726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



reasoning which they showed, yet it must be confessed that they are 

 too often ill-adapted to the common apprehension. Had he possessed 

 more knowledge and acquaintance with practical business life, been 

 nearer to the monotony of details, his work would have been imbued 

 with a smack of practicality which would have redeemed its abstract- 

 ness, and made it vastly more useful. Moreover, he would, as in the 

 discussion of the wages question, have adapted his j)rinciples more 

 correctly to the truth, and gained positions less likely to be assailed 

 after others had noted their too great symmetry and too few limita- 

 tions. His early training accounts for his book as it stands, and ex- 

 plains his faults. Account must, however, be taken of the life Mill 

 led as a servant in the East India Company's office, which widened 

 his horizon, gave his mind practical employment, and furnished him 

 with a great field of experience in men and things. This, without 

 doubt, exercised a strong and steadying influence on his thinking, 

 which had some of the faults of English insularity, and, taken together 

 with his robust philanthropy, gave that practical direction to his work 

 which, while it was inadequate, yet redeemed him from the charge of 

 being too entirely given to abstractions. Had he had an interest in 

 work-a-day things which equaled his fondness for metaphysics and 

 abstract thinking, he would have succeeded even more than he did, 

 and he made a great success. His treatment of international values 

 is a conspicuous example of his faculty for extended reasoning, but, 

 bad he put it more as a practical man of affairs, he could have made 

 an exposition of the principles quite as well as he did, and gained 

 Tastly in his hold upon the reader. Does it not become evident, then, 

 that mere philosophic acumen is not sufficient in the model economist ? 

 Nor, on the other hand, is the mere man of affairs able to grasp the 

 workings of principles in the confusion of details. These two powers 

 must be, and always are, combined in him who accomplishes the best 

 -economic work. 



The personality of Mill's great successor, Mr. Cairnes, is a very 

 interesting one. He both knew and thought much. Members of Par- 

 liament would come to sit by his invalid's chair, in which he was con- 

 fined by a painful disorder, finally ending in an untimely death, and 

 iind him more learned than they in the details and facts of certain 

 legislation ; and yet with this accumulation of practical knowledge, 

 for which he had a peculiar aptitude, no one since Ricardo has shown 

 «o vigorous a faculty for investigation, and the power of keeping 

 bis head while in the pursuit of principles. He was not befogged by 

 metaphysical niceties, but followed his way through the multiplicity 

 of actual business life with as sure and certain a grasp upon the 

 actuating causes, and witb as clear and definite a view of the princi- 

 ples in operation, as an expert accountant when adding a column of 

 figures. His logical and philosophic side is most admirably seen in 

 bis little volume, " The Logical Method," in which he lays down his 



