Such are the intricacies and wide extent of ethical questions, that it is not practicable to pursue the analysis of Mill's doctrine in at all a full manner. We cannot detect the fallacious reasoning with the same precision as in matters of geometric and logical science. This analysis is the less needful too, because, since Mill's Essays appeared, Moral Philosophy has undergone a revolution. I do not so much allude to the reform effected by Mr. Sidgwick's "Methods of Ethics," though that is a great one, introducing as it does a precision of thought and nomenclature which was previously wanting. I allude, of course, to the establishment of the Spencerian Theory of Morals, which has made a new era in philosophy.[85] Mill has been singularly unfortunate from this point of view. He might be defined as the last great philosophic writer conspicuous for his ignorance of the principles of evolution. He brought to confusion the philosophy of his master, Bentham; he ignored that which was partly to replace, partly to complete it.
I am aware that, in her Introductory Notice to the Essays on Religion (p. viii.), Miss Helen Taylor apologizes for Mill having omitted any references to the works of Mr. Darwin and Sir Henry Maine "in passages where there is coincidence of thought with those writers, or where subjects are treated which they have since discussed in a manner to which the Author of these Essays would certainly have referred had their works been published before these were written."[86] Here it is implied that Mill anticipated the authors of the Evolution philosophy in some of their thoughts, and it is a most amiable and pardonable bias which leads Miss Taylor to find in the works of one so dear to her that which is not there. The fact is that the whole tone of Mill's moral and political writings is totally opposed to the teaching of Darwin and Spencer, Taylor and Maine. Mill's idea of human nature was that we came into the world like lumps of soft clay, to be shaped by the accidents of life, or the care of those who educate us. Austin insisted on the evidence which history and daily experience afford of "the extraordinary pliability of human nature," and Mill borrowed the phrase from him.[87] No phrase could better express the misapprehensions of human nature which, it is to be hoped, will cease for ever with the last generation of writers. Human nature is one of the last things which can be called "pliable." Granite rocks can be more easily moulded than the poor savages that hide among them. We are all of us full of deep springs of unconquerable character, which education may in some degree soften or develop, but can neither create nor destroy. The mind can be shaped about as much as the body; it may be starved into feebleness, or fed and exercised into vigour and fulness; but we start always with inherent hereditary powers of growth. The non-recognition of this fact is the great defect in the moral system of Bentham. The great Jeremy was accustomed to make short work with the things which he did not understand, and it is thus he disposes of "the pretended system" of a moral sense:[88]
