[Transcriber's note: between brackets [ ] some fragments are included, which are not present in all editions, mostly commentaries concerningMr. Mill's wife and stepdaughter (Helen Taylor)--an html ed. Of thise-text, including index is pending. ] AUTOBIOGRAPHY by JOHN STUART MILL CONTENTS CHAPTER I 1806-1819 CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION CHAPTER II 1813-1821 MORAL INFLUENCES IN EARLY YOUTH--MY FATHER'S CHARACTER AND OPINIONS CHAPTER III 1821-1823 LAST STAGE OF EDUCATION, AND FIRST OF SELF-EDUCATION CHAPTER IV 1823-1828 YOUTHFUL PROPAGANDISM--THE "WESTMINSTER REVIEW" CHAPTER V 1826-1832 A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY--ONE STAGE ONWARD CHAPTER VI 1830-1840 COMMENCEMENT OF THE MOST VALUABLE FRIENDSHIP OF MY LIFE--MY FATHER'SDEATH--WRITINGS AND OTHER PROCEEDINGS UP TO 1840 CHAPTER VII 1840-1870 GENERAL VIEW OF THE REMAINDER OF MY LIFE. --COMPLETION OF THE "SYSTEMOF LOGIC"--PUBLICATION OF THE "PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY"--MARRIAGE--RETIREMENT FROM THE INDIA HOUSE--PUBLICATION OF "LIBERTY"--"CONSIDERATIONS ON REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT"--CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA--EXAMINATION OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY--PARLIAMENTARY LIFE--REMAINDER OF MY LIFE CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION It seems proper that I should prefix to the following biographical sketchsome mention of the reasons which have made me think it desirable that Ishould leave behind me such a memorial of so uneventful a life as mine. I do not for a moment imagine that any part of what I have to relate canbe interesting to the public as a narrative or as being connected withmyself. But I have thought that in an age in which education and itsimprovement are the subject of more, if not of profounder, study than atany former period of English history, it may be useful that there shouldbe some record of an education which was unusual and remarkable, andwhich, whatever else it may have done, has proved how much more than iscommonly supposed may be taught, and well taught, in those early yearswhich, in the common modes of what is called instruction, are littlebetter than wasted. It has also seemed to me that in an age of transitionin opinions, there may be somewhat both of interest and of benefit innoting the successive phases of any mind which was always pressing forward, equally ready to learn and to unlearn either from its own thoughts or fromthose of others. But a motive which weighs more with me than either ofthese, is a desire to make acknowledgment of the debts which myintellectual and moral development owes to other persons; some of them ofrecognised eminence, others less known than they deserve to be, and theone to whom most of all is due, one whom the world had no opportunity ofknowing. The reader whom these things do not interest, has only himself toblame if he reads farther, and I do not desire any other indulgence fromhim than that of bearing in mind that for him these pages were not written. I was born in London, on the 20th of May, 1806, and was the eldest sonof James Mill, the author of the _History of British India_. My father, the son of a petty tradesman and (I believe) small farmer, at NorthwaterBridge, in the county of Angus, was, when a boy, recommended by hisabilities to the notice of Sir John Stuart, of Fettercairn, one of theBarons of the Exchequer in Scotland, and was, in consequence, sent tothe University of Edinburgh, at the expense of a fund established byLady Jane Stuart (the wife of Sir John Stuart) and some other ladiesfor educating young men for the Scottish Church. He there went throughthe usual course of study, and was licensed as a Preacher, but neverfollowed the profession; having satisfied himself that he could notbelieve the doctrines of that or any other Church. For a few years hewas a private tutor in various families in Scotland, among others thatof the Marquis of Tweeddale, but ended by taking up his residence inLondon, and devoting himself to authorship. Nor had he any other meansof support until 1819, when he obtained an appointment in the India House. In this period of my father's life there are two things which it isimpossible not to be struck with: one of them unfortunately a verycommon circumstance, the other a most uncommon one. The first is, thatin his position, with no resource but the precarious one of writing inperiodicals, he married and had a large family; conduct than whichnothing could be more opposed, both as a matter of good sense and ofduty, to the opinions which, at least at a later period of life, hestrenuously upheld. The other circumstance, is the extraordinaryenergy which was required to lead the life he led, with thedisadvantages under which he laboured from the first, and with thosewhich he brought upon himself by his marriage. It would have been nosmall thing, had he done no more than to support himself and hisfamily during so many years by writing, without ever being in debt, or in any pecuniary difficulty; holding, as he did, opinions, both inpolitics and in religion, which were more odious to all persons ofinfluence, and to the common run of prosperous Englishmen, in thatgeneration than either before or since; and being not only a man whomnothing would have induced to write against his convictions, but onewho invariably threw into everything he wrote, as much of hisconvictions as he thought the circumstances would in any way permit:being, it must also be said, one who never did anything negligently;never undertook any task, literary or other, on which he did notconscientiously bestow all the labour necessary for performing itadequately. But he, with these burdens on him, planned, commenced, andcompleted, the _History of India_; and this in the course of about tenyears, a shorter time than has been occupied (even by writers who hadno other employment) in the production of almost any other historicalwork of equal bulk, and of anything approaching to the same amount ofreading and research. And to this is to be added, that during thewhole period, a considerable part of almost every day was employed inthe instruction of his children: in the case of one of whom, myself, he exerted an amount of labour, care, and perseverance rarely, ifever, employed for a similar purpose, in endeavouring to give, according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectualeducation. A man who, in his own practice, so vigorously acted up to theprinciple of losing no time, was likely to adhere to the same rulein the instruction of his pupil. I have no remembrance of the timewhen I began to learn Greek; I have been told that it was when I wasthree years old. My earliest recollection on the subject, is that ofcommitting to memory what my father termed vocables, being lists ofcommon Greek words, with their signification in English, which hewrote out for me on cards. Of grammar, until some years later, Ilearnt no more than the inflections of the nouns and verbs, but, aftera course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation; and I faintlyremember going through Aesop's _Fables_, the first Greek book whichI read. The _Anabasis_, which I remember better, was the second. Ilearnt no Latin until my eighth year. At that time I had read, undermy father's tuition, a number of Greek prose authors, among whom Iremember the whole of Herodotus, and of Xenophon's _Cyropaedia_ and_Memorials of Socrates_; some of the lives of the philosophers byDiogenes Laertius; part of Lucian, and Isocrates ad Demonicum and AdNicoclem. I also read, in 1813, the first six dialogues (in the commonarrangement) of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theoctetus inclusive:which last dialogue, I venture to think, would have been better omitted, as it was totally impossible I should understand it. But my father, inall his teaching, demanded of me not only the utmost that I could do, but much that I could by no possibility have done. What he was himselfwilling to undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be judged fromthe fact, that I went through the whole process of preparing my Greeklessons in the same room and at the same table at which he was writing:and as in those days Greek and English lexicons were not, and I couldmake no more use of a Greek and Latin lexicon than could be made withouthaving yet begun to learn Latin, I was forced to have recourse to himfor the meaning of every word which I did not know. This incessantinterruption, he, one of the most impatient of men, submitted to, andwrote under that interruption several volumes of his History and allelse that he had to write during those years. The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in this partof my childhood, was arithmetic: this also my father taught me: it wasthe task of the evenings, and I well remember its disagreeableness. But the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction I received. Much of it consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father'sdiscourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rusticneighbourhood. My father's health required considerable and constantexercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in thegreen lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read theday before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary ratherthan a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper whilereading, and from these in the morning walks, I told the story to him;for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this mannera great number: Robertson's histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatestdelight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson's _Philip the Secondand Third_. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against theTurks, and of the revolted Provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, myfavourite historical reading was Hooke's _History of Rome_. Of GreeceI had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgmentsand the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin's_Ancient History_, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read withgreat delight Langhorne's translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnet's_History of his Own Time_, though I cared little for anything in itexcept the wars and battles; and the historical part of the _AnnualRegister_, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes myfather borrowed for me from Mr. Bentham left off. I felt a livelyinterest in Frederic of Prussia during his difficulties, and in Paoli, the Corsican patriot; but when I came to the American War, I took mypart, like a child as I was (until set right by my father) on thewrong side, because it was called the English side. In these frequenttalks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to giveme explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to himin my own words. He also made me read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce meto read them of myself: among other's Millar's _Historical View of theEnglish Government_, a book of great merit for its time, and which hehighly valued; Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, McCrie's _Life ofJohn Knox_, and even Sewell and Rutty's Histories of the Quakers. He wasfond of putting into my hands books which exhibited men of energy andresource in unusual circumstances, struggling against difficulties andovercoming them: of such works I remember Beaver's _African Memoranda_, and Collins's _Account of the First Settlement of New South Wales_. Two books which I never wearied of reading were Anson's Voyages, sodelightful to most young persons, and a collection (Hawkesworth's, Ibelieve) of _Voyages round the World_, in four volumes, beginning withDrake and ending with Cook and Bougainville. Of children's books, anymore than of playthings, I had scarcely any, except an occasional giftfrom a relation or acquaintance: among those I had, _Robinson Crusoe_was pre-eminent, and continued to delight me through all my boyhood. It was no part, however, of my father's system to exclude books ofamusement, though he allowed them very sparingly. Of such books hepossessed at that time next to none, but he borrowed several for me;those which I remember are the _Arabian Nights_, Cazotte's _ArabianTales_, _Don Quixote_, Miss Edgeworth's _Popular Tales_, and a bookof some reputation in its day, Brooke's _Fool of Quality_. In my eighth year I commenced learning Latin, in conjunction with ayounger sister, to whom I taught it as I went on, and who afterwardsrepeated the lessons to my father; from this time, other sisters andbrothers being successively added as pupils, a considerable part of myday's work consisted of this preparatory teaching. It was a part whichI greatly disliked; the more so, as I was held responsible for thelessons of my pupils, in almost as full a sense as for my own: I, however, derived from this discipline the great advantage, of learningmore thoroughly and retaining more lastingly the things which I wasset to teach: perhaps, too, the practice it afforded in explainingdifficulties to others, may even at that age have been useful. Inother respects, the experience of my boyhood is not favourable to theplan of teaching children by means of one another. The teaching, Iam sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well know that therelation between teacher and taught is not a good moral disciplineto either. I went in this manner through the Latin grammar, and aconsiderable part of Cornelius Nepos and Caesar's Commentaries, butafterwards added to the superintendence of these lessons, much longerones of my own. In the same year in which I began Latin, I made my first commencementin the Greek poets with the Iliad. After I had made some progress inthis, my father put Pope's translation into my hands. It was the firstEnglish verse I had cared to read, and it became one of the books inwhich for many years I most delighted: I think I must have read itfrom twenty to thirty times through. I should not have thought itworth while to mention a taste apparently so natural to boyhood, if Ihad not, as I think, observed that the keen enjoyment of this brilliantspecimen of narrative and versification is not so universal with boys, as I should have expected both _a priori_ and from my individualexperience. Soon after this time I commenced Euclid, and somewhat later, Algebra, still under my father's tuition. From my eighth to my twelfth year, the Latin books which I rememberreading were, the _Bucolics_ of Virgil, and the first six books of theAeneid; all Horace, except the Epodes; the Fables of Phaedrus; thefirst five books of Livy (to which from my love of the subject Ivoluntarily added, in my hours of leisure, the remainder of the firstdecade); all Sallust; a considerable part of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_;some plays of Terence; two or three books of Lucretius; several of theOrations of Cicero, and of his writings on oratory; also his lettersto Atticus, my father taking the trouble to translate to me from theFrench the historical explanations in Mingault's notes. In Greek Iread the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ through; one or two plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, though by these I profited little; allThucydides; the _Hellenics_ of Xenophon; a great part of Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon; part of the _Anthology_;a little of Dionysius; several books of Polybius; and lastlyAristotle's _Rhetoric_, which, as the first expressly scientifictreatise on any moral or psychological subject which I had read, andcontaining many of the best observations of the ancients on humannature and life, my father made me study with peculiar care, and throwthe matter of it into synoptic tables. During the same years I learntelementary geometry and algebra thoroughly, the differential calculus, and other portions of the higher mathematics far from thoroughly: formy father, not having kept up this part of his early acquiredknowledge, could not spare time to qualify himself for removing mydifficulties, and left me to deal with them, with little other aidthan that of books: while I was continually incurring his displeasureby my inability to solve difficult problems for which he did not seethat I had not the necessary previous knowledge. As to my private reading, I can only speak of what I remember. Historycontinued to be my strongest predilection, and most of all ancienthistory. Mitford's Greece I read continually; my father had put me onmy guard against the Tory prejudices of this writer, and hisperversions of facts for the whitewashing of despots, and blackeningof popular institutions. These points he discoursed on, exemplifyingthem from the Greek orators and historians, with such effect that inreading Mitford my sympathies were always on the contrary side tothose of the author, and I could, to some extent, have argued thepoint against him: yet this did not diminish the ever new pleasurewith which I read the book. Roman history, both in my old favourite, Hooke, and in Ferguson, continued to delight me. A book which, inspite of what is called the dryness of its style, I took greatpleasure in, was the _Ancient Universal History_, through theincessant reading of which, I had my head full of historical detailsconcerning the obscurest ancient people, while about modern history, except detached passages, such as the Dutch War of Independence, Iknew and cared comparatively little. A voluntary exercise, to whichthroughout my boyhood I was much addicted, was what I called writinghistories. I successively composed a Roman History, picked outof Hooke; and an Abridgment of the _Ancient Universal History_; aHistory of Holland, from my favourite Watson and from an anonymouscompilation; and in my eleventh and twelfth year I occupied myselfwith writing what I flattered myself was something serious. This wasno less than a History of the Roman Government, compiled (with theassistance of Hooke) from Livy and Dionysius: of which I wrote as muchas would have made an octavo volume, extending to the epoch of theLicinian Laws. It was, in fact, an account of the struggles betweenthe patricians and plebeians, which now engrossed all the interest inmy mind which I had previously felt in the mere wars and conquests ofthe Romans. I discussed all the constitutional points as they arose:though quite ignorant of Niebuhr's researches, I, by such lights as myfather had given me, vindicated the Agrarian Laws on the evidence ofLivy, and upheld, to the best of my ability, the Roman Democraticparty. A few years later, in my contempt of my childish efforts, Idestroyed all these papers, not then anticipating that I could everfeel any curiosity about my first attempts at writing and reasoning. My father encouraged me in this useful amusement, though, as I thinkjudiciously, he never asked to see what I wrote; so that I did notfeel that in writing it I was accountable to any one, nor had thechilling sensation of being under a critical eye. But though these exercises in history were never a compulsory lesson, there was another kind of composition which was so, namely, writingverses, and it was one of the most disagreeable of my tasks. Greekand Latin verses I did not write, nor learnt the prosody of thoselanguages. My father, thinking this not worth the time it required, contented himself with making me read aloud to him, and correctingfalse quantities. I never composed at all in Greek, even in prose, andbut little in Latin. Not that my father could be indifferent to thevalue of this practice, in giving a thorough knowledge of theselanguages, but because there really was not time for it. The versesI was required to write were English. When I first read Pope's Homer, I ambitiously attempted to compose something of the same kind, andachieved as much as one book of a continuation of the _Iliad_. There, probably, the spontaneous promptings of my poetical ambition wouldhave stopped; but the exercise, begun from choice, was continued bycommand. Conformably to my father's usual practice of explaining tome, as far as possible, the reasons for what he required me to do, he gave me, for this, as I well remember, two reasons highlycharacteristic of him: one was, that some things could be expressedbetter and more forcibly in verse than in prose: this, he said, wasa real advantage. The other was, that people in general attached morevalue to verse than it deserved, and the power of writing it, was, onthis account, worth acquiring. He generally left me to choose my ownsubjects, which, as far as I remember, were mostly addresses to somemythological personage or allegorical abstraction; but he made metranslate into English verse many of Horace's shorter poems: I alsoremember his giving me Thomson's _Winter_ to read, and afterwardsmaking me attempt (without book) to write something myself on the samesubject. The verses I wrote were, of course, the merest rubbish, nordid I ever attain any facility of versification, but the practice mayhave been useful in making it easier for me, at a later period, toacquire readiness of expression. [1] I had read, up to this time, verylittle English poetry. Shakspeare my father had put into my hands, chiefly for the sake of the historical plays, from which, however, I went on to the others. My father never was a great admirer ofShakspeare, the English idolatry of whom he used to attack with someseverity. He cared little for any English poetry except Milton (forwhom he had the highest admiration), Goldsmith, Burns, and Gray's_Bard_, which he preferred to his Elegy: perhaps I may add Cowper andBeattie. He had some value for Spenser, and I remember his reading tome (unlike his usual practice of making me read to him) the first bookof the _Fairie Queene_; but I took little pleasure in it. The poetryof the present century he saw scarcely any merit in, and I hardlybecame acquainted with any of it till I was grown up to manhood, except the metrical romances of Walter Scott, which I read at hisrecommendation and was intensely delighted with; as I always was withanimated narrative. Dryden's Poems were among my father's books, andmany of these he made me read, but I never cared for any of themexcept _Alexander's Feast_, which, as well as many of the songsin Walter Scott, I used to sing internally, to a music of my own: tosome of the latter, indeed, I went so far as to compose airs, whichI still remember. Cowper's short poems I read with some pleasure, butnever got far into the longer ones; and nothing in the two volumesinterested me like the prose account of his three hares. In mythirteenth year I met with Campbell's poems, among which _Lochiel_, _Hohenlinden_, _The Exile of Erin_, and some others, gave mesensations I had never before experienced from poetry. Here, too, I made nothing of the longer poems, except the striking opening of_Gertrude of Wyoming_, which long kept its place in my feelings asthe perfection of pathos. During this part of my childhood, one of my greatest amusements wasexperimental science; in the theoretical, however, not the practicalsense of the word; not trying experiments--a kind of discipline whichI have often regretted not having had--nor even seeing, but merelyreading about them. I never remember being so wrapt up in any book, asI was in Joyce's _Scientific Dialogues_; and I was rather recalcitrantto my father's criticisms of the bad reasoning respecting the firstprinciples of physics, which abounds in the early part of that work. Idevoured treatises on Chemistry, especially that of my father's earlyfriend and schoolfellow, Dr. Thomson, for years before I attended alecture or saw an experiment. From about the age of twelve, I entered into another and more advancedstage in my course of instruction; in which the main object was nolonger the aids and appliances of thought, but the thoughts themselves. This commenced with Logic, in which I began at once with the _Organon_, and read it to the Analytics inclusive, but profited little by thePosterior Analytics, which belong to a branch of speculation I was notyet ripe for. Contemporaneously with the _Organon_, my father made meread the whole or parts of several of the Latin treatises on thescholastic logic; giving each day to him, in our walks, a minute accountof what I had read, and answering his numerous and most searchingquestions. After this, I went in a similar manner through the _Computatiosive Logica_ of Hobbes, a work of a much higher order of thought than thebooks of the school logicians, and which he estimated very highly; in myown opinion beyond its merits, great as these are. It was his invariablepractice, whatever studies he exacted from me, to make me as far aspossible understand and feel the utility of them: and this he deemedpeculiarly fitting in the case of the syllogistic logic, the usefulnessof which had been impugned by so many writers of authority. I wellremember how, and in what particular walk, in the neighbourhood of BagshotHeath (where we were on a visit to his old friend Mr. Wallace, then oneof the Mathematical Professors at Sandhurst) he first attempted byquestions to make me think on the subject, and frame some conception ofwhat constituted the utility of the syllogistic logic, and when I hadfailed in this, to make me understand it by explanations. Theexplanations did not make the matter at all clear to me at the time;but they were not therefore useless; they remained as a nucleus for myobservations and reflections to crystallize upon; the import of hisgeneral remarks being interpreted to me, by the particular instanceswhich came under my notice afterwards. My own consciousness andexperience ultimately led me to appreciate quite as highly as he did, the value of an early practical familiarity with the school logic. I know of nothing, in my education, to which I think myself moreindebted for whatever capacity of thinking I have attained. The firstintellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, wasdissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay:and though whatever capacity of this sort I attained, was due to thefact that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was mostperseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that theschool logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying it, wereamong the principal instruments of this drilling. I am persuaded thatnothing, in modern education, tends so much, when properly used, toform exact thinkers, who attach a precise meaning to words andpropositions, and are not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguousterms. The boasted influence of mathematical studies is nothing toit; for in mathematical processes, none of the real difficulties ofcorrect ratiocination occur. It is also a study peculiarly adapted toan early stage in the education of philosophical students, since itdoes not presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience andreflection, valuable thoughts of their own. They may become capableof disentangling the intricacies of confused and self-contradictorythought, before their own thinking faculties are much advanced; apower which, for want of some such discipline, many otherwise ablemen altogether lack; and when they have to answer opponents, onlyendeavour, by such arguments as they can command, to support theopposite conclusion, scarcely even attempting to confute thereasonings of their antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it depends on argument, a balanced one. During this time, the Latin and Greek books which I continued to readwith my father were chiefly such as were worth studying, not for thelanguage merely, but also for the thoughts. This included much of theorators, and especially Demosthenes, some of whose principal orationsI read several times over, and wrote out, by way of exercise, a fullanalysis of them. My father's comments on these orations when I readthem to him were very instructive to me. He not only drew my attentionto the insight they afforded into Athenian institutions, and theprinciples of legislation and government which they often illustrated, but pointed out the skill and art of the orator--how everythingimportant to his purpose was said at the exact moment when he hadbrought the minds of his audience into the state most fitted toreceive it; how he made steal into their minds, gradually and byinsinuation, thoughts which, if expressed in a more direct manner, would have roused their opposition. Most of these reflections werebeyond my capacity of full comprehension at the time; but they leftseed behind, which germinated in due season. At this time I also readthe whole of Tacitus, Juvenal, and Quintilian. The latter, owing tohis obscure style and to the scholastic details of which many partsof his treatise are made up, is little read, and seldom sufficientlyappreciated. His book is a kind of encyclopaedia of the thoughts ofthe ancients on the whole field of education and culture; and I haveretained through life many valuable ideas which I can distinctly traceto my reading of him, even at that early age. It was at this periodthat I read, for the first time, some of the most important dialoguesof Plato, in particular the _Gorgias_, the _Protagoras_, and the_Republic_. There is no author to whom my father thought himself moreindebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he morefrequently recommended to young students. I can bear similar testimonyin regard to myself. The Socratic method, of which the Platonicdialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline forcorrecting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the_intellectus sibi permissus_, the understanding which has made up allits bundles of associations under the guidance of popular phraseology. The close, searching _elenchus_ by which the man of vague generalitiesis constrained either to express his meaning to himself in definiteterms, or to confess that he does not know what he is talking about;the perpetual testing of all general statements by particular instances;the siege in form which is laid to the meaning of large abstract terms, by fixing upon some still larger class-name which includes that and more, and dividing down to the thing sought--marking out its limits anddefinition by a series of accurately drawn distinctions between it andeach of the cognate objects which are successively parted off from it--all this, as an education for precise thinking, is inestimable, andall this, even at that age, took such hold of me that it became part ofmy own mind. I have felt ever since that the title of Platonist belongsby far better right to those who have been nourished in and haveendeavoured to practise Plato's mode of investigation, than to thosewho are distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmaticalconclusions, drawn mostly from the least intelligible of his works, andwhich the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain whetherhe himself regarded as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophicconjectures. In going through Plato and Demosthenes, since I could now read theseauthors, as far as the language was concerned, with perfect ease, Iwas not required to construe them sentence by sentence, but to readthem aloud to my father, answering questions when asked: but theparticular attention which he paid to elocution (in which his ownexcellence was remarkable) made this reading aloud to him a mostpainful task. Of all things which he required me to do, there was nonewhich I did so constantly ill, or in which he so perpetually lost histemper with me. He had thought much on the principles of the art ofreading, especially the most neglected part of it, the inflections ofthe voice, or _modulation_, as writers on elocution call it (incontrast with _articulation_ on the one side, and _expression_ on theother), and had reduced it to rules, grounded on the logical analysisof a sentence. These rules he strongly impressed upon me, and took meseverely to task for every violation of them: but I even then remarked(though I did not venture to make the remark to him) that though hereproached me when I read a sentence ill, and _told_ me how I ought tohave read it, he never by reading it himself, _showed_ me how it oughtto be read. A defect running through his otherwise admirable modes ofinstruction, as it did through all his modes of thought, was that oftrusting too much to the intelligibleness of the abstract, when notembodied in the concrete. It was at a much later period of my youth, when practising elocution by myself, or with companions of my own age, that I for the first time understood the object of his rules, and sawthe psychological grounds of them. At that time I and others followedout the subject into its ramifications, and could have composed a veryuseful treatise, grounded on my father's principles. He himself leftthose principles and rules unwritten. I regret that when my mind wasfull of the subject, from systematic practice, I did not put them, andour improvements of them, into a formal shape. A book which contributed largely to my education, in the best sense ofthe term, was my father's _History of India_. It was published in thebeginning of 1818. During the year previous, while it was passingthrough the press, I used to read the proof sheets to him; or rather, I read the manuscript to him while he corrected the proofs. The numberof new ideas which I received from this remarkable book, and theimpulse and stimulus as well as guidance given to my thoughts by itscriticism and disquisitions on society and civilization in the Hindoopart, on institutions and the acts of governments in the English part, made my early familiarity with it eminently useful to my subsequentprogress. And though I can perceive deficiencies in it now as comparedwith a perfect standard, I still think it, if not the most, one of themost instructive histories ever written, and one of the books fromwhich most benefit may be derived by a mind in the course of making upits opinions. The Preface, among the most characteristic of my father's writings, aswell as the richest in materials of thought, gives a picture which maybe entirely depended on, of the sentiments and expectations with whichhe wrote the History. Saturated as the book is with the opinions andmodes of judgment of a democratic radicalism then regarded as extreme;and treating with a severity, at that time most unusual, the EnglishConstitution, the English law, and all parties and classes whopossessed any considerable influence in the country; he may haveexpected reputation, but certainly not advancement in life, from itspublication; nor could he have supposed that it would raise up anythingbut enemies for him in powerful quarters: least of all could he haveexpected favour from the East India Company, to whose commercialprivileges he was unqualifiedly hostile, and on the acts of whosegovernment he had made so many severe comments: though, in various partsof his book, he bore a testimony in their favour, which he felt to betheir just due, namely, that no Government had on the whole given so muchproof, to the extent of its lights, of good intention towards its subjects;and that if the acts of any other Government had the light of publicityas completely let in upon them, they would, in all probability, still lessbear scrutiny. On learning, however, in the spring of 1819, about a year after thepublication of the History, that the East India Directors desired tostrengthen the part of their home establishment which was employed incarrying on the correspondence with India, my father declared himselfa candidate for that employment, and, to the credit of the Directors, successfully. He was appointed one of the Assistants of the Examinerof India Correspondence; officers whose duty it was to prepare draftsof despatches to India, for consideration by the Directors, in theprincipal departments of administration. In this office, and in thatof Examiner, which he subsequently attained, the influence which histalents, his reputation, and his decision of character gave him, withsuperiors who really desired the good government of India, enabled himto a great extent to throw into his drafts of despatches, and to carrythrough the ordeal of the Court of Directors and Board of Control, without having their force much weakened, his real opinions on Indiansubjects. In his History he had set forth, for the first time, many ofthe true principles of Indian administration: and his despatches, following his History, did more than had ever been done before topromote the improvement of India, and teach Indian officials tounderstand their business. If a selection of them were published, theywould, I am convinced, place his character as a practical statesmanfully on a level with his eminence as a speculative writer. This new employment of his time caused no relaxation in his attention tomy education. It was in this same year, 1819, that he took me through acomplete course of political economy. His loved and intimate friend, Ricardo, had shortly before published the book which formed so great anepoch in political economy; a book which would never have been publishedor written, but for the entreaty and strong encouragement of my father;for Ricardo, the most modest of men, though firmly convinced of thetruth of his doctrines, deemed himself so little capable of doing themjustice in exposition and expression, that he shrank from the idea ofpublicity. The same friendly encouragement induced Ricardo, a year ortwo later, to become a member of the House of Commons; where, during theremaining years of his life, unhappily cut short in the full vigour ofhis intellect, he rendered so much service to his and my father'sopinions both on political economy and on other subjects. Though Ricardo's great work was already in print, no didactic treatiseembodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for learners, had yet appeared. My father, therefore, commenced instructing me in the science by a sortof lectures, which he delivered to me in our walks. He expounded eachday a portion of the subject, and I gave him next day a written accountof it, which he made me rewrite over and over again until it was clear, precise, and tolerably complete. In this manner I went through the wholeextent of the science; and the written outline of it which resulted frommy daily _compte rendu_, served him afterwards as notes from which towrite his _Elements of Political Economy_. After this I read Ricardo, giving an account daily of what I read, and discussing, in the bestmanner I could, the collateral points which offered themselves in ourprogress. On Money, as the most intricate part of the subject, he made me readin the same manner Ricardo's admirable pamphlets, written during whatwas called the Bullion controversy; to these succeeded Adam Smith; andin this reading it was one of my father's main objects to make meapply to Smith's more superficial view of political economy, thesuperior lights of Ricardo, and detect what was fallacious in Smith'sarguments, or erroneous in any of his conclusions. Such a mode ofinstruction was excellently calculated to form a thinker; but itrequired to be worked by a thinker, as close and vigorous as myfather. The path was a thorny one, even to him, and I am sure it wasso to me, notwithstanding the strong interest I took in the subject. He was often, and much beyond reason, provoked by my failures in caseswhere success could not have been expected; but in the main his methodwas right, and it succeeded. I do not believe that any scientificteaching ever was more thorough, or better fitted for training thefaculties, than the mode in which logic and political economy weretaught to me by my father. Striving, even in an exaggerated degree, to call forth the activity of my faculties, by making me find outeverything for myself, he gave his explanations not before, but after, I had felt the full force of the difficulties; and not only gave me anaccurate knowledge of these two great subjects, as far as they werethen understood, but made me a thinker on both. I thought for myselfalmost from the first, and occasionally thought differently from him, though for a long time only on minor points, and making his opinionthe ultimate standard. At a later period I even occasionally convincedhim, and altered his opinion on some points of detail: which I stateto his honour, not my own. It at once exemplifies his perfect candour, and the real worth of his method of teaching. At this point concluded what can properly be called my lessons: when Iwas about fourteen I left England for more than a year; and after myreturn, though my studies went on under my father's general direction, he was no longer my schoolmaster. I shall therefore pause here, andturn back to matters of a more general nature connected with the partof my life and education included in the preceding reminiscences. In the course of instruction which I have partially retraced, thepoint most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, duringthe years of childhood, an amount of knowledge in what are consideredthe higher branches of education, which is seldom acquired (ifacquired at all) until the age of manhood. The result of the experimentshows the ease with which this may be done, and places in a stronglight the wretched waste of so many precious years as are spent inacquiring the modicum of Latin and Greek commonly taught to schoolboys;a waste which has led so many educational reformers to entertain theill-judged proposal of discarding these languages altogether fromgeneral education. If I had been by nature extremely quick ofapprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory, or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trialwould not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am ratherbelow than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by anyboy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: andif I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunatecircumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed onme by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of aquarter of a century over my contemporaries. There was one cardinal point in this training, of which I have alreadygiven some indication, and which, more than anything else, was thecause of whatever good it effected. Most boys or youths who have hadmuch knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities notstrengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these areaccepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own;and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains intheir education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they havelearnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows tracedfor them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father neverpermitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exerciseof memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along withevery step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anythingwhich could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I hadexhausted my efforts to find it out for myself. As far as I can trustmy remembrance, I acquitted myself very lamely in this department; myrecollection of such matters is almost wholly of failures, hardly everof success. It is true the failures were often in things in whichsuccess, in so early a stage of my progress, was almost impossible. I remember at some time in my thirteenth year, on my happening touse the word idea, he asked me what an idea was; and expressed somedispleasure at my ineffectual efforts to define the word: I recollectalso his indignation at my using the common expression that somethingwas true in theory but required correction in practice; and how, aftermaking me vainly strive to define the word theory, he explained itsmeaning, and showed the fallacy of the vulgar form of speech which Ihad used; leaving me fully persuaded that in being unable to give acorrect definition of Theory, and in speaking of it as something whichmight be at variance with practice, I had shown unparalleled ignorance. In this he seems, and perhaps was, very unreasonable; but I think, onlyin being angry at my failure. A pupil from whom nothing is ever demandedwhich he cannot do, never does all he can. One of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early proficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, my father most anxiouslyguarded against. This was self-conceit. He kept me, with extremevigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or of being ledto make self-flattering comparisons between myself and others. Fromhis own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very humbleopinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he always held up tome, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought todo. He completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influenceshe so much dreaded. I was not at all aware that my attainments wereanything unusual at my age. If I accidentally had my attention drawn tothe fact that some other boy knew less than myself--which happened lessoften than might be imagined--I concluded, not that I knew much, but thathe, for some reason or other, knew little, or that his knowledge was ofa different kind from mine. My state of mind was not humility, but neitherwas it arrogance. I never thought of saying to myself, I am, or I can do, so and so. I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly: I did not estimatemyself at all. If I thought anything about myself, it was that I wasrather backward in my studies, since I always found myself so, incomparison with what my father expected from me. I assert this withconfidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who sawme in my childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly anddisagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and didnot scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard said. I suppose I acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged in anunusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age, and with grown persons, while I never had inculcated on me the usual respect for them. My fatherdid not correct this ill-breeding and impertinence, probably from notbeing aware of it, for I was always too much in awe of him to be otherwisethan extremely subdued and quiet in his presence. Yet with all this I hadno notion of any superiority in myself; and well was it for me that I hadnot. I remember the very place in Hyde Park where, in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father's house for a long absence, he told methat I should find, as I got acquainted with new people, that I had beentaught many things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and thatmany persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to complimentme upon it. What other things he said on this topic I remember veryimperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew more thanothers, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very unusualadvantage which had fallen to my lot, of having a father who was able toteach me, and willing to give the necessary trouble and time; that it wasno matter of praise to me, if I knew more than those who had not had asimilar advantage, but the deepest disgrace to me if I did not. I have adistinct remembrance, that the suggestion thus for the first time made tome, that I knew more than other youths who were considered well educated, was to me a piece of information, to which, as to all other things whichmy father told me, I gave implicit credence, but which did not at allimpress me as a personal matter. I felt no disposition to glorify myselfupon the circumstance that there were other persons who did not know whatI knew; nor had I ever flattered myself that my acquirements, whateverthey might be, were any merit of mine: but, now when my attention wascalled to the subject, I felt that what my father had said respecting mypeculiar advantages was exactly the truth and common sense of the matter, and it fixed my opinion and feeling from that time forward. CHAPTER II MORAL INFLUENCES IN EARLY YOUTH. MY FATHER'S CHARACTER AND OPINIONS In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, whichare so much more important than all others, are also the mostcomplicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach tocompleteness. Without attempting the hopeless task of detailing thecircumstances by which, in this respect, my early character may havebeen shaped, I shall confine myself to a few leading points, whichform an indispensable part of any true account of my education. I was brought up from the first without any religious belief, in theordinary acceptation of the term. My father, educated in the creed ofScotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections beenearly led to reject not only the belief in Revelation, but thefoundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion. I have heardhim say, that the turning point of his mind on the subject was readingButler's _Analogy_. That work, of which he always continued to speakwith respect, kept him, as he said, for some considerable time, abeliever in the divine authority of Christianity; by proving to himthat whatever are the difficulties in believing that the Old and NewTestaments proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise andgood being, the same and still greater difficulties stand in the wayof the belief, that a being of such a character can have been theMaker of the universe. He considered Butler's argument as conclusiveagainst the only opponents for whom it was intended. Those who admitan omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and rulerof such a world as this, can say little against Christianity but whatcan, with at least equal force, be retorted against themselves. Finding, therefore, no halting place in Deism, he remained in a stateof perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded tothe conviction, that concerning the origin of things nothing whatevercan be known. This is the only correct statement of his opinion; fordogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those, whom theworld has considered Atheists, have always done. These particulars areimportant, because they show that my father's rejection of all that iscalled religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily amatter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still morethan intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world sofull of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power withperfect goodness and righteousness. His intellect spurned thesubtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this opencontradiction. The Sabaean, or Manichaean theory of a Good and an EvilPrinciple, struggling against each other for the government of theuniverse, he would not have equally condemned; and I have heard himexpress surprise, that no one revived it in our time. He would haveregarded it as a mere hypothesis; but he would have ascribed to it nodepraving influence. As it was, his aversion to religion, in the senseusually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that ofLucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mentaldelusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatestenemy of morality: first, by setting up fictitious excellences--beliefin creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with thegood of human-kind--and causing these to be accepted as substitutesfor genuine virtues: but above all, by radically vitiating thestandard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom insober truth it depicts as eminently hateful. I have a hundred timesheard him say that all ages and nations have represented their gods aswicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have goneon adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfectconception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and havecalled this God, and prostrated themselves before it. This _ne plusultra_ of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonlypresented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. Think (he used tosay) of a being who would make a Hell--who would create the human racewith the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned to horrible andeverlasting torment. The time, I believe, is drawing near when thisdreadful conception of an object of worship will be no longeridentified with Christianity; and when all persons, with any sense ofmoral good and evil, will look upon it with the same indignation withwhich my father regarded it. My father was as well aware as anyonethat Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizingconsequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner orto the extent which might have been expected from it. The sameslovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involvinga contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving the logicalconsequences of the theory. Such is the facility with which mankindbelieve at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, anyconsequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, thatmultitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Authorof Hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the bestconception they were able to form of perfect goodness. Their worshipwas not paid to the demon which such a being as they imagined wouldreally be, but to their own ideal of excellence. The evil is, thatsuch a belief keeps the ideal wretchedly low; and opposes the mostobstinate resistance to all thought which has a tendency to raise ithigher. Believers shrink from every train of ideas which would leadthe mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of excellence, because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such astandard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, andwith much of what they are accustomed to consider as the Christiancreed. And thus morality continues a matter of blind tradition, withno consistent principle, nor even any consistent feeling, to guide it. It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of duty, to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions andfeelings respecting religion: and he impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subjecton which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannotbe answered, because we have no experience or authentic informationfrom which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficultya step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God?" He, at the same time, took care that I should beacquainted with what had been thought by mankind on these impenetrableproblems. I have mentioned at how early an age he made me a reader ofecclesiastical history; and he taught me to take the strongest interestin the Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestlytyranny for liberty of thought. I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who hasnot thrown off religious belief, but never had it: I grew up in anegative state with regard to it. I looked upon the modern exactly asI did upon the ancient religion, as something which in no way concernedme. It did not seem to me more strange that English people should believewhat I did not, than that the men I read of in Herodotus should have doneso. History had made the variety of opinions among mankind a fact familiarto me, and this was but a prolongation of that fact. This point in myearly education had, however, incidentally one bad consequence deservingnotice. In giving me an opinion contrary to that of the world, my fatherthought it necessary to give it as one which could not prudently be avowedto the world. This lesson of keeping my thoughts to myself, at that earlyage, was attended with some moral disadvantages; though my limitedintercourse with strangers, especially such as were likely to speak tome on religion, prevented me from being placed in the alternative ofavowal or hypocrisy. I remember two occasions in my boyhood, on which Ifelt myself in this alternative, and in both cases I avowed my disbeliefand defended it. My opponents were boys, considerably older than myself:one of them I certainly staggered at the time, but the subject was neverrenewed between us: the other who was surprised and somewhat shocked, didhis best to convince me for some time, without effect. The great advance in liberty of discussion, which is one of the mostimportant differences between the present time and that of my childhood, has greatly altered the moralities of this question; and I think thatfew men of my father's intellect and public spirit, holding with suchintensity of moral conviction as he did, unpopular opinions on religion, or on any other of the great subjects of thought, would now eitherpractise or inculcate the withholding of them from the world, unless inthe cases, becoming fewer every day, in which frankness on these subjectswould either risk the loss of means of subsistence, or would amount toexclusion from some sphere of usefulness peculiarly suitable to thecapacities of the individual. On religion in particular the time appearsto me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified inpoint of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselvesthat the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make theirdissent known; at least, if they are among those whose station orreputation gives their opinion a chance of being attended to. Such anavowal would put an end, at once and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very improperly, unbelief, is connected with anybad qualities either of mind or heart. The world would be astonished ifit knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments--of those mostdistinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue--arecomplete sceptics in religion; many of them refraining from avowal, lessfrom personal considerations than from a conscientious, though now in myopinion a most mistaken, apprehension, lest by speaking out what wouldtend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as they suppose)existing restraints, they should do harm instead of good. Of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are manyspecies, including almost every variety of moral type. But the bestamong them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing themwill hesitate to affirm, are more genuinely religious, in the bestsense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate tothemselves the title. The liberality of the age, or in other words theweakening of the obstinate prejudice which makes men unable to seewhat is before their eyes because it is contrary to their expectations, has caused it be very commonly admitted that a Deist may be trulyreligious: but if religion stands for any graces of character and notfor mere dogma, the assertion may equally be made of many whose beliefis far short of Deism. Though they may think the proof incomplete thatthe universe is a work of design, and though they assuredly disbelievethat it can have an Author and Governor who is _absolute_ in power aswell as perfect in goodness, they have that which constitutes theprincipal worth of all religions whatever, an ideal conception of aPerfect Being, to which they habitually refer as the guide of theirconscience; and this ideal of Good is usually far nearer to perfectionthan the objective Deity of those who think themselves obliged to findabsolute goodness in the author of a world so crowded with sufferingand so deformed by injustice as ours. My father's moral convictions, wholly dissevered from religion, werevery much of the character of those of the Greek philosophers; andwere delivered with the force and decision which characterized allthat came from him. Even at the very early age at which I read withhim the _Memorabilia_ of Xenophon, I imbibed from that work and fromhis comments a deep respect for the character of Socrates; who stoodin my mind as a model of ideal excellence: and I well remember how myfather at that time impressed upon me the lesson of the "Choice ofHercules. " At a somewhat later period the lofty moral standardexhibited in the writings of Plato operated upon me with great force. My father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the"Socratici viri"; justice, temperance (to which he gave a veryextended application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to encounterpain and especially labour; regard for the public good; estimation ofpersons according to their merits, and of things according to theirintrinsic usefulness; a life of exertion in contradiction to one ofself-indulgent ease and sloth. These and other moralities he conveyedin brief sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contempt. But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; andthe effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solelyon what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and stillmore, on what manner of man he was. In his views of life he partook of the character of the Stoic, theEpicurean, and the Cynic, not in the modern but the ancient sense ofthe word. In his personal qualities the Stoic predominated. Hisstandard of morals was Epicurean, inasmuch as it was utilitarian, taking as the exclusive test of right and wrong, the tendency ofactions to produce pleasure or pain. But he had (and this was theCynic element) scarcely any belief in pleasure; at least in his lateryears, of which alone, on this point, I can speak confidently. He wasnot insensible to pleasures; but he deemed very few of them worth theprice which, at least in the present state of society, must be paidfor them. The greater number of miscarriages in life he considered tobe attributable to the overvaluing of pleasures. Accordingly, temperance, in the large sense intended by the Greek philosophers--stopping short at the point of moderation in all indulgences--waswith him, as with them, almost the central point of educationalprecept. His inculcations of this virtue fill a large place in mychildish remembrances. He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it maybe supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, itwas with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimessay that if life were made what it might be, by good government andgood education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke withanything like enthusiasm even of that possibility. He never varied inrating intellectual enjoyments above all others, even in value aspleasures, independently of their ulterior benefits. The pleasures ofthe benevolent affections he placed high in the scale; and used tosay, that he had never known a happy old man, except those who wereable to live over again in the pleasures of the young. For passionateemotions of all sorts, and for everything which bas been said orwritten in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded them as a form of madness. "The intense" was with him abye-word of scornful disapprobation. He regarded as an aberration ofthe moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling. Feelings, as such, he consideredto be no proper subjects of praise or blame. Right and wrong, good andbad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct--of acts and omissions;there being no feeling which may not lead, and does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience itself, the very desire toact right, often leading people to act wrong. Consistently carryingout the doctrine that the object of praise and blame should be thediscouragement of wrong conduct and the encouragement of right, herefused to let his praise or blame be influenced by the motive of theagent. He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when themotive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciouslyevil doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation forinquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be anobligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purposeto soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on hisestimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitudeof intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any personin whom he did not feel assurance of it. But he disliked people quiteas much for any other deficiency, provided he thought it equally likelyto make them act ill. He disliked, for instance, a fanatic in any badcause, as much as or more than one who adopted the same cause fromself-interest, because he thought him even more likely to be practicallymischievous. And thus, his aversion to many intellectual errors, or whathe regarded as such, partook, in a certain sense, of the character of amoral feeling. All this is merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very unusual, threw his feelings into his opinions; which trulyit is difficult to understand how anyone who possesses much of both, canfail to do. None but those who do not care about opinions will confoundthis with intolerance. Those who, having opinions which they hold to beimmensely important, and their contraries to be prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general good, will necessarily dislike, asa class and in the abstract, those who think wrong what they think right, and right what they think wrong: though they need not therefore be, norwas my father, insensible to good qualities in an opponent, nor governedin their estimation of individuals by one general presumption, insteadof by the whole of their character. I grant that an earnest person, being no more infallible than other men, is liable to dislike peopleon account of opinions which do not merit dislike; but if he neitherhimself does them any ill office, nor connives at its being donc byothers, he is not intolerant: and the forbearance which flows from aconscientious sense of the importance to mankind of the equal freedomof all opinions, is the only tolerance which is commendable, or, to thehighest moral order of minds, possible. It will be admitted, that a man of the opinions, and the character, above described, was likely to leave a strong moral impression on anymind principally formed by him, and that his moral teaching was notlikely to err on the side of laxity or indulgence. The element whichwas chiefly deficient in his moral relation to his children was thatof tenderness. I do not believe that this deficiency lay in his ownnature. I believe him to have had much more feeling than he habituallyshowed, and much greater capacities of feeling than were everdeveloped. He resembled most Englishmen in being ashamed of the signsof feeling, and, by the absence of demonstration, starving thefeelings themselves. If we consider further that he was in the tryingposition of sole teacher, and add to this that his temper wasconstitutionally irritable, it is impossible not to feel true pity fora father who did, and strove to do, so much for his children, whowould have so valued their affection, yet who must have beenconstantly feeling that fear of him was drying it up at its source. This was no longer the case later in life, and with his youngerchildren. They loved him tenderly: and if I cannot say so much ofmyself, I was always loyally devoted to him. As regards my owneducation, I hesitate to pronounce whether I was more a loser orgainer by his severity. It was not such as to prevent me from having ahappy childhood. And I do not believe that boys can be induced toapply themselves with vigour, and--what is so much moredifficult--perseverance, to dry and irksome studies, by the sole forceof persuasion and soft words. Much must be done, and much must belearnt, by children, for which rigid discipline, and known liabilityto punishment, are indispensable as means. It is, no doubt, a verylaudable effort, in modern teaching, to render as much as possible ofwhat the young are required to learn, easy and interesting to them. But when this principle is pushed to the length of not requiring themto learn anything _but_ what has been made easy and interesting, oneof the chief objects of education is sacrificed. I rejoice in thedecline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who will be incapableof doing anything which is disagreeable to them. I do not, then, believe that fear, as an element in education, can be dispensed with;but I am sure that it ought not to be the main element; and when itpredominates so much as to preclude love and confidence on the part ofthe child to those who should be the unreservedly trusted advisers ofafter years, and perhaps to seal up the fountains of frank andspontaneous communicativeness in the child's nature, it is an evil forwhich a large abatement must be made from the benefits, moral andintellectual, which may flow from any other part of the education. During this first period of my life, the habitual frequenters of myfather's house were limited to a very few persons, most of them littleknown to the world, but whom personal worth, and more or less ofcongeniality with at least his political opinions (not so frequentlyto be met with then as since), inclined him to cultivate; and hisconversations with them I listened to with interest and instruction. My being an habitual inmate of my father's study made me acquaintedwith the dearest of his friends, David Ricardo, who by his benevolentcountenance, and kindliness of manner, was very attractive to youngpersons, and who, after I became a student of political economy, invited me to his house and to walk with him in order to converse onthe subject. I was a more frequent visitor (from about 1817 or 1818)to Mr. Hume, who, born in the same part of Scotland as my father, andhaving been, I rather think, a younger schoolfellow or collegecompanion of his, had on returning from India renewed their youthfulacquaintance, and who--coming, like many others, greatly under theinfluence of my father's intellect and energy of character--wasinduced partly by that influence to go into Parliament, and thereadopt the line of conduct which has given him an honourable place inthe history of his country. Of Mr. Bentham I saw much more, owing tothe close intimacy which existed between him and my father. I do notknow how soon after my father's first arrival in England they becameacquainted. But my father was the earliest Englishman of any greatmark, who thoroughly understood, and in the main adopted, Bentham'sgeneral views of ethics, government and law: and this was a naturalfoundation for sympathy between them, and made them familiarcompanions in a period of Bentham's life during which he admitted muchfewer visitors than was the case subsequently. At this time Mr. Bentham passed some part of every year at Barrow Green House, in abeautiful part of the Surrey Hills, a few miles from Godstone, andthere I each summer accompanied my father in a long visit. In 1813 Mr. Bentham, my father, and I made an excursion, which included Oxford, Bath and Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and Portsmouth. In this journey Isaw many things which were instructive to me, and acquired my firsttaste for natural scenery, in the elementary form of fondness for a"view. " In the succeeding winter we moved into a house very near Mr. Bentham's, which my father rented from him, in Queen Square, Westminster. From 1814 to 1817 Mr. Bentham lived during half of eachyear at Ford Abbey, in Somersetshire (or rather in a part ofDevonshire surrounded by Somersetshire), which intervals I had theadvantage of passing at that place. This sojourn was, I think, animportant circumstance in my education. Nothing contributes more tonourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and freecharacter of their habitations. The middle-age architecture, thebaronial hall, and the spacious and lofty rooms, of this fine oldplace, so unlike the mean and cramped externals of Englishmiddle-class life, gave the sentiment of a larger and freer existence, and were to me a sort of poetic cultivation, aided also by thecharacter of the grounds in which the Abbey stood; which were _riant_and secluded, umbrageous, and full of the sound of falling waters. I owed another of the fortunate circumstances in my education, ayear's residence in France, to Mr. Bentham's brother, General SirSamuel Bentham. I had seen Sir Samuel Bentham and his family at theirhouse near Gosport in the course of the tour already mentioned (hebeing then Superintendent of the Dockyard at Portsmouth), and during astay of a few days which they made at Ford Abbey shortly after thePeace, before going to live on the Continent. In 1820 they invited mefor a six months' visit to them in the South of France, which theirkindness ultimately prolonged to nearly a twelvemonth. Sir SamuelBentham, though of a character of mind different from that of hisillustrious brother, was a man of very considerable attainments andgeneral powers, with a decided genius for mechanical art. His wife, adaughter of the celebrated chemist, Dr. Fordyce, was a woman of strongwill and decided character, much general knowledge, and greatpractical good sense of the Edgeworth kind: she was the ruling spiritof the household, as she deserved, and was well qualified, to be. Their family consisted of one son (the eminent botanist) and threedaughters, the youngest about two years my senior. I am indebted tothem for much and various instruction, and for an almost parentalinterest in my welfare. When I first joined them, in May, 1820, theyoccupied the Château of Pompignan (still belonging to a descendant ofVoltaire's enemy) on the heights overlooking the plain of the Garonnebetween Montauban and Toulouse. I accompanied them in an excursion tothe Pyrenees, including a stay of some duration at Bagnères deBigorre, a journey to Pau, Bayonne, and Bagnères de Luchon, and anascent of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre. This first introduction to the highest order of mountain scenery madethe deepest impression on me, and gave a colour to my tastes throughlife. In October we proceeded by the beautiful mountain route ofCastres and St. Pons, from Toulouse to Montpellier, in which lastneighbourhood Sir Samuel had just bought the estate of Restinclière, near the foot of the singular mountain of St. Loup. During thisresidence in France I acquired a familiar knowledge of the Frenchlanguage, and acquaintance with the ordinary French literature; I tooklessons in various bodily exercises, in none of which, however, I madeany proficiency; and at Montpellier I attended the excellent wintercourses of lectures at the Faculté des Sciences, those of M. Angladaon chemistry, of M. Provençal on zoology, and of a very accomplishedrepresentative of the eighteenth century metaphysics, M. Gergonne, onlogic, under the name of Philosophy of the Sciences. I also wentthrough a course of the higher mathematics under the private tuitionof M. Lenthéric, a professor at the Lycée of Montpellier. But thegreatest, perhaps, of the many advantages which I owed to this episodein my education, was that of having breathed for a whole year, thefree and genial atmosphere of Continental life. This advantage was notthe less real though I could not then estimate, nor even consciouslyfeel it. Having so little experience of English life, and the fewpeople I knew being mostly such as had public objects, of a large andpersonally disinterested kind, at heart, I was ignorant of the lowmoral tone of what, in England, is called society; the habit of, notindeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode ofimplication, that conduct is of course always directed towards low andpetty objects; the absence of high feelings which manifests itself bysneering depreciation of all demonstrations of them, and by generalabstinence (except among a few of the stricter religionists) fromprofessing any high principles of action at all, except in thosepreordained cases in which such profession is put on as part of thecostume and formalities of the occasion. I could not then know orestimate the difference between this manner of existence, and that ofa people like the French, whose faults, if equally real, are at allevents different; among whom sentiments, which by comparison at leastmay be called elevated, are the current coin of human intercourse, both in books and in private life; and though often evaporating inprofession, are yet kept alive in the nation at large by constantexercise, and stimulated by sympathy, so as to form a living andactive part of the existence of great numbers of persons, and to berecognised and understood by all. Neither could I then appreciate thegeneral culture of the understanding, which results from the habitualexercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the mostuneducated classes of several countries on the Continent, in a degreenot equalled in England among the so-called educated, except where anunusual tenderness of conscience leads to a habitual exercise of theintellect on questions of right and wrong. I did not know the way inwhich, among the ordinary English, the absence of interest in thingsof an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special thing here andthere, and the habit of not speaking to others, nor much even tothemselves, about the things in which they do feel interest, causesboth their feelings and their intellectual faculties to remainundeveloped, or to develop themselves only in some single and verylimited direction; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, toa kind of negative existence. All these things I did not perceive tilllong afterwards; but I even then felt, though without stating itclearly to myself, the contrast between the frank sociability andamiability of French personal intercourse, and the English mode ofexistence, in which everybody acts as if everybody else (with few, orno exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore. In France, it is true, the bad as well as the good points, both of individual and of nationalcharacter, come more to the surface, and break out more fearlessly inordinary intercourse, than in England: but the general habit of thepeople is to show, as well as to expect, friendly feeling in every onetowards every other, wherever there is not some positive cause for theopposite. In England it is only of the best bred people, in the upperor upper middle ranks, that anything like this can be said. In my way through Paris, both going and returning, I passed some timein the house of M. Say, the eminent political economist, who was afriend and correspondent of my father, having become acquainted withhim on a visit to England a year or two after the Peace. He was a manof the later period of the French Revolution, a fine specimen of thebest kind of French Republican, one of those who had never bent theknee to Bonaparte though courted by him to do so; a truly upright, brave, and enlightened man. He lived a quiet and studious life, madehappy by warm affections, public and private. He was acquainted withmany of the chiefs of the Liberal party, and I saw various noteworthypersons while staying at this house; among whom I have pleasure in therecollection of having once seen Saint-Simon, not yet the foundereither of a philosophy or a religion, and considered only as a cleveroriginal. The chief fruit which I carried away from the society I saw, was a strong and permanent interest in Continental Liberalism, ofwhich I ever afterwards kept myself _au courant_, as much as ofEnglish politics: a thing not at all usual in those days withEnglishmen, and which had a very salutary influence on my development, keeping me free from the error always prevalent in England--and fromwhich even my father, with all his superiority to prejudice, was notexempt--of judging universal questions by a merely English standard. After passing a few weeks at Caen with an old friend of my father's, I returned to England in July, 1821 and my education resumed itsordinary course. CHAPTER III LAST STAGE OF EDUCATION, AND FIRST OF SELF-EDUCATION For the first year or two after my visit to France, I continued my oldstudies, with the addition of some new ones. When I returned, myfather was just finishing for the press his _Elements of PoliticalEconomy_, and he made me perform an exercise on the manuscript, whichMr. Bentham practised on all his own writings, making what he called"marginal contents"; a short abstract of every paragraph, to enablethe writer more easily to judge of, and improve, the order of theideas, and the general character of the exposition. Soon after, myfather put into my hands Condillac's _Traité des Sensations_, and thelogical and metaphysical volumes of his _Cours d'Etudes_; the first(notwithstanding the superficial resemblance between Condillac'spsychological system and my father's) quite as much for a warning asfor an example. I am not sure whether it was in this winter or thenext that I first read a history of the French Revolution. I learntwith astonishment that the principles of democracy, then apparently inso insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in Europe, hadborne all before them in France thirty years earlier, and had been thecreed of the nation. As may be supposed from this, I had previously avery vague idea of that great commotion. I knew only that the Frenchhad thrown off the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. And XV. , had putthe King and Queen to death, guillotined many persons, one of whom wasLavoisier, and had ultimately fallen under the despotism of Bonaparte. From this time, as was natural, the subject took an immense hold of myfeelings. It allied itself with all my juvenile aspirations to thecharacter of a democratic champion. What had happened so lately, seemed as if it might easily happen again: and the most transcendentglory I was capable of conceiving, was that of figuring, successful orunsuccessful, as a Girondist in an English Convention. During the winter of 1821-2, Mr. John Austin, with whom at the time ofmy visit to France my father had but lately become acquainted, kindlyallowed me to read Roman law with him. My father, notwithstanding hisabhorrence of the chaos of barbarism called English Law, had turnedhis thoughts towards the bar as on the whole less ineligible for methan any other profession: and these readings with Mr. Austin, who hadmade Bentham's best ideas his own, and added much to them from othersources and from his own mind, were not only a valuable introductionto legal studies, but an important portion of general education. WithMr. Austin I read Heineccius on the Institutes, his _Roman Antiquities_, and part of his exposition of the Pandects; to which was added aconsiderable portion of Blackstone. It was at the commencement of thesestudies that my father, as a needful accompaniment to them, put into myhands Bentham's principal speculations, as interpreted to the Continent, and indeed to all the world, by Dumont, in the _Traité de Législation_. The reading of this book was an epoch in my life; one of the turningpoints in my mental history. My previous education had been, in a certain sense, already a courseof Benthamism. The Benthamic standard of "the greatest happiness" wasthat which I had always been taught to apply; I was even familiarwith an abstract discussion of it, forming an episode in anunpublished dialogue on Government, written by my father on thePlatonic model. Yet in the first pages of Bentham it burst upon mewith all the force of novelty. What thus impressed me was the chapterin which Bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning inmorals and legislation, deduced from phrases like "law of nature, ""right reason, " "the moral sense, " "natural rectitude, " and the like, and characterized them as dogmatism in disguise, imposing itssentiments upon others under cover of sounding expressions whichconvey no reason for the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as itsown reason. It had not struck me before, that Bentham's principle putan end to all this. The feeling rushed upon me, that all previousmoralists were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencementof a new era in thought. This impression was strengthened by themanner in which Bentham put into scientific form the application ofthe happiness principle to the morality of actions, by analysing thevarious classes and orders of their consequences. But what struck meat that time most of all, was the Classification of Offences, which ismuch more clear, compact, and imposing in Dumont's _rédaction_ than inthe original work of Bentham from which it was taken. Logic and thedialectics of Plato, which had formed so large a part of my previoustraining, had given me a strong relish for accurate classification. This taste had been strengthened and enlightened by the study ofbotany, on the principles of what is called the Natural Method, whichI had taken up with great zeal, though only as an amusement, during mystay in France; and when I found scientific classification applied tothe great and complex subject of Punishable Acts, under the guidanceof the ethical principle of Pleasurable and Painful Consequences, followed out in the method of detail introduced into these subjects byBentham, I felt taken up to an eminence from which I could survey avast mental domain, and see stretching out into the distanceintellectual results beyond all computation. As I proceeded further, there seemed to be added to this intellectual clearness, the mostinspiring prospects of practical improvement in human affairs. ToBentham's general view of the construction of a body of law I was notaltogether a stranger, having read with attention that admirablecompendium, my father's article on Jurisprudence: but I had read itwith little profit, and scarcely any interest, no doubt from itsextremely general and abstract character, and also because itconcerned the form more than the substance of the _corpus juris_, thelogic rather than the ethics of law. But Bentham's subject wasLegislation, of which Jurisprudence is only the formal part: and atevery page he seemed to open a clearer and broader conception of whathuman opinions and institutions ought to be, how they might be madewhat they ought to be, and how far removed from it they now are. WhenI laid down the last volume of the _Traité_, I had become a differentbeing. The "principle of utility, " understood as Bentham understoodit, and applied in the manner in which he applied it through thesethree volumes, fell exactly into its place as the keystone which heldtogether the detached and fragmentary component parts of my knowledgeand beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of things. I now hadopinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the bestsenses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of whichcould be made the principal outward purpose of a life. And I had agrand conception laid before me of changes to be effected in thecondition of mankind through that doctrine. The _Traité de Legislation_wound up with what was to me a most impressive picture of human life asit would be made by such opinions and such laws as were recommended inthe treatise. The anticipations of practicable improvement werestudiously moderate, deprecating and discountenancing as reveries ofvague enthusiasm many things which will one day seem so natural to humanbeings, that injustice will probably be done to those who once thoughtthem chimerical. But, in my state of mind, this appearance of superiorityto illusion added to the effect which Bentham's doctrines produced on me, by heightening the impression of mental power, and the vista of improvementwhich he did open was sufficiently large and brilliant to light up my life, as well as to give a definite shape to my aspirations. After this I read, from time to time, the most important of the otherworks of Bentham which had then seen the light, either as written byhimself or as edited by Dumont. This was my private reading: while, under my father's direction, my studies were carried into the higherbranches of analytic psychology. I now read Locke's _Essay_, and wroteout an account of it, consisting of a complete abstract of everychapter, with such remarks as occurred to me; which was read by, or(I think) to, my father, and discussed throughout. I performed the sameprocess with _Helvetius de L'Esprit_, which I read of my own choice. This preparation of abstracts, subject to my father's censorship, wasof great service to me, by compelling precision in conceiving andexpressing psychological doctrines, whether accepted as truths or onlyregarded as the opinion of others. After Helvetius, my father made mestudy what he deemed the really master-production in the philosophyof mind, Hartley's _Observations on Man_. This book, though it didnot, like the _Traité de Législation_, give a new colour to myexistence, made a very similar impression on me in regard to itsimmediate subject. Hartley's explanation, incomplete as in many pointsit is, of the more complex mental phenomena by the law of association, commended itself to me at once as a real analysis, and made me feel bycontrast the insufficiency of the merely verbal generalizations ofCondillac, and even of the instructive gropings and feelings about forpsychological explanations, of Locke. It was at this very time that myfather commenced writing his _Analysis_ of the Mind, which carriedHartley's mode of explaining the mental phenomena to so much greaterlength and depth. He could only command the concentration of thoughtnecessary for this work, during the complete leisure of his holidayfor a month or six weeks annually: and he commenced it in the summerof 1822, in the first holiday he passed at Dorking; in whichneighbourhood, from that time to the end of his life, with theexception of two years, he lived, as far as his official dutiespermitted, for six months of every year. He worked at the _Analysis_during several successive vacations, up to the year 1829, when it waspublished, and allowed me to read the manuscript, portion by portion, as it advanced. The other principal English writers on mentalphilosophy I read as I felt inclined, particularly Berkeley, Hume's_Essays_, Reid, Dugald Stewart and Brown on Cause and Effect. Brown's_Lectures_ I did not read until two or three years later, nor at thattime had my father himself read them. Among the works read in the course of this year, which contributedmaterially to my development, I owe it to mention a book (written onthe foundation of some of Bentham's manuscripts and published underthe pseudonyme of Philip Beauchamp) entitled _Analysis of the Influenceof Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind_. This was anexamination not of the truth, but of the usefulness of religious belief, in the most general sense, apart from the peculiarities of any specialrevelation; which, of all the parts of the discussion concerningreligion, is the most important in this age, in which real belief inany religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion ofits necessity for moral and social purposes almost universal; and whenthose who reject revelation, very generally take refuge in anoptimistic Deism, a worship of the order of Nature, and the supposedcourse of Providence, at least as full of contradictions, andperverting to the moral sentiments, as any of the forms ofChristianity, if only it is as completely realized. Yet very little, with any claim to a philosophical character, has been written bysceptics against the usefulness of this form of belief. The volumebearing the name of Philip Beauchamp had this for its special object. Having been shown to my father in manuscript, it was put into my handsby him, and I made a marginal analysis of it as I had done of the_Elements of Political Economy_. Next to the Traité de Législation_, it was one of the books which by the searching character of itsanalysis produced the greatest effect upon me. On reading it latelyafter an interval of many years, I find it to have some of the defectsas well as the merits of the Benthamic modes of thought, and tocontain, as I now think, many weak arguments, but with a greatoverbalance of sound ones, and much good material for a morecompletely philosophic and conclusive treatment of the subject. I have now, I believe, mentioned all the books which had anyconsiderable effect on my early mental development. From this pointI began to carry on my intellectual cultivation by writing still morethan by reading. In the summer of 1822 I wrote my first argumentativeessay. I remember very little about it, except that it was an attackon what I regarded as the aristocratic prejudice, that the rich were, or were likely to be, superior in moral qualities to the poor. Myperformance was entirely argumentative, without any of the declamationwhich the subject would admit of, and might be expected to suggest toa young writer. In that department, however, I was, and remained, veryinapt. Dry argument was the only thing I could, manage, or willinglyattempted; though passively I was very susceptible to the effect ofall composition, whether in the form of poetry or oratory, whichappealed to the feelings on any basis of reason. My father, who knewnothing of this essay until it was finished, was well satisfied, and, as I learnt from others, even pleased with it; but, perhaps from adesire to promote the exercise of other mental faculties than thepurely logical, he advised me to make my next exercise in compositionone of the oratorical kind; on which suggestion, availing myself ofmy familiarity with Greek history and ideas, and with the Athenianorators, I wrote two speeches, one an accusation, the other a defenceof Pericles, on a supposed impeachment for not marching out to fightthe Lacedemonians on their invasion of Attica. After this I continuedto write papers on subjects often very much beyond my capacity, butwith great benefit both from the exercise itself, and from thediscussions which it led to with my father. I had now also begun to converse, on general subjects, with theinstructed men with whom I came in contact: and the opportunities ofsuch contact naturally became more numerous. The two friends of myfather from whom I derived most, and with whom I most associated, wereMr. Grote and Mr. John Austin. The acquaintance of both with my fatherwas recent, but had ripened rapidly into intimacy. Mr. Grote wasintroduced to my father by Mr. Ricardo, I think in 1819 (being thenabout twenty-five years old), and sought assiduously his society andconversation. Already a highly instructed man, he was yet, by the sideof my father, a tyro in the great subjects of human opinion; but herapidly seized on my father's best ideas; and in the department ofpolitical opinion he made himself known as early as 1820, by apamphlet in defence of Radical Reform, in reply to a celebratedarticle by Sir James Mackintosh, then lately published in he_Edinburgh Review_. Mr. Grote's father, the banker, was, I believe, a thorough Tory, and his mother intensely Evangelical; so that forhis liberal opinions he was in no way indebted to home influences. But, unlike most persons who have the prospect of being rich byinheritance, he had, though actively engaged in the business ofbanking, devoted a great portion of time to philosophic studies; andhis intimacy with my father did much to decide the character of thenext stage in his mental progress. Him I often visited, and myconversations with him on political, moral, and philosophical subjectsgave me, in addition to much valuable instruction, all the pleasureand benefit of sympathetic communion with a man of the highintellectual and moral eminence which his life and writings have sincemanifested to the world. Mr. Austin, who was four or five years older than Mr. Grote, was theeldest son of a retired miller in Suffolk, who had made money bycontracts during the war, and who must have been a man of remarkablequalities, as I infer from the fact that all his sons were of morethan common ability and all eminently gentlemen. The one with whom weare now concerned, and whose writings on jurisprudence have made himcelebrated, was for some time in the army, and served in Sicily underLord William Bentinck. After the Peace he sold his commission andstudied for the bar, to which he had been called for some time beforemy father knew him. He was not, like Mr. Grote, to any extent, a pupilof my father, but he had attained, by reading and thought, aconsiderable number of the same opinions, modified by his own verydecided individuality of character. He was a man of great intellectualpowers, which in conversation appeared at their very best; from thevigour and richness of expression with which, under the excitement ofdiscussion, he was accustomed to maintain some view or other of mostgeneral subjects; and from an appearance of not only strong, butdeliberate and collected will; mixed with a certain bitterness, partlyderived from temperament, and partly from the general cast of hisfeelings and reflections. The dissatisfaction with life and the world, felt more or less in the present state of society and intellect byevery discerning and highly conscientious mind, gave in his case arather melancholy tinge to the character, very natural to those whosepassive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to theiractive energies. For it must be said, that the strength of will ofwhich his manner seemed to give such strong assurance, expended itselfprincipally in manner. With great zeal for human improvement, a strongsense of duty, and capacities and acquirements the extent of which isproved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed anyintellectual task of magnitude. He had so high a standard of whatought to be done, so exaggerated a sense of deficiencies in his ownperformances, and was so unable to content himself with the amount ofelaboration sufficient for the occasion and the purpose, that he notonly spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by overlabouring it, butspent so much time and exertion in superfluous study and thought, thatwhen his task ought to have been completed, he had generally workedhimself into an illness, without having half finished what heundertook. From this mental infirmity (of which he is not the soleexample among the accomplished and able men whom I have known), combined with liability to frequent attacks of disabling though notdangerous ill-health, he accomplished, through life, little incomparison with what he seemed capable of; but what he did produce isheld in the very highest estimation by the most competent judges; and, like Coleridge, he might plead as a set-off that he had been to manypersons, through his conversation, a source not only of muchinstruction but of great elevation of character. On me his influencewas most salutary. It was moral in the best sense. He took a sincereand kind interest in me, far beyond what could have been expectedtowards a mere youth from a man of his age, standing, and what seemedausterity of character. There was in his conversation and demeanour atone of high-mindedness which did not show itself so much, if thequality existed as much, in any of the other persons with whom at thattime I associated. My intercourse with him was the more beneficial, owing to his being of a different mental type from all otherintellectual men whom I frequented, and he from the first set himselfdecidedly against the prejudices and narrownesses which are almostsure to be found in a young man formed by a particular mode of thoughtor a particular social circle. His younger brother, Charles Austin, of whom at this time and for thenext year or two I saw much, had also a great effect on me, though ofa very different description. He was but a few years older thanmyself, and had then just left the University, where he had shone withgreat _éclat_ as a man of intellect and a brilliant orator andconverser. The effect he produced on his Cambridge contemporariesdeserves to be accounted an historical event; for to it may in part betraced the tendency towards Liberalism in general, and the Benthamicand politico-economic form of it in particular, which showed itself ina portion of the more active-minded young men of the higher classesfrom this time to 1830. The Union Debating Society, at that time atthe height of its reputation, was an arena where what were thenthought extreme opinions, in politics and philosophy, were weeklyasserted, face to face with their opposites, before audiencesconsisting of the _élite_ of the Cambridge youth: and though manypersons afterwards of more or less note (of whom Lord Macaulay is themost celebrated) gained their first oratorical laurels in thosedebates, the really influential mind among these intellectualgladiators was Charles Austin. He continued, after leaving theUniversity, to be, by his conversation and personal ascendency, aleader among the same class of young men who had been his associatesthere; and he attached me among others to his car. Through him Ibecame acquainted with Macaulay, Hyde and Charles Villiers, Strutt(now Lord Belper), Romilly (now Lord Romilly and Master of the Rolls), and various others who subsequently figured in literature or politics, and among whom I heard discussions on many topics, as yet to a certaindegree new to me. The influence of Charles Austin over me differedfrom that of the persons I have hitherto mentioned, in being not theinfluence of a man over a boy, but that of an elder contemporary. Itwas through him that I first felt myself, not a pupil under teachers, but a man among men. He was the first person of intellect whom I meton a ground of equality, though as yet much his inferior on thatcommon ground. He was a man who never failed to impress greatly thosewith whom he came in contact, even when their opinions were the veryreverse of his. The impression he gave was that of boundless strength, together with talents which, combined with such apparent force of willand character, seemed capable of dominating the world. Those who knewhim, whether friendly to him or not, always anticipated that he wouldplay a conspicuous part in public life. It is seldom that men produceso great an immediate effect by speech, unless they, in some degree, lay themselves out for it; and he did this in no ordinary degree. Heloved to strike, and even to startle. He knew that decision is thegreatest element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with all thedecision he could throw into them, never so well pleased as when heastonished anyone by their audacity. Very unlike his brother, who madewar against the narrower interpretations and applications of theprinciples they both professed, he, on the contrary, presented theBenthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they weresusceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended toconsequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. All which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a mannerso agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came offvictor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that muchof the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments ofwhat are called Benthamites or Utilitarians had its origin in paradoxesthrown out by Charles Austin. It must be said, however, that his examplewas followed, _haud passibus aequis_, by younger proselytes, and that to_outrer_ whatever was by anybody considered offensive in the doctrinesand maxims of Benthamism, became at one time the badge of a small coterieof youths. All of these who had anything in them, myself among others, quickly outgrew this boyish vanity; and those who had not, became tiredof differing from other people, and gave up both the good and the bad partof the heterodox opinions they had for some time professed. It was in the winter of 1822-3 that I formed the plan of a littlesociety, to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamentalprinciples--acknowledging Utility as their standard in ethics andpolitics, and a certain number of the principal corollaries drawn fromit in the philosophy I had accepted--and meeting once a fortnight toread essays and discuss questions conformably to the premises thusagreed on. The fact would hardly be worth mentioning, but for thecircumstance, that the name I gave to the society I had planned was theUtilitarian Society. It was the first time that anyone had taken thetitle of Utilitarian; and the term made its way into the language, fromthis humble source. I did not invent the word, but found it in one ofGalt's novels, the _Annals of the Parish_, in which the Scotchclergyman, of whom the book is a supposed autobiography, is representedas warning his parishioners not to leave the Gospel and becomeutilitarians. With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seizedon the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as asectarian appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by someothers holding the opinions which it was intended to designate. As thoseopinions attracted more notice, the term was repeated by strangers andopponents, and got into rather common use just about the time when thosewho had originally assumed it, laid down that along with other sectariancharacteristics. The Society so called consisted at first of no morethan three members, one of whom, being Mr. Bentham's amanuensis, obtained for us permission to hold our meetings in his house. The numbernever, I think, reached ten, and the Society was broken up in 1826. Ithad thus an existence of about three years and a half. The chief effectof it as regards myself, over and above the benefit of practice in oraldiscussion, was that of bringing me in contact with several young men atthat time less advanced than myself, among whom, as they professed thesame opinions, I was for some time a sort of leader, and had considerableinfluence on their mental progress. Any young man of education who fellin my way, and whose opinions were not incompatible with those of theSociety, I endeavoured to press into its service; and some others Iprobably should never have known, had they not joined it. Those of themembers who became my intimate companions--no one of whom was in any senseof the word a disciple, but all of them independent thinkers on their ownbasis--were William Eyton Tooke, son of the eminent political economist, a young man of singular worth both moral and intellectual, lost to theworld by an early death; his friend William Ellis, an original thinker inthe field of political economy, now honourably known by his apostolicexertions for the improvement of education; George Graham, afterwardsofficial assignee of the Bankruptcy Court, a thinker of originality andpower on almost all abstract subjects; and (from the time when he camefirst to England to study for the bar in 1824 or 1825) a man who has madeconsiderably more noise in the world than any of these, John Arthur Roebuck. In May, 1823, my professional occupation and status for the nextthirty-five years of my life, were decided by my father's obtaining forme an appointment from the East India Company, in the office of theExaminer of India Correspondence, immediately under himself. I wasappointed in the usual manner, at the bottom of the list of clerks, torise, at least in the first instance, by seniority; but with theunderstanding that I should be employed from the beginning in preparingdrafts of despatches, and be thus trained up as a successor to those whothen filled the higher departments of the office. My drafts of courserequired, for some time, much revision from my immediate superiors, butI soon became well acquainted with the business, and by my father'sinstructions and the general growth of my own powers, I was in a fewyears qualified to be, and practically was, the chief conductor of thecorrespondence with India in one of the leading departments, that of theNative States. This continued to be my official duty until I wasappointed Examiner, only two years before the time when the abolition ofthe East India Company as a political body determined my retirement. Ido not know any one of the occupations by which a subsistence can now begained, more suitable than such as this to anyone who, not being inindependent circumstances, desires to devote a part of the twenty-fourhours to private intellectual pursuits. Writing for the press cannot berecommended as a permanent resource to anyone qualified to accomplishanything in the higher departments of literature or thought: not only onaccount of the uncertainty of this means of livelihood, especially ifthe writer has a conscience, and will not consent to serve any opinionsexcept his own; but also because the writings by which one can live arenot the writings which themselves live, and are never those in which thewriter does his best. Books destined to form future thinkers take toomuch time to write, and when written come, in general, too slowly intonotice and repute, to be relied on for subsistence. Those who have tosupport themselves by their pen must depend on literary drudgery, or atbest on writings addressed to the multitude; and can employ in thepursuits of their own choice, only such time as they can spare fromthose of necessity; which is generally less than the leisure allowed byoffice occupations, while the effect on the mind is far more enervatingand fatiguing. For my own part I have, through life, found office dutiesan actual rest from the other mental occupations which I have carried onsimultaneously with them. They were sufficiently intellectual not to bea distasteful drudgery, without being such as to cause any strain uponthe mental powers of a person used to abstract thought, or to the labourof careful literary composition. The drawbacks, for every mode of lifehas its drawbacks, were not, however, unfelt by me. I cared little forthe loss of the chances of riches and honours held out by some of theprofessions, particularly the bar, which had been, as I have alreadysaid, the profession thought of for me. But I was not indifferent toexclusion from Parliament, and public life: and I felt very sensibly themore immediate unpleasantness of confinement to London; the holidayallowed by India House practice not exceeding a month in the year, whilemy taste was strong for a country life, and my sojourn in France hadleft behind it an ardent desire of travelling. But though these tastescould not be freely indulged, they were at no time entirely sacrificed. I passed most Sundays, throughout the year, in the country, taking longrural walks on that day even when residing in London. The month'sholiday was, for a few years, passed at my father's house in thecountry; afterwards a part or the whole was spent in tours, chieflypedestrian, with some one or more of the young men who were my chosencompanions; and, at a later period, in longer journeys or excursions, alone or with other friends. France, Belgium, and Rhenish Germany werewithin easy reach of the annual holiday: and two longer absences, one ofthree, the other of six months, under medical advice, added Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Italy to my list. Fortunately, also, both these journeysoccurred rather early, so as to give the benefit and charm of theremembrance to a large portion of life. I am disposed to agree with what has been surmised by others, that theopportunity which my official position gave me of learning by personalobservation the necessary conditions of the practical conduct ofpublic affairs, has been of considerable value to me as a theoreticalreformer of the opinions and institutions of my time. Not, indeed, that public business transacted on paper, to take effect on the otherside of the globe, was of itself calculated to give much practicalknowledge of life. But the occupation accustomed me to see and hearthe difficulties of every course, and the means of obviating them, stated and discussed deliberately with a view to execution: it gaveme opportunities of perceiving when public measures, and otherpolitical facts, did not produce the effects which had been expectedof them, and from what causes; above all, it was valuable to me bymaking me, in this portion of my activity, merely one wheel in amachine, the whole of which had to work together. As a speculativewriter, I should have had no one to consult but myself, and shouldhave encountered in my speculations none of the obstacles which wouldhave started up whenever they came to be applied to practice. But as aSecretary conducting political correspondence, I could not issue anorder, or express an opinion, without satisfying various persons veryunlike myself, that the thing was fit to be done. I was thus in a goodposition for finding out by practice the mode of putting a thoughtwhich gives it easiest admittance into minds not prepared for it byhabit; while I became practically conversant with the difficulties ofmoving bodies of men, the necessities of compromise, the art ofsacrificing the non-essential to preserve the essential. I learnt howto obtain the best I could, when I could not obtain everything;instead of being indignant or dispirited because I could not haveentirely my own way, to be pleased and encouraged when I could havethe smallest part of it; and when even that could not be, to bear withcomplete equanimity the being overruled altogether. I have found, through life, these acquisitions to be of the greatest possibleimportance for personal happiness, and they are also a very necessarycondition for enabling anyone, either as theorist or as practical man, to effect the greatest amount of good compatible with his opportunities. CHAPTER IV YOUTHFUL PROPAGANDISM. THE "WESTMINSTER REVIEW" The occupation of so much of my time by office work did not relax myattention to my own pursuits, which were never carried on morevigorously. It was about this time that I began to write in newspapers. The first writings of mine which got into print were two letterspublished towards the end of 1822, in the _Traveller_ evening newspaper. The _Traveller_ (which afterwards grew into the _Globe and Traveller_, by the purchase and incorporation of the _Globe_) was then the propertyof the well-known political economist, Colonel Torrens, and under theeditorship of an able man, Mr. Walter Coulson (who, after being anamanuensis of Mr. Bentham, became a reporter, then an editor, next abarrister and conveyancer, and died Counsel to the Home Office), it hadbecome one of the most important newspaper organs of Liberal politics. Colonel Torrens himself wrote much of the political economy of hispaper; and had at this time made an attack upon some opinion of Ricardoand my father, to which, at my father's instigation, I attempted ananswer, and Coulson, out of consideration for my father and goodwill tome, inserted it. There was a reply by Torrens, to which I againrejoined. I soon after attempted something considerably more ambitious. The prosecutions of Richard Carlile and his wife and sister forpublications hostile to Christianity were then exciting much attention, and nowhere more than among the people I frequented. Freedom ofdiscussion even in politics, much more in religion, was at that time farfrom being, even in theory, the conceded point which it at least seemsto be now; and the holders of obnoxious opinions had to be always readyto argue and re-argue for the liberty of expressing them. I wrote aseries of five letters, under the signature of Wickliffe, going over thewhole length and breadth of the question of free publication of allopinions on religion, and offered them to the _Morning Chronicle_. Threeof them were published in January and February, 1823; the other two, containing things too outspoken for that journal, never appeared at all. But a paper which I wrote soon after on the same subject, _à propos_ ofa debate in the House of Commons, was inserted as a leading article; andduring the whole of this year, 1823, a considerable number of mycontributions were printed in the _Chronicle_ and _Traveller_: sometimesnotices of books, but oftener letters, commenting on some nonsensetalked in Parliament, or some defect of the law, or misdoings of themagistracy or the courts of justice. In this last department the_Chronicle_ was now rendering signal service. After the death of Mr. Perry, the editorship and management of the paper had devolved on Mr. John Black, long a reporter on its establishment; a man of mostextensive reading and information, great honesty and simplicity of mind;a particular friend of my father, imbued with many of his and Bentham'sideas, which he reproduced in his articles, among other valuablethoughts, with great facility and skill. From this time the _Chronicle_ceased to be the merely Whig organ it was before, and during the nextten years became to a considerable extent a vehicle of the opinions ofthe Utilitarian Radicals. This was mainly by what Black himself wrote, with some assistance from Fonblanque, who first showed his eminentqualities as a writer by articles and _jeux d'esprit_ in the_Chronicle_. The defects of the law, and of the administration ofjustice, were the subject on which that paper rendered most service toimprovement. Up to that time hardly a word had been said, except byBentham and my father, against that most peccant part of Englishinstitutions and of their administration. It was the almost universalcreed of Englishmen, that the law of England, the judicature of England, the unpaid magistracy of England, were models of excellence. I do not gobeyond the mark in saying, that after Bentham, who supplied theprincipal materials, the greatest share of the merit of breaking downthis wretched superstition belongs to Black, as editor of the _MorningChronicle_. He kept up an incessant fire against it, exposing theabsurdities and vices of the law and the courts of justice, paid andunpaid, until he forced some sense of them into people's minds. On manyother questions he became the organ of opinions much in advance of anywhich had ever before found regular advocacy in the newspaper press. Black was a frequent visitor of my father, and Mr. Grote used to saythat he always knew by the Monday morning's article whether Black hadbeen with my father on the Sunday. Black was one of the most influentialof the many channels through which my father's conversation and personalinfluence made his opinions tell on the world; cooperating with theeffect of his writings in making him a power in the country such as ithas rarely been the lot of an individual in a private station to be, through the mere force of intellect and character: and a power which wasoften acting the most efficiently where it was least seen and suspected. I have already noticed how much of what was done by Ricardo, Hume, andGrote was the result, in part, of his prompting and persuasion. He wasthe good genius by the side of Brougham in most of what he did for thepublic, either on education, law reform, or any other subject. And hisinfluence flowed in minor streams too numerous to be specified. Thisinfluence was now about to receive a great extension by the foundationof the _Westminster Review_. Contrary to what may have been supposed, my father was in no degree aparty to setting up the _Westminster Review_. The need of a Radicalorgan to make head against the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_ (then in theperiod of their greatest reputation and influence) had been a topic ofconversation between him and Mr. Bentham many years earlier, and it hadbeen a part of their _Château en Espagne_ that my father should be theeditor; but the idea had never assumed any practical shape. In 1823, however, Mr. Bentham determined to establish the _Review_ at his owncost, and offered the editorship to my father, who declined it asincompatible with his India House appointment. It was then entrusted toMr. (now Sir John) Bowring, at that time a merchant in the City. Mr. Bowring had been for two or three years previous an assiduous frequenterof Mr. Bentham, to whom he was recommended by many personal goodqualities, by an ardent admiration for Bentham, a zealous adoption ofmany, though not all of his opinions, and, not least, by an extensiveacquaintanceship and correspondence with Liberals of all countries, which seemed to qualify him for being a powerful agent in spreadingBentham's fame and doctrines through all quarters of the world. Myfather had seen little of Bowring, but knew enough of him to have formeda strong opinion, that he was a man of an entirely different type fromwhat my father considered suitable for conducting a political andphilosophical Review: and he augured so ill of the enterprise that heregretted it altogether, feeling persuaded not only that Mr. Benthamwould lose his money, but that discredit would probably be brought uponRadical principles. He could not, however, desert Mr. Bentham, and heconsented to write an article for the first number. As it had been afavourite portion of the scheme formerly talked of, that part of thework should be devoted to reviewing the other Reviews, this article ofmy father's was to be a general criticism of the _Edinburgh Review_ fromits commencement. Before writing it he made me read through all thevolumes of the _Review_, or as much of each as seemed of any importance(which was not so arduous a task in 1823 as it would be now), and makenotes for him of the articles which I thought he would wish to examine, either on account of their good or their bad qualities. This paper of myfather's was the chief cause of the sensation which the _WestminsterReview_ produced at its first appearance, and is, both in conception andin execution, one of the most striking of all his writings. He began byan analysis of the tendencies of periodical literature in general;pointing out, that it cannot, like books, wait for success, but mustsucceed immediately or not at all, and is hence almost certain toprofess and inculcate the opinions already held by the public to whichit addresses itself, instead of attempting to rectify or improve thoseopinions. He next, to characterize the position of the _EdinburghReview_ as a political organ, entered into a complete analysis, from theRadical point of view, of the British Constitution. He held up to noticeits thoroughly aristocratic character: the nomination of a majority ofthe House of Commons by a few hundred families; the entireidentification of the more independent portion, the county members, withthe great landholders; the different classes whom this narrow oligarchywas induced, for convenience, to admit to a share of power; and finally, what he called its two props, the Church, and the legal profession. Hepointed out the natural tendency of an aristocratic body of thiscomposition, to group itself into two parties, one of them in possessionof the executive, the other endeavouring to supplant the former andbecome the predominant section by the aid of public opinion, without anyessential sacrifice of the aristocratical predominance. He described thecourse likely to be pursued, and the political ground occupied, by anaristocratic party in opposition, coquetting with popular principles forthe sake of popular support. He showed how this idea was realized in theconduct of the Whig party, and of the _Edinburgh Review_ as its chiefliterary organ. He described, as their main characteristic, what hetermed "seesaw"; writing alternately on both sides of the question whichtouched the power or interest of the governing classes; sometimes indifferent articles, sometimes in different parts of the same article:and illustrated his position by copious specimens. So formidable anattack on the Whig party and policy had never before been made; nor hadso great a blow ever been struck, in this country, for Radicalism; norwas there, I believe, any living person capable of writing that articleexcept my father. [2] In the meantime the nascent _Review_ had formed a junction with anotherproject, of a purely literary periodical, to be edited by Mr. HenrySouthern, afterwards a diplomatist, then a literary man by profession. The two editors agreed to unite their corps, and divide the editorship, Bowring taking the political, Southern the literary department. Southern's Review was to have been published by Longman, and that firm, though part proprietors of the _Edinburgh_, were willing to be thepublishers of the new journal. But when all the arrangements had beenmade, and the prospectuses sent out, the Longmans saw my father's attackon the _Edinburgh_, and drew back. My father was now appealed to for hisinterest with his own publisher, Baldwin, which was exerted with asuccessful result. And so in April, 1824, amidst anything but hope on myfather's part, and that of most of those who afterwards aided incarrying on the _Review_, the first number made its appearance. That number was an agreeable surprise to most of us. The average of thearticles was of much better quality than had been expected. The literaryand artistic department had rested chiefly on Mr. Bingham, a barrister(subsequently a police magistrate), who had been for some years afrequenter of Bentham, was a friend of both the Austins, and had adoptedwith great ardour Mr. Bentham's philosophical opinions. Partly fromaccident, there were in the first number as many as five articles byBingham; and we were extremely pleased with them. I well remember themixed feeling I myself had about the _Review_; the joy of finding, whatwe did not at all expect, that it was sufficiently good to be capable ofbeing made a creditable organ of those who held the opinions itprofessed; and extreme vexation, since it was so good on the whole, atwhat we thought the blemishes of it. When, however, in addition to ourgenerally favourable opinion of it, we learned that it had anextraordinary large sale for a first number, and found that theappearance of a Radical Review, with pretensions equal to those of theestablished organs of parties, had excited much attention, there couldbe no room for hesitation, and we all became eager in doing everythingwe could to strengthen and improve it. My father continued to write occasional articles. The _Quarterly Review_received its exposure, as a sequel to that of the _Edinburgh_. Of hisother contributions, the most important were an attack on Southey's_Book of the Church_, in the fifth number, and a political article inthe twelfth. Mr. Austin only contributed one paper, but one of greatmerit, an argument against primogeniture, in reply to an article thenlately published in the _Edinburgh Review_ by McCulloch. Grote alsowas a contributor only once; all the time he could spare being alreadytaken up with his _History of Greece_. The article he wrote was on hisown subject, and was a very complete exposure and castigation ofMitford. Bingham and Charles Austin continued to write for some time;Fonblanque was a frequent contributor from the third number. Of myparticular associates, Ellis was a regular writer up to the ninthnumber; and about the time when he left off, others of the set began;Eyton Tooke, Graham, and Roebuck. I was myself the most frequent writerof all, having contributed, from the second number to the eighteenth, thirteen articles; reviews of books on history and political economy, ordiscussions on special political topics, as corn laws, game laws, law oflibel. Occasional articles of merit came in from other acquaintances ofmy father's, and, in time, of mine; and some of Mr. Bowring's writersturned out well. On the whole, however, the conduct of the Review wasnever satisfactory to any of the persons strongly interested in itsprinciples, with whom I came in contact. Hardly ever did a number comeout without containing several things extremely offensive to us, eitherin point of opinion, of taste, or by mere want of ability. Theunfavourable judgments passed by my father, Grote, the two Austins, andothers, were re-echoed with exaggeration by us younger people; and asour youthful zeal rendered us by no means backward in making complaints, we led the two editors a sad life. From my knowledge of what I then was, I have no doubt that we were at least as often wrong as right; and I amvery certain that if the _Review_ had been carried on according to ournotions (I mean those of the juniors), it would have been no better, perhaps not even so good as it was. But it is worth noting as a fact inthe history of Benthamism, that the periodical organ, by which it wasbest known, was from the first extremely unsatisfactory to those whoseopinions on all subjects it was supposed specially to represent. Meanwhile, however, the _Review_ made considerable noise in the world, and gave a recognised _status_, in the arena of opinion and discussion, to the Benthamic type of Radicalism, out of all proportion to the numberof its adherents, and to the personal merits and abilities, at thattime, of most of those who could be reckoned among them. It was a time, as is known, of rapidly rising Liberalism. When the fears andanimosities accompanying the war with France had been brought to an end, and people had once more a place in their thoughts for home politics, the tide began to set towards reform. The renewed oppression of theContinent by the old reigning families, the countenance apparently givenby the English Government to the conspiracy against liberty called theHoly Alliance, and the enormous weight of the national debt and taxationoccasioned by so long and costly a war, rendered the government andparliament very unpopular. Radicalism, under the leadership of theBurdetts and Cobbetts, had assumed a character and importance whichseriously alarmed the Administration: and their alarm had scarcely beentemporarily assuaged by the celebrated Six Acts, when the trial of QueenCaroline roused a still wider and deeper feeling of hatred. Though theoutward signs of this hatred passed away with its exciting cause, therearose on all sides a spirit which had never shown itself before, ofopposition to abuses in detail. Mr. Hume's persevering scrutiny of thepublic expenditure, forcing the House of Commons to a division on everyobjectionable item in the estimates, had begun to tell with great forceon public opinion, and had extorted many minor retrenchments from anunwilling administration. Political economy had asserted itself withgreat vigour in public affairs, by the petition of the merchants ofLondon for free trade, drawn up in 1820 by Mr. Tooke and presented byMr. Alexander Baring; and by the noble exertions of Ricardo during thefew years of his parliamentary life. His writings, following up theimpulse given by the Bullion controversy, and followed up in their turnby the expositions and comments of my father and McCulloch (whosewritings in the _Edinburgh Review_ during those years were mostvaluable), had drawn general attention to the subject, making at leastpartial converts in the Cabinet itself; and Huskisson, supported byCanning, had commenced that gradual demolition of the protective system, which one of their colleagues virtually completed in 1846, though thelast vestiges were only swept away by Mr. Gladstone in 1860. Mr. Peel, then Home Secretary, was entering cautiously into the untrodden andpeculiarly Benthamic path of Law Reform. At this period, when Liberalismseemed to be becoming the tone of the time, when improvement ofinstitutions was preached from the highest places, and a complete changeof the constitution of Parliament was loudly demanded in the lowest, itis not strange that attention should have been roused by the regularappearance in controversy of what seemed a new school of writers, claiming to be the legislators and theorists of this new tendency. Theair of strong conviction with which they wrote, when scarcely anyoneelse seemed to have an equally strong faith in as definite a creed; theboldness with which they tilted against the very front of both theexisting political parties; their uncompromising profession ofopposition to many of the generally received opinions, and the suspicionthey lay under of holding others still more heterodox than theyprofessed; the talent and verve of at least my father's articles, andthe appearance of a corps behind him sufficient to carry on a Review;and finally, the fact that the _Review_ was bought and read, made theso-called Bentham school in philosophy and politics fill a greater placein the public mind than it had held before, or has ever again held sinceother equally earnest schools of thought have arisen in England. As Iwas in the headquarters of it, knew of what it was composed, and as oneof the most active of its very small number, might say without undueassumption, _quorum pars magna fui_, it belongs to me more than to mostothers, to give some account of it. This supposed school, then, had no other existence than what wasconstituted by the fact, that my father's writings and conversation drewround him a certain number of young men who had already imbibed, or whoimbibed from him, a greater or smaller portion of his very decidedpolitical and philosophical opinions. The notion that Bentham wassurrounded by a band of disciples who received their opinions from hislips, is a fable to which my father did justice in his "Fragment onMackintosh, " and which, to all who knew Mr. Bentham's habits of life andmanner of conversation, is simply ridiculous. The influence whichBentham exercised was by his writings. Through them he has produced, andis producing, effects on the condition of mankind, wider and deeper, nodoubt, than any which can be attributed to my father. He is a muchgreater name in history. But my father exercised a far greater personalascendency. He _was_ sought for the vigour and instructiveness of hisconversation, and did use it largely as an instrument for the diffusionof his opinions. I have never known any man who could do such amplejustice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfectcommand over his great mental resources, the terseness andexpressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well asintellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking ofall argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a heartylaugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusingcompanion. It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merelyintellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still morethrough the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt toappreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regardabove all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life andactivity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he camein contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, theshame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation andhis very existence gave to those who were aiming at the same objects, andthe encouragement he afforded to the fainthearted or desponding amongthem, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as tothe results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt inthe power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the goodwhich individuals could do by judicious effort. If was my father's opinions which gave the distinguishing character tothe Benthamic or utilitarian propagandism of that time. They fellsingly, scattered from him, in many directions, but they flowed from himin a continued stream principally in three channels. One was through me, the only mind directly formed by his instructions, and through whomconsiderable influence was exercised over various young men, who became, in their turn, propagandists. A second was through some of the Cambridgecontemporaries of Charles Austin, who, either initiated by him or underthe general mental impulse which he gave, had adopted many opinionsallied to those of my father, and some of the more considerable of whomafterwards sought my father's acquaintance and frequented his house. Among these may be mentioned Strutt, afterwards Lord Belper, and thepresent Lord Romilly, with whose eminent father, Sir Samuel, my fatherhad of old been on terms of friendship. The third channel was that of ayounger generation of Cambridge undergraduates, contemporary, not withAustin, but with Eyton Tooke, who were drawn to that estimable person byaffinity of opinions, and introduced by him to my father: the mostnotable of these was Charles Buller. Various other persons individuallyreceived and transmitted a considerable amount of my father's influence:for example, Black (as before mentioned) and Fonblanque: most of these, however, we accounted only partial allies; Fonblanque, for instance, wasalways divergent from us on many important points. But indeed there wasby no means complete unanimity among any portion of us, nor had any ofus adopted implicitly all my father's opinions. For example, althoughhis _Essay on Government_ was regarded probably by all of us as amasterpiece of political wisdom, our adhesion by no means extended tothe paragraph of it in which he maintains that women may, consistentlywith good government, be excluded from the suffrage, because theirinterest is the same with that of men. From this doctrine, I, and allthose who formed my chosen associates, most positively dissented. It isdue to my father to say that he denied having intended to affirm thatwomen _should_ be excluded, any more than men under the age of forty, concerning whom he maintained in the very next paragraph an exactlysimilar thesis. He was, as he truly said, not discussing whether thesuffrage had better be restricted, but only (assuming that it is to berestricted) what is the utmost limit of restriction which does notnecessarily involve a sacrifice of the securities for good government. But I thought then, as I have always thought since that the opinionwhich he acknowledged, no less than that which he disclaimed, is asgreat an error as any of those against which the _Essay_ was directed;that the interest of women is included in that of men exactly as much asthe interest of subjects is included in that of kings, and no more; andthat every reason which exists for giving the suffrage to anybody, demands that it should not be withheld from women. This was also thegeneral opinion of the younger proselytes; and it is pleasant to be ableto say that Mr. Bentham, on this important point, was wholly on our side. But though none of us, probably, agreed in every respect with my father, his opinions, as I said before, were the principal element which gaveits colour and character to the little group of young men who were thefirst propagators of what was afterwards called "Philosophic Radicalism. "Their mode of thinking was not characterized by Benthamism in any sensewhich has relation to Bentham as a chief or guide, but rather by acombination of Bentham's point of view with that of the modern politicaleconomy, and with the Hartleian metaphysics. Malthus's populationprinciple was quite as much a banner, and point of union among us, asany opinion specially belonging to Bentham. This great doctrine, originally brought forward as an argument against the indefiniteimprovability of human affairs, we took up with ardent zeal in thecontrary sense, as indicating the sole means of realizing thatimprovability by securing full employment at high wages to the wholelabouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase oftheir numbers. The other leading characteristics of the creed, which weheld in common with my father, may be stated as follows: In politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy of twothings: representative government, and complete freedom of discussion. So complete was my father's reliance on the influence of reason over theminds of mankind, whenever it is allowed to reach them, that he felt asif all would be gained if the whole population were taught to read, ifall sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by word andin writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate alegislature to give effect to the opinions they adopted. He thought thatwhen the legislature no longer represented a class interest, it wouldaim at the general interest, honestly and with adequate wisdom; sincethe people would be sufficiently under the guidance of educatedintelligence, to make in general a good choice of persons to representthem, and having done so, to leave to those whom they had chosen aliberal discretion. Accordingly aristocratic rule, the government of theFew in any of its shapes, being in his eyes the only thing which stoodbetween mankind and an administration of their affairs by the bestwisdom to be found among them, was the object of his sternestdisapprobation, and a democratic suffrage the principal article of hispolitical creed, not on the ground of liberty, Rights of Man, or any ofthe phrases, more or less significant, by which, up to that time, democracy had usually been defended, but as the most essential of"securities for good government. " In this, too, he held fast only towhat he deemed essentials; he was comparatively indifferent tomonarchical or republican forms--far more so than Bentham, to whom aking, in the character of "corrupter-general, " appeared necessarily verynoxious. Next to aristocracy, an established church, or corporation ofpriests, as being by position the great depravers of religion, andinterested in opposing the progress of the human mind, was the object ofhis greatest detestation; though he disliked no clergyman personally whodid not deserve it, and was on terms of sincere friendship with several. In ethics his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all pointswhich he deemed important to human well being, while he was supremelyindifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not show itself inpersonal conduct) to all those doctrines of the common morality, whichhe thought had no foundation but in asceticism and priestcraft. Helooked forward, for example, to a considerable increase of freedom inthe relations between the sexes, though without pretending to defineexactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise conditions of thatfreedom. This opinion was connected in him with no sensuality either ofa theoretical or of a practical kind. He anticipated, on the contrary, as one of the beneficial effects of increased freedom, that theimagination would no longer dwell upon the physical relation and itsadjuncts, and swell this into one of the principal objects of life; aperversion of the imagination and feelings, which he regarded as one ofthe deepest seated and most pervading evils in the human mind. Inpsychology, his fundamental doctrine was the formation of all humancharacter by circumstances, through the universal Principle ofAssociation, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving themoral and intellectual condition of mankind by education. Of all hisdoctrines none was more important than this, or needs more to beinsisted on; unfortunately there is none which is more contradictory tothe prevailing tendencies of speculation, both in his time and since. These various opinions were seized on with youthful fanaticism by thelittle knot of young men of whom I was one: and we put into them asectarian spirit, from which, in intention at least, my father waswholly free. What we (or rather a phantom substituted in the place ofus) were sometimes, by a ridiculous exaggeration, called by others, namely a "school, " some of us for a time really hoped and aspired to be. The French _philosophes_ of the eighteenth century were the examples wesought to imitate, and we hoped to accomplish no less results. No one ofthe set went to so great excesses in his boyish ambition as I did; whichmight be shown by many particulars, were it not an useless waste ofspace and time. All this, however, is properly only the outside of our existence; or, atleast, the intellectual part alone, and no more than one side of that. In attempting to penetrate inward, and give any indication of what wewere as human beings, I must be understood as speaking only of myself, of whom alone I can speak from sufficient knowledge; and I do notbelieve that the picture would suit any of my companions without manyand great modifications. I conceive that the description so often given of a Benthamite, as amere reasoning machine, though extremely inapplicable to most of thosewho have been designated by that title, was during two or three years ofmy life not altogether untrue of me. It was perhaps as applicable to meas it can well be to anyone just entering into life, to whom the commonobjects of desire must in general have at least the attraction ofnovelty. There is nothing very extraordinary in this fact: no youth ofthe age I then was, can be expected to be more than one thing, and thiswas the thing I happened to be. Ambition and desire of distinction I hadin abundance; and zeal for what I thought the good of mankind was mystrongest sentiment, mixing with and colouring all others. But my zealwas as yet little else, at that period of my life, than zeal forspeculative opinions. It had not its root in genuine benevolence, orsympathy with mankind; though these qualities held their due place inmy ethical standard. Nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm forideal nobleness. Yet of this feeling I was imaginatively verysusceptible; but there was at that time an intermission of its naturalaliment, poetical culture, while there was a superabundance of thediscipline antagonistic to it, that of mere logic and analysis. Add tothis that, as already mentioned, my father's teachings tended to theundervaluing of feeling. It was not that he was himself cold-hearted orinsensible; I believe it was rather from the contrary quality; hethought that feeling could take care of itself; that there was sure tobe enough of it if actions were properly cared about. Offended by thefrequency with which, in ethical and philosophical controversy, feelingis made the ultimate reason and justification of conduct, instead ofbeing itself called on for a justification, while, in practice, actionsthe effect of which on human happiness is mischievous, are defended asbeing required by feeling, and the character of a person of feelingobtains a credit for desert, which he thought only due to actions, hehad a real impatience of attributing praise to feeling, or of any butthe most sparing reference to it, either in the estimation of persons orin the discussion of things. In addition to the influence which thischaracteristic in him had on me and others, we found all the opinions towhich we attached most importance, constantly attacked on the ground offeeling. Utility was denounced as cold calculation; political economy ashard-hearted; anti-population doctrines as repulsive to the naturalfeelings of mankind. We retorted by the word "sentimentality, " which, along with "declamation" and "vague generalities, " served us as commonterms of opprobrium. Although we were generally in the right, as againstthose who were opposed to us, the effect was that the cultivation offeeling (except the feelings of public and private duty) was not in muchesteem among us, and had very little place in the thoughts of most ofus, myself in particular. What we principally thought of, was to alterpeople's opinions; to make them believe according to evidence, and knowwhat was their real interest, which when they once knew, they would, wethought, by the instrument of opinion, enforce a regard to it upon oneanother. While fully recognising the superior excellence of unselfishbenevolence and love of justice, we did not expect the regeneration ofmankind from any direct action on those sentiments, but from the effectof educated intellect, enlightening the selfish feelings. Although thislast is prodigiously important as a means of improvement in the hands ofthose who are themselves impelled by nobler principles of action, I donot believe that any one of the survivors of the Benthamites orUtilitarians of that day now relies mainly upon it for the generalamendment of human conduct. From this neglect both in theory and in practice of the cultivation offeeling, naturally resulted, among other things, an undervaluing ofpoetry, and of Imagination generally, as an element of human nature. Itis, or was, part of the popular notion of Benthamites, that they areenemies of poetry: this was partly true of Bentham himself; he used tosay that "all poetry is misrepresentation": but in the sense in which hesaid it, the same might have been said of all impressive speech; of allrepresentation or inculcation more oratorical in its character than asum in arithmetic. An article of Bingham's in the first number of the_Westminster Review_, in which he offered as an explanation of somethingwhich he disliked in Moore, that "Mr. Moore _is_ a poet, and thereforeis _not_ a reasoner, " did a good deal to attach the notion of hatingpoetry to the writers in the _Review_. But the truth was that many of uswere great readers of poetry; Bingham himself had been a writer of it, while as regards me (and the same thing might be said of my father), thecorrect statement would be, not that I disliked poetry, but that I wastheoretically indifferent to it. I disliked any sentiments in poetrywhich I should have disliked in prose; and that included a great deal. And I was wholly blind to its place in human culture, as a means ofeducating the feelings. But I was always personally very susceptible tosome kinds of it. In the most sectarian period of my Benthamism, Ihappened to look into Pope's _Essay on Man_, and, though every opinionin it was contrary to mine, I well remember how powerfully it acted onmy imagination. Perhaps at that time poetical composition of any highertype than eloquent discussion in verse, might not have produced asimilar effect upon me: at all events I seldom gave it an opportunity. This, however, was a mere passive state. Long before I had enlarged inany considerable degree the basis of my intellectual creed, I hadobtained, in the natural course of my mental progress, poetic culture ofthe most valuable kind, by means of reverential admiration for the livesand characters of heroic persons; especially the heroes of philosophy. The same inspiring effect which so many of the benefactors of mankindhave left on record that they had experienced from Plutarch's _Lives_, was produced on me by Plato's pictures of Socrates, and by some modernbiographies, above all by Condorcet's _Life of Turgot_; a book wellcalculated to rouse the best sort of enthusiasm, since it contains oneof the wisest and noblest of lives, delineated by one of the wisest andnoblest of men. The heroic virtue of these glorious representatives ofthe opinions with which I sympathized, deeply affected me, and Iperpetually recurred to them as others do to a favourite poet, whenneeding to be carried up into the more elevated regions of feeling andthought. I may observe by the way that this book cured me of mysectarian follies. The two or three pages beginning "Il regardait toutesecte comme nuisible, " and explaining why Turgot always kept himselfperfectly distinct from the Encyclopedists, sank deeply into my mind. I left off designating myself and others as Utilitarians, and by thepronoun "we, " or any other collective designation, I ceased to_afficher_ sectarianism. My real inward sectarianism I did not get ridof till later, and much more gradually. About the end of 1824, or beginning of 1825, Mr. Bentham, having latelygot back his papers on Evidence from M. Dumont (whose _Traité desPreuves Judiciaires_, grounded on them, was then first completed andpublished), resolved to have them printed in the original, and bethoughthimself of me as capable of preparing them for the press; in the samemanner as his _Book of Fallacies_ had been recently edited by Bingham. I gladly undertook this task, and it occupied nearly all my leisure forabout a year, exclusive of the time afterwards spent in seeing the fivelarge volumes through the press. Mr. Bentham had begun this treatisethree time's, at considerable intervals, each time in a differentmanner, and each time without reference to the preceding: two of thethree times he had gone over nearly the whole subject. These threemasses of manuscript it was my business to condense into a singletreatise, adopting the one last written as the groundwork, andincorporating with it as much of the two others as it had not completelysuperseded. I had also to unroll such of Bentham's involved andparenthetical sentences as seemed to overpass by their complexity themeasure of what readers were likely to take the pains to understand. Itwas further Mr. Bentham's particular desire that I should, from myself, endeavour to supply any _lacunae_ which he had left; and at his instanceI read, for this purpose, the most authoritative treatises on theEnglish Law of Evidence, and commented on a few of the objectionablepoints of the English rules, which had escaped Bentham's notice. I alsoreplied to the objections which had been made to some of his doctrinesby reviewers of Dumont's book, and added a few supplementary remarks onsome of the more abstract parts of the subject, such as the theory ofimprobability and impossibility. The controversial part of theseeditorial additions was written in a more assuming tone than became oneso young and inexperienced as I was: but indeed I had never contemplatedcoming forward in my own person; and as an anonymous editor of Bentham Ifell into the tone of my author, not thinking it unsuitable to him or tothe subject, however it might be so to me. My name as editor was put tothe book after it was printed, at Mr. Bentham's positive desire, which Iin vain attempted to persuade him to forego. The time occupied in this editorial work was extremely well employed inrespect to my own improvement. The _Rationale of Judicial Evidence_ isone of the richest in matter of all Bentham's productions. The theory ofevidence being in itself one of the most important of his subjects, andramifying into most of the others, the book contains, very fullydeveloped, a great proportion of all his best thoughts: while, amongmore special things, it comprises the most elaborate exposure of thevices and defects of English law, as it then was, which is to be foundin his works; not confined to the law of evidence, but including, by wayof illustrative episode, the entire procedure or practice of WestminsterHall. The direct knowledge, therefore, which I obtained from the book, and which was imprinted upon me much more thoroughly than it could havebeen by mere reading, was itself no small acquisition. But thisoccupation did for me what might seem less to be expected; it gave agreat start to my powers of composition. Everything which I wrotesubsequently to this editorial employment, was markedly superior toanything that I had written before it. Bentham's later style, as theworld knows, was heavy and cumbersome, from the excess of a goodquality, the love of precision, which made him introduce clause withinclause into the heart of every sentence, that the reader might receiveinto his mind all the modifications and qualifications simultaneouslywith the main proposition: and the habit grew on him until his sentencesbecame, to those not accustomed to them, most laborious reading. But hisearlier style, that of the _Fragment on Government, Plan of a JudicialEstablishment_, etc. , is a model of liveliness and ease combined withfulness of matter, scarcely ever surpassed: and of this earlier stylethere were many striking specimens in the manuscripts on Evidence, allof which I endeavoured to preserve. So long a course of this admirablewriting had a considerable effect upon my own; and I added to it by theassiduous reading of other writers, both French and English, whocombined, in a remarkable degree, ease with force, such as Goldsmith, Fielding, Pascal, Voltaire, and Courier. Through these influences mywriting lost the jejuneness of my early compositions; the bones andcartilages began to clothe themselves with flesh, and the style became, at times, lively and almost light. This improvement was first exhibited in a new field. Mr. Marshall, ofLeeds, father of the present generation of Marshalls, the same who wasbrought into Parliament for Yorkshire, when the representation forfeitedby Grampound was transferred to it, an earnest Parliamentary reformer, and a man of large fortune, of which he made a liberal use, had beenmuch struck with Bentham's _Book of Fallacies_; and the thought hadoccurred to him that it would be useful to publish annually theParliamentary Debates, not in the chronological order of Hansard, butclassified according to subjects, and accompanied by a commentarypointing out the fallacies of the speakers. With this intention, he verynaturally addressed himself to the editor of the _Book of Fallacies_;and Bingham, with the assistance of Charles Austin, undertook theeditorship. The work was called _Parliamentary History and Review_. Itssale was not sufficient to keep it in existence, and it only lastedthree years. It excited, however, some attention among parliamentary andpolitical people. The best strength of the party was put forth in it;and its execution did them much more credit than that of the_Westminster Review_ had ever done. Bingham and Charles Austin wrotemuch in it; as did Strutt, Romilly, and several other Liberal lawyers. My father wrote one article in his best style; the elder Austin another. Coulson wrote one of great merit. It fell to my lot to lead off thefirst number by an article on the principal topic of the session (thatof 1825), the Catholic Association and the Catholic Disabilities. In thesecond number I wrote an elaborate Essay on the Commercial Crisis of1825 and the Currency Debates. In the third I had two articles, one ona minor subject, the other on the Reciprocity principle in commerce, _à propos_ of a celebrated diplomatic correspondence between Canningand Gallatin. These writings were no longer mere reproductions andapplications of the doctrines I had been taught; they were originalthinking, as far as that name can be applied to old ideas in new formsand connexions: and I do not exceed the truth in saying that there was amaturity, and a well-digested, character about them, which there had notbeen in any of my previous performances. In execution, therefore, theywere not at all juvenile; but their subjects have either gone by, orhave been so much better treated since, that they are entirelysuperseded, and should remain buried in the same oblivion with mycontributions to the first dynasty of the _Westminster Review_. While thus engaged in writing for the public, I did not neglect othermodes of self-cultivation. It was at this time that I learnt German;beginning it on the Hamiltonian method, for which purpose I and severalof my companions formed a class. For several years from this period, oursocial studies assumed a shape which contributed very much to my mentalprogress. The idea occurred to us of carrying on, by reading andconversation, a joint study of several of the branches of science whichwe wished to be masters of. We assembled to the number of a dozen ormore. Mr. Grote lent a room of his house in Threadneedle Street for thepurpose, and his partner, Prescott, one of the three original members ofthe Utilitarian Society, made one among us. We met two mornings in everyweek, from half-past eight till ten, at which hour most of us werecalled off to our daily occupations. Our first subject was PoliticalEconomy. We chose some systematic treatise as our text-book; my father's_Elements_ being our first choice. One of us read aloud a chapter, orsome smaller portion of the book. The discussion was then opened, andanyone who had an objection, or other remark to make, made it. Our rulewas to discuss thoroughly every point raised, whether great or small, prolonging the discussion until all who took part were satisfied withthe conclusion they had individually arrived at; and to follow up everytopic of collateral speculation which the chapter or the conversationsuggested, never leaving it until we had untied every knot which wefound. We repeatedly kept up the discussion of some one point forseveral weeks, thinking intently on it during the intervals of ourmeetings, and contriving solutions of the new difficulties which hadrisen up in the last morning's discussion. When we had finished in thisway my father's _Elements_, we went in the same manner through Ricardo's_Principles of Political Economy_, and Bailey's _Dissertation on Value_. These close and vigorous discussions were not only improving in a highdegree to those who took part in them, but brought out new views of sometopics of abstract Political Economy. The theory of International Valueswhich I afterwards published, emanated from these conversations, as didalso the modified form of Ricardo's _Theory of Profits_, laid down in my_Essay on Profits and Interest_. Those among us with whom newspeculations chiefly originated, were Ellis, Graham, and I; thoughothers gave valuable aid to the discussions, especially Prescott andRoebuck, the one by his knowledge, the other by his dialecticalacuteness. The theories of International Values and of Profits wereexcogitated and worked out in about equal proportions by myself andGraham: and if our original project had been executed, my _Essays onSome Unsettled Questions of Political Economy_ would have been broughtout along with some papers of his, under our joint names. But when myexposition came to be written, I found that I had so much over-estimatedmy agreement with him, and he dissented so much from the most originalof the two Essays, that on International Values, that I was obliged toconsider the theory as now exclusively mine, and it came out as suchwhen published many years later. I may mention that among thealterations which my father made in revising his _Elements_ for thethird edition, several were founded on criticisms elicited by theseconversations; and in particular he modified his opinions (though not tothe extent of our new speculations) on both the points to which Ihave adverted. When we had enough of political economy, we took up the syllogisticlogic in the same manner, Grote now joining us. Our first text-book wasAldrich, but being disgusted with its superficiality, we reprinted oneof the most finished among the many manuals of the school logic, whichmy father, a great collector of such books, possessed, the _Manuductioad Logicam_ of the Jesuit Du Trieu. After finishing this, we took upWhately's _Logic_, then first republished from the _EncyclopediaMetropolitana_, and finally the _Computatio sive Logica_ of Hobbes. These books, dealt with in our manner, afforded a high range fororiginal metaphysical speculation: and most of what has been done in theFirst Book of my _System of Logic_, to rationalize and correct theprinciples and distinctions of the school logicians, and to improve thetheory of the Import of Propositions, had its origin in thesediscussions; Graham and I originating most of the novelties, while Groteand others furnished an excellent tribunal or test. From this time Iformed the project of writing a book on Logic, though on a much humblerscale than the one I ultimately executed. Having done with Logic, we launched into Analytic Psychology, and havingchosen Hartley for our text-book, we raised Priestley's edition to anextravagant price by searching through London to furnish each of us witha copy. When we had finished Hartley, we suspended our meetings; but myfather's _Analysis of the Mind_ being published soon after, wereassembled for the purpose of reading it. With this our exercisesended. I have always dated from these conversations my own realinauguration as an original and independent thinker. It was also throughthem that I acquired, or very much strengthened, a mental habit to whichI attribute all that I have ever done, or ever shall do, in speculation:that of never accepting half-solutions of difficulties as complete;never abandoning a puzzle, but again and again returning to it until itwas cleared up; never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remainunexplored, because they did not appear important; never thinking that Iperfectly understood any part of a subject until I understood the whole. Our doings from 1825 to 1830 in the way of public speaking, filled aconsiderable place in my life during those years, and as they hadimportant effects on my development, something ought to be said of them. There was for some time in existence a society of Owenites, called theCo-operative Society, which met for weekly public discussions inChancery Lane. In the early part of 1825, accident brought Roebuck incontact with several of its members, and led to his attending one or twoof the meetings and taking part in the debate in opposition to Owenism. Some one of us started the notion of going there in a body and having ageneral battle: and Charles Austin and some of his friends who did notusually take part in our joint exercises, entered into the project. Itwas carried out by concert with the principal members of the Society, themselves nothing loth, as they naturally preferred a controversy withopponents to a tame discussion among their own body. The question ofpopulation was proposed as the subject of debate: Charles Austin led thecase on our side with a brilliant speech, and the fight was kept up byadjournment through five or six weekly meetings before crowdedauditories, including along with the members of the Society and theirfriends, many hearers and some speakers from the Inns of Court. Whenthis debate was ended, another was commenced on the general merits ofOwen's system: and the contest altogether lasted about three months. Itwas a _lutte corps à corps_ between Owenites and political economists, whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate opponents: but itwas a perfectly friendly dispute. We who represented political economy, had the same objects in view as they had, and took pains to show it; andthe principal champion on their side was a very estimable man, with whomI was well acquainted, Mr. William Thompson, of Cork, author of a bookon the Distribution of Wealth, and of an " Appeal" in behalf of womenagainst the passage relating to them in my father's _Essay onGovernment_. Ellis, Roebuck, and I took an active part in the debate, and among those from the Inns of Court who joined in it, I rememberCharles Villiers. The other side obtained also, on the populationquestion, very efficient support from without. The well-known GaleJones, then an elderly man, made one of his florid speeches; but thespeaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearlyevery word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of St. David's, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputationfor eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austinand Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he haduttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had everheard, and I have never since heard anyone whom I placed above him. The great interest of these debates predisposed some of those who tookpart in them, to catch at a suggestion thrown out by McCulloch, thepolitical economist, that a Society was wanted in London similar to theSpeculative Society at Edinburgh, in which Brougham, Horner, and othersfirst cultivated public speaking. Our experience at the Co-operativeSociety seemed to give cause for being sanguine as to the sort of menwho might be brought together in London for such a purpose. McCullochmentioned the matter to several young men of influence, to whom he wasthen giving private lessons in political economy. Some of these enteredwarmly into the project, particularly George Villiers, after Earl ofClarendon. He and his brothers, Hyde and Charles, Romilly, CharlesAustin and I, with some others, met and agreed on a plan. We determinedto meet once a fortnight from November to June, at the Freemasons'Tavern, and we had soon a fine list of members, containing, along withseveral members of Parliament, nearly all the most noted speakers of theCambridge Union and of the Oxford United Debating Society. It iscuriously illustrative of the tendencies of the time, that our principaldifficulty in recruiting for the Society was to find a sufficient numberof Tory speakers. Almost all whom we could press into the service wereLiberals, of different orders and degrees. Besides those already named, we had Macaulay, Thirlwall, Praed, Lord Howick, Samuel Wilberforce(afterwards Bishop of Oxford), Charles Poulett Thomson (afterwards LordSydenham), Edward and Henry Lytton Bulwer, Fonblanque, and many otherswhom I cannot now recollect, but who made themselves afterwards more orless conspicuous in public or literary life. Nothing could seem morepromising. But when the time for action drew near, and it was necessaryto fix on a President, and find somebody to open the first debate, noneof our celebrities would consent to perform either office. Of the manywho were pressed on the subject, the only one who could be prevailed onwas a man of whom I knew very little, but who had taken high honours atOxford and was said to have acquired a great oratorical reputationthere; who some time afterwards became a Tory member of Parliament. Heaccordingly was fixed on, both for filling the President's chair and formaking the first speech. The important day arrived; the benches werecrowded; all our great speakers were present, to judge of, but not tohelp our efforts. The Oxford orator's speech was a complete failure. This threw a damp on the whole concern: the speakers who followed werefew, and none of them did their best: the affair was a complete_fiasco_; and the oratorical celebrities we had counted on went awaynever to return, giving to me at least a lesson in knowledge of theworld. This unexpected breakdown altered my whole relation to theproject. I had not anticipated taking a prominent part, or speaking muchor often, particularly at first, but I now saw that the success of thescheme depended on the new men, and I put my shoulder to the wheel. Iopened the second question, and from that time spoke in nearly everydebate. It was very uphill work for some time. The three Villiers andRomilly stuck to us for some time longer, but the patience of all thefounders of the Society was at last exhausted, except me and Roebuck. Inthe season following, 1826-7, things began to mend. We had acquired twoexcellent Tory speakers, Hayward and Shee (afterwards Sergeant Shee):the Radical side was reinforced by Charles Buller, Cockburn, and othersof the second generation of Cambridge Benthamities; and with their andother occasional aid, and the two Tories as well as Roebuck and me forregular speakers, almost every debate was a _bataille rangée_ betweenthe "philosophic Radicals" and the Tory lawyers; until our conflictswere talked about, and several persons of note and consideration came tohear us. This happened still more in the subsequent seasons, 1828 and1829, when the Coleridgians, in the persons of Maurice and Sterling, made their appearance in the Society as a second Liberal and evenRadical party, on totally different grounds from Benthamism andvehemently opposed to it; bringing into these discussions the generaldoctrines and modes of thought of the European reaction against thephilosophy of the eighteenth century; and adding a third and veryimportant belligerent party to our contests, which were now no badexponent of the movement of opinion among the most cultivated part ofthe new generation. Our debates were very different from those of commondebating societies, for they habitually consisted of the strongestarguments and most philosophic principles which either side was able toproduce, thrown often into close and _serré_ confutations of oneanother. The practice was necessarily very useful to us, and eminentlyso to me. I never, indeed, acquired real fluency, and had always a badand ungraceful delivery; but I could make myself listened to: and as Ialways wrote my speeches when, from the feelings involved, or the natureof the ideas to be developed, expression seemed important, I greatlyincreased my power of effective writing; acquiring not only an ear forsmoothness and rhythm, but a practical sense for _telling_ sentences, and an immediate criterion of their telling property, by their effect ona mixed audience. The Society, and the preparation for it, together with the preparationfor the morning conversations which were going on simultaneously, occupied the greater part of my leisure; and made me feel it a reliefwhen, in the spring of 1828, I ceased to write for the _Westminster_. The _Review_ had fallen into difficulties. Though the sale of the firstnumber had been very encouraging, the permanent sale had never, Ibelieve, been sufficient to pay the expenses, on the scale on which the_Review_ was carried on. Those expenses had been considerably, but notsufficiently, reduced. One of the editors, Southern, had resigned; andseveral of the writers, including my father and me, who had been paidlike other contributors for our earlier articles, had latterly writtenwithout payment. Nevertheless, the original funds were nearly or quiteexhausted, and if the _Review_ was to be continued some new arrangementof its affairs had become indispensable. My father and I had severalconferences with Bowring on the subject. We were willing to do ourutmost for maintaining the _Review_ as an organ of our opinions, but notunder Bowring's editorship: while the impossibility of its any longersupporting a paid editor, afforded a ground on which, without affront tohim, we could propose to dispense with his services. We and some of ourfriends were prepared to carry on the _Review_ as unpaid writers, eitherfinding among ourselves an unpaid editor, or sharing the editorshipamong us. But while this negotiation was proceeding with Bowring'sapparent acquiescence, he was carrying on another in a different quarter(with Colonel Perronet Thompson), of which we received the firstintimation in a letter from Bowring as editor, informing us merely thatan arrangement had been made, and proposing to us to write for the nextnumber, with promise of payment. We did not dispute Bowring's right tobring about, if he could, an arrangement more favourable to himself thanthe one we had proposed; but we thought the concealment which he hadpractised towards us, while seemingly entering into our own project, anaffront: and even had we not thought so, we were indisposed to expendany more of our time and trouble in attempting to write up the _Review_under his management. Accordingly my father excused himself fromwriting; though two or three years later, on great pressure, he didwrite one more political article. As for me, I positively refused. Andthus ended my connexion with the original _Westminster_. The lastarticle which I wrote in it had cost me more labour than any previous;but it was a labour of love, being a defence of the early FrenchRevolutionists against the Tory misrepresentations of Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to his _Life of Napoleon_. The number of books whichI read for this purpose, making notes and extracts--even the number Ihad to buy (for in those days there was no public or subscriptionlibrary from which books of reference could be taken home)--far exceededthe worth of the immediate object; but I had at that time a half-formedintention of writing a History of the French Revolution; and though Inever executed it, my collections afterwards were very useful to Carlylefor a similar purpose. CHAPTER V CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY. ONE STAGE ONWARD For some years after this time I wrote very little, and nothingregularly, for publication: and great were the advantages which Iderived from the intermission. It was of no common importance to me, atthis period, to be able to digest and mature my thoughts for my own mindonly, without any immediate call for giving them out in print. Had Igone on writing, it would have much disturbed the importanttransformation in my opinions and character, which took place duringthose years. The origin of this transformation, or at least the processby which I was prepared for it, can only be explained by turning somedistance back. From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially fromthe commencement of the _Westminster Review_, I had what might truly becalled an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conceptionof my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. Thepersonal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow labourers in thisenterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by theway; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed on this; and I was accustomed to felicitatemyself on the certainty of a happy life which I enjoyed, through placingmy happiness in something durable and distant, in which some progressmight be always making, while it could never be exhausted by completeattainment. This did very well for several years, during which thegeneral improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself asengaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fillup an interesting and animated existence. But the time came when Iawakened from this as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 1826. I wasin a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to;unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement; one of those moodswhen what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent;the state, I should think, in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten by their first "conviction of sin. " In this frame of mindit occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose thatall your objects in life were realized; that all the changes ininstitutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could becompletely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy andhappiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctlyanswered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation onwhich my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to havebeen found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased tocharm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? Iseemed to have nothing left to live for. At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it didnot. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations oflife, had no effect on it. I awoke to a renewed consciousness of thewoful fact. I carried it with me into all companies, into alloccupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes'oblivion of it. For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker andthicker. The lines in Coleridge's _Dejection_--I was not then acquaintedwith them--exactly describe my case: "A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief In word, or sigh, or tear. " In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of pastnobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strengthand animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomedfeeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love ofmankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. Isought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If I had lovedanyone sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I shouldnot have been in the condition I was. I felt, too, that mine was not aninteresting, or in any way respectable distress. There was nothing in itto attract sympathy. Advice, if I had known where to seek it, would havebeen most precious. The words of Macbeth to the physician often occurredto my thoughts. But there was no one on whom I could build the faintesthope of such assistance. My father, to whom it would have been naturalto me to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the lastperson to whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Everythingconvinced me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as I wassuffering from, and that even if he could be made to understand it, hewas not the physician who could heal it. My education, which was whollyhis work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility ofits ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain ofthinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probablyirremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of _his_ remedies. Ofother friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of makingmy condition intelligible. It was, however, abundantly intelligible tomyself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared. My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moralfeelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were theresults of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, takepleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in anothersort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to thosethings, from the effect of education or of experience. As a corollaryfrom this, I had always heard it maintained by my father, and was myselfconvinced, that the object of education should be to form the strongestpossible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasurewith all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with allthings hurtful to it. This doctrine appeared inexpugnable; but it nowseemed to me, on retrospect, that my teachers had occupied themselvesbut superficially with the means of forming and keeping up thesesalutary associations. They seemed to have trusted altogether to the oldfamiliar instruments, praise and blame, reward and punishment. Now, Idid not doubt that by these means, begun early, and applied unremittingly, intense associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain, might becreated, and might produce desires and aversions capable of lastingundiminished to the end of life. But there must always be somethingartificial and casual in associations thus produced. The pains andpleasures thus forcibly associated with things, are not connected withthem by any natural tie; and it is therefore, I thought, essential tothe durability of these associations, that they should have become sointense and inveterate as to be practically indissoluble, before thehabitual exercise of the power of analysis had commenced. For I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity--that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings:as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and theanalysing spirit remains without its natural complements andcorrectives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued) is that it tendsto weaken and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice; that itenables us mentally to separate ideas which have only casually clungtogether: and no associations whatever could ultimately resist thisdissolving force, were it not that we owe to analysis our clearestknowledge of the permanent sequences in nature; the real connexionsbetween Things, not dependent on our will and feelings; natural laws, by virtue of which, in many cases, one thing is inseparable from anotherin fact; which laws, in proportion as they are clearly perceived andimaginatively realized, cause our ideas of things which are alwaysjoined together in Nature, to cohere more and more closely in ourthoughts. Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associationsbetween causes and effects, means and ends, but tend altogether toweaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a _mere_ matter of feeling. They are therefore (I thought) favourable to prudence and clear-sightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions andof the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermine all desires, andall pleasures, which are the effects of association, that is, accordingto the theory I held, all except the purely physical and organic; of theentire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had astronger conviction than I had. These were the laws of human nature, bywhich, as it seemed to me, I had been brought to my present state. Allthose to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathywith human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, andespecially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, werethe greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I wasconvinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling. My education, I thought, had failed tocreate these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolvinginfluence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectualcultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveteratehabit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at thecommencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, butno sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been socarefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the generalgood, but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanityand ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely as thoseof benevolence. I had had (as I reflected) some gratification of vanityat too early an age: I had obtained some distinction and felt myself ofsome importance, before the desire of distinction and of importance hadgrown into a passion: and little as it was which I had attained, yethaving been attained too early, like all pleasures enjoyed too soon, ithad made me _blasé_ and indifferent to the pursuit. Thus neither selfishnor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. And there seemed no powerin nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, andcreate, in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations ofpleasure with any of the objects of human desire. These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry, heavy dejection ofthe melancholy winter of 1826-7. During this time I was not incapable ofmy usual occupations. I went on with them mechanically, by the mereforce of habit. I had been so drilled in a certain sort of mentalexercise, that I could still carry it on when all the spirit had goneout of it. I even composed and spoke several speeches at the debatingsociety, how, or with what degree of success, I know not. Of four years'continual speaking at that society, this is the only year of which Iremember next to nothing. Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone of allwriters I have found a true description of what I felt, were often in mythoughts, not at this time (for I had never read them), but in a laterperiod of the same mental malady: "Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live. " In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I fancied it, and I doubt not that many others have passed through a similar state;but the idiosyncrasies of my education had given to the generalphenomenon a special character, which made it seem the natural effect ofcauses that it was hardly possible for time to remove. I frequentlyasked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when lifemust be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I didnot think I could possibly bear it beyond a year. When, however, notmore than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of lightbroke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's_Mémoires_, and came to the passage which relates his father's death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration bywhich he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would beeverything to them--would supply the place of all that they had lost. Avivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I wasmoved to tears. From this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppressionof the thought that all feeling was dead within me was gone. I was nolonger hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed, some of the material out of which all worth of character, and allcapacity for happiness, are made. Relieved from my ever-present sense ofirremediable wretchedness, I gradually found that the ordinary incidentsof life could again give me some pleasure; that I could again findenjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sunshine andsky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and that there was, once more, excitement, though of a moderate, kind, in exerting myselffor my opinions, and for the public good. Thus the cloud gradually drewoff, and I again enjoyed life; and though I had several relapses, someof which lasted many months, I never again was as miserable as Ihad been. The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinionsand character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before I acted, and having much in commonwith what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the convictionthat happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making itthe direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their mindsfixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness ofothers, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus atsomething else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life(such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken _en passant_, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether youare happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, nothappiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let yourself-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaustthemselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you willinhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it orthinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, orputting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now became thebasis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the besttheory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility andof capacity I for enjoyment; that is, for the great majority of mankind. The other important change which my opinions at this time underwent, wasthat I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the primenecessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of theindividual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to theordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the human beingfor speculation and for action. I had now learnt by experience that the passing susceptibilities neededto be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to benourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant, lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seenbefore; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased toconsider the power and practice of analysis as an essential conditionboth of individual and of social improvement But 1 thought that it hadconsequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds ofcultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among thefaculties now seemed to be of primary importance. The cultivation of thefeelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophicalcreed. And my thoughts and inclinations turned in an increasing degreetowards whatever seemed capable of being instrumental to that object. I now began to find meaning in the things, which I had read or heardabout the importance of poetry and art as instruments of human culture. But it was some time longer before I began to know this by personalexperience. The only one of the imaginative arts in which I had fromchildhood taken great pleasure, was music; the best effect of which (andin this it surpasses perhaps every other art) consists in excitingenthusiasm; in winding up to a high pitch those feelings of an elevatedkind which are already in the character, but to which this excitementgives a glow and a fervour, which, though transitory at its utmostheight, is precious for sustaining them at other times. This effect ofmusic I had often experienced; but, like all my pleasurablesusceptibilities, it was suspended during the gloomy period. I hadsought relief again and again from this quarter, but found none. Afterthe tide had turned, and I was in process of recovery, I had been helpedforward by music, but in a much less elevated manner. I at this timefirst became acquainted with Weber's _Oberon_, and the extreme pleasurewhich I drew from its delicious melodies did me good by showing me asource of pleasure to which I was as susceptible as ever. The good, however, was much impaired by the thought that the pleasure of music(as is quite true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fadeswith familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence, orfed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both of my thenstate, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life, that I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility ofmusical combinations. The octave consists only of five tones and twosemi-tones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemedto me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be roomfor a long succession of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out, as these haddone, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. Thissource of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of thephilosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out. Itwas, however, connected with the best feature in my character, and theonly good point to be found in my very unromantic and in no wayhonourable distress. For though my dejection, honestly looked at, couldnot be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind in general was everin my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that theflaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed intheir objects, and every person in the community were free and in a stateof physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up bystruggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. And I felt thatunless I could see my way to some better hope than this for humanhappiness in general, my dejection must continue; but that if I couldsee such an outlet, I should then look on the world with pleasure;content, as far as I was myself concerned, with any fair share of thegeneral lot. This state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact of my readingWordsworth for the first time (in the autumn of 1828), an importantevent of my life. I took up the collection of his poems from curiosity, with no expectation of mental relief from it, though I had beforeresorted to poetry with that hope. In the worst period of my depression, I had read through the whole of Byron (then new to me), to try whether apoet, whose peculiar department was supposed to be that of the intenserfeelings, could rouse any feeling in me. As might be expected, I got nogood from this reading, but the reverse. The poet's state of mind wastoo like my own. His was the lament of a man who had worn out allpleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to all who possess thegood things of it, must necessarily be the vapid, uninteresting thingwhich I found it. His Harold and Manfred had the same burden on themwhich I had; and I was not in a frame of mind to desire any comfort fromthe vehement sensual passion of his Giaours, or the sullenness of hisLaras. But while Byron was exactly what did not suit my condition, Wordsworth was exactly what did. I had looked into the _Excursion_ twoor three years before, and found little in it; and I should probablyhave found as little, had I read it at this time. But the miscellaneouspoems, in the two-volume edition of 1815 (to which little of value wasadded in the latter part of the author's life), proved to be the precisething for my mental wants at that particular juncture. In the first place, these poems addressed themselves powerfully to oneof the strongest of my pleasurable susceptibilities, the love of ruralobjects and natural scenery; to which I had been indebted not only formuch of the pleasure of my life, but quite recently for relief from oneof my longest relapses into depression. In this power of rural beautyover me, there was a foundation laid for taking pleasure in Wordsworth'spoetry; the more so, as his scenery lies mostly among mountains, which, owing to my early Pyrenean excursion, were my ideal of natural beauty. But Wordsworth would never have had any great effect on me, if he hadmerely placed before me beautiful pictures of natural scenery. Scottdoes this still better than Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscapedoes it more effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems amedicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outwardbeauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, underthe excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of thefeelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from asource of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, whichcould be shared in by all human beings; which had no connection withstruggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvementin the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed tolearn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all thegreater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at oncebetter and happier as I came under their influence. There have certainlybeen, even in our own age, greater poets than Wordsworth; but poetry ofdeeper and loftier feeling could not have done for me at that time whathis did. I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanenthappiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not onlywithout turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in, thecommon feelings and common destiny of human beings. And the delightwhich these poems gave me, proved that with culture of this sort, therewas nothing to dread from the most confirmed habit of analysis. At theconclusion of the Poems came the famous Ode, falsely called Platonic, "Intimations of Immortality": in which, along with more than his usualsweetness of melody and rhythm, and along with the two passages of grandimagery but bad philosophy so often quoted, I found that he too had hadsimilar experience to mine; that he also had felt that the firstfreshness of youthful enjoyment of life was not lasting; but that he hadsought for compensation, and found it, in the way in which he was nowteaching me to find it. The result was that I gradually, but completely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it. I long continued to value Wordsworth less according to his intrinsicmerits, than by the measure of what he had done for me. Compared withthe greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures areprecisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivationWordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsicallyfar more poets than he. It so fell out that the merits of Wordsworth were the occasion of myfirst public declaration of my new way of thinking, and separation fromthose of my habitual companions who had not undergone a similar change. The person with whom at that time I was most in the habit of comparingnotes on such subjects was Roebuck, and I induced him to readWordsworth, in whom he also at first seemed to find much to admire: butI, like most Wordsworthians, threw myself into strong antagonism toByron, both as a poet and as to his influence on the character. Roebuck, all whose instincts were those of action and struggle, had, on thecontrary, a strong relish and great admiration of Byron, whose writingshe regarded as the poetry of human life, while Wordsworth's, accordingto him, was that of flowers and butterflies. We agreed to have the fightout at our Debating Society, where we accordingly discussed for twoevenings the comparative merits of Byron and Wordsworth, propounding andillustrating by long recitations our respective theories of poetry:Sterling also, in a brilliant speech, putting forward his particulartheory. This was the first debate on any weighty subject in whichRoebuck and I had been on opposite sides. The schism between us widenedfrom this time more and more, though we continued for some years longerto be companions. In the beginning, our chief divergence related to thecultivation of the feelings. Roebuck was in many respects very differentfrom the vulgar notion of a Benthamite or Utilitarian. He was a lover ofpoetry and of most of the fine arts. He took great pleasure in music, indramatic performances, especially in painting, and himself drew anddesigned landscapes with great facility and beauty. But he never couldbe made to see that these things have any value as aids in the formationof character. Personally, instead of being, as Benthamites are supposedto be, void of feeling, he had very quick and strong sensibilities. But, like most Englishmen who have feelings, he found his feelings stand verymuch in his way. He was much more susceptible to the painful sympathiesthan to the pleasurable, and, looking for his happiness elsewhere, hewished that his feelings should be deadened rather than quickened. And, in truth, the English character, and English social circumstances, makeit so seldom possible to derive happiness from the exercise of thesympathies, that it is not wonderful if they count for little in anEnglishman's scheme of life. In most other countries the paramountimportance of the sympathies as a constituent of individual happiness isan axiom, taken for granted rather than needing any formal statement;but most English thinkers always seem to regard them as necessary evils, required for keeping men's actions benevolent and compassionate. Roebuckwas, or appeared to be, this kind of Englishman. He saw little good inany cultivation of the feelings, and none at all in cultivating themthrough the imagination, which he thought was only cultivatingillusions. It was in vain I urged on him that the imaginative emotionwhich an idea, when vividly conceived, excites in us, is not an illusionbut a fact, as real as any of the other qualities of objects; and, farfrom implying anything erroneous and delusive in our mental apprehensionof the object, is quite consistent with the most accurate knowledge andmost perfect practical recognition of all its physical and intellectuallaws and relations. The intensest feeling of the beauty of a cloudlighted by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the cloudis vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours in a state ofsuspension; and I am just as likely to allow for, and act on, thesephysical laws whenever there is occasion to do so, as if I had beenincapable of perceiving any distinction between beauty and ugliness. While my intimacy with Roebuck diminished, I fell more and more intofriendly intercourse with our Coleridgian adversaries in the Society, Frederick Maurice and John Sterling, both subsequently so well known, the former by his writings, the latter through the biographies by Hareand Carlyle. Of these two friends, Maurice was the thinker, Sterling theorator, and impassioned expositor of thoughts which, at this period, were almost entirely formed for him by Maurice. With Maurice I had for some time been acquainted through Eyton Tooke, who had known him at Cambridge, and although my discussions with himwere almost always disputes, I had carried away from them much thathelped to build up my new fabric of thought, in the same way as I wasderiving much from Coleridge, and from the writings of Goethe and otherGerman authors which I read during these years. I have so deep a respectfor Maurice's character and purposes, as well as for his great mentalgifts, that it is with some unwillingness I say anything which may seemto place him on a less high eminence than I would gladly be able toaccord to him. But I have always thought that there was moreintellectual power wasted in Maurice than in any other of mycontemporaries. Few of them certainly have had so much to waste. Greatpowers of generalization, rare ingenuity and subtlety, and a wideperception of important and unobvious truths, served him not for puttingsomething better into the place of the worthless heap of receivedopinions on the great subjects of thought, but for proving to his ownmind that the Church of England had known everything from the first, andthat all the truths on the ground of which the Church and orthodoxy havebeen attacked (many of which he saw as clearly as anyone) are not onlyconsistent with the Thirty-nine Articles, but are better understood andexpressed in those Articles than by anyone who rejects them. I havenever been able to find any other explanation of this, than byattributing it to that timidity of conscience, combined with originalsensitiveness of temperament, which has so often driven highly giftedmen into Romanism, from the need of a firmer support than they can findin the independent conclusions of their own judgment. Any more vulgarkind of timidity no one who knew Maurice would ever think of imputing tohim, even if he had not given public proof of his freedom from it, byhis ultimate collision with some of the opinions commonly regarded asorthodox, and by his noble origination of the Christian Socialistmovement. The nearest parallel to him, in a moral point of view, isColeridge, to whom, in merely intellectual power, apart from poeticalgenius, I think him decidedly superior. At this time, however, he mightbe described as a disciple of Coleridge, and Sterling as a disciple ofColeridge and of him. The modifications which were taking place in myold opinions gave me some points of contact with them; and both Mauriceand Sterling were of considerable use to my development. With Sterling Isoon became very intimate, and was more attached to him than I have everbeen to any other man. He was indeed one of the most lovable of men. Hisfrank, cordial, affectionate, and expansive character; a love of truthalike conspicuous in the highest things and the humblest; a generous andardent nature, which threw itself with impetuosity into the opinions itadopted, but was as eager to do justice to the doctrines and the men itwas opposed to, as to make war on what it thought their errors; and anequal devotion to the two cardinal points of Liberty and Duty, formed acombination of qualities as attractive to me as to all others who knewhim as well as I did. With his open mind and heart, he found nodifficulty in joining hands with me across the gulf which as yet dividedour opinions. He told me how he and others had looked upon me (fromhearsay information), as a "made" or manufactured man, having had acertain impress of opinion stamped on me which I could only reproduce;and what a change took place in his feelings when he found, in thediscussion on Wordsworth and Byron, that Wordsworth, and all which thatname implies, "belonged" to me as much as to him and his friends. Thefailure of his health soon scattered all his plans of life, andcompelled him to live at a distance from London, so that after the firstyear or two of our acquaintance, we only saw each other at distantintervals. But (as he said himself in one of his letters to Carlyle)when we did meet it was like brothers. Though he was never, in the fullsense of the word, a profound thinker, his openness of mind, and themoral courage in which he greatly surpassed Maurice, made him outgrowthe dominion which Maurice and Coleridge had once exercised over hisintellect; though he retained to the last a great but discriminatingadmiration of both, and towards Maurice a warm affection. Except in thatshort and transitory phasis of his life, during which he made themistake of becoming a clergyman, his mind was ever progressive: and theadvance he always seemed to have made when I saw him after an interval, made me apply to him what Goethe said of Schiller, "er hatte einefurchtliche Fortschreitung. " He and I started from intellectual pointsalmost as wide apart as the poles, but the distance between us wasalways diminishing: if I made steps towards some of his opinions, he, during his short life, was constantly approximating more and more toseveral of mine: and if he had lived, and had health and vigour toprosecute his ever assiduous self-culture, there is no knowing how muchfurther this spontaneous assimilation might have proceeded. After 1829 I withdrew from attendance on the Debating Society. I had hadenough of speech-making, and was glad to carry on my private studies andmeditations without any immediate call for outward assertion of theirresults. I found the fabric of my old and taught opinions giving way inmany fresh places, and I never allowed it to fall to pieces, but wasincessantly occupied in weaving it anew. I never, in the course of mytransition, was content to remain, for ever so short a time, confusedand unsettled. When I had taken in any new idea, I could not rest till Ihad adjusted its relation to my old opinions, and ascertained exactlyhow far its effect ought to extend in modifying or superseding them. The conflicts which I had so often had to sustain in defending thetheory of government laid down in Bentham's and my father's writings, and the acquaintance I had obtained with other schools of politicalthinking, made me aware of many things which that doctrine, professingto be a theory of government in general, ought to have made room for, and did not. But these things, as yet, remained with me rather ascorrections to be made in applying the theory to practice, than asdefects in the theory. I felt that politics could not be a science ofspecific experience; and that the accusations against the Benthamictheory of _being_ a theory, of proceeding _a priori_ by way of generalreasoning, instead of Baconian experiment, showed complete ignorance ofBacon's principles, and of the necessary conditions of experimentalinvestigation. At this juncture appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_, Macaulay's famous attack on my father's _Essay on Government_. This gaveme much to think about. I saw that Macaulay's conception of the logic ofpolitics was erroneous; that he stood up for the empirical mode oftreating political phenomena, against the philosophical; that even inphysical science his notions of philosophizing might have recognisedKepler, but would have excluded Newton and Laplace. But I could not helpfeeling, that though the tone was unbecoming (an error for which thewriter, at a later period, made the most ample and honourable amends), there was truth in several of his strictures on my father's treatment ofthe subject; that my father's premises were really too narrow, andincluded but a small number of the general truths on which, in politics, the important consequences depend. Identity of interest between thegoverning body and the community at large is not, in any practical sensewhich can be attached to it, the only thing on which good governmentdepends; neither can this identity of interest be secured by the mereconditions of election. I was not at all satisfied with the mode inwhich my father met the criticisms of Macaulay. He did not, as I thoughthe ought to have done, justify himself by saying, "I was not writing ascientific treatise on politics, I was writing an argument forparliamentary reform. " He treated Macaulay's argument as simplyirrational; an attack upon the reasoning faculty; an example of thesaying of Hobbes, that When reason is against a man, a man will beagainst reason. This made me think that there was really something morefundamentally erroneous in my father's conception of philosophicalmethod, as applicable to politics, than I had hitherto supposed therewas. But I did not at first see clearly what the error might be. At lastit flashed upon me all at once in the course of other studies. In theearly part of 1830 I had begun to put on paper the ideas on Logic(chiefly on the distinctions among Terms, and the import ofPropositions) which had been suggested and in part worked out in themorning conversations already spoken of. Having secured these thoughtsfrom being lost, I pushed on into the other parts of the subject, to trywhether I could do anything further towards clearing up the theory oflogic generally. I grappled at once with the problem of Induction, postponing that of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary toobtain premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainlya process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to fathomthe mode of tracing causes and effects in physical science, I soon sawthat in the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generalizationfrom particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, andthen reason downward from those separate tendencies, to the effect ofthe same causes when combined. I then asked myself, what is the ultimateanalysis of this deductive process; the common theory of the syllogismevidently throwing no light upon it. My practice (learnt from Hobbes andmy father) being to study abstract principles by means of the bestconcrete instances I could find, the Composition of Forces, in dynamics, occurred to me as the most complete example of the logical process I wasinvestigating. On examining, accordingly, what the mind does when itapplies the principle of the Composition of Forces, I found that itperforms a simple act of addition. It adds the separate effect of theone force to the separate effect of the other, and puts down the sum ofthese separate effects as the joint effect. But is this a legitimateprocess? In dynamics, and in all the mathematical branches of physics, it is; but in some other cases, as in chemistry, it is not; and I thenrecollected that something not unlike this was pointed out as one of thedistinctions between chemical and mechanical phenomena, in theintroduction to that favourite of my boyhood, Thompson's _System ofChemistry_. This distinction at once made my mind clear as to what wasperplexing me in respect to the philosophy of politics. I now saw, thata science is either deductive or experimental, according as, in theprovince it deals with, the effects of causes when conjoined, are or arenot the sums of the effects which the same causes produce when separate. It followed that politics must be a deductive science. It thus appeared, that both Macaulay and my father were wrong; the one in assimilating themethod of philosophizing in politics to the purely experimental methodof chemistry; while the other, though right in adopting a deductivemethod, had made a wrong selection of one, having taken as the type ofdeduction, not the appropriate process, that of the deductive branchesof natural philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which, not being a science of causation at all, does not require oradmit of any summing-up of effects. A foundation was thus laid in mythoughts for the principal chapters of what I afterwards published onthe Logic of the Moral Sciences; and my new position in respect to myold political creed, now became perfectly definite. If I am asked, what system of political philosophy I substituted forthat which, as a philosophy, I had abandoned, I answer, No system: onlya conviction that the true system was something much more complex andmany-sided than I had previously had any idea of, and that its officewas to supply, not a set of model institutions, but principles fromwhich the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might bededuced. The influences of European, that is to say, Continental, thought, and especially those of the reaction of the nineteenth centuryagainst the eighteenth, were now streaming in upon me. They came fromvarious quarters: from the writings of Coleridge, which I had begun toread with interest even before the change in my opinions; from theColeridgians with whom I was in personal intercourse; from what I hadread of Goethe; from Carlyle's early articles in the _Edinburgh_ andForeign Reviews, though for a long time I saw nothing in these (as myfather saw nothing in them to the last) but insane rhapsody. From thesesources, and from the acquaintance I kept up with the French literatureof the time, I derived, among other ideas which the general turningupside down of the opinions of European thinkers had brought uppermost, these in particular: That the human mind has a certain order of possibleprogress, in which some things must precede others, an order whichgovernments and public instructors can modify to some, but not to anunlimited extent: that all questions of political institutions arerelative, not absolute, and that different stages of human progress notonly _will_ have, but _ought_ to have, different institutions: thatgovernment is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands, ofwhatever is the strongest power in society, and that what this power is, does not depend on institutions, but institutions on it: that anygeneral theory or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory ofhuman progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy ofhistory. These opinions, true in the main, were held in an exaggeratedand violent manner by the thinkers with whom I was now most accustomedto compare notes, and who, as usual with a reaction, ignored that halfof the truth which the thinkers of the eighteenth century saw. Butthough, at one period of my progress, I for some time undervalued thatgreat century, I never joined in the reaction against it, but kept asfirm hold of one side of the truth as I took of the other. The fightbetween the nineteenth century and the eighteenth always reminded me ofthe battle about the shield, one side of which was white and the otherblack. I marvelled at the blind rage with which the combatants rushedagainst one another. I applied to them, and to Coleridge himself, manyof Coleridge's sayings about half truths; and Goethe's device, "many-sidedness, " was one which I would most willingly, at this period, have taken for mine. The writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of politicalthinking was brought home to me, were those of the St. Simonian schoolin France. In 1829 and 1830 I became acquainted with some of theirwritings. They were then only in the earlier stages of theirspeculations. They had not yet dressed out their philosophy as areligion, nor had they organized their scheme of Socialism. They werejust beginning to question the principle of hereditary property. I wasby no means prepared to go with them even this length; but I was greatlystruck with the connected view which they for the first time presentedto me, of the natural order of human progress; and especially with theirdivision of all history into organic periods and critical periods. During the organic periods (they said) mankind accept with firmconviction some positive creed, claiming jurisdiction over all theiractions, and containing more or less of truth and adaptation to theneeds of humanity. Under its influence they make all the progresscompatible with the creed, and finally outgrow it; when a period followsof criticism and negation, in which mankind lose their old convictionswithout acquiring any new ones, of a general or authoritative character, except the conviction that the old are false. The period of Greek andRoman polytheism, so long as really believed in by instructed Greeks andRomans, was an organic period, succeeded by the critical or scepticalperiod of the Greek philosophers. Another organic period came in withChristianity. The corresponding critical period began with theReformation, has lasted ever since, still lasts, and cannot altogethercease until a new organic period has been inaugurated by the triumph ofa yet more advanced creed. These ideas, I knew, were not peculiar to theSt. Simonians; on the contrary, they were the general property ofEurope, or at least of Germany and France, but they had never, to myknowledge, been so completely systematized as by these writers, nor thedistinguishing characteristics of a critical period so powerfully setforth; for I was not then acquainted with Fichte's _Lectures on theCharacteristics of the Present Age_. In Carlyle, indeed, I found bitterdenunciations of an "age of unbelief, " and of the present age as such, which I, like most people at that time, supposed to be passionateprotests in favour of the old modes of belief. But all that was true inthese denunciations, I thought that I found more calmly andphilosophically stated by the St. Simonians. Among their publications, too, there was one which seemed to me far superior to the rest; in whichthe general idea was matured into something much more definite andinstructive. This was an early work of Auguste Comte, who then calledhimself, and even announced himself in the title-page as, a pupil ofSaint Simon. In this tract M. Comte first put forth the doctrine, whichhe afterwards so copiously illustrated, of the natural succession ofthree stages in every department of human knowledge: first, thetheological, next the metaphysical, and lastly, the positive stage; andcontended, that social science must be subject to the same law; that thefeudal and Catholic system was the concluding phasis of the theologicalstate of the social science, Protestantism the commencement, and thedoctrines of the French Revolution the consummation, of themetaphysical; and that its positive state was yet to come. This doctrineharmonized well with my existing notions, to which it seemed to give ascientific shape. I already regarded the methods of physical science asthe proper models for political. But the chief benefit which I derivedat this time from the trains of thought suggested by the St. Simoniansand by Comte, was, that I obtained a clearer conception than ever beforeof the peculiarities of an era of transition in opinion, and ceased tomistake the moral and intellectual characteristics of such an era, forthe normal attributes of humanity. I looked forward, through the presentage of loud disputes but generally weak convictions, to a future whichshall unite the best qualities of the critical with the best qualitiesof the organic periods; unchecked liberty of thought, unbounded freedomof individual action in all modes not hurtful to others; but also, convictions as to what is right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeplyengraven on the feelings by early education and general unanimity ofsentiment, and so firmly grounded in reason and in the true exigenciesof life, that they shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious, ethical, and political, require to be periodically thrown offand replaced by others. M. Comte soon left the St. Simonians, and I lost sight of him and hiswritings for a number of years. But the St. Simonians I continued tocultivate. I was kept _au courant_ of their progress by one of theirmost enthusiastic disciples, M. Gustave d'Eichthal, who about that timepassed a considerable interval in England. I was introduced to theirchiefs, Bazard and Enfantin, in 1830; and as long as their publicteachings and proselytism continued, I read nearly everything theywrote. Their criticisms on the common doctrines of Liberalism seemed tome full of important truth; and it was partly by their writings that myeyes were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the oldpolitical economy, which assumes private property and inheritance asindefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as the_dernier mot_ of social improvement. The scheme gradually unfolded bythe St. Simonians, under which the labour and capital of society wouldbe managed for the general account of the community, every individualbeing required to take a share of labour, either as thinker, teacher, artist, or producer, all being classed according to their capacity, andremunerated according to their work, appeared to me a far superiordescription of Socialism to Owen's. Their aim seemed to me desirable andrational, however their means might be inefficacious; and though Ineither believed in the practicability, nor in the beneficial operationof their social machinery, I felt that the proclamation of such an idealof human society could not but tend to give a beneficial direction tothe efforts of others to bring society, as at present constituted, nearer to some ideal standard. I honoured them most of all for what theyhave been most cried down for--the boldness and freedom from prejudicewith which they treated the subject of the family, the most important ofany, and needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made inany other great social institution, but on which scarcely any reformerhas the courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect equality of men andwomen, and an entirely new order of things in regard to their relationswith one another, the St. Simonians, in common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves to the grateful remembrance of futuregenerations. In giving an account of this period of my life, I have only specifiedsuch of my new impressions as appeared to me, both at the time andsince, to be a kind of turning points, marking a definite progress in mymode of thought. But these few selected points give a very insufficientidea of the quantity of thinking which I carried on respecting a host ofsubjects during these years of transition. Much of this, it is true, consisted in rediscovering things known to all the world, which I hadpreviously disbelieved or disregarded. But the rediscovery was to me adiscovery, giving me plenary possession of the truths, not astraditional platitudes, but fresh from their source; and it seldomfailed to place them in some new light, by which they were reconciledwith, and seemed to confirm while they modified, the truths lessgenerally known which lay in my early opinions, and in no essential partof which I at any time wavered. All my new thinking only laid thefoundation of these more deeply and strongly, while it often removedmisapprehension and confusion of ideas which had perverted their effect. For example, during the later returns of my dejection, the doctrine ofwhat is called Philosophical Necessity weighed on my existence like anincubus. I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helplessslave of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of allothers had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and waswholly out of our own power. I often said to myself, what a relief itwould be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation ofcharacter by circumstances; and remembering the wish of Fox respectingthe doctrine of resistance to governments, that it might never beforgotten by kings, nor remembered by subjects, I said that it would bea blessing if the doctrine of necessity could be believed by all _quoad_the characters of others, and disbelieved in regard to their own. Ipondered painfully on the subject till gradually I saw light through it. I perceived, that the word Necessity, as a name for the doctrine ofCause and Effect applied to human action, carried with it a misleadingassociation; and that this association was the operative force in thedepressing and paralysing influence which I had experienced: I saw thatthough our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can domuch to shape those circumstances; and that what is really inspiritingand ennobling in the doctrine of freewill is the conviction that we havereal power over the formation of our own character; that our will, byinfluencing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits orcapabilities of willing. All this was entirely consistent with thedoctrine of circumstances, or rather, was that doctrine itself, properlyunderstood. From that time I drew, in my own mind, a clear distinctionbetween the doctrine of circumstances and Fatalism; discardingaltogether the misleading word Necessity. The theory, which I now forthe first time rightly apprehended, ceased altogether to bediscouraging; and, besides the relief to my spirits, I no longersuffered under the burden--so heavy to one who aims at being a reformerin opinions--of thinking one doctrine true and the contrary doctrinemorally beneficial. The train of thought which had extricated me fromthis dilemma seemed to me, in after years, fitted to render a similarservice to others; and it now forms the chapter on Liberty and Necessityin the concluding Book of my _System of Logic_. Again, in politics, though I no longer accepted the doctrine of the_Essay on Government_ as a scientific theory; though I ceased toconsider representative democracy as an absolute principle, and regardedit as a question of time, place, and circumstance; though I now lookedupon the choice of political institutions as a moral and educationalquestion more than one of material interests, thinking that it ought tobe decided mainly by the consideration, what great improvement in lifeand culture stands next in order for the people concerned, as thecondition of their further progress, and what institutions are mostlikely to promote that; nevertheless, this change in the premises of mypolitical philosophy did not alter my practical political creed as tothe requirements of my own time and country. I was as much as ever aRadical and Democrat for Europe, and especially for England. I thoughtthe predominance of the aristocratic classes, the noble and the rich, inthe English constitution, an evil worth any struggle to get rid of; noton account of taxes, or any such comparatively small inconvenience, butas the great demoralizing agency in the country. Demoralizing, first, because it made the conduct of the Government an example of gross publicimmorality, through the predominance of private over public interests inthe State, and the abuse of the powers of legislation for the advantageof classes. Secondly, and in a still greater degree, because the respectof the multitude always attaching itself principally to that which, inthe existing state of society, is the chief passport to power; and underEnglish institutions, riches, hereditary or acquired, being the almostexclusive source of political importance; riches, and the signs ofriches, were almost the only things really respected, and the life ofthe people was mainly devoted to the pursuit of them. I thought, thatwhile the higher and richer classes held the power of government, theinstruction and improvement of the mass of the people were contrary tothe self-interest of those classes, because tending to render the peoplemore powerful for throwing off the yoke: but if the democracy obtained alarge, and perhaps the principal share, in the governing power, it wouldbecome the interest of the opulent classes to promote their education, in order to ward off really mischievous errors, and especially thosewhich would lead to unjust violations of property. On these grounds Iwas not only as ardent as ever for democratic institutions, butearnestly hoped that Owenite, St. Simonian, and all other anti-propertydoctrines might spread widely among the poorer classes; not that Ithought 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 hadmore to fear from the poor when uneducated than when educated. In this frame of mind the French Revolution of July found me: It rousedmy utmost enthusiasm, and gave me, as it were, a new existence. I wentat once to Paris, was introduced to Lafayette, and laid the groundworkof the intercourse I afterwards kept up with several of the activechiefs of the extreme popular party. After my return I entered warmly, as a writer, into the political discussions of the time; which soonbecame still more exciting, by the coming in of Lord Grey's Ministry, and the proposing of the Reform Bill. For the next few years I wrotecopiously in newspapers. It was about this time that Fonblanque, who hadfor some time written the political articles in the _Examiner_, becamethe proprietor and editor of the paper. It is not forgotten with whatverve and talent, as well as fine wit, he carried it on, during thewhole period of Lord Grey's Ministry, and what importance it assumed asthe principal representative, in the newspaper press, of Radicalopinions. The distinguishing character of the paper was given to itentirely by his own articles, which formed at least three-fourths of allthe original writing contained in it: but of the remaining fourth Icontributed during those years a much larger share than anyone else. Iwrote nearly all the articles on French subjects, including a weeklysummary of French politics, often extending to considerable length;together with many leading articles on general politics, commercial andfinancial legislation, and any miscellaneous subjects in which I feltinterested, and which were suitable to the paper, including occasionalreviews of books. Mere newspaper articles on the occurrences orquestions of the moment, gave no opportunity for the development of anygeneral mode of thought; but I attempted, in the beginning of 1831, toembody in a series of articles, headed "The Spirit of the Age, " some ofmy new opinions, and especially to point out in the character of thepresent age, the anomalies and evils characteristic of the transitionfrom a system of opinions which had worn out, to another only in processof being formed. These articles, were, I fancy, lumbering in style, andnot lively or striking enough to be, at any time, acceptable tonewspaper readers; but had they been far more attractive, still, at thatparticular moment, when great political changes were impending, andengrossing all minds, these discussions were ill-timed, and missed firealtogether. The only effect which I know to have been produced by them, was that Carlyle, then living in a secluded part of Scotland, read themin his solitude, and, saying to himself (as he afterwards told me) "Hereis a new Mystic, " inquired on coming to London that autumn respectingtheir authorship; an inquiry which was the immediate cause of ourbecoming personally acquainted. I have already mentioned Carlyle's earlier writings as one of thechannels through which I received the influences which enlarged my earlynarrow creed; but I do not think that those writings, by themselves, would ever have had any effect on my opinions. What truths theycontained, though of the very kind which I was already receiving fromother quarters, were presented in a form and vesture less suited thanany other to give them access to a mind trained as mine had been. Theyseemed a haze of poetry and German metaphysics, in which almost the onlyclear thing was a strong animosity to most of the opinions which werethe basis of my mode of thought; religious scepticism, utilitarianism, the doctrine of circumstances, and the attaching any importance todemocracy, logic, or political economy. Instead of my having been taughtanything, in the first instance, by Carlyle, it was only in proportionas I came to see the same truths through media more suited to my mentalconstitution, that I recognised them in his writings. Then, indeed, thewonderful power with which he put them forth made a deep impression uponme, and I was during a long period one of his most fervent admirers; butthe good his writings did me, was not as philosophy to instruct, but aspoetry to animate. Even at the time when our acquaintance commenced, Iwas not sufficiently advanced in my new modes of thought to appreciatehim fully; a proof of which is, that on his showing me the manuscript of_Sartor Resartus_, his best and greatest work, which he just thenfinished, I made little of it; though when it came out about two yearsafterwards in _Fraser's Magazine_ I read it with enthusiastic admirationand the keenest delight. I did not seek and cultivate Carlyle less onaccount of the fundamental differences in our philosophy. He soon foundout that I was not "another mystic, " and when for the sake of my ownintegrity I wrote to him a distinct profession of all those of myopinions which I knew he most disliked, he replied that the chiefdifference between us was that I "was as yet consciously nothing of amystic. " I do not know at what period he gave up the expectation that Iwas destined to become one; but though both his and my opinionsunderwent in subsequent years considerable changes, we never approachedmuch nearer to each other's modes of thought than we were in the firstyears of our acquaintance. I did not, however, deem myself a competentjudge of Carlyle. I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not; that hewas a man of intuition, which I was not; and that as such, he not onlysaw many things long before me, which I could only, when they werepointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it was highlyprobable he could see many things which were not visible to me evenafter they were pointed out. I knew that I could not see round him, andcould never be certain that I saw over him; and I never presumed tojudge him with any definiteness, until he was interpreted to me by onegreatly the superior of us both--who was more a poet than he, and more athinker than I--whose own mind and nature included his, andinfinitely more. Among the persons of intellect whom I had known of old, the one withwhom I had now most points of agreement was the elder Austin. I havementioned that he always set himself in opposition to our earlysectarianism; and latterly he had, like myself, come under newinfluences. Having been appointed Professor of Jurisprudence in theLondon University (now University College), he had lived for some timeat Bonn to study for his Lectures; and the influences of Germanliterature and of the German character and state of society had made avery perceptible change in his views of life. His personal dispositionwas much softened; he was less militant and polemic; his tastes hadbegun to turn themselves towards the poetic and contemplative. Heattached much less importance than formerly to outward changes; unlessaccompanied by a better cultivation of the inward nature. He had astrong distaste for the general meanness of English life, the absence ofenlarged thoughts and unselfish desires, the low objects on which thefaculties of all classes of the English are intent. Even the kind ofpublic interests which Englishmen care for, he held in very littleesteem. He thought that there was more practical good government, and(which is true enough) infinitely more care for the education and mentalimprovement of all ranks of the people, under the Prussian monarchy, than under the English representative government: and he held, with theFrench _Economistes_, that the real security for good government is un_peuple éclairé_, which is not always the fruit of popular institutions, and which, if it could be had without them, would do their work betterthan they. Though he approved of the Reform Bill, he predicted, what infact occurred, that it would not produce the great immediateimprovements in government which many expected from it. The men, hesaid, who could do these great things did not exist in the country. There were many points of sympathy between him and me, both in the newopinions he had adopted and in the old ones which he retained. Like me, he never ceased to be a utilitarian, and, with all his love for theGermans and enjoyment of their literature, never became in the smallestdegree reconciled to the innate-principle metaphysics. He cultivatedmore and more a kind of German religion, a religion of poetry andfeeling with little, if anything, of positive dogma; while in politics(and here it was that I most differed with him) he acquired anindifference, bordering on contempt, for the progress of popularinstitutions: though he rejoiced in that of Socialism, as the mosteffectual means of compelling the powerful classes to educate thepeople, and to impress on them the only real means of permanentlyimproving their material condition, a limitation of their numbers. Neither was he, at this time, fundamentally opposed to Socialism initself as an ultimate result of improvement. He professed greatdisrespect for what he called "the universal principles of human natureof the political economists, " and insisted on the evidence which historyand daily experience afford of the "extraordinary pliability of humannature" (a phrase which I have somewhere borrowed from him); nor did hethink it possible to set any positive bounds to the moral capabilitieswhich might unfold themselves in mankind, under an enlightened directionof social and educational influences. Whether he retained all theseopinions to the end of life I know not. Certainly the modes of thinkingof his later years, and especially of his last publication, were muchmore Tory in their general character than those which he held atthis time. My father's tone of thought and feeling, I now felt myself at a greatdistance from: greater, indeed, than a full and calm explanation andreconsideration on both sides, might have shown to exist in reality. Butmy father was not one with whom calm and full explanations onfundamental points of doctrine could be expected, at least with one whomhe might consider as, in some sort, a deserter from his standard. Fortunately we were almost always in strong agreement on the politicalquestions of the day, which engrossed a large part of his interest andof his conversation. On those matters of opinion on which we differed, we talked little. He knew that the habit of thinking for myself, whichhis mode of education had fostered, sometimes led me to opinionsdifferent from his, and he perceived from time to time that I did notalways tell him _how_ different. I expected no good, but only pain toboth of us, from discussing our differences: and I never expressed thembut when he gave utterance to some opinion or feeling repugnant to mine, in a manner which would have made it disingenuousness on my part toremain silent. It remains to speak of what I wrote during these years, which, independently of my contributions to newspapers, was considerable. In1830 and 1831 I wrote the five Essays since published under the title of_Essays on some Unsettled Questions of political Economy_, almost asthey now stand, except that in 1833 I partially rewrote the fifth Essay. They were written with no immediate purpose of publication; and when, some years later, I offered them to a publisher, he declined them. Theywere only printed in 1844, after the success of the _System of Logic_. Ialso resumed my speculations on this last subject, and puzzled myself, like others before me, with the great paradox of the discovery of newtruths by general reasoning. As to the fact, there could be no doubt. Aslittle could it be doubted, that all reasoning is resolvable intosyllogisms, and that in every syllogism the conclusion is actuallycontained and implied in the premises. How, being so contained andimplied, it could be new truth, and how the theorems of geometry, sodifferent in appearance from the definitions and axioms, could be allcontained in these, was a difficulty which no, one, I thought, hadsufficiently felt, and which, at all events, no one had succeeded inclearing up. The explanations offered by Whately and others, though theymight give a temporary satisfaction, always, in my mind, left a miststill hanging over the subject. At last, when reading a second or thirdtime the chapters on Reasoning in the second volume of Dugald Stewart, interrogating myself on every point, and following out, as far as I knewhow, every topic of thought which the book suggested, I came upon anidea of his respecting the use of axioms in ratiocination, which I didnot remember to have before noticed, but which now, in meditating on it, seemed to me not only true of axioms, but of all general propositionswhatever, and to be the key of the whole perplexity. From this germ grewthe theory of the Syllogism propounded in the Second Book of the_Logic_; which I immediately fixed by writing it out. And now, withgreatly increased hope of being able to produce a work on Logic, of someoriginality and value, I proceeded to write the First Book, from therough and imperfect draft I had already made. What I now wrote becamethe basis of that part of the subsequent Treatise; except that it didnot contain the Theory of Kinds, which was a later addition, suggestedby otherwise inextricable difficulties which met me in my first attemptto work out the subject of some of the concluding chapters of the ThirdBook. At the point which I had now reached I made a halt, which lastedfive years. I had come to the end of my tether; I could make nothingsatisfactory of Induction, at this time. I continued to read any bookwhich seemed to promise light on the subject, and appropriated, as wellas I could, the results; but for a long time I found nothing whichseemed to open to me any very important vein of meditation. In 1832 I wrote several papers for the first series of _Tait'sMagazine_, and one for a quarterly periodical called the _Jurist_, whichhad been founded, and for a short time carried on, by a set of friends, all lawyers and law reformers, with several of whom I was acquainted. The paper in question is the one on the rights and duties of the Staterespecting Corporation and Church Property, now standing first among thecollected _Dissertations and Discussions_; where one of my articles in_Tait_, "The Currency Juggle, " also appears. In the whole mass of whatI wrote previous to these, there is nothing of sufficient permanentvalue to justify reprinting. The paper in the _Jurist_, which I stillthink a very complete discussion of the rights of the State overFoundations, showed both sides of my opinions, asserting as firmly as Ishould have done at any time, the doctrine that all endowments arenational property, which the government may and ought to control; butnot, as I should once have done, condemning endowments in themselves, and proposing that they should be taken to pay off the national debt. Onthe contrary, I urged strenuously the importance of a provision foreducation, not dependent on the mere demand of the market, that is, onthe knowledge and discernment of average parents, but calculated toestablish and keep up a higher standard of instruction than is likely tobe spontaneously demanded by the buyers of the article. All theseopinions have been confirmed and strengthened by the whole of mysubsequent reflections. CHAPTER VI. COMMENCEMENT OF THE MOST VALUABLE FRIENDSHIP OF MY LIFE. MYFATHER'S DEATH. WRITINGS AND OTHER PROCEEDINGS UP TO 1840. It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that Iformed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of myexistence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I haveattempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. Myfirst introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifthand she in her twenty-third year. With her husband's family it was therenewal of an old acquaintanceship. His grandfather lived in the nexthouse to my father's in Newington Green, and I had sometimes when a boybeen invited to play in the old gentleman's garden. He was a finespecimen of the old Scotch puritan; stern, severe, and powerful, butvery kind to children, on whom such men make a lasting impression. Although it was years after my introduction to Mrs. Taylor before myacquaintance with her became at all intimate or confidential, I verysoon felt her to be the most admirable person I had ever known. It isnot to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which Ifirst saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of allcould this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in thehighest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity equallyfrom the ardour with which she sought it, and from the spontaneoustendency of faculties which could not receive an impression or anexperience without making it the source or the occasion of an accessionof wisdom. Up to the time when I first saw her, her rich and powerfulnature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received type offeminine genius. To her outer circle she was a beauty and a wit, with anair of natural distinction, felt by all who approached her: to theinner, a woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitiveintelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature. Marriedat an early age to a most upright, brave, and honourable man, of liberalopinions and good education, but without the intellectual or artistictastes which would have made him a companion for her, though a steadyand affectionate friend, for whom she had true esteem and the strongestaffection through life, and whom she most deeply lamented when dead;shut out by the social disabilities of women from any adequate exerciseof her highest faculties in action on the world without; her life wasone of inward meditation, varied by familiar intercourse with a smallcircle of friends, of whom one only (long since deceased) was a personof genius, or of capacities of feeling or intellect kindred with herown, but all had more or less of alliance with her in sentiments andopinions. Into this circle I had the good fortune to be admitted, and Isoon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which inall other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to findsingly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition(including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order ofnature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many thingswhich are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble andelevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature. Ingeneral spiritual characteristics, as well as in temperament andorganisation, I have often compared her, as she was at this time, toShelley: but in thought and intellect, Shelley, so far as his powerswere developed in his short life, was but a child compared with what sheultimately became. Alike in the highest regions of speculation and inthe smaller practical concerns of daily life, her mind was the sameperfect instrument, piercing to the very heart and marrow of the matter;always seizing the essential idea or principle. The same exactness andrapidity of operation, pervading as it did her sensitive as well as hermental faculties, would, with her gifts of feeling and imagination, havefitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul andher vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a great orator, andher profound knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity inpractical life, would, in the times when such a _carrière_ was open towomen, have made her eminent among the rulers of mankind. Herintellectual gifts did but minister to a moral character at once thenoblest and the best balanced which I have ever met with in life. Herunselfishness was not that of a taught system of duties, but of a heartwhich thoroughly identified itself with the feelings of others, andoften went to excess in consideration for them by imaginativelyinvesting their feelings with the intensity of its own. The passion ofjustice might have been thought to be her strongest feeling, but for herboundless generosity, and a lovingness ever ready to pour itself forthupon any or all human beings who were capable of giving the smallestfeeling in return. The rest of her moral characteristics were such asnaturally accompany these qualities of mind and heart: the most genuinemodesty combined with the loftiest pride; a simplicity and sinceritywhich were absolute, towards all who were fit to receive them; theutmost scorn of whatever was mean and cowardly, and a burningindignation at everything brutal or tyrannical, faithless ordishonourable in conduct and character, while making the broadestdistinction between _mala in se_ and mere _mala prohibita_--between actsgiving evidence of intrinsic badness in feeling and character, and thosewhich are only violations of conventions either good or bad, violationswhich, whether in themselves right or wrong, are capable of beingcommitted by persons in every other respect lovable or admirable. To be admitted into any degree of mental intercourse with a being ofthese qualities, could not but have a most beneficial influence on mydevelopment; though the effect was only gradual, and many years elapsedbefore her mental progress and mine went forward in the completecompanionship they at last attained. The benefit I received was fargreater than any which I could hope to give; though to her, who had atfirst reached her opinions by the moral intuition of a character ofstrong feeling, there was doubtless help as well as encouragement to bederived from one who had arrived at many of the same results by studyand reasoning: and in the rapidity of her intellectual growth, hermental activity, which converted everything into knowledge, doubtlessdrew from me, as it did from other sources, many of its materials. WhatI owe, even intellectually, to her, is in its detail, almost infinite;of its general character a few words will give some, though a veryimperfect, idea. With those who, like all the best and wisest of mankind, aredissatisfied with human life as it is, and whose feelings are whollyidentified with its radical amendment, there are two main regions ofthought. One is the region of ultimate aims; the constituent elements ofthe highest realizable ideal of human life. The other is that of theimmediately useful and practically attainable. In both these departments, I have acquired more from her teaching, than from all other sourcestaken together. And, to say truth, it is in these two extremesprincipally, that real certainty lies. My own strength lay wholly in theuncertain and slippery intermediate region, that of theory, or moral andpolitical science: respecting the conclusions of which, in any of theforms in which I have received or originated them, whether as politicaleconomy, analytic psychology, logic, philosophy of history, or anythingelse, it is not the least of my intellectual obligations to her that Ihave derived from her a wise scepticism, which, while it has nothindered me from following out the honest exercise of my thinkingfaculties to whatever conclusions might result from it, has put me on myguard against holding or announcing these conclusions with a degree ofconfidence which the nature of such speculations does not warrant, andhas kept my mind not only open to admit, but prompt to welcome and eagerto seek, even on the questions on which I have most meditated, anyprospect of clearer perceptions and better evidence. I have oftenreceived praise, which in my own right I only partially deserve, for thegreater practicality which is supposed to be found in my writings, compared with those of most thinkers who have been equally addicted tolarge generalizations. The writings in which this quality has beenobserved, were not the work of one mind, but of the fusion of two, oneof them as pre-eminently practical in its judgments and perceptions ofthings present, as it was high and bold in its anticipations for aremote futurity. At the present period, however, this influence was onlyone among many which were helping to shape the character of my futuredevelopment: and even after it became, I may truly say, the presidingprinciple of my mental progress, it did not alter the path, but onlymade me move forward more boldly, and, at the same time, morecautiously, in the same course. The only actual revolution which hasever taken place in my modes of thinking, was already complete. My newtendencies had to be confirmed in some respects, moderated in others:but the only substantial changes of opinion that were yet to come, related to politics, and consisted, on one hand, in a greaterapproximation, so far as regards the ultimate prospects of humanity, toa qualified Socialism, and on the other, a shifting of my politicalideal from pure democracy, as commonly understood by its partisans, tothe modified form of it, which is set forth in my _Considerations onRepresentative Government_. This last change, which took place very gradually, dates itscommencement from my reading, or rather study, of M. De Tocqueville's_Democracy in America_, which fell into my hands immediately after itsfirst appearance. In that remarkable work, the excellences of democracywere pointed out in a more conclusive, because a more specific mannerthan I had ever known them to be, even by the most enthusiasticdemocrats; while the specific dangers which beset democracy, consideredas the government of the numerical majority, were brought into equallystrong light, and subjected to a masterly analysis, not as reasons forresisting what the author considered as an inevitable result of humanprogress, but as indications of the weak points of popular government, the defences by which it needs to be guarded, and the correctives whichmust be added to it in order that while full play is given to itsbeneficial tendencies, those which are of a different nature may beneutralized or mitigated. I was now well prepared for speculations ofthis character, and from this time onward my own thoughts moved more andmore in the same channel, though the consequent modifications in mypractical political creed were spread over many years, as would be shownby comparing my first review of _Democracy in America_, written andpublished in 1835, with the one in 1840 (reprinted in the _Dissertations_), and this last, with the _Considerations on Representative Government_. A collateral subject on which also I derived great benefit from thestudy of Tocqueville, was the fundamental question of centralization. The powerful philosophic analysis which he applied to American and toFrench experience, led him to attach the utmost importance to theperformance of as much of the collective business of society, as cansafely be so performed, by the people themselves, without anyintervention of the executive government, either to supersede theiragency, or to dictate the manner of its exercise. He viewed thispractical political activity of the individual citizen, not only as oneof the most effectual means of training the social feelings andpractical intelligence of the people, so important in themselves and soindispensable to good government, but also as the specific counteractiveto some of the characteristic infirmities of democracy, and a necessaryprotection against its degenerating into the only despotism of which, inthe modern world, there is real danger--the absolute rule of the headof the executive over a congregation of isolated individuals, all equalsbut all slaves. There was, indeed, no immediate peril from this sourceon the British side of the channel, where nine-tenths of the internalbusiness which elsewhere devolves on the government, was transacted byagencies independent of it; where centralization was, and is, thesubject not only of rational disapprobation, but of unreasoningprejudice; where jealousy of Government interference was a blind feelingpreventing or resisting even the most beneficial exertion of legislativeauthority to correct the abuses of what pretends to be localself-government, but is, too often, selfish mismanagement of localinterests, by a jobbing and _borné_ local oligarchy. But the morecertain the public were to go wrong on the side opposed tocentralization, the greater danger was there lest philosophic reformersshould fall into the contrary error, and overlook the mischiefs of whichthey had been spared the painful experience. I was myself, at this verytime, actively engaged in defending important measures, such as thegreat Poor Law Reform of 1834, against an irrational clamour grounded onthe anti-centralization prejudice: and had it not been for the lessonsof Tocqueville, I do not know that I might not, like many reformersbefore me, have been hurried into the excess opposite to that, which, being the one prevalent in my own country, it was generally my businessto combat. As it is, I have steered carefully between the two errors, and whether I have or have not drawn the line between them exactly inthe right place, I have at least insisted with equal emphasis upon theevils on both sides, and have made the means of reconciling theadvantages of both, a subject of serious study. In the meanwhile had taken place the election of the first ReformedParliament, which included several of the most notable of my Radicalfriends and acquaintances--Grote, Roebuck, Buller, Sir WilliamMolesworth, John and Edward Romilly, and several more; besidesWarburton, Strutt, and others, who were in parliament already. Those whothought themselves, and were called by their friends, the philosophicRadicals, had now, it seemed, a fair opportunity, in a more advantageousposition than they had ever before occupied, for showing what was inthem; and I, as well as my father, founded great hopes on them. Thesehopes were destined to be disappointed. The men were honest, andfaithful to their opinions, as far as votes were concerned; often inspite of much discouragement. When measures were proposed, flagrantly atvariance with their principles, such as the Irish Coercion Bill, or theCanada Coercion in 1837, they came forward manfully, and braved anyamount of hostility and prejudice rather than desert the right. But onthe whole they did very little to promote any opinions; they had littleenterprise, little activity: they left the lead of the Radical portionof the House to the old hands, to Hume and O'Connell. A partialexception must be made in favour of one or two of the younger men; andin the case of Roebuck, it is his title to permanent remembrance, thatin the very first year during which he sat in Parliament, he originated(or re-originated after the unsuccessful attempt of Mr. Brougham) theparliamentary movement for National Education; and that he was the firstto commence, and for years carried on almost alone, the contest for theself-government of the Colonies. Nothing, on the whole equal to thesetwo things, was done by any other individual, even of those from whommost was expected. And now, on a calm retrospect, I can perceive thatthe men were less in fault than we supposed, and that we had expectedtoo much from them. They were in unfavourable circumstances. Their lotwas cast in the ten years of inevitable reaction, when, the Reformexcitement being over, and the few legislative improvements which thepublic really called for having been rapidly effected, power gravitatedback in its natural direction, to those who were for keeping things asthey were; when the public mind desired rest, and was less disposed thanat any other period since the Peace, to let itself be moved by attemptsto work up the Reform feeling into fresh activity in favour of newthings. It would have required a great political leader, which no one isto be blamed for not being, to have effected really great things byparliamentary discussion when the nation was in this mood. My father andI had hoped that some competent leader might arise; some man ofphilosophic attainments and popular talents, who could have put heartinto the many younger or less distinguished men that would have beenready to join him--could have made them available, to the extent oftheir talents, in bringing advanced ideas before the public--couldhave used the House of Commons as a rostra or a teacher's chair forinstructing and impelling the public mind; and would either have forcedthe Whigs to receive their measures from him, or have taken the lead ofthe Reform party out of their hands. Such a leader there would havebeen, if my father had been in Parliament. For want of such a man, theinstructed Radicals sank into a mere _Côté Gauche_ of the Whig party. With a keen, and as I now think, an exaggerated sense of thepossibilities which were open to the Radicals if they made even ordinaryexertion for their opinions, I laboured from this time till 1839, bothby personal influence with some of them, and by writings, to put ideasinto their heads, and purpose into their hearts. I did some good withCharles Buller, and some with Sir William Molesworth; both of whom didvaluable service, but were unhappily cut off almost in the beginning oftheir usefulness. On the whole, however, my attempt was vain. To havehad a chance of succeeding in it, required a different position frommine. It was a task only for one who, being himself in Parliament, couldhave mixed with the Radical members in daily consultation, could himselfhave taken the initiative, and instead of urging others to lead, couldhave summoned them to follow. What I could do by writing, I did. During the year 1833 I continuedworking in the _Examiner_ with Fonblanque who at that time was zealousin keeping up the fight for Radicalism against the Whig ministry. Duringthe session of 1834 I wrote comments on passing events, of the nature ofnewspaper articles (under the title "Notes on the Newspapers"), in the_Monthly Repository_, a magazine conducted by Mr. Fox, well known as apreacher and political orator, and subsequently as member of parliamentfor Oldham; with whom I had lately become acquainted, and for whose sakechiefly I wrote in his magazine. I contributed several other articlesto this periodical, the most considerable of which (on the theory ofPoetry), is reprinted in the "Dissertations. " Altogether, the writings(independently of those in newspapers) which I published from 1832 to1834, amount to a large volume. This, however, includes abstracts ofseveral of Plato's Dialogues, with introductory remarks, which, thoughnot published until 1834, had been written several years earlier; andwhich I afterwards, on various occasions, found to have been read, andtheir authorship known, by more people than were aware of anything elsewhich I had written, up to that time. To complete the tale of mywritings at this period, I may add that in 1833, at the request ofBulwer, who was just then completing his _England and the English_ (awork, at that time, greatly in advance of the public mind), I wrote forhim a critical account of Bentham's philosophy, a small part of whichhe incorporated in his text, and printed the rest (with an honourableacknowledgment), as an appendix. In this, along with the favourable, a part also of the unfavourable side of my estimation of Bentham'sdoctrines, considered as a complete philosophy, was for the first timeput into print. But an opportunity soon offered, by which, as it seemed, I might have itin my power to give more effectual aid, and at the same time, stimulus, to the "philosophic Radical" party, than I had done hitherto. One of theprojects occasionally talked of between my father and me, and some ofthe parliamentary and other Radicals who frequented his house, was thefoundation of a periodical organ of philosophic radicalism, to take theplace which the _Westminster Review_ had been intended to fill: and thescheme had gone so far as to bring under discussion the pecuniarycontributions which could be looked for, and the choice of an editor. Nothing, however, came of it for some time: but in the summer of 1834Sir William Molesworth, himself a laborious student, and a precise andmetaphysical thinker, capable of aiding the cause by his pen as well asby his purse, spontaneously proposed to establish a Review, provided Iwould consent to be the real, if I could not be the ostensible, editor. Such a proposal was not to be refused; and the Review was founded, atfirst under the title of the _London Review_, and afterwards under thatof the _London and Westminster_, Molesworth having bought the_Westminster_ from its proprietor, General Thompson, and merged the twointo one. In the years between 1834 and 1840 the conduct of this Reviewoccupied the greater part of my spare time. In the beginning, it didnot, as a whole, by any means represent my opinions. I was under thenecessity of conceding much to my inevitable associates. The _Review_was established to be the representative of the "philosophic Radicals, "with most of whom I was now at issue on many essential points, and amongwhom I could not even claim to be the most important individual. Myfather's co-operation as a writer we all deemed indispensable, and hewrote largely in it until prevented by his last illness. The subjects ofhis articles, and the strength and decision with which his opinions wereexpressed in them, made the _Review_ at first derive its tone andcolouring from him much more than from any of the other writers. I couldnot exercise editorial control over his articles, and I was sometimesobliged to sacrifice to him portions of my own. The old _WestminsterReview_ doctrines, but little modified, thus formed the staple of the_Review_; but I hoped by the side of these, to introduce other ideas andanother tone, and to obtain for my own shade of opinion a fairrepresentation, along with those of other members of the party. Withthis end chiefly in view, I made it one of the peculiarities of the workthat every article should bear an initial, or some other signature, andbe held to express the opinions solely of the individual writer; theeditor being only responsible for its being worth publishing and not inconflict with the objects for which the _Review_ was set on foot. I hadan opportunity of putting in practice my scheme of conciliation betweenthe old and the new "philosophic radicalism, " by the choice of a subjectfor my own first contribution. Professor Sedgwick, a man of eminence ina particular walk of natural science, but who should not have trespassedinto philosophy, had lately published his _Discourse on the Studies ofCambridge_, which had as its most prominent feature an intemperateassault on analytic psychology and utilitarian ethics, in the form of anattack on Locke and Paley. This had excited great indignation in myfather and others, which I thought it fully deserved. And here, Iimagined, was an opportunity of at the same time repelling an unjustattack, and inserting into my defence of Hartleianism and Utilitarianisma number of the opinions which constituted my view of those subjects, asdistinguished from that of my old associates. In this I partiallysucceeded, though my relation to my father would have made it painful tome in any case, and impossible in a Review for which he wrote, to speakout my whole mind on the subject at this time. I am, however, inclined to think that my father was not so much opposedas he seemed, to the modes of thought in which I believed myself todiffer from him; that he did injustice to his own opinions by theunconscious exaggerations of an intellect emphatically polemical; andthat when thinking without an adversary in view, he was willing to makeroom for a great portion of the truths he seemed to deny. I havefrequently observed that he made large allowance in practice forconsiderations which seemed to have no place in his theory. His_Fragment on Mackintosh_, which he wrote and published about this time, although I greatly admired some parts of it, I read as a whole with morepain than pleasure; yet on reading it again, long after, I found littlein the opinions it contains, but what I think in the main just; and Ican even sympathize in his disgust at the _verbiage_ of Mackintosh, though his asperity towards it went not only beyond what was judicious, but beyond what was even fair. One thing, which I thought, at the time, of good augury, was the very favourable reception he gave toTocqueville's _Democracy in America_. It is true, he said and thoughtmuch more about what Tocqueville said in favour of democracy, than aboutwhat he said of its disadvantages. Still, his high appreciation of abook which was at any rate an example of a mode of treating the questionof government almost the reverse of his--wholly inductive and analytical, instead of purely ratiocinative--gave me great encouragement. He alsoapproved of an article which I published in the first number followingthe junction of the two reviews, the essay reprinted in the _Dissertations_, under the title "Civilization"; into which I threw many of my new opinions, and criticised rather emphatically the mental and moral tendencies of thetime, on grounds and in a manner which I certainly had not learnt from him. All speculation, however, on the possible future developments of myfather's opinions, and on the probabilities of permanent co-operationbetween him and me in the promulgation of our thoughts, was doomed to becut short. During the whole of 1835 his health had been declining: hissymptoms became unequivocally those of pulmonary consumption, and afterlingering to the last stage of debility, he died on the 23rd of June, 1836. Until the last few days of his life there was no apparentabatement of intellectual vigour; his interest in all things and personsthat had interested him through life was undiminished, nor did theapproach of death cause the smallest wavering (as in so strong and firma mind it was impossible that it should) in his convictions on thesubject of religion. His principal satisfaction, after he knew that hisend was near, seemed to be the thought of what he had done to make theworld better than he found it; and his chief regret in not livinglonger, that he had not had time to do more. His place is an eminent one in the literary, and even in the politicalhistory of his country; and it is far from honourable to the generationwhich has benefited by his worth, that he is so seldom mentioned, and, compared with men far his inferiors, so little remembered. This isprobably to be ascribed mainly to two causes. In the first place, thethought of him merges too much in the deservedly superior fame ofBentham. Yet he was anything but Bentham's mere follower or disciple. Precisely because he was himself one of the most original thinkers ofhis time, he was one of the earliest to appreciate and adopt the mostimportant mass of original thought which had been produced by thegeneration preceding him. His mind and Bentham's were essentially ofdifferent construction. He had not all Bentham's high qualities, butneither had Bentham all his. It would, indeed, be ridiculous to claimfor him the praise of having accomplished for mankind such splendidservices as Bentham's. He did not revolutionize, or rather create, oneof the great departments of human thought. But, leaving out of thereckoning all that portion of his labours in which he benefited by whatBentham had done, and counting only what he achieved in a province inwhich Bentham had done nothing, that of analytic psychology, he will beknown to posterity as one of the greatest names in that most importantbranch of speculation, on which all the moral and political sciencesultimately rest, and will mark one of the essential stages in itsprogress. The other reason which has made his fame less than hedeserved, is that notwithstanding the great number of his opinionswhich, partly through his own efforts, have now been generally adopted, there was, on the whole, a marked opposition between his spirit and thatof the present time. As Brutus was called the last of the Romans, so washe the last of the eighteenth century: he continued its tone of thoughtand sentiment into the nineteenth (though not unmodified norunimproved), partaking neither in the good nor in the bad influences ofthe reaction against the eighteenth century, which was the greatcharacteristic of the first half of the nineteenth. The eighteenthcentury was a great age, an age of strong and brave men, and he was afit companion for its strongest and bravest. By his writings and hispersonal influence he was a great centre of light to his generation. During his later years he was quite as much the head and leader of theintellectual radicals in England, as Voltaire was of the _philosophes_of France. It is only one of his minor merits, that he was theoriginator of all sound statesmanship in regard to the subject of hislargest work, India. He wrote on no subject which he did not enrich withvaluable thought, and excepting the _Elements of Political Economy_, avery useful book when first written, but which has now for some timefinished its work, it will be long before any of his books will bewholly superseded, or will cease to be instructive reading to studentsof their subjects. In the power of influencing by mere force of mind andcharacter, the convictions and purposes of others, and in the strenuousexertion of that power to promote freedom and progress, he left, as faras my knowledge extends, no equal among men and but one among women. Though acutely sensible of my own inferiority in the qualities by whichhe acquired his personal ascendancy, I had now to try what it might bepossible for me to accomplish without him: and the _Review_ was theinstrument on which I built my chief hopes of establishing a usefulinfluence over the liberal and democratic section of the public mind. Deprived of my father's aid, I was also exempted from the restraints andreticences by which that aid had been purchased. I did not feel thatthere was any other radical writer or politician to whom I was bound todefer, further than consisted with my own opinions: and having thecomplete confidence of Molesworth, I resolved henceforth to give fullscope to my own opinions and modes of thought, and to open the _Review_widely to all writers who were in sympathy with Progress as I understoodit, even though I should lose by it the support of my former associates. Carlyle, consequently became from this time a frequent writer in the_Review_; Sterling, soon after, an occasional one; and though eachindividual article continued to be the expression of the privatesentiments of its writer, the general tone conformed in some tolerabledegree to my opinions. For the conduct of the _Review_, under, and inconjunction with me, I associated with myself a young Scotchman of thename of Robertson, who had some ability and information, much industry, and an active scheming head, full of devices for making the _Review_more saleable, and on whose capacities in that direction I founded agood deal of hope: insomuch, that when Molesworth, in the beginning of1837, became tired of carrying on the _Review_ at a loss, and desirousof getting rid of it (he had done his part honourably, and at no smallpecuniary cost, ) I, very imprudently for my own pecuniary interest, andvery much from reliance on Robertson's devices, determined to continueit at my own risk, until his plans should have had a fair trial. Thedevices were good, and I never had any reason to change my opinion ofthem. But I do not believe that any devices would have made a radicaland democratic review defray its expenses, including a paid editor orsub-editor, and a liberal payment to writers. I myself and severalfrequent contributors gave our labour gratuitously, as we had done forMolesworth; but the paid contributors continued to be remunerated on theusual scale of the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_; and this couldnot be done from the proceeds of the sale. In the same year, 1837, and in the midst of these occupations, I resumedthe _Logic_. I had not touched my pen on the subject for five years, having been stopped and brought to a halt on the threshold of Induction. I had gradually discovered that what was mainly wanting, to overcome thedifficulties of that branch of the subject, was a comprehensive, and, atthe same time, accurate view of the whole circle of physical science, which I feared it would take me a long course of study to acquire; sinceI knew not of any book, or other guide, that would spread out before methe generalities and processes of the sciences, and I apprehended that Ishould have no choice but to extract them for myself, as I best could, from the details. Happily for me, Dr. Whewell, early in this year, published his _History of the Inductive Sciences_. I read it witheagerness, and found in it a considerable approximation to what Iwanted. Much, if not most, of the philosophy of the work appeared opento objection; but the materials were there, for my own thoughts to workupon: and the author had given to those materials that first degree ofelaboration, which so greatly facilitates and abridges the subsequentlabour. I had now obtained what I had been waiting for. Under theimpulse given me by the thoughts excited by Dr. Whewell, I read againSir J. Herschel's _Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy_: and Iwas able to measure the progress my mind had made, by the great help Inow found in this work--though I had read and even reviewed it severalyears before with little profit. I now set myself vigorously to work outthe subject in thought and in writing. The time I bestowed on this hadto be stolen from occupations more urgent. I had just two months tospare, at this period, in the intervals of writing for the _Review_. Inthese two months I completed the first draft of about a third, the mostdifficult third, of the book. What I had before written, I estimate atanother third, so that one-third remained. What I wrote at this timeconsisted of the remainder of the doctrine of Reasoning (the theory ofTrains of Reasoning, and Demonstrative Science), and the greater part ofthe Book on Induction. When this was done, I had, as it seemed to me, untied all the really hard knots, and the completion of the book hadbecome only a question of time. Having got thus far, I had to leave offin order to write two articles for the next number of the _Review_. Whenthese were written, I returned to the subject, and now for the firsttime fell in with Comte's _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, or ratherwith the two volumes of it which were all that had at that time beenpublished. My theory of Induction was substantially completed before Iknew of Comte's book; and it is perhaps well that I came to it by adifferent road from his, since the consequence has been that my treatisecontains, what his certainly does not, a reduction of the inductiveprocess to strict rules and to a scientific test, such as the syllogismis for ratiocination. Comte is always precise and profound on the methodof investigation, but he does not even attempt any exact definition ofthe conditions of proof: and his writings show that he never attained ajust conception of them. This, however, was specifically the problem, which, in treating of Induction, I had proposed to myself. Nevertheless, I gained much from Comte, with which to enrich my chapters in thesubsequent rewriting: and his book was of essential service to me insome of the parts which still remained to be thought out. As hissubsequent volumes successively made their appearance, I read them withavidity, but, when he reached the subject of Social Science, withvarying feelings. The fourth volume disappointed me: it contained thoseof his opinions on social subjects with which I most disagree. But thefifth, containing the connected view of history, rekindled all myenthusiasm; which the sixth (or concluding) volume did not materiallyabate. In a merely logical point of view, the only leading conceptionfor which I am indebted to him is that of the Inverse Deductive Method, as the one chiefly applicable to the complicated subjects of History andStatistics: a process differing from the more common form of thedeductive method in this--that instead of arriving at its conclusionsby general reasoning, and verifying them by specific experience (as isthe natural order in the deductive branches of physical science), itobtains its generalizations by a collation of specific experience, andverifies them by ascertaining whether they are such as would follow fromknown general principles. This was an idea entirely new to me when Ifound it in Comte: and but for him I might not soon (if ever) havearrived at it. I had been long an ardent admirer of Comte's writings before I had anycommunication with himself; nor did I ever, to the last, see him in thebody. But for some years we were frequent correspondents, until ourcorrespondence became controversial, and our zeal cooled. I was thefirst to slacken correspondence; he was the first to drop it. I found, and he probably found likewise, that I could do no good to his mind, andthat all the good he could do to mine, he did by his books. This wouldnever have led to discontinuance of intercourse, if the differencesbetween us had been on matters of simple doctrine. But they were chieflyon those points of opinion which blended in both of us with ourstrongest feelings, and determined the entire direction of ouraspirations. I had fully agreed with him when he maintained that themass of mankind, including even their rulers in all the practicaldepartments of life, must, from the necessity of the case, accept mostof their opinions on political and social matters, as they do onphysical, from the authority of those who have bestowed more study onthose subjects than they generally have it in their power to do. Thislesson had been strongly impressed on me by the early work of Comte, towhich I have adverted. And there was nothing in his great Treatise whichI admired more than his remarkable exposition of the benefits which thenations of modern Europe have historically derived from the separation, during the Middle Ages, of temporal and spiritual power, and thedistinct organization of the latter. I agreed with him that the moraland intellectual ascendancy, once exercised by priests, must in timepass into the hands of philosophers, and will naturally do so when theybecome sufficiently unanimous, and in other respects worthy to possessit. But when he exaggerated this line of thought into a practicalsystem, in which philosophers were to be organized into a kind ofcorporate hierarchy, invested with almost the same spiritual supremacy(though without any secular power) once possessed by the CatholicChurch; when I found him relying on this spiritual authority as the onlysecurity for good government, the sole bulwark against practicaloppression, and expecting that by it a system of despotism in the stateand despotism in the family would be rendered innocuous and beneficial;it is not surprising, that while as logicians we were nearly at one, associologists we could travel together no further. M. Comte lived tocarry out these doctrines to their extremest consequences, by planning, in his last work, the _Système de Politique Positive_, the completestsystem of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever yet emanated froma human brain, unless possibly that of Ignatius Loyola: a system bywhich the yoke of general opinion, wielded by an organized body ofspiritual teachers and rulers, would be made supreme over every action, and as far as is in human possibility, every thought, of every member ofthe community, as well in the things which regard only himself, as inthose which concern the interests of others. It is but just to say thatthis work is a considerable improvement, in many points of feeling, overComte's previous writings on the same subjects: but as an accession tosocial philosophy, the only value it seems to me to possess, consists inputting an end to the notion that no effectual moral authority can bemaintained over society without the aid of religious belief; for Comte'swork recognises no religion except that of Humanity, yet it leaves anirresistible conviction that any moral beliefs concurred in by thecommunity generally may be brought to bear upon the whole conduct andlives of its individual members, with an energy and potency trulyalarming to think of. The book stands a monumental warning to thinkerson society and politics, of what happens when once men lose sight, intheir speculations, of the value of Liberty and of Individuality. To return to myself. The _Review_ engrossed, for some time longer, nearly all the time I could devote to authorship, or to thinking withauthorship in view. The articles from the _London and WestminsterReview_ which are reprinted in the _Dissertations_, are scarcely afourth part of those I wrote. In the conduct of the _Review_ I had twoprincipal objects. One was to free philosophic radicalism from thereproach of sectarian Benthamism. I desired, while retaining theprecision of expression, the definiteness of meaning, the contempt ofdeclamatory phrases and vague generalities, which were so honourablycharacteristic both of Bentham and of my father, to give a wider basisand a more free and genial character to Radical speculations; to showthat there was a Radical philosophy, better and more complete thanBentham's, while recognizing and incorporating all of Bentham's which ispermanently valuable. In this first object I, to a certain extent, succeeded. The other thing I attempted, was to stir up the educatedRadicals, in and out of Parliament, to exertion, and induce them to makethemselves, what I thought by using the proper means they might become--a powerful party capable of taking the government of the country, orat least of dictating the terms on which they should share it with theWhigs. This attempt was from the first chimerical: partly because thetime was unpropitious, the Reform fervour being in its period of ebb, and the Tory influences powerfully rallying; but still more, because, asAustin so truly said, "the country did not contain the men. " Among theRadicals in Parliament there were several qualified to be useful membersof an enlightened Radical party, but none capable of forming and leadingsuch a party. The exhortations I addressed to them found no response. One occasion did present itself when there seemed to be room for a boldand successful stroke for Radicalism. Lord Durham had left the ministry, by reason, as was thought, of their not being sufficiently Liberal; heafterwards accepted from them the task of ascertaining and removing thecauses of the Canadian rebellion; he had shown a disposition to surroundhimself at the outset with Radical advisers; one of his earliestmeasures, a good measure both in intention and in effect, having beendisapproved and reversed by the Government at home, he had resigned hispost, and placed himself openly in a position of quarrel with theMinisters. Here was a possible chief for a Radical party in the personof a man of importance, who was hated by the Tories and had just beeninjured by the Whigs. Any one who had the most elementary notions ofparty tactics, must have attempted to make something of such anopportunity. Lord Durham was bitterly attacked from all sides, inveighedagainst by enemies, given up by timid friends; while those who wouldwillingly have defended him did not know what to say. He appeared to bereturning a defeated and discredited man. I had followed the Canadianevents from the beginning; I had been one of the prompters of hisprompters; his policy was almost exactly what mine would have been, andI was in a position to defend it. I wrote and published a manifesto inthe _Review_, in which I took the very highest ground in his behalf, claiming for him not mere acquittal, but praise and honour. Instantly anumber of other writers took up the tone: I believe there was a portionof truth in what Lord Durham, soon after, with polite exaggeration, saidto me--that to this article might be ascribed the almost triumphalreception which he met with on his arrival in England. I believe it tohave been the word in season, which, at a critical moment, does much todecide the result; the touch which determines whether a stone, set inmotion at the top of an eminence, shall roll down on one side or on theother. All hopes connected with Lord Durham as a politician soonvanished; but with regard to Canadian, and generally to colonial policy, the cause was gained: Lord Durham's report, written by Charles Buller, partly under the inspiration of Wakefield, began a new era; itsrecommendations, extending to complete internal self-government, were infull operation in Canada within two or three years, and have been sinceextended to nearly all the other colonies, of European race, which haveany claim to the character of important communities. And I may say thatin successfully upholding the reputation of Lord Durham and his advisersat the most important moment, I contributed materially to this result. One other case occurred during my conduct of the _Review_, whichsimilarly illustrated the effect of taking a prompt initiative. Ibelieve that the early success and reputation of Carlyle's _FrenchRevolution_, were considerably accelerated by what I wrote about it inthe _Review_. Immediately on its publication, and before the commonplacecritics, all whose rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, hadtime to pre-occupy the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote andpublished a review of the book, hailing it as one of those productionsof genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves. Neither in this case nor in that of Lord Durham do I ascribe theimpression, which I think was produced by what I wrote, to anyparticular merit of execution: indeed, in at least one of the cases (thearticle on Carlyle) I do not think the execution was good. And in bothinstances, I am persuaded that anybody, in a position to be read, whohad expressed the same opinion at the same precise time, and had madeany tolerable statement of the just grounds for it, would have producedthe same effect. But, after the complete failure of my hopes of puttinga new life into Radical politics by means of the _Review_, I am glad tolook back on these two instances of success in an honest attempt to domediate service to things and persons that deserved it. After the lasthope of the formation of a Radical party had disappeared, it was timefor me to stop the heavy expenditure of time and money which the_Review_ cost me. It had to some extent answered my personal purpose asa vehicle for my opinions. It had enabled me to express in print much ofmy altered mode of thought, and to separate myself in a marked mannerfrom the narrower Benthamism of my early writings. This was done by thegeneral tone of all I wrote, including various purely literary articles, but especially by the two papers (reprinted in the _Dissertations_)which attempted a philosophical estimate of Bentham and of Coleridge. Inthe first of these, while doing full justice to the merits of Bentham, Ipointed out what I thought the errors and deficiencies of hisphilosophy. The substance of this criticism _I_ still think perfectlyjust; but I have sometimes doubted whether it was right to publish it atthat time. I have often felt that Bentham's philosophy, as an instrumentof progress, has been to some extent discredited before it had done itswork, and that to lend a hand towards lowering its reputation was doingmore harm than service to improvement. Now, however, when acounter-reaction appears to be setting in towards what is good inBenthamism, I can look with more satisfaction on this criticism of itsdefects, especially as I have myself balanced it by vindications of thefundamental principles of Bentham's philosophy, which are reprintedalong with it in the same collection. In the essay on Coleridge Iattempted to characterize the European reaction against the negativephilosophy of the eighteenth century: and here, if the effect only ofthis one paper were to be considered, I might be thought to have erredby giving undue prominence to the favourable side, as I had done in thecase of Bentham to the unfavourable. In both cases, the impetus withwhich I had detached myself from what was untenable in the doctrines ofBentham and of the eighteenth century, may have carried me, though inappearance rather than in reality, too far on the contrary side. But asfar as relates to the article on Coleridge, my defence is, that I waswriting for Radicals and Liberals, and it was my business to dwell moston that, in writers of a different school, from the knowledge of whichthey might derive most improvement. The number of the _Review_ which contained the paper on Coleridge, wasthe last which was published during my proprietorship. In the spring of1840 I made over the _Review_ to Mr. Hickson, who had been a frequentand very useful unpaid contributor under my management: only stipulatingthat the change should be marked by a resumption of the old name, thatof _Westminster Review_. Under that name Mr. Hickson conducted it forten years, on the plan of dividing among contributors only the netproceeds of the _Review_ giving his own labour as writer and editorgratuitously. Under the difficulty in obtaining writers, which arosefrom this low scale of payment, it is highly creditable to him that hewas able to maintain, in some tolerable degree, the character of the_Review_ as an organ of radicalism and progress. I did not ceasealtogether to write for the _Review_, but continued to send itoccasional contributions, not, however, exclusively; for the greatercirculation of the _Edinburgh Review_ induced me from this time to offerarticles to it also when I had anything to say for which it appeared tobe a suitable vehicle. And the concluding volumes of _Democracy inAmerica_, having just then come out, I inaugurated myself as acontributor to the _Edinburgh_, by the article on that work, which headsthe second volume of the _Dissertations_. CHAPTER VII. GENERAL VIEW OF THE REMAINDER OF MY LIFE. From this time, what is worth relating of my life will come into a verysmall compass; for I have no further mental changes to tell of, butonly, as I hope, a continued mental progress; which does not admit of aconsecutive history, and the results of which, if real, will be bestfound in my writings. I shall, therefore, greatly abridge the chronicleof my subsequent years. The first use I made of the leisure which I gained by disconnectingmyself from the _Review_, was to finish the _Logic_. In July and August, 1838, I had found an interval in which to execute what was still undoneof the original draft of the Third Book. In working out the logicaltheory of those laws of nature which are not laws of Causation, norcorollaries from such laws, I was led to recognize kinds as realities innature, and not mere distinctions for convenience; a light which I hadnot obtained when the First Book was written, and which made itnecessary for me to modify and enlarge several chapters of that Book. The Book on Language and Classification, and the chapter on theClassification of Fallacies, were drafted in the autumn of the sameyear; the remainder of the work, in the summer and autumn of 1840. FromApril following to the end of 1841, my spare time was devoted to acomplete rewriting of the book from its commencement. It is in this waythat all my books have been composed. They were always written at leasttwice over; a first draft of the entire work was completed to the veryend of the subject, then the whole begun again _de novo_; butincorporating, in the second writing, all sentences and parts ofsentences of the old draft, which appeared as suitable to my purpose asanything which I could write in lieu of them. I have found greatadvantages in this system of double redaction. It combines, better thanany other mode of composition, the freshness and vigour of the firstconception, with the superior precision and completeness resulting fromprolonged thought. In my own case, moreover, I have found that thepatience necessary for a careful elaboration of the details ofcomposition and expression, costs much less effort after the entiresubject has been once gone through, and the substance of all that I findto say has in some manner, however imperfect, been got upon paper. Theonly thing which I am careful, in the first draft, to make as perfect asI am able, is the arrangement. If that is bad, the whole thread on whichthe ideas string themselves becomes twisted; thoughts placed in a wrongconnection are not expounded in a manner that suits the right, and afirst draft with this original vice is next to useless as a foundationfor the final treatment. During the re-writing of the _Logic_, Dr. Whewell's _Philosophy of theInductive Sciences_ made its appearance; a circumstance fortunate forme, as it gave me what I greatly desired, a full treatment of thesubject by an antagonist, and enabled me to present my ideas withgreater clearness and emphasis as well as fuller and more varieddevelopment, in defending them against definite objections, orconfronting them distinctly with an opposite theory. The controversieswith Dr. Whewell, as well as much matter derived from Comte, were firstintroduced into the book in the course of the re-writing. At the end of 1841, the book being ready for the press, I offered it toMurray, who kept it until too late for publication that season, and thenrefused it, for reasons which could just as well have been given atfirst. But I have had no cause to regret a rejection which led to myoffering it to Mr. Parker, by whom it was published in the spring of1843. My original expectations of success were extremely limited. Archbishop Whately had, indeed, rehabilitated the name of Logic, and thestudy of the forms, rules, and fallacies of Ratiocination; and Dr. Whewell's writings had begun to excite an interest in the other part ofmy subject, the theory of Induction. A treatise, however, on a matter soabstract, could not be expected to be popular; it could only be a bookfor students, and students on such subjects were not only (at least inEngland) few, but addicted chiefly to the opposite school ofmetaphysics, the ontological and "innate principles" school. I thereforedid not expect that the book would have many readers, or approvers; andlooked for little practical effect from it, save that of keeping thetradition unbroken of what I thought a better philosophy. What hopes Ihad of exciting any immediate attention, were mainly grounded on thepolemical propensities of Dr Whewell; who, I thought, from observationof his conduct in other cases, would probably do something to bring thebook into notice, by replying, and that promptly, to the attack on hisopinions. He did reply but not till 1850, just in time for me to answerhim in the third edition. How the book came to have, for a work of thekind, so much success, and what sort of persons compose the bulk ofthose who have bought, I will not venture to say read, it, I have neverthoroughly understood. But taken in conjunction with the many proofswhich have since been given of a revival of speculation, speculation tooof a free kind, in many quarters, and above all (where at one time Ishould have least expected it) in the Universities, the fact becomespartially intelligible. I have never indulged the illusion that the bookhad made any considerable impression on philosophical opinion. TheGerman, or _a priori_ view of human knowledge, and of the knowingfaculties, is likely for some time longer (though it may be hoped in adiminishing degree) to predominate among those who occupy themselveswith such inquiries, both here and on the Continent. But the "System ofLogic" supplies what was much wanted, a text-book of the oppositedoctrine--that which derives all knowledge from experience, and allmoral and intellectual qualities principally from the direction given tothe associations. I make as humble an estimate as anybody of what eitheran analysis of logical processes, or any possible canons of evidence, can do by themselves towards guiding or rectifying the operations of theunderstanding. Combined with other requisites, I certainly do think themof great use; but whatever may be the practical value of a truephilosophy of these matters, it is hardly possible to exaggerate themischiefs of a false one. The notion that truths external to the mindmay be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observationand experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the greatintellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aidof this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, ofwhich the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with theobligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its ownall-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such aninstrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices. And thechief strength of this false philosophy in morals, politics, andreligion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to theevidence of mathematics and of the cognate branches of physical science. To expel it from these, is to drive it from its stronghold: and becausethis had never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even afterwhat my father had written in his _Analysis of the Mind_, had inappearance, and as far as published writings were concerned, on thewhole the best of the argument. In attempting to clear up the realnature of the evidence of mathematical and physical truths, the _Systemof Logic_ met the intuitive philosophers on ground on which they hadpreviously been deemed unassailable; and gave its own explanation, fromexperience and association, of that peculiar character of what arecalled necessary truths, which is adduced as proof that their evidencemust come from a deeper source than experience. Whether this has beendone effectually, is still _sub judice_; and even then, to deprive amode of thought so strongly rooted in human prejudices and partialities, of its mere speculative support, goes but a very little way towardsovercoming it; but though only a step, it is a quite indispensable one;for since, after all, prejudice can only be successfully combated byphilosophy, no way can really be made against it permanently until ithas been shown not to have philosophy on its side. Being now released from any active concern in temporary politics, andfrom any literary occupation involving personal communication withcontributors and others, I was enabled to indulge the inclination, natural to thinking persons when the age of boyish vanity is once past, for limiting my own society to a very few persons. General society, asnow carried on in England, is so insipid an affair, even to the personswho make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason rather thanthe pleasure it affords. All serious discussion on matters on whichopinions differ, being considered ill-bred, and the national deficiencyin liveliness and sociability having prevented the cultivation of theart of talking agreeably on trifles, in which the French of the lastcentury so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is called societyto those who are not at the top of the tree, is the hope of being aidedto climb a little higher in it; while to those who are already at thetop, it is chiefly a compliance with custom, and with the supposedrequirements of their station. To a person of any but a very commonorder in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personalobjects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive: and most people, in the present day, of any really high class of intellect, make theircontact with it so slight, and at such long intervals, as to be almostconsidered as retiring from it altogether. Those persons of any mentalsuperiority who do otherwise, are, almost without exception, greatlydeteriorated by it. Not to mention loss of time, the tone of theirfeelings is lowered: they become less in earnest about those of theiropinions respecting which they must remain silent in the society theyfrequent: they come to look upon their most elevated objects asunpractical, or, at least, too remote from realization to be more than avision, or a theory, and if, more fortunate than most, they retain theirhigher principles unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons andaffairs of their own day they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling andjudgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep. A person of high intellect should never go into unintellectual societyunless he can enter it as an apostle; yet he is the only person withhigh objects who can safely enter it at all. Persons even ofintellectual aspirations had much better, if they can, make theirhabitual associates of at least their equals, and, as far as possible, their superiors, in knowledge, intellect, and elevation of sentiment. Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the fewcardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling onthese, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite ofanything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. Allthese circumstances united, made the number very small of those whosesociety, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought. Among these, by far the principal was the incomparable friend of whom Ihave already spoken. At this period she lived mostly with one youngdaughter, in a quiet part of the country, and only occasionally in town, with her first husband, Mr. Taylor. I visited her equally in bothplaces; and was greatly indebted to the strength of character whichenabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put onthe frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from Mr. Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together, though in all otherrespects our conduct during those years gave not the slightest groundfor any other supposition than the true one, that our relation to eachother at that time was one of strong affection and confidential intimacyonly. For though we did not consider the ordinances of society bindingon a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conductshould be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, northerefore on herself. In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, whichnow went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadthand depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understoodbefore I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turnedback from what there had been of excess in my reaction againstBenthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become muchmore indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and morewilling to be content with seconding the superficial improvement whichhad begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whoseconvictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I wasmuch more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the moredecidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almostthe only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regeneratesociety. But in addition to this, our opinions were far _more_ hereticalthan mine had been in the days of my most extreme Benthamism. In thosedays I had seen little further than the old school of politicaleconomists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in socialarrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the _dernier mot_ of legislation: and Ilooked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent onthese institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. Thenotion that it was possible to go further than this in removing theinjustice--for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedyor not--involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vastmajority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that byuniversal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, theportion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was ademocrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much lessdemocrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to beso wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially theselfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimateimprovement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedlyunder the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated withthe greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual whichmost Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forwardto a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and theindustrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, willbe applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when thedivision of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so greata degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concerton an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longereither be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exertthemselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to beexclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite thegreatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in theraw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in thebenefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose thatwe could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions theseobjects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or howdistant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that torender any such social transformation either possible or desirable, anequivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivatedherd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majorityof their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labourand combine for generous, or at all events for public and socialpurposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. Butthe capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, noris ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation ofthe sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, asreadily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slowdegrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successivegenerations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. Butthe hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in thegenerality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mindis not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night onthings which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurredfrom behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it iscapable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertionsas well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness whichforms the general character of the existing state of society, is _so_deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutionstends to foster it; and modern institutions in some respects more thanancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to doanything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequentin modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity. Theseconsiderations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attemptsto dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but weregarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (ina phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional, " and we welcomedwith the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments byselect individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whetherthey succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most usefuleducation of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacityof acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or makingthem aware of the defects which render them and others incapable ofdoing so. In the _Principles of Political Economy_, these opinions werepromulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition, rather more soin the second, and quite unequivocally in the third. The differencearose partly from the change of times, the first edition having beenwritten and sent to press before the French Revolution of 1848, afterwhich the public mind became more open to the reception of novelties inopinion, and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been thoughtvery startling a short time before. In the first edition thedifficulties of Socialism were stated so strongly, that the tone was onthe whole that of opposition to it. In the year or two which followed, much time was given to the study of the best Socialistic writers on theContinent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topicsinvolved in the controversy: and the result was that most of what hadbeen written on the subject in the first edition was cancelled, andreplaced by arguments and reflections which represent a more advancedopinion. The _Political Economy_ was far more rapidly executed than the _Logic_, or indeed than anything of importance which I had previously written. Itwas commenced in the autumn of 1845, and was ready for the press beforethe end of 1847. In this period of little more than two years there wasan interval of six months during which the work was laid aside, while Iwas writing articles in the _Morning Chronicle_ (which unexpectedlyentered warmly into my purpose) urging the formation of peasantproperties on the waste lands of Ireland. This was during the period ofthe Famine, the winter of 1846-47, when the stern necessities of thetime seemed to afford a chance of gaining attention for what appeared tome the only mode of combining relief to immediate destitution withpermanent improvement of the social and economical condition of theIrish people. But the idea was new and strange; there was no Englishprecedent for such a proceeding: and the profound ignorance of Englishpoliticians and the English public concerning all social phenomena notgenerally met with in England (however common elsewhere), made myendeavours an entire failure. Instead of a great operation on the wastelands, and the conversion of cottiers into proprietors, Parliamentpassed a Poor Law for maintaining them as paupers: and if the nation hasnot since found itself in inextricable difficulties from the jointoperation of the old evils and the quack remedy it is indebted for itsdeliverance to that most unexpected and surprising fact, thedepopulation of ireland, commenced by famine, and continued byemigration. The rapid success of the _Political Economy_ showed that the publicwanted, and were prepared for such a book. Published early in 1848, anedition of a thousand copies was sold in less than a year. Anothersimilar edition was published in the spring of 1849; and a third, of1250 copies, early in 1852. It was, from the first, continually citedand referred to as an authority, because it was not a book merely ofabstract science, but also of application, and treated Political Economynot as a thing by itself, but as a fragment of a greater whole; a branchof Social Philosophy, so interlinked with all the other branches, thatits conclusions, even in its own peculiar province, are only trueconditionally, subject to interference and counteraction from causes notdirectly within its scope: while to the character of a practical guideit has no pretension, apart from other classes of considerations. Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice tomankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing butpolitical economy (and therefore knew that ill) have taken uponthemselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had. But the numerous sentimental enemies of political economy, and its stillmore numerous interested enemies in sentimental guise, have been verysuccessful in gaining belief for this among other unmerited imputationsagainst it, and the _Principles_ having, in spite of the freedom of manyof its opinions, become for the present the most popular treatise on thesubject, has helped to disarm the enemies of so important a study. Theamount of its worth as an exposition of the science, and the value ofthe different applications which it suggests, others of course mustjudge. For a considerable time after this, I published no work of magnitude;though I still occasionally wrote in periodicals, and my correspondence(much of it with persons quite unknown to me), on subjects of publicinterest, swelled to a considerable bulk. During these years I wrote orcommenced various Essays, for eventual publication, on some of thefundamental questions of human and social life, with regard to severalof which I have already much exceeded the severity of the Horatianprecept. I continued to watch with keen interest the progress of publicevents. But it was not, on the whole, very encouraging to me. TheEuropean reaction after 1848, and the success of an unprincipled usurperin December, 1851, put an end, as it seemed, to all present hope forfreedom or social improvement in France and the Continent. In England, Ihad seen and continued to see many of the opinions of my youth obtaingeneral recognition, and many of the reforms in institutions, for whichI had through life contended, either effected or in course of being so. But these changes had been attended with much less benefit to humanwell-being than I should formerly have anticipated, because they hadproduced very little improvement in that which all real amelioration inthe lot of mankind depends on, their intellectual and moral state: andit might even be questioned if the various causes of deterioration whichhad been at work in the meanwhile, had not more than counterbalanced thetendencies to improvement. I had learnt from experience that many falseopinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least alteringthe habits of mind of which false opinions are the result. The Englishpublic, for example, are quite as raw and undiscerning on subjects ofpolitical economy since the nation has been converted to free-trade, asthey were before; and are still further from having acquired betterhabits of thought and feeling, or being in any way better fortifiedagainst error, on subjects of a more elevated character. For, thoughthey have thrown off certain errors, the general discipline of theirminds, intellectually and morally, is not altered. I am now convinced, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until agreat change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modesof thought. The old opinions in religion, morals, and politics, are somuch discredited in the more intellectual minds as to have lost thegreater part of their efficacy for good, while they have still lifeenough in them to be a powerful obstacle to the growing up of any betteropinions on those subjects. When the philosophic minds of the world canno longer believe its religion, or can only believe it withmodifications amounting to an essential change of its character, atransitional period commences, of weak convictions, paralysedintellects, and growing laxity of principle, which cannot terminateuntil a renovation has been effected in the basis of their beliefleading to the evolution of some faith, whether religious ormerely human, which they can really believe: and when things are in thisstate, all thinking or writing which does not tend to promote such arenovation, is of very little value beyond the moment. Since there waslittle in the apparent condition of the public mind, indicative of anytendency in this direction, my view of the immediate prospects of humanimprovement was not sanguine. More recently a spirit of free speculationhas sprung up, giving a more encouraging prospect of the gradual mentalemancipation of England; and concurring with the renewal under betterauspices, of the movement for political freedom in the rest of Europe, has given to the present condition of human affairs a more hopefulaspect. [3] Between the time of which I have now spoken, and the present, took placethe most important events of my private life. The first of these was mymarriage, in April, 1851, to the lady whose incomparable worth had madeher friendship the greatest source to me both of happiness and ofimprovement, during many years in which we never expected to be in anycloser relation to one another. Ardently as I should have aspired tothis complete union of our lives at any time in the course of myexistence at which it had been practicable, I, as much as my wife, wouldfar rather have foregone that privilege for ever, than have owed it tothe premature death of one for whom I had the sincerest respect, and shethe strongest affection. That event, however, having taken place inJuly, 1849, it was granted to me to derive from that evil my owngreatest good, by adding to the partnership of thought, feeling, andwriting which had long existed, a partnership of our entire existence. For seven and a-half years that blessing was mine; for seven and a-halfonly! I can say nothing which could describe, even in the faintestmanner, what that loss was and is. But because I know that she wouldhave wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I have left, and to work on for her purposes with such diminished strength as can bederived from thoughts of her, and communion with her memory. When two persons have their thoughts and speculations completely incommon; when all subjects of intellectual or moral interest arediscussed between them in daily life, and probed to much greater depthsthan are usually or conveniently sounded in writings intended forgeneral readers; when they set out from the same principles, and arriveat their conclusions by processes pursued jointly, it is of littleconsequence in respect to the question of originality, which of themholds the pen; the one who contributes least to the composition maycontribute more to the thought; the writings which result are the jointproduct of both, and it must often be impossible to disentangle theirrespective parts, and affirm that this belongs to one and that to theother. In this wide sense, not only during the years of our marriedlife, but during many of the years of confidential friendship whichpreceded, all my published writings were as much here work as mine; hershare in them constantly increasing as years advanced. But in certaincases, what belongs to her can be distinguished, and speciallyidentified. Over and above the general influence which her mind had overmine, the most valuable ideas and features in these jointproductions--those which have been most fruitful of important results, and have contributed most to the success and reputation of the worksthemselves--originated with her, were emanations from her mind, my partin them being no greater than in any of the thoughts which I found inprevious writers, and made my own only by incorporating them with my ownsystem of thought! During the greater part of my literary life I haveperformed the office in relation to her, which from a rather earlyperiod I had considered as the most useful part that I was qualified totake in the domain of thought, that of an interpreter of originalthinkers, and mediator between them and the public; for I had always ahumble opinion of my own powers as an original thinker, except inabstract science (logic, metaphysics, and the theoretic principles ofpolitical economy and politics), but thought myself much superior tomost of my contemporaries in willingness and ability to learn fromeverybody; as I found hardly anyone who made such a point of examiningwhat was said in defence of all opinions, however new or however old, inthe conviction that even if they were errors there might be a substratumof truth underneath them, and that in any case the discovery of what itwas that made them plausible, would be a benefit to truth. I had, inconsequence, marked this out as a sphere of usefulness in which I wasunder a special obligation to make myself active; the more so, as theacquaintance I had formed with the ideas of the Coleridgians, of theGerman thinkers, and of Carlyle, all of them fiercely opposed to themode of thought in which I had been brought up, had convinced me thatalong with much error they possessed much truth, which was veiled fromminds otherwise capable of receiving it by the transcendental andmystical phraseology in which they were accustomed to shut it up, andfrom which they neither cared, nor knew how, to disengage it; and I didnot despair of separating the truth from the error, and exposing it interms which would be intelligible and not repulsive to those on my ownside in philosophy. Thus prepared, it will easily be believed that whenI came into close intellectual communion with a person of the mosteminent faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself inthought, continually struck out truths far in advance of me, but inwhich I could not, as I had done in those others, detect any mixture oferror, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted in theassimilation of those truths, and the most valuable part of myintellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the pathswhich connected them with my general system of thought. [4] The first of my books in which her share was conspicious was the_Principles of Political Economy_. The _System of Logic_ owed little toher except in the minuter matters of composition, in which respect mywritings, both great and small, have largely benefited by her accurateand clear-sighted criticism. [5] The chapter of the _Political Econonomy_which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on'the Probable Future of the Labouring Classes, ' is entirely due to her;in the first draft of the book, that chapter did not exist. She pointedout the need of such a chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the bookwithout it; she was the cause of my writing it; and the more generalpart of the chapter, the statement and discussion of the two oppositetheories respecting the proper condition of the labouring classes, waswholly an exposition of her thoughts, often in words taken from her ownlips. The purely scientific part of the _Political Economy_ I did notlearn from her; but it was chiefly her influence that gave to the bookthat general tone by which it is distinguished from all previousexpositions of Political Economy that had any pretension to beingscientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds whichthose previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly inmaking the proper distinction between the laws of the Production ofWealth--which are laws of nature, dependent on the properties ofobjects--and the modes of its Distribution, which, subject to certainconditions, depend on human will. The commom run of political economistsconfuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, whichthey deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort;ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeableconditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but thenecessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merelyco-extensive with these; given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes; but this classof political economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and arguethat these causes must, by an inherent necessity, against which no humanmeans can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of theproduce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The _Principles ofPolitical Economy_ yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at thescientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under theconditions which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treatingthose conditions as final. The economic generalizations which depend noton necessaties of nature but on those combined with the existingarrangements of society, it deals with only as provisional, and asliable to be much altered by the progress of social improvement. I hadindeed partially learnt this view of things from the thoughts awakenedin me by the speculations of the St. Simonians; but it was made a livingprinciple pervading and animating the book by my wife's promptings. Thisexample illustrates well the general character of what she contributedto my writings. What was abstract and purely scientific was generallymine; the properly human element came from her: in all that concernedthe application of philosophy to the exigencies of human society andprogress, I was her pupil, alike in boldness of speculation andcautiousness of practical judgment. For, on the one hand, she was muchmore courageous and far-sighted than without her I should have been, inanticipation of an order of things to come, in which many of the limitedgeneralizations now so often confounded with universal principles willcease to be applicable. Those parts of my writings, and especially ofthe _Political Economy_, which contemplate possibilities in the futuresuch as, when affirmed by Socialists, have in general been fiercelydenied by political economists, would, but for her, either have beenabsent, or the suggestions would have been made much more timidly and ina more qualified form. But while she thus rendered me bolder inspeculation on human affairs, her practical turn of mind, and her almostunerring estimate of practical obstacles, repressed in me all tendenciesthat were really visionary. Her mind invested all ideas in a concreteshape, and formed to itself a conception of how they would actuallywork: and her knowledge of the existing feelings and conduct of mankindwas so seldom at fault, that the weak point in any unworkable suggestionseldom escapes her. [6] During the two years which immediately preceded the cessation of myofficial life, my wife and I were working together at the "Liberty. "I had first planned and written it as a short essay in 1854. It was inmounting the steps of the Capitol, in January, 1855, that the thoughtfirst arose of converting it into a volume. None of my writings havebeen either so carefully composed, or so sedulously corrected as this. After it had been written as usual twice over, we kept it by us, bringing it out from time to time, and going through it _de novo_, reading, weighing, and criticizing every sentence. Its final revisionwas to have been a work of the winter of 1858-9, the first after myretirement, which we had arranged to pass in the south of Europe. Thathope and every other were frustrated by the most unexpected and bittercalamity of her death--at Avignon, on our way to Montpellier, from asudden attack of pulmonary congestion. Since then I have sought for such allevation as my stateadmitted of, by the mode of life which most enabled me to feel her stillnear me. I bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where sheis buried, and there her daughter (my fellow-sufferer and now my chiefcomfort) and I, live constantly during a great portion of the year. Myobjects in life are solely those which were hers; my pursuits andoccupations those in which she shared, or sympathized, and which areindissolubly associated with her. Her memory is to me a religion, andher approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does allworthiness, I endeavour to regulate my life. After my irreparable loss, one of my earliest cares was to print andpublish the treatise, so much of which was the work of her whom I hadlost, and consecrate it to her memory. I have made no alteration oraddition to it, nor shall I ever. Though it wants the last touch of herhand, no substitute for that touch shall ever be attempted by mine. The _Liberty_ was more directly and literally our joint production thananything else which bears my name, for there was not a sentence of itthat was not several times gone through by us together, turned over inmany ways, and carefully weeded of any faults, either in thought orexpression, that we detected in it. It is in consequence of this that, although it never underwent her final revision, it far surpasses, as amere specimen of composition, anything which has proceeded from meeither before or since. With regard to the thoughts, it is difficult toidentify any particular part or element as being more hers than all therest. The whole mode of thinking of which the book was the expression, was emphatically hers. But I also was so thoroughly imbued with it, thatthe same thoughts naturally occurred to us both. That I was thuspenetrated with it, however, I owe in a great degree to her. There was amoment in my mental progress when I might easily have fallen into atendency towards over-government, both social and political; as therewas also a moment when, by reaction from a contrary excess, I might havebecome a less thorough radical and democrat than I am. In both thesepoints, as in many others, she benefited me as much by keeping me rightwhere I was right, as by leading me to new truths, and ridding me oferrors. My great readiness and eagerness to learn from everybody, and tomake room in my opinions for every new acquisition by adjusting the oldand the new to one another, might, but for her steadying influence, haveseduced me into modifying my early opinions too much. She was in nothingmore valuable to my mental development than by her just measure of therelative importance of different considerations, which often protectedme from allowing to truths I had only recently learnt to see, a moreimportant place in my thoughts than was properly their due. The _Liberty_ is likely to survive longer than anything else that I havewritten (with the possible exception of the _Logic_), because theconjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophictext-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively takingplace in modern society tend to bring out into ever stronger relief: theimportance, to man and society of a large variety in types of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself ininnumerable and conflicting directions. Nothing can better show how deepare the foundations of this truth, than the great impression made by theexposition of it at a time which, to superficial observation, did notseem to stand much in need of such a lesson. The fears we expressed, lest the inevitable growth of social equality and of the government ofpublic opinion, should impose on mankind an oppressive yoke ofuniformity in opinion and practice, might easily have appearedchimerical to those who looked more at present facts than at tendencies;for the gradual revolution that is taking place in society andinstitutions has, thus far, been decidedly favourable to the developmentof new opinions, and has procured for them a much more unprejudicedhearing than they previously met with. But this is a feature belongingto periods of transition, when old notions and feelings have beenunsettled, and no new doctrines have yet succeeded to their ascendancy. At such times people of any mental activity, having given up their oldbeliefs, and not feeling quite sure that those they still retain canstand unmodified, listen eagerly to new opinions. But this state ofthings is necessarily transitory: some particular body of doctrine intime rallies the majority round it, organizes social institutions andmodes of action conformably to itself, education impresses this newcreed upon the new generations without the mental processes that haveled to it, and by degrees it acquires the very same power ofcompression, so long exercised by the creeds of which it had taken theplace. Whether this noxious power will be exercised, depends on whethermankind have by that time become aware that it cannot be exercisedwithout stunting and dwarfing human nature. It is then that theteachings of the _Liberty_ will have their greatest value. And it is tobe feared that they will retain that value a long time. As regards originality, it has of course no other than that which everythoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving and expressingtruths which are common property. The leading thought of the book is onewhich though in many ages confined to insulated thinkers, mankind haveprobably at no time since the beginning of civilization been entirelywithout. To speak only of the last few generations, it is distinctlycontained in the vein of important thought respecting education andculture, spread through the European mind by the labours and genius ofPestalozzi. The unqualified championship of it by Wilhelm von Humboldtis referred to in the book; but he by no means stood alone in his owncountry. During the early part of the present century the doctrine ofthe rights of individuality, and the claim of the moral nature todevelop itself in its own way, was pushed by a whole school of Germanauthors even to exaggeration; and the writings of Goethe, the mostcelebrated of all German authors, though not belonging to that or to anyother school, are penetrated throughout by views of morals and ofconduct in life, often in my opinion not defensible, but which areincessantly seeking whatever defence they admit of in the theory of theright and duty of self-development. In our own country before the book_On Liberty_ was written, the doctrine of Individuality had beenenthusiastically asserted, in a style of vigorous declamation sometimesreminding one of Fichte, by Mr. William Maccall, in a series of writingsof which the most elaborate is entitled _Elements of Individualism_: anda remarkable American, Mr. Warren, had framed a System of Society, onthe foundation of _the Sovereignty of the individual_, had obtained anumber of followers, and had actually commenced the formation of aVillage Community (whether it now exists I know not), which, thoughbearing a superficial resemblance to some of the projects of Socialists, is diametrically opposite to them in principle, since it recognizes noauthority whatever in Society over the individual, except to enforceequal freedom of development for all individualities. As the book whichbears my name claimed no originality for any of its doctrines, and wasnot intended to write their history, the only author who had preceded mein their assertion, of whom I thought it appropriate to say anything, was Humboldt, who furnished the motto to the work; although in onepassage I borrowed from the Warrenites their phrase, the sovereignty ofthe individual. It is hardly necessary here to remark that there areabundant differences in detail, between the conception of the doctrineby any of the predecessors I have mentioned, and that set forth in thebook. The political circumstances of the time induced me, shortly after, tocomplete and publish a pamphlet (_Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_), part of which had been written some years previously on the occasion ofone of the abortive Reform Bills, and had at the time been approved andrevised by her. Its principal features were, hostility to the Ballot (achange of opinion in both of us, in which she rather preceded me), and aclaim of representation for minorities; not, however, at that time goingbeyond the cumulative vote proposed by Mr. Garth Marshall. In finishingthe pamphlet for publication, with a view to the discussions on theReform Bill of Lord Derby's and Mr. Disraeli's Government in 1859, Iadded a third feature, a plurality of votes, to be given, not toproperty, but to proved superiority of education. This recommendeditself to me as a means of reconciling the irresistible claim of everyman or woman to be consulted, and to be allowed a voice, in theregulation of affairs which vitally concern them, with the superiorityof weight justly due to opinions grounded on superiority of knowledge. The suggestion, however, was one which I had never discussed with myalmost infallible counsellor, and I have no evidence that she would haveconcurred in it. As far as I have been able to observe, it has foundfavour with nobody; all who desire any sort of inequality in theelectoral vote, desiring it in favour of property and not ofintelligence or knowledge. If it ever overcomes the strong feeling whichexists against it, this will only be after the establishment of asystematic National Education by which the various grades of politicallyvaluable acquirement may be accurately defined and authenticated. Without this it will always remain liable to strong, possiblyconclusive, objections; and with this, it would perhaps not be needed. It was soon after the publication of _Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_, that I became acquainted with Mr. Hare's admirable system of PersonalRepresentation, which, in its present shape, was then for the first timepublished. I saw in this great practical and philosophical idea, thegreatest improvement of which the system of representative government issusceptible; an improvement which, in the most felicitous manner, exactly meets and cures the grand, and what before seemed the inherent, defect of the representative system; that of giving to a numericalmajority all power, instead of only a power proportional to its numbers, and enabling the strongest party to exclude all weaker parties frommaking their opinions heard in the assembly of the nation, exceptthrough such opportunity as may be given to them by the accidentallyunequal distribution of opinions in different localities. To these greatevils nothing more than very imperfect palliations had seemed possible;but Mr. Hare's system affords a radical cure. This great discovery, forit is no less, in the political art, inspired me, as I believe it hasinspired all thoughtful persons who have adopted it, with new and moresanguine hopes respecting the prospects of human society; by freeing theform of political institutions towards which the whole civilized worldis manifestly and irresistibly tending, from the chief part of whatseemed to qualify, or render doubtful, its ultimate benefits. Minorities, so long as they remain minorities, are, and ought to be, outvoted; but under arrangements which enable any assemblage of voters, amounting to a certain number, to place in the legislature arepresentative of its own choice, minorities cannot be suppressed. Independent opinions will force their way into the council of the nationand make themselves heard there, a thing which often cannot happen inthe existing forms of representative democracy; and the legislature, instead of being weeded of individual peculiarities and entirely made upof men who simply represent the creed of great political or religiousparties, will comprise a large proportion of the most eminent individualminds in the country, placed there, without reference to party, byvoters who appreciate their individual eminence. I can understand thatpersons, otherwise intelligent, should, for want of sufficientexamination, be repelled from Mr. Hare's plan by what they think thecomplex nature of its machinery. But any one who does not feel the wantwhich the scheme is intended to supply; any one who throws it over as amere theoretical subtlety or crotchet, tending to no valuable purpose, and unworthy of the attention of practical men, may be pronounced anincompetent statesman, unequal to the politics of the future. I mean, unless he is a minister or aspires to become one: for we are quiteaccustomed to a minister continuing to profess unqualified hostility toan improvement almost to the very day when his conscience or hisinterest induces him to take it up as a public measure, and carry it. Had I met with Mr. Hare's system before the publication of my pamphlet, I should have given an account of it there. Not having done so, I wrotean article in _Fraser's Magazine_ (reprinted in my miscellaneouswritings) principally for that purpose, though I included in it, alongwith Mr. Hare's book, a review of two other productions on the questionof the day; one of them a pamphlet by my early friend, Mr. John Austin, who had in his old age become an enemy to all further Parliamentaryreform; the other an able and vigourous, though partially erroneous, work by Mr. Lorimer. In the course of the same summer I fulfilled a duty particularlyincumbent upon me, that of helping (by an article in the _EdinburghReview_) to make known Mr. Bain's profound treatise on the Mind, justthen completed by the publication of its second volume. And I carriedthrough the press a selection of my minor writings, forming the firsttwo volumes of _Dissertations and Discussions_. The selection had beenmade during my wife's lifetime, but the revision, in concert with her, with a view to republication, had been barely commenced; and when I hadno longer the guidance of her judgment I despaired of pursuing itfurther, and republished the papers as they were, with the exception ofstriking out such passages as were no longer in accordance with myopinions. My literary work of the year was terminated with an essay in_Fraser's Magazine_ (afterwards republished in the third volume of_Dissertations and Discussions_), entitled "A Few Words onNon-Intervention. " I was prompted to write this paper by a desire, whilevindicating England from the imputations commonly brought against her onthe Continent, of a peculiar selfishness in matters of foreign policy towarn Englishmen of the colour given to this imputation by the low tonein which English statesmen are accustomed to speak of English policy asconcerned only with English interests, and by the conduct of LordPalmerston at that particular time in opposing the Suez Canal; and Itook the opportunity of expressing ideas which had long been in my mind(some of them generated by my Indian experience, and others by theinternational questions which then greatly occupied the Europeanpublic), respecting the true principles of international morality, andthe legitimate modifications made in it by difference of times andcircumstances; a subject I had already, to some extent, discussed in thevindication of the French Provisional Government of 1848 against theattacks of Lord Brougham and others, which I published at the time inthe _Westminster Review_, and which is reprinted in the _Dissertations_. I had now settled, as I believed, for the remainder of my existence intoa purely literary life; if that can be called literary which continuedto be occupied in a pre-eminent degree with politics, and not merelywith theoretical, but practical politics, although a great part of theyear was spent at a distance of many hundred miles from the chief seatof the politics of my own country, to which, and primarily for which, Iwrote. But, in truth, the modern facilities of communication have notonly removed all the disadvantages, to a political writer in tolerablyeasy circumstances, of distance from the scene of political action, buthave converted them into advantages. The immediate and regular receiptof newspapers and periodicals keeps him _au courant_ of even the mosttemporary politics, and gives him a much more correct view of the stateand progress of opinion than he could acquire by personal contact withindividuals: for every one's social intercourse is more or less limitedto particular sets or classes, whose impressions and no others reach himthrough that channel; and experience has taught me that those who givetheir time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not havingleisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the publicmind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse whoreads the newspapers need be. There are, no doubt, disadvantages in toolong a separation from one's country--in not occasionally renewingone's impressions of the light in which men and things appear when seenfrom a position in the midst of them; but the deliberate judgment formedat a distance, and undisturbed by inequalities of perspective, is themost to be depended on, even for application to practice. Alternatingbetween the two positions, I combined the advantages of both. And, though the inspirer of my best thoughts was no longer with me, I was notalone: she had left a daughter, my stepdaughter, [Miss Helen Taylor, theinheritor of much of her wisdom, and of all her nobleness of character, ]whose ever growing and ripening talents from that day to this have beendevoted to the same great purposes [and have already made her namebetter and more widely known than was that of her mother, though farless so than I predict, that if she lives it is destined to become. Ofthe value of her direct cooperation with me, something will be saidhereafter, of what I owe in the way of instruction to her great powersof original thought and soundness of practical judgment, it would be avain attempt to give an adequate idea]. Surely no one ever before was sofortunate, as, after such a loss as mine, to draw another prize in thelottery of life [--another companion, stimulator, adviser, andinstructor of the rarest quality]. Whoever, either now or hereafter, maythink of me and of the work I have done, must never forget that it isthe product not of one intellect and conscience, but of three[, theleast considerable of whom, and above all the least original, is the onewhose name is attached to it]. The work of the years 1860 and 1861 consisted chiefly of two treatises, only one of which was intended for immediate publication. This was the_Considerations on Representative Government_; a connected exposition ofwhat, by the thoughts of many years, I had come to regard as the bestform of a popular constitution. Along with as much of the general theoryof government as is necessary to support this particular portion of itspractice, the volume contains many matured views of the principalquestions which occupy the present age, within the province of purelyorganic institutions, and raises, by anticipation, some other questionsto which growing necessities will sooner or later compel the attentionboth of theoretical and of practical politicians. The chief of theselast, is the distinction between the function of making laws, for whicha numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting goodlaws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorilyfulfilled by any other authority: and the consequent need of aLegislative Commission, as a permanent part of the constitution of afree country; consisting of a small number of highly trained politicalminds, on whom, when Parliament has determined that a law shall be made, the task of making it should be devolved: Parliament retaining the powerof passing or rejecting the bill when drawn up, but not of altering itotherwise than by sending proposed amendments to be dealt with by theCommission. The question here raised respecting the most important ofall public functions, that of legislation, is a particular case of thegreat problem of modern political organization, stated, I believe, forthe first time in its full extent by Bentham, though in my opinion notalways satisfactorily resolved by him; the combination of completepopular control over public affairs, with the greatest attainableperfection of skilled agency. The other treatise written at this time is the one which was publishedsome years[7] later under the title of _The Subjection of Women. _ It waswritten [at my daughter's suggestion] that there might, in any event, bein existence a written exposition of my opinions on that great question, as full and conclusive as I could make it. The intention was to keepthis among other unpublished papers, improving it from time to time if Iwas able, and to publish it at the time when it should seem likely to bemost useful. As ultimately published [it was enriched with someimportant ideas of my daughter's, and passages of her writing. But] inwhat was of my own composition, all that is most striking and profoundbelongs to my wife; coming from the fund of thought which had been madecommon to us both, by our innumerable conversations and discussions on atopic which filled so large a place in our minds. Soon after this time I took from their repository a portion of theunpublished papers which I had written during the last years of ourmarried life, and shaped them, with some additional matter, into thelittle work entitled _Utilitarianism_; which was first published, inthree parts, in successive numbers of _Fraser's Magazine_, andafterwards reprinted in a volume. Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become extremelycritical, by the commencement of the American civil war. My strongestfeelings were engaged in this struggle, which, I felt from thebeginning, was destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of thecourse of human affairs for an indefinite duration. Having been a deeplyinterested observer of the slavery quarrel in America, during the manyyears that preceded the open breach, I knew that it was in all itsstages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend theterritory of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniaryinterest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for itsclass privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in theadmirable work of my friend Professor Cairnes, _The Slave Power_. Theirsuccess, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers of evilwhich would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spiritsof its friends all over the civilized world, while it would create aformidable military power, grounded on the worst and most anti-socialform of the tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long timethe prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to all theprivileged classes of Europe a false confidence, probably only to beextinguished in blood. On the other hand, if the spirit of the North wassufficiently roused to carry the war to a successful termination, and ifthat termination did not come too soon and too easily, I foresaw, fromthe laws of human nature, and the experience of revolutions, that whenit did come it would in all probability be thorough: that the bulk ofthe Northern population, whose conscience had as yet been awakened onlyto the point of resisting the further extension of slavery, but whosefidelity to the Constitution of the United States made them disapproveof any attempt by the Federal Government to interfere with slavery inthe States where it already existed, would acquire feelings of anotherkind when the Constitution had been shaken off by armed rebellion, woulddetermine to have done for ever with the accursed thing, and would jointheir banner with that of the noble body of Abolitionists, of whomGarrison was the courageous and single-minded apostle, Wendell Phillipsthe eloquent orator, and John Brown the voluntary martyr. [8] Then, too, the whole mind of the United States would be let loose from its bonds, no longer corrupted by the supposed necessity of apologizing toforeigners for the most flagrant of all possible violations of the freeprinciples of their Constitution; while the tendency of a fixed state ofsociety to stereotype a set of national opinions would be at leasttemporarily checked, and the national mind would become more open to therecognition of whatever was bad in either the institutions or thecustoms of the people. These hopes, so far as related to slavery, havebeen completely, and in other respects are in course of beingprogressively realized. Foreseeing from the first this double set ofconsequences from the success or failure of the rebellion, it may beimagined with what feelings I contemplated the rush of nearly the wholeupper and middle classes of my own country even those who passed forLiberals, into a furious pro-Southern partisanship: the workingclasses, and some of the literary and scientific men, being almost thesole exceptions to the general frenzy. I never before felt so keenly howlittle permanent improvement had reached the minds of our influentialclasses, and of what small value were the liberal opinions they had gotinto the habit of professing. None of the Continental Liberals committedthe same frightful mistake. But the generation which had extorted negroemancipation from our West India planters had passed away; another hadsucceeded which had not learnt by many years of discussion and exposureto feel strongly the enormities of slavery; and the inattention habitualwith Englishmen to whatever is going on in the world outside their ownisland, made them profoundly ignorant of all the antecedents of thestruggle, insomuch that it was not generally believed in England, forthe first year or two of the war, that the quarrel was one of slavery. There were men of high principle and unquestionable liberality ofopinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or assimilated it tothe cases in which they were accustomed to sympathize, of a peoplestruggling for independence. It was my obvious duty to be one of the small minority who protestedagainst this perverted state of public opinion. I was not the first toprotest. It ought to be remembered to the honour of Mr. Hughes and ofMr. Ludlow, that they, by writings published at the very beginning ofthe struggle, began the protestation. Mr. Bright followed in one of themost powerful of his speeches, followed by others not less striking. Iwas on the point of adding my words to theirs, when there occurred, towards the end of 1861, the seizure of the Southern envoys on board aBritish vessel, by an officer of the United States. Even Englishforgetfulness has not yet had time to lose all remembrance of theexplosion of feeling in England which then burst forth, the expectation, prevailing for some weeks, of war with the United States, and thewarlike preparations actually commenced on this side. While this stateof things lasted, there was no chance of a hearing for anythingfavourable to the American cause; and, moreover, I agreed with those whothought the act unjustifiable, and such as to require that Englandshould demand its disavowal. When the disavowal came, and the alarm ofwar was over, I wrote, in January, 1862, the paper, in _Fraser'sMagazine_, entitled "The Contest in America, " [and I shall always feelgrateful to my daughter that her urgency prevailed on me to write itwhen I did, for we were then on the point of setting out for a journeyof some months in Greece and Turkey, and but for her, I should havedeferred writing till our return. ] Written and published when it was, this paper helped to encourage those Liberals who had felt overborne bythe tide of illiberal opinion, and to form in favour of the good cause anucleus of opinion which increased gradually, and, after the success ofthe North began to seem probable, rapidly. When we returned from ourjourney I wrote a second article, a review of Professor Cairnes' book, published in the _Westminster Review_. England is paying the penalty, inmany uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her rulingclasses stirred up in the United States by their ostentatious wishes forthe ruin of America as a nation; they have reason to be thankful that afew, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing firmly by theAmericans in the time of their greatest difficulty, effected a partialdiversion of these bitter feelings, and made Great Britain notaltogether odious to the Americans. This duty having been performed, my principal occupation for the nexttwo years was on subjects not political. The publication of Mr. Austin's_Lectures on Jurisprudence_ after his decease, gave me an opportunity ofpaying a deserved tribute to his memory, and at the same time expressingsome thoughts on a subject on which, in my old days of Benthamism, I hadbestowed much study. But the chief product of those years was the_Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_. His _Lectures_, published in 1860 and 1861, I had read towards the end of the latteryear, with a half-formed intention of giving an account of them in aReview, but I soon found that this would be idle, and that justice couldnot be done to the subject in less than a volume. I had then to considerwhether it would be advisable that I myself should attempt such aperformance. On consideration, there seemed to be strong reasons fordoing so. I was greatly disappointed with the _Lectures_. I read them, certainly, with no prejudice against Sir William Hamilton. I had up tothat time deferred the study of his _Notes to Reid_ on account of theirunfinished state, but I had not neglected his _Discussions inPhilosophy_; and though I knew that his general mode of treating thefacts of mental philosophy differed from that of which I most approved, yet his vigorous polemic against the later Transcendentalists, and hisstrenuous assertion of some important principles, especially theRelativity of human knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with hisopinions, and made me think that genuine psychology had considerablymore to gain than to lose by his authority and reputation. His_Lectures_ and the _Dissertations on Reid_ dispelled this illusion: andeven the _Discussions_, read by the light which these throw on them, lost much of their value. I found that the points of apparent agreementbetween his opinions and mine were more verbal than real; that theimportant philosophical principles which I had thought he recognised, were so explained away by him as to mean little or nothing, or werecontinually lost sight of, and doctrines entirely inconsistent with themwere taught in nearly every part of his philosophical writings. Myestimation of him was therefore so far altered, that instead ofregarding him as occupying a kind of intermediate position between thetwo rival philosophies, holding some of the principles of both, andsupplying to both powerful weapons of attack and defence, I now lookedupon him as one of the pillars, and in this country from his highphilosophical reputation the chief pillar, of that one of the two whichseemed to me to be erroneous. Now, the difference between these two schools of philosophy, that ofIntuition, and that of Experience and Association, is not a mere matterof abstract speculation; it is full of practical consequences, and liesat the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical opinionin an age of progress. The practical reformer has continually to demandthat changes be made in things which are supported by powerful andwidely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity andindefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensablepart of his argument to show, how those powerful feelings had theirorigin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophywhich discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts bycircumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimateelements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding upfavourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be thevoice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than thatof our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailingtendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character asinnate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofsthat by far the greater part of those differences, whether betweenindividuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturallywould be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chiefhindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and oneof the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. This tendency hasits source in the intuitional metaphysics which characterized thereaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, and it is atendency so agreeable to human indolence, as well as to conservativeinterests generally, that unless attacked at the very root, it is sureto be carried to even a greater length than is really justified by themore moderate forms of the intuitional philosophy. That philosophy notalways in its moderate forms, had ruled the thought of Europe for thegreater part of a century. My father's _Analysis of the Mind_, my own_Logic_, and Professor Bain's great treatise, had attempted tore-introduce a better mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite asmuch success as could be expected; but I had for some time felt that themere contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that there oughtto be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that controversial as well asexpository writings were needed, and that the time was come when suchcontroversy would be useful. Considering, then, the writings and fame ofSir W. Hamilton as the great fortress of the intuitional philosophy inthis country, a fortress the more formidable from the imposingcharacter, and the in many respects great personal merits and mentalendowments, of the man, I thought it might be a real service tophilosophy to attempt a thorough examination of all his most importantdoctrines, and an estimate of his general claims to eminence as aphilosopher; and I was confirmed in this resolution by observing that inthe writings of at least one, and him one of the ablest, of Sir W. Hamilton's followers, his peculiar doctrines were made the justificationof a view of religion which I hold to be profoundly immoral--that it isour duty to bow down in worship before a Being whose moral attributesare affirmed to be unknowable by us, and to be perhaps extremelydifferent from those which, when we are speaking of ourfellow-creatures, we call by the same names. As I advanced in my task, the damage to Sir W. Hamilton's reputationbecame greater than I at first expected, through the almost incrediblemultitude of inconsistencies which showed themselves on comparingdifferent passages with one another. It was my business, however, toshow things exactly as they were, and I did not flinch from it. Iendeavoured always to treat the philosopher whom I criticized with themost scrupulous fairness; and I knew that he had abundance of disciplesand admirers to correct me if I ever unintentionally did him injustice. Many of them accordingly have answered me, more or less elaborately, andthey have pointed out oversights and misunderstandings, though few innumber, and mostly very unimportant in substance. Such of those as had(to my knowledge) been pointed out before the publication of the latestedition (at present the third) have been corrected there, and theremainder of the criticisms have been, as far as seemed necessary, replied to. On the whole, the book has done its work: it has shown theweak side of Sir William Hamilton, and has reduced his too greatphilosophical reputation within more moderate bounds; and by some of itsdiscussions, as well as by two expository chapters, on the notions ofMatter and of Mind, it has perhaps thrown additional light on some ofthe disputed questions in the domain of psychology and metaphysics. After the completion of the book on Hamilton, I applied myself to a taskwhich a variety of reasons seemed to render specially incumbent upon me;that of giving an account, and forming an estimate, of the doctrines ofAuguste Comte. I had contributed more than any one else to make hisspeculations known in England, and, in consequence chiefly of what I hadsaid of him in my _Logic_, he had readers and admirers among thoughtfulmen on this side of the Channel at a time when his name had not yet inFrance emerged from obscurity. So unknown and unappreciated was he atthe time when my _Logic_ was written and published, that to criticizehis weak points might well appear superfluous, while it was a duty togive as much publicity as one could to the important contributions hehad made to philosophic thought. At the time, however, at which I havenow arrived, this state of affairs had entirely changed. His name, atleast, was known almost universally, and the general character of hisdoctrines very widely. He had taken his place in the estimation both offriends and opponents, as one of the conspicuous figures in the thoughtof the age. The better parts of his speculations had made great progressin working their way into those minds, which, by their previous cultureand tendencies, were fitted to receive them: under cover of those betterparts those of a worse character, greatly developed and added to in hislater writings, had also made some way, having obtained active andenthusiastic adherents, some of them of no inconsiderable personalmerit, in England, France, and other countries. These causes not onlymade it desirable that some one should undertake the task of siftingwhat is good from what is bad in M. Comte's speculations, but seemed toimpose on myself in particular a special obligation to make the attempt. This I accordingly did in two essays, published in successive numbers ofthe _Westminster Review_, and reprinted in a small volume under thetitle _Auguste Comte and Positivism_. The writings which I have now mentioned, together with a small number ofpapers in periodicals which I have not deemed worth preserving, were thewhole of the products of my activity as a writer during the years from1859 to 1865. In the early part of the last-mentioned year, incompliance with a wish frequently expressed to me by working men, Ipublished cheap People's Editions of those of my writings which seemedthe most likely to find readers among the working classes; viz, _Principles of Political Economy_, _Liberty_, and _RepresentativeGovernment_. This was a considerable sacrifice of my pecuniary interest, especially as I resigned all idea of deriving profit from the cheapeditions, and after ascertaining from my publishers the lowest pricewhich they thought would remunerate them on the usual terms of an equaldivision of profits, I gave up my half share to enable the price to befixed still lower. To the credit of Messrs. Longman they fixed, unasked, a certain number of years after which the copyright and stereotypeplates were to revert to me, and a certain number of copies after thesale of which I should receive half of any further profit. This numberof copies (which in the case of the _Political Economy_ was 10, 000) hasfor some time been exceeded, and the People's Editions have begun toyield me a small but unexpected pecuniary return, though very far froman equivalent for the diminution of profit from the Library Editions. In this summary of my outward life I have now arrived at the period atwhich my tranquil and retired existence as a writer of books was to beexchanged for the less congenial occupation of a member of the House ofCommons. The proposal made to me, early in 1865, by some electors ofWestminster, did not present the idea to me for the first time. It wasnot even the first offer I had received, for, more than ten yearsprevious, in consequence of my opinions on the Irish Land Question, Mr. Lucas and Mr. Duffy, in the name of the popular party in Ireland, offered to bring me into Parliament for an Irish county, which theycould easily have done: but the incompatibility of a seat in Parliamentwith the office I then held in the India House, precluded evenconsideration of the proposal. After I had quitted the India House, several of my friends would gladly have seen me a member of Parliament;but there seemed no probability that the idea would ever take anypractical shape. I was convinced that no numerous or influential portionof any electoral body, really wished to be represented by a person of myopinions; and that one who possessed no local connection or popularity, and who did not choose to stand as the mere organ of a party had smallchance of being elected anywhere unless through the expenditure ofmoney. Now it was, and is, my fixed conviction, that a candidate oughtnot to incur one farthing of expense for undertaking a public duty. Suchof the lawful expenses of an election as have no special reference toany particular candidate, ought to be borne as a public charge, eitherby the State or by the locality. What has to be done by the supportersof each candidate in order to bring his claims properly before theconstituency, should be done by unpaid agency or by voluntarysubscription. If members of the electoral body, or others, are willingto subscribe money of their own for the purpose of bringing, by lawfulmeans, into Parliament some one who they think would be useful there, noone is entitled to object: but that the expense, or any part of it, should fall on the candidate, is fundamentally wrong; because it amountsin reality to buying his seat. Even on the most favourable suppositionas to the mode in which the money is expended, there is a legitimatesuspicion that any one who gives money for leave to undertake a publictrust, has other than public ends to promote by it; and (a considerationof the greatest importance) the cost of elections, when borne by thecandidates, deprives the nation of the services, as members ofParliament, of all who cannot or will not afford to incur a heavyexpense. I do not say that, so long as there is scarcely a chance for anindependent candidate to come into Parliament without complying withthis vicious practice, it must always be morally wrong in him to spendmoney, provided that no part of it is either directly or indirectlyemployed in corruption. But, to justify it, he ought to be very certainthat he can be of more use to his country as a member of Parliament thanin any other mode which is open to him; and this assurance, in my owncase, I did not feel. It was by no means clear to me that I could domore to advance the public objects which had a claim on my exertions, from the benches of the House of Commons, than from the simple positionof a writer. I felt, therefore, that I ought not to seek election toParliament, much less to expend any money in procuring it. But the conditions of the question were considerably altered when a bodyof electors sought me out, and spontaneously offered to bring me forwardas their candidate. If it should appear, on explanation, that theypersisted in this wish, knowing my opinions, and accepting the onlyconditions on which I could conscientiously serve, it was questionablewhether this was not one of those calls upon a member of the communityby his fellow-citizens, which he was scarcely justified in rejecting. Itherefore put their disposition to the proof by one of the frankestexplanations ever tendered, I should think, to an electoral body by acandidate. I wrote, in reply to the offer, a letter for publication, saying that I had no personal wish to be a member of Parliament, that Ithought a candidate ought neither to canvass nor to incur any expense, and that I could not consent to do either. I said further, that ifelected, I could not undertake to give any of my time and labour totheir local interests. With respect to general politics, I told themwithout reserve, what I thought on a number of important subjects onwhich they had asked my opinion: and one of these being the suffrage, Imade known to them, among other things, my conviction (as I was bound todo, since I intended, if elected, to act on it), that women wereentitled to representation in Parliament on the same terms with men. Itwas the first time, doubtless, that such a doctrine had ever beenmentioned to English electors; and the fact that I was elected afterproposing it, gave the start to the movement which has since become sovigorous, in favour of women's suffrage. Nothing, at the time, appearedmore unlikely than that a candidate (if candidate I could be called)whose professions and conduct set so completely at defiance all ordinarynotions of electioneering, should nevertheless be elected. A well-knownliterary man[, who was also a man of society, ] was heard to say that theAlmighty himself would have no chance of being elected on such aprogramme. I strictly adhered to it, neither spending money norcanvassing, nor did I take any personal part in the election, untilabout a week preceding the day of nomination, when I attended a fewpublic meetings to state my principles and give to any questions whichthe electors might exercise their just right of putting to me for theirown guidance; answers as plain and unreserved as my address. On onesubject only, my religious opinions, I announced from the beginning thatI would answer no questions; a determination which appeared to becompletely approved by those who attended the meetings. My frankness onall other subjects on which I was interrogated, evidently did me farmore good than my answers, whatever they might be, did harm. Among theproofs I received of this, one is too remarkable not to be recorded. Inthe pamphlet, _Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_, I had said, ratherbluntly, that the working classes, though differing from those of someother countries, in being ashamed of lying, are yet generally liars. This passage some opponent got printed in a placard, which was handed tome at a meeting, chiefly composed of the working classes, and I wasasked whether I had written and published it. I at once answered "Idid. " Scarcely were these two words out of my mouth, when vehementapplause resounded through the whole meeting. It was evident that theworking people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasionfrom those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead ofthat, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was aperson whom they could trust. A more striking instance never came undermy notice of what, I believe, is the experience of those who best knowthe working classes, that the most essential of all recommendations totheir favour is that of complete straightforwardness; its presenceoutweighs in their minds very strong objections, while no amount ofother qualities will make amends for its apparent absence. The firstworking man who spoke after the incident I have mentioned (it was Mr. Odger) said, that the working classes had no desire not to be told oftheir faults; they wanted friends, not flatterers, and felt underobligation to any one who told them anything in themselves which hesincerely believed to require amendment. And to this the meetingheartily responded. Had I been defeated in the election, I should still have had no reasonto regret the contact it had brought me into with large bodies of mycountrymen; which not only gave me much new experience, but enabled meto scatter my political opinions rather widely, and, by making me knownin many quarters where I had never before been heard of, increased thenumber of my readers, and the presumable influence of my writings. Theselatter effects were of course produced in a still greater degree, when, as much to my surprise as to that of any one, I was returned toParliament by a majority of some hundreds over my Conservativecompetitor. I was a member of the House during the three sessions of the Parliamentwhich passed the Reform Bill; during which time Parliament wasnecessarily my main occupation, except during the recess. I was atolerably frequent speaker, sometimes of prepared speeches, sometimesextemporaneously. But my choice of occasions was not such as I shouldhave made if my leading object had been Parliamentary influence. When Ihad gained the ear of the House, which I did by a successful speech onMr. Gladstone's Reform Bill, the idea I proceeded on was that whenanything was likely to be as well done, or sufficiently well done, byother people, there was no necessity for me to meddle with it. As I, therefore, in general reserved myself for work which no others werelikely to do, a great proportion of my appearances were on points onwhich the bulk of the Liberal party, even the advanced portion of it, either were of a different opinion from mine, or were comparativelyindifferent. Several of my speeches, especially one against the motionfor the abolition of capital punishment, and another in favour ofresuming the right of seizing enemies' goods in neutral vessels, wereopposed to what then was, and probably still is, regarded as theadvanced liberal opinion. My advocacy of women's suffrage and ofPersonal Representation, were at the time looked upon by many as whimsof my own; but the great progress since made by those opinions, andespecially the response made from almost all parts of the kingdom to thedemand for women's suffrage, fully justified the timeliness of thosemovements, and have made what was undertaken as a moral and social duty, a personal success. Another duty which was particularly incumbent on meas one of the Metropolitan Members, was the attempt to obtain aMunicipal Government for the Metropolis: but on that subject theindifference of the House of Commons was such that I found hardly anyhelp or support within its walls. On this subject, however, I was theorgan of an active and intelligent body of persons outside, with whom, and not with me, the scheme originated, and who carried on all theagitation on the subject and drew up the Bills. My part was to bring inBills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them during theshort time they were allowed to remain before the House; after havingtaken an active part in the work of a Committee presided over by Mr. Ayrton, which sat through the greater part of the Session of 1866, totake evidence on the subject. The very different position in which thequestion now stands (1870) may justly be attributed to the preparationwhich went on during those years, and which produced but little visibleeffect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong privateinterests on one side, and only the public good on the other, have asimilar period of incubation to go through. The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament was to do workwhich others were not able or not willing to do, made me think it myduty to come to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism on occasionswhen the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advancedLiberals in the House, preferred not to incur. My first vote in theHouse was in support of an amendment in favour of Ireland, moved by anIrish member, and for which only five English and Scotch votes weregiven, including my own: the other four were Mr. Bright, Mr. McLaren, Mr. T. B. Potter, and Mr. Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered[9]was on the bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus inIreland. In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode of governingIreland, I did no more than the general opinion of England now admits tohave been just; but the anger against Fenianism was then in all itsfreshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as anapology for them; and I was so unfavourably received by the House, thatmore than one of my friends advised me (and my own judgment agreed withthe advice) to wait, before speaking again, for the favourableopportunity that would be given by the first great debate on the ReformBill. During this silence, many flattered themselves that I had turnedout a failure, and that they should not be troubled with me any more. Perhaps their uncomplimentary comments may, by the force of reaction, have helped to make my speech on the Reform Bill the success it was. Myposition in the House was further improved by a speech in which Iinsisted on the duty of paying off the National Debt before our coalsupplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some of the Toryleaders who had quoted against me certain passages of my writings, andcalled me to account for others, especially for one in my_Considerations on Representative Government_, which said that theConservative party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidestparty. They gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which upto that time had not excited any notice, but the _sobriquet_ of "thestupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time afterwards. Havingnow no longer any apprehension of not being listened to, I confinedmyself, as I have since thought too much, to occasions on which myservices seemed specially needed, and abstained more than enough fromspeaking on the great party questions. With the exception of Irishquestions, and those which concerned the working classes, a singlespeech on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill was nearly all that I contributedto the great decisive debates of the last two of my three sessions. I have, however, much satisfaction in looking back to the part I took onthe two classes of subjects just mentioned. With regard to the workingclasses, the chief topic of my speech on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill wasthe assertion of their claims to the suffrage. A little later, after theresignation of Lord Russell's Ministry and the succession of a ToryGovernment, came the attempt of the working classes to hold a meeting inHyde Park, their exclusion by the police, and the breaking down of thepark railing by the crowd. Though Mr. Beales and the leaders of theworking men had retired under protest before this took place, a scuffleensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by the police, andthe exasperation of the working men was extreme. They showed adetermination to make another attempt at a meeting in the Park, to whichmany of them would probably have come armed; the Government mademilitary preparations to resist the attempt, and something very seriousseemed impending. At this crisis I really believe that I was the meansof preventing much mischief. I had in my place in Parliament taken theside of the working men, and strongly censured the conduct of theGovernment. I was invited, with several other Radical members, to aconference with the leading members of the Council of the Reform League;and the task fell chiefly upon myself, of persuading them to give up theHyde Park project, and hold their meeting elsewhere. It was not Mr. Beales and Colonel Dickson who needed persuading; on the contrary, itwas evident that these gentlemen had already exerted their influence inthe same direction, thus far without success. It was the working men whoheld out, and so bent were they on their original scheme, that I wasobliged to have recourse to _les grands moyens_. I told them that aproceeding which would certainly produce a collision with the military, could only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of affairshad become such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thoughtthemselves able to accomplish one. To this argument, after considerablediscussion, they at last yielded: and I was able to inform Mr. Walpolethat their intention was given up. I shall never forget the depth of hisrelief or the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. After the workingmen had conceded so much to me, I felt bound to comply with theirrequest that I would attend and speak at their meeting at theAgricultural Hall; the only meeting called by the Reform League which Iever attended. I had always declined being a member of the League, onthe avowed ground that I did not agree in its programme of manhoodsuffrage and the ballot: from the ballot I dissented entirely; and Icould not consent to hoist the flag of manhood suffrage, even on theassurance that the exclusion of women was not intended to be implied;since if one goes beyond what can be immediately carried, and professesto take one's stand on a principle, one should go the whole length ofthe principle. I have entered thus particularly into this matter becausemy conduct on this occasion gave great displeasure to the Tory andTory-Liberal press, who have charged me ever since with having shownmyself, in the trials of public life, intemperate and passionate. I donot know what they expected from me; but they had reason to be thankfulto me if they knew from what I had, in all probability preserved them. And I do not believe it could have been done, at that particularjuncture, by any one else. No other person, I believe, had at thatmoment the necessary influence for restraining the working classes, except Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, neither of whom was available: Mr. Gladstone, for obvious reasons; Mr. Bright because he was out of town. When, some time later, the Tory Government brought in a bill to preventpublic meetings in the Parks, I not only spoke strongly in opposition toit, but formed one of a number of advanced Liberals, who, aided by thevery late period of the session, succeeded in defeating the Bill by whatis called talking it out. It has not since been renewed. On Irish affairs also I felt bound to take a decided part. I was one ofthe foremost in the deputation of Members of Parliament who prevailed onLord Derby to spare the life of the condemned Fenian insurgent, GeneralBurke. The Church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders ofthe party, in the session of 1868, as to require no more from me than anemphatic adhesion: but the land question was by no means in so advanceda position; the superstitions of landlordism had up to that time beenlittle challenged, especially in Parliament, and the backward state ofthe question, so far as concerned the Parliamentary mind, was evidencedby the extremely mild measure brought in by Lord Russell's government in1866, which nevertheless could not be carried. On that bill I deliveredone of my most careful speeches, in which I attempted to lay down someof the principles of the subject, in a manner calculated less tostimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince opponents. Theengrossing subject of Parliamentary Reform prevented either this bill, or one of a similar character brought in by Lord Derby's Government, from being carried through. They never got beyond the second reading. Meanwhile the signs of Irish disaffection had become much more decided;the demand for complete separation between the two countries had assumeda menacing aspect, and there were few who did not feel that if there wasstill any chance of reconciling Ireland to the British connection, itcould only be by the adoption of much more thorough reforms in theterritorial and social relations of the country, than had yet beencontemplated. The time seemed to me to have come when it would be usefulto speak out my whole mind; and the result was my pamphlet _England andIreland_, which was written in the winter of 1867, and published shortlybefore the commencement of the session of 1868. The leading features ofthe pamphlet were, on the one hand, an argument to show theundesirableness, for Ireland as well as England, of separation betweenthe countries, and on the other, a proposal for settling the landquestion by giving to the existing tenants a permanent tenure, at afixed rent, to be assessed after due inquiry by the State. The pamphlet was not popular, except in Ireland, as I did not expect itto be. But, if no measure short of that which I proposed would do fulljustice to Ireland, or afford a prospect of conciliating the mass of theIrish people, the duty of proposing it was imperative; while if, on theother hand, there was any intermediate course which had a claim to atrial, I well knew that to propose something which would be calledextreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a moremoderate experiment. It is most improbable that a measure conceding somuch to the tenantry as Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill, would have beenproposed by a Government, or could have been carried through Parliament, unless the British public had been led to perceive that a case might bemade, and perhaps a party formed, for a measure considerably stronger. It is the character of the British people, or at least of the higher andmiddle classes who pass muster for the British people, that to inducethem to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should lookupon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme andviolent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. So itproved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but anyscheme for Irish Land reform short of mine, came to be thought moderateby comparison. I may observe that the attacks made on my plan usuallygave a very incorrect idea of its nature. It was usually discussed as aproposal that the State should buy up the land and become the universallandlord; though in fact it only offered to each individual landlordthis as an alternative, if he liked better to sell his estate than toretain it on the new conditions; and I fully anticipated that mostlandlords would continue to prefer the position of landowners to that ofGovernment annuitants, and would retain their existing relation to theirtenants, often on more indulgent terms than the full rents on which thecompensation to be given them by Government would have been based. Thisand many other explanations I gave in a speech on Ireland, in the debateon Mr. Maguire's Resolution, early in the session of 1868. A correctedreport of this speech, together with my speech on Mr. Fortescue's Bill, has been published (not by me, but with my permission) in Ireland. Another public duty, of a most serious kind, it was my lot to have toperform, both in and out of Parliament, during these years. Adisturbance in Jamaica, provoked in the first instance by injustice, andexaggerated by rage and panic into a premeditated rebellion, had beenthe motive or excuse for taking hundreds of innocent lives by militaryviolence, or by sentence of what were called courts-martial, continuingfor weeks after the brief disturbance had been put down; with many addedatrocities of destruction of property logging women as well as men, anda general display of the brutal recklessness which usually prevails whenfire and sword are let loose. The perpetrators of those deeds weredefended and applauded in England by the same kind of people who had solong upheld negro slavery: and it seemed at first as if the Britishnation was about to incur the disgrace of letting pass without even aprotest, excesses of authority as revolting as any of those for which, when perpetrated by the instruments of other governments, Englishmen canhardly find terms sufficient to express their abhorrence. After a shorttime, however, an indignant feeling was roused: a voluntary Associationformed itself under the name of the Jamaica Committee, to take suchdeliberation and action as the case might admit of, and adhesions pouredin from all parts of the country. I was abroad at the time, but I sentin my name to the Committee as soon as I heard of it, and took an activepart in the proceedings from the time of my return. There was much moreat stake than only justice to the negroes, imperative as was thatconsideration. The question was, whether the British dependencies, andeventually, perhaps, Great Britain itself, were to be under thegovernment of law, or of military licence; whether the lives and personsof British subjects are at the mercy of any two or three officershowever raw and inexperienced or reckless and brutal, whom apanic-stricken Governor, or other functionary, may assume the right toconstitute into a so-called court-martial. This question could only bedecided by an appeal to the tribunals; and such an appeal the Committeedetermined to make. Their determination led to a change in thechairmanship of the Committee, as the chairman, Mr. Charles Buxton, thought it not unjust indeed, but inexpedient, to prosecute GovernorEyre and his principal subordinates in a criminal court: but anumerously attended general meeting of the Association having decidedthis point against him, Mr. Buxton withdrew from the Committee, thoughcontinuing to work in the cause, and I was, quite unexpectedly on my ownpart, proposed and elected chairman. It became, in consequence, my dutyto represent the Committee in the House of Commons, sometimes by puttingquestions to the Government, sometimes as the recipient of questions, more or less provocative, addressed by individual members to myself; butespecially as speaker in the important debate originated in the sessionof 1866, by Mr. Buxton: and the speech I then delivered is that which Ishould probably select as the best of my speeches in Parliament. [10] Formore than two years we carried on the combat, trying every avenuelegally open to us, to the Courts of Criminal Justice. A bench ofmagistrates in one of the most Tory counties in England dismissed ourcase: we were more successful before the magistrates at Bow Street;which gave an opportunity to the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen'sBench, Sir Alexander Cockburn, for delivering his celebrated charge, which settled the law of the question in favour of liberty, as far as itis in the power of a judge's charge to settle it. There, however, oursuccess ended, for the Old Bailey Grand jury by throwing out our billprevented the case from coming to trial. It was clear that to bringEnglish functionaries to the bar of a criminal court for abuses of powercommitted against negroes and mulattoes was not a popular proceedingwith the English middle classes. We had, however, redeemed, so far aslay in us, the character of our country, by showing that there was atany rate a body of persons determined to use all the means which the lawafforded to obtain justice for the injured. We had elicited from thehighest criminal judge in the nation an authoritative declaration thatthe law was what we maintained it to be; and we had given an emphaticwarning to those who might be tempted to similar guilt hereafter, that, though they might escape the actual sentence of a criminal tribunal, they were not safe against being put to some trouble and expense inorder to avoid it. Colonial governors and other persons in authority, will have a considerable motive to stop short of such extremities infuture. As a matter of curiosity I kept some specimens of the abusive letters, almost all of them anonymous, which I received while these proceedingswere going on. They are evidence of the sympathy felt with thebrutalities in Jamaica by the brutal part of the population at home. They graduated from coarse jokes, verbal and pictorial, up to threats ofassassination. Among other matters of importance in which I took an active part, butwhich excited little interest in the public, two deserve particularmention. I joined with several other independent Liberals in defeatingan Extradition Bill introduced at the very end of the session of 1866, and by which, though surrender avowedly for political offences was notauthorized, political refugees, if charged by a foreign Government withacts which are necessarily incident to all attempts at insurrection, would have been surrendered to be dealt with by the criminal courts ofthe Government against which they had rebelled: thus making the BritishGovernment an accomplice in the vengeance of foreign despotisms. Thedefeat of this proposal led to the appointment of a Select Committee (inwhich I was included), to examine and report on the whole subject ofExtradition Treaties; and the result was, that in the Extradition Actwhich passed through Parliament after I had ceased to be a member, opportunity is given to any one whose extradition is demanded, of beingheard before an English court of justice to prove that the offence withwhich he is charged, is really political. The cause of European freedomhas thus been saved from a serious misfortune, and our own country froma great iniquity. The other subject to be mentioned is the fight kept upby a body of advanced Liberals in the session of 1868, on the BriberyBill of Mr. Disraeli's Government, in which I took a very active part. Ihad taken counsel with several of those who had applied their minds mostcarefully to the details of the subject--Mr. W. D. Christie, SerjeantPulling, Mr. Chadwick--as well as bestowed much thought of my own, forthe purpose of framing such amendments and additional clauses as mightmake the Bill really effective against the numerous modes of corruption, direct and indirect, which might otherwise, as there was much reason tofear, be increased instead of diminished by the Reform Act. We alsoaimed at engrafting on the Bill, measures for diminishing themischievous burden of what are called the legitimate expenses ofelections. Among our many amendments, was that of Mr. Fawcett for makingthe returning officer's expenses a charge on the rates, instead of onthe candidates; another was the prohibition of paid canvassers, and thelimitation of paid agents to one for each candidate; a third was theextension of the precautions and penalties against bribery to municipalelections, which are well known to be not only a preparatory school forbribery at parliamentary elections, but an habitual cover for it. TheConservative Government, however, when once they had carried the leadingprovision of their Bill (for which I voted and spoke), the transfer ofthe jurisdiction in elections from the House of Commons to the Judges, made a determined resistance to all other improvements; and after one ofour most important proposals, that of Mr. Fawcett, had actually obtaineda majority, they summoned the strength of their party and threw out theclause in a subsequent stage. The Liberal party in the House was greatlydishonoured by the conduct of many of its members in giving no helpwhatever to this attempt to secure the necessary conditions of an honestrepresentation of the people. With their large majority in the Housethey could have carried all the amendments, or better ones if they hadbetter to propose. But it was late in the session; members were eager toset about their preparations for the impending General Election: andwhile some (such as Sir Robert Anstruther) honourably remained at theirpost, though rival candidates were already canvassing their constituency, a much greater number placed their electioneering interests before theirpublic duty. Many Liberals also looked with indifference on legislationagainst bribery, thinking that it merely diverted public interest fromthe Ballot, which they considered--very mistakenly as I expect it willturn out--to be a sufficient, and the only, remedy. From these causes ourfight, though kept up with great vigour for several nights, was whollyunsuccessful, and the practices which we sought to render more difficult, prevailed more widely than ever in the first General Election held underthe new electoral law. In the general debates on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, my participationwas limited to the one speech already mentioned; but I made the Bill anoccasion for bringing the two great improvements which remain to be madein Representative Government, formally before the House and the nation. One of them was Personal, or, as it is called with equal propriety, Proportional Representation. I brought this under the consideration ofthe House, by an expository and argumentative speech on Mr. Hare's plan;and subsequently I was active in support of the very imperfectsubstitute for that plan, which, in a small number of constituencies, Parliament was induced to adopt. This poor makeshift had scarcely anyrecommendation, except that it was a partial recognition of the evilwhich it did so little to remedy. As such, however, it was attacked bythe same fallacies, and required to be defended on the same principles, as a really good measure; and its adoption in a few Parliamentaryelections, as well as the subsequent introduction of what is called theCumulative Vote in the elections for the London School Board, have hadthe good effect of converting the equal claim of all electors to aproportional share in the representation, from a subject of merelyspeculative discussion, into a question of practical politics, muchsooner than would otherwise have been the case. This assertion of my opinions on Personal Representation cannot becredited with any considerable or visible amount of practical result. Itwas otherwise with the other motion which I made in the form of anamendment to the Reform Bill, and which was by far the most important, perhaps the only really important, public service I performed in thecapacity of a Member of Parliament: a motion to strike out the wordswhich were understood to limit the electoral franchise to males, andthereby to admit to the suffrage all women who, as householders orotherwise, possessed the qualification required of male electors. Forwomen not to make their claim to the suffrage, at the time when theelective franchise was being largely extended, would have been to abjurethe claim altogether; and a movement on the subject was begun in 1866, when I presented a petition for the suffrage, signed by a considerablenumber of distinguished women. But it was as yet uncertain whether theproposal would obtain more than a few stray votes in the House: andwhen, after a debate in which the speaker's on the contrary side wereconspicuous by their feebleness, the votes recorded in favour of themotion amounted to 73--made up by pairs and tellers to above 80--thesurprise was general, and the encouragement great: the greater, too, because one of those who voted for the motion was Mr. Bright, a factwhich could only be attributed to the impression made on him by thedebate, as he had previously made no secret of his nonconcurrence in theproposal. [The time appeared to my daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, to havecome for forming a Society for the extension of the suffrage to women. The existence of the Society is due to my daughter's initiative; itsconstitution was planned entirely by her, and she was the soul of themovement during its first years, though delicate health andsuperabundant occupation made her decline to be a member of theExecutive Committee. Many distinguished members of parliament, professors, and others, and some of the most eminent women of whom thecountry can boast, became members of the Society, a large proportioneither directly or indirectly through my daughter's influence, shehaving written the greater number, and all the best, of the letters bywhich adhesions was obtained, even when those letters bore my signature. In two remarkable instances, those of Miss Nightingale and Miss MaryCarpenter, the reluctance those ladies had at first felt to comeforward, (for it was not on their past difference of opinion) wasovercome by appeals written by my daughter though signed by me. Associations for the same object were formed in various local centres, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, and Glasgow; and otherswhich have done much valuable work for the cause. All the Societies takethe title of branches of the National Society for Women's Suffrage; buteach has its own governing body, and acts in complete independence ofthe others. ] I believe I have mentioned all that is worth remembering of myproceedings in the House. But their enumeration, even if complete, wouldgive but an inadequate idea of my occupations during that period, andespecially of the time taken up by correspondence. For many years beforemy election to Parliament, I had been continually receiving letters fromstrangers, mostly addressed to me as a writer on philosophy, and eitherpropounding difficulties or communicating thoughts on subjects connectedwith logic or political economy. In common, I suppose, with all who areknown as political economists, I was a recipient of all the shallowtheories and absurd proposals by which people are perpetuallyendeavouring to show the way to universal wealth and happiness by someartful reorganization of the currency. When there were signs ofsufficient intelligence in the writers to make it worth while attemptingto put them right, I took the trouble to point out their errors, untilthe growth of my correspondence made it necessary to dismiss suchpersons with very brief answers. Many, however, of the communications Ireceived were more worthy of attention than these, and in some, oversights of detail were pointed out in my writings, which I was thusenabled to correct. Correspondence of this sort naturally multipliedwith the multiplication of the subjects on which I wrote, especiallythose of a metaphysical character. But when I became a member ofParliament. I began to receive letters on private grievances and onevery imaginable subject that related to any kind of public affairs, however remote from my knowledge or pursuits. It was not my constituentsin Westminster who laid this burthen on me: they kept with remarkablefidelity to the understanding on which I had consented to serve. Ireceived, indeed, now and then an application from some ingenuous youthto procure for him a small government appointment; but these were few, and how simple and ignorant the writers were, was shown by the fact thatthe applications came in about equally whichever party was in power. Myinvariable answer was, that it was contrary to the principles on which Iwas elected to ask favours of any Government. But, on the whole, hardlyany part of the country gave me less trouble than my own constituents. The general mass of correspondence, however, swelled into an oppressiveburthen. [At this time, and thenceforth, a great proportion of all my letters(including many which found their way into the newspapers) were notwritten by me but by my daughter; at first merely from her willingnessto help in disposing of a mass of letters greater than I could getthrough without assistance, but afterwards because I thought the lettersshe wrote superior to mine, and more so in proportion to the difficultyand importance of the occasion. Even those which I wrote myself weregenerally much improved by her, as is also the case with all the morerecent of my prepared speeches, of which, and of some of my publishedwritings, not a few passages, and those the most successful, were hers. ] While I remained in Parliament my work as an author was unavoidablylimited to the recess. During that time I wrote (besides the pamphlet onIreland, already mentioned), the Essay on Plato, published in the_Edinburgh Review_, and reprinted in the third volume of _Dissertationsand Discussions_; and the address which, conformably to custom, Idelivered to the University of St. Andrew's, whose students had done methe honour of electing me to the office of Rector. In this Discourse Igave expression to many thoughts and opinions which had beenaccumulating in me through life, respecting the various studies whichbelong to a liberal education, their uses and influences, and the modein which they should be pursued to render their influences mostbeneficial. The position taken up, vindicating the high educationalvalue alike of the old classic and the new scientific studies, on evenstronger grounds than are urged by most of their advocates, andinsisting that it is only the stupid inefficiency of the usual teachingwhich makes those studies be regarded as competitors instead of allies, was, I think, calculated, not only to aid and stimulate the improvementwhich has happily commenced in the national institutions for highereducation, but to diffuse juster ideas than we often find, even inhighly educated men, on the conditions of the highest mentalcultivation. During this period also I commenced (and completed soon after I had leftParliament) the performance of a duty to philosophy and to the memory ofmy father, by preparing and publishing an edition of the _Analysis ofthe Phenomena of the Human Mind_, with notes bringing up the doctrinesof that admirable book to the latest improvements in science and inspeculation. This was a joint undertaking: the psychological notes beingfurnished in about equal proportions by Mr. Bain and myself, while Mr. Grote supplied some valuable contributions on points in the history ofphilosophy incidentally raised, and Dr. Andrew Findlater supplied thedeficiencies in the book which had been occasioned by the imperfectphilological knowledge of the time when it was written. Having beenoriginally published at a time when the current of metaphysicalspeculation ran in a quite opposite direction to the psychology ofExperience and Association, the _Analysis_ had not obtained the amountof immediate success which it deserved, though it had made a deepimpression on many individual minds, and had largely contributed, through those minds, to create that more favourable atmosphere for theAssociation Psychology of which we now have the benefit. Admirablyadapted for a class book of the Experience Metaphysics, it only requiredto be enriched, and in some cases corrected, by the results of morerecent labours in the same school of thought, to stand, as it now does, in company with Mr. Bain's treatises, at the head of the systematicworks on Analytic psychology. In the autumn of 1868 the Parliament which passed the Reform Act wasdissolved, and at the new election for Westminster I was thrown out; notto my surprise, nor, I believe, to that of my principal supporters, though in the few days preceding the election they had become moresanguine than before. That I should not have been elected at all wouldnot have required any explanation; what excites curiosity is that Ishould have been elected the first time, or, having been elected then, should have been defeated afterwards. But the efforts made to defeat mewere far greater on the second occasion than on the first. For onething, the Tory Government was now struggling for existence, and successin any contest was of more importance to them. Then, too, all persons ofTory feelings were far more embittered against me individually than onthe previous occasion; many who had at first been either favourable orindifferent, were vehemently opposed to my re-election. As I had shownin my political writings that I was aware of the weak points indemocratic opinions, some Conservatives, it seems, had not been withouthopes of finding me an opponent of democracy: as I was able to see theConservative side of the question, they presumed that, like them, Icould not see any other side. Yet if they had really read my writings, they would have known that after giving full weight to all that appearedto me well grounded in the arguments against democracy, I unhesitatinglydecided in its favour, while recommending that it should be accompaniedby such institutions as were consistent with its principle andcalculated to ward off its inconveniences: one of the chief of theseremedies being Proportional Representation, on which scarcely any of theConservatives gave me any support. Some Tory expectations appear to havebeen founded on the approbation I had expressed of plural voting, undercertain conditions: and it has been surmised that the suggestion of thissort made in one of the resolutions which Mr. Disraeli introduced intothe House preparatory to his Reform Bill (a suggestion which meetingwith no favour, he did not press), may have been occasioned by what Ihad written on the point: but if so, it was forgotten that I had made itan express condition that the privilege of a plurality of votes shouldbe annexed to education, not to property, and even so, had approved ofit only on the supposition of universal suffrage. How utterlyinadmissible such plural voting would be under the suffrage given by thepresent Reform Act, is proved, to any who could otherwise doubt it, bythe very small weight which the working classes are found to possess inelections, even under the law which gives no more votes to any oneelector than to any other. While I thus was far more obnoxious to the Tory interest, and to manyConservative Liberals than I had formerly been, the course I pursued inParliament had by no means been such as to make Liberals generally atall enthusiastic in my support. It has already been mentioned, how largea proportion of my prominent appearances had been on questions on whichI differed from most of the Liberal party, or about which they caredlittle, and how few occasions there had been on which the line I tookwas such as could lead them to attach any great value to me as an organof their opinions. I had moreover done things which had excited, in manyminds, a personal prejudice against me. Many were offended by what theycalled the persecution of Mr. Eyre: and still greater offence was takenat my sending a subscription to the election expenses of Mr. Bradlaugh. Having refused to be at any expense for my own election, and having hadall its expenses defrayed by others, I felt under a peculiar obligationto subscribe in my turn where funds were deficient for candidates whoseelection was desirable. I accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly allthe working class candidates, and among others to Mr. Bradlaugh. He hadthe support of the working classes; having heard him speak, I knew himto be a man of ability and he had proved that he was the reverse of ademagogue, by placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailingopinion of the democratic party on two such important subjects asMalthusianism and Personal Representation. Men of this sort, who, whilesharing the democratic feelings of the working classes, judged politicalquestions for themselves, and had courage to assert their individualconvictions against popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me, in Parliament, and I did not think that Mr. Bradlaugh's anti-religiousopinions (even though he had been intemperate in the expression of them)ought to exclude him. In subscribing, however, to his election, I didwhat would have been highly imprudent if I had been at liberty toconsider only the interests of my own re-election; and, as might beexpected, the utmost possible use, both fair and unfair, was made ofthis act of mine to stir up the electors of Westminster against me. Tothese various causes, combined with an unscrupulous use of the usualpecuniary and other influences on the side of my Tory competitor, whilenone were used on my side, it is to be ascribed that I failed at mysecond election after having succeeded at the first. No sooner was theresult of the election known than I received three or four invitationsto become a candidate for other constituencies, chiefly counties; buteven if success could have been expected, and this without expense, Iwas not disposed to deny myself the relief of returning to private life. I had no cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the electors; andif I had, the feeling would have been far outweighed by the numerousexpressions of regret which I received from all sorts of persons andplaces, and in a most marked degree from those members of the liberalparty in Parliament, with whom I had been accustomed to act. Since that time little has occurred which there is need to commemoratein this place. I returned to my old pursuits and to the enjoyment of acountry life in the south of Europe, alternating twice a year with aresidence of some weeks or months in the neighbourhood of London. I havewritten various articles in periodicals (chiefly in my friend Mr. Morley's _Fortnightly Review_), have made a small number of speeches onpublic occasions, especially at the meetings of the Women's SuffrageSociety, have published the _Subjection of Women_, written some yearsbefore, with some additions [by my daughter and myself, ] and havecommenced the preparation of matter for future books, of which it willbe time to speak more particularly if I live to finish them. Here, therefore, for the present, this memoir may close. NOTES: [1]In a subsequent stage of boyhood, when these exercises had ceasedto be compulsory, like most youthful writers I wrote tragedies; underthe inspiration not so much of Shakspeare as of Joanna Baillie, whose_Constantine Paleologus_ in particular appeared to me one of the mostglorious of human compositions. I still think it one of the best dramasof the last two centuries. [2] The continuation of this article in the second number of the_Review_ was written by me under my father's eye, and (except aspractice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more usefulthan anything else I ever wrote) was of little or no value. [3] Written about 1861. [4] The steps in my mental growth for which I was indebted to her werefar from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the subjectwould probably suspect. It might be supposed, for instance, that mystrong convictions on the complete equality in all legal, political, social, and domestic relations, which ought to exist between men andwomen, may have been adopted or learnt from her. This was so far frombeing the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest resultsof the application of my mind to political subjects, and the strengthwith which I held them was, as I believe, more than anything else, theoriginating cause of the interest she felt in me. What is true is that, until I knew her, the opinion was in my mind little more than anabstract principle. I saw no more reason why women should be held inlegal subjection to other people, than why men should. I was certainthat their interests required fully as much protection as those of men, and were quite as little likely to obtain it without an equal voice inmaking the laws by which they were bound. But that perception of thevast practical bearings of women's disabilities which found expressionin the book on the _Subjection of Women_ was acquired mainly through herteaching. But for her rare knowledge of human nature and comprehensionof moral and social influences, though I should doubtless have held mypresent opinions, I should have had a very insufficient perception ofthe mode in which the consequences of the inferior position of womenintertwine themselves with all the evils of existing society and withall the difficulties of human improvement. I am indeed painfullyconscious of how much of her best thoughts on the subject I have failedto reproduce, and how greatly that little treatise falls short of whatit would have been if she had put on paper her entire mind on thisquestion, or had lived to revise and improve, as she certainly wouldhave done, my imperfect statement of the case. [5] The only person from whom I received any direct assistence in thepreparation of the _System of Logic_ was Mr. Bain, since so justlycelebrated for his philosophical writings. He went carefully through themanuscript before it was sent to the press, and enriched it with a greatnumber of additional examples and illustrations from science; many ofwhich, as well as some detached remarks of his own in confirmation of mylogical views, I inserted nearly in his own words. [6] A few dedicatory lines acknowledging what the book owed to her, wereprefixed to some of the presentation copies of the _Political Economy_on iets first publication. Her dislike of publicity alone preventedtheir insertion in the other copies of the work. During the years whichintervened between the commencement of my married life and thecatastrophe which closed it, the principal occurrences of my outwardexistence (unless I count as such a first attack of the family disease, and a consequent journey of more than six months for the recovery ofhealth, in Italy, Sicily, and Greece) had reference to my position inthe India House. In 1856 I was promoted to the rank of chief of theoffice in which I had served for upwards of thirty-three years. Theappointment, that of Examiner of India Correspondence, was the highest, next to that of Secretary, in the East India Company's home service, involving the general superintendence of all the correspondence with theIndian Governments, except the military, naval, and financial. I heldthis office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more thantwo years; after which it pleased Parliament, in other words LordPalmerston, to put an end to the East india Company as a branch of thegovernment of India under the Crown, and convert the administration ofthat country into a thing to be scrambled for by the second and thirdclass of English parliamentary politicians. I was the chief manager ofthe resistance which the Company made to their own political extinction, and to the letters and petitions I wrote for them, and the concludingchapter of my treatise on Representative Government, I must refer for myopinions on the folly and mischief of this ill-considered change. Personally I considered myself a gainer by it, as I had given enough ofmy life to india, and was not unwilling to retire on the liberalcompensation granted. After the change was consummated, Lord Stanley, the first Secretary of State for India, made me the honourable offer ofa seat in the Council, and the proposal was subsequently renewed by theCouncil itself, on the first occasion of its having to supply a vacancyin its own body. But the conditions of Indian government under the newsystem made me anticipate nothing but useless vexation and waste ofeffort from any participation in it: and nothing that has since happenedhas had any tendency to make me regret my refusal. [7] In 1869. [8]The saying of this true hero, after his capture, that he was worthmore for hanging than any other purpose, reminds one, by its combinationof wit, wisdom, and self-devotion, of Sir Thomas More. [9] The first was in answer to Mr. Lowe's reply to Mr. Bright on theCattle Plague Bill, and was thought at the time to have helped to getrid of a provision in the Government measure which would have given tolandholders a second indemnity, after they had already been onceindemnified for the loss of some of their cattle by the increasedselling price of the remainder. [10] Among the most active members of the Committee were Mr. P. A. Taylor, M. P. , always faithful and energetic in every assertion of theprinciples of liberty; Mr. Goldwin Smith, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr. Slack, Mr. Chamerovzow, Mr. Shaen, and Mr. Chesson, the HonorarySecretary of the Association.