JOHN STUART MILL. 757 



the plan of his "Political Economy." It also entered into his "Rep- 

 resentative Government " ; and, if he had written a complete work on 

 sociology, he would have made it the basis of his arrangement as Comte 

 did. 



Mill's correspondence with Comte began in 1841. I heard from 

 himself a good deal of the substance of it as it went on. Comte's 

 part being now published, we can judge of the character of the whole, 

 and infer much of Mill's part in the work. In 1842 and 1843 the let- 

 ters on both sides were overflowing with mutual regard. It was 

 Comte's nature to be very frank, and he was circumstantial and minute 

 in his accounts of himself and his ways. Mill was unusually open ; 

 and revealed, what he seldom told to anybody, all the fluctuations in 

 his bodily and mental condition. In one of the early letters, he coined 

 the word " pedantocracy," which Comte caught up, and threw about 

 him right and left, ever after. Already in 1842 troubles were brew- 

 ing for him in Paris, partly in consequence of his peculiar tenets, and 

 still more from his unsparing abuse of the notables of Paris, the fore- 

 most object of his hate being the all-powerful Arago. His personal 

 situation, always detailed with the utmost fullness, makes a consider- 

 able fraction of the correspondence on his side. When in 1843 the 

 " Polytechnic pedantocracy," that is to say, the Council of the Poly- 

 technic School, for which he was examiner, first assumed a hostile atti- 

 tude, and when his post was in danger, Mill came forward with an 

 offer of pecuniary assistance, in case of the worst ; the generosity of 

 this offer will be appreciated when I come to state what his own cir- 

 cumstances were at that moment. Comte, however, declined the pro- 

 posal ; he would accept assistance from men of wealth among his fol- 

 lowers ; indeed, he broadly announced that it was their duty to minister 

 to his wants ; but he did not think that philosophers should have to 

 devote their own small means to helping one another. Mill sent the 

 " Logic " to him as soon as published ; he is overjoyed at the compli- 

 ments to himself, and warmly appreciates Mill's moral courage in own- 

 ing his admiration. They discuss sociological questions at large, at 

 first with considerable cordiality and unanimity ; but the harmony is 

 short-lived. In the summer of 1843 begins the debate on women, which 

 occupied the remainder of that year ; the letters being very long on 

 both sides. By November, Comte declares the prolongation of the 

 discussion needless ; but protests strongly against Mill's calling women 

 " slaves." Mill copied out the letters on both sides, and I remember 

 reading them. Some years later, when I asked him to show them to a 

 friend of mine, he consented, but said that, having reread them him- 

 self, he was dissatisfied with the concessions he had made to Comte, 

 and would never show them to any one again. What I remember 

 thinking at the time I read them was, that Mill needlessly prolonged 

 the debate, hoping against hope to produce an impression upon Comte. 

 The correspondence was not arrested by this divergence, nor was 



