JOHN STUART MILL. 



ing- 1 now felt myself at a greater distance 

 from : greater, indeed, than a full and 

 calm explanation and reconsideration 

 on both sides might have shown to 

 exist in reality. But my father was not 

 one with whom calm and full explana- 

 tions on fundamental points of doctrine 

 could be expected, at least with one 

 whom he might consider as, in some 

 sort, a deserter from his standard. 

 Fortunately we were almost always in 

 strong agreement on the political ques- 

 tions of the day, which engrossed a 

 large part of his interest and of his 

 conversation. On the matters of opinion 

 on which we differed, we talked little. 

 He knew that the habit of thinking for 

 myself, which his mode of education 

 had fostered, sometimes led me to opin- 

 ions different from his [but not on the 

 subject of religion], and he perceived 

 from time to time [the business must 

 have been cautiously gone about] that I 

 did not always tell him how different. 

 I expected no good, but only pain to 

 both of us, from discussing our differ- 

 ences ; and I never expressed them 

 when he gave utterance to some opinion 

 or feeling repugnant to mine, in a man- 

 ner which would have made it disingen- 

 uousness on my part to remain silent " 

 (p. 180). 



ble class in society, his isolation from it 

 is apt to be greater than that of the late 

 Dr. Thomas Guthrie, who started with a 

 fair social position and training, example 

 and associations, to say nothing of his 

 natural gifts of observation and improve- 

 ment in matters outside of his profes- 

 sional aspirations. It was fifteen years 

 after he first went to college that he got 

 a church, during five years of which, after 

 he was licensed, he had " knocked about " 

 a good deal, besides residing and study- 

 ing in Paris, and acting in his twenty- 

 six and twenty-seventh years as agent or 

 manager of a branch bank, which he de- 

 scribed as " two busy, but not lost, years 

 in that employment." And he says : 

 " That, in point of fact, was not the least 

 valuable part of my training and educa- 

 tion. I became in this way conversant 

 both with mercantile and agricultural 

 affairs ; and those who, both in the coun- 

 try and the town, afterwards became my 

 people, did not respect me the less when 

 they found their minister was something 

 else than 'a fine bodie,' who knew no 

 more about the affairs, the hopes and 

 disappointments, and temptations, and 

 trials of men engaged in the business of 

 the world than any old wife, or the ' man 

 in the moon'" (Autobiography, p. 107). 



It is certainly " useful that there 

 should be some record of an educa- 

 tion which was unusual and remark- 

 able," to guard humanity against 

 the ungodliness, the want of judg- 

 ment, and the unnatural treatment 

 or cruelty displayed in it, and but 

 for which John Stuart Mill would 

 doubtless have turned out, in some 

 respects, a different man from what 

 he did. 



III. 



A CRISIS IN HIS HISTORY. 



We have seen what a singular train- 

 ing John Stuart Mill received from 

 his father in the important questions 

 of religion, education, and social 

 life, so poorly calculated to qualify 

 him for the real battle of life, and 

 the law, for which he was originally 

 intended.. He informs us, as we 

 have seen, that when fifteen he 

 " had what might truly be called an 

 object in life to be a reformer of 

 the world," when he had been 

 brought up almost completely isola- 

 ted from it, at least to such an extent 

 as was apt to unfit him for taking 



There are many ways in which students 

 of divinity can acquire a little more 

 knowledge of the world than they do, if 

 they will but avail themselves of them. In- 

 deed, " serpentine wisdom " is not only 

 allowed, but commanded. Romanists 

 have a plan of their own in these matters. 

 What they aim at is to make their stu- 

 dents priests, the most important part of 

 whose work is to manage their people. 



James Mill seems to have been a stu- 

 dent like those described, perhaps a "boor- 

 ish cub that was licked into shape," as 

 Dr. Thomas Guthrie expressed it, whose 

 time was exclusively given to his books. 

 He would acquire little knowledge 

 as a tutor beyond the ways of polite 

 society, and have much of his Forfarshire 

 roughness rubbed off him. He seems to 

 have chosen a tutorship rather than a 

 public school, for, had he taken the 

 latter, he would have lost caste, and run 

 a much greater risk of never getting a 

 church. Had the gentlemen and noblemen 

 who employed him as a tutor known of 

 his ideas on religion, they would sooner 

 have introduced a viper to the bosom of 

 their families than had anything to do 

 with him. 



