John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

MILL DEPRESSED IN MIND AND BODY. 77
The same year was memorable for the American Repudia
tion, in which Mill was heavily involved. He had invested, I
was told, a thousand pounds of his own money, and several
thousands of his father s money which he had in trust for the
family, and which he would have to make good. The blow
completely shook him for the time. From whatever cause, or
union of causes, his bodily strength was prostrated to such a
degree that, before I left London that autumn, he was unequal
to his usual walk home from the India House, and took the
omnibus before he went far.
upon
The disaster must have preyed
him for a year or more. He alludes to his state in the
Comte letters, in which he describes his depression as both
physical and moral. It appears that in a letter to Comte of
the 1 5th Nov., he gave assurances of his being much better.
So, in writing to me on the 3rd Oct., he says,
"
I am quite well
and strong, and now walk the whole way to and from Kensing
ton without the self-indulgence of omnifo ". But on the 5th
Dec. he
better ".
"
says, I have not been very well, but am a little
He was now in the middle of the very heavy winter s
work of getting the Logic through the press. There is no more
heard of his health till the following June, in which he wrote
to Comte in a very depressed tone. I remember, either in that
or in the previous summer, his confessing to me that he was in
a low state. I naturally urged that he had a long continuance
of very heavy work. He replied hastily,
man was ever the worse for work," or something
"
I do not believe any
to that effect.
I listened in mute astonishment ; being quite ignorant that
there were other circumstances present besides his intellectual
strain. In writing to Comte, who, unlike him, believed in the bad
consequences of prolonged study, he said his doctors advised
him to rest his brain, but as they knew so very little, he
preferred to abide by his own feelings, which taught him that
work was the only thing to counteract melancholy. Comte,
however, urged
that a
"
true positive therapeutics
"
involved
rest and diversion ; and Mill believed in regular holiday tours.