Autobiography by John Stuart Mill (easy books to read txt) 📖

were engaged in this struggle, which, I felt from the

beginning, was destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the

course of human affairs for an indefinite duration. Having been a deeply

interested observer of the slavery quarrel in America, during the many

years that preceded the open breach, I knew that it was in all its

stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend the

territory of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniary

interest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for its

class privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in the

admirable work of my friend Professor Cairnes, _The Slave Power_. Their

success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers of evil

which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits

of its friends all over the civilized world, while it would create a

formidable military power, grounded on the worst and most anti-social

form of the tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time

the prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to all the

privileged classes of Europe a false confidence, probably only to be

extinguished in blood. On the other hand, if the spirit of the North was

sufficiently roused to carry the war to a successful termination, and if

that termination did not come too soon and too easily, I foresaw, from

the laws of human nature, and the experience of revolutions, that when

it did come it would in all probability be thorough: that the bulk of

the Northern population, whose conscience had as yet been awakened only

to the point of resisting the further extension of slavery, but whose

fidelity to the Constitution of the United States made them disapprove

of any attempt by the Federal Government to interfere with slavery in

the States where it already existed, would acquire feelings of another

kind when the Constitution had been shaken off by armed rebellion, would

determine to have done for ever with the accursed thing, and would join

their banner with that of the noble body of Abolitionists, of whom

Garrison was the courageous and single-minded apostle, Wendell Phillips

the eloquent orator, and John Brown the voluntary martyr.[8] Then, too,

the whole mind of the United States would be let loose from its bonds,

no longer corrupted by the supposed necessity of apologizing to

foreigners for the most flagrant of all possible violations of the free

principles of their Constitution; while the tendency of a fixed state of

society to stereotype a set of national opinions would be at least

temporarily checked, and the national mind would become more open to the

recognition of whatever was bad in either the institutions or the

customs of the people. These hopes, so far as related to slavery, have

been completely, and in other respects are in course of being

progressively realized. Foreseeing from the first this double set of

consequences from the success or failure of the rebellion, it may be

imagined with what feelings I contemplated the rush of nearly the whole

upper and middle classes of my own country even those who passed for

Liberals, into a furious pro-Southern partisanship: the working

classes, and some of the literary and scientific men, being almost the

sole exceptions to the general frenzy. I never before felt so keenly how

little permanent improvement had reached the minds of our influential

classes, and of what small value were the liberal opinions they had got

into the habit of professing. None of the Continental Liberals committed

the same frightful mistake. But the generation which had extorted negro

emancipation from our West India planters had passed away; another had

succeeded which had not learnt by many years of discussion and exposure

to feel strongly the enormities of slavery; and the inattention habitual

with Englishmen to whatever is going on in the world outside their own

island, made them profoundly ignorant of all the antecedents of the

struggle, insomuch that it was not generally believed in England, for

the first year or two of the war, that the quarrel was one of slavery.

There were men of high principle and unquestionable liberality of

opinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or assimilated it to

the cases in which they were accustomed to sympathize, of a people

struggling for independence.

 

It was my obvious duty to be one of the small minority who protested

against this perverted state of public opinion. I was not the first to

protest. It ought to be remembered to the honour of Mr. Hughes and of

Mr. Ludlow, that they, by writings published at the very beginning of

the struggle, began the protestation. Mr. Bright followed in one of the

most powerful of his speeches, followed by others not less striking. I

was on the point of adding my words to theirs, when there occurred,

towards the end of 1861, the seizure of the Southern envoys on board a

British vessel, by an officer of the United States. Even English

forgetfulness has not yet had time to lose all remembrance of the

explosion of feeling in England which then burst forth, the expectation,

prevailing for some weeks, of war with the United States, and the

warlike preparations actually commenced on this side. While this state

of things lasted, there was no chance of a hearing for anything

favourable to the American cause; and, moreover, I agreed with those who

thought the act unjustifiable, and such as to require that England

should demand its disavowal. When the disavowal came, and the alarm of

war was over, I wrote, in January, 1862, the paper, in _Fraser's

Magazine_, entitled "The Contest in America," [and I shall always feel

grateful to my daughter that her urgency prevailed on me to write it

when I did, for we were then on the point of setting out for a journey

of some months in Greece and Turkey, and but for her, I should have

deferred writing till our return.] Written and published when it was,

this paper helped to encourage those Liberals who had felt overborne by

the tide of illiberal opinion, and to form in favour of the good cause a

nucleus of opinion which increased gradually, and, after the success of

the North began to seem probable, rapidly. When we returned from our

journey I wrote a second article, a review of Professor Cairnes' book,

published in the _Westminster Review_. England is paying the penalty, in

many uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her ruling

classes stirred up in the United States by their ostentatious wishes for

the ruin of America as a nation; they have reason to be thankful that a

few, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing firmly by the

Americans in the time of their greatest difficulty, effected a partial

diversion of these bitter feelings, and made Great Britain not

altogether odious to the Americans.

 

This duty having been performed, my principal occupation for the next

two years was on subjects not political. The publication of Mr. Austin's

_Lectures on Jurisprudence_ after his decease, gave me an opportunity of

paying a deserved tribute to his memory, and at the same time expressing

some thoughts on a subject on which, in my old days of Benthamism, I had

bestowed much study. But the chief product of those years was the

_Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_. His _Lectures_,

published in 1860 and 1861, I had read towards the end of the latter

year, with a half-formed intention of giving an account of them in a

Review, but I soon found that this would be idle, and that justice could

not be done to the subject in less than a volume. I had then to consider

whether it would be advisable that I myself should attempt such a

performance. On consideration, there seemed to be strong reasons for

doing so. I was greatly disappointed with the _Lectures_. I read them,

certainly, with no prejudice against Sir William Hamilton. I had up to

that time deferred the study of his _Notes to Reid_ on account of their

unfinished state, but I had not neglected his _Discussions in

Philosophy_; and though I knew that his general mode of treating the

facts of mental philosophy differed from that of which I most approved,

yet his vigorous polemic against the later Transcendentalists, and his

strenuous assertion of some important principles, especially the

Relativity of human knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with his

opinions, and made me think that genuine psychology had considerably

more to gain than to lose by his authority and reputation. His

_Lectures_ and the _Dissertations on Reid_ dispelled this illusion: and

even the _Discussions_, read by the light which these throw on them,

lost much of their value. I found that the points of apparent agreement

between his opinions and mine were more verbal than real; that the

important philosophical principles which I had thought he recognised,

were so explained away by him as to mean little or nothing, or were

continually lost sight of, and doctrines entirely inconsistent with them

were taught in nearly every part of his philosophical writings. My

estimation of him was therefore so far altered, that instead of

regarding him as occupying a kind of intermediate position between the

two rival philosophies, holding some of the principles of both, and

supplying to both powerful weapons of attack and defence, I now looked

upon him as one of the pillars, and in this country from his high

philosophical reputation the chief pillar, of that one of the two which

seemed to me to be erroneous.

 

Now, the difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of

Intuition, and that of Experience and Association, is not a mere matter

of abstract speculation; it is full of practical consequences, and lies

at the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical opinion

in an age of progress. The practical reformer has continually to demand

that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and

widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and

indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable

part of his argument to show, how those powerful feelings had their

origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible.

There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy

which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by

circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate

elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up

favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the

voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that

of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing

tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as

innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs

that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between

individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally

would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief

hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one

of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. This tendency has

its source in the intuitional metaphysics which characterized the

reaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, and it is a

tendency so agreeable to human indolence, as well as to conservative

interests generally, that unless attacked at the very root, it is sure

to be carried to even a greater length than is really justified by the

more moderate forms of the intuitional philosophy. That philosophy not

always in its moderate forms, had ruled the thought of Europe for the

greater part of a century. My father's _Analysis of the Mind_, my own

_Logic_, and Professor Bain's great treatise, had attempted to

re-introduce a better mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite as

much success as could be expected; but I had for some time felt that the

mere contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that there ought

to be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that controversial as well as

expository writings were needed, and that the time was come when such

controversy would be useful. Considering, then, the writings and fame of

Sir W. Hamilton as the great fortress of the intuitional philosophy in

this country, a fortress the more formidable from the imposing

character, and the in many respects great personal merits and mental

endowments, of the man, I thought it might be a real service to

philosophy to attempt a thorough examination of all his most important

doctrines, and an estimate of his general claims to eminence as a

philosopher; and I was confirmed in this resolution by observing that in

the writings of at least one, and him one of the ablest, of Sir W.

Hamilton's followers, his peculiar doctrines were made the justification

of a view of religion which I hold to be profoundly immoral--that it is

our duty to bow down in