
Luke Batterham
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'THERE ARE FEW PERSONS LESS SENSITIVE TO ATTACKS': Mill on his critics. The book acknowledged in this letter appears to be Lyall's Agonistes, or Philosophical Strictures (1856), about a third of which 'consists of a very close and generally adverse discussion of the philosophical theories of John Stuart Mill' (H. M. Chichester, DNB). In our letter Mill tells Lyall: "There are few persons less sensitive to attacks on anything they write, than myself, or more desirous to profit by any, even hostile, criticism, which I do not expect that I shall find yours to be, I cannot however undertake always to discuss with my critics our differences of opinion, which on subjects like those in question are generally too deeply grounded in our respective modes of thought, to afford much hope of their being removed by controversy". No letter by or to Lyall is printed in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by J.M. Robson (1963-1991).