Mill on Religion 15.

Views on Religion
Mill remarks in his Autobiography that he must have been one of the very few in Britain who were raised without any instruction in religion or belief in a deity; certainly, he was generally taken to be an atheist or an agnostic. During his life, however, he published little on the topic of religion; as he made clear in his correspondence with Comte his fear of alienating his readers and losing his public influence led him to be determinedly cautiousindeed cautious to the extent that he was criticized for this by those who otherwise sympathized with him. The latter were rather consternated, then, with the posthumous publication of Mill's Three Essays on Religion: in spite of the strictures that appeared in Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, it turned out that Mill was rather more sympathetic to religion than were they. But even then, he showed no sympathy to any form of institutionalized religion: he failed to share Coleridge love for the established churches, and thought even less of Comte's proposals for a rigid and hierarchical institutional religion of humanity. These forms of religion and religious practice all stifled individuality and personal development. In On Nature Mill argues that the maxim Follow Nature proposed equally by the ancient Stoics and the modern Romantics is a poor guide to action, certainly one contrary to the principle of utility. Nature might have two meanings. On the first, nature means whatever happens, and it recommends as right whatever happens, be it good or bad. In this case, it offers no moral guidance whatsoever. On the second meaning, nature means whatever happens without human interferencenatural as opposed to artificial in the sense of being the result of human art. In this case it is contradictory since it itself is a matter of human art. Mill argues that nature in the second sense offers us a view of as much evil as good, and so proposes more a challenge to change than an ideal for imitation. The task is not to follow nature but to improve it, especially human nature: virtue is not the consequence of nature but of nurture, of cultivation. As for nature itself, the only rational conclusion that one can draw from contemplating the amount of ugliness and unavoidable evil that it contains is that whatever principle of good is at work in the universe, if any, cannot subdue the powers of evil: it cannot be omnipotent. In the essay on The Utility of Religion Mill argues that much of the apparent social utility of religion derives not from its dogma and theology but to its inculcation of a widely accepted moral code, and to the force of public opinion guided by that code. The belief in a supernatural power may have had some utility in maintaining that code, but is no longer needed and may indeed be detrimental. There is an unfortunate tendency in supernatural religion to hinder the development not only of our intellectual, but also our moral nature. Its appeal is to self-interest rather than to disinterested and ideal motives. As with intuitionism in ethics, it stands in the way of the critical evaluation of social norms, and thereby effectively prevents action aimed at social change for the improvement of the human lot in the

community. Supernatural religion appeals to the sense of mystery about what lies outside the narrow realm of what we know. But the appeal can be made by poetry: the realm of the unknown can filled only by the imagination. Religion and poetry address themselves, at least in one of their aspects, to the same part of the human constitution; they both supply the same want, that of ideal conceptions grander and more beautiful than we see realized in the prose of human life (Utility of Religion, Three Essays, p. 419). The power of religion to motivate derives, Mill suggests, from the human need for some sort of ideal that transcends us. To be sure, this ideal is not some supernatural being or standard, as in Christianity or Platonism. It is an idea of the good, but a human idea, a conception of being human that can move us to do our best, a standard beyond our common selfish objects of desire. Such purposes can be achieved, and better achieved, by a religion of humanity than can any supernatural religion. Given the ideal, such a religion of humanity would help us cultivate our feelings and develop our individual capacities, intellectual, moral and emotional, without burdening us with false views about a mysterious Unknowable. The contrast would be to a God of the sort Mansel proposed, one Just beyond all human justice, a principle of Goodness that creates the world in its image and therefore whose existence requires us to deny that the palpable evil that we find really is evil. The religion of humanity would draw our attention to real evil in the world, and urge us to work to overcome it. These first two essays had been written by 1858; the third, Theism, was drafted more than a decade later. The first two suggest that the alternative to supernatural religion is not the acceptance of nature and the way things are but the construction of a positive religion of humanity. The third essay makes greater concessions to traditional religion. In this essay Mill evaluates the traditional arguments for the existence of God. He rejects straight out any argument based on an a priori causal principle. But he suggests that the order to be found in the universe, in particular the adjustments of organisms for the ends of survival and reproduction, provides grounds for tentatively accepting the existence of a creator. Even here, however, he allows only that it can be established with no more than probability that the cause of such order is the activity of some intelligent designer. He allows, too, that one might, contrary to Mansel, characterize the creator in a humanly relevant way as benevolent, though it could be neither omniscient nor omnipotent. For Mill the point about a world created by such a God is that it leaves room for the work of human beings in improving both that world and themselves as persons in it. If man had not the power, he indicates, by the exercise of his own energies for the improvement both of himself and of his outward circumstances, to do for himself and other creatures vastly more than god had in the first instance done, the Being who called them into existence would deserve something very different from thanks at his hands. (Theism, Three Essays, p. 458) Mill argues in the same essay that there is no evidence for the immortality of the soul, but equally none against it. For Mill, this means that there is room for hope. Some persons at least do hope, if not for eternal life, then for a life that extends beyond their death. It is possible, he suggests, that the benevolent and powerful (though not allpowerful) creator could grant that wish. Such at least one might hope.

Defenders of religion had long appealed to miracles as support for their beliefs about the supernatural. In his essay Mill is highly critical of such appeals; there is absolutely no evidence that supports such claims. He allows only that a benevolent deity might have indicated an intention to award to those who aspire to it a life after death; if there is no rational evidence in support of that, then one might at least so hope. To this extent he allows that Jesus was indeed miraculously Christ, and that He bore such a message of glad tidings for the hopeful. In spite of Mill's argument that the proper rational attitude towards supernatural religion is neither belief nor disbelief, he now concludes, in his last essay, in a way that many found rather surprising, that the whole domain of the supernatural is thus removed from the region of Belief into that of simple Hope. (Theism, Three Essays, p. 483) Indeed, such hope might be reasonably be encouraged, since its indulgence might encourage in some persons both the feeling that life is important and their sympathy for others. Further, to construct for oneself or for one's community, an image of a person of high moral excellence, such as Jesus, and from the habit of seeking approval of this person for one's own acts, may aid that real, though purely human, religion, which sometimes calls itself the Religion of Humanity, and sometimes that of Duty. (Theism, p. 488) This develops further his concept of the moral significance of cultivating the emotions and reflects the lesson he had learned early in his life, as he recovered from his bout of depression, that human beings can flourish only with the cultivation of the feelings. In his considerations about the existence of a cause for order in the universe, Mill mentions only in passing the work of Charles Darwin, that natural selection is the cause of apparent design in the natural world. As soon became apparent, this theory removed whatever tentative support Mill had allowed for the existence of a benevolent creator. Hope alone remained the only legitimate religious sentiment, but that hope rested on the sense that there is a creator who might fulfill it. Upon the demise with Darwin's work of any expectation for the existence of such a creator all the slim hopes of religion disappeared. The later Victorians could not share Mill's optimism. They found that all that remained was to shake a fist in rage at the heavens that disappointed and stared back silently. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#VieRel

2009.09.24

John Stuart Mill, Louis J. Matz (ed.)

Three Essays on Religion
John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion, Louis J. Matz (ed.), Broadview Press, 2009, 302pp., $18.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551117683.
Reviewed by Julie C. Van Camp, California State University http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24168-three-essays-on-religion/

This splendid volume brings together three intriguing essays on religion by John Stuart Mill, "Nature", "Utility of Religion", and "Theism". First published by his stepdaughter Helen Taylor in 1874, the year after his death, they will be as surprising to many readers as they reportedly were to his contemporaries. His earlier works had led many to conclude that he was dismissive of religion, while the essays here confound those presumptions. The three essays have been available in print for many years in other editions. The special value of this collection for both scholarship and teaching comes from the extensive supplementary material so helpful in carefully interpreting the essays today. This material includes sixteen earlier statements by Mill in other writings, both published essays and letters. Excerpts from three contemporary reviews of the three essays sharpen the issues. The volume also includes excerpts from Jeremy Bentham and Mill's father, James Mill, who apparently exerted early influence on Mill on these matters. There are also excerpts from Charles Darwin and T. H. Huxley that address related issues in religion and science. A detailed bibliography with suggestions for further reading enhances the volume, as does the chronology of Mill's life, and numerous portraits of Mill, his wife Harriet Taylor, and other influential persons in his life. Although, regrettably, it has no index, this is an unusually comprehensive, worthwhile, and usable volume. Throughout the essays, Mill seems determined to reconcile his empiricist commitment to supporting beliefs with sufficient evidence and his moral commitment to improving the condition of humans in this life. But as his stepdaughter asserts in the essay she wrote for their publication in 1874, the three essays were not intended as "forming a consecutive series" and thus should not be considered "a connected body of thought" (p. 62). Even so, Taylor insists, Mill considered the three "fundamentally consistent" (p. 62). She provides persuasive evidence to support her conclusion from the sequence of Mill's preparation of the material and from Mill's his intent. The volume's editor, Louis J. Matz, argues convincingly in his invaluable introduction that the posthumous essays are at least consistent with views in Mill's published and unpublished writings. The best known of those views is Mill's observation that he did not need theistic beliefs, since he was brought up imbued with the importance of morality. Matz also hints at a variety of motivations for Mill to keep quiet about his religious views during his lifetime. As a member of Parliament, he did not want people to be able to use his religious views, regardless of what they were, against him in his bid for election (p. 36). Private correspondence hints that Mill was also concerned that an appearance of sympathy for religion might interfere with his public reputation as a reformer based on moral principles independent of religion. Mill's apparent conflicts between his public profile and private morality anticipates dilemmas of progressive politicians today. It is inconceivable that a politician who is openly atheist or even agnostic could get elected to high public office, at least in the U.S., but excessive commitment to a rigid theology can be equally damning in some quarters.

Mill lived in an era when rapidly developing scientific explanations for natural phenomena were increasingly challenging traditional religious explanations. Matz suspects Mill judged that religion might still be useful for promoting morality, even if the intellectual underpinnings of theism were increasingly implausible, a dilemma shared in heightened relief today, given the advancement of scientific explanation. In the essay "Nature", Mill meticulously presents detailed arguments against Natural Law as the basis for ethics. He concludes that either of the two main senses of "nature" ("the entire system of things" or "things as they would be, apart from human intervention") result in models for action that are "irrational and immoral" (p. 103). He distinguishes religion in the traditional supernatural sense of theism from what he calls a Religion of Humanity (p. 130). The latter idealizes goods in this world, specifically, the promotion of happiness for all beings, consistently with his utilitarianism and also with what we might today call secular humanism. In the second essay, "Utility of Religion", Mill acknowledges one advantage of supernatural religion over his proposed Religion of Humanity, namely, the hope of "a life after death" (p. 135). Nevertheless Mill is suspicious of "legislators and moralists" exploiting this quest for an afterlife to coerce people to do certain things in this life. He hopes that as the quality of life in the here and now improves, this dream of an afterlife will become less important. As the editor points out, a contemporary critic of this essay anticipates William James' "Will to Believe" (p. 46), arguing that religious experience can open up "new realities", much as Mill's ideas of personal love can open up such realities. In "Theism", Mill considers a range of arguments for the existence of God, using a methodology consistent with his lifelong insistence on evidence. He believes it to be "indispensable" that religion should from time to time be reviewed as a strictly scientific question, and that its evidences should be tested by the same scientific methods, and on the same principles as those of any of the speculative conclusions drawn by physical science (p. 141). Given that evidentiary emphasis, he concludes that monotheism is superior to polytheism, as the latter cannot be reconciled to any theory of governance of the universe, although this alone hardly proves the truth of monotheism (p. 143). Mill acknowledges that he cannot disprove the existence of a sovereign will, and proceeds to examine a variety of arguments, both a priori and a posteriori, for such an existence. The argument for a first cause, he concludes, would be of no value for the proof of theism (p. 154). He then considers the argument "from the general consent of mankind", viz., that as all persons have recognized some form of god, there must be a god. Mill argues that the diverse conceptions of such a god and the universal need to address unknowns in life account for this universality, not necessarily the existence of any actual god. He also rejects arguments from consciousness and pure reason, appealing to Kant's distinctions between speculative reason and a corresponding reality outside the mind (pp. 158-161).

Mill finds the argument from design far more significant, in part because it lends itself to testing by the scientific method he holds paramount (p. 161). Surprisingly perhaps, given his rejection of so many other claimed proofs of the existence of god, he admits that "the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation of intelligence" (p. 166). Lest any contemporary proponents of Intelligent Design rush to cite Mill for support, however, note that he qualifies this conclusion by pointing to the limits of "the present state of our knowledge". In other words, although he was familiar with Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859), Mill acknowledged that, in the mid-nineteenth century, we did not yet know enough about the natural world to account for all the then-current conditions of the species. Concluding that he could not rule out the argument from design is a far cry from concluding that it proved the existence of a deity. Further, his critics at the time thought he had not sufficiently understood the power of Darwin's work (p. 49). Even granting the possibility of an Intelligent Designer, Mill wonders what sort of god that would be. He questions why human beings were not designed "to last longer, and not to get so easily and frequently out of order" (p. 170). Here he anticipates recent challenges to the contemporary intelligent design movement. If god is omnipotent, could he not have come up with a better design for our aching backs and fragile knees? Mill also notes that there is no evidence in the world we inhabit of divine benevolence or divine justice (p. 177). In this final essay, he again considers the promise of an afterlife (p. 179ff). Mill concludes that there is no way to prove or disprove its existence, but he concedes that it might be of comfort to many people. He also dismisses claims that revelation received by persons proves anything about the existence of god or anything else.
These essays, along with the extensive supplementary material in this volume, provide the basis for exciting and detailed analysis by student and scholar alike, the sort of comprehensive, contextual work in the history of philosophy that brings old texts into contemporary life. The context furnished for these materials also provides safeguards against reading passages in ways that would distort Mill's views. The essays were published posthumously, and there is evidence, at least with the "Theism" essay, that Mill did not intend for it ever to be published. He surely did not have time for the editing and clarification that might have discouraged provocative misreadings. The book provides the tools for exceptional scholarship and teaching regarding Mill's views on religion, and for that we can all be grateful.

h. Essays on Religion

Mills criticism of traditional religious doctrines and institutions and his promotion of the Religion of Humanity, also depended largely on concerns about human cultivation and education. Though the Benthamite philosophic radicals, including Mill, took Christianity to be a particularly pernicious superstition that fostered indifference or hostility to human happiness (the keystone of utilitarian morality), Mill also thought that religion could potentially serve important ethical needs by supplying us with ideal conceptions grander and more beautiful than we see realized

in the prose of human life. (CW, X.419). In so doing, religion elevates our feelings, cultivates sympathy with others, and imbues even our smallest activities with a sense of purpose. The posthumously published three Essays on Religion (1874)on Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theismcriticized traditional religious views and formulated an alternative in the guise of the Religion of Humanity. Along with the criticism of religions moral effects that he shared with the Benthamites, Mill was also critical of the intellectual laziness that permitted belief in an omnipotent and benevolent God. He felt, following his father, that the world as we find it could not possibly have come from such a God given the evils rampant in it; either his power is limited or he is not wholly benevolent. Beyond attacking arguments concerning the essence of God, Mill undermines a variety of arguments for his existence including all a priori arguments. He concludes that the only legitimate proof of God is an a posteriori and probabilistic argument from the design of the universe the traditional argument (stemming from Aristotle) that complex features of the world, like the eye, are unlikely to have arisen by chance, hence there must be a designer. (Mill acknowledges the possibility that Darwin, in his 1859 The Origin of Species, has provided a wholly naturalistic explanation of such features, but he suggests that it is too early to judge of Darwins success). Inspired by Comte, Mill finds an alternative to traditional religion in the Religion of Humanity, in which an idealized humanity becomes an object of reverence and the morally useful features of traditional religion are supposedly purified and accentuated. Humanity becomes an inspiration by being placed imaginatively within the drama of human history, which has a destination or point, namely the victory of good over evil. As Mill puts it, history should be seen as the unfolding of a great epic or dramatic action, which terminates in the happiness or misery, the elevation or degradation, of the human race. It is an unremitting conflict between good and evil powers, of which every act done by any of us, insignificant as we are, forms one of the incidents. (CW, XXI.244). As we begin to see ourselves as participants in this Manichean drama, as fighting alongside people like Socrates, Newton, and Jesus to secure the ultimate victory of good over evil, we become capable of greater sympathy, moral feeling, and an ennobled sense of the meaning of our own lives. The Religion of Humanity thereby acts as an instrument of human cultivation.

3. Conclusion
Mills intellect engaged with the world rather than fled from it. His was not an ivory tower philosophy, even when dealing with the most abstract of philosophical topics. His work is of enduring interest because it reflects how a fine mind struggled with and attempted to synthesize important intellectual and cultural movements. He stands at the intersections of conflicts between enlightenment and romanticism, liberalism and conservatism, and historicism and rationalism. In each case, as someone interested in conversation rather than pronouncement, he makes sincere efforts to move beyond polemic into sustained and thoughtful analysis. That analysis produced challenging answers to problems that still remain. Whether or not one agrees with his answers, Mill serves as a model for thinking about human problems in a serious and civilized way.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/milljs/#SH2h

Essays On Religion

The posthumously published volume of Essays on Religion contains three essayson Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism. The first and second were written between 1850 and 1858, that is, during the same period as the essays on Utilitarianism and on Liberty, while the third belongs to a much later time, having been written between 1868 and 1870, and is thus "the last considerable work which he completed," and "showsthe latest state of the Author's mind, the carefully balanced result of the deliberations of a lifetime" (Essays on Religion, Preface). The first essay is a protest against the view that the ideal of human conduct is found in conformity to Nature. It reminds us of Huxley's later condemnation, in his famous Romanes lecture on Evolutioin and Ethics, of the cosmic process from the ethical point of view. "In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's every day performances" (Essays on Religion, p. 28). It is a protest rather against naturalistic ethics than against Natural Theology, but the latter is included in the same condemnation with the former type of theory. The Author of Nature cannot be at once good and omnipotent. The main argument of the essay on the Utility of Religion, which, like that on Nature, is a fine specimen of Mill's philosophical style, is the sufficiency of the Religion of Humanity and its superiority to all but the best of the supernatural religions. "Let it be remembered that if individual life is short, the life of the human species is not short; its indefinite duration is practically equivalent to endlessness; and being combined with indefinite capability of improvement, it offers to the imagination and sympathies a large enough object to satisfy any reasonable demand for grandeur of aspiration" (Ibid, P. 106). The essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognized as of the highest excellence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of desire. This condition is fulfilled by the Religion on Humanity in as eminent a degree, and in as high a sense, as by the supernatural religions even in their best manifestations, and far more so than in any of their others. (Ibid., P. 109) The characteristic tendency of supernaturalism is to arrest the development not only of the intellectual, but also of the moral nature. Its appeal is to self-interest rather than to disinterested and ideal motives; and like the intuitional theory of ethics, it stereotypes morality. The special appeal of supernatural religion is to our sense of the mystery which circumscribes our little knowledge, but the same appeal is made, and the same service to the imagination rendered, by Poetry. "Religion and poetry address themselves, at least in one of their aspects, to the same part of the human constitution; they both supply the same want, that of ideal conceptions grander and more beautiful than we see realized in the prose of human life" (Essays on Religion, P. 103). "The idealization of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made," is "capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a

religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers" (Ibid., P. 105). Yet "he to whom ideal good, and the progress of the world towards it, are already a religion" may find consolation and encouragement in the belief that he is, a fellow-laborer with the Highest, a fellow-combatant in the great strife; contributing his little which by the aggregation of many like himself becomes much towards that progressive ascendancy, and ultimately complete triumph of good over evil, which history points to, and which this doctrine teaches us to regard as planned by the Being to whom we behold in Nature. Against the moral tendency of this creed no possible objection can lie; it can produce on whoever can succeed in believing it, no other than an ennobling effect. (Ibid., P. 117) The essay on Theism bears evidence, in the imperfection of its construction and the inferiority of its style, to its lack of the author's final revision. The argument for a First Cause is condemned, on the ground that there is a permanent element in nature itself; "as far as anything can be concluded from human experience, Force has all the attributes of a thing eternal and uncreated" (Ibid., P. 147). The argument from Design is found to be less unsatisfactory. The principle of the survival of the fittest, while not inconsistent with Creation, "would greatly attenuate the evidence for it." But "leaving this remarkable speculation to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have in store for it," Mill concludes that "it must be allowed that, in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence" (Essays on Religion, P. 174). On the other hand, "it is not too much to say that every indication of Design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer" (Ibid., P. 176). The necessity of contrivance, or the adaptation of means to ends, implies limitation of power in the agent. As to Immorality, there is "a total absence of evidence on either side." Miracles, while not impossible, are extremely improbable, even on the hypothesis of a supernatural Being. The reasonable attitude, on all these questions, is that of atheism. If we are right in the conclusions to which we have been led by the preceding inquiry, there is evidence, but insignificant for proof, and amounting only to one of the lower degrees of probability. The induction given by such evidence as there is, points to the creation, not indeed of the universe, but of the present order of it, by an Intelligent Mind, whose power over the materials was not absolute, whose love for his creatures was not his sole actuating inducement, but who nevertheless, desired their good. (Ibid., P. 242) Where belief is not warranted, however, hope is permissible, and the imagination need not be controlled by purely rational considerations. To me it seems that human life, small and confined as it is, and as considered merely in the present, it is likely to remain even when the progress of material and moral improvement may have freed it from the greater part of its present calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration for itself and its destination, which the exercise of imagination can yield to it without running counter to the evidence of fact; and that it is a part of wisdom to make the most of any, even

small, probabilities on this subject, which furnish imagination with any footing to support itself upon. (Ibid, p. 245). Above all, the conception of a morally perfect being, and of his approbation, is an inspiration for the moral life which would be sorely missed, and Christianity has provided us with an "ideal representative and guide of humanity;" nor, "even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life" (Essays on Religion, P. 255). "The feeling of helping God" in the struggle with evil is "excellently fitted to aid and fortify that real, though purely human religion, which sometimes calls itself the Religion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty," and which "is destined, with or without supernatural sanctions, to be the religion of the Future." http://metareligion.com/Philosophy/Biography/John_Stuart_Mill/john_stuart_mill.htm
The Utility of Religious Illusion: A Critique of J.S. Mill's Religion of Humanity Lou Matza1
a1

University of the Pacific, lmatz@uop.edu

Abstract In Utility of Religion, Mill argues that a wholly naturalistic religion of humanity would promote individual and social welfare better than supernatural religions like Christianity; in Theism, however, Mill defends the salutary effects of hope in an afterlife. While commentators have acknowledged this discrepancy, they have not examined the utilitarian value of what Mill terms illusions. In this essay, I explain Mill's case against the utility of supernatural religious belief and then argue that Mill cannot dismiss the utility of hope in an ultimate justice since it need not pervert the intellect or morality. There are thus utilitarian grounds to support some supernatural illusions, which undermines Mill's defence of an exclusively naturalistic religion. I conclude with the suggestion that while the utility of religious belief leads Mill toward William James's view, they disagree about whether supernatural religious sentiment has any unique, intrinsic force.