JOHN STUART MILL 457 



trait — an intellectual liberality unusual among scholars devoted to 

 some chosen branch of stud)*. " Some years ago," Fawcett narrates, " I 

 happened to be conversing at Cambridge with three men who were 

 respectively of great eminence in mathematics, classics and physiology. 

 We were discussing the inaugural address which Mr. Mill had just 

 delivered as rector of the St. Andrews University. The mathematician 

 said that he had never seen the advantages to be derived from the 

 study of mathematics so justly and so forcibly described; the same 

 remark was made by the classic about classics, and by the physiologist 

 about natural science. ISTo more fitting homage can probably be offered 

 to the memory of one to whom so many of us are bound by the strongest 

 ties of gratitude and affection, than if, profiting by his example, we 

 endeavor to remember that above all things he was just to his opponents, 

 that he appreciated opinions from which he differed, and that one of 

 his highest claims to our admiration was his general sympathy with all 

 branches of knowledge." 



What we of to-day owe to Mill, it seems safe to assert in closing, 

 is not so much the advancement of learning in any particular direction 

 — for the world has already caught up with and assimilated a great 

 part of the new truth uttered by him — as the stimulus of a rarely pure 

 and lofty and strenuous nature, devoted to high ideals for the ameliora- 

 tion of mankind, and unflinchingly courageous in advocating them by 

 example as well as by precept. Industrious and versatile to a degree 

 that astonishes one on surveying the products of his literary and his 

 business activity, he at the same time achieved, in whatever he under- 

 took, a uniformly high quality of workmanship that would be note- 

 worthy even in the most rigorous specialist. To the strenuous youth of 

 this strenuous age (if one may be pardoned for using again a much 

 over-worked adjective) Mill may well serve as a model of nobly directed 

 activity, generous self-sacrifice, and memorable achievement. But in 

 emulating his example, let us first ponder well these words of his from 

 a letter to Caroline Fox : " No one should attempt anything intended 

 to benefit his age, without at first making a stern resolution to take 

 up his cross and to bear it. If he does not begin by counting the cost, 

 all his schemes must end in disappointment; either he will sink under 

 it, as Chatterton, or yield to the counter-current, like Erasmus, or pass 

 his life in disappointment and vexation, as Luther did." 



