Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3: The Death of Mr Mill; Mr Mill's Autobiography — John Morley
3 of 3), Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill; Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Critical Miscellanies, (Vol. 3 of 3), Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill; Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography Author : John Morley Release date : March 23, 2007 [eBook #20887] Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20887 Credits : Produced by Paul Murray, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF 3 OF 3), ESSAY 2: THE DEATH OF MR MILL; ESSAY 3: MR MILL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY *** CRITICAL MISCELLANIES BY JOHN MORLEY VOL. III. ESSAY 2: THE DEATH OF MR MILL ESSAY 3: MR MILL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904 CONTENTS THE DEATH OF MR. MILL. Peculiar office of the Teacher 37 Mill's influence in the universities and the press 39 His union of science with aspiration 40 And of courage with patience 42 His abstinence from society 45 Sense of the tendency of society to relapse 46 Peculiar trait of his authority 47 The writer's last day with him 48 MR MILL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY The spirit of search 53 Key to Mill's type of character and its value 54 Sensibility of his intellect 56 Yet no reaction against his peculiar education 57 Quality of the Autobiography 58 One of its lessons—μἑμνησο ἁπιστειν 60 Mill's aversion to the spirit of sect 60 Not a hindrance to systematisation 61 Criticism united with belief 63 Practical difficulties in the union of loyalty with tolerance 64 Impressiveness of Mill's self-effacement 65 His contempt for socialistic declamation 68 Yet the social aim paramount in him 69 Illustrated in his attack on Hamilton 71 And in the Logic 72 The book on the Subjection of Women 75 The two crises of life 77 Mill did not escape the second of them 78 Influence of Wordsworth 79 Hope from reformed institutions 79 This hope replaced by efforts in a deeper vein 80 Popular opinion of such efforts 81 Irrational disparagement of Mill's hope 82 Mill's conception of happiness contrasted with his father's 84 Remarks on his withdrawal from society 88 It arose from no moral valetudinarianism 91 THE DEATH OF MR. MILL. ( May 1873. ) The tragic commonplaces of the grave sound a fuller note as we mourn for one of the greater among the servants of humanity. A strong and pure light is gone out, the radiance of a clear vision and a beneficent purpose. One of those high and most worthy spirits who arise from time to time to stir their generation with new mental impulses in the deeper things, has perished from among us. The death of one who did so much to impress on his contemporaries that physical law works independently of moral law, marks with profounder emphasis the ever ancient and ever fresh decree that there is one end to the just and the unjust, and that the same strait tomb awaits alike the poor dead whom nature or circumstance imprisoned in mean horizons, and those who saw far and felt passionately and put their reason to noble uses. Yet the fulness of our grief is softened by a certain greatness and solemnity in the event. The teachers of men are so few, the gift of intellectual fatherhood is so rare, it is surrounded by such singular gloriousness. The loss of a powerful and generous statesman, or of a great master in letters or art, touches us with many a vivid regret. The Teacher, the man who has talents and has virtues, and yet has a further something which is neither talent nor virtue, and which gives him the mysterious secret of drawing men after him, leaves a deeper sense of emptiness than this; but lamentation is at once soothed and elevated by a sense of sacredness in the occasion. Even those whom Mr. Mill honoured with his friendship, and who must always bear to his memory the affectionate veneration of sons, may yet feel their pain at the thought that they will see him no more, raised into a higher mood as they meditate on the loftiness of his task and the steadfastness and success with which he achieved it. If it is grievous to think that such richness of culture, such full maturity of wisdom, such passion for truth and justice, are now by a single stroke extinguished, at least we may find some not unworthy solace in the thought of the splendid purpose that they have served in keeping alive, and surrounding with new attractions, the difficult tradition of patient and accurate thinking in union with unselfish and magnanimous living. Much will one day have to be said as to the precise value of Mr. Mill's philosophical principles, the more or less of his triumphs as a dialectician, his skill as a critic and an expositor. However this trial may go, we shall at any rate be sure that with his reputa tion will stand or fall the intellectual repute of a whole generation of his countrymen. The most eminent of those who are now so fast becoming the front line, as death mows down the veterans, all bear traces of his influence, whether they are avowed disciples or avowed opponents. If they did not accept his method of thinking, at least he determined the questions which they should think about. For twenty years no one at all open to serious intellectual impressions has left Oxford without having undergone the influence of Mr. Mill's teaching, though it would be too much to say that in that gray temple where they are ever burnishing new idols, his throne is still unshaken. The professorial chairs there and elsewhere are more and more being filled with men whose minds have been trained in his principles. The universities only typify his influence on the less lear