the Globe. But there was little more that he could learn from them, The case was different, however, with another French philosopher, better known in our time, who had been one of Saint-Simon's followers, but had separated himself from the latter early in his career. This was Auguste Comte. Comte's Positive Politics had made a profound impression on Mill in 1825. After that time Mill had lost sight of the French philosopher until the appearance of the first two volumes of the Course de Philosophie Positive in 1837. And during the next ten years the two men kept up an active correspondence. Comte's influence on Mill was greater than one would be led to suppose from his Autobiography and the Westminster Review articles on Comte, which Mill wrote after the publication of the Systême de Politique Positive in 1851 and after the two men had drifted apart. In the Autobiography Mill describes at some length Comte's influence on the Logic." But perhaps the most marked effect that Comte's philosophy had on Mill's thinking was negative. Comte's dogmatism and insistence on authority irked the liberty-loving Mill. The disagreements in matters of philosophy which led to the dropping of their correspondence with each other might have been foreseen in the light of the different temperaments of the two men. Mill was at bottom a liberal, brought up in the tradition of English individualism. Comte, on the other hand, had the Catholic Church for his background. He admired its system and order, and the authority that it exercised. His positive religion which Mill characterized an evidence of the "melancholy decadence of a great intellect" was a sort of caricature of Catholicism. Mill was always open-minded, interested in political affairs and social progress. Comte, on the other hand, in order to leave himself free for his higher speculations, made a point of not keeping up with current affairs

or current philosophical thought. He practised what he called hygiène cérébrale. The contrast between Mill in later years in Parliament almost against his wishes, and Comte ineffectually demanding the honor due to the high priest of positivism, symbolizes the difference between the characters of the two

men.

The actual points of divergence between them are in line with their differences in temperament. The first was on the matter of psychology. Comte rejected not only the association psychology which was so dear to Mill's heart, but all psychology based on introspection, and substituted for it phrenology. Another matter of dispute was the position of women. Comte insisted women were men's inferiors intellectually, though he thought them superior on the emotional side. Mill believed that the differences between men and women could be largely explained by outward circumstances and claimed for them equal opportunities with men, though he did admit the possibilities of certain innate differences. But the chief difference between them had to do with the fundamental conception of liberty and authority. Comte clung to his early theory of alternating critical and organic periods in the world's history. The essential thing about organic periods was the unified organization of society under some central authority. This was true of the Middle Ages and was to be true of the positive era which Comte saw dawning. The critical periods were, to Comte's way of thinking, purely negative. Criticism had no place in an organic period. He saw nothing of permanent value in the ideas of the French Revolution. Mill, on the other hand, believed that criticism was an important social function all the time. Comte's ideas on government and on education Mill viewed with particular horror. He says that nothing can exceed Comte's

"combined detestation and contempt for government by assemblies and for parliamentary or representative institutions in any form.

L

They are an expedient, in his opinion, only suited to a state of transition, and even that nowhere but in England. The attempt to naturalize them in France, or any Continental nation, he regards as mischievous quackery. Louis Napoleon's usurpation is absolved, is made laudable to him, because it overthrew a representative government. Election of superiors by inferiors, except as a revolutionary expedient, is an abomination in his sight."

Comte thought that all education should be centralized under the spiritual power, and confined to practical matters:

"It is no exaggeration to say that M. Comte gradually acquired a real hatred for scientific and all purely intellectual pursuits, and was bent on retaining no more of them than was strictly indispensable. The greatest of his anxieties is lest people should reason and seek to know more than enough. He regards all abstraction and all reasoning as morally dangerous by developing an inordinate pride (orgueil), and still more, by producing dryness (sécheresse). Abstract thought, he says, is not a wholesome occupation for more than a small number of human beings, nor of them for more than a small part of their time."

Students should be taught

"not only without encouraging, but stifling as much as possible, the examining and questioning spirit. The disposition which should be encouraged is that of receiving all on the authority of the teacher."

Mill's distaste for Comte's regimentation of affairs served only to bind him more closely to his own conviction of the importance of individuality and variety, and of freedom for people to think their own thoughts and live their own lives. In the Politique Positive particularly, Mill saw a despotism which would put an end to freedom-political, intellectual, and spiritual-once and for all. "Comte's book," Mill says, "stands a monumental warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what happens when once men lose sight, in their speculations, of the value of Liberty and of Individuality.”

17 The Positive Philosophy of August Comte, p. 140. The Positive Philosophy of August Comte, p. 160. 19 The Positive Philosophy of August Comte, p. 161.

Mill's early enthusiasm for Comte on account of his scientific method contrasted with his later criticism of Comte, illustrates very clearly a point that will be brought out in the next chapter-that is, the shift which took place in Mill's interest from "science," so called, to warmer and more human interests. Mill's friendships between 1825 and 1840 brought into his life a new richness, and many new things to think about. His friendships made him realize the underlying ties of affection and sympathy that could bind people together. But he realized, too, the importance of contrasts in social life. He saw that unless each person had some special contribution to make, social life would lose that very richness and diversity that make it valuable. As time went on, this matter of the development of the individual seemed to Mill more and more important.

III.

This was brought home to him and tremendously reenforced in Mill's own experience by what he calls the "most important friendship" of his life-that with Harriet Hardy Taylor, whom he afterward married. Though Mill was influenced by the romantic movement on the continent, his own philosophy was the opposite of romantic. The emphasis was on the intellect-cold, detached, and analytical. But there is a warmth in his very enthusiasm for clear thinking and general principles, which suggests a personal romanticism in sharp contrast with his philosophical rationalism. It was this personal attitude which found its extreme expression in the case of Mrs. Taylor.

The familiar story of the friendship between Mrs. Taylor and Mill, leading to their marriage in 1851, need not be recounted. But the episode was important in many ways. For one thing, it accounts for his withdrawing more and more from society as he did after the publication of the

Logic in 1843, and for the peculiar sensitiveness which he displays about his personal affairs. There was a good deal of disapproval on the part of Mill's friends on the score of his intimacy with Mrs. Taylor. His father blamed him for being in love with another man's wife. A coldness sprang up between him and his mother and sisters due to a fancied slight of Mrs. Taylor-it seems that they did not call on her the day after Mill announced his intended marriage, as he thought they should have done. Mrs. Grote stopped seeing Mill apparently for this reason, and Roebuck says that a remonstrance which he made to Mill on the matter of his relations with Mrs. Taylor led to the cessation of their friendship." Mill's preference for Mrs. Taylor's company to Carlyle's was one cause of the drifting apart of Mill and Carlyle. It may be inferred that Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Carlyle did not get along very well together. Carlyle writes of these years:

"Mill was another steady visitor (had by this time introduced his Mrs. Taylor, too,—a very will-o'-wispish “iridescence” of a creature; meaning nothing bad either). She at first considered my Jane a rustic spirit fit for rather tutoring and whirling about when the humor took her, but got taught better (to her lasting memory) before long.""

On account of his admiration for Mrs. Taylor, Mill felt to an almost morbid degree the pressure of the adverse opinion of his friends. It was an experience calculated to make him feel more strongly than ever how important it is for the individual to be free to lead his or her own life as he or she sees fit, without interference from the rest of society. The distinction he makes in the Essay on Liberty between matters of importance to the individual himself and matters of more general social importance is ever in his mind. Of his relation to Mrs. Taylor, Mill says "we did not

"Bain, John Stuart Mill, p. 163. See also "Notes on the Private Life of John Stuart Mill" in Volume I of the Letters.