335 
(Gen. i. 31). What Mr. Mill’s hypothesis is seems, after all, 
hard to say. 
25. It is with satisfaction we notice in this very sentence, 
however, that Mr. Mill cannot help conceiving of 
“ right” and “ wrong ” as realities in themselves. His him ^f better 
mind bears witness to the moral absolute, in spite of ^* t his argu ‘ 
his argument. We all of us, when appealing to our 
fellow-men, appeal to their perception of the Right and the 
True. We expect them to compare what is said, by us or others, 
with reason, the “ true-always ” ; nor is this supposing them to 
strike an average of opinion — though even that implies antecedent 
reason to guide them — but it is that we anticipate in many cases, 
and rightly, a much shorter process. And, little as he might have 
thought it, Mr. Mill exactly thus presupposes the a priori. 
Such a sentence, as we occasionally meet with in his pages, as 
— “ Right action must mean something more and other than 
merely intelligent action” — discovers, as if by accident, an ethical 
conception which no mere utilitarian calculations could satisfy. 
If, then, the antecedent idea of right, or reason, or the Good, be 
thus in us by “ Nature,” as an “ improving” rule, or a rectifying 
principle, it is a part of that “every thing that is” which Mr. Mill’s 
definition includes; and it would follow from this that Mr. Mill’s 
fierce assault on Nature has no real foundation even with him ; 
for Nature, he says, is to be regarded as a whole. The very 
faculty which sits in judgment on the animal kingdom, where 
pain and evil and destruction are found so largely, is an active 
and indestructible part of Nature whose voice is against Evil, 
affirming that it ought not to be. Nature has in it a “a reason- 
able” and “right,” which is essential to it, and, as Mr. Mill 
himself feels, even demands supremacy. 
26. Now, what is this but what Augustin says against the 
Manichees? “ If in one and the same thing, or order of things, 
one finds something to praise and something to Mr Mill , sun . 
blame — take awav what is blamed, and true Nature conscious ad- 
remains ; while to take away what is praised as good, par ed with 
and to leave only what was blamed, is to destroy against UgUS the 
Nature, and introduce entire confusion. Join with Manichseans, 
me, then, in commending form, classification, arrange- 
ment, harmony and unity of forms, symmetry and correspondence 
of members, control by mind, acquiescence of body,”' — and so on. 
What hinders or deranges must be the opposition, and not the 
Nature ; “ every nature, as nature, being a good.” There is a 
passage in Butler in harmony with this, and enlarging the view 
in a moral direction : Not only “ is general benevolence a pervad- 
ing law of ethics,” but indignation against vice and wickedness 
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