100 



JOHN STUART MILL. 



pretended perfection to the order of 

 nature and the universe)" (p. 186). 

 If she had any religion, she does not 

 seem, with the influence she possess- 

 ed, to have tried to bring him over 

 to it, or to have made any impres- 

 sion on him. She also maintained 

 " an earnest protest against many 

 things which are still part of the 

 established constitution of society " 

 (p. 1 86) [not stating, as usual, what 

 these were], which "resulted not 

 from the hard intellect [or hard 

 heart ?] but from strength of noble 

 and elevated feelings," that " co-ex- 

 isted with a highly reverential na- 

 ture " (p. 1 86), while "making the 

 broadest distinction between mala 

 in se and mere mala prohibita [if not 

 by God, by whom prohibited?] 

 between acts giving evidence of in- 

 trinsic badness in feeling and charac- 

 ter [still very indefinite], and those 

 which are only violations of conven- 

 tions either good or bad ; violations 

 which, whether in themselves right 

 or wrong, [such as ?] are capable of 

 being committed by persons in every 

 other respect loveableor admirable" 

 (p. 1 88). 



This is the only allusion, indirect- 

 ly made, to the feelings entertained 

 by society regarding his connec- 

 tion with Mrs. Taylor, as expressed 

 by the writers in Fraser's Magazine 

 and the Edinburgh Review. Here 

 we have no admission of any law by 

 which he would be bound ; no moral 

 law of God or society (for, with his 

 principles, he could have totally 

 disregarded the latter) ; none except 

 his interest, his vanity, or his sove- 

 reign caprice ; and he dismisses the 

 subject when he says : 



" The reader whom these things do 

 not interest has only himself to blame 

 if he reads farther, and I do not desire 

 any other indulgence from him than 

 that of bearing in mind, that for him 

 these pages were not written " (p. 2). 



" This friendship has been the 

 honour [?] and chief blessing of my ex- 

 istence, as well as the source of a great 

 part of all that I have attempted to do, 

 or hope to effect hereafter for human 



improvement " (p. 184). "In thought 

 and intellect, Shelley, so far as his 

 powers were developed in his short life, 

 was but a child compared with what she 

 ultimately became" (p. 186). "She 

 possessed in combination the qualities 

 which, in all other persons whom I had 

 known, I had been only too happy to 

 find singly " (p. 186). "What I owe, 

 even intellectually, to her, is in its detail 

 almost infinite " (p. 189). 



With his usual want of particu- 

 lars, and indefiniteness of language, 

 Mill does not state the circum- 

 stances under which she separated 

 from her husband ; nor whether she 

 had an allowance from him to sup- 

 port herself and daughter, and enter- 

 tain her friends. The woman who 

 would leave her husband in the 

 way she seems to have done would 

 not only accept an allowance, but 

 demand it. If she did not have that, 

 or had no means of her own, Mill 

 was certainly bound in honour to 

 maintain his " Platonic love,'* for 

 being his " guide, philosopher and 

 friend," and for the great service 

 she was to him in his literary enter- 

 prises (to say nothing of the social 

 disgrace she incurred on his ac- 

 count) ; and if these were not re- 

 munerative, he should have fallen 

 back on his official salary for the 

 purpose. " Thou shalt not covet 

 thy neighbour's wife," was a com- 

 mand which Mill did not recognize. 

 Indeed, he said in substance that 

 that was none of society's business. 

 " We did not consider the ordi- 

 nances of society [or any other 

 ordinances?] binding on a subject so 

 entirely personal " (p. 229), "whether 

 they were good or bad, right or 

 wrong." Nothing seems to have 

 been thought of the poor abandoned 

 man, for whom he " had the sin- 

 cerest respect, and she the strongest 

 affection " (p. 240). But at last there 

 " took place the most important 

 events of my private life " (p. 240) 

 the death of Mr. Taylor in July, 

 1849, an d his marriage in April, 

 1851, to his widow ; a " lady whose 

 incomparable worth had made her 



