A reply even to an unjust estimate should admit what there is of truth in it.In the first place,of course,Mill was not,and never took himself to be,a poet.He had no vivid pictures of concrete facts;he was not,as he puts it in contrasting himself with Carlyle,a man of intuitions,and he formed his judgments of affairs by analysing and reflecting and expressing the result in abstract formula.That is only to say that his predominant faculty was logical,and that the imagination was comparatively feeble.He was sensitive to some poetry,to Shelley as well as to Wordsworth;but he is more impressed by its philosophical than its direct asthetical value.He was certainly less deficient than James Mill in this direction;but in another quality the contrast with his father is significant.James Mill,whatever his faults,was a man,and born to be a leader of men.He was rigid,imperative,and capable of controlling and dominating.John Stuart Mill was far weaker in that sense,and weaker because he had less virility.Mill never seems fully to appreciate the force of human passions;he fancies that the emotions which stir men to their depths can be controlled by instilling a few moral maxims or pointing out considerations of utility.He has in that respect less,human nature,in him than most human beings;and has not,like Carlyle's favourite Ram Dass,fire enough in his inside to burn up the sins of the world.One effect is obvious even in his philosophy.A philosopher,I think,owes more than is generally perceived to the moral quality which goes into masculine vigour.
To accept,as well as to announce,a doctrine which clashes with the opinions accepted in his class requires an amount of vigour and self-reliance which is only possessed by the few.Mill held very unpopular opinions,but they had been instilled into him from childhood;they were those of the whole world in which he lived,and it would have required more vigour to abandon than to maintain them.It is impossible to read the Autobiography without wondering whether a different education might not have made him a Coleridgean instead of a Benthamite.If he disbelieved in innate principles and in the boundless power of 'association,'it was partly because the influence of his own idiosyncrasy was so slightly marked in his intellectual development.He was one of the most remarkable instances of the power of education to mould the intellect,because few intellects so powerful have been so amenable.
The want of the qualities which make a man self-assertive and original implies,however,no coldness of the affections.Mill was a man of great emotional sensibility,and of very unusual tenderness.Besides his great attachment,he was deeply devoted to a few friends,and,in certain cases,greatly overestimated their qualities.His devotion to speculative pursuits made most of his attachments the product of intellectual sympathy;and he either did not form,or could not keep up,intimacies formed with persons incapable of such sympathy.Unless he could talk upon serious matters with man or woman,he would have no common bond with them;and he was too sincere to express it.His feelings,however,were,I take it,as tender as a woman's.They were wanting,not in keenness,but in the massiveness which implies more masculine fibre.And this,indeed,is what seems to indicate the truth.Mill could never admit any fundamental difference between the sexes.That is,I believe,a great but a natural misconception for one who was in character as much feminine as masculine.He had some of the amiable weaknesses which we at present --perhaps on account of the debased state of society --regard as especially feminine.The most eminent women,hitherto at least,are remarkable rather for docility than originality.
Mill was especially remarkable,as I have said,for his powers of assimilation.No more receptive pupil could ever be desired by a teacher.Like a woman,he took things --even philosophers --with excessive seriousness;and shows the complete want of humour often --unjustly perhaps --attributed to women.Prejudices provoke him,but he does not see the comic side of prejudice or of life in general.When Carlyle,in his hasty wrath,denounces,shams,with a huge guffaw,Mill patiently unravels the sophistry,and tries to discover the secret of their plausibility.Mill's method no doubt leads as a rule to safer and more sober results.
The real candour,too,and desire of light from all sides is most genuine and admirable.It may lead him rather to develop and widen the philosophy in which he was immersed than to strike out new paths.One misses at times the flashes of intuition of keener philosophers,and still more the downright protests of rough common-sense,which can sweep away cobwebs without trying elaborately to pick them to pieces.
