John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works. Коллектив авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ thirty years, acquitting himself with great ability, and gradually rising to the most responsible position that could be there held by a subordinate.

      But, though he was thus early started in life as a city clerk, his self-training and his education by his father were by no means abandoned. The ancient and modern languages, as well as the various branches of philosophy and philosophical thought in which he was afterwards to attain such eminence, were studied by him in the early mornings, under the guidance of his father, before going down to pass his days in the India Office. During the summer evenings, and on such holidays as he could get, he began those pedestrian exploits for which he afterwards became famous, and in which his main pleasure appears to have consisted in collecting plants and flowers in aid of the botanical studies that were his favorite pastime, and something more than a pastime, all through his life. His first printed writings are said to have been on botany, in the shape of some articles contributed to a scientific journal while he was still in his teens, and it is probable, that, could they now be detected, we should find in other periodicals traces of his work, at nearly if not quite as early a period in other lines of study. That he worked early and with wonderful ability in at least one very deep line, appears from the fact that while he was still only a lad, Jeremy Bentham intrusted to him the preparation for the press, and the supplementary annotation, of his "Rationale of Judicial Evidence." That work, for which he was highly commended by its author, published in 1827, contains the first publicly acknowledged literary work of John Stuart Mill.

      While he was producing that result of laborious study in a special and intricate subject, his education in all sorts of other ways was continued. In evidence of the versatility of his pursuits, the veteran author of a short and ungenerous memoir that was published in "The Times" of May the 10th contributes one interesting note. "It is within our personal knowledge," he says, "that he was an extraordinary youth when, in 1824, he took the lead at the London Debating Club in one of the most remarkable collections of 'spirits of the age' that ever congregated for intellectual gladiatorship, he being by two or three years the junior of the clique. The rivalry was rather in knowledge and reasoning than in eloquence, mere declamation was discouraged; and subjects of paramount importance were conscientiously thought out." In evidence of his more general studies, we may here repeat a few sentences from an account, by an intimate friend of both these great men, of the life of Mr. Grote, which was published in our columns two years ago. "About this time a small society was formed for readings in philosophical subjects. The meetings took place at Mr. Grote's house in Threadneedle Street, on certain days from half past eight till ten in the morning, at which hour the members (all in official employment) had to repair to their respective avocations. The members were Grote, John Mill, Roebuck, William Ellice, William Henry Prescott, two brothers Whitmore, and George John Graham. The mentor of their studies was the elder Mr. Mill. The meetings were continued for two or three years. The readings embraced a small manual of logic, by Du Trieu, recommended by Mr. Mill, and reprinted for the purpose, Whately's Logic, Hobbes's Logic, and Hartley on Man, in Priestley's edition. The manner of proceeding was thorough. Each paragraph, on being read, was commented on by every one in turn, discussed and rediscussed, to the point of total exhaustion. In 1828 the meetings ceased; but they were resumed in 1830, upon Mill's 'Analysis of the Mind,' which was gone over in the same manner." These philosophical studies were not only of extreme advantage in strengthening and developing the merits of Mr. Mill and his friends, nearly all of whom were considerably older than he was, they also served to unite the friends in close and lasting intimacy of the most refined and elevating sort. Mr. Grote, his senior by twelve years, was perhaps the most intimate, as he was certainly the ablest, of all the friends whom Mr. Mill thus acquired.

      Many of these friends were contributors to the original "Westminster Review," which was started by Bentham in 1824. Bentham himself and the elder Mill were its chief writers at first; and in 1828, if not sooner, the younger Mill joined the number. In that year he reviewed Whately's Logic; and it is probable that in the ensuing year he contributed numerous other articles. His first literary exploit, however, which he cared to reproduce in his "Dissertations and Discussions" was an article that appeared in "The Jurist," in 1833, entitled "Corporation and Church Property." That essay, in some respects, curiously anticipated the Irish Church legislation of nearly forty years later. In the same year he published, in "The Monthly Repository," a remarkably able and quite a different production, – "Poetry and its Varieties," showing that in the department of belles-lettres he could write with nearly as much vigor and originality as in the philosophical and political departments of thought to which, ostensibly, he was especially devoted. Shortly after that he embarked in a bolder literary venture. Differences having arisen concerning "The Westminster Review," a new quarterly journal – "The London Review" – was begun by Sir William Molesworth, with Mr. Mill for editor, in 1835. "The London" was next year amalgamated with "The Westminster," and then the nominal if not the actual editorship passed into the hands of Mr. John Robertson. Mr. Mill continued, however, to be one of its most constant and able contributors until the Review passed into other hands in 1840. He aided much to make and maintain its reputation as the leading organ of bold thought on religious and social as well as political matters. Besides such remarkable essays as those on Civilization, on Armand Carrel, on Alfred de Vigny, on Bentham, and on Coleridge, which, with others, have been republished in his collection of minor writings, he contributed many of great importance. One on Mr. Tennyson, which was published in 1835, is especially noteworthy. Others referred more especially to the politics of the day. From one, which appeared in 1837, reviewing Albany Fonblanque's "England under Seven Administrations," and speaking generally in high terms of the politics of "The Examiner," we may extract a few sentences which define very clearly the political ground taken by Mr. Mill, Mr. Fonblanque, and those who had then come to be called Philosophical Radicals. "There are divers schools of Radicals," said Mr. Mill. "There are the historical Radicals, who demand popular institutions as the inheritance of Englishmen, transmitted to us from the Saxons or the barons of Runnymede. There are the metaphysical Radicals, who hold the principles of democracy, not as means to good government, but as corollaries from some unreal abstraction, – from 'natural liberty' or 'natural rights.' There are the radicals of occasion and circumstance, who are radicals because they disapprove the measures of the government for the time being. There are, lastly, the Radicals of position, who are Radicals, as somebody said, because they are not lords. Those whom, in contradistinction to all these, we call Philosophical Radicals, are those who in politics observe the common manner of philosophers; that is, who, when they are discussing means, begin by considering the end, and, when they desire to produce effects, think of causes. These persons became Radicals because they saw immense practical evils existing in the government and social condition of this country, and because the same examination which showed them the evils showed also that the cause of those evils was the aristocratic principle in our government, – the subjection of the many to the control of a comparatively few, who had an interest, or fancied they had an interest, in perpetuating those evils. These inquirers looked still farther, and saw, that, in the present imperfect condition of human nature, nothing better than this self-preference was to be expected from a dominant few; that the interests of the many were sure to be in their eyes a secondary consideration to their own ease or emolument. Perceiving, therefore, that we are ill-governed, and perceiving that, so long as the aristocratic principle continued predominant in our government, we could not expect to be otherwise, these persons became Radicals; and the motto of their Radicalism was, Enmity to the aristocratical principle."

      The period of Mr. Mill's most intimate connection with "The London and Westminster Review" forms a brilliant episode in the history of journalism; and his relations, then and afterwards, with other men of letters and political writers, – some of them as famous as Mr. Carlyle and Coleridge, Charles Buller and Sir Henry Taylor, Sir William Molesworth, Sir John Bowring, and Mr. Roebuck, – yield tempting materials for even the most superficial biography; but we must pass them by for the present. And here we shall content ourselves with enumerating, in the order of their publication, those lengthier writings with which he chiefly occupied his leisure during the next quarter of a century; though that work was frequently diversified by important contributions to "The Edinburgh" and "The Westminster Review," "Fraser's Magazine," and other periodicals. His first great work was "A System of Logic," the result of many years' previous study, which appeared in 1843. That completed, he СКАЧАТЬ