272 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
tory estimate of what he has done, what he has failed to do, and 
what his influence in the future is likely to be. The habit of 
thinking characteristic of this generation is too much affected by 
his logical methods, and pervaded by his spirit, to admit of a per- 
fectly just estimate. 
That he has been in a great degree the representative English 
thinker of his generation will be generally allowed ; for we already 
see enough to recognise in him the leader in this age of that 
school of British philosophy, which, in the seventeenth century, 
was represented by Hobbes and Locke, and in last century by 
Hartley and Hume. If he wanted the rugged masculine vigour 
and originality of Hobbes, he had more ardent sympathies and a 
more indulgent candour. Locke undoubtedly far excelled him in 
massive common sense and in practical knowledge of human 
nature, and was more complete as a man ; but he was hardly 
superior as a subtle analytical psychologist, or equal as a lucid 
expositor. If Mr Mill wanted Hume’s grace, humour, gaiety of 
temper, and insight, in the expression of a philosophy of life in a 
large degree common to them both, he had a moral earnestness and 
intensity of sentiment which one does not find in Hume. Mill 
was eminently a logician rather than a metaphysician or a specu- 
lative moralist ; his conception of life was limited in its scope 
and aim. He methodised the experience of an age devoted to the 
physical sciences, and tending towards materialism. He was not 
a speculative philosopher, who sought to comprehend the universe : 
he was a reformer who wanted to make society better, by improving 
its relations to its circumstances on this planet. He accordingly 
explained to his countrymen their own scientific habits of research, 
in which inductive methods and presuppositions are employed with 
extraordinary vigour and success, for the improvement of circum- 
stances and of the external arrangements of society. As a meta- 
physician, he always tried to keep speculation within the limits of 
positive science, and to dissolve by analysis, as hurtful prejudices, 
the faith or thought which does not admit of ordinary inductive 
verification,— thus, it may be alleged, overlooking in man, and with- 
drawing from human life, some of their best and noblest possessions. 
Yet in some of their aspects Mr Mill’s life and writings witness to 
a broader and deeper philosophy than he professed. His heart and his 
