Note AN — PREFACE

In a note to this passage, Mr. Mill makes some sarcastic comments on an argument of Hamilton’s against Cousin’s theory that God is necessarily determined to create. “On this hypothesis,” says Hamilton, “God, as necessarily determined to pass from absolute essence to relative manifestation, is determined to pass either from the better to the worse, or from the worse to the better.” Mr. Mill calls this argument “a curiosity of dialectics,” and answers, “Perfect wisdom would have begun to will the new state at the precise moment when it began to be better than the old.” Hamilton is not speaking of states of things, but of states of the Divine nature, as creative or not creative; and Mr. Mill’s argument, to refute Hamilton, must suppose a time when the new nature of God begins to be better than the old! Mr. Mill would perhaps have spoken of Hamilton’s argument with more respect had he known that it is taken from Plato.