n be
manufactured at will, and produce indefinite consequences. And yet he
can lay down laws of absolute validity, because he seems to be
deducing them from one or two formulae corresponding to the essential
and invariable properties of the ultimate unit--whether man or ideas.
From this follows, too, the tendency to speak as if human desires
corresponded to some definite measurable things, such as utility in
ethics, value in political economy, and self-interest in politics.
This point appears in the application of Mill's theories to the moral
sciences.

III. JAMES MILL'S ETHICS

James Mill in his ethical doctrine follows Bentham with little
variation; but he shows very clearly what was the psychology which
Bentham virtually assumed. I may pass very briefly over Mill's theory
of conduct[556] in general. The 'phenomena of thought,' he says, may
be divided into the 'intellectual' and the 'active' powers. Hitherto
he has considered 'sensations' and 'ideas' merely as existing; he will
now consider them as 'exciting to action.'[557] The phenomena consist
in both cases of sensations and ideas, combined into 'clusters,' and
formed into trains 'according to the sense laws.' We have now to
consider the ideas as active, and 'to demonstrate the simple laws into
which the phenomena of human life, so numerous and apparently so
diversified, may all be easily resolved.'

A desire is an 'idea' of a pleasant sensation; an 'aversion' an idea
of painful sensation. The idea and the sensation are not two things,
but two names for the same thing. Desire, again, has a 'tacit
reference to future time' when applied to a given case. We associate
these pains and pleasures with the causes; and in the important case
our own actions are the causes. Thus the association produces the
motive, and the readiness to obey the motive is, as Bentham says, the
'disposition.' Then, following Hartley, Mill explains the will. Bodily
actions are muscular contractions, which are slowly co-ordinated by
habit--association, of course, acting at every stage of the process.
Now, it is a plain fact that muscular contractions follow 'ideas.' It
is easy, then, to see how the 'idea of a pleasure should excite the
idea of the action which is the cause of it; and how, when the idea
exists, the action should follow.'[558] An 'end' is a pleasure
desired, and gives the 'motive.' When we start from the motive and get
the pleasure the same association is called 'will.' 'Free