JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 



321 



from the twentieth chapter of the third book, a 

 chapter, therefore, which closely precedes the 

 chapter on " The Remaining Laws of Nature," 

 where Mill dispatches Resemblance. This chap- 

 ter treats nominally of analogy, but what must 

 be our surprise to find that in reality it treats 

 from beginning to end of Resemblance ! This is 

 the way in which he describes reasoning by anal- 

 ogy: 1 



" It is, on the -whole, more usual, however, to 

 extend the name of* analogical evidence to argu- 

 ments from any sort of resemblance, provided 

 they do not amount to a complete induction : 

 without peculiarly distinguishing resemblance of 

 relations. Analogical reasoning, in this sense, 

 may be reduced to the following formula : Two 

 things resemble each other in one or more re- 

 spects ; a certain proposition is true of the one ; 

 therefore, it is true of the other. But we have 

 nothing here by -which to discriminate analogy 

 from induction, since this type will serve for all 

 reasoning from experience. In the strictest induc- 

 tion, equally with the faintest analogy, we conclude 

 because A resembles B in one or more properties, 

 that it does so in a certain other property." 



It seems, then, that the universal type of the 

 reasoning process wholly turns upon the pivot of 

 resemblance. The stone which was despised and 

 slightingly treated in a brief section of the twenty- 

 fourth chapter, has become the corner-stone of 

 Mill's logical edifice. It would almost seem as if 

 Mill were one of those persons who are said to 

 think independently with the two halves of their 

 brain. On the one side of the great longitudinal 

 fissure must be held the doctrine that resem- 

 blance is seldom a subject of science ; on the 

 other side, Mill must have thought out the im- 

 portant place which resemblance holds as the 

 universal type of the reasoning and inductive pro- 

 cesses. Double-mindedness, the Law of Oblivis- 

 cence, or some Deus ex machine/, must be called 

 in ; for it is absurd to contemplate the possibility 

 of reconciling Mill's statement of the universal 

 type of all reasoning with his remarks upon 

 Locke's doctrine. Locke, he says in the passage 

 already quoted, unduly extended the importance 

 of resemblance, when he made all reasoning a case 

 of it, and Locke's definition of knowledge and of 

 reasoning required to be limited to our knowledge 

 of and reasoning about resemblances. Yet, accord- 

 ing to Mill himself, the universal type of all rea- 

 soning turns wholly on resemblance. Under such 

 circumstances, it is impossible to discuss serious- 



1 Book III., chapter xx., beginning of second sec- 

 tion. 



57 



ly the value of Mill's analysis of knowledge- 

 Which part of the analysis are we to discuss ? 

 That in which resemblance is treated as the basis 

 of all reasoning, or that in which it belongs to 

 the " remaining " and " minor matters of tact," 

 which had not been treated in the books of induc- 

 tion, and which therefore remained to be disposed 

 of? 



We have not yet done with this question of 

 resemblance; it is the fundamental question as 

 regards the theory of knowledge and reasoning, 

 and, even at the risk of being very tedious, I must 

 show that in the deep of Mill's inconsistency there 

 is still a lower deep. I have to point out that 

 some of his opinions concerning the import of 

 propositions may be thus formulated : 



1. The names of attributes are names for the 

 resemblances of our sensations. 



2. Certain propositions affirm the possession 

 of properties, or attributes, or common peculiari- 

 ties. 



3. Such propositions do not, properly speak- 

 ing, assert resemblance at all. 



Proceeding in the first place to prove that 

 Mill has made statements of the meaning attrib- 

 uted to him, we find the matter of the first in a 

 note ' written by Mill in answer to Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer, who had charged Mill with confounding 

 exact likeness and literal identity. With the 

 truth of this charge we will not concern ourselves 

 now ; we have only to notice the following dis- 

 tinct statement : " What, then, is the common 

 something which gives a meaning to the general 

 name ? Mr. Spencer can only say, it is the simi- 

 larity of the feelings ; and I rejoin, the attribute 

 is precisely that similarity. The names of attri- 

 butes are in their ultimate analyses names for the 

 resemblances of our sensations (or other feelings). 

 Every general name, whether abstract or con- 

 crete, denotes or connotes one or more of those 

 resemblances." Mill's meaning evidently is that 

 when you apply a general name to a thing, as for 

 instance in calling snow white, you mean thnt 

 there is a resemblance between snow and other 

 things in respect of their whiteness. The general 

 name white connotes this resemblance ; the ab- 

 stract name whiteness denotes it. 



Let us now consider a passage in the chapter 

 on the Import of Propositions, which must be 

 quoted at some length : - 



1 Book IT., chapter ii., section 3. near the beginning 

 of the third paragraph of the foot-note. This note 

 does not occur in some of the early editions. 



3 Book I., chapter v., section 6, second paragraph. 



