The Personal Debate

Abstract

The rift between Mill and Carlyle came in 1840, when Carlyle delivered an onslaught on Bentham in ‘The Hero as Prophet’.¹ Their parting demonstrated how, although they were both striving to escape the sterility of sectarian philosophical debate, they did so in terms of dissimilar personal experiences, which gave them irreconcilable perspectives on both logic and life. In 1831, Empson mentioned Mill to Carlyle as ‘a converted Utilitarian who is studying German’, and this elicited an enthusiastic response from Carlyle: in 1832, Carlyle claimed Mill was his ‘partial disciple’.² The friendship flourished at a time when both were cultivating open-mindedness; they shared, said Carlyle, ‘a common recognition of the infinite nature of Truth’.³