John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

146 PRETENSIONS TO ORIGINALITY. 1849-1872.
that even if they were errors there might be a substratum of
truth underneath them, and that in any case the discovery of
what it was that made them plausible, would be a benefit to
truth." The parenthesis is truly remarkable. A man is to
think humbly of himself as an original thinker, provided his
originality does not extend beyond Logic, Metaphysics, and
Social ! Philosophy How many more subjects would have been
necessary to establish the claim ? One would naturally suppose
the point to be, how much did he do in these three domains ?
If he did everything that many of us are willing to give him
credit for, he was an original thinker, and had few superiors,
and not many equals. Willingness to learn is a very good
thing, and was a part
of his merits and a condition of his
success ; but it is not under all circumstances necessary to
original thinking, and certainly
would not of itself constitute
originality. Unless there be decided innate force, an over-
susceptibility to other people s views rather extinguishes than
promotes invention. Had Mill been less disposed to learn and
unlearn, he must, with his powers of mind, have been still an
original thinker, although in a somewhat different way. He
himself contributes a curious and interesting illustration of this
very point. To my mind, the best piece of work that he ever
did, was the Third Book of the Logic Induction. Now, he
tells us how fortunate he was in having finished this Book
before reading Comte. That is to say, unassisted invention
gave a better result than he would have attained by taking
Comte into partnership from the beginning.
I must still farther qualify Mill s claim to receptiveness,
by adverting again to what I consider his greatest theoretical
errors as a scientific thinker. The first is his doctrine of the
natural equality of men. On this subject he was, in my
opinion, blind to a whole region
of facts. He inherited the
mistake from his father, and could neither learn nor unlearn,
in regard to it. The other error was perhaps less to be won
dered at ; I mean the disregard of the physical conditions of