 6 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 form the friendship which has been the honor and chief blessing of my existence, as well as a 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 acquaintancehip, his grandfather lived in the house next to my father's in Newington Green, and I had sometimes, when a boy had been invited to play in the old gentleman's garden, he was the 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 anyone, 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 the law of her nature, a necessity equal from the ardor 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 obsession 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 an early age to a most upright, brave, and honorable man of liberal opinions and good education, but without the intellectual or artistic case 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 the small circle of friends, of whom 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 as 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 organization, 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 was 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 career 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 balance which I had 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 dishonorable in conduct and character, while making the broadest distinction between mala in sei 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 in 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 skepticism, which while it has not hindered me from following out the honest exercise of my thinking faculties, to whatever conclusion 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 speculation 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 clear 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 preeminently 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 partisans 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, Monsieur 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 defenses 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 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 an 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 born local oligarchy. But the more certain the public were to go wrong on the side opposed to centralization, the greater danger was their less philosophic reformers should fall into the contrary error and overlook the mischievous 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 clamor 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 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, Robuck, Buller, Sir William Mollsworth, John and Edward Romley, 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 and 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 favor of one or two of the younger men, and in the case of Robuck 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. Brahm, 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, in 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 unfavorable 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 affected, 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 favor of new things. It would have required a great political leader, which no one is to be blamed for not being, to have affected really great things by parliamentary discussion when the nation was in this mood. My father and I 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 wigs 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 coat gouge of the wig party, with a keen and as I now think an exaggerated sense of possibilities which were open to the radicals if they made even ordinary exertion for their opinions, I labored 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 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 Fawn Blanc, who at the time was zealous in keeping up the fight for radicalism against the wig 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 a 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 Bullwar, who was just then completing his England and the English, a work at the 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 honorable acknowledgement as an appendix, in this along with the favorable, a part also of the unfavorable 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 cooperation 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 coloring, 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 in 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 and 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 opinion 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 defense of heartal linearism 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 it possible 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 believe 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 and 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 Macintosh, 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 Macintosh, 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 favorable reception he gave to Tocqueville's democracy in America. It is true, he said, and thought much more about what Tocqueville said in favor 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 ratio-sinnative, 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 criticized 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 cooperation 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. 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 throughout 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, and 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 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 revolutionise or rather create one of the great departments of human thought. Believing 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 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 center 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 philosophies of France. It is only one of his minor merits that he was the originator of all sound statementship in regard to the subject of his largest work, India. He wrote on no subject which he did not enrich with valuable thought and accepting 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. The acutely sensible of my own inferiority and 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. In 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. Carlile 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. With a conduct of the review under and in conjunction with me 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 salable, and on whose capacities in that direction I founded a good deal of hope in so much 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 honorably 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 labor gratuitously as we had done for Molesworth, but the paid contributors continued to be renumerated 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, 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 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 best I could from the details. Happily for me, Dr. Weevill, 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 labor. I had now obtained what I had been waiting for under the impulse given me by the thoughts excited by Dr. Weevill. 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 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 comp's course the philosophy positive, or rather with the two volumes of it which were all that had at the time been published. My theory of induction was substantially completed before I knew of comp'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 treaty contains. But his certainly does not. A reduction of the inductive process to strict rules, and to a scientific test such as the syllogism is for ratiosonation. Comp is always precise and profound on the method of investigation, but he does not even attempt any exact definition of the conditions of proof, and his writing 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 comp, with which to enrich my chapters in the subsequent rewriting, and his book was of essential service to me in some of the parts which still remain to be thought out. As his subsequent volume 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 comp, and but for him I might not soon, if ever, have arrived at it. I had been long and ardent admirer of comp'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 correspondents became controversial and our zeal cooled. I was the first to slacken correspondents. 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 and 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 Compte, to which I have adverted, and there was nothing in his great treaty 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. 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 the 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, Monsieur Compte lived to carry out these doctrines to their extremist consequences by planning in his last work the system de politique positive, completist system of spiritual and temporal despotism, whichever 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 Compte'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 Compte's work recognizes no religion except that of humanity, yet it leaves an irresistible conviction that any moral belief 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 and 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 benthenomism. I desired while retaining the precision of expression the definiteness of meaning the contempt of declamatory phrases and vague generalities which were so honorably 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 wigs. This attempt was from the first chimerical partly because the time was unpropitious. The reform fervor 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 there 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. Anyone 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, invade 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 honor. Instantly a number of other writers took up the tone. I believed that 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 as the almost triumphal reception which he met with on his arrival in England. I believe it to have been the word and 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 error. Its recommendations extending to the 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 advisors 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 Carlisle's French Revolution were considerably accelerated by what I wrote about it in the review. Immediately on its publication and before the common place 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 Carlisle 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 effect. 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 immediate 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 colorage. 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 colorage I attempted to characterize the European reaction against the negative philosophy of the 18th century and here if the effect only of this one paper were to be considered I might be thought to have aired by giving undue prominence to the favorable side as I had done in the case of bentham to the unfavorable. In both cases the impetus with which I had detached myself from what was untenable in the doctrines of bentham and of the 18th 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 colorage my defense 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 colorage was the last which was published during my proprietorship. In the spring of 1840 I made over the review to Mr. Hixon 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. Hixon conducted it for ten years on the plan of dividing among contributors only the net proceeds of the review giving his own labor 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 has the second volume of the dissertations and of chapter 6 part 2 recording by Vicky Rans. Section 16 autobiography of John Stuart Mill. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tony Richardson chapter 7 part 1. 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 process 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 in 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 began 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 vigor of the first conception with the superior precision and completeness resulting from prolonged thought. In my own case more over 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 grateful in the first draft to make as practical 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 connection are not expounded in a manner that suits the right and the first draft with this original vice is next to useless as a foundation for the final treatment. During the rewriting of the logic Dr. Huellwell's philosophy of the inductive sciences made its appearance. A circumstance fortunate for me as it gave me what I really 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. Huellwell as well as much matter derived from Compt were first introduced into the book in the course of the rewriting. 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 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 Watley had indeed rehabilitated the name of logic and the study of the forms, rules and fallacies of rationation and Dr. Huellwell's writings had begun to execute 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 principal school. I therefore did not expect that the book would have many readers or approvers and looked for a 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 properties of Dr. Huellwell, who I thought from observation of his conduct and other cases would probably do something to bring the book into notice, but replying in that promptly to the attack on his opinions. He did reply, but not until 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 book 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 been since given of a revival of speculation, speculation to have 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 particularly intelligible. I have never indulged the illusion that the book had made any considerable impression on philosophical opinion. The German or a 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 textbook 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 and morals, politics and religion lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the evidence of mathematics and of the cognitive 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 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 with 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 subjudice 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 there released from active concerns and temporary politics and from any literary occupation involving personal communication with contributors and others, I was unable 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 and 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 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 anybody 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 to 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 feelings 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 are 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 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 traveling 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 person 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 are now 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 in the world and more willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had begun to take place in those common opinions then became one whose convictions on so many points differed fundamentally from them. I was much more inclined than I can now prove 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 properties now understood and inheritance appeared to me as to them the Dernier moat 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 chemical and only hope 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 were repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most socialist systems are supposed to involve we yet look 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 poppers only but impartially to all when the divisions of the produce of labor instead of depending as in so great a degree it now does on the accident of birth will be made by a 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 consider 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 labor we had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectively 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 laboring masses and in the immense majority of their employers both these classes must learn by practice to labor 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 weaker 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 and 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 common wells 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 welcome with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals such as the cooperative societies which whether they succeeded or failed could not but operate as the most useful education for those who took their part in them by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good are 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 mediation 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 foundation of peasant properties on the wastelands of ireland this was during the period of famine the winter of 1846 to 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 endeavors an entire failure instead of a great operation on the wastelands and the conversion of kathies into proprietors parliament passed a poor law for maintaining them as poppers 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 immigration end of section 16 recording by tony richison