ABSTRACT
Thinking is not one of the natural activities of man; it is a product of disease, like a high temperature in illness. In France before the Revolution, and in England in the early nineteenth century, the disease in the body politic caused certain men to think important thoughts, which developed into the science of political economy. This science, in combination with the philosophy of Bentham and the psychology which James Mill learnt from Hartley, produced the school of Philosophical Radicals, who dominated British politics for fifty years. They were a curious set of men: rather uninteresting, quite without what is called “vision,” prudent, rational, arguing carefully from premisses which were largely false to conclusions which were in harmony with the interests of the middle class. John Stuart Mill, their last representative, had less brains than Bentham or Malthus or Ricardo, but surpassed them in imagination and sympathy, with the result that he failed to remain orthodox and even allowed himself to coquette with Socialism. But the founders of the sect, like Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield, would tolerate no weakness.
