e, but provocative to the observant intelligence. Of
all persons whom we have known, Mr. James Mill was the one who stood
least remote from the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic--[Greek: tou
didonai kai dechesthai logon] (the giving and receiving of
reasons)--competent alike to examine others or to be examined by them in
philosophy. When to this we add a strenuous character, earnest
convictions, and single-minded devotion to truth, with an utter disdain
of mere paradox, it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful
intellectual ascendancy over youthful minds,' etc.--_Minor Works of
George Grote_, p. 284.]

* * * * *

In more than one remarkable place the Autobiography shows us distinctly
what all careful students of Mr. Mill's books supposed, that with him
the social aim, the repayment of the services of the past by devotion to
the services of present and future, was predominant over any merely
speculative curiosity or abstract interest. His preference for deeply
reserved ways of expressing even his strongest feelings prevented him
from making any expansive show of this governing sentiment. Though no
man was ever more free from any taint of that bad habit of us English,
of denying or palliating an abuse or a wrong, unless we are prepared
with an instant remedy for it, yet he had a strong aversion to mere
socialistic declamation. Perhaps, if one may say so without presumption,
he was not indulgent enough in this respect. I remember once pressing
him with some enthusiasm for Victor Hugo,--an enthusiasm, one is glad to
think, which time does nothing to weaken. Mr. Mill, admitting, though
not too lavishly, the superb imaginative power of this poetic master of
our time, still counted it a fatal drawback to Hugo's worth and claim to
recognition that 'he has not brought forward one single practical
proposal for the improvement of the society against which he is
incessantly thundering.' I ventured to urge that it is unreasonable to
ask a poet to draft acts of parliament; and that by bringing all the
strength of his imagination and all the majestic fulness of his sympathy
to bear on the social horrors and injustices which still lie so thick
about us, he kindled an inextinguishable fire in the hearts of men of
weaker initiative and less imperial gifts alike of imagination and
sympathy, and so prepared the forces out of which practical proposals
and specific improvements may be expected to