BOOK I. Сн. 1. § 5. subjective observation. ing, were it not for the subjective experience of such phenomena connected with certain feelings and motives in oneself. In reasoning about such phenomena The method of without any such subjective experience, if it were possible to do so, we should be reasoning about unknown quantities, and our terms would have only the value of algebraical symbols, or a currency without purchasing power. On the other hand, without a large gathering of phenomena by objective observation, subjective observation would be impoverished, and lack matter to be exercised upon. The result would approximate to a mere description of the phenomena of self, abstracted from the world at large. But this, which is a vice or a weakness in Metaphysic, where it occurs, is by no means a necessary feature of subjective observation; it is a vice to which all branches of knowledge, and not Metaphysic only, are liable; as indeed they are also to the opposite vice, that of having too little subjective insight. But the latter vice is most dangerous in the metaphysical, the former in the physical, sciences; because the subjective method preponderates in the one, the objective in the other. 12. Let us now draw some of the practical conclusions from the foregoing analysis, so far at least as Ethic is concerned. There is a comparatively great amount of agreement among men about the meaning of terms describing external actions and circumstances, and this agreement hides from our view the necessary antecedent processes of subjective observation upon which it is founded. There is a far less amount of agreement about the meaning of terms describing feelings and states of consciousness; and this disparity of the agreement in the two cases BOOK I. § 5. subjective leads us to disparage the use of the latter class of terms, and to trust exclusively to the former, alThe method of though the subjective method of observation has observation. been a necessary source of the agreement attained in the one case, and is our only hope of attaining greater agreement in the other. Again, the line usually drawn between objects of objective and subjective observation is fluctuating and uncertain; men are prone to call an object, when described in terms the meaning of which they do not accept or understand, an object of subjective observation, or an object existing only in the brain of the describer; while objects described in terms which they do understand, and accept as at least not self-contradictory, they will call objective, as objects which may possibly exist in a given case. For instance, a man will say he observes fear in the faces of a terrified mob; yet he sees only the evidences of fear, and the connection between the evidence and the emotion evidenced is given only by his own subjective observation. The agreement of men in the meaning they attach to any term is the circumstance which seems hitherto to have determined them to consider the fact described by it as a fact of objective observation. And in arriving at such agreement, where it exists, we are driven back upon ourselves, upon our subjective observation, at every step of the process. Yet we are required by the Positive school of philosophers to build upon this sandy foundation, to erect this fluctuating limit into a strict philosophical distinction, and to renounce in consequence the appeal to consciousness at the very point where agreement ceases and uncertainty begins, as if it was not owing to this very appeal that the agreement at present existing has been actually obtained. It is only by further appeals to consciousness, subjective observation, that the boundaries of agreement can be pushed forward, and its domain enlarged. I do not say that nothing can be done in working with the terms upon which there is agreement already, but that to enlarge the number of these terms, and to make new progress in investigating human nature, which is the problem of ethical analysis, the same method must be resorted to which has been a constant condition of all the previous advance, the combination of subjective with objective observation, in provisional definition, objective reasoning on phenomena external to the observer, subjective verification and interpretation. To restrict enquiry to a so-called objective observation is the most retrograde doctrine ever heard from philosophers who aim at the advancement of science. (See the remarks, to me quite conclusive, of Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Principles of Psychology, Part i. Chap. vii. § 56, edit. 1868, although I by no means adopt his mode of using the terms objective and subjective.) 13. Lastly let us recur to the question with which this commenced, the relation between Ethic studied subjectively and History studied objectively. History studied objectively alone is the discovery and narration of actions and events as they have actually occurred; and although certain general facts may be demonstrated about the order of sequence and recurrence of these phenomena, there is yet no science of history until this order is shown to result from certain causes, less general than the order as a whole, which have recurred or are capable of recurrence; thus producing parallel or analogous con BOOK I. § 5. subjective observation. sequences in different nations, or in different sets of phenomena, such phenomena, for instance, as are The method of contained in the different sciences. Thus Auguste Comte's Law of the Three States may be regarded as a generalisation of the course of development found, first, in the different sciences, and secondly, in the different branches of human activity as well as in those of speculation. But, in the first place, such a generalisation of the events of history, although it completes the first step towards a science of history, is, taken by itself, to be paralleled with such observations as that the planets move in ellipses, in Astronomy; observations which require to be farther analysed into the forces and their measurements which in composition produce or result in the curves described. The astronomy of the solar system could not be said to be constituted as a science by the general observation of the elliptical orbits of the planets. But the further analysis of such general laws as that of the Three States consists in pointing out the feelings and motives which have influenced human action and speculation, so as to produce the result described by the generalisation. And no doubt the generalisation itself was attained chiefly by the consideration of such motives of action. In other words, this and other such generalisations are both effected originally and must be applied subsequently by means of subjective observation combined with objective. It is not mere movements and configurations of physical objects that are described by such generalisations, but changes in the feelings and opinions of men, embodied in and evidenced by such movements and configurations; the actions and events which are generalised are phenomena consisting of BOOK I. CH. I. § 5. subjective observation. both physical and mental changes, of which the latter give significance to the former. The motive and the result of every human action is a feeling, and The method of the events of history are but actions in combination. The generalisation therefore of the phenomena of history requires completion by being analysed into the actions which compose it, and by these being again analysed into their several motives and results. The persons whose lives have made up human history did not indeed aim at acting and reasoning so as to produce the result described in the Law of the Three States, but they acted from some immediate motives, and for some immediate ends, which have had this as their general result. The problem of history as a science is to find, 1st, what kind of immediate motives these were, and 2d, what were the intermediate steps between the so motived actions of the individuals and the general result described by that Law. The connection between such immediate motives and intermediate steps, the media axiomata of history, are the kind of results which are of practical use to the politician and statesman in forming judgments to guide future policy; such judgments as may be found, for instance, in the works of De Tocqueville. But the motives and feelings of individuals can only be known to others by objective observation interpreted and verified by subjective. Ethic, then, is no less the complement of History studied objectively than History is of Ethic studied subjectively; and the necessary complement of both is the study of the physical environment and physical organisation. (See on the whole subject of this § Book vi. of Mr. J. S. Mill's System of Logic, especially Chapters ix. and x., 6th edit.) |