THE

JOURNAL

OF

SACRED LITERATURE

AND

BIBLICAL RECORD.

No. XVII. APRIL, 1866.

MR. J. S. MILL AND THE INDUCTIVE ORIGIN OF FIRST

PRINCIPLES.

A STEP TOWARDS THE RECONCILIATION OF THE TWO SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY.

THAT it is of the highest importance to ascertain the true and infallible method of obtaining first principles, more especially in those departments of knowledge which are aiming to be sciences, but have as yet their first principles in an unsettled condition, will be readily acknowledged by every one who is keenly alive to the influence which ideas exert upon the progress of the human

race.

To describe this method in a general way, and in relation to the views of some of the leading writers on this subject in this country, is the object of this essay.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in criticizing Mr. J. S. Mill's views in relation to Dr. Whewell's test of necessary truth, remarks that,

"If there be, as Mr. J. S. Mill holds, certain absolute uniformities in nature; if these absolute uniformities produce, as they must, absolute uniformities in our experience; and if, as he shews, these absolute uniformities in our experience disable us from conceiving the negation of them, then answering to each absolute uniformity in nature which we can cognize there must be in us a belief of which the negation is inconceivable, and which is absolutely true. . . . In nearly all cases this test of inconceivableness must be valid now, and where it is not, it still expresses the NEW SERIES.- -VOL. IX., NO. XVII.

B

net result of our experience up to the present time, which is the most that any test can do."

Mr. Spencer holds, then, that what is contrary to absolute or unbroken uniformity of experience is inconceivable, and that this is the only test of the invariableness of a belief. Is a belief invariable? We know that it is so by the inconceivableness of its negation, by its firmly holding its ground against every possible attempt to upset it. But why is its negation inconceivable? Because the negation is completely opposed to our uniform and unbroken experience. But is this test absolutely perfect? Is it possible that a belief pronounced by it to be invariable should some time or other turn out to be variable? Mr. Spencer, in words which are quoted below, seems to admit that the test does not always preclude this possibility. Indeed, how can uniform experience, for example, our experience of the sun's rising, prove the impossibility of the cessation of this event? No induction from such experience is competent to establish a necessary and universal truth, and it is only the negation of such a truth which is absolutely inconceivable. Uniform experience supplies us with two kinds of convictions, those whose negation is conceivable, and those whose negation is not conceivable. But why is there this difference between them? Philosophy will not rest satisfied with the simple statement of the fact that some beliefs, when you attempt to dispel them by any means whatever, are discovered to be perfectly indestructible, but will seek to dive deeper into the matter, and look out for some explanation of this fact.

In the controversy between Mr. Mill and Dr. Whewell (alas! now no more), in regard to inconceivableness as the test of necessary truth, it is contended by the former, owing to what, in imitation of Reid, may be called an error personæ, that certain beliefs were once held to be true, because their negation in some sense was inconceivable, which beliefs are now exploded, and, therefore, that such inconceivableness is no infallible criterion of the necessity of a truth. But the inconceivableness which Dr. Whewell had in view is that which we experience when we try to think the contradictory of a necessary truth, as, for instance, that 5+5 does not make 10. The inconceivableness which Mr. Mill has singled out is that which certain persons have felt when they attempted to undo firm, long-standing, but ill-founded associations. Mr. Spencer attempts to weaken the force of Mr. Mill's objection to Dr. Whewell's view, but does not perceive its irrelevant character. He writes::

"Conceding the entire truth of Mr. Mill's position, that as during any phase of human progress, the ability or inability to form a specific conception wholly depends on the experiences men have had, they may byand-bye be enabled to conceive things before inconceivable to them; it may still be argued that as, at any time, the best warrant men can have for a belief is the perfect agreement of all pre-existing experience in support of it, it follows that, at any time, the inconceivableness of its negation is the deepest test any belief admits of. Though occasionally it may prove an imperfect test, yet as our most certain beliefs are capable of no better, to doubt one belief, because we have no higher guarantee for it, is really to doubt all beliefs."

By inconceivableness, then, Mr. Spencer means much the same thing as Mr. Mill does, namely, that which is contrary to absolute or steadfast uniformity of experience. While, however, Mr. Mill, in opposition to Dr. Whewell, makes little of the test of inconceivableness, and exposes its weakness, Mr. Spencer makes the most of it; maintaining that our most certain beliefs are capable of no better. We think that Mr. Spencer is right in the main. Truths are known to be necessary and universal by its being found that they will not brook contradiction. For example, we know that 5+5 must always make 10, because it is impossible to conceive or even to suppose 5+5 making anything else than 10. So far we agree with Mr. Spencer; but we cannot hold with him that absolute uniformities in our experience are the sole root of convictions whose negation is inconceivable from involving contradiction, because uniform experience supplies us with some convictions whose negation is not inconceivable from involving contradiction, as, for example, our belief in the future rising of the sun or the alternations of day and night.

How can Mr. Spencer account for the existence of the absolutely fixed conviction that 2+2 can by no possibility whatever make, at any time, anything else than 4? If we simply had the evidence of invariable experience for the truth of this conviction, we should have only precisely the same evidence for it as we have for the belief that the sun will continue to rise in future. But surely, if, from this evidence, we cannot infer that the sun will never cease to rise; neither can we conclude from similar evidence that 2+2 will never cease to make 4. We cannot, from precisely similar inductions, infer a contingent truth, as well as a necessary and universal truth. No; we can only draw, in both instances, the weaker conclusion which follows in one of them. Since, however, our conviction that 2+2 must always make 4, is as strong as it can possibly be, it must be

Introduction, p. 21.

quite clear that it is based on far more conclusive evidence than that which has here been claimed for it.

It is pointed out by Mr. Mill, that in some cases we have not the power, from the absence of any analogy, to imagine an exception to our uniform experience. We cannot, for example, imagine space which has no space beyond; time which had no time prior to it, or which will have no time posterior to it; or picture the character of elements simpler than those which baffle the attempts of analysis to resolve them into yet simpler ones. In these instances the inconceivableness arises, not from involving contradiction, but from restrictions of another kind to which the mind is subject. This species of inconceivableness is brought by Professor Mansel under the head of judgments necessary in the second degree, or psychological necessity. The contradictory of such judgments is said to be supposable, but not conceivable, that is, there is nothing to prove that the contradictory may not be true; but we are not able, for want of material, for want of elements, to form either a notion or a mental image of it. For example, we cannot form a mental picture of space which has no space beyond. Admitting that the mind is subject to these restrictions; still, if we have the evidence of uniform experience alone for the infinity of space, we are not deterred by that evidence from supposing space to be finite, even though we cannot conceive or picture it as such.

C

System of Logic. Third Edition. Vol. i., p. 268.

d Prolegomena Logica. Second Edition, p. 176.

e

d

By the supposable, but not conceivable, we must understand that which may be, for aught we know to the contrary, but of which we have not the means of forming a notion or concept. Thus, we can suppose a being capable of perceiving colours without eyes; but how this is done it is not in our power either to conceive or imagine.

"The words Conception, Concept, Notion, should be limited to the thought of what cannot be represented in the imagination, as the thought suggested by a general term. The Leibnitzians call this symbolical in contrast to intuitive knowledge. This is the sense in which conceptio and conceptus have been usually and correctly employed. Mr. Stewart, on the other hand, arbitrarily limits conception to the reproduction (in imagination) of an object of sense as actually perceived." (Hamilton's Reid, p. 360. Note.)

:

Adopting the interpretation here given, we define the following terms thus :Perception, the mental act by which we have direct, presentative, or intuitive knowledge of individual objects as individual. This mental act is otherwise called the Law of Difference.

Conception (con-capere), the mental act by which, in the first place, we have a knowledge of individual objects as resembling each other; in the second place, by which we form notions or concepts, and express them by general terms; and in the third place, by which we attach a meaning to general terms. This mental act is otherwise called the Law of Similarity.

Imagination, the mental act by which we re-present in thought the presentations of perception either as they actually occur, or not as they actually occur, but combined in a fictitious manner.

The undoubted fact, however, that we cannot even suppose space to be finite, without a falling into contradiction, manifestly shews that absolute uniformity of experience is not the sole basis of the conviction that space is illimitable.

Having thus opened the question, let us proceed to examine the origin of necessary and universal truth. After long and patient investigation, we have arrived at the conviction that necessary truth is procured by a form of reasoning which, as preliminary to further inquiry, and as a help to it, may be expressed as follows:-If it is perceived that this is connected with that, and if it is also perceived that this without that cannot exist, then it is inferred that this is necessarily connected with that.

We call this the Canon of Induction. Be it observed that it is a form of reasoning. We have in it a positive and a negative premiss, and a conclusion which states the inference drawn from them. For example, perception enables us simply to ascertain that 2+2 makes 4, and that without 2+2 there is no 4. But when perception has done this, there is no more that it can do. It is by an act of reasoning, by the comparison of the above data, that we are enabled to get a knowledge of the necessary conjunction which exists between 2+2 and 4. The above canon seems therefore to be the criterion of necessary truth. According to it, there is no alternative save for a connection among facts, whether belonging to the mental or the physical world, to be either necessary or not necessary, that is, contingent.

It has, however, always been held that a necessary truth is virtually a universal truth. Now it appears that the universality of a necessary truth is inferred from the fact that its contradictory cannot be entertained by the mind. For example, if it is proved by inductive reasoning that a triangle is necessarily three-sided, we cannot suppose an instance in which this is not the case, or in which a triangle is not three-sided, without committing a subversio principii, without destroying, that is, the very subject of the contradictory judgment itself, and this because the subject necessarily implies the judgment to which the contradictory is opposed, namely, that a triangle is necessarily three-sided. If it is proved that 2+2 must equal 4, then, when by an effort of conception we multiply cases of 2+2=4, if we would not subvert our principium, we are compelled to suppose each case as precisely similar to it. It is by adopting this plan alone that we are able to avoid falling into contradiction. The only alternative which we have, therefore, is to infer that at any period, past, present, and to come, and in any number of instances, a necessary conjunction is a universal one. This law we have named-The Law of Universalization.