ment, made use of its wings on being set at liberty, totally ignorant of the outside world. We find him saying of himself, when fifteen and a half years old, that he "had what might truly be called an object in life-to be a reformer of the world" (p. 132). For this, his father was doubtless mainly responsible, for he looked on his son John as a wonderful child, destined to do some great things in the world; a kind of John the Baptist, in his way of thinking, who would at least “build the bridges and clear the paths" for others, and connect their thoughts with his (and doubtless his father's) "general system of thought" (p. 244). It is also interesting to notice that Mill kept his son aloof from the corrupting influence which boys exercise over boys," the "demoralizing effects of school life," and the contagion of vulgar modes of thought and feeling," when even royalty will send its children to public educational establishments, for the benefit of being initiated in some of the ways of the world, which must be done in youth, to speak of nothing else. This appears singular when we consider the birth and rearing of Mill himself, who was brought up on the humblest of Scotch fare-"taties and kail, parritch and skim or kirn milk "-and went barefooted during a good part of the year, and used his jacket-sleeve as his only handkerchief. And if the charity by which he was educated went no further than the instruction, his "provender" while at college would, in all probability, be confined for the most part to his mealbag. It cannot be said that James Mill was a fit and proper person to be intrusted with the bringing-up of children. He would, doubtless, have made an excellent teacher or drill-master in certain branches of education in an institution presided over by a man of judgment and humanity, who would have allowed him no discretion in their management, beyond instructing them in their lessons or the subjects to be taught them.* John Stuart Mill's education, in the proper sense of the word, really began after he left his father, of whom he stood in constant dread to the last, as if he had him always after him with a stick. It is noticeable how he picked it up" about town "-here, there, and everywhere-undoing much of his previous instruction-and as much as possible away from his father's supervision or influence. The latter in some respects resembled a “bearded Savoyard," whose calling is to 66 teach animals which have the misfortune to find their way to his establishment for that purpose. The education which he gave his son was devoid of everything connected with the imagination and the heart. How the son gradually shook himself clear of him is thus related, when he was about twentysix years old : 66 * My father's tone of thought and feel Divinity students, in Scotland especially, labour under great disadvantages in gaining a knowledge of the world by the time they have otherwise prepared themselves to assume their positions in it. They have to isolate themselves to a great extent from their fellow creatures, owing to the nature of their calling and the peculiarities of society; their associa tions with them being confined for the most part to some of the trifling amenities of life, where everything presents itself in its most favourable aspect; so that when they are about twenty-five years old they have had little or no real commerce with their kind. And there is no chair at the university to teach them worldly wisdom," to make up the loss. They thus lose at least eight years of the best part of their lives for acquiring the most important part of knowledge. Dur ing all that time they are presumed to have been studying the "eternal verities," to the great neglect of what strictly refers positions with a sufficiency of learning, to this world. Hence they assume their but with a deficiency of the knowledge of their duties relating to practical life. If the student belongs to a poor or hum III. ing I now felt myself at a greater distance [ It is certainly "useful that there from: greater, indeed, than a full and should be some record of an educacalm explanation and reconsideration tion which was unusual and remarkon both sides might have shown to exist in reality. But my father was not able," to guard humanity against one with whom calm and full explana- the ungodliness, the want of judg- . tions on fundamental points of doctrine ment, and the unnatural treatment could be expected, at least with one or cruelty displayed in it, and but whom he might consider as, in some for which John Stuart Mill would sort, a deserter from his standard. doubtless have turned out, in some Fortunately we were almost always in respects, a different man from what strong agreement on the political ques- he did. tions of the day, which engrossed a large part of his interest and of his conversation. On the matters of opinion on which we differed, we talked little. He knew that the habit of thinking for myself, which his mode of education had fostered, sometimes led me to opinions different from his [but not on the subject of religion], and he perceived from time to time [the business must have been cautiously gone about] 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 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" (p. 180). ble class in society, his isolation from it A CRISIS IN HIS HISTORY. We have seen what a singular training John Stuart Mill received from his father in the important questions of religion, education, and social life, so poorly calculated to qualify him for the real battle of life, and the law, for which he was originally intended. He informs us, as we have seen, that when fifteen he "had what might truly be called an object in life-to be a reformer of the world," when he had been brought up almost completely isolated from it, at least to such an extent as was apt to unfit him for taking There are many ways in which students of divinity can acquire a little more knowledge of the world than they do, if they will but avail themselves of them. Indeed, "serpentine wisdom" is not only allowed, but commanded. Romanists have a plan of their own in these matters. What they aim at is to make their stu dents priests, the most important part of whose work is to manage their people. James Mill seems to have been a student like those described, perhaps a "boorish cub that was licked into shape," as Dr. Thomas Guthrie expressed it, whose time was exclusively given to his books. He would acquire little knowledge as a tutor beyond the ways of polite society, and have much of his Forfarshire roughness rubbed off him. He seems to have chosen a tutorship rather than a public school, for, had he taken the latter, he would have lost caste, and run a much greater risk of never getting a church. Had the gentlemen and noblemen who employed him as a tutor known of his ideas on religion, they would sooner have introduced a viper to the bosom of their families than had anything to do with him. that he devoured treatises on chemistry before he attended a lecture or saw an experiment (p. 17). In the winter of 1821-2, he read on Roman Law, Roman Antiquities, and a considerable portion of Blackstone; then a "Course of Benthamism," Locke's Essays, Hartley's Observations on Man, some of the British Philosophers, etc. his own part in it in some things. He missed the most valuable part of life for acquiring the foundation of real knowledge, in being separated from his kind; but that could have been to a great extent amended by his after intercourse with the world, however limited, and by his connection with the India House, had he not shown what appears to have been a natural deficiency in that respect; at least, he does not seem "In the summer of 1822, I wrote my to have endeavoured to acquire that first argumentative essay " (p. 71). "After this I continued to write papers on very important part of one's education by such means as presented subjects often very much beyond my cathemselves; and the deficiency re- notice.] pacity (p. 72). [A point worthy of "I had now also begun to mained with him to the last. His converse, on general subjects, with the intercourse with his fellow-creatures instructed men with whom I came in was at first limited to a very few contact" (p. 72). In 1822-3 he formgrown-up people, who visited his ed the plan of a little society to be comfather (p. 53); and when he went posed of young men agreeing in fundamental principles acknowledging anywhere it was generally with his utility as their standard in ethics and father, which kept him from asso-politics" (p. 79). [An odd standard in ciating with others. He paid a visit morals.] of upwards of a year to France, before he had any experience of English life, or "knowledge of God and good manners," and returned with some crude ideas of things in both countries. 66 In May, 1823, when seventeen years old, he was engaged by the East India Company, in the office of Examiner of India Correspondence, immediately under his father, who apparently would hardly let him out of his sight, with the understanding that I should be employed from the beginning in pre 'At this point concluded what can properly be called my lessons: when I was about fourteen, I left England [for France] for more than a year; and after my return, though my studies went on under my father's general direction, heparing drafts of despatches [from the dictation of others, it is presumwas no longer my school-master (p. 29). “I returned to England in July, ed], and be thus trained up as a 1821, and my education resumed its successor to those who then filled ordinary course (p. 61). "Under my the higher departments of the father's directions my studies were car- office" (p. 82). And he says:-" In ried into the higher branches of analytic 1856, I was promoted to the rank psychology" (p. 68). Having so little of chief of the office in which I had experience of English life, and the few served for upwards of thirty-three people I knew being mostly such as had public objects, 66 I could not then years. . . know or estimate the difference between this manner of existence [the English] and that of a people like the French (p. 58). "All these things [difference between English and French life] I did not perceive till long afterwards ” (p. 59). He says that one of his greatest amusements during part of his childhood was experimental science, without ever seeing an experiment; and I held this office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more than two years" (p. 249). For a few years after his appointment, he spent his month's vacation at his father's house in the country, and after that on the Continent, "chiefly in pedestrian excursions, with some one or more of the young men who were my chosen companions; and at a later period in longer "From the winter of 1821 [when he was fifteen years of age] . . . I had what might truly be called an object in life-to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object" (p. 132). But in the year 1826 66 I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to..; the state, I should think, in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten by their first conviction of sin' [as if he knew anything about that subject]. 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?'" (p. 133.) This was a trifling enough question to be asked of himself by a lad so inexperienced in the ways of the world, and which would have had little or no effect on a young man differently brought up; or rather, his experience or common sense would have prevented him asking it at all. If he had inquired about God, his soul, and its future destiny -calling in question all his father had taught him on these subjects we could have understood his allusion to converts to Methodism when smitten by their first conviction of sin." That was a subject about which he was evidently profoundly ignorant, and apparently as indifferent; nor does it appear, in his many allusions to religion, that he believed he even had a soul that would exist after leaving the body, whether to be saved or lost, or a God to be accountable to. But the odd question he asked himself, he answered thus: "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 pur suit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be an interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing to live for. At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. I awoke to a renewed consciousness of the woful fact. I carried it with me into all companies, into all occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it. For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and thicker" (p. 134). "In vain I sought relief from my favourite books,. . . and I became persuaded that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out" (p. 135), [in doing what?] "If I had loved anyone sufficiently [notwithstanding his love of mankind'] to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition I was [rather an odd idea]. . . . 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 [excepting a priest] to whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Everything convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such menthat even if he could be made to undertal state as I was suffering from; and 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 failall events, beyond the power of his ure was probably irremediable, and, at remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible. [Where was the family physician?] It was, however, abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more I dwelt upon it the more hopeless it appeared" (p. 135). Then for four pages (136 to 140) he goes on to philosophize on the phenomenon, and the cause of it, saying far more than can be inserted here; but the following are the principal words used, taking them in their order, which, as now given, are nearly as intelligible as Mill's four pages on the question treated : Course of study, mental and moral feelings and qualities, associations, love and hope, pleasure, action, contemplation, pain, ideas, education, experience, corollary, associations of the salutary class, retrospect, instruments, praise and blame, reward and punishment, intense associations, desires, aversions, artificial and casual, intense and inveterate, practically indissoluble, natural tie, habitual exercise, power of analysis, incredulity, natural laws, complements and correctives, prejudice, dissolving force, permanent sequences, sympathy, object of existence, dissolving influence of analysis, intellectual cultivation, precocious and premature analysis, inveterate habit, blasé and indifferent, heavy dejection, melancholy winter.* 66 The idiosyncrasies of my education had given to the general phenomenon a special character, which made it seem the natural effect of causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove [although it went away of its own accord]. I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was 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. [Here we would have expected he would have made away with himself.] When, however, not more than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light broke in upon my gloom" (p. 140). The reader will doubtless be anxious to learn how he got released from this "purgatory on earth," without a prayer being offered, or a miracle wrought, for the purpose, since no remedy seems to have been resorted to to dispel the evil spirit that possessed him. It was in this way: "I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's Memoires, and came to the passage which relates his father's death, the distressed position of the family, then a mere boy [Mill was then twenty], and the sudden inspiration by which he, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them—would supply the place of all that they had lost. [A case having no earthly resemblance to his own.] A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, moment [!] my burden grew lighter. and I was moved to tears. From this feeling was dead within me was gone. The oppression of the thought that all stock or a stone. I was no longer hopeless; I was not a [And then he became what he had been before.] "There was, once more, excitement, though of a moderate kind, in exerting myself for my opinions and for the public good [and figuring,' as before]. Thus the cloud gradually drew off, and I again enjoyed life and [this is very significant] though I had several relapses, some of which lasted many months, I never again was as miserable as I had been" (p. 141). My conception of my own happiness [not that of others] was entirely identiformer of the world, from the time he fied with this object [that of being a rewas fifteen]. The personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow-labourers in this enterprise. the certainty of a happy life which I enwas accustomed to felicitate myself on * Mill, as he left his region of recondite subjects for the sphere of every-day life, in which the most unsophisticated people feel at home, illustrated, in the "crisis of his mental history," the character of an owl in daylight, with its large head, sol-joyed [in building castles in the air], emn eyes, imposing garb, and judicial air. The words now given, as the essence of what he wrote, are a specimen of the owl-like wisdom which he could display on occasions. I through placing my happiness on something durable and distant, in which some progress might be always making, while it could never be exhausted by complete attainment" (p. 133). [So far |