John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

156 FORMS OF GENEROSITY. 1849-18/2.
or without acknowledgment ;
but he never disturbed himself
one way or other. Of this part of his character, I can speak
absolutely, and not by a figure of speech, under which we may
turn a part into a whole. In other virtues, he had his limits,
but in this he had none.
What was the extent of his generosity in money gifts and
assistance, I cannot tell. It may have been considerable, but
would never have been known from himself; the Comte
correspondence tells us what he was prepared to do for Comte,
at the worst conceivable moment for his own circumstances.
But cases are known where he came to the relief of authors in
their difficulties with publishers. I have heard him say
generally that he considered it a very good way of helping a
young author, to offer to bear the risk of the publisher s loss, in
the first instance. Mr. Herbert Spencer mentions an offer of
this kind made to him, at a time when he was on the eve of
suspending the publication in numbers of his great serial work.
He did something of the same kind for me, when Parker
wished to delay publishing my volume The Emotions and the
Will. On condition of immediate publication, he offered a
guarantee against loss, which had the effect without being called
into play.
Another point of conduct where his merits were absolute,
had reference to fidelity in engagements, punctuality, and
thorough reliableness, when he pledged his word. He never,
to my knowledge, failed in any matter where people counted
on him. I remember his having an important communication
to make, by a given day, to the Women s Suffrage Committee.
To obviate the possibility of miscarriage, he despatched a dupli
cate by a different channel.
Continuing our criticism of the generous or altruistic side of
Mill s nature, we may single out his treatment of opponents
in his life-long controversial warfare. There are very few cases
indeed, where he failed to put forward the whole strength of
the arguments that he was contending against ;
and his manner