passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit."

As Mill in his psychology made admissions that contradict its validity, so in his theory of morals he has not kept the path of consistency. From the pursuit of happiness as a merely personal end he crosses over to the pursuit of the happiness of men generally, and makes utilitarianism to require the latter. But if, as appears in his system, happiness is the sole motive as well as the criterion of actions, a person can have actually no incentive to seek the happiness of others save as he identifies it with his own. Now suppose,

as is often the fact, that one does not make this identification; what provision is there in Mill's philosophy for showing that he ought to make it? None whatever that can stand analysis. If pleasure is both the invincible motive and criterion of conduct, there can be nothing back or irrespective of it which can or ought to determine conduct. The truth is, the sensational utilitarian scheme gives no proper account of the sense of duty. The "greatest happiness principle," as ultimately interpreted by Mill in favor of altruism, may be a good maxim for practically directing the sense of duty; but of this sense of duty itself no satisfactory account has been given by him or by others standing on the same basis. Nor would it be reasonable to ask that it should be given. A real foundation of duty ought not to be required of a system which does not claim to afford even a foundation for genuine faith in mathematical truths.

In the foregoing comments we have expressed the gist of strictures which different English critics have

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passed on the utilitarian theory. Among these James Martineau has written with much force and vivacity. The following sentences summarize his conclusions: It is but a sophistical slip of thought which carries the utilitarian from the principle Each for his own happiness' to that of Each for the happiness of all.' Notwithstanding the provision in our nature for the partial conversion of interested into disinterested feeling, it is impossible to identify the greatest happiness of self with the greatest happiness of all concerned; or, from the necessity of pursuing the former, to establish the claim of the latter; or to extract a scheme of duty from rules of prudence; or to make the motive of self-love, however rationally worked, suffice for building up a virtuous character. The moral consciousness of the individual mind comprises experiences which are not covered by the data and inferences of rational hedonism." 1

As John Stuart Mill tended in a measure to outgrow the philosophy which he had inherited (though not really escaping its limitations), so he was inclined in his later years to transcend the negative attitude toward religion which characterized the larger part of his life. At the last he allowed a preponderance of evidence in favor of creation by design, confessed the admissibility - if not the clear foundation of the hope of immortality, and taught that Christ might appropriately be taken as the ideal representative of humanity. These were his main concessions. On the other hand, he compromised the theistic conception by maintaining that both omnipotence and perfect benevolence cannot be ascribed to the Author 1 Types of Ethical Theory, 2d edit., ii. 334–344.

of nature, betraying thus a leaning to a dualistic theory akin to the Manichæan.

The connection suggests a word respecting Sir William Hamilton, a representative of an eclectic philosophy which John Stuart Mill examined with some measure of apparent profit to his own thinking. The position of Hamilton has been defined by a German critic as follows: "He was indebted to both Reid and Kant; he endeavored to combine the realism of the former with the subjective criticism of the latter, but without any great success." This statement may be accepted, if by lack of success is meant failure to weld philosophical elements into a system adapted by its firmness and consistency to command permanent influence and assent. Hamilton did not do this. His writings nevertheless served for a season as a marked stimulant to the speculative thinking of the English-speaking world.

In the latter part of the century the sensational philosophy has maintained partnership with the realistic type of evolutionism which had been commended to the favor of scientists by Darwin. Herbert Spencer has been perhaps the most industrious representative of this partnership. He finds in the doctrine of evolution a welcome relief from the necessity of making the principle of the association of ideas to work with such magical efficacy as uniformly to create invincible beliefs in a narrow space of time. Supposing the nervous organization to determine the facts of mental life, and presuming that the modifications of this organization which have been wrought by the experiences of antecedent individu

1 Otto Pfleiderer, The Progress of Theology in Great Britain since 1825.

als have been continuously transmitted, he provides, as he conceives, for the growth of necessary or intuitive beliefs by a long process. They have arisen, he says, not merely through such associations of ideas as we personally have made, but through such as have been made by a long line of ancestors. It is in this way that the intuition of space has arisen; in this way also that the faculty of moral intuition has been furnished to the human mind.

Though Mr. Spencer has written with much ingenuity, and has curtained his hypotheses with a fine verbal display, he has not been able to allay the suspicion that his evolutionary theory pushes back rather than overcomes the fundamental difficulty of the sensational scheme. As one or another critic has suggested, it is necessary to explain the possibility of the experience which is supposed to generate the faculties of intuition, without the anterior presence of some portion at least of that which is assumed to be generated. The enigma which confronted Mill, and which he left an enigma, stands no less against the system of Spencer. His principles do not provide for the unity of consciousness, without which rational experience is not conceivable. "He assumes," says an acute critic of the sensational philosophy, “certain elementary feelings, which are in fact nothing at all apart from determination in a system of self-consciousness, or in a correlative consciousness of nature, and to which both he and his readers really ascribe the character derived from such determination. He then traces a genesis out of them of the system which they presuppose. . . . Confusing succession of feelings with cognition of succession, changes of consciousness with consciousness

of change, he virtually supposes the feelings, as apart from it, to be that which they doubtless really are, but which they are only in relation to it. He then extracts from, as the result of their multiplication and through them the result of force, that unified consciousness which they must be in order to become."1 As still further illustrating Spencer's evasion of the real problem, we add this comment of Pfleiderer: "When he speaks of change of states of consciousness as the result of changing impressions of force, he seeks to find the origin of consciousness in effects produced from without, which cannot, however, surely, be perceived as in succession. and changed save by reference to previously existing consciousness; he really, therefore, presupposes consciousness as already inwardly present, while he seeks to explain it from external action. In fact, we must concur in the searching criticism of Green, that Spencer has not grasped the fundamental problem of the source and nature of knowledge, as it was proposed by Hume and solved by Kant in the synthetic function of the ego. Spencer supposes that Kant has been refuted by the new discovery of the doctrine of natural evolution, namely, that the supposed a priori or innate ideas which are considered to precede experience are in reality only the result of the experience of the race which the individual inherits. But Spencer here fails to perceive the real nature of the problem, which is, How is experience in any form possible? - a problem which remains unaltered whether the experience is that of the individual or the race, and to the solution of which no historical 'psychogenesis' of nature can contribute in the smallest

1 Thomas Hill Green, Works, i. 438-440.