ccid watery sense
which flatters the indolence of so many of our contemporaries, who like
to have their ears amused with a new doctrine each morning, to be held
for a day, and dropped in the evening, and who have little more
seriousness in their intellectual life than the busy insects of a summer
noon. He says that he looked forward 'to a future which shall unite the
best qualities of the critical with the best qualities of the organic
periods; unchecked liberty of thought, unbounded freedom of individual
action in all modes not hurtful to others; but also convictions as to
what is right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the
feelings by early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so
firmly grounded in reason and the true exigencies of life, that they
shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious, ethical, and
political, require to be periodically thrown off and replaced by others'
(p. 166). This was in some sort the type at which he aimed in the
formation of his own character--a type that should combine organic with
critical quality, the strength of an ordered set of convictions, with
that pliability and that receptiveness in face of new truth, which are
indispensable to these very convictions being held intelligently and in
their best attainable form. We can understand the force of the eulogy on
John Austin (p. 154), that he manifested 'an equal devotion to the two
cardinal points of Liberty and Duty.' These are the correlatives in the
sphere of action to the two cardinal points of Criticism and Belief in
the sphere of thought.

We can in the light of this double way of viewing the right balance of
the mind, the better understand the combination of earnestness with
tolerance which inconsiderate persons are apt to find so awkward a
stumbling-block in the scheme of philosophic liberalism. Many people in
our time have so ill understood the doctrine of liberty, that in some of
the most active circles in society they now count you a bigot if you
hold any proposition to be decidedly and unmistakably more true than any
other. They pronounce you intemperate if you show anger and stern
disappointment because men follow the wrong course instead of the right
one. Mr. Mill's explanation of the vehemence and decision of his
father's disapproval, when he did disapprove, and his refusal to allow
honesty of purpose in the doer to soften his disapprobation of the deed,
gives the reader a worthy