第26章 Chapter I(26)

Nothing could be more in harmony with his principles than the support of an honest and straightforward man,attacked by the bitterest theological prejudice.His seat,however,for Westminster was lost (1868),and,refusing some other offers,he was glad to retire once more to private life,and to literary and philosophical pursuits.His strength was apparently failing,and he achieved little more.His parliamentary activity had enlarged his circle of acquaintance,and during these years he became far more sociable.Admiring friends gathered round him;his old allies,such as Hare and W.T.Thornton,the economist Cairnes,and such rising politicians as Henry Fawcett,Mr Courtney,and Mr Worley,looked up to him,and had frequent meetings with him.One characteristic point must be noticed,his withdrawal of the,wage fund,theory when impugned by W.T.Thornton in 1869.The candour which he showed on this occasion,and his generous appreciation of his friend,was eminently characteristic.In the same year appeared his edition of his father's Analysis,which,he says,(84)'ought now to stand at the head of the systematic works on Analytic Psychology.'He was preparing for other writings,but his task was done.He died at Avignon,8th May 1873,of a sudden attack,having three days before walked fifteen miles on a botanical excursion.

The impression made upon T.H.Green(85)by some of Mill's letters was that he must have been an 'extraordinarily good man.'

The remark came from a philosophical opponent,and might be echoed by many admirers and generous adversaries.The reverence of his personal friends is sufficiently indicated by the articles of Mr John Morley,(86)written at the time of their loss.Mill's moral excellence,indeed,is in some directions beyond all dispute.No human being ever devoted himself more unreservedly to a worthy end from his earliest to his latest years;the end was the propagation of truths of the highest importance to mankind,and the devotion implied entire freedom from all meaner or subsidiary ambitions.A man of whom that can be said without fear of contradiction has certainly extraordinary goodness.When we add that he was singularly candid,fair in argument,most willing to recognise merits in others,and a staunch enemy of oppression in every form,we may say that Mill possessed in an almost unsurpassable degree the virtues peculiarly appropriate to a philosopher.A complete judgment,however,must take other characteristics into account.One remark is obvious.Mill observes(87)that the description of a Benthamite as 'a mere reasoning machine,'though untrue of many of his friends,was true of himself during 'two or three years'--before,that is,he had learned to appreciate the value of the emotions.Many readers thought it true of him to the last.Though the phrase may be understood so as to imply the very contradictory of the truth,I take it to imply one aspect of his character which cannot be neglected.The Autobiography,though a very interesting,is to many readers far from an attractive,work;and its want of charm is,I think,significant of the weakness which is caricatured by the epithet 'reasoning machine.'Omitting the pages about his wife,there is a singular absence of the qualities which make so many autobiographies interesting:there is no tender dwelling upon early days and associations;his father is incidentally revealed as an object of profound respect,but without illusion as to his harsher qualities;hardly any reference is made to his mother or his brothers and sisters;his friends are briefly noticed and their intellectual merits duly set forth,but there is no warm expression of personal feeling towards any one of them;his remarks upon his countrymen in general are contemptuous;and,though he is desirous of the welfare of the species,he is as fully convinced as Carlyle,that men are 'mostly fools.'Old institutions awake no thrill;they are simply embodiments of prejudice;and the nation is divided between those who have a 'sinister interest'in abuses,and the masses who are still too brutalised to be trusted.At the bottom of his heart he seems to prefer a prig,a man of rigid formula,to the vivid and emotional character,whose merits he recognises in theory.He complains frequently of the general decay of energy,and yet his ideal would seem to be the thoroughly drilled thinker,who is the slave of abstract theories.His 'zeal for the good of mankind'was really to the last what he admits it to have been at the early period,a 'zeal for speculative opinions.'The startling phrases about his wife are in contrast to this coolness,but they are so hysterical as to check full sympathy.From such remarks,some people have inferred that Mill was really a frigid thinker,a worthy prophet of the dismal science,which leaves out of account all that is deepest and most truly valuable in human nature.