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lust, impelled by hunger, oscillates hetween the fragile cracking barriers; we are nearing the final breaking-up, which will be open anarchy, and the democ racy will heave amidst the ruins, until the sentiment of the divine and of duty has rallied them around the worship of heroism; until it has discovered the means of calling to power the most virtuous and the most capable; † unti it has given its guidance in their hands, instead of making them subject to its caprices; until it has recognized and reverenced its Luther and its Cromwel its priest and its king.

ers, who preach the gospel of gold; | men, without work, live upon public we have gentlemen, dandies, lords, who charity. The formidable masses, given preach the gospel of manners. We up to the hazards of industry, urged by overwork ourselves to heap up guineas, or else make ourselves insipid to attain an elegant dignity. Our hell is no longer, as under Cromwell, the dread of being found guilty before the just Judge, but the dread of making a bad speculation, or of transgressing etiquette. We have for our aristocracy greedy shopkeepers, who reduce life to a calculation of cost and sale-prices; and idle amateurs, whose great business in life is to preserve the game on their estates. We are no longer governed. Our government has no other ambition than to preserve the public peace, and to get in the taxes. Our constitution lays it down as a principle, that, in order to discover the true and the good, we have only to make two million imbeciles vote. Our Parliament is a great word-mill, where plotters out-bawl each other for the sake of making a noise.

Under this thin cloak of conventionalities and phrases, ominously growls the irresistible democracy. England perishes if she ever ceases to be able to sell a yard of cotton at a farthing less than others. At the least check in the manufactures, 1,500,000 work"It is his effort and desire to teach this and the other thinking British man that said finale, he advent namely of actual open Anarchy, cannot be distant, now when virtual disguised Anarchy, long-continued, and waxing daily, has got to such a height; and that the one method of staving off the fatal consummation, and steering towards the Continents of the Future, lies not in the direction of reforming Parliament, but of what he calls reforming Downing Street; a thing infinitely urgent to be begun, and to be strenuously carried on. To find a Parliament more and more the express image of the People, could, unless the People chanced to be wise as well as miserable, give him no satisfaction. Not this at all; but to find some

VII.

Nowadays, doubtless, in the whole civilized world, democracy is swelling or overflowing, and all the channels in which it flows are fragile or temporary. But it is a strange offer to present for its issue the fanaticism and tyranny of the Puritans. The society and spirit which Carlyle proposes, as models for human nature, lasted but an hour, and could not last longer. The asceticism of the Republic produced the debauchery of the Restoration; Harrison preceded Rochester, men like Bunyan raised up men like Hobbes; and the sectaries, in instituting the despotism of enthusiasm, established by reaction the authority of the positive mind and the worship of gross pleasure. Ex altation is not stable, and it cannot be exacted from man, without injustice and danger. The sympathetic gener osity of the French Revolution ended in the cynicism of the Directory and the slaughters of the empire. The chivalric and poetic piety of the great Spanish monarchy emptied Spain of men and of thought. The primacy of

sort of King, made in the image of God, who could a little achieve for the People, if not their spoken wishes, yet their dnmb wants, and what they would at last find to have been their in-genius, taste and intellect in Italy re stinctive will, which is a far different matter usually, in this babbling world of ours."-Parliaments, in Latter-Day Pamphlets.

"A king or leader, then, in all bodies of men, there must be; be their work what it may, there is one man here who by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it.

"He who is to be my ru er, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither, except in such obedience to the Heaven-chosen, is freedɔm so much as conceivable."

duced her at the end of a century to voluptuous sloth and political slavery "What makes the angel makes the beast;" and perfect heroism, like all excesses, ends in stupor. Human nature has its explosions, but with intervals: mysticism is serviceable but when it is short. Violent circumstances

*Official Report, 1842.

↑ Latter-Day Pamphlets; Parliaments.

produce extreme conditions; great evils are necessary in order to raise great men, and you are obliged to look for shipwrecks when you wish to behold rescuers. If enthusiasm is beautiful, its results and its originating circumstances are sad; it is but a crisis, and a healthy state is better. In this respect Carlyle himself may serve for a proof. There is perhaps less genius in Macaulay than in Carlyle; but when we have fed for some time on this exaggerated and demoniacal style, this marvellous and sickly philosophy, this contorted and prophetic history, these sinister and furious politics, we gladly return to the continuous eloquence, to the vigorous reasoning, to the moderate prognostications, to the demonstrated theories, of the generous and solid mind which Europe has just lost, who brought honor to England, and whose place none can fill.

CHAPTER V.

Philosophy.-Stuart Mill.*

I.

WHEN at Oxford some years ago, during the meeting of the British Association, I met, amongst the few students still in residence, a young Englishman, a man of intelligence, with *M. Taine has published this "Study on Mill" separately, and preceded it by the following note, as a preface :-"When this Study first appeared, Mr. Mill did me the honour to write to me that it would not be possible to give in a few pages a more exact and complete notion of the contents of his work, considered as a body of philosophical teaching, But,' he added, I think you are wrong in regarding the views I adopt as especially English. They were so in the first half of the eighteenth cenury, from the time of Locke to that of the reaction against Hume. This reaction, begin ning in Scotland, assumed long ago the German form, and ended by prevailing universally. When I wrote my book, I stood almost alone in my opinions; and though they have met with a degree of sympathy which I by no means expected, we may still count in England twenty à priori and spiritualist philosophers for every partisan of the doctrine of Experience.'

"This remark is very true. I myself could have made it, having been brought up in the doctrines of Scottish philosophy and the writings of Reid. I simply answer, that there are philosophers whom we do not count, and that all such, whether English or not, spiritualist or

whom I became intimate. He took me in the evening to the New Museum, well filled with specimens. Here short lectures were delivered, new models of machinery were set to work; ladies were present and took an interest in the experiments; on the last day, full of enthusiasm, God save the Queen was sung. I admired this zeal, this solidity of mind, this organization of science, these voluntary subscriptions, this ap titude for association and for labor, this great machine pushed on by so many arms, and so well fitted to accumu late, criticise, and classify facts. But yet, in this abundance, there was a void; when I read the Transactions, I thought I was present at a congress of heads of manufactories. All these learned men verified details and ex changed recipes. It was as though I listened to foremen, busy in communicating their processes for tanning leather or dyeing cotton : general ideas were wanting. I used to regret this to my friend; and in the evening, by his lamp, amidst that great silence in which the university town lay wrapped, we both tried to discover its reasons.

II.

You have

One day I said to him: You lack philosophy-I mean what the Germans call metaphysics. learned men, but you have no thinkers. Your God impedes you. He is the Supreme Cause, and you dare not reason on causes, out of respect for not, may be neglected without much harm. Once in a half century, or perhaps in a century or two centuries, some thinker appears; Bacor and Hume in England, Descartes and Condil lac in France, Kant and Hegel in Germany At other times the stage is unoccupied, or ordinary men come forward, and offer the public that which the public likes-Sensualists or Idealists, according to the tendency of the day, with sufficient instruction and skill to play leading parts, and enough capacity to re-set old airs, well drilled in the works of their predeces sors, but destitute of real invention--simple executant musicians, who stand in the place of composers. In Europe, at present, the stage is a blank. The Germans adapt au alter effete French materialism. The French listen from habit, but somewhat wearily and distractedly, to the scraps of melody and eloquent commonplace which their instructors have repeated to them for the last thirty years. In this deep silence, and from among these dull medioo rities, a master comes forward to speak. Noth ing of the sort has been seen since Hegel."

*

to experiments in the laboratory. You go culling plants and collecting shells. Science is deprived of its head; but " is for the best, for practical life is im proved, and dogma remains intact.

III.

him. He is the most important personage in England, and I see clearly that he merits his position; for he forms part of your constitution, he is the guardian of your morality, he judges in final appeal on all questions whatsoever, he replaces with advantage the prefects and gendarmes with whom You are truly French, he answered; the nations on the Continent are still you ignore facts, and all at once find encumbered. Yet, this high rank has yourself settled in a theory. I assure the inconvenience of all official posi- you that there are thinkers amongst us, nors; it produces a cant, prejudices, and not far from hence, at Christ intclerance, and courtiers. Here, close Church, for instance. One of them, by us, is poor Mr. Max Müller, who, in the professor of Greek, has spoken so order to acclimatize the study of San- deeply on inspiration, the creation and scrit, was compelled to discover in the final causes, that he is out of favor. Vedas the worship of a moral God, Look at this little collection which has that is to say, the religion of Paley and recently appeared, Essays and Reviews; Addison. Some time ago, in London, your philosophic freedom of the last I read a proclamation of the Queen, century, the latest conclusions of geolforbidding people to play cards, even ogy and cosmogony, the boldness of in their own houses, on Sundays. It German exegesis, are here in abstract. seems that, if I were robbed, I could Some things are wanting, amongst not bring my thief to justice without others the waggeries of Voltaire, the taking a preliminary religious oath; misty jargon of Germany, and the pro for the judge has been known to send saic coarseness of Comte; to my mind, a complainant away who refused to the loss is small. Wait twenty years, take the oath, deny him justice, and and you will find in London the ideas insult him into the bargain. Every of Paris and Berlin.-But they will year when we read the Queen's speech still be the ideas of Paris and Berlin. in your papers, we find there the com- Whom have you that is original ?— pulsory mention of Divine Providence, Stuart Mill.-Who is he?-A political which comes in mechanically, like the writer. His little book On Liberty is invocation to the immortal gods on the as admirable as Rousseau's Contrat fourth page of a rhetorical declamation; Social is bad.—That is a bold assertion. and you remember that once, the pious-No, for Mill decides as strongly for phrase having been omitted, a second the independence of the individual as communication was made to Parlia-Rousseau for the despotism of the ment for the express purpose of sup- State.-Very well, but that is not plying it. All these cavillings and enough to make a philosopher. What pedantries indicate to my mind a celes- besides is he?-An economist who tial monarchy; naturally it resembles all goes beyond his science, and subordi. others; I mean that it relies more will-nates production to man, instead of ingly on tradition and custom than on man to production.-Well, but this is examination and reason. A monarchy never invited men to verify its credentials. As yours is, however, useful, well adapted to you, and moral, you are not revolted by it; you submit to it without difficulty, you are, at heart, attached to it; you would fear, in touching it, to disturb the constitution and morality. You leave it in the clouds, amidst public homage. You fall back upon yourselves, confine yourselves to matters of fact, to minute dissections, *This law has been abrogated by an Act of

Parliament.-TR.

not enough to make a philosopher. Is he any thing else?-A logician.-Very good; but of what school?-Of his own. I told you he was original.-Is he Hegelian?-By no means; he is too fond of facts and proofs.-Does he follow Port-Royal?-Still less; he is too well acquainted with modern sciences.-Does he imitate Condillac? -Certainly not; Condillac has only taught him to write well.-Who, then, are his friends?-Locke and Comte in the first rank; then Humé and Newton. —Is he a system-monger, a speculative

reformer?-He has too much sense for | like logicians. Mill has written or that; he only arranges the best the- logic. What is logic? It is a science ories, and explains the best methods. What is its object? The sciences; for, He does not attitudinize majestically suppose that you have traversed the in the character of a restorer of science; universe, and that you know it he does not declare, like your Germans, thoroughly, stars, earth, sun, heat, that his book will open up a new era gravity, chemical affinities, the species for humanity. He proceeds gradually, of minerals, geological revolutions, somewhat slowly, often creepingly, plants, animals human events, all that through a multitude of particular facts. classifications and theories explain and He excels in giving precision to an embrace, there still remain these classi dea, in disentangling a principle, in fications and theories to be learnt. Not discovering it amongst a number of only is there an order of beings, but different facts; in refuting, distinguish- also an order of the thoughts which ing, arguing. He has the astuteness, represent them; not only plants and patience, method, and sagacity of a animals, but also botany and zoology; lawyer. Very well, you admit that I not only lines, surfaces, volumes, and was right. A lawyer, an ally of Locke, numbers, but also geometry and arithNewton, Comte, and Hume; we have metic. Sciences, then, are as real things here only English philosophy; but no as facts themselves, and therefore, as matter. Has he reached a grand con- well as facts, become the subject of ception of the universe?—Yes. Has study. We can analyze them as we he an individual and complete idea of analyze facts, investigate their elements, nature and the mind?—Yes.—Has he composition, order, relations, and obcombined the operations and discover-ject. There is, therefore, a science of ies of the intellect under a single prin- sciences; this science is called logic, ciple which puts them all in a new and is the subject of Mill's work. It light?—Yes; but we have to discover is no part of logic to analyze the operathis principle. That is your business, tions of the mind, memory, the associand I hope you will undertake it.—But ation of ideas, external perception, etc.; I shall fall into abstract generalities.- that is the business of psychology. We There is no harm in that?-But this do not discuss the value of such operaclose reasoning will be like a quick-set tions, the veracity of our conscioushedge. We will prick our fingers withness, the absolute certainty of our eleit. But three men out of four would cast aside such speculations as idle.— So much the worse for them. For in what does the life of a nation or a century consist, except in the formation of such theories? We are not thoroughly men unless so engaged. If some dweller in another planet were to come down here to ask us the nature of our race, we should have to show him the five or six great ideas which we have formed of the mind and the world. That alone would give him the measure of our intelligence. Expound to me your theory, and I shall go away better instructed than after having seen the masses of brick, which you call London and Manchester.

§ 1.-EXPERIENCE.

I.

mentary knowledge; this belongs to metaphysics. We suppose our faculties to be at work, and we admit their pri mary discoveries. We take the instru ment as nature has provided it, and we trust to its accuracy. We leave to others the task of taking its mechanism to pieces, and the curiosity which criticises its results. Setting out from its primitive operations, we inquire how they are added to each other; how they are combined; how one is convertible into another; how, by dint of additions, combinations, and transfermations, they finally compose a system of connected and developed truths. We construct a theory of science, as others construct theories of vegetation, of the mind, or of numbers. Such is the idea of logic; and it is plain that it has, as other sciences, a real subjectmatter, its distinct province, its manifest importance, its special method, and

Let us begin, then, at the beginning, a certain future.

II.

nerve. It weighs ten pounds: that is, it would require to lift it an effort less than for a weight of eleven pounds, and greater than for a weight of nine pounds; in other words, it produces a certain muscular sensation. It is hard and square, which means that, if first pushed, and then run over by the hand, it will excite two distinct kinds of muscular sensations. And so on. When

Having premised so much, we obBerve that all these sciences which form the subject of logic, are but collections of propositions, and that each proposition merely connects or separates a ubject and an attribute, that is, two names, a quality and a substance; that is to say, a thing and another thing. We must then ask what we understand by a thing, what we indicate by a examine closely what I know of it, name; in other words, what it is we recognize in objects, what we connect or separate, what is the subject-matter of all our propositions and all our science. There is a point in which all our several items of knowledge resemble one another. There is a common element which, continually repeated, constitutes all our ideas. There is, as it were, a minute primitive crystal which, indefinitely and variously repeating itself, forms the whole mass, and which, once known, teaches us beforehand the laws and composition of the complex bodies which it has formed.

Now, when we attentively consider the idea which we form of any thing, what do we find in it? Take first substances, that is to say, Bodies and Minds. This table is brown, long, wide, three feet high, judging by the eye: that is, it forms a little spot in the field of vision; in other words, it produces a certain sensation on the optic

I find that I know nothing else except the impressions it makes upon me. Our idea of a body comprises nothing else than this: we know nothing of it but the sensations it excites in us; we determine it by the nature, number, and order of these sensations; we know nothing of its inner nature, nor whether it has one; we simply affirm that it is the unknown cause of these sensations. When we say that a body has existed in the absence of our sensations we mean simply that if, during that time, we had been within reach of it, we should have had sensations which we have not had. We never define it save by our present or past, future or possible, complex or simple impressions This is so true, that philosophers like Berkeley have maintained, with some show of truth, that matter is a creature of the imagination, and that the whole universe of sense is reducible to an order of sensations. It is at least so, as far as our knowledge is concerned; and the judgments which compose our sciences, have reference only to the impressions by which things are manifest

"It is certain, then, that a part of our notion of a body consists of the notion of a number of sensations of our own or of other sentient beings, habitually occurring simultaneously.ed to us. My conception of the table at which I am writing is compounded of its visible form and size, which are complex sensations of sight; its tangible form and size, which are complex sensations of our organs of touch and of our muscles; its weight, which is also a sensation of touch and of the muscles; its colour, which is a sensation of sight; its hardness, which is a sensation of the muscles; its composition, which is

another word for all the varieties of sensation which we receive, under various circumstances, from the wood of which it is made; and so forth. All or most of these various sensations frequently are, and, as we learn by experience, always might be, experienced simultaneously, or in many different orders of succession, at our own choice: and hence the thought of any one of them makes us think of the others, and the whole becomes mentally amalgamated into one mixed state of consciousness, which, in the language of Locke and Hartley, is termed a Complex Idea."-MILL'S System of Logic, 4th ed. 2 vols.. i. 62.

So, again, with the mind. We may well admit that there is in us a soul, an "ego," a subject or recipient of our sensations and of our other modes of being, distinct from those sensations and modes of existence; but we know nothing of it. Mr. Mill says:

"For, as our conception of a body is that o an unknown exciting cause of sensations, so our conception of a mind is that of an unknown recipient, or percipient, of them; and not of them alone, but of all our other feelings. As body is the mysterious something which excites the mind to feel, so mind is the mysterious something which feels, and thinks. It is u necessary to give in the case of mind, as we gave in the case of matter, a particular state ment of the sceptical system by which its exist ence as a Thing in itself, distinct from the series of what are denominated its states, is

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