John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

PROJECTED WORK ON ETHOLOGY. 79
there was anything to be got in the direction that he was
looking. He was all his life possessed of the idea that differ
ences of character, individual and national, were due to
accidents and circumstances that might possibly be, in part,
controlled ;
on this doctrine rested his chief hope in the future.
He would not allow that human beings at birth are so very
different as they afterwards turn out.
His failure with Ethology fatally interfered with the larger
project, which I have no doubt he entertained, of executing a
work on Sociology as a whole. The opinion was long afloat in
London that he had such a work in view ; but I do not think
he ever said so : it was not his way to give out what he was
engaged upon, at least before making himself sure of going
through with it. That he despaired, for the present at least, ot
making anything out of Ethology at the time I refer to, is
proved by his betaking himself soon after to the composition
of his Political Economy.
I have now disposed of all my memoranda relating to 1842
and 1843. The beginning of 1844 saw the publication of the
article on Michelet,
to which I have adverted. In a letter
dated 8th Jan., I find this upon Beneke :
"
I am reading a
German professor s book on Logic Beneke is his name
which he has sent to me after reading mine, and which had
previously been recommended to me by Austin and by Herschel
as in accordance with the spirit of my doctrines. It is so in
some degree, though far more psychological than entered into
my plans. Though I think much of his psychology unsound
for want of his having properly grasped the principle of associa
tion (he comes very close to it now and then), there is much
of it of a suggestive kind."
From the Comte letters it appears that he had another
relapse of his indisposition at this time. Comte earnestly urges
him to try a change of climate Naples or Lisbon to fortify
him for the next few years against "le
se"jour spleenique de