I must still come back to the year 1842. In the October number of the "Westminster Review" for that year was published his article on Bailey's "Theory of Vision," in which he upheld the Berkeleian doctrine against Bailey's attacks. I remember his saying that he went to the country, on one occasion, from Friday till Tuesday, and in the three days wrote this article. With all his respect for Bailey, he used a number of expressions very derogatory to his understanding; attributing to him such things as a "triumphing over a shadow," "misconceiving the argument he was replying to," etc. Bailey was much hurt at the time by these expressions; and Mill's reply on this point is very characteristic ("Dissertations," ii., 119): "To dispute the soundness of a man's doctrines and the conclusiveness of his arguments, may always be interpreted as an assumption of superiority over him; true courtesy, however, between thinkers, is not shown by refraining from this sort of assumption, but by tolerating it in one another; and we claim from Mr. Bailey this tolerance, as we, on our part, sincerely and cheerfully concede to him the like." This was his principle of composition throughout his polemical career, and he never departed from it. Of Bailey's reply on this occasion, he remarked: "The tone of it is peevish. But Bailey is, I know, of that temper—or rather I infer it from sundry indications."
| ATLANTIS NOT A MYTH. |
By EDWARD H. THOMPSON.
OUR sturdy worker in the copper mines of Lake Superior, finding both himself and his vein of copper growing poorer day by day, determines to seek some more paying claim in the as yet unexplored portion of the copper country. He gathers his kit of tools together and starts, and, after many a hard hour's travel over the wild and rugged country, finds a region with abundant signs of copper, and where seemingly no human foot has trod since creation's dawn.
He strikes a rich vein and goes steadily to work digging and blasting his way to the richer portions, when suddenly, right in the richest part, he finds his lead cut off by what looks to his experienced eye marvelously like a mining shaft. Amazedly he begins to clear out of the pit the fallen earth and the débris of ages, and the daylight thus let in reveals to his astonished gaze an immense mass of copper raised
"Logic" with avidity, and took up Corote with equal avidity. These two works, I believe, gave him his start in philosophy; for, although he had studied in Germany for some time, I am not aware that he was much impressed by German philosophy. In an article in the "British and Foreign Review," in 1843, on the modern philosophy of France, he led up to Comte, and gave some account of him.
