第134章 Chapter V(19)

Here I may try to indicate,though I cannot develop,a general conclusion.What was the true significance of the Utilitarian paradox the indifference to history combined with the appeal to experience?History in the narrower sense is a particular case of evolution;and if it could be made scientific,would formulate the laws by which the existing institutions,political,ecclesiastical,and industrial,have grown out of earlier states.The importance of taking into account the 'genetic'point of view,of inquiring into the growth as well as the actual constitution of things,is obvious in all the sciences which are concerned with organic life.Though we cannot analyse the organism into its ultimate constituent factors,we can learn something by tracing its development from simpler forms.The method is applicable to biology as well as to sociology;and as sciences extended,its importance became manifest.Some theory of evolution was required in every direction,and must obviously be necessary if we are to carry out systematically the principles of the uniformity and continuity of nature.The difficulty of the Utilitarians was all along that theories of evolution appeared to them to involve something mystical and transcendental.They proposed to analyse everything till they could get to single aggregations of facts,or in their sense ideal,that is,to a thoroughgoing atomism.This leads to the paradox indicated by Hume's phrase.The atoms,things and thoughts,must be completely separate and yet invariably conjoined.Causation becomes mere sequence or conjunction,and 'experience'ceases to offer any ground for anticipation.I have tried to show how this affected the Utilitarians in every subject;in their philosophical,legal,ethical,and economical speculations;and how they always seem to be in need of,and yet always to reject by anticipation,some theory of evolution.To appeal to 'experience'they have to make the whole universe incoherent,while to get general laws they have to treat variable units as absolutely constant.'External circumstances'must account for all variation,though it is difficult to see how everything can be 'external.'The difficulty has now appeared in history proper,and the attempt to base a sociology upon a purely individualist assumption.This may help to explain the great influence of the Darwinian theories.They marked the point at which a doctrine of evolution could be allied with an appeal to experience.Darwin appealed to no mystical bond,but simply to verifiable experience.He postulated the continuance of processes known by observation,and aimed at showing that they would sufficiently explain the present as continuous with the past.There was nothing mystical to alarm empiricists,and their consequent adoption of Darwinism implied a radical change in their methods and assumptions.The crude empiricism was transformed into evolutionism.The change marked an approximation to the conceptions of the opposite school when duly modified,and therefore in some degree a reconciliation.

'Intuitions'no longer looked formidable when they could be regarded as developed by the race instead of mysteriously implanted in the individual mind.The organic correlations were admissible when they were taken to imply growth instead of supernatural interference,and it was no longer possible to regard 'natural kinds'as mere aggregates of arbitrarily connected properties.I need not ask which side really gained by the change,whether Darwinism inevitably leads to some more subtle form of atomism,or whether the acceptance of any evolution does not lead to idealism --to a belief in a higher teleology than Paley's --and the admission that mind or 'spirit'must be the ultimate reality.Such problems may be treated by the philosopher of the future.Without anticipating his verdict,Imust try to indicate the final outcome of what passed for philosophy with the Utilitarians.

NOTES:

1.See Memoir by Mrs Austin prefixed to the edition of his Lectures,edited by Mr R.Campbell (1869).

2.Jurisprudence,p.701.

3.For Austin's admiration of Hobbes see especially the long note in Jurisprudence,p.186,etc.

4.Jurisprudence,p.238.

5.Ibid.p.791.

6.Jurisprudence,p.336.

7.Cp.Mill's Dissertations,iii,237,etc.

8.Jurisprudence,p.330.

9.Jurisprudence,p.303.Austin makes certain qualifications which I need not notice.

10.Austin refers his readers to Brown's essay on 'Cause and Effect';and takes Brown to have proved 'beyond controversy'that the faculty called the 'will'is just nothing at all.--Jurisprudence,pp.424-25.

11.Mill touches this point characteristically in his review of Austin,but does not discuss the validity of the logic.

12.Edinburgh Review,October,1861.

13.Mill's Dissertations,iii,206-74,from Edin.Rev.of Oct.

1863.

14.For Lewis see especially the very interesting article in Bagehot's Works (by Forrest Morgan),1891,iii,222-68.His chief political treatise is A Treatise on Methods'of Reasoning and Observation in Politics (1852).

15.Methods of Observation,etc.i,448.

16.Ibid,i.357.

17.Ibid.ii,356.

18.Ibid.ii.370.

19.Mrs Grote's Personal History of George Grote is neither adequate nor quire accurate.Compare a very useful life by G.

Croom Robertson in Dictionary of National Biography,and the article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica by William Smith.

20.Bain's J.S.Mill,p.83.

21.Mrs Grote's Philosophical Radicals of 1832(1866),p.28.

22.Introduction to the Study of History (English Translation,1898),p.310.