John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

84 REVIEW OF GUIZOT. 1841-1848.
ment; next to the shock of the "Bentham" and "Coleridge"
articles ; and to Mill s consequent making himself at home
with Maurice, Sterling, and Carlyle, with whom Grote never
could have the smallest sympathy.
The first opinion held by both that I found occasion to con
trovert, in those early conversations, was the Helvetius doctrine
of the natural equality of human beings in regard of capacity.
I believe I induced Grote at last to relax very considerably
on the point ; but Mill never accommodated his views, as I
thought, to the facts. With all his wide knowledge of the
human constitution and of human beings, this region of obser
vation must have been to him an utter blank.
This summer (1845) produced the article on Guizot, the
last of his series on the French Historians (apart from Comte).
It seems to have been a great success, even in the point of
view of the old Edinburgh Review connexion, to which it was
often an effort to accommodate himself. Jeffrey (Napier Corres
pondence, p. 492) is unusually elated with it; "a very remarkable
paper,"
"
passages worthy of "
Macaulay," the traces of a
and discursive intellect He did not then know the
".
vigorous
author : when made aware of the fact, he adds,
"
Though I
have long thought highly of his powers as a reasoner, I scarcely
gave him credit for such large and sound views of realities and
practical
results." The reader will remember that the most
prominent topic is the Feudal System.
- We are now at the commencement of the Political Economy,
which dates from the autumn of this year. The failure of the
Ethology as a portal to a complete Sociology left the way
clear for this other project, at a time when he had still energy
for great things. Indoctrinated as he was from infancy in the
subject, and having written articles on it and discussed it, both
in private and in the Political Economy Club,
experts of the time,
with all the
it seemed to offer a fine field for his
expository powers. Add to which, he found that he could attach