I.

A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE


John Stuart Mill was born on the 20th of May, 1806. "I am glad," wrote
George Grote to him in 1865, with reference to a forthcoming article
on his "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," "to get an
opportunity of saying what I think about your 'System of Logic' and
'Essay on Liberty,' but I am still more glad to get (or perhaps to
_make_) an opportunity of saying something about your father. It has
always rankled in my thoughts that so grand and powerful a mind as his
left behind it such insufficient traces in the estimation of
successors." That regret was natural. The grand and powerful mind of
James Mill left very notable traces, however, in the philosophical
literature of his country, and in the training of the son who was to
carry on his work, and to be the most influential teacher in a new
school of thought and action, by which society is likely to be
revolutionized far more than it has been by any other agency since
the period of Erasmus and Martin Luther. James Mill was something more
than the disciple of Bentham and Ricardo. He was a profound and
original philosopher, whose depth and breadth of study were all the
more remarkable because his thoughts were developed and his knowledge
was acquired mainly by his own exertions. He had been helped out of
the humble life into which he had been born by Sir John Stuart, who
assisted him to attend the lectures of Dugald Stewart and others at
Edinburgh with a view to his becoming a minister in the Church of
Scotland. Soon finding that calling distasteful to him, he had, in or
near the year 1800, settled in London as a journalist, resolved by