Page 5 of 14

This concluding declaration is memorable in many ways. Mr Mill announces his resolution to determine for himself, and according to his own reason and conscience, what God he will worship, and what God he will not worship. For ourselves, we cordially sympathize with his resolution. But Mr Mill must be aware that this is a point on which society is equally resolved that no individual shall determine for himself, if they can help it.^[6] Each new-born child finds his religious creed ready prepared for him. In his earliest days of unconscious infancy, the stamp of the national, gentile, phratric, God, or Gods, is imprinted upon him by his elders; and if the future man, in the exercise of his own independent reason, acquires such convictions as compel him to renounce those Gods, proclaiming openly that he does so—he must count upon such treatment as will go far to spoil the value of the present life to him, even before he passes to those ulterior liabilities which Mr Mill indicates in the distance. We are not surprised that a declaration so unusual and so impressive should have been often cited in critical notices of this volume; that during the month preceding the last Westminster election, it was studiously brought forward by some opponents of Mr Mill, and more or less regretted by his friends, as likely to offend many electors, and damage his chance of success; and that a conspicuous and noble-minded ecclesiastic, the Dean of Westminster, thought the occasion so grave as to come forward with his characteristic generosity, for the purpose of shielding a distinguished man suspected of heresy.

The sublime self-assertion, addressed by Prometheus to Zeus, under whose sentence he was groaning, has never before been put into such plain English.^[7] Mr Mill's declaration reminds us also of Hippolytus, the chaste and pure youth, whose tragic fate is so beautifully described by Euripides. Hippolytus is exemplary in his devotions to the Goddess Artemis; but he dissents from all his countrymen, and determines for himself, in refusing to bestow the smallest mark of honour or worship upon Aphroditê, because he considers her to be a very bad Goddess.^[8] In this refusal he persists with inflexible principle (even after having received, from an anxious attendant, warning of the certain ruin which it will bring upon him), until the insulted Aphroditê involves him, along with the unhappy Phædra and Theseus himself, in one common abyss of misery. In like manner Mr Mill's declaration stands in marked contrast with the more cautious proceeding of men like Herodotus. That historian, alike pious and prudent, is quite aware that all the Gods are envious and mischief-making, and expressly declares them to be so.^[9] Yet, far from refusing to worship them on that account, he is assiduous in prayer and sacrifice—perhaps, indeed, all the more assiduous in consequence of what he believes about their attributes;^[10] being persuaded (like the attendant who warned Hippolytus) that his only chance of mollifying their ungentle dispositions in regard to himself is, by honorific tribute in words and offerings.

When, however, after appreciating as we are bound to do Mr Mill's declaration of subjective sentiment, we pass to its logical bearing on the controversy between him and Mr Mansel, we are obliged to confess that in this point of view it has little objective relevancy. The problem was, how to reconcile the actual evil and suffering in the universe (which is recited as a fact by Mr Mansel, though in terms conveying a most inadequate idea of its real magnitude) with the goodness of God. Mr Mill repudiates the explanatory hypothesis tendered by Mr Mansel, as a solution, but without suggesting any better hypothesis of his own. For ourselves, we are far from endorsing Mr Mansel's solution as satisfactory; yet we can hardly be surprised if he considers it less unsatisfactory than no solution at all. And when we reflect how frequently and familiarly predicates applicable to man are applied to the Supreme Being, when they cannot possibly be understood about Him in the same sense—we see no ground for treating the proceeding as disingenuous, which Mr Mill is disposed to do. Indeed, it cannot easily be avoided: and Mr Mill himself furnishes us with some examples in the present volume. At page 491, he says:—

In the words here employed, seeing and hearing are predicted of God.

Now when we predicate of men, that they see or hear, we affirm facts of extreme complexity, especially in the case of seeing; facts partly physical, partly mental, involving multifarious movements and agencies of nerves, muscles, and other parts of the organism, together with direct sensational impressions, and mental reconstruction of the past, inseparably associated therewith; all which, so far as they are known, are perspicuously enumerated in the work of Professor Bain^[11] on the 'Senses and the Intellect,' Again, Mr Mill speaks (in p. 102 and elsewhere) of 'the veracity of God.' When we say of our neighbour that he is a veracious man, we ascribe to him a habit of speaking the truth; that is, of employing his physical apparatus of speech, and his mental power of recalling and recombining words lodged in the memory, for the purpose of asserting no other propositions except such as declare facts which he knows, or beliefs which he really entertains. But how either seeing, or hearing, or veracity, in these senses, can be predicated of God, we are at a loss to understand. And if they are to be predicated of God in a different sense, this admits the same license as Mr Mansel contends for in respect to Goodness, when he feels that undeniable facts preclude him from predicating that epithet univocally respecting God and respecting man.^[12]

On the whole, it seems to us, that though Mr Mill will consent to worship only a God of perfect goodness, he has thrown no new light on the grave problem—frankly stated though imperfectly solved, by Mr Mansel—how such a conception of God is to be reconciled with the extent of evil and suffering actually pervading human life and animal life throughout the earth. We are compelled to say, respecting Mr Mill's treatment of this subject—what we should not say respecting his treatment of any other—that he has left an old perplexing problem not less perplexing than he found it.

Reverting, not unwillingly, from theology to philosophy, we now pass on to Mr Mill's ninth chapter (p. 128 seq.), of the Interpretation of Consciousness. There is assuredly no lesson more requiring to be taught than the proper mode of conducting such interpretation; for the number of different modes in which Consciousness has been interpreted is astonishing. Mr Mill begins by citing from Sir W. Hamilton's lectures a passage of some length, upon which he bestows considerable praise, regarding it as—