5o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



idea. Indeed, the exposition is too short for the theme ; the reader is 

 apt to be satisfied with the portable phi-ase " permanent possibility of 

 sensation," which helps him to one vital part of the case, but does not 

 amount to a satisfactory equivalent for an external and independent 

 world. There would have been more help in an expression dwelling 

 upon the " common to all," in contrast with the " special to me," to use 

 one of Ferrier's forms of phraseology. This ground of distinction is 

 not left unnoticed by Mill, but it is simply mentioned. 



His chapter on the application to our belief in the permanent ex- 

 istence of mind is, I think, even more subtile than the preceding on 

 matter. The manner of disposing of Reid's difficulty about the exist- 

 ence of his fellow creatures is everything that I could wish. It is 

 when, in the concluding paragraph, he lays down as final and inexplica- 

 ble the belief in memory, that I am unable to agree with him. This po- 

 sition of his has been much dwelt upon by the thinkers opposed to him. 

 It makes him appear, after all, to be a transcendentalist like themselves, 

 differing only in degree. For myself, I never could see where his dif- 

 ficulty lay, or what moved him to say that the belief in memory is in- 

 comprehensible or essentially irresolvable. The precise nature of belief 

 is no doubt invested with very peculiar delicacy, but whenever it shall 

 be cleared up it may very fairly be capable of accounting for the belief 

 that a certain state now past as a sensation, but present as an idea, was 

 once a sensation, and is not a mere product of thought or imagination. 

 —{Cf. "The Emotions and the Will," third edition, p. 532.) 



I may make a passing observation on the chapter specially devoted 

 to Hansel's " Limits of Religious Thought." It is a considerable di- 

 gression in a work devoted to Hamilton, but Hansel's book touched 

 Hill to the quick ; in private, he called it a " loathsome " book. His 

 combined argumentative and passionate style rises to its utmost height. 

 Hansel sarcastically described his famous climax — " to hell I will go " 

 — as an exhibition of taste and temper. That passage was scarcely 

 what Grote called it, a Promethean defiance of Jove, inasmuch as the 

 fear of hell never had a place in Hill's bosom ; it was the strength of 

 his feelings coining the strongest attainable image to give them vent.* 



Hill could not help adverting to Hamilton's very strong and para- 

 doxical assertions about free-will ; but, as he never elaborates a consec- 

 utive exposition of the question, I doubt the propriety of making these 

 assertions a text for discussing it at full. Hill's chapter is either too 

 much or too little ; too much as regards his author, too little as re- 

 gards the subject. The connection of punishment with free-will should 

 be allowed only under protest ; the legitimacy and the limits of pun- 

 ishment make a distinct inquiry. Punishment, psychologically viewed, 

 assumes that men recoil from pain ; there may be other springs of ac- 



* Grote thought that the phrase was an echo of something occurring in Ben Jonson, 

 where a military captain's implicit obedience is crowned by the illustration, " Tell him to 

 go to hell, to hell he will go." 



