While mainly occupied in those years with philosophical studies, Mill did not remit his interest in current politics. He supported the North in the American crisis of 1862, using all his strength to explain what has since been universally recognized as the issue really at stake in the struggle, the abolition of slavery. Huxley, Tyndall, Cairnes, Mark Pattison, F. Harrison, Sir Frederick Pol lock and Lockyer were among the contributors.
In 1865 he stood as parliamentary candidate for Westminster, on conditions strictly in accordance with his principles. He would not canvass, nor pay agents to canvass for him, nor would he engage to attend to the local business of the constituency. He was with difficulty persuaded even to address a meeting of the electors, but was elected. He took an active part in the debates on Disraeli's Reform Bill (moving, on April 12, 1866, an amend ment to omit the word "man" and insert "person"), and helped to extort from the government several useful modifications of the Bill for the Prevention of Corrupt Practices. The reform of land tenure in Ireland, the representation of women, the reduction of the national debt, the reform of London government, the abro gation of the Declaration of Paris, were among the topics on which he spoke with marked effect. He took occasion more than once to enforce what he had often advocated in writing, England's duty to intervene in foreign politics in support of the cause of freedom. As a speaker Mill was somewhat hesitating, pausing occasionally as if to recover the thread of his argument, but he showed great readiness in extemporaneous debate.
Mill's subscription to the election expenses of Bradlaugh, and his attack on the conduct of Governor Eyre in Jamaica were per haps the main causes of his defeat in the general election of 1868. But his studied advocacy of unfamiliar projects of reform had made him unpopular with "moderate Liberals." He retired with a sense of relief to his cottage and his literary life at Avignon. His little cottage was filled with books and newspapers the beau tiful country round it furnished him with a variety of walks ; he read, wrote, discussed, walked, botanized. He was extremely fond of music, and was himself a fair pianist. His step-daughter, Miss Taylor (d. January 1907), was his constant companion after his wife's death. Mill was an enthusiastic botanist all his life long, and a frequent contributor of notes and short papers to the Phytologist. One of the things that he looked forward to during his last journey to Avignon was seeing the spring flowers and completing a flora of the locality. His delight in scenery fre quently appears in letters written to his friends during his summer and autumn tours.
Yet he did not relax his laborious habits nor his ardent out look on human affairs. The essays in the fourth volume of his Dissertations—on endowments, on land, on labour, on meta physical and psychological questions—were written for the Fort nightly Review at intervals after his short parliamentary career. One of his first tasks was to send his treatise on the Subjection of Women (written 1861, published 1869, many editions) through the press. The essay on Theism was written soon after. The last public work in which he engaged was the starting of the Land Tenure Reform Association. The interception by the state of the unearned increment, and the promotion of co-operative agri culture, were the most striking features in his programme. He wrote in the Examiner and made a public speech in favour of the association a few months before his death. The secret of the ardour with which he took up this question probably was his conviction that a great struggle was impending in Europe between labour and capital. He regarded his project as a timely com promise.
Mill died at Avignon on May 8, 1873. He was a man of ex
treme simplicity in his method of life. His services in ethics, politics and philosophy lay not so much in his actual achieve ment as in his personality and the liberal and inquiring spirit in which he handled the great questions of his time. A statue in bronze was placed on the Thames Embankment, and there is a good portrait by Watts (a copy of which, by Watts himself, was hung in the National Gallery).
The influence which Mill's works exercised upon contemporary English thought can scarcely be over-estimated. In philosophy his chief work was to systematize and expound the utilitarianism of his father and Bentham. (See UTILITARIANISM.) He may, in fact, be regarded as the final exponent of that empirical school of philosophy which owed its impulse to John Locke, and is generally spoken of as being typically English. Its fundamental characteristic is the emphasis laid upon human reason, i.e., upon the duty incumbent upon all thinkers to investigate for them selves rather than to accept the authority of others. Knowledge must be based upon experience. In reasserting and amplifying the empirical conclusions of his predecessors, especially in the sphere of ethics, Mill's chief function was the introduction of the humanist element. This was due, no doubt, to his revulsion from the sternness of his upbringing and the period of stress through which he passed in early manhood, but also to the sympathetic and emotional qualities which manifested themselves in his early manhood. We have seen, for example, that he was led to investi gate the subject of logic because he found in attempting to ad vance his humanitarian schemes in politics an absence of that fundamental agreement which he recognized as the basis of scien tific advance. Both his logical and his metaphysical studies were thus undertaken as the pre-requisites of a practical theory of human development. Though he believed that the lower classes were not yet ripe for Socialism, with the principles of which he (unlike James Mill and Bentham) was in general agreement, his whole life was devoted to the amelioration of the conditions of the working classes. This fact, no doubt, should be taken into account in any detailed criticism of the philosophic work, it was taken up not as an end but as ancillary to a social and ethical system Reference to the articles on LOGIC, METAPHYSICS, etc , will show that subsequent criticism, however much it has owed by way of stimulus to Mill's strenuous rationalism, has been able to point to much that is inconsistent, inadequate and even super ficial in his writings. Two main intellectual movements from widely different standpoints combined to diminish his influence: the idealism of the German school and the application of the evolutionary theory to ethics. In the sphere of psychology, like wise—e.g., in connection with Mill's doctrine of Association of Ideas (q v.) and the phrase "Mental Chemistry," by which he sought to meet the problems which Associationism left unsolved— modern criticism and the experimental methods of the psycho physiological school have set up wholly new criteria, with a new terminology and different fields of investigation. (See Psv CHOLOGY.) A similar fate has befallen Mill's economic theories. The title of his work, Principles of Political Economy, with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, though open to criticism, indi cated a less narrow and formal conception of the field of the science than had been common amongst his predecessors. It is an admirably lucid, and even elegant, exposition of the Ricard ian economics, the Malthusian theory being of course incorpo rated with these; but, notwithstanding the introduction of many minor novelties, it is in its scientific substance little or nothing more.