Essays On Religion.

The posthumously published volume of Essays on Religion contains three essayson Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism. The first and second were written between 1850 and 1858, that is, during the same period as the essays on Utilitarianism and on Liberty, while the third belongs to a much later time, having been written between 1868 and 1870, and is thus "the last considerable work which he completed," and "showsthe latest state of the Author's mind, the carefully balanced result of the deliberations of a lifetime" (Essays on Religion, Preface).
The first essay is a protest against the view that the ideal of human conduct is found in conformity to Nature. It reminds us of Huxley's later condemnation, in his famous Romanes lecture on Evolutioin and Ethics, of the cosmic process from the ethical point of view. "In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's every day performances" (Essays on Religion, p. 28). It is a protest rather against naturalistic ethics than against Natural Theology, but the latter is included in the same condemnation with the former type of theory. The Author of Nature cannot be at once good and omnipotent.
The main argument of the essay on the Utility of Religion, which, like that on Nature, is a fine specimen of Mill's philosophical style, is the sufficiency of the Religion of Humanity and its superiority to all but the best of the supernatural religions. "Let it be remembered that if individual life is short, the life of the human species is not short; its indefinite duration is practically equivalent to endlessness; and being combined with indefinite capability of improvement, it offers to the imagination and sympathies a large enough object to satisfy any reasonable demand for grandeur of aspiration" (Ibid, P. 106).
The essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognized as of the highest excellence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of desire. This condition is fulfilled by the Religion on Humanity in as eminent a degree, and in as high a sense, as by the supernatural religions even in their best manifestations, and far more so than in any of their others. (Ibid., P. 109)
The characteristic tendency of supernaturalism is to arrest the development not only of the intellectual, but also of the moral nature. Its appeal is to self-interest rather than to disinterested and ideal motives; and like the intuitional theory of ethics, it stereotypes morality. The special appeal of supernatural religion is to our sense of the mystery which circumscribes our little knowledge, but the same appeal is made, and the same service to the imagination rendered, by Poetry. "Religion and poetry address themselves, at least in one of their aspects, to the same part of the human constitution; they both supply the same want, that of ideal conceptions grander and more beautiful than we see realized in the prose of human life" (Essays on Religion, P. 103). "The idealization of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made," is "capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers" (Ibid., P. 105). Yet "he to whom ideal good, and the progress of the world towards it, are already a religion" may find consolation and encouragement in the belief that he is,
a fellow-laborer with the Highest, a fellow-combatant in the great strife; contributing his little which by the aggregation of many like himself becomes much towards that progressive ascendancy, and ultimately complete triumph of good over evil, which history points to, and which this doctrine teaches us to regard as planned by the Being to whom we behold in Nature. Against the moral tendency of this creed no possible objection can lie; it can produce on whoever can succeed in believing it, no other than an ennobling effect. (Ibid., P. 117)
The essay on Theism bears evidence, in the imperfection of its construction and the inferiority of its style, to its lack of the author's final revision. The argument for a First Cause is condemned, on the ground that there is a permanent element in nature itself; "as far as anything can be concluded from human experience, Force has all the attributes of a thing eternal and uncreated" (Ibid., P. 147). The argument from Design is found to be less unsatisfactory. The principle of the survival of the fittest, while not inconsistent with Creation, "would greatly attenuate the evidence for it." But "leaving this remarkable speculation to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have in store for it," Mill concludes that "it must be allowed that, in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence" (Essays on Religion, P. 174). On the other hand, "it is not too much to say that every indication of Design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer" (Ibid., P. 176). The necessity of contrivance, or the adaptation of means to ends, implies limitation of power in the agent. As to Immorality, there is "a total absence of evidence on either side." Miracles, while not impossible, are extremely improbable, even on the hypothesis of a supernatural Being. The reasonable attitude, on all these questions, is that of atheism.
If we are right in the conclusions to which we have been led by the preceding inquiry, there is evidence, but insignificant for proof, and amounting only to one of the lower degrees of probability. The induction given by such evidence as there is, points to the creation, not indeed of the universe, but of the present order of it, by an Intelligent Mind, whose power over the materials was not absolute, whose love for his creatures was not his sole actuating inducement, but who nevertheless, desired their good. (Ibid., P. 242)
Where belief is not warranted, however, hope is permissible, and the imagination need not be controlled by purely rational considerations.
To me it seems that human life, small and confined as it is, and as considered merely in the present, it is likely to remain even when the progress of material and moral improvement may have freed it from the greater part of its present calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration for itself and its destination, which the exercise of imagination can yield to it without running counter to the evidence of fact; and that it is a part of wisdom to make the most of any, even small, probabilities on this subject, which furnish imagination with any footing to support itself upon. (Ibid, p. 245).
Above all, the conception of a morally perfect being, and of his approbation, is an inspiration for the moral life which would be sorely missed, and Christianity has provided us with an "ideal representative and guide of humanity;" nor, "even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life" (Essays on Religion, P. 255). "The feeling of helping God" in the struggle with evil is "excellently fitted to aid and fortify that real, though purely human religion, which sometimes calls itself the Religion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty," and which "is destined, with or without supernatural sanctions, to be the religion of the Future."