JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 



327 



equally strange that it should afterward be 

 " strictly analyzed." Before we get down to the 

 basis of our intellectual structure it might be 

 supposed that analysis had exhausted itself. 



James Mill gives no reference to the subse- 

 quent part of the inquiry where this analysis is 

 carried out, nor do I find that John Stuart Mill, 

 or the other editors of the second edition, have 

 supplied the reference. Doubtless, however, the 

 analysis is given in the second section of chapter 

 xiv., where, in treating of " Relative Terms," 1 

 he inquires into the meaning of Same, Different, 

 Like, or Unlike, and comes to the conclusion 

 that the resemblance between sensation and sen- 

 sation is, after all, only sensation. He says : 



" Having two sensations, therefore, is not only 

 having sensation, but the only thing which can, 

 in strictness, be called having sensation ; and the 

 having two and knowing they are two, which are 

 not two things, but one and the same thing, is not 

 only sensation, and nothing else than sensation, 

 but the only thing which can, in strictness, be 

 called sensation. The having a new sensation, 

 and knowing that it is new, are not two things, 

 but one and the same thing." 



This is, no doubt, a wonderfully acute piece 

 of sophistical reasoning ; but I have no need to 

 occupy space in refuting it, because John Stuart 

 Mill has already refuted it in several passages 

 which evidently refer to his father's fallacy. 

 Thus I have already quoted, at the commence- 

 ment of this article, a statement in which John 

 Stuart Mill argues that resemblance between two 

 phenomena is more intelligible than any explana- 

 tion could make it. Again, in editing his father's 

 " Analysis," Mill comments at some length upon 

 this section, 2 showing that it does not explain 

 anything, nor leave the likenesses and unlike- 

 nesses of our simple feelings less ultimate facts 

 than they were before. 



But though Mill thus refuses to dissolve re- 

 semblance away altogether, his thoughts were 

 probably warped in youth by the perverse doc- 

 trines which his father so unsparingly forced 

 upon his intellect. Too early the brain-fibres re- 

 ceived a decided set, from which they could not 

 recover, and all the power and acuteness of Mill's 

 intellect were wasted in trying to make things fit, 

 which could not fit, because mistakes had been 

 made in the very commencement of the structure. 



This misapprehension of the Mills, pere ei 

 Jils, concerning resemblance, is certainly one of 



1 " Analysis :"' first edition, vol. ii., p. 10 ; second 

 edition, vol. ii., pp. 11. 12. 

 " Vol. ii., pp. 17-20. 



the most extraordinary instances of perversity of 

 thought in the history of philosophy. That which 

 is the summum genus of reasoned knowledge, they 

 have either attempted to dissolve away altogether, 

 or, after grudgingly allowing its existence, have 

 placed in the position of a minor species and ex- 

 ceptional case. Yet it is impossible to use any 

 language at all without implying the relation of 

 resemblance and difference in every term. There 

 is not a sentence in Mill's own works in which 

 this fact might not be made manifest after a little 

 discussion. We cannot employ a general name 

 without implying the resemblance between the 

 significates of that name, and we cannot select 

 any class of objects for attention without dis- 

 criminating them from other objects in general. 

 To propose resemblance itself as the subject of 

 inquiry presupposes that we distinguish it from 

 other possible subjects of inquiry. Thus, when 

 James Mill is engaged (in a passage already 

 quoted) in dissipating the relation of resem- 

 blance, he presupposes resemblance in every 

 name. What is a new sensation, unless it re- 

 sembles other new sensations in being discrimi- 

 nated from old sensations ? What is a sensation 

 unless it resembles other sensations in being sep- 

 arated in thought from things which are nol-sen- 

 sations? But it is truly amusing to find that, in 

 the very first sentence of the paragraph imme- 

 diately following that quoted, James Mill uses 

 the word resemblance. He says, ' " The case 

 between sensation and sensation resembles that 

 between sensation and idea." Nevertheless, James 

 Mill sums up the result of the section of his work 

 in question by the following: 2 



" It seems, therefore, to be made clear, that in 

 applying to the simple sensations and ideas their 

 absolute names, which are names of classes, as red, 

 green, sweet, bitter ; and also applying to them 

 names which denote them in pairs, as such and 

 such; there is nothing whatsoever but having the 

 sensations, having the ideas, and making marks 

 for them." 



This sentence, if it means anything, means 

 that our sensations and our ideas have no ties 

 between them except in the common marks or 

 names applied to them. The connection of re- 

 semblance is denied existence. This ultra-nom- 

 inalism of the father is one of the strangest per- 

 versities of thought which could be adduced ; and ? 

 though John Stuart Mill disclaims such an absurd 

 doctrine in an apologetic sort of way, yet he nev- 



1 "Analysis :" first edition, vol. ii., p. 10 ; second 

 edition, vol. ii., p. 12. 



• Ibid., first edition, p. 15; second edition, p. 17. 



