The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill,   ISBN:9781604503142

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I read this book for a graduate Mill seminar in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term.

I have to say that I found Mill's Autobiography left me wanting to read a good biography of him in order to learn more about his personal life and interaction with family and friends. He certainly did not reveal himself in the way Jean Jacques Rousseau did in his much-ballyhooed autobiography The Confessions. I do understand that his wife Harriett edited the autobiography to the extent that there is no mention of Mill's mother in it. Other than his education and his reference to taking walks with his father to talk about books he had read, he says little about their relationship. In addition, there is only a passing reference to having to serve as schoolmaster to his siblings while he was an adolescent and he does not mention them again. Mill spent most of his adulthood working for the East India Company; however, he says little about that experience in his autobiography. It seems he had few friends as an adult, if you go by his autobiography. There is a brief reference about his friendship with George Grote, the eminent historian of Greek history. Thus, the impression that I got of Mill the man was one of an emotionally cold person socially except to his wife Harriett, who I believe was the only person in his life he truly loved. Most of his autobiography is dedicated to his education; such as, books he had read or written and philosophers he was influenced by, and this is a part of his life that I found most interesting.

In Mill's autobiography, he tells readers how he benefited and suffered from having one of the most unique educational experiences known to humankind. His father was personally involved in both his education and that of his other siblings He was a brilliant student who read Greek by the age of three and Latin at eight years old. By the time he matured to adulthood, he was extremely well read. Thus, he received an academically rigorous education at home, and I find that his education really defined and shaped his character. Providing and improving education for all humans was a cornerstone of his philosophical belief in Utilitarianism. Education meant that people could develop their higher pleasures; a concept that Mill thought was of paramount importance to increase one's happiness. He invented this concept and differed with Jeremy Bentham, the progenitor of Utilitarianism, on this point. Bentham did not believe there was a qualitative property to happiness--Mill did. Thus, it is no mystery that in adulthood he developed very strong views on the advantages that universal education would have on improving people's characters. Mill believed universal education would lead to fostering social change for the betterment of all mankind. He stayed consistent on this belief throughout his life. He gave what I think was one of the great speeches on education and character formation in 1867 after accepting the position as Rector of the University of St. Andrews. In his Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, one of the points that he made in his speech was the responsibility that universities had in building their students' characters. He also wrote about the importance of character formation had on the ability for people to enjoy freedom in society in his book On Liberty. However, he personally found that his education had come at a great price to his emotional well-being.

During the winter of 1826 and into 1827 while in his early twenties, Mill recognized that he was suffering from a bout with depression. This is the only portion of his autobiography where Mill exposes his inner emotions to his readers. He believed his depression stemmed from an inadequacy in his education. He came to realize that although his father provided him a superior education on many intellectual levels, it was negligent in social contact with children of his own age, and did not prepare him emotionally for interaction with other members of society. His parents and visitors treated him as an adult from early childhood. Mill realized that his upbringing led up to his inability to feel a normal range of human emotions; thus, he felt detached from humanity. Mill found that reading poetry by Wordsworth in 1828 ultimately broke his depression. In poetry, Mill found that he could feel sorrow, and sympathize with others.

I found this part of his autobiography of importance for three reasons. First, it is the only painful human emotional event in his life that he divulges to his readers. Secondly, it is an indication of the importance that the concept of sympathy played in his life and formed his philosophical views as well. Mill understood the need for humans to be sympathetic to one another. Sympathy is required for social interaction and is a useful character trait that we use in order to keep us from harming each other. Thirdly, without his awakening of this emotion in his life, I seriously doubt that he would have found the capacity to love his wife Harriett in the manner that he did. One does get the sense from his description of her that she was his true soul mate and only real long lasting friend in his life.

Mill's friendship with Harriett while she was married to another man, caused them both to endure scandalous gossip, even though they both denied there relationship had any sexual component to it. When they eventually married each other about two years after she became a widow, Mill stayed true to his life long conviction in believing in equal rights for women. During Mill's time, married women's property automatically devolved to their husband and he correctly saw this as one more inequity against women placed on them by society. Therefore, on the day when he married Harriett Taylor in 1851, a financially secure widow, he wrote a formal renunciation to all of her property in protest against the current law. He was a life long feminist who wrote in his essay The Subjection of Women, about the scathing inequalities that women endured since the history of mankind had been chronicled. I have no doubt that his essay paved the way in changing marriage and divorce laws and fostered the improvement of relations between the sexes. He was also the first Member of Parliament to introduce a bill in the Commons to enfranchise women. He worked tirelessly at the end of his life, supporting women's rights with his pen and his purse. His stepdaughter Helen carried on his feminist work by becoming a leader in the suffragist movement in her own right.

In total, I would say that although the Autobiography provides scant information into Mill's daily life, when he does reveal himself, it appears he consistently lived up to his philosophical teachings and beliefs.

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This book is so wonderful on so many different levels that to give it a review at all would be a disservice. My recommendation is not on whether or not to read it but instead on how to read it. I suggest a quiet room, comfortable chair or couch, cup of coffee and a few hours of uninterrupted reading time. After completing the book, rest and repeat as desired.

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Mill's remarkable childhood education prepared him to be one of the leading intellectuals of his day (far surpassing his father, James Mill, who was no slouch, but not in his son's league) but while I admire his erudition and achievements, one has to wonder if the deep depression he fell into in his mid-20s had something to do with that.

Mill's contributions are better remembered than many of the other famous British intellectuals of the period--such as Herbert Spencer--whose particularly invidious version of the theory of Social Darwinism is best left languishing in obscurity. Who today remembers the prolific Spencer, whose collected works run to over 20 large volumes?

Mill is frank about his depression and how debilitating it was, and what a struggle it was to pull through it. But with the help of his best friend, he pulled out of it and went on to write many important works in philosophy, logic, political science, and economics.

Mill's I.Q. was certainly very high (estimated by psychologist Katherine Cox using a modified ratio I.Q. method to be at least 200), but very likely his father's misguided efforts to produce a prodigy and homegrown, British Wunderkind (to compete with the legendary "Infant of Lubeck," no doubt :-)) were the cause of his long, serious depression.

Mill's text on econonics, which was called Political Economy back in those days (also the title of his book, if I remember right), was the longest running and most successful college text of all time, being used for the next 50 years until the 1920s when the "New Economics" of the day, championed by the field of microeconomics and the theory of the firm, made a more modern, updated text necessary.

For me the most interesting part of the book was Mill's theory of history, with positive periods of creative cultural development being followed by periods of negation and dissolution. Mill summarizes it as follows (I think I'm remembering the quote more or less accurately): "During the positive periods mankind adopts with conviction some positive creed, claiming jurisdiction for all their actions proceeding from it, and possessing more or less of the truth and adaptation to the needs of humanity; when a period follows of negation and dissolution, during which mankind loses its old beliefs, of a general and authoritative character, except the belief that the old are false." Mills theory has parallels to the earlier Hegel's historical dialectic and later to Oswald Spengler's theory, and to later 20th century historian Arnold Toynbee's idea of "challenge and response."

For another more literary (and probably more interesting) take on depression by another British intellectual, you might try Richard Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (not to be confused with the African explorer by the same name). After all, anyone who says that "Giraffes live for love," not to mention palm trees, can't be all bad. :-)

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Ever wonder for which bipolar monomaniac the Sorcerer's Apprentice worked? Now you know. Drier than Dryden, boot-licking admirer of the thief of his childhood, humorless bookworm of a dusty aristocrat, protonerd ex machina in extremis. When Continent-lazing navel-gazers concern themselves with improving society, oil your firearms. I'd rather a deep belly laugh than Mill's musings, any day.

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John Stuart Mill was raised by his father to be his intellectual heir, and a great genius. There is something moving about the care taken by the father to teach his wunderkind son all that he knew. The father was with Jeremy Bentham the guiding spirit of the philosophical movement Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism was a mechanical kind of philosophy which thought it possible to measure the goodness of action by measuring the amount of pleasure against the amount of pain. Mill followed the path his father set out from him, adopted his father's values and social conscience and was already by the tender age of twenty a distinguished intellectual figure. But then he asked himself the question if the realization of all his social schemes and all the grand social ideals would bring him happiness. And he understood that it would not. He understood in other words that all this focus on outward good and action, on mechanical measures for human life was missing some vital component in life and in himself. Mill went into a great depression. What brought him out was the reading of the poetry of Wordsworth and the understanding that there is a dimension of feeling, a dimension of the inner life which is somehow more important than all the social thought. This did not mean that Mill abandoned the path of social reform but rather that he changed its direction. Part of this change had to do with his meeting his relationship with Harriet Taylor, his embracing in a certain sense of liberal ideas on the role of women in society. Mill found himself and continued on his intellectual path, a path which would lead him to produce one of the masterpieces of modern political thought, "On Liberty ".