Oct. 13 THE NEW ENGLANDER. EDITED BY GEORGE P FISHER, TIMOTHY DWIGHT, WILLIAM L. KINGSLEY. OCTOBER, 1874. NULLIUS ADDICTUS JURARE IN VERBA MAGISTRI. NEW HAVEN: PUBLISHED BY W. L. KINGSLEY. PRINTED BY TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE, AND TAYLOR. 1874. ART. I. Review of the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill. 605 623 722 VI. "Is Schism a Necessity?" VII. Mr. Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection. Lyell T. Adams, Esq., U. S. Consul, Malta, Europe. VIII. Christian Missions and some of their Obstacles. Dr. T. D. Woolsey, New Haven, Conn. ARTICLE IX.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS. Farrar's Life of Christ. By Frederick A. Farrar, D.D., F.R.S. 741 770 784 Walker's Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. By Rev. James B. Walker, D.D. 785 786 By Robert 788 Solar Hieroglyphics. Mementos of Dr. Payson. By Rev. Edwin L. Janes. 788 789 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL. Life of John Quincy Adams. Vol. II. By Charles Francis Adams. 791 791 792 793 Blackie's Horæ Hellenicæ. By John Stuart Blackie, F.R.S.E., &c., &c. 793 794 SMITH, ENGLISH & CO., BOOKSELLERS AND IMPORTERS, [ESPECIALLY OF THEOLOGICAL BOOKS] No. 710 Arch Street, PHILADELPHIA, PA. S, E. & CO. have on hand the best and most complete assortment of THEOLOGICAL BOOKS for sale in the country. A new Classified Catalogue lately published, which will be sent to any address for 25 cents. SECOND HAND BOOKS taken in exchange. THE NEW ENGLANDER. No. CXXIX. OCTOBER, 1874. ARTICLE I.-AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL.* THIS is a frank and truthful record of a life marked by more than ordinary distinction in its external contact with the world, and peculiarly strange and sad and instructive in the unfolding of its inner phases. Its interior development furnishes the thread of the whole narrative, as the author meant it should. For he gives three reasons for leaving this memorial of himself: first, that there might be "some record of an education which was unusual and remarkable;" second, that there might be open to study "the successive phases of a mind which was always pressing forward," "in an age of transitions in opinions ;" and third, and most especially, that due acknowledgment might be made of "the debts which this intellectual and moral development owed to other persons." This life began in London, on the 20th of May, 1806. Its earthly career was closed, as other hands make record, near Avignon, on the 8th of May, 1873. The sixty-seven years included between these dates form a period of stirring activity and conflict in the political history of Europe, and of yet more * Autobiography. By JOHN STUART MILL New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1873. VOL. XXXIII. 40 stirring activity and conflict in the domain of human thought for the world. The circumstances of this individual life brought it very peculiarly under the molding pressure of one set of influences incident to such a time. We cannot wonder, therefore, that the development was abnormal and one-sided, almost to deformity. In the case of most men of eminence, the impress of a mother's animating spirit and plastic touch of love is seen to be determinative of best results. But it is a singular fact that the word "mother" does not once occur in this autobiography, and the sketch shows hardly a sign of anything like homeaffection, filial or fraternal, in its subject. As soon as the birth is announced, the prominent figure in the foreground is the father, only the father, and such a father! A Scotchman born, strong in brawn and brains, with a powerful intellect, improved by high culture and tasked with intense work, he was by con stitution and by habit devoid of the gentleness and sympathy which are essential qualifications of one who undertakes the training of a child. Then, as in spiteful hostility to the truths of Christianity he broke away from the faith of his fathers and abandoned the service of the Church for which he was educated, he became, by that very act, more cold, skeptical, bitter, unfeeling, and cruel in the rigor with which he insisted on his own ideal of mental development. Hence, almost before the child could go alone, this father snatched him from his nurse's arms and subjected him to a course of intellectual discipline which seems to us terrible. Mill says: "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." The precocious development thus early commenced went on under steady pressure, which excluded him from all participation in the ordinary sports of childhood and from all association with other boys. Mill rates himself rather below than above par in the natural gifts of quick apprehension, retentive memory, and active, energetic character. Yet we find him at eight years of age reading Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plato, with only his father for a lexicon. In his eighth year he commenced Latin, a learner, and, at the same time, a teacher of his younger brothers and sisters, compelled to evince his own proficiency by the results of his teaching. During the next four years, he read the works of all the leading Latin authors, also those of the Greek poets, dramatists, orators, and philosophers, even to Aristotle's Rhetoric. During the same period, he learned thoroughly geometry and algebra, and was compelled to grapple alone with the problems of the calculus and higher mathematics. This close application to study was interspersed with extensive private reading, chiefly of history, to an extent that seems almost incredible; the topics of his reading being made the subjects of earnest conversation in frequent, long walks taken with his father. His chief amusement he found in reading books of experimental science without either performing or witnessing any practical experiments. The inexorable rigor of his training is illustrated by the fact that in the higher mathematics, with which his father had not kept up his early acquired knowledge so as to give needed explanation, the boy "was continually incurring his father's displeasure by his inability to solve difficult problems for which he did not see that the necessary previous knowledge was wanting." Some relief from this he found in a voluntary exercise which he took up and called writing histories. Thus in his eleventh and twelfth years, he compiled from Livy and Dionysius a history of the Roman Government, writing enough, he says, to make an octavo volume. This was his play. At about the same age, in addition to his other tasks, he was compelled to write English verses, having been introduced to a few of the choice old poets. But for this exercise he had but little of either genius or taste, and in it he made no great proficiency. From the age of twelve, he entered on what he calls an advanced stage of his education and took up Logic, beginning with Bacon's Organon and following that with some Latin treatises on the subject. His subsequent reading of Latin and Greek authors was for the sake of their thoughts, his father requiring him to read aloud in the Greek, especially Plato and Demosthenes, and to answer questions when asked, and making this, at the same time, a severe and irksome drill in Elocution. In his fourteenth year, he was taken through a complete course of Political Economy, partly by the study of such books as were then published on the subject and partly by a sort of peripatetic course of lectures and discussions in walks with his |