thc25
thc25f
Vol 25: The Classics
JOHN STUART MILL
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ESSAY ON LIBERTY
THOMAS CARLYLE
CHARACTERISTICS
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
ESSAY ON SCOTT
WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
VOLUME 25
fi'^i
P F COLLIER & SON COMPANY
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1909
By p. F. Collier & Son
manufactured in u. s a.
Designed, Printed, and Bound at
^te Collier Presfjf, J^e\D gorU
CONTENTS
By John Stuart Mill
PAGE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY JOHN STUART MILL
Chapter I 7
Chapter II 30
Chapter III 45
Chapter IV 60
Chapter V 88
Chapter VI 120
Chapter VII 143
ON LIBERTYj
Chapter I *.♦.*.. 203
Chapter II 218
Chapter III 260
Chapter IV 281
Chapter V 302
By Thomas Carlyle
CHARACTERISTICS 333
INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT EDINBURGH ..... 375
SIR WALTER SCOTT 4^9
Vol. 25—1
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
John Stuart Mill was horn in London, May 20, 1806. He
was the eldest of the nine children of James Mill, the chief dis-
ciple of Benthani and one of the most important leaders in the
Utilitarian movement in England. J, S. Mill as a child was al-
most incredibly precocious. He began Greek at three, and by
the time he was eight had read such authors as Herodotus and
Plato in the original, besides such English historians as Gibbon
and Hume. At twelve he was studying logic "seriously*' ; at
thirteen A-? went through a complete course in political economy
which his father gave him in conversation during their walks,
and the summaries he made of these talks were the basis of
James MilFs treatise on this subject. These and other in-
tellectual feats will be found related in the '^Autobiography/'
not in a spirit of boastfulness, but in support of more profitable
educational methods.
So far young Mill had been educated entirely by his father;
hut when he was fourteen he was sent to France for a year,
where he mastered the language, learned much of French society
and politics, and continued his studies in mathematics, econom-
ics, and science. In 1823 he entered the India House as a clerk
in the examiner's office, of which his father was the head; rose
rapidly, and finally succeeded to his father's position as chief
examiner.
His official labors left him considerable leisure, which he em-
ployed with the industry that had been habitual with him almost
from infancy. He wrote for the papers, helped his father on
the ''Westminster Review," and, before he was twenty, edited
Bentham's "Treatise on Evidence." His first original work of
importance was his "Essays upon Unsettled Questions of Po-
litical Economy," written when he was about twenty-four, but
not published till 1844.
In religion. Mill had been brought up an agnostic, and, in phi-
losophy, a utilitarian of the school of Bent ham; hut after a
nervous illness in 1836, he began to be dissatisfied with the high
and dry intelle dualism of his father's circle. He "learnt that
happiness was to be found not in directly pursuing it, but in the
pursuit of other ends; and learnt, also, the importance of a
3
4 INTRODUCTION
steady cultivation of the feelings" He had already a wide ac-
quaintance among the most active minds in London, and some
of these, like F. D. Maurice and John Sterling, aided in the proc-
ess of humanising Mill's philosophy. He became a disciple of
Wordsworth's and a friend of Carlyle's; and a second visit to
France still further helped to broaden his views and sympathies,
more especially through the influence of the St, Simonian school
and Comte. Important also among the friendships which af-
fected his development was that with Mrs. Taylor, an invalid
lady of whose intellectual powers Mill had the most exalted
opinion, and whom he ultimately married.
In 1S35, t^^^ ''London Review," later combined with the ''West-
minster Review," and for a time owned by Mill, was started as
the organ of the "philosophical radicals" ; and till he gave it up
in 1S40 he wrote much in it on political and literary topics, and
sought to make it an influence in practical politics. But the
party it represented fell for the time into obscurity, and Mill
resumed his logical studies, which culminated in 1S43 in the pub-
lication of his ''Logic" This work, which met with great and
immediate success, established Mill as the leader of the empiri-
cal school of thought in England, and it holds its position still
as a standard work on the subject.
His interest now passed for the time to economics, and within
five years he issued his "Principles of Political Economy," a
treatise which stands on the political side, as his "Logic" does
on the philosophical, as the representative statement of the prin-
ciples of the school of philosophical radicalism. Much in its
teaching is still regarded by economists as valuable, and the book
ranks as perhaps the most important systematic treatise on the
subject since "The Wealth of Nations."
In 1S38 the East India Company was dissolved, the adminis-
tration of India being taken over by the English Government,
and Mill retired on a pension. The same year his wife died, just
after completing with her husband the revision of his famous
"Essay on Liberty." In this book, along with his "Representa-
tive Government" (i860) and his "Utilitarianism" (1861) one
may find an exceedingly compact presentation of his views on
the most important questions of social and political philosophy.
His function with regard to the Utilitarian doctrines in which
he had been trained by his father was that of broadening and
INTRODUCTION 5
elevating the conception of ''the greatest happiness of ffie great-
est number'* as the true end of human conduct, by the recogni-
tion of difference of quality among pleasures, and by the addition
of a new sanction for altruism in a ''feeling of unity with his
fellow creatures" which makes it a "natural want*' of a person
of "properly cultivated moral nature'' that his aims and theirs
should harmonise. With the rise of the evolutionist school on
the one hand and the spread of the doctrines of Kant and his
successors on the other, the influence of Mill's philosophy has
declined.
Mill's philosophical activity culminated in his searching "Ex-
amination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," originally
published in 1865, and reissued later with replies to critics. In
this work he reviewed thoroughly all the main points of differ-
ence between the empirical and the intuitional schools; and
though, with the shifting of issues in the progress of philosophic
thought, the controversy has now died down, the criticism re-
mains an interesting and lively example of Mill's acuieness and
skill as a controversialist.
So far Mill's part in politics had been confined to the writing
of pamphlets and articles, but in i86s he was elected to Parlia-
ment as member for Westminster, In spite of a weak voice and
a nervous manner, he impressed the House by his fluency, and
exactness in speech, and by his honesty and independence of
judgment. He favored the extension of the franchise, and the
reform of the Irish land laws; and he argued in favor of a
number of projects which long after his time were carried into
effect. When Parliament dissolved in 1868, he was not re-
elected.
He now returned to literature, writing frequently in the "Fort-
nightly Review," then edited by his friend John Morley ; and in
i86g he issued his "Subjection of Women," in the production of
which both his wife and his step-daughter had had a share.
During his Parliamentary career he had urged the granting of
the voting power to the other sex, and this work is still a stand-
ard plea for the rights of women. His health now began to
give way, and he died on May 8, i8/S-
Although the dominant impression conveyed by the record of
Mill's life in his candid and interesting "Autobiography" is one
of intellectuality, he was a man of high sensibility and of a
« INTRODUCTION
tender and affectionate nature. The purity of his motives, the
vigor of his thinking, and the energy and independence with
which he strove for the realisation of his ideals, had their effect
not merely on the large circle with whom he came into personal
contact, hut in the stimulating and elevating of the general in-
tellectual and moral life of his time.
It is as the story of such a man's life, told by himself when
it was about six years from its close, that his ''Autobiography '^
is here printed. The ''Essay on Liberty'* has an interest of a
different kind. It belongs to that splendid series of pleas for
intellectual freedom, which, beginning with Milton's "Areopa-
gitica/' or speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, and
coming down through Locke's "Letters concerning Toleration"
to the utterances of Mill himself and his friend and fellow
liberal Morley, form the literary expression of the gradual real-
ization of the passion for individual freedom which is one of
the glories of the English-speaking peoples^
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
JOHN STUART MILL
CHAPTER I
Childhood and Early Education
IT seems proper that I should prefix to the following
biographical sketch, some mention of the reasons which
have made me think it desirable that I should 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, can be interesting to the public as a narrative, or
as being connected with myself. But I have thought that
in an age in which education, and its improvement, are the
subject of more, if not of profounder study than at any
former period of English history, it may be useful that there
should be some record of an education which was unusual
and remarkable, and which, whatever else it may have done,
has proved how much more than is commonly supposed may
be taught, and well taught, in those early years which, in the
common modes of what is called instruction, are little better
than wasted. It has also seemed to me that in an age of tran-
sition in opinions, there may be somewhat both of interest
and of benefit in noting the successive phases of any mind
which was always pressing forward, equally ready to learn
and to unlearn either from its own thoughts or from those
of others. But a motive which weighs more with me than
either of these, is a desire to make acknowledgment of the
debts which my intellectual and moral development owes to
other persons ; some of them of recognised eminence, others
less known than they deserve to be, and the one to whom
most of all is due, one whom the world had no opportunity
of knowing. The reader whom these things do not interest,
7
8 JOHN STUART MILL
has only himself to blame if he reads farther, and I do not
desire any other indulgence from him 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 son of James Mill, the author of the History
of British India. My father, the son of a petty tradesman
and (I believe) small farmer, at Northwater Bridge, in the
county of Angus, was, when a bo}'", recommended by his
abilities to the notice of Sir John Stuart, of Fettercairn, one
of the Barons of the Exchequer in Scotland, and was, in
consequence, sent to the University of Edinburgh, at the
expense of a fund established by Lady Jane Stuart (the
wife of Sir John Stuart) and some other ladies for edu-
cating young men for the Scottish Church. He there went
through the usual course of study, and was licensed as a
Preacher, but never followed the profession; having satis-
fied himself that he could not believe the doctrines of that
or any other Church. For a few years he was a private
tutor in various families in Scotland, among others that of
the Marquis of Tweeddale, but ended by taking up his
residence in London, and devoting himself to authorship.
Nor had he any other means of 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 is impossible not to be struck with: one of them
unfortunately a very common circumstance, the other a
most uncommon one. The first is, that in his position, with
no resource but the precarious one of writing in periodicals,
he married and had a large family; conduct than which
nothing could be more opposed, both as a matter of good
sense and of duty, to the opinions which, at least at a later
period of life, he strenuously upheld. The other circum-
stance, is the extraordinary energy which was required to
lead the life he led, with the disadvantages under which he
laboured from the first, and with those which he brought
upon himself by his marriage. It would have been no small
thing, had he done no more than to support himself and his
family during so many years by writing, without ever being
in debt, or in any pecuniary difficulty; holding, as he did,
opinions, both in politics and in religion, which were more
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 9
odious to all persons of influence, and to the common run
of prosperous Englishmen in that generation, than either
before or since; and being not only a man whom nothing
would have induced to write against his convictions, but
one who invariably threw into everything he wrote, as much
of his convictions 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 not' conscientiously bestow all the
labour necessary for performing it adequately. But he, with
these burdens on him, planned, commenced, and completed,
the History of India; and this in the course of about ten
years, a shorter time than has been occupied (even by
writers who had no other employment) in the production of
almost any other historical work of equal bulk, and of any-
thing approaching to the same amount of reading and re-
search. And to this is to be added, that during the whole
period, a considerable part of almost every day was em-
ployed in the instruction of his children in the case of one
of whom, myself, he exerted an amount of labour, care, and
perseverance rarely, if ever, employed for a similar purpose,
in endeavouring to give, according to his own conception,
the highest order of intellectual education.
A man who, in his own practice, so vigorously acted up
to the principle of losing no time, was likely to adhere to
the same rule in the instruction of his pupil. I have no re-
membrance of the time when I began to learn Greek, I have
been told that it was when I was three years old. My ear-
liest recollection on the subject, is that of committing to
memory what my father termed vocables, being lists of
common Greek words, with their signification in English,
which he wrote out for me on cards. Of grammar, until
some years later, I learnt no more than the inflexions of the
nouns and verbs, but after a course of vocables, proceeded
at once to translation ; and I faintly remember going through
^sop's Fables, the first Greek book which I read. The
Anabasis, which I remember better, was the second. I learnt
no Latin until my eighth year. At that time I had read,
under my father's tuition, a number of Greek prose authors,
among whom I remember the whole of Herodotus, and of
10 JOHN STUART MILL
Xenophon's Cyropsedia and Memorials of Socrates; some of
the lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius: part of
Lucian, and Isocrates ad Demonicum and Ad Nicoclem. I
also read, in 1813, the first six dialogues (in the common
arrangement) of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theoc-
tetus 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, in all 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 himself
willing to undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be
judged from the fact, that I went through the whole process
of preparing my Greek lessons 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 could make no
more use of a Greek and Latin lexicon than could be made
without having yet begun to learn Latin, I was forced to
have recourse to him for the meaning of every word which
I did not know. This incessant interruption, he, one of the
most impatient of men, submitted to, and wrote under that
interruption several volumes of his History and all else that
he had to write during those years.
The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in
this part of my childhod, was arithmetic: this also my
father taught me : it was the 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 con-
sisted in the books I read by myself, and my father's dis-
courses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the
end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an
almost rustic neighbourhood. My father's health required
considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually
before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Horn-
sey. 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 the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this
was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made
notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these in
the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 11
were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a
great number: Robertson's histories, Hume, Gibbon; but
my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Wat-
son's Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of
the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted
Provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an
intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite
historical reading was Hooke's History of Rome. Of Greece
I had seen at that time no regular history, except school
abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a trans-
lation of Rollings Ancient History, beginning with Philip
of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne's
translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the
time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Bur-
net's History of his Own Time, though I cared little for any-
thing in it except the wars and battles; and the historical
part of the ^'Annual Register," from the beginning to about
1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from
Mr. Bentham left off. I felt a lively interest in Frederic of
Prussia during his difficulties, and in Paoli, the Corsican
patriot; but when I came to the American war, I took my
part, like a child as I was (until set right by my father), on
the wrong side, because it was called the English side. In
these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as op-
portunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respect-
ing civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation,
which he required me afterwards to restate to him in 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 me to read them of myself: among
others, Millar's Historical View of the English Govern-
ment, a book of great merit for its time, and which he
highly valued; Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, McCrie's
Life of John Knox, and even Sewell and Rutty's Histories
of the Quakers. He was fond of putting into my hands books
which exhibited men of energy and resource in unusual
circumstances, struggling against difficulties and overcoming
them; of such works I remember Beaver's African Memo-
randa, and CoUins's Account of the First Settlement of New
South Wales. Two books which I never wearied of read-
12 JOHN STUART MILL
ing were Anson's Voyages, so delightful to most young
persons, and a collection (Hawkesworth's, I believe) of
Voyages Round the World, in four volumes, beginning M^ith
Drake and ending with Cook and Bougainville. Of chil-
dren's books, any more than of playthings, I had scarcely
any, except an occasional gift from a relation or acquaint-
ance : 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 of amusement, though he allowed them very sparingly.
Of such books he possessed at that time next to none, but
he borrowed several for me; those which I remember are
the Arabian Nights, Cazotte's Arabian Tales, Don Quixote,
Miss Edgeworth's Popular Tales, and a book of some repu-
tation in its day, Brooke's Fool of Quality.
In my eighth year I commenced learning Latin, in con-
junction with a younger sister, to whom I taught it as I
went on, and who afterwards repeated the lessons to my
father: and from this time, other sisters and brothers be-
ing successively added as pupils, a considerable part of my
day's work consisted of this preparatory teaching. It was
a part which I greatly disliked; the more so, as I was held
responsible for the lessons of my pupils, in almost as full a
sense as for my own: I, however, derived from this dis-
cipline the great advantage, of learning more thoroughly
and retaining more lastingly the things which I was set
to teach: perhaps too, the prac'Jce it afforded in explaining
difficulties to others, may even at that age have been useful.
In other respects, the experience of my boyhood is not
favourable to the plan of teaching children by means of one
another. The teaching, I am sure, is very inefficient as
teaching, and I well know that the relation between teacher
and taught is not a good moral discipline to either. I
went in this manner through the Latin grammar, and a con-
siderable part of Cornelius Nepos and Caesar's Commentaries,
but afterwards added to the superintendence of these lessons,
much longer ones of my own.
In the same year in which I began Latin, I made my
first commencement in the Greek poets with the Iliad. After
I had made some progress in this way, my father put Pope's
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 13
translation into my hands. It was the first English verse I
had cared to read, and it became one of the books in which
for many years I most delighted: I think I must have read
it from twenty to thirty times through. I should not have
thought it worth while to mention a taste apparently so
natural to boyhood, if I had not, as I think, observed that the
keen enjoyment of this brilliant specimen of narrative and
versification is not so universal with boys, as I should have
expected both a priori and from my individual experience.
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 remember reading were, the Bucolics of Virgil, and the
first six books of the ^neid ; all Horace, except the Epodes ;
the Fables of Phsedrus; the first five books of Livy (to
which from my love of the subject I voluntarily added, in
my hours of leisure, the remainder of the first decade) ; all
Sallust; a considerable part of Ovid's Metamorphoses; some
plays of Terence; two or three books of Lucretius; several
of the Orations of Cicero, and of his writings on oratory;
also his letters to Atticus, my father taking the trouble to
translate to me from the French the historical explanations
in Mingaulf s notes. In Greek I read the Iliad and Odyssey
through; one or two plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and
Aristophanes, though by these I profited little; all Thucyd-
ides; the Hellenics of Xenophon; a great part of De-
mosthenes, ^schines, and Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon;
part of the Anthology; a little of Dionysius; several books of
Polybius; and lastly Aristotle's Rhetoric, which, as the
first expressly scientific treatise on any moral or psycho-
logical subject which I had read, and containing many of
the best observations of the ancients on human nature and
life, my father made me study with peculiar care, and throw
the matter of it into synoptic tables. During the same years
I learnt elementary geometry and algebra thoroughly, the
differential calculus, and other portions of the higher mathe-
matics far from thoroughly: for my father, not having
kept up this part of his early acquired knowledge, could not
spare time to qualify himself for removing my difficulties,
and left me to deal with them, with little other aid than
14 JOHN STUART MILL
that of books; while I was continually incurring his dis-
pleasure by my inability to solve difficult problems for
which he did not see that I had not the necessary previous
knowledge.
As to my private reading, I can only speak of what 1
remember. History continued to be my strongest predilec-
tion, and most of all ancient history. Mitford's Greece I
read continually ; my father had put me on my guard against
the Tory prejudices of this writer, and his perversions of
facts for the whitewashing of despots, and blackening of
popular institutions. These points he discoursed on, ex-
emplifying them from the Greek orators and historians,
with such effect that in reading Mitford my sympathies were
always on the contrary side to those of the author, and I
could, to some extent, have argued the point against him:
yet this did not diminish the ever new pleasure with which
I read the book. Roman history, both in my old favourite,
Hooke, and in Ferguson, continued to delight me. A book
which, in spite of what is called the dryness of its style,
I took great pleasure in, was the Ancient Universal History,
through the incessant reading of which, I had my head full
of historical details concerning the obscurest ancient people,
while about modern history, except detached passages, such
as the Dutch War of Independence, I knew and cared com-
paratively little. A voluntary exercise, to which throughout
my boyhood I was much addicted, was what I called writing
histories. I successively composed a Roman History, picked
out of Hooke; an Abridgment of the Ancient Universal
History; a History of Holland, from my favourite Watson
and from an anonymous compilation; and in my eleventh
and twelfth year I occupied myself with writing what I
flattered myself was something serious. This was no less
than a History of the Roman Government, compiled (with
the assistance of Hooke) from Livy and Dionysius: of
which I wrote as much as would have made an octavo vol-
ume, extending to the epoch of the Licinian Laws. It was,
in fact, an account of the struggles between the patricians
and plebeians, which now engrossed all the interest in my
mind which I had previously felt in the mere wars and
conquests of the Romans. I discussed all the constitutional
! AUTOBIOGRAPHY 15
points as they arose: though quite ignorant of Niebuhr's re-
searches, I, by such lights as my father had given me,
vindicated the Agrarian Laws on the evidence of Livy, and
upheld, to the best of my ability, the Roman Democratic
party. A few years later, in my contempt of my childish
efforts, I destroyed all these papers, not then anticipating
that I could ever feel any curiosity about my first attempts
at writing and reasoning. My father encouraged me in
this useful amusement, though, as I think judiciously, he
never asked to see what I wrote; so that I did not feel that
in writing it I was accountable to any one, nor had the
chilling sensation of being under a critical eye.
But though these exercises in history were never a com-
pulsory lesson, there was another kind of composition which
was so, namely, writing verses, and it was one of the most
disagreeable of my tasks. Greek and Latin verses I did not
write, nor learnt the prosody of those languages. My father,
thinking this not worth the time it required, contented him-
self with making me read aloud to him, and correcting
ifalse quantities. I never composed at all in Greek, even
in prose, and but little in Latin. Not that my father could
be indifferent to the value of this practice, in giving a
thorough knowledge of these languages, but because there
really was not time for it. The verses I was required to
write were English. When I first read Pope's Homer,
I ambitiously attempted to compose something of the same
kind, and achieved as much as one book of a continuation
of the Iliad. There, probably, the spontaneous promptings
of my poetical ambition would have stopped; but the exer-
cise, begun from choice, was continued by command. Con-
formably to my father's usual practice of explaining to me,
as far as possible, the reasons for what he required me to
do, he gave me, for this, as I well remember, two reasons
highly characteristic of him: one was, that some things
could be expressed better and more forcibly in verse than
in prose: this, he said, was a real advantage. The other
was, that people in general attached more value to verse than
it deserved, and the power of writing it, was, on this account,
worth acquiring. He generally left me to choose my own
subjects, which, as far as I remember, were mostly ad-
16 JOHN STUART MILL
dresses to some mythological personage or allegorical ab-
straction ; but he made me translate into English verse maiy
of Horace's shorter poems: I also remember his giving me
Thomson's " Winter '' to read, and afterwards making nr.e
attempt (without book) to write something myself on the
same subject. The verses I wrote were, of course, the
merest rubbish, nor did I ever attain any facility of versifica-
tion, but the practice may have been useful in making it
easier for me, at a later period, to acquire readiness of ex-
pression/ I had. read, up to this time, very little 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 of Shakspeare, the English idolatry of
whom he used to attack with some severity. He cared little
for any English poetry except Milton (for whom he had
the highest admiration), Goldsmith, Burns, and Gray's Bard,
which he preferred to his Elegy : perhaps I may add Cowper
and Beattie. He had some value for Spenser, and I re-
member his reading to me (unlike his usual practice of
making me read to him), the first book of the Faerie Queene;
but I took little pleasure in it. The poetry of the present
century he saw scarcely any merit in, and I hardly became
acquainted with any of it till I was grown up to manhood,
except the metrical romances of Walter Scott, which I read
at his recommendation and was intensely delighted with;
as I always was with animated narrative. Dryden's Poems
were among my father's books, and many of these he made
me read, but I never cared for any of them except Alex-
ander's Feast, which, as well as many of the songs in Walter
Scott, I used to sing internally, to music of my own: to
some of the latter, indeed, I went so far as to compose airs,
which I still remember. Cowper's short poems I read with
some pleasure, but never got far into the longer ones; and
nothing in the two volumes interested me like the prose
account of his three hares. In my thirteenth year I met
^ In a subsequent stage of boyhood, when these exercises^ had ceased to
be compulsory, like most youthful writers I wrote tragedies; under the
inspiration not so much of Shakspeare as of Joanna Baillie, whose " Con-
stantine Paleologus " in particular appeared to me one of the most glorious
of human compositions. I still think it one of the best dramas of the
last two centuries.
j AUTOBIOGRAPHY 17
with Campbell's poems, among which Lochiel, Hohenlinden,
Th^ Exile of Erin, and some others, gave me sensations 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
ill my feelings as the perfection of pathos.
During this part of my childhood, one of my greatest
amusements was experimental science; in the theoretical,
however, not the practical sense of the word; not trying
experiments — a kind of discipline which I have often re-
gretted not having had — nor even seeing, but merely reading
about them. I never remember being so wrapt up in any
book, as I was in Joyce's Scientific Dialogues; and I was
rather recalcitrant to my father's criticisms of the bad rea-
soning respecting the first principles of physics, which
abounds in the early part of that work. I devoured treatises
on Chemistry, especially that of my father's early friend
and schoolfellow. Dr. Thomson, for years before I attended
a lecture or saw an experiment.
From about the age of twelve, I entered into another and
more advanced stage in my course of instruction; in which
the main object was no longer 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 the
Posterior Analytics, which belong to a branch of speculation
I was not yet ripe for. Contemporaneously with the Oragnon,
my father made me read the whole or parts of several of
the Latin treatises on the scholastic logic; giving each day
to him, in our walks, a minute account of what I had read,
and answering his numerous and searching questions. After
this, I went in a similar manner, through the " Computatio
sive Logica" of Hobbes, a work of a much higher order of
thought than the books of the school logicians, and which
he estimated very highly; in my own opinion beyond its
merits, great as these are. It was his invariable practice,
whatever studies he exacted from me, to make me as far
as possible understand and feel the utility of them: and this
he deemed peculiarly fitting in the case of the syllogistic
logic, the usefulness of which had been impugned by so
18 JOHN STUART MILL
many writers of authority. I well remember how, and in
what particular walk, in the neighbourhood of Bagshot
Heath (where we were on a visit to his old friend Mr.
Wallace, then one of the Mathematical Professors at Sand-
hurst) he first attempted by questions to make me think
on the subject, and frame some conception of what con-
stituted the utility of the syllogistic logic, and when I had
failed in this, to make me understand it by explanations.
The explanations 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 my observations and reflections
to crystallize upon; the import of his general remarks be-
ing interpreted to me, by the particular instances which
came under my notice afterwards. My own consciousness
and experience 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 more indebted for whatever capacity
of thinking I have attained. The first intellectual operation
in which I arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad
argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay: and
though whatever capacity of this sort I attained, was due to
the fact that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was
most perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that
the school logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying
it, were among the principal instruments of this drilling. I
am persuaded that nothing, in modern education, tends so
much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who at-
tach a precise meaning to words and propositions, and are
not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. The
boasted influence of mathematical studies is nothing to it;
for in mathematical processes, none of the real difliculties of
correct ratiocination occur. It is also a study peculiarly
adapted to an early stage in the education of philosophical
students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of
acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of
their own. They may become capable of disentangling the
intricacies of confused and self -contradictory thought, be-
fore their own thinking faculties are much advanced; a
power which, for want of some such discipline, many other-
I AUTOBIOGRAPHY 19
wise able men altogether lack; and when they have to an-
swer opponents, only endeavour, by such arguments as they
can command, to support the opposite conclusion, scarcely
even attempting to confute the reasonings of their antag-
onists; 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 con-
tinued to read with my father were chiefly such as were
worth studying, not for the language merely, but also for
the thoughts. This included much of the orators, and
especially Demosthenes, some of whose principal orations I
read several times over, and wrote out, by way of exercise,
a full analysis of them. My father's comments on these
orations when I read them to him were very instructive to
me. He not only drew my attention to the insight they af-
forded into Athenian institutions, and the principles of legis-
lation and government which they often illustrated, but
pointed out the skill and art of the orator — how everything
important to his purpose was said at the exact moment when
he had brought the minds of his audience into the state most
fitted to receive it; how he made steal into their minds,
gradually and by insinuation, thoughts which, if expressed
in a more direct manner, would have roused their opposition.
Most of these reflections were beyond my capacity of full
comprehension at the time; but they left seed behind, which
germinated in due season. At this time I also read the
whole of Tacitus, Juvenal, and Quintilian. The latter,
owing to his obscure style and to the scholastic details of
which many parts of his treatise are made up, is little read,
and seldom sufficiently appreciated. His book is a kind of
encyclopaedia of the thoughts of the ancients on the whole
field of education and culture; and I have retained through
life many valuable ideas which I can distinctly trace
to my reading of him, even at that early age. It was
at this period that I read, for the first time, some of the
most important dialogues of Plato, in particular the Gorgias,
the Protagoras, and the Republic. There is no author to
whom my father thought himself more indebted for his
own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he more frequently
recommended to young students. I can bear similar testi-
2a JOHN STUART MILL
mony in regard to myself. The Socratic method, of which
the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed
as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the
confusions incident to the intellecUis sibi permissus, the
understanding which has made up all its bundles of asso-
ciations under the guidance of popular phraseology. The
close, searching elenchus by which the man of vague gener-
alities is constrained either to express his meaning to him-
self in definite terms, or to confess that he does not know
what he is talking about; the perpetual testing of all gen-
eral 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 and definition by a series of accurately drawn
distinctions between it and each of the cognate objects
which are successively parted off from it — all this, as an
education for precise thinking, is inestimable, and all this,
even at that age, took such hold of me that it became part
of my own mind. I have felt ever since that the title of
Platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been
nourished in, and have endeavoured to practise Plato's mode
of investigation, than to those who are distinguished only
by the adoption of certain dogmatical conclusions, drawn
mostly from the least intelligible of his works, and which
the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain
whether he himself regarded as anything more than poetic
fancies, or philosophic conjectures.
In going through Plato and Demosthenes, since I could
now read these authors, as far as the language was con-
cerned, with perfect ease, I was not required to construe
them sentence by sentence, but to read them aloud to my
father, answering questions when asked: but the particular
attention which he paid to elocution (in which his own
excellence was remarkable) made this reading aloud to
him a most painful task. Of all things which he required me
to do, there was none which I did so constantly ill, or in
which he so perpetually lost his temper with me. He had
thought much on the principles of the art of reading, espe-
cially the most neglected part of it, the inflections of the voice.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 21
or modulation as writers on elocution call it (in contrast
with articulation on the one side and expression on the
other), and had reduced it to rules, grounded on the logical
analysis of a sentence. These rules he strongly impressed
upon me, and took me severely to task for every violation
of them: but I even then remarked (though I did not ven-
ture to make the remark to him) that though he reproached
me when I read a sentence ill, and told me how I ought to
have read it, he never, by reading it himself, showed me
how it ought to be read. A defect running through his
otherwise admirable modes of instruction, as it did through
all his modes of thought, was that of trusting too much to the
intelligibleness of the abstract, when not embodied 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 saw the psychological grounds of them. At
that time I and others followed out the subject into its
ramifications and could have composed a very useful treatise,
grounded on my father's principles. He himself left those
principles and rules unwritten. I regret that when my mind
was full of the subject, from systematic practice, I did not
put them, and our improvements of them, into a formal
shape.
A book which contributed largely to my education, in the
best sense of the term, was my father's History of India.
It was published in the beginning of 1818. During the
year previous, while it was passing through 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
number of new ideas which I received from this remarkable
book, and the impulse and stimulus as well as guidance given
to my thoughts by its criticisms and disquisitions on society
and civilization in the Hindoo part, on institutions and the
acts of governments in the English part, made my early
familiarity with it eminently useful to my subsequent prog-
ress. And though I can perceive deficiencies in it now
as compared with a perfect standard, I still think it, if
not the most,- one of the most instructive histories ever
written, and one of the books from which most benefit
22 JOHN STUART MILL
may be derived by a mind in the course of making up its
opinions.
The Preface, among the most characteristic of my
father's writings, as well as the richest in materials of
thought, gives a picture which may be entirely depended on,
of the sentiments and expectations with which he wrote
the History. Saturated as the book is with the opinions and
modes of judgment of a democratic radicalism then regarded
as extreme; and treating with a severity, at that time most
unusual, the English Constitution, the English law, and all
parties and classes who possessed any considerable influence
in the country; he may have expected reputation, but cer-
tainly not advancement in life, from its publication; nor
could he have supposed that it would raise up anything but
enemies for him in powerful quarters: least of all could he
have expected favour from the East India Company, to
whose commercial privileges he was unqualifiedly hostile,
and on the acts of whose government he had made so many
severe comments: though, in various parts of his book,
he bore a testimony in their favour, which he felt to be their
just due, namely, that no Government had on the whole
given so much proof, to the extent of its lights, of good in-
tention towards its subjects; and that if the acts of any other
Government had the light of publicity as completely let in
upon them, they would, in all probability, still less bear
scrutiny.
On learning, however, in the spring of 1819, about a
year after the publication of the History, that the East
India Directors desired to strengthen the part of their
home establishment which was employed in carrying on the
correspondence with India, my father declared himself a
candidate for that employment, and, to the credit of the
Directors, successfully. He was appointed one of the As-
sistants of the Examiner of India Correspondence; officers
whose duty it was to prepare drafts of despatches to India,
for consideration by the Directors, in the principal depart-
ments of administration. In this office, and in that of
Examiner, which he subsequently attained, the influence
which his talents, his reputation, and his decision of char-
acter gave him, with superiors who really desired the good
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 23
government of India, enabled him to a great extent to throw
into his drafts of despatches, and to carry through the ordeal
of the Court of Directors and Board of Control, without
having their force much weakened, his real opinions on
Indian subjects. In his History he had set forth, for the first
time, many of the true principles of Indian administration:
and his despatches, following his History, did more than
had ever been done before to promote the improvement of
India, and teach Indian officials to understand their business.
If a selection of them were published, they would, I am
convinced, place his character as a practical statesman fully
on a level with his eminence as a speculative writer.
This new employment of his time caused no relaxation
in his attention to my education. It was in this same year,
1819, that he took me through a complete course of political
economy. His loved and intimate friend, Ricardo, had
shortly before published the book which formed so great an
epoch in political economy; a book which never would have
been published or written, but for the entreaty and strong
encouragement of my father; for Ricardo, the most modest
of men, though firmly convinced of the truth of his doctrines,
deemed himself so little capable of doing them justice in
exposition and expression, that he shrank from the idea
of publicity. The same friendly encouragement induced
Ricardo, a year or two later, to become a member of the
House of Commons; where during the few remaining years
of his life, unhappily cut short in the full vigour of his in-
tellect, he rendered so much service to his and my father's
opinions both on political economy and on other subjects.
Though Ricardo's great work was already in print, no
didactic treatise embodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for
learners, had yet appeared. My father, therefore, com-
menced instructing me in the science by a sort of lectures,
which he delivered to me in our walks. He expounded
each day a portion of the subject, and I gave him next day a
written account of 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 whole extent of the
science; and the written outline of it which resulted from
my daily compte rendu, served him afterwards as notes from
24 JOHN STUART MILL
which to write his Elements of Political Economy. After
this I read Ricardo, giving an account daily of what I read,
and discussing, in the best manner I could, the collateral
points which offered themselves in our progress.
On Money, as the most intricate part of the subject, he
made me read in the same manner Ricardo's admirable pam-
phlets, written during what was called the Bullion contro-
versy; to these succeeded Adam Smith; and in this reading
it was one of my father's main objects to make me apply to
Smith's more superficial view of political economy, the
superior lights of Ricardo, and detect what was fallacious
in Smith's arguments, or erroneous in any of his conclu-
sions. Such a mode of instruction was excellently calcu-
lated to form a thinker; but it required to be worked by a
thinker, as close and vigorous as my father. The path was
a thorny one, even to him, and I am sure it was so to me, not-
withstanding the strong interest I took in the subject. He
was often, and much beyond reason, provoked by my failures,
in cases where success could not have been expected; but
in the main his method was right, and it succeeded. I do
not believe that any scientific teaching ever was more
thorough, or better fitted for training the faculties, than the
mode in which logic and political economy were taught to me
by my father. Striving, even in an exaggerated degree, to
call forth the activity of my faculties, by making me find out
everything for myself, he gave his explanations not before,
but after, I had felt the full force of the difficulties ; and not
only gave me a,n accurate knowledge of these two great
subjects, as far as they were then understood, but made
me a thinker on both. I thought for myself almost from the
first, and occasionally thought differently from him, though
for a long time only on minor points, and making his
opinion the ultimate standard. At a later period I even
occasionally convinced him, and altered his opinion on some
points of detail: which I state to 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 I was about fourteen I left England for more
than a year; and after my return, though my studies went
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 25
on tinder my father's general direction, he was no longer
my schoolmaster. I shall therefore pause here, and turn
back to matters of a more general nature connected with
the part of my life and education included in the preceding
reminiscences.
In the course of instruction which I have partially re-
traced, the point most superficially apparent is the great
effort to give, during the years of childhood, an amount of
knowledge in what are considered the higher branches of
education, which is seldom acquired (if acquired at all)
until the age of manhood. The result of the experiment
shows the ease with which this may be done, and places in
a strong light the wretched waste of so many precious years
as are spent in acquiring the modicum of Latin and Greek
commonly taught to schoolboys; a waste which has led so
many educational reformers to entertain the ill-judged pro-
posal of discarding these languages altogether from general
education. If I had been by nature extremely quick of
apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive
memory, or were of a remarkably active and energetic char-
acter, the trial would not be conclusive; but in all these
natural gifts I am rather below than above par ; what I
could do, could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of
average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and if
I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other for-
tunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early
training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly
say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my
contemporaries.
There was one cardinal point in this training, of which
I have already given some indication, and which, more than
anything else, was the cause of whatever good it effected.
Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled
into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened,
but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and
with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are
accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of
their own: and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have
spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere
parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their
26 JOHN STUART MILL
minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, how-
ever, was not an education of cram. My father never per-
mitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere
exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding
not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if
possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by
thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts
to find it out for myself. As far as I can trust my remem-
brance, I acquitted myself very lamely in this department;
my recollection of such matters is almost wholly of failures,
hardly ever of success. It is true the failures were often
in things in which success in so early a stage of my progress,
was almost impossible. I remember at some time in my
thirteenth year, on my happening to use the word idea,
he asked me what an idea was; and expressed some dis-
pleasure at my ineffectual efforts to define the word : I recol-
lect also his indignation at my using the common expression
that something was true in theory but required correction
in practice ; and how, after making me vainly strive to define
the word theory, he explained its meaning, and showed the
fallacy of the vulgar form of speech which I had used;
leaving me fully persuaded that in being unable to give
a correct definition of Theory, and in speaking of it as
something which might be at variance with practice, I had
shown unparalleled ignorance. In this he seems, and per-
haps was, very unreasonable; but I think, only in being
angry at my failure. A pupil from whom nothing is ever
demanded which 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 prom-
ise, my father most anxiously guarded against. This was
self-conceit. He kept me, with extreme vigilance, out of the
way of hearing myself praised, or of being led to make self-
flattering comparisons between myself and others. From
his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very
humble opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison
he always held up to me, was not what other people did,
but what a man could and ought to do. He completely suc-
ceeded in preserving me from the sort of influences he so
much dreaded. I was not at all aware that my attainments
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 27
were anything unusual at my age. If I accidentally had my
attention drawn to the fact that some other boy knew less
than myself — which happened less often than might be
imagined — I concluded, not that I knew much, but that he,
for some reason or other, knew little, or that his knowl-
edge was of a different kind from mine. My state of mind
was not humility, but neither was 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 esti-
mate myself at all. If I thought anything about myself,
it was that I was rather backward in my studies,
since I aways found myself so, in comparison with what
my father expected from me. I assert this with confidence,
though it was not the impression of various persons who
saw me in my childhood. They, as I have since found,
thought me greatly and disagreeably self-conceited ;*probably
because I was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct
contradictions to things which I heard said. I suppose I
acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged in an
unusual 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 father did not correct this ill-
breeding and impertinence, probably from not being aware of
it, for I was always too much in awe of him to be other-
wise than extremely subdued and quiet in his presence. Yet
with all this I had no notion of any superiority in myself;
and well was it for me that I had not. 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
me that I should find, as I got acquainted with new people,
that I had been taught many things which youths of my age
did not commonly know; and that many persons would be
disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment me upon it.
What other things he said on this topic I remember very
perfectly ; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew
more than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me,
but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to my
lot, of having a father who was able to teach me, and will-
ing to give the necessary trouble and time; that it was no
matter of praise to me, if I knew more than those who had
^>^\ .
28 JOHN STUART MILE
not had a similar advantage, but the deepest disgrace to me
if I did not. I have a distinct remembrance, that the sug-
gestion thus for the first time made to me, 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 which my father told me, I gave implicit credence,
but which did not at all impress me as a personal matter.
I felt no disposition to glorify myself upon the circumstance
that there were other persons who did not know what I
knew ; nor had I ever flattered myself that my acquirements,
whatever they might be, were any merit of mine: but, now
when my attention was called to the subject, I felt that what
my father had said respecting my peculiar advantages was
exactly the truth and common sense of the matter, and it
fixed my opinion and feeling from that time forward.
It is evident that this, among many other of the purposes
of my father's scheme of education, could not have been
accomplished if he had not carefully kept me from having
any great amount of intercourse with other boys. He was
earnestly bent upon my escaping not only the corrupting in-
fluence which boys exercise over boys, but the contagion of
vulgar modes of thought and feeling; and for this he was
willing that I should pay the price of inferiority in the ac-
complishments which schoolboys in all countries chiefly
cultivate. The deficiencies in my education were principally
in the things which boys learn from being turned out to
shift for themselves, and from being brought together in
large numbers. From temperance and much walking, I grew
up healthy and hardy, though not muscular ; but I could do no
feats of skill or physical strength, and knew none of the
ordinary bodily exercises. It was not that play, or time
for it, was refused me. Though no holidays were allowed,
lest the habit of work should be broken, and a taste for
idleness acquired, I had ample, leisure in every day to amuse
myself; but as I had no boy companions, and the animal
need of physical activity was satisfied by walking, my amuse-
ments, which were mostly solitary, were in general, of a quiet>
if not a bookish turn, and gave little stimulus to any other
kind even of mental activity than that which was already
called forth by my studies: I consequently remained long.
/r?/^
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 29
and In a less degree have always remained, inexpert in any-
thing requiring manual dexterity; my mind, as well as my
hands, did its work very lamely when it was applied, or
ought to have been applied to the practical details which,
as they are the chief interest of life to the majority of men,
are also the things in which whatever mental capacity they
have, chiefly shows itself. I was constantly meriting reproof
by inattention, inobservance, and general slackness of mind
in matters of daily life. My father was the extreme opposite
in these particulars : his senses and mental faculties were
always on the alert ; he carried decision and energy of char-
acter in his whole manner and into every action of life:
and this, as much as his talents, contributed to the strong
impression which he always made upon those with whom he
came into personal contact. But the children of energetic
parents, frequently grow up unenergetic, because they lean
on their parents, and the parents are energetic for them.
The education which my father gave me, was in itself much
more fitted for training me to know than to do. Not that he
was unaware of my deficiencies; both as a boy and as a
youth I was incessantly smarting under his severe admoni-
tions on the subject. There was anything but insensibility or
tolerance on his part towards such shortcomings : but, while
he saved me from the demoralizing effects of school life, he
made no effort to provide me with any sufficient substitute for
its practicalizing influences. Whatever quahties he himself,
probably, had acquired without difficulty or special training,
he seems to have supposed that I ought to acquire as easily.
He had not, I think, bestowed the same amount of thought
and attention on this, as on most other branches of educa-
tion, and here, as well as in some other points of my tuition,
he seems to have expected effects without causes.
CHAPTER II
Moral Influences in Early Youth. My Father's
Character and Opinions.
IN my education, as in that of everyone, the moral in-
fluences, which are so much more important than all
others, are also the most complicated, and the most
difficult to specify with any approach to completeness.
Without attempting the hopeless task of detailing the cir-
cumstances by which, in this respect, my early character
may have been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few lead-
ing points, which form an indispensable part of any true
account of my education.
I was brought up from the first without any religious
belief, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. My father,
educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his
own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only
the belief in Revelation, but the foundations of what is
commonly called Natural Religion. I have heard him say,
that the turning point of his mind on the subject was reading
Butler's Analogy. That work, of which he always con-
tinued to speak with respect, kept him, as he said, for some
considerable time, a believer in the divine authority of
Christianity; by proving to him, that whatever are the
difficulties in believing that the Old and New Testaments
proceed from, or record the acts of a perfectly wise and
good being, the same and still greater difficulties stand in
the way of the belief, that a being of such a character can
have been the Maker of the universe. He considered But-
ler's argument as conclusive against the only opponents for
whom it was intended. Those who admit an omnipotent as
well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler of
such a world as this, can say little against Christianity but
what can, with at least equal force, be retorted against them-
30
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 31
selves. Finding, therefore, no halting place in Deism, he
remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless after
many struggles, he yielded to the conviction, that, concern-
ing the origin of things nothing whatever can be known.
This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for dog-
matic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those,
whom the world has considered Atheists, have always done.
These particulars are important, because they show that
my father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was
not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic
and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than
intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world
so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite
power with perfect goodness and righteousness. His intel-
lect spurned the subtleties by which men attempt to blind
themselves to this open contradiction. The Sabsean, or
Manichaean, theory of a Good and an Evil Principle, strug-
gling against each other for the government of the universe,
he would not have equally condemned ; and I have heard him
express surprise, that no one revived it in our time. He
would have regarded it as a mere hypothesis; but he would
have ascribed it to no depraving influence. As it was, his
aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the
term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he re-
garded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion,
but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest
enemy of morality, first, by setting up fictitious excellences,
— ^behef in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not
connected with the good of human-kind, — and causing these
to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues: but above
all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals; making it
consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes
indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth
it depicts as eminently hateful. I have a hundred times
heard him say, that all ages and nations have represented
their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression,
that mankind have gone on adding trait after trait till they
reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which
the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and
prostrated themselves before it. This ne plus ultra of wick-
32 JOHN STUART MILL
edness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly
presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. Think
(he used to say) of a being who would make a Hell — who
would create the human race with the infallible foreknowl-
edge, and therefore with the intention, that the great
majority of them were to be consigned to horrible and ever-
lasting torment The time, I believe, is drawing near when
this dreadful conception of an object of worship will be no
longer identified with Christianity; and when all persons,
with any sense of moral good and evil, will look upon it with
the same indignation with which my father regarded it. My
father was as well aware as 'any one that Christians do not,
in general, undergo the demoralizing consequences which
seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or to the ex-
tent which might have been expected from it. The same
slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to
fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a
theory involving a contradiction in terms, prevents them
from perceiving the logical consequences of the theory.
Such is the facility with which mankind believe at one and
the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so
few are those who draw from what they receive as truths,
any consequences but those recommended to them by their
feelings, that multitudes have held the undoubting belief
in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have nevertheless
identified that being with the best conception they were able
to form of perfect goodness. Their worship was not paid
to the demon which such a Being as they imagined would
really be, but to their own ideal of excellence. The evil is,
that such a belief keeps the ideal wretchedly low; and op-
poses the most obstinate resistance to all thought which has
a tendency to raise it higher. Believers shrink from every
train of ideas which would lead the mind to a clear concep-
tion and an elevated standard of excellence, because they
feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a
standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of
nature, and with much of what they are accustomed to con-
sider as the Christian creed. And thus morality continues
a matter of blind tradition, with no consistent principle,
nor even any consistent feeling, to guide it.
Vol. 25—1 HC
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 33
It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's
ideas of duty, to allow me to acquire impressions contrary
to his convictions and feelings respecting religion: and he
impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which
the world came into existence was a subject on which noth-
ing was known : that the question, " Who made me ? '' cannot
be answered, because we have no experience or authentic
information from which to answer it; and that any answer
only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the
question immediately presents itself, "Who made God?"
He, at the same time, took care that I should be acquainted
with what had been thought by mankind on these impenetra-
ble problems. I have mentioned at how early an age he
made me a reader of ecclesiastical history; and he taught
me to take the strongest interest in the Reformation, as the
great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for lib-
erty of thought.
I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country,
of one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never
had it: I grew up in a negative state with regard to it. I
looked upon the modern exactly as I did upon the ancient
religion, as something which in no way concerned me. It
did not seem to me more strange that English people should
believe what I did not, than that the men I read of in
Herodotus should have done so. History had made the
variety of opinions among mankind a fact familiar to me,
and this was but a prolongation of that fact. This point in
my early education had, however, incidentally one bad con-
sequence deserving notice. In giving me an opinion con-
trary to that of the world, my father thought it necessary
to give it as one which could not prudently be avowed to the
world. This lesson of keeping my thoughts to myself, at
that early age, was attended with some moral disadvantages ;
though my limited intercourse with strangers, especially
such as were likely to speak to me on religion, prevented me
from being placed in the alternative of avowal or hypocrisy.
I remember two occasions in my boyhood, on which I felt
myself in this alternative, and in both cases I avowed my
disbelief and defended it. My opponents were boys, con-
siderably older than myself: one of them I certainl}^ stag-
Vol.25— 2 HC
M JOHN STUART MILL
gered at the time, but the subject was never renewed
between us: the other who was surprised and somewhat
shocked, did his best to convince me for some time,
without effect.
The great advance in liberty of discussion, which is
one of the most important differences between the present
time and that of my childhood, has greatly altered the
morahties of this question ; and I think that few men of my
father's intellect and public spirit, holding with such in-
tensity of moral conviction as he did, unpopular opinions
on religion, or on any other of the great subjects of thought,
would now either practise or inculcate the withholding of
them from the world, unless in the cases, becoming fewer
every day, in which frankness on these subjects would either
risk the loss of means of subsistence, or would amount to
exclusion from some sphere of usefulness peculiarly suitable
to the capacities of the individual. On religion in particular
the time appears to me to have come, when it is the duty of
all who being qualified in point of knowledge, have on ma-
ture consideration satisfied themselves that the current
opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent
known; at least, if they are among those whose station or
reputation gives their opinion a chance of being attended
to. Such an avowal would put an end, at once and for ever,
to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very improperly,
unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities either of mind
or heart. The world would be astonished if it knew how
great a proportion of its brightest ornaments — of those most
distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and
virtue — are complete sceptics in religion; many of them
refraining from avowal, less from personal considerations,
than from a conscientious, though now in my opinion a most
mistaken apprehension, lest by speaking out what would
tend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as
they suppose) existing restraints, they should do harm in-
stead of good.
Of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there
are many species, including almost every variety of moral
type. But the best among them, as no one who has had
opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 3S
are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word
religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves
the title. The liberality of the age, or in other words the
weakening of the obstinate prejudice which makes men
unable to see what is before their eyes because it is con-
trary to their expectations, has caused it to be very commonly
admitted that a Deist may be truly religious : but if religion
stands for any graces of character and not for mere dogma,
the assertion may equally be made of many whose belief is
far short of Deism. Though they may think the proof in-
complete that the universe is a work of design, and though
they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an Author and Gov-
ernor who is absolute in power as well as perfect in good-
ness, they have that which constitutes the principal worth of
all religions whatever, an ideal conception of a Perfect
Being, to which they habitually refer as the guide of their
conscience; and this ideal of Good is usually far nearer to
perfection than the objective Deity of those, who think
themselves obliged to find absolute goodness in the author
of a world so crowded with suffering and so deformed by
injustice as ours.
My father's moral convictions, wholly dissevered from
religion, were very much of the character of those of the
Greek philosophers; and were delivered with the force and
decision which characterized all that came from him. Even
at the very early age at which I read with him the Memora-
bilia of Xenophon, I imbibed from that work and from his
comments a deep respect for the character of Socrates;
who stood in my mind as a model of ideal excellence: and
I well remember how my father at that time impressed
upon me the lesson of the '' Choice of Hercules." At a
somewhat later period the lofty moral standard exhibited 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 very extended application), veracity, persever-
ance, readiness to encounter pain and especially labour;
regard for the public good; estimation of persons according
to their merits, and of things according to their intrinsic
usefulness; a life of exertion in contradiction to one of self-
36 JOHN STUART MILL
indulgent ease and sloth. These and other moralities he
conveyed in brief sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of
grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contempt.
But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect
does more; and the effect my father produced on my char-
acter, did not depend solely on what he said or did with that
direct object, but also, and still more, on what manner of
man he was.
In his views of life he partook of the character of the
Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Cynic, not in the modern but
the ancient sense of the word. In his personal qualities
the Stoic predominated. His standard of morals was Epicu-
rean, inasmuch as it was utilitarian, taking as the exclusive
test of right and wrong, the tendency of actions to produce
pleasure or pain. But he had (and this was the Cynic ele-
ment) scarcely any belief in pleasure; at least in his later
years, of which alone, on this point, I can speak confidently.
He was not insensible to pleasures ; but he deemed very few
of them worth the price which, at least in the present state
of society, must be paid for them. The greater number of
miscarriages in life, he considered to be attributable to the
over-valuing of pleasures. Accordingly, temperance, in the
large sense intended by the Greek philosophers — stopping
short at the point of moderation in all indulgences — was
with him, as with them, almost the central point of educa-
tional precept. His inculcations of this virtue fill a large
place in my childish 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 may be supposed, in
the presence of young persons : but when he did, it was with
an air of settled and profound conviction. He would some-
times say, that if life were made what it might be, by good
government and good education, it would be worth having:
but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of
that possibility. He never varied in rating intellectual en-
joyments above all others, even in value as pleasures, inde-
pendently of their ulterior benefits. The pleasures of the
benevolent affections he placed high in the scale; and
used to say, that he had never known a happy old man,
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 37
except those who were able to live over again in the pleas-
ures o£ the young. For passionate emotions of all sorts, and
for everything which has been said or written in exaltation
of them, he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded
them as a form of madness. ** The intense ^' was with him
a bye-word of scornful disapprobation. He regarded as an
aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared
with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling.
Feelings, as such, he considered to be no proper subjects of
praise or blame. Right and wrong, good and bad, he re-
garded 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 to act right, often leading people to
act wrong. Consistently carrying out the doctrine, that the
object of praise and blame should be the discouragement of
wrong conduct and the encouragement of right, he refused
to let his praise or blame be influenced by the motive of the
agent. He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action,
when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had
been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted as
a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely be-
lieved burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience.
But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften
his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his
estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness
and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapa-
ble of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance
of it. But he disliked people quite as much for any other
deficiency, provided he thought it equally likely to make
them act ill. He disliked, for instance, a fanatic in any bad
cause, as much or more than one who adopted the same
cause from self-interest, because he thought him even more
likely to be practically mischievous. And thus, his aversion
to many intellectual errors, or what he regarded as such,
partook, in a certain sense, of the character of a moral feel-
ing. All this is merely saying that he, in a degree once
common, but now very unusual, threw his feelings into his
opinions; which truly it is difficult to understand how any
one who possesses much of both, can fail to do. None but
38 JOHN STUART MILL
those who do not care about opinions, will confound this
with intolerance. Those, who having opinions which they
hold to be immensely important, and their contraries to be
prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general
good, will necessarily dislike, as a 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,
nor was my father, insensible to good qualities in an op-
ponent, nor governed in their estimation of individuals by
one general presumption, instead of by the whole of their
character. I grant that an earnest person, being no more
infallible than other men, is liable to dislike people on account
of opinions which do not merit dislike; but if he neither him-
self does them any ill ofiice, nor connives at its being done by
others, he is not intolerant : and the forbearance which flows
from a conscientious sense of the importance to mankind of
the equal freedom of all opinions, is the only tolerance
which is commendable, or, to the highest 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 any mind principally formed by him, and that
his moral teaching was not likely to err on the side of
laxity or indulgence. The element which was chiefly de-
ficient in his moral relation to his children was that of
tenderness. I do not believe that this deficiency lay in his
own nature. I believe him to have had much more feeling
than he habitually showed, and much greater capacities of
feeling than were ever developed. He resembled most
Englishmen in being ashamed of the signs of feeling, and by
the absence of demonstration, starving the feelings them-
selves. If we consider further that he was in the trying
position of sole teacher, and add to this that his temper
was constitutionally irritable, it is impossible not to feel
true pity for a father who did, and strove to do, so much
for his children, who would have so valued their affection,
yet who must have been constantly feeling that fear of him
was drying it up at its source. This was no longer the
case later in life, and with his younger children. They
loved him tenderly : and if I cannot say so much of myself,
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 39
I was always loyally devoted to him. As regards my own
education, I hesitate to pronounce whether I was more a
loser or gainer by his severity. It was not such as to pre-
vent me from having a happy childhood. And I do not
believe that boys can be induced to apply themselves with
vigour, and what is so much more difficult, perseverance,
to dry and irksome studies, by the sole force of persuasion
and soft words. Much must be done, and much must be
learnt, by children, for which rigid discipline, and known
liability to punishment, are indispensable as means. It is,
no doubt, a very laudable effort, in modern teaching, to
render as much as possible of what the young are required
to learn, easy and interesting to them. But when this
principle is pushed to the length of not requiring them to
learn anything but what has been made easy and interesting,
one of the chief objects of education is sacrificed. I rejoice
in the decline 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 incapable of 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 it predominates so much as to preclude love and con-
fidence on the part of the child to those who should be the
unreservedly trusted advisers of after years, and perhaps
to seal up the fountains of frank and spontaneous communi-
cativeness in the child's nature, it is an evil for which a
large abatement must be made from the benefits, moral and
intellectual, which may flow from any other part of the
education.
During this first period of my life, the habitual frequenters
of my father's house were limited to a very few persons,
most of them little known to the world, but whom personal
worth, and more or less of congeniality with at least his
political opinions (not vSO frequently to be met with then as
since) inclined him to cultivate; and his conversations with
them I listened to with interest and instruction. My being
an habitual inmate of my father's study made me acquainted
with the dearest of his friends, David Ricardo, who by his
40 JOHN STUART MILL
benevolent countenance, and kindliness of manner, was very
attractive to young persons, and who after I became a student
of political economy, invited me to his house and to walk
with him in order to converse on the 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, and
having been, I rather think, a younger schoolfellow or col-
lege companion of his, had on returning from India renewed
their youthful acquaintance, and who coming like many
others greatly under the influence of my father's intellect
and energy of character, was induced partly by that influence
to go into Parliament, and there adopt the line of conduct
which has given him an honourable place in the history of
his country. Of Mr. Bentham I saw much more, owing to
the close intimacy which existed between him and my father.
I do not know how soon after my father's first arrival in
England they became acquainted. But my father was the
earliest Englishman of any great mark, who thoroughly
understood, and in the main adopted, Bentham's general
views of ethics, government and law: and this was a natural
foundation for sympathy between them, and made them
familiar companions in a period of Bentham's life during
which he admitted much fewer visitors than was the case
subsequently. At this time Mr. Bentham passed some part
of every year at Barrow Green House, in a beautiful part of
the Surrey Hills, a few miles from Godstone, and there 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 I saw many things which
were instructive to me, and acquired my first taste for nat-
ural 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 each year at Ford Abbey, in
Somersetshire (or rather in a part of Devonshire surrounded
by Somersetshire), which intervals I had the advantage of
passing at that place. This sojourn was, I think, an im-
portant circumstance in my education. Nothing contributes
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 41
more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people than
the large and free character of their habitations. The mid-
dle age architecture, the baronial hall, and the spacious and
lofty rooms, of this fine old place, so unlike the mean and
cramped externals of English middle class life, gave the
sentiment of a larger and freer existence, and were to me
a sort of poetic cultivation, aided also by the character 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, a year's residence in France, to Mr. Bentham's
brother, General Sir Samuel Bentham. I had seen Sir
Samuel Bentham and his family at their house near Gos-
port in the course of the tour already mentioned (he being
then Superintendent of the Dockyard at Portsmouth), and
during a stay of a few days which they made at Ford
Abbey shortly after the peace, before going to live on the
Continent.
In 1820 they invited me for a six months' visit to them
in the south of France, which their kindness ultimately
prolonged to nearly a twelvemonth. Sir Samuel Bentham,
though of a character of mind different from that of his il-
lustrious brother, was a man of very considerable attainments
and general powers, with a decided genius for mechanical
art. His wife, a daughter of the celebrated chemist. Dr.
Fordyce, was a woman of strong will and decided character,
much general knowledge, and great practical good sense of
the Edgeworth kind: she was the ruling spirit of the house-
hold, as she deserved, and was well qualified, to be. Their
family consisted of one son (the eminent botanist) and
three daughters, the youngest about two years my senior. I
am indebted to them for much and various instruction, and
for an almost parental interest in my welfare. When I first
joined them, in May 1820, they occupied the Chateau of
Pomignan (still belonging to a descendant of Voltaire's
enemy) on the heights overlooking the plain of the Garonne
between Montauban and Toulouse. I accompanied them in
an excursion to the Pyrenees, including a stay of some dura-
tion at Bagneres de Bigorre, a journey to Pau, Bayonne, and
42 JOHN STUART MILL
Bagneres de Luchon, and an ascent of the Pic du Midi de
Bigorre.
This first introduction to the highest order of mountain
scenery made the deepest impression on me, and gave a
colour to my tastes through life. In October we proceeded
by the beautiful mountain route of Castres and St. Pons,
from Toulouse to Montpellier, in which last neighbourhood
Sir Samuel had just bought the estate of Restincliere, near
the foot of the singular mountain of St. Loup. During this
residence in France, I acquired a familiar knowledge of the
French language, and acquaintance with the ordinary French
literature; I took lessons in various bodily exercises, in none
of which however I made any proficiency; and at Mont-
pellier I attended the excellent winter courses of lectures at
the Faculte des Sciences, those of M. Anglada on chemistry,
of M. Provencal on zoology, and of a very accomplished
representative of the eighteenth century metaphysics, M.
Gergonne, on logic, under the name of Philosophy of the
Sciences. I also went through a course of the higher math-
ematics under the private tuition of M. Lentheric, a pro-
fessor at the Lycee of Montpellier. But the greatest, per-
haps, of the many advantages which I owed to this episode
in my education, was that of having breathed for a whole
year, the free and genial atmosphere of Continental life.
This advantage was not the less real though I could not then
estimate, nor even consciously feel it. Having so little ex-
perience of English life, and the few people I knew being
mostly such as had public objects, of a large and personally
disinterested kind, at heart, I was ignorant of the low moral
tone of what, in England, is called society; the habit of,
not indeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode
of implication, that conduct is of course always directed
towards low and petty objects; the absence of high feelings
which manifests itself by sneering depreciation of all dem-
onstrations of them, and by general abstinence (except
among a few of the stricter religionists) from professing
any high principles of action at all, except in those pre-
ordained cases in which such profession is put on as part
of the costume and formalities of the occasion. I could
not then know or estimate the difference between this man-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 43
tier of existence, and that of a people like the French, whose
faults, if equally real, are at all events different; among
whom sentiments, which by comparison at least may be
called elevated, are the current coin of human inter-
course, both in books and in private life; and though often
evaporating in profession, are yet kept alive in the nation
at large by constant exercise, and stimulated by sympathy,
so as to form a living and active part of the existence of
great numbers of persons, and to be recognised and under-
stood by all. Neither could I then appreciate the general
culture of the understanding, which results from the habitual
exercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the
most uneducated classes of several countries on the Conti-
nent, in a degree not equalled in England among the so-
called educated, except where an unusual tenderness of
conscience leads to a habitual exercise of the intellect on
questions of right and wrong. I did not know the way
in which, among the ordinary English, the absence of in-
terest in things of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a
special thing here and there, and the habit of not speaking
to .others, nor much even to themselves, about the things in
which they do feel interest, causes both their feelings and
their intellectual faculties to remain undeveloped or to de-
velop themselves only in some single and very limited
direction ; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a
kind of negative existence. All these things I did not per-
ceive till long afterwards ; but I even then felt, though with-
out stating it clearly to myself, the contrast between the
frank sociability and amiability of French personal inter-
course, and the English mode of existence in which every-
body acts as if everybody else (with few, or no 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
national character, come more to the surface, and break
out more fearlessly in ordinary intercourse, than in England ;
but the general habit of the people is to show, as well as to
expect, friendly feeling in every one towards every other,
wherever there is not some positive cause for the opposite.
In England it is only of the best bred people, in the upper
or upper middle ranks, that anything like this can be said.
44 JOHN STUART MILL
In my way through Paris, both going and returning, I
passed some time in the house of M. Say, the eminent
poHtical economist, who was a friend and correspondent of
my father, having become acquainted with him on a visit
to England a year or two after the peace. He was a man
of the later period of the French Revolution, a fine speci-
men of the best kind of French Republican, one of those
who had never bent the knee to Bonaparte though courted
by him to do so; a truly upright, brave, and enlightened
man. He lived a quiet and studious life, made happy by
warm affections, public and private. He was acquainted
with many of the chiefs of the Liberal party, and I saw
various noteworthy persons while staying at his house;
among whom I have pleasure in the recollection of having
once seen Saint-Simon, not yet the founder either of a
philosophy or a religion, and considered only as a clever
originaL The chief fruit which I carried away from the
society I saw, was a strong and permanent interest in Con-
tinental Liberalism, of which I ever afterwards kept myself
au courant, as much as of English politics: a thing not at
all usual in those days with Englishmen, and which had a
very salutary influence on my development, keeping me free
from the error always prevalent in England, and from which
even my father with all his superiority to prejudice was
not exempt, 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,
182 1 ; and my education resumed its ordinary 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 old studies, with the addition of some
new ones. When I returned, my father was just
finishing for the press his Elements of Political Economy,
and he made me perform an exercise on the manuscript,
which Mr. Bentham practised on all his own writings, mak-
ing what he called "marginal contents;'' a short abstract
of every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to judge
of, and improve, the order of the ideas, and the general
character of the exposition. Soon after, my father put into
my hands Condillac's Traite des Sensations, and the logical
and metaphysical volumes of his Cours d'Etudes; the first
(notwithstanding the superficial resemblance between Con-
dillac's psychological system and my father's) quite as much
for a warning as for an example. I am not sure whether
it was in this winter or the next that I first read a history
of the French Revolution. I learnt with astonishment, that
the principles of democracy, then apparently in so insig-
nificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in Europe, had
borne all before them in France thirty years earlier, and
had been the creed of the nation. As may be supposed from
this, I had previously a very vague idea of that great com-
motion. I knew only that the French had thrown off the
absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. and XV., had put the
King and Queen to death, guillotined many persons, one of
whom was Lavoisier, and had ultimately fallen under the
despotism of Bonaparte. From this time, as was natural,
the subject took an immense hold of my feelings. It allied
itself with all my juvenile aspirations to the character of a
democratic champion. What had happened so lately, seemed
as if it might easily happen again : and the most transcendent
45
46 JOHN STUART MILL
glory I was capable of conceiving, was that of figuring,
successful or unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an English
Convention.
During the winter of 1821-2, Mr. John Austin, with whom
at the time of my visit to France my father had but lately
become acquainted, kindly allowed me to read Roman law
with him. My father, notwithstanding his abhorrence of the
chaos of barbarism called English Law, had turned his
thoughts towards the bar as on the whole less ineligible for
me than any other profession: and these readings with Mr*
Austin, who had made Bentham's best ideas his own, and
added much to them from other sources and from his own
mind, were not only a valuable introduction to legal studies,
but an important portion of general education. With Mr.
Austin I read Heineccius on the Institutes, his Roman An-
tiquities, and part of his exposition of the Pandects ; to which
was added a considerable portion of Blackstone. It was at
the commencement of these studies that my father, as
a needful accompaniment to them, put into my hands
Bentham's principal speculations, as interpreted to the
Continent, and indeed to all the world, by Dumont, in the
Traite de Legislation. The reading of this book was an
epoch in my life; one of the turning points in my mental
history.
My previous education had been, in a certain sense, al-
ready a course of Benthamism. The Benthamic standard of
" the greatest happiness '' was that which I had always been
taught to apply; I was even familiar with an abstract dis-
cussion of it, forming an episode in an unpublished dialogue
on Government, written by my father on the Platonic model.
Yet in the first pages of Bentham it burst upon me with
all the force of novelty. What thus impressed me was the
chapter in w^hich Bentham passed judgment on the common
modes of reasoning in morals 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 its sentiments upon
others under cover of sounding expressions which convey no
reason for the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as its own
reason. It had not struck me before, that Bentham's princi-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 47
pie put an end to all this. The feeling rushed upon me, that
all previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed
was the commencement of a new era in thought. This im-
pression was strengthened by the manner in which Bentham
put into scientific form the application of the happiness
principle to the morality of actions, by analysing the various
classes and orders of their consequences. But what struck
me at that time most of all, was the Classification of Of-
fences, which is much more clear, compact, and imposing in
Dumont's redaction than in the original work of Bentham
from which it was taken. Logic and the dialectics of Plato,
which had formed so large a part of my previous training,
had given me a strong relish for accurate classification.
This taste had been strengthened and enlightened by the
study of botany, on the principles of what is called the
Natural Method, which I had taken up with great zeal,
though only as an amusement, during my stay in France;
and when I found scientific classification applied to the great
and complex subject of Punishable Acts, under the guidance
of the ethical principle of Pleasurable and Painful Conse-
quences, followed out in the method of detail introduced
into these subjects by Bentham, I felt taken up to an emi-
nence from which I could survey a vast mental domain,
and see stretching out into the distance intellectual results
beyond all computation. As I proceeded further, there
seemed to be added to this intellectual clearness, the most
inspiring prospects of practical improvement in human af-
fairs. To Bentham's general view of the construction of a
body of law I was not altogether a stranger, having read
with attention that admirable compendium, my father's
article on Jurisprudence : but I had read it with little profit,
and scarcely any interest, no doubt from its extremely gen-
eral and abstract character, and also because it concerned
the form more than the substance of the corpus juris, the
logic rather than the ethics of law. But Bentham's subject
was Legislation, of which Jurisprudence is only the formal
part: and at every page he seemed to open a clearer and
broader conception of what human opinions and institutions
ought to be, how they might be made what they ought to
be, and how far removed from it they are now. When I
48 JOHN STUART MILL
laid down the last volume of the Traite, I had become a dif-
ferent being. The " principle of utility '' understood as
Bentham understood it, and applied in the manner in which
he applied it through these three volumes, fell exactly into
its place as the keystone which held together the detached
and fragmentary component parts of my knowledge and be-
liefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of things. I now had
opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among
the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and
diffusion of which could be made the principal outward pur-
pose of a life. And I had a grand conception laid before me
of changes to be effected in the condition of mankind
through that doctrine. The Traite de Legislation wound up
with what was to me a most impressive picture of human
life as it would be made by such opinions and such laws
as were recommended in the treatise. The anticipations
of practicable improvement were studiously moderate, depre-
cating and discountenancing as reveries of vague enthusi-
asm many things which will one day seem so natural to
human beings, that injustice will probably be done to those
who once thought them chimerical. But, in my state of
mind, this appearance of superiority to illusion added to
the effect which Bentham^s doctrines produced on me, by
heightening the impression of mental power, and the vista
of improvement which 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 other works of Bentham which had then seen the
light, either as written by himself or as edited by Dumont.
This v/as my private reading : while, under my father's direc-
tion, my studies were carried into the higher branches of
analytic psychology. I now read Locke's Essay, and wrote
out an account of it, consisting of a complete abstract of
every chapter, with such remarks as occurred to me: which
was read by, or (I think) to, my father, and discussed
throughout. I performed the same process with Helvetius de
I'Esprit, which I read of my own choice. This preparation
of abstracts, subject to my father's censorship, was of great
service to me, by compelling precision in conceiving and ex*
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 49
pressing psychological doctrines, whether accepted as truths
or only regarded as the opinion of others. After Helvetius,
my father made me study what he deemed the really master-
production in the philosophy of mind, Hartley's Observa-
tions on Man. This book, though it did not, like the Traite
de Legislation, give a new colour to my existence, made a
very similar impression on me in regard to its immediate
subject. Hartley's explanation, incomplete as in many points
it 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 by contrast the insufficiency of
the merely verbal generalizations of Condillac, and even of
the instructive gropings and feelings about for psychological
explanations, of Locke. It was at this very time that my
father commenced writing his Analysis of the Mind, which
carried Hartley^s mode of explaining the mental phenomena
to so much greater length and depth. He could only com-
mand the concentration of thought necessary for this work,
during the complete leisure of his holiday of a month or
six weeks annually: and he commenced it in the summer of
1822, in the first holiday he passed at Dorking; in which
neighbourhood, from that time to the end of his life, with
the exception of two years, he lived, as far as his official
duties permitted, for six months of every year. He worked
at the Analysis during several successive vacations, up to
the year 1829 when it was published, and allowed me to read
the manuscript, portion by portion, as it advanced. The
other principal English writers on mental philosophy 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 that time had my father himself read them.
Among the works read in the course of this year, which
contributed materially to my development, I ought to men-
tion a book (written on the foundation of some of Ben-
tham's manuscripts and published under the pseudonyme of
Philip Beauchamp) entitled ** Analysis of the Influence of
Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind."
This was an examination not of the truth, but of the useful-
ness of religious belief, in the most general sense, apart
50 JOHN STUART MILL
from the peculiarities of any special Revelation; which, of
all the parts of the discussion concerning reHgion, is the
most important in this age, in which real belief in any
religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion
of its necessity for moral and social purposes almost uni-
versal; and when those who reject revelation, very generally
take refuge in an optimistic Deism, a worship of the order
of Nature, and the supposed course of Providence, at least
as full of contradictions, and perverting to the moral senti-
ments, as any of the forms of Chistianity, if only it is as
completely realized. Yet, very little, with any claim to a
philosophical character, has been written by sceptics against
the usefulness of this form of belief. The volume bearing
the name of Philip Beauchamp had this for its special object.
Having been shown to my father in manuscript, it was put
into my hands by him, and I made a marginal analysis of it
as I had done of the Elements of Political Economy. Next
to the Traite de Legislation, it was one of the books which
by the searching character of its analysis produced the great-
est effect upon me. On reading it lately after an interval of
many years, I find it to have some of the defects as well as
the merits of the Benthamic modes of thought, and to contain,
as I now think, many weak arguments, but with a great over-
balance of sound ones, and much good material for a more
completely philosophic and conclusive treatment of the subject.
I have now, I believe, mentioned all the books which had
any considerable effect on my early mental development.
From this point I began to carry on my intellectual cultiva-
tion by writing still more than by reading. In the summer
of 1822 I wrote my first argumentative essay. I remember
very little about it, except that it was an attack on what I
regarded as the aristocratic prejudice, that the rich were, or
were likely to be, superior in moral qualities to the poor.
My performance was entirely argumentative, without any
of the declamation which the subject would admit of, and
might be expected to suggest to a young writer. In that
department however I was, and remained, very inapt. Dry
argument was the only thing I could manage, or willingly
attempted; though passively I was very susceptible to the
effect of all composition, whether in the form of poetry; or
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 51
oratory, which appealed to the feelings on any basis of
reason. My father, who knew nothing of this essay until it
was finished, was well satisfied, and as I learnt from others,
even pleased with it; but, perhaps from a desire to promote
the exercise of other mental faculties than the purely logi-
cal, he advised me to make my next exercise in composition
one of the oratorical kind: on which suggestion, availing
myself of my familiarity with Greek history and ideas and
with the Athenian orators, I wrote two speeches, one an .
accusation, the other a defence of Pericles, on a supposed ]
impeachment for not marching out to fight the Lacedae-
monians on their invasion of Attica. After this I continued
to write papers on subjects often very much beyond my
capacity, but with great benefit both from the exercise
Itself, and from the discussions which it led to with my
father.
I had now also begun to converse, on general subjects, with
the instructed men with whom I came in contact: and the
opportunities of such contact naturally became more nu-
merous. The two friends of my father from whom I
derived most, and with whom I most associated, were Mr.
Grote and Mr. John Austin. The acquaintance of both with
my father was recent, but had ripened rapidly into intimacy.
Mr. Grote was introduced to my father by Mr. Ricardo, I
think in 1819, (being then about twenty-five years old,) and
sought assiduously his society and conversation. Already a
highly instructed man, he was yet, by the side of my father,
a tyro in the great subjects of human opinion; but he
rapidly seized on my father's best ideas; and in the depart-
ment of political opinion he made himself known as early
as 1820, by a pamphlet in defence of Radical Reform, in
reply to a celebrated article by Sir James Mackintosh, then
lately published in the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Grote's
father, the banker, was, I believe, a thorough Tory, and his
mother intensely Evangelical ; so that for his liberal opinions
he was in no way indebted to home influences. But, unlike
most persons who have the prospect of being rich by in-
heritance, he had, though actively engaged in the business
of banking, devoted a great portion of time to philosophic
studies ; and his intimacy with my father did much to decide
52 JOHN STUART MILL
the character of the next stage in his mental progress. Him
I often visited, and my conversations v^ith him on political,
moral, and philosophical subjects gave me, in ^addition to
much valuable instruction, all the pleasure and benefit of
sympathetic communion w^ith a man of the high intellectual
and moral eminence which his life and writings have since
manifested to the world.
Mr. Austin, who was four or five years older than Mr.
Grote, was the eldest son of a retired miller in Suffolk, who
had made money by contracts during the war, and who must
have been a man of remarkable qualities, as I infer from
the fact that all his sons were of more than common ability
and all eminently gentlemen. The one with whom we are
now concerned, and whose writings on jurisprudence have
made him celebrated, was for some time in the army, and
served in Sicily under Lord William Bentinck. After the
peace he sold his commission and studied for the bar, to
which he had been called for some time before my father
knew him. He was not, like Mr. Grote, to any extent, a
pupil of my father, but he had attained, by reading and
thought, a considerable number of the same opinions, modi-
fied by his own very decided individuality of character. He
was a man of great intellectual powers which in conversation
appeared at their very best; from the vigour and richness
of expression with which, under the excitement of discussion,
he was accustomed to maintain some view or other of most
general subjects; and from an appearance of not only strong,
but deliberate and collected will ; mixed with a certain bitter-
ness, partly derived from temperament, and partly from the
general cast of his feelings and reflections. The dissatis-
faction with life and the world, felt more or less in the
present state of society and intellect by every discerning and
highly conscientious mind, gave in his case a rather melan-
choly tinge to the character, very natural to those whose
passive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to
their active energies. For it must be said, that the strength
of will of which his manner seemed to give such strong
assurance, expended itself principally in manner. With
great zeal for human improvement, a strong sense of duty,
and capacities and acquirements the extent of which is
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 53
proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever com-
pleted any intellectual task of magnitude. He had so high
a standard of what ought to be done, so exaggerated a
sense of deficiencies in his own performances, and was so
unable to content himself with the amount of elaboration
sufficient for the occasion and the purpose that he not only
spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by overlabouring
it, but spent so much time and exertion in superfluous study
and thought, that when his task ought to have been com-
pleted, he had generally worked himself into an illness, with-
out having half finished what he undertook. From this men-
tal infirmity (of which he is not the sole example among the
accomplished and able men whom I have known), combined
with liability to frequent attacks of disabling though not
dangerous ill-health, he accomplished, through life, little in
comparison with what he seemed capable of; but what he did
produce is held 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 many persons, through his con-
versation, a source not only of much instruction but of great
elevation of character. On me his influence was most salu-
tary. It was moral in the best sense. He took a sincere
and kind interest in me^ far beyond what could have been
expected towards a mere youth from a man of his age,
standing, and what seemed austerity of character. There
was in his conversation and demeanour a tone of highmind-
edness which did not show itself so much, if the quality ex-
isted as much, in any of the other persons with whom at
that time I associated. My intercourse with him was the
more beneficial, owing to his being of a different mental
type from all other intellectual men whom I frequented, and
he from the first set himself decidedly against the prejudices
and narrownesses which are almost sure to be found in a
young man formed by a particular mode of thought or a par-
ticular social circle.
His younger brother, Charles Austin, of whom at this
time and for the next year or two I saw much, had also
a great effect on me, though of a very different description.
He was but a few years older than myself, and had then
just left the University, where he had shone with great eclat
M JOHN STUART MILL
as a man of intellect and a brilliant orator and converser.
The effect he produced on his Cambridge contemporaries de-
serves to be accounted an historical event; for to it may in
part be traced the tendency towards Liberalism in general,
and the Benthamic and politico-economic form of it in
particular, v^hich showed itself in a portion of the more
active-minded young men of the higher classes from this
time to 1830. The Union Debating Society, at that time at
the height of its reputation, was an arena where what were
then thought extreme opinions, in politics and philosophy,
were weekly asserted, face to face with their opposites, be-
fore audiences consisting of the elite of the Cambridge
youth : and though many persons afterwards of more or less
note, (of whom Lord Macaulay is the most celebrated),
gained their first oratorical laurels in those debates, the really
influential mind among these intellectual gladiators was
Charles Austin. He continued, after leaving the University,
to be, by his conversation and personal ascendancy, a leader
among the same class of young men who had been his asso-
ciates there: and he attached me among others to his car.
Through him I became 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 certain degree new to me. The influence of Charles Aus-
tin over me differed from that of the persons T have hitherto
mentioned, in being not the influence of a man over a boy,
but that of an elder contemporary. It was 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 met
on a ground of equality, though as yet much his inferior on
that common ground. He was a man who never failed to im-
press greatly those with whom he came in contact, even when
their opinions were the very reverse of his. The impression
he gave was that of boundless strength, together with talents
which, combined with such apparent force of will and char-
acter, seemed capable of dominating the world. Those who
knew him, whether friendly to him or not, always anticipated
that he would play a conspicuous part in public life. It is
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 55
seldom that men produce so great an immediate effect by
speech, unless they, in some degree, lay themselves out for it ;
and he did this in no ordinary degree. He loved to strike,
and even to startle. He knew that decision is the greatest
element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with all the
decision he could throw into them, never so well pleased as
when he astonished any one by their audacity. Very unlike
his brother, who made war against the narrower interpreta-
tions and applications of the principles they both professed,
he, on the contrary, presented the Benthamic doctrines in
the most startling form of which they were susceptible, ex-
aggerating everything in them which tended to consequences
offensive to any one's preconceived feelings. All which, he
defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by
a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always
either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field.
It is my belief that much of the notion popularly enter-
tained of the tenets and sentiments of what are called Ben-
thamites or Utilitarians had its origin in paradoxes thrown
out by Charles Austin. It must be said, however, that his
example was followed, haud passibus crquis, by younger pros-
elytes, and that to outrer whatever was by anybody con-
sidered offensive in the doctrines and maxims of Bentham-
ism, became at one time the badge of a small coterie of
youths. All of these who had anything in them, myself
among others, quickly outgrew this boyish vanity; and those
who had not, became tired of differing from other people,
and gave up both the good and the bad part of the heterodox
opinions they had for some time professed.
It was in the winter of 1822-3 that I formed the plan of
a little society, to be composed of young men agreeing
in fundamental principles — acknowledging Utility as their
standard in ethics and politics, and a certain number of the
principal corollaries drawn from it in the philosophy I had
accepted — and meeting once a fortnight to read essays and
discuss questions conformably to the premises thus agreed
.on. The fact would hardly be worth mentioning, but for the
circumstance, that the name I gave to the society I had
planned was the Utilitarian Society. It was the first time
that any one had taken the title of Utilitarian; and the term
56 JOHN STUART MILL
made its way into the language from this humble source. I
did not invent the word, but found it in one of Galf s novels,
the " Annals of the Parish," in which the Scotch clergyman,
of whom the book is a supposed autobiography, is repre-
sented as warning his parishioners not to leave the Gospel
and become utilitarians. With a boy's fondness for a name
and a banner I seized on the word, and for some years called
myself and others by it as a sectarian appellation; and it
came to be occasionally used by some others holding the
opinions which it was intended to designate. As those opin-
ions attracted more notice, the term was repeated by
strangers and opponents, and got into rather common use
just about the time when those who had originally assumed
it, laid down that along with other sectarian characteristics.
The Society so called consisted at first of no more than
three members, one of whom, being Mr. Bentham's amanuen-
sis, obtained for us permission to hold our meetings in his
house. The number never, I think, reached ten, and the
society was broken up in 1826. It had thus an existence of
about three years and a half. The chief effect of it as re-
gards myself, over and above the benefit of practice in oral
discussion, was that of bringing me in contact with several
young men at that time less advanced than myself, among
whom, as they professed the same opinions, I was for some
time a sort of leader, and had considerable influence on their
mental progress. Any young man of education who fell in
my way, and whose opinions were not incompatible with
those of the Society, I endeavoured to press into its service ;
and some others I probably should never have known, had
they not joined it. Those of the members who became my
intimate companions — no one of whom was in any sense of
the word a disciple, but all of them independent thinkers on
their own basis — were William Eyton Tooke, son of the
eminent political economist, a young man of singular worth
both moral and intellectual, lost to the world by an early
death; his friend William Ellis, an original thinker in the
field of political economy, now honourably known by his
apostolic exertions for the improvement of education;
George Graham, afterwards official assignee of the Bank-
ruptcy Court, a thinker of originality and power on almost
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 57
all abstract subjects; and (from the time when he came first
to England to study for the bar in 1824 or 1825) a man who
has made considerably more noise in the world than any of
these, John Arthur Roebuck.
In May, 1823, my professional occupation and status for
the next thirty-five years of my life, were decided by my
father's obtaining for me an appointment from the East
India Company, in the office of the Examiner of India Cor-
respondence, immediately under himself. I was appointed
in the usual manner, at the bottom of the list of clerks, to
rise, at least in the first instance, by seniority; but with the
understanding that I should be employed from the beginning
in preparing drafts of despatches, and be thus trained up as
a successor to those who then filled the higher departments
of the office. My drafts of course required, for some time,
much revision from my immediate superiors, but I soon be-
came well acquainted with the business, and by my father's
instructions and the general growth of my own powers, I
was in a few years qualified to be, and practically was, the
chief conductor of the correspondence with India in one of
the leading departments, that of the Native States. This
continued to be my official duty until I was appointed Exam-
iner, only two years before the time when the abolition of
the East India Company as a political body determined my
retirement. I do not know any one of the occupations by
which a subsistence can now be gained, more suitable than
such as this to any one who, not being in independent cir-
cumstances, desires to devote a part of the twenty-four
hours to private intellectual pursuits. Writing for the press,
cannot be recommended as a permanent resource to any one
qualified to accomplish anything in the higher departments
of literature or thought: not only on account of the uncer-
tainty of this means of livelihood, especially if the writer has
a conscience, and will not consent to serve any opinions ex-
cept his own; but also because the writings by which one
can live, are not the writings which themselves live, and are
never those in which the writer does his best. Books destined
to form future thinkers take too much time to write, and
when written come, in general, too slowly into notice and
repute, to be relied on for subsistence. Those who have to
58 JOHN STUART MILL
support tTiemselves by their pen must depend on literary
drudgery, or at best on writings addressed to the multitude ;
and can employ in the pursuits of their own choice, only such
time as they can spare from those of necessity; which is
generally less than the leisure allowed by office occupations,
while the effect on the mind is far more enervating and
fatiguing. For my own part 1 have, through life, found office
duties an actual rest from the other mental occupations
which I have carried on simultaneously with them. They
were sufficiently intellectual not to be a distasteful drudgery,
without being such as to cause any strain upon the mental
powers of a person used to abstract thought, or to the labour
of careful literary composition. The drawbacks, for every
mode of life has its drawbacks, were not, however, unfelt
by me. I cared little for the loss of the chances of riches
and honours held out by some of the professions, particu-
larly the bar, which had been, as I have already said, the
profession thought of for me. But I was not indifferent to
exclusion from Parliament, and public life: and I felt very
sensibly the more immediate unpleasantness of confinement
to London; the holiday allowed by India-House practice not
exceeding a month in the year, while my taste was strong
for a country life, and my sojourn in France had left behind
it an ardent desire of travelling. But though these tastes
could not be freely indulged, they were at no time entirely
sacrificed. I passed most Sundays, throughout the year, in
the country, taking long rural walks on that day even when
residing in London. The month's holiday was, for a few
years, passed at my father's house in the country: after-
wards a part or the whole was spent in tours, chiefly pedes-
trian, with some one or more of the young men who were
my chosen companions; and, at a later period, in longer
journeys or excursions, alone or with other friends. France,
Belgium, and Rhenish Germany were within easy reach of
the annual holiday: and two longer absences, one of three,
the other of six months, under medical advice, added Switzer-
land, the Tyrol, and Italy to my list. Fortunately, also, both
these journeys occurred rather early, so as to give the benefit
and charm of the remembrance to a large portion of life.
I am disposed to agree with what has been surmised by
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 59
others, that the opportunity which my official position gave
me of learning by personal observation the necessary con-
ditions of the practical conduct of public affairs, has been of
considerable value to me as a theoretical reformer of the
opinions and institutions of my time. Not, indeed, that pub-
lic business transacted on paper, to take effect on the other
side of the globe, was of itself calculated to give much prac-
tical knowledge of life. But the occupation accustomed
me to see and hear the difficulties of every course, and the
means of obviating them, stated and discussed deliberately
with a view to execution; it gave me opportunities of per-
ceiving when public measures, and other political facts, did
not produce the effects which had been expected of them,
and from what causes; above all, it was valuable to me by
making me, in this portion of my activity, merely one wheel
in a machine, the whole of which had to work together. As
a speculative writer, I should have had no one to consult
but myself, and should have encountered in my speculations
none of the obstacles which would have started up whenever
they came to be applied to practice. But as a Secretary con-
ducting political correspondence, I could not issue an order
or express an opinion, without satisfying various persons
very unlike myself, that the thing was fit to be done. I was
thus in a good position for finding out by practice the mode
of putting a thought which gives it easiest admittance into
minds not prepared for it by habit; while I became practi-
cally conversant with the difficulties of moving bodies of men,
the necessities of compromise, the art of sacrificing the
non-essential to preserve the essential. I learnt how to ob-
tain the best I could, when I could not obtain everything;
instead of being indignant or dispirited because I could not
have entirely my own way, to be pleased and encouraged
when I could have the smallest part of it; and when even
that could not be, to bear with complete equanimity the
being overruled altogether. I have found, through life, these
acquisitions to be of the greatest possible importance for
personal happiness, and they are also a very necessary con-
dition for enabling any one, 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 my attention to my own pursuits, which
were never carried on more vigorously. It was
about this time that I began to write in newspapers. The
first writings of mine which got into print were two letters
published 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 property of the well-known politi-
cal economist, Colonel Torrens, and under the editorship of
an able man, Mr. Walter Coulson (who, after being an
amanuensis of Mr. Bentham, became a reporter, then an
editor, next a barrister and conveyancer, and died Counsel
to the Home Office), it had become one of the most important
newspaper organs of Liberal politics. Colonel Torrens him-
self wrote much of the political economy of his paper; and
had at this time made an attack upon some opinion of Ri-
cardo and my father, to which, at my father^s instigation, I
attempted an answer, and Coulson, out of consideration for
my father and goodwill to me, inserted it. There was a
reply by Torrens, to which I again rejoined. I soon after
attempted something considerably more ambitious. The
prosecutions of Richard Carlile and his wife and sister for
publications hostile to Christianity, were then exciting much
attention, and nowhere more than among the people I fre-
quented. Freedom of discussion even in politics, much more
in religion, was at that time far from being, even in theory,
the conceded point which it at least seems to be now; and
the holders of obnoxious opinions had to be always ready
to argue and re-argue for the liberty of expressing them.
I wrote a series of five letters, under the signature of Wick-
60
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 61
liffe, going over the whole length and breadth of the ques-
tion of free publication of all opinions on religion, and
offered them to the Morning Chronicle. Three of them
were published in January and February, 1823 ; the other two,
containing things too outspoken for that journal, never ap-
peared at all. But a paper which I wrote soon after on the
same subject, a propos of a debate in the House of Commons,
was inserted as a leading article ; and during the whole of this
year, 1823, a considerable number of my contributions were
printed in the Chronicle and Traveller: sometimes notices
of books but oftener letters, commenting on some nonsense
talked in Parliament, or some defect of the law, or misdoings
of the magistracy or the courts of justice. In this last de-
partment the Chronicle was now rendering signal service.
After the death of Mr. Perry, the editorship and manage-
ment of the paper had devolved on Mr. John Black, long a
reporter on its establishment; a man of most extensive read-
ing and information, great honesty and simplicity of mind;
a particular friend of my father, imbued with many of his
and Bentham's ideas, which he reproduced in his articles,
among other valuable thoughts, with great facility and skill.
From this time the Chronicle ceased to be the merely Whig
organ it was before, and during the next ten years became
to a considerable extent a vehicle of the opinions of the
Utilitarian Radicals. This was mainly by what Black him-
self wrote, with some assistance from Fonblanque, who first
showed his eminent qualities as a writer by articles and
jeux d'esprit in the Chronicle. The defects of the law, and
of the administration of justice, were the subject on which
that paper rendered most service to improvement. Up to
that time hardly a word had been said, except by Bentham
and my father, against that most peccant part of English in-
stitutions and of their administration. It was the almost
universal creed of Englishmen, that the law of England, the
judicature of England, the unpaid magistracy of England,
were models of excellence. I do not go beyond the mark in
saying, that after Bentham, who supplied the principal ma-
terials, the greatest share of the merit of breaking down
this wretched superstition belongs to Black, as editor of the
Morning Chronicle. He kept up an incessant fire against
62 JOHN STUART MILE
it, exposing the absurdities and vices of the law and the
courts of justice, paid and unpaid, until he forced some
sense of them into people's minds. On many other ques-
tions he became the organ of opinions much in advance of
any which had ever before found regular advocacy in the
newspaper press. Black was a frequent visitor of my
father, and Mr. Grote used to say that he always knew by
the Monday morning's article, whether Black had been with
my father on the Sunday, Black was one of the most in-
fluential of the many channels through which my father's
conversation and personal influence made his opinions tell
on the world ; co-operating with the effect of his writings in
making him a power in the country, such as it has 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 was often acting the most efficiently where it
was least seen and suspected. I have already noticed how
much of what was done by Ricardo, Hume, and Grote, was
the result, in part, of his prompting and persuasion. He
was the good genius by the side of Brougham in most of
what he did for the public, either on education, law reform,
or any other subject. And his influence flowed in minor
streams too numerous to be specified. This influence was
now about to receive a great extension by the foundation
of the Westminster Review.
Contrary to what may have been supposed, my father was
in no degree a party to setting up the Westminster Review.
The need of a Radical organ to make head against the Edin-
burgh and Quarterly (then in the period of their greatest
reputation and influence), had been a topic of conversation
between him and Mr. Bentham many years earlier, and it
had been a part of their Chateau en Espagne that my father
should be the editor; but the idea had never assumed any
practical shape. In 1823, however, Mr. Bentham deter-
mined to establish the Review at his own cost, and offered
the editorship to my father, who declined it as incompatible
with his India House appointment. It was then entrusted
to Mr, (now Sir John) Bowring, at that time a merchant in
the City. Mr. Bowring had been for two or three years pre-
vious an assiduous frequenter of Mr. Bentham, to whom he
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 63
was recommended by many personal good qualities, by an
ardent admiration for Bentham, a zealous adoption of many,
though not all of his opinions, and, not least, by an exten-
sive acquaintanceship and correspondence with Liberals of
all countries, which seemed to qualify him for being a power-
ful agent in spreading Bentham's fame and doctrines through
all quarters of the world. My father had seen little of Bow-
ring, but knew enough of him to have formed a strong opin-
ion, that he was a man of an entirely different type from
what my father considered suitable for conducting a political
and philosophical Review : and he augured so ill of the enter-
prise that he regretted it altogether, feeling persuaded not
only that Mr. Bentham would lose his money, but that dis-
credit would probably be brought upon Radical principles.
He could not, however, desert Mr. Bentham, and he con-
sented to write an article for the first number. As it had
been a favourite portion of the scheme formerly talked of,
that part of the work should be devoted to reviewing the
other Reviews, this article of my father's was to be a gen-
eral criticism of the Edinburgh Review from its commence-
ment. Before writing it he made me read through all the
volumes 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 make notes for him of the articles
which I thought he would wish to examine, either on ac-
count of their good or their bad qualities. This paper of my
father's was the chief cause of the sensation which the
Westminster Review produced at its first appearance, and is,
both in conception and in execution, one of the most striking
of all his writings. He began by an analysis of the tenden-
cies of periodical literature in general; pointing out, that it
cannot, like books, wait for success, but must succeed im-
mediately, or not at all, and is hence almost certain to pro-
fess and inculcate the opinions already held by the public to
which it addresses itself, instead of attempting to rectify or
improve those opinions. He next,, to characterize the posi-
tion of the Edinburgh Review as a political organ, entered
into a complete analysis, from the Radical point of view, of
the British Constitution. He held up to notice its thoroughly
aristocratic character: the nomination of a majority of the
64 JOHN STUART MILL
House of Commons by a few hundred families; the entire
identification of the more independent portion, the county
members, with the great landholders; the different classes
whom this narrow oligarchy was induced, for convenience,
to admit to a share of power; and finally, what he called its
two props, the Church, and the legal profession. He pointed
out the natural tendency of an aristocratic body of this com-
position, to group itself into two parties, one of them in
possession of the executive, the other endeavouring to sup-
plant the former and become the predominant section by
the aid of public opinion, without any essential sacrifice of
the aristocratical predominance. He described the course
likely to be pursued, and the political ground occupied, by
an aristocratic party in opposition, coquetting with popular
principles for the sake of popular support. He showed how
this idea was realized in the conduct of the Whig party, and
of the Edinburgh Review as its chief literary organ. He
described, as their main characteristic, what he termed " see-
saw ; " writing alternately on both sides of every question
which touched the power or interest of the governing classes ;
sometimes in different articles, sometimes in different parts
of the same article: and illustrated his position by copious
specimens. So formidable an attack on the Whig party and
policy had never before been made; nor had so great a blow
been ever struck, in this country, for Radicalism; nor was
there, I believe, any living person capable of writing that
article, except my father.^
In the meantime the nascent Review had formed a junc-
tion with another project, of a purely literar}'- periodical, to
be edited by Mr. Henry Southern, 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 Long-
man, and that firm, though part proprietors of the Edin-
burgh, were willing to be the publishers of the new journal.
But when all the arrangements had been made, and the pros-
^ The continuation of this article in the second number of the Review
was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as practice in
composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful than anything
else I ever wrote) was of little or no value.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 65
pectuses sent out, the Longmans saw my father's attack on
the Edinburgh, and drew back. My father was now appealed
to for his interest with his own publisher, Baldwin, which
was exerted with a successful result. And so, in April, 1824,
amidst anything but hope on my father's part, and that of
most of those who afterwards aided in carrying on the Re-
view, the first number made its appearance.
That number was an agreeable surprise to most of us.
The average of the articles was of much better quality than
had been expected. The literary and artistic department
had rested chiefly on Mr. Bingham, a barrister (subsequently
a police magistrate), who had been for some years a fre-
quenter of Bentham, was a friend of both the Austins, and
had adopted with great ardour Mr. Bentham's philosophical
opinions. Partly from accident, there were in the first
number as many as five articles by Bingham ; and we were
extremely pleased with them. I well remember the mixed
feeling I myself had about the Review; the joy at finding,
what we did not at all expect, that it was sufficiently good
to be capable of being made a creditable organ of those who
held the opinions it professed; and extreme vexation, since
It was so good on the whole, at what we thought the blem-
ishes of it. When, however, in addition to our generally
favourable opinion of it, we learned that it had an extraordi-
nary large sale for a first number, and found that the appear-
ance of a Radical Review, with pretensions equal to those
of the established organs of parties, had excited much
attention, there could be no room for hesitation, and we all
became eager in doing everything we 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 his other contributions, the most
important were an attack on Southey's Book of the Church,
in the fifth number, and a political article in the twelfth.
Mr. Austin only contributed one paper, but one of great
merit, an argument against primogeniture, in reply to an
article then lately published in the Edinburgh Review by
M'Culloch. Grote also was a contributor only once; all the
time he could spare being already taken up with his History
Vol. 25—3 HC
66 JOHN STUART MILL
of Greece. The article he wrote was on his own subject,
and was a very complete exposure and castigation of Mit-
ford. Bingham and Charles Austin continued to write for
some time ; Fcnblanque was a frequent contributor from the
third number. Of my particular associates, Ellis was a
regular writer up to the ninth number; and about the time
when he left off, others of the set began; Eyton, Tooke,
Graham, and Roebuck. I was myself the most frequent
writer of all. Having contributed, from the second number
to the eighteenth, thirteen articles; reviews of books on
history and political economy, or discussions on special
political topics, as corn laws, game laws, law of libel. Occa-
sional articles of merit came in from other acquaintances of
my father's, and, in time, of mine; and some of Mr. Bow-
ring's writers turned out well. On the whole, however, the
conduct of the Review was never satisfactory to any of the
persons strongly interested in its principles, with whom I
came in contact. Hardly ever did a number come out with-
out containing several things extremely offensive to us,
either in point of opinion, of taste, or by mere want of
ability. The unfavourable judgments passed by my father,
Grote, the two Austins, and others, were re-echoed with
exaggeration by us younger people ; and as our 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 am very certain that if the Re-
view had been carried on according to our notions (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
in the history of Benthamism, that the periodical organ, by
which it was best known, was from the first extremely un-
satisfactory to those whose opinions 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 number of its adherents, and to
the personal merits and abilities, at that time, of most of
those who could be reckoned among them. It was a time.
AUTOBIOGRAPHV 67
as is known, of rapidly rising Liberalism. When the fears
and animosities 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 the Continent
by the old reigning famihes, the countenance apparently
given by the English Government to the conspiracy against
liberty called the Holy Alliance, and the enormous weight
of the national debt and taxation occasioned by so long and
costly a war, rendered the government and parliament very
unpopular. Radicalism, under the leadership of the Burdetts
and Cobbetts, had assumed a character and importance
which seriously alarmed the administration : and their alarm
had scarcely been temporarily assuaged by the celebrated
Six Acts, when the trial of Queen Caroline roused a still
wider and deeper feeling of hatred. Though the outward
signs of this hatred passed away with its exciting cause,
there arose on all sides a spirit which had never shown itself
before, of opposition to abuses in detail. Mr. Hume's per-
severing scrutiny of the public expenditure, forcing the
House of Commons to a division on every objectionable
item in the estimates, had begun to tell with great force on
public opinion, and had extorted many minor retrenchments
from an unwilling administration. Political economy had
asserted itself with great vigour in public affairs, by the
petition of the merchants of London for free trade, drawn
up in 1820 by Mr. Tooke and presented by Mr. Alexander
Baring; and by the noble exertions of Ricardo during the
few years of his parliamentary life. His writings, follow-
ing up the impulse given by the Bullion controversy, and
followed up in their turn by the expositions and comments
of my father and M'Culloch (whose writings in the Edin-
burgh Review during those years were most valuable), had
drawn general attention to the subject, making at least par-
tial converts in the Cabinet itself ; and Huskisson, supported
by Canning, had commenced that gradual demolition of the
protective system, which one of their colleagues virtually
completed in 1846, though the last vestiges were only swept
away by Mr. Gladstone in i860. Mr. Peel, then Home Sec-
retary, was entering cautiously into the untrodden and
68 JOHN STUART MILL
peculiarly Benthamic path of Law Reform. At this period
when LiberaHsm seemed to be becoming the tone of the
time, when improvement of institutions was preached from
the highest places, and a complete change of the constitution
of parliament was loudly demanded in the lowest, it is not
strange that attention should have been roused by the regu-
lar appearance in controversy of what seemed a new school
of writers, claiming to be the legislators and theorists of this
new tendency. The air of strong conviction with which
they wrote, when scarcely any one else seemed to have an
equally strong faith in as definite a creed; the boldness
with which they tilted against the very front of both the
existing political parties; their uncompromising profession
of opposition to many of the generally received opinions, and
the suspicion they lay under of holding others still more
heterodox than they professed; the talent and verve of at
least my father's articles, and the appearance of a corps
behind him sufficient to carry on a Review; and finally, the
fact that the Review was bought and read, made the so-
called Bentham school in philosophy and politics fill a
greater place in the public mind than it had held before, or
has ever again held since other equally earnest schools of
thought have arisen in England. As I was in the head-
quarters of it, knew of what it was composed, and as one
of the most active of its very small number, might say without
undue assumption, quorum pars magna fui, it belongs to me
more than to most others, to give some account of it.
This supposed school, then, had no other existence than
what was constituted by the fact, that my father's writings
and conversation drew round him a certain number of
young men who had already imbibed, or who imbibed from
him, a greater or smaller portion of his very decided politi-
cal and philosophical opinions. The notion that Bentham
was surrounded by a band of disciples who received their
opinions from his lips, is a fable to which my father did
justice in his " Fragment on Mackintosh," and which, to all
who knew Mr. Bentham's habits of life and manner of con-
versation, is simply ridiculous. The influence which Ben-
tham exercised was by his writings. Through them he has
produced, and is producing, effects on the condition of man-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 69
kind, wider and deeper, no doubt, than any which can be
attributed to my father. He is a much greater name in
history. But my father exercised a far greater personal
ascendancy. He was sought for the vigour and instructive-
ness of his conversation, and did use it largely as an instru-
ment for the diffusion of his opinions. I have never known
any man who could do such ample justice to his best
thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect command
over his great mental resources, the terseness and express-
iveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well
as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the
most striking of all argumentative conversers: and he was
full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and, when with people
whom he liked, a most lively and amusing companion. It
was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intel-
lectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still
more through the influence of a quality, of which I have
only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that ex-
alted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good
of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every
germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in
contact with : the desire he made them feel for his appro-
bation, the shame at his disapproval; the moral support
which his conversation and his very existence gave to those
who were aiming at the same objects, and the encourage-
ment he afforded to the fainthearted or desponding among
them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of
sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one particu-
lar case) he always felt in the power of reason, the general
progress of improvement, and the good which individuals
could do by judicious effort.
It was my father's opinions which gave the distinguishing
character to the Benthamic or utilitarian propagandism of
that time. They fell singly, scattered from him, in many
directions, but they flowed from him in a continued stream
principally in three channels. One was through me, the only
mind directly formed by his instructions, and through whom
considerable influence was exercised over various young
men, who became, in their turn, propagandists. A second
was through some of the Cambridge contemporaries of
70 JOHN STUART MILL
Charles Austin, who, either initiated by him or under the
general mental impulse which he gave, had adopted many
opinions allied to those of my father, and some of the more
considerable of whom afterwards sought my father's ac-
quaintance and frequented his house. Among these may
be mentioned Strutt, afterwards Lord Belper, and the pres-
ent Lord Romilly, with whose eminent father, Sir Samuel,
my father had of old been on terms of friendship. The third
channel was that of a younger generation of Cambridge
undergraduates, contemporary, not with Austin, but with
Eyton Tooke, who were drawn to that estimable person by
affinity of opinions, and introduced by him to my father:
the most notable of these was Charles Buller. Various other
persons individually received and transmitted a considerable
amount of my father's influence: for example, Black (as be-
fore mentioned) and Fonblanque: most of these, however,
we accounted only partial allies; Fonblanque, for instance,
was always divergent from us on many important points.
But indeed there was by no means complete unanimity
among any portion of us, nor had any of us adopted im-
plicitly all my father's opinions. For example, although his
Essay on Government was regarded probably by all of us
as a masterpiece of political wisdom, our adhesion by no
means extended to the paragraph of it, in which he main-
tains that women may consistently with good government,
be excluded from the suffrage, because their interest is the
same with that of men. From this doctrine, I, and all those
who formed my chosen associates, most positively dissented.
It is due to my father to say that he denied having intended
to affirm that women should be excluded any more than men
under the age of forty, concerning whom he maintained, in
the very next paragraph, an exactly similar thesis. He was,
as he truly said, not discussing whether the suffrage had
better be restricted, but only (assuming that it is to be re-
stricted) what is the utmost limit of restriction, which does
not necessarily involve a sacrifice of the securities for good
government. But I thought then, as I have always thought
since, that the opinion which he acknowledged, no less than
that which he disclaimed, is as great an error as any of
those against which the Essay was directed; that the in-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 71
terest of women is included in that of men exactly as much
and no more, as the interest of subjects is included in that of
kings; and that every reason which exists for giving the
suffrage to anybody, demands that it should not be withheld
from women. This was also the general opinion of the
younger proselytes; and it is pleasant to be able to 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 gave its colour and character to the
little group of young men who were the first propagators of
what was afterwards called "Philosophic Radicalism."
Their mode of thinking was not characterized by Bentham-
ism in any sense which has relation to Bentham as a chief
or guide, but rather by a combination of Bentham's point of
view with that of the modern political economy, and with
the Hartleian metaphysics. Malthus's population principle
was quite as much a banner, and point of union among us,
as any opinion specially belonging to Bentham. This great
doctrine, originally brought forward as an argument against
the indefinite improvability of human affairs, we took up
with ardent zeal in the contrary sense, as indicating the sole
means of realizing that improvability by securing full em-
ployment at high wages to the whole labouring population
through a voluntary restriction of the increase of their
numbers. The other leading characteristics of the creed,
which we held in common with my father, may be stated as
follows :
In politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy
of two things: representative government, and complete
freedom of discussion. So complete was my father's reliance
on the influence of reason over the minds of mankind, when-
ever it is allowed to reach them, that he felt as if all would
be gained if the whole population were taught to read, if all
sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by
word and in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they
could nominate a legislature to give effect to the opinions
they adopted. He thought that when the legislature no
longer represented a class interest, it would aim at the
72 JOHN STUART MILL
general interest honestly, and with adequate wisdom; since
the people would be sufficiently under the guidance of edu-
cated intelligence, to make in general a good choice of per-
sons to represent them, and having done so, to leave to those
whom they had chosen a liberal discretion. Accordingly
aristocratic rule, the government of the Few in any of its
shapes, being in his eyes the only thing which stood between
mankind and an administration of their affairs by the best
wisdom to be found among them, was the object of his
sternest disapprobation, and a democratic suffrage the prin-
cipal article of his political creed, not on the ground of
liberty, Rights of Man, or any of the 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 to what
he deemed essentials; he was comparatively indifferent to
monarchical or republican forms — far more so than Ben-
tham, to whom a king, in the character of " corrupter-
general," appeared necessarily very noxious. Next to aris-
tocracy, an established church, or corporation of priests, as
being by position the great depravers of religion, and inter-
ested in opposing the progress of the human mind, was the
object of his greatest detestation; though he disliked no
clergyman personally who did not deserve it, and was on
terms of sincere friendship with several. In ethics, his
moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points which
he deemed important to human well being, while he was su-
premely indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did
not show itself in personal conduct) to all those doctrines
of the common morality, which he thought had no founda-
tion but in asceticism and priest-craft. He looked forward,
for example, to a considerable increase of freedom in the
relations between the sexes, though without pretending to
define exactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise
conditions of that freedom. This opinion was connected in
him with no sensuality either of a theoretical or of a practi-
cal kind. He anticipated, on the contrary, as one of the
beneficial effects of increased freedom, that the imagination
would no longer dwell upon the physical relation and its
adjuncts, and swell this into one of the principal objects of
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 73
life; a perversion of the imagination and feelings, which he
regarded as one of the deepest seated and most pervading
evils in the human mind. In psychology, his fundamental
doctrine was the formation of all human character by cir-
cumstances, through the universal Principle of Association,
and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the
moral and intellectual condition of mankind by education.
Of all his doctrines none was more important than this, or
needs more to be insisted on: unfortunately there is none
which is more contradictory to the prevailing tendencies of
speculation, both in his time and since.
These various opinions were seized on with youthful
fanaticism by the little knot of young men of whom I was
one: and we put into them a sectarian spirit, from which,
in intention at least, my father was wholly free. What we
(or rather a phantom substituted in the place of us) 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 example we sought to imitate, and we
hoped to accomplish no less results. No one of the set went
to so great excesses in this boyish ambition as I did; which
might be shown by many particulars, were it not an useless
waste of space and time.
All this, however, is properly only the outside of our ex-
istence; or, at least, the intellectual part alone, and no more
than one side of that. In attempting to penetrate inward,
and give any indication of what we were as human beings,
I must be understood as speaking only of myself, of whom
alone I can speak from sufficient knowledge; and I do not
believe that the picture would suit any of my companions
without many and great modifications.
I conceive that the description so often given of a Ben-
thamite, as a mere reasoning machine, though extremely
inapplicable to most of those who have been designated by
that title, was during two or three years of my life not
altogether untrue of me. It was perhaps as applicable to
me as it can well be to any one just entering into life, to
whom the common objects of desire must in general have
at least the attraction of novelty. There is nothing very
74 JOHN STUART MILL
extraordinary in this fact; no youth of the age I then was,
can be expected to be more than one thing, and this was the
thing I happened to be. Ambition and desire of distinction,
I had in abundance; and zeal for what I thought the good
of mankind was my strongest sentiment, mixing with and
colouring all others. But my zeal was as yet little else, at
that period of my life, than zeal for speculative opinions.
It had not its root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy with
mankind; though these qualities held their due place in my
ethical standard. Nor was it connected with any high en-
thusiasm for ideal nobleness. Yet of this feeling I was
imaginatively very susceptible; but there was at that time
an intermission of its natural aliment, poetical culture, while
there was a superabundance of the discipline antagonistic
to it, that of mere logic and analysis. Add to this that, as
already mentioned, my father's teachings tended to the
undervaluing of feeling. It was not that he was himself
cold-hearted or insensible; I believe it was rather from the
contrary quality ; he thought that feeling could take care of
itself; that there was sure to be enough of it if actions were
properly cared about. Offended by the frequency with
which, in ethical and philosophical controversy, feeling is
made the ultimate reason and justification of conduct, in-
stead of being itself called on for a justification, while, in
practice, actions the effect of which on human happiness
is mischievous, are defended as being required by feeling,
and the character of a person of feeling obtains a credit for
c|esert, which he thought only due to actions, he had a r.eal
irnpatience of attributing praise to feeling, or of any but the
most sparing reference to it, either in the estimation of per-
sons or in the discussion of things. In addition to the
influence which this characteristic in him, had on me and
others, we found all the opinions to which we attached most
importance, constantly attacked on the ground of feeling.
Utility was denounced as cold calculation; political economy
as hard-hearted; anti-population doctrines as repulsive to the
natural feelings of mankind. We retorted by the word
" sentimentality," which, along with *' declamation " and
" vague generalities," served us as common terms of oppro-
brium. Although we were generally in the right, as against
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 75
those who were opposed to us, the effect was that the cul-
tivation of feeling (except the feelings of public and private
duty), was not in much esteem among us, and had very
little place in the thoughts of most of us, myself in particu-
lar. What we principally thought of, was to alter people's
opinions; to make them believe according to evidence, and
know what was their real interest, which when they once
knew, they would, we thought, by the instrument of opinion,
enforce a regard to it upon one another. While fully recog-
nising the superior excellence of unselfish benevolence and
love of justice, we did not expect the regeneration of man-
kind from any direct action on those sentiments, but from
the effect of educated intellect, enlightening the selfish feel-
ings. Although this last is prodigiously important as a
means of improvement in the hands of those who are them-
selves impelled by nobler principles of action, I do not be-
lieve that any one of the survivors of the Benthamites or
Utilitarians of that day, now relies mainly upon it for the
general amendment of human conduct.
From this neglect both in theory and in practice of the
cultivation of feeling, naturally resulted, among other
things, an undervaluing of poetry, and of Imagination gen-
erally, as an element of human nature. It is, or was, part
of the popular notion of Benthamites, that they are enemies
of poetry : this was partly true of Bentham himself ; he used
to say that " all poetry is misrepresentation :'' but in the
sense in which he said it, the same might have been said of
all impressive speech; of all representation or inculcation
more oratorical in its character than a sum in arithmetic.
An article of Bingham's in the first number of the West-
minster Review, in which he offered as an explanation of
something which he disliked in Moore, that *' Mr. Moore is
a poet, and therefore is not a reasoner,'' did a good deal to
attach the notion of hating poetry to the writers in the
Review. But the truth was that many of us were 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), the correct statement would be, not that I dis*
liked poetry, but that I was theoretically indifferent to it.
I disliked any sentiments in poetry which I should have dis-
76 JOHN STUART MILL
liked in prose; and that included a great deal. And I was
wholly blind to its place in human culture, as a means of
educating the feelings. But I was always personally very
susceptible to some kinds of it. In the most sectarian period
of my Benthamism, I happened to look into Pope's Essay on
Man, and though every opinion in it was contrary to mine,
I well remember how powerfully it acted on my imagina-
tion. Perhaps at that time poetical composition of any
higher type than eloquent discussion in verse, might not have
produced a similar effect on me : at all events I seldom gave
it an opportunity. This, however, was a mere passive state.
Long before I had enlarged in any considerable degree, the
basis of my intellectual creed, I had obtained in the natural
course of my mental progress, poetic culture of the most
valuable kind, by means of reverential admiration for the
lives and characters of heroic persons ; especially the heroes
of philosophy. The same inspiring effect which so many
of the benefactors of mankind have left on record that they
had experienced from Plutarch's Lives, was produced on
me by Plato's pictures of Socrates, and by some modern
biographies, above all by Condorcet's Life of Turgot; a
book well calculated to rouse the best sort of enthusiasm,
since it contains one of the wisest and noblest of lives, de-
lineated by one of the wisest and noblest of men. The
.heroic virtue of these glorious representatives of the opin-
ions with which I sympathized, deeply affected me, and I
perpetually recurred to them as others do to a favourite
poet, when needing to be carried up into the more elevated
regions of feeling and thought. I may observe by the way
that this book cured me of my sectarian follies. The two
or three pages beginning ** II regardait toute secte comme
nuisible," and explaining why Turgot always kept himself
perfectly distinct from the Encyclopedists, sank deeply into
my mind. I left off designating myself and others as Utili-
tarians, and by the pronoun " we " or any other collective
designation, I ceased to afficher sectarianism. My real in-
ward sectarianism I did not get rid of till later, and much
more gradually.
About the end of 1824, or beginning of 1825, Mr. Ben-
tham, having lately got back his papers on Evidence from
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 77
M. Dumont (whose Traite des Preuves Judiciaires, grounded
on them, was then first completed and published) resolved
to have them printed in the original, and bethought himself
of me as capable of preparing them for the press; in the
same manner as his Book of Fallacies had been recently
edited by Bingham. I gladly undertook this task, and it
occupied nearly all my leisure for about a year, exclusive of
the time afterwards spent in seeing the five large volumes
through the press. Mr. Bentham had begun this treatise
three times, at considerable intervals, each time in a different
manner, and each time without reference to the preceding:
two of the three times he had gone over nearly the whole
subject.
These three masses of manuscript it was my business
to condense into a single treatise; adopting the one last
written as the groundwork, and incorporating with it as
much of the two others as it had not completely superseded.
I had also to unroll such of Bentham's involved and paren-
thetical sentences, as seemed to overpass by their complexity
the measure of what readers were likely to take the pains to
understand. It was further Mr. Bentham's particular desire
that I should, from myself, endeavour to supply any lacuncB
which he had left; and at his instance I read, for this pur-
pose, the most authoritative treatises on the English Law
of Evidence, and commented on a few of the objectionable
points of the English rules, which had escaped Bentham's
notice. I also replied to the objections which had been made
to some of his doctrines by reviewers of Dumont's book,
and added a few supplementary remarks on some of the
more abstract parts of the subject, such as the theory of
improbability and impossibility. The controversial part of
these editorial additions was written in a more assuming
tone than became one vSO young and inexperienced as I was :
but indeed I had never contemplated coming forward in my
own person ; and as an anonymous editor of Bentham, I fell
into the tone of my author, not thinking it unsuitable to
him or to the subject, however it might be so to me. My
name as editor was put to the book after it was printed, at
Mr. Bentham's positive desire, which I in vain attempted
to persuade him to forego.
78 JOHN STUART MILL
The time occupied in this editorial work v/as extremely
well employed in respect to my own improvement. The
" Rationale of Judicial Evidence " is one of the richest in
matter of all Bentham's productions. The theory of evi-
dence being in itself one of the most important of his sub-
jects, and ramifying into most of the others, the book con-
tains, very fully developed, a great proportion of all his best
thoughts: while, among more special things, it comprises
the most elaborate exposure of the vices and defects of
English law, as it then was, which is to be found in his
works; not confined to the law of evidence, but including,
by way of illustrative episode, the entire procedure or prac-
tice of Westminster Hall. The direct knowledge, therefore,
which I obtained from the book, and which was imprinted
upon me much more thoroughly than it could have been by
mere reading, was itself no small acquisition. But this
occupation did for me what might seem less to be expected;
it gave a great start to my powers of composition. Every-
thing which I wrote subsequently to this editorial employ-
ment, was markedly superior to anything that I had written
before it. Bentham's hter style, as the world knows, was
heavy and cumbersome, from the excess of a good quality,
the love of precision, which made him introduce clause
within clause into the heart of every sentence, that the
reader might receive into his mind all the modifications and
qualifications simultaneously with the main proposition: and
the habit grew on him until his sentences became, to those
not accustomed to them, most laborious reading. But his
earlier style, that of the Fragment on Government, Plan of
a Judicial Establishment, &c., is a model of liveliness and
ease combined with fulness of matter, scarcely ever sur-
passed: and of this earlier style there were many striking
specimens in the manuscripts on Evidence, all of which I
endeavoured to preserve. So long a course of this admira-
ble writing had a considerable effect upon my own; and I
added to it by the assiduous reading of other writers, both
French and English, who combined in a remarkable degree,
ease with force, such as Goldsmith, Fielding, Pascal, Vol-
taire, and Courier. Through these influences my writing
lost the jejunenesB of my early compositions; the bones and
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 79
cartilages 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, of Leeds, father of the present generation of
Marshalls, the same who was brought into Parliament for
Yorkshire, when the representation forfeited by Grampound
was transferred to it, an earnest parliamentary reformer,
and a man of large fortune, of which he made a liberal use,
had been much struck with Bentham's Book of Fallacies;
and the thought had occurred to him that it would be useful
to publish annually the Parliamentary Debates, not in the
chronological order of Hansard, but classified according to
subjects, and accompanied by a commentary pointing out the
fallacies of the speakers. With this intention, he very
naturally addressed himself to the editor of the Book of
Fallacies; and Bingham, with the assistance of Charles
Austin, undertook the editorship. The work was called
" Parliamentary History and Review.'' Its sale was not
sufficient to keep it in existence, and it only lasted three
years. It excited, however, some attention among parlia-
mentary and political 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 wrote much 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 the first number by an article on the principal
topic of the session (that of 1825), the Catholic Association
and the Catholic Disabilities. In the second number I wrote
an elaborate Essay on the Commercial Crisis of 1825 and
the Currency Debates. In the third I had two articles, one
on a minor subject, the other on the Reciprocity principle in
commerce, a propos of a celebrated diplomatic correspond-
ence between Canning and Gallatin. These writings were
no longer mere reproductions and applications of the doc-
trines I had been taught ; they were original thinking, as far
as that name can be applied to old ideas in new forms and
connexions: and I do not exceed the truth in saying that
there was a maturity, and a well-digested character about
80 JOHN STUART MILL
them, which there had not been in any of my previous per-
formances. In execution, therefore, they were not at all
juvenile; but their subjects, had either gone by, or have been
so much better treated since, that they are entirely super-
seded, and should remain buried in the same oblivion with
my contributions to the first dynasty of the Westminster
Review. /
While thus engaged in writing for the public, I did not
neglect other modes of self-cultivation. It was at this time
that I learnt German; beginning it on the Hamiltonian
method, for which purpose I and several of my companions
formed a class. For several years from this period, our
social studies assumed a shape which contributed very much
to my mental progress. The idea occurred to us of carrying
on, by reading and conversation, a joint study of several
of the branches of science which we wished to be masters of.
We assembled to the number of a dozen or more. Mr. Grote
lent a room of his house in Threadneedle Street for the
purpose, and his partner, Prescott, one of the three original
members of the Utilitarian Society, made one among us.
We met two mornings in every week, from half -past eight
till ten, at which hour most of us were called off to our
daily occupations. Our first subject was Political Economy.
We chose some systematic treatise as our text-book; my
father's " Elements '' being our first choice. One of us read
aloud a chapter, or some smaller portion of the book. The
discussion was then opened, and any one who had an ob-
jection, or other remark to make, made it. Our rule was to
discuss thoroughly every point raised, whether great or
small, prolonging the discussion until all who took part were
satisfied with the conclusion they had individually arrived at ;
and to follow up every topic of collateral speculation which
the chapter or the conversation suggested, never leaving it
until we had untied every knot which we found. We re-
peatedly kept up the discussion of some one point for several
weeks, thinking intently on it during the intervals of our
meetings, and contriving solutions of the new difficulties
which had risen up in the last morning's discussion. When
we had finished in this way my father's Elements, we went
in the same manner through Ricardo's Principles of Po-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 81
litical Economy, and Bailey's Dissertations on Value. These
close and vigorous discussions were not only improving in
a high degree to those who took part in them, but brought
out new views of some topics of abstract Political Economy.
The theory of International Values which I afterwards pub-
lished, emanated from these conversations, as did also the
modified form of Ricardo's theory of Profits, laid down in my
Essay on Profits and Interest. Those among us with whom
new speculations chiefly originated, were Ellis, Graham, and
I; though others gave valuable aid to the discussions, espe-
cially Prescott and Roebuck, the one by his knowledge, the
other by his dialectical acuteness. The theories of Inter-
national Values and of Profits were excogitated and worked
out in about equal proportions by myself and Graham: and
if our original project had been executed, my '^Essays on
Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy " would
have been brought out along with some papers of his, under
our joint names. But when my exposition came to be writ-
ten, I found that I had so much over-estimated my agreement
with him, and he dissented so much from the most original
of the two Essays, that on International Values, that I was
obliged to consider the theory as now exclusively mine, and
it came out as such when published many years later. I may
mention that among the alterations which my father made
in revising his Elements for the third edition, several were
founded on criticisms elicited by these conversations; and
in particular he modified his opinions (though not to the ex-
tent of our new speculations) on both the points to which I
have adverted.
When we had enough of political economy, we took up
the syllogistic logic in the same manner, Grote now joining
us. Our first text-book was Aldrich, but being disgusted
with its superficiality, we reprinted one of the most finished
among the many manuals of the school logic, which my
father, a great collector of such books, possessed, the Manu-
ductio ad Logicam of the Jesuit Du Trieu. After finishing
this, we took up Whately's Logic, then first republished from
the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, and finally the " Compu-
tatio sive Logica '' of Hobbes. These books, dealt with in our
manner, afforded a wide range for original metaphysical
82 JOHN STUART MILL
speculation: and most of what has been done in the First
Book of my System of Logic, to rationalize and correct the
principles and distinctions of the school logicians, and to
improve the theory of the Import of Propositions, had its
origin in these discussions; Graham and I originating most
of the novelties, while Grote and others furnished an ex-
cellent tribunal or test. From this time I formed the project
of writing a book on Logic, though on a much humbler scale
than the one I ultimately executed.
Having done with Logic, we launched into Analytic Psy-
chology, and having chosen Hartley for our text-book, we
raised Priestley's edition to an extravagant price by searching
through London to furnish each of us with a copy. When
we had finished Hartley, we suspended our meetings; but
my father's Analysis of the Mind being pubHshed soon after,
we reassembled for the purpose of reading it. With this
our exercises ended. I have always dated from these con-
versations my own real inauguration as an original and
independent thinker. It was also through them that I ac-
quired, or very much strengthened, a mental habit to
which I 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 it was cleared up;
never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remain unex-
plored, because they did not appear important; never think-
ing that I perfectly understood any part of a subject until
I understood the whole.
Our doings from 1825 to 1830 in the way of public speak-
ing, filled a considerable place in my life during those years,
and as they had important effects on my development, some-
thing ought to be said of them.
There was for some time in existence a society of Owen-
ites, called the Co-operation Society, which met for weekly
public discussions in Chancery Lane. In the early part of
1825, accident brought Roebuck in contact with several of its
members, and led to his attending one or two of 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 a general battle: and Charles Austin and scone
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 83
of his friends who did not usually take part in our joint
exercises, entered into the project. It was carried out by
concert with the principal members of the Society, them-
selves nothing loth, as they naturally preferred a controversy
with opponents to a tame discussion among their own body.
The question of population was proposed as the subject of
debate: Charles Austin led the case on our side with a bril-
liant speech, and the fight was kept up by adjournment
through five or six weekly meetings before crowded audi-
tories, including along with the members of the Society and
their friends, many hearers and some speakers from the
Inns of Court. When this debate was ended, another was
commenced on the general merits of Owen's system: and
the contest altogether lasted about three months. It was
a httte corps a corps between Owenites and political econo-
mists, whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate
opponents : but it was a perfectly friendly dispute. We who
represented political economy, had the same objects in view
as they had, and took pains to show it; and the principal
champion on their side was a very estimable man, with
whom I was well acquainted, Mr. William Thompson, of
Cork, author of a book on the Distribution of Wealth, and
of an " Appeal '' in behalf of women against the passage
relating to them in my father's Essay on Government. Ellis,
Roebuck, and I took an active part in the debate, and among
those from the Inns of Court who joined in it, I remember
Charles Villiers. The other side obtained also, on the popu-
lation question, very efficient support from without. The
well-known Gale- Jones, then an elderly man, made one of
his florid speeches; but the speaker with whom I was most
struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said,
was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of St. David's,
then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high repu-
tation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge .Union be-
fore the era of Austin and Macaulay. His speech was in
answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences,
I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I
have never since heard any one whom I placed above him.
The great interest of these debates predisposed some of
those who took part in them, to catch at a suggestion thrown
84 JOHN STUART MILL
out by M'Culloch, the political economist, that a Society was
wanted in London similar to the Speculative Society of
Edinburgh, in which Brougham, Horner, and others first
cultivated public speaking. Our experience at the Co-opera-
tive Society seemed to give cause for being sanguine as to
the sort of men who might be brought together in London
for such a purpose. M'Culloch mentioned the matter to
several young men of influence, to whom he was then giving
private lessons in political economy. Some of these entered
warmly into the project, particularly George Villiers, after-
wards Earl of Clarendon. He and his brothers, Hyde and
Charles, Romilly, Charles Austin and I, with some others,
met and agreed on a plan. We determined to meet once a
fortnight from November to June, at the Freemasons' Tav-
ern, and we had soon a fine list of members, containing,
along with several members of Parliament, nearly all the
most noted speakers of the Cambridge Union and of the
Oxford United Debating Society. It is curiously illustra-
tive of the tendencies of the time, that our principal diffi-
culty in recruiting for the Society was to find a sufficient
number of Tory speakers. Almost all whom we could
press into the service were Liberals, of different orders and
degrees. Besides those already named, we had Macaulay,
Thirlwall, Praed, Lord Howick, Samuel Wilberforce (after-
wards Bishop of Oxford), Charles Poulett Thomson (after-
wards Lord Sydenham), Edward and Henry Lytton Bulwer,
Fonblanque, and many others whom I cannot now recollect,
but who made themselves afterwards more or less conspicu-
ous in public or literary life. Nothing could seem more
promising. But when the time for action drew near, and
it was necessary to fix on a President, and find somebody to
open the first debate, none of our celebrities would consent
to perform either office. Of the many who were pressed
on the subject, the only one who could be prevailed on was
a man of whom I knew very little, but who had taken high
honours at Oxford and was said to have acquired a great
oratorical reputation there; who some time afterwards be-
came a Tory member of Parliament. He accordingly was
fixed on, both for filling the President's chair and for making
the first speech. The important day arrived; the benches
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 85
were crowded; all our great speakers were present, to judge
of, but not to help our efforts. The Oxford orator's speech
was a complete failure. This threw a damp on the whole
concern: the speakers who followed were few, and none
of them did their best; the affair was a complete fiasco;
and the oratorical celebrities we had counted on went away
never to return, giving to me at least a lesson in knowledge
of the world. This unexpected breakdown altered my whole
relation to the project. I had not anticipated taking a prom-
inent part, or speaking much or often, particularly at first,
but I now saw that the success of the scheme depended on
the new men, and I put my shoulder to the wheel. I opened
the second question, and from that time spoke in nearly
every debate. It was very uphill work for some time. The
three Villiers and Romilly stuck to us for some time longer,
but the patience of all the founders of the Society was at
last exhausted, except me and Roebuck. In the season fol-
lowing, 1826-7, things began to mend. We had acquired two
excellent Tory speakers, Hay ward and Shee (afterwards
Sergeant Shee) : the Radical side was reinforced by Charles
Buller, Cockburn, and others of the second generation of
Cambridge Benthamites ; and with their and other occasional
aid, and the two Tories as well as Roebuck and me for
regular speakers, almost every debate was a bataille rangee
between the " philosophic Radicals " and the Tory lawyers ;
until our conflicts were talked about, and several persons of
note and consideration came to hear us. This happened still
more in the subsequent seasons, 1828 and 1829, when the
Coleridgians, in the persons of Maurice and Sterling, made
their appearance in the Society as a second Liberal and even
Radical party, on totally different grounds from Benthamism
and vehemently opposed to it; bringing into these discus-
sions the general doctrines and modes of thought of the
European reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth
century; and adding a third and very important belligerent
party to our contests, which were now no bad exponent of
the movement of opinion among the most cultivated part
of the new generation. Our debates were very different
from those of common debating societies, for they habitually
consisted of the strongest arguments and most philosophic
86 JOHN STUART MILL
principles which either side was able to produce, thrown
often into close and serre confutations of one another.
The practice was necessarily very useful to us, and emi-
nently so to me. I never, indeed, acquired real fluency, and
had always a bad and ungraceful delivery ; but I could make
myself listened to : and as I always wrote my speeches when,
from the feelings involved, or the nature of the ideas to be
developed, expression seemed important, I greatly increased
my power of effective writing; acquiring not only an ear
for smoothness and rhythm, but a practical sense for telling
sentences, and an immediate criterion of their telling prop-
erty, by their effect on a mixed audience.
The Society, and the preparation for it, together with the
preparation for the morning conversations which were going
on simultaneously, occupied the greater part of my leisure;
and made me feel it a relief when, in the spring of 1828, I
ceased to write for the Westminster. The Review had fallen
into difficulties. Though the sale of the first number had
been very encouraging, the permanent sale had never, I
believe, been sufficient to pay the expenses, on the scale on
which the Review was carried on. Those expenses had been
considerably, but not sufficiently, reduced. One of the edi-
tors, Southern, had resigned; and several of the writers, in-
cluding my father and me, who had been paid like other
contributors for our earlier articles, had latterly written
without payment. Nevertheless, the original funds were
nearly or quite exhausted, and if the Review was to be con-
tinued some new arrangement of its affairs had become in-
dispensable. My father and I had several conferences with
Bowring on the subject. We were willing to do our utmost
for maintaining the Review as an organ of our opinions, but
not under Bowring's editorship: while the impossibility of
its any longer supporting a paid editor, afforded a ground on
which, without affront to him, we could propose to dispense
with his services. We and some of our friends were pre-
pared to carry on the Review as unpaid writers, either find-
ing among ourselves an unpaid editor, or sharing the editor-
ship among us. But while this negotiation was proceeding
with Bowring's apparent acquiescence, he was carrying on
another in a different quarter (with Colonel Perronet Thomp-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 87
son), of which we received the first intimation in a letter
from Bowring as editor, informing us merely that an ar-
rangement had been made, and proposing to us to write for
the next number, with promise of payment. We did not
dispute Bowring's right to bring about, if he could, an ar-
rangement more favourable to himself than the one we had
proposed ; but we thought the concealment which he had prac-
tised towards us, while seemingly entering into our own
project, an affront: and even had we not thought so, we
were indisposed to expend any more of our time and trouble
in attempting to write up the Review under his manage-
ment. Accordingly my father excused himself from writing ;
though two or three years later, on great pressure, he did
write one more political article. As for me, I positively re-
fused. And thus ended my connexion with the original West-
minster. The last article 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 French Revolutionists against
the Tory misrepresentations of Sir Walter Scott, in the
introduction to his Life of Napoleon. The number of books
which I read for this purpose, making notes and extracts —
even the number I had to buy (for in those days there was
no public or subscription library from which books of ref-
erence could be taken home), far exceeded the worth of the
immediate object; but I had at that time a half- formed in-
tention of writing a History of the French Revolution; and
though I never executed it, my collections afterwards were
very useful to Carlyle for a similar purpose.
CHAPTER V
A Crisis in my Mental History. One Stage Onward
FOR some years after this time I wrote very little, and
nothing regularly, for publication: and great were
the advantages which I derived from the intermission.
It was of no common importance to me, at this period, to
be able to digest and mature my thoughts for my own mind
only, without any immediate call for giving them out in
print. Had I gone on writing, it would have much disturbed
the important transformation in my opinions and character,
which took place during those years. The origin of this
transformation, or at least the process by which I was pre-
pared for it, can only be explained by turning some distance
back.
From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and
especially from the commencement of the Westminster Re-
view, I had what might truly be called an object in life:
to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own
happiness was entierly identified with this object. The per-
sonal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow labourers
in this enterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers
as I could by the way; but as a serious and permanent per-
sonal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed
on this; and I was accustomed to felicitate myself on the
certainty of a happy life which I enjoyed, through placing
my happiness in something durable and distant, in which
some progress might be always making, while it could never
be exhausted by complete attainment. This did very well
for several years, during which the general improvement
going on in the world and the idea of myself as engaged
with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fill
up an interesting and animated existence. But the time
came when I awakened from this as from a dream. It was
88
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 89
in the autumn of 1826. I was in a dull state of nerves, such
as everybody is occasionally liable to; unsusceptible to en-
joyment or pleasureable excitement; one of those moods
when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or in-
different; the state, I should think, in which converts to
Methodism usually are, when smitten by their first " convic-
tion of sin/' In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put
the question directly to myself : " Suppose that all your ob-
jects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions
and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be com-
pletely effected at this very instant: would this be a great
joy and happiness to you?'' And an irrepressible self-con-
sciousness distinctly answered, " No ! " At this my heart
sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was
constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been
found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had
ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any
interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to
live for.
At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself;
but it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the
smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. I awoke to a
renewed consciousness of the woful fact. I carried it with
me into all companies, into all occupations. Hardly anything
had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it.
For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and
thicker. The lines in Coleridge's "Dejection" — I was not
then acquainted with 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 past nobleness and greatness from which I had
always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them
now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus
all its charm ; and I became persuaded, that my love of man-
kind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out,
I sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt.
If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my
go JOHN STUART MILL
griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition
I was. I felt, too, that mine was not an interesting, or in any
way respectable distress. There was nothing in it to attract
sympathy. Advice, if I had known where to seek it, would
ihave been most precious. The words of Macbeth to the
physician often occurred to my thoughts. But there was no
one on whom I could build the faintest hope of such assist-
ance. My father, to whom it would have been natural to me
to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last per-
son to whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Every-
thing convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such
mental state as I was suffering from, and that even if he
could be made to understand it, he was not the physician who
could heal it. My education, which was wholly his work,
had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of
its ending in this result ; and I saw no use in giving him the
pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure
was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the
power of his remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time
none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelli-
gible. It was however abundantly intelligible to myself ; 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 moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a
bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one
thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action
or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the
clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things, from
the effect of education or of experience. As a corollary
from this, I had always heard it maintained by my father,
and was myself convinced, that the object of education
should be to form the strongest possible associations of the
salutary class; associations of pleasure with all things bene-
ficial to the great whole, and of pain- with all things hurt-
ful to it. This doctrine appeared inexpugnable; but it now
seemed to me, on retrospect, that my teachers had occupied
themselves but superficially with the means of forming and
keeping up these salutary associations. They seemed to have
trusted altogether to the old familiar instruments, praise
and blame, reward and punishment. Now, I did not doubt
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 91
that by these means, begun early, and applied unremittingly,
intense associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain,
might be created, and might produce desires and aversions
capable of lasting undiminished to the end of life. But there
must always be something artificial and casual in associations
thus produced. The pains and pleasures thus forcibly asso-
ciated with things, are not connected with them by any natu-
ral tie; and it is therefore, I thought, essential to the dura-
bility of these associations, that they should have become so
intense and inveterate as to be practically indissoluble, before
the habitual exercise of the power of analysis had com-
menced. 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 the /
analysing spirit remains without its natural complements
and correctives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued)
is that it tends to weaken and tmdermine whatever is the
result of prejudice; that it enables us mentally to separate
ideas which have only casually clung together : and no asso-
ciations whatever could ultimately resist this dissolving force,
were it not that we owe to anlaysis our clearest knowledge of
the permanent sequences in nature; the real connexions be-
tween Things, not dependent on our will and feelings; nat-
ural laws, by virtue of which, in many cases, one thing is
inseparable from another in fact; which laws, in proportion
as they are clearly perceived and imaginatively realized,
cause our ideas of things which are always joined together
in Nature, to cohere more and more closely in our thoughts.
Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations
between causes and effects, means and ends, but tend alto-
gether to weaken 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 and of the virtues ; and, above
all, fearfully undermine all desires, and all pleasures, which
are the effects of association, that is, according to the theory
I held, all except the purely physical and organic ; of the en-
tire insufiBciency of which to make life desirable, no one
had a stronger conviction than I had. These were the
92 JOHN STUART MILL
laws of human nature, by which, as it seemed to me, I had
been brought to my present state. All those to whom I
looked up were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with
human beings, and the feelings which made the good of
others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the ob-
ject of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of
happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, 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
to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dis-
solving influence of analysis, while the whole course of my
intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature
analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I
said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my
voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail ;
without any real desire for the ends which I had been so
carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the
general good, but also just as little in anything else. The
fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up
within me, as completely as those of benevolence. I had had
(as I reflected) some gratification of vanity at too early an
age: I had obtained some distinction, and felt myself of some
importance, before the desire of distinction and of impor-
tance had grown into a passion : and little as it was which I
had attained, yet having been attained too early, like all pleas-
ures enjoyed too soon, it had made me hlase and indifferent
to the pursuit. Thus neither selfish nor unselfish pleasures
were pleasures to me. And there seemed no power in nature
sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and
create in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associa-
tions of pleasure with any of the objects of human desire.
These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry
heavy dejection of the melancholy winter of 1826-7. During
this time I was not incapable of my usual occupations. I
went on with them mechanically, by the mere force of habit.
I had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental exercise, that I
could still carry it on when all the spirit had gone out of it.
I even composed and spoke several speeches at the debating
society, how, or with what degree of success, I know not.
Of four years continual speaking at that society, this is the
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 93
only year of which I remember next to nothing. Two lines
of Coleridge, in whom alone of all writers I have found
a true description of what I felt, were often in my thoughts,
not at this time (for I had never read them), but in a later
period 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 educa-
tion had given to the general phenomenon a special character,
which made it seem the natural effect of causes that it was
hardly possible for time to remove. I frequently asked my-
self, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life
must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to my-
self, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond
a year. When, however, not more than half that duration
of time had elapsed, a small ray of light broke in upon
my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's " Me-
moires,'' and came to the passage which relates his father's
death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden
inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made
them feel that he would be everything to them — would supply .
the place of all that they had lost. A vivid conception of I
the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was moved to /
tears. From this moment my burden grew lighter. The op-
pression of the thought that all feeling was dead within me,
was gone. I was no longer 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 all capacity for happiness,
are made. Relieved from my ever present sense of irre-
mediable wretchedness, I gradually found that the ordinary
incidents of life could again give me some pleasure; that I
could again find enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for
cheerfulness, in sunshine and sky, in books, in conversation,
in public affairs; and that there was, once more, excite-
ment, though of a moderate kind, in exerting myself for my
opinions, and for the public good. Thus the cloud gradually
drew off, and I again enjoyed life: and though I had several
94 JOHN STUART MILL
relapses, some of which lasted many months, I never again
was as miserable as I had been.
The experiences of this period had two very marked effects
on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me
to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had
before acted, and having much in common with what at that
time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-conscious-
ness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the con-
viction that 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 it the direct end. Those only
are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some
object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of
others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or
pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end.
Aiming thus at something 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 you are happy, and you cease to be so.
[The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end ex-
ternal to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-conscious-
ness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust them-
selves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced
you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without
dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestall-
ing it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal question-
ing. This theory now became the basis of my philosophy of
life. And I still hold to it as the best theory for all those who
have but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for
enjoyment, that is, for the great majority of mankind.
The other important change which my opinions at this
time underwent, was that I, for the first time, gave its
proper place, among the prime necessities of human well-
being, to the internal culture of the individual. I ceased to
attach almost exclusive importance to the ordering of out-
ward circumstances, and the training of the human being
for speculation and for action.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 95
I had now learnt by experience that the passive suscepti-
bilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active capaci-
ties, and required to be nourished and enriched as well as
guided. I did not, for an instant, lose sight of, or under-
value, that part of the truth which I had seen before ; I never
turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider
the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition
both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought
that it had consequences which required to be corrected, by
joining other kinds of cultivation with it. The maintenance
of a due balance among the faculties, now seemed to me of
primary importance. The cultivation of the feelings became
one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical
creed. And my thoughts and inclinations turned in an in-
creasing degree towards whatever seemed capable of being
instrumental to that object.
I now began to find meaning in the things which I had
read or heard about the importance of poetry and art as in-
struments of human culture. But it was some time longer
before I began to know this by personal experience. The
only one of the imaginative arts in which I had from child-
hood taken great pleasure, was music; the best effect of
which (and in this it surpasses perhaps every other art)
consists in exciting enthusiasm; in winding up to a high
pitch those feelings of an elevated kind which are already in
the character, but to which this excitement gives a glow and
a fervor, which, though transitory at its utmost height, is
precious for sustaining them at other times. This effect
of music I had often experienced ; but like all my pleasurable
susceptibilities it was suspended during the gloomy period.
I had sought relief again and again from this quarter, but
found none. After the tide had turned, and I was in process
of recovery, I had been helped forward by music, but in a
much less elevated manner. I at this time first became
acquainted with Weber's Oberon, and the extreme pleasure
which I drew from its delicious melodies did me good, by
showing me a source of pleasure to which I was as sus-
ceptible 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) fades with
96 JOHN STUART MILL
familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence,
or fed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic
both of my then state, 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 of musical combinations.
The octave consists only of five tones and two semitones,
which can be put together in only a limited number of ways,
of which but a small proportion are beautiful : most of these,
it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and
there could not be room for a long succession of Mozarts
and Webers, to strike out, as these had done, entirely new
and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. This source of
anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of the phi-
losophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt
out. It was, however, connected with the best feature in my
character, and the only good point to be found in my very un-
romantic and in no way honourable distress. For though my
dejection, honestly looked at, could not 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 ever
in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own.
I felt that the flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself;
that the question was, whether, if the reformers of society
and government could succeed in their objects, and every
person in the community were free and in a state of physical
comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by
struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. And
I felt that unless I could see my way to some better hope than
this for human happiness in general, my dejection must con-
tinue; but that if I could see 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 the general lot.
This state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact of
'my reading Wordsworth for the first time (in the autumn
of 1828), an important event in my life. I took up the
collection of his poems from curiosity, with no expectation of
mental relief from it, though I had before resorted 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 a poet, whose peculiar department was sup-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 97
posed to be that of the intenser feelings, could rouse any
feeling in me. As might be expected, I got no good from
this reading, but the reverse. The poet's state of mind was[
too like my own. His was the lament of a man who hadl
worn out all pleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to J
all who possess the good things of it, must necessarily be
the vapid, uninteresting thing which I found it. His Harold
and Manfred had the same burden on them which I had;
and I was not in a frame of mind to desire any comfort
from the vehement sensual passion of his Giaours, or the
sullenness of his Laras. But while Byron was exactly what
did not suit my condition, Wordsworth was exactly what did.
I had looked into the Excursion two or three years before,
and found little in it; and I should probably have found as
little, had I read it at this time. But the miscellaneous poems,
in the two-volume edition of 1815 (to which little of value
was added in the latter part of the author's life) proved to
be the precise thing for my mental wants at that particular
juncture.
In the first place, these poems addressed themselves power-
fully to one of the strongest of my pleasurable suscepti-
bilities, the love for rural objects and natural scenery; to
which I had been indebted not only for much of the pleasure
of my life, but quite recently for relief from one of my
longest relapses into depression. In this power of rural
beauty over me, there was a foundation laid for taking
pleasure in Wordsworth's poetry; 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 had merely placed before me beautiful pictures of
natural scenery. Scott does this still better than Words-
worth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more ef-
fectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poemj
a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not
mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought
coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They
seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was
in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of
inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which
Vol. 25-— 4 HC
96 JOHN STUART MILL
could be shared in by all human beings; which had no con-
nexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made
richer by every improvement in the physical or social con-
dition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what
would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the
greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt my-
self at once better and happier as I came under their in-
fluence. There have certainly been, even in our own age,
greater poets than Wordsworth; but poetry of deeper and
loftier feeling could not have done for me at that time what
his did. I needed to be made to feel that there was real, per-
manent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth
.taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with
a greatly increased interest in the common feelings and
common destiny of human beings. And the delight which
these poems gave me, proved that with culture of this sort,
there was nothing to dread from the most confirmed habit of
analysis. At the conclusion of the Poems came the famous
Ode, falsely called Platonic, '^ Intimations of Immortality :"
in which, along with more than his usual sweetness of melody
and rhythm, and along with the two passages of grand
imagery but bad philosophy so often quoted, I found that
he too had had similar experience to mine; that he also had
felt that the first freshness of youthful enjoyment of life
was not lasting; but that he had sought for compensation,
and found it, in the way in which he was now teaching 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 ac-
cording to his intrinsic merits, than by the measure of what
he had done for me. Compared with the greatest poets, he
may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of
quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are
precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cul-
tivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets
Vv^ho are intrinsically far more poets than he.
It so fell out that the merits of Wordsworth were the
occasion of my first public declaration of my new way of
thinking, and separation from those of my habitual compan-
ions who had not undergone a similar change. The person
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 99
with whom at that time I was most in the habit of comparing
notes on such subjects was Roebuck, and I induced him to
read Wordsworth, in whom he also at first seemed to find
much to admire: but I, Hke most Wordsworthians, threw
myself into strong antagonism to Byron, both as a poet and
as to his influence on the character. Roebuck, all whose
instincts were those of action and struggle, had, on the
contrary, a strong relish and great admiration of Byron,
whose writings he regarded as the poetry of human life,
while Wordsworth's, according to him-, was that of flowers
and butterflies. We agreed to have the fight out at our
Debating Society, where we accordingly discussed for two
evenings the comparative merits of Byron and Wordsworth,
propounding and illustrating by long recitations our respec
tive theories of poetry: Sterling also, in a brilliant speech,
putting forward his particular theory. This was the first
debate on any weighty subject in which Roebuck and I had
been on opposite sides. The schism between us widened
from this time more and more, though we continued for
some years longer to be companions. In the beginning, our
chief divergence related to the cultivation of the feelings.
Roebuck was in many respects very different from the
vulgar notion of a Benthamite or Utilitarian. He was a
lover of poetry and of most of the fine arts. He took great
pleasure in music, in dramatic performances, especially in
painting, and himself drew and designed landscapes with
great facility and beauty. But he never could be made to
see that these things have any value as aids in the formation
of character. Personally, instead of being, as Benthamites
are supposed to be, void of feeling, he had very quick and
strong sensibilities. But, like most Englishmen who have
feelings, he found his feelings stand very much in his way.
He was much more susceptible to the painful sympathies
than to the pleasurable, and looking for his happiness else-
where, he wished that his feelings should be deadened rather
than quickened. And, in truth, the English character, and
English social circumstances, make it so seldom possible
to derive happiness from the exercise of the sympathies,
that it is not wonderful if they count for little in an English-
man's scheme of life. In most other countries the paramount
100 JOHN STUART MILIi
importance of the sympathies as a constituent of individual
happiness is an axiom, taken for granted rather than need-
ing any formal statement; but most English thinkers almost
seem to regard them as necessary evils, required for keeping
men's actions benevolent and compassionate. Roebuck was,
or appeared to be, this kind of Englishman. He saw little
good in any cultivation of the feelings, and none at all in
cultivating them through the imagination, which he thought
was only cultivating illusions. It was in vain I urged on
him that the imaginative emotion which an idea, when
vividly conceived, excites in us, is not an illusion but a
fact, as real as any of the other qualities of objects; and far
from implying anything erroneous and delusive in our
mental apprehension of the object, is quite consistent with
the most accurate knowledge and most perfect practical
recognition of all its physical and intellectual laws and re-
lations. The intense feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted
by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the
cloud is vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours
in a state of suspension; and I am just as likely to allow
for, and act on, these physical laws whenever there is occa-
sion to do so, as if I had been incapable of perceiving any
distinction between beauty and ugHness.
While my intimacy with Roebuck diminished, I fell more
and more into friendly 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 Hare
and Carlyle. Of these two friends, Maurice was the thinker.
Sterling the orator, 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 him were almost always
disputes, I had carried away from them much that helped
to build up my new fabric of thought, in the same way as
I was deriving much from Coleridge, and from the writings
of Goethe and other German authors which I read during
these years. I have so deep a respect for Maurice's character
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 101
and purposes, as well as for his great mental gifts, that
it is with some unwillingness I say anything which may seem
to place him on a less high eminence than I would gladly
be able to accord to him. But I have always thought that
there was more intellectual power wasted in Maurice than
in any other of my contemporaries. Few of them certainly
have had so much waste. Great powers of generalization,
rare ingenuity and subtlety, and a wide perception of impor-
tant and unobvious truths, served him not for putting some-
thing better into the place of the worthless heap of re-
ceived opinions on the great subjects of thought, but for
proving to his own mind that the Church of England had
known everything from the first, and that all the truths on
the ground of which the Church and orthodoxy have been
attacked (many of which he saw as clearly as any one)
are not only consistent with the Thirty-nine Articles, but
are better understood and expressed in those Articles than
by any one who rejects them. I have never been able to
find any other explanation of this, than by attributing it
to that timidity of conscience, combined with original sensi-
tiveness of temperament, which has so often driven highly
gifted men into Romanism from the need of a firmer support
than they can find in the independent conclusions of their
own judgment. Any more vulgar kind of timidity no one
who knew Maurice would ever think of imputing to him,
even if he had not given public proof of his freedom from
it. by his ultimate collision with some of the opinions com-
monly regarded as orthodox, and by his noble origination
of the Christian Socialist movement. The nearest parallel
to him, in a moral point of view, is Coleridge, to whom, in
merely intellectual power, apart from poetical genius, I think
him decidedly superior. At this time, however, he might be
described as a disciple of Coleridge, and Sterling as a dis-
ciple of Coleridge and of him. The modifications which
were taking place in my old opinions gave me some points
of contact with them; and both Maurice and Sterling were
of considerable use to my development. With Sterling I
soon became very intimate, and was more attached to him
than I have ever been to any other man. He was indeed
one of the most loveable of men. His frank, cordial, af-
102 JOHN STUART MILL
fectionate, and expansive character; a love of trtitli alike
conspicuous in the highest things and the humblest; a gen-
erous and ardent nature v^hich threw itself with impetuosity
into the opinions it adopted, but was as eager to do justice
to the doctrines and the men it was opposed to, as to make
war on what it thought their errors; and an equal devotion
to the two cardinal points of Liberty and Duty, formed a
combination of qualities as attractive to me, as to all others
who knew him as well as I did. With his open mind and
heart, he found no difficulty in joining hands with me across
the gulf which as yet divided our opinions. He told me how
he and others had looked upon me (from hearsay informa-
tion), as a "made'' or manufactured man, having had a
certain impress of opinion stamped on me which I could
only reproduce; and what a change took place in his feel-
ings when he found, in the discussion on Wordsworth and
Byron, that Wordsworth, and all which that name implies,
" belonged " to me as much as to him and his friends. The
failure of his health soon scattered all his plans of life, and
compelled him to live at a distance from London, so that
after the first year or two of our acquaintance, we only saw
each other at distant intervals. 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 full sense of the
word, a profound thinker, his openness of mind, and the
moral courage in which he greatly surpassed Maurice, made
him outgrow the dominion which Maurice and Coleridge
had once exercised over his intellect ; though he retained to
the last a great but discriminating admiration of both, and
towards Maurice a warm affection. Except in that short
and transitory phasis of his life, during which he made the
mistake of becoming a clergyman, his mind was ever pro-
gressive: and the advance 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 eine furchtliche
Fortschreitung." He and I started from intellectual points
almost as wide apart as the poles, but the distance between
us was always diminishing: if I made steps towards some of
his opinions, he, during his short life, was constantly ap-
proximating more and more to several of mine: and if he
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 103
had lived, and had health and vigour to prosecute his ever
assiduous self-culture, there is no knowing how much
further this spontaneous assimilation might have proceeded.
After 1829 I withdrew from attendance on the Debating
Society. I had had enough of speechmaking, and was glad
to carry on my private studies and meditations without any
immediate call for outward assertion of their results. I
found the fabric of my old and taught opinions giving way
in many fresh places, and I never allowed it to fall to pieces,
but was incessantly occupied in weaving it anew. I never,
in the course of my transition, was content to remain, for
ever so short a time, confused and unsettled. When I had
taken in any new idea, I could not rest till I had adjusted its
relation to my old opinions, and ascertained exactly how far
its effect ought to extend in modifying or superseding them.
The conflicts which I had so often had to sustain in de-
fending the theory of government laid down in Bentham's
and my father's writings, and the acquaintance I had ob-
tained with other schools of political thinking, made me
aware of many things which that doctrine, professing to 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 as corrections to be made in applying the theory to
practice, than as defects in the theory. I felt that politics
could not be a science of specific experience; and that the
accusations against the Benthamic theory of being a theory,
of proceeding a priori by way of general reasoning, instead
of Baconian experiment, showed complete ignorance of
Bacon's principles, and of the necessary conditions of ex-
perimental investigation. At this juncture appeared in the
Edinburgh Review, Macaulay's famous attack on my father's
Essay on Government. This gave me much to think about.
I saw that Macaulay's conception of the logic of politics was
erroneous ; that he stood up for the empirical mode of treat-
ing political phenomena, against the philosophical; that
even in physical science his notions of philosophizing might
have recognized Kepler, but would have excluded Newton
and Laplace. But I could not help feeling, that though the
tone was unbecoming (an error for which the writer, at a
later period, made the most ample and honourable amends).
104 JOHN STUART MILL
there was truth in several of his strictures on my father^s
treatment of the subject; that my father's premises were
really too narrow, and included but a small number of the
general truths, on which, in politics, the important conse-
quences depend. Identity of interest between the governing
body and the community at large, is not, in any practical
sense which can be attached to it, the only thing on which
good government depends; neither can this identity of in-
terest be secured by the mere conditions of election. I was
not at all satisfied with the mode in which my father met
the criticisms of Macaulay. He did not, as I thought he
ought to have done, justify himself by saying, *' I was not
writing a scientific treatise on politics, I was writing an argu-
ment for parliamentary reform." He treated Macaulay's
argument as simply irrational ; an attack upon the reasoning
faculty; an example of the saying of Hobbes, that when
reason is against a man, a man will be against reason. This
made me think that there was really something more funda-
mentally erroneous in my father's conception of philosophical
method, as applicable to politics, than I had hitherto sup-
posed there was. But I did not at first see clearly what
the error might be. At last it flashed upon me all at once
in the course of other studies. In the early part of 1830 I
had begun to put on paper the ideas of Logic (chiefly on
the distinctions among Terms, and the import of Propo-
sitions) which had been suggested and in part worked out
in the morning conversations already spoken of. Having
secured these thoughts from being lost, I pushed on into the
other parts of the subject, to try whether I could do any-
thing further towards clearing up the theory of logic gen-
erally. I grappled at once with the problem of Induction,
postponing that of Reasoning, on the ground that it is nec-
essary to obtain premises before we can reason from them.
Now, Induction is mainly a process for finding the causes
of effects : and in attempting to fathom the mode of tracing
causes and effects in physical science, I soon saw that in
the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generaliza-
tion from particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered
singly, and then reason downward from those separate ten-
dencies, to the effect of the same causes when combined.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 105
I then asked myself, what is the ultimate analysis of this
deductive process; the common theory of the syllogism
evidently throwing no light upon it. My practice (learnt
from Hobbes and my father) being to study abstract prin-
ciples by means of the best concrete instances I could find,
the Composition of Forces, in dynamics, occurred to me as
the most complete example of the logical process I was in-
vestigating. On examining, accordingly, what the mind
does when it applies the principle of the Composition of
Forces, I found that it performs a simple act of addition.
It adds the separate effect of the one force to the separate
effect of the other, and puts down the sum of these separate
effects as the joint effect. But is this a legitimate process?
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 then recollected that something not unlike this was pointed
out as one of the distinctions between chemical and me-
chanical phenomena, in the introduction to that favourite of
my boyhood, Thompson's System of Chemistry. This dis-
tinction at once made my mind clear as to what was per-
plexing me in respect to the philosophy of politics. I now
saw, that a science is either deductive or experimental, ac-
cording as, in the province it deals with, the effects of
causes when conjoined, are or are not 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 the method of philosophizing in pol-
itics to the purely experimental method of chemistry; while
the other, though right in adopting a deductive method, had
made a wrong selection of one, having taken as the type of
deduction, not the appropriate process, that of the deduc-
tive branches of natural philosophy, but the inappropriate
one of pure geometry, which, not being a science of causa-
tion at all, does not require or admit of any summing-up of
effects. A foundation was thus laid in my thoughts for the
principal chapters of what I afterwards published on the
Logic of the Moral Sciences ; and my new position in respect
to my old political creed, now became perfectly definite.
I£ I am asked, what system of political philosophy I sub-
106 JOHN STUART MILL
stituted for that which, as a philosophy, I had abandoned,
I answer, No system : only a conviction that the true system
was something much more complex and many-sided than I
had previously had any idea of, and that its office was to
supply, not a set of model institutions, but principles from
which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances
might be deduced. The influences of European, that is to
say, Continental, thought, and especially those of the re-
action of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, were
now streaming in upon me. They came from various quar-
ters; from the writings of Coleridge, which I had begun to
read with interest even before the change in my opinions;
from the Coleridgians with whom I was in personal inter-
course; from what I had read of Goethe; from Carlyle's
early articles in the Edinburgh and Foreign Reviews, though
for a long time I saw nothing in these (as my father saw
nothing in them to the last) but insane rhapsody. From
these sources, and from the acquaintance I kept up with the
French literature of the time, I derived, among other ideas
which the general turning upside down of the opinions of
European thinkers had brought uppermost, these in partic-
ular: That the human mind has a certain order of possible
progress, in which some things must precede others, an
order which governments and public instructors can modify
to some, but not to an unlimited extent: that all questions
of political institutions are relative, not absolute, and that
different stages of human progress not only will have, but
ought to have, different institutions: that government is al-
ways either in the hands, or passing into the hands, of what-
ever is the strongest power in society, and that what this
power is, does not depend on institutions, but institutions on
it: that any general theory of philosophy of politics sup-
poses a previous theory of human progress, and that this is
the same thing with a philosophy of history. These opin-
ions, true in the main, were held in an exaggerated and vio-
lent manner by the thinker with whom I was now most
accustomed to compare notes, and who, as usual with a re-
action, ignored that half of the truth which the thinkers of
the eighteenth century saw. But though, at one period of
my progress, I for some time undervalued that great century.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 107
I never joined in the reaction against it but kept as firm
hold of one side of the truth as I took of the other. The
fight between the nineteenth century and the eighteenth al-
ways reminded me of the battle about the shield, one side of
which was white and the other black. I marvelled at the
blind rage with which the combatants rushed against one
another. I applied to them, and to Coleridge himself, many
of Coleridge's sayings about half truths; and Goethe's de-
vice, " many-sidedness," was one which I would most will-
ingly, at this period, have taken for mine.
The writers by whom, more than by any others, a new
mode of political thinking was brought home to me, were
those of the St. Simonian school in France. In 1829 and
1830 I became acquainted with some of their writings. They
were then only in the earlier stages of their speculations.
They had not yet dressed out their philosophy as a religion,
nor had they organized their scheme of Socialism. They
were just beginning to question the principle of hereditary
property. I was by no means prepared to go with them
even this length; but I was greatly struck with the con-
nected view which they for the first time presented to me,
of the natural order of human progress; and especially with
their division of all history into organic periods and criti-
cal periods. During the organic periods (they said) man-
kind accept with firm conviction some positive creed, claim-
ing jurisdiction over all their actions, and containing more
or less of truth and adaptation to the needs of humanity.
Under its influence they make all the progress compatible
with the creed, and finally outgrow it ; when a period follows
of criticism and negation, in which mankind lose their old
convictions without acquiring any new ones, of a general or
authoritative character, except the conviction that the old
are false. The period of Greek and Roman polytheism, so
long as really believed in by instructed Greeks and Romans,
was an organic period, succeeded by the critical or sceptical
period of the Greek philosophers. Another organic period
came in with Christianity. The corresponding critical period
began with the Reformation, has lasted ever since, still lasts,
and cannot altogether cease until a new organic period has
been inaugurated by the triumph of a yet more advanced
108 JOHN STUART MILX
creed. These ideas, I knew, were not peculiar to the St
Simonians; on the contrary, they were the general property
of Europe, or at least of Germany and France, but they had
never, to my knowledge, been so completely systematized as
by these writers, nor the distinguishing characteristics of a
critical period so powerfully set forth; for I was not then
acquainted with Fichte's Lectures on '' The Characteristics
of the Present Age." In Carlyle, indeed, I found bitter
denunciations of an " age of unbelief,'' and of the present
age as such, which I, like most people at that time, supposed
to be passionate protests in favour of the old modes of be-
lief. But all that was true in these denunciations, I thought
that I found more calmly and philosophically stated by the
St. Simonians. Among their publications, too, there was
one which seemed to me far superior to the rest; in which
the general idea was matured into something much more
definite and instructive. This was an early work of Auguste
Comte, who then called himself, and even announced himself
in the title-page, as a pupil of Saint Simon. In this tract
M. Comte first put forth the doctrine, which he afterwards
so copiously illustrated, of the natural succession of three
stages in every department of human knowledge: first, the
theological, next the metaphysical, and lastly, the positive
stage; and contended, that social science must be subject
to the same law ; that the feudal and Catholic system was the
concluding phasis of the theological state of the social
science, Protestantism the commencement, and the doctrines
of the French Revolution the consummation, of the meta-
physical; and that its positive state was yet to come. This
doctrine harmonized well with my existing notions, to which
it seemed to give a scientific shape. I already regarded the
methods of physical science as the proper models for politi-
cal. But the chief benefit which I derived at this time from
the trains of thought suggested by the St. Simonians and
by Comte, was, that I obtained a clearer conception than
ever before of the peculiarities of an era of transition in
opinion, and ceased to mistake the moral and intellectual
characteristics of such an era, for the normal attributes of
humanity. I looked forward, through the present age of
loud disputes but generally weak convictions, to a future
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 109
which shall unite the best qualities of the critical with the
best qualities of the organic periods; unchecked liberty of
thought, unbounded freedom of individual action in all
modes not hurtful to others; but also, convictions as to
what is right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply en-
graven on the feelings by early education and general una-
nimity of sentiment, and so firmly grounded in reason and in
the true exigencies of life, that they shall not, like all former
and present creeds, religious, ethical, and political, require
to be periodically thrown off and replaced by others.
M. Comte soon left the St. Simonians, and I lost sight of
him and his writings for a number of years. But the St.
Simonians I continued to cultivate. I was kept au courant
of their progress by one of their most enthusiastic disciples,
M. Gustave d'Eichthal, who about that time passed a con-
siderable interval in England. I was introduced to their
chiefs, Bazard and Enfantin, in 1830; and as long as their
public teachings and proselytism continued, I read nearly
every thing they wrote. Their criticisms on the common
doctrines of Liberalism seemed to me full of important
truth ; and it was partly by their writings that my eyes were
opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old
political economy, which assumes private property and in-
heritance as indefeasible facts, and freedom of production
and exchange as the dernier mot of social improvement.
The scheme gradually unfolded by the St, Simonians, under
which the labour and capital of society would be managed
for the general account of the community, every individual
being required to take a share of labour, either as thinker,
teacher, artist or producer, all being classed according to
their capacity, and remunerated according to their work,
appeared to me a far superior description of Socialism to
Owen's. Their aim seemed to me desirable and rational,
however their means might be inefficacious; and though I
neither believed in the practicability, nor in the beneficial
operation of their social machinery, I felt that the procla-
mation of such an ideal of human society could not but tend
to give a beneficial direction to the efforts of others to bring
society, as at present constituted, nearer to some ideal stand-
ard. I honoured them most of all for what they have been
110 JOHN STUART MILL
most cried down for — the boldness and freedom from prej-
udice with which they treated the subject of family, the
most important of any, and needing more fundamental al-l
terations than remain to be made in any other great sociat
institution, but on which scarcely any reformer has the
courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect equality of
men and women, an entirely new order of things in regard
to their relations with one another, the St. Simonians, in
common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves
to the grateful remembrance of future generations.
In giving an account of this period of my life, I have only
specified such of my new impressions as appeared to me,
both at the time and since, to be a kind of turning points,
marking a definite progress in my mode of thought. But
these few selected points give a very insufficient idea of the
quantity of thinking which I carried on respecting a host of
subjects during these years of transition. Much of this, it
is true, consisted in rediscovering things known to all the
world, which I had previously disbelieved, or disregarded.
But the rediscovery was to me a discovery, giving me plenary
possession of the truths, not as traditional platitudes, but
fresh from their source : and it seldom failed to place them in
some new light, by which they were reconciled with, and
seemed to confirm while they modified the truths less gen-
erally known which lay in my early opinions, and in no es-
sential part of which I at any time wavered. All my new
thinking only laid the foundation of these more deeply and
strongly, while it often removed misapprehension and con-
fusion of ideas which had perverted their effect. For ex-
ample, during the later returns of my dejection, the doctrine
of what is called Philosophical Necessity weighed on my
existence like an incubus. I felt as if I was scientifically
proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances:
as if my character and that of all others had been formed
for us by agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out
of our own power. I often said to myself, what a relief it
would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation
of character by circumstances; and remembering the wish
of Fox respecting the doctrine of resistance to governments,
that it might never be forgotten by kings, nor remembered
AUTOBIOGRAPHY HI
by subjects, I said that it would be a blessing if the doctrine
of necessity could be believed by all quoad the characters
of others, and disbelieved in regard to their own. I pon-
dered painfully on the subject, till gradually I saw light
through it. I perceived, that the word Necessity, as a name
for the doctrine of Cause and Effect applied to human
action, carried with it a misleading association; and that
this association was the operative force in the depressing
and paralysing influence which I had experienced: I saw that
though our character is formed by circumstances, our own
desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that
what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of
freewill, is the conviction that we have real power over the
formation of our own character; that our will, by influ-
encing some of our circumstances, can modify our future
habits or capabilities of willing. All this was entirely con-
sistent with the doctrine of circumstances, or rather, was
that doctrine itself, properly understood. From that time
I drew in my own mind^ a clear distinction between the
doctrine of circumstances, and Fatalism; discarding alto-
gether the misleading word Necessity. The theory, which
I now for the first time rightly apprehended, ceased alto-
gether to be discouraging, and besides the relief to my
spirits, I no longer suffered mder the burden, so heavy to
one who aims at being a reformer in opinions, of thinking
one doctrine true, and the contrary doctrine morally bene-
ficial. The train of thought which had extricated me from
this dilemma, seemed to me, in after years, fitted to render
a similar service to others; and it now forms the chapter
on Liberty and Necessity in the concluding Book of my
System of Logic.
Again in politics, though I no longer accepted the doc-
trine of the Essay on Government as a scientific theory;
though I ceased to consider representative democracy as
an absolute principle, and regarded it as a question of time,
place, and circumstance; though I now looked upon the
choice of political institutions as a moral and educational
question more than one of material interests, thinking that it
ought to be decided mainly by the consideration, what
great improvement in life and culture stands next in order
112 JOHN STUART MILL
for the people concerned, as the condition of their further
progress, and what institutions are most likely to promote'
that; nevertheless, this change in the premises of my politf
ical philosophy did not alter my practical political creed as to
the requirements of my own time and country. I was as much
as ever a Radical and Democrat for Europe, and especially
for England. I thought the predominance of the aristo-
cratic classes, the noble and the rich, in the English con-
stitution, an evil worth any struggle to get rid of; not on
account of taxes, or any such comparatively small incon-
venience, but as the great demoralizing agency in the coun-
try. Demoralizing, first, because it made the conduct of
the Government an example of gross public immorality,
through the predominance of private over public interests
in the State, and the abuse of the powers of legislation for
the advantage of classes. Secondly, and in a still greater
degree, because the respect of the multitude always attach-
ing itself principally to that which, in the existing state of
society, is the chief passport to power; and under English
institutions, riches, hereditary or acquired, being the almost
exclusive source of political importance; riches, and the
signs of riches, were almost the only things really respected,
and the life of the people was mainly devoted to the pursuit
of them. I thought, that while the higher and richer classes
held the power of government, the instruction and improve-
ment of the mass of the people were contrary to the self-
interest of those classes, because tending to render the people
more powerful for throwing off the yoke: but if the democ-
racy obtained a large, and perhaps the principal share, in
the governing power, it would become the interest of the
opulent classes to promote their education, in order to ward
off really mischievous errors, and especially those which
would lead to unjust violations of property. On these
grounds I was not only as ardent as ever for democratic
institutions, but earnestly hoped that Owenite, St. Simonian,
and all other anti-property doctrines might spread widely
among the poorer classes ; not that I thought 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 had more to
fear from the poor when uneducated, than when educated^
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 113
In this frame of mind the French Revolution of July
found me. It roused my utmost enthusiasm, and gave me, as
it were, a new existence. I went at once to Paris, was in-
troduced to Lafayette, and laid the groundwork of the
intercourse I afterwards kept up with several of the active
chiefs of the extreme popular party. After my return I
entered warmly, as a writer, into the political discussions of
the time; which soon became 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 wrote copiously
in newspapers. It was about this time that Fonblanque,
who had for some time written the political articles in the
Examiner, became the proprietor and editor of the paper.
It is not forgotten with what verve and talent, as well as
fine wit, he carried it on, during the whole period of Lord
Grey's Ministry, and what importance it assumed as the
principal representative in the newspaper press, of Radical
opinions. The distinguishing character of the paper was
given to it entirely by his own articles, which formed at
least three-fourths of all the original writing contained in
it: but of the remaining fourth I contributed during those
years a much larger share than any one else. I wrote
nearly all the articles on French subjects, including a weekly
summary of French politics, often extending to considerable
length ; together with many leading articles on general poli-
tics, commercial and financial legislation, and any miscel-
laneous subjects in which I felt interested, and which were
suitable to the paper, including occasional reviews of books.
Mere newspaper articles on the occurrences or questions
of the moment, gave no opportunity for the development of
any general mode of thought; but I attempted, in the begin-
ning of 1831, to embody in a series of articles, headed
*' The Spirit of the Age,'' some of my new opinions, and
especially to point out in the character of the present age,
the anomalies and evils characteristic of the transition from
a system of opinions which had worn out, to another only
in process of being formed. These articles were, I fancy,
lumbering in style, and not lively or striking enough to be,
at any time, acceptable to newspaper readers ; but had they
been far more attractive, still, at that particular moment.
114 JOHN STUART MILL
when great political changes were impending, and engross-
ing all minds, these discussions were ill-timed, and missed
fire altogether. The only effect which I know to have been
produced by them, was that Carlyle, then living in a se-
cluded part of Scotland, read them in his solitude, and say-
ing to himself (as he afterwards told me) "Here is a new
Mystic,'* inquired on coming to London that autumn
respecting their authorship; an inquiry which was the im-
mediate cause of our becoming personally acquainted.
I have already mentioned Carlyle's earlier writings as
one of the channels through which I received the influences
which enlarged my early narrow creed; but I do not think
that those writings, by themselves, would ever have had
any effect on my opinions. What truths they contained,
though of the very kind which I was already receiving from
other quarters, were presented in a form and vesture less
suited than any other to give them access to a mind trained
as mine had been. They seemed a haze of poetry and
German metaphysics, in which almost the only clear thing
was a strong animosity to most of the opinions which were
the basis of my mode of thought : religious scepticism, utili-
tarianism, the doctrine of circumstances, and the attaching
any importance to democracy, logic, or political economy.
Instead of my having been taught anything, in the first in-
stance, by Carlyle, it was only in proportion as I came to see
the same truths through media more suited to my mental
constitution, that I recognised them in his writings. Then,
indeed, the wonderful power with which he put them forth
made a deep impression upon me, and I was during a long
period one of his most fervent admirers; but the good his
writings did me, was not as philosophy to instruct, but as
poetry to animate. Even at the time when our acquaintance
commenced, I was not sufficiently advanced in my new
modes of thought to appreciate him fully; a proof of which
is, that on his showing me the manuscript of Sartor Resar-
tus, his best and greatest work, which he had just then
finished, I made little of it; though when it came out about
two years afterwards in Eraser's Magazine I read it with
enthusiastic admiration and the keenest delight. I did not
seek and cultivate Carlyle less on account of the funda-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 115
mental differences in our philosophy. He soon found out
that I was not ** another mystic/' and when for the sake of
my own integrity I wrote to him a distinct profession of all
those of my opinions which I knew he most disliked, he
replied that the chief difference between us was that I " was
as yet consciously nothing of a mystic." I do not know
at what period he gave up the expectation that I was des-
tined to become one; but though both his and my opinions
underwent in subsequent years considerable changes, we
never approached much nearer to each other's modes of
thought than we were in the first years of our acquaintance.
I did not, however, deem myself a competent judge of
Carlyle. I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not; that
he was a man of intuition, which I was not; and that as
such, he not only saw many things long before me, which
I could only when they were pointed out to me, hobble after
and prove, but that it was highly probable he could see
many things which were not visible to me even after they
were pointed out. I knew that I could not see round him,
and could never be certain that I saw over him ; and I never
presumed to judge him with any definiteness, until he was in-
terpreted to me by one greatly the superior of us both —
who was more a poet than he, and more a thinker than I — -
whose own mind and nature included his, and infinitely
more.
Among the persons of intellect whom I had known of old,
the one with whom I had now most points of agreement was
the elder Austin. I have mentioned that he always set himself
in opposition to our early sectarianism ; and latterly he had,
like myself, come under new influences. Having been
appointed Professor of Jurisprudence in the London Uni-
versity (now University College), he had lived for some
time at Bonn to study for his Lectures; and the influences
of German literature and of the German character and state
of society had made a very perceptible change in his views
of life. His personal disposition was much softened ; he was
less militant and polemic ; his tastes had begun to turn them-
selves towards the poetic and contemplative. He attached
much less importance than formerly to outward changes;
unless accompanied by a better cultivation of the inward
116 JOHN STUART MILL
nature. He had a strong distaste for the general meanness
of English life, the absence of enlarged thoughts and un-
selfish desires, the low objects on which the faculties of all
classes of the English are intent. Even the kind of public
interests which Englishmen care for, he held in very little
esteem. He thought that there was more practical good
government, and (which is true enough) infinitely more
care for the education and mental improvement of all ranks
of the people, under the Prussian monarchy, than under the
English representative government: and he held, with the
French Economistes, that the real security for good govern-
ment is " un peuple eclaire," which is not always the fruit
of popular institutions, and which if it could be had without
them, would do their work better than they. Though he
approved of the Reform Bill, he predicted, what in fact
occurred, that it would not produce the great immediate
improvements in government, which many expected from it.
The men, he said, 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 new opinions he had
adopted and in the old ones which he retained. Like me,
he never ceased to be an utilitarian, and with all his love
of the Germans, and enjoyment of their literature, never
became in the smallest degree reconciled to the innate-
principle metaphysics. He cultivated more and more a kind
of German religion, a religion of poetry and feeling with
little, if anything, of positive dogma; while, in politics (and
here it was that I most differed with him) he acquired an
indifference, bordering on contempt, for the progress of
popular institutions : though he rejoiced in that of Socialism,
as the most effectual means of compelling the powerful
classes to educate the people, and to impress on them the
only real means of permanently improving their material
condition, a limitation of their numbers. Neither was he,
at this time, fundamentally opposed to Socialism in itself as
an ultimate result of improvement. He professed great dis-
respect for what he called " the universal principles of
human nature of the political economists," and insisted on
the evidence which history and daily experience afford of
the "extraordinary pliability of human nature" (a phrase
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 117
which I Tiave somewhere borrowed from him) ; nor did he
think it possible to set any positive bounds to the moral
capabilities which might unfold themselves in mankind,
under an enlightened direction of social and educational
influences. Whether he retained all these opinions to the
end of life I know not. Certainly the modes of thinking
of his later years, and especially of his last publication,
were much more Tory in their general character than those
which he held at this time.
My father's tone of thought and feeling, I now felt myself
at a great distance from: greater, indeed, than a full and
calm explanation and reconsideration on both sides, might
have shown to exist in reality. But my father was not one
with whom calm and full explanations on fundamental
points of doctrine could be expected, at least with one whom
he might consider as, in some sort, a deserter from his
standard.
Fortunately we were almost always in strong agreement
on the political questions of the day, which engrossed
a large part of his interest and of his conversation. On
those matters of opinion on which we differed, we talked
little. He knew that the habit of thinking for myself, which
his mode of education had fostered, sometimes led me to
opinions different from his, and he perceived from time to
time that I did not always tell him how different. I ex-
pected no good, but only pain to both of us, from discuss-
ing our differences: and I never expressed them but when
he gave utterance to some opinion or feeling repugnant to
mine, in a manner which would have made it disingenuous-
ness on my part to remain silent.
It remains to speak of what I wrote during these years,
which, independently of my contributions to newspapers,
was considerable. In 1830 and 1831 I wrote the five Essays
since published under the title of " Essays on some Unsettled
Questions of Political Economy,^' almost as they now
stand, except that in 1833 I partially rewrote the fifth Essay.
They were written with no immediate purpose of publica-
tion; and when, some years later, I offered them to a pub-
lisher, he declined them. They were only printed in 1844,
after the success of the "System of Logic/' I also resumed
118 JOHN STUART MILL
my speculations on this last subject, and puzzled myself,
like others before me, with the great paradox of the dis-
covery of new truths by general reasoning. As to the fact,
there could be no doubt. As little could it be doubted, that
all reasoning is resolvable into syllogisms, and that in every
syllogism the conclusion is actually contained and implied
in the premises. How, being so contained and implied, it
could be new truth, and how the theorems of geometry, so
different in appearance from the definitions and axioms,
could be all contained in these, was a difficulty which no
one, I thought, had sufficiently felt, and which, at all events,
no one had succeeded in clearing up. The explanations
offered by Whately and others, though they might give a
temporary satisfaction, always^ in my mind, left a mist still
hanging over the subject. At last, when reading a second
or third time the chapters on Reasoning in the second vol-
ume of Dugald Stewart, interrogating myself on every
point, and following out, as far as I knew how, every topic
of thought which the book suggested, I came upon an idea
of his respecting the use of axioms in ratiocination, which
I did not remember to have before noticed, but which now,
in meditating on it, seemed to me not only true of axioms,
but of all general propositions whatever, and to be the key
of the whole perplexity. From this germ grew the theory
of the Syllogism propounded in the Second Book of the
Logic; which I immediately fixed by writing it out. And
now, with greatly increased hope of being able to produce
a work on Logic, of some originality and value, I proceeded
to write the First Book, from the rough and imperfect draft
I had already made. What I now wrote became the basis
pf that part of the subsequent Treatise; except that it did
not contain the Theory of Kinds, which was a later addi-
tion, suggested by otherwise inextricable difficulties which
met me in my first attempt to work out the subject of some
of the concluding chapters of the Third Book. At the
point which I had now reached I made a halt, which lasted
five years. I had come to the end of my tether; I could
make nothing satisfactory of Induction, at this time. I con-
tinued to read any book which seemed to promise light on
the subject, and appropriated, as well as I could, the results;
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 119
but for a long time I found nothing which seemed to open
to me any very important vein of meditation.
In 1832 I wrote several papers for the first series of
Tait's Magazine, and one for a quarterly periodical called
the Jurist, which had been founded, and for a short time
carried on, by a set of friends, all lawyers and law reform-
ers, with several of whom I was acquainted. The paper in
question is the one on the rights and duties of the State
respecting Corporation and Church Property, now standing
first among the collected " Dissertations and Discussions ; "
where one of my articles in '' Tait," " The Currency Juggle,"
also appears. In the whole mass of what I wrote previous
to these, there is nothing of sufficient permanent value to
justify reprinting. The paper in the Jurist, which I still
think a very complete discussion of the rights of the State
over Foundations, showed both sides of my opinions, assert-
ing as firmly as I should have done at any time, the doctrine
that all endowments are national property, which the gov-
ernment may and ought to control ; but not, as I should once
have done, condemning endowments in themselves, and pro-
posing that they should be taken to pay off the national debt.
On the contrary, I urged strenuously the importance of
having a provision for education, not dependent on the mere
demand of the market, that is, on the knowledge and dis-
cernment of average parents, but calculated to establish and
keep up a higher standard of instruction than is likely to
be spontaneously demanded by the buyers of the article. All
these opinions have been confirmed and strengthened by the
whole course of my subsequent reflections.
CHAPTER VI
Commencement of the Most Valuable Friendship of
My Life. My Father^'s Death. Writings
AND Other Proceedings Up to 1840.
IT was at the period of my mental progress which I
have now reached that I formed the friendship which
has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence,
as well as the source of a great part of all that I have at-
tempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human
improvement. My first 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-fifth and she in
her twenty-third year. With her husband's family it was
the renewal of an old acquaintanceship. His grandfather
lived in the next house to my father's in Newington Green,
and I had, sometimes when a boy, been invited to play in the
old gentleman's garden. He was a fine specimen of the old
Scotch Puritan; stern, severe, and powerful, but very kind
to children, on whom such men make a lasting impression.
Although it was years after my introduction to Mrs. Taylor
before my acquaintance with her became at all intimate or
confidential, I very soon felt her to be the most admirable
person I had ever known. It is not to be supposed that she
was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her,
could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of all could
this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress
in the highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature ; a
necessity equally from the ardour with which she sought it,
and from the spontaneous tendency of faculties which could
not receive an impression or an experience without making
it the source or the occasion of an accession of wisdom.
Up to the time when I first saw her, her rich and powerful
nature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received
120
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 121
type of feminine genius. To her outer circle she was a
beauty and a wit, with an air of natural distinction, felt by
all who approached her: to the inner, a woman of deep and
strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive intelligence,
and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature. Married
at an early age, to a most upright, brave, and honourable
man, of liberal opinions and good education, but without the
intellectual or artistic tastes which would have made him a
companion for her, though a steady and affectionate friend,
for whom she had true esteem and the strongest affection
through life, and whom she most deeply lamented when
dead; shut out by the social disabilities of women from any
adequate exercise of her highest faculties in action on the
world without; her life was one of inward meditation,
varied by familiar intercourse with a small circle of friends,
of whom one only (long since deceased) was a person of
genius, or of capacities of feeling or intellect kindred with
her own, but all had more or less of alliance with her in
sentiments and opinions. Into this circle I had the good for-
tune to be admitted, and I soon perceived that she pos-
sessed in combination, the qualities which in all other per-
sons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find
singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of
superstition (including that which attributes a pretended
perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an
earnest protest against many things which are still part of
the established constitution of society, resulted not from the
hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feel-
ing, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature. In
general spiritual characteristics, as well as in temperament
and organization, I have often compared her, as she was at
this time, to Shelley: but in thought and intellect, Shelley,
so far as his powers were developed in his short life, was
but a child compared with what she ultimately became.
Alike in the highest regions of speculation and in the smaller
practical concerns of daily life, her mind was the same
perfect instrument, piercing to the very heart and marrow
of the matter; always seizing the essential idea or principle.
The same exactness and rapidity of operation, pervading as
it did her sensitive as well as her mental faculties, would,
122 JOHN STUART MILL
with her gifts of feeling and imagination, have fitted her
to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul and
her vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a
great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature
and discernment and sagacity in practical life, would, in
the times when such a carriere was open to women, have
made her eminent among the rulers of mankind. Her intel-
lectual gifts did but minister to a moral character at once the
noblest and the best balanced which I have ever met with
in life. Her unselfishness was not that of a taught system
of duties, but of a heart which thoroughly identified itself
with the feelings of others, and often went to excess in
consideration for them by imaginatively investing their feel-
ings with the intensity of its own. The passion of justice
might have been thought to be her strongest feeling, but
for her boundless generosity, and a lovingness ever ready to
pour itself forth upon any or all human beings who were
capable of giving the smallest feeling in return. The rest
of her moral characteristics were such as naturally accom-
pany these qualities of mind and heart: the most genuine
modesty combined with the loftiest pride; a simplicity and
sincerity which were absolute, towards all who were fit to
receive them; the utmost scorn of whatever was mean and
cowardly, and a burning indignation at everything brutal or
tyrannical, faithless or dishonourable in conduct and char-
acter, while making the broadest distinction between mala
in se and mere mala prohibita — between acts giving evidence
of intrinsic badness in feeling and character, and those
which are only violations of conventions either good or bad,
violations which whether in themselves right or wrong, are
capable of being committed by persons in every other re-
spect loveable or admirable.
To be admitted into any degree of mental intercourse
with a being of these qualities, could not but have a most
beneficial influence on my development; though the effect
was only gradual, and many years elapsed before her men-
tal progress and mine went forward in the complete com-
panionship they at last attained. The benefit I received was
far greater than any which I could hope to give; though to
her, who had at first reached her opinions by the moral
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 123
intuition of a character of strong feeling, there was doubt-
less help as well as encouragement to be derived from one
who had arrived at many of the same results by study and
reasoning: and in the rapidity of her intellectual growth,
her mental activity, which converted everything into knowl-
edge, doubtless drew from me, as it did from other sources,
many of its materials. What I owe, even intellectually, to
her, is in its detail, almost infinite; of its general character
a few words will give some, though a very imperfect, idea.
With those who, like all the best and wisest of mankind,
are dissatisfied with human life as it is, and whose feelings
are wholly identified with its radical amendment, there are
two main regions of thought. One is the region of ultimate
aims ; the constituent elements of the highest realizable ideal
of human life. The other is that of the immediately useful
and practically attainable. In both these departments, I
have acquired more from her teaching, than from all other
sources taken together. And, to say truth, it is in these two
extremes principally, that real certainty lies. My own
strength lay wholly in the uncertain and slippery inter-
mediate region, that of theory, on moral and political
science: respecting the conclusions of which, in any of the
forms in which I have received or originated them, whether
as political economy, analytic psychology, logic, philoso-
phy of history, or anything else, it is not the least of my
intellectual obligations to her that I have derived from her
a wise scepticism, which, while it has not hindered me from
following out the honest exercise of my thinking faculties
to whatever conclusions might result from it, has put me
on my guard against holding or announcing these conclu-
sions with a degree of confidence which the nature of such
speculations does not warrant, and has kept my mind not only
open to admit, but prompt to welcome and eager to seek,
even on the questions on which I have most meditated, any
prospect of clearer perceptions and better evidence. I have
often received praise, which in my own right I only par-
tially deserve, for the greater practicality which is sup-
posed to be found in my writings, compared with those of
most thinkers who have been equally addicted to large gen-
eralizations. The writings in which this quality has been
124 JOHN STUART MILL
observed, were not the work of one mind, but of the fusion
of two, one of them as pre-eminently practical in its judg-
ments and perceptions of things present, as it was high and
bold in its anticipations for a remote futurity.
At the present period, however, this influence was only
one among many which were helping to shape the character
of my future development: and even after it became, I may
truly say, the presiding principle of my mental progress, it
did not alter the path, but only made me move forward more
boldly, and, at the same time, more cautiously, in the same
course. The only actual revolution which has ever taken
place in my modes of thinking, was already complete. My
new tendencies had to be confirmed in some respects, mod-
erated in others : but the only substantial changes of opinion
that were yet to come, related to politics, and consisted, on
one hand, in a greater approximation, so far as regards the
ultimate prospects of humanity, to a qualified Socialism, and
on the other, a shifting of my political ideal from pure
democracy, as commonly understood by its partizans, to the
modified form of it, which is set forth in my " Considera-
tions on Representative Government."
This last change, which took place very gradually, dates
its commencement from my reading, or rather study, of
M. de Tocqueville's " Democracy in America," which fell
into my hands immediately after its first appearance. In
that remarkable work, the excellences of democracy were
pointed out in a more conclusive, because a more specific
manner than I had ever known them to be, even by the most
enthusiastic democrats; while the specific dangers which
beset democracy, considered as the government of the nu-
merical majority, were brought into equally strong light,
and subjected to a masterly analysis, not as reasons for
resisting what the author considered as an inevitable result
of human progress, but as indications of the weak points of
popular government, the defences by which it needs to be
guarded, and the correctives which must be added to it in
order that while full play is given to its beneficial tendencies,
those which are of a different nature may be neutralized or
mitigated. I was now well prepared for speculations of this
character, and from this time onward my own thoughts
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 125
moved more and more in the same channel, though the con-
sequent modifications in my practical political creed were
spread over many years, as would be shown by comparing
my first review of " Democracy in America," written and
published 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 the study of Tocqueville, was the fundamental question
of centralization. The powerful philosophic analysis which
he applied to American and to French experience, led him
to attach the utmost importance to the performance of as
much of the collective business of society, as can safely be
so performed, by the people themselves, without any inter-
vention of the executive government, either to supersede
their agency, or to dictate the manner of its exercise. He
viewed this practical political activity of the individual citi-
zen, not only as one of the most effectual means of training
the social feelings and practical intelligence of the people,
so important in themselves, and so indispensable to good
government, but also as the specific counteractive to some
of the characteristic infirmities of democracy, and a neces-
sary protection against its degenerating into the only despot-
ism of which, in the modern world, there is real danger —
the absolute rule of the head of the executive over a congre-
gation of isolated individuals, all equals but all slaves. There
was, indeed, no immediate peril from this source on the
British side of the channel, where nine-tenths of the inter-
nal business which elsewhere devolves on the government,
was transacted by agencies independent of it ; where central-
ization was, and is, the subject not only of national
disapprobation, but of unreasoning prejudice; where jeal-
ousy of government interference was a blind feeling
preventing or resisting even the most beneficial exertion of
legislative authority to correct the abuses of what pretends
to be local self-government, but is, too often, selfish mis-
management of local interests, by a jobbing and borne
local oligarchy. But the more certain the public were to
go wrong on the side opposed to centralization, the greater
danger was there lest philosophic reformers should fall into
126 JOHN STUART MILL
the contrary error, and overlook the mischiefs of which they
had been spared the painful experience. I was myself, at
this very time, actively engaged in defending important
measures, such as the great Poor Law Reform of 1834,
against an irrational clamour grounded on the anti-central-
ization prejudice: and had it not been for the lessons of
Tocqueville, I do not know that I might not, like many re-
formers before me, have been hurried into the excess oppo-
site to that, which, being the one prevalent in my own
country, it was generally my business to 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 in the right place, I have at least insisted with equal
emphasis upon the evils on both sides, and have made the
means of reconciling the advantages of both, a subject of
serious study.
In the meanwhile had taken place the election of the first
Reformed Parliament, which included several of the most
notable of my Radical friends and acquaintances — Grote,
Roebuck, Buller, Sir William Molesworth, John and Ed-
ward Romilly, and several more; besides Warburton, Strutt,
and others, who were in Parliament already. Those who
thought themselves, and were called by their friends, the
philosophic Radicals, had now, it seemed, a fair opportunity,
in a more advantageous position than they had ever before
occupied, for showing what was in them; and I, as well as
my father, founded great hopes on them. These hopes were
destined to be disappointed. The men were honest, and
faithful to their opinions, as far as votes were concerned;
often in spite of much discouragement. When measures
were proposed, flagrantly at variance with their principles,
such as the Irish Coercion Bill, or the Canada Coercion in
1837, they came forward manfully, and braved any amount
of hostility and prejudice rather than desert the right. But
on the whole they did very little to promote any opinions;
they had little enterprise, little activity: they left the lead
of the Radical portion of the House to the old hands, to
Hume and O'Connell. A partial exception must be made in
favour of one or two of the younger men ; and in the case
of Roebuck, it is his title to permanent remembrance, that
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 127
in the very first year during which he sat in Parliament, he
originated (or re-originated after the unsuccessful attempt
of Mr. Brougham) the parliamentary movement for
National Education ; and that he was the first to commence,
and for years carried on almost alone, the contest for the
self-government of the Colonies. Nothing, on the whole
equal to these two things, was done by any other individual,
even of those from whom most was expected. And now, on
a calm retrospect, I can perceive that the men were less in
fault than we supposed, and that we had expected too much
from them. They were in unfavourable circumstances.
Their lot was cast in the ten years of inevitable reaction,
when, the Reform excitement being over, and the few legis-
lative improvements which the public really called for
having been rapidly effected, power gravitated back in its
natural direction, to those who were for keeping things as
they were; when the public mind desired rest, and was
less disposed than at any other period since the peace, to
let itself be moved by attempts to work up the Reform feel-
ing into fresh activity in favour of new things. It would
have required a great political leader, which no one is to be
blamed for not being, to have effected really great things
by parliamentary discussion when the nation was in this
mood. My father and I had hoped that some competent
leader might arise ; some man of philosophic attainments and
popular talents, who could have put heart into the many
younger or less distinguished men that would have been
ready to join him — could have made them available, to the
extent of their talents, in bringing advanced ideas before
the public — could have used the House of Commons as a
rostra or a teacher's chair for instructing and impelling the
public mind; and would either have forced the Whigs to
receive their measures from him, or have taken the lead of
the Reform party out of their hands. Such a leader there
would have been, if my father had been in Parliament. For
want of such a man, the instructed Radicals sank into a
mere Cote Gauche of the Whig party. With a keen, and as I
now think, an exaggerated sense of the possibilities which
were open to the Radicals if they made even ordinary exer-
tion for their opinions, I laboured from this time till 1839,
128 JOHN STUART MILL
both by personal influence with some of them, and by
writings, to put ideas into their heads, and purpose into
their hearts. I did some good with Charles Buller, and
some with Sir William Molesworth; both of whom did val-
uable service, but were unhappily cut off almost in the
beginning of their usefulness. On the whole, however, my
attempt was vain. To have had a chance of succeeding in
it, required a different position from mine. It was a task
only for one who, being himself in Parliament, could have
mixed with the Radical members in daily' consultation,
could himself have taken the initiative, and instead of urging
Others to lead, could have summoned them to follow.
What I could do by writing, I did. During the year 1833
I continued working in the Examiner with Fonblanque, who
at that time was zealous in keeping up the fight for Radi-
calism against the Whig ministry. During the session of
1834 I wrote comments on passing events, of the nature of
newspaper articles (under the title of " Notes on the News-
papers"), in the Monthly Repository, a magazine conducted
by Mr. Fox, well known as a preacher and political orator,
and subsequently as member of Parliament for Oldham;
with whom I had lately become acquainted, and for whose
sake chiefly I wrote in his magazine. I contributed several
other articles to this periodical, the most considerable of
which (on the theory of Poetry), is reprinted in the "Dis-
sertations." Altogether, the writings (independently of those
in newspapers) which I published from 1832 to 1834, amount
to a large volume. This, however, includes abstracts of sev-
eral of Plato's Dialogues, with introductory remarks, which,
though not published until 1834, had been written several
years earlier; and which I afterwards, on various occasions,
found to have been read, and their authorship known, by
more people than were aware of anything else which I had
written, up to that time. To complete the tale of my
writings at this period, I may add that in 1833, at the request
of Bulwer, who was just then completing his " England and
the English " (a work, at that time, greatly in advance of
the public mind), I wrote for him a critical account of
Bentham's philosophy, a small part of which he incorporated
in his text, and printed the rest (with an honourable ac-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 129
knowledgment), as an appendix. In this, along with the
favourable, a part also of the unfavourable side of my
estimation of Bentham's doctrines, considered as a com-
plete philosophy, was for the first time put into print.
But an opportunity soon offered, by which, as it seemed,
I might have it in 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 the projects occa-
sionally talked of between my father and me, and some of
the parliamentary and other Radicals who frequented his
house, was the foundation of a periodical organ of philo-
sophic radicalism, to take the place which the Westminster
Review had been intended to fill: and the scheme had gone
so far as to bring under discussion the pecuniary contribu-
tions which could be looked for, and the choice of an editor.
Nothing, however, came of it for some time: but in the
summer of 1834 Sir William Molesworth, himself a labo-
rious student, and a precise and metaphysical thinker, capable
of aiding the cause by his pen as well as by his purse, spon-
taneously proposed to establish a Review, provided I would
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, at first under the title of the London Review, and
afterwards under that of the London and Westminster,
Molesworth having bought the Westminster from its pro-
prietor. General Thompson, and merged the two into one.
In the years between 1834 and 1840 the conduct of this
Review occupied the greater part of my spare time. In the
beginning, it did not, as a whole, by any means represent
my opinions. I was under the necessity 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 not at issue on many essential points,
and among whom I could not even claim to be the most
important individual. My father's co-operation as a writer
we all deemed indispensable, and he wrote largely in it until
prevented by his last illness. The subjects of his articles, and
the strength and decision with which his opinions were ex-
pressed in them, made the Review at first derive its tone
and colouring from him much more than from any of the
Vol. 25—5 HC
130 JOHN STUART MILL
other writers. I could not exercise editorial control over
his articles, and I was sometimes obliged to sacrifice to him
portions of my own. The old Westminster Review doc-
trines, but little modified, thus formed the staple of the
Review; but I hoped, by the side of these, to introduce other
ideas and another tone, and to obtain for my own shade of
opinion a fair representation, along with those of other mem-
bers of the party. With this end chiefly in view, I made it
one of the peculiarities of the work that every article should
bear an initial, or some other signature, and be held to
express the opinions solely of the individual writer; the edi-
tor being only responsible for its being worth publishing,
and not in conflict with the objects for which the Review
was set on foot. I had an opportunity of putting in practice
my scheme of conciliation between the old and the new
"philosophic radicalism," by the choice of a subject for my
own first contribution. Professor Sedgwick, a man of emi-
nence in a particular walk of natural science, but who
should not have trespassed into philosophy, had lately pub-
lished his Discourse on the Studies of Cambridge, which
had as its most prominent feature an intemperate assault
on analytic psychology and utilitarian ethics, in the form of
an attack on Locke and Paley. This had excited great in-
dignation in my father and others, which I thought it fully
deserved. And here, I imagined, was an opportunity of at
the same time repelling an unjust attack, and inserting into
my defence of Hartleianism and Utilitarianism a number
of the opinions which constituted my view of those subjects,
as distinguished from that of my old associates. In this I
partially succeeded, though my relation to my father would
have made it painful to me in any case, and impossible in a
Review for which he wrote, to speak out my whole mind on
the subject at this time.
I am, however, inclined to think that my father was not
so much opposed as he seemed, to the modes of thought in
which I believed myself to dififer from him; that he did in-
justice to his own opinions by the unconscious exaggerations
of an intellect emphatically polemical; and that when think-
ing without an adversary in view, he was willing to make
room for a great portion of the truths he seemed to deny.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 131
I have frequently observed that he made large allowance in
practice for considerations 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 more pain
than pleasure; yet on reading it again, long after, I found
little in the opinions it contains, but what I think in the main
just; and I can 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 to Tocqueville's
" Democracy in America." It is true, he said and thought
much more about what Tocqueville said in favour of de-
mocracy, than what he said of its disadvantages. Still,
his high appreciation of a book which was at any rate an
example of a mode of treating the question of government
almost the reverse of his — wholly inductive and analytical,
instead of purely ratiocinative — gave me great encourage-
ment. He also approved of an article which I published in
the first number following the junction of the two reviews,
the essay reprinted in the *' Dissertations,'' under the title
" Civilization ; " into which I threw many of my new opin-
ions, and criticised rather emphatically the mental and moral
tendencies of the time, on grounds and in a manner which
I certainly had not learnt from him.
All speculation, however, on the possible future develop-
ments of my father's opinions, and on the probabilities of
permanent co-operation between him and me in the promul-
gation of our thoughts, was doom.ed to be cut short. During
the whole of 1835 his health had been declining: his symp-
toms became unequivocally those of pulmonary consumption,
and after lingering 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 apparent abatement of intellectual vigour; his
interest in all things and persons that had interested him
through life was undiminished, nor did the approach of
death cause the smallest wavering (as in so strong and
firm a mind it was impossible that it should) in his convic-
tions on the subject of religion. His principal satisfaction.
132 JOHN STUART MILL
after he knew that his end was near, seemed to be the
thought of what he had done to make the world better than
he found it; and his chief regret in not living longer, that
he had not had time to do more.
His place is an eminent one in the literary, and even in
the political history of his country; and it is far from hon-
ourable to the generation which has benefited by his worth,
that he is so seldom mentioned, and, compared with men
far his inferiors, so little remembered. This is probably to
be ascribed mainly to two causes. In the first place, the
thought of him merges too much in the deservedly superior
fame of Bentham. Yet he was anything but Bentham's mere
follower or disciple. Precisely because he was himself one
of the most original thinkers of his time, he was one of the
earliest to appreciate and adopt the most important mass of
original thought which had been produced by the generation
preceding him. His mind and Bentham's were essentially
of different construction. He had not all Bentham's high
qualities, but neither had Bentham all his. It would, indeed,
be ridiculous to claim for him the praise of having accom-
plished for mankind such splendid services as Bentham's.
He did not revolutionize, or rather create, one of the great
departments of human thought. But, leaving out of the
reckoning all that portion of his labours in which he ben-
efited by what Bentham had done, and counting only what
he achieved in a province in which Bentham had done
nothing, that of analytic psychology, he will be known to
posterity as one of the greatest names in that most important
branch of speculation, on which all the moral and political
sciences ultimately rest, and will mark one of the essential
:^ages in its progress. The other reason which has made his
fame less than he deserved, is that notwithstanding the
great number of his opinions which, partly through his own
efforts, have now been generally adopted, there was, on the
whole, a marked opposition between his spirit and that of the
present time. As Brutus was called the last of the Romans,
so was he the last of the eighteenth century: he continued
its tone of thought and sentiment into the nineteenth
(though not unmodified nor unimproved), partaking neither
in the good nor in the bad influences of the reaction against
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 133
the eighteenth century, which was the great characteristic
of the first half of the nineteenth. The eighteenth century
was a great age, an age of strong and brave men, and he was
a fit companion for its strongest and bravest. By his writ-
ings and his personal 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 the intellectual radicals in
England, as Voltaire was of the philosophes of France. It
is only one of his mxinor merits, that he was the originator
of all sound statesmanship in regard to the subject of his
largest work, India. He wrote on no subject which he did
not enrich with valuable thought, and excepting the " Ele-
ments of Political Economy," a very useful book when first
written, but which has now for some time finished its work,
it will be long before any of his books will be wholly super-
seded, or will cease to be instructive reading to students of
their subjects. In the power of influencing by mere force
of mind and character, the convictions and purposes of
others, and in the strenuous exertion of that power to
promote freedom and progress, he left, as my knowledge
extends, no equal among men and but one among women.
Though acutely sensible of my own inferiority in the
qualities by which he acquired his personal ascendancy, I
had now to try what it might be possible for me to accom-
plish without him: and the Review was the instrument on
which I built my chief hopes of establishing a useful in-
fluence over the liberal and democratic section of the public
mind. Deprived of my father's aid, I was also exempted
from the restraints and reticences by which that aid had
been purchased. I did not feel that there was any other
radical writer or politician to whom I was bound to defer,
further than consisted with my own opinions: and having
the complete confidence of Molesworth, I resolved hence-
forth to give full scope 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 understood it, even
though I should lose by it the support of my former asso-
ciates. Carlyle, consequently, became from this time a fre-
quent writer in the Review; Sterling, soon after, an occa-
sional one; and though each individual article continued to
134 JOHN STUART MILL
be the expression of the private sentiments of its writer, the
general tone conformed in some tolerable degree to my
opinions. For the conduct of the Review, under, and in
conjunction with me, I associated with myself a young
Scotchman of the name 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 a good
deal of hope: insomuch, that when Molesworth, in the be-
ginning of 1837, became tired of carrying on the Review
at a loss, and desirous of getting rid of it (he had done his
part honourably, and at no small pecuniary cost), I, very
imprudently for my own pecuniary interest, and very much
from reliance on Robertson's devices, determined to con-
tinue it at my own risk, until his plans should have had a
fair trial. The devices were good, and I never had any
reason to change my opinion of them. But I do not believe
that any devices would have made a radical and democratic
review defray its own expenses, including a paid editor or
sub-editor, and a liberal payment to writers. I myself and
several frequent contributors gave our labour gratuitously,
as we had done for Molesworth ; but the paid contributors
continued to be remunerated on the usual scale of the Edin-
burgh and Quarterly Reviews; and this could not be done
from the proceeds of the sale.
In the same year, 1837, and in the midst of these occupa-
tions, I resumed the 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 dis-
covered that what was mainly wanting, to overcome the dif-
ficulties of that branch of the subject, was a comprehensive,
and, at the 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; since I knew not of any book,
or other guide, that would spread out before me the generali-
ties and processes of the sciences, and I apprehended that
I should 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 with eagerness, and found in it a consid-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 135
erable approximation to what I wanted. Much, if not most,
of the philosophy of the work appeared open to objection;
but the materials were there, for my own thoughts to work
upon: and the author had given to those materials that first
degree of elaboration, which so greatly facilitates and
abridges the subsequent labour. I had now obtained what I
had been waiting for. Under the impulse given me by the
thoughts excited by Dr. Whewell, I read again Sir J. Her-
scheFs discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy: and
I was able to measure the progress my mind had made, by the
great help I now found in this work — though I had read
and even reviewed it several years before with little profit.
1 now set myself vigorously to work out the subject in
thought and in writing. The time I bestowed on this had
to be stolen from occupations more urgent. I had just two
months to spare, at this period, in the intervals of writing for
the Review. In these two months I completed the first draft
of about a third, the most difficult third, of the book. What
I had before written, I estimate at another third, so that only
one-third remained. What I wrote at this time consisted of
the remainder of the doctrine of Reasoning (the theory of
Trains of Reasoning, and Demonstrative Science), and the
greater part of the 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 had become only a question
of time. Having got thus far, I had to leave off in order to
write two articles for the next number of the Review.
When these were written, I returned to the subject, and now
for the first time fell in with Comte's Cour de Philosophic
Positive, or rather with the two volumes of it which were
all that had at that time been published.
My theory of Induction was substantially completed be-
fore I knew of Comte's book; and it is perhaps well that I
came to it by a different road from his, since the conse-
quence has been that my treatise contains, what his certainly
does not, a reduction of the inductive process to strict rules
and to a scientific test, such as the syllogism is for ratiocina-
tion. Comte is always precise and profound on the method
of investigation, but he does not even attempt any exact defi-
nition of the conditions of proof: and his writings show
136 JOHN STUART MILL
that he never attained a just 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 the
subsequent rewriting; and his book was of essential service
to me in some of the parts which still remained to be thought
out. As his subsequent volumes successively made their ap-
pearance, I read them with avidity, but, when he reached the
subject of Social Science, with varying feelings. The fourth
volume disappointed me: it contained those of his opinions on
social subjects with which I most disagree. But the fifth,
containing the connected view of history, rekindled all my
enthusiasm; which the sixth (or concluding) volume did
not materially abate. In a merely logical point of view,
the only leading conception for which I am indebted to him
is that of the Inverse Deductive Method, as the one chiefly
applicable to the complicated subjects of History and Sta-
tistics: a process differing from the more common form of
the deductive method in this — that instead of arriving at its
conclusions by general reasoning, and verifying them by
specific experience (as is the natural order in the deductive
branches of physical science), it obtains its generalizations
by a collation of specific experience, and verifies them by
ascertaining whether they are such as would follow from
known general principles. This was an idea entirely new to
me when I found it in Comte : and but for him I might not
soon (if ever) have arrived at it.
I had been long an ardent admirer of Comte's writings
before I had any communication with himself; nor did I ever,
to the last, see him in the body. But for some years we were
frequent correspondents, until our correspondence became
controversial, and our zeal cooled. I was the first 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, and that all the good he could do to mine, he did by
his books. This would never have led to discontinuance of
intercourse, if the differences between us had been on mat-
ters of simple doctrine. But they were chiefly on those
points of opinion which blended in both of us with our
strongest feelings, and determined the entire direction of our
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 137
aspirations, I had fully agreed with him when he maintained
that the mass of mankind, including even their rulers in all
the practical departments of life, must, from the necessity
of the case, accept most of their opinions on political and
social matters, as they do on physical, from the authority of
those who have bestowed more study on those subjects than
they generally have it in their power to do. This lesson had
been strongly impressed on me by the early work of Comte,
to which I have adverted. And there was nothing in his
great Treatise which I admired more than his remarkable
exposition of the benefits which the nations of modern Eu-
rope have historically derived from the separation, during
the Middle Ages, of temporal and spiritual power, and the
distinct organization of the latter. I agreed with him that
the moral and intellectual ascendancy, once exercised by
priests, must in time pass into the hands of philosophers, and
will naturally do so when they become sufficiently unanimous,
and in other respects worthy to possess it. But when he
exaggerated this line of thought into a practical system, in
v/hich philosophers were to be organized into a kind of cor-
porate hierarchy, invested with almost the same spiritual
supremacy (though without any secular power) once pos-
sessed by the Catholic Church; when I found him relying
on this spiritual authority as the only security for good gov-
ernment, the sole bulwark against practical oppression, and
expecting that by it a system of despotism in the state and
despotism in the family would be rendered innocuous and
beneficial; it is not surprising, that while as logicians we
were nearly at one, as sociologists we could travel together no
further. M. Comte lived to carry out these doctrines to
their extremest consequences, by planning, in his last work,
the '' Systeme de Politique Positive,'' the completest system
of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever yet emanated
from a human brain, unless possibly that of Ignatius Loyola:
a system by which the yoke of general opinion, wielded by an
organized body of spiritual teachers and rulers, would be
made supreme over every action, and as far as is in human
possibility, every thought, of every member of the commu-
nity, as well in the things which regard only himself, as in
those which concern the interests of others. It is but just
138 JOHN STUART MILL
to say that this work is a considerable improvement, in many
points of feeling, over Comte's previous writings on the same
subjects: but as an accession to social philosophy, the only
value it seems to me to possess, consists in putting an end
to the notion that no effectual moral authority can be main-
tained over society without the aid of religious belief; for
Comte's work recognizes no religion except that of Human-
ity, yet it leaves an irresistible conviction that any moral
beliefs concurred in by the community generally, may be
brought to bear upon the whole conduct and lives of its
individual members, with an energy and potency truly
alarming to think of. The book stands a monumental
warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what hap-
pens when once men lose sight in their 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 author-
ship, or to thinking with authorship in view. The articles
from the London and Westminster Review which are re-
printed in the " Dissertations,'' are scarcely a fourth part of
those I wrote. In the conduct of the Review I had two prin-
cipal objects. One was to free philosophic radicalism from
the reproach of sectarian Benthamism. I desired, while
retaining the precision of expression, the definiteness of
meaning, the contempt of declamatory phrases and vague
generalities, which were so honourably characteristic both of
Bentham and of my father, to give a wider basis and a more
free and genial character to Radical speculations; to show
that there was a Radical philosophy, better and more com-
plete than Bentham's, while recognizing and incorporating all
of Bentham's which is permanently valuable. In this first
object I, to a certain extent, succeeded. The other thing I
attempted, was to stir up the educated Radicals, in and out
of Parliament, to exertion, and induce them to make them-
selves, what I thought by using the proper means they might
become — a powerful party capable of taking the govern-
ment of the country, or at least of dictating the terms on
which they should share it with the Whigs. This attempt
was from the first chimerical: partly because the time was
lingropitious, the Reform fervour being in its period of ebb,
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 139
and the Tory influences powerfully rallying; but still more,
because, as Austin so truly said, " the country did not contain
the men/' Among the Radicals in Parliament there were
several qualified to be useful members of an enlightened
Radical party, but none capable of forming and leading such
a party. The exhortations I addressed to them found no re-
sponse. One occasion did present itself when there seemed
to be room for a bold and successful stroke for Radicalism.
Lord Durham had left the Ministry, by reason, as was
thought, of their not being sufficiently Liberal; he after-
wards accepted from them the task of ascertaining and re-
moving the causes of the Canadian rebellion ; he had shown
a disposition to surround himself at the outset with Radi-
cal advisers; one of his earliest measures, a good measure
both in intention and in effect, having been disapproved and
reversed by the Government at home, he had resigned his
post, and placed himself openly in a position of quarrel with
the Ministers. Here was a possible chief for a Radical party
in the person of a man of importance, who was hated by
the Tories and had just been injured by the Whigs. Any
one who had the most elementary notions of party tactics,
must have attempted to make something of such an oppor-
tunity. Lord Durham was bitterly attacked from all sides,
inveighed against by enemies, given up by timid friends;
while those who would willingly have defended him did not
know what to say. He appeared to be returning a defeated
and discredited man. I had followed the Canadian events
from the beginning; I had been one of the prompters of his
prompters; his policy was almost exactly what mine would
have been, and I was in a position to defend it. I wrote and
published a manifesto in the Review, in which I took the very
highest ground in his behalf, claiming for him not mere
acquittal, but praise and honour. Instantly a number of
other writers took up the tone : I believe there was a portion
of truth in what Lord Durham, soon after, with polite exag-
geration, said to me — that to this article might be ascribed
the almost triumphant reception which he met with on his
arrival in England. I believe it to have been the word in
season, which, at a critical moment, does much to decide the
result; the touch which determines whether a stone, set la
140 JOHN STUART MILL
motion at the top of an eminence, shall roll down on one
side or on the other. All hopes connected with Lord Dur-
ham as a politician soon vanished; but with regard to Cana-
dian, and generally to colonial policy, the cause was gained:
Lord Durham's report, written by Charles BuUer, partly
under the inspiration of Wakefield, began a new era; its
recommendations, extending to complete internal self-gov-
ernment, were in full operation in Canada within two or
three years, and have been since extended to nearly all the
other colonies, of European race, which have any claim to
the character of important communities. And I may say that
in successfully upholding the reputation of Lord Durham
and his advisers at the most important moment, I contributed
materially to this result.
One other case occurred during my conduct of the Review,
which similarly illustrated the effect of taking a prompt in-
itiative. I believe that the early success and reputation of
Carlyle's French Revolution, were considerably accelerated
by what I wrote about it in the Review. Immediately on its
publication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose
rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time to
pre-occupy the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote
and published a review of the book, hailing it as one of
those productions of 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 the impression, which I think was
produced by what I wrote, to any particular merit of execu-
tion: indeed, in at least one of the cases (the article on
Carlyle) I do not think the execution was good. And in
both instances, I am persuaded that anybody, in a position to
be read, who had expressed the same opinion at the same
precise time, and had made any tolerable statement of the
just grounds for it, would have produced the same efifect.
But, after the complete failure of my hopes of putting a
new life into Radical politics by means of the Review, I
am glad to look back on these two instances of success
in an honest attempt to do immediate service to things and
persons that deserv.ed it.
After the last hope of the formation of a Radical party
had disappeared, it was time for me to stop the heavy ex-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 141
pendititre of time and money which the Review cost me. It
had to some extent answered my personal purpose as a
vehicle for my opinions. It had enabled me to express in
print much of my altered mode of thought, and to separate
myself in a marked manner from the narrower Benthamism
of my early writings. This was done by the general 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. In the first of these, while doing full justice to
the merits of Bentham, I pointed out what I thought the
errors and deficiencies of his philosophy. The substance of
this criticism I still think perfectly just ; but I have sometimes
doubted whether it was right to publish it at that time. I
have often felt that Bentham's philosophy, as an instrument
of progress, has been to some extent discredited before it had
done its work, and that to lend a hand towards lowering its
reputation was doing more harm than service to improve-
ment. Now, however, when a counter-reaction appears to
be setting in towards what is good in Benthamism, I can
look with more satisfaction on this criticism of its defects,
especially as I have myself balanced it by vindications of
the fundamental principles of Bentham's philosophy, which
are reprinted along with it in the same collection. In the
essay on Coleridge I attempted to characterize the European
reaction against the negative philosophy of the eighteenth
century: and here, if the effect only of this one paper were
to be considered, I might be thought to have erred by giving
undue prominence to the favourable side, as I had done in the
case of Bentham to the unfavourable. In both cases, the
impetus with which I had detached myself from what was
untenable in the doctrines of Bentham and of the eighteenth
century, may have carried me, though in appearance rather
than in reality, too far on the contrary side. But as far
as relates to the article on Coleridge, my defence is, that I
was writing for Radicals and Liberals, and it was my busi-
ness to dwell most on that, in writers of a different school,
from the knowledge of which, they might derive most im-
provement.
The number of the Review which contained the paper on
142 JOHN STUART MILL
Coleridge, was the last which was published during my pro-
prietorship. In the spring of 1840 I made over the Review
to Mr. Hickson, who had been a frequent and very useful
unpaid contributor under my management: only stipulating
that the change should be marked by a resumption of the
old name, that of Westminster Review. Under that name
Mr, Hickson conducted it for ten years, on the plan of
dividing amxOng contributors only the net proceeds of the
Review, giving his own labour as writer and editor gratui-
tously. Under the difficulty in obtaining writers, which
arose from this low scale of payment, it is highly creditable
to him that he was able to maintain, in some tolerable degree,
the character of the Review as an organ of radicalism and
progress. I did not cease altogether to write for the Re-
view, but continued to send it occasional contributions, not,
however, exclusively; for the greater circulation of the Edin-
burgh Review induced me from this time to offer articles
to it also when I had anything to say for which it appeared
to be a suitable vehicle. And the concluding volumes of
" Democracy in America," having just then come out, I
inaugurated myself as a contributor to the Edinburgh, by
the article on that work, which heads the 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 very small compass ; for I have no further
mental changes to tell of, but only, as I hope, a con-
tinued mental progress; which does not admit of a consecu-
tive history, and the results of which, if real, will be best
found in my writings. I shall, therefore, greatly abridge
the chronicle of my subsequent years.
The first use I made of the leisure which I gained by dis-
connecting myself 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 undone of the original draft of the
Third Book. In working out the logical theory of those
laws of nature which are not laws of Causation, nor corol-
laries from such laws, I was led to recognise kinds as realities
in nature, and not mere distinctions for convenience ; a light
which I had not obtained when the First Book was written,
and which made it necessary for me to modify and enlarge
several chapters of that Book. The Book on Language and
Classification, and the chapter on the Classification of Fal-
lacies, were drafted in the autumn of the same year; the
remainder of the work, in the summer and autumn of 1840.
From April following, to the end of 1841, my spare time was
devoted to a complete re-writing of the book from its com-
mencement. It is in this way that all my books have been
composed. They were always written at least twice over;
a first draft of the entire work was completed to the very
end of the subject, then the whole begun again de novo;
but incorporating, in the second writing, all sentences and
parts of sentences of the old draft, which appeared as suit-
able to my purpose as anything which I could write in lieu
of them. I have found great advantages in this system of
143
144 JOHN STUART MILL
double redaction. It combines,, better than any other mode
of composition, the freshness and vigour of the first con-
ception, with the superior precision and completeness result-
ing from prolonged thought. In my own case, moreover, I
have found that the patience necessary for a careful elabora-
tion of the details of composition and expression, costs much
less effort after the entire subject has been once gone through,
and the substance of all that I find to say has in some man-
ner, however imperfect, been got upon paper. The only
thing which I am careful, in the first draft, to make as per-
fect as I am able, is the arrangement. If that is bad, the
whole thread on which the ideas string themselves becomes
twisted; thoughts placed in a wrong connexion are not ex-
pounded in a manner that suits the right, and a first draft
with this original vice is next to useless as a foundation for
the final treatment.
During the re-writing of the Logic, Dr. Whewell's Phi-
losophy of the Inductive Sciences made its appearance; a cir-
cumstance fortunate for me, as it gave me what I greatly
desired, a full treatment of the subject by an antagonist, and
enabled me to present my ideas with greater clearness and
emphasis as well as fuller and more varied development, in
defending them against definite objections, or confronting
them distinctly with an opposite theory. The controversies
with Dr. Whewell, as well as much matter derived from
Comte, were first introduced 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 to Murray, who kept it until too late for publica-
tion that season, and then refused it, for reasons which
could just as well have been given at first. But I have had
no cause to regret a rejection which led to my offering it
to Mr. Parker, by whom it was published in the spring of
1843. My original expectations of success were extremely
limited. Archbishop Whately had, indeed, rehabilitated the
name of Logic, and the study of the forms, rules, and fal-
lacies of Ratiocination ; and Dr. Whewell's writings had
begun to excite an interest in the other part of my subject,
the theory of Induction. A treatise, however, on a matter
so abstract, could not be expected to be popular; it could
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 145
only be a book for students, and students on such subjects
were not only (at least in England) few, but addicted chiefly
to the opposite school of metaphysics, the ontological and
"innate principles'* school. I therefore did not expect that
the book would have many readers, or approvers ; and looked
for little practical effect from it, save that of keeping the
tradition unbroken of what I thought a better philosophy.
What hopes I had of exciting any immediate attention, were
mainly grounded on the polemical propensities of Dr. Whe-
well; who, I thought, from observation of his conduct in
other cases, would probably do something to bring the book
into notice, by replying, and that promptly, to the attack on
his opinions. He did reply, but not till 1850, just in time for
me to answer him in the third edition. How the book came
to have, for a work of the kind, so much success, and what
sort of persons compose the bulk of those who have bought,
I will not venture to say read, it, I have never thoroughly
understood. But taken in conjunction with the many proofs
which have since been given of a revival of speculation^
speculation too of a free kind, in many quarters, and above
all (where at one time I should have least expected it) in
the Universities, the fact becomes partially intelligible. I
have never indulged the illusion that the book had made any
considerable impression on philosophical opinion. The Ger-
man, or a priori view of human knowledge, and of the
knowing faculties, is likely for some time longer (though
it may be hoped in a diminishing degree) to predominate
among those who occupy themselves with such inquiries,
both here and on the Continent. But the "System of Logic"
supplies what was much wanted, a text-book of the opposite
doctrine — that which derives all knowledge from experience,
and all moral and intellectual qualities principally from the
direction given to the associations. I make as humble an
estimate as anybody of what either an analysis of logical
processes, or any possible canons of evidence, can do by
themselves, towards guiding or rectifying the operations
of the understanding. Combined with other requisites, I
certainly do think them of great use; but whatever may
be the practical value of a true philosophy of these matters,
it is hardly possible to exaggerate the mischiefs of a false
14S JOHN STUART MILL
one. The notion that truths external to the mmd may be
known by intuition or consciousness, independently of ob-
servation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times,
the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad
institutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate
belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not
remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of
justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-
sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such
an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prej-
udices. And the chief strength of this false philosophy in
morals, politiCvS, and religion, lies in the appeal which it is
accustomed to make to the evidence of mathematics and of
the cognate branches of physical science. To expel it from
these, is to drive it from its stronghold: and because this
had never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even
after what my father had written in his Analysis of the
Mind, had in appearance, and as far as published writings
were concerned, on the whole the best of the argument. In
attempting to clear up the real nature of the evidence of
mathematical and physical truths, the " System of Logic "
met the intuitive philosophers on ground on which they had
previously been deemed unassailable; and gave its own ex-
planation, from experience and association, of that pecul-
iar character of what are called necessary truths, which
is adduced as proof that their evidence must come from a
deeper source than experience. Whether this has been done
effectually, is still sub judice; and even then, to deprive a
mode of thought so strongly rooted in human prejudices
and partialities, of its mere speculative support, goes but a
very little way towards overcoming it; but though only a
step, it is a quite indispensable one; for since, after all, prej-
udice can only be successfully combated by philosophy, no
way can really be made against it permanently until it has
been shown not to have philosophy on its side.
Being now released from any active concern in temporary
politics, and from any literary occupation involving personal
communication with contributors 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
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 147
own society to a very few persons. General society, as now
carried on in England, is so insipid an affair, even to the
persons who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any
reason rather than the pleasure it affords. All serious dis-
cussion on matters on which opinions differ, being con-
sidered ill-bred, and the national deficiency in liveliness and
sociability having prevented the cultivation of the art of
talking agreeably on trifles, in which the French of the last
century so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is
called society to those who are not at the top of the tree, is
the hope of being aided to climb a little higher in it; while
to those who are already at the top, it is chiefly a compliance
with custom, and with the supposed requirements of their
station. To a person of any but a very common order in
thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personal ob-
jects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive: and
most people, in the present day, of any really high class of
intellect, make their contact with it so slight, and at such long
intervals, as to be almost considered as retiring from it alto-
gether. Those persons of any mental superiority who do
otherwise, are, almost without exception, greatly deteri-
orated by it. Not to mention loss of time, the tone of their
feelings is lowered: they become less in earnest about those
of their opinions respecting which they must remain silent
in the society they frequent: they come to look upon their
most elevated objects as unpractical, or, at least, too remote
from realization to be more than a vision, or a theory; and
if, more fortunate than most, they retain their higher prin-
ciples unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons and affairs
of their own day they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling
and judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the
company they keep. A person of high intellect should never
go into unintellectual society unless he can enter it as an
apostle; yet he is the only person with high objects who can
safely enter it at all. Persons even of intellectual aspira-
tions had much better, if they can, make their habitual as-
sociates of at least their equals, and, as far as possible, their
superiors, in knowledge, intellect, and elevation of senti-
ment. Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind
made up, on the few cardinal points of human opinion,
148 JOHN STUART MILL
agreement of conviction and feeling on these, has been felt
in all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy
the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. All these
circumstances united, made the number very small of those
whose society, and still more whose intimacy, I now vol-
untarily sought.
Among these, the principal was the incomparable friend
of whom I have already spoken. At this period she lived
mostly with one young daughter, in a quiet part of the
country, and only occasionally in town, with her first hus-
band, Mr. Taylor. I visited her equally in both places; and
was greatly indebted to the strength of character which
enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be
put on the frequency of my visits to her while living gen-
erally apart from Mr. Taylor, and on our occasionally trav-
elling together, though in all other respects our conduct
during those years gave not the slightest ground for any
other supposition than the true one, that our relation to
each other at that time was one of strong affection and con-
fidential intimacy only. For though we did not consider the
ordinances of society binding on a subject so entirely per-
sonal, we did feel bound that our conduct should be such
as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor there-
fore on herself.
In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental
progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my
opinions gained equally in breadth and depth, I understood
more things, and those which I had understood before, I
now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely
turned back from what there had been of excess in my
reaction against Benthamism. I had, at the height of that re-
action, certainly become much more indulgent to the com-
mon opinions of society and the world, and more willing
to be content with seconding the superficial improvement
which had begun to take place in those common opinions,
than became one whose convictions, on so many points,
differed fundamentally from them. I was much more in-
clined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more
decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look
upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 149
in any way to regenerate society. But in addition to this,
our opinions were far viore heretical than mine had been
in the days of my most extreme Benthamism. In those days
I had seen little further than the old school of political
economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement
in social arrangements. Private property, as now under-
stood, and inheritance, appeared to me, a? to them, the
dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to
mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions,
by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion
that it was possible to go further than this in removing the
injustice — for injustice it is, whether admitting of a com-
plete remedy or not — involved in the fact that some are born
to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned
chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, lead-
ing to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the
poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a
democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now
much less democrats than I had been, because so long as
education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we
dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and
brutality of the mass : but our ideal of ultimate improve-
ment went far beyond Democracy, and would class us de-
cidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While
we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of
society over the individual which most Socialistic systems
are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time
when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the
industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall
not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially
to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead
of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the
accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowl-
edged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either
be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert
themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not
to be exclusively 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 the greatest individual liberty
of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of
150 JOHN STUART MILL
the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits
of combined labour. We had not the presumption to sup-
pose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of
institutions these objects could most effectually be attained,
or at how near or how distant a period they would be-
come practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such
social transformation either possible or desirable, an equiva-
lent change of character must take place both in the un-
cultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and
in the immense majority of their employers. Both these
classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for
generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and
not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But
the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and
is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit,
and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common
man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for
his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a
system of culture prolonged through successive generations,
that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the
hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human
nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a
motive in the generality, not because it can never be other-
wise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it
as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend
only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as
only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and
spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear
of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men,
the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sac-
rifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general
character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted,
only because the whole course of existing institutions tends
to foster it; and modern institutions in some respects more
than ancient, since the occasion on which the individual is
called on to do anything for the public without receiving
its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than in the
smaller commonwealths of antiquity. These considerations
did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to
dispense with the inducement of private interest in social
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 151
affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be pro-
vided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social
arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from
Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the
greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by
select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies),
which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but
operate as a most useful education of those who took part
in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives
pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware
of the defects which render them and others incapable of
doing so.
In the " Principles of Political Economy," these opinions
were promulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition,
rather more so in the second, and quite unequivocally in the
third. The difference arose partly from the change of times,
the first edition having been written and sent to press before
the French Revolution of 1848, after which the public mind
became more open to the reception of novelties in opinion,
and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been
thought very startling a short time before. In the first
edition the difficulties of socialism were stated so strongly,
that the tone was on the 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 the Continent, and
to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topics
involved in the controversy: and the result was that most
of what had been written on the subject in the first edition
was cancelled, and replaced by arguments and reflections
which represent a more advanced opinion.
The Political Economy was far more rapidly executed
than the Logic, or indeed than anything of importance
which I had previously written. It was commenced in the
autumn of 1845, ^^^ was ready for the press before the end
of 1847. I^ this period of little more than two years there
was an interval of six months during which the work was
laid aside, while I was writing articles in the Morning
Chronicle (which unexpectedly entered warmly into my
purpose) urging the formation of peasant properties on the
[waste lands of Ireland. This was during the period of the
152 JOHN STUART MILL
Famine, the winter of 1846-47, when the stern necessities
of the time seemed to afford a chance of gaining attention
for what appeared to me the only mode of combining relief
to immediate destitution with permanent improvement of
the social and economical condition of the Irish people.
But the idea was new and strange; there was no English
precedent for such a proceeding : and the profound ignorance
of English politicians and the English public concerning all
social phenomena not generally met with in England (how-
ever common elsewhere,) made my endeavours an entire
failure. Instead of a great operation on the waste lands, and
the conversion of cottiers into proprietors. Parliament passed
a Poor Law for mamtaining them as paupers: and if the
nation has not since found itself in inextricable difficulties
from the joint operation of the old evils and the quack
remedy, it is indebted for its deliverance to that most
' unexpected and surprising fact, the depopulation of Ireland,
commenced by famine, and continued by emigration.
The rapid success of the Political Economy showed that
the public wanted, and were prepared for such a book.
Published early in 1848, an edition of a thousand copies
was sold in less than a year. Another similar edition was
published in the spring of 1849 J ^^^ ^ third, of 1250 copies,
early in 1852. It was, from the first, continually cited and
referred to as an authority, because it was not a book
merely of abstract science, but also of application, and
treated Political Economy not as a thing by itself, but as a
fragment of a greater whole ; a branch of Social Philosophy,
so interlinked with all the other branches, that its con-
clusions, even in its own peculiar province, are only true
conditionally, subject to interference and counteraction from
causes not directly within its scope: while to the character
of a practical guide it has no pretension, apart from other
classes of considerations. Political Economy, in truth, has
never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights
but its own; though people who knew nothing but political
economy (and therefore knew that ill) have taken upon them-
selves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they
had. But the numerous sentimental enemies of political
economy, and its still more numerous interested enemies in
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 15J
sentimental guise, have been very successful in gaining be-
lief for this among other unmerited imputations against
it, and the " Principles " having, in spite of the freedom of
many of its opinions, become for the present the most
popular treatise on the subject, has helped to disarm the
enemies of so important a study. The amount of its worth
as an exposition of the science, and the value of the (}if-
ferent applications which it suggests, others, of course must
judge.
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 un-
known to me), on subjects of pubHc interest, swelled to a
considerable iDulk. During these years I wrote or com-
menced various Essays, for eventual publication, on some of
the fundamental questions of human and social life, with
regard to several of which I have already much exceeded
the severity of the Horatian precept. I continued to watch
with keen interest the progress of public events. But it was
not, on the whole, very encouraging to me. The European
reaction after 1848, and the success of an unprincipled
usurper in December, 1851, put an end, as it seemed, to all
present hope of freedom or social improvement in France
and the Continent. In England, I had seen and continued
to see many of the opinions of my youth obtain general
recognition, and many of the reforms in institutions, for
which I had through life contended, either effected or in
course of being so. But these changes had been attended
with much less benefit to human well-being than I should
formerly have anticipated, because they had produced very
little improvement in that which all amelioration in the
lot of mankind depends on, their intellectual and moral
state: and it might even be questioned if the various causes
ol deterioration which had been at work in the meanwhile,
had not more than counterbalanced the tendencies to im-
provement. I had learnt from experience that many false
opinions may be changed for true ones, without in the
least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions
are the result. The English public, for example, are quite
as raw and undiscerning on subjects of political economy
154 JOHN STUART MILL
since the nation has been converted to free-trade, as they
were before; and are still further from having acquired
better habits of thought or feeling, or being in any way
better fortified against error, on subjects of a more elevated
character. For, though they have thrown off certain errors,
the general discipline of their minds, intellectually and
morally, is not altered. I am now convinced, that no great
improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great
change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their
modes of thought. The old opinions in rehgion, morals,
and politics, are so much discredited in the more intellectual
minds as to have lost the greater part of their efficacy for
good, while they have still life enough in them to be a
powerful obstacle to the growing up of any better opinions
on those subjects. When the philosophic minds of the
world can no longer believe its religion, or can only believe
it with modifications amounting to an essential change of
its character, a transitional period commences, of weak con-
victions, paralysed intellects, and growing laxity of principle,
which cannot terminate until a renovation has been effected
in the basis of their belief leading to the evolution of some
faith, whether religious or merely human, which they can
really believe: and when things are in this state, all think-
ing or writing which does not tend to promote such a
renovation, is of very little value beyond the moment.
Since there was little in the apparent condition of the public
mind, indicative of any tendency in this direction, my view
of the immediate prospects of human improvement was not
sanguine. More recently a spirit of free speculation has
sprung up, giving a more encouraging prospect of the grad-
ual mental emancipation of England; and concurring with
the renewal under better auspices, of the movement for
political freedom in the rest of Europe, has given to the
present condition of human affairs a more hopeful aspect/
Between the time of which I have now spoken, and the
present, took place the most important events of my private
life. The first of these was my marriage, in April, 185 1, to the
lady whose incomparable worth had made her friendship
the greatest source to me both of happiness and of improve-
1 Written about 1861.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 15S
ment during many years in which we never expected to be
in any closer relation to one another. Ardently as I should
have aspired to this complete union of our lives at any time
in the course of my existence at which it had been practi-
cable, I, as much as my wife, would far rather have foregone
that privilege for ever, than have owed it to the premature
death of one for whom I had the sincerest respect, and she
the strongest affection. That event, however, having taken
place in July, 1849, it was granted to me to derive from that
evil my own greatest good, by adding to the partnership of
thought, feeling, and writing which had long existed, a
partnership of our entire existence. For seven and a half
years that blessing was mine ; for seven and a half only ! I
can say nothing which could describe, even in the faintest
manner, what that loss was and is. But because I know
that she would have 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 be derived from thoughts
of her, and communion with her memory.
When two persons have their thoughts and speculations
completely in common; when all subjects of intellectual or
moral interest are discussed between them in daily life, and
probed to much greater depths than are usually or conveni-
ently sounded in writings intended for general readers;
when they set out from the same principles, and arrive at
their conclusions by processes pursued jointly, it is of little
consequence in respect to the question of originality, which
of them holds the pen ; the one who contributes least to the
composition may contribute most to the thought; the writ-
ings which result are the joint product of both, and it must
often be impossible to disentangle their respective parts, and
affirm that this belongs to one and that to the other. In this
wide sense, not only during the years of our married life,
but during many of the years of confidential friendship
which preceded, all my published writings were as much her
work as mine; her share in them constantly increasing as
years advanced. But in certain cases, what belongs to her
can be distinguished, and specially identified. Over and
above the general influence which her mind had over mine,
the most valuable ideas and features in these joint produc-
156 JOHN STUART MILL
tions — those which have been most fruitful of important
results, and have contributed most to the success and repu-
tation of the works themselves — originated with her, were
emanations from her mind, my part in them being no greater
than in any of the thoughts which I found in previous
writers, and made my own only by incorporating them with
my own system of thought. During the greater part of
my literary life I have performed the office in relation to her,
which from a rather early period I had considered as the
most useful part that I was qualified to take in the domain
of thought, that of an interpreter of original thinkers, and
mediator between them and the public; for I had always a
humble opinion of my own powers as an original thinker,
except in abstract science (logic, metaphysics, and the the-
oretic principles of political economy and politics), but
thought myself much superior to most of my contemporaries
in willingness and ability to learn from everybody; as I
found hardly any one who made such a point of examining
what was said in defence of all opinions, however new or
however old, in the conviction that even if they were errors
there might be a substratum of truth underneath them, and
that in any case the discovery of what it was that made them
plausible, would be a benefit to truth. I had, in consequence,
marked this out as a sphere of usefulness in which I was
under a special obligation to make myself active: the more
so, as the acquaintance I had formed with the ideas of the
Coleridgians, of the German thinkers, and of Carlyle, all of
them fiercely opposed to the mode of thought in which I had
been brought up, had convinced me that along with much
error they possessed much truth, which was veiled from
minds otherwise capable of receiving it by the transcenden-
tal and mystical phraseology in which they were accustomed
to shut it up, and from which they neither cared, nor knew
how, to disengage it ; and I did not despair of separating the
truth from the error, and exposing it in terms which would
be intelligible and not repulsive to those on my own side
in philosophy. Thus prepared, it will easily be believed
that when I came into close intellectual communion with a
person of the most eminent faculties, whose genius, as it
grew and unfolded itself in thought, continually struck out
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 157
truths far in advance of me, but in which I could not, as I
had done in those others, detect any mixture of error, the
greatest part of my mental growth consisted in the assimila-
tion of those truths, and the most valuable part of my intel-
lectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the
paths which connected them with my general system of
thought.^
The first of my books in which her share was conspicuous
was the " Principles of PoHtical Economy." The " System
of Logic " owed little to her except in the minuter matters
of composition, in which respect my writings, both great and
small, have largely benefited by her accurate and clear-
sighted criticism.^ The chapter of the Political Economy
^ The steps in my mental growth for which I was indebted to her were
far from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the subject
would probably suspect. It might be supposed, for instance, that my
strong convictions on the complete equality in all legal, political, social
and domestic relations, which ought to exist between men and women,
may have been adopted or learnt from her. This was so far from being
the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest results of the
application of my mind to political subjects, and the strength with which
I held them was. as I believe, more than anything else, the originating
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 an abstract principle,
1 saw no more reason why women should be held in legal subjection to
other people, than why men should. I was certain that their interests
required fully as rnuch protection as those of men, and were quite as
little likely to obtain it without an equal voice in making the laws by
which they were to be bound. But that perception of the vast practical
bearings of women's disabilities which found expression in the book on
the " Subjection of Women " was acquired mainly through her teaching.
But for^ her rare knowledge of human nature and comprehension of moral
and social influences, though I should doubtless have held my present opin-
ions, I should have had a very insufficient perception of the mode in which
the consequences of the inferior position of women intertwine themselves
with all the evils of existing society and with all the difficulties of human
improvement. I am indeed painfully conscious of how much of her best
thoughts on the subject I have failed to reproduce, and how greatly that
little treatise falls short of what would have been if she had put on paper
her entire mind on this question, or had lived to revise and improve, as
she certainly would have done, my imperfect statement of the case.
^ The only person from whom I received any direct assistance in the
preparation of the System of Logic was Mr. Bain, since so justly celebrated
for his philosophical writings. He went carefully through the manuscript
before it was sent to press, and enriched it with a great number of addi-
tional examples and illustrations from science; many of which, as well as
some detached remarks of his own in confirmation of my logical views,
I inserted nearly in his own words.
My obligations to Comte were only to his writings — to the jpart which
had then been published of his " Systeme de Philosophic Positive: " and,
as has been seen from what I have already said in this narrative, the
amount of these obligations is far less than has sometimes been asserted.
The first volume, which contains all the fundamental doctrines of the book,
was substantially complete before I had seen Comte's treatise. I derived
from him many valuable thoughts, conspicuously in the chapter on Hy-
potheses and in the view taken of the logic of Algebra; but it is only in
the concluding Book, on the Logic of the Moral Sciences, that I owe to
158 JOHN STUART MILL
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 pointed out the need of such
a chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the book without
it: she was the cause of my writing it; and the more gen-
eral part of the chapter, the statement and discussion of
the two opposite theories respecting the proper condition of
the labouring classes, was wholly an exposition of her
thoughts, often in words taken from her own lips. The
purely scientific part of the Political Economy I did not
learn from her; but it was chiefly her influence that gave
to the book that general tone by which it is distinguished
from all previous expositions of Political Economy that had
any pretension to being scientific, and which has made it
so useful in conciliating minds which those previous exposi-
tions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in making
the proper distinction between the laws of the Production
of Wealth, which are real laws of nature, dependent on the
properties of objects, and the modes of its Distribution,
which, subject to certain conditions, depend on human will.
The common run of political economists confuse these
together, under the resignation of economic laws, which they
deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human
effort; ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on
the unchangeable conditions of our earthly existence, and
to those which, being but the necessary consequences of
particular social arrangements, are merely co-extensive with
these: given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits,
and rent will be determined by certain causes; but this class
of political economists drop the indispensable presupposition,
and argue that these causes must, by an inherent necessity
against which no human means can avail, determine the
shares which fall, in the division of the produce, to labour-
ers, capitalists, and landlords. The " Principles of Political
Economy '' yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at
the scientific appreciation of the action of these causes,
under the conditions which they presuppose; but it set the
him any radical improvement in my conception of the applicatiort of logical
method. This improvement I have stated and characterized irt a former
part of the present Memoir.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 159
example of not treating those conditions as final. The eco-
nomic generalizations which depend, not on necessities of
nature but on those combined with the existing arrange-
ments of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as
liable to be much altered by the progress of social improve-
ment. I had indeed partially learnt this view of things from
the thoughts awakened in me by the speculations of the St.
Simonians; but it was made a living principle pervading and
animating the book by my wife's promptings. This example
illustrates well the general character of what she contrib-
uted to my writings. What was abstract and purely scientific
was generally mine; the properly human element came from
her: in all that concerned the application of philosophy to
the exigencies of human society and progress, I was her
pupil, alike in boldness of speculation and cautiousness of
practical judgment. For, on the one hand, she was much
more courageous and far-sighted than without her I should
have been, in anticipations of an order of things to come, in
which many of the limited generalizations now so often
confounded with universal principles will cease to be appli-
cable. Those parts of my writings, and especially of the
Political Economy, which contemplate possibilities in the
future such as, when affirmed by socialists, have in general
been fiercely denied by political economists, would, but for
her, either have been absent, or the suggestions would have
been made much more timidly and in a more qualified form.
But while she thus rendered me bolder in speculation on
human affairs, her practical turn of mind, and her almost
unerring estimate of practical obstacles, repressed in me all
tendencies that were really visionary. Her mind invested
all ideas in a concrete shape, and formed to itself a concep-
tion of how they would actually work: and her knowledge
of the existing feelings and conduct of mankind was so sel-
dom at fault, that the weak point in any unworkable sugges-
tion seldom escaped her."^
During the years which intervened between the commence-
ment of my married life and the catastrophe which closed it,
^A few dedicatory lines acknowledging what the book owed to her, were
prefixed to some of the presentation copies of the Political Economy on its
first publication. Her dislike of publicity alone prevented their insertion
in the other copies of the work.
160 JOHN STUART MILL
the principal occurrences of my outward existence (unless
I count as such a first attack of the family disease, and a
consequent journey of more than six months for the recov-
ery of health, in Italy, Sicily, and Greece) had reference to
my position in the India House. In 1856 I was promoted to
the rank of chief of the office in which I had served for
upwards of thirty-three years. The appointment, 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 correspond-
ence with the Indian Governments, except the military,
naval, and financial. I held this office as long as it con-
tinued to exist, being a little more than two years; after
which it pleased Parliament, in other words. Lord Palmer-
ston, to put an end to the East India Company as a branch
of the Government of India under the Crown, and convert
the administration of that country into a thing to be scram-
bled for by the second and third class of English parlia-
mentary politicians. I was the chief manager of the
resistance which the Company made to their own political
extinction, and to the letters and petitions I wrote for them,
and the concluding chapter of my treatise on Representa-
tive Government, I must refer for my opinions on the folly
and mischief of this ill-considered change. Personally I
considered myself a gainer by it, as I had given enough of
my life to India, and was not unwilling to retire on the lib-
eral compensation granted. After the change was consum-
mated. Lord Stanley, the First Secretary of State for India,
made me the honourable offer of a seat in the Council, and
the proposal was subsequently renewed by the Council itself,
on the first occasion of its having to supply a vacancy in
its own body. But the conditions of Indian Government
under the new system made me anticipate nothing but use-
less vexation and waste of effort from any participation in
it: and nothing that has since happened has had any ten-
dency to make me regret my refusal.
During the two years which immediately preceded the
cessation of my official 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 in mounting the steps of
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 161
the Capitol, in January, 1855, that the thought first arose
of converting it into a volume. None of my writings have
been either so carefully composed, or so sedulously cor-
rected 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 criti-
cising every sentence. Its final revision was to have been a
work of the winter of 1858-9, the first after my retire-
ment, which we had arranged to pass in the South of Europe.
That hope and every other were frustrated by the most
unexpected and bitter calamity of her death — at Avignon,
on our way to Montpellier, from a sudden attack of pul-
monary congestion.
Since then I have sought for such alleviation as my state
admitted of, by the mode of life which most enabled me to
feel her still near me. I bought a cottage as close as possi-
ble to the place where she is buried, and there her daughter
(my fellow-sufferer and now my chief comfort) and I,
live constantly during a great portion of the year. My
objects in life are solely those which were hers; my pur-
suits and occupations those in which she shared, or sympa-
thized, and which are indissolubly associated with her. Her
memory is to me a religion, and her approbation the stand-
ard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I en-
deavour to regulate my life.^
After my irreparable loss, one of my earliest cares was to
print and publish the treatise, so much of which was the
work of her whom I had lost, and consecrate it to her mem-
ory. I have made no alteration or addition to it, nor shall I
ever. Though it wants the last touch of her hand, no sub-
stitute for that touch shall ever be attempted by mine.
The " Liberty "' was more directly and literally our joint
production than anything else which bears my name, for
there was not a sentence of it which was not several times
gone through by us together, turned over in many ways,
and carefully weeded of any faults, either in thought or
expression, that we detected in it. It is in consequence of
this that, although it never underwent her final revision, it
^ What precedes was written or revised previous to, or during the year
X86l« What follows was written in 1870.
Vol. 25—6 HO
162 JOHN STUART MILL
far surpasses, as a mere specimen of composition, anything
which has proceeded from me either before or since. With
regard to the thoughts, it is difficult to identify any par-
ticular part or element as being more hers than all the rest
The whole mode of thinking of which the book was the ex-
pression, was emphatically hers. But I also was so thor-
oughly imbued with it, that the same thoughts naturally
occurred to us both. That I was thus penetrated with it,
however, I owe in a great degree to her. There was a
moment in my mental progress when I might easily have
fallen into a tendency towards over-government, both social
and political ; as there was also a moment when, by reaction
from a contrary excess, I might have become a less thor-
ough radical and democrat than I am. In both these points,
as in many others, she benefited me as much by keeping me
right where I was right, as by leading me to new truths,
and ridding me of errors. My great readiness and eager-
ness to learn from everybody, and to make room in my
opinions for every new acquisition by adjusting the old
and the new to one another, might, but for her steadying
influence, have seduced me into modifying my early opinions
too much. She was in nothing more valuable to my mental
development than by her just measure of the relative im-
portance of different considerations, which often protected
me from allowing to truths I had only recently learnt
to see, a more important place in my thoughts than was
properly their due.
r The " Liberty '' is likely to survive longer than anything
else that I have written (with the possible exception of the
"Logic''), because the conjunction of her mind with mine
has rendered it a kind of philosophic text-book of a single
truth, which the changes progressively taking place in mod-
ern society tend to bring out into ever stronger relief: the
importance, to man and society, of a large variety in types
of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature
to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions.
Nothing can better show how deep are the foundations of
this truth, than the great impression made by the exposition
of it at a time which, to superficial observation, did not seem
to stand much in need of such a lesson. The fears we ex-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 163
pressed, lest the inevitable growth of social equality and of
the government of public opinion, should impose on man-
kind an oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and prac-
tice, might easily have appeared chimerical to those who
looked more at present facts than at tendencies; for the
gradual revolution that is taking place in society and insti-
tutions has, thus far, been decidedly favourable to the
development of new opinions, and has procured for them
a much more unprejudiced hearing than they previously
met with. But this is a feature belonging to periods of
transition, when old notions and feelings have been unset-
tled, and no new doctrines have yet succeeded to their ascend-
ancy. At such times people of any mental activity, having
given up their old beliefs, and not feeling quite sure that those
they still retain can stand unmodified, listen eagerly to new
opinions. But this state of things is necessarily transitory:
some particular body of doctrine in time rallies the majority
round it, organizes social institutions and modes of action
conformably to itself, education impresses this new creed
upon the new generations without the mental processes that
have led to it, and by degrees it acquires the very same
power of compression, so long exercised by the creeds of
which it had taken the place. Whether this noxious power
will be exercised, depends on whether mankind have by that
time become aware that it cannot be exercised without stunt •
ing and dwarfing human nature. It is then that the teachings
of the *' Liberty " will have their greatest value. And it is
to be feared that they will retain that value a long time.
As regards originality, it has of course no other than that
which every thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of con-
ceiving and expressing truths which are common property.
The leading thought of the book is one which though in many
ages confined to insulated thinkers, mankind have probably
at no time since the beginning of civilization been entirely
without. To speak only of the last few generations, it is
distinctly contained in the vein of important thought respect-
ing education and culture, spread through the European mind
by the labours and genius of Pestalozzi. The unqualified
championship of it by Wilhelm von Humboldt is referred
to in the book; but he by no means stood alone in his own
164 JOHN STUART MILL
country. During the earlv part of the present century the
doctrine of the rights of individuality, and the claim of the
moral nature to develop itself in its ow^n way, v^as pushed
by a whole school of German authors even to exaggeration;
and the writings of Goethe, the most celebrated of all Ger-
man authors, though not belonging to that or to any other
school, are penetrated throughout by views of morals and
of conduct in life, often in my opinion not defensible,
but which are incessantly seeking whatever defence they
admit of in the theory of the right and duty of self-develop-
ment. In our own country, before the book " On Liberty "
was written, the doctrine of Individuality had been enthusi-
astically asserted, in a style of vigorous declamation some-
times reminding one of Fichte, by Mr. William Maccall,
in a series of writings of which the most elaborate is en-
titled " Elements of Individualism :' and a remarkable
American, Mr. Warren, had formed a System of Society, on
the foundation of the " Sovereignty of the Individual,^' had
obtained a number of followers, and had actually commenced
the formation of a Village Community (whether it now
exists I know not), which, though bearing a superficial re-
semblance to some of the projects of Socialists, is diamet-
rically opposite to them in principle, since it recognises no
authority whatever in Society over the individual, except to
enforce equal freedom of development for all individualities.
As the book which bears my name claimed no originality
for an) of its doctrines, and was not intended to write their
history, the only author who had preceded me in their asser-
tion, of whom I thought it appropriate to say anything, was
Humboldt, who furnished the motto to the work; although
in one passage I borrowed from the Warrenites their phrase,
the sovereignty of the individual. It is hardly necessary
here to remark that there are abundant differences in detail,
between the conception of the doctrine by any of the prede-
cessors I have mentioned, and that set forth in the book.
The political circumstances of the time induced rne,
shortly after, to complete and publish a pamphlet
("Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform"), part of which
had been written some years previously, on the occasion of
one of the abortive Reform Bills, and had at the time been
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 165
approved and revised by her. Its principal features were,
hostility to the Ballot (a change of opinion in both of us,
in which she rather preceded me), and a claim of repre-
sentation for minorities; not, however, at that time going
beyond the cumulative vote proposed by Mr. Garth Mar-
shall. In finishing the pamphlet for publication, with a
view to the discussions on the Reform Bill of Lord Derby's
and Mr. Disraeli's government in 1859, I added a third
feature, a plurality of votes to be given, not to property,
but to proved superiority of education. This recommended
itself to me as a means of reconciling the irresistible claim
of every man or woman to be consulted, and to be allowed
a voice, in the regulation of affairs which vitally concern
them, with the superiority of weight justly due to opinions
grounded on superiority of knowledge. The suggestion,
however, was one which I had never discussed with my
almost infallible counsellor, and I have no evidence that
she would have concurred in it. As far as I have been able
to observe, it has found favour with nobody ; all who desire
any sort of inequality in the electoral vote, desiring it in
favour of property and not of intelligence or knowledge.
If it ever overcomes the strong feeling which exists against
it, this will only be after the establishment of a systematic
National Education by which the various grades of politically
valuable acquirement may be accurately defined and authen-
ticated. Without this it will always remain liable to strong,
possibly conclusive, objections; and with this, it would per-
haps not be needed.
It was soon after the publication of " Thoughts on Parlia-
mentary Reform," that I became acquainted with Mr. Hare's
admirable system of Personal Representation, which, in its
present shape, was then for the first time published. I
saw in this great practical and philosophical idea, the
greatest improvement of which the system of representative
government is susceptible; an improvement which, in the
most felicitous manner, exactly meets and cures the grand,
and what before seemed the inherent, defect of the repre-
sentative system; that of giving to a numerical majority all
power, instead of only a power proportional to its numbers,
and enabling the strongest party to exclude all weaker parties
166 JOHN STUART MILL
from making their opinions heard in the assembly of the
nation, except through such opportunity as may be given to
them by the accidentally unequal distribution of opinions
in different localities. To these great evils nothing more
than very imperfect palliations had seemed possible ; but Mr.
Harems system affords a radical cure. This great discovery,
for it is no less, in the political art, inspired me, as I believe
it has inspired all thoughtful persons who have adopted it,
with new and more sanguine hopes respecting the prospects
of human society; by freeing the form of political institu-
tions towards which the whole civilized world is manifestly
and irresistibly tending, from the chief part of what seemed
to qualify, or render doubtful, its ultimate benefits. Minori-
ties, so long as they remain minorities, are, and ought to be,
outvoted; but under arrangements which enable any assem-
blage of voters, amounting to a certain number, to place in
the legislature a representative of its own choice, minorities
cannot be suppressed. Independent opinions will force their
way into the council of the nation and make themselves
heard there, a thing which often cannot happen in the ex-
isting forms of representative democracy; and the legisla-
ture, instead of being weeded of individual peculiarities and
entirely made up of men who simply represent the creed of
great political or religious parties, will comprise a large
proportion of the most eminent individual minds in the coun-
try, placed there, without reference to party, by voters who
appreciate their individual eminence. I can understand that
persons, otherwise intelligent, should, for want of sufficient
examination, be repelled from Mr, Hare's plan by what they
think the complex nature of its machinery. But any one
who does not feel the want which the scheme is intended to
supply; any one who throws it over as a mere theoretical
subtlety or crotchet, tending to no valuable purpose, and un-
worthy of the attention of practical men, may be pronounced
an incompetent statesman, unequal to the politics of the
future. I mean, unless he is a minister or aspires to be-
come one: for we are quite accustomed to a minister con-
tinuing to profess unqualified hostility to an improvement
almost to the very day when his conscience, or his interest,
induces him to take it up as a public measure, and carry it.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 167
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 wrote an article in Fraser's Magazine
(reprinted in my miscellaneous writings) principally for
that purpose, though I included in it, along with Mr. Hare's
book, a review of two other productions on the question
of 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 Parliamentary reform; the other an
able and vigorous, though partially erroneous work by Mr.
Lorimer.
In the course of the same summer I fulfilled a duty par-
ticularly incumbent upon me, that of helping (by an article
in the Edinburgh Review) to make known Mr. Bain's pro-
found treatise on the Mind, just then completed by the pub-
lication of its second volume. And I carried through the
press a selection of my minor writings, forming the first two
volumes of " Dissertations and Discussions." The selection
had been made during my wife's lifetime, but the revision,
in concert with her, with a view to republication, had been
barely commenced; and when I had no longer the guidance
of her judgment I despaired of pursuing it further, and re-
published the papers as they were, with the exception of
striking out such passages as were no longer in accord-
ance with my opinions. My literary work of the year was
terminated with an essay in Fraser's Magazine, (afterwards
republished in the third volume of " Dissertations and Dis-
cussions,") entitled "A Few Words on Non-intervention."
I was prompted to write this paper by a desire, while vindi-
cating England from the imputations commonly brought
against her on the Continent, of a peculiar selfishness in mat-
ters of foreign policy, to warn Englishmen of the colour
given to this imputation by the low tone in which English
statesmen are accustomed to speak of English policy as con-
cerned only with English interests, and by the conduct of
Lord Palmerston at that particular time in opposing the Suez
Canal : and I took the opportunity of expressing ideas which
had long been in my mind (some of them generated by my
Indian experience, and others by the international questions
which then greatly occupied the European public), respect-
168 JOHN STUART MILL
ing the true principles of international morality, and the
legitimate modifications made in it by difference of times and
circumstances; a subject I had already, to some extent, dis-
cussed in the vindication of the French Provisional Govern-
ment of 1848 against the attacks of Lord Brougham and
others, which I published at the time in the Westminster Re-
view, and which is reprinted in the " Dissertations."
I had now settled, as I believed, for the remainder of my
existence into a purely literary life: if that can be called
literary which continued to be occupied in a pre-eminent
degree with politics, and not merely with theoretical, but
practical politics, although a great part of the year was spent
at a distance of many hundred miles from the chief seat of
the politics of my own country, to which, and primarily for
which, I wrote. But, in truth, the modern facilities of com-
munication have not only removed all the disadvantages, to
a political writer in tolerably easy circumstances, of distance
from the scene of political action, but have converted them
into advantages. The immediate and regular receipt of
newspapers and periodicals keeps him an courant of even
the most temporary politics, and gives him a much more cor-
rect view of the state and progress of 'opinion than he could
acquire by personal contact with individuals : for every one's
social intercourse is more or less limited to particular sets
or classes, whose impressions and no others reach him
through that channel; and experience has taught me that
those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is
called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaint-
ance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant
of the general state either of the public mind, or of the
active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads
the newspapers need be. There are, no doubt, disadvantages
in too long a separation from one's country — in not occasion-
ally renewing one's impressions of the light in which men
and things appear when seen from a position in the midst
of them; but the deliberate judgment formed at a distance,
and undisturbed by inequalities of perspective, is the most
to be depended on, even for application to practice. Alter-
nating between the two positions, I combined the advantages
of both. And, though the inspirer of my best thoughts was
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 169
no longer with me, I was not alone : she had left a daughter
my step-daughter, * * hj * *
***** whose ever growing and
ripening talents from that day to this have been devoted
to the same great purposes * * * :ic
*^^ •^ ^u ^u ^f ^^ «i«
^* >^ ^^ ^^ ^* ^^ ^^
Surely no one ever before was so fortunate, as, after such
a loss as mine, to draw another prize in the lottery of life.
* * * Whoever, either now or hereafter,
may think of me and of the work I have done, must never
forget that it is the product not of one intellect and con-
science, but of three *****
********
*P 3^ 3|C 9|C 3|C 9|C ^C ^^
The work of the years i860 and 1861 consisted chiefly of
two treatises, only one of which was intended for immediate
publication. This was the " Considerations on Representa-
tive Government ; ^' a connected exposition of what, by the
thoughts of many years, I had come to regard as the best
form of a popular constitution. Along with as much of the
general theory of government as is necessary to support
this particular portion of its practice, the volume contains
my matured views of the principal questions which occjupy
the present age, within the province of purely organic insti-
tutions, and raises, by anticipation, some other questions to
which growing necessities will sooner or later compel the
attention both of theoretical and of practical politicians. The
chief of these last, is the distinction between the function of
making laws, for which a numerous popular assembly is
radically unfit, and that of getting good laws made, which is
its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled by any
other authority: and the consequent need of a Legislative
Commission, as a permanent part of the constitution of a
free country; consisting of a small number of highly trained
political minds, on whom, when Parliament has determined
that a law shall be made, the task of making it should be
devolved: Parliament retaining the power of passing or re-
jecting the bill when drawn up, but not of altering it other-
170 JOHN STUART MILL
wise than by sending proposed amendments to be dealt with
by the Commission. The question here raised respecting the
most important of all public functions, that of legislation, is
a particular case of the great problem of modern political
organization, stated, I believe, for the first time in its full
extent by Bentham, though in my opinion not always satis-
factorily resolved by him; the combination of complete
popular control over public affairs, with the greatest attaina-
ble perfection of skilled agency.
The other treatise written at this time is the one which
was published some years later^ under the title of " The
Subjection of Women.'' It was written * *
***** that there might, in
any event, be in existence a written exposition of my opin-
ions on that great question, as full and conclusive as I could
make it. The intention was to keep this among other unpub-
lished papers, improving it from time to time if I was able,
and to publish it at the time when it should seem likely
to be most useful. As ultimately published * *
in what was of my own composition, all that is most striking
and profound belongs to my wife; coming from the fund of
thought which had been made common to us both, by our
innumerable conversations and discussions on a topic which
filled so large a place in our minds.
Soon after this time I took from their repository a portion
of the unpublished papers which I had written during the
last years of our married life, and shaped them, with some
additional matter, into the little work entitled *' Utilitari-
anism ; " which was first published, in three parts, in suc-
cessive numbers of Fraser's Magazine, and afterwards re-
printed in a volume.
Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become
extremely critical, by the commencement of the American
civil war. My strongest feelings were engaged in this
struggle, which, I felt from the beginning, was destined to
be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human
affairs for an indefinite duration. Having been a deeply in-
terested observer of the slavery quarrel in America, during
*In 1869.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 171
the many years that preceded the open breach, I knew that
it was in all its stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-
owners to extend the territory of slavery; under the com-
bined influences of pecuniary interest, domineering temper,
and the fanaticism of a class for its class privileges, influ-
ences so fully and powerfully depicted in the admirable work
of my friend Professor Cairnes, " The Slave Power." Their
success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers
of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress
and damp the spirits of its friends all over the civilized
world, while it would create a formidable military power,
grounded on the worst and most anti-social form of the
tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time
the prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to
all the privileged classes of Europe a false confidence, proba-
bly only to be extinguished in blood. On the other hand, if
the spirit of the North was sufficiently roused to carry the
war to a successful termination, and if that termination did
not come too soon and too easily, I foresaw, from the laws
of human nature, and the experience of revolutions, that
when it did come it would in all probability be thorough:
that the bulk of the Northern population, whose conscience
had as yet been awakened only to the point of resisting the
further extension of slavery, but whose fidelity to the Con-
stitution of the United States made them disapprove of any
attempt by the Federal Government to interfere with slavery
in the States where it already existed, would acquire feelings
of another kind when the Constitution had been shaken off
by armed rebellion, would determine to have done for ever
with the accursed thing, and would join their banner with
that of the noble body of Abolitionists, of whom Garrison
was the courageous and single-minded apostle, Wendell
Phillips the eloquent orator, and John Brown the voluntary
martyr.^ 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 to foreigners for the most
flagrant of all possible violations of the free principles of
their Constitution; while the tendency of a fixed state of
^ The saying of this true hero, after his capture, that he was worth moi
for hanging than for any other purpose, reminds one, by its combination
of wit, wisdom, and self-devotion, of Sir Thomas More.
172 JOHN STUART MILL
society to stereotype a set of national opinions would be at
least temporarily checked, and the national mind would be-
come more open to the recognition of whatever was bad in
either the institutions or the customs of the people. These
hopes, so far as related to slavery, have been completely, and
in other respects are in course of being progressively realized.
Foreseeing from the first this double set of consequences
from the success or failure of the rebellion, it may be im-
agined with what feelings I contemplated the rush of nearly
the whole upper and middle classes of my own country, even
those who passed for Liberals, into a furious pro-Southern
partisanship: the working classes, and some of the literary
and scientific men, being almost the sole exceptions to the
general frenzy. I never before felt so keenly how little per-
manent improvement had reached the minds of our influential
classes, and of what small value were the Liberal opinions
they had got into the habit of professing. None of the Con-
tinental Liberals committed the same frightful mistake. But
the generation which had extorted negro emancipation from
our West India planters had passed away; another had suc-
ceeded which had not learnt by many years of discussion and
exposure to feel strongly the enormities of slavery; and the
inattention habitual with Englishmen to whatever is going on
in the world outside their own island, made them profoundly
ignorant of all the antecedents of the struggle, insomuch that
it was not generally believed in England, for the first year or
two of the war, that the quarrel was one of slavery. There
were men of high principle and unquestionable liberality of
opinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or assimilated
it to the cases in which they were accustomed to sympathize,
of a people struggling for independence.
It was my obvious duty to be one of the small minority
who protested against this perverted state of public opinion.
I was not the first to protest. It ought to be remembered to
the honour of Mr. Hughes and of Mr. Ludlow, that they,
by writings published at the very beginning of the struggle,
began the protestation. Mr. Bright followed in one of the
most powerful of his speeches, followed by others not less
striking. I was on the point of adding my word to theirs,
when there occurred, towards the end of 1861, the seizure
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 173
of the Southern envoys on board a British vessel, by an
officer of the United States. Even English forgetfuhiess has
not yet had time to lose all remembrance of the explosion of
feeling in England which then burst forth, the expectation,
which prevailed for some weeks, of war with the United
States, and the warlike preparations actually commenced on
this side. While this state of things lasted, there was no
chance of a hearing for anything favourable to the American
cause; and, moreover, I agreed with those who thought the
act unjustifiable, and such as to require that England should
demand its disavowal. When the disavowal came, and the
alArm of war was over, I wrote, in January, 1862, the paper,
in Eraser's Magazine, entitled " The Contest in America."
***** Written and published
when it was, this paper helped to encourage those Liberals
who had felt overborne by the tide of illiberal opinion, and to
form in favour of the good cause a nucleus of opinion which
increased gradually, and, after the success of the North
began to seem probable, rapidly. When we returned from
our journey I wrote a second article, a review of Professor
Cairnes' book, published in the Westminster Review. Eng-
land is paying the penalty, in many uncomfortable ways, of
the durable resentment which her ruling classes stirred up
in the United States by their ostentatious wishes for the ruin
of America as a nation : they have reason to be thankful that
a few, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing
firmly by the Americans in the time of their greatest diffi-
culty, effected a partial diversion of these bitter feelings, and
made Great Britain not altogether odious to the Americans.
This duty having been performed, my principal occupation
for the next two years was on subjects not political. The
publication of Mr. Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence after
his decease, gave me an opportunity of paying a deserved
tribute to his memory, and at the same time expressing some
thoughts on a subject on which, in my old days of Bentham-
ism, I had bestowed much study. But the chief product of
those years was the Examination of Sir William Hamilton's
Philosophy. His Lectures, published in i860 and 1861, I had
read towards the end of the latter year, with a half-formed
intention of giving an account of them in a Review, but I
174 JOHN STUART MILL
soon found that this would be idle, and that justice could
not be done to the subject in less than a volume. I had then
to consider whether it would be advisable that I myself
should attempt such a performance. On consideration, there
seemed to be strong reasons for doing so. I was greatly
disappointed with the Lectures. I read them, certainly, with
no prejudice against Sir William Hamilton. I had up to that
time deferred the study of his Notes to Reid on account of
their unfinished state, but I had not neglected his " Dis-
cussions in Philosophy ; '" and though I knew that his general
mode of treating the facts of mental philosophy differed
from that of which I most approved, yet his vigorous polemic
against the later Transcendentalists, and his strenuous asser-
tion of some important principles, especially the Relativity
of human knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with
his opinions, and made me think that genuine psychology had
considerably more to gain than to lose by his authority and
reputation. His Lectures and the Dissertations on Reid dis-
pelled this illusion: and even the Discussions, read by the
light which these throw on them, lose much of their value.
I found that the points of apparent agreement between his
opinions and mine were more verbal than real; that the im-
portant philosophical principles which I had thought he
recognized, were so explained away by him as to mean little
or nothing, or were continually lost sight of, and doctrines
entirely inconsistent with them were taught in nearly every
part of his philosophical writings. My estimation of him was
therefore so far altered, that instead of regarding him as
occupying a kind of intermediate position between the two
rival philosophies, holding some of the principles of both, and
supplying to both powerful weapons of attack and defence, I
now looked upon him as one of the pillars, and in this coun-
try from his high philosophical reputation the chief pillar, of
that one of the two which seemed to me to be erroneous.
Now, the difference between these two schools of philoso-
phy, that of Intuition, and that of Experience and Associa-
tion, is not a mere matter of abstract speculation ; it is full
of practical consequences, and lies at the foundation of all
the greatest differences of practical opinion in an age of
progress. The practical reformer has continually to demand
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 175
that changes be made in things which are supported by pow-
erful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent
necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is
often an indispensable part of his argument to show, how
those powerful feelings had their origin, and how those
facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is
therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy
which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral
facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat
them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy
which is addicted to holding up favourite doctrines as in-
tuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature
and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of
our reason.
In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing ten-
dency to regard all the marked distinctions of human char-
acter as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore
the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those
differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes,
are such as not only might but naturally would be pro-
duced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hin-
drances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and
one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.
This tendency has its source in the intuitional metaphysics
which characterized the reaction of the nineteenth century
against the eighteenth, and it is a tendency so agreeable to
human indolence, as well as to conservative interests gener-
ally, that unless attacked at the very root, it is sure to be
carried to even a greater length than is really justified by
the more moderate forms of the intuitional philosophy. That
philosophy, not always in its moderate forms, had ruled the
thought of Europe for the greater part of a century. My
father's Analysis of the Mind, my own Logic, and Professor
Bain's great treatise, had attempted to re-introduce a better
mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite as much success
as could be expected; but I had for some time felt that the
mere contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that
there ought to be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that
controversial as well as expository writings were needed, and
that the time Vv^as come when such controversy would be use-
176 JOHN STUART MILL
ful. Considering then the writings and fame of Sir W.
HamiUon as the great fortress of the intuitional philosophy
*in this country, a fortress the more formidable from the
imposing character, and the in many respects great personal
merits and mental endowments, of the man, I thought it
might be a real service to philosophy to attempt a thorough
examination of all his most important doctrines, and an
estimate of his general claims to eminence as a philosopher,
and I was confirmed in this resolution by observing that in
the writings of at least one, and him one of the ablest, of Sir
W. Hamilton's followers, his peculiar doctrines were made
the justification of a view of religion which I hold to be pro-
foundly immoral — that it is our duty to bow down in worship
before a Being whose natural attributes are affirmed to be
unknowable by us, and to be perhaps extremely different
from those which, when we are speaking of our fellow crea-
tures, we call by the same names.
As I advanced in my task, the damage to Sir W. Hamil-
ton's reputation became greater than I at first expected,
through the almost incredible multitude of inconsistencies
which showed themselves on comparing different passages
with one another. It was my business, however, to show
things exactly as they were, and I did not flinch from it. I
endeavoured always to treat the philosopher whom I criti-
cised with the most scrupulous fairness; and I knew that
he had abundance of disciples and admirers to correct me
if I ever unintentionally did him injustice. Many of them
accordingly have answered me, more or less elaborately ; and
they have pointed out oversights and misunderstandings,
though few in number, and mostly very unimportant in sub-
stance. Such of those as had (to my knowledge) been
pointed out before the publication of the latest edition (at
present the third) have been corrected there, and the re-
mainder of the criticisms have been, as far as seemed neces-
sary, replied to. On the whole, the book has done its work :
it has shown the weak side of Sir William Hamilton, and
has reduced his too great philosophical reputation within
more moderate bounds; and by some of its discussions, as
well as by two expository chapters, on the notions of Matter
and of Mind, it has perhaps thrown additional light on some
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 177
of the disputed questions in the domain of psychology and
metaphysics.
After the completion of the book on Hamilton, I applied
myself to a task which a variety of reasons seemed to render
specially incumbent upon me ; that of giving an account, and
forming an estimate, of the doctrines of Auguste Comte. I
had contributed more than any one else to make his specula-
tions known in England, and, in consequence chiefly of
what I had said of him in my Logic, he had readers and
admirers among thoughtful men on this side of the Channel
at a time when his name had not yet in France emerged
from obscurity. So unknown and unappreciated was he at
the time when my Logic was written and published, that to
criticise his weak points might well appear superfluous, while
it was a duty to give as much publicity as one could to the im-
portant contributions he had made to philosophic thought.
At the time, however, at which I have now arrived, this state
of affairs had entirely changed. His name, at least, was
known almost universally, and the general character of his
doctrines very widely. He had taken his place in the estima-
tion both of friends and opponents, as one of the conspicuous
figures in the thought of the age. The better parts of his
speculations had made great progress in working their way
into those minds, which, by their previous culture and ten-
dencies, were fitted to receive them: under cover of those
better parts those of a worse character, greatly developed
and added to in his later writings, had also made some way,
having obtained active and enthusiastic adherents, some of
them of no inconsiderable personal merit, in England, France,
and other countries. These causes not only made it desirable
that some one should undertake the task of sifting what is
good from what is bad in M. Comte's speculations, but
seemed to impose on myself in particular a special obligation
to make the attempt. This I accordingly did in two essays,
published in successive numbers of the Westminster Review,
and reprinted in a small volume under the title ** Auguste
Comte and Positivism."
The writings which I have now mentioned, together with
a small number of papers in periodicals which I have not
deemed worth preserving, were the whole of the products of
178 JOHN STUART MILL
my activity as a writer during the years from 1859 ^^ 1865,
In the early part of the last-mentioned year, in compliance
with a wish frequently expressed to me by working men, I
published cheap People's Editions of those of my writings
which seemed the most likely to find readers among the
working classes: viz.. Principles of Political Economy, Lib-
erty, and Representative Government. This was a consid-
erable sacrifice of my pecuniary interest, especially as I
resigned all idea of deriving profit from the cheap editions,
and after ascertaining from my publishers the lowest price
which they thought would remunerate them on the usual
terms of an equal division of profits, I gave up my half
share to enable the price to be fixed still lower. To the
credit of Messrs. Longman they fixed, unasked, a certain
number of years after which the copyright and stereotype
plates were to revert to me, and a certain number of copies
after the sale of which I should receive half of any further
profit. This number of copies (which in the case of the
Political Economy was 10,000) has for some time been ex-
ceeded, and the People's Editions have begun to yield me
a small but unexpected pecuniary return, though very far
from an equivalent for the diminution of profit from the
Library Editions.
In this summary of my outward life I have now arrived
at the period at which my tranquil and retired existence as
a writer of books was to be exchanged for the less congenial
occupation of a member of the House of Commons. The
proposal made to me early in 1865, by some electors of West-
minster, did not present the idea to me for the first time.
It was not even the first offer I had received, for, more than
ten years previous, 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 Par-
liament for an Irish county, which they could easily have
done: but the incompatibility of a seat in Parliament with
the office I then held in the India House, precluded even
consideration 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 any practical shape. I was con-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 179
vinced that no numerous or influential portion of any elec-
toral body, really wished to be represented by a person of
my opinions ; and that one who possessed no local connexion
or popularity, and who did not choose to stand as the mere
organ of a party, had small chance of being elected any-
where unless through the expenditure of money. Now it
was, and is, my fixed conviction, that a candidate ought not
to incur one farthing of expense for undertaking a public
duty. Such of the lawful expenses of an election as have no
special reference to any particular candidate, ought to be
borne as a public charge, either by the State or by the lo-
cality. What has to be done by the supporters of each can-
didate in order to bring his claims properly before the con-
stituency, should be done by unpaid agency, or by voluntary
subscription. If members of the electoral body, or others,
are willing to subscribe money of their own for the purpose
of bringing, by lawful means, into Parliament some one
who they think would be useful there, no one is entitled to
object: but that the expense, or any part of it, should fall
on the candidate, is fundamentally wrong; because it
amounts in reality to buying his seat. Even on the most
favourable supposition as to the mode in which the money
is expended, there is a legitimate suspicion that any one who
gives money for leave to undertake a public trust, has other
than public ends to promote by it; and (a consideration of
the greatest importance) the cost of elections, when borne
by the candidates, deprives the nation of the services, as
members of Parliament, of all who cannot or will not afford
to incur a heavy expense. I do not say that, so long as
there is scarcely a chance for an independent candidate to
come into Parliament without complying with this vicious
practice, it must always be morally wrong in him to spend
money, provided that no part of it is either directly or in-
directly employed in corruption. But, to justify it, he ought
to be very certain that he can be of more use to his country
as a member of Parliament than in any other mode which
is open to him; and this assurance, in my own case, I did
not feel. It was by no means clear to me that I could do
more to advance the public objects which had a claim on my
exertions, from the benches of the House of Commons, than
180 JOHN STUART MILL
from the simple position of a writer. I felt, therefore, that
I ought not to seek election to Parliament, much less to ex-
pend any money in procuring it.
But the conditions of the question were considerably al-
tered when a body of electors sought me out, and sponta-
neously offered to bring me forward as their candidate. If
it should appear, on explanation, that they persisted in this
wish, knowing my opinions, and accepting the only conditions
on which I could conscientiously serve, it was questionable
whether this was not one of those calls upon a member of
the community by his fellow-citizens, which he was scarcely
justified in rejecting. I therefore put their disposition to
the proof by one of the frankest explanations ever tendered,
I should think, to an electoral body by a candidate. 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
I thought a candidate ought neither to canvass nor to incur
any expense, and that I could not consent to do either. I said
further, that if elected, I could not undertake to give any
of my time and labour to their local interests. With respect
to general politics, I told them without reserve, what I
thought on a number of important subjects on which they
had asked my opinion; and one of these being the suffrage,
I made known to them, among other things, my conviction
(as I was bound to do, since I intended, if elected, to act
on it), that women were entitled to representation in Par-
liament on the same terms with men. It was the first time,
doubtless, that such a doctrine had ever been mentioned to
English electors; and the fact that I was elected after pro-
posing it, gave the start to the movement which has since be-
come so vigorous, in favour of women's suffrage. Nothing,
at the time, appeared more unlikely than that a candidate
(if candidate I could be called) whose professions and
conduct set so completely at defiance all ordinary notions
of electioneering, should nevertheless be elected. A well-
known literary man was heard to say that the Almighty
himself would have no chance of being elected on such a
programme. I strictly adhered to it, neither spending money
nor canvassing, nor did I take any personal part in the elec-
tion, until about a week preceding the day of nomination.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 181
when I attended a few public meetings to state my principles
and give answers to any questions which the electors might
exercise their just right of putting to me for their own
guidance; answers as plain and unreserved as my address.
On one subject only, my religious opinions, I announced from
the beginning that I would answer no questions; a deter-
mination which appeared to be completely approved by those
who attended the meetings. My frankness on all other sub-
jects on which I was interrogated, evidently did me far more
good than my answers, whatever they might be, did harm.
Among the proofs I received of this, one is too remarkable
not to be recorded. In the pamphlet, " Thoughts on Parlia-
mentary Reform,'' I had said, rather bluntly, that the work-
ing classes, though differing from those of some other coun-
tries, in being ashamed of lying, are yet generally liars.
This passage some opponent got printed in a placard, which
was handed to me at a meeting, chiefly composed of the
[working classes, and I was asked whether I had written and
published it. I at once answered " I did." Scarcely were
these two words out of my mouth, when vehement applause
resounded through the whole meeting. It was evident that
the working people were so accustomed to expect equivoca-
tion and evasion from those who sought their suffrages, that
when they found, instead of that, a direct avowal of what
was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead of being af-
fronted, they concluded at once that this was a person whom they
could trust. A more striking instance never came under my
notice of what, I believe, is the experience of those who
best know the working classes, that the most essential of all
recommendations to their favour is that of complete straight-
forwardness; its presence outweighs in their minds very
strong objections, while no amount of other qualities will
m?ke amends for its apparent absence. The first working
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 of their faults; they wanted friends, not flat-
terers, and felt under obligation to any one who told them
anything in themselves which he sincerely believed to require
amendment. And to this the meeting heartily responded.
Had I been defeated in the election, I should still have had
182 JOHN STUART MILL
no reason to regret the contact it had brought me into with
large bodies of my countrymen; which not only gave me
much new experience, but enabled me to scatter my political
opinions more widely, and, by making me known in many
quarters where I had never before been heard of, increased
the number of my readers, and the presumable influence of
my writings. These latter 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 to Parliament by a ma-
jority of some hundreds over my Conservative competitor.
I was a member of the House during the three sessions
of the Parliament which passed the Reform Bill; during
which time Parliament was necessarily my main occupation
except during the recess. I was a tolerably frequent
speaker, sometimes of prepared speeches, sometimes extem-
poraneously. But my choice of occasions was not such as I
should have made if my leading object had been Parlia-
mentary influence. When I had gained the ear of the
House, which I did by a successful speech on Mr. Glad-
stone's Reform Bill, the idea I proceeded on was that when
anything was likely to be as well done, or sufficiently
well done, by other people, there was no necessity for me
to meddle with it. As I, therefore, in general reserved my-
self for work which no others were likely to do, a great
proportion of my appearances were on points on which the
bulk of the Liberal party, even the advanced portion of it,
either were of a different opinion from mine, or were com-
paratively indifferent. Several of my speeches, especially
one against the motion for the abolition of capital punish-
ment, and another in favour of resuming the right of seiz-
ing enemies' goods in neutral vessels, were opposed to what
then was, and probably still is, regarded as the advanced
Liberal opinion. My advocacy of women's suffrage and of
Personal Representation, were at the time looked upon by
many as whims of my own; but the great progress since
made by those opinions, and especially the response made
from almost all parts of the kingdom to the demand for
women's suffrage, fully justified the timeliness of those
movements, and have made what was undertaken as a moral
and social duty, a personal success. Another duty which
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 183
was particularly incumbent on me as one of the metro-
politan members, was the attempt to obtain a Municipal
Government for the Metropolis: but on that subject the in-
difference of the House of Commons was such that I found
hardly any help or support within its walls. On this sub-
ject, however, I was the organ of an active and intelligent
body of persons outside, with whom, and not with me, the
scheme originated, and who carried on all the agitation on
the subject and drew up the Bills. My part was to bring in
Bills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them
during the short time they were allowed to remain before
the House; after having taken 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, to take evi-
dence on the subject. The very different position in which
the question now stands (1870) may justly be attributed
to the preparation which went on during those years, and
which produced but little visible effect at the time; but all
questions on which there are strong private interests on one
side, and only the public good on the other, have a similar
period of incubation to go through.
The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament
was to do work which others were not able or not willing to
do, made me think it my duty to come to the front in de-
fence of advanced Liberalism on occasions when the obloquy
to be encountered was such as most of the advanced Liberals
in the House, preferred not to incur. My first vote in the
House was in support of an amendment in favour of Ireland,
moved by an Irish member, and for which only five English
and Scotch votes were given, including my own: the other
four were Mr. Bright, Mr. MTaren, Mr. T. B. Potter, and
Mr. Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered^ was on
the Bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in
Ireland. In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode
of governing Ireland, I did no more than the general opinion
of England now admits to have been just; but the anger
1 The first was in answer to Mr. Lowe's reply to Mr. Bright on the Cattle
Plague Bill, and was thought at the time to have helped to get rid of a
provision in the Government measure which would have given to landholders
a second indemnity, after they had already been once indemnified for the loss
of some of their cattle by the increased selling price of the remainder.
184 JOHN STUART MILL
against Fenianism was then in all its freshness; any attack
on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as an apology
for them; and I was so unfavourably received by the House,
that more than one of my friends advised me (and my own
judgment agreed with the advice) to wait, before speaking
again, for the favourable opportunity that would be given
by the first great debate on the Reform Bill. During this
silence, many flattered themselves that I had turned out 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. My position in the
House was further improved by a speech in which I insisted
on the duty of paying off the National Debt before our coal
supplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some of
the Tory leaders who had quoted against me certain passages
of my writings, and called me to account for others, espe-
cially for one in my ^'Considerations on Representative
Government," which said that the Conservative party was,
by the law of its composition, the stupidest party. They
gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which
up to that time had not excited any notice, but the sobriquet
of "the stupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time
afterwards. Having now no longer any apprehension of not
being listened to, I confined myself, as I have since thought
too much, to occasions on which my services seemed spe-
cially needed, and abstained more than enough from speak-
ing on the great party questions. With the exception of
Irish questions, and those which concerned the working
classes, a single speech on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill was
nearly all that I contributed to 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 on the two classes of subjects just mentioned.
With regard to the working classes, the chief topic of my
speech on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill was the assertion
of their claims to the suffrage. A little later, after the
resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry and the succession
of a Tory Government, came the attempt of the working
classes to hold a meeting in Hyde Park, their exclusion by
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 185
the police, and the breaking down of the park railing by the
crowd. Though Mr. Beales and the leaders of the working
men had retired under protest when this took place, a scuffle
ensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by
the police, and the exasperation of the working men was
extreme. They showed a determination to make another
attempt at a meeting in the Park, to which many of them
would probably have come armed; the Government made
military preparations to resist the attempt, and something
very serious seemed impending. At this crisis I really be-
lieve that I was the means of preventing much mischief.
I had in my place in Parliament taken the side of the work-
ing men, and strongly censured the conduct of the Govern-
ment. I was invited, with several other Radical members,
to a conference with the leading members of the Council
of the Reform League; and the task fell chiefly upon my-
self, of persuading them^ to give up the Hyde Park project,
and hold their meeting elsewhere. It was not Mr. Beales and
Colonel Dickson who needed persuading; on the contrary, it
was evident that these gentlemen had already exerted their
influence in the same direction, thus far without success.
It was the working men who held out, and so bent were they
on their original scheme, that I was obliged to have recourse
to les grands moyens. I told them that a proceeding which
would certainly produce a collision with the military, could
only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of af-
fairs had become such that a revolution was desirable, and
if they thought themselves able to accomplish one. To this
argument, after considerable discussion, they at last yielded :
and I was able to inform Mr. Walpole that their intention
was given up. I shall never forget the depth of his relief
or the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. After the
working men had conceded so much to me, I felt bound to
comply with their request that I would attend and speak
at their meeting at the Agricultural Hall; the only meeting
called by the Reform League which I ever attended. I had
always declined being a member of the League, on the
avowed ground that I did not agree in its programme of
manhood suffrage and the ballot : from the ballot I dissented
entirely; and I could not consent to hoist the flag of man-
186 JOHN STUART MILL
hood suffrage, even on the assurance that the exclusion of
women was not intended to be impHed; since if one goes
beyond what can be immediately carried, and professes to
take one's stand on a principle, one should go the whole
length of the principle. I have entered thus particularly
into this matter because my conduct on this occasion gave
great displeasure to the Tory and Tory-Liberal press, who
have charged me ever since with having shown myself, in
the trials of public life, intemperate and passionate. I do
not know what they expected from me; but they had reason
to be thankful to 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 particular juncture, by any one else.
No other person, I believe, had at that moment 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 prevent public meetings in the Parks, I not only
spoke strongly in opposition to it, but formed one of a num-
ber of advanced Liberals, who, aided by the very late period
of the session, succeeded in defeating the Bill by what is
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 of the foremost in the deputation of members of
Parliament who prevailed on Lord Derby to spare the life
of the condemned Fenian insurgent. General Burke. The
Church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders
of the party, in the session of 1868, as to require no more
from me than an emphatic adhesion : but the land question
was by no means in so advanced a position : the supersti-
tions of landlordism had up to that time been little chal-
lenged, especially in Parliament, and the backv/ard state of
the question, so far as concerned the Parliamentary mind,
was evidenced by the extremely -mild measure brought in
by Lord Russell's Government in 1866, which nevertheless
could not be carried. On that Bill I delivered one of my
most careful speeches, in which I attempted to lay down
some of the principles of the subject, in a manner calcu-
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 187
lated less to stimulate friends, than to conciliate and con-
vince opponents. The engrossing subject of Parliamentary
Reform prevented either this Bill, or one of a similar char-
acter brought in by Lord Derby's Government, from being
carried through. They never got beyond the second read-
ing. Meanwhile the signs of Irish disaffection had become
much more decided; the demand for complete separation
between the two countries had assumed a menacing aspect,
and there were few who did not feel that if there was
still any chance of reconciling Ireland to the British con-
nexion, it could only be by the adoption of much more
thorough reforms in the territorial and social relations
of the country, than had yet been contemplated. The time
seemed to me to have come when it would be useful to
speak out my whole mind; and the result was my pamphlet
" England and Ireland,'' which was written in the winter of
1867, and published shortly before the commencement of the
session of 1868. The leading features of the pamphlet were,
on the one hand, an argument to show the undesirableness,
for Ireland as well as for England, of separation between the
countries, and on the other, a proposal for settling the land
question by giving to the existing tenants a permanent
tenure, at a fixed rent, to be assessed after due inquiry by
the State.
The pamphlet was not popular, except in Ireland, as I
did not expect it to be. But, if no measure short of that
which I proposed would do full justice to Ireland, or afford
a prospect of conciliating the mass of the Irish people, the
duty of proposing it was imperative; while if, on the other
hand, there was any intermediate course which had a claim
to a trial, I well knew that to propose something which
would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but
to facilitate a more moderate experiment. It is most improb-
able that a measure conceding so much to the tenantry as
Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill, would have been proposed
by a Government, or could have been carried through Par-
liament, unless the British public had been led to perceive
that a case might be made, and perhaps a party formed, for
a measure considerably stronger. It is the character of the
British people, or at least of the higher and middle classes
188 JOHN STUART MILL
who pass muster for the British people, that to induce them
to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should
look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal
extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal
going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme
views may discharge itself. So it proved in the present in-
stance; my proposal was condemned, but any scheme for
Irish Land reform, short of mine, came to be thought mod-
erate by comparison. I may observe that the attacks made
on my plan usually gave a very incorrect idea of its nature.
It was usually discussed as a proposal that the State should
buy up the land and become the universal landlord; though
in fact it only offered to each individual landlord this as an
alternative, if he liked better to sell his estate than to retain
it on the new conditions; and I fully anticipated that most
landlords would continue to prefer the position of land-
owners to that of Government annuitants, and would re-
tain their existing relation to their tenants, often on more
indulgent terms than the full rents on which the compensa-
tion to be given them by Government would have been
based. This and many other explanations I gave in a
speech on Ireland, in the debate on Mr. Maguire's resolu-
tion, early in the session of 1868. A corrected report 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 to perform, both in and out of Parliament,
during these years. A disturbance in Jamaica, provoked in
the first instance by injustice, and exaggerated by rage and
panic into a premeditated rebellion, had been the motive or
excuse for taking hundreds of innocent lives by military
violence, or by sentence of what were called courts-martial,
continuing for weeks after the brief disturbance had been
put down ; with many added atrocities of destruction of prop-
erty, flogging women as well as men, and a general display
of the brutal recklessness which usually prevails when fire
and sword are let loose. The perpetrators of those deeds
were defended and applauded in England by the same kind
of people who had so long upheld negro slavery: and it
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 189
seemed at first as if the British nation was about to incur
the disgrace of letting pass without even a protest, excesses
of authority as revolting as any of those for which, when
perpetrated by the instruments of other Governments, En-
glishmen can hardly find terms sufficient to express their
abhorrence. After a short time, however, an indignant
feeling was roused: a voluntary Association formed itself
under the name of the Jamaica Committee, to take such
deliberation and action as the case might admit of, and
adhesions poured in from all parts of the country. I was
abroad at the time, but I sent in my name to the Committee
as soon as I heard of it, and took an active part in the
proceedings from the time of my return. There v/as much
more at stake than only justice to the Negroes, imperative
as was that consideration. The question was, whether the
British dependencies, and eventually, perhaps. Great Britain
itself, were to be under the government of law, or of mili-
tary license; whether the lives and persons of British subjects
are at the mercy of any two or three officers however raw
and inexperienced or reckless and brutal, whom a panic-
stricken Governor, or other functionary, may assume the
right to constitute into a so-called court-martial. This
question could only be decided by an appeal to the tribu-
nals; and such an appeal the Committee determined to
make. Their determination led to a change in the chair-
manship of the Committee, as the chairman, Mr. Charles
Buxton, thought it not unjust indeed, but inexpedient, to
prosecute Governor Eyre and his principal subordinates in
a criminal court ; but a numerously attended general meeting
of the Association having decided this point against him,
Mr. Buxton withdrew from the Committee, though con-
tinuing to work in the cause, and I was, quite unexpectedly
on my own part, proposed and elected chairman. It became,
in consequence, my duty to represent the Committee in
the House of Commons, sometimes by putting questions
to the Government, sometimes as the recipient of ques-
tions, more or less provocative, addressed by individual
members to myself; but especially as speaker in the impor-
tant debate originated in the session of 1866 by Mr. Buxton:
and the speech I then delivered is that which I should
190 JOHN STUART MILL
probably select as the best of my speeches in Parliament.^
For more than two years we carried on the combat, try-
ing every avenue legally open to us, to the Courts of Crim-
inal Justice. A bench of magistrates in one of the most
Tory counties in England dismissed our case: we were
more successful before the magistrates at Bow Street;
which gave an opportunity to the Lord Chief Justice of the
Queen's Bench, Sir Alexander Cockburn, for delivering
his celebrated charge, which settled the law of the question
in favour of liberty, as far as it is in the power of a judge's
charge to settle it. There, howxver, our success ended, for
the Old Bailey Grand Jury by throwing out our Bill pre-
vented the case from coming to trial. It was clear that to
bring English functionaries to the bar of a criminal court
for abuses of power committed against negroes and mulat-
toes was not a popular proceeding with the English middle
classes. We had, however, redeemed, so far as lay in us,
the character of our country, by showing that there was at
any rate a body of persons determined to use all the means
which the law afforded to obtain justice for the injured. We
had elicited from the highest criminal judge in the nation
an authoritative declaration that the law was what we main-
tained it to be; and we had given an emphatic warning 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 in order to avoid it. Colonial gov-
ernors and other persons in authority, will have a consider-
able motive to stop short of such extremities in future.
As a matter of curiosity, I kept some specimens of the
abusive letters, almost *all of them anonymous, which I
received while these proceedings were going on. They are
evidence of the sympathy felt with the brutalities in Ja-
maica by the brutal part of the population at home. They
graduated from coarse jokes, verbal and pictorial, up to
threats of assassination.
1 Among the most active members of the Committee were Mr. P. A.
Taylor, M.P., always faithful and energetic in every assertion of the
principles of liberty; Mr. Goldwin Smith, Mr. Frederick Harrison, Mr.
vSlack, Mr. Chamerovzow, Mr. Shaen, and Mr. Chesson, the Honorary-
Secretary of the Association.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 191
Among other matters of importance in which I took an
active part, but which excited little interest in the public,
two deserve particular mention. I joined with several other
independent Liberals in defeating an Extradition Bill intro-
duced at the very end of the session of 1866, and by which,
though surrender avowedly for political offences was not
authorized, political refugees, if charged by a foreign Gov-
ernment with acts which are necessarily incident to all at-
tempts at insurrection, would have been surrendered to be
dealt with by the criminal courts of the Government against
which they had rebelled: thus making the British Govern-
ment an accomplice in the vengeance of foreign despotisms.
The defeat of this proposal led to the appointment of a
Select Committee (in which I was included), to examine
and report on the whole subject of Extradition Treaties;
and the result was, that in the Extradition Act which passed
through Parliament after I had ceased to be a member,
opportunity, is given to any one whose extradition is de-
manded, of being heard before an English court of justice
to prove that the offence with which he is charged, is really
political. The cause of European freedom has thus been
saved from a serious misfortune, and our own country from
a great iniquity. The other subject to be mentioned is the
fight kept up by a body of advanced Liberals in the session
of 1868, on the Bribery Bill of Mr. Disraeli's Government,
in which I took a very active part. I had taken counsel with
several of those who had applied their minds most care-
fully to the details of the subject — Mr. W. D. Christie,
Serjeant Pulling, Mr. Chadwick — as well as bestowed much
thought of my own, for the purpose of framing such amend-
ments and additional clauses as might make the Bill really
effective against the numerous modes of corruption, direct
and indirect, which might otherwise, as there was much
reason to fear, be increased instead of diminished by the
Reform Act. We also aimed at engrafting on the Bill,
measures for diminishing the mischievous burden of what
are called the legitimate expenses of elections. Among our
many amendments, was that of Mr. Fawcett for making the
returning officer's expenses a charge on the rates, instead of
on the candidates ; another was the prohibition of paid can-
192 JOHN STUART MILL
vassers, and the limitation of paid agents to one for each
candidate; a third was the extension of the precautions and
penalties against bribery, to municipal elections, which are
well known to be not only a preparatory school for bribery
at Parliamentary elections, but an habitual cover for it.
The Conservative Government, however, when once they
had carried the leading provision of their Bill (for which I
voted and spoke), the transfer of the jurisdiction in elec-
tions from the House of Commons to the Judges, made a
determined resistance to all other improvements; and after
one of the most important proposals, that of Mr. Fawcett,
had actually obtained a majority, they summoned the strength
of their party and threw out the clause in a subsequent
stage. The Liberal party in the House was greatly dis-
honoured by the conduct of many of its members in giving
no help whatever to this attempt to secure the necessary
conditions of an honest representation of the people. With
their large majority in the House they could have carried
all the amendments, or better ones if they had better to
propose. But it was late in the session; members were
eager to set about their preparations for the impending Gen-
eral Election: and while some (such as Sir Robert An-
struther), honourably remained at their post, though rival
candidates were already canvassing their constituency, a
much greater number placed their electioneering interests
before their public duty. Many Liberals also looked with
indifference on legislation against bribery, thinking that
it merely diverted public interest from the Ballot, which they
considered, very mistakenly as I expect it will turn out,
to be a sufficient, and the only, remedy. From these causes
our fight, though kept up with great vigour for several
nights, was wholly unsuccessful, and the practices which we
sought to render more difficult, prevailed more widely
than ever in the first General Election held under the new
electoral law.
In the general debates on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, my
participation was limited to the one speech already men-
tioned; but I made the Bill an occasion for bringing the
two greatest improvements which remain to be made in
Representative Government, formally before the House
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 193
and the nation. One of them was Personal, or, as it is
called with equal propriety, Proportional Representation. I
brought this under the consideration of the House, by an
expository and argumentative speech on Mr. Hare's plan;
and subsequently I was active in support of the very imper-
fect substitute for that plan, which, in a small number of
constituencies. Parliament was induced to adopt. This poor
makeshift had scarcely any recommendation, except that it
was a partial recognition of the evil which it did so little
to remedy. As such, however, it was attacked by the same
fallacies, and required to be defended on the same principles,
as a really good measure; and its adoption in a few Parlia-
mentary elections, as well as the subsequent introduction of
what is called thti Cumulative Vote in the elections for the
London School Board, have had the good effect of converting
the equal claim of all electors to a proportional share in the
representation, from a subject of merely speculative dis-
cussion, into a question of practical politics, much sooner
than would otherwise have been the case.
This assertion of my opinions on Personal Representation
cannot be credited with any considerable or visible amount
of practical result. It was otherwise with the other motion
which I made in the form of an amendment to the Reform
Bill, and which was by far the most important, perhaps the
only really important, public service I performed in the
capacity of a member of Parliament; a motion to strike out
the words which were understood to limit the electoral fran-
chise to males, and thereby to admit to the suffrage all
women who, as householders or otherwise, possessed the
qualification required of male electors. For women not to
make their claim to the suffrage, at the time when the elective
franchise was being largely extended, would have been to'
abjure the claim altogether; and a movement on the subject
was begun in 1866, when I presented a petition for the
suffrage, signed by a considerable number of distinguished
women. But it was as yet uncertain whether the proposal
would obtain more than a few stray votes in the House :
and when, after a debate in which the speakers on the con-
trary side were conspicuous by their feebleness, the votes
recorded in favour of the motion amounted to 73 — made up
Vol. 25—7 HC
194 JOHN STUART MILL
by pairs and tellers to above 80— the surprise was general
and the encouragement great: the greater, too, because one
oi those who voted for the motion was Mr. Bright, a fact
which could only be attributed to the impression made on
him by the debate, as he had previously made no secret of
his non-concurrence in the proposal *****
I believe I have mentioned all that is worth remembering
of my proceedings in the House. But their enumeration,
even if complete, would give but an inadequate idea of my
occupations during that period, and especially of the time
taken up by correspondence. For many years before my
election to Parliament, I had been continually receiving let-
ters from strangers, mostly addressed to me as a writer on
philosophy, and either propounding difficulties or communi-
cating thoughts on subjects connected with logic or polit-
ical economy. In common, I suppose, with all who are known
as political economists, I was a recipient of all the shallow
theories and absurd proposals by which people are perpetu-
ally endeavouring to show the way to universal wealth and
happiness by some artful reorganization of the currency.
When there were signs of sufficient intelligence in the
writers to make it worth while attempting to put them right,
I took the trouble to point out their errors, until the growth
of my correspondence made it necessary to dismiss such
persons with very brief answers. Many, however, of the
communications I received were more worthy of attention
than these, and in some, over-sights of detail were pointed
out in my writings, which I was thus enabled to correct. Cor-
respondence of this sort naturally multiplied with the mul-
tiplication of the subjects on which I wrote, especially those
of a metaphysical character. But when I became a member
of Parliament, I began to receive letters on private griev-
ances and on every imaginable subject that related to any
kind of public affairs, however remote from my knowledge
or pursuits. It was not my constituents in Westminster who
laid this burden on me: they kept with remarkable
fidelity to the understanding on which I had consented to
serve. I received, indeed, now and then an application from
some ingenuous youth to procure for him a small Govern-
ment appointment; but these were few, and how simple and
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 195
Ignorant the writers were, was shown by the fact that the
applications came in about equally whichever party was in
power. My invariable answer was, that it was contrary to
the principles on which I was elected to ask favours of any
Government. But, on the whole, hardly any part of the
country gave me less trouble than my own constituents. The
general mass of correspondence, however, swelled into an
oppressive burden. * * * * h^ *
:»: He * * * * * **
********
While I remained in Parliament my work as an author was
unavoidably limited to the recess. During that time I wrote
(besides the pamphlet on Ireland, already mentioned), the
Essay on Plato, published in the Edinburgh Review, and
reprinted in the third volume of *' Dissertations and Discus-
sions;" and the address which, conformably to custom, I
delivered to the University of St. Andrew's, whose students
had done me the honour of electing me to the office of Rector.
In this discourse I gave expression to many thoughts and
opinions which had been accumulating in me through life,
respecting the various studies which belong to a liberal
education, their uses and influences, and the mode in which
they should be pursued to render their influences most ben-
eficial The position taken up, vindicating the high educa-
tional value alike of the old classic and the new scientific
studies, on even stronger grounds than are urged by most of
their advocates, and insisting that it is only the stupid in-
efficiency of the usual teaching which makes those studies
be regarded as competitors instead of allies, was, I think,
calculated, not only to aid and stimulate the improvement
which has happily commenced in the national institutions
for higher education, but to diffuse juster ideas than we
often find, even in highly educated men, on the conditions
of the highest mental cultivation.
During this period also I commenced (and completed soon
after I had left Parliament) tb^. performance of a duty to
philosophy and to the memory of my father, by preparing
and publishing an edition of the *' Analysis of the Phenomena
of the Human Mind,'' with notes bringing up the doctrines
196 JOHN STUART MILL
of that admirable book to the latest improvements in science
and in speculation. This was a joint undertaking: the
psychological notes being furnished in about equal propor-
tions by Mr. Bain and myself, while Mr. Grote supplied
some valuable contributions on points in the history of
philosophy incidently raised, and Dr. Andrew Findlater
supplied the deficiencies in the book which had been occa-
sioned by the imperfect philological knowledge of the time
when it was written. Having been originally published at
a time when the current of metaphysical speculation ran
in a quite opposite direction to the psychology of Experience
and Association, the "Analysis " had not obtained the amount
of immediate success which it deserved, though it had made
a deep impression on many individual minds, and had largely
contributed, through those minds, to create that more favour-
able atmosphere for the Association Psychology of which
we now have the benefit. Admirably adapted for a class-
book of the Experience Metaphysics, it only required to be
enriched, and in some cases corrected, by the results of more
recent labours in the same school of thought, to stand, as it
now does, in company with Mr. Bain's treatise, at the head
of the systematic works on Analytic Psychology.
In the Autumn of 1868 the Parliament which passed the
Reform Act was dissolved, and at the new election for West-
minster I was thrown out ; not to my surprise, nor, I believe,
to that of my principal supporters, though in the few days
preceding the election they had become more sanguine than
before. That I should not have beeia elected at all would
not have required any explanation; what excites curiosity
is that I should have been elected the first time, or, having
been elected then, should have been defeated afterwards.
But the efforts made to defeat me were far greater on the
second occasion than on the first. For one thing, the Tory
Government was now struggling for existence, and success
in any contest was of more importance to them. Then,
too, all persons of Tory feelings were far more embittered
against me individually than on the previous occasion ; many
who had at first been either favourable or indifferent, were
vehemently opposed to my re-election. As I had shown in
my political writings that I was aware of the weak points
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 197
in democratic opinions, some Conservatives, it seems, had
not been without hopes of finding me an opponent of de-
mocracy: as I was able to see the Conservative side of the
question, they presumed that, like them, I could 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
appeared to me well grounded in the arguments against
democracy, I unhesitatingly decided in its favour, while
recommending that it should be accompanied by such insti-
tutions as were consistent with its principle and calculated
to ward off its inconveniences: one of the chief of these
remedies being Proportional Representation, on which
scarcely any of the Conservatives gave me any support.
Some Tory expectations appear to have been founded on
the approbation I had expressed of plural voting, under
certain conditions: and it has been surmised that the sug-
gestion of this sort made in one of the resolutions which
Mr. Disraeli introduced into the House preparatory to his
Reform Bill (a suggestion which meeting with no favour
he did not press), may have been occasioned by what I
had written on the point: but if so, it was forgotten that I
had made it an express condition that the privilege of a
plurality of votes should be annexed to education, not to
property, and even so, had approved of it only on the sup-
position of universal suffrage. How utterly inadmissible
such plural voting would be under the suffrage given by the
present Reform Act, is proved, to any who could other-
wise doubt it, by the very small weight which the working
classes are found to possess in elections, even under the
law which gives no more votes to any one elector than to
any other.
While I thus was far more obnoxious to the Tory interest,
and to many Conservative Liberals than I had formerly
been, the course I pursued in Parliament had by no means
been such as to make Liberals generally at all enthusiastic
in my support. It has already been mentioned, how large a
proportion of my prominent appearances had been on ques-
tions on which I differed from most of the Liberal party, or
about which they cared little, and how few occasions there
had been on which the line I took was such as could lead
198 JOHN STUART MILL
them to attach any great value to me as an organ of their
opinions. I had moreover done things which had excited,
in many minds, a personal prejudice against me. Many
were offended by what they called the persecution of Mr.
Eyre: and still greater offence was taken at my sending a
subscription to the election expenses of Mr. Bradlaugh.
Having refused to be at any expense for my own election,
and having had all its expenses defrayed by others, I felt
under a peculiar obligation to subscribe in my turn where
funds were deficient for candidates whose election was de-
sirable, I accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly all the
working class candidates, and among others to Mr. Brad-
laugh. He had the support of the working classes; having
heard him speak, I knew him to be a man of ability, and he
had proved that he was the reverse of a demagogue, by
placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailing opinion
of the democratic party on two such important subjects as
Malthusianism and Personal Representation. Men of this
sort, who, while sharing the democratic feelings of the
working classes, judged political questions for themselves,
and had courage to assert their individual convictions against
popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me, in Par-
liament, and I did not think that Mr. Bradlaugh's anti-
religious opinions (even though he had been intemperate in
the expression of them) ought to exclude him. In sub-
scribing, however, to his election, I did what would have
been highly imprudent if I had been at liberty to consider
only the interests of my own re-election; and, as might be
expected, the utmost possible use, both fair and unfair, was
made of this act of mine to stir up the electors of Westmin-
ster against me. To these various causes, combined with an
unscrupulous use of the usual pecuniary and other influ-
ences on the side of my Tory competitor, while none were
used on my side, it is to be ascribed that I failed at my
second election after having succeeded at the first. No
sooner was the result of the election known than I received
three or four invitations to become a candidate for other
constituencies, chiefly counties; but even if success could
have been expected, and this without expense, I was not dis-
posed to deny myself the relief of returning to private life.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 199
I had no cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the
electors; and if I had, the feeling would have been far out-
weighed by the numerous expressions of regret which I re-
ceived from all sorts of persons and places, and in a most
marked degree from those members of the Liberal party in
Parliament, with whom I had been accustomed to act.
Since that time little has occurred which there is need to
commemorate in this place. I returned to my old pursuits
and to the enjoyment of a country life in the south of
Europe, alternating twice a year with a residence of some
few weeks or months in the neighbourhood of London. I
have written various articles in periodicals (chiefly in my
friend Mr. Morley's Fortnightly Review), have made a small
number of speeches on public occasions, have published the
" Subjection of Women," written some years before, with
some additions * * * * * * *
* * * and have commenced the preparation of
matter for future books, of which it will be time to speak
more particularly if I live to finish them. Here therefore,
for the present, this memoir may close*
ON LIBERTY
BY
JOHN STUART MILL
ON LIBERTY
CHAPTER I
Introductory
THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty
of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the. mis-
named doctrine of Philosophical Necessity ; but Civil,
or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which
can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual
A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in gen-
eral terms, but which profoundly influences the practical
controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely
soon to make itself recognized as the vital question of the
future. It is so far from being new, that, in a certain sense,
it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages, but
in the stage of progress into which the more civilized por-
tions of the species have now entered, it presents itself
under new conditions, and requires a different and more fun-
damental treatment.
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most
conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which
we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome,
and Englando But in old times this contest was between
subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the government.
By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the
political rulers. The rulers were conceived (except in some
of the popular governments of Greece) as in a necessarily
antagonistic position to the people whom they ruled. They
consisted of a governing One, or a governing tribe or caste,
who derived their authority from inheritance or conquest;
who, at all events, did not hold it at the pleasure of the gov-
erned, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps
did not desircj to contest, whatever precautions might be
203
204 JOHN STUART MILL
taken against its oppressive exercise. Their power was re-
garded as necessary, but also as highly dangerous; as a
weapon which they would attempt to use against their sub-
jects, no less than against external enemies. To prevent
the weaker members of the community from being preyed
upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there
should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commis-
sioned to keep them down. But as the king of the vultures
would be no less bent upon preying upon the flock than any
of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a per-
petual attitude of defence against his beak and claws. The
aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power
which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the
community; and this limitation was what they meant by
liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining
a recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties
or rights, v/hich it was to be regarded as a breach of duty
in the ruler to infringe, and which, if he did infringe, specific
resistance, or general rebellion, was held to be justifiable. A
second, and generally a later expedient, was the establish-
ment of constitutional checks; by which the consent of the
community, or of a body of some sort supposed to represent
its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the
more important acts of the governing power. To the first
of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most
European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit.
It was not so with the second; and to attain this, or when
already in some degree possessed, to attain it more com-
pletely, became everywhere the principal object of the lovers
of liberty. And so long as mankind were content to combat
one enemy by another, and to be ruled by a master, on con-
dition of being guaranteed more or less efficaciously against
his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations beyond this
point.
A time, however, came in the progress of human affairs,
when men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their
governors should be an independent power, opposed in in-
terest to themselves. It appeared to them much better that
the various magistrates of the State should be their tenants
or delegates, revocable at their pleasure. In that way alone.
ON LIBERTY 205
it seemed, could they have complete security that the powers
of government would never be abused to their disadvan-
tage. By degrees, this new demand for elective and tem-
porary rulers became the prominent object of the exertions
of the popular party, wherever any such party existed; and
superseded, to a considerable extent, the previous efforts to
limit the power of rulers. As the struggle proceeded for
making the ruling power emanate from the periodical choice
of the ruled, some persons began to think that too much im-
portance had been attached to the limitation of the power
itself. That (it might seem) was a resource against rulers
whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the peo-
ple. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be
identified with the people; that their interest and will should
be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not
need to be protected against its own will. There was no
fear of its tyrannizing over itself. Let the rulers be ef-
fectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and it
could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself
dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation's
own power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for ex-
ercise. This mode of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling,
was common among the last generation of European liberal-
ism, in the Continental section of which, it still apparently
predominates. Those who admit any limit to what a gov-
ernment may do, except in the case of such governments
as they think ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant ex-
ceptions among the political thinkers of the Continent. A
similar tone of sentiment might by this time have been
prevalent in our own country, if the circumstances which
for a time encouraged it had continued unaltered.
But, in political and philosophical theories, as well as in
persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure
might have concealed from observation. The notion, that
the people have no need to limit their power over themselves,
might seem axiomatic, when popular government was a thing
only dreamed about, or read of as having existed at some
distant period of the past. Neither was that notion neces-
sarily disturbed by such temporary aberrations as those of
the French Revolution, the worst of which were the work
206 JOHN STUABT MILL
of an usurping few, and which, in any case, belonged, not
to the permanent working of popular institutions, but to a
sudden and convulsive outbreak against monarchical and
aristocratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic
republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth's sur-
face, and made itself felt as one of the most powerful mem-
bers of the community of nations; and elective and respon-
sible government became subject to the observations and
criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It was
now perceived that such phrases as " self-government," and
" the power of the people over themselves," do not express
the true state of the case. The "' people " who exercise the
power, are not always the same people with those over whom
it is exercised, and the " self-government " spoken of, is not
the government of each by himself, but of each by all the
rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means,
the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the
people; the majority, or those who succeed in making them-
selves accepted as the majority: the people, consequently,
may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precau-
tions are as much needed against this, as against any other
abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of
government over individuals, loses none of its importance
when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the
community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This view
of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence
of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes
in European society to whose real or supposed interests de-
mocracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself;
and in political speculations " the tyranny of the majority "
is now generally included among the evils against which
society requires to be on its guard.
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at
first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operat-
ing through the acts of the public authorities. But reflect-
ing persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant
— society collectively, over the separate individuals who
compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the
acts which it may do by the hands of its political function-
aries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and
ON LIBERTY 207
if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any man-
dates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it
practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds
of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by
such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, pen-
etrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslav-
ing the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny
of the magistrate is not enough ; there needs protection also
against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling;
against the tendency of society to impose, by other means
than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of
conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the de-
velopment, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any in-
dividuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all
characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its
own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of col-
lective opinion with individual independence; and to find
that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as in-
dispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protec-
tion against political despotism.
But though this proposition is not likely to be contested
in general terms, the practical question, where to place the
limit — how to make the fitting adjustment between individ-
ual independence and social control — is a subject on which
nearly everything remains to be done. All that makes exist-
ence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of
restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of
conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first
place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit sub-
jects for the operation of law. What these rules should be,
is the principal question in human affairs; but if we except
a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which
least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages,
and scarcely any two countries, have decided it alike; and
the decision of one age or country is a wonder to another.
Yet the people of any given age and country no more sus-
pect any difficulty in it, than if it were a subject on which
mankind had always been agreed. The rules which obtain
among themselves appear to them self-evident and self-
justifying. This all but universal illusion is one of the
208 JOHN STUART MILL
examples of the magical influence of custom, which is not only,
as the proverb says a second nature, but is continually mis-
taken for the first. The effect of custom, in preventing zny
misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind
impose on one another, is all the more complete because the
subject is one on which it is not generally considered neces-
sary that reasons should be given, either by one person to
others, or by each to himself. People are accustomed to believe
and have been encouraged in the belief by some who aspire
to the character of philosophers, that their feelings, on sub-
jects of this nature, are better than reasons, and render
reasons unnecessary. The practical principle which guides
them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct,
is the feeling in each person's mind that everybody should
be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes,
would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to
himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but
an opinion on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons,
can only count as one person's preference ; and if the reasons,
when given, are a m.ere appeal to a similar preference felt
by other people, it is still only many people's liking instead
of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own preference,
thus supported, is not only a perfectly satisfactory reason,
but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of
morality, taste, or propriety, which are not expressly written
in his religious creed; and his chief guide in the inter-
pretation even of that. Men's opinions, accordingly, on what
is laudable or blamable, are affected by all the multifari-
ous causes which influence their wishes in regard to the
conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those
which determine their wishes on any other subject. Some-
times their reason — at other times their prejudices or super-
stitions: often their social affections, not seldom their anti-
social ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or con-
temptuousness : but most commonly, their desires or fears
for themselves — their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest.
Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of
the morality of the country emanates from its class interests,
and its feelings of class superiority. The morality between
Spartans and Helots, between planters and negroes, between
ON LIBERTY 209
princes and subjects, between nobles and roturiers, between
men and women, has been for the most part the creation of
these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments thus
generated, react in turn upon the moral feeHngs of the mem-
bers bf the ascendant class, in their relations among them-
selves. Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly as-
cendant, has lost its ascendency, or where its ascendency is
unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear
the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority. Another
grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both
in act and forbearance which have been enforced by law or
opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the sup-
posed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters,
or of their gods. This servility though essentially selfish, is
not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments
of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics.
Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious
interests of society have of course had a share, and a large
one, in the direction of the moral sentiments: less, however,
as a matter of reason, and on their own account, than as a
consequence of the sympathies and antipathies which grew
out of them: and sympathies and antipathies which had
little or nothing to do with the interests of society, have
made themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with
quite as great force.
The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful
portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically
determined the rules laid down for general observance, un-
der the penalties of law or opinion. And in general, those
who have been in advance of society in thought and feeling,
have left this condition of things unassailed in principle,
however they may have come into conflict with it in some of
its details. They have occupied themselves rather in inquiring
what things society ought to like or dislike, than in question-
ing whether its likings or dislikings should be a law to in-
dividuals. They preferred endeavouring to alter the feelings
of mankind on the particular points on which they were
themselves heretical, rather than make common cause in
defence of freedom, with heretics generally. The only case
in which the higher ground has been taken on principle and
210 JOHN STUART MILL
maintained with consistency, by any but an individual hei«
and there, is that of religious belief: a case instructive in
many ways, and not least so as forming a most striking in-
stance of the fallibility of what is called the moral sense:
for the odium theologicum, in a sincere bigot, is one of the
most unequivocal cases of moral feeling. Those who first
broke the yoke of what called itself the Universal Church,
were in general as little willing to permit difference of relig-
ious opinion as that church itself. But when the heat of
the conflict was over, without giving a complete victory to
any party, and each church or sect was reduced to limit its
hopes to retaining possession of the ground it already oc-
cupied; minorities, seeing that they had no chance of be-
coming majorities, were under the necessity of pleading to
those whom they could not convert, for permission to
differ. It is accordingly on this battle-field, almost solely,
that the rights of the individual against society have been as-
serted on broad grounds of principle, and the claim of
society to exercise authority over dissentients openly con-
troverted. The great writers to whom the world owes what
religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom
of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely
that a human being is accountable to others for his relig-
ious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in what-
ever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly
anywhere been practically realized, except where religious
indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by
theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.
In the minds of almost all religious persons, even in the most
tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is admitted with
tacit reserves. One person will bear with dissent in matters
of church government, but not of dogma; another can
tolerate everybody, short of a Papist or an Unitarian; an-
other, every one who believes in revealed religion; a few
extend their charity a little further, but stop at the belief
in a God and in a future state. Wherever the sentiment of
the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have
abated little of its claim to be obeyed.
In England, from the peculiar circumstances of our
political history, though the yoke of opinion is perhaps
ON LIBERTY 211
heavier, that of law is lighter, than in most other countries
of Europe; and there is considerable jealousy of direct in-
terference, by the legislative or the executive power with
private conduct; not so much from any just regard for the
independence of the individual, as from the still subsisting
habit of looking on the government as representing an op-
posite interest to the public. The majority have not yet
learnt to feel the power of the government their power, or
its opinions their opinions. When they do so, individual
liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from
the government, as it already is from public opinion. But,
as yet, there is a considerable amount of feeling ready to be
called forth against any attempt of the law to control indi-
viduals in things in which they have not hitherto been ac-
customed to be controlled by it; and this with very little
discrimination as to whether the matter is, or is not, within
the legitimate sphere of legal control; insomuch that the
feeling, highly salutary on the whole, is perhaps quite as
often misplaced as well grounded in the particular instances
pf its application.
There is, in fact, no recognized principle by which the
propriety or impropriety of government interference is cus-
tomarily tested. People decide according to their personal
preferences. Some, whenever they see any good to be done,
or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the govern-
ment to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear
almost any amount of social evil, rather than add one to
the departments of human interests amenable to govern-
mental control. And men range themselves on one or the
other side in any particular case, according to this general
direction of their sentiments; or according to the degree
of interest which they feel in the particular thing which it is
proposed that the government should do; or according to
the belief they entertain that the government would, or
would not, do it in the manner they prefer ; but very rarely
on account of any opinion to which they consistently ad-
here, as to what things are fit to be done by a government.
And it seems to me that, in consequence of this absence of
rule or principle, one side is at present as often wrong as
the other; the interference of government is, with about
212 JOHN STUART MILL
equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly con-
demned.
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple
principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of
society with the individual in the way of compulsion and
control, whether the means used be physical force in the
form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public
opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which man-
kind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfer-
ing with the liberty of action of any of their number, is
self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can
be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized com-
munity, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His
own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient war-
rant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear
because it v/ill be better for him to do so, because it will
make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do
so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons
for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or per-
suading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him,
or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To
justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter
him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else.
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is
amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the
part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of
right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind,
the individual is sovereign.
It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine
is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of
their faculties. We are not speaking of children, or of
young persons below the age which the law may fix as that
of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still in a state
to require being taken care of by others, must be protected
against their own actions as well as against external in-
jury. For the same reason, we may leave out of considera-
tion those backward states of society in which the race
itself may be considered as in its nonage. The early diffi-
culties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that
there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them;
ON LIBERTY 213
and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted
in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, per-
haps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legitimate
mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided
the end be their improvement, and the means justified by
actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no
application to any state of things anterior to the time when
mankind have become capable of being improved by free
and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them
but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if
they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as man-
kind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own
improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long
since reached in all nations with whom we need here con-
cern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in
that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer
admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only
for the security of others.
It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which
could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract
right as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as
the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be
utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent
interests of man as a progressive being. Those interests, I
contend, authorize the subjection of individual spontaneity
to external control, only in respect to those actions of each,
which concern the interest of other people. If any one
does an act hurtful to others, there is a prima facie case for
punishing him, by law, or, where legal penalties are not
safely applicable, by general disapprobation. There are also
many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may
rightfully be compelled to perform; such as, to give evi-
dence in a court of justice; to bear his fair share in the
common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to
the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection ;
and to perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such
as saving a fellow-creature's life, or interposing to protect
the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it
is obviously a man's duty to do, he may rightfully be made
responsible to society for not doing. A person may cause
214 JOHN STUART MILL
evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction,
and in neither case he is justly accountable to them for the
injury. The latter case, it is true, requires a much more
cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make
any one answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to
make him answerable for not preventing evil, is, com-
paratively speaking, the exception. Yet there are many
cases clear enough and grave enough to justify that ex-
ception. In all things which regard the external relations
of the individual, he is de jure amenable to those whose
interests are concerned, and if need be, to society as their
protector. There are often good reasons for not holding
him to the responsibility; but these reasons must arise from
the special expediencies of the case: either because it is a
kind of case in which he is on the whole likely to act better,
when left to his own discretion, than when controlled in
any way in which society have it in their power to control
him; or because the attempt to exercise control would pro-
duce other evils, greater than those which it would prevent.
When such reasons as these preclude the enforcement of
responsibility, the conscience of the agent himself should
step into the vacant judgment-seat, and protect those inter-
ests of others which have no external protection; judging
himself all the more rigidly, because the case does not admit
of his being made accountable to the judgment of his fellow-
creatures.
But there is a sphere of action in which society, as dis-
tinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect
interest; comprehending all that portion of a person's life
and conduct which affects only himself, or, if it also affects
others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived con-
sent and participation. When I say only himself, I mean
directly, and in the first instance : for whatever affects him-
self, may affect others through himself; and the objection
which may be grounded on this contingency, will receive
consideration in the sequel. This, then, is the appropriate
region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward do-
main of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in
the most comprehensive sense; Hberty of thought and feel-
ing; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all
ON LIBERTY 215
subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theo-
logical. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions
may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs
to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns
other people; but, being almost of as much importance as
the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the
same reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly,
the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of
framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of
doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may fol-
low; without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long
as what we do does not harm them- tven though they should
think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly,
from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty,
within the same limits, of combination among individuals;
freedom to unite, for any^ purpose not involving harm to
others: the persons combining being supposed to be of fuU
age, and not forced or deceived.
No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole,
respected, is free, whatever may be its form of government ;
and none is completely free in which they do not exist abso-^
lute and unqualified. The only freedom which deserves the
name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so
long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or
impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guard-
ian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spirit-
ual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other
to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each
to live as seems good to the rest.
Though this doctrine is anything but new, and, to some
persons, may have the air of a truism^ there is no doctrine
which stands more directly opposed to the general tendency
of existing opinion and practice. Society has expended
fully as much effort in the attempt (according to its lights)
to compel people to conform- to its notions of personal, as
of social excellence. The ancient commonwealths thought
themselves entitled to practise, and the ancient philosophers
countenanced, the regulation of every part of private con-
duct by public authority, on the ground that the State had
a deep interest in the whole bodily and mental discipline o£
216 JOHN STUART MILL
every one of its citizens, a mode of thinking which may
have been admissible in small repubhcs surrounded by pow-
erful enemies, in constant peril of being subverted by
foreign attack or internal commotion, and to which even a
short interval of relaxed energy and self-command might so
easily be fatal, that they could not afford to wait for the salu-
tary permanent effects of freedom. In the modern world, the
greater size of political communities, and above all, the
separation between the spiritual and temporal authority
(which placed the direction of men's consciences in other
hands than those which controlled their worldly affairs),
prevented so great an interference by law in the details of
private life; but the engines of moral repression have been
wielded more strenuously against divergence from the
reigning opinion in self-regarding, than even in social mat-
ters ; religion, the most powerful of the elements which have
entered into the formation of moral feeling, having almost
always been governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy,
seeking control over every department of human conduct,
or by the spirit of Puritanism. And some of those modern
reformers who have placed themselves in strongest opposi-
tion to the rehgions of the past, have been noway behind
either churches or sects in their assertion of the right of
spiritual domination: M. Comte, in particular, whose social
system, as unfolded in his Trait e de Politique Positive, aims
at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appli-
ances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing
anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most
rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers.
Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers,
there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination
to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual,
both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation :
and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the
world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of
the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils
which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary,
to grow more and more formidable. The disposition of
mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens^ to impose
their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on
ON LIBERTY 217
others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and
by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that
it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of
power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, un-
less a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised
against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circum-
stances of the world, to see it increase.
It will be convenient for the argument, if, instead of at
once entering upon the general thesis, we confine ourselves
in the first instance to a single branch of it, on which the
principle here stated is, if not fully, yet to a certain point,
recognized by the current opinions. This one branch is the
Liberty of Thought : from which it is impossible to separate
the cognate liberty of speaking and of writing. Although
these liberties, to some considerable amount^ form part of
the political morality of all countries which profess re-
ligious toleration and free institutions, the grounds, both
philosophical and practical, on which they rest, are perhaps
not so familiar to the general mind, nor so thoroughly ap-
preciated by many even of the leaders of opinion, as might
have been expected. Those grounds, when rightly under-
stood, are of much wider application than to only one
division of the subject, and a thorough consideration of this
part of the question will be found the best introduction to
the remainder. Those to whom nothing which I am about
to say will be new, may therefore, I hope, excuse me, if on
a subject which for now three centuries has been so often
discussed, I venture on one discussion more.
CHAPTER II
Op the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
THE time, it is to be hoped, is gone by when any
defence would be necessary of the " liberty of the
press " as one of the securities against corrupt or
tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can
now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an ex-
ecutive, not identified in interest with the people, to pre-
scribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or
what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect
of the question, besides, has been so often and so trium-
phantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be
specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of Eng-
land, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day
as it was in the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of
its being actually put in force against political discussion,
except during some temporary panic, when fear of insurrec-
tion drives ministers and judges from their propriety;^
* These words had scarcely been written, when, as if to give them an
emphatic contradiction, occurred the Government Press Prosecutions of
1858. That ill-judged interference with the liberty of public discussion has
not, however, induced me to alter a single word in the text, nor has it at
all weakened my conviction that, moments of panic excepted, the era of
pains and penalties for political discussion has, in our own country, passed
away. For, in the first place, the prosecutions were not persisted in; and,
in the second, they were never, properly speaking, political prosecutions.
The offence charged was not that of criticizing institutions, or the acts or
persons of rulers, but of circulating what was deemed an immoral doctrine,
the lawfulness of Tyrannicide.
If the arguments of the present chai)ter are of any validity, there ought
to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of
ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.
It would, therefore, be irrelevant and out of place to examine here, whether
the doctrine of Tyrannicide deserves that title. I shall content myself with
saying, that the subject has been at all times one of the open questions of
morals; that the act of a private citizen in striking down a criminal, who,
by raising himself above the law, has placed himself beyond the reach of
legal punishment or control, has been accounted by whole nations, and by
some of the best and wisest of men, not a crime, but an act of exalted
virtue; and that, right or wrong, it is not of the nature of assassination,
but of civil war. As such, I hold that the instigation to it, in a specific
case, may be a proper subject of punishment, but only if an overt act has
213
ON LIBERTY 219
and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries,
to be apprehended that the government, whether completely
responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to con-
trol the expression of opinion, except when in doing so it
makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the
public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is
entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exert-
ing any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it
conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the
people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or
by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The
best government has no more title to it than the worst. It
is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance
with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all
mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one per-
son were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no
more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he
had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except
to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it
were simply a private injury, it would make some difference
whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons
or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expres-
sion of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race;
posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dis-
sent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.
If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity
of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what
is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier
impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses,
each of which has a distinct branch of the argument cor-
responding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we
are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were
sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by
authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to sup-
followed, and at least a probable connection can be established between the
act and the instigation. Even then, it is not a foreign government, but the
very government assailed, which alone, in the exercise of self-defence, can
legitimately punish attacks directed against its own existence.
220 N JOHN STUART MILL
press it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible.
They have no authority to decide the question for all man-
kind, and exclude every other person from the means of
judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they
are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty
is the same thing as absolute' certainty. All silencing of
discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation
may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the
worse for being common.
Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact
of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their
practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory ;
for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few
think it necessary to take any precautions against their own
fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion of
which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of
the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable.
Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited
deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own
opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situ-
ated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are
not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong,
place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their
opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to
whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's
want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he
usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of
*' the world '' in general. And the world, to each individual,
means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his
party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man
may be called, by comparison, almost liberal and large-
minded to whom it means anything so comprehensive as his
own country or his own age. Nor is his faith in this col-
lective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other
ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have
thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He de-
volves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the
right against the dissentient worlds of other people; and it
never troubles him that mere accident has decided which
of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and
ON LIBERTY 221
that the same causes which make him a Churchman in Lon-
don, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in
Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself as any amount of argu-
ment can make it, that ages are no more infallible than in-
dividuals ; every age having held many opinions which subse-
quent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is
as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected
by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected
by the present.
The objection likely to be made to this argument, would
probably take some such form as the following. There is
no greater assumption of infallibility in forbidding the
propagation of error, than in any other thing which is
done by public authority on its own judgment and responsi-
bility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Be-
cause it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that
they ought not to use it at all? To prohibit what they think
pernicious, is not claiming exemption from error, but ful-
filling the duty incumbent on them, although fallible, of act-
ing on their conscientious conviction. If we were never
to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong,
we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our
duties unperformed. An objection which applies to all
conduct can be no valid objection to any conduct in par-
ticular.
It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to
form the truest opinions they can; to form them care-
fully, and never impose them upon others unless they are
quite sure of being right. But when they are sure (such
reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousness but cowardice
to shrink from acting on their opinions, and allow doctrines
which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of man-
kind, either in this life or in another, to be scattered abroad
without restraint, because other people, in less enlightened
times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true.
Let us take care, it may be said, not to make the same mis-
take: but governments and nations have made mistakes in
other things, which are not denied to be fit subjects for the
exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes, made
unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and,
222 JOHN STUART MILL
under whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and
governments, must act to the best of their ability. There
is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance
sufficient for the purposes of human life. We may, and
must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our
own conduct: and it is assuming no more when we forbid
bad men to pervert society by the propagation of opinions
which we regard as false and pernicious.
I answer, that it is assuming very much more. There is
the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be
true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it
has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose
of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of con-
tradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition
which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of
action; and on no other terms can a being with human
faculties have any rational assurance of being right.
When we consider either the history of opinion, or the
ordinary conduct of human life, to what is it to be ascribed
that the one and the other are no worse than they are ? Not
certainly to the inherent force of the human understanding;
for, on any matter not self-evident, there are ninety-nine per-
sons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who is capable;
and the capacity of the hundredth person is only compara-
tive; for the majority of the eminent men of every past
generation held many opinions now known to be erroneous,
and did or approved numerous things which no one will now
justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a pre-
ponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational
conduct? If there really is this preponderance — ^which there
must be, unless human affairs are, and have always been,
in an almost desperate state — it is owing to a quality of the
human mind, the source of everything respectable in man,
either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely, that
his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his
mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience
alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is
to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually
yield to fact and argument : but facts and arguments, to pro-
duce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it
ON LIBERTY 223
Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without
comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength
and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one
property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance
can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right
are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person
whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has
It become so ? Because he has kept his mind open to criti-
cism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his
practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to
profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself,
and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was falla-
cious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a
human being can make some approach to knowing the whole
of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by per-
sons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in
which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No
wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this;
nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in
any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and
completing his own opinion by collating it with those of
others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying
it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just
reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all that can, at least
obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his
position against all gainsayers knowing that he has sought
for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them,
and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the
subject from any quarter — ^fie has a right to think his judg-
ment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who
have not gone through a similar process.
It is not too much to require that what the wisest of
mankind, those who are best entitled to trust their own judg-
ment, find necessary to warrant their relying on it, should
be submitted to by that miscellaneous collection of a few
wise and many foolish individuals, called the public. The
most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church,
even at the canonization of a saint, admits, and listens
patiently to, a '* devil's advocate.'' The holiest of men, it
appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, until all
224 JOHN STUART MILL
that the devil could say against him is known and weighed.
If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted to be
questioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance
of its truth as they now do. The beliefs which we have
most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a stand-
ing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.
If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the at-
tempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we
have done the best that the existing state of human reason
admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the
truth a chance of reaching us : if the lists are kept open, we
may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found
when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in
the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach
to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount
of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the
sole way of attaining it.
Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the
arguments for free discussion, but object to their being
" pushed to an extreme ;'* not seeing that unless the rea-
sons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for
any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are
not assuming infallibility when they acknowledge that there
should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly
be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doc-
trine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is
so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain.
To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who
would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not per-
mitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree
with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without
hearing the other side.
In the present age — which has been described as "destitute
of faith, but terrified at scepticism," — in which people feel
sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they
should not know what to do without them — the claims of an
opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not
so much on its truth, as on its importance to society. There
are, it is alleged, certain beliefs, so useful, not to say indis-
pensable to well-being, that it is as much the duty of govern-
ON LIBERTY 225
ments to uphold those beliefs, as to protect any other of the
interests of society. In a case of such necessity, and so
directly in the line of their duty, something less than in-
fallibility may, it is maintained, warrant, and even bind,
governments, to act on their own opinion, confirmed by the
general opinion of mankind. It is also often argued, and
still oftener thought, that none but bad men would desire
to weaken these salutary beHefs; and there can be nothing
wrong, it is thought, in restraining bad men, and prohibiting
what only such men would wish to practise. This mode of
thinking makes the justification of restraints on discussion
not a question of the truth of doctrines, but of their
usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to escape the
responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opin-
ions. But those who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive
that the assumption of infallibility is merely shifted from
one point to another. The usefulness of an opinion is
itself matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to dis-
cussion and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion
itself. There is the same need of an infallible judge of
opinions to decide an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it
to be false, unless the opinion condemned has full oppor-
tunity of defending itself. And it will not do to say that the
heretic may be allowed to maintain the utility or harmless-
ness of his opinion, though forbidden to maintain its truth.
The truth of an opinion is part of its utility. If we would
know whether or not it is desirable that a proposition should
be believed, is it possible to exclude the consideration of
whether or not it is true? In the opinion, not of bad men,
but of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can
be really useful: and can you prevent such men from urging
that plea, when they are charged with culpability for denying
some doctrine which they are told is useful, but which they
believe to be false? Those who are on the side of received
opinions, never fail to take all possible advantage of this
plea; you do not find them handUng the question of utility
as if it could be completely abstracted from that of truth:
on the contrary, it is, above all, because their doctrine is
"the truth," that the knowledge or the belief of it is held
to be so indispensable. There can be no fair discussion
Vol. 25—8 HC
226 JOHN STUART MILL
of the question of usefulness, when an argument so vital
may be employed on one side, but not on the other. And
in point of fact, when law or public feeling do not permit
the truth of an opinion to be disputed, they are just as little
tolerant of a denial of its usefulness. The utmost they
allow is an extenuation of its absolute necessity or of the
positive guilt of rejecting it.
In order more fully to illustrate the mischief of denying
a hearing to opinions because we, in our own judgment,
have condemned them, it will be desirable to fix down the
discussion to a concrete case; and I choose, by preference,
the cases which are least favourable to me — in which the
argument against freedom of opinion, both on the score of
truth and on that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let
the opinions impugned be the belief in a God and in a future
state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality.
To fight the battle on such ground, gives a great advantage
to an unfair antagonist; since he will be sure to say (and
many who have no desire to be unfair will say it internally),
Are these the doctrines which you do not deem sufficiently
certain to be taken under the protection of law? Is the
belief in a God one of the opinions, to feel sure of which,
you hold to be assuming infallibiHty? But I must be per-
mitted to observe, that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine
(be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infalli-
bility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for
others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on
the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pre-
tension not the less, if put forth on the side of my most
solemn convictions. However positive any one's persuasion
may be, not only of the falsity, but of the pernicious conse-
quences — not only of the pernicious consequences, but (to
adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the im-
morality and impiety of an opinion; yet if, in pursuance of
that private judgment, though backed by the public judg-
ment of his country or his cotemporaries, he prevents the
opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infalli-
bility. And so far from the assumption being less objec-
tionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called
immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which
ON LIBERTY 227
it is most fatal. These are exactly the occasions on which
the men of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes
which excite the astonishment and horror of posterity. It
is among such that we find the instances memorable in his-
tory, when the arm of the law has been employed to root
out the best men and the noblest doctrines; with deplorable
success as to the men, though some of the doctrines have
survived to be (as if in mockery) invoked, in defence of
similar conduct towards those who dissent from them, or
from their received interpretation.
Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was
once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal
authorities and public opinion of his time, there took place
a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abound-
ing in individual greatness, this man has been handed down
to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the
most virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head
and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the
source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the
judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, '' i maestri di color che
sanno" the two headsprings of ethical as of all other philos-
ophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers
who have since lived — whose fame, still growing after
more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole
remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious
— was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial con-
viction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying
the gods recognized by the State ; indeed his accuser asserted
(see the "Apologia'') that he believed in no gods at all.
Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a
"corrupter of youth." Of these charges the tribunal, there
is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty,
and condemned the man who probably of all then born had
deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as a criminal.
To pass from this to the only other instance of judicial
iniquity, the mention of which, after the condemnation of
Socrates, would not be an anti-climax: the event which took
place on Calvary rather more than eighteen hundred years
ago. The man who left on the memory of those who wit-
nessed his life and conversation, such an impression of his
228 JOHN STUART MILL
moral grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries have
done homage to him as the Almighty in person, was igno-
miniously put to death, as what? As a blasphemer. Men
did not merely mistake their benefactor; they mistook him
for the exact contrary of what he was, and treated him as
that prodigy of impiety, which they themselves are now held
to be, for their treatment of him. The feelings with which
mankind now regard these lamentable transactions, especially
the latter of the two, render them extremely unjust in their
judgment of the unhappy actors. These were, to all ap-
pearance, not bad men — not worse than men most commonly
are, but rather the contrary ; men who possessed in a full, or
somewhat more than a full measure, the religious, moral,
and patriotic feelings of their time and people : the very
kind of men who, in all times, our own included, have every
chance of passing through life blameless and respected.
The high-priest who rent his garments when the words were
pronounced, which, according to all the ideas of his country,
constituted the blackest guilt, was in all probability quite as
sincere in his horror and indignation, as the generality of
respectable and pious men now are in the religious and moral
sentiments they profess; and most of those who now shudder
at his conduct, if they had lived in his time and been born
Jews, would have acted precisely as he did. Orthodox
Christians who are tempted to think that those who stoned
to death the first martyrs must have been worse men than
they themselves are, ought to remember that one of those per-
secutors was Saint Paul.
Let us add one more example, the most striking of all, if
the impressiveness of an error is measured by the wisdom
and virtue of him who falls into it. If ever any one, pos-
sessed of power, had grounds for thinking himself the best
and most enlightened among his cotemporaries, it was the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole
civilized world, he preserved through life not only the most
unblemished justice, but what was less to be expected from
his Stoical breeding, the tenderest heart. The few failings
which are attributed to him, were all on the side of in-
dulgence: while his writings, the highest ethical product
of the ancient mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they
ON LIBERTY 229
differ at all, from the most characteristic teachings of Christ.
This man, a better Christian in all but the dogmatic sense
of the word, than almost any of the ostensibly Christian
sovereigns who have since reigned, persecuted Christianity.
Placed at the summit of all the previous attainments of
humanity, with an open, unfettered intellect, and a character
which led him of himself to embody in his moral writings the
Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that Christianity was
to be a good and not an evil to the world, with his duties
to which he was so deeply penetrated. Existing society he
knew to be in a deplorable state. But such as it was, he
saw or thought he saw, that it was held together and pre-
vented from being worse, by belief and reverence of the
received divinities. As a ruler of mankind, he deemed it
his duty not to suffer society to fall in pieces; and saw not
how, if its existing ties were removed, any others could be
formed which could again knit it together. The new re-
ligion openly aimed at dissolving these ties: unless, there-
fore, it was his duty to adopt that religion, it seemed to be
his duty to put it down. Inasmuch then as the theology of
Christianity did not appear to him true or of divine origin;
inasmuch as this strange history of a crucified God was not
credible to him, and a system which purported to rest en-
tirely upon a foundation to him so wholly unbelievable,
could not be foreseen by him to be that renovating agency
which, after all abatements, it has in fact proved to be ; the
gentlest and most amiable of philosophers and rulers, under
a solemn sense of duty, authorized the persecution of Chris-
tianity. To my mind this is one of the most tragical facts
in all history. It is a bitter thought, how different a thing
the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Chris-
tian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire
under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of
Constantine. But it would be equally unjust to him and
false to truth, to deny, that no one plea which can be urged
for punishing anti-Christian teaching, was wanting to Mar-
cus Aurelius for punishing, as he did, the propagation of
Christianity. No Christian more firmly believes that Atheism
is false, and tends to the dissolution of society, than Marcus
Aurelius believed the same things of Christianity; he who.
230 JOHN STUART MILL
of all men then living, might have been thought the most
capable of appreciating it. Unless any one who approves
of punishment for the promulgation of opinions, flatters
himself that he is a wiser and better man than Marcus
Aurelius — more deeply versed in the wisdom of his time,
more elevated in his intellect above it — more earnest in his
search for truth, or more single-minded in his devotion to
it when found; — let him abstain from that assumption of
the joint infallibility of himself and the multitude, which
the great Antoninus made with so unfortunate a result.
Aware of the impossibility of defending the use of pun-
ishment for restraining irreligious opinions, by any argument
which will not justify Marcus Antoninus, the enemies of
religious freedom, when hard pressed, occasionally accept
this consequence, and say, with Dr. Johnson, that the per-
secutors of Christianity were in the right; that persecution
is an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, and always
passes successfully, legal penalties being, in the end, power-
less against truth, though sometimes beneficially effective
against mischievous errors. This is a form of the argument
for religious intolerance, sufficiently remarkable not to be
passed without notice.
A theory which maintains that truth may justifiably be
persecuted because persecution cannot possibly do it any
harm, cannot be charged with being intentionally hostile to
the reception of new truths; but we cannot commend the
generosity of its dealing with the persons to whom man-
kind are indebted for them. To discover to the world some-
thing which deeply concerns it, and of which it was pre-
viously ignorant; to prove to it that it had been mistaken
on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as
important a service as a human being can render to his
fellow-creatures, and in certain cases, as in those of the
" early Christians and of the Reformers, those who think
with Dr. Johnson believe it to have been the most precious
gift which could be bestowed on mankind. That the authors
of such splendid benefits should be requited by martyrdom;
that their reward should be to be dealt with as the vilest of
criminals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable error and
misfortune, for which humanity should mourn in sackcloth
ON LIBERTY 231
and ashes, but the normal and justifiable state of things.
The propounder of a new truth, according to this doctrine,
should stand, as stood, in the legislation of the Locrians,
the proposer of a new law, with a halter round his neck,
to be instantly tightened if the public assembly did not, on
hearing his reasons, then and there adopt his proposition.
People who defend this mode of treating benefactors, can
not be supposed to set much value on the benefit; and I
believe this view of the subject is mostly confined to the
sort of persons who think that new truths may have been
desirable once, but that we have had enough of them now.
But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs
over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which
men repeat after one another till they pass into common-
places, but which all experience refutes. History teems with
instances of truth put down by persecution. If not sup-
pressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To
speak only of religious opinions : the Reformation broke out
at least twenty times before Luther, and was put down.
Arnold of Brescia was put down. Fra Dolcino was put
down. Savonarola was put down. The Albigeois were
put down. The Vaudois were put down. The Lollards
were put down. The Hussites were put down. Even
after the era of Luther, wherever persecution was per-
sisted in, it was successful. In Spain, Italy, Flanders,
the Austrian empire. Protestantism was rooted out; and,
most likely, would have been so in England, had Queen Mary
lived, or Queen Elizabeth died. Persecution has always
succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party
to be effectually persecuted. No reasonable person can
doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated in the
Roman empire. It spread, and became predominant, be-
cause the persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a
short time, and separated by long intervals of almost un-
disturbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle sentimentality
that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied
to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake.
Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for
error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social
penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation
232 JOHN STUART MILL
of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in
this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished
once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there
will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some
one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favour-
able circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made
such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to sup-
press it.
It will be said, that we do not now put to death the intro-
ducers of new opinions: we are not like our fathers who
slew the prophets, we even build sepulchres to them. It is
true we no longer put heretics to death; and the amount of
penal infliction which modern feeling would probably tol-
erate, even against the most obnoxious opinions, is not
sufficient to extirpate them. But let us not flatter ourselves
that we are yet free from the stain even of legal persecu-
tion. Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression,
still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these
times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible that they
may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857,
at the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfor-
tunate man,^ said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all
relations of life, was sentenced to twenty-one months impris-
onment, for uttering, and writing on a gate, some offensive
words concerning Christianity. Within a month of the
same time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two separate
occasions,^ were rejected as jurymen, and one of them
grossly insulted by the judge and one of the counsel, be-
cause they honestly declared that they had no theological
belief; and a third, a foreigner,* for the same reason, was
denied justice against a thief. This refusal of redress took
place in virtue of the legal doctrine, that no person can be
allowed to give evidence in a court of justice, who does not
profess belief in a God (any god is sufficient) and in a future
state; which is equivalent to declaring such persons to be
outlaws, excluded from the protection of the tribunals ; who
may not only be robbed or assaulted with impunity, if no one
* Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In December following,
he received a free pardon from the Crown.
* George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857; Edward Truelove, July, 1857,
* Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough Street Police Court, August 4, 1857.
ON LIBERTY 233
but themselves, or persons of similar opinions, be present,
but any one else may be robbed or assaulted with impunity,
if the proof of the fact depends on their evidence. The as-
sumption on v^hich this is grounded, is that the oath is
worthless, of a person who does not believe in a future
state; a proposition which betokens much ignorance of his-
tory in those who assent to it (since it is historically true
that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been per-
sons of distinguished integrity and honor) ; and would be
maintained by no one who had the smallest conception how
many of the persons in greatest repute with the world, both
for virtues and for attainments, are well known, at least to
their intimates, to be unbelievers. The rule, besides, is sui-
cidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under pretence that
atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists
who are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the
obloquy of publicly confessing a detested creed rather than
affirm a falsehood. A rule thus self-convicted of absurdity
so far as regards its professed purpose, can be kept in force
only as a badge of hatred, a relic of persecution; a persecu-
tion, too, having the peculiarity that the qualification for
undergoing it is the being clearly proved not to deserve it.
The rule, and the theory it implies, are hardly less insulting
to believers than to infidels. For if he who does not believe
in a future state necessarily lies, it follows that they who do
believe are only prevented from lying, if prevented they are,
by the fear of hell. We will not do the authors and abettors
of the rule the injury of supposing, that the conception
which they have formed of Christian virtue is drawn from
their own consciousness.
These, indeed, are but rags and remnants of persecution,
and may be thought to be not so much an indication of the
wish to persecute, as an example of that very frequent in-
firmity of English minds, which makes them take a prepos-
terous pleasure in the assertion of a bad principle, when they
are no longer bad enough to desire to carry it really into
practice. But unhappily there is no security in the state
of the public mind, that the suspension of worse forms of
legal persecution, which has lasted for about the space of
a generation, will continue. In this age the quiet surface
234 JOHN STUART MILL
of routine is as often ruffled by attempts to resuscitate past
evils, as to introduce new benefits. What is boasted of at
the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in
narrow and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival
of bigotry; and where there is the strongest permanent
leaven of intolerance in the feelings of a people, which at
all times abides in the middle classes of this country, it needs
but little to provoke them into actively persecuting those
whom they have never ceased to think proper objects of per-
secution.^ For it is this — it is the opinions men entertain,
and the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown
the beliefs they deem important, which makes this country
not a place of mental freedom. For a long time past, the
chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen
the social stigma. It is that stigma which is really effective,
and so effective is it, that the profession of opinions which
are under the ban of society is much less common in Eng-
land, than is, in many other countries, the avowal of those
which incur risk of judicial punishment. In respect to all
persons but those whose pecuniary circumstances make them
independent of the good will of other people, opinion, on
this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be
imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their
bread. Those whose bread is already secured, and who
^ Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the passions
of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display of the worst parts
of our national character on the occasion of the Sepoy insurrection. The
ravings of fanatics or charlatans from the pulpit may be unworthy of
notice; but the heads of the Evangelical party have announced as their
Erinciple, for the government of Hindoos and Mahomedans, that no schools
e supported by public money in which the Bible is not taught, and by
necessary consequence that no public employment be given to any but real
or pretended Christians. An Under-Secretary of State, in a speech deliv-
ered to his constituents on the 12th of November, 1857, is reported to have
said: "Toleration of their faith'* (the faith of a hundred millions of
British subjects), "the superstition which they called religion, by the
British Government, had had the effect of retarding the ascendency of
the British name, and preventing the salutary growth of Christianity. . . .
Toleration was the great corner-stone of the religious liberties of this coun-
try; but do not let them abuse that precious word toleration. As he
understood it, it meant the complete lioerty to all, freedom of worship,
among Christians, who worshipped upon the same foundation. It meant
toleration of all sects and denominations of Christians who believed in the
one mediation.*' I desire to call attention to the fact, that a man who has
been deemed fit to fill a high office in the government of this country, under
a liberal Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who do not believe in the
divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of toleration. Who, after this imbe-
cile display, can indulge the illusion that religious persecution has passed
away» never to return?
ON LIBERTY 235
desire no favors from men in power, or from bodies
of men, or from the public, have nothing to fear from the
open avowal of any opinions, but to be ill-thought of and ill-
spoken of, and this it ought not to require a very heroic
mould to enable them to bear. There is no room for any
appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of such persons. But
though we do not now inflict so much evil on those who
think differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to
do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever
by our treatment of them. Socrates was put to death, but
the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and
spread its illumination over the whole intellectual firma-
ment. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Christian
Church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping
the older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its
shade. Our merely social intolerance, kills no one, roots out
no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain
from any active effort for their diffusion. With us, hereti-
cal opinions do not perceptibly gain or even lose, ground in
each decade or generation; they never blaze out far and
wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of
thinking and studious persons among whom they originate,
without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with
either a true or a deceptive light.
