Autobiography
by John Stuart Mill



I. Childhood and Early Education

    It seems proper that I should prefix to the following
biographical sketch, some mention of the reasons which have made
me think it desirable that I should leave behind me such a
memorial of so uneventful a life as mine. I do not for a moment
imagine that any part of what I have to relate can be interesting
to the public as a narrative, or as being connected with myself.
But I have thought that in an age in which education, and its
improvement, are the subject of more, if not of profounder study
than at any former period of English history, it may be useful
that there should be some record of an education which was
unusual and remarkable, and which, whatever else it may have
done, has proved how much more than is commonly supposed may be
taught, and well taught, in those early years which, in the
common modes of what is called instruction, are little better
than wasted. It has also seemed to me that in an age of
transition in opinions, there may be somewhat both of interest
and of benefit in noting the successive phases of any mind which
was always pressing forward, equally ready to learn and to
unlearn either from its own thoughts or from those of others. But
a motive which weighs more with me than either of these, is a
desire to make acknowledgment of the debts which my intellectual
and moral development owes to other persons; some of them of
recognized eminence, others less known than they deserve to be,
and the one to whom most of all is due, one whom the world had no
opportunity of knowing. The reader whom these things do not
interest, has only himself to blame if he reads farther, and I do
not desire any other indulgence from him than that of bearing in
mind, that for him these pages were not written.
    I was born in London, on the 20th of May, 1806, and was the
eldest son of James Mill, the author of the History of British
India. My father, the son of a petty tradesman and (I believe)
small farmer, at Northwater Bridge, in the county of Angus, was,
when a boy, recommended by his abilities to the notice of Sir
John Stuart, of Fettercairn, one of the Barons of the Exchequer
in Scotland, and was, in consequence, sent to the University of
Edinburgh at the expense of a fund established by Lady Jane
Stuart (the wife of Sir John Stuart) and some other ladies for
educating young men for the Scottish Church. He there went
through the usual course of study, and was licensed as a
Preacher, but never followed the profession; having satisfied
himself that he could not believe the doctrines of that or any
other Church. For a few years he was a private tutor in various
families in Scotland, among others that of the Marquis of
Tweeddale; but ended by taking up his residence in London, and
devoting himself to authorship. Nor had he any other means of
support until 1819, when he obtained an appointment in the India
House.
    In this period of my father's life there are two things which
it is impossible not to be struck with: one of them unfortunately
a very common circumstance, the other a most uncommon one. The
first is, that in his position, with no resource but the
precarious one of writing in periodicals, he married and had a
large family; conduct than which nothing could be more opposed,
both as a matter of good sense and of duty, to the opinions
which, at least at a later period of life, he strenuously upheld.
The other circumstance is the extraordinary energy which was
required to lead the life he led, with the disadvantages under
which he laboured from the first, and with those which he brought
upon himself by his marriage. It would have been no small thing,
had he done no more than to support himself and his family during
so many years by writing, without ever being in debt, or in any
pecuniary difficulty; holding, as he did, opinions, both in
politics and in religion, which were more odious to all persons
of influence, and to the common run of prosperous Englishmen in
that generation than either before or since; and being not only a
man whom nothing would have induced to write against his
convictions, but one who invariably threw into everything he
wrote, as much of his convictions as he thought the circumstances
would in any way permit: being, it must also be said, one who
never did anything negligently; never undertook any task,
literary or other, on which he did not conscientiously bestow all
the labour necessary for performing it adequately. But he, with
these burthens on him, planned, commenced, and completed, the
History of India; and this in the course of about ten years, a
shorter time than has been occupied (even by writers who had no
other employment) in the production of almost any other
historical work of equal bulk, and of anything approaching to the
same amount of reading and research. And to this is to be added,
that during the whole period, a considerable part of almost every
day was employed in the instruction of his children: in the case
of one of whom, myself, he exerted an amount of labour, care, and
perseverance rarely, if ever, employed for a similar purpose, in
endeavouring to give, according to his own conception, the
highest order of intellectual education.
    A man who, in his own practice, so vigorously acted up to the
principle of losing no time, was likely to adhere to the same
rule in the instruction of his pupil. I have no remembrance of
the time when I began to learn Greek. I have been told that it
was when I was three years old. My earliest recollection on the
subject, is that of committing to memory what my father termed
Vocables, being lists of common Greek words, with their
signification in English, which he wrote out for me on cards. Of
grammar, until some years later, I learnt no more than the
inflexions of the nouns and verbs, but, after a course of
vocables, proceeded at once to translation; and I faintly
remember going through AEsop's Fables, the first Greek book which
I read. The Anabasis, which I remember better, was the second. I
learnt no Latin until my eighth year. At that time I had read,
under my father's tuition, a number of Greek prose authors, among
whom I remember the whole of Herodotus, and of Xenophon's
Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates; some of the lives of the
philosophers by Diogenes Laertius; part of Lucian, and Isocrates'
ad Demonicum and ad Nicoclem. I also read, in 1813, the first six
dialogues (in the common arrangement) of Plato, from the
Euthyphron to the Theaetetus inclusive: which last dialogue, I
venture to think, would have been better omitted, as it was
totally impossible I should understand it. But my father, in all
his teaching, demanded of me not only the utmost that I could do,
but much that I could by no possibility have done. What he was
himself willing to undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be
judged from the fact, that I went through the whole process of
preparing my Greek lessons in the same room and at the same table
at which he was writing: and as in those days Greek and English
lexicons were not, and I could make no more use of a Greek and
Latin lexicon than could be made without having yet begun to
learn Latin, I was forced to have recourse to him for the meaning
of every word which I did not know. This incessant interruption,
he, one of the most impatient of men, submitted to, and wrote
under that interruption several volumes of his History and all
else that he had to write during those years.
    The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in
this part of my childhood, was arithmetic: this also my father
taught me: it was the task of the evenings, and I well remember
its disagreeableness. But the lessons were only a part of the
daily instruction I received. Much of it consisted in the books I
read by myself, and my father's discourses to me, chiefly during
our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in
Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father's
health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked
habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards
Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my
earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is
mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read
the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a
voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on
slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning
walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly
histories, of which I read in this manner a great number:
Robertson's histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight,
then and for long afterwards, was Watson's Philip the Second and
Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the
Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against
Spain, exited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to
Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke's History of
Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history,
except school abridgments and the first two or three volumes of a
translation of Rollin's Ancient History, beginning with Philip of
Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne's translation of
Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume
leaves off, I remember reading Burnet's History of his Own Time,
though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and
battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the
beginning to about 1788, when the volumes my father borrowed for
me from Mr Bentham left off. I felt a lively interest in Frederic
of Prussia during his difficulties, and in Paoli, the Corsican
patriot; but when I came to the American war, I took my part,
like a child as I was (until set right by my father) on the wrong
side, because it was called the English side. In these frequent
talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to
give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization,
government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me
afterwards to restate to him in my own words. He also made me
read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would
not have interested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of
myself: among others, Millar's Historical View of the English
Government, a book of great merit for its time, and which he
highly valued; Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, McCrie's Life of
John Knox, and even Sewel's and Rutty's Histories of the Quakers.
He was fond of putting into my hands books which exhibited men of
energy and resource in unusual circumstances, struggling against
difficulties and overcoming them: of such works I remember
Beaver's African Memoranda, and Collins's account of the first
settlement of New South Wales. Two books which I never wearied of
reading were Anson's Voyage, so delightful to most young persons,
and a Collection (Hawkesworth's, I believe) of Voyages round the
World, in four volumes, beginning with Drake and ending with Cook
and Bougainville. Of children's books, any more than of
playthings, I had scarcely any, except an occasional gift from a
relation or acquaintance: among those I had, Robinson Crusoe was
preeminent, and continued to delight me through all my boyhood.
It was no part however of my father's system to exclude books of
amusement, though he allowed them very sparingly. Of such books
he possessed at that time next to none, but he borrowed several
for me; those which I remember are the Arabian Nights, Cazotte's
Arabian Tales, Don Quixote, Miss Edgeworth's "Popular Tales," and
a book of some reputation in its day, Brooke's Fool of Quality.
    In my eighth year I commenced learning Latin, in conjunction
with a younger sister, to whom I taught it as I went on, and who
afterwards repeated the lessons to my father: and from this time,
other sisters and brothers being successively added as pupils, a
considerable part of my day's work consisted of this preparatory
teaching. It was a part which I greatly disliked; the more so, as
I was held responsible for the lessons of my pupils, in almost as
full a sense as for my own: I however derived from this
discipline the great advantage of learning more thoroughly and
retaining more lastingly the things which I was set to teach:
perhaps, too, the practice it afforded in explaining difficulties
to others, may even at that age have been useful. In other
respects, the experience of my boyhood is not favourable to the
plan of teaching children by means of one another. The teaching,
I am sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well knew that
the relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral
discipline to either. I went in this manner through the Latin
grammar, and a considerable part of Cornelius Nepos and Caesar's
Commentaries, but afterwards added to the superintendence of
these lessons, much longer ones of my own.
    In the same year in which I began Latin, I made my first
commencement in the Greek poet with the Iliad. After I had made
some progress in this, my father put Pope's translation into my
hands. It was the first English verse I had cared to read, and it
became one of the books in which for many years I most delighted:
I think I must have read it from twenty to thirty times through.
I should not have thought it worth while to mention a taste
apparently so natural to boyhood, if I had not, as I think,
observed that the keen enjoyment of this brilliant specimen of
narrative and versification is not so universal with boys, as I
should have expected both a priori and from my individual
experience. Soon after this time I commenced Euclid, and somewhat
later, algebra, still under my father's tuition.
    From my eighth to my twelfth year the Latin books which I
remember reading were, the Bucolics of Virgil, and the first six
books of the AEneid; all Horace except the Epodes; the Fables of
Phaedrus; the first five books of Livy (to which from my love of
the subject I voluntarily added, in my hours of leisure, the
remainder of the first decade); all Sallust; a considerable part
of Ovid's Metamorphoses; some plays of Terence; two or three
books of Lucretius; several of the Orations of Cicero, and of his
writings on oratory; also his letters to Atticus, my father
taking the trouble to translate to me from the French the
historical explanations in Mongault's notes. In Greek I read the
Iliad and Odyssey through; one or two plays of Sophocles,
Euripides, and Aristophanes, though by these I profited little;
all Thucydides; the Hellenics of Xenophon; a great part of
Demosthenes, AEschines, and Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon; part of
the Anthology; a little of Dionysius; several books of Polybius;
and lastly Aristotle's Rhetoric, which, as the first expressly
scientific treatise on any moral or psychological subject which I
had read, and containing many of the best observations of the
ancients on human nature and life, my father made me study with
peculiar care, and throw the matter of it into synoptic tables.
During the same years I learnt elementary geometry and algebra
thoroughly, the differential calculus and other portions of the
higher mathematics far from thoroughly: for my father, not having
kept up this part of his early acquired knowledge, could not
spare time to qualify himself for removing my difficulties, and
left me to deal with them, with little other aid than that of
books; while I was continually incurring his displeasure by my
inability to solve difficult problems for which he did not see
that I had not the necessary previous knowledge.
    As to my private reading, I can only speak of what I
remember. History continued to be my strongest predilection, and
most of all ancient history. Mitford's Greece I read continually;
my father had put me on my guard against the Tory prejudices of
this writer, and his perversions of facts for the white-washing
of despot, and blackening of popular institutions. These points
he discoursed on, exemplifying them from the Greek orators and
historians, with such effect that in reading Mitford my
sympathies were always on the contrary side to those of the
author, and I could, to some extent, have argued the point
against him: yet this did not diminish the ever new pleasure with
which I read the book. Roman history, both in my old favourite,
Hooke, and in Ferguson, continued to delight me. A book which, in
spite of what is called the dryness of its style, I took great
pleasure in, was the Ancient Universal History, through the
incessant reading of which I had my head full of historical
details concerning the obscurest ancient people, while about
modern history, except detached passages, such as the Dutch war
of independence, I knew and cared comparatively little. A
voluntary exercise, to which throughout my boyhood I was much
addicted, was what I called writing histories. I successively
imposed a Roman history, picked out of Hooke; an abridgment of
the Ancient Universal History; a History of Holland, from my
favourite Watson and from an anonymous compilation; and in my
eleventh and twelfth year I occupied myself with writing what I
flattered myself was something serious. This was no less than a
history of the Roman Government, compiled (with the assistance of
Hooke) from Livy and Dionysius: of which I wrote as much as would
have made an octavo volume, extending to the epoch of the
Licinian Laws. It was, in fact, an account of the struggles
between the patricians and plebeians, which now engrossed all the
interest in my mind which I had previously felt in the mere wars
and conquest of the Romans. I discussed all the institutional
point as they arose: though quite ignorant of Niebuhr's
researches, I, by such lights as my father had given me,
vindicated the Agrarian Laws on the evidence of Livy, and upheld
to the best of my ability the Roman democratic party. A few years
later, in my contempt of my childish efforts, I destroyed all
these papers, not then anticipating that I could ever feel any
curiosity about my first attempt at writing and reasoning. My
father encouraged me in this useful amusement, though, as I think
judiciously, he never asked to see what I wrote; so that I did
not feel that in writing it I was accountable to any one, nor had
the chilling sensation of being under a critical eye.
    But though these exercises in history were never a compulsory
lesson, there was another kind of composition which was so,
namely, writing verses, and it was one of the most disagreeable
of my tasks. Greek and Latin verses I did not write, nor learnt
the prosody of those languages. My father, thinking this not
worth the time it required, contented himself with making me read
aloud to him, and correcting false quantities. I never composed
at all in Greek, even in prose, and but little in Latin. Not that
my father could be indifferent to the value of this practice, in
giving a thorough knowledge of those languages, but because there
really was not time for it. The verses I was required to write
were English. When I first read Pope's Homer, I ambitiously
attempted to compose something of the same kind, and achieved as
much as one book of a continuation of the Iliad. There, probably,
the spontaneous promptings of my poetical ambition would have
stopped; but the exercise, begun from choice, was continued by
command. Conformably to my father's usual practice of explaining
to me, as far as possible, the reasons for what he required me to
do, he gave me, for this, as I well remember, two reasons highly
characteristic of him: one was, that some things could be
expressed better and more forcibly in verse than in prose: this,
he said, was a real advantage. The other was, that people in
general attached more value to verse than it deserved, and the
power of writing it, was, on this account, worth acquiring. He
generally left me to choose my own subject, which, as far as I
remember, were mostly addresses to some mythological personage or
allegorical abstractions; but he made me translate into English
verse many of Horace's shorter poems: I also remember his giving
me Thomson's "Winter" to read, and afterwards making me attempt
(without book) to write something myself on the same subject. The
verses I wrote were, of course, the merest rubbish, nor did I
ever attain any facility of versification, but the practice may
have been useful in making it easier for me, at a later period,
to acquire readiness of expression.(1*) I had read, up to this
time, very little English poetry, Shakespeare my father had put
into my hands, chiefly for the sake of the historical plays, from
which, however, I went on to the others. My father never was a
great admirer of Shakespeare, the English idolatry of whom he
used to attack with some severity. He cared little for any
English poetry except Milton (for whom he had the highest
admiration), Goldsmith, Burns, and Gray's Bard, which he
preferred to his Elegy: perhaps I may add Cowper and Beattie. He
had some value for Spenser, and I remember his reading to me
(unlike his usual practice of making me read to him), the first
book of the Fairie Queene; but I took little pleasure in it. The
poetry of the present century he saw scarcely any merit in, and I
hardly became acquainted with any of it till I was grown up to
manhood, except the metrical romances of Walter Scott, which I
read at his recommendation and was intensely delighted with; as I
always was with animated narrative. Dryden's Poems were among my
father's books, and many of these he made me read, but I never
cared for any of them except Alexander's Feast, which, as well as
many of the songs in Walter Scott, I used to sing internally, to
a music of my own: to some of the latter, indeed, I went so far
as to compose airs, which I still remember. Cowper's short poems
I read with some pleasure, but never got far into the longer
ones; and nothing in the two volumes interested me like the prose
account of his three hares. In my thirteenth year I met with
Campbell's Poems, among which Lochiel, Hohenlinden, the Exile of
Erin, and some others, gave me sensations I had never before
experienced from poetry. Here, too, I made nothing of the longer
poems, except the striking opening of Gertrude of Wyoming, which
long kept it place in my feelings as the perfection of pathos.
    During this part of my childhood, one of my greatest
amusements was experimental science; in the theoretical, however,
not the practical sense of the word; not trying experiments -- a
kind of discipline which I have often regretted not having had --
nor even seeing, but merely reading about them. I never remember
being so wrapt up in any book, as I was in Joyce's Scientific
Dialogues; and I was rather recalcitrant to my father's
criticisms of the bad reasoning respecting the first principles
of physics, which abounds in the early part of that work. I
devoured treatises on Chemistry, especially that of my father's
early friend and schoolfellow, Dr. Thomson, for years before I
attended a lecture or saw an experiment.
    From about the age of twelve, I entered into another and more
advanced stage in my course of instruction; in which the main
object was no longer the aids and appliances of thought, but the
thoughts themselves. This commenced with Logic, in which I began
at once with the Organon, and read it to the Analytics inclusive,
but profited little by the Posterior Analytics, which belongs to
a branch of speculation I was not yet ripe for. Contemporaneously
with the Organon, my father made me read the whole or parts of
several of the Latin treatises on the scholastic logic; giving
each day to him, in our walks, a minute account of what I had
read, and answering his numerous and searching questions. After
this, I went in a similar manner, through the "Computatio sive
Logica" of Hobbes, a work of a much higher order of thought than
the books of the school logicians, and which he estimated very
highly; in my own opinion beyond it merits, great as these are.
It was his invariable practice, whatever studies he exacted from
me, to make me as far as possible understand and feel the utility
of them: and this he deemed peculiarly fitting in the case of the
syllogistic logic, the usefulness of which had been impugned by
so many writers of authority. I well remember how, and in what
particular walk, in the neighbourhood of Bagshot Heath (where we
were on a visit to his old friend Mr Wallace, then one of the
Mathematical Professors at Sandhurst) he first attempted by
questions to make me think on the subject, and frame some
conception of what constituted the utility of the syllogistic
logic, and when I had failed in this, to make me understand it by
explanations. The explanations did not make the matter at all
clear to me at the time; but they were not therefore useless;
they remained as a nucleus for my observations and reflections to
crystallize upon; the import of his general remarks being
interpreted to me, by the particular instances which came under
my notice afterwards. My own consciousness and experience
ultimately led me to appreciate quite as highly as he did, the
value of an early practical familiarity with the school logic. I
know nothing, in my education, to which I think myself more
indebted for whatever capacity of thinking I have attained. The
first intellectual operation in which I arrived at any
proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what
part the fallacy lay: and though whatever capacity of this sort I
attained was due to the fact that it was an intellectual exercise
in which I was most perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is
also true that the school logic, and the mental habits acquired
in studying it, were among the principal instruments of this
drilling. I am persuaded that nothing, in modern education, tends
so much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who attach a
precise meaning to words and propositions, and are not imposed on
by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. The boasted influence of
mathematical studies is nothing to it; for in mathematical
processes, none of the real difficulties of correct ratiocination
occur. It is also a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in
the education of philosophical students, since it does not
presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience and
reflection, valuable thoughts of their own. They may become
capable of disentangling the intricacies of confused and
self-contradictory thought, before their own thinking faculties
are much advanced; a power which, for want of some such
discipline, many otherwise able men altogether lack; and when
they have to answer opponent, only endeavour, by such argument as
they can command, to support the opposite conclusion, scarcely
even attempting to confute the reasonings of their antagonists;
and, therefore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it
depends on argument, a balanced one.
    During this time, the Latin and Greek books which I continued
to read with my father were chiefly such as were worth studying,
not for the language merely, but also for the thoughts. This
included much of the orators, and especially Demosthenes, some of
whose principal orations I read several times over, and wrote
out, by way of exercise, a full analysis of them. My father's
comments on these orations when I read them to him were very
instructive to me. He not only drew my attention to the insight
they afforded into Athenian institutions, and the principles of
legislation and government which they often illustrated, but
pointed out the skill and art of the orator -- how everything
important to his purpose was said at the exact moment when he had
brought the minds of his audience into the state most fitted to
receive it; how he made steal into their minds, gradually and by
insinuation, thoughts which, if expressed in a more direct manner
would have aroused their opposition. Most of these reflections
were beyond my capacity of full comprehension at the time; but
they left seed behind, which geminated in due season. At this
time I also read the whole of Tacitus, Juvenal, and Quintilian.
The latter, owing to his obscure style and to the scholastic
details of which many parts of his treatise are made up, is
little read, and seldom sufficiently appreciated. His book is a
kind of encyclopaedia of the thoughts of the ancients on the
whole field of education and culture; and I have retained through
life many valuable ideas which I can distinctly trace to my
reading of him, even at that early age. It was at this period
that I read, for the first time, some of the most important
dialogues of Plato, in particular the Gorgias, the Protagoras,
and the Republic. There is no author to whom my father thought
himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or
whom he more frequently recommended to young student. I can bear
similar testimony in regard to myself. The Socratic method, of
which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is
unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and
clearing up the confusions incident to the intellectus sibi
permissus, the understanding which has made up all its bundles of
associations under the guidance of popular phraseology. The
close, searching elenchus by which the man of vague generalities
is constrained either to express his meaning to himself in
definite terms, or to confess that he does not know what he is
talking about; the perpetual testing of all general statements by
particular instances; the siege in from which is laid to the
meaning of large abstract terms, by fixing upon some still larger
class-name which includes that and more, and dividing down to the
thing sought -- marking out its limits and definition by a series
of accurately drawn distinctions between it and each of the
cognate objects which are successively parted off from it -- all
this, as an education for precise thinking, is inestimable, and
all this, even at that age, took such hold of me that it became
part of my own mind. I have felt ever since that the title of
Platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been
nourished in, and have endeavoured to practise Plato's mode of
investigation, than to those who are distinguished only by the
adoption of certain dogmatical conclusions, drawn mostly from the
least intelligible of his works, and which the character of his
mind and writings makes it uncertain whether he himself regarded
as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures.
    In going through Plato and Demosthenes, since I could now
read these authors, as far as the language was concerned, with
perfect ease, I was not required to construe them sentence by
sentence, but to read them aloud to my father, answering
questions when asked: but the particular attention which he paid
to elocution (in which his own excellence was remarkable) made
this reading aloud to him a most painful task. Of all things
which he required me to do, there was none which I did so
constantly ill, or in which he so perpetually lost his temper
with me. He had thought much on the principles of the art of
reading, especially the most neglected part of it, the
inflections of the voice, or modulation as writers on elocution
call it (in contrast with articulation on the one side, and
expression on the other), and had reduced it to rules, grounded
on the logical analysis of a sentence. These rules he strongly
impressed upon me, and took me severely to task for every
violation of them: but I even then remarked (though I did not
venture to make the remark to him) that though he reproached me
when I read a sentence ill, and told me how I ought to have read
it, he never, by reading it himself, showed me how it ought to be
read. A defect running through his otherwise admirable modes of
instruction, as it did through all his modes of thought, was that
of trusting too much to the intelligibleness of the abstract,
when not embodied in the concrete. It was at a much later period
of my youth, when practising elocution by myself, or with
companions of my own age, that I for the first time understood
the object of his rules, and saw the psychological grounds of
them. At that time I and others followed out the subject into its
ramifications and could have composed a very useful treatise,
grounded on my father's principles. He himself left those
principles and rules unwritten. I regret that when my mind was
full of the subject, from systematic practice, I did not put
them, and our improvements of them, into a formal shape.
    A book which contributed largely to my education, in the best
sense of the term, was my father's History of India. It was
published in the beginning of 1818. During the year previous,
while it was passing through the press, I used to read the proof
sheets to him; or rather, I read the manuscript to him while he
corrected the proofs. The number of new ideas which I received
from this remarkable book, and the impulse and stimulus as well
as guidance given to my thoughts by its criticisms and
disquisitions on society and civilization in the Hindoo part, on
institutions and the acts of governments in the English part,
made my early familiarity with it eminently useful to my
subsequent progress. And though I can perceive deficiencies in it
now as compared with a perfect standard, I still think it, if not
the most, one of the most instructive histories ever written, and
one of the books from which most benefit may be derived by a mind
in the course of making up its opinions.
    The Preface, among the most characteristic of my father's
writings, as well as the richest in materials of thought, gives a
picture which may be entirely depended on, of the sentiments and
expectations with which he wrote the History. Saturated as the
book is with the opinions and modes of judgment of a democratic
radicalism then regarded as extreme; and treating with a
severity, at that time most unusual, the English Constitution,
the English law, and all parties and classes who possessed any
considerable influence in the country; he may have expected
reputation, but certainly not advancement in life, from its
publication; nor could he have supposed that it would raise up
anything but enemies for him in powerful quarters: least of all
could he have expected favour from the East India Company, to
whose commercial privileges he was unqualifiedly hostile, and on
the acts of whose government he had made so many severe comments:
though, in various parts of his book, he bore a testimony in
their favour, which he felt to be their just due, namely, that no
government had on the whole given so much proof, to the extent of
its lights, of good intention towards its subjects; and that if
the acts of any other government had the light of publicity as
completely let in upon them, they would, in all probability,
still less bear scrutiny.
    On learning, however, in the spring of 1819, about a year
after the publication of the History, that the East India
Directors desired to strengthen the part of their home
establishment which was employed in carrying on the
correspondence with India, my father declared himself a candidate
for that employment, and, to the credit of the Directors,
successfully. He was appointed one of the Assistants of the
Examiner of India Correspondence; officers whose duty it was to
prepare drafts of despatches to India, for consideration by the
Directors, in the principal departments of administration. In
this office, and in that of Examiner, which he subsequently
attained, the influence which his talents, his reputation, and
his decision of character gave him, with superiors who really
desired the good government of India, enabled him to a great
extent to throw into his drafts of despatches, and to carry
through the ordeal of the Court of Directors and Board of
Control, without having their force much weakened, his real
opinions on Indian subjects. In his History he had set forth, for
the first time, many of the true principles of Indian
administration: and his despatches, following his History, did
more than had ever been done before to promote the improvement of
india, and teach indian officials to understand their business.
If a selection of them were published, they would, I am
convinced, place his character as a practical statesman fully on
a level with his eminence as a speculative writer.
    This new employment of his time caused no relaxation in his
attention to my education. It was in this same year, 1819, that
he took me through a complete course of political economy. His
loved and intimate friend, Ricardo, had shortly before published
the book which formed so great an epoch in political economy; a
book which never would have been published or written, but for
the entreaty and strong encouragement of my father; for Ricardo,
the most modest of men, though firmly convinced of the truth of
his doctrines, deemed himself so little capable of doing them
justice in exposition and expression, that he shrank from the
idea of publicity. The same friendly encouragement induced
Ricardo, a year or two later, to become a member of the House of
Commons; where, during the few remaining years of his life,
happily cut short in the full vigour of his intellect, he
tendered so much service to his and my father's opinions both on
political economy and on other subjects.
    Though Ricardo's great work was already in print, no didactic
treatise embodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for learners,
had yet appeared. My father, therefore, commenced instructing me
in the science by a sort of lectures, which he delivered to me in
our walks. He expounded each day a portion of the subject, and I
gave him next day a written account of it, which he made me
rewrite over and over again until it was clear, precise, and
tolerably complete. In this manner I went through the whole
extent of the science; and the written outline of it which
resulted from my daily compte rendu, served him afterwards as
notes from which to write his Elements of Political Economy.
After this I read Ricardo, giving an account daily of what I
read, and discussing, in the best manner I could, the collateral
points which offered themselves in our progress.
    On Money, as the most intricate part of the subject, he made
me read in the same manner Ricardo's admirable pamphlets, written
during what was called the Bullion controversy. to these
succeeded Adam Smith; and in this reading it was one of my
father's main objects to make me apply to Smith's more
superficial view of political economy, the superior lights of
Ricardo, and detect what was fallacious in Smith's arguments, or
erroneous in any of his conclusions. Such a mode of instruction
was excellently calculated to form a thinker; but it required to
be worked by a thinker, as close and vigorous as my father. The
path was a thorny one, even to him, and I am sure it was so to
me, notwithstanding the strong interest I took in the subject. He
was often, and much beyond reason, provoked by my failures in
cases where success could not have been expected; but in the main
his method was right, and it succeeded. I do not believe that any
scientific teaching ever was more thorough, or better fitted for
training the faculties, than the mode in which logic and
political economy were taught to me by my father. Striving, even
in an exaggerated degree, to call forth the activity of my
faculties, by making me find out everything for myself, he gave
his explanations not before, but after, I had felt the full force
of the difficulties; and not only gave me an accurate knowledge
of these two great subjects, as far as they were then understood,
but made me a thinker on both. I thought for myself almost from
the first, and occasionally thought differently from him, though
for a long time only on minor points, and making his opinion the
ultimate standard. At a later period I even occasionally
convinced him, and altered his opinion on some points of detail:
which I state to his honour, not my own. It at once exemplifies
his perfect candour, and the real worth of his method of
teaching.
    At this point concluded what can properly be called my
lessons: when I was about fourteen I left England for more than a
year; and after my return, though my studies went on under my
father's general direction, he was no longer my schoolmaster. I
shall therefore pause here, and turn back to matters of a more
general nature connected with the part of my life and education
included in the preceding reminiscences.
    In the course of instruction which I have partially retraced,
the point most superficially apparent is the great effort to
give, during the years of childhood an amount of knowledge in
what are considered the higher branches of education, which is
seldom acquired (if acquired at all) until the age of manhood.
The result of the experiment shows the ease with which this may
be done, and places in a strong light the wretched waste of so
many precious years as are spent in acquiring the modicum of
Latin and Greek commonly taught to schoolboys; a waste, which has
led so many educational reformers to entertain the ill-judged
proposal of discarding these languages altogether from general
education. If I had been by nature extremely quick of
apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive
memory or were of a remarkably active and energetic character,
the trial would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts
I am rather below than above par; what I could do, could
assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and
healthy physical constitution: and if I have accomplished
anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the
fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father,
I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a
century over my contemporaries.
    There was one cardinal point in this training, of which I
have already given some indication, and which, more than anything
else, was the cause of whatever good it effected. Most boys or
youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their
mental capacities not strengthened, but over-laid by it. They are
crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of
other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the
power to form opinions of their own: and thus the sons of eminent
fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often
grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of
using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine,
however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted
anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of
memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along
with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it.
Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told,
until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself. As
far as I can trust my remembrance, I acquitted myself very lamely
in this department; my recollection of such matters is almost
wholly of failures, hardly ever of success. It is true the
failures were often in things in which success in so early a
stage of my progress, was almost impossible. I remember at some
time in my thirteenth year, on my happening to use the word idea,
he asked me what an idea was; and expressed some displeasure at
my ineffectual efforts to define the word: I recollect also his
indignation at my using the common expression that something was
true in theory but required correction in practice; and how,
after making me vainly strive to define the word theory, he
explained its meaning, and showed the fallacy of the vulgar form
of speech which I had used; leaving me fully persuaded that in
being unable to give a correct definition of Theory, and in
speaking of it as something which might be at variance with
practice, I had shown unparalleled ignorance. In this he seems,
and perhaps was, very unreasonable; but I think, only in being
angry at my failure. A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded
which he cannot do, never does all he can.
    One of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early
proficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, my
father most anxiously guarded against. This was self-conceit. He
kept me, with extreme vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself
praised, or of being led to make self-flattering comparisons
between myself and others. From his own intercourse with me I
could derive none but a very humble opinion of myself; and the
standard of comparison he always held up to me, was not what
other people did, but what a man could and ought to do. He
completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influences
he so much dreaded. I was not at all aware that my attainments
were anything unusual at my age. If I accidentally had my
attention drawn to the fact that some other boy knew less than
myself -- which happened less often than might be imagined-i
concluded, not that I knew much, but that he, for some reason or
other, knew little, or that his knowledge was of a different kind
from mine. My state of mind was not humility, but neither was it
arrogance. I never thought of saying to myself, I am, or I can
do, so and so. I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly. I did
not estimate myself at all. If I thought anything about myself,
it was that I was rather backward in my studies, since I always
found myself so, in comparison with what my father expected from
me. I assert this with confidence, though it was not the
impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood. They,
as I have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably
self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did not
scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard
said. I suppose I acquired this bad habit from having been
encouraged in an unusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age,
and with grown persons, while I never had inculcated in me the
usual respect for them. My father did not correct this
ill-breeding and impertinence, probably from not being aware of
it, for I was always too much in awe of him to be otherwise than
extremely subdued and quiet in his presence. Yet with all this I
had no notion of any superiority in myself; and well was it for
me that I had not. I remember the very place in Hyde Park where,
in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father's house
for a long absence, he told me that I should find, as I got
acquainted with new people, that I had been taught many things
which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that many
persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to
compliment me upon it. What other things he said on this topic I
remember very imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that
whatever I knew more than others, could not be ascribed to any
merit in me, but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen
to my lot, of having a father who was able to teach me, and
willing to give the necessary trouble and time; that it was no
matter of praise to me, if I knew more than those who had not had
a similar advantage, but the deepest disgrace to me if I did not.
I have a distinct remembrance, that the suggestion thus for the
first time made to me, that I knew more than other youths who
were considered well educated, was to me a piece of information,
to which, as to all other things which my father told me, I gave
implicit credence, but which did not at all impress me as a
personal matter. I felt no disposition to glorify myself upon the
circumstance that there were other persons who did not know what
I knew; nor had I ever flattered myself that my acquirements,
whatever they might be, were any merit of mine: but, now when my
attention was called to the subject, I felt that what my father
had said, respecting my peculiar advantages was exactly the truth
and common sense of the matter, and it fixed my opinion and
feeling from that time forward.
    It is evident that this, among many other of the purposes of
my father's scheme of education, could not have been accomplished
if he had not carefully kept me from having any great amount of
intercourse with other boys. He was earnestly bent upon my
escaping not only the ordinary corrupting influence which boys
exercise over boys, but the contagion of vulgar modes of thought
and feeling; and for this he was willing that I should pay the
price of inferiority in the accomplishments which schoolboys in
all countries chiefly cultivate. The deficiencies in my education
were principally in the things which boys learn from being turned
out to shift for themselves, and from being brought together in
large numbers. From temperance and much walking, I grew up
healthy and hardy though not muscular; but I could do no feats of
skill or Physical strength, and knew none of the ordinary bodily
exercises. It was not that play, or time for it, was refused me.
Though no holidays were allowed, lest the habit of work should be
broken, and a taste for idleness acquired, I had ample leisure in
every day to amuse myself; but as I had no boy companions, and
the animal need of physical activity was satisfied by walking, my
amusements, which were mostly solitary, were in general of a
quiet, if not a bookish turn, and gave little stimulus to any
other kind even of mental activity than that which was already
called forth by my studies: I consequently remained long, and in
a less degree have always remained, inexpert in anything
requiring manual dexterity; my mind as well as my hands, did its
work very lamely when it was applied, or ought to have been
applied, to the practical details which, as they are the chief
interest of life to the majority of men, are also the things in
which whatever mental capacity they have, chiefly shows itself: I
was constantly meriting reproof by inattention, inobservance, and
general slackness of mind in matters of daily life. My father was
the extreme opposite in these particulars: his senses and mental
faculties were always on the alert; he carried decision and
energy of character in his whole manner and into every action of
life: and this, as much as his talents, contributed to the strong
impression which he always made upon those with whom he came into
personal contact. But the children of energetic parents,
frequently grow up unenergetic, because they lean on their
parents, and the parents are energetic for them. The education
which my father gave me, was in itself much more fitted for
training me to know than to do. Not that he was unaware of my
deficiencies; both as a boy and as a youth I was incessantly
smarting under his severe admonitions on the subject. There was
anything but insensibility or tolerance on his part towards such
shortcomings: but, while he saved me from the demoralizing
effects of school life, he made no effort to provide me with any
sufficient substitute for its practicalizing influences. Whatever
qualities he himself, probably, had acquired without difficulty
or special training, he seems to have supposed that I ought to
acquire as easily. He had not, I think, bestowed the same amount
of thought and attention on this, as on most other branches of
education; and here, as well as in some other points of my
tuition, he seems to have expected effects without causes. 

 II. MORAL INFLUENCES IN EARLY YOUTH. MY FATHER'S CHARACTER AND
OPINIONS.

    In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral
influences, which are so much more important than all others, are
also the most complicated, and the most difficult to specify with
any approach to completeness. Without attempting the hopeless
task of detailing the circumstances by which, in this respect, my
early character may have been shaped, I shall confine myself to a
few leading points, which form an indispensable part of any true
account of my education.
    I was brought up from the first without any religious belief,
in the ordinary acceptation of the term. My father, educated in
the creed of Scotch presbyterianism, had by his own studies and
reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in
revelation, but the foundations of what is commonly called
Natural Religion. I have heard him say, that the turning point of
his mind on the subject was reading Butler's Analogy. That work,
of which he always continued to speak with respect, kept him, as
he said, for some considerable time, a believer in the divine
authority of Christianity; by proving to him, that whatever are
the difficulties in believing that the Old and New Testaments
proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise and good
being, the same and still greater difficulties stand in the way
of the belief, that a being of such a character can have been the
Maker of the universe. He considered Butler's argument as
conclusive against the only opponents for whom it was intended.
Those who admit an omnipotent as well as perfectly just and
benevolent maker and ruler of such a world as this, can say
little against Christianity but what can, with at least equal
force, be retorted against themselves. Finding, therefore, no
halting place in Deism, he remained in a state of perplexity,
until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to the
conviction, that, concerning the origin of things nothing
whatever can be known. This is the only correct statement of his
opinion; for dogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most
of those, whom the world has considered Atheists, have always
done. These particulars are important, because they show that my
father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was
not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and
evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than
intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so
full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power
with perfect goodness and righteousness. His intellect spurned
the subtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this
open contradiction. The Sabaean, or Manichaean theory of a Good
and Evil Principle, struggling against each other for the
government of the universe, he would not have equally condemned;
and I have heard him express surprise, that no one revived it in
our time. He would have regarded it as a mere hypothesis; but he
would have ascribed to it no depraving influence. As it was, his
aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term,
was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he regarded it with
the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great
moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality:
first, by setting up factitious excellencies, -- belief in
creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with
the good of human kind, -- and causing these to be accepted as
substitutes for genuine virtues: but above all, by radically
vitiating the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the
will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of
adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently
hateful. I have a hundred times heard him say, that all ages and
nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly
increasing progression, that mankind have gone on adding trait
after trait till they reached the most perfect conception of
wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this
God, and prostrated themselves before it. This ne plus ultra of
wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly
presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. Think (he used
to say) of a being who would make a Hell -- who would create the
human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with
the intention, that the great majority of them were to be
consigned to horrible and everlasting torment. The time, I
believe, is drawing near when this dreadful conception of an
object of worship will be no longer identified with Christianity;
and when all persons, with any sense of moral good and evil, will
look upon it with the same indignation with which my father
regarded it. My father was as well aware as anyone that
Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing
consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner
or to the extent which might have been expected from it. The same
slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears,
wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory
involving a contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving
the logical consequences of the theory. Such is the facility with
which mankind believe at one and the same time things
inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from
what they receive as truths, any consequences but those
recommended to them by their feelings, that multitudes have held
the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have
nevertheless identified that being with the best conception they
were able to form of perfect goodness. Their worship was not paid
to the demon which such a being as they imagined would really be,
but to their own idea of excellence. The evil is, that such a
belief keeps the ideal wretchedly low; and opposes the most
obstinate resistance to all thought which has a tendency to raise
it higher. Believers shrink from every train of ideas which would
lead the mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of
excellence, because they feel (even when they do not distinctly
see) that such a standard would conflict with many of the
dispensations of nature, and with much of what they are
accustomed to consider as the Christian creed. And thus morality
continues a matter of blind tradition, with no consistent
principle, nor even any consistent feeling, to guide it.
    It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas
of duty, to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his
convictions and feelings respecting religion: and he impressed
upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came
into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the
question, "Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no
experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and
that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back,
since the question immediately presents itself, Who made God? He,
at the same time, took care that I should be acquainted with what
had been thought by mankind on these impenetrable problems. I
have mentioned at how early an age he made me a reader of
ecclesiastical history; and he taught me to take the strongest
interest in the Reformation, as the great and decisive contest
against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought.
    I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of
one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it: I
grew up in a negative state with regard to it. I looked upon the
modern exactly as I did upon the ancient religion, as something
which in no way concerned me. It did not seem to me more strange
that English people should believe what I did not, than that the
men I read of in Herodotus should have done so. History had made
the variety of opinions among mankind a fact familiar to me, and
this was but a prolongation of that fact. This point in my early
education had, however, incidentally One bad consequence
deserving notice. In giving me an opinion contrary to that of the
world, my father thought it necessary to give it as one which
could not prudently be avowed to the world. This lesson of
keeping my thoughts to myself, at that early age, was attended
with some moral disadvantages; though my limited intercourse with
strangers, especially such as were likely to speak to me on
religion, prevented me from being placed in the alternative of
avowal or hypocrisy. I remember two occasions in my boyhood, on
which I felt myself in this alternative, and in both cases I
avowed my disbelief and defended it. My opponents were boys,
considerably older than myself: one of them I certainly staggered
at the time, but the subject was never renewed between us: the
other who was surprised, and somewhat shocked, did his best to
convince me for some time, without effect.
    The great advance in liberty of discussion, which is one of
the most important differences between the present time and that
of my childhood, has greatly altered the moralities of this
question; and I think that few men of my father's intellect and
public spirit, holding with such intensity of moral conviction as
he did, unpopular opinions on religion, or on any other of the
great subjects of thought, would now either practise or inculcate
the withholding of them from the world, unless in the cases,
becoming fewer every day, in which frankness on these subjects
would either risk the loss of means of subsistence, or would
amount to exclusion from some sphere of usefulness peculiarly
suitable to the capacities of the individual. On religion in
particular the time appears to me to have come, when it is the
duty of all who being qualified in point of knowledge, have on
mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current
opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent
known; at least, if they are among those whose station or
reputation, gives their opinion a chance of being attended to.
Such an avowal would put an end, at once and for ever, to the
vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very improperly, unbelief,
is connected with any bad qualities either of mind or heart. The
world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of
its brightest ornaments -- of those most distinguished even in
popular estimation for wisdom and virtue -- are complete sceptics
in religion; many of them refraining from avowal, less from
personal considerations, than from a conscientious, though now in
my opinion a most mistaken apprehension, lest by speaking out
what would tend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence
(as they suppose) existing restraints, they should do harm
instead of good.
    Of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are
many species, including almost every variety of moral type. But
the best among them, as no one who has had opportunities of
really knowing them will hesitate to affirm (believers rarely
have that opportunity), are more genuinely religious, in the best
sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate
to themselves the title. The liberality of the age, or in other
words the weakening of the obstinate prejudice which makes men
unable to see what is before their eyes because it is contrary to
their expectations, has caused it to be very commonly admitted
that a Deist may be truly religious: but if religion stands for
any graces of character and not for mere dogma, the assertion may
equally be made of many whose belief is far short of Deism.
Though they may think the proof incomplete that the universe is a
work of design, and though they assuredly disbelieve that it can
have an Author and Governor who is absolute in power as well as
perfect in goodness, they have that which constitutes the
principal worth of all religions whatever, an ideal conception of
a Perfect Being, to which they habitually refer as the guide of
their conscience; and this ideal of Good is usually far nearer to
perfection than the objective Deity of those, who think
themselves obliged to find absolute goodness in the author of a
world so crowded with suffering and so deformed by injustice as
ours.
    My father's moral convictions, wholly dissevered from
religion, were very much of the character of those of the Greek
Philosophers; and were delivered with the force and decision
which characterized all that came from him. Even at the very
early age at which I read with him the Memorabilia of Xenophon, I
imbibed from that work and from his comments a deep respect for
the character of Socrates; who stood in my mind as a model of
ideal excellence: and I well remember how my father at that time
impressed upon me the lesson of the "Choice of Hercules." At a
somewhat later period the lofty moral standard exhibited in the
writings of Plato operated upon me with great force. My father's
moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the
"Socratici viri;" justice, temperance (to which he gave a very
extended application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to
encounter pain and especially labour; regard for the public good;
estimation of persons according to their merits, and of things
according to their intrinsic usefulness; a life of exertion in
contradiction to one of self-indulgent sloth. These and other
moralities he conveyed in brief sentences, uttered as occasion
arose, of grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contempt.
    But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does
more; and the effect my father produced on my character, did not
depend solely on what he said or did with that direct object, but
also, and still more, on what manner of man he was.
    In his views of life he partook of the character of the
Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Cynic, not in the modern but the
ancient sense of the word. In his personal qualities the Stoic
predominated. His standard of morals was Epicurean, inasmuch as
it was utilitarian, taking as the exclusive test of right and
wrong, the tendency of actions to produce pleasure or pain. But
he had (and this was the Cynic element) scarcely any belief in
pleasure; at least in his later years, of which alone, on this
point, I can speak confidently. He was not insensible to
pleasures; but he deemed very few of them worth the price which,
at least in the present state of society, must be paid for them.
The greater number of miscarriages in life, he considered to be
attributable to the overvaluing of pleasures. Accordingly,
temperance, in the large sense intended by the Greek philosophers
-- stopping short at the point of moderation in all indulgences
-- was with him, as with them, almost the central point of
educational precept. His inculcations of this virtue fill a large
place in my childish remembrances. He thought human life a poor
thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied
curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often
speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young
persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and
profound conviction. He would sometimes say, that if life were
made what it might be, by good government and good education, it
would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like
enthusiasm even of that possibility. He never varied in rating
intellectual enjoyments above all others, even in value as
pleasures, independently of their ulterior benefits. The
pleasures of the benevolent affections he placed high in the
scale; and used to say, that he had never known a happy old man,
except those who were able to live over again in the pleasures of
the young. For passionate emotions of all sorts, and for
everything which has been said or written in exaltation of them,
he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded them as a form of
madness. "The intense" was with him a bye-word of scornful
disapprobation. He regarded as an aberration of the moral
standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the
great stress laid upon feeling. Feelings, as such, he considered
to be no proper subjects of praise or blame. Right and wrong,
good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct-of acts
and omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and
does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions:
conscience itself, the very desire to act right, often leading
people to act wrong. Consistently carrying out the doctrine, that
the object of praise and blame should be the discouragement of
wrong conduct and the encouragement of right, he refused to let
his praise or blame be influenced by the motive of the agent. He
blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive
was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil
doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for
inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be
an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty
of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its
full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized
conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was
more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel
assurance of it. But he disliked people quite as much for any
other deficiency, provided he thought it equally likely to make
them act ill. He disliked, for instance, a fanatic in any bad
cause, as much or more than one who adopted the same cause from
self-interest, because he thought him even more likely to be
practically mischievous. And thus, his aversion to many
intellectual errors, or what he regarded as such, partook, in a
certain sense, of the character of a moral feeling. All this is
merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very
unusual, threw his feelings into his opinions; which truly it is
difficult to understand how any one who possesses much of both,
can fail to do. None but those who do not care about opinions,
will confound it with intolerance. Those, who having opinions
which they hold to be immensely important, and their contraries
to be prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general
good, will necessarily dislike, as a class and in the abstract,
those who think wrong what they think right, and right what they
think wrong: though they need not therefor.e be, nor was my
father, insensible to good qualities in an opponent, nor governed
in their estimation of individuals by one general presumption,
instead of by the whole of their character. I grant that an
earnest person, being no more infallible than other men, is
liable to dislike people on account of opinions which do not
merit dislike; but if he neither himself does them any ill
office, nor connives at its being done by others, he is not
intolerant: and the forbearance which flows from a conscientious
sense of the importance to mankind of the equal Freedom of all
opinions, is the only tolerance which is commendable, or, to the
highest moral order of minds, possible.
    It will be admitted, that a man of the opinions, and the
character, above described, was likely to leave a strong moral
impression on any mind principally formed by him, and that his
moral teaching was not likely to err on the side of laxity or
indulgence. The element which was chiefly deficient in his moral
relation to his children was that of tenderness. I do not believe
that this deficiency lay in his own nature. I believe him to have
had much more feeling than he habitually showed, and much greater
capacities of feeling than were ever developed. He resembled most
Englishmen in being ashamed of the signs of feeling, and by the
absence of demonstration, starving the feelings themselves. If we
consider further that he was in the trying position of sole
teacher, and add to this that his temper was constitutionally
irritable, it is impossible not to feel true pity for a father
who did, and strove to do, so much for his children, who would
have so valued their affection, yet who must have been constantly
feeling that fear of him was drying it up at its source. This was
no longer the case later in life, and with his younger children.
They loved him tenderly. and if I cannot say so much of myself, I
was always loyally devoted to him. As regards my own education, I
hesitate to pronounce whether I was more a loser or gainer by his
severity it was not such as to prevent me from having a happy
childhood. And I do not believe that boys can be induced to apply
themselves with vigour, and what is so much more difficult,
perseverance, to dry and irksome studies, by the sole force of
persuasion and soft words. Much must be done, and much must be
learnt, by children, for which rigid discipline, and known
liability to punishment, are indispensable as means. It is, no
doubt, a very laudable effort, in modern teaching, to render as
much as possible of what the young are required to learn, easy
and interesting to them. But when this principle is pushed to the
length of not requiring them to learn anything but what has been
made easy and interesting, one of the chief objects of education
is sacrificed. I rejoice in the decline of the old brutal and
tyrannical system of teaching, which, however, did succeed in
enforcing habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me,
is training up a race of men who will be incapable of doing
anything which is disagreeable to them. I do not, then, believe
that fear, as an element in education, can be dispensed with; but
I am sure that it ought not to be the main element; and when it
predominates so much as to preclude love and confidence on the
part of the child to those who should be the unreservedly trusted
advisers of after years, and perhaps to seal up the fountains of
frank and spontaneous communicativeness in the child's nature, it
is an evil for which a large abatement must be made from the
benefits, moral and intellectual, which may flow from any other
part of the education.
    During this first period of my life, the habitual frequenters
of my father's house were limited to a very few persons, most of
them little known to the world, but whom personal worth, and more
or less of congeniality with at least his political opinions (not
so frequently to be met with then as since) inclined him to
cultivate; and his conversations with them I listened to with
interest and instruction. My being an habitual inmate of my
father's study made me acquainted with the dearest of his
friends, David Ricardo, who by his benevolent countenance, and
kindliness of manner, was very attractive to young persons, and
who after I became a student of political economy, invited me to
his house and to walk with him in order to converse on the
subject. I was a more frequent visitor (from about 1817 or 1818)
to Mr Hume, who, born in the same part of Scotland as my father,
and having been, I rather think, a younger schoolfellow or
college companion of his, had on returning from India renewed
their youthful acquaintance, and who coming like many others
greatly under the influence of my father's intellect and energy
of character, was induced partly by that influence to go into
Parliament, and there adopt the line of conduct which has given
him an honourable place in the history of his country. Of Mr
Bentham I saw much more, owing to the close intimacy which
existed between him and my father. I do not know how soon after
my father's first arrival in England they became acquainted. But
my father was the earliest Englishman of any great mark, who
thoroughly understood, and in the main adopted, Bentham's general
views of ethics, government and law: and this was a natural
foundation for sympathy between them, and made them familiar
companions in a period of Bentham's life during which he admitted
much fewer visitors than was the case subsequently. At this time
Mr Bentham passed some part of every year at Barrow Green House,
in a beautiful part of the Surrey hills, a few miles from
Godstone, and there I each summer accompanied my father in a long
visit. In 1813, Mr Bentham, my father, and I made an excursion,
which included Oxford, Bath and Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and
Portsmouth. In this journey I saw many things which were
instructive to me, and acquired my first taste for natural
scenery, in the elementary form of fondness for a "view." in the
succeeding winter we moved into a house very near Mr Bentham's,
which my father rented from him, in Queen Square, Westminster.
From 1814 to 1817 Mr Bentham lived during half of each year at
Ford Abbey in Somersetshire (or rather in a part of Devonshire
surrounded by Somersetshire), which intervals I had the advantage
of passing at that place. This sojourn was, I think, an important
circumstance in my education. Nothing contributes more to nourish
elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free
character of their habitations. The middle-age architecture, the
baronial hall, and the spacious and lofty rooms, of this fine old
place, so unlike the mean and cramped externals of English middle
class life, gave the sentiment of a large and freer existence,
and were to me a sort of poetic cultivation, aided also by the
character of the grounds in which the Abbey stood; which were
riant and secluded, umbrageous, and full of the sound of falling
waters.
    I owed another of the fortunate circumstances in my
education, a year's residence in France, to Mr Bentham's brother,
General Sir Samuel Bentham. I had seen Sir Samuel Bentham and his
family at their house near Gosport in the course of the tour
already mentioned (he being then Superintendent of the Dockyard
at Portsmouth), and during a stay of a few days which they made
at Ford Abbey shortly after the peace, before going to live on
the Continent. In 1820 they invited me for a six months' visit to
them in the South of France, which their kindness ultimately
prolonged to nearly a twelvemonth. Sir Samuel Bentham, though of
a character of mind different from that of his illustrious
brother, was a man of very considerable attainments and general
powers, with a decided genius for mechanical art. His wife, a
daughter of the celebrated chemist, Dr Fordyce, was a woman of
strong will and decided character, much general knowledge, and
great practical good sense of the Edgeworth kind: she was the
ruling spirit of the household, as she deserved, and was well
qualified, to be. Their family consisted of one son (the eminent
botanist) and three daughters, the youngest about two years my
senior. I am indebted to them for much and various instruction,
and for an almost parental interest in my welfare. When I first
joined them, in May 1820, they occupied the Château of Pompignan
(still belonging to a descendant of Voltaire's enemy) on the
heights overlooking the plain of the Garonne between Montauban
and Toulouse. I accompanied them in an excursion to the Pyrenees,
including a stay of some duration at Bagnères de Bigorre, a
journey to Pau, Bayonne, and Bagnères de Luchon, and an ascent of
the Pic du Midi de Bigorre.
    This first introduction to the highest order of mountain
scenery made the deepest impression on me, and gave a colour to
my tastes through life. In October we proceeded by the beautiful
mountain route of Castres and St. Pons, from Toulouse to
Montpellier, in which last neighbourhood Sir Samuel had just
bought the estate of Restinclière, near the foot of the singular
mountain of St. Loup. During this residence in France I acquired
a familiar knowledge of the French language, and acquaintance
with the ordinary French literature; I took lessons in various
bodily exercises, in none of which however I made any
proficiency; and at Montpellier I attended the excellent winter
courses of lectures at the Faculté des Sciences, those of M.
Anglada on chemistry, of M. Provençal on zoology, and of a very
accomplished representative of the eighteenth century
metaphysics, M. Gergonne, on logic, under the name of Philosophy
of the Sciences. I also went through a course of the higher
mathematics under the private tuition of M. Lenthéric, a
professor at the Lycée of Montpellier. But the greatest, perhaps,
of the many advantages which I owed to this episode in my
education, was that of having breathed for a whole year, the free
and genial atmosphere of Continental life. This advantage was not
the less real though I could not then estimate, nor even
consciously feel it. Having so little experience of English life,
and the few people I knew being mostly such as had public
objects, of a large and personally disinterested kind, at heart,
I was ignorant of the low moral tone of what, in England, is
called society'. the habit of, not indeed professing, but taking
for granted in every mode of implication, that conduct is of
course always directed towards low and petty objects; the absence
of high feelings which manifests itself by sneering depreciation
of all demonstrations of them, and by general abstinence (except
among a few of the stricter religionists) from professing any
high principles of action at all, except in those preordained
cases in which such profession is put on as part of the costume
and formalities of the occasion. I could not then know or
estimate the difference between this manner of existence, and
that of a people like the French, whose faults, if equally real,
are at all events different; among whom sentiments, which by
comparison at least may be called elevated, are the current coin
of human intercourse, both in books and in private life; and
though often evaporating in profession, are yet kept alive in the
nation at large by constant exercise, and stimulated by sympathy,
so as to form a living and active part of the existence of great
numbers of persons, and to be recognized and understood by all.
Neither could I then appreciate the general culture of the
understanding, which results from the habitual exercise of the
feelings, and is thus carried down into the most uneducated
classes of several countries on the Continent, in a degree not
equalled in England among the so-called educated, except where an
unusual tenderness of conscience leads to a habitual exercise of
the intellect on questions of right and wrong. I did not know the
way in which, among the ordinary English, the absence of interest
in things of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special
thing here and there, and the habit of not speaking to others,
nor much even to themselves, about the things in which they do
feel interest, causes both their feelings and their intellectual
faculties to remain undeveloped, or to develope themselves only
in some single and very limited direction; reducing them,
considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence.
All these things I did not perceive till long afterwards; but I
even then felt, though without stating it clearly to myself, the
contrast between the frank sociability and amiability of French
personal intercourse, and the English mode of existence in which
everybody acts as if everybody else (with few, or no exceptions)
was either an enemy or a bore. In France, it is true, the bad as
well as the good points, both of individual and of national
character, come more to the surface, and break out more
fearlessly in ordinary intercourse, than in England: but the
general habit of the people is to show, as well as to expect,
friendly feeling in every one towards every other, wherever there
is not some positive cause for the opposite. In England it is
only of the best bred people, in the upper or upper middle ranks,
that anything like this can be said.
    In my way through Paris, both going and returning, I passed
some time in the house of M. Say, the eminent political
economist, who was a friend and correspondent of my father,
having become acquainted with him on a visit to England a year or
two after the peace. He was a man of the later period of the
French Revolution, a fine specimen of the best kind of French
Republican, one of those who had never bent the knee to Bonaparte
though courted by him to do so; a truly upright, brave, and
enlightened man. He lived a quiet and studious life, made happy
by warm affections, public and private. He was acquitted with
many of the chiefs of the Liberal party, and I saw various
noteworthy persons while staying at his house; among whom I have
pleasure in the recollection of having once seen Saint-Simon, not
yet the founder either of a philosophy or a religion, and
considered only as a clever original. The chief fruit which I
carried away from the society I saw, was a strong and permanent
interest in Continental Liberalism, of which I ever afterwards
kept myself au courant, as much as of English politics: a thing
not at all usual in those days with Englishmen, and which had a
very salutary influence on my development, keeping me free from
the error always prevalent in England, and from which even my
father with all his superiority to prejudice was not exempt, of
judging universal questions by a merely English standard. After
passing a few weeks at Caen with an old friend of my father's, I
returned to England in July 1821; and my education resumed its
ordinary course. 

 III. LAST STAGE OF EDUCATION AND FIRST OF SELF-EDUCATION.

    For the first year or two after my visit to France, I
continued my old studies, with the addition of some new ones.
When I returned, my father was just finishing for the press his
"Elements of Political Economy," and he made me perform an
exercise on the manuscript, which Mr Bentham practised on all his
own writings, making what he called, "marginal contents"; a short
abstract of every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to
judge of, and improve, the order of the ideas, and the general
character of the exposition. Soon after, my father put into my
hands Condillac's Traité des Sensations, and the logical and
metaphysical volumes of his Cours d'Etudes; the first
(notwithstanding the superficial resemblance between Condillac's
Psychological system and my father's) quite as much for a warning
as for an example. I am not sure whether it was in this winter or
the next that I first read a history of the French Revolution. I
learnt with astonishment, that the principles of democracy, then
apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere
in Europe, had borne all before them in France thirty years
earlier, and had been the creed of the nation. As may be supposed
from this, I had previously a very vague idea of that great
commotion. I knew only that the French had thrown off the
absolute monarchy of Louis XIV and XV, had put the King and Queen
to death, guillotined many persons, one of whom was Lavoisier,
and had ultimately fallen under the despotism of Bonaparte. From
this time, as was natural, the subject took an immense hold of my
feelings. It allied itself with all my juvenile aspirations to
the character of a democratic champion. What had happened so
lately, seemed as if it might easily happen again: and the most
transcendant glory I was capable of conceiving, was that of
figuring, successful or unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an
English Convention.
    During the winter of 1821-2, Mr John Austin, with whom at the
time of my visit to France my father had but lately become
acquainted, kindly allowed me to read Roman law with him. My
father, notwithstanding his abhorrence of the chaos of barbarism
called English Law, had turned his thoughts towards the bar as on
the whole less ineligible for me than any other profession: and
these readings with Mr Austin, who had made Bentham's best ideas
his own, and added much to them from other sources and from his
own mind, were not only a valuable introduction to legal studies,
but an important portion of general education. With Mr Austin I
read Heineccius on the Institutes, his Roman Antiquities, and
part of his exposition of the Pandects; to which was added a
considerable portion of Blackstone. It was at the commencement of
these studies that my Gather, as a needful accompaniment to them,
put into my hands Bentham's principal speculations, as
interpreted to the Continent, and indeed to all the world, by
Dumont, in the Traité de Législation. The reading of this book
was an epoch in my life; one of the turning points in my mental
history.
    My previous education had been, in a certain sense, already a
course of Benthamism. The Benthamic standard of "the greatest
happiness" was that which I had always been taught to apply; I
was even familiar with an abstract discussion of it, forming an
episode in an unpublished dialogue on Government, written by my
father on the Platonic model. Yet in the first pages of Bentham
it burst upon me with all the force of novelty. What thus
impressed me was the chapter in which Bentham passed judgment on
the common modes of reasoning in morals and legislation, deduced
from phrases like "law of nature," "right reason," "the moral
sense," "natural rectitude," and the like, and characterized them
as dogmatism in disguise, imposing its sentiments upon others
under cover of sounding expressions which convey no reason for
the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as its own reason. It had
not struck me before, that Bentham's principle put an end to all
this. The feeling rushed upon me, that all previous moralists
were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a
new era in thought. This impression was strengthened by the
manner in which Bentham put into scientific form the application
of the happiness principle to the morality of actions, by
analysing the various classes and orders of their consequences.
But what struck me at the time most of all, was the
Classification of Offences, which is much more clear, compact and
imposing in Dumont's rédaction than in the original work of
Bentham from which it was taken. Logic and the dialectics of
Plato, which had formed so large a part of my previous training,
had given me a strong relish for accurate classification. This
taste had been strengthened and enlightened by the study of
botany, on the principles of what is called the Natural Method,
which I had taken up with great zeal, though only as an
amusement, during my stay in France; and when I found scientific
classification applied to the great and complex subject of
Punishable Acts, under the guidance of the ethical principle of
Pleasurable and Painful Consequences, followed out in the method
of detail introduced into these subjects by Bentham, I felt taken
up to an eminence from which I could survey a vast mental domain,
and see stretching out into the distance intellectual results
beyond all computation. As I proceeded further, there seemed to
be added to this intellectual clearness, the most inspiring
prospects of practical improvements in human affairs. To
Bentham's general view of the construction of a body of law I was
not altogether a stranger, having read with attention that
admirable compendium, my father's article "Jurisprudence": but I
had read it with little profit and scarcely any interest, no
doubt from its extremely general and abstract character, and also
because it concerned the form more than the substance of the
corpus juris, the logic rather than the ethics of law. But
Bentham's subject was Legislation, of which Jurisprudence is only
the formal part: and at every page he seemed to open a clearer
and broader conception of what human opinions and institutions
ought to be, how they might be made what they ought to be, and
how far removed from it they now are. When I laid down the last
volume of the Traité, I had become a different being. The
"principle of utility" understood as Bentham understood it, and
applied in the manner in which he applied it through these three
volumes, fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held
together the detached and fragmentary component parts of my
knowledge and beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of things.
I now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one
among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation
and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward
purpose of a life. And I had a grand conception laid before me of
changes to be effected in the condition of mankind through that
doctrine. The Traité de Législation wound up with what was to me
a most impressive picture of human life as it would be made by
such opinions and such laws as were recommended in the treatise.
The anticipations of practicable improvement were studiously
moderate, deprecating and discountenancing as reveries of vague
enthusiasm many things which will one day seem so natural to
human beings, that injustice will probably be done to those who
once thought them chimerical. But, in my state of mind, this
appearance of superiority to illusion added to the effect which
Bentham's doctrines produced on me, by heightening the impression
of mental power, and the vista of improvement which he did open
was sufficiently large and brilliant to light up my life, as well
as to give a definite shape to my aspirations.
    After this I read, from time to time, the most important of
the other works of Bentham which had then seen the light, either
as written by himself or as edited by Dumont. This was my private
reading: while, under my father's direction, my studies were
carried into the higher branches of analytic psychology. I now
read Locke's Essay, and wrote out an account of it, consisting of
a complete abstract of every chapter, with such remarks as
occurred to me: which was read by, or (I think) to, my father,
and discussed throughout. I performed the same process with
Helvetius De l'Esprit, which I read of my own choice. This
preparation of abstracts, subject to my father's censorship, was
of great service to me, by competing precision in conceiving and
expressing psychological doctrines, whether accepted as truths or
only regarded as the opinion of others. After Helvetius, my
father made me study what he deemed the really master-production
in the philosophy of mind, Hartley's Observations on Man. This
book, though it did not, like the Traité de Législation, give a
new colour to my existence, made a very similar impression on me
in regard to its immediate subject. Hartley's explanation,
incomplete as in many points it is, of the more complex mental
phenomena by the law of association, commended itself to me at
once as a real analysis, and made me feel by contrast the
insufficiency of the merely verbal generalizations of Condillac,
and even of the instructive gropings and feelings about for
psychological explanations, of Locke. It was at this very time
that my father commenced writing his Analysis of the Mind, which
carried Hartley's mode of explaining the mental phenomena to so
much greater length and depth. He could only command the
concentration of thought necessary for this work, during the
complete leisure of his holiday of a month or six weeks annually:
and he commenced it in the summer of 1822, in the first holiday
he passed at Dorking; in which neighbourhood, from that time to
the end of his life, with the exception of two years, he lived,
as far as his official duties permitted, for six months of every
year. He worked at the Analysis during several successive
vacations, up to the year 1829 when it was published, and allowed
me to read the manuscript, portion by portion, as it advanced.
The other principal English writers on mental philosophy I read
as I felt inclined, particularly Berkeley, Hume's Essays, Reid,
Dugald Stewart and Brown on Cause and Effect. Brown's Lectures I
did not read until two or three years later, nor at that time had
my father himself read them.
    Among the works read in the course of this year, which
contributed materially to my development, I ought to mention a
book (written on the foundation of some of Bentham's manuscripts
and published under the pseudonyme of Philip Beauchamp) entitled
"Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal
Happiness of Mankind." This was an examination not of the truth,
but of the usefulness of religious belief, in the most general
sense, apart from the peculiarities of any special Revelation;
which, of all the parts of the discussion concerning religion, is
the most important in this age, in which real belief in any
religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion of
its necessity for moral and social purposes almost universal; and
when those who reject revelation, very generally take refuge in
an optimistic Deism, a worship of the order of Nature, and the
supposed course of Providence, at least as full of
contradictions, and perverting to the moral sentiments, as any of
the forms of Christianity, if only it is as completely realized.
Yet, very little, with any claim to a philosophical character,
has been written by sceptics against the usefulness of this form
of belief. The volume bearing the name of Philip Beauchamp had
this for its special object. Having been shown to my father in
manuscript, it was put into my hands by him, and I made a
marginal analysis of it as I had done of the Elements of
Political Economy. Next to the Traité de Législation, it was one
of the books which by the searching character of its analysis
produced the greatest effect upon me. On reading it lately after
an interval of many years, I find it to have some of the defects
as well as the merits of the Benthamic modes of thought, and to
contain, as I now think, many weak arguments, but with a great
overbalance of sound ones, and much good material for a more
completely philosophic and conclusive treatment of the subject.
    I have now, I believe, mentioned all the books which had any
considerable effect on my early mental development. From this
point I began to carry on my intellectual cultivation by writing
still more than by reading. In the summer of 1822 I wrote my
first argumentative essay. I remember very little about it,
except that it was an attack on what I regarded as the
aristocratic prejudice, that the rich were, or were likely to be,
superior in moral qualities to the poor. My performance was
entirely argumentative, without any of the declamation which the
subject would admit of, and might be expected to suggest to a
young writer. In that department however I was, and remained,
very inapt. Dry argument was the only thing I could manage, or
willingly attempted; though passively I was very susceptible to
the effect of all composition, whether in the form of poetry or
oratory, which appealed to the feelings on any basis of reason.
My father, who knew nothing of this essay until it was finished,
was well satisfied, and as I learnt from others, even pleased
with it; but, perhaps from a desire to promote the exercise of
other mental faculties than the purely logical, he advised me to
make my next exercise in composition one of the oratorical kind:
on which suggestion, availing myself of my familiarity with Greek
history and ideas and with the Athenian orators, I wrote two
speeches, one an accusation, the other a defence of Pericles, on
a supposed impeachment for not marching out to fight the
Lacedaemonians on their invasion of Attica. After this I
continued to write papers on subjects often very much beyond my
capacity, but with great benefit both from the exercise itself,
and from the discussions which it led to with my father. I had
now also begun to converse, on general subjects, with the
instructed men with whom I came in contact: and the opportunities
of such contact naturally became more numerous. The two friends
of my father from whom I derived most, and with whom I most
associated, were Mr Grote and Mr John Austin. The acquaintance of
both with my father was recent, but had ripened rapidly into
intimacy. Mr Grote was introduced to my father by Mr Ricardo, I
think in 1819, (being then about twenty-five years old), and
sought assiduously his society and conversation. Already a highly
instructed man, he was yet, by the side of my father, a tyro on
the great subjects of human opinion; but he rapidly seized on my
father's best ideas; and in the department of political opinion
he made himself known as early as 1820, by a pamphlet in defence
of Radical Reform, in reply to a celebrated article by Sir James
Mackintosh, then lately published in the Edinburgh Review. Mr
Grote's father, the banker, was, I believe, a thorough Tory, and
his mother intensely Evangelical; so that for his liberal
opinions he was in no way indebted to home influences. But,
unlike most persons who have the prospect of being rich by
inheritance, he had, though actively engaged in the business of
banking, devoted a great portion of time to philosophic studies;
and his intimacy with my father did much to decide the character
of the next stage in his mental progress. Him I often visited,
and my conversations with him on political, moral, and
philosophical subjects gave me, in addition to much valuable
instruction, all the pleasure and benefit of sympathetic
communion with a man of the high intellectual and moral eminence
which his life and writings have since manifested to the world.
    Mr Austin, who was four or five years older than Mr Grote,
was the eldest son of a retired miller in Suffolk, who had made
money by contracts during the war, and who must have been a man
of remarkable qualities, as I infer from the fact that all his
sons were of more than common ability and all eminently
gentlemen. The one with whom we are now concerned, and whose
writings on jurisprudence have made him celebrated, was for some
time in the army, and served in Sicily under Lord William
Bentinck. After the peace he sold his commission and studied for
the bar, to which he had been called for some time before my
father knew him. He was not, like Mr Grote, to any extent a pupil
of my father, but he had attained, by reading and thought, a
considerable number of the same opinions, modified by his own
very decided individuality of character. He was a man of great
intellectual powers which in conversation appeared at their very
best; from the vigour and richness of expression with which,
under the excitement of discussion, he was accustomed to maintain
some view or other of most general subjects; and from an
appearance of not only strong, but deliberate and collected will;
mixed with a certain bitterness, partly derived from temperament,
and partly from the general cast of his feelings and reflexions.
The dissatisfaction with life and the world, felt more or less in
the present state of society and intellect by every discerning
and highly conscientious mind, gave in his case a rather
melancholy tinge to the character, very natural to those whose
passive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to
their active energies. For it must be said, that the strength of
will of which his manner seemed to give such strong assurance,
expended itself principally in manner. With great zeal for human
improvement, a strong sense of duty and capacities and
acquirements the extent of which is proved by the writings he has
left, he hardly ever completed any intellectual task of
magnitude. He had so high a standard of what ought to be done, so
exaggerated a sense of deficiencies in his own performances, and
was so unable to content himself with the amount of elaboration
sufficient for the occasion and the purpose, that he not only
spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by over-labouring it,
but spent so much time and exertion in superfluous study and
thought, that when his task ought to have been completed, he had
generally worked himself into an illness, without having half
finished what he undertook. From this mental infirmity (of which
he is not the sole example among the accomplished and able men
whom I have known), combined with liability to frequent attacks
of disabling though not dangerous ill-health, he accomplished,
through life, little in comparison with what he seemed capable
of; but what he did produce is held in the very highest
estimation by the most competent judges; and, like Coleridge, he
might plead as a set-off that he had been to many persons,
through his conversation, a source not only of much instruction
but of great elevation of character. On me his influence was most
salutary. It was moral in the best sense. He took a sincere and
kind interest in me, far beyond what could have been expected
towards a mere youth from a man of his age, standing, and what
seemed austerity of character. There was in his conversation and
demeanour a tone of high-mindedness which did not show itself so
much, if the quality existed as much, in any of the other persons
with whom at that time I associated. My intercourse with him was
the more beneficial, owing to his being of a different mental
type from all other intellectual men whom I frequented, and he
from the first set himself decidedly against the prejudices and
narrownesses which are almost sure to be found in a young man
formed by a particular mode of thought or a particular social
circle.
    His younger brother, Charles Austin, of whom at this time and
for the next year or two I saw much, had also a great effect on
me, though of a very different description. He was but a few
years older than myself, and had then just left the University,
where he had shone with great éclat as a man of intellect and a
brilliant orator and converser. The effect he produced on his
Cambridge contemporaries deserves to be accounted an historical
event; for to it may in part be traced the tendency towards
Liberalism in general, and the Benthamic and politico-economic
form of it in particular, which showed itself in a portion of the
more active-minded young men of the higher classes from this time
to 1830. The Union Debating Society at that time at the height of
its reputation, was an arena where what were then thought extreme
opinions, in politics and philosophy, were weekly asserted, face
to face with their opposites, before audiences consisting of the
élite of the Cambridge youth: and though many persons afterwards
of more or less note, (of whom Lord Macaulay is the most
celebrated), gained their first oratorical laurels in those
debates, the really influential mind among these intellectual
gladiators was Charles Austin. He continued, after leaving the
University, to be, by his conversation and personal ascendancy, a
leader among the same class of young men who had been his
associates there; and he attached me among others to his car.
Through him I became acquainted with Macaulay, Hyde and Charles
Villiers, Strutt (now Lord Belper), Romilly (now Lord Romilly and
Master of the Rolls), and various others who subsequently figured
in literature or politics, and among whom I heard discussions on
many topics, as yet to a certain degree new to me. The influence
of Charles Austin over me differed from that of the persons I
have hitherto mentioned, in being not the influence of a man over
a boy, but that of an elder contemporary. It was through him that
I first felt myself, not a pupil under teachers, but a man among
men. He was the first person of intellect whom I met on a ground
of equality, though as yet much his inferior on that common
ground. He was a man who never failed to impress greatly those
with whom he came in contact, even when their opinions were the
very reverse of his. The impression he gave was that of boundless
strength, together with talents which, combined with such
apparent force of will and character, seemed capable of
dominating the world. Those who knew him, whether friendly to him
or not, always anticipated that he would play a conspicuous part
in public life. It is seldom that men produce so great an
immediate effect by speech, unless they, in some degree, lay
themselves out for it; and he did this in no ordinary degree. He
loved to strike, and even to startle. He knew that decision is
the greatest element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with
all the decision he could throw into them, never so well pleased
as when he astonished any one by their audacity. Very unlike his
brother, who made war against the narrower interpretations and
applications of the principles they both professed, he, on the
contrary, presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most startling
form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in
them which tended to consequences offensive to any one's
preconceived feelings. All which, he defended with such verve and
vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as
forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the
honours of the field. It is my belief that much of the notion
popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of what are
called Benthamites or Utilitarians had its origin in paradoxes
thrown out by Charles Austin. It must be said, however, that his
example was followed, haud passibus aequis, by younger
proselytes, and that to outrer whatever was by anybody considered
offensive in the doctrines and maims of Benthanism, became at one
time the badge of a small coterie of youths. All of these who had
anything in them, myself among others, quickly outgrew this
boyish vanity; and those who had not, became tired of differing
from other people, and gave up both the good and the bad part of
the heterodox opinions they had for some time professed.
    It was in the winter of 1822-3 that I formed the plan of a
little society, to be composed of young men agreeing in
fundamental principles -- acknowledging Utility as their standard
in ethics and politics, and a certain number of the principal
corollaries drawn from it in the philosophy I had accepted -- and
meeting once a fortnight to read essays and discuss questions
conformably to the premises thus agreed on. The fact would hardly
be worth mentioning, but for the circumstance, that the name I
gave to the society I had planned was the Utilitarian Society. It
was the first time that any one had taken the title of
Utilitarian; and the term made its way into the language from
this humble source. I did not invent the word, but found it in
one of Galt's novels, the "Annals of the Parish," in which the
Scotch clergyman, of whom the book is a supposed autobiography,
is represented as warning his parishioners not to leave the
Gospel and become utilitarians. With a boy's fondness for a name
and a banner I seized on the word, and for some years called
myself and others by it as a sectarian appellation; and it came
to be occasionally used by some others holding the opinions which
it was intended to designate. As those opinions attracted more
notice, the term was repeated by strangers and opponents, and got
into rather common use just about the time when those who had
originally assumed it, laid down that along with other sectarian
characteristics. The Society so called consisted at first of no
more than three members, one of whom, being Mr Bentham's
amanuensis, obtained for us permission to hold our meetings in
his house. The number never, I think, reached ten, and the
society was broken up in 1826. It had thus an existence of about
three years and a half. The chief effect of it as regards myself,
over and above the benefit of practice in oral discussion, was
that of bringing me in contact with several young men at that
time less advanced than myself, among whom, as they professed the
same opinions, I was for some time a sort of leader, and had
considerable influence on their mental progress. Any young man of
education who fell in my way, and whose opinions were not
incompatible with those of the Society, I endeavoured to press
into its service; and some others I probably should never have
known, had they not joined it. Those of the members who became my
intimate companions -- no one of whom was in any sense of the
word a disciple, but all of them independent thinkers on their
own basis -- were William Eyton Tooke, son of the eminent
political economist, a young man of singular worth both moral and
intellectual, lost to the world by an early death; his friend
William Ellis, an original thinker in the field of political
economy, now honourably known by his apostolic exertions for the
improvement of education; George Graham, afterwards an official
assignee of the Bankruptcy Court, a thinker of originality and
power on almost all abstract subjects; and (from the time when he
came first to England to study for the bar in 1824 or 1825) a man
who has made considerably more noise in the world than any of
these, John Arthur Roebuck.
    In May, 1823, my professional occupation and status for the
next thirty-five years of my life, were decided by my father's
obtaining for me an appointment from the East India Company, in
the office of the Examiner of india Correspondence, immediately
under himself. I was appointed in the usual manner, at the bottom
of the list of clerks, to rise, at least in the first instance,
by seniority; but with the understanding that I should be
employed from the beginning in preparing drafts of despatches,
and be thus trained up as a successor to those who then filled
the higher departments of the office. My drafts of course
required, for some time, much revision from my immediate
superiors, but I soon became well acquainted with the business,
and by my father's instructions and the general growth of my own
powers, I was in a few years qualified to be, and practically
was, the chief conductor of the correspondence with India in one
of the leading departments, that of the Native States. This
continued to be my official duty until I was appointed Examiner,
only two years before the time when the abolition of the East
India Company as a political body determined my retirement. I do
not know any one of the occupations by which a subsistence can
now be gained, more suitable than such as this to any one who,
not being in independent circumstances, desires to devote a part
of the twenty-four hours to private intellectual pursuits.
Writing for the press, cannot be recommended as a permanent
resource to any one qualified to accomplish anything in the
higher departments of literature or thought: not only on account
of the uncertainty of this means of livelihood, especially if the
writer has a conscience, and will not consent to serve any
opinions except his own; but also because the writings by which
one can live, are not the writings which themselves live, and are
never those in which the writer does his best. Books destined to
form future thinkers take too much time to write, and when
written come, in general, too slowly into notice and repute, to
be relied on for subsistence. Those who have to support
themselves by their pen must depend on literary drudgery, or at
best on writings addressed to the multitude; and can employ in
the pursuits of their own choice, only such time as they can
spare from those of necessity; which is generally less than the
leisure allowed by office occupations, while the effect on the
mind is far more enervating and fatiguing. For my own part I
have, through life, found office duties an actual rest from the
other mental occupations which I have carried on simultaneously
with them. They were sufficiently intellectual not to be a
distasteful drudgery, without being such as to cause any strain
upon the mental powers of a person used to abstract thought, or
to the labour of careful literary composition. The drawbacks, for
every mode of life has its drawbacks, were not, however, unfelt
by me. I cared little for the loss of the chances of riches and
honours held out by some of the professions, particularly the
bar, which had been, as I have already said, the profession
thought of for me. But I was not indifferent to exclusion from
Parliament, and public life: and I felt very sensibly the more
immediate unpleasantness of confinement to London; the holiday
allowed by India-house practice not exceeding a month in the
year, while my taste was strong for a country life, and my
sojourn in France had left behind it an ardent desire of
travelling. But though these tastes could not be freely indulged,
they were at no time entirely sacrificed. I passed most Sundays,
throughout the year, in the country, taking long rural walks on
that day even when residing in London. The month's holiday was,
for a few years, passed at my father's house in the country.
afterwards a part or the whole was spent in tours, chiefly
pedestrian, with some one or more of the young men who were my
chosen companions; and, at a later period, in longer journeys or
excursions, alone or with other friends. France, Belgium, and
Rhenish Germany were within easy reach of the annual holiday: and
two longer absences, one of three, the other of six months, under
medical advice, added Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Italy to my
list. Fortunately, also, both these journeys occurred rather
early, so as to give the benefit and charm of the remembrance to
a large portion of life.
    I am disposed to agree with what has been surmised by others,
that the opportunity which my official position gave me of
learning by personal observation the necessary conditions of the
practical conduct of public affairs, has been of considerable
value to me as a theoretical reformer of the opinions and
institutions of my time. Not, indeed, that public business
transacted on paper, to take effect on the other side of the
globe, was of itself calculated to give much practical knowledge
of life. But the occupation accustomed me to see and hear the
difficulties of every course, and the means of obviating them,
stated and discussed deliberately with a view to execution; it
gave me opportunities of perceiving when public measures, and
other political facts, did not produce the effects which had been
expected of them, and from what causes; above all, it was
valuable to me by making me, in this portion of my activity,
merely one wheel in a machine, the whole of which had to work
together. As a speculative writer, I should have had no one to
consult but myself, and should have encountered in my
speculations none of the obstacles which would have started up
whenever they came to be applied to practice. But as a Secretary
conducting political correspondence, I could not issue an order
or express an opinion, without satisfying various persons very
unlike myself, that the thing was fit to be done. I was thus in a
good position for finding out by practice the mode of putting a
thought which gives it easiest admittance into minds not prepared
for it by habit; while I became practically conversant with the
difficulties of moving bodies of men, the necessities of
compromise, the art of sacrificing the non-essential to preserve
the essential. I learnt how to obtain the best I could, when I
could not obtain everything; instead of being indignant or
dispirited because I could not have entirely my own way, to be
pleased and encouraged when I could have the smallest part of it;
and when even that could not be, to bear with complete equanimity
the being overruled altogether. I have found, through life, these
acquisitions to be of the greatest possible importance for
personal happiness, and they are also a very necessary condition
for enabling any one, either as theorist or as practical man, to
effect the greatest amount of good compatible with his
opportunities.


IV. YOUTHFUL PROPAGANDISM. THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

    The occupation of so much of my time by office work did not
relax my attention to my own pursuits, which were never carried
on more vigorously. It was about this time that I began to write
in newspapers. The first writings of mine which got into print
were two letters published towards the end of 1822, in the
Traveller evening newspaper. The Traveller (which afterwards grew
into the "Globe and Traveller," by the purchase and incorporation
of the Globe) was then the property of the well-known political
economist, Colonel Torrens, and under the editorship of an able
man, Mr Walter Coulson (who, after being an amanuensis of Mr
Bentham, became a reporter, then an editor, next a barrister and
conveyancer, and died Counsel to the Home Office), it had become
one of the most important newspaper organs of liberal politics.
Col. Torrens himself wrote much of the political economy of his
paper; and had at this time made an attack upon some opinion of
Ricardo and my father, to which, at my father's instigation, I
attempted an answer, and Coulson, out of consideration for my
father and goodwill to me, inserted it. There was a reply by
Torrens, to which I again rejoined. I soon after attempted
something considerably more ambitious. The prosecutions of
Richard Carlile and his wife and sister for publications hostile
to Christianity, were then exciting much attention, and nowhere
more than among the people I frequented. Freedom of discussion
even in politics, much more in religion, was at that time far
from being, even in theory, the conceded point which it at least
seems to be now; and the holders of obnoxious opinions had to be
always ready to argue and re-argue for the liberty of expressing
them. I wrote a series of five letters, under the signature of
Wickliffe, going over the whole length and breadth of the
question of free publication of all opinions on religion, and
offered them to the Morning Chronicle. Three of them were
published in January and February 1823; the other two, containing
things too outspoken for that journal, never appeared at all. But
a paper which I wrote soon after on the same subject, à propos of
a debate in the House of Commons, was inserted as a leading
article; and during the whole of this year, 1823, a considerable
number of my contributions were printed in the Chronicle and
Traveller: sometimes notices of books but oftener letters,
commenting on some nonsense talked in Parliament, or some defect
of the law or misdoings of the magistracy or the courts of
justice. In this last department the Chronicle was now rendering
signal service. After the death of Mr Perry, the editorship and
management of the paper had devolved on Mr John Black, long a
reporter on its establishment; a man of most extensive reading
and information, great honesty and simplicity of mind; a
Particular friend of my father, imbued with many of his and
Bentham's ideas, which he reproduced in his articles, among other
valuable thoughts, with great facility and skill. From this time
the Chronicle ceased to be the merely Whig organ it waS before,
and during the next ten years became to a considerable extent a
vehicle of the opinions of the Utilitarian radicals. This was
mainly by what Black himself wrote, with some assistance from
Fonblanque, who first showed his eminent qualities as a writer by
articles and jeux d'esprit in the Chronicle. The defects of the
law, and of the administration of justice, were the subject on
which that paper rendered most service to improvement. Up to that
time hardly a word had been said, except by Bentham and my
father, against that most peccant part of English institutions
and of their administration. It was the almost universal creed of
Englishmen, that the law of England, the judicature of England,
the unpaid magistracy of England, were models of excellence. I do
not go beyond the mark in saying, that after Bentham, who
supplied the principal materials, the greatest share of the merit
of breaking down this wretched superstition belongs to Black, as
editor of the Morning Chronicle. He kept up an incessant fire
against it, exposing the absurdities and vices of the law and the
courts of justice, paid and unpaid, until he forced some sense of
them into people's minds. On many other questions he became the
organ of opinions much in advance of any which had ever before
found regular advocacy in the newspaper press. Black was a
frequent visitor of my father, and Mr Grote used to say that he
always knew by the Monday morning's article, whether Black had
been with my father on the Sunday. Black was one of the most
influential of the many channels through which my father's
conversation and personal influence made his opinions tell on the
world; cooperating with the effect of his writings in making him
a power in the country, such as it has rarely been the lot of an
individual in a private station to be, through the mere force of
intellect and character: and a power which was often acting the
most efficiently where it was least seen and suspected. I have
already noticed how much of what was done by Ricardo, Hume, and
Grote, was the result, in part, of his prompting and persuasion.
He was the good genius by the side of Brougham in most of what he
did for the public, either on education, law reform, or any other
subject. And his influence flowed in minor streams too numerous
to be specified. This influence was now about to receive a great
extension by the foundation of the Westminster Review. 
    Contrary to what may have been supposed, my father was in no
degree a party to setting up the Westminster Review. The need of
a Radical organ to make head against the Edinburgh and Quarterly
(then in the period of their greatest reputation and influence),
had been a topic of conversation between him and Mr Bentham many
years earlier, and it had been a part of their château en Espagne
that my father should be the editor; but the idea had never
assumed any practical shape. In 1823, however, Mr Bentham
determined to establish the review at his own cost, and offered
the editorship to my father, who declined it as incompatible with
his india House appointment. It was then entrusted to Mr (now Sir
John) Bowring, at that time a merchant in the City. Mr Bowring
had been for two or three years previous an assiduous frequenter
of Mr Bentham, to whom he was recommended by many personal good
qualities, by an ardent admiration for Bentham, a zealous
adoption of many, though not all, of his opinions, and, not
least, by an extensive acquaintanceship and correspondence with
Liberals of all countries, which seemed to qualify him for being
a powerful agent in spreading Bentham's fame and doctrines
through all quarters of the world. My father had seen little of
Bowring, but knew enough of him to have formed a strong opinion,
that he was a man of an entirely different type from what my
father considered suitable for conducting a political and
philosophical review: and he augured so ill of the enterprise
that he regretted it altogether, feeling persuaded not only that
Mr Bentham would lose his money, but that discredit would
probably be brought upon radical principles. He could not,
however, desert Mr Bentham, and he consented to write an article
for the first number. As it had been a favourite portion of the
scheme formerly talked of, that part of the work should be
devoted to reviewing the other Reviews, this article of my
father's was to be a general criticism of the Edinburgh Review
from its commencement. Before writing it he made me read through
all the volumes of the Review, or as much of each as seemed of
any importance (which was not so arduous a task in 1823 as it
would be now), and make notes for him of the articles which I
thought he would wish to examine, either on account of their good
or their bad qualities. This paper of my father's was the chief
cause of the sensation which the Westminster Review produced at
its first appearance, and is, both in conception and in
execution, one of the most striking of all his writings. He began
by an analysis of the tendencies of periodical literature in
general; pointing out, that it cannot, like books, wait for
success, but must succeed immediately, or not at all, and is
hence almost certain to profess and inculcate the opinions
already held by the public to which it addresses itself, instead
of attempting to rectify or improve those opinions. He next, to
characterize the position of the Edinburgh Review as a political
organ, entered into a complete analysis, from the Radical point
of view, of the British Constitution. He held up to notice its
thoroughly aristocratic character: the nomination of a majority
of the House of Commons by a few hundred families; the entire
identification of the more independent portion, the county
members, with the great landholders; the different classes whom
this narrow oligarchy was induced, for convenience, to admit to a
share of power; and finally, what he called its two props, the
Church, and the legal profession. He pointed out the natural
tendency of an aristocratic body of this composition, to group
itself into two parties, one of them in possession of the
executive, the other endeavouring to supplant the former and
become the predominant section by the aid of public opinion,
without any essential sacrifice of the aristocratic predominance.
He described the course likely to be pursued, and the political
ground occupied, by an aristocratic party in opposition,
coquetting with popular principles for the sake of popular
support. He showed how this idea was realized in the conduct of
the Whig party, and of the Edinburgh Review as its chief literary
organ. He described, as their main characteristic, what he termed
" seesaw;" writing alternately on both sides of every question
which touched the power or interest of the governing classes;
sometimes in different articles, sometimes in different parts of
the same article: and illustrated his position by copious
specimens. So formidable an attack on the Whig party and policy
had never before been made; nor had so great a blow been ever
struck, in this country, for radicalism; nor was there, I
believe, any living person capable of writing that article,
except my father.(2*)
    In the meantime the nascent review had formed a junction with
another project, of a purely literary periodical, to be edited by
Mr Henry Southern, afterwards a diplomatist, then a literary man
by profession. The two editors agreed to unite their corps, and
divide the editorship, Bowring taking the political, Southern the
literary department. Southern's review was to have been published
by Longman, and that firm, though part proprietors of the
Edinburgh, were willing to be the publishers of the new journal.
But when all the arrangements had been made, and the prospectuses
sent out, the Longmans saw my father's attack on the Edinburgh,
and drew back. My father was now appealed to for his interest
with his own publisher, Baldwin, which was exerted with a
successful result. And so, in April, 1824, amidst anything but
hope on my father's part, and that of most of those who
afterwards aided in carrying on the review, the first number made
its appearance. 
    That number was an agreeable surprise to most of us. The
average of the articles was of much better quality than had been
expected. The literary and artistic department had rested chiefly
on Mr Bingham, a barrister (subsequently a Police Magistrate),
who had been for some years a frequenter of Bentham, was a friend
of both the Austins, and had adopted with great ardour Mr
Bentham's philosophical opinions. Partly from accident, there
were in the first number as many as five articles by Bingham; and
we were extremely pleased with them. I well remember the mixed
feeling I myself had about the Review; the joy at finding, what
we did not at all expect, that it was sufficiently good to be
capable of being made a creditable organ of those who held the
opinions it professed; and extreme vexation, since it was so good
on the whole, at what we thought the blemishes of it. When,
however, in addition to our generally favourable opinion of it,
we learned that it had an extraordinarily large sale for a first
number, and found that the appearance of a Radical review, with
pretensions equal to those of the established organs of parties,
had excited much attention, there could be no room for
hesitation, and we all became eager in doing everything we could
to strengthen and improve it. 
    My father continued to write occasional articles. The
Quarterly Review received its exposure, as a sequel to that of
the Edinburgh. Of his other contributions, the most important
were an attack on Southey's Book of the Church, in the fifth
number, and a political article in the twelfth. Mr Austin only
contributed one paper, but one of great merit, an argument
against primogeniture, in reply to an article then lately
published in the Edinburgh Review by McCulloch. Grote also was a
contributor only once; all the time he could spare being already
taken up with his History of Greece. The article he wrote was on
his own subject, and was a very complete exposure and castigation
of Mitford. Bingham and Charles Austin continued to write for
some time; Fonblanque was a frequent contributor from the third
number. Of my particular associates, Ellis was a regular writer
up to the ninth number; and about the time when he left off,
others of the set began; Eyton Tooke, Graham, and Roebuck. I was
myself the most frequent writer of all, having contributed, from
the second number to the eighteenth, thirteen articles; reviews
of books on history and political economy, or discussions on
special political topics, as corn laws, game laws, laws of libel.
Occasional articles of merit came in from other acquaintances of
my father's, and, in time, of mine; and some of Mr Bowring's
writers turned out well. On the whole, however, the conduct of
the Review was never satisfactory to any of the persons strongly
interested in its principles, with whom I came in contact. Hardly
ever did a number come out without containing several things
extremely offensive to us, either in point of opinion, of taste,
or by mere want of ability. The unfavourable judgments passed by
my father, Grote, the two Austins, and others, were re-echoed
with exaggeration by us younger people; and as our youthful zeal
tendered us by no means backward in making complaints, we led the
two editors a sad life. From my knowledge of what I then was, I
have no doubt that we were at least as often wrong as right; and
I am very certain that if the Review had been carried on
according to our notions (I mean those of the juniors), it would
have been no better, perhaps not even so good as it was. But it
is worth noting as a fact in the history of Benthanism, that the
periodical organ, by which it was best known, was from the first
extremely unsatisfactory to those whose opinions on all subjects
it was supposed specially to represent.
    Meanwhile, however, the Review made considerable noise in the
world, and gave a recognised status, in the arena of opinion and
discussion, to the Benthamic type of radicalism, out of all
proportion to the number of its adherents, and to the personal
merits and abilities, at that time, of most of those who could be
reckoned among them. It was a time, as is known, of rapidly
rising Liberalism. When the fears and animosities accompanying
the war with France had been brought to an end, and people had
once more a place in their thoughts for home politics, the tide
began to set towards reform. The renewed oppression of the
Continent by the old reigning families, the countenance
apparently given by the English Government to the conspiracy
against liberty called the Holy Alliance, and the enormous weight
of the national debt and taxation occasioned by so long and
costly a war, tendered the government and parliament very
unpopular. Radicalism, under the leadership of the Burdetts and
Cobbetts, had assumed a character and importance which seriously
alarmed the Administration: and their alarm had scarcely been
temporarily assuaged by the celebrated Six Acts, when the trial
of Queen Caroline roused a still wider and deeper feeling of
hatred. Though the outward signs of this hatred passed away with
its exciting cause, there arose on all sides a spirit which had
never shown itself before, of opposition to abuses in detail. Mr
Hume's persevering scrutiny of the public expenditure, forcing
the House of Commons to a division on every objectionable item in
the estimates, had begun to tell with great force on public
opinion, and had extorted many minor retrenchments from an
unwilling administration. Political economy had asserted itself
with great vigour in public affairs, by the Petition of the
Merchants of London for Free Trade, drawn up in 1820 by Mr Tooke
and presented by Mr Alexander Baring; and by the noble exertions
of Ricardo during the few years of his parliamentary life. His
writings, following up the impulse given by the Bullion
controversy, and followed up in their turn by the expositions and
comments of my father and McCulloch (whose writings in the
Edinburgh Review during those years were most valuable), had
drawn general attention to the subject, making at least partial
converts in the Cabinet itself; and Huskisson, supported by
Canning, had commenced that gradual demolition of the protective
system, which one of their colleagues virtually completed in
1846, though the last vestiges were only swept away by Mr
Gladstone in 1860. Mr Peel, then Home Secretary, was entering
cautiously into the untrodden and peculiarly Benthamic path of
Law Reform. At this period, when Liberalism seemed to be becoming
the tone of the time, when improvement of institutions was
preached from the highest places, and a complete change of the
constitution of Parliament was loudly demanded in the lowest, it
is not strange that attention should have been roused by the
regular appearance in controversy of what seemed a new school of
writers, claiming to be the legislators and theorists of this new
tendency. The air of strong conviction with which they wrote,
when scarcely any one else seemed to have an equally strong faith
in as definite a creed: the boldness with which they tilted
against the very front of both the existing political Parties;
their uncompromising profession of opposition to many of the
generally received opinions, and the suspicion they lay under of
holding others still more heterodox than they professed; the
talent and verve of at least my father's articles, and the
appearance of a corps behind him sufficient to carry on a review;
and finally, the fact that the review was bought and read, made
the so-called Bentham school in philosophy and politics fill a
greater place in the public mind than it had held before, or has
ever again held since other equally earnest schools of thought
have arisen in England. As I was in the headquarters of it, knew
of what it was composed, and as one of the most active of its
very small number, might say without undue assumption, quorum
pars magna fui, it belongs to me more than to most others, to
give some account of it. 
    This supposed school, then, had no other existence than what
was constituted by the fact, that my father's writings and
conversation drew round him a certain number of young men who had
already imbibed, or who imbibed from him, a greater or smaller
portion of his very decided political and philosophical opinions.
The notion that Bentham was surrounded by a band of disciples who
received their opinions from his lips, is a fable to which my
father did justice in his "Fragment on Mackintosh," and which, to
all who knew Mr Bentham's habits of life and manner of
conversation, is simply ridiculous. The influence which Bentham
exercised was by his writings. Through them he has produced, and
is producing, effects on the condition of mankind, wider and
deeper, no doubt, than any which can be attributed to my father.
He is a much greater name in history. But my father exercised a
far greater personal ascendancy. He was sought for the vigour and
instructiveness of his conversation, and did use it largely as an
instrument for the diffusion of his opinions. I have never known
any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in
colloquial discussion. His perfect command over his great mental
resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language and
the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his
delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative
conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and,
when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing
companion. It was not solely, ot even chiefly, in diffusing his
merely intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it
was still more through the influence of a quality, of which I
have only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that
exalted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good of
the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of
similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with:
the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the shame at
his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and his
very existence gave to those who were aiming to the same objects,
and the encouragement he afforded to the fainthearted or
desponding among them, by the firm confidence which (though the
reverse of sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one
particular case) he always felt in the power of reason, the
general progress of improvement, and the good which individuals
could do by judicious effort. 
    It was my father's opinions which gave the distinguishing
character to the Benthamic or utilitarian propagandism of that
time. They fell singly, scattered from him in many directions,
but they flowed from him in a continued stream principally in
three channels. One was through me, the only mind directly formed
by his instructions, and through whom considerable influence was
exercised over various young men, who became, in their turn,
propagandists. A second was through some of the Cambridge
contemporaries of Charles Austin, who, either initiated by him or
under the general mental impulse which he gave, had adopted many
opinions allied to those of my father, and some of the more
considerable of whom afterwards sought my father's acquaintance
and frequented his house. Among these may be mentioned Strutt,
afterwards Lord Belper, and the present Lord Romilly with whose
eminent father, Sir Samuel, my father had of old been on terms of
friendship. The third channel was that of a younger generation of
Cambridge undergraduates, contemporary, not with Austin, but with
Eyton Tooke, who were drawn to that estimable person by affinity
of opinions, and introduced by him to my father: the most notable
of these was Charles Buller. Various other persons individually
received and transmitted a considerable amount of my father's
influence: for example, Black (as before mentioned) and
Fonblanque: most of these, however, we accounted only partial
allies; Fonblanque, for instance, was always divergent from us on
many important points. But indeed there was by no means complete
unanimity among any portion of us, nor had any of us adopted
implicitly all my father's opinions. For example, although his
Essay on Government was regarded probably by all of us as a
masterpiece of political wisdom, our adhesion by no means
extended to the paragraph of it, in which he maintains that women
may consistently with good government, be excluded from the
suffrage, because their interest is the same with that of men.
From this doctrine, I, and all those who formed my chosen
associates, most positively dissented. It is due to my father to
say that he denied having intended to affirm that women should be
excluded, any more than men under the age of forty, concerning
whom he maintained, in the very next paragraph, an exactly
similar thesis. He was, as he truly said, not discussing whether
the suffrage had better be restricted, but only (assuming that it
is to be restricted) what is the utmost limit of restriction,
which does not necessity involve a sacrifice of the securities
for good government. But I thought then, as I have always thought
since, that the opinion which he acknowledged, no less than that
which he disclaimed, is as great an error as any of those against
which the Essay was directed; that the interest of women is
included in that of men exactly as much and no more, as the
interest of subjects is included in that of kings; and that every
reason which exists for giving the suffrage to anybody, demands
that it should not be withheld from women. This was also the
general opinion of the younger proselytes; and it is pleasant to
be able to say that Mr Bentham, on this important point, was
wholly on our side. 
    But though none of us, probably, agreed in every respect with
my father, his opinions, as I said before, were the principal
element which gave its colour and character to the little group
of young men who were the first propagators of what was
afterwards called "philosophic radicalism." Their mode of
thinking was not characterized by Benthamism in any sense which
has relation to Bentham as a chief or guide, but rather by a
combination of Bentham's point of view with that of the modern
political economy, and with the Hartleian metaphysics. Malthus's
population principle was quite as much a banner, and point of
union among us, as any opinion specially belonging to Bentham.
This great doctrine, originally brought forward as an argument
against the indefinite improvability of human affairs, we took up
with ardent zeal in the contrary sense, as indicating the sole
means of realizing that improvability by securing full employment
at high wages to the whole labouring population through a
voluntary restriction of the increase of their numbers. The other
leading characteristics of the creed, which we held in common
with my father, may be stated as follows:
    In politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy
of two things: representative government, and complete freedom of
discussion. So complete was my father's reliance on the influence
of reason over the minds of mankind, whenever it is allowed to
reach them, that he felt as if all would be gained if the whole
population were taught to read, if all sorts of opinions were
allowed to be addressed to them by word and in writing, and if by
means of the suffrage they could nominate a legislature to give
effect to the opinions they adopted. He thought that when the
legislature no longer represented a class interest, it would aim
at the general interest, honestly and with adequate wisdom; since
the people would be sufficiently under the guidance of educated
intelligence, to make in general a good choice of persons to
represent them, and having done so, to leave to those whom they
had chosen a liberal discretion. Accordingly aristocratic rule,
the government of the Few in any of its shapes, being in his eyes
the only thing which stood between mankind and an administration
of their affairs by the best wisdom to be found among them, was
the object of his sternest disapprobation, and a democratic
suffrage the principal article of his political creed, not on the
ground of liberty, Rights of Man, or any of the phrases, more or
less significant, by which, up to that time, democracy had
usually been defended, but as the most essential of "securities
for good government." In this, too, he held fast only to what he
deemed essentials; he was comparatively indifferent to
monarchical or republican forms-far more so than Bentham, to whom
a king, in the character of "corrupter-general," appeared
necessarily very noxious. Next to aristocracy, an established
church, or corporation of priests, as being by position the great
depravers of religion, and interested in opposing the progress of
the human mind, was the object of his greatest detestation;
though he disliked no clergyman personally who did not deserve
it, and was on terms of sincere friendship with several. In
ethics, his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points
which he deemed important to human well being, while he was
supremely indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not
show itself in personal conduct) to all those doctrines of the
common morality, which he thought had no foundation but in
asceticism and priest-craft. He looked forward, for example, to a
considerable increase of freedom in the relations between the
sexes, though without pretending to define exactly what would be,
or ought to be, the precise conditions of that freedom. This
opinion was connected in him with no sensuality either of a
theoretical or of a practical kind. He anticipated, on the
contrary, as one of the beneficial effects of increased freedom,
that the imagination would no longer dwell upon the physical
relation and its adjuncts, and swell this into one of the
principal objects of life; a perversion of the imagination and
feelings, which he regarded as one of the deepest seated and most
pervading evils in the human mind. In psychology, his fundamental
doctrine was the formation of all human character by
circumstances, through the universal Principle of Association,
and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the moral
and intellectual condition of mankind by education. Of all his
doctrines none was more important than this, or needs more to be
insisted on: unfortunately there is none which is more
contradictory to the prevailing tendencies of speculation, both
in his time and since.
    These various opinions were seized on with youthful
fanaticism by the little knot of young men of whom I was one: and
we put into them a sectarian spirit, from which, in intention at
least, my father was wholly free. What we (or rather a phantom
substituted in the place of us) were sometimes, by a ridiculous
exaggeration, called by others, namely a "school," some of us for
a time really hoped and aspired to be. The French philosophes of
the eighteenth century were the example we sought to imitate, and
we hoped to accomplish no less results. No one of the set went to
so great excesses in this boyish ambition as I did; which might
be shown by many particulars, were it not an useless waste of
space and time.
    All this, however, is properly only the outside of our
existence; or, at least, the intellectual part alone, and no more
than one side of that. In attempting to penetrate inward, and
give any indication of what we were as human beings, I must be
understood as speaking only of myself, of whom alone I can speak
from sufficient knowledge; and I do not believe that the picture
would suit any of my companions without many and great
modifications.
    I conceive that the description so often given of a
Benthamite, as a mere reasoning machine, though extremely
inapplicable to most of those who have been designated by that
title, was during two or three years of my life not altogether
untrue of me. It was perhaps as applicable to me as it can well
be to any one just entering into life, to whom the common objects
of desire must in general have at least the attraction of
novelty. There is nothing very extraordinary in this fact: no
youth of the age I then was, can be expected to be more than one
thing, and this was the thing I happened to be. Ambition and
desire of distinction, I had in abundance; and zeal for what I
thought the good of mankind was my strongest sentiment, mixing
with and colouring all others. But my zeal was as yet little
else, at that period of my life, than zeal for speculative
opinions. It had not its root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy
with mankind; though these qualities held their due place in my
ethical standard. Nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm
for ideal nobleness. Yet of this feeling I was imaginatively very
susceptible; but there was at that time an intermission of its
natural ailment, poetical culture, while there was a
superabundance of the discipline antagonistic to it, that of mere
logic and analysis. Add to this that, as already mentioned, my
father's teachings tended to the under-valuing of feeling. It was
not that he was himself cold-hearted or insensible; I believe it
was rather from the contrary quality; he thought that feeling
could take care of itself; that there was sure to be enough of it
if actions were properly cared about. Offended by the frequency
with which, in ethical and philosophical controversy, feeling is
made the ultimate reason and justification of conduct, instead of
being itself called on for a justification, while, in practice,
actions, the effect of which on human happiness is mischievous,
are defended as being required by feeling, and the character of a
person of feeling obtains a credit for desert, which he thought
only due to actions, he had a teal impatience of attributing
praise to feeling, or of any but the most sparing reference to
it, either in the estimation of persons ot in the discussion of
things. In addition to the influence which this characteristic in
him had on me and others, we found all the opinions to which we
attached most importance, constantly attacked on the ground of
feeling. Utility was denounced as cold calculation; political
economy as hard-hearted; anti-population doctrines as repulsive
to the natural feelings of mankind. We retorted by the word
"sentimentality" which, along with "declamation" and "vague
generalities," served us as common terms of opprobrium. Although
we were generally in the right, as against those who were opposed
to us, the effect was that the cultivation of feeling (except the
feelings of public and private duty), was not in much esteem
among us, and had very little place in the thoughts of most of
us, myself in particular. What we principally thought of, was to
alter people's opinions; to make them believe according to
evidence, and know what was their real interest, which when they
once knew, they would, we thought, by the instrument of opinion,
enforce a regard to it upon one another. While fully recognizing
the superior excellence of unselfish benevolence and love of
justice, we did not expect the regeneration of mankind from any
direct action on those sentiments, but from the effect of
educated intellect, enlightening the selfish feelings. Although
this last is prodigiously important as a means of improvement in
the hands of those who are themselves impelled by nobler
principles of action, I do not believe that any one of the
survivors of the Benthamites or Utilitarians of that day, now
relies mainly upon it for the general amendment of human conduct.
    From this neglect both in theory and in practice of the
cultivation of feeling, naturally resulted, among other things,
an under-valuing of poetry, and of Imagination generally, as an
element of human nature. It is, or was, part of the popular
notion of Benthamites, that they are enemies of poetry: this was
partly true of Bentham himself; he used to say that "all poetry
is misrepresentation: " but in the sense in which he said it, the
same might have been said of all impressive speech; of all
representation or inculcation mote oratorical in its character
than a sum in arithmetic. An article of Bingham's in the first
number of the Westminster Review, in which he offered as an
explanation of something which he disliked in Moore, that "Mr
Moore is a poet, and therefore is not a reasoner," did a good
deal to attach the notion of hating poetry to the writers in the
Review. But the truth was that many of us were great readers of
poetry; Bingham himself had been a writer of it, while as regards
me (and the same thing might be said of my father), the correct
statement would be, not that I disliked poetry, but that I was
theoretically indifferent to it. I disliked any sentiments in
poetry which I should have disliked in prose; and that included a
great deal. And I was wholly blind to its place in human culture,
as a means of educating the feelings. But I was always personally
very susceptible to some kinds of it. In the most sectarian
period of my Benthamism, I happened to look into Pope's Essay on
Man, and though every opinion in it was contrary to mine, I well
remember how powerfully it acted on my imagination. Perhaps at
that time poetical composition of any higher type than eloquent
discussion in verse, might not have produced a similar effect on
me: at all events I seldom gave it an opportunity. This, however,
was a mere passive state. Long before I had enlarged in any
considerable degree, the basis of my intellectual creed, I had
obtained in the natural course of my mental progress, poetic
culture of the most valuable kind, by means of reverential
admiration for the lives and characters of heroic persons;
especially the heroes of philosophy. The same inspiring effect
which so many of the benefactors of mankind have left on record
that they had experienced from Plutarch's Lives, was produced on
me by Plato's pictures of Socrates, and by some modern
biographies, above all by Condorcet's Life of Turgot; a book well
calculated to rouse the best sort of enthusiasm, since it
contains one of the wisest and noblest of lives, delineated by
one of the wisest and noblest of men. The heroic virtue of these
glorious representatives of the opinions with which I
sympathized, deeply affected me, and I perpetually recurred to
them as others do to a favourite poet, when needing to be carried
up into the more elevated regions of feeling and thought. I may
observe by the way that this book cured me of my sectarian
follies. The two or three pages beginning "Il regardait toute
secte comme nuisible," and explaining why Turgot always kept
himself perfectly distinct from the Encyclopedists, sank deeply
into my mind. I left off designating myself and others as
Utilitarians, and by the pronoun "we" or any other collective
designation, I ceased to affiche, sectarianism. My real inward
sectarianism I did not get rid of till later, and much more
gradually.
    About the end of 1824, or beginning of 1825, Mr Bentham,
having lately got back his papers on Evidence from M. Dumont
(whose Traité des Preuves Judiciaires, grounded on them, was then
first completed and published) resolved to have them printed in
the original, and bethought himself of me as capable of preparing
them for the press; in the same manner as his Book of Fallacies
had been recently edited by Bingham. I gladly undertook this
task, and it occupied nearly all my leisure for about a year,
exclusive of the time afterwards spent in seeing the five large
volumes through the press. Mt. Bentham had begun this treatise
three times, at considerable intervals, each time in a different
manner, and each time without reference to the preceding: two of
the three times he had gone over nearly the whole subject. These
three masses of manuscript it was my business to condense into a
single treatise; adopting the one last written as the groundwork,
and incorporating with it as much of the two others as it had not
completely superseded. I had also to unroll such of Bentham's
involved and parenthetical sentences, as seemed to overpass by
their complexity the measure of what readers were likely to take
the pains to understand. It was further Mr Bentham's particular
desire that I should, from myself, endeavour to supply any
lacunae which he had left; and at his instance I read, for this
purpose, the most authoritative treatises on the English Law of
Evidence, and commented on a few of the objectionable points of
the English rules, which had escaped Bentham's notice. I also
replied to the objections which had been made to some of his
doctrines by reviewers of Dumont's book, and added a few
supplementary remarks on Some of the more abstract parts of the
subject, such as the theory of improbability and impossibility.
The controversial part of these editorial additions was written
in a more assuming tone than became one so young and
inexperienced as I was: but indeed I had never contemplated
coming forward in my own person; and as an anonymous editor of
Bentham, I fell into the tone of my author, not thinking it
unsuitable to him or to the subject, however it might be so to
me. My name as editor was put to the book after it was printed,
at Mr Bentham's positive desire, which I in vain attempted to
persuade him to forego.
    The time occupied in this editorial work was extremely well
employed in respect to my own improvement. The "Rationale of
judicial Evidence" is one of the richest in matter of all
Bentham's productions. The theory of evidence being in itself one
of the most important of his subjects, and ramifying into most of
the others, the book contains, very fully developed, a great
proportion of all his best thoughts: while, among more special
things, it comprises the most elaborate exposure of the vices and
defects of English law, as it then was, which is to be found in
his works; not confined to the law of evidence, but including, by
way of illustrative episode, the entire procedure or practice of
Westminster Hall. The direct knowledge, therefore, which I
obtained from the book, and which was imprinted upon me much more
thoroughly than it could have been by mere reading, was itself no
small acquisition. But this occupation did for me what might seem
less to be expected; it gave a great start to my powers of
composition. Everything which I wrote subsequently to this
editorial employment, was markedly superior to anything that I
had written before it. Bentham's later style, as the world knows,
was heavy and cumbersome, from the excess of a good quality, the
love of precision, which made him introduce clause within clause
into the heart of every sentence, that the reader might receive
into his mind all the modifications and qualifications
simultaneously with the main proposition: and the habit grew on
him until his sentences became, to those not accustomed to them,
most laborious reading. But his earlier style, that of the
Fragment on Government, Plan of a judicial Establishment, &c., is
a model of liveliness and ease combined with fulness of matter,
scarcely ever surpassed: and of this earlier style there were
many striking specimens in the manuscripts on Evidence, all of
which I endeavoured to preserve. So long a course of this
admirable writing had a considerable effect upon my own; and I
added to it by the assiduous reading of other writers, both
French and English, who combined, in a remarkable degree, ease
with force, such as Goldsmith, Fielding, Pascal, Voltaire, and
Courier. Through these influences my writing lost the jejuneness
of my early compositions; the bones and cartilages began to
clothe themselves with flesh, and the style became, at times,
lively and almost light.
    This improvement was first exhibited in a new field. Mr
Marshall, of Leeds, father of the present generation of
Marshalls, the same who was brought into Parliament for
Yorkshire, when the representation forfeited by Grampound was
transferred to it, an earnest parliamentary reformer, and a man
of large fortune, of which he made a liberal use, had been much
struck with Bentham's Book of Fallacies: and the thought had
occurred to him that it would be useful to publish annually the
Parliamentary Debates, not in the chronological order of Hansard,
but classified according to subjects, and accompanied by a
commentary pointing out the fallacies of the speakers. With this
intention, he very naturally addressed himself to the editor of
the Book of Fallacies; and Bingham, with the assistance of
Charles Austin, undertook the editorship. The work was called
"Parliamentary History and Review." Its sale was not sufficient
to keep it in existence, and it only lasted three years. It
excited, however, some attention among parliamentary and
political people. The best strength of the party was put forth in
it; and its execution did them much more credit than that of the
Westminster Review had ever done. Bingham and Charles Austin
wrote much in it; as did Strutt, Romilly, and several other
liberal lawyers. My father wrote one article in his best style;
the elder Austin another. Coulson wrote one of great merit. It
fell to my lot to lead off the first number by an article on the
principal topic of the session (that of 1825), the Catholic
Association and the Catholic disabilities. In the second number I
wrote an elaborate Essay on the commercial crisis of 1825 and the
Currency Debates. In the third I had two articles, one on a minor
subject, the other on the Reciprocity principle in commerce, à
propos of a celebrated diplomatic correspondence between Canning
and Gallatin. These writings were no longer mere reproductions
and applications of the doctrines I had been taught; they were
original thinking, as far as that name can be applied to old
ideas in new forms and connexions: and I do not exceed the truth
in saying that there was a maturity, and a well-digested
character about them, which there had not been in any of my
previous performances. In execution, therefore, they were not at
all juvenile; but their subjects have either gone by, ot have
been so much better treated since, that they are entirely
superseded, and should remain buried in the same oblivion with my
contributions to the first dynasty of the Westminster Review.
    While thus engaged in writing for the public, I did not
neglect other modes of self-cultivation. It was at this time that
I learnt German; beginning it on the Hamiltonian method, for
which purpose I and several of my companions formed a class. For
several years from this period, our social studies assumed a
shape which contributed very much to my mental progress. The idea
occurred to us of carrying on, by reading and conversation, a
joint study of several of the branches of science which we wished
to be masters of. We assembled to the number of a dozen or more.
Mr Grote lent a room of his house in Threadneedle Street for the
purpose, and his partner, Prescott, one of the three original
members of the Utilitarian Society, made one among us. We met two
mornings in every week, from half-past eight till ten, at which
hour most of us were called off to our daily occupations. Our
first subject was Political Economy. We chose some systematic
treatise as our text-book; my father's "Elements" being our first
choice. One of us read aloud a chapter, ot some smaller portion
of the book. The discussion was then opened, and any one who had
an objection, or other remark to make, made it. Our rule was to
discuss thoroughly every point raised, whether great or small,
prolonging the discussion until all who took part were satisfied
with the conclusion they had individually arrived at; and to
follow up every topic of collateral speculation which the chapter
or the conversation suggested, never leaving it until we had
untied every knot which we found. We repeatedly kept up the
discussion of some one point for several weeks, thinking intently
on it during the intervals of our meetings, and contriving
solutions of the new difficulties which had risen up in the last
morning's discussion. When we had finished in this way my
father's Elements, we went in the same manner through Ricardo's
Principles of Political Economy, and Bailey's Dissertation on
Value. These close and vigorous discussions were not only
improving in a high degree to those who took part in them, but
brought out new views of some topics of abstract Political
Economy. The theory of International Values which I afterwards
published, emanated from these conversations, as did also the
modified form of Ricardo's theory of Profits, laid down in my
Essay on Profits and Interest. Those among us with whom new
speculations chiefly originated, were Ellis, Graham, and I;
though others gave valuable aid to the discussions, especially
Prescott and Roebuck, the one by his knowledge, the other by his
dialectical acuteness. The theories of International Values and
of Profits were excogitated and worked out in about equal
proportions by myself and Graham: and if our original project had
been executed, my "Essays on some Unsettled Questions of
Political Economy" would have been brought out along with some
papers of his, under our joint names. But when my exposition came
to be written, I found that I had so much over-estimated my
agreement with him, and he dissented so much from the most
original of the two Essays, that on international Values, that I
was obliged to consider the theory as now exclusively mine, and
it came out as such when published many years later. I may
mention that among the alterations which my father made in
revising his Elements for the third edition, several were founded
on criticisms elicited by these conversations; and in particular
he modified his opinions (though not to the extent of our new
speculations) on both the points to which I have adverted.
    When we had enough of political economy, we took up the
syllogistic logic in the same manner, Grote now joining us. Our
first text-book was Aldrich, but being disgusted with its
superficiality, we reprinted one of the most finished among the
many manuals of the school logic, which my father, a great
collector of such books, possessed, the Manuductio ad Logicam of
the Jesuit Du Trieu. After finishing this, we took up Whately's
Logic, then first republished from the Encyclopaedia
Metropolitana, and finally the "Computatio sive Logica" of
Hobbes. These books, dealt with in our manner, afforded a wide
range for original metaphysical speculation: and most of what has
been done in the First Book of my System of Logic, to rationalize
and correct the principles and distinctions of the school
logicians, and to improve the theory of the import of
Propositions, had its origin in these discussions; Graham and I
originating most of the novelties, while Grote and others
furnished an excellent tribunal or test. From this time I formed
the project of writing a book on Logic, though on a much humbler
scale than the one I ultimately executed.
    Having done with Logic, we launched into analytic psychology,
and having chosen Hartley for our text-book, we raised
Priestley's edition to an extravagant price by searching through
London to furnish each of us with a copy. When we had finished
Hartley, we suspended our meetings; but my father's Analysis of
the Mind being published soon after, we reassembled for the
purpose of reading it. With this our exercises ended. I have
always dated from these conversations my own real inauguration as
an original and independent thinker. It was also through them
that I acquired, or very much strengthened, a mental habit to
which I attribute all that I have ever done, or ever shall do, in
speculation; that of never accepting half-solutions of
difficulties as complete; never abandoning a puzzle, but again
and again returning to it until it was cleared up; never allowing
obscure corners of a subject to remain unexplored, because they
did not appear important; never thinking that I perfectly
understood any part of a subject until I understood the whole.
Our doings from 1825 to 1830 in the way of public speaking,
filled a considerable place in my life during those years, and as
they had important effects on my development, something ought to
be said of them.
    There was for some time in existence a society of Owenites,
called the Co-operative Society, which met for weekly public
discussions in Chancery Lane. In the early part of 1825, accident
brought Roebuck in contact with several of its members, and led
to his attending one or two of the meetings and taking part in
the debate in opposition to Owenism. Some of us started the
notion of going there in a body and having a general battle: and
Charles Austin and some of his friends who did not usually take
part in our joint exercises, entered into the project. It was
carried out by concert with the principal members of the Society,
themselves nothing loth, as they naturally preferred a
controversy with opponents to a tame discussion among their own
body. The question of population was proposed as the subject of
debate: Charles Austin led the case on our side with a brilliant
speech, and the fight was kept up by adjournment through five or
six weekly meetings before crowded auditories, including along
with the members of the Society and their friends, many hearers
and some speakers from the Inns of Court. When this debate was
ended, another was commenced on the general merits of Owen's
system: and the contest altogether lasted about three months. It
was a lutte corps-à-corps between Owenites and political
economists, whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate
opponents: but it was a perfectly friendly dispute. We who
represented political economy, had the same objects in view as
they had, and took pains to show it; and the principal champion
on their side was a very estimable man, with whom I was well
acquainted, Mr William Thompson, of Cork, author of a book on the
Distribution of Wealth, and of an "Appeal" in behalf of women
against the passage relating to them in my father's Essay on
Government. Ellis, Roebuck, and I took an active part in the
debate, and among those from the inns of Court who joined in it,
I remember Charles Villiers. The other side obtained also, on the
population question, very efficient support from without. The
well-known Gale Jones, then an elderly man, made one of his
florid speeches; but the speaker with whom I was most struck,
though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall,
the historian, since Bishop of St. David's, then a Chancery
barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence
acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin and
Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had
uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had
ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed
above him.
    The great interest of these debates predisposed some of those
who took part in them, to catch at a suggestion thrown out by
McCulloch, the political economist, that a society was wanted in
London similar to the Speculative Society at Edinburgh, in which
Brougham, Horner, and others first cultivated public speaking.
Our experience at the Co-operative Society seemed to give cause
for being sanguine as to the sort of men who might be brought
together in London for such a purpose. McCulloch mentioned the
matter to several young men of influence, to whom he was then
giving private lessons in political economy. Some of these
entered warmly into the project, particularly George Villiers,
afterwards Earl of Clarendon. He and his brothers, Hyde and
Charles, Romilly, Charles Austin and I, with some others, met and
agreed on a plan. We determined to meet once a fortnight from
November to June, at the Freemasons' Tavern, and we had soon a
splendid list of members, containing, along with several members
of parliament, nearly all the most noted speakers of the
Cambridge Union and of the Oxford United Debating Society. It is
curiously illustrative of the tendencies of the time, that our
principal difficulty in recruiting for the Society was to find a
sufficient number of Tory speakers. Almost all whom we could
press into the service were Liberals, of different orders and
degrees. Besides those already named, we had Macaulay, Thirlwall,
Praed, Lord Howick, Samuel Wilberforce (afterwards Bishop of
Oxford), Charles Poulett Thomson (afterwards Lord Sydenham),
Edward and Henry Lytton Bulwer, Fonblanque, and many others whom
I cannot now recollect, but who made themselves afterwards more
or less conspicuous in public or literary life. Nothing could
seem more promising. But when the time for action drew near, and
it was necessary to fix on a President, and find somebody to open
the first debate, none of our celebrities would consent to
perform either office. Of the many who were pressed on the
subject, the only one who could be prevailed on was a man of whom
I knew very little, but who had taken high honours at Oxford and
was said to have acquired a great oratorical reputation there;
who some time afterwards became a Tory member of parliament. He
accordingly was fixed on, both for filling the President's chair
and for making the first speech. The important day arrived; the
benches were crowded; all our great speakers were present, to
judge of, but not to help our efforts. The Oxford orator's speech
was a complete failure. This threw a damp on the whole concern:
the speakers who followed were few, and none of them did their
best: the affair was a complete fiasco; and the oratorical
celebrities we had counted on went away never to return, giving
to me at least a lesson in knowledge of the world. This
unexpected breakdown altered my whole relation to the project. I
had not anticipated taking a prominent part, or speaking much or
often, particularly at first, but I now saw that the success of
the scheme depended on the new men, and I put my shoulder to the
wheel. I opened the second question, and from that time spoke in
nearly every debate. It was very uphill work for some time. The
three Villiers' and Romilly stuck to us for some time longer, but
the patience of all the founders of the Society was at last
exhausted, except me and Roebuck. In the season following,
1826-7, things began to mend. We had acquired two excellent Tory
speakers, Hayward and Shee (afterwards Sergeant Shee): the
radical side was reinforced by Charles Buller, Cockburn, and
others of the second generation of Cambridge Benthamites; and
with their and other occasional aid, and the two Tories as well
as Roebuck and me for regular speakers, almost every debate was a
bataille rangée between the "philosophic radicals" and the Tory
lawyers; until our conflicts were talked about, and several
persons of note and consideration came to hear us. This happened
still more in the subsequent seasons, 1828 and 1829, when the
Coleridgians, in the persons of Maurice and Sterling, made their
appearance in the Society as a second Liberal and even Radical
party, on totally different grounds from Benthamism and
vehemently opposed to it; bringing into these discussions the
general doctrines and modes of thought of the European reaction
against the philosophy of the eighteenth century; and adding a
third and very important belligerent party to our contests, which
were now no bad exponent of the movement of opinion among the
most cultivated part of the new generation. Our debates were very
different from those of common debating societies, for they
habitually consisted of the strongest arguments and most
philosophic principles which either side was able to produce,
thrown often into close and serré confutations of one another.
The practice was necessarily very useful to us, and eminently so
to me. I never, indeed, acquired real fluency, and had always a
bad and ungraceful delivery; but I could make myself listened to:
and as I always wrote my speeches when, from the feelings
involved, or the nature of the ideas to be developed, expression
seemed important, I greatly increased my power of effective
writing; acquiring not only an ear for smoothness and rhythm, but
a practical sense for telling sentences, and an immediate
criterion of their telling property, by their effect on a mixed
audience. 
    The Society, and the preparation for it, together with the
preparation for the morning conversations which were going on
simultaneously, occupied the greater part of my leisure; and made
me feel it a relief when, in the spring of 1828, I ceased to
write for the Westminster. The Review had fallen into
difficulties. Though the sale of the first number had been very
encouraging, the permanent sale had never, I believe, been
sufficient to pay the expenses, on the scale on which the review
was carried on. Those expenses had been considerably, but not
sufficiently, reduced. One of the editors, Southern, had
resigned; and several of the writers, including my father and me,
who had been paid like other contributors for our earlier
articles, had latterly written without payment. Nevertheless, the
original funds were nearly or quite exhausted, and if the Review
was to be continued some new arrangement of its affairs had
become indispensable. My father and I had several conferences
with Bowring on the subject. We were willing to do our utmost for
maintaining the Review as an organ of our opinions, but not under
Bowring's editorship: while the impossibility of its any longer
supporting a paid editor, afforded a ground on which, without
affront to him, we could propose to dispense with his services.
We and some of our friends were prepared to carry on the Review
as unpaid writers, either finding among ourselves an unpaid
editor, or sharing the editorship among us. But while this
negotiation was proceeding with Bowring's apparent acquiescence,
he was fig on another in a different quarter (with Colonel
Perronet Thompson), of which we received the first intimation in
a letter from Bowring as editor, informing us merely that an
arrangement had been made, and proposing to us to write for the
next number, with promise of payment. We did not dispute
Bowring's right to bring about, if he could, an arrangement more
favourable to himself than the one we had proposed; but we
thought the concealment which he had practised towards us, while
seemingly entering into our own project, an affront: and even had
we not thought so, we were indisposed to expend any more of our
time and trouble in attempting to write up the Review under his
management. Accordingly my father excused himself from writing;
though two or three years later, on great pressure, he did write
one more political article. As for me, I positively refused. And
thus ended my connexion with the original Westminster. The last
article which I wrote in it had cost me more labour than any
previous; but it was a labour of love, being a defence of the
early French Revolutionists against the Tory misrepresentations
of Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to his Life of Napoleon.
The number of books which I read for this purpose, making notes
and extracts -- even the number I had to buy (for in those days
there was no public or subscription library from which books of
reference could be taken home), Far exceeded the worth of the
immediate object; but I had at that time a half-formed intention
of writing a History of the French Revolution; and though I never
executed it, my collections afterwards were very useful to
Carlyle for a similar purpose. 

 V. A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY. ONE STAGE ONWARD.

    For some years after this I wrote very little, and nothing
regularly, for publication: and great were the advantages which I
derived from the intermission. It was of no common importance to
me, at this period, to be able to digest and mature my thoughts
for my own mind only, without any immediate call for giving them
out in print. Had I gone on writing, it would have much disturbed
the important transformation in my opinions and character, which
took place during those years. The origin of this transformation,
or at least the process by which I was prepared for it, can only
be explained by turning some distance back.
    From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and
especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, 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. The personal sympathies I wished for
were those of fellow labourers in this enterprise. I endeavoured
to pick up as many flowers as I could by the way; but as a
serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my
whole reliance was placed on this; and I was accustomed to
felicitate myself on the certainty of a happy life which I
enjoyed, through placing my happiness in something durable and
distant, in which some progress might be always making, while it
could never be exhausted by complete attainment. This did very
well for several years, during which the general improvement
going on in the world and the idea of myself as engaged with
others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fill up an
interesting and animated existence. But the time came when I
awakened from this as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 1826.
I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is
occasionally liable to; unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable
excitement; one of those moods when what is pleasure at other
times, becomes insipid or indifferent; the state, I should think,
in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten by their
first "conviction of sin." 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?" And 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 pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm,
and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I
seemed to have nothing left 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. The lines in
Coleridge's "Dejection" -- I was not then acquainted with them --
exactly describe my case: 

     "A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
     A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
     Which finds no natural outlet or relief
     In word, or sigh, or tear." 

    In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those
memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always
hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without
feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and
I became persuaded, that my love of mankind, and of excellence
for its own sake, had worn itself out. I sought no comfort by
speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved any one
sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should
not have been in the condition I was. I felt, too, that mine was
not an interesting, or in any way respectable distress. There was
nothing in it to attract sympathy. Advice, if I had known where
to seek it, would have been most precious. The words of Macbeth
to the physician often occurred to my thoughts. 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 to
whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Everything
convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as
I was suffering from, and that even if he could be made to
understand 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 failure was probably irremediable, and, at all
events, beyond the power of his remedies. Of other friends, I had
at that time none to whom I had any hope of making my condition
intelligible. It was however abundantly intelligible to myself;
and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.
    My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and
moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind,
were the results of association; that we love one thing, and hate
another, take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation,
and pain in another sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or
painful ideas to those things, from the effect of education or of
experience. As a corollary from this, I had always heard it
maintained by my father, and was myself convinced, that the
object of education should be to form the strongest possible
associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure with
all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all
things hurtful to it. This doctrine appeared inexpugnable; but it
now seemed to me, on retrospect, that my teachers had occupied
themselves but superficially with the means of forming and
keeping up these salutary associations. They seemed to have
trusted altogether to the old familiar instruments, praise and
blame, reward and punishment. Now, I did not doubt that by these
means, begun early, and applied unremittingly, intense
associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain, might be
created, and might produce desires and aversions capable of
lasting undiminished to the end of life. But there must always be
something artificial and casual in associations thus produced.
The pains and pleasures thus forcibly associated with things, are
not connected with them by any natural tie; and it is therefore,
I thought, essential to the durability of these associations,
that they should have become so intense and inveterate as to be
practically indissoluble, before the habitual exercise of the
power of analysis had commenced. For I now saw, or thought I saw,
what I had always before received with incredulity -- that the
habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as
indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the
analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and
correctives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued) is that
it tends to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of
prejudice; that it enables us mentally to separate ideas which
have only casually clung together: and no associations whatever
could ultimately resist this dissolving force, were it not that
we owe to analysis our clearest knowledge of the permanent
sequences in nature; the real connexions between Things, not
dependent on our will and feelings; natural laws, by virtue of
which, in many cases, one thing is inseparable from another in
fact; which laws, in proportion as they are clearly perceived and
imaginatively realized, cause our ideas of things which are
always joined together in Nature, to cohere more and more closely
in our thoughts. Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the
associations between causes and effects, means and ends, but tend
altogether to weaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a mere
matter of feeling. They are therefore (I thought) favourable to
prudence and clearsightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root
both of the passions and of the virtues; and, above all,
fearfully undermine all desires, and all pleasures, which are the
effects of association, that is, according to the theory I held,
all except the purely physical and organic; of the entire
insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a
stronger conviction than I had. These were the laws of human
nature, by which, as it seemed to me, I had been brought to my
present state. All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion
that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings
which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a
large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and
surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was
convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I
had it, did not give me the feeling. My education, I thought, had
failed to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist
the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole course of
my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature
analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said
to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a
well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real
desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to
work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also
just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanity and
ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely as
those of benevolence. I had had (as I reflected) some
gratification of vanity at too early an age: I had obtained some
distinction, and felt myself of some importance, before the
desire of distinction and of importance had grown into a passion:
and little as it was which I had attained, yet having been
attained too early, like all pleasures enjoyed too soon, it had
made me blasé and indifferent to the pursuit. Thus neither
selfish nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. And there
seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my
character anew, and create in a mind now irretrievably analytic,
fresh associations of pleasure with any of the objects of human
desire.
    These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry heavy
dejection of the melancholy winter of 1826-7. During this time I
was not incapable of my usual occupations. I went on with them
mechanically, by the mere force of habit. I had been so drilled
in a certain sort of mental exercise, that I could still carry it
on when all the spirit had gone out of it. I even composed and
spoke several speeches at the debating society, how, or with what
degree of success, I know not. Of four years continual speaking
at that society, this is the only year of which I remember next
to nothing. Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone of all writers
I have found a true description of what I felt, were often in my
thoughts, not at this time (for I had never read them), but in a
later period of the same mental malady:

        "Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
        And hope without an object cannot live."

    In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I
fancied it, and I doubt not that many others have passed through
a similar state; but 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. 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. When, however, not more than half
that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light broke in
upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's
"Mémoires," and came to the passage which relates his father's
death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden
inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel
that he would be everything to them-would supply the place of all
that they had lost. A vivid conception of the scene and its
feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears. From this moment
my been grew lighter. The oppression of the thought that all
feeling was dead within me, was gone. I was no longer hopeless: I
was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed, some of the
material out of which all worth of character, and all capacity
for happiness, are made. Relieved from my ever present sense of
irremediable wretchedness, I gradually found that the ordinary
incidents of life could again give me some pleasure; that I could
again find enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for
cheerfulness, in sunshine and sky, in books, in conversation, in
public affairs; and that there was, once more, excitement, though
of a moderate kind, in exerting myself for my opinions, and for
the public good. Thus the cloud gradually drew off, and I again
enjoyed life: and though I had several relapses, some of which
lasted many months, I never again was as miserable as I had been.
    The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on
my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to
adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before
acted, and having much in common with what at that time I
certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory
of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that
happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of
life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by
not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought)
who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own
happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of
mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means,
but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they
find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now
my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they
are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once
make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient.
They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself
whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is
to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the
purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your
self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise
fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air
you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without
either forestalling it in imagination, ot putting it to flight by
fatal questioning. This theory now became the basis of my
philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the best theory for
all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and of
capacity for enjoyment, that is, for the great majority of
mankind.
    The other important change which my opinions at this time
underwent, was that I, for the first time, gave its proper place,
among the prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal
culture of the individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive
importance to the ordering of outward circumstances, and the
training of the human being for speculation and for action.
    I had now learnt by experience that the passive
susceptibilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active
capacities, and required to be nourished and enriched as well as
guided. I did not, for an instant, lose sight of, or undervalue,
that part of the truth which I had seen before; I never turned
recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power
and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of
individual and of social improvement. But I thought that it had
consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other
kinds of cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance
among the faculties, now seemed to me of primary importance. The
cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in
my ethical and philosophical creed. And my thoughts and
inclinations turned in an increasing degree towards whatever
seemed capable of being instrumental to that object.
    I now began to find meaning in the things which I had read or
heard about the importance of poetry and art as instruments of
human culture. But it was some time longer before I began to know
this by personal experience. The only one of the imaginative arts
in which I had from childhood taken great pleasure, was music;
the best effect of which (and in this it surpasses perhaps every
other art) consists in exciting enthusiasm; in winding up to a
high pitch those feelings of an elevated kind which are already
in the character, but to which this excitement gives a glow and a
fervour, which, though transitory at its utmost height, is
precious for sustaining them at other times. This effect of music
I had often experienced; but like all my pleasurable
susceptibilities it was suspended duriNg the gloomy period. I had
sought relief again and again from this quarter, but found none.
After the tide had turned, and I was in process of recovery, I
had been helped forward by music, but in a much less elevated
manner. I at this time first became acquainted with Weber's
Oberon, and the extreme pleasure which I drew from its delicious
melodies did me good, by showing me a source of pleasure to which
I was as susceptible as ever. The good, however, was much
impaired by the thought, that the pleasure of music (as is quite
true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades with
familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence,
or fed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both
of my then state, and of the general tone of my mind at this
period of my life, that I was seriously tormented by the thought
of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. The octave
consists only of five tones and two semi-tones, which can be put
together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small
proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must
have been already discovered, and there could not be room for a
long succession of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out, as these
had done, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of musical
beauty. This source of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to
resemble that of the philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the
sun should be burnt out. It was, however, connected with the best
feature in my character, and the only good point to be found in
my very unromantic and in no way honourable distress. For though
my dejection, honestly looked at, could not be called other than
egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of
happiness, yet the destiny of mankind in general was ever in my
thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the
flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question
was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could
succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were
free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life,
being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to
be pleasures. And I felt that unless I could see my way to some
better hope than this for human happiness in general, my
dejection must continue; but that if I could see such an outlet,
I should then look on the world with pleasure; content as far as
I was myself concerned, with any fair share of the general lot.
    This state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact of my
reading Wordsworth for the first time (in the autumn of 1828), an
important event in my life. I took up the collection of his poems
from curiosity, with no expectation of mental relief from it,
though I had before resorted to poetry with that hope. In the
worst period of my depression, I had read through the whole of
Byron (then new to me), to try whether a poet, whose peculiar
department was supposed to be that of the intenser feelings,
could rouse any feeling in me. As might be expected, I got no
good from this reading, but the reverse. The poet's state of mind
was too like my own. His was the lament of a man who had worn out
all pleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to all who
possess the good things of it, must necessarily be the vapid,
uninteresting thing which I found it. His Harold and Manfred had
the same burthen on them which I had; and I was not in a frame of
mind to derive any comfort from the vehement sensual passion of
his Giaours, or the sullenness of his Laras. But while Byron was
exactly what did not suit my condition, Wordsworth was exactly
what did. I had looked into the Excursion two or three years
before, and found little in it; and I should probably have found
as little, had I read it at this time. But the miscellaneous
poems, in the two-volume edition of 1815 (to which little of
value was added in the latter part of the author's life), proved
to be the precise thing for my mental wants at that particular
juncture.
    In the first place, these poems addressed themselves
powerfully to one of the strongest of my pleasurable
susceptibilities, the love of rural objects and natural scenery;
to which I had been indebted not only for much of the pleasure of
my life, but quite recently for relief from one of my longest
relapses into depression. In this power of rural beauty over me,
there was a foundation laid for taking pleasure in Wordsworth's,
poetry. the more so, as his scenery lies mostly among mountains,
which, owing to my early Pyrenean excursion, were my ideal of
natural beauty. But Wordsworth would never have had any great
effect on me, if he had merely placed before me beautiful
pictures of natural scenery. Scott does this still better than
Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more
effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems a
medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere
outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by
feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the
very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I
seemed to draw from a Source of inward joy, of sympathetic and
imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human
beings; which had no connexion with struggle ot imperfection, but
would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or
social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what
would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater
evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once
better and happier as I came under their influence. There have
certainly been, even in our own age, greater poets than
Wordsworth; but poetry of deeper and loftier feeling could not
have done for me at that time what his did. I needed to be made
to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil
contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without
turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the
common feelings and common destiny of human beings. And the
delight which these poems gave me, proved that with culture of
this sort, there was nothing to dread from the most confirmed
habit of analysis. At the conclusion of the Poems came the famous
Ode, falsely called Platonic, "Intimations of Immortality:" in
which, along with more than his usual sweetness of melody and
rhythm, and along with the two passages of grand imagery but bad
philosophy so often quoted, I found that he too had had similar
experience to mine; that he also had felt that the first
freshness of youthful enjoyment of life was not lasting; but that
he had sought for compensation, and found it, in the way in which
he was now teaching me to find it. The result was that I
gradually, but completely, emerged from my habitual depression,
and was never again subject to it. I long continued to value
Wordsworth less according to his intrinsic merits, than by the
measure of what he had done for me. Compared with the greatest
poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures,
possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical
natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation.
This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than
poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he.
    It so fell out that the merits of Wordsworth were the
occasion of my first public declaration of my new way of
thinking, and separation from those of my habitual companions who
had not undergone a similar change. The person with whom at that
time I was most in the habit of comparing notes on such subjects
was Roebuck, and I induced him to read Wordsworth, in whom he
also at first seemed to find much to admire: but I, like most
Wordsworthians, threw myself into strong antagonism to Byron,
both as a poet and as to his influence on the character. Roebuck,
all whose instincts were those of action and struggle, had, on
the contrary, a strong relish and great admiration of Byron,
whose writings he regarded as the poetry of human life, while
Wordsworth's, according to him, was that of flowers and
butterflies. We agreed to have the fight out at our Debating
Society, where we accordingly discussed for two evenings the
comparative merits of Byron and Wordsworth, propounding and
illustrating by long recitations our respective theories of
poetry: Sterling also, in a brilliant speech, putting forward his
particular theory. This was the first debate on any weighty
subject in which Roebuck and I had been on opposite sides. The
schism between us widened from this time more and more, though we
continued for some years longer to be companions. In the
beginning, our chief divergence related to the cultivation of the
feelings. Roebuck was in many respects very different from the
vulgar notion of a Benthamite or Utilitarian. He was a lover of
poetry and of most of the fine arts. He took great pleasure in
music, in dramatic performances, especially in painting, and
himself drew and designed landscapes with great facility and
beauty. But he never could be made to see that these things have
any value as aids in the formation of character. Personally,
instead of being, as Benthamites are supposed to be, void of
feeling, he had very quick and strong sensibilities. But, like
most Englishmen who have feelings, he found his feelings stand
very much in his way. He was much more susceptible to the painful
sympathies than to the pleasurable, and looking for his happiness
elsewhere, he wished that his feelings should be deadened rather
than quickened. And, in truth, the English character, and English
social circumstances, make it so seldom possible to derive
happiness from the exercise of the sympathies, that it is not
wonderful if they count for little in an Englishman's scheme of
life. In most other countries the paramount importance of the
sympathies as a constituent of individual happiness is an axiom,
taken for granted rather than needing any formal statement; but
most English thinkers almost seem to regard them as necessary
evils, required for keeping men's actions benevolent and
compassionate. Roebuck was, or appeared to be, this kind of
Englishman. He saw little good in any cultivation of the
feelings, and none at all in cultivating them through the
imagination, which he thought was only cultivating illusions. It
was in vain I urged on him that the imaginative emotion which an
idea, when vividly conceived, excites in us, is not an illusion
but a fact, as real as any of the other qualities of objects; and
far from implying anything erroneous and delusive in our mental
apprehension of the object, is quite consistent with the most
accurate knowledge and most perfect practical recognition of all
its physical and intellectual laws and relations. The intensest
feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted by the setting sun, is
no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is vapour of water,
subject to all the laws of vapours in a state of suspension; and
I am just as likely to allow for, and act on, these physical laws
whenever there is occasion to do so, as if I had been incapable
of perceiving any distinction between beauty and ugliness.
    While my intimacy with Roebuck diminished, I fell more and
more into friendly intercourse with our Coleridgian adversaries
in the Society, Frederick Maurice and John Sterling, both
subsequently so well known, the former by his writings, the
latter through the biographies by Hare and Carlyle. Of these two
friends, Maurice was the thinker, Sterling the orator, and
impassioned expositor of thoughts which, at this period, were
almost entirely formed for him by Maurice. With Maurice I had for
some time been acquainted through Eyton Tooke, who had known him
at Cambridge, and though my discussions with him were almost
always disputes, I had carried away from them much that helped to
build up my new fabric of thought, in the same way as I was
deriving much from Coleridge, and from the writings of Goethe and
other German authors which I read during those years. I have so
deep a respect for Maurice's character and purposes, as well as
for his great mental gifts, that it is with some unwillingness I
say anything which may seem to place him on a less high eminence
than I would gladly be able to accord to him. But I have always
thought that there was more intellectual power wasted in Maurice
than in any other of my contemporaries. Few of them certainly
have had so much to waste. Great powers of generalization, rare
ingenuity and subtlety, and a wide perception of important and
unobvious truths, served him not for putting something better
into the place of the worthless heap of received opinions on the
great subjects of thought, but for proving to his own mind that
the Church of England had known everything from the first, and
that all the truths on the ground of which the Church and
orthodoxy have been attacked (many of which he saw as clearly as
any one) are not only consistent with the Thirty-nine articles,
but are better understood and expressed in those articles than by
any one who rejects them. I have never been able to find any
other explanation of this, than by attributing it to that
timidity of conscience, combined with original sensitiveness of
temperament, which has so often driven highly gifted men into
Romanism from the need of a firmer support than they can find in
the independent conclusions of their own judgment. Any more
vulgar kind of timidity no one who knew Maurice would ever think
of imputing to him, even if he had not given public proof of his
freedom from it, by his ultimate collision with some of the
opinions commonly regarded as orthodox, and by his noble
origination of the Christian Socialist movement. The nearest
parallel to him, in a moral point of view, is Coleridge, to whom,
in merely intellectual power, apart from poetical genius, I think
him decidedly superior. At this time, however, he might be
described as a disciple of Coleridge, and Sterling as a disciple
of Coleridge and of him. The modifications which were taking
place in my old opinions gave me some points of contact with
them; and both Maurice and Sterling were of considerable use to
my development. With Sterling I soon became very intimate, and
was more attached to him than I have ever been to any other man.
He was indeed one of the most lovable of men. His frank, cordial,
affectionate, and expansive character; a love of truth alike
conspicuous in the highest things and the humblest; a generous
and ardent nature which threw itself with impetuosity into the
opinions it adopted, but was as eager to do justice to the
doctrines and the men it was opposed to, as to make war on what
it thought their errors; and an equal devotion to the two
cardinal points of Liberty and Duty, formed a combination of
qualities as attractive to me, as to all others who knew him as
well as I did. With his open mind and heart, he found no
difficulty in joining hands with me across the gulf which as yet
divided our opinions. He told me how he and others had looked
upon me (from hearsay information), as a "made" or manufactured
man, having had a certain impress of opinion stamped on me which
I could only reproduce; and what a change took place in his
feelings when he found, in the discussion on Wordsworth and
Byron, that Wordsworth, and all which that names implies,
"belonged" to me as much as to him and his friends. The failure
of his health soon scattered all his plans of life, and compelled
him to live at a distance from London, so that after the first
year or two of our acquaintance, we only saw each other at
distant intervals. But (as he said himself in one of his letters
to Carlyle) when we did meet it was like brothers. Though he was
never, in the full sense of the word, a profound thinker, his
openness of mind, and the moral courage in which he greatly
surpassed Maurice, made him outgrow the dominion which Maurice
and Coleridge had once exercised over his intellect; though he
retained to the last a great but discriminating admiration of
both, and towards Maurice a warm affection. Except in that short
and transitory phasis of his life, during which he made the
mistake of becoming a clergyman, his mind was ever progressive:
and the advance he always seemed to have made when I saw him
after an interval, made me apply to him what Goethe said of
Schiller, "Er hatte eine fürchterliche Fortschreitung." He and I
started from intellectual points almost as wide apart as the
poles, but the distance between us was always diminishing: if I
made steps towards some of his opinions, he, during his short
life, was constantly approximating more and more to several of
mine: and if he had lived, and had health and vigour to prosecute
his ever assiduous self-culture, there is no knowing how much
further this spontaneous assimilation might have proceeded.
    After 1829 I withdrew from attendance on the debating
Society. I had had enough of speech-making, and was glad to carry
on my private studies and meditations without any immediate call
for outward assertion of their results. I found the fabric of my
old and taught opinions giving way in many fresh places, and I
never allowed it to fall to pieces, but was incessantly occupied
in weaving it anew. I never, in the course of my transition, was
content to remain, for ever so short a time, confused and
unsettled. When I had taken in any new idea, I could not rest
till I had adjusted its relation to my old opinions, and
ascertained exactly how far its effect ought to extend in
modifying or superseding them.
    The conflicts which I had so often had to sustain in
defending the theory of government laid down in Bentham's and my
father's writings, and the acquaintance I had obtained with other
schools of political thinking, made me aware of many things which
that doctrine, professing to be a theory of government in
general, ought to have made room for, and did not. But these
things, as yet, remained with me rather as corrections to be made
in applying the theory to practice, than as defects in the
theory. I felt that politics could not be a science of specific
experience; and that the accusations against the Benthamic theory
of being a theory, of proceeding à priori by way of general
reasoning, instead of Baconian experiment, showed complete
ignorance of Bacon's principles, and of the necessary conditions
of experimental investigation. At this juncture appeared in the
Edinburgh Review, Macaulay's famous attack on my father's Essay
on Government. This gave me much to think about. I saw that
Macaulay's conception of the logic of politics was erroneous;
that he stood up for the empirical mode of treating political
phenomena, against the philosophical; that even in physical
science his notion of philosophizing might have recognized
Kepler, but would have excluded Newton and Laplace. But I could
not help feeling, that though the tone was unbecoming (an error
for which the writer, at a later period, made the most ample and
honourable amends), there was truth in several of his strictures
on my father's treatment of the subject; that my father's
premises were really too narrow, and included but a small number
of the general truths, on which, in politics, the important
consequences depend. Identity of interest between the governing
body and the community at large, is not, in any practical sense
which can be attached to it, the only thing on which good
government depends; neither can this identity of interest be
secured by the mere conditions of election. I was not at all
satisfied with the mode in which my father met the criticisms of
Macaulay. He did not, as I thought he ought to have done, justify
himself by saying, "I was not writing a scientific treatise on
politics, I was writing an argument for parliamentary reform." He
treated Macaulay's argument as simply irrational; an attack upon
the reasoning faculty; an example of the saying of Hobbes, that
when reason is against a man, a man will be against reason. This
made me think that there was really something more fundamentally
erroneous in my father's conception of philosophical method, as
applicable to politics, than I had hitherto supposed there was.
But I did not at first see clearly what the error might be. At
last it flashed upon me all at once in the course of other
studies. In the early part of 1830 I had begun to put on paper
the ideas on Logic (chiefly on the distinctions among Terms, and
the import of Propositions) which had been suggested and in part
worked out in the morning conversations already spoken of. Having
secured these thoughts from being lost, I pushed on into the
other parts of the subject, to try whether I could do anything
further towards clearing up the theory of Logic generally. I
grappled at once with the problem of Induction, postponing that
of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain
premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly
a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to
fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical
science, I soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we
ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of
causes considered singly, and then reason downward from those
separate tendencies, to the effect of the same causes when
combined. I then asked myself, what is the ultimate analysis of
this deductive process; the common theory of the syllogism
evidently throwing no light upon it. My practice (learnt from
Hobbes and my father) being to study abstract principles by means
of the best concrete instances I could find, the Composition of
Forces, in dynamics, occurred to me as the most complete example
of the logical process I was investigating. On examining,
accordingly, what the mind does when it applies the principle of
the Composition of Forces, I found that it performs a simple act
of addition. It adds the separate effect of the one force to the
separate effect of the other, and puts down the sum of these
separate effects as the joint effect. But is this a legitimate
process? In dynamics, and in all the mathematical branches of
physics, it is; but in some other cases, as in chemistry, it is
not; and I then recollected that something not unlike this was
pointed out as one of the distinctions between chemical and
mechanical phenomena, in the introduction to that favorite of my
boyhood, Thomson's System of Chemistry. This distinction at once
made my mind clear as to what was perplexing me in respect to the
philosophy of politics. I now saw, that a science is either
deductive or experimental, according as, in the province it deals
with, the effects of causes when conjoined, are or are not the
sums of the effects which the same causes produce when separate.
It followed that politics must be a deductive science. It thus
appeared, that both Macaulay and my father were wrong; the one in
assimilating the method of philosophising in politics to the
purely experimental method of chemistry; while the other, though
right in adopting a deductive method, had made a wrong selection
of one, having taken as the type of deduction, not the
appropriate process, that of the deductive branches of natural
philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which,
not being a science of causation at all, does not require or
admit of any summing-up of effects. A foundation was thus laid in
my thoughts for the principal chapters of what I afterwards
published on the Logic of the Moral Sciences; and my new position
in respect to my old political creed, now became perfectly
definite.
    If I am asked, what system of political philosophy I
substituted for that which, as a philosophy, I had abandoned, I
answer, no system: only a conviction that the true system was
something much more complex and many-sided than I had previously
had any idea of, and that its office was to supply, not a set of
model institutions, but principles from which the institutions
suitable to any given circumstances might be deduced. The
influences of European, that is to say Continental, thought, and
especially those of the reaction of the nineteenth century
against the eighteenth, were now streaming in upon me. They came
from various quarters: from the writings of Coleridge, which I
had begun to read with interest even before the change in my
opinions; from the Coleridgians with whom I was in personal
intercourse; from what I had read of Goethe; from Carlyle's early
articles in the Edinburgh and Foreign Reviews, though for a long
time I saw nothing in these (as my father saw nothing in them to
the last) but insane rhapsody. From these sources, and from the
acquaintance I kept up with the French literature of the time, I
derived, among other ideas which the general turning upside down
of the opinions of European thinkers had brought uppermost, these
in particular. That the human mind has a certain order of
possible progress, in which some things must precede others, an
order which governments and public instructors can modify to
some, but not to an unlimited extent: That all questions of
political institutions are relative, not absolute, and that
different stages of human progress not only will have, but ought
to have, different institutions: That government is always either
in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the
strongest power in society, and that what this power is, does not
depend on institutions, but institutions on it: That any general
theory or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory of
human progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy
of history. These opinions, true in the main, were held in an
exaggerated and violent manner by the thinkers with whom I was
now most accustomed to compare notes, and who, as usual with a
reaction, ignored that half of the truth which the thinkers of
the eighteenth century saw. But though, at one period of my
progress, I for some time under-valued that great century, I
never joined in the reaction against it, but kept as firm hold of
one side of the truth as I took of the other. The fight between
the nineteenth century and the eighteenth always reminded me of
the battle about the shield, one side of which was white and the
other black. I marvelled at the blind rage with which the
combatants rushed against one another. I applied to them, and to
Coleridge himself, many of Coleridge's sayings about half truths;
and Goethe's device, "many-sidedness," was one which I would most
willingly, at this period, have taken for mine.
    The writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of
political thinking was brought home to me, were those of the St.
Simonian school in France. In 1829 and 1830 I became acquainted
with some of their writings. They were then only in the earlier
stages of their speculations. They had not yet dressed out their
philosophy as a religion, nor had they organized their scheme of
Socialism. They were just beginning to question the principle of
hereditary property. I was by no means prepared to go with them
even this length; but I was greatly struck with the connected
view which they for the first time presented to me, of the
natural order of human progress; and especially with their
division of all history into organic periods and critical
periods. During the organic periods (they said) mankind accept
with firm conviction some positive creed, claiming jurisdiction
over all their actions, and containing more or less of truth and
adaptation to the needs of humanity. Under its influence they
make all the progress compatible with the creed, and finally
outgrow it; when a period follows of criticism and negation, in
which mankind lose their old convictions without acquiring any
new ones, of a general or authoritative character, except the
conviction that the old are false. The period of Greek and Roman
polytheism, so long as really believed in by instructed Greeks
and Romans, was an organic period, succeeded by the critical or
sceptical period of the Greek philosophers. Another organic
period came in with Christianity. The corresponding critical
period began with the Reformation, has lasted ever since, still
lasts, and cannot altogether cease until a new organic period has
been inaugurated by the triumph of a yet more advanced creed.
These ideas, I knew, were not peculiar to the St. Simonians; on
the contrary, they were the general property of Europe, or at
least of Germany and France, but they had never, to my knowledge,
been so completely systematized as by these writers, nor the
distinguishing characteristics of a critical period so powerfully
set forth; for I was not then acquainted with Fichte's Lectures
on "the Characteristics of the Present Age." In Carlyle, indeed,
I found bitter denunciations of an "age of unbelief," and of the
present as such, which I, like most people at that time, supposed
to be passionate protests in favour of the old modes of belief.
But all that was true in these denunciations, I thought that I
found more calmly and philosophically stated by the St.
Simonians. Among their publications, too, there was one which
seemed to me far superior to the rest; in which the general idea
was matured into something much more definite and instructive.
This was an early work of Auguste Comte, who then called himself,
and even announced himself in the title-page as, a pupil of
Saint-Simon. In this tract M. Comte first put forth the doctrine,
which he afterwards so copiously illustrated, of the natural
succession of three stages in every department of human
knowledge: first, the theological, next the metaphysical, and
lastly, the positive stage; and contended, that social science
must be subject to the same law; that the feudal and Catholic
system was the concluding phasis of the theological state of the
social science, Protestantism the commencement, and the doctrines
of the French Revolution the consummation of the metaphysical;
and that its positive state was yet to come. This doctrine
harmonized well with my existing notions, to which it seemed to
give a scientific shape. I already regarded the methods of
physical science as the proper models for political. But the
chief benefit which I derived at this time from the trains of
thought suggested by the St. Simonians and by Comte, was, that I
obtained a clear conception than ever before of the peculiarities
of an era of transition in opinion, and ceased to mistake the
moral and intellectual characteristics of such an era, for the
normal attributes of humanity. I looked forward, through the
present age of loud disputes but generally weak convictions, to a
future which shall unite the best qualities of the critical with
the best qualities of the organic periods; unchecked liberty of
thought, unbounded freedom of individual action in all modes not
hurtful to others; but also, convictions as to what is right and
wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the feelings by
early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so firmly
grounded in reason and in the true exigencies of life, that they
shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious,
ethical, and political, require to be periodically thrown off and
replaced by others.
    M. Comte soon left the St. Simonians, and I lost sight of him
and his writings for a number of years. But the St. Simonians I
continued to cultivate. I was kept au courant of their progress
by one of their most enthusiastic disciples, M. Gustave
d'Eichthal, who about that time passed a considerable interval in
England. I was introduced to their chiefs, Bazard and Enfantin,
in 1830; and as long as their public teachings and proselytism
continued, I read nearly everything they wrote. Their criticisms
on the common doctrines of Liberalism seemed to me full of
important truth; and it was partly by their writings that my eyes
were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old
political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance
as indefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as
the dernier mot of social improvement. The scheme gradually
unfolded by the St. Simonians, under which the labour and capital
of society would be managed for the general account of the
community every individual being required to take a share of
labour either as thinker, teacher, artist, or producer, all being
classed according to their capacity, and remunerated according to
their works, appeared to me a far superior description of
Socialism to Owen's. Their aim seemed to me desirable and
rational, however their means might be inefficacious; and though
I neither believed in the practicability nor in the beneficial
operation of their social machinery, I felt that the proclamation
of such an ideal of human society could not but tend to give a
beneficial direction to the efforts of others to bring society as
at present constituted, nearer to some ideal standard. I
'honoured them most of all for what they have been most cried
down for -- the boldness and freedom from prejudice with which
they treated the subject of family the most important of any, and
needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made in
any other great social institution, but on which scarcely any
reformer has the courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect
equality of men and women, and an entirely new order of things in
regard to their relations with one another, the St. Simonians, in
common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves to the
grateful remembrance of future generations.
    In giving an account of this period of my life, I have only
specified such of my new impressions as appeared to me, both at
the time and since, to be a kind of turning points, marking a
definite progress in my mode of thought. But these few selected
points give a very insufficient idea of the quantity of thinking
which I carried on respecting a host of subjects during these
years of transition. Much of this, it is true, consisted in
rediscovering things known to all the world, which I had
previously disbelieved, or disregarded. But the rediscovery was
to me a discovery, giving me plenary possession of the truths,
not as traditional platitudes, but fresh from their source; and
it seldom failed to place them in some new light, by which they
were reconciled with, and seemed to confirm while they modified,
the truths less generally known which lay in my early opinions,
and in no essential part of which I at any time wavered. All my
new thinking only laid the foundation of these more deeply and
strongly while it often removed misapprehension and confusion of
ideas which had perverted their effect. For example, during the
later returns of my dejection, the doctrine of what is called
Philosophical Necessity weighed on my existence like an incubus.
I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave
of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of all
others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and
was wholly out of our own power. I often said to myself, what a
relief it would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the
formation of character by circumstances; and remembering the wish
of Fox respecting the doctrine of resistance to governments, that
it might never be forgotten by kings, nor remembered by subjects,
I said that it would be a blessing if the doctrine of necessity
could be believed by all quoad the characters of others, and
disbelieved in regard to their own. I pondered painfully on the
subject, till gradually I saw light through it. I perceived, that
the word Necessity, as a name for the doctrine of Cause and
Effect applied to human action, carried with it a misleading
association; and that this association was the operative force in
the depressing and paralysing influence which I had experienced:
I saw that though our character is formed by circumstances, our
own desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that
what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of
free-will, is the conviction that we have real power over the
formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing
some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or
capabilities of willing. All this was entirely consistent with
the doctrine of circumstances, or rather, was that doctrine
itself, properly understood. From that time I drew in my own
mind, a clear distinction between the doctrine of circumstances,
and Fatalism; discarding altogether the misleading word
Necessity. The theory, which I now for the first time rightly
apprehended, ceased altogether to be discouraging, and besides
the relief to my spirits, I no longer suffered under the burthen,
so heavy to one who aims at being a reformer in opinions, of
thinking one doctrine true, and the contrary doctrine morally
beneficial. The train of thought which had extricated me from
this dilemma, seemed to me, in after years, fitted to render a
similar service to others; and it now forms the chapter on
Liberty and Necessity in the concluding Book of my "System of
Logic."
    Again, in politics, though I no longer accepted the doctrine
of the Essay on Government as a scientific theory; though I
ceased to consider representative democracy as an absolute
principle, and regarded it as a question of time, place, and
circumstance; though I now looked upon the choice of political
institutions as a moral and educational question more than one of
material interests, thinking that it ought to be decided mainly
by the consideration, what great improvement in life and culture
stands next in order for the people concerned, as the condition
of their further progress, and what institutions are most likely
to promote that; nevertheless, this change in the premises of my
political philosophy did not alter my practical political creed
as to the requirements of my own time and country. I was as much
as ever a radical and democrat for Europe, and especially for
England. I thought the predominance of the aristocratic classes,
the noble and the rich, in the English Constitution, an evil
worth any struggle to get rid of; not on account of taxes, or any
such comparatively small inconvenience, but as the great
demoralizing agency in the country. Demoralizing, first, because
it made the conduct of the government an example of gross public
immorality, through the predominance of private over public
interests in the State, and the abuse of the powers of
legislation for the advantage of classes. Secondly, and in a
still greater degree, because the respect of the multitude always
attaching itself principally to that which, in the existing state
of society, is the chief passport to power; and under English
institutions, riches, hereditary or acquired, being the almost
exclusive source of political importance; riches, and the signs
of riches, were almost the only things really respected, and the
life of the people was mainly devoted to the pursuit of them. I
thought, that while the higher and richer classes held the power
of government, the instruction and improvement of the mass of the
people were contrary to the self-interest of those classes,
because tending to render the people more powerful for throwing
off the yoke: but if the democracy obtained a large, and perhaps
the principal, share in the governing power, it would become the
interest of the opulent classes to promote their education, in
order to ward off really mischievous errors, and especially those
which would lead to unjust violations of property. On these
grounds I was not only as ardent as ever for democratic
institutions, but earnestly hoped that Owenite, St. Simonian, and
all other anti-property doctrines might spread widely among the
poorer classes; not that I thought those doctrines true, or
desired that they should be acted on, but in order that the
higher classes might be made to see that they had more to fear
from the poor when uneducated, than when educated.
    In this frame of mind the French Revolution of July found me.
It aroused my utmost enthusiasm, and gave me, as it were, a new
existence. I went at once to Paris, was introduced to Lafayette,
and laid the groundwork of the intercourse I afterwards kept up
with several of the active chiefs of the extreme popular party.
After my return I entered warmly, as a writer, into the political
discussions of the time; which soon became still more exciting,
by the coming in of Lord Grey's ministry, and the proposing of
the Reform Bill. For the next few years I wrote copiously in
newspapers. It was about this time that Fonblanque, who had for
some time written the political articles in the Examiner, became
the proprietor and editor of the paper. It is not forgotten with
what verve and talent, as well as fine wit, he carried it on,
during the whole period of Lord Grey's ministry, and what
importance it assumed as the principal representative, in the
newspaper press, of radical opinions. The distinguishing
character of the paper was given to it entirely by his own
articles, which formed at least three-fourths of all the original
writing contained in it: but of the remaining fourth I
contributed during those years a much larger share than any one
else. I wrote nearly all the articles on French subjects,
including a weekly summary of French politics, often extending to
considerable length; together with many leading articles on
general politics, commercial and financial legislation, and any
miscellaneous subjects in which I felt interested, and which were
suitable to the paper, including occasional reviews of books.
Mere newspaper articles on the occurrences or questions of the
moment, gave no opportunity for the development of any general
mode of thought; but I attempted, in the beginning of 1831, to
embody in a series of articles, headed "The Spirit of the Age,"
some of my new opinions, and especially to point out in the
character of the present age, the anomalies and evils
characteristic of the transition from a system of opinions which
had worn out, to another only in process of being formed. These
articles were, I fancy, lumbering in style, and not lively or
striking enough to be at any time, acceptable to newspaper
readers; but had they been far more attractive, still, at that
particular moment, when great political changes were impending,
and engrossing all minds, these discussions were ill-timed, and
missed fire altogether. The only effect which I know to have been
produced by them, was that Carlyle, then living in a secluded
part of Scotland, read them in his solitude, and saying to
himself (as he afterwards told me) "here is a new Mystic,"
inquired on coming to London that autumn respecting their
authorship; an inquiry which was the immediate cause of our
becoming personally acquainted.
    I have already mentioned Carlyle's earlier writings as one of
the channels through which I received the influences which
enlarged my early narrow creed; but I do not think that those
writings, by themselves, would ever have had any effect on my
opinions. What truths they contained, though of the very kind
which I was already receiving from other quarters, were presented
in a form and vesture less suited than any other to give them
access to a mind trained as mine had been. They seemed a haze of
poetry and German metaphysics, in which almost the only clear
thing was a strong animosity to most of the opinions which were
the basis of my mode of thought; religious scepticism,
utilitarianism, the doctrine of circumstances, and the attaching
any importance to democracy, logic, or political economy. Instead
of my having been taught anything, in the first instance, by
Carlyle, it was only in proportion as I came to see the same
truths through media more suited to my mental constitution, that
I recognized them in his writings. Then, indeed, the wonderful
power with which he put them forth made a deep impression upon
me, and I was during a long period one of his most fervent
admirers; but the good his writings did me, was not as philosophy
to instruct, but as poetry to animate. Even at the time when out
acquaintance commenced, I was not sufficiently advanced in my new
modes of thought, to appreciate him fully; a proof of which is,
that on his showing me the manuscript of Sartor Resartus, his
best and greatest work, which he had just then finished, I made
little of it; though when it came out about two years afterwards
in Fraser's Magazine I read it with enthusiastic admiration and
the keenest delight. I did not seek and cultivate Carlyle less on
account of the fundamental differences in our philosophy. He soon
found out that I was not "another mystic," and when for the sake
of my own integrity I wrote to him a distinct profession of all
those of my opinions which I knew he most disliked, he replied
that the chief difference between us was that I "was as yet
consciously nothing of a mystic." I do not know at what period he
gave up the expectation that I was destined to become one; but
though both his and my opinions underwent in subsequent years
considerable changes, we never approached much nearer to each
other's modes of thought than we were in the first years of our
acquaintance. I did not, however, deem myself a competent judge
of Carlyle. I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not; that
he was a man of intuition, which I was not; and that as such, he
not only saw many things long before me, which I could only when
they were pointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it
was highly probable he could see many things which were not
visible to me even after they were pointed out. I knew that I
could not see round him, and could never be certain that I saw
over him; and I never presumed to judge him with any
definiteness, until he was interpreted to me by one greatly the
superior of us both -- who was more a poet than he, and more a
thinker than I -- whose own mind and nature included his, and
infinitely more.
    Among the persons of intellect whom I had known of old, the
one with whom I had now most points of agreement was the elder
Austin. I have mentioned that he always set himself in opposition
to our early sectarianism; and latterly he had, like myself, come
under new influences. Having been appointed Professor of
Jurisprudence in the London University (now University College),
he had lived for some time at Bonn to study for his Lectures; and
the influences of German literature and of the German character
and state of society had made a very perceptible change in his
views of life. His personal disposition was much softened ; he w
as less militant and polemic; his tastes had begun to turn
themselves towards the poetic and contemplative. He attached much
less importance than formerly to outward changes; unless
accompanied by a better cultivation of the inward nature. He had
a strong distaste for the general meanness of English life, the
absence of enlarged thoughts and unselfish desires, the low
objects on which the faculties of all classes of the English are
intent. Even the kind of public interests which Englishmen care
for, he held in very little esteem. He thought that there was
more practical good government, and (which is true enough)
infinitely more care for the education and mental improvement of
all ranks of the people, under the Prussian monarchy, than under
the English representative government: and he held, with the
French Economistes, that the real security for good government is
"un peuple éclairé," which is not always the fruit of popular
institutions, and which if it could be had without them, would do
their work better than they. Though he approved of the Reform
Bill, he predicted, what in fact occurred, that it would not
produce the great immediate improvements in government, which
many expected from it. The men, he said, who could do these great
things, did not exist in the country. There were many points of
sympathy between him and me, both in the new opinions he had
adopted and in the old ones which he retained. Like me, he never
ceased to be an utilitarian, and with all his love of the
Germans, and enjoyment of their literature, never became in the
smallest degree reconciled to the innate-principle metaphysics.
He cultivated more and more a kind of German religion, a religion
of poetry and feeling with little, if anything, of positive
dogma; while, in politics (and here it was that I most differed
with him) he acquired an indifference, bordering on contempt, for
the progress of popular institutions: though he rejoiced in that
of Socialism, as the most effectual means of compelling the
powerful classes to educate the people, and to impress on them
the only real means of permanently improving their material
condition, a limitation of their numbers. Neither was he, at this
time, fundamentally opposed to Socialism in itself as an ultimate
result of improvement. He professed great disrespect for what he
called "the universal principles of human nature of the political
economists," and insisted on the evidence which history and daily
experience afford of the "extraordinary pliability of human
nature" (a phrase which I have somewhere borrowed from him), nor
did he think it possible to set any positive bounds to the moral
capabilities which might unfold themselves in mankind, under an
enlightened direction of social and educational influences.
Whether he retained all these opinions to the end of life I know
not. Certainly the modes of thinking of his later years, and
especially of his last publication, were much more Tory in their
general character than those which he held at this time.
    My father's tone of thought and feeling, I now felt myself at
a great distance from: greater, indeed, than a full and calm
explanation and reconsideration on both sides, might have shown
to exist in reality. But my father was not one with whom calm and
full explanations on fundamental points of doctrine could be
expected, at least with one whom he might consider as, in some
sort, a deserter from his standard. Fortunately we were almost
always in strong agreement on the political questions of the day
which engrossed a large part of his interest and of his
conversation. On those 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, and he perceived from time to time
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 but when he gave utterance to some opinion
of feeling repugnant to mine, in a manner which would have made
it disingenuousness on my part to remain silent.
    It remains to speak of what I wrote during these years,
which, independently of my contributions to newspapers, was
considerable. In 1830 and 1831 I wrote the five Essays since
published under the title of "Essays on some Unsettled Questions
of Political Economy," almost as they now stand, except that in
1833 I partially rewrote the fifth Essay. They were written with
no immediate purpose of publication; and when, some years later,
I offered them to a publisher, he declined them. They were only
printed in 1844, after the success of the "System of Logic." I
also resumed my speculations on this last subject, and puzzled
myself, like others before me, with the great paradox of the
discovery of new truths by general reasoning. As to the fact,
there could be no doubt. As little could it be doubted, that all
reasoning is resolvable into syllogisms, and that in every
syllogism the conclusion is actually contained and implied in the
premises. How, being so contained and implied, it could be new
truth, and how the theorems of geometry, so different in
appearance from the definitions and axioms, could be all
contained in these, was a difficulty which no one, I thought, had
sufficiently felt, and which, at all events, no one had succeeded
in clearing up. The explanations offered by Whately and others,
though they might give a temporary satisfaction, always, in my
mind, left a mist still hanging over the subject. At last, when
reading a second or third time the chapters on Reasoning in the
second volume of Dugald Stewart, interrogating myself on every
point, and following out, as far as I knew how, every topic of
thought which the book suggested, I came upon an idea of his
respecting the use of axioms in ratiocination, which I did not
remember to have before noticed, but which now, in meditating on
it, seemed to me not only true of axioms, but of all general
propositions whatever, and to be the key of the whole perplexity.
From this germ grew the theory of the Syllogism propounded in the
Second Book of the Logic; which I immediately fixed by writing it
out. And now, with greatly increased hope of being able to
produce a work on Logic, of some originality and value, I
proceeded to write the First Book, from the rough and imperfect
draft I had already made. What I now wrote became the basis of
that part of the subsequent Treatise; except that it did not
contain the Theory of Kinds, which was a later addition,
suggested by otherwise inextricable difficulties which met me in
my first attempt to work out the subject of some of the
concluding chapters of the Third Book. At the point which I had
now reached I made a halt, which lasted five years. I had come to
the end of my tether; I could make nothing satisfactory of
Induction, at this time. I continued to read any book which
seemed to promise light on the subject, and appropriated, as well
as I could, the results; but for a long time I found nothing
which seemed to open to me any very important vein of meditation.
    In 1832 I wrote several papers for the first series of Tait's
Magazine, and one for a quarterly periodical called the Jurist,
which had been founded, and for a short time carried on, by a set
of friends, all lawyers and law reformers, with several of whom I
was acquainted. The paper in question is the one on the rights
and duties of the State respecting Corporation and Church
Property, now standing first among the collected "Dissertations
and Discussions;" where one of my articles in Tait, "The Currency
Juggle," also appears. In the whole mass of what I wrote previous
to these, there is nothing of sufficient permanent value to
justify reprinting. The paper in the Jurist, which I still think
a very complete discussion of the rights of the State over
Foundations, showed both sides of my opinions, asserting as
firmly as I should have done at any time, the doctrine that all
endowments are national property, which the government may and
ought to control; but not, as I should once have done, condemning
endowments in themselves, and proposing that they should be taken
to pay off the national debt. On the contrary, I urged
strenuously the importance of having a provision for education,
not dependent on the mere demand of the market, that is, on the
knowledge and discernment of average parents, but calculated to
establish and keep up a higher standard of instruction than is
likely to be spontaneously demanded by the buyers of the article.
All these opinions have been confirmed and strengthened by the
whole course of my subsequent reflections.

 VI. COMMENCEMENT OF THE MOST VALUABLE FRIENDSHIP OF MY LIFE. MY
FATHER'S DEATH. WRITINGS AND OTHER PROCEEDINGS UP TO 1840. 

    It was the period of my mental progress which I have now
reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour
and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a
great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect
hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the
lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become
my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in
her twenty-third year. With her husband's family it was the
renewal of an old acquaintanceship. His grandfather lived in the
next house to my father's in Newington Green, and I had sometimes
when a boy been invited to play in the old gentleman's garden. He
was a fine specimen of the old Scotch puritan; stern, severe, and
powerful, but very kind to children, on whom such men make a
lasting impression. Although it was years after my introduction
to Mrs. Taylor before my acquaintance with her became at all
intimate or confidential, I very soon felt her to be the most
admirable person I had ever known. It is not to be supposed that
she was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her,
could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of all could this
be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in the
highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity
equally from the ardour with which she sought it, and from the
spontaneous tendency of faculties which could not receive an
impression or an experience without making it the source or the
occasion of an accession of wisdom. Up to the time when I first
saw her, her rich and powerful nature had chiefly unfolded itself
according to the received type of feminine genius. To her outer
circle she was a beauty and a wit, with an air of natural
distinction, felt by all who approached her: to the inner, a
woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive
intelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature.
Married at a very early age, to a most upright, brave, and
honourable man, of liberal opinions and good education, but
without the intellectual or(3*) artistic tastes which would have
made him a companion for her, though a steady and affectionate
friend, for whom she had true esteem and the strongest affection
through life, and whom she most deeply lamented when dead; shut
out by the social disabilities of women from any adequate
exercise of her highest faculties in action on the world without;
her life was one of inward meditation, varied by familiar
intercourse with a small circle of friends, of whom(4*) one only
(long since deceased) was a person of genius, or of capacities of
feeling or intellect kindred with her own, but all had more or
less of alliance with her in sentiments and opinions. Into this
circle I had the good fortune to be admitted, and I soon
perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which
in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy
to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of
superstition (including that which attributes a pretended
perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an
earnest protest against many things which are still part of the
established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard
intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and
co-existed with a highly reverential nature. In general spiritual
characteristics, as well as in temperament and organisation, I
have often compared her, as she was at this time, to Shelley: but
in thought and intellect, Shelley, so far as his powers were
developed in his short life, was but a child compared with what
she ultimately became. Alike in the highest regions of
speculation and in the smaller practical concerns of daily life,
her mind was the same perfect instrument, piercing to the very
heart and marrow of the matter; always seizing the essential idea
or principle. The same exactness and rapidity of operation,
pervading as it did her sensitive as well as her mental
faculties, would, with her gifts of feeling and imagination, have
fitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender
soul and her vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a
great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature and
discernment and sagacity in practical life, would, in the times
when such a carrière was open to women, have made her eminent
among the rulers of mankind. Her intellectual gifts did but
minister to a moral character at once the noblest and the best
balanced which I have ever met with in life. Her unselfishness
was not that of a taught system of duties, but of a heart which
thoroughly identified itself with the feelings of others, and
often went to excess in consideration for them by imaginatively
investing their feelings with the intensity of its own. The
passion of justice might have been thought to be her strongest
feeling, but for her boundless generosity, and a lovingness ever
ready to pour itself forth upon any or all human beings who were
capable of giving the smallest feeling in return. The rest of her
moral characteristics were such as naturally accompany these
qualities of mind and heart: the most genuine modesty combined
with the loftiest pride; a simplicity and sincerity which were
absolute, towards all who were fit to receive them; the utmost
scorn of whatever was mean and cowardly, and a burning
indignation at everything brutal or tyrannical, faithless or
dishonourable in conduct and character, while making the broadest
distinction between mala in se and mere mala prohibita -- between
acts giving evidence of intrinsic badness in feeling and
character, and those which are only violations of conventions
either good or bad, violations which whether in themselves right
or wrong, are capable of being committed by persons in every
other respect lovable or admirable.
    To be admitted into any degree of mental intercourse with a
being of these qualities, could not but have a most beneficial
influence on my development; though the effect was only gradual,
and many years elapsed before her mental progress and mine went
forward in the complete companionship they at last attained. The
benefit I received was far greater than any which I could hope to
give; though to her, who had at first reached her opinions by the
moral intuition of a character of strong feeling, there was
doubtless help as well as encouragement to be derived from one
who had arrived at many of the same results by study and
reasoning: and in the rapidity of her intellectual growth, her
mental activity, which converted everything into knowledge,
doubtless drew from me, as it did from other sources, many of its
materials. What I owe, even intellectually, to her, is in its
detail, almost infinite; of its general character a few words
will give some, though a very imperfect, idea. With those who,
like all the best and wisest of mankind, are dissatisfied with
human life as it is, and whose feelings are wholly identified
with its radical amendment, there are two main regions of
thought. One is the region of ultimate aims; the constituent
elements of the highest realizable ideal of human life. The other
is that of the immediately useful and practically attainable. In
both these departments, I have acquired more from her teaching,
than from all other sources taken together. And, to say truth, it
is in these two extremes principally, that real certainty lies.
My own strength lay wholly in the uncertain and slippery
intermediate region, that of theory, or moral and political
science: respecting the conclusions of which, in any of the forms
in which I have received or originated them, whether as political
economy, analytic psychology, logic, philosophy of history, or
anything else, it is not the least of my intellectual obligations
to her that I have derived from her a wise scepticism, which,
while it has not hindered me from following out the honest
exercise of my thinking faculties to whatever conclusions might
result from it, has put me on my guard against holding or
announcing these conclusions with a degree of confidence which
the nature of such speculations does not warrant, and has kept my
mind not only open to admit, but prompt to welcome and eager to
seek, even on the questions on which I have most meditated, any
prospect of clearer perceptions and better evidence. I have often
received praise, which in my own right I only partially deserve,
for the greater practicality which is supposed to be found in my
writings, compared with those of most thinkers who have been
equally addicted to large generalizations. The writings in which
this quality has been observed, were not the work of one mind,
but of the fusion of two, one of them as pre-eminently practical
in its judgments and perceptions of things present, as it was
high and bold in its anticipations for a remote futurity.
    At the present period, however, this influence was only one
among many which were helping to shape the character of my future
development: and even after it became, I may truly say, the
presiding principle of my mental progress, it did not alter the
path, but only made me move forward more boldly, and, at the same
time, more cautiously, in the same course. The only actual
revolution which has ever taken place in my modes of thinking,
was already complete. My new tendencies had to be confirmed in
some respects, moderated in others: but the only substantial
changes of opinion that were yet to come, related to politics,
and consisted, on one hand, in a greater approximation, so far as
regards the ultimate prospects of humanity, to a qualified
Socialism, and on the other, a shifting of my political ideal
from pure democracy, as commonly understood by its partizans, to
the modified form of it, which is set forth in my "Considerations
on Representative Government."
    This last change, which took place very gradually, dates its
commencement from my reading, or rather study, of M. de
Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," which fell into my hands
immediately after its first appearance. In that remarkable work,
the excellences of democracy were pointed out in a more
conclusive, because a more specific manner than I had ever known
them to be, even by the most enthusiastic democrats ; while the
specific dangers which beset democracy, considered as the
government of the numerical majority, were brought into equally
strong light, and subjected to a masterly analysis, not as
reasons for resisting what the author considered as an inevitable
result of human progress, but as indications of the weak points
of popular government, the defences by which it needs to be
guarded, and the correctives which must be added to it in order
that while full play is given to its beneficial tendencies, those
which are of a different nature may be neutralized or mitigated.
I was now well prepared for speculations of this character, and
from this time onward my own thoughts moved more and more in the
same channel, though the consequent modifications in my practical
political creed were spread over many years, as would be shown by
comparing my first review of "Democracy in America," written and
published in 1835, with the one in 1840 (reprinted in the
"Dissertations"), and this last, with the "Considerations on
Representative Government."
    A collateral subject on which also I derived great benefit
from the study of Tocqueville, was the fundamental question of
Centralization. The powerful philosophic analysis which he
applied to American and to French experience, led him to attach
the utmost importance to the performance of as much of the
collective business of society, as can safely be so performed, by
the people themselves, without any intervention of the executive
government, either to supersede their agency, or to dictate the
manner of its exercise. He viewed this practical political
activity of the individual citizen, not only as one of the most
effectual means of training the social feelings and practical
intelligence of the people, so important in themselves and so
indispensable to good government, but also as the specific
counteractive to some of the characteristic infirmities of
democracy, and a necessary protection against its degenerating
into the only despotism of which, in the modern world, there is
real danger -- the absolute rule of the head of the executive
over a congregation of isolated individuals, all equals but all
slaves. There was, indeed, no immediate peril from this source on
the British side of the channel, where nine-tenths of the
internal business which elsewhere devolves on the government, was
transacted by agencies independent of it; where Centralization
was, and is, the subject not only of rational disapprobation, but
of unreasoning prejudice; where jealousy of Government
interference was a blind feeling preventing or resisting even the
most beneficial exertion of legislative authority to correct the
abuses of what pretends to be local self-government, but is, too
often, selfish mismanagement of local interests, by a jobbing and
borné local oligarchy. But the more certain the public were to go
wrong on the side opposed to Centralization, the greater danger
was there lest philosophic reformers should fall into the
contrary error, and overlook the mischiefs of which they had been
spared the painful experience. I was myself, at this very time,
actively engaged in defending important measures, such as the
great Poor Law Reform of 1834, against an irrational clamour
grounded on the Anti-Centralization prejudice: and had it not
been for the lessons of Tocqueville, I do not know that I might
not, like many reformers before me, have been hurried into the
excess opposite to that, which, being the one prevalent in my own
country, it was generally my business to combat. As it is, I have
steered carefully between the two errors, and whether I have or
have not drawn the line between them exactly in the right place,
I have at least insisted with equal emphasis upon the evils on
both sides, and have made the means of reconciling the advantages
of both, a subject of serious study.
    In the meanwhile had taken place the election of the first
Reformed Parliament, which included several of the most notable
of my Radical friends and acquaintances -- Grote, Roebuck,
Buller, Sir William Molesworth, John and Edward Romilly, and
several more; besides Warburton, Strutt, and others, who were in
parliament already. Those who thought themselves, and were called
by their friends, the philosophic radicals, had now, it seemed, a
fair opportunity, in a more advantageous position than they had
ever before occupied, for showing what was in them; and I, as
well as my father, founded great hopes on them. These hopes were
destined to be disappointed. The men were honest, and Faithful to
their opinions, as far as votes were concerned; often in spite of
much discouragement. When measures were proposed, flagrantly at
variance with their principles, such as the irish Coercion Bill,
or the Canada coercion in 1837, they came forward manfully, and
braved any amount of hostility and prejudice rather than desert
the right. But on the whole they did very little to promote any
opinions; they had little enterprise, little activity: they left
the lead of the radical portion of the House to the old hands, to
Hume and O'Connell. A partial exception must be made in favour of
one or two of the younger men; and in the case of Roebuck, it is
his title to permanent remembrance, that in the very first year
during which he sat in Parliament, he originated (or
re-originated after the unsuccessful attempt of Mr Brougham) the
parliamentary movement for National Education; and that he was
the first to commence, and for years carried on almost alone, the
contest for the self-government of the Colonies. Nothing, on the
whole equal to these two things, was done by any other
individual, even of those from whom most was expected. And now,
on a calm retrospect, I can perceive that the men were less in
fault than we supposed, and that we had expected too much From
them. They were in unfavourable circumstances. Their lot was cast
in the ten years of inevitable reaction, when, the Reform
excitement being over, and the few legislative improvements which
the public really called for having been rapidly effected, power
gravitated back in its natural direction, to those who were for
keeping things as they were; when the public mind desired rest,
and was less disposed than at any other period since the peace,
to let itself be moved by attempts to work up the reform feeling
into fresh activity in favour of new things. It would have
required a great political leader, which no one is to be blamed
for not being, to have effected really great things by
parliamentary discussion when the nation was in this mood. My
father and I had hoped that some competent leader might arise;
some man of philosophic attainments and popular talents, who
could have put heart into the many younger or less distinguished
men that would have been ready to join him -- could have made
them available, to the extent of their talents, in bringing
advanced ideas before the public -- could have used the House of
Commons as a rostra or a teacher's chair for instructing and
impelling the public mind; and would either have forced the Whigs
to receive their measures from him, or have taken the lead of the
Reform party out of their hands. Such a leader there would have
been, if my father had been in Parliament. For want of such a
man, the instructed Radicals sank into a mere côté gauche of the
Whig party. With a keen, and as I now think, an exaggerated sense
of the possibilities which were open to the Radicals if they made
even ordinary exertion for their opinions, I laboured from this
time till 1839, both by personal influence with some of them, and
by writings, to put ideas into their heads, and purpose into
their hearts. I did some good with Charles Buller, and some with
Sir William Molesworth; both of whom did valuable service, but
were unhappily cut off almost in the beginning of their
usefulness. On the whole, however, my attempt was vain. To have
had a chance of succeeding in it, required a different position
from mine. It was a task only for one who, being himself in
Parliament, could have mixed with the radical members in daily
consultation, could himself have taken the initiative, and
instead of urging others to lead, could have summoned them to
follow.
    What I could do by writing, I did. During the year 1833 I
continued working in the Examiner with Fonblanque who at that
time was zealous in keeping up the fight for radicalism against
the Whig ministry. During the session of 1834 I wrote comments on
passing events, of the nature of newspaper articles (under the
title "Notes on the Newspapers"), in the Monthly Repository, a
magazine conducted by Mr Fox, well known as a preacher and
political orator, and subsequently as member of parliament for
Oldham; with whom I had lately become acquainted, and for whose
sake chiefly I wrote in his Magazine. I contributed several other
articles to this periodical, the most considerable of which (on
the theory of poetry), is reprinted in the "Dissertations."
Altogether, the writings (independently of those in newspapers)
which I published from 1832 to 1834, amount to a large volume.
This, however, includes abstracts of several of Plato's
Dialogues, with introductory remarks, which, though not published
until 1834, had been written several years earlier; and which I
afterwards, on various occasions, found to have been read, and
their authorship known, by more people than were aware of
anything else which I had written, up to that time. To complete
the tale of my writings at this period, I may add that in 1833,
at the request of Bulwer, who was just then completing his
"England and the English" (a work, at that time, greatly in
advance of the public mind), I wrote for him a critical account
of Bentham's philosophy, a small part of which he incorporated in
his text, and printed the rest (with an honourable
acknowledgment), as an appendix. In this, along with the
favourable, a part also of the unfavourable side of my estimation
of Bentham's doctrines, considered as a complete philosophy, was
for the first time put into print.
    But an opportunity soon offered, by which, as it seemed, I
might have it in my power to give more effectual aid, and at the
same time, stimulus, to the "philosophic radical" party, than I
had done hitherto. One of the projects occasionally talked of
between my father and me, and some of the parliamentary and other
Radicals who frequented his house, was the foundation of a
periodical organ of philosophic radicalism, to take the place
which the Westminster Review had been intended to fill: and the
scheme had gone so far as to bring under discussion the pecuniary
contributions which could be looked for, and the choice of an
editor. Nothing, however, came of it for some time: but in the
summer of 1834 Sir William Molesworth, himself a laborious
student, and a precise and metaphysical thinker, capable of
aiding the cause by his pen as well as by his purse,
spontaneously proposed to establish a Review, provided I would
consent to be the real, if I could not be the ostensible, editor.
Such a proposal was not to be refused; and the review was
founded, at first under the title of the London Review, and
afterwards under that of the London and Westminster, Molesworth
having bought the Westminster from its proprietor, General
Thompson, and merged the two into one. In the years between 1834
and 1840 the conduct of this review occupied the greater part of
my spare time. In the beginning, it did not, as a whole, by any
means represent my opinions. I was under the necessity of
conceding much to my inevitable associates. The Review was
established to be the representative of the "philosophic
radicals," with most of whom I was now at issue on many essential
points, and among whom I could not even claim to be the most
important individual. My father's co-operation as a writer we all
deemed indispensable, and he wrote largely in it until prevented
by his last illness. The subjects of his articles, and the
strength and decision with which his opinions were expressed in
them, made the Review at first derive its tone and colouring from
him much more than from any of the other writers. I could not
exercise editorial control over his articles, and I was sometimes
obliged to sacrifice to him portions of my own. The old
Westminster Review doctrines, but little modified, thus formed
the staple of the review; but I hoped by the side of these, to
introduce other ideas and another tone, and to obtain for my own
shade of opinion a fair representation, along with those of other
members of the party. With this end chiefly in view, I made it
one of the peculiarities of the work that every article should
bear an initial, or some other signature, and be held to express
the opinions solely of the individual writer; the editor being
only responsible for its being worth publishing and not in
conflict with the objects for which the Review was set on foot. I
had an opportunity of putting in practice my scheme of
conciliation between the old and the new "philosophic
radicalism," by the choice of a subject for my own first
contribution. Professor Sedgwick, a man of eminence in a
particular walk of natural science, but who should not have
trespassed into philosophy, had lately published his Discourse on
the Studies of Cambridge, which had as its most prominent feature
an intemperate assault on analytic psychology and utilitarian
ethics, in the form of an attack on Locke and Paley. This had
excited great indignation in my father and others, which I
thought it fully deserved. And here, I imagined, was an
opportunity of at the same time repelling an unjust attack, and
inserting into my defence of Hartleianism and Utilitarianism a
number of the opinions which constituted my view of those
subjects, as distinguished from that of my old associates. In
this I partially succeeded, though my relation to my father would
have made it painful to me in any case, and impossible in a
review for which he wrote, to speak out my whole mind on the
subject at this time.
    I am, however, inclined to think that my father was not so
much opposed as he seemed, to the modes of thought in which I
believed myself to differ from him; that he did injustice to his
own opinions by the unconscious exaggerations of an intellect
emphatically polemical; and that when thinking without an
adversary in view, he was willing to make room for a great
portion of the truths he seemed to deny. I have frequently
observed that he made large allowance in practice for
considerations which seemed to have no place in his theory. His
"Fragment on Mackintosh," which he wrote and published about this
time, although I greatly admired some parts of it, I read as a
whole with more pain than pleasure; yet on reading it again, long
after, I found little in the opinions it contains, but what I
think in the main just; and I can even sympathize in his disgust
at the verbiage of Mackintosh, though his asperity towards it
went not only beyond what was judicious, but beyond what was even
fair. One thing, which I thought, at the time, of good augury,
was the very favourable reception he gave to Tocqueville's
"Democracy in America." It is true, he said and thought much more
about what Tocqueville said in favour of Democracy, than about
what he said of its disadvantages. Still, his high appreciation
of a book which was at any rate an example of a mode of treating
the question of government almost the reverse of his -- wholly
inductive and analytical, instead of purely ratiocinative -- gave
me great encouragement. He also approved of an article which I
published in the first number following the junction of the two
reviews, the essay reprinted in the Dissertations, under the
title "Civilization;" into which I threw many of my new opinions,
and criticised rather emphatically the mental and moral
tendencies of the time, on grounds and in a manner which I
certainly had not learnt from him.
    All speculation, however, on the possible future developments
of my father's opinions, and on the probabilities of permanent
co-operation between him and me in the promulgation of our
thoughts, was doomed to be cut short. During the whole of 1835
his health had been declining: his symptoms became unequivocally
those of pulmonary consumption, and after lingering to the last
stage of debility, he died on the 23rd of June, 1836. Until the
last few days of his life there was no apparent abatement of
intellectual vigour; his interest in all things and persons that
had interested him through life was undiminished, nor did the
approach of death cause the smallest wavering (as in so strong
and firm a mind it was impossible that it should) in his
convictions on the subject of religion. His principal
satisfaction, after he knew that his end was near, seemed to be
the thought of what he had done to make the world better than he
found it; and his chief regret in not living longer, that he had
not had time to do more.
    His place is an eminent one in the literary, and even in the
political history of his country. and it is far from honourable
to the generation which has benefited by his worth, that he is so
seldom mentioned, and, compared with men far his inferiors, so
little remembered. This is probably to be ascribed mainly to two
causes. In the first place, the thought of him merges too much in
the deservedly superior fame of Bentham. Yet he was anything but
Bentham's mere follower or disciple. Precisely because he was
himself one of the most original thinkers of his time, he was one
of the earliest to appreciate and adopt the most important mass
of original thought which had been produced by the generation
preceding him. His mind and Bentham's were essentially of
different construction. He had not all Bentham's high qualities,
but neither had Bentham all his. It would, indeed, be ridiculous
to claim for him the praise of having accomplished for mankind
such splendid services as Bentham's. He did not revolutionize, or
rather create, one of the great departments of human thought.
But, leaving out of the reckoning all that portion of his labours
in which he benefited by what Bentham had done, and counting only
what he achieved in a province in which Bentham had done nothing,
that of analytic psychology, he will be known to posterity as one
of the greatest names in that most important branch of
speculation, on which all the moral and political sciences
ultimately rest, and will mark one of the essential stages in its
progress. The other reason which has made his fame less than he
deserved, is that notwithstanding the great number of his
opinions which, partly through his own efforts, have now been
generally adopted, there was, on the whole, a marked opposition
between his spirit and that of the present time. As Brutus was
called the last of the Romans, so was he the last of the
eighteenth century: he continued its tone of thought and
sentiment into the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor
unimproved), partaking neither in the good nor in the bad
influences of the reaction against the eighteenth century, which
was the great characteristic of the first half of the nineteenth.
The eighteenth century was a great age, an age of strong and
brave men, and he was a fit companion for its strongest and
bravest. By his writings and his personal influence he was a
great centre of light to his generation. During his later years
he was quite as much the head and leader of the intellectual
radicals in England, as Voltaire was of the philosophes of
France. It is only one of his minor merits, that he was the
originator of all sound statesmanship in regard to the subject of
his largest work, India. He wrote on no subject which he did not
enrich with valuable thought, and excepting the "Elements of
Political Economy," a very useful book when first written, but
which has now for some time finished its work, it will be long
before any of his books will be wholly superseded, or will cease
to be instructive reading to students of their subjects. In the
power of influencing by mere force of mind and character, the
convictions and purposes of others, and in the strenuous exertion
of that power to promote freedom and progress, he left, as far as
my knowledge extends, no equal among men and but one among women.
    Though acutely sensible of my own inferiority in the
qualities by which he acquired his personal ascendancy, I had now
to try what it might be possible for me to accomplish without
him: and the Review was the instrument on which I built my chief
hopes of establishing a useful influence over the liberal and
democratic section of the public mind. Deprived of my father's
aid, I was also exempted from the restraints and reticences by
which that aid had been purchased. I did not feel that there was
any other radical writer or politician to whom I was bound to
defer, further than consisted with my own opinions: and having
the complete confidence of Molesworth, I resolved henceforth to
give full scope to my own opinions and modes of thought, and to
open the Review widely to all writers who were in sympathy with
Progress as I understood it, even though I should lose by it the
support of my former associates. Carlyle, consequently became
from this time a frequent writer in the Review; Sterling, soon
after, an occasional one; and though each individual article
continued to be the expression of the private sentiments of its
writer, the general tone conformed in some tolerable degree to my
opinions. For the conduct of the Review, under, and in
conjunction with me, I associated with myself a young Scotchman
of the name of Robertson, who had some ability and information,
much industry, and an active scheming head, full of devices for
making the Review more saleable, and on whose capacities in that
direction I founded a good deal of hope: insomuch, that when
Molesworth, in the beginning of 1837, became tired of carrying on
the Review at a loss, and desirous of getting rid of it (he had
done his part honourably, and at no small pecuniary cost,) I,
very imprudently for my own pecuniary interest, and very much
from reliance on Robertson's devices, determined to continue it
at my own risk, until his plans should have had a fair trial. The
devices were good, and I never had any reason to change my
opinion of them. But I do not believe that any devices would have
made a radical and democratic review defray its expenses,
including a paid editor or sub-editor, and a liberal payment to
writers. I myself and several frequent contributors gave our
labour gratuitously, as we had done for Molesworth; but the paid
contributors continued to be remunerated on the usual scale of
the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews; and this could not be done
from the proceeds of the sale.
    In the same year, 1837, and in the midst of these
occupations, I resumed the Logic. I had not touched my pen on the
subject for five years, having been stopped and brought to a halt
on the threshold of Induction. I had gradually discovered that
what was mainly wanting, to overcome the difficulties of that
branch of the subject, was a comprehensive, and, at the same
time, accurate view of the whole circle of physical science,
which I feared it would take me a long course of study to
acquire; since I knew not of any book, or other guide, that would
spread out before me the generalities and processes of the
sciences, and I apprehended that I should have no choice but to
extract them for myself, as I best could, from the details.
Happily for me, Dr. Whewell, early in this year, published his
History of the Inductive Sciences. I read it with eagerness, and
found in it a considerable approximation to what I wanted. Much,
if not most, of the philosophy of the work appeared open to
objection; but the materials were there, for my own thoughts to
work upon: and the author had given to those materials that first
degree of elaboration, which so greatly facilitates and abridges
the subsequent labour. I had now obtained what I had been waiting
for. Under the impulse given me by the thoughts excited by Dr
Whewell, I read again Sir J. Herschel's Discourse on the Study of
Natural Philosophy: and I was able to measure the progress my
mind had made, by the great help I now found in this work --
though I had read and even reviewed it several years before with
little profit. I now set myself vigorously to work out the
subject in thought and in writing. The time I bestowed on this
had to be stolen from occupations more urgent. I had just two
months to spare, at this period, in the intervals of writing for
the Review. In these two months I completed the first draft of
about a third, the most difficult third, of the book. What I had
before written, I estimate at another third, so that only
one-third remained. What I wrote at this time consisted of the
remainder of the doctrine of Reasoning (the theory of Trains of
Reasoning, and Demonstrative Science), and the greater part of
the Book on Induction. When this was done, I had, as it seemed to
me, untied all the really hard knots, and the completion of the
book had become only a question of time. Having got thus far, I
had to leave off in order to write two articles for the next
number of the Review. When these were written, I returned to the
subject, and now for the first time fell in with Comte's Cours de
Philosophie Positive, or rather with the two volumes of it which
were all that had at that time been published.
    My theory of Induction was substantially completed before I
knew of Comte's book; and it is perhaps well that I came to it by
a different road from his, since the consequence has been that my
treatise contains, what his certainly does not, a reduction of
the inductive process to strict rules and to a scientific test,
such as the Syllogism is for ratiocination. Comte is always
precise and profound on the methods of investigation, but he does
not even attempt any exact definition of the conditions of proof:
and his writings show that he never attained a just conception of
them. This, however, was specifically the problem, which, in
treating of Induction, I had proposed to myself. Nevertheless, I
gained much from Comte, with which to enrich my chapters in the
subsequent rewriting: and his book was essential service to me in
some of the parts which still remained to be thought out. As his
subsequent volumes successively made their appearance, I read
them with avidity, but, when he reached the subject of Social
Science, with varying feelings. The fourth volume disappointed
me: it contained those of his opinions on social subjects with
which I most disagree. But the fifth, containing the connected
view of history, rekindled all my enthusiasm ; which the sixth
(or concluding) volume did not materially abate. In a merely
logical point of view, the only leading conception for which I am
indebted to him is that of the inverse Deductive Method, as the
one chiefly applicable to the complicated subjects of History and
Statistics: a process differing from the more common form of the
Deductive Method in this -- that instead of arriving at its
conclusions by general reasoning, and verifying them by specific
experience (as is the natural order in the deductive branches of
physical science), it obtains its generalizations by a collation
of specific experience, and verifies them by ascertaining whether
they are such as would follow from known general principles, This
was an idea entirely new to me when I found it in Comte: and but
for him I might not soon (if ever) have arrived at it.
    I had been long an ardent admirer of Comte's writings before
I had any communication with himself; nor did I ever, to the
last, see him in the body. But for some years we were frequent
correspondents, until our correspondence became controversial,
and our zeal cooled. I was the first to slacken correspondence;
he was the first to drop it. I found, and he probably found
likewise, that I could do no good to his mind, and that all the
good he could do to mine, he did by his books. This would never
have led to discontinuance of intercourse, if the differences
between us had been on matters of simple doctrine. But they were
chiefly on those points of opinion which blended in both of us
with our strongest feelings, and determined the entire direction
of our aspirations. I had fully agreed with him when he
maintained that the mass of mankind, including even their rulers
in all the practical departments of life, must, from the
necessity of the case, accept most of their opinions on political
and social matters, as they do on physical, from the authority of
those who have bestowed more study on those subjects than they
generally have it in their power to do. This lesson had been
strongly impressed on me by the early work of Comte, to which I
have adverted. And there was nothing in his great Treatise which
I admired more than his remarkable exposition of the benefits
which the nations of modern Europe have historically derived from
the separation, during the middle ages, of temporal and spiritual
power, and the distinct organization of the latter. I agreed with
him that the moral and intellectual ascendancy, once exercised by
priests, must in time pass into the hands of philosophers, and
will naturally do so when they become sufficiently unanimous, and
in other respects worthy to possess it. But when he exaggerated
this line of thought into a practical system, in which
philosophers were to be organized into a kind of corporate
hierarchy, invested with almost the same spiritual supremacy
(though without any secular power) once possessed by the Catholic
church; when I found him relying on this spiritual authority as
the only security for good government, the sole bulwark against
practical oppression, and expecting that by it a system of
despotism in the state and despotism in the family would be
rendered innocuous and beneficial; it is not surprising, that
while as logicians we were nearly at one, as sociologists we
could travel together no further. M. Comte lived to carry out
these doctrines to their extremest consequences, by planning, in
his last work, the "Système de Politique Positive," the
completest system of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever
yet emanated from a human brain, unless possibly that of Ignatius
Loyola: a system by which the yoke of general opinion, wielded by
an organized body of spiritual teachers and rulers, would be made
supreme over every action, and as far as is in human possibility,
every thought, of every member of the community, as well in the
things which regard only himself, as in those which concern the
interests of others. It is but just to say that this work is a
considerable improvement, in many points of feeling, over Comte's
previous writings on the same subjects: but as an accession to
social philosophy, the only value it seems to me to possess,
consists in putting an end to the notion that no effectual moral
authority can be maintained over society without the aid of
religious belief; for Comte's work recognises no religion except
that of Humanity, yet it leaves an irresistible conviction that
any moral beliefs concurred in by the community generally may be
brought to bear upon the whole conduct and lives of its
individual members, with an energy and potency truly alarming to
think of. The book stands a monumental warning to thinkers on
society and politics, of what happens when once men lose sight in
their speculations, of the value of Liberty and of Individuality.
    To return to myself. The Review engrossed, for some time
longer, nearly all the time I could devote to authorship, or to
thinking with authorship in view. The articles from the London
and Westminster Review which are reprinted in the
"Dissertations," are scarcely a fourth part of those I wrote. In
the conduct of the Review I had two principal objects. One was to
free philosophic radicalism from the reproach of sectarian
Benthamism. I desired, while retaining the precision of
expression, the definiteness of meaning, the contempt of
declamatory phrases and vague generalities, which were so
honourably characteristic both of Bentham and of my father, to
give a wider basis and a more free and genial character to
Radical speculations; to show that there was a Radical
philosophy, better and more complete than Bentham's, while
recognizing and incorporating all of Bentham's which is
permanently valuable. In this first object I, to a certain
extent, succeeded. The other thing I attempted, was to stir up
the educated Radicals, in and out of Parliament, to exertion, and
induce them to make themselves, what I thought by using the
proper means they might become -- a powerful party capable of
taking the government of the country, or at least of dictating
the terms on which they should share it with the Whigs. This
attempt was from the first chimerical: partly because the time
was unpropitious, the Reform fervour being in its period of ebb,
and the Tory influences powerfully rallying; but still more,
because, as Austin so truly said, "the country did not contain
the men." Among the Radicals in Parliament there were several
qualified to be useful members of an enlightened Radical party,
but none capable of forming and leading such a party. The
exhortations I addressed to them found no response. One occasion
did present itself when there seemed to be room for a bold and
successful stroke for Radicalism. Lord Durham had left the
ministry, by reason, as was thought, of their not being
sufficiently liberal; he afterwards accepted from them the task
of ascertaining and removing the causes of the Canadian
rebellion; he had shown a disposition to surround himself at the
outset with Radical advisers ; one of his earliest measures, a
good measure both in intention and in effect, having been
disapproved and reversed by the Government at home, he had
resigned his post, and placed himself openly in a position of
quarrel with the ministers. Here was a possible chief for a
Radical party in the person of a man of importance, who was hated
by the Tories and had just been injured by the Whigs. Any one who
had the most elementary notions of party tactics, must have
attempted to make something of such an opportunity. Lord Durham
was bitterly attacked from all sides, inveighed against by
enemies, given up by timid friends; while those who would
willingly have defended him did not know what to say. He appeared
to be returning a defeated and discredited man. I had followed
the Canadian events from the beginning; I had been one of the
prompters of his prompters; his policy was almost exactly what
mine would have been, and I was in a position to defend it. I
wrote and published a manifesto in the Review, in which I took
the very highest ground in his behalf, claiming for him not mere
acquittal, but praise and honour. Instantly a number of other
writers took up the tone: I believe there was a portion of truth
in what Lord Durham, soon after, with polite exaggeration, said
to me-that to this article might be ascribed the almost triumphal
reception which he met with on his arrival in England. I believe
it to have been the word in season, which, at a critical moment,
does much to decide the result; the touch which determines
whether a stone, set in motion at the top of an eminence, shall
roll down on one side or on the other. All hopes connected with
Lord Durham as a politician soon vanished; but with regard to
Canadian, and generally to colonial policy, the cause was gained:
Lord Durham's report, written by Charles Buller, partly under the
inspiration of Wakefield, began a new era; its recommendations,
extending to complete internal self-government, were in full
operation in Canada within two or three years, and have been
since extended to nearly all the other colonies, of European
race, which have any claim to the character of important
communities. And I may say that in successfully upholding the
reputation of Lord Durham and his advisers at the most important
moment, I contributed materially to this result.
    One other case occurred during my conduct of the Review,
which similarly illustrated the effect of taking a prompt
initiative. I believe that the early success and reputation of
Carlyle's French Revolution, were considerably accelerated by
what I wrote about it in the Review. Immediately on its
publication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose rules
and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time to preoccupy
the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote and published a
review of the book, hailing it as one of those productions of
genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves.
Neither in this case nor in that of Lord Durham do I ascribe the
impression, which I think was produced by what I wrote, to any
particular merit of execution: indeed, in at least one of the
cases (the article on Carlyle) I do not think the execution was
good. And in both instances, I am persuaded that anybody, in a
position to be read, who had expressed the same opinion at the
same precise time, and had made any tolerable statement of the
just grounds for it, would have produced the same effects. But,
after the complete failure of my hopes of putting a new life into
radical politics by means of the Review, I am glad to look back
on these two instances of success in an honest attempt to do
mediate service to things and persons that deserved it.
    After the last hope of the formation of a Radical party had
disappeared, it was time for me to stop the heavy expenditure of
time and money which the Review cost me. It had to some extent
answered my personal purpose as a vehicle for my opinions. It had
enabled me to express in print much of my altered mode of
thought, and to separate myself in a marked manner from the
narrower Benthamism of my early writings. This was done by the
general tone of all I wrote, including various purely literary
articles, but especially by the two papers (reprinted in the
Dissertations) which attempted a philosophical estimate of
Bentham and of Coleridge. In the first of these, while doing full
justice to the merits of Bentham, I pointed out what I thought
the errors and deficiencies of his philosophy. The substance of
this criticism I still think perfectly just; but I have sometimes
doubted whether it was right to publish it at that time. I have
often felt that Bentham's philosophy, as an instrument of
progress, has been to some extent discredited before it had done
its work, and that to lend a hand towards lowering its reputation
was doing more harm than service to improvement. Now, however,
when a counter-reaction appears to be setting in towards what is
good in Benthamism, I can look with more satisfaction on this
criticism of its defects, especially as I have myself balanced it
by vindications of the fundamental principles of Bentham's
philosophy, which are reprinted along with it in the same
collection. In the essay on Coleridge I attempted to characterize
the European reaction against the negative philosophy of the
eighteenth century: and here, if the effect only of this one
paper were to be considered, I might be thought to have erred by
giving undue prominence to the favourable side, as I had done in
the case of Bentham to the unfavourable. In both cases, the
impetus with which I had detached myself from what was untenable
in the doctrines of Bentham and of the eighteenth century, may
have carried me, though in appearance rather than in reality, too
far on the contrary side. But as far as relates to the article on
Coleridge, my defence is, that I was writing for Radicals and
Liberals, and it was my business to dwell most on that in writers
of a different school, from the knowledge of which they might
derive most improvement.
    The number of the Review which contained the paper on
Coleridge, was the last which was published during my
proprietorship. In the spring of 1840 I made over the Review to
Mr Hickson, who had been a frequent and very useful unpaid
contributor under my management: only stipulating that the change
should be marked by a resumption of the old name, that of
Westminster Review. Under that name Mr Hickson conducted it for
ten years, on the plan of dividing among contributors only the
net proceeds of the Review giving his own labour as writer and
editor gratuitously. Under the difficulty in obtaining writers,
which arose from this low scale of payment, it is highly
creditable to him that he was able to maintain, in some tolerable
degree, the character of the Review as an organ of radicalism and
progress. I did not cease altogether to write for the Review, but
continued to send it occasional contributions, not, however,
exclusively; for the greater circulation of the Edinburgh Review
induced me from this time to offer articles to it also when I had
anything to say for which it appeared to be a suitable vehicle.
And the concluding volumes of "Democracy in America," having just
then come out, I inaugurated myself as a contributor to the
Edinburgh, by the article on that work, which heads the second
volume of the "Dissertations." 

 VII. GENERAL VIEW OF THE REMAINDER OF MY LIFE.

    From this time, what is worth relating of my life will come
into a very small compass; for I have no further mental changes
to tell of, but only, as I hope, a continued mental progress;
which does not admit of a consecutive history, and the results of
which, if real, will be best found in my writings. I shall,
therefore, greatly abridge the chronicle of my subsequent years.
    The first use I made of the leisure which I gained by
disconnecting myself from the Review, was to finish the Logic. In
July and August, 1838, I had found an interval in which to
execute what was still undone of the original draft of the Third
Book. In working out the logical theory of those laws of nature
which are not laws of Causation, nor corollaries from such laws,
I was led to recognize kinds as realities in nature, and not mere
distinctions for convenience; a light which I had not obtained
when the First Book was written, and which made it necessary for
me to modify and enlarge several chapters of that Book. The Book
on Language and Classification, and the chapter on the
Classification of Fallacies, were drafted in the autumn of the
same year; the remainder of the work, in the summer and autumn of
1840. From April following to the end of 1841, my spare time was
devoted to a complete rewriting of the book from its
commencement. It is in this way that all my books have been
composed. They were always written at least twice over; a first
draft of the entire work was completed to the very end of the
subject, then the whole begun again de novo; but incorporating,
in the second writing, all sentences and parts of sentences of
the old draft, which appeared as suitable to my purpose as
anything which I could write in lieu of them. I have found great
advantages in this system of double redaction. It combines,
better than any other mode of composition, the freshness and
vigour of the first conception, with the superior precision and
completeness resulting from prolonged thought. In my own case,
moreover, I have found that the patience necessary for a careful
elaboration of the details of composition and expression, costs
much less effort after the entire subject has been once gone
through, and the substance of all that I find to say has in some
manner, however imperfect, been got upon paper. The only thing
which I am careful, in the first draft, to make as perfect as I
am able, is the arrangement. If that is bad, the whole thread on
which the ideas string themselves becomes twisted; thoughts
placed in a wrong connexion are not expounded in a manner that
suits the right, and a first draft with this original vice is
next to useless as a foundation for the final treatment.
    During the re-writing of the Logic, Dr. Whewell's Philosophy
of the Inductive Sciences made its appearance; a circumstance
fortunate for me, as it gave me what I greatly desired, a full
treatment of the subject by an antagonist, and enabled me to
present my ideas with greater clearness and emphasis as well as
fuller and more varied development, in defending them against
definite objections, or confronting them distinctly with an
opposite theory. The controversies with Dr. Whewell, as well as
much matter derived from Comte, were first introduced into the
book in the course of the re-writing.
    At the end of 1841, the book being ready for the press, I
offered it to Murray, who kept it until too late for publication
that season, and then refused it, for reasons which could just as
well have been given at first. But I have had no cause to regret
a rejection which led to my offering it to Mr Parker, by whom it
was published in the spring of 1843. My original expectations of
success were extremely limited. Archbishop Whately had, indeed,
rehabilitated the name of Logic, and the study of the forms,
rules, and fallacies of Ratiocination; and Dr. Whewell's writings
had begun to excite an interest in the other part of my subject,
the theory of induction. A treatise, however, on a matter so
abstract, could not be expected to be popular; it could only be a
book for students, and students on such subjects were not only
(at least in England) few, but addicted chiefly to the opposite
school of metaphysics, the ontological and "innate principles"
school. I therefore did not expect that the book would have many
readers, or approvers; and looked for little practical effect
from it, save that of keeping the tradition unbroken of what I
thought a better philosophy. What hopes I had of exciting any
immediate attention, were mainly grounded on the polemical
propensities of Dr Whewell; who, I thought, from observation of
his conduct in other cases, would probably do something to bring
the book into notice, by replying, and that promptly, to the
attack on his opinions. He did reply but not till 1850, just in
time for me to answer him in the third edition. How the book came
to have, for a work of the kind, so much success, and what sort
of persons compose the bulk of those who have bought, I will not
venture to say read, it, I have never thoroughly understood. But
taken in conjunction with the many proofs which have since been
given of a revival of speculation, speculation too of a free
kind, in many quarters, and above all (where at one time I should
have least expected it) in the Universities, the fact becomes
partially intelligible. I have never indulged the illusion that
the book had made any considerable impression on philosophical
opinion. The German, or à priori view of human knowledge, and of
the knowing faculties, is likely for some time longer (though it
may be hoped in a diminishing degree) to predominate among those
who occupy themselves with such inquiries, both here and on the
Continent. But the "System of Logic" supplies what was much
wanted, a text-book of the opposite doctrine -- that which
derives all knowledge from experience, and all moral and
intellectual qualities principally from the direction given to
the associations. I make as humble an estimate as anybody of what
either an analysis of logical processes, or any possible canons
of evidence, can do by themselves, towards guiding or rectifying
the operations of the understanding. Combined with other
requisites, I certainly do think them of great use; but whatever
may be the practical value of a true philosophy of these matters,
it is hardly possible to exaggerate the mischiefs of a false one.
The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by
intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and
experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great
intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By
the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense
feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to
dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and
is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification.
There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all
deep-seated prejudices. And the chief strength of this false
philosophy in morals, politics, and religion, lies in the appeal
which it is accustomed to make to the evidence of mathematics and
of the cognate branches of physical science. To expel it from
these, is to drive it from its stronghold: and because this had
never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even after
what my father had written in his Analysis of the Mind, had in
appearance, and as far as published writings were concerned, on
the whole the best of the argument. In attempting to clear up the
real nature of the evidence of mathematical and physical truths,
the "System of Logic" met the intuitive philosophers on ground on
which they had previously been deemed unassailable; and gave its
own explanation, from experience and association, of that
peculiar character of what are called necessary truths, which is
adduced as proof that their evidence must come from a deeper
source than experience. Whether this has been done effectually,
is still sub judice; and even then, to deprive a mode of thought
so strongly rooted in human prejudices and partialities, of its
mere speculative support, goes but a very little way towards
overcoming it; but though only a step, it is a quite
indispensable one; for since, after all, prejudice can only be
successfully combated by philosophy, no way can really be made
against it permanently until it has been shown not to have
philosophy on its side.
    Being now released from any active concern in temporary
politics, and from any literary occupation involving personal
communication with contributors and others, I was enabled to
indulge the inclination, natural to thinking persons when the age
of boyish vanity is once past, for limiting my own society to a
very few persons. General society, as now carried on in England,
is so insipid an affair, even to the persons who make it what it
is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than the pleasure it
affords. All serious discussion on matters on which opinions
differ, being considered ill-bred, and the national deficiency in
liveliness and sociability having prevented the cultivation of
the art of talking agreeably on trifles, in which the French of
the last century so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is
called society to those who are not at the top of the tree, is
the hope of being aided to climb a little higher in it; while to
those who are already at the top, it is chiefly a compliance with
custom, and with the supposed requirements of their station. To a
person of any but a very common order in thought or feeling, such
society, unless he has personal objects to serve by it, must be
supremely unattractive: and most people, in the present day, of
any really high class of intellect, make their contact with it so
slight, and at such long intervals, as to be almost considered as
retiring from it altogether. Those persons of any mental
superiority who do otherwise, are, almost without exception,
greatly deteriorated by it. Not to mention loss of time, the tone
of their feelings is lowered: they become less in earnest about
those of their opinions respecting which they must remain silent
in the society they frequent: they come to look upon their most
elevated objects as unpractical, or, at least, too remote from
realization to be more than a vision, or a theory. and if, more
fortunate than most, they retain their higher principles
unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons and affairs of their
own day they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling and judgment
in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep. A
person of high intellect should never go into unintellectual
society unless he can enter it as an apostle; yet he is the only
person with high objects who can safely enter it at all. Persons
even of intellectual aspirations had much better, if they can,
make their habitual associates of at least their equals, and, as
far as possible, their superiors, in knowledge, intellect, and
elevation of sentiment. Moreover, if the character is formed, and
the mind made up, on the few cardinal points of human opinion,
agreement of conviction and feeling on these, has been felt in
all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy the
name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. All these
circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose
society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought.
    Among these, by far the principal was the incomparable friend
of whom I have already spoken. At this period she lived mostly
with one young daughter, in a quiet part of the country, and only
occasionally in town, with her first husband, Mr Taylor. I
visited her equally in both places; and was greatly indebted to
the strength of character which enabled her to disregard the
false interpretations liable to be put on the frequency of my
visits to her while living generally apart from Mr Taylor, and on
our occasionally travelling together, though in all other
respects our conduct during those years gave not the slightest
ground for any other supposition than the true one, that our
relation to each other at that time was one of strong affection
and confidential intimacy only. For though we did not consider
the ordinances of society binding on a subject so entirely
personal, we did feel bound that our conduct should be such as in
no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor therefore on
herself.
    In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental
progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions
gained equally in breadth and depth, I understood more things,
and those which I had understood before, I now understood more
thoroughly. I had now completely turned back from what there had
been of excess in my reaction against Benthamism. I had, at the
height of that reaction, certainly become much more indulgent to
the common opinions of society and the world, and more willing to
be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had
begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one
whose convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from
them. I was much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in
abeyance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which
I now look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which
tends in any way to regenerate society. But in addition to this,
our opinions were far more heretical than mine had been in the
days of my most extreme Benthamism. In those days I had seen
little further than the old school of political economists into
the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social
arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and
inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of
legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the
inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of
primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go
further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it
is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in
the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to
poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by
universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on
population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable.
In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We
were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as
education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the
ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the
mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond
Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general
designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest
energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most
Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked
forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the
idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work
shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but
impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour,
instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the
accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged
principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be
thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves
strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively
their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The
social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite
the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common
ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal
participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had
not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by
what precise form of institutions these objects could most
effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period
they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any
such social transformation either possible or desirable, an
equivalent change of character must take place both in the
uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in
the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must
learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all
events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto,
solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this
has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to
be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the
sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country,
as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by
slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through
successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to
this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential
constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at
present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can
never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to
dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which
tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as
only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and
spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of
shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most
strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The
deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the
existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the
whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern
institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the
occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for
the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in
modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity. These
considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature
attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in
social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be
provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social
arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from Austin)
"merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure
and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals
(such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether they
succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful
education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their
capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general
good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and
others incapable of doing so.
    In the "Principles of Political Economy," these opinions were
promulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition, rather
more so in the second, and quite unequivocally in the third. The
difference arose partly from the change of times, the first
edition having been written and sent to press before the French
Revolution of 1848, after which the public mind became more open
to the reception of novelties in opinion, and doctrines appeared
moderate which would have been thought very startling a short
time before. In the first edition the difficulties of Socialism
were stated so strongly, that the tone was on the whole that of
opposition to it. In the year or two which followed, much time
was given to the study of the best Socialistic writers on the
Continent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of
topics involved in the controversy: and the result was that most
of what had been written on the subject in the first edition was
cancelled, and replaced by arguments and reflections which
represent a more advanced opinion.
    The Political Economy was far more rapidly executed than the
Logic, or indeed than anything of importance which I had
previously written. It was commenced in the autumn of 1845, and
was ready for the press before the end of 1847. In this period of
little more than two years there was an interval of six months
during which the work was laid aside, while I was writing
articles in the Morning Chronicle (which unexpectedly entered
warmly into my purpose) urging the formation of peasant
properties on the waste lands of Ireland. This was during the
period of the Famine, the winter of 1846-47, when the stern
necessities of the time seemed to afford a chance of gaining
attention for what appeared to me the only mode of combining
relief to immediate destitution with permanent improvement of the
social and economical condition of the Irish people. But the idea
was new and strange; there was no English precedent for such a
proceeding: and the profound ignorance of English politicians and
the English public concerning all social phenomena not generally
met with in England (however common elsewhere), made my
endeavours an entire failure. Instead of a great operation on the
waste lands, and the conversion of cottiers into proprietors,
Parliament passed a Poor Law for maintaining them as paupers: and
if the nation has not since found itself in inextricable
difficulties from the joint operation of the old evils and the
quack remedy it is indebted for its deliverance to that most
unexpected and surprising fact, the depopulation of ireland,
commenced by famine, and continued by emigration.
    The rapid success of the Political Economy showed that the
public wanted, and were prepared for such a book. Published early
in 1848, an edition of a thousand copies was sold in less than a
year. Another similar edition was published in the spring of
1849; and a third, of 1250 copies, early in 1852. It was, from
the first, continually cited and referred to as an authority,
because it was not a book merely of abstract science, but also of
application, and treated Political Economy not as a thing by
itself, but as a fragment of a greater whole; a branch of Social
Philosophy, so interlinked with all the other branches, that its
conclusions, even in its own peculiar province, are only true
conditionally, subject to interference and counteraction from
causes not directly within its scope: while to the character of a
practical guide it has no pretension, apart from other classes of
considerations. Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended
to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though
people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew
that ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do
so by such lights as they had. But the numerous sentimental
enemies of political economy, and its still more numerous
interested enemies in sentimental guise, have been very
successful in gaining belief for this among other unmerited
imputations against it, and the "Principles" having, in spite of
the freedom of many of its opinions, become for the present the
most popular treatise on the subject, has helped to disarm the
enemies of so important a study. The amount of its worth as an
exposition of the science, and the value of the different
applications which it suggests, others of course must judge.
    For a considerable time after this, I published no work of
magnitude; though I still occasionally wrote in periodicals, and
my correspondence (much of it with persons quite unknown to me),
on subjects of public interest, swelled to a considerable bulk.
During these years I wrote or commenced various Essays, for
eventual publication, on some of the fundamental questions of
human and social life, with regard to several of which I have
already much exceeded the severity of the Horatian precept. I
continued to watch with keen interest the progress of public
events. But it was not, on the whole, very encouraging to me. The
European reaction after 1848, and the success of an unprincipled
usurper in December, 1851, put an end, as it seemed, to all
present hope for freedom or social improvement in France and the
Continent. In England, I had seen and continued to see many of
the opinions of my youth obtain general recognition, and many of
the reforms in institutions, for which I had through life
contended, either effected or in course of being so. But these
changes had been attended with much less benefit to human
well-being than I should formerly have anticipated, because they
had produced very little improvement in that which all real
amelioration in the lot of mankind depends on, their intellectual
and moral state: and it might even be questioned if the various
causes of deterioration which had been at work in the meanwhile,
had not more than counterbalanced the tendencies to improvement.
I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be
exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits
of mind of which false opinions are the result. The English
public, for example, are quite as raw and undiscerning on
subjects of political economy since the nation has been converted
to free-trade, as they were before; and are still further from
having acquired better habits of thought and feeling, or being in
any way better fortified against error, on subjects of a more
elevated character. For, though they have thrown off certain
errors, the general discipline of their minds, intellectually and
morally, is not altered. I am now convinced, that no great
improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great
change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes
of thought. The old opinions in religion, morals, and politics,
are so much discredited in the more intellectual minds as to have
lost the greater part of their efficacy for good, while they have
still life enough in them to be a powerful obstacle to the
growing up of any better opinions on those subjects. When the
philosophic minds of the world can no longer believe its
religion, or can only believe it with modifications amounting to
an essential change of its character, a transitional period
commences, of weak convictions, paralysed intellects, and growing
laxity of principle, which cannot terminate until a renovation
has been effected in the basis of their belief leading to the
elevation of some faith, whether religious or merely human, which
they can really believe: and when things are in this state, all
thinking or writing which does not tend to promote such a
renovation, is of very little value beyond the moment. Since
there was little in the apparent condition of the public mind,
indicative of any tendency in this direction, my view of the
immediate prospects of human improvement was not sanguine. More
recently a spirit of free speculation has sprung up, giving a
more encouraging prospect of the gradual mental emancipation of
England; and concurring with the renewal under better auspices,
of the movement for political freedom in the rest of Europe, has
given to the present condition of human affairs a more hopeful
aspect.
    Between the time of which I have now spoken, and the present,
took place the most important events of my private life. The
first of these was my marriage, in April, 1851, to the lady whose
incomparable worth had made her friendship the greatest source to
me both of happiness and of improvement, during many years in
which we never expected to be in any closer relation to one
another. Ardently as I should have aspired to this complete union
of our lives at any time in the course of my existence at which
it had been practicable, I, as much as my wife, would far rather
have foregone that privilege for ever, than have owed it to the
premature death of one for whom I had the sincerest respect, and
she the strongest affection. That event, however, having taken
place in July, 1849, it was granted to me to derive from that
evil my own greatest good, by adding to the partnership of
thought, feeling, and writing which had long existed, a
partnership of our entire existence. For seven and a half years
that blessing was mine; for seven and a half only! I can say
nothing which could describe, even in the faintest manner, what
that loss was and is. But because I know that she would have
wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I have left,
and to work on for her purposes with such diminished strength as
can be derived from thoughts of her, and communion with her
memory.
    During the years which intervened between the commencement of
my married life and the catastrophe which closed it, the
principal occurrences of my outward existence (unless I count as
such a first attack of the family disease, and a consequent
journey of more than six months for the recovery of health, in
Italy, Sicily, and Greece) had reference to my position in the
India House. In 1856 I was promoted to the rank of chief of the
office in which I had served for upwards of thirty-three years.
The appointment, that of Examiner of India Correspondence, was
the highest, next to that of Secretary, in the East India
Company's home service, involving the general superintendence of
all the correspondence with the Indian Governments, except the
military, naval, and financial. I held this office as long as it
continued to exist, being a little more than two years; after
which it pleased Parliament, in other words Lord Palmerston, to
put an end to the East india Company as a branch of the
government of India under the Crown, and convert the
administration of that country into a thing to be scrambled for
by the second and third class of English parliamentary
politicians. I was the chief manager of the resistance which the
Company made to their own political extinction. To the letters
and petitions I wrote for them, and the concluding chapter of my
treatise on Representative Government, I must refer for my
opinions on the folly and mischief of this ill-considered change.
Personally I considered myself a gainer by it, as I had given
enough of my life to india, and was not unwilling to retire on
the liberal compensation granted. After the change was
consummated, Lord Stanley, the first Secretary of State for
India, made me the honourable offer of a seat in the Council, and
the proposal was subsequently renewed by the Council itself, on
the first occasion of its having to supply a vacancy in its own
body. But the conditions of Indian government under the new
system made me anticipate nothing but useless vexation and waste
of effort from any participation in it: and nothing that has
since happened has had any tendency to make me regret my refusal.
    During the two years which immediately preceded the cessation
of my official life, my wife and I were working together at the
"Liberty." I had first planned and written it as a short essay in
1854. It was in mounting the steps of the Capitol, in January,
1855, that the thought first arose of converting it into a
volume. None of my writings have been either so carefully
composed, or so sedulously corrected as this. After it had been
written as usual twice over, we kept it by us, bringing it out
from time to time, and going through it de novo, reading,
weighing, and criticizing every sentence. Its final revision was
to have been a work of the winter of 1858-9, the first after my
retirement, which we had arranged to pass in the South of Europe.
That hope and every other were frustrated by the most unexpected
and bitter calamity of her death -- at Avignon, on our way to
Montpellier, from a sudden attack of pulmonary congestion.
    Since then I have sought for such allegation as my state
admitted of, by the mode of life which most enabled me to feel
her still near me. I bought a cottage as close as possible to the
place where she is buried, and there her daughter (my
fellow-sufferer and now my chief comfort) and I, live constantly
during a great portion of the year. My objects in life are solely
those which were hers; my pursuits and occupations those in which
she shared, or sympathized, and which are indissolubly associated
with her. Her memory is to me a religion, and her approbation the
standard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I
endeavour to regulate my life.
    In resuming my pen some years after closing the preceding
narrative, I am influenced by a desire not to leave incomplete
the record, for the sake of which chiefly this biographical
sketch was undertaken, of the obligations I owe to those who have
either contributed essentially to my own mental development or
had a direct share in my writings and in whatever else of a
public nature I have done. In the preceding pages, this record,
so far as it relates to my wife, is not so detailed and precise
as it ought to be; and since I lost her, I have had other help,
not less deserving and requiring acknowledgment.
    When two persons have their thoughts and speculations
completely in common; when all subjects of intellectual or moral
interest are discussed between them in daily life, and probed to
much greater depths than are usually or conveniently sounded in
writings intended for general readers; when they set out from the
same principles, and arrive at their conclusions by processes
pursued jointly, it is of little consequence in respect to the
question of originality, which of them holds the pen; the one who
contributes least to the composition may contribute most to the
thought; the writings which result are the joint product of both,
and it must often be impossible to disentangle their respective
parts, and affirm that this belongs to one and that to the other.
In this wide sense, not only during the years of our married
life, but during many of the years of confidential friendship
which preceded it, all my published writings were as much my
wife's work as mine; her share in them constantly increasing as
years advanced. But in certain cases, what belongs to her can be
distinguished, and specially identified. Over and above the
general influence which her mind had over mine, the most valuable
ideas and features in these joint productions -- those which have
been most fruitful of important results, and have contributed
most to the success and reputation of the works themselves --
originated with her, were emanations from her mind, my part in
them being no greater than in any of the thoughts which I found
in previous writers, and made my own only by incorporating them
with my own system of thought. During the greater part of my
literary life I have performed the office in relation to her,
which from a rather early period I had considered as the most
useful part that I was qualified to take in the domain of
thought, that of an interpreter of original thinkers, and
mediator between them and the public; for I had always a humble
opinion of my own powers as an original thinker, except in
abstract science (logic, metaphysics, and the theoretic
principles of political economy and politics), but thought myself
much superior to most of my contemporaries in willingness and
ability to learn from everybody; as I found hardly any one who
made such a point of examining what was said in defence of all
opinions, however new or however old, in the conviction that even
if they were errors there might be a substratum of truth
underneath them, and that in any case the discovery of what it
was that made them plausible, would be a benefit to truth. I had,
in consequence, marked out this as a sphere of usefulness in
which I was under a special obligation to make myself active: the
more so, as the acquaintance I had formed with the ideas of the
Coleridgians, of the German thinkers, and of Carlyle, all of them
fiercely opposed to the mode of thought in which I had been
brought up, had convinced me that along with much error they
possessed much truth, which was veiled from minds otherwise
capable of receiving it by the transcendental and mystical
phraseology in which they were accustomed to shut it up, and from
which they neither cared, nor knew how, to disengage it; and I
did not despair of separating the truth from the error, and
expressing it in terms which would be intelligible and not
repulsive to those on my own side in philosophy. Thus prepared,
it will easily be believed that when I came into close
intellectual communion with a person of the most eminent
faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in
thought, continually struck out truths far in advance of me, but
in which I could not, as I had done in those others, detect any
mixture of error, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted
in the assimilation of those truths, and the most valuable part
of my intellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing
the paths which connected them with my general system of
thought.(5*)
    The first of my books in which her share was conspicuous was
the "Principles of Political Economy." The "System of Logic" owed
little to her except in the minuter matters of composition, in
which respect my writings, both great and small, have largely
benefited by her accurate and clear-sighted criticism.(6*) The
chapter of the Political Economy which has had a greater
influence on opinion than all the rest, that on "the Probable
Future of the Labouring Classes," is entirely due to her. In the
first draft of the book, that chapter did not exist. She pointed
out the need of such a chapter, and the extreme imperfection of
the book without it: she was the cause of my writing it; and the
more general part of the chapter, the statement and discussion of
the two opposite theories respecting the proper condition of the
labouring classes, was wholly an exposition of her thoughts,
often in words taken from her own lips. The purely scientific
part of the Political Economy I did not learn from her; but it
was chiefly her influence that gave to the book that general tone
by which it is distinguished from all previous expositions of
Political Economy that had any pretension to being scientific,
and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which those
previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in
making the proper distinction between the laws of the Production
of Wealth, which are real laws of nature, dependent on the
properties of objects, and the modes of its Distribution, which,
subject to certain conditions, depend on human will. The common
run of political economists confuse these together, under the
designation of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being
defeated or modified by human effort; ascribing the same
necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of
our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the
necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are
merely co-extensive with these: given certain institutions and
customs, wages, profits, and rent will be determined by certain
causes ; but this class of political economists drop the
indispensable presupposition, and argue that these causes must,
by an inherent necessity, against which no human means can avail,
determine the shares which fall, in the division of the produce,
to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The "Principles of
Political Economy" yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming
at the scientific appreciation of the action of these causes,
under the conditions which they presuppose; but it set the
example of not treating those conditions as final. The economic
generalizations which depend, not on necessities of nature but on
those combined with the existing arrangements of society, it
deals with only as provisional, and as liable to be much altered
by the progress of social improvement. I had indeed partially
learnt this view of things from the thoughts awakened in me by
the speculations of the St. Simonians; but it was made a living
principle pervading and animating the book by my wife's
promptings. This example illustrates well the general character
of what she contributed to my writings. What was abstract and
purely scientific was generally mine; the properly human element
came from her: in all that concerned the application of
philosophy to the exigencies of human society and progress, I was
her pupil, alike in boldness of speculation and cautiousness of
practical judgment. For, on the one hand, she was much more
courageous and far-sighted than without her I should have been,
in anticipations of an order of things to come, in which many of
the limited generalizations now so often confounded with
universal principles will cease to be applicable. Those parts of
my writings, and especially of the Political Economy, which
contemplate possibilities in the future such as, when affirmed by
Socialists, have in general been fiercely denied by political
economists, would, but for her, either have been absent, or the
suggestions would have been made much more timidly and in a more
qualified form. But while she thus rendered me bolder in
speculation on human affairs, her practical turn of mind, and her
almost unerring estimate of practical obstacles, repressed in me
all tendencies that were really visionary. Her mind invested all
ideas in a concrete shape, and formed to itself a conception of
how they would actually work: and her knowledge of the existing
feelings and conduct of mankind was so seldom at fault, that the
weak point in any unworkable suggestion seldom escaped her.
    The "Liberty" was more directly and literally our joint
production than anything else which bears my name, for there was
not a sentence of it that was not several times gone through by
us together, turned over in many ways, and carefully weeded of
any faults, either in thought or expression, that we detected in
it. It is in consequence of this that, although it never
underwent her final revision, it far surpasses, as a mere
specimen of composition, anything which has proceeded from me
either before or since. With regard to the thoughts, it is
difficult to identify any particular part or element as being
more hers than all the rest. The whole mode of thinking of which
the book was the expression, was emphatically hers. But I also
was so thoroughly imbued with it, that the same thoughts
naturally occurred to us both. That I was thus penetrated with
it, however, I owe in a great degree to her. There was a moment
in my mental progress when I might easily have fallen into a
tendency towards over-government, both social and political; as
there was also a moment when, by reaction from a contrary excess,
I might have become a less thorough radical and democrat than I
am. In both these points, as in many others, she benefited me as
much by keeping me right where I was right, as by leading me to
new truths, and ridding me of errors. My great readiness and
eagerness to learn from everybody, and to make room in my
opinions for every new acquisition by adjusting the old and the
new to one another, might, but for her steadying influence, have
seduced me into modifying my early opinions too much. She was in
nothing more valuable to my mental development than by her just
measure of the relative importance of different considerations,
which often protected me from allowing to truths I had only
recently learnt to see, a more important place in my thoughts
than was properly their due.(7*)
    The "Liberty" is likely to survive longer than anything else
that I have written (with the possible exception of the "Logic"),
because the conjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a
kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the
changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to
bring out into ever stronger relief: the importance, to man and
society of a large variety in types of character, and of giving
full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and
conflicting directions. Nothing can better show how deep are the
foundations of this truth, than the great impression made by the
exposition of it at a time which, to superficial observation, did
not seem to stand much in need of such a lesson. The fears we
expressed, lest the inevitable growth of social equality and of
the government of public opinion, should impose on mankind an
oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and practice, might
easily have appeared chimerical to those who looked more at
present facts than at tendencies; for the gradual revolution that
is taking place in society and institutions has, thus far, been
decidedly Favourable to the development of new opinions, and has
procured for them a much more unprejudiced hearing than they
previously met with. But this is a feature belonging to periods
of transition, when old notions and feelings have been unsettled,
and no new doctrines have yet succeeded to their ascendancy. At
such times people of any mental activity, having given up many of
their old beliefs, and not feeling quite sure that those they
still retain can stand unmodified, listen eagerly to new
opinions. But this state of things is necessarily transitory:
some particular body oF doctrine in time rallies the majority
round it, organizes social institutions and modes of action
conformably to itself, education impresses this new creed upon
the new generations without the mental processes that have led to
it, and by degrees it acquires the very same power of
compression, so long exercised by the creeds of which it had
taken the place. Whether this noxious power will be exercised,
depends on whether mankind have by that time become aware that it
cannot be exercised without stunting and dwarfing human nature.
It is then that the teachings of the "Liberty" will have their
greatest value. And it is to be feared that they will retain that
value a long time.
    As regards originality, it has of course no other than that
which every thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving
and expressing truths which are common property. The leading
thought of the book is one which though in many ages confined to
insulated thinkers, mankind have probably at no time since the
beginning of civilization been entirely without. To speak only of
the last few generations, it is distinctly contained in the vein
of important thought respecting education and culture, spread
through the European mind by the labours and genius of
Pestalozzi. The unqualified championship of it by Wilhelm von
Humboldt is referred to in the book; but he by no means stood
alone in his own country. During the early part of the present
century the doctrine of the rights of individuality, and the
claim of the moral nature to develop itself in its own way, was
pushed by a whole school of German authors even to exaggeration;
and the writings of Goethe, the most celebrated of all German
authors, though not belonging to that or to any other school, are
penetrated throughout by views of morals and of conduct in life,
often in my opinion not defensible, but which are incessantly
seeking whatever defence they admit of in the theory of the right
and duty of self-development. In our own country before the book
"On Liberty" was written, the doctrine of individuality had been
enthusiastically asserted, in a style of vigorous declamation
sometimes reminding one of Fichte, by Mr William Maccall, in a
series of writings of which the most elaborate is entitled
"Elements of Individualism:" and a remarkable American, Mr
Warren, had framed a System of Society, on the foundation of "the
Sovereignty of the individual," had obtained a number of
followers, and had actually commenced the formation of a Village
Community (whether it now exists I know not), which, though
bearing a superficial resemblance to some of the projects of
Socialists, is diametrically opposite to them in principle, since
it recognizes no authority whatever in Society over the
individual, except to enforce equal Freedom of development for
all individualities. As the book which bears my name claimed no
originality for any of its doctrines, and was not intended to
write their history, the only author who had preceded me in their
assertion, of whom I thought it appropriate to say anything, was
Humboldt, who furnished the motto to the work; although in one
passage I borrowed from the Warrenites their phrase, the
sovereignty of the individual. It is hardly necessary here to
remark that there are abundant differences in detail, between the
conception of the doctrine by any of the predecessors I have
mentioned, and that set forth in the book.
    After my irreparable loss, one of my earliest cares was to
print and publish the treatise, so much of which was the work of
her whom I had lost, and consecrate it to her memory. I have made
no alteration or addition to it, nor shall I ever. Though it
wants the last touch of her hand, no substitute for that touch
shall ever be attempted by mine.
    The political circumstances of the time induced me, shortly
after, to complete and publish a pamphlet ("Thoughts on
Parliamentary Reform"), part of which had been written some years
previously on the occasion of one of the abortive Reform Bills,
and had at the time been approved and revised by her. Its
principal features were, hostility to the Ballot (a change of
opinion in both of us, in which she rather preceded me), and a
claim of representation for minorities; not, however, at that
time going beyond the cumulative vote proposed by Mr Garth
Marshall. In finishing the pamphlet for publication, with a view
to the discussions on the Reform Bill of Lord Derby's and Mr
Disraeli's Government in 1859, I added a third feature, a
plurality of votes, to be given, not to property, but to proved
superiority of education. This recommended itself to me as a
means of reconciling the irresistible claim of every man or woman
to be consulted, and to be allowed a voice, in the regulation of
affairs which vitally concern them, with the superiority of
weight justly due to opinions grounded on superiority of
knowledge. The suggestion, however, was one which I had never
discussed with my almost infallible counsellor, and I have no
evidence that she would have concurred in it. As far as I have
been able to observe, it has found favour with nobody. all who
desire any sort of inequality in the electoral vote, desiring it
in favour of property and not of intelligence or knowledge. If it
ever overcomes the strong feeling which exists against it, this
will only be after the establishment of a systematic National
Education by which the various grades of politically valuable
acquirement may be accurately defined and authenticated. Without
this it will always remain liable to strong, possibly conclusive,
objections; and with this, it would perhaps not be needed.
    It was soon after the publication of "Thoughts on
Parliamentary Reform," that I became acquainted with Mr Hare's
admirable system of Personal Representation, which, in its
present shape, was then for the first time published. I saw in
this great practical and philosophical idea, the greatest
improvement of which the system of representative government is
susceptible; an improvement which, in the most felicitous manner,
exactly meets and cures the grand, and what before seemed the
inherent, defect of the representative system; that of giving to
a numerical majority all power, instead of only a power
proportional to its numbers, and enabling the strongest party to
exclude all weaker parties from making their opinions heard in
the assembly of the nation, except through such opportunity as
may be given to them by the accidentally unequal distribution of
opinions in different localities. To these great evils nothing
more than very imperfect palliatives had seemed possible; but Mr
Hare's system affords a radical cure. This great discovery, for
it is no less, in the political art, inspired me, as I believe it
has inspired all thoughtful persons who have adopted it, with new
and more sanguine hopes respecting the prospects of human
society; by freeing the form of political institutions towards
which the whole civilized world is manifestly and irresistibly
tending, from the chief part of what seemed to qualify, or render
doubtful, its ultimate benefits. Minorities, so long as they
remain minorities, are, and ought to be, outvoted; but under
arrangements which enable any assemblage of voters, amounting to
a certain number, to place in the legislature a representative of
its own choice, minorities cannot be suppressed. Independent
opinions will force their way into the council of the nation and
make themselves heard there, a thing which often cannot happen in
the existing forms of representative democracy; and the
legislature, instead of being weeded of individual peculiarities
and entirely made up of men who simply represent the creed of
great political or religious parties, will comprise a large
proportion of the most eminent individual minds in the country,
placed there, without reference to party, by voters who
appreciate their individual eminence. I can understand that
persons, otherwise intelligent, should, for want of sufficient
examination, be repelled from Mr Hare's plan by what they think
the complex nature of its machinery. But any one who does not
feel the want which the scheme is intended to supply; any one who
throws it over as a mere theoretical subtlety or crotchet,
tending to no valuable purpose, and unworthy of the attention of
practical men, may be pronounced an incompetent statesman,
unequal to the politics of the future. I mean, unless he is a
minister or aspires to become one: for we are quite accustomed to
a minister continuing to profess unqualified hostility to an
improvement almost to the very day when his conscience or his
interest induces him to take it up as a public measure, and carry
it.
    Had I met with Mr Hare's system before the publication of my
pamphlet, I should have given an account of it there. Not having
done so, I wrote an article in Fraser's Magazine (reprinted in my
miscellaneous writings) principally for that purpose, though I
included in it, along with Mr Hare's book, a review of two other
productions on the question of the day; one of them a pamphlet by
my early friend, Mr John Austin, who had in his old age become an
enemy to all further Parliamentary reform; the other an able and
ingenious, though Partially erroneous, work by Mr Lorimer.
    In the course of the same summer I fulfilled a duty
particularly incumbent upon me, that of helping (by an article in
the Edinburgh Review) to make known Mr Bain's profound treatise
on the Mind, just then completed by the publication of its second
volume. And I carried through the press a selection of my minor
writings, forming the first two volumes of "Dissertations and
Discussions." The selection had been made during my wife's
lifetime, but the revision, in concert with her, with a view to
republication, had been barely commenced; and when I had no
longer the guidance of her judgment I despaired of pursuing it
further, and republished the papers as they were, with the
exception of striking out such passages as were no longer in
accordance with my opinions. My literary work of the year was
terminated with an essay in Fraser's magazine (afterwards
republished in the third volume of "Dissertations and
Discussions,") entitled "A Few Words on Non-Intervention." I was
prompted to write this paper by a desire, while vindicating
England from the imputations commonly brought against her on the
Continent, of a peculiar selfishness in matters of foreign policy
to warn Englishmen of the colour given to this imputation by the
low tone in which English statesmen are accustomed to speak of
English policy as concerned only with English interests, and by
the conduct of Lord Palmerston at that particular time in
opposing the Suez Canal: and I took the opportunity of expressing
ideas which had long been in my mind (some of them generated by
my Indian experience, and others by the international questions
which then greatly occupied the European public), respecting the
true principles of international morality, and the legitimate
modifications made in it by difference of times and
circumstances; a subject I had already, to some extent, discussed
in the vindication of the French Provisional Government of 1848
against the attacks of Lord Brougham and others, which I
published at the time in the Westminster Review, and which is
reprinted in the "Dissertations."
    I had now settled, as I believed, for the remainder of my
existence into a purely literary life; if that can be called
literary which continued to be occupied in a pre-eminent degree
with politics, and not merely with theoretical, but practical
politics, although a great part of the year was spent at a
distance of many hundred miles from the chief seat of the
politics of my own country, to which, and primarily for which, I
wrote. But, in truth, the modern facilities of communication have
not only removed all the disadvantages, to a political writer in
tolerably easy circumstances, of distance from the scene of
political action, but have converted them into advantages. The
immediate and regular receipt of newspapers and periodicals keeps
him au cOurant of even the most temporary politics, and gives him
a much more correct view of the state and progress of opinion
than he could acquire by personal contact with individuals : for
every one's social intercourse is more or less limited to
particular sets or classes, whose impressions and no others reach
him through that channel; and experience has taught me that those
who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called
society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with
the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general
state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed
part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be.
There are, no doubt, disadvantages in too long a separation from
one's country -- in not occasionally renewing one's impressions
of the light in which men and things appear when seen from a
position in the midst of them; but the deliberate judgment formed
at a distance, and undisturbed by inequalities of perspective, is
the most to be depended on, even for application to practice.
Alternating between the two positions, I combined the advantages
of both. And, though the inspirer of my best thoughts was no
longer with me, I was not alone: she had left a daughter, my
stepdaughter, Miss Helen Taylor, the inheritor of much of her
wisdom, and of all her nobleness of character, whose ever growing
and ripening talents from that day to this have been devoted to
the same great purposes, and have already made her name better
and more widely known than was that of her mother, though far
less so than I predict, that if she lives it is destined to
become. Of the value of her direct cooperation with me, something
will be said hereafter, of what I owe in the way of instruction
to her great powers of original thought and soundness of
practical judgment, it would be a vain attempt to give an
adequate idea. Surely no one ever before was so fortunate, as,
after such a loss as mine, to draw another prize in the lottery
of life -- another companion, stimulator, adviser, and instructor
of the rarest quality. Whoever, either now or hereafter, may
think of me and of the work I have done, must never forget that
it is the product not of one intellect and conscience, but of
three, the least considerable of whom, and above all the least
original, is the one whose name is attached to it.
    The work of the years 1860 and 1861 consisted chiefly of two
treatises, only one of which was intended for immediate
publication. This was the "Considerations on Representative
Government"; a connected exposition of what, by the thoughts of
many years, I had come to regard as the best form of a popular
constitution. Along with as much of the general theory of
government as is necessary to support this particular portion of
its practice, the volume contains many matured views of the
principal questions which occupy the present age, within the
province of purely organic institutions, and raises, by
anticipation, some other questions to which growing necessities
will sooner or later compel the attention both of theoretical and
of practical politicians. The chief of these last, is the
distinction between the function of making laws, for which a
numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting
good laws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be
satisfactorily fulfilled by any other authority: and the
consequent need of a Legislative Commission, as a permanent part
of the constitution of a free country; consisting of a small
number of highly trained political minds, on whom, when
Parliament has determined that a law shall be made, the task of
making it should be devolved: Parliament retaining the power of
passing or rejecting the bill when drawn up, but not of altering
it otherwise than by sending proposed amendments to be dealt with
by the Commission. The question here raised respecting the most
important of all public functions, that of legislation, is a
particular case of the great problem of modern political
organization, stated, I believe, for the first time in its full
extent by Bentham, though in my opinion not always satisfactorily
resolved by him; the combination of complete popular control over
public affairs, with the greatest attainable perfection of
skilled agency.
    The other treatise written at this time is the one which was
published some years later under the title of "The Subjection of
Women." It was written at my daughter's suggestion that there
might, in any event, be in existence a written exposition of my
opinions on that great question, as full and conclusive as I
could make it. The intention was to keep this among other
unpublished papers, improving it from time to time if I was able,
and to publish it at the time when it should seem likely to be
most useful. As ultimately published it was enriched with some
important ideas of my daughter's, and passages of her writing.
But in what was of my own composition, all that is most striking
and profound belongs to my wife ; coming from the fund of thought
which had been made common to us both, by our innumerable
conversations and discussions on a topic which filled so large a
place in our minds.
    Soon after this time I took from their repository a portion
of the unpublished papers which I had written during the last
years of our married life, and shaped them, with some additional
matter, into the little work entitled "Utilitarianism"; which was
first published, in three parts, in successive numbers of
Fraser's Magazine, and afterwards reprinted in a volume.
    Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become
extremely critical, by the commencement of the American civil
war. My strongest feelings were engaged in this struggle, which,
I felt from the beginning, was destined to be a turning point,
for good or evil, of the course of human affairs for an
indefinite duration. Having been a deeply interested observer of
the Slavery quarrel in America, during the many years that
preceded the open breach, I knew that it was in all its stages an
aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend the territory
of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniary interest,
domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for its class
privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in the
admirable work of my friend Professor Cairnes, "The Slave Power."
Their success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the
powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of
progress and damp the spirits of its friends all over the
civilized world, while it would create a formidable military
power, grounded on the worst and most anti-social form of the
tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time the
prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to all the
privileged classes of Europe a false confidence, probably only to
be extinguished in blood. On the other hand, if the spirit of the
North was sufficiently roused to carry the war to a successful
termination, and if that termination did not come too soon and
too easily, I foresaw, from the laws of human nature, and the
experience of revolutions, that when it did come it would in all
probability be thorough: that the bulk of the Northern
population, whose conscience had as yet been awakened only to the
point of resisting the further extension of slavery, but whose
fidelity to the Constitution of the United States made them
disapprove of any attempt by the Federal Government to interfere
with slavery in the States where it already existed, would
acquire feelings of another kind when the Constitution had been
shaken off by armed rebellion, would determine to have done for
ever with the accursed thing, and would join their banner with
that of the noble body of Abolitionists, of whom Garrison was the
courageous and single-minded apostle, Wendell Phillips the
eloquent orator, and John Brown the voluntary martyr.(8*) Then,
too, the whole mind of the United States would be let loose from
its bonds, no longer corrupted by the supposed necessity of
apologizing to foreigners for the most flagrant of all possible
violations of the free principles of their Constitution; while
the tendency of a fixed state of society to stereotype a set of
national opinions would be at least temporarily checked, and the
national mind would become more open to the recognition of
whatever was bad in either the institutions or the customs of the
people. These hopes, so far as related to Slavery, have been
completely, and in other respects are in course of being
progressively realized. Foreseeing from the first this double set
of consequences from the success or failure of the rebellion, it
may be imagined with what feelings I contemplated the rush of
nearly the whole upper and middle classes of my own country even
those who passed for Liberals, into a furious pro-Southern
partisanship : the working classes, and some of the literary and
scientific men, being almost the sole exceptions to the general
frenzy. I never before felt so keenly how little permanent
improvement had reached the minds of our influential classes, and
of what small value were the liberal opinions they had got into
the habit of professing. None of the Continental Liberals
committed the same frightful mistake. But the generation which
had extorted negro emancipation from our West India planters had
passed away; another had succeeded which had not learnt by many
years of discussion and exposure to feel strongly the enormities
of slavery; and the inattention habitual with Englishmen to
whatever is going on in the world outside their own island, made
them profoundly ignorant of all the antecedents of the struggle,
insomuch that it was not generally believed in England, for the
first year or two of the war, that the quarrel was one of
slavery. There were men of high principle and unquestionable
liberality of opinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or
assimilated it to the cases in which they were accustomed to
sympathize, of a people struggling for independence.
    It was my obvious duty to be one of the small minority who
protested against this perverted state of public opinion. I was
not the first to protest. It ought to be remembered to the honour
of Mr Hughes and of Mr Ludlow, that they, by writings published
at the very beginning of the struggle, began the protestation. Mr
Bright followed in one of the most powerful of his speeches,
followed by others not less striking. I was on the point of
adding my words to theirs, when there occurred, towards the end
of 1861, the seizure of the Southern envoys on board a British
vessel, by an officer of the United States. Even English
forgetfulness has not yet had time to lose all remembrance of the
explosion of Feeling in England which then burst forth, the
expectation, prevailing for some weeks, of war with the United
States, and the warlike preparations actually commenced on this
side. While this state of things lasted, there was no chance of a
hearing for anything favourable to the American cause; and,
moreover, I agreed with those who thought the act unjustifiable,
and such as to require that England should demand its disavowal.
When the disavowal came, and the alarm of war was over, I wrote,
in January, 1862, the paper, in Fraser's Magazine, entitled "The
Contest in America," And I shall always feel grateful to my
daughter that her urgency prevailed on me to write it when I did,
for we were then on the point of setting out for a journey of
some months in Greece and Turkey, and but for her, I should have
deferred writing till our return. Written and published when it
was, this paper helped to encourage those Liberals who had felt
overborne by the tide of illiberal opinion, and to form in favour
of the good cause a nucleus of opinion which increased gradually,
and, after the success of the North began to seem probable,
rapidly. When we returned from our journey I wrote a second
article, a review of Professor Cairnes' book, published in the
Westminster Review. England is paying the penalty, in many
uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her ruling
classes stirred up in the United States by their ostentatious
wishes for the ruin of America as a nation: they have reason to
be thankful that a few, if only a few, known writers and
speakers, standing firmly by the Americans in the time of their
greatest difficulty, effected a partial diversion of these bitter
feelings, and made Great Britain not altogether odious to the
Americans.
    This duty having been performed, my principal occupation for
the next two years was on subjects not political. The publication
of Mr Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence after his decease, gave
me an opportunity of paying a deserved tribute to his memory, and
at the same time expressing some thoughts on a subject on which,
in my old days of Benthamism, I had bestowed much study. But the
chief product of those years was the Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy. His Lectures, published in 1860 and 1861,
I had read towards the end of the latter year, with a half-formed
intention of giving an account of them in a Review, but I soon
found that this would be idle, and that justice could not be done
to the subject in less than a volume. I had then to consider
whether it would be advisable that I myself should attempt such a
performance. On consideration, there seemed to be strong reasons
for doing so. I was greatly disappointed with the Lectures. I
read them, certainly, with no prejudice against Sir W. Hamilton.
I had up to that time deferred the study of his Notes to Reid on
account of their unfinished state, but I had not neglected his
"Discussions in Philosophy;" and though I knew that his general
mode of treating the facts of mental philosophy differed from
that of which I most approved, yet his vigorous polemic against
the later Transcendentalists, and his strenuous assertion of some
important principles, especially the Relativity of human
knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with his opinions, and
made me think that genuine psychology had considerably more to
gain than to lose by his authority and reputation. His Lectures
and the Dissertations on Reid dispelled this illusion: and even
the Discussions, read by the light which these throw on them,
lost much of their value. I found that the points of apparent
agreement between his opinions and mine were more verbal than
real; that the important philosophical principles which I had
thought he recognised, were so explained away by him as to mean
little or nothing, or were continually lost sight of, and
doctrines entirely inconsistent with them were taught in nearly
every part of his philosophical writings. My estimation of him
was therefore so far altered, that instead of regarding him as
occupying a kind of intermediate position between the two rival
philosophies, holding some of the principles of both, and
supplying to both powerful weapons of attack and defence, I now
looked upon him as one of the pillars, and in this country from
his high philosophical reputation the chief pillar, of that one
of the two which seemed to me to be erroneous.
    Now, the difference between these two schools of philosophy,
that of intuition, and that of Experience and Association, is not
a mere matter of abstract speculation; it is full of practical
consequences, and lies at the foundation of all the greatest
differences of practical opinion in an age of progress. The
practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made
in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread
feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and
indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an
indispensable part of his argument to show, how those powerful
feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem
necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural
hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the
explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and
association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of
human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up
favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to
be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority
higher than that of our reason. In particular, I have long felt
that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked
distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main
indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the
greater part of those differences, whether between individuals,
races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would
be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief
hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions,
and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.
This tendency has its source in the intuitional metaphysics which
characterized the reaction of the nineteenth century against the
eighteenth, and it is a tendency so agreeable to human indolence,
as well as to conservative interests generally, that unless
attacked at the very root, it is sure to be carried to even a
greater length than is really justified by the more moderate
forms of the intuitional philosophy. That philosophy not always
in its moderate forms, had ruled the thought of Europe for the
greater part of a century. My father's Analysis of the Mind, my
own Logic, and Professor Bain's great treatise, had attempted to
re-introduce a better mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite
as much success as could be expected; but I had for some time
felt that the mere contrast of the two philosophies was not
enough, that there ought to be a hand-to-hand fight between them,
that controversial as well as expository writings were needed,
and that the time was come when such controversy would be useful.
Considering then the writings and fame of Sir W. Hamilton as the
great fortress of the intuitional philosophy in this country, a
fortress the more formidable from the imposing character, and the
in many respects great personal merits and mental endowments, of
the man, I thought it might be a real service to philosophy to
attempt a thorough examination of all his most important
doctrines, and an estimate of his general claims to eminence as a
philosopher, and I was confirmed in this resolution by observing
that in the writings of at least one, and him one of the ablest,
of Sir W. Hamilton's followers, his peculiar doctrines were made
the justification of a view of religion which I hold to be
profoundly immoral-that it is our duty to bow down in worship
before a Being whose moral attributes are affirmed to be
unknowable by us, and to be perhaps extremely different from
those which, when we are speaking of our fellow creatures, we
call by the same names.
    As I advanced in my task, the damage to Sir W. Hamilton's
reputation became greater than I at first expected, through the
almost incredible multitude of inconsistencies which showed
themselves on comparing different passages with one another. It
was my business, however, to show things exactly as they were,
and I did not flinch from it. I endeavoured always to treat the
philosopher whom I criticized with the most scrupulous fairness;
and I knew that he had abundance of disciples and admirers to
correct me if I ever unintentionally did him injustice. Many of
them accordingly have answered me, more or less elaborately. and
they have pointed out oversights and misunderstandings, though
few in number, and mostly very unimportant in substance. Such of
those as had (to my knowledge) been pointed out before the
publication of the latest edition (at present the third) have
been corrected there, and the remainder of the criticisms have
been, as far as seemed necessary, replied to. On the whole, the
book has done its work: it has shown the weak side of Sir W.
Hamilton, and has reduced his too great philosophical reputation
within more moderate bounds; and by some of its discussions, as
well as by two expository chapters, on the notions of Matter and
of Mind, it has perhaps thrown additional light on some of the
disputed questions in the domain of psychology and metaphysics.
    After the completion of the book on Hamilton, I applied
myself to a task which a variety of reasons seemed to render
specially incumbent upon me; that of giving an account, and
forming an estimate, of the doctrines of Auguste Comte. I had
contributed more than any one else to make his speculations known
in England. In consequence chiefly of what I had said of him in
my Logic, he had readers and admirers among thoughtful men on
this side of the Channel at a time when his name had not yet in
France emerged from obscurity. So unknown and unappreciated was
he at the time when my Logic was written and published, that to
criticize his weak points might well appear superfluous, while it
was a duty to give as much publicity as one could to the
important contributions he had made to philosophic thought. At
the time, however, at which I have now arrived, this state of
affairs had entirely changed. His name, at least, was known
almost universally, and the general character of his doctrines
very widely. He had taken his place in the estimation both of
friends and opponents, as one of the conspicuous figures in the
thought of the age. The better parts of his speculations had made
great progress in working their way into those minds, which, by
their previous culture and tendencies, were fitted to receive
them: under cover of those better parts those of a worse
character, greatly developed and added to in his later writings,
bad also made some way, having obtained active and enthusiastic
adherents, some of them of no inconsiderable personal merit, in
England, France, and other countries. These causes not only made
it desirable that some one should undertake the task of sifting
what is good from what is bad in M. Comte's speculations, but
seemed to impose on myself in particular a special obligation to
make the attempt. This I accordingly did in two Essays, published
in successive numbers of the Westminster Review, and reprinted in
a small volume under the title "Auguste Comte and Positivism."
    The writings which I have now mentioned, together with a
small number of papers in periodicals which I have not deemed
worth preserving, were the whole of the products of my activity
as a writer during the years from 1859 to 1865. In the early part
of the last-mentioned year, in compliance with a wish frequently
expressed to me by working men, I published cheap People's
Editions of those of my writings which seemed the most likely to
find readers among the working classes; viz, Principles of
Political Economy, Liberty, and Representative Government. This
was a considerable sacrifice of my pecuniary interest, especially
as I resigned all idea of deriving profit from the cheap
editions, and after ascertaining from my publishers the lowest
price which they thought would remunerate them on the usual terms
of an equal division of profits, I gave up my half share to
enable the price to be fixed still lower. To the credit of
Messrs. Longman they fixed, unasked, a certain number of years
after which the copyright and stereotype plates were to revert to
me, and a certain number of copies after the sale of which I
should receive half of any further profit. This number of copies
(which in the case of the Political Economy was 10,000) has for
some time been exceeded, and the People's Editions have begun to
yield me a small but unexpected pecuniary return, though very far
from an equivalent for the diminution of profit from the Library
Editions.
    In this summary of my outward life I have now arrived at the
period at which my tranquil and retired existence as a writer of
books was to be exchanged for the less congenial occupation of a
member of the House of Commons. The proposal made to me, early in
1865, by some electors of Westminster, did not present the idea
to me for the first time. It was not even the first offer I had
received, for, more than ten years previous, in consequence of my
opinions on the irish Land question, Mr Lucas and Mr Duffy, in
the name of the popular party in Ireland, offered to bring me
into Parliament for an Irish County, which they could easily have
done: but the incompatibility of a seat in Parliament with the
office I then held in the India House, precluded even
consideration of the proposal. After I had quitted the India
House, several of my friends would gladly have seen me a member
of Parliament; but there seemed no probability that the idea
would ever take any practical shape. I was convinced that no
numerous or influential portion of any electoral body, really
wished to be represented by a person of my opinions; and that one
who possessed no local connexion or popularity, and who did not
choose to stand as the mere organ of a party had small chance of
being elected anywhere unless through the expenditure of money.
Now it was, and is, my fixed conviction, that a candidate ought
not to incur one farthing of expense for undertaking a public
duty. Such of the lawful expenses of an election as have no
special reference to any particular candidate, ought to be borne
as a public charge, either by the State or by the locality. What
has to be done by the supporters of each candidate in order to
bring his claims properly before the constituency, should be done
by unpaid agency or by voluntary subscription. If members of the
electoral body, or others, are willing to subscribe money of
their own for the purpose of bringing, by lawful means, into
Parliament some one who they think would be useful there, no one
is entitled to object: but that the expense, or any part of it,
should fall on the candidate, is fundamentally wrong; because it
amounts in reality to buying his seat. Even on the most
favourable supposition as to the mode in which the money is
expended, there is a legitimate suspicion that any one who gives
money for leave to undertake a public trust, has other than
public ends to promote by it; and (a consideration of the
greatest importance) the cost of elections, when borne by the
candidates, deprives the nation of the services, as members of
Parliament, of all who cannot or will not afford to incur a heavy
expense. I do not say that, so long as there is scarcely a chance
for an independent candidate to come into Parliament without
complying with this vicious practice, it must always be morally
wrong in him to spend money, provided that no part of it is
either directly or indirectly employed in corruption. But, to
justify it, he ought to be very certain that he can be of more
use to his country as a member of Parliament than in any other
mode which is open to him; and this assurance, in my own case, I
did not feel. It was by no means clear to me that I could do more
to advance the public objects which had a claim on my exertions,
from the benches of the House of Commons, than from the simple
position of a writer. I felt, therefore, that I ought not to seek
election to Parliament, much less to expend any money in
procuring it.
    But the conditions of the question were considerably altered
when a body of electors sought me out, and spontaneously offered
to bring me forward as their candidate. If it should appear, on
explanation, that they persisted in this wish, knowing my
opinions, and accepting the only conditions on which I could
conscientiously serve, it was questionable whether this was not
one of those calls upon a member of the community by his
fellow-citizens, which he was scarcely justified in rejecting. I
therefore put their disposition to the proof by one of the
frankest explanations ever tendered, I should think, to an
electoral body by a candidate. I wrote, in reply to the offer, a
letter for publication, saying that I had no personal wish to be
a member of parliament, that I thought a candidate ought neither
to canvass nor to incur any expense, and that I could not consent
to do either. I said further, that if elected, I could not
undertake to give any of my time and labour to their local
interests. With respect to general politics, I told them without
reserve, what I thought on a number of important subjects on
which they had asked my opinion; and one of these being the
suffrage, I made known to them, among other things, my conviction
(as I was bound to do, since I intended, if elected, to act on
it), that women were entitled to representation in Parliament on
the same terms with men. It was the first time, doubtless, that
such a doctrine had ever been mentioned to English electors; and
the fact that I was elected after proposing it, gave the start to
the movement which has since become so vigorous, in favour of
women's suffrage. Nothing, at the time, appeared more unlikely
than that a candidate (if candidate I could be called) whose
professions and conduct set so completely at defiance all
ordinary notions of electioneering, should nevertheless be
elected. A well-known literary man, who was also a man of
society, was heard to say that the Almighty himself would have no
chance of being elected on such a programme, I strictly adhered
to it, neither spending money nor canvassing, nor did I take any
personal part in the election, until about a week preceding the
day of nomination, when I attended a few public meetings to state
my principles and give to any questions which the electors might
exercise their just right of putting to me for their own
guidance, answers as plain and unreserved as my Address. On one
subject only, my religious opinions, I announced from the
beginning that I would answer no questions; a determination which
appeared to be completely approved by those who attended the
meetings. My frankness on all other subjects on which I was
interrogated, evidently did me far more good than my answers,
whatever they might be, did harm. Among the proofs I received of
this, one is too remarkable not to be recorded. In the pamphlet,
"Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform," I had said, rather bluntly,
that the working classes, though differing from those of some
other countries, in being ashamed of lying, are yet generally
liars. This passage some opponent got printed in a placard, which
was handed to me at a meeting, chiefly composed of the working
classes, and I was asked whether I had written and published it.
I at once answered "I did." Scarcely were these two words out of
my mouth, when vehement applause resounded through the whole
meeting. It was evident that the working people were so
accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion from those who
sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of that, a
direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them,
instead of being offended, they concluded at once that this was a
person whom they could trust. A more striking instance never came
under my notice of what. I believe, is the experience of those
who best know the working classes, that the most essential of all
recommendations to their favour is that of complete
straightforwardness; its presence outweighs in their minds very
strong objections, while no amount of other qualities will make
amends for its apparent absence. The first working man who spoke
after the incident I have mentioned (it was Mr Odger) said, that
the working classes had no desire not to be told of their faults;
they wanted friends, not flatterers, and felt under obligation to
any one who told them anything in themselves which he sincerely
believed to require amendment. And to this the meeting heartily
responded.
    Had I been defeated in the election, I should still have had
no reason to regret the contact it had brought me into with large
bodies of my countrymen; which not only gave me much new
experience, but enabled me to scatter my political opinions
rather widely, and, by making me known in many quarters where I
had never before been heard of, increased the number of my
readers, and the presumable influence of my writings. These
latter effects were of course produced in a still greater degree,
when, as much to my surprise as to that of any one, I was
returned to Parliament by a majority of some hundreds over my
Conservative competitor.
    I was a member of the House during the three sessions of the
Parliament which passed the Reform Bill; during which time
Parliament was necessarily my main occupation, except during the
recess. I was a tolerably frequent speaker, sometimes of prepared
speeches, sometimes extemporaneously. But my choice of occasions
was not such as I should have made if my leading object had been
parliamentary influence. When I had gained the ear of the House,
which I did by a successful speech on Mr Gladstone's Reform Bill,
the idea I proceeded on was that when anything was likely to be
as well done, or sufficiently well done, by other people, there
was no necessity for me to meddle with it. As I, therefore, in
general reserved myself for work which no others were likely to
do, a great proportion of my appearances were on points on which
the bulk of the Liberal party, even the advanced portion of it,
either were of a different opinion from mine, or were
comparatively indifferent. Several of my speeches, especially one
against the motion for the abolition of capital punishment, and
another in favour of resuming the right of seizing enemies' goods
in neutral vessels, were opposed to what then was, and probably
still is, regarded as the advanced liberal opinion. My advocacy
of women's suffrage and of Personal Representation, were at the
time looked upon by many as whims of my own; but the great
progress since made by those opinions, and especially the zealous
response made from almost all parts of the kingdom to the demand
for women's suffrage, fully justified the timeliness of those
movements, and have made what was undertaken as a moral and
social duty, a personal success. Another duty which was
particularly incumbent on me as one of the Metropolitan Members,
was the attempt to obtain a Municipal Government for the
Metropolis: but on that subject the indifference of the House of
Commons was such that I found hardly any help or support within
its walls. On this subject, however, I was the organ of an active
and intelligent body of persons outside, with whom, and not with
me, the scheme originated, and who carried on all the agitation
on the subject and drew up the Bills. My part was to bring in
Bills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them
during the short time they were allowed to remain before the
House; after having taken an active part in the work of a
Committee presided over by Mr Ayrton, which sat through the
greater part of the Session of 1866, to take evidence on the
subject. The very different position in which the question now
stands (1870) may justly be attributed to the preparation which
went on during those years, and which produced but little visible
effect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong
private interests on one side, and only the public good on the
other, have a similar period of incubation to go through.
    The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament was to
do work which others were not able or not willing to do, made me
think it my duty to come to the front in defence of advanced
Liberalism on occasions when the obloquy to be encountered was
such as most of the advanced Liberals in the House, preferred not
to incur. My first vote in the House was in support of an
amendment in favour of Ireland, moved by an Irish member, and for
which only five English and Scotch votes were given, including my
own: the other four were Mr Bright, Mr McLaren, Mr T.B. Potter,
and Mr Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered(9*) was on the
bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in Ireland.
In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode of governing
Ireland, I did no more than the general opinion of England now
admits to have been just; but the anger against Fenianism was
then in all its freshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked
was looked upon as an apology for them; and I was so unfavourably
received by the House, that more than one of my friends advised
me (and my own judgment agreed with the advice) to wait, before
speaking again, for the favourable opportunity that would be
given by the first great debate on the Reform Bill. During this
silence, many flattered themselves that I had turned out a
failure, and that they should not be troubled with me any more.
Perhaps their uncomplimentary comments may, by the force of
reaction, have helped to make my speech on the Reform Bill the
success it was. My position in the House was further improved by
a speech in which I insisted on the duty of paying off the
National Debt before our coal supplies are exhausted, and by an
ironical reply to some of the Tory leaders who had quoted against
me certain passages of my writings, and called me to account for
others, especially for one in my "Considerations on
Representative Government," which said that the Conservative
party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidest party.
They gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which up
to that time had not excited any notice, but the sobriquet of
"the stupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time
afterwards. Having now no longer any apprehension of not being
listened to, I confined myself, as I have since thought too much,
to occasions on which my services seemed specially needed, and
abstained more than enough from speaking on the great party
questions. With the exception of Irish questions, and those which
concerned the working classes, a single speech on Mr Disraeli's
Reform Bill was nearly all that I contributed to the great
decisive debates of the last two of my three sessions.
    I have, however, much satisfaction in looking back to the
part I took on the two classes of subjects just mentioned. With
regard to the working classes, the chief topic of my speech on Mr
Gladstone's Reform Bill was the assertion of their claims to the
suffrage. A little later, after the resignation of Lord Russell's
ministry and the succession of a Tory Government, came the
attempt of the working classes to hold a meeting in Hyde Park,
their exclusion by the police, and the breaking down of the park
railing by the crowd. Though Mr Beales and the leaders of the
working men had retired under protest before this took place, a
scuffle ensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by
the police, and the exasperation of the working men was extreme.
They showed a determination to make another attempt at a meeting
in the Park, to which many of them would probably have come
armed; the Government made military preparations to resist the
attempt, and something very serious seemed impending. At this
crisis I really believe that I was the means of preventing much
mischief. I had in my place in Parliament taken the side of the
working men, and strongly censured the conduct of the Government.
I was invited, with several other Radical members, to a
conference with the leading members of the Council of the Reform
League; and the task fell chiefly upon myself, of persuading them
to give up the Hyde Park project, and hold their meeting
elsewhere. It was not Mr Beales and Colonel Dickson who needed
persuading; on the contrary, it was evident that these gentlemen
had already exerted their influence in the same direction, thus
far without success. It was the working men who held out, and so
bent were they on their original scheme, that I was obliged to
have recourse to les grands moyens. I told them that a proceeding
which would certainly produce a collision with the military,
could only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of
affairs had become such that a revolution was desirable, and if
they thought themselves able to accomplish one. To this argument,
after considerable discussion, they at last yielded: and I was
able to inform Mr Walpole that their intention was given up. I
shall never forget the depth of his relief or the warmth of his
expressions of gratitude. After the working men had conceded so
much to me, I felt bound to comply with their request that I
would attend and speak at their meeting at the Agricultural Hall;
the only meeting called by the Reform League which I ever
attended. I had always declined being a member of the League, on
the avowed ground that I did not agree in its programme of
manhood suffrage and the ballot: from the ballot I dissented
entirely; and I could not consent to hoist the flag of manhood
suffrage, even on the assurance that the exclusion of women was
not intended to be implied; since if one goes beyond what can be
immediately carried, and professes to take one's stand on a
principle, one should go the whole length of the principle. I
have entered thus particularly into this matter because my
conduct on this occasion gave great displeasure to the Tory and
Tory Liberal press, who have charged me ever since with having
shown myself, in the trials of public life, intemperate and
passionate. I do not know what they expected from me; but they
had reason to be thankful to me if they knew from what I had, in
all probability preserved them. And I do not believe it could
have been done, at that particular juncture, by any one else. No
other person, I believe, had at that moment the necessary
influence for restraining the working classes, except Mr
Gladstone and Mr Bright, neither of whom was available: Mr
Gladstone, for obvious reasons; Mr Bright because he was out of
town.
    When, some time later, the Tory Government brought in a bill
to prevent public meetings in the Parks, I not only spoke
strongly in opposition to it, but formed one of a number of
advanced Liberals, who, aided by the very late period of the
Session, succeeded in defeating the Bill by what is called
talking it out. It has not since been renewed.
    On Irish affairs also I felt bound to take a decided part. I
was one of the foremost in the deputation of Members of
Parliament who prevailed on Lord Derby to spare the life of the
condemned Fenian insurgent, General Burke. The Church question
was so vigorously handled by the leaders of the party, in the
session of 1868, as to require no more from me than an emphatic
adhesion: but the land question was by no means in so advanced a
position; the superstitions of landlordism had up to that time
been little challenged, especially in Parliament, and the
backward state of the question, so far as concerned the
Parliamentary mind, was evidenced by the extremely mild measure
brought in by Lord Russell's government in 1866, which
nevertheless could not be carried. On that bill I delivered one
of my most careful speeches, in which I attempted to lay down
Some of the principles of the subject, in a manner calculated
less to stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince
opponents. The engrossing subject of Parliamentary Reform
prevented either this bill, or one of a similar character brought
in by Lord Derby's Government, from being carried through. They
never got beyond the second reading. Meanwhile the signs of Irish
disaffection had become much more decided; the demand for
complete separation between the two countries had assumed a
menacing aspect, and there were few who did not feel that if
there was still any chance of reconciling Ireland to the British
connexion, it could only be by the adoption of much more thorough
reforms in the territorial and social relations of the country,
than had yet been contemplated. The time seemed to me to have
come when it would be useful to speak out my whole mind; and the
result was my pamphlet "England and Ireland," which was written
in the winter of 1867, and published shortly before the
commencement of the session of 1868. The leading features of the
pamphlet were, on the one hand, an argument to show the
undesirableness, for Ireland as well as England, of separation
between the countries, and on the other, a proposal for settling
the land question by giving to the existing tenants a permanent
tenure, at a fixed rent, to be assessed after due inquiry by the
State.
    The pamphlet was not popular, except in Ireland, as I did not
expect it to be. But, if no measure short of that which I
proposed would do full justice to Ireland, or afford a prospect
of conciliating the mass of the Irish people, the duty of
proposing it was imperative; while if, on the other hand, there
was any intermediate course which had a claim to a trial, I well
knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was
the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate
experiment. It is most improbable that a measure conceding so
much to the tenantry as Mr Gladstone's Irish Land Bill, would
have been proposed by a Government, or could have been carried
through Parliament, unless the British public had been led to
perceive that a case might be made, and perhaps a party formed,
for a measure considerably stronger. It is the character of the
British people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who
pass muster for the British people, that to induce them to
approve of any change, it is necessary that they should look upon
it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and
violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still
farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may
discharge itself. So it proved in the present instance; my
proposal was condemned, but any scheme of Irish Land reform,
short of mine, came to be thought moderate by comparison. I may
observe that the attacks made on my plan usually gave a very
incorrect idea of its nature. It was usually discussed as a
proposal that the State should buy up the land and become the
universal landlord; though in fact it only offered to each
individual landlord this as an alternative, if he liked better to
sell his estate than to retain it on the new conditions; and I
fully anticipated that most landlords would continue to prefer
the position of landowners to that of Government annuitants, and
would retain their existing relation to their tenants, often on
more indulgent terms than the full rents on which the
compensation to be given them by Government would have been
based. This and many other explanations I gave in a speech on
Ireland, in the debate on Mr Maguire's Resolution, early in the
session of 1868. A corrected report of this speech, together with
my speech on Mr Fortescue's Bill, has been published (not by me,
but with my permission) in Ireland.
    Another public duty, of a most serious kind, it was my lot to
have to perform, both in and out of Parliament, during these
years. A disturbance in Jamaica, provoked in the first instance
by injustice, and exaggerated by rage and panic into a
premeditated rebellion, had been the motive or excuse for taking
hundreds of innocent lives by military violence, or by sentence
of what were called courts-martial, continuing for weeks after
the brief disturbance had been put down; with many added
atrocities of destruction of property logging women as well as
men, and a general display of the brutal recklessness which
usually prevails when fire and sword are let loose. The
perpetrators of those deeds were defended and applauded in
England by the same kind of people who had so long upheld negro
slavery: and it seemed at first as if the British nation was
about to incur the disgrace of letting pass without even a
protest, excesses of authority as revolting as any of those for
which, when perpetrated by the instruments of other governments,
Englishmen can hardly find terms sufficient to express their
abhorrence. After a short time, however, an indignant feeling was
roused: a voluntary Association formed itself under the name of
the Jamaica Committee, to take such deliberation and action as
the case might admit of, and adhesions poured in from all parts
of the country. I was abroad at the time, but I sent in my name
to the Committee as soon as I heard of it, and took an active
part in the proceedings from the time of my return. There was
much more at stake than only justice to the Negroes, imperative
as was that consideration. The question was, whether the British
Dependencies, and eventually, perhaps, Great Britain itself, were
to be under the government of law, or of military licence;
whether the lives and persons of British subjects are at the
mercy of any two or three officers however raw and inexperienced
or reckless and brutal, whom a panic-stricken Governor, or other
functionary, may assume the right to constitute into a so-called
Court-martial. This question could only be decided by an appeal
to the tribunals; and such an appeal the Committee determined to
make. Their determination led to a change in the Chairmanship of
the Committee, as the Chairman, Mr Charles Buxton, thought it not
unjust indeed, but inexpedient, to prosecute Governor Eyre and
his principal subordinates in a criminal court: but a numerously
attended general meeting of the Association having decided this
point against him, Mr Buxton withdrew from the Committee, though
continuing to work in the cause, and I was, quite unexpectedly on
my own part, proposed and elected Chairman. It became, in
consequence, my duty to represent the Committee in the House,
sometimes by putting questions to the Government, sometimes as
the recipient of questions, more or less provocative, addressed
by individual members to myself; but especially as speaker in the
important debate originated in the session of 1866, by Mr Buxton:
and the speech I then delivered is that which I should probably
select as the best of my speeches in Parliament.(10*) For more
than two years we carried On the combat, trying every avenue
legally open to us, to the courts of criminal justice. A bench of
magistrates in one of the most Tory counties in England dismissed
our case: we were more successful before the magistrates at Bow
Street; which gave an opportunity to the Lord Chief Justice of
the Queen's Bench, Sir Alexander Cockburn, for delivering his
celebrated charge, which settled the law of the question in
favour of liberty, as far as it is in the power of a judge's
charge to settle it. There, however, our success ended, for the
Old Bailey Grand jury by throwing out our bill prevented the case
from coming to trial. It was clear that to bring English
functionaries to the bar of a criminal court for abuses of power
committed against negroes and mulattoes was not a popular
proceeding with the English middle classes. We had, however,
redeemed, so far as lay in us, the character of our country, by
showing that there was at any rate a body of persons determined
to use all the means which the law afforded to obtain justice for
the injured. We had elicited from the highest criminal judge in
the nation an authoritative declaration that the law was what we
maintained it to be; and we had given an emphatic warning to
those who might be tempted to similar guilt hereafter, that,
though they might escape the actual sentence of a criminal
tribunal, they were not safe against being put to some trouble
and expense in order to avoid it. Colonial governors and other
persons in authority, will have a considerable motive to stop
short of such extremities in future.
    As a matter of curiosity I kept some specimens of the abusive
letters, almost all of them anonymous, which I received while
these proceedings were going on. They are evidence of the
sympathy felt with the brutalities in Jamaica by the brutal part
of the population at home. They graduated from coarse jokes,
verbal and pictorial, up to threats of(11*) assassination.
    Among other matters of importance in which I took an active
part, but which excited little interest in the public, two
deserve particular mention. I joined with several other
independent Liberals in defeating an Extradition Bill introduced
at the very end of the session of 1866, and by which, though
surrender avowedly for political offences was not authorized,
political refugees, if charged by a foreign government with acts
which are necessarily incident to all attempts at insurrection,
would have been surrendered to be dealt with by the criminal
courts of the government against which they had rebelled : thus
making the British Government an accomplice in the vengeance of
foreign despotisms. The defeat of this proposal led to the
appointment of a Select Committee (in which I was included), to
examine and report on the whole subject of Extradition Treaties;
and the result was, that in the Extradition Act which passed
through Parliament after I had ceased to be a member, opportunity
is given to any one whose extradition is demanded, of being heard
before an English Court of justice to prove that the offence with
which he is charged, is really political. The cause of European
freedom has thus been saved from a serious misfortune, and our
own country from a great iniquity. The other subject to be
mentioned is the fight kept up by a body of advanced Liberals in
the session of 1868, on the Bribery Bill of Mr Disraeli's
Government, in which I took a very active part. I had taken
counsel with several of those who had applied their minds most
carefully to the details of the subject -- Mr W.D. Christie,
Serjeant Pulling, Mr Chadwick -- as well as bestowed much thought
of my own, for the purpose of framing such amendments and
additional clauses as might make the Bill really effective
against the numerous modes of corruption, direct and indirect,
which might otherwise, as there was much reason to fear, be
increased instead of diminished by the Reform Act. We also aimed
at engrafting on the Bill, measures for diminishing the
mischievous burthen of what are called the legitimate expenses of
elections. Among our many amendments, was that of Mr Fawcett for
making the returning officer's expenses a charge on the rates,
instead of on the candidates; another was the prohibition of paid
canvassers, and the limitation of paid agents to one for each
candidate; a third was the extension of the precautions and
penalties against bribery to municipal elections, which are well
known to be not only a preparatory school for bribery at
parliamentary elections, but an habitual cover for it. The
Conservative Government, however, when once they had carried the
leading provision of their Bill (for which I voted and spoke),
the transfer of the jurisdiction in elections from the House of
Commons to the Judges, made a determined resistance to all other
improvements; and after one of our most important proposals, that
of Mr Fawcett, had actually obtained a majority they summoned the
strength of their party and threw out the clause in a subsequent
stage. The Liberal party in the House was greatly dishonoured by
the conduct of many of its members in giving no help whatever to
this attempt to secure the necessary conditions of an honest
representation of the people. With their large majority in the
House they could have carried all the amendments, or better ones
if they had better to propose. But it was late in the Session;
members were eager to set about their preparations for the
impending General Election: and while some (such as Sir Robert
Anstruther) honourably remained at their post, though rival
candidates were already canvassing their constituency, a much
greater number placed their electioneering interests before their
public duty. Many Liberals also looked with indifference on
legislation against bribery, thinking that it merely diverted
public interest from the Ballot, which they consider.ed, very
mistakenly as I expect it will turn out, to be a sufficient, and
the only, remedy. From these causes our fight, though kept up
with great vigour for several nights, was wholly unsuccessful,
and the practices which we sought to render more difficult,
prevailed more widely than ever in the first General Election
held under the new electoral law.
    In the general debates on Mr Disraeli's Reform Bill, my
participation was limited to the one speech already mentioned;
but I made the Bill an occasion for bringing the two great
improvements which remain to be made in representative
government, formally before the House and the nation. One of them
was Personal, or, as it is called with equal propriety,
Proportional Representation. I brought this under the
consideration of the House, by an expository and argumentative
speech on Mr Hare's plan; and subsequently I was active in
support of the very imperfect substitute for that plan, which, in
a small number of constituencies, Parliament was induced to
adopt. This poor makeshift had scarcely any recommendation,
except that it was a partial recognition of the evil which it did
so little to remedy. As such, however, it was attacked by the
same fallacies, and required to be defended on the same
principles, as a really good measure; and its adoption in a few
parliamentary elections, as well as the subsequent introduction
of what is called the Cumulative Vote in the elections for the
London School Board, have had the good effect of converting the
equal claim of all electors to a proportional share in the
representation, from a subject of merely speculative discussion,
into a question of practical politics, much sooner than would
otherwise have been the case.
    This assertion of my opinions on Personal Representation
cannot be credited with any considerable or visible amount of
practical result. It was otherwise with the other motion which I
made in the form of an amendment to the Reform Bill, and which
was by far the most important, perhaps the only really important,
public service I performed in the capacity of a Member of
Parliament: a motion to strike out the words which were
understood to limit the electoral Franchise to males, and thereby
admitting to the suffrage all women who, as householders or
otherwise, possessed the qualification required of male electors.
For women not to make their claim to the suffrage, at the time
when the elective franchise was being largely extended, would
have been to abjure the claim altogether; and a movement on the
subject was begun in 1866, when I presented a petition for the
suffrage, signed by a considerable number of distinguished women.
But it was as yet uncertain whether the proposal would obtain
more than a few stray votes in the House: and when, after a
debate in which the speaker's on the contrary side were
conspicuous by their feebleness, the votes recorded in favour of
the motion amounted to 73 -- made up by pairs and tellers to
above 80 -- the surprise was general, and the encouragement
great: the greater, too, because one of those who voted for the
motion was Mr Bright, a fact which could only be attributed to
the impression made on him by the debate, as he had previously
made no secret of his nonconcurrence in the proposal. The time
appeared to my daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, to have come for
forming a Society for the extension of the suffrage to women. The
existence of the Society is due to my daughter's initiative; its
constitution was planned entirely by her, and she was the soul of
the movement during its first years, though delicate health and
superabundant occupation made her decline to be a member of the
Executive Committee. Many distinguished members of parliament,
professors, and others, and some of the most eminent women of
whom the country can boast, became members of the Society, a
large proportion either directly or indirectly through my
daughter's influence, she having written the greater number, and
all the best, of the letters by which adhesions was obtained,
even when those letters bore my signature. In two remarkable
instances, those of Miss Nightingale and Miss Mary Carpenter, the
reluctance those ladies had at first felt to come forward, (for
it was not on their past difference of opinion) was overcome by
appeals written by my daughter though signed by me. Associations
for the same object were formed in various local centres,
Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, and Glasgow; and
others which have done much valuable work for the cause. All the
Societies take the title of branches of the National Society for
Women's Suffrage; but each has its own governing body, and acts
in complete independence of the others.
    I believe I have mentioned all that is worth remembering of
my proceedings in the House. But their enumeration, even if
complete, would give but an inadequate idea of my occupations
during that period, and especially of the time taken up by
correspondence. For many years before my election to Parliament,
I had been continually receiving letters from strangers, mostly
addressed to me as a writer on philosophy, and either propounding
difficulties or communicating thoughts on subjects connected with
logic or political economy. In common, I suppose, with all who
are known as political economists, I was a recipient of all the
shallow theories and absurd proposals by which people are
perpetually endeavouring to show the way to universal wealth and
happiness by some artful reorganization of the currency. When
there were signs of sufficient intelligence in the writers to
make it worth while attempting to put them right, I took the
trouble to point out their errors, until the growth of my
correspondence made it necessary to dismiss such persons with
very brief answers. Many, however, of the communications I
received were more worthy of attention than these, and in some,
oversights of detail were pointed out in my writings, which I was
thus enabled to correct. Correspondence of this sort naturally
multiplied with the multiplication of the subjects on which I
wrote, especially those of a metaphysical character. But when I
became a member of parliament. I began to receive letters on
private grievances and on every imaginable subject that related
to any kind of public affairs, however remote from my knowledge
or pursuits. It was not my constituents in Westminster who laid
this burthen on me: they kept with remarkable fidelity the
understanding on which I had consented to serve. I received,
indeed, now and then an application from some ingenuous youth to
procure for him a small government appointment; but these were
few, and how simple and ignorant the writers were, was shown by
the fact that the applications came in about equally whichever
party was in power. My invariable answer was, that it was
contrary to the principles on which I was elected to ask favours
of any Government. But, on the whole, hardly any part of the
country gave me less trouble than my own constituents. The
general mass of correspondence, however, swelled into an
oppressive burthen.
    At this time, and thenceforth, a great proportion of all my
letters (including many which found their way into the
newspapers(12*)) were not written by me but by my daughter; at
first merely from her willingness to help in disposing of a mass
of letters greater than I could get through without assistance,
but afterwards because I thought the letters she wrote superior
to mine, and more so in proportion to the difficulty and
importance of the occasion. Even those which I wrote myself were
generally much improved by her, as is also the case with all the
more recent of my prepared speeches, of which, and of some of my
published writings, not a few passages, and those the most
successful, were hers.
    While I remained in Parliament my work as an author was
unavoidably limited to the recess. During that time I wrote
(besides the pamphlet on ireland, already mentioned), the Essay
on Plato, published in the Edinburgh Review, and reprinted in the
third volume of "Dissertations and Discussions;" and the Address
which, conformably to custom, I delivered to the University of
St. Andrew's, whose students had done me the honour of electing
me to the office of Rector. In this Discourse I gave expression
to many thoughts and opinions which had been accumulating in me
through life, respecting the various studies which belong to a
liberal education, their uses and influences, and the mode in
which they should be pursued to render their influences most
beneficial. The position I took up, vindicating the high
educational value alike of the old classic and the new scientific
studies, on even stronger grounds than are urged by most of their
advocates, and insisting that it is only the stupid inefficiency
of the usual teaching which makes those studies be regarded as
competitors instead of allies, was, I think, calculated, not only
to aid and stimulate the improvement which has happily commenced
in the national institutions for higher education, but to diffuse
juster ideas than we often find, even in highly educated men, on
the conditions of the highest mental cultivation.
    During this period also I commenced (and completed soon after
I had left Parliament) the performance of a duty to philosophy
and to the memory of my father, by preparing and publishing an
edition of the "Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind,"
with notes bringing up the doctrines of that admirable book to
the latest improvements in science and in speculation. This was a
joint undertaking: the psychological notes being furnished in
about equal proportions by Mr Bain and myself, while Mr Grote
supplied some valuable contributions on points in the history of
philosophy incidentally raised, and Dr. Andrew Findlater supplied
the deficiencies in the book which had been occasioned by the
imperfect philological knowledge of the time when it was written.
Having been originally published at a time when the current of
metaphysical speculation ran in a quite opposite direction to the
psychology of Experience and Association, the "Analysis" had not
obtained the amount of immediate success which it deserved,
though it had made a deep impression on many individual minds,
and had largely contributed, through those minds, to create that
more favourable atmosphere for the Association Psychology of
which we now have the benefit. Admirably adapted for a class book
of the Experience Metaphysics, it only required to be enriched,
and in some cases corrected, by the results of more recent
labours in the same school of thought, to stand, as it now does,
in company with Mr Bain's treatises, at the head of the
systematic works on Analytic psychology.
    In the autumn of 1868 the Parliament which passed the Reform
Act was dissolved, and at the new election for Westminster I was
thrown out; not to my surprise, nor, I believe, to that of my
principal supporters, though in the few days preceding the
election they had become more sanguine than before. That I should
not have been elected at all would not have required any
explanation; what excites curiosity is that I should have been
elected the first time, or, having been elected then, should have
been defeated afterwards. But the efforts made to defeat me were
far greater on the second occasion than on the first. For One
thing, the Tory Government was now struggling for existence, and
success in any contest was of more importance to them. Then, too,
all persons of Tory feelings were far more embittered against me
individually than on the previous occasion; many who had at first
been either favourable or indifferent, were vehemently opposed to
my re-election. As I had shown in my political writings that I
was aware of the weak points in democratic opinions, some
Conservatives, it seems, had not been without hopes of finding me
an opponent of democracy, as I was able to see the Conservative
side of the question, they presumed that, like them, I could not
see any other side. Yet if they had really read my writings, they
would have known that after giving full weight to all that
appeared to me well grounded in the arguments against democracy,
I unhesitatingly decided in its favour, while recommending that
it should be accompanied by such institutions as were consistent
with its principle and calculated to ward off its inconveniences:
one of the chief of these remedies being Proportional
Representation, on which scarcely any of the Conservatives gave
me any support. Some Tory expectations appear to have been
founded on the approbation I had expressed of plural voting,
under certain conditions: and it has been surmised that the
suggestion of this sort made in one of the Resolutions which Mr
Disraeli introduced into the House preparatory to his Reform Bill
(a suggestion which meeting with no favour he did not press), may
have been occasioned by what I had written on the point: but if
so, it was forgotten that I had made it an express condition that
the privilege of a plurality of votes should be annexed to
education, not to property, and even so, had approved of it only
on the supposition of universal suffrage. How utterly
inadmissible such plural voting would be under the suffrage given
by the present Reform Act, is proved, to any who could otherwise
doubt it, by the very small weight which the working classes are
found to possess in elections, even under the law which gives no
more votes to any one elector than to any other.
    While I thus was far more obnoxious to the Tory interest, and
to many Conservative Liberals than I had formerly been, the
course I pursued in Parliament had by no means been such as to
make Liberals generally at all enthusiastic in my support. It has
already been mentioned, how large a proportion of my prominent
appearances had been on questions on which I differed from most
of the Liberal party, or about which they cared little, and how
few occasions there had been on which the line I took was such as
could lead them to attach any great value to me as an organ of
their opinions. I had moreover done things which had excited, in
many minds, a personal prejudice against me. Many were offended
by what they called the persecution of Mr Eyre: and still greater
offence was taken at my sending a subscription to the election
expenses of Mr Bradlaugh. Having refused to be at any expense for
my own election, and having had all its expenses defrayed by
others, I felt under a peculiar obligation to subscribe in turn
where funds were deficient for candidates whose election my was
desirable. I accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly all the
working class candidates, and among others to Mr Bradlaugh. He
had the support of the working classes; having heard him speak, I
knew him to be a man of ability and he had proved that he was the
reverse of a demagogue, by placing himself in strong opposition
to the prevailing opinion of the democratic party on two such
important subjects as Malthusianism and Personal Representation.
Men of this sort, who, while sharing the democratic feelings of
the working classes, judged political questions for themselves,
and had courage to assert their individual convictions against
popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me, in
Parliament, and I did not think that Mr Bradlaugh's
anti-religious opinions (even though he had been intemperate in
the expression of them) ought to exclude him. In subscribing,
however, to his election, I did what would have been highly
imprudent if I had been at liberty to consider only the interests
of my own reelection; and, as might be expected, the utmost
possible use, both fair and unfair, was made of this act of mine
to stir up the electors of Westminster against me. To these
various causes, combined with an unscrupulous use of the usual
pecuniary and other influences on the side of my Tory competitor,
while none were used on my side, it is to be ascribed that I
failed at my second election after having succeeded at the first.
No sooner was the result of the election known than I received
three or four invitations to become a candidate for other
constituencies, chiefly counties; but even if success could have
been expected, and this without expense, I was not disposed to
deny myself the relief of returning to private life. I had no
cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the electors; and if
I had, the feeling would have been far outweighed by the numerous
expressions of regret which I received from all sorts of persons
and places, and in a most marked degree from those members of the
liberal party in Parliament, with whom I had been accustomed to
act.
    Since that time little has occurred which there is need to
commemorate in this place. I returned to my old pursuits and to
the enjoyment of a country life in the South of Europe,
alternating twice a year with a residence of some weeks or months
in the neighbourhood of London. I have written various articles
in periodicals (chiefly in my friend Mr Morley's Fortnightly
Review), have made a small number of speeches on public
occasions, especially at the meetings of the Women's Suffrage
Society, have published the "Subjection of Women," written some
years before, with some additions by my daughter and myself, and
have commenced the preparation of matter for future books, of
which it will be time to speak more particularly if I live to
finish them. Here, therefore, for the present, this Memoir may
close. 

NOTES:

1. In a subsequent stage of boyhood when these exercises had
ceased to be compulsory, like most youthful writers I wrote
tragedies; under the inspiration not so much of Shakespeare as of
Joanna Baillie, whose "Constantine Paleologus" in particular
appeared to me one of the most glorious human compositions. I
still think it one of the best dramas of the last two centuries.

2. The continuation of this article in the second number of the
review was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as
practice in composition in which respect it was, to me, more
useful than anything else I ever wrote) was of little or no
value.

3. Pencil note, by H.T. on MS. "not true".

4. Pencil note, on MS. "Miss Flower, H.T."

5. The steps in my mental growth for which I was indebted to here
were far from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the
subject would probably suspect. It might be supposed, for
instance, that my strong convictions on the complete equality in
all legal, political, social and domestic relations, which ought
to exist between men and women, may have been adopted or learnt
from her. This was so far from being the fact, that those
convictions were among the earliest results of the application of
my mind to political subjects, and the strength with which I held
them was, as I believe, more than anything else, the originating
cause of the interest she felt in me. What is true is, that until
I knew her, the opinion was in my mind, little more than an
abstract principle. I saw no more reason why women should be held
in legal subjection to other people, than why men should. I was
certain that their interests required fully as much protection as
those of men, and were quite as little likely to obtain it
without an equal voice in making the laws by which they are to be
bound. But that perception of the vast practical bearings of
women's diabilities which found expression in the book on the
"Subjection of Women" was acquired mainly through her teaching.
But for her rare knowledge of human nature and emprehension of
moral and social influences, though I should doubtless have held
my present opinions, I should have had a very insufficient
perception of he mode in which the consequences of the inferior
position of women intertwine themselves with all the evils of
existing society and with all the difficulties of human
improvement. I was indeed painfully conscious how much of here
best thoughts on the subject I have failed to reproduce, and how
greatly that little treatise falls short of what would have been
if she had put on paper her entire mind on this question, or had
lived to revise and improve, as she certainly would have done, my
imperfect statement of the case.

6. The only person from whom I received any direct assistance in
the preparation of the "System of Logic" was Mr Bain, since so
justly celebrated for his philosophical writings. He went
carefully through the manuscript before it was sent to press, and
enriched it with a great number of additional examples and
illustrations from science; many of which, as well as some
detached remarks of his own in confirmation of may logical views,
I inserted nearly in his own words.
    My obligations to Comte were only to his writings -- to the
part which had then been published of his "Système de Philosophie
Positive": and, as has been seen from what I have said in the
Narrative, the amount of these obligations is far less than has
sometimes been asserted. The first volume, which contains al the
fundamental doctrines of the book, was substantially complete
before I had seen Comte's treatise. I derived from him many
valuable thoughts, compicuously in the chapter on Hypotheses and
in the view taken of the logic of algebra: but it is only in the
concluding Book, on the Logic of the Moral Sciences that I owe to
him any radical improvement in my conception of the application
of logical methods. This improvement I have stated and
characterized in a former part of the present Memoir.

7. A few dedicatory lines acknowledging what the book owed to
her, were prefixed to some of the presentation copies of the
Political Economy on the first publication. Her dislike of
publicity alone prevented their insertion in the other copies of
the work.

8. The saying of this true hero, after his capture, that he was
worth more for hanging than for any other purpose, reminds one,
by its combination of wit, wisdom, and self-devotion, of Sir
Thomas More.

9. The first was in answer to Mr Lowe's reply to Mr Bright on the
Cattle Plague Bill, and was thought at the time to have helped to
get rid of a provision in the Government measure which would have
given to landholders a second indemnity, after they had already
been once indemnified for the loss of some of their cattle by the
increased selling price of the remainder.

10. Among the most active members of the Committee were Mr P.A.
Taylor, M.P., always faithful and energetic in every assertion of
the principles of liberty; Mr Goldwin Smith, Mr Frederic
Harrison, Mr Slack, Mr Chamerovzow, Mr Shaen, and Mr Chesson, the
Honorary Secretary of the Association.

11. At one time I reckoned that threates of assassination were
received at least once a week; and I remarked that threatening
letters were always espcially numerous by Tuesday's morning post.
I inferred that they wre meditated during the Sunday's leisure
and posted on the Mondays. It might be worth while to collect
evidence as to the proportions of crime committed on the
different days of the week. It may be observed however that in
England Sunday is generally used for all kinds of letter writing,
innocent as well as guilty. Helen Taylor.

12. One which deserves particular mention is a letter respecting
the Habitual Criminals Act and the functions of a police
generally, written in answer to a private application for my
opinion, but which got into the newspapers and excited some
notice. This letter which was full of original and vauable
thoughts was entirely my daughter's; the fertility and aptness
which distinguishes her practical conceptions of the adaptation
of means to ends is such I can never hope to rival.