Note 274.1 — UTILITARIANISM.

It will be most convenient to treat this subject historically, because this method will display in the clearest light the operation of that one-sided reaction out of which the Lockian philosophy, no less than the Benthamite Ethics took its rise. And here it will be manifest that we cannot altogether escape metaphysics, however odious that word may sound to the general English ear; for in our inquiry we must find or assert certain first principles which form the foundation of all reason, whether practical or speculative; and though metaphysics, like clouds, are apt to be misty, they are just as certainly the fountain of all moral science, as the clouds are the fathers of the rain, which supplies the water that moves the useful machinery of the mill. We must therefore start from Mr. Locke, the acknowledged father of whatever school of British thinking deserves the name of a philosophy. No doubt before him came Hobbes; but this man stands alone, like a huge trap-rock bolt up in a flat country; and therefore we shall let him lie over for a separate treatment, if opportunity should occur; but in tracing up the main line of Utilitarian Ethics from Mill to Hartley, I found that they ended naturally and legitimately in Locke, just as a net-work of waters may often be traced to one common well-head. Now Locke is the father of what the Germans call the empirical philosophy. What does this mean? It simply means, as any one may see by a superficial glance cast on the first chapter of the “Essay on the Human Understanding,” that he commenced his philosophy by a formal declaration of war against the doctrine of innate ideas inherited by modern thinkers from the Platonists of Athens, Alexandria, and Florence; and, if all innate sources of true knowledge are denied, then there remains for morality, as for everything else, only the source of external experience, which comes to us not by nature but by acquisition; for according to the use of the English language, whatever things a man does not originally possess, he acquires. Locke, therefore, in the language of Plato and Aristotle, denied the existence of ἐπιστήμη, or science properly so called, which is founded on necessary principles of internal reason, and asserted that all knowledge is to be got by ἐμπειρία or experience, in other words, is what the Germans call empirical. That Locke’s ideas on this fundamental question of all speculation were anything but clear we shall see immediately; but on the face of the matter the very noticeable thing is, that in rejecting the doctrine of innate ideas the Englishman does not go directly to Plato and Plotinus, the sources from which this doctrine had come, but he goes to war with certain floating loose notions of Herbert and other dreamy speculators of his own or the previous generation. Now, this is evidently a method of proceeding altogether unphilosophical. If a man means to refute Christianity scientifically, he does not go to the books of the Jesuits, but to the New Testament. So the refutation of the doctrine of innate ideas should have commenced with the examination of Plato, its original promulgator. But it was Locke’s destiny to fight against Plato as Bacon fought against Aristotle, without knowing his adversary. The consequence was in both cases the same; a real battle against a real adversary, and a real victory on the one side against a real defeat on the other; but not the victory and not the adversary supposed. The world, however, always willing to be deceived by names, gave the combatants credit for having done a much greater thing than they had really achieved; it was not the mock image of Æneas, but the real Æneas that Diomede had routed in the fight. And so it came to be an accepted fact in this country with large classes of persons that Locke had driven Plato out of the field, just as Bacon had quashed Aristotle. And the deception in the case of Locke has lasted longer; and that for a very obvious reason. The physical science movement inaugurated by Bacon led much more naturally to a recognition of the true Aristotle than to a recovery of the genuine Plato. It suited the practical genius of John Bull to regard the severe Idealist as a transcendental dreamer; and Mr. Locke taught him to put this shallow prejudice into dignified and grave language. A thinker who does such a service to any nation is pretty sure to be overrated; and so it fared with Mr. Locke, who besides being a thinker was a sensible man, and on public affairs held liberal opinions in harmony with the progressive element of the age. Accordingly a recent juridical writer of the Utilitarian school has not scrupled to call him in the most unqualified terms, “the greatest and best of philosophers.”[274.1] With this partial verdict, however, we do not find that foreign writers agree; and the following estimate of the merits of our typical English Philosopher by a recent German writer, is unquestionably nearer the truth. “Precision and clearness, perspicacity and distinctness, are the characteristic of Locke’s writings. Acute rather than deep in thinking, he is true to the character of his nationality.”[274.2] So much for the position of our great English “empiric.” Let us now look more nicely at his doctrine, and the reasons of it.