whilst the romance of his personal life is seducing him to adopt most extravagant delusions. The co-operation of man with woman has never been more finely described than in Mill's own statement of the ideal marriage in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them-so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development.' Be it noted that this picture is in the very spirit, nay, in the actual words, with which Comte has drawn the ideal marriage. This ideal is at once the gem of Mill's book on Women-and its refutation. It is not, as he fancies, 'the dream of an enthusiast.' It is an ideal which is often, even in our own day, attained in perfection; and which they who have been blessed in such attainment well know to be the normal and natural type to which the relations of the two sexes steadily tend to conform, even, to a certain extent, in the relations of family, friendship, and association, beyond and outside of the marriage union. The true function of men and of women is to be the complement each of the other. The effort to assimilate them is a step towards barbarism.

This is no place to deal with the great works of Mill's earlier life -the Logic and the Political Economy. They are still standard works which every student of these sciences is bound to master; they have exercised a really dominant influence over the thoughts of the thinking world; and they are doubtless destined to colour the minds of many students for some time to come. It is true that their authority has been rapidly waning since Mill's death; and they are, perhaps, as much undervalued now as they once were unduly extolled as manuals of final and absolute truth. Forty years ago these works were the text-books of a large and influential school of students, especially at Oxford: and, as is the unhappy fate of text-books, they were regarded by the youthful philosopher as infallible revelation. This, of course, they are not; nor is any one of them the summary of a coherent and complete system of thought. In the Political Economy especially we find two incompatible schemes of thought; and the first and the second volumes of the Logic are not wholly consistent throughout. The truth is that Mill, for all his apparent proof armour of dry logic, was continually moved by what has been called 'the logic of feeling.' He was excessively sensitive and indeed impressionable; and was often carried away by new ideas and intense feelings. In the course of his career he passed through the tremendous grinding of Bentham and James Mill's cast-iron machine, and ultimately ended in social utopias and sentimental ideals. It was said of the great Condorcet that he was a volcano covered with snow. And Mill had something of that temperament-without, a method of severe logic, within, intense sympathy and aspirations after new ideals. Both of

these may be traced in most of his writings, in antinomies that he failed to harmonise, of which he is obviously unconscious himself.

This is especially marked in the Political Economy, which went through three modifications, as has been explained by Professor Ingram, who has admirably described both its weakness and its strength. It has been, as he says, the source from which most of our contemporaries have derived their knowledge of the science, And it still remains the most important English text-book of the older school. It marks an epoch. For, if it cannot be said to be the introduction to the new methods with which our generation approaches economic problems, it undoubtedly closes the canon of the older methods. For in its final form, and still more in connection with Mill's later economic doctrines, it makes admissions and encourages ideals of a social future which knock the ground from under the feet of the old orthodox school of abstract dogmas and unlimited Competition. Of this tendency Mill himself was quite aware, and he admitted that he had imbibed it in the school of St. Simon and Comte. But, if the absence of any perfectly coherent scheme is a defect in the Political Economy, the fact that it combines so much of sound reasoning on economics with a serious attempt to expand plutonomy into sociology, makes it the most valuable general treatise which our language in this century has produced.

The Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy is so full of acuteness, of interest, and of pregnant argument as to make one regret that Mill's chief metaphysical work should have been cast in a controversial form. It would have been far better had he stated his own metaphysical position in a systematic body of doctrine. He has not altogether satisfied such thinkers of his own school as Professor Bain, G. H. Lewes, and Herbert Spencer. Few metaphysicians, alas! ever satisfy any of their fellow philosophers altogether. But although there is much in this most interesting criticism of Hamilton that has not won general assent or even a very important following, the volume as a whole contains so many characteristic and memorable lines of thought, and has so much that is at once subtle, and rich with sterling good sense, that it is especially valuable in this age of Intuitional Reaction and in the welter of half-hearted hypotheses in which we are told to-day that true philosophy consists.

With the work on Auguste Comte and Positivism I shall not deal, for it has been treated so exhaustively by Dr. Bridges in his admirable reply, and I have in other places dealt with it at such length that I have nothing further to add. I associate myself entirely with the whole of Dr. Bridges's essay. He has amply shown how very large and fundamental are the points of agreement between the two, and how deeply Mill had assimilated the philosophical, ethical, social, and religious ideas of Comte. Mr. Leslie Stephen states it truly when he says, 'Comte's influence upon Mill was clearly

very great, especially in his general view of social development.' It has been remarked by Professor Bain and by Professor Ingram that Mill had been influenced by Comte far more than he was himself disposed to believe. Readers of Bain's Life of Mill and of Mill's own Autobiography will observe how early, how intimate, how profound was the effect of Comte's work upon the mind of Mill. The grand difference—whereon they eventually parted company—was that Mill was (in theory) an Individualist, whilst Comte was (philosophically speaking) a Socialist. To Comte Synthesis was the great aim: to Mill it was Independence. Both aimed at combining Liberty and Duty. But Mill would put Liberty first: Comte gave the prerogative place to Duty.

In the supreme point of religious aspiration there is essential agreement. It is clear from a concurrence of testimony that Mill looked forward to what in his last considerable piece he describes as 'that real, though purely human religion, which sometimes calls itself the Religion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty.' In his last interview with John Morley he expressed the same thought. The three posthumous Essays on Religion develop and expound it. Written at intervals of some twenty years, they are not quite consistent, and to Bain and Morley they present certain difficulties hard to reconcile with each other and with their knowledge of the writer. The last essay on Theism admits, in a loose and sentimental way, a certain concurrent and purely hypothetical Theism as likely to aid and colour the Religion of Duty. This Comte himself certainly did not contemplate, and all Christians and most Theists would reject it with scorn. But Mill's religion was not after Comte's model, though it virtually amounted to the same result. Fairly considered, the three posthumous Essays on Religion do not vary more than the development of a single mind over twenty years may explain. They combine to surrender all forms of belief in the Supernatural, in Revelation, or Christianity, and they practically close with a definite acceptance of the Religion of Humanity, as in some form or other the permanent religion of the Future.

With Mill's political activity and his writings on politics we are not now concerned. They belong to his own generation, not to ours. And, however rich with light and leading to the movements which they founded or inspired, their effect was in no sense either so great or so permanent as that of his books. His whole conduct in public was that of a courageous, conscientious, and noble-minded citizen, who gave his countrymen a rare example of how to play that most perilous of all parts-the philosopher as ruler. Whether we agree or not with all his aims, his bearing was always a combination of patience, justice, a lofty morality, and unflinching courage,

In summing-up the peculiar powers of Mill and his special services to English thought, it would seem that his work marks a certain

transition or combination between two very different movements, and also the return to the fusion between French and English ideas. Hume, Gibbon, Priestley, Godwin, and Bentham, with the societies around them, had saturated Englishmen with the philosophical and political ideas of France. Scott, Coleridge, and Carlyle saturated them with German romanticism and philosophy. The influence of Mill again was almost wholly French, and to a very small degree German. In spite of the formal reasoning of his method, and the laborious precision of his form, he can hardly claim the highest rank as an original, or systematic, thinker. He is neither so original nor so systematic as Bentham or Spencer. And nearly all his work shows evidence of competing currents which are far from completely harmonised. His social philosophy is made up of Bentham and Comte, his Economics of Plutonomy tempered by Socialism, his Metaphysics are based, either by agreement or antagonism, on Sir W. Hamilton. His Liberty is deeply coloured by the memory of his father, and the Subjection of Women is an echo of his romantic devotion to his wife.

Yet as one turns over the roll of Mill's labours in philosophy, in metaphysics, in ethic, in economics, in sociology, in politics, in religion, it is difficult to believe but that such solid achievement will have a permanent place in English thought, although it may never regain its original vogue. In any case the name of Mill must stand as the most important name in English philosophy between Bentham and Spencer. But, to the diminishing band of those who knew him, it will be his nobility of nature which dwells deepest in their memory, rather than his sagacity of mind. And those who did not know him should read in his Autobiography the modest yet resolute presentment of a life of indefatigable industry, conscientious effort, and beautiful ideals. The sensitiveness to social improvement and the passionate nature of his own affections, which led him so to exaggerate the gifts of his own dear ones, and to plunge into such social revolutions, not seldom overpowered his science and involved him in inconsistencies, little to be expected from the external form of logical and patient induction. The inconsistencies and sophisms will be forgotten, as his great services to thought and his sympathetic trust in humanity are more and more remembered and prized.

FREDERIC HARRISON.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH

CENTURY

No. CCXXXVI-OCTOBER 1896

WHY RUSSIA DISTRUSTS ENGLAND

THE visit of the Emperor of Russia to the Queen coincides with a momentous crisis in the affairs of Europe, and above all in the relations of the countries over which the two monarchs reign. England and Russia seem to be standing at the parting of the ways,' and to have before them the choice either of a permanent friendship, with all its attendant blessings, or of a lasting estrangement and hostility, accompanied by perils the unspeakable gravity of which cannot be exaggerated. It is natural in these circumstances that all who wish well to their own country, and who are not inspired by any feeling of deadly hostility to Russia, should be asking themselves whether something cannot be done to bring about a change for the better in the relations of the two States. Their anxiety to see such a change effected is increased by their knowledge of the fact that a good understanding between Great Britain and Russia would mean the termination of the orgies of devilish cruelty in the dominions of the Sultan. There is apparently no other way in which the occupant of the Yildiz Kiosk can be reached and curbed. We have therefore a double motive for wishing to come to terms with Russia, the motive of an enlightened self-interest and the motive of common humanity.

The Czar visits the Queen as a friend and ally, closely connected by marriage with the royal family of this country. In this character he has received a welcome of the genuine warmth of which he can make no complaint. Yet it is impossible to forget that every effort has been made, not only by the Russian press but by the journals of France and Germany, to convince us that the nation over which the Czar rules is our enemy, and that under no circumstances will

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