MR. MILL'S LOGIC EXAMINED.
An examination of the attempted use of logic by Mr. Mill may be helpful and. instructive in illustrating the amount of knowledge and argument that can be made apparently to serve absurd conclusions. His “grounds of disbelief " will be found in the chapters on Induction, the argument of which calls for notice.
The Notion of a Cause
Mr. Mill undoubtedly is right in stating that the notion of a cause being the root of the whole theory of induction, “it is indispensable that this idea should at the very outset of our inquiry be with the utmost practicable degree of precision fixed and determined."
It must be granted that the only notion of a cause that is intelligible is that of an adequate one. All inadequate cause—that is, effects caused by a cause that is not sufficient for the effects it causes—is an inconceivable and meaningless thing.
The steps of the induction by which Mr. Mill reaches his conclusion are as follows:
First:—the Premise
We will proceed a consider the notion of a cause as Mr. Mill presents it. First on page 236 he clearly states the premise from which he is to get his notion:—I premise, then, that whom in the course of this inquiry I speak of the cause of any phenomenon, I do not mean a cause which is not itself a phenomenon; I make no research into the ultimate or ontological cause of anything. To adopt a distinction familiar in the writings of the Scotch metaphysicians, and especially of Reid, the causes with which I concern myself are not efficient, but physical causes."
Second Step:— the Adequacy of This Premise Stated, but Not Its Inadequacy
Mr. Mill asserts that the only notion of cause which the theory of induction requires is such a notion as can be gained by experience. The definition of induction is also given:
"For the purposes of the present inquiry, Induction may be defined, the operation of discovering and proving general propositions."
No objection could be raised to this, provided the limit of the induction were acknowledged to be fixed by the character of the premise. But this is just what is not done.
Physical Cause Inadequate to Explain All Phenomena
There is no basis of induction in the premise of a physical cause—which is the only notion that can be gained from a study of physical causes—for all phenomena, unless all phenomena can be proved physical. But this the agnostic scientist positively declares to be not the case. “The one thing certain is the existence of the mental world."
Some phenomena testify as unmistakably to mental causes as others do to physical laws. Another has well illustrated this. "Bat what they have discovered leads me to another point, which they have obscured by their studies and constant occupation with secondary causes, and which is much more simply and clearly apprehended by unscientific minds. If a man of science met a peasant with his cart, and tried to prove the cart had not been made, he would bring Bedlam, not science, into the poor man's mind. He might explain the curves produced by a fly on the periphery of the wheel as it turned, what the principles of the pressure of weight on the parts of the cart were, and the plan of draft, how far equal wheels affected the draft, and much more. Nay he might explain to him how the stimulus of the whip applied to the horse behind set the centrepetal nerves to produce an effect on the cells, or combination of cells, in the horse's brain, and by some unknown reflex action set the motor efferent fibers in activity, so as to act on his hind heels, and even his fore legs, and at the same time to move the cart. Still my poor carter would believe that his cart had a maker, and was made with a, particular design to carry manure or corn as the case might be; nay, perhaps, in his ignorance, that though born of a cart mare, his horse was made too, and would fancy, poor ignorant man with a whip in his hand, that it was made for him to have dominion over; nor would he be much in the wrong."
The correlation and conservation of physical force and matter are the same whether the cart is made or not made; but the cart as made presents phenomena which witness to a cause outside and independent of physical causes. At least so Mr. Huxley has taught.
Again there can be in 'the premise of a physical cause no basis of induction for any inquiry either as to the origin or, as a consequence of this inadequacy, as to the permanence of things which are. Moreover, science, which can experiment in causes and effects within that sphere where all is in existence, can cause nothing to exist that was not there before, The notion of a cause, if based upon scientific experiment and observation only, must be that of a cause that in fact has caused nothing to be!
Third Step:— Physical Causes Become Permanent Ones
The next stop in Mr. Mill's procedure, is to aver that physical causes present the idea of permanence. Perhaps they do suggest such an idea to an observer occupied solely with them. But logical induction has nothing to do with the origin or permanence of things as they exist. It cannot state that things will continue as they are, for it has no pie miser as to how they came to be.
Fourth Step:—From Permanent to Cyclic Causes
These permanent ca uses are not always objects; they are sometimes events, that is to say, periodical cycles of events, that being the only mode in which events eau possess the property of permanence.
But circles are not always a guarantee for permanence, at least hardly so in argument. Whether Mr. Mill's logic depends on this premise for its permanency, the reader must judge
The Fifth Step:— Attempt to Discredit the Proof of an Efficient Cause
Slowly thus the evolution is proceeding from a physical or inefficient cause to an efficient one. The gap between the efficient and the inefficient causes is now sought to be descend by the attempt to discredit the proof that exists of an efficient cause in the world because there is only one.
The argument continues from p. 249 to p. 255. And then we read according to the theory in question, Mind, or to speak more precisely, Will, is the only cause of phenomena. The type of causation; as well as the exclusive source from which we derive the idea, is our own voluntary agency. Here, and here only (it is said), we have direct evidence of causation. We know that we can move our bodies, Mr. Mill labors to invalidate this direct evidence of efficient causation. But numbers of objections have nothing to do with the weight of proof. There may be any number of physical causes, but this does not affect the existence of one cause that is efficient. The exercise of mind or will recognized as a cause is the only example known that fulfills—as far as it goes—the requirements of the law of causation. An efficient cause in this case can be assigned to perceived effects, Whether it be in the moving of bodies or the use the forces of nature are put to, the phenomena as a whole from beginning to end can be traced to an efficient cause.
The Sixth and Final Step:— Cal Causes Are Placed in Company of Efficient Causes.
But though lie does say that volition is not an efficient cause, it does not seem to be Mr. Mill's object to deny the illustration given of an efficient cause so much as to claim for other causes the same efficiency, He denies " the inference that because Volition is an efficient cause, therefore it is the only cause " (p, 262), Other causes—those, for instance, of the notion of his premise—ought to be given, then, which can be proved to be of the same rank as efficient. Needless to say, this is not done; but thus the field of argument has been cleared for any meaningless statement.
The last step now becomes an easy one, and it is not astonishing to see one who set out with the premise of an inadequate cause find himself back again by his argument to the seine place, and claim by his conclusions (p. 405) the possibility of uncaused phenomena The concession, is made that it is natural to assume that in this world there are no phenomena which were uncaused, yet the passage continues, " It must at the seine time, be remarked that the reasons for this reliance do not hold in circumstances unknown to us, and beyond the possible range of our experience. In distant parts of the stellar regions where the phenomena may be entirely unlike those with which we are acquainted it would be folly to affirm confidently that this general law prevails, any more than those special ones which we have found to hold universally on our own planet." And Mr. Mill has made logic responsible for such a conclusion,
Astronomers may tell us that the star 61 C. is rushing onwards at the rate of 100 miles a second and moreover find such a speed and the power that is the cause of it alike inconceivable; but if any were to state that such a speed was an uncaused phenomenon and the star might with the same reason be traveling in the opposite direction, for cause was not an essential of the phenomena,—or again that without cause it might start on a return journey,—the astronomer’s judgment would begin to be questioned, certainly by ordinary men of ordinary intelligence, The ignorance of the ancients in attempting an explanation of the observed motion of the stars by placing wheels or souls within them, may be patent now to almost all, but in the attempt the need of at adequate cause was always assumed. They never assumed there were phenomena without a cause. This was left for Mr. Mill to attempt. May it not with fitness be said, "Great men are not always wise” and that God has indeed made foolish the wisdom of this world—that by the foolishness preaching he might save them that believe?
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