JOHN STUART MILL. 33 i 



repeated it. It grew out of the very laudable desire to approach an 

 abstract subject by a concrete introduction ; but the conditions of 

 success in that endeavor have scarcely yet been realized by any one 

 of the many that have made it. At a later period, Grote declaimed 

 strongly against Mill's setting Whately above Hamilton. 



The final article in April, 1828, is the review of Scott's " Life of 

 Napoleon." It extends to sixty pages, and is in every way a master- 

 piece. He had now made a thorough study of the French Revolution, 

 and had formed the design to be himself its historian. He does ample 

 justice to Scott's genius as a narrator, and to a certain amount of 

 impartiality founded on his naturally tolerant disposition, and his aim 

 at winning the good word of everybody. But the exposure of the 

 many and deep-seated defects of the work, both in facts and in reason- 

 ings, is complete, and would have marred the fame of any other writer. 

 In point of execution, it is not unworthy to be compared with the 

 Sedgwick and Whewell articles. 



I consider some observations called for on the mental crisis of 1826. 

 He had then completed his twentieth year. The subjective description 

 given of his state must be accepted as complete. But the occurrence 

 is treated as purely spiritual or mental ; the physical counterpart being 

 wholly omitted ; the only expression used, " a dull state of nerves such 

 as everybody is liable to" is merely to help out the description on the 

 mental side. Nothing could be more characteristic of the man. There 

 was one thing he never would allow, which was, that work could be 

 pushed to the point of being injurious to either body or mind. That 

 the dejection so feelingly depicted was due to physical causes, and that 

 the chief of these causes was overworking the brain, may I think be 

 certified beyond all reasonable doubt. We know well enough what 

 amount of mental strain the human constitution, when at its very best, 

 has been found to endure ; and I am unable to produce an instance of 

 a man going through as much as Mill did before twenty, and yet liv- 

 ing a healthy life of seventy years. The account of his labors in the pre- 

 vious year alone, 1825 (a lad of nineteen), is enough to account for all 

 that he underwent in the years immediately following. Moreover, it 

 was too 'early to have exhausted his whole interest in life, even sup- 

 posing that he had drawn somewhat exclusively upon the side of activity 

 and reforming zeal. Fifteen or twenty years later was soon enough to 

 readjust his scheme of enjoyment, by delicate choice and variation of 

 stimulants, by the cultivation of poetry and passive susceptibility. It 

 so happened that, on the present occasion, his morbid symptoms were 

 purely subjective ; there was no apparent derangement in any bodily 

 organ. Judging, however, from what followed a few years later, we 

 can plainly see in this " mental crisis " the beginning of the maladies 

 that oppressed the second half of his life in a way that could not be 

 mistaken. He got over the attack apparently in two or three years, 



