A Mill for Editing

The happy dreams of editors the nightmares are privileged com munications-feature banners with the strange device,"DEFiNiTiVE!" And sometimes incautious and over-generous reviewers make those dreams an apparent reality. But the irony has entered the soul, and can not be long forgotten. Those of us engaged in editing John Stuart Mill's Collected Works have always known that, quite apart from our fail ings, it is impossible to produce an edition that will stand up for all time. Even more important is the realization that no editor of an author such as Mill can fully satisfy any one generation of actual, let alone poten tial, readers. This apologia is a proper introduction, because our procedures in tentionally and not merely accidentally depart from what might be called the best-established textual methods "definitive" cannot be applied to any method and occasionally even from themselves. It need not be said, however, that an apologia is not an apology in the common sense.