B .Ha Oass _ Book _ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT i. JOHN STUART MILL BY FREDERIC HARRISON t&ak?fj* . j Neto got* THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1896 All rights reserved | -Y' \. Copyright, 1896, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Nortoooti -yjressB J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. Norwood Mass. U.S.A. II L 3// JOHN STUART MILL. 1 Almost a generation has passed since a most strenuous and magnanimous spirit was laid to rest in the cemetery of Avignon along the Rhone. In that majestic and melan- choly spot, beneath dark pines and beside his beloved wife, lies John Stuart Mill, one of the most intense workers, one of the most upright spirits of our age. The age itself, we must admit, has been flowing on, like the Rhone to the sea, and has left the philosopher at peace in his distant grave. His work was completed, he himself said with his dying breath ; and his most devoted friends will not dare to claim for him the influence and the reputation he undoubtedly possessed some thirty years ago. There are few to-day who will re-echo quite literally all that John Morley said in the two fine pieces written on the death of Mill in 1873, now to be read in the third volume of his Miscellanies. His tribute, if deepened into rare passion and pathos by the unexpected loss of a friend and master, was substantially just and true. He did not say too much when he wrote : * A strong and pure light is gone out, the radiance of a clear vision and a beneficent purpose ; ' ' We have lost a great teacher and example of knowledge and virtue." It is, however; obvious that the influence of John Stuart Mill has been waning in the present generation. They who would use the language just cited are not so many as they 1 Copyright in England, i.e. the United Kingdom. B 1 D I 2 JOHN STUART MILL. were, nor are they themselves in so strong a force. It was said at the time of his death that with the reputation of Mill would stand or fall the reputation of a whole generation of Englishmen. Something of that kind has already happened. The young lions of to-day, whether in politics, literature, or philosophy, are very far from caring much for what was said 'by them of old time,' i.e. in the early manhood of their own fathers. Their motto is, rjfieis fiev irarepcov fjuey a/nv/JLOves ev^d/JLeO' elvai. They are not familiar with the reputations of the last genera- tion, and are apt to wonder how these were made. If the reputation of Mill has waned, the reputation of a whole school of leading minds of his generation has waned also. It was the dominant school of the ' sixties ' : it is dominant no more. For this reason it is much to be wished that John Morley would now give us that estimate of Mill which in 1873 he said would one day have to be made, and that Life which we have so long awaited. But since he is otherwise em- ployed (alas ! for letters, alas ! for philosophy), a few words may be permitted to tell the younger generation wherein lay the influence over us elders of Mill's character and mind some thirty years ago. For my own part, I can pre- tend to none of the qualifications which so eminently meet in Mr. Morley. Though I knew Mill in the later years of his life, I could not in any sense lay claim to his intimacy. With very deep respect for him, I was in no way his dis- ciple. My own education, habits, tastes, and temperament were so utterly different from his as to awaken in me the interest of contrast and surprise. I felt, and I still ' feel, vehement aversion to some of Mill's cherished ideals and doctrines. And so far from his being my master, he has attacked my own master with unsparing, and I hold unjust, criticism in an important volume. I can, therefore, JOHN STUART MILL. 3 pretend to no claim to speak of him except it may be some knowledge of his life, nature, and writings ; a deep reverence for his noble qualities; and, I think, a sym- pathetic, but real, impartiality of mind. These few pages will, of course, not admit of any proper criticism of Mill's philosophy, social and moral teaching, or his political theories, much less any estimate of his character, example, and life. To attempt such a task would be to compile a treatise on Logic, another on Political Economy, a third on Ethic, a fourth on Politics, to say nothing of Metaphysics, Natural Theology, and Positivism. ' No such high aim is mine. We shall have this in good time, we all trust, when Unionists and Nationalists, Imperialists and Englishmen shall have lain down together at last. In the meantime, I wish to say a few words {caret quia vate sacrd) as to the influence of John Stuart Mill upon his own generation — what of it is left and is destined to remain — what of it lies silent beneath the pine trees and cypresses at Avignon — into what form some of the best of it has matured. Those who are familiar with the sermon on the death of Mill I have cited, will remember how deeply it is charged with enthusiasm for the character of the man, more than with praise of the work of the teacher. It is, perhaps, not easy for those who did not personally know him to do justice to all that was great and good in Mill's nature. By education and by temperament alike he was one of the most reserved and self-contained of men, formally and externally not very sympathetic, a Stoic by birth and train- ing, cramped from childhood by an unnatural and almost inhuman type of discipline, a man to whom the ordinary amusements, humours, and passions of life were as utterly unknown as were its follies and its vices. His punctilious courtesy was such as to seem somewhat pedagogic to the 4 JOHN STUART MILL. ordinary man of the world ; as his generosity was so methodically rational as to seem almost ungracious to the idle good fellow. Infinitely patient, just, tolerant as he was, he was always dominated by the desire to strike the balance of right and wrong, of the weight of evidence, the force of argument, pro and contra every act under observation and every proposition that he heard. This produced on the ordinary and casual observer an impres- sion of pedantic formalism most undeserved by a nature that was the very soul of compassion, benevolence, and honour. As his books are curiously devoid of anything like literary grace or mastery of the 'pathetic fallacy,' the ordinary reader does not easily perceive how much enthusiasm, what magnanimity, what tenderness underlies the precise statements even of such pieces as the Auto- biography, the Subjection of Women, and Liberty : pieces which are red-hot within with affection, pity, and passion. Some of us were always more attracted by Mill's char- acter than by his intellect : we rated his heart above his brain : and his failures seem to us mental, not moral per- versities. But of his fine and exemplary nature it is indeed needless for me to speak. It has had full justice done to it by John Morley, who has so well placed Mill's distinction in the 'union of stern science with infinite aspiration, of rigorous sense of what is real and practi- cable with bright and luminous hope.' We listened to him just because we found in him a most systematic intellect in a truly great heart. It must always be borne in mind that Mill essentially belonged to a school, that he was peculiarly the product of a very marked order of English thinkers, and gave their ideas a new development. Coleridge, Carlyle, Ruskin, can hardly be said to have been either the sons or the foun- ders of any school of thought. John Mill was a singularly JOHN STUART MILL. 5 systematic product of a singularly systematic school of philosophers. And he was himself at one time the recog- nised head of a group of men of a more or less kindred type, with more or less similar aims in mental and social science. Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Malthus, James Mill, Austin, Grote, Bowring, Roebuck, the philoso- phic Radicals of the first Reform era, maintained a real filiation of central ideas which reached their complete gen- eral systematisation in the earlier writings of John Stuart Mill. He in turn worked on general lines with Professor Bain, T. Hare, G. H. Lewes, Professor Cairnes, W. E. Forster, and Henry Fawcett. John Morley and Leonard Courtney still maintain erect the standard of their former chief. And Herbert Spencer, building on an analogous general ground-plan, has raised a still more encyclopaedic system of his own. John Morley hardly over-stated the intellectual authority of Mill when he wrote, in 1873, that the leading men of that day bore traces of his influence, whether as disciples or as opponents. The universities (he said), journalism, popular reading, and foreign opinion concurred in the same testimony. Mill held, moreover, a very unusual position — at once head of a school of philosophy, and also a most active social reformer, a politician of mark, and the inspirer of many practical movements, moral, economic, or religious. Hume, Adam Smith, Carlyle, Spencer, have each poured forth very pregnant ideas upon social problems : but they did not discuss Bills in Parliament or found Leagues. It was the essence of John Stuart Mill, which he inherited with his Benthamite blood and his Utilitarian nurture, to unite ' stern science with infinite aspiration,' to regard social philosophy as the instrument of social regeneration. If he was far more the philosopher than Bentham, he was quite as much as O JOHN STUART MILL. Bentham the social reformer — far more, than was any other follower of Bentham and his school. Mill indeed was a compound of Bentham corrected by the ideals and thinkers of modern France, especially by Auguste Comte. Those who admit that the influence of Mill has been waning in the last generation have also to admit that the whole school of thought which came to its flower in Mill has been waning also in the same time and for the same cause. John Mill is not to-day what he was a gen- eration ago, because Utilitarianism, Bethanism, Political Economy, Radicalism, the Philosophy of experience, moral and social Utopias have somewhat gone out of fashion. It is rather the school than the man which has lost vogue. It is not so much Mill as social science, which ceases to absorb the best of the rising generation. We live in an age of reversion to more early types — theologico — meta- physico — dilemmas and » aristocratic incarnations of the beautiful, the wise, and the good. To-day our aspirations are imperial, our summum bonum is national glory. War, armaments, athletic triumphs fill the souls of our patriotic and heroic youth. Philosophy retires into a higher region of mist and invisibility. Philosophy must wait and pos- sess its soul in peace. If the larger doctrinal treatises of Mill have a wider teaching power, his distinctive ideas and the keynote of his mind and nature are to be found rather in the three short popular essays to which he gave his whole soul in later life, and whereon he placed his chief claim to leader- ship. These are Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1863), and The Subjection of Women (1869). They are all sum- maries of his beliefs, manifestoes, appeals, almost sermons in their inward fervour, addressed to the people, con- densed and publiseed in sternly popular form. To reach the essence of Mill's nature and influence we must JOHN STTART MILL. / always go straight to these short but typical works of his mellow and widowed age. The literary history of the Liberty has no small interest. It was planned and written as an essay in 1855; in the following year, he tells us, that, whilst mounting the steps of the Capitol at Rome, he conceived (like Gibbon) the idea of making it a book. For two years his wife and he worked at it, writing it twice over, and then revising every sentence separately and criticising it with their joint labour. After years of thought it is published with a magnificent dedication to his dead wife as part author of the work, inspired 'by her all but unrivalled wisdom.' And it may be bought, in sixty-eight pages, for sixteen- pence, in which form it has found an immense circulation. None of his writings, he says, have been so carefully com- posed or so sedulously corrected; and he believes it destined to survive longer than anything else that he has written, with the possible exception of the Logic. It is destined to be, in his own words, ' a philosophic text-book of a single truth ' : ' the importance, to man and society, of a large variety in types of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflict- ing "directions.' But this ' single truth ' covers the whole field of the relation of the individual to society, i.e. Ethic, Sociology, Education, Politics, Law, Manners, and Religion. It was, therefore, not strange that a code of maxims thereon should absorb the thoughts of two thinkers for many years, and, when formulated with a sort of stern passion, should strike fire in some millions of brains. The ' simple principle ' on which the Liberty expends so deep a passion and so much logic is this : that self- protection is the sole end for which society is warranted in interfering with the liberty of action of the individual. This principle is absolute, and includes all intervention, 8 JOHN STUART MILL. physical force, or moral coercion. The independence of the individual is absolute, of right, implies the sovereignty of the individual over his own mind and body. The only part of his conduct for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others. And this liberty includes liberty of conscience, liberty of tastes and pursuits, liberty of combination. No society can be called free in which freedom in all these forms does not exist, absolute and unqualified. On this great theme John Mill has com- posed a truly monumental manual of acute and impressive thoughts. It would be futile to attempt in these few pages either a defence or a criticism of these far-reaching dogmas. The only purpose of this slight essay is to consider how far the book of Mill impressed his own age, and how far it can be said to have a growing or permanent influence. It is cer- tain that the little book' produced a profound impression on contemporary thought, and had an extraordinary suc- cess with the public. It has been read by hundreds of thousands, and, to some of the most vigorous and most conscientious spirits amongst us, it became a sort of gospel — much as for a time did Rousseau's Social Contract or Bentham's Principles of Legislation. It was the code of many thoughtful writers and several influential politicians. It undoubtedly contributed to the practical programmes of Liberals and Radicals for the generation that saw its birth ; and the statute book bears many traces of its in- fluence over the sphere and duties of government. But in the present generation, or, broadly speaking, since the great Franco-German war, that influence has been waning, and is now at its lowest point. The book is still read, it is still admired, it has not been refuted or superseded. But much of it is accepted to-day as truth needing no argu- ment ; much of it is regarded as quite outside of modern JOHN STUART MILL. 9 conditions ; and a good deal of it is condemned as contrary to all the movements and aspirations of the newer schools of social reform. Why is this : and what are the parts of the book to which these remarks may apply ? The second chapter, on ' Liberty of Thought and Dis- cussion,' is a masterpiece of wise and generous pleading for toleration in opinion, freedom of speech, and liberty of conscience. On such a topic it is impossible to be original ; but it condenses, with a mastery of touch and a measured passion, all the best that has ever been said in defence of freedom of opinion, and will stand beside the Areopagitica as one of the classics thereon. Few of us are still so much in love with Debate as to share in Mill's exaggeration of the moral and mental value of discussion itself, so that he seems to think that Truth must languish if it were not constantly opposed to the counter-stimulation of some advocatus Falsi. But Mill would not be himself if he did not exaggerate the value of discussion. Yet the argument is lighted up with so much moral enthusiasm, and (what is so rare in Mill) with so much eloquence, that we easily pass over its defects. This chapter also has that typical example of free speech in the concrete — the daring and somewhat unjust arraignment of Christian morality. But even those who are forced to dissent from many of its arguments and conclusions will agree with Professor Bain that ' it stands as the chief text-book on Freedom of Dis- cussion.' The third chapter is an ardent plea for individuality as an element of well-being, and it is that part of the book which makes it a sort of Gospel to many a brave and honest soul. No one can gainsay the manly enthusiasm and convincing logic which rings in every passage. No one outside a Jesuit seminary is ever heard to maintain the contrary : but the eloquent and reasoned justification IO JOHN STUART MILL. of individuality as the essential basis of civilisation does certainly give a moral stamina to life, and many a man will echo Charles Kingsley's words, that it made him ' a clearer-headed, braver-minded man on the spot.' The question still remains, whether there has been visible of late any waning of individuality in our country or in Europe : is there any real danger of its being undervalued ? Is it true that ' the danger which threatens human nature is the deficiency of personal impulses and preferences ? ' There are undoubtedly many molluscous and sheepish natures which show such deficiency. There always have been, and there always will be ; and if anything can make men of them, such a warning as that of Mill on Liberty ought to rouse them. But a cool review of the facts, after the thirty-eight years that have passed since this appalling prophecy was made, compels us to doubt if any such danger now ' threatens human nature ' — to doubt if the last generation showed any want of ' individuality ' — if 'individuality' has been growing weaker amongst us in the present generation. A very strong and growing opinion to-day is that we are still rather over-stocked with ' the sovereignty of the individual.' It is when we come to the fourth chapter — 'The limits of the authority of society over the individual' — that the breach grows widest between Mill's absolute individualism and the current of contemporary thought. The steady tendency of opinion and of policy in the last generation has been to strengthen the authority of society over indi- viduals. Though it is only a jest to say that 'we are all Socialists now,' it is quite true that recent opinion and legislation have shown evidence of a socialist bias. Mill laid it down as an axiom 'that society has now got the better of the individual.' But the dominant, and I will add the best, ideals of our time tend still further to assist JOHN STUART MILL. I I society in getting the better of the individual. Indeed, the book on Liberty, so far from helping to curb the authority of society and limit its range, coincided with a very strong heave throughout the whole of society, from top to bottom, to make the authority of society more stringent and more ample. The old legal saw ran, 'It is the part of a good judge to enlarge his jurisdiction.' The political maxim to- day more early runs thus: — 'It is the part of the wise legislator to enlarge the authority of law.' And whatever be the errors of detail, most thoughtful and patriotic citi- zens are not dissatisfied with the general spirit of the rule. It does not at all follow that Mill's protests in the cen- tral chapter of his book are unnecessary or mischievous. His general propositions are far too absolute and doctri- naire ; but his practical warnings are invaluable, and his practical warnings are invaluable, and his concrete ex- amples of State meddling and muddling are full of sense and point. Thousands of social reformers and scores of politicians are every day clamouring amongst us for repres- sive legislation, of which Mill expounds all the folly and mischief. Nearly all the examples he gives in the chapter on the 'Limits of Authority' and in the chapter on 'Appli- cations ' may be gratefully accepted as contributions to po- litical philosophy, by those who very much object to Mill's general doctrines of non-intervention by society as absolute and rigid axioms. Even they must see how many things are wise, how many are noble, how many are inspiring in this memorable and sagacious book. The real weakness of the book, the cause of the aver- sion it inspires in so many minds, lies in its ultra-absolute dogmatism and its violent exaggeration of individualism. Mill's canons as to State intervention are stated with the rigid generality of mathematical axioms. His propositions bristle with such words as 'absolute,' 'unqualified,' 'of 12 JOHN STUART MILL. right,' 'sovereignty,' 'independence.' Now, the science of politics abhors any ' absolute,' 4 unqualified ' rule : it uses 'right,' 'sovereignty,' 'independence' only in a legal or else in a metaphorical way, never as constituting a rigid social law. Mill is far too deeply versed in the history of sociology and jurisprudence to appeal to 'rights' with the reckless sophistry of so many metaphysicians. But when he speaks of a thing as ' not warranted,' as being ' of right,' or 'not rightfully,' he is appealing to a theory of right. But we know now that sound principles of social organisation cannot be founded upon ' rights ' exclusively. 1 Rights ' are primarily what the law will secure for each, and secondarily, what each may think himself worthy to receive — an idea on which no doctrine can be framed. At bottom, the book on Liberty is an attempt to ascertain what are the 'rights' of the individual against the State. We know that this is like asking what are the 'rights ' of the stomach against the body ? An even more fundamental fallacy is the way in which ' Society ' and ' the State • are used almost as if they were interchangeable terms ; and there is a want of steady dis- tinguishing between these two throughout the argument. The true problem is, not 'what are the limits of the authority of Society over the Individual ? ' but ' what are the respective limits of State Legislation and Social Opinion?' The essence of Social Science is to determine the respective provinces of Law, Force, Government on the one side, and of Public Opinion, Social Morality, Religious Discipline on the other side. The progress of civilisation means the restriction of the former power, and the correlative enlargement of the latter power : the trans- fer of control over individuals from Law to Opinion. As the poet says : Molto e licito la che qui non lece. JOHN STUART MILL. 1 3 Most thoughtful men agree with the practical examples that Mill gives us of the evils of legislative meddling. But they are not at all willing to bind the legislative power within absolute and cast-iron bonds. There are no abso- lute and immutable limits : it is a practical problem, to be determined for different societies and various occasions in tentative ways, by skilled statesmen, as Aristotle says, a>? 6 (f>povL/uo<; opi^ei. Most of us to-day deeply revolt against the arbitrary dogma — that the only part of conduct for which one is amenable to society is that which concerns others ; that, as to what concerns oneself, the individual is sovereign. That may be the practical limit of legislation, but it is no absolute bar to moral and social influence. If a man chooses to be a sot, a hog, a savage, a catamite, it is the bounden duty of his fellow-men to bring the whole press- ure of society to bear on him; of 'society, we say, not necessarily of law: that is a question for experts, or states- men. What 'part of conduct' concerns the individual merely and does not concern others ? No part whatever. ' Conduct ' is ex hypothesi a. social act. No man's life is, or can be, solitary. The whole of ' conduct ' concerns society, concerns others ; for human life simply means a continual action upon, and reaction from our fellow-beings. 'We are all members one of another,' said the greatest of relig- ious teachers. And the strength of all religions has lain in their bringing home to the believer the continuous and inevitable relation of every act and thought of the indi- vidual soul to the great Power which he believes to repre- sent the sum of things and men around him. Nor can any Gospel look to supersede the old Gospels of theology, unless it will base itself on the organic unity of the Indi- vidual and of Humanity, and discard vain dreams about the isolated autonomy of the auto-man. 14 JOHN STUART MILL. What does 'the individual' mean? It is no doubt a physical, mechanical, and biological fact. It is a con- venient term of logic, and is useful as an abstract idea for purposes of analysis or classification. But in sociol- ogy there never was, is not, nor can be, any absolute 'individual' in real life, as a normal human being living; a complete and continuous human life. In social science, an 'individual' is a term of art, not a substantive organ- ism, just as we may speak of the 'nervous system,' or 'the digestive apparatus' in anatomy, or the 'vertebrate series ' in physiology. We cannot find, or even imagine, any 'nervous system,' or 'digestive apparatus,' living and continuously in function in a normal way, whilst being absolutely isolated from the rest of the organism, 'sove- reign over itself,' and rigidly absorbed in what 'merely concerns itself.' So, in social science, we cannot find, we cannot imagine, an 'individual,' living a complete and continuous human life, as an individual. Living men and women are, and always must be, organic members of a social system. Any social philosophy founded upon ' indi- viduals ' as such, is founded not on real facts and living beings, as we find them and know them, but upon mental abstractions, that is, upon postulates, not on realities. Of course we can temporarily get individuals isolated, just as we can dissect out a nerve, or even a cell, but these iso- lated individuals can no more function normally as men and women than can the dissected nerve or cell. To talk, in social science, about the ' rights of individ- uals,' or the separate life of individuals, or the indepen- dence of individuals, or the^conduct that solely concerns the individual, unless we are using these terms as con- venient hypotheses of abstract analysis, not as real, perma- nent, substantive facts of nature, is as incoherent as to talk of 'the rights' of the nervous system, or the separate JOHN STUART MILL. 15 life of a detached nerve or organ in the dissected body. In social science, the smallest substantive organism of which society is composed is the Family, not the Indi- vidual. A Family, as such, has a rudimentary organic life of its own, but an Individual has not. A Family on an isolated island can conceivably continue a normal, but very low, type of human life, physical, moral, intellectual, and progressive, and can transmit somewhat that can be called the germs of human civilisation from generation to generation. An Individual cannot do this, and therefore is not, normally speaking, man at all. The unit of society is the Family, not the Individual, which is an abstract artifice of analytic classification. And the social science which starts with Individuals, not with Families, is based on a radical sophism. It is this fundamental error which vitiates Mill's book on Liberty, and vitiates indeed the whole scheme of Mill's Social Philosophy. In the ' Introduction ' to the Liberty Mill does make some reference to the difficulty that whatever affects the individual may indirectly affect society, and he promises to meet this objection in the sequel. But he entirely fails to meet it, and he states the difficulty itself far too slightly. The attempt to distinguish between conduct which con- cerns oneself, and conduct that may remotely concern others, is quite fallacious. No distinction can be drawn, for human acts are organically inseparable. Not only may the conduct of the individual, as concerns himself, affect others, but it m ust affect them — the individual never can know when, or how, or whom it will affect. The belly might as well say to the brain, 'What can it matter to you what I take ? ' as the individual can say to his family, or even to his countrymen, '.What can it matter to you what I eat or drink ? ' Society does not indeed possess the all-seeing Eye which the Christian believes to pene- l6 JOHN STUART MILL. trate the most secret thoughts or acts ; but it has quite as real an interest in those thoughts and acts, and they far more intimately concern its own well-being. The book on Liberty, from beginning to end, is an invaluable text-book for the legislator, for the politician, for the social reformer; and its powerful protest against all forms of over-legislation, intolerance, and the tyranny of majorities, is rich with perennial wisdom and noble manliness. But as a piece of social philosophy it is based upon a sophism as radical as that of Rousseau himself, with his assumption of a primordial Contract. And, if these absolute dogmas as to ' the sovereignty of the indi- vidual ' against even the moral coercion of his fellow-citi- zens were literally enforced, there would be a bar put to the moral and religious development of civilised communi- ties. Mill has left it exceedingly vague what is the line that he draws between t'he 'persuasion,' exhortation, in- struction, and apparently even the boycotting, which he admits, and the 'moral coercion of public opinion,' which he regards as iniquitous. As in the famous trades-union cases, it seems to be left to the temper of the judge to decide where ' persuasion ' ends and ' moral coercion ' be- gins. The real crux, in the problem of individual liberty, as in that of 'picketing,' is to decide where lawful 'per- suasion' becomes wrongful 'coercion.' And this part of the problem Mill has left uncertain and vague. To many of us, ' moral ceorcion,' of a wise and guarded sort, may become a great engine of progressive civilisation. Not only is the language of the Liberty somewhat vague in defining the respective limits of 'persuasion ' and 'coer- cion,' but the practical illustrations of lawful restrictions by the State seem at times hardly consistent with so abso- lute a doctrine. It is somewhat startling, after such tren- chant assertion of the absolute freedom of the individual, JOHN STUART MILL. 17 to find a defence of the Malthusian laws of some conti- nental States, which forbid the marriage of needy adults. The vehement language against the 'mischievous act' of poor persons in breeding sounds strangely in the mouth of an apostle of freedom. And it is even more startling to find it preceded by an elaborate plea for * the duty of enforcing universal education? the instrument being public examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at an early age, the parent being punished if the child fails to pass. Here is indeed a Chinese tyranny of an ominous kind, which is hard to reconcile with the absolute freedom of the citizen. Many of us from the first protested against State compulsion even in the sacred cause of education, and we see the results of it to-day. Hinc illce lacryma — ill(E irce — illce rixce — which resound in our midst. The result of forcing children into school, cramming them for mechanical examination, and fining the parent, has proved to be a source of religious bitterness, and the disorganisa- tion of 'our public education. The root error of ancient States, according to Mill, was in their belief ' that the State had a deep interest in the whole bodily and mental discipline of every one of its citi- zens.' It is quite true that the codes of the ancient com- monwealths erred in a monstrous amount of over-legislation — (Mulieres genas ne radunto, XII Tab.) — which culmi- nated in Plato's Utopian Republic. This primitive error Mill would meet by the dogma that the Individual, and not the State, is sovereign over all that concerns himself alone. The correction is as sophistical and as mischievous as the original dogma. The error of the ancient legislators lay in their extravagant idea of the State. Put the term Society for State, and the doctrine is right. Society has a deep interest in the whole bodily and mental discipline of every one of its citizens : though it is but a small part l8 JOHN STUART MILL. of that discipline which the magistrate can enforce or laws prescribe, and but a part of it which even Society can influ- ence. How to distinguish the one from the other is the great problem of Polity, of Ethic, of Religion. And that problem Mill has not solved, in spite of all the wise warn- ings he impresses on the legislator, and all the courageous and inspiring virtue that breathes throughout his essay. The little treatise on Utilitarianism was also a compact manual of Mill's ethical system, elaborated for years and diligently revised. It was begun in 1854, recast and finally published in 1861-63. It contains a wonderful amount of thought ; it has had a great influence ; and has met with incessant criticism and comment. It remains, after all deductions and corrections made, far the most ample and rational text-book of the principle of Greatest Happiness as the foundation of Ethic. It is better reasoned, more fully developed, more enlightening and ennobling than anything produced by Bentham and his school. If it had been wholly detached from the formulas and associations of Bentham, if its type of social morality had been worked out in ampler forms and made its central doctrine, if it had been more purely Mill's own work, and if he had gone on to define and expound his own doctrine of Happiness — perhaps, if it had borne another title — it would have been the most important and effective piece that Mill ever produced. The worst thing about it is its name — the term which Mill himself adopted in order to describe the Benthamite principle of the greatest Happiness of the greatest number. In spite of all that Bentham, Mill, and their followers have said, the ordinary man will continue perversely to associ- ate Utility with Expediency, with self-interest, with mate- rial value, with practical commodities. It is ignorant, unfair, uncandid to do so — but it is human nature. It JOHN STUART MILL. 19 must be admitted that Utilitarianism is a very awkward term to describe the pursuit of the highest welfare of mankind ; to mean indeed what has been happily called — The Service of Man ; and to include all the devotion of self to others that we may find in the lives of Alfred, or Washington — nay, we must add of Socrates, St. Paul, or Christ. Are these the types of utilitarian morality ? In substance, Mill's book is a plea for Ethic as being a demonstrable science founded on analysis and experience of man as a social being eminently adapted to social development. When he says that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote Happiness, and that by Happiness he means Pleasure, he makes it clear in the sequel that he really intends to say, that Happiness, in the best sense, is the general and purest welfare of Man- kind, and that Pleasure, in the true and highest degree, is the satisfaction of man's best instincts of Benevolence and Devotion. So understood, the book is a solid and con- vincing addition to moral philosophy, in spite of its title and its associations. The weakness of the argument admittedly lies in the want of a more scientific definition of Happiness, and an ample exposition of the elements, constitution, and pro- duction of Happiness. And an even more serious Jiiatus lies in the absence of all these explanations as to Pleasure. What constitutes Happiness : how is it created, maintained, and lost ? What Pleasures are high, what low : what are the qualities of Pleasure, and how should we distinguish between them ? It is quite clear that Mill's own concep- tion of Happiness is both practical and elevated, reason- ably adjusted between each and all ; and that his conception of Pleasure is a wise and noble harmony between the per- sonal and the altruistic pleasures. But he does not system- atically work all this out. He leaves all this in sketch. 20 JOHN STUART MILL. And he does not, therefore, give us a substantive scheme of ethical science. That Mill's conception of Happiness and of Pleasure is of this rational and elevated order appears in his whole argument, but especially in that truly grand passage in the third chapter, where he claims as the natural basis of morality the social feelings of mankind, the desire to-be in unity with our fellow-creatures ; and where he goes on to show that the social state is the normal destiny, and, under civilisation, becomes the instinctive habit of man- kind. The true basis of Ethic is that which, with Aris- totle, starts with the conception of Happiness as normally to be attained by the free development of man's natural function, and man's natural function to be fulfilling his part as a social being. And Comte has completed that view by proving man's natural function to be the system- atic control of the personal desires by the benevolent instincts, with regard to and by the aid of the entire Human Organism. Mill coincides with that theory, and is entirely saturated with it ; he certainly urges nothing to the contrary. But he has not worked out any theory of Ethic so definitely as Comte has done, and indeed as Her- bert Spencer has done. How Mill himself reconciled the tone of militant Indi- vidualism in the Liberty with the tone of enthusiastic Altruism of the Utilitarianism he entirely fails to explain in his Autobiography, or elsewhere. The two pieces were both composed about the same period — that of his short married life — and both were published at nearly the same date. He was evidently not conscious of any divergence of view. Without saying that they are in verbal or direct contradiction, or that they do not coincide in many things, the paramount importance given to the social feelings as the firm foundation of morality does not seem compatible JOHN STUART MILL. 21 with the spirit of the Liberty, which is to assert the sovereignty of the individual and the absolute indepen- dence of each man and woman. Take this noble passage in the third chapter of the Utilitarianism : The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body ; and this association is riveted more and more, as mankind are farther removed from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, be- comes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. . . . In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are con- stantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest ; which feeling, if perfect, would 7nake him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. This fine burst of altruistic sentiment is as true as it is eloquent. It is entirely consistent with Mill's own nature and with the facts of his life, and it inspires the whole spirit of his Utilitarianism, of which it is the best and cen- tral idea. A follower of Comte would even say that the altruism is exaggerated in the last cited phrase, and that the legitimate claims of Self are ignored. Mill, we know, called Comte ' a morality-intoxicated man : every question with him is one of morality, and no motive but that of morality is permitted.' Potest retorqueri ; for here Mill appears as intoxicated — not so much with morality as with altruism. But if this fusion of the personal with the altruistic feelings is so natural, so complete in a high civi- lisation, so essential to the stability of morality, what be- comes of the defiant sovereignty of the individual — 'whose independence in all that part of conduct which merely con- 22 JOHN STUART MILL. cerns himself is, of right, absolute ? ' In the Utilitarianism we are told that a man of high moral culture in a society of high civilisation will come to feel about himself, to think of himself, not as an isolated individual, but habitually and naturally as an organ in a social organism. How are we to reconcile the Liberty of Mill with his Utilitarianism ? I turn now to the last of his completed books, The Sub- jection of Women, 1869 — in many ways the most eloquent of his works, the most characteristic, and perhaps that which has had the most direct and immediate effect. Like the Liberty, it was written many years before it was pub- lished, and was to a great degree a joint production. His biographer, Professor Bain, very justly calls it 'the most sustained exposition of Mill's life-long theme — the abuses of power.' And Mr. John Morley calls it 'the best illus- tration of all the best and richest qualities of its author's mind.' 'It is fortunate,' he adds, 'that a subject of such incomparable importance should have been first effectively presented for discussion in so worthy and pregnant a form.' The form is indeed pregnant, and in every sense worthy of a scheme which touches us all home, and reaches so far and wide. It is one of those very rare examples of a short treatise on a weighty topic, packed with accumulated thought, and fused with ardent conviction. In four short chapters it condenses a scheme of social Ethics. It is in its passionate logic the most ' notable result of this ripest, loftiest, most inspiring part of his life.-' And its practical effect on legislation, manners, and opinion has no doubt been greater than anything else which Mill gave to his generation. The law has already been amended on many points which drew down his indignation and satire. A great number of the disabilities of women arising from prejudice, habit, or torpor have been practically removed. At least, there remains no legal or moral bar to the aspiring woman, JOHN STUART MILL. 23 except in one or two exceptional cases. Literature, art, medicine, science, law, the universities, athletics, sport, political agitation, the public service, are now practically open to women. Their admission to Parliament, to the franchise, to the Bar, to Degrees, is still an open question, which would be decided in their favour at once if the majority of women seriously resolved to claim it. There is nothing now to prevent any woman who wishes it from competing with men in composing an epic, playing in a polo match, orating on platforms, in building a cathedral, in presiding over a hospital, in inspecting a factory, or sitting on a parish council and a school board. One or two dis- abilities remain, really because many of the best and greatest women we have earnestly oppose their removal. The change which the present generation has witnessed in law, practice, and in opinion is mainly due to the pas- sionate school of Reform which Mill inspired, and very largely to the little book in which his aspirations were concentrated. This is no place to discuss how far these changes are salutary, for the aim of this brief essay is to call attention to the effect of Mill's influence on his age. It is impossi- ble to dispute what Mr. Morley justly calls 'the sagacity of his maxims on individual conduct and character,' and 'the beauty of the aspirations for collective social life' in this eloquent treatise. There are whole pages which would furnish forth a dozen sermons on the coarseness, the cruelty, the arrogance which men so often show towards women who fall into their power, towards the women of their own family, to their sisters, to their daughters, con- stantly to their wives, and occasionally even to their mothers. It is a scathing indictment : and few men will dare to say that they have not known some loathsome examples of the brutalities it depicts. And all honest 24 JOHN STUART MILL. men will agree that there are few homes into which this insolence of sex does not from time to time intrude; that the rebuking- of this temper is indeed a primal duty of morality and religion ; that no more powerful sermon on this duty has ever been preached by man. The Stibjection of Women, however, is not a simple sermon against male arrogance. It is a systematic effort to recast the whole form of our domestic, social, and politi- cal life, and, as such, it must be judged. The real question is, not whether the book contains many salutary warnings and some noble aspirations, but whether it shows adequate ground for a vast revolution in law, opinion, habits, and ideals, both of private and of public life. Has civilised life between the sexes been based on a selfish tyranny : must it be reformed root and branch ? Here some of those who honour most the memory of Mill entirely de- cline to assent. That he has denounced with a noble freedom gross tendencies in our social and domestic life is most true. That these tendencies are so enormous, so universal, so poisonous as he asserts is a monstrous exag- geration. That they can only be overcome by the tre- mendous revolution which he preaches is an even more dangerous delusion. The subjection of women is a mere hysterical sophism in itself. The remedy proposed to cure it is rank moral and social anarchy. The whole argument is an example of what we know so well — the fiery denunciation of some too common failing or vice, to be stamped out by some revolutionary process. Nearly all that teetotallers say about drunkenness is true ; but it does not follow that we need penal laws to prevent all mankind from obtaining alcohol. Marriage is not sel- dom a cruel purgatory for one or both of the married pair ; but it does not follow that all marriages should be termi- nable at will or on trivial grounds. There is practised a JOHN STUART MILL. 2$ great deal of cruelty to brutes and much wanton slaugh- ter ; but it does not follow that we ought to make it a misdemeanour to hurt or kill a Vertebrate animal, even in order to save human life or provide human fopd. Calmly judged, and regarded as a serious contribution to sociol- ogy, the Subjection of Women partakes of the fanatical ex- travagance found in Abolitionists, Vegetarians, and Free Lovers. The assertions of fact on which it professes to rest its plea are caricatures of practical life of truly gro- tesque extravagance. And the results at which it aims would logically involve the dissolution of civil and domestic existence as civilisation has slowly evolved it. It is said to be 'a joint production'; but in truth the Subjection of Women is much more the production of a woman than of a man. Mill himself was a man with a heart of truly feminine sensibility. His heart was even richer than his brain. Under the stimulus of indignation for the outrages and obstacles of which he saw women to be frequent victims, his acute reasoning powers caught fire. Indeed, there are purple patches in the book where we seem to hear that spiteful wrongheadedness of some woman who has grown old in nursing her wrongs, out of touch with actual life and with her own sex. These Hecubas, whose married life was a failure or who have never known it at all, are suffered to rail at male wicked- ness with a burlesque exaggeration which disturbs no one, and which none disregard so completely as the sensible, amiable, average woman. We had hardly got over the conventional satire upon Woman which disgraced the age of Swift, Pope, and Congreve, when there was founded the feminine caricature of Man. And for this new terror to quiet life Mr. Mill, with his female inspirers and imitators, have to answer at the bar of Good Sense and Good Feel- ing. 26 JOHN STUART MILL. A revolution so vast as that involving the mutual rela- tions of the sexes is not to be decided by reference to one country or one generation. The supposed uprising of women against the tyranny of man is still a mere fad in the other advanced nations of Europe. And to pretend that women are slaves in the United States is too ludicrous to be attempted. In what is far the largest part of the English-speaking race we are assured that Woman is abso- lute mistress of the situation, and Man with shame begins to take a lower place. The American girls who so freely accept English husbands are not thought by their sisters to descend into the ranks of degraded slaves. The anomalies of the feudal law which long lingered on our statute book, for the most part survivals of antique man- ners, were in practice corrected by appropriate modifica- tions. It is an instance* of this feminine want of balance, of knowledge, and of impartiality, when Mr. Mill calls these modifications of the old law ' special contracts setting aside the law.' The rules of Equity and the sys- tem of settlement are, of course, quite as truly law as the old Norman common law ; and, instead of ' setting aside the law,' they are improvements in law made by lawyers and enforced by judges. It is childish to ask for a change which will shake to its foundations every household in civilisation, on the ground of an obsolete doctrine which survives in the text-books of our old English law, but which no longer seriously affects any number of families. English law bristles with anomalies under the heads of property, family, Church, and State, and we have a dozen different types of agitation which propose radical changes on the strength of these obsolete and paradoxical anoma- lies. It is melancholy to find a great sociologist such as Mill heading one more of these rhetorical revolutions. Let us guard against misconception, if that be possible, * JOHN STUART MILL. 2J on this thorny topic. We admit that many changes are needed in law, in opinion, in our habits, before all the powers of women can be fully developed. There is per- manent value in Mill's invectives against male tyranny in the past and male arrogance in the present. And his impassioned rebukes have much nobility and no little truth. But they do not justify the radical sexual revolu- tion that he heralds. It would be quite as easy to frame a wholesale indictment against the cruelty, selfishness, and meanness of women — not in the brutal ways common to bad men, but in the feline ways common to bad women. There are bad wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, alas ! in all ranks, although the bad are not so savage as bad men, and the good are often nobler than the best men. Men of the world know as many homes made wretched by the defects of the women as by the arrogance of the men. Selfishness, alas ! is common to both sexes, and is too often latent, if it be not blatant, in the average home. It takes different forms with men and with women, but there is not so much to choose between the secretive selfishness of women and the domineering selfishness of men. The vices of both are to be met by purer morals, manners, religion — not by social revolutions and anarchic experi- ments in the New Life. To argue that the arrogance of many men requires us to turn our social institutions inside out is quite as foolish as it would be to argue that the meanness of many women justifies the subjection of women as really practised by ancient Romans and modern Mussulmans. I have no intention whatever of discussing the specific changes recommended by Mill ; and it would be idle in this place to touch upon problems so vast and so universal. The institutions of Family and the relations of the sexes concern the whole human race and the general course of 28 JOHN STUART MILL. human civilisation. It is pedantry to debate them from the point of view of Britain to-day. A favourite argument with some academic debaters founds this vast social revo- lution on the slightly greater proportion of women to men — a phenomenon in itself trifling, which is due to the acci- dents of emigration in the British Empire for the time, but which is reversed by similar reasons in the United States and some other countries. The famous argument that it is impossible to say what women may one day become, since for generations they have never had a chance, is too much like the pretext of the spiritualists that the pres- ence of an incredulous person makes every test unfair. A whole generation has now been bred up in the light of the new movement that Mill led and inspired ; and few of the disabilities he denounced have now any practical effect. It is difficult to believe that, in these twenty-seven years, women have proved themselves so greatly superior to their mothers and their grandmothers, that the passage from slavery to freedom has wrought any change so vast — or indeed any change at all except a certain perceptible loss in tenderness, modesty, and charm/and a very marked increase of restlessness, self-assertion, and conceit. The specific proposals of the book need not be consid- ered whilst it confronts us with the root misconception on which it is founded. Women are not a subject race in civilised Europe and America, not slaves, not victims : and men are not tyrants, jealous task-masters, and inhu- man brutes. And the plea for the vast social changes involved is founded on the same theory of the Individual that is the root error of Liberty. Nothing can be made right in sociology whilst society is regarded as made up of Individuals instead of Families. If this individualist doc- trine is logically carried out, and husband and wife are to be but temporary 'partners' with identical rights and JOHN STUART MILL. 29 separate lives, monaogamic marriage as now understood must disappear. Mill for once failed in his accustomed courage when he shrank from frankly dealing with the problem of Marriage. It is certain that he was really pre- pared for a very large relaxation of its actual conditions and laws. But Marriage is only one of the institutions over which these absolute dogmas of individualism would cast a blight. The Family as an institution would be dissolved ; the fine flower of Womanhood would become cankered ; the brutality of Man would become a grim reality; and the Subjection of Women would be a fact — and not an epigram. With all its defects, the book has great beauties, lasting merits. All that could be done by a most generous, pure, and noble spirit starting with a vicious theory, Mill has done. To me it reads like a sermon of St. Bernard on the miraculous gifts of the saints, or some other transcenden- tal figment. Beautiful and impressive as an occassional homily, as philosophy it is vitiated, not only by its meta- physical apotheosis of the Individual, but also by unsound physiological, cerebral, and ethical data. The truth lies not in the equality but in the interdependence of the sexes : not in their identities or similarities but in their hetero- geneities and correlations. This truth Mill's own beauty of soul is continually leading him to affirm, even whilst the romance of his personal life is seducing him to adopt most extravagant delusions. The co-operation of man with woman has never been more finely described than in Mill's own statement of the ideal marriage — 'in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them — so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can 30 JOHN STUART MILL. have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development.' Be it noted that this pict- ure is in the very spirit, nay, in the actual words, with which Comte has drawn the ideal marriage. This ideal is at once the gem of Mill's book on Women — and its refutation. It is not, as he fancies, 'the dream of an enthusiast.' It is an ideal which is often, even in our own day, attained in perfection ; and which they who have been blessed in such attainment well know to be the normal and natural type to which the relations of the two sexes steadily tend to conform, even, to a cer- tain extent, in the relations of family, friendship, and association, beyond and outside of the marriage union. The true function of men and of women is to be the complement each of the other. The effort to assimilate them is a step towards barbarism. This is no place to deal with the great works of Mill's earlier life — the Logic and the Political Economy. They are still standard works which every student of these sciences is bound to master ; they have exercised a really dominant influence over the thoughts of the thinking world ; and they are doubtless destined to colour the minds of many students for some time to come. It is true that their authority has been rapidly waning since Mill's death ; and they are, perhaps, as much undervalued now as they once were unduly extolled as manuals of final and absolute truth. Forty years ago these works were the text-books of a large and influential school of students ; especially at Oxford : and, as is the unhappy fate of text- books, they were regarded by the youthful philosopher as infallible revelation. This, of course, they are not ; nor is either of them the summary of a coherent and com- plete system of thought. In the Political Economy es- pecially we find two incompatible schemes of thought ; JOHN STUART MILL. 31 and the first and the second volumes of the Logic are not wholly consistent throughout. The truth is that Mill, for all his apparent proof armour of dry logic, was continually moved by what has been called 'the logic of feeling.' He was excessively sensitive and indeed impressionable ; and was often carried away by new ideas and intense feel- ings. In the course of his career he passed through the tremendous grinding of Bentham and James Mill's cast- iron machine, and ultimately ended in social Utopias and sentimental ideals. It was said of the great Condorcet that he was a volcano covered with snow. And Mill had something of that temperament — without, a method of severe logic, within, intense sympathy and aspirations after new ideals. Both of these may be traced in most of his writings, in antinomies that he failed to harmonise, of which he is obviously unconscious himself. This is especially marked in the Political Economy, which went through three modifications, as has been ex- plained by Professor Ingram, who has admirably described both its weakness and its strength. It has been, as he says, the source from which most of our contemporaries have derived their knowledge of the science. And it still remains the most important English text-book of the older school. It marks an epoch. For, if it cannot be said to be the introduction to the new methods with which our generation approaches economic problems, it undoubtedly closes the canon of the older methods, for in its final form, and still more in connexion with Mill's later economic doctrines, it makes admissions and en- courages ideals of a social future which knock the ground from under the feet of the old orthodox school of abstract dogmas and unlimited Competition. Of this tendency Mill himself was quite aware, and he admitted that he had imbibed it in the school of St. Simon and 32 JOHN STUART MILL. Comte. But, if the absence of any coherent scheme is a defect in the Political Economy, the fact that it com- bines so much of sound reasoning on economics with a serious attempt to expand platonomy into sociology, makes it the most valuable general treatise which our language in this century has produced. The Examination of Sir W. Hamilton s Philosophy is so full of acuteness, of interest, and of pregnant argument as to make one regret that Mill's chief metaphysical work should have been cast in a controversial form. It would have been far better had he stated his own metaphysical position in a systematic body of doctrine. He has not altogether satisfied such thinkers of his own school as Professor Bain, G. H. Lewes, and Herbert Spencer. Few metaphysicians, alas ! ever satisfy any of their fellow phi- losophers altogether. But although there is much in this most interesting criticism of Hamilton that has not won general assent or even a very important following, the volume as a whole contains so many characteristic and memorable lines of thought, and has so much that is at once subtle, and rich with sterling good sense that it is especially valuable in this age of Intuitional Reaction and in .the welter of half-hearted hypotheses in which we are told to-day that true philosophy consists. With the work on August e Comte and Positivism I shall not deal, for it has been treated so exhaustively by Dr. Bridges in his admirable reply, and I have in other places dealt with it at such length that I have nothing further to add. I associate myself entirely with the whole of Dr. Bridges' essay. He has amply shown how very large and fundamental are the points of agreement between the two, and how deeply Mill has assimilated the philosophical, ethical, social, and religious ideas of Comte. Mr. Leslie Stephen states it truly when he says, ' Comte's influence JOHN STUART MILL. 33 upon Mill was clearly very great especially in his general view of social development.' It has been remarked by Professor Bain and by Professor Ingram that Mill had been influenced by Comte far more than he was himself disposed to believe. Readers of Bain's Life of Mill and of Mill's own Autobiography will observe how early, how intimate, how profound was the effect of Comte's work upon the mind of Mill. The grand difference — j whereon they eventually parted company — was that Mill was (in theory) an Individualist, whilst Comte was (philosophically speaking) a Socialist. To Comte Synthesis was the aim : to Mill it was Independence. Both aimed at combining Liberty and Duty. But Mill would put Liberty first : Comte gave the prerogative place to duty. In the supreme point of religious aspiration there is essential agreement. It is clear from a concurrence of testimony that Mill looked forward to what in his last con- siderable piece he describes as 'that real, though purely human religion, which sometimes calls itself the Relig- ion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty.' In his last interview with John Morley he expressed the same thought. The three posthumous Essays on Relig- ion develop and expound it. Written at intervals of some twenty years, they are not quite consistent, and to Bain and Morley they present certain difficulties hard to reconcile with each other and with their knowledge of the writer. The last essay on Theism admits, in a loose and sentimental way, a certain concurrent and purely hypo- thetical Theism as likely to aid and colour the Religion of Duty. This Comte himself certainly did not contemplate, and all Christians and most Theists would reject it with scorn. But Mill's religion was not after Comte's model, though it virtually amounted to the same result. Fairly considered, the three posthumous Essays on Religion do D 34 JOHN STUART MILL. not vary more than the development of a single mind over twenty. .years may explain. Thev combine to surrender all forms of belief in the Supern ttural, in Revelation, or Christianity, and they practically close with a definite acceptance of the Religion of Humanity, as in some form or other the permanent religion of the Future. With Mill's political activity and his writings on politics we are not now concerned. They belong to his own genera- tion, not to ours. And, however rich with light and lead- ing to the movements which they founded or inspired, their effect was in no sense either so great or so perma- nent as that of his books. His whole conduct in public was that of a courageous, conscientious, and noble-minded citizen, who gave his .countrymen a rare example of how to play that most perilous of all parts — the philosopher as ruler. Whether we agree or not with all his aims, his bearing was always a combination of patience, justice, a lofty morality, and unflinching courage. In summing up the peculiar powers of Mill and his special services to English thought, it would seem that his work marks a certain transition or combination between two very different movements, and also the return to the fusion between French and English ideas. Hume, Gibbon, Priestley, Godwin, and Bentham, with the societies around them, had saturated Englishmen with the philosophical and political ideas of France. Scott, Coleridge, and Carlyle saturated them with German romanticism and philosophy. The influence of Mill again was almost wholly French, and to a very small degree German. In spite of the formal reasoning of his method, and the labo- rious precision of his form, he can hardly claim the highest rank as an original, or systematic, thinker. He is neither so original nor so systematic as Bentham or Spencer. And nearly all his work shows evidence of competing currents JOHN STUART MILL. 35 which are far from completely harmonised. His social philosophy is made up of Bentham and Comte, his Eco- nomics of Plutonomy V pered by Socialism, his Meta- physics are based, either by agreement or antagonism, on Sir W. Hamilton. His Liberty is deeply coloured by the memory of his father, and the Subjection of Women is an echo of his romantic devotion to his wife. Yet as one turns over the roll of Mill's labours in phi- losophy, in metaphysics, in ethic, in economics, in sociol- ogy, in politics, in religion, it is difficult to believe but that such solid achievement will have a permanent place in English thought, although it may never regain its orig- inal vogue. In any case the name of Mill must stand as the most important name in English philosophy between Bentham and Spencer. But, to the diminishing band of those who knew him, it will be his nobility of nature which dwells deepest in their memory, rather than his sagacity of mind. And those who did not know him should read in his Autobiography the modest yet resolute presentment of a life of indefatigable industry, conscientious effort, and beautiful ideals. The sensitiveness to social improvement and the passionate nature of his own affections, which led him so to exaggerate the gifts of his own dear ones, and to plunge into such social revolutions, not seldom over- powered his science and involved him in inconsistencies, little to be expected from the external form of logical and patient induction. The inconsistencies and sophisms will be forgotten, as his great services to thought and his sym- pathetic trust in humanity are more and more remembered and prized. JOHN STUART MILL BY FREDERIC HARRISON THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1896 All rights reserved Jte / I y s \ t V ,