John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

DOCTRINAL ERRORS.
our mental life. He might have educated himself out of this
error, but he never did. I do not mean to say that he made
no allowances for the physical element of our being ; my con
tention is, that he did not allow what every competent physio
logist would now affirm to be the facts. I am afraid that, on
both these errors, his feelings operated in giving his mind
a bias. Whatever be the explanation, the effect was practically
injurious.
In common with his father, Sir Walter Scott, and many
others, he held that literature and philosophy should not be
resorted to as a means of livelihood ;
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that people should derive
their subsistence from some of the common vocations, and
work at the higher themes in leisure hours. In a transition
time, when a man of very original views in philosophy, or in
sociology, has little chance of being listened to, it would be a
mistake to depend for one s livelihood on writing books. The
same objection does not apply to literature. Any man whose
genius lies in style can make a living with comparative ease ;
such a man would not better his condition by serving eight
hours a-day in a counting house, and using the few remaining
hours for literary work. Much of course depends on the
occupation. Mill himself was nominally engaged six hours
a-day ; but probably never gave more than the half of that time
to his office routine. His two great works the Logic and the
Political Economy were, I may say, written during his office
hours. If he had been serving under a private master, he
would not have been allowed to give up his business-time to
extraneous work. Grote took a much better measure of the
situation of a business man with erudite tastes. He found that
while engaged in the work of the banking-house, he could not
only pursue an extensive course of reading, but also work up
the Herculean
essays on limited subjects ; yet when he began
labour of remodelling the entire History of Greece, he needed
to have his whole time at his disposal, for twelve years.