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JOHN STUART MILL. 



only in the matter of religion, but 

 in many other things, when he 

 wrote : 



" He disliked people quite as much 

 for any other deficiency, provided he 

 thought it equally likely to make them 

 act ill. He disliked, for instance, a 

 fanatic in any bad cause, as much or 

 more than one who adopted the same 

 cause from self-interest, because he 

 thought him even more likely to be 

 practically mischievous " (p. 50). 



Mill was to a very great extent, 

 and in a very marked degree, a 

 " made or manufactured man, hav- 

 ing had a certain impress of opin- 

 ions stamped on him which he 

 could only reproduce " (p. 155), 

 notwithstanding what he says about 

 his ideas of Wordsworth and Byron, 

 whether the impress was made on 

 him by his father, Mrs. Taylor, or 

 whoever they were that "attached 

 him to their cars." 



" I felt that what my father had said 

 respecting my peculiar advantages was 

 exactly the truth and common sense of 

 the matter, and it fixed my opinion and 

 feeling from that time forward " (p. 35), 

 [viz :] " that it was no matter of praise 

 to me if I knew more than those who 

 had not had a similar advantage, but 

 the deepest disgrace to me if I did not " 

 (P- 34). 



His case was not that of a boy 

 brought up and educated in the 

 ordinary way, and depending on no 

 one but himself, or one brought up 

 in circumstances of destitution, and 

 deprived of every advantage of even 

 the most elementary instruction, 

 and yet who educated himself 

 and rose to distinction; but one 

 who was educated and trained 

 as a stalled ox is fed. He was a 

 forced, hot-house plant, that had 

 everything done for it, and " cram- 

 med with mere facts, and with the 

 opinions or phrases of other people " 

 (p. 31), which his training enabled 

 him to manipulate and transpose 

 this way and that way, as a person 

 acquires a trade, business or 

 art, on being put to it ; some show- 



ing greater merits in proportion to 

 their application, and natural talents 

 running in that way. This is what 

 Mill was substantially, leaving it as 

 an open question his estimate of 

 himself when he said : " My own 

 strength lay wholly in the uncertain 

 and slippery intermediate region, 

 that of theory or moral and political 

 science " (p. 189). 



A person appearing before the 

 world advocating an idea or a fact 

 that may have incidentally presented 

 itself to him, and taking up others 

 that the first may have as incidental- 

 ly led to, is a kind of person totally 

 different from one like Mill, whose 

 " cramming " urged him to become 

 a " reformer of the world " at the 

 time he was fifteen, when he had no 

 practical knowledge of the world 

 (and never really acquired it), or of 

 what there was in it that required 

 reformation. The latter is almost 

 sure to become, in some things at 

 least, little better than a demagogue, 

 or pest generally, especially when 

 his capacity or training qualifies 

 him, for the most part, to but level 

 and fire off the guns of others' load- 

 ing. 



Mill's premature studies really 

 spoiled him, for they were not 

 counteracted, modified, or controlled 

 by subsequent practical knowledge. 

 They led him, at the early age men- 

 tioned, to say that 



" The most transcendent glory I was 

 capable of conceiving was that of fig- 

 uring, successful or unsuccessful, as a 

 Girondist in an English convention " (p. 

 63). An idea doubtless imbibed from 

 his father. And when he was a young 

 man he said : " The French philoso- 

 phes of the eighteenth century were the 

 example we sought to imitate, and we 

 hoped to accomplish no less results [!]. 

 No one of the set went to so great ex- 

 cesses in this boyish ambition as I did 

 (p. 108). . . . Ambition and desire 

 of distinction I had in abundance ; and 

 zeal for what I thought the good of 

 mankind was my strongest sentiment, 

 mixing with and colouring all others. 

 But my zeal was as yet little else, at that 



