John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

HER CONTRIBUTIONS TO HIS WRITINGS.
169
titled,
" The Probable Future of the
Labouring Classes," which,
he says, has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest
put together. It was
"
chiefly her influence that gave the book
that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous
expositions of Political Economy that had any pretentions to be
scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds
which these previous expositions had repelled ".
" What
Again
:
was abstract and purely scientific was generally mine ;
the properly human element came from her ; in all that con
cerned the application of philosophy to the exigencies of human
society and progress, I was her pupil,
alike in boldness of
speculation and cautiousness of practical judgment".*
He avows an intensity of passionate regard that could
hardly subsist in any mind, without yielding the known conse
quences of excessive emotion. Difficult as it often is to bring
under general laws of the mind the capricious origin of strong
attachments, there is much more of law and uniformity in the
results. If one particular attachment of the mind is twenty
times as strong as the strongest of the others, and ten times as
strong as all the rest of the regards put together, the effects
may be calculated to a certainty. The minor feelings will
receive their limited share of consideration ; only, they must
never enter into rivalry with the master passion ; they may be
easily put aside altogether for a time. Mill, in writing to his
brother James, after his bereavement, : says
" When I was
happy, I never went after any one ; those that wanted me
might come to me ". After his grief had subsided, he began
to seek his friends ;
he went to their houses, and received them
*
Carlyle, when led to refer to Mrs. Taylor, used to describe her in his own
"
way. The phrase that he most usually employed was, I think, veevid" ; which
the reader may compare with the terms that he used in his supercilious mood
"
when he penned the Reminiscences". John Mill himself, in what he said to
me about her, noted specially her great power of seizing and retaining pictorial
or concrete aspects ; indicating that she had the groundwork of an imaginative
intellect.