The Living Age

Time, when thou shalt bring again
Pallas from the Trojan plain,
Portia from the Roman's hall,
Brynhild from the fiery wall,
Eleanor, whose fearless breath
Drew the venom'd fangs of Death,
And Philippa doubly brave
Or to conquer or to save-
When thou shalt on one bestow
All their grace and all their glow,
All their strength and all their state,
All their passion pure and great,
Some far age may honor then
Such another queen of mene

Henry Nerobolt. The Spectator.

JOHN STUART MILL.

It was no bad usage of the old Ro- flaws in any deposition that time's unmans to bring down from its niche the kind hand may bring to light. His life waxen image of an eminent ancestor on was true to his professions, and was no the anniversary of his natal day, and to less tolerant, liberal, unselfish, singlerecall his memory and its lineaments, minded, high, and strenuous than they even though time and all its wear and

were. tear should have sprinkled a little dust, Nobody who claims to deal as a mator chipped a feature. Nor was the ter of history with the intellectual ferAlexandrian sage unwise who deemed mentation between 1840 and 1870 or a himself unworthy of a birthday feast little longer, whatever value the hisand kept its very date strictly secret, torian may choose to set upon its yet sacrificed to the gods and enter- products, can fail to assign a leading tained his friends on the birthdays of influence to Mill. One of the choicest Socrates and Plato. Nobody would spirits of our age, for example, was have been more severely displeased Henry Sidgwick, and he has told how than Mill at an attempt to exalt him to he began his study of philosophy with a level in the empyrean with those two the works of Mill, "who, I think, had immortal shades; ye he was of the attained the full height (1860) of that Socratic household. He was the first remarkable influence which he exerguide and inspirer of a generation that cised over youthful thought, and perhas now all but passed away; and it haps I may say the thought of the may perhaps be counted among the country generally, for a period of some sollemnia pietatis, the feasts and offices years." "No one thinker, so far as I of grateful recollection, in an Easter know, has ever had anything like equal holiday from more clamorous things, to influence in the forty years or so that muse for a day upon the teacher who have elapsed since Mill's dominion bewas born on the twentieth of May a gan to weaken." To dilate on Mill's hundred years ago.

achievements, said Herbert Spencer, Mill was once called by Mr. Gladstone "and to insist upon the wideness of his the saint of rationalism, and the desig- influence over the thought of his time, nation was a happy one. The canoni- and consequently over the action of zation of a saint in the Roman com- his time, seems to me superfluous." munion is preceded by the dozen or Spencer was rightly chary of random more preliminary steps of beatification; compliments, yet he declared that he and the books tell us that the person to should value Mill's agreement more be beatified must be shown to have than that of any other thinker. It practised in a signal degree the three would be easy to collect copious testitheological virtues of Faith, Hope, and mony to this extraordinary supremacy. Charity, and the four cardinal virtues One may recall Taine's vivacious diof Prudence, Justice, Courage, and alogue with some Oxford friend, actual Temperance. I think Mill would or imaginary, in the sixties:emerge in perfect safety from such an

What have you English got that is inquisition, on any rational or ration

original?-Stuart Mill.—What is Stuart alistic interpretation of those high

Mill?-A publicist; his little book on terms; nor need we be at all afraid Liberty is as good as your Rousseau's that the advocatus diaboli will find fatal Social Contract is bad, for Mill con

men

cludes as strongly for the independence most active. It is true, Mill's fame and of the individual as Rousseau for the influence are no longer what they were. despotism of the State. That is not

How should they be? As if perpetuity enough to make a philosopher. What

of direct power or of personal renown else?-An economist, who goes beyond his science, and subordinates produc

could fall to any philosopher's lot, outtion to man, instead of subordinating side the little group consecrated by traman to production.-Still not enough to dition. Books outside of the enchanted make a philosopher. Wþat more?- A realm of art and imagination become logician.-Of what school?-His own. I

spent forces;

who were the told you he was an original. –Then

driving agents of their day sink into who are his friends?-Locke and Comte

literary names,

and take faded in the front; then Hume and Newton.Is he systematic?-a speculative re

place in the catalogue of exhausted former?-Oh he has far too much mind

influences. for that. He does not pose in the maj- The philosophic teacher's fame, like esty of a restorer of science; he does the statesman's or the soldier's—like the not proclaim, like your Germans, that great navigator's, inventor's, or discovhis book is going to open a new era for

erer's-ê color d'erba, is like the grass, the human race. He walks step by

whose varying huestep, a little slowly, and often close to the ground across a host of instance

Doth come and go-by that same sun and example. He excels in giving pre

destroyed cision to an idea, in disentangling a From whose warm ray its vigor first principle, in recovering it from under

it drew. a crowd of different cases, in refuting, in distinguishing, in arguing.-Has he

New needs emerge. Proportions arrived at any great conception of a

change. Fresh strata are uncovered. Whole?-Yes.-Has he a personal and

Theories once charged with potency complete idea of nature and the human mind?-Yes.

evaporate. So a later generation must

play umpire. How should Mill be betThough the reader, if he be ter off than Grotius or Montesquieu, minded, may smile at this to-day, still Descartes or Locke, or Jean Jacques, it is a true summary of the claim then or any of the others who in their day made for Mill, of the position generally shook the world, or lighted up some assented to (by Taine himself among single stage of the world's dim jourothers), and of aims partially if not ney? As is well put for our present wholly achieved. Bentham founded a case, a work great in itself and of exgreat school, James Mill inspired a po- clusive authorship is not the only way litical group, Dugald Stewart impressed in which original power manifests ita talented band with love of virtue and self. "A multitude of small impresof truth. John Mill possessed for a sions," says Bain, the most sinewy of time a more general ascendency than Mill's allies, “may have the accumuany of these. Just as Macaulay's Es- lated effect of a mighty whole. Who says fixed literary and historical sub- shall sum up Mill's collective influence jects for the average reader, so the as an instructor in politics, ethics, writings of Mill set the problems and logic, and metaphysics? No calculus defined the channels for people with a can integrate the innumerable little taste for political thinking and thinking pulses of knowledge and of thought deeper than political. He opened all that he has made to vibrate in the the ground, touched all the issues, minds of his generation." posed all the questions in the spheres The amazing story of his education is where the intellects of men must be well known from his own account of it.

In after years he told Miss Caroline various pleasures, with a decided preFox, whose "Journals" are the most at- dominance of the active over the pastractive of all the surviving memorials sive, and having as the foundation of of Mill, “that his father made him study the whole not to expect from life more ecclesiastical history before he was ten. than it is capable of bestowing." Even This method of early intense applica- friendly philosophers have denounced tion he would not recommend to others; this as a rash and off-hand formula, in most cases it would not answer, and and they may be right; for anything where it does, the buoyancy of youth that I know, analysis might kill it. is entirely superseded by the maturity Meanwhile it touches at least three of manhood, and action is very likely vital points in a reasonable standard to be merged in reflection. 'I never for a life well laid out. Mill had his was a boy,' he said, 'never played at moments of discouragement, but they cricket; it is better to let Nature have never lasted long and never arrested her own way.'" He has told us what effort. were his father's moral inculcations- He realized how great an expenditure justice, temperance (to which he gave of the reformer's head and heart, to use a very extended application), veracity, his own phrase, went in vain attempts perseverance, readiness to encounter to make the political dry bones live. pain and especially labor; regard for With cheerful stoicism he accepted the public good; estimation of persons this law of human things. “When the according to their merits, and of things end comes," he wrote to a friend in according to their intrinsic usefulness; pensive vein, “the whole of life will a life of exertion in contradiction to one appear but as a day, and the only quesof self-indulgent ease and sloth. But tion of any moment to us then will be, James Mill, when all was said, "thought Has that day been wasted? Wasted it human life a poor thing at best, after has not been by those who have been, the freshness of youth and of satisfied for however short a time, a source of curiosity had gone by." He would happiness and of moral good even to sometimes say that if life were made the narrowest circle. But there is what it might be by good government only one plain rule of life eternally and good education, it would be worth binding, and independent of all vari. having, but he never spoke with any- ation of creeds, embracing equally the thing like enthusiasm even of that greatest moralities and the smallest; possibility. Passionate emotions he re- it is this. Try thyself unweariedly till garded as a form of madness, and the thou findest the highest thing thou art intense was a byword of scornful dis- capable of doing, faculties and circumapprobation. In spite of training his stances being both duly considered, son grew to be very different. John and then do it." This responsibility for Mill's opinions on subjects where emo- life and gifts was once put by Mr. tion was possible or appropriate were Gladstone as a threefold disposition to suffused by feeling; and admiration, resist the tyranny of self; to recognize anger, contempt often found intense the rule of duty; to maintain the suenough expression. Nor did a hint premacy of the higher over the lower ever escape him about life being “a parts of our nature. Mill had none of poor thing at best.” All pointed the Mr. Gladstone's faith in an over-ruling other way. "Happiness," he once Providence; but in a famous passage he wrote, "is not a life of rapture; but mo- set out his conviction that social feelments of such in an existence made up ing in men themselves might do as of few and transitory pains, many and well:-

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