John Stuart Mill

In 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor, a women’s right advocate and a philosopher, for whom Mill had great regard and whom he treated as intellectually equal. They probably first met sometime in 1830; but at that time, she was already married to John Taylor and had three children with him.

Over the years, Mill and Harriet Taylor developed an intimate, but chaste friendship. They decided to get married after John Taylor died in 1849, but to avoid scandal, waited for two years. Unfortunately, Harriet died in 1858. Thereafter, her daughter Helen Taylor became Mill’s constant companion.

On 8 May, 1873 Mill died from erysipelas in Avignon, France, where he maintained a villa. He was buried there alongside his wife.

John Stuart Mill was born on 20 May 1806 in the Pentonville area of London. His father, James Mill, was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist and philosopher, best known for his work ‘The History of British India’, in which he denounced Indian culture. His mother’s name was Harriet Burrow.

John was the couple’s eldest son. Born a precocious child, he was brought up very rigorously by his father, who wanted him to carry on the cause of utilitarianism, which he had been advocating with his friend Jeremy Bentham.

James Mill not only took full charge of his son’s education, but also kept him away from other children. As a result, young John Stuart Mill spent most of his time in his father’s company. Thus he imbibed much of his father’s ideas from an early age.

From Mill’s autobiography, published posthumously in 1873, we know that he started learning Greek from the age of three. By eight, he had read, among other things, Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the works of Herodotus and had also studied a great part of English history, arithmetics, physics and astronomy.

Also at eight, Mill started learning Latin and algebra and began to study the works of the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, the father of Geometry. By the age of ten, Mill could read Plato and Demosthenes.

Initially James Mill wanted his son to join the bar. Therefore, on returning to England John Stuart Mill began to study psychology and Roman law with John Austin. Concurrently, he also studied the works of writers like Pierre-Étienne-Louis Dumont, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac and Claude-Adrien Helvétius.

Sometime now, he started contributing to different periodicals, such as ‘The Traveller’ and ‘Morning Chronicle’. In 1822-23, he established the Utilitarian Society with his friends.

In 1823, James Mill decided against his son joining the bar. So he secured a position for him in the examiner’s office of the India House. Along with working at the India House, John Mill continued his scholarly pursuits.

When in 1824 the ‘Westminster Review’ was founded, he also began to contribute to that. From 1825, he began to edit Jeremy Bentham’s manuscript, ‘Rationale of Judicial Evidence’.

However in 1826, Mill started having a misgiving about the goal of his life. The previous year, he had taken part in a debate at the London Debating Society for the first time. There he found that he was being looked upon as an intellectual machine, ready to grind opposing views.

He experienced a kind of mental depression and soon began to ask himself if creating a just society, for which he had been groomed since childhood, would actually make him happy. The answer he found to be negative. But he was too much in awe of his father to talk to him about it.

Therefore, he started wrestling with himself, contemplating anew. Alone in a gloomy solitude, he even thought of committing suicide. Fortunately, saner thought prevailed and he started reformulating the theories he had hitherto embraced.

It is believed that the poems of William Wordsworth helped him to come out of the labyrinth. He emerged from it with a more catholic view of human happiness and a hatred of sectarianism. Moreover, he learned to appreciate poetries and to moderate his ambition to practical possibilities.

He also began to realize that his emotional growth had been compromised by his father’s intense analytical training. He therefore began to look for a philosophy that would help him to overcome his shortcomings.