John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

INADEQUACY OF THE RELIGIOUS DISCUSSIONS.
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proper character, and who view the world as he viewed it. In
a purely secular scheme of life, the ideal that he holds forth
must seem greatly over-strained.
Mill was, doubtless, able to state and to give reasons for his
own view of the plan of the universe. He was also highly
qualified to discuss particular portions of the groundwork of
the prevailing creeds. I think, however, that he was too little
versed in the writings of Theologians, to attack their doctrines
with any effect. He absented himself during his whole life,
except as a mere child, from religious services. He scarcely ever
read a Theological book. He could not help knowing the
main positions of Theology from our general literature.
That, however, was scarcely enough for basing an attack
upon Christianity along the whole line. Just about the
time when the Essays on Religion appeared, Strauss s last book,
"
called The Old Faith and the New," was published in this
country. Anyone reading it would, I think, be struck with its
immense superiority to Mill s work, in all but the logic and
metaphysics. Strauss speaks like a man thoroughly at home
with his subject. He knows both sides as a life-study can
enable one to know them. Mill, even supposing him to be in
the right, would not be convincing. He may puzzle opponents,
he may compel them to change front ; still, he does not meet
their difficulties, nor take account of what they feel to be their
strength. He is not even well read in the sceptics that pre
ceded him. If he had studied the whole cycle of Hume s
argumentative treatises, so lucidly condensed by Mr. Leslie
Stephen, he might have put his case on the negative side much
better, while he would have been led to modify his constructive
Theism.
It has been said by his opponents, with some show of
plausibility, that Mill was at bottom a religious man. Setting
aside special dogmas, and looking only to the cheering influence
of religion on its most favourable side an influence that may
be exerted in a variety of ways we may call his aspirations and