h these departments, I have acquired more from her
teaching than from all other sources taken together. And, to say
truth, it is in these two extremes principally, that real certainty
lies. My own strength lay wholly in the uncertain and slippery
intermediate region, that of theory, or moral and political science;
respecting the conclusions of which, in any of the forms in which I
have received or originated them, whether as political economy,
analytic psychology, logic, philosophy or history, or anything else,
it is not the least of my intellectual obligations to her that I
have derived from her a wise skepticism, which, while it has not
hindered me from following out the honest exercise of my thinking
faculties to whatever conclusions might result from it, has put me
on my guard against holding or announcing these conclusions with a
degree of confidence which the nature of such speculations does not
warrant, and has kept my mind not only open to admit, but prompt to
welcome and eager to seek, even on the questions on which I have
most meditated, any prospect of clearer perceptions and better
evidence. I have often received praise, which in my own right I only
partially deserve, for the greater practicality that is supposed to
be found in my writings, compared with those of most thinkers who
have been equally addicted to large generalizations. The writings in
which this quality has been observed, were not the work of one mind,
but of the fusion of two: one as eminently practical in its
judgments and perceptions of things present, as it was high and bold
in its anticipations for futurity.

* * * * *

The social functions at the Taylor home now became less frequent, and
finally ceased. Women looked upon the friendship of John Stuart Mill and
Mrs. Taylor with some resentment and a slight tinge of jealousy. Men
lifted an eyebrow and called it "equivocal"--to use the phrase of
Clement Shorter.

"The plan of having a husband and also a lover is not entirely without
precedent," said Disraeli in mock apology, and took snuff solemnly.
Meantime manuscripts were traveling back and forth between the East
India House and the Taylors'.

John Stuart Mill was contributing essays to the magazines that made the
thinkers think. He took a position opposed to his father, and maintained
the vast importance of th