;%t5^ J ■lA I LL 8 6/^ : CORNELL . UNIVERSITt"^ LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY HEHRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library B1607 .B16 *'***^'?..Ste.'1,.M'" = a criticism : with pe oiin 3 1924 029 045 982 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029045982 JOHN STUART MILL. A. KING AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN, JOHN STUART MILL. CRITICISM WITH PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. EY ALEXANDER gAIN, LL.D.. EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1882. [Ai/ rights reserved,^ f\. lU,-2.-]5o PREFACE. In the present work, I do not propose to give the complete biography of John Stuart Mill. My chief object is to examine fully his writings and character ; in doing which, I have drawn freely upon my personal recollections of the second half of his life. By means of family documents, I have been able to add a few important particulars to his own account of his early years. Aberdeen, /flffwa;'^', 1882. CONTENTS.. Chapter I. EARLY EDUCATION. 1 806-1 821. Commencement of his education, Going to visit Bentham, at Barrow Green, His own account of his earliest reading, Composes a History of Rome at six years and a half, • Conversation with Lady Spencer, Letter from Ford Abbey, containing a description of the Abbey, Important letter Jo Sir Samuel Bentham, giving an account of his studiesJ^xnm eight to thirteen, .... Comparison with the statements in the Autobiography, Invitation to visit Sir Samuel, in France, Diary of his visit, ...... Journey to Paris, and thence to Toulouse, Studies and occupations from day to day, Has a fencing master, and riding master, besides lessons in musiCj Writes a letter in Latin to his two sisters, Makes a tour to the Pyrenees, on the way to Montpellier, Lady Bentham's opinion of him, .... Estimate of his precocity in study and acquirements, . Application excessive, and too few breaks. His knowledge of Classics necessarily superficial, His Mathematical studies probably had genuine results, Precocity most remarkable in Logic, .... Return to England, ...... Began Law ; studied Bentham ; commenced Psychology, Visits the Austins at Norwich. Letter from Yarmouth: Lost his watch; Resumes home-teaching the other children. Acquaintances at Cambridge. Visit to Charles Austin there, Professor Townshend's attempts to get him entered at Trinity College, ib. 2 3 4 ib. ib. II ib. 12 20 21 ib. 22 ib. 23 24 25 26 27 ib. ib. 28 ib. ib. Chapter IL TWENTY YEARS OF WORK. 1820-1840. Chronological sequence from 1820 to 1830, Entered the India House in 1823. Steps of his promotion, 30 31 VIU Contents. Contributions to the Westminster Review: — continues his father's attack on the Edinburg^h Review, . . . - On the Richard Carlisle prosecutions : — extract from peroration, Review of Brodie on Hume's misrepresentations in his History: Hume': disingenuous artifices, . ... Articles contributed in 1825, 1826, 1827, Review of Whateley's Logic, .... Final article on Scott's Life of Napoleon, ... Mental crisis of 1826 ; over-working of his brain. Memoranda of conversations with Roebuck respecting his early inti- macy with Mill, . . . . Chronological outHne from 1830 to 1840, Visit to Paris after the three days of July. Letter to his father on the state of parties, . . ... Bad illness of 1836. Leave of absence and three months' tour in France, Switzerland and Italy, Illness of 1839. Six months of sick leave, spent in Italy, London Review started : first contribution the Sedgwick article, Other articles ; Tennyson ; De Tocqueville, Energetic review of the Parliamentary Session of 1835, Union of the London Review with the Westminster : Mill's article on f Civilization : on the History of Reform, Reviews Carlyle's French Revolution, .... Political article on the Parhament of 1837 : on Armaud Carrel, First "Canada and Lord Durham" article, On Alfred de Vigny — philosophy of Literature and Poetry, Second Canada article — "Lord Durham's Return," "Re-organization of the Reform Party," Theory of the two State Parties, ..... Bentham^nd Coleridge articles :— their general drift, and their eifect upon his old associates, ..... Principle of conducting the Review — wide comprehension of different opinions, ....... Management of the Review: Mill never ostensible editor: his pecuniary losses by it, . His sub-editor, John Robertson, Strain of his poUtical articles for the seven years. Last illness and death of his brother Henry, 32 33 34 35 36 37 ib. 38 40 4r 42 44 46 47 j9_ 50 51 52 53 ib. ib. 57 58 59 60 ib. Chapter IIT, LOGIC AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1841-1848, First acquaintance with Mill — 1839, Picture of him in the India House, as seen in April, 1842, Revision of his Logic, then ready for press, 62 64 65 Contents. IX Openings for criticisn', ..... Publication in March, 1843 • immediate success, Connexion with Comte; first introduction into England of Comte'; chief work : its effect upon Mill, ..... Ideas appropriated in the Logic ; particularly in the Social Science, Correspondence with Comte, beginning in 1841 : Personalities between Mill and Comte, ...... Reviews Bailey's Theory of Vision, and defends Berkeley, Depressed health : losses by American Repudiation, . Article on Michelet, ...... "Attempts to write on the Science of Ethology, but abandons the pro- — . ject. Turns his thoughts to a work on Political Economy, Studies Beneke, ....... Writes on " Claims of Labour," in 1844, Ward's book. The Ideal, 8cc., Herschel's Address at the British Association of 1845 ; compliments Mill ; speaks slightingly of Comte ; correspondence with Mil], Conversations with Grote ; his high estimate of the Logic, The Helvetius doctrine of human equality held by both Mill and Grote, Commencement of Political Economy, .... Writes on Fre nch Pol itics for the Edinburgh, Reviews the first two volumes oirGrote's Greece, Writes in the Morning Chronicle on the Irish famine, urging the for- mation of peasant properties, Liebig's testimony to the Logic, .... Publication of Political Economy, .... Doctrines on Property; Malthusianism ; littlefeyourshownioSocialism, Break-down in health — a bad accident, . His greatest works now completed, . . , . Chapter IV. REMAINING WRITINGS. 1849-1873. First important revision of Logic, .... Marriage — 1851, ....... Views of Home Politics, ... ... Vindicates against Brougham the French Revolution of 1848, Article on Whewell :...... On Grote's Greece, ...... Death of his brother George, at Madeira, Bad illness of 1854 : long tour abroad, .... Appointed Head of his office, ..... Drafts the East India Company's Petition to Parhament, against the contempleted abolition of the Company, Extracts from the Petition, ..... Contents, RetiTement from India House, » . . . . Wife's death, ....... Pamphlet on Parliamentry Reform : change of opinion on the Ballot, ^Publication of Liberty, ...... Analysis of its contents : — ..... Necessity of keeping in view the counter to every proposition, Application to ethical and religious doctrines, . Conflicting doctrines usually share the truth between them, Morality of Christianity incomplete, .... Lays himself open to reply, ..... Liberty of Conduct : unsteady hold of the essentials of human happiness, Limits to the authority of Society over the individual, , Applications to the relationship of the sexes, Disapprobation not necessarily described as punishment. Sir James Stephen'sxriticJfiioSr — ? .... Mode of stating objections to prosecution for heresy, . Necessity of bringing force to bear on human life at all points, IKingsley on the effect produced on him by the Liberty ^ ^Utilitarianism published, 1861, .... Gives up important strategic positions : loose expressions as to the constituents of Happiness, ..... iThe superior quality of.pleasures refers to the good of others . Definition of a happy life, ..... Genesis of moral sentiment admirably illustrated, Criticisms : John Grote : Sir James Stephen, . Lgtt^ on the changes in the India Office, Publication of Representative Government in i860, Plan of the work, ...... Enters on the examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, . Buoyant spirits at the time, ..... Articles on the Civil War in America, .... Studies for the Hamilton, ..... Belief in the External World : omission of Sense of Resistance, " Fixity of order," too exclusively considered, . Permanent existence of Mind well handled. Belief in Memory, Attack on Mansel, . , .... Free-will too much mixed up with other questions, Hamilton on the study of Mathematics, Articles on John Austin and on Comte, .... Invited to stand for the representation of Westminster, Conduct in Parliament, ... , . Article on Grote's Plato, ...... Revision of Logic, ...,,, Elected Rector of St. Andrews, ..... Rectorial Address, ...... Not adapted to the limits of the Scotch University curriculum, Contents, XI Mistaken advocacy of Classics, ..... Hierarchy of the Sciences put forward, .... Third Edition of Hamilton : replies to objectors, Editing his father's "Analysis," . • . , Defeat on again standing for Westminster, Pamphlet on England and Ireland, Subjection of Women published, ..... Strong illustration of the evils from the abuse of power, Mental equality of the sexes urged with too little qualification, Felt strongly on this subject, ..... Sir James Stephen's criticism, ..... Labours on the Land Question : co-operation with the leaders of the working men, ,..,.. Grote's funeral, ... .... His own death, ....... .Posthumous Essays on Religion, \y ... Essay on Nature : handling in some respects inadequate, Utility of Religion, ...... Theism : difficulties attending a re-construction of Religion, . Insufficient discussion of the argument from Design, . Christ as a human person exclusively, .... Incongruity of reducing him from the Divine to the human level, His example and precepts are suitable only to his religious character, Weakness in purely Theological discussion : comparison with Strauss, In some respects, Mill a religious man, but a negationist at bottom, Chapter V, CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE. Good physical constitution, ..... Mental powers generally, ..... Specialities of his Intellect, ..... Distinguishing feature — command of generalities, How far combining originality and precision as a thinker, Openness of mind, ...... Receptiveness not an absolute quality, but, in Mill's mind, very high, Habit of not accepting half-solutions, . * . . Estimate of his own originality, ..... Mistaken doctrines — natural equaUty of men ; insufficient hold of the physical element of our being, .... Approved of combining a professional avocation with philosophy, Might have done more original work if he had been exempt from office, Moral side of his character, ..... Sources of his Activity, ...... Sensual feelings below average, ..... Emotional elements — ^Tender Feeling ; character of Sociability, XII Contents Malevolent emotion, under great restraint, Love of Scenery ; Plant-collecting, Anxiety to preserve the natural beauties of our country. The Piccadilly trees, ' Poetic tastes, ... Sympathy :— forms of generosity, Fidelity to engagements. Treatment of opponents in controversy. Love of truth ; courage of his opinions, . f Public spirit ; ardent promotion of all improvements, The great object of his hfe — work, -Shortcomings of his sympathetic side, . Severity of judgment upon the Radical party, . Harsh judgments on England, and English society, Sharpness in expressing difference of opinion, . "Beginning of friendship v^'ith Mrs. Taylor, Intercourse with her in her husband's life time, . Dedication of Political Economy, Encomiums after her death, Sources of his attachment, Her special influence, .... -Her part in the Liberty and the Subjection of Women, His estimate of her genius, Different views as to her attractions, "His Style ; language faculty not intrinsically great, Defective grammar — placing of qualifying words ; excess of relatives looseness in the employment of ' it ', Rhetorical arts, . Illustration and allusion, . Strength not the highest quality, Neglect of emphasis. Connection of pecuharities with Expository art in general, Exemplification of principles thorough, . ^Defects in complex ideas, and plural subjects. ExampL Powers of Persuasion very great. Addressed both the reason and the feehngs, Defective only in verbal luxmiance, Examples of Wit, Character as a Converser, Different views of his conversational aptitudes, Voice, elocution, and gesture. Could give and take with others, Wit and humour in conversation, Carlyle's remark, .... CaroHne Fox's Journals — reports of his talk, Influence in general, 191 id. Contents, xiii jQ DLnionsj MtticfZga? ....... 192 Destructive and constructive alike, . ... ib. Examples of his constructiveness : — The Colonies ; sound advice to the Working Classes : the Women Question, .... 193 Warnings against the dangers of lodging power in the numerical majority, ........ 194 Influence not to be measured by a few great constructions, , . 195 Appendix. J. E, Cairns on Mill as a Political Economist .... 197 Chapter I. EARLY EDUCATION. 1806 — 1821. IT was said of the famous Swedish Chemist, Bergman, that he had made many discoveries, but his greatest was the discovery of Scheele. In like manner, it will be said of James Mill that his greatest contribution to human progress was his son, whom he educated to be his fellow-worker and successor. John Stuart Mill was born on the 20th May, 1806, in the house, now No. 13 Rodney Street, Pentonville. We need to refer to the Autobiography^ for the commence- ment of his education. It is stated to have begun at three years of age ; and there is a sort of pause or break at his eighth year, when he began Latin. The five years from three to eight are occupied with Greek, English, and Arithmetic ; the Greek, strange to say, taking precedence. The earliest recol- lection he had, we are led to believe, although it is not explicitly affirmed, is his committing to memory lists of Greek words written by his father on cards. He had been told that he was then three years old. Of course, reading English, both printed and written, was presupposed ; and we have to infer that he had no recollection of that first start of all, which must have been made before he completed his third year. Judging from the work gone through by his eighth year, he cannot be far wrong in putting down the date of the Greek commencement. In his father's biography, I have given a letter to Bentham, dated 25th July, 1809, on the occasion of the first visit to Bentham at Barrow Green. I repeat a short passage from that 2 EARLIEST READINGS. 1806-182I. letter : — " When I received your letter on Monday, John, who is so desirous to be your inmate, was in the room, and observed me smiling [at Bentham's fun] as I read it. This excited his curiosity to know what it was about. I said it was Mr. Ben- tham asking us to go to Barrow Green. He desired to read that. I gave it to him to see what he would say, when he began, as if reading — Why have you not come to Barrow Green, and brought John with you?" The letter closes — " John asks if Monday (the day fixed) is not to-morrow ". Not much is to be made of this, except that the child's precocious intellect is equal to a bit of waggery. The remark may seem natural, that if he were then learning his Greek cards, he might actually have read the letter ; but no one that ever saw Bentham's hand-writing would hazard that remark. As I take it, the interest of the scene lies in disclosing a sunny moment in the habitually stern relationship of the father and son. As an introduction to the next contemporary landmark of his progress, I need to quote from himself the account of his earliest reading. He says nothing of English books till he has first given a long string of Greek authors — ^sop's Fables, the Anabasis, Cyropaedia and Memorabilia of Xenophon, Herodo- tus, parts of Diogenes Laertius, part of Lucian, two speeches of Isocrates ; all these seem to have been gone through before his eighth year. His English reading he does not connect with his Greek, but brings up at another stage of the narrative. From 1810 to 1813 (age, four to seven) the family had their residence at Newington Green. His father took him out in morning walks in the lanes towards Hornsey, and in those walks he gave his father an account of his reading ; the books cited being now histories in English — Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, AVatson's Philip the Second and Third (his greatest favourite), Hooke's History of Rome (his favourite after Watson), Rollin in English, Langhornes' Plutarch, Burnet's Own Time, the history in the Annual Register : he goes on, after a remark or two, to add Millar on the English Government, Mosheim, M'Crie's Knox, WRITES A ROMAN HISTORY. 3 numerous Voyages and Travels — Anson, Cook, &c. ; Robin- son Crusoe, Arabian Nights, Don Quixote,. Miss Edgeworth's Tales, and Brooke's Fool of Quality. I repeat that all this was within the same four years as the Greek list above enumerated. At a later stage, he speaks of his fondness for writing histories ; he successively composed a Roman History from Hooke, an abridgment of the Universal History, a History of Holland, and (in his eleventh and twelfth years) a History of the Roman Government. All these, he says, he destroyed. It happens, however, that a lady friend of the family copied and preserved the first of these essays, the Roman History ; upon the copy is marked his age, six and a-half years, which would be near the termination of the two formidable courses of reading now sum- marized. The sketch is very short, equal to about four of the present printed pages, and gives but a few scraps of the earlier traditions. If it is wonderful for the writer's age, it also shows that his enormous reading had as yet done little for him. He can make short sentences neatly enough ; he gives the heads of the history, in the shape of the succession of kings and consuls, and, . in imitation of his author, he supplies erudite and critical notes. The beginning runs thus (heading ' First Alban Govern- ment : Roman Conquest in Italy') : — " We know not any part, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, of the History of Rome till the Sicilian invasions. Before that time, the country had not been entered by any foreign invader. After the expulsion of Sicilians, Iberian (?) kings reigned for several years ; but in the time of Latinus, ^neas, son of Venus and Anchises, came to Italy, and established a kingdom there called Albania. He^ then succeeded Latinus in the government, and engaged in the wars of Italy. The Rutuli, a people living near the sea, apd extending along the Numicius up to Lavinium, opposed him. ' However, Turnus their king was defeated and killed by ^neas. ^neas was killed soon after this. The war continued to be carried on chiefly against the Rutuli, to the time of Romulus, the first king of Rome. By him it was that Rome was built." , 4 DESCRIBES FORD ABBEY. 1806-1821. As a boy about five, he was taken by George Bentham to see Lady Spencer (wife of Lord Spencer, then at the head of the Admirality) : her curiosity being roused by the accounts of him. He kept up an animated conversation with her on the com- parative merits of Marlborough and WeHington. My next document is a letter, in his own hand, dated Sept. 13, 1814. He was now eight years and four months. At this date, he was in the second stage of his studies, having begun Latin, and having extended his reading in Greek to the poets, commencing with the Iliad. He was also engaged in teaching his sister, two years younger than himself. The event that gave rise to the letter was the migration of the whole family (in July) to Bentham's newly acquired residence. Ford Abbey, in Somersetshire. I will give a part and abridge the rest. His correspondent was some intimate friend of the family unknown. " I have arrived at Ford Abbey without any accident, and am now safely settled there. We are all in good health, except that I have been ill of slight fever for several days, but am now perfectly recovered. " It is time to give you a description of the Abbey. There is a little hall and a long cloister, which are reckoned very fine architecture, from the door, and likewise two beautiful rooms, a dining-parlour and a breakfast-parlour adorned with fine drawings within one door ; on another side is a large hall, adorned with a gilt ceiling ; afid beyond it two other rooms, a dining and drawing-room, of which the former contains various kinds of musical instruments, and the other is hung with beautiful tapestry. " To this house there are many staircases. The first of them has little remarkable up it, but that three rooms are hung with tapestry, of which one contains a velvet bed, and is therefore called the velvet room. The looking-glass belonging to this room is decorated with nun's lace. FORD ABBEY. 5 " Up another staircase is a large salooiij hung with admirable tapestry, as also a small library. From this saloon issues a long range of rooms, of which one is fitted up in the Chinese style, and another is hung with silk. There is a little further on a room, which, it is said, was once a nursery ; though the old farmer Clyde, who lives hard by, called out his sons to hear the novelty of a child crying in the Abbey ! which had not happened for the whole lime he had lived here, being near thirty years. Down a staircase from here is a long range of bedrooms, generally called the Monks' Walk. From it is a staircase leading into the cloisters. The rest of the house is not worth mentioning. If I was to mention the whole it would tire you exceedingly, as tHs house is in reality so large that the eight rooms on one floor of the wing which we inhabit, which make not one-quarter of even that floor of the whole House, are as many as all the rooms in your house, and considerably larger. " I have been to the parish church which is at Thornecomb. Mr. Hume has been here a great while. Mr. Koe came the other day, and Admiral Chietekoff is expected. Willie and I have had rides in Mr. Hume's curricle.'* He goes on to say — " What has been omitted here will be found in a journal which I am writing of this and last year's journeys '\ He then incontinently plunges again into descriptive particulars about the fish-ponds, the river Axe, the deer-parks, the walks, and Bentham's improvements. The performance is not a favourable specimen of his composition ; the hand-writing is very scratchy, and barely shows what it became a few years later. The reference to Joseph Hume's visit has to be connected wit h the _]Dassage at a rms between the elder Mill and Bentham, which I had formerly occasion to notiCQ'(!nwgrSp'^'l^yames Mill, p. 136). By far the most important record of Mill's early years is his diary during part of his visit to France, in his fifteenth year ; 6 LETTER TO SIR SAMUEL EENTHAM. 1806-182I. and from this I hope to illustrate with some precision the real character of his acquisitions, and his intellectual power at that age. A very valuable introduction to this diary was lately brought to light by Mr. Roebuck, who had fortunately pre- served a letter of Mill's that he had received from Jeremy Bentham's amanuensis in 1827. It was addressed to Bentham's brother. Sir Samuel Bentham, and is dated July 36, 1819, his age being thirteen years and two months. It is worth giving entire. "Acton Place, Hoxton, July 30, i8ig. " My dear Sir, *' It is so long since I last had the pleasure of seeing you that I have almost forgotten when it was, but I believe it was in the year 1814, the first year we were at Ford Abbey. I am very much obliged to you for your inquiries with respect to my progress in my studies ; and as nearly as I can remember I will endeavour to give an account of them from that year. "In the year 1814, I read Thucydides, and Anacreon, and I believe the Electra of Sophocles, the Phoeniss£e of Euripides, and the Plutus and the Clouds of Aristophanes. I also read the Philippics of Demosthenes. " The Latin which I read was only the Oration of Cicero for the Poet Archias, and the (first or last) part of his pleading against Verres. And in Mathematics, I was then reading Euclid \ I also began Euler's Algebra, Bonnycastle's principally for the sake of the examples to perform. I read likewise some of West^s Geometry. "^t. 9. — The Greek which I read in the year 1815 was, I think. Homer's Odyssey. Theocritus, some of Pindar, and the two Orations of ^schines, and Demosthenes on the Crown. In Latin I read the six first books, I believe, of Ovid's Meta- morphoses, the five first books of Livy, the Bucolics, and the six first books of the ^neid of Virgil, and part of Cicero's Orations. In Mathematics, after finishing the first six books, STUDIES BETWEEN NINE AND TWELVE. 7 with the eleventh and twelfth of Euclid, and the Geometry of West, I studied Simpson's Conic Sections and also West's Conic Sections, Mensuration and Spherics ; and in Algebra, Kersey's Algebra, and Newton's Universal Arithmetic, in which I performed all the problems without the book, and most of them without any help from the book. "^t. lo. — In the year 1816 I read the following Greek: Part of Polybius, all Xenophon's Hellenics, The Ajax and the Philoctetes of Sophocles, the Medea of Euripides, and the Frogs of Aristophanes, and great part of the Anthologia Grseca. In Latin I read all Horace, except the Book of Epodes ; and in Mathematics I read Stewart's Propositiones Geometricse, Playfair's Trigonometry at the end of his Euclid, and an article on geometry in the Edinburgh Encydopmdia, I also studied Simpson's Algebra. *'^t. II. — In the year 1817 I read Thucydides a second time, and I likewise read a great many Orations of Demos- thenes and all Aristotle's Rhetoric, of which I made a synoptic table. In Latin I read all Lucretius, except the last book, and Cicero's Letters to Atticus, his Topica, and his treatise, De Partitione Oratoria. I read in Conic Sections an article in the Encydopcedia Britannica (in other branches of the mathematics I studied Euler's Analysis of Infinities and began Fluxions, on which I read an article in the Encydopcedia Briiannica\ and Simpson's Fluxions. In the application of mathematics I read Keill's Astronomy and Robinson's Mechanical Philosophy. " ^t. 12. — ^Last year I read some more of Demosthenes, and the four first Books of Aristotle's Organon, all which I tabulated in the same manner as his Rhetoric. " In Latin, I read all the works of Tacitus, except the dialogue concerning oratory, and great part of Juvenal, and began Quintilian. In Mathematics and their application, I read Emerson's Optics, and a Treatise on Trigonometry by Professor Wallace, of the Military College, near Bagshot, intended for the use of the cadets. I likewise re-solved several 8 LOGIC AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1806-1821. problems in various branches of mathematics ; and began an article on Fluxions in the Edinburgh Encydopcedia, " M\., 13. — This year I read Plato's dialogues called Gorgias and Protagoras, and his Republic, of which I made an abstract. I am still reading Quintilian and the article on Fluxions, and am performing without book the problems in Simpson's Select Exercises. " Last year I began to learn logic. I have read several Latin books of Logic: those of Smith, Brerewood, and Du Trieu, and part of Burgersdicius, as far as I have gone in Aristotle. I have also read Hobbes' Logic. " I am now learning political economy. I have made a kind of treatise from what my father has explained to me on that subject, and I am now reading Mr. Ricardo's work and writing an abstract of it. I have learnt a little natural philosophy, and, having had an opportunity of attending a course of lectures on chemistry, delivered by Mr. Phillips, at the Royal Military College, Bagshot, I have applied myself particularly to that science, and have read the last edition of Dr. Thomson's system of chemistry. "What English I have read since the year 18 14 I cannot tell you, for I cannot remember so long ago. But I recollect that since that time I have read Ferguson's Roman and Mitford's Grecian History. I have also read a great deal of Livy by myself. I have sometimes tried my hand at writing history. I had carried a history of the United Provinces from their revolt from Spain, in the reign of Phillip IL, to the accession of the Stadtholder, William III., to the throne of England. "I had likewise begun to write a history of the Roman Government, which I had carried down to the Licinian Laws. I should have begun to learn French before this time, but that my father has for a long time had it in contemplation to go to the Continent, there to reside for some time. But as we are hindered from going by my father's late appointment in the TEACHING HIS SISTERS. 9 East India House, I shall begin to learn French as soon as my sisters have made progress enough in Latin to learn with me. " I have now and then attempted to write Poetry. The last production of that kind at which I tried my hand was a tragedy. I have now another in view in which I hope to correct the fault of this. " I believe rny sister Willie was reading Cornelius Nepos when you saw her. She has since that time read some of Caesar ; almo^ all Phsedrus, ;all the Catiline and part of the Jugurtha of -Sallust, and two .plays of Terence ; she has read the first, and .part of the second book of Lucretius, and is now reading the Eclogues of Virgil. " Clara has begun Latin also. After going through the grammar, she read some of Cornelius Nepos and Caesar, almost as much as Willie of Sallust, and is now reading Ovid. They are both now tolerably good arithmeticians.; they have gone as far as the extraction of the cube root. They are reading the Roman Antiquities and the Greek Mythology, and are trans- lating English into Latin from Mair's Introduction .to Latin Syntax. " This is to the best of my remembrance a true account of my own and my sisters' progress since the year 1814. I hope Lady Bentham, and George, and the young ladies are in good health. " Your obedient, humble servant, " John Stuart Mill, " To Sir Saml. Bentham." Letter endorsed on the outside in Jeremy Bentham's handwriting : — 1819 \ John Mill .Acton July > to .place go ' SB J Ms and Sisters , Studies since 1814 15 years old 24 May 1821 10 COMPARISON WITH AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1806-182I, While the above enumeration is much fuller than that in the Autobiography^ it omits mention of several works there given : as Sallust, Terence, Dionysius, and Polybius. The private English reading is in both : chiefly Mitford's Greece, Hooke's and Ferguson's Rome, and the Ancient Universal History. In both, too, is given the fact of his composing Roman History. as well as Poetry and a Tragedy. The account of the Higher Mathematics of this period is slightly deficient in the Auto- biography. This letter was doubtless intended not merely to satisfy Sir Samuel's curiosity as to his precocity of acquirement, but also to pave the way for the invitation to accompany him to France the following year (1820).* A carefully written diary extending over the five first months of John Mill's stay in France, is our best attainable record of his youthful studies. * Sir Samuel Bentham, the brother of Jeremy Bentham, was himself a remarkable man. His first service was in the Russian army, where his soldier- ing was intermingled with suggestions for improvements of all sorts, and especially mechanical inventions, for which he had a pronounced genius. One of his proposals to the Russian government was the Panopticon prison, of which he was the originator. He came over to England in 1795, and received from our Government the appointment of Superintendent of the Dockyard at Portsmouth, where his talent for invention had scope in the improvement of the navy. He married the daughter of an early friend of his brother's, Dr. John Fordyce, a physician in London, called by Bentham " one of the coldest of the cold Scotch " : this lady had the domestic supervision of Mill for more than a year. On retiring from the Dockyard, Sir Samuel bought an estate in the South of France for the sake of a residence there ; and this led to his inviting Mill to reside with him, first at Toulouse, and afterwards at Montpel- lier. The family consisted of one son, Mr. George Bentham, the well-known botanist, and three daughters — all older than Mill. A biography of Sir Samuel by Lady Bentham, is the most remarkable bio- graphy of a man by his wife that I have ever seen. It follows with the most minute detail his professional life, which consisted of an uninterrupted series of mechanical discoveries ; all of which she expounds with admirable precision. To their entire domestic life she devotes in all about 12 lines. His residence on the Continent, after retirement, is summarized in less than a. page. Allusion is made to their eldest child, whose premature death was a great grief to his father. The other children are not even named. The work may be described as the obverse of Mrs. Grote's Life of her husband. LEAVES LONDON FOR FRANCE. II We have his reading and all his other occupations recorded day by day, together with occasional reflections and discussions that attest his thinking power at that age. The diary was regu- larly transmitted to his father. At first he writes in English ; but, as one of the purposes of his visiting France was to learn the language, he soon changes to French. Printed in full it would be nearly as long as this chapter. I shall endeavour to select some of the more illustrative details. He left London on the 15th May, 1820, five days before completing his fourteenth year ; travelling in company with his, fiber's Irish friend, Mr. Ensor. The diary recounts all the incidents of the journey — the coach to Dover, the passage across, the thirty-three hours in the diligence to Paris. He goes first to a hotel, but, on presenting an introduction by his father^to M. Say, he is invited to the house of that distinguished political economist. The family of the Says — an eldest son, Horace Say, a daughter at home, the youngest son, Alfred, ajr school en pension^ but coming home on Saturday and Sunday, and their mother — devote themselves to taking him about Paris. He gives his father an account of all the sights, but without much criticism His moral indignation bursts forth in his account of the Palais Royal, an "immense building belonging to the profligate Due d'Orleans, who, having ruined himself with debauchery, resolved to let the arcades of his palace to various tradesmen". The Sunday after his arrival (May 21) is so hot that he does not go out, but plays at battle- dore and shuttlecock with Alfred Say. He delivers various messages from his father and Bentham, and contracts new acquaintances, from whom he receives farther attentions. The most notable is the Count Berthollet, to whom he takes a paper from Bentham. Madame Berthollet showed him her very beautiful garden, and desires him to call on his return ; he learns afterwards that he was to meet Laplace. On the 27t^i, after nine days' stay in Paris, he bids goodbye to Mr. 12 ARRIVAL AT TOULOUSE. l8o5-l82I, Ensor and the Says, and proceeds on his way to join the Ben- tham family, then at a chateau, belonging to the Marquis de Pompignan, a few miles from Toulouse. The journey occupies four days, and is not without incidents. He makes a blunder in choosing the cabriolet of the diligence, and finds himself in low company. At Orleans, a butcher, with the largest belly he had ever seen, came in and kept incessantly smoking. On the third day he is at Limoges, and breakfasts in company with a good-natured gentleman from the interior ; but his own com- pany does not much improve ; the butcher leaves, but a very dirty Ji/k, with an eruption in her face, keeps up his annoyance. The following day, a vacancy occurs in the interior, and he claims it as the passenger of longest standing ; a lady contests it with him, and it has to be referred to the maire ^ the retiring passenger, a young avocat^ pleadmg his case. He is now in good company, and his account of the successive locahties is minute and cheerful. He arrives at his destination at two, a.m., the 2nd of June, is received by Mr. George Bentham, and meets the family at breakfast. They take him out a walk, and he does not work that day, but begins a letter to his father. Next day he makes an excursion to Toulouse, spends the night there, and gives up a second day to sight-seeing , there was a great religious pro- cession that day. He makes the acquaintance of a Dr. Russell, resident at Toulouse, with whose family he afterwards associates. The following day, the 5th, he sees the Marquis and Madame de Pompignan, the proprietors of the Chateau. On the 6th, he commences work : and now begins our informa- tion as to his mode of allocating his time to study. The entry for this day merely sets forth that he got up early ; went into the Library; read some of Lucian (who is his chief Greek reading for the weeks to follow) ; also some of Millot, by Mr. George's advice ; " learnt a French fable by rote " — the begin- ning of his practice in French. 7th. — " Learnt a very long fable ; wrote over again, with many improvements, my Dialogue, DAILY TASKS. 1 3 part I." This Dialogue frequently comes up, but without farther explanation. We must take it as one of his exercises in original composition, perhaps in imitation of the Platonic Dialogues. 8th. Engaged with Mr. G. in arranging the books of the Library, which seems to have been set as a task to the boys. " Wrote some of Dialogue ; learnt a very long fable by heart ; resolved some problems of West (Algebra) ; did French exercises (translating and so forth)." 9th. "Break- fasted early and went with Sir S. and Lady Bentham in the carriage to Montauban ; took a volume of Racine in my pocket, and read two plays " ; remark his reading pace. On returning home he reads a comedy of Voltaire. loth. " Before breakfast, learnt another fable, and read some of Virgil. After breakfast, wrote some of my Dialogue, and some French exercises. Wrought some of the Differential Calculus. Read a tragedy of Corneille.'' i ith. " Learnt another fable ; finished my Dialogue. If good for nothing beside, it is good as an exercise to my reasoning powers, as well as to my invention, both which it has tried extremely.'' We may be sure that it aimed at something very high. "Wrote some French exer- cises ; began to learn an extremely long fable. Read a comedy of Moli^re, and after dinner a tragedy of Voltaire. Took a short walk by myself out of the pleasure grounds." 12th. " Rose very early. Sir S. B. and Mr. G. went in the carriage to Toulouse. Before breakfast, I wrote some French exercises, read some of Lucian's Hermotimus. Revised part of my Dialogue. After breakfast went with the domestique Piertot to see his Metairie and his Htde piece of land and help him to gather cherries. After returning »I finished the long fable.*' Then follows an apology for not working at his Mathematics : Sir Samuel's books are not unpacked, and in the Library of the house he finds chiefly French Literature, and hence his read- ings in Racine, &c. Another tragedy read to-day. 13th. Before breakfast assists Mr. G. in packing. Wrote French exercises, read Voltaire and Moli6re. It is by the advice of 14 DIARY AT TOULOUSE. 1806-182I. the family that he reads plays, for the sake of dialogue. After dinner, he takes a long walk on the hills behind Pompignan ; in his return falls in with the garde champHre, who communi- cates all about himself and his district. Weather now hot X4th. Could not get into the Library. Walked about the grounds with Mr. G. and one of his sisters ; came in and wrote French exercises. Begins a new study — to master the Depart- ments of France. Reads Lucian. 15th. Got up early ; began his Livre Statistique of the Departments — chief towns, rivers, population, &c. Learns by heart the names of the Departments and their capital towns. Acting on a suggestion of Lady B., he reads and takes notes of some parts of the Code Napoleon. Meets the Russell family at dinner, and walks with them. 1 6th. Up early, walked out, reads a tragedy of Voltaire.. A mad dog has bitten several persons. More of Code Napoldon ; Virgil \ French exercises. Here he concludes what is to make his first letter to his father, and appends to the diary a disser- tation on the state of French Politics ; the then exciting topic being the Law of Elections. We are surprised at the quantity of information he has already got together, partly we may suppose from conversations, and partly from newspapers \ but he never once mentions readmg a newspaper ; and his oppor- tunities of conversation are very much restricted by incessant studies. Besides passing politics, illustrated by anecdotes, he has inquired into education, the statistics of population, and the details of the provincial government. I continue the extracts from the Diary. June 17th. Late in bed, not knowing the time. One of Sir SamueFs daughters has given him Legendre's Geometry, to which he applies himself, at first, for the sake of French Mathematical terms. Performs an investigation in the Differential Calculus. A short walk. After dinner, a tragedy of Corneille. i8th. Rose early. Wrote French exercises, and read Voltaire. It is a fete day (Sunday), and the peasants danced in the pleasure grounds before the house. After breakfast, finished exercises, then walked with LUCIAN : FRENCH GEOGRAPHY. 1 5 the family in the grounds. Received from Mr. G. a lecture on Botany (probably the beginning of what became his favourite recreation). Wrote out the account of his expenditure since leaving Paris, gives the items, amounting to 148 francs. De- scribes the peasants' dance. 19th. Rose early. Finished the Hermotimus of Lucian, and yesterday's tragedy ; wrote French exercises. After breakfast, assisted in packing up, as the family are leaving the chateau for a residence in Toulouse. Finds time before dinner for another tragedy of Voltaire. In the evening, takes to an article in the Annales de Chimie (his in- terest in Chemistry being now of four years' standing). 20th. Occupied principally with preparations for leaving. 21st. The house in confusion. Still he does a good stroke of French reading. 22nd. In bed till after nine; couldn't account for it. The confusion is worse confounded ; doesn't know what to do about his books ; is now debarred from the library. Has taken out his exercise-book from his trunk, and written a considerable portion of exercises. ■ Has added to his IJvre Statistique j the Departments are now fully in his head : next topic the course of the Rivers — an occupation when he has nothing to do. 23rd. Rose at three o'clock, to finish packing for departure. As there could be no reading, at five he takes a long country walk to Fronton ; gives two pages of the Diary to a description of , the country and the agriculture. Books being all locked up, he expects to feel ennui for a little time, Writes some of his Livre, converses with two intelligent workmen, gives particulars. After dinner, walks to the village of on the Garonne ; de- scribes the river itself in the neighbourhood. In the evening, being the " Veille de St. Jean," saw the fires lighted up in the district. 24th. Lay in bed purposely late, having nothing to do. M. Le Comte (son of the proprietor) comes in, and po- litely offers him the key of the library, shows him a book of prints ; he also scores a tragedy of Voltaire. As this is the last day before moving to Toulouse, he makes a pause, and de- spatches his seven days' diary to his father, accompanied with l6 DIARY AT TOULOUSE. 1806-182I. a short letter in French to R. Doane, Bentham's amanuensis, chiefly personal and gossipy ; none of his letters to Mr. Doane take up matters of thought. 25th. Rose at half-past two for the journey. He walks out on foot, to be overtaken by a char- k-banc, with part of the family. One of the girls drove part of the way, and gave him the reins for the remainder, as a lesson in driving. They take up their quarters in one of the streets, where they have a very good " Appartement" (I suppose a flat) ; still, after the chateau, they feel considerably cramped; his room a little hole, which he proceeds at once to arrange, having got shelves for his books. Same night, finishes Lucian's Biwv Xlpaai'!, and reads some of Thomson's Chemistry, which is part of his own library. The family remains in Toulouse for some time. We have his diary for nearly six weeks. It is the intention of the Benthams to find him, not merely a French master, but in- struction in various accomplishments — music, dancing, fencing, horsemanship. It is some time before the arrangements are made, so that his first days are purely devoted to book-studies ; and the diary is an exact record of the nature, amount, and duration of hi^ reading, very nearly as at home. It also gives occasional glimpses of his thinking power at the age he has now reached. It is farther interesting as exhibiting his tone towards his father. I will merely quote enough to complete the illustration of these various particulars. 26th. Besides a mass of French reading, reports two eclogues of Virgil and the Alectryon of Luciaa Remarks that having so much French to do, he cannot read Latin and Greek and study Mathematics every day, and means to give one day to Mathematics and one to Latin and Greek. 27th. Rose early. Begins the practice of going every morning to bathe in the Garonne, a little above the town : he is accompanied regularly by Mr. George, and on this occasion by Dr. Russell's boys. To-day reads Legendre's Geometry. Gives a subtle criticism of the author's method, which he thinks excellent ; praises the mathematics; classics; bentham. 17 derivation of the Axioms from the Definitions, as conforming to Hobbes's doctrine that the science is founded on Definitions. Approves also of the way the more elementary theorems are deduced. Learns a very long French fable. Solves a problem in West's Algebra that had bafiled him for several years. Mr. George has already engaged for him the best dancing-master in the place. 28th. (Classical day.) Bathing as usual. Two eclogues of Virgil, and a French grammatical treatise on Pronouns. Reads some more of Legendre (resolution broken through already) : thinks his line of deduction better than Euclid, or even than West. Studies Bentham's Chrestomathic Tables (a vast and minute scheme of the divisions of knowledge). Began the Vocalium Judicium of Lucian. Goes for a second dancing- lesson. 29th. Rather late in returning from the river. An eclogue of Virgil ; finishes the Vocalium. Judicium ; writes French exercises, reads some of Boileau's little pieces ; is to have Voltaire's works soon ; asks Mr. George about a Praxis in the higher Mathematics, having performed over and over again all the problems in Lacroix's Differential Calculus. Resolves more problems of West, including the second of two that had long puzzled him. After dinner began Lucian's Cataplus. 30th. Two eclogues of Virgil ; finished Cataplus ; more of Legendre, discovered a flaw in one of his demonstrations ; wrote French exercises ; read some of Sanderson's Logic ; also some of Thomson's Chemistry. July ist. Treatise on Pronouns finished; Sanderson ; began Lucian's Necyomantia : French exercises ; finished first book of Legendre ; Thomson's Chemistry. Dan- cing-lesson. A singing-master engaged. 2nd. Georgics of Virgil, 99 lines ; more of the Necyomantia before breakfast. After breakfast, Thomson's Chemistry. Wrote Livre Geogra- phique. In the evening the whole family go to Franconi's Circus ; describes the exploits. Has to be measured for a new iuit, French fashion; his English suit being inadmissible, trousers too short, waistcoat too long. The Russells call in the evening, and there is an earnest talk on politics, English and 2 l8 DIARY AT TOULOUSE. 1806-182I. French, which he details. 3rd. A breakdown in the char-k- banc that takes them to the river. Has now got a singing- master, and takes first lesson in Solfkges et Principes de Musique. Again at Franconi's, and full of the performance ; for a wonder, no studies recorded. 4th. Rose at 5 ; home from bathing, &c., at 7|. Has obtained Voltaire's Essai sur les Moeurs, which he includes amongst his stated reading : breakfast at \ to 9: at 9I, begins Voltaire where he left off in England, reads six chapters in two hours ; Virgil's Georgics, 47 lines; at \2\ began a treatise on French Adverbs ; at i^, began the second book of Legendre, read the definitions and five propositions ; miscellaneous employments till 3, then took second Music- lesson. Dined ; family again to Franconi's, but he could not give up his dancing-lesson ; this got, he writes French exercises and practises music. 5th. Rose at 5 ; too rainy for bathing. Five chapters of Voltaire : from 7^ till 8 J, Mr. G. corrects his French exercises which had got into arrears as regards correction; Music-master came; at 9^ began new exercises (French); puts his room in order; at 11^ took out Lucian and finished Necyomantia; five propositions of Legendre, renewed expressions of his superiority to all other geometers ; practises Music-lessons ; Thomson's Chemistry, makes out various Chemical Tables, the drift not explained ; at 3j, tries several propositions in West, and made out two that he had formerly failed in; begins a table of 58 rivers in France, to show what departments each passes through, and the chief towns on their banks; 4, dined; finishes Chemical Table; dancing-lesson ; supped. Reports that a distinguished music- mistress is engaged, at whose house he is to have instrumental practice. 6th. Rose at 6 ; no bathing ; five chapters of Vol- taire ; a quarter of an hour to West's problems ; lesson in Music {Principes) ; problems resumed ; breakfasted, and tried pro- blem again till \o\ ; French exercises till 11 ; began to correct his Dialogue, formerly mentioned, till 12^; summoned to dress for going out to call; has found a French master; at i|, CRITICISM OF LEGENDRE. 1 9 returned and corrected Dialogue till 3^ ; Thomson till 4 (din- ner), resumed till 6; Mr. G. corrects his French exercises; went out for his French lesson, but the master did not teach on Sundays and Thursdays ; back to Thomson till 8 ; repeated Fables to Mr. G. , miscellaneous affairs ; supped ; journal always written just before going to bed. 7th. Rose 5I ; five chapters Voltaire till 7; till 7^, 46 lines of Virgil; till 8, Lucian's Jupiter Confutatus ; goes on a family errand ; Music- lesson till 9 (Prindpes) ; Lucian continued till 9I, and finished after breakfast at io| ; a call required him to dress ; read Thomson and made Tables till 12^; seven propositions of Legendre ; has him over the coals for his confusion in regard to ratio — " takes away a good deal of my opinion of the merit of the work as an elementary work " ; till i J, wrote exercises and various miscellanies ; till 2J, the treatise on Adverbs ; till , 3f , Thomson ; Livre Geographique and Miscellanies till 5 ; eats a little, dinner being uncertain, owing to a family event ; goes for first lesson to music-mistress, a lady reduced by the Revolution, and living by her musical talents ; henceforth to practise at her house daily from 11 to 12, and take a lesson in the evening; dined on return, then dancing-lesson, 9th. Rose at 5 ; five chapters Voltaire ; 6f , Adverbs ; 7|, the Prometheus of Lucian ; %\ till 9, first lesson of Solfeges together with Prindpes; continued Prometheus till break- fast ; miscellaneous occupation till the hour of music-lesson at Mad, Boulet's ; home at 12 J, ten propositions of Legendre : ** if anything could palliate the fault I have noticed of introducing the ratio and the measure of angles before the right place, it is the facility which this method gives to the demonstration of the subsequent propositions ; this, how- ever, cannot excuse such a palpable logical error, &c." Mr. G. is to procure Cagnioli's Trigonometry, but a Praxis in the higher Mathematics is not yet forthcoming. loth. Starts at 4 with Mr. G. and the Russells on a day's excursion to the forest of Bouconne, three leagues from Toulouse, the object being to 20 DIARY AT TOULOUSE. 1806-182I. collect plants and insects. Makes his coup d'essai at catching butterflies, got only about ten worth keeping ; the adventures of the day fully given, nth. Yesterday's fatigue keeps him in bed late; one chapter of Voltaire; at yj, with Mr. G.,to begin with his French master, who hears his pronunciation, and sets him plenty of work. Taken with a party to the house of an astronomer, M. Daubuisson, and shown his instruments ; then to the house of his brother, a great mineralogist. Returns at two to commence the formidable course of lessons set by the French master. Goes successively to his music-master and music-mistress. Introduces a remark as to the great kindness of the family in constantly, without ill-humour, explaining to him the defects in his way of conducting himself in society : "I ought to be very thankful". 12th. Hears from his father that Lady B. has written a good account of him. Replies in full to the matters in his father's letter; is glad to hear of his article on Government, and promises on his return to read it with great attention. Indicates that in future his French lessons will very much engross his time. He is to take the first opportunity of sending the Dialogue, on which he has taken great pains both with expression and with reasoning. Apologizes for giving more time to Mathematics than to Latin apd Greek. A fencing-master is now provided for him, and in two days more a riding-master, so that we have seen him at his best as regards book-studies. He keeps these up a few hours every day, but the largest part of the day is taken up with his other exercises. The only thing deserving mention now is the occa- sional notice of new subjects. Thus,he begins a treatise on Value, and Sir S. Bentham is to get Say's book for him. His French master seems to prescribe, among other things, translating from Latin into French, and he takes up the speech of Catiline in Sallust, and afterwards some Odes of Horace. There is another day's excursion to the forest of RSmelle, with many incidents. He soon reports having read the last of Lucian, and gives a LATIN COMPOSITION. 21 short review of him, accompanied with high admiration ; Her* motimus he considers a masterpiece of ingenious reasoning. In a letter to his mother he adverts to his progress in music and dancing ; he advises his two elder sisters to remit their music till he returns, as he discovers now that they were on a wrong plan. Writes a letter in Latin to those two sisters, by no means a high composition.* Begins a Dialogue at the suggestion of Lady B., on the question — whether great landed estates and great establishments in commerce or manu- factures, or small ones, are most conducive to the general happiness ; in the circumstances, rather venturesome. The following day began, also by Lady B.'s advice, to write on the Definition of Political Economy. Very much elated by " ex- cellent news of the revolution in Italy ". Attends three Lec- tures on Modern Greek, and gives his father an account of the departures from the Ancient Greek. In the beginnmg of August the lessons are at an end ; the family going for a tour in the Pyrenees. What remains of the diary is occupied with this tour, its incidents and descriptions, and is written in French. I must, however, advert to an interesting letter from Lady Bentham to his father, dated J4th September. It refers to a previous letter of hers giving particulars of John's progress in French and other branches of acquirement. The family is to reside in Montpellier, and the purpose of the present letter is * Johannes carissimis Sororibus Williamincs atque Clara salufem ; Credo vos leetaturas epistolee conspectu : Latin6 scribo, pro vobis in et lingui exercendis : Gaudeo k patre audiisse vos in historic Gvseck vosmetipsas instruere ; studium enim illud maxim6 est necessarium omnibus, seu juvenibus, seu puellis. Mihi condonetis quasso si quern errorem in Latinfe scribendo feci, quippe semper in nomen gallicum insido, cum quaeram Latinum. Ricardo Doaneo dicatis me non locum in litteris his habuisse, ut illi scriberera ; itaque mihi non irascatur. Scribatis mihi precor, si possitis, Latinfe, sin minus, Anglich. Forte hanc epistolam difficilem ad legendum, et traducendum inve- nietis ; sed vos exercebit. Valeatis. XIII. Kal. Aug., 1820. Vesperi ad hora — , 2 2 JOURNEY TO THE PYRENEES. 1806-182I. to recommend to his father to allow him to spend the winter there, and to attend the public lectures of the college. Mr. Bernard, a distinguished chemist, who had visited the Benthams at Toulouse, had taken an interest in him, and sounded his depths and deficiencies, and gives the same opinion. As the party has now been boxed up together for some weeks, his habits and peculiarities had been more closely attended to than ever, and (I quote the words) " we have been considerably suc- cessful in getting the better of his inactivity of mind and body when left to himself". This probably refers to his ennui when deprived of books ; it being apparent that, great as was his interest in scenery, he could not yet subsist upon that alone. The letter goes on — " Upon all occasions his gentleness under reproof and thankfulness for correction are remarkable ; and as it is by reason supported by examples we point out to him that we endeavour to convince him — not by command that we in- duce him to do so and so, we trust that you will have satisfac- tion from that part of his education we are giving him to fit him for commerce with the world at large ". Lady Bentham does not omit to add that he must also dress well. The remainder of the diary serves mainly to show his grow- ing taste for scenery and his powers of description. He de- picts climate, productions, villages, the habits of the people, as well as the views that were encountered. The party make the ascent of Le Pic du Midi de Bigorre, and he is in raptures with the prospect. " Mais jamais je n' oublierai la vue du cote mdridionale." In short, to describe its magnificence would need a volume ! We may now conceive with some degree of precision the in- tellectual calibre of this marvellous boy. In the first place, we learn the number of hours that he could devote to study each day. From two to three hours before breakfast, about five hours between breakfast and dinner, and two or three in the evening, make up a working day of nine hours clear. And, ESTIMATE OF HIS STUDIES. 23 while at Toulouse, scarcely any portion of his reading could be called recreative. His lightest literature was in French, and was intended as practice in the language. Probably at home his reading-day may have often been longer ; it would scarcely ever be shorter. For a scholar, in mature years, eight or nine hours' reading would not be extraordinary ; but then there is no longer the same tasking of the memory. Mill's power of application all through his early years was without doubt amaz- ing ; and, although he suffered from it in' premature ill-health, it was a foretaste of what he could do throughout his whole life. It attested a combination of cerebral activity and consti- tutional vigour that is as rare as genius ; 'his younger brothers succumbed under a far less severe discipline. That the application was excessive, I for one would afErm without any hesitation. That his health suffered, we have ample evidence, which I shall afterwards produce. That his mental progress might have been as great with a smaller strain on his powers, I am strongly inclined to believe, although the proof is not so easy. We must look a little closer at the facts. I cannot help thinking that the rapid and unbroken transi- tions from one study to another must have been unfavourable to a due. impression on the memory. He lost not a moment in passing from subject to subject in his reading : he hurried home from his music-lesson, or fencing-lesson, to his books. Now we know well enough that the nervous currents when strongly aroused in any direction tend to persist for some time: in the act of learning, this persistence will count in stamping the impression ; while part of the effect of a lesson must be lost in hurrying without a moment's break to something new, even although the change of subject is of the nature of relief. By his own account, his lessons from masters at Toulouse, with the exception of French and Music, took no effect upon him. Nor is this the worst feature of Mill's programme. According to our present notions of physical and mental training, he oupjht to have had a decided break in the afternoon. Con- 24 APPLICATION TO STUDY EXCESSIVE. l8o5-l82I, sidering that he was at work from about six in the morning, with only half-an-hour for breakfast, he should clearly have had between one and two a cessation of several hours, extending over [dinner ; especially as he gave up the evening to his hardest subjects. Of course this interval should have been devoted to out-of-doors recreation. It is quite true that both father and son were alive to the necessity of walking, and practised it even to excess ; in fact, counted too much upon it as a means of renewing the forces of the brain : while their walks were so conducted as to be merely a part of their work- ing-day — a hearing and giving of lessons. What with his own recital in the Autobiography, and the minuter details in the letter to Sir S. Bentham, and the diary, we have a complete account of his reading and study in every form. The amount is, of course, for a child, stupendous. The choice and sequence of books and subjects suggest various re- flections. His beginning Greek at so early an age was no doubt due to his father's strong predilection for that language. What we wonder at most is the order of his reading. Before his eighth year, he had read not merely the easier writers, but six dialogues of Plato (the Theaetetus he admits he did not understand). He was only eight, when he first read Thu- cydides, as well as a number of plays ; at nine, he read part of Demosthenes \ at eleven, Thucydides the second time. What his reading of Thucydides could be at eight, we may dimly imagine ; it could be nothing but an exercise in the Greek language ; and the same remark must be applicable to the great mass of his early reading both in Greek and in Latin. At Toulouse, we find him still reading Virgil, although ^y& years before he had read the Buccolics and six books of the ^neid. Moreover, at Toulouse, his Greek reading was Lucian, a very easy writer whom he had begun before he was eight ; the noticeable fact being that he is now taking an interest in the writer's thoughts and able to criticize him. It is apparent enough that his vast early reading was too rapid, and, as a con- LITTLE INTEREST IN THE MATTER OF BOOKS. 25 sequence superficial. It is observable how rare is his avowal of interest in the subjects of the classical books : Lucian is an ;ception ; Quintilian is another. He was set by his father to make an analysis of Aristotle's Rhetoric and Organon, and doubtless his mind was cast for Logic from the first. "-His inaptitude for the jnatter of the Greek and Latin poets is unambiguously shown ; he read Homer in Greek, but his interest was awakened only by Pope's translation. His read- ings in the English poets for the most part made no impression upon him whatever. He had a boyish delight in action, battles, energy and heroism ; and seeing that whatever he felt, he felt intensely, his devotion to that kind of literature was very ardent. But, whether from early habits or from native peculiarity, he had all his life an extraordinary power of re- reading books. His first reading merely skimmed the subject: if a book pleased him, and he wished to study it, he read it two or three times, not after an interval, but immediately. I cannot but think that in this practice there is a waste of power. It was impossible for his father to test his study of Greek and Latin works, except in select cases ; and hence it must have been very slovenly. In Mathematics, he had little or no assistance, but there he would check himself. His readings in Physical Science were also untutored : unless at Montpellier, he never had any masters, and his knowledge was at no time mature. If I were to compare him in his fifteenth year with the most intellectual youth that I have ever known, or heard or read of, I should say that his attainments on the whole are not unparalleled, although, I admit, very rare. His classical know- ledge, such as it was, might be forced upon a clever youth of that age. The Mathematics could not be so easily com- manded. The best mathematicians have seldom been capable of beginning Euclid at eight or nine,* and even granting that * Locke knew a young gentleman who could demonstrate several proposi- tions in Euclid de/ore he was thirteen. 26 ESTIMATE OE HIS PRECOCITY. 1806-182I. in this, as in other subjects, he made small way at first, yet the Toujpuse diary shows us what he could do at fourteen ; and L should be curious to know whether Herschel, De Morgan, or Airy could have done as much. I have little doubt that, with forcing, these men would all have equalled him in his Classics and Mathematics combined. But the one thing, in my judg- ment, where Mill was most markedly in advance of his years, was Logic. It was not merely that he had read treatises on the Formal Logic, as well as Hobbes's Computatio sive Logica, but that he was able to chop Logic with his father in regard to the foundations and demonstrations of Geometry. I have never known a similar case of precocity. We must remember, how- ever, that while his father could not be expected to teach him everything, yet, in point of fact, there were a few things that he could and did teach effectually: one of these was Logic; the others were Political Economy, Historical Philosophy and Politics, all which were eminently his own subjects. On these, John was a truly precocious youth • his innate aptitudes, which must have been great, received the utmost stimulation that it was possible to apply.* His father put enormous stress upon Logic, even in the scholastic garb ; but he was himself far more of a logician than the writers of any of the manuals. In that war against vague, ambiguous, flimsy, unanalyzed words and phrases, which was carried on alike by Benthani and by himself, in the wide domains of Politics and Ethics, he put forth a faculty not imparted by the scholastic Logic , and in this higher training the son was early and persistently indoctrinated. To this were added other parts of logical discipline that may also be called unwritten : as, for example, the weighing and balancing of arguments pro and con in every question ; the looking out for snares and fallacies of a much wider compass than those set down in the common manuals. (See the beginning of the ' Bentham ' article for Mill's delineation of Bentham's Logic) * His father, before his death, was proposing to begin Logic with the younger brother, Henry, then in his fourteenth year. John, we have seen, began Logic at twelve. RETURN TO ENGLAND. 27 He returned to England in July, 1821, after a stay of four- teen months. He sufficiently describes (Autobiography^ P- 5^) the fruits of his stay in France, which included a familiar know- ledge of the French language, and, an acquaintance with ordinary French literature. If we may judge from what he says after- wards, his acquaintance with the literature was strictly ordinary; he, knew nothing of the French Revolution, and it was at a much later period that he studied French authors for the im- provement of his style. He had still nearly two years before entering on official life : and he tells us how these were occupied. His father had be- come acquainted with John Austin, who assisted him in Roman Law, his destination being the bar. He also got deep into Bentham for the first time, and began Psychology. He now read the history of the French Revolution. An undated letter to his father probably belongs to this period. He was on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Austin at Norwich. The letter begins with a short account of his studies. He read Blackstone (with Mr. Austin) three or four hours daily, and a portion of Bentham's "Introduction" (I suppose the "Morals and Legislation") in the evening. Among other things, " I have found time to write the defence of Pericles in answer to the accusation which you have with you. I have also found some time to practise the delivery of the accusation, according to your directions." Then follows an account of a visit of ten days with the Austins to the town of Yarmouth, with a description of the place itself. The larger part of the letter is on the politics of Norwich, where " the Cause '' (Liberal) prospers ill, being still worse at Yar- mouth. He has seen of Radicals many ; of clear-headed men not one. The best is Sir Thomas Beever, whom he wishes to be induced to come to London and see his father and Mr. Grole. At Yarmouth he has dined with Radical Palmer, who had opened the borough to the Whigs ; not much better than a mere Radical. " I have been much entertained by a sermon of Mr. Madge, admirable as against Calvinists and Catholics, 28 ACQUAINTANCES AT CAMBRIDGE. 1806-1821. but the weakness of which as against anybody else, I think he himself must have felt." The concluding part of the letter should have been a postscript — *' I wish I had nothing else to tell you, but I must inform you that I have lost my watch. It was lost while I was out of doors, but it is impossible that it should have been stolen from my pocket. It must therefore be my own fault. The loss it- self (though I am conscious that I must remain without a watch till I can buy one for myself) is to me not great — much less so than my carelessness deserves. It must, howeverj vex you — and deservedly, from the bad sign which it affords of me." On his return from France, he resumed energetically the task of home-teaching, making a great improvement in the lot of his pupils, who were exclusively under their father's care in the interval ; for, while he scolded them freely for their stupidity and backwardness, he took pains to explain their lessons, which their father never did. He was kept at this work ever after. I remember hearing Mrs. Grote say that she had turned up an old letter from James Mill, in answer to an invitation to John to accompany Mr. Grote and her on a vacation-tour ; the reply was that he could not be spared from the work of teaching the younger children. The Autobiography gives a full account of his acquaintances among the young men resident at Cambridge, who afterwards came to London, including, besides Charles Austin, who was the means of introducing him, Macaulay, Hyde and Charles Villiers, Strutt (Lord Belper), Romilly, &c. There is no men- tion of his having gone to Cambridge in 1822, on a visit to Qharles Austin. The contrast of his boyish figure and thin voice, with his immense conversational power, left a deep im- pression on the undergraduates of the time ; notwithstanding their being familiar with Macaulay and Austin. I alluded, in the biography of James Mill, to the persistent attempts of Professor Townshend of Cambridge to get John entered there. I repeat two sentences from a letter dated PRESSED TO ENTER TRINITY COLLEGE. 29 March 29, 1823, two months before he entered the India House. " I again entreat you to permit me to write to the tutor at Trinity to enter your son's name at that noble college. Whatever you may wish his eventual destiny to be, his pros- perity in life cannot be retarded, but must on the contrary be increased, by making an acquaintance at an English University with his Patrician contemporaries." Whether it would have been possible to induce his father to send him to Cambridge, I very much doubt. I suspect that, of the two, the son would have been the more intractable on the matter of subscription to the Articles. Ten years later, it was an open question in the house whether his brother Henry should be sent to Cambridge. Chapter II. TWENTY YEARS OF WORK. 1 8 20-1840. HAVING no more documents until 1830, I propose to make a short critical review of Mill's writings and doings in the interval, upon the basis of the information sup- plied by himself. I will first endeavour, for the sake of clearness, to extract the chronological sequence of the years from 1820 to 1830, which, from his plan of writing, is not very easy to get hold of. 182 1. Returns from France (July). Beginning of Psycho- logical studies. Condillac. 1822. Reads the History of the French Revolution ; inflamed with the subject. Studies Law with Austin. Dumont's Bentham excites him to a pitch of enthusiasm. Locke, Helve- tius, Hartley, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Dugald Stewart, Brown on Cause and Effect, Bentham's Analysis of Natural Religion. Begins intimacy with Grote. Charles Austin. His first pub- lished writings in the Traveller newspaper. 1823. Utilitarian Society at Bentham's house : Tooke, Ellis, and Graham. Letters to the Morning Chronicle on the Richard Carlile prosecutions (Jan. and Feb.). Frequent contributions throughout the year to the Chronicle and Traveller, West- minster Review projected. Reads up the Edinburgh Review SUMMARY OF TEN YEARS. 3 1 for his father's attack upon it in the first number of the West- minster* 1824. First number of the Westminster appears (March). Contributes to the second number on the Edinburgh Review f^ to the third, on Religious Persecution and on War Expendi- 7 ture ; to the fourth, on Hume's Misrepresentations in his ' History. 1825. Principal occupation — editing Bentham's book on Evidence. Starting of Parlia7nentary History and Reviews writes the article on the Catholic Disabilities ; also on the Commercial Crisis and Currency and the Reciprocity Principle in Commerce. Learns.G^rman. Begins morning-readings in jthe Society^at Grpte's. house in-Threadneedle Street. Goes Iwith some others to the debates of the Owenites' Co-opera- tive Society \ founding of the Speculative Debating Society, y Writes, in the Westminster^ on the Political Economy of the Quarterly^ on the Law of Libel (?), and on the Game Laws (?) (number for Jan., 1826). 1826. Utilitarian Society ceases; readings at Grote's con- /\ tinue. Speculative Society flourishing. Reviews, for the Westminster^ Mignet's French Revolution, and Sismondi's History of France; writes two articles on the Corn Laws. Beginning of " mental crisis ". 1827. Speculative Society, Readings at Grote's (turned * This was the year of his entering the India House. He was app^nted ^ junior clerk in the Examiner's Office, 21st May, 1823. The clerks in those days ^ had no salary, only a gratuity. For three years, Mill had ^^30 a-year ; at the end of that time, he received a salary of ;i^ioo, with an annual rise of ;^io. / It was, however, in 1828, that he was put over the heads of all the clerks, and made an Assistant, at ;^6oo a-year ; being sixth in rank. In 1830, he stood ' fifth ; his father being at the top. Early in 1836, he gained a step, and, on his father's death, the same year, another : he was then third, but David Hill was made second over his head ; Peacock was chief. His salary was now ^1200 a-year ; to which, in 1854, a special and personal addition was made of I ^200 a-year. On 28th March, 1856, Peacock and Hill retiring together, he was made Examiner, salary ;^2ooo a-year. At Christmas, 1858, on the transfer of ' the Company's government to the crown, he was superannuated on a pension of ;f 1500 a-year, j 32 WRITINGS IN THE WESTMINSTER. 1820-1840. now to Logic). Articles in the Westminster : review of God- win's Commonwealth (?) ; Whately's Logic (in number for Jan., 1828). 1828. Speculative Society. Last article in Westminster— Scott's Life of Napoleon. Acquaintance with Maurice and Sterling. Reads Wordsworth for the first time. (At some later return of his dejection, year not stated, he was oppressed with the problem of philosophical necessity, and found the solution that he afterwards expounded in the Logic) Is promoted ^fmm being a clerk to be Assistant Examiner in his office. Attends John Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence in Univer- \^sity College. /1829. Readings at Grote's on his father's Analysis of the ilu?nan Mind. Withdraws from Speculative Debating Society. Macaulay's attack on his father's Essay on Government pro- duces a change in his views of the Logic of Politics. Attends Austin's second Course of Lectures. With regard to these nine years, I will first remark on his articles in the Westminster Review, He says he contributed thirteen, of which he specifies only three. Of the whole, he says generally, they were reviews of books on history and political economy, or discussions on special political topics, as corn-laws, game-laws, laws of libel. I am able to identify the greater number of them. His first contribution is the article in the second number, on the Edinburgh Review^ which continued the attack made by his father in the first number : he puts this down as " of little or no value," although to himself a most useful exercise in composition ; it is, nevertheless, in respect of his biography, an interesting study. No doubt the opinions are for the most part his father's, though independently and freshly illustrated. The demonstration of the truckling of the Edinburgh Review to sentiment and popularity \ the onslaught against lubricated phrases ; the defectiveness of the current morality as reflected ON THE RICHARD CARLILE PROSECUTIONS. 33 in the Review; the denunciation of the pandering to our national egotism — all these were his father redivivus ; yet, we may see the beginnings of his own independent start, more especially in the opinions with regard to women, and the morality of sex. The first article in the third number (July, 1824), is on the Carlile Prosecutions, and, I have no doubt, is his. It is said of the famous Scotchman, Thomas Chalmers, that, on the memorable occasion when four hundred of the clergy of the Church of Scotland met to resolve upon throwing up their places in the Establishment, he addressed them in his most fervid style, and, in so doing, reproduced a passage on the heroism of the early Christians, composed when he was only eighteen. In like manner, there are passages in this article that could have been transferred without change to the " Liberty ". Take for e sample, a part of the peroration. " That Christians, the Author of whose religion was tried and executed for blasphemy, his own words during the trial being pronounced sufficient evidence against him by his sacerdotal judge ; Christians, whose prophetic books are full of the most biting sarcasms on the gods and worship of the mightiest em- pires ; Christians, who boast a noble army of martyrs, whose lives were the penalty of their avowed departure from the reli- gion of their country; Christians, whose missionaries are striving in every region of the earth to bring other religions * into disbelief and contempt ' ; Christians, Protestant Chris- tians, whose reformers perished in the dungeon or at the stake as heretics, apostates, and blasphemers ; Christians, whose religion breathes charity, liberty, and mercy, in every line ; that they^ having gained the power to which so long they were victims, should employ it in the self-same way, and strive to crush the opposition of opinion, or of passion even, by vindic- tive persecution, is most monstrous." In the same number, he has an article on War Expenditure, the review of a pamphlet by William Blake on the recent fluc- 3 34 EXPOSURE OF Hume's history. 1820-1840. tuations of prices. In the fourth number (Oct., 1824), he reviews at length a work on English Histor}% by George Brodie, which is specially devoted to Hume's misrepresentations. He enters fully into the exposure of Hume's disingenuous artifices; and, at the present time, when Hume's metaphysical reputation is so resplendent, his moral obliquity as a historian should not be glossed over. No doubt his Toryism was his shelter from the odium of his scepticism. Mill says of him : — " Hume pos- sessed powers of a very high order ; but regard for truth formed no part of his character. He reasoned with surprising acuteness ; but the object of his reasonings was not to attain truth, but to show that it was unattainable. His mind, too, was completely enslaved by a taste for literature ; not those kinds of literature which teach mankind to know the causes of their happiness and misery, that they may seek the one and avoid the other ; but that literature which without regard for truth or utility, seeks only to excite emotion." I quote a few more sentences, to give some idea of the charges that the article proposes to substantiate. " Hume may very possibly have been sincere. He may, perhaps, have been weak enough to believe, that the pleasures and pains of one individual are of unspeakable importance, those of the many of no importance at all. But though it be possible to defend Charles L, and be an honest man, it is not possible to be an honest man, and defend him as Hume has done. '' A skilful advocate will never tell a lie, when suppressing the truth will answer his purpose ; and if a lie must be told, he will rather, if he can, lie by insinuation than by direct assertion. In all the arts of a rhetorician, Hume was a master : and it would be a vain attempt to describe the systematic suppression of the truth which is exemplified in this portion of his history ; and which, within the sphere of our reading, we have scarcely, if ever, seen matched. Particular instances of this species of mendacity, Mr. Brodie has brought to light in abundance ; of the degree ia which it pervades the whole, he has not given, MIGNETS FRENCH REVOLUTION. 35 nor would it be possible to give, an adequate conception, unless by printing Mr. Brodie's narrative and Hume's in oppo- site columns. Many of the most material* facts, facts upon which the most important of the subsequent transactions hinged, and which even the party writers of the day never attempted to deny, Hume totally omits to mention ; others, which are so notorious that they cannot safely be passed over in silence, he either affects to disbelieve, or mentioning no evidence, indirectly gives it to be understood that there was none. The direct lies are not a few ; the lies insinuated are innumerable. We do not mean that he originated any lies ; for all those which he could possibly need were ready made to his hand. But if it be criminal to be the original inventor of a lie, the crime is scarcely less of him who knowingly repeats it." In the fifth number (Jan., 1825), he assails the Quarterly for its review of the Essay on Political Economy in the Supplement to the EncyclopcBdia Britannica, In the sixth number (April, 1825), there is a long article on the Law of Libel, the sequel to- a previous article on Religious Prosecutions (No. 3). For the fourth volume, Nos. seven and eight, I have no clue. The ninth _ number (Jan., 1826) opens with a powerfully-written paper on the Game Laws, which I believe to be his. In the tenth number (April, 1826), there is a short review by him of Mignet's History of the French Revolution, which is principally occupied with pointing out the merits of the book. I have heard him recom- mend Mignet as the best for giving the story of the Revolution. He reserves all discussions of the subject; "it being our intention ^t no distant period, to treat of that subject at greater length ". In the eleventh number (July, 1826), there is a searching discussion of the merits of the Age of Chivalry, on the basis of Sismondi's History of France, and Dufaure's History of Paris : this is not unlikely to be Mill's. The Corn-Laws is one of his subjects, and on this there is an article of 30 pages in the twelfth number (Oct., 1826). In the following number (Jan., 1827), there is a second article, referring to Mr. Canning's 36 whately's logic. 1820-1840. measure recently brought forward (1826). The concluding "Article of this number I at first supposed to be his ; but I have sinc e learned that it was by Charles Austin. It deals with a recent article in the Quarterly^ on Greek Courts of Justice, and is very happy. It retorts cleverly upon the exaggerations of the Quarterly, by finding in the English legal practice abuses equal to the worst that the reviewer discovers in the Athenian courts. In the sixteenth number, there is a review of Godwin's History of the Commonwealth, which seems to follow up the review of Hume. The article on Whately in Jan., 1828, was the outcome of the discussions in Grote's house the previous year. It is a landmark not merely in the history of his own mind, but in the history of Logic. His discussion of the utility of Logic, at a time when Syllogism was the body and essence of it, hits the strongest part of the case better than the famous chapter on the Functions of the Syllogism ; I mean the analyzing of an argument, with a view to isolating the attention ori the parts. The discussion of the Predicables is an improvement upon Whately. He even praises, although he does not quite agree with, Whately's attempt to identify Induction with Syllogism, and gives him credit for illustrating, but not for solving, the difficulty of our assenting to general propositions without seeing all that they involve. His view of the desiderata of Logic is thus expressed : — " A large portion of the philosophy of general Terms still remains undiscovered ; the philosophical analysis of Predication, the explanation of what is the immediate object of belief when we assent to a proposition, is yet to be perform- ed ; and, though the important assistance rendered by general language, not only in what are termed the exact sciences, but even in the discovery of physical facts, is known and admitted, the nature of the means by which it performs this service is a problem still to a great extent unsolved." On the whole, it cannot be said that he had, as yet, made much progress in Logic, even under the stimulus of the debates in Threadneedle SCOTTS LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 37 Street. The real advances, apparently, remained to be worked out by his own unassisted strength during the next twelve years. I may remark, in conclusion, that I think he greatly overrates the value of Whately : — "The masterly sketch which he has given of the whole science in the analytical form, previously to entering upon a more detailed exposition of it in the synthetical order, constitutes one of the greatest merits of the volume, as an elementary work.*' If, instead of merits, defects were substituted, the sentence would be, in my judg- ment very near the truth. The mode of arrangement was ■ singularly confusing to myself, when I first read the book ; and the testimony of all subsequent writers on Logic must be held as against it — for not one, to my knowledge, has ever repeated it. It grew out of the very laudable desire to approach an abstract subject by a concrete introduction; but the conditions of success in that endeavour have scarcely yet been realized by any one of the many that have made it. At a later period, Grote reclaimed strongly against Mill's setting Whately above Hamilton. The final article, in April, 1828, is the review of Scott's Life of Napoleon. It extends to sixty pages, and is in every way a masterpiece. He had now made a thorough study of the French Revolution, and had formed the design to be himself its historian. He does ample justice to Scott's genius as a narrator, and to a certain amount of impartiality founded on his naturally tolerant disposition, and his desire to win the good word of everybody. But the exposure of the many and deep-seated defects of the work, both in facts and in reason- ings, is complete, and would have marred the fame of any other writer. In point of execution, it is not unworthy to be compared with the Sedgwick and Whewell articles. I consider some observations called for on the mental crisis of 1826. He had then completed his twentieth year. The subjective description given of his state must be accepted as complete. But the occurrence is treated as purely spiritual or 38 MENTAL CRISIS OF 1826, 1820-1840, mental ; the physical counterpart being wholly omitted ; the only expression used, " a dull state of nerves such as everybody is liable to,'' is merely to help out the description on the mental side. Nothing could be more characteristic of the man. There was one thing he never would allow, which was that work could be pushed to the point of being injurious to either body or mind. That the dejection so feelingly depicted was due to physical causes, and that the chief of these causes was over-working the brain, may I think be certified beyond all Reasonable doubt. We know well enough what amount of mental strain the human constitution, when at its very best, has been found to endure ; and I am unable to produce an instance of a man going through as much as Mill did before twenty, and yet living a healthy life of seventy years. The narrative of his labours in the previous year alone, 1825 (a lad of 19), is sufficient to account for all that he underwent in the years immediately following. Moreover, it was too early to have exhausted his whole interest in life, even supposing that he had drawn somewhat exclusively upon the side of activity and reforming zeal. Fifteen or twenty years later was soon enough to re-adjust his scheme of enjoyment, by dehcate choice and variation of stimulants, by the cultivation of poetry and passive susceptibility. It so happened that, on the present occasion, his morbid symptoms were purely subjective \ there was no apparent derangement in any bodily organ. Judging, however, from what followed a few years later, we can plainly see in this " mental crisis " the beginning of the maladies that oppressed the second half of his life in a way that could not be mistaken. He got over the attack apparently in two or three years, with powers of enjoyment considerably impaired. That spirit left him for a time, but returned afterwards with another still worse. I may here introduce some memoranda of conversations that I had with Roebuck not long before his death. INTIMACY WITH ROEBUCK. 39 Roebuck came over from America, to enter the English bar, I believe, about 1824. He called at the Ind ia H ouse o n _ his relative. Peacock, who offered to mtroduce him to a " disquisitiveyoutn," in the office, and took him to Mill's room. The intimacy that sprung up was even greater than appears from the Autobiography. Mill had already begun his friendship with George John Graham, who also took to Roe- buck, so that the trio became inseparable. Mill used, on his way to the India House, to pick up Roebuck at his chambers, and Graham somewhere else, and they walked together to the city. Mill spends a page or two in giving the origin of the differ- ence of opinion between Roebuck and himself, with reference to poetry and to Wordsworth in particular, which led to the diminution and ultimate cessation of their intimacy. Roebuck treated the whole of this account as without any basis of fact. According to him, the coolness arose, on his foolishly (such was his own expression) remonstrating with Mill on the danger to his future prospects, from his relation to Mrs. Taylor. In the early days of his intimacy with Graham and Roebuck, he took them down once or twice to spend the Sunday at the summer lodgings ot the family. He seemed unconscious of * his father's dislike to his having them for friends : the reason of the dislike I can only surmise. On one of these visits his father was markedly discourteous ; and Roebuck was the very man not to be put upon in any way. He retorted the incivil- ity , and the consequence may be supposed. On Monday morning, Roebuck and Graham went up to London, by the regular coach ; Mill stayed behind, and then walked to town (from Croydon). On next seeing his friends, he told them what happened between him and his father ; he had, he said, " vindicated his position". The scene left a great impression in the family. The children have a recollection of their mother being, on one occasion, in a state of grief, saying, "John was going to leave the house, all on account of Graham and 40 OUTLINE FROM 1830 TO 184O. 182O-1840. Roebuck". Doubtless, this was the occasion that Roebuck described. At all events, the father had to succumb; John stuck by his friends, but of course did not bring them back to the house. Preparatory to the additional elucidation of his life and work from 1830 to 1840, I have constructed the following chrono- logical outline : — 1830. Put on paper ideas on Logical distinctions among Terms, and the Import of Propositions. First acquaintance with the French Philosophy of History : St. Simonians; Comte. Went to Paris after Revolution of July. Began to write steadily on French Politics (Examiner). 1 83 1. Writing in Examiner: essays on the Spirit of the Age.* Essays on Unsettled Questions in Political Economy (1830 and 1831, not published till long after). Resumed Logical Axioms and theory of the Syllogism. Tide of the Reform Agitation. First introduction to Mrs. Taylor. * On looking over the file of the Examiner, to see the drift of these Essays, which I expected to turn upon social questions, more than upon politics, I find that they all point in the direction of his Representative Govern^nent, in so far as they contain anything constructive. There is a long exordium on the character of the present age, as an age of transition, with all the consequences growing out of that — unsettlement of existing institutions, in the absence of principles to found new ones upon. " Wordly power must pass from the hands of the stationary part of mankind into those of the progressive part" " There must be a moral and social revolution which shall indeed take away "no men's lives or property, but which shall leave to no man one fraction of un- earned distinction or unearned importance." "For mankind to change their institutions while their minds are unsetUed, without fixed principles, is indeed a fearful thing. But a bad way is often the best, to get out of a bad position. Let us place our trust in the future, not in the wisdom of mankind, but in some- thing far surer, the force of circumstances which makes man see that, when it is near at hand, which they could not foresee when at a distance." Discussing the way to secure government by the fittest, he considers the time is gone by when wealth is the criterion. Age has more to say for itself, excepting in a time of transition. He considers at some length the sources of moral influence on society. The last of the series (29th May) concludes — " I shall resume my subject as early as possible after the passing of the Reform Bill"; the agitation then going on being used as the climax of the proof tliat the time is one of transition. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 183O. 41 1832. Essays in Tait's Magazine; and in the Jurist. Papers on Corporation and Church Property, and the Currency Juggle. 1833. Monthly Repository: — Review of Alison's History ; Thoughts on Poetry ; Analysis of Platonic Dialogues. In Paris in autumn, and saw Carrel for the first time. 1834. London Review projected; Molesworth to be pro- prietor. Remark rnade — "writings from 1832 to 1834 (with- out newspaper articles) would amount to a large volume ". 1835. Read De Tocqueville's Democracy in America. London Review : — Article on Sedgwick. 1836. His father's death. Illness in the head. Three ' months' leave of absence : tour in Switzerland and Italy. London and Westminster Review : — Civilisation (April). Is promoted to be second Assistant in his office (salary ;^8oo), and again to be first Assistant (;^i2oo). 1837. London and Westminster Review: — Aphorisms (Jan.); Armand Carrel (Oct). 1838. London and Westminster Review: — A Prophecy (Jan.) ; Alfred de Vigny (April) ; Bentham (Aug.) ; Finished original draft of the Third Book of the Logic. 1839. Illness. Six months' leave of absence: travelled in Italy. 1840. London and Westminster : Coleridge (March). Edin- burgh Review: — De Tocqueville's Democracy (Oct.). With Henry at Falmouth, in his last illness. Wrote Sixth Book of Logic. He tells us how he was excited by the French Revolution of 1830, and visited Paris in consequence. He wrote on the 13th August a long letter to his father on the state of parties. He begins — " I have had some conversation with M. Say, and a great deal with Adolphe d' Eichthal and Victor Lanjuinais, and I have been a very assiduous reader of all the newspapers since I arrived." " At present, if I were to look only at the cowardice 42 VISIT TO PARIS. 182O-1840, and imbecility of the existing generation of public men, with scarcely a single exception, I should expect very little good ; but when I consider the spirit and intelligence of the young men and of the people, the immense influence of the journals, and the strength of the public voice, I am encouraged to hope that as there has been an excellent revolution without leaders, leaders will not be required in order ta establish a good govern- ment." He then goes on to give a detailed account of how the., revolution was accomplished — the flinching of the generals of the army, the cowardice and meanness of Dupin above every- body. He has the lowest opinion- of the ministry, not a Radical among them except Dupont deTEure;. all mere place- hunters. Thiers, at the meeting for organizing the resistance, showed great weakness and pusillanimity. [I heard him long afterwards say he detested Thiers.] Of the new measures he praises most the lowering of the age-qualification to the Cham- ber from 40 to 30 : he has seen no one that attaches due importance to this change. " I am going to the Chamber of Deputies to-morrow with Mr. Austin, and next week, I am to be introduced to the Society of * Aide-toi,' where I am to be brought in contact with almost all the best of the young men, and there are few besides that I should at all care to be acquainted with.'' *' I have heard an immense number of the most affecting instances of the virtue and good sense of the common people." These last observations are thoroughly characteristic. Young men and ouvriers- were Mill's hopes. We learn from himself that for several years, he wrote the articles in the Examiner on French Politics. Even when English politics became all-engrossing, he still maintained his interest and fond hopes in the future of France. His first bad illness was ten. years after the beginning of the period of dejection in 1826. In 1836, his thirtieth year, he was seized with an obstinate derangement of the brain. Among - the external symptoms, were involuntary nervous twitchings in BAD ILLNESS OF 1 836. 43 the face. Of the inner consciousness corresponding, we have suggestive indications in the family letters of the time. The earliest allusion to his state h contained in his father's first letter to James in India. " John is still in a rather pining way ; though, as he does not choose to tell the cause of his pining, he leaves other people to their conjectures." This shows that he had ceased to give his father his confidence both in bodily and in mental matters. His medical adviser sent him, in the first instance, to Brighton. A letter from thence addressed to Henry at home — date not given, but probably near the time of his father's letter — says : — " There seems to be a change considerably for the better in my bodily state within the last . three days ; whether it will last, I cannot yet tell ; nor do I know whether the place has contributed towards it, as the more genial weather of yesterday and to-day is probably the chief cause."" He then says that he will continue his stay if the improvement goes on, but is reluctant to be long absent, partly on account of his father's illness and partly on account of his tutoring " Mary and George". He trusts to Henry to keep him informed on the state of matters, and if he can be of any use to his father, he will forego the present advantages and trust to getting well as the summer advances. In a letter, dated 7th May, from Henry to James in India, occurs a further allusion. " There is a new visitor added to the list of young men who come here, a Dr. King, whom John consults about his health '' (he afterwards married the eldest daughter, but soon left her a widow). John " is certainly iH, but nothing, every one assures us, to be frightening himself about". The father's death occurred soon after (23rd June), and, on the 29th of July, Henry wrote r — " We are all well in- health, except John and myself— John from his old complaint." "George ^nd I are going to the. continent with John, who has got leave of absence from the India House for three months, on plea of ill-health." In this letter is a postscript — " John has honoured me with the present of a watch that was given to my father by 44 ILL AGAIN IN 1839. 182O-1840. Mr. Ricardo; so you see it is trebly valuable to me." This reminds us of John's loss of his own watch ; to which I may add that to the end of his life he had only an ordinary silver watch, Next day, the 30th, the party left London. They travelled in France and Switzerland for a month, and the two boys took up their abode at Lausanne, while John went on to Italy. The ' expressions as to his state are still (4th Sept.) very discourag-, ing : — " His head is most obstinate ; those same disagreeable; sensations still, which he has tried so many ways to get rid of, ; are plaguing him." Three weeks later Henry says : — " John wrote to us a very desponding letter, saying that if he had to go back without getting well, he could not again go to the India House, but must throw it up, and try if a year or two of leisure would do anything." The same letter incidentally notices that Mrs. Taylor joined the party, and accompanied John in his tour, while the young people remained at Lausanne. We have no farther references to this illness ; he got round in time, but he retained to the end of his life an almost ceaseless spasmodic twitching over one eye. His renewed capabiHty for work is shown by the dates of his writings immediately subsequent. He had many illnesses- afterwards, but I do not know that anyone was so markedly an affection of the brain as on this occasion. Two years and a-half later, in the beginning of 1839, he went to Italy, and was away six months on sick leave. The expressions that I shall quote from the correspondence are my only means of knowing the nature and extent of his malady. On the 17th Jan., Henry writes : — "As to John's health, none of us believe that it is anything very serious ; our means of judging are his looks when he was here, and also what we have heard from Dr. Arnott. We are told, however, that his sending him away is because his pains in the chest, which are the symptoms, make it seem that a winter in Italy just now LONG TOUR IN ITALY. 45 will afford him sensible and permanent benefit for the whole of his life. . . . That this might have turned to gout." The next letter is one from himself, dated Rome, nth March. He says : — " I have returned here after passing about three weeks very pleasantly in Naples, and the country about it. I did not for some time get any better, but I think I am now, though very slowly, improving, ever since I left off animal food, and took to living almost entirely on macaroni. I began this experiment about a fortnight ago, and it seems to succeed better than any of the other experiments I have tried." The remainder of the letter describes Naples and the neighbourhood — "Pompeii, Baise, Psestum, &c." Ten days later he writes : — "As for me I am going on well too — not that my health is at all better ; but I have gradually got quite reconciled to the idea of returning in much the same state of health as when I left England ; it is by care and regimen that I must hope to get well, and if I can only avoid getting worse, I shall have no great reason to complain, as hardly anybody continues after my 3-g^ (33) to have the same vigorous health they had in early youth. In the meantime it is something to have so good an opportunity of seeing Italy." Again, he writes on the 31st May, from Munich on his way home : — " I am not at all cured, but I cease to care much about it. I am as fit for all my occupations as I was before, and as capable of bodily exertion as I have been of late years — only I have not quite so good a stomach." He then dilates on the pleasures of his Italian tour, to which he added the Tyrol. He returned to his office-work on the ist July. The only indication of his state is in a letter from Henry : — " John is come back looking tolerably well; he is considerably thinner, however." We, infer that his primary affection was in the chest, and to this was added weakness of stomach. In both these organs, he was subject to recurring derangements for the- rest of his life.* * He took the opportunity of studying Roman History while in Italy ; and in Rome itself he read Niebuhr. It was long a design of his to write the 46 LONDON REVIEW STARTED. 182O-184O. The London Review, projected in 1834, started in April, 1835. Sir William Molesworth undertook the whole risk ; and Mill was to be Editor ; although he considered it incompatible with his office to be openly proclaimed in that capacity. His father lent his latest energies to the scheme, and opened the first number with a political article, entitled * The State of the Nation ' — a survey of the situation of public affairs in the beginning of 1835, in his usual style. John MilFs first contri- bution was the ' Sedgwick ' article. I have heard that Sedgwick himself confessed that he had been writing about what he did not understand, but my informant was not him- self a Cambridge man. Effective as the article was for its main purpose of defending the Utilitarian Ethics against a sciolist, it always seemed to me rather weak in the Introduc- tion, which consists in putting the question, " For what end do endowed Universities exist," and in answering — **To keep alive philosophy ". In his mind, philosophy seemed to mean chiefly advanced views in politics and in ethics ; which, of course, came into collision with religious orthodoxy and the ^ received commonplaces of society. Such a view of the , functions of a University would not be put forth by any man that had ever resided in a University ; and this is not the only occasion when Mill dogmatized on Universities in total ignorance of their working. The second number of the Review is chiefly notable for his father's article on Reform in the Church. It is understood that this article gave a severe shock to the religious public ; it was a style of reform that the ordinary churchman could not enter into. The prospects of the Review were said to be very much damaged in consequence. John Mill wrote on Samuel Bailey's Rationale of Political Representation. Bailey's view being in close accordance with his own, he chiefly uses the philosophy of the rise of the Roman power, but he failed to satisfy himself that he possessed an adequate clue. So late as 1844 or 1845, he was brooding over a review-article on this subject. REVIEWS TENNYSON: DE TOCQUEVILLE. 47 work as an enforcement of the radical creed. After Bentham and the Mills, no man of their generation was better grounded in logical methods, or more thorough in his method of grap- pling with political and other questions, than Samuel Bailey. In the same number, Mill reviews Tennyson's poems. He assigns as his inducement that the only influential organs that had as yet noticed them were Blackwood and the Quarterly Review ; on which notices he pronounces a decided and not very flattering opinion. He is, accordingly, one of the earliest to mete out justice to Tennyson's powers ; and, as a critical exercise, as well as a sympathetic appreciation, the article is highly meritorious. In some instances besides, Mill was among the first, if not the very first, to welcome a rising genius. He closes the number with a political article on the measures of the Government for the session, among others, the Irish Church and the Municipal Corporations bills. His text seems to be that the statesmen of the generation are good in destroy- ing, but bad in construction; and he says that the remark applies to all the Whig reforms, and most of all to Lord Brougham's Law reforms. In the third number, Oct., 1835, Mill reviews De Tocque- ville's book, which had then appeared ; the review extending to 45 pages. It is a very full account of the book, with copious extracts, but may be considered as superseded by the article written for the Edinburgh Review in 1840, which is reprinted in the Dissertations. The number concludes with a short but energetic review of the Parliamentary session just concluded. It is of the tone and character of all his political writing in those years ; a retrospect of recent achievements, with a view of the present position and declaration of the one thing needful for it — a leader. He bitterly complains of the absence of a man of action, and asks, " Why does not Mr. Grote exert himself? There is not a man in Parliament who could do so much, or who is more thoroughly the people's friend." "O'Connell is the only figure that stands erect." 48 LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW. 1820-1840. The Liberal Press is too much given to truckling to the' Ministry. The bull must be taken by the horns ; the Tories must be awakened by the apparition of a House of Lords Amendment Bill. In the fourth number, January, 1836, he has an article Entitled ' State of Society in America/ reviewing a number of books of American Travels, and following up the article, on De Tocqueville. It is occupied with an attempt to connect the features of American Society with the industrial position and political constitution of the country. It may be called one of his minor sociological studies. The fifth number is the first of the union of the Lojidon with the old Westminster, hereafter called The London and JVest- minster. It appeared in April, 1836. Mill contributes to it his article on Civilisation, contained in the Dissertations ^ and a short political article on the State of Politics in 1836. I never felt quite satisfied with the article on Civilisation. The definition given at the outset seems inadequate ; and the re- mainder of the article is one of his many attacks on the vicious tendencies of the time. He regards as consequences of our civilisation, the decay of individual energy, the weakening of the influence of superior minds, the growth of charlatanerie^ and the diminished efficacy of public opinion, and insists on some remedies for the evils \ winding up with an attack on the Universities. To my mind, these topics should have been detached from any theory of Civilisation, or any attempt to extol the past at the cost of the present. The political article is a survey of the measures pending in Parliament. He is very much excited, as his father was, about the spoiling of the country with unnecessary railways. There is the usual com- plaint of the torpidity of Radicals, Joseph Hume being his only exception. For the July number, he contributes only the opening article, which is a political survey, on the text of Sir John Walsh's Contemporary History. It retraces the history of Reform, POLITICAL ARTICLES. 49 and its consequences, and discourses on the relative merits of Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, with the usual complaints. Knowing the state of his health this year, the occurrence of his father's death, and his three months' absence, we are surprised to find that he can contribute to the October number ; of which the first article is his — on the Definition and Method of Political Economy. Doubtless, this had been lying by him, and had been brought out to fill a gap. In January, 1837, the political article is by Sir William Molesworth (The Terms of Alliance between Radicals and Whigs). Mill contributes only a short paper on an anonymous work of Arthur Helps, I believe his first pubhcation — ' Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd '- This was another occasion when he displayed his passion for discerning and encouraging the first indications of talent and genius. I remember when I first came to London, this was one of the books he lent me ; and we agreed that, in point of thinking power, Helps had not fulfilled the promise of that little work. For April, 1837, he contributes a review of Fonblanque's England under Seven Administrations ; which would be easy work. The article is laudatory enough, but iterates the author's standing complaint against all the journals, namely, too great subserviency to the ministry in power. The political summary in the number is again by Molesworth. Carlyle contributes a short paper on the French Revolution, under an editorial caveat In July, appears the review of Carlyle's French Revolution, which Mill considers to have been one of his grand strokes in the Review. Carlyle's reputation was as yet hanging very dubious. The effect to be produced by the French Revolution was extremely uncertain. Mill was now well acquainted with Carlyle, and knew how his peculiarities affected people, and how easily a prejudice might be created that would retard his fame for years. A judicious boldness was the only chance, and the article opens thus : — * This is not so much a history, as an epic poem ; and not 4 50 CARLYLE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 182O-1840. withstanding, or even in consequence of this, the truest of histories. It is the history of the French Revolution^ and the poetry of it, both in one; and on the whole, no work of greater genius, either historical or poetical, has been produced in this country for many years.' Nothing could be better calculated to disarm prejudice against the book than the conduct of this article throughout; it is indeed a masterpiece of pleading, and deserved to be success- ful, as it was. A little later. Mill admitted into the Review an article on Carlyle by John Sterling, which was a still more complete exhibition of Carlyle, and is probably yet one of the best criticisms that he has ever received. Still, when Carlyle, in his Life of Sterling, refers to that article as the first marked recognition he had received in the press, he was unfairly oblivious to what Mill's article had previously done for him. In this number the political article has to advert to the death of King William, and the events that follow. The Radicalism is as strong as ever ; but the signature (E) is not Mill's, and I do not know the author. The next number is October, 1837. The opening article is the political one, and is by Mill. Its text is the opening of the new Parliament of 1837. It is, if possible, more energetic and outspoken than ever. It addresses first the Ministers, and demands of them the Ballot, as a special measure, and a number of other reforms, the Church included. It addresses the Radicals in Parliament in the usual strain. It hits the Tories very hard for their disingenuous dealing on the new Poor Law at the elections, and demonstrates that not they, but the Radicals, were the real upholders of the rights of property. The incitements to action are redoubled, as the power of the Liberals has diminished. I do not know of any compositions that better deserve to be compared with the Philippics of Demosthenes than Mill's political onslaughts in those years. This number contains also the article on Armand Carrel. ARMAND CARREL : CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 5 1 The best part of it is, perhaps, the history of French politics from the restoration of the Bourbons, on which he was thoroughly informed. The personality of Carrel is sketched chiefly from Carrel's biographers, to which he adds the impres- sions made by Carrel on himself. The distinguishing aim of Carrel's political life is remarkable for its common sense and intelligibility — to mitigate the mutual hostility of parties as a preparation for a constitutional regime. In the summing up of Carrel's personality Mill displays himself: — ■" Like all persons of fine faculties, he carried the faculties with him into the smallest things ; and did not disdain to excel, being qualified to do so, in those things which are great only to little men." This doctrine, 1 conceive, was held by Mill to an erroneous excess ; the counter-doctrine of the limitation of the human faculties he never fully allowed for. He believed in large minds without any qualification, and saw very little incompatibility between the most opposite gifts. In January, 1838, appears the first 'Canada and Lord Durham' article. In the Autobiography h.^ celebrates the in- fluence exerted by this and his subsequent article on the return of Lord Durham, and believes that they were a turning-point, not merely in the settlement of Canada, but in the future of all our British colonies. But, independently of this. Mill exercised great personal influence on Lord Durham's Canadian measures, chiefly through his secretary, Charles Buller, who was always very open to Mill's suggestions. The present article apologizes for not reviewing the home political situation at large, because "a question has arisen, which suspends all united action among Radicals ". " On this most grievous subject, we shall, in the course of this article, declare our whole opinion." He yet, however, finds it necessary first to denounce in fitting terms Lord John Russell's declaration of hostility to all reform on the first night of the session. The discussion of the Canadian problem is in his very best style, and is as well worth reading even now as any of his reprinted papers. / 52 PHILOSOPHIZES IN LITERATURE AND POETRY. 1820-1844. The number for April, this year, opens with one of his literary articles, reproduced in the Dissertations — 'Alfred de Vigny'. This article is his latest and most highly elaborated attempt to philosophize upon Literature and Poetry. The ' Thoughts on Poetry ' is his only other paper that he has deemed worth preserving. The reviews of Tennyson and Carlyle's French Revolution are replete with just criticism, but do not reach the height of philosophical explanation. In his philosophy of style, there are many good points, but, as I con- ceive, some serious omissions. I doubt if he gave enough thought to the subject. The earlier part of the ' De Vigny* article on the influence exerted on Poetry by Political changes, such as the French Revolution, is, I think, very happily express- ed ; and is quite equal to any other similar dissertations by our best historians and critics. It is when he comes to state the essential quality of the poetic genius or temperament, that I think his view defective. In the first place, he puts too much stress on the Emotional quality, and too little on the Intel- lectual. In the second place, he is wrong in identifying the poet intellectually with the philosopher or thinker : he regards genius, whether in poetry or in philosophy, as the gift of seeing truths at a greater depth than the world can penetrate. On the former of these two heads he accepts De Vigny's emotional delineation—" the thrill from beauty, grandeur, and harmony, the infinite pity for mankind " — as the tests, or some of the tests, of the poetic nature ; but he takes no direct notice of the genius of expression, the constructive or creative faculty, with- out which emotion will never make a poet, and with which the grandest poetry may be produced on a very shght emotional basis. To criticize Shelley without adducing his purely intel- lectual force, displayed in endless resources of language, is to place the superstructure of poetry on a false foundation. Shakespeare, in any view of him, was ten parts intellect for one -emotion ; and his intellect did not, so far as I am aware, see truths at a greater depth than the worM could penetrate. LORD DURHAM'S RETURN. 53 Mill inherited his father's disposition to think Shakespeare over-rated ; which, to say the least, was unfortunate when he came to theorize on poetry at large. In August, appeared the review of Bentham, which I will advert to presently. The next number is December, 1838. It closes with Mill's second article on Canada-^—' Lord Durham's Return ' — vindi- cating his policy point by point, in a way that only Mill could have done. It concludes — " If this be failure, failure is bu the second degree of success ; the first and highest degree may be yet to come". The succeeding number appears in April, 1839, and contains the last, and in one viev/ the greatest, of Mill's political series. Liberalism in Parliament is now at its lowest ebb : and only some new and graaid expedient can be of any avail. Departing from his old vein of criticism of Whigs and Radicals, he plans the ' Reorganisation of the Reform Party,' by an inquiry into the origin and foundations of the two great parties in the State. He inquires who, by position and circumstances, are 7iatural Radicals, and who are natural Tories \ who are interested in progress, and who in things as they are. I strongly recommend this article as a piece of admirable political philosophy, and I do not know any reason for his not preserving it, except that it is so closely connected with the passing politics of the time. The following summary is worth giving ; the theme is one that will often be written upon : — " In order to estimate the strength of the two parties, we must consider the permanent causes which are operating upon each of the separate divisions that compose the nation, and determining it towards the one party or the other : and these permanent causes (speaking as we are of bodies of men, and not of remarkable individuals) are for the most part to be looked for in their personal interests, or in their class feelings. We are the last persons to undervalue the power of moral con- victions. But the convictions of the mass of mankind run 54 REORGANIZATION OF THE REFORM PARTY. 1820-184O. hand in hand with their interests or with their class feelings. We have a strong faith, stronger than either politicians or philosophers generally have, in the influence of reason and virtue over men's minds ; but it is in that of the reason and virtue on their own side of the question ; in the ascendancy which may be exercised over them for their good, by the best and wisest persons of their own creed. We expect few conver- sions by the mere force of reason, from one creed to the other. ' Men's intellects and hearts have a large share in determining what sort of Conservatives or Liberals they will be ; but it is their position (saving individual exceptions) which makes them Conservatives or Liberals. " If we would find, then, the hne of distinction between the two parties, we must look out for another line of demarcation \ we must find ont who are the Privileged Classes, and who are the Disqualified. The former are the natural Conservatives of the country ; the latter are the natural Radicals. " The Privileged Classes are all those who are contented with their position ; who think that the institutions of the country work well for them ; who feel that they have all the influence, or more than the in"fluence, in the present order of things, which they could expect under any other ; who enjoy a degree of consideration in society which satifies their ambition, and find the legislature prompt to lend an ear to their complaints, and if they feel anything as an inconvenience to endeavour to devise a remedy for it. All, in short, who feel secure that their interests will not be postponded to those of other people, and still more all who feel secure that the interests of the other people will be postponed to theirs, compose the Conservative body. Those who feel and think the reverse of all this are the Disqualified Classes. All who feel oppressed, or unjustly dealt with, by any of the institutions of the country ; who are taxed more heavily than other people, or for other people's benefit ; who have, or consider themselves to have, the field of employ- ment for their pecuniary means or their bodily or mental BENTHAM AND COLERIDGE ARTICLES. 55 faculties unjustly narrowed ; who are denied the importance in society, or the influence in public affairs, which they consider due to them as a class, or who feel debarred as individuals from a fair chance of rising in the world especially if others, in whom they do not recognize any superiority of merit, are artificially exalted above their heads : these compose the natural Radicals ; to whom must be added a large proportion of those who, from whatever cause, are habitualy ill at ease in their pecuniary circumstances ; the sufferers from low wages, low profits, or want of employment : for even if they do not im- pute their situation to the government,, they almost always think that the government could if it chose, do something to relieve them ; and, at all events, finding themselves ill of as they are, think they should not fare worse and would stand a chance of faring better under a change." The article is the farewell to Mill's political agitatation. As this was the year of his second bad illness, I presume was written in the end of 1838, in the midst of great suffering. After six months' interval, the next number appears — October, 1839. It contains no article of Mill's : he had been abroad the first half of the year. The number is otherwise notable for Sterling's article on Carlyle, and Robertson's on Cromwell. In March, 1840, is published the last number under Mill's pro- prietorship. It opens with his * Coleridge ' article. The Bentham article both stands alone as an appreciation ot Bentham's work, and also forms one member of a correlative couple with the disquisition on Coleridge. No one possessed the qualification of Mill for setting forth Bentham's merits and defects : we wish that he had made still more use of his means in depicting Bentham's personality. But in the mode of dealing with the defective side of Bentham, he undoubtedly gave offence to the Benthamite circle. He admits (in the Autobiography) that it was too soon to bring forward the faults of Bentham ; and, looking at the article now, we may be allowed to say that a little more explanation is wanted on both points ; as, for 56 PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM. 1820-1840. examiDle, Bentham's deficiency in Imagination, his omission of high motives in his Springs of Action, and his aversion to the phrases ' good and bad tasi^. It is apparent that Mill is \ criticizing him from a point of view not taken by any other I of Bentham's friends and disciples. When we turn to the ' Coleridge ' article, we find the more explicit statement of his position, as between the great rival schools. There we have a laboured introduction to show the necessity of studying the conflicting modes of thought on all- questions : we are told that, as partisans of any one side, we see only part of the truth, and must learn from our opponents the other part. Following out this text, Mill endeavours to assign the truth that there is in Conservatism, when purified by Coleridge and raised to a coherent system, or a philosophy. It is needless to advert to the detailed illustration, but the conclusion is open to remark. A Conservative philosophy may be, he says, an absurdity, but it is calculated to drive out still worse absurdities. To cut the matter short, he hopes from it, not the conversion of Con- servatives into Liberals, but the adoption of " one liberal opinion after another as a part of Conservatism itself. Surely this is spreading the snare in the sight of the bird. We may ask whether, after forty years' trial, the Conservative philosophy of Coleridge has really born such fruits ; or whether the adoption of Liberal opinions by Conservatives has had any- thing to do with philosophical consistency. Did Mr. Glad- stone's conversion follow, in any degree, from Coleridge's philosophy ? Be this as it may, these two articles made a temporary alienation between Mill and his old associates, and planted in their minds a painful misgiving as to his adhering to their principles or to any principles.* There is, in the Logicy an * A letter from Mrs. Grote to Roebuck, in April, 1837, states, with some exaggeration and coarseness, the feeling that grew up in her circle as to the management of the Review. ' ' Molesworth wrote a flippant letter in mighty bad taste about our ceasing to write for L. and W., affecting despair, &c MANAGEMENT. OF THE REVIEW. 57 extract from the * Coleridge * article, on the essential conditions of stability in any society. One of these conditions is that there be something that is settled, and not to be called in question. Grote never ceased to convert this remark into an ' expression for the standing intolerance of society towards un- popular opinions. From these two articles, it is a natural transition to remark generally upon his manner of conducting the Review from first to last. He aimed at a wider comprehension than had ever been allowed before in any periodical representing a sect. He sought out fresh and vigorous thinking, and did not expect a literal adherence to his own opinions. The Review abounds in editorial caveats^ attached to the articles : his principle of seeing partial truth on opposite sides was carried out in this form. He respected real ability when combined with sincerity, and, as an editor, he never refused a reading to an offered con- tribution ; in fact, he delighted in the perusal of young authors' essays. It was a noble experiment to endeavour to combine opposites and to maintain a perpetual attitude of sympathy with hostile opinions. A dissertation would be well expended in inquiring into its results. For the present I remark that, as real opposi- tion cannot be smoothed down, we must still work on the old track of counter-argumentation ; while every honest truth- seeker endeavours to do justice to the case of an opponent. Now, I merely wrote to John, by G.'s desire, a simple refusal to furnish an article on Greek History. M. chuses to book it as a piece oi party feeling, I suppose, towards T. F. (Thomas Falconer), as he is very sore, I see. I am quite persuaded the Review will cease to be the engine of propagating sound and sane doctrines on Ethics and Politics under J. M. Whether by getting hooks baited with carrion, he attract other sorts of fish than those we angle for, and thus render it a better investment, I really am not in a condition to judge. But, on the other hand, it is a matter of entire indifference to me so viewed. For my part I only wonder how the people contrive to keep improving, under the purveyance of the stuff and nonsense they are subjected to." 58 MILL TAKES THE WHOLE RISK. 1820-1840. The watch-word in those days of the Review, was — Sympathize in order to learn. That doctrine, preached by Goethe and echoed by Carlyle, was in everybody's mouth, and had its fling. Mill's account of the management of the Review, first as held by Molesworth, and afterwards by himself,, leaves un- certainties on various interesting points. He was at first sole editor, it appears, without being the avowed editor : he does not say what this exactly meant. In point of fact, he rather supervised than edited the Review. The first acting editor, as I am informed, was Mr. Thomas Falconer, a barrister, and now a county court judge ; Mill guiding him, but not being the active correspondent with contributors. During Mill's absence in the autumn of 1836, Mr. Falconer did all the editing un- controlled, and, in the exercise of his editorial discretion, rejected Carlyle's article on Mirabeau, which Mill had previ- ously approved of: the rejection was afterwards reversed by Mill, who printed the article in the following January (1837). Although not the impression left by the narrative in the Auto- biography, I am constrained by the facts within my knowledge to believe that Robertson's period as assistant-editor must have begun in the summer of 1837 ; and Molesworth's retirement could not have been till the end of the year. This affects our estimate of the numbers issued at Mill's sole risk. Molesworth may have borne the cost of ten or eleven numbers, which would leave Mill seven or eight, of the eighteen in all. Molesworth expended, no doubt, a considerable sum in starting it; and Mill must have been both very sanguine, and also very much bent upon propagating his views in politics, philosophy and literature, to take the whole risk upon himself. He paid his sub-editor, and gave sixteen pounds a sheet to such of the contributors as took payment. On these eight numbers he must have lost considerably ; perhaps somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand pounds. I can form some estimate of the loss from knowing what Hickson paid to contributors, when he SUCCESSES IN THE REVIEW. 59 took over the Review, and worked it on the plan of making it pay its own expenses, he giving his labour gratis.* Readers of the Autobiography remember the account Mill gives of his two most brilliant successes achieved by the Review ; the saving of Lord Durham, and the rescuing of Car- lyle's French Revolution from probable failure. In an interesting letter written soon after the Review ceased, he insists with even greater empressement on these two feats, but adds — " My third success is that I have dinned into people's ears that Guizot is a great thinker and writer, till they are, * I was well acquainted with Mill's sub-editor, John Robertson, now dead. He was a Tellow-townsman, and was the medium of my introduction to Mill. I had. for several years, abundant opportunities of conversing with him, and learnt a great deal about Mill during our intercourse. But he was very reticent about his own relations with Mill ; he never told me at least, what was his pecuniary allowance as sub-editor ; nor did he explain how they worked together in the matter of editing ; his habit was to style himself Editor, and to seem to take the sole management. He has not left behind him any record of the connexion between him and Mill ; while I know enough of his history to make me doubt whether it commenced in 1836. Those that knew Robertson were not a little taken aback by Mill's character of him : — ' A young Scotch- man, who had some ability and information, much industry, and an active scheming head, full of devices for making the Review more saleable, &c/ I remember on one occasion when Mr. Disraeli, in the House of Commons, quoted Mill as an authority on some economical view. Lord John Russell, in reply, spoke of him as a learned author ; the next time I met him, he accosted me with his humorous twinkle ' you see what I am now, according to Lord John Russell '. The malapropos here was not even so bad. Robertson's attainments were of the slenderest descripdon, and his industry very fitful ; but he could make a vigorous and brilliant display both in composition and in conversation. He contributed striking articles to the Review, the best being his Cromwell. He was also a very good writer of newspaper articles. His impetus and suggestiveness in conversation drew out Mill, who never talked better than he did with him. But although he made friends in London circles and in the clubs, he was very distasteful to many of Mill's associates and increased the difficulties of carrying on the Review ; being in fact, for a novus homo, as Henry Mill styled him, somewhat arrogant. He took much interest in the Scotch Non-Intrusion controversy, and coached the Melbourne Government upon the question. About 1844, he disappeared from London, and was afterwards rarely heard of. Mill scarcely ever mentioned his name in later years. His widow has gathered together the extant indications of his career but he left few or no reminiscences of his more interesting connexions. 6o COMPLAINT AGAINST THE RADICALS. 1820-1840. though slowly, beginning to read him — which I do not believe they would be doing yet, in this country, but for me." His admiration of Guizot persisted some time longer, and led to his most elaborate article of all, in the Edinburgh Review^ five years later, which article he has seen fit to reprint ; but we may suppose that Guizot's subsequent career and writings had a disenchanting effect on him as on many others.* Reverting to the salient idea of his political articles for those seven or eight years — the fatality of there being no leader of the Radical party, although it was composed of very able men —I have often wondered in vain what he expected a leader to do or to be. Everything is not possible even to the greatest of chiefs ; and it is doubtful whether any of the men that ever wielded the fierce democracy, from Demosthenes to Gambetta, would have headed a conquering majority in the last years of the Melbourne Ministry. He nearly admits as much, but not without reservation. He says explicitly that his father might have been such a leadei ; and even implies that he himself could have made the state of matters very different. We may well hesitate on both heads. That his father would have made an able minister or party-leader, we must cheerfully allow ; but his sentiments and views would have required a thick covering of disguise to allow even his being elected to Parliament, and still more to qualify him for meeting that most pressing want of the time — Reform of the Church. This chapter may fitly conclude with the remaining event of importance in the year 1840 — the last illness and death of * I cannot identify all the signatures of the articles in the Review ; but in addition to the contributors incidentally brought forward in the text, I may mention the names of Lytton Bulwer, Charles Buller, J. A. Roebuck, James Martineau, Harriet Martineau, Blanco White, Andrew Bisset, W. J. Fox, Mazzini, George Fletcher, Henry Cole, J. P. Nichol. Never was so much * good blood ' infused into a periodical of the same duration. Of old Reviews, I think it would be difficult to produce nine volumes possessing the same amount of interest and stimulus. DEATH OF HENRY MILL. 6 1 Mill's favourite brother Henry, which took place at Falmouth, on the 4th April, in his 19th year. He was sent there in the beginning of the year, for the relief of his complaint — consump- tion ; and John plied him with every kindness that he could devise. He went and lived at Falmouth, during his illness, as long as he could get away from his office ; and had an oppor- tunity at the same time of seeing a great deal of Sterling, who was there also on account of chest-weakness. A letter of warm acknowledgment to Mr. Barclay Fox, of Falmouth, for the attention bestowed on Henry by his family, is for Mill un- usually effusive, and teems with characteristic traits. One not a Christian, addressing a Christian family upon death, and wakening up the chords of our common humanity, is a spec- tacle worth observing. Chapter III. LOGIC AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 1841-1848. MY acquaintance with Mill dates from 1839, when I was a student at Marischal College, Aberdeen. In the winter of 1838-9, John Robertson, who was then assisting in the Review, paid a short visit to his native city. I had known him when I was little more than a child, but had not seen him for years. He asked me to meet him, and entered into free conversation about his doings in. London and about my pursuits and prospects. He gave me both advice and encouragement, and spoke a good deal about Mill, whom I had never heard of, although I may have known something of his father. On return- ing to London, Robertson mentioned my name to Mill. In the summer of 1839, 1 wrote a criticism of some points in Herschel's Discourse on Natural Philosophy^ a book that had long fascinated me, as it had done so many others. I thought Herschel oc- casionally weak in his metaphysics, and directed my criticism to some of those weaknesses. Robertson showed Mill this paper. , He spoke favourably of the effort, but remarked to myself some time afterwards that the criticism was too severe, and that the book " always seemed to him to have the characters of a first crude attempt of a clever and instructed man in a province new to him '*- In 1840, I took my M.A. Degree, and began to write for periodicals. Mill had just parted with the London and West- minster : but, through Robertson, I got my first published CORRESPONDENCE OF 1841. 6;^ article admitted into the Westminster for September ; an ex- position of the two scientific novelties — the Electrotype and Daguerreotype. In July, 1841, was published a second article entitled " The Properties of Matter," to which I owed the first notice taken of me by Mr. Grote. Both these articles did me good with Mill. In the same autumn, 1841, Robertson, who was now very much at sea himself, came down to Aberdeen, and made a long stay ; during which I had abundant talk with him — my early friend David Masson being also of the party. Robertson occasionally wrote to Mill, and at last incited me to write to him. I scarcely remember anything of the terms of the letter, but I have preserved his reply, dated 21st Sept., 1841. After my first meeting with Robertson, nearly three years previous, I assiduously perused the back numbers of the London and London and Westminster Reviews, as well as each new number as it appeared, whereby I became thoroughly familiar- ized with Mill's ideas : and was thus able to exchange thoughts with him on his own subjects. I was engaged for the succeeding winter to teach the Class of Moral Philosophy in Marischal College, as substitute for the professor ; and his letter is chiefly a comment upon this fact. Notwithstanding that he was then intently occupied in finishing his Logic for the press, he wrote me several other letters in the course of the winter. In the one immediately following (Oct. 15) he made mention of Comte, in these terms — " Have you ever looked into Comte's Co7ers de Philosophie Positive ? He makes some mistakes, but on the whole I think it very near the grandest work of this age.*' From the remaining letters, I can gather that I had written him a good deal upon Whewell's writings, as well as on Herschel, and on his own coming book. Among other things, he sketched out for me a course of reading on Political and Historical Philosophy. He also criticized in detail the strong and the weak points of an article published by me in the Westminster in Jan. 1842, with the somewhat misleading title — " Toys ". 64 IN THE INDIA HOUSE. 1841-1848. As soon as the Aberdeen winter session was over, in the middle of April, 1842, I went to London, and remained there five months. The day after arriving, I walked down to the India House with Robertson, and realized my dream of meeting Mill in person. I am not likely to forget the impression he made upon me, as he stood by his desk, with his face turned to the door as we entered. His tall slim figure, his youthful face and bald head, fair hair and ruddy complexion, and the twitching of his eyebrow when he spoke, first arrested the attention : then the vivacity of his manner, his thin voice approaching to sharpness, but with nothing shrill or painful about it, his comely features and sweet expression — would have all remained in my memory though I had never seen him again. To complete the picture, I should add his dress which was constant — a black dress-suit with silk necktie. Many years after that he changed his dress-coat for a surtout ; but black cloth was his choice to the end.* * I trust that some one that served under the East India Company, will leave to future historians, and lovers of picturesque effects, a. full description of thfe Company's dingy, capacious, and venerable building in Leadenhall Street. In common with a goodly number of persons, I have a vivid recollec- tion of the great front, the pillared portal, and the line of passages conducting to Mill's room, from which I never had any occasion to deviate. On entering we passed the porter in his official uniform, including cocked hat, and walked straight forward by a long passage not less, I should think, than a hundred feet ; then up two pair of very unpretentious flights of stairs. At the landing was a door, bearing on the top-lintel the inscription, " Examiner's Office". We entered a little room occupied by the messengers, where they could make tea for the officials (Mill had his breakfast provided in this way, on arriving at ten o'clock : tea, bretld and butter, and a boiled egg). Leaving this room we entered, by a baize spring door the long clerks' room. To the right of the matted passage, were the clerks' screened boxes adjoining the windows. At the far end just on emerging was a huge fire {in winter), which gave the room a sickly, stuffy tem- perature : nevertheless, as was natural, two or three of the clerks might be found standing in front, for additional warmth, or perhaps still more for conversation. Passing the fire, and throwing open a spring door, we were in n passage leading to the private rooms. One of these, the second I believe, was Mill's. There was an outside green baize door, always latched back to the wall; reminding us that the officials were servants of the Secret Committee, and might have to hold very confidential interviews. The loom itself was very CONVERSATIONS. 65 My opportunities of conversation with him for these five months consisted in going down to the India House twice a week at four o'clock, and walking with him a good part of his way to Kensington Square, where his mother and family lived, I also spent occasional evenings at the house, where I met other friends of his — G. H. Lewes being a frequent visitor. I may be said to have travelled over a good part of his mind that summer. Although he did not then give me his full confidence in many things, that I came to know afterwards, I had a very full acquaintance with his views on Philosophy and Politics, as well as a complete appreciation of his whole manner of thinking. His Logic was finished and ready for press ; he had intended that it should be out in April of that year (1842). He had submitted it the previous winter to Mr. John Murray ; who kept it for some time, and then declined it, so that it could not be brought out that season. He then submitted it to J. W. spacious, I should suppose nearly thirty feet long and about eighteen wide ; it was lighted by three large windows. From the fire at one end to a book press at the other, the whole length was free from furniture, and was Mill's promenade with papers in hand. While reading he was generally always on foot. At the angle between the fire and the nearest window, in a recess, was his standing desk, and near it his office table, which was covered with papers, and provided with drawers, but was not used according to his intention ; he wrote at the tall desk either standing or sitting on a high stool. The chair for visitors was next the blank wall, beside a large table, on which the India Despatches used to lie in huge piles. For a long time, he walked to and from his room, by the route I have des- cribed ; but, latterly, he changed it for a much more difficult one, whose windings my memory does not serve me to describe. What 1 remember is that, (suppose we were leaving), on passing out of the messengers' ante-room, instead of descend- ing the two flights of stairs to the long passage, he turned into another door in the landing, descended a few steps, and went by a long dreary 'corridor, with numerous locked presses for papers, and at the far end descended by a series of stairs that landed us close to the entrance hall. The chief thing that took my attention in this route was a notice board pointing out the hall or Theatre for holding the meetings of the Court of Proprietors. It set forth that none but proprietors of ;^Soo or upwards of Stock were admitted to the meetings. Mill's windows looked into a small brick court, consisting of officials' rooms; a clock was audible but not visible. 5 66 THE LOGIC READY FOR PRESS. 1841-1848. Parker, by whom it was eagerly accepted* I do not remember the date of Parker's acceptance, but the book had not begun to go to press in the summer months ; the printing actually took place in the following winter. One of the first results of our conversations was, that he gave me the manuscript to peruse. During my stay I read and discussed with him the whole of it. The impression made upon me by the work was, as may be supposed, very profound. I knew pretty well the works that could be ranked as its precursors in Inductive Logic, but the difference between it and them was obviously vast. The general impression at first overpowered my critical faculties ; and it was some time before I could begin to pick holes. I remember, among the first of my criticisms, remarking on the Chapter on " Things denoted by Names," as not being very intelligible : I had also a difficulty in seeing its place in the scheme, although I did not press this objection. The result was that he revised the chapter, and introduced the subordinate headings, which very much lightened the burden of its natural abstruseness. The main defect of the work, however, was in the Experi- mental Examples. I soon saw, and he felt as much as I did, that these were too few and not unfrequently incorrect It was on this point that I was able to render the greatest service. Circumstances had made me tolerably familiar with the Experi- mental Physics, Chemistry and Physiology of that day, and I set to work to gather examples from all available sources. Liebig's books on the application of Chemistry had then just appeared, and contained many new and striking facts and reasonings, which we endeavoured to turn to account ; although at the present day some of those inductions of his have lost • So great a work can sustain even a little anecdote. Parker, in intimating his willingness to publish the book, sent the opinion of his referee, in the writer's own hand, withholding the name. "He forgot," said Mill, '* that I had been an Editor, and knew the handwriting of nearly every literary man of the day." The referee was Dr. W. Cooke Taylor, who afterwards was one of the reviewers of the book* ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES OF INDUCTION. 67 their repute. An Aberdeen Lecturer on Chemistry, the late Dr. John Shier (Chemist to the Colony of Demarara), went carefully over all the chemical examples with me, and struck out various erroneous statements. I had recently made a study of Faraday's very stiff papers on Electricity, and from these I extracted one generalization, somewhat modified by myself, and this Mill prized very highly ; nevertheless, it was afterwards carped at by Whewell, as going beyond what Faraday would have allowed. One way or other, I gave him a large stock of examples to choose from, as he revised the Third Book for press. The difficulty that was most felt was to get good examples of the purely Experimental Methods. He had availed himself of the famous research on Dew adduced by Herschel. There was hardly to be got any other example so good. For one of his later editions, I gave him the example from Brown-Sdquard, on the cause of Cadaveric Rigidity, and also used it in my own book. For the Deductive Method, and the allied subjects of Explanation and Empirical and Derivative Laws, the examples that we found were abundant. When, however, I suggested his adopting some from Psychology, he steadily, and I believe wisely, resisted ; and, if he took any of these, it was in the Deductive department. I was so much struck with the view of Induction that re- garded it as reasoning from particulars to particulars, that I suggested a farther exemplification of it in detail, and he inserted two pages of instances that 1 gave him. On the three last books, 1 had little to offer. I remember his saying at a later period, that the Fourth Book (which I have always regarded as the crude materials oi a Logic of Definition and Classification) was made up of a number of subjects that he did not know where to place. The Logic has been about the best attacked book of the time ■■, and the author has in successive editions replied to objections and made extensive amendments. I have had myself full opportunities for expressing both agreements and 68 INCONSISTENCIES OF EXPRESSION IN LOGIC. 1841-1848. dissents in regard to all the main points. Yet I could not pretend to say that criticism has been exhausted, or that imper- fections and even inconsistencies may not even yet be pointed out. It is long since I was struck with the seeming incompati- bility between the definition of Logic in the Introduction — the Science of Proof or Evidence — and the double designation in the title — Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. Previous writers laid little stress on Proof, and Mill took the other extreme and made Proof everything. Bacon, Herschel, and Whewell seemed to think that if we could only make discoveries, the proof would be readily forth- coming ; a very natural supposition with men educated mainly in mathematics and physics. Mill, from his familiarity with the Moral and Political Sciences, saw that Proof was more important than Discovery. But the title, although larger than the definition, is not larger than the work ; he did discuss the methods of Investigation, as aids to Discovery, as well as means of Proof ; only, he never explained the mutual bearings of the two. Any one that tries, will find this not an easy matter. The Sixth Book was the outcome of his long study of Politics, both Practical and Theoretical, to which the finishing stroke was given by the help of Auguste Comte. I will return to this presently. In five months he carried the work through the press, and brought it out in March, 1843. One may form some estimate of the united labour of correcting proof sheets, often one a day, of re-considering the new examples that had been suggested, of reading Liebig's two books, and Comte's sixth volume (nearly a thousand pages), and of re-casting the concluding chapters. From the moment of publication, the omens were auspicious. Parker's trade-sale was beyond his anticipations, and the book was asked for by unexpected persons, and appeared in shop- windows where he never thought to see it. Whately spoke LOGIC REVIEWED BY WARD IN THE BRITISH CRITIC. 69 handsomely of it ; and desired his bookseller to get an addi- tional copy for him, and expose it in the window. While the work was printing, I prepared from the sheets a review of it, which came out in the Westminster in the April number, and was even more laudatory than Mill liked. The first adverse criticism of importance was an article in the autumn number of the British Critic^ of nearly a hundred pages, known to have been written by Mr. W. G. Ward, the ally of Newman and Pusey. It was a most remarkable production, and gave Mill very great satisfaction, all things considered. It was not so much a review of the Logic, as of Mill altogether. Mr. Ward had followed him through his various articles in the London and Westminster^ and had mastered his modes of thinking on all the great questions ; and the present article takes these up along with the Logic. He expresses a warm interest in Mill himself: remarking — "An inquirer, who bears every mark of a single-minded and earnest pursuit of truth, cheers and relieves the spirits " , a pretty strong innuendo as to the prevailing dispositions of so-called inquirers. He deplores Mill's " miserable moral and reUgious deficiencies," and says if his '' principles be adopted as a full statement of the truth, the whole fabric of Christian Theology must totter and fall ". Accordingly, the article is devoted to counterwork- ing these erroneous tendencies ; and the parts chosen for attack are the Experience-foundations of the Mathematical Axioms, the derived view of Conscience, and Necessity as against Free-Will. Mr. Ward has continued to uphold his peculiar tenets against the Experience-school. He had after- wards, as he informs me, a good deal of correspondence with Mill, and once met him. At his instigation. Mill expunged from his second edition an objectionable anecdote.* * In regard to the British Critic, Mill wrote, " I always hailed Puseyism, and predicted that Thought would sympatise with Thought — though I did not expect to find my own case so striking an example". I was told that he had written several letters in the Morning Chronicle in this strain of subtle remark. 70 COMTE's work brought to ENGLAND. 184I-1848. Without pursuing farther at present the fortunes of the Logic^ I will allude to the connexion between Mill and Comte, and to the share that Comte had in shaping Mill's Political Philosophy. Wheatstone always claimed to be the means of introducing ' Comte in England. He brought over from Paris the two first volumes of the Philosophie Positive^ after the publication of the second, which was in 1837. It would appear that the first volume, published by itself, in 1830, had fallen dead; notwith- standing that the two first chapters really contained in veiy ■ clear language, although without expansion, the two great foundations that Comte built upon — the Three Stages and the Hierarchy of the Sciences. Wheatstone mentioned the work. to his scientific friends in London, and among others to Brewster, who was then a contributor of scientific articles to the Edinburgh Review. Comte's volumes struck him at once as a good topic ; and he wrote an article on them in the August number for 1838. Anyone knowing him would have predicted, as the strain of his review, an indignant or else a contemptuous exposure of the atheism, a fastening on the weak points in his own special subjects, as Optics, and a cold recognition of his systematic comprehensiveness. This, however, was to leave out of the account one element — his antipathy to Whewell ; sufficiently marked in a review of the History of the Inductive Sciences in the previous year. Brewster found with joy a number of observations on Hypothesis and other points, that he could turn against Whewell ; and the effect was, I have no doubt, to soften the adverse criticisms, and to produce an article on the whole favourable to the book, and one that even Comte himself regarded with some complacency. Mill got wind of the two volumes in the end of 1837, after he had completed the draft of his Book on Induction. The Autobio- graphy gives (pp. 210-14) the general effect produced upon him by the whole work, which he perused with avidity as the successive volumes appeared ; but does not adequately express the influence in detail, nor the warmth of esteem and affection DISCUSSION OF COMTE IN DETAIL. 7 1 displayed in the five years of their correspondence from 1841 to 1846. In our many conversations, during the summer 01 1842, Mill occasionally mentioned Comte, but not in a way to give me any clear conception of what his merits consisted in. Among his associates at that time was William Smith, lately dead, and known as the author of Thomdale and various other works. He was a pupil of the Mills in Philosophy, and oc- cupied himself in contributing to magazines. In the winter of that year, he wrote a review of Comte in Blackwood (March, 1843), giving very well selected extracts; and from these I derived my first impression of the peculiar force of the book. I remember particularly being struck with the observations on the metaphysical and critical stage, as a vein of remark quite original. It was in the summer of that year, 1843, ^"^^ ^ x^zA the work for myself I was in London as before, and had the same opportunities of conversing with Mill. We discussed the work chapter by chapter, up to the last volume, which I had not begun when I left town. We were very much at one both as to the merits and as to the defects. The errors were mostly of a kind that could be remedied by ordinary, men better informed on special points than Comte \ while the systematic array was untouched. The improvement effected in the Classification of the Sciences was apparent at a glance ; while the carrying out of the Hierarchy, involving the double dependence of each science upon the preceding, first as to Doctrine and next as to Method, raised the scheme above the usual barrenness of science-classifications. Mill had already seized with alacrity, and embodied in the Logic^ Comte's great distinction between Social Statics and Social Dynamics ; and I was even more strongly impressed than he was, respecting the value of that distinction, as an instrument of analysis. Comte, according to his plan of pushing forward the ideas of each of the fundamental sciences into the succeeding, had taken up the distinction in Abstract Mechanics, and carried it first into 72 DISTINCTION OF ORDER AND PROGRESS. 1841-1848, Biology, where it made his contrast between Anatomy and Physiology — Structure and Function. The next step was to Sociology, and led to the distinction of Order and Progress. I confess that I never thought the three cases exactly parallel : still, however the distinction came, it was invaluable in Sociology; and Comte's separation of the two interests — Social Order and Social Progress — was a grand simplification of the subject, and a mighty advance upon the Historical and Political Philosophy of his predecessors and contemporaries. The Social Statics he discussed briefly, as compared with the magnitude of the topics, but indicated well enough what these topics were ; the Social Dynamics enabled him to give free scope to his doctrine of the Three Stages, and to carry this out in a grand survey of the historical development of mankind. Here, of course, he exposed a wide front to criticism ; but, while numerous exceptions might be taken to his interpretations of history, it was truly wonderful to see how many facts seemed to fall in happily under his formulas. Mill, it will be seen from the Logic (Book VL, chap, x.), accepted the Three Stages as an essential part of Comte's Historical Method, which method he also adopts and expounds as the completion of the Logic of Sociology. In our very first conversations, I remember how much he regretted Comte's misappreciation of Protestantism ; and he strove in the early part of their correspondence to make him see this. He also endeavoured to put him right on the speciality of England in the political evolution. It is curious to observe that his altered estimate of Comte never extended to the views appropriated from him on the method of Social Science. The modifications in the later editions consisted mainly in leaving out the high-pitched com- pliments to Comte in the first; none of the quotations are interfered with. I give a few examples of these omissions. Referring to the latest edition, the eighth, on p. 490, he writes, " The only thinker who, with a competent knowledge of scientific methods in general " ; in the first edition — " The ADOPTIONS FROM COMTE. 73 greatest living authority on scientific methods in general ". On p. 506, 1. 5 from bottom, before "To prove (in short)," the first edition has — " It is therefore well said of M. Comte ". In p. 512, 1. 13 from top, the words "but deem them," are followed in ist ed. by '*with the single exception of M. Comte". In p. 513, 1. 9 from top, after " up to the present time," a long sentence of reference ^o Comte is left out. In p. 530, 1. 14 from top, after " attempted to characterise," there is omitted the clause — '* but which hitherto are to my knowledge exem- plified nowhere but in the writings of M. Comte '\ The distinction of Statics and Dynamics was carried by Mill into the plan of his Political Economy. It also entered into his Represe7itative Govem7nent ; and if he had written a com- plete work on Sociology, he would have made it the basis of his arrangement as Comte did. Mill's correspondence with Comte began in 1841. I heard from himself a good deal of the substance of it as it went on. Comte's part being now published, we can judge of the charac- ter of the whole, and infer much of Mill's part in the work. In 184a and 1843, the letters on both sides were overflowing with mutual regard. It was Comte's nature to be very frank, and he was circumstantial and minute in his accounts of himself and his ways. Mill was unusually open ; and revealed, what he seldom told to anybody, all the fluctuations in his bodily and mental condition. In one of the early letters, he coined the word " pedantocracy," which Comte caught up, and threw about him right and left ever after. Already, in 1842, troubles were brewing for him in Paris, partly in consequence of his peculiar tenets, and still more from his unsparing abuse of the notables of Paris, the foremost object of his hate being the all-powerful Arago. His personal situation, always detailed with the utmost fulness, makes a considerable fraction of the correspondence on his side. When in 1843, the " Polytechnic pedantocracy," that is to say, the Council of the Polytechnic School, for which he was Examiner, first assumed a hostile 74 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COMTE. 1841-1848. attitude, and when his post was in danger, Mill came forward with an offer of pecuniary assistance, in case of the worst ] the generosity of this offer will be appreciated when I come to state what his own circumstances were at that moment. Comte, however, declined the proposal : he would accept assistance from men of wealth among- his followers; indeed, he broadly announced that it was their duty to minister to his wants , but he did not think that philosophers should have to devote their own small means to helping one another. Mill sent the Logic to him as soon as published; he is overjoyed at the compli- ments to himself, and warmly appreciates Mill's moral courage in owning his admiration. They discuss sociological questions at large, at first with considerable cordiality and unanimity ; but the harmony is short-lived. In summer, 1843, begins the debate on Women, which occupied the remainder of that year, the letters being very long on both sides. By November, Comte declares the prolongation of the discussion needless, but protests strongly against Mill's calling women " slaves "- Mill copied out the letters on both sides, and I remember reading them. Some years later, when I asked him to show them to a friend of mine, he consented, but said that, having re-read them himself, he was dissatisfied with the concessions he had made to Comte, and would never show them to anyone again. What I remember thinking at the time I read them was, that Mill needlessly prolonged the debate, hoping against hope to produce an impression upon Comte. The correspon- dence was not arrested by this divergence, nor was Mill's sym- pathy for Comte's misfortunes in any way abated, but the chance of their ever pulling together on social questions was reduced to a very small amount. They still agreed as to the separation of the Spiritual and the Temporal power, but only as a vague generality. In July, 1844, came the crash at the Polytechnic: by a dexterous manoeuvre, Comte was ousted without being formally dismissed ; he lost 6000 francs a-year, and was in dire distress. He appealed to Mill, but with the same comte's pecuniary misfortunes. 75 reservation as before. Mill exerted himself with Grote and Molesworth, who, with Raikes Currie, agreed to make up the deficiency for the year. Another election came round, and he was not reinstated ; and was again dependent on the assistance of his English friends. They made up a portion of his second year's deficiency, but declined to continue the grant. He is vexed and chagrined beyond measure, and administers to Mill a long lecture upon the relations of rich men to philosophers ; but his complaint is most dignified in tone. This puts Mill into a very trying position : he has to justify the conduct of Grote and Molesworth, who might, with so little inconvenience to themselves, have tided him over another year. The delicate part of the situation was that Grote, who began admiring Comte, as Mill did, although never to the same degree, was yet strongly adverse to his sociological theories, especially as regarded their tendency to introduce a new despotism over the individual. Indeed, his admiration of Comte scarcely extended at all to the sociological volumes. He saw in them frequent mistakes and perversions of , historical facts, and did not put the same stress as Mill did upon the Social analysis — the distinction of Statics and Dynamics, and the Historical Method; in fact, he had considerable misgivings throughout as to all the grand theories of the French school on the Philosophy of History. But the repression of liberty by a new machinery touched his acutest susceptibility ; he often recurred in conversation to this part of Comte's system, and would not take any comfort from the suggestion I often made to him, that there was little danger of any such system ever being in force. It was the explanation of this divergence that Mill had to convey to Co.nte ; who, on the other hand, attempted in vain to re-argue the point, by calling to mind how much he and Mill were agreed upon ; this, however, did not meet Grote's case. He returned to the theme in successive letters, and urged upon Mill that there was an exaggeration of secondary differences, and so on. What may be said in his favour is, that Grote 76 REVIEW OF bailey's theorv of vision. 184T-1848. turned upon him rather too soon. This was in 1846. The same year his Clotilde died. He still unfolded his griefs to Mill, and, as may be supposed, received a tender and sym- pathizing response. The correspondence here ends.* I must still come back to the year 1842. In the October number of the Westminster Review for that year, was published Mill's article on Bailey's Theory of Vision, in which he upheld the Berkeleyan doctrine against Bailey's attacks. I remember his saying that he went to the country, on one occasion, from Friday till Tuesday, and in the three days wrote this article. With all his respect for Bailey, he used a number of expressions very derogatory to his understanding ; attributing to him such things as a " triumphing over a shadow,' " misconceiving the argument he is replying to," and so forth. Bailey was much hurt at the time by these expressions ; and Mill's reply on this point is very characteristic (Dissertations^ 11. 119) : — " To dispute the soundness of a man's doctrines and the conclusive- ness of his arguments, may always be interpreted as an assumption of superiority over him ; true courtesy, however, between thinkers, is not shown by refraining from this sort of assumption, but by tolerating it in one another ; and we claim from Mr. Bailey this tolerance, as we, on our part, sincerely and cheerfully concede to him the Uke." This was his principle of composition throughout his polemical career, and he never departed from it. Of Bailey's reply on this occasion, he remarked — ** The tone of it is peevish. But Bailey is, I know, of that temper — or rather I infer it from sundry indications.'' * Although Mill was the first and principal medium of making Comte and his doctriijes familiar to the public, he was soon followed by George Henry- Lewes who was beginning his hterary career, as a writer in reviews, about the year 1841. I met Lewes frequently when I was first in London in 1842. He sat at the feet of Mill, read the lj)gic with avidity, and took up Comte with equal avidity. These two works, I believe, gave him his start in philosophy ; for, although he had studied in Germany for some time, I am not aware that he was much impressed by German Philosophy. In an article, in the British and Foreign Review, in 1843, O" ^^ Modern Philosophy of France, he led up to Comte, and gave some account of him. MILL DEPRESSED IN MIND AND BODY. 77 The same year was memorable for the American Repudia- tion, in which Mill was heavily involved. He had invested, I was told, a thousand pounds of his own money, and several thousands of his father's money which he had in trust for the family, and which he would have to make good. The blow completely shook him for the time. From whatever cause, or union of causes, his bodily strength was prostrated to such a degree that, before I left London that autumn, he was unequal to his usual walk home from the India House, and took the omnibus before he went far. The disaster must have preyed upon him for a year or more! He alludes to his state in the Comte letters, in which he describes his depression as both physical and moral. It appears that in a letter to Comte of the 15th Nov., he gave assurances of his being much better. So, in writing to me on the 3rd Oct., he says, " I am quite well and strong, and now walk the whole way to and from Kensing- ton without the self-indulgence of omni(5/". But on the 5th Dec. he says, " I have not been very well, but am a little better '\ He was now in the middle of the very heavy winter's work of getting the Logic through the press. There is no more heard of his health till the following June, in which he wrote to Comte in a very depressed tone. I remember, either in that or in the previous summer, his confessing to me that he was in a low state. I naturally urged that he had a long continuance of very heavy work. He replied hastily, *' I do not believe any man was ever the worse for work," or something to that effect. I listened in mute astonishment ; being quite ignorant that there were other circumstances present besides his intellectual strain. In writing to Comte, who, unlike him, believed in the bad consequences of prolonged study, he said his doctors advised him to rest his brain, but as they knew so very little, he preferred to abide by his own feelings, which taught him that work was the only thing to counteract melancholy. Comte, however, urged that a " true positive therapeutics " involved rest and diversion ; and Mill believed in regular holiday tours. ^8 ARTICLE ON MICHELET. 184I-1848. It was during this dreadful depression of June and July, 1843, and after the American Repudiation had beggared him, that he made his offer of pecuniary assistance to Comte. He had had no holiday for two years, and, except for his customary Sunday walks, he did not leave town that autumn : I suspected that his money affairs had something to do with his still postponing his holiday. In October, his letters announce an improved state of health. His work in 1843, after the publication of the Logic, was his " Michelet " article, written in autumn. In September, he writes, ** I am now vigorously at work reviewing Michelet's History of France for the Ediftburgh. I hope to do Napier, and get him to insert it before he finds out what a fatal thing he is doing." On 3rd Nov., he says, '* My review of Michelet is in Napier's hands. If he prints it, he will make some of his readers stare." The article appeared in January, and had none of the serious consequences predicted. We have a difficulty, reading it now, to see anything very dreadful in its views. But a philosophic vindication of the Papacy and the celibacy of the clergy, as essential preservatives against barbarism, was not then famihar to the English mind. Mill had worked himself into sympathy with everything French, and echoed the import- ance of France from the French historians. He always dealt gently with her faults, and liberally with her virtues. While writing this article, he was projecting in his mind his next book, which was to be on the new science, first sketched in the Logic, and there called * Ethology'. With parental fond- ness, he cherished this subject for a considerable time; regarding it as the foundation and cornerstone of Sociology. " There is no chance,*^he says,%r Social Statics at least, until the laws of human character are better treated." A few months later he wrote— "I do not know when I shall be ripe for beginning ' Ethology ^ The scheme has not assumed any definite shape with me yet." In fact, it never came to anything ; and he seems shortly to have dropped thinking of it. I do not believe PROJECTED WORK ON ETHOLOGY. 79 there was anything to be got in the direction that he was looking. He was all his life possessed of the idea that differ- ences of character, individual and national, were due to accidents and circumstances that might possibly be, in part, controlled ; on this doctrine rested his chief hope in the future. He would not allow that human beings at birth are so very different as they afterwards turn out. His failure with ' Ethology ' fatally interfered with the larger project, which I have no doubt he entertained, of executing a work on Sociology as a whole. The opinion was long afloat in London that he had such a work in view ; but I do not think he ever said so ; it was not his way to give out what he was engaged upon, at least before making himself sure of going through with it. That he despaired, for the present at least, ot making anything out of Ethology at the time I refer to, is proved by his betaking himself soon after to the composition of his Political Economy. I have now disposed of all my memoranda relating to 1842 and 1843. The beginning of 1844 saw the publication of the article on Michelet, to which I have adverted. In a letter dated 8th Jan., I find this upon Beneke : — " I am reading a German professor's book on Logic — Beneke is his name — which he has sent to me after reading mine, and which had previously been recommended to me by Austin and by Herschel as in accordance with the spirit of my doctrines. It is so in some degree, though far more psychological than entered into my plans. Though I think much of his psychology unsound for want of his having properly grasped the principle of associa- tion (he comes very close to it now and then), there is much of it of a suggestive kind." From the Comte letters it appears that he had another relapse of his indisposition at this time. Comte earnestly urges him to try a change of climate — Naples or Lisbon — to fortify him for the next few years against "le sdjour spleenique de 8o REVIEWS OF LOGIC. 184I-1848. Londres". "What is the opinion, I do not say ot your doctors, whom you have little faith in, but of those of your friends who are biologists ? " I passed three months in London in the summer of 1844, and saw him frequently as before. I have no special recollec- tions of his work this summer. In the autumn he took his long-deferred holiday, and was absent two months. He came back quite recruited, and in the course of the winter wrote his admirable article on " The Claims of Labour," which appeared in the Edinburgh Review in the following spring.* I had several letters from him in the winter of 1844-5, but they say little about himself. He remarks of the review of his Logic in the Eclectic Review, that the reviewer differs from him on the Syllogism which he understands, and agrees with him on the rest of the book without seeming to understand it. He announces with satisfaction, as a most important conquest foi Comte, the appearance of Littr^'s papers in the National newspaper. This, however, was immediately followed by Comte's renewed and final exclusion from the Polytechnic Examinership \ for which one resource was suggested — to start a Positive Review, a scheme that bulks largely in the corres- pondence for some months, and receives from Mill a qualified support. In March, 1845, he writes to me, "Have you seen Ward's book, The Ideal, 6^^. 1 It is a remarkable book in every way, and not the least so because it quotes and puffs me in every chapter, and Comte occasionally, though with deep lamentations over our irreligion." The Comte correspondence shows that he had written to Comte informing him of Mr. Ward's allusions. Comte is very much flattered, and thinks the compliments deserved, because of the justice he had rendered to Catholicism (p. 323). The summer of 1845 ^^s marked by an interesting incident. * See, in the Napier Correspondence, his letters in proposing this as the subjact of an article. It is a perfect lay sermon on the text—" The age of chivalry is gone". HERSCHEL ON LOGIC. 8 1 In June, the British Association met at Cambridge, Sir John Herschel in the chair. I was at the meeting, and Hstened to Herschel's address. One notable feature in it was the allusion to the recent works on the Logic of Science, by Whewell and Mill especially, on both of whom Sir John bestowed high encomiums. He also mentioned Comte, but in a very different strain. There was, I remember, a good deal of buzz among Mill's friends that were present, at this unexpected mention of him. Mill was of course extremely gratified on his own account, but considered that Comte was very unfairly handled. Herschel brought up the nebular hypothesis, as advocated by Comte, but treated Comte's mathematics with contempt, and spoke of his book as " a philosophical work of much mathema- tical pretension, which has lately come into a good deal of notice in this country '\ To dismiss Comte ^in this summary fashion, even supposing he had laid himself open by his sup- posed mathematical proofs of the hypothesis, was a little too strong. Mill naturally thought it an evidence of some weakness in Herschel's mind that he should be so blind to the abounding manifestations of intellectual force in the Philosophie Positive.^ He wrote to Herschel, thanking him for the mention of him- self, and remonstrating on his treatment of Comte ; but went a little out of his depth in attempting to uphold Comte's calculation. Herschel, in replying, reiterated his approval of the Lo^c^ stating that it was his intention to have reviewed it in the Quarterly^ as he had done Whewell ; but, as regarded Comte, he was obdurate, and demoHshed at a stroke the proof that Mill had reUed upon. I think Mill wrote a rejoinder. It is to be hoped that these letters are preserved. Mill copied * The following sentence in Mill's review of " Comte and Positivism " does not apply to the scientific magnates of England, at the date of Herschel's Address : — " He (Comte) has displayed a quantity and quality of mental power, and achieved an amount of success, which have not only won but retained the high admiration of thinkers as radically and strenuously opposed as it is pos- sible to be, to nearly the whole of his later tendencies, and to many of his earlier opinions ". 6 82 HERSCHEL ON COMTE. 184I-1848. them and sent them to Comte. It was not the first time that Herschel's name had come up between them ; he must have previously written to Mill in acknowledgment of the Logic. In Comte's letter of date 21st October, 1844 (p. 276), he refers to the information given him by Mill, that Herschel meant to read *' mon grand ouvrage," but does not count upon its making a favourable impression, " du moins intense" He then gives the reasons: one being HerscheFs prepossessions in favour of sidereal astronomy ; the other his analogy to Arago, although " without the charlatanism and immorality of that disastrous personage "- Such was the previous reference. The result of his seeing the present correspondence appears in p. 362. Comte is very much touched with the zeal displayed by Mill on his behalf; but dechnes Mill's suggestion that he should himself take up the cudgels in his own defence. Mill, he says, had sufficiently proved, although in a polite way, the malevo- lent spirit and even the bad faith of Herschel. He is, however, quite satisfied with his former explanation of Herschel's motives, namely, the soreness caused by his discarding sidereal astro- nomy, on which Herschel's father and himself rested their chief fame. In the summer of 1845, I became personally acquainted with Grote. For several years previously, Mill appears to have seen little of him, but they had now resumed their footing of intimacy. Grote was living chiefly in the country, but when he came into town, he made a point of arranging walks and talks with Mill. From the time of my introduction to Grote, I was usually asked to join them. I remember well our first meeting at the London Library, and subsequent walk in Hyde Park. Their conversation took an exceptional turn \ how it came I cannot exactly remember, but they went over all the leaders of the Reformation, discussing their several characteristics. The subject was not one that either was specially informed upon. As Grote was then on the eve of bringing out the first two volumes of his History^ this was a natural topic ; much more CONVERSATIONS WITH GROTE. 8$ SO, after the volumes were out. But Grote was never satisfied if we parted without coming across some question in meta- physics or philosophy. Although his time was mainly given to the History^ he always refreshed his mind at intervals with some philosophic reading or meditation, and had generally a nut to crack when we came together. Plato and Aristotle were never long out of his hands ; he was also an assiduous reader of all works on science, especially if they involved the method of science \ but the book that was now oftenest in his hands in the intervals of work, was Mill's Logic. I doubt if any living man conned and thumbed the book as he did " John Mill's Logic'' I remember his saying, "is the best book in my library *' ; he had not the same high opinion of any of Mill's other books. He was himself one of nature's logicians ; he was a thorough-going upholder of the Experience-philosophy, and Mill's Logic completely satisfied him on this head. Often and often did he recur to the arguments in favour of d, priori truth, and he was usually full ot fresh and ingenious turns of reply. It was only in Mill that he could find a talker to his mind in this region, as in philosophy generally. Equally intense was his devotion to Utility as the basis of Morals, and still more varied was his elucidation and defence of the principle; on that topie also he had few that he could declare his whole mind to, and this was another bond of attraction to Mill. Towards himself, on the other side, Mill had an almost filial affection, and generally gave him the earliest intimation of his own plans; but much as he loved Grote's company, his movements were under the control of a still greater power. Notwithstanding their wide agreement and numerous bonds of sympathy from this cause as well as from long intimacy, Grote had always a certain misgiving as to his persistence in the true faith. He would say to me, ** Much as I admire John Mill, my admiration is always mixed with fear " ; meaning that he never knew what unexpected turn Mill might take. This I regarded as an exag- geration due, in the first instance, to Grote's gloomy tempera- 84 REVIEW OF GUIZOT. 184I-1848. ment; next to the shock of the "Bentham" and "Coleridge" articles ; and to Mill's consequent making himself at home with Maurice, Sterling, and Carlyle, with whom Grote never could have the smallest sympathy. The first opinion held by both that I found occasion to con- trovert, in those early conversations, was the Helvetius doctrine of the natural equality of human beings in regard of capacity. I believe I induced Grote at last to relax very considerably on the point ; but Mill never accommodated his views, as I thought, to the facts. With all his wide knowledge of the human constitution and of human beings, this region of obser- vation must have been to him an utter blank. This summer (1845) produced the article on Guizot, the last of his series on the French Historians (apart from Comte). It seems to have been a great success, even in the point of view of the old Edinburgh Review connexion, to which it was often an effort to accommodate himself Jeffrey (Napier Corres- pondence^ p. 492) is unusually elated with it; "a very remarkable paper,'' " passages worthy of Macaulay," '' the traces of a vigorous and discursive intellect ". He did not then know the author : when made aware of the fact, he adds, " Though I have long thought highly of his powers as a reasoner, I scarcely gave him credit for such large and sound views of realities and practical results.'' The reader will remember that the most prominent topic is the Feudal System. We are now at the commencement of the Political Economy^ which dates from the autumn of this -year. The failure of the * Ethology ' as a portal to a complete Sociology left the way clear for this other project, at a time when he had still energy for great things. Indoctrinated as he was from infancy in the subject, and having written articles on it and discussed it, both in private and in the Political Economy Club, with all the experts of the time, it seemed to offer a fine field for his expository powers. Add to which, he found that he could attach COMMENCEMENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 85 to it his views as to the great social questions ; although, we must confess, the bond of connexion was somewhat loose, and the larger Sociology would have been a more fitting occasion for such wide-reaching topics. In a letter dated Feb., 1846, he announces that the third part of the Political Economy is written. He says, in the Auto- biography^ that it was the most rapidly written of any of his books ; which showed that the subject had been well matured. He turned aside to write an article for the Edinburgh on French politics, the text being a series of political papers by Charles Duveyrier. Louis Philippe was now at the height of his pros- perity ; but the political system was very unsatisfactory : and Mill returned for a little to his old interest in France, and discussed in his usual style the workings of the constitutional system, its weakness, and its remedies. His author — a calm, clear-sighted reasoner — put much stress upon a second chamber made up of old officials, and Mill sympathizes with his object in desiring a counterpoise to democracy : but remarks, with his usual acuteness, " It is not the uncontrolled ascendancy of popular power, but of any power, which is formidable ", The article came out in April, 1846. It appears that the Editor thought fit to omit a passage controverting the prevailing notion of the warlike propensity of the French. Mill wished the passage had been retained : " The opinion is a very old and firm one with me, founded on a good deal of personal observa- tion ". He adds, " the Edinburgh has lately been sometimes very unjust_to_th^, French ". He further interrupted the Political Economy to write his review of Grote's first two volumes, which appeared in the Edinburgh in October. This was, in every sense, a labour of love; love of the subject, love of the author, and admiration of the work. Writing in September, he says, " I have just corrected the proof of my review of Grote, in which I have introduced no little of the Comtean philosophy of religion. Altogether I like the thing, though I wrote it in exactly four 86 REVIEW OF GROTE'S GREECE. 1841-1848. days, and re-wrote it in three more, but I had to read and think a good deal for it first." His reading, I remember, included the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey, for the sake of the Homeric discussion, in which he perilously ventured to differ somewhat from Grote. There was no man whose opinion Grote was more sensitive to, but the objections raised did not alter his views. In deference to Mill, he made some slight changes in the next edition. One, I remember, was to leave out of the preface the words "feminine'' and "masculine,'' as a figurative expression of the contrast of the artistic and scientific sides of the Greek mind. Mill could never endure the differences of character between men and women to be treated as a matter of course. In the letter above quoted, he announces that he has " got on well with the Pol. Ec. I am on the point of finishing the third book (Exchange)." He was now beginning his most laborious winter after 1842-3. It was the winter of the Irish famine, and he thought he saw an opportunity for a grand regenerating operation in Ireland. He began in the Morning Chronicle a series of leading articles, urging the reclamation of the waste lands to be converted into peasant properties, and iterated all the facts showing the potency of the proprietary feeling in strengthening the dispositions to industry.* In the months of October, November, December, and January, he wrote two or three leaders a-week on this topic : we used to call these, in the language of the medical schools, his " Clinical Lectures". He was pushing on the Political Economy at the same time. More- over, a letter to his brother James (2nd Nov.), shows that he was labouring under illness : " had been ill, now better, but still a bad cold". In the middle of November, he wrote that the articles " have excited a good deal of notice, and have quite snatched the initiative out of the Times '\ He adds— " It is a capital thing to have the power of writing leaders in * I believe that it was his friend W. J. Thornton that first awakened him to the question of Peasant Properties. Thornton's " Plea " was published before the Political Economy came out, and MiU read the proof sheets as it went through the press. ADVOCACY OF PEASANT PROPERTIES. 87 the Chronicle whenever I like, which I can always do. The paper has tried for years to get me to write to it, but it has not suited me to do it before, except once in six months or so." On the 28th December, he says — " I continue to carry on the Pol. Eco7i. as well as I can with the articles in the Chronicle. These last I may a little slacken now, having in a great measure, as far as may be judged by appearances, carried my point, viz., t3 have the waste lands reclaimed and parcelled out in small properties among the best part of the peasantry.'' In another month he changes his tune. On 27th Jan. (1847), he writes: — "You will have seen by this time how far the ministry , are from having adopted any of my conclusions about Ireland, though Lord J. Russell subscribes openly to almost all the premises. I have little hope left. The ten- dency of their measures seems to me such that it can only bring about good to Ireland by excess of evil." " I have so indoctrinated the Chronicle writers with my ideas on Ireland, that they are now going on very well and spiritedly without me, which enables me to work much at the Political Economy, to my own satisfaction. The last thing I did for the Chronicle was a thorough refutation, in three long articles, of Croker's article on the Division of Property in France.'' Two months later, he announced that the first draft of the Political Economy was finished. As to public affairs — " The people are all mad, and nothing will bring them to their senses but the terrible consequences they are certain to bring on themselves, as shown in Whately's speech yesterday in the House of Lords — the only sensible speech yet made in either House on the question. Fontenelle said that mankind must pass through all forms of error before arriving at truth. The form of error we are now possessed by is that of making all take care of each, instead of stimulating and helping each to take care of himself ; and now this is going to be put to a terrible trial, which will bring it to a crisis and a termination sooner than could otherwise have been hoped for." 88 liebig's opinion of logic. 1841-1848. Before passing from this memorable winter, I may mention that Liebig, in a reprint of his Animal Chemistry, handsomely repaid the notice taken of his researches in the Logic : saying of his amended views that "he feels that he can claim no other merit than that of having applied so some special cases, and carried out farther than had previously been done, those prin- ciples of research in natural science which have been laid down " in Mill's work. Mill exultingly remarked—" The tree may be known by its fruits. Schelling and Hegel have done nothing of the kind." Before arriving in London this year, I had another letter (5th May). He delays to commence rewriting his book till he sees the upshot of the Irish business. " The conduct of the ministers is wretched beyond measure upon all subjects \ nothing but the meanest truckling at a time when a man with a decided opinion could carry almost anything triumphantly." I saw him as usual during the summer, but do not remember any incidents of importance. Grote was in town for several weeks on the publication of his third and fourth volumes, which was a new excitement. I went down to Scotland in autumn, but, having no longer any teaching-appointment there, I returned to London in November, and entered the Government service ; and was, therefore, in consta^it residence, until I saw fit to resign in 1850. For this interval, I have not the advantage of possessing any letters from Mill, and can only give a few scattered recollections of the more impressive occurrences. The Political Economy was published in the beginning of 1848. I am not about to criticize the work, as I mean to do the subsequent writings, but I wish to offer a few remarks. One modification in the laying out of the subject he owes, as I have already said, to Comte's sociological distinction between Statics and Dynamics. This is shown in the commencement of the fifth book, entitled, "The Influence of the Progress of Society in Production and Distribution "^ I can believe, although I am not a political economist, that this distinction VIEWS ON PROPERTY : MALTHUSIANISM, 89 may have been as useful in Political Economy as in Politics, He spoke of it to me at the time as a great improvement. But what I remember most vividly of his talk pending the publication of the work, was his anticipating a tremendous outcry about his doctrines on Property. He frequently spoke of his proposals as to Inheritance and Bequest, which, if carried out, would pull down all large fortunes in two generations. To his surprise, however, this part of the book made no sensa- tion at all. I cannot now undertake to assign the reason. Probably the people thought it the dream of a future too dis- tant to affect the living ; or else, that the views were too wild and revolutionary to be entertained. One thing strikes me in the chapter on Property. In § 3, he appears to intimate that the children even of the wealthy should be thrown upon their own exertions for the difference between a bare individual maintenance and what would be requisite to support a family ; while, in the next section, he contemplates " a great multiplica- tion of families in easy circumstances^ with the advantage of leisure^ and all the real enjoyments which wealth can give, except those of vanity ". The first case would be met by from two to five huniired a year \ the second supposes from one to two thousand. The whole speculation seems to me inade- quately worked out The question of the existence of large fortunes is necessarily a very complex one ; and I should like that he had examined it fully, which I do not think he ever did. His views of the elevation of the Working Classes on Malthu- sian principles have been much more widely canvassed. But there is still a veil of ambiguity over his meaning. Malthus himself, and some of his followers, such as Thomas Chalmers, regarded late marriages as the proper means of restricting numbers ; an extension to the lower classes of the same pru- dence that maintains the position of the upper and middle classes. Mill prescribes a further pitch of self-denial, the con- tinence of married couples. At least, such is the more obvious interpretation to be put upon his language. It was the opinion 90 SOCIALISM, 1 841-1 848. of many, that while his estimate of pure sentimental affection was more than enough, his estimate of the sexual passion was too low. The strong leanings towards some form of Socialism, indi- cated in the Autobiography^ would have led us to believe that his opinions nearly coincided with those of the socialists com- monly so called. The recent pubHc^tion of his first draft of a projected essay on the subject, shows the wide gulf that still separated him^and them. The obstacles to the realizing of socialistic schemes could not be more forcibly expressed. Above all, the great stress that he always put uj)on Individuality would be impossible to reconcile with the constructions of Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc, and the American communists. His socialism is thus to be the outcome of a remote future, when human beings shall have made a great stride in moral education, or, as Mr. Spencer would express it, have evolved a new and advanced phase of altruism. The publication of the Political Economy was followed by another very serious breakdown in his health. In the summer of 1848, he had a bad accident. Inside the Kensington Grove gate of Hyde Park, there is a pump by which he used to cross in order to walk on the grass. One day he trod on a loose brick, and fell heavily on the hip. In treating the hurt, a belladonna plaster was applied. An affection ol his eyes soon followed, which he had knowledge enough at once to attribute to the belladonna, and disused the plaster forthwith. For some weeks, however, he was both lame and unable to use his eyes. I never saw him in such a state of despair. Prostration of the nervous system may have aggravated his condition. His elasticity of constitution brought him through once more ; but in the following year, 1849, he was still in an invalid condition. I introduced to him that year Dr. Thomas Clark, of Marischal College, himself a permanent invalid from overwork, who spoke a good deal to him about regimen, and endeavoured to induce him to try the water-treatment, then just started. He PAUSE IN HIS CAREER. 9 1 was, however, not to be moved from his accustomed routine. His view of the medical art (at the time I speak of) was, that it should restore a shattered frame by something like magic. In other respects, his intercourse with Clark gratified him much, and led to a permanent friendship. His work, as a great originator, in my opinion, was done. The two books now before the world were the main construc- tions that his accumulated stores had prepared him for ; and I do not think that there lay in him the materials of a third at all approaching to these. It is very unlikely indeed that he was even physically capable of renewing the strain of the two winters — 1842-3 and 1846-7. His subsequent years were marked by diminished labours on the whole ; while the direc- tion of these labours was towards application, exposition and polemic, rather than origination ; and he was more and more absorbed in the outlook for social improvements. Not that his later writings are deficient in stamina or in value ; as sources of public instruction and practical guidance in the greatest interests of society^ they will long hold their place. But it was not within the compass of his energies to repeat the impression made by him in 1843 and again in 1848. We must remember that all through his severest struggles, he had a public official duty, and spent six hours every day in the air of Leadenhall street ; and although he always affected to make light of this, and even to treat the oflfice work as a refreshing change from study, yet when his constitution was once broken, it would tell upon him more than his peculiar theories of health and work would allow him to confess.* Chapter IV, REMAINING WRITINGS. 1849-1873, WHAT I have to say on Mill's ten years from 1848 to 1858 may be conveniently introduced by a reference to the Autobiography^ p. 237. He states that for a considerable time after the publication of the Political Ecorwmy, he pub- , lished no work of magnitude. He still occasionally wrote in periodicals, and his correspondence with unknown persons on questions of public interest swelled to a considerable amount. He wrote, or commenced, various essays on human and social subjects, and kept a watch on the progress of public events. The year 1850 was chiefly noted for the first important revision of the Logic, namely, for the third edition. He had to answer many attacks upon it, including a pamphlet by Whewell. As I was absent from London while this was going on, I had a good many letters from him, chiefly on Whewell's criticism, of the weakness of which he had a very decided opinion. I suggested some alterations and additional examples, but I scarcely remember what they were. The edition was printed in November ; and no revision of anything like the same extent was undertaken till the eighth edition came out in 1872. The Political Economy was subject to more frequent revisions, and occupied a good deal of his attention at one time or other, but I did not keep pace with him on that subject. In spring, 1851, took place his marriage to Mrs. Taylor In autumn of that year, I resumed my abode in London, and MARRIAGK 93 remained there, or in the neighbourhood, till i85o. I con- tinued to see him at intervals, in the India House, but he had changed his residence, and was not available for four o'clock walks. He could almost always allow a visitor fifteen or twenty minutes in the course of his official day ■ and this was the only way he could be seen. He never went mto any society, except the monthly meetings of the PoHtical Economy Club. On some few occasions, a little after his marriage, Grote and he and I walked together between the India house and his railway station. An extract from a letter to his brother George, in Madeira, (8th April, 185 1) gives a very good idea of his talk upon our home politics at this period. " Lord J. Russell has been justly punished for his truckling to the Tmes, the parsons and the bigots. He has disgusted all real liberals without satisfying or pleasing any one else. He has lef<" to such men as Sir J Graham and Lord Aberdeen the whole credit of standing up for religious liberty and for justice to Ireland, and he is now a minister by sufferance, until it suits any one of the factions of the H. of C. to turn him out : continually beaten and unable to count on a single vete except those of the office holders and their family connexions." Only three of his reprinted articles belong to the period I am now referring to ; but he must have written for the Westminster Review at least one or two that were not reprinted. I cannot help thinking that the failure of his energy was one chief cause of his comparative inaction. As an instance,* I remember, when he first read Ferrier's Institutes, he said he felt that he could have dashed off an article upon it in the way he did with Bailey's book on Vision ; and I cannot giye any reason why he did not. He wrote for the Westminster^ in 1849, a vindication of the French Revolution of February, 1848, in reply to Lord Brougham and others. In French politics he was thoroughly at home, and up to the fatality of December, 1851, he had a sanguine beUef in the political future of France. This article, like his *' Armand 94 REVIEWS : — whewell; grote. 1849-1873. Carrel," is a piece of French political history, and the replies to Brougham are scathing. I remember well, in his excitement at the Revolution, his saying that the one thought that haunted him was— Oh, that Carrel were still alive ! It was for the Westminster oi October, 1852, that he wrote the article on Whewell's Moral Philosophy. What effect it had upon Whewell himself I cannot say ; in a subsequent edition of his Elements of Morality, he took notice of it blandly in reviewing objectors generally, omitting names. John Grote thought that in this and in the "Sedgwick" article, Mill indulged in a severity that was unusual in his treatment of opponents. I could not, for my own part, discover the difference. Yet it is no wonder, as he told me once, that he avoided meeting Whewell in person, although he had had opportunities of being introduced to him (I have no doubt, through his old friend James Garth Marshall, of Leeds, whose sister Whewell married). * In 1853, he wrote his final article on Grote's Greece, in which he enters with enthusiasm into Grote's vindication of the Athenians and their democratic constitution. He was, quite as much as Grote, a Greece-intoxicated man. Twice in his life he traversed the country from end to end. I remember, when I saw him at the India House after his first tour, he challenged me to name any historical locality that he had not explored. His youngest brother, George, died this year at Madeira, where he had to go on account of disease of the lungs.f He had been * In the Life of Whewell, by Mrs. Stair Douglas, recently published, there occur several letters from him to James Garth Marshall. From some of them, we can plainly see that Marshall had been engaged in counter-arguing Whewell, on the points where he stood opposed to Mill. t Dr. M'Cosh, in his work on the Scottish Philosophy, has a notice of James Mill, and publishes the fact that his son George put an end to his own life. His informant, he says, was resident in Madeira at the time. It was the case that George, in consequence of very acute suffering, anticipated by a week or two, the inevitable termination ; but Dr. M 'Cosh's informant is both errone- ous and coarse in stating the manner of his death. PROMOTION TO BE HEAD EXAMINER. 95 appointed to the India House, as a clerk in the Examiner's Office; but an ill-judged walking tour in Switzerland, over- tasked his strength, and affected his lungs, which were naturally weak. John and he, strange to say, did not get on very harmoniously together : I cannot tell ■ why ; and John was positively unkind to him in his last years of failing health. He had admirable ability, and was very genial ; but constitutionally feeble. It should have fallen to him, failing his next elder brother Henry, also a victim of consumption, to write their father's life. In 1854, he had an illness so serious that he mentions it in the Autobiography. It was an attack in the chest, ending in the partial destruction of one lung. He took the usual remedy of a long tour, being absent about eight months, in Italy, Sicily and Greece. I remember Sir James Clark giving a very de spending view of his state ; the local disease, however, he said, was not so serious as the general debility, and, in all likelihood, he would never be fit for any other considerable work. Accord- ing to a remark made to Grote by Peacock, the head of his office, his absence was felt severely at the India House. He rallied, nevertheless, and resumed his usual routine. In the year following his recovery, 1856, his two seniors in the Examiner's office retired together, and he became head of the office. This made an entire change in his work ; instead of preparing despatches in one department, he had to superintend all the departments. The engrossment of his official time was consequently much greater , and he had often to cut short the visits of friends. In little more than a year after his promotion, in the end of 1857, the extinction of the company was resolved upon by the Government, and he had to give his aid to the Court of Directors in their unavailing resistance to their doom. For this purpose he drafted the Petition to Parliament in behalf of the Company, in which he brought to bear all his resources in the theory and practice of politics. The Petition, as ulti- 96 DRAFTS THE INDIA COMPANY'S PETITION. 1849-1873, mately submitted, after some slight amendments by the Court of Directors, was pronounced by Earl Grey the ablest state-paper he had ever read. The following are the introductory sentences, the point and pungency of which the greatest orator might be proud of : — "That your Petitioners, at their own expense, and by the agency of their own civil and military servants, originally ac- quired for this country its ma:gnificent empire in the East. "That the foundations of this empire were laid by your Petitioners, at that time neither aided nor controlled by Parlia- ment, at the same period at which a succession of administra- tions under the control of Parliament were losing to the Crown of Great Britain another great empire, on the opposite side of the Atlantic. " That during the period of about a century which has smce elapsed, the Indian possessions of this country have been governed and defended from the resources of those possessions, without the smallest cost to the British Exchequer, which, to the best of your Petitioners' knowledge and belief, cannot be said of any other of the numerous foreign dependencies of the Crown." As this document is for the present buried in the Blue Books, I give a few of the more striking passages. The mutiny had just preceded the change of Government. The Company challenged a full enquiry into that matter ; to see whether it was in any degree due to a failure in their arrangements. The Petition then goes on — " That, were it even true that these arrangements had failed, the failure could constitute no reason for divesting the East- India Company of its functions, and transferring them to Her Majesty's Government. For, under the existing system, Her Majesty's Government have the deciding voice. The duty imposed upon the Court of Directors is to originate measures and frame drafts of instructions. Even had they been remiss in this duty, their remissness, however discreditable to them- COMPANYS RESPONSIBILITY SHARED. 97 selves, could in no way absolve the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government, since the Minister for India possesses, and has frequently exercised, the power of requiring that the Court of Directors should take any subject into consideration, and prepare a draft despatch for his approval. Her Majesty's Government are thus in the fullest sense accountable for all that has been done, and for all that has been forborne or omitted to be done. Your Petitioners, on the other hand, are accountable only in so far as the act or omission has been promoted by themselves. " That, under these circumstances, if the administration of India had been a failure, it would, your Petitioners submit, have been somewhat unreasonable to expect that a remedy W0uld be found in annihilating the branch of the ruling authority which could not be the one principally in fault, and might be altogether blameless, in order to concentrate all powers in the branch which had necessarily the decisive share in every error, real or supposed. To believe that the adminis- tration of India would have been more free from error had it been conducted by a Minister of the Crown without the aid of the Court of Directors, would be to believe that the Minister, with full power to govern India as he pleased, has governed ill because he has had the assistance of experienced and responsible advisers." The effect of a change of Government upon the natives of India is strongly portrayed. " Your Petitioners cannot look without the deepest uneasi- ness at the effect likely to be produced on the minds of the people of India. To them, however incorrectly the name may express the fact, the British Government in India is the Government of the East-India Company. To their minds the abolition of the Company will, for some time to come, mean the abolition of the whole system of administration with which the Company is identified. The measure, introduced simul- taneously with the influx of an overwhelming British force, will 7 98 EFFECTS ON PEOPLE OF INDIA. 1849-1873. be coincident with a general outcry, in itself most alarming to their fears, from most of the organs of opinion in this country as well as of English opinion in India, denouncing the past policy of the Government on the express ground that it has been too forbearing and too considerate towards the natives. The people of India will at first feel no certainty that the new Government, or the Government under a new name, which it is proposed to introduce, will hold itself bound by the pledges of its predecessors. They will be slow to believe that a Government has been destroyed only to be followed b}i another which will act on the same principles and adhere to the same measures. They cannot suppose that the existing . organ of administration would be swept away without the intention of reversing any part of its policy. They will see the authorities, both at home and in India, surrounded by persons vehemently urging radical changes in many parts of that policy. And interpreting, as they must do, the change in the instrument of government as a concession to these ©pinions and feelings, they can hardly fail to believe that, whatever else may be ■intended, the Government will no longer be permitted to observe that strict impartiality between those who profess its own creed and those who hold the creeds of its native subjects which hitherto characterised it ; that their strongest and most deeply-rooted feelings will henceforth be treated with much less regard than heretofore; and that a directly aggressive policy towards everything in their habits, or in their usages and customs, which Englishmen deem objectionable, will be no longer confined to individuals and private associations, but will be backed by all the power of Government." The position of the new Indian Minister, when subjected to no external control is depicted thus : — " That in constituting a body of experienced advisers to be associated with the Indian Minister, your Petitioners consider it indispensable to bear in mind that this body should not only be qualified to advise the miaiister, but also, by its advice, to MISCHEVIOUS HOME INFLUENCES. 99 exercise, to a certain degree, a moral check. It cannot be expected that the minister, as a general rule, should himself know India ;' while he will be exposed to perpetual solicitations from individuals and bodies, either entirely ignorant of that country, or knowing only enough of it to impose on those who know still less than themselves, and having very frequently objects in view other than the interests or good government of India. The influences likely to be brought to bear on him through the organs of popular opinion will, in the majority of. cases, be equally misleading. The public opinion of England, itself necessarily unacquainted with Indian affairs, can only follow the promptings of those who take most pains to influence it, and these will generally be such as have some private interest to serve. It is, therefore, your Petitioners submit, of the utmost importance that any council which may form a part of the Home Government of India should derive sufficient weight from its constitution, and from the relation it occupies to the minister, to be a substantial barrier against those inroads of self-interest and ignorance in this country from which the Government of India has hitherto been comparatively free, but against which it would be too much to expect that Parliament should of itself afford a sufficient protection. " That your Petitioners cannot well conceive a worse form of government for India than a minister with a council whom he should be at liberty to consult or not at his pleasure, or whose advice he should be able to disregard, without giving his reasons in writing, and in a manner likely to carry convic- tion. Such an arrangement, your Petitioners submit, would be really liable to the objections, in their opinion, erroneously urged against the present system. Your Petitioners respectfully represent that any body of persons associated with the minister, which is not a check, will be a screen. Unless the council is so constituted as to be personally independent of the minister, unless it feels itself responsible for recording an opinion on every Indian subject, and pressing that opinion on the minister, lOO DOUBLE GOVERNMENT NO EVIL. 1849-1873. whether it is agreeable to him or not ; and unless the minister, when he overrules their opinion, is bound to record his reasons, their existence will only serve to weaken his responsibility, and to give the colourable sanction of prudence and experience to measures in the framing of which those qualities have had no share." The following is an interesting exposition of the functions exercised by the Home Government, that is to say by the Court of Directors, and their staff of officials; subject to the Board of Control. It is also contains a home thrust by way of meeting the stock objection to the Company's position. "That your Petitioners are aware that the present Home Government of India is reproached with being a double Government ; and that any arrangement by which an indepen- dent check is provided to the discretion of the Minister will be liable to a similar reproach. But they conceive that this accusation originates in an entire misconception of the functions devolving on the Home Government of India, and in the application to it of the principles applicable to purely executive departments. The Executive Government of India is, and must be, seated in India itself The Court of Directors is not so much an executive, as a deliberative body. Its principal function, and that of the Home Government generally, is not to direct the details of administration, but to scrutinise and revise the past acts of the Indian Governments ; to lay down principles, and issue general instructions for their future guidance, and to give or refuse sanction to great political measures, which are referred home for approval. These duties are more analogous to the functions of Parliament, than to those of an Executive Board : and it might almost as well be said that Parliament, as that the Government of India, should be constituted on the principles applicable to Executive Boards. It is considered an excellence, not a defect, in the constitution of Parliament, to be not merely a double but a triple Govern- ment. An executive authority, your Petitioners submit, may RETIREMENT FROM INDIA HOUSE. 10 1 often with advantage be single, because promptitude is its first requisite. But the function of passing a deUberate opinion on past measures, and laying down principles of future policy, is a business which, in the estimation of your Petitioners, admits of, and requires the concurrence of more judgments than one. It is no defect in such a body to be double, and no excellence to be single ; especially when it can only be made so by cutting off that branch of it which by previous training is always the best prepared, and often the only one which is prepared at all, for its peculiar duty." Several other documents were drawn up by Mill for the Court of Directors, while the abolition of the Company was under dis- cussion in Parliament. It so happened that the Liberal Govern- ment, which first resolved on the measure, retired from office, before it was carried, and the Government of Lord Derby had to complete it. Under the management of Lord Stanley, as Presi- dent of the Board of Control, the new India Council was much more assimilated to the constitution of the old Court of Directors ; and I am inclined to believe that the modification was in great measure owing to the force of Mill's reasonings. It seemed a remarkable coincidence, and yet it grew naturally of the circumstances, that the son should play exactly the out same part during the final political catastrophe of the East India Company, that the father had acted in the crisis last preceding, namely, the renewal of the Charter, with the loss of the China trade, in 1833. John Mill was, from his official standing as well as his commanding ability, destined to become head of the office, in those very years ; so that the Company's last defence fell to his hands as a matter of course. The passing of the Bill for the transfer of the Government to the Crown, led to his retirement from the India House. He told Grote that, but for the dissolution of the Company, he would have continued in the service till he was sixty. An attempt was made to secure him for the new Council. After the Chairman, -he was the first applied to by Lord Stanley to I02 wife's death. 1849-18 73. take office as a Crown nominee. In declining, he gave, as his reason, failing health: but, even had he been stronger, he would have still preferred retirement to working under the new constitution. His deliverance from official work in 1858 was followed by the crushing calamity of his wife's death. He was then on his way to spend the winter in Italy, but, immediately after the event, he returned to his home at Blackheath. For some months, he saw nobody, but still corresponded actively on ; matters that interested him. His despondency was frightful. In reply to my condolence, he said " I have recovered the shock as much as I ever shall. Henceforth, I shall be only a conduit for ideas." Thornton shewed me the letter written to him, which gave the first intimation of the event to friends in England, and enclosed the form of notice that appeared in the leading London newspapers at the time. Here is an extract :— r " The hopes with which I commenced this journey have been fatally frustrated. My Wife, the companion of all my feelings, the prompter of all my best thoughts, the guide of all my actions, is gone ! She was taken ill at this place with a violent attack of bronchitis and pulmonary congestion. The medical men here could do nothing for her, and before the physician at Nice, who saved her life once before, could arrive, all was over. " It is doubtful if I shall ever be fit for anything, public or private, again. The spring of my life is broken. But I shall best fulfil her wishes by not giving up the attempt to do something useful. I am sure of your sympathy, but if you knew what she was, you would feel how little any sympathy can do.'' In the beginning of 1859, 1 was preparing for publication my volume on The Emotions and the WilL I showed the MS. to Mill, and he revised it minutely, and jotted a great many CHANGE OF OPINION ON THE BALLOT. IO3 fniggestions. In two or three instances, his remarks bore the impress of his lacerated feehngs. He soon recommenced an active career of publication. The Liberty was already written, and, as he tells us, was never to be re-touched. His pamphlet on Parliamentary Reform^ written some years previously, was revised and sent to press. On this he remarked in a letter : — " Grote, I am afraid, will not like it, on account of the ballot, if not other points. But I attach importance to it, as a sort of revision of the theory of represen- tative government." A few days later, he wrote — " Grote knows that I now differ with him on the ballot, and we have discussed it together, with no effect on either ". Of course the pamphlet was well reasoned, but the case against the Ballot had not the strength that I should have expected. The main considerations put forward are these two — first, that the electoral vote is a trust, and therefore to be openly exercised ; second, that, as a matter of fact, the coercion of the voter by bribery and intimidation has diminished and is diminishing. The argument from " a trust " was not new ; it had been repeatedly answered by his father, by Grote, and by others. The real point at issue was — whether withdrawing the elector from the legitimate control of public opinion, be not a less evil than exposing him to illegitimate influence ; and this depends on the state of the facts as to the diminution of such influence. Experience seems to be against Mill here : and it is unfortunate for his political sagacity and prescience, that the Legislature was converted to the ballot, after he had abandoned it. The Liberty appeared about the same time. The work was conceived and planned in 1854. While thinking of it, he told Grote that he was cogitating an essay to goint ou t what things society forbade that it ought not, and what thmes it left alone tliatitoughtjo control^ Grote repeated- this to me, remarking ESSAY ON LIBERTY. 1849-1873. 'TtJs.alLj^erywell for John Mill to stand up for thejemo^l. of social restraints, but as to imposing new. ones^ J feel the greatest apprehensions ". 1 instantly divined _what the_ ne^? restraints would be. The volume must have been the chief occupation of his spare time during the last two years of his official life. It is known that he set great store by the work, and thought it would probably last longer than any of his writings — except perhaps the Logic. The old standing question of Freedom of Thought had been worked up, in a series' of striking expositions, by his father, in conjunction with Bentham, and the circle of the Westminster Review, He himself, from his earliest youth, was embarked in the same cause, and his essays were inferior to none in the '-^ower and freshness of the handling. The first part of the Xiberty is the condensation of alUthat had been previously done'; and, for the present, stands as the chief text-book on Freedom of Discussion. It works round a central idea — wKich has"had a,grpjviEi£j2J"051^^^"*^^ ^^ ^^*^^ years — namely, the necessity of ta king account of the negative to every positive affirmation ; of laying down, side by side with every proposition^-the-^g^^/gy- 'proposzno n. ' .g^llowin^ this cue. Mill's first assump tion is^ that^ a n opmion authoritatively suppressgd^may possibly be true ;. and 't he th irty pages devoted tothis position shqw ^acombination of reasoning and elo quence t hat has never been_surpassed, if indeed^ ever equalled, in the ca use of i ntellectual freedom. J The second assumption is that an opinion is false. Her e his arguine nt takes the "more exclusive form of showing the nece ssity,^ keepi ng in the view the opposite of every opinion^i n order t o^ inSinta in the living force of the opinion itself. While there is much that is effective here alsQ^J[ _think_thathp lays too great stress upon the operation of negative criticism ir^.keepAn^ glive t t RTuudu ' i j Uiidin.i ' uf ^ sTdoctiTne,. It ia perfectly trn& ..that when ah opini on is ac tively^^02po5edj^its^dp.fftnder.s,-are. put^pn ,the (jm vweAn its defence : and have, in^ conseguence, a far more lively sense of its truth^ as_. well as a juster view of its meaning KEEPING IN VIEW THE OPPOSITE SIDE. lOS y ad import : yet the necessity of keeping up imaginary ^pponenlsT6"6'very trut h in sci oice may easily be exa g gerated^. . Welieed noTcmijure up disb elievers ^n^rayitat ion so long a s a hundred observato ries and a hundred th ousand ships are TuiisUndy lil' work'testing its consequenc^ "^ '" •^" AVhen ne proceeds to illustrate t he enlivening influence of negation by the case 6t etTiic al'^'arid'l'^Ti^^STrg^tJf^trlfieB, ^ le fails to make out Lis case. It may be true enough that when a creed is firs t fighting for reception , . it IS at the height ol its tervour, but the loss of power at a late r stage is due to other causes than t he absence of opponents . Mill's ill ustration from Christ ianity is hardly in point. Never. sihce the suppression of pagan philosophy, w as Christianity more attacked than it is now; but we cannot say that the attacks have led, or are likely to lead, to a resuscitatio n of its spirit i n ^j^ _ ""^^ds of Ctiristians : tEe op posite would be nearer t he Jruthi„ The last branch of the argument for Free Thought is constJ- tuted by, Mill's favourite_maxim that co nfliciing doctrine s usually share ^^^ tT^ltih b^*wf ^T^n^lr^.mi - This view is."TThinT f. both precarious in itself/ and ^fve ry doubtful T ^f^lev^prp to the author's main the sis. The exampleftom^the ^o^^st^te^ pnrti^?^ — f,hp part y of order and the pan ^.^^^OS^f'^S— :_^yU), P^^ s tand a severe scrutiny. Not to mention, what h f admits, that tlTPjp jg ppT^^ff^f frpeHom of rJisnu^^lOP "" the mattei;-j,., the-. war o f ^parties is, in poin t of fact, sca rcely conducted according t o his ideal. e ventures int o the fiel d of Th eological discussion, by a criticism of the morality of Christianity, which he pronounces to be incomplete and one-sided. The remarks would be in- teresting and suggestive, if we could view them dispassionately; but that is next to impossible. Such a line of observation is felt at once as challenging the pretensions of Christianity to be a divine revelation ; and this ought not to be done in a passing remark. Thcf proofs that Mill offers of the alleged one-sided- Io6 ESSAY ON LIBERTY. 1849-18)2. ness may have been very satisfactory to himself, yet everyo \e of them might be plausibly set aside. Ilis sttpngest point is . the passive^character of the Christian^'precept;^ . j^ CKrigFiamt y is negative pt^^r thaji_pQsitiv^J|gESsiKej:ather thaq active; Innocence rather than Nobleii£ Ss^uAbstinence. . from jEvil, rather than energedc pursu it of^ggod-lJnite precepts.. (as has been well said) 'thou shaltnot' prgd flmlnntps Tinduly over 'thou shalt '." Now, T ^p nnt n;ipan to say thfif. thare.may ^ot ^^^'^TTlf t^^^^^ ^" ^^^ th\c: -^ T mprply say that it js_ e xceeding ly open to reply. For example, activity in virtue de pe nds quit e asjTi ^ch Qn ^ r^t^^vi clual temperament aspV creed. } The jypical Anglo-Saxon _w hen highly virtu ousUs-^ lmost sure to be ac tively so Bidj ^i)l nnt;^j;f^^meTnh^r hi^, ^father's friend. Wffiam-A^4j the reference to the Christian morality belongs to the first branch of the argument and might have been included there; that first branch con- taining to my mind the real strength of the contention for Freedom of Thought. The second half of the book is on Liberty of^Coadyct^ as ^amiL2E£iestraints of our social customs. This is introduced by a chaptes: on Individuality, considered as one of the ele- ments of well-being. ) Excellent as are many of the author's remarks, there are various openings for criticism. Tji e^ chief thing that strikes me is the want of a steady view of the LIBERTY OF CONDUCT. 107 ^sentials of human_ha]3pinessl^?J_^a^^^ ^j-y.6 t^9, "ffJ^P^^E y-^ the defects of Mill's Hedonistic p hiIosopb y f^^^X-tb kyt^'^^ftt^he geatly _exaggeraj:es the di fferences beitwee n hunian being s as re gards tTie . conditions of happiness^_^TQie_cpmmii.nity of struc- ture in our corporeal and mental framework far excee ds th e dfepahties. There are certain easily sjated requisites^ in the possesion" of whTcTTnb one could be very unhappy; while the specialities needed lb impart to a given individuaHhe highest degree of felicity, are seldomer^ withheld by the tyranny^of custo^^thanjby cause^^ cannot control. . Mill pleads strongly for the energetic natures^ for the exuberance of sgontaneit^ y and 'st rong" impulses. '""BuTenergy, assjich, is not thwar^ j...; and the dSftcultj^^^ni^ al ways rem ainj that sup er- abun dant energy" is exceedingly' "apt to trench upon other ■ jieopIe'S"" rights. MjlL too closely . identifies energy with origi-" nali ty or gen ius, and. genius with eccentrid'ty. In regard to all tEese characteristics, many fine distinctions need to be drawn, over and above what Mill gives us. When he talks of the present state of Englishmen as a state of collective greatness and diminishing individuality, it takes a little reflection to see what he is driving at Nor is his reference of the unprogressive- ness of the East to the despotism of custom a wholly satis- factory explanation : the problem of stationary societies is still -dTTOeaded. yA /The chagterjpllowing, entitled-, "The.. Limits to the Authority^H^ QflSoete^^-ov^ the Individual," helps us better 'to his real -^ meaning. Re .lays it down as^^jjuarioEo^jhaJt^socie^ interfere only in wKaT^concerns itself. One might suppose tKa;f"this WOUlTnTave passed as self-evident, instead of being cavilled at on all hands. Why should society, more than any other entity, interfere with what does not concern it ? Even. accepting the axiom , we may yetwork it in society's favour by those numerous p retexts Jwh er^by individual action is alleged^to "^^^ ^^zT^^^ ^J^^^Xi refuseTSe'ajaom itself argues some ^ defect of intelligent comprehension. i Io8 ESSAY ON LIBERTY. 1849-1872. As a piece of vigorous composition, this chapter is not inferior to any in the book ; it is admirable as an exposition in practical ethics, and might be enshrined as a standing homily in the moral instruction of mankind. 'n-4s an excg^sivc-pftee^o pay for religioi^jiMf&'rmity," SIR JAMES STEPHEN'S CRITICISM. Ill The general tenor of Sir James Stephen's work, is to illustrate the necessity of .bringing force to bear upon hnr nfin life nt ^11 points^Religion and Morals included. His facts and argu- 1 ments are well put, and often irresistible. He repeats the v' common objection to Mill, founded on the admission that we \ may^d isaQjUXi yp of p ir^ opl e ior certakL things. _withQut-beij3g „held as punish ing thein. Jlfi-aak^ wTiat k '•hf^^g<;j:;2£^i£::J2jilIl^^ betwee n an unfav ourable judgment leadin siJjXJio smous-eonr sequences, and fine or imprisonroent.,- ■Xo jhich the reply is, tKat tne^positiorLof our c^ure in the scale of in fliction niakes a mighty difference, which we may call either princip le or practice . Whether c ertai n errors of doctrine shall i nfer dgpp;_ sition from office, or mere ly_ be_lQoked at jwith_the^ort of disap- Iproval that we entertain towards those that differ from us in politics, is, to all intents and purposes, a question of principle. The Jews, after their admission to Parliament, made no com- plaint, and no charge of inconsistency, against Christians for disliking their tenets, in the milder forms that the dislike now assumes. There are many other cases where difference of '' degree makes all the difference in the world. A great deal of whit Sir James says as to the occasions when force has operated as a civilizing agent, would be admitted by Mill himself He makes ample allowances for such cases. Much of Sir James's argumentation would seem to be needless ; while much of it gives a very unpalatable view of human life. Mill's own remark as he read the articles, on their first appearing, was that the author " does not know what he is arguing against ; and is more likely to repel than to attract people ". This last observation is, I think, the juster of the two. Sir James may be quite right in all that he urges upon the necessity of at times converting people, in battalions, as Charlemagne did ; yet few in the present day would think it a matter of pride, or of satis- faction in any way, to belong to a society thus recruited. A large number of persons would rather give up religion altogether than regard it as a rough-shod engine of state. " Erastian " is 112 WORK ON UTILITARIANISM. 1849-1872. too weak a term for Sir James's theory of Church Government. So, he insists on the vital connexion between a belief in God and in Immortality and our existing ethical code ; yet he him- self has endeavoured to show the insufificiency of the evidences of Christianity, which is our present embodiment of Theism. There is an interesting letter in Kingsley's Life (Vol. II., p. 8B), written by Mill, in answer to one from Kingsley, thanking him for the gift of his " Dissertations and Discussions," and also for the work on Liberty, which he says, " affected me in making me a clearer-headed, braver-minded man on the spot". The point of the expression requires an additional fact to be known. Kingsley first saw the Liberty on the table in Parker's shop. He sat down and read it through, there and Jhen ; and made, the remark before he left the shop. Closely connected, both in date of composition andln subject matter, is the Utilitarianism. I find from a letter that it was written in 1854. It was thoroughly revised in i860, and appeared as three papers in Fraser's Magazine in the beginning of 1 86 1. I am not aware that any change was made in re- printing it as* a volume, notwithstanding that it had its full share of hostile criticism as it came out in Fraser. This short work has many volumes to answer for. The amount of attention it has received is due, in my opinion, partly to its merits, and partly to its defects. As a powerful advocacy of Utility, it threw the Intuitionists on the defensive ; while by a number of unguarded utterances, it gave them important strategic positions which they could not fail to occupy. It is this last point that I shall now chiefly dwell upon. What I. allude to more particularly is theJiiepry of pleasure an^dT"' pain, embodied in the second chapter, or rather the string of casual expressions having reference to pleasures and pains. I have already said thatj considerMiirs Hedon^na-weak. I do not find fault with him for not having elaborated a Hedonistic theory ; that is a matter still ahead of us. My objection lies to IMPERFECT DEFINITION OF HAPPINESS. "3 cer tain loose e ^cpressions that have received an amount of notice fr^m_^^i]e r,ritics-oi]t_ofall proportTdnlolheir bearing^orTtris grgiTTr>Pnt-c= fnr TTfjUty,, lThint~ihaI7niayiiTg- oppon o nt c a t- every point, his proper course was not to commit himself to an^jnore specific definition of Happiness than his case abso- lutely required. lit was obviously necessary that he should give some expla- nation of Happiness ; and, on his principles, happiness must be i resolved into pleasure and the absence of pain. Here, however,/ he had to encounter at once the common dislike to regarding^ pleasure as the sole object of desire and pursuit ; " a doctrine/ worthy only of swine," to which its holders have, both in ancient\ and in modern times, been most profusely likened. He cou-j rageously faces the difficulty by pronouncing in favour~or diggr^ oeln j ^^^'gg^^T'amgngr^ he expands through two or three eloquent pages, which I believe have received more attention from critics on the other side than all the rest of the book j)ut together. -M^Qwn_ decided opinion is, that he ^JgtOOlAhave resolved all the so-called nobler or higher pleasures into the one stngle^ifcum- stan ce o f including, with the agent's pleasure, the pleasure of others. This is the only position that a supporter of Utility "^ can hold to. There is a superiority attaching to some pleasures that are still exclusively self-regarding, namely, their amount ^as compared with the exhaustion of the nervous power ; the 7 pleasures of music and of scenery are higher than those of \ stimulating drugs. But the superiority that makes a distinction of quality, that rises clearly and effectually above the swinish . level, is the superiority of the gratifications that take our fellow-^ beings alon^;_with us : such, are Jhe-^pleagures of affection_i. benevolence, oT'^dntyr- To have met opponents upon this ] ground alone would have been the proper undertaking for the' object Mill had in view. It_ surprises me ihj-t.he has not ventur^iiipon- such a mode of resolving pleasures. He says — ** On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, 8 114 WORK ON UTILITARIANISM. 1S49-I872. or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and consequences, the judgment of those who are quaUfied by knowledge of both, must be admitted to be final.'// Apart^ fro m moral att ributes and consequences, I do not see a difference. o£ quality_at all ; and, when these are taken into account, the difference is sufficient to call forth any amount of admiring preference. // A man's actions are noble if they arrest misery or diffuse happiness around him : they are not noble if they are not directly or indirectly altruistic ; they are essentially of the swinish type.// .Still rasher, I think, is his off-hand formula of a ha^py^ife",* if he meant this to be a stone in the building of "Utilitarian philosophy. As a side-remark upon some of the important conditions of happiness, it is interesting enough, but far from being rounded or precise. What he had to expect was that this utterance should have the same fate as Paley's chapter on Happiness, namely, to be analyzed to death, and to have its mangled remains exposed as a memento of the weakness of the philosophy that it is intended to support;^ In conducting a defence of; Utility, his business clearly was, to avoid all ques- tionable siippositions, and to proceed upon what everybody would allow on the matter of happiness.// His third chapter, treating of the Uttimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility, has been much cavilled at in detail, but is, I consider, a very admirable statement of the genesis of moral sentiment, under all the various influences that are necessarily at work. Here occurs that fine passage on the Social feelings of mankind, which ought, I think, to have been the framework or setting of the whole chapter. Perhaps he should have avoided the word " sanction," so rigidly confined by Austin and the jurists to the penalty or punishment of wrong. * Happiness is "not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in an exist- ence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the founda- tion of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing". CRITICISMS ON UTILITARIANISM. II 5 The real stress of the book lies in the last chapter, which is well reasoned in every way, and free from damaging admissions. Under the guise of an inquiry int o tl;; ie foundations of Justice. ^ h e^ raises the que stion as t o the source of duty or obli gation, and meets the intuitionists point by point in a way that I need not particularize. By far the best hostile criticism of the Utilitarianism that I am acquainted with, is th e posthumous v olume oL-ErQ£L_John GrfltSr — It will there be seen what havoc an acute, yet candid and respectful opponent, can make of his theories of happiness. Many of those strictures I consider unanswerable. Prof. Grote also makes the most of MilFs somewhat exaggerated moral strain, and his affectation of holding happiness in contempt ; " doing without it," if need be. Sir James Stephen's work, already noticed, contains various criticisms on the present treatise also. On the question, whether Morality is intuitive, Sir James is at one with Mill. He counter-argues the Intuitionists with all his accustomed skill. While, however, contending that happiness is the sole end of moral precepts, _he still maintains that the conception of h appiness is^ vitally involved with our vie ws as ^to ^religion." " The question whether this present life is all that we have to look to and provide for, or whether there are reasonable grounds for supposing that it is a stage in a longer and probably larger life, and the further question A^hether the universe in which we live is a mere dead machine, or whether it is under the guidance of a being with whom we share the attributes of consciousness and will, overshadow all moral philosophy." Morality might, he thinks, survive the downfall of religion, but it would be a different morality. Mill, however, does not insist that morality, in the absence of religion, would be the same ; while to affirm that it would be either worse or better, is merely to beg the whole matter in dispute. His contention is that there would be no defect in the stringency of the moral sanc- tions, considered as growing out of a regard to human well- being in the present life. ^l6 BUSINESS Al THE INDIA OFFICE. 1849-1872. I am tenipfed-4iere-tO'g!ve one of his letters to Thornton, belonging to the present year (i860) ; as conveying his first im- pressions of the working of the change in the Government of India. He repeatedly adverted to the subject in the corre- spondence of the next few years ; and his letters will be after- wards of use in comparing his prophecies with the actual events. "Your letter of September 19 gave me much pleasure, because it contained better and more encouraging accounts of your health, and also because it said that things were likely to be made pleasanter to you at the India House by changes in the mode of transacting business. I shall be greatly interested by hearing more of these changes, since, as you are aware, I think that the practical goodness of a government depends, much more than is generally supposed, on the forms of business. It is a comfort to hear of any changes for the better. Unfortunately, the deteriorations in the structure of the instrument of Government in detail, which I always feared would follow from the substitution of the traditions of the Government Offices for those of the India House, seem to be taking place still more rapidly than I looked for. If the Council at Calcutta is to be abolished, and a Cabinet of Secretaries put in its place, as the newspapers say, and as is too probable, the change will be almost fatal : for the Members of Council are the only high administrative Officers not dependent on the will of the Governor-General, and their Minutes are the only Channel through which an independent and ungarbled opinion necessarily reaches the home authorities. The difficulties of governing India have so much increased, while there is less and less wisdom employed in doing it, that I begin to despair of the whole subject, and almost beHeve that we are at the beginning of the end." It was in 1S60, that he wrote his volume onR^resentative Governnmit. The state of the Reform question, which led him to prepare his pamphlet oh Reform, was the motive of the still VOLUME ON REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. II7 larger undertaking, his principal contribution to a Philosophy of Politics. He says in tho/PrefacCj that the chief novelty of the volume is the bringing together, in a connected form, the various political doctrines//;hat he had at various times given expression to : but the mere fact of viewing them in connexion necessarily improved their statement and bearings ; and the six or eight months' additional elaboration in his fertile brain could not but infuse freshness into the subject. In my estimate of Mill's genius, he was first of all a Logician, and next a social philosopher or Politician. The Political Economy and the Representative Government constitute his political outcome. People will differ as to his conclusions, but certainly whoever wishes to judge of any matter within the scope of the Representative Government should first see what is there said upon it ; and the work must long enter into the education of the higher class of politicians. ATThe c hapter on the " Criterion of a good form of Government " contains an exceedingly pertinent discussion ot the relation between Order and Progress ; and demonstratesthat__Qrilgr rannnfrhg^ pprmanprifr with^nt Prngr^st; • a position in advance of Comte. The third chapter demolishes the fond theory entertained by many In the present day that the best govern- ment is " Absolute authority in good hands ". Then comes a question that needs all the author's delicacy, tact, and resource — Under what conditions is representative government appli- cable ? But his strongest point throughout is the exposition of the dangers and difficulties attending on Democracy. This was one of his oldest themes in the Westminster Review ; he has put it in every possible light, and discussed with apostolic ardour all the contrivances for withstanding the tyranny of the majority. He took up with avidity Mr. Hare's scheme of Representation, and never ceased to urge it as the greatest known improvement that representative institutions are suscep- tible of. He dismisses Second Chambers as wholly inadequate to the purpose in view, however useful ©therwise. The discussions Ti8 Hamilton's philosophy. 1849-1872. on the proper functions of the Local Governing Bodies, on De- pendencies, and on Federations, are all brimful of good political thinking. He passes by the subject of Hereditary Monarchy. Both he and Grote were republicans in principle, but they re- garded the monarchy as preferable to the exposing of the highest dignity of the state to competition. From my latest conversations with Mill, I think he coincided in the view that simple Cabinet Government would be the natural substitute for Monarchy. In 1 86 1, he began to turn his thoughts to a review of Hamilton's Philosophy. Writing to me in November, he says, " I mean to take up Sir William Hamilton, and try if I can make an article on him for the Westminster ". He chose the Westminster vAxQVi he wanted free room for his elbow. He soon abandoned the idea of an article. In December he said : — " I have now studied all Sir W. Hamilton's works pretty thoroughly, and see my way to most of what I have got to say respecting him. But I have given up the idea of doing it in anything less than a volume. The great recommendation of this project is, that it will enable me to supply what was prudently left deficient in the Logic, and to do the kind of service which I am capable of to rational psychology, namely, to its FolemikJ' A month before, he had written to Thornton, in terms that showed how well he had recovered his natural buoyant spirits, and his enjoyment of life. " Life here is uneventful, and feels like a perpetual holiday. It is one of the great privileges of advanced civilization, that while keeping out of the turmoil and depressing wear of life, one can have brought to one's doors all that is agreeable or stimulating in the activities of the outward world, by newspapers, new books, periodicals, &c. It is, in truth, too self-indulgent a life for any one to allow himself whose duties lie among his fellow-beings, unless, as is fortunately the case with me, they are mostly such as can be better fulfilled at a distance from their society, than in the midst of it." LOW OPINION OF HAMILTON. II9 He was interrupted for a time by the events in America. In January, 1862, he wrote in Fraser his paper on the Civil War. He expected it to give great offence, and to be the most hazardous thing for his influence that he had yet done. After spending the summer in a tour in Greece and Asia Minor, he wrote again on the American Question, in a review of Cairnes's book in the Westminster, This done, he set to the Hamilton^ which was the chief part of his occupation for the next two years. His interruptions were — the article on John Austin in the Edinburgh^ in Oct., 1863, the two articles on Comte to the end of 1864, and the revision of the Political Economy. I had a great deal of correspondence with him while he was engaged with Hamilton. He read all Hamilton's writings three times over ; and all the books that he thought in any way re- lated to the subjects treated of. Among other things, he wrote me a long criticism of Ferrier's Institutes. " I thought Ferrier's book quite sui generis when I first read it, and I think so more than ever after reading it again. His system is one of pure scepticism, very skilfully clothed in dogmatic language." He was much exercised upon the whole subject of Indestructibility of Force. His reading of Spencer, Tyndall, and others, landed him in a host of difficulties, which I did what I could to clear up. His picture of Hamilton grew darker as he went on ; chiefly from the increasing sense of his inconsistencies. He often wished that Hamilton was alive to answer for himself. " I was not prepared for the degree in which this complete acquaintance lowers my estimate of the man and of his specu- lations. I did not expect to find them a mass of contradictions. There is scarcely a point of importance on which he does not hold conflicting theories, or profess doctrines which suppose one theory while he himself holds another. It almost goes against me to write so complete a demolition of a brother philosopher after he is dead, not having done it while he was alive." 120 THEORY OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD. 1849-1872, During my stay in London in the summer of 1864, he showed me the finished MS. of a large part of the book. I offered a variety of minor suggestions, and he completed the work for the press the same autumn. Of the many topics comprised in the volume, I shall advert only to one or two of the principal. After following Hamilton's various theories through ten chapters, he advances his own positive view of the Belief in an External World. Having myself gone over the same ground, I wish to remark on what is peculiar in his treatment of the question. I give him full credit for his uncompromising Idealism, and for his varied and forcible exposition of it. In this respect he has laboured to educate the thinking public in what I regard as the truth. But in looking at his analysis in detail, while I admit he has seized the more important things, I do not exactly agree with him either as to the order of statement, or as to the relative stress put upon the various elements of the Object and Subject distinction. In the first place, I would remark on the omission of the quality of Resistance, and of the muscular energies as a whole, from his delineation of the object or external world. In this particular, usage and authority are against him, to begin with. The connexion of an External World with the Primary Qualities has been so long prevalent, that surely there must be some reason or plausibility in it. His own father and Mansel are equally emphatic in setting forth Resistance as the foundation fact of Externality. Mill himself, however, allows no place for Resis- tance in his psychological theory. In a separate chapter on the Primary Qualities of Matter, he deals with Extension and Resistance, as products of muscular sensibility, and as giving us our notions of Matter, but he thinks that simple tactile sensi- bility mingles with resistance, and plays as great a part as the purely muscular ingredient ; thus frittering Away the supposed antithesis of muscular energy and passive sensibility. Now, for my own part, I incline to the usage and opinion of our pre- FIXITY OF ORDER. 121 decessors in putting forward the contrast of active energy and passive feeling as an important constituent of the subject and object distinction; and, if it is to be admitted at all, I am disposed to begin with it, instead of putting it last as Mr. Spencer does, or leaving it out as Mill does. It does not give all that is implied in Matter, but it gives the nucleus of the composite feeling, as well as the fundamental and defining attribute. The stress of Mill's exposition rests on the fixity of order in our sensations, leading to a constancy of recurrence, and a belief in that constancy, which goes the length of assuming independent existence. Although he shows a perfect mastery of his position, I do not consider that he has done entire justice to il, from not carrying along with him the full contrast of the objective and the subjective — the Sensation and the Idea. Indeed, the exposition is too short for the theme \ the reader is apt to be satisfied with the portable phrase — "permanent possibility of sensation," which helps him to one vital part of the case, but does not amount to a satisfactory equivalent for an External and Independent World. There would have been more help in an expression dwelling upon the " common to all," in con- trast with the "special to me," to use one of Ferrier's forms of phraseology. This ground of distinction is not left unnoticed by Mill, but it is simply mentioned. His chapter applying the theory to our belief in the permanent existence of Mind is, I think, even more subtle than the pre- ceding one on Matter. The way of disposing of Reid's diffi- culty about the existence of his fellow-creatures is everything that I could wish. It is when, in the concluding paragraph, he lays down, as final and inexplicable, the Belief in Memory, that I am unable to agree with him. This position of his has been much, dwelt upon by the thinkers opposed to him. It makes him appear, after all, to be a transcendentalist like themselves, differing only in degree. For myself, I never could see where his difficulty lay, or what moved him to say 122 ATTACK ON MANSEL. 1849-1872. that the belief in memory is incomprehensible or essentially- irresolvable. The precise nature of Belief is no doubt invested with very peculiar delicacy, but, whenever it shall be cleared up, we may very fairly suppose it capable of accounting for the belief that a certain state now past as a sensation, but present as an idea, was once a sensation, and is not a mere product of thought or imagination. (Cf. The Emotions and the Will^ 3rd. edit, p. 532.) I may make a passing observation on the chapter .specially devoted to Hansel's Limits of Religious Thought. It is a con- siderable digression in a work devoted to Hamilton ; but Mansel's book touched Mill to the quick ; in private, he called it a " loathsome " book. His combined argumentative and passionate style rises to its utmost height. Mansel sarcastically described his famous climax — " to hell I will go " — as an exhi- bition of taste and temper. That passage was scarcely what Grote called it, a Promethean defiance of Jove, inasmuch as the fear of hell never had a place in Mill's bosom ; it sprang from the strength of his feelings coining the strongest attainable image to give them vent,* Mill could not help adverting to Hamilton's very strong and paradoxical assertions about Free-Will ; but, as he never elabo- rates a consecutive exposition of the question, I doubt the propriety of making these assertions a text for discussing it at full. Mill's chapter is either too much or too litde ; too much as regards his author, too little as regards the subject. The connexion of Punishment with Free-will should be allowed only under protest ; the legitimacy and the limits of punishment make a distinct inquiry. Punishment, psychologically viewed, assumes that men recoil from pain \ there may be other springs of action besides pain or pleasure ; but as regards such, both re- * Grote thought that the phrase was an echo of something occurring in Benjonson; where a military captain's implicit obedience is crowned by the illustration— " Tell him to go to hell, to hell he will go ", I have never got any clue to the place. HAMILTON ON FREE-WILL. 1 23 ward and punishment are irrelevant. I think Mill very successful in showing that moral good and evil are noways bound up with the question of the Will. He is not too strong in his remonstrance against Hamilton's attempt to frighten people into Free-Wili by declaring that the existence of the Creator hangs upon it. It was quite in Hamilton's way to destroy all the other arguments in favour of a doctrine that he espoused, in order to give freer course to his own. He damages the advocacy of Free-Will by his slashing antinomy of the two contrary doctrines. It is certainly a clearing of the ground, if nothing more, to affirm, as he does so strongly, that " a determination by motives cannot escape from necessitation '\ Such admis- sions give an opponent some advantage, but only as respects him individually. The general controversy, however, must proceed on different lines from his, and hence the waste of strength in following his lead. Hamilton's attack on the study of Mathematics was a battery of learned quotations intended to confound Whewell and Cambridge. It is not very convincing; it hardly even does what Mill thinks hostile criticism tends to do, namely, to bring out the half-truth neglected by the other side. It was not worth while to write so long a chapter in reply ; but Mill, partly from what he learnt from Comte, and partly from his own logical studies, had a pat answer to every one of Hamilton's points. Most notable, in my view, is the paragraph about the disastrous influence of the mathematical method of Descartes on all subsequent speculation. He seems there to say that the d priori spirit has been chiefly kept up by the example of Mathematics. Now, I freely admit that the axioms of mathematics have been the favourite illustration of Intuition ; but there is no certainty that, in the absence of that example, Intuitionism would not have had its full swing during the last two centuries. Mill admits that the crudity of Bacon's Induc- tive canons had an equally bad effect on English speculation ; but all this shows simply that error is the parent of error. 124 STANDING FOR WESTMINSTER. 1849-1872. The two subjects taken up while the Hamilton was still in hand — John Austin and Comte — deserve to be ranked among the best of his minor compositions. The " Austin " article took him back to his early days when he worked with Bentham and attended the lectures of Austin at University College. It does not seem to contain much originality, but it is a logical treat. The two " Comte '' articles are still more valuable, as being Mill's contribution to the elucidation of Comte's Philo- sophy. It will be long ere an equally searching and dispas- sionate estimate of Comte be given to the world ; indeed, no one can again combine the same qualifications for the worL The publication of the Hamilton in the spring of 1865 was followed by a crowd of events. Mill had already embarked on an article on Grote's Plato^ which had lately appeared. He had arranged with his publisher for cheap reprints of the Political Economy, the Liberty^ and the Representative Government. Then came the requisition to stand for Westminster, by which his name blazed out into a sudden notoriety, under which the cheap volumes went off like wildfire, while there was an increased demand for the Logic, His letter, announcing his compliance with the requisition on certain conditions, was a surprise. It was scarcely to be expected that he could feel himself "honoured" by being elected to Parliament, in the maturity of his great reputation. Perhaps we must go farther back to account for his ready compliance. He had felt it acutely, as a disadvantage of his being placed in the India House, that he could not enter Parliament ; and again, in the days when he was heading the philosophic radicals, he was conscious of the weakness of his. position in not being himself in the House of Commons. He had not yet ceased to be a practical politician, although he had become many things besides ; and the long slumbering idea of being in Parliament was suddenly wakened into life. His anticipation of success in the election was not sanguine; but his supporters were SUCCESS IN PARLIAMENT. 1 25 enthusiastic, and his appearance at the meetings of the electors procured daily accessions to his cause. He had been hitherto very little seen by the public : and neither friends nor foes had any adequate conception of his resources and his readiness as a speaker. Above all things, the attempts to entrap him by cunningly devised questions most signally recoiled upon the authors. Half of his year for the next three years was given up to attendance in the House and engrossment with public questions. I am not about to criticize his career as a member of Parliament. The part of the Autobiography where he is perhaps most self-complacent, is what relates to his speeches and doings in that capacity. He set a good example of perfect party loyalty, combined with the assertion of difference of opinion on particular questions. For a number of years his relations with Mr. Gladstone had been far more cordial and intimate than the. outer world was aware of. His idea of venti- lating questions that had as yet scarcely any supporters, appears to me to be carried to an extreme. He was not an orator physically ; but he composed and delivered speeches possessing all the qualities of his published writings ; that is to say, original in thought, powerfully reasoned, and full of passionate fire when the occasion demanded. In the six months' recess he carried on his philosophical and other writings. In the autumn and winter of 1865, he had to finish his long article on FlatOy on which he bestowed great pains, having taken the trouble to re-read the whole of Plato in the original. To the reader of Grote, the article does not impart much that is absolutely new ; but, Plato being an early subject of his as well as of his father's, his handling has fresh- ness and gusto. The extraordinary stimulus given to the sale of his books prematurely exhausted the current edition of the Logic ; and it had been his intention to revise it for the next edition (the Sixth). This had to be seen to, along with the " Plato," during 126 ELECTED RECTOR OF ST. ANDREWS. 1849-1872. the same recess. His revision, on this occasion, partly consisted in improving the " Induction '' by new examples. I referred him to Brown S^quard's interesting research on Cadaveric Rigidity, and induced him to read the same author's volume of Researches on the Nervous System. I also obtained from Thomas Graham a complete set of his researches on Gases and Liquids ; pointing his attention to what I thought most avail- able. It was in this edition that he first combated Mr. Spencer's doctrine of " The Inconceivability of the Opposite " as a test of truth. The same winter recess was not allowed to conclude without another distraction. The students of St. Andrews had, without asking his leave, elected him Lord Rector. On its being announced to him, he wished to decline. This, however, was not easy after the thing was done ; and he accepted on the understanding that he was not to deliver the Rectorial Address till next year. Meantime, his letters to me were full of the notices that had come out on the Hainilton. When the session of 1866 was concluded, after a tour in the Alps and Pyrenees, he settled down at Avignon to write his Address for St. Andrews, and to answer the attacks on Hamilion for the third edition ; both which feats he accomplished before the opening of the session of 1867. The St. Andrews Address was a very lengthened performance; its delivery lasted three hours. It aimed at a complete survey of the Higher Education. Its absolute value is considerable ; but in relation to the time, place, and circumstances, I consider it to have been a mistake. Mill had taken it into his head that the Greek and Roman classics had been too hardly pressed by the votaries of science, and were in some danger of being ex- cluded from the higher teaching ; and he occupies nearly half of the address in vindicating their importance. The second half is a vigorous enforcement of the claims of Science. RECTORIAL ADDRESS. 1 27 The performance was a failure, in my opinion, for this simple reason, that he had no conception of the Umits of a University curriculum. The Scotch Universities have been distinguished for the amount of study comprised in their Arts Degree. Mill would have them keep up the Classics intact, and even raise their standard ; he would also include a complete course of the Primary Sciences — Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Physio- logy, Logic, and Psychology — to which he would add Political Economy, Jurisprudence, and International Law. Now at present the obligatory sciences are Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral Philosophy. If he had consulted me on this occasion, I should have endeavoured to impress upon him the limits of our possible curriculum, and should have asked him to arbitrate between the claims of Literature and Science, so as to make the very most of our time and means. He would then have had to balance Latin and Greek against Chemistry, Physiology, and Jurisprudence ; for it is quite certain that both these languages would have to be dropped absolutely, to admit his extended science course. In that case he would have been more careful in his statements as to the Greek and Latin languages. He would not have put these languages as synonymous with "literature''; and he would have made much more allowance for translations and ex- positions through the modern languages. He would have found that at the present day we have other methods of cor- recting the tendency to mistake words for things than learning any two or three additional languages. He would not have assumed that our pupils are made all " to think in Greek " ; nor would he have considered it impossible to get at the sources of Greek and Roman History without studying the languages. If he had had a real opponent, he would not have given the authority of his name to the assertion that Grammar is " ele- mentary Logic". His mode of speaking of the style of the ancient writers, to my mind at least, is greatly exaggerated. " Look at an oration of Demosthenes ; there is nothing in it 128 MISTAKEN ADVOCACY OF CLASSICS. 1849-1872. which calls attention to itself as style at all." "The Athenians do not cry out — What a splendid speaker, but — Let us march against Philip." He also gives way to the common remark that the teaching of Latin and Greek could be so much im.- proved as to make it an inconsiderable draft upon a pupil's energies. On this point he had no experience to go upon but his own, and that did not support his position. In the scientific departments he carries out strictly the Comte hierarchy of the fundamental sciences, and, in this respect, the address was valuable as against the mischievous practice of culling out a science from the middle of the series, say Chemistry, and prescribing it by itself to the exclusion of its forerunners in the hierarchy. While he speaks fairly and well on the Mathematical and Physical Sciences, his remarks on the Moral and Political display, as usual, the master's hand. He next goes on to talk of Free Thought, on which he maintains a somewhat impracticable ideal for our Universities. From Science he proceeds to Art, and enforces a favourite theme — the subservience of Poetry to Virtue and Morality. One feels that on this topic a little more discrimination was necessary^ art being a very wide word. His conclusion was a double entendre. *' I do not attempt to instigate you by the prospect of direct rewards, either earthly or heavenly ; the less we think about being rewarded in either way, the better for us." In the reception given to the Address, he was most struck with the vociferous applause of the Divinity students at the Free-thought passage. He was privately thanked by others among the hearers for this part The Third Edition of the Hamilton contained replies to the host of critics that had assailed it. The additional scope given to the author's polemical ability greatly enhanced the interest of the book. In answering the attacks made on his criticism of Hamilton's doctrines on the Relativity of Knowledge and Philo- sophy of the Conditioned, as well as in the reply to Mansel on EDITING HIS FATHERS "ANALYSIS". 1 29 Religion, he showed to considerable advantage. In defending the Psychological Theory of the Belief in an External World, he grappled with the stock arguments against Idealism. He made least way in the Free-Will controversy ; affording, as I think, a confirmation of the impropriety of carrying on so many distinct questions together. His next literary project was the editing his father's Analysis. This was commenced in the recess of 1867, and finished in the following year, being brought out early in 1869. He called it "a very great relief from its extreme unlikeness to parliamentary work, and to parliamentary semi-work, or idleness "* I had ne- cessarily a long correspondence with him on the allocation of topics 'j but each of us took our own line in regard to the doctrines. Coincidence of view was the rule , the discrepancy seldom went beyond the mode of statement, the chief exception being the topic of Belief. The work contains perhaps the best summary of his psychological opinions, although the Hamilton shows them in the more stirring shape of polemics. Before this work came out, his Parliamentary career was at an end. The circumstances that led to his defeat in the election of 1868 are detailed by himself. They included the singular indiscretion of his allowing his subscription to Mr. Bradlaugh to be made public before his own election day ; very unlike his usual circumspectness. ' His apology is somewhat lame ; and does not take account of the fact that he was contesting the seat in the interest of other people and at their expense. So ener- getically did the opposition ply the weapon thus put into their hands, that they may have owed their success to it alone. Although on public grounds he regretted being no longer in Parliament, he was not sorry to resume his quiet and his leisure for other work. The pamphlet entitled England ami Ireland^ brought out in 9 130 ON THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN, 1849-1872. the beginning of 1868, declared, as he says, his whole mind on the subject of Ireland — chiefly as regarded the Land — and is couched in very strong language indeed. He believed that this pamphlet helped to determine Mr. Gladstone to commence his Irish Legislation with the Church, leaving the Land to a later operation. The year 1869, his first year of release, saw the publication of his last book — The Subjection of Women, together with the two first articles in his fourth volume of Dissertations — " Endowments," and " Labour and its claims," a review of Mr. Thornton's work on that subject. The volume on the Subjection of Women, he tells us, was first written in 1861. It was, he says, a joint production ; portions were written by Miss Taylor, while his share was the result of innumerable conversations and discussions with his wife. How- ever the merits be partitioned, it is a book of very marked character. It is the most sustained exposition of Mill's life-long theme — the abuses of power. The extent of the illustration and the emphasis of the language render it the best extant homily on the evils of subjection in general ; while the same arts are maintained in dealing with the application to the dis- abilities of women. This case, which of all others most engaged his feelings, is, I think, the one instance where he may be charged with overstraining. In discussing political freedom at large, he is always sufficiently alive to the necessities of govern- ment \ in the present question, he leads us to suppose that the relations of men and women between themselves may work upon a purely voluntary principle. He abstains here and else- where from advocating divorce pure and simple, because of the complications attending the question : while he does not show what is the remedy when a man and a woman, united'^by the marriage bond, are unable to co-operate as equal partners. His handling of the mental equality of the sexes is, to my ASSERTS EQUALITY TOO STRONGLY. 131 mind, open to exception. In the intensity of his special plead- ing on this question, he hardly avoids contradicting himself ; while he postulates a degree of equality that does not chime in with the experience of the least biassed observers. He grants that women are physically inferior, but seems lo think that this does not affect their mental powers. He never takes account of the fact, that the large diversion of force for the procreative function must give some general inferiority in all things where that does not come in, unless women are made on the whole much stronger than men. In an allusion to his experience of the Independent States of India, he tells us that in three cases out of four, if a superior instance of good government occurs, it is in a woman's reign j which looks like the fallacy of proving too much. Without entering into an argument with him on his equality view, I expressed my doubts as to the expediency of putting this more strongly than people generally would be willing to accept ; inasmuch as the equality of rights did not presuppose absolute equality of faculties. He replied with much warmth, contending that the day of a temporizing policy was past ; that it was necessary to show, not simply that the removal of restrictions would leave things as they are, but that many women are really capable of taking advantage of the higher openings. And further, he urged, it was necessary to stimu- late the aspirations of women themselves, so as to obtain proofs from experience as to what they could do. In Sir James Stephen's work, the question of the Subjection of Women undergoes a very full handling ; and the conclusions reached are of course entirely different from Mill's. This is his remark in introducing the subject : — " I might give in proof or illustration of this the whole of his essay on the Subjection of^ Women, a work from which I dissent from the first sentence to the last, but which I will consider on the present occasion only with reference to the particular topic of equality, and as the strongest distinct illus- 132 CO-OPERATES WITH THE WORKING-MEN. 1849-1872. tration known to me of what is perhaps one of the strongest, and what appears to me to be by far the most ignoble and mischievous of all the popular feelings of the age." Sir James's concessions, however, are important : — " I freely admit that in many particulars the stronger party has in this, as in other cases, abused his strength, and made rules for his supposed advantage, which in fact are greatly to the injury of both parties. It is needless to say anything in detail of the stupid coarseness of the laws about the effects of marriage on property, laws which might easily be replaced by a general statutory ' marriage settlement analogous to those which every prudent person makes who has anything to settle. As to acts of violence against women, by all means make the law on this head as severe as it can be made without defeating itself. As to throwing open to women the one or two em- ployments from which they are at present excluded, it is rather a matter of sentiment than of practical importance." A considerable portion of his labours during the last three years of his life was given to the Land Question, which he gready helped to mature for future settlement. Under this movement he renewed his former fight for peasant properties, and started the new heresy of the unearned increment. It was his pride to co-operate in all these questions with the working classes and their leaders, and, had he lived, he would have been of unspeakable value as a mediator in the impending struggles between labour and capital, and between the working population generally and the heads of poHtical parties. He would not, how- ever, I think, ever have been a working-men's champion on their own lines. He would not have held out any tempting bribe of immediate amelioration such as to inspire the highest efforts of the existing generation. His most sanguine hopes were of a very slow progress in all things ; with the sole exception, perhaps, of the equality-of-women question, on which his feelings went farther than on any other. GROTES FUNERAL. 133 Grote died in June, 1871. Mill disliked his being buried in the Abbey, but of course attended the funeral. He resisted the proposal that he should be one of the pall-bearers, and gave way only under great pressure. As he and I walked out together, his remark was — " In no very long time, I shall be laid in the ground with a very different ceremonial from that".* He seemed to be now conscious of a break-up in his physical system. He had in the course of the next two years several prostrating attacks, but with marvellous recoveries. His last illness, as is well known, was due to a local endemic disease. Three days before his death, he had walked fifteen miles on a botanical excursion. There was evidently still a reserve of power in his constitution, which might have tided him over several more years of useful work, but could not carry him through a malignant infection. The posthumous Essa^s_on^eligion do not correspond with what we should have expected from him on that subject. Never, so far as I know, did he give any hint of wishing or attempting to re-construct a system of theism on a scientific basis. In one sentence in the Hamilton he spoke approvingly of the argument from Design, but laid more stress on its persuasiveness than on its soundness. The Autobiography represented his attitude towards Religion as pure negation, or nescience, just as his father's had been. The Essay on Nature paints the world black enough, and , from that he was not likely to rise to a flattering estimate of Nature's God. I think he should have widened his survey considerably, before pronouncing as he does. For, although there are good grounds for many of his statements of fact, the case is by no means complete^ By his own showing in other places, many happy lives have been passed in the world as we • It so happened, however, that a prayer was delivered at his own interment, by the protestant pastor at Avignon, who thereby got himself into trouble, from Mill's known scepticism, and had to write an exculpation in the local news- paper. Mill had made a friend of this pastor, a very intelligent and liberal- minded man. 134 ESSAYS ON RELIGION. 1849-1872. find it, and he looked forward to a time when happiness might be the rule instead of the exception. I should have expected him to push the analysis of the causes of evil a step farther ; namely, first, to the inadequacy of man's intellectual force to coge with the obscurities of nature, and next to the want of ability to counteract known causes of mischief. A remark that he once made regarding his own temperament, is a part of the case in considering nature : he said, in answer to some gloomy utterance of Grote's, that with himself the difficulty was not^o much to realize pleasure as to keep off pain ; and it is the fact that there are many pleasurable resources in the world, if we could only submerge the attendant miseries. His exposure of the insufficiency of Nature as a gm'de is pure logic, and in that he was not likely to be wanting. The so-called Light of Nature is mere darkness ; while we are often notoriously incapable of following the light we have. We are only just beginning to track the secrets of disease ; including the forms of pestilence that from time to time commit wholesale ravages alike upon man and beast. The Essay on the U'^zk'fy of Reli^on is a farther illustration of his old theme (in the Utilitarianism) as to the sufficiency of the sanctions and motives of the present life for sustaining, not only the inferior moral virtues, but also the elevated sentiments of mankind. He here puts forward a sort of Religion of Humanity, constructed on the basis of men's amiable feelings towards one another. To this he had been led, I have no doubt^ in the first instance, by Comte, although the filling-up is his own. But by far the most laboured of the Essays is the last — uniting a destructive and a constructive Theism. The de- structive part is in accordance with all his antecedents ; it is the constructive part that we were not prepared for. It was indeed quite compatible with his warm human sympathies, and with his long-standing doctrine that every creed is likely to contain some portion of truth, that he should try to ascertain CONSTRUCTIVE THEISM. I35 what there was in religion to commend it to the best minds among its adherents: our doubt would have been whether, after painting the world in such gloomy hues, he could set up a Deity that would replace, in the hearts of men, the one that he under- took to destroy. Religion, we know, is exceedingly variable; but there are some things in it not easy to dispense with. Until the advent of the modern sentimental Theism, it has usually contained the idea of authority and subjection — the prescription of duties with rewards and punishments attached to them. Men's deities in all early ages had to be propitiated as powers capable of evil at least, if not also of good. In pure Monotheism, the^ unbounded beneficence of the Deity has been an indispensable attribute, in spite of the difficulties attending it. Plato insisted that this belief should be supported by state penalties ; and we know how essential it is regarded in the pre- sent day by those of the Theists that do not accept revelation. All these points of support Mill dispensed with ; while working upon the idea, so repugnant to the religious worshipper, of putting a logical limitation and restriction on the great object of worship. A Being that would not interfere to do us either harm or good can scarcely excite in us any strong regards ; at least until we have undergone a new education. The supposed limitations of his power, besides being strangely at variance with the undeniable vastness and complex adjustment of the world, would seem fatal to his ascendency in our minds. The speculation is equally precarious as regards a future life. Mill hardly does justice to the natural difficulties of reproducing human existence, after death, for an eternal duration ; and yet casts doubts on the omnipotence of the Power that is to perform the miracle. Seeing that the only argument for Theism that Mill put any value upon, was the argument from^ Design, it is unfortunate that he should have considered nine pages sufficient for its discussion. The handling is not only short, but extremely 136 INFLUENCE OF THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 1849-1872. ■ unsatisfactory. It is what we might suppose to be the first of the three redactions that all his writings went through ; a mere rough note, to be worked up in one or two subsequent elabora- tions. His attempt to show that the argument rises above Analogy into the sphere of Induction is not, as I conceive, a logical success ; at least, it stands in need of a much more detailed justification. He ought manifestly to have disposed of the objections advanced by Hume and Kant respectively : in so doing, he would have made his own position clearer, if not stronger. He very properly introduces into the case the canons of Induction, strictly so called, and the conditions (first distinctly stated by himself) of proof from Analogy ; he ought farther to have brought into play his doctrine of what consti- tutes a logical Hypothesis, and have shown the bearings of this upon the supposed Anthropomorphic origin of the Universe. Both his Theism and his estimate of Christianity as founded on the character of Christ, are concessions to the existing Theology ; and, as is usual in such cases, the inch has been stretched to an ell. As regards the beneficial influence that may continue to be exerted by our contemplation of Jesus Christ, I quote a few sentences as the groundwork of some remarks. " Above all, the most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced by holding up in a Divine Person a standard of excellence and a model for imita- tion, is available even to the absolute unbeliever and can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ, rather than God, whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of Nature, who being idealised has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modem mind. And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left ; a unique figure, not more unlike all bis precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that DISTINCTIVENESS OF CHRIST'S INDIVIDUALITY, 1 37 Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not historical and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels ? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee ; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of .a totally different sort." " But about the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight, which, if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where something very different ' was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of themen of sublime genius of whom our species '^can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and imartyr to that mission, who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the 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 endeavour ' so to live that Christ would approve our life. When to this we add that, to the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he supposed himself to be — not God, for he never made the smallest pretension to that character and would probably have thought such a pretension as blasphemous as it seemed to the men who condemned him — but a man charged with a special, express, and unique com- mission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue; we may well conclude that the influences of religion on the charac- ter which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion, are well worth preserving, and 138 CHRIST AS A HUMAN PERSON, 1849-1874. that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief, is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction." It seems, at first glance, a bold proceeding to take to pieces the Christ of Christianity, and to appropriate just so much of him as suits a " rational criticism ". Something of this kind has already been tried by the Unitarians, but with small success, if that is to be measured by the extent of popular reception. It would seem, in this as in other parts of religion, that what the rationalist disapproves of most, the multitude like best. We are, of course, at liberty to dissent from the prevailing view, which makes Christ a divine person. But to reduce a Deity to the human level, to rank him simply as a great man, and to hold ideal intercourse with him in that capacity, is, to say the least of it, an incongruity. Historians and moralists have been accustomed to treat with condemnation those monarchs that, after being dethroned, have accepted in full the position of subjects. Either to die, or else to withdraw into dignified isolation,, has been accounted the only fitting termina- tion to the loss of royal power. So, a Deity dethroned should retire altogether from playing a part in human affairs, and remain simply as an historic name. The point of congruity or propriety is not, as I conceive, the worst objection to Mill's proposal. The doctrines, prescriptions, or sayings of one believed to be a God, must all have a religious bearing ; they are properly adapted to men in their religious ca,pacity. They may often refer to matters of mere worldly conduct, but the religious side is still a vital part of them. If religion were done away with, to the extent that Mill would have it, those sayings of Christ must lose their suitability to human life as so transformed. " Forgive that ye may be forgiven (by God) " — is no longer applicable. The best guidance, under. such altered circumstances, would be that furnished by the wisest of purely secular teachers. The same applies to Christ as an example. He is so to those that accept him in his own INADEQUACY OF THE RELIGIOUS DISCUSSIONS. 1 39 proper character, and who view the world as he viewed it. In a purely secular scheme of life, the ideal that he holds forth must seem greatly over-strained. Mill was, doubtless, able to state and to give reasons for his own view of the plan of the universe. He was also highly qualified to discuss particular portions of the groundwork of the prevailing creeds. I think, however, that he was too little versed in the writings of Theologians, to attack their doctrines with any effect He absented himself during his whole life, except as a mere child, from religious services. He scarcely ever read a Theological book. He could not help knowing the main positions of Theology from our general literature. That, however, was scarcely enough for basing an attack upon Christianity along the whole line. Just about the time when the Essays on Religion appeared, Strauss's last book, called " The Old Faith and the New," was published in this country. Anyone reading it would, I think, be struck with its immense superiority to Mill's work, in all but the logic and metaphysics. Strauss speaks like a man thoroughly at home with his subject. He knows both sides as a life-study can enable one to know them. Mill, even supposing him to be in the right, would not be convincing. He may puzzle opponents, he may compel them to change front ; still, he does not meet their difficulties, nor take account of what they feel to be their strength. He is not even well read in the sceptics that pre- ceded him. If he had studied the whole cycle of Hume's argumentative treatises, so lucidly condensed by Mr. Leslie Stephen, he might have put his case on the negative side much better, while he would have been led to modify his constructive Theism. It has been said by his opponents, with some show of .plausibility, that Mill was at bottom a religious man. Setting aside special dogmas, and looking only to the cheering influence of religion on its most favourable side — an influence that may be exerted in a variety of ways — we may call his aspirations and I40 A NEGATIVIST AT BOTTOM. 1849-1872. hopes for a bright future to the race, a reHgion of humanity. To hold up an ideal that involves no contradictions to our knowledge, to inspire and elate the mind, oppressed by the dulness and the hardships of the present life, — will be accepted by many as comfort of the spiritual kind, the real analogue of religion. And something of this effect is undoubtedly produced by Mill's later writings. With all this, however, the fact remains, that in everything characteristic of the creed of Christendom, he was a thorough-going negationist. He ad- mitted, neither its truth nor its utility. His estimate of its best side is given in the remark to a friend under domestic sorrow — " To my mind the only permanent 7'alue of religion is in lightening the feeling of total separation which is so dreadful in a real grief" Chapter V. CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE. ON Mill's general character, little remains for me to say. His writings, his career, his numerous critics, and last, but not least, his Autobiography^ have sufficiently shown what manner of man he was. Any additional contribution is jus- tifiable mainly on the supposition of enabling us better to seize the central features, and to make the whole more consistent throughout. There are, moreover, some anomalous passages in his life, upon which the last word has not yet been said. Mill had, I believe, a very fine constitution physically. His father's brain was encased in an admirable framework. His muscle was good to the last ; and his nutritive powers failed only in consequence of a strain that they should never have been subjected to. The nervous system was habitually kept at a high tension all through ; this cannot be done for nothing. The general cast of his mental powers was high in all the regions of mind. With a predominance of Intellect, he had great power of Will, and unusual depth of Feeling. He had pre- eminently the sanguine temperament. Whenever the general system was in working order, enjoyment was with him the natural result. He was, I think, born for a happy life, if he had got only tolerably fair play. It was not the fault of nature that he was so often in the depths : his power of recovery attests the vital force of the system. There can be little hesitation as to the specialities of his Intellect. These were soon brought out by his early education, so far as books could do it. Every, species of literature was 142 MEMORY FOR LANGUAGE AND DETAIL. 1849-1872. presented to his mind ; and, while he imbibed something of all, it soon became evident that science was his forte. He had an intellect for the abstract and the logical, out of all proportion to his hold of the concrete, and the poetical. His attempts at writing poetry could be little more than memory working upon the books that he had read, while their impression was fresh. He never attained to picturesqueness in the smallest degree ; he could no doubt have succeeded by set purpose, but he had other matters to attend to. He was but moderately endowed with the faculty of language as such ; the undoubted excellence of his mature style was arrived at by a series of efforts that may well be celebrated among triumphs of perseverance. I think it perhaps a fortunate adjustment, to have possessed merely enough verbal power to give adequate expression to his thoughts, and not enough to make an artist to the extent occasionally realized even with great philosophers. That the thinking faculty, pure and simple, should have the predomi- nating share of his intellectual force, was the condition of his peculiar subtlety as a thinker. Plato, Bacon, Berkeley, Hume, Ferrier, and others, paid for the goodness of their style, by some inferiority of their thoughts. Aristotle and Kant were perhaps at the other extreme ; their gifts of style were unequal to the adequate presentation of their ideas. Mill had not much memory for detail of any kind. He had read a vast quantity of history, of fiction, of travels and inci- dents ; but you would not be aware of the fact from his conver- sation or from his writings. Neither in the illustration of doctrines, nor for figurative allusions, was he ready at repro- ducing facts in the concrete. He was, as a youth, well read in the Greek and Roman classics, but he scarcely ever made a happy original quotation. By express study, and frequent reference, he had amassed a store of facts bearing on political or sociological doctrines ; and these he had at full command. The enormous devotion of his early years to book study interfered with his activity as an observer of facts at first hand, STORAGE OF PRINCIPLES. 143 whether in the physical, or in the mental world. He did, nevertheless, show a considerable wakefulness to what went on within his circle, yet with decided limitations. He could have imbibed physical facts with avidity, if his circumstances had been favourable ; but his opportunities were very few. He was perhaps all the more disposed to notice mental and social facts; and it is wonderful how many of these he took hold of, in the remissions of book study. Of course, the larger mass of sociological details had to be gathered through books ; yet a certain quantity of personal observation was needed as a basis for comprehending those that came by the other sources. His power of psychological observation was also good, and served him both as a theoretical psychologist, and as a practical philo- sopher, more especially .in ethics, and in politics. We come finally to the great distinguishing feature of such a mind as his: the rich storage of principles, doctrines, generalities of every degree, over several wide departments of knowledge. Principles had to be imbibed in copious draughts all through his education ; the collision, combination, harmonizing, of these constitutes speculative insight, and conducts to original thinking. To read the productions of scientific men, to enter into the discussion of abstract themes with kindred minds, to excogitate and to reduce to writing new attempts at generalising from the facts, — such are the exercises of the discursive or scientific mind ; and the natural avidity for those exercises is the test of the scientific endowment. Mill laid up in his capacious mind a variety of things ; but, with all his getting, he got this special understanding — the understanding of prin- ciples. If you wanted, at any time, to commend yourself to his favourable regards, you had but to start a doctrinal dis- cussion — to bring a new logos to his view. With what success he plied his speculative faculty, what were the lines of his peculiar force, how far he rose above or fell below other speculators, — his books alone will testify ; and all of them have been freely and almost exhaustively criticized for 144 READINESS TO LEARN AND TO UNLEARN. 1849-1872. those very questions. He is generally admitted to combine originality and clearness as only very few men have done. The attempts to undervalue his reputation on either head have met with little countenance. Tried by an absolute stan- dard, he may be found defective at points ; but who is entitled to cast the first stone? What other speculator from the beginning of philosophy has been equally original, and yet more uniformly precise, logical, and intelligible ? He could split hairs with any scholastic. He could discern flaws in the closest dialectic ;. or turn the flank of the most circumspect disputant. Unless I am greatly deceived, time will not impair the fascination of that subtle intellect. The number of men that can handle such weapons can never be so great as to render his writings a superfluity ; and, even when his doctrines shall have been more highly worked up, by other thinkers, his manner of putting them will be. looked back upon with curious interest He himself speaks with not unbecoming pride of his being always open to new views. To the last, he continued (he says) ■ to learn and to unlearn. Of no man can this be stated absolutely. Yet Mill stood very high on the point of receptive- ness. He did not shut up his mind to new impressions at forty. This, however, was merely another form of his anxiety to know whatever could be said by any one upon any question. Wishing always to do his very best, he neglected no available means. Before beginning to produce, he took ample time to absorb ; and, better than most men, hit the happy mean between haste and procrastination. He might have occasionally improved his work by a little more elaboration, but the loss in- quantity would not have been compensated by the difference in quality. He tells us, in connexion with his readings at Grote's house, that he " dated from these conversations my own real inaugura- tion as an original and independent thinker. It was also through them that I acquired, or very much strengthened, a NOT CONTENT WITH HALF-SOLUTIONS. 145 mental habit to which I attribute all that I have ever done, or ever shall do, in speculation ; that of never accepting half- solutions of difficulties as complete; never abandoning a puzzle, but again and again returning to it until it was cleared up \ never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remain unexplored, because they did not appear important; never thinking that I perfectly understood any part of a subject until I understood the whole"- This proceeds upon a large assumption, namely, that he always knew when he had at- tained to a complete solution ; which, by the very nature of things, a man can seldom be quite sure of I consider that he made one great stroke in his theory of the Syllogism ; that it was more than a half solution, but yet was not the whole. So, in other things. We are rarely in a posi- tion to say that we have finished a problem; a succession of thinkers is required for every great advance ; and whoever feels he can make one step need not wait till he can make all the rest. The only reason for hesitation is the uncertainty whether it is a step. Another somewhat remarkable avowal in Mill's estimate of himself is contained in the long passage (Autobiography, p. 242), where he describes the influence of his wife upon his intellectual productiveness. " During the greater part of my literary life I have performed the office in relation to her, which from a rather early period I had considered as the most useful part that I was qualified to take in the domain of thought, that of an interpreter of original thinkers, and mediator between them and the public ; for I had always a humble opinion of .my own powers as an original thinker, except in abstract science (logic, metaphysics, and the theoretic principles of political economy and politics), but thought myself much superior to most of my contemporaries in willingness and ability to learn from everybody ; as I found hardly any one who made such a point of examining what was said in defence of all opinions, however new or however old, in the conviction xo 146 PRETENSIONS TO ORIGINALITY. 1849-1872. that even if they were errors there might be a substratum of truth underneath them, and that in any case the discovery pf what it was that made them plausible, would be a benefit to truth.'' The parenthesis is truly remarkable. A man is to think humbly of himself as an original thinker, provided his originality does not extend beyond Logic, Metaphysics, and Social Philosophy ! How many more subjects would have been necessary to estabUsh the claim ? One would naturally suppose the point to be, how much did he , do in these three domains ? If he did everything that many of us are willing to give him credit for, he was an original thinker, and had few superiors, and not many equals. Willingness to learn is a very good thing, and was a part of his merits and a condition of his success ; but it is not under all circumstances necessary to original thinking, and certainly would not of itself constitute originality. Unless there be decided innate force, an over- sukceptibility to other people's views rather extinguishes than promotes invention. Had Mill been less disposed to learn and unlearn, he must, with his powers of mind, have been still an original thinker, although in a somewhat different way. He himself contributes a curious and interesting illustration of this ' very point. To my mind, the best piece of work that he ever did, was the Third Book of the Logic — Induction. Now, he tells us how fortunate he was in having finished this Book before reading Comte. That is to say, unassisted invention gave a better result than he would have attained by taking Comte into partnership from the beginning. I must still farther qualify Mill's claim to receptiveness, by adverting again to what I consider his greatest theoretical errors as a scientific thinker. The first is — his doctri ne of the nat m'al equality of nig n. On this subject he was, in my opinion, blind to a whole region of facts. He inherited the mistake from his father, and could neither learn nor unlearn, in regard to it. The other error was perhaps less to be won- dered at ; I mean the disregard of the physical conditions of DOCTRINAL ERRORS. T47 our mental life. He might have educated himself out of this error, but he never did. I do not mean to say that he made no allowances for the physical element of our being ; my con- tention is, that he did not allow what every competent physio- logist would now affirm to be the facts. I am afraid that, on both these errors, his feelings operated in giving his mind a bias. Whatever be the explanation, the effect was practically injurious. In common with his father, Sir Walter Scott, and many others, he held that literature and philosophy should not be resorted to as a means of livelihood ; that people should derive their subsistence from some of the common vocations, and work at the higher themes in leisure hours. In a transition time, when a man of very original views in philosophy, or in sociology, has little chance of being listened to, it would be a mistake to depend for one's livelihood on writing books. The same objection does not apply to literature. Any man whose genius lies in style can make a living with comparative ease ; such a man would not better his condition by serving eight hours a-day in a counting house, and using the few remaining hours for literary work. Much of course depends on the occupation. Mill himself was nominally engaged six hours a-day ; but probably never gave more than the half of that time to his office routine. His two great works — the Logic and the Political Economy — were, I may say, written during his office hours. If he had been serving under a private master, he would not have been allowed to give up his business-time to extraneous work. Grote took a much better measure of the situation of a business man with erudite tastes. He found that while engaged in the work of the banking-house, he could not only pursue an extensive course of reading, but also work up essays on limited subjects ; yet when he began the Herculean labour of remodelling the entire History of Greece^ he needed to have his whole time at his disposal, for twelve years. 14S OFFICIAL DUTIES A DRAWBACK. 1849-1872. It was remarked by De Morgan, that if Newton had remained at Cambridge, Mathematical Science might have been advanced a century. So, if the two Mills had been wholly exempted from official work, I have little doubt that all the speculative portions of Logic, Psychology, Politics, and Political Economy would have been put forward at least a generation. It so happened that their official duties opened up for them a sphere of public usefulness, and perhaps made them more practical in their views ; but, if they had been freed from all such labours, which perhaps others could have performed with the benefit of their lights, they would have given an impetus to speculation much beyond what we can now assign to them. By endeavour- ing to combine work for a livelihood with original research in philosophy, they brought upon themselves premature exhaustion, and vitiated their theories of life by shaping them under the perverting influence of shattered frames. It is now time to turn to the Moral side of MilFs character. In what has been said on his intellect, moral and emotional elements have been assumed. The general impression made on the world by this part of his character has been highly favourable, on the whole. The generosity of his disposition manifested itself in many forms, and in high degrees ; while it also had its limitations. The entire total of the emotional aspect of human character . comprehends the whole circle of sensibilities, tastes, likings, and the way that those are modified by sympathy and the sense of duty. These are the motives to action, and their relative strength and preponderance can be best judged by action or conduct. Nevertheless, we must, as I conceive, take account; ' of Activity as a separate and independent factor, and form some estimate of it on its account. I said, with reference to James\ Mill, that Intellect and Will were dominant over Feeling. Perhaps, of the son, we may say that there was a more nearly equal balance of all the three functions. The element of Will, SOURCES OF HIS ACTIVITY. 149 viewed apart from strength of motives — the pure spontaneous activity — was high in him too ; without that he could not have been such a persistent worker. At the same time, I am dis- posed to believe that his superabundant energy and activity had its largest source in the strength of his feelings. I once made the remark to him, regarding the sources of energy of character, that these were either natural fulness of vigour, or else excite- ment through stimulation. He said, quickly — " There ; stimu- lation is what people never sufficiently allow for ". It is usually easy enough to determine which of the two sources is operative in any marked case. The extreme dependence on stimulation is shown by the tendency to total quiescence when motives are wanting. Mill no doubt had a good, but not excessive, spon- taneity ; and he had very large emotional susceptibilities that made him pre-eminently a worker. We are now to see what these were. I am not singular in the opinion that in the so-called sensual feelings, he was below average ; that, in fact, he was not a good representative specimen of humanity in respect of these ; and scarcely did justice to them in his theories. He was not an ascetic in any sense ; he desired that every genuine suscepti- bility to pleasure should be turned to account, so far as it did not interfere with better pleasures ; but he made light of the difficulty of controlling the sexual appetite. He was exceed- ingly temperate as regarded the table ; there was nothing of the gourmand superadded to his healthy appetite. To have seen his simple breakfast at the India House, and to couple with that his entire abstinence from eating or drinking till his plain dinner at six o'clock, — would be decisive of his moderation in the pleasures of the palate. Of his pleasures through the ear and the eye, not much can be said, until we take into account all the associated circumstances that render these two senses the avenues of the greater part of our chief gratifications. He had a musical ear, and gave some 150 ■ SUSCEPTIBILITY TO EMOTION. 1849-1872. attention to music in his early life. His ear for articulate cadence, elocution, and oratory, was in no wise distinguished. His colour-sense was not inconsiderable ; I have heard him say that, as a child, he had a very great pleasure in bright colours. I doubt, however, whether this susceptibiUty in him could really be called high ; it did not reach the point of the artist or picturesque poet; if it had, his facult/ for the abstract might have been submerged thereby. It was enough to make a perceptible element in his taste for scenery ; but, generally, he seemed to care very little for coloured effects. We need to dive into the depths of our emotional nature, to reach the main sources of his pleasures and the springs of his conduct. The Tender Feeling must in him have been very considerable. He was, throughout, affectionate, genial, kindly. After his first great physical crisis, when his activity and ambition no longer sufificed for his support/ he had recourse to his tender susceptibilities, which had previously perhaps been cramped and confined, although not wholly dormant. He had not the sociable feeling in the form of large indiscriminate outpourings, and boundless capability of fellowship. A certain kindliness towards people in general, with a deep attachment to a few, was his peculiar mode ; this, probably, took much less out of him — drew less upon his mental resources as a whole, than the other form of sociability. He formed few close friend- ships, and was absorbed very early by his one great attachment The Tender feeling is necessarily an element in poetry, scenery, history, and indeed Fine Art generally. It is the beginning, but not the consummation, of our interest in man- kind — the philanthropic impulse of great benefactors. Kind- ness to animals was a characteristic form in Mill, as it was in Bentham, who also had a great fund of natural tenderness, although wayward in manifesting it. There is great difficulty in arriving at the precise degree of the fundamental or elementary emotions in almost any mind, still more in Mill, who, by training or culture, was a highly TASTES AND DIVERSIONS. 151 complex product. The remark is applicable to the Tender feeling, viewed in its ultimate form ; and even more to the other great source of human emotion — the Malevolent or Irascible feeling. Unless conspicuously present, or conspicuously absent, the amount of the feeling in the elementary shape can with difficulty be estimated in a character notable for growth, and for complication of impulses. In Mill, all the coarse, crude forms of angry passion were entirely wanting. He never got into a rage. His pleasures of malevolence, so far as existing, were of a very refined nature. Only in the punishment of offenders against his fellow-men, did he indulge revengeful sentiment. He could, on occasions, be very severe in his judgments and denunciations ; but vulgar calumny, abuse, hatred for the mere sake of hatred, were completely crucified in him. He spent a large part of his life in polemics ; and his treatment of oppo- nents was a model of the ethics of controversy. The delight in victory was with him a genial, hearty chuckle, and no- more. Taking emotional and sensuous elements together, we may recount his chief tastes and diversions, irrespective of sympathy proper, which adds a new and all-important fact of character. The love of scenery, in connexion with touring excursions, was stimulated from an early date, and indulged in to the last. Whether he had a refined judgment of scenic effects, from an artist's point of view, I am unable to say. He did not become poetically inspired by nature, like Shelley or Wordsworth ; perhaps he enjoyed it none the less. He made little use of his varied travels by allusions, or figures in his composition. His enjoyment of the concrete did not render his style much less abstract than it would have been although, like Kant, he had never left home. His taste for plant-collecting began in France, under George Bentham, and was continued through life. It served him in those limited excursions, in the neighbourhood of London, that ^le habitually kept up for the needs of recreation. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me, that this taste belongs to a 152 botany: love of scenery. 1849-1872. character joyous by nature, and therefore easily amused ; or perhaps nothing more stimulating is to be had. It no doubt adds an interest to pedestrian exercise. The mental effort is very small ; the scientific outcome still smaller. Of Botany as a science, Mill knew very little ; indeed, when he began, there was not much to be known, beyond the description of plants in detail, and the classifications of Linnaeus and Jussieu. Plant- hunting was to him what sports are to other persons. I doubt whether, under any circumstances, he could have brought himself to be a sportsman. Hunting and shooting would, I am pretty certain, have been abhorrent to him ; and, while his excur- sions often brought him into opportunities for fishing, he never availed himself of these. The chase for plants was all that he desired. In my chapter, in T/ie Emotmis and the Will^ on Plot-Interest, I endeavoured to describe the situation of pursuit in the sports of the field. When Mill revised the MS. of the work, before publication, he added the note, which is given in connexion with the passage — " All this eminently applies to the botanist ". Reverting to his interest in natural scenery, we may recall his great anxiety lest the enclosure of Commons should go the length of effacing natural beauties and diminishing the scope of the picturesque tourist. This was one of the " five points " of his charter in reforming the Land Laws. He was also very much concerned (and so was his father) at the possible havoc that the railways might make in the beauties of our rural districts. Thus, writing in 183(5, on the measures of Reform then pending, he adverts to the progress of the railways, and observes — " it is far from desirable that this island, the most beautiful portion perhaps of the earth's surface for its size, should be levelled and torn up in a hundred unnecessary directions by these deformities ". And again : — " In the choice of a line it is disgraceful that not one thought should be bestowed upon the character of the natural scenery which is threatened with destruction. It is highly desirable that there FEAR OF RAILWAYS DEFACING THE COUNTRY. 1 53 should be a railway to Brighton ; scarcely any one which could be constructed would be convenient to such a multitude of persons, or is likely to be so profitable to the subscribers. But of the five rival lines which have been proposed, two, if not three, and particularly Stephenson's, would, to a great degree, annihilate the peculiar beauty of a spot unrivalled in the world for the exquisiteness, combined with the accessibility, of its natural scenery : the vale of Norbury, at the foot of Box Hill. Yet into the head of hardly one Member of Parliament does it appear to have come, that this consideration ought to weigh one feather, even on the question of preference among a variety of lines, in other respects probably about equal in their advan- tages. Yet these men have voted ^ii,ooo of the people's money for two Correggios, and many thousands more for a building to put them in, and will hold forth by the hour about encouraging the fine arts, and refining the minds of the people by the pleasures of imagination. We see, by this contrast, what amount of real taste, real wish to cultivate in the people the capacity of enjoying beauty, or real capacity for enjoying it themselves, is concerned in this profuse expenditure of public money ; although two-thirds of these men would shout in chorus against ^ political economists ' and * utilitarians ' for having no imagination, and despising that faculty in others. The truth is, that in this country the sense of beauty, as a national characteristic, scarcely exists. What is mistaken for it is the taste for costliness, and for whatever has a costly appearance." The passage is a long one; but it -illustrates Mill in other points besides his love of scenery. I cannot help thinking that his sweeping condemnation of Members of Parliament generally is a little overdone. One other anecdote is worth preserving. A number of years ago, Piccadilly was widened by taking a slice off the Green Park. A row of trees was included in the addition ; and, in all probability, these would have been cut down. Lord Lincoln 154 TASTE FOR POETRY, 1849-1872. was then chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests. Mill intervened at the right moment, and, I believe by the mediation of Charles Buller, induced Lord Lincoln to preserve the row- as they now remain at the street edge of the foot pavement. Setting aside for the moment the interests that grew out of his intellectual capabilities and work generally, we may remark upon his aesthetic sensibilities as a whole. His earliest favourite books were those relating to characters renowned for heroism and strength. I do not think that this persisted through life to a marked degree. He qualified his admiration of strength with the use made of it ; and thoroughly concurred in Grote's estimate of Alexander the Great. Caesarism was his abomina^ tion. Pericles, I should suppose, was his greatest hero or antiquity. Greece was the home of his affections in the ancient world. His poetic tastes, as they revealed themselves aftei Ms great crisis, are beyond my powers to analyze or explain. Soon after I knew him, he endeavoured to make me interested in Words- worth, and pointed out the poems that I should begin with ; but his efforts were for the time unsuccessful. He seemed to look upon Poetry as a Religion, or rather as Religion and Philosophy in one. He took strongly to Tennyson, and was able to discern at once those beauties that the general world have since agreed upon ; but his obtuseness to Shakespeare would suggest doubts as to his feeling for poetic effects of the kind that represent pure poetry, apart from either religion or philosophy. I never could make sure whether the highest genius of style attracted him, without pointing some moral, or lending itself to a truth ; yet, I found from one of his letters at a late period of his life, that he continued to read Carlyle with pleasure, after ceasing to care anything for his doctrinal views. His thorough mastery of the French language enabled him to enjoy the masterpieces of French prose. At an early stage, he read the French wits for improving his style ; and it has seemed to me a curious slip of memory that he never mentions, in the Autobiography , Paul SYMPATHETIC SIDE. 1 55 Louis Courier, whose witty turns he often quoted with gusto. He was charmed with George Sand, as a. matter of course ; and the rhetoric of Victor Hugo was not strong for him. Yet his doctrinal leanings came out even with the French romancists. I can remember going with him to Bailli^re's shop in Regent Street, after the publication of the Political Economy, to direct copies to be sent to Eugene Sue and George Sand ; his reason being, that their novels were impregnated with social theories ; and these he partly sympathised with, and partly desired to rectify. We cannot proceed farther without including the Sympathetic element in character, which should be viewed apart from mere emotion; it being so easily confounded with tender feeling. There is in every one a certain strength of the sympathetic disposition, and a certain limited number of channels wherein it flows. What actually comes to the surface is a result of the conflict between the natural force of sympathy (a hypothetical quantity) and the purely egotistic impulses. Now there is no doubt that Mill had a highly sympathetic nature, but it had very decided limits. It must have operated at once as a restraint on the growth of egotism, a quality very little pro- nounced in his character. Placed early in life in an occupation which soon gave him comparative opulence, he was rendered content as far as regarded means, and thus removed from the struggle for subsistence. He had made up his mind that his writings would not bring him money, and for a time not even fame ; so that he was more than satisfied with his success as an author. He was absolutely without any feeling of rivalry, or jealousy of other men's success. His originality and fecundity of ideas would not have exempted him so completely from the dread of being anticipated in his discoveries, or baulked of his credit, had he not possessed a fund of generosity of character, for which sympathy is another name. He poured himself out in conversation, and his ideas were caught up and used, with 156 FORMS OF GENEROSITY. 1849-1872. or without acknowledgment ; but he never disturbed himself one way or other. Of this part of his character, I can speak absolutely, and not by a figure of speech, under which we may turn a part into a whole. In other virtues, he had his limits, but in this he had none. What was the extent of his generosity in money gifts and assistance, I cannot tell. It may have been considerable, but would never have been known from himself; the Comte correspondence tells us what he was prepared to do for Comte, at the worst conceivable moment for his own circumstances. But cases are known where he came to the relief of authors in their difficulties with publishers. I have heard him say generally that he considered it a very good way of helping a young author, to offer to bear the risk of the publisher's loss, in the first instance. Mr. Herbert Spencer mentions an offer of this kind made to him, at a time when he was on the eve of suspending the publication in numbers of his great serial work. He did something of the same kind for me, when Parker wished to delay publishing my volume — The Emotions and the Will, On condition of immediate publication, he offered a guarantee against loss, which had the effect without being called into play. Another point of conduct where his merits were absolute, had reference to fidelity in engagements, punctuality, and thorough reliableness, when he pledged his word. He never, to my knowledge, failed in any matter where people counted on him. I remember his having an important communication to make, by a given day, to the Women's Suffrage Committee, To obviate the possibility of miscarriage, he despatched a dupli- cate by a different channel. Continuing our criticism of the generous or altruistic side of Mill's nature, we may single out his treatment of opponents in his life-long controversial warfare. There are very few cases indeed, where he failed to put forward the whole strength of the arguments that he was contending against ; and his manner TREATMENT OF OPPONENTS IN CONTROVERSY. 157 with irritating controversialists is exactly stated in the preface to his Discussions, thus — " Only a small number of these papers are controversial, and in but two [the Sedgwick and Whewell articles ] am I aware of anything like asperity of tone. In both these cases some degree of it was justifiable, as I was defending maligned doc- trines or individuals, against unmerited onslaughts by persons who, on the evidence afforded by themselves, were in no respect entitled to sit in judgment on them : and the same misrepresentations have been and still are so incessantly reiterated by a crowd of writers, that emphatic protests against them are as needful now as when the papers in question were first written. My adversaries, too, were men not themselves remarkable for mild treatment of opponents, and quite capable of holding their own in any form of reviewing or pamphleteer- ing polemics. I believe that I have in no case fought with other than fair weapons, and any strong expressions which I have used were extorted from me by my subject, not prompted by the smallest feeling of personal ill-will towards my anta- gonists." We must emphatically claim for him the merit of being, throughout his whole life, a seeker for truth. To be found in error was no affront to his amour propre. He was not afraid to encounter an able opponent ; simply because to change an opinion, under the force of new facts or reasonings, was not only not repugnant, it was welcome. His opinions were in marked opposition to his worldly interests, as his father's had been. He did not publicly avow his dissent from the orthodoxy of the country \ but it was well enough known in a very wide private circle, and could be inferred from his published writings. He had long determined to throw off the mask entirely, when the time should be ripe for it. He intended, he said, to expend all the reputation he got by his books in upholding unpopular opinions; and was prevented from an earlier avowal of these, solely by the circumstance that the silent course of opinion was serving 158 COURAGE IN MAINTAINING HIS OPINIONS. 1849-1872. the interests of progress better than any violent shock, on his part would have done. Courage was a quality he was never deficient in ; the reason being that he was ready to incur the sacrifice that it necessarily involves. Perhaps, with one exception, the most signal example of his courage was the composition of the Essay on Theistn. It was a more extra- ordinary revelation of departure from opinions that he had been known to maintain, than had been his Bentham and Coleridge articles ; and, while it might be grateful to some of his friends and the opposite to others, it was certainly hard to reconcile with his former self. These aspects of his character properly connect themselves with the great central peculiarity of an ardent public spirit, contracted under his father's influence and fostered by his own * natural dispositions. He is admitted on all hands to have had a pure and genuine love of his kind. It was the key to his life-long exertions ; and had the very minimum of inter- ' mixture with purely personal ambition. He cordially sympa-> pathized with every form of improvement ; and did whatever lay in him to aid the contrivers of new and beneficial schemes. He was a strong supporter of Mr. Chadwick's Poor Law and ' Sanitary legislation. He was quite exultant when the Peel Government of 1841 acquiesced in the Penny Postage, which Peel had at first opposed. He gave a willing hand to any plausible projects of improvement. His taking up of Hare's- scheme of representation was a notable illustration of his readi- ness to embrace proposals that he had no hand in suggesting. If anything, he was perhaps too eager and hopeful, and prone to be led away by fair promises ; his natural temperament was confiding rather than sceptical \ when he had not knowledge enough to check what other people said, he was ready to take them at their word. It is, then, to his zeal for the welfare of mankind, that we must refer the direction of his pursuits and the intensity of his WORIC THE END OF HIS LIFE. I59 labours. He knew what his own capabilities were, and placed them freely at the service of his fellow-beings, according to his best lights. His tastes, pleasures, or likings, must now be reviewed, with the addition of the sympathetic or altruistic element. We must add, to the points already named, the active portion of his character — the delight in the exertion of his • faculties, and in the prospect of public good accruing therefrom. He had, to begin with, a pleasure, of quite unusual amount, in the putting forth of his speculative powers, both in conversation and in writing. Considering the high standard of excellence he had achieved, not simply in the invention, but also in the expression and elaboration, of his ideas, I am astonished at his avowals of sustained pleasure in writing. He used to say that the beginning of a work cost him a good deal of labour and pain ; but when he was fairly launched, his enjoyment of the task predominated over the toil. His severe early training perhaps contributed to this rare and enviable endowment. He, more than once, to my recollection, after two or three months' touring in. summer, retired to Avignon, to have a holiday of work ; namely, to write a book. Such was the egoistic side of his work, and was of course somewhat strongly expressed. To account fully for his many labours, we must also view the altruistic side. This was the fixed idea that he came into the world not to serve himself, but to serve his race ; and that idleness, except as the condition of renewed labour, was culpable and base. His favourite text was — The night cometh when no man can work. Here is an interesting remark in a letter to Thornton, in i860. Thornton had been to see Oxford, and Mill recalls his own visit twenty years before, and says — " In that same holiday I completed the first draft of my Logic, and had, for the first time, the feel- ing that I had now actually accomplished something — that one certain portion of my life's work was done "- I understand that, on the night of his death, when he was informed that he would not recover; he calmly said — " My work is done ". l6o SHORTCOMINGS OF SYMPATHIES. 1849-1872. Although his services to the public were spread over his life, in alternation with tracts of recreation and pure enjoyment, and although they were, to an unusual degree, pleasurable in the performance, yet I do not doubt that he could, if necessary, have given still greater proofs of his disinterestedness and zeal for humanity. He could have embraced a much more self- denying career ; like Howard, in Bentham's felicitous eulogy, he might have " lived an apostle, and died a martyr ". I must now endeavour to point out what were the more conspicuous shortcomings of the generous or sympathetic side of Mill's nature. Everyone's sympathies come to a stop somewhere ; and a character is not completely stated without assigning the limit. I am not speaking of the case where antagonism is a necessary consequence of attachment ; we must be enemies to those that make enemies of us. I allude to cases where I believe Mill's sentiments may be fairly con- sidered as excessive and uncalled for. Had his judgment of the circumstances been perfect, the severity might have been right ; but he at times assumed too readily his own infallibility, and condemned people accordingly. In the Autobiography, he recants the harshness of his judgment upon the radical leaders of the years following the Reform Bill ; yet he does not apolo- gize for such language as the following. I quote from the Life of Fofiblanque : — "In 1838 these differences [among the Radicals] appear to have become more serious ; and we find Fonblanque reproach- ing Mill with identifying himself with the " Grote conclave " and the " philosophical Radicals," and Mill, in defending himself against the charge, repudiating the doctrines of Grote and his coterie, as " persons whom I have nothing to do with, and to whose opinions you are far more nearly allied than I am. . , . There may be such a conclave, but I know nothing of it, for I have never been within the door of Grote's house in Eccleston Street, and have been for the last few years HARSH WAY OF SPEAKING OF ENGLAND, l6l completely estranged from that household. Immediately after Lord J. Russell's declaration I tried to rouse them, and went to a meeting of most of the leading parliamentary Radicals at Molesworth's, from which I came away, they thinking me, I fancy, almost mad, and I thinking them craven. I do not except Grote, or Warburton, or Hume, all of whom were there. I except none but Molesworth and Leader, two raw boys ; and I assure you, when I told them what I thought should be done by men of spirit and real practicalness of character, I had perfect ground for feeling well assured that they would not do it." I think his habitual way of speaking of England, the English people, English society, as compared with other nations, was positively unjust, and served no good end. This remark occurs in the article on The Clai7ns of Labour. " It is a just charge against the English nation, considered generally, that they do not know how to be kind, courteous, and considerate of the feelings of others. It is their character throughout Europe. They have much to learn from other nations in the arts not only of being serviceable and amiable with grace, but of being so at all." Now, it seems to me, that, with the standard of moral perfection in our view, a great deal may be said against our country ; but, in the comparison with France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the rest, I cannot admit the justice of such a strain of remark. Mill had a great partiality for France, until the usurpation of Louis Napoleon ; and his opinion of England was correspondingly low. His criticism of public men and public events seemed to me to err very often on the side of severity. His denunciation of our age in particular, as compared with former ages — " this is an age of weak convictions, &c."— is, I think, considerably misplaced, and savours too much of Carlyle. There may have been ages with more intensity in special directions — as religious fervour, for example — but I doubt if any century ever took upon itself the redress of so many wrongs, left untouched for ages, as ours has done. II l62 DESCRIPTION OF GENERAL SOCIETY. 1849-1872. His remarks (Autobiography^ p. 227) as to his withdrawal from general society, at the close of the political decade, 1830- 40, have naturally exposed him to pretty sharp criticism. " General society, as now carried on in England, is so insipid an affair, even to the persons who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than the pleasure it affords "; and so on. It is difficult to recognize the appositeness of the censure. General society is a very large phrase ; it comprises coteries where such a man as Mill would be out of his element, and others where he might discuss any subject, and utter any opinions that he pleased. It was no doubt a saving of time to renounce going into society ; but it was accompanied with some loss, for which he makes no allowance. There were other societies, besides the Political Economy Club, where he could have occasionally gone with considerable profit Before hazarding all the opinions contained in the Essays on Religion, he would have done well to have discussed them with a variety of persons whom it would not be difficult to name. In expressing himself on matters that he very much disliked, he was at times exceedingly sh^rp and plain-spoken. One example is given by Mr. Holyoake, in connexion with the population question. In other cases, I have known him very unceremonious in his expressions of disapproval. I never had any occasion to complain of his manner, so far as I myself was concerned; he was, on the contrary, unremittingly courteous as well as kind. But the things that he said to other people, ' made one feel that he might take a sudden and inexplicable turn. Then, it was a theory of his to be more frank and out- spoken than the common notions of good-breeding would allow \ with this qualification, that he expected to be treated to the same frankness in return. We must carefully exonerate him from rudeness of language ; his refinement and tact were perfect ; he could clothe a very severe remark in an unexcep- tionable form. For many years, he was wont to encourage young men to send him their productions for criticism and FRIENDSHIP WITH MRS. TAYLOR. 163 advice. He took a great deal of trouble in recommending such articles to editors ; and thus helped to start not a few men in a literaiy career. It was, I think, G. H. Lewes that mentioned sending something to him, as he had often done before ; the paper was abruptly returned without explanation. It will no doubt go down to posterity as one of his charac- teristic traits, that he refused to see our two Royal Princesses (the Crown Princess of Prussia and the Princess AHce), who earnestly sought an interview, and proposed to go to Avignon for the purpose. We cannot attribute the refusal to haughti- ness or pride, which was entirely foreign to him ; but, in the absence of the real explanation, I prefer to give no opinion on what would seem an uncalled-for discourtesy. I am bound to take notice of what he calls the greatest friendship of his life ; his relation to Mrs. Taylor, which began in 1 83 1, and led to his marrying her, twenty years later, when her first husband was dead. When I went t© London in 1842, the friendship had lasted eleven years. It was the familiar talk of all the circle. On his first acquaintance with Mrs. Taylor, he introduced her to some of his friends, but chiefly, I think, to Carlyle, whom she continued to visit for a considerable time, being, as we are told, one of his great admirers. Mill and she attended together Carlyle's courses of Lectures. The connexion soon became known to his father, who taxed him with being in love with another man's wife. He repHed, he had no other feeling towards her, than he would have towards an equally able man. The answer was unsatisfactory, but final. His father could do no more, but he expressed to several of his friends, his strong disapproval of the affair. Some attempts at remonstrance were made by others, but with no better result. Nothing, it was said, drew down his resent- ment more surely than any interference, or any remarks that came to his ear, on the subject. When I first knew him, he 164 MANNER OF THEIR INTERCOURSE. 1^49-1872. was completely alienated from Mrs. Grote, while keeping up his intercourse with Grote himself; and as she was not the person to have an opinion without freely expressing it, I inferred that the estrangement had some reference to Mrs. Taylor. Mrs. Austin, too, I was told, came in for the cold shoulder ; and Harriet Martineau, who had special opportunities of knowing the history of the connexion, and also spoke her mind freely concerning it, was understood to be still more decisively under the ban.* The upshot was that everyone of Mill's friends abstained from all allusions to Mrs. Taylor, and he was equally reticent on his side. Her name was never mentioned in his own family. His manner of intercourse with her is stated generally in the Autobiography, p. 229. In the summer of 1842, and for some of the following summers, I cannot say how many, I knew that he went to dine with her at her husband's house, in Kent Terrace, Regent's Park, about twice a-week (Mr. Taylor himself dining out) ; there were certain days that he was not available for a walk with me from the India House to Kensington. Occasion- ally, I happened to fall upon one of these days, and we went together only as far as the Bank, where he took the omnibus for the Regent's Park. At a later period, she was living mostly in the country, in a lodging (I think at Walthamstowe) with her daughter, then very young. I believe that, at this time, she was suffering from spinal injury, and had to remain on the sofa for several years. She ultimately recovered the power of walking, but was delicate in other ways, being liable to attacks • Miss Martineau was present at the dinner party, in Mr. Taylor's house, in the city, at which Mill first met his wife. She related freely the whole of the circumstances, but I see no good in repeating them. Mr. Taylor was a mem- ber of the Unitarian body, and attended the chapel of W. J. Fox. Mrs. Taylor made Fox her confidant as to her want of sympathy from her husband (to whom she had been married at 18), and Fox suggested her becoming acquainted with Mill. Fox was one of the dinner-party. Roebuck also was present. Mr. Taylor was, I understand, a Drysalter, or Wholesale Druggist, in Mark Lane ; his eldest son still carries on the business. DEDICATION OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 165 of hemorrhage from the lungs. During ail the years of her marriage with Mill, she was properly described as an invalid. The behaviour of her husband was, in the circumstances, exceedingly generous. After some remonstrances and explana- tions, he accepted the situation ; a modus vivendi, as the phrase is, was agreed upon ; and he was a consenting party to the in- tercourse that Mill describes. No doubt he and his children were sufferers by the diversion of his wife's thoughts and atten- tions; to what extent I will not presume to say.* The first occasion when Mill gave publicity to his admiration for Mrs. Taylor was in bringing out his Political Economy. In a certain number of copies, stamped " Gift copies," he intro- duced a dedication, in the following terms, as near as I can remember : — " To Mrs. John Taylor, who, of all persons known * A Divorce law, such as exists in Germany, and in some of the United States of America, would have been the best thing for all parties in this anoma- lous situation. Mill repeatedly exposed the weakness of the commoii argu- ments for indissoluble marriage, yet never advocated divorce under any conditions. Mr. Morley details a conversation with him, not long before his death, during which he touched upon this question, and said he would not have it raised until women had an equal voice with men in deciding it. I am afraid if it can Ue over till that time, it will lie over a good while longer. Bentham argues the question with his usual incisiveness ; and his arguments are rarely met. An attempt, on the part of Whewell, to meet them, is thus disposed of by Mill himself : — " Finally, Dr. Whewell says — ' No good rule can be established on this subject without regarding the marriage union in a moral point of view; without assuming it as one great object of the law to elevate and purify men's idea of marriage : to lead them to look upon it as an entire union of interests and feelings, enjoyments and hopes, between the two parties '. We cannot agree in the doctrine that it should be an object of the law to ' lead men to look upon ' marriage as being what it is not. Neither Bentham nor any one who thinks with him would deny that this entire union is the completest ideal of marriage ; but it is bad philosophy to speak of a relation as if it always was the best thing that it possibly can be, and then infer that when it is notoriously not such, as in an immense majority of cases, and even when it is the extreme contrary, as in a considerable minority, it should nevertheless be treated exactly as if the fact corresponded with the theory. The liberty of divorce is contended for, because marriages are not what Dr. Whewell says they should be looked upon as being ; because a choice made by an inexperienced person, and not allowed to be corrected, cannot, except by a happy accident, realise the condi- tions essential to this complete union." 1 66 HER CHARACTER. 1849-1872. to the author, is the most highly qualified, either to originate or to appreciate speculation on social advancement, this work is, with the highest respect and esteem, dedicated." He tells us that he wished to prefix this dedication to the published • copies, but she disliked it. Although, like everybody else, I had always avoided any allusion to Mrs. Taylor, I thought that he had now, of his own accord, introduced her name to his friends, and that to continue ignoring her existence was mistaken delicacy. I accordingly did venture to speak of her, and drew him out into a eulogy of her extraordinary powers. The phrase that chiefly survives in my memory is — she was ^n " apostle of progress " He spoke with great vehemence, and seemed not at all to dislike my broaching the subject. I believe no one else made the same use of the occasion ; and I was considered to have done a very rash thing. I confess, I did not feel dis- posed to renew the reference very often : I alluded to her again only two, or three times, and not till after their marriage. He asked no one, so far as I know, to visit her. Grote would have most cordially paid his respects to her, had he known it would have been agreeable ; but he did not receive any intimation to that effect, and never saw her either before or after her marriage to Mill. Mrs. Grote had, on one occasion, at Mill's desire, taken her to the House of Commons to hear Grote speak. Her two sons were friends of MilVs mother and family. I have repeatedly met them at the house. George Mill used to visit at their father's house, and knew their mother well. Of course, he often spoke of her to his companions, myself among the rest. Although a young man, he was not incapable of forming a judgment of people; and his observation always was, that Mrs. Taylor was a clever and remarkable woman, but nothing like what John took her to be.* * Mill for a time (I suppose during the thirties) went to the receptions of Lady Harriet Baring, afterwards the first Lady Ashburton, whom he was said ENCOMIUMS AFTER HER DEATH. 1 67 He did not again, in her lifetime, bring her name promi- nently forward. It was after her death that he made her the subject of his extraordinary encomiums. The first occasion was in the dedication to the Liberty ; this was followed, soon after, by the note in the second volume of the Dissertations, in connexion with her owrt article on the Enfranchisement of Women. Grote used to say, — " only John Mill's reputation could survive such displays '\ Finally^ came the Auto- biography.'^ The love attachment between the sexes, in its extreme instances, is hardly reducible to any of the laws of human feeling in general. Its occasions and causes seem often out of all proportion to the eifects. On what seems a very minute physical feature often turns an overpowering preference for one individual, a fascination stronger than anything that life affords. The description given by Heine is a typical instance : — " Her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. Yes : or have since heard ; or ever shall hear." The effects of personal beauty upon human beings generally are far from being accounted for ; the special likings for individuals are still less explicable. A few circumstances have been noticed as more or less prevailing in their sweep. The influence of contrasted peculiarities is perhaps the most notable ; the liking of fair for dark complexions is very to admire very much. He was introduced, I believe, by Charles Duller, -d. great favourite with her ladyship, herself remarkable for wit and brilliancy. He broke off this connexion abruptly ; various reasons were afloat. Of course, Mrs. Taylor's name came up in the explanation. * The inscription on the tomb at Avignon is worded thus: — "Her great and loving heart, her noble soul, her clear, powerful, original, and compre- hensive intellect, made her the guide and support, the instructor in wisdom, and the example in goodness, as she was the sole earthly delight of those who had the happiness to belong to her. As earnest for all public good as she was generous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence has been felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age, and will be in those still to come. Were there even a few hearts and intellects like hers, this earth would already become the hoped-for heaven." The wordiness of the composition is more suggestive of intense feeling than a polished elegy could have been. l68 SYMPATHY IN OPINIONS. 1849-1872. apparent in mixed races like ourselves. In mental peculiarities, contrast also dominates in many subtle forms which I need not here dilate upon. Mill would fain make us believe that the attachment in his case was based altogether on mental superiority — intellectual and moral. The influence of beauty in general, the special attraction of fair for dark, of tall for short, and other such in- fluences,— he would have us leave entirely out of the account. Hard thinkers are most often charmed, not by other thinkers, but by minds of the more concrete and artistic mould. He would have perhaps allowed something of this sort, in his case, with the condition, that the artistic element was merely one of the aspects of a genius that took the first rank in every form of intellectual greatness. The influence of contrast in producing the love of attach- ment must be so expressed as not to exclude sympathy or agreement in opinions, objects, and aspirations; which is one great cause of individual likings. This is a broad general fact, but does not go far towards explaining the select overpowering attachments. Mill tells us that his opinions on the complete equality between the sexes in all legal, political, social, and do- mestic relations were, he believed, more than anything else, the originating cause of the interest his wife felt in him. This is so far in conformity with the general principle ; yet does not help us very much. His hyperbolical language of unbounded laudation, which has been the cause of so much wonderment, can be somewhat checked by the details that he himself supplies. His accus- tomed precision does not desert him in regard to these ; and we are enabled to form a probable estimate of what his wife really was to him. In the first place, he tells us that the Logic owed nothing to her, except the minutiae of composition. Then as to the Political Economy^ the purely scientific part he did not learn from her. What was entirely her work was the chapter en- HER CONTRIBUTIONS TO HIS WRITINGS. 1 69 titled, " The Probable Future of the Labouring Classes," which, he says, has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest put together. It was " chiefly her influence that gave the book that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous expositions of Political Economy that had any pretentions to be scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which these previous expositions had repelled ". Again : " What was abstract and purely scientific was generally mine ; the properly human element came from her ; in all that con- cerned the application of philosophy to the exigencies of human society and progress, I was her pupil, alike in boldness of speculation and cautiousness of practical judgment".* He avows an intensity of passionate regard that could hardly subsist in any mind, without yielding the known conse- quences of excessive emotion. Difficult as it often is to bring under general laws of the mind the capricious origin of strong attachments, there is much more of law and uniformity in the results. If one particular attachment of the mind is twenty times as strong as the strongest of the others, and ten times as strong as all the rest of the regards put together, the effects may be calculated to a certainty. The minor feelings will receive their limited share of consideration ; only, they must never enter into rivalry with the master passion ; they may be easily put aside altogether for a time. Mill, in writing to his brother James, after his bereavement, s^ys : — " When I was happy, I never went after any one ; those that wanted me might come to me ". After his grief had subsided, he began to seek his friends ; he went to their houses, and received them * Carlyle, when led to refer to Mrs. Taylor, used to describe her in his own way. The phrase that he most usually employed was, I think, ' ' veevid " ; which the reader may compare with the terms that he used in his supercilious mood when he penned the " Reminiscences". John Mill himself, in what he said to me about her, noted specially her great power of seizing and retaining pictorial or concrete aspects ; indicating that she had the groundwork of an imaginative intellect. lyo FUTURE OF THE LABOURING CLASSES. 1849-1872. into his ; and was in his last years, for a few months in the twelve, a sociable man. The chapter above referred to, as I understand it, is occupied with an account of the altered position of the working classes with reference to those above, as no longer a relation of depen- dence and protection, " We have entered into a state of civilisation in which the bond that attaches human beings to one another, must be disinterested admiration and sympathy for personal qualities, or gratitude for unselfish services, and not the emotions of protectors towards dependents, or of dependents towards protectors. The arrangements of society are now such that no man or woman who either possesses or is able to earn a livelihood requires any other protection than that of the law. This being the case, it argues great ignorance of human nature to continue taking for granted that relations founded on protection must always subsist, and not to see that the assumption of the part of protector, and of the power wliiph belongs to it, without any of the necessities which justify it, must engender feelings opposite to loyalty." This is the same ' thesis so well worked out in the article on Claims of Labour^ The third paragraph contains an emphatic assertion of the necessity of opening up industrial occupation freely to both sexes. The second half of the chapter discusses Co-operation, as a means of raising the condition of the labourer. All this might certainly have grown out of Mill's own inde- pendent studies \ but we must take his word for it when he says that his conversations with Mrs. Taylor helped him in giving it " form and pressure ". He makes no special claim for her in regard to his Political writings \ of which the Representative Government (composed soon after her death) may be considered as the sum. He men- tions merely that she preceded him in turning against the Ballot. The Liberty was the chief production of his married life : and in it, she bore a considerable part. His o\^ antecedents HIS wife's genius. 171 had prepared him for writing a defence of Free-thought that would be sure to take rank with the first expositions of the subject. The book has unsurpassed excellencies, and, as I think, some defects. How far these are to be partitioned be- tween the two co-operating minds, there is probably no means of discovering. The Subjection of Woman is said to have been the result of their joint discussions for many years ; Miss Helen Taylor assisting in the composition. No doubt this was his wife's subject by pre-eminence \ it is the only subject that she actually wrote upon with her own pen. Her influence upon Mill, and upon the world through him, lay unmistakably here. Apart from her, he probably might have continued to hold his original opinions as to the equality of the sexes, but he might not have devoted so much of his life to the energetic advocacy of them. If Mill had been content with putting forward these explana- tions as to his wife's concurrence in his labours, the world would have accepted them as given, and would have accorded to her a reputation corresponding. Unfortunately for both, he outraged all reasonable credibility in describing her match- less genius, without being able to supply any corroborating testimony. Such a state of subjection to the will of another, as he candidly avows, and glories in, cannot be received as a right state of things. It violates our sense of due proportion, in the relationship of human beings. Still, it is but the natural outcome of his extraordinary hallucination as to the personal qualities of his wife. The influence of overweening passion is most conspicuous and irrefragable in this particular. He does not tell us that he set aside other interests on her account ; what he does tell shows that his mode of estimating her must have been partial to a degree that will create lasting astonish- ment. The remark was made by Mr. Goldwin Smith, that Mill's hallucination as to his wife's genius deprived him of all authority wherever that came in ; but he was still to be treated with the deference due to his great powers, where that did not 172 SOURCES OF THE ATTACHMENT. 1849 1872. come in. It is fortunate for his fame and influence, that so very much of what he did was entirely withdrawn from possible bias on her account. It is a painful fact that his marriage was the occasion of his utter estrangement from his mother and sisters. He had been the joy and the light of the house, while he lived with the family. Some very slight incident was laid hold of as a ground of offence, and all communication was thenceforth broken off, excepting on essential matters of business. But for the redeem- ing circumstance of his coming forward, with his natural generosity, when misfortune arose, the relations with his own family after his marriage would have seriously shaded his biography. I speak, of course, from one-sided knowledge, which is never held conclusive ; but all parties concerned have been under powerful motives to put the best possible construc- tion upon his conduct. Various views have been given as to the nature of the fasci- nation that first drew him to Mrs. Taylor. One view is simply that he fell, as philosopher and peasant alike may fall, under the witchery of the other sex. To complete the explanation, it is added, that his severe intellectual strain prepared him for a reaction on the emotional side, and that the grand passion came in happily to fill up an aching void in his nature. His finding one that could be an intellectual companion entered into the charm. Now this may be all very true, but we do not know it to be the truth. The fact must be faced that, on his own showing, she was an intellectual companion, only in a very small portion of his range of studies. He had no sympathy or help from her during perhaps the most intense and exciting work that he ever went through — the composition of the Logic. Their great mutual sympathy grew up on her strong practical views on a certain limited number of topics, on which he grew more and more ardent, and magnified at the expense of his whole specu- lative range in Logic, Metaphysics, and Politics. MISTAKEN EXPLANATIONS. 1 73 The more common way of representing Mrs. Mill's ascen- dancy, is to say that she imbibed all his views, and gave them back in her own form, by which he was flattered and pleased. This is merest conjecture : the authors of the surmise never saw Mill and his wife together ; and, in all probability, miscon- ceived the whole situation. As I have just remarked, it was comparatively few of his ideas that she could render back in an intelligent form. But farther, it is not the true account of Mill to say that he was pleased by the simple giving back of his own thoughts. Of course, this would have been preferable to contradicting him at every point, or to gross misconception of his meaning. Judging from my own experience of him, I should say that what he liked was to have his own faculties set in motion, so as to evolve new thoughts and new aspects of old thoughts. This might be done better by intelligently controverting his views than by merely reproducing them in different language. And I have no doubt that his wife did operate upon him in this very form. But the ways of inducing him to exert his powers in talk, which was a standing pleasure of his life, cannot be summed up under either agreement or opposition. It supposed independent resources on the part of his fellow- talker, and a good mutual understanding as to the proper conditions of the problem at issue. Mill was not such an egotist as to be captivated by the echo of his own opinions. Something of the kind might have applied to Milton, if he had been fortunate enough to find a suitable mate ; or to the affection of Auguste Comte for Clotilde de Vaux. The men that Mill professed most attach- ment to were very much at variance with him even in funda- mental questions. It is enough to refer to what he says of John Sterling, who retained to the last the dprwrtvfay of looking at things. I saw him and Sterling together, once or twice, and could easily divine the cause of their, mutual liking. Sterling is known from Carlyle's portrait of him : he was exceedingly genial in disposition and manner, and overflowed in suggestive 174 STYLE. 1849-1872. talk, which Mill took up and improved upon in his own way. In like manner, one of Mill's chief friendships in later years was with Thornton, who differed from him in a great many things, but the differences were of the kind to bring into lively exercise Mill's argumentative powers. My next topic in the delineation of Mill's character, is his Style. He is allowed to be not only a great thinker, but a good writer. His lucidity, in particular, is regarded as pre-eminent. Exceptions are taken by the more fastidious critics ; he is said by Mr. Pattison to be wanting in classical grace and Uterary polish. I have already expressed the opinion that the language faculty in him was merely ordinary. Great cultivation had given him a good command of expression for all his purposes, but nothing could have made him a Macaulay. To begin with his vocabulary — including in that, not simply the words of the English dictionary, but the stock of phrases coined by our literary predecessors for expressing single ideas — we cannot say that in this he was more than a good average among men of intelligence and culture. He was greatly inferior to Bentham in the copiousness, the variety of his primary stock of language elements. He was surpassed, if I mistake not, by both the Austins, by Grote and by Roebuck. Had he been required to express the same idea in ten different forms, all good, he would have come to a standstill sooner than any of those. His grammar is oftener defective than we should expect in any one so carefully disciplined as he was from the first. In some of the points that would be deemed objectionable, he probably had theories of his own. His placing of the trouble- some words " only/' and " not only " is, in my judgment, often wholly indefensible. Scores of examples of such constructions as the following, may be produced from his writings : — " Astr?ea must not only have returned to earth, but the heart of the worst DEFECTIVE GRAMMAR. 1 75 man must have become her temple." " He lived to see almost all the great principles which he had advocated not merely re- cognised, but a commencement made in carrying them into practice." " It is not the uncontrolled ascendancy of popular power, hut of any power that is to be dreaded." " We can only know a substance through its qualities, but also, we can only know qualities as inhering ifi a substance. Substance and attribute are correlative, and can only be thought together : the knowledge of each, therefore, is relative to the other ; but need not be, and indeed is not, relative to us. For we know attributes as they are in themselves, and our knowledge of them is only relative inasmuch as attributes have only a relative existence. It is relative knowledge in a sense not contradictory to absolute. It is an absolute knowledge, though of things which only exist in a necessary relation to another thing called a substance." " And in these days of discussion, and generally awakened in- terest in improvement, what formerly was the work of centuries, often requires only years." "Men, as well as women, do not need political rights in order that they may govern, but in order that they may not be misgoverned." This should be — " Men,_ as well as women, need political rights, not in order that they may govern, &c." The sentence where he describes his early upbringing as regards religion, cannot be construed on any known rules of grammar. " I am thus one of the very few examples,, in this country, of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it." -.The re-construction of this on grammatical principles is Jikely to become one of the stock exercises in our manuals of English Composition. Critically examined, his style is wanting in delicate attention to the placing of qualifying words generally. He had appa- rently never thought of this matter farther than to satisfy himself that his sentences were intelligible. Another peculiarity of grammar tending to make his style not unfrequently heavy, and sometimes a little obscure, was the excess of relatives, and especially of the heavy relatives 176 RHETORICAL ARTS, 1849-1872. "which'' and "who". He never entered into the distinction of meaning between those two, and " that " as a relative. Like many other writers, he used *'that" only as a relief after too many " whiches ". Here is an example : — '* Inasmuch as any, even unintentional, deviation from truth, does that much towards weakening the trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not only the principal support of all present social well-being, but the insufficiency of which does more than any- thing that can be named to keep back civilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness on the largest scale de- pends " Early familiarity with French is apt to produce an insensibility to the clogging effect of a great number of " whiches," and a consequent inattention to the many easy de- vices for keeping clear of the excess. In the use of the pronoun " it," he did not display the care usually taken by good writers of the present day, to avoid un- certainty and ambiguity of reference. His father's weakness for the " I know not " form is occa- sionally seen in him also. Instances of looseness not falling under any special type are frequent enough. The following might possibly have been cor- rected, if he had lived to superintend the printing of the work where it occurs : — "The patience of all the founders of the Society was at last exhausted, except me and Roebuck ". Of arts of the rhetorical kind in the structure of his sentences, he was by no means wanting. He could be short and pithy, which goes a great way. He had likewise caught up, probably in a good measure from the French writers, his peculiar epi- grammatic smartness, which he practised also in conversation. He would often express himself thus : — " It is one thing to tell the rich that they ought to take care of the poor, and another thing to tell the poor that the rich ought to take care of them ". A historian, he says, must possess gifts of imagination; "and what is rarer still, he must forbear to abuse them ". " With the genius for producing a great historical romance, he must STRENGTH AND EMPHASIS. 177 have the virtue to add nothing to what can be proved to be true.'' To the attacks made upon the French historians, for superficiaUty and want of research, he replies with a piquancy that is more than mere style: — "Voltaire gave false views of history in many respects, but not falser than Hume's ; Thiers is inaccurate, but not less so than Sir Walter Scott ". He was not deficient in the power of illustration by meta- phor and allusion, although he could not in this respect com- pare with men whose strength consists mainly in the power of expression. Moreover, as expository style requires that illus- trations should be apposite, their employment is limited with precise writers.* As a whole, I should say that Mill was wanting in strength, energy, or momentum. His happiest strokes were of the nature of a corruscation — a lightning flash, rather than effects of impetus or mass in motion. His sentences and paragraphs are apt to be diffuse ; not because of unnecessary circumstances, but from a want of steady endeavour after emphasis by good collocation and condensation. Every now and then, one of his pithy sentences comes across us, with inexpressible welcome. He is himself conscious when he is becoming too involved, and usually endeavours to relieve us by a terse summary at the close of the paragraph. What I mean by not studying emphasis, may be exemplified by a quotation. The following shows his brief anc^ epigrammatic style, in a fair average. The concluding sentence is what I chiefly call attention to. The passage is directed against the philanthropic theory of the protection of the poor by the rich : — ■ * He had a dread, of running into a figurative or florid style. I remember a curious illustration in point. He had written an article for the Westminster Review, but, having gone abroad before a proof was ready, he left the correct- ' ing to the editor, Hickson. I saw him on his return, and he was in a state of great annoyance at the numerous misprints that had been allowed to pass. One of these was a very excusable error. He had written ' * the family in the patri- archal sense," and the printer had changed it into "tents"; making, as he said, in a complaining tone, 3. picture, 12 178 EXPOSITORY ART IN GENERAL. l849-l872' " Mankind are often cautioned by divines and moralists against unreasonableness in their expectations. We attach greater value to the more limited warning against inconsistency in them. The state of society which this picture represents, is a conceivable one. We shall not at present inquire if it is of all others the most eligible one, even as an Utopia. We only ask if its promoters are willing to accept this state of society together with its inevitable accompaniments." What I should wish to see strengthened here, is the emphasis upon the concluding circumstance inevitable accompaniments^ wherein lies the whole stress of the matter. A very little change would improve it. " We only ask if the advocates of of this state of society are willing to accept its inevitable accom- paniments,^' We can now view all those peculiarities in connexion with his Expository art in general, of which they are important accessories without being the main elements. Exposition, in its typical character, embodies the clear statement and adequate exempli- fication of principles. Where this central circumstance is well attended to, the result cannot be a failure. Now, Mill was at home here. He kniew how to introduce a generality, how to state it clearly, and what amount of exemplification was needed for the ordinary reader. He could occasionally provide very good illustrations as distinct from examples, that is to say, figurative comparisons, or similes. In the strict forms of ex- position, logical power comes in aid ; the logician is well accustomed to see the one in the many, and the many in the one — the generality in the particulars, and the particulars supporting the generality. There are far more trying situations, however, than the state- ment and exemplification of one single truth. A principle has often to be qualified by another principle ; and both may need to be elucidated together. A diiferent form of complication is brought out, when a subject has not one predicate but several, all requiring to be attended to. Very often what has to be EXAMPLE OF EXPOSITION. 1 79 expounded is a highly complex idea, whose defining particulars have to be separately illustrated. These are a few of the testing forms of the expository art. Such matters cannot be despatched airrente calamo — with the pen of a ready writer. They need careful retouching to find for each particular the best possible place. Mill has often such topics to handle, and certainly does not fall below the average of ordinary writers \ yet he does not rise above being passable. Two examples, each with a special character, will show what is intended. The first is his exposition of Nationahty. I quote a part : — " A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a Nation- ality, if they are united among themselves by common sym- pathies, which do not exist between them and any others — which make them co-operate with each other more wiUingly than with other people, desire to be under the same govern- ment, and desire that it should be government by themselves, or a portion of themselves, exclusively. This feeling of na- tionality may have been generated by various causes. Some- times it is the effect ©f identity of race and descent. Community of language, and community of religion, greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of its causes. But the strong- est of all is identity of political antecedents ; the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections ; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, con- nected with the same incidents in the past. None of these circumstances, however, are either indispensable, or necessarily sufficient by themselves. Switzerland has a strong sentiment of nationality, though the cantons are of different races, dif- ferent languages, and different religions. Sicily has hitherto felt itself quite distinct in nationality from Naples, notwith- standing identity of religion, almost, identity of language, and a considerable amount of common historical antece- dents. The Flemish and the Walloon provinces of Belgium, l8o A COMPLEX IDEA. 1849-1872. notwithstanding diversity of race and language, have a much greater feeling of common nationality, than the former have with Holland, or the latter with France. Yet in general the national feeling is proportionally weakened by the failure of any of the causes which contribute to it. Identity of language, literature, and, to some extent, of race and recollec- tions, have maintained the feeling of nationality in considerable strength among the different portions of the German name, though they have at no time been really united under the same government ; but the feeling has never reached to making the separate states desire to get rid of their autonomy. Among Italians an identity, far from complete, of language and litera- ture, combined with a geographical position which separates them by a distinct line from other countries, and, perhaps more than everything else, the possession of a common name, which makes them all glory in the past achievements in arts, arms, politics, religious primacy, science, and literature, of any who share the same designation, give rise to an amount of national feeling in the population, which, though still imper- fect, has been sufficient to produce the great events now passing before us : notwithstanding a great mixture of races, and although they have never, in either ancient or modern history, been under the same government, except while that govern- ment extended or was extending (itself) over the greater part of the known world." Now there is nothing here but what might be made out by attention and study; yet very little is done to assist the reader in keeping the different ideas distinct, still less in re- taining a coherent view of the whole. For one thing, the proper definition should have been made into a separate para- graph, and a little more illustration given to its constituent ideas. Concrete examples might have been adduced of the working of the feeling in itself. When he came to inquire into the causes, he should have started a new paragraph, to keep this part quite distinct from the meaning of the fact. Then, in A DOUBLE SUBJECT, l8l Stating the causes, he would have done well to have presented them numerically, and in parallel sentence forms. A much more natural arrangement could be given, thus : — Geographical limits, race, language, religion, history or political antecedents (strongest of all). Then comes the qualification — no one is indispensable in itself His train of examples instead of being appended to the causes themselves is appended to this qualifying statement; an arrangement of very doubtful pro- priety. A still more testing situation is given in the following attempt to expound a contrasting couple — Central and Local Authority. The contrast is run upon a two-fold predicate ; that is, the com- parative merits of the two forms, are put under two heads. The complication thus arising can be readily foreshadowed ; a contrasting couple of subjects, with two predicates to each, under affirmation and denial, — keeps no less than eight pro- positions running through the paragraph. They cannot be given in strict linear order, because they have to be compared and contrasted throughout. If we could write in several parallel columns, and if the human mind could attend to three or four trains at one moment, all this would be much easier. But conditioned as we are, the difficulties are very great. By no ingenuity can the comprehension of the theme be made easy ; but there are ways and means of alleviating the compli- cations, the account of which is the higher art of Exposition. I quote the paragraph that I have in view : — " To decide this question, it is essential to consider what is the comparative position of the central and the local authori- ties, as to capacity for the work, and security against negligence and abuse. In the first place, the local representative bodies and their officers are almost certain to be of a much lower grade of intelligence and knowledge, than Parliament and the national executive. Secondly, besides being themselves of inferior qualifications, they are watched by and accountable to, an inferior public opinion. The public under whose eyes they l82 PLURALITY OF PREDICATES. 1849-187^^ act, and by whom they are criticised, is both more limited in extent, and generally far less enlightened, than that which surrounds and admonishes the highest authorities at the capi- tal ; while the comparative smallness of the interests involved, causes even that inferior public to direct its thoughts to the subject less intently, and with less solicitude. Far less inter- ference is exercised by the press and by public discussion, and that which is exercised may with much more impunity be dis- regarded, in the proceedings of local, than in those of national authorities. Thus far, the advantage seems wholly on the side of management by the central government. But when we look more closely, these motives of preference are found to be balanced by others fully as substantial. If the local authorities and public are inferior to the central ones in knowledge of the principles of administration, they have the compensatory advan- tage of a far more direct interest in the result. A man's neigh- bours or his landlord may be much cleverer than himself, and not without an indirect interest in his prosperity, but for all that, his interests will be better attended to in his own keeping than in theirs. It is further to be remembered, that even sup- posing the central government to administer through its own officers, its officers do not act at the centre, but in the locality ; and however inferior the local public may be to the central, it is the local public alone which has any opportunity of watching them, and it is the local opinion alone which either acts directly upon their own conduct, or calls the attention of the govern- ment to the points in which they may require correction. It is but in extreme cases that the general opinion of the country is brought to bear at all upon details of local administration, and still more rarely has- it the means of deciding upon them with any just appreciation of the case. Now, the local opinion necessarily acts far more forcibly upon purely local adminis- trators. They, in the natural course of things, are permanent residents, not expecting to be withdrawn from the place when they cease to exercise authority in it ; and their authority itself ARTS OF PERSUASION. 1 83 depends, by supposition, on the will of the local public. I need not dwell on the deficiencies of the central authority in detailed knowledge of local persons and things, and the too great engrossment of its time and thoughts by other concerns, to admit of its acquiring the quantity and quality of local know- ledge necessary even for deciding on complaints, and enforcing responsibility from so great a number of local agents. In the details of management, therefore, the local bodies will generally have the advantage ; but in comprehension of the principles even of purely local management, the superiority of the central government, when rightly constituted, ought to be prodigious : not only by reason of the probably great personal superiority of the individuals composing it, and the multitude of thinkers and writers who are at all times engaged in pressing useful ideas upon their notice, but also because the knowledge and experience of any local authority is but local knowledge and experience, confined to their own part of the country and its mode of management, whereas the central government has the means of knowing all that is to be learnt from the united experience of the whole kingdom, with the addition of easy access to that of foreign countries." If it were not that the eight floating propositions are at last reduced, in the concluding sentence, to a summary statement of two, this would be a very hopeless paragraph. The means of amending it does not consist in any one expedient, but in a great number of little details of arrangement, which would make its re-composition a work of considerable study. To quote such examples as these is to put any man to a severe trial ; and few would come well through it. But criti- cism, if it is to be of use at all, should not shirk the difficult cases. Enough has been said of Mill as an expositor ; there remains his capability in Persuasion. Intermediate between the two functions, if not rather a combination of both, was his remark- 1 84 ADDRESSING THE FEELINGS. 1849-1872. able polemical aptitude. But I shall speak now of his persua- sive power, which I conceive to be very great on the whole, and susceptible of being precisely defined. The power of persuasion was with him not much a matter of mere style ; it lay more in his command of thoughts, and in his tact in discerning what would suit the persons addressed. When he set himself to argue a point, his information and command of principles usually enabled him to exhaust his case. His political writing is enough to show this. It was seldom that he was deficient in knowledge of his audience. If he ever failed here, it was in matters of religion, where he was necessarily little informed, and on the women question, where his feelings carried him too far. Not only could he shape arguments to the reason, properly so called, he could also address the feelings. The Liberty and the Subjection of Women, as well as his political writing generally, exemplify what might be called impassioned oratory; they leave nothing unsaid that could enlist the strongest feelings of the readers. His best Parliamentary speeches appealed to the understanding and to the feelings alike, and he seldom, so far as I can judge, lost ground for want of suiting himself to a most difficult assembly. Although he could not clothe his feelings with the richness of poetry, he could warm with his subject, and work by the force of sympathy. All this, as I have already observed, had to do with know- ledge and thinking power, more than with style. In the oratory of rhetoric, he was entirely wanting. He could appeal to men's feelings by suitable circumstances plainly and even forcibly stated \ but that luxuriance of verbal display, whereby the emotions can be roused with a hurricane's might, was not a part of his equipment. He could not be an orator in the Same sense as the two Pitts, Burke, Canning, Brougham, Macaulay, DTsraeli, or any of our rhetorical writers ; although I am not sure that he might not often have rivalled such men in actual effect, by the gifts that were peculiarly his own. EXAMPLES OF WIT. 1 85 The powerful adjunct of Wit was hardly within his reach, any more than rhetorical display in general. He had the sense of humour, but not a sufficient creative power to embody it in writing ; and he was careful not to attempt what he could not do well. I can recall but one example of real Wit such as might have come from Sydney Smith or Fonblanque. In his article on Corporation and Church Property, he replies to the stock arguments against diverting old foundations. He makes full allowance for compensation to present holders of life interests. Still this does not appease the opposition : — " Would you rob the Church ? it is asked. And at the sound of these words rise up images of rapine, violence, plunder ; and every sentiment of repugnance which would be excited by a proposal to take away from an individual the earnings of his toil or the inheritance of his fathers, comes heightened in the particular case by the added idea of sacrilege. " But the Church ! Who is the Church ? Who is it that we desire to rob? Who are the persons whose property, whose rights we are proposing to take away ? "Not the clergy; from them we do not propose to take anything. To every man who now benefits by the endowment, we have said that we would leave his entire income ; at least until the State shall offer, as the purchase money of his services in some other shape, advantages which he himself shall regard as equivalent, " But if not the clergy, surely we are not proposing to rob the laity :, on the contrary, they are robbed now, if the fact be, that the application of the money to its present purpose is no longer advisable. We are exhorting the laity to daim their property out of the hands of the clergy ; who are not the Church, but only the managing members of the association. " Qui trompe-t-on id ? asks Figaro. Qui vok-t-on id ? may well be asked. What man, woman, or child, is the victim of this robbery ? Who suffers by the robbery when everybody robs nobody ? But though no man, woman, or child is robbed, l86 CONVERSATIONAL POWER. 1849-1872. the Church it seems is robbed. What follows? That the Church may be robbed, and no man, woman, or child be the worse for it. If this be so, why, in Heaven's name, should it not be done ? If money or money's worth can be squeezed out of an abstraction, we would appropriate it without scruple. We had no idea that the region Where entity and quiddity. The ghosts of defunct bodies, fly, was an Eldorado of riches. We wish all other abstract ideas had as ample a patrimony. It is fortunate that their estates are of a less volatile and airy nature than themselves, and that here at length is a * chimsera bombinans in vacuo,' which lives upon something more substantial than * secundas intentiones '. We hold all such entia rationis to be fair game, and their pos- sessions a legitimate subject of invasion and conquest. " Any act may be a crime, if giving it a bad name could make it so ; but the robbery that we object to must be some- thing more than robbing a word. The laws of property were made for the protection of human beings, and not of phrases. As long as the bread is not taken from any of our fellow- creatures, we care not though the whole English dictionary had to beg in the streets." The mathematicians, owing to their very high pretensions to set forth reasoning in its most perfect form, have exposed themselves to the jibes of profane wit. Thus, Berkeley ridi- culed the Fluxions of Newton, as made up of the " ghosts of departed quantities ". Mill contributes to the same purpose. Speaking of Mathematics as a whole, he says, "it is as full of fictions as English Law, and of mysteries as Theology ". I have now a few remarks to make upon his Conversational power, which was part of his influence, although not to so great a degree as in his father's case. That he was a striking talker, even as a boy, we have good testimony. Still, he impressed DIFFERENT OPINIONS AS TO CONVERSATION, 1 87 people very differently, and when he was twenty-four he was described by Charles Greville in these terms : — "November 15th [1830]. — Yesterday morning I breakfasted with Taylor (Henry) to meet Southey : the party was Southey ; Strutt, member for Derby, a Radical ; young Mill, a political economist ; Charles Villiers, young Elliot, and myself . . . Young Mill is the son of Mill who wrote the ' History of British India,' and is said to be cleverer than his father. He has written many excellent articles in reviews, pamphlets, &c. ; but though powerful with a pen in his hand, in conversation he has not the art of managing his ideas, and is consequently hesitating and slow, and has the appearance of being always working in his mind propositions or a syllogism.'' Any one that knew him twelve years later would not recog- nize the smallest resemblance in this picture. He had no want of the art of managing his ideas ; quite the opposite : he was neither hesitating nor slow : and there was nothing in the order of his statements that suggested syllogisms. A writer in the Edinburgh Review (January, 1874), who knew him from early years, gives a delineation, which seems to me not much nearer the mark : — " His manners were shy and awkward. His powers of con- versation, though remarkable enough in argument, were wholly didactic and controversial. He had no humour, no ' talk,' and indeed no interest in the minor concerns of life. He had been bred in a small coterie of people of extreme opinions, whom he regarded as superior beings, and he seemed to shrink from all contact with ordinary mortals. In later life he affected some- thing of the life of a prophet, surrounded by admiring votaries, who ministered to him largely that incense in which prophets delight. He had neither the wit and readiness which adorn the higher circles of the world, nor the geniality and desire to oblige which impart a charm to the lower." His shyness and awkwardness I entirely failed to perceive. His conversation was not limited to argument \ he had humour l88 VOICE AND ELOCUTION. 1849-1872. and lightness, and did not restrain their display. He did not shrink from contact with ordinary mortals, and had a great many occasions of encountering such : if it were only during the six hours a day, for thirty-five years, that he spent in a busy State office, encompassed with superiors, equals, and inferiors. He had wit and readiness such as we do not find often sur- passed in the *' higher circles''. No one pretends that he was a Sydney Smith. I believe that the one thing that took the London public by surprise in 1865, and carried his election for Westminster, was his wit and readiness. The material of a man's conversation must be his amassed knowledge ; and a writer shows that by his books. The nearest approach to actual conversation is letter-writing ; we may judge of people's talk by their familiar correspondence. What books and letters fail to show is conversation as such ; and includes elements of considerable efficacy in themselves. All that re- lates to voice, delivery, gesture, and play of countenance — the purely physical part — is imperfectly conceivable through mere description. The part not physical is the conduct as regards the listeners ; which fluctuates between the two extremes of lecture or monologue, in the Coleridge style, and short question and answer, in the Socratic style. Mill's voice was agreeable, although not specially melodious ; it was thin and weak. His articulation was not very clear. His elocution was good, without being particularly showy or impressive ; he had a mastery of emphasis ; his modulation was sufficiently removed from monotone, so that there was nothing wearying in his manner. He had not much gesture, but it was all in keeping ; his features were expressive without his aiming at strong effects. Everything about him had the cast of sobriety and reserve ; he did no more than the end required. There was so little of marked peculiarity in his speaking, that I never knew anyone that could mimic him successfully in the enunciation of a sentence. Very few people could assume his GIVING AND TAKING IN CONVERSATION. 1 89 voice, to begin with ; and his modulation was simply correct and colourless elocution. I can account for his seeming hesitation of manner. Although he did not study grand and imposing talk, he always aimed at saying the right thing clearly and shortly. He was perfectly fluent, but yet would pause for an instant to get the best word, or the neatest collocation : and he also liked to finish with an epigrammatic turn. He was one day expressing his admiration of Charles BuUer, and then, alluding to Roebuck, remarked he was equally good in his way, *' but it was not so good a way ". His demeanour with reference to the other participants in the conversation was sufficiently marked. He never lectured or declaimed, or engrossed the talk. He paused at due inter- vals, to hear what the others had to say ; and not merely heard, but took in, and embodied that in his reply. With him, talk was, what it ought to be, an exchange of information^ thought, and argument, when it assumed the form of discussion ; and an exchange of sympathies when the feelings were concerned. He did not care to converse on any other terms than perfect mutuality. He would expound or narrate at length when it was specially wished ; and there were, of course, subjects that it was agreeable to him to dilate upon ; but he wished to be in accord with his hearers, and to feel that they also had due openings for expressing concurrence or otherwise.* I have sometimes been surprised at his readiness to answer any question or plunge into any topic that might be propounded. I should have often expected him to resist such rapid transi- tions of subject as I have seen him led into ; but, in talk with people that he cared for, he did not resent a desultory chace. It is mainly with reference to his conversation, that we are * He had a good-humoured contempt for the monologue talkers. When Sydney Smith's well-known saying on Macaulay came out (unusually brilliant, some splendid flashes of silence), Mill capped it with a story of two Frenchmen of this species, pitted against each other. One was in full possession, but so intent was the other upon striking in, that a third person watching the contest, exclaimed, " If he spits, he's done ". 190 WIT AND HUMOUR. 1849-1872. entitled to speak of him as possessing Wit and Humour. He had not sufficient originality of style to yield literary effects worthy of being printed ; but, like many other people having the same Umitations, he had more than enough to be enter- taining and genial in society and in talk. For the same reason that Wit fails to display itself in his books, he did not produce many quotable sayings ; having so little love of display, he did not make any efforts in this direction. I don't remember any saying of his at all comparable to Cornewall Lewis's — " Life would be tolerable, but for its amusements " ; but he made numerous sallies that amused the moment, as well as amateur wit usually does ; his enjoyment of a good joke was intense ; and his range of subjects was wide and liberal. He had the essential conditions of a humourist, as opposed to scornful, scathing mockery of the Swift and Voltaire stamp : that is to say, sympathy and warmth of feeling, and the absence of egotistic fears as to his own dignity.* Carlyle's phrase in the " Reminiscences " describing Mill's conversation as "sawdustish" shows his worst temper, without his usual felicity. As Mill did not lecture, but talk, he always gave Carlyle himself abundant rope, and brought him out, as only a small number of his friends could do. I never saw the two together but once. Calling at the India House, at Mill's hour for leaving, I found Carlyle in the room. We walked together to the London Library, Carlyle having the largest share of the talk. I remember only the conclusion. It was as *I remember walking with him by Trafalgar Square, one afternoon, when an advertising board set forth a dwarf figure wearing a helmet, and holding a long javelin, but otherwise completely nude. This professed to be "General Tom Thumb as Romulus". (The dwarf had been giving a round of personations). It caught Mill's eye, and put him into convulsions. He was fond of taking off his father s Scotch friends that came to the house. The best bit of humour of this sort that I remember his telling, was upon Professor Wallace. About the time when knighthoods were given to a number of scientific men — Brewster, Leslie, and others — Wallace happened to be staying with the Mills. He was asked {I have no doubt by John Mill himself) why he had not been knighted. His answer was — "ye see they would ca' me Sir Weelyam Wallace ". RECORDED CONVERSATIONS. 191 we were entering St. James's Square, that Carlyle was de- nouncing our religion and all its accessories. Mill strucl^ in with the remark — " Now, you are just the very man to tell the public your whole mind upon that subject ". This was not exactly what Carlyle fancied. He gave, with his peculiar grunt, the exclamation — "Ho," and added, "it is some one like Frederick the Great that should do that ". The recently published "Journals of Caroline Fox" gives some very interesting pictures of Mill's conversations and ways, as he appeared between 1840 and 1846. His opinions about things in general in those years, so far as shown to the Fal- mouth circle, are very fairly set forth. The thing wanting to do full justice to his conversation is to present it in dialogue, so as to show how he could give and take with his fellow-talkers. A well-reported colloquy between him and Sterling would be very much to the purpose. He appears to great advantage in the way that he accommodated himself to the kind Foxes, on the occasion of staying at Falmouth during Henry's last illness. The letter to Barclay Fox, which I have referred to above (p. 61), is given at length. A remark of Sterling's is quoted, which corroborates what I have already said as to Mill's want of concreteness : — " Mill has singularly little sense of the con- crete, and, though possessing deep feeling, has little poetry ". He had, it seems to me, the sense and the feeling, but not the power of expression, or of concrete embodiment in language — which is the distinctive mark of the poetic genius. He was born to read, and not to write, poetry. A few lines on Mill's influence, past, present, and future, will bring our sketch to a close. Not that the topic has been left hitherto untouched; but that an express reference will serve to bring up a few novel illustrations. It is not for the opportunity of contradicting former opinions respecting him, but because the polemic and criticism of others are often more suggestive than mere exposition, that I quote 192 INFLUENCE UNDERESTIMATED. 1849-1872. some of the unfavourable estimates of his character and influ- ence. His great friend, Nassau Senior — a man of various ac- complishments and of large acquaintance with people — spoke of him thus, in 1844, in a letter to the Editor of the Edin- burgh : — " Factory labour must be left to Mill. He will be ingenious and original, though I own I do not quite trust his good sense. He has been bitten by Carlyle and Torrens, and is apt to puzzle himself by the excess of his own ingenuity. Like Ricardo too, he wants * keeping ', He does not cut a knot which is insoluble ; but lets a real, but comparatively unimportant difficulty stand in the way of practical action." This is a specimen of a kind of criticism that I have often heard regarding Mill. It was really a mode of expressing difference of judgment on particular points. Mill was no doubt at times unpractical, but so, in my humble opinion, was Senior. I have met him occasionally, and admired him as a converser ; but I never saw any great wisdom in his political views. If I were to give an example, it would be Kis persistently recom- mending for years the endowment of the Irish Roman Catholic Priests from the public exchequer. A still more decisively unfavourable judgment is passed upon Mill's influence by his critic in the Edinburgh Review. " In truth, if the whole work of his life be examined, it will be found to be eminently destructive, but not to contain one practical constructive idea." This comes to the very point that I wish to start from. It lays out his two sides — destructive and constructive — and pronounces distinctly upon each. His destructive agency has undoubtedly been great ; but it is still unexhausted, and is difficult to estimate with precision. His influence must be taken along with Bentham's and his father's ; and a more formidable trio, for the work of pulling down rotten structures, never came together. But it would be a monstrous perversion of fact to call them nothing but de- stroyers. In politics, everything must be done by co-operation, and POLITICAL MOVEMENTS. 193 single individuals can rarely claim an undivided merit. If, however, what Mill says of the part he took in supporting Lord Durham, in the London and Westminster Review^ is proof against refutation, he has rendered a great service to the world in one important region of affairs. His words are: — "Lord Durham's re^port, written by Charles BuUer, partly under the inspiration of Wakefield, began a new era; its recommendations, extending to complete internal self-government, were in full operation in Canada within two or three years, and have been since extended to nearly all the other colonies of European race, which have any claim to the character of important communi- ties. And I may say that in successfully upholding the reputa- tion of Lord Durham and his advisers at the most important moment, I contributed materially to this result." I call the whole of his doctrines regarding the greatest poli- tical problem of all — the elevating of the class that needs to be elevated — in an eminent degree sound in themselves and pro- lific of the best consequences, although we may not be able to single out any one distinctive or separate result. When both parties in the State were helping to poison and delude the working men, he (after his father) was steadily occupied in sweeping away the refuges of lies — in teaching them self- dependence, and in warning them against bubbles and expec- tations of immediate relief. He dared to tell them, as well as other people, unpalatable truths ; and but, for his teaching, the Chartism of the thirties might have been far more perilous. Whatever may be the view taken of the political claims put forward in behalf of women, it will be allowed that Mill has done more than any single person for the bread-earners of the sex. The cold philosophy of Sir James Stephen would not have taken the place of his apostolic zeal, in obtaining the concessions of the last few years for bettering the education of women, and for widening the spheres of their industry. Mill, having not only inherited, but also shared, his father's responsibility in urging upon this country a great extension of 13 194 DANGER OF THE POWER OF NUMBERS. 1849-1872. the suffrage, considered it a part of his calling to set forth all the possible dangers of placing power in the hands of the ma- jority. He gave his first note of warning on this point, in the Bentham article ; the topic came up again in his reviews of De Tocqueville, and is treated at length in the Representative Government. Although, in point of fact, the transfer of power has gone on, as is usual, through the scramble of parties, by flukes and leaps in the dark, these warnings are not thrown away. At our present stage, we have not been able to con- ceive, still less to set up, an ideal minority that shall be more faithful to our collective interests than an actual majority. All the governing minorities, hitherto, have looked chiefly to themselves ; -and consequently the greater the extension of the suffrage, the fewer are the neglected interests. Mill is exceed- ingly sensitive to the welfare of small minorities, who have so little chance under the government of a majority; though, of course, equally ill off under a minority distinct from them- selves. The great advantage of democracy is that all classes have votes, and can thus make their influence felt ; minorities cannot have the absolute rule, but they can club with other minorities and make terms with the preponderating body, be- fore contributing to place it in power. That the working class, having the absolute majority of votes, may band themselves on their class interest, and seize the reins of power to the exclusion of property and capital, is at the present moment chimerical. The elder Mill's faith in the influence of the rfiiddle class, which combines wealth and intelHgence with no small numerical force, stands good, so far as we have gone yet : the government is still upon their shoulders, although subject to great upper-class control. Nevertheless, we are none the worse for his son's elaborate examination of the evils that may possibly arise from the sway of mere numbers. So much in answer to the question — what has Mill done by way of construction in social philosophy? His constructiveness in other branches is less ambiguous ; I mention for the last INFLUENCE BY MULTITUDE OF SMALL IMPR:£SSI0NS. 1 95 time, but without further comment, the Logic of Induc- tion. Although in order to a permanent reputation, it is necessary to produce a work great in itself and of exclusive authorship, yet this is not the only way that original power manifests ' itself. A multitude of small impressions liiay have the accumu- lated effect of a mighty whole. Who shall sum up Mill's collective influence as an instructor in Politics, Ethics, Logic, and Metaphysics ? No calculus can integrate the innumerable little pulses of knowledge and of thought that he has made to vibrate in the minds of his generation. The united careers of the two Mills covered exactly a cen- tury. A day chosen between the 23rd April and the 7th May, 1973, would serve as a double centenary, when their conjoint influence might be finally summed up. APPENDIX. J. E. Cairnes on Mill's Political Economy. As I have been able to say very little on Mill as a Political Economist, I am happy in being able to quote the estimate formed of him in this capa- city by his friend, Cairnes. It was one of a series of notices of Mill's labours published in the Examiner after his death. The task of fairly estimating the value of Mr. Mill's achievements in Political Economy— and, indeed, the same remark applies to what he has done in every department of philosophy— is rendered particularly difficult by a circumstance which constitutes their principal merit. The character of his intellectual, no less than of his moral nature, led him to strive to connect his thoughts, whatever was the branch of knowledge at which he laboured, with the previously existing body of speculation, to fit them into the same framework, and exhibit them as parts of the same scheme ; so that it might be truly said of him that he was at more pains to conceal the originality and independent value of his contributions to the stock of knowledge than most writers are to set forth those qualities in their compositions. As a consequence of this, hasty readers of his works, while recognizing the com- prehensiveness of his mind, have sometimes denied its originality ; and in political economy in particular he has been frequently represented as little more than an expositor and populariser of Ricardo. It cannot be denied that there is a show of truth in this representation ; about as much as there would be in asserting that Laplace and Herschell were the expositors and popularizers of Newton, or that Faraday performed a like office for Sir Humphrey Davy. In truth, this is an incident of all progressive science. The cultivators in each age may, in a sense, be said to be the interpreters and popularizers of those who have preceded them ; and it is in this sense, and in this sense only, that this part can be attributed to Mill. In this respect he is to be strongly contrasted with the great majority of writers on political economy, who, on the strength, perhaps, of a verbal correction, or an unimportant qualification, of a received doctrine, if not on the score of a pure fallacy, would fain persuade us that they have achieved a revolu- tion in economic doctrine, and that the entire science must be rebuilt from I9S APPENDIX. its foundation in conformity with their scheme. This sort of thing has done infinite mischief to the progress of economic science ; and one of Mill's great merits is that both by example and by precept he steadily discounten- anced it. His anxiety to affiliate his own speculations to those of his predecessors is a marked feature in all his philosophical works, and illus- trates at once the modesty and comprehensiveness of his mind. It is quite true that Mill, as an economist, was largely indebted to Eicardo, and he has so fully and frequently acknowledged the debt that there is some danger of rating the obligation too highly. As he himself used to put it, Ricardo supplied the back-bone of the science ; but it is not less certain that the limbs, the joints, the muscular developments — all that renders political economy a complete and organized body of knowledge — have been the work of Mill. In Ricardo's great work the fundamental doctrines of production, distribution, and exchange, have been laid down, but for the most part in mere outline, so much so that superficial students are in general wholly unable to connect his statement of principles with the facts, as we find them, of industrial life. Hence, we have inniimerable ** refutations of Ricardo " — almost invariably refutations of the writers' own misconceptions. In Mill's exposition the connexion between principles and facts becomes clear and intelligible. The conditions and modes of action are exhibited by which human wants and desires — the motive powers of industry— come to issue in the actual phenomena of wealth ; and Poli- tical Economy becomes a system of doctrines susceptible of direct applica- tion to human affairs. As an example, I may refer to Mill's development of Ricardo's doctrine of foreign trade. In Ricardo's pages the fundamental principles of that department of exchange are indeed laid down with a master's hand ; but, for the majority of readers, they have little relation to the actual commerce of the world. Turn to Mill, and all becomes clear. Principles of the most abstract kind are translated into concrete language, and brought to explain familiar facts, and this result is achieved, not simply or chiefly by virtue of mere lucidity of exposition, but through the discovery and exhibition of modifying conditions and links in the chain of causes overlooked by Ricardo, It, was in his Essays on Unsettled Questions in Political Economy that his views upon this subject were first given to the world— a work of which M. Cherbuliez of Geneva, speaks as " un travail le plus important et le plus original dont la science 6conomique se soit enrichie depuis une vingtaine d'annees "- On some points, however, and these points of supreme importance, the contributions of Mill to economic science are very much more than develop- ments—even though we understand that term in its largest sense-rof any previous writer. No one can have studied political economy in the works of its earlier cultivators without being struck with the dreariness of the CAIRNES ON mill's POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 99 outlook which, in the main, it discloses for the human race. "^It seems to fjave been Ricardo's deliberate opinion that a substantial improvement in the condition of the mass of mankind was impossible. He considered it as the normal state of things that wages should be at the minimum requisite to support the labourer in physical health and strength, and to enable him to bring up a family large enough to supply the wants of the labour market. A temporary improvement, indeed, as the consequence of ex- panding commerce and growing capital, he saw that there might be ; but he held that the force of the principle of population was always powerful enough so to augment the supply of labour as to bring wages ever again down to the minimum point. So completely had this belief become a fixed idea in Ricardo's mind, that he confidently drew from it the consequence that in no case could taxation fall on the labourer, since — living, as u normal state ot things, on the lowest possible stipend adequate to maintain him and his family— he would inevitably, he argued, transfer the burden to his employer, and a tax, nominally on wages, would, in the result, become invariably a tax upon profits. On this point Mill's doctrine leads to conclusions directly opposed to Ricardo's, and to those of most preceding economists. And it will illustrate his position as a thinker, in relation to them, if we note how this result was obtained. Mill neither denied the premises nor disputed the logic of Ricardo's argument ; he accepted both \ and in particular he recognized fully the force of the principle of popula- tion ; but he took account of a further premiss which Ricardo had over- looked, and which, duly weighed, led to a reversal of Ricardo's conclusion. The minimum of wages, even such as it exists in the case of the worst paid labourer, ia not the very least sum that human nature can subsist upon ; it is something more than this j in the case of all above the worst paid class it is decidedly more. The minimum is, in truth, not a physical, but a moral minimitm, and, as such, is capable of being altered with the changes in the moral character of those whom it affects. In a word, each class has a certain standard of comfort below which it will not consent to live, or, at least, to multiply — a standard, however, not fixed, but liable to modifica- tion with the changing circumstances of society, and which in the case of a progressive community is, in point of fact, constantly rising, as moral and intellectual influences are brought more and more effectually to bear on the masses of the people. This was the new premiss brought by Mill to the elucidation of the wages question, and it sufficed to change the entire aspect of human life regarded from the point of view of Political Economy. The practical deductions made from it were set forth in the celebrated chapter on "The Future of the Industrial Classes" — a chapter which, it is no exaggeration to say, places a gulf between Mill and all who preceded him, and opens an entirely new vista to economic speculation. 200 APPENDIX. The doctrine of the science with which Mill's name has been most pro- minently associated, within the last few years, is that which relates to the economic nature of land, and the consequences to which this should lead in practical legislation. It is very commonly believed that on this point Mill has started aside from the beaten highway of economic thought, and pro- pounded views wholly at variance with those generally entertained by orthodox economists. No economist need be told that this is an entire mistake. In truth there is no portion of the economic field in which Mill's originality is less conspicuous than in that which deals with the land. His assertion of the peculiar nature of landed property, and again his doctrine as to the ** unearned increment " of value arising from land with the growth of society, are simply direct deductions from Ricardo's theory of rent, and cannot be consistently denied by any one who accepts that theory. All that Mill has done here has been to point the application of principles, all but universally accepted, to the practical affairs of life. This is not the place to consider how far the plan proposed by him for this purpose is susceptible of practical realization ; but it may at least be confidently stated that the scientific basis on which his proposal rests is no strange novelty invented by him, but simply a principle as fundamental and widely recog- nized as any within the range of the science of which it forms a part. I have just remarked that Mill's originality is less conspicuous in relation to the economic theory of land than in other problems of Political Economy; but the reader must not understand me from this to say that he has not very largely contributed to the elucidation of this topic. He has indeed done so, though not, as is commonly supposed, by setting aside principles established by his predecessors, but, as his manner was, while accepting those principles, by introducing a new premiss into the argument. The new premiss introduced in this case was the influence of custom as modify- ing the action of competition. The existence of an active competition, on the one hand between farmers seeking farms, on the other between farming and other modes of industry as offering inducements to the investment of capital, is a constant assumption in the reasoning by which Ricardo arrived at his theory of rent. Granting this assumption, it followed that farmers, as a rule, would pay neither higher nor lower rents than would leave them in possession of the average profits on their capital current in the country. Mill fully acknowledged the force of this reasoning, and accepted the con- clusion as true wherever the conditions assumed were realized ; but he proceeded to point out that, in point of fact, the conditions are not realized over the greater portion of the world, and, as a consequence, that the rent actually paid by the cultivators to the owners of the soil, by no means, as a general rule, corresponds with that portion of the produce which Ricardo considered as properly " rent ", The real regulator of actual rent over the CAIRNES ON MILLS POLITICAL ECONOMY. 201 greater part of the habitable globe was, he showed, not competition, but custom ; and he further pointed out that there are countries in which the actual rent paid by the cultivators is governed neither by the causes set forth by Ricardo, nor yet by custom, but by a third cause different from either — the absolute will of the owners of the soil, controlled only by the physical exigencies of the cultivator, or by the fear of his vengeance if disturbed in his holding. The recognition of this state of things threw an entirely new light over the whole problem of land tenure, and plainly furnished grounds for legislative interference in the contracts between land- lords and tenants. Its application to Ireland was obvious, and Mill himself, as the world knows, did not hesitate to urge the application with all the energy and enthusiasm which he invariably threw into every cause that he espoused. In the above remarks I have attempted to indicate briefly some few of the salient features in Mill's contributions to the science of political eco- noi^iy. There is still one more which ought not to be omitted from even th6 most meagre summary. Mill was not the first to treat political economy as a science, but he was the first, if not to perceive, at least to enforce the lesson, that, just because it is a science, its conclusions carried with them no obligatory force with reference to human conduct. As a science it tells us that certain modes of action lead to certain results ; but it remains for each man to judge of the value of the results thus brought about, and to decide whether or not it is worth while to adopt the means necessary for their attainment. In the writings of the economists who preceded Mill it is very generally assumed, that to prove that a certain course of conduct tends to the most rapid increase of wealth suffices to entail upon all who accept the argument the obligation of adopting the course which leads to this result. Mill absolutely repudiated this inference, and while accepting the theoretic conclusion, held himself perfectly free to adopt in practice whatever course he preferred. It was not for political economy or for any science to say what are the ends most worthy of being pursued by human beings : the task of science is complete when it shows us the means by which the ends may be attained ; but it is for each individual man to decide how far the end is desirable at the cost which its attainment involves. In a word, the sciences should be our servants, and not our masters." This was a lesson which Mill was the first to enforce, and by enforcing which he may be said to have emancipated economists from the thraldom of their own teaching. It is in no slight degree, through the constant recognition of its truth, that he has been enabled to divest of repulsiveness even the most abstract speculations, and to impart a glow of human interest to all that he has touched. By the same Author, A FIRST ENGLISH GRAMMAR,. . . \s. i^. 4Sth Thousand. A KEY WITH ADDITIONAL EXERCISES, xs.gd. A HIGHER ENGLISH GRAMMAR, . 2s. 6d. 40th Thousand of Revised Edition. 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