JOHX STUART MILL, 505 



to write so complete a demolition of a brother philosopher after he is 

 dead, not having done it while he was alive." 



During my stay in London in the summer of 1864, he showed me 

 the finished MS. of a large part of the book. I offered a variety of 

 minor suggestions, and he completed the work for the j^ress the same 

 autumn. 



Of the many topics comprised in the volume, I shall advert only 

 to one or two of the principal. After following Hamilton's theories 

 through ten chapters, he advances his own positive view of the belief 

 in an external world. Having myself gone over the same ground, I 

 wish to remark on what is peculiar in his treatment of the question. 



I give him full credit for his uncompromising idealism, and for his 

 varied and forcible exposition of it. In this respect he has contributed 

 to educate the thinking public in what I regard as the truth. But in 

 looking at his analysis in detail, while I admit he has seized the more 

 important things, I do not exactly agree with him either as to the order 

 of statement or as to the relative stress put upon the various elements 

 of the object and subject distinction. 



In the first place, I would remark on the omission of the quality of 

 " Resistance," and of the muscular energies as a whole, from his delin- 

 eation of the object or external world. In this particular, usage and 

 authority are against him to begin with. The connection of an exter- 

 nal world with the primary qualities has been so long prevalent that 

 there must be some reason or plausibility in it. His own father and 

 Mansel are equally emphatic in setting forth resistance as the primary 

 fact of externality. Mill himself, however, allows no place for resist- 

 ance in his psychological theoiy. In a separate chapter on the " Pri- 

 mary Qualities of Matter," he deals with extension and resistance as 

 products of muscular sensibility, and as giving iis our notions of mat- 

 ter, but he thinks that simple tactile sensibility mingles with resistance, 

 and plays as great a part as the purely muscular ingredient ; thus frit- 

 tering away the supposed antithesis of muscular energy and passive 

 sensibility. Now, for my own part, I incline to the usage and opinion 

 of our predecessors in putting forward the contrast of active energy 

 and passive feeling as an important constituent of the subject and ob- 

 ject distinction ; and, if it is to be admitted at all, I am disposed to 

 begin with it, instead of putting it last as Mr. Spencer does, or leaving 

 it out as Mill does. It does not give all that is implied in matter, but 

 it gives the nucleus of the composite feeling as well as the fundamen- 

 tal and defining attribute. 



The stress of Mill's exposition rests on the fixity of order in our sen- 

 sations leading to a constancy of recurrence, and a belief in that con- 

 stancy going the length of assuming independent existence. Although 

 he shows a perfect mastery of his position, I do not consider that he 

 has done entire justice to it from not carrying along with him the 

 contrast of the objective and the subjective — the sensation and the 



