John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works: Twelve Sketches by Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison, and Other Distinguished Authors — John Shaqi
John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works: Twelve Sketches by Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison, and Other Distinguished Authors
Philosophy
John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works: Twelve Sketches by Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison, and Other Distinguished Authors
Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873; Philosophers -- Great Britain -- Biography
government for the time being. There are, lastly, the Radicals of
position, who are Radicals, as somebody said, because they are not
lords. Those whom, in contradistinction to all these, we call
Philosophical Radicals, are those who in politics observe the common
manner of philosophers; that is, who, when they are discussing means,
begin by considering the end, and, when they desire to produce
effects, think of causes. These persons became Radicals because they
saw immense practical evils existing in the government and social
condition of this country, and because the same examination which
showed them the evils showed also that the cause of those evils was
the aristocratic principle in our government,--the subjection of the
many to the control of a comparatively few, who had an interest, or
fancied they had an interest, in perpetuating those evils. These
inquirers looked still farther, and saw, that, in the present
imperfect condition of human nature, nothing better than this
self-preference was to be expected from a dominant few; that the
interests of the many were sure to be in their eyes a secondary
consideration to their own ease or emolument. Perceiving, therefore,
that we are ill-governed, and perceiving that, so long as the
aristocratic principle continued predominant in our government, we
could not expect to be otherwise, these persons became Radicals; and
the motto of their Radicalism was, Enmity to the aristocratical
principle."
The period of Mr. Mill's most intimate connection with "The London and
Westminster Review" forms a brilliant episode in the history of
journalism; and his relations, then and afterwards, with other men of
letters and political writers,--some of them as famous as Mr. Carlyle
and Coleridge, Charles Buller and Sir Henry Taylor, Sir William
Molesworth, Sir John Bowring, and Mr. Roebuck,--yield tempting
materials for even the most superficial biography; but we must pass
them by for the present. And here we shall content ourselves with
enumerating, in the order of their publication, those lengthier
writings with which he chiefly occupied his leisure during the next
quarter of a century; though that work was frequently diversified by
important contributions to "The Edinburgh" and "The Westminster
Review," "Fraser's Magazine," and other periodicals. His first great
work was "A System of Logic," the result of many years' previous
study, which appeared in 1843. That completed, he seems immediately to
have paid chief attention to politico-economical questions. In 1844
appeared "Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy,"
which were followed, in 1848, by the "Principles of Political
Economy." After that there was a pause of ten years, though the works
that were issued during the next six years show that he had not been
idle during the interval. In 1857 were published two volumes of the
"Dissertations and Discussions," consisting solely of printed
articles, the famous essay "On Liberty," and the "Thoughts on
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