OF KNOWLEDGE. 377 



Jeremy Bentham. This was strengthened by his early 

 acquaintance with the political philosophers of France, 

 notably those of the school of St Simon. Mill's ac- 

 quaintance with Comte began before the publication of 

 the Logic, but belongs mainly to a later date. Mill's 

 Logic was the first systematic attempt in the direction of 

 a theory of knowledge, and it starts by referring to " the 

 modes of investigating truth and estimating evidence, by 

 which so many important and recondite laws of nature 

 have in the various sciences been aggregated to the stock 

 of human knowledge." It is not likely that Mill had 

 at that time any knowledge at first hand of Kant's 

 ' Critique of Pure Eeason.' Nevertheless it is significant 50. 



Ground 



to note how both he and Kant take for granted the common to 



° Mill and 



existence of a body of correct knowledge as it is con- ^n*- 

 tained in the mathematical and natural sciences. But 

 he at once separates himself by indicating as the 

 final aim of his book " to contribute towards the 

 solution of a question which the decay of old opinions 

 and the agitation that disturbs European society . . . 

 renders as important ... to the practical interest of 

 human life as it must be to the completeness of our 

 speculative knowledge — viz., . . . how far the methods 

 by which so many of the laws of the physical world have 

 been numbered among truths irrevocably acquired and 

 universally assented to can be made instrumental to the 

 formation of a similar body of received doctrine in moral 

 and political science." It is evident from this that Mill 

 did not take, with regard to the problems of practical 

 life, the same view as Kant and his successors, notably 

 Fichte — viz., that the certainty in such matters starts 



