behind the fighting line, although he may be useful in forging
explosives in some quiet laboratory. Mill himself was continually
hampered, as an ardent combatant, by the impedimenta which he brought
into the field in the shape of abstract speculations, which could not
be made to fit in with the immediate demands of thorough-going
partisans. His democratic fervour was tempered by his conviction of
the incapacity of the masses. He was a Socialist 'in the sense that he
looked forward to a complete, though distant, revolution in the whole
structure of society'; he discovered that the Chartists had crude
views upon political economy; his attitude toward factory legislation
was very dubious. Yet in the main purpose of his life and writings,
which was to mend and guide public opinion on social and political
questions by theoretical treatment--that is, by a logically connected
survey of the facts--he was undoubtedly successful, as is shown by
the popularity of his two great works on _Logic_ and _Political
Economy_, which became the text-books of higher study on these
subjects for a whole generation. On the other hand, he exposed himself
to the distrust and hostility that are always aroused by philosophical
arguments which strike at the roots of established beliefs and
prejudices, and are discovered to be really more dangerous to them
than a direct assault.

It was the philosophic strategy of J. S. Mill to prosecute the
Utilitarian war against metaphysics, and finally to exterminate
Intuitions, being convinced, as he said, that the _a priori_ and
spiritualistic thinkers still far exceeded the partisans of
experience, and that a great majority of Englishmen were still
Intuitionists. Is this actually a true account of English thought? Mr.
Stephen thinks not, for he believes that if Mill had not lived much
apart from ordinary folk he would have found Englishmen practically,
though not avowedly, predisposed to empiricism, which has been the
philosophic tradition in this country since Hobbes. We so far agree
with Mr. Stephen that we believe Englishmen, in general, to practise a
great deal more of empiricism than they avow. But Mill proposed to
demonstrate and declare it as a weapon in polemics and an engine of
action, and it was here, probably, that the main body of Englishmen
deserted him. They were not ready to cut themselves off from theology
and from all ideas that transcend experience, and they demurred to the
paramount juris