John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

man must have become her temple."
DEFECTIVE GRAMMAR. 175
" He
lived to see almost
all the great principles which he had advocated not merely re
cognised, but a commencement made in carrying them into
"It
practice."
is not the uncontrolled ascendancy of popular
power, but of "
any power that is to be dreaded." We can only
know a substance through its qualities, but also, we can only know
qualities as inhering in a substance. Substance and attribute are
correlative, and can only be thought together : the knowledge of
each, therefore, is relative to the other ; but need not be, and
indeed is not, relative to us. For we know attributes as they
are in themselves, and our knowledge of them is only relative
inasmuch as attributes have only a relative existence. It is
relative knowledge in a sense not contradictory to absolute.
It is an absolute knowledge, though of things which only exist
in a necessary relation to another thing called a substance."
" And in these days of discussion, and generally awakened in
terest in improvement, what formerly was the work of centuries,
"
often requires only years." Men, as well as women, do not
need political rights in order that they may govern, but in order
that they may not be misgoverned."
This should be
"
Men,
as well as women, need political rights, not in order that they
may govern, &c." The sentence where he describes his early
upbringing as regards religion, cannot be construed on any
"
known rules of grammar. I am thus one of the very few
examples, in this country, of one who has not thrown off religious
re-construction of this on
belief, but never had it." The
grammatical principles is likely
to become one of the stock
exercises in our manuals of English Composition.
Critically examined, his style is wanting in delicate attention
to the placing of qualifying words generally. He had appa
rently never thought of this matter farther than to satisfy himself
that his sentences were intelligible.
Another peculiarity of grammar tending to make his style
not unfrequently heavy, and sometimes a little obscure, was
the excess of relatives, and especially of the heavy relatives