HIS WIFE. 



inferiority in the qualities by which he 

 acquired his personal ascendancy [alert- 

 ness, decision and energy, among others], 

 I had now to try what it might be possi- 

 ble for me to accomplish without him. 



Deprived of my father's 



aid, I was also exempted from the re- 

 straints and reticences by which that aid 

 had been purchased" (p. 206). 



At this time Mill was nearly thirty 

 years old ; old enough, one would 

 think, to have been completely eman- 

 cipated from every one. He seems 

 to have " got along " pretty well 

 with two " guides, philosophers and 

 friends " ; but after his father's death 

 he appears to have come completely 

 under the influence of the other, for 

 fifteen years, when he married her, 

 and had her all to himself for seven 

 and a half years. 



" Not only during 1 the years of our 

 married life, but during many of the 

 years of confidential friendship which 

 preceded, all my published writings were 

 as much her work as mine ; her share in 

 them constantly increasing as years ad- 

 vanced " (p. 241). . . . "Over and 

 above the general influence which her 

 mind had over mine, the most valuable 

 ideas and features in these joint pro- 

 ductions those which have been most 

 fruitful of important results [what were 

 these important results ?], and have con- 

 tributed most to the success and repu- 

 tation of the works themselves origi- 

 nated with her, were emanations from 

 her mind, my part in them being no 

 greater than in any of the thoughts 

 which I found in previous writers, and 

 made my own only by incorporating 

 them with my own system of thought 

 [which must have been a small ingredi- 

 ent in the mixture, such as a book- 

 wright could furnish]. During the 

 greater part of my literary life I have 

 performed the office in relation to her, 

 which from a rather early period I had 

 considered as the most useful part that 

 I was qualified to take in the domain of 

 thought, that of an interpreter of origi- 

 nal thinkers, and the mediator between 

 them and the public [that is, a dry nurse 

 to others' bantlings] ; for I had always 

 a humble opinion of my own powers as 

 an original thinker, except in abstract 

 science " (p. 242). " My own strength 

 lay wholly in the uncertain and slippery 



intermediate region, that of theory or 

 moral and political science" (p. 189) 

 [which should have kept him from rush- 

 ing into almost every practical subject 

 connected with life]. " It will easily be 

 believed [there is no doubt about it] that 

 when I came into close intellectual com- 

 munion with a person of the most emi- 

 nent faculties, whose genius, as it grew 

 and unfolded itself in thought, continu- 

 ally struck out truths far in advance of 

 me, but in which I could not, as I had 

 done in those others [the Coleridgians, the 

 German thinkers, and Carlyle], detect 

 any mixture of error [was he a fallible 

 and she an infallible being ?], the greatest 

 part of my mental growth consisted in 

 the assimilation of those truths [what 

 were they ?] ; and the most valuable part 

 of my intellectual work was in building 

 the bridges and clearing the paths [me- 

 chanical work] which connected them 

 with my general system of thought " (p. 

 2 43) [whether his own or borrowed 

 from others]. 



Of his Principles of Political Econ- 

 omy, the most important chapter, 

 on the " Probable future of the la- 

 bouring classes," was entirely due to 

 her: 



" It was chiefly her influence that 

 gave to the book that general tone by 

 which it is distinguished from all previ- 

 ous expositions of Political Economy 

 that had any pretension to being scien- 

 tific " (p. 246). " This example illus- 

 trates well the general character of what 

 she contributed to my writings. What 

 was abstract and purely scientific was 

 generally mine [sometimes his own ' co- 

 gitations,' and sometimes those of 

 others] ; the proper human element [or 

 common sense] came from, her : in all 

 that concerned the application of phil- 

 osophy to the exigencies of human soci- 

 ety and progress, I was her pupil " (p. 

 247). " Her practical turn of mind, and 

 her almost unerring estimate of practi- 

 cal obstacles, repressed in me all ten- 

 dencies that were really visionary " (p. 

 248). 



He says of his System of Logic^ 

 that it " owed little to her except 

 in the minuter matters of composi- 

 tion, in which respect my writings, 

 both great and small, have largely 

 benefited by her accurate and clear- 

 sighted criticism " (p. 244). But if 



