Note 155 — Chapter X · The Virtues and Vices of Women

A certain French writer, despite a wholly mistaken admiration for J. S. Mill, is nevertheless bound to admit, in reference to Mill’s Subjection of Women and his strangely wild and unreasoning infatuation for Mrs. Taylor, that: “Il n’en est pas moins curieux et remarquable que, sous l’aiguillon de ce sentiment, cet esprit froid, si fort, si durement logique, ait pris sans hésiter cette attitude.” See Psychologie de la Femme, by Henri Marion, (Paris, 1903, p. 257). In his Criticisms on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers the Rev. R. H. Hutton, M.A., writes as follows on Mill’s relation to Mrs. Taylor; “His passionate reverence for his wife’s memory and genius—in his own words ‘a religion’—was one which, as he must have been perfectly sensible, he could not possibly make to appear otherwise than extravagant, not to say an hallucination, in the eyes of the rest of mankind.” (See Vol. I, p. 173.) See the same work for some sharp and well-deserved criticism of Mill’s Utilitarianism.