s, and politics, which have now lost
most of their efficacy for good, though still possessed of life enough
to present formidable obstacles to the growth of better opinion on those
subjects (p. 239).

Thus the crisis of disappointment which breaks up the hope and effort of
so many men who start well, or else throws them into poor and sterile
courses, proved in this grave, fervent, and most reasonable spirit only
the beginning of more serious endeavours in a new and more arduous vein.
Hitherto he had been, as he says, 'more willing to be content with
seconding the superficial improvements which had begun to take place in
the common opinions of society and the world.' Henceforth he kept less
and less in abeyance the more heretical part of his opinions, which he
began more and more clearly to discern as 'almost the only ones, the
assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate society' (p. 230). The
crisis of middle age developed a new fortitude, a more earnest
intrepidity, a greater boldness of expression about the deeper things,
an interest profounder than ever in the improvement of the human lot.
The book on the _Subjection of Women_, the _Liberty_, and probably some
pieces that have not yet been given to the world, are the notable result
of this ripest, loftiest, and most inspiring part of his life.

This judgment does not appear to be shared by the majority of those who
have hitherto published their opinions upon Mr. Mill's life and works.
Perhaps it would have been odd if such a judgment had been common.
People who think seriously of life and its conditions either are content
with those conditions as they exist, or else they find them empty and
deeply unsatisfying. Well, the former class, who naturally figure
prominently in the public press, because the press is the more or less
flattering mirror of the prevailing doctrines of the day, think that Mr.
Mill's views of a better social future are chimerical, utopian, and
sentimental. The latter class compensate themselves for the pinchedness
of the real world about them by certain rapturous ideals, centring in
God, a future life, and the long companionship of the blessed. The
consequence of this absorption either in the immediate interests and
aims of the hour, or in the interests and aims of an imaginary world
which is supposed to await us after death, has been a hasty inclination
to look on such a life and such purposes as are set forth in the
Autobiography as essen