John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

SYMPATHETIC SIDE. I(-c
Louis Courier, whose witty turns he often quoted with gusto.
He was charmed with George Sand, as a matter of course ; and
the rhetoric of Victor Hugo was not
strong for him. Yet his
doctrinal leanings came out even with the French romancists.
I can remember going with him to Bailliere s shop in Regent
Street, after the publication of the Political Economy, to direct
copies to be sent to Eugene Sue and George Sand ;
his reason
being, that their novels were impregnated with social theories ;
and these he partly sympathised with, and partly desired to
rectify.
We cannot proceed farther without including the Sympathetic
element in character, which should be viewed apart from mere
emotion; it being so easily confounded with tender feeling.
There is in every one a certain strength of the sympathetic
disposition, and a certain limited number of channels wherein
it flows. What actually comes to the surface is a result of the
conflict between the natural force of sympathy (a hypothetical
quantity) and the purely egotistic impulses. Now there is no
doubt that Mill had a highly sympathetic nature, but it had
very decided limits. It must have operated
at once as a
restraint on the growth of egotism, a quality very little pro
nounced in his character. Placed early in life in an occupation
which soon gave him comparative opulence, he was rendered
content as far as regarded means, and thus removed from the
struggle for subsistence. He had made up his mind that his
writings would not bring him money, and for a time not even
fame ; so that he was more than satisfied with his success as an
author. He was absolutely without any feeling of rivalry, or
jealousy of other men s success. His originality and fecundity
of ideas would not have exempted him so completely from the
dread of being anticipated in his discoveries, or baulked of his
credit, had he not possessed a fund of generosity of character,
for which sympathy is another name. He poured himself out
in conversation, and his ideas were caught up and used, with