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

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questions. After this, I went in a similar manner through the _Computatio

sive Logica_ of Hobbes, a work of a much higher order of thought than the

books of the school logicians, and which he estimated very highly; in my

own opinion beyond its merits, great as these are. It was his invariable

practice, whatever studies he exacted from me, to make me as far as

possible understand and feel the utility of them: and this he deemed

peculiarly fitting in the case of the syllogistic logic, the usefulness

of which had been impugned by so many writers of authority. I well

remember how, and in what particular walk, in the neighbourhood of Bagshot

Heath (where we were on a visit to his old friend Mr. Wallace, then one

of the Mathematical Professors at Sandhurst) he first attempted by

questions to make me think on the subject, and frame some conception of

what constituted the utility of the syllogistic logic, and when I had

failed in this, to make me understand it by explanations. The

explanations did not make the matter at all clear to me at the time;

but they were not therefore useless; they remained as a nucleus for my

observations and reflections to crystallize upon; the import of his

general remarks being interpreted to me, by the particular instances

which came under my notice afterwards. My own consciousness and

experience ultimately led me to appreciate quite as highly as he did,

the value of an early practical familiarity with the school logic.

I know of nothing, in my education, to which I think myself more

indebted for whatever capacity of thinking I have attained. The first

intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, was

dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay:

and though whatever capacity of this sort I attained, was due to the

fact that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was most

perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that the

school logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying it, were

among the principal instruments of this drilling. I am persuaded that

nothing, in modern education, tends so much, when properly used, to

form exact thinkers, who attach a precise meaning to words and

propositions, and are not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous

terms. The boasted influence of mathematical studies is nothing to

it; for in mathematical processes, none of the real difficulties of

correct ratiocination occur. It is also a study peculiarly adapted to

an early stage in the education of philosophical students, since it

does not presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience and

reflection, valuable thoughts of their own. They may become capable

of disentangling the intricacies of confused and self-contradictory

thought, before their own thinking faculties are much advanced; a

power which, for want of some such discipline, many otherwise able

men altogether lack; and when they have to answer opponents, only

endeavour, by such arguments as they can command, to support the

opposite conclusion, scarcely even attempting to confute the

reasonings of their antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost,

leaving the question, as far as it depends on argument, a balanced one.

 

During this time, the Latin and Greek books which I continued to read

with my father were chiefly such as were worth studying, not for the

language merely, but also for the thoughts. This included much of the

orators, and especially Demosthenes, some of whose principal orations

I read several times over, and wrote out, by way of exercise, a full

analysis of them. My father's comments on these orations when I read

them to him were very instructive to me. He not only drew my attention

to the insight they afforded into Athenian institutions, and the

principles of legislation and government which they often illustrated,

but pointed out the skill and art of the orator--how everything

important to his purpose was said at the exact moment when he had

brought the minds of his audience into the state most fitted to

receive it; how he made steal into their minds, gradually and by

insinuation, thoughts which, if expressed in a more direct manner,

would have roused their opposition. Most of these reflections were

beyond my capacity of full comprehension at the time; but they left

seed behind, which germinated in due season. At this time I also read

the whole of Tacitus, Juvenal, and Quintilian. The latter, owing to

his obscure style and to the scholastic details of which many parts

of his treatise are made up, is little read, and seldom sufficiently

appreciated. His book is a kind of encyclopaedia of the thoughts of

the ancients on the whole field of education and culture; and I have

retained through life many valuable ideas which I can distinctly trace

to my reading of him, even at that early age. It was at this period

that I read, for the first time, some of the most important dialogues

of Plato, in particular the _Gorgias_, the _Protagoras_, and the

_Republic_. There is no author to whom my father thought himself more

indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he more

frequently recommended to young students. I can bear similar testimony

in regard to myself. The Socratic method, of which the Platonic

dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for

correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the

_intellectus sibi permissus_, the understanding which has made up all

its bundles of associations under the guidance of popular phraseology.

The close, searching _elenchus_ by which the man of vague generalities

is constrained either to express his meaning to himself in definite

terms, or to confess that he does not know what he is talking about;

the perpetual testing of all general statements by particular instances;

the siege in form which is laid to the meaning of large abstract terms,

by fixing upon some still larger class-name which includes that and more,

and dividing down to the thing sought--marking out its limits and

definition by a series of accurately drawn distinctions between it and

each of the cognate objects which are successively parted off from it

--all this, as an education for precise thinking, is inestimable, and

all this, even at that age, took such hold of me that it became part of

my own mind. I have felt ever since that the title of Platonist belongs

by far better right to those who have been nourished in and have

endeavoured to practise Plato's mode of investigation, than to those

who are distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmatical

conclusions, drawn mostly from the least intelligible of his works, and

which the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain whether

he himself regarded as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic

conjectures.

 

In going through Plato and Demosthenes, since I could now read these

authors, as far as the language was concerned, with perfect ease, I

was not required to construe them sentence by sentence, but to read

them aloud to my father, answering questions when asked: but the

particular attention which he paid to elocution (in which his own

excellence was remarkable) made this reading aloud to him a most

painful task. Of all things which he required me to do, there was none

which I did so constantly ill, or in which he so perpetually lost his

temper with me. He had thought much on the principles of the art of

reading, especially the most neglected part of it, the inflections of

the voice, or _modulation_, as writers on elocution call it (in

contrast with _articulation_ on the one side, and _expression_ on the

other), and had reduced it to rules, grounded on the logical analysis

of a sentence. These rules he strongly impressed upon me, and took me

severely to task for every violation of them: but I even then remarked

(though I did not venture to make the remark to him) that though he

reproached me when I read a sentence ill, and _told_ me how I ought to

have read it, he never by reading it himself, _showed_ me how it ought

to be read. A defect running through his otherwise admirable modes of

instruction, as it did through all his modes of thought, was that of

trusting too much to the intelligibleness of the abstract, when not

embodied in the concrete. It was at a much later period of my youth,

when practising elocution by myself, or with companions of my own age,

that I for the first time understood the object of his rules, and saw

the psychological grounds of them. At that time I and others followed

out the subject into its ramifications, and could have composed a very

useful treatise, grounded on my father's principles. He himself left

those principles and rules unwritten. I regret that when my mind was

full of the subject, from systematic practice, I did not put them, and

our improvements of them, into a formal shape.

 

A book which contributed largely to my education, in the best sense of

the term, was my father's _History of India_. It was published in the

beginning of 1818. During the year previous, while it was passing

through the press, I used to read the proof sheets to him; or rather,

I read the manuscript to him while he corrected the proofs. The number

of new ideas which I received from this remarkable book, and the

impulse and stimulus as well as guidance given to my thoughts by its

criticism and disquisitions on society and civilization in the Hindoo

part, on institutions and the acts of governments in the English part,

made my early familiarity with it eminently useful to my subsequent

progress. And though I can perceive deficiencies in it now as compared

with a perfect standard, I still think it, if not the most, one of the

most instructive histories ever written, and one of the books from

which most benefit may be derived by a mind in the course of making up

its opinions.

 

The Preface, among the most characteristic of my father's writings, as

well as the richest in materials of thought, gives a picture which may

be entirely depended on, of the sentiments and expectations with which

he wrote the History. Saturated as the book is with the opinions and

modes of judgment of a democratic radicalism then regarded as extreme;

and treating with a severity, at that time most unusual, the English

Constitution, the English law, and all parties and classes who

possessed any considerable influence in the country; he may have

expected reputation, but certainly not advancement in life, from its

publication; nor could he have supposed that it would raise up anything

but enemies for him in powerful quarters: least of all could he have

expected favour from the East India Company, to whose commercial

privileges he was unqualifiedly hostile, and on the acts of whose

government he had made so many severe comments: though, in various parts

of his book, he bore a testimony in their favour, which he felt to be

their just due, namely, that no Government had on the whole given so much

proof, to the extent of its lights, of good intention towards its subjects;

and that if the acts of any other Government had the light of publicity

as completely let in upon them, they would, in all probability, still less

bear scrutiny.

 

On learning, however, in the spring of 1819, about a year after the

publication of the History, that the East India Directors desired to

strengthen the part of their home establishment which was employed in

carrying on the correspondence with India, my father declared himself

a candidate for that employment, and, to the credit of the Directors,

successfully. He was appointed one of the Assistants of the Examiner

of India Correspondence; officers whose duty it was to prepare drafts

of despatches to India, for consideration by the Directors, in the

principal departments of administration. In this office, and in that

of Examiner, which he subsequently attained, the influence which his

talents, his reputation, and his decision of character gave him, with

superiors who really desired the good government of India, enabled him

to a great extent to throw into his drafts of despatches, and to carry

through the ordeal of the Court of Directors and Board of Control,

without having their force much weakened, his real opinions on Indian

subjects. In his History he had set forth, for the first time, many of

the true principles of Indian administration: and his despatches,

following his History, did more than had ever been done before to

promote the improvement of India, and teach Indian officials to

understand their business. If a selection of them were published, they

would, I am convinced, place his character as a practical statesman

fully on a level with his eminence as a speculative writer.

 

This new employment of his time caused no relaxation in his attention to

my education. It was in