Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3

Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3), by
John Morley

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Title: Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) Essay 2: The Death of Mr
Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography
Author: John Morley
Release Date: March 23, 2007 [EBook #20887]
Language: English
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CRITICAL MISCELLANIES
BY JOHN MORLEY

VOL. III.
ESSAY 2: THE DEATH OF MR MILL ESSAY 3: MR MILL'S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE
MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904

CONTENTS
THE DEATH OF MR. MILL.
Peculiar office of the Teacher 37
Mill's influence in the universities and the press 39
His union of science with aspiration 40
And of courage with patience 42
His abstinence from society 45
Sense of the tendency of society to relapse 46
Peculiar trait of his authority 47
The writer's last day with him 48
MR MILL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The spirit of search 53
Key to Mill's type of character and its value 54
Sensibility of his intellect 56
Yet no reaction against his peculiar education 57

Quality of the Autobiography 58
One of its lessons--[Greek: memnêso apistein] 60
Mill's aversion to the spirit of sect 60
Not a hindrance to systematisation 61
Criticism united with belief 63
Practical difficulties in the union of loyalty with tolerance 64
Impressiveness of Mill's self-effacement 65
His contempt for socialistic declamation 68
Yet the social aim paramount in him 69
Illustrated in his attack on Hamilton 71
And in the Logic 72
The book on the Subjection of Women 75
The two crises of life 77
Mill did not escape the second of them 78
Influence of Wordsworth 79
Hope from reformed institutions 79
This hope replaced by efforts in a deeper vein 80
Popular opinion of such efforts 81
Irrational disparagement of Mill's hope 82
Mill's conception of happiness contrasted with his father's 84

Remarks on his withdrawal from society 88
It arose from no moral valetudinarianism 91

THE DEATH OF MR. MILL.
(May 1873.)
The tragic commonplaces of the grave sound a fuller note as we mourn
for one of the greater among the servants of humanity. A strong and
pure light is gone out, the radiance of a clear vision and a beneficent
purpose. One of those high and most worthy spirits who arise from
time to time to stir their generation with new mental impulses in the
deeper things, has perished from among us. The death of one who did
so much to impress on his contemporaries that physical law works
independently of moral law, marks with profounder emphasis the ever
ancient and ever fresh decree that there is one end to the just and the
unjust, and that the same strait tomb awaits alike the poor dead whom
nature or circumstance imprisoned in mean horizons, and those who
saw far and felt passionately and put their reason to noble uses. Yet the
fulness of our grief is softened by a certain greatness and solemnity in
the event. The teachers of men are so few, the gift of intellectual
fatherhood is so rare, it is surrounded by such singular gloriousness.
The loss of a powerful and generous statesman, or of a great master in
letters or art, touches us with many a vivid regret. The Teacher, the
man who has talents and has virtues, and yet has a further something
which is neither talent nor virtue, and which gives him the mysterious
secret of drawing men after him, leaves a deeper sense of emptiness
than this; but lamentation is at once soothed and elevated by a sense of
sacredness in the occasion. Even those whom Mr. Mill honoured with
his friendship, and who must always bear to his memory the
affectionate veneration of sons, may yet feel their pain at the thought
that they will see him no more, raised into a higher mood as they
meditate on the loftiness of his task and the steadfastness and success
with which he achieved it. If it is grievous to think that such richness of
culture, such full maturity of wisdom, such passion for truth and justice,

are now by a single stroke extinguished, at least we may find some not
unworthy solace in the thought of the splendid purpose that they have
served in keeping alive, and surrounding with new attractions, the
difficult tradition of patient and accurate thinking in union