e of these calamitous
impediments is susceptible of the weightiest modification, and some of
them of final removal. Mr. Mill had learnt from Turgot and
Condorcet--two of the wisest and noblest of men, as he justly calls them
(113)--among many other lessons, this of the boundless improvableness of
the human lot, and we may believe that he read over many a time the
pages in which Condorcet delineated the Tenth Epoch in the history of
human perfectibility, and traced out in words of finely reserved
enthusiasm the operation of the forces which should consummate the
progress of the race. 'All the grand sources of human suffering,' Mr.
Mill thought, 'are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely,
conquerable by human care and effort; and though their removal is
grievously slow--though a long succession of generations will perish in
the breach before the conquest is completed, and this world becomes all
that, if will and knowledge were not wanting, it might easily be
made--yet every mind sufficiently intelligent and generous to bear a
part, however small and unconspicuous, in the endeavour, will draw a
noble enjoyment from the contest itself, which he would not for any
bribe in the form of selfish indulgence consent to be without'
(_Utilitarianism_, 22).

[Footnote 6: For this exposition see _Utilitarianism_, pp. 18-24.]

We thus see how far from dreary this wise and benign man actually found
his own life; how full it was of cheerfulness, of animation, of
persevering search, of a tranquillity lighted up at wholesome intervals
by flashes of intellectual and moral excitement. That it was not seldom
crossed by moods of despondency is likely enough, but we may at least be
sure that these moods had nothing in common with the vulgar despondency
of those whose hopes are centred in material prosperity in this world
and spiritual prosperity in some other. They were, at least, the
dejection of a magnanimous spirit, that could only be cast down by some
new hindrance to the spread of reason and enlightenment among men, or
some new weakening of their incentives to right doing.

* * * * *

Much has been said against Mr. Mill's strictures on society, and his
withdrawal from it. If we realise the full force of all that he says of
his own purpose in life, it is hard to see how either his opinion or his
practice could have been different. He ceased to be content with
'seconding the superficial improvemen