The earliest glimpses we get of Mill in his letters shows a young man pathetically reaching out for someone to befriend him and understand. In 1829 he wrote to John Sterling, whom he knew only slightly at that time: "I am now chiefly anxious to explain to you, more clearly than I fear I did, what I meant when I spoke to you of the comparative loneliness of my probable future lot. Do not suppose me to mean that I am conscious at present of any tendency to misanthropy-although among the very various states of mind, some of them extremely painful ones, through which I have passed during the last three years, something distantly approximating to misanthropy was one. At present I believe that my sympathies with society, which were never strong, are, on the whole, stronger than they ever were. By loneliness I mean the absence of that feeling which has accompanied me through the greater part of my life, that which one fellow-traveller, or one fellow-soldier has towards another-the feeling of being engaged in the pursuit of a common object, and of mutually cheering one another on, and helping one another in an arduous undertaking. This, which after all is one of the strongest ties of individual sympathy, is at present, so far as I am concerned, suspended at least, if not entirely broken off. There is now no human being (with whom I can associate on terms of equality) who acknowledges a common object with me, or with whom I can co-operate even in any practical undertaking, without the feeling that I am only using a man, whose purposes are different, as an instrument for the furtherance of my own.' A little later (March, 1833) he tried to pour his heart to Thomas Carlyle, and to make clear his sense of the barrier that was set between himself and other people: "You wonder at 'the boundless capacity man has of loving'; boundless indeed it is in some natures, immeasurable and inexhaustible; but I also wonder, judging from myself, at the limitedness and even narrowness of that capacity in others. That seems to me the only really insuperable calamity in life-the only one which is not conquerable by the power of a strong will. It seems the eternal barrier between man and man-the natural and impassable limit both to the happiness and to the spiritual perfection of (I fear) a large majority of our race."* J. S. Mill, Letters, Vol. I. p. 2. *J. S. Mill, Letters, Vol. I. p. 37. The intimacy with Carlyle lasted for a few years, but before long the essential differences in the outlook of the two men asserted itself, and they drifted apart. With Sterling it was different. Though Sterling was away from England much of the time and Mill and he saw little of each other after the days of the Speculative Debating Society, there was a deep affection between them, and they kept up a correspondence which lasted until Sterling's death in 1844. "He was indeed," says Mill in his Autobiography, "one of the most lovable of men." And in 1842, in a letter to Archdeacon Hare, Mill speaks of Sterling's discouragement at not being able to do any writing, and then says: "It is hard for an active mind like his to reconcile itself to comparative idleness, and to what he considers uselessness, only, however, from his inability to persuade himself of the good which his society, his correspondence, and the very existence of such a man diffuses through the world. If he did but know the moral and even intellectual influence which he exercises, without writing or publishing anything, he would think it quite worth living for, even if he were never to be capable of writing again.” “ Another friendship important at this time was that with Gustave d'Eichthal. It was in the spring of 1828, the year after the close of the "mental crisis," that at a meeting of the London Debating Society Mill first met this attractive and winning protagonist of a new way of thought across the Channel. Open-minded as he was toward all new things, he became immediately interested in the gospel of the SaintSimonians. Their plans for organizing industry under leaders skillful and at the same time altruistic seemed to Mill full of possibilities. And though he had no very high opinion of the machinery of their organization, in his letters to d'Eichthal he followed the custom of the Saint-Simonians and sent extravagant messages of homage to "Pierre Enfan tin." It was through d'Eichthal that Mill heard of Auguste Comte, who had been a member of the Saint-Simonian Group, and Saint-Simon's secretary from 1818 to 1820. Mill read Comte's Traite de Politique Positive, which had appeared in 1822, and was much impressed by the SaintSimonians' theory of alternate constructive and destructive epochs in history there propounded. The Saint-Simonians believed that the universal law was the law of development. They went to some pains to prove that each age had something to contribute toward human progress. The Middle Ages, in spite of many defects, they saw to have been a constructive period. The 18th Century saw only the abuses of the system that had grown up, and tried to throw the whole thing overboard. The men of the 18th Century tried to set up as a positive guiding ideal certain negative principles such as equality and liberty, which had been the basis of their revolt. It remained for the 19th Century to find the real basis of social organization, which the Saint-Simonians thought lay in the recognition of the fact that men had different capacities, and that the governing should be done by those who had skill and experience in governing. Mill felt the Saint-Simonians were kindred spirits. For d'Eichthal especially he had a warm affection. D'Eichthal for his part bears witness to the chaleur d'ame et veritable tendresse which he found in the young philosopher." The political and economic theories of the Saint-Simonians were an important factor in making Mill realize the shortcomings of the "common doctrine of the Liberals." In his Autobiography Mill says: “It was partly by their writings that my eyes were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance as indefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as the dernier mot of social improvement. The scheme gradually unfolded by the *Correspondence Inédite, p. 1x. Saint-Simoniana, under which the labour and capital of society would be managed for the general account of the community, every individual being required to take a share of labour, either as thinker, teacher, artist, or producer, all being classed according to their work, appeared to me a far superior description of Socialism to Owen's. Their aim seemed to me desirable and rational, however their means might be inefficacious; and though I neither believed in the practicability, nor in the beneficial operation of their social machinery, I felt that the proclamation of such an ideal of human society could not but tend to give a beneficial direction to the efforts of others to bring society, as at present constituted, nearer to some ideal standard.” “ 23 He adds that he honored them most of all for their position on the question of women and the family. But there were to Mill's mind many objections to the teachings of the Saint-Simonians. He objects, among other things, to their doctrine of an organized spiritual power: “Un état dans lequel la massue du peuple, c'est-à-dire les illettrés aura pour l'autorité des savants, en morale et en politique, les mêmes sentiments de déférence et de soumission qu'elle a actuellement pour les doctes en sciences physiques." " Spirit, on the contrary, Mill claimed, is a thing which cannot be organized; it is a matter of the influence-de l'esprit sur l'esprit. 34 Gustave d'Eichthal, in his apostolic zeal, had hopes of making converts of Mill and Eyton Tooke, and starting Saint-Simonism on a triumphant career in England. But he was doomed to disappointment. It is clear from Mill's side of the correspondence that while he had a great personal liking for d'Eichthal and a great interest in the Saint-Simonians, he never would have identified himself with the SaintSimonian School. It was, after all, a sect, and he was firm in his resolve to steer clear of any kind of sectarianism. In answer to a very zealous letter from d'Eichthal written in 13 Autobiography, p. 166-167. 1830, soon after the death of Tooke, in which d'Eichthal said that he was thinking of coming to London in the hope that a conversation face to face would convert Mill to the new Christianity, Mill replies most characteristically. If he ever were to be converted to Saint-Simonism, he says, it would not be the result of a sudden and rapid conviction produced by a few days or even a few weeks of discussion, but the fruit of his own reflection and study. He has little use for the kind of argument when each person desires only to bring the other to his own way of thinking. It is only when each is willing to give as well as to take that discussion is worth while. "Aussi," he says, "je suis enclin à refuser toute controverse orale avec vous, même si vous etiez ici, nous risquerions seulement d'y voir s'alterer ou s'affaiblir nos sentiments actuels réciproques, car nous nous trouverions probablement respectivement plus intraitables que nous ne pensons, tout homme se montrant dans la discussion pire qu'il n'est en réalité; appelé à défendre subitement ses opinions, il y semble inféode plus que de raison, et il est enclin à produire des arguments autres que ceux qui ont réellement agi sur son propre esprit." " Mill seems to have felt, even if at this time he did not realize it, the inconsistency between d'Eichthal's winning personality and the sort of mechanical regimentation which was involved in the Saint-Simonian philosophy. He knew there was something wrong about it all, but he had not yet discovered just what it was. Doubtless it was partly for this reason that he refused to discuss the matter with d'Eichthal. It was not until he read the later works of Comte many years afterward, that he saw explicitly the kind of thing that the Saint-Simonian philosophy could lead to. Mill continued to keep in touch with d'Eichthal and his friends through their ups and downs during the next few years by correspondence and through the columns of "Correspondence Inédite, p. 25. |