n far his inferiors, so little remembered. This is
probably to be ascribed mainly to two causes. In the first place, the
thought of him merges too much in the deservedly superior fame of
Bentham. Yet he was anything but Bentham's mere follower or disciple.
Precisely because he was himself one of the most original thinkers of
his time, he was one of the earliest to appreciate and adopt the most
important mass of original thought which had been produced by the
generation preceding him. His mind and Bentham's were essentially of
different construction. He had not all Bentham's high qualities, but
neither had Bentham all his. It would, indeed, be ridiculous to claim
for him the praise of having accomplished for mankind such splendid
services as Bentham's. He did not revolutionize, or rather create, one
of the great departments of human thought. But, leaving out of the
reckoning all that portion of his labours in which he benefited by what
Bentham had done, and counting only what he achieved in a province in
which Bentham had done nothing, that of analytic psychology, he will be
known to posterity as one of the greatest names in that most important
branch of speculation, on which all the moral and political sciences
ultimately rest, and will mark one of the essential stages in its
progress. The other reason which has made his fame less than he
deserved, is that notwithstanding the great number of his opinions
which, partly through his own efforts, have now been generally adopted,
there was, on the whole, a marked opposition between his spirit and that
of the present time. As Brutus was called the last of the Romans, so was
he the last of the eighteenth century: he continued its tone of thought
and sentiment into the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor
unimproved), partaking neither in the good nor in the bad influences of
the reaction against the eighteenth century, which was the great
characteristic of the first half of the nineteenth. The eighteenth
century was a great age, an age of strong and brave men, and he was a
fit companion for its strongest and bravest. By his writings and his
personal influence he was a great centre of light to his generation.
During his later years he was quite as much the head and leader of the
intellectual radicals in England, as Voltaire was of the _philosophes_
of France. It is only one of his minor merits, that he was the
originator of all sound statesmanship in regard to the subject of his