Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 | Page 3

satisfied the ingenuous moral ardour which is instinctive
in the best natures, until the dust of daily life dulls or extinguishes it,
and at the same time he satisfied the rationalistic qualities, which are
not less marked in the youthful temperament of those who by and by do
the work of the world. This mixture of intellectual gravity with a
passionate love of improvement in all the aims and instruments of life,
made many intelligences alive who would otherwise have slumbered,
or sunk either into a dry pedantry on the one hand, or a windy,
mischievous philanthropy on the other. He showed himself so wholly
free from the vulgarity of the sage. He could hope for the future
without taking his eye from the realities of the present. He recognised
the social destination of knowledge, and kept the elevation of the great
art of social existence ever before him, as the ultimate end of all
speculative activity.
Another side of this rare combination was his union of courage with
patience, of firm nonconformity with silent conformity. Compliance is
always a question of degree, depending on time, circumstance, and
subject. Mr. Mill hit the exact mean, equally distant from timorous
caution and self-indulgent violence. He was unrivalled in the difficult
art of conciliating as much support as was possible and alienating as
little sympathy as possible, for novel and extremely unpopular opinions.
He was not one of those who strive to spread new faiths by brilliant
swordplay with buttoned foils, and he was not one of those who run
amuck among the idols of the tribe and the market-place and the theatre.
He knew how to kindle the energy of all who were likely to be
persuaded by his reasoning, without stimulating in a corresponding
degree the energy of persons whose convictions he attacked. Thus he
husbanded the strength of truth, and avoided wasteful friction. Probably
no English writer that ever lived has done so much as Mr. Mill to cut at
the very root of the theological spirit, yet there is only one passage in
the writings published during his lifetime--I mean a well-known
passage in the Liberty--which could give any offence to the most
devout person. His conformity, one need hardly say, never went beyond
the negative degree, nor ever passed beyond the conformity of silence.

That guilty and grievously common pusillanimity which leads men to
make or act hypocritical professions, always moved his deepest
abhorrence. And he did not fear publicly to testify his interest in the
return of an atheist to parliament.
His courage was not of the spurious kinds arising from anger, or
ignorance of the peril, or levity, or a reckless confidence. These are all
very easy. His distinction was that he knew all the danger to himself,
was anxious to save pain to others, was buoyed up by no rash hope that
the world was to be permanently bettered at a stroke, and yet for all this
he knew how to present an undaunted front to a majority. The only fear
he ever knew was fear lest a premature or excessive utterance should
harm a good cause. He had measured the prejudices of men, and his
desire to arouse this obstructive force in the least degree compatible
with effective advocacy of any improvement, set the single limit to his
intrepidity. Prejudices were to him like physical predispositions, with
which you have to make your account. He knew, too, that they are
often bound up with the most valuable elements in character and life,
and hence he feared that violent surgery which in eradicating a false
opinion fatally bruises at the same time a true and wholesome feeling
that may cling to it. The patience which with some men is an instinct,
and with others a fair name for indifference, was with him an
acquisition of reason and conscience.
The value of this wise and virtuous mixture of boldness with tolerance,
of courageous speech with courageous reserve, has been enormous.
Along with his direct pleas for freedom of thought and freedom of
speech, it has been the chief source of that liberty of expressing
unpopular opinions in this country without social persecution, which is
now so nearly complete, that he himself was at last astonished by it.
The manner of his dialectic, firm and vigorous as the dialectic was in
matter, has gradually introduced mitigating elements into the
atmosphere of opinion. Partly, no doubt, the singular tolerance of free
discussion which now prevails in England--I do not mean that it is at all
perfect--arises from the prevalent scepticism, from indifference, and
from the influence of some of the more high-minded of the clergy. But
Mr. Mill's steadfast abstinence from drawing wholesale indictments

against persons or classes whose opinions he controverted, his generous
candour, his scrupulous respect for