JOHN STUART MILL
Autobiography of J. S. Mill. (Columbia 'University Press.
12s. lid.) Autobiography of J. S. Mill. (World's Clagiiies. 2s.).
BY many people the autobiography of John Stuart Mill is considered a dry, uninteresting book, the natural product of a mind that had been warped and dehumanized by an extraordinary education. But it might be retorted that this is the natural attitude of minds that have not been " warped and dehumanized," that is to say, intensively cultivated and disciplined for a definite end : the strengthening of the reason- ing faculties. It is true that the book is entirely different from most other examples of this class of literature in that it is the history of the progress of a mind, not a narration of physical events and adventures ; the relation of the birth, and life, and death of theories, not a story, usual or unusual, of ordinary human contacts. "Moving accidents by flood and field " we are not given ; but surely the conflict of a fine spirit with the ideas, the truths and fallacies of his time must always be as important to civilized beings as the struggles of lives on a less exalted plane.
Such an autobiography as this, we may say, is the exact opposite to such a book as the Memoirs of Casanova ; and though there is little doubt that to the average mortal the history of a Casanova will be more interesting than that of a John Stuart Mill, it is indisputable which life was the more
important to the human race. He held as high as any man the lamp of reason, and it burned the more brightly because he lived." The lamp of reason is at least as valuable as the lamp of love, and not nearly so often lit. And if the use of our reason is the be-all and the end-all of our existence, if the evolution of mind is, as we pretend it is, the last triumph of the life-force, it is pertinent to inquire whether it would not be better for mankind if a few more children were given an educa- tion on similar lines to that of this man of reason.
It is not suggested that every mind would stand the strain of such a fierce education as that of Mill's ; but it is not impossible that a vast improvement in the general mentality would soon be effected if our methods of education were more like those on which he was brought up. How invaluable it would be if, as Mill was, most of us from the time we were children were made to give a resume of every book we read, of every lesson we were supposed to have learnt—if we were constantly trained to cultivate precision of thought, and to abhor vagueness and inaccuracy in anything—if we were made to detect the fallacies in a specious argument, rather than to stutter forth our own, or somebody else's ideas in refutation. It is terrible to think what would happen to our most popular orators and writers were such a reformation to occur. But they need not tremble yet awhile. Common sense, we know, is always esoteric, and the age of reason is still far away. " Man," as Oscar Wilde remarks somewhere, " may be defined as a rational animal who always becomes ill-tempered when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."
Yet a great and continual increase in the cultivation of the mental faculties of modern peoples seems to be the chief means of solving the problem of a civilization that is rapidly getting out of the control of its makers. For however great a civilization becomes, and however long it lasts, it is certain that the men who are born into it do not in any way reach to that point of civilization .by hereditary incorporation. Men still remain savages beneath their refinement ; and in an education such as that Mill received we seem to have the necessary technique which will make us capable of creating a real civilization. Unless, as Mill remarks, " we- learn to labour and combine for geneious, or at all events, for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones," it is possible that the power we are now able to wield over the forces of nature will destroy us.
The ideas and ideals, then, of a thinker such as J. S. Mill still cannot fail to interest all who desire the progress of humanity to the earthly paradise that the resources of science seem capable of making for us. Besides, the man himself is
interesting ; his personality is a rare and beautiful one. Georg Brandes, in his essay, tells us that it is needful to look back to the most sublime philosophic characters of antiquity, to Marcus Aurelius and his peers, if peers he has, to find a parallel to Mill." Shining through the dry, unemotional, but flexible and clarified style of his autobiography, we can easily discern a kind, humane, very admirable character. Essentially truthful, modest, and hardworking, with scarcely a trace of pedantry, and with a mind open to the last to the influx of new ideas, we can find that little harm was done either to his body or to his mind by the abnormal education to which he was subjected.
His education made him, perhaps, unsociable, though this complaint can be directed against most thoughtful people. " General society," as Mill truly says, " as now carried on in England, is so insipid an affair, even to those who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason other than the pleasure it affords." But it certainly made him reasonable to a very high degree, and though a purely reasonable being is far from being suggested as an ideal, a little more reason in this world of ours would not be a dangerous thing. Mill's theories are now outmoded ; it is his attitude to life that will always deserve to be imitated. And if the educational system which now obtains paid a little less attention to the playing fields of Eton, and a little more attention to the country of the mind, it is possible that our all-too-human trick of exchanging false opinions for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result, might be eradicated.
The Columbia University Press edition of the autobiography, which is very well printed and bound, publishes it " for the first time without alterations and omissions from the original manuscript." The World's Classics edition is simply a reprint of the ordinary edition first published by Helen Taylor, but it contains, in addition, an appendix of five hitherto unpub- lished speeches.
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