Spencer himself set the
greatest
store upon his work on ethics.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v14
There is nothing
fundamentally original about his views on these topics; but
his discussion of both illustrates his ability to see further into the
facts than his predecessors, and his candour in recording what he
sees, along, however, with a certain disinclination to pursue an
enquiry which might land him definitely on the other side of
the traditional lines. Mill's doctrine is essentially Humean, though,
as regards the external world, he prefers to call it Berkeleyan; and
here he is the inventor of a phrase: matter is 'permanent possi-
bility of sensation. ' The phrase is striking and useful; but a
possibility of sensation is not sensation, and the permanence which
2-2
## p. 20 (#50) ##############################################
20
Philosophers
[CH.
he attributes to the possibility of sensation implies an objective
order: so that the reduction of matter to sensation is implicitly
relinquished when it appears to be affirmed in words. Mind, in
somewhat similar fashion, is reduced to a succession of feelings or
states of consciousness. But the fact of memory proves a stumbling-
block in his way; he cannot explain how a succession of feelings
should be conscious of itself as a succession; and he implicitly
admits the need of a principle of unity. Thus, he almost relin-
quishes his own theory and only avoids doing so explicitly by
falling back on the assertion that here we are in presence of the
final inexplicability in which ultimate questions always merge.
In spite of the prominence of the ethical interest in his mind
and in spite, also, of numerous ethical discussions in his other
writings, Mill's sole contribution to the fundamental problem of
ethical theory was his small volume Utilitarianism, which first
appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 and wa reprinted in book-
form in 1863. Perhaps, he regarded the fundamental positions of
Benthamism as too secure to need much elaboration. What he offers
is a finely conceived and finely written defence of utilitarian ethics,
into which his own modifications of Bentham's doctrine of life are
worked. He holds that the sanctions of this doctrine are not weaker
than those of any other doctrine, and that, in its own nature, it is
neither a selfish nor a sensual theory. It is not selfish, because it
regards the pleasures of all men as of equal moment; it is not
sensual, because it recognises the superior value of intellectual,
artistic and social pleasures as compared with those of the senses.
But Mill fails in trying to establish a logical connection between
the universal reference of the ethical doctrine and the egoistic
analysis of individual action to which his psychology committed him.
And he is so determined to emphasise the superiority of the pleasures
commonly called 'higher,' that he maintains that, merely as
pleasures, they are superior in kind to the pleasures of the senses,
irrespective of any excess of the latter in respect of quantity. In
so doing he strikes at the root of hedonism, for he makes the
ultimate criterion of value reside not in pleasure itself but in that
characteristic—whatever it may turn out to be—which makes one
kind of pleasure superior to another.
Mill's social and political writings, in addition to occasional
articles, consist of the short treatise Considerations on Repre-
sentative Government (1860), Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform
(1859), the essays On Liberty (1859) and on the Subjection of
Women (1869), Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political
## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################
1]
Political and Economic Theory
21
Economy (1831, 1844) and Principles of Political Economy (1848).
The method appropriate to these topics had been already discussed
in the chapters on 'the Logic of the Moral Sciences' included in
his Logic. He sought a via media between the purely empirical
method and the deductive method. The latter, as employed by his
father, was modelled on the reasonings of geometry, which is not a
science of causation. The method of politics, if it is to be deductive,
must belong to a different type, and will (he holds) be the same
as that used in mathematical physics. Dynamics is a deductive
science because the law of the composition of forces holds ;
similarly, politics is a deductive science because the causes with
which it deals follow this law: the effects of these causes, when
conjoined, are the same as the sum of the effects which the same
causes produce when acting separately. Like his predecessors,
Mill postulated certain forces as determining human conduct:
especially, self-interest and mental association. From their working
he deduced political and social consequences. He did not diverge
from the principles agreed upon by those with whom he was
associated. Perhaps, he did not add very much to them. But he
saw their limitations more clearly than others did: the hypo-
thetical nature of economic theory, and the danger that democratic
government might prove antagonistic to the causes of individual
freedom and of the common welfare. To guard against these
dangers he proposed certain modifications of the representative
system. But his contemporaries, and even his successors of the
same way of thinking in general, for long looked upon the dangers
as imaginary, and his proposals for their removal were ignored.
The essay On Liberty—the most popular of all his works—is an
eloquent defence of the thesis that the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering
with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection,'
but, as an argument, it meets everywhere with the difficulty of
determining the precise point at which the distinction between
self-regarding and social (even directly social) activity is to be
drawn. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, accepting Mill's utilitarian
criterion, raked his positions with a fire of brilliant and incisive, if
unsympathetic, criticism in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873).
Mill's Political Economy has been variously regarded as an
improved Adam Smith and as a popularised Ricardo. Perhaps
the latter description is nearer the mark. Its essential doctrines
differ little, if at all, from those of Ricardo; the theory of the
'wages fund, for example, is formulated quite in the spirit of
a
## p. 22 (#52) ##############################################
22
[CH.
Philosophers
Ricardo, though this theory was afterwards relinquished or modi-
fied by Mill in consequence of the criticisms of William Thomas
Thornton. But the work has a breadth of treatment which
sometimes reminds one of Adam Smith: the hypothetical nature
of economic theory was not overlooked, and the applications to
social philosophy' were kept in view. In spite of his adherence
to the maxim of laissez faire, Mill recognised the possibility of
modifying the system of distribution, and, with regard to that
system, he displayed a leaning to the socialist ideal, which grew
stronger as his life advanced. His methodical and thorough
treatment of economics made his work a text-book for more than
a generation, and largely determined the scope of most of th
treatises of his own and the succeeding period, even of those
written by independent thinkers.
Mill died at Avignon in 1873. After his death, were published
his Autobiography (1873) and Three Essays on Religion: Nature
the Utility of Religion and Theism (1874). These essays were
written between 1850 and 1870 and include the author's latest
thoughts on ultimate questions. He had been educated in the
belief that speculation on ultimate questions is futile; in his works
he had always maintained the attitude afterwards called agnosticism,
for which he was willing to adopt Comte's term positivism; he
accepted, also, in general, Comte's doctrine on this point, though
always dissociating himself from the latter's political and social
theories. But, even while, in his book Auguste Comte and
Positivism (1865), accepting the view that the essential nature
and ultimate causes of things are inscrutable, he holds that this
'positive mode of thought is not necessarily a denial of the super-
natural,' but only throws it back beyond the limits of science. His
posthumous essays show a further development. In that on nature
(the earliest of the series), he dwells upon the imperfections of the
cosmic order as showing that it cannot have been the creation of a
being of infinite goodness and power; in the last essay of the
volume, he approaches a tentative and limited form of theism
the doctrine of a finite God.
a
For more than a generation Mill's influence was dominant in
all departments of philosophical and political thought; he had
the initiative, and set the problems for his opponents as well as
for his adherents ; and his works became university text-books.
This holds of politics, economics, ethics, psychology and logic.
A striking reaction against his influence is shown in the work of
## p. 23 (#53) ##############################################
1]
Alexander Bain
23
William Stanley Jevons, professor at Manchester and afterwards
in London, whose economic and logical writings are distinguished
by important original ideas. In his Theory of Political Economy
(1871), he introduced the conception of final (or marginal) utility,
which, subsequently, has been greatly developed in the analytic
and mathematical treatment of the subject. In logic, also, he laid
the foundations for a mathematical treatment in his Pure Logic
(1864) and Substitution of Similars (1869); and, in his Principles
of Science (1874), he fully elaborated his theory of scientific infer-
ence, a theory which diverged widely from the theory of induction
expounded by Mill. As time went on, Jevons became more and
more critical of the foundations of Mill's empirical philosophy,
which he attacked unsparingly in discussions contributed to Mind.
George Grote, the historian of Greece, an older contemporary
and early associate of Mill, deserves mention here not only for his
works on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, but, also, for some
independent contributions to ethics, published together under
the title Fragments on Ethical Subjects (1876). He had little
sympathy with Mill’s approximations to types of thought opposed
to the traditional utilitarianism. In this respect he agreed with
Alexander Bain, professor at Aberdeen, a writer of far greater
importance in a philosophical regard. Bain was younger than
Mill and long outlived him; he assisted him in some of his works,
especially the Logic; he wrote numerous works himself; but his
pre-eminence was in psychology, to which his chief contributions
were two elaborate books, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and
The Emotions and the Will (1859). The psychology of James Mill
and of J. S. Mill was, in the main, derived from Hartley; but
it was Hartley as expurgated by Priestley, Hartley with the
physiology left out? Bain reinstated the physiological factor, not
in Hartley's rather speculative manner, but by introducing facts of
nerve and muscle whenever they could serve to elucidate mental
process. That came to be, as a rule, whenever the mental
process itself was obscure or difficult. The result is sometimes
confusing, because it mixes two different orders of scientific con-
ceptions. But Bain's work is wonderfully complete as a treatment
of the principle of the association of ideas; and, perhaps, he has
said the last word that can be said in favour of this principle as
the ultimate explanation of mind. His range of vision may have
been narrow, but he had a keen eye for everything within that
range. He was persistent in his search for facts and shrewd in
i Cf. ante, p. 5.
## p. 24 (#54) ##############################################
24
[CH.
Philosophers
6
examining them; and he had no illusions-except the great
illusion that mind is a bundle of sensations tied together by laws
of association. It is interesting to note how this clear-sighted and
unimaginative writer made observations which suggest doctrines,
different from his own, which have gained prominence later. His
observations on spontaneous movement and his teaching as to fixed
ideas strike at the roots of the analysis of volition to which he
adhered, and might lead naturally to a view of mind as essentially
active and no mere grouping of sensations or feelings. He offered,
also, a new analysis of belief (though he subsequently withdrew it)
which resolved it into a preparedness to act; and, here, the latent
'activism’ in his thinking might have led, if developed, to
something of the nature of pragmatism.
George Croom Robertson, professor in University college,
London, was in general sympathy with Mill's school of thought,
tempered, however, by wide knowledge and appreciation of other
developments, including those of recent philosophy. Circumstances
prevented his producing much literary work beyond a few articles
and an admirable monograph on Hobbes (1886). He is remembered
not only for these, and for his lectures, some of which have been
published (1896), but, also, for his skilful and successful work as
editor of Mind during the first sixteen years of its existence.
Mind was the first English journal devoted to psychology and
philosophy, and its origin in 1876 is a landmark in the history of
British philosophy.
a
In Mill's day and afterwards there was an active, though not
very widespread, propaganda of the positive philosophy of Comte.
The study of Comte's system was greatly facilitated by the admirable
condensed translation of his Positive Philosophy issued by Harriet
Martineau in 1853. The chief teachers of positivist doctrine in
England were a group of writers who had been contemporaries at
Oxford; but a serious disagreement arose amongst them regarding
the prominence to be given to the inculcation of Comte’s ‘religion
of humanity. ' Their activity was shown in lectures and addresses
and in many translations of Comte's works. The Catechism of
positive religion was translated by Richard Congreve in 1858;
Comte's General View of Positivism by John Henry Bridges in
1865; and System of Positive Polity by Bridges and Frederick
Harrison in 1875. Their independent writings were inspired by
the positivist spirit, even when they did not add much to its
defence on philosophical grounds. In The Unity of Comte's Life
## p. 25 (#55) ##############################################
1]
John Grote
25
and Doctrine (1866), Bridges replied to the criticisms of J. S. Mill.
He published, also, Five Discourses on Positive Religion in 1882;
and his Essays and Addresses (1907) were collected and edited
after his death.
V. RATIONAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHERS
Although Mill's fame overshadowed the other philosophers of
his day, there were a number of contemporary writers who were
not merely his followers or critics, but independent thinkers.
Of note among these was John Grote, younger brother of the
historian, who held the chair of moral philosophy at Cambridge
from 1855 to 1866. Grote himself issued only one volume on
philosophy-Exploratio Philosophica, Part 1 (1865). After his
death three volumes were compiled from his manuscripts: An
Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy in 1870, A Treatise on
the Moral Ideals in 1876 and the second part of Exploratio in
1900. They are all 'rough notes'-as the author himself describes
the first on its title-page. They have no place in literature. Grote
thought and wrote simply to get at the truth of things and without
any view of impressing the public. A ‘belief in thought' upheld
him: 'a feeling that things were worth thinking about, that
thought was worth effort. ' He did not seek reputation as a
philosophical writer, and he has not gained it. His direct
influence has been restricted to a limited number of other
thinkers, through whom it has passed to wider circles without any
definite trace of its origin. His books are largely filled with
criticism of contemporary writers. But none of the criticism is
merely destructive: it aims always at elucidating the core of
truth in other men's opinions, with a view to a comprehensive
synthesis. Often it leads to bringing out important doctrines
which, if not altogether new, are set in a new light. An instance
of this is his whole doctrine of the scale of sensation or know-
ledge,' and, in particular, the elaboration and application of the
distinction of two kinds of knowledge or, rather, the twofold
process of knowledge, which he formulated as the distinction
between acquaintance with a thing and knowing about it. He
sought to assign its due value to phenomenalism or positivism, at
the same time as he contended for the more complete view-
‘rationary' or idealist—which recognised in positivism ‘an ab-
straction from the complete view of knowledge. ' Similarly, in
moral philosophy, there was a science of virtue, or 'aretaics,
## p. 26 (#56) ##############################################
26
[CH.
Philosophers
existing side by side with 'eudaemonics,' or the science of happi-
ness. Fundamentally, his theory is a doctrine of thought: 'the
fact that we know is prior to, and logically more comprehensive
than, the fact that what we know is. ' To be known, things must
be knowable, or fitted for knowledge. “Knowledge is the sym-
pathy of intelligence with intelligence, through the medium of
qualified or particular existence. '
Religious philosophy in England was stimulated and advanced
by the work of three men all born in the year 1805. These were
Maurice, Newman and Martineau. Frederick Denison Maurice?
had already an ecclesiastical career behind him when, in 1866, he
succeeded Grote as professor at Cambridge. Of his numerous
works only a few deal with philosophy; the most important of
these, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, originally appeared
in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana in 1847 and is a historical
sketch which is chiefly devoted to ancient thought. Maurice's
influence was due to his personality more than to his books; and
he was a social reformer and religious teacher rather than a philo-
sopher. But his work, both in social reform and in religion, derived
stimulus and direction from philosophical ideas. John Henry
Newman’ was still less of a philosopher, though his Grammar of
Assent propounds a theory of the nature and grounds of belief.
More significant, however, is the appearance in Newman's work of
the idea of development, which was beginning to transform all
departments of thought: for the quasi-mechanical view with which
he started of a fixed norm of belief existing in the past, he
substituted the view of the church as an organism whose life
and doctrine were in process of growth. The only philosopher
among those who joined the Roman church about the same time
as Newman was William George Ward, who, in various articles,
carried on a controversy with Mill concerning free-will and
necessary truth. These and other articles were collected after
his death and published as Essays on the Philosophy of Theism
(1884).
Of much greater importance than these, in a philosophical
regard, was James Martineau. His philosophy, also, was essen-
tially religious philosophy; individual freedom and the being and
presence of God were his fundamental certainties, and these he
defended in many writings during his long life. His earlier works
were mainly religious rather than philosophical, though, in a series
1 See, ante, vol. xn, chap. Xm.
; Ibid. chap. XII.
## p. 27 (#57) ##############################################
1]
Herbert Spencer
27
of essays, he showed his power as a critic of materialism and
naturalism, and gave an outline of the ethical views which he
afterwards worked out in detail. He was eighty years old, or
upwards, when his chief books appeared— Types of Ethical Theory
(1885), A Study of Religion (1888), and The Seat of Authority in
Religion (1890). The first of these is the most notable, and works
out the original view of the moral criterion which had been
previously indicated by him. It suffers from faulty arrangement,
from the undue prominence given to the psychological factor in
moral judgment and from the incompleteness of the psychological
analysis. As a whole it does not impress the reader. But, taken
in detail, it is seen to be full of penetrating criticism, and to be
inspired by insight into the spiritual meaning of life. Traces of
age are to be found only in its defective order and, perhaps, in its
diffuseness; its style shows no marks of weariness: it is brilliant,
pellucid, eloquent, rhetorical sometimes and coloured by emotion,
but never falls below the dignity of his theme. Martineau did
not make any important advance in speculative construction; he
was not in sympathy with the idealist metaphysic that had risen
to the ascendant in England even before his books were published;
the ideas which he elucidated and defended were those which had
been distinctive of spiritual thought for many centuries. In his
criticisms, on the other hand, he did not restrict himself to the
older forms of materialist and sensationalist doctrine; he was
prompt to recognise the difference made by more recent scientific
views, and he showed no lack of power or effectiveness in dealing
with the claims of the philosophy of evolution.
VI. HERBERT SPENCER AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF
EVOLUTION
a
.
The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 marks
a turning-point in the history of thought. It had a revolutionary
effect upon the view of the world held by educated men similar
to that which had been produced, more slowly, three centuries
before, by the work of Copernicus ; on philosophical ideas its
influence may, perhaps, be better compared with that of the
theory of mechanics chiefly due to Galileo. The latter contributed
to philosophy the conception of nature as a mechanical system ;
Darwin contributed the conception of evolution and, owing largely
to his influence, biological ideas gained greater prominence than
mathematical in philosophical construction.
## p. 28 (#58) ##############################################
28
[CH.
Philosophers
1
The acknowledged leader of the new movement in philosophy
was Herbert Spencer. He was born at Derby on 27 April 1820,
and his early training was as an engineer. This profession he
relinquished at the age of twenty-five. He had previously, in
1842, contributed a series of letters on the Proper Sphere of
Government' to The Nonconformist, and, from 1848 to 1853
he acted as sub-editor of The Economist. In these years he
wrote his book Social Statics (1850) and began the publication
of longer essays in reviews, among which mention should be
made of the essays "The Development Hypothesis' (1852), “The
Genesis of Science' (1854) and Progress : its law and cause
(1857). He also published Principles of Psychology, in one
volume, in 1855. His essays show, even by their titles, that he
was working towards a theory of evolution before he had any
knowledge of Darwin's researches, the results of which were
still unpublished. Then, in 1860, he issued his ‘Programme
of a System of Synthetic Philosophy,' on which he had been
at work for some time, and to the elaboration of which he
devoted his life. It is impossible to speak too highly of the
single-minded purpose with which he carried out this task, in spite
of inherent and extraneous difficulties. He continued to work,
without haste and without rest, publishing First Principles in
1862, Principles of Biology (two volumes) in 1864—7, Prin-
ciples of Psychology (two volumes) in 1870—2, Principles of
Sociology (three volumes) in 1876—96 and Principles of Ethics
(two volumes) in 1879–92. Besides these he designed a series
of charts of Descriptive Sociology, which were compiled by his
assistants, until the work had to be suspended from lack of funds ;
and he also produced smaller works on Education (1861), The
Classification of the Sciences (1864), The Study of Sociology
(1872), The Man versus The State (1884) and Factors of Organic
Evolution (1887). Thus, his perseverance enabled him to complete
his scheme : except, indeed, that he omitted the detailed treat-
ment of inorganic evolution, and thus gained the incidental
advantage of avoiding the awkward problem of the origin of life.
And he produced a considerable amount of subsidiary writing,
including an Autobiography (published in 1904, the year after his
death), which contains a minute and elaborate account of his life,
character and work.
Spencer's idea of philosophy is a system of completely
coordinated knowledge—the sciences consisting of knowledge
partially coordinated. In this sense his system is synthetic. It
## p. 29 (#59) ##############################################
1]
The Unknowable
29
is a scheme in which everything is to find its place, and is to
be seen as a resultant of a single principle. His elaboration of
this scheme approaches completeness, and, in this respect, his
system stands by itself: no other English thinker since Bacon
and Hobbes had even attempted anything so vast. The system
itself fitted in admirably, also, with the scientific conceptions of the
early Darwinians, and thus obtained wide currency in all English-
speaking countries and, to a less extent, on the continent of
Europe. Darwin hailed him as 'our great philosopher,' for he
made evolution a universal solvent and not merely a means for
explaining the different forms of plants and animals. At the same
time, the support which it received from modern science seemed
to give Spencer's philosophy a more secure position than that
of those speculative systems of which the English mind tended
to be suspicious.
The view of philosophy as science further coordinated brings
Spencer's doctrine into line with positivism. He did not, however,
entirely ignore the question of the nature of ultimate reality.
Perhaps, he was not much interested in questions of the kind, and
he had certainly small acquaintance with previous speculation
regarding them. But he had great skill in adapting current
doctrines to his uses; and he found what he needed in the doctrine
of the relativity of knowledge set forth by Hamilton and Mansel.
On this he based his doctrine of the limits of knowledge. But
he found, as others have found, that it was necessary to recognise
something which lay beyond the sphere of exact knowledge.
Hamilton had called this the sphere of belief; Spencer says that
we have an indefinite consciousness of what he nevertheless calls
the unknowable. The nature of this indefinite consciousness is
not explained by him; yet, its object is not treated by him, as one
would expect it to be, as a mere blank; it is said to be “growing
clearer'; the unknowable is constantly referred to as a power,
and it is even asserted that it makes for the happiness of
mankind. These inconsistencies soften his paradox that religion
and science can be reconciled by assigning to the latter the
region of the knowable and restricting the former to the un-
knowable. On his view, all that we know consists of mani-
festations of the inscrutable power behind phenomena ; and
these manifestations depend ultimately upon a single first prin-
ciple—the persistence of force. Spencer's interpretation of this
principle is somewhat flexible and has been attacked by mathe-
maticians and physicists as loose and unscientific. Nevertheless,
## p. 30 (#60) ##############################################
30
Philosophers
[ch.
Spencer holds that from it every other scientific principle must be
deduced-even the law of evolution itself. He has provided a
'formula,' or, rather, definition, of evolution. He defines it as
an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during
which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a
definite coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion
undergoes a parallel transformation.
All phenomena of whatever kind are subject to this law. It is
throughout conceived as a law of progress, which will issue in
a highest state establishing the extremest multiformity and most
complete moving equilibrium. ' But this stage, also, cannot be
permanent; and Spencer contemplates the history of the universe
as a succession of cycles—'alternate eras of evolution and dis-
solution. '
Spencer displayed much ingenuity in fitting organic, mental
and social facts into this mechanical framework.
His early
training as an engineer seems to have influenced his ideas. He
built a system as he might have built a bridge. It was a problem
of strains and of the adaptation of material. Regarded thus, the
whole problem was mechanical and had to be solved in terms
of matter and motion. His purpose was, as he says, 'to interpret
the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of matter,
motion, and force. ' Hence, life, mind and society are treated as
stages of increasing complexity in phenomena of the same kind,
and-80 far as this treatment is adhered to—the characteristic
functions of each stage are left unexplained. But the method
of treatment is supplemented by another in which the facts are
dealt with more directly. This is seen especially in psychology,
where the subjective aspect' is recognised with only a suggestion
of an attempt to deduce it from the objective aspect. Spencer
was a keen observer and fertile in his reflections on what he
observed. His power of coordinating facts may, perhaps, be seen
at its best in his Psychology and Sociology. His generalisations
may be often unsound; but, if we compare these works with
earlier and then with later treatises on the same subjects, it
is not possible to deny the great stimulus to thought which
they gave.
Spencer himself set the greatest store upon his work on ethics.
To it, he said, all his other work led up; and this induced him to
issue the first part of it-called The Data of Ethics—out of due
order and before his Sociology was completed. The first part is
undoubtedly the most instructive section of the book as ultimately
6
## p. 31 (#61) ##############################################
1]
Spencer's Individualism
31
finished. The facts of morality are regarded as belonging to the
same order of evolution as the facts dealt with in previous
volumes, being only more special and complicated ; full con-
sideration is given to their biological, sociological and psycho-
logical aspects ; the respective rights of egoism and of altruism
are defended ; and the ethics of evolution is distinguished from
the utilitarian ethics not by having some other ultimate end than
happiness but by its different method and working criterion.
Where the author fails is in giving any adequate proof for his assump-
tion that evolution tends to greatest happiness—an assumption
upon which his ethical theory depends. And, like all the ex-
ponents of the ethics of evolution who have followed him, he
does not distinguish clearly between the historical process
explained by the law of evolution and the ground of its authority
for conduct—if such authority be claimed for it. He finds the
standard for right conduct in what he calls 'absolute ethics,'
by which he means a description of the conduct of fully-evolved
man in fully-evolved surroundings. In this state, there will be
complete adaptation between the individual and his environment;
so that, even if action is still possible, no choice of better or worse
will remain. The system of absolute ethics is worked out in the
succeeding parts of the work, but with very meagre success.
Indeed, at the end, the author is fain to admit that evolution had
not helped him to the extent he had anticipated.
In his ethical, and still more in his political, writings we see
the supreme value set by Spencer on the individual, and the
very restricted functions which he allowed to the state or other
organised community of individuals. The point is not, perhaps,
easy to reconcile with the doctrine of evolution as otherwise
expounded by him. But there were two things which seem to
have been more fundamental in his thought than evolution itself.
One of these has been already referred to as the group of ideas
which may be described as mechanism and which is exhibited
both in the basis and in the plan of his whole structure. The
other is his strong bias towards individualism. If the former may
plausibly be connected with his training as an engineer, the
origin of the latter may, with still greater probability, be traced
to the doctrines current in that circle of liberalism in which he
was nurtured. He wrote political essays and a political treatise
(Social Statics) before his mind seems to have been attracted
by the conception of evolution ; and, although, in some points,
he afterwards modified the teaching of that treatise, its essential
## p. 32 (#62) ##############################################
32
[CH.
Philosophers
ideas and its spirit characterise his latest writings on political
theory. It showed ingenuity rather than insight on his part to
bring them within the grasp of the evolution doctrine ; but, in
spite of many criticisms, he held steadfastly to his doctrine of
what has been called 'administrative nihilism. '
6
No other writer rivalled Spencer's attempt at a reconstruc-
tion of the whole range of human thought. But many of his
contemporaries preceded or followed him in applying the new
doctrine of evolution to the problems of life, mind and society.
Some of these were men of science, who felt that an instrument
had been put into their hands for extending its frontiers ; others
were primarily interested in moral and political questions, or in
philosophy generally, and evolution seemed to provide them with
a key to old difficulties and a new view of the unity of reality.
Darwin himself, though he never posed as a philosopher, was
aware of the revolutionary effect which his researches had upon
men's views of the universe as a whole; what was more im-
portant, he made a number of shrewd and suggestive observations
on morals and on psychology in his Descent of Man and, also,
in his later volume The Expression of the Emotions. But his
contributions were only incidental to his biological work. Others,
writing under the intellectual influence which he originated, were
concerned more directly with problems of philosophy.
Among these writers the first place may be given to George
Henry Lewes, although, in his earlier works, he was influenced
by Comte, not by Darwin. Lewes was a man of marvellous
literary versatility as essayist, novelist, biographer and expositor
of popular science. This versatility also marks his work in
philosophy. At first Comte's influence was supreme. His philo-
sophical publications began with The Biographical History of
Philosophy (1845–6), a slight and inaccurate attempt to cover
a vast field, and apparently designed to show that the field
was not worth the tillage ; later editions of this work, however,
not only greatly increased its extent and removed many blemishes
but showed the author's ability to appreciate other points of
view than that from which he had started. After an interval,
he produced books entitled Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences
(1853) and Aristotle : a chapter from the history of science (1864).
But, for a long time, Lewes had been at work on investigations
of a more constructive and original kind, partly philosophical and
partly scientific, the results of which were not fully published at
## p. 33 (#63) ##############################################
1]
George Henry Lewes
33
the time of his death in 1878. These results were contained in
Problems of Life and Mind, the first two volumes of which,
entitled The Foundations of a Creed, appeared in 1874–5, and
the fifth and final volume in 1879. In this work the author has
advanced far from his early Comtism, and it shows, in many
respects, a much more adequate comprehension of philosophical
problems than can be found in Spencer, whose knowledge of
the history of thought was limited and sketchy, and whose
criticisms of other philosophers were nearly always external-in
the worst sense of the word. But Lewes had fitted himself for
writing, not only by original researches in physiology and related
branches of science, but, also, by a considerable and sympathetic
study of modern philosophy. He is thus able to appeal to other
readers than those who have limited their intellectual enquiries
to a predetermined range. He rejected as 'metempirical' what lay
beyond possible experience; but he would not, like Spencer, affect
;
to derive comfort from the unknowable. There was room for
metaphysics, he thought, as the science of the highest generalities,
or the codification of the most abstract laws of cause, and he
sought to transform it by reducing it to the method of science.
In working out this aim, he relied on and illustrated the dis-
tinction between immediate experience or 'feeling' and the
symbols or conceptual constructions used for its codification.
He also criticised the current mechanical interpretation of organic
processes, holding that sensibility was inherent in nervous sub-
stance. And he was one of the first to emphasise the importance
of the social factor in the development of mind and to exhibit
its working. He defended the conception of the 'general mind,
not as expressing a separate entity, but as a symbol ; and, for him,
the individual mind, also, was a symbol. The problems with which
he dealt were partly general-enquiries into knowledge, truth
and certitude-partly psychophysical and psychological. His
Problems shows the prolonged and eager reflection of an active
mind. In it the multifarious writings of many years were reduced
and expanded. But it may be doubted whether the reduction
was carried far enough. There is a good deal of repetition, but
hardly a central argument; the separate discussions are often
important and suggestive ; but the fundamental position re-
garding subject and object does not seem to be adequately
defended or even made perfectly clear. Lewes had more philo-
sophical insight than Spencer, but he had not the latter's
architectonic genius.
-
E. L. XIV.
CH. I.
3
## p. 34 (#64) ##############################################
34
Philosophers
[CH.
>
cause.
Thomas Henry Huxley, the distinguished zoologist and advocate
of Darwinism, made many incursions into philosophy, and always
with effect. From his youth he had studied its problems un-
systematically; he had a way of going straight to the point in
any discussion; and, judged by a literary standard, he was a great
master of expository and argumentative prose. Apart from his
special work in science, he had an important influence upon
English thought through his numerous addresses and essays on
topics of science, philosophy, religion and politics. Among the
most important of his papers relevant here are those entitled “The
Physical Basis of Life’(1868), and 'On the Hypothesis that Animals
are Automata' (1874), along with a monograph on Hume (1879)
and the Romanes lecture Ethics and Evolution (1893) Huxley
is credited with the invention of the term 'agnosticism' to describe
his philosophical position : it expresses his attitude towards certain
traditional questions without giving any clear delimitation of the
frontiers of the knowable. He regards consciousness as a collateral
effect of certain physical causes, and only an effect-never, also, a
But, on the other hand, he holds that matter is only
a symbol, and that all physical phenomena can be analysed into
states of consciousness. This leaves mental facts in the peculiar
position of being collateral effects of something that, after all, is
only a symbol for a mental fact; and the contradiction, or apparent
contradiction, is left without remark. His contributions to ethics
are still more remarkable. In a paper entitled Science and Morals'
(1888), he concluded that the safety of morality lay'in a real and
living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social dis-
organisation on the track of immorality. His Romanes lecture
reveals a different tone. In it, the moral order is contrasted with the
cosmic order; evolution shows constant struggle; instead of looking
to it for moral guidance, he 'repudiates the gladiatorial theory of
existence. ' He saw that the facts of historical process did not
constitute validity for moral conduct; and his plain language com-
pelled others to see it also. But he exaggerated the opposition
between them and did not leave room for the influence of moral
ideas as a factor in the historical process.
Another man of science, William Kingdon Clifford, professor
of mathematics in London, dealt in occasional essays with some
central points in the theory of knowledge, ethics and religion.
In these essays he aimed at an interpretation of life in the light of
the new science. There was insight as well as courage in all he
wrote, and it was conveyed in a brilliant style. But his work was
a
a
## p. 35 (#65) ##############################################
1]
Influence of Evolutionary Thought 35
cut short by his early death in 1879, and his contributions to
philosophy remain suggestions only.
It was natural that men of science with a philosophical turn of
mind should be among the first to work out the more general
consequences of the theory of evolution. But the wide range
which the theory might cover was fairly obvious, and was seen by
others who approached philosophy from the point of view of studies
other than the natural sciences. Foremost among these was
Leslie Stephen, a man of letters keenly interested in the moral
sciences. The portion of his writings which bear upon philosophy
.
is small only in relation to his total literary output. His History
of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876) places the
philosophers and moralists in their due position in the whole
literary activity of the period, and is penetrating and usually just
in its estimate of their work. A further stage of the same history
-The English Utilitarians (1900)—was completed towards the
end of his life. His own independent contribution is given in The
Science of Ethics (1882). After Spencer's Data, this is the first
book which worked out an ethical view determined by the theory
of evolution. As such it is significant. The author had sat at the
feet of John Stuart Mill; he had eagerly welcomed Darwin as an
ally of the empirical and utilitarian creed; but he came to see that
more extensive changes were necessary. Spencer's compromise
between hedonism and evolutionism failed to satisfy him, and he
found the ethical bearing of evolution better expressed by the
conception of social vitality than by that of pleasure. The great
merit of the work consists in its presentation of the social content
of morality in the individual mind as well as in the community;
but it does not sufficiently recognise the distinction between the
historical process traced by the evolution theory and the ethical
validity which evolution is assumed to possess.
The transformation of the biological sciences by the theory of
evolution was connected with a wider movement, which consisted
in the greatly extended use of the historical method in explaining
the nature of things. This applies chiefly to the social sciences.
It is to be remembered that both Darwin and Wallace owed the
suggestion of their hypothesis of natural selection to a work on
social theory. The underlying doctrine was, simply, that facts were
to be understood by tracing their origins and historical connections.
How far this historical understanding could take the enquirer
3-2
## p. 36 (#66) ##############################################
36
[CH.
Philosophers
a
became the point at issue between what inay be called the evolu-
tion philosophy and its critics : it may be expressed in the question
whether or not origin determines validity. It was only gradually,
however, that the point of controversy became clear; and, mean-
while, the application of the historical method vastly aided the
understanding of the social order. In this reference, the treatise
entitled Ancient Law (1861) by Sir Henry Maine marks an epoch in
the study of law and institutions, and it had a much wider influence
upon thought generally by furthering the use of the method which
it employed. An early example of the application of the same
method in economics may be found in the series of essays by Thomas
Edward Cliffe Leslie, republished as Essays in Political Economy
(1888); and the historical side of economics has subsequently
been exhaustively worked.
Walter Bagehot’s Physics and Politics (1869) is still more closely
connected with the doctrine of evolution. It is described on the title-
page as 'thoughts on the application of the principles of natural
selection and inheritance to political society. ' Luminous and sug-
gestive though these studies are, it cannot be said that the influence
of the theory of evolution expresses the leading characteristic of
Bagehot’s mind, especially as shown in his other political and
economic works—The English Constitution (1867), Lombard
Street (1873), and Economic Studies (1880). It was his insight
into the actual forces, especially the human forces, at work that
chiefly distinguished his treatment. Whereas even Mill looked
upon economic and political processes as due to the composition
of a few simple forces such as desire of wealth and aversion
from labour, Bagehot knew the actual men who were doing the
work, and he recognised the complexity of their motives and the
degree in which they were influenced by habit, tradition and
imitation. In this way he gave a great impulse to realistic study,
as contrasted with the abstract method of the older economics and
politics.
6
VII. HENRY SIDGWICK AND SHADWORTH HODGSON
These writers had not much in common beyond the two points
which have led to their being placed together here. They both
saw that evolution was not an 'open sesame' to the secrets of
philosophy, and neither owed allegiance to the idealist movement
which rose to prominence in their time. They were probably
## p. 37 (#67) ##############################################
1]
Henry Sidgwick
37
the ablest and most influential writers who made independent
advances on lines more closely connected with the older English
tradition.
Sidgwick taught philosophy for many years at Cambridge, and
held the chair of moral philosophy there from 1883 until 1900, the
year of his death. His reputation as a philosophical writer was
made by his first book, The Methods of Ethics (1874). He after-
wards published treatises on a similar scale on political economy
and on politics ; and, after his death, various occasional articles
were issued in collected form, and a considerable series of books
was compiled from his manuscripts, dealing with general philosophy,
with contemporary ethical systems and with political constitutions.
Within certain limits, Sidgwick may be regarded as a follower of
John Stuart Mill, at least in ethics, politics and economics. In
these subjects he took Mill's views as the basis of his own criticisms
and reflections, and he accepted the utilitarian criterion. At the
same time, he gave much more weight than Mill had done to the
intellectualist tradition in philosophy. He saw that the empirical
philosophy was based on conceptions which it was unable to justify
by its customary method of tracing their origin in experience.
This did not lead, however, to any agreement with Kant's analysis
of knowledge. He was an adverse and somewhat unsympathetic
critic of the Kantian theory. He inclined, rather, to a return to
the 'natural realism' of Thomas Reid, on the question of the
knowledge of external reality; and his ethical doctrine includes
a synthesis of the views of Clarke and Butler with those of
Mill.
His first book remains his most striking contribution to philo-
sophy and the most accurate index of his philosophical attitude.
In spite of his utilitarian sympathies, its starting-point and most
fundamental ideas show the influence of a different type of thought.
He starts with the fundamental notion of ought'or duty, and argues
that enquiries into its origin in our consciousness do not affect its
validity. The knowledge that there is something right or rational
to be done depends, in the last resort, upon an intuition or imme-
diate view of what is right or reasonable. All the old arguments
of the utilitarians are swept away; the analysis of conduct into
pursuit of pleasure is shown not only to be itself incorrect, but to
be irreconcilable with the acceptance of general happiness as the
ethical end. His own utilitarianism is based upon a new synthesis
of intuitionism and empiricism. Here enters his central doctrine
of the 'axioms of the practical reason. ' These do not prescribe
6
## p. 38 (#68) ##############################################
38
[CH.
Philosophers
any concrete end as good—that has to be determined in another
way; but they are formal principles eternally valid whatever the
nature of goodness may prove to be. To these formal principles
are given the names prudence, benevolence and justice; but
they include much less than is usually covered by these terms and
may, perhaps, be adequately summed up in the statement that
neither the time at which, nor the person by whom, a good is
enjoyed affects the degree of its goodness. From the distinction
and yet equal validity of the axioms of prudence and benevolence,
Sidgwick's ethical theory terminates in a doctrine of the dualism
of the practical reason. ' It would appear, however, that this
dualism really arises from the ambiguity of the term prudence,
which may mean either regard for one's own good on the whole
or (what is not the same thing) the principle that 'hereafter as
such is neither less nor more valuable than now. Only the latter
has a claim to be regarded as an absolute ethical principle;
and it is not inconsistent with the axiom of benevolence. The
other side of his utilitarianism—the reduction of goodness to
terms of pleasure-is carried out by analysing conscious life into
its elements and showing that each in its turn (except pleasure),
when taken alone, cannot be regarded as ultimate good. This
analytic method is characteristic of Sidgwick's thinking, as it was
of that of most of his predecessors—intuitionist as well as empirical.
It rests on the assumption that the nature of a thing can be com-
pletely ascertained by examination of the separate elements into
which it can be distinguished by reflection-an assumption which
was definitely discarded by the contemporary school of idealists,
and on which the evolutionist writers also do not seem to have
relied.
As was natural, therefore, Sidgwick did not produce a system
of philosophy. He made many suggestions towards construction,
but, in the main, his work was critical. He was severely critical of
the attempts at speculative construction made in his day, and he
carried on some controversies in which his subtlety and wit had
full play: neither Spencer nor Green was his match in dialectics.
It was not, however, of systems and theories only that he was
a great critic. His powers are seen at their highest when he
analysed and described the moral opinions of ordinary men, not as
they are reflectively set down in philosophical books, but as they
are expressed in life, compact of reason and tradition, fused by
emotion and desire. The third book of his Methods of Ethics
consists, in large part, of an examination of the morality of
## p. 39 (#69) ##############################################
1]
Shadworth Hodgson
39
commonsense. It is an elucidation and sifting of the ideas under
which men act, often without clear consciousness of them; and it
shows the sympathetic apprehension of a mind which shares the
thoughts it describes and can yet see them in perspective and sum
up their significance. Both the excellence of the matter and the
distinction of the style should give at least this portion of his
work a permanent place in literature.
Shadworth Hodgson's life was an example of rare devotion to
philosophy. He had no profession and filled no public office, but
spent his time in systematic reflection and writing; and his long
life gave him the opportunity of reviewing, confirming and im-
proving upon his first thoughts. There were two periods in his
activity. In the former of these he published three books: Time
and Space in 1865, The Theory of Practice in 1870 and The
Philosophy of Reflection in 1878. Shortly thereafter he was
instrumental in founding the Aristotelian Society for the sys-
tematic study of philosophy,' and he remained its president for
fourteen years. This led to contact with other minds who looked
at the same subjects from different points of view. He read many
papers to the society, which were published in pamphlet form and
in its Proceedings, and he built up his own system afresh in the
light of familiar criticism. It took final form in The Metaphysic
of Experience, a work of four volumes published in 1898.
As an analysis of experience, Hodgson's philosophy falls into
line with a characteristic English tradition. It agrees with this
tradition, also, in taking the simple feeling as the ultimate datum
of experience. But, even here, and wherever there is experience,
there is a distinction to be drawn—not the traditional distinction
between subject and object, but that between consciousness and
its object. Always, there are two aspects in any bit of experience
that of the object itself and that of the awareness of it or the sub-
jective aspect; and these two are connected by the relation of
knowledge. The sciences are concerned with the objective aspect
only; philosophy has to deal with the subjective aspect, or the
conscious process which is fundamental and common to all the
variety of objects. Beyond this conscious reference there is nothing.
The mirage of absolute existence, wholly apart from knowledge,
is a common-sense prejudice. ' Consciousness is commensurate
with being; all existence has a subjective aspect. But this
doctrine, he holds, is misinterpreted when mind and body are
supposed to interact or when mental and bodily facts are regarded
## p. 40 (#70) ##############################################
40
[CH.
Philosophers
!
2
as parallel aspects of the same substance. In psychology, Hodgson
may be called a materialist, unfit as that name would be to
describe his philosophical attitude. Ideas do not determine one
another, nor does desire cause volition; the only real condition
known to us is matter. And yet matter itself is a composite exist-
ence; it can be analysed into empirical percepts; and, therefore,
it is itself conditioned by something which is not material : the
very term existence implies relativity to some sort of consciousness
or other. This is the conclusion of the general analysis of ex-
perience. Of the unseen world which lies beyond the material
part of the world we cannot, he contends, have any speculative
knowledge. But the ethical judgment and our own moral nature
bring us into practical relation with that unseen world and thus
permit a positive, although not a speculative, knowledge of it. In
this way, in the final issue of his philosophy as well as in its
fundamental positions, Hodgson regards himself as correcting and
completing the work of Kant.
VIII. IDEALISTS
a
The latter half of the nineteenth century was marked by the
work of a number of writers who were influenced by the specu-
lations which, in Germany, had turned the results of Kant's
criticism into a direction which he had not anticipated. This
influence, which they shared, and their constant controversy with
current empirical philosophy united these writers into what may be
termed a school; and this school is sometimes described as neo-
Kantian, more commonly as Hegelian or neo-Hegelian. But its
members describe it simply as idealism, though it is an idealism of
a form new in English thought. Before them, Kant's speculative
successors had not obtained currency in England, unless, perhaps,
in a slight measure, through some of the utterances of Coleridge ;
and the powerful influence of Hamilton's criticism had been
almost sufficient to put a ban on what he called 'the philosophy of
the unconditioned. '
The first important work of the new movement was The Insti-
tutes of Metaphysic (1854) by James Frederick Ferrier, professor
at St Andrews. Before this date he had written a number
of philosophical articles, and in particular a series of papers
entitled The Philosophy of Consciousness,' which showed the
trend of his thinking. After his death these were collected
and published together along with a series of lectures as
>
## p. 41 (#71) ##############################################
1]
The English Idealists
41
Lectures on Greek Philosophy and other philosophical remains
(1866). As a historian of philosophy, Ferrier did not pretend
to exceptional research; but he had a remarkable power of
entering into the mind of earlier thinkers and of giving a living
presentation of their views. The history of philosophy was,
for him, no mere record of discarded systems, but 'philosophy
itself taking its time. ' He was a sympathetic student, also, of
the German philosophers banned by his friend Hamilton. It is
difficult to trace any direct influence of Hegel upon his own
doctrine, and, indeed, he said that he could not understand Hegel.
But, both his earlier and his later writings have an affinity with
Fichte-especially in their central doctrine: the stress laid on
self-consciousness, and its distinction from the ‘mental states' with
which the psychologist is concerned. This doctrine connects him
with Berkeley, also. He was one of the first to appreciate the
true nature of Berkeley's thought, as not a mere transition-stage
between Locke and Hume, but as a discovery of the spiritual
nature of reality. The philosophy which he worked out in The
Institutes of Metaphysic is, however, strikingly original. He
claimed that it was 'Scottish to the core. ' But it is very different
from the traditional Scottish philosophy. It disclaims all connec-
tion with psychology. He even formulates a false and psychological
theorem as the counterpart of each true and metaphysical theorem.
And this reiterated opposition, it must be confessed, grows a little
wearisome and can be excused only by the backward state of
psychology, and its confusion with philosophy, at the time when
the book was written. Further, the Scottish philosophy relied on
intuition or immediate apprehension of reality ; Ferrier's method
is that of rational deduction from a first principle. Philosophy is
reasoned truth,' he says ; but ‘it is more proper that philosophy
should be reasoned, than that it should be true. Unfortunately,
he takes Spinoza's method as his model, though he does not follow
the model in all details. There is no array of definitions, axioms
and postulates, but only propositions, each deduced from the
preceding. Thus, a heavy weight is thrown on the first proposi-
tion of the series. This is the primary law or condition of all
knowledge, and is stated in the words, ‘Along with whatever any
intelligence knows it must, as the ground or condition of its
knowledge, have some cognisance of itself.
fundamentally original about his views on these topics; but
his discussion of both illustrates his ability to see further into the
facts than his predecessors, and his candour in recording what he
sees, along, however, with a certain disinclination to pursue an
enquiry which might land him definitely on the other side of
the traditional lines. Mill's doctrine is essentially Humean, though,
as regards the external world, he prefers to call it Berkeleyan; and
here he is the inventor of a phrase: matter is 'permanent possi-
bility of sensation. ' The phrase is striking and useful; but a
possibility of sensation is not sensation, and the permanence which
2-2
## p. 20 (#50) ##############################################
20
Philosophers
[CH.
he attributes to the possibility of sensation implies an objective
order: so that the reduction of matter to sensation is implicitly
relinquished when it appears to be affirmed in words. Mind, in
somewhat similar fashion, is reduced to a succession of feelings or
states of consciousness. But the fact of memory proves a stumbling-
block in his way; he cannot explain how a succession of feelings
should be conscious of itself as a succession; and he implicitly
admits the need of a principle of unity. Thus, he almost relin-
quishes his own theory and only avoids doing so explicitly by
falling back on the assertion that here we are in presence of the
final inexplicability in which ultimate questions always merge.
In spite of the prominence of the ethical interest in his mind
and in spite, also, of numerous ethical discussions in his other
writings, Mill's sole contribution to the fundamental problem of
ethical theory was his small volume Utilitarianism, which first
appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 and wa reprinted in book-
form in 1863. Perhaps, he regarded the fundamental positions of
Benthamism as too secure to need much elaboration. What he offers
is a finely conceived and finely written defence of utilitarian ethics,
into which his own modifications of Bentham's doctrine of life are
worked. He holds that the sanctions of this doctrine are not weaker
than those of any other doctrine, and that, in its own nature, it is
neither a selfish nor a sensual theory. It is not selfish, because it
regards the pleasures of all men as of equal moment; it is not
sensual, because it recognises the superior value of intellectual,
artistic and social pleasures as compared with those of the senses.
But Mill fails in trying to establish a logical connection between
the universal reference of the ethical doctrine and the egoistic
analysis of individual action to which his psychology committed him.
And he is so determined to emphasise the superiority of the pleasures
commonly called 'higher,' that he maintains that, merely as
pleasures, they are superior in kind to the pleasures of the senses,
irrespective of any excess of the latter in respect of quantity. In
so doing he strikes at the root of hedonism, for he makes the
ultimate criterion of value reside not in pleasure itself but in that
characteristic—whatever it may turn out to be—which makes one
kind of pleasure superior to another.
Mill's social and political writings, in addition to occasional
articles, consist of the short treatise Considerations on Repre-
sentative Government (1860), Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform
(1859), the essays On Liberty (1859) and on the Subjection of
Women (1869), Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political
## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################
1]
Political and Economic Theory
21
Economy (1831, 1844) and Principles of Political Economy (1848).
The method appropriate to these topics had been already discussed
in the chapters on 'the Logic of the Moral Sciences' included in
his Logic. He sought a via media between the purely empirical
method and the deductive method. The latter, as employed by his
father, was modelled on the reasonings of geometry, which is not a
science of causation. The method of politics, if it is to be deductive,
must belong to a different type, and will (he holds) be the same
as that used in mathematical physics. Dynamics is a deductive
science because the law of the composition of forces holds ;
similarly, politics is a deductive science because the causes with
which it deals follow this law: the effects of these causes, when
conjoined, are the same as the sum of the effects which the same
causes produce when acting separately. Like his predecessors,
Mill postulated certain forces as determining human conduct:
especially, self-interest and mental association. From their working
he deduced political and social consequences. He did not diverge
from the principles agreed upon by those with whom he was
associated. Perhaps, he did not add very much to them. But he
saw their limitations more clearly than others did: the hypo-
thetical nature of economic theory, and the danger that democratic
government might prove antagonistic to the causes of individual
freedom and of the common welfare. To guard against these
dangers he proposed certain modifications of the representative
system. But his contemporaries, and even his successors of the
same way of thinking in general, for long looked upon the dangers
as imaginary, and his proposals for their removal were ignored.
The essay On Liberty—the most popular of all his works—is an
eloquent defence of the thesis that the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering
with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection,'
but, as an argument, it meets everywhere with the difficulty of
determining the precise point at which the distinction between
self-regarding and social (even directly social) activity is to be
drawn. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, accepting Mill's utilitarian
criterion, raked his positions with a fire of brilliant and incisive, if
unsympathetic, criticism in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873).
Mill's Political Economy has been variously regarded as an
improved Adam Smith and as a popularised Ricardo. Perhaps
the latter description is nearer the mark. Its essential doctrines
differ little, if at all, from those of Ricardo; the theory of the
'wages fund, for example, is formulated quite in the spirit of
a
## p. 22 (#52) ##############################################
22
[CH.
Philosophers
Ricardo, though this theory was afterwards relinquished or modi-
fied by Mill in consequence of the criticisms of William Thomas
Thornton. But the work has a breadth of treatment which
sometimes reminds one of Adam Smith: the hypothetical nature
of economic theory was not overlooked, and the applications to
social philosophy' were kept in view. In spite of his adherence
to the maxim of laissez faire, Mill recognised the possibility of
modifying the system of distribution, and, with regard to that
system, he displayed a leaning to the socialist ideal, which grew
stronger as his life advanced. His methodical and thorough
treatment of economics made his work a text-book for more than
a generation, and largely determined the scope of most of th
treatises of his own and the succeeding period, even of those
written by independent thinkers.
Mill died at Avignon in 1873. After his death, were published
his Autobiography (1873) and Three Essays on Religion: Nature
the Utility of Religion and Theism (1874). These essays were
written between 1850 and 1870 and include the author's latest
thoughts on ultimate questions. He had been educated in the
belief that speculation on ultimate questions is futile; in his works
he had always maintained the attitude afterwards called agnosticism,
for which he was willing to adopt Comte's term positivism; he
accepted, also, in general, Comte's doctrine on this point, though
always dissociating himself from the latter's political and social
theories. But, even while, in his book Auguste Comte and
Positivism (1865), accepting the view that the essential nature
and ultimate causes of things are inscrutable, he holds that this
'positive mode of thought is not necessarily a denial of the super-
natural,' but only throws it back beyond the limits of science. His
posthumous essays show a further development. In that on nature
(the earliest of the series), he dwells upon the imperfections of the
cosmic order as showing that it cannot have been the creation of a
being of infinite goodness and power; in the last essay of the
volume, he approaches a tentative and limited form of theism
the doctrine of a finite God.
a
For more than a generation Mill's influence was dominant in
all departments of philosophical and political thought; he had
the initiative, and set the problems for his opponents as well as
for his adherents ; and his works became university text-books.
This holds of politics, economics, ethics, psychology and logic.
A striking reaction against his influence is shown in the work of
## p. 23 (#53) ##############################################
1]
Alexander Bain
23
William Stanley Jevons, professor at Manchester and afterwards
in London, whose economic and logical writings are distinguished
by important original ideas. In his Theory of Political Economy
(1871), he introduced the conception of final (or marginal) utility,
which, subsequently, has been greatly developed in the analytic
and mathematical treatment of the subject. In logic, also, he laid
the foundations for a mathematical treatment in his Pure Logic
(1864) and Substitution of Similars (1869); and, in his Principles
of Science (1874), he fully elaborated his theory of scientific infer-
ence, a theory which diverged widely from the theory of induction
expounded by Mill. As time went on, Jevons became more and
more critical of the foundations of Mill's empirical philosophy,
which he attacked unsparingly in discussions contributed to Mind.
George Grote, the historian of Greece, an older contemporary
and early associate of Mill, deserves mention here not only for his
works on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, but, also, for some
independent contributions to ethics, published together under
the title Fragments on Ethical Subjects (1876). He had little
sympathy with Mill’s approximations to types of thought opposed
to the traditional utilitarianism. In this respect he agreed with
Alexander Bain, professor at Aberdeen, a writer of far greater
importance in a philosophical regard. Bain was younger than
Mill and long outlived him; he assisted him in some of his works,
especially the Logic; he wrote numerous works himself; but his
pre-eminence was in psychology, to which his chief contributions
were two elaborate books, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and
The Emotions and the Will (1859). The psychology of James Mill
and of J. S. Mill was, in the main, derived from Hartley; but
it was Hartley as expurgated by Priestley, Hartley with the
physiology left out? Bain reinstated the physiological factor, not
in Hartley's rather speculative manner, but by introducing facts of
nerve and muscle whenever they could serve to elucidate mental
process. That came to be, as a rule, whenever the mental
process itself was obscure or difficult. The result is sometimes
confusing, because it mixes two different orders of scientific con-
ceptions. But Bain's work is wonderfully complete as a treatment
of the principle of the association of ideas; and, perhaps, he has
said the last word that can be said in favour of this principle as
the ultimate explanation of mind. His range of vision may have
been narrow, but he had a keen eye for everything within that
range. He was persistent in his search for facts and shrewd in
i Cf. ante, p. 5.
## p. 24 (#54) ##############################################
24
[CH.
Philosophers
6
examining them; and he had no illusions-except the great
illusion that mind is a bundle of sensations tied together by laws
of association. It is interesting to note how this clear-sighted and
unimaginative writer made observations which suggest doctrines,
different from his own, which have gained prominence later. His
observations on spontaneous movement and his teaching as to fixed
ideas strike at the roots of the analysis of volition to which he
adhered, and might lead naturally to a view of mind as essentially
active and no mere grouping of sensations or feelings. He offered,
also, a new analysis of belief (though he subsequently withdrew it)
which resolved it into a preparedness to act; and, here, the latent
'activism’ in his thinking might have led, if developed, to
something of the nature of pragmatism.
George Croom Robertson, professor in University college,
London, was in general sympathy with Mill's school of thought,
tempered, however, by wide knowledge and appreciation of other
developments, including those of recent philosophy. Circumstances
prevented his producing much literary work beyond a few articles
and an admirable monograph on Hobbes (1886). He is remembered
not only for these, and for his lectures, some of which have been
published (1896), but, also, for his skilful and successful work as
editor of Mind during the first sixteen years of its existence.
Mind was the first English journal devoted to psychology and
philosophy, and its origin in 1876 is a landmark in the history of
British philosophy.
a
In Mill's day and afterwards there was an active, though not
very widespread, propaganda of the positive philosophy of Comte.
The study of Comte's system was greatly facilitated by the admirable
condensed translation of his Positive Philosophy issued by Harriet
Martineau in 1853. The chief teachers of positivist doctrine in
England were a group of writers who had been contemporaries at
Oxford; but a serious disagreement arose amongst them regarding
the prominence to be given to the inculcation of Comte’s ‘religion
of humanity. ' Their activity was shown in lectures and addresses
and in many translations of Comte's works. The Catechism of
positive religion was translated by Richard Congreve in 1858;
Comte's General View of Positivism by John Henry Bridges in
1865; and System of Positive Polity by Bridges and Frederick
Harrison in 1875. Their independent writings were inspired by
the positivist spirit, even when they did not add much to its
defence on philosophical grounds. In The Unity of Comte's Life
## p. 25 (#55) ##############################################
1]
John Grote
25
and Doctrine (1866), Bridges replied to the criticisms of J. S. Mill.
He published, also, Five Discourses on Positive Religion in 1882;
and his Essays and Addresses (1907) were collected and edited
after his death.
V. RATIONAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHERS
Although Mill's fame overshadowed the other philosophers of
his day, there were a number of contemporary writers who were
not merely his followers or critics, but independent thinkers.
Of note among these was John Grote, younger brother of the
historian, who held the chair of moral philosophy at Cambridge
from 1855 to 1866. Grote himself issued only one volume on
philosophy-Exploratio Philosophica, Part 1 (1865). After his
death three volumes were compiled from his manuscripts: An
Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy in 1870, A Treatise on
the Moral Ideals in 1876 and the second part of Exploratio in
1900. They are all 'rough notes'-as the author himself describes
the first on its title-page. They have no place in literature. Grote
thought and wrote simply to get at the truth of things and without
any view of impressing the public. A ‘belief in thought' upheld
him: 'a feeling that things were worth thinking about, that
thought was worth effort. ' He did not seek reputation as a
philosophical writer, and he has not gained it. His direct
influence has been restricted to a limited number of other
thinkers, through whom it has passed to wider circles without any
definite trace of its origin. His books are largely filled with
criticism of contemporary writers. But none of the criticism is
merely destructive: it aims always at elucidating the core of
truth in other men's opinions, with a view to a comprehensive
synthesis. Often it leads to bringing out important doctrines
which, if not altogether new, are set in a new light. An instance
of this is his whole doctrine of the scale of sensation or know-
ledge,' and, in particular, the elaboration and application of the
distinction of two kinds of knowledge or, rather, the twofold
process of knowledge, which he formulated as the distinction
between acquaintance with a thing and knowing about it. He
sought to assign its due value to phenomenalism or positivism, at
the same time as he contended for the more complete view-
‘rationary' or idealist—which recognised in positivism ‘an ab-
straction from the complete view of knowledge. ' Similarly, in
moral philosophy, there was a science of virtue, or 'aretaics,
## p. 26 (#56) ##############################################
26
[CH.
Philosophers
existing side by side with 'eudaemonics,' or the science of happi-
ness. Fundamentally, his theory is a doctrine of thought: 'the
fact that we know is prior to, and logically more comprehensive
than, the fact that what we know is. ' To be known, things must
be knowable, or fitted for knowledge. “Knowledge is the sym-
pathy of intelligence with intelligence, through the medium of
qualified or particular existence. '
Religious philosophy in England was stimulated and advanced
by the work of three men all born in the year 1805. These were
Maurice, Newman and Martineau. Frederick Denison Maurice?
had already an ecclesiastical career behind him when, in 1866, he
succeeded Grote as professor at Cambridge. Of his numerous
works only a few deal with philosophy; the most important of
these, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, originally appeared
in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana in 1847 and is a historical
sketch which is chiefly devoted to ancient thought. Maurice's
influence was due to his personality more than to his books; and
he was a social reformer and religious teacher rather than a philo-
sopher. But his work, both in social reform and in religion, derived
stimulus and direction from philosophical ideas. John Henry
Newman’ was still less of a philosopher, though his Grammar of
Assent propounds a theory of the nature and grounds of belief.
More significant, however, is the appearance in Newman's work of
the idea of development, which was beginning to transform all
departments of thought: for the quasi-mechanical view with which
he started of a fixed norm of belief existing in the past, he
substituted the view of the church as an organism whose life
and doctrine were in process of growth. The only philosopher
among those who joined the Roman church about the same time
as Newman was William George Ward, who, in various articles,
carried on a controversy with Mill concerning free-will and
necessary truth. These and other articles were collected after
his death and published as Essays on the Philosophy of Theism
(1884).
Of much greater importance than these, in a philosophical
regard, was James Martineau. His philosophy, also, was essen-
tially religious philosophy; individual freedom and the being and
presence of God were his fundamental certainties, and these he
defended in many writings during his long life. His earlier works
were mainly religious rather than philosophical, though, in a series
1 See, ante, vol. xn, chap. Xm.
; Ibid. chap. XII.
## p. 27 (#57) ##############################################
1]
Herbert Spencer
27
of essays, he showed his power as a critic of materialism and
naturalism, and gave an outline of the ethical views which he
afterwards worked out in detail. He was eighty years old, or
upwards, when his chief books appeared— Types of Ethical Theory
(1885), A Study of Religion (1888), and The Seat of Authority in
Religion (1890). The first of these is the most notable, and works
out the original view of the moral criterion which had been
previously indicated by him. It suffers from faulty arrangement,
from the undue prominence given to the psychological factor in
moral judgment and from the incompleteness of the psychological
analysis. As a whole it does not impress the reader. But, taken
in detail, it is seen to be full of penetrating criticism, and to be
inspired by insight into the spiritual meaning of life. Traces of
age are to be found only in its defective order and, perhaps, in its
diffuseness; its style shows no marks of weariness: it is brilliant,
pellucid, eloquent, rhetorical sometimes and coloured by emotion,
but never falls below the dignity of his theme. Martineau did
not make any important advance in speculative construction; he
was not in sympathy with the idealist metaphysic that had risen
to the ascendant in England even before his books were published;
the ideas which he elucidated and defended were those which had
been distinctive of spiritual thought for many centuries. In his
criticisms, on the other hand, he did not restrict himself to the
older forms of materialist and sensationalist doctrine; he was
prompt to recognise the difference made by more recent scientific
views, and he showed no lack of power or effectiveness in dealing
with the claims of the philosophy of evolution.
VI. HERBERT SPENCER AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF
EVOLUTION
a
.
The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 marks
a turning-point in the history of thought. It had a revolutionary
effect upon the view of the world held by educated men similar
to that which had been produced, more slowly, three centuries
before, by the work of Copernicus ; on philosophical ideas its
influence may, perhaps, be better compared with that of the
theory of mechanics chiefly due to Galileo. The latter contributed
to philosophy the conception of nature as a mechanical system ;
Darwin contributed the conception of evolution and, owing largely
to his influence, biological ideas gained greater prominence than
mathematical in philosophical construction.
## p. 28 (#58) ##############################################
28
[CH.
Philosophers
1
The acknowledged leader of the new movement in philosophy
was Herbert Spencer. He was born at Derby on 27 April 1820,
and his early training was as an engineer. This profession he
relinquished at the age of twenty-five. He had previously, in
1842, contributed a series of letters on the Proper Sphere of
Government' to The Nonconformist, and, from 1848 to 1853
he acted as sub-editor of The Economist. In these years he
wrote his book Social Statics (1850) and began the publication
of longer essays in reviews, among which mention should be
made of the essays "The Development Hypothesis' (1852), “The
Genesis of Science' (1854) and Progress : its law and cause
(1857). He also published Principles of Psychology, in one
volume, in 1855. His essays show, even by their titles, that he
was working towards a theory of evolution before he had any
knowledge of Darwin's researches, the results of which were
still unpublished. Then, in 1860, he issued his ‘Programme
of a System of Synthetic Philosophy,' on which he had been
at work for some time, and to the elaboration of which he
devoted his life. It is impossible to speak too highly of the
single-minded purpose with which he carried out this task, in spite
of inherent and extraneous difficulties. He continued to work,
without haste and without rest, publishing First Principles in
1862, Principles of Biology (two volumes) in 1864—7, Prin-
ciples of Psychology (two volumes) in 1870—2, Principles of
Sociology (three volumes) in 1876—96 and Principles of Ethics
(two volumes) in 1879–92. Besides these he designed a series
of charts of Descriptive Sociology, which were compiled by his
assistants, until the work had to be suspended from lack of funds ;
and he also produced smaller works on Education (1861), The
Classification of the Sciences (1864), The Study of Sociology
(1872), The Man versus The State (1884) and Factors of Organic
Evolution (1887). Thus, his perseverance enabled him to complete
his scheme : except, indeed, that he omitted the detailed treat-
ment of inorganic evolution, and thus gained the incidental
advantage of avoiding the awkward problem of the origin of life.
And he produced a considerable amount of subsidiary writing,
including an Autobiography (published in 1904, the year after his
death), which contains a minute and elaborate account of his life,
character and work.
Spencer's idea of philosophy is a system of completely
coordinated knowledge—the sciences consisting of knowledge
partially coordinated. In this sense his system is synthetic. It
## p. 29 (#59) ##############################################
1]
The Unknowable
29
is a scheme in which everything is to find its place, and is to
be seen as a resultant of a single principle. His elaboration of
this scheme approaches completeness, and, in this respect, his
system stands by itself: no other English thinker since Bacon
and Hobbes had even attempted anything so vast. The system
itself fitted in admirably, also, with the scientific conceptions of the
early Darwinians, and thus obtained wide currency in all English-
speaking countries and, to a less extent, on the continent of
Europe. Darwin hailed him as 'our great philosopher,' for he
made evolution a universal solvent and not merely a means for
explaining the different forms of plants and animals. At the same
time, the support which it received from modern science seemed
to give Spencer's philosophy a more secure position than that
of those speculative systems of which the English mind tended
to be suspicious.
The view of philosophy as science further coordinated brings
Spencer's doctrine into line with positivism. He did not, however,
entirely ignore the question of the nature of ultimate reality.
Perhaps, he was not much interested in questions of the kind, and
he had certainly small acquaintance with previous speculation
regarding them. But he had great skill in adapting current
doctrines to his uses; and he found what he needed in the doctrine
of the relativity of knowledge set forth by Hamilton and Mansel.
On this he based his doctrine of the limits of knowledge. But
he found, as others have found, that it was necessary to recognise
something which lay beyond the sphere of exact knowledge.
Hamilton had called this the sphere of belief; Spencer says that
we have an indefinite consciousness of what he nevertheless calls
the unknowable. The nature of this indefinite consciousness is
not explained by him; yet, its object is not treated by him, as one
would expect it to be, as a mere blank; it is said to be “growing
clearer'; the unknowable is constantly referred to as a power,
and it is even asserted that it makes for the happiness of
mankind. These inconsistencies soften his paradox that religion
and science can be reconciled by assigning to the latter the
region of the knowable and restricting the former to the un-
knowable. On his view, all that we know consists of mani-
festations of the inscrutable power behind phenomena ; and
these manifestations depend ultimately upon a single first prin-
ciple—the persistence of force. Spencer's interpretation of this
principle is somewhat flexible and has been attacked by mathe-
maticians and physicists as loose and unscientific. Nevertheless,
## p. 30 (#60) ##############################################
30
Philosophers
[ch.
Spencer holds that from it every other scientific principle must be
deduced-even the law of evolution itself. He has provided a
'formula,' or, rather, definition, of evolution. He defines it as
an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during
which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a
definite coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion
undergoes a parallel transformation.
All phenomena of whatever kind are subject to this law. It is
throughout conceived as a law of progress, which will issue in
a highest state establishing the extremest multiformity and most
complete moving equilibrium. ' But this stage, also, cannot be
permanent; and Spencer contemplates the history of the universe
as a succession of cycles—'alternate eras of evolution and dis-
solution. '
Spencer displayed much ingenuity in fitting organic, mental
and social facts into this mechanical framework.
His early
training as an engineer seems to have influenced his ideas. He
built a system as he might have built a bridge. It was a problem
of strains and of the adaptation of material. Regarded thus, the
whole problem was mechanical and had to be solved in terms
of matter and motion. His purpose was, as he says, 'to interpret
the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of matter,
motion, and force. ' Hence, life, mind and society are treated as
stages of increasing complexity in phenomena of the same kind,
and-80 far as this treatment is adhered to—the characteristic
functions of each stage are left unexplained. But the method
of treatment is supplemented by another in which the facts are
dealt with more directly. This is seen especially in psychology,
where the subjective aspect' is recognised with only a suggestion
of an attempt to deduce it from the objective aspect. Spencer
was a keen observer and fertile in his reflections on what he
observed. His power of coordinating facts may, perhaps, be seen
at its best in his Psychology and Sociology. His generalisations
may be often unsound; but, if we compare these works with
earlier and then with later treatises on the same subjects, it
is not possible to deny the great stimulus to thought which
they gave.
Spencer himself set the greatest store upon his work on ethics.
To it, he said, all his other work led up; and this induced him to
issue the first part of it-called The Data of Ethics—out of due
order and before his Sociology was completed. The first part is
undoubtedly the most instructive section of the book as ultimately
6
## p. 31 (#61) ##############################################
1]
Spencer's Individualism
31
finished. The facts of morality are regarded as belonging to the
same order of evolution as the facts dealt with in previous
volumes, being only more special and complicated ; full con-
sideration is given to their biological, sociological and psycho-
logical aspects ; the respective rights of egoism and of altruism
are defended ; and the ethics of evolution is distinguished from
the utilitarian ethics not by having some other ultimate end than
happiness but by its different method and working criterion.
Where the author fails is in giving any adequate proof for his assump-
tion that evolution tends to greatest happiness—an assumption
upon which his ethical theory depends. And, like all the ex-
ponents of the ethics of evolution who have followed him, he
does not distinguish clearly between the historical process
explained by the law of evolution and the ground of its authority
for conduct—if such authority be claimed for it. He finds the
standard for right conduct in what he calls 'absolute ethics,'
by which he means a description of the conduct of fully-evolved
man in fully-evolved surroundings. In this state, there will be
complete adaptation between the individual and his environment;
so that, even if action is still possible, no choice of better or worse
will remain. The system of absolute ethics is worked out in the
succeeding parts of the work, but with very meagre success.
Indeed, at the end, the author is fain to admit that evolution had
not helped him to the extent he had anticipated.
In his ethical, and still more in his political, writings we see
the supreme value set by Spencer on the individual, and the
very restricted functions which he allowed to the state or other
organised community of individuals. The point is not, perhaps,
easy to reconcile with the doctrine of evolution as otherwise
expounded by him. But there were two things which seem to
have been more fundamental in his thought than evolution itself.
One of these has been already referred to as the group of ideas
which may be described as mechanism and which is exhibited
both in the basis and in the plan of his whole structure. The
other is his strong bias towards individualism. If the former may
plausibly be connected with his training as an engineer, the
origin of the latter may, with still greater probability, be traced
to the doctrines current in that circle of liberalism in which he
was nurtured. He wrote political essays and a political treatise
(Social Statics) before his mind seems to have been attracted
by the conception of evolution ; and, although, in some points,
he afterwards modified the teaching of that treatise, its essential
## p. 32 (#62) ##############################################
32
[CH.
Philosophers
ideas and its spirit characterise his latest writings on political
theory. It showed ingenuity rather than insight on his part to
bring them within the grasp of the evolution doctrine ; but, in
spite of many criticisms, he held steadfastly to his doctrine of
what has been called 'administrative nihilism. '
6
No other writer rivalled Spencer's attempt at a reconstruc-
tion of the whole range of human thought. But many of his
contemporaries preceded or followed him in applying the new
doctrine of evolution to the problems of life, mind and society.
Some of these were men of science, who felt that an instrument
had been put into their hands for extending its frontiers ; others
were primarily interested in moral and political questions, or in
philosophy generally, and evolution seemed to provide them with
a key to old difficulties and a new view of the unity of reality.
Darwin himself, though he never posed as a philosopher, was
aware of the revolutionary effect which his researches had upon
men's views of the universe as a whole; what was more im-
portant, he made a number of shrewd and suggestive observations
on morals and on psychology in his Descent of Man and, also,
in his later volume The Expression of the Emotions. But his
contributions were only incidental to his biological work. Others,
writing under the intellectual influence which he originated, were
concerned more directly with problems of philosophy.
Among these writers the first place may be given to George
Henry Lewes, although, in his earlier works, he was influenced
by Comte, not by Darwin. Lewes was a man of marvellous
literary versatility as essayist, novelist, biographer and expositor
of popular science. This versatility also marks his work in
philosophy. At first Comte's influence was supreme. His philo-
sophical publications began with The Biographical History of
Philosophy (1845–6), a slight and inaccurate attempt to cover
a vast field, and apparently designed to show that the field
was not worth the tillage ; later editions of this work, however,
not only greatly increased its extent and removed many blemishes
but showed the author's ability to appreciate other points of
view than that from which he had started. After an interval,
he produced books entitled Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences
(1853) and Aristotle : a chapter from the history of science (1864).
But, for a long time, Lewes had been at work on investigations
of a more constructive and original kind, partly philosophical and
partly scientific, the results of which were not fully published at
## p. 33 (#63) ##############################################
1]
George Henry Lewes
33
the time of his death in 1878. These results were contained in
Problems of Life and Mind, the first two volumes of which,
entitled The Foundations of a Creed, appeared in 1874–5, and
the fifth and final volume in 1879. In this work the author has
advanced far from his early Comtism, and it shows, in many
respects, a much more adequate comprehension of philosophical
problems than can be found in Spencer, whose knowledge of
the history of thought was limited and sketchy, and whose
criticisms of other philosophers were nearly always external-in
the worst sense of the word. But Lewes had fitted himself for
writing, not only by original researches in physiology and related
branches of science, but, also, by a considerable and sympathetic
study of modern philosophy. He is thus able to appeal to other
readers than those who have limited their intellectual enquiries
to a predetermined range. He rejected as 'metempirical' what lay
beyond possible experience; but he would not, like Spencer, affect
;
to derive comfort from the unknowable. There was room for
metaphysics, he thought, as the science of the highest generalities,
or the codification of the most abstract laws of cause, and he
sought to transform it by reducing it to the method of science.
In working out this aim, he relied on and illustrated the dis-
tinction between immediate experience or 'feeling' and the
symbols or conceptual constructions used for its codification.
He also criticised the current mechanical interpretation of organic
processes, holding that sensibility was inherent in nervous sub-
stance. And he was one of the first to emphasise the importance
of the social factor in the development of mind and to exhibit
its working. He defended the conception of the 'general mind,
not as expressing a separate entity, but as a symbol ; and, for him,
the individual mind, also, was a symbol. The problems with which
he dealt were partly general-enquiries into knowledge, truth
and certitude-partly psychophysical and psychological. His
Problems shows the prolonged and eager reflection of an active
mind. In it the multifarious writings of many years were reduced
and expanded. But it may be doubted whether the reduction
was carried far enough. There is a good deal of repetition, but
hardly a central argument; the separate discussions are often
important and suggestive ; but the fundamental position re-
garding subject and object does not seem to be adequately
defended or even made perfectly clear. Lewes had more philo-
sophical insight than Spencer, but he had not the latter's
architectonic genius.
-
E. L. XIV.
CH. I.
3
## p. 34 (#64) ##############################################
34
Philosophers
[CH.
>
cause.
Thomas Henry Huxley, the distinguished zoologist and advocate
of Darwinism, made many incursions into philosophy, and always
with effect. From his youth he had studied its problems un-
systematically; he had a way of going straight to the point in
any discussion; and, judged by a literary standard, he was a great
master of expository and argumentative prose. Apart from his
special work in science, he had an important influence upon
English thought through his numerous addresses and essays on
topics of science, philosophy, religion and politics. Among the
most important of his papers relevant here are those entitled “The
Physical Basis of Life’(1868), and 'On the Hypothesis that Animals
are Automata' (1874), along with a monograph on Hume (1879)
and the Romanes lecture Ethics and Evolution (1893) Huxley
is credited with the invention of the term 'agnosticism' to describe
his philosophical position : it expresses his attitude towards certain
traditional questions without giving any clear delimitation of the
frontiers of the knowable. He regards consciousness as a collateral
effect of certain physical causes, and only an effect-never, also, a
But, on the other hand, he holds that matter is only
a symbol, and that all physical phenomena can be analysed into
states of consciousness. This leaves mental facts in the peculiar
position of being collateral effects of something that, after all, is
only a symbol for a mental fact; and the contradiction, or apparent
contradiction, is left without remark. His contributions to ethics
are still more remarkable. In a paper entitled Science and Morals'
(1888), he concluded that the safety of morality lay'in a real and
living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social dis-
organisation on the track of immorality. His Romanes lecture
reveals a different tone. In it, the moral order is contrasted with the
cosmic order; evolution shows constant struggle; instead of looking
to it for moral guidance, he 'repudiates the gladiatorial theory of
existence. ' He saw that the facts of historical process did not
constitute validity for moral conduct; and his plain language com-
pelled others to see it also. But he exaggerated the opposition
between them and did not leave room for the influence of moral
ideas as a factor in the historical process.
Another man of science, William Kingdon Clifford, professor
of mathematics in London, dealt in occasional essays with some
central points in the theory of knowledge, ethics and religion.
In these essays he aimed at an interpretation of life in the light of
the new science. There was insight as well as courage in all he
wrote, and it was conveyed in a brilliant style. But his work was
a
a
## p. 35 (#65) ##############################################
1]
Influence of Evolutionary Thought 35
cut short by his early death in 1879, and his contributions to
philosophy remain suggestions only.
It was natural that men of science with a philosophical turn of
mind should be among the first to work out the more general
consequences of the theory of evolution. But the wide range
which the theory might cover was fairly obvious, and was seen by
others who approached philosophy from the point of view of studies
other than the natural sciences. Foremost among these was
Leslie Stephen, a man of letters keenly interested in the moral
sciences. The portion of his writings which bear upon philosophy
.
is small only in relation to his total literary output. His History
of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876) places the
philosophers and moralists in their due position in the whole
literary activity of the period, and is penetrating and usually just
in its estimate of their work. A further stage of the same history
-The English Utilitarians (1900)—was completed towards the
end of his life. His own independent contribution is given in The
Science of Ethics (1882). After Spencer's Data, this is the first
book which worked out an ethical view determined by the theory
of evolution. As such it is significant. The author had sat at the
feet of John Stuart Mill; he had eagerly welcomed Darwin as an
ally of the empirical and utilitarian creed; but he came to see that
more extensive changes were necessary. Spencer's compromise
between hedonism and evolutionism failed to satisfy him, and he
found the ethical bearing of evolution better expressed by the
conception of social vitality than by that of pleasure. The great
merit of the work consists in its presentation of the social content
of morality in the individual mind as well as in the community;
but it does not sufficiently recognise the distinction between the
historical process traced by the evolution theory and the ethical
validity which evolution is assumed to possess.
The transformation of the biological sciences by the theory of
evolution was connected with a wider movement, which consisted
in the greatly extended use of the historical method in explaining
the nature of things. This applies chiefly to the social sciences.
It is to be remembered that both Darwin and Wallace owed the
suggestion of their hypothesis of natural selection to a work on
social theory. The underlying doctrine was, simply, that facts were
to be understood by tracing their origins and historical connections.
How far this historical understanding could take the enquirer
3-2
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36
[CH.
Philosophers
a
became the point at issue between what inay be called the evolu-
tion philosophy and its critics : it may be expressed in the question
whether or not origin determines validity. It was only gradually,
however, that the point of controversy became clear; and, mean-
while, the application of the historical method vastly aided the
understanding of the social order. In this reference, the treatise
entitled Ancient Law (1861) by Sir Henry Maine marks an epoch in
the study of law and institutions, and it had a much wider influence
upon thought generally by furthering the use of the method which
it employed. An early example of the application of the same
method in economics may be found in the series of essays by Thomas
Edward Cliffe Leslie, republished as Essays in Political Economy
(1888); and the historical side of economics has subsequently
been exhaustively worked.
Walter Bagehot’s Physics and Politics (1869) is still more closely
connected with the doctrine of evolution. It is described on the title-
page as 'thoughts on the application of the principles of natural
selection and inheritance to political society. ' Luminous and sug-
gestive though these studies are, it cannot be said that the influence
of the theory of evolution expresses the leading characteristic of
Bagehot’s mind, especially as shown in his other political and
economic works—The English Constitution (1867), Lombard
Street (1873), and Economic Studies (1880). It was his insight
into the actual forces, especially the human forces, at work that
chiefly distinguished his treatment. Whereas even Mill looked
upon economic and political processes as due to the composition
of a few simple forces such as desire of wealth and aversion
from labour, Bagehot knew the actual men who were doing the
work, and he recognised the complexity of their motives and the
degree in which they were influenced by habit, tradition and
imitation. In this way he gave a great impulse to realistic study,
as contrasted with the abstract method of the older economics and
politics.
6
VII. HENRY SIDGWICK AND SHADWORTH HODGSON
These writers had not much in common beyond the two points
which have led to their being placed together here. They both
saw that evolution was not an 'open sesame' to the secrets of
philosophy, and neither owed allegiance to the idealist movement
which rose to prominence in their time. They were probably
## p. 37 (#67) ##############################################
1]
Henry Sidgwick
37
the ablest and most influential writers who made independent
advances on lines more closely connected with the older English
tradition.
Sidgwick taught philosophy for many years at Cambridge, and
held the chair of moral philosophy there from 1883 until 1900, the
year of his death. His reputation as a philosophical writer was
made by his first book, The Methods of Ethics (1874). He after-
wards published treatises on a similar scale on political economy
and on politics ; and, after his death, various occasional articles
were issued in collected form, and a considerable series of books
was compiled from his manuscripts, dealing with general philosophy,
with contemporary ethical systems and with political constitutions.
Within certain limits, Sidgwick may be regarded as a follower of
John Stuart Mill, at least in ethics, politics and economics. In
these subjects he took Mill's views as the basis of his own criticisms
and reflections, and he accepted the utilitarian criterion. At the
same time, he gave much more weight than Mill had done to the
intellectualist tradition in philosophy. He saw that the empirical
philosophy was based on conceptions which it was unable to justify
by its customary method of tracing their origin in experience.
This did not lead, however, to any agreement with Kant's analysis
of knowledge. He was an adverse and somewhat unsympathetic
critic of the Kantian theory. He inclined, rather, to a return to
the 'natural realism' of Thomas Reid, on the question of the
knowledge of external reality; and his ethical doctrine includes
a synthesis of the views of Clarke and Butler with those of
Mill.
His first book remains his most striking contribution to philo-
sophy and the most accurate index of his philosophical attitude.
In spite of his utilitarian sympathies, its starting-point and most
fundamental ideas show the influence of a different type of thought.
He starts with the fundamental notion of ought'or duty, and argues
that enquiries into its origin in our consciousness do not affect its
validity. The knowledge that there is something right or rational
to be done depends, in the last resort, upon an intuition or imme-
diate view of what is right or reasonable. All the old arguments
of the utilitarians are swept away; the analysis of conduct into
pursuit of pleasure is shown not only to be itself incorrect, but to
be irreconcilable with the acceptance of general happiness as the
ethical end. His own utilitarianism is based upon a new synthesis
of intuitionism and empiricism. Here enters his central doctrine
of the 'axioms of the practical reason. ' These do not prescribe
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Philosophers
any concrete end as good—that has to be determined in another
way; but they are formal principles eternally valid whatever the
nature of goodness may prove to be. To these formal principles
are given the names prudence, benevolence and justice; but
they include much less than is usually covered by these terms and
may, perhaps, be adequately summed up in the statement that
neither the time at which, nor the person by whom, a good is
enjoyed affects the degree of its goodness. From the distinction
and yet equal validity of the axioms of prudence and benevolence,
Sidgwick's ethical theory terminates in a doctrine of the dualism
of the practical reason. ' It would appear, however, that this
dualism really arises from the ambiguity of the term prudence,
which may mean either regard for one's own good on the whole
or (what is not the same thing) the principle that 'hereafter as
such is neither less nor more valuable than now. Only the latter
has a claim to be regarded as an absolute ethical principle;
and it is not inconsistent with the axiom of benevolence. The
other side of his utilitarianism—the reduction of goodness to
terms of pleasure-is carried out by analysing conscious life into
its elements and showing that each in its turn (except pleasure),
when taken alone, cannot be regarded as ultimate good. This
analytic method is characteristic of Sidgwick's thinking, as it was
of that of most of his predecessors—intuitionist as well as empirical.
It rests on the assumption that the nature of a thing can be com-
pletely ascertained by examination of the separate elements into
which it can be distinguished by reflection-an assumption which
was definitely discarded by the contemporary school of idealists,
and on which the evolutionist writers also do not seem to have
relied.
As was natural, therefore, Sidgwick did not produce a system
of philosophy. He made many suggestions towards construction,
but, in the main, his work was critical. He was severely critical of
the attempts at speculative construction made in his day, and he
carried on some controversies in which his subtlety and wit had
full play: neither Spencer nor Green was his match in dialectics.
It was not, however, of systems and theories only that he was
a great critic. His powers are seen at their highest when he
analysed and described the moral opinions of ordinary men, not as
they are reflectively set down in philosophical books, but as they
are expressed in life, compact of reason and tradition, fused by
emotion and desire. The third book of his Methods of Ethics
consists, in large part, of an examination of the morality of
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Shadworth Hodgson
39
commonsense. It is an elucidation and sifting of the ideas under
which men act, often without clear consciousness of them; and it
shows the sympathetic apprehension of a mind which shares the
thoughts it describes and can yet see them in perspective and sum
up their significance. Both the excellence of the matter and the
distinction of the style should give at least this portion of his
work a permanent place in literature.
Shadworth Hodgson's life was an example of rare devotion to
philosophy. He had no profession and filled no public office, but
spent his time in systematic reflection and writing; and his long
life gave him the opportunity of reviewing, confirming and im-
proving upon his first thoughts. There were two periods in his
activity. In the former of these he published three books: Time
and Space in 1865, The Theory of Practice in 1870 and The
Philosophy of Reflection in 1878. Shortly thereafter he was
instrumental in founding the Aristotelian Society for the sys-
tematic study of philosophy,' and he remained its president for
fourteen years. This led to contact with other minds who looked
at the same subjects from different points of view. He read many
papers to the society, which were published in pamphlet form and
in its Proceedings, and he built up his own system afresh in the
light of familiar criticism. It took final form in The Metaphysic
of Experience, a work of four volumes published in 1898.
As an analysis of experience, Hodgson's philosophy falls into
line with a characteristic English tradition. It agrees with this
tradition, also, in taking the simple feeling as the ultimate datum
of experience. But, even here, and wherever there is experience,
there is a distinction to be drawn—not the traditional distinction
between subject and object, but that between consciousness and
its object. Always, there are two aspects in any bit of experience
that of the object itself and that of the awareness of it or the sub-
jective aspect; and these two are connected by the relation of
knowledge. The sciences are concerned with the objective aspect
only; philosophy has to deal with the subjective aspect, or the
conscious process which is fundamental and common to all the
variety of objects. Beyond this conscious reference there is nothing.
The mirage of absolute existence, wholly apart from knowledge,
is a common-sense prejudice. ' Consciousness is commensurate
with being; all existence has a subjective aspect. But this
doctrine, he holds, is misinterpreted when mind and body are
supposed to interact or when mental and bodily facts are regarded
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40
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Philosophers
!
2
as parallel aspects of the same substance. In psychology, Hodgson
may be called a materialist, unfit as that name would be to
describe his philosophical attitude. Ideas do not determine one
another, nor does desire cause volition; the only real condition
known to us is matter. And yet matter itself is a composite exist-
ence; it can be analysed into empirical percepts; and, therefore,
it is itself conditioned by something which is not material : the
very term existence implies relativity to some sort of consciousness
or other. This is the conclusion of the general analysis of ex-
perience. Of the unseen world which lies beyond the material
part of the world we cannot, he contends, have any speculative
knowledge. But the ethical judgment and our own moral nature
bring us into practical relation with that unseen world and thus
permit a positive, although not a speculative, knowledge of it. In
this way, in the final issue of his philosophy as well as in its
fundamental positions, Hodgson regards himself as correcting and
completing the work of Kant.
VIII. IDEALISTS
a
The latter half of the nineteenth century was marked by the
work of a number of writers who were influenced by the specu-
lations which, in Germany, had turned the results of Kant's
criticism into a direction which he had not anticipated. This
influence, which they shared, and their constant controversy with
current empirical philosophy united these writers into what may be
termed a school; and this school is sometimes described as neo-
Kantian, more commonly as Hegelian or neo-Hegelian. But its
members describe it simply as idealism, though it is an idealism of
a form new in English thought. Before them, Kant's speculative
successors had not obtained currency in England, unless, perhaps,
in a slight measure, through some of the utterances of Coleridge ;
and the powerful influence of Hamilton's criticism had been
almost sufficient to put a ban on what he called 'the philosophy of
the unconditioned. '
The first important work of the new movement was The Insti-
tutes of Metaphysic (1854) by James Frederick Ferrier, professor
at St Andrews. Before this date he had written a number
of philosophical articles, and in particular a series of papers
entitled The Philosophy of Consciousness,' which showed the
trend of his thinking. After his death these were collected
and published together along with a series of lectures as
>
## p. 41 (#71) ##############################################
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The English Idealists
41
Lectures on Greek Philosophy and other philosophical remains
(1866). As a historian of philosophy, Ferrier did not pretend
to exceptional research; but he had a remarkable power of
entering into the mind of earlier thinkers and of giving a living
presentation of their views. The history of philosophy was,
for him, no mere record of discarded systems, but 'philosophy
itself taking its time. ' He was a sympathetic student, also, of
the German philosophers banned by his friend Hamilton. It is
difficult to trace any direct influence of Hegel upon his own
doctrine, and, indeed, he said that he could not understand Hegel.
But, both his earlier and his later writings have an affinity with
Fichte-especially in their central doctrine: the stress laid on
self-consciousness, and its distinction from the ‘mental states' with
which the psychologist is concerned. This doctrine connects him
with Berkeley, also. He was one of the first to appreciate the
true nature of Berkeley's thought, as not a mere transition-stage
between Locke and Hume, but as a discovery of the spiritual
nature of reality. The philosophy which he worked out in The
Institutes of Metaphysic is, however, strikingly original. He
claimed that it was 'Scottish to the core. ' But it is very different
from the traditional Scottish philosophy. It disclaims all connec-
tion with psychology. He even formulates a false and psychological
theorem as the counterpart of each true and metaphysical theorem.
And this reiterated opposition, it must be confessed, grows a little
wearisome and can be excused only by the backward state of
psychology, and its confusion with philosophy, at the time when
the book was written. Further, the Scottish philosophy relied on
intuition or immediate apprehension of reality ; Ferrier's method
is that of rational deduction from a first principle. Philosophy is
reasoned truth,' he says ; but ‘it is more proper that philosophy
should be reasoned, than that it should be true. Unfortunately,
he takes Spinoza's method as his model, though he does not follow
the model in all details. There is no array of definitions, axioms
and postulates, but only propositions, each deduced from the
preceding. Thus, a heavy weight is thrown on the first proposi-
tion of the series. This is the primary law or condition of all
knowledge, and is stated in the words, ‘Along with whatever any
intelligence knows it must, as the ground or condition of its
knowledge, have some cognisance of itself.
