MANSEL’S REPLY TO MILL From The Nation, January 10, 1867. ⁴⁸

That the two great schools of philosophy will never be able to make much impression on one another by way of criticism seems pretty evident from the history of the long debate the last words of which reach us in Mr. Mansel’s restatement and defense of Sir William Hamilton’s philosophy. “The Philosophy of the Conditioned; comprising some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and on Mr. J. S. Mill's Examination of that Philosophy. By H. L. Mansel, B.D.” 1866. Pp. vii. and 189. Reprinted, with additions, from the “Contemporary Review.” ⁴⁹ The only real strength of either school appears to be in its ability to hold and fill the minds of its disciples to the exclusion of the other, not by logical refutations but by competitive rivalry in meeting the intellectual demands of the thinker. Few minds could be tempted; even were they competent to do so, to stand in fair judgment between these contestants, and the only feasible course of this sort ever recommended was that of Pyrrho, who advised his disciples to stand aside rather and to attend only to the practical questions of life. For, after all, the intellectual demands which these philosophies are calculated to meet are creations of the philosophies themselves, and once created they find their food only in the parent thought. Thus, the main summary objection which the metaphysical spirit makes to the theories of the sceptical school is, that they fail to answer the questions which the metaphysical school has started. And the main objection of the sceptical spirit to metaphysics is, that these questions are gratuitous, idle, and foolish.

A compromise between the two schools was nevertheless attempted by Sir William Hamilton in his “Philosophy of the

Conditioned.” This philosophy allows the validity of metaphysical problems; allows that the terms and positions of the orthodox philosophy mean something possibly real; but maintains at the same time that these refer to unattainable objects, and that the questions are unanswerable so far as human powers of comprehension can render the facts evident or even intelligible as such. This philosophy is in strict accordance with the teachings of Catholic theology from the earliest times, and it gives great prominence to an essential position of this theology—the antithesis of reason and faith, or the doctrine of a difference in kind between knowledge and belief. The kind of entertainment which, according to the “Philosophy of the Conditioned,” it is possible for the mind to have of the ideas of metaphysics, far from being a conviction resulting from direct or intuitive evidence, is not even a conception of the facts as possibly true. A conception of the terms and of the propositions as such is, of course, not only allowed, but is an essential position of this philosophy. That which is regarded as inconceivable is the union of the terms of these propositions in reality as well as in form—in the facts which are supposed to be stated in the propositions. That such a fact can be entertained or assented to is the common ground of this philosophy and orthodox theology. “Faith” or “simple belief” is the name of this assent. But inasmuch as this assent is entirely independent of knowledge or probable evidence, an independent ground for it is required among the native powers of the mind, and this is also called “faith” or “belief.” Knowledge and partial evidence may aid in fashioning our ideas of metaphysical facts, but are not regarded as the grounds of our assent to them.

To this extent the “Philosophy of the Conditioned” is nothing more than the doctrine of orthodox theology. But its essential feature is this: The faith which is ultimate and independent of knowledge is not in this philosophy a sentiment, the issue of the heart, or a conviction having its ground in aspiration, love, and devotion, but it subsists in the cold light of the intellect itself, where alone intellectual philosophy could profess to find it. It subsists as a logical necessity

of thinking something to exist which is unthinkable—not merely something which we have not yet thought of—not the unknown simply, but the unknowable. Sir William Hamilton professes to demonstrate this necessity in the passage so often quoted from his review of Cousin.

“The conditioned is the mean between two extremes—two inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary,” etc. This application of the logical laws of contradiction and excluded middle is the gist of the philosophy of the conditioned; and to this Mr. Mill, in his “Examination” of Hamilton’s doctrines, has distinctly replied to the following effect: What is the evidence of the impossibility of a middle ground between contradictory propositions? Simply this: that in all that we know, and in all which we can conceive as possible, there is no such middle ground. What, then, is the evidence in regard to that which we cannot know and cannot conceive as possible? It is clear that on their proper evidence the laws of excluded middle and contradiction cannot be extended to such cases, and that such an extension of them is purely gratuitous. What hinders, either in the laws of thought or in our knowledge of things, that there should be an inconceivable middle ground between inconceivable contradictories? What hinders that both of them or that neither of them should be true, or that truth should be wholly included in what can be understood as true?

To this refutation of the main position of the philosophy of the conditioned, Mr. Mansel makes no reference in his reply, except in a very remote manner, in a passage in which he sneers at Mr. Mill’s apparent ignorance of Hamilton’s doctrine of the reality of space. A favorite illustration with Hamilton of his laws of the conditioned is the equal inconceivability, as he asserts, of infinite space and space absolutely bounded, one of which, on the ground of their mutual repugnance, must be admitted as real. The fitness of this illustration, to say nothing of its truth, depends on its not being confined to space as we know it, but on its extension to the

really existent space, or space independent of our knowledge, if any such space exists. If no such space exists, then the illustration is wholly inapt. Mr. Mill, therefore, very naturally attributes to Hamilton the only meaning which could fit his illustration to its use, and he supposes Hamilton to refer to a “noumenon space.” Mr. Mill says: “It is not merely space as cognizable by our sense, but space as it is in itself, which he [Hamilton] affirms must be either of unlimited or of limited extent.” “At this sentence,” exclaims Mr. Mansel, “we fairly stand aghast.” “Space as it is in itself! The noumenon space! Has Mr. Mill been all this while ‘examining’ Sir William Hamilton’s philosophy in utter ignorance that the object of that philosophy is the ‘conditioned in time and space;’ that he accepts Kant’s analysis of time and space as formal necessities of thought, but pronounces no opinion whatever as to whether time and space can exist as noumena or not?” (p. 138). And so Mr. Mansel runs off on an irrelevant issue from the nearest approach he makes to the gist of the matter.

The first sixty pages of Mr. Mansel’s review are devoted to a positive exposition of the metaphysical doctrine of the “unconditioned,” that “highest link in the chain of thought,” that “absolutely first link in a chain of phenomena” about which metaphysicians have gratuitously confused themselves for so many ages. Mr. Mansel endeavors to clear up the matter by discussing the terms employed in the doctrine, and especially the meanings attached to them by Hamilton. He then comes to the trial of Mr. Mill’s “Examination,” and this is his indictment: “Not only is Mr. Mill’s attack on Hamilton’s philosophy, with the exception of some minor details, unsuccessful; but we are compelled to add that, with regard to the three fundamental doctrines of that philosophy—the relativity of knowledge, the incognizability of the absolute and infinite, and the distinction between reason and faith— Mr. Mill has, throughout his criticism, altogether missed the meaning of the theories he is attempting to assail” (p. 63). More specifically he charges Mr. Mill with ignorance of the history of the questions discussed; with frequent perversions

and even inversions of the meanings of the terms employed by Hamilton and other metaphysicians, and with an unpardonable want of familiarity with Plato and with the antiquity of the doctrines which he discovers as absurdities in Hamilton and our author.

A scholastic display of subtle learning was probably not Mr. Mill’s object in entering into this debate with the metaphysicians. If metaphysical philosophy had been content to remain a purely theoretical philosophy, shut up in its own technicalities, and in the original Greek; if it had disdained to descend into the arena of practical life and to influence men’s conduct, no really earnest critic, like Mr. Mill, would have opposed its pretensions. If it had not translated itself into the vernacular, and wrested words of a familiar and practical application from their familiar and practical use, and thereby sought to enslave the souls of men to a scholastic and ecclesiastical authority, no criticisms like Mr. Mill’s would have disturbed its self-complacency.

That Pyrrho was wrong in his advice to abstain from such disputations, is sufficiently evinced by the influence upon practical life which the doctrines of Hamilton and Mansel were calculated to exert. “That a true psychology is the indispensable basis of morals, of politics, of the science and art of education; that the difficulties of metaphysics lie at the root of all science; that these difficulties can only be quieted by being resolved, and that until they are resolved—positively, if possible, but at any rate negatively—we are never assured that any human knowledge, even physical, stands on solid foundations;” these are reasons enough for examining the pretensions of the metaphysical philosophy; these are the sufficient grounds of the practical critic’s interest in those formidable words, the infinite and the absolute, the chevaux de bataille of metaphysics. For these words are also common and familiar ones, and are commonly and familiarly used, as Mr. Mansel himself admits, in senses different from those assigned to them by the metaphysicians; but the conclusions drawn from their definitions in metaphysics are inevitably interpreted into a practical accordance with the commonsense

meanings of the words, and hence lead to false judgments concerning the character of the evidences of religious and moral truths.

Mr. Mill’s real end was, therefore, a practical one—to show that in the recognized common meanings of these words the doctrines of metaphysics make arrant nonsense, and that these words have a valid, useful, and intelligible application to the most serious practical relations of life, without any reference to their use in metaphysics. Mr. Mansel uses the word “absolute” in a sense different even from Hamilton’s, and complains that Mr. Mill has not given him the benefit of his philosophically clearer and corrector definition. But we imagine that Mr. Mill was more concerned to do justice to the common-sense meaning of the word than to Mr. Mansel.

That the words “infinite” and “absolute,” as defined in metaphysics, involve contradictions in their definitions, and not in the attempt to conceive the reality of the things defined, is the position which Mr. Mill maintains against the philosophy of the conditioned. “The contradictions which Mr. Mansel asserts to be involved in the notions do not follow,” says Mr. Mill, “from an imperfect mode of apprehending the infinite and the absolute, but lie in the definitions of them, in the meanings of the words themselves.” This position Mr. Mansel flatly denies. He holds that these meanings are perfectly intelligible, and are exactly what are expressed by the definitions of the words. To test this, let us take an example. “If we could realize in thought infinite space,” says an anonymous writer (a diligent student of Sir William Hamilton’s writings, whom Mr. Mansel quotes with approbation), “that conception would be a perfectly definite one.” The infinite, then, is not the indefinite. It is a unit, a whole. But it is without limits. It is, then, a whole without limits. But a whole implies limits. We know of no whole which has not limits. We can conceive of no whole which has not limits. Limits, in fact, belong to the essence of every whole of which we speak intelligibly. Does not the metaphysical idea or definition of infinity involve, therefore, a contradiction?

Of the common idea of the infinite, as involved in the concrete example, “infinite space,” Mr. Mill says: “The negative part of this conception is the absence of bounds. The positive is the idea of space, and of space greater than any finite space.” “This definition of infinite space is,” says Mr. Mansel, “exactly that which Descartes gives us of indefinite extension” But an indefinite extension, according to Descartes, is that which is capable of unlimited increase, and we fail to see the identity of this with Mr. Mill’s definition. Moreover, according to the metaphysicians, the infinite and the finite, being contradictories, include all there is; and as the indefinite is not the infinite, it must be some finite. But Mr. Mill says that his infinite is greater than any finite. How, then, can it be the same as the indefinite?“Greater than any finite” excludes the finite as effectually as an absolute negation of it, but it has this positive peculiarity, that it excludes the finite in an essential and characteristic manner. “Greater than” is a much more specific form of denial than the “is not” by which the metaphysicians are content to distinguish the infinite from the finite. It is this specific and characteristic mode of exclusion which constitutes the positive part of the abstract conception of the infinite, and, according to Mr. Mansel, a positive conception, or the positive part of a conception, is that of which we can conceive the manner of its realization. It cannot be supposed that Mr. Mansel means by this that only those conceptions are positive of which we can have examples in intuition, for this would be to identify positive conceptions with adequate ones. No one asserts that the infinite can be adequately conceived except the “rationalists,” to whom Mr. Mill is as much opposed as Hamilton or Mansel; but, as Mr. Mill observes, “between a conception which, though inadequate, is real and correct as far as it goes, and the impossibility of any conception, there is a wide difference.”

The common notion of infinity is not, then, a mere negation. It refers to and is related to positive experience, and to valid operations of the mind in drawing conclusions from experience. It is not the same as the indefinite; it is not that

to which an unlimited addition is possible, since it is defined as the greatest possible, greater than any quantities which can be measured or compared by their differences. But such quantities may still be compared by their ratios when, as in the higher mathematics, they are “the greatest possible” under certain conditions which do not, however, determine or limit their values as numbers, or as definite sums of units. In a foot-note (p. 115), Mr. Mansel breaks a lance with Professor De Morgan, “one of the ablest mathematicians and the most persevering Hamiltono-mastix of the day.” De Morgan maintains the applicability of a valid notion of infinity to mathematical magnitudes; but unfortunately assumes besides, or appears to assume, that such phrases as “points at an infinite distance,” “the extremities of infinite lines,” etc., are literally valid in mathematics. This assumption Mr. Mansel easily refutes. But the main position remains untouched. With the mathematician such phrases are really technical abbreviated expressions of a complex conception. Having shown validly and consistently that lines of unlimited length tend to approach continually to a given state of things, or to a given relation to one another, but in a manner which makes it impossible for them as lines, continuously drawn, ever to reach this state of things, the mathematician then changes the object of his contemplation. He dismisses the infinite line, and turns his attention to the state of things (the point of tangency, for example) to which his infinite lines, though always approaching, could never attain. Instead of spanning the infinite in his thought, he simply abbreviates in his language that substitution of one object for another which conducts him to the end of his research. ⁵⁰ The metaphysical idea or definition of infinity, on the contrary, in so far as it is not merely negative, involves a contradiction, since it is asserted to be a definite whole, and, at the same time, to be without limits.

Mr. Mansel quotes Locke against Mr. Mill’s position, to the effect that the supposition of an actual idea of the infinite realized in the mind involves a contradiction. But Mr. Mill does not suppose the notion to be fully realized or to be capable of complete realization. It is important only that the notion be true so far as it goes, or that it should accord with the facts and the evidences which the mind is capable of comprehending.

We must pass over other special points of criticism, and hasten to the chief practical ground of difference, which we conceive to have furnished the real motive of Mr. Mill’s “Examination” of Hamilton’s and Mansel’s doctrines. Our readers will remember the paragraph in the “Examination,” p. 103:

“If, instead of the ‘glad tidings’ that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive exist in a

degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite; but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that ‘the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving’ does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and, at the same time, call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say, in plain terms, that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.”

To this Mr. Mansel replies by discussing the meaning of the word “good.” He asks “whether Mr. Mill really supposes the word good to lose all community of meaning when it is applied, as it constantly is, to different persons among our ‘fellow-creatures’ with express reference to their different duties and different qualifications for performing them?” and he proposes to “test Mr. Mill’s declamation by a parallel case”:

“A wise and experienced father addresses a young and inexperienced son. ‘My son,’ he says, ‘there may be some of my actions which do not seem to you to be wise or good, or such us you would do in my place. Remember, however, that your duties are different from mine, that your knowledge of my duties is very imperfect, and that there may be things which you cannot see to be wise and good, but which you may hereafter discover to be so.’ ‘Father,’ says the son, ‘your principles of action are not the same as mine; the highest morality which I can conceive at present does not sanction them; and as for believing that you are good in anything of which I do not plainly see the goodness ’— We will not repeat Mr. Mill’s alternative; we will only ask whether it is not just possible that there may be as much difference between man and God as there is between a child and his father?”

This “parallel case” is, in an important respect, a very happy one. It suggests the real practical issue of the debate, unencumbered by theological and metaphysical obscurities; but to make it perfect, the parallel should be more exact. The real question is as to the child’s obligation to respect his father’s wisdom and goodness independently of any experience of them, and solely on the ground of that parent’s word for them. If, from the wisdom and the goodness which the child has seen and understood, he infers uncomprehended higher

degrees of these qualities, reasoning from the known to the unknown, just as he does in all other relations of life, and just as we all do, then the child bases his faith on the sure and only ground of knowledge; and his deference to the father’s judgment in all cases of doubt or conflict is the natural and direct consequence of a faith so grounded. But if, bewildered and oppressed by a metaphysical difficulty in trying to comprehend the peculiar duties of a father, he should base his faith on his ignorance of them, and believe in the goodness which he cannot comprehend, believing because of his ignorance and not on account of the little knowledge he does possess; and if, in his blind devotion, he should abdicate his own intelligence, reject his own clear judgments of right, when they are brought into apparent conflict with the parent’s selfishness, or with that of servants claiming to speak by authority, then the child’s devotion would not be that of an ingenuous, filial piety; it would rather be an abject slavish submission. Such we conceive to be the really parallel case, involving the real practical issue between the two philosophies. Faith is, in one, founded on knowledge by experience; in the other, it is independent of knowledge.