452 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



innumerable little pulses of knowledge and of thought that he has made 

 to vibrate in the minds of his generation " — and, one may add, in the 

 minds of the succeeding generation. 



That keen, alert intelligence, trained, as an athlete is trained, to 

 the very maximum of efficiency, if not indeed overtrained, can not but 

 command the admiration of Mill's readers to-day, as it did that of his 

 contemporaries. One can hardly read his remarkable ' Autobiography ' 

 without acknowledging in Mill a kind and a degree of intellect so far 

 out of the ordinary as to approach the prseter-human — we will not say 

 the superhuman. " Logic-chopping engine," Carlyle may dub his old 

 friend, as he emphatically does in describing the ' Autobiography ' to 

 his brother John. " I have never read a more uninteresting book," he 

 declares, " nor should I say a sillier, by a man of sense, integrity, and 

 seriousness of mind. ... It is wholly the life of a logic-chopping engine, 

 little more of human in it than if it had been done by a thing of mech- 

 anized iron. Autobiography of a steam-engine." " A fascinating book 

 it is from beginning to end," said Edward Everett Hale, in reviewing 

 the work at the time of its appearance. 



Probably the one book of Mill's that has done more than any other 

 to awaken interest and arouse enthusiasm is his treatise on ' Liberty.' 

 Its merits are well indicated in an adverse criticism that occurs in one 

 of Caroline Fox's letters. " I am reading," she says, " that terrible 

 book of John Mill's on Liberty, so clear and calm and cold; he lays it 

 on one as a tremendous duty to get oneself well contradicted, and admit 

 always a devil's advocate into the presence of your dearest, most sacred 

 truths, as they are apt to grow windy and worthless without such tests, 

 if, indeed, they can stand the shock of argument at all. He looks you 

 through like a basilisk, relentless as fate. . . . No, my dear, I don't 

 agree with Mill, though I, too, should be very glad to have some of my 

 ' ugly opinions ' corrected, however painful the process ; but Mill makes 

 me shiver, his blade is so keen and so unhesitating." It is exactly this 

 willingness, and more than willingness, to hear the other side, that 

 attracts the young reader, and in fact all ingenuous minds, to Mill. 

 His writings bear the unmistakable stamp of sincerity. " I had always," 

 he tells us, " a humble opinion of my own powers as an original thinker, 

 . . . but thought myself much superior to most of my contemporaries 

 in willingness and ability to learn from everybody; as I found hardly 

 any one who made such a point of examining what was said in defense 

 of all opinions, however new or however old, in the conviction that even 

 if they were errors there might be a substratum of truth underneath 

 them, and that in any case the discussion of what it was that made them 

 plausible, would be a benefit to truth." 



In harmony with this spirit of modesty and candor is that peculiar 

 quality in his writings which is at the same time one of their chief 



