If The Dog's Name Had Been 'Spot' Or
'Bob,' The Important Psychological Fact Would Have Been
Faithfully Registered.
As to the theme of the discourse,
that had nothing to do with - millinery.
And Mr. Bain
doubtless did not overlook the fact.
Owen was an accomplished lecturer; but one's attention to him
depended on two things - a primary interest in the subject,
and some elementary acquaintance with it. If, for example,
his subject were the comparative anatomy of the cycloid and
ganoid fishes, the difference in their scales was scarcely of
vital importance to one's general culture. But if he were
lecturing on fish, he would stick to fish; it would be
essentially a JOUR MAIGRE.
With Huxley, the suggestion was worth more than the thing
said. One thought of it afterwards, and wondered whether his
words implied all they seemed to imply. One knew that the
scientist was also a philosopher; and one longed to get at
him, at the man himself, and listen to the lessons which his
work had taught him. At one of these lectures I had the
honour of being introduced to him by a great friend of mine,
John Marshall, then President of the College of Surgeons. In
later years I used to meet him constantly at the Athenaeum.
Looking back to the days of one's plasticity, two men are
pre-eminent among my Dii Majores. To John Stuart Mill and to
Thomas Huxley I owe more, educationally, than to any other
teachers. Mill's logic was simply a revelation to me. For
what Kant calls 'discipline,' I still know no book, unless it
be the 'Critique' itself, equal to it. But perhaps it is the
men themselves, their earnestness, their splendid courage,
their noble simplicity, that most inspired one with
reverence. It was Huxley's aim to enlighten the many, and he
enlightened them. It was Mill's lot to help thinkers, and he
helped them. SAPERE AUDE was the motto of both. How few
there are who dare to adopt it! To love truth is valiantly
professed by all; but to pursue it at all costs, to 'dare to
be wise' needs daring of the highest order.
Mill had the enormous advantage, to start with, of an
education unbiassed by any theological creed; and he brought
exceptional powers of abstract reasoning to bear upon matters
of permanent and supreme importance to all men. Yet, in
spite of his ruthless impartiality, I should not hesitate to
call him a religious man. This very tendency which no
imaginative mind, no man or woman with any strain of poetical
feeling, can be without, invests Mill's character with a
clash of humanity which entitles him to a place in our
affections. It is in this respect that he so widely differs
from Mr. Herbert Spencer. Courageous Mr. Spencer was, but
his courage seems to have been due almost as much to absence
of sympathy or kinship with his fellow-creatures, and to his
contempt of their opinions, as from his dispassionate love of
truth, or his sometimes passionate defence of his own tenets.
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