After 1829 I withdrew from attendance on the Debating Society. I had had enough of speech-making, and was glad to carry on my private studies and meditations without any immediate call for outward assertion of their results. I found the fabric of my old and taught opinions giving way in many fresh places, and I never allowed it to fall to pieces, but was incessantly occupied in weaving it anew. I never, in the course of my transition, was content to remain, for ever so short a time, confused and unsettled. When I had taken in any new idea, I could not rest till I had adjusted its relation to my old opinions, and ascertained exactly how far its effect ought to extend in modifying or superseding them.
Note from KBJ: Mill valued epistemic (or doxastic) coherence. He didn't want his beliefs to be merely consistent, in the sense of being logically compatible with one another; he wanted them to be coherent, i.e., mutually supporting. Mill anticipated Quine and Ullian's book "The Web of Belief" (which, by the way, I recommend to anyone interested in philosophy).
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 