fellow-creatures, distinguished only as infinite in degree; but is different in kind, and another quality altogether.  Accordingly Mr Mansel combats as a heresy of his opponents, the opinion that infinite goodness differs only in degree from finite goodness.—­Here, then, I take my stand upon the acknowledged principle of logic and of morality; that when we mean different things we have no right to call them by the same name, and to apply to them, the same predicates, moral and intellectual.  If, instead of the glad tidings that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human form can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, except that the highest human morality does not sanction them—­convince me of this and I will hear my fate as I may.  But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say, in plain terms, that I will not.  Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing he shall not do; he shall not compel me to worship him.  I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.’

This concluding declaration is memorable in many ways.  Mr Mill announces his resolution to determine for himself, and according to his own reason and conscience, what God he will worship, and what God he will not worship.  For ourselves, we cordially sympathize with his resolution.  But Mr Mill must be aware that this is a point on which society is equally resolved that no individual shall determine for himself, if they can help it.[6] Each new-born child finds his religious creed ready prepared for him.  In his earliest days of unconscious infancy, the stamp of the national, gentile, phratric, God, or Gods, is imprinted upon him by his elders; and if the future man, in the exercise of his own independent reason, acquires such convictions as compel him to renounce those Gods, proclaiming openly that he does so—­he must count upon such treatment as will go far to spoil the value of the present life to him, even before he passes to those ulterior liabilities which Mr Mill indicates in the distance.  We are not surprised that a declaration so unusual and so impressive should have been often cited in critical notices of this volume; that during the month preceding the last Westminster election, it was studiously brought forward by some opponents of Mr Mill, and more or less regretted by his friends, as likely to offend many electors, and damage his chance of success; and that a conspicuous and noble-minded ecclesiastic, the Dean of Westminster, thought the occasion so grave as to come forward with his characteristic generosity, for the purpose of shielding a distinguished man suspected of heresy.