JOHN STUART MILL 455 



His adroitness in applying abstract principles to concrete realities, 

 and thus making attractive to the many those studies of his that might 

 otherwise have repelled even the few, is too well known to require illus- 

 tration. As Herbert Spencer somewhere makes illuminative use of 

 the shape of a present-day ' milk- jug ' to illustrate the irrationality of 

 fashion and convention, so Mill can strengthen an argument by happily 

 introducing the diminishing vogue of fainting-fits among young ladies. 

 And as in small things, so in large. The high degree of common sense 

 inwrought in the philosophy of Mill and Spencer contributes no little 

 to the readableness, the intelligibility and the popularity of their 

 writings. That Mill was nothing but ' a book in breeches,' as he was 

 so often called, can not rightly be made to appear, even in the most 

 learned of his published works. Unless precision and clearness of 

 thought, accuracy of expression, aptness of illustration, breadth of 

 reading and of observation, and constant openness to conviction, con- 

 stitute the pedant, he was no pedant. One may even wish that there 

 were a little more of the bookish element in him ; for, remembering the 

 extent of his reading in both ancient and modern literature, we feel 

 some disappointment at finding in his works so little of that common 

 stock of graceful allusion and happy quotation that might have been 

 expected to adorn and to light up his somewhat sombre pages. Never- 

 theless he can not properly be called ' a thing of mechanized iron.' If 

 he was the ' steam-engine ' that Carlyle pronounced him to be, he was 

 at least an engine of that excellent sort that burns its own smoke, 

 which is more than can be said of Carlyle. 



Mr. Frederic Harrison, who knew Mill personally, is emphatic in 

 asserting that his heart was " even richer than his brain." Mr. Morley 

 places Mill's distinction in the "union of stern science with infinite 

 aspiration, of rigorous sense of what is real and practical with bright 

 and luminous hope." All readers will recall the purple patches in 

 ' The Subjection of Women.' In spite of his proof armor of dry logic, 

 the author is more than once carried away by what has been styled 

 ' the logic of feeling.' Mr. Harrison calls him " excessively sensitive 

 and indeed impressionable." As Condorcet said of Turgor, he resem- 

 bled a volcano clothed in ice. Proofs of this warmth of feeling could 

 be adduced in great number, but a very few must here suffice. For a 

 whole year he took upon himself the duties of his friend and subordi- 

 nate in the India House, W. T. Thornton, to enable the latter to recruit 

 his health without relinquishing his post. Mill's offer to guarantee the 

 expense of certain early publications of Spencer's and Bain's, and also 

 his generous kindness to Comte, when the French philosopher had fallen 

 on evil days, and at a time when Mill himself was suffering from heavy 

 pecuniary losses, are matters of common knowledge. A considerateness 

 for others, and a depreciation of self, that went even to extremes, may 



