JOHN STUART MILL. 



JOHN STUART MILL. 



By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL. D., 



PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 



IV. 



THE year 1842 was memorable for the American repudiation, in 

 which Mill was heavily involved. He had invested, I am told, a 

 thousand pounds of his own money, and several thousands of his 

 father's money which he had in trust for the family, and which he 

 would have to make good. The blow completely shook him for the 

 time. From whatever cause, or union of causes, his bodily strength 

 was prostrated to such degree that, before I left London that autumn, 

 he was unequal to his usual walk from the India House home, and 

 took the omnibus before he went far. The disaster must have preyed 

 upon him for a year or more. He alluded to his state in the Comte 

 letters, in which he described his depression as both physical and 

 moral. It appears that in a letter to Comte of the 15th of November, 

 he gave assurances of his being much better. So in writing to me on 

 the 3d of October, he says, " I am quite well and strong, and now walk 

 the whole way to and from Kensington without the self-indulgence 

 of OTombV But on the 5th of December he says, " I have not been 

 very well, but am a little better." He was now in the middle of the 

 very heavy winter's work 6f getting the " Logic " through the press. 

 There is no more heard of his health till the following June, in which 

 he wrote to Comte in a very depressed tone. I remember, either in 

 that or in the previous summer, his confessing to me that he was in a 

 low state. I naturally urged that he had a long continuance of very 

 heavy work. He replied hastily, " I do not believe any man was ever 

 the worse for work," or something to that effect. I listened in mute 

 astonishment, being quite ignorant that other circumstances besides 

 his intellectual strain were at work. In writing to Comte, who, unlike 

 him, believed in the bad consequences of prolonged study, he said his 

 doctors advised him to rest his brain, but, as they knew so very little, 

 he preferred to abide by his own feelings, which taught him that work 

 was the only thing to counteract melancholy. Comte, however, urged 

 that a " true positive therapeutics " involved rest and diversion ; and 

 Mill believed in regular holiday tours. It was during this dreadful 

 depression of June and July, 1843, and after the American repudia- 

 tion had beggared him, that he made his offer of pecuniary assistance 

 to Comte. He had had no holiday for two years, and, except for his 

 customary Sunday walks, he did not leave town that autumn : I sus- 

 pect that his money affairs had something to do with his still postpon- 

 ing his holiday. In October his letters announce an improved state 

 of health. 



