e way at once to stability and
growth of character, and thus to make of life what it is so good for us
that it should be, a continual building up, a ceaseless fortifying and
enlargement and multiplication of the treasures of the spirit. To make a
point of 'examining what was said in defence of all opinions, however
new or however old, in the conviction that even if they were errors
there might be a substratum of truth underneath them, and that in any
case the discovery of what it was that made them plausible would be a
benefit to truth,'[2]--to thrust out the spirit of party, of sect, of
creed, of the poorer sort of self-esteem, of futile contentiousness, and
so to seek and again seek with undeviating singleness of mind the right
interpretation of our experiences--here is the genuine seal of
intellectual mastery and the true stamp of a perfect rationality.

[Footnote 2: Mill's _Autobiography_, 242.]

The men to whom this is the ideal of the life of the reason, and who
have done anything considerable towards spreading a desire after it,
deserve to have their memories gratefully cherished even by those who do
not agree with all their positive opinions. We need only to reflect a
little on the conditions of human existence; on the urgent demand which
material necessities inevitably make on so immense a proportion of our
time and thought; on the space which is naturally filled up by the
activity of absorbing affections; on the fatal power of mere tradition
and report over the indifferent, and the fatal power of inveterate
prejudice over so many even of the best of those who are not
indifferent. Then we shall know better how to value such a type of
character and life as Mr. Mill has now told us the story of, in which
intellectual impressionableness on the most important subjects of human
thought was so cultivated as almost to acquire the strength and quick
responsiveness of emotional sensibility. And this, without the too
common drawback to great openness of mind. This drawback consists in
loose beliefs, taken up to-day and silently dropped to-morrow;
vacillating opinions, constantly being exchanged for their contraries;
feeble convictions, appearing, shifting, vanishing, in the quicksands of
an unstable mind.

Nobody will impute any of these disastrous weaknesses to Mr. Mill. His
impressionableness was of the valuable positive kind, which adds and
assimilates new elements from many quarters, without disturbing the
organic