MILL'S LAST ESSAYS.*

......
It is probably a consequence of the caution here referred to in reference to the publication of works on the subject of religion that the only writings of Mill in which this is the predominant theme have been withheld from the press until after his death. The reason for this scrupulousness, which by his detractors has been malignantly ascribed to considerations of timidity that the whole public and private life of Mill so abundantly negatives, is seen without difficulty by a perusal of this volume. It is that in dealing with the subject of religion he felt himself on ground where certainty was not to be looked for, and where, in place of the scientific certitude which is attainable in the region of logical or economic science, he had to be content with a precarious estimate of shadowy probabilities. And so it is mainly in his posthumous works, in these essays and in his autobiography, that a distinct and systematic statement of his religious opinions is to be found. It is easy to see why the position of Mill towards his friends and his foes has been somewhat changed by these later books, and especially by these essays. Theologians who had poured out upon him the vials of pious wrath as the head of a school of philosophic sceptics have found with surprise that his sympathies were not so opposed to their systems as were his principles. His positivist and nihilist admirers have been in some cases disgusted to find, as has been said by one critic, that "he was not a very strict atheist after all," and are enraged that he does not assume the faculty of omniscience so far as to deny even the possibility of a Supreme Being. To many who belong to neither of these classes, it will be a new light thrown on the character of Mill to discover how discontented he was with the narrow limits within which his intellectual philosophy confined him, how the same eager emotional temperament—almost feminine in its keen impulsiveness—which he displayed in his friendship and in his social and political sympathies, have also swayed his reason very materially in the sphere of religious thought, and at times is found dictating principles to his intellect, and leaving to that merely the task of inventing reasons to support them.

The first essay is a polemic against Nature. It is written to show that if the world is to be regarded as the work of an intelligent ruler then it is a work of miserable imperfection and injustice. The often-repeated precept to make Nature the rule of our actions, to live in accordance with Nature, is either unmeaning or monstrous. "Nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned every day for doing to one another are Nature's every-day performance. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures, such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures." Seeing all this, seeing the cruelty, the waste, the suffering which pervade the world of Nature, and the moral wrong, injustice, and imperfection, together with the sorrow and misery, which afflict human life, we can only conclude that the author of Nature was deficient either in power or in beneficence. Numerous sophistical replies are urged to this argument, but they carry no weight to the heart of humanity. Indeed, many who believe the most firmly in the existence of a ruler of the universe have not believed his power to be unlimited. In the words of Mill:ㄧ

"Those who have been strengthened in goodness by relying on the sympathising support of a powerful and good governor of the world have, I am satisfied, never really believed that governor to be, in the strict sense of the term, omnipotent. They have always saved his goodness at the expense of his power. They have believed, perhaps, that he could if be willed, remove all the thorns from their individual path, but not without causing greater harm to some one else, or frustrating some purpose of great importance to the general well-being. They have believed that he could do any thing, but not any combination of things; that his government, like human government, was a system of adjustments and compromises ; that the world is inevitably imperfect, contrary to his intention. And since the exertion of all his power to make it as little imperfect as possible leaves it no better than it is, they cannot but regard this power, though vastly beyond human estimate,yet as in itself not merely finite but extremely limited.

To most readers much of this essay will seem like an old tale. One of the earliest generalisations of the experience of mankind most have been—and the oldest records, the oldest utterances of poetry and of religion show us that it was—that the world is a place of suffering and sorrow, trouble and disappointment. Nature is red in tooth and claw with ravine and slaughter. The strong prey on the weak, only to be themselves the prey of a stronger, and inexorable death devours all. This state of things, which is again so painfully reflected in the miseries of human life, most have been as obvious to the earliest observers as now, and any attempts to explain away the facts of bitter and universal experience most have seemed to the miserable and unhappy nothing but wretched trifling. But these are considerations that healthy minds have never cared to dwell upon. Rather has the resigned acceptance of all evils that are seen to be inevitable been always a mark by which cheerful mental well-being has been discriminated from a state of mental morbidity. The fact that such evils exist is one that supplies no data for conclusions of any practical worth. It is rather one that humanity is content to glance at and pass on. There is something in Mill's reflections on the subject essentially weak and querulous, to which we are tempted to reply in the words of Carlyle, " What if thou wert born and predestined not to be happy, but to be unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a vulture, then, that fliest through the universe, seeking after something to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given to thee ?"

The second essay, on the " Utility of Religion," is one that discusses a perfectly legitimate inquiry. It is readily seen to be a perfectly independent topic from the truth of religion, and it is one that may fairly be considered. As the author observes, the age is one "of weak beliefs, and in which such belief as men have is much more determined by their wish to believe than by any mental appreciation of evidence." At such a time the consideration of the usefulness of religion may form an important part of the argument for and against it. In attempting to estimate the subject, he contends that much of the benefit that is usually attributed to religious teaching is due to it merely as teaching, and that "religion receives the credit of all the influence in human affairs which belongs to any generally accepted system of rules for the guidance and government of human life." In support of this he cites the institutions of Lycurgus, and their effects as developed in the history of Sparta, as showing that the principle of patriotism, when enabled to wield, as religion has, the agencies of early and universal education, could produce many of the moral and civil effects that are usually considered to be only producible by religion. Expanding this consideration, he holds that if the love of country could, under favourable circumstances, produce such results, the "love of that larger country, the world, may be nursed into similar strength, both as a source of elevated emotion and as a principle of duty." In other words, he considers that the "religion of humanity," of which he has, in earlier works, spoken with much respect, is fitted to elicit much of the beneficial effect that is yielded by the supernatural religions in their best forms. In reply to the argument that such a religion would be wanting in the stimulus derivable from the doctrine of a life after death, he answers—" The Buddhist religion counts probably, at this day, a greater number of votaries than either the Christian or the Mahomedan. . . But the blessing from Heaven, which it proposes as a reward to be earned by perseverance in the highest order of virtuous life, is annihilation. . . It seems to me not only possible, but probable, that in a higher, and, above all, a happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immortality may be the burdensome idea, and that human nature, though pleased with the present, and by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and not sadness in the thought that it is not chained through eternity to a conscious existence which it cannot be assured that it will always wish to preserve."

The most important of the essays, and the one which contributes the most largely to the effect we spoke of, of somewhat changing Mill's position relatively to many of his followers and of his opponents, is the last, that on " Theism." In this he examines the various arguments a priori and a posteriori in favour of the existence of a deity, and in strict accordance with the empirical philosophy of which he is the greatest exponent, dismisses all of them except those which come under the latter head, and all of these save that founded on the marks of design in nature. This he speaks of as one of a really scientific character, which does not shrink from really scientific tests. On investigating this argument and determining on its validity, he considers that "in the present state of our knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence." But he is careful to insist that "this is no more than a probability." With regard to the next question, that of the attributes of this intelligent author of the universe, he seeks for evidence in the exploration of his wiles. He considers that the net results of natural theology on the subject are, "A Being of great but limited power, how or by what limited we cannot even conjecture; of great and perhaps an limited intelligence, put perhaps, also, more narrowly limited than his power; who desires, and pays some regard to, the happiness of his creatures, but who seems to have other motives of action which he cares more for, and who can hardly he supposed to have created the universe for that purpose alone." Next he discusses the ground we have for believing in human immortality. The ordinary affirmative arguments on the subject are speedily despatched. He observes—
 "The common arguments are— the goodness of God ; the improbability that He would ordain the annihilation of His noblest and richest work after the greater part of its few years of life had been spent in the acquisition of faculties which time is not allowed him to turn to fruit; and the special improbability that He would have implanted in us an instinctive desire of eternal life, and doomed that desire to complete disappointments. These might be arguments in a world the constitution of which made it possible without contradiction to hold it for the work of a being at once omnipotent and benevolent. But they are not arguments in a world like that in which we live."

Replying to the argument from what is sometimes called the instinct of immortality, he says in words which recall the logical force of Mill's writings in his best days:— Granting that wherever there is an instinct there exists something such as that instinct demands, can it be affirmed that this something exists in boundless quantity, or sufficient to satisfy the infinite craving of human desires ? What is called the desire of eternal life is simply the desire of life; and does there not exist that which this desire calls for ? Is there not life ? And is not the instinct, if it be an instinct, gratified by the possession and preservation of life ?" And further on:—

"One thing is quite certain in respect to God's government of the world, that He either could not or would not grant to us everything we wish. We wish for life, and He has granted us some life. That we wish, or some of us wish, for a boundless extent of life, and that it is not granted is no exception to the ordinary modes of His government. Many a man would like to be a Crœsus or an Augustus Cæsar, but has his wishes gratified only to the moderate extent of £1 a week or the secretaryship of his trade union. There is, therefore, no assurance whatever of a life after death on grounds of natural religion."

But, still, though there is no such assurance " to any one who feels it conducive either to his satisfaction or to his usefulness to hope for a future state as a possibility, there is no hindrance to his indulging that hope."

After an inquiry into the evidences of revelation, which are examined and set aside as of no evidential validity, the author comes back to this point of the hope of immortality. He says, in words which his readers will find it difficult completely to reconcile with some that went before:—

" To me it seems that human life, small and confined as it is, and as, considered merely in the present, it is likely to remain, even when the progress of material and moral improvement may have freed it from the greater part of its present calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration for itself and its destination which the exercise of imagination can yield to it without running counter to the evidence of fact; and that it is a part of wisdom to make the most of any, even small, probabilities on this subject which furnish imagination with any footing to support itself upon. And I am satisfied that the cultivation of such a tendency in the imagination, provided it goes on pari passu with the cultivation of severe reason, has no necessary tendency to pervert the judgement; but that it is possible to form a perfectly sober estimate of the evidences on both sides of a question, and yet to let the imagination dwell by preference on those possibilities which are at once the most comforting and, the most improving, without in the least degree overrating the solidity of the grounds for expecting that these rather than any other will be the possibilities actually realised."

This is the pale colourless residuum to which religion is reduced in the crucible of Mill's philosophy, and yet even this he considers a thing of value, not to be lightly cast aside. Even to acquire this very poor, doubtful product we are to " make the most of any, even small, probabilities which furnish imagination with any footing to support itself upon." He proceeds to enumerate some of the benefits which such exercise of the imagination would tend to produce, but it is easy to see that this could only result if the imagination were associated with belief of a rather high degree, and yet this Mill is strenuous and distinct in denouncing as contrary to reason and evidence. We see by this passage how far Mill was from being the passionless, purely intellectual philosopher he has been imagined from his earlier works. It is evident that—

" The burden of the mystery,
The heavy and the weary weight,
Of all this Unintelligible world,"

lay as a heavy load upon him. With all of the clear intellectuality of his philosophy, the adamantine chain of his logic, this relentless problem of life was ever preying secretly upon him as the fox beneath the robe of the Spartan boy. The greatest achievement of intellect, says Goethe, is to prevent what we know from being embarrassed by what we do not know. But these revelations of Mill's inner nature show us that he was unable to reach this serene altitude. With a wonderfully clear, lucid intellect, and the most determined resolve to allow it unlimited liberty and to follow out its utmost conclusions, he felt that something else was wanting. It is not alone that he recognised the inadequacy of mere intellect to the solution of the manifold and complex problem of human life, or that he was pressed by the feeling of the narrow bounds of our knowledge, a mere spark of light in an infinite atmosphere of darkness and mystery. Others have been equally ready to acknowledge this without permitting themselves to be ever haunted by the constantly present consciousness of the unexplained and unexplainable. They have seen that in the world of reality open before us there is space enough for human work, human science, and human life, and have been enabled to leave the rest to the attainments of the future, or, perhaps even to the unfoldings of a time when all problems will become manifest or the mind will no more be puzzled or confounded by them. This is not the course of Mill.

He, as we see, was not enabled to accept this condition, or to consent contentedly to regard these problems as wholly insoluble and, therefore, of no practical concern. Instead of once for all recognising that outside these limits of human knowledge there is infinity with all of its possibilities, that the known is everywhere bounded by, springs from, and at the last issues in the unknown, he considers that if we were to cultivate the faculty of imagination and the feeling of hope by painting the curtains of mystery by which we are surrounded with beautiful anticipations of what is beyond them, at the same time always paying heed to the warnings of severe reason that these are but the dreams of fancy and have no farther validity, this would he doing something to cheer the aspect of our prison-house and to brighten the prospects of human life. A strange teaching to be presented to us as the final thought of the greatest, strongest, profoundest intellect of our generation.
But, after all, it is given but to few men, and not always to the greatest, to rise superior to, or wholly to emancipate themselves from, the conditions of the time in which they live. Our age is one of intellectual restlessness and spiritual turmoil and anarchy. The mind of Mill was torn as the mind of his epoch is torn, by opposite demands and conflicting tendencies. On the one side he was drawn by the claims of his scientific reason, which he regarded as supreme, and on the other by links of attachment, or sympathy, with faith, or at least with one central faith, which he felt himself unable fully either to accept or to relinquish. His hold on this faith was faint and hesitating. It seemed to his reason the weakest of probabilities. Yet he has allowed the feelings it awakened to exert an influence over his speculations far in excess of what he estimated as its logical value, and to lead him into the inconsistencies and strange doctrine visible in these his final essays.

*Nature, Utility of Religion and Theism by John Stuart Mill. London ; Longmans. 1874
Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 30 January 1875, page 8

 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.

. . . But in truth, these essays show a balance of his mind towards Christianity, for which the readers of his "Autobiography," and the more ardent students of his philosophy were not prepared. It is no part of my duty to follow him here into his various arguments; but I may refer to one passage which has attracted much attention, in which he approaches the central figure of Christ, and like Rousseau and other independent thinkers, renders his meed of homage to the ideal excellence of his character. The words, are best given as he penned them, for they will long have historic interest in connexion with the name of John Stuart Mill :—

" Whatever may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left—a unique figure,not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all, the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee ; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source. . . . But about the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity of insight, which, if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the the concrete than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life. When to this we add that, to the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he supposed, himself to be—not God, for he never made the smallest pretension to that character, and would probably have thought such a pretension as blasphemous as it seemed to the men who condemned him, but a man charged with a special, express, and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue, we may well conclude that the influences of religion on the character which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion are well worth preserving, and that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief, is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction."

The publication of these essays has created the livelier interest at the present moment from the fact of their coming like another bombshell into the midst of the controversies raised by Professor Tyndall's address at Belfast The criticism evoked by that remarkable address seems to have startled the redoubtable professor. In a preface to the authorised edition he gives some pithy specimens of the different opinions which he has had to encounter, and briefly repudiates the charge of atheism. But this week, at Manchester, where he has been lecturing in the Free-trade-hall, on "Crystalline and Molecular Forces," he has returned to the subject with more emphatic words. "We are surrounded," he said, towards the close of his lecture, "by wonders and mysteries everywhere. I have sometimes—not some times, but often—in the spring-time watched the advance of the sprouting leaves, and of the grass, and of the flowers, and observed the general joy of opening life in nature, and I have asked myself this question, 'Can it be that there is no being or thing in nature that knows more about these things than I do ? Do I in my ignorance represent the highest knowledge of these things existing in this universe ?' Ladies and gentlemen, the man who puts that question fairly to himself, if he he not a shallow man, if be be a man capable of being penetrated by profound thought, will never answer the question by professing that creed of atheism which has been so lightly attributed to me." Loud cheers, which were again and again renewed, followed the utterance of this sentiment, and the Professor went on to express his belief that many of the fears that are now entertained on these subjects really have their roots in a kind of scepticism. " It is not always those who are charged with scepticism that are the real sceptics—(hear, hear, and cheers)—and I confess it is a matter of some grief to me to see able, useful, and courageous men running to and fro upon the earth wringing their hands over the threatened destruction of their ideals. I would exhort them to cast out scepticism, for this fear has its root in scepticism."

Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 19 December 1874, page 1