Early Buddhism and John Stuart Mill's thinking in the Fields of
philosophy and religion: Some notes toward a comparative study
By Vijitha Rajapakse
Philosophy East and West
Volume 37, no. 3
July 1987
P.260-285
(C) by University of Hawaii Press
P.260
I
Europe came to know of Buddhism as a distinct system
in the nineteenth century, and the closeness of some
of its teachings to certain experientially grounded
patterns of Western thinking was recognized in a
rudimentary fashion in that century itself.(1) The
critical examination of the relevant affinities,
however, is a complex task, and it did not, to be
sure, come to be addressed seriously in any
significant sense until much later. Notable advances
have been made recently in probing into these
affinities; still, one can hardly say that the
comparativists who have involved themselves in this
task lately have dealt with their subject in an
exhaustive manner. Though the empirical outlook
which Buddhism(2) projects, and certain analytic
tendencies it incorporates, have been identified
rather strikingly in the last decades,(3) only the
systems of a very limited number of experientially
oriented Western philosophers have actually been
compared with Buddhist teachings in any detail so
far. Most notable among such systems are those of
David Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein.(4) In what
follows I propose to focus some attention on yet
another Western philosopher whose ideas, approaches,
and attitudes admit of comparison or juxtaposition
with those of Buddhism, namely, John Stuart Mill.(5)
No one, I believe, has seriously set out to extend
the comparative process in this direction.(6)
Nevertheless, there are strong reasons for doing so.
For when set beside each other, Buddhism and Mill's
thinking present some unusually interesting
opportunities for observing the intricate ways in
which the positions inherent in an Eastern religion
and those adopted by a Western secular philosopher
both meet and part, coalesce and diverge.
It might be useful to mention at the outset that
Mill's thinking relates to Buddhism in ways that do
not appear to be true of either Hume or
Wittgenstein. For one thing, there is a rather wide
variety of levels at which Mill's views and Buddhist
positions can be shown to correspond or at least to
admit of being brought together. Epistemological
discussion undoubtedly offers the greatest scope for
the observance of such resemblances; but,
significantly, they are by no means mainly confined
to that sphere (as is the case, by and large, with
comparisons involving the two philosophers just
mentioned). For Mill's thinking in several other
fields (logic, metaphysics, ethics, social and
political philosophy, and philosophy of religion)
also contains standpoints which are somewhat
analogous to those of Buddhism, Moreover, secondly,
unlike Hume or Wittgenstein, Mill displayed an
awareness, of sorts, of Buddhism in one of his
contributions to the philosophy of religion. Despite
its evidently rudimentary nature, this awareness is
especially noteworthy because in the context where
it comes to the fore Mill set out albeit in an
inchoate fashion--to indulge in a comparative
endeavor: he indeed attempted to link a Buddhist
position to one of his preferred stances in the
field of religious thinking.(7)
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Though a comparativist, then, can hardly afford
to ignore the preceding distinctive ways in which
Mill relates to Buddhism, even so, the actual task
of comparison in the present context cannot proceed
on the presumption that this versatile Victorian
philosopher had a particular penchant for Buddhist
teachings, or, much less, that his thinking was
deeply affected by them. Easily the most influential
English philosophic writer of the century, Mill
often reflected the basic epistemological outlook of
the British empirical tradition as it evolved from
Locke through Hume.(8) But he was, above all, a
Utilitarian--a product (and in turn a prominent
proponent as well) of the values, ideas, and ideals
associated with the Benthamite school. Now the
"philosophic radicalism" which was inculcated in
this school encompassed, notably enough, practical
and secular biases as well as a strong motivation
for this-wordly reform and social improvement.(9)
And these emphases, to be sure, became the important
determinants of Mill's thinking at many levels.(10)
On the other hand, in Buddhism one encounters a
soteriological system enunciated by an Indian
religious leader some twenty-four centuries earlier
following, significantly, an explicit renunciation
of the world. Its emphases--in contrast to those of
utilitarianism or philosophic radicalism--were
spiritual and esoteric.(11) Focusing on man's
existential predicament, and judging, as a result,
our sentient life and the ambient world to be an
irremediable realm of transience and sorrow, the
Buddha stressed the need to overcome this realm
altogether. The goal he set forth for man (to be
achieved through ethical and spiritual
self-culture) , was accordingly a transcendental
state, nirvaa.na. Thus, not only do Buddhism and
Mill's thinking spring from dissimilar backgrounds,
but they also address different basic concerns and
are withal differently oriented.
Nevertheless, a perceptive inquirer will discern
many points of contact between the two sides and,
consequently, much scope for the exercise of
comparative efforts. For the scheme of deliverance
which the Buddha enunciated was indeed predicated on
a wide-ranging analysis of existence and experience
which, naturally, encompassed philosophical
perspectives of fundamental importance. It is at
this level, then, that Buddhism and Mill can be
found to converge most notably. And in view of what
has been observed earlier about Mill's own reference
to Buddhism, one may perhaps say that the fact just
mentioned--in other words, that the philosophical
outlooks sustained by Buddhism and Mill project
resemblances and hence admit of comparison--is, to
be sure, something that Mill himself acknowledged in
a small (and faltering) way. Besides. a
comparativist can scarcely forget that both systems
incorporate a distinctive "transformative"
dimension, even though the sphere in which Buddhist
soteriology sought to effect a transformation was
preeminently the individual and his attitudinal
structure, whereas in this regard Mill's reformist
utilitarianism, on the other hand, had its sights
fixed on society and its institutional structure.
The "inner-outer," "subjective-objective" cleavage
seen here is striking, but again, it can be hardly
said to preclude a search for affinities between
Buddhism and
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Mill.(12) All in all, the complex pattern of
parallelisms and contrasts that come to the fore at
this and other levels of our comparison must indeed
be considered as indicated at the outset--as
pointers to the polar tensions accompanying an
attempt to juxtapose an Eastern religious philosophy
and Western secular thought.
Where and how do the specific positions taken by
Buddhism, on the one hand, and Mill's philosophical
and religious thought, on the other, meet? In what
ways do the two sides diverge, and what can one
learn from this important circumstance? The
discussion that follows seeks to probe into these
interesting questions in some measure, though what
is undertaken here is by no means an exhaustive
inquiry. The philosophical perceptions and the
methodological insights that accrue from attempts to
build "bridges of understanding" between differently
oriented systems of the East and the West are
considerable. To the comparativist, at any rate,
they have an intrinsic significance. But the
following discussion, I believe, might in some ways
also help illuminate the characteristic emphases of
the systems compared, and thus provide certain
opportunities to gauge the adequacy and the cogency
of those emphases in a manner that is hardly
possible when they are considered separately, that
is to say, within their own respective contexts.
II
It would be appropriate to begin the present
comparison of Buddhism and Mill by inquiring into
the positions taken by the two sides on the major
concerns of epistemology. Buddhism has frequently
been represented as a system which upholds an
experientialist stance with respect to the origin of
knowledge; the emphasis on "personal and direct
knowledge," as Jayatilleke has noted, is indeed an
evident feature of Nikaaya literature in
particular.(13) Mill's approaches in this sphere, on
the face of things at least, were very similar. He
regarded himself as a defender of the "School of
Experience" in philosophy."(14) And his famous A System
of Logic was actually identified as a "textbook"
which proclaimed the overall standpoint of this
school, namely, that all knowledge is derived from
experience.(15) In fact, in this work he noted
pointedly that it may safely be "laid down as a
truth" that "of the outer world we can know
absolutely nothing except the sensations we
experience from it" (CW, 7, p. 62). And he sought to
derive knowledge of the inner world from the
complementary source of introspection.(16) Mill did
not, of course, rest content with an affirmation of
experientialism, but went further and elaborated a
methodology for scientific investigation which was
consistent with that affirmation,(17) thus giving a
notably inductivist dimension to his
experientialism. Now where does Buddhism stand with
respect to this feature in Mill's epistemological
thinking?
Significantly enough, some lines of connection
can again be discerned at this level as well. It is
interesting to note that evidences of a scientific
spirit have sometimes been recognized in the
Buddha's attitudes and in the general tenor of
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his teachings;(18) and Jayatilleke in particular has
pointed out that not only perception, but inductive
inference, too, received recognition in the Pali
Nikaayas as the means of knowledge.(19) Indeed, as
hinted earlier, several investigators have
identified parallels of a sort between some of
Mill's inductive methods (especially those of
Agreement and Difference, where the focus is on the
determination of causality) and the Buddhist
clarification of the causal formula as found in the
Pali Nikaayas or associated literature.(20)
These resemblances, I think, are rather
striking; but it is important to point out that
other notable acceptances or accompaniments in the
epistemological thinking of both sides contain
incompatible elements. Let me explain.
As regards Buddhism, two points in particular
need to be observed. First, the definition of
experience it operates with is wider than that which
underlies Western empiricist thinking, for both
normal and paranormal perception are treated as
valid means of knowledge here.(21) The former, of
course, represents the deliverances of sense, but
what of the latter? Indian religious philosophies
for the most part treat paranormal perception
(atiindriya pratyak.sa) as an extension or an
enlargement of the ordinary perceptual process.
Buddhism retained this position. Pali Nikaaya
sources in particular are replete with references to
extrasensory knowledge: telepathy, precognition,
retrocognition, and clairvoyance are frequently
mentioned in them as powers or capacities possessed
and exercised by the Buddha and Buddhist saints.(22)
However, the acquisition of this knowledge was
always deemed to be predicated on the removal of
factors which obscure the mind's vision. And these,
significantly, were considered to be defilements and
impurities understood in a basically ethical sense;
their removal in turn was seen as an exercise in
spiritual self-culture.(23) Thus. it is the
religious "virtuoso" adept in disciplining the
energies of the mind and body, not the ordinary
individual, who could attain to paranormal
perception. Second, Buddhism attached a greater
significance to the experience built on paranormal
perception. More important. it was held to be
esoteric and illuminative, and hence represented as
being intuitive in nature. Buddhism's highest
truths--the "saving knowledge"
(vimutti-~naa.nadassana)--had finally to be reached
through paranormal means. Indeed, the Buddha himself
has been identified as one who, in a higher,
intuitive sense, "knowing, knows" (jaana.m jaanaati)
and Buddhism likewise as a system which in the last
analysis is sustained by "knowledge and insight"
(~naa.nadassana).(24) Clearly, then, paranormal or
extrasensory perception is admitted in Buddhism, and
indeed plays a vital role in its epistemology.
Now not only is it difficult to accommodate
these positions within the framework of Mill's
epistemological thinking, but it is even possible to
say that his outlook as a whole derives its basic
inspiration from altogether different
presuppositions. Some clarification of this would
again be in order.
Experience in Mill's view was confined to the
deliverances of sense, nothing more. To put this
point another way, his concern in the sphere of
knowledge was with "the mere existence of our
sensations and in the laws or the order of their
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occurrence" (CW, 9, p. 203) .(25) Paranormal or
extrasensory experience had no place in Mill's
thinking. Explaining the direction of his
investigation in the Logic (and hence the focus of
his epistemology) , Mill emphasized that "mine
professes to be a logic of experience only, and to
throw no further light upon the existence of truths
not experimental than is thrown by showing to what
extent reasoning from experience will carry us" (CW,
8, p. 412).26 Moreover, it is important to remember
that Mill always set his experiential standpoint
against that of intuitionism. Indeed, as Alan Ryan
has rightly observed, "the goals, methods and the
characteristic style of Mill's philosophy are to a
great extent intelligible in terms of his dislike of
intuitionism."(27) Mill actually undertook a
systematic attack on intuitionism in An Examination
of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, for in
Hamilton he recognized the "chief pillar of
intuitional philosophy" (CW, 1, p. 233).(28) Now
what exactly was meant by intuitionism? According to
Mill, it upheld the notion that "truths external to
the mind" may be known by the mind itself--in other
words, independently of sense experience. And he
found it especially objectionable because "by the
aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and
every intense feeling" could easily "dispense with
the obligation of justifying itself by reason" and
is instead "erected into its own all self-sufficient
voucher and justification."
Thus, though both Buddhism and Mill espouse
experientialism, clearly, each side seeks to
interpret some of its implications on lines which
are hardly considered by the other. Is Mill's
rejection of intuitionism compatible with Buddhism?
And, on the other hand, can one accommodate the
inner illuminative knowledge which is so vital to
Buddhism within Mill's epistemological framework?
These, admittedly, are complex questions; still, in
the interests of our inquiry as a whole it would be
useful to address them briefly.
To begin with, it is of course possible to say
that the intuitionism against which Mill inveighed
is basically a "seeing" ascribed to or associated
with our rational faculties, and that this kind of
knowledge is not crucial to Buddhist
epistemology.(29) Equally significant, there is also
room to argue that the inner illuminative insight
which the latter system values is finally an
extension or a refinement of the experiential
process, for Buddhist texts, as indicated earlier,
frequently represent it on these lines.
Nevertheless, one can hardly deny that when viewed
from the standpoint of Mill's philosophy, this
knowledge does appear to be privileged rather than
public. And privileged knowledge, it is well to
remember, is often suspected of partaking of some of
the characteristics of mysticism: the grounds for
doing this are all the greater when one views
matters from a Millian standpoint.(30) Now there is.
in any event, one interesting context in which Mill
clarified his attitude to mystical truth.(31) All in
all, he appears to have preferred to dissociate
himself from such truth until its status was
established in logic. In a word, Mill wanted to be
shown how mystical claims stood in the light of
logic before he could be sure of them or assent to
them--esoteric, priviledged claims had, in his view,
to be verified in the court of common experience.
Perhaps he was
P.265
asking for the impossible here.(32) But be that as
it may, this stance underscores an approach which is
characteristic of Mill: the senses and the
evidential criteria built upon them remained for him
the final touchstones of truth. And by placing so
great and so exclusive an emphasis on them, Mill's
thinking can also be said to distance itself from
Buddhism. For privileged, self-validating inner
knowledge is a primary goal of the Buddhist
soteriological quest; such knowledge, to be sure,
sits at the very heart of the Buddhist enlightenment
as epitomized in the nirvaa.nic experience.
As regards the sources of knowledge, then,
Buddhism and Mill's thought display some shared
approaches amidst certain striking differences. The
same pattern is discernible at other levels of
reflection relating to epistemological matters in
the two systems. Buddhism denied knowledge of
unchanging realities which lay beneath or behind
experience. Now Mill's phenomenalistic
interpretations of both mind and matter led to a
broadly similar conclusion. The correspondences that
come to the fore in this area are particularly
noteworthy. Many recent investigators appear to
labor under the impression that the Buddhist
critique of substance is most closely paralleled in
Western philosophy by the reductive analyses of Hume
(and Hume alone). However, it is possible to wonder
whether this impression is really justified. Indeed,
not only are Mill's agreements with Buddhism on this
score striking, but they also seem at times to be
stronger than those of Hume.(33) Let me explain by
delving into a few relevant details.
Buddhist philosophy, it would be well to
reiterate, excludes the notion of abiding
metaphysical essences altogether. Its celebrated
doctrine of nonself (anattaa) is founded on a
reductive analysis of the individual person. Five
aggregates (pa~ncakkhandha) make up, in the Buddhist
view, the human person.(34) And they are represented
as interdependent and conditioning factors which do
not incorporate anything permanent and unchanging of
the nature of a soul. Indeed, the Nikaaya dialogues
are replete with reminders regarding the "soulless"
character of the various aggregates. This, of
course, is always a greatly stressed stance in
Theravaada thinking in particular. It is, for
example, rhetorically defended in the
Milindapa~nha(35) and is again central to the
Buddhist soteriological message set forth in another
famous context, namely, the Visuddhimagga.(36)
Now interestingly enough, the principle involved
here--that a substantial self cannot be located
anywhere in experience and that the aggregate bases
consequently highlight an emptiness (su~n~nataa) in
a metaphysical sense--is certainly not alien to
Mill's thinking. In his Logic, Mill. to be sure,
maintained that "a thread of consciousness" (which
in turn was interpreted as "a series of feelings,
that is, of sensations, thoughts, emotions and
volitions more or less complicated") summed up in
effect our knowledge of our "inmost nature" (CW, 7,
p. 64). He confessed to being unable to give meaning
to the "subject" of metaphysical theory in any other
terms save these.(37) Clarifying his position
further, Mill reiterated:
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I know nothing about myself, save my capacities of
feeling or being conscious (including, of course,
thinking and willing): and were I to learn anything
new concerning my own nature, I cannot with my
present faculties conceive this new information to
be anything else, than that I have some additional
capacities, as yet unknown to me, of feeling
thinking or willing. (CW, 7, p. 64)
It would be relevant to observe that Mill
interpreted material substance on lines similar to
those he adopted to explain mental substance. The
external world (much like the internal world of the
mind) lacked, in his view, a substantial support of
a metaphysical nature; matter, according to him,
merely represented "a permanent possibility of
sensation" (CW, 9, p. 183). Indeed, Mill argued here
that "the reliance of mankind on the real existence
of visible and tangible objects, means reliance on
the reality and permanence of possibilities of
visual and tactual sensations, when no such
sensations are actually experienced" (ibid.).(38)
Now these positions in turn resemble Buddhist
stances in a general sense, although Buddhist
thinking on this particular issue (as developed in
the various contexts of discussion and set forth in
a variety of writings) displays peculiarities of its
own.(39) All in all, the main point that needs to be
noted is that like Mill, Buddhism, too, accords no
place to any metaphysical entity called
"matter."(40) Physical reality in the latter system
is explained through ruupa-dhammas, which,
significantly, are said to be devoid of an abiding
essence (asaara) and are consequently seen as
nonsubstantial data,(41) and sometimes simply as
sense data.(42) The sensations Mill invoked to
explain matter as conventionally understood thus do
admit of some comparison with the ruupa dhammas of
Buddhism.
Dissociation from substance metaphysics, then,
is a feature common to both Mill and Buddhism. But
one must not forget that it was stressed for
different reasons and articulated in different terms
in each system. On the Buddhist side, the
dissociation in question forms a crucial link in a
soteriolgical strategy. As Steven Collins has
observed, the anatta doctrine "represents a
determinate pattern of self-perception and
psychological analysis" for the Buddhist believer;
it was, moreover, held to deliver "a true
description of reality" and hence became a veritable
"instrument by which the aspirant to nirvaa.na
progresses towards and achieves his goal."(43)
Again, Buddhist clarifications at this level rely on
or revolve around images and analogies. The finer
points of the Buddhist positions on identity and
continuity, for example, are mainly explained
through these means.(44) Very little of this is, of
course, true of the critique of substance that
enters into Mill's secular thinking.(45) What Mill
addressed in this context is simply a philosophic
issue.(46) And his conclusions in turn were offered
in a purely intellectual spirit. Besides, unlike the
Buddhists, Mill was sometimes conscious of the
conceptual difficulties that attended a reductive
analysis of the self in particular. For instance, he
observed in the Examination that the "theory which
resolves mind into a series of feelings with a
background of possibilities of feelings,'' indeed
entails "intrinsic difficulties which we have not
yet set forth and which it seems to me beyond the
power of metaphysical analysis to remove"
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(CW, 9, p. 193). Mill, it seems. was especially
puzzled by the fact of memory, and the problems it
poses for his theory. For in the context just
presented, he remarked:
If, therefore, we speak of the Mind as a series of
feelings, we are obliged to complete the statement
by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of
itself as past and future; and we are reduced to the
alternative of believing that the Mind or Ego, is
something different from any series of feelings, or
possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox,
that something which ex hypothesi is but a series of
feelings, can be aware of itself as a series. (CW,
9, p. 194)
On the other hand, there is little evidence of
internal autocriticism of this kind in Buddhist
literature; indeed. Collins(47) takes the extreme
view that the anattaa doctrine assumes the form of a
"linguistic taboo" in Theravaada writings.(48)
It is worth reiterating that the relationships
highlighted last, when broadly viewed, indeed point
to an ingrained pattern which is true of our
comparison as a whole: the similarities that one
recognizes between Buddhist positions and Mill's
thinking are almost always coupled with differences
of one sort or another. Nevertheless, the
similarities themselves are striking and important,
and the preceding discussion, I think, clearly
establishes that the approaches adopted by the two
sides on several questions of epistemological
interest do admit of being correlated or juxtaposed.
Now as indicated at the outset, this process can
be extended to embrace still other questions that
relate to a broad range of areas in philosophical
and religious reflection. Indeed, not only does
Buddhism often share the critical outlook and the
scientific spirit which informed Mill's thinking in
metaphysics in particular, but it also tends to
retain or value some emphases in his
liberaldemocratic commitments, humanism and
humanitarianism (which entered prominently into
Mill's ethical theory, critique of religion, and
social philosophy). I propose next to clarify this
rather remarkable circumstance by delving into a few
relevant details.
Several emphases in Buddhism's metaphysical
outlook are echoed in Mill's writings. As is widely
known. Buddhism adopts a critical attitude towards
the idea of a Creator-God and excludes it altogether
from its cosmological reflections.(49) Mill's
thinking (at least in quite a few notable contexts)
was informed by broadly similar stances. Mill upheld
the general validity of Comte's famous "law of the
three stages, " and was therefore theoretically
committed to move away from explanations that
invoked God.(50) More significant, in his religious
essays (in "Nature in particular), he argued against
conventional deistic (and theistic) explanations of
the universe, insisting that such explanations are
untenable, given the reality of evil and
suffering.(51) It is interesting to observe that
Buddhist arguments against the idea of Creator-God
as set forth in some contexts also revolved around
the existence of evil in the world, and hence admit
of comparison with Mill's thinking. The veiws
expressed in Bhuuridatta-Jaataka, for example, are
particularly noteworthy in this connection. The
pervasiveness of suffering is
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identified here as an overwhelming argument against
a cosmology which posits the existence of a perfect
creator.(52) Yet it would be worng to conclude that
what we have at this level is a complete convergence
of views. For the critique of theism which each side
projects bears witness to distinctive features.
Buddhism, it needs to be noted, refused to
compromise on its exclusion of a supreme creative
agency; nevertheless, its outlook does not disfavor
belief in the supernatural. Indeed, the existence of
divine beings (devas) in particular and the veracity
of supernatural occurrences (such as miracles and
prodigies) are tacitly assumed in its ancient
Writings.(53) Mill's religious thinking, on the
other hand, has almost opposite implications.
Firstly, Mill was not unwilling to make certain
concessions to theism even while he criticized some
of the typical forms in which it was upheld in
philosophy and religion.(54) The positions adopted
in the essay on "Theism" bring this out strikingly.
"The notion of a providential government by an
omnipotent Being for the good of his creatures'' was
clearly dismissed here (CW, 10, p. 482). Yet he was
not inclined to embrace dogmatic atheism either. On
the contrary, he insisted that though "creation by
intelligence" cannot be proved, there was
nevertheless "a large balance of probability" in its
favor (CW, 10, p. 450). Indeed, in concluding his
last considered reflections in this notable context
Mill even went so far as to allude to the "unseen
Being to whom we owe all that is enjoyable in life"
(CW, 10, p. 488).(55) At the same time, secondly,
the secular orientation of Mill's utilitarian
outlook and the demands for proof entailed by his
inductivist logical theory served, by and large, to
preclude the supernatural, which is taken for
granted in Buddhist belief at certain levels. As is
evident from the thinking in "Theism," to Mill,
"belief in gods" was a natural (albeit basically
primitive) tendency evident in the initial stages of
the evolution of religious consciousness (CW, 10, p.
431) . Mill characterized this tendency as
"pre-scientific" (in contrast to monotheism, which
he held could at least claim for itself a "footing
on scientific ground" (CW, 10, p. 482). And, not
surprisingly, his attitude to miracles was decidedly
negative, Arguing on strictly inductive grounds,
Mill insisted that occurrences deemed to be
miraculous necessarily violated the ordered sequence
of ordinary phenomena subsumed under natural laws,
and were therefore not merely improbable, but for
all practical purposes impossible.(56)
All in all, it would be well to observe that the
elements of agreement one notices amidst the
preceding differences are basically negative in
nature: both Buddhism and Mill take the view that
God as conventionally understood is not a directive
influence in the universe, and again, that there are
no valid grounds for giving credence to revelations.
Now skeptical perspectives of this kind are usually
accompanied by a no less skeptical interpretation of
the prospect of an afterlife for man; those who
criticize theism rarely concede that the "beyond" is
real. Yet Buddhism certainly, and Mill's thinking in
one notable context, do not, to be sure, exemplify
this pattern. Indeed. notwithstanding their common
rejection of the idea of an unchanging substantial
self, both systems tend to regard survival
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in a positive light. Of course, in Buddhism it is
strongly held, since survival in the sense of
rebirth is virtually a doctrinal assumption and in
fact provides the raison d'etre of this religion's
entire soteriological scheme.(57) Mill: on the other
hand, tended to approach this question with an open
yet critical mind, for he was acutely conscious of
the logical difficulties which the concept of
survival present to the modern inquirer. Besides,
when he gave thought to the subject of survival, he
appears to have understood it in the sense of
immortality, not rebirth.(58) Nevertheless, what is
striking and merits notice here is the fact that he,
too, found some grounds for belief in a life beyond
death. Mill disputed the validity of skeptical
arguments against survival. He remarked that the
relation of thought to the brain is not a
"metaphysical necessity," but rather a contingent
fact (CW, 10, p. 461). And what we know about the
brain, he reminded, is in the final analysis a set
of sensations which is either actual or inferred as
possible. Now in experience, the series of conscious
thoughts is always associated with these latter
sensations (in other words, the brain); but one
should recognize, he said, that:
it is possible to imagine such a series of states
without, as with, this accompaniment, and we know of
no reason in the nature of things against the
possibility of its being thus disjoined. We may
suppose that the same thoughts, emotions, volitions
and even sensations which we have here, may persist
or recommence somewhere else under other conditions,
just as we may suppose that other thoughts and
sensations may exist under other conditions in other
parts of the universe. (CW, 10, p. 462)
Now reasoning of this kind might not fully
convince the inflexible skeptic; but anyone
conversant with the background to Buddhist thinking
on rebirth will perhaps recognize that Mill's
argument here and in a subsequent passage(59) was
sometimes similar in spirit (or at least admits of
being instructively juxtaposed with) the views
broached in an interesting Buddhist context, namely
the Milindapa~nha. While insisting that a
fluctuating complex of psychical elements
(dhamma-santati) constituted the inner nature of the
egoless personality in this life, the Buddhist
apologist here (Naagasena) also maintained that
there was no "last consciousness" (pacchima
vi~n~nana), implying, among other things, that the
elements in question have the potential to continue
in a "beyond"--in other words, in another life.(60)
Moreover, Naagasena tried to drive home this point
by a significant appeal to analogies.(61)
It remains to be observed, however, that in the
Buddhist view, rebirth (understood as the linking of
consciousness between one existence and another) is
determined by the agency of kamma, the inherent
force of the effects of one's deeds. Further, as a
soteriological system, Buddhism stresses the
possibility (and indeed the supreme value) of
eliminating rebirth altogether. As hinted
previously, the salvation sought by the Buddhist
(nibbaana) is actually an emancipation from the
round of repeated births and deaths which is
believed to be the lot of all sentient beings.(62)
Now these latter beliefs and emphases, needless to
say, are alien to Mill's thinking. His reflections
on the question of a life beyond death only
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served to draw attention to the existence of validly
arguable grounds for intellectually entertaining
such a future (trans-empirical) prospect.
Points of contact of an entirely different order
can be discerned in the interpretations preferred by
the two sides on human nature, suffering and
compassions. Evidently, what we have here is a set
of very complex subjects; it is also difficult to
say that all of them are addressed as focal issues
in Mill's secular writings. On the other hand, they
were frequently drawn into Buddhist doctrinal
expositions in pivotal ways, for the issues in
question have a definite bearing on soteriological
concerns. Mill's thinking on ethics and religion in
particular, however, incorporate important insights
and reflections on human nautre, suffering, and
compassion; and these, to be sure, again admit of
comparison or juxtaposition. I propose next to
extend our inquiry by delving briefly into some
relevant details.
Buddhist and Millian perspectives on human
nature indeed tend to coincide at some levels.
Buddhism takes the view that as sentient creatures,
human beings naturally prefer pleasure over pain.
The idea that human psychology (or for that matter
the psychology of all living creatures) is governed
by the pleasure-pain principle is not at all alien
to this system; indeed, Buddhist texts sometimes
identify man in particular as a being who hankers
after the pleasurable and shuns what is painful
(sukhakaamo dukkhapa.tikkkuulo) .(63) Now the
"Greatest Happiness Principle" which Mill took over
from Bentham and adopted as the cornerstone of his
own moral philosophy actually proceeds from an
analogous perception of human nature. Mill argued
that the theory of morality which takes this
principle as its foundation is in turn based on a
"theory of life" where pleasure and the freedom from
pain are regarded as the ends naturally preferred by
human beings.(64) This common acknowledgment of a
basic human proclivity, then, is a striking point of
contact between Buddhism and Mill that deserves
notice. And, interestingly, it is also possible to
link some inner details of the moral thinking in the
two sides that stemmed, by and large, from the same
acknowledgment. For one thing, as Mrs. Rhys Davids
had hinted, Buddhism, like Mill, can be said to
employ pleasure (sukha) "to cover the whole ground
of desirability," and, furthermore, there was a
shared stress on consequences in both moral
philosophies, (65) (although kamma vipaaka as
admitted in Buddhism affected not only the present
life, but also had a "carry-over" effect on future
lives as well). Perhaps more significant, secondly,
there is the question of moral freedom or free will.
The correspondence that needs to be discerned here,
I believe, is this: both Buddhsim and Mill seem to
take the stand that moral self-development is not in
any way hampered or precluded by the operation of
universal causal laws (whose existence both systems
concede, although causality as a concept is of
course often applied and interpreted by them
differently) .(66) Needless to say, man's moral
freedom is in effect upheld by this stand. The
Buddhist endorsement of it is borne out in such
contexts as the Dhammapada, which proclaims that
"both defilement and purity depend on oneself."(67)
And a broadly similar perspective was pro-
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jected in Mill's philosophy. While observing that
the necessitarian view that our actions follow from
our character does not preclude our ability to form
or mold our character, Mill insisted: "the feeling
of our being able to modify our own character if we
wish is the feeling of moral freedom we are
conscious of" (Logic, CW, 8. p. 841).(68) Thus, the
Buddhist stress on individual perfection and Mill's
utilitarian preoccupation with improvement and
social reform seem to have been predicated on the
common philosophic belief that character is
malleable and man as such is hence free. Clearly,
determinism is a predicament that Buddhism as well
as Mill had indeed to confront and avoid. Yet it
would be well to bear in mind that while the "laws"
that impinge on human life were conceived by Mill to
be exclusively natural or scientific, what Buddhism
as a soteriological system had especially to reckon
with was the impact of one's previous actions and
doings, in other words, kamma vipaaka.(69)
The subjects of suffering and compassion offer
opportunities for the extension of our comparative
effort in still other directions. The centrality of
the former subject to Buddhism hardly needs much
elaboration. Not only do the teachings of this
religion project the view that existence as a whole
is pervaded by suffering (dukkha), but they also
proclaim that the overcoming of suffering is man's
primary goal.(70) Though traditionally translated as
"suffering,'' dukkha of course bears a complex
meaning; its philosophical implications include the
overall sense of imperfection inherent in life. Now
a certain understanding of this was not lost on
Mill: the idea that life must needs appear
"unsatisfactory or unsatisfying" to the sensitive,
reflective mind is broached both in "Utilitarianism"
and the Autobiography. The "best and the
wisest"--those who are "discerning and highy
conscientious" or "highly endowed"--he indicated,
are especially prone to feel this way (CW, 10, p.
121; CW, 1, p. 197). True, Mill's thinking contains
no blanket endorsement of the view that the world is
a realm of suffering; on the contrary, he found in
it "so much to interest, so much to enjoy and so
much also to correct and improve" (CW, 10, p.
216).(71) Yet the suffering and pain evident in the
operations of nature touched him deeply, and they
actually became, as explained earlier, the focus of
philosophic comment in the essay on "Nature."
Detailing the many kinds of evil experienced in the
world, Mill maintained here that nature's dealings
with life entail enormous evils (CW, 10, p. 384 and
the following pages).(72) Indeed, it would be well
to recall that Mill turned away from the deistic
notion of an omnipotent creator mainly through a
consideration of the great dispersion of suffering
and pain in the world. All in all, though Mill
neither defined nor perceived suffering in quite the
same way as Buddhism, his reflections in various
areas nevertheless involve a recognition of its
reality. The sense of dissatisfaction with the world
that he hinted at, and the evils and the pain that
he actually observed in experience, certainly form a
part of the range of meanings that are commonly
attached to the Pali word dukkha.(73)
Buddhist views on compassion can be related to
Mill's thinking on much the same lines as suffering
discussed in the preceding. Buddhist ethics
underscores
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the value of all-embracing fellow feeling, which
extends to man and beast alike. This can be
conveniently (even if loosely) identified as
compassion, although the attitudinal elements that
come into play here are conveyed by several distinct
Pali terms, the most notable among them being mettaa
(loving-kindness), karu.na (compassion proper), and
avihi.msaa (noninjury and avoidance of cruelty). It
is useful to remember that this enlarged fellow
feeling and compassionate consideration for all
sentient creatures are represented in Buddhism as
characteristics of "right thinking" (sammaa
sa^mkappa). And "right thinking" in turn is one of
the things enjoined by its basic soteriological
norm-ideal. the "eightfold path" (which the believer
has to follow in order to attain the ultimate goal
of nibbaana). Now compassion is of course neither
esteemed nor invoked in a similar spirit in Mill's
secular system. Yet one can hardly ignore the fact
that utilitarian humanism as interpreted by Mill
accords a certain place to it. Broad altruistic
feelings form the groundwork of his ethical thinking
and social philosophy. Notably enough, he wanted the
utilitarian goal of an existence exempt from pain
and rich in enjoyments to be secured not only to all
mankind, but "so far as the nature of things admits,
to the whole of sentient creation."(74) More
significant, following Bentham(75) Mill stressed the
claims to consideration which animals have, but are
unfortunately often overlooked. Thus arguing against
William Whewell, Mill insisted that the exclusion of
animals from our moral concerns are unethical.(76)
Such an exclusion, he maintained, could only be
justified on the basis of a myopic interpretation of
rights which is sustained by a coldly insensitive
outlook. Quite in keeping with these sentiments,
Mill referred pointedly to the propriety of
governmental intervention in order to prevent
cruelty to animals in the famous Principles of
Political Economy.(77)
Our comparison so far has ranged over subjects
that fall within the purview of some of the core
areas of philosophical thinking. I propose to close
this inquiry by turning to two topics--tolerance and
equality--which, to be sure, relate to a somewhat
"peripheral" field, namely, social and political
philosophy. Though "peripheral'' in relation to
general philosophical studies, this field,
nevertheless, is one in which Mill excelled: Mill's
eminence as a philosopher, it must be remembered,
rests largely on his contributions to social and
political philosophy. Of course, being a
soteriological system, Buddhism, in contrast, was
not directly concerned with advancing knowledge in
matters that touched on society and politics. Yet
Buddhist teachings have some sociopolitical
implications, and in working them out or otherwise
probing into them, one can discern certain points of
contact with Mill. Tolerance and equality, then, are
two topics on which Buddhist positions and M ill's
thinking can be instructively juxtaposed, although
the backgrounds from which the respective
reflections arose tended to differ substantially.
To consider tolerance first. it might be useful
to observe that this concept has frequently been
invoked to explain an ingrained trait in
Buddhism--especially in its attitude to other
religions and thought systems.(78) What
characterized this
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attitude was, above all, the absence of any hint of
dogmatic exclusiveness: both Buddha and historic
Buddhist leaders like A`soka are on record as not
only having practiced tolerance, but also as having
advocated an open, critical, and investigative
approach to the pursuit of religious truth.(79)
Significantly enough, some of these emphases are
evident in Mill's thinking in his celebrated essay,
"On Liberty." Here, while deliberating on the
liberty of thought in particular, Mill condemned
intolerance and deprecated haughty assumptions of
infallibility which led to the silencing of
discussion.(80) Yet the theoretical bases of Mill's
defence of tolerance had some distinctive features.
For one thing, he seems to have advocated an
absolute tolerance of opinion, irrespective of the
character of such opinion.(81) And this position,
secondly, was for the most part rooted in the
conviction that opinions are variable, or again that
there is no such thing as "absolute certainty."(82)
It must be emphasized that "pure tolerance" deriving
inspiration from a relativistic view of truth is not
an implication of Buddhist teachings. The tolerance
which Buddhism upholds rather is finally predicated
on other insights. Buddhists are not taught to be
instructed by every doctrine, or, still less, to
settle for a relativistic view of truth. The
viability of materialistic or deterministic
standpoints, for example, was always disputed in
Buddhist texts. But it is also noteworthy that the
Buddha refused to deride other creeds; on the
contrary, he showed on occasion a readiness to
recognize some spiritual strengths in them.(83) All
in all, what is basic to Buddhist tolerance is the
recognition of the need to confront conflicting
theories--"the tangle of views"(84)--in an open,
nondogmatic way. And this, to be sure, accords with
the spirit of Mill's thinking, even though the
actual informing ideas of Buddhist tolerance are
mainly traceable to certain specific emphases in
Buddhism's epistemological and ethical
positions.(85)
Equality as advocated by the two sides seems to
correspond in a somewhat closer way. Buddhism upheld
the biological unity of mankind, and consciously
opposed racism and caste-based distinctions (and in
the Indian milieu, the latter, it must be noted,
were often a most notorious basis for social
discrimination) .(86) The characteristic Buddhist
penchant to treat every human being on an equal
footing (samaasama) , was of course uniquely
reflected in the composition of the Buddhist
religious order (sa^mgha), which from its inception
was comprised of both men and women drawn from all
castes, classes, and conditions.(87) Pali texts
tend, in addition, to offer certain arguments
against various affectations and pretensions of
superiority--most notably those of the Brahmanical
kind. Buddhism explicitly disputed the existence of
any valid physical grounds for negatively
differentiating people; despite differences in some
attributes (like skin color or hair quality), all
members of the human species, it insisted, were
basically alike and hence heirs to an equal
dignity.(88) Again, stikingly enough, Mill's social
and political thinking evinces a parallel concern
for equality, although his stances are in the main
distinguished by a notable opposition to
gender-based discrimination (a circumstance borne
out by the arguments in Mill's influential work, The
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Subjection of Women). Like Buddhism, Mill was also
inclined to question the superiority claimed for
certain races; this, he suggested, is not
established by "the analytical examination of human
nature."(89) Mill repeatedly acknowledged the value
of equality; but in keeping with his secular
perspectives he saw it principally as an attribute
of civilization which is withal indispensable for
social improvement and progress.(90) However, in his
political thought Mill focused upon yet another
facet of equality. This was equal representation,
which, he insisted, was necessary in order to ensure
true democratic government (as opposed to
"government of inequality and privilege"(91)). And
it is also significant that, reflecting his
practical proclivities and reformist commitments,
Mill drew attention elsewhere to the need to enlist
the services of governments in the arduous task of
minimizing the effect of inequalities evidenced in
the world. "In racing for a prize," he observed,
"the stimulus to exertion on the part of the
competitors is only at its highest when all start
fair," and accordingly, he underscored the State's
obligation to do "something to strengthen the weaker
side, " without which "unfairness becomes truly
crushing and dispiriting" ("Civilization," CW, 19,
p. 591). Since its focus is on spiritual advancement
and salvation, Buddhism did not of course advocate
the need to enforce equality through governmental
intervention. Still, it is well to recall again that
equality was indeed enforced and sustained within
the ecclesiastical society of monks (sa^mgha). And
this, to be sure, was an example for the larger
society of the outside world to conform to and
follow.(92)
III
The foregoing discussion establishes that Buddhist
teachings and Mill's thinking can be juxtaposed
instructively at a variety of levels, even though
the two sides do not finally emerge as congruent
systems. It would be well to reiterate that both the
similarities as well as the differences encountered
in the course of this investigation point to two
important facts. The similarities are indicative of
the considerable area of agreement that subsists
between Buddhism, on the one hand, and Western
critical philosophy such as is notably informed by
empiricist perspectives, on the other. The
differences, for their part, remind us of the
permanent gulf which separates soteriological quests
from secular-intellectualist endeavors. But
considered overall, the distinctive ways in which
the details of Mill's thinking relate to Buddhism
reflect in great measure the complex philosophical,
ideological and cultural underpinnings of that
thinking. The latter, of course, had their roots in
the West, and, notably enough, most of Mill's
divergences from Buddhist positions that have been
highlighted in the preceding pages are ultimately
traceable to the determinative effects which the
various elements in Mill's Western background have
had in shaping the character, direction, and tone of
his thinking. In this connection it is useful to
recall, for example, that Mill's limitation of
knowledge to the deliverances of the senses mirrors
a basic emphasis of Western empirical philosophy and
science, and his preoccupation
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with reform and improvement here on earth derives
its justification from utilitarian doctrines.(93)
Though he did not attempt directly to highlight them
often, Mill also manifested-especially in his mature
work--an allegiance to some of the values nurtured
in the traditional culture of his English Protestant
environment. The significance he attached to the
human person, freedom, and education have (as Mill
himself hinted sometimes in Auguste Comte and
Positivism) a deeper basis in Protestant values. And
it must likewise be noted that the classic concerns
of Western religious inquiry (God's existence as a
Creator, the status of revelation and immortality)
loomed large in Mill's religious thinking, even
though he tended in the main to view these topics in
a spirit of criticism rather than conformity.(94)
Indeed, Mill's philosophy of life, in the final
reckoning, was anchored in the value structure
derived from these complex sources. This is
especially borne out by a striking passage in
"Utilitarianism" where Mill projected the view that
though suffering and pain are common presences in
the human scene, man's aim should be to overcome
them through the application of innovative
intelligence, will, and effort. Here, he said:
... no one whose opinion deserves a moment's
consideration can doubt that most of the great
positive evils of the world are in themselves
removable, and will, if human affairs continue to
improve, be in the end reduced within narrow limits.
Poverty, in any sense implying suffering, may be
completely extinguished by the wisdom of society,
combined with the good sense and providence of
individuals. Even the most intractable of enemies,
disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions
by good physical and moral education, and proper
control of noxious influences; while the progress of
science holds out a promise for the future of still
more direct conquests over this detestable foe....
As for the vicissitudes of fortune, and other
disappointments connected with worldly
circumstances, these are principally the effect
either of gross imprudence, of illregulated desires,
or of bad or imperfect social institutions. All the
grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a
great degree, many of them almost entirely,
conquerable by human care and effort.... (CW, 10,
pp. 216-217)
Call them utopian or practical, this hope in a
better world here on earth and the concomitant
belief that individual as well as collective
energies should be directed toward its realization
indeed remained the more deeply inspiring tenets of
Mill's philosophical and religious thinking.(95)
Buddhism, to be sure, did not view life or interpret
its goals on these lines, although, as should be
apparent from the foregoing clarifications, a caring
concern for the betterment of the world around us
can certainly be accommodated within its philosophy.
Improvement and transformation were also emphases of
Buddhism, as they were in Mill's thinking (and one
finally must not overlook the parallelism
encountered here, despite its formal character). But
it would be useful to reiterate a point made at the
outset--what Buddhism valued and pursued was
absolute inner transformation (in a word,
perfection) , and, unlike Mill, it took the
individual seeker as its focus, and set out to
achieve this goal through highly specialized
techniques of mental and moral culture.
What is the more important. realizable
ideal--the general improvement of the
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mass of human beings in society, or the absolute
spiritual perfection of its individual members?
Though Mill showed a certain penchant for
elitism,(96) evidently his thinking and Buddhism
tended, by and large, to provide divergent answers
to this crucial question; and I suspect that the
differences that separate the two sides here have a
larger significance in that they epitomize in some
ways the "cultural distance" between the traditional
East and the modern West. But again, what a
comparativist in particular must focus upon even at
this level is the shared concern for the development
of human potentialities and the over-all enhancement
of the quality of life, though these, predictably
enough, were perceived and interpreted in dissimilar
ways in the two systems. Mill was persuaded that
that the commitment to human well-being and worldly
betterment would be the informing ideal of the
"religion of the future" ("Theism," CW, 10, p. 489)
. Given its emphasis on salvation and transcendence,
Buddhism, needless to say, cannot absorb this purely
humanistic ideal in its entirety. But it can, on the
other hand, enrich it: most notably by demonstrating
the relevance of mental, moral, and spiritual
self-discipline to the actualization of the secular
goals of social progress. Perhaps this might be one
means of working towards an East-West synthesis in
philosophy--at least in relation to some of the
prominent concerns that figure in the context of our
comparison.(97)
NOTES
1. Cf. T. W. Rhys Davids, Lectures or the Origin
and Growth of Buddhism, Hibbert Lectures (London:
Norgate & Williams, 1881), pp. 125, 155; T. H.
Huxley, Evolution and Ethics (London: Pilot Press,
1947), pp. 70 ff.
2. 'Buddhism' in what follows stands for early
Buddhism, that is to say, the teachings of the
Buddha as expounded in the Pali canon and associated
commentarial or expository literature.
3. Cf. H. H. Price, "The Present Relations
between Eastern and Western Philosophy," The Hibbert
Journal 53 (1955); K. N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist
Theory of Knowledge (London: George Allen & Unwin.
1963), Donald W. Mitchell, "Analysis in Theravaada
Buddhism, " Philosophy East and West 21, no. 1
(January 1971), K. K. Inada and N. P. Jacobson,
eds., Buddhism and American Thinkers (Albany, New
York: State University of New York Press, 1984).
4. Cf. N. P. Jacobson, Buddhism: The Religion of
Analysis, chap. 8 (London & New York, Humanities
Press, 1966); Chris Gudmunsen, Wittgenstein and
Buddhism (London: The Macmillan Press, 1966).
5. The references to Mill's writings cited in
this article are to the presently available
twenty-one volumes of the series The Collected Works
of John Stuart Mill, ed. by J. M. Robson (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1963- 1985). In this
article individual references from this edition will
hereafter be identified as CW, followed by
appropriate volume and page numbers. The sources for
longer citations from Mill are indicated in
parentheses in the text of the article itself.
6. Although I doubt very much whether the
affinities between Buddhism and Mill's thinking have
been examined in extenso by anyone, it is necessary
to point out that exponents of the former system in
particular, however, have occasionally referred to
Mill's ideas in order to clarify Buddhist doctrinal
positions. For example, utilitarian stances and Mill
himself have been mentioned by Mrs. C. A. F. Rhys
Davids in the course of the lengthy clarification of
Buddhist moral and philosophical attitudes which
accompanied her English translation of the first
book in the Abhidamma Pi.taka, Dhamma-Sa^ngani (see
A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics (London:
The Pali Text Society,
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1974) , pp. xci, xxxv, 263-263 n.) .
Interestingly enough, this pioneer in the field
of Pali textual research saw something akin to a
utilitarian approach in Buddhist standpoints on
ethical values. Elsewhere (Compendium of
Philosophy, English trans. of
Abhidammattha-Sangaha by Shwe Zan Aung and Mrs.
Rhys Davids (London: The Pali Text Society,
1979), p. 261), Mill's thinking on causality
implicit in his contributions to inductive logic
(namely, the "Method of Difference") has been
linked to a particular interpretation of the
Buddhist causal formula (pa.ticca samuppaada) in
the Pali commentaries of Sri Lanka. The latter
parallel has also figured more recently in an
epistemological discussion relating to Buddhism,
albeit again in passing only. Jayatilleke (Early
Buddhist Theory, pp. 146ff.) has referred to the
existence of a similarity between the methods of
discovering a causal connection as given in
Mill's A System of Logic and in the Pali
Nikaayas. See also G. R. Gupta. "Certain Aspects
of the Causal Theories of the Buddhists, Hume
and Mill," Indian Philosophical Quarterly 5
(1978).
7. See "Utility of Religion," CW, 10, p. 427. In
an implicit reference to Buddhism's nirvaa.nic goal,
Mill observed here that the idea of personal
immortality (so central in traditional Western
creeds) is excluded from this Eastern religion which
"counts at this day a greater number of votaries
than either the Christian or the Mohamedan." More
important, he considered this circumstance as
"proof" that the "Religion of Humanity" (the
humanistic, secular religion which Mill proposed,
adopting Comtean insights, as a possible substitute
for the West's old creeds) can indeed be viable, and
have popular appeal, despite the fact that it, too
(like Buddhism), excluded the idea of personal
immortality. It remains to be observed, however,
that Mill was mistaken when he repeated a then
prevalent view that Buddhism's highest "blessing is
"annihilation," though he is perhaps less open to
criticism for his suggestion that he took this to
mean "the cessation, at least. of all conscious or
separate existence." Of course, Buddhists prefer to
maintain that as a transcendent state, nirvaa.na is
beyond conceptualization altogether. In any event,
Mill also alluded to the Buddhist belief in karman
earlier in this context, but this again reflected
defective information: he mentioned "the
transmigration of the soul into new bodies of men
and animals," without recognizing that Buddhism
(much like Mill himself, as will be seen
subsequently) rejects the notion of a soul, and
gives instead a reductive, phenomenalistic account
of the mind.
8. Though Mill consciously avoided the term
empiricism, he took his stand with the British
empiricists in holding that the raw material of
knowledge is provided by experience. Mill's
empiricism (or rather experientialism, as he
preferred to call it), however, had some special
features: it applied the associationist principles
of Hartley and James Mill in notable ways, and
steered clear of both subjectivism and skepticism
through a strong commitment to inductive
explanation. Cf. A. J. Ayer and P. Winch, eds.,
British Empirical Philosophers (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1952), Introduction: K. Britton, John
Stuart Mill (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953); R. P.
Anschutz, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953) ; A. Ryan, The
Philosophy · of John Stuart Mill (London:
Macmillan, 1970); J. H. Randall, "J. S. Mill and the
Working Out of Empiricism." Journal of the History
of Ideas 26(1965).
9. Philosophic radicalism had a solid, albeit
complex, ideological basis. Cf. E. Halevy, The
Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (London: Gaber &
Gwyer, 1928). Its most important component elements
were largely derived from the writings of Jeremy
Bentham, although Mill's father (James Mill) also
played a notable role in the formation of
nineteenth-century radical thinking. The radicals'
characteristic commitment to utilitarianism, for
example, was predicated on Bentham's "Greatest
Happiness Principle" (which held that actions are
right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, and wrong as they produce the reverse of
happiness, pain). For a connected view of the
development of English utilitarianism in the
thinking of its principal figures, see L. Stephen,
English Utilitarians, 3 vols. (London: Duckworth,
1900). Cf. J. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1958).
10. Though Mill's own outlook was by and large
colored by the overall emphases of the Benthamite
school, after his celebrated "mental crisis" in
particular, he broadened his horizons considerably
as recorded in Mill's Autobiography (CW, 1). Cf. J.
Durham, "The Influence of John Stuart Mill's Mental
Crisis on his Thought," American Imago 20 (1963).
His later writings (especially in ethics and
religion) tend on occasion to reflect this rather
strikingly. For information on the complex
influences on and standpoints in Mill's overall work
see the following: J. Viner, "Bentham and J. S.
Mill: The Utilitarian Background," American Economic
Review 39 (1949); J. Hamburger, Intellectuals in
Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic
Radicals (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale
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University Press, 1965); J. M. Robson, The
Improvement of Mankind. The Social and Political
Thought cf John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1968); E. R. August, John
Stuart Mill: A Mind at Large (New York:
Scribner's, 1975); P. Classman, J. S. Mill. The
Evolution of a Genius (Gainsville, Florida:
University Presses of Florida, 1985).
11. For elucidations on Buddhism's character as
soteriological system, and also the philosophical
outlook it projects, see the following: M. Walleser,
Die Philosophische Grundlage des Alten Buddhismus
(Berlin, 1904); I. B. Horner, The Early Buddhist
Theory of Man Perfected (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1936); E. Lamotte, The Spirit of Ancient
Buddhism (Rome, 1961); G. Appleton, The Eightfold
Path (New York, 1961); Piyadassi Thera, The Buddha
's Ancient Path (London, 1961).
12. It would be useful to observe that the
preoccupation with the outer (socioeconomic)
transformation is not without its implications for
the development of the individual's inner life.
Besides, even though those who think in terms of a
perfect society rarely recognize it, their endeavors
have some affinities to the drive for individual
perfection manifesting in religion. And it is
perhaps likewise possible to argue in the reverse
here. Thus the two variants of transformative
thinking identified in the preceding can, after all,
meet--not overtly, but in subtle ways. Cf. Alfred
Brunthal. Salvation and Perfect Society: The
Eternal Quest (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1979). I do not, however,
propose to delve into this very complex subject
here. What needs to be borne in mind is that
religious "perfectionism" and secular-social
"meliorism" might on closer scrutiny reveal some
common roots.
13. See Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory, p.
416. Jayatilleke is of the view that Buddhism's
emphasis that "knowing" (jaana.m) must be based on
"seeing" (passa.m) or direct perceptual experience
makes it a form of empiricism (ibid. p. 463).
14. See Autobiography, CW, 1, p. 269.
15. See ibid., p. 233.
16. See A System of Logic, in CW, 7, p. 64. In
subsequent references the title of this work will be
abbreviated as Logic.
17. See ibid., bk. 3. Inferential knowledge and
its norms were the special focus of Mill's thinking
in much of the Logic. Cf. E. Nagel, ed., John Stuart
Mill's Philosophy of Scientific Method (New York:
Hafner, 1950), Introduction.
18. Cf. J. B. Pratt, "Buddhism and Scientific
Thinking," Journal of Religion 14 (1934); N. P.
Jacobson, Buddhism. A Religion of Analysis.
19. See Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory, p.
463; cf. pp. 442-443.
20. Cf. note 6 preceding.
21. See Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory, p.
437 ff. Cf. E. R. Sarathchandra, Buddhist
Psycholog of Perception (Colomb: Gunasena & Co.,
1958).
22. See Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory,
chap. 9; he has identified some of the relevant
contexts and also detailed the nature and the range
of the extrasensory perception as admitted in the
early literature of Buddhism.
23. Raising the mind to its higher potential is
compared in the Buddhist texts to the refining of
ores to get gold. Cf. A^nguttara Nikaaya, II, 16;
Sa^myutta Nikaaya, V, 92-93.
24. Cf. Majjhima Nikaaya, I, 111; Suttanipaata,
229; A^nguttara Nikaaya, V, 42, 44.
25. This citation is from Mill's An Examination
of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.
26. These remarks (in Early Letters, 2), it is
interesting to observe, were made in the course of a
reply to a question by John Sterling about knowledge
of higher principles and final matters. Mill was
interested simply in the laws governing phenomena:
"...above all" he added, "mine is a logic of the
indicative mood alone--the logic of the imperative
in which the major premise says not is but ought--I
do not meddle with" (ibid.). This emphasis inspired
the nature of Mill's commitment to inductive
explanation in particular, and here again, it is
well to remark, his thinking shows distinctive
features when compared to Buddhism. Indeed, though
inductivist tendencies are evident in Buddhism,
inductive explanation is not systematically
enunciated there with a view to achieving heuristic
goals in a world of everyday events and objective
facts. On the other hand this was exactly what Mill
aimed at: a complete logic of the sciences was to
him also a "complete logic of practical business and
common life" (Logic, CW, 7, p. 284). Cf. H. T.
Walsh, "Whewell and Mill on Induction," Philosophy
of Science 29, (1962).
27. Anschutz, The Philosophy of John Stuart
Mill, p. xii.
P.279
28. Autobiography, in CW, 1, p. 233. The other
citations in the remainder of the present paragraph
are also taken from this context.
29. This position, I think, can by and large be
maintained even when it is recognized that
intuitionism was applied to the field of religious
explanation by Hamilton's disciple Mansel, and that
this to be sure drew a famous attack from Mill. Cf.
Mill, Examination, chap. 7. For the Western
intuitionist's knowledge of religious truth, it
appears, was not obtained through a process of
refining or disciplining the mind (as was indeed the
case with Buddhism). If anything, a deep faith
informed this knowledge, coupled perhaps with a
reasoned conviction that faith had a proper sphere
in matters of an ultimate nature. Cf. Herbert
Spencer, "Mill versus Hamilton--The Test of Truth,"
Fortnightly Review 1 (1865): D. W. Dockrill, "The
Limits of Thought and Regulative Truths," Journal of
Theological Studies 21 (1970).
30. I do not mean to suggest here that Buddhism
is a mystical system. Many exponents have, on the
contrary, detected opposite features in it. Cf. L.
De la Valle Poussin, The Way of Nirvana (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 30. The point
to be noted presently is the implication of a
Buddhist position as seen from a Millian angle.
31. See Mill's letter to Thomas Carlyle (1834),
in Earlier Letters, CW, 12, p. 216.
32. Nevertheless, the demand for naturalistic
explanation was a consistent emphasis in Mill's
thinking. It comes to the fore well in his clash
with Mansel (refered to already in note 29). Here,
as Alan Ryan (see Mill, Examination, CW, 9.
Introduction, p. xx) has rightly observed, Mill's
secular, this-worldly temperament showed itself
singularly at odds with points of view that admitted
things opaque to the logic of common experience--the
sense of the mysterious and the supernatural.
33. I say this especially because, as will be
seen shortly in the comparison of metaphysical
points of view, Mill indeed went to some lengths in
adumbrating the way in which the prospect of
survival can be accommodated within a
phenomenalistic analysis of the self and personality
which he proposed. Hume, in contrast, merely
conceded at one point that metempsychosis is an idea
that "philosophy can harken to" ("On the Immortality
of the Soul, " in Essays Moral, Political and
Literary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p.
603). Since it is prominently applied to both mind
and matter, Mill's rejection on the notion of
substance is also more broad-based, and the many
details that enter into his critique of substance
provide ample opportunities for observing how his
thinking relates to Buddhist positions. Cf. Hume, A
Treatise of Human Nature, bk. 1, pt. 4, sections 5,
6.
34. In addition to the body (ruupa). Buddhism
identifies in this connection feelings (vedanaa),
perception (sa~n~naa) , volitional activities
(sa^mkhaara), and consciousness (vi~n~naana). The
canonical sources that deal with this doctrine are
identified in detail in a recent interpretative
study, Joaquin Perez-Remon, Self and Non-Self in
Early Buddhism (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1980).
35. See Milinda's Questions, trans. by I. B.
Horner (London: Luzac & Co., 1969), vol. 1, pp. 34
ff. Here, the monk-sage Naagasena, in confronting
the Bactrian Greek king Milinda, indeed offers a
thoroughly reductive account of the self, without,
of course, attending to the difficutlties which such
an account tends to entail at the purely
philosophical level. Cf. W. Davie, "Hume on
Perceptions and Persons," Hume Studies 10(1984).
36. See The Path of Purity, trans. by P. Maung
Tin (London: The Pall Text Society, 1971), p. 609.
The view that there is "ill, but no one to feel it,
action, but no doer," is prominently maintained in
this context.
37. Thus. arguing against Hamilton's view that a
"self" is immediately apprehended in our primitive
consciousness. Mill pointed out in the Examination
that these sensations never "awaken in us any notion
of an ego or self." To refer them to an ego, he
said, is to consider them as "part of a series of
states of consciousness, some portion of which is
already past. The identification of a present state
with a remembered state cognized as past, is what,
to my thinking, constitutes the cognition that it is
I who feel it. 'I' means he who saw, touched, or
felt something yesterday or the day before. No
single sensation can suggest personal identity: this
requires a series of sensations, thought of as
forming a line of succession, and summed up in
thought into a Unity" (Mill, Examination, CW, 9, p.
210).
38. Mill's thinking on material substance (which
is most interestingly developed in the Examination,
the source for our foregoing citations) has been the
focus of some philosophical investigation. See, for
example, H. H. Price. "Mill's View of the External
World," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 37.
(1927); J. P. Day, 'Mill on Matter," Philosophy 38
(1963).
P.280
39. For an elaboration of the relevant details,
see Y. Karunadasa, Buddhist Analysis of Matter
(Colombo: Department of Cultural Affairs, 1967).
40. See ibid. p. 14.
41. See ibid. pp. 41,49.
42. Cf. Lynn A. de Silva. The Problem of Self in
Buddhism and Christianity (London: The Macmillan
Press, 1979), p. 20.
43. Selfless Persons, Imagery and Thought in
Theravada Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), p. 12.
44. Cf. ibid., parts 3 and 4 in particular.
45. However, comparativists. I believe, must
impugn Collins's contention in the preceding work
that the conceptual products of Buddhist culture
(and in particular, patterns of imaginistic
representation invoked to explain personality and
personal continuity there) display a "specificity"
and that Western philosophy has nothing in common
with them. As will be evident shortly, Mill, too,
resorted to imagery (invoking, significantly, a
"negative parallel" with plants) in order to
elucidate his view of the prospect of survival
within a framework of thought which excluded
anything of the nature of a perdurable essence
underlying the personality. Since Collins insists
that the use of imagery of plants and plant growth
in Buddhist texts is a pointer to the localized
cultural imagination of the peasant society which
sustained Buddhism, it is well to point out that
imagery of much the same kind is drawn into the very
English thinking of our Victorian philosopher. Its
prominence in Mill's essay On Liberty has been the
focus of considerable discussion. Cf. Charles
Matthews, "Argument through Metaphor in John Stuart
Mill's On Liberty," Language and Style 4 (1971);
Gordon D. Hirsch, "Organic Imagery and the
Psychology of Mill's On Liberty," The Mill News
Letter 10 (1975).
46. As a reformist philosopher, Mill was mindful
of the influence of ideas on actions, and stressed
this fact, as indicated earlier, in criticizing
intuitionism in particular. Cf. Autobiography, CW,
1, p. 233. Yet, even though some of his most
characteristic arguments against the idea of
substance are set forth in the Examination (where
anti-intuitionist stances are most evident), Mill
did not identify any negative consequences that stem
from the belief in substance. In Buddhism, on the
other hand, this belief tends to be viewed as a
source of egoism and worldly attachment, and hence
an impediment to spiritual emancipation.
47. Collins, Selfless Persons.
48. Given the soteriological character of this
doctrine, the exclusion of criticism, however, is
hardly surprising. Buddhists, in any event. are
likely to say that its adequacy has to be gauged
finally at an extra-intellectual level.
49. Cf. Helmuth von Glasenapp, Buddhism, A
Non-Theistic Religion (London, 1970) . See in
particular pp. 19 and 35 for information on the
classic Nikaaya sources, which set Forth critiques
of theism or highlight Buddhism s negative attitudes
to creationist world views.
50. This "law" was actually a generalization
about the development of human knowledge, which, it
was held. passed through the theological,
metaphysical, and positive stages. Mill hailed it
and maintained that it was backed by "a high degree
of scientific evidence" (Logic, vol. 2, CW, 8, p.
928). Comte's law as ordinarily understood virtually
consigned theologically grounded explanation to the
infancy of human thinking, although in the Logic
(see ibid., footnote) in particular, Mill sought to
soften its implications to some extent. Cf. Mill's
Auguste Comte and Positivism, in CW, 10.
51. In "Nature," for example, Mill observed that
"however offensive the proposition may appear to
many religious persons. they should be willing to
look in the face the undeniable fact, that the order
of nature, in so far as unmodified by man, is such
as no being, whose attributes are justice and
benevolence would have made," and "Not even on the
most distorted and contracted theory of good which
ever was framed by religious and philosophical
fanaticism, can the government of Nature be made to
resemble the work of a being at once good and
omnipotent" (CW, 10, pp. 383, 389). Mill held fast
to the points emphasized here in his two other
religious essays, "Utility of Religion" and "Theism"
(see ibid., pp. 425, 456, 466), though, as will be
seen in what follows, the latter (posthumous)
composition also contains some tenuous concessions
to theistic belief. Cf. George Nakhnikian, ed.,
Mill, Nature and Utility of Religion (New York: The
Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1958), Introduction.
52. See The Jaataka, or Stories from the
Buddha's Former Births, trans. by E. B. Cowell
(London: The Pali Text Society, 1973), vol. 6, p.
110. The reality of Brahmaa(the divine creator of
the Hindu
P.281
tradition) is disputed here in the following lines:
He who has eyes can see the sickening sight:
Why does not Brahma set his creatures right?
If his wide power no limits can restrain,
Why is his hand so rarely spread to bless?
Why are his creatures all condemned to pain?
Why does he not to all give happiness?
Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail?
Why triumphs falsehood,--truth and justice fail?
I count your Brahma one th' injust among,
Who made a world in which to shelter wrong.
It would be instructive to add that while disputing
the validity of the conventional theistic and
deistic assumptions of his own milieu, Mill,
however, went a little further and also contested
the claims of those who sought to reconcile the
reality of evil with the Creator's benevolence:
theodicy, Mill insisted, was a futile exercise. (See
"Nature," CW, 10, p. 390ff.) All in all, Mill was
at pains to point out that these forms of belief
could not be sustained in the court of critical
reasoning. The universe, Mill said, is "capriciously
governed," and observed in the "Utility of Religion"
that "for a person of exercised intellect faith in
God is difficult to attain, given the evil in the
world" (ibid., p. 425).
53. Cf. Glassenapp, Buddhism (cited note 49), p.
17, also Mahaa Samaya Suttanta (Digha Nikaaya, XX).
In addition, Buddhism acknowledges the existence of
spirits of high or low condition (as is evidenced in
such notable contexts as the Vimanavattu and
Petavattu). It is noteworthy, however, that Buddhism
as a religion does not of course call for the
worshipping or the propitiation of these
supernatural beings; further, they had no role to
play in an individual's quest for salvation. Indeed,
being mortal, such beings themselves were in need of
the Buddha's "saving message.'' A somewhat similar
qualification has to be made with regard to miracles
and prodigies: though they figure in Buddhist texts,
Buddhist doctrines are not predicated on them. The
miraculous as such is irrelevant to the concerns of
Buddhist liberation. Cf. Paatika Suttanta (Digha
Nikaaya, XXIV).
54. The point that needs to be emphasized here
is that Mill was not just another skeptic in
religion (or, Still less, an atheist), for there was
a certain dimension of belief in his thinking. For
some relevant inquiries on this matter see the
following: Robert Carr, "The Religious Thought of J.
S. Mill: A Study in Reluctant Scepticism," Journal
of the History of Ideas 23 (1963); D. Krook, Three
Traditions of Moral Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1959), chap. 7; Karl Britton,
"John Stuart Mill on Christianity," in James and
John Stuart Mill, Papers of the Centenary
Conference, ed. by J. M. Robson and M. Laine
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976).
55. Of course Mill's thinking at this level
displays other highly distinctive features. For
example, he was of the view that one could hope in
things that could not be proved; moreover, Mill
confessed to a readiness to set aside "rational
criticism" of Christian claims and look up to Christ
as "the pattern of perfection for humanity" (ibid.,
pp. 485, 487). Mill indeed tended to evince an
attraction of a sort towards Christianity in the
evening of his life. Cf. section III following.
56. See "Of the Grounds of Disbelief," in
Logic, CW, 7, chap. 25; and also "Theism," CW, 10,
section on "Revelation." pp. 470 ff. The negative
evaluation of the miraculous seen in the latter
context actually became the basis for impugning the
evidential background of revealed knowledge, for
Mill insisted that a divine revelation cannot be
proved. save by "the exhibition of supernatural
facts" (p. 470) . But in this sphere. Mill's
thinking. interestingly enough. shares some common
ground with Buddhism. For implicit in the positions
of the latter system, too, is a questioning of the
validity of revealed knowledge. See Tevijjaa
Suttanta (Diigha Nikaaya, XIII). Cf. Jayatilleke,
Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, pp. 128 ff.
57. The redemption which the Buddha sought and
won is indeed represented finally as an escape from
the round of births and rebirths and the attendant
sorrows. Cf. Dhammapada, verse 153.
58. See, for example, "Theism," CW, 10, pp. 460,
461. In this context Mill often used the phrase
"immortality of the soul." It is. needless to say,
the conventional Judeo-Christian perceptions of a
beyond that are commonly articulated through this
phrase.
59. "A flower of the most exquisite form and
colour," Mill remarked, "grows up from a root, comes
to perfection in weeks or months, and lasts only a
few hours or days. Why should it be
P.282
otherwise with man? Why indeed. But why, also,
should it not be otherwise? Feeling and thought are
not merely different from what we call inanimate
matter, but are at the opposite pole of existence,
and analogical inference has little or no validity
from the one to the other" ("Theism," CW, 10, p.
462).
60. See Milinda's Questions, trans. by I. B.
Horner, vol. 1 p. 56.
61. In this connection Naagasena drew attention
to the change and continuity underlying a burning
lamp flame. and again to milk in its transformations
into butter, curd. and so forth. In what is perhaps
a more striking clarification of the process of
rebirth elsewhere in this work (ibid., p. 97),
Naagasena argued that the reconnection of
consciousness (pa.tisandhi) from one state of being
to another could be understood after the manner of
the lighting of one lamp from another or the
learning of a poem by one individual from another.
All in all, these analogies, it was argued. helped
establish that "that which does not pass over (yet)
reconnects" (ibid) . Many Indian systems regard
analogy or comparison (upamaa) as a valid means of
knowledge. However, it is doubtful whether reasoning
of the kind Naagasena employed here would pass
muster in Mill's system. In Logic (bk. 3, chap. 20),
Mill characterized analogy as a mode of reasoning
which is inductive in nature, though not amounting
to a complete induction. Conclusions derived from
analogy, he affirmed. are of "any considerable
value" only when "the case to which we reason is an
adjacent case"--adjacent, most important, in
circumstances (CW, 7, p. 559). Mill's religious
thinking in the contexts already cited reflects the
spirit of his logic: the burden of his argument at
one point was to dispute the validity of popular
analogical reasoning invoked to overrule the
possibility of survival.
62. As mentioned (see note 7 preceding), in his
only reference to Buddhist teachings, Mill of course
demonstrated an awareness of this point.
63. See Sa^myutta Nikaaya, IV, 172, 188.
64. See "Utilitarianism," CW, 10, p. 210. The
famous opening statement in Bentham's An
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation (1789) is worthy of recall in this
connection. Here, Bentham declared: "Nature has
placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign
masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to
point out what we ought to do, as well as determine
what we shall do" (chap. 1, sec. 1). Proceeding on
this basis, Mill's ethic of utility sought to
interpret happiness as pleasure and unhappiness as
pain; actions, likewise, were regarded as "right in
proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong
as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness"
(CW, 10, p. 210).
65. See note 6 preceding and Mrs. Rhys Davids,
Buddhist Psychological Ethics, p. xciii. It might be
in place to observe that Mill's celebrated
distinction between "higher" and "lower" pleasures
and the accompanying defense of mental cultivation
(see "Utilitarianism," chap. 2) could perhaps be
invoked to justify the committed Buddhist's
soteriological quest: nibbaana to the believer was,
after all, the highest pleasure (parama^m sukha^m).
But on the other hand, one must not also forget that
Mill's ethical as well as religious thinking even at
their highest levels remained moored to
secular-meliorist concerns of a this-worldly nature.
Cf. "Theism," CW, 10, pp. 488-489.
66. It should be observed that causality enjoys
a vital place in Buddhist thinking. Cf. D. J.
Kalupahana, Causality: The Central Philosophy of
Buddhism (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii
Press, 1975). One of Buddhism's key teachings, the
doctrine of Dependent Origination (pa.ticca
samuppaada) , is indeed set forth as a causal
formula. The recognition of causal laws is crucial
to Mill's thinking as well. Mill went so far as to
call it the "main pillar of inductive science," and
maintained that the "undoubted assurance we have
that there is a law to be found if only we knew how
to find it" is in turn "the source from which the
canons of the Inductive Logic derive their
validity" (CW, 7, p. 327). It must be observed,
however, that Mill sought to dissociate himself from
"research into the ultimate or ontological causes
of anything" (ibid., p. 326). Though in certain
doctrinal settings (like the Cuula Maalu^nkya Sutta
in the Majjhima Nikaaya) Buddhism also projects a
similar stance, there could be some doubts as to
whether it is persistently maintained there in view
of the ontological overtones found in the pa.ticca
samuppaada.
67. See verse 165.
68. In dwelling further on this point Mill gave
expression to views which reflect a spirit often
evident in Buddhist ethical thinking as well. For he
argued that "a person feels morally free who feels
that his habits or his temptations are not his
masters, but he theirs: who even in yielding to them
knows that he could resist.... And hence it is said
with truth that none but a person of confirmed
virtue is completely free" (Cw, 8, p. 841 ).
P.283
69. Buddhists are apt to see in kammavipaaka the
operations of a cosmic moral law; texts like the
Dhammapada (verses 1-2) tend to represent it as an
inexorable influence on life. Besides, kamma as such
is reckoned to be the controlling element in
rebirth. It is again difficult to say how much of
these ideas would pass muster in Mill's system. But
it is significant that in "Theism" (CW, 10, pp.
466-467) he made the following statement, which, to
be sure, has some bearing on Buddhist stances:
Nothing can be more opposed to every estimate we can
form of probability than the common idea of the
future life as a state of rewards and punishments in
any other sense than that the consequences of our
actions upon our own character and susceptibilities
will follow us in the future as they have done in
the past and the present. Whatever the probabilities
of a future life, all the probabilities in case of a
future life are that such as we have been made or
have made ourselves before the change, such we shall
enter into in the life hereafter; and that the fact
of death will make no sudden break in our spiritual
life, nor influence our character any otherwise than
as any important change in our mode of existence may
always be expected to modify it.
70. This is underscored in Buddhism's "Four
Truths" (cattaari ariyasaccaani) and again in
specific textual contexts (cf. Majjhima Nikaaya,
22). Suffering (dukkha) in the Buddhist view was of
course one of the three properties of existence
(tilakkhanaan) , the others being impermanence
(anicca) and egolessness (anattaa). As is evident
from the maxim yad anicca^m ta^m dukkha^m ("whatever
is impermanent is fraught with suffering"), Buddhism
regards the entire phenomenal realm to be under the
sway of dukkha.
71. The characteristic optimism of the
utilitarian reformer stands out clearly at some
levels of Mill's thinking. Thus, in "Utilitarianism"
(CW, 10, p. 217), Mill contended that "all the grand
sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great
degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by
human care and effort... though their removal is
grievously slow...." Cf. section III following.
72. Again, while discussing the skeptical
opinions of his father (James Mill) in the
Autobiography (CW, 1, p. 49), Mill said that ours is
a "world so crowded with suffering and so deformed
by injustice."
73. However, it is worth emphasizing that Mill's
strategy for coping with suffering and evil differed
from that of Buddhism. Mill set out to contain and
minimize these untoward circumstances through social
action, in a word, reform. Focusing primarily on the
inveterate aspects of suffering (such as decay,
transience, and, mortality), Buddhism of course
adopted the stance that one must finally transcend
the world in order to overcome suffering.
74. "Utilitarianism," CW, 10, p. 214. It is
worth pointing out that Mill's preceding reference
to "the whole of sentient creation" can fairly be
juxtaposed with the classic focus of Buddhist
compassion, sabbe sattaa ("all beings").
75. In An introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation (chap. 17, sec. 1), Bentham
highlighted the capacity of animals to suffer, and
argued for the need to take their concerns into due
consideration in morality and law. On this account
Bentham has been indeed acclaimed as a pioneering
Western defender of animal rights. Cf. Peter Singer,
Animal Liberation, Toward an End to Man's Inhumanity
to Animals (London: Paladin Books, 1978) pp. 26-27.
76. See "Whewell on Moral Philosophy." CW, 10,
p. 185. It should be noted that Mill's recognition
that feeling, suffering, and sympathy are common
bonds uniting man and beast, which is evident both
here and again in "Utilitarianism" (ibid., p. 247),
indeed echoes in the main a psychological insight
underscored in certain Buddhist texts such as the
Dhammapada (X, 129-132) and the Udaana (II, iii),
namely, that since all creatures cherish their
lives, and fear pain and death, comparing others to
oneself, one should neither kill nor cause to kill.
77. See CW, 3, p. 952. "Lower animals." he
declared here, are the "unfortunate slaves and
victims of the most brutal part of mankind"; he held
that "it is by the grossest misunderstanding of the
principles of liberty, that the infliction of
exemplary punishment on ruffianism practised towards
these defenceless creatures has been treated as a
meddling by government with things beyond its
province."
78. Cf. Phra Khantipalo, Tolerance, A Study from
Buddhist Sources (London, 1964). The Pali word for
tolerance is khantii, which literally means
patience. The dictionary definition of tolerance, it
is worth noticing, is the "disposition to be patient
with or indulgent towards the opinions and practices
of others."
P.284
79. In the Majjhima Nikaaya (I, 372), for
example, the Buddha counselled the Jaina layman
Upali to embrace religious precepts only after due
investigation. This sentiment is again underscored
in the Discourse to the Kalamas (A^nguttara Nikaaya,
I, 189) and likewise in the Diigha Nikaaya (I, 3).
For A`soka's advocacy of tolerance see T. W. Rhys
Davids, Buddhist India (Delhi: Indological Book
House, 1970), pp. 133-134. In several edicts A`soka
not only extolled the spirit of tolerance, but also
expressed his respect for all religious sects.
80. See the essay On Liberty (CW, 18, pp. 228
ff) . Mill was of course concerned with all
manifestations of intolerance. both religious and
otherwise. Nevertheless, in dealing with this
subject he evinced a strong awareness of the impact
which intolerance associated with religion had had
on Western history.
81. Indeed, Mill maintained that "if all mankind
minus one were of one opinion, and only one person
were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no
more justified in silencing that one person, than
he, if he had the power, would be justified in
silencing mankind" (CW, 18, p. 229). Though a
laudable extension of libertarian perspectives, this
advocacy of "pure tolerance" has generated some
criticism. For example, in arguing against Mill, a
noted nineteenth-century writer, Sir James Fitzjames
Stephen (see Liberty, Equality and Fraternity),
insisted that there is no need to attach equal
weight to every opinion. since some are false and
even pernicious. This view has been echoed by recent
thinkers as well. Cf. R. P. Wolfe, B. Moore and H.
Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston,
1969). However, Mill took the position that even the
freedom to propagate wrong opinions can be
beneficial: contact with error, he said, had the
effect of producing a "clearer and livelier
impression of truth" (CW, 18, p. 229).
82. Ibid. Mill was sometimes inclined to the
view that truth is "many-sided." Cf. Earlier
Letters, CW, 12, p. 181.
83. Cf. Diigha Nikaaya, II, 151; XIII, 35-36.
84. Di.t.thi-visuuka.m, Majjhima Nikaaya, I, 8.
Cf. Sa^myutta Nikaaya, I, 20.
85. The main epistemological factors that serve
to "underwrite" Buddhist tolerance are finally
discernible in the philosophical status of the
dhamma, which was presumed to be amenable to
verification (ehipassiko) and accessible to the
prescient individually (paccatta.m veditabba.m
vi~n~nuuhi) . Dogmatism, then, was intrinsically
alien to Buddhism. It should be also noted that the
Buddha did not issue commandments or enjoin fidelity
to a "Holy Writ." Buddhism's emphasis on spiritual
practice above everything else (cf. Dhammapada, I,
19) indeed tended to foster a liberal, hospitable
outlook among its followers. Its stress on
compassion at the purely ethical level was a further
encouragement to tolerance: compassion precluded
enforced conformity or persecution, both of which of
course entailed the infliction of mental and
physical suffering on fellow beings.
86. Cf. G. P. Malalasekera & K. N. Jayatilleke,
Buddhism and the Race Question (Paris: UNESCO
Publications, 1958): also, Kenneth K. Inada. "The
Buddhist Perspective of Human Rights," in Human
Rights and Religious Traditions, ed. Arlene Swidler
(New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1982).
87. Historic testimony to this is found in the
Thera- Therii Gaathaa, the "psalms of the brothers
and sisters." It should be noted that as against
Hindu orthodoxy (committed to the idea of Brahmin
superiority), the Buddha proclaimed egalitarianism,
emphasizing that salvation is accessible to all who
strive after it. Cf. Majjhima Nikaaya, I, 85-89; II,
147-151.
88. Cf. Ambatta Sutta, Diigha Nikaaya, I, 99. In
fact adherence to racial and caste prejudices (jaati
vaada, gotta vaada) are represented here as
obstacles to spiritual emancipation. The Buddhist
view throughout is a modernistic one--that people
are validly distinguished only on the basis of their
moral and spiritual attainments, both of which are
acquired rather than inherited. Accordingly, the
word "Brahmin" is often given a purely ethical
connotation in Buddhist discourse. Cf. Udaana, I,
v--x.
89. "The Negro Question." CW, 21, p. 93. In
order, apparently, to clinch this point Mill also
observed: "the earliest known civilization was, we
have the strongest reason to believe, a negro
civilization. The original Egyptians we are
informed, from the evidence of their sculpture, to
have been a negro race: it was from the negroes,
therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first
lessons of civilization" (ibid.).
90. See "On Marriage" and The Subjection of
Women, CW, 21, pp. 42, 272, 295. In a reference
elsewhere to the denial of equality, Mill said: "the
subjection of any one individual or class to another
is always and necessarily disastrous in its effects
to both" ("Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform," CW,
19, p. 324).
P.285
91. See Considerations on Representative
Government, CW, 19, p. 449. Though Mill favored the
granting of greater weight to "persons of superior
knowledge and cultivation," he held that "in any
system of representation which can be conceived as
perfect." every adult human being should wield "a
portion of influence on the management of public
affairs." See "Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, CW,
19, pp. 324, 322. It is noteworthy that Buddhist
disciplinary rules for the organization of the
sa^mgha as set forth in the Vinaya Pi.taka (under
ti.navatthaakara, upavaasathaa, sa^mghaadi`se.sa)
allow for decision making through majority
consent--indeed, explicit provisions for voting are
retained here for some purposes, thus highlighting a
remarkable Buddhist commitment to democratic
equality.
92. Some of the gaps in the preceding
adumbrations of Buddhist and Millian approaches to
issues falling within the purview of social and
political philosophy might be closed by delving into
specific studies of positions adopted by the two
sides in these fields. In this connection the
following works are especially instructive: Heinz
Bechert, Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft in den
Landern des Theravaada Buddhismus (Berlin, 1965); F.
L. van Holthoon, The Road to Utopia: A Study of John
Stuart Mill's Social Thought (Assen: Van Gorcum,
1971) ; John Gray, Mill on Liberty, A Defence
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983).
93. In "Utility of Religion" (CW, 10, p. 404),
Mill declared that "truth and the general good are
the two noblest of all objects of pursuit." For an
overview of the value considerations which are
sustained in Mill's thinking, see F. W. Garforth,
Educative Democracy: John Stuart Mill on
Education in Society (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1980), chap. 1.
94. Some hints of a tendency to appropriate
Christian insights are evident in the essay on
"Theism," Mill's last-considered contribution to the
philosophical evaluation of religion. Not only did
he, as already indicated, refer here to Christ as a
"pattern of perfection for humanity" but went
further and invoked the Christian idea of hope (as
against the philosophical and scientific concept of
logical proof). "The indulgence of hope" in respect
of unproven matters of religious belief, he argued,
is indeed "legitimate and philosophically
defencible" (CW, 10, pp. 487, 485). Cf. R. Carr,
"The Religious Thought of John Stuart Mill: A Study
in Reluctant Scepticism," Journal of the History of
Ideas 23 (1962); K. Britton, "John Stuart Mill on
Christianity," in J. M. Robson and M. Laine, eds.,
James and John Stuart Mill, Papers of the Centenary
Conference.
95. It is noteworthy that these tenets were
given a religious connotation in the concluding
section of the essay on "Theism." In alluding to the
cultivation of "a religious devotion to the welfare
of our fellow-creatures as an obligatory limit to
every selfish aim," Mill maintained here that by
making this a "rule of life," we may be in fact
"co-operating" with the unseen sources of goodness
and creativity in the universe (CW, 10, p. 488).
96. An elitism (which in some sense completes or
complements Mill's belief in the value of the
individual) comes to the fore in a wide range of his
writings-notably in the essays on "Bentham" and
"Coleridge" in On Liberty and the Chapters on
Socialism. Mill's epigrammatic statement in
"Utilitarianism" (CW, 10, p. 212) that it is "better
to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied"
should also be recalled in this connection. Cf. G.
Duncan, Marx and Mill (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1973).
97. As a final pointer to the criss-crossing
pattern of parallelisms and contrasts, and
convergences and divergences which have been the
special focus of the inquiry in the preceding pages,
it might be relevant to add that both Buddhism and
Mill's thinking afford specific grounds for
effecting this "synthesis." Though theory directed
towards transforming or improving the world is not a
primary emphasis in Buddhism, Buddhist concepts like
compassion and loving-kindness (mettaa karu.naa) can
certainly be invoked to justify involvement in
social action aimed at promoting happiness and
removing pain in this world (which, to be sure, is a
basic utilitarian goal). And, on the other hand,
Mill, it should be observed, was not insensitive to
the role played by culture (and in particular mental
culture) in sustaining civilization and improving
society. Evidence of this is found in Mill's
contributions to educational thought; indeed, in the
"Inaugural Address" delivered to the University of
St. Andrews, the mature Mill identified "meditative
self-consciousness" as a veritable trait of
modernity (CW, 21, p. 230).