Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/409

 and Henry Cole. Mill contributed some remarkable essays, some of which are republished in his ‘Dissertations.’ Among them were an article upon Tocqueville's ‘Democracy in America,’ a book which greatly affected his political theories; two well-known articles upon Bentham and Coleridge; an article (in the second number, July 1835) which was one of the first to do justice to Tennyson's poetry; and another (July 1837) which gave a warm and, as he thought, a very seasonable welcome to Carlyle's ‘French Revolution.’ Mill was always anxious to help unrecognised genius. Other articles show his interest in French politics and the gradual development of his political theories, in which his old democratic zeal was tempered by a fear of the danger to individualism. His main practical purpose, however, was to stimulate the flagging energies of the ‘philosophical radicals.’ He tried to believe that they only required a leader; and he thought that such a leader might be found in Lord Durham, whose Canadian administration he warmly supported in two articles (January and December 1838). The first of these, according to Robertson (Atlantic Monthly), greatly injured the sale of the number; but Mill in his ‘Autobiography’ congratulates himself upon the effect produced upon colonial policy.

Mill's attempt to influence politics ceased with his abandonment of the review and the complete eclipse for the time of the philosophical radicals. He had again taken up his logical speculations in 1837. Whewell's ‘History of the Inductive Sciences,’ published in that year, gave him needed materials, and he succeeded in elaborating his theory of induction. In spite of his other occupations and a serious illness, which caused six months' leave of absence in 1839, he carried on the work. In the beginning of 1840 he stayed some time at Falmouth, where his favourite brother Henry had gone in consumption (he died 4 April 1840), and saw much of Sterling and the Fox family. In 1841 he finally rewrote the ‘Logic,’ and at the end of the year offered it to Murray. It was rejected by him, but accepted by J. W. Parker, who finally published it in March 1843. The book had a rapid success, beyond the expectations of its author, and was for many years the standard authority with all who took his side in the main philosophical questions. Mill, in fact, was recognised as the great leader of the empirical as opposed to what he called the intuitional school; and few men have had a more marked influence upon the rising intellect of the time. His chief opponents at the moment were Whewell, to whom he replied in a third edition, and W. G. Ward, who reviewed him at great length in the ‘British Critic.’ Though diametrically opposed upon important points, Ward and Mill received each other's criticisms with singular candour and good temper.

The later part of the ‘Logic’ shows the influence of Comte, although Mill is careful to state that his own theory of induction had been independently reached. Mill had been an early student of Comte; he had read every volume of the ‘Philosophie’ as it appeared; and from 1841 to 1846 they carried on a correspondence at first very intimate and affectionate. (The ‘Lettres d'Auguste Comte à John Stuart Mill, 1841–6,’ Paris, 1877, throw more light upon Comte's position than upon Mill's, whose letters have not been published.) Mill took part with Grote and Molesworth in supplying Comte with a sum to make up for his loss of official income in 1844. They declined, however, after a second year, to consider the subsidy. Considerable divergences of opinion had shown themselves; Mill's views of the equality of the sexes had led to a warm dispute, and he, though not so strongly as Grote, objected to Comte's doctrines as destructive of liberty. The intercourse ceased, and Mill in later editions of his ‘Logic’ softened down the high compliments which he had first paid to Comte. Comte's influence, however, upon Mill was clearly very great, especially in his general view of social development.

Mill now contemplated a book to be called ‘Ethology,’ a theory of human character as preparatory to a theory of social statics. This, however, gradually gave place to a treatise upon political economy, upon which he laboured from the autumn of 1845. He contributed some articles to the ‘Edinburgh Review’ at this time, and in the winter of 1846–7 wrote a series of leaders in the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ urging the formation of peasant-proprietorships on waste lands in Ireland. His long familiarity with political economy enabled him to compose his treatise with unusual rapidity; it was finished by the end of 1847 and published early in 1848. While expounding the old doctrines of Ricardo it indicated also the opinions which he shared with Mrs. Taylor, and which entitled them in his view to come ‘under the general designation of socialists’ (Autobiog. p. 231). This, however, must not be understood as including later implications of the word. Mill's theories, to which he gave greater prominence in later editions, are indicated in the chapter upon the ‘Probable Future of the Labouring Classes,’ which was