John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

G rote died in June, 1871.
GROTE S FUNERAL. 133
Mill disliked his being buried in
the Abbey, but of course attended the funeral. He resisted
the proposal that he should be one of the pall-bearers, and gave
way only under great pressure. As he and I walked out together,
his remark was
"
In no very long time, I shall be laid in the
ground with a very
different ceremonial from that".* He seemed
to be now conscious of a break-up in his physical system.
had in the course of the next two years several prostrating attacks,
but with marvellous recoveries. His last illness, as is well known,
was due to a local endemic disease. Three days before his death,
he had walked fifteen miles on a botanical excursion. There
was evidently still a reserve of power in his constitution, which
might have tided him over several more years of useful work,
but could not carry him through a malignant infection.
The posthumous Essays on Religion do not correspond with
what we should have expected from him on that subject.
Never, so far as I know, did he give any hint of wishing or
attempting to re-construct a system of theism on a scientific^,
basis. In one sentence in the Hamilton he spoke approvingly
of the argument from Design, but laid more stress on its
persuasiveness than on its soundness. The Autobiography
represented his attitude towards Religion as pure negation, or_
nescience, just as his father s had been.
The Essay on Nature paints the world black enough, and
from that he was not likely to rise to a flattering estimate of
Nature s God. I think he should have widened his survey
considerably, before pronouncing as he does. For, although
there are good grounds for many of his statements of fact, the
case is by no means complete. By his own showing in other
places, many happy lives have been passed in the world as we
* It so happened, however, that a prayer was delivered at his own interment,
by the protestant pastor at Avignon, who thereby got himself into trouble, from
Mill s known scepticism, and had to write an exculpation in the local news
paper. Mill had made a friend of this pastor, a very intelligent and liberalminded
man.
He