Mill, John Stuart 1806-73
English philosopher and social reformer

John Stuart Mill was born in London, the son of the Scottish philosopher James Mill, who was wholly responsible for his son's remarkable and rigorous education. He taught him Greek at the age of three, Latin and arithmetic at eight, logic at 12, and political economy at 13. He was shielded from association with other boys of his age, his only recreation being a daily walk with his father, during which he was tested with oral examinations. After a visit to France in 1820 he broadened his studies into history, law and philosophy and in 1823 began a career under his father at the India Office, where he advanced to become head of his department.

This forced education gave him an advantage, as he put it, of a quarter of a century over his contemporaries, and he began enthusiastically to fulfil the ambitions his father had for him to become the leader and prophet of the Benthamite utilitarian movement. He began publishing in the newspaper The Traveller in 1822; he helped form the Utilitarian Society, which met for reading and discussion in Jeremy Bentham's house (1823-26), and with Bentham he helped found University College London in 1825; he was a major contributor to the Westminster Review and a regular performer in the London Debating Society; and he corresponded with Thomas Carlyle and met Frederick Maurice. He espoused Malthusian doctrines, and was arrested in 1824 for distributing birth control literature to the poor in London.

In 1826 he suffered a mental crisis which he describes in his autobiography, and which has usually been seen as a result of his precocious but emotionally restricted development. For a while he was in 'a dull state of nerves', but the depression passed and he recovered, with his sympathies broadened and his intellectual position importantly modified, as his reviews of Tennyson (1835), Carlyle (1837), Bentham (1838) and Coleridge (1840) indicate. He effectively humanized utilitarianism by his recognition of the differences in the quality as well as the quantity of pleasures thereby restoring the importance of cultural and idealistic values.

In 1830 he had met Harriet Taylor, the bluestocking wife of a wealthy London merchant, and after a long, intense but apparently chaste romance he married her in 1851, two years after her husband's death. She took an active interest in his writing and contributed significantly to his essay On Liberty (1859), the most popular of all his works, which eloquently defines and defends the freedoms of the individual against social and political control. Her views on marriage and the status of women helped inspire The Subjection of Women (1869), which provoked great antagonism.

Remaining politically active in later life, he was elected to parliament in 1865. He campaigned for women's suffrage and generally supported the Advanced Liberals. In 1872 he became godfather, 'in a secular sense', to Lord Amberley's second son, Bertrand Russell. His last years were spent in France and he died in Avignon.

Bibliography: Mill's major work, A System of Logic (1843), ran through many editions, establishing his philosophical reputation and greatly influencing John Venn, John Neville Keynes, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, particularly in its treatment of induction. His other works include Principles of Political Economy (1848), Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Utilitarianism (1863), Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865), Auguste Comte and Positivism (1873) and Three Essays on Religion (1874). His Autobiography was published in 1873. See also A Ryan, J. S. Mill (1974).