Chapter II: Part 2

It is little to say, that my own friendship with him was, from first to last, never once ruffled by difference or misunderstanding of any kind. Differences of opinion we had in abundance; but my open avowal of them was always recognized by him as one of the strongest proofs of respect, and served to cement instead of weakening our attachment.[1] The nearest approach made throughout our intercourse to any thing of an unpleasant character was about the time of his retirement from the India House. Talking over that one day with two or three of my colleagues, I said it would not do to let Mill go without receiving some permanently-visible token of our regard. The motion was no sooner made than it was carried by acclamation. Every member of the examiners' office--for we jealously insisted on confining the affair to ourselves--came tendering his subscription, scarcely waiting to be asked; in half an hour's time some fifty or sixty pounds--I forget the exact sum--was collected, which in due course was invested in a superb silver inkstand, designed by our friend, Digby Wyatt, and manufactured by Messrs. Elkington. Before it was ready, however, an unexpected trouble arose. In some way or other, Mill had got wind of our proceeding, and, coming to me in consequence, began almost to upbraid me as its originator. I had never before seen him so angry. He hated all such demonstrations, he said, and was quite resolved not to be made the subject of them. He was sure they were never altogether genuine or spontaneous; there were always several persons who took part in them merely because they did not like to refuse; and, in short, whatever we might do, he would have none of it. In vain I represented how eagerly everybody, without exception, had come forward; that we had now gone too far to recede; that, if he would not take the inkstand, we should be utterly at a loss what to do with it; and that I myself should be in a specially embarrassing position. Mill was not to be moved. This was a question of principle, and on principle he could not give way. There was nothing left, therefore, but resort to a species of force. I arranged with Messrs. Elkington that our little testimonial should be taken down to Mr. Mill's house at Blackheath by one of their men, who, after leaving it with the servant, should hurry away without waiting for an answer. This plan succeeded; but I have always suspected, though she never told me so, that its success was mainly due to Miss Helen Taylor's good offices. But for her, the inkstand would almost certainly have been returned, instead of being promoted, as it eventually was, to a place of honor in her own and her father's drawing-room.

Mine is scarcely just now the mood in which I should have been naturally disposed to relate anecdotes like this; but, in the execution of my present task, I have felt bound chiefly to consider what would be likely to interest the reader.

W.T. THORNTON.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I may be permitted here, without Mr. Thornton's
knowledge, to recall a remark made by Mr. Mill only a few
weeks ago. We were speaking of Mr. Thornton's recently
published "Old-fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense
Metaphysics," when I remarked on Mr. Mill's wide divergence
from most of the views contained in it. "Yes," he replied,
"it is pleasant to find _something_ on which to differ from
Thornton." Mr. Mill's prompt recognition of the importance
of Mr. Thornton's refutation of the wage-fund theory is only
one out of numberless instances of his peculiar
magnanimity.--B.

III.

HIS MORAL CHARACTER.

To dilate upon Mr. Mill's achievements, and to insist upon the wideness of his influence over the thought of his time and consequently over the actions of his time, seems to me scarcely needful. The facts are sufficiently obvious, and are recognized by all who know any thing about the progress of opinion during the last half century. My own estimate of him, intellectually considered, has been emphatically though briefly given on an occasion of controversy between us, by expressing my regret at 'having to contend against the doctrine of one whose agreement I should value more than that of any other thinker.'

While, however, it is almost superfluous to assert of him that intellectual height so generally admitted there is more occasion for drawing attention to a moral elevation that is less recognized partly because his activities in many directions afforded no occasion for exhibiting it, and partly because some of its most remarkable manifestations in conduct are known only to those whose personal relations with him have called them forth. I feel especially prompted to say something on this point, because, where better things might have been expected, there has been, not only a grudging recognition of intellectual rank, but a marked blindness to those fine traits of character, which, in the valuation of men, must go for more than superiority of intelligence.

It might indeed have been supposed, that even those who never enjoyed the pleasure of personal acquaintance with Mr. Mill would have been impressed with the nobility of his nature as indicated in his opinions and deeds. How entirely his public career has been determined by a pure and strong sympathy for his fellow men, how entirely this sympathy has subordinated all desires for personal advantage, how little even the fear of being injured in reputation or position has deterred him from taking the course which he thought equitable or generous--ought to be manifest to every antagonist, however bitter. A generosity that might almost be called romantic was obviously the feeling prompting sundry of those courses of action which have been commented upon as errors. And nothing like a true conception of him can be formed, unless, along with dissent from them, there goes recognition of the fact that they resulted from the eagerness of a noble nature impatient to rectify injustice and to further human welfare.

It may perhaps be that my own perception of this pervading warmth of feeling has been sharpened by seeing it exemplified, not in the form of expressed opinions only, but in the form of private actions, for Mr. Mill was not one of those, who, to sympathy with their fellow men in the abstract, join indifference to them in the concrete. There came from him generous acts that corresponded with his generous sentiments. I say this, not from second-hand knowledge, but having in mind a remarkable example known only to myself and a few friends. I have hesitated whether to give this example, seeing that it has personal implications. But it affords so clear an insight into Mr. Mill's character, and shows so much more vividly than any description could do how fine were the motives swaying his conduct, that I think the occasion justifies disclosure of it.

Some seven years ago, after bearing as long as was possible the continued losses entailed on me by the publication of the "System of Philosophy," I notified to the subscribers that I should be obliged to cease at the close of the volume then in progress. Shortly after the issue of this announcement I received from Mr. Mill a letter, in which, after expressions of regret, and after naming a plan which he wished to prosecute for re-imbursing me, he went on to say, "In the next place ... what I propose is, that you should write the next of your treatises, and that I should guarantee the publisher against loss; i.e., should engage, after such length of time as may be agreed on, to make good any deficiency that may occur, not exceeding a given sum,--that sum being such as the publisher may think sufficient to secure him." Now, though these arrangements were of kinds that I could not bring myself to yield to, they none the less profoundly impressed me with Mr. Mill's nobility of feeling, and his anxiety to further what he regarded as a beneficial end. Such proposals would have been remarkable even had there been entire agreement of opinion, but they were the more remarkable as being made by him under the consciousness that there existed between us certain fundamental differences, openly avowed. I had, both directly and by implication, combated that form of the experiential theory of human knowledge which characterizes Mr. Mill's philosophy: in upholding Realism, I had opposed in decided ways those metaphysical systems to which his own Idealism was closely allied; and we had long carried on a controversy respecting the test of truth, in which I had similarly attacked Mr. Mill's positions in an outspoken manner. That, under such circumstances, he should have volunteered his aid, and urged it upon me, as he did, on the ground that it would not imply any personal obligation, proved in him a very exceptional generosity.

Quite recently I have seen afresh illustrated this fine trait,--this ability to bear with unruffled temper, and without any diminution of kindly feeling, the publicly-expressed antagonism of a friend. The last evening I spent at his house was in the company of another invited guest, who, originally agreeing with him entirely on certain disputed questions, had some fortnight previously displayed his change of view,--nay, had publicly criticised some of Mr. Mill's positions in a very undisguised manner. Evidently, along with his own unswerving allegiance to truth, there was in Mr. Mill an unusual power of appreciating in others a like conscientiousness, and so of suppressing any feeling of irritation produced by difference,--suppressing it, not in appearance only, but in reality, and that, too, under the most trying circumstances.

I should say indeed, that Mr. Mill's general characteristic, emotionally considered, was an unusual predominance of the higher sentiments,--a predominance which tended, perhaps, both in theory and practice, to subordinate the lower nature unduly. That rapid advance of age which has been conspicuous for some years past, and which doubtless prepared the way for his somewhat premature death, may, I think, be regarded as the outcome of a theory of life which made learning and working the occupations too exclusively considered. But when we ask to what ends he acted out this theory, and in so doing too little regarded his bodily welfare, we see that even here the excess, if such we call it, was a noble one. Extreme desire to further human welfare was that to which he sacrificed himself.

HERBERT SPENCER.

IV.

HIS BOTANICAL STUDIES.

If we would have a just idea of any man's character, we should view it from as many points, and under as many aspects, as we can. The side-lights thrown by the lesser occupations of a life are often very strong, and bring out its less obvious parts into startling prominence. Much especially is to be learned of character by taking into consideration the employment of times of leisure or relaxation; the occupation of such hours being due almost solely to the natural bent of the individual, without the interfering action of necessity or expediency. Most men, perhaps especially eminent men, have a "hobby",--some absorbing object, the pursuit of which forms the most natural avocation of their mind, and to which they turn with the certainty of at least satisfaction, if not of exquisite pleasure. The man who follows any branch of natural science in this way is almost always especially happy in its prosecution; and his mental powers are refreshed and invigorated for the more serious and engrossing if less congenial occupation of his life. Mr. Mill's hobby was practical field botany; surely in all ways one very well suited to him.

Of the tens of thousands who are acquainted with the philosophical writings of Mr. Mill, there are probably few beyond the circle of his personal friends who are aware that he was also an author in a modest way on botanical subjects, and a keen searcher after wild plants. His short communications on botany were chiefly if not entirely published in a monthly magazine called "The Phytologist," edited, from its commencement in 1841, by the late George Luxford, till his death, in 1854, and afterwards conducted by Mr. A. Irvine of Chelsea, an intimate friend of Mr. Mill's, till its discontinuance in 1863. In the early numbers of this periodical especially will be found frequent notes and short papers on the facts of plant distribution brought to light by Mr. Mill during his botanical rambles. His excursions were chiefly in the county of Surrey, and especially in the neighborhood of Guildford and the beautiful vale of the Sittingbourne, where he had the satisfaction of being the first to notice several plants of interest, as _Polygonum dumetorum_, _Isatis tinctoria_, and _Impatiens fulva_, an American species of balsam, affording a very remarkable example of complete naturalization in the Wey and other streams connected with the lower course of the Thames. Mr. Mill says he first observed this interloper in 1822 at Albury, a date which probably marks about the commencement of his botanical investigations, if not that of the first notice of the plant in this country. Mr. Mill's copious MS lists of observations in Surrey were subsequently forwarded to the late Mr. Salmon of Godalming, and have been since published with the large collection of facts made by that botanist in the "Flora of Surrey," printed under the auspices of the Holmesdale (Reigate) Natural History Club. Mr. Mill also contributed to the same scientific magazine some short notes on Hampshire botany, and is believed to have helped in the compilation of Mr. G.G. Mill's "Catalogue of the Plants of Great Marlow, Bucks."

The mere recording of isolated facts of this kind of course affords no scope for any style in composition. It may, however, be thought worth while to reproduce here the concluding paragraph of a short article on "Spring Flowers in the South of Europe," as a sample of Mr. Mill's popular manner, as well as for its own sake as a fine description of a matchless scene. He is describing the little mountain range of Albano, beloved of painters, and, after comparing its vernal flora with that in England, goes on:--

'If we would ascend the highest member of the mountain group,
the Monte Cavo, we must make the circuit of the north flank
of the mountains of Marino, on the edge of the Albano Lake,
and Rocca di Tassa, a picturesque village in the hollow
mountain side, from which we climb through woods, abounding
in _Galanthus nivalis_ and _Corydalis cava_, to that summit
which was the _arx_ of Jupiter Latialis, and to which the
thirty Latian cities ascended in solemn procession to offer
their annual sacrifice. The place is now occupied by a
convent, under the wall of which I gathered _Orinthogalum
nutans_; and from its neighborhood I enjoyed a panoramic
view, surely the most glorious, in its combination of
natural beauty and grandeur of historical recollections, to
be found anywhere on earth. The eye ranged from Terracina on
one side to Veii on the other, and beyond Veii to the hills
of Sutrium and Nepete, once covered by the Cimmian forests,
then deemed an impenetrable barrier between the interior of
Etruria and Rome. Below my feet the Alban mountain, with all
its forest-covered folds, and in one of them the dark-blue
Lake of Nemi; that of Albano, I think, was invisible. To the
north, in the dim distance, the Eternal City, to the west
the eternal sea, for eastern boundary, the long line of
Sabine mountains from Soracte past Tibur and away towards
Proeneste. The range then passed behind the Alban group, but
re-appeared to the south-east as the mountain crescent of
Cora and Pometia, enclosing between its horns the Pontine
marshes, which lay spread out below as far as the sea line,
extending east and west from Terracina in the bay of Fondi,
the Volscian Anxur, to the angle of the coast where rises
suddenly, between the marshes and the sea, the mountain
promontory of Circeii, celebrated alike in history and in
fable. Within the space visible from this one point, the
destinies of the human race were decided. It took the Romans
nearly five hundred years to vanquish and incorporate the
warlike tribes who inhabited that narrow tract, but, this
being accomplished, two hundred more sufficed them to
complete the conquest of the world.

During the frequent and latterly prolonged residence at Avignon, Mr. Mill, carrying on his botanical propensities, had become very well acquainted with the vegetation of the district, and at the time of his death had collected a mass of notes and observations on the subject. It is believed to have been his intention to have printed these as the foundation of a flora of Avignon.

In the slight contributions to the literature of botany made by Mr. Mill, there is nothing which gives any inkling of the great intellectual powers of their writer. Though always clear and accurate, they are merely such notes as any working botanical collector is able to supply in abundance. Mainly content with the pursuit as an outdoor occupation, with such an amount of home work as was necessary to determine the names and affinities of the species, Mr. Mill never penetrated deeply into the philosophy of botany, so as to take rank among those who have, like Herbert Spencer, advanced that science by original work either of experiment or generalization, or have entered into the battle-field where the great biological questions of the day are being fought over. The writer of this notice well remembers meeting, a few years since, the (at that time) parliamentary logician, with his trousers turned up out of the mud, and armed with the tin insignia of his craft, busily occupied in the search after a marsh-loving rarity in a typical spongy wood on the clay to the north of London.

But however followed, the investigation of nature cannot fail to influence the mind in the direction of a more just appreciation of the necessity of system in arrangement, and of the principles which must regulate all attempts to express notions of system in a classification. Traces of this are not difficult to find in Mr. Mill's writings. It may be safely stated, that the chapters on classification in the "Logic" would not have taken the form they have, had not the writer been a naturalist as well as a logician. The views expressed so clearly in these chapters are chiefly founded on the actual needs experienced by the systematic botanist; and the argument is largely sustained by references to botanical systems and arrangements. Most botanists agree with Mr. Mill in his objections to Dr. Whewell's views of a natural classification by resemblance to "types," instead of in accordance with well-selected characters; and indeed the whole of these chapters are well deserving the careful study of naturalists, notwithstanding that the wonderfully rapid progress in recent years of new ideas, lying at the very root of all the natural sciences, may be thought by some to give the whole argument, in spite of its logical excellence, a somewhat antiquated flavor. How fully Mr. Mill recognized the great importance of the study of biological classifications, and the influence such a study must have had on himself, may be judged from the following quotation:--

"Although the scientific arrangements of organic nature
afford as yet the only complete example of the true
principles of rational classification, whether as to the
formation of groups or of series, those principles are
applicable to all cases in which mankind are called upon to
bring the various parts of any extensive subject into mental
co-ordination. They are as much to the point when objects
are to be classed for purposes of art or business as for
those of science. The proper arrangement, for example, of a
code of laws, depends on the same scientific conditions as
the classifications in natural history; nor could there be a
better preparatory discipline for that important function
than the study of the principles of a natural arrangement,
not only in the abstract, but in their actual application to
the class of phenomena for which they were first elaborated,
and which are still the best school for learning their use.
Of this, the great authority on codification, Bentham, was
perfectly aware; and his early 'Fragment on Government,' the
admirable introduction to a series of writings unequalled in
their department, contains clear and just views (as far as
they go) on the meaning of a natural arrangement, such as
could scarcely have occurred to any one who lived anterior
to the age of Linnaeus and Bernard de Jussieu" (_System of
Logic_, ed. 6, ii., p. 288).

HENRY TRIMEN.

V

HIS PLACE AS A CRITIC

Mr. Mill's achievements as an economist, logician, psychologist, and politician are known more or less vaguely to all educated men; but his capacity and his actual work as a critic are comparatively little regarded. In the three volumes of his collected miscellaneous writings, very few of the papers are general reviews either of books or of men; and even these volumes derive their character from the essays they contain on the severer subjects with which Mr. Mill's name has been more peculiarly associated. Nobody buys his "Dissertations and Discussions" for the sake of his theory of poetry, or his essays on Armand Carrel and Alfred de Vigny, noble though these are in many ways. His essay on Coleridge is very celebrated; but it deals, not with Coleridge's place as a poet, but with his place as a thinker--with Coleridge as the antagonistic power to Bentham in forming the opinions of the generation now passing away. Still at such a time as this it is interesting to make some endeavor to estimate the value of what Mr. Mill has done in the way of criticism. It is at least worth while to examine whether one who has shown himself capable of grappling effectively with the driest and most abstruse problems that vex the human intellect was versatile enough to study poetry with an understanding heart, and to be alive to the distinctive powers of individual poets.

It was in his earlier life, when his enthusiasm for knowledge was fresh, and his active mind, "all as hungry as the sea," was reaching out eagerly and strenuously to all sorts of food for thought,--literary, philosophical, and political,--that Mr. Mill set himself, among other things, to study and theorize upon poetry and the arts generally. He could hardly have failed to know the most recent efflorescence of English poetry, living as he did in circles where the varied merits of the new poets were largely and keenly discussed. He had lived also for some time in France, and was widely read in French poetry. He had never passed through the ordinary course of Greek and Latin at school and college, but he had been taught by his father to read these languages, and had been accustomed from the first to regard their literature as literature, and to read their poetry as poetry. These were probably the main elements of his knowledge of poetry. But it was not his way to dream or otherwise luxuriate over his favorite poets for pure enjoyment. Mr. Mill was not a cultivator of art for art's sake. His was too fervid and militant a soul to lose itself in serene love and culture of the calmly beautiful. He read poetry for the most part with earnest, critical eye, striving to account for it, to connect it with the tendencies of the age, or he read to find sympathy with his own aspirations after heroic energy. He read De Vigny and other French poets of his generation, with an eye to their relations to the convulsed and struggling state of France, and because they were compelled by their surroundings to take life _au serieux_, and to pursue, with all the resources of their art, something different from beauty in the abstract. Luxurious passive enjoyment or torpid half-enjoyment must have been a comparatively rare condition of his finely-strung, excitable, and fervid system. I believe that his moral earnestness was too imperious to permit much of this. He was capable indeed of the most passionate admiration of beauty, but even that feeling seems to have been interpenetrated by a certain militant apostolic fervor; his love was as the love of a religious soldier for a patron saint who extends her aid and countenance to him in his wars. I do not mean to say that his mind was in a perpetual glow: I mean only that this surrender to impassioned transports was more characteristic of the man than serene openness to influx of enjoyment. His "Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties," while clear and strenuous as most of his thoughts were, are neither scientifically precise, nor do they contain any notable new idea not previously expressed by Coleridge, except perhaps the idea, that emotions are the main links of association in the poetic mind: still his working out of the definition of poetry, his distinction between novels and poems, and between poetry and eloquence, is interesting as throwing light upon his own poetic susceptibilities. He holds that poetry is the delineation of the deeper and more secret workings of human emotion. It is curious to find one who is sometimes assailed as the advocate of a grovelling philosophy complaining that the chivalrous spirit has almost disappeared from books of education, that the youth of both sexes of the educated classes are growing up unromantic. "Catechisms," he says, "will be found a poor substitute for the old romances, whether of chivalry or faery, which, if they did not give a true picture of actual life, did not give a false one, since they did not profess to give any, but (what was much better) filled the youthful imagination with pictures of heroic men, and of what are at least as much wanted,--heroic women."

If Mr. Mill did not love poetry with a purely disinterested love, but with an eye to its moral causes and effects, neither did he study character from mere delight in observing the varieties of mankind. Armand Carrel the Republican journalist, Alfred de Vigny the Royalist poet, Coleridge the Conservative, and Bentham the Reformer, are taken up and expounded, not as striking individuals, but as types of influences and tendencies. This habit of keeping in view mind in the abstract, or men in the aggregate, may have been in a large measure a result of his education by his father; but I am inclined to think that he was of too ardent and pre-occupied a disposition, perhaps too much disposed to take favorable views of individuals, to be very sensitive to differences of character. It should not, however, be forgotten that in one memorable case he showed remarkable discrimination. Soon after Mr. Tennyson published his second issue of poems, Mr. Mill reviewed them in "The Westminster Review" for July, 1835, and, with his usual earnestness and generosity, applied all his powers to making a just estimate of the new aspirant. To have reprinted this among his miscellaneous writings might have seemed rather boastful, as claiming credit for the first full recognition of a great poet: still it is a very remarkable review; and one would hope it will not be omitted if there is to be any further collection of his casual productions. I shall quote two passages which seem obvious enough now, but which required true insight, as well as courageous generosity, to write them in 1835--

"Of all the capacities of a poet, that which seems to have
arisen earliest in Mr. Tennyson, and in which he most
excels, is that of scene-painting in the higher sense of the
term; not the mere power of producing that rather vapid
species of composition usually termed descriptive
poetry,--for there is not in these volumes one passage of
pure description,--but the power of creating scenery in
keeping with some state of human feeling, so fitted to it as
to be the embodied symbol of it, and to summon up the state
of feeling itself with a force not to be surpassed by any
thing but reality."

* * * * *

"The poems which we have quoted from Mr. Tennyson prove
incontestably that he possesses in an eminent degree the
natural endowment of a poet,--the poetic temperament. And it
appears clearly, not only from a comparison of the two
volumes, but of different poems in the same volume, that
with him the other element of poetic excellence,
intellectual culture, is advancing both steadily and
rapidly; that he is not destined, like so many others, to be
remembered for what he might have done rather than for what
he did; that he will not remain a poet of mere temperament,
but is ripening into a true artist.... We predict, that, as
Mr. Tennyson advances in general spiritual culture, these
higher aims will become more and more predominant in his
writings; that he will strive more and more diligently, and,
even without striving, will be more and more impelled by the
natural tendencies of an expanding character, towards what
has been described as the highest object of poetry,--'to
incorporate the everlasting reason of man in forms visible
to his sense, and suitable to it.'"

This last sentence might easily be construed into a prediction of "In Memoriam" and "The Idyls of the King."

If it is asked why Mr. Mill, with all his width of knowledge and sympathy, has achieved so little of a reputation as a miscellaneous writer, part of the reason no doubt is, that he sternly repressed his desultory tendencies, and devoted his powers to special branches of knowledge, attaining in them a distinction that obscured his other writings. Another reason is, that, although his style is extremely clear, he was for popular purposes dangerously familiar with terms belonging more or less to the schools. He employed these in literary generalizations, without remembering that they were not equally familiar to his readers; and thus general readers, like Tom Moore, or the author of the recent notice in "The Times," who read more for amusement than instruction, were disposed to consider Mr. Mill's style "vastly unreadable."

W. MINTO.

VI.

HIS WORK IN PHILOSOPHY

To a savage contemplating a railway train in motion, the engine would present itself as the master of the situation,--the determining cause of the motion and direction of the train. It visibly takes the lead, it looks big and important, and it makes a great noise. Even people a long way up in the scale of civilization are in the habit of taking these attributes, perhaps not as the essential ones of leadership, but at all events as those by which a leader may be recognized. Still that blustering machine, which puffs and snorts, and drags a vast multitude in its wake, is moving along a track determined by a man hidden away from the public gaze. A line of rail lies separated from an adjacent one, the pointsman moves a handle, and the foaming giant, that would, it may be, have sped on to his destruction and that of the passive crew who follow in his rear, is shunted to another line running in a different direction and to a more desirable goal.

The great intellectual pointsman of our age--the man who has done more than any other of this generation to give direction to the thought of his contemporaries--has passed away; and we are left to measure the loss to humanity by the result of his labors. Mr. Mill's achievements in both branches of philosophy are such as to give him the foremost place in either. Whether we regard him as an expounder of the philosophy of mind or the philosophy of society, he is _facile princeps_. Still it is his work in mental science which will, in our opinion, be in future looked upon as his great contribution to the progress of thought. His work on political economy not only put into thorough repair the structure raised by Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo, but raised it at least one story higher. His inestimable "System of Logic" was a revolution. It hardly needs, of course, to be said that he owed much to his predecessors,--that he borrowed from Whewell much of his classification, from Brown the chief lines of his theory of causation, from Sir John Herschel the main principles of the inductive methods. Those who think this a disparagement of his work must have very little conception of the mass of original thought that still remains to Mr. Mill's credit, the great critical power that could gather valuable truths from so many discordant sources, and the wonderful synthetic ability required to weld these and his own contributions into one organic whole.

When Mr. Mill commenced his labors, the only logic recognized was the syllogistic. Reasoning consisted solely, according to the then dominant school, in deducing from general propositions other propositions less general. It was even asserted confidently, that nothing more was to be expected,--that an inductive logic was impossible. This conception of logical science necessitated some general propositions to start with; and these general propositions being _ex hypothesi_ incapable of being proved from other propositions, it followed, that, if they were known to us at all, they must be original data of consciousness. Here was a perfect paradise of question begging. The ultimate major premise in every argument being assumed, it could of course be fashioned according to the particular conclusion it was called in to prove. Thus an 'artificial ignorance,' as Locke calls it, was produced, which had the effect of sanctifying prejudice by recognizing so-called necessities of thought as the only bases of reasoning. It is true, that outside of the logic of the schools great advances had been made in the rules of scientific investigation; but these rules were not only imperfect in themselves, but their connection with the law of causation was but imperfectly realized, and their true relation to syllogism hardly dreamt of.

Mr. Mill altered all this. He demonstrated that the general type of reasoning is neither from generals to particulars, nor from particulars to generals, but from particulars to particulars. "If from our experience of John, Thomas, &c., who once were living, but are now dead, we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we might surely, without any logical inconsequence, have concluded at once from those instances, that the Duke of Wellington is mortal. The mortality of John, Thomas, and others is, after all, the whole evidence we have for the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a general proposition." We not only may, according to Mr. Mill, reason from some particular instances to others, but we frequently do so. As, however, the instances which are sufficient to prove one fresh instance must be sufficient to prove a general proposition, it is most convenient to at once infer that general proposition, which then becomes a formula according to which (but not from which) any number of particular inferences may be made. The work of deduction is the interpretation of these formulas, and therefore, strictly speaking, is not inferential at all. The real inference was accomplished when the universal proposition was arrived at.

It will easily be seen that this explanation of the deductive process completely turns the tables on the transcendental school. All reasoning is shown to be at bottom inductive. Inductions and their interpretation make up the whole of logic; and to induction accordingly Mr. Mill devoted his chief attention. For the first time induction was treated as the _opus magnum_ of logic, and the fundamental principles of science traced to their inductive origin. It was this, taken with his theory of the syllogism, which worked the great change. Both his "System of Logic" and his "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy" are for the most part devoted to fortifying this position, and demolishing beliefs inconsistent with it. As a systematic psychologist Mr. Mill has not done so much as either Professor Bain or Mr. Herbert Spencer. The perfection of his method, its application, and the uprooting of prejudices which stood in its way,--this was the task to which Mr. Mill applied himself with an ability and success rarely matched and never surpassed.

The biggest lion in the path was the doctrine of so-called "necessary truth." This doctrine was especially obnoxious to him, as it set up a purely subjective standard of truth, and a standard--as he was easily able to show--varying according to the psychological history of the individual. Such thinkers as Dr. Whewell and Mr. Herbert Spencer had to be met in intellectual combat. Dr. Whewell held, not that the inconceivability of the contradictory of a proposition is a proof of its truth co-equal with experience, but that its value transcends experience. Experience may tell us what _is_; but it is by the impossibility of conceiving it otherwise that we know it _must be_. Mr. Herbert Spencer, too, holds that propositions whose negation is inconceivable have "a higher warrant than any other whatever." It is through this door that ontological belief was supposed to enter. "Things in themselves" were to be believed in because we could not help it. Modern Noumenalists agree that we can know nothing more of "things in themselves" than their existence, but this they continue to assert with a vehemence only equalled by its want of meaning.

In his "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," Mr. Mill gives battle to this mode of thought. After reviewing, in an opening chapter, the various views which have been held respecting the relativity of human knowledge, and stating his own doctrine, he proceeds to judge by this standard the philosophy of the absolute and Sir William Hamilton's relation to it. The argument is really on the question whether we have or have not an intuition of God, though, as Mr. Mill says, "the name of God is veiled under two extremely abstract phrases,--'The Infinite' and 'The Absolute.'" So profound and friendly a thinker as the late Mr. Grote held this raising of the veil inexpedient, but he proved, by a mistake he fell into, the necessity of looking at the matter in the concrete. He acknowledged the force of Mr. Mill's argument, that "The Infinite" must include "a farrago of contradictions;" but so also, he said, does the Finite. Now undoubtedly finite things, taken distributively, have contradictory attributes, but not as a class. Still less is there any one individual thing, "The Finite," in which these contradictory attributes inhere. But it was against a corresponding being, "The Infinite," that Mr. Mill was arguing. It is this that he calls a "fasciculus of contradictions," and regarded as the _reductio ad absurdissimum_ of the transcendental philosophy.

Mr. Mill's religious tendencies may very well be gathered from a passage in his review of Auguste Comte, a philosopher with whom he agreed on all points save those which are specially M. Comte's. "Candid persons of all creeds may be willing to admit, that if a person has an ideal object, his attachment and sense of duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life, that person has a religion; and though every one naturally prefers his own religion to any other, all must admit, that if the object of his attachment, and of this feeling of duty, is the aggregate of our fellow-creatures, this religion of the infidel cannot in honesty and conscience be called an intrinsically bad one. Many indeed may be unable to believe that this object is capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong; but this is exactly the point on which a doubt can hardly remain in an intelligent reader of M. Comte: and we join with him in contemning, as equally irrational and mean, the conception of human nature as incapable of giving its love, and devoting its existence, to any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity of personal enjoyment." Never has the libel of humanity involved in the current theology been more forcibly pointed out, with its constant appeal to low motives of personal gain, or still lower motives of personal fear. Never has the religious sentiment which must take the place of the present awe of the unknown been more clearly indicated. It is this noble sentiment which shines out from every page of Mr. Mill's writings and all his relations to his fellow-creatures: the very birds about his dwelling seemed to recognize it. It is this noble sentiment which infuses a soul of life into his teachings, and the enunciation and acting-out of which constitute him, not only the great philosopher, but also the great prophet of our time.

J. H. LEVY.

VII

HIS STUDIES IN MORALS AND JURISPRUDENCE

The two chief characteristics of Mr. Mill's mind are conspicuous in the field of morals and jurisprudence. He united in an extraordinary degree an intense delight in thinking for its own sake, with an almost passionate desire to make his intellectual excursions contribute to the amelioration of the lot of mankind, especially of the poorer and suffering part of mankind. And yet he never allowed those high aims to clash with one another: he did not degrade his intellect to the sophistical office of finding reasons for a policy arising from mere emotion, nor did he permit it to run waste in barren speculations, which might have excited admiration, but never could have done any good. This is the reason why so many persons have been unable to understand him as the prophet of utilitarianism. A man of such exquisite feeling, of such pure conscientiousness, of such self-denying life, must surely be an advocate of what is called absolute morality. Utilitarianism is the proper creed of hard unemotional natures, who do not respond to the more subtle moral influences. Such is the view natural to those who cannot dissociate the word "utilitarianism" from the narrow meaning of utility, as contrasted with the pleasures of art. The infirmity of human language excuses such errors; for the language in which controversy is conducted is so colored by sentiment that it may well happen that two shall agree on the thing, and fight to the death about the word. We need the support of such reflections when we recall the history of such a word as "pleasure." To pursue pleasure, say the anti-utilitarians, is a swinish doctrine. "Yes," replied Mr. Mill, "if men were swine, and capable only of the pleasures appropriate to that species of animals." Those who could not answer this argument, and at the same time cannot divest themselves of the association of pleasure with the ignoble, took refuge in the charge of inconsistency, and, finding there was not less but more nobility in Mr. Mill's writing than their own theory, accused him of abandoning the tradition of his school. Mahomet would not go to the mountain, and they pleased themselves with the thought that the mountain had gone to Mahomet. Such a charge is really tantamount to a confession that popular antipathy was more easily excited by the word than by the real doctrine. Nevertheless Mr. Mill did an incalculable service in showing not less by his whole life, than by his writings, that utilitarianism takes account of all that is good in man's nature, and includes the highest emotions, as well as those that are more commonplace. He took away a certain reproach of narrowness, which was never in the doctrine, and which was loudly, though perhaps with little reason, urged against some of its most conspicuous supporters. An important addition to the theory of morals is also contained in the book on "Utilitarianism." His analysis of "justice" is one of the happiest efforts of inductive definition to be found in any book on ethics. From any point of view, it must be regarded as a valuable addition to the literature of ethical philosophy.

The somewhat technical subject of jurisprudence was not too much for Mr. Mill's immense power of assimilation. One of his earliest efforts was as editor of Bentham's "Rationale of Judicial Evidence." He must, therefore, at an early period, have been master of the most original and enlightened theory of judicial evidence that the world has seen. He lived to see nearly all the important innovations proposed by Bentham become part and parcel of the law of the land; one of the last relics of bigotry--the exclusion of honest atheists (and only of such) from the witness-box--having been removed two or three years ago. Mr. Mill, in after years, attended Austin's famous lectures on jurisprudence, taking extensive notes; so that he was able to supply the matter wanting to complete two important lectures, as they were printed in the first edition of Austin's works. Among the "Dissertations and Discussions," is a criticism of Austin's work, which shows that he was far more than a scholar,--a most competent judge of his master. He pointed out in Austin's definition of "right" a real defect. One of the points that Austin elaborated most was a classification such as might serve for a scientific code of law. Mr. Mill fully acknowledged the merits of the scheme, but laid his finger unerringly on its weakest part. His remarks show, that, if he had followed up the subject with an adequate knowledge of any good system of law, he would have rivalled or surpassed his achievements in other departments of knowledge.

W. A. HUNTER.

VIII.

HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY.

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 labored, 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 comprehensiveness 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 popularizer 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 Herschel were the expositors and popularizers of Newton, or that Faraday performed a like office for Sir Humphry 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 revolution in economic doctrine, and that the entire science must be rebuilt from 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 discountenanced it. His anxiety to affiliate his own speculations to those of his predecessors is a marked feature in all his philosophical works, and illustrates at once the modesty and comprehensiveness of his mind.

It is quite true that Mill, as an economist, was largely indebted to Ricardo; 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 backbone 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 innumerable "refutations of Ricardo,"--almost invariably refutations of the writers' own misconceptions. In Mill's exposition, the connection 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 political economy becomes a system of doctrines susceptible of direct application 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 economique 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 developments--even though we understand that term in its largest sense--of 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 outlook which, in the main, it discloses for the human race. It seems to have 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 laborer in physical health and strength, and to enable him to bring up a family large enough to supply the wants of the labor-market. A temporary improvement indeed, as the consequence of expanding 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 labor 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 laborer, since--living, as a normal state of 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 population; but he took account of a further premise which Ricardo had overlooked, 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 laborer, is not the very least sum that human nature can subsist upon: it is something more than this; 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 _minimum_, 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 modification 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 premise 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.