MILL AND SON. 



105 



mainly through her teaching 



I am indeed painfully conscious of how 

 much of her best thoughts on the sub- 

 ject I have failed to reproduce, and how 

 greatly that little treatise falls short of 

 what [it] would have been if she had put 

 on paper her entire mind on this ques- 

 tion, or had lived to revise and improve, 

 as she certainly would have done, my 

 imperfect statement of the case" [p. 

 244]. 



His Utilitarianism, with the ex- 

 ception of some additional matter, 

 was " written during the last years 

 of his married "life " (p. 266), and 

 doubtless was as much his wife's as 

 the others. 



It would have been interesting if 

 Mill had told us fully where a " be- 

 ing of these qualities " (p. 188) could 

 have got all her information, since 

 " to be admitted into any degree 

 of mental intercourse " with her 

 " could not but have a most beneficial 

 influence on his development " (p. 

 1 88). 



" To her who had at first reached her 

 opinions by the moral intuition of a 

 character of strong feeling [was that in- 

 spiration ?] there was doubtless help as 

 well as encouragement to be derived 

 from one who had arrived at many of 

 the same results by study and reason- 

 ing : and in the rapidity of her intellect- 

 ual growth, her mental activity, which 

 converted everything into knowledge, 

 doubtless drew from me [there she must 

 have bamboozled him], as it did from 

 other sources, many of its materials " 

 (p. i 88). 



That was a subject upon which 

 Mill appears to have remained igno- 

 rant to the last, and it may become 

 one of discussion to such as feel in- 

 terested in it. 



V. 



MILL AND SON. 



It is remarkable that Mill, de- 

 pending so much upon others, di- 

 rectly and indirectly, for his opin- 

 ions, and the details, as well as some 

 of the execution, of so many of the 

 writings published in his name, 



should have looked upon himself as 

 an Apostle : for he says : 



"A person of high intellect should 

 never go into unintellectual society un- 

 less he can enter it as an Apostle ; yet 

 he is the only person with high objects 

 who can safely enter it at all " (p. 228), 



The only real apostleship which 

 characterized him was that of rank 

 atheism, acquired at second hand, 

 and preached by his executors ; 

 which " society" of any kind can 

 well dispense with. The writer in 

 the Edinburgh Review, alluded to, 

 says : 



"What education would he have 

 given them ? What has he ever done to 

 promote their education in any one re- 

 spect which would make the peasant 

 and the artizan a better and a happier 

 man ? " " In truth, if the whole work 

 of his life be examined, it will be found 

 to be eminently destructive, but not to 

 contain one practical constructive idea." 



And the writer in Blackwooffs 



Magazine says : 



" There was not an opinion or an in- 

 stitution cherished by his countrymen 

 which he ... . did not attack, 

 with a view to its absolute extinction." 

 " Marriage was the institution which he 

 especially assailed," "and called upon 

 the whole female sex to revolt against 

 it, as unworthy and to the lowest de- 

 gree degrading." 



As illustrative of the mischief- 

 making intentions or tendencies of 

 his nature and teaching, like those 

 of a child starting machinery which 

 it could not control, the following 

 may be given, when he says that he 



" Earnestly hoped that Owenite, St. 

 Simonian, and all other anti-property 

 doctrines might spread widely among 

 the poorer classes ; not that I thought 

 those doctrines true, or desired that they 

 should be acted on, but in order that the 

 higher classes might be made to see that 

 they had more to fear from the poor 

 when uneducated than when educated " 

 (p. 172). 



His father's words would apply, 

 in an eminent degree, to himself, not 



