BOOKS.
MR. JOHN STUART MILL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.* THAT this curious volume delineates, on the whole, a man marked by the most earnest devotion to human good, and the widest in- tellectual sympathies, no one who reads it with any discernment can doubt. But it is both a very melancholy book to read, and • Autobiography by John Stuart Mill. London: Longman. one full of moral paradoxes. It is very sad, in the first instance, to read the story of the over-tutored boy, constantly incurring his father's displeasure for not being able to do what by no possibility could he have done, and apparently without anyone to love. Mr. James Mill, vivacious talker, and in a narrow way powerful thinker as he was, was evidently as an educator, on his son's own showing, a hard master, anxious to reap what he had not sown, and to gather what he had not strewed, or as that sou himself puts it, expecting " effects without causes." Not that the father did not teach the child with all his might, and teach in many respects well; but then he taught the boy far too much, and expected him to learn besides it-great deal that he neither taught him nor showed him where to find. The child began Greek at three years old, read a good deal of Plato at seven, and was writing what he flattered himself was "something serious," a history of the Roman Government,—not a popular history, but a constitutional history of Rome, —by the time he was nine years old. He began logic at twelve; went through a " complete course of political economy " at thirteen, including the most intricate points of the theory of currency. He was a con- stant writer for the Westminster Review at eighteen, was editing Bentham's Theory of Evidence and writing habitual criticisms Of the Parliamentary debates at nineteen. At twenty he fell into a profound melancholy, on discovering that the only objects of life for which he lived,—the objects of social and political reformers,— would, if suddenly and completely granted, give him no happiness whatever. Such a childhood and youth, lived apparently without a single strong affection,—for his relation to his father was one of deep respect and fear, rather than love, and he tells us frankly, in describing the melancholy to which we have alluded, that if he had loved anyone well enough to confide in him, the melancholy would not have been,—and resulting at the age of eighteen in the production of what Mr. Mill himself says might, with as little extra- vagance as would ever be involved in the application of such a phrase to a human being, be called "a mere reasoning machine,"— are not pleasant subjects of contemplation, even though it be true, as Mr. Mill asserts, that the over-supply of study and under-supply of love, did not prevent his childhood from being a happy one. Nor are the other personal incidents of the autobiography of a different cast. Nothing is more remarkable than the fewness, limited char- acter, and apparently, so far as close intercourse was concerned, temporary duration, of most of Mr. Mill's friendships. The one close and intimate friendship of his life, which made up to him for the insufficiency of all others, that with the married lady who, after the death of her husband, became his wife, was one which for a long time subjected him to slanders, the pain of which his sensitive nature evidently felt very keenly. And yet he must have been aware that though in his own conduct he had kept free from all stain, his example was an exceedingly dangerous and mis- chievous one for others, who might be tempted by his moral autho- rity to follow in a track in which they would not have had the strength to tread. Add to this that his married life was very brief, only seven years and a half, being unexpectedly cut short, and that his passionate reverence for his wife's memory and genius
his own words, " a religion "—was one which, as he must have • been perfectly sensible, he could not possibly make to appear otherwise than extravagant, not to say an hallucina- tion, in the eyes of the rest of mankind, and yet that he was possessed by an irresistible yearning to attempt to embody it in all the tender and enthusiastic hyperbole of which it is so pathetic to find a man who gained his fame by his " dry-light" a master, and it is impossible not to feel that the human incidents in Mr. Mill's career are very sad. True, his short service in Parliament, when he was already advanced in years, was one to bring him much intellectual consideration and a certain amount of popularity. But even that terminated in a defeat, and was hardly successful enough to repay him for the loss of literary productiveness which those three years of practinal drudgery imposed. In spite of the evi- dent satisfaction and pride with which Mr. Mill saw that his school of philosophyihad gained rapid ground since the publication of his Logic, and that his large and liberal view of the science of political economy had made still more rapid way amongst all classes, the record of his. life which he leaves behind him is not even in its own tone, and still less in the effect produced on the reader, a bright and happy one. It is " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," —and of thought that has to do duty for much, both of feeling and of action, which usually goes to constitute the full life of a large mind.
And besides the sense of sadness 'which the human incident of the autobiography produces, the intellectual and moral story itself is full of paradox which weighs upon the heart as well as the mind. Mr. Mill war brought up by his father to believe that Christianity was false, and that even as regards natural religion there was no ground for faith. How far he retained the latter opinion,—he evidently did retain the former,—it is understood that some future work will tell us. But in the meantime, he is most anxious, to point out that religion, in what he thinks the best sense, is possible even to one who does not believe in God. That best. sense is the sense in which religion stands for an ideal conception, of a Perfect Being to which those who have such a conception "habitually refer as the guide of their conscience," an ideal, he- says, "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." Unfortunately, however, this "ideal conception. of a perfect Being" is not a power on which human nature can lean. It is merely its own best thought of itself; so that it dwindles- when the mind and heart contract, and vanishes just when there• is most need of help. This Mr. Mill himself felt at one period of his life. At the age of 20 he underwent a crisis which apparently corresponded in his own opinion to the state of mind that leads to. "a Wesleyan's conversion." We wish we could extract in full his- eloquent and impressive description of this rather thin moral. crisis. Here is his description of the first stage :— " From the winter of 1821, when first I 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 satis- faction 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 realised; 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 one even a few minutes' oblivion of it. For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and thicker. The lines in Coleiidge'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 /or 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."
It is clear that Mr. Mill felt the deep craving for a more per- manent and durable source of spiritual life than any which the most beneficent activity spent in patching up human institutions and laboriously recasting the structure of human society, could secure• him,—that he himself had a suspicion that, to use the language of a book he had been taught to make light of, his soul was thirst- ing for God, and groping after an eternal presence, in which he- lived and moved and had his being. What is strange and almost-• burlesque, if it were not so melancholy, is the mode in which this- moral crisis culminates. A few tears shed over Marmonters, Alimoires, and the fit passed away :- " 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, whioh 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, Mar- montel's Mdmoires,' 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 burden 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 Atilt, 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."
And the only permanent instruction which this experience left behind it seems to have been curiously slight. It produced a threefold moral result,—first, a grave alarm at the dan- gerously undermining capacities of his own power of moral analysis, which promised to unravel all those artificial moral webs of painful and pleasurable associations with injurious and useful actions, respectively, which his father had so laboriously woven for him during his childhood and youth ; and further, two notable practical conclusions,—one, that in order to attain happiness (which he " never wavered " in regarding as " the test of all rules of con- -duct and the end of life"), the best strategy is a kind of flank march,—to aim at something else, at some ideal end, not consciously as a means to happiness, but as an end in itself,—so, he held, may you have a better chance of securing happiness by the way, than on can by any direct pursuit of it,—and the other, that it is most -desirable to cultivate the feelings, the passive susceptibilities, as well as the reasoning and active powers, if the utilitarian life is to be made enjoyable. Surely a profound sense of the inadequacy of ordinary human success to the cravings of the human spirit was never followed by a less radical moral change. That it resulted in a new breadth of sympathy with writers like Coleridge and Wordsworth, whose fundamental modes of thought and faith Mr. Mill entirely rejected, but for whose modes of sentiment, after this period of his life, he somehow managed, not very intelligibly, to make room, is very true ; and it is also true that this gave a new largeness of tone to his writings, and gave him a real superiority in all matters of taste to the utilitarian clique to which he had belonged,—results which enor- mously widened the scope of his influence, and changed him from the mere expositor of a single school of psychology into the thoughtful critic of many different schools. But as far as we can judge, all this new breadth was gained at the cost of a certain haze which, from this time forth, spread itself over his grasp of the first principles which he still professed to hold. He did not cease to be a utili- tarian, but he ceased to distinguish between the duty of promoting your own happiness and of promoting anybody else's, and never -could make it clear where he found his moral obligation to sacri- fice the former to the latter. He still maintained that actions, and not sentiments, are the true subjects of ethical discrimina- tion ; but he discovered that there was a significance which he bad never before suspected even in sentiments and emotions of which he continued to maintain that the origin was artificial and arbitrary. He did not cease to declaim against the prejudices -engendered by the intuitional theory of philosophy, but he made it one of his peculiar distinctions as an Experience-philo- aopher, that he recommended the fostering of new preposses- sions, only distinguished from the prejudices he strove to dissipate by being, in his opinion, harmless, though quite as little based as those in ultimate or objective truth. He maintained as strongly as , ever that the character of man is formed by circumstances, but he discovered that the will can act upon circumstances, and so modify its own future capability of willing ; and though it is in his opinion circumstances which enable or induce the will thus to act upon circumstances, he thought and taught that this makes all the difference between fatalism and the doctrine of cause and effect as applied to character. After his influx of new light, he remained as strong a democrat as ever, but he ceased to believe in the self- interest principle as universally efficient to produce good govern- ment when applied to multitudes, and indeed qualified his demo- cratic theory by an intellectual aristocracy of feeling which to our minds is the essence of exclusiveness. " A person of high intel- lect," he writes, " 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 ever enter it at all." You can hardly have exclu- siveness more extreme than that, or a doctrine more strangely out of moral sympathy with the would-be universalism of the Ben- thamite theory. In fact, as it seems to us, Mr. Mill's unquestion- able breadth of philosophic treatment was gained at the coat of a certain ambiguity which fell over the root-principles of his philoso- phy,—an ambiguity by which he gained for it a more catholic re- pute than it deserved. The result of the moral crisis through which Mr. Mill passed at the age of 20 may be described briefly, in our opinion, as this,—.that it gave him tastes far in advance of his philo- sophy, foretastes in fact of a true philosophy ; and that this moral flavour of something truer and wider, served him in place of the substance of anything truer and wider, during the rest of his life.
The part of the Autobiography which we like least, though it is, on the whole, that on which we are most at one with Mr. Mill, is the section in which he reviews his short, but thoughtful Parlia- mentary career. The tone of this portion of the book is too self-important, too minutely egotistic, for the dry and abstract style in which it is told. It adds little to our knowledge of the Parliamentary struggles in which he was engaged, and nothing to our knowledge of any of the actors in them except himself. The best part of the Autobiography, except the remarkable and masterly sketch of his father, Mr. James Mill, is the account of the growth of his own philosophic creed in relation to Logic and Political Economy, but this is of course a part only intelligible to the students of his more abstract works.
On the whole, the book will be found, we think, even by Mr. Mill's most strenuous disciples, a dreary one. It shows that in spite of all Mr. Mill's genuine and generous compassion for human misery and his keen desire to alleviate it, his relation to concrete humanity was of a very confined and reserved kind,—ore brightened by few personal ties, and those few not, except in about two cases, really hearty ones. The multitude was to him an object of compass sion and of genuine beneficence, but he had no pleasure in men, no delight in actual intercourse with this strange, various, homely world of motley faults and virtues. His nature was composed of a few very fine threads, but wanted a certain strength of basis, and the general effect, though one of high and even enthusiastic disin- terestedness, is meagre and pallid. His tastes were refined, but there was a want of homeliness about his hopes. He was too strenuously didactic to be in sympathy with man, and too in- cessantly analytic to throw his burden upon God. There was something overstrained in all that was noblest in him, this excess seeming to be by way of compensation, as it were, for the number of regions of life in which he found little or nothing where other men find so much. He was strangely de- ficient in humour, which, perhaps, we ought not to regret, for had he had it, his best work would in all probability have been greatly hampered by such a gift. Unique in intellectual ardour and moral disinterestedness, of tender heart and fastidious tastes, though narrow in his range of practical sympathies, his name will long be famous as that of the most wide-minded and generous of political economists, the most disinterested of Utilitarian moralists, and the most accomplished and impartial of empirical philosophers. But as a man, there was in him a certain poverty of nature, in spite of the nobleness in him,—a monotonous joylessness, in spite of the hectic sanguineness of his theoretic creed,—a want of genial trust, which spurred on into an almost artificial zeal his ardour for philosophic reconstruction ; and these are qualities which will probably put a well-marked limit on the future pro. pagation of an influence such as few writers on such subjects have ever before attained within the period of their own life-time.
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