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THE HARVARD CLASSICS

The Five-Foot Shelf of Books

THE HARVARD CLASSICS
EDITED BY CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL.D.

John Stuart Mill

Autobiography
Essay on Liberty

Thomas Carlyle

Characteristics

Inaugural Address

Essay on Scott

Y^ith Introductions and Notes
Volume 25

P. F. Collier & Son Corporation

NEW YORK

Copyright, 1909
By P. F. Collier & Son

MANUFACTURED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS

By John Stuart Mill

AUTOBIOGRAPHY JOHN STUART MILL page

Chapter I 7

Chapter II 29

Chapter III 43

Chapter IV . 58

Chapter V 85

Chapter VI 116

Chapter VII 138

ON LIBERTY

Chapter I 195

Chapter II 210

Chapter III 250

Chapter IV . 270

Chapter V 290

By Thomas Carlyle

CHARACTERISTICS 319

INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT EDINBURGH 359

SIR WALTER SCOTT 393

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

John Stuart Mill was born in London, May 20, 1806. He was the
eldest of the nine children of James Mill, the chief disciple of Bentham
and one of the most important leaders in the Utilitarian movement in
England. J. S. Mill as a child was almost 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 he 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 Mill's
treatise on this subject. These and other intellectual 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; but 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 con-
tinued his studies in mathematics, economics, 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 employed
with the industry that had been habitual with him almost from infancy.
He wrote for the papers, helped his father on the "Westminster Re-
view," and, before he was twenty, edited Bentham's "Treatise on Evi-
dence." His first original work of importance was his "Essays upon
Unsettled Questions of Political Economy," written when he was about
twenty-four, but not published till 1844.

In religion. Mill had been brought up an agnostic, and, in philosophy,
a utilitarian of the school of Bentham; but after a nervous illness in
1836, he began to be dissatisfied with the high and dry intellectualism
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 steady cultivation of the feelings." He had already
a wide acquaintance among the most active minds in London, and some
of these, like F. D. Maurice and John Sterling, aided in the process of
humanising Mill's philosophy. He became a disciple of Wordsworth's

4 INTRODUCTION

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 in-
iluence of the St. Simonian school and Comte. Important also among
the friendships which affected 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 1835, the "London Review," later combined with the "Westminster
Review," and for a time owned by Mill, was started as the organ of the
"philosophical radicals"; and till he gave it up in 1840 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
1843 in the publication 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 principles of the school of philosophi-
cal 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 1858 the East India Company was dissolved, the administration 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 "Representative Government" (i860) and his "Utili-
tarianism" (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 ele-
vating the conception of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number"
as the true end of human conduct, by the recognition 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 harmonize. With the rise of the evolu-
tionist 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.

INTRODUCTION 5

Mill's philosophical activity culminated in his searching "Examination
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 difference 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 remains an interesting and lively example of Mill's acuteness
and skill as a controversialist.

So far Mill's part in politics had been confined to the writing of
pamphlets and articles, but in 1865 he was elected to Parliament as
member for Westminster. In spite of a weak voice and a nervous man-
ner, 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 frequendy in the "Fortnighdy
Review," then edited by his friend John Morley; and in 1869 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 standard plea for the rights of women. His health now
began to give way, and he died on May 8, 1873.

Although the dominant impression conveyed by the record of Mill's
life in his candid and interesting "Autobiography" is one of intellec-
tuality, he was a man of high sensibility and of a 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 realization of his
ideals, had their effect not merely on the large circle with whom he
came into personal contact, but in the stimulating and elevating of the
general intellectual 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, begin-
ning with Milton's "Areopagitica," or speech for the Liberty of Un-
licensed Printing, and coming down through Locke's "Letters con-
cerning 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 ics 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 transition 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, has only
himself to blame if he reads farther, and I do not desire any other

7

8 JOHN STUART MILL

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 boy, 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 educating 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 pro-
fession; having satisfied himself that he could not believe the doc-
trines 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 Mar-
quis 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 circumstance, is the ex-
traordinary 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 odious to all per-
sons of influence, and to the common run of prosperous English-
men in that generation, than either before or since; and being not

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 9

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 anything 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 employed 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 remembrance of the time
when I began to learn Greek, I have been told that it was when I
was three years old. My earliest 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 Xenophon's Cyropaedia 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,

10 JOHN STUART MILL

from the Euthyphron to the Theoctetus inclusive: which last dia-
logue, 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 childhood, was arithmetic: this also my father taught
me: it was the task of the evenings, and I well remember its dis-
agreeableness. But the lessons were only a part of the daily instruc-
tion I received. Much of it consisted in the books I read by myself,
and my father's discourses 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 con-
siderable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before
breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these
walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections
of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I
gave him daily of what I had read 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
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 Watson'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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 1

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 abridgements and the last two or three volumes of a
translation of Rollin's Ancient History, beginning with Philip of
Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne's translation of
Plutarch. In EngUsh history, beyond the time at which Hume
leaves off, I remember reading Burnet's History of his Own Time,
though I cared little for anything in 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 Uvely 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 opportunity offered, to give me explanations and
ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultiva-
tion, 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 Government, a book of great merit for its
time, and which he highly valued; Mosheim's Ecclesiastical His-
tory, 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 cir-
cumstances, struggling against difficulties and overcoming them;
of such works I remember Beaver's African Memoranda, and Col-
lins's Account of the First Settlement of New South Wales. Two
books which I never wearied of reading were Anson's Voyages, so de-
lightful to most young persons, and a collection (Hawkesworth's, I
believe) of Voyages Round the World, in four volumes, beginning
with Drake and ending with Cook and Bougainville. Of children's
books, any more than of playthings, I had scarcely any, except an
occasional gift from a relation or acquaintance: among those I had,
Robinson Crusoe was pre-eminent, and continued to delight me

12 JOHN STUART MILL

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 reputation in its
day, Brooke's Fool of Quality.

In my eighth year I commenced learning Latin, in conjunction
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 being successively added as pupils, a
considerable part of my day's work consisted of this preparatory
teaching. It was a part whiah 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 disci-
pline the great advantage, of learning more thoroughly and re-
taining more lastingly the things which I was set to teach: perhaps
too, the practice 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 considerable part of
Cornelius Nepos and Cassar'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 com-
mencement in the Greek poets with the Iliad. After I had made
some progress in this way, my father put Pope's 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 ap-
parently 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 ^ priori and from my individual experience. Soon after this

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 3

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 iEneid; all Horace, except the Epodes; the Fables of
Phaedrus; the first five books of Livy (to which from my love of
the subject I voluntarily added, in my hours of leisure, the re-
mainder 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
Mingault'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 Thucydides; the Hellenics of Xenophon;
a great part of Demosthenes, iEschines, and Lysias; Theocritus;
Anacreon; part of the Anthology; a litde of Dionysius; several
books of Polybius; and lastly Aristotle's Rhetoric, which, as the first
expressly scientific treatise on any moral or psychological 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 mathematics 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 that of books;
while I was continually incurring his displeasure 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 I remember.
History continued to be my strongest predilection, 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,

14 JOHN STUART MILL

exemplifying 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 comparatively
little. A voluntary exercise, to which throughout my boyhood I
was much addicted, was what I called writing histories. I suc-
cessively 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 volume, 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
points as they arose: though quite ignorant of Niebuhr's researches,
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 anticipat-
ing that I could ever feel any curiosity about my first attempts at
writing and reasoning. My father encouraged me in this usefid
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 account-
able to any one, nor had the chilling sensation of being under a
critical eye.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 5

But though these exercises in history were never a compulsory
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 himself with making me read aloud to him,
and correcting false 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 knowl-
edge 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 exercise, begun from
choice, was continued by command. Conformably 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 addresses to some mythological personage
or allegorical abstraction; but he made me translate into English
verse many of Horace's shorter poems: I also remember his giving
me Thomson's "Winter" to read, and afterwards making me 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 versification, but the practice may have
been useful in making it easier for me, at a later period, to acquire
readiness of expression.' I had read, up to this time, very little

' In a subsequent stage of boyhood, when these exercises had ceased to be com-
pulsory, like most youthful writers I wrote tragedies; under the inspiration not so
much of Shakspeare as of Joanna Baillie, whose "Constantine Paleologus" in par-
ticular appeared to me one of the most glorious of human compositions. I still
chink it one of the best dramas of the last two centuries.

1 6 JOHN STUAB.T MILL

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 de-
lighted with; as I always was with animated narrative. Dry den'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 Alexander'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
with Campbell's poems, among which Lochiel, Hohenlinden, The
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 Wyo-
ming, which long kept its place in 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 prac-
tical sense of the word; not trying experiments — a kind of discipline
which I have often regretted 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 reasoning
respecting the first principles of physics, which abounds in the

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I7

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
Organon, 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 answer-
ing 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 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 rnake me as far as possible
understand and feel the utility of them: and this he deemed pecu-
liarly fitting in the case of the syllogistic logic, the usefulness of
which had been impugned by so 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 Sandhurst) he
first attempted by questions to make me think on the subject, and
frame some conception of what constituted the utility of the syllo-
gistic 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 being inter-
preted 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

l8 JOHN STUART MILL

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 instru-
ments of this drilling. I am persuaded that nothing, in modern
education, tends so much, when properly used, to form exact
thinkers, who attach 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 difficulties of correct ratio-
cination 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 re-
flection, valuable thoughts of their own. They may become capable
of disentangling the intricacies of confused and self-contradictory
thought, before their own thinking faculties are much advanced;
a power which, for want of some such discipline, many otherwise
able men altogether lack; and when they have to answer opponents,
only endeavour, by such arguments as they can command, to sup-
port the opposite conclusion, scarcely even attempting to confute
the reasonings of their antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost,
leaving the question, as far as it depends on argument, a balanced
one.

During this time, the Latin and Greek books which I continued to
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 afforded into
Athenian institutions, and the principles of legislation and govern-
ment which they often illustrated, but pointed out the skill and art
of the orator — how everything important to his purpose was said at

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I9

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 testimony 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
intellectus sibi permissus, the understanding which has made up
all its bundles of associations under the guidance of popular phrase-
ology. The close, searching elenchus by which the man of vague
generalities is constrained either to express his meaning to himself
in definite terms, or to confess that he does not know what he is
talking about; the perpetual testing of all general statements by
particular instances; the siege in form which is laid to the meaning
of large abstract terms, by fixing upon some still larger class-name
which includes that and more, and dividing down to the thing
sought — marking out its limits and definition by a series of ac-
curately 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 tide of Platonist belongs by far better

20 JOHN STUART MILL

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 concerned, with per-
fect 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, especially the most neglected
part of it, the inflections of the voice, 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 venture 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 com-
posed 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.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 21

A book which contributed largely to my education, in the best
sense of the term, was my father's History of India. It was pub-
lished 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 re-
markable 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 progress. 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 may be
derived by a mind in the course of making up its opinions.

The Preface, among the most characteristic of my father's writ-
ings, as well as the richest in materials of thought, gives a picture
which may be entirely depended on, of the sentiments and expecta-
tions 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 certainly not
advancement in life, from its publication; nor could he have sup-
posed that it would raise up anything but enemies for him in power-
ful quarters: least of all could he have expected favour from the
East India Company, to whose commercial privileges he was un-
qualifiedly 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 intention 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

22 JOHN STUART MILL

to strengthen the part o£ their home estabUshment which was em-
ployed 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 departments of administration.
In this office, and in that of Examiner, which he subsequently at-
tained, the influence which his talents, his reputation, and his de-
cision of character gave him, with superiors who really desired the
good 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 pohtical 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 doc-
trines, deemed himself so little capable of doing them justice in
exposition and expression, that he shrank from the idea of pub-
licity. 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 intellect, he rendered so much service to his
and my father's opinions both on political economy and on other
subjects.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 23

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, commenced 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 com-
plete. 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 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 pamphlets, written
during what was called the Bullion controversy; 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 siiperficial view of political
economy, the superior lights of Ricardo, and detect what was fal-
lacious in Smith's arguments, or erroneous in any of his conclusions.
Such a mode of instruction was excellently calculated 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, notwithstanding the strong interest
1 took in the subject. He was often, and much beyond reason, pro-
voked 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. Striv-
ing, 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 an 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,

24 JOHN STUART MILL

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 on under my father's
general direction, he was no longer my schoolmaster. I shall there-
fore 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 retraced, the
point most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during
the years of childhood, an amount of knowledge in what are con-
sidered 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 proposal 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 character, 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 any-
thing, I owe it, among other fortunate 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 25

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 minds except in the
furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of
cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to de-
generate 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 remembrance, 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 displeasure at
my ineffectual efforts to define the word: I recollect also his indig-
nation 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 some-
thing which might be at variance with practice, I had shown un-
paralleled ignorance. In this he seems, and perhaps 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 pro-
ficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, 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

26 JOHN STUART MILL

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 succeeded in pre-
serving me from the sort of influences he so much dreaded. I was
not at all aware that my attainments 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 knowledge 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 estimate myself at all. If I thought anything about
myself, it was that I was rather backward in my studies, since I
always found myself so, in comparison with what my father ex-
pected 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 re-
spect for them. My father did not correct this ill-breeding and im-
pertinence, probably from not being aware of it, for I was always
too much in awe of him to be otherwise 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 re-
member 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 com-
monly 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 2/

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
willing to give the necessary trouble and time; that it was no mat-
ter of praise to me, if I knew more than those who had not had a
similar advantage, but the deepest disgrace to me if I did not. I
have a distinct remembrance, that the suggestion 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 escap-
ing not only the corrupting influence 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
accomplishments 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 mus-
cular; 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 satis-
fied by walking, my amusements, which were mostly solitary, were
in general, of a quiet, if not a bookish turn, and gave little stimulus

28 JOHN STUART MILL

to any other kind even of mental activity than that w^hich was
already called forth by my studies: I consequently remained long,
and in a less degree have always remained, inexpert in anything
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 character in his whole manner
and into every action of life: and this, as much as his talents, con-
tributed 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 \now 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 admonitions 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 qualities he
himself, probably, had acquired without difficulty or special train-
ing, he seems to have supposed that I ought to acquire as easily. He
had not, I think, bestowed the same amount of thought and atten-
tion on this, as on most other branches of education, 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 influences,
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 circumstances by which, in this respect, my early
character may have been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few
leading 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 reflec-
tions 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 sub-
ject was reading Butler's Analogy. That work, of which he always
continued to speak with respect, kept him, as he said, for some con-
siderable 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 dif-
ficulties stand in the way of the belief, that a being of such a
character can have been the Maker of the universe. He considered
Butler'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 themselves. 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,

29

30 JOHN STUART MILL

concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known.
This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for dogmatic
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 Sabaean, or Manichaean, theory of
a Good and an Evil Principle, struggling 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 regarded 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, — belief 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 con-
stantly 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
wickedness 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 foreknowledge, and therefore with

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 31

the intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned
to horrible and everlasting torment. The time, I beUeve, is draw-
ing 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 extent 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 facil-
ity 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 recom-
mended 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 opposes the most obstinate re-
sistance 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 conception 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 consider as the
Christian creed. And thus morality continues a matter of blind
tradition, with no consistent principle, nor even any consistent feel-
ing, to guide it.

It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of
duty, to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions
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 nothing was known: that the question.

32 JOHN STUART MILL

"Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no ex-
perience 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 impenetrable 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 inter-
est in the Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against
priestly tyranny for liberty 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 educa-
tion had, however, incidentally one bad consequence deserving
notice. In giving me an opinion contrary to that of the world, my
father thought it necessary to give it as one which could not pru-
dently be avowed to the world. This lesson of keeping my thoughts
to myself, at that early age, was attended with some moral dis-
advantages; 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 alterna-
tive, and in both cases I avowed my disbelief and defended it. My
opponents were boys, considerably older than myself: one of them
I certainly staggered 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 moralities of this question;

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 33

and I think that few men of my father's intellect and public spirit,
holding with such intensity 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 in-
dividual. 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 mature 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 con-
nected with any bad qualities either of mind or heart. The world
would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its bright-
est ornaments — of those most distinguished even in popular estima-
tion 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 mis-
taken apprehension, lest by speaking out what would tend to weaken
existing beliefs, and by consequence (as they suppose) existing
restraints, they should do harm instead of good.

Of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are 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, 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 contrary to their ex-
pectations, 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

34 JOHN STUART MILL

made of many whose belief is far short of Deism. Though they may
think the proof incomplete that the universe is a work of design,
and though they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an Author and
Governor who is absolute in power as well as perfect in goodness,
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 sufEering 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 Memorabilia 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, per-
severance, 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-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 character, 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 35

Standard of morals was Epicurean, 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 element) 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. Ac-
cordingly, temperance, in the large sense intended by the Greek
philosophers — stopping short at the point of moderation in all in-
dulgences — was with him, as with them, almost the central point of
educational 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 con-
viction. He would sometimes 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 enjoy-
ments above all others, even in value as pleasures, independently
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, except those who were able to live over
again in the pleasures of 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 regarded as qualities solely of conduct — of acts and
omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and does not
frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience itself.

36 JOHN STUART MILL

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
believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But
though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his dis-
approbation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of
characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of in-
tention more highly, or was more incapable 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 feeling. All this is
merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very un-
usual, 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 those who do not care about opinions, will con-
found 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 opponent, 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
himself does them any ill office, nor connives at its being done by

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 37

Others, he is not intolerant: and the forbearance which flows from a
conscientious sense of the importance to mankind of the equal free-
dom 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 deficient 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 demonstra-
tion, starving the feelings themselves. 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, 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 prevent 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

38 JOHN STUAKT MILL

system o£ teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits
of appHcation; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race
of men who will be incapable of doing anything which is disagree-
able 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 confidence on the part of the child to those who
should be the unreservedly trusted advisers of after years, and per-
haps to seal up the fountains of frank and spontaneous communi-
cativeness in the child's nature, it is an evil for which a large abate-
ment 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 so fre-
quently to be met with then as since) inclined him to cultivate; and
his conversations with them I listened to with interest and in-
struction. My being an habitual inmate of my father's study made
me acquainted with the dearest of his friends, David Ricardo, who
by his 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 college 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 be-
tween 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 39

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 beauti-
ful 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 natural scenery, in the elementary form
of fondness for a "view." In the succeeding winter we moved into
a house very near Mr. Bentham's, which my father rented from
him, in Queen Square, Westminster. From 1814 to 1817 Mr. Ben-
tham 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 important circumstance in my education.
Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a
people than the large and free character of their habitations. The
middle age architecture, the baronial hall, and the spacious and lofty
rooms, of this line old place, so unlike the mean and cramped ex-
ternals 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 Gosport in the course of the tour already men-
tioned (he being then Superintendent of the Dockyard at Ports-
mouth), 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

40 JOHN STUART MILL

of mind different from that of his illustrious brother, was a man
of very considerable attainments and general powers, with a de-
cided genius for mechanical art. His wife, a daughter of the cele-
brated 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
household, 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
duration at Bagneres de Bigorre, a journey to Pau, Bayonne, and
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 Montpellier 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 mathematics under the private tuition of M. Lentheric, a pro-
fessor at the Lycee of Montpellier. But the greatest, perhaps, 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 4 1

real though I could not then estimate, nor even consciously feel it.
Having so little experience of English life, and the few people 1
knew being mostly such as had public objects, of a large and per-
sonally 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 demonstrations 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 manner of existence, and that
of a people hke 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 evaporat-
ing in profession, are yet kept alive in the nation at large by con-
stant 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 understood 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 Continent, 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 interest 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 develop 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
perceive till long afterwards; but I even then felt, though without

42 JOHN STUART MILL

stating it clearly to myself, the contrast between the frank sociability
and amiability of French personal intercourse, and the EngUsh
mode of existence in which everybody 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 indi-
vidual 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 any-
thing like this can be said.

In my way through Paris, both going and returning, I passed
some time in the house of M. Say, the eminent political 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 specimen 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 aflections, 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 Continental 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, 1821; 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 ex-
ercise on the manuscript, which Mr. Bentham practised on all his
own writings, making 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 Con-
dillac's Traite des Sensations, and the logical and metaphysical
volumes of his Cours d'Etudes; the first (notwithstanding the super-
ficial resemblance between Condillac'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 insignificant 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 commotion. 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 glory I was capable of conceiving, was that
of figuring, successful or unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an English
Convention.

43

44 JOHN STUART MILL

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 Antiquities, 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 Con-
tinent, 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, already 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 discussion 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 which 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 dog-
matism 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 be-
fore, that Bentham's principle 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 impression was strengthened by the manner in which Bentham
put into scientific form the application of the happiness principle

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 45

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 Offences, 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 eminence from which
I could survey a vast mental domain, and see stretching out into
the distance intellectual results beyond all computation. As I pro-
ceeded further, there seemed to be added to this intellectual clear-
ness, the most inspiring prospects of practical improvement in hu-
man affairs. To Bentham's general view of the construction of a
body of law I was not altogether a stranger, having read with atten-
tion that admirable compendium, my father's article on Jurispru-
dence: but I had read it with little profit, and scarcely any interest,
no doubt from its extremely general 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 concep-
tion 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 laid down the last volume of the
Traite, I had become a different 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 beliefs. It
gave unity to my conceptions of things. I now had opinions; a

46 JOHN STUART MILL

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 purpose 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 Legis-
lation 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 practica-
ble improvement were studiously moderate, deprecating and dis-
countenancing as reveries of vague enthusiasm 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 height-
ening the impression of mental power, and the vista of improve-
ment 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 was my private
reading: while, under my father's direction, 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, sub-
ject to my father's censorship, was of great service to me, by com-
pelling precision in conceiving and expressing psychological doc-
trines, 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 Observations 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, com-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 47

mended 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 wrriting 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 command the con-
centration 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 contrib-
uted materially to my development, I ought to mention a book
(written on the foundation of some of Bentham'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 usefulness of religious belief, in the most general
sense, apart from the peculiarities of any special Revelation; which,
of all the parts of the discussion concerning religion, 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 universal; 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 Provi-
dence, at least as full of contradictions, and perverting to the moral
sentiments, as any of the forms of Christianity, if only it is as
completely realized. Yet, very litde, with any claim to a philosophi-

48 JOHN STUART MILL

cal character, has been written by sceptics against the usefulness
of this form of behef. The volume bearing the name of Philip
Beauchamp had this for its special object. Having been show^n 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 pro-
duced the greatest 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 beheve, mentioned all the books which had any
considerable effect on my early mental development. From this
point I began to carry on my intellectual cultivation 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 how-
ever 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 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 logical, 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 im-
peachment for not marching out to fight the Lacedaemonians on
their invasion of Attica. After this I continued to write papers on

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 49

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, vwth the
instructed men with whom I came in contact: and the opportunities
of such contact naturally became more numerous. 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 sub-
jects of human opinion; but he rapidly seized on my father's best
ideas; and in the department 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 Evangeli-
cal; 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 inheritance, he had, though actively engaged in
the business of banking, devoted a great portion of time to philo-
sophic studies; and his intimacy with my father did much to decide
the character of the next stage in his mental progress. Him I often
visited, and my conversations with him on political, moral, and
philosophical subjects gave me, in addition to much valuable in-
struction, all the pleasure and benefit of sympathetic communion
with 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

50 JOHN STUART MILL

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, modified by his own very decided individuality of
character. He was a man of great intellectual powers which in con-
versation 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 bitterness, partly derived
from temperament, and partly from the general cast of his feelings
and reflections. The dissatisfaction 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 melancholy
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
proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed 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 completed, he had
generally worked himself into an illness, without having half fin-
ished what he undertook. From this mental 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 dis-
abling 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 5I

competent judges; and, like Coleridge, he might plead as a set-oflE
that he had been to many persons, through his conversation, a source
not only of much instruction but of great elevation of character.
On me his influence was most salutary. 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 highmindedness which
did not show itself so much, if the quality existed as much, in any
of the other persons with whom at that time I associated. My inter-
course with him was the more beneficial, owing to his being of a
different mental type from all other intellectual men whom I fre-
quented, 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 particular
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 as a man of intellect and a brilliant orator
and converser. The effect he produced on his Cambridge contempo-
raries deserves 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, which
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,
before 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 in-
tellectual 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

52 JOHN STUART MILL

associates 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 subse-
quently 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 o£ Charles Austin over me differed from that of the
persons I 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 impress 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 character, seemed capable of dominating the world.
Those who knew him, whether friendly to him or not, always antici-
pated that he would play a conspicuous part in public life. It is
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 ut-
tered his opinions with all the decision he could throw into them,
never so well pleased as when he astonished any one by their au-
dacity. Very unlike his brother, who made war against the nar-
rower interpretations 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, exaggerating
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 popu-
larly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of what are called
Benthamites or Utilitarians had its origin in paradoxes thrown out
by Charles Austin. It must be said, however, that his example was

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 53

followed, haud passibus (squis, by younger proselytes, and that to
outrer whatever was by anybody considered offensive in the doc-
trines and maxims of Benthamism, 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 made its
way into the language from this humble source. I did not invent
the word, but found it in one of Gait's novels, the "Annals of the
Parish," in which the Scotch clergyman, of whom the book is a
supposed autobiography, is represented as warning his parishioners
not to leave the Gospel and become utilitarians. With a boy's fond-
ness 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 opinions 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
amanuensis, 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 regards myself, over and
above the benefit of practice in oral discussion, was that of bringing

54 JOHN STUART MILL

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, after-
wards official assignee of the Bankruptcy Court, a thinker of origi-
nality and power on almost 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 Correspondence, immediately under him-
self. 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 begin-
ning 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 became 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 Examiner,
only two years before the time when the abolition of the East India

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 55

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 circumstances, 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 quali-
fied to accomplish anything in the higher departments of literature
or thought: not only on account of the uncertainty of this means of
livelihood, especially if the writer has a conscience, and will not
consent to serve any opinions except his own; but also because the
writings by which one can live, are not the writings which them-
selves 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 re-
pute, to be relied on for subsistence. Those who have to support
themselves 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 I have, through life,
found office duties an actual rest from the other mental occupations
which I have carried on simultaneously with them. They were suffi-
ciently 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 compo-
sition. 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,
particularly the bar, which had been, as I have already said, the
profession thought of for me. But I was not indifferent to exclu-
sion 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

56 JOHN STUART MILL

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: afterwards a part or the
whole was spent in tours, chiefly pedestrian, 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 Switzerland, 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 others,
that the opportunity which my official position gave me of learning
by personal observation the necessary conditions 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 public business transacted on paper, to take effect
on the other side of the globe, was of itself calculated to give much
practical knowledge of life. But the occupation accustomed me to
see and hear the difficulties of every course, and the means of obvi-
ating them, stated and discussed deliberately with a view to execu-
tion; it gave me opportunities of perceiving 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 obsta-
cles which would have started up whenever they came to be applied
to practice. But as a Secretary conducting 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 practically conversant

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 57

with the difficulties of moving bodies of men, the necessities of com-
promise, the art of sacrificing the non-essential to preserve the essen-
tial. I learnt how to obtain 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 condition 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 political economist. Colonel Torrens, and under the editor-
ship of an able man, Mr. Walter Coulson (who, after being an aman-
uensis 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 Lib-
eral poUtics. Colonel Torrens himself wrote much of the political
economy of his paper; and had at this time made an attack upon
some opinion of Ricardo 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 some-
thing considerably more ambitious. The prosecutions of Richard
Carlile and his wife and sister for publications hostile to Chris-
tianity, were then exciting much attention, and nowhere more than
among the people I frequented. 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 Wickliffe, going over
the whole length and breadth of the question of free publication of
all opinions on religion, and offered them to the Morning Chronicle.

58

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 59

Three of them were published in January and February, 1823; the
other two, containing things too outspoken for that journal, never
appeared at all. But a paper which I wrote soon after on the
same subject, 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 of tener let-
ters, 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 department the Chronicle was now rendering
signal service. After the death of Mr. Perry, the editorship and
management of the paper had devolved on Mr. John Black, long a
reporter on its establishment; a man of most extensive reading 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 himself
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 institutions and of their administration. It was the almost
universal creed of Englishmen, that the law of England, the judica-
ture 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 materials, 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 inces-
sant fire against 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 questions he became the
organ of opinions much in advance of any which had ever before

6o JOHN STUART MILL

found regular advocacy in the newspaper press. Black was a fre-
quent 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 influen-
tial 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 Edinburgh 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 determined to estab-
lish the Review at his own cost, and offered the editorship to my
father, who declined it as incompatible with his India House ap-
pointment. 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 previous an assiduous frequenter of Mr. Bentham, to
whom he 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 extensive ac-
quaintanceship and correspondence with Liberals of all countries,
which seemed to qualify him for being a powerful agent in spreading
Bentham's fame and doctrines through all quarters of the world.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 6l

My father had seen Httle of Bowring, but knew enough of him to
have formed a strong opinion, that he was a man of an entirely
different type from what my father considered suitable for conduct-
ing a political and philosophical Review: and he augured so ill of
the enterprise that he regretted it altogether, feeling persuaded not
only that Mr. Bentham would lose his money, but that discredit
would probably be brought upon Radical principles. He could not,
however, desert Mr. Bentham, and he consented 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 general 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 account 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 tendencies of periodical
literature in general; pointing out, that it cannot, like books, wait
for success, but must succeed immediately, or not at all, and is hence
almost certain to profess 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 position 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 nom-
ination of a majority of the 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 tend-
ency of an aristocratic body of this composition, to group itself into
two parties, one of them in possession of the executive, the other

62 JOnN STUART MILL

endeavouring to supplant 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 junction with
another project, of a purely literary 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
Longman, and that firm, though part proprietors of the Edinburgh,
were willing to be the publishers of the new journal. But when all
the arrangements had been made, and the prospectuses 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 Review, the first number made its appearance.

That number was an agreeable surprise to most of us. The av-
erage of the articles was of much better quality than had been
expected. The literary and artistic department had rested chiefly

* The continuation o£ 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 63

on Mr. Bingham, a barrister (subsequently a police magistrate),
who had been for some years a frequenter of Bentham, was a friend
of both the Austins, and had adopted with great ardour Mr. Ben-
tham'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 blemishes of it. When, however, in addition to our
generally favourable opinion of it, we learned that it had an extraor-
dinary large sale for a first number, and found that the appearance
of a Radical Review, with pretensions equal to those of the estab-
lished 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'Cul-
loch. Grote also was a contributor only once; all the time he could
spare being already taken up with his History of Greece. The
article he wrote was on his own subject, and was a very complete
exposure and castigation of Mitford. Bingham and Charles Austin
continued to write for some time; Fonblanque was a frequent con-
tributor 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 ofl, 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 dis-
cussions on special political topics, as corn laws, game laws, law of
libel. Occasional articles of merit came in from other acquaintances

64 JOHN STUART MILL

of my father's, and, in time, of mine; and some of Mr. Bowring's
writers turned out well. On the whole, however, the conduct of the
Review was never satisfactory to any of the persons strongly inter-
ested in its principles, with whom I came in contact. Hardly ever
did a number come out without 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 Review 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 unsatisfactory to those
whose opinions on all subjects it was supposed specially to repre-
sent.

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 abili-
ties, at that time, of most of those who could be reckoned among
them. It was a time, 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 re-
form. The renewed oppression of the Continent by the old reign-
ing families, the countenance apparently given by the English Gov-
ernment to the conspiracy against liberty called the Holy AUiance,
and the enormous weight of the national debt and taxation occa-
sioned 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 65

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 persevering 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, following up
the impulse given by the Bullion controversy, and followed up in
their turn by the expositions and comments of my father and M'Cul-
loch (whose writings in the Edinburgh Review during those years
were most valuable), had drawn general attention to the subject,
making at least partial 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 com-
pleted in 1846, though the last vestiges were only swept away by
Mr. Gladstone in i860. Mr. Peel, then Home Secretary, was enter-
ing cautiously into the untrodden and peculiarly Benthamic path
of Law Reform. At this period when Liberalism seemed to be be-
coming the tone of the time, when improvement of institutions was
preached from the highest places, and a complete change of the con-
stitution of parliament was loudly demanded in the lowest, it is not
strange that attention should have been roused by the regular ap-
pearance 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 profes-
sion 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

66 JOHN STUART MILL

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 headquarters 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 political 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 conversation, is simply
ridiculous. The influence which Bentham exercised was by his
writings. Through them he has produced, and is producing, effects
on the condition of mankind, 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 ascend-
ancy. He was sought for the vigour and instructiveness of his con-
versation, and did use it largely as an instrument 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
expressiveness 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 dif-
fusing his merely intellectual 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 exalted

AUTOBIOGRAPHY (i"]

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 approbation, 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 encouragement
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 particular 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 char-
acter 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 chan-
nels. 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
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 acquaintance and frequented his
house. Among these may be mentioned Strutt, afterwards Lord
Belper, and the present 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 under-
graduates, 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 ex-
ample. Black (as before 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 por-
tion of us, nor had any of us adopted implicitly all my father's opin-

68 JOHN STUART MILL

ions. For example, although his Essay on Government was regarded
probably by all of us as a masterpiece of political wisdom, our adhe-
sion by no means extended to the paragraph of it, in which he main-
tains that women may consistently with good government, be ex-
cluded 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 afSrm 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 restricted)
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 interest 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 any-
body, 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 "Philo-
sophic Radicalism." Their mode of thinking was not characterized
by Benthamism 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,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 69

as indicating the sole means of realizing that improvability by se-
curing full employment at high wages to the whole labouring pop-
ulation through a voluntary restriction of the increase of their num-
bers. 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 discus-
sion. So complete was my father's reliance on the influence of reason
over the minds of mankind, whenever 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 repre-
sented a class interest, it would aim at the general interest honestly,
and with adequate wisdom; since the people would be sufficiently
under the guidance of educated intelligence, to make in general a
good choice of persons to represent them, and having done so, to
leave to those whom they had chosen a liberal discretion. Accord-
ingly aristocratic rule, the government of the Few in any of its
shapes, being in his eyes the only thing which stood between man-
kind 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 principal 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 re-
publican forms — far more so than Bentham, to whom a king, in the
character of "corrupter-general," appeared necessarily very noxious.
Next to aristocracy, an established church, or corporation of priests,
as being by position the great depravers of religion, and interested
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

70 JOHN STUART MILL

points which he deemed important to human well being, while he
was supremely 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 foundation but in as-
ceticism 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 practical 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 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 circumstances, 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 doc-
trines none was more irnportant than this, or needs more to be in-
sisted 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 ex-
cesses 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 existence;
or, at least, the intellectual part alone, and no more than one side
of that. In attempting to penetrate inward, and give any indication

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 71

o£ what we were as human beings, I must be understood as speaking
only of myself, of whom alone I can speak from sufficient knowl-
edge; 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 Benthamite,
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 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. Am-
bition 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 man-
kind; though these qualities held their due place in my ethical stand-
ard. Nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm for ideal noble-
ness. 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 antago-
nistic 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, instead 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 desert, which he thought only due to actions,
he had a real impatience of attributing praise to feeling, or of any
but the most sparing reference to it, either in the estimation of per-

72 JOHN STUART MILL

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 doc-
trines 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 opprobrium.
Although we were generally in the right, as against those who
were opposed to us, the effect was that the cultivation 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 particular. 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 recognising the superior
excellence of unselfish benevolence and love of justice, we did not
expect the regeneration of mankind from any direct action on those
sentiments, but from the eflect of educated intellect, enlightening
the selfish feelings. Although this last is prodigiously important as a
means of improvement in the hands of those who are themselves
impelled by nobler principles of action, I do not believe that any
one of the survivors of the Benthamites or Utilitarians of that day,
now reUes 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 generally, 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 im-
pressive 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 Westminster Review, in which he offered
as an explanation of something which he disliked in Moore, that

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 73

"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 Re-
view. 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 disliked poetry, but that I was
theoretically indifferent to it. I disliked any sentiments in poetry
which I should have disliked in prose; and that included a great
deal. And I was wholly blind to its place in human culture, as a
means 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 imagination. 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 in-
spiring 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, delineated by one of the wisest
and noblest of men. The heroic virtue of these glorious representa-
tives of the opinions 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

74 JOHN STUART MILL

Utilitarians, and by the pronoun "we" or any other collective desig-
nation, I ceased to afficher sectarianism. My real inward sectarian-
ism I did not get rid of till later, and much more gradually.

About the end of 1824, or beginning of 1825, Mr. Bentham, having
lately got back his papers on Evidence from 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 ground-
work, 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 parenthetical 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 lacunce which he
had left; and at his instance I read, for this purpose, the most authori-
tative 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 ab-
stract 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 so 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 unsuit-
able to him or to the subject, however it might be so to me. My

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 75

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.

The time occupied in this editorial work was extremely well em-
ployed in respect to my own improvement. The "Rationale or Ju-
dicial Evidence" is one of the richest in matter of all Bentham's pro-
ductions. The theory of evidence being in itself one of the most
important of his subjects, and ramifying into most of the others, the
book contains, 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 practice of Westminster Hall. The direct knowl-
edge, 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. Everything which I wrote
subsequently to this editorial employment, was markedly superior
to anything that I had written before it. Bentham's later 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 simul-
taneously 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
surpassed: and of this earlier style there were many striking speci-
mens in the manuscripts on Evidence, all of which I endeavoured
to preserve. So long a course of this admirable writing had a con-
siderable 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, Voltaire, and Courier. Through these influences my writing

76 JOHN STUART MILL

lost the jejuneness of my early compositions; the bones and 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. Mar-
shall, 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 assist-
ance of Charles Austin, undertook the editorship. The work was
called "Parliamentary History and Review." Its sale was not suffi-
cient to keep it in existence, and it only lasted three years. It excited,
however, some attention among parliamentary 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 num-
ber 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 com-
merce, ^ propos of a celebrated diplomatic correspondence between
Canning and Gallatin. These writings were no longer mere repro-
ductions and applications of the doctrines 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 them, which there had not been in any of my previous per-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 77

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 superseded, and should remain
buried in the same oblivion with my contributions to the first dy-
nasty 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 pur-
pose 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 objection, 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 indi-
vidually arrived at; and to follow up every topic of collateral specu-
lation which the chapter or the conversation suggested, never leaving
it until we had untied every knot which we found. We repeatedly
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 morn-
ing's discussion. When we had finished in this way my father's
Elements, we went in the same manner through Ricardo's Principles
of Political 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

78 JOHN STUART MILL

of some topics of abstract Political Economy. The theory of Inter-
national Values which I afterwards published, 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,
especially Prescott and Roebuck, the one by his knowledge, the
■other by his dialectical acuteness. The theories of International Val-
ues 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 written, 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 con-
sider 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 extent of our new speculations) on both the points to
which I have adverted.

When we had enough of political economy, we took up the syllo-
^stic 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 Manuductio ad Logicam of the Jesuit Du Trieu.
After finishing this, we took up Whately's Logic, then first repub-
lished from the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, and finally the "Com-
putatio sive Logica" of Hobbes. These books, dealt with in our
manner, afforded a wide range for original metaphysical specula-
tion: and most of what has been done in the First Book of my
System of Logic, to rationalize and correct the principles and dis-
tinctions of the school logicians, and to improve the theory of the
Import of Propositions, had its origin in these discussions; Graham

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 79

and I originating most of the novelties, while Grote and others fur-
nished an excellent 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 Psychology,
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 published soon after, we reassembled for the purpose of
reading it. With this our exercises ended. I have always dated from
these conversations my own real inauguration as an original and
independent thinker. It was also through them that I acquired, 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 thinking 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 speaking,
filled a considerable place in my life during those years, and as they
had important effects on my development, something ought to be
said of them.

There was for some time in existence a society of Owenites, 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 some
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, themselves nothing loth, as they
naturally preferred a controversy with opponents to a tame discus-
sion among their own body. The question of population was pro-

80 JOHN STUART MILL

posed as the subject of debate: Charles Austin led the case on our
side with a brilliant speech, and the fight was kept up by adjourn-
ment through five or six weekly meetings before crowded auditories,
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 lutte corps i corps between Owenites and political
economists, whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate
opponents: but it was a perfectly friendly dispute. We who repre-
sented 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 population 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 before 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 out by M'Culloch,
the political economist, that a Society was wanted in London similar
to the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, in which Brougham, Hor-
ner, and others first cultivated public speaking. Our experience at
the Co-operative 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 8 1

men of influence, to whom he was then giving private lessons in
poUtical economy. Some of these entered warmly into the project,
particularly George Villiers, afterwards 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'
Tavern, 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 Debat-
ing Society. It is curiously illustrative of the tendencies of the time,
that our principal difficulty 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 (afterwards Bishop of Oxford),
Charles Poulett Thomson (afterwards Lord Sydenham), Edward
and Henry Lytton Bulwer, Fonblanque, and many others whom
I cannot now recollect, but who made themselves afterwards more
or less conspicuous 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 after-
wards became 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 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 fol-
lowed 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 knowl-
edge of the world. This unexpected breakdown altered my whole
relation to the project. I had not anticipated taking a prominent

82 JOHN STUART MILL

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 following,
1826-7, things began to mend. We had acquired two excellent Tory
speakers, Hayward and Shee (afterwards Sergeant Shee) : the Rad-
ical side was reinforced by Charles Duller, 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
ran gee 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 dif-
ferent grounds from Benthamism and vehemently opposed to it;
bringing into these discussions 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 belliger-
ent 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 argu-
ments and most philosophic principles which either side was able to
produce, thrown often into close and serre confutations of one an-
other. The practice was necessarily very useful to us, and eminently
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 impor-
tant, I greatly increased my power of effective writing; acquiring
not only an ear for smoothness and rhythm, but a practical sense for

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 83

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 prep-
aration for the morning conversations which were going on simul-
taneously, 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 editors. South-
ern, had resigned; and several of the writers, including 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 continued some new arrangement of its affairs had become
indispensable. My father and I had several conferences with Bow-
ring on the subject. We were willing to do our utmost for main-
taining 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 prepared to carry on the Review as
unpaid writers, either finding among ourselves an unpaid editor, or
sharing the editorship among us. But while this negotiation was pro-
ceeding with Bowring's apparent acquiescence, he was carrying on
another in a different quarter (with Colonel Perronet Thompson),
of which we received the first intimation in a letter from Bowring
as editor, informing us merely that an arrangement 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 arrangement 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

84 JOHN STUART MILL

up the Review under his management. 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 refused. And thus ended my connexion with the original
Westminster, 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 misrepresenta-
tions 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 reference
could be taken home), far exceeded the worth of the immediate
object; but I had at that time a half-formed intention 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 prepared for
it, can only be explained by turning some distance back.

From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and espe-
cially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I had
what might truly be called an object in Ufe: to be a reformer of the
world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified
with this object. The personal 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
personal 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 some-
thing 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 im-
provement 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 in the autumn of 1826.
I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable
to; unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasureable excitement; one of
those moods when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid

85

86 JOHN STUART MILL

or indiflferent; the state, I should think, in which converts to Meth-
odism usually are, when smitten by their first "conviction of sin."
In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly
to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that
all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking
forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would
this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-
consciousness 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 occu-
pations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few min-
utes' 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 oudet 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 feeUng,
or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and I became
persuaded, that my love of mankind, 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 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 have been most precious. The words

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 87

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
assistance. My father, to whom it would have been natural to me
to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last person to
whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Everything con-
vinced 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 under-
stand 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 intelligible. 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 beneficial to the great whole,
and of pain with all things hurtful 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 that
by these means, begun early, and applied unremittingly, intense
associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain, might be cre-
ated, and might produce desires and aversions capable of lasting
undiminished to the end of life. But there must always be some-
thing artificial and casual in associations thus produced. The pains

88 JOHN STUART MILL

and pleasures thus forcibly associated with things, are not connected
with them by any natural tie; and it is therefore, I thought, essential
to the durability 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 commenced. For
I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received
with incredulity — that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear
away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is
cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural com-
plements and correctives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued)
is that it tends to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of
prejudice; that it enables us mentally to separate ideas which have
only casually clung together: and no associations whatever could
ultimately resist this dissolving force, were it not that we owe to
analysis our clearest knowledge of the permanent sequences in
nature; the real connexions between Things, not dependent on our
will and feelings; natural laws, by virtue of which, in many cases,
one thing is inseparable from another in fact; which laws, in pro-
portion as they are clearly perceived and imaginatively realized,
cause our ideas of things which are always joined together in Na-
ture, 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 altogether 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 pleas-
ures, which are the effects of association, that is, according to the
theory I held, all except the purely physical and organic; of the
entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a
stronger conviction than I had. These were the 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 object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happi-
ness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 89

would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeHng. My
education, I thought, had failed to create these feelings in sufficient
strength to resist the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole
course of my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and pre-
mature 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 importance had
grown into a passion: and little as it was which I had attained, yet
having been attained too early, like all pleasures enjoyed too soon,
it had made me blase 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 associations 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 only year of which I remember next to nothing. Two lines
of Coleridge, in whom alone of all writers I have found a true de-
scription 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

90 JOHN STUART MILL

it, and I doubt not that many others have passed through a similar
state; but the idiosyncrasies of my education had given to the general
phenomenon a special character, vi^hich made it seem the natural
effect of causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove. I
frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I vs'as bound to go on living,
when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to
myself, 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 "Memoires," 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 the scene
and its feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears. From this
moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression of the thought
that all feeling was dead within me, was gone. I was no longer hope-
less: 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 inci-
dents of life could again give me some pleasure; that I could again
find enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sun-
shine and sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and that
there was, once more, excitement, 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 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-consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never,
indeed, wavered in the conviction 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 9 1

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 princi-
pal 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 external to it, as the
purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-
interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortu-
nately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you
breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either
forestalling 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 im-
portance to the ordering of outward circumstances, and the training
of the human being for speculation and for action.

I had now learnt by experience that the passive susceptibilities,
needed to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, 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
condiuon 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

92 JOHN STUART MILL

cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed. And my
thoughts and inclinations turned in an increasing 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 instruments 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 childhood 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 susceptible as ever. The good, however,
was much impaired by the thought, that the pleasure of music (as
is quite true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades
with 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 ex-
haustibility 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 beauti-
ful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been already dis-
covered, 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 philoso-
phers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out. It was,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 93

however, connected with the best feature in my character, and the
only good point to be found in my very unromantic 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 continue; 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-
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 had worn out all pleasures, and who seemed
to think that life, to 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 prob-
ably have found as little, had I read it at this time. But the miscel-
laneous poems, in the two-volume edition of 1815 (to which little of

94 JOHN STUART MILL

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 junc-
ture.

In the first place, these poems addressed themselves powerfully
to one of the strongest of my pleasurable susceptibilities, 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 ex-
cursion, were my ideal of natural beauty. But Wordsworth would
never have had any great effect on me, if he had merely placed be-
fore me beautiful pictures of natural scenery. Scott does this still
better than Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape does it
more effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems
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 could be shared in by all human beings; which had
no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made
richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of
mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the peren-
nial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have
been removed. And I felt myself at once better and happier as I
came under their influence. 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, permanent
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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 95

the famous Ode, falsely called Platonic, "Intimations of Immor-
tality:" 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 Words-
worth less according 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 cultivation Wordsworth is
much more fitted to give, than poets who 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 separa-
tion from those of my habitual companions who had not undergone
a similar change. The person with whom at that time I was most
in the habit of 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, like 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, pro-
pounding and illustrating by long recitations our respective 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

g6 JOHN STUART MILL

continued for some years longer to be companions. In the beginning,
our chief divergence related to the cultivation of the feelings. Roe-
buck 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 sup-
posed to be, void of feeling, he had very quick and strong sensi-
bilities. But, like most Englishmen who have feelings, he found
his feelings stand very much in his way. He was much more sus-
ceptible to the painful sympathies than to the pleasurable, and look-
ing for his happiness elsewhere, 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 Englishman's
scheme of life. In most other countries the paramount importance
of the sympathies as a constituent of individual happiness Is an
axiom, taken for granted rather than needing any formal statement;
but most English thinkers almost seem to regard them as necessary
evils, required for keeping men's actions benevolent and compas-
sionate. 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 relations. 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 97

occasion to do so, as if I had been incapable of perceiving any distinc-
tion between beauty and ugliness.

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 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 important and unobvious truths, served him
not for putting something better into the place of the worthless heap
of received opinions on the great subjects of thought, but for prov-
ing to his own mind that the Church of England had known every-
thing 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 sensitiveness of
temperament, which has so often driven highly gifted men into
Romanism from the need of a firmer support than they can find

98 JOHN STUART MILL

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 commonly regarded as orthodox, and by his noble origina-
tion 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 disciple 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 love-
able of men. His frank, cordial, affectionate, and expansive char-
acter; a love of truth alike conspicuous in the highest things and
the humblest; a generous and ardent nature which 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 combina-
tion 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 information), 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 feelings
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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 99

profound thinker, his openness of mind, and the moral courage in
which he greatly surpassed Maurice, made him outgrow the do-
minion 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 progres-
sive: 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 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 vras 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 defending the
theory of government laid down in Bentham's and my father's
writings, and the acquaintance I had obtained 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, re-
mained 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

100 JOHN STUART MILL

against the Benthamic theory o£ being a theory, of proceeding
i priori by way o£ general reasoning, instead of Baconian experiment,
showed complete ignorance of Bacon's principles, and of the neces-
sary conditions of experimental 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 treating
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), 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 consequences 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 interest 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 argument 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
fundamentally erroneous in my father's conception of philosophical
method, as applicable to politics, than I had hitherto supposed 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY lOI

thoughts from being lost, I pushed on into the other parts of the
subject, to try whether I could do anything further towards
clearing up the theory of logic generally. I grappled at once with
the problem of Induction, postponing that of Reasoning, on the
ground that it is necessary to obtain premises before we can
reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly a process for find-
ing 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 generalization from
particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, and then
reason downward from those separate tendencies, to the effect of the
same causes when combined. 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 investigating. 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 recol-
lected that something not unlike this was pointed out as one of the
distinctions between chemical and mechanical phenomena, in the
introduction to that favourite of my boyhood, Thompson's System
of Chemistry. This distinction at once made my mind clear as to
what was perplexing me in respect to the philosophy of politics. I
now saw, that a science is either deductive or experimental, accord-
ing as, in the province it deals with, the effects of causes when con-
joined, 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
politics to the purely experimental method of chemistry; while the

102 JOHN STUART MILL

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 deductive branches of natural
philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which, not
being a science of causation 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.

If I am asked, what system of political philosophy I substituted 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 ofifice was to supply, not a set of model institutions, but
principles from which the institutions suitable to any given circum-
stances might be deduced. The influences of European, that is to
say, Continental, thought, and especially those of the reaction of
the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, were now streaming
in upon me. They came from various quarters; 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 intercourse; 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 litera-
ture 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 particular: 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 ques-
tions 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 always either in the
hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power
in society, and that what this power is, does not depend on institu-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IO3

tions, but institutions on it: that any general theory of philosophy
of politics supposes a previous theory of human progress, and
that this is the same thing with a philosophy of history. These
opinions, true in the main, were held in an exaggerated and violent
manner by the thinker with whom I was now most accustomed to
compare notes, and who, as usual with a reaction, 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 under-
valued that great century, 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 always
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 device, "many-sidedness," was one which I would most
willingly, at this period, have taken for mine.

The writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of
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 connected 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 critical periods. During the organic periods
(they said) mankind accept with firm conviction some positive
creed, claiming 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

104 JOHN STUART MILL

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 o£ 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 in-
augurated by the triumph of a yet more advanced creed. These
ideas, I knew, were not peculiar to the St. Simonians; on the con-
trary, 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 distinguish-
ing characteristics of a critical period so powerfully set forth; for I
was not then acquainted with Fichte's Lectures on "The Character-
istics of the Present Age." In Carlyle, indeed, I found bitter de-
nunciations 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 belief. But all that was true
in these denunciations, I thought that I found more calmly and
philosophically stated by the St. Simonians. Among their publica-
tions, 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 illus-
trated, 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 metaphysical; 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 political. But the chief benefit which I derived
at this time from the trains of thought suggested by the St. Simon-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IO5

ians 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 for-
ward, through the present age of loud disputes but generally weak
convictions, to a future 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 engraven on the feelings
by early education and general unanimity 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 con-
tinued 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 considerable interval in. England. I was intro-
duced 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 inheritance as indefeasible facts, and freedom
of production and exchange as the dernier mot of social improve-
ment. 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 ac-
cording 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 proclamation of such an ideal of

I06 JOHN STUART MILL

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 standard. I honoured them most of all for what they
have been most cried down for — the boldness and freedom from
prejudice with which they treated the subject of family, the most
important of any, and needing more fundamental alterations than
remain to be made in any other great social 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 generally known which lay in my early opinions, and
in no essential 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 confusion of ideas
which had perverted their effect. For example, 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 cir-
cumstances: 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY lOJ

doctrine of resistance to governments, that it might never be for-
gotten by kings, nor remembered 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
ovi^n. I pondered 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 opera-
tive force in the depressing and paralysing influence which I had
experienced: I saw that though our character is formed by circum-
stances, 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 influencing some of our
circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of will-
ing. All this was entirely consistent with the doctrine of circum-
stances, 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 altogether
the misleading word Necessity. The theory, which I now for the
first time rightly apprehended, ceased altogether to be discouraging,
and besides the relief to my spirits, I no longer suffered under the
burden, so heavy to one who aims at being a reformer in opinions,
of thinking one doctrine true, and the contrary doctrine morally
beneficial. 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 doctrine 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, think-
ing that it ought to be decided mainly by the consideration, what
great improvement in life and culture stands next in order for the
people concerned, as the condition of their further progress, and

I08 JOHN STUART MILL

what institutions are most likely to promote that; nevertheless, this
change in the premises of my political 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
aristocratic classes, the noble and the rich, in the English constitu-
tion, an evil worth any struggle to get rid of; not on account of taxes,
or any such comparatively small inconvenience, but as the great
demoralizing agency in the country. Demoralizing, first, because
it made the conduct of the Government an example of gross public
immorality, through the predominance of private over public in-
terests 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 attaching itself prin-
cipally to that which, in the existing state of society, is the chief pass-
port 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 improvement
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 democracy 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.

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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IO9

existence. I went at once to Paris, was introduced 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 con-
tributed 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 politics, commercial
and financial legislation, and any miscellaneous subjects in which
I felt interested, and which were suitable to the paper, including
occasional reviews of books. Mere newspaper articles on the oc-
currences or questions of the moment, gave no opportunity for the
development of any general mode of thought; but I attempted, in
the beginning 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, when
great political changes were impending, and engrossing 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 secluded part of Scotland, read them in

no JOHN STUART MILL

his solitude, and saying 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 immediate
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 meta-
physics, 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, utilitarianism, 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
instance, 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 sufSciently 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 Resartus, 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 fundamental
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 destined

AUTOBIOGRAPHY III

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 com-
petent 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 interpreted 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 Juris-
prudence in the London University (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 Ufe. His personal disposition was much softened; he was less
miUtant and polemic; his tastes had begun to turn themselves
towards the poetic and contemplative. He attached much less im-
portance than formerly to outward changes; unless accompanied by
a better cultivation of the inward nature. He had a strong distaste
for the general meanness of English life, the absence of enlarged
thoughts and unselfish 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 EngUsh representative government: and

112 JOHN STUART MILL

he held, with the French Economistes, that the real security for
good government 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 govern-
ment, 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 ac-
quired 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 per-
manently 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 pro-
fessed great disrespect 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 "extraor-
dinary pliability of human nature" (a phrase which I have some-
where borrowed from him) ; nor did he think it possible to set any
positive bounds to the moral capabilities which might unfold them-
selves 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 explana-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY II3

tion 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 de-
serter 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 litde. He knew that the habit of think-
ing for myself, which his mode of education had fostered, some-
times led me to opinions different from his, and he perceived from
time to time that I did not always tell him how different. I expected
no good, but only pain to both of us, from discussing 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 disingenuousness 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
publication; 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 my speculations
on this last subject, and puzzled myself, like others before me, with
the great paradox of the discovery of new truths by general reason-
ing. 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

114 JOHN STUART MILL

hanging over the subject. At last, when reading a second or third
time the chapters on Reasoning in the second volume 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 o£ 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 in-
creased 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 of 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 diinculties 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 continued to read any book which seemed to promise light on
the subject, and appropriated, as well as I could, the results; 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 Maga-
zine, 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 reformers, with several of whom I was ac-
quainted. 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 1 5

opinions, asserting as firmly as I should have done at any time, the
doctrine that all endowments are national property, which the
government may and ought to control; but not, as I should once
have done, condemning endowments in themselves, and proposing
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 discernment 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 attempted to do, or hope to effect here-
after, 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 power-
ful, 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 type of feminine
genius. To her outer circle she was a beauty and a wit, vsdth an air
of natural distinction, felt by all who approached her: to the inner,

116

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 1 7

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 intel-
lectual 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 capac-
ities 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 fortune to be admitted, and I soon perceived
that she possessed in combination, the quaUties which in all other
persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find
singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of super-
stition (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 feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential
nature. In general spiritual characteristics, as well as in tempera-
ment 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 com-
pared with what she ultimately became. Alike in the highest re-
gions 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, with
her gifts of feeling and imagination, have fitted her to be a consum-
mate 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 prac-

Il8 JOHN STUART MILL

tical life, would, in the times when such a carriere was open to
women, have made her eminent among the rulers of mankind. Her
intellectual 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 feelings 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 charac-
teristics were such as naturally accompany 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 character,
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 con-
ventions either good or bad, violations which whether in themselves
right or wrong, are capable of being committed by persons in every
other respect 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 influ-
ence on my development; though the effect was only gradual, and
many years elapsed before her mental progress and mine went for-
ward in the complete companionship they at last attained. The ben-
efit 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
intuition of a character of strong feeling, there was doubtless 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 con-
verted everything into knowledge, doubtless drew from me, as it did
from other soiu'ces, many of its materials. What I owe, even

AUTOBIOGRAPHY II9

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 dis-
satisfied 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 ele-
ments 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 intermediate
region, that of theory, on moral and political science: respecting
the conclusions of which, in any of the forms in which I have re-
ceived or originated them, whether as political economy, analytic
psychology, logic, philosophy 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 iny thinking faculties to
whatever conclusions might result from it, has put me on my guard
against holding or announcing these conclusions 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 wel-
come and eager to seek, even on the questions on which I have
most meditated, any prospect of clearer perceptions and better evi-
dence. I have often received praise, which in my own right I only
partially deserve, for the greater practicality which is supposed to
be found in my writings, compared with those of most thinkers
who have been equally addicted to large generalizations. The writ-
ings in which this quality has been observed, were not the work of
one mind, but of the fusion of two, one of them as pre-eminently
practical in its judgments 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 de-
velopment: and even after it became, I may truly say, the presiding
principle of my mental progress, it did not alter the path, but only

120 JOHN STUART MILL

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 com-
plete. My new tendencies had to be confirmed in some respects,
moderated in others: but the only substantial changes of opinion
that were yet to come, related to politics, and consisted, on one hand,
in a 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
"Considerations on Representative Government."

This last change, which took place very gradually, dates its com-
mencement from my reading, or rather study, of M. de Tocque-
ville's "Democracy in America," which fell into my hands immedi-
ately after its first appearance. In that remarkable work, the excel-
lences 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 numerical
majority, were brought into equally strong light, and subjected to a
masterly analysis, not as reasons for resisting what the author con-
sidered 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 miti-
gated. I was now well prepared for speculations of this character,
and from this time onward my own thoughts moved more and more
in the same channel, though the consequent 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 Rep-
resentative Government."

A collateral subject on which also I derived great benefit from the
study of Tocqueville, was the fundamental question of centraliza-
tion. The powerful philosophic analysis which he applied to Amer-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 121

ican and to French experience, led him to attach the utmost impor-
tance to the performance of as much of the collective business of
society, as can safely be so performed, by the people themselves,
without any intervention 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 citizen, 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 necessary protection against its degenerating into the only
despotism of which, in the modern world, there is real danger — the
absolute rule of the head of the executive over a congregation of
isolated individuals, all equals but all slaves. There was, indeed,
no immediate peril from this source on the British side of the chan-
nel, where nine-tenths of the internal business which elsewhere
devolves on the government, was transacted by agencies independent
of it; where centralization was, and is, the subject not only of na-
tional disapprobation, but of unreasoning prejudice; where jealousy
of government interference was a blind feeling preventing or resist-
ing even the most beneficial exertion of legislative authority to cor-
rect the abuses of what pretends to be local self-government, but is,
too often, selfish mismanagement of local interests, by a jobbing
and borne local oligarchy. But the more certain the pubhc were
to go wrong on the side opposed to centralization, the greater danger
was there lest philosophic reformers should fall into the contrary
error, and overlook the mischiefs of which they had been spared
the painful experience. I was myself, at this very time, actively en-
gaged in defending important measures, such as the great Poor
Law Reform of 1834, against an irrational clamour grounded on
the anti-centralization 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 opposite to
that, which, being the one prevalent in my owrt 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

122 JOHN STUART MILL

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 Re-
formed Parliament, which included several of the most notable of
my Radical friends and acquaintances — Grote, Roebuck, Buller, Sir
William Molesworth, John and Edward 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 oppor-
tunity, 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 discourage-
ment. When measures were proposed, flagrantly at variance with
their principles, such as the Irish Coercion Bill, or the Canada Co-
ercion 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 excep-
tion 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
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 indi-
vidual, 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 legislative improvements which the public
really called for having been rapidly effected, power gravitated back

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I23

in its natural direction, to those who were for keeping things as
they were; when the pubUc 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 feeling 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 tal-
ents, who could have put heart into the many younger or less dis-
tinguished 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 im-
pelling 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 exertion for their opinions, I laboured from this time
till 1839, both by personal influence with some of them, and by writ-
ings, 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 valuable service, but were unhap-
pily 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 him-
self 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 ^ ^^^'
tinned working in the Examiner with Fonblanque, who at that
time was zealous in keeping up the fight for Radicalism against the
Whig ministry. During the session of 1834 I wrote comments on

124 JOHN STUART MILL

passing events, o£ the nature of newspaper articles (under the title
of "Notes on the Newspapers"), in the Monthly Repository, a mag-
azine conducted by Mr. Fox, well known as a preacher and poHtical
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 "Dissertations." Altogether, the writings
(independently of those in newspapers) which I pubUshed from
1832 to 1834, amount to a large volume. This, however, includes
abstracts of several 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 ad-
vance 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 acknowledgment),
as an appendix. In this, along with the favourable, a part also of
the unfavourable side of my estimation of Bentham's doctrines, con-
sidered as a complete 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 occasionally 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 philosophic 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 contributions 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 laborious student, and a precise and meta-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I25

physical thinker, capable of aiding the cause by his pen as well as
by his purse, spontaneously 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 proprietor. 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 in-
evitable associates. The Review was established to be the representa-
tive 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
expressed in them, made the Review at first derive its tone and col-
ouring from him much more than from any of the other writers. I
could not exercise editorial control over his articles, and I was some-
times obliged to sacrifice to him portions of my own. The old West-
minster Review doctrines, 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 members 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 editor 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 eminence 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

126 JOHN STUART MILL

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 indignation 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 sub-
jects, 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 differ from him; that he did injustice to his own opinions
by the unconscious exaggerations of an intellect emphatically po-
lemical; and that when thinking without an adversary in view, he
was willing to make room for a great portion of the truths he
seemed to deny. 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 Tocque-
ville's "Democracy in America." It is true, he said and thought
much more about what Tocqueville said in favour of democracy,
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 in-
ductive and analytical, instead of purely ratiocinative — gave me great
encouragement. He also approved of an article which I published
in the first number following the junction of the two reviews, the

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 27

essay reprinted in the "Dissertations," under the title "Civilization;"
into which I threw many of my new opinions, and criticised rather
emphatically the mental and moral tendencies of the time, on
grounds and in a manner which I certainly had not learnt from
him.

All speculation, however, on the possible future developments of
my father's opinions, and on the probabilities of permanent co-
operation between him and me in the promulgation of our thoughts,
was doomed to be cut short. During the whole of 1835 his health
had been declining: his symptoms 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 convictions on the subject of religion. His
principal satisfaction, 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 honourable 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 him-
self 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 accomplished for mankind such splendid services as
Bentham's. He did not revolutionize, or rather create, one of the

128 JOHN STUART MILL

great departments of human thought. But, leaving out of the
reckoning all that portion of his labours in which he benefited 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 stages 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 re-
action against the eighteenth century, which was the great char-
acteristic 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 writings 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 minor 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 "Elements
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 superseded, 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 29

it might be possible for me to accomplish without him: and the
Review was the instrument on which I built my chief hopes of
establishing a useful influence 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 henceforth 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 associates.
Carlyle, consequently, became from this time a frequent writer in
the Review; Sterling, soon after, an occasional one; and though each
individual article continued to 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 Scotch-
man of the name of Robertson, who had sonie abiUty and informa-
tion, 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 beginning 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 im-
prudently for my own pecuniary interest, and very much from
reliance on Robertson's devices, determined to continue 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 my-
self 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 Edinburgh and
Quarterly Reviews; and this could not be done from the proceeds
of the sale.

130 JOHN STUART MILL

In the same year, 1837, and in the midst of these occupations, I
resumed the Logic. I had not touched my pen on the subject for
five years, having been stopped and brought to a hah on the thresh-
old of Induction. I had gradually discovered that what was mainly
wanting, to overcome the difficulties 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 generalities 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 considerable approximation to what I wanted. Much,
if not most, of the philosophy of the work appeared open to objec-
tion; 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 sub-
sequent labour. I had now obtained what I had been waiting for.
Under the impulse given me by the thoughts excited by Dr. Whe-
well, I read again Sir J. Herschel's 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. I 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 3 1

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 before I knew
of Comte's book; and it is perhaps well that I came to it by a
diflEerent road from his, since the consequence 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 ratiocination. Comte is always precise and profound
on the method of investigation, but he does not even attempt any
exact definition of the conditions of proof: and his writings show
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 suc-
cessively made their appearance, 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, con-
taining 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 Statistics: a process differing from the more common form of
the deductive method in this — that instead of arriving at its con-
clusions by general reasoning, and verifying them by specific ex-
perience (as is the natural order in the deductive branches of
physical science), it obtains its generalizations by a collation of spe-
cific 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.

132 JOHN STUART MILL

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 corre-
spondents, 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 dis-
continuance of intercourse, if the differences between us had been
on matters 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 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 Europe 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 which philosophers were
to be organized into a kind of corporate hierarchy, invested with
almost the same spiritual supremacy (though without any secular
power) once possessed by the Catholic Church; when I found him
relying on this spiritual authority as the only security for good
government, the sole bulwark against practical oppression, and ex-
pecting 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I33

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 community, as well in the
things which regard only himself, as in those which concern the
interests of others. It is but just to say that this work is a con-
siderable 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 maintained over society without the aid of religious belief; for
Comte's work recognizes no religion except that of Humanity, 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 monu-
mental warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what happens
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 authorship, or to thinking with
authorship in view. The articles from the London and Westminster
Review which are reprinted in the "Dissertations," are scarcely a
fourth part of those I wrote. In the conduct of the Review I had
two principal 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 con-
tempt 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 complete than Bentham's, while recognizing and in-

134 JOHN STUART MILL

corporating 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 themselves, what
I thought by using the proper means they might become — a power-
ful party capable of taking the government 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 be-
cause the time was unpropitious, the Reform fervour being in its
period of ebb, 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 ex-
hortations I addressed to them found no response. One occasion did
present itself when there seemed to be room for a bold and success-
ful stroke for Radicalism. Lord Durham had left the Ministry, by
reason, as was thought, of their not being sufficiently Liberal; he
afterwards 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 Radical 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 opportunity. 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I35

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 Dur-
ham, soon after, with polite exaggeration, 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 in motion
at the top of an eminence, shall roll down on one side or on the
other. All hopes connected with Lord Durham as a politician soon
vanished; but with regard to Canadian, 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-
government, 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 im-
portant communities. And I may say that in successfully upholding
the reputation of Lord Durham and his advisers at the most im-
portant 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 initiative. I be-
lieve that the early success and reputation of Carlyle's French Revo-
lution, were considerably accelerated by what I wrote about it in
the Review. Immediately on its publication, and before the com-
monplace 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 execution: 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 effect. But, after

136 JOHN STUART MILL

the complete failure of my hopes of putting a new life into Radical
politics JDy 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 deserved it.

After the last hope of the formation of a Radical party had dis-
appeared, it was time for me to stop the heavy expenditure 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 Cole-
ridge. 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 phi-
losophy, 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 improvement. 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 prom-
inence 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 Ben-
tham 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I37

was writing for Radicals and Liberals, and it was my business to
dwell most on that, in writers of a different school, from the knowl-
edge of which, they might derive most improvement.

The number of the Review which contained the paper on Cole-
ridge, was the last which was published during my proprietorship.
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 among contributors only the net proceeds of the Review,
giving his own labour as vi^riter and editor gratuitously. 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 Review, but continued to send it occasional contributions, not,
however, exclusively; for the greater circulation of the Edinburgh
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 Hfe will come
into a very small compass; for I have no further mental
changes to tell of, but only, as I hope, a continued mental
progress; which does not admit of a consecutive history, and the re-
sults 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 disconnecting
myself from the Review, was to finish the Logic. In July and
August, 1838, 1 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 corollaries 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 Fallacies, 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 commencement. 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 suitable to my purpose as anything
which I could write in lieu of them. I have found great advantages
in this system of 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 resulting from

138

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I39

prolonged thought. In my own case, moreover, I have found that
the patience necessary for a careful elaboration 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 manner, however imperfect, been got
upon paper. The only thing which I am careful, in the first draft,
to make as perfect 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 expounded
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 Philosophy of
the Inductive Sciences made its appearance; a circumstance fortu-
nate 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 con-
fronting 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 publication 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 ex-
tremely limited. Archbishop Whately had, indeed, rehabilitated the
name of Logic, and the study of the forms, rules, and fallacies 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 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

140 JOHN STUART MILL

of what I thought a better philosophy. What hopes I had of excit-
ing any immediate attention, were mainly grounded on the po-
lemical propensities of Dr. Whewell; who, I thought, from observa-
tion 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
German, or ^ 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. Com-
bined 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 one. The notion that truths external to the mind may be
known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation
and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great intel-
lectual 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I4I

all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an
instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices. And
the chief strength of this false philosophy in morals, politics, and
religion, lies in the appeal vi^hich 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 explanation, from experience and association, of that peculiar
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, prejudice 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 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 discussion on matters
on which opinions differ, being considered ill-bred, and the national
deficiency in liveliness and sociability having prevented the culti-
vation 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

142 JOHN STUART MILL

of being aided to climb a litde 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 objects 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 in-
tervals, as to be almost considered as retiring from it altogether.
Those persons of any mental superiority who do otherwise, are,
almost without exception, greatly deteriorated 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 principles 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 associates
of at least their equals, and, as far as possible, their superiors, in
knowledge, intellect, and elevation of sentiment. Moreover, if the
character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few cardinal
points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on
these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of any-
thing 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 voluntarily
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 husband, Mr. Taylor. I visited her equally
in both places; and was greatly indebted to the strength of char-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 43

acter which enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable
to be put on the frequency of my visits to her while living generally
apart from Mr. Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling 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 affec-
tion and confidential intimacy only. For though we did not con-
sider the ordinances of society binding on a subject so entirely
personal, we did feel bound that our conduct should be such as in
no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor therefore 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 reaction, certainly become much more indulgent to the common
opinions of society and the world, and more wilhng 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 inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abey-
ance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now
look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends in
any way to regenerate society. But in addition to this, our opinions
were far more heretical than mine had been in the days of my
most extreme Benthamism. In those days I had seen Uttle further
than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of
fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property,
as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the
dernier mot of legislation : and I looked no further than to mitigat-
ing 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 complete 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 edu-

144 JOHN STUART MILL

cation, leading 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 im-
provement 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 acknowledged
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 the globe, and an equal participation of all in
the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to
suppose 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 become practicable.
We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either
possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take
place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labour-
ing 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,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I45

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 otherwise, 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 sacrifices. 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 in-
stitutions 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 affairs, while no
substitute for them has been or can be provided: 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 ex-
periments 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 culti-
vating 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 dif-
ference 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

146 JOHN STUART MILL

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, and was ready
for the press before the end of 1847. In 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 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 im-
provement 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 (however 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 maintaining 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
faa, the depopulation of Ireland, commenced by famine, and con-
tinued 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,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I47

an edition of a thousand copies was sold in less than a year. Another
similar edition was published in the spring of 1849; and a 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 Econ-
omy 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 conclusions, 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 themselves 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 sentimental guise, have been very successful in gaining belief
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 different applications which it suggests, others, of course must
judge.

For a considerable time after this, I pubhshed no work of magni-
tude; though I still occasionally wrote in periodicals, and my corre-
spondence (much of it with persons quite unknown to me), on
subjects of public interest, swelled to a considerable bulk. During
these years I wrote or commenced 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

148 JOHN STUART MILL

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 antici-
pated, 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 of deterioration which had been at work in the
meanwhile, had not more than counterbalanced the tendencies to
improvement. 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 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 feehng, or being in any way better forti-
fied 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 con-
stitution of their modes of thought. The old opinions in religion,
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
convictions, paralysed intellects, and growing laxity of principle,
which cannot terminate until a renovation has been effected in the
basis of their beUef 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 thinking or writing which does
not tend to promote such a renovation, is of very little value beyond

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 49

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 gradual mental emanci-
pation 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, 1851, to the lady whose in-
comparable worth had made her friendship the greatest source to
me both of happiness and of improvement 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
practicable, 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, feeHng, 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 com-
pletely in common; when all subjects of intellectual or moral in-
terest are discussed between them in daily Hfe, and probed to much
greater depths than are usually or conveniently sounded in writings
intended for general readers; when they set out from the same
'Written about 1861.

150 JOHN STUART MILL

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
writings 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 con-
stantly 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 productions — those
which have been most fruitful of important results, and have con-
tributed most to the success and reputation 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 theoretic principles of polidcal 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 con-
viction 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 Cole-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I5I

ridgians, 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 transcendental 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 phi-
losophy. Thus prepared it will easily be believed that when I came
into close intellectual communion with a person of the most eminent
faculues, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in thought,
continually struck out 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 assimilation
of those truths, and the most valuable part of my intellectual 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 Political Economy." The "System of Logic" owed

2 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 sus-
pect. It might be supposed, for instance, that my strong convictions on the com-
plete 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. I 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 much protection as those of men, and were
quite as litUe 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 doubdess have
held my present opinions, I should have had a very insufficient perception of the
mode in which the consequences of the inferior position of women intertwine them-
selves with all the evils of existing society and with all the difficulties of human im-
provement. 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.

152 JOHN STUART MILL

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 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 general part of the chapter,
the statement and discussion of the two opposite theories respecting
the proper condition of the labouring classes, was wholly an ex-
position 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 expositions 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 resigna-
tion of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being defeated
or modified by human effort; ascribing the same necessity to things

'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 additional 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 part which had then
been published of his "Systeme de Philosophie 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 Hypotheses 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
him any radical improvement in my conception of the application of logical method.
This improvement I have stated and characterized in a former part of the present
Memoir.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I53

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 labourers, 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 con-
ditions which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating
those conditions as final. The economic generalizations which
depend, not on necessities of nature but on those combined with the
existing arrangements of society, it deals with only as provisional,
and as hable 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 contributed 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 applicable. Those parts of my writings,
and especially of the Political Economy, which contemplate possi-
bilities 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

154 JOHN STUART MILL

obstacles, repressed in me all tendencies that were really visionary.
Her mind invested all ideas in a concrete shape, and formed to itself
a conception of how they would actually work : and her knowledge
of the existing feelings and conduct of mankind was so seldom at
fault, that the weak point in any unworkable suggestion seldom
escaped her.*

During the years which intervened between the commencement
of my married life and the catastrophe which closed it, 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 recovery 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 correspondence with the
Indian Governments, except the military, naval, and financial. I
held this office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more
than two years; after which it pleased Parliament, in other words.
Lord Palmerston, 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 scrambled
for by the second and third class of English parliamentary politi-
cians. I was the chief manager of the resistance which the Com-
pany made to their own political extinction, and to the letters
and petitions I wrote for them, and the concluding chapter of
my treatise on Representative 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 liberal com-
pensation granted. After the change was consummated. Lord Stan-
ley, the First Secretary of State for India, made me the honourable
offer of a seat in the Council, and the proposal was subsequently

* A few dedicatory lines aclinowledging 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.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 155

renewed by the Council itself, on the first occasion o£ 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 useless vexation and waste of effort from any participation in
it: and nothing that has since happened has had any tendency 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 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
corrected as this. After it had been written as usual twice over, we
kept it by us, bringing it out from time to time, and going through
it de novo, reading, weighing, and criticising every sentence. Its
final revision was to have been a work of the winter of 1858-9, the
first after my retirement, 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 pulmonary con-
gestion.

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 possible 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 pursuits
and occupations those in which she shared, or sympathized, and
which are indissolubly associated with her. Her memory is to me
a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing
up as it does all worthiness, I endeavour 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 memory. I have made no

alteration or addition to it, nor shall I ever. Though it wants the

'what precedes was written or revised previous to, or during the year 1861. What
follows was written in 1870.

156 JOHN STUART MILL

last touch of her hand, no substitute 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 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 particular part or
element as being more hers than all the rest. The whole mode of
thinking of which the book was the expression, was emphatically
hers. But I also was so thoroughly 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 mo-
ment 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 thorough 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 importance 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.

The "Liberty" is likely to survive longer than anything else that
I have written (with the possible exception of the "Logic"), be-
cause the conjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a kind
of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes pro-
gressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out into ever

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 157

Stronger relief: the importance, to man and society, o£ a large va-
riety 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 expressed, lest the inevitable
growth of social equality and of the government of public opinion,
should impose on mankind an oppressive yoke of uniformity in
opinion and practice, might easily have appeared chimerical to those
who looked more at present facts than at tendencies; for the grad-
ual revolution that is taking place in society and institutions has,
thus far, been decidedly favourable to the development of new opin-
ions, 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 ascendancy.
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 stunting 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 conceiving 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

158 JOHN STUART MILL

of civilization been entirely without. To speak only of the last few
generations, it is distinctly contained in the vein of important
thought respecting education and culture, spread through the Euro-
pean 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 country. During
the early part of the present century the doctrine of the rights of
individuality, and the claim of the moral nature to develop itself in
its own way, was pushed by a whole school of German authors even
to exaggeration; and the writings of Goethe, the most celebrated
of all German 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 inces-
santly seeking whatever defence they admit of in the theory of the
right and duty of self-development. In our own country, before
the book "On Liberty" was written, the doctrine of Individuality
had been enthusiastically asserted, in a style of vigorous declamation
sometimes reminding one of Fichte, by Mr. William Maccall, in
a series of writings of which the most elaborate is entitled "Ele-
ments of Individualism :" and a remarkable American, Mr. Warren,
had formed a System of Society, on the foundation of the "Sov-
ereignty 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 super-
ficial resemblance 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 any of its doctrines, and
was not intended to write their history, the only author who had
preceded me in their assertion, 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 predecessors I have
mentioned, and that set forth in the book.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 159

The political circumstances of the time induced me, 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 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 representation for minori-
ties; not, however, at that time going beyond the cumulative vote
proposed by Mr. Garth Marshall. In finishing the pamphlet for pub-
lication, with a view to the discussions on the Reform Bill of Lord
Derby's and Mr. Disraeli's government in 1859, ^ 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 authenticated. Without this it will always remain
liable to strong, possibly conclusive, objections; and with this, it
would perhaps not be needed.

It was soon after the publication of "Thoughts on Parliamentary
Reform," that I became acquainted with Mr. Hare's admirable
system of 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 representative

l6o JOHN STUART MILL

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 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. Hare's
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 san-
guine hopes respecting the prospects of human society; by freeing
the form of political institutions 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.
Minorities, so long as they remain minorities, are, and ought to be,
outvoted; but under arrangements which enable any assemblage of
voters, amounting to a certain number, to place in the legislature 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 existing forms of representative democracy; and the
legislature, 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 country, placed there,
without reference to party, by voters who appreciate their indi-
vidual eminence. I can understand that persons, otherwise intelli-
gent, should, for want of sufficient examination, be repelled from
Mr. Hare's plan by what they think the complex nature of its ma-
chinery. 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 theo-
retical 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 become one: for we are
quite accustomed to a minister continuing to profess unqualified

AUTOBIOGRAPHY l6l

hostility to an improvement almost to the very day virhen his con-
science, or his interest, induces him to take it up as a public measure,
and carry it.

Had I met with Mr. Hare's system before the publication of my
pamphlet, I should have given an account of it there. Not having
done so, I vi'rote an article in Eraser's Magazine (reprinted in my
miscellaneous writings) principally for that purpose, though I in-
cluded 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 particularly
incumbent upon me, that of helping (by an article in the Edinburgh
Review) to make known Mr. Bain's profound treatise on the Mind,
just then completed by the publication 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 selec-
tion 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 judg-
ment I despaired of pursuing it further, and republished the papers
as they were, with the exception of striking out such passages as
were no longer in accordance with my opinions. My literary work
of the year was terminated with an essay in Eraser's Magazine,
(afterwards republished in the third volume of "Dissertations and
Discussions,") entitled "A Few Words on Non-intervention." I
was prompted to write this paper by a desire, while vindicating
England from the imputations commonly brought against her on
the Continent, of a peculiar selfishness in matters 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 concerned 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

l62 JOHN STUART MILL

experience, and others by the international questions which then
greatly occupied the European pubUc), respecting the true princi-
ples of international morality, and the legitimate modifications made
in it by difference of times and circumstances; a subject I had al-
ready, to some extent, discussed in the vindication of the French
Provisional Government of 1848 against the attacks of Lord Broug-
ham and others, which I published at the time in the Westminster
Review, 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 con-
tinued 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 communicadon 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 advan-
tages. The immediate and regular receipt of newspapers and peri-
odicals keeps him au courant of even the most temporary poUtics,
and gives him a much more correct view of the state and progress
of opinion than he could acquire by personal contact with indi-
viduals: 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 acquaintance 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
occasionally 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. Alternating between the two positions,
I combined the advantages of both. And, though the inspirer of my

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 63

best thoughts was no longer with me, I was not alone: she had left
a daughter my step-daughter, *****
#****#*#*

****** whose ever growing and
ripening talents from that day to this have been devoted to the same
great purposes *******
**#*****#

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 conscience, but of three * *

The work of the years i860 and 1861 consisted chiefly of two
treatises, only one of which was intended for immediate pubhcation.
This was the "Considerations on Representative 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 occupy the
present age, within the province of purely organic institutions, and
raises, by anticipation, some other questions to which growing neces-
sities will sooner or later compel the attention both of theoretical
and of practical poUticians. The chief of these last, is the distinc-
tion 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 rejecting the bill when drawn
up, but not of altering it otherwise than by sending proposed amend-

164 JOHN STUART MILL

ments 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
poHtical 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 attainable perfection of
skilled agency.

The other treatise written at this time is the one which was pub-
lished some years later* under the tide of "The Subjection of
Women." It was written # # * * *

* * * that there might, in any event, be in exist-

ence a written exposition of my opinions on that great question,
as full and conclusive as I could make it. The intention was to keep
this among other unpublished 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 * * *

*4b ^ ^ ^ d^ j^ ^ j^

TT ^r ^r ^r tt tt tt tp

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 "Utilitarianism;" which was first pub-
lished, in three parts, in successive numbers of Fraser's Magazine,
and afterwards reprinted in a volume.

Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become ex-
tremely 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 interested observer of the slavery quarrel in
America, during the many years that preceded the open breach, I

8 In 1869.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 65

knew that it was in all its stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-
owners to extend the territory of slavery; under the combined influ-
ences of pecuniary interest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism
of a class for its class privileges, influences 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 ene-
mies of progress and damp the spirits of its friends all over the civi-
hzed 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 repubUc, would give to all the privileged classes
of Europe a false confidence, probably 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 Constitution 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 aposde, 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 for-
eigners for the most flagrant of all possible violations of the free
principles of their Constitution; while the tendency of a fixed state
of society to stereotype a set of national opinions would be at least
temporarily checked, and the national mind would become more

''The saying of this true hero, after his capture, that he was worth more for
hanging than for any other purpose, reminds one, by its combination of wit, wisdom,
and self-devotion, of Sir Thomas More.

l66 JOHN STUART MILL

open to the recognition o£ 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 imagined 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 permanent 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 Continental Liberals committed the same frightful mistake.
But the generation which had extorted negro emancipation from our
West India planters had passed away; another had succeeded 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 Eng-
land, 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 assim-
ilated 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 pro-
tested 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
of the Southern envoys on board a British vessel, by an officer of
the United States. Even English forgetfulness has not yet had time
to lose all remembrance of the explosion of feeling in England which

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 167

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 o£ things lasted, there
was no chance o£ 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 Fraser's Magazine, en-
titled "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. England is paying the penalty, in many un-
comfortable 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 reaspn 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 difficulty, effected a partial
diversion of these bitter feeUngs, and made Great Britain not alto-
gether odious to the Americans.

This duty having been performed, my principal occupation for the
next two years was on subjects not pohtical. The pubUcation 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 Benthamism, I had bestowed much study. But the chief
product of those years was the Examination of Sir WiUiam Hamil-
ton's Philosophy. His Lectures, pubUshed 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 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 con-
sideration, there seemed to be strong reasons for doing so. I was

l68 JOHN STUART MILL

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 unfin-
ished state, but I had not neglected his "Discussions 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 assertion of some important principles, especially the Rel-
ativity of human knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with
his opinions, and made me think that genuine psychology had con-
siderably more to gain than to lose by his authority and reputation.
His Lectures and the Dissertations on Reid dispelled 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 important 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 phi-
losophical writings. My estimation of him was therefore so far al-
tered, that instead of regarding him as occupying a kind of interme-
diate 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 country 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 philosophy, that
of Intuition, and that of Experience and Association, 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 contin-
ually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported
by powerful 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 69

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 intuitive 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 tendency to re-
gard all the marked distinctions of human character 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
produced 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 tend-
ency 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 con-
servative interests generally, 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 was come when such controversy would be useful.
Considering then the writings and fame of Sir W. Hamilton 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 writ-

170 JOHN STUART MILL

ings 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 profoundly 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 creatures, we call by the same names.

As I advanced in my task, the damage to Sir. W. Hamilton's repu-
tation 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 busi-
ness, however, to show things exactly as they were, and I did not
flinch from it. I endeavoured always to treat the philosopher whom
I criticised 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 substance. Such of those as had (to my
knowledge) been pointed out before the pubUcation of the latest
edition (at present the third) have been corrected there, and the
remainder of the criticisms have been, as far as seemed necessary,
rephed 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 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 incum-
bent 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 speculations 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I71

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 important 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 estimation
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 tendencies, 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 ac-
cordingly 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 my activity as a writer
during the years from 1859 to 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, Liberty,
and Representative Government. This was a considerable sacrifice
of my pecuniary interest, especially as I resigned all idea of deriving
profit from the cheap editions, and after ascertaining from my pub-
lishers 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

172 JOHN STUART MILL

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
exceeded, 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 simimary 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 Westminster, did not present the idea to
me for the first time. It was not even the first ofler 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 Parliament
for an Irish county, which they could easily have done: but the in-
compatibility of a seat in Parliament with the ofHce 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 prob-
ability that the idea would ever take any practical shape. I was
convinced that no numerous or influential portion of any electoral
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 anywhere 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 locality. What has to be done
by the supporters of each candidate in order to bring his claims
properly before the constituency, 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 73

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 funda-
mentally 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 great-
est 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 indirectly
employed in corruption. But, to justify it, he ought to be very cer-
tain 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 Com-
mons, than from the simple position of a writer. I felt, therefore, that
I ought not to seek election to Parliament, much less to expend any
money in procuring it.

But the conditions of the question were considerably altered when
a body of electors sought me out, and spontaneously 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

174 JOHN STUART MILL

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 Parliament 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 proposing it, gave the
start to the movement which has since become so vigorous, in favour
of women's suffrage. Nothing, at the time, appeared more unlikely
than 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 election, until about a week preceding the day of nomi-
nation, 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 re-
ligious opinions, I announced from the beginning that I would
answer no questions; a determination which appeared to be com-
pletely approved by those who attended the meetings. My frankness
on all other subjects 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 Parliamentary Re-
form," I had said, rather bluntly, that the working classes, though
differing from those of some other countries, 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 175

the whole meeting. It was evident that the working people were so
accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion from those who
sought their suflfrages, that when they found, instead of that, a
direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead
of being affronted, 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 thoje who best
know the working classes, that the most essential of all recommenda-
tions to their favour is that of complete straightforwardness; its
presence outweighs in their minds very strong objections, while no
amount of other qualities will make amends for its apparent ab-
sence. 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 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 pre-
sumable 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 majority 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 Par-
liament was necessarily my main occupation except during the
recess. I was a tolerably frequent speaker, sometimes of prepared
speeches, sometimes extemporaneously. But my choice of occasions
was not such as I should have made if my leading object had been
Parliamentary influence. When I had gained the ear of the House,
which I did by a successful speech on Mi". Gladstone'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

176 JOHN STUART MILL

necessity for me to meddle with it. As I, therefore, in general re-
served myself 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 comparatively indifferent.
Several of my speeches, especially one against the motion for the
abolition of capital punishment, and another in favour of resuming
the right of seizing 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 was par-
ticularly incumbent on me as one of the metropolitan members, was
the attempt to obtain a Municipal Government for the Metropolis:
but on that subject the indifference of the House of Commons was
such that I found hardly any help or support within its walls. On
this subject, 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 evidence
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 pubHc 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 defence of advanced Liberalism

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 177

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. M'Laren, 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 de-
nouncing, 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 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 them-
selves that I had turned out a failure, and that they should not be
troubled with me any more. Perhaps their, uncomplimentary com-
ments 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 ex-
hausted, 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, especially 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

' 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.

178 JOHN STUART MILL

services seemed specially needed, and abstained more than enough
from speaking 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. Glad-
stone'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 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 inno-
cent 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 believe that I was
the means of preventing much mischief. I had in my place in Par-
liament taken the side of the working men, and strongly censured
the conduct of the Government. 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 myself,
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 gentle-
men 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 affairs had become
such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thought themselves

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 179

able to accomplish one. To this argument, after considerable dis-
cussion, 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 mem-
ber 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 Hag of man-
hood suffrage, even on the assurance that the exclusion of women
was not intended to be implied; 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 thank-
ful 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 particu-
lar 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 avail-
able: 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 number 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

l8o JOHN STUART MILL

handled by the leaders o£ 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 challenged,
especially in Parliament, and the backward 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
calculated less to stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince
opponents. The engrossing subject of Parliamentary Reform pre-
vented either this Bill, or one of a similar character brought in by
Lord Derby's Government, from being carried through. They
never got beyond the second reading. Meanwhile the signs of Irish
disaffection had become much more decided; the demand for
complete separation between the two countries had 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 connexion,
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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY l8l

would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to
facilitate a more moderate experiment. It is most improbable 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 Parliament, 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 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 instance; my proposal was con-
demned, but any scheme for Irish Land reform, short of mine, came
to be thought moderate 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 con-
ditions; and I fully anticipated that most landlords would continue
to prefer the position of landowners to that of Government an-
nuitants, and would retain their existing relation to their tenants,
often on more indulgent terms than the full rents on which the
compensation 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 resolution, 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-

1 82 JOHN STUART MILL

martial, continuing for weeks after the brief disturbance had been
put down; with many added atrocities of destruction of property,
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 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, Englishmen
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 was 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
military license; whether the lives and persons of British subjects
are at the mercy of any two or three officers however raw and in-
experienced 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 tribunals; and such an appeal the Committee de-
termined to make. Their determination led to a change in the
chairmanship 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 hav-
ing decided this point against him, Mr. Buxton withdrew from the
Committee, though continuing 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

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 83

Government, sometimes as the recipient of questions, more or less
provocative, addressed by individual members to myself; but
especially as speaker in the important debate originated in the
session of 1866 by Mr. Buxton: and the speech I then delivered is
that which I should probably select as the best of my speeches in
Parliament.' For more than two years we carried on the combat,
trying every avenue legally open to us, to the Courts of Criminal
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 ques-
tion in favour of liberty, as far as it is in the power of a judge's
charge to settle it. There, however, our success ended, for the
Old Bailey Grand Jury by throwing out our Bill prevented the case
from coming to trial. It was clear that to bring English function-
aries to the bar of a criminal court for abuses of power committed
against negroes and mulattoes 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 authorita-
tive declaration that the law was what we maintained 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
governors and other persons in authority, will have a considerable
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 Jamaica by the brutal part of the popula-

' 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. Slack, Mr. Chamerovzow, Mr. Shaen,
and Mr. Chesson, the Honorary Secretary of the Association.

184 JOHN STUART MILL

don at home. They graduated from coarse jokes, verbal and pic-
torial, up to threats of assassination.

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 introduced 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 Government with acts which are necessarily incident to
all attempts 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 Government an ac-
complice 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 ad-
vanced 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 carefully 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 amendments 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
ofiScer's expenses a charge on the rates, instead of on the candidates;

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 85

another was the prohibition of paid canvassers, 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 elec-
tions, 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 elections 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 dishonoured
by the conduct of many of its members in giving no help whatever
to this attempt to secure the necessary conditions of an honest repre-
sentation 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 General
Election: and while some (such as Sir Robert Anstruther), honour-
ably 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 con-
sidered, 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 partici-
pation was limited to the one speech already mentioned; but I
made the Bill an occasion for bringing the two greatest improve-
ments which remain to be made in Representative Government,
formally before the House and the nation. One of them was
Personal, or, as it is called with equal propriety. Proportional Repre-

1 86 JOHN STUART MILL

sentation. 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 imperfect substitute
for that plan, which, in a small number of constituencies, Parliament
was induced to adopt. This poor makeshift had scarcely any recom-
mendation, 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 Parliamentary
elections, as well as the subsequent introduction of what is called
the 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 discussion, 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
franchise to males, and thereby to admit to the suffrage all women
who, as householders or otherwise, possessed the qualification re-
quired 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 adjure 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 distin-
guished 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 contrary side were
conspicuous by their feebleness, the votes recorded in favour of the
motion amounted to 73 — made up by pairs and tellers to above 80 —
the surprise was general and the encouragement great: the greater,
too, because one of those who voted for the mouon was Mr. Bright,
a fact which could only be attributed to the impression made on

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 87

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 letters from strangers, mostly addressed to me as a writer
on philosophy, and either propounding difficulties or communicat-
ing thoughts on subjects connected with logic or political economy.
In common, I suppose, with all who are known as political econo-
mists, I was a recipient of all the shallow theories and absurd pro-
posals by which people are perpetually 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. Correspondence of this sort naturally multiplied with
the multiplication 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 grievances 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 Government
appointment; but these were few, and how simple and 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.

l88 JOHN STUART MILL

The general mass o£ correspondence, however, swelled into an
oppressive burden. # * * # * *

#*###*

While I remained in Parliament my work as an author was un-
avoidably 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 Discussions;" and the address which,
comformably to custom, I delivered to the University of St. An-
drew'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 educa-
tion, their uses and influences, and the mode in which they should
be pursued to render their influences most beneficial. The position
taken up, vindicating the high educational 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 inefficiency 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 educa-
tion, 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) the 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 of that admirable book to the latest
improvements in science and in speculation. This was a joint under-
taking: the psychological notes being furnished in about equal pro-
portions by Mr. Bain and myself, while Mr. Grote supplied some
valuable contributions on points in the history of philosophy inci-
dently raised, and Dr. Andrew Findlater supplied the deficiencies
in the book which had been occasioned by the imperfect philological

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 89

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 im-
mediate success which it deserved, though it had made a deep im-
pression on many individual minds, and had largely contributed,
through those minds, to create that more favourable atmosphere for
the Association Psychology of which we now have the benefit.
Admirably adapted for a classbook 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 Westminster 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 been 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-elec-
tion. As I had shown in my political writings that I was aware of
the weak points in democratic opinions, some Conservatives, it
seems, had not been without hopes of finding me an opponent of
democracy: 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

ipo JOHN STUART MILL

institutions as were consistent with its principle and calculated to
ward oflF its inconveniences : one of the chief of these remedies being
Proportional Representation, on which scarcely any of the Con-
servatives 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
suggestion 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 supposition
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 otherwise 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 appear-
ances had been on questions 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 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 ex-
penses 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 desirable. I
accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly all the working class candi-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY I9I

dates, and among others to Mr. Bradlaugh. 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 prevail-
ing 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 Parliament, and I did not think that Mr.
Bradlaugh's anti-religious opinions (even though he had been in-
temperate 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 Westminster against me. To these various causes,
combined with an unscrupulous use of the usual pecuniary and
other influences 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 disposed to deny myself the relief of returning to private
life. I had no cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the electors;
and if I had, the feeling would have been far outweighed by the
numerous expressions of regret which I received from all sorts of
persons and places, and in a most marked degree from those mem-
bers 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 com-
memorate 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),

192 JOHN STUART MILL

have made a small number of speeches on pubHc 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 o£ this Essay is not the so-called Liberty o£ the
Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed 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 general terms, but which profoundly in-
fluences 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 portions of the species
have now entered, it presents itself under new conditions, and re-
quires a different and more fundamental treatment.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most con-
spicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are
earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.
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 con-
ceived (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 governed,
and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not desire
to contest, whatever precautions might be taken against its oppressive
exercise. Their power was regarded as necessary, but also as highly

195

196 JOHN STUART MILL

dangerous; as a weapon which they would attempt to use against
their subjects, 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, commissioned 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 perpetual 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, which 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 establishment
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 condition 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 interest 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, it seemed, could they have complete security
that the powers of government would never be abused to their
disadvantage. By degrees, this new demand for elective and tem-
porary rulers became the prominent object of the exertions of the

ON LIBERTY 1 97

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 importance had been attached to the
limitation of the power itself. That (it might seem) was a re-
source against rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to
those of the people. 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 effectually 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 exercise. This mode of thought, or rather
perhaps of feeling, was common among the last generation of
European liberalism, in the Continental section of which, it still
apparently predominates. Those who admit any limit to what a
government may do, except in the case of such governments as
they think ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions
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 necessarily disturbed by such temporary
aberrations as those of the French Revolution, the worst of which
were the work 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 aristo-
cratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic republic came to

198 JOHN STUART MILL

occupy a large portion of the earth's surface, and made itself felt
as one of the most powerful members of the community of nations;
and elective and responsible 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, more-
over, practically means, the will of the most numerous or the most
active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in
making themselves accepted as the majority: the people, con-
sequendy, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and
precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other
abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of govern-
ment 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, recom-
mending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the
inclination of those important classes in European society to whose
real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty
in estabhshing 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 operating through
the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting 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 functionaries. Society can and does execute its own man-
dates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any
mandates 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, penetrating

ON LIBERTY 1 99

much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving 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 development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of
any individuality 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 collective opinion with
individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it
against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of
human affairs, as protection 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 individual independ-
ence and social control — is a subject on which nearly everything
remains to be done. All that makes existence 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 subjects 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 suspect 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 examples of
the magical influence of custom, which is not only, as the proverb
says, a second nature, but is continually mistaken for the first. The
effect of custom, in preventing any 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 necessary that reasons should be given, either by one

200 JOHN STUART MILL

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 subjects
of this nature, are better than reasons, and render reasons un-
necessary. 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 mere 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 interpretation even of that. Men's
opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, are affected
by all the multifarious 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. Sometimes their
reason — at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their
social affections, not seldom their anti-social ones, their envy or
jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: 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 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 feelings of the members of the ascendant class, in their
relations among themselves. Where, on the other hand, a class,
formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendency, or where its ascendency
is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear the

ON LIBERTY 201

impress of an impatient dislike of superiority. Another grand de-
termining principle of the rules o£ conduct, both in act and for-
bearance which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been
the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aver-
sions of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility
though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to per-
fectly genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn ma-
gicians 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 con-
sequence 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, under 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
questioning whether its likings or dislikings should be a law to
individuals. 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 maintained with consistency, by
any but an individual here and there, is that of religious belief: a
case instructive in many ways, and not least so as forming a most
striking instance 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 religious opinion as that church
itself. But when the heat of the conflict was over, without giving

202 JOHN STUART MILL

a complete victory to any party, and each church or sect was re-
duced to limit its hopes to retaining possession of the ground it
already occupied; minorities, seeing that they had no chance of
becoming majorities, were under the necessity of pleading to those
whom they could not convert, for permission to differ. It is accord-
ingly on this battle-field, almost solely, that the rights of the in-
dividual against society have been asserted on broad grounds of
principle, and the claim of society to exercise authority over dis-
sentients openly controverted. 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 religious belief.
Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really
care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been prac-
tically 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; another, 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 in-
tense, 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 heavier, that of law
is lighter, than in most other countries of Europe; and there is
considerable jealousy of direct interference, 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 opposite 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

ON LIBERTY 203

of feeling ready to be called forth against any attempt of the law to
control individuals in things in which they have not hitherto been
accustomed to be controlled by it; and this with very little dis-
crimination 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 of its application.

There is, in fact, no recognized principle by which the propriety
or impropriety of government interference is customarily tested.
People decide according to their personal preferences. Some, when-
ever they see any good to be done, or evil to be remedied, would
willingly instigate the government 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 govern-
ment would, or would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but very
rarely on account of any opinion to which they consistently adhere,
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 equal frequency, improperly invoked and
improperly condemned.

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as
entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the indi-
vidual 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 mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in inter-
fering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-
protection. That the only purpose for which power can be right-
fully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against
his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical
or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be com-

204 JOHN STUART MILL

pelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so,
because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions o£ others,
to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for
remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading 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 injury. For the same reason, we may leave out of con-
sideration those backward states of society in which the race itself
may be considered as in its nonage. The early difficulties in the way
of spontaneous progress are so great, that there is seldom any choice
of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of
improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will
attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a
legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, pro-
vided 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 mankind 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 concern
ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains

ON LIBERTY 205

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 spon-
taneity 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 evidence 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 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 answer-
able for doing evil to others, is the rule; to make him answerable
for not preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the exception.
Yet there are many cases clear enough and grave enough to justify
that exception. 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;

206 JOHN STUART MILL

or because the attempt to exercise control would produce 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 interests 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 distinguished
from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; com-
prehending 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 consent and participation. When I say
only himself, I mean directly, and in the first instance: for what-
ever affects himself, 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 domain of conscious-
ness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive
sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion
and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific,
moral, or theological. 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 follow; without impediment from our fellow-
creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them even though
they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly,
from this Uberty 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 com-
bining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.

No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, re-
spected, is free, whatever may be its form of government; and

ON LIBERTY 207

none is completely free in which they do not exist absolute 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 guardian of his own health, whether bodily,
or mental or spiritual. 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 conduct by
public authority, on the ground that the State had a deep interest
in the whole bodily and mental discipline of every one of its
citizens, a mode of thinking which may have been admissible in
small republics surrounded by powerful 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
salutary 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 re-
pression have been wielded more strenuously against divergence
from the reigning opinion in self-regarding, than even in social
matters; 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 Puritan-
ism. And some of those modern reformers who have placed them-
selves in strongest opposition to the religions of the past, have been

208 JOHN STUART MILL

noway behind either churches or sects in their assertion of the right
of spiritual domination: M. Comte, in particular, whose social sys-
tem, as unfolded in his Traite de Politique Positive, aims at estab-
lishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) 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 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 re-
straint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not
declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction
can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present
circumstances 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
religious toleration and free institutions, the grounds, both philo-
sophical and practical, on which they rest, are perhaps not so familiar
to the general mind, nor so thoroughly appreciated by many even of
the leaders of opinion, as might have been expected. Those grounds,
when rightly understood, are of much wider application than to
only one division of the subject, and a thorough consideration of

ON LIBERTY 209

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
Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion

THE time, it is to be hoped, is gone by when any defence
would be necessary of the "Hberty 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 executive, not identified in interest with the people,
to prescribe 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 triumphantly enforced by preced-
ing writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place.
Though the law of England, 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* insurrection drives
ministers and judges from their propriety;' 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 control 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 exerting any power of
coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice.

1 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, mo-
ments 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 pros-
ecutions. The offence charged was not that of criticizing institutions, or the acts
of persons of rulers, but of circulating what was deemed an immoral doctrine, the
lawfulness of Tyrannicide.

If tile arguments of the present chapter 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

ON LIBERTY 211

But I deny the right o£ 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 pubUc
opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one,
were of one opinion, and only one person 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 expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the
human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who
dissent 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 corresponding 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 suppress it, of course deny
its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to
decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person

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 strik-
ing 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 na-
tions, 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 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.

212 JOHN STUART MILL

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. AH silencing of discussion
is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed
to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being com-
mon.

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 situated, 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 com-
prehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his faith in this
collective 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 devolves 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 that the same causes which make him a Churchman
in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in
Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself as any amount of argument can
make it, that ages are no more infallible than individuals; every

ON LIBERTY 213

age having held many opinions which subsequent 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 assump-
tion of infallibility in forbidding the propagation of error, than in
any other thing which is done by public authority on its own judg-
ment and responsibility. Judgment is given to men that they may
use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that
they ought not to use it at all? To prohibit what they think per-
nicious, is not claiming exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty
incumbent on them, although fallible, of acting 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 particular.

It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to form the
truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, 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 conscientious-
ness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinions, and
allow doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare
of mankind, 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 mistake: 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, 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 propaga-
tion of opinions which we regard as false and pernicious.

214 JOHN STUART MILL

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 contradicting and disproving our opinion, is
the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for pur-
poses 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 persons totally incapable of judging
of it, for one who is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth per-
son is only comparative; 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 preponderance
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 rectify-
ing 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 produce any effect on
the mind, must be brought before it. 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, depend-
ing 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 judg-
ment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Be-
cause he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and
conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could

ON LIBERTY 215

be said against him; to profit by as much o£ it as was just, and
expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what
was fallacious. 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 persons 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 carry-
ing 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
gainsay ers knowing that he has sought for objections and diffi-
culties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which
can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter — he has a right
to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multi-
tude, 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 judgment, find neces-
sary to warrant their relying on it, should be submitted to by that
miscellaneous collection of a few wise and many fooUsh individuals,
called the public. The most intolerant of churches, the Roman
CathoHc 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 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 standing invitation to the whole world
to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is
accepted and the attempt 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

2l6 JOHN STUART MILL

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 reasons 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 doctrine should
be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, be-
cause they are certain that it is certain. To call any proposition cer-
tain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if per-
mitted, but who is not permitted, 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 indispensable to well-being, that it is as much the
duty of governments to uphold those beliefs, as to protect any other
of the interests of society. In a case of such necessity, and so direcdy
in the line of their duty, something less than infallibility 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 beUefs; and there can be
nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining bad men, and prohibit-
ing 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

ON LIBERTY 217

infallible judge of opinions. 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 discussion 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
opportunity of defending itself. And it will not do to say that
the heretic may be allowed to maintain the utility of harmlessness
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 pos-
sible 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 handling 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 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 favour-
able to me — in which the argument against freedom of opinion, both
on the score of truth and on that of utiUty, 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

2l8 JOHN STUART MILL

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 infallibility ?
But I must be permitted to observe, that it is not the feeling sure
of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of
infallibility. 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 pretension 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 consequences — not only of the pernicious conse-
quences, but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn)
the immorality and impiety of an opinion; yet if, in pursuance of
that private judgment, though backed by the public judgment of
his country or his cotemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being
heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the
assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the
opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others
in which 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 history, 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 abounding 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 a/e know him
as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the

ON LIBERTY 219

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 philosophy. 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 conviction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in de-
nying the gods recognized by the State; indeed his accuser asserted
(see the "Apologia") that he believed in no gods at all. ImmoraUty,
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 witnessed his life and conversation, such an
impression of his moral grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries
have done homage to him as the Almighty in person, was ignomini-
ously 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 trans-
actions, especially the latter of the two, render them extremely
unjust in their judgment of the unhappy actors. These were, to
all appearance, not bad men — not worse than men most commonly
are, but rather the contrary; men who possessed in a full, or some-
what 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

220 JOHN STUART MILL

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 persecutors 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, possessed 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 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 prevented from being worse, by belief and rever-
ence 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 religion openly aimed at
dissolving these ties: unless, therefore, it was his duty to adopt
that religion, it seemed to be his duty to put it down. Inasmuch

ON LIBERTY 221

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 entirely 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 gendest and
most amiable of philosophers and rulers, under a solemn sense of
duty, authorized the persecution of Christianity. 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 Christian 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 Marcus Aurelius for punish-
ing, 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 Chris-
tianity; he who, 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 punishment
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 persecutors 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, powerless against truth, though sometimes beneficially effective

222 JOHN STUART MILL

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 mankind are indebted for them. To discover
to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it
was previously 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 Re-
formers, 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 martyr-
dom; that their reward should be to be dealt with as the vilest of
criminals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable error and mis-
fortune, for which humanity should mourn in sackcloth 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 persecu-
tion, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one
another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience
refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecu-
tion. If not suppressed 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

ON LIBERTY 223

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 persisted
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, because the persecu-
tions were only occasional, lasting but a short time, and separated
by long intervals of almost undisturbed 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 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 redis-
cover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from
favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made
such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
It will be said, that we do not now put to death the introducers
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 tolerate, 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 persecution. 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 unfortunate man,^ said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all

2 Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In December following, he
received a £ree pardon from the Crown.

224 JOHN STUART MILL

relations of life, was sentenced to twenty-one months imprisonment,
for uttering, and writing on a gate, some offensive words concern-
ing 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, because 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 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 assumption on which 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 history in those
who assent to it (since it is historically true that a large proportion
of infidels m all ages have been persons 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
suicidal, 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 per-
secution; a persecution, too, having the peculiarity that the qualifica-
tion 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 beUeve in a future

'George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857; Edward Truelove, July, 1857.
* Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough Street Police Court, August 4, 1857.

ON LIBERTY 225

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 infirmity of English minds,
which makes them take a preposterous 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 genera-
tion, will continue. In this age the quiet surface of routine is as
often rufHed 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 per-
manent 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 persecution.* For it is

' 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 na-
tional 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 principle, for the government of Hindoos
and Mahomedans, that no schools be 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
delivered to his constituents on the 12th of November, 1857, 's 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 ascendancy of the British name, and preventing the salutary
growth of Christianity. . . . Toleration was the great corner-stone of the religious
liberties of this country; but do not let them abuse that precious word toleration.
As he understood it, it meant the complete liberty 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 imbecile display, can indulge the illusion that religious persecution
has passed away, never to return?

226 JOHN STUART MILL

this — it is the opinions men entertain, and the feelings they cherish,
respecting those who disown the beUef s 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 England, 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
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 intel-
lectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Chris-
tian 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, heretical opinions do not per-
ceptibly 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. And thus is kept up a state
cf things very satisfactory to some minds, because, without the
unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning anybody, it maintains
all prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed, while it does not

ON LIBERTY 22/

absolutely interdict the exercise of reason by dissentients afSicted
with the malady of thought. A convenient plan for having peace in
the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on therein very-
much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort of in-
tellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage
of the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion
of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep
the genuine principles and grounds of their convictions within their
own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit
as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which
they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless
characters, and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the
thinking world. The sort of men who can be looked for under it,
are either mere conformers to commonplace, or time-servers for
truth whose arguments on all great subjects are meant for their
hearers, and are not those which have convinced themselves. Those
who avoid this alternative, do so by narrowing their thoughts and
interests to things which can be spoken of without venturing within
the region of principles, that is, to small practical matters, which
would come right of themselves, if but the minds of mankind were
strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be made effectually
right until then; while that which would strengthen and enlarge
men's minds, free and daring speculation on the highest subjects,
is abandoned.

Those in whose eyes this reticence on the part of heretics is no
evil, should consider in the first place, that in consequence of it there
is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions; and
that such of them as could not stand such a discussion, though they
may be prevented from spreading, do not disappear. But it is not
the minds of heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed
on all inquiry which does not end in the orthodox conclusions. The
greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose
whole mental development is cramped, and their reason cowed, by
the fear of heresy. Who can compute what the world loses in the
multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters,
who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train
of thought, lest it should land them in something which would

228 JOHN STUART MILL

admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among them we
may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtile
and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with
an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of
ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience
and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the
end succeed in doing. No one can be a great thinker who does not
recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect
to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by
the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for
himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them
because they do not suffer themselves to think. Not that it is
solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers, that freedom of thinking
is required. On the contrary, it is as much, and even more indis-
pensable, to enable average human beings to attain the mental
stature which they are capable of. There have been, and may again
be, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of mental
slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmos-
phere, an intellectually active people. Where any people has made
a temporary approach to such a character, it has been because the
dread of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended. Where
there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed;
where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy
humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that
generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods
of history so remarkable. Never when controversy avoided the
subjects which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm,
was the mind of a people stirred up from its foundations, and the
impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary
intellect to something of the dignity of thinking beings. Of such
we have had an example in the condition of Europe during the times
immediately following the Reformation; another, though limited
to the Continent and to a more cultivated class, in the speculative
movement of the latter half of the eighteenth century; and a third,
of still briefer duration, in the intellectual fermentation of Germany
during the Goethian and Fichtean period. These periods differed
widely in the particular opinions which they developed; but were

ON LIBERTY 229

alike in this, that during all three the yoke of authority was broken.
In each, an old mental despotism had been thrown off, and no new
one had yet taken its place. The impulse given at these three periods
has made Europe what it now is. Every single improvement which
has taken place either in the human mind or in institutions, may
be traced distinctly to one or other of them. Appearances have for
some time indicated that all three impulses are well-nigh spent;
and we can expect no fresh start, until we again assert our mental
freedom.

Let us now pass to the second division of the argument, and dis-
missing the supposition that any of the received opinions may be
false, let us assume them' to be true, and examine into the worth
of the manner in which they are likely to be held, when their truth
is not freely and openly canvassed. However unwillingly a person
who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his
opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration
that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequendy, and fear-
lessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a Hving truth.

There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as
formerly) who think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly
to what they think true, though he has no knowledge whatever of
the grounds of the opinion, and could not make a tenable defence
of it against the most superficial objections. Such persons, if they
can once get their creed taught from authority, naturally think that
no good, and some harm, comes of its being allowed to be ques-
tioned. Where their influence prevails, they make it nearly im-
possible for the received opinion to be rejected wisely and con-
siderately, though it may still be rejected rashly and ignorantly; for
to shut out discussion entirely is seldom possible, and when it once
gets in, beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give way be-
fore the slightest semblance of an argument. Waiving, however,
this possibiHty — assuming that the true opinion abides in the mind,
but abides as a prejudice, a beUef independent of, and proof against,
argument — this is not the way in which truth ought to be held
by a rational being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus
held, is but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the
words which enunciate a truth.

230 JOHN STUART MILL

If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought to be cultivated,
a thing which Protestants at least do not deny, on what can these
faculties be more appropriately exercised by any one, than on the
things which concern him so much that it is considered necessary
for him to hold opinions on them? If the cultivation of the under-
standing consists in one thing more than in another, it is surely in
learning the grounds of one's own opinions. Whatever people
believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe
rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common
objections. But, some one may say, "Let them be taught the grounds
of their opinions. It does not follow that opinions must be merely
parroted because they are never heard controverted. Persons who
learn geometry do not simply commit the theorems to memory,
but understand and learn likewise the demonstrations; and it would
be absurd to say that they remain ignorant of the grounds of geo-
metrical truths, because they never hear any one deny, and attempt
to disprove them." Undoubtedly: and such teaching suffices on a
subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all to be said
on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of the evidence
of mathematical truths is, that all the argument is on one side.
There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on every
subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends
on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons.
Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation
possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of helio-
centric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown
why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is
shown and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand
the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely
more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and
the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every dis-
puted opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favor some
opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity,
has left it on record that he always studied his adversary's case with
as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What
Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be
imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth.

ON LIBERTY 23 1

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little o£ that.
His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute
them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the
opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are,
he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational
position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he
contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts,
like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most in-
clination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of
adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and
accompanied by what they offer as refutations. This is not the way
to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with
his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who
actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their
very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible
and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty
which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of,
else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth
which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred
of what are called educated men are in this condition, even of those
who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be
true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never
thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think
differently from them, and considered what such persons may have
to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the
word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. They do
not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder;
the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts
with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong
reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part
of the truth which turns the scale, aijd decides the judgment of a
completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever
really known, but to those who have attended equally and im-
partially to both sides, and endeavored to see the reasons of both in
the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real under-
standing of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all
important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine thena

232 JOHN STUART MILL

and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most
skilful devil's advocate can conjure up.

To abate the force of these considerations, an enemy of free dis-
cussion may be supposed to say, that there is no necessity for man-
kind in general to know and understand all that can be said against
or for their opinions by philosophers and theologians. That it is
not needful for common men to be able to expose all the misstate-
ments or fallacies of an ingenious opponent. That it is enough if
there is always somebody capable of answering them, so that nothing
likely to mislead uninstructed persons remains unrefuted. That
simple minds, having been taught the obvious grounds of the
truths inculcated on them, may trust to authority for the rest, and
being aware that they have neither knowledge nor talent to resolve
every difficulty which can be raised, may repose in the assurance that
all those which have been raised have been or can be answered, by
those who are specially trained to the task.

Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can be
claimed for it by those most easily satisfied with the amount of
understanding of truth which ought to accompany the belief of it;
even so, the argument for free discussion is no way weakened. For
even this doctrine acknowledges that mankind ought to have a
rational assurance that all objections have been satisfactorily an-
swered; and how are they to be answered if that which requires to
be answered is not spoken? or how can the answer be known to
be satisfactory, if the objectors have no opportunity of showing that
it is unsatisfactory? If not the public, at least the philosophers and
theologians who are to resolve the difficulties, must make themselves
familiar with those difficulties in their most puzzling form; and this
cannot be accomplished unless they are freely stated, and placed in
the most advantageous light which they admit of. The Catholic
Church has its own way of dealing with this embarrassing problem.
It makes a broad separation between those who can be permitted to
receive its doctrines on conviction, and those who must accept them
on trust. Neither, indeed, are allowed any choice as to what they
will accept; but the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided in,
may admissibly and meritoriously make themselves acquainted with
the arguments of opponents, in order to answer them, and may,

ON LIBERTY 233

therefore, read heretical books; the laity, not unless by special per-
mission, hard to be obtained. This discipline recognizes a knowledge
of the enemy's case as beneficial to the teachers, but finds means,
consistent with this, of denying it to the rest of the world: thus
giving to the elite more mental culture, though not more mental
freedom, than it allows to the mass. By this device it succeeds in
obtaining the kind of mental superiority which its purposes require;
for though culture without freedom never made a large and liberal
mind, it can make a clever nisi prius advocate of a cause. But in
countries professing Protestantism, this resource is denied; since
Protestants hold, at least in theory, that the responsibility for the
choice of a religion must be borne by each for himself, and cannot
be thrown off upon teachers. Besides, in the present state of the
world, it is practically impossible that writings which are read by
the instructed can be kept from the uninstructed. If the teachers
of mankind are to be cognizant of all that they ought to know,
everything must be free to be written and published without
restraint.

If, however, the mischievous operation of the absence of free dis-
cussion, when the received opinions are true, were confined to
leaving men ignorant of the grounds of those opinions, it might be
thought that this, if an intellectual, is no moral evil, and does not
affect the worth of the opinions, regarded in their influence on the
character. The fact, however, is, that not only the grounds of the
opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often
the meaning of the opinion itself. The words which convey it,
cease to suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of those they
were originally employed to communicate. Instead of a vivid con-
ception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained
by rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is
retained, the finer essence being lost. The great chapter in human
history which this fact occupies and fills, cannot be too earnestly
studied and meditated on.

It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines
and religious creeds. They are all full of meaning and vitality to
those who originate them, and to the direct disciples of the orig-
inators. Their meaning continues to be felt in undiminished strength,

234 JOHN STUART MILL

and is perhaps brought out into even fuller consciousness, so long
as the struggle lasts to give the doctrine or creed an ascendency
over other creeds. At last it either prevails, and becomes the general
opinion, or its progress stops; it keeps possession of the ground it
has gained, but ceases to spread further. When either of these
results has become apparent, controversy on the subject flags, and
gradually dies away. The doctrine has taken its place, if not as a
received opinion, as one of the admitted sects or divisions of opinion :
those who hold it have generally inherited, not adopted it; and con-
version from one of these doctrines to another, being now an excep-
tional fact, occupies little place in the thoughts of their professors.
Instead of being, as at first, constantly on the alert either to defend
themselves against the world, or to bring the world over to them,
they have subsided into acquiescence, and neither listen, when they
can help it, to arguments against their creed, nor trouble dissentients
(if there be such) with arguments in its favor. From this time may
usually be dated the decline in the living power of the doctrine. We
often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of
keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the
truth which they nominally recognize, so that it may penetrate the
feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct. No such
difficulty is complained of while the creed is still fighting for its
existence: even the weaker combatants then know and feel what
they are fighting for, and the difference between it and other doc-
trines; and in that period of every creed's existence, not a few per-
sons may be found, who have realized its fundamental principles
in all the forms of thought, have weighed and considered them in
all their important bearings, and have experienced the full effect on
the character, which belief in that creed ought to produce in a mind
thoroughly imbued with it. But when it has come to be an hereditary
creed, and to be received passively, not actively — when the mind is
no longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to exercise its
vital powers on the questions which its belief presents to it, there
is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the for-
mularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if accepting it on
trust dispensed with the necessity of realizing it in consciousness,
or testing it by personal experience; until it almost ceases to connect

ON LIBERTY 235

itself at all with the inner life of the human being. Then are seen the
cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to form the
majority, in which the creed remains as it were outside the mind,
encrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed
to the higher parts of our nature; manifesting its power by not suffer-
ing any fresh and Uving conviction to get in, but itself doing nothing
for the mind or heart, except standing sentinel over them to keep
them vacant.

To what an extent doctrines intrinsically fitted to make the
deepest impression upon the mind may remain in it as dead beliefs,
without being ever realized in the imagination, the feelings, or the
understanding, is exemplified by the manner in which the majority
of believers hold the doctrines of Christianity. By Christianity I
here mean what is accounted such by all churches and sects — the
maxims and precepts contained in the New Testament. These
are considered sacred, and accepted as laws, by all professing Chris-
tians. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that not one Christian in a
thousand guides or tests his individual conduct by reference to
those laws. The standard to which he does refer it, is the custom
of his nation, his class, or his religious profession. He has thus,
on the one hand, a collection of ethical maxims, which he believes
to have been vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom as rules for his
government; and on the other, a set of every-day judgments and
practices, which go a certain length with some of those maxims,
not so great a length with others, stand in direct opposition to some,
and are, on the whole, a compromise between the Christian creed
and the interests and suggestions of worldly life. To the first of
these standards he gives his homage; to the other his real allegiance.
Ail Christians believe that the blessed are the poor and humble,
and those who are ill-used by the world; that it is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven; that they should judge not, lest they be judged;
that they should swear not at all; that they should love their neighbor
as themselves; that if one take their cloak, they should give him
their coat also; that they should take no thought for the morrow;
that if they would be perfect, they should sell all that they have
and give it to the poor. They are not insincere when they say that

236 JOHN STUART MILL

they believe these things. They do beUeve them, as people believe
what they have always heard lauded and never discussed. But in
the sense of that living belief which regulates conduct, they believe
these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon
them. The doctrines in their integrity are serviceable to pelt ad-
versaries with; and it is understood that they are to be put forward
(when possible) as the reasons for whatever people do that they
think laudable. But any one who reminded them that the maxims
require an infinity of things which they never even think of doing
would gain nothing but to be classed among those very unpopular
characters who affect to be better than other people. The doctrines
have no hold on ordinary believers — are not a power in their minds.
They have an habitual respect for the sound of them, but no feeling
which spreads from the words to the things signified, and forces
the mind to take them in, and make them conform to the formula.
Whenever conduct is concerned, they look round for Mr. A and B
to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ.

Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus, but far
otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity
never would have expanded from an obscure sect of the despised
Hebrews into the religion of the Roman empire. When their
enemies said, "See how these Christians love one another" (a remark
not Ukely to be made by anybody now), they assuredly had a much
livelier feeling of the meaning of their creed than they have ever
had since. And to this cause, probably, it is chiefly owing that
Christianity now makes so little progress in extending its domain,
and after eighteen centuries, is still nearly confined to Europeans
and the descendants of Europeans. Even with the stricdy religious,
who are much in earnest about their doctrines, and attach a greater
amount of meaning to many of them than people in general, it
commonly happens that the part which is thus comparatively active
in their minds is that which was made by Calvin, or Knox, or some
such person much nearer in character to themselves. The sayings
of Christ coexist passively in their minds, producing hardly any
effect beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable
and bland. There are many reasons, doubtless, why doctrines which
are the badge of a sect retain more of their vitality than those com-

ON LIBERTY 237

mon to all recognized sects, and why more pains are taken by
teachers to keep their meaning alive; but one reason certaiiJy is,
that the peculiar doctrines are more questioned, and have to be
oftener defended against open gainsayers. Both teachers and learners
go to sleep at their post, as soon as there is no enemy in the field.

The same thing holds true, generally speaking, of all traditional
doctrines — those of prudence and knowledge of life, as well as of
morals or religion. All languages and literatures are full of general
observations on life, both as to what it is, and how to conduct oneself
in it; observations which everybody knows, which everybody repeats,
or hears with acquiescence, which are received as truisms, yet of
which most people first truly learn the meaning, when experience,
generally of a painful kind, has made it a reality to them. How
often, when smarting under some unforeseen misfortune or dis-
appointment, does a person call to mind some proverb or common
saying familiar to him all his life, the meaning of which, if he had
ever before felt it as he does now, would have saved him from the
calamity. There are indeed reasons for this, other than the absence
of discussion: there are many truths of which the full meaning
cannot be realized, until personal experience has brought it home.
But much more of the meaning even of these would have been
understood, and what was understood would have been far more
deeply impressed on the mind, if the man had been accustomed to
hear it argued pro and con by people who did understand it. The
fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when
it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors. A contem-
porary author has well spoken of "the deep slumber of a decided
opinion."

But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of unanimity an in-
dispensable condition of true knowledge ? Is it necessary that some
part of mankind should persist in error, to enable any to realize the
truth } Does a belief cease to be real and vital as soon as it is gen-
erally received — and is a proposition never thoroughly understood
and felt unless some doubt of it remains.'' As soon as mankind
have unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within
them.'' The highest aim and best result of improved intelligence,
it has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more and more in

238 JOHN STUART MILL

the acknowledgment of all important truths: and does the intelli-
gence only last as long as it has not achieved its object? Do the
fruits of conquest perish by the very completeness of the victory?

I afBrm no such thing. As mankind improve, the number of
doctrines which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly
on the increase: and the well-being of mankind may almost be meas-
ured by the number and gravity of the truths which have reached
the point of being uncontested. The cessation, on one question after
another, of serious controversy, is one of the necessary incidents of
the consolidation of opinion; a consolidation as salutary in the case
of true opinions, as it is dangerous and noxious when the opinions
are erroneous. But though this gradual narrowing of the bounds
of diversity of opinion is necessary in both senses of the term, being
at once inevitable and indispensable, we are not therefore obliged
to conclude that all its consequences must be beneficial. The loss
of so important an aid to the intelligent and living apprehension of
a truth, as is afforded by the necessity of explaining it to, or defend-
ing it against, opponents, though not sufficient to outweigh, is no
trifling drawback from, the benefit of its universal recognition.
Where this advantage can no longer be had, I confess I should like
to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide a substitute
for it; some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question
as present to the learner's consciousness, as if they were pressed
upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion.

But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have
lost those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnifi-
cently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of
this description. They were essentially a negative discussion of the
great questions of philosophy and life, directed with consummate
skill to the purpose of convincing any one who had merely adopted
the commonplaces of received opinion, that he did not understand
the subject — that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doc-
trines he professed; in order that, becoming aware of his ignorance,
he might be put in the way to attain a stable belief, resting on a
clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and of their
evidence. The school disputations of the Middle Ages had a some-
what similar object. They were intended to make sure that the

ON LIBERTY 239

pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary correlation)
the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds o£ the one
and confute those of the other. These last-mentioned contests had
indeed the incurable defect, that the premises appealed to were taken
from authority, not from reason; and, as a discipline to the mind,
they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which
formed the intellects of the "Socratici viri:" but the modern mind
owes far more to both than it is generally willing to admit, and the
present modes of education contain nothing which in the smallest
degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other. A person
who derives all his instruction from teachers or books, even if he
escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself with cram,
is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is far from
a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both
sides; and the weakest part of what everybody says in defence of his
opinion, is what he intends as a reply to antagonists. It is the fash-
ion of the present time to disparage negative logic — that which
points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without estab-
lishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor
enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to attaining any posi-
tive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued
too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it,
there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intel-
lect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of spec-
ulation. On any other subject no one's opinions deserve the name
of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced upon him
by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process
which would have been required of him in carrying on an active
controversy with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent,
it is so indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than
absurd is it to forego, when spontaneously offering itself! If there
are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so
if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our
minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for
us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the cer-
tainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater
labor for ourselves.

240 JOHN STUART MILL

It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes which make
diversity of opinion advantageous, and will continue to do so until
mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement
which at present seems at an incalculable distance. We have hith-
erto considered only two possibilities: that the received opinion may
be false, and some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the
received opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is
essential to a clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But
there is a commoner case than either of these; when the conflicting
doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the
truth between them; and the nonconforming opinion is needed to
supply the remainder of the truth, of which the received doctrine
embodies only a part. Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable
to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They
are a part of the truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller
part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the truths by
which they ought to be accompanied and limited. Heretical opin-
ions, on the other hand, are generally some of these suppressed and
neglected truths, bursting the bonds which kept them down, and
either seeking reconciliation with the truth contained in the common
opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and setting themselves up, with
similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The latter case is hitherto
the most frequent, as, in the human mind, one-sidedness has always
been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in
revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while an-
other rises. Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most
part only substitutes one partial and incomplete truth for another;
improvement consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of
truth is more wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than
that which it displaces. Such being the partial character of prevail-
ing opinions, even when resting on a true foundation; every opinion
which embodies somewhat of the portion of truth which the com-
mon opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, with whatever
amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended. No sober
judge of human affairs will feel bound to be indignant because those
who force on our notice truths which we should otherwise have over-
looked, overlook some of those which we see. Rather, he will think

ON LIBERTY 24I

that so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is more desirable than
otherwise that unpopular truth should have one-sided asserters too;
such being usually the most energetic, and the most likely to compel
reluctant attention to the fragment o£ wisdom which they proclaim
as if it were the whole.

Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the instructed,
and all those of the uninstructed who were led by them, were lost
in admiration of what is called civilization, and of the marvels of
modern science, literature, and philosophy, and while greatly over-
rating the amount of unlikeness between the men of modern and
those of ancient times, indulged the belief that the whole of the
difference was in their own favour; with what a salutary shock did
the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like bombshells in the midst, dis-
locating the compact mass of one-sided opinion, and forcing its ele-
ments to recombine in a better form and with additional ingredients.
Not that the current opinions were on the whole farther from the
truth than Rousseau's were; on the contrary, they were nearer to it;
they contained more of positive truth, and very much less of error.
Nevertheless there lay in Rousseau's doctrine, and has floated down
the stream of opinion along with it, a considerable amount of exactly
those truths which the popular opinion wanted; and these are the
deposit which was left behind when the flood subsided. The superior
worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and demoralizing effect
of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society, are ideas which
have never been entirely absent from cultivated minds since Rous-
seau wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect, though
at present needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be asserted
by deeds, for words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted their
power.

In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of
order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both neces-
sary elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the
other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally
of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to
be preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of these
modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the
other; but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other that

242 JOHN STUART MILL

keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity. Unless opinions
favorable to democracy and to aristocracy, to property and to equal-
ity, to co-operation and to competition, to luxury and to abstinence,
to sociality and individuality, to liberty and discipline, and all the
other standing antagonisms of practical life, are expressed with equal
freedom, and enforced and defended vi^ith equal talent and energy,
there is no chance of both elements obtaining their due; one scale
is sure to go up, and the other down. Truth, in the great practical
concerns of life, is so much a question of the reconciling and com-
bining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious
and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correct-
ness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle be-
tween combatants fighting under hostile banners. On any of the
great open questions just enumerated, if either of the two opinions
has a better claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated, but to
be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which happens at the
particular time and place to be in a minority. That is the opinion
which, for the time being, represents the neglected interests, the side
of human well-being which is in danger of obtaining less than its
share. I am aware that there is not, in this country, any intolerance
of differences of opinion on most of these topics. They are adduced
to show, by admitted and multiplied examples, the universality of
the fact, that only through diversity of opinion is there, in the exist-
ing state of human intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the
truth. When there are persons to be found, who form an exception
to the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the
world is in the right, it is always probable that dissentients have
something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth
would lose something by their silence.

It may be objected, "But some received principles, especially on
the highest and most vital subjects, are more than half-truths. The
Christian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on that subject
and if any one teaches a morality which varies from it, he is wholly
in error." As this is of all cases the most important in practice, none
can be fitter to test the general maxim. But before pronouncing
what Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable to decide
what is meant by Christian morality. If it means the morality of the

ON LIBERTY 243

New Testament, I wonder that any one who derives his knowledge
of this from the book itself, can suppose that it was announced, or
intended, as a complete doctrine of morals. The Gospel always refers
to a preexisting morality, and confines its precepts to the particulars
in which that morality was to be corrected, or superseded by a wider
and higher; expressing itself, moreover, in terms most general, often
impossible to be interpreted literally, and possessing rather the im-
pressiveness of poetry or eloquence than the precision of legislation.
To extract from it a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible
without eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system
elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only
for a barbarous people. St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical
mode of interpreting the doctrine and filling up the scheme of his
Master, equaUy assumes a preexisting morality, namely, that of the
Greeks and Romans; and his advice to Christians is in a great meas-
ure a system of accommodadon to that; even to the extent of giving
an apparent sanction to slavery. What is called Chrisdan, but should
rather be termed theological, moraUty, was not the work of Christ
or the Aposdes, but is of much later origin, having been gradually
built up by the Cathohc Church of the first five centuries, and
though not implicitly adopted by moderns and Protestants, has been
much less modified by them than might have been expected. For the
most part, indeed, they have contented themselves with cutdng off
the additions which had been made to it in the Middle Ages, each
sect supplying the place by fresh additions, adapted to its own char-
acter and tendencies. That mankind owe a great debt to this mo-
rality, and to its early teachers, I should be the last person to deny;
but I do not scruple to say of it, that it is, in many important points,
incomplete and one-sided, and that imless ideas and feeUngs, not
sanctioned by it, had contributed to the formation of European Hfe
and character, human affairs would have been in a worse condition
than they now are. Christian moraUty (so called) has all the char-
acters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism.
Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active;
Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than
energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said)
"thou shalt not" predonainates unduly over "thou shalt." In its hor-

244 JOHN STUART MILL

ror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been grad-
ually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope
of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate
motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the
ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an
essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man's feelings of
duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures, except so far as a self-
interested inducement is offered to him for consulting them. It is
essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission
to ail authorities found established; who indeed are not to be actively
obeyed when they command what religion forbids, but who are not
to be resisted, far less rebelled against, for any amount of wrong to
ourselves. And while, in the morality of the best Pagan nations,
duty to the State holds even a disproportionate place, infringing on
the just liberty of the individual; in purely Christian ethics that
grand department of duty is scarcely noticed or acknowledged. It
is in the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read the maxim —
"A ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in his
dominions another man better qualified for it, sins against God and
against the State." What. little recognition the idea of obligation to
the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and
Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of pri-
vate life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal
dignity, even the sense of honor, is derived from the purely human,
not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown
out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly
recognized, is that of obedience.

I am as far as any one from pretending that these defects are
necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics, in every manner in which
it can be conceived, or that the many requisites of a complete moral
doctrine which it does not contain, do not admit of being reconciled
with it. Far less would I insinuate this of the doctrines and precepts
of Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all, that
I can see any evidence of their having been intended to be; that they
are irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive morality re-
quires; that everything which is excellent in ethics may be brought
within them, with no greater violence to their language than has

ON LIBERTY 245

been done to it by all who have attempted to deduce from them
any practical system of conduct whatever. But it is quite consistent
with this, to believe that they contain and were meant to contain,
only a part of the truth; that many essential elements of the highest
morality are among the things which are not provided for, nor
intended to be provided for, in the recorded deliverances of the
Founder of Christianity, and which have been entirely thrown
aside in the system of ethics erected on the basis of those de-
liverances by the Christian Church. And this being so, I think
it a great error to persist in attempting to find in the Christian
doctrine that complete rule for our guidance, which its author
intended it to sanction and enforce, but only partially to provide.
I believe, too, that this narrow theory is becoming a grave practical
evil, detracting greatly from the value of the moral training and
instruction, which so many well-meaning persons are now at length
exerting themselves to promote. I much fear that by attempting to
form the mind and feelings on an exclusively religious type, and
discarding those secular standards (as for want of a better name they
may be called) which heretofore coexisted with and supplemented
the Christian ethics, receiving some of its spirit, and infusing into it
some of theirs, there will result, and is even now resulting, a low,
abject, servile type of character, which, submit itself as it may to
what it deems the Supreme Will, is incapable of rising to or sympa-
thizing in the conception of Supreme Goodness. I believe that other
ethics than any one which can be evolved from exclusively Christian
sources, must exist side by side with Christian ethics to produce the
moral regeneration of mankind; and that the Christian system is
no exception to the rule that in an imperfect state of the human
mind, the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions. It is
not necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral truths not con-
tained in Christianity, men should ignore any of those which it does
contain. Such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether
an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always ex-
empt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an inestimable
good. The exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the
whole, must and ought to be protested against, and if a reactionary
impulse should make the protestors unjust in their turn, this one-

246 JOHN STUART MILL

sidedness, like the other, may be lamented, but must be tolerated.
If Christians would teach infidels to be just to Christianity, they
should themselves be just to infidelity. It can do truth no service
to blink the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaint-
ance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and
most valuable moral teaching has been the work, not only of men
who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the Christian
faith.

I do not pretend that the most unlimited use of the freedom of
enunciating all possible opinions would put an end to the evils of
religious or philosophical sectarianism. Every truth which men of
narrow capacity are in earnest about is sure to be asserted, incul-
cated, and in many ways ever acted on, as if no other truth existed
in the world, or at all events none that could limit or qualify the
first. I acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become
sectarian is not cured by the freest discussion, but is often heightened
and exacerbated thereby; the truth which ought to have been, but
was not, seen, being rejected all the more violently because pro-
claimed by persons regarded as opponents. But it is not on the
impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested
bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect.
Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet sup-
pression of half of it, is the formidable evil: there is always hope
when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend
only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases
to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood. And
since there are few mental attributes more rare than that judicial
faculty which can sit in intelligent judgment between two sides of a
question, of which only one is represented by an advocate before it,
truth has no chance but in proportion as every side of it, every
opinion which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only finds ad-
vocates, but is so advocated as to be listened to.

We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being
of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of free-
dom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four
distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for

ON LIBERTY 247

aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume
our own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and
very commonly does, contain a portion o£ truth; and since the gen-
eral or prevailing opinion on any object is rarely or never the whole
truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remain-
der of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the
whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously
and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be
held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or
feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the
meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or
enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and con-
duct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious
for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth
of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal expe-
rience.

Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take
notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions
should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate,
and do not pass the bounds of! fair discussion. Much might be
said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are
to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is
attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given when-
ever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent
who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer,
appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an
intemperate opponent. But this, though an important consideration
in a practical point of view, merges in a more fundamental objec-
tion. Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even though
it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and may justly incur
severe censure. But the principal offences of the kind are such as it
is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to bring
home to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically,
to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case,
or misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to the most

248 JOHN STUART MILL

aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith, by
persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may
not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is
rarely possible on adequate grounds conscientiously to stamp the mis-
representation as morally culpable; and still less could law presume
to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct. With regard
to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely, in-
vective, sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these
weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to
interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain
the employment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the
unprevailing they may not only be used without general disap-
proval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the
praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation. Yet whatever mis-
chief arises from their use, is greatest when they are employed
against the comparatively defenceless; and whatever unfair advan-
tage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting it,
accrues almost exclusively to received opinions. The worst offence
of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatize
those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men. To
calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are
peculiarly exposed, because they are in general few and uninfluential,
and nobody but themselves feels much interest in seeing justice done
them; but this weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those
who attack a prevailing opinion : they can neither use it with safety
to themselves, nor if they could, would it do anything but recoil on
their own cause. In general, opinions contrary to those commonly
received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of lan-
guage, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence,
from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without
losing ground : while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side
of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing
contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them.
For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more impor-
tant to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the
other; and, for example, if it were necessary to choose, there would
be much more need to discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than

ON LIBERTY 249

on religion. It is, however, obvious that law and authority have no
business with restraining either, while opinion ought, in every in-
stance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual
case; condemning every one, on whichever side of the argument he
places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor,
or malignity, bigotry or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves,
but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes,
though it be the contrary side of the question to our own; and giving
merited honor to every one, whatever opinion he may hold, who has
calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their
opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping
nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor.
This is the real morality of public discussion; and if often violated,
I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who to a
great extent observe it, and a still greater number who conscien-
tiously strive towards it.

CHAPTER III
On Individuality, as One of the Elements of Wellbeing

SUCH being the reasons which make it imperative that human
beings should be free to form opinions, and to express their
opinions without reserve; and such the baneful consequences
to the intellectual, and through that to the moral nature of man,
unless this liberty is either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohi-
bition; let us next examine whether the same reasons do not require
that men should be free to act upon their opinions — to carry these
out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical or moral, from
their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril. This
last proviso is of course indispensable. No one pretends that actions
should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose
their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed
are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to
some mischievous act. Ah opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of
the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested
when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur pun-
ishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before
the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same
mob in the form of a placard. Acts of whatever kind, which, with-
out justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more
important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavor-
able sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of
mankind. The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited;
he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. But if he
refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely
acts according to his own inclination and judgment in things which
concern himself, the same reasons which show that opinion should
be free, prove also that he should be allowed, without molestation,
to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost. That mankind
are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-

250

ON LIBERTY 25 1

truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and
freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity
not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than
at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, are principles applica-
ble to men's modes of action, not less than to their opinions. As it
is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different
opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of liv-
ing; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short
of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life
should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them.
It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern
others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person's
own character, but the traditions of customs of other people are the
rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of
human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and
social progress.

In maintaining this principle, the greatest difficulty to be encoun-
tered does not lie in the appreciation of means towards an acknowl'
edged end, but in the indifference of persons in general to the end
itself. If it were felt that the free development of individuality is
one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it is not only a co-
ordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civiliza-
tion, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and
condition of all those things; there would be no danger that liberty
should be undervalued, and the adjustment of the boundaries be-
tween it and social control would present no extraordinary difficulty.
But the evil is, that individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by
the common modes of thinking as having any intrinsic worth, or
deserving any regard on its own account. The majority, being satis-
fied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who
make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways
should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spon-
taneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social
reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome
and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what
these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for
mankind. Few persons, out of Germany, even comprehend the

252 JOHN STUART MILL

meaning of the doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt, so eminent
both as a savant and as a politician, made the text of a treatise — that
"the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immu-
table dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient
desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his pow-
ers to a complete and consistent whole;" that, therefore, the object
"towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts,
and on which especially those who design to influence their fellow-
men must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of power and
development;" that for this there are two requisites, "freedom, and
a variety of situations;" and that from the union of these arise "indi-
vidual vigor and manifold diversity," which combine themselves in
"originality." '

Little, however, as people are accustomed to a doctrine like that of
Von Humboldt, and surprising as it may be to them to find so high
a value attached to individuality, the question, one must nevertheless
think, can only be one of degree. No one's idea of excellence in
conduct is that people should do absolutely nothing but copy one
another. No one would assert that people ought not to put into their
mode of life, and into the conduct of their concerns, any impress
whatever of their own judgment, or of their own individual char-
acter. On the other hand, it would be absurd to pretend that people
ought to live as if nothing whatever had been known in the world
before they came into it; as if experience had as yet done nothing
towards showing that one mode of existence, or of conduct, is pref-
erable to another. Nobody denies that people should be so taught
and trained in youth, as to know and benefit by the ascertained
results of human experience. But it is the privilege and proper
condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties,
to use and interpret experience in his own way. It is for him to
find out what part of recorded experience is properly applicable to
his own circumstances and character. The traditions and customs
of other people are, to a certain extent, evidence of what their experi-
ence has taught them; presumptive evidence, and as such, have a
claim to this deference : but, in the first place, their experience may

' The Sphere and Duties of Government, from the German of Baron Wilhelm
von Humboldt, pp. 11 -13.

ON LIBERTY 253

be too narrow; or they may not have interpreted it rightly. Sec-
ondly, their interpretation of experience may be correct but unsuit-
able to him. Customs are made for customary circumstances, and
customary characters: and his circumstances or his character may
be uncustomary. Thirdly, though the customs be both good as cus-
toms, and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom, merely as
custom, does not educate or develop in him any of the qualities
which are the distinctive endowment of a human being. The human
faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental
activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making
a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no
choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring
what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are
improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exer-
cise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by
believing a thing only because others believe it. If the grounds of an
opinion are not conclusive to the person's own reason, his reason
cannot be strengthened, but is likely to be weakened by his adopting
it: and if the inducements to an act are not such as are consentaneous
to his own feelings and character (where affection, or the rights of
others are not concerned), it is so much done towards rendering
his feelings and character inert and torpid, instead of active and ener-
getic.

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan
of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like
one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all
his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judg-
ment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimina-
tion to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to
hold to his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and
exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he
determines according to his own judgment and feelings is a large
one. It is possible that he might be guided in some good path, and
kept out of harm's way, without any of these things. But what will
be his comparative worth as a human being? It really is of impor-
tance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they
are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly

254 JOHN STUART MILL

employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance
surely is man himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses
built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even churches
erected and prayers said, by machinery — by automatons in human
form — ^it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these autom-
atons even the men and women who at present inhabit the more
civilized parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved speci-
mens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature is not
a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work
prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop
itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces
which make it a living thing.

It will probably be conceded that it is desirable people should
exercise their understandings, and that an intelligent following of
custom, or even occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom,
is better than a blind and simply mechanical adhesion to it. To a
certain extent it is admitted, that our understanding should be our
own: but there is not the same willingness to admit that our desires
and impulses should be our own likewise; or that to possess impulses
of our own, and of any strength, is anything but a peril and a snare.
Yet desires and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human
being, as beliefs and restraints: and strong impulses are only perilous
when not properly balanced; when one set of aims and inclinations
is developed into strength, while others, which ought to coexist with
them, remain weak and inactive. It is not because men's desires are
strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.
There is no natural connection between strong impulses and a weak
conscience. The natural connection is the other way. To say that
one person's desires and feelings are stronger and more various than
those of another, is merely to say that he has more of the raw mate-
rial of human nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps of more
evil, but certainly of more good. Strong impulses are but another
name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but more good
may always be made of an energetic nature, than of an indolent and
impassive one. Those who have most natural feeling, are always
those whose cultivated feelings may be made the strongest. The
same strong susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid

ON LIBERTY 255

and powerful, are also the source from whence are generated the
most passionate love of virtue, and the sternest self-control. It is
through the cultivation of these, that society both does its duty and
protects its interests: not by rejecting the stuff of which heroes are
made, because it knows not how to make them. A person whose
desires and impulses are his own — are the expression of his own
nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture —
is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not
his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has a char-
acter. If, in addition to being his own, his impulses are strong, and
are under the government of a strong will, he has an energetic char-
acter. Whoever thinks that individuality of desires and impulses
should not be encouraged to unfold itself, must maintain that society
has no need of strong natures — is not the better for containing many
persons who have much character — and that a high general average
of energy is not desirable.

In some early states of society, these forces might be, and were,
too much ahead of the power which society then possessed of dis-
ciplining and controlling them. There has been a time when the
element of spontaneity and individuality was in excess, and the social
principle had a hard struggle with it. The difficulty then was, to
induce men of strong bodies or minds to pay obedience to any rules
which required them to control their impulses. To overcome this
difficulty, law and discipline, like the Popes struggling against the
Emperors, asserted a power over the whole man, claiming to control
all his life in order to control his character — which society had not
found any other sufficient means of binding. But society has now
fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens
human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal im-
pulses and preferences. Things are vastly changed, since the pas-
sions of those who were strong by station or by personal endowment
were in a state of habitual rebellion against laws and ordinances,
and required to be rigorously chained up to enable the persons
within their reach to enjoy any particle of security. In our times,
from the highest class of society down to the lowest every one lives
as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in
what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the

256 JOHN STUART MILL

individual, or the family, do not ask themselves — what do I prefer?
or, what would suit my character and disposition? or, what would
allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it
to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my
position ? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuni-
ary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons
of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean
that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their
own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination,
except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the
yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first
thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only
among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of
conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not
following their own nature, they have no nature to follow: their
human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable
of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally with-
out either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their
own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human
nature?

It is so, on the Calvinistic theory. According to that, the one
great offence of man is Self-will. All the good of which humanity
is capable, is comprised in Obedience. You have no choice; thus
you must do, and no otherwise; "whatever is not a duty is a sin."
Human nature being radically corrupt, there is no redemption for
any one until human nature is killed within him. To one holding
this theory of life, crushing out any of the human faculties, capacities,
and susceptibilities, is no evil: man needs no capacity, but that of
surrendering himself to the will of God: and if he uses any of his
faculties for any other purpose but to do that supposed will more
effectually, he is better without them. That is the theory of Cal-
vinism; and it is held, in a mitigated form, by many who do not
consider themselves Calvinists; the mitigation consisting in giving
a less ascetic interpretation to the alleged will of God; asserting it
to be his will that mankind should gratify some of their inclinations;
of course not in the manner they themselves prefer, but in the way
of obedience, that is, in a way prescribed to them by authority;

ON LIBERTY 257

and, therefore, by the necessary conditions of the case, the same
for all.

In some such insidious form there is at present a strong tendency
to this narrow theory of life, and to the pinched and hidebound type
of human character which it patronizes. Many persons, no doubt,
sincerely think that human beings thus cramped and dwarfed, are
as their Maker designed them to be; just as many have thought that
trees are a much finer thing when clipped into pollards, or cut
out into figures of animals, than as nature made them. But if it be
any part of religion to believe that man was made by a good Being,
it is more consistent with that faith to believe, that this Being gave
all human faculties that they might be cultivated and unfolded, not
rooted out and consumed, and that he takes delight in every nearer
approach made by his creatures to the ideal conception embodied in
them, every increase in any of their capabilities of comprehension,
of action, or of enjoyment. There is a different type of human excel-
lence from the Calvinistic; a conception of humanity as having its
nature bestowed on it for other purposes than merely to be abne-
gated. "Pagan self-assertion" is one of the elements of human worth,
as well as "Christian self-denial." ^ There is a Greek ideal of self-
development, which the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-govern-
ment blends with, but does not supersede. It may be better to be a
John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a Pericles than
either; nor would a Pericles, if we had one in these days, be without
anything good which belonged to John Knox.

It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in
themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the
limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human
beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and
as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the
same process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and animat-
ing, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevat-
ing feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual
to the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to.
In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person
becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being

2 Sterling's Essays.

258 JOHN STUART MILL

more valuable to others. There is a greater fulness of life about his
own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more
in the mass which is composed of them. As much compression as
is necessary to prevent the stronger specimens of human nature from
encroaching on the rights of others, cannot be dispensed with; but
for this there is ample compensation even in the point of view of
human development. The means of development which the indi-
vidual loses by being prevented from gratifying his incUnations to
the injury of others, are chiefly obtained at the expense of the devel-
opment of other people. And even to himself there is a full equiva-
lent in the better development of the social part of his nature, ren-
dered possible by the restraint put upon the selfish part. To be held
to rigid rules of justice for the sake of others, develops the feelings
and capacities which have the good of others for their object. But to
be restrained in things not affecting their good, by their mere dis-
pleasure, develops nothing valuable, except such force of character
as may unfold itself in resisting the restraint. If acquiesced in, it
dulls and blunts the whole nature. To give any fair play to the na-
ture of each, it is essential that different persons should be allowed
to lead different lives. In proportion as this latitude has been exer-
cised in any age, has that age been noteworthy to posterity. Even
despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as Individuality
exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by
whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be
enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

Having said that Individuality is the same thing with develop-
ment, and that it is only the cultivation of individuality which pro-
duces, or can produce, well-developed human beings, I might here
close the argument: for what more or better can be said of any
condition of human affairs, than that it brings human beings them-
selves nearer to the best thing they can be? or what worse can be
said of any obstruction to good, than that it prevents this? Doubt-
less, however, these considerations will not suffice to convince those
who most need convincing; and it is necessary further to show, that
these developed human beings are of some use to the undeveloped —
to point out to those who do not desire liberty, and would not avail
themselves of it, that they may be in some intelligible manner

ON LIBERTY 259

rewarded for allowing other people to make use o£ it without
hindrance.

In the first place, then, I would suggest that they might possibly
learn something from them. It will not be denied by anybody, that
originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always
need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when
what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence
new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct,
and better taste and sense in human life. This cannot well be gain-
said by anybody who does not believe that the world has already
attained perfection in all its ways and practices. It is true that this
benefit is not capable of being rendered by everybody alike: there
are but few persons, in comparison with the whole of mankind,
whose experiments, if adopted by others, would be likely to be any
improvement on established practice. But these few are the salt of
the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool.
Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before
exist; it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.
If there were nothing new to be done, would human intellect cease
to be necessary? Would it be a reason why those who do the old
things should forget why they are done, and do them like cattle, not
like human beings? There is only too great a tendency in the best
beliefs and practices to degenerate into the mechanical; and unless
there were a succession of persons whose ever-recurring originality
prevents the grounds of those beliefs and practices from becoming
merely traditional, such dead matter would not resist the smallest
shock from anything really alive, and there would be no reason
why civilization should not die out, as in the Byzantine Empire.
Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small
minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the
soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmos-
phere of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more indi-
vidual than any other people — less capable, consequently, of fitting
themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small
number of moulds which society provides in order to save its mem-
bers the trouble of forming their own character. If from timidity
they consent to be forced into one of these moulds, and to let all

26o JOHN STUART MILL

that part of themselves which cannot expand under the pressure
remain unexpanded, society will be little the better for their genius.
If they are of a strong character, and break their fetters they become
a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them
to common-place, to point at with solemn warning as "wild,"
"erratic," and the like; much as if one should complain of the
Niagara river for not flowing smoothly between its banks like a
Dutch canal.

I insist thus emphatically on the importance of genius, and the
necessity of allowing it to unfold itself freely both in thought and
in practice, being well aware that no one will deny the position in
theory, but knowing also that almost every one, in reality, is totally
indifferent to it. People think genius a fine thing if it enables a man
to write an exciting poem, or paint a picture. But in its true sense,
that of originality in thought and action, though no one says that
it is not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at heart, think they can
do very well without it. Unhappily this is too natural to be wondered
at. Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel
the use of. They cannot see what it is to do for them: how should
they? If they could see what it would do for them, it would not
be originality. The first service which originality has to render them,
is that of opening their eyes: which being once fully done, they
would have a chance of being themselves original. Meanwhile, rec-
ollecting that nothing was ever yet done which some one was not
the first to do, and that all good things which exist are the fruits
of originality, let them be modest enough to believe that there is
something still left for it to accomplish, and assure themselves that
they are more in need of originality, the less they are conscious of
the want.

In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid,
to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things
throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power
among mankind. In ancient history, in the Middle Ages, and in a
diminishing degree through the long transition from feudality to the
present time, the individual was a power in himself; and if he had
either great talents or a high social position, he was a considerable
power. At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it

ON LIBERTY 26 1

is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world.
The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of govern-
ments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and
instincts of masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations
of private life as in public transactions. Those whose opinions go
by the name of public opinion, are not always the same sort of public:
in America, they are the whole white population; in England, chiefly
the middle class. But they are always a mass, that is to say, collective
mediocrity. And what is still greater novelty, the mass do not now
take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from osten-
sible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done for them by
men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their
name, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers. I am
not complaining of all this. I do not assert that anything better is com-
patible, as a general rule, with the present low state of the human
mind. But that does not hinder the government of mediocrity from
being mediocre government. No government by a democracy or a
numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the opinions,
qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or could rise
above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign Many have let
themselves be guided (which in their best times they always have
done) by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and
instructed One or Few. The initiation of all wise or noble things,
comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from
some one individual. The honor and glory of the average man is
that he is capable of following that initiative; that he can respond
internally to wise and noble things, and be led to them with his eyes
open. I am not countenancing the sort of "hero-worship" which
applauds the strong man of genius for forcibly seizing on the gov-
ernment of the world and making it do his bidding in spite of itself.
All he can claim is, freedom to point out the way. The power of
compelling others into it, is not only inconsistent with the freedom
and development of all the rest, but corrupting to the strong man
himself. It does seem, however, that when the opinions of masses of
merely average men are everywhere become or becoming the domi-
nant power, the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency would
be, the more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand

262 JOHN STUART MILL

on the higher eminences of thought. It is in these circumstances
most especially, that exceptional individuals, instead of being de-
terred, should be encouraged in acting differently from the mass.
In other times there was no advantage in their doing so, unless they
acted not only differently, but better. In this age the mere example
of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is
itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as
to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break
through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity
has always abounded when and where strength of character has
abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally
been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral
courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric,
marks the chief danger of the time.

I have said that it is important to give the freest scope possible to
uncustomary things, in order that it may in time appear which of
these are fit to be converted into customs. But independence of
action, and disregard of custom are not solely deserving of encour-
agement for the chance they afford that better modes of action, and
customs more worthy of general adoption, may be struck out; nor
is it only persons of decided mental superiority who have a just claim
to carry on their lives in their own way. There is no reason that all
human existences should be constructed on some one, or some small
number of patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount of
common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his ex-
istence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it
is his own mode. Human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep
are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair
of boots to fit him, unless they are either made to his measure, or he
has a whole warehousef ul to choose from : and is it easier to fit him
with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like one
another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in
the shape of their feet? If it were only that people have diversities
of taste that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all
after one model. But different persons also require different condi-
tions for their spiritual development; and can no more exist healthily
in the same moral, than all the variety of plants can in the same

ON LIBERTY 263

physical atmosphere and climate. The same things which are helps
to one person towards the cultivation of his higher nature, are hin-
drances to another. The same mode of life is a healthy excitement
to one, keeping all his faculties of action and enjoyment in their best
order, while to another it is a distracting burden, which suspends
or crushes all internal life. Such are the differences among human
beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and
the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that
unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they
neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the men-
tal, moral, and esthetic stature of which their nature is capable. Why
then should tolerance, as far as the public sentiment is concerned,
extend only to tastes and modes of life which extort acquiescence by
the multitude of their adherents ? Nowhere (except in some monas-
tic institutions) is diversity of taste entirely unrecognized; a person
may without blame, either like or dislike rowing, or smoking, or
music, or athletic exercises, or chess, or cards, or study, because both
those who like each of these things, and those who dislike them, are
too numerous to be put down. But the man, and still more the
woman, who can be accused either of doing "what nobody does,"
or of not doing "what everybody does," is the subject of as much
depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral
delinquency. Persons require to possess a tide, or some other badge
of rank, or the consideration of people of rank, to be able to indulge
somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like without detriment to
their estimation. To indulge somewhat, I repeat: for whoever allow
themselves much of that indulgence, incur the risk of something
worse than disparaging speeches — they are in peril of a commission
de lunatico, and of having their property taken from them and given
to their relations.'

3 There is something both contemptible and frightful in the sort of evidence on
which, of late years, any person can be judicially declared unfit for the management
of his afiairs; and after his death, his disposal of his property can be set aside, if
there is enough of it to pay the expenses of litigation — which are charged on the
property itself. All the minute details of his daily life are pried into, and whatever
is found which, seen through the medium of the perceiving and describing faculties
of the lowest of the low, bears an appearance unlike absolute commonplace, is laid
before the jury as evidence of insanity, and often with success; the jurors being little,
if at all, less vulgar and ignorant than the witnesses; while the judges, with that
extraordinary want of knowledge of human nature and life which continually aston-

264 JOHN STUART MILL

There is one characteristic o£ the present direction of public opin-
ion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked dem-
onstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not
only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they
have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do any-
thing unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who
have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they
are accustomed to look down upon. Now, in addition to this fact
which is general, we have only to suppose that a strong movement
has set in towards the improvement of morals, and it is evident what
we have to expect. In these days such a movement has set in; much
has actually been effected in the way of increased regularity of con-
duct, and discouragement of excesses; and there is a philanthropic
spirit abroad, for the exercise of which there is no more inviting
field than the moral and prudential improvement of our fellow-
creatures. These tendencies of the times cause the public to be more
disposed than at most former periods to prescribe general rules of
conduct, and endeavor to make every one conform to the approved
standard. And that standard, express or tacit, is to desire nothing
strongly. Its ideal of character is to be without any marked char-
acter; to maim by compression, like a Chinese lady's foot, every
part of human nature which stands out prominently, and tends to
make the person markedly dissimilar in outline to commonplace
humanity.

As is usually the case with ideals which exclude one half of what
is desirable, the present standard of approbation produces only an
inferior imitation of the other half. Instead of great energies guided
by vigorous reason, and strong feelings strongly controlled by a con-
scientious will, its result is weak feeUngs and weak energies, which

ishes us in English lawyers, often help to mislead them. These trials speak volumes
as to the state of feeling and opinion among the vulgar with regard to human
liberty. So far from setting any value on individuality — so far from respecting the
rights of each individual to act, in things indifferent, as seems good to his own
judgment and inclinations, judges and juries cannot even conceive that a person in
a state of sanity can desire such freedom. In former days, when it was proposed
to burn atheists, charitable people used to suggest putting them in a madhouse in-
stead: it would be nothing surprising now-a-days were we to see this done, and the
doers applauding themselves, because, instead of persecuting for religion, they had
adopted so humane and Christian a mode of treating these unfortunates, not without
a silent satisfaction at their having thereby obtained their deserts.

ON LIBERTY 265

therefore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any
strength either of will or of reason. Already energetic characters on
any large scale are becoming merely traditional. There is now
scarcely any outlet for energy in this country except business. The
energy expended in that may still be regarded as considerable. What
little is left from that employment, is expended on some hobby;
which may be a useful, even a philanthropic hobby, but is always
some one thing, and generally a thing of small dimensions. The great-
ness of England is now all collective: individually small, we only ap-
pear capable of anything great by our habit of combining; and with
this our moral and religious philanthropists are perfecdy contented.
But it was men of another stamp than this that made England what
it has been; and men of another stamp will be needed to prevent
its decline.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance
to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that dis-
position to aim at something better than customary, which is called,
according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress
or improvement. The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit
of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling
people; and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts,
may ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of im-
provement; but the only unfailing and permanent source of im-
provement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible inde-
pendent centres of improvement as there are individuals. The pro-
gressive principle, however, in either shape, whether as the love
of liberty or of improvement, is antagonistic to the sway of Custom,
involving at least emancipation from that yoke; and the contest
between the two constitutes the chief interest of the history of man-
kind. The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no his-
tory, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case
over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final appeal;
justice and right mean conformity to custom; the argument of cus-
tom no one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with power, thinks of
resisting. And we see the result. Those nations must once have had
originality; they did not start out of the ground populous, lettered,
and versed in many of the arts of life; they made themselves all this,

266 JOHN STUART MILL

and were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the world.
What are they now? The subjects or dependents of tribes whose
forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs had magnificent
palaces and gorgeous temples, but over whom custom exercised only
a divided rule with liberty and progress. A people, it appears, may
be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop: when
does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality. If a similar
change should befall the nations of Europe, it will not be in exactly
the same shape: the despotism of custom with which these nations
are threatened is not precisely stationariness. It proscribes singu-
larity, but it does not preclude change, provided all change together.
We have discarded the fixed costumes of our forefathers; every one
must still dress like other people, but the fashion may change once
or twice a year. We thus take care that when there is change, it
shall be for change's sake, and not from any idea of beauty or con-
venience; for the same idea of beauty or convenience would not
strike all the world at the same moment, and be simultaneously
thrown aside by all at another moment. But we are progressive as
well as changeable: we continually make new inventions in mechan-
ical things, and keep them until they are again superseded by better;
we are eager for improvement in politics, in education, even in
morals, though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists
in persuading or forcing other people to be as good as ourselves.
It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatter our-
selves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived. It is
individuality that we war against: we should think we had done
wonders if we had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that the un-
likeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which
draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type,
and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by combining the
advantages of both, of producing something better than either. We
have a warning example in China — a nation of much talent, and, in
some respects, even wisdom, owing to the rare good fortune of
having been provided at an early period with a particularly good
set of customs, the work, in some measure, of men to whom even
the most enlightened European must accord, under certain limita-
tions, the title of sages and philosophers. They are remarkable, too.

ON LIBERTY 267

in the excellence of their apparatus for impressing, as far as possible,
the best wisdom they possess upon every mind in the community,
and securing that those who have appropriated most of it shall oc
cupy the posts of honor and power. Surely the people who did
this have discovered the secret of human progressiveness, and must
have kept themselves steadily at the head of the movement of the
world. On the contrary, they have become stationary — have re-
mained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to be farther
improved, it must be by foreigners. They have succeeded beyond
all hope in what English philanthropists are so industriously work-
ing at — in making a people all alike, all governing their thoughts
and conduct by the same maxims and rules; and these are the
fruits. The modern regime of public opinion is, in an unorganized
form, what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an
organized; and unless individuality shall be able successfully to as-
sert itself against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antece-
dents and its professed Christianity, will tend to become another
China.

What is it that has hitherto preserved Europe from this lot?
What has made the European family of nations an improving, in-
stead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excel-
lence in them, which when it exists, exists as the eflpect, not as the
cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. In-
dividuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another:
they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to some-
thing valuable; and although at every period those who travelled
in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each
would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have
been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each
other's development have rarely had any permanent success, and
each has in time endured to receive the good which the others have
offered. Europe is, in my judgment, wholly indebted to this plu-
rality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development. But
it already begins to possess this benefit in a considerably less degree.
It is decidedly advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all
people alike. M. de Tocqueville, in his last important work, remarks
how much more the Frenchmen of the present day resemble one

268 JOHN STUART MILL

another, than did those even of the last generation. The same re-
mark might be made of Enghshmen in a far greater degree. In a
passage already quoted from Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points
out two things as necessary conditions of human development, be-
cause necessary to render people unlike one another; namely, free-
dom, and variety of situations. The second of these two conditions
is in this country every day diminishing. The circumstances which
surround different classes and individuals, and shape their charac-
ters, are daily becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different ranks,
different neighborhoods, different trades and professions lived in
what might be called different worlds; at present, to a great degree,
in the same. Comparatively speaking, they now read the same
things, listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the
same places, have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects,
have the same rights and liberties, and the same means of asserting
them. Great as are the differences of position which remain, they
are nothing to those which have ceased. And the assimilation is still
proceeding. All the political changes of the age promote it, since
they all tend to raise the low and to lower the high. Every extension
of education promotes it, because education brings people under
common influences, and gives them access to the general stock of
facts and sentiments. Improvements in the means of communication
promote it, by bringing the inhabitants of distant places into per-
sonal contact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of residence
between one place and another. The increase of commerce and man-
ufactures promotes it, by diffusing more widely the advantages of
easy circumstances, and opening all objects of ambition, even the
highest, to general competition, whereby the desire of rising becomes
no longer the character of a particular class, but of all classes. A
more powerful agency than even all these, in bringing about a gen-
eral similarity among mankind, is the complete establishment, in
this and other free countries, of the ascendancy of public opinion
in the State. As the various social eminences which enabled persons
entrenched on them to disregard the opinion of the multitude, grad-
ually became levelled; as the very idea of resisting the will of the
public, when it is positively known that they have a will, disap-
pears more and more from the minds of practical politicians; there

ON LIBERTY 269

ceases to be any social support for non-conformity — any substantive
power in society, which, itself opposed to the ascendancy of num-
bers, is interested in taking under its protection opinions and tend-
encies at variance with those of the public.

The combination of all these causes forms so great a mass of influ-
ences hostile to Individuality, that it is not easy to see how it can
stand its ground. It will do so with increasing difficulty, unless the
intelligent part of the public can be made to feel its value — to see
that it is good there should be differences, even though not for the
better, even though, as it may appear to them, some should be for
the worse. If the claims of Individuality are ever to be asserted, the
time is now, while much is still wanting to complete the enforced
assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages that any stand can be
successfully made against the encroachment. The demand that all
other people shall resemble ourselves, grows by what it feeds on. If
resistance waits till life is reduced nearly to one uniform type, all
deviations from that type will come to be considered impious, im-
moral, even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily
become unable to conceive diversity, when they have been for some
time unaccustomed to see it.

CHAPTER IV
Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual

WHAT, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the
individual over himself? Where does the authority of
society begin? How much of human life should be as-
signed to individuality, and how much to society?

Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which more
particularly concerns it. To individuality should belong the part of
life in which it is chiefly the individual that is interested; to society,
the part which chiefly interests society.

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good
purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social
obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society
owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders
it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line
of conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not
injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests,
which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding,
ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person's bear-
ing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labors
and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from
injury and molestation. These conditions society is justified in en-
forcing, at all costs to those who endeavor to withhold fulfilment.
Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may
be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their wel-
fare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted
rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though
not by law. As soon as any part of a person's conduct affects preju-
dicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and
the question whether the general welfare will or will not be pro-
moted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there
is no room for entertaining any such question when a person's con-

270

ON LIBERTY 27I

duct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not
affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full
age, and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases
there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action
and stand the consequences.

It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose
that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human
beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that
they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-
being of one another, unless their own interest is involved. Instead
of any diminution, there is need of a great increase of disinterested
exertion to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevo-
lence can find other instruments to persuade people to their good,
than whips and scourges, either of the literal or the metaphorical
sort. I am the last person to undervalue the self -regarding virtues;
they are only second in importance, if even second, to the social.
It is equally the business of education to cultivate both. But even
education works by conviction and persuasion as well as by compul-
sion, and it is by the former only that, when the period of education
is past, the self-regarding virtues should be inculcated. Human beings
owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse,
and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter. They
should be forever stimulating each other to increased exercise of their
higher faculties, and increased direction of their feelings and aims
towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of degrading, ob-
jects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any number
of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe
years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he
chooses to do with it. He is the person most interested in his own
well-being, the interest which any other person, except in cases of
strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared
with that which he himself has; the interest which society has in
him individually (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional,
and altogether indirect: while, with respect to his own feelings and
circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of
knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by
any one else. The interference of society to overrule his judgment

272 JOHN STUAKT MILL

and purposes in what only regards himself, must be grounded on
general presumptions; which may be altogether wrong, and even if
right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to individual cases, by
persons no better acquainted with the circumstances of such cases
than those are who look at them merely from without. In this de-
partment, therefore, of human affairs. Individuality has its proper
field of action. In the conduct of human beings towards one another,
it is necessary that general rules should for the most part be observed,
in order that people may know what they have to expect; but in
each person's own concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to
free exercise. Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to
strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even obtruded on him,
by others; but he, himself, is the final judge. All errors which he
is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed
by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem
his good.

I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is regarded
by others, ought not to be in any way affected by his self-regarding
qualities or deficiencies. This is neither possible nor desirable. If
he is eminent in any of the qualities which conduce to his own good,
he is, so far, a proper object of admiration. He is so much the nearer
to the ideal perfection of human nature. If he is grossly deficient
in those qualities, a sentiment the opposite of admiration will follow.
There is a degree of folly, and a degree of what may be called
(though the phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness or depravation
of taste, which, though it cannot justify doing harm to the person
who manifests it, renders him necessarily and properly a subject of
distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt: a person could not
have the opposite qualities in due strength without entertaining
these feelings. Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may
so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to him, as a fool, or
as a being of an inferior order: and since this judgment and feeUng
are a fact which he would prefer to avoid, it is doing him a service
to warn him of it beforehand, as of any other disagreeable conse-
quence to which he exposes himself. It would be well, indeed, if
this good office were much more freely rendered than the common
notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person could

ON LIBERTY 273

honestly point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without
being considered unmannerly or presuming. We have a right, also,
in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of any one,
not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.
We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right
to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a
right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right,
and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think
his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on
those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference
over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his
improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very
severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly
concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as
they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences
of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on
him for the sake of punishment. A person who shows rashness,
obstinacy, self-conceit — who cannot live within moderate means —
who cannot restrain himself from hurtful indulgences — who pursues
animal pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and intellect —
must expect to be lowered in the opinion of others, and to have a less
share of their favorable sentiments, but of this he has no right to
complain, unless he has merited their favor by special excellence in
his social relations, and has thus established a title to their good
offices, which is not affected by his demerits towards himself.

What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly
inseparable from the unfavorable judgment of others, are the only
ones to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of
his conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which
does not affect the interests of others in their relations with him.
Acts injurious to others require a totally different treatment. En-
croachment on their rights; infliction on them of any loss or damage
not justified by his own rights; falsehood or dupHcity in dealing
with them; unfair or ungenerous use of advantages over them; even
selfish abstinence from defending them against injury — these are
fit objects of moral reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral retribu-
tion and punishment. And not only these acts, but the dispositions

274 JOHN STUART MILL

which lead to them, are properly immoral, and fit subjects of disap-
probation which may rise to abhorrence. Cruelty of disposition;
malice and ill-nature; that most anti-social and odious of all passions,
envy; dissimulation and insincerity; irascibility on insufficient cause,
and resentment disproportioned to the provocation; the love of dom-
ineering over others; the desire to engross more than one's share of
advantages (the TrXtovt^ia of the Greeks); the pride which derives
gratification from the abasement of others; the egotism which thinks
self and its concerns more important than everything else, and de-
cides all doubtful questions in his own favor; — these are moral vices,
and constitute a bad and odious moral character: unlike the self-
regarding faults previously mentioned, which are not properly im-
moralities, and to whatever pitch they may be carried, do not con-
stitute wickedness. They may be proofs of any amount of folly, or
want of personal dignity and self-respect; but they are only a sub-
ject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach of duty to
others, for whose sake the individual is bound to have care for him-
self. What are called duties to ourselves are not socially obligatory,
unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to others.
The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than pru-
dence, means self-respect or self -development; and for none of these
is any one accountable to his fellow-creatures, because for none of
them is it for the good of mankind that he be held accountable
to them.

The distinction between the loss of consideration which a person
may rightly incur by defect of prudence or of personal dignity, and
the reprobation which is due to him for an offence against the rights
of others, is not a merely nominal distinction. It makes a vast dif-
ference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him,
whether he displeases us in things in which we think we have a
right to control him, or in things in which we know that we have
not. If he displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may
stand aloof from a person as well as from a thing that displeases us;
but we shall not therefore feel called on to make his life uncom-
fortable. We shall reflect that he already bears, or will bear, the
whole penalty of his error; if he spoils his life by mismanagement,
we shall not, for that reason, desire to spoil it still further : instead of

ON LIBERTY 275

wishing to punish him, we shall rather endeavor to alleviate his
punishment, by showing him how he may avoid or cure the evils
his conduct tends to bring upon him. He may be to us an object of
pity, perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or resentment; we shall
not treat him like an enemy of society: the worst we shall think
ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to himself, if we do not
interfere benevolently by showing interest or concern for him. It
is far otherwise if he has infringed the rules necessary for the protec-
tion of his fellow-creatures, individually or collectively. The evil
consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on others;
and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate on
him; must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punishment,
and must take care that it be sufficiently severe. In the one case,
he is an offender at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in
judgment on him, but, in one shape or another, to execute our
own sentence: in the other case, it is not our part to inflict any suf-
fering on him, except what may incidentally follow from our
using the same liberty in the regulation of our own affairs, which
we allow to him in his.

The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person's
life which concerns only himself, and that which concerns others,
many persons will refuse to admit. How (it may be asked) can
any part of the conduct of a member of society be a matter of
indifference to the other members? No person is an entirely isolated
being; it is impossible for a person to do anything seriously or per-
manently hurtful to himself, without mischief reaching at least to
his near connections, and often far beyond them. If he injures his
property, he does harm to those who directly or indirectly derived
support from it, and usually diminishes, by a greater or less
amount, the general resources of the community. If he deteriorates
his bodily or mental faculties, he not only brings evil upon all who
depended on him for any portion of their happiness, but disqualifies
himself for rendering the services which he owes to his fellow-
creatures generally; perhaps becomes a burden on their affection
or benevolence; and if such conduct were very frequent, hardly any
offence that is committed would detract more from the general sum
of good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does no direct

276 JOHN STUART MILL

harm to others, he is nevertheless (it may be said) injurious by his
example; and ought to be compelled to control himself, for the sake
o£ those whom the sight or knowledge of his conduct might corrupt
or mislead.

And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct
could be confined to the vicious or thoughtless individual, ought
society to abandon to their own guidance those who are manifestly
unfit for it? If protection against themselves is confessedly due to
children and persons under age, is not society equally bound to
afford it to persons of mature years who are equally incapable of
self-government? If gambling, or drunkenness, or incontinence, or
idleness, or uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness, and as great
a hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts prohibited
by law, why (it may be asked) should not law, so far as is consistent
with practicability and social convenience, endeavor to repress these
also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of
law, ought not opinion at least to organize a powerful police against
these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties those who are
known to practise them ? There is no question here (it may be said)
about restricting individuality, or impeding the trial of new and
original experiments in living. The only things it is sought to pre-
vent are things which have been tried and condemned from the
beginning of the world until now; things which experience has
shown not to be useful or suitable to any person's individuality.
There must be some length of time and amount of experience, after
which a moral or prudential truth may be regarded as established,
and it is merely desired to prevent generation after generation from
falling over the same precipice which has been fatal to their prede-
cessors.

I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself,
may seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their inter-
ests, those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society
at large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate
a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons,
the case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amen-
able to moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. If, for
example, a man, through intemperance or extravagance, becomes

ON LIBERTY 277

unable to pay his debts, or, having undertaken the moral respon-
sibility of a family, becomes from the same cause incapable of sup-
porting or educating them, he is deservedly reprobated, and might
be justly punished; but it is for the breach of duty to his family
or creditors, not for the extravagance. If the resources which ought
to have been devoted to them, had been diverted from them for the
most prudent investment, the moral culpability would have been
the same. George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get money for his
mistress, but if he had done it to set himself up in business, he would
equally have been hanged. Again, in the frequent case of a man
who causes grief to his family by addiction to bad habits, he deserves
reproach for his unkindness or ingratitude; but so he may for culti-
vating habits not in themselves vicious, if they are painful to those
with whom he passes his life, or who from personal ties are de-
pendent on him for their comfort. Whoever fails in the considera-
tion generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being
compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable
self -preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure,
but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to
himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a
person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the
performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public,
he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished sim-
ply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be pun-
ished for being drunk on duty. Whenever, in short, there is a defi-
nite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual
or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and
placed in that of morality or law.

But with regard to the merely contingent or, as it may be called,
constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct
which neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions
perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself; the in-
convenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of
the greater good of human freedom. If grown persons are to be pun-
ished for not taking proper care of themselves, I would rather it
were for their own sake, than under pretence of preventing them
from impairing their capacity of rendering to society benefits which

278 JOHN STUART MILL

society does not pretend it has a right to exact. But I cannot con-
sent to argue the point as if society had no means of bringing
its weaker members up to its ordinary standard of rational con-
duct, except waiting till they do something irrational, and then pun-
ishing them, legally or morally, for it. Society has had absolute
power over them during all the early portion of their existence: it
has had the whole period of childhood and nonage in which to try
whether it could make them capable of rational conduct in life.
The existing generation is master both of the training and the
entire circumstances of the generation to come; it cannot indeed
make them perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably
deficient in goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always,
in individual cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well
able to make the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little
better than, itself. If society lets any considerable number of its
members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by
rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame
for the consequences. Armed not only with all the powers of edu-
cation, but with the ascendency which the authority of a received
opinion always exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge
for themselves; and aided by the natural penalties which cannot be
prevented from falling on those who incur the distaste or the con-
tempt of those who know them; let not society pretend that it needs,
besides all this, the power to issue commands and enforce obedience
in the personal concerns of individuals, in which, on all principles
of justice and policy, the decision ought to rest with those who are
to abide the consequences. Nor is there anything which tends more
to discredit and frustrate the better means of influencing conduct,
than a resort to the worse. If there be among those whom it is
attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance, any of the material
of which vigorous and independent characters are made, they will
infallibly rebel against the yoke. No such person will ever feel that
others have a right to control him in his concerns, such as they
have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily
comes to be considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in the
face of such usurped authority, and do with ostentation the exact
opposite of what it enjoins; as in the fashion of grossness which

ON LIBERTY 279

succeeded, in the time of Charles II., to the fanatical moral intoler-
ance of the Puritans. With respect to what is said of the necessity
of protecting society from the bad example set to others by the
vicious or the self-indulgent; it is true that bad example may have
a pernicious effect, especially the example of doing wrong to others
with impunity to the wrong-doer. But we are now speaking of con-
duct which, while it does no wrong to others, is supposed to do
great harm to the agent himself: and I do not see how those who
believe this, can think otherwise than that the example, on the
whole, must be more salutary than hurtful, since, if it displays the
misconduct, it displays also the painful or degrading consequences
which, if the conduct is justly censured, must be supposed to be in
all or most cases attendant on it.

But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference
of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does
interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong
place. On questions of social morality, of duty to others, the opinion
of the public, that is, of an overruling majority, though often wrong,
is likely to be still oftener right; because on such questions they
are only required to judge of their own interests; of the manner in
which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised, would
affect themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed
as a law on the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct,
is quite as likely to be wrong as right; for in these cases public
opinion means, at the best, some people's opinion of what is good
or bad for other people; while very often it does not even mean
that; the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing over
the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure,
and considering only their own preference. There are many who
consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have
a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a
religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feel-
ings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his
feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But
there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion,
and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no
more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the

28o JOHN STUART MILL

desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as
much his own pecuhar concern as his opinion or his purse. It is
easy for any one to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the
freedom and choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undis-
turbed, and only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct
which universal experience has condemned. But where has there
been seen a public which set any such limit to its censorship? or
when does the public trouble itself about universal experience. In
its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of any-
thing but the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself;
and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to man-
kind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine tenths of all
moralists and speculative writers. These teach that things are right
because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us
to search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding
on ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but
apply these instructions, and make their own personal feelings of
good and evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory
on all the world?

The evil here pointed out is not one which exists only in theory;
and it may perhaps be expected that I should specify the instances
in which the public of this age and country improperly invests its
own preferences with the character of moral laws. I am not writing
an essay on the aberrations of existing moral feeling. That is too
weighty a subject to be discussed parenthetically, and by way of
illustration. Yet examples are necessary, to show that the principle
I maintain is of serious and practical moment, and that I am not
endeavoring to erect a barrier against imaginary evils. And it is
not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds
of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most
unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the
most universal of all human propensities.

As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men cherish on
no better grounds than that persons whose religious opinions are
different from theirs, do not practise their religious observances,
especially their religious abstinences. To cite a rather trivial example,
nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom

ON LIBERTY 28 1

the hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their eating
pork. There are few acts which Christians and Europeans regard
with more unaffected disgust, than Mussulmans regard this par-
ticular mode of satisfying hunger. It is, in the first place, an offence
against their religion; but this circumstance by no means explains
either the degree or the kind of their repugnance; for wine also is
forbidden by their religion, and to partake of it is by all Mussulmans
accounted wrong, but not disgusting. Their aversion to the flesh of
the "unclean beast" is, on the contrary, of that peculiar character,
resembling an instinctive antipathy, which the idea of uncleanness,
when once it thoroughly sinks into the feelings, seems always to
excite even in those whose personal habits are anything but
scrupulously cleanly and of which the sentiment of religious im-
purity, so intense in the Hindoos, is a remarkable example. Sup-
pose now that in a people, of whom the majority were Mussulmans,
that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to be eaten
within the limits of the country. This would be nothing new in
Mahomedan countries.' Would it be a legitimate exercise o£ the
moral authority of public opinion? and if not, why not? The
practice is really revolting to such a public. They also sincerely
think that it is forbidden and abhorred by the Deity. Neither could
the prohibition be censured as religious persecution. It might be
religious in its origin, but it would not be persecution for religion,
since nobody's religion makes it a duty to eat pork. The only tenable
ground of condemnation would be, that with the personal tastes and
self-regarding concerns of individuals the public has no business
to interfere.

To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards con-
sider it a gross impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme
Being, to worship him in any other manner than the Roman Cath-

■ The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious instance in point. When this in-
dustrious and enterprising tribe, the descendants of the Persian fire-worshippers, flying
from their native country before the Caliphs, arrived in Western India, they were
admitted to toleration by the Hindoo sovereigns, on condition of not eating beef.
When those regions afterwards fell under the dominion of Mahomedan conquerors,
the Parsees obtained from them a continuance of indulgence, on condition of re-
fraining from pork. What was at first obedience to authority became a second nature,
and the Parsees to this day abstain both from beef and pork. Though not required
by their religion, the double abstinence has had time to grow into a custom of their
tribe; and custom, in the East, is a religion.

282 JOHN STUART MILL

olic; and no other public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The
people of all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as not
only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What do
Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the
attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind
are justified in interfering with each other's liberty in things which
do not concern the interests of others, on what principle is it possible
consistently to exclude these cases? or who can blame people for
desiring to suppress what they regard as a scandal in the sight of
God and man?

No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which
is regarded as a personal immorality, than is made out for suppress-
ing these practices in the eyes of those who regard them as impieties;
and unless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and to
say that we may persecute others because we are right, and that they
must not persecute us because they are wrong, we must beware of
admitting a principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice
the application to ourselves.

The preceding instances may be objected to, although unreason-
ably, as drawn from contingencies impossible among us: opinion,
in this country, not being likely to enforce abstinence from meats,
or to interfere with people for worshipping, and for either marrying
or not marrying, according to their creed or inclination. The next
example, however, shall be taken from an interference with liberty
which we have by no means passed all danger of. Wherever the
Puritans have been sufficiently powerful, as in New England, and
in Great Britain at the time of the Commonwealth, they have
endeavored, with considerable success, to put down all public, and
nearly all private, amusements: especially music, dancing, public
games, or other assemblages for purposes of diversion, and the
theatre. There are still in this country large bodies of persons by
whose notions of morality and religion these recreations are con-
demned; and those persons belonging chiefly to the middle class,
who are the ascendant power in the present social and political con-
dition of the kingdom, it is by no means impossible that persons
of these sentiments may at some time or other command a majority
in Parliament. How will the remaining portion of the community

ON LIBERTY 283

like to have the amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated
by the religious and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and
Methodists? Would they not, with considerable peremptoriness,
desire these intrusively pious members of society to mind their own
business ? This is precisely what should be said to every government
and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall
enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong. But if the principle
of the pretension be admitted, no one can reasonably object to its
being acted on in the sense of the majority, or other preponderating
power in the country; and all persons must be ready to conform to
the idea of a Christian commonwealth, as understood by the early
setders in New England, if a religious profession similar to theirs
should ever succeed in regaining its lost ground, as religions sup-
posed to be declining have so often been known to do.

To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to be
realized than the one last mentioned. There is confessedly a strong
tendency in the modern world towards a democratic constitution of
society, accompanied or not by popular political institutions. It is
affirmed that in the country where this tendency is most completely
realized — where both society and the government are most dem-
ocradc — the United States — the feeling of the majority, to whom
any appearance of a more showy or costly style of living than they
can hope to rival is disagreeable, operates as a tolerably effectual
sumptuary law, and that in many parts of the Union it is really
difficult for a person possessing a very large income, to find any
mode of spending it, which will not incur popular disapprobation.
Though such statements as these are doubtless much exaggerated
as a representation of existing facts, the state of things they describe
is not only a conceivable and possible, but a probable result of dem-
ocratic feeling, combined with the notion that the public has a
right to a veto on the manner in which individuals shall spend their
incomes. We have only further to suppose a considerable diffusion
of Socialist opinions, and it may become infamous in the eyes of
the majority to possess more property than some very small amount,
or any income not earned by manual labor. Opinions similar in prin-
ciple to these, already prevail widely among the artisan class, and
weigh oppressively on those who are amenable to the opinion

284 JOHN STUART MILL

chiefly of that class, namely, its own members. It is known that the
bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many
branches of industry, are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen
ought to receive the same wages as good, and that no one ought to
be allowed, through piecework or otherwise, to earn by superior
skill or industry more than others can without it. And they employ
a moral police, which occasionally becomes a physical one, to deter
skilful workmen from receiving, and employers from giving, a
larger remuneration for a more useful service. If the public have
any jurisdiction over private concerns, I cannot see that these
people are in fault, or that any individual's particular public can be
blamed for asserting the same authority over his individual conduct,
which the general public asserts over people in general.

But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are, in our
own day, gross usurpations upon the liberty of private life actually
practised, and still greater ones threatened with some expectation
of success, and opinions proposed which assert an unlimited right
in the public not only to prohibit by law everything which it thinks
wrong, but in order to get at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any
number of things which it admits to be innocent.

Under the name of preventing intemperance the people of one
English colony, and of nearly half the United States, have been
interdicted by law from making any use whatever of fermented
drinks, except for medical purposes: for prohibition of their sale
is in fact, as it is intended to be, prohibition of their use. And
though the impracticability of executing the law has caused its
repeal in several of the States which had adopted it, including the
one from which it derives its name, an attempt has notwithstanding
been commenced, and is prosecuted with considerable zeal by many
of the professed philanthropists, to agitate for a similar law in this
country. The association, or "Alliance" as it terms itself, which has
been formed for this purpose, has acquired some notoriety through
the publicity given to a correspondence between its Secretary and
one of the very few English public men who hold that a politician's
opinions ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley's share in
this correspondence is calculated to strengthen the hopes already
built on him, by those who know how rare such qualities as are

ON LIBERTY 285

manifested in some of his public appearances, unhappily are among
those who figure in political life. The organ of the Alliance, who
would "deeply deplore the recognition of any principle which could
be wrested to justify bigotry and persecution," undertakes to point
out the "broad and impassable barrier" which divides such prin-
ciples from those of the association. "All matters relating to thought,
opinion, conscience, appear to me," he says, "to be without the
sphere of legislation; all pertaining to social act, habit, relation,
subject only to a discretionary power vested in the State itself,
and not in the individual, to be within it." No mention is made
of a third class, different from either of these, viz., acts and habits
which are not social, but individual; although it is to this class,
surely, that the act of drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling
fermented liquors, however, is trading, and trading is a social act.
But the infringement complained of is not on the liberty of the
seller, but on that of the buyer and consumer; since the State might
just as well forbid him to drink wine, as purposely make it im-
possible for him to obtain it. The Secretary, however, says, "I claim,
as a citizen, a right to legislate whenever my social rights are
invaded by the social act of another." And now for the definition
of these "social rights." "If anything invades my social rights,
certainly the traffic in strong drink does. It destroys my primary
right of security, by constantly creating and stimulating social dis-
order. It invades my right of equality, by deriving a profit from
the creation of a misery, I am taxed to support. It impedes my right
to free moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my path
with dangers, and by weakening and demoralizing society, from
which I have a right to claim mutual aid and intercourse." A theory
of "social rights," the like of which probably never before found its
way into distinct language — ^being nothing short of this — that it is
the absolute social right of every individual, that every other indi-
vidual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever
fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and
entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the
grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any
single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which
it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom what-

286 JOHN STUART MILL

ever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without
ever disclosing them; for the moment an opinion which I consider
noxious, passes any one's lips, it invades all the "social rights" at-
tributed to me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind
a vested interest in each other's moral, intellectual, and even physical
perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own
standard.

Another important example of illegitimate interference with the
rightful liberty of the individual, not simply threatened, but long
since carried into triumphant effect, is Sabbatarian legislation. With-
out doubt, abstinence on one day in the week, so far as the exigencies
of life permit, from the usual daily occupation, though in no respect
religiously binding on any except Jews, is a highly beneficial custom.
And inasmuch as this custom cannot be observed without a general
consent to that effect among the industrious classes, therefore, in so
far as some persons by working may impose the same necessity on
others, it may be allowable and right that the law should guarantee
to each, the observance by others of the custom, by suspending the
greater operations of industry on a particular day. But this justifica-
tion, grounded on the direct interest which others have in each
individual's observance of the practice, does not apply to the self-
chosen occupations in which a person may think fit to employ his
leisure; nor does it hold good, in the smallest degree, for legal re-
strictions on amusements. It is true that the amusement of some is
the day's work of others; but the pleasure, not to say the useful
recreation, of many, is worth the labor of a few, provided the
occupation is freely chosen, and can be freely resigned. The oper-
atives are perfectly right in thinking that if all worked on Sunday,
seven days' work would have to be given for six days' wages: but
so long as the great mass of employments are suspended, the small
number who for the enjoyment of others must still work, obtain a
proportional increase of earnings; and they are not obliged to follow
those occupations, if they prefer leisure to emolument. If a further
remedy is sought, it might be found in the establishment by custom
of a holiday on some other day of the week for those particular
classes of persons. The only ground, therefore, on which restrictions
on Sunday amusements can be defended, must be that they are

ON LIBERTY 287

religiously wrong; a motive of legislation which never can be too
earnestly protested against. "Deorum injuriae Diis curae." It remains
to be proved that society or any of its officers holds a commission
from on high to avenge any supposed offence to Omnipotence,
which is not also a wrong to our fellow-creatures. The notion that
it is one man's duty that another should be religious, was the founda-
tion of all the religious persecutions ever perpetrated, and if ad-
mitted, would fully justify them. Though the feeling which breaks
out in the repeated attempts to stop railway travelling on Sunday,
in the resistance to the opening of Museums, and the like, has not
the cruelty of the old persecutors, the state of mind indicated by it is
fundamentally the same. It is a determination not to tolerate others
in doing what is permitted by their religion, because it is not per-
mitted by the persecutor's religion. It is a belief that God not only
abominates the act of the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless
if we leave him unmolested.

I cannot refrain from adding to these examples of the little account
commonly made of human liberty, the language of downright
persecution which breaks out from the press of this country, when-
ever it feels called on to notice the remarkable phenomenon of Mor-
monism. Much might be said on the unexpected and instructive
fact, that an alleged new revelation, and a religion, founded on it,
the product of palpable imposture, not even supported by the prestige
of extraordinary qualities in its founder, is believed by hundreds of
thousands, and has been made the foundation of a society, in the
age of newspapers, railways, and the electric telegraph. What here
concerns us is, that this religion, like other and better religions, has
its martyrs; that its prophet and founder was, for his teaching, put
to death by a mob; that others of its adherents lost their lives by
the same lawless violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in a
body, from the country in which they first grew up; while, now
that they have been chased into a solitary recess in the midst of a
desert, many in this country openly declare that it would be right
(only that it is not convenient) to send an expedition against them,
and compel them by force to conform to the opinions of other people.
The article of the Mormonite doctrine which is the chief provocative
to the antipathy which thus breaks through the ordinary restraints

288 JOHN STUART MILL

of religious tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy; which, though
permitted to Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and Chinese, seems to
excite unquenchable animosity when practised by persons who
speak English, and profess to be a kind of Christians. No one has
a deeper disapprobation than I have of this Mormon institution;
both for other reasons, and because, far from being in any way
countenanced by the principle of liberty, it is a direct infraction of
that principle, being a mere riveting of the chains of one half of the
community, and an emancipation of the other from reciprocity of
obligation towards them. Still, it must be remembered that this
relation is as much voluntary on the part of the women concerned
in it, and who may be deemed the sufferers by it, as is the case with
any other form of the marriage institution; and however surprising
this fact may appear, it has its explanation in the common ideas and
customs of the world, which teaching women to think marriage the
one thing needful, make it intelligible that many a woman should
prefer being one of several wives, to not being a wife at all. Other
countries are not asked to recognize such unions, or release any
portion of their inhabitants from their own laws on the score of
Mormonite opinions. But when the dissentients have conceded to
the hostile sentiments of others, far more than could justly be de-
manded; when they have left the countries to which their doctrines
were unacceptable, and established themselves in a remote corner of
the earth, which they have been the first to render habitable to
human beings; it is difBcult to see on what principles but those of
tyranny they can be prevented from living there under what laws
they please, provided they commit no aggression on other nations,
and allow perfect freedom of departure to those who are dissatisfied
with their ways. A recent writer, in some respects of considerable
merit, proposes (to use his own words,) not a crusade, but a civil-
izade, against this polygamous community, to put an end to what
seems to him a retrograde step in civilization. It also appears so to
me, but I am not aware that any community has a right to force
another to be civilized. So long as the sufferers by the bad law do
not invoke assistance from other communities, I cannot admit that
persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in and require
that a condition of things with which all who are directly interested

ON LIBERTY 289

appear to be satisfied, should be put an end to because it is a scandal
to persons some thousands o£ miles distant, who have no part or
concern in it. Let them send missionaries, if they please, to preach
against it; and let them, by any fair means, (of which silencing the
teachers is not one,) oppose the progress of similar doctrines among
their own people. If civilization has got the better of barbarism
when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess
to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should
revive and conquer civilization. A civilization that can thus suc-
cumb to its vanquished enemy must first have become so degenerate,
that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has
the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be
so, the sooner such a civilization receives notice to quit, the better.
It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated
(like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians.

CHAPTER V

Applications

THE principles asserted in these pages must be more gen-
erally admitted as the basis for discussion of details, before
a consistent application of them to all the various depart-
ments of government and morals can be attempted with any prospect
of advantage. The few observations I propose to make on questions
of detail, are designed to illustrate the principles, rather than to follow
them out to their consequences. I offer, not so much applications, as
specimens of application; which may serve to bring into greater
clearness the meaning and limits of the two maxims which together
form the entire doctrine of this Essay and to assist the judgment in
holding the balance between them, in the cases where it appears
doubtful which of them is applicable to the case.

The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to
society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no
person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance
by other people, if thought necessary by them for their own good,
are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its
dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such
actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is
accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punish-
ments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite
for its protection.

In the first place, it must by no means be supposed, because dam-
age, or probability of damage, to the interests of others, can alone
justify the interference of society, that therefore it always does justify
such interference. In many cases, an individual, in pursuing a
legitimate object, necessarily and therefore legitimately causes pain
or loss to others, or intercepts a good which they had a reasonable
hope of obtaining. Such oppositions of interest between individuals
often arise from bad social institutions, but are unavoidable while

290

ON LIBERTY 29 1

those institutions last; and some would be unavoidable under any
institutions. Whoever succeeds in an overcrov^^ded profession, or
in a competitive examination; whoever is preferred to another in
any contest for an object which both desire, reaps benefit from the
loss of others, from their wasted exertion and their disappointment.
But it is, by common admission, better for the general interest of
mankind, that persons should pursue their objects undeterred by
this sort of consequences. In other words, society admits no right,
either legal or moral, in the disappointed competitors, to immunity
from this kind of suilering; and feels called on to interfere, only
when means of success have been employed which it is contrary to
the general interest to permit — namely, fraud or treachery, and force.
Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any de-
scription of goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other
persons, and of society in general ; and thus his conduct, in principle,
comes within the jurisdiction of society: accordingly, it was once
held to be the duty of governments, in all cases which were con-
sidered of importance, to fix prices, and regulate the processes of
manufacture. But it is now recognized, though not till after a long
struggle, that both the cheapness and the good quality of com-
modities are most effectually provided for by leaving the producers
and sellers perfectly free, under the sole check of equal freedom to
the buyers for supplying themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called
doctrine of Free Trade, which rests on grounds different from,
though equally solid with, the principle of individual liberty asserted
in this Essay. Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes
of trade, are indeed restraints; and all restraint, qua restraint, is
an evil : but the restraints in question affect only that part of conduct
which society is competent to restrain, and are wrong solely because
they do not really produce the results which it is desired to produce
by them. As the principle of individual liberty is not involved in the
doctrine of Free Trade so neither is it in most of the questions
which arise respecting the limits of that doctrine: as for example,
what amount of public control is admissible for the prevention of
fraud by adulteration; how far sanitary precautions, or arrange-
ments to protect work-people employed in dangerous occupations,
should be enforced on employers. Such questions involve con-

292 JOHN STUART MILL

siderations of liberty, only in so far as leaving people to themselves
is always better, aeteris paribus, than controlling them: but that
they may be legitimately controlled for these ends, is in principle
undeniable. On the other hand, there are questions relating to
interference with trade which are essentially questions of liberty;
such as the Maine Law, already touched upon; the prohibition of
the importation of opium into China; the restriction of the sale of
poisons; all cases, in short, where the object of the interference is
to make it impossible or difficult to obtain a particular commodity.
These interferences are objectionable, not as infringements on the
liberty of the producer or seller, but on that of the buyer.

One of these examples, that of the sale of poisons, opens a new
question; the proper limits of what may be called the functions of
police; how far liberty may legitimately be invaded for the preven-
tion of crime, or of accident. It is one of the undisputed functions
of government to take precautions against crime before it has been
committed, as well as to detect and punish it afterwards. The
preventive function of government, however, is far more liable to
be abused, to the prejudice of liberty, than the punitory function;
for there is hardly any part of the legitimate freedom of action of a
human being which would not admit of being represented, and
fairly too, as increasing the facilities for some form or other of
delinquency. Nevertheless, if a public authority, or even a private
person, sees any one evidently preparing to commit a crime, they are
not bound to look on inactive until the crime is committed, but may
interfere to prevent it. If poisons were never bought or used for
any purpose except the commission of murder, it would be right to
prohibit their manufacture and sale. They may, however, be wanted
not only for innocent but for useful purposes, and restrictions can-
not be imposed in the one case without operating in the other.
Again, it is a proper office of public authority to guard against acci-
dents. If either a public officer or any one else saw a person attempt-
ing to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe, and
there were no time to warn him of his danger, they might seize
him and turn him back without any real infringement of his liberty;
for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not
desire to fall into the river. Nevertheless, when there is not a cer-

ON LIBERTY 293

tainty, but only a danger of mischief, no one but the person himself
can judge of the sufficiency of the motive which may prompt him to
incur the risk: in this case, therefore, (unless he is a child, or
delirious, or in some state of excitement or absorption incompatible
with the full use of the reflecting faculty,) he ought, I conceive, to
be only warned of the danger; not forcibly prevented from exposing
himself to it. Similar considerations, applied to such a question as
the sale of poisons, may enable us to decide which among the pos-
sible modes of regulation are or are not contrary to principle. Such
a precaution, for example, as that of labelling the drug with some
word expressive of its dangerous character, may be enfprced without
violation of liberty: the buyer cannot wish not to know that the
thing he possesses has poisonous qualities. But to require in all
cases the certificate of a medical practitioner, would make it some-
times impossible, always expensive, to obtain the article for legitimate
uses. The only mode apparent to me, in which difficulties may be
thrown in the way of crime committed through this means, without
any infringement, worth taking into account, upon the liberty of
those who desire the poisonous substance for other purposes, con-
sists in providing what, in the apt language of Bentham, is called
"preappointed evidence." This provision is familiar to every one in
the case of contracts. It is usual and right that the law, when a
contract is entered into, should require as the condition of its
enforcing performance, that certain formalities should be observed,
such as signatures, attestation of witnesses, and the like, in order
that in case of subsequent dispute, there may be evidence to prove
that the contract was really entered into, and that there was nothing
in the circumstances to render it legally invalid: the effect being,
to throw great obstacles in the way of fictitious contracts, or contracts
made in circumstances which, if known, would destroy their validity.
Precautions of a similar nature might be enforced in the sale of
articles adapted to be instruments of crime. The seller, for example,
might be required to enter in a register the exact time of the trans-
action, the name and address of the buyer, the precise quality and
quantity sold; to ask the purpose for which it was wanted, and
record the answer he received. When there was no medical pre-
scription, the presence of some third person might be required, to

294 JOHN STUART MILL

bring home the fact to the purchaser, in case there should after-
wards be reason to beheve that the article had been applied to
criminal purposes. Such regulations would in general be no material
impediment to obtaining the article, but a very considerable one to
making an improper use of it without detection.

The right inherent in society, to ward off crimes against itself by
antecedent precautions, suggests the obvious limitations to the
maxim, that purely self-regarding misconduct cannot properly be
meddled with in the way of prevention or punishment. Drunken-
nesses, for example, in ordinary cases, is not a fit subject for legis-
lative interference; but I should deem it perfectly legitimate that a
person, who had once been convicted of any act of violence to
others under the influence of drink, should be placed under a
special legal restriction, personal to himself; that if he were after-
wards found drunk, he should be liable to a penalty, and that if
when in that state he committed another offence, the punishment to
which he would be liable for that other offence should be increased
in severity. The making himself drunk, in a person whom drunken-
ness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. So,
again, idleness, except in a person receiving support from the public,
or except when it constitutes a breach of contract, cannot without
tyranny be made a subject of legal punishment; but if either from
idleness or from any other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform
his legal duties to others, as for instance to support his children,
it is no tyranny to force him to fulfil that obligation, by com-
pulsory labor, if no other means are available.

Again, there are many acts which, being directly injurious only
to the agents themselves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but
which, if done publicly, are a violation of good manners, and com-
ing thus within the category of offences against others, may right-
fully be prohibited. Of this kind are offences against decency; on
which it is unnecessary to dwell, the rather as they are only con-
nected indirectly with our subject, the objection to publicity being
equally strong in the case of many actions not in themselves con-
demnable, nor supposed to be so.

There is another question to which an answer must be found,
consistent with the principles which have been laid down. In cases

ON LIBERTY 295

of personal conduct supposed to be blameable, but which respect
for Hberty precludes society from preventing or punishing, because
the evil directly resulting falls wholly on the agent; what the agent
is free to do, ought other persons to be equally free to counsel or
instigate? This question is not free from difficulty. The case of a
person who solicits another to do an act, is not strictly a case of self-
regarding conduct. To give advice or offer inducements to any one,
is a social act, and may therefore, like actions in general which
affect others, be supposed amenable to social control. But a little
reflection corrects the first impression, by showing that if the case is
not strictly within the definition of individual liberty, yet the reasons
on which the principle of individual liberty is grounded, are appli-
cable to it. If people must be allowed, in whatever concerns only
themselves, to act as seems best to themselves at their own peril,
they must equally be free to consult with one another about what is
lit to be so done; to exchange opinions, and give and receive sug-
gestions. Whatever it is permitted to do, it must be permitted to
advise to do. The question is doubtful, only when the instigator
derives a personal benefit from his advice; when he makes it his
occupation, for subsistence, or pecuniary gain, to promote what
society and the State consider to be an evil. Then, indeed, a new
element of complication is introduced; namely, the existence of
classes of persons with an interest opposed to what is considered
as the public weal, and whose mode of living is grounded on the
counteraction of it. Ought this to be interfered with, or not? For-
nication, for example, must be tolerated, and so must gambling; but
should a person be free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house?
The case is one of those which lie on the exact boundary line be-
tween two principles, and it is not at once apparent to which of the
two it properly belongs. There are arguments on both sides. On
the side of toleration it may be said, that the fact of following any-
thing as an occupation, and living or profiting by the practice of it,
cannot make that criminal which would otherwise be admissible;
that the act should either be consistently permitted or consistently
prohibited; that if the principles which we have hitherto defended
are true, society has no business, as society, to decide anything to
be wrong which concerns only the individual; that it cannot go

296 JOHN STUART MILL

beyond dissuasion, and that one person should be as free to persuade,
as another to dissuade. In opposition to this it may be contended,
that although the public, or the State, are not warranted in authori-
tatively deciding, for purposes of repression or punishment, that
such or such conduct affecting only the interests of the individual is
good or bad, they are fully justified in assuming, if they regard it
as bad, that its being so or not is at least a disputable question: That,
this being supposed, they cannot be acting wrongly in endeavoring
to exclude the influence of solicitations which are not disinterested,
of instigators who cannot possibly be impartial — who have a direct
personal interest on one side, and that side the one which the State
believes to be wrong, and who confessedly promote it for personal
objects only. There can surely, it may be urged, be nothing lost,
no sacrifice of good, by so ordering matters that persons shall make
their election, either wisely or foolishly, on their own prompting,
as free as possible from the arts of persons who stimulate their
inclinations for interested purposes of their own. Thus (it may
be said) though the statutes respecting unlawful games are utterly
indefensible — though all persons should be free to gamble in their
own or each other's houses, or in any place of meeting established
by their own subscriptions, and open only to the members and their
visitors — yet public gambling-houses should not be permitted. It is
true that the prohibition is never effectual, and that whatever amount
of tyrannical power is given to the police, gambling-houses can
always be maintained under other pretences; but they may be
compelled to conduct their operations with a certain degree of secrecy
and mystery, so that nobody knows anything about them but those
who seek them; and more than this, society ought not to aim at.
There is considerable force in these arguments. I will not venture
to decide whether they are sufficient to justify the moral anomaly of
punishing the accessary, when the principal is (and must be) allowed
to go free; of fining or imprisoning the procurer, but not the
fornicator, the gambling-house keeper, but not the gambler. Still
less ought the common operations of buying and selling to be
interfered with on analogous grounds. Almost every article which
is bought and sold may be used in excess, and the sellers have a
pecuniary interest in encouraging that excess; but no argument can

ON LIBERTY 297

be founded on this, in favor, for instance, of the Maine Law; be-
cause the class of dealers in strong drinks, though interested in their
abuse, are indispensably required for the sake of their legitimate use.
The interest, however, of these dealers in promoting intemperance
is a real evil, and justifies the State in imposing restrictions and re-
quiring guarantees, which but for that justification would be in-
fringements of legitimate Hberty.

A further question is, whether the State while it permits, should
nevertheless indirectly discourage conduct which it deems contrary
to the best interests of the agent; whether, for example, it should
take measures to render the means of drunkenness more costly, or
add to the difficulty of procuring them, by limiting the number
of the places of sale. On this as on most other practical questions,
many distinctions require to be made. To tax stimulants for the
sole purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained, is a
measure differing only in degree from their entire prohibition; and
would be justifiable only if that were justifiable. Every increase of
cost is a prohibition, to those whose means do not come up to the
augmented price; and to those who do, it is a penalty laid on them
for gratifying a particular taste. Their choice of pleasures, and
their mode of expending their income, after satisfying their legal
and moral obligations to the State and to individuals, are their
own concern, and must rest with their own judgment. These con-
siderations may seem at first sight to condemn the selection of
stimulants as special subjects of taxation for purposes of revenue.
But it must be remembered that taxation for fiscal purposes is
absolutely inevitable; that in most countries it is necessary that a
considerable part of that taxation should be indirect; that the State,
therefore, cannot help imposing penalties, which to some persons
may be prohibitory, on the use of some articles of consumption. It
is hence the duty of the State to consider, in the imposition of
taxes, what commodities the consumers can best spare; and a fortiori,
to select in preference those of which it deems the use, beyond a
very moderate quantity, to be positively injurious. Taxation, there-
fore, of stimulants, up to the point which produces the largest
amount of revenue (supposing that the State needs all the revenue
which it yields) is not only admissible, but to be approved of.

298 JOHN STUART MILL

The question o£ making the sale of these commodities a more or
less exclusive privilege, must be ansv/ered differently, according to
the purposes to which the restriction is intended to be subservient.
AH places of public resort require the restraint of a police, and
places of this kind peculiarly, because offences against society are
especially apt to originate there. It is, therefore, fit to conhne the
power of selling these commodities (at least for consumption on
the spot) to persons of known or vouched-for respectability of con-
duct; to make such regulations respecting hours of opening and
closing as may be requisite for public surveillance, and to withdraw
the license if breaches of the peace repeatedly take place through
the connivance or incapacity of the keeper of the house, or if it
becomes a rendezvous for concocting and preparing offences against
the law. Any further restriction I do not conceive to be, in prin-
ciple, justifiable. The limitation in number, for instance, of beer
and spirit-houses, for the express purpose of rendering them more
difScult of access, and diminishing the occasions of temptation, not
only exposes all to an inconvenience because there are some by
whom the facility would be abused, but is suited only to a state of
society in which the laboring classes are avowedly treated as children
or savages, and placed under an education of restraint, to fit them
for future admission to the privileges of freedom. This is not the
principle on which the laboring classes are professedly governed in
any free country; and no person who sets due value on freedom
will give his adhesion to their being so governed, unless after all
efforts have been exhausted to educate them for freedom and govern
them as freemen, and it has been definitively proved that they can
only be governed as children. The bare statement of the alternative
shows the absurdity of supposing that such efforts have been made
in any case which needs be considered here. It is only because the
institutions of this country are a mass of inconsistencies, that things
find admittance into our practice which belong to the system of
despotic, or what is called paternal, government, while the general
freedom of our institutions precludes the exercise of the amount of
control necessary to render the restraint of any real efficacy as a
moral education.

It was pointed out in an early part of this Essay, that the liberty

ON LIBERTY 299

of the individual, in things wherein the individual is alone con-
cerned, implies a corresponding liberty in any number o£ indi-
viduals to regulate by mutual agreement such things as regard
them jointly, and regard no persons but themselves. This question
presents no difficulty, so long as the will of all the persons implicated
remains unaltered; but since that will may change, it is often
necessary, even in things in which they alone are concerned, that
they should enter into engagements with one another; and when
they do, it is fit, as a general rule, that those engagements should be
kept. Yet in the laws probably, of every country, this general rule
has some exceptions. Not only persons are not held to engagements
which violate the rights of third parties, but it is sometimes con-
sidered a sufficient reason for releasing them from an engagement,
that it is injurious to themselves. In this and most other civilized
countries, for example, an engagement by which a person should
sell himself, or allow himself to be sold, as a slave, would be null
and void; neither enforced by law nor by opinion. The ground for
thus limiting his power of voluntarily disposing of his own lot in
life, is apparent, and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. The
reason for not interfering, unless for the sake of others, with a
person's voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty. His volun-
tary choice is evidence that what he so chooses is desirable, or at
the least endurable, to him, and his good is on the whole best pro-
vided for by allowing him to take his own means of pursuing it.
But by selling himself for a slave, he abdicates his liberty; he fore-
goes any future use of it, beyond that single act. He therefore
defeats, in his own case, the very purpose which is the justifica-
tion of allowing him to dispose of himself. He is no longer free;
but is thenceforth in a position which has no longer the presumption
in its favor, that would be afforded by his voluntarily remaining in
it. The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be free
not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to alienate his
freedom. These reasons, the force of which is so conspicuous in
this peculiar case, are evidently of far wider application; yet a
limit is everywhere set to them by the necessities of life, which
continually require, not indeed that we should resign our freedom,
but that we should consent to this and the other limitation of it.

300 JOHN STUART MILL

The principle, however, which demands uncontrolled freedom of
action in all that concerns only the agents themselves, requires that
those who have become bound to one another, in things which
concern no third party, should be able to release one another from
the engagement: and even without such voluntary release, there
are perhaps no contracts or engagements, except those that relate
to money or money's worth, of which one can venture to say
that there ought to be no liberty whatever of retractation. Baron
Wilhelm von Humboldt, in the excellent Essay from which I have
already quoted, states it as his conviction, that engagements which
involve personal relations or services, should never be legally bind-
ing beyond a limited duration of time; and that the most important
of these engagements, marriage, having the peculiarity that its
objects are frustrated unless the feelings of both the parties are in
harmony with it, should require nothing more than the declared
will of either party to dissolve it. This subject is too important,
and too complicated, to be discussed in a parenthesis, and I touch
on it only so far as is necessary for purposes of illustration. If the
conciseness and generality of Baron Humboldt's dissertation had
not obliged him in this instance to content himself with enunciating
his conclusion without discussing the premises, he would doubtless
have recognized that the question cannot be decided on grounds so
simple as those to which he confines himself. When a person, either
by express promise or by conduct, has encouraged another to rely
upon his continuing to act in a certain way — to build expectations
and calculations, and stake any part of his plan of life upon that
supposition, a new series of moral obligations arises on his part
towards that person, which may possibly be overruled, but can
not be ignored. And again, if the relation between two contracting
parties has been followed by consequences to others; if it has placed
third parties in any peculiar position, or, as in the case of marriage,
has even called third parties into existence, obligations arise on the
part of both the contracting parties towards those third persons, the
fulfilment of which, or at all events, the mode of fulfilment, must
be greatly affected by the continuance or disruption of the relation
between the original parties to the contract. It does not follow, nor
can I admit, that these obligations extend to requiring the fulfilment

ON LIBERTY 3OI

of the contract at all costs to the happiness o£ the reluctant party;
but they are a necessary element in the question; and even if, as
Von Humboldt maintains, they ought to make no difference in the
legal freedom of the parties to release themselves from the engage-
ment (and I also hold that they ought not to make much difference),
they necessarily make a great difference in the moral freedom. A
person is bound to take all these circumstances into account, before
resolving on a step which may affect such important interests of
others; and if he does not allow proper weight to those interests, he
is morally responsible for the wrong. I have made these obvious
remarks for the better illustration of the general principle of liberty,
and not because they are at all needed on the particular question,
which, on the contrary, is usually discussed as if the interest of
children was everything, and that of grown persons nothing.

I have already observed that, owing to the absence of any recog-
nized general principles, liberty is often granted where it should
be withheld, as well as withheld where it should be granted; and
one of the cases in which, in the modern European world, the
sentiment of liberty is the strongest, is a case where, in my view,
it is altogether misplaced. A person should be free to do as he
likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he
likes in acting for another under the pretext that the affairs of
another are his own affairs. The State, while it respects the liberty
of each in what specially regards himself, is bound to maintain a
vigilant control over his exercise of any power which it allows
him to possess over others. This obligation is almost entirely dis-
regarded in the case of the family relations, a case, in its direct
influence on human happiness, more important than all the others
taken together. The almost despotic power of husbands over wives
needs not be enlarged upon here, because nothing more is
needed for the complete removal of the evil, than that wives should
have the same rights, and should receive the protection of law in the
same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the
defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the
plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of power.
It is in the case of children, that misapplied notions of liberty are
a real obstacle to the fulfilment by the State of its duties. One

302 JOHN STUART MILL

would almost think that a man's children were supposed to be
literally, and not metaphorically, a part of himself, so jealous is
opinion of the smallest interference of law with his absolute and
exclusive control over them; more jealous than of almost any inter-
ference with his own freedom of action: so much less do the gen-
erality of mankind value liberty than power. Consider, for example,
the case of education. Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the
State should require and compel the education, up to a certain
standard, of every human being who is born its citizen? Yet who
is there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth ? Hardly
any one indeed will deny that it is one of the most sacred duties
of the parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the father), after
summoning a human being into the world, to give to that being an
education fitting him to perform his part well in life towards others
and towards himself. But while this is unanimously declared to
be the father's duty, scarcely anybody, in this country, will bear
to hear of obliging him to perform it. Instead of his being required
to make any exertion or sacrifice for securing education to the child,
it is left to his choice to accept it or not when it is provided gratis!
It still remains unrecognized, that to bring a child into existence
without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for
its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime,
both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that
if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see
it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.

Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted,
there would be an end to the difficulties about what the State
should teach, and how it should teach, which now convert the
subject into a mere battle-field for sects and parties, causing the
time and labor which should have been spent in educating, to be
wasted in quarrelling about education. If the government would
make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it
might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to
parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and
content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer
classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those
who have no one else to pay for them. The objections which are

ON LIBERTY 303

urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the
enforcement of education by the State, but to the State's taking
upon itself to direct that education: which is a totally different
thing. That the whole or any large part of the education of the
people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecat-
ing. All that has been said of the importance of individuality of
character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves,
as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A
general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people
to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts
them is that which pleases the predominant power in the govern-
ment, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or
the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient
and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by
natural tendency to one over the body. An education established
and controlled by the State, should only exist, if it exist at all, as
one among many competing experiments, carried on for the pur-
pose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain
standard of excellence. Unless, indeed, when society in general is
in so backward a state that it could not or would not provide for
itself any proper institutions of education, unless the government
undertook the task; then, indeed, the government may, as the less
of two great evils, take upon itself the business of schools and
universities, as it may that of joint-stock companies, when private
enterprise, in a shape fitted for undertaking great works of industry
does not exist in the country. But in general, if the country contains
a sufficient number of persons qualified to provide education under
government auspices, the same persons would be able and willing
to give an equally good education on the voluntary principle, under
the assurance of remuneration afforded by a law rendering education
compulsory, combined with State aid to those unable to defray the
expense.

The instrument for enforcing the law could be no other than
public examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at
an early age. An age might be fixed at which every child must be
examined, to ascertain if he (or she) is able to read. If a child
proves unable, the father, unless he has some sufficient ground of

304 JOHN STUART MILL

excuse, might be subjected to a moderate fine, to be worked out,
if necessary, by his labor, and the child might be put to school at
his expense. Once in every year the examination should be renewed,
with a gradually extending range of subjects, so as to make the
universal acquisition, and what is more, retention, of a certain mini-
mum of general knowledge, virtually compulsory. Beyond that
minimum, there should be voluntary examinations on all subjects,
at which all who come up to a certain standard of proficiency might
claim a certificate. To prevent the State from exercising through
these arrangements, an improper influence over opinion, the knowl-
edge required for passing an examination (beyond the merely in-
strumental parts of knowledge, such as languages and their use)
should, even in the higher class of examinations, be confined to facts
and positive science exclusively. The examinations on religion, poli-
tics, or other disputed topics, should not turn on the truth or false-
hood of opinions, but on the matter of fact that such and such an
opinion is held, on such grounds, by such authors, or schools, or
churches. Under this system, the rising generation would be no
worse off in regard to all disputed truths, than they are at present;
they would be brought up either churchmen or dissenters as they
now are, the State merely taking care that they should be instructed
churchmen, or instructed dissenters. There would be nothing to
hinder them from being taught religion, if their parents chose, at the
same schools where they were taught other things. All attempts by
the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects,
are evil; but it may very properly offer to ascertain and certify that
a person possesses the knowledge requisite to make his conclusions,
on any given subject, worth attending to. A student of philosophy
would be the better for being able to stand an examination both in
Locke and in Kant, whichever of the two he takes up with, or even
if with neither: and there is no reasonable objection to examining
an atheist in the evidences of Christianity, provided he is not re-
quired to profess a belief in them. The examinations, however, in
the higher branches of knowledge should, I conceive, be entirely
voluntary. It would be giving too dangerous a power to gov-
ernments, were they allowed to exclude any one from professions,
even from the profession of teacher, for alleged deficiency of quali-

ON LIBERTY 305

fications: and I think, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, that degrees,
or other pubUc certificates of scientific or professional acquirements,
should be given to all who present themselves for examination, and
stand the test; but that such certificates should confer no advantage
over competitors, other than the weight which may be attached to
their testimony by public opinion.

It is not in the matter of education only that misplaced notions
of liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from
being recognized, and legal obligations from being imposed, where
there are the strongest grounds for the former always, and in many
cases for the latter also. The fact itself, of causing the existence of
a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range
of human life. To undertake this responsibility — to bestow a life
which may be either a curse or a blessing — unless the being on whom
it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desir-
able existence, is a crime against that being. And in a country either
over-peopled or threatened with being so, to produce children, be-
yond a very small number, with the effect of reducing the reward of
labor by their competition, is a serious offence against all who live
by the remuneration of their labor. The laws which, in many
countries on the Continent, forbid marriage unless the parties can
show that they have the means of supporting a family, do not
exceed the legitimate powers of the State: and whether such laws
be expedient or not (a question mainly dependent on local circum-
stances and feelings), they are not objectionable as violations of
liberty. Such laws are interferences of the State to prohibit a mis-
chievous act — an act injurious to others, which ought to be a subject
of reprobation, and social stigma, even when it is not deemed expedi-
ent to superadd legal punishment. Yet the current ideas of liberty,
which bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of the
individual, in things which concern only himself, would repel the
attempt to put any restraint upon his inclinations when the con-
sequence of their indulgence is a life, or lives, of wretchedness and
depravity to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently
within reach to be in any way affected by their actions. When we
compare the strange respect of mankind for liberty, with their
strange want of respect for it, we might imagine that a man had

306 JOHN STUART MILL

an indispensable right to do harm to others, and no right at all to
please himself without giving pain to any one.

I have reserved for the last place a large class of questions respect-
ing the limits of government interference, which, though closely
connected with the subject of this Essay, do not, in strictness, belong
to it. These are cases in which the reasons against interference do
not turn upon the principle of liberty: the question is not about
restraining the actions of individuals, but about helping them: it is
asked whether the government should do, or cause to be done,
something for their benefit, instead of leaving it to be done by
themselves, individually, or in voluntary combination.

The objections to government interference, when it is not such
as to involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.

The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better done
by individuals than by the government. Speaking generally, there
is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by
whom it shall be conducted, as those who are personally interested
in it. This principle condemns the interferences, once so common,
of the legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary
processes of industry. Butthis part of the subject has been sufficiently
enlarged upon by political economists, and is not particularly related
to the principles of this Essay.

The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In
many cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so
well, on the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless
desirable that it should be done by them, rather than by the govern-
ment, as a means to their own mental education — a mode of
strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and
giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they
are thus left to deal. This is a principal, though not the sole, recom-
mendation of jury trial (in cases not political) ; of free and popular
local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of industrial and
philanthropic enterprises by voluntary associations. These are not
questions of liberty, and are connected with that subject only by
remote tendencies; but they are questions of development. It be-
longs to a different occasion from the present to dwell on these
things as parts of national education; as being, in truth, the

ON LIBERTY 307

peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the political educa-
tion of a free people, taking them out of the narrow circle of per-
sonal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the compre-
hension of joint interests, the management of joint concerns —
habituating them to act from public or semi-public motives, and
guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating them
from one another. Without these habits and powers, a free con-
stitution can neither be worked nor preserved, as is exemplified by
the too-often transitory nature of political freedom in countries
where it does not rest upon a sufficient basis of local liberties. The
management of purely local business by the localities, and of the
great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily
supply the pecuniary means, is further recommended by all the
advantages which have been set forth in this Essay as belonging to
individuality of development, and diversity of modes of action.
Government operations tend to be everywhere alike. With indi-
viduals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied
experiments, and endless diversity of experience. What the State
can usefully do, is to make itself a central depository, and active
circulator and difluser, of the experience resulting from many trials.
Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit by the
experiments of others, instead of tolerating no experiments but
its own.

The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference
of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its
power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by
the government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be
more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active
and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government,
or of some party which aims at becoming the government. If the
roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-
stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all
of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal
corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them,
became departments of the central administration; if the employes
of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the
government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not

308 JOHN STUART MILL

all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legis-
lature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in
name. And the evil would be greater, the more efficiently and
scientifically the administrative machinery was constructed — the
more skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands
and heads with which to work it. In England it has of late been
proposed that all the members of the civil service of government
should be selected by competitive examination, to obtain for those
employments the most intelligent and instructed persons procurable;
and much has been said and written for and against this proposal.
One of the arguments most insisted on by its opponents is that the
occupation of a permanent official servant of the State does not
hold out sufficient prospects of emolument and importance to attract
the highest talents, which will always be able to find a more inviting
career in the professions, or in the service of companies and other
public bodies. One would not have been surprised if this argument
had been used by the friends of the proposition, as an answer to its
principal difficulty. Coming from the opponents it is strange enough.
What is urged as an objection is the safety-valve of the proposed
system. If indeed all the high talent of the country could be drawn
into the service of the government, a proposal tending to bring about
that result might well inspire uneasiness. If every part of the
business of society which required organized concert, or large and
comprehensive views, were in the hands of the government, and if
government offices were universally filled by the ablest men, all the
enlarged culture and practised intelligence in the country, except
the purely speculative, would be concentrated in a numerous bureau-
cracy, to whom alone the rest of the community would look for all
things: the multitude for direction and dictation in all they had
to do; the able and aspiring for personal advancement. To be
admitted into the ranks of this bureaucracy, and when admitted, to
rise therein, would be the sole objects of ambition. Under this
regime, not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for want of
practical experience, to criticize or check the mode of operation
of the bureaucracy, but even if the accidents of despotic or the
natural working of popular institutions occasionally raise to the
summit a ruler or rulers of reforming inclinations, no reform can

ON LIBERTY 309

be effected which is contrary to the interest of the bureaucracy.
Such is the melancholy condition of the Russian empire, as is
shown in the accounts of those who have had sufficient opportunity
of observation. The Czar himself is powerless against the bureau-
cratic body: he can send any one of them to Siberia, but he cannot
govern without them, or against their will. On every decree of his
they have a tacit veto, by merely refraining from carrying it into
effect. In countries of more advanced civilization and of a more
insurrectionary spirit the public, accustomed to expect everything
to be done for them by the State, or at least to do nothing for them-
selves without asking from the State not only leave to do it, but even
how it is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for all
evil which befalls them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of
patience, they rise against the government and make what is called
a revolution; whereupon somebody else, with or without legitimate
authority from the nation, vaults into the seat, issues his orders to
the bureaucracy, and everything goes on much as it did before;
the bureaucracy being unchanged, and nobody else being capable of
taking their place.

A very different spectacle is exhibited among a people accustomed
to transact their own business. In France, a large part of the people
having been engaged in military service, many of whom have held
at least the rank of non-commissioned officers, there are in every
popular insurrection several persons competent to take the lead, and
improvise some tolerable plan of action. What the French are in
military affairs, the Americans are in every kind of civil business;
let them be left without a government, every body of Americans
is able to improvise one, and to carry on that or any other public
business with a sufficient amount of intelligence, order and decision.
This is what every free people ought to be: and a people capable
of this is certain to be free; it will never let itself be enslaved by
any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the
reins of the central administration. No bureaucracy can hope to
make such a people as this do or undergo anything that they do not
like. But where everything is done through the bureaucracy, nothing
to which the bureaucracy is really adverse can be done at all. The
constitution of such countries is an organization of the experience

310 JOHN STUART MILL

and practical ability of the nation, into a disciplined body for the
purpose of governing the rest; and the more perfect that organ-
ization is in itself, the more successful in drawing to itself and educat-
ing for itself the persons of greatest capacity from all ranks of the
community, the more complete is the bondage of all, the members
of the bureaucracy included. For the governors are as much the
slaves of their organization and discipline, as the governed are of
the governors. A Chinese mandarin is as much the tool and creature
of a despotism as the humblest cultivator. An individual Jesuit is
to the utmost degree of abasement the slave of his order though the
order itself exists for the collective power and importance of its
members.

It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorption of all the prin-
cipal ability of the country into the governing body is fatal, sooner
or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the body itself.
Banded together as they are — working a system which, like all
systems, necessarily proceeds in a great measure by fixed rules — the
official body are under the constant temptation of sinking into
indolent routine, or, if they now and then desert that mill-horse
round, of rushing into some half -examined crudity which has struck
the fancy of some leading member of the corps : and the sole check
to these closely allied, though seemingly opposite, tendencies, the
only stimulus which can keep the ability of the body itself up to a
high standard, is liability to the watchful criticism of equal ability
outside the body. It is indispensable, therefore, that the means
should exist, independently of the government, of forming such
ability, and furnishing it with the opportunities and experience
necessary for a correct judgment of great practical affairs. If we
would possess permanently a skilful and efficient body of func-
tionaries — above all, a body able to originate and willing to adopt
improvements; if we would not have our bureaucracy degenerate
into a pedantocracy, this body must not engross all the occupations
which form and cultivate the faculties required for the government
of mankind.

To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to human
freedom and advancement begin, or rather at which they begin
to predominate over the benefits attending the collective application

ON LIBERTY 3II

of the force of society, under its recognized chiefs, for the removal
of the obstacles which stand in the way of its well-being, to secure
as much of the advantages of centraUzed power and intelligence, as
can be had without turning into governmental channels too great
a proportion of the general activity, is one of the most difficult and
complicated questions in the art of government. It is, in a great
measure, a question of detail, in which many and various con-
siderations must be kept in view, and no absolute rule can be laid
down. But I believe that the practical principle in which safety
resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which to test
all arrangements intended for overcoming the difficulty, may be
conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination of power con-
sistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible centralization of
information, and diffusion of it from the centre. Thus, in municipal
administration, there would be, as in the New England States, a
very minute division among separate officers, chosen by the localities,
of all business which is not better left to the persons directly inter-
ested; but besides this, there would be, in each department of local
affairs, a central superintendence, forming a branch of the general
government. The organ of this superintendence would concentrate,
as in a focus, the variety of information and experience derived
from the conduct of that branch of public business in all the localities,
from everything analogous which is done in foreign countries, and
from the general principles of political science. This central organ
should have a right to know all that is done, and its special duty
should be that of making the knowledge acquired in one place
available for others. Emancipated from the petty prejudices and
narrow views of a locality by its elevated position and comprehensive
sphere of observation, its advice would naturally carry much author-
ity; but its actual power, as a permanent institution, should, I con-
ceive, be limited to compelling the local officers to obey the laws
laid down for their guidance. In all things not provided for by
general rules, those officers should be left to their own judgment,
under responsibility to their constituents. For the violation of
rules, they should be responsible to law, and the rules themselves
should be laid down by the legislature; the central administrative
authority only watching over their execution, and if they were not

312 JOHN STUART MILL

properly carried into effect, appealing, according to the nature of
the case, to the tribunal to enforce the law, or to the constituencies
to dismiss the functionaries who had not executed it according to
its spirit. Such, in its general conception, is the central superin-
tendence which the Poor Law Board is intended to exercise over the
administrators of the Poor Rate throughout the country. Whatever
powers the Board exercises beyond this limit, were right and neces-
sary in that peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits of mal-
administration in matters deeply affecting not the localities merely,
but the whole community; since no locality has a moral right to
make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism, necessarily
overflowing into other localities, and impairing the moral and
physical condition of the whole laboring community. The powers
of administrative coercion and subordinate legislation possessed by
the Poor Law Board (but which, owing to the state of opinion on
the subject, are very scantily exercised by them), though perfectly
justifiable in a case of a first-rate national interest, would be wholly
out of place in the superintendence of interests purely local. But
a central organ of information and instruction for all the localities,
would be equally valuable in all departments of administration. A
government cannot have too much of the kind of activity which does
not impede, but aids and stimulates, individual exertion and develop-
ment. The mischief begins when, instead of calling forth the activity
and powers of individuals and bodies, it substitutes its own activity
for theirs; when, instead of informing, advising, and upon occasion
denouncing, it makes them work in fetters or bids them stand aside
and does their work instead of them. The worth of a State, in the
long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State
which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and ele-
vation, to a little more of administrative skill or that semblance of
it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State, which
dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments
in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small
men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the per-
fection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in
the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in
order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred
to banish.

CHARACTERISTICS

BY

THOMAS CARLYLE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Thomas Caelyle was born at Ecclefechan in the south of Scotland,
December 4, 1795. His father, a rigorous Calvinist belonging to the
seceding "Burgher Kirk," was a stone-mason, a man of stern and up-
right character with a gift of fiery speech. Thomas began his education
at home, went next to the village school, thence to the grammar school
at Annan, and in 1809 walked to Edinburgh, a hundred miles away,
and entered the University with a view to preparing for the ministry.
On finishing his arts course, he was appointed mathematical usher at
Annan and two years later at Kirkcaldy, where he formed an intimate
friendship with Edward Irving. But he hated teaching, and, as he had
abandoned his orthodox views and could no longer think of preaching,
he returned to Edinburgh to study for the bar, supporting himself by
private tutoring and writing for encyclopedias. These years, 1819-1822,
he regarded as the most miserable of his life. Tormented with dyspepsia,
torn with religious perplexity, with no prospects and no profession, he
found comfort only in the affection of his family. It was about this time
that the study of German led him to Goethe, who proved his chief aid
in his struggles to gain spiritual peace.

Through Irving Carlyle obtained a position as tutor to Charles and
Arthur Buller at a salary that enabled him to help his family in sub-
stantial ways. This engagement lasted for two years, during which he
translated Legendre's "Geometry" and Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister,"
and wrote a "Life of Schiller." His relation with the BuUers led him to
London, and for a short time to Paris; and in his "Reminiscences" we
have a graphic picture of the unfavorable impression made on him by
fashionable and literary society.

He now retired to a farm near his father's house, and spent a peaceful
year, chiefly in translating. In 1826 he married Jane Baillie Welsh, the
brilliant and beautiful daughter of a doctor in Haddington, whom he
had met through Irving. Miss Welsh was descended on one side from
John Knox, on the other from the gipsies, and, it was claimed, William
Wallace; and her temperament did not belie her ancestry. She had been
much courted, and her wooing by Carlyle was as ominous as it was
extraordinary. Over their subsequent domestic relations there has been a
vast amount of unseemly controversy, no one condemning Carlyle more
severely than he did himself. Yet it may be argued that they found in
their marriage as much satisfaction as either of them was capable of

315

3 1 6 INTRODUCTION

finding in wedded life. Carlyle's absorption in his work and his career
undoubtedly led to much neglect and suffering on the part of his wife,
but it is clear that the expressions of remorse in his writings after her
death are not fairly to be taken as judicial evidence against him.

For the first eighteen months after marriage, the Carlyles lived in
Edinburgh, where they shared in the most distinguished intellectual
society of the city, and where Carlyle formed with Francis Jeffrey a pleas-
ant and useful relation. Jeffrey accepted articles for the "Edinburgh
Review," and their success there opened to Carlyle the pages of other
periodicals. The first two reviews were on Richter and on German
Literature, which, with his translations and later writings in the same
field, gained him recognition as a pioneer of German literature in
England, and brought him generous personal acknowledgments from
Goethe.

In spite of these successes, the financial affairs of the Carlyles were still
far from satisfactory, and to reduce expenses they retreated to the farm
of Craigenputtock, which belonged to Mrs. Carlyle. Here they lived for
more than six years, in an isolation broken only by occasional visits from
guests, notable among whom were the Jeffreys and Emerson. It was
here that the quasi-autobiographical "Sartor Resartus" was written, and
more German articles, the market for which, however, grew duller and
duller. A visit to London in 1831, for which he had to borrow money
from Jeffrey, led to new relations with publishers and editors; and four
months in Edinburgh broadened his range of subjects. But, finally,
solitude and the need of money drove them to London, where they
settled in 1834 in the house in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where they lived
for the rest of their lives.

The most important event of the earlier years of the London period
was the ripening of Carlyle's friendship with J. S. Mill. To this inter-
course was due his undertaking his "History of the French Revolution,"
published in 1837. Meanwhile, he succeeded in getting sorely needed
funds by lecturing, giving four courses in successive springs, the last of
which was his well-known "Heroes and Hero-worship." These relieved
him from pressing necessities, and with the recognition of the brilliant
qualities of his "French Revolution" came the turn in his fortunes. He
gained many friends, among whom were such men as John Sterling,
whose life he afterward was to write with sympathy and charm; F. D.
Maurice, J. G. Lockhart, R. M. Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, and
the Barings; and he was often sought out by young inquirers. Emerson
had introduced his works to America, with the result of both fame and

INTRODUCTION 317

profit. He was already becoming a noted figure in intellectual circles in
London.

His political ideas were put into definite shape in his "Chartism"
(1839), and, if any one had ever doubted it, it now became clear that
he was never to be classed with any of the established political parties.
"Past and Present," a contrast between medieval monastic life and
modern conditions, still further emphasized his separation from both
Tories and Radicals. While these shorter works were being put forth,
he was laboring on his next great book, the "Life and Letters of Oliver
Cromwell"; and when this appeared in 1845 his position as one of the
leading men of letters of the day was thoroughly established.

After a year or two mainly occupied with political writing, most of it
at once powerful in style and ineffective in result, he settled down to
another great task, a life of Frederick the Great, which occupied his
main energies till 1865, and extended his reputation both on the Continent
and at home. In this year he was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh
University. The Inaugural Address, which constitutes the sole duty of
this honorary ofSce, he delivered the next year; and on his journey south
after a triumphal reception he was met at Dumfries by the news of his
wife's death. She was buried in the Abbey Kirk at Haddington; and
the epitaph which her husband placed upon her grave tells what the
blow meant for him. It runs thus: "In her bright existence she had
more sorrows than are common, but also a soft invincibility, a capacity
of discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart which are rare. For forty
years she "was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act
and word unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worthy
that he did or attempted. She died at London, 21st April, 1866, sud-
denly snatched from him, and the light of his life as if gone out."

And, indeed, the light of his life had gone out. He was henceforth a
broken man. He revised his collected works, wrote his "Reminiscences,"
but undertook no new tasks. He was now at the head of his profession,
and surrounded by friends and admirers; honors were showered on him
at home and abroad; but he lived in a gloom that deepened to the end.
He died on February 4, 1881, and was buried in the old kirkyard at
Ecclefechan.

Of the works by Carlyle here printed, "Characteristics" is a condensed
and telling statement of some of his most fundamental ideas; the essay
on "Sir Walter Scott" exhibits, both in its strength and in its short-
comings, the domination of ethical over esthetic considerations in his
estimate of literature, and contains besides many characteristic generali-

3 1 8 INTRODUCTION

zations on human life and conduct; the "Inaugural Address," the sub-
ject of which is nominally the "Reading of Books," summarizes rapidly
his own intellectual history, and digresses in true Carlylean fashion into
religion, ethics, history, and a variety of other topics. It is written in an
exceptionally simple and straightforward style, admirably suited to the
occasion; the two other papers represent more truly his habitual manner
of expression — often abrupt, often exaggerated, sometimes grotesque,
but, to use his own words of his "French Revolution," coming "direct
and flamingly from the heart of a living man."

This style was, indeed, highly characteristic of its owner. The endless
labor he put into his histories, the passion of his political convictions, the
profound earnestness of his moral and religious preaching, were com-
bined with a thirst for effective expression that led him to shatter any
convention that stood in the way of truth, and gave a weight and edge
to his utterance that make it a thing unique in English literature. Com-
plex and inconsistent to the point of paradox, absolutely sincere yet
exaggerated and over-emphatic, violent to brutality yet tender of heart,
a Radical to the Tories and a Tory to the Radicals, Carlyle formed no
school, yet was one of the most stimulating and potent influences of his
century. Over his character and his message the voices of controversy
have not yet died down, but whoever turns to his work finds coursing
everjrwhere through it the red blood of a man.

CHARACTERISTICS^

[1831]

THE healthy know not of their health, but only the sick:
this is the Physician's Aphorism; and applicable in a far
wider sense than he gives it. We may say, it holds no less
in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in merely corporeal
therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the
sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of
their working right or working wrong.

In the Body, for example, as all doctors are agreed, the first con-
dition of complete health is, that each organ perform its function,
unconsciously, unheeded; let but any organ announce its separate
existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure, not for pain, then
already has one of those unfortunate 'false centres of sensibility'
established itself, already is derangement there. The perfection of
bodily well-being is that the collective bodily activities seem one;
and be manifested, moreover, not in themselves, but in the action
they accomplish. If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his system is in high
order. Dietetic Philosophy may indeed take credit; but the true
Peptician was that Countryman who answered that, 'for his part,
he had no system.' In fact, unity, agreement is always silent, or
soft- voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself. So long
as the several elements of Life, all fitly adjusted, can pour forth their
movement like harmonious tuned strings, it is a melody and unison;
Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in celestial music

'Edinburgh Review, No. 108. — i. An Essay on the Origin and Prospects of
Man. By Thomas Hope. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.

2. Philosophische Vorlesungen, insbesondere iiber Philosophic der Sprache und des
Wortes. Geschrieben und vorgetragen zu Presden im December, 1828, und in den
ersten Tagen des Januars, 1829 (Philosophical Lectures, especially on the Philosophy
of Language and the Gift of Speech. Written and delivered at Dresden in December,
1828, and the early days of January, 1829). By Friedrich von Schlegel. 8vo. Vienn.i,
1830.

3»9

320 THOMAS CARLYLE

and diapason, — which also, Uke that other music of the spheres,
even because it is perennial and complete, without interruption and
without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. Thus too,
in some languages, is the state of health well denoted by a term
expressing unity; when we feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say
that we are whole.

Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with that
felicity of 'having no system' ; nevertheless, most of us, looking back
on young years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial trans-
lucency and elasticity and perfect freedom; the body had not yet
become the prison-house of the soul, but was its vehicle and imple-
ment, hke a creature of the thought, and altogether pliant to its
bidding. We knew not that we had limbs, we only lifted, hurled and
leapt; through eye and ear, and all avenues of sense, came clear
unimpeded tidings from without, and from within issued clear
victorious force; we stood as in the centre of Nature, giving and
receiving, in harmony with it all; unlike Virgil's Husbandmen,
'too happy because we did not know our blessedness.' In those
days, health and sickness were foreign traditions that did not con-
cern us; our whole being was as yet One, the whole man like an
incorporated Will. Such, were Rest or ever-successful Labour the
human lot, might our life continue to be: a pure, perpetual, un-
regarded music; a beam of perfect white light, rendering all things
visible, but itself unseen, even because it was of that perfect white-
ness, and no irregular obstruction had yet broken it into colours.
The beginning of Inquiry is Disease: all Science, if we consider
well, as it must have originated in the feeling of something being
wrong, so it is and continues to be but Division, Dismemberment,
and partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as was of old written, the
Tree of Knowledge springs from a root of evil, and bears fruits of
good and evil. Had Adam remained in Paradise, there had been
no Anatomy and no Metaphysics.

But, alas, as the Philosopher declares, 'Life itself is a disease; a
working incited by suffering'; action from passion! The memory
of that first state of Freedom and paradisaic Unconsciousness has
faded away into an ideal poetic dream. We stand here too conscious
of many things: with Knowledge, the symptom of Derangement,

CHARACTERISTICS 321

we must even do our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few
instances, and at rare intervals, the diapason of a heavenly melody;
oftenest the fierce jar of disruptions and convulsions, which, do
what we will, there is no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still
the wish of Nature on our behalf; in all vital action, her manifest
purpose and effort is, that we should be unconscious of it, and like
the peptic Countryman, never know that we 'have a system.' For,
indeed, vital action everywhere is emphatically a means, not an
end; Life is not given us for the mere sake of Living, but always
with an ulterior external Aim: neither is it on the process, on the
means, but rather on the result, that Nature, in any of her doings,
is wont to intrust us with insight and volition. Boundless as is the
domain of man, it is but a small fractional proportion of it that
he rules with Consciousness and by Forethought: what he can
contrive, nay, what he can altogether know and comprehend, is
essentially the mechanical, small; the great is ever, in one sense or
other, the vital; it is essentially the mysterious, and only the surface
of it can be understood. But Nature, it might seem, strives, like a
kind mother, to hide from us even this, that she is a mystery: she
will have us rest on her beautiful and awful bosom as if it were our
secure home; on the bottomless boundless Deep, whereon all human
things fearfully and wonderfully swim, she will have us walk and
build, as if the film which supported us there (which any scratch of
a bare bodkin will rend asunder, any sputter of a pistol-shot in-
stantaneously burn up) were no film, but a solid rock-foundation.
Forever in the neighbourhood of an inevitable Death, man can
forget that he is born to die; of his Life, which, strictly meditated,
contains in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can conceive lightly,
as of a simple implement wherewith to do day-labour and earn
wages. So cunningly does Nature, the mother of all highest Art,
which only apes her from afar, 'body forth the Finite from the
Infinite'; and guide man safe on his wondrous path, not more by
endowing him with vision, than, at the right place, with blindness!
Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work. Life, lies a basis
of Darkness, which she benignantly conceals; in Life too, the roots
and inward circulations which stretch down fearfully to the regions
of Death and Night, shall not hint of their existence, and only the

322 THOMAS CARLYLE

fair stem with its leaves and flowers, shone on by the fair sun, shall
disclose itself, and joyfully grow.

However, without venturing into the abstruse, or too eagerly
asking Why and How, in things where our answer must needs
prove, in great part, an echo of the question, let us be content to
remark farther, in the merely historical way, how that Aphorism of
the bodily Physician holds good in quite other departments. Of
the Soul, with her activities, we shall find it no less true than of
the Body: nay, cry the Spiritualists, is not that very division of the
unity, Man, into a dualism of Soul and Body, itself the symptom of
disease; as, perhaps, your frightful theory of Materialism, of his
being but a Body, and therefore, at least, once more a unity, may be
the paroxysm which was critical, and the beginning of cure! But
omitting this, we observe, with confidence enough, that the truly
strong mind, view it as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other
aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; that here
as before the sign of health is Unconsciousness. In our inward, as
in our outward world, what is mechanical lies open to us: not what
is dynamical and has vitality. Of our Thinking, we might say, it
is but the mere upper surface that we shape into articulate Thoughts;
— underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse, lies
the region of meditation; here, in its quiet mysterious depths,
dwells what vital force is in us; here, if aught is to be created, and
not merely manufactured and communicated, must the work go
on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial: Creation is great, and
cannot be understood. Thus if the Debater and Demonstrator,
whom we may rank as the lowest of true thinkers, knows what he
has done, and how he did it, the Artist, whom we rank as the highest,
knows not; must speak of Inspiration, and in one or the other
dialect, call his work the gift of a divinity.

But on the whole, 'genius is ever a secret to itself; of this old
truth we have, on all sides, daily evidence. The Shakspeare takes
no airs for writing Hamlet and the Tempest, understands not that
it is anything surprising: Milton, again, is more conscious of his
faculty, which accordingly is an inferior one. On the other hand,
what cackling and strutting must we not often hear and see, when,
in some shape of academical prolusion, maiden speech, review article,

CHARACTERISTICS 323

this or the other well-fledged goose has produced its goose-egg, of
quite measurable value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and
wonders why all mortals do not wonder!

Foolish enough, too, was the College Tutor's surprise at Walter
Shandy: how, though unread in Aristotle, he could nevertheless
argue; and not knowing the name of any dialectic tool, handled
them all to perfection. Is it the skilfulest anatomist that cuts the
best figure at Sadler's Wells? or does the boxer hit better for
knowing that he has a flexor longus and a flexor brevis? But
indeed, as in the higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the
Speaker and Inquirer, the true force is an unconscious one. The
healthy Understanding, we should say, is not the Logical, argumen-
tative, but the Intuitive; for the end of Understanding is not to
prove and find reasons, but to know and believe. Of logic, and its
limits, and uses and abuses, there were much to be said and
examined; one fact, however, which chiefly concerns us here, has
long been famiUar: that the man of logic and the man of insight;
the Reasoner and the Discoverer, or even Knower, are quite sepa-
rable, — indeed, for most part, quite separate characters. In practical
matters, for example, has it not become almost proverbial that the
man of logic cannot prosper.? This is he whom business-people call
Systematic and Theoriser and Word-monger; his vital intellectual
force lies dormant or extinct, his whole force is mechanical, con-
scious: of such a one it is foreseen that, when once confronted with
the infinite complexities of the real world, his little compact theorem
of the world will be found wanting; that unless he can throw it
overboard and become a new creature, he will necessarily founder.
Nay, in mere Speculation itself, the most ineffectual of all characters,
generally speaking, is your dialectic man-at-arms; were he armed
cap-a-pie in syllogistic mail of proof, and perfect master of logic-
fence, how little does it avail him! Consider the old Schoolmen, and
their pilgrimage towards Truth: the faithfulest endeavour, incessant
unwearied motion, often great natural vigour; only no progress:
nothing but antic feats of one limb poised against the other; there
they balanced, somersetted, and made postures; at best gyrated
swiftly with some pleasure, like Spinning Dervishes, and ended
where they began. So is it, so will it always be, with all System-

324 THOMAS CARLYLE

makers and builders of logical card-castles; of which class a certain
remnant must, in every age, as they do in our own, survive and
build. Logic is good, but it is not the best. The Irrefragable Doctor,
with his chains of induction, his corollaries, dilemmas and other
cunning logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful
horoscope, and speak reasonable things; nevertheless your stolen
jewel, which you wanted him to find you, is not forthcoming.
Often by some winged word, winged as the thunderbolt is, of a
Luther, a Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see the difficulty split asunder,
and its secret laid bare; while the Irrefragable, with all his logical
tools, hews at it, and hovers round it, and finds it on all hands too
hard for him.

Again, in the difference between Oratory and Rhetoric, as indeed
everywhere in that superiority of what is called the Natural over
the Artificial, we find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades
and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can
prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him : the
one is in a state of healthy unconsciousness, as if he 'had no system';
the other, in virtue of regimen and dietetic punctuality, feels at best
that 'his system is in high order.' So stands it, in short, with all
the forms of Intellect, whether as directed to the finding of truth,
or to the fit imparting thereof; to Poetry, to Eloquence, to depth of
Insight, which is the basis of both these; always the characteristic
of right performance is a certain spontaneity, an unconsciousness;
'the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick.' So that
the old precept of the critic, as crabbed as it looked to his ambitious
disciple, might contain in it a most fundamental truth, applicable
to us all, and in much else than L-iterature: "Whenever you have
written any sentence that looks particularly excellent, be sure to
blot it out." In like manner, under milder phraseology, and with
a meaning purposely much wider, a living Thinker has taught us:
'Of the Wrong we are always conscious, of the Right never.'

But if such is the law with regard to Speculation and the Intel-
lectual power of man, much more is it with regard to Conduct, and
the power, manifested chiefly therein, which we name Moral. 'Let
not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth': whisper not
to thy own heart. How worthy is this action! — for then it is already

CHARACTERISTICS 325

becoming worthless. The good man is he who works continually
in welldoing; to whom welldoing is as his natural existence, awaken-
ing no astonishment, requiring no commentary; but there, like a
thing of course, and as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation,
on the other hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease, be it or be it
not the sign of cure. An unhealthy Virtue is one that consumes itself
to leanness in repenting and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates
itself into dropsical boastfulness and vain-glory: either way, there
is a self-seeking; an unprofitable looking behind us to measure
the way we have made: whereas the sole concern is to walk con-
tinually forward, and make more way. If in any sphere of man's
life, then in the Moral sphere, as the inmost and most vital of
all, it is good that there be wholeness; that there be unconscious-
ness, which is the evidence of this. Let the free, reasonable Will,
which dwells in us, as in our Holy of Holies, be indeed free,
and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its right and its effort: the per-
fect obedience will be the silent one. Such perhaps were the sense
of that maxim, enunciating, as is usual, but the half of a truth: To
say that we have a clear conscience, is to utter a solecism; had we
never sinned, we should have had no conscience. Were defeat un-
known, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.

This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible state of being; yet ever
the goal towards which our actual state of being strives; which it is
the more perfect the nearer it can approach. Nor, in our actual
world, where Labour must often prove ineffectual, and thus in all
senses Light alternate with Darkness, and the nature of an ideal
Morality be much modified, is the case, thus far, materially different.
It is a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is
acquainted with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate ac-
quaintance with. Above all, the public acknowledgment of such
acquaintance, indicating that it has reached quite an intimate foot-
ing, bodes ill. Already, to the popular judgment, he who talks much
about Virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspect; it is shrewdly
guessed that where there is great preaching, there will be little alms-
giving. Or again, on a wider scale, we can remark that ages of
Heroism are not ages of Moral Philosophy; Virtue, when it can be
philosophised of, has become aware of itself, is sickly and beginning

326 THOMAS CARLYLE

to decline. A spontaneous habitual all-pervading spirit of Chivalrous
Valour shrinks together, and perks itself up into shrivelled Points of
Honour; humane Courtesy and Nobleness of mind dwindle into
punctilious Politeness, 'avoiding meats'; 'paying tithe of mint and
anise, neglecting the weightier matters of the law.' Goodness, which
was a rule to itself, must now appeal to Precept, and seek strength
from Sanctions; the Freewill no longer reigns unquestioned and
by divine right, but like a mere earthly sovereign, by expediency,
by Rewards and Punishments: or rather, let us say, the Freewill,
so far as may be, has abdicated and withdrawn into the dark, and
a spectral nightmare of a Necessity usurps its throne; for now that
mysterious Self-impulse of the whole man, heaven-inspired, and in
all senses partaking of the Infinite, being captiously questioned in a
finite dialect, and answering, as it needs must, by silence^ — is
conceived as non-extant, and only the outward Mechanism of it
remains acknowledged: of Volition, except as the synonym of De-
sire, we hear nothing; of 'Motives,' without any Mover, more than
enough.

So too, when the generous Affections have become well-nigh
paralytic, we have the reign of Sentimentality. The greatness, the
profitableness, at any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high
feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, love, self-forgetful-
ness, devotedness and all manner of godlike magnanimity, — are
everywhere insisted on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and
writing, in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim 'Benevo-
lence' to all the four winds, and have Truth engraved on their
watch-seals: unhappily with little or no effect. Were the limbs in
right walking order, why so much demonstrating of motion ? The
barrenest of all mortals is the Sentimentalist. Granting even that he
were sincere, and did not wilfully deceive us, or without first de-
ceiving himself, what good is in him? Does he not lie there as a
perpetual lesson of despair, and type of bedrid valetudinarian im-
potence? His is emphatically a Virtue that has become, through
every fibre, conscious of itself; it is all sick, and feels as if it were
made of glass, and durst not touch or be touched; in the shape of
work, it can do nothing; at the utmost, by incessant nursing and
caudUng, keep itself alive. As the last stage of all, when Virtue,
properly so called, has ceased to be practised, and become extinct,

CHARACTERISTICS 327

and a mere remembrance, we have the era of Sophists, descanting
of its existence, proving it, denying it, mechanically 'accounting' for
it; — as dissectors and demonstrators cannot operate till once the
body be dead.

Thus is true Moral genius, like true Intellectual, which indeed is
but a lower phasis thereof, 'ever a secret to itself.' The healthy moral
nature loves Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it: the
unhealthy makes love to it, and would fain get to live in it; or,
finding such courtship fruitless, turns round, and not without con-
tempt abandons it. These curious relations of the Voluntary and
Conscious to the Involuntary and Unconscious, and the small pro-
portion which, in all departments of our life, the former bears to
the latter, — might lead us into deep questions of Psychology and
Physiology: such, however, belong not to our present object. Enough,
if the fact itself become apparent, that Nature so meant it with us;
that in this wise we are made. We may now say, that view man's
individual Existence under what aspect we will, under the highest
spiritual, as under the merely animal aspect, everywhere the grand
vital energy, while in its sound state, is an unseen unconscious one;
or, in the words of our old Aphorism, 'the healthy know not of their
health, but only the sick.'

To understand man, however, we must look beyond the individual
man and his actions or interests, and view him in combination with
his fellows. It is in Society that man first feels what he is; first
becomes what he can be. In Society an altogether new set of spir-
itual activities are evolved in him, and the old immeasurably quick-
ened and strengthened. Society is the genial element wherein his
nature first lives and grows; the solitary man were but a small por-
tion of himself, and must continue forever folded in, stunted and
only half alive. 'Alreatiy,' says a deep Thinker, with more meaning
than will disclose itself at once, 'my opinion, my conviction, gains
infinitely in strength and sureness, the moment a second mind has
adopted it.' Such, even in its simplest form, is association; so won-
drous the communion of soul with soul as directed to the mere act
of Knowing! In other higher acts, the wonder is still more manifest;
as in that portion of our being which we name the Moral : for prop-
erly, indeed, all communion is of a moral sort, whereof such intellec-

328 THOMAS CARLYLE

tual communion (in the act of knowing) is itself an example. But
with regard to Morals strictly so called, it is in Society, we might
almost say, that Morality begins; here at least it takes an altogether
new form, and on every side, as in living growth, expands itself.
The Duties of Man to himself, to what is Highest in himself, make
but the First Table of the Law: to the First Table is now super-
added a Second, with the Duties of Man to his Neighbour; whereby
also the significance of the First now assumes its true importance.
Man has joined himself with man; soul acts and reacts on soul; a
mystic miraculous unfathomable Union establishes itself; Life, in
all its elements, has become intensated, consecrated. The lightning-
spark of Thought, generated, or say rather heaven-kindled, in the
solitary mind, awakens its express likeness in another mind, in a
thousand other minds, and all blaze-up together in combined fire;
reverberated from mind to mind, fed also with fresh fuel in each,
it acquires incalculable new light as Thought, incalculable new heat
as converted into Action. By and by, a common store of Thought
can accumulate, and be transmitted as an everlasting possession:
Literature, whether as preserved in the memory of Bards, in Runes
and Hieroglyphs engraved on stone, or in Books of written or
printed paper, comes into existence, and begins to play its wondrous
part. Polities are formed; the weak submitting to the strong; with
a willing loyalty giving obedience that he may receive guidance:
or say rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant submitting to
the wise; for so it is in all even the rudest communities, man never
yields himself wholly to brute Force, but always to moral Greatness;
thus the universal title of respect, from the Original Shei\, from the
Sachem of the Red Indians, down to our English Sir, implies only
that he whom we mean to honour is our senior. Last, as the crown
and all-supporting keystone of the fabric, Religion arises. The de-
vout meditation of the isolated man, which flitted through his soul,
like a transient tone of Love and Awe from unknown lands, ac-
quires certainty, continuance, when it is shared-in by his brother
men. 'Where two or three are gathered together' in the name of
the Highest, then first does the Highest, as it is written, 'appear
among them to bless them'; then first does an Altar and act of
united Worship open a way from Earth to Heaven; whereon, were

CHARACTERISTICS 329

it but a simple Jacob's-ladder, the heavenly Messengers will travel,
with glad tidings and unspeakable gifts for men. Such is Society,
the vital articulation of many individuals into a new collective indi-
vidual: greatly the most important of man's attainments on this
earth; that in which, and by virtue of which, all his other attain-
ments and attempts find their arena, and have their value. Consid-
ered well. Society is the standing wonder of our existence; a true
region of the Supernatural; as it were, a second all-embracing Life,
wherein our first individual Life becomes doubly and trebly alive,
and whatever of Infinitude was in us bodies itself forth, and becomes
visible and active.

To figure Society as endowed with life is scarcely a metaphor; but
rather the statement of a fact by such imperfect methods as language
affords. Look at it closely, that mystic Union, Nature's highest work
with man, wherein man's volition plays an indispensable yet so sub-
ordinate a part, and the small Mechanical grows so mysteriously and
indissolubly out of the infinite Dynamical, Hke Body out of Spirit, —
is truly enough vital, what we can call vital, and bears the distin-
guishing character of life. In the same style also, we can say that
Society has its periods of sickness and vigour, of youth, manhood,
decrepitude, dissolution and new birth; in one or other of which
stages we may, in all times, and all places where men inhabit, dis-
cern it; and do ourselves, in this time and place, whether as co-
operating or as contending, as healthy members or as diseased ones,
to our joy and sorrow, form part of it. The question. What is the
actual condition of Society.? has in these days unhappily become
important enough. No one of us is unconcerned in that question;
but for the majority of thinking men a true answer to it, such is
the state of matters, appears almost as the one thing needful. Mean-
while, as the true answer, that is to say, the complete and funda-
mental answer and settlement, often as it has been demanded, is
nowhere forthcoming, and indeed by its nature is impossible, any
honest approximation towards such is not without value. The
feeblest light, or even so much as a more precise recognition of the
darkness, which is the first step to attainment of light, will be wel-
come.

This once understood, let it not seem idle if we remark that here

330 THOMAS CARLYLE

too our old Aphorism holds; that again in the Body Politic, as in
the animal body, the sign of right performances is Unconsciousness.
Such indeed is virtually the meaning of that phrase, 'artificial state
of society,' as contrasted with the natural state, and indicating some-
thing so inferior to it. For, in all vital things, men distinguish an
Artificial and a Natural; founding on some dim perception or senti-
ment of the very truth we here insist on: the artificial is the con-
scious, mechanical; the natural is the unconscious, dynamical. Thus,
as we have an artificial Poetry, and prize only the natural; so likewise
we have an artificial Morality, an artificial Wisdom, an artificial
Society. The artificial Society is precisely one that knows its own
structure, its own internal functions; not in watching, not in know-
ing which, but in working outwardly to the fulfilment of its aim,
does the wellbeing of a Society consist. Every Society, every Pohty,
has a spiritual principle; is the embodiment, tentative and more or
less complete, of an Idea: all its tendencies of endeavour, specialties
of custom, its laws, politics and whole procedure (as the glance of
some Montesquieu, across innumerable superficial entanglements,
can partly decipher), are prescribed by an Idea, and flow naturally
from it, as movements from the living source of motion. This Idea,
be it of devotion to a man or class of men, to a creed, to an institu-
tion, or even, as in more ancient times, to a piece of land, is ever a
true Loyalty; has in it something of a religious, paramount, quite
infinite character; it is properly the Soul of the State, its Life; mys-
terious as other forms of Life, and like these working secretly, and
in a depth beyond that of consciousness.

Accordingly, it is not in the vigorous ages of a Roman Republic
that Treatises of the Commonwealth are written: while the Decii
are rushing with devoted bodies on the enemies of Rome, what
need of preaching Patriotism ? The virtue of Patriotism has already
sunk from its pristine all-transcendent condition, before it has re-
ceived a name. So long as the Commonwealth continues rightly ath-
letic, it cares not to dabble in anatomy. Why teach obedience to
the Sovereign; why so much as admire it, or separately recognise it,
while a divine idea of Obedience perennially inspires all men ? Loy-
alty, like Patriotism, of which it is a form, was not praised till it had
begun to decline; the Preux Chevaliers first became rightly admira-

CHARACTERISTICS 33 1

ble, when 'dying for their king' had ceased to be a habit with cheva-
Hers. For if the mystic significance of the State, let this be what it
may, dwells vitally in every heart, encircles every life as with a sec-
ond higher life, how should it stand self-questioning? It must rush
outward, and express itself by works. Besides, if perfect, it is there
as by necessity, and does not excite inquiry: it is also by na-
ture infinite, has no limits; therefore can be circumscribed by no
conditions and definitions; cannot be reasoned of; except musi-
cally, or in the language of Poetry, cannot yet so much as be
spoken of.

In those days. Society was what we name healthy, sound at heart.
Not indeed without suffering enough; not without perplexities, diffi-
culty on every side: for such is the appointment of man; his highest
and sole blessedness is, that he toil, and know what to toil at: not
in ease, but in united victorious labour, which is at once evil and
the victory over evil, does his Freedom lie. Nay, often, looking no
deeper than such superficial perplexities of the early Time, historians
have taught us that it was all one mass of contradiction and disease;
and in the antique Republic or feudal Monarchy have seen only the
confused chaotic quarry, not the robust labourer, or the stately edi-
fice he was building of it.

If Society, in such ages, had its difficulty, it had also its strength;
if sorrowful masses of rubbish so encumbered it, the tough sinews
to hurl them aside, with indomitable heart, were not wanting. So-
ciety went along without complaint; did not stop to scrutinize itself,
to say. How well I perform! or, Alas, how ill! Men did not yet feel
themselves to be 'the envy of surrounding nations'; and were envi-
able on that very account. Society was what we can call whole, in
both senses of the word. The individual man was in himself a
whole, or complete union; and could combine with his fellows as
the living member of a greater whole. For all men, through their
life, were animated by one great Idea; thus all efforts pointed one
way, everywhere there was wholeness. Opinion and Action had not
yet become disunited; but the former could still produce the latter,
or attempt to produce it; as the stamp does its impression while the
wax is not hardened. Thought and the voice of thought were also a
unison; thus, instead of Speculation, we had Poetry; Literature, in

332 THOMAS CARLYLE

its rude utterance, was as yet a heroic Song, perhaps too a devotional
Anthem.

ReHgion was everywhere; Philosophy lay hid under it, peaceably
included in it. Herein, as in the life-centre of all, lay the true health
and oneness. Only at a later era must Religion split itself into
Philosophies; and thereby, the vital union of Thought being lost,
disunion and mutual collision in all provinces of Speech and Action
more and more prevail. For if the Poet, or Priest, or by whatever
title the inspired thinker may be named, is the sign of vigour and
well-being; so likewise is the Logician, or uninspired thinker, the
sign of disease, probably of decrepitude and decay. Thus, not to
mention other instances, one of them much nearer hand, — so soon
as Prophecy among the Hebrews had ceased, then did the reign
of Argumentation begin; and the ancient Theocracy, in its Sad-
duceeisms and Phariseeisms, and vain jangling of sects and doctors,
give token that the soul of it had fled, and that the body itself, by
natural dissolution, 'with the old forces still at work, but working
in reverse order,' was on the road to final disappearance.

We might pursue this question into innumerable other ramifi-
cations; and everywhere, under new shapes, iind the same truth,
which we here so imperfectly enunciate, disclosed; that throughout
the whole world of man, in all manifestations and performances
of his nature, outward and inward, personal and social, the Perfect,
the Great is a mystery to itself, knows not itself; whatsoever does
know itself is already little, and more or less imperfect. Or other-
wise, we may say. Unconsciousness belongs to pure unmixed life;
Consciousness to a diseased mixture and conflict of life and death:
Unconsciousness is the sign of creation; Consciousness, at best, that
of manufacture. So deep, in this existence of ours, is the significance
of Mystery. Well might the Ancients make Silence a god; for it is
the element of all godhood, infinitude, or transcendental greatness;
at once the source and the ocean wherein all such begins and ends.
In the same sense, too, have Poets sung 'Hymns to the Night'; as
if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day were but a small motley-
coloured veil spread transiently over the infinite bosom of Night,
and did but deform and hide from us its purely transparent eternal

CHARACTERISTICS 333

deeps. So likewise have they spoken and sung as if Silence were
the grand epitome and complete sum-total of all Harmony; and
Death, what mortals call Death, properly the beginning of Life.
Under such figures, since except in figures there is no speaking of
the Invisible, have men endeavoured to express a great Truth; — a
Truth, in our Times, as nearly as is perhaps possible, forgotten by
the most; which nevertheless continues forever true, forever all-im-
portant, and will one day, under new figures, be again brought
home to the bosoms of all.

But indeed, in a far lower sense, the rudest mind has still some

intimation of the greatness there is in Mystery. If Silence was made

a god of by the Ancients, he still continues a government-clerk among

us Moderns. To all quacks, moreover, of what sort soever, the

effect of Mystery is well known: here and there some Cagliostro,

even in latter days, turns it to notable account: the blockhead also,

who is ambitious, and has no talent, finds sometimes in 'the talent of

silence,' a kind of succedaneum. Or again, looking on the opposite

side of the matter, do we not see, in the common understanding of

mankind, a certain distrust, a certain contempt of what is altogether

self-conscious and mechanical.'' As nothing that is wholly seen

through has other than a trivial character; so anything professing to

be great, and yet wholly to see through itself, is already known to

be false, and a failure. The evil repute your 'theoretical men' stand

in, the acknowledged inefficiency of 'paper constitutions,' and all

that class of objects, are instances of this. Experience often repeated,

and perhaps a certain instinct of something far deeper that lies under

such experiences, has taught men so much. They know beforehand,

that the loud is generally the insignificant, the empty. Whatsoever

can proclaim itself from the house-tops may be fit for the hawker,

and for those multitudes that must needs buy of him; but for any

deeper use, might as well continue unproclaimed. Observe too, how

the converse of the proposition holds; how the insignificant, the

empty, is usually the loud; and, after the manner of a drum, is loud

even because of its emptiness. The uses of some Patent Dinner

Calefactor can be bruited abroad over the whole world in the course

of the first winter; those of the Printing Press are not so well seen

into for the first three centuries: the passing of the Select-Vestries

334 THOMAS CARLYLE

Bill raises more noise and hopeful expectancy among mankind than
did the promulgation of the Christian Religion. Again, and again,
we say, the great, the creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself;
only the small, the barren and transient is otherwise.

If we now, with a practical medical view, examine, by this same
test of Unconsciousness, the Condition of our own Era, and of man's
Life therein, the diagnosis we arrive at is nowise of a flattering sort.
The state of Society in our days is, of all possible states, the least
an unconscious one: this is specially the Era when all manner of
Inquiries into what was once the unf eit, involuntary sphere of man's
existence, find their place, and, as it were, occupy the whole domain
of thought. What, for example, is all this that we hear, for the last
generation or two, about the Improvement of the Age, the Spirit
of the Age, Destruction of Prejudice, Progress of the Species, and
the March of Intellect, but an unhealthy state of self-sentience, self-
survey; the precursor and prognostic of still worse health? That In-
tellect do march, if possible at double-quick time, is very desirable;
nevertheless, why should she turn round at every stride, and cry:
See you what a stride I have taken! Such a marching of Intellect
is distinctly of the spavined kind; what the Jockeys call 'all action
and no go.' Or at best, if we examine well, it is the marching of
that gouty Patient, whom his Doctors had clapt on a metal floor
artificially heated to the searing point, so that he was obliged to
march, and did march with a vengeance — nowhither. Intellect did
not awaken for the first time yesterday; but has been under way
from Noah's Flood downwards: greatly her best progress, more-
over, was in the old times, when she said nothing about it. In those
same 'dark ages,' Intellect (metaphorically as well as literally) could
invent glass, which now she has enough ado to grind into spectacles.
Intellect built not only Churches, but a Church, the Church, based
on this firm Earth, yet reaching up, and leading up, as high as
Heaven; and now it is all she can do to keep its doors bolted, that
there be no tearing of the Surplices, no robbery of the Alms-box.
She built a Senate-house likewise, glorious in its kind; and now it
costs her a well-nigh mortal effort to sweep it clear of vermin, and
get the roof made rain-tight.

CHARACTERISTICS 335

But the truth is, with Intellect, as with most other things, we are
now passing from that first or boastful stage of Self-sentience into
the second or painful one: out of these often-asseverated declarations
that 'our system is in high order,' we come now, by natural sequence,
to the melancholy conviction that it is altogether the reverse. Thus,
for instance, in the matter of Government, the period of the 'Inval-
uable Constitution' has to be followed by a Reform Bill; to lauda-
tory De Lolmes succeed objurgatory Benthams. At any rate, what
Treatises on the Social Contract, on the Elective Franchise, the
Rights of Man, the Rights of Property, Codifications, Institutions,
Constitutions, have we not, for long years, groaned under! Or again,
with a wider survey, consider those Essays on Man, Thoughts on
Man, Inquiries concerning Man; not to mention Evidences of the
Christian Faith, Theories of Poetry, Considerations on the Origin
of Evil, which during the last century have accumulated on us to a
frightful extent. Never since the beginning of Time was there, that
we hear or read of, so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole
relations to the Universe and to our fellow-man have become an
Inquiry, a Doubt; nothing will go on of its own accord, and do its
function quietly; but all things must be probed into, the whole
working of man's world be anatomically studied. Alas, anatom-
ically studied, that it may be medically aided! Till at length indeed,
we have come to such a pass, that except in this same medicine, with
its artifices and appliances, few can so much as imagine any strength
or hope to remain for us. The whole Life of Society must now be
carried on by drugs: doctor after doctor appears with his nostrum, of
Cooperative Societies, Universal Suffrage, Cottage-and-Cow systems,
Repression of Population, Vote by ballot. To such height has the
dyspepsia of Society reached: as indeed the constant grinding inter-
nal pain, or from time to time the mad spasmodic throes, of all
Society do otherwise too mournfully indicate.

Far be it from us to attribute, as some unwise persons do, the dis-
ease itself to this unhappy sensation that there is a disease! The
Encyclopedists did not produce the troubles of France; but the trou-
bles of France produced the Encyclopedists, and much else. The
Self-consciousness is the symptom merely; nay, it is also the attempt
towards cure. We record the fact, without special censure; not won-

336 THOMAS CARLYLE

dering that Society should feel itself, and in all ways complain of
aches and twinges, for it has suffered enough. Napoleon was but a
Job's<omforter, when he told his wounded staff-officer, twice un-
horsed by cannon-balls, and with half his limbs blown to pieces:
"Yous vous ecoutez trap!"

On the outward, as it were Physical diseases of Society, it were
beside our purpose to insist here. These are diseases which he who
runs may read; and sorrow over, with or without hope. Wealth has
accumulated itself into masses; and Poverty, also in accumulation
enough, lies impassably separated from it; opposed, uncommunicat-
ing, like forces in positive and negative poles. The gods of this
lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, less happy than Epi-
curus's gods, but as indolent, as impotent; while the boundless living
chaos of Ignorance and Hunger welters terrific, in its dark fury,
under their feet. How much among us might be likened to a whited
sepulchre; outwardly all pomp and strength; but inwardly full of
horror and despair and dead-men's bones! Iron highways, with their
wains fire-winged, are uniting all ends of the firm Land; quays and
moles, with their innumerable stately fleets, tame the Ocean into
our pliant bearer of burdens; Labour's thousand arms of sinew and
of metal, all-conquering everywhere, from the tops of the mountain
down to the depths of the mine and the caverns of the sea, ply
unweariedly for the service of man: yet man remains unserved. He
has subdued this Planet, his habitation and inheritance; yet reaps
no profit from the victory.

Sad to look upon: in the highest stage of civilisation, nine-tenths
of mankind have to struggle in the lowest battle of savage or even
animal man, the battle against Famine. Countries are rich, pros-
perous in all manner of increase, beyond example: but the Men of
those countries are poor, needier than ever of all sustenance out-
ward and inward; of Belief, of Knowledge, of Money, of Food. The
rule. Sic vos non vobis, never altogether to be got rid of in men's
Industry, now presses with such incubus weight, that Industry must
shake it off, or utterly be strangled under it; and, alas, can as yet
but gasp and rave, and aimlessly struggle, like one in the final
deliration. Thus Change, or the inevitable approach of Change, is
manifest everywhere. In one Country we have seen lava-torrents

CHARACTERISTICS 337

o£ fever-frenzy envelop all things; Government succeed Govern-
ment, like the phantasms of a dying brain. In another Country, we
can even now see, in maddest alternation, the Peasant governed
by such guidance as this: To labour earnestly one month in raising
wheat, and the next month labour earnestly in burning it. So that
Society, were it not by nature immortal, and its death ever a new-
birth, might appear, as it does in the eyes of some, to be sick to
dissolution, and even now writhing in its last agony. Sick enough
we must admit it to be, with disease enough, a whole nosology of
diseases; wherein he perhaps is happiest that is not called to prescribe
as physician; — wherein, however, one small piece of policy, that of
summoning the Wisest in the Commonwealth, by the sole method
yet known or thought of, to come together and with their whole
soul consult for it, might, but for late tedious experiences, have
seemed unquestionable enough.

But leaving this, let us rather look within, into the Spiritual condi-
tion of Society, and see what aspects and prospects offer themselves
there. For after all, it is there properly that the secret and origin of
the whole is to be sought: the Physical derangements of Society are
but the image and impress of its Spiritual; while the heart continues
sound, all other sickness is superficial, and temporary. False Action
is the fruit of false Speculation; let the spirit of Society be free and
strong, that is to say, let true Principles inspire the members of So-
ciety, then neither can disorders accumulate in its Practice; each
disorder will be promptly, faithfully inquired into, and remedied as
it arises. But alas, with us the Spiritual condition of Society is no
less sickly than the Physical. Examine man's internal world, in any
of its social relations and performances, here too all seems diseased
self-consciousness, collision and mutually-destructive struggle. Noth-
ing acts from within outwards in undivided healthy force; everything
lies impotent, lamed, its force turned inwards, and painfully 'listens
to itself.'

To begin with our highest Spiritual function, with Religion, we
might ask, Whither has Religion now fled.'' Of Churches and their
establishments we here say nothing; nor of the unhappy domains
of Unbelief, and how innumerable men, blinded in their minds,
have grown to 'live without God in the world'; but, taking the fair-

338 THOMAS CARLYLE

est side of the matter, we ask, What is the nature of that same Re-
ligion, which still lingers in the hearts of the few who are called,
and call themselves, specially the Religious? Is it a healthy religion,
vital, unconscious of itself; that shines forth spontaneously in doing
of the Work, or even in preaching of the Word? Unhappily, no. In-
stead of heroic martyr Conduct, and inspired and soul-inspiring Elo-
quence, whereby Religion itself were brought home to our living
bosoms, to live and reign there, we have 'Discourses on the Evi-
dences,' endeavouring, with smallest result, to make it probable that
such a thing as Religion exists. The most enthusiastic EvangeUcals
do not preach a Gospel, but keep describing how it should and might
be preached: to awaken the sacred fire of faith, as by a sacred con-
tagion, is not their endeavour; but, at most, to describe how Faith
shows and acts, and scientifically distinguish true Faith from false.
Religion, like all else, is conscious of itself, listens to itself; it be-
comes less and less creative, vital; more and more mechanical. Con-
sidered as a whole, the Christian Religion of late ages has been con-
tinually dissipating itself into Metaphysics; and threatens now to
disappear, as some rivers do, in deserts of barren sand.

Of Literature, and its deep-seated, wide-spread maladies, why
speak? Literature is but a branch of ReUgion, and always partici-
pates in its character: however, in our time, it is the only branch
that still shows any greenness; and, as some think, must one day
become the main stem. Now, apart from the subterranean and
tartarean regions of Literature; — leaving out of view the frightful,
scandalous statistics of Puffing, the mystery of Slander, Falsehood,
Hatred and other convulsion-work of rabid Imbecility, and all that
has rendered Literature on that side a perfect 'Babylon the mother
of Abominations,' in very deed making the world 'drunk' with the
wine of her iniquity; — ^forgetting all this, let us look only to the
regions of the upper air; to such Literature as can be said to have
some attempt towards truth in it, some tone of music, and if it be
not poetical, to hold of the poetical. Among other characteristics,
is not this manifest enough: that it knows itself? Spontaneous
devotedness to the object, being wholly possessed by the object, what
we can call Inspiration, has well-nigh ceased to appear in Literature.
Which melodious Singer forgets that he is singing melodiously?

CHARACTERISTICS 339

We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of great-
ness. Hence infinite Affectations, Distractions; in every case in-
evitable Error. Consider, for one example, this pecuHarity of Mod-
ern Literature, the sin that has been named View-himting. In our
elder writers, there are no paintings of scenery for its own sake; no
euphuistic gallantries with Nature, but a constant heartlove for her,
a constant dwelling in communion with her. View-hunting, with
so much else that is of kin to it, first came decisively into action
through the Sorrows of Werter; which wonderful Performance,
indeed, may in many senses be regarded as the progenitor of all
that has since become popular in Literature; whereof, in so far as
concerns spirit and tendency, it still offers the most instructive
image; for nowhere, except in its own country, above all in the
mind of its illustrious Author, has it yet fallen wholly obsolete.
Scarcely ever, till that late epoch, did any worshipper of Nature
become entirely aware that he was worshipping, much to his own
credit; and think of saying to himself: Come, let us make a descrip-
tion! Intolerable enough: when every puny whipster plucks out his
pencil, and insists on painting you a scene; so that the instant you
discern such a thing as 'wavy oudine,' 'mirror of the lake,' 'stern
headland,' or the hke, in any Book, you tremulously hasten on; and
scarcely the Author of Waverley himself can tempt you not to skip.
Nay, is not the diseased self-conscious state of Literature disclosed
in this one fact, which hes so near us here, the prevalenc2 of Re-
viewing! Sterne's wish for a reader 'that would give-up the reins of
his imagination into his author's hands, and be pleased he knew not
why, and cared not wherefore,' might lead him a long journey now.
Indeed, for our best class of readers, the chief pleasure, a very stinted
one, is this same knowing of the Why; which many a Kames and
Bossu has been, ineffectually enough, endeavouring to teach us: till
at last these also have laid down their trade; and now your Re-
viewer is a mere taster; who tastes, and says, by the evidence of
such palate, such tongue, as he has got, It is good. It is bad. Was it
thus that the French carried out certain inferior creatures on their
Algerine Expedition, to taste the wells for them, and try whether
they were poisoned? Far be it from us to disparage our own craft,
whereby we have our living! Only we must note these things: that

340 THOMAS CARLYLE

Reviewing spreads with strange vigour; that such a man as Byron
reckons the Reviewer and the Poet equal; that at the last Leipzig
Fair, there was advertised a Review of Reviews. By and by it will
be found that all Literature has become one boundless self -devouring
Review; and, as in London routs, we have to do nothing, but only to
see others do nothing. — Thus does Literature also, like a sick thing,
superabundantly 'listen to itself.'

No less is this unhealthy symptom manifest, if we cast a glance
on our Philosophy, on the character of our speculative Thinking.
Nay, already, as above hinted, the mere existence and necessity of a
Philosophy is an evil. Man is sent hither not to question, but to
work: 'the end of man,' it was long ago written, 'is an Action, not
a Thought.' In the perfect state, all Thought were but the picture
and inspiring symbol of Action; Philosophy, except as Poetry and
Religion, would have no being. And yet how, in this imperfect
state, can it be avoided, can it be dispensed with? Man stands as in
the centre of Nature; his fraction of Time encircled by Eternity,
his handbreadth of Space encircled by Infinitude: how shall he for-
bear asking himself. What am I; and Whence; and Whither? How
too, except in slight partial hints, in kind asseverations and assur-
ances, such as a mother quiets her fretfully inquisitive child with,
shall he get answer to such inquiries?

The disease of Metaphysics, accordingly, is a perennial one. In
all ages, those questions of Death and Immortality, Origin of Evil,
Freedom and Necessity, must, under new forms, anew make their
appearance; ever, from time to time, must the attempt to shape for
ourselves some Theorem of the Universe be repeated. And ever
unsuccessfully : for what Theorem of the Infinite can the Finite ren-
der complete? We, the whole species of Mankind, and our whole
existence and history, are but a floating speck in the illimitable ocean
of the All; yet in that ocean; indissoluble portion thereof; partaking
of its infinite tendencies : borne this way and that by its deep-swelling
tides, and grand ocean currents; — of which what faintest chance is
there that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascertain the go-
ings and comings ? A region of Doubt, therefore, hovers forever in
the background; in Action alone can we have certainty. Nay, prop-
erly Doubt is the indispensable, inexhaustible material whereon Ac-

CHARACTERISTICS 34 1

tion works, which Action has to fashion into Certainty and Reality;
only on a canvas of Darkness, such is man's way of being, could the
many-coloured picture of our Life paint itself and shine.

Thus if our eldest system of Metaphysics is as old as the Bool(^ of
Genesis, our latest is that of Mr. Thomas Hope, published only
within the current year. It is a chronic malady that of Metaphysics,
as we said, and perpetually recurs on us. At the utmost, there is a
better and a worse in it; a stage of convalescence, and a stage of
relapse with new sickness: these forever succeed each other, as is the
nature of all Life-movement here below. The first, or convalescent
stage,we might also name that of Dogmatical or Constructive Meta-
physics; when the mind constructively endeavours to scheme out
and assert for itself an actual Theorem of the Universe, and there-
with for a time rests satisfied. The second or sick stage might be
called that of Sceptical or Inquisitory Metaphysics; when the mind
having widened its sphere of vision, the existing Theorem of the
Universe no longer answers the phenomena, no longer yields con-
tentment; but must be torn in pieces, and certainty anew sought for
in the endless realms of denial. All Theologies and sacred Cos-
mogonies belong, in some measure, to the first class; in all Pyr-
rhonism, from Pyrrho down to Hume and the innumerable disciples
of Hume, we have instances enough of the second. In the former,
so far as it affords satisfaction, a temporary anodyne to doubt, an
arena for wholesome action, there may be much good; indeed in this
case, it holds rather of Poetry than of Metaphysics, might be called
Inspiration rather than Speculation. The latter is Metaphysics
proper; a pure, unmixed, though from time to time a necessary evil.

For truly, if we look into it, there is no more fruitless endeavour
than this same, which the Metaphysician proper toils in: to educe
Conviction out of Negation. How, by merely testing and rejecting
what is not, shall we ever attain knowledge of what is? Meta-
physical Speculation, as it begins in No or Nothingness, so it must
needs end in Nothingness; circulates and must circulate in endless
vortices; creating, swallowing — itself. Our being is made up of
Light and Darkness, the Light resting on the Darkness, and bal-
ancing it; everywhere there is Dualism, Equipoise; a perpetual Con-
tradiction dwells in us: 'where shall I place myself to escape from

342 THOMAS CARLYLE

my own shadow?' Consider it well, Metaphysics is the attempt o£
the mind to rise above the mind; to environ and shut in, or as we
say, comprehend the mind. Hopeless struggle, for the wisest, as for
the foolishest! What strength of sinew, or athletic skill, will enable
the stoutest athlete to fold his own body in his arms, and, by lifting,
lift up himself? The Irish Saint swam the Channel, 'carrying his
head in his teeth'; but the feat has never been imitated.

That this is the age of Metaphysics, in the proper, or sceptical
Inquisitory sense; that there was a necessity for its being such an
age, we regard as our indubitable misfortune. From many causes,
the arena of free Activity has long been narrowing, that of sceptical
Inquiry becoming more and more universal, more and more per-
plexing. The Thought conducts not to the Deed; but in boundless
chaos, self-devouring, engenders monstrosities, phantasms, fire-
breathing chimeras. Profitable Speculation were this: What is to be
done; and How is it to be done? But with us not so much as the
What can be got sight of. For some generations, all Philosophy
has been a painful, captious, hostile question towards everything in
the Heaven above, and in the Earth beneath: Why art thou there?
Till at length it has come to pass that the worth and authenticity
of all things seem dubitable or deniable: our best effort must be
unproductively spent not in working, but in ascertaining our mere
Whereabout, and so much as whether we are to work at all. Doubt,
which, as was said, ever hangs in the background of our world, has
now become our middleground and foreground; whereon, for the
time, no fair Life-picture can be painted, but only the dark air-can-
vas itself flow round us, bewildering and benighting.

Nevertheless, doubt as we will, man is actually Here; not to ask
questions, but to do work: in this time, as in all times, it must be
the heaviest evil for him, if his faculty of Action lie dormant, and
only that of sceptical Inquiry exert itself. Accordingly whoever looks
abroad upon the world, comparing the Past with the Present, may
fitnd that the practical condition of man in these days is one of the
saddest; burdened with miseries which are in a considerable degree
peculiar. In no time was man's life what he calls a happy one; in no
time can it be so. A perpetual dream there has been of Paradises,
and some luxurious Lubberland, where the brooks should run wine.

CHARACTERISTICS 343

and the trees bend with ready-baked viands; but it was a dream
merely; an impossible dream. Suffering, contradiction, error, have
their quite perennial, and even indispensable abode in this Earth.
Is not labour the inheritance of man ? And what labour for the pres-
ent is joyous, and not grievous? Labour, effort, is the very interrup-
tion of that ease, which man foolishly enough fancies to be his hap-
piness; and yet without labour there were no ease, no rest, so much
as conceivable. Thus Evil, what we call Evil, must ever exist while
man exists: Evil, in the widest sense we can give it, is precisely the
dark, disordered material out of which man's Freewill has to create
an edifice of order and Good. Ever must Pain urge us to Labour;
and only in free Effort can any blessedness be imagined for us.

But if man has, in all ages, had enough to encounter, there has, in
most civilised ages, been an inward force vouchsafed him, whereby
the pressure of things outward might be withstood. Obstruction
abounded; but Faith also was not wanting. It is by Faith that man
removes mountains: while he had Faith, his limbs might be wearied
with toiling, his back galled with bearing; but the heart within him
was peaceable and resolved. In the thickest gloom there burnt a
lamp to guide him. If he struggled and suffered, he felt that it even
should be so; knew for what he was suffering and struggling. Faith
gave him an inward Willingness; a world of Strength wherewith
to front a world of Difficulty. The true wretchedness lies here : that
the Difficulty remain and the Strength be lost; that Pain cannot
relieve itself in free Effort; that we have the Labour, and want the
Willingness. Faith strengthens us, enlightens us, for all endeavours
and endurances; with Faith we can do all, and dare all, and life
itself has a thousand times been joyfully given away. But the sum
of man's misery is even this, that he feel himself crushed under the
Juggernaut wheels, and know that Juggernaut is no divinity, but a
dead mechanical idol.

Now this is specially the misery which has fallen on man in our
Era. Belief, Faith has well-nigh vanished from the world. The youth
on awakening in this wondrous Universe no longer finds a compe-
tent theory of its wonders. Time was, when if he asked himself.
What is man, What are the duties of man ? the answer stood ready
written for him. But now the ancient 'ground-plan of the All' belies

344 THOMAS CARLYLE

itself when brought into contact with reality; Mother Church has,
to the most, become a superannuated Step-mother, whose lessons go
disregarded; or are spurned at, and scornfully gainsaid. For young
Valour and thirst of Action no ideal Chivalry invites to heroism,
prescribes what is heroic: the old ideal of Manhood has grown obso-
lete, and the new is still invisible to us, and we grope after it in
darkness, one clutching this phantom, another that; Werterism,
Byronism, even Brummelism, each has its day. For Contemplation
and love of Wisdom, no Cloister now opens its religious shades; the
Thinker must, in all senses, wander homeless, too often aimless,
looking up to a Heaven which is dead for him, round to an Earth
which is deaf. Action, in those old days, was easy, was voluntary,
for the divine worth of human things lay acknowledged; Specula-
tion was wholesome, for it ranged itself as the handmaid of Action;
what could not so range itself died out by its natural death, by
neglect. Loyalty still hallowed obedience, and made rule noble; there
was still something to be loyal to: the Godlike stood embodied
under many a symbol in men's interests and business; the Finite
shadowed forth the Infinite; Eternity looked through Time. The
Life of man was encompassed and overcanopied by a glory of
Heaven, even as his dwelling-place by the azure vault.

How changed in these new days! Truly may it be said, the Divin-
ity has withdrawn from the Earth; or veils himself in that wide-
wasting Whirlwind of a departing Era, wherein the fewest can dis-
cern his goings. Not Godhead, but an iron, ignoble circle of Necessity
embraces all things; binds the youth of these times into a sluggish
thrall, or else exasperates him into a rebel. Heroic Action is para-
lysed; for what worth now remains unquestionable with him? At
the fervid period when his whole nature cries aloud for Action, there
is nothing sacred under whose banner he can act; the course and
kind and conditions of free Action are all but undiscoverable. Doubt
storms-in on him through every avenue; inquiries of the deepest,
painfulest sort must be engaged with; and the invincible energy of
young years waste itself in sceptical, suicidal cavillings; in passionate
'questionings of Destiny,' whereto no answer will be returned.

For men, in whom the old perennial principle of Hunger (be it
Hunger of the poor Day-drudge who stills it with eighteenpence

CHARACTERISTICS 345

a-day, or o£ the ambitious Placehunter who can nowise still it with
so little) suffices to fill-up existence, the case is bad; but not the
worst. These men have an aim, such as it is; and can steer towards
it, with chagrin enough truly; yet, as their hands are kept full,
without desperation. Unhappier are they to whom a higher instinct
has been given; who struggle to be persons, not machines; to whom
the Universe is not a warehouse, or at best a fancy-bazaar, but a
mystic temple and hall of doom. For such men there lie properly
two courses open. The lower, yet still an estimable class, take up
with worn-out Symbols of the Godlike; keep trimming and truck-
ing between these and Hypocrisy, purblindly enough, miserably
enough. A numerous intermediate class end in Denial; and form a
theory that there is no theory; that nothing is certain in the world,
except this fact of Pleasure being pleasant; so they try to realise
what trifling modicum of Pleasure they can come at, and to live
contented therewith, winking hard. Of those we speak not here;
but only of the second nobler class, who also have dared to say No,
and cannot yet say Yea; but feel that in the No they dwell as in a
Golgotha, where Hfe enters not, where peace is not appointed them.
Hard, for most part, is the fate of such men ; the harder the nobler
they are. In dim forecastings, wrestles within them the 'Divine Idea
of the World,' yet will nowhere visibly reveal itself. They have to
realise a Worship for themselves, or live unworshipping. The God-
like has vanished from the world; and they, by the strong cry of
their soul's agony, like true wonder-workers, must again evoke its
presence. This miracle is their appointed task; which they must
accomplish, or die wretchedly: this miracle has been accomplished
by such; but not in our land; our land yet knows not of it. Behold a
Byron, in melodious tones, 'cursing his day': he mistakes earthborn
passionate desire for heaven-inspired Freewill; without heavenly
loadstar, rushes madly into the dance of meteoric lights that hover
on the mad Mahlstrom; and goes down among its eddies. Hear a
Shelley filling the earth with inarticulate wail; like the infinite, in-
articulate grief and weeping of forsaken infants. A noble Friedrich
Schlegel, stupefied in that fearful loneliness, as of a silenced battle-
field, flies back to Catholicism; as a child might to its slain mother's
bosom, and cling there. In lower regions, how many a poor Hazlitt

346 THOMAS CARLYLE

must wander on God's verdant earth, like the Unblest on burning
deserts; passionately dig wells, and draw up only the dry quicksand;
believe that he is seeking Truth, yet only wrestle among endless
Sophisms, doing desperate battle as with spectre-hosts; and die and
make no sign!

To the better order of such minds any mad joy of Denial has long
since ceased: the problem is not now to deny, but to ascertain and
perform. Once in destroying the False, there was a certain inspira-
tion; but now the genius of Destruction has done its work, there is
now nothing more to destroy. The doom of the Old has long been
pronounced, and irrevocable; the Old has passed away: but, alas, the
New appears not in its stead; the Time is still in pangs of travail
with the New. Man has walked by the light of conflagrations, and
amid the sound of falling cities; and now there is darkness, and
long watching till it be morning. The voice even of the faithful
can but exclaim: 'As yet struggles the twelfth hour of the Night:
birds of darkness are on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead walk,
the living dream. — Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt cause the day to
dawn!"

Such being the condition, temporal and spiritual, of the world at
our Epoch, can we wonder that the world 'listens to itself,' and
struggles and writhes, everywhere externally and internally, like a
thing in pain ? Nay, is not even this unhealthy action of the world's
Organisation, if the symptom of universal disease, yet also the symp-
tom and sole means of restoration and cure? The effort of Nature,
exerting her medicative force to cast-out foreign impediments, and
once more become One, become whole? In Practice, still more in
Opinion, which is the precursor and prototype of Practice, there
must needs be collision, convulsion; much has to be ground away.
Thought must needs be Doubt and Inquiry, before it can again be
Affirmation and Sacred Precept. Innumerable 'Philosophies of Man,'
contending in boundless hubbub, must annihilate each other, before
an inspired Poesy and Faith for Man can fashion itself together.

From this stunning hubbub, a true Babel-like confusion of tongues,
we have here selected two Voices; less as objects of praise or con-
demnation, than as signs how far the confusion has reached, what
^ Jean Paul's Hesperus (Vorrede).

CHARACTERISTICS 347

prospect there is o£ its abating. Friedrich Schlegel's Lectures deliv-
ered at Dresden, and Mr. Hope's Essay published in London, are
the latest utterances of European Speculation: far asunder in exter-
nal place, they stand at a still wider distance in inward purport; are,
indeed, so opposite and yet so cognate that they may, in many senses,
represent the two Extremes of our whole modern system of
Thought; and be said to include between them all the Metaphysical
Philosophies, so often alluded to here, which, of late times, from
France, Germany, England, have agitated and almost overwhelmed
us. Both in regard to matter and to form, the relation of these two
Works is significant enough.

Speaking first of their cognate qualities, let us remark, not without
emotion, one quite extraneous point of agreement; the fact that the
Writers of both have departed from this world; they have now fin-
ished their search, and had all doubts resolved: while we listen to
the voice, the tongue that uttered it has gone silent forever. But
the fundamental, all-pervading similarity lies in this circumstance,
well worthy of being noted, that both these Philosophies are of the
Dogmatic or Constructive sort: each in its way is a kind of Genesis;
an endeavour to bring the Phenomena of man's Universe once more
under some theoretic Scheme: in both there is a decided principle
of unity; they strive after a result which shall be positive; their aim
is not to question, but to establish. This, especially if we consider
with what comprehensive concentrated force it is here exhibited,
forms a new feature in such works.

Under all other aspects, there is the most irreconcilable opposition;
a staring contrariety, such as might provoke contrasts, were there
far fewer points of comparison. If Schlegel's Work is the apotheosis
of Spiritualism; Hope's again is the apotheosis of MateriaUsm: in
the one, all Matter is evaporated into a Phenomenon, and terrestrial
Life itself, with its whole doings and showings, held out as a Dis-
turbance (Zerriittung) produced by the Zeitgeist (Spirit of Time) ;
in the other. Matter is distilled and sublimated into some semblance
of Divinity: the one regards Space and Time as mere forms of
man's mind, and without external existence or reality; the other
supposes Space and Time to be 'incessantly created,' and rayed-in
upon us like a sort of gravitation,' Such is their difference in respect

348 THOMAS CARLYLE

of purport: no less striking is it in respect of manner, talent, success
and all outward characteristics. Thus, if in Schlegel we have to ad-
mire the power of Words, in Hope we stand astonished, it might
almost be said, at the want of an articulate Language. To Schlegel
his Philosophic Speech is obedient, dexterous, exact, like a promptly
ministering genius; his names are so clear, so precise and vivid, that
they almost (sometimes altogether) become things for him: with
Hope there is no Philosophical Speech; but a painful, confused
stammering, and struggling after such; or the tongue, as in doatish
forgetfulness, maunders, low, long-winded, and speaks not the word
intended, but another; so that here the scarcely intelligible, in these
endless convolutions, becomes the wholly unreadable; and often we
could ask, as that mad pupil did of his tutor in Philosophy, "But
whether is Virtue a fluid, then, or a gas?" If the fact, that Schlegel,
in the city of Dresden, could find audience for such high discourse,
may excite our envy; this other fact, that a person of strong powers,
skilled in English Thought and master of its Dialect, could write
the Origin and Prospects of Man, may painfully remind us of the
reproach, that England has now no language for Meditation; that
England, the most calculative, is the least meditative, of all civilised
countries.

It is not our purpose to offer any criticism of Schlegel's Book; in
such limits as were possible here, we should despair of communicat-
ing even the faintest image of its significance. To the mass of
readers, indeed, both among the Germans themselves, and still more
elsewhere, it nowise addresses itself, and may lie forever sealed. We
point it out as a remarkable document of the Time and of the Man;
can recommend it, moreover, to all earnest Thinkers, as a work de-
serving their best regard; a work full of deep meditation, wherein
the infinite mystery of Life, if not represented, is decisively recog-
nised. Of Schlegel himself, and his character, and spiritual history,
we can profess no thorough or final understanding; yet enough to
make us view him with admiration and pity, nowise with harsh
contemptuous censure; and must say, with clearest persuasion, that
the outcry of his being 'a renegade,' and so forth, is but like other
such outcries, a judgment where there was neither jury, nor evi-
dence, nor judge. The candid reader, in this Book itself, to say

CHARACTERISTICS 349

nothing o£ all the rest, will find traces of a high, far-seeing, earnest
spirit, to whom 'Austrian Pensions,' and the Kaiser's crown, and
Austria altogether, were but a light matter to the finding and
vitally appropriating of Truth. Let us respect the sacred mystery
of a Person; rush not irreverently into man's Holy of Holies! Were
the lost little one, as we said already, found 'sucking its dead mother,
on the field of carnage,' could it be other than a spectacle for tears ?
A solemn mournful feeling comes over us when we see this last
Work of Friedrich Schlegel, the unwearied seeker, end abruptly in
the middle; and, as if he had not yet found, as if emblematically of
much, end with an 'Aber — ,' with a 'But — '! This was the last word
that came from the Pen of Friedrich Schlegel: about eleven at night
he wrote it down, and there paused sick; at one in the morning.
Time for him had merged itself in Eternity; he was, as we say, no
more.

Still less can we attempt any criticism of Mr. Hope's new Book of
Genesis. Indeed, under any circumstances, criticism of it were now
impossible. Such an utterance could only be responded to in peals
of laughter; and laughter sounds hollow and hideous through the
vaults of the dead. Of this monstrous Anomaly, where all sciences
are heaped and huddled together, and the principles of all are, with
a childlike innocence, plied hither and thither, or wholly abolished
in case of need; where the First Cause is figured as a huge Circle,
with nothing to do but radiate 'gravitation' towards its centre; and
so construct a Universe, wherein all, from the lowest cucumber with
its coolness, up to the highest seraph with his love, were but 'gravi-
tation,' direct or reflex, 'in more or less central globes,' — what can
we say, except, with sorrow and shame, that it could have originated
nowhere save in England? It is a general agglomerate o£ all facts,
notions, whims and observations, as they lie in the brain of an
English gentleman; as an English gentleman, of unusual thinking
power, is led to fashion them, in his schools and in his world: all
these thrown into the crucible, and if not fused, yet soldered or
conglutinated with boundless patience; and now tumbled out here,
heterogeneous, amorphous, unspeakable, a world's wonder. Most
melancholy must we name the whole business; full of long-con-
tinued thought, earnestness, loftiness of mind; not without glances

350 THOMAS CARLYLE

into the Deepest, a constant fearless endeavour after truth; and with
all this nothing accomplished, but the perhaps absurdest Book writ-
ten in our century by a thinking man. A shameful Abortion; which,
however, need not now be smothered or mangled, for it is already
dead; only, in our love and sorrowing reverence for the writer of
Anastasius, and the heroic seeker of Light, though not bringer
thereof, let it be buried and forgotten.

For ourselves, the loud discord which jars in these two Works, in
innumerable works of the like import, and generally in all the
Thought and Action of this period, does not any longer utterly con-
fuse us. Unhappy who, in such a time, felt not, at all conjunctures,
ineradicably in his heart the knowledge that a God made this Uni-
verse, and a Demon not! And shall Evil always prosper then ? Out
of all Evil comes Good? and no Good that is possible but shall one
day be real. Deep and sad as is our feeling that we stand yet in the
bodeful Night; equally deep, indestructible is our assurance that
the Morning also will not fail. Nay, already, as we look round,
streaks of a dayspring are in the east; it is dawning; when the
time shall be fulfilled, it will be day. The progress of man towards
higher and nobler developments of whatever is highest and noblest
in him, lies not only prophesied to Faith, but now written to the
eye of Observation, so that he who runs may read.

One great step of progress, for example, we should say, in actual
circumstances, was this same; the clear ascertainment that we are
in progress. About the grand Course of Providence, and his final
Purposes with us, we can know nothing, or almost nothing: man
begins in darkness, ends in darkness: mystery is everywhere around
us and in us, under our feet, among our hands. Nevertheless so
much has become evident to every one, that this wondrous Man-
kind is advancing somewhither; that at least all human things are,
have been and forever will be, in Movement and Change;— as, in-
deed, for beings that exist in Time, by virtue of Time, and are
made of Time, might have been long since understood. In some
provinces, it is true, as in Experimental Science, this discovery is an
old one; but in most others it belongs wholly to these latter days.
How often, in former ages, by eternal Creeds, eternal Forms of

CHARACTERISTICS 351

Government and the like, has it been attempted, fiercely enough,
and with destructive violence, to chain the Future under the Past;
and say to the Providence, whose ways with man are mysterious,
and through the great deep: Hitherto shalt thou come, but no far-
ther! A wholly insane attempt; and for man himself, could it pros-
per, the frightfulest of all enchantments, a very Life-in-Death.
Man's task here below, the destiny of every individual man, is to be
in turns Apprentice and Workman; or say rather, Scholar, Teacher,
Discoverer: by nature he has a strength for learning, for imitating;
but also a strength for acting, for knowing on his own account.
Are we not in a world seen to be Infinite; the relations lying closest
together modified by those latest discovered and lying farthest
asunder? Could you ever spell-bind man into a Scholar merely, so
that he had nothing to discover, to correct; could you ever establish
a Theory of the Universe that were entire, unimprovable, and which
needed only to be got by heart; man then were spiritually defunct,
the Species we now name Man had ceased to exist. But the gods,
kinder to us than we are to ourselves, have forbidden such suicidal
acts. As Phlogiston is displaced by Oxygen, and the Epicycles of
Ptolemy by the Ellipses of Kepler; so does Paganism give place to
Catholicism, Tyranny to Monarchy, and Feudalism to Representa-
tive Government, — where also the process does not stop. Perfection
of Practice, like completeness of Opinion, is always approaching,
never arrived; Truth, in the words of Schiller, imtner wird, nie ist',
never is, always is a-being.

Sad, truly, were our condition did we know but this, that Change
is imiversal and inevitable. Launched into a dark shoreless sea of
Pyrrhonism, what would remain for us but to sail aimless, hopeless;
or make madly merry, while the devouring Death had not yet in-
gulfed us? As indeed, we have seen many, and still see many do.
Nevertheless so stands it not. The venerator of the Past (and to
what pure heart is the Past, in that 'moonlight of memory,' other
than sad and holy?) sorrows not over its departure, as one utterly
bereaved. The true Past departs not, nothing that was worthy in
the Past departs; no Truth of Goodness realised by man ever dies,
or can die; but is all still here, and, recognised or not, lives and
works through endless changes. If all things, to speak in the

352 THOMAS CARLYLE

German dialect, are discerned by us, and exist for us, in an element
of Time, and therefore of Mortality and Mutability; yet Time itself
reposes on Eternity : the truly Great and Transcendental has its basis
and substance in Eternity; stands revealed to us as Eternity in a
vesture of Time. Thus in all Poetry, Worship, Art, Society, as one
form passes into another, nothing is lost; it is but the superficial, as
it were the body only, that grows obsolete and dies; under the mortal
body lies a soul which is immortal; which anew incarnates itself in
fairer revelation; and the Present is the living sum-total of the whole
Past.

In Change, therefore, there is nothing terrible, nothing super-
natural: on the contrary, it lies in the very essence of our lot and
life in this world. Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change;
how can our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to be the
fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet
ever needful; and if Memory have its force and worth, so also has
Hope. Nay, if we look well to it, what is all Derangement, and
necessity of great Change, in itself such an evil, but the product
simply of increased resources which the old methods can no longer
administer; of new wealth which the old coffers will no longer con-
tain? What is it, for example, that in our own day bursts asunder
the bonds of ancient Political Systems, and perplexes all Europe
with the fear of Change, but even this: the increase of social re-
sources, which the old social methods will no longer sufficiently
administer? The new omnipotence of the Steam-engine is hewing
asunder quite other mountains than the physical. Have not our
economical distresses, those barnyard Conflagrations themselves, the
frightfulest madness of our mad epoch, their rise also in what is a
real increase: increase of Men; of human Force; properly, in such
a Planet as ours, the most precious of all increases ? It is true again,
the ancient methods of administration will no longer suffice. Must
the indomitable millions, full of old Saxon energy and fire, lie
cooped-up in this Western Nook, choking one another, as in a
Blackhole of Calcutta, while a whole fertile untenanted Earth, deso-
late for want of the ploughshare, cries : Come and till me, come and
reap me ? If the ancient Captains can no longer yield guidance, new
must be sought after: for the difficulty lies not in nature, but in arti-

CHARACTERISTICS 353

fice; the European Calcutta-Bkckhole has no walls but air ones and
paper ones. — So too, Scepticism itself, with its innumerable mischiefs,
what is it but the sour fruit of a most blessed increase, that of Knowl-
edge; a fruit too that will not always continue sour?

In fact, much as we have said and mourned about the unproduc-
tive prevalence of Metaphysics, it was not without some insight into
the use that lies in them. Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary
evil, is the forerunner of much good. The fever of Scepticism must
needs burn itself out, and burn out thereby the Impurities that
caused it; then again will there be clearness, health. The principle
of life, which now struggles painfully, in the outer, thin and barren
domain of the Conscious or Mechanical, may then withdraw into
its inner sanctuaries, its abysses of mystery and miracle; withdraw
deeper than ever into that domain of the Unconscious, by nature
infinite and inexhaustible; and creatively work there. From that
mystic region, and from that alone, all wonders, all Poesies, and
Religions, and Social Systems have proceeded: the like wonders, and
greater and higher, lie slumbering there; and, brooded on by the
spirit of the waters, will evolve themselves, and rise like exhalations
from the Deep.

Of our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may not this already be
said, that if they have produced no Affirmation, they have destroyed
much Negation? It is a disease expelling a disease: the fire of
Doubt, as above hinted, consuming away the Doubtful; that so the
Certain come to light, and again lie visible on the surface. English
or French Metaphysics, in reference to this last stage of the specu-
lative process, are not what we allude to here; but only the Meta-
physics of the Germans. In France or England, since the days of
Diderot and Hume, though all thought has been of a sceptico-
metaphysical texture, so far as there was any Thought, we have seen
no Metaphysics; but only more or less ineffectual questionings
whether such could be. In the Pyrrhonism of Hume and the Ma-
terialism of Diderot, Logic had, as it were, overshot itself, overset
itself. Now, though the athlete, to use our old figure, cannot, by
much lifting, lift up his own body, he may shift it out of a laming
posture, and get to stand in a free one. Such a service have German
Metaphysics done for man's mind. The second sickness of Specula-

354 THOMAS CARLYLE

tion has abolished both itself and the first. Friedrich Schlegel com-
plains much of the fruitlessness, the tumult and transiency of Ger-
man as of all Metaphysics; and with reason. Yet in that wide-
spreading, deep-whirling vortex of Kantism, so soon metamorphosed
into Fichteism, Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and Cousinism,
perhaps finally evaporated, is not this issue visible enough, That
Pyrrhonism and Materialism, themselves necessary phenomena in
European culture, have disappeared; and a Faith in Religion has
again become possible and inevitable for the scientific mind; and
the word Fre^-thinker no longer means the Denier or Caviller, but
the Believer, or the Ready to believe? Nay, in the higher Literature
of Germany, there already lies, for him that can read it, the begin-
ning of a new revelation of the Godlike; as yet unrecognised by the
mass of the world; but waiting there for recognition, and sure to
find it when the fit hour comes. This age also is not wholly without
its Prophets.

Again, under another aspect, if Utilitarianism, or Radicalism, or
the Mechanical Philosophy, or by whatever name it is called, has
still its long task to do; nevertheless we can now see through it
and beyond it: in the better heads, even among us English, it has
become obsolete; as in other countries, it has been, in such heads, for
some forty or even fifty years. What sound mind among the French,
for example, now fancies that men can be governed by 'Constitu-
tions'; by the never so cunning mechanising of Self-interests, and
all conceivable adjustments of checking and balancing; in a word,
by the best possible solution of this quite insoluble and impossible
problem, Given a world of Knaves, to produce an Honesty from
their united action? Were not experiments enough of this kind
tried before all Europe, and found wanting, when, in that doomsday
of France, the infinite gulf of human Passion shivered asunder the
thin rinds of Habit; and burst forth all-devouring, as in seas of
Nether Fire? Which cunningly-devised 'Constitution,' constitu-
tional, republican, democratic, sansculottic, could bind that raging
chasm together? Were they not all burnt up, like paper as they
were, in its molten eddies; and still the fire-sea raged fiercer than
before? It is not by Mechanism, but by Religion; not by Self-interest,
but by Loyalty, that men are governed or governable.

CHARACTERISTICS 355

Remarkable it is, truly, how everywhere the eternal fact begins
again to be recognised, that there is a Godlike in human affairs;
that God not only made us and beholds us, but is in us and around
us; that the Age of Miracles, as it ever was, now is. Such recognition
we discern on all hands and in all countries: in each country after
its own fashion. In France, among the younger nobler minds,
strangely enough; where, in their loud contention with the Actual
and Conscious, the Ideal or Unconscious is, for the time, without
exponent; where Religion means not the parent of Polity, as of all
that is highest, but Polity itself; and this and the other earnest man
has not been wanting, who could audibly whisper to himself: 'Go
to, I will make a religion.' In England still more strangely; as in
all things, worthy England will have its way: by the shrieking of
hysterical women, casting out of devils, and other 'gifts of the Holy
Ghost.' Well might Jean Paul say, in this his twelfth hour of the
Night, 'the living dream'; well might he say, 'the dead walk.' Mean-
while let us rejoice rather that so much has been seen into, were
it through never so diffracting media, and never so madly distorted;
that in all dialects, though but half-articulately, this high Gospel
begins to be preached: Man is still Man. The genius of Mechanism,
as was once before predicted, will not always sit like a choking
incubus on our soul; but at length, when by a new magic Word
the old spell is broken, become our slave, and as familiar-spirit do
all our bidding. 'We are near awakening when we dream that we
dream.'

He that has an eye and a heart can even now say: Why should I
falter? Light has come into the world; to such as love Light, so as
Light must be loved, with a boundless all-doing, all-enduring love.
For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the mystery of the Infinite
cease to harass us. It is a mystery which, through all ages, we shall
only read here a line of, there another line of. Do we not already
know that the name of the Infinite is Good, is God? Here on Earth
we are Soldiers, fighting in a foreign land; that understand not the
plan of the campaign, and have no need to understand it; seeing
well what is at our hand to be done. Let us do it like Soldiers; with
submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. 'Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with all thy might.' Behind us, behind each one

356 THOMAS CARLYLE

of us, lie Six Thousand Years of human effort, human conquest:
before us is the boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated and un-
conquered Continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to
conquer, to create; and from the bosom of Eternity there shine for
us celestial guiding stars.

'My inheritance how wide and fair!

Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I'm heir.'

INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY

BY
THOMAS CARLYLE

INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT
EDINBURGH

2ND APRIL 1866

On Being Installed as Rector of the University There

GENTLEMEN, — I have accepted the office you have elected
-me to, and it is now my duty to return thanks for the great
honour done me. Your enthusiasm towrards me, I must
admit, is in itself very beautiful, however undeserved it may be in re-
gard to the object of it. It is a feeling honourable to all men, and one
well known to myself when I was of an age like yours, nor is it yet
quite gone. I can only hope that, with you, too, it may endure to
the end, — this noble desire to honour those whom you think worthy
of honour; and that you will come to be more and more select and
discriminate in the choice of the object of it: — for I can well under-
stand that you will modify your opinions of me and of many things
else, as you go on {Laughter and cheers^. It is now fifty-six years,
gone last November, since I first entered your City, a boy of not
quite fourteen; to 'attend the classes' here, and gain knowledge of
all kinds, I could little guess what, my poor mind full of wonder
and awe-struck expectation; and now, after a long course, this is
what we have come to \Cheers^. There is something touching and
tragic, and yet at the same time beautiful, to see, as it were, the
third generation of my dear old native land rising up and saying,
"Well, you are not altogether an unworthy labourer in the vine-
yard; you have toiled through a great variety of fortunes, and have
had many judges: this is our judgment of you!" As the old proverb
says, 'He that builds by the wayside has many masters.' We must
expect a variety of judges: but the voice of young Scotland, through
you, is really of some value to me; and I return you many thanks for
it, — though I cannot go into describing my emotions to you, and

359

360 THOMAS CARLYLE

perhaps they will be much more perfectly conceivable if expressed in
silence [Cheers].

When this office was first proposed to me, some of you know I
was not very ambitious to accept it, but had my doubts rather. I
was taught to believe that there were certain more or less impor-
tant duties which would lie in my power. This, I confess, was my
chief motive in going into it, and overcoming the objections I felt to
such things: if it could do anything to serve my dear old Alma
Mater and you, why should not I? [Loud cheers.] Well, but on
practically looking into the matter when the office actually came
into my hands, I find it grows more and more uncertain and
abstruse to me whether there is much real duty that I can do at all.
I live four hundred miles away from you, in an entirely different
scene of things; and my weak health, with the burden of the many
years now accumulating on me, and my total unacquaintance with
such subjects as concern your affairs here, — all this fills me with
apprehension that there is really nothing worth the least considera-
tion that I can do on that score. You may depend on it, however,
that if any such duty does arise in any form, I will use my most
faithful endeavour to dp in it whatever is right and proper, accord-
ing to the best of my judgment [Cheers].

Meanwhile, the duty I at present have, — which might be very
pleasant, but which is not quite so, for reasons you may fancy, — ^is
to address some words to you, if possible not quite useless nor incon-
gruous to the occasion, and on subjects more or less cognate to the
pursuits you are engaged in. Accordingly, I mean to offer you some
loose observations, loose in point of order, but the truest I have, in
such form as they may present themselves; certain of the thoughts
that are in me about the business you are here engaged in, what
kind of race it is that you young gentlemen have started on, and
what sort of arena you are likely to find in this world. I ought, I
believe, according to custom, to have written all that down on
paper, and had it read out. That would have been much handier for
me at the present moment [A laugh]; — but on attempting the thing,
I found I was not used to write speeches, and that I didn't get on
very well. So I flung that aside; and could only resolve to trust,
in all superficial respects, to the suggestion of the moment, as you

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 361

now see. You will therefore have to accept what is readiest; what
comes direct from the heart; and you must just take that in com-
pensation for any good order or arrangement there might have
been in it. I will endeavour to say nothing that is not true, so far
as I can manage; and that is pretty much all I can engage for [A
laugh].

Advices, I believe, to young men, as to all men, are very seldom
much valued. There is a great deal of advising, and very little faith-
ful performing; and talk that does not end in any kind of action
is better suppressed altogether. I would not, therefore, go much into
advising; but there is one advice I must give you. In fact, it is the
summary of all advices, and doubtless you have heard it a thousand
times; but I must nevertheless let you hear it the thousand-and-first
time, for it is most intensely true, whether you will believe it at
present or not: — namely. That above all things the interest of your
whole life depends on your being diligent, now while it is called
to-day, in this place where you have come to get education! Dili-
gent: that includes in it all virtues that a student can have; I mean
it to include all those qualities of conduct. that lead on to the ac-
quirement of real instruction and improvement in such a place. If
you will believe me, you who are young, yours is the golden season
of life. As you have heard it called, so it verily is, the seed-time of
life; in which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of
wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards, and you will
arrive at little. And in the course of years when you come to look
back, if you have not done what you have heard from your advisers,
— and among many counsellors there is wisdom, — you will bitterly
repent when it is too late. The habits of study acquired at Univer-
sities are of the highest importance in after-life. At the season when
you are young in years, the whole mind is, as it were, fluid, and is
capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the mind
pleases to allow it, or constrain it, to form itself into. The mind is
then in a plastic or fluid state; but it hardens gradually, to the con-
sistency of rock or of iron, and you cannot alter the habits of an
old man: he, as he has begun, so he will proceed and go on to
the last.

By diligence I mean, among other things, and very chiefly too, —

362 THOMAS CARLYLE

honesty, in all your inquiries, and in all you are about. Pursue your
studies in the way your conscience can name honest. More and
more endeavour to do that. Keep, I should say for one thing, an
accurate separation between what you have really come to know in
your minds and what is still unknown. Leave all that latter on
the hypothetical side o£ the barrier, as things afterwards to be ac-
quired, if acquired at all; and be careful not to admit a thing as
known when you do not yet know it. Count a thing known
only when it is imprinted clearly on your mind, and has become
transparent to you, so that you may survey it on all sides with intel-
ligence. There is such a thing as a man endeavouring to persuade
himself, and endeavouring to persuade others, that he knows things,
when he does not know more than the outside skin of them; and
yet he goes flourishing about with them [Hear, hear, and a laugh].
There is also a process called cramming, in some Universities {A
laugh], — that is, getting-up such points of things as the examiner
is likely to put questions about. Avoid all that, as entirely unworthy
of an honourable mind. Be modest, and humble, and assiduous in
your attention to what your teachers tell you, who are profoundly
interested in trying to bring you forward in the right way, so far as
they have been able to understand it. Try all things they set before
you, in order, if possible, to understand them, and to follow and
adopt them in proportion to their fitness for you. Gradually see what
kind of work you individually can do; it is the first of all problems
for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this uni-
verse. In short, morality as regards study is, as in all other things,
the primary consideration, and overrules all others. A dishonest man
cannot do anything real; he never will study with real fruit; and
perhaps it would be greatly better if he were tied up from trying it.
He does nothing but darken counsel by the words he utters. That
is a very old doctrine, but a very true one; and you will find it con-
firmed by all the thinking men that have ever lived in this long
series of generations of which we are the latest.

I dare say you know, very many of you, that it is now some seven
hundred years since Universities were first set-up in this world of
ours. Abelard and other thinkers had arisen with doctrines in them

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 363

which people wished to hear of, and students flocked towards them
from all parts of the world. There was no getting the thing recorded
in books, as you now may. You had to hear the man speaking to
you, vocally, or else you could not learn at all what it was that he
wanted to say. And so they gathered together, these speaking ones,
— the various people who had anything to teach; — and formed them-
selves gradually, under the patronage of kings and other potentates
who were anxious about the culture of their populations, and nobly
studious of their best benefit; and became a body-corporate, with
high privileges, high dignities, and really high aims, under the title
of a University.

Possibly too you may have heard it said that the course of
centuries has changed all this; and that 'the true University of our
days is a Collection of Books.' And beyond doubt, all this is greatly
altered by the invention of Printing, which took place about mid-
way between us and the origin of Universities. Men have not now
to go in person to where a Professor is actually speaking; because
in most cases you can get his doctrine out of him through a book;
and can then read it, and read it again and again, and study it.
That is an immense change, that one fact of Printed Books. And
I am not sure that I know of any University in which the whole
of that fact has yet been completely taken in, and the studies
moulded in complete conformity with it. Nevertheless, Universities
have, and will continue to have, an indispensable value in society;
— ^I think, a very high, and it might be, almost the highest value.
They began, as is well known, with their grand aim directed on
Theology, — their eye turned earnestly on Heaven. And perhaps,
in a sense, it may be still said, the very highest interests of man are
virtually intrusted to them. In regard to theology, as you are
aware, it has been, and especially was then, the study of the deepest
heads that have come into the world, — what is the nature of this
stupendous Universe, and what are our relations to it, and to all
things knowable by man, or known only to the great Author of
man and it. Theology was once the name for all this; all this is
still alive for man, however dead the name may grow! In fact, the
members of the Church keeping theology in a lively condition
[Laughter] for the benefit of the whole population, theology was

364 THOMAS CARLYLE

the great object of the Universities. I consider it is the same
intrinsically now, though very much forgotten, from many causes,
and not so successful [A laugh ] as might be w^ished, by any manner
of means!

It remains, however, practically a most important truth, what I
alluded to above, that the main use of Universities in the present
age is that, after you have done with all your classes, the next
thing is a collection of books, a great library of good books, which
you proceed to study and to read. What the Universities can
mainly do for you, — what I have found the University did for me,
is, That it taught me to read, in various languages, in various
sciences; so that I could go into the books which treated of these
things, and gradually penetrate into any department I wanted to
make myself master of, as I found it suit me.

Well, Gentlemen, whatever you may think of these historical
points, the clearest and most imperative duty lies on every one of
you to be assiduous in your reading. Learn to be good readers, —
which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn
to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with
your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest
in, a real not an imaginary, and which you find to be really fit for
what you are engaged in. Of course, at the present time, in a great
deal of the reading incumbent on you, you must be guided by the
books recommended by your Professors for assistance towards the
effect of their prelections. And then, when you leave the University,
and go into studies of your own, you will find it very important
that you have chosen a field, some province specially suited to you,
in which you can study and work. The most unhappy of all men
is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no
work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For
work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever
beset mankind, — honest work, which you intend getting done.

If, in any vacant vague time, you are in a strait as to choice of
reading, — a very good indication for you, perhaps the best you could
get, is toward some book you have a great curiosity about. You
are then in the readiest and best of all possible conditions to improve

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 365

by that book. It is analogous to what doctors tell us about the
physical health and appetites of the patient. You must learn, how-
ever, to distinguish between false appetite and true. There is such
a thing as a false appetite, which will lead a man into vagaries with
regard to diet; will tempt him to eat spicy things, which he should
not eat at all, nor would, but that the things are toothsome, and
that he is under a momentary baseness of mind. A man ought to
examine and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for,
what suits his constitution and condition; and that, doctors tell
him, is in general the very thing he ought to have. And so with
books.

As applicable to all of you, I will say that it is highly expedient
to go into History; to inquire into what has passed before you on
this Earth, and in the Family of Man.

The history of the Romans and Greeks will first of all concern
you; and you will find that the classical knowledge you have got
will be extremely applicable to elucidate that. There you have two
of the most remarkable races of men in the world set before you,
calculated to open innumerable reflections and considerations; a
mighty advantage, if you can achieve it; — to say nothing of what
their two languages will yield you, which your Professors can better
explain; model languages, which are universally admitted to be
the most perfect forms of speech we have yet found to exist among
men. And you will find, if you read well, a pair of extremely re-
markable nations, shining in the records left by themselves, as a kind
of beacon, or solitary mass of illumination, to light-up some noble
forms of human life for us, in the otherwise utter darkness of the
past ages; and it will be well worth your while if you can get into
the understanding of what these people were, and what they did.
You will find a great deal of hearsay, of empty rumour and tradi-
tion, which does not touch on the matter; but perhaps some of you
will get to see the old Roman and the old Greek face to face; you
will know in some measure how they contrived to exist, and to
perform their feats in the world.

I believe, also, you will find one important thing not much noted,
That there was a very great deal of deep reUgion in both nations.
This is pointed out by the wiser kind of historians, and particularly

366 THOMAS CARLYLE

by Ferguson, who is very well worth reading on Roman History,—
and who, I believe, was an alumnus of our own University. His
book is a very creditable work. He points out the profoundly
religious nature of the Roman people, notwithstanding their rug-
gedly positive, defiant and fierce ways. They believed that Jupiter
Optimus Maximus was lord of the universe, and that he had ap-
pointed the Romans to become the chief of nations, provided they
followed his commands, — to brave all danger, all difficulty, and
stand up with an invincible front, and be ready to do and die;
and also to have the same sacred regard to truth of promise, to
thorough veracity, thorough integrity, and all the virtues that
accompany that noblest quality of man, valour, — to which latter the
Romans gave the name of 'virtue* proper {virtus, manhood), as the
crown and summary of all that is ennobling for a man. In the
literary ages of Rome this religious feeling had very much decayed
away; but it still retained its place among the lower classes of the
Roman people. Of the deeply religious nature of the Greeks, along
with their beautiful and sunny effulgences of art, you have striking
proof, if you look for it. In the tragedies of Sophocles there is a
most deep-toned recognition of the eternal justice of Heaven, and
the unfailing punishment of crime against the laws of God. I
believe you will find in all histories of nations, that this has been
at the origin and foundation of them all; and that no nation which
did not contemplate this wonderful universe with an awe-stricken
and reverential belief that there was a great unknown, omnipotent,
and all-wise and all-just Being, superintending all men in it, and
all interest in it, — no nation ever came to very much, nor did any
man either, who forgot that. If a man did forget that, he forgot
the most important part of his mission in this world.

Our own history of England, which you will naturally take a
great deal of pains to make yourselves acquainted with, you will
find beyond all others worthy of your study. For indeed I believe
that the British nation, — including in that the Scottish nation, —
produced a finer set of men than any you will find it possible to get
anywhere else in the world [Applause]. I don't know, in any
history of Greece or Rome, where you will get so fine a man as
Oliver Cromwell, for example [Applause], And we too have had

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 367

men worthy of memory, in our little corner of the Island here, as
well as others; and our history has had its heroic features all along;
and did become great at last in being connected with world-history:
— for if you examine well, you will find that John Knox was the
author, as it were, of Oliver Cromwell; that the Puritan revolution
never would have taken place in England at all, had it not been for
that Scotchman [Applause], That is an authentic fact, and is not
prompted by national vanity on my part, but will stand examining
[Laughter and applause].

In fact, if you look at the struggle that was then going on in
England, as I have had to do in my time, you will see that people
were overawed by the immense impediments lying in the way. A
small minority of God-fearing men in that country were flying
away, with any ship they could get, to New England, rather than
take the lion by the beard. They durst not confront the powers
with their most just complaints, and demands to be delivered from
idolatry. They wanted to make the nation altogether conformable
to the Hebrew Bible, which they, and all men, understood to be the
exact transcript of the Will of God; — and could there be, for man,
a more legitimate aim ? Nevertheless, it would have been impossible
in their circumstances, and not to be attempted at all, had not Knox
succeeded in it here, some fifty years before, by the firmness and
nobleness of his mind. For he also is of the select of the earth to
me, — John Knox [Applause]. What he has suffered from the un-
grateful generations that have followed him should really make us
humble ourselves to the dust, to think that the most excellent man
our country has produced, to whom we owe everything that dis-
tinguishes us among the nations, should have been so sneered at,
misknown, and abused [Applause]. Knox was heard by Scotland;
the people heard him, believed him to the marrow of their bones:
they took up his doctrine, and they defied principalities and powers
to move them from it. "We must have it," they said; "we will and
must!" It was in this state of things that the Puritan struggle arose
in England; and you know well how the Scottish earls and nobility,
with their tenantry, marched away to Dunse Hill in 1639, and sat
down there: just at the crisis of that struggle, when it was either to
be suppressed or brought into greater vitality, they encamped on

368 THOMAS CARLYLE

Dunse Hill, — ^thirty-thousand armed men, drawn out for that oc-
casion, each regiment round its landlord, its earl, or whatever he
might be called, and zealous all of them 'For Christ's Crown and
Covenant.' That was the signal for all England's rising up into
unappeasable determination to have the Gospel there also; and you
know it went on, and came to be a contest whether the Parliament
or the King should rule; whether it should be old formalities and
use-and-wont, or something that had been of new conceived in the
souls of men, namely, a divine determination to walk according
to the laws of God here, as the sum of all prosperity; which of these
should have the mastery: and after a long, long agony of struggle,
it was decided — the way we know.

I should say also of that Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell's, not-
withstanding the censures it has encountered, and the denial of
everybody that it could continue in the world, and so on, it appears
to me to have been, on the whole, the most salutary thing in the
modern history of England. If Oliver Cromwell had continued it
out, I don't know what it would have come to. It would have got
corrupted probably in other hands, and could not have gone on;
but it was pure and true, to the last fibre, in his mind; there was
perfect truth in it while he ruled over it.

Macchiavelli has remarked, in speaking of the Romans, that
Democracy cannot long exist anywhere in the world; that as a mode
of government, of national management or administration, it in-
volves an impossibility, and after a little while must end in wreck.
And he goes on proving that, in his own way. I do not ask you all
to follow him in that conviction [Hear], — but it is to him a clear
truth; he considers it a solecism and impossibility that the universal
mass of men should ever govern themselves. He has to admit of
the Romans, that they continued a long time; but believes it was
purely in virtue of this item in their constitution, namely, of their
all having the conviction in their minds that it was solemnly neces-
sary, at times, to appoint a Dictator; a man who had the power of
life and death over everything, who degraded men out of their
places, ordered them to execution, and did whatever seemed to him
good in the name of God above him. He was commanded to take

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 369

care that the republic suffer no detriment. And Macchiavelli cal-
culates that this was the thing which purified the social system
from time to time, and enabled it to continue as it did. Probable
enough, if you consider it. And an extremely proper function
surely, this of a Dictator, if the republic was composed of little other
than bad and tumultuous men, triumphing in general over the
better, and all going the bad road, in fact. Well, Oliver Cromwell's
Protectorate, or Dictatorate if you will let me name it so, lasted for
about ten years, and you will find that nothing which was contrary
to the laws of Heaven was allowed to live by Oliver [Applause^.
For example, it was found by his Parliament of Notables, what
they call the 'Barebones Parliament,' — the most zealous of all Parlia-
ments probably [Laughter], — that the Court of Chancery in Eng-
land was in a state which was really capable of no apology; no man
could get up and say that that was a right court. There were, I
think, fifteen-thousand, or fifteen-hundred [Laughter], — I really
don't remember which, but we will call it by the latter number, to
be safe [Renewed laughter] ; — there were fifteen-hundred cases lying
in it undecided; and one of them, I remember, for a large amount
of money, was eighty-three years old, and it was going on still; wigs
were wagging over it, and lawyers were taking their fees, and
there was no end of it. Upon view of all which, the Barebones people,
after deliberation about it, thought it was expedient, and com-
manded by the Author of Man and Fountain of Justice, and in the
name of what was true and right, to abolish said court. Really, I
don't know who could have dissented from that opinion. At the
same time, it was thought by those who were wiser in their gen-
eration, and had more experience of the world, that this was a very
dangerous thing, and wouldn't suit at all. The lawyers began to
make an immense noise about it [Laughter]. All the public, the
great mass of solid and well-disposed people who had got no deep
insight into such matters, were very adverse to it: and the Speaker
of the Parliament, old Sir Francis Rous, — who translated the Psalms
for us, those that we sing here every Sunday in the Church yet; a
very good man, and a wise and learned, Provost of Eton College
afterwards, — he got a great number of the Parliament to go to
Oliver the Dictator, and lay down their functions altogether, and

370 THOMAS CARLYLE

declare officially, with their signature, on Monday morning, that
the Parliament was dissolved. The act of abolition had been passed
on Saturday night; and on Monday morning Rous came and said,
"We cannot carry-on the affair any longer, and we remit it into
the hands of your Highness." Oliver in that way became Protector,
virtually in some sort a Dictator, for the first time.

And I give you this as an instance that Oliver did faithfully set
to doing a Dictator's function, and of his prudence in it as well.
Oliver felt that the Parliament, now dismissed, had been perfectly
right with regard to Chancery, and that there was no doubt of the
propriety of abolishing Chancery, or else reforming it in some kind
of way. He considered the matter, and this is what he did. He
assembled fifty or sixty of the wisest lawyers to be found in Eng-
land. Happily, there were men great in the law; men who valued
the laws of England as much as anybody ever did; and who knew
withal that there was something still more sacred than any of
these [A laugh]. Oliver said to them, "Go and examine this thing,
and in the name of God inform me what is necessary to be done
with it. You will see how we may clean-out the foul things in that
Chancery Court, which render it poison to everybody." Well, they
sat down accordingly, and in the course of six weeks, — (there was
no public speaking then, no reporting of speeches, and no babble
of any kind, there was just the business in hand) — they got some
sixty propositions fixed in their minds as the summary of the things
that required to be done. And upon these sixty propositions.
Chancery was reconstituted and remodelled; and so it got a new
lease of life, and has lasted to our time. It had become a nuisance,
and could not have continued much longer. That is an instance
of the manner of things that were done when a Dictatorship pre-
vailed in the country, and that was how the Dictator did them. I
reckon, all England, Parliamentary England, got a new lease of
life from that Dictatorship of Oliver's; and, on the whole, that the
good fruits of it will never die while England exists as a nation.

In general, I hardly think that out of common history-books you
will ever get into the real history of this country, or ascertain any-
thing which can specially illuminate it for you, and which it would

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 37I

most of all behoove you to know. You may read very ingenious
and very clever books, by men whom it would be the height of
insolence in me to do other than express my respect for. But their
position is essentially sceptical. God and the Godlike, as our fathers
would have said, has fallen asleep for them; and plays no part in
their histories. A most sad and fatal condition of matters; who
shall say how fatal to us all! A man unhappily in that condition
will make but a temporary explanation of anything: — in short, you
will not be able, I believe, by aid of these men, to understand how
this Island came to be what it is. You will not find it recorded in
books. You will find recorded in books a jumble of tumults, dis-
astrous ineptitudes, and all that kind of thing. But to get what you
want, you will have to look into side sources, and inquire in all
directions.

I remember getting Collins's Peerage to read, — a very poor per-
formance as a work of genius, but an excellent book for diligence
and fidelity. I was writing on Oliver Cromwell at the time
[Applause']. I could get no biographical dictionary available; and
I thought the Peerage Book, since most of my men were peers or
sons of peers, would help me, at least would tell me whether people
were old or young, where they lived, and the like particulars, better
than absolute nescience and darkness. And accordingly I found
amply all I had expected in poor Collins, and got a great deal of help
out of him. He was a diligent dull London bookseller, of about a
hundred years ago, who compiled out of all kinds of parchments,
charter-chests, archives, books that were authentic, and gathered far
and wide, wherever he could get it, the information wanted. He
was a very meritorious man.

I not only found the solution of everything I had expected there,
but I began gradually to perceive this immense fact, which I really
advise every one of you who read history to look out for, if you
have not already found it. It was that the Kings of England, all
the way from the Norman Conquest down to the times of Charles
I., had actually, in a good degree, so far as they knew, been in the
habit of appointing as Peers those who deserved to be appointed. In
general, I perceived, those Peers of theirs were all royal men of a
sort, with minds full of justice, valour and humanity, and all kinds

372 THOMAS CARLYLE

of qualities that men ought to have who rule over others. And then
their genealogy, the kind of sons and descendants they had, this
also was remarkable: — for there is a great deal more in genealogy
than is generally believed at present. I never heard tell of any clever
man that came of entirely stupid people [Laughter]. If you look
around, among the families of your acquaintance, you will see such
cases in all directions; — I know that my own experience is steadily
that way; I can trace the father, and the son, and the grandson, and
the family stamp is quite distinctly legible upon each of them. So
that it goes for a great deal, the hereditary principle, — in Govern-
ment as in other things; and it must be again recognised as soon as
there is any fixity in things. You will remark, too, in your Collins,
that, if at any time the genealogy of a peerage goes awry, if the man
that actually holds the peerage is a fool, — in those earnest practical
times, the man soon gets into mischief, gets into treason probably,
— soon gets himself and his peerage extinguished altogether, in
short. [Laughter] .

From those old documents of Collins, you learn and ascertain that
a peer conducts himself in a pious, high-minded, grave, dignified
and manly kind of way, in his course through life, and when he
takes leave of life: — his last will is often a remarkable piece, which
one lingers over. And then you perceive that there was kindness in
him as well as rigour, pity for the poor; that he has fine hospitalities,
generosities, — in fine, that he is throughout much of a noble, good
and valiant man. And that in general the King, with a beautiful
approximation to accuracy, had nominated this kind of man; saying,
"Come you to me, sir. Come out of the common level of the people,
where you are liable to be trampled upon, jostled about, and can
do in a manner nothing with your fine gift; come here and take a
district of country, and make it into your own image more or less;
be a king under me, and understand that that is your function."
I say this is the most divine thing that a human being can do to
other human beings, and no kind of thing whatever has so much
of the character of God Almighty's Divine Government as that
thing, which, we see, went en all over England for about six hun-
dred years. That is the grand soul of England's history [Cheers].
It is historically true that, down to the time of James, or even

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 373

Charles I., it was not understood that any man was made a Peer
without having merit in him to constitute him a proper subject
for a peerage. In Charles I.'s time it grew to be known or said
that, if a man was born a gentleman, and cared to lay out 10,000 /.
judiciously up and down among courtiers, he could be made a
Peer. Under Charles II. it went on still faster, and has been going-on
with ever-increasing velocity, until we see the perfectly breakneck
pace at which they are going now [A laugh], so that now a peerage
is a paltry kind of thing to what it was in those old times. I could
go into a great many more details about things of that sort, but I
must turn to another branch of the subject.

First, however, one remark more about your reading. I do not
know whether it has been sufficiently brought home to you that
there are two kinds of books. When a man is reading on any kind
of subject, in most departments of books, — in all books, if you take
it in a wide sense, — he will find that there is a division into good
books and bad books. Everywhere a good kind of book and a bad
kind of book I am not to assume that you are unacquainted, or ill
acquainted, with this plain fact; but I may remind you that it is
becoming a very important consideration in our day. And we
have to cast aside altogether the idea people have, that if they are
reading any book, that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he
is doing rather better than nothing at all. I must entirely call that
in question; I even venture to deny that [Laughter and cheers].
It would be much safer and better for many a reader, that he had
no concern with books at all. There is a number, a frightfully in-
creasing number, of books that are decidedly, to the readers of them,
not useful [Hear]. But an ingenuous reader will learn, also, that
a certain number of books were written by a supremely noble kind
of people, — not a very great number of books, but still a number
fit to occupy all your reading industry, do adhere more or less to
that side of things. In short, as I have written it down somewhere
else, I conceive that books are like men's souls; divided into sheep
and goats [Laughter and cheers]. Some few are going up, and
carrying us up, heavenward; calculated, I mean, to be of priceless
advantage in teaching, — in forwarding the teaching of all gen-
erations. Others, a frightful multitude, are going down, down;

374 THOMAS CARLYLE

doing ever the more and the wider and the wilder mischief. Keep
a strict eye on that latter class of books, my young friends! —

And for the rest, in regard to all your studies and readings here,
and to whatever you may learn, you are to remember that the
object is not particular knowledges, — not that of getting higher,
and higher in technical perfections, and all that sort of thing.
There is a higher aim lying at the rear of all that, especially
among those who are intended for literary or speaking pursuits,
or the sacred profession. You are ever to bear in mind that
there lies behind that the acquisition of what may be called wis-
dom; — namely, sound appreciation and just decision as to all the
objects that come round you, and the habit of behaving with
justice, candour, clear insight, and loyal adherence to fact. Great is
wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated;
it is the highest achievement of man: 'Blessed is he that getteth
understanding.' And that, I believe, on occasion, may be missed
very easily; never more easily than now, I sometimes think. If that
is a failure, all is failure! — However, I will not touch further upon
that matter.

But I should have said, in regard to book-reading, if it be so very
important, how very useful would an excellent library be in every
University! I hope that will not be neglected by the gendemen who
have charge of you; and, indeed, I am happy to hear that your
library is very much improved since the time I knew it, and I hope
it will go on improving more and more. Nay, I have sometimes
thought, why should not there be a library in every county town,
for benefit of those that could read well and might if permitted?
True, you require money to accomplish that; — and withal, what
perhaps is still less attainable at present, you require judgment in
the selectors of books; real insight into what is for the advantage
of human souls, the exclusion of all kinds of claptrap books which
merely excite the astonishment of foolish people [Laughter^, and
the choice of wise books, as much as possible of good books. Let
us hope the future will be kind to us in this respect.

In this University, as I learn from many sides, there is considerable
stir about endowments; an assiduous and praiseworthy industry for

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 375

getting new funds collected to encourage the ingenuous youth of
Universities, especially of this our chief University [Hear, hear^.
Well, I entirely participate in everybody's approval of the movement.
It is very desirable. It should be responded to, and one surely expects
it will. At least, if it is not, it will be shameful to the country of
Scotland, which never was so rich in money as at the present
moment, and never stood so much in need of getting noble Uni-
versities, and institutions to counteract many influences that are
springing up alongside of money. It should not be slack in coming
forward in the way of endowments [^A laugh']; at any rate, to the
extent of rivalling our rude old barbarous ancestors, as we have been
pleased to call them. Such munificence as theirs is beyond all praise;
and to them, I am sorry to say, we are not yet by any manner of
means equal, or approaching equality [^Laughter]. There is an
abundance and over-abundance of money. Sometimes I cannot help
thinking that probably never has there been, at any other time, in
Scotland, the hundredth part of the money that now is, or even
the thousandth part. For wherever I go, there is that same gold-
nuggeting [A laugh], — that 'unexampled prosperity,' and men
counting their balances by the million sterling. Money was never
so abundant, and nothing that is good to be done with it [Hear, hear,
and a laugh]. No man knows, — or very few men know, — what
benefit to get out of his money. In fact, it too often is secretly a
curse to him. Much better for him never to have had any. But I
do not expect that generally to be believed [Laughter]. Never-
theless, I should think it would be a beneficent relief to many a rich
man who has an honest purpose struggUng in him, to bequeath
some house of refuge, so to speak, for the gifted poor man who may
hereafter be born into the world, to enable him to get on his way a
little. To do, in fact, as those old Norman kings whom I have been
describing; to raise some noble poor man out of the dirt and mud,
where he is getting trampled on unworthily by the unworthy, into
some kind of position where he might acquire the power to do a litde
good in his generation! I hope that as much as possible will be
achieved in this direction; and that efforts will not be relaxed till
the thing is in a satisfactory state. In regard to the classical depart-
ment, above all, it surely is to be desired by us that it were properly

376 THOMAS CARLYLE

supported, — that we could allow the fit people to have their scholar-
ships and subventions, and devote more leisure to the cultivation of
particular departments. We might have more of this from Scotch
Universities than we have; and I hope we shall.

I am bound, however, to say that it does not appear as if, of late
times, endowment were the real soul of the matter. The English,
for example, are the richest people in the world for endowments in
their Universities; and it is an evident fact that, since the time of
Bentley, you cannot name anybody that has gained a European name
in scholarship, or constituted a point of revolution in the pursuits
of men in that way. The man who does so is a man worthy of being
remembered; and he is poor, and not an Englishman. One man that
actually did constitute a revolution was the son of a poor weaver in
Saxony; who edited his Tibullus, in Dresden, in a poor comrade's
garret, with the floor for his bed, and two folios for pillow; and
who, while editing his Tibullus, had to gather peasecods on the
streets and boil them for his dinner. That was his endowment
[Laughter]. But he was recognised soon to have done a great thing.
His name was Heyne [Cheers], I can remember, it was quite
a revolution in my mind when I got hold of that man's edition of
Virgil. I found that, for the first time, I understood Virgil; that
Heyne had introduced me, for the first time, into an insight of
Roman life and ways of thought; had pointed out the circumstances
in which these works were written, and given me their interpreta-
tion. And the process has gone on in all manner of developments,
and has spread out into other countries.

On the whole, there is one reason why endowments are not given
now as they were in old days, when men founded abbeys, colleges,
and all kinds of things of that description, with such success as we
know. All that has now changed; a vast decay of zeal in that direc-
tion. And truly the reason may in part be, that people have become
doubtful whether colleges are now the real sources of what I called
wisdom; whether they are anything more, anything much more,
than a cultivating of man in the specific arts. In fact, there has
been in the world a suspicion of that kind for a long time [A laugh].
There goes a proverb of old date, 'An ounce of mother-wit is worth
a pound of clergy' [Laughter] . There is a suspicion that a man is

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 377

perhaps not nearly so wise as he looks, or because he has poured
out speech so copiously [Laughter']. When 'the seven free arts,'
which the old Universities were based on, came to be modified a
little, in order to be convenient for the wants of modern society, —
though perhaps some of them are obsolete enough even yet for
some of us, — there arose a feeling that mere vocality, mere culture
of speech, if that is what comes out of a man, is not the synonym
of wisdom by any means! That a man may be a 'great speaker,' as
eloquent as you like, and but little real substance in him, — especially
if that is what was required and aimed at by the man himself, and
by the community that set him upon becoming a learned man.
Maid-servants, I hear people complaining, are getting instructed in
the 'ologies,' and are apparently becoming more and more ignorant
of brewing, boiling, and baking [^Laughter] ; and above all, are
not taught what is necessary to be known, from the highest of us
to the lowest, — faithful obedience, modesty, humility, and correct
moral conduct.

Oh, it is a dismal chapter all that, if one went into it, — what has
been done by rushing after fine speech! I have written down some
very fierce things about that, perhaps considerably more emphatic
than I could now wish them to be; but they were and are deeply my
conviction [Hear, hear]. There is very great necessity indeed of
getting a little more silent than we are. It seems to me as if the
finest nations of the world, — the EngUsh and the American, in
chief, — were going all off into wind and tongue [Applause and
laughter]. But it will appear sufficiently tragical by and by, long
after I am away out of it. There is a time to speak, and a time to
be silent. Silence withal is the eternal duty of a man. He won't get
to any real understanding of what is complex, and what is more
than aught else pertinent to his interests, without keeping silence
too. 'Watch the tongue,' is a very old precept, and a most true one.

I don't want to discourage any of you from your Demosthenes,
and your studies of the niceties of language, and all that. Believe
me, I value that as much as any one of you. I consider it a very
graceful thing, and a most proper, for every human creature to
know what the implement which he uses in communicating his

378 THOMAS CARLYLE

thoughts is, and how to make the very utmost of it. I want you to
study Demosthenes, and to know all his excellencies. At the same
time, I must say that speech, in the case even of Demosthenes, does
not seem, on the whole, to have turned to almost any good account.
He advised next to nothing that proved practicable; much of the
reverse. Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker, if it is not the
truth that he is speaking? Phocion, who mostly did not speak at
all, was a great deal nearer hitting the mark than Demosthenes
[Laug/iter] . He used to tell the Athenians, "You can't fight Philip.
Better if you don't provoke him, as Demosthenes is always urging
you to do. You have not the slightest chance with Philip. He is a
man who holds his tongue; he has great disciplined armies; a full
treasury; can bribe anybody you like in your cities here; he is
going on steadily with an unvarying aim towards his object; while
you, with your idle clamourings, with your Cleon the Tanner
spouting to you what you take for wisdom — ! Phihp will infallibly
beat any set of men such as you, going on raging from shore to
shore with all that rampant nonsense." Demosthenes said to him
once, "Phocion, you will drive the Athenians mad some day, and
they will kill you." "Yes," Phocion answered, "me, when they go
mad; and as soon as they get sane again, you!" [Laughter and
applause.^

It is also told of him how he went once to Messene, on some
deputation which the Athenians wanted him to head, on some
kind of matter of an intricate and contentious nature: Phocion went
accordingly; and had, as usual, a clear story to have told for himself
and his case. He was a man of few words, but all of them true and
to the point. And so he had gone on telling his story for a while,
when there arose some interruption. One man, interrupting with
something, he tried to answer; then another, the like; till finally,
too many went in, and all began arguing and bawling in endless
debate. Whereupon Phocion struck-down his staif; drew back
altogether, and would speak no other word to any man. It appears
to me there is a kind of eloquence in that rap of Phocion's staff
which is equal to anything Demosthenes ever said: "Take your
own way, then; I go out of it altogether" [Applause^.

Such considerations, and manifold more connected with them, —

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 379

innumerable considerations, resulting from observation of the world
at this epoch, — have led various people to doubt of the salutary effect
of vocal education altogether. I do not mean to say it should be
entirely excluded; but I look to something that will take hold of
the matter much more closely, and not allow it to slip out of our
fingers, and remain worse than it was. For, if a 'good speaker,'
never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the
truth of that, but the untruth and the mistake of that, — ^is there a
more horrid kind of object in creation.'' [Loud Cheers.] Of such
speech I hear all manner of people say "How excellent!" Well,
really it is not the speech, but the thing spoken, that I am anxious
about! I really care very little how the man said it, provided I
understand him, and it be true. Excellent speaker.? But what if he
is telling me things that are contrary to the fact; what if he has
formed a wrong judgment about the fact, — ^if he has in his mind
(hke Phocion's friend, Cleon the Tanner) no power to form a
right judgment in regard to the matter.? An excellent speaker of
that kind is, as it were, saying, "Ho, every one that wants to be
persuaded of the thing that is not true; here is the man for you!"
[Great laughter and applause.] I recommend you to be very
chary of that kind of excellent speech [Renewed laughter^.

Well, all that sad stuff being the too well-known product of our
method of vocal education,— the teacher merely operating on the
tongue of the pupil, and teaching him to wag it in a particular
way [Laughter], — ^it has made various thinking men entertain a
distrust of this not very salutary way of procedure; and they have
longed for some less theoretic, and more practical and concrete
way of working out the problem of education;— in effect, for an
education not vocal at all, but mute except where speaking was
strictly needful. There would be room for a great deal of de-
scription about this, if I went into it; but I must content myself
with saying that the most remarkable piece of writing on it is in a
book of Goethe's, — the whole of which you may be recommended
to take up, and try if you can study it with understanding. It is
one of his last books; written when he was an old man above seventy
years of age: I think, one of the most beautiful he ever wrote; full

380 THOMAS CARLYLE

of meek wisdom, of intellect and piety; which is found to be
strangely illuminative, and very touching, by those who have eyes
to discern and hearts to feel it. This about education is one of the
pieces in Wilhelm Meister's Travels; or rather, in a fitful way, it
forms the whole gist of the book. I first read it many years ago; and,
of course, I had to read into the very heart of it while I was trans-
lating it [Applause^ ; and it has ever since dwelt in my mind as
perhaps the most remarkable bit of writing which I have known
to be executed in these late centuries. I have often said that there
are some ten pages of that, which, if ambition had been my only
rule, I would rather have written, been able to write, than have
written all the books that have appeared since I came into the
world [Cheers~\. Deep, deep is the meaning of what is said there.
Those pages turn on the Christian religion, and the religious
phenomena of the modern and the ancient world: altogether
sketched out in the most aerial, graceful, delicately wise kind of
way, so as to keep himself out of the common controversies of the
street and of the forum, yet to indicate what was the result of
things he had been long meditating upon.

Among others, he introduces in an airy, sketchy kind of way,
with here and there a touch, — the sum-total of which grows into
a beautiful picture, — a scheme of entirely mute education, at least
with no more speech than is absolutely necessary for what the
pupils have to do. Three of the wisest men discoverable in the
world have been got together, to consider, to manage and super-
vise, the function which transcends all others in importance, — that
of building up the young generation so as to keep it free from that
perilous stuff that has been weighing us down, and clogging every
step; — which function, indeed, is the only thing we can hope to go
on with, if we would leave the world a little better, and not the
worse, of our having been in it, for those who are to follow. The
Chief, who is the Eldest of the three, says to Wilhelm: "Healthy
well-formed children bring into the world with them many precious
gifts; and very frequently these are best of all developed by Nature
herself, with but slight assistance, where assistance is seen to be
wise and profitable, and with forbearance very often on the part
of the overseer of the process. But there is one thing which no child

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 38 1

brings into the world with him, and without which all other things
are of no use." Wilhelm, who is there beside him, asks, "And what
is that?" "All want it," says the Eldest; "perhaps you yourself."
Wilhelm says, "Well, but tell me what it is?" "It is," answers the
other, "Reverence (Ehrfurcht); Reverence!" Honour done to those
who are greater and better than ourselves; honour distinct from
fear. Ehrfurcht; the soul of all religion that has ever been among
men, or ever will be.

And then he goes into details about the religions of the modern
and the ancient world. He practically distinguishes the kinds of
religion that are, or have been, in the world; and says that for men
there are three reverences. The boys are all trained to go through
certain gesticulations; to lay their hands on their breasts and look
up to heaven, in sign of the first reverence; other forms for the
other two : so they give their three reverences. The first and simplest
is that of reverence for what is above us. It is the soul of all the
Pagan religion; there is nothing better in the antique man than that.
Then there is reverence for what is around us, — reverence for our
equals, to which he attributes an immense power in the culture of
man. The third is reverence for what is beneath us; to learn to
recognise in pain, in sorrow and contradiction, even in those things,
odious to flesh and blood, what divine meanings are in them; to
learn that there lies in these also, and more than in any of the
preceding, a priceless blessing. And he defines that as being the
soul of the Christian religion, — the highest of all religions; 'a
height,' as Goethe says (and that is very true, even to the letter,
as I consider), 'a height to which mankind was fated and enabled
to attain; and from which, having once attained it, they can never
retrograde.' Man cannot quite lose that (Goethe thinks), or per-
manently descend below it again; but always, even in the most
degraded, sunken and unbelieving times, he calculates there will
be found some few souls who will recognise what this highest of
the religions meant; and that, the world having once received it,
there is no fear of its ever wholly disappearing.

The eldest then goes on to explain by what methods they seek
to educate and train their boys; in the trades, in the arts, in the
sciences, in whatever pursuit the boy is found best fitted for. Beyond

382 THOMAS CARLYLE

all, they are anxious to discover the boy's aptitudes; and they try
him and watch him continually, in many wise ways, till by degrees
they can discover this. Wilhelm had left his own boy there, per-
haps expecting they would make him a Master of Arts, or something
of the kind; and on coming back for him, he sees a thunder-cloud
of dust rushing over the plain, of which he can make nothing. It
turns out to be a tempest of wild horses, managed by young lads
who had a turn for horsemanship, for hunting, and being grooms.
His own son is among them; and he finds that the breaking of colts
has been the thing he was most suited for \lMughter\.

The highest outcome, and most precious of all the fruits that are
to spring from this ideal mode of educating, is what Goethe calls
Art: — of which I could at present give no definition that would
make it clear to you, unless it were clearer already than is likely
\^A laugh^. Goethe calls it music, painting, poetry: but it is in
quite a higher sense than the common one; and a sense in which, I
am afraid, most of our painters, poets and music-men would not
pass muster [A laugh']. He considers this as the highest pitch to
which human culture can go; infinitely valuable and ennobling;
and he watches with great industry how it is to be brought about
in the men who have a turn for it. Very wise and beautiful his
notion of the matter is. It gives one an idea that something far
better and higher, something as high as ever, and indubitably true
too, is still possible for man in this world. — ^And that is all I can
say to you of Goethe's fine theorem of mute education.

I confess it seems to me there is in it a shadow of what will one
day be; will and must, unless the world is to come to a conclusion
that is altogether frightful: some kind of scheme of education
analogous to that; presided over by the wisest and most sacred
men that can be got in the world, and watching from a distance: a
training in practicality at every turn; no speech in it except speech
that is to be followed by action, for that ought to be the rule as
nearly as possible among men. Not very often or much, rarely
rather, should a man speak at all, unless it is for the sake of some-
thing that is to be done; this spoken, let him go and do his part in
it, and say no more about it.

I will only add, that it is possible, all this fine theorem of Goethe's,

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 383

or something similar! Consider what we have already; and what
'difficulties' we have overcome. I should say there is nothing in
the world you can conceive so difficult, prima facie, as that o£ getting
a set of men gathered together as soldiers. Rough, rude, ignorant,
disobedient people; you gather them together, promise them a
shiUing a day; rank them up, give them very severe and sharp drill;
and by bullying and drilling and compelling (the word drilling, if
you go to the original, means 'beating,' 'steadily tormenting' to the
due pitch), they do learn what it is necessary to learn; and there
is your man in red coat, a trained soldier; piece of an animated
machine incomparably the most potent in this world; a wonder of
wonders to look at. He will go where bidden; obeys one man,
will walk into the cannon's mouth for him; does punctually what-
ever is commanded by his general officer. And, I believe, all manner
of things of this kind could be accomplished, if there were the
same attention bestowed. Very many things could be regimented,
organised into this mute system; — and perhaps in some of the
mechanical, commercial and manufacturing departments some faint
incipiences may be attempted before very long. For the saving of
human labour, and the avoidance of human misery, the effects
would be incalculable, were it set about and begun even in part.

Alas, it is painful to think how very far away it all is, any real
fulfilment of such things! For I need not hide from you, young
Gentlemen, — and it is one of the last things I am going to tell you,
— that you have got into a very troublous epoch of the world; and
I don't think you will find your path in it to be smoother than
ours has been, though you have many advantages which we had
not. You have careers open to you, by public examinations and
so on, which is a thing much to be approved of, and which we
hope to see perfected more and more. All that was entirely un-
known in my time, and you have many things to recognise as ad-
vantages. But you will find the ways of the world, I think, more
anarchical than ever. Look where one will, revolution has come upon
us. We have got into the age of revolutions. All kinds of things are
coming to be subjected to fire, as it were: hotter and hotter blows the
element round everything. Curious to see how, in Oxford and other
places that used to seem as lying at anchor in the stream of time.

384 THOMAS CARLYLE

regardless of all changes, they are getting into the highest humour
of mutation, and all sorts of new ideas are afloat. It is evident that
whatever is not inconsumable, made of asbestos, will have to be
burnt, in this world. Nothing other will stand the heat it is getting
exposed to.

And in saying that, I am but saying in other words that we are
in an epoch of anarchy. Anarchy plus a constablel \Laughter.'\
There is nobody that picks one's pocket without some policeman
being ready to take him up [Renewed laughter']. But in every other
point, man is becoming more and more the son, not of Cosmos,
but of Chaos. He is a disobedient, discontented, reckless and alto-
gether waste kind of object (the commonplace man is, in these
epochs); and the wiser kind of man, — the select few, of whom I
hope you will be part, — has more and more to see to this, to look
vigilantly forward; and will require to move with double wisdom.
Will find, in short, that the crooked things he has got to pull
straight in his own life all round him, wherever he may go, are
manifold, and will task all his strength, however great it be.

But why should I complain of that either? For that is the thing
a man is born to, in all epochs. He is born to expend every particle
of strength that God Almighty has given him, in doing the work
he finds he is fit for; to stand up to it to the last breath of life, and do
his best. We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get, —
which we are perfectly sure of, if we have merited it, — is that we
have got the work done, or at least that we have tried to do the
work. For that is a great blessing in itself; and I should say, there
is not very much more reward than that going in this world. If
the man gets meat and clothes, what matters it whether he buy
those necessaries with seven thousand a year, or with seven million,
could that be, or with seventy pounds a year? He can get meat
and clothes for that; and he will find intrinsically, if he is a wise
man, wonderfully little real difference [Laughter],

On the whole, avoid what is called ambition; that is not a fine
principle to go upon, — and it has in it all degrees of vulgarity, if that
is a consideration. 'Seelcest thou great things, seek them not:' I
warmly second that advice of the wisest of men. Don't be ambitious;
don't too much need success; be loyal and modest. Cut down the

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 385

proud towering thoughts that get into you, or see that they be pure
as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all
California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on
the Planet just now [Loud and prolonged cheers\.

Finally, Gentlemen, I have one advice to give you, which is
practically of very great importance, though a very humble one. In
the midst of your zeal and ardour, — for such, I foresee, will rise
high enough, in spite of all the counsels to moderate it that I can
give you, — remember the care of health. I have no doubt you have
among you young souls ardently bent to consider life cheap, for
the purpose of getting forward in what they are aiming at of high;
but you are to consider throughout, much more than is done at
present, and what it would have been a very great thing for me if
I had been able to consider, that health is a thing to be attended to
continually; that you are to regard that as the very highest of all
temporal things for you [Applause']. There is no kind of achieve-
ment you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health.
What to it are nuggets and millions? The French financier said,
"Why, is there no sleep to be sold!" Sleep was not in the market at
any quotation [Laughter and applause].

It is a curious thing, which I remarked long ago, and have often
turned in my head, that the old word for 'holy' in the Teutonic
languages, heilig, also means 'healthy.' Thus Heilbronn means
indifferently 'holy-well' or 'health-well.' We have in the Scotch,
too, 'hale,' and its derivatives; and, I suppose, our English word
'whole' (with a 'w'), all of one piece, without any hole in it, is the
same word. I find that you could not get any better definition of
what 'holy' really is than 'healthy.' Completely healthy; mens sana
in corpore sano [Applause]. A man all lucid, and in equilibrium.
His intellect a clear mirror geometrically plane, brilliantly sensitive
to all objects and impressions made on it, and imagining all things
in their correct proportions; not twisted up into convex or concave,
and distorting everything, so that he cannot see the truth of the
matter without endless groping and manipulation: healthy, clear
and free, and discerning truly all round him. We never can attain
that at all. In fact, the operations we have got into are destructive
of it. You cannot, if you are going to do any decisive intellectual

386 THOMAS CARLYLE

operation that will last a long while; if, for instance, you are going
to write a book, — you cannot manage it (at least, I never could)
without getting decidedly made ill by it: and really one nevertheless
must; if it is your business, you are obliged to follow out what you
are at, and to do it, if even at the expense of health. Only remember,
at all times, to get back as fast as possible out of it into health; and
regard that as the real equilibrium and centre of things. You should
always look at the heilig, which means 'holy' as well as 'healthy.'

And that old etymology, — what a lesson it is against certain
gloomy, austere, ascetic people, who have gone about as if this
world were all a dismal prison-house! It has indeed got all the
ugly things in it which I have been alluding to; but there is an
eternal sky over it; and the blessed sunshine, the green of prophetic
spring, and rich harvests coming, — all this is in it too. Piety does
not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and
refuse to enjoy wisely what his Maker has given. Neither do you
find it to have been so with the best sort, — with old Knox, in par-
ticular. No; if you look into Knox, you will find a beautiful Scotch
humour in him, as vvell as the grimmest and sternest truth when
necessary, and a great deal of laughter. We find really some of the
sunniest glimpses of things come out of Knox that I have seen in
any man; for instance, in his History of the Reformation, — which
is a book I hope every one of you will read \_Applause'\, a glorious
old book.

On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work, whatever
it may be, and not be afraid of it; not in sorrows or contradictions
to yield, but to push on towards the goal. And don't suppose that
people are hostile to you or have you at ill-will, in the world. In
general, you will rarely find anybody designedly doing you ill. You
may feel often as if the whole world were obstructing you, setting
itself against you: but you will find that to mean only, that the world
is travelling in a different way from you, and, rushing on in its
own path, heedlessly treads on you. That is mostly all: to you no
specific ill-will; — only each has an extremely good-will to himself,
which he has a right to have, and is rushing on towards his object.
Keep out of literature, I should say also, as a general rule {Laughter'\,
— though that is by the bye. If you find many people who are hard

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 387

and indifferent to you, in a world which you consider to be inhos-
pitable and cruel, as often indeed happens to a tender-hearted,
striving young creature, you will also find there are noble hearts
who will look kindly on you; and their help will be precious to
you beyond price. You will get good and evil as you go on, and have
the success that has been appointed you.

I will wind-up with a small bit o£ verse, which is from Goethe
also, and has often gone through my mind. To me it has some-
thing of a modern psalm in it, in some measure. It is deep as the
foundations, deep and high, and it is true and clear: — no clearer
man, or nobler and grander intellect has lived in the world, I
believe, since Shakespeare left it. This is what the poet sings; — a
kind of road-melody or marching-music of mankind:

'The future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow;
We press still thorow,
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us, — onward.

And solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal;
Goal of all mortal: —
Stars silent rest o'er us.
Graves under us silent!

While earnest thou gazest.
Comes boding of terror.
Comes phantasm and error;
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.

But heard are the Voices,
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages:
"Choose well; your choice is
Brief, and yet endless.

Here eyes do regard you,
In Eternity's stillness;
Here is all fulness.
Ye brave, to reward you;
Work, and despair not." *

388 THOMAS CARLYLE

Work, and despair not: Wir heissen euch ho^en, 'We bid you
be of hope!' — let that be my last word. Gentlemen, I thank you for
your great patience in hearing me; and, with many most kind
wishes, say Adieu for this time.

Finis of Rectorship. — 'Edinburgh University. Mr, Carlyle ex-Lord
Rector of the University of Edinburgh, has been asked to deliver a
valedictory address to the students, but has declined. The following is a
copy of the correspondence.

'2 S.-W. Circus Place, Edinburgh, 3d December 1868.

'Sir, — On the strength of being Vice-President of the Committee
for your election as Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh, I
have been induced to write to you, in order to know if you will
be able to deliver a Valedictory Address to the Students. Mr.
Gladstone gave us one, and we fondly hope you will find it con-
venient to do so as well. Your Inaugural Address is still treasured
up in our memories, and I am sure nothing could give us greater
pleasure than once more to listen to your words. I trust you will
pardon me for this intrusion; and hoping to receive a favourable
answer, I am, etc., A. Robertson, M. A.

'T. Carlyle, Esq.'

'Chelsea, 9th December 1868.

'Dear Sir, — I much regret that a Valedictory Speech from me,
in present circumstances, is a thing I must not think of. Be pleased
to assure the young Gentlemen who were so friendly towards me,
that I have already sent them, in silence, but with emotions deep
enough, perhaps too deep, my loving Farewell, and that ingratitude,
or want of regard, is by no means among the causes that keep me
absent. With a fine youthful enthusiasm, beautiful to look upon,
they bestowed on me that bit of honour, loyally all they had; and
it has now, for reasons one and another, become touchingly memo-
rable to me, — touchingly, and even grandly and tragically, — never
to be forgotten for the remainder of my life.

'Bid them, in my name, if they still love me, fight the good fight,
and quit themselves like men in the warfare, to which they are as
if conscript and consecrated, and which lies ahead. Tell them to

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 389

consult the eternal oracles (not yet inaudible, nor ever to become so,
when worthily inquired of) : and to disregard, nearly altogether, in
comparison, the temporary noises, menacings and deliriums. May
they love Wisdom as Wisdom, if she is to yield her treasures, must
be loved, — piously, valiantly, humbly, beyond life itself or the
prizes of life, with all one's heart, and all one's soul: — in that case
(I will say again), and not in any other case, it shall be well with
them. Adieu, my young Friends, a long adieu. — Yours with great
sincerity, T. Carlyle.

'A. Robertson, Esq.' *

'Edinburgh Newspapers of December 12-13, 1868.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

BY
THOMAS CARLYLE

SIR WALTER SCOTT'

[1838]

AMERICAN Cooper asserts, in one of his books, that there is
LJL 'an instinctive tendency in men to look at any man who
X .^ has become distinguished.' True, surely: as all observation
and survey of mankind, from China to Peru, from Nebuchadnezzar
to Old Hickory, will testify! Why do men crowd towards the
improved-drop at Newgate, eager to catch a sight? The man about
to be hanged is in a distinguished situation. Men crowd to such
extent, that Greenacre's is not the only life choked-out there. Again,
ask of these leathern vehicles, cabriolets, neat-flies, with blue men
and women in them, that scour all thoroughfares. Whither so fast?
To see dear Mrs. Rigmarole, the distinguished female; great Mr.
Rigmarole, the distinguished male! Or, consider that crowning
phenomenon, and summary of modern civilisation, a soiree of lions.
Glittering are the rooms, well-lighted, thronged; bright flows their
undulatory flood of blonde-gowns and dress-coats, a soft smile dwell-
ing on all faces; for behold there also flow the lions, hovering dis-
tinguished: oracles of the age, of one sort or another. Oracles really
pleasant to see; whom it is worth while to go and see: look at them,
but inquire not of them, depart rather and be thanlsful. For your
lion-soiree admits not of speech; there lies the specialty of it. A
meeting together of human creatures; and yet (so high has civil-
isation gone) the primary aim of human meeting, that soul might
in some articulate utterance unfold itself to soul, can be dispensed
with in it. Utterance there is not; nay, there is a certain grinning
play of tongue-fence, and make-believe of utterance, considerably
worse than none. For which reason it has been suggested, with an
eye to sincerity and silence in such lion-soirees. Might not each lion
be, for example, ticketed, as wine-decanters are? Let him carry,

'London and Westminster Review, No. 12. — Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter
Scott, Baronet. Vols, i.-vi. Edinburgh, 1837.

393

394 THOMAS CARLYLE

slung round him, in such ornamental manner as seemed good,
his silver label with name engraved; you lift his label, and read it,
with what farther ocular survey you find useful, and speech is not
needed at all. O Fenimore Cooper, it is most true there is 'an in-
stinctive tendency in men to look at any man that has become dis-
tinguished'; and, moreover, an instinctive desire in men to become
distinguished and be looked at!

For the rest, we will call it a most valuable tendency this; indis-
pensable to mankind. Without it, where were star-and-garter, and
significance of rank; where were all ambition, money-getting, re-
spectability of gig or no gig; and, in a word, the main impetus by
which society moves, the main force by which it hangs together?
A tendency, we say, of manifold results; of manifold origin, not
ridiculous only, but sublime; — which some incline to deduce from
the mere gregarious purblind nature of man, prompting him to run,
'as dim-eyed animals do, towards any glittering object, were it but
a scoured tankard, and mistake it for a solar luminary,' or even
'sheeplike, to run and crowd because many have already run'! It is
indeed curious to consider how men do make the gods that them-
selves worship. For the most famed man, round whom all the world
rapturously huzzahs and venerates, as if his like were not, is the
same man whom all the world was wont to jostle into the kennels;
not a changed man, but in every fibre of him the same man. Foolish
world, what went ye out to see? A tankard scoured bright: and do
there not lie, of the self-same pewter, whole barrowfuls of tankards,
though by worse fortune all still in the dim state?

And yet, at bottom, it is not merely our gregarious sheeplike
quality, but something better, and indeed best: which has been called
'the perpetual fact of hero-worship'; our inborn sincere love of great
men! Not the gilt farthing, for its own sake, do even fools covet;
but the gold guinea which they mistake it for. Veneration of great
men is perennial in the nature of man; this, in all times, especially in
these, is one of the blessedest facts predicable of him. In all times,
even in these seemingly so disobedient times, 'it remains a blessed
fact, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought
to obey, he cannot but obey. Show the dullest clodpole, show the
haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually

SIR WALTER SCOTT 395

here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and wor-
ship.' So it has been written; and may be cited and repeated till
known to all. Understand it well, this of 'hero-worship' was the
primary creed, and has intrinsically been the secondary and ternary,
and will be the ultimate and final creed of mankind; indestructible,
changing in shape, but in essence unchangeable; whereon polities,
religions, loyalties, and all highest human interests have been and
can be built, as on a rock that will endure while man endures. Such
is hero-worship; so much lies in that our inborn sincere love of
great men! — In favour of which unspeakable benefits of the reality,
what can we do but cheerfully pardon the multiplex ineptitudes of
the semblance; cheerfully wish even lion-soirees, with labels for
their lions or without that improvement, all manner of prosperity ?
Let hero-worship flourish, say we; and the more and more assiduous
chase after gilt farthings while guineas are not yet forthcoming.
Herein, at lowest, is proof that guineas exist, that they are believed
to exist, and valued. Find great men, if you can; if you cannot,
still quit not the search; in defect of great men, let there be noted
men, in such number, to such degree of intensity as the public
appedte can tolerate.

Whether Sir Walter Scott was a great man, is still a question
with some; but there can be no question with any one that he was
a most noted and even notable man. In this generation there was
no literary man with such a popularity in any country; there have
only been a few with such, taking-in all generations and all countries.
Nay, it is farther to be admitted that Sir Walter Scott's popularity
was of a select sort rather; not a popularity of the populace. His
admirers were at one time almost all the intelligent of civilised
countries; and to the last included, and do still include, a great
portion of that sort. Such fortune he had, and has continued to
maintain for a space of some twenty or thirty years. So long the
observed of all observers; a great man or only a considerable man;
here surely, if ever, is a singular circumstanced, is a 'distinguished'
man! In regard to whom, therefore, the 'instinctive tendency' on
other men's part cannot be wanting. Let men look, where the world
has already so long looked. And now, while the new, earnestly

396 THOMAS CARLYLE

expected Life 'by his son-in-law and literary fsxecutor' again sum-
mons the whole world's attention round him, probably for the last
time it will ever be so summoned; and men are in some sort taking
leave of a notability, and about to go their way, and commit him to
his fortune on the flood of things, — why should not this Periodical
Publication likewise publish its thought about him? Readers of
miscellaneous aspect, of unknown quantity and quality, are waiting
to hear it done. With small inward vocation, but cheerfully obedient
to destiny and necessity, the present reviewer will follow a multitude :
to do evil or to do no evil, will depend not on the multitude but on
himself. One thing he did decidedly wish; at least to wait till the
Work were finished: for the six promised Volumes, as the world
knows, have flowed over into a Seventh, which will not for some
weeks yet see the light. But the editorial powers, wearied with
waiting, have become peremptory; and declare that, finished or not
finished, they will have their hands washed of it at this opening
of the year. Perhaps it is best. The physiognomy of Scott will not
be much altered for us by that Seventh Volume; the prior Six have
altered it but little; — as, indeed, a man who has written some two-
hundred volumes of his own, and lived for thirty years amid the
universal speech of friends, must have already left some likeness of
himself. Be it as the peremptory editorial powers require.

First, therefore, a word on the Life itself. Mr. Lockhart's known
powers justify strict requisition in his case. Our verdict in general
would be, that he has accomplished the work he schemed for him-
self in a creditable workmanlike manner. It is true, his notion of
what the work was, does not seem to have been very elevated. To
picture-forth the life of Scott according to any rules of art or com-
position, so that a reader, on adequately examining it, might say to
himself, "There is Scott, there is the physiognomy and meaning of
Scott's appearance and transit on this earth; such was he by nature,
so did the world act on him, so he on the world, with such result
and significance for himself and us": this was by no manner of
means Mr. Lockhart's plan. A plan which, it is rashly said, should
preside over every biography! It might have been fulfilled with all
degrees of perfection, from that of the Odyssey down to Thomas
Ellwood or lower. For there is no heroic poem in the world but is at

SIR WALTER SCOTT 397

bottom a biography, the Ufe of a man: also, it may be said, there is
no hfe of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its
sort, rhymed or unrhymed. It is a plan one would prefer, did it
otherwise suit; which it does not, in these days. Seven volumes sell
so much dearer than one; are so much easier to write than one. The
Odyssey, for instance, what were the value of the Odyssey sold per
sheet? One paper of Picl{^wic\; or say, the inconsiderable fraction
of one. This, in commercial algebra, were the equation: Odyssey
equal to Picl{wic\ divided by an unknown integer.

There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature, that of
paying literary men by the quantity they do not write. Nay, in
sober truth, is not this actually the rule in all writing; and, more-
over, in all conduct and acting? Not what stands above ground,
but what lies unseen under it, as the root and subterrene element it
sprang from and emblemed forth, determines the value. Under all
speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.
Silence is deep as Eternity: speech is shallow as Time. Paradoxical
does it seem? Woe for the age, woe for the man, quack-ridden,
bespeeched, bespouted, blown about like barren Sahara, to whom this
world-old truth were altogether strange! — Such we say is the rule,
acted on or not, recognised or not; and he who departs from it, what
can he do but spread himself into breadth and length, into super-
ficiality and saleability; and, except as filigree, become comparatively
useless? One thinks, Had but the hogshead of thin wash, which sours
in a week ready for the kennels, been distilled, been concentrated!
Our dear Fenimore Cooper, whom we started with, might, in that
way, have given us one Natty LeatherstocJ^ing, one melodious
synopsis of Man and Nature in the West (for it lay in him to do it) ,
almost as a Saint-Pierre did for the Islands of the East; and the
hundred Incoherences, cobbled hastily together by order of Colburn
and Company, had slumbered in Chaos, as all incoherences ought if
possible to do. Verily this same genius of diffuse-writing, of diffuse-
acting, is a Moloch; and souls pass through the fire to him, more
than enough. Surely, if ever discovery was valuable and needful,
it were that above indicated, of paying by the work not visibly done!
— Which needful discovery we will give the whole projecting, rail-
waying, knowledge-diffusing, march-of-intellect and otherwise pro-

398 THOMAS CARLYLE

motive and locomotive societies in the Old and New World, any
required length of centuries to make. Once made, such discovery
once made, we too will fling cap into the air, and shout, "lo Pcean!
the Devil /'/ conquered"; — and, in the mean while, study to think it
nothing miraculous that seven biographical volumes are given
where one had been better; and that several other things happen,
very much as they from of old were known to do, and are like to
continue doing.

Mr. Lockhart's aim, we take it, was not that of producing any
such highflown work of art as we hint at: or indeed to do much
other than to print, intelligently bound together by order of time,
and by some requisite intercalary exposition, all such letters, docu-
ments and notices about Scott as he found lying suitable, and as it
seemed likely the world would undertake to read. His Work, accord-
ingly, is not so much a composition, as what we may call a com-
pilation well done. Neither is this a task of no difficulty; this too
is a task that may be performed with extremely various degrees
of talent: from the Life and Correspondence of Hannah More, for
instance, up to this Life of Scott, there is a wide range indeed! Let
us take the Seven Volumes, and be thankful that they are genuine
in their kind. Nay, as to that of their being seven and not one, it
is right to say that the public so required it. To have done other,
would have shown little policy in an author. Had Mr. Lockhart
laboriously compressed himself, and instead of well-done com-
pilation, brought out the well-done composition, in one volume
instead of seven, which not many men in England are better quali-
fied to do, there can be no doubt but his readers for the time had
been immeasurably fewer. If the praise of magnanimity be denied
him, that of prudence must be conceded, which perhaps he values
more.

The truth is, the work, done in this manner too, was good to
have: Scott's Biography, if uncomposed, lies printed and inde-
structible here, in the elementary state, and can at any time be com-
posed, if necessary, by whosoever has a call to that. As it is, as it
was meant to be, we repeat, the work is vigorously done. Sagacity,
decision, candour, diligence, good manners, good sense: these quali-

SIR WALTER SCOTT 399

ties are throughout observable. The dates, calculations, statements,
we suppose to be all accurate; much laborious inquiry, some o£ it
impossible for another man, has been gone into, the results of which
are imparted with due brevity. Scott's letters, not interesting gen-
erally, yet never absolutely without interest, are copiously given;
copiously, but with selection; the answers to them still more select.
Narrative, delineation, and at length personal reminiscences, occa-
sionally of much merit, of a certain rough force, sincerity and pic-
turesqueness, duly intervene. The scattered members of Scott's
Life do lie here, and could be disentangled. In a word, this com-
pilation is the work of a manful, clear-seeing, conclusive man, and
has been executed with the faculty and combination of faculties the
public had a right to expect from the name attached to it.

One thing we hear greatly blamed in Mr. Lockhart: that he has
been too communicative, indiscreet, and has recorded much that
ought to have Iain suppressed. Persons are mentioned, and circum-
stances, not always of an ornamental sort. It would appear there is
far less reticence than was looked for! Various persons, name and
surname, have 'received pain' : nay, the very Hero of the Biography
is rendered unheroic; unornamental facts of him, and of those he
had to do with, being set forth in plain English: hence 'personality,'
'indiscretion,' or worse, 'sanctities of private life,' etc., etc. How
delicate, decent is English Biography, bless its mealy mouth! A
Damocles' sword of Respectability hangs forever over the poor Eng-
lish Life-writer (as it does over poor English Life in general), and
reduces him to the verge of paralysis. Thus it has been said 'there
are no English lives worth reading except those of Players, who
by the nature of the case have bidden Respectability good-day.' The
English biographer has long felt that if in writing his Man's Biog-
raphy, he wrote down anything that could by possibility offend any
man, he had written wrong. The plain consequence was, that,
properly speaking, no biography whatever could be produced. The
poor biographer, having the fear not of God before his eyes, was
obliged to retire as it were into vacuum; and write in the most
melancholy, straitened manner, with only vacuum for a result. Vain
that he wrote, and that we kept reading volume on volume: there

400 THOMAS CARLYLE

was no biography, but some vague ghost of a biography, white,
stainless; without feature or substance; vacuum, as we say, and wind
and shadow, — which indeed the material of it was.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he
has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.
His life is a battle, in so far as it is an entity at all. The very
oyster, we suppose, conies in collision with oysters: undoubtedly
enough it does come in collision with Necessity and Difficulty;
and helps itself through, not as a perfect ideal oyster, but as an
imperfect real one. Some kind of remorse must be known to the
oyster; certain hatreds, certain pusillanimities. But as for man, his
conflict is continual with the spirit of contradiction, that is without
and within; with the evil spirit (or call it, with the weak, most neces-
sitous, pitiable spirit), that is in others and in himself. His walk,
like all walking (say the mechanicians), is a series of ^alls. To
paint man's life is to represent these things. Let them be represented,
fitly, with dignity and measure; but above all, let them be repre-
sented. No tragedy of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted
by particular desire! No ghost of a biography, let the Damocles'
sword of Respectability, (which, after all, is but a pasteboard one)
threaten as it will. One hopes that the public taste is much mended
in this matter; that vacuum-biographies, with a good many other
vacuities related to them, are withdrawn or withdrawing into
vacuum. Probably it was Mr. Lockhart's feeling of what the great
public would approve, that led him, open-eyed, into this offence
against the small criticising public: we joyfully accept the omen.

Perhaps then, of all the praises copiously bestowed on his Work,
there is none in reality so creditable to him as this same censure,
which has also been pretty copious. It is a censure better than a good
many praises. He is found guilty of having said this and that, cal-
culated not to be entirely pleasant to this man and that; in other
words, calculated to give him and the thing he worked in a living
set of features, not leave him vague, in the white beatified-ghost
condition. Several men, as we hear, cry out, "See, there is some-
thing written not entirely pleasant to me!" Good friend, it is pity;
but who can help it? They that will crowd about bonfires may,
sometimes very fairly, get their beards singed; it is the price they

SIR WALTER SCOTT 4OI

pay for such illumination; natural twilight is safe and free to all.
For our part, we hope all manner of biographies that are written
in England will henceforth be written so. If it is fit that they be
written otherwise, then it is still fitter that they be not written at
all: to produce not things but ghosts of things can never be the duty
of man.

The biographer has this problem set before him: to delineate a
likeness of the earthly pilgrimage of a man. He will compute well
what profit is in it, and what disprofit; under which latter head
this of offending any of his fellow-creatures will surely not be for-
gotten. Nay, this may so swell the disprofit side of his account,
that many an enterprise of biography, otherwise promising, shall
require to be renounced. But once taken up, the rule before all
rules is to do //, not to do the ghost of it. In speaking of the man
and men he has to deal with, he will of course keep all his charities
about him; but all his eyes open. Far be it from him to set down
aught untrue; nay, not to abstain from, and leave in oblivion much
that is true. But having found a thing or things essential for his
subject, and well computed the for and against, he will in very
deed set down such thing or things, nothing doubting, — having,
we may say, the fear of God before his eyes, and no other fear
whatever. Censure the biographer's prudence; dissent from the
computation he made, or agree with it; be all malice of his, be all
falsehood, nay, be all offensive avoidable inaccuracy, condemned and
consumed; but know that by this plan only, executed as was possible,
could the biographer hope to make a biography; and blame him
not that he did what it had been the worst fault not to do.

As to the accuracy or error of these statements about the Ballan-
tynes and other persons aggrieved, which are questions much mooted
at present in some places, we know nothing at all. If they are inac-
curate, let them be corrected; if the inaccuracy was avoidable, let
the author bear rebuke and punishment for it. We can only say,
these things carry no look of inaccuracy on the face of them; neither
is anywhere the smallest trace of ill-will or unjust feeling discernible.
Decidedly the probabilities are, and till better evidence arise, the
fair conclusion is, that this matter stands very much as it ought to
do. Let the clatter of censure, therefore, propagate itself as far as

402 THOMAS CARLYLE

it can. For Mr. Lockhart it virtually amounts to this very consid-
erable praise, that, standing full in the face of the public, he has
set at naught, and been among the first to do it, a public piece of
cant; one of the commonest we have, and closely allied to many
others of the fellest sort, as smooth as it looks.

The other censure, of Scott being made unheroic, springs from
the same stem; and is, perhaps, a still more wonderful flower of it.
Your true hero must have no features, but be white, stainless, an
impersonal ghost-hero! But connected with this, there is a hypothe-
sis now current, due probably to some man of name, for its own
force would not carry it far: That Mr. Lockhart at heart has a
dislike to Scott, and has done his best in an underhand treacherous
manner to dishero him! Such hypothesis is actually current: he
that has ears may hear it now and then. On which astonishing
hypothesis, if a word must be said, it can only be an apology for
silence, — "That there are things at which one stands struck silent,
as at first sight of the Infinite." For if Mr. Lockhart is fairly charge-
able with any radical defect, if on any side his insight entirely fails
him, it seems even to be in this : that Scott is altogether lovely to him ;
that Scott's greatness spreads out for him on all hands beyond reach
of eye; that his very faults become beautiful, his vulgar worldli-
nesses are solid prudences, proprieties; and of his worth there is no
measure. Does not the patient Biographer dwell on his Abbots,
Pirates, and hasty theatrical scene-paintings; affectionately analysing
them, as if they were Raphael-pictures, time-defying Hamlets,
Othellos? The Novel-manufactory, with its 15,000/. a-year, is sacred
to him as creation of a genius, which carries the noble victor up to
Heaven. Scott is to Lockhart the unparalleled of the time; an object
spreading-out before him like a sea without shore. Of that aston-
ishing hypothesis, let expressive silence be the only answer.

And so in sum, with regard to Lockjiart's Life of Scott, readers
that believe in us shall read it with the feeling that a man of talent,
decision and insight wrote it; wrote it in seven volumes, not in one,
because the public would pay for it better in that state; but wrote
it with courage, with frankness, sincerity; on the whole, in a very
readable, recommendable manner, as things go. Whosoever needs
it can purchase it, or purchase the loan of it, vvdth assurance more

SIR WALTER SCOTT 403

than usual that he has ware for his money. And now enough of
the written Life; we will glance a little at the man and his acted
life.

Into the question whether Scott was a great man or not, we do not
propose to enter deeply. It is, as too usual, a question about words.
There can be no doubt but many men have been named and printed
great who were vastly smaller than he: as little doubt moreover that
of the specially good, a very large portion, according to any genuine
standard of man's worth, were worthless in comparison to him.
He for whom Scott is great may most innocently name him so;
may with advantage admire his great qualities, and ought with
sincere heart to emulate them. At the same time, it is good that
there be a certain degree of precision in our epithets. It is good
to understand, for one thing, that no popularity, and open-mouthed
wonder of all the world, continued even for a long series of years,
can make a man great. Such popularity is a remarkable fortune;
indicates a great adaptation of the man to his element of circum-
stances; but may or may not indicate anything great in the man.
To our imagination, as above hinted, there is a certain apotheosis
in it; but in the reality no apotheosis at all. Popularity is as a blaze
of illumination, or alas, of conflagration, kindled round a man;
showing what is in him; not putting the smallest item more into
him; often abstracting much from him; conflagrating the poor man
himself into ashes and caput mortuum! And then, by the nature
of it, such popularity is transient; your 'series of years,' quite unex-
pectedly, sometimes almost all on a sudden, terminates! For the
stupidity of men, especially of men congregated in masses round
any object, is extreme. What illuminations and conflagrations have
kindled themselves, as if new heavenly suns had risen, which proved
only to be tar-barrels and terrestrial locks of straw! Profane Prin-
cesses cried out, "One God, one Farinelli!" — and whither now have
they and Farinelli danced.?

In Literature too there have been seen popularities greater even than
Scott's, and nothing perennial in the interior of them. Lope de Vega,
whom all the world swore by, and made a proverb of; who could
make an acceptable five-act tragedy in almost as many hours; the

404 THOMAS CARLYLE

greatest of all popularities past or present, and perhaps one of the
greatest men that ever ranked among popularities. Lope himself, so
radiant, far-shining, has not proved to be a sun or star of the firma-
ment; but is as good as lost and gone out; or plays at best in the
eyes of some few as a vague aurora-borealis, and brilliant ineffec-
tuality. The great man of Spain sat obscure at the time, all dark
and poor, a maimed soldier; writing his Don Quixote in prison.
And Lope's fate withal was sad, his popularity perhaps a curse to
him; for in this man there was something ethereal too, a divine
particle traceable in few other popular men; and such far-shining
diffusion of himself, though all the world swore by it, would do
nothing for the true life of him even while he lived : he had to creep
into a convent, into a monk's cowl, and learn, with infinite sorrow,
that his blessedness had lain elsewhere; that when a man's life feels
itself to be sick and an error, no voting of bystanders can make it
well and a truth again.

Or coming down to our own times, was not August Kotzebue
popular ? Kotzebue, not so many years since, saw himself, if rumour
and hand-clapping could be credited, the greatest man going; saw
visibly his Thoughts, dressed-out in plush and pasteboard, per-
meating and perambulating civilised Europe; the most iron visages
weeping with him, in all theatres from Cadiz to Kamtchatka; his
own 'astonishing genius' meanwhile producing two tragedies or so
per month: he, on the whole, blazed high enough: he too has gone
out into Night and Orcus, and already is not. We will omit this
of popularity altogether; and account it as making simply nothing
towards Scott's greatness or non-greatness, as an accident, not a
quahty.

Shorn of this falsifying nimbus, and reduced to his own natural
dimensions, there remains the reality, Walter Scott, and what we
can find in him: to be accounted great, or not great, according to
the dialects of men. Friends to precision of epithet will probably
deny his title to the name 'great.' It seems to us there goes other
stuff to the making of great men than can be detected here. One
knows not what idea worthy of the name of great, what purpose,
instinct or tendency, that could be called great, Scott ever was
inspired with. His life was worldly; his ambitions were worldly.

SIR WALTER SCOTT 405

There is nothing spiritual in him; all is economical, material, o£
the earth earthy. A love of picturesque, of beautiful, vigorous and
graceful things; a genuine love, yet not more genuine than has
dwelt in hundreds of men named minor poets: this is the highest
quality to be discerned in him.

His power of representing these things, too, his poetic power, like
his moral power, was a genius in extenso, as we may say, not in
intenso. In action, in speculation, broad as he was, he rose nowhere
high; productive without measure as to quantity, in quality he for
the most part transcended but a little way the region of common-
place. It has been said, 'no man has written as many volumes with
so few sentences that can be quoted.' Winged words were not his
vocation; nothing urged him that way: the great Mystery of Ex-
istence was not great to him; did not drive him into rocky solitudes
to wrestle with it for an answer, to be answered or to perish. He
had nothing of the martyr; into no 'dark region to slay monsters
for us,' did he, either led or driven, venture down: his conquests
were for his own behoof mainly, conquests over common market-
labour, and reckonable in good metallic Coin of the realm. The
thing he had faith in, except power, power of what sort soever, and
even of the rudest sort, would be difficult to point out. One sees
not that he believed in anything; nay, he did not even disbelieve;
but quietly acquiesced, and made himself at home in a world of
conventionalities; the false, the semi-false and the true were alike
true in this, that they were there, and had power in their hands more
or less. It was well to feel so; and yet not well! We find it written,
'Woe to them that are at ease in Zion'; but surely it is a double
woe to them that are at ease in Babel, in Domdaniel. On the other
hand, he wrote many volumes, amusing many thousands of men.
Shall we call this great? It seems to us there dwells and struggles
another sort of spirit in the inward parts of great men!

Brother Ringletub, the missionary, inquired of Ram-Dass, a Hin-
doo man-god, who had set up for godhood lately, What he meant
to do, then, with the sins of mankind? To which Ram-Dass at
once answered, He had fire enough in his belly to burn-up all the
sins in the world. Ram-Dass was right so far, and had a spice of
sense in him; for surely it is the test of every divine man this same.

406 THOMAS CARLYLE

and without it he is not divine or great,— that he have fire in him
to burn-up somewhat of the sins o£ the world, of the miseries and
errors of the world: why else is he there? Far be it from us to
say that a great man must needs, with benevolence prepense, become
a 'friend of humanity'; nay, that such professional self-conscious
friends of humanity are not the fatalest kind of persons to be met
with in our day. All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and
nought. And yet a great man without such fire in him, burning
dim or developed, as a divine behest in his heart of hearts, never
resting till it be fulfilled, were a solecism in Nature. A great man
is ever, as the Transcendentalists speak, possessed with an idea.

Napoleon himself, not the superfinest of great men, and ballasted
sufficiently with prudences and egoisms, had nevertheless, as is
clear enough, an idea to start with: the idea that Democracy was the
Cause of Man, the right and infinite Cause. Accordingly he made
himself 'the armed Soldier of Democracy'; and did vindicate it in
a rather great manner. Nay, to the very last, he had a kind of idea;
that, namely, of 'La carriers ouverte aux talens, The tools to him that
can handle them'; really one of the best ideas yet promulgated on
that matter, or rather the one true central idea, towards which all
the others, if they tend anywhither, must tend. Unhappily it was in
the military province only that Napoleon could realise this idea of
his, being forced to fight for himself the while: before he got it
tried to any extent in the civil province of things, his head by much
victory grew light (no head can stand more than its quantity) ; and
he lost head, as they say, and became a selfish ambitionist and quack,
and was hurled out; leaving his idea to be realised, in the civil prov-
ince of things, by others! Thus was Napoleon; thus are all great
men: children of the idea; or, in Ram-Dass's phraseology, furnished
with fire to burn-up the miseries of men. Conscious or unconscious,
latent or unfolded, there is small vestige of any such fire being extant
in the inner-man of Scott.

Yet on the other hand, the surliest critic must allow that Scott was
a genuine man, which itself is a great matter. No affectation, fan-
tasticality or distortion dwelt in him; no shadow of cant. Nay,
withal, was he not a right brave and strong man, according to his
kind? What a load of toil, what a measure of felicity, he quietly

SIR WALTER SCOTT 4O7

bore along with him; with what quiet strength he both worked on
this earth, and enjoyed in it; invincible to evil fortune and to good!
A most composed, invincible man; in difficulty and distress knowing
no discouragement, Samson-like carrying ofE on his strong Samson-
shoulders the gates that would imprison him: in danger and menace
laughing at the whisper of fear. And then, with such a sunny cur-
rent of true humour and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so
many things; what of fire he had all lying so beautifully latent, as
radical latent heat, as fruitful internal warmth of life; a most robust,
healthy man! The truth is, our best definition of Scott were perhaps
even this, that he was, if no great man, then something much pleas-
anter to be, a robust, thoroughly healthy and withal very prosperous
and victorious man. An eminently well-conditioned man, healthy
in body, healthy in soul; we will call him one of the healthiest
of men.

Neither is this a small matter: health is a great matter, both to
the possessor of it and to others. On the whole, that humorist in the
Moral Essay was not so far out, who determined on honouring
health only; and so instead of humbling himself to the high-born,
to the rich and well-dressed, insisted on doffing hat to the healthy:
coroneted carriages with pale faces in them passed by as failures,
miserable and lamentable; trucks with ruddy-cheeked strength drag-
ging at them were greeted as successful and venerable. For does
not health mean harmony, the synonym of all that is true, justly-
ordered, good; is it not, in some sense, the net-total, as shown by
experiment, of whatever worth is in us? The healthy man is the
most meritorious product of Nature so far as he goes. A healthy
body is good; but a soul in right health, — it is the thing beyond
all others to be prayed for; the blessedest thing this earth receives
of Heaven. Without artificial medicament of philosophy, or tight-
lacing of creeds (always very questionable), the healthy soul discerns
what is good, and adheres to it, and retains it; discerns what is bad,
and spontaneously casts it off. An instinct from Nature herself, like
that which guides the wild animals of the forest to their food, shows
him what he shall do, what he shall abstain from. The false and
foreign will not adhere to him; cant and all fantastic diseased in-
crustations are impossible; — as Walker the Original, in such emi-

408 THOMAS CARLYLE

nence of health was he for his part, could not, by much abstinence
from soap-and- water, attain to a dirty face! This thing thou canst
work with and profit by, this thing is substantial and worthy; that
other thing thou canst not work with, it is trivial and inapt: so
speaks unerringly the inward monition of the man's whole nature.
No need of logic to prove the most argumentative absurdity absurd;
as Goethe says of himself, 'all this ran down from me like water
from a man in wax<loth dress.' Blessed is the healthy nature; it is
the coherent, sweetly cooperative, not incoherent, self-distracting,
self-destructive one! In the harmonious adjustment and play of all
the faculties, the just balance of oneself gives a just feeling towards
all men and all things. Glad light from within radiates outwards,
and enlightens and embellishes.

Now all this can be predicated of Walter Scott, and of no British
literary man that we remember in these days, to any such extent,
— if it be not perhaps of one, the most opposite imaginable to Scott,
but his equal in this quality and what holds of it: William Cobbett!
Nay, there are other similarities, widely different as they two look;
nor be the comparison disparaging to Scott: for Cobbett also, as the
pattern John Bull of his century, strong as the rhinoceros, and with
singular humanities and genialities shining through his thick skin, is
a most brave phenomenon. So bounteous was Nature to us; in the
sickliest of recorded ages, when British Literature lay all puking
and sprawling in Werterism, Byronism, and other Sentimentalism
tearful or spasmodic (fruit of internal wind). Nature was kind
enough to send us two healthy Men, of whom she might still say,
not without pride, "These also were made in England; such Hmbs
do I still make there!" It is one of the cheerfulest sights, let the
question of its greatness be settled as you will. A healthy nature
may or may not be great; but there is no great nature that is not
healthy.

Or, on the whole, might we not say, Scott, in the new vesture of
the nineteenth century, was intrinsically very much the old fighting
Borderer of prior centuries; the kind of man Nature did of old make
in that birthland of his? In the saddle, with the foray-spear, he
would have acquitted himself as he did at the desk with his pen.
One fancies how, in stout Beardie of Harden's time, he could have

SIR WALTER SCOTT 409

played Beardie's part; and been the stalwart bufl-belted terrce filius
he in this late time could only delight to draw. The same stout self-
help was in him; the same oak and triple brass round his heart. He
too could have fought at Redswire, cracking crowns with the fierc-
est, if that had been the task; could have harried cattle in Tynedale,
repaying injury with compound interest; a right sufficient captain of
men. A man without qualms or fantasticalities; a hard-headed,
sound-hearted man, of joyous robust temper, looking to the main
chance, and lighting direct thitherward; valde stalwartus homo! —
How much in that case had slumbered in him, and passed away
without sign! But indeed who knows how much slumbers in many
men? Perhaps our greatest poets are the mute Miltons; the vocals
are those whom by happy accident we lay hold of, one here, one
there, as it chances, and mal^e vocal. It is even a question, whether,
had not want, discomfort and distress-warrants been busy at Strat-
ford-on-Avon, Shakspeare himself had not lived killing calves or
combing wool! Had the Edial Boarding-school turned out well, we
had never heard of Samuel Johnson; Samuel Johnson had been a
fat schoolmaster and dogmatic gerundgrinder, and never known
that he was more. Nature is rich: those two eggs thou art eating
carelessly to breakfast, could they not have been hatched into a pair
of fowls, and have covered the whole world with poultry?

But it was not harrying of cattle in Tynedale, or cracking of
crowns at Redswire, that this stout Border-chief was appointed to
perform. Far other work. To be the song-singer and pleasant tale-
teller to Britain and Europe, in the beginning of the artificial nine-
teenth century; here, and not there, lay his business. Beardie of
Harden would have found it very amazing. How he shapes himself
to this new element; how he helps himself along in it, makes it to do
for him, lives sound and victorious in it, and leads over the marches
such a spoil as all the cattle-droves the Hardens ever took were poor
in comparison to; this is the history of the life and achievements
of our Sir Walter Scott, Baronet; — whereat we are now to glance
for a little! It is a thing remarkable; a thing substantial; of joyful,
victorious sort; not unworthy to be glanced at. Withal, however, a
glance here and there will suffice. Our limits are narrow; the thing,
were it never so victorious, is not of the sublime sort, nor extremely

410 THOMAS CARLYLE

edifying; there is nothing in it to censure vehemently, nor love ve-
hemently; there is more to wonder at than admire; and the whole
secret is not an abstruse one.

Till towards the age of thirty, Scott's life has nothing in it de-
cisively pointing towards Literature, or indeed towards distinction
of any kind; he is wedded, settled, and has gone through all his
preliminary steps, without symptom of renown as yet. It is the life
of every other Edinburgh youth of his station and time. Fortunate
we must name it, in many ways. Parents in easy or wealthy circum-
stances, yet unencumbered with the cares and perversions of aristoc-
racy; nothing eminent in place, in faculty or culture, yet nothing
deficient; all around is methodic regulation, prudence, prosperity,
kindheartedness; an element of warmth and light, of affection, in-
dustry, and burgherly comfort, heightened into elegance; in which
the young heart can wholesomely grow. A vigorous health seems
to have been given by Nature; yet, as if Nature had said withal,
"Let it be a health to express itself by mind, not by body," a lame-
ness is added in childhood; the brave little boy, instead of romping
and bickering, must learn to think; or at lowest, what is a great
matter, to sit still. No rackets and trundling-hoops for this young
Walter; but ballads, history-books and a world of legendary stuff,
which his mother and those near him are copiously able to furnish.
Disease, which is but superficial, and issues in outward lameness,
does not cloud the young existence; rather forwards it towards the
expansion it is fitted for. The miserable disease had been one
of the internal nobler parts, marring the general organisation; under
which no Walter Scott could have been forwarded, or with all his
other endowments could have been producible or possible. 'Nature
gives healthy children much; how much! Wise education is a wise
unfolding of this; often it unfolds itself better of its own accord.'

Add one other circumstance: the place where; namely, Presbyte-
rian Scotland. The influences of this are felt incessantly, they stream-
in at every pore. 'There is a country accent,' says La Rochefoucauld,
'not in speech only, but in thought, conduct, character and manner
of existing, which never forsakes a man.' Scott, we believe, was all
his days an Episcopalian Dissenter in Scotland; but that makes little

SIR WALTER SCOTT 4II

to the matter. Nobody who knows Scotland and Scott can doubt
but Presbyterianism too had a vast share in the forming of him. A
country where the entire people is, or even once has been, laid hold
of, filled to the heart with an infinite religious idea, has 'made a
step from which it cannot retrograde.' Thought, conscience, the
sense that man is denizen of a Universe, creature of an Eternity,
has penetrated to the remotest cottage, to the simplest heart. Beauti-
ful and awful, the feeling of a Heavenly Behest, of Duty god-com-
manded, over-canopies all life. There is an inspiration in such a
people: one may say in a more special sense, 'the inspiration of the
Almighty giveth them understanding.' Honour to all the brave and
true; everlasting honour to brave old Knox, one of the truest of the
true! That, in the moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils,
in convulsion and confusion, were still but struggling for life, he
sent the schoolmaster forth to all corners, and said, "Let the people
be taught"; this is but one, and indeed an inevitable and compara-
tively inconsiderable item in his great message to men. His message,
in its true compass, was, "Let men know that they are men; created
by God, responsible to God; who work in any meanest moment of
time what will last throughout eternity." It is verily a great message.
Not ploughing and hammering machines, not patent-digesters
(never so ornamental) to digest the produce of these: no, in no wise;
born slaves neither of their fellow-men, nor of their own appetites;
but men! This great message Knox did deliver, with a man's voice
and strength; and found a people to believe him.

Of such an achievement, we say, were it to be made once only, the
results are immense. Thought, in such a country, may change its
form, but cannot go out; the country has attained majority; thought,
and a certain spiritual manhood, ready for all work that man can
do, endures there. It may take many forms: the form of hard-fisted
money-getting industry, as in the vulgar Scotchman, in the vulgar
New Englander; but as compact developed force and alertness of
faculty, it is still there; it may utter itself one day as the colossal
Scepticism of a Hume (beneficent this too though painful, wrestling
Titan-Hke through doubt and inquiry towards new belief); and
again, some better day, it may utter itself as the inspired Melody
of a Burns: in a word, it is there, and continues to manifest itself,

412 THOMAS CARLYLE

in the Voice and the Work of a Nation of hardy endeavouring con-
sidering men, with whatever that may bear in it, or unfold from it.
The Scotch national character originates in many circumstances;
first of all, in the Saxon stuff there was to work on; but next, and
beyond all else except that, in the Presbyterian Gospel of John Knox.
It seems a good national character; and on some sides not so good.
Let Scott thank John Knox, for he owed him much, little as he
dreamed of debt in that quarter! No Scotchman of his time was
more entirely Scotch than Walter Scott: the good and the not so
good, which all Scotchmen inherit, ran through every fibre of him.

Scott's childhood, school-days, college-days, are pleasant to read
of, though they differ not from those of others in his place and
time. The memory of him may probably enough last till this record
of them become far more curious than it now is. "So lived an Edin-
burgh Writer to the Signet's son in the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury," may some future Scotch novelist say to himself in the end
of the twenty-first! The following little fragment of infancy is all
we can extract. It is from an Autobiography which he had begun,
which one cannot but regret he did not finish. Scott's best qualities
never shone out more freely than when he went upon anecdote and
reminiscence. Such a master of narrative and of himself could have
done personal narrative well. Here, if anywhere, his knowledge
was complete, and all his humour and good-humour had free scope:

'An odd incident is worth recording. It seems, my mother had sent a
maid to take charge of me, at this farm of Sandy-Knowe, that I might
be no inconvenience to the family. But the damsel sent on that impor-
tant mission had left her heart behind her, in the keeping of some wild
fellow, it is likely, who had done and said more to her than he was like
to make good. She became extremely desirous to return to Edinburgh;
and, as my mother made a point of her remaining where she was, she
contracted a sort of hatred at poor me, as the cause of her being detained
at Sandy-Knowe. This rose, I suppose, to a sort of delirious affection;
for she confessed to old Alison Wilson, the housekeeper, that she had
carried me up to the craigs under a strong temptation of the Devil to
cut my throat with her scissors, and bury me in the moss. Alison
instantly took possession of my person, and took care that her confidant
should not be subject to any farther temptation, at least so far as I was
concerned. She was dismissed of course, and I have heard afterwards
became a lunatic.

SIR WALTER SCOTT 413

'It is here, at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence of my paternal grand-
father, already mentioned, that I have the first consciousness of exist-
ence; and I recollect distinctly that my situation and appearance were a
litde whimsical. Among the odd remedies recurred to, to aid my lame-
ness, some one had recommended that so often as a sheep was killed for
the use of the family, I should be stripped, and swathed-up in the skin
warm as it was flayed from the carcass of the animal. In this Tartar-like
habiliment I well remember lying upon the floor of the little parlour in
the farmhouse, while my grandfather, a venerable old man with white
hair, used every excitement to make me try to crawl. I also distinctly
remember the late Sir George M'Dougal of Mackerstown, father of the
present Sir Henry Hay M'Dougal, joining in the attempt. He was, God
knows how, a relation of ours; and I still recollect him, in his old-
fashioned military habit (he had been Colonel of the Greys), with a
small cocked-hat deeply laced, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat, and a
light-coloured coat, with milk-white locks tied in a military fashion,
kneeling on the ground before me, and dragging his watch along the
carpet to induce me to follow it. The benevolent old soldier, and the
infant wrapped in his sheepskin, would have afforded an odd group to
uninterested spectators. This must have happened about my third year
(1774), for Sir George M'Dougal and my grandfather both died shordy
after that period.'^

We will glance next into the 'Liddesdale Raids.' Scott has grown-
up to be a brisk-hearted jovial young man and Advocate: in vacation-
time he makes excursions to the Highlands, to the Border Cheviots
and Northumberland; rides free and far, on his stout galloway,
through bog and brake, over the dim moory Debatable Land, — over
Flodden and other fields and places, where, though he yet knew it
not, his work lay. No land, however dim and moory, but either has
had or will have its poet, and so become not unknown in song.
Liddesdale, which was once as prosaic as most dales, having now
attained illustration, let us glance thitherward: Liddesdale too is
on this ancient Earth of ours, under this eternal Sky; and gives and
takes, in the most incalculable manner, with the Universe at large!
Scott's experiences there are rather of the rustic Arcadian sort; the
element of whisky not wanting. We should premise that here and
there a feature has, perhaps, been aggravated for effect's sake :

'During seven successive years,' writes Mr. Lockhart (for the Auto-
biography has long since left us), 'Scott made a raid, as he called it, into

* Vol. i. pp. 15-17.

414 THOMAS CARLYLE

Liddesdale with Mr. Shortreed, sheriff-substitute of Roxburgh, for his
guide; exploring every rivulet to its source, and every ruined peel from
foundation to batdement. At this time no wheeled carriage had ever been
seen in the district; — the first, indeed, was a gig, driven by Scott himself
for a part of his way, when on the last of these seven excursions. There
was no inn nor publichouse of any kind in the whole valley; the travellers
passed from the shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again from
the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the rough and jolly welcome of
the homestead; gathering, wherever they went, songs and tunes, and
occasionally more tangible relics of antiquity, even such a "rowth of auld
knicknackets" as Burns ascribes to Captain Grose. To these rambles
Scott owed much of the materials of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border;
and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the living manners of
these unsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one
of the most charming of his prose works. But how soon he had any
definite object before him in his researches seems very doubtful. "He was
ma^in' himsell a' the time," said Mr. Shortreed; "but he didna ken
maybe what he was about till years had passed: at first he thought o'
little, I daresay, but the queerness and the fun."

' "In those days," says the Memorandum before me, "advocates were
not so plenty — ^at least about Liddesdale;" and the worthy Sheriff-
substitute goes on to describe the sort of bustle, not unmixed with alarm,
produced at the first farmhouse they visited (Willie Elliot's at Millburn-
holm), when the honest man was informed of the quality of one of his
guests. When they dismounted, accordingly, he received Mr. Scott with
great ceremony, and insisted upon himself leading his horse to the
stable. Shortreed accompanied Willie, however; and the latter, after
taking a deliberate peep at Scott, "out-by the edge of the door-cheek,"
whispered, "Weel, Robin, I say, de'il hae me if I's be a bit feared for him
now; he's just a chield like ourselves, I think." Half-a-dozen dogs of all
degrees had already gathered round "the advocate," and his way of re-
turning their compliments had set Willie Elliot at once at his ease.

'According to Mr. Shortreed, this good man of Millburnholm was the
great original of Dandie Dinmont.' * * * 'They dined at Millburnholm;
and, after having lingered over Willie Elliot's punchbowl, until, in Mr.
Shortreed's phrase, they were "half-glowrin'," mounted their steeds
again, and proceeded to Dr. Elliot's at Cleughhead, where ("for," says
my Memorandum, "folk werena very nice in those days") the two
travellers slept in one and the same bed, — as, indeed, seems to have been
the case with them throughout most of their excursions in this primitive
district. Dr. Elliot (a clergyman) had already a large ms. collection of
the ballads Scott was in quest of.' * * * 'Next morning they seem to
have ridden a long way for the express purpose of visiting one "auld
Thomas o' Tuzzilehope," another Elliot, I suppose, who was celebrated

SIR WALTER SCOTT 415

for his skill on the Border pipe, and in particular for being in possession
of the real lilt^ of Dic\ o the Cowe. Before starting, that is, at six
o'clock, the ballad-hunters had, "just to lay the stomach, a devilled duck
or twae and some London porter." Auld Thomas found them, neverthe-
less, well disposed for "breakfast" on their arrival at Tuzzilehope; and
this being over, he delighted them with one of the most hideous and
unearthly of all specimens of "riding music," and, moreover, with con-
siderable libations of whisky-punch, manufactured in a certain wooden
vessel, resembling a very small milkpail, which he called "Wisdom," be-
cause it "made" only a few spoonfuls of spirits, — though he had the art
of replenishing it so adroitly, that it had been celebrated for fifty years
as more fatal to sobriety than any bowl in the parish. Having done due
honour to "Wisdom," they again mounted, and proceeded over moss
and moor to some other equally hospitable master of the pipe. "Ah me,"
says Shortreed, "sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he then
had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring
and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsell to
everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsell the great
man, or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these
jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk — (this, however,
even in our wildest rambles, was rare) — but, drunk or sober, he was aye
the gentleman. He lookit excessively heavy and stupid when he was jou,
but he was never out o' gude humour." '

These are questionable doings, questionably narrated; but what
shall we say of the following, wherein the element of whisky plays
an extremely prominent part.'' We will say that it is questionable,
and not exemplary, whisky mounting clearly beyond its level; that
indeed charity hopes and conjectures here may be some aggravating
of features for effect's sake!

'On reaching, one evening, some Charlieshope or other (I forget the
name) among those wildernesses, they found a kindly reception, as
usual; but, to their agreeable surprise after some days of hard living, a
measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon after supper,
at which a bottle of elderberry-wine alone had been produced, a young
student of divinity, who happened to be in the house, was called upon
to take the "big ha' Bible," in the good old fashion of Burns's "Saturday
Night"; and some progress had been already made in the service, when
the good-man of the farm, whose "tendency," as Mr. Mitchell says, "was
soporific," scandalised his wife and the dominie by starting suddenly
from his knees, and, rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian exclamation of

"By , here's the keg at last!" and in tumbled, as he spoke the word,

' Loud tune: German, lallen.

4l6 THOMAS CARLYLE

a couple of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing a day before of the
advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain smuggler's
haunt, at some considerable distance, in quest of a supply of run brandy
from the Solway Frith. The pious "exercise" of the household was hope-
lessly interrupted. With a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby
entertainment, this jolly Elliot, or Armstrong, had the welcome /{eg
mounted on the table without a moment's delay; and gentle and simple,
not forgetting the dominie, continued carousing about it until daylight
streamed-in upon the party. Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw
him in company with his Liddesdale companion, to mimic with infinite
humour the sudden outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of
horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg — the con-
sternation of the dame — and the rueful despair with which the young
clergyman closed the book.'*

From which Liddesdale raids, which we here, like the young
clergyman, close not without a certain rueful despair, let the reader
draw what nourishment he can. They evince satisfactorily, though
in a rude manner, that in those days young advocates, and Scott
like the rest of them, were alive and alert, — whisky sometimes pre-
ponderating. But let us now fancy that the jovial young Advocate
has pleaded his first cause; has served in yeomanry drills; been
wedded, been promoted Sheriff, without romance in either case; dab-
bling a little the while, under guidance of Monk Lewis, in transla-
tions from the German, in translation of Goethe's Gotz with the
Iron Hand; — and we have arrived at the threshold of the Minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border, and the opening of a new century.

Hitherto, therefore, there has been made out, by Nature and Cir-
cumstance working together, nothing unusually remarkable, yet
still something very valuable; a stout effectual man of thirty, full
of broad sagacity and good humour, with faculties in him fit for
any burden of business, hospitality and duty, legal or civic: — with
what other faculties in him no one could yet say. As indeed, who,
after lifelong inspection, can say what is in any man? The uttered
part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered un-
conscious part a small unknown proportion; he himself never knows
it, much less do others. Give him room, give him impulse; he
reaches down to the Infinite with that so straitly-imprisoned soul
^Vol. i. pp. 195-199.

SIR WALTER SCOTT 417

of his; and can do miracles if need be! It is one of the comfortablest
truths that great men abound, though in the unknown state. Nay,
as above hinted, our greatest, being also by nature our quietest, are
perhaps those that remain unknown! Philosopher Fichte took com-
fort in this belief, when from all pulpits and editorial desks, and
publications periodical and stationary, he could hear nothing but
the infinite chattering and twittering of commonplace become am-
bitious; and in the infinite stir of motion nowhither, and of din which
should have been silence, all seemed churned into one tempestuous
yeasty froth, and the stern Fichte almost desired 'taxes on knowl-
edge' to allay it a little; — he comforted himself, we say, by the un-
shaken belief that Thought did still exist in Germany; that thinking
men, each in his own corner, were verily doing their work, though
in a silent manner.^

Walter Scott, as a latent Walter, had never amused all men for
a score of years in the course of centuries and eternities, or gained
and lost several hundred thousand pounds sterling by Literature;
but he might have been a happy and by no means a useless, — nay,
who knows at bottom whether not a still usefuler Walter! How-
ever, that was not his fortune. The Genius of rather a singular age,
— an age at once destitute of faith and terrified at scepticism, with
little knowledge of its whereabout, with many sorrows to bear or
front, and on the whole with a life to lead in these new circum-
stances, — had said to himself: What man shall be the temporary
comforter, or were it but the spiritual comfit-maker, of this my
poor singular age, to solace its dead tedium and manifold sorrows
a little.'' So had the Genius said, looking over all the world. What
man? and found him walking the dusty Outer Parliament-house
of Edinburgh, with his advocate-gown on his back; and exclaimed,
That is he!

The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border proved to be a well from
which flowed one of the broadest rivers. Metrical Romances (which
in due time pass into Prose Romances) ; the old life of men resus-
citated for us: it is a mighty word! Not as dead tradition, but as a
palpable presence, the past stood before us. There they were, the
'Fichte, Vber das Wesen des Gelehrten.

41 8 THOMAS CARLYLE

rugged old fighting men; in their doughty simpHcity and strength,
with their heartiness, their healthiness, their stout self-help, in their
iron basnets, leather jerkins, jack-boots, in their quaintness of man-
ner and costume; there as they looked and lived: it was like a new-
discovered continent in Literature; for the new century, a bright
El Dorado, — or else some fat beatific land of Cockaigne, and Para-
dise of Donothings. To the opening nineteenth century, in its lan-
guor and paralysis, nothing could have been welcomer. Most unex-
pected, most refreshing and exhilarating; behold our new El Do-
rado; our fat beatific Lubberland, where one can enjoy and do
nothing! It was the time for such a new Literature; and this Walter
Scott was the man for it. The Lays, the Marmions, the Ladys and
Lords of Lake and Isles, followed in quick succession, with ever-
widening profit and praise. How many thousands of guineas were
paid-down for each new Lay; how many thousands of copies (fifty
and more sometimes) were printed off, then and subsequently;
what complimenting, reviewing, renown and apotheosis there was:
all is recorded in these Seven Volumes, which will be valuable in
literary statistics. It is a. history, brilliant, remarkable; the outlines
of which are known to all. The reader shall recall it, or conceive it.
No blaze in his fancy is likely to mount higher than the reality did.
At this middle period of his life, therefore, Scott, enriched with
copyrights, with new official incomes and promotions, rich in money,
rich in repute, presents himself as a man in the full career of suc-
cess. 'Health, wealth, and wit to guide them' (as his vernacular
Proverb says), all these three are his. The field is open for him,
and victory there; his own faculty, his own self, unshackled, vic-
toriously unfolds itself, — the highest blessedness that can befall a
man. Wide circle of friends, personal loving admirers; warmth of
domestic joys, vouchsafed to all that can true-heartedly nestle down
among them; light of radiance and renown given only to a few:
who would not call Scott happy? But the happiest circumstance of
all is, as we said above, that Scott had in himself a right healthy
soul, rendering him little dependent on outward circumstances.
Things showed themselves to him not in distortion or borrowed
light or gloom, but as they were. Endeavour lay in him and endur-
ance, in due measure; and clear vision of what was to be endeav-

SIR WALTER SCOTT 419

oured after. Were one to preach a Sermon on Health, as really were
worth doing, Scott ought to be the text. Theories are demonstrably
true in the way of logic; and then in the way of practice they prove
true or else not true: but here is the grand experiment, Do they
turn-out well? What boots it that a man's creed is the wisest, that
his system of principles is the superfinest, if, when set to work, the
life of him does nothing but jar, and fret itself into holes? They are
untrue in that, were it in nothing else, these principles of his; openly
convicted of untruth; — fit only, shall we say, to be rejected as coun-
terfeits, and flung to the dogs? We say not that; but we do say,
that ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat, is battle (in a good or
in a bad cause) with bad success; that health alone is victory. Let
all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy! He who in
what cause soever sinks into pain and disease, let him take thought
of it; let him know well that it is not good he has arrived at yet, but
surely evil, — may, or may not be, on the way towards good.

Scott's healthiness showed itself decisively in all things, and no-
where more decisively than in this: the way in which he took his
fame; the estimate he from the first formed of fame. Money will
buy money's worth; but the thing men call fame, what is it? A
gaudy emblazonry, not good for much, — except, indeed, as it too
may turn to money. To Scott it was a profitable pleasing super-
fluity, no necessary of life. Not necessary, now or ever! Seemingly
without much effort, but taught by Nature, and the instinct which
instructs the sound heart what is good for it and what is not, he
felt that he could always do without this same emblazonry of repu-
tation; that he ought to put no trust in it; but be ready at any time
to see it pass away from him, and to hold on his way as before. It
is incalculable, as we conjecture, what evil he escaped in this man-
ner; what perversions, irritations, mean agonies without a name,
he lived wholly apart from, knew nothing of. Happily before fame
arrived, he had reached the mature age at which all this was easier
to him. What a strange Nemesis lurks in the felicities of men! In
thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey, in thy belly it shall be bitter
as gall! Some weakly-organised individual, we will say at the age
of five-and-twenty, whose main or whole talent rests on some
prurient susceptivity, and nothing under it but shallowness and

420 THOMAS CARLYLE

vacuum, is clutched hold of by the general imagination, is whirled
aloft to the giddy height; and taught to believe the divine-seeming
message that he is a great man: such individual seems the luckiest
of men: and, alas, is he not the unluckiest? Swallow not the Circe-
draught, O weakly-organised individual; it is fell poison; it will dry
up the fountains of thy whole existence, and all will grow withered
and parched; thou shalt be wretched under the sunl

Is there, for example, a sadder book than that Life of Byron by
Moore? To omit mere prurient susceptivities that rest on vaccum,
look at poor Byron, who really had much substance in him. Sitting
there in his self-exile, with a proud heart striving to persuade itself
that it despises the entire created Universe; and far off, in foggy
Babylon, let any pitifulest whipster draw pen on him, your proud
Byron writhes in torture, — as if the pitiful whipster were a ma-
gician, or his pen a galvanic wire struck into the Byron's spinal
marrow! Lamentable, despicable, — one had rather be a kitten and
cry mew! O son of Adam, great or little, according as thou art
lovable, those thou livest with will love thee. Those thou livest not
with, is it of moment that they have the alphabetic letters of thy name
engraved on their memory, with some signpost likeness of thee (as
like as I to Hercules) appended to them? It is not of moment; in
sober truth, not of any moment at all! And yet, behold, there is no
soul now whom thou canst love freely, — from one soul only art thou
always sure of reverence enough; in presence of no soul is it rightly
well with thee! How is thy world become desert; and thou, for the
sake of a little babblement of tongues, art poor, bankrupt, insolvent
not in purse, but in heart and mind! 'The Golden Calf of self-love,'
says Jean Paul, 'has grown into a burning Phalaris' Bull, to consume
its owner and worshipper.' Ambition, the desire of shining and
outshining, was the beginning of Sin in this world. The man of
letters who founds upon his fame, does he not thereby alone declare
himself a follower of Lucifer (named Satan, the Enemy), and
member of the Satanic school?

It was in this poetic period that Scott formed his connexion with
the Ballantynes; and embarked, though under cover, largely in
trade. To those who regard him in the heroic light, and will have

SIR WALTER SCOTT 42 1

Vates to signify Prophet as well as Poet, this portion of his biography
seems somewhat incongruous. Viewed as it stood in the reality, as
he was and as it was, the enterprise, since it proved so unfortunate,
may be called lamentable, but cannot be called unnatural. The prac-
tical Scott, looking towards practical issues in all things, could not but
find hard cash one of the most practical. If by any means cash could
be honestly produced, were it by writing poems, were it by printing
them, why not? Great things might be done ultimately; great diffi-
culties were at once got rid of, — manifold higglings of booksellers,
and contradictions of sinners hereby fell away. A printing and book-
selling speculation was not so alien for a maker of books. Voltaire,
who indeed got no copyrights, made much money by the war-com-
missariat, in his time; we believe, by the victualling branch of it.
St. George himself, they say, was a dealer in bacon in Cappadocia.
A thrifty man will help himself towards his object by such steps
as lead to it. Station in society, solid power over the good things of
this world, was Scott's avowed object; towards which the precept of
precepts is that of lago. Put money in thy purse.

Here, indeed, it is to be remarked, that perhaps no literary man
of any generation has less value than Scott for the immaterial part
of his mission in any sense: not only for the fantasy called fame,
with the fantastic miseries attendant thereon; but also for the spir-
itual purport of his work, whether it tended hitherward or thither-
ward, or had any tendency whatever; and indeed for all purports
and results of his working, except such, we may say, as offered them-
selves to the eye, and could, in one sense or the other, be handled,
looked at and buttoned into the breeches-pocket. Somewhat too
little of a fantast, this Vates of ours! But so it was: in this nineteenth
century, our highest literary man, who immeasurably beyond all
others commanded the world's ear, had, as it were, no message
whatever to deliver to the world; wished not the world to elevate
itself, to amend itself, to do this or to do that, except simply pay
him for the books he kept writing. Very remarkable; fittest, perhaps,
for an age fallen languid, destitute of faith and terrified at scepti-
cism.? Or, perhaps, for quite another sort of age, an age all in peace-
able triumphant motion ? Be this as it may, surely since Shakspeare's
time there has been no great speaker so unconscious of an aim in

422 THOMAS CARLYLE

speaking as Walter Scott. Equally unconscious these two utterances:
equally the sincere complete products of the minds they came from:
and now if they were equally deep? Or, if the one was living fire,
and the other was futile phosphorescence and mere resinous fire-
work? It will depend on the relative worth of the minds; for both
were equally spontaneous, both equally expressed themselves unen-
cumbered by an ulterior aim. Beyond drawing audiences to the
Globe Theatre, Shakspeare contemplated no result in those plays
of his. Yet they have had results! Utter with free heart what thy
own dcemon gives thee: if fire from heaven, it shall be well; if
resinous firework, it shall be — as well as it could be, or better than
otherwise!

The candid judge will, in general, require that a speaker, in so
extremely serious a Universe as this of ours, have something to speak
about. In the heart of the speaker there ought to be some kind of
gospel-tidings, burning till it be uttered; otherwise it were better
for him that he altogether held his peace. A gospel somewhat more
decisive than this of Scott's, — except to an age altogether languid,
without either scepticism or faith! These things the candid judge
will demand of literary men; yet withal will recognise the great
worth there is in Scott's honesty if in nothing more, in his being the
thing he was with such entire good faith. Here is a something, not
a nothing. If no skyborn messenger, heaven looking through his eyes;
then neither is it a chimera with his systems, crotchets, cants, fanati-
cisms, and 'last infirmity of noble minds,' — full of misery, unrest
and ill-will; but a substantial, peaceable, terrestrial man. Far as the
Earth is under the Heaven does Scott stand below the former sort
of character; but high as the cheerful flowery Earth is above waste
Tartarus does he stand above the latter. Let him live in his own
fashion, and do honour to him in that.

It were late in the day to write criticisms on those Metrical Ro-
mances : at the same time, we may remark, the great popularity they
had seems natural enough. In the first place, there was the indis-
putable impress of worth, of genuine human force, in them. This,
which lies in some degree, or is thought to lie, at the bottom of all
popularity, did to an unusual degree disclose itself in these rhymed
romances of Scott's. Pictures were actually painted and presented;

SIR WALTER SCOTT 423

human emotions conceived and sympathised with. Considering
what wretched Della-Cruscan and other vamping-up of old worn-
out tatters was the staple article then, it may be granted that Scott's
excellence was superior and supreme. When a Hayley was the main
singer, a Scott might well be hailed with warm welcome. Consider
whether the Loves of the Plants, and even the Loves of the Tri-
angles, could be worth the loves and hates of men and women!
Scott was as preferable to what he displaced, as the substance is to
wearisomely repeated shadow of a substance.

But, in the second place, we may say that the J^ind of worth which
Scott manifested was fitted especially for the then temper of men.
We have called it an age fallen into spiritual languor, destitute of
belief, yet terrified at Scepticism; reduced to live a stinted half-life,
under strange new circumstances. Now vigorous whole-life, this
was what of all things these delineations offered. The reader was
carried back to rough strong times, wherein those maladies of ours
had not yet arisen. Brawny fighters, all cased in buff and iron, their
hearts too sheathed in oak and triple brass, caprioled their huge war-
horses, shook their death-doing spears; and. went forth in the most
determined manner, nothing doubting. The reader sighed, yet not
without a reflex solacement: "O, that I too had lived in those
times, had never known these logic-cobwebs, this doubt, this sickli-
ness; and been and felt myself alive among men alive!" Add lastly,
that in this new-found poetic world there was no call for effort on
the reader's part; what excellence they had, exhibited itself at a
glance. It was for the reader, not the El Dorado only, but a beatific
land of Cockaigne and Paradise of Donothings! The reader, what
the vast majority of readers so long to do, was allowed to lie down
at his ease, and be ministered to. What the Turkish bathkeeper is
said to aim at with his frictions, and shampooings, and fomentings,
more or less effectually, that the patient in total idleness may have
the delights of activity, — was here to a considerable extent realised.
The languid imagination fell back into its rest; an artist was there
who could supply it with high-painted scenes, with sequences of
stirring action, and whisper to it, Be at ease, and let thy tepid element
be comfortable to thee. 'The rude man,' says a critic, 'requires only
to see something going on. The man of more refinement must be

424 THOMAS CARLYLE

made to feel. The man of complete refinement must be made to
reflect.'

We named the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border the fountain from
which flowed this great river of Metrical Romances; but according
to some they can be traced to a still higher, obscurer spring; to
Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand; of which, as
we have seen, Scott in his earlier days executed a translation. Dated
a good many years ago, the following words in a criticism on Goethe
are found written; which probably are still new to most readers of
this Review:

'The works just mentioned, Gotz and Werter, though noble specimens
of youthful talent, are still not so much distinguished by their intrinsic
merits as by their splendid fortune. It would be difficult to name two
books which have exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent litera-
ture of Europe than these two performances of a young author; his first-
fruits, the produce of his twenty-fourth year. Werter appeared to seize
the hearts of men in all quarters of the world, and to utter for them the
word which they had long been waiting to hear. As usually happens
too, this same word, once uttered, was soon abundantly repeated; spoken
in all dialects, and chanted through all notes of the gamut, till the sound
of it had grown a weariness rather than a pleasure. Sceptical senti-
mentality, view-hunting, love, friendship, suicide and desperation, be-
came the staple of literary ware; and though the epidemic, after a long
course of years, subsided in Germany, it reappeared with various modi-
fications in other countries, and everywhere abundant traces of its good
and bad effects are still to be discerned. The fortune of Berlichingen
with the Iron Hand, though less sudden, was by no means less exalted.
In his own country, Gotz, though he now stands solitary and childless,
became the parent of an innumerable progeny of chivalry plays, feudal
delineations, and poetico-antiquarian performances; which, though long
ago deceased, made noise enough in their day and generation: and with
ourselves his influence has been perhaps still more remarkable. Sir Walter
Scott's first literary enterprise was a translation of Gotz von Berlichingen:
and, if genius could be communicated like instruction, we might call
this work of Goethe's the prime cause of Marmion and the Lady of the
La\e, with all that has followed from the same creative hand. Truly,
a grain of seed that has lighted in the right soil! For if not firmer and
fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all
the nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its fruit.'

How far Gotz von Berlichingen actually affected Scott's literary
destination, and whether without it the rhymed romances, and then

SIR WALTER SCOTT 425

the prose romances of the Author of Waverley, would not have fol-
lowed as they did, must remain a very obscure question; obscure and
not important. Of the fact, however, there is no doubt, that these
two tendencies, which may be named Gotzism and Werterism, of
the former of which Scott was representative with us, have made,
and are still in some quarters making the tour of all Europe. In
Germany too there was this affectionate half-regretful looking-back
into the Past; Germany had its buff -belted watch-tower period in
literature, and had even got done with it before Scott began. Then
as to Werterism, had not we English our Byron and his genus? No
form of Werterism in any other country had half the potency; as
our Scott carried Chivalry Literature to the ends of the world, so
did our Byron Werterism. France, busy with its Revolution and
Napoleon, had little leisure at the moment for Gotzism or Werter-
ism; but it has had them both since, in a shape of its own: witness
the whole 'Literature of Desperation' in our own days; the beggar-
liest form of Werterism yet seen, probably its expiring final form:
witness also, at the other extremity of the scale, a noble-gifted
Chateaubriand, Gotz and Werter both in one. — Curious : how all
Europe is but like a set of parishes of the same county; participant
of the self -same influences, ever since the Crusades, and earlier; —
and these glorious wars of ours are but like parish-brawls, which
begin in mutual ignorance, intoxication and boastful speech; which
end in broken windows, damage, waste and bloody noses; and which
one hopes the general good sense is now in the way towards putting
down, in some measure!

But leaving this to be as it can, what it concerned us here to
remark, was that British Werterism, in the shape of those Byron
Poems, so potent and poignant, produced on the languid appetite of
men a mighty effect. This too was a 'class of feelings deeply impor-
tant to modern minds; feelings which arise from passion incapable
of being converted into action, which belong to an age as indolent,
cultivated and unbelieving as our own'! The 'languid age without
either faith or scepticism' turned towards Byronism with an interest
altogether peculiar: here, if no cure for its miserable paralysis and
languor, was at least an indignant statement of the misery; an indig-
nant Ernulphus' curse read over it, — which all men felt to be some-

426 THOMAS CARLYLE

thing. Half-regretful lockings in the Past gave place, in many
quarters, to Ernulphus' cursings of the Present. Scott was among
the first to perceive that the day of Metrical Chivalry Romances was
declining. He had held the sovereignty for some half-score of
years, a comparatively long lease of it; and now the time seemed
come for dethronement, for abdication: an unpleasant business;
which however he held himself ready, as a brave man will, to
transact with composure and in silence. After all. Poetry was not
his staff of life; Poetry had already yielded him much money; this
at least it would not take back from him. Busy always with edit-
ing, with compiling, with multiplex official commercial business,
and solid interests, he beheld the coming change with unmoved
eye.

Resignation he was prepared to exhibit in this matter; — and now
behold there proved to be no need of resignation. Let the Metrical
Romance become a Prose one; shake off its rhyme-fetters, and try
a wider sweep! In the spring of 1814 appeared Waverley; an event
memorable in the annals of British Literature; in the annals of
British Bookselling thrice and four times memorable. Byron sang,
but Scott narrated; and when the song had sung itself out through
all variations onwards to the Don Juan one, Scott was still found
narrating, and carrying the whole world along with him. All by-
gone popularity of chivalry-lays was swallowed up in a far greater.
What 'series' followed out of Waverley, and how and with what
result, is known to all men; was witnessed and watched with a kind
of rapt astonishment by all. Hardly any literary reputation ever rose
so high in our Island; no reputation at all ever spread so wide.
Walter Scott became Sir Walter Scott, Baronet, of Abbotsford; on
whom Fortune seemed to pour her whole cornucopia of wealth,
honour and worldly goods; the favourite of Princes and of Peasants,
and all intermediate men. His 'Waverley series,' swift-following one
on the other apparently without end, was the universal reading;
looked for like an annual harvest, by all ranks, in all European
countries.

A curious circumstance superadded itself, that the author though
known was unknown. From the first most people suspected, and
soon after the first, few intelligent persons much doubted, that the

SIR WALTER SCOTT 427

Author of Waverley was Walter Scott. Yet a certain mystery was
still kept up; rather piquant to the public; doubtless very pleasant
to the author, who saw it all; who probably had not to listen, as
other hapless individuals often had, to this or the other long-drawn
'clear proof at last,' that the author was not Walter Scott, but a certain
astonishing Mr. So-and-so; — one of the standing miseries of human
life in that time. But for the privileged Author it was like a king
travelling incognito. All men know that he is a high king, chival-
rous Gustaf or Kaiser Joseph; but he mingles in their meetings
without cumber of etiquette or lonesome ceremony, as Chevalier du
Nord, or Count of Lorraine: he has none of the weariness of roy-
alty, and yet all the praise, and the satisfaction of hearing it with
his own ears. In a word, the Waverley Novels circulated and
reigned triumphant; to the general imagination the 'Author of
Waverley' was like some living mythological personage, and ranked
among the chief wonders of the world.

How a man lived and demeaned himself in such unwonted cir-
cumstances, is worth seeing. We would gladly quote from Scott's
correspondence of this period; but that does not much illustrate the
matter. His letters, as above stated, are never without interest, yet
also seldom or never very interesting. They are full of cheerfulness,
of wit and ingenuity; but they do not treat of aught intimate;
without impeaching their sincerity, what is called sincerity, one
may say they do not, in any case whatever, proceed from the inner-
most parts of the mind. Conventional forms, due consideration of
your own and your correspondents' pretensions and vanities, are at
no moment left out of view. The epistolary stream runs on, lucid,
free, gladflowing; but always, as it were, parallel to the real sub-
stance of the matter, never coincident with it. One feels it hollowish
under foot. Letters they are of a most humane man of the world,
even exemplary in that kind; but with the man of the world always
visible in them; — as indeed it was little in Scott's way to speak,
perhaps even with himself, in any other fashion. We select rather
some glimpses of him from Mr. Lockhart's record. The first is of
dining with Royalty or Prince-Regentship itself; an almost official
matter:

428 THOMAS CARLYLE

'On hearing from Mr. Croker (then Secretary to the Admiralty) that
Scott was to be in town by the middle of March (1815), the Prince said,
"Let me know when he comes, and I'll get-up a snug little dinner that
will suit him;" and after he had been presented and graciously received
at the levee, he was invited to dinner accordingly, through his excellent
friend Mr. Adam (now Lord Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court in
Scotland), who at that time held a confidential office in the royal house-
hold. The Regent had consulted with Mr. Adam, also, as to the com-
position of the party. "Let us have," said he, "just a few friends of his
own, and the more Scotch the better;" and both the Commissioner and
Mr. Croker assure me that the party was the most interesting and agree-
able one in their recollection. It comprised, I believe, the Duke of York —
the Duke of Gordon (then Marquess of Huntly) — the Marquess of
Hertford (then Lord Yarmouth) — the Earl of Fife — and Scott's early
friend. Lord Melville. "The Prince and Scott," says Mr. Croker, "were
the two most brilliant story-tellers, in their several ways, that I have ever
happened to meet; they were both aware of their forte, and both exerted
themselves that evening with delightful effect. On going home, I really
could not decide which of them had shone the most. The Regent was
enchanted with Scott, as Scott with him; and on all his subsequent visits
to London, he was a frequent guest at the royal table." The Lord Chief
Commissioner remembers that the Prince was particularly delighted with
the poet's anecdotes of the old Scotch judges and lawyers, which his
Royal Highness sometimes capped by ludicrous traits of certain ermine
sages of his own acquaintance. Scott told, among others, a story, which
he was fond of telling, of his old friend the Lord Justice-Clerk Braxfield;
and the commentary of his Royal Highness on hearing it amused Scott,
who often mentioned it afterwards. The anecdote is this: Braxfield,
whenever he went on a particular circuit was in the habit of visiting
a gentleman of good fortune in the neighbourhood of one of the assize
towns, and staying at least one night, which, being both of them ardent
chess-players, they usually concluded with their favourite game. One
Spring circuit the battle was not decided at daybreak; so the Justice-
Clerk said, "Weel, Donald, I must e'en come back this gate, and let the
game lie ower for the present:" and back he came in October, but not to
his old friend's hospitable house; for that gentleman had in the interim
been apprehended on a capital charge (of forgery), and his name stood
on the Porteous Roll, or list of those who were about to be tried under
his former guest's auspices. The laird was indicted and tried accord-
ingly, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Braxfield forthwith put
on his cocked hat (which answers to the black cap in England), and
pronounced the sentence of the law in the usual terms — "To be hanged
by the neck until you be dead; and may the Lord have mercy upon your

SIR WALTER SCOTT 429

unhappy soul!" Having concluded this awful formula in his most
sonorous cadence, Braxfield, dismounting his formidable beaver, gave a
familiar nod to his unfortunate acquaintance, and said to him in a sort
of chuckling whisper, "And now, Donald my man, I think I've check-
mated you for ance." The Regent laughed heartily at this specimen of
Macqueen's brutal humour; and "F faith, Walter," said he, "this old
big-wig seems to have taken things as coolly as my tyrannical self. Don't
you remember Tom Moore's description of me at breakfast —

"The table spread with tea and toast.
Death-warrants and the Morning Post?"

'Towards midnight the Prince called for "a bumper, with all the
honours, to the Author of Waverley"; and looked significantly, as he
was charging his own glass, to Scott. Scott seemed somewhat puzzled
for a moment, but instantly recovering himself, and filling his glass to
the brim, said, "Your Royal Highness looks as if you thought I had
some claim to the honours of this toast. I have no such pretensions; but
shall take good care that the real Simon Pure hears of the high compli-
ment that has now been paid him." He then drank-ofi his claret; and
joined with a stentorian voice in the cheering, which the Prince himself
timed. But before the company could resunie their seats, his Royal
Highness, "Another of the same, if you please, to the Author of Mar-
mion, — and now, Walter my man, I have checkmated you for ance."
The second bumper was followed by cheers still more prolonged: and
Scott then rose, and returned thanks in a short address, which struck the
Lord Chief Commissioner as "alike grave and graceful." This story has
been circulated in a very perverted shape.' * * * 'Before he left town he
again dined at Carlton House, when the party was a still smaller one
than before, and the merriment if possible still more free. That nothing
might be wanting, the Prince sang several capital songs.' *

Or take, at a very great interval in many senses, this glimpse of
another dinner, altogether ««ofEcialIy and much better described.
It is James Ballantyne the printer and publisher's dinner, in St. John
Street, Canongate, Edinburgh, on the birth-eve of a Waverley
Novel:

'The feast was, to use one of James's own favourite epithets, gorgeous;
an aldermanic display of turde and venison, with the suitable accompani-
ments of iced punch, potent ale, and generous Madeira. When the cloth
was drawn, the burly praeses arose, with all he could master of the port
*Vol. iii. pp. 340-343.

430 THOMAS CARLYLE

of John Kemble, and spouted with a sonorous voice the formula o£
Macbeth,

"Fill full!
I drink to the general joy of the whole table!"

This was followed by "the King, God bless him!" and second came —
"Gentlemen, there is another toast which never has been nor shall be
omitted in this house of mine: I give you the health of Mr. Walter Scott,
with three times three!" All honour having been done to this health,
and Scott having briefly thanked the company, with some expressions of
warm aflection to their host, Mrs. Ballantyne retired; — the bottles passed
round twice or thrice in the usual way; and then James rose once more,
every vein on his brow distended; his eyes solemnly fixed on vacancy, to
propose, not as before in his stentorian key, but with " 'bated breath," in
the sort of whisper by which a stage-conspirator thrills the gallery, —
"Gentlemen, a bumper to the immortal Author of Waverleyl" — The up-
roar of cheering, in which Scott made a fashion of joining, was succeeded
by deep silence; and then Ballantyne proceeded —

"In his Lord-Burleigh look, serene and serious,
A something of imposing and mysterious" —

to lament the obscurity, in which his illustrious but too modest corre-
spondent still chose to conceal himself from the plaudits of the world;
to thank the company for the manner in which the nominis umbra had
been received; and to assure them that the Author of Waverley would,
when informed of the circumstance, feel highly delighted — "the proudest
hour of his life," etc., etc. The cool, demure fun of Scott's features
during all this mummery was perfect; and Erskine's attempt at a gay
nonchalance was still more ludicrously meritorious. Aldiborontiphos-
cophornio, however, bursting as he was, knew too well to allow the new
Novel to be made the subject of discussion. Its name was announced,
and success to it crowned another cup; but after that, no more of Jede-
diah. To cut the thread, he rolled out unbidden some one of his many
theatrical songs, in a style that would have done no dishonour to almost
any orchestra — The Maid of Lodi, or perhaps The Bay of Biscay, 01 —
or The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft.. Other toasts followed,
interspersed with ditties from other performers; old George Thomson,
the friend of Burns, was ready, for one, with The Moorland Wedding, or
Willie brew'd a pec\ o' maut; — and so it went on, until Scott and
Erskine, with any clerical or very staid personage that had chanced to be
admitted, saw fit to withdraw. Then the scene was changed. The claret
and olives made way for broiled bones and a mighty bowl of punch; and
when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his powers, James
opened ore rotundo on the merits of the forthcoming Romance. "One
chapter — one chapter only!" was the cry. After "Nay by'r Lady, nay I"

SIR WALTER SCOTT 43 1

and a few more coy shifts, the proof<-sheets were at length produdetl, and
James, with many a prefatory "hem," read aloud what he considered as
the most striking dialogue they contained.

'The first I heard so read was the interview between Jeanie Deans, the
Duke of Argyle and Queen Caroline, in Richmond Park; and, notwith-
standing some spice of the pompous tricks to which he was addicted, I
must say he did the inimitable scene great justice. At all events, the
effect it produced was deep and memorable; and no wonder that the
exulting typographer's one bumper more to ]edediah Cleishbotham pre-
ceded his parting-stave, which was uniformly The Last Words of Mar-
mion, executed certainly with no contemptible rivalry of Braham.' '

Over at Abbotsford things wear a still more prosperous aspect.
Scott is building there, by the pleasant banks of the Tweed; he has
bought and is buying land there; fast as the new gold comes in for
a new Waverley Novel, or even faster, it changes itself into moory
acres, into stone, and hewn or planted wood.

'About the middle of February' (1820), says Mr. Lockhart, 'it having
been ere that time arranged that I should marry his eldest daughter in
the course of the spring, — I accompanied him and part of his family
on one of those flying visits to Abbotsford, with which he often indulged
himself on a Saturday during term. Upon such occasions, Scott appeared
at the usual hour in court, but wearing, instead of the official suit of
black, his country morning-dress, green jacket and so forth, under the
clerk's gown' — 'At noon, when the Court broke up, Peter Mathieson was
sure to be in attendance in the Parliament Close; and, five minutes after,
the gown had been tossed off; and Scott, rubbing his hands for glee, was
under weigh for Tweedside. As we proceeded,' etc.

'Next morning there appeared at breakfast John Ballantyne, who had
at this time a shooting or hunting-box a few miles off, in the vale of the
Leader, and with him Mr. Constable, his guest; and it being a fine clear
day, as soon as Scott had read the church-service and one of Jeremy
Taylor's sermons, we all sallied out before noon on a perambulation of
his upland territories; Maida (the hound) and the rest of the favourites
accompanying our march. At starting we were joined by the constant
henchman, Tom Purdie, — and I may save myself the trouble of any
attempt to describe his appearance, for his master has given us an in-
imitably true one in introducing a certain personage of his Red-
gauntlet: — "He was, perhaps, sixty years old; yet his brow was not much
furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, by the
advance of age. All his motions spoke strength unabated; and, though
rather undersized, he had very broad shoulders, was square-made, thin-
'Vol. iv. pp. 166-168.

432 THOMAS CARLYLE

flanked, and apparently combined in his frame muscular strength and
activity; the last somewhat impaired, perhaps, by years, but the first
remaining in full vigor. A hard and harsh countenance; eyes far sunk
under projecting eyebrows, which were grizzled like his hair; a wide
mouth, furnished from ear to ear with a range of unimpaired teeth
of uncommon whiteness, and a size and breadth which might have be-
come the jaws of an ogre, completed this delightful portrait." Equip this
figure in Scott's cast-ofi green jacket, white hat and drab trousers; and
imagine that years of kind treatment, comfort and the honest conse-
quence of a confidential grieve^ had softened away much of the hardness
and harshness originally impressed on the visage by anxious penury, and
the sinister habits of a blac^-fisher; — and the Tom Purdie of 1820 stands
before us.

'We were all delighted to see how completely Scott had recovered his
bodily vigour, and none more so than Constable, who, as he puffed and
panted after him, up one ravine and down another, often stopped to
wipe his forehead, and remarked, that "it was not every author who
should lead him such a dance." But Purdie's face shone with rapture as
he observed how severely the swag-bellied bookseller's activity was tasked.
Scott exclaimed exultingly, though, perhaps, for the tenth time, "This
will be a glorious spring for our trees, Tom!" — "You may say that.
Sheriff," quoth Tom, — and then lingering a moment for Constable —
"My certy," he added, scratching his head, "and I think it will be a grand
season for our builds too.'' But indeed Tom always talked of our buikj,
as if they had been as regular products of the soil as our aits and our
bir\s. Having threaded first the Hexilcleugh and then the Rhymer's
Glen, we arrived at Huntly Burn, where the hospitality of the kind
Weird Sisters, as Scott called the Miss Fergusons, reanimated our ex-
hausted bibliopoles, and gave them courage to extend their walk a litde
farther down the same famous brook. Here there was a small cottage in
a very sequestered situation' (named Chiefswood), 'by making some
litde additions to which Scott thought it might be converted into a
suitable summer residence for his daughter and future son-in-law.'
* * * 'As we walked homeward, Scott being a litde fatigued, laid his
left hand on Tom's shoulder, and leaned heavily for support, chatting
to his "Sunday pony," as he called the affectionate fellow, just as freely
as with the rest of the party; and Tom put-in his word shrewdly and
manfully, and grinned and grunted whenever the joke chanced to be
within his apprehension. It was easy to see that his heart swelled within
him from the moment the Sheriff got his collar in his gripe.' °

That Abbotsford became infested to a great degree with tourists,
wonder-hunters, and all that fatal species of people, may be sup-

' Overseer; German, graf. ^ Vol. iv. pp. 349-353.

SIR WALTER SCOTT 433

posed. Solitary Ettrick saw itself populous: all paths were beaten
with the feet and hoofs of an endless miscellany of pilgrims. As
many as 'sixteen parties' have arrived at Abbotsford in one day;
male and female; peers, Socinian preachers, whatsoever was distin-
guished, whatsoever had love of distinction in it! Mr. Lockhart
thinks there was no literary shrine ever so bepilgrimed, except Fer-
ney in Voltaire's time, who, however, was not half so accessible. A
fatal species! These are what Schiller calls the 'flesh-flies'; buzzing
swarms of bluebottles, who never fail where any taint of human
glory or other corruptibility is in the wind. So has Nature decreed.
Scott's healthiness, bodily and mental, his massive solidity of char-
acter, nowhere showed itself more decisively than in his manner
of encountering this part of his fate. That his bluebottles were blue,
and of the usual tone and quality, may be judged. Hear Captain
Basil Hall (in a very compressed state) :

'We arrived in good time, and found several other guests at dinner.
The public rooms are lighted with oil-gas, in a style of extraordinary
splendour. The' etc. — 'Had I a hundred pens, each of which at the
same time should separately write down an anecdote, I could not hope
to record one half of those which our host, to use Spenser's expression,
"welled out alway." ' — 'Entertained us all the way with an endless string
of anecdotes;' — 'came like a stream of poetry from his lips;' — 'path
muddy and scarcely passable, yet I do not remember ever to have seen
any place so interesting as the skill of this mighty magician had rendered
this narrow ravine.' — 'Impossible to touch on any theme, but straightway
he has an anecdote to fit it.' — 'Thus we strolled along, borne, as it were,
on the stream of song and story.' — 'In the evening we had a great feast
indeed. Sir Walter asked us if we had ever read Christabel.' — 'Inter-
spersed with these various readings were some hundreds of stories, some
quaint, some pathetical.' — 'A breakfast today we had, as usual, some 150
stories — God knows how they came in.' — 'In any man so gifted — so
qualified to take the loftiest, proudest line at the head of the literature,
the taste, the imagination of the whole world!' — 'For instance, he never
sits at any particular place at table, but takes' etc. etc.'"

Among such worshippers, arriving in 'sixteen parties a-day,' an
ordinary man might have grown buoyant; have felt the god, begun
to nod, and seemed to shake the spheres. A slightly splenetic man,
possessed of Scott's sense, would have swept his premises clear of

'"Vol. V. pp. 375-402.

434 THOMAS CARLYLE

them: Let no blue bottle approach here, to disturb a man in his
work, — under pain of sugared squash (called quassia) and king's
yellow! The good Sir Walter, like a quiet brave man, did neither.
He let the matter take its course; enjoyed what was enjoyable in it;
endured what could not well be helped; persisted meanwhile in
writing his daily portion of romance-copy, in preserving his com-
posure of heart; — in a word, accommodated himself to this loud-
buzzing environment, and made it serve him, as he would have
done (perhaps with more ease) to a silent, poor and solitary one.
No doubt it affected him too, and in the lamentable way fevered
his internal life, though he kept it well down; but it affected him
less than it would have done almost any other man. For his guests
were not all of the bluebottle sort; far from that. Mr. Lockhart
shall furnish us with the brightest aspect a British Ferney ever
yielded, or is like to yield: and therewith we will quit Abbotsford
and the dominant and culminant period of Scott's life:

'It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness in the air
that doubled the animating influence of the sunshine, and all was in
readiness for a grand coursing-match on Newark Hill. The only guest
who had chalked-out other sport for himself was the stanchest of anglers,
Mr. Rose; but he too was there on his shelty, armed with his salmon-rod
and landing-net, and attended by his Hinves, and Charlie Purdie, a
brother of Tom, in those days the most celebrated fisherman of the
district. This little group of Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's
preserve, remamed lounging about, to witness the start of the main
cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sibyl, was marshalling the order of
procession with a huge hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome
youths and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline,
appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in
the troop. Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. WoUaston, and the patriarch of
Scottish belles-lettres, Henry Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, however,
was persuaded with some difficulty to resign his steed for the present to
his faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the sociable, until
we should reach the ground of our battue. Laidlaw, on a strong-tailed
wiry Highlander, yclept Hoddin Grey, which carried him nimbly and
stoutly, although his feet almost touched the ground as he sat, was the
adjutant. But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor of
the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of angling, and
had been practising it successfully with Rose, his travelling companion,
for two or three days preceding this; but he had not prepared for coursing

SIR WALTER SCOTT 435

fields, or had left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir Walter's on a sudden
thought, and his fisherman's costume — a brown hat with flexible brim,
surrounded with line upon line of catgut, and innumerable fly-hooks —
jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled
with the blood of salmon, made a fine contrast with the smart jackets,
white-cord breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less distin-
guished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was in black; and with his
noble serene dignity of countenance might have passed for a sporting
archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie, at this time in the 76th year of his age,
with a white hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green jacket, and
long brown leathern gaiters, buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a
dog-whistle round his neck, and had, all over, the air of as resolute a
devotee as the gay captain of Huntly Burn. Tom Purdie and his subal-
terns had preceded us by a few hours with all the greyhounds that could
be collected at Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant Maida
had remained as his master's orderly, and now gambolled about Sibyl
Grey, barking for mere joy like a spaniel puppy.

"The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable was just
getting under weigh, when the Lady Anne broke from the line, scream-
ing with laughter, and exclaimed, "Papa, papa, I knew you could never
think of going without your pet!" Scott looked round, and I rather
think there was a blush as well as a smile upon his face, when he per-
ceived a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a self-
elected addition to the party of the day. He tried to look stern, and
cracked his whip at the creature, but was in a moment obliged to join in
the general cheers. Poor piggy soon found a strap round its neck, and was
dragged into the background; — Scott, watching the retreat, repeated
with mock pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song —

"What will I do gin my hoggie die?

My joy, my pride, my hoggie!
My only beast, I had na mae.
And wow! but I was vogie!"

— the cheers were redoubled — and the squadron moved on.

'This pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental
attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its pretensions to be
admitted a regular member of his tail along with the greyhounds and
terriers: but, indeed, I remember him suffering another summer under
the same sort of pertinacity on the part of an affectionate hen. I leave
the explanation for philosophers; — but such were the facts. I have too
much respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey, to name him in the
same category of pets with the pig and the hen; but a year or two after
this time, my wife used to drive a couple of these animals in a little
garden-chair, and whenever her father appeared at the door of our cot-

436 THOMAS CARLYLE

tage, we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne
Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their pasture, to lay
their noses over the paling, and, as Washington Irving says of the old
white-haired hedger with the Parisian snuff-box, "to have a pleasant
crack wi' the laird." "

'There' at Chiefswood 'my wife and I spent this summer and autumn
of 1 821; the first of several seasons which will ever dwell on my memory
as the happiest of my life. We were near enough Abbotsford to partake
as often as we liked of its brilliant and constantly varying society; yet
could do so without being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit
which the daily reception of newcomers entailed upon all the family,
except Sir Walter himself. But, in truth, even he was not always proof
against the annoyances connected with such a style of open house-

'' Vol. V. pp. 7-10.

On this subject let us report an anecdote furnished by a correspondent of our own,
whose accuracy we can depend on: 'I myself was acquainted with a litde Blenheim
cocker, one of the smallest, beautifulest and wisest of lap-dogs or dogs, which,
though Sir Walter knew it not, was very singular in its behaviour towards him.
Shandy, so hight this remarkable cocker, was extremely shy of strangers: promenad-
ing on Princes Street, which in fine weather used to be crowded in those days, he
seemed to live in perpetual fear of being stolen; if any one but looked at him ad-
miringly, he would draw-back with angry timidity, and crouch towards his own lady-
mistress. One day, a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting by; the little
dog ran towards him, began fawning, frisking, licking at his feet: it was Sir Walter
Scott! Had Shandy been the. most extensive reader of Reviews, he could not have
done better. Every time he saw Sir Walter afterwards, which was some three or
four times in the course of visiting Edinburgh, he repeated his demonstrations, ran
leaping, frisking, licking the author of Waverley's feet. The good Sir Walter en-
dured it with good humour; looked down at the little wise face, at the silky shag-
coat of snow-white and chestnut-brown; smiled, and avoided hitting him as they
went on, — till a new division of streets or some other obstacle put an end to the
interview. In fact, he was a strange litde fellow, this Shandy. He has been known
to sit for hours looking out at the summer moon, with the saddest, wistfulest expres-
sion of countenance; altogether like a Werterean Poet. He would have been a poet,
I daresay, if he could have found a publisher. But his moral tact was the most
amazing. Without reason shown, without word spoken, or act done, he took his
likings and dislikings; unalterable; really almost unerring. His chief aversion, I
should say, was to the genus quack., above all, to the genus acrid-quack., these, though
never so clear-starched, bland-smiling and beneficent, he absolutely would have no
trade with. Their very sugar-cake was unavailing. He said with emphasis, as clearly
as barking could say it: "Acrid-quack, avaunt!" Would to Heaven many a prime-
minister and high-person in authority had such an invaluable talent! On the whole,
there is more in this universe than our philosophy has dreamt of. A dog's instinct
is a voice of Nature too; and farther, it has never babbled itself away in idle jargon
and hypothesis, but always adhered to the practical, and grown in silence by contin-
ual communion with fact. We do the aninnals injustice. Their body resembles our
body, Buffon says; with its four limbs, with its spinal marrow, main organs in the
head, and so forth: but have they not a kind of soul, equally the rude draught and
imperfect imitation of ours.? It is a strange, an almost solemn and pathetic thing to
see an intelligence imprisoned in that dumb rude form; struggling to express itself
out of that; — even as we do out of our imprisonment; and succeed very imperfectly!'

SIR WALTER SCOTT 437

keeping. Even his temper sank sometimes under the solemn applauses
of learned dulness, the vapid raptures of painted and periwigged dow-
agers, the horse-leech avidity with which underbred foreigners urged
their questions, and the pompous simpers of condescending magnates.
When sore beset at home in this way, he would every now and then
discover that he had some very particular business to attend to on an
outlying part of his estate; and, craving the indulgence of his guests
over-night, appear at the cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were
astir in the morning. The clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the yelping of
Mustard and Spice, and his own joyous shout of reveillee under our
windows, were the signal that he had burst his toils, and meant for that
day to "take his ease in his inn." On descending, he was to be found
seated with all his dogs and ours about him, under a spreading ash that
overshadowed half the bank between the cottage and the brook, pointing
the edge of his woodman's axe, and listening to Tom Purdie's lecture
touching the plantation that most needed thinning. After breakfast he
would take possession of a dressing-room upstairs, and write a chapter of
The Pirate; and then, having made-up and despatched his packet for Mr.
Ballantyne, away to join Purdie wherever the foresters were at work —
and sometimes to labour among them as strenuously as John Swanston —
until it was time either to rejoin his own party at Abbotsford, or the
quiet circle of the cottage. When his guests were few and friendly, he
often made them come over and meet him at Chiefswood in a body
towards evening; and surely he never appeared to more amiable advan-
tage than when helping his young people with their litde arrangements
upon such occasions. He was ready with all sorts of devices to supply
the wants of a narrow establishment; he used to delight particularly
in sinking the wine in a well under the brae ere he went out, and
hauling up the basket just before dinner was announced, — this primitive
device being, he said, what he had always practised when a young house-
keeper, and in his opinion far superior in its results to any application
of ice: and in the same spirit, whenever the weather was sufficiently
genial, he voted for dining out of doors altogether, which at once got
rid of the inconvenience of very small rooms, and made it natural and
easy for the gentlemen to help the ladies, so that the paucity of servants
went for nothing.' '^

Surely all this is very beautiful; like a picture of Boccaccio's; the
ideal of a country life in our time. Why could it not last ? Income
was not wanting: Scott's official permanent income was amply ade-
quate to meet the expense of all that was valuable in it; nay, of all
that was not harassing, senseless and despicable. Scott had some
2,000/. a-year without writing books at all. Why should he manu-
1^ Vol. V. pp. 123, 124.

438 THOMAS CARLYLE

facture and not create, to make more money; and rear mass on mass
for a dwelling to himself, till the pile toppled, sank crashing, and
buried him in its ruins, when he had a safe pleasant dwelling ready
of its own accord? Alas, Scott, with all his health, was infected;
sick of the fearfulest malady, that of Ambition! To such a length
had the King's baronetcy, the world's favour and 'sixteen parties a
day,' brought it with him. So the inane racket must be kept up, and
rise ever higher. So masons labour, ditchers delve; and there is
endless altogether deplorable corresfwndence about marble-slabs
for tables, wainscoting of rooms, curtains and the trimmings of cur-
tains, orange-coloured or fawn-coloured: Walter Scott, one of the
gifted of the world, whom his admirers call the most gifted, must
kill himself that he may be a country gentleman, the founder of a
race of Scottish lairds.

It is one of the strangest, most tragical histories ever enacted under
this sun. So poor a passion can lead so strong a man into such mad
extremes. Surely, were not man a fool always, one might say there
was something eminently distracted in this, end as it would, of a
Walter Scott writing daily with the ardour of a steam-engine, that
he might make 15,000/. a-year, and buy upholstery with it. To cover
the walls of a stone house in Selkirkshire with nicknacks, ancient
armour and genealogical shields, what can we name it but a being
bit with delirium of a kind? That tract after tract of moorland in
the shire of Selkirk should be joined together on parchment and by
ring-fence, and named after one's name, — why, it is a shabby small
type edition of your vulgar Napoleons, Alexanders, and conquering
heroes, not counted venerable by any teacher of men! —

'The whole world was not half so wide
To Alexander when he cried
Because he had but one to subdue,
As was a narrow paltry tub to
Diogenes; who ne'er was said,
For aught that ever I could read,
To whine, put finger i' the eye and sob.
Because he had ne'er another tub.'

Not he! And if, 'looked at from the Moon, which itself is far from
Infinitude,' Napoleon's dominions were as small as mine, what, by

SIR WALTER SCOTT 439

any chance of possibility, could Abbotsford landed-property ever
have become? As the Arabs say, there is a black speck, were it
no bigger than a bean's eye, in every soul; which once set it a-work-
ing, will overcloud the whole man into darkness and quasi-madness,
and hurry him balefully into Night I

With respect to the literary character of these Waverley Novels, so
extraordinary in their commercial character, there remains, after so
much reviewing, good and bad, little that it were profitable at
present to say. The great fact about them is, that they were faster
written and better paid for than any other books in the world. It
must be granted, moreover, that they have a worth far surpassing
what is usual in such cases; nay, that if Literature had no task but
that of harmlessly amusing indolent languid men, here was the very
perfection of Literature; that a man, here more emphatically than
ever elsewhere, might fling himself back, exclaiming, "Be mine to
lie on this sofa, and read everlasting Novels of Walter Scott I" The
composition, slight as it often is, usually hangs together in some
measure, and is a. composition. There is a free flow of narrative,
of incident and sentiment; an easy masterlike coherence throughout,
as if it were the free dash of a master's hand, 'round as the O of
Giotto.'" It is the perfection of extemporaneous writing. Farther-
more, surely he were a blind critic who did not recognise here a
certain genial sunshiny freshness and picturesqueness; paintings
both of scenery and figures, very graceful, brilliant, occasionally full
of grace and glowing brightness blended in the softest composure;
in fact, a deep sincere love of the beautiful in Nature and Man, and
the readiest faculty of expressing this by imagination and by word.
No fresher paintings of Nature can be found than Scott's; hardly
anywhere a wider sympathy with man. From Davie Deans up to
Richard Coeur-de-Lion; from Meg Merrilies to Die Vernon and

'' 'Venne a Firenze' (il cortigiano del Papa), *e andato una mattina in bottega di
Giotto, ciie lavorava, gli chiese un poco di disegno per mandarlo a sua Santitk. Giotto,
clie garbatissimo era, prose un foglio, ed in quello con un pennello tinto di rosso,
fermato il braccio al fianco per fame compasso, e girato la mano fece un tondo si
pari di sesto e di profilo, che fu a vederlo una maraviglia. Cio fatto ghignando disse
al cortigiano, Eccovi il disegno.' . . . 'Onde il Papa, e molti cortigiani intendenti
conobbero percio, quanto Giotto avanzasse d' eccelenza tutti gli altri pittori del suo
tempo. Divolgatasi poi questa cosa, ne nacque il proverbio, che ancora ^ in uso
dirsi a gli uomini di grossa pasta: Tu set piii tondo che I' O di Giotto.' — Vasari, Vite
(Roma, 1759), i. 46.

440 THOMAS CARLYLE

Queen Elizabeth! It is the utterance of a man of open soul; of
a brave, large, free-seeing man, who has a true brotherhood with all
men. In joyous picturesqueness and fellow-feeling, freedom of eye
and heart; or to say it in a word, in general healthiness of mind,
these Novels prove Scott to have been amongst the foremost writers.

Neither in the higher and highest excellence, of drawing charac-
ter, is he at any time altogether deficient; though at no time can
we call him, in the best sense, successful. His Bailie Jarvies, Din-
monts, Dalgettys (for their name is legion), do look and talk like
what they give themselves out for; they are, if not created and made
poetically alive, yet deceptively enacted as a good player might do
them. What more is wanted, then ? For the reader lying on a sofa,
nothing more; yet for another sort of reader, much. It were a long
chapter to unfold the difference in drawing a character between a
Scott, and a Shakspeare, a Goethe. Yet it is a difference literally
immense; they are of different species; the value of the one is
not to be counted in the coin of the other. We might say in a short
word, which means a long matter, that your Shakspeare fashions
his characters from the heart outwards; your Scott fashions them
from the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them! The
one set become living men and women; the other amount to little
more than mechanical cases, deceptively painted automatons. Com-
pare Fenella with Goethe's Mignon, which, it was once said, Scott
had 'done Goethe the honour' to borrow. He has borrowed what he
could of Mignon. The small stature, the climbing talent, the tricki-
ness, the mechanical case, as we say, he has borrowed; but the soul
of Mignon is left behind. Fenella is an unfavorable specimen for
Scott; but it illustrates in the aggravated state, what is traceable in
all the characters he drew.

To the same purport indeed we are to say that these famed books
are altogether addressed to the every-day mind; that for any other
mind there is next to no nourishment in them. Opinions, emotions,
principles, doubts, beliefs, beyond what the intelligent country gen-
tleman can carry along with him, are not to be found. It is orderly,
customary, it is prudent, decent; nothing more. One would say, it
lay not in Scott to give much more; getting out of the ordinary
range, and attempting the heroic, which is but seldom the case, he

SIR WALTER SCOTT 44 1

falls almost at once into the rose-pink sentimental, — descries the
Minerva Press from afar, and hastily quits that course; for none
better than he knew it to lead nowhither. On the whole, contrasting
Waverley, which was carefully written, with most of its followers,
which were written extempore, one may regret the extempore
method. Something very perfect in its kind might have come from
Scott; nor was it a low kind: nay, who knows how high, with stu-
dious self-concentration, he might have gone; what wealth Nature
had implanted in him, with his circumstances, most unkind while
seeming to be kindest, had never impelled him to unfold?

But after all, in the loudest blaring and trumpeting of popularity,
it is ever to be held in mind, as a truth remaining true forever,
that Literature has other aims than that of harmlessly amusing indo-
lent languid men: or if Literature have them not, then Literature
is a very poor affair; and something else must have them, and must
accomplish them, with thanks or without thanks; the thankful or
thankless world were not long a world otherwise! Under this head
there is little to be sought or found in the Waverley Novels. Not
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for edification, for building up
or elevating, in any shape! The sick heart will find no healing
here, the darkly-struggling heart no guidance: the Heroic that is in
all men no divine awakening voice. We say, therefore, that they
do not found themselves on deep interests, but on comparatively
trivial ones; not on the perennial, perhaps not even on the lasting.
In fact, much of the interest of these Novels results from what may
be called contrasts of costume. The phraseology, fashion of arms,
of dress and life, belonging to one age, is brought suddenly with
singular vividness before the eyes of another. A great effect this;
yet by the very nature of it, an altogether temporary one. Consider,
brethren, shall not we too one day be antiques, and grow to have
as quaint a costume as the rest? The stuffed Dandy, only give him
time, will become one of the wonderfulest mummies. In antiquarian
museums, only two centuries hence, the steeple-hat will hang on
the next peg to Franks and Company's patent, antiquarians deciding
which is uglier: and the Stulz swallow-tail, one may hope, will seem
as incredible as any garment that ever made ridiculous the respecta-
ble back of man. Not by slashed breeches, steeple-hats, buff-belts,

442 THOMAS CARLYLE

or antiquated speech, can romance-heroes continue to interest us;
but simply and solely, in the long-run, by being men. Buff-belts and
all manner of jerkins and costumes are transitory; man alone is
perennial. He that has gone deeper into this than other men, will be
remembered longer than they; he that has not, not. Tried under
this category, Scott, with his clear practical insight, joyous temper,
and other sound faculties, is not to be accounted little, — among the
ordinary circulating-library heroes he might well pass for a demi-
god. Not little, yet neither is he great; there were greater, more than
one or two, in his own age: among the great of all ages, one sees
no likelihood of a place for him.

What, then, is the result of these Waverley Romances? Are they
to amuse one generation only? One or morel As many generations
as they can; but not all generations: ah no, when our swallow-tail
has become fantastic as trunk-hose, they will cease to amuse! —
Meanwhile, as we can discern, their results have been several-fold.
First of all, and certainly not least of all, have they not perhaps had
this result: that a considerable portion of mankind has hereby been
sated with mere amusement, and set on seeking something better?
Amusement in the way of reading can go no farther, can do nothing
better, by the power of man; and men ask. Is this what it can do?
Scott, we reckon, carried several things to their ultimatum and
crisis, so that change became inevitable; a great service, though an
indirect one.

Secondly, however, we may say, these Historical Novels have
taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was
as good as unknown to writers of history and others, till so taught:
that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men,
not by protocols, state-papers, controversies and abstractions of men.
Not abstractions were they, not diagrams and theorems; but men,
in buff or other coats and breeches, with colour in their cheeks, with
passions in their stomach, and the idioms, features and vitalities of
very men. It is a little word this; inclusive of great meaning! His-
tory will henceforth have to take thought of it. Her faint hearsays
of 'philosophy teaching by experience' will have to exchange them-
selves everywhere for direct inspection and embodiment: this, and
this only, vsdll be counted experience; and till once experience have

SIR WALTER SCOTT 443

got in, philosophy will reconcile herself to wait at the door. It is
a great service, fertile in consequences, this that Scott has done; a
great truth laid open by him; — correspondent indeed to the sub-
stantial nature of the man; to his solidity and veracity even of imagi-
nation, which, with all his lively discursiveness, was the characterisdc
of him.

A word here as to the extempore style of writing, which is getting
much celebrated in these days. Scott seems to have been a high pro-
ficient in it. His rapidity was extreme; and the matter produced
was excellent, considering that: the circumstances under which some
of his Novels, when he could not himself write, were dictated, are
justly considered wonderful. It is a valuable faculty this of ready-
writing; nay, farther, for Scott's purpose it was clearly the only
good mode. By much labour he could not have added one guinea
to his copyright; nor could the reader on the sofa have lain a whit
more at ease. It was in all ways necessary that these works should
be produced rapidly; and, round or not, be thrown off like Giotto's
O. But indeed, in all things, writing or other, which a man engages
in, there is the indispensablest beauty in knowing how to get done.
A man frets himself to no purpose; he has not the sleight of the trade;
he is not a craftsman, but an unfortunate borer and bungler, if he
know not when to have done. Perfection is unattainable: no car-
penter ever made a mathematically accurate right-angle in the
world; yet all carpenters know when it is right enough, and do not
botch it, and lose their wages, by making it too right. Too much
painstaking speaks disease in one's mind, as well as too little. The
adroit sound-minded man will endeavour to spend on each business
approximately what of pains it deserves; and with a conscience
void of remorse will dismiss it then. All this in favour of easy-
writing shall be granted, and, if need were, enforced and incul-
cated.

And yet, on the other hand, it shall not less but more strenuously
be inculcated, that in the way of writing, no great thing was ever,
or will ever be done with ease, but with difficulty! Let ready-
writers with any faculty in them lay this to heart. Is it with ease,
or not with ease, that a man shall do his best, in any shape; above
all, in this shape justly named of 'soul's travail,' working in the deep

444 THOMAS CARLYLE

places o£ thought, embodying the True out of the Obscure and
Possible, environed on all sides with the uncreated False? Not so,
now or at any time. The experience of all men belies it; the nature
of things contradicts it. Virgil and Tacitus, were they ready-
writers? The whole Prophecies of Isaiah are not equal in extent
to this cobweb of a Review Article. Shakspeare, we may fancy,
wrote with rapidity; but not till he had thought with intensity:
long and sore had this man thought, as the seeing eye may discern
well, and had dwelt and wrestled amid dark pains and throes, —
though his great soul is silent about all that. It was for him to write
rapidly at fit intervals, being ready to do it. And herein truly lies
the secret of the matter: such swiftness of mere writing, after due
energy of preparation, is doubtless the right method; the hot fur-
nace having long worked and simmered, let the pure gold flow
out at one gush. It was Shakspeare's plan; no easy-writer he, or he
had never been a Shakspeare. Neither was Milton one of the mob
of gentlemen that write with ease; he did not attain Shakspeare's
faculty, one perceives, of even writing fast after long preparation,
but struggled while he wrote. Goethe also tells us he 'had nothing
sent him in his sleep'; no .page of his but he knew well how it came
there. It is reckoned to be the best prose, accordingly, that has been
written by any modern. Schiller, as an unfortunate and unhealthy
man, '\onnte nie fertig werden, never could get done'; the noble
genius of him struggled not wisely but too well, and wore his life
itself heroically out. Or did Petrarch write easily? Dante sees him-
self 'growing lean' over his Divine Comedy; in stern solitary death-
wrestle with it, to prevail over it, and do it, if his uttermost faculty
may: hence, too, it is done and prevailed over, and the fiery life of it
endures forevermore among men.

No: creation, one would think, cannot be easy; your Jove has
severe pains, and fire-flames, in the head out of which an armed
Pallas is struggling! As for manufacture, that is a different matter,
and may become easy or not easy, according as it is taken up. Yet
of manufacture too, the general truth is that, given the manufacturer,
it will be worthy in direct proportion to the pains bestowed upon it;
and worthless always, or nearly so, with no pains. Cease, therefore,
O ready-writer, to brag openly of thy rapidity and faciUty; to thee

SIR WALTER SCOTT 445

(if thou be in the manufacturing line) it is a benefit, an increase of
wages; but to me it is sheer loss, worsening of my pennyworth:
why wilt thou brag of it to me ? Write easily, by steam if thou canst
contrive it, and canst sell it; but hide it like virtue! "Easy writing,"
said Sheridan, "is sometimes d — d hard reading." Sometimes; and
always it is sure to be rather useless reading, which indeed (to a
creature of few years and much work) may be reckoned the hardest
of all.

Scott's productive facility amazed everybody; and set Captain
Hall, for one, upon a very strange method of accounting for it
without miracle; — ^for which see his Journal, above quoted from.
The Captain, on counting line for line, found that he himself had
written in that Journal of his almost as much as Scott, at odd hours
in a given number of days; 'and as for the invention,' says he, 'it is
known that this costs Scott nothing, but comes to him of its own
accord.' Convenient indeed! — But for us too Scott's rapidity is
great, is a proof and consequence of the solid health of the man,
bodily and spiritual; great, but unmiraculous; not greater than that
of many others besides Captain Hall. Admire it, yet with measure.
For observe always, there are two conditions in work : let me fix the
quality, and you shall fix the quantity! Any man may get through
work rapidly who easily satisfies himself about it. Print the tal\
of any man, there will be a thick octavo volume daily; make his
writing three times as good as his talk, there will be the third part
of a volume daily, which still is good work. To write with never
such rapidity in a passable manner, is indicative not of a man's
genius, but of his habits; it will prove his soundness of nervous
system, his practicality of mind, and in fine, that he has the knack
of his trade. In the most flattering view, rapidity will betoken health
of mind: much also, perhaps most of all, will depend on health of
body. Doubt it not, a faculty of easy- writing is attainable by man!
The human genius, once fairly set in this direction, will carry it
far. WiUiam Cobbett, one of the healthiest of men, was a greater
improviser even than Walter Scott: his writing, considered as to
quality and quantity, of Rural Rides, Registers, Grammars, Sermons,
Peter Porcupines, Histories of Reformation, ever-fresh denounce-
ments of Potatoes and Paper-money, seems to us still more wonder-

446 THOMAS CARLYLE

ful. Pierre Bayle wrote enormous folios, one sees not on what
motive principle: he flowed-on forever, a mighty tide of ditch-
water; and even died flowing, with the pen in his hand. But indeed
the most unaccountable ready-writer of all is, probably, the com-
mon Editor of a Daily Newspaper. Consider his leading articles;
what they treat of, how passably they are done. Straw that has
been thrashed a hundred times without wheat; ephemeral sound
of a sound; such portent of the hour as all men have seen a hundred
times turn out inane: how a man with merely human faculty,
buckles himself nightly with new vigour and interest to this thrashed
straw, nightly thrashes it anew, nightly gets-up new thunder about
it; and so goes on thrashing and thundering for a considerable series
of years; this is a fact remaining still to be accounted for, in human
physiology. The vitality of man is great.

Or shall we say, Scott, among the many things he carried towards
their ultimatum and crisis, carried this of ready-writing too, that so
all men might better see what was in it.? It is a valuable consum-
mation. Not without results; — results, at some of which Scott as
a Tory politician would have greatly shuddered. For if once Printing
have grown to be as Talk, then Democracy (if we look into the
roots of things) is not a bugbear and probability, but a certainty,
and event as good as come! 'Inevitable seems it me.' But leaving
this, sure enough the triumph of ready-writing appears to be even
now; everywhere the ready-writer is found bragging strangely of
his readiness. In a late translated Don Carlos, one of the most in-
different translations ever done with any sign of ability, a hitherto
unknown individual is found assuring his reader, 'The reader will
possibly think it an excuse, when I assure him that the whole piece
was completed within the space of ten weeks, that is to say, between
the sixth of January and the eighteenth of March of this year (in-
clusive of a fortnight's interruption from over-exertion); that I
often translated twenty pages a-day, and that the fifth act was
the work of five days.' " O hitherto unknown individual, what
is it to me what time it was the work of, whether five days or
five decades of years? The only question is. How well hast thou
done it.?

'* Don Carlos, a Dramatic Poem, from the German of Schiller. Mannheim and
London, 1837.

SIR WALTER SCOTT 447

So, however, it stands: the genius of Extempore irresistibly lord-
ing it, advancing on us like ocean-tides, like Noah's deluges — of
ditch-water! The prospect seems one of the lamentablest. To have
all Literature swum away from us in watery Extempore, and a
spiritual time of Noah supervene? That surely is an awful reflec-
tion; worthy of dyspeptic Matthew Bramble in a London fog! Be
of comfort, O splenetic Matthew; it is not Literature they are
swimming away; it is only Book-publishing and Book-selling. Was
there not a Literature before Printing or Faust of Mentz, and yet
men wrote extempore ? Nay, before Writing or Cadmus of Thebes,
and yet men spoke extempore? Literature is the Thought of think-
ing Souls; this, by the blessing of God, can in no generation be swum
away, but remains with us to the end.

Scott's career, of writing impromptu novels to buy farms with,
was not of a kind to terminate voluntarily, but to accelerate itself
more and more; and one sees not to what wise goal it could, in any
case, have led him. Bookseller Constable's bankruptcy was not the
ruin of Scott; his ruin was, that ambition, and even false ambition,
had laid hold of him; that his way of life was not wise. Whither
could it lead? Where could it stop? New farms there remained
ever to be bought, while new novels could pay for them. More and
more success but gave more and more appetite, more and more
audacity. The impromptu writing must have waxed ever thinner;
declined faster and faster into the questionable category, into the
condemnable, into the generally condemned. Already there ex-
isted, in secret, everywhere a considerable opposition party; wit-
nesses of the Waverley miracles, but unable to believe in them, forced
silently to protest against them. Such opposition party was in the
sure case to grow; and even, with the impromptu process ever going
on, ever waxing thinner, to draw the world over to it. Silent protest
must at length have come to words; harsh truths, backed by harsher
facts of a world-popularity overwrought and worn-out, behoved to
have been spoken; — such as can be spoken now without reluctance,
when they can pain the brave man's heart no more. Who knows?
Perhaps it was better ordered to be all otherwise. Otherwise, at any
rate, it was. One day the Constable mountain, which seemed to
stand strong like the other rock mountains, gave suddenly, as the

448 THOMAS CARLYLE

icebergs do, a loud-sounding crack; suddenly, with huge clangor,
shivered itself into ice-dust; and sank, carrying much along with it.
In one day Scott's high-heaped money-wages became fairy-money
and nonentity; in one day the rich man and lord of land saw him-
self penniless, landless, a bankrupt among creditors.

It was a hard trial. He met it proudly, bravely, — ^like a brave
proud man of the world. Perhaps there had been a prouder way
still: to have owned honestly that he was unsuccessful, then, all
bankrupt, broken, in the world's goods and repute; and to have
turned elsewhither for some refuge. Refuge did lie elsewhere; but
it was not Scott's course, or fashion of mind, to seek it there. To
say. Hitherto I have been all in the wrong, and this my fame and
pride, now broken, was an empty delusion and spell of accursed
witchcraft! It was difficult for flesh and blood! He said, I will
retrieve myself, and make my point good yet, or die for it. Silently,
like a proud strong man, he girt himself to the Hercules' task of
removing rubbish-mountains, since that was it; of paying large
ransoms by what he could still write and sell. In his declining years,
too; misfortune is doubly and trebly unfortunate that befalls us
then. Scott fell to his Hercules' task like a very man, and went on
with it unweariedly; with a noble cheerfulness, while his life-strings
were cracking, he grappled with it, and wrestled with it, years long,
in death-grips, strength to strength; — and it proved the stronger;
and his life and heart did crack and break: the cordage of a most
strong heart! Over these last writings of Scott, his Napoleons,
Demonologies, Scotch Histories, and the rest, criticism, finding still
much to wonder at, much to commend, will utter no word of blame;
this one word only. Woe is me! The noble war-horse that once
laughed at the shaking of the spear, how is he doomed to toil himself
dead, dragging ignoble wheels! Scott's descent was like that of a
spent projectile; rapid, straight down; — perhaps mercifully so. It
is a tragedy, as all life is; one proof more that Fortune stands on a
restless globe; that Ambition, literary, warHke, politic, pecuniary,
never yet profited any man.

Our last extract shall be from Volume Sixth; a very tragical one.
Tragical, yet still beautiful; waste Ruin's havoc borrowing a kind

SIR WALTER SCOTT 449

of sacredness from a yet sterner visitation, that of Death! Scott has
withdrawn into a solitary lodging-house in Edinburgh, to do daily
the day's work there; and had to leave his wife at Abbotsford in
the last stage of disease. He went away silently; looked silently at
the sleeping face he scarcely hoped ever to see again. We quote
from a Diary he had begun to keep in those months, on hint from
Byron's Ravenna Journal: copious sections of it render this Sixth
Volume more interesting than any of the former ones:

'Abbotsford , May ii (1826). — * * It withers my heart to think of it,
and to recollect that I can hardly hope again to seek confidence and
counsel from that ear, to which all might be safely confided. But in her
present lethargic state, what would my attendance have availed? — and
Anne has promised close and constant intelligence. I must dine with
James Ballantyne today en jamille. I cannot help it; but would rather
be at home and alone. However, I can go out too. I will not yield
to the barren sense of hopelessness which struggles to invade me.'

'Edinburgh, — Mrs. Brown's lodgings, North St. David Street — May
12. — I passed a pleasant day with kind J. B., which was a great relief
from the black dog, which would have worried me at home. He was
quite alone.'

'Well, here I am in Arden. And I may say with Touchstone, "When
I was at home I was in a better place"; I must, when there is occasion,
draw to my own Bailie Nicol Jarvie's consolation — "One cannot carry the
comforts of the Saut-Market about with one." Were I at ease in mind, I
think the body is very well cared for. Only one other lodger in the
house, a Mr. Shandy, — a clergyman, and, despite his name, said to be a
quiet one.'

'May 14. — A fair good-morrow to you, Mr. Sun, who are shining so
brightly on these dull walls. Methinks you look as if you were looking
as bright on the banks of the Tweed; but look where you will, Sir Sun,
you look upon sorrow and suffering. — Hogg was here yesterday, in
danger, from having obtained an accommodation of 100/. from James
Ballantyne, which he is now obliged to repay. I am unable to help the
poor fellow, being obliged to borrow myself.'

'May 15. — Received the melancholy intelligence that all is over at
Abbotsford.'

'Abbotsford, May 16. — She died at nine in the morning, after being
very ill for two days — easy at last. I arrived here late last night. Anne
is worn out, and has had hysterics, which returned on my arrival. Her
broken accents were like those of a child, the language as well as the
tones broken, but in the most gentle voice of submission. "Poor mamma

450 THOMAS CARLYLE

— never return again — gone forever — a better place." Then, when she
came to herself, she spoke with sense, freedom and strength of mind,
till her weakness returned. It would have been inexpressibly moving to
me as a stranger — what was it then to the father and the husband.? For
myself, I scarce know how I feel; sometimes as firm as the Bass Rock,
sometimes as weak as the water that breaks on it. I am as alert at think-
ing and deciding as I ever was in my life. Yet, when I contrast what this
place now is, with what it has been not long since, I think my heart
will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family — all but poor Anne;
an impoverished, an embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my
thoughts and counsels, who could always talk-down my sense of the
calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them
alone. — Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to
think of beyond my weary self-reflections.

'I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte — my
thirty-years companion. There is the same symmetry of form, though
those limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic — but that
yellow mask, with pinched features, which seems to mock life rather than
emulate it, can it be the face that was once so full of lively expression?
I will not look on it again. Anne thinks her little changed, because the
latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she appeared under cir-
cumstances of extreme pain. Mine go back to a period of comparative
ease. If I write long in this way, I shall write-down my resolution, which
I should rather write-up, if I could.'

'May i8. — * * Cerements of lead and of wood already hold her; cold
earth must have her soon. But it is not my Charlotte, it is not the bride
of my youth, the mother of my children, that will be laid among the
ruins of Dryburgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and
pastime. No, no.'

'May 22. — * * Well, I am not apt to shrink from that which is my
duty, merely because it is painful; but I wish this funeral-day over. A
kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all were unreal that
men seem to be doing and talking.'

'May 26. — * * Were an enemy coming upon my house, would I not
do my best to fight, although oppressed in spirits; and shall a similar
despondency prevent me from mental exertion? It shall not, by Heaven!'

'Edinburgh, May 30. — Returned to town last night with ''Charles.
This morning resume ordinary habits of rising early, working in the
morning, and attending the Court. * * * J finished correcting the
proofs for the Quarterly; it is but a flimsy article, but then the circum-
stances were most untoward. — ^This has been a melancholy day — most
melancholy. I am afraid poor Charles found me weeping. I do not
know what other folks feel, but with me the hysterical passion that

SIR WALTER SCOTT 45 1

impels tears is a terrible violence — a sort of throttling sensation — then
succeeded by a state of dreaming stupidity, in which I ask if my poor
Charlotte can actually be dead.' '^

This is beautiful as well as tragical. Other scenes, in that Seventh
Volume, must come, which will have no beauty, but be tragical
only. It is better that we are to end here.

And so the curtain falls; and the strong Walter Scott is with us
no more. A possession from him does remain; widely scattered;
yet attainable; not inconsiderable. It can be said of him. When he
departed, he took a Man's life along with him. No sounder piece
of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of
Time. Alas, his fine Scotch face, with its shaggy honesty, sagacity
and goodness, when we saw it latterly on the Edinburgh streets,
was all worn with care, the joy all fled from it; — ploughed deep
with labour and sorrow. We shall never forget it; we shall never
see it again. Adieu, Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen, take our
proud and sad farewell.

'5 Vol. vi. pp. 297-307.