— Ch. 1 · The Boy Who Read Plato —
John Stuart Mill.
~2 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
John Stuart Mill was born on the 20th of May 1806 at 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville, London. His father James Mill, a Scottish philosopher and historian, designed an education so rigorous that it bordered on torture by modern standards. The boy learned Greek at age three and had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and all of Herodotus by age eight. He studied Latin, Euclid, and algebra while simultaneously teaching younger children in his own family. By ten years old, he could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. This intense upbringing aimed to create a genius intellect capable of carrying forward utilitarianism after his father and Jeremy Bentham died. The child was deliberately shielded from association with peers his own age except for siblings. At twelve, he began studying scholastic logic alongside Aristotle's original treatises. In the following year, he studied political economy under Adam Smith and David Ricardo. His daily economic lessons helped his father write Elements of Political Economy in 1821. The book lacked popular support despite its theoretical rigor. At fourteen, Mill spent a year in France with Sir Samuel Bentham's family. There he encountered mountain scenery that sparked a lifelong love for landscapes. The lively French lifestyle left a deep impression on him. He attended winter courses on chemistry, zoology, and higher mathematics in Montpellier. While traveling through Paris, he stayed with economist Jean-Baptiste Say and met Henri Saint-Simon. These early experiences shaped a mind that would later question everything it had been taught.
The Crisis That Saved Him
At twenty years of age, John Stuart Mill went through months of profound sadness and contemplated suicide. He asked himself whether creating a just society, his life's objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered no, and he lost the happiness of striving toward this goal. This psychological breakdown reshaped his entire philosophical outlook. Poetry by William Wordsworth eventually showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy. With renewed vigor, he continued working toward a just society but now with more relish for the journey. Many differences between him and his father stemmed from this expanded source of joy. He met Thomas Carlyle during one of the latter's visits to London in the early 1830s. They quickly became companions and correspondents. Mill offered to print Carlyle's works at his own expense and encouraged him to write his French Revolution. In March 1835, while the manuscript was in Mill's possession, his housemaid unwittingly used it as tinder. All except some three or four bits of leaves were destroyed. Mortified, Mill offered Carlyle £200 as compensation though Carlyle accepted only £100. Ideological differences ended their friendship during the 1840s. Carlyle's early influence still colored Mill's later thought. He had been engaged in a pen-friendship with Auguste Comte since November 1841. Comte's positivism motivated Mill to reject Bentham's cold view of human nature. Instead he favored Comte's sociable view focused on historical facts and human individuals.