man has no moral claim to unrestricted liberty. The suspicion of
Mill's honesty which is thus awakened is confirmed by further critical
reading of his treatise. In that skilful tractate one comes across,
every here and there, a _suggestio falsi [suggestion of a falsehood],_
or a _suppressio veri [suppression of the truth],_ or a fallacious
analogy nebulously expressed, or a mendacious metaphor, or a passage
which is contrived to lead off attention from some weak point in the
feminist case.[1] Moreover, Mill was unmindful of the obligations of
intellectual morality when he allowed his stepdaughter, in connexion
with feminist questions, to draft letters [2] which went forward as
his own.

[1] _Vide [See]_ in this connexion the incidental references to Mill
on pp. 50, 81 footnote, and 139.
[2] Vide _Letters of John Stuart Mill,_ vol. ii, pp. 51, 79, 80, 100,
141, 157, 238, 239, 247, 288, and 349. There is yet another factor
which must be kept in mind in connexion with the writings of Mill. It
was the special characteristic of the man to set out to tackle concrete
problems and then to spend his strength upon abstractions.

In his _Political Economy_, where his proper subject matter was man
with his full equipment of impulses, Mill took as his theme an
abstraction: an _economic man_ who is actuated solely by the desire of
gain. He then worked out in great elaboration the course of conduct
which an aggregate of these puppets of his imagination would pursue.
Having persuaded

himself, after this, that he had in his possession a _vade mecum_
_[handbook]_ to the comprehension of human societies, he now took it
upon himself to expound the principles which govern and direct these.