Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873)
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: MIC-MOL
del.icio.us it!
|
See also: It is important, however, to See also:note that the really important part of the training was the See also:close association which it involved with the strenuous See also:character and vigorous See also:intellect of his father . From his earliest days he spent much time in his father's study and habitually accompanied him on his walks in See also:North London . Much therefore of what he acquired was assimilated without difficulty, and the accuracy of his impressions was tested by his subsequently drafting a resume of their conversations . He thus learned See also:early to grapple with difficulties and to accustom himself to the See also:necessity of precision in See also:argument and expression . It was an inevitable result of such an See also:education that Mill acquired many of his father's speculative opinions, and his father's way of defending them . But he did not receive the impress passively and mechanically . " One of the See also:grand See also:objects of education," according to the See also:elder Mill, " should be to generate a See also:constant and anxious concern about See also:evidence." The See also:duty of See also:collecting and weighing evidence for himself was at every turn impressed upon the boy; he was taught to accept no See also:opinion on authority . He was deliberately educated as an apostle, but it was as an apostle of reasoned truth in human affairs, not as an apostle of any See also:system of dogmatic tenets . It was to prevent any falling off from this high moral See also:standard till it should become part of his being that his father kept the boy so closely with himself . Mill expressly says that his childhood was not unhappy . It seems unhappy only when we compare it with the normal life of a boy and decline to imagine its See also:peculiar enjoyments and aspirations . Mill complains that his father often required more than could be expected of him, but his tasks were not so severe as to prevent him from growing up a healthy and high-spirited boy, though he was not constitutionally robust, and his pursuits were so different from those of other boys of the same age . From May 182o till See also:July 1821 Mill was in See also:France in the family of See also:Sir See also:Samuel See also:Bentham, See also:brother of See also:Jeremy Bentham . Away from his father he maintained his laborious habits . Copious extracts from a See also:diary kept by him at this time are given by Bain; they show how methodically he read and wrote, studied See also:chemistry and See also:botany, tackled advanced mathematical problems, made notes on the scenery and the See also:people and customs of the See also:country . He also gained a thorough acquaintance with the See also:French See also:language . On his return in 1821 he added to his work the study of See also:psychology, and that of Roman See also:law, which he read with John See also:Austin, his father having See also:half decided on the See also:bar as the best profession open to him . In 1822, however, when he had just completed his seventeenth year, this intention was abandoned, and he entered as a clerk in the examiner's See also:office of the India House, " with the understanding that he should be employed from the beginning in preparing drafts of despatches, and be thus trained up as a successor to those who then filled the highest departments of the office." Mill's work at the India House, which was henceforth his livelihood, did! not come before the public; hence some have scouted his political writings as the work of an abstract philosopher, entirely unacquainted with affairs . From the first he was more than a clerk, and after a See also:short See also:apprenticeship he was promoted, in 1828, to the responsible position of assistant-examiner with a See also:salary of £600 a year . The duty of the so-called examiners was to examine the letters of the agents of the See also:Company in India, and to draft instructions in reply . The character of the Company's government was almost entirely dependent upon their abilities as statesmen . For twenty years, from 1836 (when his father died) to 1856, Mill had See also:charge of the Company's relations with the native states, and in 1856 he became See also:chief of the office with a salary of £2000 . In the hundreds of despatches that he wrote in this capacity, much, no doubt, was done in accordance with established routine, but few statesmen of his See also:generation had a wider experience of the responsible application of the principles of government . About this work he said little in the Autobiography, probably because his main concern there was to expound the influences that effected his moral and See also:mental development . About the time of his entering the India House Mill read See also:Dumont's exposition of Bentham's doctrines in the Traite de Legislation, which made a lasting impression upon him . When he laid down the last See also:volume, he says, he had become a different being . It gave unity to the detached and fragmentary parts of his knowledge and beliefs . The impression was confirmed by the study of the English psychologists, as well as See also:Condillac and Helvetius, and in 1822–1823 he established among a few See also:friends the " Utilitarian " Society, taking the word, as he tells us, from See also:Galt's See also:Annals of the See also:Parish . Two See also:newspapers were open to him—the Traveller, edited by a friend of Bentham's, and the See also:Morning See also:Chronicle, edited by his father's friend See also:Black . One of his first efforts was a solid argument for freedom of discussion, in a See also:series of letters to the Chronicle apropos of the See also:prosecution of See also:Richard See also:Carlile . But he watched all public incidents with a vigilant See also:eye, and seized every passing opportunity of exposing departures from See also:sound principle in See also:parliament and courts of See also:justice . Another outlet was opened up for him (See also:April 1824) by the starting of the See also:Westminster See also:Review, and still another in the following year in the See also:Parliamentary History and Review . This year also he found a congenial occupation in editing Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence . All the time, his mind full of public questions, he discussed eagerly with the many men of distinction who came to his father's house . He engaged in set discussions at a reading society formed at See also:Grote's house in 1825, and in set debates at a Speculative Society formed in the same year . From the Autobiography we learn that in 1826 Mill's See also:enthusiasm was checked by a misgiving as to the value of the ends which he had set before him . This expression was the result, no doubt, of his strenuous training and the See also:comparative lack of congenial friendships . His father was reserved, undemonstrative even to the See also:pitch of chilling sternness, and among See also:young Mill's comrades contempt of feeling was almost a watchword . Himself absorbed in abstract questions and projects of See also:general philanthropy, he had been careless of See also:personal See also:attachment . On the other See also:hand without experience he could not have been prepared for the actual slowness of the reformer's work . In 1826 he looked back to four years of eager toil . What were the results ? He had become convinced that his comrades in the Utilitarian Society, never more than ten, had not the stuff in them for a See also:world-shaking propaganda; the society itself was dissolved; the Parliamentary Review was a failure; the Westminster did not pay its expenses; Bentham's Judicial Evidence produced little effect on the reviewers . His own reception at the Speculative Debating Society, where he first measured his strength in public conflict, was calculated to produce self-distrust . He found himself looked upon with curiosity as a precocious phenomenon, a " made See also:man," an intellectual See also:machine set to grind certain tunes . The outcome of this See also:period of depression was a broadening of his outlook on the problemswhich he had set himself to solve . He now saw that regard for the public See also:good was too vague an See also:object for the See also:satisfaction of a man's affections . It is a See also:proof of the dominating force of his father's character that it cost the younger Mill such an effort to shake off his stern creed about See also:poetry and personal emotion . Like Plato, the elder Mill would have put poets under See also:ban as enemies of truth, and he subordinated private to public affections . See also:Landor's See also:maxims of " few acquaintances, fewer friends, no familiarities " had his cordial approval . These doctrines the younger Mill now See also:felt himself forced in See also:reason to abandon . Too much in See also:awe of his father to make him a confidant, he wrestled in the gloomy solitude of his own mind . He gained from the struggle a more See also:catholic view of human happiness, at delight in the poetry of nature and the affections as well as the poetry of heroic unselfishness, a disposition to study more sympathetically the point of view of opponents, a more courteous See also:style of polemic, a hatred of sectarianism, an ambition, no less See also:noble and disinterested, but moderated to See also:practical possibilities . In the course of the next few years he wrote comparatively little, but he continued his reading, and also derived much benefit from discussions held twice a See also:week at Grote's house in Threadneedle See also:Street . Gradually also he had the satisfaction of seeing the debates in the Speculative Society becoming famous enough to attract men with whom it was profitable for him to interchange opinions, among others See also:Maurice and John See also:Sterling . He ceased to attend the society in 1829, but he carried away from it the strengthening memory of failure overcome by per-severing effort, and the important doctrinal conviction that a true system of political See also:philosophy was " something much more complex and many-sided than he had previously had any See also:idea of, and that its office was to See also:supply, not a set of See also:model institutions but principles from which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might be deduced." The first sketch of Mill's political philosophy appeared in a series of contributions to the Examiner in the autumn of 183o entitled " Prospects in France." He was in See also:Paris soon after the July Revolution, and made the acquaintance of the leading See also:spirits among the younger men; in his discussion of their proposals we find the germs of many thoughts afterwards more fully See also:developed in his Representative Government . It is from this time that Mill's letters supply a connected See also:account of his life (see See also:Hugh See also:Elliott, Letters of John See also:Stuart Mill, 191o) . The letters in the Examiner may be taken as marking the close of his period of meditative See also:search, and his return to hopeful aspiring activity . It was characteristic of his nature that he should be stirred to such delight by the Revolution in France, and should labour so earnestly to make his countrymen under-stand with what gravity and sobriety it had been effected . Their own Reform See also:Bill came soon after and it is again characteristic of Mill—at once of his enthusiasm and of his steady determination to do work that nobody else seemed able or willing to do—that we find him in the See also:heat of the struggle in 1831 See also:writing to the Examiner a series of letters on " The Spirit of the Age " which See also:drew from See also:Carlyle the singular exclamation " Here is a new mysticl" How little this criticism was justified may be seen from the fact that Mill's inductive logic was the See also:direct result of his aspirations after political stability as determined by the dominion of the wisest (Examiner letters) . " Why is it," he asked, that the multitude accept implicitly the decisions of the wisest, of the specially skilled, in See also:physical See also:science ? " Because in physical science there is all but See also:complete agreement in opinion . " And why this agreement?" Because all accept the same methods of investigation, the same tests of truth . Is it possible then to obtain unanimity as to the methods of arriving at conclusions in social and political matters, so as to secure similar agreement of opinion among the specially skilled, and similar general respect for their authority ? The same thought appears in a review of See also:Herschel's Natural Philosophy, written about the same time . Mill remarks that the uncertainty See also:hanging over the very elements of moral and social philosophy proves that the means of arriving at the truth in those sciences are not yet properly understood . " And whither," he adds, " can mankind so advantageously turn, in See also:order to learn the proper means, and to See also:form their minds to the proper habits, as to that See also:branch of knowledge in which by universal See also:acknowledgment the greatest number of truths have been ascertained, and the greatest possible degree of certainty arrived at ? " By 1831 the period of depression had passed; Mill's enthusiasm for humanity had been thoroughly reawakened, and had taken the definite shape of an aspiration to supply an unimpeachable method of search for conclusions in moral and social science . No mystic ever worked with warmer zeal than Mill . But his zeal encountered a check which baffled him for several years, and which See also:left its See also:mark in various inconsistencies and incoherences in his completed system . He had been bred by his father in a great veneration for the syllogistic logic as an antidote against confused thinking . He attributed to his early discipline in this logic an impatience of vague language which in all likelihood was really fostered in him by his study of the Platonic dialogues and of Bentham, for he always had in himself more of Plato's fertile ingenuity in canvassing the meaning of vague terms than the schoolman's rigid consistency in the use of them .
Be this as it may, enthusiastic as he was for a new logic that might give certainty to moral and social conclusions, Mill was no less resolute that the new logic should stand in no antagonism to the old
.
In his Westminster review of See also:Whately's Logic in 1828 (invaluable to all students of the See also:genesis of Mill's logic) he appears, curiously enough, as an ardent and brilliant See also:champion of the syllogistic logic against highfliers such as the Scottish philosophers who talk of " superseding " it by " a supposed system of inductive logic." His inductive logic must " supplement and not supersede." But for several years he searched in vain for the means of concatenation
..
Meantime, while recurring again and again, as was his See also:custom, to this See also:cardinal difficulty, Mill worked indefatigably in other directions where he saw his way clear
.
The working of the new order in France, and the personalities of the leading men, had a profound See also:interest for him; he wrote on the subject in the Examiner
.
He had ceased to write for the Westminster in 1828; but during the years 1832 and 1833 he contributed many essays to See also:Tait's See also:Magazine, the Jurist, and the Monthly Repository
.
In 1835 Sir See also: The Logic was published in 1843 . In 1844 appeared his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy . These essays were worked out and written many years before, and show Mill in his first See also:stage as a political economist . Four out of the five essays are elaborate and powerful solutions of perplexing technical problems—the See also:distribution of the gains of See also:international See also:commerce, the influence of See also:consumption on See also:production,. the See also:definition of productive and unproductive labour, the precise relations between profits and See also:wages . Though Mill appears here purely as the See also:disciple of Ricardo, striving after more precise statement, and reaching forward to further consequences, wecan well understand in reading these essays how about the time when he first sketched them he began to be conscious of See also:power as an original and See also:independent thinker . That originality and See also:independence became more conspicuous when he reached his second stage as a political economist, struggling forward towards the standpoint from which his systematic work was written . It would seem that in his fits of despondency one of the thoughts that marred his dreams of human improvement was the apparently inexorable character of economic See also:laws, condemning thousands of labourers to a cramped and miserable existence, and thousands more to semi-See also:starvation . From this oppressive feeling he found See also:relief in the thought set forth in the opening of the second See also:book of his Political Economy—that, while the conditions of production have the necessity of physical laws, the distribution of what is produced among the various classes of producers is a matter of human arrangement, dependent upon alterable customs and institutions . There can be little doubt that this thought, whether or not in the clear shape that it afterwards assumed, was the germ of all that is most distinctive in his system of political economy . This system, which for many years subsequently was regarded as authoritative, has been subjected to vigorous criticism by later economists, and it is perhaps not too much to say that it now possesses mainly an historical interest . Its chief importance is perhaps the stress which it laid on the vital connexion which must subsist between true economic theory and the wider facts of social and See also:national development . While his great systematic works were in progress, Mill wrote very little on events or books of the See also:day .
He turned aside for a few months from his Political Economy during the See also:winter of the Irish See also:famine (1846–1847) to See also:advocate the creation of See also:peasant-proprietorships as a remedy for See also:distress and disorder in See also:Ireland
.
He found time also to write elaborate articles on French history
and Greek history in the See also:Edinburgh Review apropos of See also:Michelet, See also:Guizot and Grote, besides some less elaborate essays
.
The Political Economy was published in 1848
.
Mill could now feel that his main work was accomplished; he remained, however, on the alert for opportunities of useful influence, and pressed on with hardly diminished enthusiasm in his search for useful truth
.
Among other things, he made a more thorough study of socialist writers, with the result that, though he was not converted to any of their schemes as being.immediately practicable, he began to look upon some more equal distribution of the produce of labour as a practicability of the remote future, and to dwell upon the prospect of such changes in human character as might render a See also:stable society possible without the institution of private See also:property
.
This he has called his third stage as a political economist, and he says that he was helped towards it by the See also:lady, Mrs See also: She was a confirmed invalid, and lived in the country, where Mill visited her regularly for twenty years, with the full consent of her See also:husband, a man of limited mental powers, but of high character and unselfishness . Mill's friendship with Mrs Taylor and their See also:marriage in 1851 involved a break with his family (apparently due to his resentment at a fancied slight, not to any bitterness on their part), and his practical disappearance from society . (On these points see See also:Mary Ta lor, Mrs Mill's grand-daughter, in Elliott's edition of the Letters . closely reasoned and characteristic works, the See also:Liberty, the See also:Utilitarianism, the Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, and the Subjection of Women, besides his posthumously published essays on Nature and on the Utility of See also:Religion, were thought out and partly written in collaboration with his wife . In 1856 he became See also:head of the examiner's office in the India House, and for two years, till the See also:dissolution of the Company in 1858, his See also:official work, never a See also:light task, kept him fully occupied . It See also:fell to him as head of the office to write the See also:defence of the Company's government of India when the See also:transfer of its powers was See also:pro-posed . Mill was earnestly opposed to the transfer, and the documents in which he substantiated the proud boast for the Company that " few governments, even under far more favour-able circumstances, have attempted so much for the good of their subjects or carried so many of their attempts to a beneficial issue," and exposed the defects of the proposed new government, are See also:models of trenchant and dignified See also:pleading . On the dissolution of the Company Mill was offered a seat in the new See also:council, but declined, and retired with a See also:pension of £1500 . His retirement from official work was followed almost immediately by his wife's See also:death at See also:Avignon, whither they had come in the course of a tour . So great was the See also:shock that for the rest of his life he spent most of his time at a See also:villa at St Veran, near Avignon, returning to his See also:Blackheath |