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| Rising Of The Sun John Stuart Mill, the eldest son of James Mill – the British historian, economist, and philosopher, was born on May 20, 1806, in Pentonville, London. James Mill, a strict disciplinarian, took the initiative in providing John an intellectually stimulating education. John began reading Greek language and literature at three years of age. James Mill planned out John's education from the very early age and followed it strictly. The boy was put through strenuous learning sessions and reading, so much so that his emotional and physical growth was almost ignored against the attention paid to his intellectual growth. His father wanted him to be some prophet and concentrated all his efforts to make him one with his arrangements for his studies. Though he was not raised with any strict religious beliefs. Not even in his teens, and he
had the knowledge almost 25 years ahead of his time. He had read the original Greek
Aesop’s Fables, Xenophon’s Anabasis, and Herodotus. He was up-to-date with the
satirist Lucian, the historian of philosophy - Diogenes Laėrtius, the Athenian writer and
educational theorist Isocrates, and six dialogues of Plato. John’s intensive education at a tender age cultivated an intimate relationship with the spirited intellect of his father. From childhood, he spent most of the time in his father’s study and routinely accompanied him on walks. Consequently, he inherited many of his father’s exploratory beliefs and the art of defending them from critics.
Recognition John Mill received recognition
from two newspapers for his contributions – The Traveler, edited by a friend of
Bentham’s, and The Morning Chronicle, edited by his father’s friend John Black. Mental Crisis His intense training and non-stop journey towards attainment of status of a scholar had its ill-effects. He suffered mental crisis in 1826 due to the strain he had gone through for years to gather as much knowledge possible. Suddenly, the things for which he was being trained and prepared, lost its charm. He had 'no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else'. He found himself in a situation where he could neither recognize not respond to any emotions. This was a very bad state of life and he suffered a lot. But he felt that 'the cloud gradually drew off' and he was blessed with a normal life again Live And Non-stop! In 1826, a calm, as to the
value of ends he had set before him, limited Mill’s passion. London Debating Society
provided him an opportunity to gauge his force in community divergence. He was looked upon
as a precocious fact, an intellect geared up to change and evolve community life. Away
from agreeing to some strict beliefs of his father, Mill scuffled with his suspicions in
depressing isolation. He emerged victorious from this skirmish with a more Catholic view
of individual delight. At Paris Mill made his visit to Paris in 1830 loaded with inputs from young liberals and was convinced of a return to hopeful activity. His letters in The Examiner in 1830, and a series of articles on The Spirit of the Age in the same paper in 1831 reflect this confidence. During 1832 and 1833 he contributed many essays to Tait’s Magazine, The Jurist, and The Monthly Repository. In 1835 Sir William Molesworth founded The London Review, with Mill as its editor. It was amalgamated with The Westminster (as The London and Westminster Review) in 1836, and Mill continued as the editor and later as a proprietor until 1840. In and after 1840, he published several important articles in The Edinburgh Review. Some of the essays written for these journals were reprinted in the first two volumes (1859) of Mill’s Dissertations and Discussions and provide evidence of the widening spectrum of his interests. Among the more important are Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties (1833), Writings of Alfred de Vigny (1838), Bentham (1838), Coleridge (1840), M De Tocqueville on Democracy in America (1840), Michelet’s History of France (1844), and Guizot’s Essays and Lectures on History (1845). The twin essays on Bentham and Coleridge exhibit Mill’s supremacy at its magnificence, undoubtedly suggesting the new spirit that he puffed into English radicalism. . |
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He took up
Latin, the geometry of Euclid, and algebra and began teaching younger children of the
family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all Latin and Greek
authors commonly read in schools and universities. At 10, he was thorough with Plato and
the Athenian statesman Demosthenes. He commenced a thorough study of scholastic logic,
simultaneously taking lessons on Aristotle’s logical treatises when he reached 12. In
the following year he got introduced to political economy and studied the works of
Scottish Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
One of
his first efforts was a solid argument for freedom of discussion in a series of letters to
the Chronicle on the prosecution of Richard Carlyle, a 19th century English
radical and freethinker. Mill was an opportunist to expose deviations from sound
principles in Parliament and courts of justice. The opening of Westminster Review in April
1824 as the organ of the philosophical radicals, became yet another platform for Mill to
voice his views. In 1825, he set in motion work on an edition of Bentham’s Rationale
of Judicial Evidence. He gained recognition by participating in discussions. Distinguished
gentlemen visiting his father, engaged in discussions at a reading society formed by
George Grote in 1825 and in debates at the London Debating Society, formed in the same
year.
This reflects a pragmatic aspiration. Gradually,
debates at the London Debating Society engrossed men in an invigorating and inspiring
deliberations. Mill discontinued his engagements with the society in 1829. However, he was
convinced for the rest of his life that a genuine structure of political philosophy was
complex and multi-dimensional than he had previously thought of.