John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

TREATMENT OF OPPONENTS IN CONTROVERSY. 157
with irritating controversialists is exactly stated in the preface
to his Discussions, thus
"
Only a small number of these papers are controversial, and
in but two [the Sedgwick and Whewell articles] am I aware of
anything like asperity
of tone. In both these cases some
degree of it was justifiable, as I was defending maligned doc
trines or individuals, against unmerited onslaughts by persons
who, on the evidence afforded by themselves, were in no
respect entitled to sit in judgment on them : and the same
misrepresentations have been and still are so incessantly
reiterated by a crowd of writers, that emphatic protests against
them are as needful now as when the papers in question were
first written. My adversaries, too, were men not themselves
remarkable for mild treatment of opponents, and quite capable
of holding their own in any form of reviewing or pamphleteer
ing polemics. I believe that I have in no case fought with
other than fair weapons, and any strong expressions which I
have used were extorted from me by my subject, not prompted
by the smallest feeling of personal ill-will towards my anta
gonists."
We must emphatically claim for him the merit of being,
throughout his whole life, a seeker for truth. To be found in
error was no affront to his amour propre. He was not afraid
to encounter an able opponent ; simply because to change an
opinion, under the force of new facts or reasonings, was not only
not repugnant, it was welcome. His opinions were in marked
as his father s had been. He
opposition to his worldly interests,
did not publicly avow his dissent from the orthodoxy of the
country ; but it was well enough known in a very wide private
circle, and could be inferred from his published writings. He had
long determined to throw off the mask entirely, when the time
should be ripe for it. He intended, he said, to expend all the
reputation he got by his books in upholding unpopular opinions;
and was prevented from an earlier avowal of these, solely by
the circumstance that the silent course of opinion was serving