292 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



of the curriculum. It was with men of the succeeding generation (as 

 generally hapjiens with great innovators in science and philosophy) 

 that his teachings were destined to be fully appreciated. But his 

 teachings were none of them fundamentally new ; or what was new 

 in them was, or appeared to be, subordinate to what he had avowedly 

 borrowed from previous thinkers. He was neither the atithor of a new 

 system of philosophy, nor the discoverer of a new science. He can 

 hardly be called, in strictness, the advocate even, of any previous doc- 

 trine in ^Jhilosophy or science. It was one of his short-comings that he 

 took for granted more than most of his readers knew. His starting- 

 point was in advance of what most of them knew, and he was thus 

 unintelligible to many of the best minds among his coevals. Starting 

 from what many of them did not know, he completed, carried out, and 

 put into a scientific form in his " System of Logic," and in his " Prin- 

 ciples of Political Economy," the views he had adopted from his earlier 

 teachers and from his later studies. 



It was through his masterly style of exposition and his skill in 

 dialectics, and by other traits of a personal character to which active and 

 original youth is especially alive, that he secured an unprejudiced hearing 

 for doctrines in philosophy and practice which had almost ceased to 

 have adherents. These doctrines had a century before, from the time of 

 Locke (and before they had made such fearful inroads on existing customs 

 and opinions, as Hume developed from it), become an especially English 

 philosophy ; but had almost disappeared through the influence of the 

 Scottish and German reactions against Hume. When his " System 

 of Logic " was published, he stood almost alone in his opinions. The 

 work was not written in exposition or defence of this philosophy, but 

 in accordance with its tenets, which were thus reduced to a proximate 

 application, or to a more determinate or concrete form. A qualified 

 nominalism, thoroughly English, and descended from the English 

 schoolman William of Ockham, was its philoso^jhical basis. He wel- 

 comed and introduced to English readers the revival of this philosophy 

 in France, by Auguste Comte, with whom he agx'eed in many posi- 

 tions, — more especially in those wliich were not original with Comte. 

 His accordance with Comte can hardly be regarded as one of disciple- 

 ship, since in most important practical matters Mill dissented from the 

 views of the French philosojjher. His real allegiance was to the once 

 prevalent teachings of Locke, and to those of Berkeley, Hume, Brown, 

 Hartley, and his father James Mill. 



No modern thinker has striven more faithfully to restore and build 

 upon those speculations of the past, which appeared to him just and true. 



