DR. WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.*

IF the worth of Dr. Whewell's writings could be measured by the importance and amplitude of their subjects, no writer of the age could vie with him in merit or usefulness. He has aspired to be, not only the historian, but the philosopher and legislator, of almost all the great departments of human knowledge; reducing each to its first principles, and showing how it might be scientifically evolved from these as a connected whole. After endeavoring, in his "History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," to place physics, and incidentally metaphysics, on a philosophic foundation, he has made an almost equally ambitious attempt on the subjects of morals and government, of which the two works before us are the results. He is thus entitled to the praise of having done his best to wipe off from the two endowed universities, in one of which he holds a high place, the reproach to which they have so long been justly liable, of neglecting the higher regions of philosophy. By his writings and influence, he has been an agent in that revival of speculation on the most

* Westminster Review, October, 1852.-1. "Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England." By William Whewell, D.D., Master of Trinity College, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge. 1 vol. 8vo. 1852.

2. Elements of Morality, including Polity." By the same Author. 2 vols. 8vo 1945.

difficult and highest subjects, which has been noticeable for some years past within as well as without the pale of Oxford and Cambridge. And inasmuch as mental activity of any kind is better than torpidity, and bad solutions of the great questions of philosophy are preferable to a lazy ignoring of their existence, whoever has taken so active a part as Dr. Whewell in this intellectual movement may lay claim to considerable merit.

Unfortunately, it is not in the nature of bodies constituted like the English universities, even when stirred up into something like mental activity, to send forth thought of any but one description. There have been universities (those of France and Germany have at some periods been practically conducted on this principle) which brought together into a body the most vigorous thinkers and the ablest teachers, whatever the conclusions to which their thinking might have led them. But, in the English universities, no thought can find place, except that which can reconcile itself with orthodoxy. They are ecclesiastical institutions; and it is the essence of all churches to vow adherence to a set of opinions made up and prescribed, it matters little whether three or thirteen centuries ago. Men will some day open their eyes, and perceive how fatal a thing it is, that the instruction of those who are intended to be the guides and governors of mankind should be confided to a collection of persons thus pledged. If the opinions they are pledged to were every one as true as any fact in physical science, and had been adopted, not as they almost always are, on trust and authority, but as the result of the most diligent and impartial examination of which the mind of

the recipient was capable, even then, the engagement under penalties always to adhere to the opinions once assented to would debilitate and lame the mind, and unfit it for progress, still more for assisting the progress of others. The person who has to think more of what an opinion leads to, than of what is the evidence of it, cannot be a philosopher, or a teacher of philosophers. Of what value is the opinion, on any subject, of a man of whom every one knows, that, by his profession, he must hold that opinion? and how can intellectual vigor be fostered by the teaching of those, who, even as a matter of duty, would rather that their pupils were weak and orthodox, than strong with freedom of thought? Whoever thinks that persons thus tied are fitting depositaries of the trust of educating a people must think that the proper object of intellectual education is, not to strengthen and cultivate the intellect, but to make sure of its adopting certain conclusions; that, in short, in the exercise of the thinking faculty, there is something, either religion or conservatism or peace, or whatever it be, more important than truth. Not to dilate further on this topic, it is nearly inevitable, that when persons bound by the vows, and placed in the circumstances, of an established clergy, enter into the paths of higher speculation, and endeavor to make a philosophy, either purpose or instinct will direct them to the kind of philosophy best fitted to prop up the doctrines to which they are pledged; and, when these doctrines are so prodigiously in arrear of the general progress of thought as the doctrines of the Church of England now are, the philosophy resulting will have a tendency, not to promote, but to arrest, progress.

Without the slightest wish to speak in disparagement of Dr. Whewell's labors, and with no ground for questioning his sincerity of purpose, we think the preceding remark thoroughly applicable to his philosophical speculations. We do not say the intention, but certainly the tendency, of his efforts, is to shape the whole of philosophy, physical as well as moral, into a form adapted to serve as a support and a justification to any opinions which happen to be established. A writer who has gone beyond all his predecessors in the manufacture of necessary truths, that is, of propositions, which, according to him, may be known to be true, independently of proof; who ascribes this self-evidence to the larger generalities of all sciences (however little obvious at first) as soon as they have become familiar, was still more certain to regard all moral propositions familiar to him from his early years as self-evident truths. His "Elements of Morality" could be nothing better than a classification and systematizing of the opinions which he found prevailing among those who had been educated according to the approved methods of his own country; or, let us rather say, an apparatus for converting those prevailing opinions on matters of morality into reasons for themselves.

This, accordingly, is what we find in Dr. Whewell's volumes; while we have sought in vain for the numerous minor merits which give a real scientific value to his previous works. If the "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" was, as we think, an erroneous philosophy, it contained much that was not unfit to find place in a better, and was often calculated to suggest deeper thoughts than it possessed of its own. But, in the

Elements of Morality," he leaves the subject so exactly as he found it; the book is so mere a catalogue of received opinions, containing nothing to correct any of them, and little which can work with any potency even to confirm them, that it can scarcely be counted as any thing more than one of the thousand waves on the dead sea of commonplace, affording nothing to invite or to reward a separate examination. We should not, therefore, have felt called upon to concern ourselves specially about it, if Dr. Whewell had not, in his more recent publication, "Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England," undertaken to characterize and criticise, from his own point of view, all other English writers on moral philosophy, and particularly those who derive their ethical conclusions, not from internal intuition, but from an external standard. So long as he contented himself with giving what we think bad reasons for common opinions, there was not much inducement to interfere with them; but assaults on the only methods of philosophizing from which any improvement in ethical opinions can be looked for ought to be repelled. And, in doing this, it is necessary to extend our comments to some of Dr. Whewell's substantive opinions also. When he argues in condemnation of any external standard, and especially of utility, or tendency to happiness, as the principle or test of morality, it is material to examine how he gets on without it; how he fares in the attempt to construct a coherent theory of morals on any other basis. We shall make use of his larger work in so far only as it is evidence on this point.

Even with the "Lectures," considered as giving an