be held to express the opinions 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 defence of Hartleianism 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 impossible 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 believed 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 in 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 Mackintosh_, 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 Mackintosh,
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 favourable reception he gave to
Tocqueville's _Democracy in America_. It is true, he said and thought
much more about what Tocqueville said in favour 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 ratiocinative--gave me great encouragement. He also
approved of an article which I published in the first number following