n opponent of democracy: as I
was able to see the Conservative side of the question, they presumed
that like them I could not see any other side. Yet if they had really
read my writings, they would have known that after giving full weight to
all that appeared to me well grounded in the arguments against
democracy, I unhesitatingly decided in its favour, while recommending
that it should be accompanied by such institutions as were consistent
with its principle and calculated to ward off its inconveniences' (p.
309). This was only one illustration of what constantly happened, until
at length, it is hardly too much to say, a man who had hitherto enjoyed
a singular measure of general reverence because he was supposed to see
truth in every doctrine, became downright unpopular among many classes
in the community, because he saw more truth in one doctrine than
another, and brought the propositions for whose acceptance he was most
in earnest eagerly before the public.

In a similar way the Autobiography shows us the picture of a man uniting
profound self-respect with a singular neutrality where his own claims
are concerned, a singular self-mastery and justice of mind, in matters
where with most men the sense of their own personality is wont to be so
exacting and so easily irritated. The history of intellectual eminence
is too often a history of immoderate egoism. It has perhaps hardly ever
been given to any one who exerted such influence as Mr. Mill did over
his contemporaries, to view his own share in it with such discrimination
and equity as marks every page of his book, and as used to mark every
word of his conversation. Knowing as we all do the last infirmity of
even noble minds, and how deep the desire to erect himself Pope and Sir
Oracle lies in the spirit of a man with strong convictions, we may value
the more highly, as well for its rarity as for its intrinsic worth, Mr.
Mill's quality of self-effacement, and his steadfast care to look
anywhere rather than in his own personal merits, for the source of any
of those excellences which he was never led by false modesty to
dissemble.

Many people seem to find the most interesting figure in the book that
stoical father, whose austere, energetic, imperious, and relentless
character showed the temperament of the Scotch Covenanter of the
seventeenth century, inspired by the principles and philosophy of France
in the eighteenth. No doubt, for those in search of strong dramatic