Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/332

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314 M I L M I L generally regarded as the main causes of his defeat in the general election of 1868. But, as he suggests himself, his studied advocacy of unfamiliar projects of reform had made him unpopular with " moderate Liberals." When he was first elected on a sudden impulse of enthusiasm, extremely little was known about him by the bulk of the electorate; and his writing about checks against democracy had pre pared many for a more conservative attitude on questions of practical politics. He retired with a sense of relief to his cottage and his literary life at Avignon. His parlia mentary duties and the quantity of correspondence brought upon him by increased publicity had absorbed nearly the whole of his time. The scanty leisure of his first recess had been devoted to writing his St Andrews rectorial address on higher education and to answering attacks on his criticism of Hamilton ; of the second, to annotating, in conjunction with Mr Bain and Mr Findlater, his father s Analysis of the Mind. But now he could look forward to a literary life pure and simple, and his letters show how much he enjoyed the change. His little cottage was filled with books and newspapers ; the beautiful country round it furnished him with a variety of walks ; he read, wrote, discussed, walked, botanized. His step-daughter, Miss Taylor, his constant companion after his wife s death, "architect and master-mason all in one," carried out various improvements in their quiet home for the philo sopher s comfort. : Helen," he wrote to Mr Thornton, " has carried out her long-cherished scheme (about which she tells me she consulted you) of a vibratory for me, and has made a pleasant covered walk, some 30 feet long, where I can vibrate in cold or rainy weather. The terrace, you must know, as it goes round two sides of the house, has got itself dubbed the semi-circumgyratory, In addition to this Helen has built me a herbarium, a little room fitted up with closets for my plants, shelves for my botanical books, and a great table whereon to manipulate them all. Thus, you see, with my herbarium, my vibratory, and my semi-circumgyratory, I am in clover ; and you may imagine with what scorn I think of the House of Commons, which, comfortable club as it is said to be, could offer me none of these comforts, or, more perfectly speaking, these necessaries of life." Mill was an enthusiastic botanist all his life long, and a frequent con tributor of notes and short papers to the Phytologist. One of the things that he looked forward to during his last journey to Avignon was seeing the spring flowers and completing a flora of the locality. His delight in scenery frequently appears in letters written to his friends during his summer and autumn tours. No recluse ever had a more soothing retreat than Mill s Avignon cottage, but to the last he did not relax his laborious habits nor his ardent outlook on human affairs. The essays in the fourth volume of his Dissertations on endowments, on land, on labour, on metaphysical and psychological questions were written for the Fortnightly Review at intervals after his short parliamentary career. One of his first tasks was to send his treatise on the Subjection of Women through the press. The essay on Theism was written soon after. The last public work in which he engaged was the starting of the Land Tenure Reform Association. The interception by the state of the unearned increment, and the promotion of co-operative agriculture, were the most striking features in his pro gramme. He wrote in the Examiner and made a public speech in favour of the association a few months before his death. The secret of the ardour with which he took up this question probably was his conviction that a great struggle was impending in Europe between labour and capital. He regarded his project as a timely compromise. Mill died at Avignon on the 8th of May 1873. Within the limits of this article it is impossible to attempt a criticism of Mill s conclusions in so many fields of research; one must be content with trying to indicate the purpose and the spirit of his work. Perhaps we still stand too near to judge without bias; some years hence men will be better able to say whether he made sciolism less reckless or brought mankind appreciably nearer that dominion of the wisest which was the remote goal of his endeavour. It will be long before humanity finds a nobler example of the searcher after the best means of social improvement. He sought after clear ideas with the ardour of a mystic, the patience and laborious industry of a man of science; he encountered opponents with a generosity and a courtesy worthy of any preux cJicvalier of mediaeval romance, while he was not inferior to that ideal in the vigour of his blows against injustice. As regards his influence, it has been well said that "no calculus can integrate the innumerable pulses of knowledge and of thought that he has made to vibrate in the minds of his generation." He quickened thought upon every problem that he touched. Any estimate of Mill s service to political or philosophical thought at this moment is liable to be injuri ously affected by the temporary discredit into which some of his doc trines have fallen. He was not infallible; he made no claim to dog matic authority. But in criticism of detail, according to our present light, we may easily blind ourselves to the greatness of the work that Mill accomplished in the development of opinion. (W. M. ) MILLAU, or MILHAU, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Aveyron, France, is situated on the left bank of the Tarn, half a mile below the point at which that river is joined by the Dourbie, and 48 miles to the south-east of Rodez, on the Rodez and Montpellier line. Itself 1210 feet above the level of the sea, it is overlooked by hills covered with vineyards and fruit trees or by bare and scarped rocks. The streets of Millau are narrow, and some of the houses of great antiquity, but the town is surrounded by spacious boulevards. On two sides the Place d Armes is adorned by stone columns supporting galleries of wood ; the only buildings of special interest are the Romanesque church of Notre Dame, and the belfry of the old hotel de ville. The principal industry is the manufacture of gloves, but various branches of the leather manufacture are also carried on. The chief articles of commerce are wool (both raw and prepared), Roquefort cheese, wine, almonds, and live stock. The population in 1881 was 16,628. The viscounts of Millau are mentioned as early as the 10th century; in the 16th it became one of the leading strongholds of the Reformed party in the south of France. Its industry suffered severely by the revocation of the edict of Nantes. MILLENNIUM. In the history of Christianity three main forces are found to have acted as auxiliaries of the gospel. They have elicited the ardent enthusiasm of many whom the bare preaching of the gospel would never have made decided converts. These are (1) a belief in the speedy return of Christ and in His glorious reign on earth ; (2) mystical contemplation, which regards heavenly bless ings as a possible possession in the present life; and (3) faith in a divine predestination of some to salvation and others to perdition. Each of these forces has at particular times proved too strong for church authority and burst the embankments with which the church had at once narrowed and protected Christian life and thought. They have pro duced ecclesiastical, social, and political convulsions, where the elemental force of religious conviction has destroyed all organization, whether of church or of state. They have released from its fetters the free spirit of Christianity, though often enough they have associated with it a fanaticism more damaging to the gospel than the temporiz ing policy of the hierarchy. First in point of time came the faith in the nearness of Christ s second advent and the establishing of His reign of glory on the earth. Indeed it appears so early that it might be questioned whether it ought not to be regarded as an essential part of the Christian religion. That question, however, will scarcely be answered in the affirma tive. The ideas of the Sermon on the Mount, or the pregnant thoughts of the Pauline theology, are independent

of the expectation that the kingdom of glory will shortly