John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

EDITING HIS FATHER S "ANALYSIS".
Religion, he showed to considerable advantage.
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In defending
the Psychological Theory of the Belief in an External World,
he grappled with the stock arguments against Idealism. He
made least way in the Free-Will controversy ; affording, as I
think, a confirmation of the impropriety of carrying on so many
distinct questions together.
His next literary project was the editing his father s Analysts.
This was commenced in the recess of 1867, and finished in the
following year, being brought out early in 1869. He called it "a
very great relief from its extreme unlikeness to parliamentary
work, and to parliamentary semi-work, or idleness ". I had ne
cessarily a long correspondence with him on the allocation of
topics ; but each of us took our own line in regard to the
doctrines. Coincidence of view was the rule , the discrepancy
seldom went beyond the mode of statement, the chief exception
being the topic of Belief. The work contains perhaps the best
summary of his psychological opinions, although the Hamilton
shows them in the more stirring shape of polemics.
Before this work came out, his Parliamentary career was at
an end. The circumstances that led to his defeat in the election
of 1868 are detailed by himself. They included the singular
indiscretion of his allowing his subscription to Mr. Bradlaugh to
be made public before his own election day ; very unlike his
usual circumspectness. His apology is somewhat lame ; and
does not take account of the fact that he was contesting the seat
in the interest of other people and at their expense. So ener
getically did the opposition ply the weapon thus put
into their
hands, that they may have owed their success to it alone.
Although on public grounds he regretted being no longer in
Parliament, he was not sorry to resume his quiet and his leisure
for other work.
The pamphlet entitled England and Ireland, brought out in
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