9 6 



JOHN STUART MILL. 



" The cultivation of the feelings be- 

 came one of the cardinal points in my 

 ethical and philosophical creed. And 

 my thoughts and inclinations turned in 

 an increasing degree towards whatever 

 seemed capable of being instrumental 

 to that object " (p. 144) [such as poet- 

 ry, but nothing in regard to religion]. 



" The only one of the imaginative arts 

 in which I had from childhood taken 

 great pleasure was music. .... 

 But, like all my pleasurable susceptibili- 

 ties, it was suspended during the gloomy 

 period. I had sought relief again and 

 again from this quarter, but found none, j 

 After the tide had turned, and I was in 

 process of recovery, I had been helped 

 forward by music, but in a much less 

 elevated manner" (p. 144), for " I was 

 seriously tormented by the thought of 

 the exhaustibility of musical combina- 

 tions This source of anxi- 

 ety may, perhaps, be thought to re- 

 semble that of the philosophers of La- 

 puta, who feared lest the sun should be 

 burnt out" (p. 145). 



This cultivation of the feelings, 

 which began at so late an age, con- 

 trasts finely with his father's ideas 

 on the subject: 



" He regarded as an aberration of the 

 moral standard of modern times, com- 

 pared with that of the ancients, the 

 great stress laid upon feeling. Feel- 

 ings, as such, he considered to be no 

 proper subjects of praise or blame" 

 [whatever the occasion of their exercise] 

 (p. 49). " My father's teachings tended 

 to the undervaluing of feeling " (p. 1 10). 

 " I needed to be made to feel that there 

 was real permanent happiness in tran- 

 quil contemplation. Wordsworth taught 

 me this, not only without turning away 

 from, but with a greatly increased inter- 

 est in, the common feelings and com- 

 mon destiny of human beings. And the 

 delight which these poems gave me 

 proved that, with culture of this sort [hu- 

 man affections], there was nothing to 

 dread from the most confirmed habit 

 of analysis. . . The result was that 

 I gradually, but completely, emerged 

 from my habitual depression, and was 

 never again subject to it " (p. 148). 



" Although we were generally in the 

 right, as against those who were op- 

 posed to us, the effect was that the cul- 

 tivation of feeling (except the feelings 

 of public and private duties) was not 



in much esteem among us [the little so- 

 ciety with utility for its standard in 

 ethics and politics], and had very little 

 place in the thoughts of most of us, my- 

 self in particular " (p. 1 1 1). " I disliked 

 any sentiments in poetry which I should 

 have disliked in prose ; and that included 

 a great deal. And I was wholly blind 

 to its place in human culture, as a means 

 of educating the feelings " (p. 112). But 

 after the crisis " it so fell out that the 

 merits of Wordsworth were the occasion 

 of my public declaration of my new way 

 of thinking, and separation from those 

 of my habitual companions who had not 

 undergone a similar change " (p. 149). 



It is difficult to assign a reason 

 for his separating from his friends 



who had not undergone a similar 

 change." If his state had really 

 been that in which "converts to 

 Methodism usually are when smit- 

 ten by their first conviction of sin," 

 leading him to " renounce the world, 

 the flesh and the devil," it could be 

 understood why he should have sep- 

 arated from his habitual companions; 

 but his behaviour was incomprehen- 

 sible, unless we hold that Mill, in 

 addition to going to extremes, like 

 the pendulum of a clock, was quar- 

 relsome, domineering, intolerant, 

 supercilious, or touchy in his dispo- 

 sition. He admitted that a schism 

 took place between him and Roe- 

 buck, which widened from that time 

 more and more, the chief divergence 

 in the beginning relating to the " cul- 

 tivation of the feelings," his new 

 hobby (p. 150). 



All that Mill said of the " crisis 'in 

 his mental history" could have been 

 stated in a very few words. As already 

 mentioned, it was doubtless a nerv- 

 ous disorder, which (it would be ab- 

 surd to deny it) could not have been 

 cured by his merely " reading acci- 

 dentally " a short passage in Mar- 

 monteVs Memoir es. It had the effect, 

 however, of directing his attention to 

 other subjects than his grinding anal- 

 ysis. The treatment of it should 

 have extended to internal and ex- 

 ternal remedies, exercises, amuse- 

 ments, change of air, and diversified 



