Autobiography by John Stuart Mill (easy books to read txt) 📖

[Transcriber's note:

between brackets [ ] some fragments are included,

which are not present in all editions, mostly commentaries concerning

Mr. Mill's wife and stepdaughter (Helen Taylor)--an html ed. of this

e-text, including index is pending.]

CHAPTER I (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,

the son of a petty tradesman and (I believe) small farmer, at Northwater

Bridge, in the county of Angus, was, when a boy, recommended by his

abilities to the notice of Sir John Stuart, of Fettercairn, one of the

Barons of the Exchequer in Scotland, and was, in consequence, sent to

the University of Edinburgh, at the expense of a fund established by

Lady Jane Stuart (the wife of Sir John Stuart) and some other ladies

for educating young men for the Scottish Church. He there went through

the usual course of study, and was licensed as a Preacher, but never

followed the profession; having satisfied himself that he could not

believe the doctrines of that or any other Church. For a few years he

was a private tutor in various families in Scotland, among others that

of the Marquis of Tweeddale, but ended by taking up his residence in

London, and devoting himself to authorship. Nor had he any other means

of support until 1819, when he obtained an appointment in the India House.

 

In this period of my father's life there are two things which it is

impossible not to be struck with: one of them unfortunately a very

common circumstance, the other a most uncommon one. The first is, that

in his position, with no resource but the precarious one of writing in

periodicals, he married and had a large family; conduct than which

nothing could be more opposed, both as a matter of good sense and of

duty, to the opinions which, at least at a later period of life, he

strenuously upheld. The other circumstance, is the extraordinary

energy which was required to lead the life he led, with the

disadvantages under which he laboured from the first, and with those

which he brought upon himself by his marriage. It would have been no

small thing, had he done no more than to support himself and his

family during so many years by writing, without ever being in debt,

or in any pecuniary difficulty; holding, as he did, opinions, both in

politics and in religion, which were more odious to all persons of

influence, and to the common run of prosperous Englishmen, in that

generation than either before or since; and being not only a man whom

nothing would have induced to write against his convictions, but one

who invariably threw into everything he wrote, as much of his

convictions as he thought the circumstances would in any way permit:

being, it must also be said, one who never did anything negligently;

never undertook any task, literary or other, on which he did not

conscientiously bestow all the labour necessary for performing it

adequately. But he, with these burdens on him, planned, commenced, and

completed, the _History of India_; and this in the course of about ten

years, a shorter time than has been occupied (even by writers who had

no other employment) in the production of almost any other historical

work of equal bulk, and of anything approaching to the same amount of

reading and research. And to this is to be added, that during the

whole period, a considerable part of almost every day was employed in

the instruction of his children: in the case of one of whom, myself,

he exerted an amount of labour, care, and perseverance rarely, if

ever, employed for a similar purpose, in endeavouring to give,

according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectual

education.

 

A man who, in his own practice, so vigorously acted up to the

principle of losing no time, was likely to adhere to the same rule

in the instruction of his pupil. I have no remembrance of the time

when I began to learn Greek; I have been told that it was when I was

three years old. My earliest recollection on the subject, is that of

committing to memory what my father termed vocables, being lists of

common Greek words, with their signification in English, which he

wrote out for me on cards. Of grammar, until some years later, I

learnt no more than the inflections of the nouns and verbs, but, after

a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation; and I faintly

remember going through Aesop's _Fables_, the first Greek book which

I read. The _Anabasis_, which I remember better, was the second. I

learnt no Latin until my eighth year. At that time I had read, under

my father's tuition, a number of Greek prose authors, among whom I

remember the whole of Herodotus, and of Xenophon's _Cyropaedia_ and

_Memorials of Socrates_; some of the lives of the philosophers by

Diogenes Laertius; part of Lucian, and Isocrates ad Demonicum and Ad

Nicoclem. I also read, in 1813, the first six dialogues (in the common

arrangement) of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theoctetus inclusive:

which last dialogue, I venture to think, would have been better omitted,

as it was totally impossible I should understand it. But my father, in

all his teaching, demanded of me not only the utmost that I could do,

but much that I could by no possibility have done. What he was himself

willing to undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be judged from

the fact, that I went through the whole process of preparing my Greek

lessons in the same room and at the same table at which he was writing:

and as in those days Greek and English lexicons were not, and I could

make no more use of a Greek and Latin lexicon than could be made without

having yet begun to learn Latin, I was forced to have recourse to him

for the meaning of every word which I did not know. This incessant

interruption, he, one of the most impatient of men, submitted to, and

wrote under that interruption several volumes of his History and all

else that he had to write during those years.

 

The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in this part

of my childhood, was arithmetic: this also my father taught me: it was

the task of the evenings, and I well remember its disagreeableness.

But the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction I received.

Much of it consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father's

discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of

1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic

neighbourhood. My father's health required considerable and constant

exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the

green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him,

and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers,

is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the

day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather

than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while

reading, and from these in the morning walks, I told the story to him;

for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner

a great number: Robertson's histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest

delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson's _Philip the Second

and Third_. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the

Turks, and of the revolted Provinces of the Netherlands against Spain,

excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my

favourite historical reading was Hooke's _History of Rome_. Of Greece

I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments

and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin's

_Ancient History_, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with

great delight Langhorne's translation of Plutarch. In English history,

beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnet's

_History of his Own Time_, though I cared little for anything in it

except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the _Annual

Register_, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my

father borrowed for me from Mr. Bentham left off. I felt a lively

interest in Frederic of Prussia during his difficulties, and in Paoli,

the Corsican patriot; but when I came to the American War, I took my

part, like a child as I was (until set right by my father) on the

wrong side, because it was called the English side. In these frequent

talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give

me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality,

mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him

in my own words. He also made me read, and give him a verbal account of,

many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me

to read them of myself: among other's Millar's _Historical View of the

English Government_, a book of great merit for its time, and which he

highly valued; Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, McCrie's _Life of

John Knox_, and even Sewell and Rutty's Histories of the Quakers. He was

fond of putting into my hands books which exhibited men of energy and

resource in unusual circumstances, struggling against difficulties and

overcoming them: of such works I remember Beaver's _African Memoranda_,

and Collins's _Account of the First Settlement of New South Wales_.

Two books which I never wearied of reading were Anson's Voyages, so

delightful to most young persons, and a collection (Hawkesworth's, I

believe) of _Voyages round the World_, in four volumes, beginning with

Drake and ending with Cook and Bougainville. Of children's books, any

more than of playthings, I had scarcely any, except an occasional gift

from a relation