第23章 Chapter I(23)

Apart from the revelation of Mill's character,the only question is whether any intellectual influence is to be attributed to Mrs Mill.It is easy to suggest that he admired her because she was skilful in echoing his own opinions.To this Professor Bain replies that Mill generally liked intelligent opposition,and holds that in fact Mrs Mill did set his mind to work by stimulating conversation.(68)This may be true within limits.Mill,however,himself assigns coincidence on cardinal points of opinion as a necessary condition of friendship.(69)It is plain that such an agreement existed between himself and his wife.That he could detect no error in her proves simply that she held what he thought to be true,that is,his own opinions.He has indeed said enough to explain the general relation.She had nothing to do with the Logic,except as to the minuter matters of composition;he had already come to believe in woman's rights before he knew her;she did not affect the logical framework of the Political Economy,but she suggested the chapter to which he attributes most influence upon the future of the labouring classes;and gave to the book,the general tone by which it is distinguished from previous treatises.''What was abstract and purely scientific,'he says by way of summary,'was generally mine;the properly human element came from her.'(70)In other words,her influence was rather upon his emotions than upon his intellect,and led him to apply his abstract principles to the actual state of society and to estimate their bearing upon human interests and sympathies more clearly and widely than he would otherwise have done.Undoubtedly we may gladly admit the importance of this element in Mill's life;we can fully believe that this,the one great affection of his life,had enabled him to breathe a more genial atmosphere and helped to save him from the rigidity and dryness of some of his allies.It is,however,impossible to attribute to Mrs Mill any real share in framing his philosophical doctrines;and the impossibility will be the more evident when we have noticed to what an extent they were simply the development of the creed which he had been imbibing from his earliest years.Mill was essentially formed by Bentham,James Mill,and Ricardo;while the relation to Mrs Mill encouraged him to a more human version of the old Utilitarian gospel.The attribution of all conceivable excellences to his wife shows that he loved,if I may say so,with his brain.The love was perfectly genuine and of most unusual strength;but he interpreted it into terms of reason,and speaks of an invaluable sympathy as if it implied a kind of philosophical inspiration.

Mill,now released from his official labours,settled down as he expected,for the remainder of his existence into a purely literary life.'(71)For six or seven years (end of 1858to summer of 1865)he carried out this design,and wrote much both on political and philosophical topics.He first published the Liberty,in which,after the death of his wife,he resolved to make no further alterations.He gave the weight of his approval to the congenial work of his friend,Professor Bain,by a review in the Edinburgh of October 1859.He put together,from previously written papers,his short treatise upon Utilitarianism.(72)In October 1863he reviewed in the Edinburgh the recently published lectures of his old friend,John Austin,the representative Utilitarian jurist.Two articles upon Comte(73)in 1864gave his final judgment of one of the thinkers to whom he owed most outside of the Utilitarian circle.His most elaborate performance,however,was his examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy.This was suggested by the recent publication of Hamilton's Lectures,which he at first intended only to review.The work swelled upon his hands;he read all Hamilton's writings three times over,and much other literature;he completed the book in the autumn of 1864,and published it in the following spring.It involved him in some very sharp controversies,and contained his final and most elaborate protest against the Intuitionist school.This,too,with the three posthumous essays,(74)gives his position upon the general philosophical questions which were not treated in the Logic.In his earlier books he had been systematically reticent to a degree of which he afterwards disapproved.(75)The intelligent reader,indeed,could perceive to what conclusions his principles led;but the intelligent reader is a rarity.When,in 1865,his political opponents tried to turn his unpopular opinions to account,the only phrase upon which they could fix was the really very orthodox sentiment (in the examination of Hamilton)that he would go to hell rather than worship an unjust God.He had intended,it may be noticed,to publish the essay Upon Nature himself;but the others were to be still held back.These last utterances,however,taken together,give a sufficient account of Mill's final position in philosophy.

VI.POLITICAL ACTIVITY