scripture, I should have said all men are mortal. Adam and all his children will die, for they are men (save prevention by power). If observation was my ground, I could not say any one would die. The general proposition may be rightly or wrongly accepted, but that is another question. But, as he says, there would be a contradiction if the general principle be assumed, not if only particular cases; that is, a syllogism is sound reasoning because it lays the basis in a general proposition; and Mill talks nonsense in his reasoning about it. But I repeat, with the reasoning of the syllogism the actual truth of the premises has nothing to do. It is a contradiction not to admit the conclusion, assuming the premises. That the premises may be obvious or require proof is evident, and may be partially true, as I have said as to animals. Animals cease to exist; man is an animal; therefore man ceases to exist. As existing here in time, qua animal he does; but it is only partially true, because animal and man are not equivalent terms -- man is more comprehensive.
Water dissolves lime; if I put this lime into this water, it will dissolve it. But the water is already saturated. We have thus to distinguish the accuracy of propositions. Water will dissolve some lime is alone true; and this water is water with its full complement of lime. What a weariness to turn to this from the truth, from the word of God! But I pursue, the rather as here (pages 240-247) the cloven foot comes out, though it is really only going over again the same false ground; and Mill clearly proves, in seeking to do the contrary, that general propositions are the only way of real conclusions. Thus as to arsenic (page 242). I have no need to go to other inductions from qualities. What produces a black spot under such circumstances, etc., poisons. No matter whether metallic, volatile, or what else, if everything that does so poisons. The induction is as to the nature of the thing which does produce blackness, that is, to a general proposition: All that does so poisons. Supposing all that does so does not poison, I can draw no conclusion from such a spot. That is, a general proposition which states the nature of what does is absolutely necessary to the argument. If only some articles, alike in this, do, I may add, A spot-producing article if also metallic, volatile, etc., does these qualities are necessary to make it universal, that is, determine its nature as poisonous; but I have my general proposition. Everything that produces such spot, being also metallic, volatile, etc., poisons, has that nature destructive of physical life in man. I learn it in every known instance, and when I have (any exception being from an extraneous cause), I say "every," I have a general proposition as to its nature, and hence only applied to every case because it is its nature, and so always such. The justness of the induction has of course to be settled. That is, my major premise may be contested, but with the conclusion this has nothing to do -- that is based on its being true, and, if true, the conclusion is simply certain.
And this he admits in the government case. No government: that general proposition is the foundation of all -- "a generalisation from history." The similarity is not the question -- another false principle of his. It is in this the same, it desires the good of its subjects: the nature and principle which governs the point is ascertained. This government acts in the same way. It certainly is not likely to be overthrown (for likeliness is the point to be proved here). Then comes question as to the fact. Now this is not a question of inference at all, but of testimony. Is it a fact that I believe the testimony, or not? If I do, I say with certainty. Supposing twenty instances of disinterested intelligent witnesses had occurred. This may or may not be true, and may or may not be believed to be true. To draw my conclusion, the government must be the same in this; if I believe the testimony, I say it is the same, as no government, etc.; this is not likely to be overthrown. This is an inference justly drawn, and the inference certain according to the premises, but "may be believed to be true" gives no inference as to fact at all as to this government. The witness of intelligent disinterested witnesses affords no ground of inference. It may be all necessary and right for common human life, but has nothing to do with logical inference. I may be a bad judge of the witnesses, or ill informed as to them, and other witnesses being true does not prove them to be so. Moral probabilities are very important, but they have nothing to do with logical inference. I can say, if these say true, this government is not likely, a certain inference on a hypothetical truth, and so far logical; but what depends on the moral estimate of my mind as to the personal qualities of witnesses has nothing to do with logical inference. It only proves incapacity to judge of reasoning to say it does. The resembling other cases is no part of what I believe on testimony at all even, but the fact of that in which they are the same. Nor is it reasoning from particulars. His starting-point was no government, and supposing this true only of some, the possibility of overthrow even, if so, not its unlikeliness, would be proved. The whole argument is trash, save as it clearly proves he is all wrong. Being asserted to do so by intelligent, etc., was no mark that it did so in its nature or qualities, but merely a question, Do these de facto speak truth as to its qualities? of which their testimony is no mark at all as an attribute in the government. But all this is to get rid of evidence, and subject the matter to logical inference that nothing might be believed, and always rest in this "may be believed to be true," and nothing be believed at all. Now, reasoning or syllogistic conclusion is certain if the premises be true, and evidence may be morally or absolutely certain too. This makes all uncertain in logic and in testimony. I do not a moment admit that every step in the deduction is still an induction. The deduction does not begin till the general proposition or nature of the subject expressed in the predicate is, through induction or other means, assumed to be true. In the deduction there is no induction at all.
All he says as to mathematics is mere unintelligent materialism; as if, because his fingers and compass could not be absolutely true, his mental apprehension of it could not. His head is no wiser than his fingers. The certainty is no illusion. He supposes that mere materialism is all we have. But we exist in space and time, and space is divisible. What is material phenomenally exists in space, and the matter is not the subject of thought but that mode of existence, and this gives form and measure, and of this mathematics are cognisant and demonstrate the equality of dissimilar forms, etc. But his idea of a point, etc., is not only false, but wholly inapprehensive of the truth. A line is that at which divided space begins and ends, the limits of any such division, or of two which meet. And if I enter on existing matter, or the space it is in, I am not at the limit at all. Hence a line properly is a non-existent thing, as the limit of a thing, or of two spaces which meet, must be; but I necessarily so think from my nature. A point is the starting-point or end of the line, or any point where the mind divides it. A straight line is that whose direction is invariably to a fixed point. So surface is that where matter ceases or begins. If I pass into an existing thing, I am not on its surface. When we make lines physically, they are sufficient to represent them to the eye for the mind, but this is all. If I take what is physically marked, I have lost the idea of line. And we, as finite, living according to space and time, necessarily think in it. If the radii are not equal, it is that the circle is not a true one, not that equal radii are not true of any circle: if not, it is not a circle at all. And so far from a right angle never being true, it is necessarily true, and I cannot help thinking of an exact one if I think of it. Supposing a line so conceived as above, and for practical use any line drawn, let one cross another at any angle. Let one move round in the direction to enlarge the smaller of the two angles. I necessarily pass through all angles till the lines are identical, and at a given point a right angle; I must do it. The physical exactitude is a mere question of physical skill. In the case of a line one cannot form a mental picture of a line, for its essence is not to be a material existence at all, but the mode of existence of that of which I can form such a picture, that is, existence in divisible space; and it is his reducing all thought to mere objects, so as to apply the phenomenal facts as to that to all thought in the mind, which makes all his system false. Geometers just define it for practical use; but Mill never thinks nor gets beyond what he picks up to comment on. All human reasoning is built on hypothesis necessarily. The only difference of geometry is that, occupied with what actually exists in nature, the hypothesis is incontrovertible. Mere definition or axiomatic assertion may be well or ill founded, but the relations of space, quantity, inequality exist in the necessity of our thought; and geometry has only to discover what they are, and, as in all true deductive reasoning, the conclusion is necessary.
Some mathematical definitions are very stupid. "A straight line is the shortest line between two points." This may be and doubtless is true, but is no definition, not what a straight line is, but a quality of it. "Straight" is whatever never swerves from one direction towards a point fixed as regards the point from which it starts. Every basis of deduction is an assumed truth -- and as to the nature of what is spoken of -- only mathematics dealing with the forms and measures of space deal with that which exists as true in the nature we belong to. Man is mortal, or man is a rational animal, may give rise to a thousand questions other than such as belong immutably to the nature of space, the sphere or time, the condition in which we now exist.
His change as to equal magnitudes (page 264) makes the whole thing false. There are equal magnitudes which cannot be so applied to one another as to coincide, though those which do are upon the face of it equal. I suppose "magnitudes equal to the same" to be a delusion in terms, even if convenient for practice. The magnitudes here are the same. I think the proposition that two straight lines cannot enclose a space may be demonstrated, for let them start from two separate points and these are not united by them. Let them start from the same point -- either they are identical (only one line really) or perpetually diverge. The true definition of a straight line, one which never diverges from direction to one fixed point, makes all this simple. I dare say geometry may be more convenient as we have it; but what we want in it logically is to give right force to terms, and so to definitions. What we have said of straight lines is not (page 266) an induction from the evidence of our senses (rather nonsense, by the bye) but is necessarily demonstrated from the meaning of "straight."
And this introduces another fallacy of Mill's, founded on his assertion of general propositions and ignorance of their nature. Of course they may be contested, but in all deductive reasoning are assumed. But as reasoning from particulars (Mill's theory) is clearly false on the face of it, and no reasoning at all -- that is, no legitimate inference of any kind -- so the universality of a general proposition is not all. That all men are mortal is a fact. They have been so in all known cases; but the induction goes farther, and involves, perhaps is even tacitly based on, another: Man is mortal, which affirms something of the nature of man which is other and more than the fact that all are involved in it. And this is the meaning of what is universal is necessary -- that is, certainly must happen according to the nature. "Straight" is a line of a particular nature, one which never deviates in its direction; if it does, it is not straight. So a circle; it means a boundary line enclosing space whose distance from a point within is always equal. Now Mr. Mill's reasoning that it comes from observation is false upon the face of it; for he says there never was a perfect circle nor line seen, nor can there be, he declares. Hence it cannot be observation which has given me the idea of a perfect line or circle, for there is no such thing to be observed. It will be said, I correct its aberrations in my mind. Correct it by what? By the idea I have of it; that is, I have an idea to correct it by, not an idea in the sense of a mental image. I know what equal means. This I may have learned experimentally; but knowing what equal means, I know what circle means without seeing it or forming any image of it in my mind.
Saying, too, I cannot reason about nonentities is false; for modes of existence (as time and space) are not entities, and I can, though with perhaps more difficulty, reason about them. And here the part which language takes is forgotten. I may have learned what "equal" is by observation (not by inference and inferring nothing from it); but I exist in space, and divisible space and time, and I know what number is, and I think in this order, and equal becomes an abstraction from the things I may have learned it by. I apply it to entities; but it is not an entity at all, yet it is a perfectly intelligible word. I have no mental image before me when I say equal or unequal, though modes of existence suppose for us that things exist; but they are not existing things imaged in the mind. This materialism has rendered all Mill's reasoning false. I have an idea of straight and circle, lines or forms, with certain qualities which exclude from them all lines and forms which have them not. And if nature or art does not, as Mill says, furnish such, then I say a true circle does not exist in nature, and art cannot make one, though what it makes is meant for it, and answers practically for deductive reasoning, because it is meant for it, and supposed to be it. I do not take Euclid's axioms; because they are taken as sufficient for mathematical purposes, not meant to have the precision necessary for logical discussion. Let us bear in mind that all syllogistic reasoning is on the assumption of the truth of premises -- that is, hypothetical; and if true, the conclusion is always "must be," never really "is "; never truth affirmed in itself, but a conclusion, though always a necessary one. That two lines cannot include space is demonstrable, and no real axiom, but a necessary consequence of their nature, the meaning of "straight" being assumed, of which, whether I have ever seen an exactly straight thing or not, I have a perfectly clear thought.
As to the burden of proof (page 267), it is a feeble defence, but Mill has proved it; for he tells us that no one has ever seen a true straight line or true circle. I have already said that the only difference of mathematics is that the truths we start with -- space, divisible space, form, etc. -- are in the certain nature of things, that is, our own mode of existence. Hence unless I know God and what "I am" means, in which there is no space or time, all thoughts, or rather attempts at thought, of what is eternal outside them are negative and cannot be otherwise -- infinite, immense, and so on. I exist in what is divisible space and time, and with human power I cannot go beyond it. When I say I am, the thought has no past, no future -- that is, is negative of finite time. It is the nearest to eternity I can come, and by a tacit negation. It is always now.+ Hence, when used absolutely, it negatives time absolutely; when said of myself, it says, I exist now.
What Mr. Bain says is clearly false (page 272), for we have no really straight objects to compare, and I cannot say "bent or crooked" without understanding what "straight" means, to which another object may be an approximation. That the knowledge which makes it understood suffices to verify it, is true; but for a very different reason. Straight means what does not deviate; but from what? All his reasoning in pages 274-5 is founded on different meanings of inconceivable. Whewell used it as tantamount to impossible, Mill as what the mind may or cannot apprehend, he having nothing but observation and experience to judge by, but the impossibility is in the nature of the things. Two are not three in the same sense, nor bent and straight. It is not simply that I cannot conceive two straight lines enclosing a space, but they cannot enclose it. It has nothing to do with the information of my mind or its habits, which is all Mill can speak of. The thing, according to our mode of existence and thought, cannot be. It is not merely that in my condition of mind it cannot de facto be thought: in my state of existence it is not thinkable. All his reasoning is not worth a straw. One is the effect of prejudice or education; the other is in the nature of the things. My having ascertained it or not is the state of my mind; the other is the state of two straight lines. And it is quite possible that, while my ascertaining the fact is a matter of scientific progress, I may learn, too, that, things being what they are (and so only can I think logically and as to nature), it could not be otherwise. Thus it took great progress to learn the uniform and universal laws of gravitation; but, once learned, the sun being an enormously greater mass, that principle being true, the earth, once set in motion, must go round the sun.
+Everlasting only supposes continuous existence from now, ex parte post, so called, or ex parte ante.
So with combinations in the reasoning of both these gentlemen. If things were not definitely combined (though experimentally learned), we could not have a kosmos, an ordered universe. There might have been another combination possible (but not according to that in which we live, hence not conceivable by us); but to have order and distinct bodies, there being diverse elements, they must be definitely combined to have these distinct bodies. Uniformity and order cannot exist without it. Whewell, on the main point, defends himself needlessly and to no purpose (page 283). The question is not, save for myself, if I conceived distinctly or not, nor do I trouble myself with actual axioms more or less correct; but is there such a thing as a straight line conceivable which is not a crooked one, and a circle which is itself not an ellipse nor a square? Necessary conclusions are those rightly drawn from admitted premises; necessary truths are those which follow necessarily from the facts certain in nature. They are also facts. I learn them perhaps by reasoning. Geometry proves the equal quantities of distinct forms. I join by a straight line two radii of a circle. I have an isosceles triangle; whatever may be deduced rightly from that necessarily follows, and may involve important discoveries. The uncultivated mind has no clear idea of what makes it impossible for him, therefore it is not so, of course. And though I cannot conceive a world with different chemical combinations, as I belong to this and am not a creator, I can conceive there may be; just as I may conceive there are a thousand chemical combinations yet undiscovered. But chaos man cannot conceive. It is combination in a definite way which comes into his mind, if any; but any particular combination must be for an ordered kosmos.
True axioms, then, are relationships which are in nature and for our existence always and necessarily true. When I define a thing in mathematics, I take a fact in the relations of space or number, not an existing object, but a relationship mentally conceived, one which is important for further reasoning, though there may be a thousand others; not, as Mr. Mill says, denying other attributes, but selecting that which makes it important. What I take necessarily and absolutely exists, not a physical object, an object of sense, but a relationship in the nature of things, say a right angle. Now all angles exist infinite in number. I take one where, two lines crossing each other, all the angles are equal. There must be such, for all angles exist (they are the mere relation or difference of direction of two lines from one point),+ therefore this does: only I take it for further use. So there are infinite forms circumscribed by a continuous line, never straight, but returning to the same identical point. There is, therefore, one of which the circumscribing line is always equidistant from a point within, that is, all whose radii are equal. I take this one, because from this quality (there may be twenty others) all the system of trigonometry (its sines, cosines, versed sines, etc.) flows. But the existence of these relationships is in the nature of things, not objects (though if true they may become such), but as to which it is impossible that they should not be. I learn many consequences, as I do from the ellipse or other forms which in astronomy become of the greatest importance: consequences that are also true as relationships -- say as Kepler's laws -- much more certain and certainly accurate in mathematics than by observation. If facts, they may be observable of course, but their certainty is mathematical, that is, in their nature not experimental. I repeat, all deductive reasoning is hypothetical; that is, it assumes the truth of the premises.
+Angles are mere quantitative angular space, part of the whole circle of space round a point. A right angle is one of four equal ones which take in the whole space.
(Pages 290, 293.) I come to numbers. Mr. Mill tells us that 1 = 1 is not certain, because a pound troy is not equal to a pound avoirdupois. This is a sample of Mill's logic. He says we must think of ten bodies, ten sounds, etc.; but I do not think of bodies or sounds at all, not even if such are before me, only of their relation in number. I think of ten. I can say ten is not nine, and think of no body or thing at all. Two and one is no definition of three at all; it merely states that, if I add one to two, it makes what I call three; but two and two making four, 3 + 1 making four, and so on, shew this has nothing to do with definitions. We cannot define numbers, because they enter as a primary idea into my condition of existence in the divisibility of quantity or the unity of an undivided object, as three parts, one sum. You cannot define colours for an analogous reason, nor sounds. They are primary sensations in the latter cases, the mode of my existence in the former. The word is merely the sign of it; but I am one, another person speaking to me is one, and we are two. When I say "two," it shews that it is not the object of sense, for the two are different, but unity or numerical quantity that I think of. The word "four," as applicable to all objects, represents none. It represents four, the number, a mode of separate existence. The objects are not the subject of thought, but the number of them, and therefore I can compute without referring to any object; the relations developed are relations of number, and nothing else. Nobody denies that objects are numbered, but thinking of number is not thinking of the objects. They exist in space, in time; but space and time are not the objects of sense that exist in them. To confound reasoning of "one" and "one pound," as if it were the same thing, shews an incapacity of mind which may not be impossible, but it is certainly "inconceivable" in one pretending to teach reasoning or logic: the difference is in the pounds, not in the one. But mathematical arguments as to quantity are just as certain. What have quantities, as man has combined them in commerce, to do with abstract relations of quantity? This is all child's play in logic.
I need not enter at any length into the question between Mr. Mill and Mr. Spencer. Both base their reasoning on exact experience, and both are all wrong. If, as Mr. Spencer says, I feel I am cold, and cannot conceive I am not, this is not past experience. Nor is it necessary to talk of the opposite being inconceivable. A present positive feeling is for him who has it certain. Mr. Mill's answer is simplest nonsense. He says, I can conceive not being cold; but Mr. S. evidently means that when I feel cold I cannot conceive being not cold then. But they are, in order to make experience the sole test of truth, making my conception of a thing the only question, not the thing itself. If I have a toothache, the pain is something, though, of course, I conceive it; and in the cases we have been considering -- circles, numbers, etc. -- my conceiving it has nothing to do with it. The thing has the qualities; the form or number is what it is. There are numbers which convey no idea to the mind, but I can calculate them with as much certainty as if it were two or three: the certainty is in the numerical relation, not in any conception; and, be the circle big or little, the relations of sines, cosines, etc., are just the same. Conceiving depends on the conceiving power, not on the truth of the thing. "That what is inconceivable cannot be true," is as false as can possibly be; for conceivable depends on the capacity of the conceiver, not on truth or not. Besides, a man may be certain in his conception, and deceived -- think himself made of glass, or Louis XVI; he is mad, no doubt, but just as certain. It is inconceivable for him that it should be otherwise. Mr. Mill distinguishes between inconceivable and impossible. I may use the former for the latter; but if the difference is made and it is just, I had already made it. The whole argument is not worth a rush. What is impossible cannot have been a matter of experience, and rests on the nature of the thing, not on conception or experience at all. And a thing may be impossible and yet supposed, or so far conceived, as that the square of the hypotenuse is not equal to the squares of the two sides. This is impossible to be true from the relation of the quantities. I may have to discover it, but it is in the nature of the thing always so.
As to contradiction or an excluded middle, I must add used in the same sense. Thus, snow is white; snow is not white. If snow is white, what is not white is not snow. What is red snow? It is in all its essential qualities what makes it snow, but it has been coloured in some way; and contradiction is simply such negatives that is, says the affirmation is not true, consequently the negative cannot be true if it is. But this supposes the term used in the same sense. A man is one single I, but there are body, soul, and spirit, which may be separated. But what Mill says is, as usual, wrong (page 321); for an unmeaning proposition is none at all -- is not true nor false, not as a proposition, but because it is not one at all. He is wrong, too, as to matter. What is infinitely divisible cannot be said to be not infinitely divisible. Whether matter exists or not has nothing to do with the question. The existence of matter is another proposition, the truth of which is assumed in the one we are treating of, as is always the case mentally. The incapacity of Mr. Mill in analysing is really astounding. Nor has sight or touch anything to do with it. Thus, if chemistry has shewn, as alleged in the atomic theory,+ that divisibility cannot be carried farther, then the up to that divisible thing is not infinitely divisible. Infinite divisibility may be applied to space without matter in thought. If I get space, I get extension; and if I do, I can conceive part of it.
+But this is merely physically. Mentally space is always divisible, because it has extension, or it is not space.
In the quotations from Spencer we get the usual reference of everything to experience. Now as to phenomena I should insist on it. But reasoning has nothing to do with it. I know, without any phenomenon, that when I say a thing is not, I do not mean that it is, but to contradict it, that I am saying that the proposition is not true; if it is true, it is not true to say it is not. I have nothing to do here with the experience of objects, beyond which these men cannot get. I say, whales are mammals; it is said that whales are not mammals. If I use the word in the same sense both cannot be true, because one says the other is not, and it cannot be true and not true in the same sense. Yet I have no experience of whales -- never saw one to examine it -- only I know that in the usual ordinary sense of the term it is a great fish; but I have no experience of the matter; only I know what a proposition is, and what not means.
I deny altogether that all our knowledge comes from induction, or that induction gives us any truth at all. Induction gives us what we have to act on as men, in a multitude of cases; for Mill carefully leaves out belief in testimony. But induction only gives us a high degree of probability. Induction does not give us truth; testimony alone gives us truth. But he admits that what induction does is to discover and prove general propositions. He insists on ascertaining individual facts, but all this is sophistry.+ Because I do not infer from some observed cases to one, unless it be the observation of all; for if not, you can draw no inference; it concludes from constant recurrence in all cases without other cause; it is true in all cases, hence in any given one; otherwise in none, unless that it is uncertain, for some are and some are not alike, or at least only probability. It never gives truth as such. "Observation of known cases" means of all known cases, or is quite false; but from all known cases universality is concluded. But this is the general proposition.
+Indeed in page 331 he says, "In strictness, indeed, the result of the problem is a general proposition." To be sure it is, and must be -- here in the case of mathematics.
The inference is to a whole class, because it is true of the whole class in all observed cases. "It does not hold at all, or it holds in all cases." Just so; but my induction is from its having been so in all observed: if it has not, I cannot infer that it will; and of cases not yet observed I only infer it of one, because I infer it of all. Only, as I have said, it tacitly but really affirms the nature of the thing. "All men are mortal" is really a conclusion as to man's nature from having known all to die as to human knowledge. All diameters of a circle are equal is the nature of a circle having all its radii equal. But here again the cloven foot comes out, that the inquiry into a scientific principle or an individual fact is just the same induction. Now, a principle or the nature of things is a matter of induction from many or all observed facts, but an individual fact (save as identical with a scientific principle) is never a matter of induction, but of testimony. I know he reasons about it to shew that I believe by an induction as to credibility; but this, however much it has its place, does not in itself give any induction in believing the fact. I believe the testimony that the fact is, and infer nothing about anything. I may shew it is folly not to believe the testimony, and infer I ought; but that is reasoning or inferring as to the testimony, if I do this (not always the ground or belief, nor even of divine faith), not as to the fact. I believe on testimony, which is no induction at all; and this in the next pages he does not deny.
Page 329). The senses or testimony must decide on the individual fact. Inductions may, of course, then be made; but what he says about the syllogism is all false, as before. It is always and only deduction, and not induction. Even in practical affairs the inference to a particular case would not be just, unless true of all such cases, for if not, this one may be a similar exception; and so he admits in the first sentence in the next chapter. It is really wearisome to pursue such absence of all exactness of mind. This definition of induction? (page 333) says all I have insisted on, as to the whole class or general proposition being its true character. But syllogism is not induction, but deduction. It does not give probability, however high, which is all induction can do, and therefore nothing certain, but a necessary and certain conclusion if the premises be true. The case Mr. Mill puts is induction, and of it syllogism says: Argumentum a particulari ad universalem nil valet, and for a deduction certain in its nature, that must be; it is an induction from given cases to a class which may or may not be well founded. It is an induction; there is a conclusion, namely that every A is B; whether it be fairly conclusive depends on circumstances. If this and that A are sufficiently numerous and none contradictory are known, then it is a fair induction, such as men have to act on. But it is not a syllogism -- must be if the premises are.
Of the use of syllogism I have spoken; it connects with certainty, by means of a middle term, ideas or an idea not connected or contained in the subject as announced, and which is called in question. Every man is an animal; every animal lives (as such) by blood; therefore man lives by blood. The middle term animal connects life by blood with man, which is supposed to be in dispute. He is wrong in saying ascertained as to every individual in it. That is not it. It is ascertained as to every individual that has come under observation, and so I conclude as to one which has not. That is induction, the nature being really always introduced, though the process be not analysed in our minds. And this view of induction he admits to be true in pages 334, 335. But syllogism is wholly distinct in its nature, and gives on admitted premises a certain conclusion from them. The induction, if it be sufficient to prove the nature, is practically sufficient so far as phenomena go; but never in se certainty. But this point of the nature of things is of great importance, though it simplifies things much.
I need not follow the mass of useless verbiage in the controversy between Mill and Dr. Whewell. Mill sums it up in one sentence as to Kepler, but shews himself wrong therein; for, as is evident, Kepler's law was an induction, only one ready-made for him in the necessary rules of an ellipse. Having found a number of places and movements of Mars, he inferred all the rest: only the inference was ready-made for him. But as to the question of nature itself, what is in Mill (ground of induction) and Whately is vague and unsatisfactory, though there is a general presentiment of truth in it. Nature and its uniformity come up in three distinct ways. First, uniformity of relative existence, that is, of what is always true in nature as it subsists, as space and form, mathematical induction, which is really merely discovery of what is constantly so. Secondly, the effects of power in nature, which may or may not operate constantly, as gravitation or certain chemical affinities or effects. Thirdly, subjection to some law or power which operates universally. The second is probably the law of nature. I do not conclude because John and Peter have died that all will. Abel's death by violence, and all men's, save eight, by the flood, could not have proved it, because it was not the course of nature that all would have died by nature; but I conclude that John and Peter will die because all have. My reason is that the universality of it, without other external cause, makes it a law of man's nature; but as it is not in the subject itself apparently, but subjection to a law of necessity, I must shew its universality in the natural course of things, which practically proves its necessity in every cause. Yet it is not proof, that is, certainty, though quasi-certainty. He who believes scripture knows we shall not all die. It is what in a person or being in his normal state is contrary to his nature, for he lives. He is subjected to it, he may be even violently. Hence I can only conclude while that subjection continues. But in chemical affinities or gravitation it is in its normal state that it so acts; it is its nature. Seeing this, namely it is its nature, the law of it if you please, I reckon on its doing so in all cases, because it is its nature. This may be both learned and confirmed by observation, and, no doubt, possibly the generalisation induced; but from one clear adequate instance or many I have its nature.
In geometrical induction it is, as I said, discovery of the nature or essential qualities of one form; and these never vary, they are the qualities of that form. What he says of only proving that that circle is only so and-so is a mistake. It is what a circle, any circle, is. Colours do not give just ground for induction. They are not what the thing is -- its nature. Black swans, however, were known -- rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno. What he says of abstraction is wrong. It abstracts a quality from all it may be found in, as whiteness; or a thing as a nature abstractedly from all in which the nature is found, as a man, or man; a circle, etc. It is not connecting known facts by common characters, but taking the characters apart from the facts. Man is so-and-so, whiteness dazzles. It is the quality of being in its nature apart from the objects in which a quality is, or individual instances of a being or an act: as "Reading much tries the mind": "Living by warm blood is the property of all beings who breathe through lungs." It is really that the nature of the thing has been discovered. In all cases it is, so far as one instance shews, the nature of the thing that the induction is sure (for mathematics is a discovered fact of relation of quantity). When it is only from all known instances (though adequately for human conclusions) and the nature of the thing not shewn, it is not, properly speaking, certain; as mortality is not the nature of man -- that is, a living being; but subjection to something which produces it. But there is another kind of inference, not from cases or all cases to the one not observed, but to the cause of the case itself. This may be from other similar cases, but not necessarily. Thus if, having gone round part of an island, I find in a strait I have not surveyed the tide setting in strong through it, I conclude it is open at the other end, for the current could not so set through it under given circumstances if it were not. This is a legitimate induction to the cause of the phenomenon, and then to the state of things which allows the cause to operate and is its formal occasion.
But I deny wholly that belief in oracles, or Whately's popular superstition, is induction from experience. They may try and justify their opinion by experience. It is evidently the power of unseen things on the human mind. Its cause is not experience. What invented it? What set it up? I do not admit any proof in induction (page 352). When one man has died, the conception of being mortal is not arrived at at all. Nor is it properly a conception. I conceive death. Mortality is a moral judgment as to the condition of the living where that conception has no place. Nor is abstraction description. But I do not dwell on these points. But if generalisation from experience be induction, it cannot be proof. In material facts of the course of nature it may, but that is not really an induction from instances, but the discovery of the uniform law of the course of nature in which we exist. It does not assume the uniformity of the laws of nature, but discovers, and in that sense proves, it in the cases where it is so. I do not (from some cases of bodies falling, since nature is uniform) infer that other bodies will fall, but learn weight or gravity as a law of nature from all bodies (not hindered) falling. What I have discovered is the law (or uniformity) from all known cases, not some from an abstract idea of uniformity.
I have no contest with uniformity of laws of material nature; my question is about the inductive process. I admit habitual experience gives a general feeling of a uniform law in the order of nature. But even in this it is only present phenomena. The sun rises and sets, and I expect it to do so. But the most accurate science says this order must have begun, and it must end. I shall be told this is a mere general law; be it so (though it makes phenomenal induction a poor and foolish thing). But it proves that proof by induction from observed instances to others, on the assumption of uniformity in the course of nature, is no solid ground of reasoning. For this reason: the earth had a beginning, that is, as Mill admits, there was a change. That is, uniformity, which means no change, is not true.
If one boldly says beginning to exist is from a law (not to say that it is nonsense), where is the proof of it as a law? from what other causes is the induction made? What was the antecedent of which its existence is the sequence (called cause)? If I am told it was the effect of cast-off portions of a revolving sun and cooling mass, what was the antecedent of that? Whatever cooling of the sun may be affirmed, if matter be inert and has been set going, some force has set it going which is not in the inert matter. So, if the uniformity of the principle of weight is there, what put it there? This regards change and beginning, and motion is change. Where there is none, the case is even plainer. "Fire burns," he tells us, does not relate to time. Of course not, but "fire burns" is a statement of its nature, and what it is as such, what consequently it always as such does. There is no inference at all from cases known to cases unknown; it is known already and always that fire burns. He tells us (page 254) that this uniformity of the course of nature, or government by general laws, "is an assumption involved in every case of induction." In page 255 again:" That the course of nature is uniform is the fundamental principle or general axiom of induction. It would yet be a great error to offer this large generalisation as any explanation of the inductive process. On the contrary, I hold it to be itself an instance of induction ... . Far from being the first induction we make, it is one of the last." This is singular. It is an assumption involved in every case of induction, the fundamental principle or general axiom of induction; but then it is a late induction -- that is, it is not an assumption at all, but an instance of induction, which of course must have been made without it, for it is one of the last inductions made-that is, it cannot have been assumed before. It is known by induction, the fruit of it; but the induction was made always by assuming it. It is always taken for granted to have proof by induction, but the induction must be made or it is not known; it is itself induction, in which it takes itself for granted.
His only answer to this is, for he admits it, that it is no more than the major of a syllogism. But this is no answer at all, for he admits that the major is necessary to prove the conclusion, though no part of the proof. What is necessary thus to prove all inductions is itself a matter of induction, when it is not there though necessary! But the answer is in itself unfounded. The major is part of the proof -- ground I have already gone over. Thus man lives by blood, therefore man is mortal. Here is no proof whatever of anything. I say, Why so? I answer, which is the major, because everything that lives by blood is mortal. My minor only brought it into this class, the major proved it was mortal. He would say, Your major had to be proved. Of course it had. But that has nothing to do with the proof of the syllogism.
In fact, moreover, universal laws of nature are not assumed. A universal law of gravity is discovered by observation, generalises withal by finding that it explains all the phenomena of movement in the universe, though gravity is only a name for the fact. But nothing of a universal law is assumed here. It is, as he admits, an induction, and an induction which could not yet be made. I find by experiment that water presses equally in every direction, another general law, but no assumption of universality. But when I find in every case coming before me that there are fixed principles of nature, and that it is in a general way necessary for the order which constitutes the kosmos, I accept it as a general principle of that kosmos -- that is, in the physical order of things. It is a result of induction. But this proves the inaccuracy of Mill in saying that it is the basis in every induction; for it is not in any of these, by which it is ascertained. That is, his principle is wholly false. Nor does it go beyond material elements or physical nature; but we cannot expect Mill to get beyond materialism.
But then to assume it is a universal basis of induction because it is in material things is wholly unfounded. He may amuse himself with chemistry from Bain and Sir John Herschel, but this is superficial work, and shews a will. He says (page 329): The validity of argument, when constructed, depends on principles, and must be tried by tests which are the same for all descriptions of inquiries. Now an inquiry whether alkalies neutralise acids is not tried by the same test as whether man is morally responsible to God, and what God is, what morality is. And Mill has shewn elsewhere the effect of this materialism in declaring his belief of an impotent God, partially good and unable to do better with the materials ready to His hand, whencesoever they came. Doubtless he had felt physical evil personally, and knew, as evidently he did not, nothing else, nothing of the truths involved in conscience. His theory is -- we are to perfect what has been made imperfectly.
The induction by simple enumeration is true where it is the expression of nature, for that reason; one instance of an effect well ascertained to be attributable to a chemical agent is so for the same reason. When I cannot say it is nature, it is the highest probability where no other cause is, as ordinary mortality. Violence, disease, or not, men equally die as to animal life; phenomenally animals the same. I then say it is the present order of nature. When I say alkalies neutralise acids, or hydrogen and oxygen in given proportions make water, I get, as far as men can ascertain, their nature as to that. And I to not, however, draw an induction properly in this case. It is the nature of alkalies, and these gases so united make water. I do not predict, save to the ignorant. They do not resemble, as Mill would say; they are the same, not in corporate unity, which has nothing to do with the matter, in action. Alkalies do that, not "have done" nor will," though each be true; they do it. When I conclude from instances to instances, it may be more or less likely, because, if tolerably many, there is probably a common cause; but it is no proof of anything: but if I ascertain the nature of the thing, that is an induction, and so far practical proof. But this only applies to material nature, not to a law binding everything with a phenomenal kosmos. Consequences prove antecedents, but only where it is the nature of the thing; sequence in itself has nothing to do with it. He admits the fact; but if it does not in one instance, it is no proof in any.THE MOST HIGH
A FEW WORDS ON THE TRINITY
THE ABSOLUTE
THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE INFINITE
EXAMINATION OF MILL'S LOGIC+