No More Learning

James
Mill lectured to his son during their daily walks; and then the son
wrote out an account of the lectures, which was read to his father
and criticized by him. The lad was compelled to rewrite again and
again his notes until they were satisfactory. These notes were used
in the preparation of James Mill's Elements of Political Economy';
a work which was intended to present, in the form of a school-book,
the principles of his friend Ricardo. Ricardo's writings and Adam
Smith's Wealth of Nations) were carefully studied under the father's
tuition. The son was questioned, and difficulties were not explained
until he had done his best to solve them himself.
An important event in Mill's education was
a year spent in
France, in the house of Sir Samuel Bentham, a brother of the Eng-
lish philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham, who was a friend both of
father and son. While in France he acquired the French language,
and gained an interest in French affairs which he never lost. He also
enjoyed the beautiful mountain scenery which he visited while on the
Continent. While in Paris, on his way to Sir Samuel Bentham's, he
spent nine days in the house of the French political economist Jean
Baptiste Say, a distinguished French disciple of Adam Smith. Mill
returned to England in 1821, at the age of fifteen, and then began
the study of Roman and English law. He began his writing for the
press at the age of sixteen; and the day after he was seventeen, as
we have seen, he entered upon a service of nearly forty years in the
India House.
There has been considerable controversy about the value of the
education which he received in his early years, and also about the
disadvantages which attended his father's methods of instruction.
John Stuart Mill himself states, and with apparent regret, that he
had no real boyhood. But he does feel that otherwise his education
was a success, and gave him an advantage of starting a quarter of a
century ahead of his contemporaries. The following words are found
in his Autobiography :-
«In the course of the instruction which I have partially retraced, the point
most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during the years of
childhood, an amount of knowledge in what are considered the higher branches
of education, which is seldom acquired (if acquired at all) until the age of


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JOHN STUART MILL
10009
manhood. The result of the experiment shows the ease with which this may
be done, and places in a strong light the wretched waste of so many precious
years as are spent in acquiring the modicum of Latin and Greek commonly
taught to schoolboys; a waste which has led so many educational reformers to
entertain the ill-judged proposal of discarding these languages altogether from
general education. If I had been by nature extremely quick of apprehension,
or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory, or were of a remark-
ably active and energetic character, the trial would not be conclusive: but in
all these natural gifts I am rather below than above par,— what I could do,
could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy
physical constitution; and if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among
other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training
bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advan-
tage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries. ”
We are quite safe in calling in question at least the statement
that what John Stuart Mill did could be done by any boy or girl of
“average capacity and healthy physical constitution. ” It may be
well to quote in this connection Mill's statement about the impression
produced upon him by a perusal of Dumont's Traité de Législation'
(Treatise on Legislation), which contained an exposition of the princi-
pal speculations of Jeremy Bentham: -
«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 dis-
guise, 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
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 super-
seded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a new era in thought.
When I laid down the last volume of the (Traité, I had become a
different being. ”
reason.
All this, and much more like it, proceeded from a youth of fifteen!
Assuredly his native powers were extraordinary.
Among the men with whom Mill came in contact, and who influ-
enced him, may be mentioned Ricardo, Bentham, Grote the historian,
John Austin, Macaulay, Frederick Denison Maurice, and John Sterling.


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1οοΙο
JOHN STUART MILL
Even in so brief a sketch of John Stuart Mill as the present,
mention must not fail to be made of Mill's remarkable attachment to
his wife, Mrs. John Taylor, whom he married in 1851, but with whom
he had already enjoyed many years of devoted and helpful friend-
ship. Mill's demeanor in general society seems to have been cold,
and perhaps almost frigid. Mention is made of his “icy reserve”;
but no youth could surpass him in the ardor of his love for his wife,
or in the warmth with which he expressed it. His exaggerated state-
ments about her have brought upon him a certain reproach; and his
entire relation to his wife, both before and after marriage, forms one
of the strangest passages in his remarkable career. Mrs. Mill does
not appear to have impressed others with whom she came in contact
very strongly; but he speaks of her "all-but unrivaled wisdom. ”
Mill was once elected a Member of Parliament; but his career in
the House was not especially remarkable, although he appears to
have made a strong impression upon Gladstone, who dubbed him the
«Saint of Rationalism. ”. “He did us all good,” writes the statesman.
Mill's moral worth and elevation of character impressed all who
knew him. Herbert Spencer speaks of his generosity as “almost
romantic”; and his entire life was one of singular devotion to the
improvement of mankind, which was with him quite as strong a pas-
sion as with Adam Smith.
Mill's intellectual activity was remarkable on account of the vari-
ous fields to which it extended. He was a specialist of distinction in
logic and mental philosophy generally, in moral science, in political
philosophy, in political economy, and in social philosophy -- of which
his political economy was only a part. While attaining high rank in
each one of these fields, his interests were so broad that he avoided
the dangers of narrow specialism. His interests even extended be-
yond the humanities; for he was an enthusiastic botanist, and even
contributed botanical articles to scientific magazines.
Mill took immense pains in the preparation of all his works, and
also in their composition; with the result that whatever he wrote be-
came literature. Taine in his History of English Literature) devotes
forty pages to the Logic'; and the Political Economy' is perhaps
the only economic treatise which deserves to rank as literature.
Mill's first great work was his treatise on logic, which bears the
title, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Con-
nected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scien-
tific Investigation. This was published in 1843. Along with this
work should be mentioned his 'Examination of Sir William Hamil-
ton's Philosophy and the Principal Philosophical Questions Discussed
in his Writings,' although this did not appear until 1865. These
two works, together with his father's (Analysis of the Phenomena of


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JOHN STUART MILL
IOONI
the Human Mind,' edited by him in 1869, give a view of his philoso-
phy. He belongs to the school of Locke, Hartley, and Hume. Indi-
vidual experience is the foundation upon which he builds his system
of knowledge. The connecting principle binding together what indi-
vidual experience has given is the principle of association. Innate
ideas and a priori reason - in fact, all knowledge antecedent and
prior to experience -- are rejected.
The fearlessness and consistency with which Mill bases all knowl-
edge upon individual experience cannot fail to excite a certain
admiration even in those who differ widely with him. He will not
acknowledge the universality of causation, but thinks it quite possible
that in regions beyond our experience things may happen at random.
These are the words in which he expresses this doctrine:-
«I am convinced that any one accustomed to abstraction and analysis,
who will fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, when his imagina-
tion has once learnt to entertain the notion, find no difficulty in conceiving
that in some one, for instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal
astronomy now divides the universe, events may succeed one another at ran-
dom without any fixed law; nor can anything in our experience, or in our
nental nature, constitute a sufficient — or indeed any reason for believing
that this is nowhere the case. )
Mill's Logic' has in all countries a high reputation, and must take
its rank among the great treatises on logic of all times. He is fre-
quently called the founder of the inductive logic, so great was the
contribution which he made in his treatment of induction.
In his political philosophy he was an exponent of democracy.
What he did for democracy in the nineteenth century has been com-
pared with Locke's contribution to the philosophy of constitutional
monarchy in the seventeenth century. His principal work in this
field is entitled “Thoughts on Representative Government. ' His work
on Liberty, however, belongs in part to the domain of political
philosophy; and the volumes entitled Dissertations and Discussions)
contain many essays on scientific politics.
He advocated government by the people because, among other
things, political activity carried with it an intellectual and ethical
education. Political interests were the first, he maintained, to enlarge
men's minds and thoughts beyond the narrow circle of the family.
One marked feature of what he wrote on politics was his advocacy
of the enfranchisement of women. He was always a champion of
women's rights, and reference should be made in this connection to
his work The Subjection of Women. ' He disliked to think that
there were any fundamental differences in mind and character be-
tween the sexes. One of his speeches in the House of Commons was
on the Admission of Women to the Electoral Franchise. '


## p. 10012 (#428) ##########################################

IOOI 2
JOHN STUART MILL
But Mill was keenly conscious of the dangers of democracy; and
he wished that measures should be adopted, on the one hand to pre-
pare men and women by education for self-government, and on the
other to prevent a tyranny of the majority. Consequently he was an
advocate of a representation of minorities in legislative bodies. He
was always known as a friend of the workingman; but he was no
demagogue, and would not stoop to flattery. When he was candidate
for Parliament, he was asked in a public meeting whether he had
ever made the statement that the working classes of England differed
from those of other countries in being ashamed of lying, although
they were generally liars. The audience was composed largely of
workingmen, and his reply was a frank and instantaneous “I did. ”
The statement was greeted with applause, which was always to him
a source of hope for the wage-earning classes. It showed that they
wanted friends, not flatterers.
It is noteworthy, however, that as Mill grew older he became less
democratic and more socialistic. He says of himself and Mrs. Taylor,
referring to the year 1843 or thereabouts:-
“We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as
education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance
and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass; but our ideas of ulti-
mate improvement went far beyond democracy, and classed us under the gen.
eral designation of socialists. . The social problem of the future we
considered to be, how to unite the greatest liberty of action with a common
ownership of the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all
in the benefits of combined labor. »
a
Mill's chief contribution to ethics is found in his little work en-
titled Utilitarianism'; and this gives him a position in the history
of ethical thought. His «utilitarianism” was what he himself called
the greatest happiness principle; not the greatest happiness of the
individual merely, but the greatest happiness of society. This thought
of the greatest happiness as the ultimate test of conduct in the
individual and in society runs all through his writing, and is funda-
mental. It must always be borne in mind by one who would under-
stand what he wrote; and in it we find at least a certain unity amid
many inconsistencies. The greatest-happiness rule was Bentham's
principle: but Mill added to considerations of quantity of happiness,
the considerations of quality; it was not merely the highest quantity of
happiness which must be sought, but the highest sorts of happiness.
While this elevated utilitarianism, it introduced an element of ideal-
ism which has rightly been held to be inconsistent with the utilita-
rian philosophy. If happiness is fundamental, how can we distinguish
between kinds of happiness on any other grounds than those of mere


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JOHN STUART MILL
10013
quantity? If we are able to say that one sort of happiness is higher
than another, then we must have some different test and some more
fundamental test than happiness itself.
Mill's Political Economy' is a transitional work; and indeed, it
may not be too much to say of all his work that it was transitional.
He brought to a close a line of development in economics proceeding
from Adam Smith through Ricardo, Malthus, and James Mill, and
opened a new era. He added on to the superstructure large humani-
tarian and social considerations which were hardly consistent with the
foundations upon which he built; and this he himself recognized late
in life. Yet the very imperfections of his book on political economy
render it interesting and also instructive. It must be read carefully
and in connection with his other writings to be fully understood; but
its mastery has been called in itself a liberal education.
The book is entitled Principles of Political Economy, with some
of their Applications to Social Philosophy. ' It is in truth as a part
of a system of social philosophy that Mill's political economy is most
interesting This enlargement of the scope of political economy,
and its connection with general sociology, is something for which he
was chiefly indebted to the French sociologist Auguste Comte, whose
works he studied, with whom he formed a warm friendship which
lasted for some years, and whom he always admired. It was from
Comte that he learned his distinction between social statics and social
dynamics: the first dealing with phenomena in their coexistence, and
giving us the theory of order; the second dealing with social phe-
nomena in their succession, and giving us the theory of progress.
The view of nature found in his writing is in marked contrast to
the eighteenth-century view entertained by Adam Smith. Nature is
no longer a beneficent power, but inexpressibly cruel. Man is benefi-
cent, and the good in the world is brought about through the sub-
jugation of nature by man. Civilization means to him a contest with
nature and a conquest of her forces. It is for inan to overcome her
inequalities and injustices.
Mill's thoughts were directed to the improvement of the condi-
tion of the masses; and this improvement was to be brought about
gradually, through an enlargement of economic and political oppor-
tunities. He advocated views of the taxation and regulation of in-
heritance and bequest which would break down large fortunes and
bring about a wider diffusion of property. In the same spirit was
conceived his plan for the appropriation of the “unearned increment”
of land, or future increments in the rent of land due to the progress
of society and not to the exertions of the individual land-owner. His
last public act was the foundation of the Land Tenure Reform Asso-
ciation, which was designed to carry out this idea of the appropriation


## p. 10014 (#430) ##########################################

10014
JOHN STUART MILL
of the future unearned increment by society, to be used for general
social purposes and to encourage co-operative agriculture.
It has already been stated that Mill's views gradually changed in
the direction of socialism. He was at work on the problem of social-
ism at the time of his death, but appears to have reached no definite
conclusion. He dreaded anything like tyranny over the individual,
and on this account rejected all schemes of socialism with which he
was familiar. Nevertheless, he was working towards an ideal kind
of socialism, which, as he said, should with the common ownership of
the instruments of production and participation in the benefits of
combined labor «unite the greatest individual liberty of action. ”
Richard gely
OF THE STATIONARY STATE OF WEALTH AND POPULATION
From (Political Economy
)
I
CANNOT, therefore, regard the stationary state of capital and
wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested
towards it by political economists of the old school. I am
inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very con-
siderable improvement on our present condition. I confess I am
not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think
that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to
get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on
each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are
the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the dis-
agreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.
It may be a necessary stage in the progress of civilization, and
those European nations which have hitherto been so fortunate as
to be preserved from it may have it yet to undergo. It is an
incident of growth, not a mark of decline, for it is not necessarily
destructive of the higher aspirations and the heroic virtues: as
America in her great civil war is proving to the world, both by
her conduct as a people and by numerous splendid individual
examples; and as England, it is to be hoped, would also prove on
an equally trying and exciting occasion. But it is not a kind of
social perfection which philanthropists to come will feel any very
eager desire to assist in realizing. Most fitting indeed is it, that


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JOHN STUART MILL
10015
one
while riches are power, and to grow as rich as possible the uni-
versal object of ambition, the path to its attainment should be
open to all, without favor or partiality. But the best state for
human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no
desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back
by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.
That the energies of mankind should be kept in employment
by the struggle for riches, as they were formerly by the strug-
gle of war, until the better minds succeed in educating the oth-
ers into better things, is undoubtedly more desirable than that
they should rust and stagnate.
While minds are coarse they
require coarse stimuli; and let them have them.
In the mean
time, those who do not accept the present very early stage of
human improvement as its ultimate type, may be excused for
being comparatively indifferent to the kind of economical progress
which excites the congratulations of ordinary politicians,— the
mere increase of production and accumulation. For the safety of
national independence it is essential that a country should not
fall much behind its neighbors in these things; but in them-
selves they are of little importance, so long as either the increase
of population or anything else prevents the mass of the people
from reaping any part of the benefit of them. I know not why
it should be matter of congratulation, that persons who are
already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled
their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure
except as representative of wealth; or that numbers of individ-
uals should pass over, every year, from the middle classes into
a richer class, or from the class of the occupied rich to that of
the unoccupied. It is only in the backward countries of the
world that increased production is still an important object; in
those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better
distribution,- of which one indispensable means is a stricter
restraint on population. Leveling institutions, either of a just
or of an unjust kind, cannot alone accomplish it; they may
lower the heights of society, but they cannot of themselves per-
manently raise the depths.
On the other hand, we may suppose this better distribution
of property attained by the joint effect of the prudence and fru-
gality of individuals, and of a system of legislation favoring
equality of fortunes, so far as is consistent with the just claim of
the individual to the fruits, whether great or small, of his or her


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10016
JOHN STUART MILL
own industry. We may suppose, for instance (according to the
suggestion thrown out in a former chapter), a limitation of the
sum which any one person may acquire by gift or inheritance,
to the amount sufficient to constitute a moderate independence.
Under this twofold influence, society would exhibit these leading
features: a well-paid and affluent body of laborers; no enormous
fortunes, except what were earned and accumulated during a
single lifetime; but a much larger body of persons than at pres-
ent not only exempt from the coarser toils, but with sufficient
leisure both physical and mental, from mechanical details, to
cultivate freely the graces of life, and afford examples of them
to the classes less favorably circumstanced for their growth.
This condition of society, so greatly preferable to the present, is
not only perfectly compatible with the stationary state, but, it
would seem, more naturally allied with that state than with any
other.
There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old coun-
tries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of
life to go on improving and capital to increase. But even if
innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The
density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain,
in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation
and of social intercourse, has in all the most populous countries
been attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be
.
amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man
to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species.
A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal.
Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any
depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence
of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thoughts and
aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which
society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in
contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous
activity of nature: with every rood of land brought into cultiva-
tion which is capable of growing food for human beings; every
flowery waste or natural pasture plowed up, all quadrupeds or
birds which are not domesticated for man's use exterminated as
his rivals for food, every hedge-row or superfluous tree rooted
out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could
grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of im.
proved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion


## p. 10017 (#433) ##########################################

JOHN STUART MILL
I0017
of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited
increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for
the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a
better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of
posterity, that they will be content to be stationary long before
necessity compels them to it.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition
of capital and population implies no stationary state of human
improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all
kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much
room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood
of its being improved when minds ceased to be engrossed by the
art of getting on. Even the industrial arts might be as earnestly
and as successfully cultivated, with this sole difference: that in-
stead of serving no purpose but the increase of wealth, indus-
trial improvements would produce their legitimate effect, that of
abridging labor. Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical
inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human
being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same
life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of
manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased
the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun
to effect those great changes in human destiny which it is in
their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when,
in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be
under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the con-
quests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and
energy of scientific discoveries become the common property of
the species, and the means of improving and elevating the uni-
versal lot.
OF COMPETITION
From (Political Economy)
I
AGREE, then, with the socialist writers in their conception
of the form which industrial operations tend to assume in
the advance of improvement; and I entirely share their opin-
ion that the time is ripe for commencing this transformation,
and that it should by all just and effectual means be aided and
encouraged. But while I agree and sympathize with socialists in
XVII-627


## p. 10018 (#434) ##########################################

10018
JOHN STUART MILL
-
-
this practical portion of their aims, I utterly dissent from the
most conspicuous and vehement part of their teaching - their
declamations against competition. With moral conceptions in many
respects far ahead of the existing arrangements of society, they
have in general very confused and erroneous notions of its act-
ual working; and one of their greatest errors, as I conceive, is to
charge upon competition all the economical evils which at present
exist. They forget that wherever competition is not, monopoly
is; and that monopoly, in all its forms, is the taxation of the
industrious for the support of indolence, if not of plunder. They
forget too that with the exception of competition among laborers,
all other competition is for the benefit of the laborers, by cheap-
ening the articles they consume; that competition even in the
labor market is a source not of low but of high wages, wherever
the competition for labor exceeds the competition of labor, -as in
America, in the colonies, and in the skilled trades,- and never
could be a cause of low wages save by the overstocking of the
labor market through the too great numbers of the laborers' fam-
ilies; while if the supply of laborers is excessive, not even social-
ism can prevent their remuneration from being low. Besides, if
association were universal, there would be no competition between
laborer and laborer; and that between association and association
would be for the benefit of the consumers,— that is, of the asso-
ciations, of the industrious classes generally.
I do not pretend that there are no inconveniences in compe-
tition, or that the moral objections urged against it by socialist
writers, as a source of jealousy and hostility among those en-
gaged in the same occupation, are altogether groundless. But if
competition has its evils, it prevents greater evils. As M. Feu-
gueray well says, “The deepest root of the evils and iniquities
which fill the industrial world is not competition, but the subjec-
tion of labor to capital, and the enormous share which the pos-
sessors of the instruments of industry are able to take from the
produce.
If competition has great power for evil, it is
no less fertile of good, especially in what regards the develop-
ment of the individual faculties and the success of innovations. ”
It is the common error of socialists to overlook the natural
indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the
slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen.
Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider
tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will
a


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JOHN STUART MILL
10019
thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve; and
by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required
to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be
the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary
one; and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indis-
pensable to progress. Even confining ourselves to the industrial
department,-in which, more than in any other, the majority
may be supposed to be competent judges of improvements,— it
would be difficult to induce the general assembly of an associa-
tion to submit to the trouble and inconvenience of altering their
habits by adopting some
some new and promising invention, unless
their knowledge of the existence of rival associations made them
apprehend that what they would not consent to do, others would,
and that they would be left behind in the race.
Instead of looking upon competition as the baneful and anti-
social principle which it is held to be by the generality of social-
ists, I conceive that, even in the present state of society and
industry, every restriction of it is an evil, and every extension of
it-even if for the time injuriously affecting some class of labor.
ers— is always an ultimate good. To be protected against com-
petition is to be protected in idleness, in mental dullness; to be
saved the necessity of being as active and as intelligent as other
people: and if it is also to be protected against being underbid
for employment by a less highly paid class of laborers, this is
only where old custom or local and partial monopoly has placed
some particular class of artisans in a privileged position as com-
pared with the rest; and the time has come when the interest
of universal improvement is no longer promoted by prolonging
the privileges of a few. If the slop-sellers and others of their
class have lowered the wages of tailors and some other artisans,
by making them an affair of competition instead of custom, so
much the better in the end. What is now required is not to bol-
ster up old customs, whereby limited classes of laboring people
obtain partial gains which interest them in keeping up the present
organization of society, but to introduce new general practices ben-
eficial to all; and there is reason to rejoice at whatever makes
the privileged classes of skilled artisans feel that they have the
same interests, and depend for their remuneration on the same
general causes, and must resort for the improvement of their con-
dition to the same remedies, as the less fortunately circumstanced
and comparatively helpless multitude.


## p. 10020 (#436) ##########################################

10020
JOHN STUART MILL
MILL'S FINAL VIEWS ON THE DESTINY OF SOCIETY
From the Autobiography)
I
I was
N this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental pro-
gress, which now went hand in hand with hers [his wife's),
my opinions gained equally in breadth and depth; I under-
stood more things, and those which I had understood before, I
now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned
back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against
Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly
become much more indulgent to the common opinions of society
and the world; and more willing to be content with second-
ing the superficial improvement which had begun to take place
in those common opinions, than became one whose convictions
on so many points differed fundamentally from them.
much more inclined than I can now approve to put in abeyance
the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now
look upon as almost the only ones the assertion of which tends
in any way to regenerate society. But in addition to this, our
opinions were far more heretical than mine had been in the days
of my most extreme Benthamism. In those days I had seen
little further than the old school of political economists into the
possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements.
Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to
me as to them the dernier mot of legislation; and I looked no
further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these
institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The
notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing
the injustice — for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete
remedy or not — involved in the fact that some are born to riches
and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical;
and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary
restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made
more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of
a socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been,
because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly im-
perfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness
and brutality of the mass; but our ideal of ultimate improve-
ment went far beyond democracy, and would class us decidedly
under the general designation of socialists. While we repudiated


## p. 10021 (#437) ##########################################

JOHN STUART MILL
IO021
with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the indi-
vidual which most socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we
yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be
divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they
who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers
only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of
labor, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does,
on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowl-
edged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either
be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert
themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to
be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they
belong to.
The social problem of the future we considered to be, how
to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common
ownership in the raw material of the globe and an equal par-
ticipation of all in the benefits of combined labor. We had not
the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee by what
precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually
be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would
become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such
social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent
change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd
who now compose the laboring masses, and in the immense ma-
jority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by prac-
tice to labor and combine for generous, or at all events for public
and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly
interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed
in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Educa.
tion, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a
common man dig or weave for his country as readily as fight for
his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a sys-
tem of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men
in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is
not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the
common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality,
not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is
not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till
night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When
called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily
course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction


## p. 10022 (#438) ##########################################

IOO22
JOHN STUART MILL
and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in com-
mon men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic
sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general
character of the existing state of society is so deeply rooted, only
because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster
it; and modern institutions in some respects more than ancient,
since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do
anything for the public, without receiving its pay, are far less
frequent in modern life than in the smaller commonwealths of
antiquity. These considerations did not make us overlook the
folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of
private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has
been or can be provided; but we regarded all existing institutions
and social arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from
Austin) merely provisional. ”
JUSTICE AND UTILITY
From (Utilitarianism
I
S THEN the difference between the Just and the Expedient a
merely imaginary distinction ? Have mankind been under a
delusion in thinking that justice is a more sacred thing than
policy, and that the latter ought only to be listened to after the
former has been satisfied ? By no means. The exposition we
have given of the nature and origin of the sentiment recognizes
a real distinction; and no one of those who profess the most sub-
lime contempt for the consequences of actions as an element in
their morality, attaches more importance to the distinction than
I do. While I dispute the pretensions of any theory which sets
up an imaginary standard of justice not grounded on utility, I
account the justice which is grounded on utility to be the chief
part, and incomparably the most sacred and binding part, of all
morality. Justice is a name for certain classes of moral rules
which concern the essentials of human well-being more nearly,
and are therefore of more absolute obligation, than any other
rules for the guidance of life; and the notion which we have
found to be of the essence of the idea of justice, - that of a
right residing in an individual, -implies and testifies to this more
binding obligation.


## p. 10023 (#439) ##########################################

JOHN STUART MILL
10023
The moral rules which forbid mankind to nurt one another
(in which we must never forget to include wrongful interference
with each other's freedom) are more vital to human well-being
than any maxims, however important, which only point out the
best mode of managing some department of human affairs. They
have also the peculiarity, that they are the main element in
determining the whole of the social feelings of mankind. It
is their observance which alone preserves peace among human
beings: if obedience to them were not the rule, and disobedience
the exception, every one would see in every one else a probable
enemy, against whom he must be perpetually guarding himself.
What is hardly less important, these are the precepts which man-
kind have the strongest and most direct inducements for impress-
ing upon one another. By merely giving to each other prudential
instruction or exhortation, they may gain, or think they gain,
nothing: in inculcating on each other the duty of positive benefi-
cence they have an unmistakable interest, but far less in degree,
-a person may possibly not need the benefits of others, but he
always needs that they should not do him hurt. Thus the moral-
ities which protect every individual from being harmed by others,
either directly or by being hindered in his freedom of pursuing
his own good, are at once those which he himself has most at
heart, and those which he has the strongest interest in publish-
ing and enforcing by word and deed. It is by a person's observ-
ance of these that his fitness to exist as one of the fellowship of
human beings is tested and decided; for on that depends his
being a nuisance or not to those with whom he is in contact.
Now, it is these moralities primarily which compose the obliga-
tions of justice. The most marked cases of injustice, and those
which give the tone to the feeling of repugnance which charac-
terizes the sentiment, are acts of wrongful aggression, or wrongful
exercise of power over some one; the next are those which con-
sist in wrongfully withholding from him something which is his
due: in both cases inflicting on him a positive hurt, either in the
form of direct suffering, or of the privation of some good which
he had reasonable ground, either of a physical or of a social kind,
for counting upon.
The same powerful motives which command the observance of
these primary moralities, enjoin the punishment of those who vio-
late them; and as the impulses of self-defense, of defense of oth-
ers, and of vengeance, are all called forth against such persons,


## p. 10024 (#440) ##########################################

10024
JOHN STUART MILL
retribution, or evil for evil, becomes closely connected with the
sentiment of justice, and is universally included in the idea.
Good for good is also one of the dictates of justice; and this,
though its social utility is evident, and though it carries with
it a natural human feeling, has not at first sight that obvious
connection with hurt or injury, which, existing in the most ele-
mentary cases of just and unjust, is the source of the character-
istic intensity of the sentiment. But the connection, though less
obvious, is not less real. He who accepts benefits, and denies a
return of them when needed, inflicts a real hurt, by disappoint-
ing one of the most natural and reasonable of expectations, and
one which he must at least tacitly have encouraged, otherwise the
benefits would seldom have been conferred. The important rank,
among human evils and wrongs, of the disappointment of expect-
ation, is shown in the fact that it constitutes the principal crim-
inality of two such highly immoral acts as a breach of friendship
and a breach of promise. Few hurts which human beings can
sustain are greater, and none wound more, than when that on
which they habitually and with full assurance relied, fails them
in the hour of need: and few wrongs are greater than this mere
withholding of good; none excites more resentment, either in the
person suffering, or in a sympathizing spectator. The principle,
therefore, of giving to each what they deserve,- that is, good
for good, as well as evil for evil, - is not only included within
the idea of Justice as we have defined it, but is a proper object
of that intensity of sentiment which places the Just, in human
estimation, above the simply Expedient.
Most of the maxims of justice current in the world, and com-
monly appealed to in its transactions, are simply instrumental to
carrying into effect the principles of justice which we have now
spoken of That a person is only responsible for what he has
done voluntarily or could voluntarily have avoided, that it is un-
just to condemn any person unheard, that the punishment ought
to be proportioned to the offense, and the like, are maxims
intended to prevent the just principle of evil for evil from being
perverted to the infliction of evil without that justification. The
greater part of these common maxims have come into use from
the practice of courts of justice; which have been naturally led
to a more complete recognition and elaboration than was likely
to suggest itself to others, of the rules necessary to enable them
to fulfill their double function, of inflicting punishment when due
and of awarding to each person his right.


## p. 10025 (#441) ##########################################

JOHN STUART MILL
10025
:
That first of judicial virtues, impartiality, is an obligation of
justice, partly for the reason last mentioned: as being a neces-
sary condition of the fulfillment of the other obligations of justice.
But this is not the only source of the exalted rank among
human obligations of those maxims of equality and impartiality,
which, both in popular estimation and in that of the most en-
lightened, are included among the precepts of justice. In one
point of view they may be considered as corollaries from the
principles already laid down. If it is a duty to do to each accord-
ing to his deserts, returning good for good as well as repressing
evil by evil, it necessarily follows that we should treat all equally
well (when no higher duty forbids) who have deserved equally
well of us, and that society should treat all equally well who
have deserved equally well of it,- that is, who have deserved
equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of
social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and
the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost
possible degree to converge. But this great moral duty rests
upon a still deeper foundation; being a direct emanation from
the first principles of morals, and not a mere logical corollary
from secondary or derivative doctrines. It is involved in the
very meaning of Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle.
That principle is a mere form of words without rational sig.
nification, unless one person's happiness, supposed equal in de-
gree (with the proper allowance made for kind), is counted for
exactly as much as another's: those conditions being supplied,
Bentham's dictum, "Everybody to count for one, nobody for more
than one,” might be written under the principle of utility, as
an explanatory commentary. The equal claim of everybody to
happiness, in the estimation of the moralist and the legislator,
involves an equal claim to all the means of happiness, -except
in so far as the inevitable conditions of human life, and the gen-
eral interest in which that of every individual is included, set
limits to the maxim; and those limits ought to be strictly con-
strued. As every other maxim of justice, so this is by no means
applied or held applicable universally; on the contrary, as I have
already remarked, it bends to every person's ideas of social expe.
diency. But in whatever case it is deemed applicable at all, it
is held to be the dictate of justice. All persons are deemed to
have a right to equality of treatment, except when some recog-
nized social expediency requires the reverse. And hence all social
(
-


## p. 10026 (#442) ##########################################

10026
JOHN STUART MILL
name
inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient assume
the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and
appear so tyrannical that people are apt to wonder how they
ever could have been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves
perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken
notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that
which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have
at last learnt to condemn. The entire history of social improve-
ment has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or
institution after another, from being a supposed primary neces-
sity of social existence, has passed into the rank of a univer-
sally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the
distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians
and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the
aristocracies of color, race, and sex.
It appears from what has been said that justice is a
for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand
higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more
paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases
may occur in which some other social duty is so important as
to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to
save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal or
take by force the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap and
compel to officiate the only qualified medical practitioner. In
such cases, as we do not call anything justice which is not a vir-
tue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to some other
moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by
reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case.
By this useful accommodation of language, the character of inde.
feasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from
the necessity of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice.
The considerations which have now been adduced resolve, I
conceive, the only real difficulty in the utilitarian theory of
morals. It has always been evident that all cases of justice are
also cases of expediency; the difference is in the peculiar senti.
ment which attaches to the former, as contradistinguished from
the latter. If this characteristic sentiment has been sufficiently
accounted for; if there is no necessity to assume for it any pecul-
iarity of origin;
that idea no longer presents itself as a
stumbling-block to the utilitarian ethics.


## p. 10027 (#443) ##########################################

10027
JOAQUIN MILLER
(1841-)
INCINNATUS HEINE Miller, known to literature under the
name of Joaquin Miller," was born November 10th, 1841,
in the Wabash district of Indiana. In 1854 his parents
moved to Oregon, where the poet was brought up amid all the pict-
uresque deprivations of pioneer life. With the next turn of destiny's
wheel he became a miner in California, living with his associates a
life of adventure, of which he afterwards made good use in his long
narrative poems. In 1860 he returned to Oregon and studied law
until the next year, when he went as ex-
press messenger to the gold-mining districts
of Idaho. Returning again to Oregon in
1863, he edited the Democratic Register,-
a weekly newspaper which was suppressed
for disloyalty,- after which he began the
practice of law in Cañon City.
From 1866 to 1870 Mr. Miller held the
office of judge of the Grant County court,
Oregon; and at the same time made his first
serious attempts as a poet. By a strange
intuition he felt that his work would meet
with more favor abroad than at home; and
hence his visit in 1870 to England, where
JOAQUIN MILLER
the year following he brought out his
(Songs of the Sierras) simultaneously with their publication in Bos-
ton, under the imprint of Roberts Brothers. The name “Joaquin,"
prefixed to his own on the title-page, the author borrowed from the
name of a Mexican brigand, Joaquin Murietta, for whom he had once
made a legal defense. The appearance of the (Songs of the Sierras)
made a great stir in England; and Mr. Miller was fêted, and lauded
with superlative adjectives and epithets, culminating in the illustrious
title of the "American Byron. ” On his return from England, Mr.
Miller did journalistic work in Washington, D. C. , till the autumn of
1887, when he removed to Oakland, California, which has since been
his permanent place of residence.
Besides the volume of poems already mentioned, Mr. Miller pub-
lished in 1873 (Songs of the Sunlands, in 1875 (Songs of the Desert,'
in 1878 (Songs of Italy,' in 1882 his Collected Poems, and in 1887



## p. 10028 (#444) ##########################################

10028
JOAQUIN MILLER
(
(Songs of Mexican Seas. ) He is also the author of the following
prose works: “The Baroness of New York (1877), "The Danites in
the Sierras) (1881), «Shadows of Shasta' (1881), «Memorie and Rime'
(1884), and '49, or the Gold Seekers of the Sierras (1884). His last
work, (Songs of the Soul,' was published in the summer of 1896.
Mr. Miller's chief claim to literary fame rests upon his original-
ity, freshness of style, and vigor of thought and expression. In the
sweeping rush of his rhythm there is a suggestion of the roaring
streams and swaying forests whose music he heard in his youth.
The power to report nature by symbols and pagan metaphors, so that
she seems in his poetry to be using her own vernacular, is one of
his peculiar gifts. His qualities of style are seen at their best in
(The Isles of the Amazon. In his shorter lyrical poems there is a
gentler cadence, with an undertone of deep melancholy that haunts
the reader. This effect is well illustrated in The Last Hymn' and
(Down into the Dust. '
In spite of his claim to a high rank among American poets, - a
claim which England freely granted him,- Mr. Miller has worked out
more bitterly than most authors the Scriptural sentence concerning
a prophet in his own country, and the allied one of Solomon which
declares that the race is not to the swift,
nor yet favor to
men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. ”
FROM THE SHIP IN THE DESERT)
A.
CHIEF from out the desert's rim
Rode swift as twilight swallows swim,
Or eagle blown from eyrie nest.
His trim-limbed steed was black as night;
His long black hair had blossomed white
With feathers from the koko's crest;
His iron face was flushed and red,
His eyes flashed fire as he fled, -
For he had seen unsightly things,
Had felt the flapping of their wings.
A wild and wiry man was he,
This tawny chief of Shoshonee;
And oh, his supple steed was fleet!
About his breast flapped panther-skins;
About his eager flying feet
Flapped beaded, braided moccasins;
He rode as rides the hurricane;
He seemed to swallow up the plain:


## p. 10029 (#445) ##########################################

JOAQUIN MILLER
10029
He rode as never man did ride,-
He rode, for ghosts rode at his side;
And on his right a grizzled, grim -
No, no, this tale is not of him.
-
An Indian warrior lost his way
While prowling on this desert's edge
In fragrant sage and prickly hedge,
When suddenly he saw a sight,
And turned his steed in eager Aight.
He rode right through the edge of day,
He rode into the rolling night.
He leaned, he reached an eager face,
His black wolf-skin flapped out and in,
And tiger claws on tiger-skin
Held seat and saddle to its place;
But that gray ghost that clutched thereat
Arrête! the tale is not of that.
A chieftain touched the desert's rim
One autumn eve; he rode alone,
And still as moon-made shadows swim.
He stopped, he stood as still as stone;
He leaned, he looked, there glistened bright
From out the yellow yielding sand
A golden cup with jeweled rim.
He leaned him low, he reached a hand,
He caught it up, he galloped on.
He turned his head, he saw a sight . . .
His panther-skins flew to the wind,
The dark, the desert lay behind;
The tawny Ishmaelite was gone;
But something sombre as death is
Tut, tut! the tale is not of this.
A mountaineer, storm-stained and brown,
From farthest desert touched the town;
And striding through the crowd, held up
Above his head a jeweled cup.
He put two fingers to his lip,
He whispered wild, he stood a-tip,
And leaned the while with lifted hand,
And said, "A ship lies yonder, dead; »
And said, “Doubloons lie sown in sand
In yon far desert dead and brown,


## p. 10030 (#446) ##########################################

10030
JOAQUIN MILLER
Beyond where wave-washed walls look down,
As thick as stars set overhead.
That three ship-masts uplift like trees
Away! the tale is not of these.
An Indian hunter held a plate
Of gold above his lifted head,
Around which kings had sat in state.
« 'Tis from that desert ship,” they said,
« That sails with neither sail nor breeze,
Or galleon, that sank below
Of old, in olden dried-up seas,
Ere yet the red men drew the bow. ”
But wrinkled women wagged the head,
And walls of warriors sat that night
In black, nor streak of battle red,
Around against the red camp-light;
And told such wondrous tales as these
Of wealth within their dried-up seas.
And one, girt well in tiger's skin,
Who stood, like Saul, above the rest,
With dangling claws about his breast,
A belt without, a blade within,-
A warrior with a painted face,
And lines that shadowed stern and grim,-
Stood pointing east from his high place,
And hurling thought like cannon shot,
Stood high with visage flushed and hot -
But stay! this tale is not of him.
The day glared through the eastern rim
Of rocky peaks, as prison bars;
With light as dim as distant stars
The sultry sunbeams filtered down
Through misty phantoms weird and dim,
Through shifting shapes bat-winged and brown.
Like some vast ruin wrapped in flame,
The sun fell down before them now.
Behind them wheeled white peaks of snow.
As they proceeded.
Gray and grim
And awful objects went and came


## p. 10031 (#447) ##########################################

JOAQUIN MILLER
10031
Before them then. They pierced at last
The desert's middle depths, and lo!
There loomed from out the desert vast
A lonely ship, well-built and trim,
And perfect all in hull and mast.
No storm had stained it any whit,
No seasons set their teeth in it.
Her masts were white as ghosts, and tall;
Her decks were as of yesterday.
The rains, the elements, and all
The moving things that bring decay
By fair green lands or fairer seas,
Had touched not here for centuries.
Lo! date had lost all reckoning;
And Time had long forgotten all
In this lost land, and no new thing
Or old could anywise befall, -
Or morrows or a yesterday,-
For Time went by the other way.
The ages had not any course
Across this untracked waste.
The sky
Wears here one blue, unbending hue,
The heavens one unchanging mood.
The far, still stars, they filter through
The heavens, falling bright and bold
Against the sands as beams of gold.
The wide white moon forgets her force;
The very sun rides round and high,
As if to shun this solitude.
What dreams of gold or conquest drew
The oak-built sea-king to these seas,
Ere Earth, old Earth, unsatisfied,
Rose up and shook man in disgust
From off her wearied breast, and threw
And smote his cities down, and dried
These measured, town-set seas to dust ?
Who trod these decks?
What captain knew
The straits that led to lands like these?
Blew south-sea breeze or north-sea breeze ?
What spiced winds whistled through this sail ?


## p. 10032 (#448) ##########################################

10032
JOAQUIN MILLER
What banners streamed above these seas?
And what strange seamen answered back
To other sea-king's beck and hail,
That blew across his foamy track ?
Sought Jason here the golden fleece ?
Came Trojan ship or ships of Greece ?
Came decks dark-manned from sultry Ind,
Wooed here by spacious wooing wind, -
So like a grand, sweet woman, when
A great love moves her soul to men ?
Came here strong ships of Solomon
In quest of Ophir by Cathay?
Sit down and dream of seas withdrawn,
And every sea-breath drawn away -
Sit down, sit down!
What is the good
That we go on still fashioning
Great iron ships or walls of wood,
High masts of oak, or anything?
Lo! all things moving must go by.
The sea lies dead. Behold, this land
Sits desolate in dust beside
His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand;
The very clouds have wept and died,
And only God is in the sky.
KIT CARSON'S RIDE
From (Songs of the Sierras )
UN? Now you bet you; I rather guess so!
But he's blind as a badger. Whoa, Paché boy, whoa!
No, you wouldn't believe it to look at his eyes,
But he is badger-blind, and it happened this wise: -
R
We lay in the grasses and the sunburnt clover,
That spread on the ground like a great brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away
To the Brazos, to where our lodges lay,
One broad and unbroken sea of brown,
Awaiting the curtains of night to come down


## p. 10033 (#449) ##########################################

JOAQUIN MILLER
10033
To cover us over and conceal our flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.
We lounged in the grasses — her eyes were in mine,
And her hands on my knee, and her hair was as wine
In its wealth and its flood, pouring on and all over
Her bosom wine-red, and pressed never by one;
And her touch was as warm as the tinge of the clover
Burnt brown as it reached to the kiss of the sun;
And her words were as low as the lute-throated dove,
And as laden with love as the heart when it beats
In its hot eager answer to earliest love,
Or a bee hurried home by its burthen of sweets.
We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride;
And the heavens of blue and the harvest of brown
And beautiful clover were welded as one,
To the right and the left, in the light of the sun. *
(Forty full miles if a foot to ride,
Forty full miles if a foot, and the devils
Of red Camanches are hot on the track
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down
Soon, very soon,” muttered bearded old Revels
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding fast to his lasso. Then he jerked at his steed,
And he sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the ground;
Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride,
While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud,
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a reed:-
Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed,
And speed you if ever for life you would speed,
And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride!
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire,
And feet of wild horses hard flying before
I hear like a sea breaking high on the shore;
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire. ”
We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them on, cinched them on, cinched them over again,
XVII-628


## p. 10034 (#450) ##########################################

10034
JOAQUIN MILLER
And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheers,
Cut away tapidaros, loosed the sash from its fold,
Cast aside the catenas red-spangled with gold,
And gold-mounted Colts, the companions of years,
Cast the silken serapes to the wind in a breath,
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the horse –
As bare as when born, as when new from the hand
Of God — without word, or one word of command.
Turned head to the Brazos in a red race with death,
Turned head to the Brazos with a breath in the hair
Blowing hot from a king leaving death in his course;
Turned head to the Brazos with a sound in the air
Like the rush of an army, and a flash in the eye
Of a red wall of fire reaching up to the sky,
Stretching fierce in pursuit of a black rolling sea
Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping free
And afar from the desert blew hollow and hoarse.
Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall;
Not a kiss from my bride, not a look nor low call
Of love-note or courage: but on o'er the plain
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane,
With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein,
Rode we on, rode we three, rode we nose and gray nose,
Reaching long, breathing loud, as a creviced wind blows;
Yet we broke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer;
There was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.
Gray nose to gray nose, and each steady mustang
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the arid earth rang,
And the foam from the flank and the croup and the neck
Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck.
Twenty miles! — thirty miles! - a dim distant speck -
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight,
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right -
But Revels was gone: I glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
To right and to left the black buffalo came,
A terrible surf on a red sea of flame
Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching higher.


## p. 10035 (#451) ##########################################

JOAQUIN MILLER
10035
And he rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull,
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings loud
And unearthly, and up through its lowering cloud
Came the flash of his eyes like a half-hidden fire,
While his keen crooked horns, through the storm of his mane,
Like black lances lifted and lifted again;
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through,
And he fell and was lost, as we rode two and two.
I looked to my left then - and nose, neck, and shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs;
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes,
With a longing and love, yet a look of despair
And of pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames reaching far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking steed faltered, his eager ears fell
To and fro and unsteady, and all the neck's swell
Did subside and recede, and the nerves fell as dead.
Then she saw sturdy Paché still lorded his head,
With a look of delight; for nor courage nor bribe,
Nor aught but my bride, could have brought him to me.
For he was her father's, and at South Santafee
Had once won a whole herd, sweeping everything down
In a race where the world came to run for the crown.
And so when I won the true heart of my bride, -
My neighbor's and deadliest enemy's child,
And child of the kingly war-chief of his tribe,-
She brought me this steed to the border the night
She met Revels and me in her perilous flight
From the lodge of the chief to the North Brazos side;
And said, so half guessing of ill as she smiled,
As if jesting, that I, and I only, should ride
The fleet-footed Paché, so if kin should pursue
I should surely escape without other ado
Than to ride, without blood, to the North Brazos side,
And await her — and wait till the next hollow moon
Hung her horns in the palms, when surely and soon
And swift she would join me, and all would be well
Without bloodshed or word. And now as she fell
From the front, and went down in the ocean of fire,
The last that I saw was a look of delight
That I should escape – a love — a desire -


## p. 10036 (#452) ##########################################

10036
JOAQUIN MILLER
Yet never a word, not one look of appeal,
Lest I should reach hand, should stay hand or stay heel
One instant for her in my terrible flight.
Then the rushing of fire around me and under,
And the howling of beasts and a sound as of thunder -
Beasts burning and blind and forced onward and over,
As the passionate flame reached around them, and wove her
Red hands in their hair, and kissed hot till they died -
Till they died with a wild and a desolate moan,
As a sea heart-broken on the hard brown stone;
And into the Brazos I rode all alone
All alone, save only a horse long-limbed,
And blinded and bare and burnt to the skin.
Then just as the terrible sea came in
And tumbled its thousands hot into the tide,
Till the tide blocked up and the swift stream brimmed
In eddies, we struck on the opposite side.
*
Sell Paché - blind Paché? Now, mister, look here:
You have slept in my tent and partook of my cheer
Many days, many days, on this rugged frontier,
For the ways they are rough and Camanches were near;
But you'd better pack up, sir! That tent is too small
For us two after this! Has an old mountaineer,
Do you book-men believe, got no tum-tum at all ?
Sell Paché! - you buy him! - a bag full of gold ! -
You show him ! - tell of him the tale I have told!
Why, he bore me through fire, and is blind, and is old! -
Now pack up your papers, and get up and spin
To them cities you tell of — Blast you and your tin!


## p. 10036 (#453) ##########################################



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