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.
My friend Napier told me an amusing little story about John
Mill when he was in the East India Company's administration.
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