"
This estimate of his own influence and of the importance to
metaphysical discussion at the present time of the philosophy he
"adopted" is entitled to much more consideration than ought in
general to be allowed for an opinion inspired by the ambition,
the enthusiasm, the disappointments, or even the modesty of a
philosophical thinker. Nevertheless, the far different opinion of
his standing as a metaphysician which his critics entertain is
undoubtedly more correct, though in a sense which was not so
clearly apparent to him. They see clearly that a philosophy of
which he was not the founder, and never pretended to be, has
gained through his writings a hold, not only on English
speculation, but on that of the civilized world, which it did not
acquire even in England when it was an especially English
philosophy, as it was "in the first half of the eighteenth
century, from the time of Locke to that of the reaction against
Hume."
What, then, is it in Mill's philosophical writings that has given
him this eminence as a thinker? Two qualities, we think, very
rarely combined: a philosophical style which for clearness and
cogency has, perhaps, never been surpassed, and a conscientious
painstaking, with a seriousness of conviction, and an earnestness
of purpose which did not in general characterize the thinkers
whose views he adopted.
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