Critical Miscellanies, (Vol. 3 of 3), Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill; Essay 3: Mr Mill's AutobiographyMorley, John
Philosophy
Critical Miscellanies, (Vol. 3 of 3), Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill; Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography
Morley, John
Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873
Much will one day have to be said as to the precise value of Mr. Mill's
philosophical principles, the more or less of his triumphs as a
dialectician, his skill as a critic and an expositor. However this trial
may go, we shall at any rate be sure that with his reputation will
stand or fall the intellectual repute of a whole generation of his
countrymen. The most eminent of those who are now so fast becoming the
front line, as death mows down the veterans, all bear traces of his
influence, whether they are avowed disciples or avowed opponents. If
they did not accept his method of thinking, at least he determined the
questions which they should think about. For twenty years no one at all
open to serious intellectual impressions has left Oxford without having
undergone the influence of Mr. Mill's teaching, though it would be too
much to say that in that gray temple where they are ever burnishing new
idols, his throne is still unshaken. The professorial chairs there and
elsewhere are more and more being filled with men whose minds have been
trained in his principles. The universities only typify his influence on
the less learned part of the world. The better sort of journalists
educated themselves on his books, and even the baser sort acquired a
habit of quoting from them. He is the only writer in the world whose
treatises on highly abstract subjects have been printed during his
lifetime in editions for the people, and sold at the price of railway
novels. Foreigners from all countries read his books as attentively as
his most eager English disciples, and sought his opinion as to their own
questions with as much reverence as if he had been a native oracle. An
eminent American who came over on an official mission which brought him
into contact with most of the leading statesmen throughout Europe, said
to the present writer:--'The man who impressed me most of them all was
Stuart Mill; you placed before him the facts on which you sought his
opinion. He took them, gave you the different ways in which they might
fairly be looked at, balanced the opposing considerations, and then
handed you a final judgment in which nothing was left out. His mind
worked like a splendid piece of machinery; you supply it with raw
material, and it turns you out a perfectly finished product.' Of such a
man England has good reason to be very proud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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