The latter were
comprehensive-minded men, bold and weighty, like Taine, or cold and
agile like Renan, but they were men of intellect and thought, only
having no connection with the practical side of life. They were not
adapted to personal action, felt no inclination to direct interference.
Mill was different. Although he was more of a thinker than any of them,
his boldness was not of the merely theoretic kind. He wished to
interfere and re-model. None of those Frenchmen lacked firmness; if,
from any consideration, they modified their utterances somewhat, their
fundamental views, at any rate, were formed independently; but their
firmness lay in defence, not in attack; they wished neither to rebuke
nor to instigate; their place was the lecturer's platform, rather than
the tribune. Mill's firmness was of another kind, hard as steel; both in
character and expression he was relentless, and he went to work
aggressively. He was armed, not with a cuirass, but a glaive.
Thus in him I met, for the first time in my life, a figure who was the
incarnation of the ideal I had drawn for myself of the great man. This
ideal had two sides; talent and character: great capacities and
inflexibility. The men of great reputation whom I had met hitherto,
artists and scientists, were certainly men richly endowed with talents;
but I had never hitherto encountered a personality combining talents
with gifts of character.
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