7 5 o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY. 



JOHN STUART MILL. 



By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL. D., 



PEOFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 



III. 



MY acquaintance with Mill dates from 1839, when I was a student 

 at Marischal College, Aberdeen. In the winter of 1838-'39, 

 John Robertson, who was then assisting in the Review, paid a short 

 visit to his native city. I had known him when I was a child, but had 

 not seen him for years. He asked me to meet him, and entered into 

 free conversation about his doings in London, and about my pursuits 

 and prospects. He gave me both advice and encouragement, and 

 spoke a good deal about Mill, whom I had never heard of, although I 

 may have known something of his father. On returning to London, 

 Robertson mentioned my name to Mill. In the summer of 1839 I 

 wrote a criticism of some points in Herschel's " Discourse on Natural 

 Philosophy," a book that had long fascinated me, as it had done so 

 many others. I thought Herschel occasionally weak in his metaphys- 

 ics, and directed my criticism to some of those weaknesses. Robert- 

 son showed Mill this paper. He spoke favorably of the effort, but 

 remarked to me afterward that the criticism was too severe, and that 

 the book "always seemed to him to have the characters of a first 

 crude attempt of a clever and instructed man in a province new to 

 him." 



In 1840 I took my M. A. degree, and began to write for periodi- 

 cals. Mill had just parted with the " London and Westminster " : but 

 through Robertson, I got my first published article admitted into the 

 " Westminster " for September ; an exposition of the two scientific 

 novelties the electrotype and daguerreotype. In July, 1841, was pub- 

 lished a second article entitled " The Properties of Matter," to which I 

 owed the first notice taken of me by Mr. Grote. Both these articles 

 did me good with Mill. In the same autumn (1841) Robertson, who 

 was now very much at sea himself, came down to Aberdeen, and made 

 a long stay ; during which I had abundant talk with him, my early 

 friend David Masson being also of the party. Robertson occasion- 

 ally wrote to Mill, and at last incited me to write to him. I scarcely 

 remember anything of the terms of the letter, but I have preserved his 

 reply, dated 21st September, 1841. After my first meeting with Rob- 

 ertson, nearly three years previous, I assiduously perused the back 

 numbers of the " London " and " London and Westminster " Reviews, 

 as well as each new number as it appeared, whereby I became thor- 

 oughly familiarized with Mill's ideas, and was thus able to exchange 

 ideas with him on his own subjects. I was engaged for the succeed- 



