Art. 11.-JOHN STUART MILL.

1. The Letters of John Stuart Mill. Edited, with an Introduction, by Hugh S. R. Elliot, with a note on Mill's private life by Mary Taylor. London: Longmans, 1910.

2. Autobiography. By John Stuart Mill. London : Longmans, 1908.

3. John Stuart Mill. A Criticism. By Alexander Bain. London: Longmans, 1882.

SOME forty years ago or more two comments on John Stuart Mill used often to be quoted, made by the two men who were then the most prominent figures in the English world of politics. Mr Gladstone spoke of him (and, I think, also wrote of him) as the 'saint of Rationalism.' Mr Disraeli, when asked after a session's experience of the new member for Westminster what he thought of him, replied with a shrug of the shoulders, A political finishing governess.' Mr Gladstone's verdict, that of one who knew and valued Mill's work, was a profound and true one; Disraeli's-passed by one who probably knew nothing of Mill beyond his speeches in the House -was an obviously superficial one, indeed not a verdict at all. But taken as being what it was, a statement of the impression made by Mill upon an acute but superficial observer, who was all the more alive to mannerisms because the real man was beyond his purview, it suggests very truly the limitations of one who was in some respects a really great man, limitations apparent not in politics alone. They were in part the defects of those very qualities which won Gladstone's admiration. Mill had the educating mania, and it was largely inspired by that religious zeal for the improvement of mankind which formed part of his 'saintship.' From his father he had early learnt to think that if only people were thoroughly educated and freed from the dead hand of outworn institutions all would be well with the world. And greatly though his views eventually changed, this early way of looking at things left its stamp on him through life. His cult of education issued in a certain priggishness and preciseness, and a detestation of anything vague and not clearly communicable to those whom

he would instruct and help. It is to this side of his intellectual character that we may set down his admiration for the French intellect and his extraordinary undervaluing of such German metaphysicians as Hegel and Fichte. To this again must be ascribed his intense joy in distinct classification-which made Dumont's rédaction of Bentham (of which I shall speak later on) as inspiring and satisfying to him as Fichte and Hegel were almost physically distressing. It is the finishing governess' element again which made his own unique and precocious early education for years the sole matter of interest to him, and led him afterwards to analyse its results with such painful care. Every event in his life was regarded by him in its effect on his character and mind. He let nothing stand in memory as a mere fact, without a serious estimate of its educative consequences. Like a Jesuit confessor he regarded recreation only as a means to the accomplishment of the main purpose.

The truth is that there was in the nature of Mill from first to last a certain thinness of sympathy and a deficiency in geniality which contributed to the priggishness that struck Disraeli-though his sympathies were very intense in their own narrow groove. There was a lack of full humanity. He had no sense of the ludicrous. He did not enter into or understand the varieties of human character, and he was wanting in virility. These last two traits were evidenced in his believing that all men were like himself and like one another in the insignificant place which (as he maintained) the sexual instinct normally occupied in the life of mankind. He traced obvious exceptions to this rule to abnormal conditions. By a little management in education the propensity in question could, he considered, be reduced to an almost negligible quantity, and he once expressed to the present writer's father in conversation the opinion that the human race would come to an end by its ultimate complete disappearance. It is also, I think, a mark of the 'governess' side of Mill's character that these volumes of his letters, absorbing though they are, exert something of a strain on the logical faculty of the reader. There is little or no imagination in them. Of humour there is one gleam and only one-and it comes from no words of Mill, but from a suggestion of

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Roebuck. Mill's speeches in the House of Commons were (it seems) weakened in their effect first by an impression of hesitation as to the sequence of topics and arguments, and secondly by his manner of delivery. He had a habit, in Roebuck's words, of joining his hands behind him and rolling from side to side like a schoolboy saying his lessons.' Possibly the general effect was somewhat similar to what many of us remember who have seen and heard another great writer, the late Mr Lecky, addressing the House of Commons. Roebuck prescribed as a remedy that he should write out the heads of his speech on a card, and should stand every day, card in hand, for some minutes before a large looking-glass and rehearse systematically the coming oration.

In point of fact the early hothouse forcing of the mind of one set by his father to learn Greek at four and Latin at eight, and encouraged in destructive analysis of those natural sources of enthusiasm which most men find in national institutions and in religion, killed much while it developed much. It developed in an extraordinary degree the reasoning powers, but it tended to depress vitality and imagination, and to make the logical faculty unduly predominant. Mill associated little with other boys. He was never able to achieve any success in games or sport, and soon gave up the attempt to cultivate such pastimes. He spoke of himself as being in early life little more than a logical machine, despising sentiment on Benthamite principles. He eventually desired to awaken the faculties he had despised, but they had become partially atrophied. Sentiment, when it came to him and was systematically developed, had always in it something thin, something hectic. He inhaled his oxygen not in the fields but artificially through an air pump. This is the general character of the limitations which were responsible for Disraeli's witty and unfair saying.

It is to be regretted that the editor of Mill's Letters, who has wisely included in his selection some which have already appeared in print, should have omitted to republish the very characteristic letters of his boyhood given to the world thirty years ago by Mr Bain in his Criticism' of Mill, but long since generally forgotten. One of these especially throws the vivid light of contemporary illustration on the unique story of his early

education. It is addressed to Jeremy Bentham's brother, Sir Samuel Bentham. The Benthams had known John Mill as a child. George Bentham had taken him at the age of five to see Lady Spencer-the wife of Lord Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty-and Mill had kept up an animated conversation with her on the comparative merits of Wellington and Marlborough. When he stayed with them at the age of eight they found that he had already read in Greek Esop's Fables,' Xenophon's 'Anabasis,' 'Cyropædia' and 'Memorabilia,' Herodotus, part of Lucian and two speeches of Isocrates; also in English the histories of Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, Burnet's History of his Own Time,' the 'Arabian Nights,' Don Quixote,' and quite as many more books whose names it would be tedious to enumerate. Curious to learn something of the further progress of this extraordinary experiment in education, Sir Samuel Bentham wrote, some years later, to ask him to send an account of his reading since they had last met. The solemn boy of thirteen consults his memory as to the events of his crowded life to ascertain how long ago that meeting was. He decides that it was six years earlier, and begins his reply as follows:

'MY DEAR SIR,-It is so long since I last had the pleasure of seeing you that I have almost forgotten when it was, but I believe it was in the year 1814, the first year we were at Ford Abbey. I am very much obliged to you for your inquiries with respect to my progress in my studies; and as nearly as I can remember I will endeavour to give an account of them from that year.

'In the year 1814 I read Thucydides and Anacreon and, I believe, the Electra of Sophocles, the Phoenissæ of Euripides, and the Plutus and the Clouds of Aristophanes. I also read the Philippics of Demosthenes.

'The Latin which I read was only the oration of Cicero for the poet Archias, and the (first or last) part of his pleading against Verres. And in mathematics, I was then reading Euclid; I also began Euler's Algebra, and Bonnycastle's, principally for the sake of the examples to perform. I read likewise some of West's Geometry.

'Aet. 9.-The Greek which I read in the year 1815 was, I think, Homer's Odyssey. Theocritus, some of Pindar, and the two orations of Æschines, and Demosthenes on the Crown. In Latin I read the first six books, I believe, of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the first five books of Livy, the Bucolics,

and the six first books of the Eneid of Virgil, and part of Cicero's Orations. In mathematics, after finishing the first six books, with the eleventh and twelfth, of Euclid, and the Geometry of West, I studied Simpson's Conic Sections, and also West's Conic Sections, Mensuration and Spherics; and in algebra, Kersey's Algebra, and Newton's Universal Arithmetic, in which I performed all the problems without the book, and most of them without any help from the book.'

This extract is enough to recall the amazing length to which he willingly carried the education mania impressed on him in word and in action by his father.

The letters and brief diary now for the first time before us present to the reader very little of Mill's personality. There are no personal touches, no quaint or original phrases indicating the writer's moods or likes or dislikes, none of the elements of familiar conversation. It is, therefore, well before reading them to remind ourselves from other sources what the man was like.

At thirty-six Mill is described as tall and thin, with a somewhat bald head, fair hair and ruddy complexion. He was all through life a great reader, and he read either walking up and down his room in the East India Office (of which he was an official) or at the standing desk at which he wrote. His expression was sweet. His voice was thin, almost sharp. As he spoke there was a constant twitching of the eyebrows which arrested attention. His manner of conversation was cold and passionless as a rule. In his twenties he did not always impress people as a talker. 'Though powerful with a pen in his hand,' writes one witness, he has not the art of managing his ideas, and is consequently hesitating and slow and has the appearance of being always working in his mind propositions or a syllogism.' Even later some thought his conversation, though remarkable enough in argument, wholly didactive and controversial. He had no humour, no talk and, indeed, no interest in the minor concerns of life.' 'He had not much gesture, but it was all in keeping,' writes Mr Bain; his features were expressive without his aiming at strong effects. Everything about him had the cast of sobriety and reserve; he did no more than the end required.'

There was evidently no fullness, no vividness, no