Dissertations and Discussions Author:John Stuart Mill Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. All the more recent of these papers were joint productions of myself and of one whose loss, even in a merely intellectual point of v... more »iew, can never be repaired or alleviated. But the following Essay is hers in a peculiar sense; my share in it being little more than that of au editor and amanuensis. Its authorship having been known at the time, and publicly attributed to her, it is proper to state, that she never regarded it as a complete discussion of the subject which it treats of; and. highly as I estimate it, I would rather it remained unacknowledged, than that it should be read with the idea that even the faintest image can be found in it of a mind and heart, which, in their union of the rarest and what are deemed the most conflicting excellences, were unparalleled in any human being that I have known or read of. While she was the light, life, and grace of every society in which she took part, the foundation of her character was a deep seriousness, resulting from the combination of the strongest and most sensitive feelings with the highest principles. All that excites admiration, when found separately in others, seemed brought together in her: a conscience at once healthy and tender ; a generosity bounded only by a sense of justice, which often forgot its own claims, but never those of others ; a heart so large and loving, that whoever was capable of making the smallest return of sympathy always received tenfold; and, in the intellectual department, a vigor and truth of imagination, a delicncy of pereeption, an accuracy and nicety of observation, only equalled by her profundity of speculative thought,and by a practical judgment and discernment next to infallible. So elevated was the general level of her faculties, that the highest poetry, philosophy...« less