CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION


It seems proper that I should prefix to the following biographical sketch
some mention of the reasons which have made me think it desirable that I
should leave behind me such a memorial of so uneventful a life as mine.
I do not for a moment imagine that any part of what I have to relate can
be interesting to the public as a narrative or as being connected with
myself. But I have thought that in an age in which education and its
improvement are the subject of more, if not of profounder, study than at
any former period of English history, it may be useful that there should
be some record of an education which was unusual and remarkable, and
which, whatever else it may have done, has proved how much more than is
commonly supposed may be taught, and well taught, in those early years
which, in the common modes of what is called instruction, are little
better than wasted. It has also seemed to me that in an age of transition
in opinions, there may be somewhat both of interest and of benefit in
noting the successive phases of any mind which was always pressing forward,
equally ready to learn and to unlearn either from its own thoughts or from
those of others. But a motive which weighs more with me than either of
these, is a desire to make acknowledgment of the debts which my
intellectual and moral development owes to other persons; some of them of
recognised eminence, others less known than they deserve to be, and the
one to whom most of all is due, one whom the world had no opportunity of
knowing. The reader whom these things do not interest, has only himself to
blame if he reads farther, and I do not desire any other indulgence from
him than that of bearing in mind that for him these pages were not written.

I was born in London, on the 20th of May, 1806, and was the eldest son
of James Mill, the author of the _History of British India_. My father,