John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

150 SUSCEPTIBILITY TO EMOTION. 1849-1872.
attention to music in his early life. His ear for articulate
cadence, elocution, and oratory, was in no wise distinguished.
His colour-sense was not inconsiderable ; I have heard him
say that, as a child, he had a very great pleasure in bright
colours. I doubt, however, whether this susceptibility in him
it did not reach the point of the
could really be called high ;
artist or picturesque poet ; if it had, his faculty
might have been submerged thereby.
for the abstract
It was enough to make a
perceptible element in his taste for scenery ; but, generally, he
seemed to care very little for coloured effects.
We need to dive into the depths of our emotional nature,
to reach the main sources of his pleasures and the springs of
his conduct. The Tender Feeling must in him have been
very considerable. He was, throughout, affectionate, genial,
kindly. After his first great physical crisis, when his activity
and ambition no longer sufficed for his support, he had recourse
to his tender susceptibilities, which had previously perhaps been
cramped and confined, although not wholly dormant. He had
not the sociable feeling in the form of large indiscriminate
outpourings, and boundless capability of fellowship. A certain
kindliness towards people in general, with a deep attachment to
a few, was his peculiar mode ; this, probably, took much less
out of him drew less upon his mental resources as a whole,
than the other form of sociability. He formed few close friend
ships, and was absorbed very early by his one great attachment.
The Tender feeling is necessarily an element in poetry,
scenery, history, and indeed Fine Art generally. It is the
beginning, but not the consummation, of our interest in man
kind the philanthropic impulse of great benefactors. Kind
ness to animals was a characteristic form in Mill, as it was in
Bentham, who also had a great fund of natural tenderness,
although wayward in manifesting it.
There is great difficulty in arriving at the precise degree of
the fundamental or elementary emotions in almost any mind,
still more in Mill, who, by training or culture, was a highly