The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 76, February, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 76, February, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
In the first place, he accepts the science as such, accepts it cordially
and almost with enthusiasm,--in fact, has a degree of faith in its
completeness and of confidence in its uses, greater, perhaps, than our
own final thought will justify; for the reader will already have
perceived that we incline in some measure to the opposition, with
Carlyle, Ruskin, and others. Proceeding upon this basis, Mr. Mill
expounds the orthodox theories with that definiteness of thought, with
that precision of statement, and that calmness and breadth of survey,
which never fail to characterize his literary labor. Any one who
assumes, and wishes to study the science, will find in this writer a
guide through its intricacies, whom it were hardly an exaggeration to
name as perfect. Always sound-hearted, always clear, candid, and
logical, always maintaining a certain judicial superiority, he is a
thinker in whose company one likes to go on his mental travels, and
whose thought one will be inclined to trust rather too much than too
little. In the second place, Mr. Mill discerns the limitations of the
science more clearly, and acknowledges them more frankly, than, to the
extent of our somewhat narrow conversance with such writers, has ever
been done before by any one who regarded it with equal affection and
reposed in its theories a like faith. This, too, is thoroughly
characteristic of him. He is one of the sanest and sincerest of men.
Thirdly, his inspiring and generative purpose is to lift the science
into serviceable relation to the broad interests of man. Here we come to
the real soul of the book. He accepts its customary limits chiefly that
he may transcend them. He treats of wealth with a philosophical and
cordial perception of its uses; but beyond and above this he is thinking
of man, always of man,--and of man not merely as an eater and drinker,
but as an intelligence and a candidate for moral or personal upbuilding.
A reader would regard the work with a dull eye, who should miss this
commanding feature. Sometimes by special discussions, as in his defence
of peasant-properties in land,--sometimes only by an aroma pervading his
pages, or bypassing expressions,--and always by the general ordering and
culminating tendency of his thought,--one reads this perpetual question,
the true and final question of all politics and economies:--How shall we
secure the greatest number of intelligent and worthy men and women?
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