Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 | Page 8

the practical record
of the formation of an eminent thinker's mental habits and the
succession of his mental attitudes. The formation of such mental habits
is not a romance, but the most arduous of real concerns. If we are led
up to none of the enkindled summits of the soul, and plunged into none
of its abysses, that is no reason why we should fail to be struck by the
pale flame of strenuous self-possession, or touched by the
ingenuousness and simplicity of the speaker's accents. A generation
continually excited by narratives, as sterile as vehement, of storm and
stress and spiritual shipwreck, might do well, if it knew the things that
pertained to its peace, to ponder this unvarnished history--the history of
a man who, though he was not one of the picturesque victims of the
wasteful torments of an uneasy spiritual self-consciousness, yet
laboured so patiently after the gifts of intellectual strength, and did so
much permanently to widen the judgments of the world.
If Mr. Mill's Autobiography has no literary grandeur, nor artistic
variety, it has the rarer merit of presenting for our contemplation a
character that was infested by none of the smaller passions, and warped
by none of the more unintelligent attitudes of the human mind. We
have to remember that it is exactly these, the smaller passions on the
one hand, and slovenliness of intelligence on the other, which are even
worse agencies in spoiling the worth of life and the advance of society
than the more imposing vices either of thought or sentiment. Many
have told the tale of a life of much external eventfulness. There is a
rarer instructiveness in the quiet career of one whose life was an
incessant education, a persistent strengthening of the mental habit of
'never accepting half-solutions of difficulties as complete; never
abandoning a puzzle, but again and again returning to it until it was
cleared up; never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remain

unexplored, because they did not appear important; never thinking that
I perfectly understood any part of a subject until I understood the
whole' (p. 123). It is true that this mental habit is not so singular in
itself, for it is the common and indispensable merit of every truly
scientific thinker. Mr. Mill's distinction lay in the deliberate intention
and the systematic patience with which he brought it to the
consideration of moral and religious and social subjects. In this region
hitherto, for reasons that are not difficult to seek, the empire of
prejudice and passion has been so much stronger, so much harder to
resist, than in the field of physical science.
Sect is so ready to succeed sect, and school comes after school, with
constant replacement of one sort of orthodoxy by another sort, until
even the principle of relativity becomes the base of a set of absolute
and final dogmas, and the very doctrine of uncertainty itself becomes
fixed in a kind of authoritative nihilism. It is, therefore, a signal gain
that we now have a new type, with the old wise device, [Greek:
memnêso apistein]--be sure that you distrust. Distrust your own bias;
distrust your supposed knowledge; constantly try, prove, fortify your
firmest convictions. And all this, throughout the whole domain where
the intelligence rules. It was characteristic of a man of this type that he
should have been seized by that memorable passage in Condorcet's Life
of Turgot to which Mr. Mill refers (p. 114), and which every man with
an active interest in serious affairs should bind about his neck and write
on the tablets of his heart.
'Turgot,' says his wise biographer, 'always looked upon anything like a
sect as mischievous.... From the moment that a sect comes into
existence, all the individuals composing it become answerable for the
faults and errors of each one of them. The obligation to remain united
leads them to suppress or dissemble all truths that might wound
anybody whose adhesion is useful to the sect. They are forced to
establish in some form a body of doctrine, and the opinions which
make a part of it, being adopted without inquiry, become in due time
pure prejudices. Friendship stops with the individuals; but the hatred
and envy that any of them may arouse extends to the whole sect. If this
sect be formed by the most enlightened men of the nation, if the

defence of truths of the greatest importance to the common happiness
be the object of its zeal, the mischief is still worse. Everything true or
useful which they propose is rejected without examination. Abuses and
errors of every kind always have for their defenders that herd of
presumptuous and mediocre mortals, who are the bitterest enemies of
all celebrity and renown. Scarcely is a truth made clear, before