economic problems from a purely a priori standpoint by the deductive method.
By his Analysis of the Mind and his Fragment on Mackintosh Mill acquired a position in the history of psychology and ethics. He took up the problems of mind very much after the fashion of the Scottish school, as then represented by Reid, Stewart and Brown, but made a new start, due in part to Hartley, and still more to his own independent thinking. He carried out the principle of association into the analysis of the complex emotional states, as the affections, the aesthetic emotions and the moral sentiment, all which he endeavoured to resolve into pleasurable and painful sensations. But the salient merit of the Analysis is the constant endeavour after precise definition of terms and clear statement of doctrines. The Fragment on Mackintosh is a severe exposure of the flimsiness and misrepresentations of Sir James Mackintosh’s famous Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (1830), and discusses the foundations of ethics from the author’s utilitarian point of view.
Bibliography.—Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, vol. ii. (1900), and article in Dict. Nat. Biog.; A. Bain, James Mill (1882); G. S. Bower, Hartley and James Mill (1881); James McCosh, Scottish Philosophy (1885); J. S. Mill, Autobiography (1873); Th. Ribot, La Psychologie anglaise (1870; Eng. trans., 1873); J. Morley in Fortnightly Review, xxxvii. (1882); Graham Wallas, The Life of Francis Place (1898).
MILL, JOHN (c. 1645–1707), English theologian, was born
about 1645 at Shap in Westmorland, entered Queen’s College,
Oxford, as a servitor in 1661, and took his master’s degree in
1669 in which year he spoke the “Oratio Panegyrica” at the
opening of the Sheldonian Theatre. Soon afterwards he was
chosen fellow and tutor of his college; in 1676 he became chaplain
to the bishop of Oxford, and in 1681 he obtained the rectory of
Bletchington, Oxfordshire, and was made chaplain to Charles II.
From 1685 till his death he was principal of St Edmund’s Hall;
and in 1704 he was nominated by Queen Anne to a prebendal
stall in Canterbury. He died on the 23rd of June 1707, just a
fortnight after the publication of his Greek Testament.
Mill’s Novum testamentum græcum, cum lectionibus variantibus MSS. exemplarium, versionum, editionum SS. patrum et scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, et in easdem notis (Oxford, fol. 1707), was undertaken by the advice and encouragement of John Fell (q.v.), his predecessor in the field of New Testament criticism; it represents the labour of thirty years, and is admitted to mark a great advance on all that had previously been achieved. The text indeed is that of R. Stephanus (1550), but the notes, besides embodying all previously existing collections of various readings, add a vast number derived from his own examination of many new MSS, and Oriental versions (the latter unfortunately he used only in the Latin translations). Though the amount of information given by Mill is small compared with that in modern editions, it is probable that no one person, except perhaps Tischendorf, has added so much material for the work of textual criticism. He was the first to notice, though only incidentally, the value of the concurrence of the Latin evidence with the Codex Alexandrinus, the only representative of an ancient non-Western Greek text then sufficiently known; this hint was not lost on Bentley (see Westcott and Hort, Introduction to New Testament). Mill’s various readings, numbering about thirty thousand, were attacked by Daniel Whitby (1638–1726) in his Examen as destroying the validity of the text; Antony Collins also argued in the same sense though with a different object. The latter called forth a reply from Bentley (Phileleutherus lipsiensis). In 1710 Kuster reprinted Mill’s Testament at Amsterdam with the readings of twelve additional MSS.
MILL, JOHN STUART (1806–1873), English philosopher and
economist, son of James Mill, was born on the 20th of May 1806
in his father’s house in Pentonville, London. He was educated
exclusively by his father, who was a strict disciplinarian, and
at the age of three was taught the Greek alphabet and long lists
of Greek words with their English equivalents. By his eighth
year he had read Aesop’s Fables, Xenophon’s Anabasis, and the
whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes
Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato (see his
Autobiography). He had also read a great deal of history in English—Robertson’s
histories, Hume, Gibbon, Robert Watson’s Philip II.
and Philip III., Hooke’s Roman History, part of a translation
of Rollin’s Ancient History, Langhorne’s Plutarch, Burnet's
History of My Own Times, thirty volumes of the Annual Register,
Millar’s Historical View of the English Government, Mosheim’s
Ecclesiastical History, M‘Crie’s Knox, and two histories of the
Quakers. A contemporary record of Mill’s studies from eight to
thirteen is published in Bain’s sketch of his life. It shows that
the Autobiography rather understates the amount of work done.
At the age of eight he began Latin, Euclid, and algebra, and
was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the
family. His main reading was still history, but he went through
all the Latin and Greek authors commonly read in the schools
and universities, besides several that are not commonly read by
undergraduates. He was not taught to compose either in Latin
or in Greek, and he was never an exact scholar; it was for the
subject matter that he was required to read, and by the age of
ten he could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father's
History of India was published in 1818; immediately thereafter,
about the age of twelve, John began a thorough study of the
scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle’s logical
treatises in the original. In the following year he was introduced
to political economy and studied Adam Smith and Ricardo with
his father.
Not unnaturally the training which the younger Mill received has aroused amazement and criticism; and it is reasonable to doubt whether the material knowledge which he retained in the result was as valuable to him as his father imagined. It is important, however, to note that the really important part of the training was the close association which it involved with the strenuous character and vigorous 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 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 résumé of their conversations. He thus learned early to grapple with difficulties and to accustom himself to the necessity of precision in argument and expression. It was an inevitable result of such an 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 grand objects of education,” according to the elder Mill, “should be to generate a constant and anxious concern about evidence.” The duty of collecting and weighing evidence for himself was at every turn impressed upon the boy; he was taught to accept no 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 system of dogmatic tenets. It was to prevent any falling off from this high moral 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 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 1820 till July 1821 Mill was in France in the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy Bentham. Away from his father he maintained his laborious habits. Copious extracts from a diary kept by him at this time are given by Bain; they show how methodically he read and wrote, studied chemistry and botany, tackled advanced mathematical problems, made notes on the scenery and the people and customs of the country. He also gained a thorough acquaintance with the French language. On his return in 1821 he added to his work the study of psychology, and that of Roman law, which he read with John Austin, his father having half decided on the 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 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.”
