第10章 James Mill(10)

Another undertaking occupied much of Mill's attention in the following years.The educational schemes of the Utilitarians had so far proved abortive.In 1824,however,it had occurred to the poet,Thomas Campbell,then editing the New Monthly Magazine ,that London ought to possess a university comparable to that of Berlin,and more on a level with modern thought than the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge,which were still in the closest connection with the church.Campbell addressed a letter to Brougham,and the scheme was taken up energetically on several sides.Place 27wrote an article,which he offered to Campbell for the New Monthly ,who declined out of modesty to publish it in his own organ.It was then offered to Bowring for the Westminster,and ultimately suppressed by him,which may have been one of the causes of his differences with the Mills.Brougham took a leading part in the agitation;Joseph Hume promised to raise £100,000.George Birkbeck,founder of the Mechanics'institution,and Zachary Macaulay,who saw in it a place of education for dissenting ministers,joined the movement,and among the most active members of the new body were James Mill and Grote.A council was formed at the end of 1825,and after various difficulties a sum of £160,000was raised,and the university started in Gower Street in 1828.Among the first body of professors were John Austin and M'Culloch,both of them sound Utilitarians.The old difficulty,however,made itself felt.In order to secure the unsectarian character of the university,religious teaching was omitted.The college was accused of infidelity.

King's College was started in opposition;and violent antipathies were aroused.A special controversy raged within the council itself.Two philosophical chairs were to be founded;and philosophy cannot be kept clear of religion.

After long discussions,one chair was filled by the appointment of the Reverend John Hoppus,an independent minister.Grote,declaring that no man,pledged by his position to the support of any tenets,should be appointed,resigned his place on the council.28The university in 1836became a college combined with its rival King's College under the newly formed examining body called the University of London.It has,I suppose,been of service to education,and may be regarded as the one practical achievement of the Utilitarians in that direction,so far as its foundation was due to them.It must,however,be admitted that the actual body still falls very far short of the ideal present to the minds of its founders.

From 1822James Mill spent his vacations at Dorking,and afterwards at Mickleham.He had devoted them to a task which was necessary to fill a gap in the Utilitarian scheme.

Hitherto the school had assumed,rather than attempted to establish,a philosophical basis of its teaching.Bentham's fragmentary writings about the Chrestomathic school supplied all that could by courtesy be called a philosophy.Mill,however,had been from the first interested in philosophical questions.His reading was not wide;he knew something of the doctrines taught by Stewart and Stewart's successor,Brown.He had been especially impressed by Hobbes,to some degree by Locke and Hume,but above all by Hartley.He knew something,too,of Condillac and the French ideologists.

Of recent German speculation he was probably quite ignorant.I find indeed that Place had called his attention to the account of Kant,published by Wirgman in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis in 1817.Mill about the same time tells Place that he has begun to read The Critic of Pure Reason ,'I see clearly enough,'he says,'what poor Kant would be about,but it would require some time to give an account of him.'He wishes (December 6,1817)that he had time to write a book which would,make the human mind as plain as the road from Charing Cross to St.Paul's.'29This was apparently the task to which he applied himself in his vacations.The Analysis appeared in 1829,and,whatever its defects of incompleteness and one-sidedness from a philosophical point of view,shows in the highest degree Mill's powers of close,vigorous statement;and lays down with singular clearness the psychological doctrine,which from his point of view supplied the fundamental theorems of knowledge in general.It does not appear,however,to have made an impression proportionate to the intellectual power displayed,and had to wait a long time before reaching the second edition due to the filial zeal of J.S.Mill.

James Mill,after his articles in the Westminster,could take little part in political agitation.He was still consulted by Place in regard to the Reform movement.Place himself took an important part at the final crisis,especially by his circulation in the week of agony of the famous placard,'Go for Gold.'But the Utilitarians were now lost in the crowd.The demand for reform had spread through all classes.The attack upon the ruling class carried on by the Radicals of all shades in the dark days of Sidmouth and the six Acts was now supported by the nation at large.The old Toryism could no longer support itself by appealing to the necessities of a struggle for national existence.The prestige due to the victorious end of the war had faded away.The Reform Bill of 1832was passed,and the Utilitarians hoped that the millennium would at least begin to dawn.

Mill in 1830removed from Queen's Square to Vicarage Place,Kensington.He kept his house at Mickleham,and there took long Sunday walks with a few of his disciples.His strength was more and more absorbed in his official duties.He was especially called upon to give evidence before the committees which from 1830to 1833considered the policy to be adopted in renewing the charter of the East India Company.