Chapter XXII: Mr. Mill's Logic264 (3)

74. I have now made such remarks as appear to me to be necessary, on the most important parts of Mr. Mill's criticism of my _Philosophy_. I hope I have avoided urging any thing in a contentious manner; as I have certainly written with no desire of controversy, but only with a view to offer to those who may be willing to receive it, some explanation of portions of my previous writings. I have already said, that if this had not have been my especial object, I could with pleasure have noted the passages of Mr. Mill's _Logic_ which I admire, rather than the points in which we differ. I will in a very few words refer to some of these points, as the most agreeable way of taking leave of the dispute.

I say then that Mr. Mill appears to me especially instructive in his discussion of the nature of the proof which is conveyed by the syllogism; and that his doctrine, that the force of the syllogism consists in an _inductive assertion, with an interpretation added to it_, solves very happily the difficulties which baffle the other theories of this subject. I think that this doctrine of his is made still more instructive, by his excepting from it the cases of Scriptural Theology and of Positive Law (i. 260), as cases in which general propositions, not particular facts, are our original data. I consider also that the recognition of _Kinds_ (i. 166) as classes in which we have, not a finite but an _inexhaustible_ body of resemblances among individuals, and as groups made by nature, not by mere definition, is very valuable, as stopping the inroad to an endless train of false philosophy. I conceive that he takes the right ground in his answer to Hume's argument against miracles (ii. 183): and I admire the acuteness with which he has criticized Laplace's tenets on the Doctrine of Chances, and the candour with which he has, in the second edition, acknowledged oversights on this subject made in the first. I think that much, I may almost say all, which he says on the subject of Language, is very philosophical; for instance, what he says (ii. 238) of the way in which words acquire their meaning in common use. I especially admire the acuteness and force with which he has shown (ii. 255) how moral principles expressed in words degenerate into formulas, and yet how the formula cannot be rejected without a moral loss. This "perpetual oscillation in spiritual truths," as he happily terms it, has never, I think, been noted in the same broad manner, and is a subject of most instructive contemplation. And though I have myself refrained from associating moral and political with physical science in my study of the subject, I see a great deal which is full of promise for the future progress of moral and political knowledge in Mr. Mill's sixth Book, "On the Logic of the Moral and Political Sciences." Even his arrangement of the various methods which have been or may be followed in "the Social Science,"--"the Chemical or Experimental Method," "the Geometrical or Abstract Method," "the Physical or Concrete Deductive Method," "the Inverse Deductive or Historical Method," though in some degree fanciful and forced, abounds with valuable suggestions; and his estimate of "the interesting philosophy of the Bentham school," the main example of "the geometrical method," is interesting and philosophical. On some future occasion, I may, perhaps, venture into the region of which Mr. Mill has thus essayed to map the highways: for it is from no despair either of the great progress to be made in such truth as that here referred to, or of the effect of philosophical method in arriving at such truth, that I have, in what I have now written, confined myself to the less captivating but more definite part of the subject.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 264: [_A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a connected view of the Principles of Evidence, and of the Methods of Scientific Investigation._ By John Stuart Mill.]]

[Footnote 265: These Remarks were published in 1849, under the title _Of Induction, with especial reference to Mr. J. S. Mill's System of Logic_.]

[Footnote 266: My references are throughout (except when otherwise expressed) to the volume and the page of Mr. Mill's first edition of his _Logic_.]

[Footnote 267: On this subject see an Essay _On the Transformation of Hypotheses_, given in the Appendix.]

[Footnote 268: B. vii. c. iii. sect. 3.]

[Footnote 269: B. iii. c. ix. art. 7.]

[Footnote 270: B. i. c. iii.]

[Footnote 271: B. iii. c. viii.]

[Footnote 272: _Discourse_, Art. 192.]

[Footnote 273: B. xi. c. xi.]

[Footnote 274: _Phil._ b. xiii. c. ix. art. 7.]

[Footnote 275: B. xiii. c. viii.]

[Footnote 276: Given also in the _Phil. Ind. Sc._ b. xiii. c. vii. sect. 17.]

[Footnote 277: _Ibid._ b. vi. c. iv.]

[Footnote 278: See _Hist. Ind. Sc._ b. xii. note D, in the second edition.]

[Footnote 279: There are some points in my doctrines on the subject of the Classificatory Sciences to which Mr. Mill objects, (ii. 314, &c.), but there is nothing which I think it necessary to remark here, except one point. After speaking of Classification of organized beings in general, Mr. Mill notices (ii. 321) as an additional subject, the arrangement of natural groups into a Natural Series; and he says, that "all who have attempted a theory of natural arrangement, including among the rest Mr. Whewell, have stopped short of this: all except M. Comte." On this I have to observe, that I stopped short of, or rather passed by, the doctrine of a Series of organized beings, because I thought it bad and narrow philosophy: and that I sufficiently indicated that I did this. In the _History_ (b. xvi. c. vi.) I have spoken of the doctrine of Circular Progression propounded by Mr. Macleay, and have said, "so far as this view _negatives_ a mere _linear_ progression in nature, which would place each genus in contact with the preceding and succeeding ones, and so far as it requires us to attend to the more varied and ramified resemblances, there can be no doubt that it is supported by the result of all the attempts to form natural systems." And with regard to the difference between Cuvier and M. de Blainville, to which Mr. Mill refers (ii. 321), I certainly cannot think that M. Comte's suffrage can add any weight to the opinion of either of those great naturalists.]

[Footnote 280: _Hist. Ind. Sc._ b. x. note (VA) in the second edition.]

[Footnote 281: B. xi. c. v. art. 11.]

[Footnote 282: I have given elsewhere (see last chapter) reasons why I cannot assign to M. Comte's _Philosophie Positive_ any great value as a contribution to the philosophy of science. In this judgment I conceive that I am supported by the best philosophers of our time. M. Comte owes, I think, much of the notice which has been given to him to his including, as Mr. Mill does, the science of society and of human nature in his scheme, and to his boldness in dealing with these. He appears to have been received with deference as a mathematician: but Sir John Herschel has shown that a supposed astronomical discovery of his is a mere assumption. I conceive that I have shown that his representation of the history of science is erroneous, both in its details and in its generalities. His distinction of the three stages of sciences, the theological, metaphysical, and positive, is not at all supported by the facts of scientific history. Real discoveries always involve what he calls _metaphysics_; and the doctrine of final causes in physiology, the main element of science which can properly be called _theological_, is retained at the end, as well as the beginning of the science, by all except a peculiar school.]

[Footnote 283: I have also, in the same place, given the Inductive Pyramid for the science of Optics. These Pyramids are necessarily inverted in their form, in order that, in reading in the ordinary way, we may proceed _to_ the vertex. _Phil. Ind. Sc._ b. xi. c. vi.]

[Footnote 284: _Cosmos_, vol. ii. note 35.]

[Footnote 285: The reader will probably recollect that as _Induction_ means the inference of general propositions from particular cases, _Deduction_ means the inference by the application of general propositions to particular cases, and by combining such applications; as when from the most general principles of Geometry or of Mechanics, we prove some less general theorem; for instance, the number of the possible regular solids, or the principle of _vis viva_.]

[Footnote 286: B. vi. c. v.]

[Footnote 287: c. vi.]

[Footnote 288: _Hist._ b. vi. c. vi. sect. 13.]

[Footnote 289: _Hist. Ind. Sc._ b. viii.]

[Footnote 290: Reprinted in the Appendix to this volume.]