Autobiography
What I could do by writing, I did. During the year 1833 I continued
working in the _Examiner_ with Fonblanque who at that time was zealous
in keeping up the fight for Radicalism against the Whig ministry. During
the session of 1834 I wrote comments on passing events, of the nature of
newspaper articles (under the title "Notes on the Newspapers"), in the
_Monthly Repository_, a magazine conducted by Mr. Fox, well known as a
preacher and political orator, and subsequently as member of parliament
for Oldham; with whom I had lately become acquainted, and for whose sake
chiefly I wrote in his magazine. I contributed several other articles
to this periodical, the most considerable of which (on the theory of
Poetry), is reprinted in the "Dissertations." Altogether, the writings
(independently of those in newspapers) which I published from 1832 to
1834, amount to a large volume. This, however, includes abstracts of
several of Plato's Dialogues, with introductory remarks, which, though
not published until 1834, had been written several years earlier; and
which I afterwards, on various occasions, found to have been read, and
their authorship known, by more people than were aware of anything else
which I had written, up to that time. To complete the tale of my
writings at this period, I may add that in 1833, at the request of
Bulwer, who was just then completing his _England and the English_ (a
work, at that time, greatly in advance of the public mind), I wrote for
him a critical account of Bentham's philosophy, a small part of which
he incorporated in his text, and printed the rest (with an honourable
acknowledgment), as an appendix. In this, along with the favourable,
a part also of the unfavourable side of my estimation of Bentham's
doctrines, considered as a complete philosophy, was for the first time
put into print.
But an opportunity soon offered, by which, as it seemed, I might have it
in my power to give more effectual aid, and at the same time, stimulus,
to the "philosophic Radical" party, than I had done hitherto. One of the
projects occasionally talked of between my father and me, and some of
the parliamentary and other Radicals who frequented his house, was the
foundation of a periodical organ of philosophic radicalism, to take the
place which the _Westminster Review_ had been intended to fill: and the
scheme had gone so far as to bring under discussion the pecuniary
contributions which could be looked for, and the choice of an editor.
Nothing, however, came of it for some time: but in the summer of 1834
Sir William Molesworth, himself a laborious student, and a precise and
metaphysical thinker, capable of aiding the cause by his pen as well as
by his purse, spontaneously proposed to establish a Review, provided I
would consent to be the real, if I could not be the ostensible, editor.
Such a proposal was not to be refused; and the Review was founded, at
first under the title of the _London Review_, and afterwards under that
of the _London and Westminster_, Molesworth having bought the
_Westminster_ from its proprietor, General Thompson, and merged the two
into one. In the years between 1834 and 1840 the conduct of this Review
occupied the greater part of my spare time. In the beginning, it did
not, as a whole, by any means represent my opinions. I was under the
necessity of conceding much to my inevitable associates. The _Review_
was established to be the representative of the "philosophic Radicals,"
with most of whom I was now at issue on many essential points, and among
whom I could not even claim to be the most important individual. My
father's co-operation as a writer we all deemed indispensable, and he
wrote largely in it until prevented by his last illness. The subjects of
his articles, and the strength and decision with which his opinions were
expressed in them, made the _Review_ at first derive its tone and
colouring from him much more than from any of the other writers. I could
not exercise editorial control over his articles, and I was sometimes
obliged to sacrifice to him portions of my own. The old _Westminster
Review_ doctrines, but little modified, thus formed the staple of the
_Review_; but I hoped by the side of these, to introduce other ideas and
another tone, and to obtain for my own shade of opinion a fair
representation, along with those of other members of the party. With
this end chiefly in view, I made it one of the peculiarities of the work
that every article should bear an initial, or some other signature, and
be held to express the opinions solely of the individual writer; the
editor being only responsible for its being worth publishing and not in
conflict with the objects for which the _Review_ was set on foot. I had
an opportunity of putting in practice my scheme of conciliation between
the old and the new "philosophic radicalism," by the choice of a subject
for my own first contribution. Professor Sedgwick, a man of eminence in
a particular walk of natural science, but who should not have trespassed
into philosophy, had lately published his _Discourse on the Studies of
Cambridge_, which had as its most prominent feature an intemperate
assault on analytic psychology and utilitarian ethics, in the form of an
attack on Locke and Paley. This had excited great indignation in my
father and others, which I thought it fully deserved. And here, I
imagined, was an opportunity of at the same time repelling an unjust
attack, and inserting into my defence of Hartleianism and Utilitarianism
a number of the opinions which constituted my view of those subjects, as
distinguished from that of my old associates. In this I partially
succeeded, though my relation to my father would have made it painful to
me in any case, and impossible in a Review for which he wrote, to speak
out my whole mind on the subject at this time.
I am, however, inclined to think that my father was not so much opposed
as he seemed, to the modes of thought in which I believed myself to
differ from him; that he did injustice to his own opinions by the
unconscious exaggerations of an intellect emphatically polemical; and
that when thinking without an adversary in view, he was willing to make
room for a great portion of the truths he seemed to deny. I have
frequently observed that he made large allowance in practice for
considerations which seemed to have no place in his theory. His
_Fragment on Mackintosh_, which he wrote and published about this time,
although I greatly admired some parts of it, I read as a whole with more
pain than pleasure; yet on reading it again, long after, I found little
in the opinions it contains, but what I think in the main just; and I
can even sympathize in his disgust at the _verbiage_ of Mackintosh,
though his asperity towards it went not only beyond what was judicious,
but beyond what was even fair. One thing, which I thought, at the time,
of good augury, was the very favourable reception he gave to
Tocqueville's _Democracy in America_. It is true, he said and thought
much more about what Tocqueville said in favour of democracy, than about
what he said of its disadvantages. Still, his high appreciation of a
book which was at any rate an example of a mode of treating the question
of government almost the reverse of his--wholly inductive and analytical,
instead of purely ratiocinative--gave me great encouragement. He also
approved of an article which I published in the first number following
the junction of the two reviews, the essay reprinted in the _Dissertations_,
under the title "Civilization"; into which I threw many of my new opinions,
and criticised rather emphatically the mental and moral tendencies of the
time, on grounds and in a manner which I certainly had not learnt from him.
All speculation, however, on the possible future developments of my
father's opinions, and on the probabilities of permanent co-operation
between him and me in the promulgation of our thoughts, was doomed to be
cut short. During the whole of 1835 his health had been declining: his
symptoms became unequivocally those of pulmonary consumption, and after
lingering to the last stage of debility, he died on the 23rd of June,
1836. Until the last few days of his life there was no apparent
abatement of intellectual vigour; his interest in all things and persons
that had interested him through life was undiminished, nor did the
approach of death cause the smallest wavering (as in so strong and firm
a mind it was impossible that it should) in his convictions on the
subject of religion. His principal satisfaction, after he knew that his
end was near, seemed to be the thought of what he had done to make the
world better than he found it; and his chief regret in not living
longer, that he had not had time to do more.
His place is an eminent one in the literary, and even in the political
history of his country; and it is far from honourable to the generation
which has benefited by his worth, that he is so seldom mentioned, and,
compared with men 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
largest work, India. He wrote on no subject which he did not enrich with
valuable thought, and excepting the _Elements of Political Economy_, a
very useful book when first written, but which has now for some time
finished its work, it will be long before any of his books will be
wholly superseded, or will cease to be instructive reading to students