Page images
PDF
EPUB

country to a nobler life. Few persons, I think, can listen to their words without feeling their own Christian life strengthened by their simple and sincere estimate of Christ and His teaching.

Meanwhile, let us cease to hear the disparaging reflections upon Christian Missions which have been too often made by members of the Liberal school in our Church and country; and let us cease to look at the influence of England in India as if it had been, and could be, nothing but a violent conquest to be used for vulgar objects. The leader of the Positivist school in England some years. back announced as the natural policy of this country, "That we withdraw from our occupation of India without any unnecessary delay, within the shortest period compatible with due arrangements for the security of European life and property, and with such measures as shall be deemed advisable in the interest of Indian independence and good government," and ridiculed the idea expressed at public meetings that Providence had entrusted India to us for good ends. But even Burnouf declared that since the transference of India to the Crown, the influence of English Government had been good, and nothing but good; and to the Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen every Englishman that lands in India is a friend and a brother. To him it is no doubtful thing that God's Providence has been at work, for England has brought to him and his friends the light that has set them free.

If any one still doubts the power of Christian Missions in India, let him read the essay already referred to of Sir Bartle Frere, in "The Church and the Age," which tells of the subtle, underground influence with which the Missions are working; of Christian tracts being taken up in villages where no missionary has gone, and the people spontaneously casting away their idols; of the young Brahmin, educated in English knowledge, finding the belief of his fathers simply impossible to him, and wanting as a real necessity to know what the religion of Europeans is. Science, commerce, education, intercommunication of ideas, the researches of scholars, which show the Hindus what their religion really means, the growing realization of the fact that the Aryan race in Europe and Asia are one, all are working surely, and with accelerating pace, towards a great moral and religious end. It would be a mistake to shape out that end with a minute precision which is sure to be reproved by the event; but we who were so slow to believe St. Paul cannot doubt, now that a Hindu Theist has told it us, that Asia, as well as Europe, has a share in Jesus Christ. And as little can we doubt that in the country from which this Hindu Reformer and his associates have sprung, and from which they refuse to separate their spiritual destiny, the kingdom of God has begun to dawn.

W. H. FREMANTLE.

PROFESSOR GROTE ON UTILITARIANISM.

OF

An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy. By the late JOHN
GROTE, B.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Univer-
sity of Cambridge. Edited by J. B. MAYOR, M.A., Cambridge.
Deighton, Bell, & Co. 1870.

F all moralists not distinctly professing to take the Utilitarian side, probably no one has conceded so much to the Utilitarian theory as Professor Grote. He distinguishes, indeed, between the older Epicurean doctrine concerning happiness as the object of action, and what he calls the Neo-Utilitarianism of Mr. J. S. Mill; and it is only to the latter that he gives so cordial a welcome. He sees in it a philosophy differing much, and even in kind, from that of Bentham and Paley. But this ethical system of Mr. Mill is the Utilitarianism which is before the world now, and in which we of this generation are chiefly interested; and Professor Grote, as a philosopher of a different school, has treated it with a generosity which should tell with equally advantageous effects both on Utilitarians and on their opponents. It is extremely desirable on many accounts that the modern Utilitarianism should be understood, and should have thorough justice done to it.

The criticism which Professor Grote brings to bear on Mr. Mill's treatise at many different points is mainly intended to prove that the system expounded by Mr. Mill is inadequate as a complete explanation of all the facts which moral science must take into account. All Mr. Mill's positive doctrine, we might say, Professor Grote accepts; and he gives it a high place, allowing it to divide the

[blocks in formation]

throne of the ethical kingdom. But he decidedly opposes the claim of Utilitarianism, in its improved shape, to be the whole of moral science.

I wish it were possible to commend this work of Mr. Grote to all those who are interested in ethical discussions as a readable book. But unfortunately, with all its merits, it does not possess that of readableness. For this the style is partly to blame, and partly the whole order and method of the work. But it would be hard to blame either the author or the editor. Mr. Mayor has done all that an editor could do in the circumstances in which he was placed. These are fully explained in the Preface. The pleasure which Professor Grote took in speculating and writing down his thoughts on philosophical questions was in a great measure neutralized by his dislike of the task of preparing what he wrote for publication. He consequently left a large quantity of essays and chapters in manuscript, in a more or less finished state. A great part of this Examination was written when Mr. Mill's papers on Utilitarianism came out in Fraser's Magazine in 1861. On the republication of these papers in a separate volume, Mr. Grote sent his criticisms to the press as far as the end of the seventh chapter of this volume; but then he changed his mind about publishing in that form, and the type was broken up. After his lamented death in 1866, Mr. J. B. Mayor, as literary executor, found himself in possession of the printed chapters, with eleven more in MS. These latter he has partly re-arranged; and he has edited the whole work with affectionate care, giving all possible help to the reader by references, summaries, and occasional notes of explanation. Such being the history of the work, we can hardly either wonder or complain that it exhibits the disadvantages of being written in a desultory manner. The arrangement, though not disorderly, is unsystematic; whilst the subjects discussed are so liable to be confused and made hopelessly unintelligible by indistinctness of thought, that we most of us need the helps of formal arrangement and a precise style to preserve us from lapses of discrimination, and from being victimized by besetting fallacies. If the matter of the volume had been digested and packed into half the space-if this criticism of Mr. Mill had not been much more than twice as long as Mr. Mill's treatise-the reading of the book would have been much easier.

No doubt some will also share the feeling which caused Professor Grote himself to give up his first intention of publishing this work, -that it is too exclusively critical in its scope. It aims at proving that the New Utilitarianism is not so well-based and complete a system of life and duty as it professes to be. But we are too familiar with the shortcomings of all human products, systems of

speculation amongst the rest. Considering how freely Mr. Grote accepts the Utilitarian as a partial theory of morals, the reader will be apt, I think, to get tired of so much trying of its weak places, and will wish to see it harmoniously and securely adjusted in the more comprehensive theory of which it is to form a part. Mr. Grote does not omit to indicate what principles, in his judgment, are needed to supplement that of the pursuit of happiness, but he deliberately declines to attempt the construction of any system, and prefers to regard human existence as too various and incomprehensible a matter to be brought, at least with our present knowledge, under any simple unity of conception. A little more enthusiasm, a more evident desire to commend some satisfying view to the reader's mind, would have made the book more interesting.

But if we miss the inspiring effects of eagerness and confidence, we feel at once in this work the presence of the most charming modesty and candour. Professor Grote is never carried by controversial warmth into unfairness. He is always courteous and gentle, always anxious to correct dogmatism in himself, as in others, by appeals to the complexity and mysteriousness of the world with which moralists have to deal. And, in the same spirit of reverence for the actual truth of things, he takes pains to be accurate in expression as in thought. His style, though involved and cumbrous, is that of a thinker who realizes distinctly what he means, and endeavours to convey his meaning in terms which shall not be liable to be misunderstood.

The following topics may serve as heads for some of the critical observations in which Mr. Grote seems to me to have touched weak points in the Utilitarian creed :-the nature of happiness, the social instinct, the distribution of happiness, the value of action, moral imperativeness.

1. Utilitarians hold, in Mr. Mill's words, "that actions are right in proportion as they tend to produce happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain: by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure." Professor Grote admits that some kind of happiness is the end of all action, that "the happiness of whatever can feel happiness is the proper object of all the action which can go on in the universe." "I hope I may be able to avoid," he says, "in controverting Mr. Mill, any disposition to value less than he does human happiness, or even human pleasure, and the action which is conducive to it. I recognise fully the worth, not only of his Utilitarianism, but of the older and inferior, as aiding the study, than which nothing can be more important, of the manner in which human happiness may be promoted" (p. 32). But, he inquires, do

we sufficiently know what happiness is, to be able to make general rules about it, and to use it as the one measure of the rightness of actions? Mr. Mill thinks we do. He appeals to common sense and common experience. But when attempts are made to formulate happiness, either we have only the more commonplace forms of it represented, or we have some ideal quality of it introduced, which does not belong to the mere testimony of experience. In describing a happy life, Mr. Mill mentions as "the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing." Mr. Grote observes on this prescription for happiness, that it rather has a partial and moralistic truth, than is true as a scientific statement. "I apprehend that with at least an equal degree of truth we might say that it was a great thing for happiness to expect a great deal from life." "I can hardly think Nature was wrong in filling us, as she does, especially in earlier days, with hope and unlimited expectation, even though perhaps much of bitter disappointment should follow." "The advice of parents to their children is given with the feeling, on the part of the parent, that there is sure to be enough in the child of strong passion, hopefulness, enterprise, and other elements of this kind, which he only fears lest there should be too much of, but the absence of which, though they make no part of his advice, he understands would be quite as great a calamity as disregard of his advice. Mr. Mill's prescription for happiness, not to expect too much from life, is of this character. Considering the exceeding likelihood that we shall form utterly unreasonable expectations, the advice, in this point of view, is most sensible. But if Mr. Mill's view were, not simply to correct and restrain a temper of mind which he knows is sure to exist in spite of all that may be said against it, but to describe the temper which he thinks should be, I would take, for happiness, what seems to me to be the side of nature against him. And so as to Paley: if his description of what will make us happy is intended as a portrait of a happy life, without the supposition of there existing besides a mass of strong emotion, impulse, imagination, and other such elements, of which what he gives is really only a chastening and correction,* I must say

There is a curious coincidence between this observation of Mr. Grote's and a similar one in a paper to which I shall refer again, on "The Morals of Expediency and Intuition." "All moral controversies may, we think, be reduced under four general heads. First, what is the sphere of morals, what part of human life do they cover, and of what other elements in human nature do they assume the existence? . . . The first, which is of extreme importance, has as yet been hardly touched, though it would probably be found to throw great light upon the other three. We shall confine ourselves to observing upon it that it will be found to involve, amongst other things, the principle that all ethical systems assume the existence of a flow of passion which is to be artificially checked or quickened by prohibitions or commands.”—Pall Mall Gazette, June 5, 1869.

« EelmineJätka »