aking of the master, are
as strong as any sober man would allow himself to use concerning Locke
or Bacon. The essay before us is perhaps the most remarkable of the
works to which Mr Mill owes his fame. By the members of his sect, it is
considered as perfect and unanswerable. Every part of it is an article
of their faith; and the damnatory clauses, in which their creed abounds
far beyond any theological symbol with which we are acquainted, are
strong and full against all who reject any portion of what is so
irrefragably established. No man, they maintain, who has understanding
sufficient to carry him through the first proposition of Euclid, can
read this masterpiece of demonstration and honestly declare that he
remains unconvinced.

We have formed a very different opinion of this work. We think that the
theory of Mr Mill rests altogether on false principles, and that even on
those false principles he does not reason logically. Nevertheless, we
do not think it strange that his speculations should have filled the
Utilitarians with admiration. We have been for some time past inclined
to suspect that these people, whom some regard as the lights of the
world and others as incarnate demons, are in general ordinary men, with
narrow understandings and little information. The contempt which they
express for elegant literature is evidently the contempt of ignorance.
We apprehend that many of them are persons who, having read little
or nothing, are delighted to be rescued from the sense of their own
inferiority by some teacher who assures them that the studies which
they have neglected are of no value, puts five or six phrases into their
mouths, lends them an old number of the Westminster Review, and in a
month transforms them into philosophers. Mingled with these smatterers,
whose attainments just suffice to elevate them from the insignificance
of dunces to the dignity of bores, and to spread dismay among their
pious aunts and grandmothers, there are, we well know, many well-meaning
men who have really read and thought much; but whose reading and
meditation have been almost exclusively confined to one class of
subjects; and who, consequently, though they possess much valuable
knowledge respecting those subjects, are by no means so well qualified
to judge of a great system as if they had taken a more enlarged view of
literature and society.

Nothing is more amusing or instructive than to observe the manner in
which people who thi