Collected Writings of John Nelson Darby (Volume 32)

《Collected Writings of John Nelson Darby (Volume 32)》

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Examination of Mill's Logic 1234
God in His Essence and Attributes
The Most High
A few words on the Trinity
The Absolute
The Relative and the Absolute
Self-consciousness and the Infinite
Miracles and Infidelity
On Mysticism
On the Government of God and His Counsels in Grace
The Coming of the Lord that which characterises the Christian Life
The Olive, the Vine, and the Fig-tree
The Value of Scripture Knowledge
Some Observations on the Scripture Lessons of the Board of Education
Deliverance from the Law of Sin
Progress of Democratic Power, and its Effects on the Moral State of England
Four things we have in Christ
"This one thing" Philippians 3
The Believer's Place in Christ 2 Corinthians 5
The Narrative of Passion Week, and of the Resurrection
The Facts of the Lord's Resurrection, in their Relative Order
The Closing Commissions in the Gospels
The Faith once Delivered to the Saints Jude 3
The Public Ruin of the Church 1 Timothy 3: 15, 16; 2 Timothy 2: 19-22
Letter on "Apostasy"
The Person of the Lord
The Humiliation of Christ

Examination of Mill's Logic

J. N. Darby.

<32007E> 54 {file section a.}

{A System of Logic, by John Stuart Mill, 8th edition.

The reader must bear in mind that these are only MSS notes jotted down while reading the book.}

The question is a grave one, how far, when no general idea or quality is predicated of an object, but it is only said "is," two objects are before the mind. But Mr. Mill is, as to this, all wrong and inaccurate. When I say "the sun," I already suppose such a thing and its existence, or I can have no object before my mind at all. "A round square" gives no object or idea to be - Mr. Mill's example - affirmed about. What he does not see (and the whole book is in my judgment very shallow) is that what is affirmed in saying "the sun exists" involves unexpressed that it exists now. Time present is affirmed; but whether I say "was," "is," or "will be," I have an object of which the existence is before my mind, or there is no object before it. He shirks the word idea, because an idea in the mind supposes an object with which it is occupied. It may be only a poetical possibility, but its existence is assumed poetically. If I say "is," or "exists," I affirm that it is a fact now. It may go farther, for the present supposes in its nature all times or none; it affirms a fact, and leaves past and future wholly out. If I say, "I am," I cannot say "I" without a conscious object; "am" adds little to any idea of it. There is no other object. "I" carries "am" with it; and the only danger is that "am" makes it too absolute by excluding beginning, "was" and "will be." "I" involves my existence as spoken of. "I thought "; that is passed. "I will give "; that supposes an "I," an existing object I have in my mind. Yet I may not exist to do it; but the object is an object in the mind, and existing there as an object thought, whatever is affirmed about it. The verb substantive affirms that it is not only an ideal object, but an actually existing one - "God is." If I say "God," I have a thought object, an object before my mind; if there be no such thing thinkable (as "a round square "), I am talking nonsense. It is an assumed object, and I cannot think it without thinking of it as an existence. I do not say "existing," for that says now, but an existence. When I say "is," I affirm actual existence now, and past and future are not in my mind. It is an existing fact, and, as every present puts me in a present time (that is, has no time at all), it is an affirmation, taken by itself, of eternal existence.

55 It is totally false that no belief can be afforded. If I say "my father," my hearer believes, if he receives what I say, that I have had or have one, and disbelieves what I say if he does not think so. Thus, if I say "Adam's father," I disbelieve the whole account in Genesis. If I say "Cain's father," and another does not reject what is said, it is believing he had one, at least agreeing in it. If I say a "round square," he has no object before his mind to affirm about. When it is said "affirmed of something," something is affirmed before anything is affirmed about it. The sun exists, or my father exists, goes on to say it or he which is exists now. And the present involves no time - that is, contemplates no duration for a time, and hence is either the simple fact of now, which has no duration, or involves eternity - a now that never ceases to be now,* for now is unity, not duration - when the present is used not as now, it is a true unabgeschlossenes Aorist (i.e. Aorist of unspecified time). "I dine every day": what time is that?

{*Hence, when I say "God is," "God" necessarily represents to the mind an eternal, self-existing, or uncreated Being. No beginning and no ending is in the thought; and it can be said absolutely of such only. "Is" affirms being. It may be used for "exists," and then it has not its absolute sense. San and dasein are not the same thing. Man exists; the world around us exists; but I could not say "is."}

When I say, "God is," I affirm no time, but existence: and, if I add nothing, eternal existence. Existence only is affirmed of Him, and, if true, always true. If I say to any one "God," I call his attention to an object, which I cannot do if there be no such object. I do not say in existence now, but as an object to be thought of as existing (I do not say when). But I think of His Sein, though not necessarily as seiend. If "the sun" suggests a meaning, what meaning? That there is such a thing as sun as an object of thought; not "is," as presently existing, but as an existence. If I say "round square," I have no object of thought at all; it is not an existence even for thought; it has no meaning. The importance of this in "I am," "God is," is evident. And this is evident when other words are used predicatively. "God created the world." If "God" does not convey the thought of an existing object, the proposition has no sense at all. That is, without affirming at all that God exists or did exist then, naming Him affirms, not as an inference but in the word itself, an existence, a Being which did that. So if I say, "the sun heats," "sun" gives me the thought of an existing thing. I say something about it, but I speak of something about which I affirm. And one could pertinently say, There is no such thing as a sun to heat. That is, he does not believe, not the proposition about heating or the sun's heating, but what is contained in the word "sun." If I say "The moon heats," one might say, No, it does not. That is, he disbelieves what I say about the moon, he denies the proposition; but, in denying the proposition, he accepts the affirmation that there is a moon to heat or not to heat, and knows it is affirmed, and believes it. In what I have said of the sun, he disbelieves it. Thus if one speak of, say "a round square," I say there is no such thing, I disbelieve what is said.

56 And this Mill really admits in chapter 1, sec. 3 when he says, "What we do, what passes in our mind, when we affirm or deny two names of one another, must depend on what they are names of; since it is with reference to that, and not to the mere names themselves, that we make the affirmation or denial." Just so; but then there is a "that" which we affirm or deny about. This is "what we do, what passes in our mind" - that is, mind takes cognisance of the reality of the object as an existence, believes it, or can have no proposition about it. Again, Names, chapter 2, sec. 1. "Names are not intended only to make the hearer conceive what we conceive, but also to inform him what we believe. Now, when I use a name for the purpose of expressing a belief, it is a belief concerning the thing itself, not concerning my idea of it." If then a name expresses my belief in the thing, he, if he goes in with what I affirm about it, acquiesces in the thing as an existence, a thing; just what I insist on. It is a complete contradiction in terms of what he had said: "There is as yet nothing to believe." If I express a belief concerning the thing, so can he, or (as I said) tacitly acquiesce in the belief I express, to go on to something else said about it.

Names are the names of things. And when I say "Franklin," or "sun," or, what is infinitely more important, "God," I am naming a thing and "expressing my belief" in that thing, and the hearer too, if he acquiesces, whatever else I may affirm about it. But I cannot talk of Franklin if there be no Franklin to talk about; nor about the sun if there be none. All propositions assume then the subject and predicate as things or existences.

57 Hence it is evident that reasoning, inference, logic, supposes existence, an object; that is, it is always preceded by belief. I cannot reason about nothing, I cannot infer from nothing. I do not say, therefore, logic has nothing to do with belief; but that it is based on belief. To put it in a more palpable way, suppose I say "Drumdrum is white." If you think I am serious, you will say, What is "Drumdrum"? If I answer, There is no such thing, you will at once say, Then you cannot say it "is white": that is a proposition, supposes the subject to be a real thing, that is, believes it. "Is" goes farther when it is a copula - that is, affirms a quality of the subject. It affirms present existence. If I say "gold is yellow," I speak of it not only as a thing, but as an existing thing. If I say "Fuimus Troes," "fuit Ilion," I speak of a thing, but as no longer existing. That is, belief is necessarily antecedent to all reasoning, first, of the affirmation in the premises; secondly, further, that the thing affirmed about is a thing, the word therefore conveying an objective idea to my mind. But more, the conclusion is never an object of belief, though in practical life it becomes so. It is a conclusion, a necessary consequence if the premises are true, involved really in them, and so a means of belief practically. But all that is affirmed is, not that the conclusion is true, but that it is involved in the premises and no more. What I believe or deny is what is in the premises. I say, "then so and so follows." What I say is "must be" - "gold is yellow." Then, I believe there is a thing called gold, and that it is yellow. I add, all yellow things are ugly. I believe that of yellow things; but gold is a yellow thing; consequently if these two propositions are believed, gold must be ugly too. But I infer the thing, because I have no direct evidence of the fact, or I should want no inference. I quite admit that practically it induces the belief if gold still exists, but I must believe this to turn the inference to a fact I believe.

I believe by experience or testimony, and by that only; I conclude from the nature of language and thought, which never goes into fact, because it is only the nature of thought, but supposes it, because I cannot have thought without an object thought of, a thing. When my knowledge arises from testimony, reasoning may help me as to the credibility of testimony from experience of the world and men and the like, from which I reason to the credibility; but what I believe is still the experience or the testimony. I believe that there is an innate consciousness of God - not an idea of God. Such as I have may be true or false as to many things I affirm about Him. I believe that He can make Himself known. This is experience. I believe that He has made Himself known in an external way, that is, by a revelation. But this is not a matter of inference, nor can it be, but of experience or testimony, supposing capacity to receive it. I may reason to banish the folly of false reasoning; but that appeals to facts, as all reasoning must. A conclusion must rest on premises, that is, on facts; but they are known by experience or testimony. And so even scripture speaks. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself; and he that believeth not hath made God a liar." That is experience and testimony. In conclusion, then, belief precedes logic always. If I say "gold is yellow," I affirm two things - that is, believe them or present them for belief - that gold is, and is of a certain colour; but I have drawn no conclusion at all. There is no reasoning as yet whatever, no logic. It is what is stated as believed by experience or testimony. Mill's statement is wholly and essentially wrong, and is the basis of his infidelity. And a very poor one it is, and only shews how very inaccurate and illogical a mind he has.

58 The extreme looseness and carelessness of the book is surprising. There is a kind of impudence in its character. "Truths are known to us in two ways: some directly and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness," Introduction, section 4; in the note he tells us others make a difference between the two: Intuition of objects external to our minds; Consciousness of our mental phenomena; but he uses them indiscriminately; and then he admits that something is known antecedent to all reasoning, but, if known, believed; then he gives being vexed yesterday as consciousness, whereas this is memory; by inference only, about what took place when we were absent, the events recorded in history, or the theorems of mathematics. The two former we infer from the testimony adduced; but this is not an inference at all, it is belief of the testimony, right or wrong, without any inference at all; or traces of what has happened. This may be called inference; but to put knowing what has happened by testimony, or theorems of mathematics, on the same ground of inference, is nonsense or impudence, or rather both. It is to get rid of knowledge by testimony, which he states thus: "Whatever we are capable of knowing must belong to the one class or to the other; must be in the number of the primitive data, or of the conclusions which can be drawn from these." Now, I know it is cold at the poles, and that Constantinople is a city in Turkey. But it is not primitive data, nor a conclusion drawn from any such. People have told me so, which is neither one nor the other. This is not honest, that is the fact; and so to state it is impudence. It is convenient for infidelity.

59 I deny that logic judges anything but the justness of an inference; nor does it determine whether evidence has been found. It settles whether, the premises being given, the conclusion is just, and no more. Whether the premises are true is a question with which it has nothing to do, save as they may be a conclusion from prior reasoning. It only says, granting the premises, such a conclusion necessarily follows; that is all. It may use subsidiary helps, as definitions, divisions, etc.; but inference from is all it judges of - of truth, never. Hence the scholastic rule, "Contra negantem principia non disputandum est," page 9.

In page 3 Mill says every author has a right to give whatever provisional definition he pleases of his own subject; but if the definition be false, he deceives from one end to the other, as all the reasoning depends on it. Thus in Milner's End of Controversy, the author says, A rule of faith, or means of communicating Christ's religion, and hence proves the Protestant rule of faith unfit to be such. It sounds all fair, the Bible being used to communicate religious knowledge; but a rule and a means of communicating are not the same thing, and his whole book is a fallacy, unanswerable in great part if the definition be let pass. A mother may communicate Christ's religion, but she is no rule of faith. People have no right to deceive and mislead by a fraudulent or false definition, and this Mill does.* Thus when Mill says testimony to a fact happening when we are absent, or a theorem of mathematics, are alike inference, he is deceiving his reader if he has not his eyes open to what he is about. So, when he says - for thus he uses his false division - "Whether God, and duty, are realities, the existence of which (p. 8) is manifest to us a priori by the constitution of our rational faculty; or whether our ideas of them are acquired notions," etc., not of consciousness or intuition, but of evidence and of reasoning, it does not follow it is rational faculty or acquired notions. It is not necessarily nor really one or the other; nor are our ideas of them the same thing as their being realities; all is grossly loose. Nor is it the same either to say, "not of consciousness or intuition, but of evidence and reasoning." For a priori rational faculty is not intuition or consciousness; and, so far from admitting the greater portion of our knowledge to be matter of inference, I deny that inference gives any true knowledge at all. It may be a help or a short end to get at what is sufficiently near it to act on, but it is never knowledge. I agree with Bain (p. 43), that to say such a smell or sound is not white, is nonsense; colour does not apply to either. It is astonishing what an inaccurate mind Mill has.

{*He also professes to take "cause" as meaning merely an antecedent, without entering into effectual causes, and so to define it; but, when the statement is lost sight of, he takes it as a certain and proved point.}

60 In page 7, "The science, therefore, which expounds the operations of the human understanding," etc. What science is that? We have had none such spoken of. Here he speaks of it to exclude metaphysical inquiries from logic. Be it so, though it be difficult save as a mere examination of the laws of inference, at any rate from its subsidiary parts as definitions. But then logic is a science (page 2). Logic is a science - "the analysis of the mental process which takes place whenever we reason," "a right understanding of the mental process itself, of the conditions it depends on, and the steps of which it consists." Now, these two statements are contradictory to one another, only so vague, so indeterminate, that though one affirms and the other denies as to logic, a certain part of a general science not elsewhere named, it is impossible to say they do or do not so contradict one another. Still "a right understanding of the mental process itself" is pretty much the same as "expounds the operations of the human understanding," and so far he plainly contradicts himself. Again, the whole book depends on the difference of intuition and logical inference, yet no one could tell from it what intuition is. Nay, it is carefully obscured by the statements in page 5: The object of logic is to know how we come by that portion of our knowledge which is not intuitive (whatever that is). Yet "logic neither observes, nor invents, nor discovers, but judges," page 9. But judging is not coming to any part of knowledge, but ascertaining the accuracy of what is before my mind, eliminating what is not accurate. If logic discovers nothing, it is no way of coming to any knowledge. It is not practically true that it discovers nothing; it does not in fact or directly, but it does to my mind. I would dissuade a man from ascending Mont Blanc. Constant white is bad for the eyes, but snow is constant white: snow is bad for the eyes. This is very simple; the conclusion is, as often argued, involved in the premises, but it is not in my mind before, and in this sense I discover it. It is the means of putting two things together in my mind by means of a middle thing, which were not together there before. Everything is not so simple. Every man is an animal; all animals die; man dies. This is not exact knowledge; it involves man being a mere animal, and the second premise assumes that, and may be false if the first be absolutely true. It affirms that an animal necessarily and universally, in the sense in which it is used in the first premise, is subject to death, for that is what "die" means here; and in the absolute sense I may combat both premises. This makes the statement of two names for one thing, as Hobbes, evidently false. Man may be an animal as to qualities which make anything such; but if all other animals die, he may be exempt from it. It states that man and death are colimitaneous, of which we have no proof; though a matter of general observation, which is in general sufficient for conduct, but it is never truth in itself. This could be met by denying the major, that all animals die. Death is not a quality necessary to constitute anything an animal. If it were nothing else, it assumes that what has happened constantly always must happen, which is not necessarily true. There may be impeding causes. Man may have to act on it in the world in which he does observe, but it is never truth.