John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

122 ATTACK ON MANSEL. 1849-1872.
that the belief in memory is incomprehensible or essentially
irresolvable. The precise nature of Belief is no doubt invested
with very peculiar delicacy, but, whenever it shall be cleared up,
we may very fairly suppose it capable of accounting for the
belief that a certain state now past as a sensation, but present
as an idea, was once a sensation, and is not a mere product of
thought or imagination. ( Cf. The Emotions and the Will, 3rd.
edit, p. 532.)
I may make a passing observation on the chapter specially
devoted to Hansel s Limits of Religious Thought. It is a con
siderable digression in a work devoted to Hamilton ; but
Hansel s book touched Hill to the quick ;
it a
"
loathsome
"
in private, he called
book. His combined argumentative and
passionate style rises to its utmost height. Hansel sarcastically
described his famous climax
"
to hell
"
I will go as an exhi
bition of taste and temper. That passage was scarcely what
Grote called it, a Promethean defiance of Jove, inasmuch as the
fear of hell never had a place in Hill s bosom ;
it sprang from
the strength of his feelings coining the strongest attainable
image to give them vent.*
Hill could not help adverting to Hamilton s very strong and
paradoxical assertions about Free-Will ; but,
as he never elabo
rates a consecutive exposition of the question, I doubt the
propriety of making these assertions a text for it discussing at
full. Hill s chapter is either too much or too little ; too much
as regards his author, too little as regards the subject. The
connexion of Punishment with Free-will should be allowed only
under protest ; the legitimacy and the limits of punishment
make a distinct inquiry. Punishment, psychologically viewed,
- assumes that men recoil from pain ; there may be other springs
of action besides pain or pleasure ;
but as regards such, both re-
* Grote thought that the phrase was an echo of something occurring in
Bsnjonson; where a military captain s implicit obedience is crowned by the
"
illustration
clue to the place.
Tell him to go to hell, to hell he will ". go I have never got any