No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
JAMES MILL, THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE PROBLEM OF CIVIL RELIGION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2017
Abstract
This article argues for a reassessment of James Mill's anticlerical, and possibly atheistic, brand of secularism. Mill's well-known religious skepticism and criticism of the Church of England, it is suggested, have tended to obscure his otherwise dispassionate assessment of religion as a social phenomenon. The article traces Mill's lifelong belief that religious improvement was a necessary precondition to societal progress, from his first major publication in 1805 to his late advocacy of a tolerant state religion in 1835. In this, Mill differed starkly from Jeremy Bentham, who considered all religious beliefs harmful and whose utopian utilitarian society was secular rather than tolerant. The article contends that eighteenth-century Scottish enquiries into human manners and religious progress directly inspired Mill's lifelong ambition to use religion as a tool to reform manners and create the educated public opinion he believed was indispensable to the enactment of his democratic and utilitarian programme.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017
Footnotes
Early versions of this paper were presented at the Maison française d'Oxford and at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Science. I would like to thank all the participants for their comments and suggestions, as well as three anonymous reviewers.
References
1 This is what Haakonssen has called Mill's “emasculation of the Smith–Millar tradition.” Haakonssen, Knud, “James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy,” Political Studies 33/4 (1985), 628–41, at 628CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Leslie Stephen's history of utilitarianism also played a large role in establishing Mill's image as Bentham's “lieutenant.” Stephen, Leslie, The English Utilitarians, 3 vols. (London, 1900), 2: 7–25Google Scholar.
3 Grint, Kris, “The Freedom of the Press in James Mill's Political Thought,” Historical Journal 60/2 (2017), 363–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plassart, Anna, “James Mill's Treatment of Religion and the History of British India,” Journal of the History of European Ideas 4/34 (2008), 526–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Mill, James, “The Church, and Its Reform,” London Review 1/2 (1835), 257–95Google Scholar. See Bain, Alexander, James Mill: A Biography (New York, 1967), 388Google Scholar; Ball, Terence, “The Survivor and the Savant: Two Schemes for Civil Religion Compared,” in Ball, Reappraising Political Theory: Revisionist Studies in the History of Political Thought (Oxford, 1995), 131–57Google Scholar, at 142.
5 For Mill on India see in particular William Thomas, “Editor's Introduction,” in Mill, James, The History of British India, ed. Thomas, William (Chicago, 1975), xi–xliGoogle Scholar; Forbes, Duncan, “James Mill and India,” Cambridge Journal 5 (1951), 19–33Google Scholar.
6 Secondat, Charles Louis, Montesquieu, Baron de, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. Cohler, Anne, Miller, Basia and Stone, Harold (Cambridge, 1989; first published 1748), 459Google Scholar, Book 24, chap. 1.
7 Ibid., 460, Book 24, chap. 2.
8 Beiner, Ronald, Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge, 2010), 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 For English accounts of religious progress see Spadafora, David, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New Haven, 1990), 370Google Scholar.
10 Hume, David, “The Natural History of Religion,” in Hume, Four Dissertations (London, 1757), 1–117Google Scholar.
11 For a detailed account of Montesquieu's attempts to formulate a natural history of religion see Spector, Céline, “Naturalisation des croyances, religion naturelle et histoire naturelle de la religion: le statut du fait religieux dans l'Esprit des Lois,” in Ehrard, J., ed., Montesquieu, l’État et la religion (Sofia, 2007), 40–109Google Scholar, at 48–70.
12 Here I paraphrase ibid., 47–48.
13 Hume, “The Natural History of Religion,” 10.
14 Ibid., 11.
15 Ibid., 10.
16 Ibid., 45.
17 Ibid., 51.
18 “[M]en have a natural tendency to rise from idolatry to theism, and to sink again from theism into idolatry.” Ibid., 54.
19 Ibid., 44.
20 Hume's frequent references to a “true religion” have often been viewed as ironic nods towards an empty notion. But this is likely too crude an interpretation. See especially J. C. A. Gaskin and Keith Yandell's views that Hume's religion was an “attenuated deism” or “diaphanous theism,” and Andre C. Willis's argument that Hume's “true religion” was characterized by “genuine theism” and “moderate hope.” Willis, Andre C., Towards a Humean True Religion: Genuine Theism, Moderate Hope, and Practical Morality (University Park, 2015)Google Scholar; Gaskin, J. C. A., “Hume's Attenuated Deism,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 65/2 (1983), 160–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yandell, Keith E., Hume's “Inexplicable Mystery”: His Views on Religion (Philadelphia, 1990)Google Scholar.
21 Hume, David, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” in Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F. (Indianapolis, 1987; first published 1758), 73–79Google Scholar, at 73, 75.
22 Merrill, Thomas W., Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2015), 145CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 He acknowledged that Protestantism had had beneficial consequences on European politics, even if these effects were “perhaps neither foreseen nor intended.” For example, he highlighted the intolerance of seventeenth-century Puritans, showing that they had been far from willfully paving the ground for a free Whig constitution. Hume, David, The History of England, 6 vols. (Indianapolis, 1983; first published 1754–61)Google Scholar, 3: 207.
24 Cited in Mossner, Ernest Campbell, The Life of David Hume (Oxford, 1980), 306Google Scholar. A similar argument is presented by Cleanthes in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Hume, David, “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,” in The Philosophical Works of David Hume, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1828)Google Scholar, 2: 419–548, at 538.
25 Hume, The History of England, 3: 136.
26 Smith, Adam, Lectures on Jurisprudence (Indianapolis, 1982), 550Google Scholar.
27 Smith does not use the term “true religion,” but he dismisses “false notions of religion” as the corruption of “natural principles of religion” or of “natural sentiments.” Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis, 1982; first published 1759), 192Google Scholar, 197. D. D. Raphael points out that, for Smith, “a theology is unacceptable if it fails to accord with ‘all our moral sentiments’.” Raphael, D. D., The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (Oxford, 2007), 104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1981; first published 1776), 2Google Scholar: 805–6.
29 The propagation of a large number of small sects “might in time probably reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established.” Ibid., 2: 793.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., 2: 815, 1: 12, 2: 723. In his discussion, Smith cites Hume's argument for a state-funded clergy. Ibid., 2: 791.
32 Ibid., 2: 785.
33 Ibid., 2: 796, 793.
34 Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 370. See Ferguson, Adam, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Cambridge, 1996; first published 1767), 89–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Millar, John, An Historical View of the English Government, from the Settlement of the Saxons in Britain to the Revolution in 1688 (Indianapolis, 2006; first published 1787), 403Google Scholar. Home, Henry (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man, ed. Harris, James A., 3 vols. (Indianapolis, 2007; first published 1778), 3Google Scholar: 813–14.
35 Robertson's History of America (1777), cited in Phillipson, Nicholas, “Providence and Progress: An Introduction to the Historical Thought of William Robertson,” in Brown, Stewart J., ed., William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire (Cambridge, 1997), 55–73Google Scholar, at 68. On Kames see Sebastiani, Silvia, The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress, trans. Jeremy Carden (New York, 2013), 96–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 192. See also Kames's account of the Indians of Hispaniola, who “embraced the Christian religion, and assumed by degrees the manners and customs of their masters.” Home (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man, 3: 73.
37 Spector, “Naturalisation des croyances,” 42. See Ferguson's praise of Montesquieu in Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 66.
38 Kidd, Colin, Subverting Scotland's Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689–c.1830 (Cambridge, 1993), 192–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 For examples of Burnet's providentialism see, for instance, Burnet, Gilbert, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England: The Second Part, of the Progress Made in It till the Settlement of It in the Beginning of Q. Elizabeths Reign (London, 1681), 421Google Scholar.
40 Robertson, William, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. With a View of the Progress of Society in Europe, from the Subversion of the Roman Empire, to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, 3 vols. (London, 1769), 2Google Scholar: 258, 348, 451, 78.
41 Millar, Historical View, 537, 642.
42 Home (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man, 3: 185.
43 Hume, The History of England, 3: 134. See also Millar, Historical View, 470; Robertson, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V, 2: 120.
44 Ehrlich, Joshua, “William Robertson and Scientific Theism,” Modern Intellectual History, 10/3 (2013), 519–42Google Scholar.
45 Robertson, William, The Situation of the World at the Time of Christ's Appearance, and Its Connexion with the Success of His Religion, Considered (Edinburgh, 1755), 7–8Google Scholar.
46 Robertson, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V, 2: 117, 120. For an account of Robertson's providentialist narrative of religion see Phillipson, “Providence and Progress,” 61–73. For a more secular interpretation of Robertson's historical thought see Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 374–77.
47 This contrasts with Linda Colley's analysis of Protestantism as a source of British national identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. On the question see Kidd, Colin, “North Britishness and the Nature of Eighteenth-Century British Patriotisms,” Historical Journal 39/2 (1996), 361–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 Robertson's account of progress relied on the role of superior civilizations to civilize the world. His sermon The Situation of the World at the Time of Christ's Appearance and his History of America presented the Roman and Spanish Empires as the instruments of Providence in civilizing Europe and South American, and his planned history of British America cast Britain as another divine agent of progress. See Sebastiani, The Scottish Enlightenment, 96–100.
49 Phillipson, “Providence and Progress,” 71.
50 Bain, James Mill, 51.
51 Haakonssen, “James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy,” 629–30; Arthur Laurence Lazenby, “James Mill: The Formation of a Scottish Émigré Writer” (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, 1972), 9.
52 Bain, James Mill, 33.
53 Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography (London, 1989; first published 1873)Google Scholar, v. Bain, James Mill, 90.
54 “This no better proof that there is a God, than the universal pursuit of pleasure is, that pleasure is the supreme good.” “To believe there is any merit in believing is a thing wholly immoral. If there is a merit in any thing, connected with belief, it is the merit of attending to evidence.” James Mill, “Religion,” in Mill's Common Place Books (at http://intellectualhistory.net/mill, 2010), vol. 3, chap. 8.
55 Ibid. Bentham is also cited there as entertaining the opinion that most men “rather do not disbelieve, than . . . believe.”
56 Thomas Ahnert, The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 1690–1805 (New Haven, 2015), 13. Stewart, Dugald, “Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. II” (1814), in The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, ed. Hamilton, Sir William, 11 vols. (London, 1994), 3: 338Google Scholar.
57 Bain cites General Miranda as “the instrument of his final transformation,” but there is no evidence to back up his claim. Bain, James Mill, 89.
58 See, for instance, Stewart's identification of Burnet's History as the source of the idea that the Reformation had far-reaching intellectual, social and political consequences, and his characterization of the Reformation as both an “effect” and a “cause” of the revival of letters. Dugald Stewart, “Dissertation Exhibiting a General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philosophy, Since the Revival of Letters in Europe” (1815–21), in Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, 1: 39 n. 28.
59 Ibid., 1: 492, original emphasis.
60 Mill, James, editor's footnote, in Charles de Villers, An Essay on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of Luther, trans. and ed. James Mill (London, 1805), 25Google Scholar n.
61 Pocock, J. G. A., “Virtues, Rights, and Manners: A Model for Historians of Political Thought,” Political Theory 9/3 (1981), 353–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See, for instance, the many educational schemes formulated in France under the Directory. Jainchill, Andrew, Reimagining Politics after the Terror: The Republican Origins of French Liberalism (Ithaca, 2008), 75–88Google Scholar.
62 Here I rely on Printy, Michael, “Protestantism and Progress in the Year XII: Charles Villers's ‘Essay on the Spirit and Influence of the Luther's Reformation (1804)’,” Modern Intellectual History 9/2 (2012), 303–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 312.
63 Ibid., 314.
64 Mill, in Villers, An Essay on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of Luther, i.
65 Mill, however, strongly disapproved of Hume's supposed hatred of “religion and liberty”—although there may have been a degree of posturing on his part concerning the former. Ibid., 108 n.
66 Ibid., i–ii, 5 n.
67 Ibid., v.
68 Hardy, Thomas, The Progress of the Christian Religion: A Sermon, Preached before the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, at Their Anniversary Meeting in the High Church of Edinburgh, Thursday, May 30, 1793 (Edinburgh, 1794)Google Scholar.
69 Ibid., 5.
70 Ibid., 46.
71 Christianity is “calculated for universal reception as the religion of the human race.” Ibid., 14.
72 “The general tendency of things at the time of the Reformation was towards liberty, both in thought and action, but the Reformation was a circumstance which in a most extraordinary manner accelerated that progress.” Mill, in Villers, An Essay on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of Luther, 294 n.
73 Ibid., 255 n.
74 Mill explicitly ascribed his perfectibilism to Dugald Stewart, quoting lengthy passages from the Elements. Ibid., 25 n.
75 Grint, “The Freedom of the Press in James Mill's Political Thought,” 197–200.
76 Schofield, Philip, Jeremy Bentham: Prophet of Secularism (London, 2012), 56Google Scholar. Schofield sees Bentham as being more agnostic than atheistic. For an argument that Bentham's position was “unmitigated atheism” see Crimmins, James E., Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford, 1990), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
77 Crimmins, Secular Utilitarianism, 283. Some of Bentham's earlier writings in the 1790s occasionally suggested that religious messages and the Church could be instrumentalized to serve secular end, but by the 1810s he was arguing the opposite. Crimmins, James E., “Bentham on Religion: Atheism and the Secular Society,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47/1 (1986), 95–110, at 99, 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
78 Crimmins, “Bentham on Religion,” 103. See, for example, Bentham, Jeremy, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Published under the Superintendance of His Executor, John Bowring, 11 vols. (Edinburgh, 1838), 4Google Scholar: 47, 8: 420, 427–31.
79 Religion has no place in the utopian utilitarian society described in the Constitutional Code. Bk 1, chap. 14 (“Established Religion—None”) states, “No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavour to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.” See also Bk 2, chap. 11. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 9: 92–3, 432–3.
80 Crimmins, “Bentham on Religion,” 108–9. Hence the Elysean Field of auto-icons: it is the specific individuals who are admired for their past accomplishments, not abstract concepts.
81 See J. S. Mill's acknowledgment of the human need for spirituality in the posthumously published essay “Utility of Religion,” in Mill, Three Essays on Religion (London, 1874), 69–122, at 103–4.
82 For a discussion of Mill's anticlericalism and an argument that his religious thought was primarily derived from Bentham see Kris Grint, “James Mill's Common Place Books and Their Intellectual Context, 1773–1836” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex, 2013), chap. 4. There the argument relies on evidence from Mill's Common Place Books, which span the period from 1806 to 1820, when Bentham's influence would have been most pronounced.
83 “The true religion never ought to have a priest.” Mill, “Religion,” in Common Place Books, vol. 3, chap. 8.
84 For Mill on religious sanction see Grint, “James Mill's Common Place Books,” 192.
85 Mill, “Religion,” in Common Place Books, vol. 3, chap. 8.
86 For Mill's discussion of religion in the History of British India see Thomas, “Editor's Introduction,” xxviii–xxx; Plassart, “James Mill's Treatment of Religion and the History of British India.”
87 Mill, James, The History of British India, 6 vols. (London, 1826), 1Google Scholar: 150. For the close similarities between Mill and Hume's accounts compare Hume, “The Natural History of Religion,” 5–10, 44–54; with Mill, The History of British India, 1826, 1: 150–56.
88 Mill, The History of British India, 1: 167. Here Mill's stance is closer to Hume's than to Moderate theology, which remained wary of natural or rationalist religion. See Thomas Ahnert, The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 5.
89 Mill, The History of British India, 1: 167.
90 Ibid., 1: 175.
91 Ibid., 1: 171.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid., 1: 167, 2: 204.
94 Plassart, “James Mill's Treatment of Religion and the History of British India,” 533–4.
95 See the pamphlet ‘Schools for All’ (1812), as well as his involvement in the Chrestomathic school project (1813), the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1826) and the foundation of University College London (1826).
96 See William Thomas's observation that “Mill's radicalism is at bottom a programme of education.” Thomas, William, “James Mill's Science of Politics,” in Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817–1841 (Oxford, 1979), 95–146, at 120Google Scholar.
97 Mill, James, “Schools for All, in Preference to Schools for Churchmen Only,” in James Mill on Education, ed. Burston, W.H. (Cambridge, 1969), 120–93, at 129Google Scholar.
98 Ibid., 151.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid., 142, original emphasis.
101 Ibid., 151.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid., 179. Here again, Mill relies on Paley to support his argument.
104 Ibid., 168, original emphasis.
105 Ibid., 180.
106 Ibid., 190–91, original emphasis.
107 Ibid., 191.
108 Grint, “James Mill's Common Place Books,” 153.
109 James Mill, “Ecclesiastical Establishments,” Westminster Review 5 (1826), 504–48, at 505.
110 Ibid., 548.
111 See also his note about the lack of social harm caused by atheism: “Hume (Providence and a Future State) contends that Atheism has no evil tendency with regard to the moral or political conduct of men—that we can infer nothing of God beyond what this world testifies—and that the laws of this world render conduct morally and politically good our interest.” Mill, “Religion,” in Common Place Books, vol. 3, chap. 8.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid., vol. 2, chap. 5.
114 Ibid.
115 Ibid., vol. 3, chap. 8.
116 Ibid.
117 Mill, “Ecclesiastical Establishments,” 530.
118 Ibid., 505.
119 Ibid., 541.
120 Grint, “James Mill's Common Place Books,” 152. See also, for instance, Fenn, Robert A, James Mill's Political Thought (London, 1987), 53Google Scholar.
121 Mill, Autobiography, 154.
122 Mill, James, “The State of the Nation,” London Review 1/1 (1834), 1–24 at 8–9Google Scholar.
123 Ibid., 23.
124 Mill, “The Church, and Its Reform,” 295.
125 Ibid.
126 Ibid., 274.
127 Ibid., 258, 260.
128 Ibid., 280. See Hume's argument for a clergy salaried by the state, in a passage cited by Smith, Wealth of Nations, 2: 791; Hume, The History of England, 3: 136.
129 Mill, “The Church, and Its Reform,” 261, 267.
130 Ibid., 280–81.
131 Ibid., 288, added emphasis.
132 “There is no class of Christians, who could not join in the labours of love of one who was going about continually doing good; whose more solemn addresses to his assembled parishioners would never have any other object than to assimilate them more and more in heart and mind to Him who is the author of all good, and the perfection of wisdom and benevolence.” Ibid.
133 Ibid.
134 Ibid.
135 Bain, James Mill, 389.
136 Ball acknowledges that “call for state-supported church and civil religion is at first sight surprising,” and credits Plato for inspiring the scheme. Ball, “The Survivor and the Savant,” 142. Interestingly, Mill's first biographer, Alexander Bain, was most puzzled by Mill's plan for “a religion of Natural Theism” in view of his well-known mastery of theology and biblical exegesis. Bain, James Mill, 388.
137 Ball, “The Survivor and the Savant,” 153.
138 Grint also observes that some of the article's points (especially on clerical salaries) were noted in Mill's Common Place Books around 1813–15. Grint, “James Mill's Common Place Books,” 154.
139 In fact Rousseau even flirted with the idea that Protestantism could provide a satisfying civic religion. Beiner, Civil Religion, 31.
140 For parallels and differences between Mill's civil religion and Comte's see Ball, “The Survivor and the Savant,” 150.
141 See Beiner's assessment of J. S. Mill's approach to religion as a cross between Hume's (and the need to replace superstition with reason) and Tocqueville's (and the need for religion to give depth and meaning to human life). Beiner, Civil Religion, 267.