John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

8o REVIEWS OF LOGIC. 1841-1848.
Londres ".
" What
is the opinion, I do not say ol your
doctors, whom you have little faith in, but of those of your
"
friends who are biologists ?
I passed three months in London in the summer of 1844,
and saw him frequently as before. I have no special recollec
tions of his work this summer. In the autumn he took his
long-deferred holiday, and was absent two months. He came
back quite recruited, and in the course of the winter wrote his
admirable article on "The Claims of Labour," which appeared
in the Edinburgh Review in the following spring.*
I had several letters from him in the winter of 1844-5, but
they say little about himself. He remarks of the review of his
Logic in the Eclectic Review, that the reviewer differs from him
on the Syllogism which he understands, and agrees with him
on the rest of the book without seeming to understand it. He
announces with satisfaction, as a most important conquest foi
Comte, the appearance of Littre s papers in the National
newspaper. This, however, was immediately followed by
Comte s renewed and final exclusion from the Polytechnic
Examinership ; for which one resource was suggested to start
a Positive Review, a scheme that bulks largely in the corres
pondence for some months, and receives from Mill a qualified
support. In March, 1845, he writes to me,
" Have you seen
Ward s book, The Ideal, &c. ? It is a remarkable book in
every way, and not the least so because it quotes and puffs me
in every chapter, and Comte occasionally, though with deep
lamentations over our irreligion." The Comte correspondence
shows that he had written to Comte informing him of Mr.
Ward s allusions. Comte is very much flattered, and thinks
the compliments deserved, because of the justice he had
rendered to Catholicism (p. 323).
The summer of 1845 was marked by an interesting incident.
*
See, in the Napier Correspondence, his letters in proposing this as the
subject of an article. It is a perfect lay sermon on the text "The age of
chivalry is gone".