Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/412

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thoughtful expression. He was always in black, and till his later years wore a dress suit. He had a good constitution, overstrained by his labours. He loved walking and natural scenery. He protested in 1836, as Mr. Ruskin might have done later, against the passage of a railway through the beautiful valley of Mickleham; and it was through his influence that the line of trees, still on the south side of Piccadilly, was saved when the street was widened. He was a founder and active member of the Commons Preservation Society. His astonishing powers of work, shown by his early edition of Bentham's ‘Evidence,’ enabled him, in spite of a daily six hours at his office (of which Mr. Bain thinks only half were spent upon his necessary duties), to get through immense intellectual labours. He was very temperate, and took nothing between an early breakfast and a plain dinner at six o'clock. His animal appetites were probably below the average intensity, and he underestimated their force in others.

Although Mill's intellect was essentially of the logical order, his emotions were extremely tender and vivid. The severe training of his father directed them mainly into the channel of public spirit. His whole life was devoted to the propagation of principles which he held to be essential to human happiness; and his metaphysical doctrines were valued by him not so much upon purely logical grounds, as by their application to the well-being of his fellows. The affectionate nature shown in his idolatry of his wife appeared in his friendships; though unfortunately his absorption in this passion and his seclusion from society led to difficulties with his family, and checked his sympathies with even so old a friend as Grote. His appreciation of such friends as Hare and Thornton was expressed in terms of even excessive generosity. He was always eager to recognise the merits of an antagonist, or of a still obscure genius. He was liberal in money matters, and offered to guarantee the cost of early writings of Professor Bain and Mr. Herbert Spencer. He could speak sharply at times, especially upon such questions as woman's rights, and was both sensitive and irritable. Yet in published controversy his candour and calmness were conspicuous. When W. T. Thornton was disabled by illness from performing his duties in the India House, and thought of resigning his post, Mill obviated the necessity by doing all Thornton's work in addition to his own for a year. He was the author, as Thornton adds, of nearly all the ‘political’ despatches from the India House for twenty-three years, and his official writings would fill two large volumes annually. The same qualities mark his intellectual career. Brought up after the strictest sect of the utilitarians, the history of his development is mainly a history of his attempts to widen and humanise their teaching. He adhered, indeed, to the philosophical groundwork of his predecessors, and much of his thought is best understood as an elaboration of his father's principles, intended to supply gaps and correct crudities. Mill thus carried on the traditional teaching of English philosophers on the lines originally laid down by Locke; and for the quarter of a century after the publication was regarded as the leading exponent of its principles. His influence has diminished with the rise of the evolutionist doctrine on his own side and the appearance on the other side of men familiar with Kant and his German successors. Mill's superficial acquaintance with the German writers prevented him from perceiving some weaknesses of his teaching; and his contemporary antagonists, though rather better informed, scarcely recognised defects which have been since pointed out by Thomas Hill Green [q. v.] and others. Whatever the result to his system, he at least did more than any one of his time to stimulate English thought upon such topics.

In political economy Mill built upon the foundations of Ricardo and Malthus. He came to regard the Malthusian principles not as a barrier to progress, but as showing the conditions by which progress could be achieved. His book is throughout governed by a belief in the possibility of great social improvements, combined with a resolution to expose quack remedies and utter unpalatable truths. If he appears to the modern socialist as a follower of Ricardo, he would have been regarded by Ricardo's disciples as a socialist. The purely scientific part of his doctrine retains much value. When his exposition of the ‘wage fund’ theory was assailed by his friend Thornton, Mill not only made concessions, but, according to Professor Marshall, allowed himself to have fallen into confusions of which he was not really guilty. The same high authority observes that most of Mill's exposition of the theory in the last book of his treatise will stand later inquiry. Mill's political and social doctrines show a similar transition. While ardently sympathising with the aspirations of radicals, he had learnt to regard as the great danger of modern society the tendency of democracies to crush individual development and tyrannise over minorities. No one had a more rooted hatred for all oppression, and his advocacy