John Stuart Mill and Mrs. Taylor [pp. 516-523]

518 OH0tHN STUART MAILL AND MRS. TA YLOR.
tion, his narrow philosophy and his bitter hatred of Christianity, industriously
laboring to stamp his own image on the
helpless, pliant soul of the little innocent child. There is such pathos in the
story, and in the son's unconsciousness
when telling it, that one pauses, sorrowful, amazed, and indignant. Especially
must they feel thus who have ever yearned over those sweet tender questionings
and revealings of childhood, whereby
the spirit first tries its wings and seeks
to rise toward the divine. Remorselessly were these immortal promptings nipped in the bud by the elder Mill; carefully was the son kept too busy to leave
room for many such. Who made the
world? No one can tell. Was it God,
as some say? Then, who made God?
must be the next question, and so back
to-no one knows what. If any God is
at the head of affairs he must be either
too weak to prevent evil, or too wicked
to wish to prevent it. As to the Christian religion, it is a curse to mankind;
as to the God of the Bible, He is a demon.
And thus the whole great subject was
settled, and apparently settled forever,
for John Stuart Mill. There is no evidence that he accorded Christianity importance enough ever to re-open or very
earnestly to reconsider that portion of
his father's instructions. He did reconsider them in other particulars, changing and in some cases reversing the
lessons of childhood by the light of his
maturer judgment. But to Christianity,
notwithstanding the great power which
it has been in the world for 2,000 years,
notwithstanding that it has made rationalism itself possible, he remained to the
end of his life profoundly and unphilosophically indifferent. "I looked upon
it," he says, "as something which no
way concerned me." Thus, despising
religion, fed on heathen literature, with
Socrates for his highest ideal, in a world
which had no God, and only a blank,
dead wall for a spiritual horizon, the
child grew up, more a heathen than the
heathen themselves. For they did seek
after a knowledge of God, did hope in a
hereafter. But this soul seems to have
been utterly vacant of all such desire;
utterly and persistently incurious and indifferent as to these the greatest possibilities of humanity.
There is one most singular omission
in Mr. Mill's narrative. He never speaks
of his mother. No most distant allusion,
no most casual statement, mentions her
existence. But for the necessity of the
case one would be left to doubt whether
he ever had a mother. The inference
is inevitable-she had no hold on his
affections. His young life was as bare
of love for human beings as it was of
faith in a Divine Being. This seems an
incredible statement, but it is abundantly borne out. His father's plan of education kept him from all schools and
all companions; therefore his affections
were never called out toward playmates.
Having been the eldest, he was made
to teach his brothers and sisters, and
was held responsible by his father for
their progress as well as for his owna process not apt to make him tenderly
attached to them, particularly as his father was exceedingly impatient and very
severe. They are dismissed from his
autobiography with perhaps less mention than we have given them here; evidently they formed no part of his real
life. His father was the presiding deity
of his existence, and a deity who ruled
by fear. The son never felt at ease in
his presence, confesses that he did not
love him, and was continually subject to
his fierce impatience for not being able
to contain and digest all the knowledge
which was poured into his distended intellect. So the boy absolutely loved nobody. He had no conception of the
feeling. The elder Mill's idea of education was how best to make "a reasoning machine." To this end the intel
[DEC.