y one, Oversy tion is inds of s been, amilton, de of the › been the Mill should resumption gains in force hing to expect Mr. Mill. X. CHAPTER described in synonyms and circumlocutions, but not to be crumbled into a definition. Sir William Hamilton quotes a short sentence from one of Descartes's letters, in which he casually put forth a sort of definition, that has been much, but needlessly, praised for its depth and its novelty: "All our pleasure is nothing more than the consciousness of some one or other of our perfections." He does not quote the sentence in which Descartes, in his work on the Passions of the Soul, proposes, with all the formality of an article headed "Article 91. La Définition de la joie," to lay bare the nature of pleasure, and in which the philosopher slips into synonyms it was useless to write but is not useless to note. "Joy is an agreeable emotion of the soul, wherein consists its enjoyment of some good." In this tautology of the father of modern philosophy we have the sum and substance of nearly all modern speculation on the subject. Pleasure, says Bossuet, is an agreeable feeling according to our nature; pain a disagreeable one contrary to our nature. And so Sir William with a hundred other great authorities. I have one more preliminary remark to make own specu- before I ask the reader to launch with me upon pleasure. the great theme of pleasure. As Sir William lation on Hamilton is the thinker who more than all others in modern times has closely examined into the nature of pleasure, and as his theory, X. character as a philo although by no means perfect, is the most com- CHAPTER plete that has yet been produced, being, indeed, entitled to the praise which he claims for it, of embracing and containing nearly all previous theories, we should naturally begin this inquiry by a statement of the position in which it was left by him. It may be necessary to correct his definition, it may be possible to advance upon it, but begin with it we must. Just at this moment, however, there is here in London a presumption And his against any doctrine which Sir William Hamilton could claim as his own. He has been roundly sopher. attacked by Mr. Mill. The followers of Mr. Mill have been shouting in the journals that the pretensions of Sir William Hamilton as a philosopher are demolished for ever; and it is un- His chadoubtedly the fact, that until Mr. Mill shall be assailed by answered, there is a presumption against the dead giant whom he has assailed. Any one, however, who looks down upon the controversy from a height will see that this presumption is only temporary, and that the leading minds of Europe will always be, as they have always been, on the side espoused by Sir William Hamilton, not on that espoused by Mr. Mill. The side of the latter in philosophy has always hitherto been the losing one. That is no reason why Mr. Mill should not now make it win; but it is a presumption against him, and the presumption gains in force when we consider that he has nothing to expect racter is Mr. Mill. X. CHAPTER from popular favour to compensate for being among philosophers in a very small minority. Still, whatever be the end of the campaign which Mr. Mill has opened, there is no doubt that he has opened it with rare spirit and ability, that he has fought a great and bloody battle in a style which even his adversaries must admire, and that he has achieved for himself and his school this grand result-that whereas hitherto they have been treated with supreme contempt by all the other schools of thought in Europe, their very existence not being recognised, they have now vindicated their right to be heard, and heard they shall be. Accordingly, for the moment, the voice of the living prevails over that of the dead philosopher, and men who ought to know much better indulge in unseemly triumph over the supposed defeat of the greatest thinker that Britain has produced in the present century. Although it would be out of place here to attempt an answer to the elaborate And needs attack of Mr. Mill, yet it may not be improper, while the full answer is withheld, to justify the terms in which I speak of Sir William Hamilton as the highest of all authorities on the subject of pleasure. considera tion. The view of It must be remembered that while reviewit given by writers, on the strength of Mr. Mill's battery of arguments, venture to sneer at Sir William Hamilton as a nobody, and to trample under X. foot his philosophical pretensions, Mr. Mill, more CHAPTER cautious than his disciples, and better acquainted with his antagonist, never ventures on any such expression. He is careful to assure us that really and truly his subject "is not Sir W. Hamilton, but the questions which Sir W. Hamilton discussed. It is impossible," he says, "to write on these questions in our own country and in our time without incessant reference, express or tacit, to his (Sir William's) treatment of them. On all the subjects on which he touched he is either one of the most powerful allies of what I deem a sound philosophy, or, more frequently, by far its most formidable antagonist; both because he came the latest, and wrote with a full knowledge of the flaws which had been detected in his predecessors, and because he was one of the ablest, the most clearsighted, and the most candid. Whenever any opinion which he deliberately expressed is contended against, his form of the opinion and his arguments for it are those which especially require to be faced and carefully appreciated." This estimate of Sir William Hamilton's mode of thinking is no more than just, but to understand all that it implies we must refer to a previous passage, and, indeed, to the whole tenour of Mr. Mill's book. From the above quotation it will be seen that Mr. Mill, by his own showing, proposes to attack |