LAST STAGE OF EDUCATION, AND FIRST OF SELF-EDUCATION
For the first year or two after my visit to France, I continued my old
studies, with the addition of some new ones. When I returned, my
father was just finishing for the press his _Elements of Political
Economy_, and he made me perform an exercise on the manuscript, which
Mr. Bentham practised on all his own writings, making what he called
"marginal contents"; a short abstract of every paragraph, to enable
the writer more easily to judge of, and improve, the order of the
ideas, and the general character of the exposition. Soon after, my
father put into my hands Condillac's _Traité des Sensations_, and the
logical and metaphysical volumes of his _Cours d'Etudes_; the first
(notwithstanding the superficial resemblance between Condillac's
psychological system and my father's) quite as much for a warning as
for an example. I am not sure whether it was in this winter or the
next that I first read a history of the French Revolution. I learnt
with astonishment that the principles of democracy, then apparently in
so insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in Europe, had
borne all before them in France thirty years earlier, and had been the
creed of the nation. As may be supposed from this, I had previously a
very vague idea of that great commotion. I knew only that the French
had thrown off the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. and XV., had put
the King and Queen to death, guillotined many persons, one of whom was
Lavoisier, and had ultimately fallen under the despotism of Bonaparte.
From this time, as was natural, the subject took an immense hold of my
feelings. It allied itself with all my juvenile aspirations to the
character of a democratic champion. What had happened so lately,
seemed as if it might easily happen again: and the most transcendent
glory I was capable of conceiving, was that of figuring, successful or
unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an English Convention.
During the winter of 1821-2, Mr. John Austin, with whom at the time of
my visit to France my father had but lately become acquainted, kindly
allowed me to read Roman law with him. My father, notwithstanding his
abhorrence of the chaos of barbarism called English Law, had turned
his thoughts towards the bar as on the whole less ineligible for me
than any other profession: and these readings with Mr. Austin, who had
made Bentham's best ideas his own, and added much to them from other
sources and from his own mind, were not only a valuable introduction
to legal studies, but an important portion of general education. With
Mr. Austin I read Heineccius on the Institutes, his _Roman Antiquities_,
and part of his exposition of the Pandects; to which was added a
considerable portion of Blackstone. It was at the commencement of these
studies that my father, as a needful accompaniment to them, put into my
hands Bentham's principal speculations, as interpreted to the Continent,
and indeed to all the world, by Dumont, in the _Traité de Législation_.
The reading of this book was an epoch in my life; one of the turning
points in my mental history.
My previous education had been, in a certain sense, already a course
of Benthamism. The Benthamic standard of "the greatest happiness" was
that which I had always been taught to apply; I was even familiar
with an abstract discussion of it, forming an episode in an
unpublished dialogue on Government, written by my father on the
Platonic model. Yet in the first pages of Bentham it burst upon me
with all the force of novelty. What thus impressed me was the chapter
in which Bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning in
morals and legislation, deduced from phrases like "law of nature,"
"right reason," "the moral sense," "natural rectitude," and the like,
and characterized them as dogmatism in disguise, imposing its
sentiments upon others under cover of sounding expressions which
convey no reason for the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as its
own reason. It had not struck me before, that Bentham's principle put
an end to all this. The feeling rushed upon me, that all previous
moralists were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencement
of a new era in thought. This impression was strengthened by the
manner in which Bentham put into scientific form the application of
the happiness principle to the morality of actions, by analysing the
various classes and orders of their consequences. But what struck me
at that time most of all, was the Classification of Offences, which is
much more clear, compact, and imposing in Dumont's _rédaction_ than in
the original work of Bentham from which it was taken. Logic and the
dialectics of Plato, which had formed so large a part of my previous
training, had given me a strong relish for accurate classification.
This taste had been strengthened and enlightened by the study of
botany, on the principles of what is called the Natural Method, which
I had taken up with great zeal, though only as an amusement, during my
stay in France; and when I found scientific classification applied to
the great and complex subject of Punishable Acts, under the guidance
of the ethical principle of Pleasurable and Painful Consequences,
followed out in the method of detail introduced into these subjects by
Bentham, I felt taken up to an eminence from which I could survey a
vast mental domain, and see stretching out into the distance
intellectual results beyond all computation. As I proceeded further,
there seemed to be added to this intellectual clearness, the most
inspiring prospects of practical improvement in human affairs. To
Bentham's general view of the construction of a body of law I was not
altogether a stranger, having read with attention that admirable
compendium, my father's article on Jurisprudence: but I had read it
with little profit, and scarcely any interest, no doubt from its
extremely general and abstract character, and also because it
concerned the form more than the substance of the _corpus juris_, the
logic rather than the ethics of law. But Bentham's subject was
Legislation, of which Jurisprudence is only the formal part: and at
every page he seemed to open a clearer and broader conception of what
human opinions and institutions ought to be, how they might be made
what they ought to be, and how far removed from it they now are. When
I laid down the last volume of the _Traité_, I had become a different
being. The "principle of utility," understood as Bentham understood
it, and applied in the manner in which he applied it through these
three volumes, fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held
together the detached and fragmentary component parts of my knowledge
and beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of things. I now had
opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best
senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which
could be made the principal outward purpose of a life. And I had a
grand conception laid before me of changes to be effected in the
condition of mankind through that doctrine. The _Traité de Legislation_
wound up with what was to me a most impressive picture of human life as
it would be made by such opinions and such laws as were recommended in
the treatise. The anticipations of practicable improvement were
studiously moderate, deprecating and discountenancing as reveries of
vague enthusiasm many things which will one day seem so natural to human
beings, that injustice will probably be done to those who once thought
them chimerical. But, in my state of mind, this appearance of superiority
to illusion added to the effect which Bentham's doctrines produced on me,
by heightening the impression of mental power, and the vista of improvement
which he did open was sufficiently large and brilliant to light up my life,
as well as to give a definite shape to my aspirations.
After this I read, from time to time, the most important of the other
works of Bentham which had then seen the light, either as written by
himself or as edited by Dumont. This was my private reading: while,
under my father's direction, my studies were carried into the higher
branches of analytic psychology. I now read Locke's _Essay_, and wrote
out an account of it, consisting of a complete abstract of every
chapter, with such remarks as occurred to me; which was read by, or
(I think) to, my father, and discussed throughout. I performed the same
process with _Helvetius de L'Esprit_, which I read of my own choice.
This preparation of abstracts, subject to my father's censorship, was
of great service to me, by compelling precision in conceiving and
expressing psychological doctrines, whether accepted as truths or only
regarded as the opinion of others. After Helvetius, my father made me
study what he deemed the really master-production in the philosophy
of mind, Hartley's _Observations on Man_. This book, though it did
not, like the _Traité de Législation_, give a new colour to my
existence, made a very similar impression on me in regard to its
immediate subject. Hartley's explanation, incomplete as in many points
it is, of the more complex mental phenomena by the law of association,
commended itself to me at once as a real analysis, and made me feel by
contrast the insufficiency of the merely verbal generalizations of
Condillac, and even of the instructive gropings and feelings about for
psychological explanations, of Locke. It was at this very time that my
father commenced writing his _Analysis_ of the Mind, which carried
Hartley's mode of explaining the mental phenomena to so much greater
length and depth. He could only command the concentration of thought
necessary for this work, during the complete leisure of his holiday
for a month or six weeks annually: and he commenced it in the summer
of 1822, in the first holiday he passed at Dorking; in which
neighbourhood, from that time to the end of his life, with the
exception of two years, he lived, as far as his official duties
permitted, for six months of every year. He worked at the _Analysis_
during several successive vacations, up to the year 1829, when it was
published, and allowed me to read the manuscript, portion by portion,
as it advanced. The other principal English writers on mental
philosophy I read as I felt inclined, particularly Berkeley, Hume's
_Essays_, Reid, Dugald Stewart and Brown on Cause and Effect. Brown's
_Lectures_ I did not read until two or three years later, nor at that
time had my father himself read them.
Among the works read in the course of this year, which contributed
materially to my development, I owe it to mention a book (written on
the foundation of some of Bentham's manuscripts and published under
the pseudonyme of Philip Beauchamp) entitled _Analysis of the Influence
of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind_. This was an
examination not of the truth, but of the usefulness of religious belief,
in the most general sense, apart from the peculiarities of any special
revelation; which, of all the parts of the discussion concerning
religion, is the most important in this age, in which real belief in
any religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion of
its necessity for moral and social purposes almost universal; and when
those who reject revelation, very generally take refuge in an
optimistic Deism, a worship of the order of Nature, and the supposed
course of Providence, at least as full of contradictions, and
perverting to the moral sentiments, as any of the forms of
Christianity, if only it is as completely realized. Yet very little,
with any claim to a philosophical character, has been written by
sceptics against the usefulness of this form of belief. The volume
bearing the name of Philip Beauchamp had this for its special object.
Having been shown to my father in manuscript, it was put into my hands
by him, and I made a marginal analysis of it as I had done of the
_Elements of Political Economy_. Next to the Traité de Législation_,
it was one of the books which by the searching character of its
analysis produced the greatest effect upon me. On reading it lately
after an interval of many years, I find it to have some of the defects
as well as the merits of the Benthamic modes of thought, and to
contain, as I now think, many weak arguments, but with a great
overbalance of sound ones, and much good material for a more
completely philosophic and conclusive treatment of the subject.
I have now, I believe, mentioned all the books which had any
considerable effect on my early mental development. From this point
I began to carry on my intellectual cultivation by writing still more
than by reading. In the summer of 1822 I wrote my first argumentative
essay. I remember very little about it, except that it was an attack
on what I regarded as the aristocratic prejudice, that the rich were,
or were likely to be, superior in moral qualities to the poor. My
performance was entirely argumentative, without any of the declamation
which the subject would admit of, and might be expected to suggest to
a young writer. In that department, however, I was, and remained, very
inapt. Dry argument was the only thing I could, manage, or willingly
attempted; though passively I was very susceptible to the effect of
all composition, whether in the form of poetry or oratory, which
appealed to the feelings on any basis of reason. My father, who knew
nothing of this essay until it was finished, was well satisfied, and,
as I learnt from others, even pleased with it; but, perhaps from a
desire to promote the exercise of other mental faculties than the
purely logical, he advised me to make my next exercise in composition
one of the oratorical kind; on which suggestion, availing myself of
my familiarity with Greek history and ideas, and with the Athenian
orators, I wrote two speeches, one an accusation, the other a defence
of Pericles, on a supposed impeachment for not marching out to fight
the Lacedemonians on their invasion of Attica. After this I continued
to write papers on subjects often very much beyond my capacity, but
with great benefit both from the exercise itself, and from the
discussions which it led to with my father.
I had now also begun to converse, on general subjects, with the
instructed men with whom I came in contact: and the opportunities of
such contact naturally became more numerous. The two friends of my
father from whom I derived most, and with whom I most associated, were
Mr. Grote and Mr. John Austin. The acquaintance of both with my father
was recent, but had ripened rapidly into intimacy. Mr. Grote was
introduced to my father by Mr. Ricardo, I think in 1819 (being then
about twenty-five years old), and sought assiduously his society and
conversation. Already a highly instructed man, he was yet, by the side
of my father, a tyro in the great subjects of human opinion; but he
rapidly seized on my father's best ideas; and in the department of
political opinion he made himself known as early as 1820, by a
pamphlet in defence of Radical Reform, in reply to a celebrated
article by Sir James Mackintosh, then lately published in he
_Edinburgh Review_. Mr. Grote's father, the banker, was, I believe,
a thorough Tory, and his mother intensely Evangelical; so that for
his liberal opinions he was in no way indebted to home influences.
But, unlike most persons who have the prospect of being rich by
inheritance, he had, though actively engaged in the business of
banking, devoted a great portion of time to philosophic studies; and
his intimacy with my father did much to decide the character of the
next stage in his mental progress. Him I often visited, and my
conversations with him on political, moral, and philosophical subjects
gave me, in addition to much valuable instruction, all the pleasure
and benefit of sympathetic communion with a man of the high
intellectual and moral eminence which his life and writings have since
manifested to the world.
Mr. Austin, who was four or five years older than Mr. Grote, was the
eldest son of a retired miller in Suffolk, who had made money by
contracts during the war, and who must have been a man of remarkable
qualities, as I infer from the fact that all his sons were of more
than common ability and all eminently gentlemen. The one with whom we
are now concerned, and whose writings on jurisprudence have made him
celebrated, was for some time in the army, and served in Sicily under
Lord William Bentinck. After the Peace he sold his commission and
studied for the bar, to which he had been called for some time before
my father knew him. He was not, like Mr. Grote, to any extent, a pupil
of my father, but he had attained, by reading and thought, a
considerable number of the same opinions, modified by his own very
decided individuality of character. He was a man of great intellectual
powers, which in conversation appeared at their very best; from the
vigour and richness of expression with which, under the excitement of
discussion, he was accustomed to maintain some view or other of most
general subjects; and from an appearance of not only strong, but
deliberate and collected will; mixed with a certain bitterness, partly
derived from temperament, and partly from the general cast of his
feelings and reflections. The dissatisfaction with life and the world,
felt more or less in the present state of society and intellect by
every discerning and highly conscientious mind, gave in his case a
rather melancholy tinge to the character, very natural to those whose
passive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to their
active energies. For it must be said, that the strength of will of
which his manner seemed to give such strong assurance, expended itself
principally in manner. With great zeal for human improvement, a strong
sense of duty, and capacities and acquirements the extent of which is
proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed any
intellectual task of magnitude. He had so high a standard of what
ought to be done, so exaggerated a sense of deficiencies in his own
performances, and was so unable to content himself with the amount of
elaboration sufficient for the occasion and the purpose, that he not
only spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by overlabouring it, but
spent so much time and exertion in superfluous study and thought, that
when his task ought to have been completed, he had generally worked
himself into an illness, without having half finished what he
undertook. From this mental infirmity (of which he is not the sole
example among the accomplished and able men whom I have known),
combined with liability to frequent attacks of disabling though not
dangerous ill-health, he accomplished, through life, little in
comparison with what he seemed capable of; but what he did produce is
held in the very highest estimation by the most competent judges; and,
like Coleridge, he might plead as a set-off that he had been to many
persons, through his conversation, a source not only of much
instruction but of great elevation of character. On me his influence
was most salutary. It was moral in the best sense. He took a sincere
and kind interest in me, far beyond what could have been expected
towards a mere youth from a man of his age, standing, and what seemed
austerity of character. There was in his conversation and demeanour a
tone of high-mindedness which did not show itself so much, if the
quality existed as much, in any of the other persons with whom at that
time I associated. My intercourse with him was the more beneficial,
owing to his being of a different mental type from all other
intellectual men whom I frequented, and he from the first set himself
decidedly against the prejudices and narrownesses which are almost
sure to be found in a young man formed by a particular mode of thought
or a particular social circle.
His younger brother, Charles Austin, of whom at this time and for the
next year or two I saw much, had also a great effect on me, though of
a very different description. He was but a few years older than
myself, and had then just left the University, where he had shone with
great _éclat_ as a man of intellect and a brilliant orator and
converser. The effect he produced on his Cambridge contemporaries
deserves to be accounted an historical event; for to it may in part be
traced the tendency towards Liberalism in general, and the Benthamic
and politico-economic form of it in particular, which showed itself in
a portion of the more active-minded young men of the higher classes
from this time to 1830. The Union Debating Society, at that time at
the height of its reputation, was an arena where what were then
thought extreme opinions, in politics and philosophy, were weekly
asserted, face to face with their opposites, before audiences
consisting of the _élite_ of the Cambridge youth: and though many
persons afterwards of more or less note (of whom Lord Macaulay is the
most celebrated) gained their first oratorical laurels in those
debates, the really influential mind among these intellectual
gladiators was Charles Austin. He continued, after leaving the
University, to be, by his conversation and personal ascendency, a
leader among the same class of young men who had been his associates
there; and he attached me among others to his car. Through him I
became acquainted with Macaulay, Hyde and Charles Villiers, Strutt
(now Lord Belper), Romilly (now Lord Romilly and Master of the Rolls),
and various others who subsequently figured in literature or politics,
and among whom I heard discussions on many topics, as yet to a certain
degree new to me. The influence of Charles Austin over me differed
from that of the persons I have hitherto mentioned, in being not the
influence of a man over a boy, but that of an elder contemporary. It
was through him that I first felt myself, not a pupil under teachers,
but a man among men. He was the first person of intellect whom I met
on a ground of equality, though as yet much his inferior on that
common ground. He was a man who never failed to impress greatly those
with whom he came in contact, even when their opinions were the very
reverse of his. The impression he gave was that of boundless strength,
together with talents which, combined with such apparent force of will
and character, seemed capable of dominating the world. Those who knew
him, whether friendly to him or not, always anticipated that he would
play a conspicuous part in public life. It is seldom that men produce
so great an immediate effect by speech, unless they, in some degree,
lay themselves out for it; and he did this in no ordinary degree. He
loved to strike, and even to startle. He knew that decision is the
greatest element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with all the
decision he could throw into them, never so well pleased as when he
astonished anyone by their audacity. Very unlike his brother, who made
war against the narrower interpretations and applications of the
principles they both professed, he, on the contrary, presented the
Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were
susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to
consequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. All which,
he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner
so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off
victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much
of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of
what are called Benthamites or Utilitarians had its origin in paradoxes
thrown out by Charles Austin. It must be said, however, that his example
was followed, _haud passibus aequis_, by younger proselytes, and that to
_outrer_ whatever was by anybody considered offensive in the doctrines
and maxims of Benthamism, became at one time the badge of a small coterie
of youths. All of these who had anything in them, myself among others,
quickly outgrew this boyish vanity; and those who had not, became tired
of differing from other people, and gave up both the good and the bad part
of the heterodox opinions they had for some time professed.
It was in the winter of 1822-3 that I formed the plan of a little
society, to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental
principles--acknowledging Utility as their standard in ethics and
politics, and a certain number of the principal corollaries drawn from
it in the philosophy I had accepted--and meeting once a fortnight to
read essays and discuss questions conformably to the premises thus
agreed on. The fact would hardly be worth mentioning, but for the
circumstance, that the name I gave to the society I had planned was the
Utilitarian Society. It was the first time that anyone had taken the
title of Utilitarian; and the term made its way into the language, from
this humble source. I did not invent the word, but found it in one of
Galt's novels, the _Annals of the Parish_, in which the Scotch
clergyman, of whom the book is a supposed autobiography, is represented
as warning his parishioners not to leave the Gospel and become
utilitarians. With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized
on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as a
sectarian appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by some
others holding the opinions which it was intended to designate. As those
opinions attracted more notice, the term was repeated by strangers and
opponents, and got into rather common use just about the time when those
who had originally assumed it, laid down that along with other sectarian
characteristics. The Society so called consisted at first of no more
than three members, one of whom, being Mr. Bentham's amanuensis,
obtained for us permission to hold our meetings in his house. The number
never, I think, reached ten, and the Society was broken up in 1826. It
had thus an existence of about three years and a half. The chief effect
of it as regards myself, over and above the benefit of practice in oral
discussion, was that of bringing me in contact with several young men at
that time less advanced than myself, among whom, as they professed the
same opinions, I was for some time a sort of leader, and had considerable
influence on their mental progress. Any young man of education who fell
in my way, and whose opinions were not incompatible with those of the
Society, I endeavoured to press into its service; and some others I
probably should never have known, had they not joined it. Those of the
members who became my intimate companions--no one of whom was in any sense
of the word a disciple, but all of them independent thinkers on their own
basis--were William Eyton Tooke, son of the eminent political economist,
a young man of singular worth both moral and intellectual, lost to the
world by an early death; his friend William Ellis, an original thinker in
the field of political economy, now honourably known by his apostolic
exertions for the improvement of education; George Graham, afterwards
official assignee of the Bankruptcy Court, a thinker of originality and
power on almost all abstract subjects; and (from the time when he came
first to England to study for the bar in 1824 or 1825) a man who has made
considerably more noise in the world than any of these, John Arthur Roebuck.
In May, 1823, my professional occupation and status for the next
thirty-five years of my life, were decided by my father's obtaining for
me an appointment from the East India Company, in the office of the
Examiner of India Correspondence, immediately under himself. I was
appointed in the usual manner, at the bottom of the list of clerks, to
rise, at least in the first instance, by seniority; but with the
understanding that I should be employed from the beginning in preparing
drafts of despatches, and be thus trained up as a successor to those who
then filled the higher departments of the office. My drafts of course
required, for some time, much revision from my immediate superiors, but
I soon became well acquainted with the business, and by my father's
instructions and the general growth of my own powers, I was in a few
years qualified to be, and practically was, the chief conductor of the
correspondence with India in one of the leading departments, that of the
Native States. This continued to be my official duty until I was
appointed Examiner, only two years before the time when the abolition of
the East India Company as a political body determined my retirement. I
do not know any one of the occupations by which a subsistence can now be
gained, more suitable than such as this to anyone who, not being in
independent circumstances, desires to devote a part of the twenty-four
hours to private intellectual pursuits. Writing for the press cannot be
recommended as a permanent resource to anyone qualified to accomplish
anything in the higher departments of literature or thought: not only on
account of the uncertainty of this means of livelihood, especially if
the writer has a conscience, and will not consent to serve any opinions
except his own; but also because the writings by which one can live are
not the writings which themselves live, and are never those in which the
writer does his best. Books destined to form future thinkers take too
much time to write, and when written come, in general, too slowly into
notice and repute, to be relied on for subsistence. Those who have to
support themselves by their pen must depend on literary drudgery, or at
best on writings addressed to the multitude; and can employ in the
pursuits of their own choice, only such time as they can spare from
those of necessity; which is generally less than the leisure allowed by
office occupations, while the effect on the mind is far more enervating
and fatiguing. For my own part I have, through life, found office duties
an actual rest from the other mental occupations which I have carried on
simultaneously with them. They were sufficiently intellectual not to be
a distasteful drudgery, without being such as to cause any strain upon
the mental powers of a person used to abstract thought, or to the labour
of careful literary composition. The drawbacks, for every mode of life
has its drawbacks, were not, however, unfelt by me. I cared little for
the loss of the chances of riches and honours held out by some of the
professions, particularly the bar, which had been, as I have already
said, the profession thought of for me. But I was not indifferent to
exclusion from Parliament, and public life: and I felt very sensibly the
more immediate unpleasantness of confinement to London; the holiday
allowed by India House practice not exceeding a month in the year, while
my taste was strong for a country life, and my sojourn in France had
left behind it an ardent desire of travelling. But though these tastes
could not be freely indulged, they were at no time entirely sacrificed.
I passed most Sundays, throughout the year, in the country, taking long
rural walks on that day even when residing in London. The month's
holiday was, for a few years, passed at my father's house in the
country; afterwards a part or the whole was spent in tours, chiefly
pedestrian, with some one or more of the young men who were my chosen
companions; and, at a later period, in longer journeys or excursions,
alone or with other friends. France, Belgium, and Rhenish Germany were
within easy reach of the annual holiday: and two longer absences, one of
three, the other of six months, under medical advice, added Switzerland,
the Tyrol, and Italy to my list. Fortunately, also, both these journeys
occurred rather early, so as to give the benefit and charm of the
remembrance to a large portion of life.
I am disposed to agree with what has been surmised by others, that the
opportunity which my official position gave me of learning by personal
observation the necessary conditions of the practical conduct of
public affairs, has been of considerable value to me as a theoretical
reformer of the opinions and institutions of my time. Not, indeed,
that public business transacted on paper, to take effect on the other
side of the globe, was of itself calculated to give much practical
knowledge of life. But the occupation accustomed me to see and hear
the difficulties of every course, and the means of obviating them,
stated and discussed deliberately with a view to execution: it gave
me opportunities of perceiving when public measures, and other
political facts, did not produce the effects which had been expected
of them, and from what causes; above all, it was valuable to me by
making me, in this portion of my activity, merely one wheel in a
machine, the whole of which had to work together. As a speculative
writer, I should have had no one to consult but myself, and should
have encountered in my speculations none of the obstacles which would
have started up whenever they came to be applied to practice. But as a
Secretary conducting political correspondence, I could not issue an
order, or express an opinion, without satisfying various persons very
unlike myself, that the thing was fit to be done. I was thus in a good
position for finding out by practice the mode of putting a thought
which gives it easiest admittance into minds not prepared for it by
habit; while I became practically conversant with the difficulties of
moving bodies of men, the necessities of compromise, the art of
sacrificing the non-essential to preserve the essential. I learnt how
to obtain the best I could, when I could not obtain everything;
instead of being indignant or dispirited because I could not have
entirely my own way, to be pleased and encouraged when I could have
the smallest part of it; and when even that could not be, to bear with
complete equanimity the being overruled altogether. I have found,
through life, these acquisitions to be of the greatest possible
importance for personal happiness, and they are also a very necessary
condition for enabling anyone, either as theorist or as practical man,
to effect the greatest amount of good compatible with his opportunities.