800 K S
115
MILL'S INTELLECTUAL BEACON
JOHN STUART MILL AND HARRIET TAYLOR. By F.
A.
Hoyek. Uni–
versity of Chicogo Press. $4.50.
It has never been easy-he saw to it that it should not be–
to think of John Stuart Mill without also thinking of the woman whom
he memorialized as the most brilliant mind and noblest spirit he had
ever encountered, the inspiration of his best ideas and, indeed, their
author in all but the writing. But until the appearance of Professor
Hayek's fascinating selection of hitherto unpublished correspondence,
we have known
only
as much, or as little, about the relationship of
Mill and Mrs. Taylor as Mill was willing to tell us in the
Autobiography
-that he was 24, Harriet Taylor 22 when they met; that Harriet was
already married and the mother of several children; that they were
devoted friends for twenty years, until Harriet's worthy husband died;
that they were then married, for the seven years of life which remained
to Mrs. Taylor. The actual nature of the relationship and, even more
important, the question of how much objective truth there was in
Mill's high estimate of Mrs. Taylor's gifts and of his dependence on
her have had to be matters for conjecture.
And conjecture has not been kind to Mrs. Taylor, either in her
own time or since. I do not mean that people have seriously doubted
Mill's word on the sexual innocence of the long friendship--although
Mr. Taylor's wife lived much apart from her husband, in the country
where Mill was her frequent house guest, and the friends even traveled
abroad together, both contemporary opinion and posterity have, on
the whole, granted them the virtue of which they made such a principle.
Where admirers of Mill have refused to believe him is in his judgment
of Harriet's intellectual capacities and in his repeated statements of
her enormous influence on his work.
I suppose the skepticism has in part been justified. The praise
Mill lavishes on his wife in the famous autobiographical passage–
" ... her gifts of feeling and imagination ... consummate artist ... her
fiery and tender soul . . . her vigorous eloquence . . . her profound
knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity in practical
life ... her unselfishness ... passion of justice ... her boundless generos-
ity . .. a lovingness ever ready to pour itself forth upon all human
beings ... the most generous modesty ... a simplicity and sincerity . . .
etc. etc."-is of the inordinate sort which at once implies the possibility
of correction. Then too, if Mrs. Taylor was as talented as Mill says,
