John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

l6o SHORTCOMINGS OF SYMPATHIES. 1849-1872.
Although his services to the public were spread over his life,
in alternation with tracts of recreation and pure enjoyment, and
although they were, to an unusual degree, pleasurable in the
performance, yet I do not doubt that he could, if necessary,
have given still greater proofs of his disinterestedness and zeal
for humanity. He could have embraced a much more self-
denying career ; like Howard, in Bentham s felicitous eulogy,
he might have
"
lived an apostle, and died a ". martyr
I must now endeavour to point out what were the more
conspicuous shortcomings of the generous or sympathetic side
of Mill s nature. Everyone s sympathies come to a stop
somewhere ; and a character is not completely stated without
assigning the limit. I am not speaking
of the case where
antagonism is a necessary consequence of attachment ; we
must be enemies to those that make enemies of us. I allude
to cases where I believe Mill s sentiments may be fairly con
sidered as excessive and uncalled for. Had his judgment of
the circumstances been perfect, the severity might have been
right ; but he at times assumed too readily his own infallibility,
and condemned people accordingly. In the Autobiography, he
recants the harshness of his judgment upon the radical leaders
of the years following the Reform Bill ; yet he does not apolo
gize for such language as the following.
of Fonblanque :
"
I quote from the Life
In 1838 these differences [among the Radicals] appear to
have become more serious ;
ing Mill with identifying himself with the
and the
"
and we find Fonblanque reproach
"
"
Grote conclave
philosophical Radicals," and Mill, in defending
himself against the charge, repudiating the doctrines of Grote
and his coterie, as
"
persons whom I have nothing to do with,
and to whose opinions you are far more nearly allied than I
am. . . . There may be such a conclave, but I know
of it. for I have never been within the door of Grote s
nothing
house in Eccleston Street, and have been for the last few years