He
is already enrolled among the first of contemporary thinkers, and from
that list his name will never be erased. The nature of Mr. Mill's work
is such as to make it easy to predict the character of his future
reputation. His is the kind of philosophy that is destined to become
the commonplace of the future. We may anticipate that many of his most
remarkable views will become obsolete in the best sense: they will
become worked up into practice, and embodied in institutions. Indeed,
the place that he will hold will probably be closely resembling that
of the great father of English philosophy,--John Locke. There is
indeed, amid distinguishing differences, a remarkable similarity
between the two men, and the character of their influence on the
world. What Locke was to the liberal movements of the seventeenth
century, Mr. Mill has more than been to the liberal movement of the
nineteenth century. The intellectual powers of the two men had much in
common, and they were exercised upon precisely similar subjects. The
"Essay on the Human Understanding" covered doubtless a field more
purely psychological than the "Logic;" but we must remember that the
"Analysis of the Mind" by the elder Mill had recently carried the
inductive study of mind to an advanced point.
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