The answer to the riddle is indeed plain enough;or rather there are many superabundantly obvious answers,Had Mill defended orthodox views and Coleridge been avowedly heterodox,we should no doubt have heard more of Coleridge's opium and of Mill's blameless and energetic life.But this explains little.That Coleridge was a man of genius and,moreover,of exquisitely poetical genius,and that Mill was at most a man of remarkable talent and the driest and sternest of logicians is also obvious.It is even more to the purpose that Coleridge was overflowing with kindliness,though little able to turn goodwill to much effect;whereas Mill's morality took the form chiefly of attacking the wicked.This is indicated by the saying attributed by Bowring to Bentham that Mill's sympathy for the many sprang out of his hatred of the oppressing few.30J.S.Mill very properly protested against this statement when it was quoted in the Edinburgh Review .It would obviously imply a gross misunderstanding,whether Bentham,not a good observer of men,said so or not.But it indicates the side of Mill's character which made him unattractive to contemporaries and also to posterity.He partook,says his son,31of the Stoic,the Epicurean,and the Cynic character.He was a Stoic in his personal qualities;an Epicurean so far as his theory of morals was concerned;and a Cynic in that he cared little for pleasure.He thought life a 'poor thing'after the freshness of youth had passed;and said that he had never known an old man happy unless he could live over again in the pleasures of the young.Temperance and self-restraint were therefore his favourite virtues.
He despised all 'passionate emotions';he held with Bentham that feelings by themselves deserved neither praise nor blame;he condemned a man who did harm whether the harm came from malevolence or from intellectual error.
Therefore all sentiment was objectionable,for sentiment means neglect of rules and calculations.He shrank from showing feeling with more than the usual English reserve;and showed his devotion to his children by drilling them into knowledge with uncompromising strictness,He had no feeling for the poetical or literary side of things;and regarded life,it would seem,as a series of arguments,in which people were to be constrained by logic,not persuaded by sympathy.He seems to have despised poor Mrs.Mill,and to have been unsuccessful in concealing his contempt,though in his letters he refers to her respectfully.Mill therefore was a man little likely to win the hearts of his followers,though his remarkable vigour of mind dominated their understandings.
The amiable and kindly,whose sympathies are quickly moved,gain an unfair share of our regard both in life and afterwards.We are more pleased by an ineffectual attempt to be kindly,than by real kindness bestowed ungraciously.Mill's great qualities should not be overlooked because they were hidden by a manner which seems almost deliberately repellent.He devoted himself through life to promote the truth as he saw it;to increase the scanty amounts of pleasures enjoyed by mankind;and to discharge all the duties which he owed to his neighbours.
He succeeded beyond all dispute in forcibly presenting one set of views which profoundly influenced his countrymen;and the very narrowness of his intellect enabled him to plant his blows more effectively.
NOTES:
1.The chief authority for James Mill is James Mill:a Biography ,by Alexander Bain,Emeritus Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen,London,1882.The book contains very full materials,and,if rather dry,deals with a dry subject.
2.Wallas's Francis Place ,p.70n.
3.Bain's James Mill ,p.166.
4.Gifford's real name was John Richards Green.The identity of his assumed name with that of the more famous William Gifford has led to common confusion between the two periodicals.'Peter Pindar'assaulted William Gifford under the erroneous impression tht he was editor of the second.
5.Letter in Bain's James Mill ,pp.136-40.
6.Autobiography ,p.39.
7.Bain's James Mill ,pp.97-106.Mill appears to have said something 'extravagant'about Bentham in an article upon Miranda in the Edinburgh Review for January,1809.He also got some praises of Bentham into the Annual Review of 1809(Bain,92-96).
8.See the very interesting Life of Francis Place ,by Mr Graham Wallas,1898.
9.Bain's James Mill ,p.78,and Wallas's Francis Place ,p.66.
10.Wallas's Francis Place ,p.68.
11.He 'put together'the Not Paul but Jesus at Ford Abbey in 1817,and helped to preface the Reform Catechism.Wallas's Francis Place ,p.84.
12.The article of 1811was also published separately.
13.He wrote only the first volume.Two others were added by Cuthbert Southey.
14.Lectures (Ashe,1885),pp.32,61.
15.James Mill,according to Place,wrote a 'memorable and admirable essay,"Schools for all,not schools for Churchmen only."'--Wallas's Francis Place ,99n.
16.This absurd suspicion was aroused by a quarrel about Burdett's arrest.See Wallas'Place ,p.56.
17.Mr Wallas gives an account of these schemes in chap.iv,of his Life of Place.I have also consulted Place's collections in Additional MSS .27,823.
18.Bain's James Mill ,p.162.
19.H.H.Wilson in his preface to the edition of 1840.
20.Wallas's Francis Place ,p.78.
21.Bain's James Mill ,p.435.
22.Ibid.p.433.
23.Bentham's Works ,p.498.
24.See Cannan in Economic Review ,1894.
25.See under Black in Dictionary of National Biography .
26.Autobiography ,p.101.
27.See Place's account in Additional MSS .27,823.
28.G.C.Robertson,Philosophical Remains ,p.166;and under George Grote in Dictionary of National Biography .
29.Letters communicated by Mr Graham Wallas.See Mr Wallas's Francis Place ,p.91.
30.So Place observed that Mill 'could help the mass,but could not help the individual,not even himself or his own.'--Wallas's Francis Place ,p.79.
31.Autobiography ,p.48.
