CHAPTER V.

For more than a year now, I find nothing from Chauncey’s pen. During this period, or probably a little earlier, it was gradually brought to the knowledge of the friends who then saw him oftenest that he had yielded to an infirmity which afterwards caused him much unhappiness. After anxious consideration, I think it best to speak of this subject openly and fully. ⁴⁶ Irregular habits of work and sleep, physical inactivity, and the practice of excessive smoking, had brought on sleeplessness and physical suffering, from which he sought relief in stimulants. The breaking up of old haunts and habits, resulting from the departure or marriage of friends, In the fall of 1868, Professor Gurney, his most intimate companion, was married. Mr. Gurney had removed from Little’s Block in 1863, yet he continued to see much of Chauncey until near the period which we have now reached. ⁴⁷ and the solitary and monotonous nature of his ill-adjusted tasks upon the almanac, induced a great depression of mind. At about this time, the Nortons went abroad for several years; In the summer of 1868. ⁴⁸ and, in losing them, he lost one of his chief social resources and supports. His work now fell greatly in arrears; President Runkle writes: “On July 1, 1866, the whole of the work upon the Lunar Ephemeris was given to Chauncey and myself. We divided this work evenly between us. As nearly as I now remember, Chauncey did his work the first year. The second year, he fell behind, and I helped him out. The third year, he delayed his work till late, and then told me that he could not do it, and gave up the contract.” ⁴⁹ he excused himself from

all invitations of friends, absented himself from his clubs, and took little satisfaction — indeed, had little, if any, power — in writing, or in his favorite speculations.

This state of things was a cause of the greatest surprise to his friends, and of no little alarm. At last, they communicated with him on the subject through one of their number, and with happy results: after one ineffectual endeavor to recover from his weakness, he made a second attempt, with good success. His friends gathered about him, and, without his observing it, engaged him more actively in correspondence, in visits, and in social occupations; and he gradually recovered his spirits and the full vigor of his mind. In a year or two, they had reason to think that he occasionally fell back, and there is no doubt that afterwards he yielded at intervals to this evil tendency as long as he lived; but these lapses were not frequent.

Through it all, he seemed like one who was the victim of a disease: there was no baseness about him, and no love of low companions or low habits. Sad it was, beyond description, to witness the temporary wrecking of that fine intelligence; to see his suffering, his heroic efforts to recover himself, his imperfect success: that he was blameworthy, I shall not deny: that he was permanently injured by these habits, I believe; his judgment was a little less serene, — he was a little less faithful to the catholic tenets of his philosophy. But it was a good thing to see how small was the injury to the best part of him, — how simple, sweet, and wholly uncorrupted his character and his heart remained, how soon the freshness of his intellectual interest revived, and how largely he regained his old power in the exercise of the balanced and masterly faculties of his mind upon the most important philosophical questions of his time.

A very little thing would have saved him. Had his employment been one which demanded a daily conformity to rules and hours of work; had he been married, or had any

social duties; had it perhaps happened that any one of his old intimates remained by him, with whom he might sit, either to talk or to speculate in social silence, as of old,—he would never have gone wrong. But it had fallen to the lot of this warm-hearted man — built, outwardly and inwardly, for the enjoyment of all that is best in human intercourse — to live, for the most part, the perilous life of a thinker, a life which was not cheered, supported, and admonished through the more intimate social relations, nor subjected to the wholesome influences that might command regularity in the daily ordering of it.

A letter from Mrs. Lesley which alludes to these unhappy facts has a reference to her satisfaction at this time in thinking of his intimate relations with the Nortons, — a circumstance in which all who cared for him rejoiced, as the chief source of happiness and safety for him in his later years. It would, indeed, be difficult to say too much of the delicacy and the assiduity with which these friends now sought to draw him away from the solitude which was his chief danger, into the sunlight of their sympathy. “From 1862,” writes Mrs. Lesley, “I saw less of Chauncey. Our own work in life became more and more imperious and exacting; and though we now and then had a lovely visit from him, of which the remembrance will always be like a treasure laid up in heaven, yet many were the visits he promised and planned which never were made. We heard with rejoicing, however, of the friendship he had formed with the Norton family; and, when we met, he would read to me with delight his letters from them. I felt that my prayers for him were answered in the good influences that surrounded him from these sources, and that the appreciative friendship of others would give him all that time and circumstances had denied to us the opportunity to offer.”

To Mr. Abbot.

Cambridge, Feb. 10, 1869.

I have had the proposition A request that Chauncey would contribute an article on “The Religious Aspects of Positivism” to a volume which it was then proposed to publish. ⁵⁰ of your letter of so long ago, so long in debate that I presume you have concluded ere this that my silence means dissent. This I am now persuaded is the true interpretation, though contrary to the current maxim.

I owe you an apology for this delay in answering your kind letter, to which you wished an immediate reply. But I really desired to see my way clear to meeting your wishes and my own, touching the essay on the positivists’ religion; and I regret very much that I cannot count upon myself as good for so difficult and delicate a task. My pen has of late forsaken the paths of speculation; and I have not been able to persuade it back.

I do not feel competent, nor do I care, to address, unprovoked, a large promiscuous audience, the majority of whom judge by texts and phrases, and apply the touchstone of magical words, —and so think they think. Something more stimulating, like misrepresentation by an opponent, or like personal debate, must inspire me. A cold thesis, served in a book, does not incite the speculative appetite with me; and I confess to the heartiest sympathy with Plato’s preference for a man, who can question and answer, rather than for a book, which must say much at random, or demand an artist’s skill and imagination in the writer. One of the most important of the teacher’s or preacher’s qualifications, yet one of the rarest, is a knowledge of the hearer’s mind, so that his discourse may answer to something, or else raise clear and profitable questions. Most philosophical books, lectures, and sermons seem

to me either mechanical performances, or else the offspring of a subtile vanity and desire for intellectual sympathy. Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence. Men will not agree in the fashions of their dress, in manners, or “beliefs,” till reduced to the naked facts of experience; and the precepts and methods of modern science, every day extended to new fields of inquiry, will, in these, I believe, do more to invigorate and correct the human understanding than all the essays of all the philosophers.

The old philosophy is ignored by science, not opposed by it, and must take its chance in the reconstruction of speculative thought without the aid of the traditions, the loyalties, and the patriotisms which now certify so much to so many. Why are we Protestants rather than Catholics, Unitarians rather than Orthodox, radicals rather than reactionists? Certainly, not for the kind of reason which makes us Newtonians.

Positivism, to be sure, so far as it pretends to be a philosophy at all, is more than the body of the sciences. It must be a system of the universal methods, hypotheses, and principles which are founded on them, and if not a universal science, in an absolute sense, yet must be coextensive with actual knowledge, and exhibit the consilience of the sciences.

But while positivism ignores religion in the narrower sense of the word, — that is, the body thereof, — it nevertheless, unlike the old atheism, does not reject the religious spirit. It is rather constrained — not for itself, but through the earnest, practical characters of many of its disciples — to yield some worthy object to religious devotion, which they think they find in the interests of humanity. But this is an affair of character, not of intelligence. If you define the end of philosophy to be the attainment of religious objects and truths, then positivism is no philosophy. The religion of positivism is no

part of its philosophy, but is only a religion which consists with its rigid methods and restraints. Mr. Mill maintains that such a religion is not only possible, but has actually controlled the lives and formed the characters of men of this way of thinking.

I see that, after declining to enter into this discussion in your book, I have straightway been tempted to take it up in my letter; but my aim is only to show how such an essay as you desire would not properly come from one who is a positivist in spite of religion: it should rather come from some one who is religious in spite of his positivism. I could do better in the way of defending this philosophy from theological attacks than in adapting a religion to it.

I hope to hear from you soon, in spite of my ill-deserts, and to hear that you are prospering.

To Miss Jane Norton, in Europe.

Cambridge, Feb. 15, 1869.

I returned to-day from passing the Sunday with James Thayer, in Milton. The visit served as a temporary and partial diversion from the stagnation of Cambridge, or rather of this old room. Thayer has two of the brightest little boys that I have ever known, — vigorous, sensible, and full of frolicsome life from the beginning to the end of the day.

I am going as soon as I can, to take my work into town, and work with Mr. Runkle at the Technological Institute. This will involve the walk in or out of town, or both, every fair day. Walking without companionship or necessity or special object, is a dreadful bore; but you see I am going to make it a sort of necessity. Meantime, I am making a heroic virtue of it, for it goes much against the grain, like resuscitation from drowning.

I did not see Mr. Lesley during his short stay in this neighborhood;

but I saw Mrs. Lesley and Mary and Meggy once before they went to Philadelphia, and found them well and happy. Mr. Lesley’s health has very much improved, and he appears this winter, I hear, almost as well as ever; but he carefully refrains from hard work, and occupies himself chiefly with his duties as librarian of the Philosophical Institute. . . .

I went on Wednesday to hear Mr. Emerson read the poets and comment on them. Ben Jonson was his principal theme, and, on the whole, the discourse was interesting. At least, I did not get to sleep, nor even sleepy. This reading is the only one of the course that I have heard. Some former ones are said to have been much more interesting, especially the previous one on Shakespeare. There is, of course, a double interest in these exercises. To learn what pleases Mr. Emerson in a poet, is almost as interesting as it is to listen to his readings and comments.

I don’t know when I have written so long a news letter, and all this without a sketch of an essay, or even a hint of one; and besides so incoherent and childlike! I shall certainly let you read my essay on political parties in manuscript, since you prefer it; but when it will be written is impossible for me to conjecture. I think that voluminous reading will be necessary for preparation; and meantime a dozen other fine theses will present themselves for reflection and study, — that is such study as an indolent leisure permits. When I stop dreaming and win back again the spirit of work, then the Muse may come also.

I have lately declined to write, at Mr. Abbot’s request, an essay on the Religious Aspect of Positivism for a book of Essays to be published in the spring by the Free Religious Association; also reviews solicited for the “Nation” and the “North American Review.” In short, there is no end to the catalogue of my delinquencies; but there is that sort of

pleasure in confessing them, which confirmed invalids sometimes take in recounting their afflictions and infirmities to sympathizing friends. The sinner, when his faults are not malevolent or contagious, is a similar egotistical object of benevolent interest.

You must have read Mr. Goldwin Smith’s paper in the “North American Review,” on the English Revolution. It interested me very much, though I was inclined to question some of his estimates of men and events, — with no right, however, to dispute them. . . .

How fortunate we are, in this country, where the most radical changes are provided for, in our very organization, with no huge hulks of ancient privilege to block the way! This reminds me of a question Mr. Curtis proposed in one of our old walks in Ashfield: whether any privileged class, like a priesthood or an aristocracy or the slave masters, ever voluntarily resigned their powers. We could recall no instance in history. Such powers are always taken away by force or resigned from fear of it.

To the Same.

Cambridge, March 22, 1869.

I cannot believe that you designedly imposed on me as a punishment, the difficult task, which would require much reflection, of giving clear and satisfactory reasons for my refusal of Mr. Abbot’s proposition about the Essay on the Religious Aspects of Positivism; but I feel myself in the condition of the school-boy who can only answer the demand to explain his misconduct by the summary but inexplicit reason “because,” — an answer by which he enounces, at least, his faith in the universality of causation, or in the doctrine of “the sufficient reason” without which nothing happens.

It might possibly be easier to write the essay than to say why not do it. Both would be difficult expositions; and to attempt the essay would perhaps be the directest means of demonstrating my incompetency. There may appear but a shade of difference between a general essay on the religious bearings of positivism and a defence of this philosophy and its adherents, from the attacks and misrepresentations of theological opponents. But the difference is really material. I may be the swiftest racer on this course; yet to no purpose, since I lack rider and spur. If I were more of a Comtist than I am, — that is, had a proselyting interest in the direct practical bearings of positivism, — I should rush, I suppose, to a platform, or into print before the great and discriminating public. As it is, I have much greater confidence in the indirect influence of the causes which have made this philosophy prevail, for determining and exerting its religious effects, than I have in the discussion of themes, which, in the common estimation, are more specifically religious.

Our side cannot now help being heard on its substantial merits, and has no need of pulpits. The effect on the character and direction of men’s faiths, which the possession of a large and extensive body of unquestionable and united truths is fitted to produce, is one which follows naturally, in whatever direction this body of knowledge has disciplined the philosophical dispositions to act, within the legitimate limits of speculation. To take in enough of natural philosophy to make one feel sure that the weather is not ruled by any free moral agents, though it diminishes many other assurances, much supposed weather-wisdom, is a great step in advance. To take such steps in social science must have the effect to turn men’s attention to new social interests, no longer directly dependent on the social powers of the prayerful, the hopeful, the angry, the wilful, or the affectionate child, but on those of the foreseeing, contriving, intelligent man. Moral effort,

though, as before, arising in the burnings of the heart, will then gain through its light a far-reaching influence, which its warmth does not possess. On this aspect of the subject, I might write to the verge of sentimentality; but this, I suppose, is not what Mr. Abbot wanted from my pen.

What positivism has to say about the great religious doctrines of “supernatural causes” and the “future life,” is the question of the theologically trained mind; and, if positivism has nothing to say on these things, how can it justify its pretension to be a philosophy and a competent guide of life? In this question of authority, its not unskilful opponents strike at a vital point; but the blow can be parried, and in return positivism can more pertinently demand of the so-called religious philosophies their authority for saying any thing on these themes. To the reply that life would not be worth improving, that moral effort would be vain, without some such grounds of action as religion presents; that any questioning of these must be settled before life can have an intelligent interest for us, or human nature appear to be superior to the brutal, — to such replies, the kind of return which positivism is most naturally and charitably inclined to, is not polemical but hygienic. The formidable aspects of these themes, the associations of feelings which have grown up with them, are of the nature of diseases, infectious or transmitted, — but not unavoidable at the outset, as our ignorance and the limits of our possible development are. They are traditional distortions of development, which the natural man, even in attaining the most advanced moral growth, need not undergo. This view of the matter (the doctrine of distorted development) is the positive counterpart of the orthodox doctrine of “original depravity.”

The cure should not be “heroic,” since this method attacks the patient as well as the disease. Opening to his activity a mental and moral and even philosophical life, infinitely varied

in objects which invite attention and incite to effort, and wide enough for a rational spirit of speculation (the pursuits of positive science and their various directions), — complete preoccupation is the treatment. If this should be objected to as practically only a culture in “mere morality,” it would be, as Mr. Emerson says, “much as if one should say, ‘Poor God! with nobody to help him.’”

In my correspondence with Mr. Abbot about the direct bearings of positivism on the subject of religion, I was conscious of adopting, in a mild way, the heroic treatment, attacking under indirect forms not his opinions, but the still too superstitious spirit, in which he seemed to me to hold them, —in which he seemed to attribute still, in his understanding, the weight of valid evidence to the force of merely associated interests. To dissociate these interests, not to criticise his doctrines, was my only end in the debate; and I should not be willing to enter again into any such debate, except it be again with a person equally candid, unprejudiced, and intelligent,— certainly not with the public.

My regard for the social and political attitude of radicalism, as the extreme and yet the logically valid result of Protestantism, is very widely separated from my interest in the several philosophies, practical and speculative, which in the minds of the several radicals is so intimately (and to them so naturally) associated with this attitude. As a distinct body of religious thinkers, or as other than a few among liberals of many varieties, I have little sympathy with them, and not much respect for their intelligence. Perhaps you will think me a little prejudiced.

I have so little space left in which to tell the news, or even to make such a sharp turn and deep descent, that I am constrained to regard this as the essay in question (abortive and abbreviated though it be), instead of the letter I meant to write.

To Mr. Norton.

Cambridge, July 9, 1869.

I have got so much accustomed to contemplating vast wastes of time behind me, which are infertile not so much from the lack of cultivation as from the long droughts to which they are subject, that I look upon my delay in answering your letter as a kind of fatality, of which I regard and suffer the consequences without self-reproach. Nevertheless, I am not a fatalist; for conscience has its share in determining me this sultry July morning to break my long silence. What roused my conscience under such an unpropitious sky, it would be difficult to say, — unless, like a beleaguered power, it wakes to find the siege raised and its enemies gone. . . .

Commencement was certainly a much finer day than I remember at its old dates; and the return to something like the old rational festivities at the dinner was a marked improvement in the interests of the day. The old readings of the necrology were not revived, and even the printed list is at last reduced to bare names and dates. Harvard now counts among its honored children only its benefactors, and even these are regarded as only partly paying the debt due to the great interests of learning. Attorney-General Hoar pronounced over those rich citizens who were not benefactors of the colleges “that saddest epitaph ever recorded in history, ‘And the rich man also died, and was buried?”...

The change in the government of the College by the new mode of electing its overseers was much eulogized, and with justice; for each year shows more clearly the value and importance of the change. One incident of it, which has lately interested me, is the chance it affords for a fair trial by competent electors of a modification of Mr. Hare's scheme. The adoption of this modified plan at the next choice of overseers is now very probable. The committee of elections have been

instructed to inquire into it, and to adopt it if they find it has substantial advantages. The modification of the scheme which this would involve—that is, the irresponsible choice of nominees by it, and the responsible choice of officers from these by plurality votes — has interested me a good deal during the past few days on account of its bearings on general politics, — a view of the matter which I think has not been considered in detail by any who have studied it. I cannot do better, I imagine, by way of ascent to philosophy, than to give you some account of my lucubrations on this subject.

Having studied the practical workings of this mode of counting votes, and found that it is made remarkably simple by certain practical devices for the roughly just distribution of the surplus and scattering votes to the candidates of second choice, my attention was called to the advantages of the proposed double election, —first of candidates by minorities, and then, from these, of officers by pluralities,—through which it is intended to prevent the virtual control of an election by a majority composed of minorities acting in concert. This is the main advantage of the modification, and has been duly considered; but there is also another advantage in it, through which majorities get their rightful power, and are made to assume their rightful responsibilities. To make this clear, I must go forward to the conclusions of my speculation, and regard the community as divided into two bodies, —although so far as the exercise of the suffrage is at present determined with us, these would be composed of the same individuals. The two classes ought to be, first, the governing class, who exercise government through the suffrage; and, secondly, those of the governed whose wishes and whose judgments of their own interests ought to be consulted. The functions and the implied qualifications and the consequent extent of these two classes, ought to be regarded as quite distinct, though both of them will and must include the same individuals, when these

belong at once to the governors and the governed. In logical language, these classes are communicant in their extension, though distinct in their comprehension.

The right to decide upon the choice of public officers, and the enactment of public measures, implies more than self-government. It implies, as Mr. Mill has so clearly pointed out, the right to govern others, and it ought to go along with responsibility, and with the power to enforce these decisions even in the last resort, that is, by force. This power in democratic communities resides, therefore, in the majority of male adults, — the potential rebel or anarchical power of the community. On the other hand, the right to be consulted and heard with reference to such decisions, not merely through the courtesy of electors or by the moral force of free discussions, but also by the exercise of a legal or constitutional control over the will of majorities, — this right does not involve ultimate responsibility, but only an intelligent interest in public affairs, and it belongs justly to all whose wishes and knowledge can be of any real service to themselves or others; that is, it belongs to all intelligent adults of both sexes. In this division of rights and powers, we have a solution of the woman’s suffrage question on what I conceive to be its real merits; and, by the proposed modification of Mr. Hare’s scheme, we have the means of carrying this solution into effect. At the same time, without modifying essentially the responsible suffrage or the present laws of election, we can put a highly just and civilized scheme of nomination in the place of a grossly unjust and barbarous one, through which caucuses and conventions not only fail to represent the wishes of intelligent minorities, but practically usurp the powers even of majorities, driving and penning them like sheep. This reform might be effected even without legal or constitutional enactments, if party organizations could be induced to consent to it, and use their influence for it, so great is their power for good or

for evil. That they would be the last to consent, is a proof of the evil.

Under law, the scheme would work in detail somewhat like this: Let the names of every intelligent adult, of either sex, who desires it, be registered at the nearest voting-place, and let copies of these registers be sent to a central bureau, and, between certain convenient dates, let each such person send to this bureau a list of nominations as long as each chooses, but written in the order of preference, — one vote counting in the final distribution for only one candidate. Newspapers, caucuses, and public meetings may aid in suggesting candidates, or candidates may offer themselves through any means of publication. Such extra-governmental agencies would still be of service, though without such a virtual usurpation of powers as now obtains.

Let the lists of nominations so made, and containing twice or thrice as many names as there are offices to be filled, be then sent to the voting-places, and let a choice be then made from this list by each elector, and the final decision be made by the electoral body at large, on the simple principle of pluralities. This will, in case of a division of the community on any prominent question, amount to a decision by a responsible majority, without neglecting or sacrificing minor questions or interests, as is so often done in our present political contests.

The scheme in this shape would not preclude the admission of women to the electoral body proper and to the legislature, when by practice in politics they shall have learned to make laws on other than parental and nursery principles. In native force and influence, they are not inferior to many non-militant men who now have the suffrage. But I have said enough to show the two principal advantages, — the prevention of “logrolling” by minorities and the assumption of responsibility by majorities, —belonging to this modification of Mr. Hare's scheme, and to show the ease with which it could be put into

practice, the cure it would effect of some of our worst political evils, and the solution it affords of the woman’s suffrage question. Could any political device have more or more important utilities?

To Miss Grace Norton.

[July 17, 1869.]

. . . But I know you will forgive this trifling when I confess to you that I am debarred from any but the most serious and necessary talk, by the continuance of a cold which has begun to show unmistakable signs of being based on, and in league with, a whooping-cough,—caught, at my last visit to Milton, from the little Thayers. What a fall is this! To say nothing of the fate of livelier talk, — to have even the maturest utterances of experience and calm reflection, constantly interrupted by the loud and impertinent explosions and strangulations which I suffer in common with infants! Can you wonder that I do not preserve my wonted gravity with the unimpeded pen? On Monday, I mean to seek a remedy in a new treatment lately introduced in France, and also found very successful by Dr. George Hayward, of Boston, though long known, he says (in the “Medical Journal”), to the English; instead of flying to some watering place or to the mountain air, I shall seek relief in the exhalations of the lime-vats of the Cambridge gas-house. . . .

I felt [in reading Mill’s “Subjection of Women”] what I suppose is a very common aversion to being completely convinced by cold logic, with only a little irony for sauce, — with not one word of persuasion, no warmth of eloquence. But, being convinced, I am now persuaded that I agreed substantially with Mr. Mill before. The main points of the argument are familiar grounds with a student of Mr. Mill’s writings. First, his scepticism, — in the true Socratic sense, — his detection of opinions as founded on a false persuasion of knowledge.

He points out the impossibility of knowing, without such experimentation as the subject has never received, what the nature of women is, or of men either, as distinguished from the highly artificialized characteristics which are due to tradition and custom. I rebelled against his tracing historically the legal subjection of woman in marriage, and her other disabilities, solely to the worst dispositions of barbarians, — to their love of domineering. I fancied that I had seen in little boys and girls differences which guided them, as by instinct, to choose from the very first the means, and to exert the social powers and influences, which were calculated to gain for them their greatest successes as men and women. But, on reflection, I found, with only indirect aid from Mr. Mill, that I had probably overestimated the simplicity of the natures of boys and girls; that I had not considered what little heaps of traditions and customs they really are, after all; how subtly observant and sympathetic they are; how constantly, though unwittingly, parents and nurses, friends and teachers, are impressing them with artificialities of feeling and manner, thought and expression, — while they have nothing to unlearn, no a priori prejudices to stand in the way of the most rapid acquisition of whatever is not opposed to their simple common nature: so that, as soon as they begin to regard themselves as little men and women, — as they do almost as soon as they begin to speak, —they begin to command and to coax, to frown and to smile, and to play ruler or subject, according as their ample experience points the way to their advantage. How difficult to find, then, the nature that lies back of all culture, or to find the difference of sex, if any, which belongs to it. Indeed, we may define the human being as one whose nature, as we know it, descends mainly by other channels than those of the blood, — in the spiritual and invisible currents of an extremely complex, artificial life, without which the human nature is immediately lost in the brute, and with reference to which the original nature is more a receptive than a productive power; though, possibly, human life might spring anew from an untaught infant colony.

Next, we come to Mr. Mill’s familiar position, “the law of liberty,” —which is allied to his scepticism. Let this unknown nature, whatever it may be, make itself known through perfect freedom to work itself out; unless it prove on trial to be bad, that is, positively injurious, and not merely contrary to custom. The stupidity of not merely anticipating without trial, but also re-enacting, the supposed laws of human nature, is shown up in this happy way. “One thing we may be certain of, that what is contrary to women’s nature to do they never will be made to do by giving their nature free play. The anxiety of mankind to interfere in behalf of nature for fear lest nature should not succeed in effecting its purpose, is an altogether unnecessary solicitude,” &c. And so he challenges the marriage laws to show some better origin for their justification than the old barbaric dogma that might not only does, but should, make right.

He acknowledges that all other barbarities, like slavery and absolute government in their various forms, which have yielded to modern civilization, have been compelled to yield. The legal subjection of women is an anomaly in the highest civilization, the one barbarity which has had too much strength in it to be overcome by the forces of civilization. And it seemed to me at first that herein was a necessity which made any thing more than mere mitigations by civilized laws an Utopian project. The relation of a superior will to an inferior one might be rendered in a high degree attractive and the source of great happiness and great virtues. Indeed, the virtues of chivalry and generosity are founded on such relations. Will the world resign all its romantic virtues to the humdrum of loving equality and justice? The possession of tyrannical power, with the virtue to refrain from its abuse, is an attractive position and

character, not only to those who have them, but also to those who are their objects; so much so that, as Mr. Mill says, “It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power;” and he adds that it would be cruel to inquire, “how great a place in most men this sentiment fills, even in religious devotion.” Slavery, in its worst forms, exhibits fidelity and devotion in the greatest degrees. “These individual feelings nowhere rise to such luxuriant height as under the most atrocious institutions.” So then, we must part with the devotion, fidelity, and gratitude, along with the chivalry, gallantry, and generosity, that depend for their existence on human institutions, — except in that last exercise of them, the abolition of the institutions. There will still be room enough for these virtues in the accidental and unavoidable inequalities of life.

But how are men to be forced or induced to make this sacrifice? Mr. Mill does not dwell so long or so clearly on the answer as could be wished. To prove the reasonableness and probable advantage of the sacrifice, is enough with him; but his hope seems to be this, — that adherents of the cause can be found in sufficient numbers in the powerful and offending sex to divide it against itself; that those who hate slavish worship, and the possession as well as the exercise of tyrannical power, will some day outnumber, or at any rate outweigh, the barbarians in civilized society, and will put such worship and power out of existence, — irrevocably out of their own, as well as the barbarian’s possession; and out of men’s religious ideas also.

You see that what I think on the question is so nearly like Mr. Mill’s thought, that I have hardly done more than epitomize parts of the essay. . . . Radical positions on the

details of policy, such as women’s claims to the suffrage and to various professional pursuits, are far less solidly founded than general radical positions of principle, which, while disclaiming a profound knowledge or insight of human nature, yet demand a profounder inquiry into it and a freer play for it; which regard all legal and social restrictions, not founded in an ascertained necessity, as shabby impertinences. Indignant protests against barbarism and presumptuous ignorance from such radicals as Mr. Mill are far more efficacious than the undignified clamorous assumptions of another class. It is a characteristic quality of Mr. Mill, shown both in his speculative and practical writings, that he is far less solicitous to separate himself from those with whom he agrees in main tendencies, though differing in details, than most thinkers are. In philosophy, he is much less sectarian than Huxley or Spencer, and does not reprobate Comte; and in social reforms he is much more charitable toward silly radicals than I should be, but for his example. The main, and far the most important, division of opinion to him is the one which separates the modern from the ancient world in faith and practice. Probably, his more profound radicalism, beginning simply in the removal of time-honored obstacles, will ultimately work greater changes than any the silly radicals now dream of, or any I dare to predict. So I cannot yet treat “the whole question.” No doubt, the scheming radical has his use, if in nothing else at least in this, that he familiarizes prejudiced minds with possible changes, and so makes them easier if they happen to be judicious. That they may be judicious, or at any rate worth testing in spite of their novelty, is the extent of my radicalism at present.