Copyright © 1996 R.J. Kilcullen
You read some of J.S. Mill, Representative Government, in POL167 (here). I included him in that course to 'round off' some of the topics first raised by Plato - democracy, authority versus freedom, the equality of the sexes. In POL264 we have taken a step backwards chronologically, to begin with Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. Among the people who took up its ideas were Jeremy Bentham (b. 1748). Bentham and James Mill were friendly also with David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy & Taxation (1817) was written at James Mill's suggestion; 'it is almost certain that he would not have finished it without Mill's continuous encouragement' (R.M. Hartwell, 'Introduction' to Ricardo's Principles (Penguin), p.13). James Mill published his own Elements of Political Economy in 1821. James Mill's son was John Stuart Mill (b. 1806). The younger Mill began to make an impact as a writer of newspaper articles in the 1820s. His Logic was published in 1843, Principles of Political Economy in 1848. He died in 1873, almost a century after the publication of the Wealth of Nations.
So I hope that straightens out the chronology. Today I am concerned with J.S. Mill not as political economist, or as crusader for women's rights, or as a Utilitarian, or as writer of Representative Government, etc., but as logician. Let me digress for a moment to note the versatility of these older writers. The division of labour had not progressed as much in their time as it has since. Their idea, perhaps, was that to understand the world and human life you need to draw on many intellectual disciplines, whereas the modern specialized academic usually thinks of his job (and is encouraged to do so by the practice of universities in appointment and promotion) as the production of artifacts, namely publications, which certainly are produced in greater volume by more specialized research. But who puts the findings of these lines of research together into a coherent understanding of life, the universe and everything? We hope you do, as you move from one specialized course to another.
Well, J.S. Mill was a logician, among many other things. Logic was invented by Aristotle as a means of recognising more reliably what follows from what: given an argument, if you agree with the premisses, do you have to accept the conclusion? Do those premisses really prove that conclusion? But by Mill's time logic had been extended to include a study of how premisses are obtained. Mill says: from experience, and nowhere else - 'inductively', by induction from observations. Mill was what is called an empiricist, from the Greek word for experience. Others, notably Immanuel Kant, were saying that some elements are contributed to human knowledge by the mind itself, independently of experience (or a priori - previous to experience). Kant's instance was mathematics:'2+2=4' is not an empirical generalization, but a necessary truth independent of experience, known intuitively. Kant and others applied the same idea to morality: moral principles are not empirical generalizations, but a priori principles. J.S. Mill opposed all this, for various reasons, including political reasons: as a liberal, he was against the idea that moral principles are not subject to reform in the light of experience. The hard case was mathematics = how could it be shown that '2+2=4' is indeed an empirical generalization? Mill wrote his logic partly to show how an empiricist or 'inductive' philosopher could deal with such questions.
The last 'book' of the logic, book VI, is entitled 'Of the Logic of the Moral Sciences'. 'Moral' there has its old sense, from Latin mos a custom or practice. The moral sciences include not only ethics, but also what we would call the social sciences. In book VI Mill discusses psychology, economics, politics and sociology. Part of his motive in writing books VI is to come to terms with part of T.B. Macaulay's criticism of his father's Essays on Government (see POL167 Course Materials - though this extract does not include the part to which Mill's logic replies). For relevant extracts from Mill & Macaulay see J. Lively and J. Rees (eds) Utilitarian Logic and Politics, SR:JS/223/.M653.U87). James Mill's Essay on Government advocated something like democracy. Mill's argument was that since self-interest is the basic motive in human nature, only democracy can protect people from the selfish behaviour of rulers. At the end of his devastating review, Macaulay wrote: 'Our objection to the essay of Mr Mill is fundamental. We believe that it is utterly impossible to deduce the science of government from the principles of human nature ... How, then, are we to arrive at just conclusions on a subject so important to the happiness of mankind? Surely by that method which, in every experimental science to which it has been applied, has signally increased the power and knowledge of our species ... by the method of induction - by observing the present state of the world - by assiduously studying the history of past ages - ... by generalising with judgment and diffidence' (emphasis added). So there can be no science of politics deduced from principles of human nature (e.g. that humans are essentially self-interested), but an inductive science of politics, based on observation and history.
You would expect J.S. Mill, as an empiricist, to accept Macaulay's point. In fact Macaulay's essay made a deep impression on the younger Mill. Nevertheless he set out to defend the theory of his father's essay - at the same time modifying it in various ways. This was typical of J.S. Mill at that stage of his life, while his father was still alive. He defended the theories of James Mill and Jeremy Bentham, but in the process modified them. By the time he wrote his Logic his father was dead and he could speak more freely.
In it he rejects both James Mill's project of deducing a science of politics from paramount principles of human nature, such as selfishness (which indeed J.S. Mill did not think was the only real motive of human behaviour), and Macaulay's project of an inductive science of politics constructed by generalising from history. What he advocates is political theory deduced from the principles of a human nature which is not permanent and unchanging, but extremely modifiable: from principles about the underlying nature of humankind, but - more important - principles describing how the underlying nature is overlaid by acquired characteristics, and principles describing how someone with certain characteristics is likely to acquire others:
Against Macaulay (though Macaulay might well have agreed) J.S. Mill is saying that the use for politics of history is indirect - through the contribution it makes to our understanding of human nature. Against James Mill, J.S. Mill is saying that political knowledge is not simply the application of knowledge of the fundamental and permanent principles of human nature, but of human nature as modified by culture. To understand the workings of political institutions we need, not knowledge of human nature generally, but knowledge of the culture of the time and place. A culture is the result of historical causes acting upon human nature, but what Mill emphasises is that the original human nature is now deeply buried under layers of historically acquired characteristics: 'The influence exercised over each generation by the generations preceding it becomes ... more and more preponderant over all other influences; until at length what we now are and do is in a very small degree the result of the universal circumstances of the human race, or even of our own circumstances acting through the original qualities of our species, but mainly of the qualities produced in us by the whole previous history of humanity'; Logic VI.x.4.
To sum up, then, political science does depend (as so many had said since Thucydides) on knowledge of human nature: but of human nature as modifiable, and as modified by the history preceding the political episode to be studied. Political generalizations arrived at, say, by study of Roman politics (which is Machiavelli's method), cannot be applied directly to 20th century Australian politics. The study of history is useful as providing materials to illustrate how human characteristics are modified, but a generalization (even about how character is modified) derived from history cannot be applied directly to a culture different from that about which the generalization was made. 'Unless two societies could be alike in all the circumstances which surround and influence them (which would imply their being alike in their previous history), no portion whatever of the phenomena will, unless by accident, precisely correspond; no one cause will produce exactly the same effects in both ... We can never, therefore, affirm with certainty that a cause which has a particular tendency in one people or in one age will have exactly the same tendency in another ...' (Logic, VI,ix.2).
This means that historical generalizations are 'historically relative' - i.e. that they hold only in relation to some particular historical period. Mill calls such generalizations 'empirical laws', and from knowing that Mill is classified as an 'empiricist' you might suppose that he would regard 'empirical laws' with approval. But what he means by the term 'empirical laws' is: a generalization not so far incorporated into a more general empirical theory capable of explaining why the empirical law holds when it does and doesn't when it doesn't. In other words: we know that it is generally true, but we must suspect that it will not hold in some circumstances, but since we cannot yet explain why it does hold when it does, we do not know yet what its limits are, what the circumstances are in which it will fail. For Mill all good theory is empirical, but a merely 'empirical law' is a provisional or tentative generalization not yet incorporated into wider theory. The generalizations people derive from history are merely empirical laws, until they had been explained by psychology, sociology and other social sciences.
Mill complains that 'The most erroneous generalizations are continually made from the course of history ... The only check or correction is constant verification by psychological and ethological laws ['Ethology' is Mill's term for the study of how a person with certain characteristics acquires others under certain circumstances - the study of personality change] ... no one but a person competently skilled in those laws is capable of preparing the materials for historical generalization by analyzing the facts of history, or even by observing the social phenomena of his own time. [Only such a person will] ... know what facts to look for or observe; still less will he be capable of estimating the evidence of facts which, as is the case with most, cannot be ascertained by direct observation or learnt from testimony, but must be inferred' from documents or artifacts (Logic, VI.x.4).
He makes a similar point in relation to economics. Economists 'draw conclusions from the elements of our state of society, and apply them to other states in which many of the elements are not the same' (i.e. they do not take enough account of differences of culture), (Logic VI.ix.3). 'A trial of corn laws in another country or in a former generation would go a very little way towards verifying a conclusion drawn respecting their effect in this generation and in this country' (Logic VI.ix.6). For a contemporary example: to argue from the failure of socialism in Eastern Europe to the conclusion that socialism could never work would be an abuse of history; we must understand why it failed in that place and time and be prepared to find that those causes do not operate elsewhere and at other times.
So it is not possible to draw lessons from history directly, but only by using history as an occasion for testing and refining social science: but the fundamental propositions of social science are applicable to particular cases only with reference to the particular historical circumstances.
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