218 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his examination of " Sir William 

 Hamilton's Philosophy/' says : l " If I am informed that the 

 world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but 

 what they are w T e cannot learn, nor what the principles of 

 his government, except that ' the highest human morality 

 which we are capable of conceiving ' does not sanction 

 them ; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. 

 But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the 

 same time call this being by the names which, express and 

 affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms 

 that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have 

 over me, there is one thing which he shall not do : he shall 

 not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, 

 who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my 

 fellow-creatures ; and if such a being can sentence me to 

 hell for not so calling him, to. hell I will go." 



This is unquestionably an admirable sentiment on the 

 part of Mr. Mill (with which every absolute moralist will 

 agree), but it contains a complete refutation of his own 

 position, and is a capital instance 2 of the vigorous life of 

 moral intuition in one who professes to have eliminated 

 any fundamental distinction between the " right " and the 

 " expedient." For if an action is morally good, and to be 

 done merely in proportion to the amount of pleasure it 

 secures, and morally bad and to be avoided as tending 

 to misery, and if it could be proved that by calling God 



1 Page 103. 



2 I have not the merit of detecting this inconsistency ; it was pointed 

 out to me by my friend the Rev. W. W. Roberts. It is a good example 

 of the refutations which Mr. Mill, every now and then, gives himself 

 much the kind of thing which Professor Masson calls " a trap-door opened 

 by Mr. Mill himself in the floor of his own philosophy." Recent British 

 Philosophy, p. 339. 



