Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/399

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JOHN STUART MILL.
385

affords the most satisfactory evidence that the influence he has exerted is spontaneous, and is therefore likely to be lasting in its effects. If students had been driven to read his books by the necessity which examinations impose, it is quite possible that, after the examination, the books might never be looked at again. A resident, however, at the university can scarely fail to be struck with the fact that many who perfectly well know that they will never in any examination be asked to answer a question in logic or political economy, are among the most diligent students of Mr. Mill's books. When I was an undergraduate I well remember that most of my friends who were likely to take high mathematical honors were already so intimately acquainted with Mr. Mill's writings, and were so much imbued with their spirit, that they might have been regarded as his disciples. Many looked up to him as their teacher; many have since felt that he then instilled into them principles which, to a great extent, have guided their conduct in after-life. Any one who is intimately acquainted with Mr. Mill's writings will readily understand how it is that they possess such peculiar attractiveness for the class of readers to whom I am now referring. There is nothing more characteristic in his writings than generosity and courage. He always states his opponent's case with the most judicial impartiality; he never shrinks from the expression of opinion because he thinks it unpopular, and there is nothing so abhorrent to him as that bigotry which prevents a man from appreciating what is just and true in the views of those who differ from him. This toleration, which is so predominant a feature of his writings, is probably one of the rarest of all qualities in a controversialist. Those who do not possess it always produce an impression that they are unfair; and this impression, once produced, exercises a repelling influence upon the young.

To those who believe that the influence Mr. Mill has exercised at the universities has been in the highest degree beneficial—to those who think that his books not only afford the most admirable intellectual training, but also are calculated to produce a most healthy moral influence—it may be some consolation, now that we are deploring his death, to know that, although he has passed away, he may still continue to be a teacher and a guide. I believe he never visited the English universities; it was consequently entirely through his books that he was known. Not one of those who were his greatest admirers at Cambridge, when I was an undergraduate, ever saw him till many years after they had left the university. Nothing, perhaps, was so remarkable in his character as his tenderness to the feelings of others, and the deference with which he listened to those in every respect inferior to himself. There never was a man who was more entirely free from that intellectual conceit which breeds disdain. Nothing is so discouraging and heart-breaking to young people as the sneer of an intellectual cynic. A sarcasm about an act of youthful mental en-