The problems which he has been considering could not be adequately treated by regarding ideas as 'things 'bound together by association.What,after all,is a proposition?What is meant by 'true'or 'false,'as distinguished from real and unreal?If an association actually is a truth,what is the difference between right and wrong associations?Both are facts,and the very words 'right'and 'wrong,'that is,true and false,apply not to facts but to propositions.85the judgment is tested in some way by correspondence to the 'order of Nature,'or of our sensations and ideas.
What precisely is meant by this order?So far as we have gone,it seems as if ideas might be combined in any order whatever,and the most various beliefs generated in different minds.Perhaps,however,the principle of association itself may reveal something as to the possible modes of coalescence.
Mill makes contiguity an ultimate ground of association;and contiguity implies that things have certain relations expressible in terms of space and time and so forth.These primitive relations now come up for consideration,and should enable us to say more precisely what kind of order is possible.
In fact,Mill now endeavours to analyse the meanings of such words as relation in general,time,space,number,likeness,personal identity and others.
The effect of his analysis is that the principles,whatever they may be,which might be supposed to underlie association appear to be products of association.He begins by asking what is the meaning of 'relative terms.'
Their peculiarity is that they 'always exist in pairs,'such as 'father and son,''high and low,''right and left.''If it is asked,Why do we give names in pairs?the general answer immediately suggests itself.It is because the things named present themselves in pairs,that is,are joined by association.'86J.S.Mill thinks that no part of the Analysis is more valuable than the 'simple explanation'which follows,there is no 'mystical bond called a relation'between two things,but 'a very simple peculiarity in the concrete fact'marked by the names.In 'ordinary names of objects,the fact connoted by a name concerns one object only';in the case of relative names,'the fact connoted concerns two objects,and cannot be understood without thinking of them both.'A 'fact concerning an object'is a curiously awkward expression;but one point is clear.If the two objects concerned are the same,whether considered apart or together,the 'relation'must be something more than the facts,and therefore requires to be specified.
If they are,in fact,one thing,or parts of a continuous process,we must ask how they come to be distinguished,and what ground there is for speaking of association.James Mill,by considering the problem as a mere question of 'names,'seems to intimate that the relation is a mere figment.In fact,as J.S.Mill perceives,the 'explanations'become nugatory.They simply repeat the thing to be explained.He begins with 'resemblance.'To feel two things to be alike is,he says,the same thing as to have the two feelings.
He means to say,apparently,that when there are two 'ideas'there is not also a third idea of 'likeness.'That would be what Bentham called a 'fictitious entity.'But this cannot 'explain'the likeness of the ideas.'Their being alike,'as his son interprets,'is nothing but their being felt to be alike which does not help us.'87So 'antecedence and consequence'are 'explained'by saying that one of two feelings calls up the other;or,as the son again remarks,antecedence is explained by antecedence,and succession by succession.Antecedence and consequence,like likeness and unlikeness,must therefore,according to J.S,Mill,be 'postulated as universal conditions of Nature,inherent in all,our feelings whether of external or internal consciousness.'88In other words,apparently,time is an ultimate form of thought.Time and space,generally,as James Mill thinks,are the 'abstract names'respectively of successive and simultaneous order,which become 'indissolubly associated with the idea of every object.'89Space,of course,is said to be a product of touch and muscular sensations,and the problem as to how these varying sensations and these alone give rise to apparently necessary and invariable beliefs is not taken into consideration.
Mill is here dealing with the questions which Kant attempted to answer by showing how the mind imposes its forms upon sense-given materials,forms them into concepts,and combines the concepts into judgments and reasoning,Mill evades the mysterious and transcendental at the cost of omitting reason altogether.He represents the result of accepting one horn of a dilemma,which presses upon philosophies of loftier pretensions.Those who accept the other horn speak of a 'fact'as though it were a truth,and argue as though the world could be spun out of pure logic,or a tissue be made of relations without any things to be related.Mill,with scarcely a glance at such doctrines,tries systematically to speak of a truth as if it were a fact.The world for him is made up of ideas sticking together;and nothing else exists.The relation is the fact;belief is the association;consciousness and reflection,considered apart,are nothing but the sensations,ideas,clusters,and trains.The attempt to base all truth upon experience,to bring philosophy into harmony with science was,as I hold,perfectly right.
Only,upon these assumptions it could not be carried out.Mill had the merit which is implied even by an unsuccessful attempt to hold by fact.
He raises a number of interesting questions;and I think that it is more remarkable that so many of his observations have still an interest for psychologists than that so much is obviously wrong.Mill,it may be said,took an essay upon association for a treatise upon psychology in general.