第54章 Chapter II(25)

Happily,philosophical theories are not really important solely as giving tenable and definitive results,but as indications of the intellectual temperament of different schools,and of the methods of reasoning which they find congenial.

Without further disquisition,I shall conclude by indicating briefly Mill's application of his principles to the 'Moral Sciences.'This is the subject of the last book of his treatise,and represents,as we have seen,the purpose of the whole.As,however,the full application will appear hereafter,I may here confine myself to certain critical points.Mill begins of course by arguing that the 'Moral Sciences'are possible,and are to be created by applying the method of the physical sciences.This suggests the free will difficulty.The doctrine of 'philosophical necessity'had 'weighed on his existence like an incubus'during his early depression.(106)He escaped by the solution which now forms a chapter in the Logic.He discovered that the Hume and Brown theory removed the misleading associations with the word 'necessity.'It would be truer,he thinks,to say that matter is free than that mind is not free.(107)The supposed external 'tie'which binds things together is a nonentity.In practice,however,Owen and his like had become fatalists rather than necessitarians.Holding that character is formed by circumstances,they had forgotten that our own desires are part of the 'circumstances,'and therefore that the mind has the power to co-operate in the 'formation of its own character.'This,Mill thinks,is the ennobling belief which is completely reconcilable with the admission that human actions are caused,although the two doctrines had been on both sides regarded as incompatible.

Upon this endless controversy I can only suggest one hint.Mill,I think,was right in saying that the difficulty depends on the confusion of 'determinism'with 'fatalism'.that is,with the belief that the will is coerced by some external force.But he does not see that his doctrine of causation always raises the difficulty.He orders us to think of the succession of ideas as due simply to association,as in the external world events are to be regarded as simply following each other;and in either case it is impossible to avoid the impression that there must be some connecting link which binds together entirely disparate phenomena.We cannot help asking why 'this'should always follow 'that,'and inferring that there is something more than a bare sequence.The real line of escape is,I think,shown by an improved view of causation.If we hold that the theory of cause and effect simply arises from the analysis of a single process,we need no external force to act upon the will.There is no 'coercion'involved.Given the effect,there must have been the cause;as given the cause,the effect must follow.'All the universe must exist in order that I must exist'is as true as that 'I must exist if all the universe exists.'There is not a man plus a law,but the law is already implied in the man;or the distinction of cause and effect corresponds to a difference in our way of regarding the facts,and implies no addition to the facts.I must not,however,launch into this inquiry.I only note that Mill's view is connected with his favourite principle of the indefinite modifiability of character.(108)To Mill,as to his father,this seemed to hold out hopes for the 'unlimited possibility'of elevating the race.If J.S.Mill denied 'the freedom of the will,'or,rather,the existence of 'will'itself as a separate entity,actually originating active principles,he admitted that the desires erroneously hypostatised as 'will'could work wonders.As the causal link between events is a figment,so,in the sphere of mind,we are bound by no fixed mysterious tie.He thus escapes from the painful sense of coercion by holding that an infinite variety of results is made possible by the infinite combinations of materials,though,in each case,there is a necessary sequence.Association,in fact,is omnipotent.As it can make the so-called necessary truths,it can transform the very essence of character.Accordingly the foundation of the moral sciences is to be found in the psychology,for an exposition of which he refers to his father,to Mr Bain,and to Mr Herbert Spencer.(109)He thus drops,consciously or not,the claim of treating metaphysical doctrine as common ground,and assumes the truth of the association doctrine.To pass from these principles to questions of actual conduct requires a science not hitherto constructed --the science,namely,of human character,for which he proposes the name Ethology.This,as we have seen,occupied his thoughts for some time,till it was ultimately dropped for political economy.

The difficulty of forming such a science upon his terms is obvious.It holds an ambiguous place between 'psychology'and the 'sociology'which he afterwards accepts from Comte;and as Professor Bain remarks,his doctrine would not fit easily to any such science.He has got rid of 'necessity'only too completely.

In fact,his view of the indefinite power of association,and his strong desire to explain all differences,even those between the sexes,as due to outward circumstances,seem to make character too evanescent a phenomenon to be subjected to any definite laws.(110)Ethology,however,is taken by him to be the science which corresponds to the 'art of education,'taken in its widest sense,and would,if constructed,be a 'deductive science,'consisting of corollaries from psychology,the 'experimental science.'(111)The utility of such a science from his point of view is obvious.It would be a statement of the way in which society was actually to be built up out of the clusters of associated ideas,held together by the unit Man.