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Lecture fear, that he had achieved success by just that kind of appeal to emotion or to moral rhetoric which would have excited derision among the philosophic Radicals of his youth.

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1

This tendency to address himself to the instinctive feelings of his readers is well illustrated by the one passage in the grave Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy which gained the attention and the sympathy of the general public. "I will call," he wrote, "no being good, who is not "what I mean when I apply that epithet to my "fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go." These expressions excited the enthusiastic approval of thousands of young men who in 1865 revered Mill as their philosopher and guide. They elicited the sympathy of teachers so much opposed to utilitarianism as Maurice and James Martineau, but are we sure that James Mill might not have read his son's defiance of an unmoral deity with very dubious approval? Is it certain that he might not, with Mansel, have been amazed "at this extraordinary outburst of rhetoric" ? 2

With Mill's theology we need not concern ourselves except to note that the Three Essays on Religion are marked by the same transition from one school of thought or feeling to another which is traceable in his other writings. More to our purpose is the gradual change discoverable in his economical and social opinions. He built his economical views upon the foundations of Ricardo

1 Examination, p. 129.

2 English Utilitarians, iii. p. 430.

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and Malthus, but Malthusian principles appeared to Lecture him not as a barrier to progress, but as showing the conditions by which progress could be achieved. "If "he appears to the modern socialist as a follower of Ricardo, he would have been regarded by Ricardo's 'disciples as a socialist."1 Mill, it appears, says the same writer," was [in the latter part of his life] well "on the way to State Socialism."2 "In [Mill's] case, writes Henry Sidgwick, whose profound knowledge and absolute impartiality cannot be questioned, "we "have the remarkable phenomenon that the author of "the book which became, for nearly a generation, by "far the most popular and influential text-book of "Political Economy in England, was actually-at any rate when he revised the third and later 66 editions completely Socialistic in his ideal of "ultimate social improvement. 'I look forward,' "he tells us, in his Autobiography, 'to a time when "the rule that they who do not work shall not eat "will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially

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to all; and when the division of the produce of "labour, instead of depending, in so great a degree as "it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of "justice.' Having this ideal, he 'regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as merely provisional, and welcomed with the greatest pleasure

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1 John Mill, Dict. of Nat. Biog. xxxvii. p. 398.

2 English Utilitarians, iii. p. 230. A dictum has been attributed to John Bright that the concession by Mill that under certain circumstances protection might be a benefit to a country, has done more harm than the whole of Mill's Political Economy had done good. The remark, whether really made by Bright or not, is itself a recognition of Mill's tendency to qualify by concessions the rigidity of the economic doctrine professed by his early teachers.

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"and interest all Socialistic experiments by select "individuals.' In short, the study planted by Adam "Smith and watered by Ricardo had, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, imbibed a full measure of the spirit of Saint-Simon and Owen,"and that in England, the home of what the Germans 'call 'Manchesterthum.'

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"I do not mean to suggest that those who learnt "Political Economy from Mill's book during this period went so far as their teacher in the adoption "of Socialistic aims. This, no doubt, was far from 'being the case. Indeed-if I may judge from my own experience—I should say that we were as much surprised as the 'general reader' to learn from "Mill's Autobiography that our master, the author "of the much-admired treatise On Liberty,' had "been all the while looking forward to a time when "the division of the produce of labour should be "made by concert.'" 1

Note, too, that while Mill remains a utilitarian to the end of his life, utilitarianism itself undergoes in his hands a sort of transformation. The principle of utility, or the greatest-happiness principle, which was taken to be a maxim of self-interest, becomes a precept of self-sacrifice, and the doctrine which teaches that every man must of necessity pursue his own happiness is made to lead to the conclusion that a good man of heroic mould will be willing to serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own.2 Whether this conclusion can be justly

1 Sidgwick, Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses, pp. 241, 242. Compare particularly L. Stephen, English Utilitarians, iii. pp. 2242 Utilitarianism, p. 23.

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drawn from utilitarian premises may be left for the Lecture discussion of moralists. Thus much is certain, that the principle of utility, as expounded by Mill, is somewhat difficult to grasp, and is a very different thing from the simple and absolutely comprehensible notion that every man is by his own nature impelled to pursue his own happiness, and that the intelligent pursuit by each man of his well-understood interest will inevitably secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number. One may well wonder whether Bentham would have recognised his own doctrine in the exposition of it provided by the most eminent and faithful of his disciples.

Whether in this instance, and in others, Mill really succeeded in the attempt to reconcile principles, each of which he thought contained half the truth, may be doubtful. To some even of his admirers it may seem that he affected rather a juxtaposition or combination than a fusion or reconciliation of apparently opposed convictions. But however this may be, it is clear that John Mill was a teacher created for, and assured of a welcome in, an age of transition. The lucidity of his style, which may sometimes surpass the clearness of his thought, and the matchless skill in the arrangement of arguments, which occasionally disguises both from himself and from his readers a weakness in the links of his reasoning, his patent honesty, and his zeal for truth, constituted the intellectual foundation of his influence over the youth of 1860-1870. But other qualities of a different order enhanced his authority. His susceptibility to every form of generous emotion, combined, as it almost must be, with intense desire for, and appreciation of

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Lecture sympathy, made an author known to most Englishmen only by his writings something like the personal friend of his readers. His immediate influence is a thing of the past, but for the purpose of these Lectures it possesses a peculiar importance. The changes or fluctuations in Mill's own convictions, bearing as they do in many points upon legislative opinion, are at once the sign, and were in England, to a great extent, the cause, of the transition from the individualism of 1830-1865 to the collectivism of 1900. His teaching specially affected the men who were just entering on public life towards 1870. It prepared them at any rate to accept, if not to welcome, the collectivism which from that time onwards has gained increasing strength.

II. As to the dependence of legislative opinion on the general tendencies of English thought.

In considering the manner in which legislative opinion has, especially between 1830 and 1900, been affected by the general movement of English or rather of European thought, a student should divert his attention from many eddies or cross-currents of opinion which, interesting though they be, are of minor consequence, and fix his mind resolutely upon those leading features of modern thought which, just because they are easily recognised, seem be obvious and commonplace, but are in reality the governing characteristics of a particular age. Among these traits he will certainly note the increasing freedom of discussion and the disintegration of beliefs, that increasing importance given to the emotional side of human nature which has been