JOHN STUART MILL. 



man, that is a worm, and the son of 

 man, who is a worm." 



Man's mode of coming into being 

 is, as I have said, an appeal to every 

 intelligent creature of more or less 

 maturity of knowledge. It is all the 

 more wonderful when it is consid- 

 ered that one generation might have 

 been the children instead of the 

 parents of the other, so far as the 

 knowledge, choice, and power of the 

 blind instruments of the perpetua- 

 tion of the race are concerned ; for 

 the subject is as incomprehensible 

 to them, with all their endowments, 

 if left to themselves, as if they were 

 the most irrational of beings. Hence 

 the natural and easy transition to 

 what St. Paul said to the Athenians: 

 " For in him we live, and move, and 

 have our being ; as certain also of 

 your own poets have said, For we are 

 also his offspring " (Acts xvii. 28). 

 If our present existence, in every 

 possible aspect of it, is so utterly 

 incomprehensible to us, why object 

 to one in a future state, when it 

 seems but the complement of the 

 present one, as it is the desire the 

 hope and consolation of virtu- 

 ous and pious, or even thoughtful 

 men ? And since our bodies emanate 

 from nothing, why speak of the im- 

 possibility, or even the unlikelihood 

 of a resurrection, which has now as 

 it had of old this effect, as experi- 

 enced by the Apostle : " And when 

 they heard of the resurrection of the 

 dead, some mocked, and others said, 

 We will hear thee again of this mat- 

 ter " (verse 32). And if we reject 

 the Scriptures, what would people, 

 brought up in a Christian communi- 

 ty, accept in their place, beyond 

 their own ignorance, helplessness 

 and misery ? 



The Mills could not have been al- 

 together devoid of the instincts com- 

 mon to their kind, when they spent 

 their lives in seeking or wishing to 

 obliterate from the mind of man, as 

 well as their own, the sense of a 

 knowledge of, and a reliance on, the 

 author of their beings. Both of 



them seem to have been singularly ill- 

 made-up characters a species of 

 wild men, in short; the elder being 

 the strangest phenomenon of the 

 two, inasmuch as he was carefully 

 trained and licensed to preach 

 Christianity, and doubtless did 

 preach it. Both were really asham- 

 ed and afraid to avow before the 

 world that they did not believe in 

 God ; while others, often the best 

 and most pious of men, are half- 

 ashamed, half -afraid, to avow to 

 everyone how much they do believe 

 in him, and in the revelation which 

 he has made of himself to his crea- 

 tures. 



The opinions of so many of the 

 wise and great men of the earth, in 

 addition to the instincts of their 

 kind, as to the existence of God, 

 had no effect on the Mills ; and 

 while other men may desire to hold 

 themselves entirely at his disposal, 

 we could imagine them fretting over 

 the mysteries of their being and 

 destiny, and the " nature of things," 

 like hyenas pacing to and fro in 

 their cages. If they could have 

 succeeded in suppressing in their 

 breasts all thought of the Deity, and 

 their responsibilities to him, they 

 would have to some extent re- 

 alized their creeds ; that of the 

 elder being that " the exclusive 

 test of right and wrong [is] the 

 tendency of actions to produce 

 pleasure or pain " (p. 48) ; and that 

 of the younger, that " happiness is 

 the test of all rules of conduct, and 

 the end of life " (p. 142). 



II. 



HIS EDUCATION. 



In regard to his education, Mill 

 writes : 



" I have thought that in an age in 

 which education and its improvement 

 are the subject of more, if not of pro- 

 founder study than at any former period 

 of English history, it may be useful that 

 there should be some record of an edu- 

 cation which was unusual and remark- 



