John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

66 THE LOGIC READY FOR PRESS. 1841-1848.
Parker, by whom it was eagerly accepted.*
I do not remember
the date of Parker s acceptance, but the book had not begun to
go to press in the summer months ; the printing actually took
place in the following winter. One of the first results of our
conversations was, that he gave me the manuscript to peruse.
During my stay I read and discussed with him the whole of it.
The impression made upon me by the work was, as may be-
supposed, very profound. I knew pretty well the works that
could be ranked as its precursors in Inductive Logic, but the
difference between it and them was obviously vast. The general
impression at first overpowered my critical faculties ; and it was
some time before I could begin to pick holes. I remember,
among the first of my criticisms, remarking on the Chapter on
"
Things denoted by Names," as not :
being very intelligible
I had also a difficulty in seeing its place in the scheme, although
I did not press this objection. The result was that he revised
the chapter, and introduced the subordinate headings, which
very much lightened the burden of its natural abstruseness.
The main defect of the work, however, was in the Experi
mental Examples.
I soon saw, and he felt as much as I did,
tHat these were too few and not unfrequently incorrect. It was
on this point that I was able to render the greatest service.
Circumstances had made me tolerably familiar with the Experi
mental Physics, Chemistry and Physiology of that day, and I
set to work to gather examples from all available sources.
Liebig s books on the application of Chemistry had then just
appeared, and contained many new and striking facts and
reasonings, which we endeavoured to turn to account ; although
at the present day some of those inductions of his have lost
* So great a work can sustain even a little anecdote. Parker, in intimating
his willingness to publish the book, sent the opinion of his referee, in the writer s
own hand, withholding the name.
" He forgot," said Mill,
"
that I had been
an Editor, and knew the handwriting of nearly every literary man of the day."
The referee was Dr. W. Cooke Taylor, who afterwards was one of the
reviewers of the book,